sixthiterationlogs | one little snap and it all falls, falls, falls down

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one little snap and it all falls, falls, falls down

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Bungalow #22
WHEN: 1AM, July 25
OPEN TO: Jake Jensen, Veronica Sawyer
WARNINGS: Violence, mentions of death
STATUS: Closed

It's a miracle Cougar's lasted this long.

He's been sleeping like the dead, when he does sleep. There have been long days of insomnia that keep him awake and then when he does find sleep, it's without dreams. It's a blessing from God in a place that seems scant on blessings. It's taken this long for him to find respite in sleep and when he does, it's thanks to Jensen's presence and the knowledge that someone else has his back.

It starts like it always does. Cougar thrashes in the bed, tossing and turning as he dreams. As always, it's green. The smell of the jungle is around them and he hears birds. The laughter of children echoes in his ears, rapid-fire, happy Spanish being shared and plans for the future. He hears them from all around him, as if in stereo, but just like always, the dream shifts.

The fires start, claiming the trees around them, and then the bullets. One by one, the children fall, consumed by bullets and fire, but they don't stay dead. They come back to haunt him, aglow and afire with hatred and anger in their eyes.

"You," they chorus, staring at him, "it's your fault."

He can never move, in this dream. Stuck, paralyzed, Cougar can't get away as they crumble to dust, one by one. His little angelitos are slowly dying because he put them on a helicopter and told them everything was going to be fine. He lied to them and now they're dead, twenty-five little angels on his soul.

"No," he murmurs. "No, no, no!" It builds faster and faster, until Cougar is thrashing in his bed, the covers tangled with his body as he starts to scream, the fires of hell opening their gates for him in the dream, beckoning him in for what he did. Sweaty, panicked, and as scared as ever, he flails in the bed as hoarse bellows fill the bungalow and he tries for the knife to defend himself against this waking nightmare.

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Leaving his glasses behind was a stupid fucking move, but Jake hadn't been thinking. Obvious. He never thinks when it comes to Cougar.

Cougar is a slippery bastard at the worst of times, and right now is no different. Before Jake can rear back, he's been grabbed and Cougar's knee gets slammed right into his balls. He's too shocked to do much more than flail and squeak, torn between defending himself and not hitting his friend.

His indecision winds up with him flat on his back, Cougar's weight pinning him down, a sharp knife pressed to his neck.

"Cougs," he wheezes pitifully, fighting the urge to curl up in a ball and protect his soft, dangly bits. He can't curl up, Cougar's got him pinned to the mattress. "Cougs," he repeats, his hand curled around Cougar's wrist. "It's just me. Jake. No demons, okay? Just me."

Cougs filters through. At first, it comes from the mouth of the little demon girl, but eventually, the haze clears and he hears it the second time through the echo. His eyes widen in panicked fear and Cougar recoils, the knife scattering to the ground as he lets go of it, vaulting off Jake and crossing himself, murmuring a frantic Hail Mary to repent for this sudden sin.

"What are you doing here?" he snaps at him. "I could have killed you."

The moment Cougar springs off him, Jake lets himself curl up with a pained little whimper, pain rolling over him in horrible, red-hot waves as he breathes doggedly through clenched teeth. He's been kicked in the nuts before, he knows all he has to do is breathe and the pain will dissipate soon enough.

"You were screaming," is his only justification.

That doesn't answers Cougar's question. He finishes his prayer with a touch of his palm to his sacred heart tattoo, bared since he only sleeps in his boxers. He arches a brow at Jensen's pain, but he does feel guilty because he definitely is the cause of it. "Lo siento," he murmurs evenly, for the part where he'd both kneed Jensen and nearly sliced off his head.

"But you shouldn't have been so stupid," he snaps.

Jake had been teammates with Roque for years, he's used to the relationship between his head and shoulders being threatened regularly. Maybe not quite so seriously, but this isn't the first time he's had a knife whipped out at him.

"Yell at me later," he wheezes, blinking myopically up at Cougar in the near-dark. He's functionally blind at the best of times without his glasses, but in the middle of the night? He's lucky he didn't slam his shin into the bedframe and add to his collection of injuries. "Shut up now before you wake Veronica." If he hasn't already.

Cougar glares at Jake when he accuses him of waking up Veronica. Now that the dream is clearing, he can also see that Jake doesn't have his glasses. Cougar leans forward and smacks the back of his head, cursing at him, before creeping out stealthily and silently to find Jake's glasses in the dark, back in his bedroom.

He slides them on Jake's face, leaning over to light one of the lamps so he can get a good look at how much of a cut there is, splayed fingers grabbing Jake's chin to shove it up, elongating his neck. The divot of the cut is evident, especially when Cougar rubs away a droplet of blood. "How are the cojones?" he asks, unable to help his smirk.

Edited 2016-07-26 13:38 (UTC)

When Cougar smacks the back of his head, Jake lets out a wounded, petulant noise. "What was that for?" he protests, pouting.

When Cougar returns with his glasses, though, Jake lets out a soft sigh and lets him slide them back on his face, one hand lifting to gently touch Cougar's elbow as he forces him to tip his head back so he could see the damage he's done. "It's fine, Cougs," he assures him. "I've had worse shaving."

Cougar's follow-up question has him glaring, though, huffing a mad noise out of his noise. "Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm not going to be fathering any children anytime soon," he gripes. "God, how many knees do you have?"

Edited 2016-07-26 14:54 (UTC)

It's for charging into the room without his glasses when he could have run smack into a wall, which would have been stupid and careless of him. And that makes Cougar smack him because it's a stupid thing to do, especially just for him. "Si quieres, puedo besar mejor," he deadpans, but the glint in his eyes isn't joking so much as teasing.

He leans over to start stoking the lamp, ready to get himself awake for a long haul. If he wants to avoid those nightmares, he needs to stay awake.

"You're not kissing anything," he says, petulant. "You're mean to me."

When Cougar leans over to fiddle with the lamp, Jake frowns at him. "What are you dong? No, stop. C'mon. No lights. We're going back to sleep." He uses his longer reach to his advantage to turn the lamp down even further, muscling Cougar out of the way so he can lean over and puff air down the fluted glass, snuffing out the light before putting his glasses on the bedside table by the lamp. "Stop being such an idiot. You need to sleep."

Edited 2016-07-26 18:41 (UTC)

Cougar shrugs, passing off the comment like it's water off a duck, not minding rejection from Jensen. It's been fairly clear where Jake's affections lie and they're usually in the women that Cougar keeps from him (for his own good, he'd say).

He stiffens up when the dark floods the room again, not sure he can cope with the same nightmare twice in one night. "I'm not tired," he lies evenly, even if his muscles and head screams protest.

"You're a terrible fucking liar," he grumbles, using his greater bulk to muscle Cougar away from the lamp and back down onto the bed. "Just go to sleep, I'll be here." To stave off his nightmares, he doesn't say. Cougar is famously touchy about his problems, but Jake has found that if you just don't give him a choice, sometimes you can make him stop obsessing over them and relax.

The pillows are thin and the blankets are too, but the nights are still warm here in their little house, so Jake doesn't mind too much. Settling himself down between Cougar and the door, Jake pins him down with an arm across his stomach and his knee dug into his leg. "Stop thinking so loud, Carlos, c'mon. Sleep now. Thinking later."

The way he's positioned may seem kind and supportive, but Cougar knows better. This is a position that will be impossible to get out of, especially with Jake's bulk. He gives a sharp growl of frustration, but there is something soothing and drug-like about the warmth and the contact.

He relents and settles, skin shiny with sweat. "Haven't slept like this since Bolivia," he mutters, thinking of one of the worst nights and how Jake had abandoned his post for Cougar's bed.

Cougar is sweaty and warm under Jake's arm, a remnant from his nightmare, but he'll cool down soon enough. Especially if syncs his breath to Jake's, following the deep, obvious pattern he's using to fill his lungs. Back when they were stateside, he used to go to yoga classes with his sister. He's not really built for yoga, but he always enjoyed the classes, and the breathing exercises were surprisingly helpful.

"You haven't had nightmares like that since Bolivia," he points out quietly, splaying his hand wide across the edge of Cougar's ribcage.

He's not ready to sync his breaths to Jake, still amped up and sharp. His brain is fixated on the images in that nightmare and he's not sure whether he should be grateful that Afghanistan hadn't bled in this time, because shooting the wrong target hadn't exactly been...well, not the stuff of peaceful dreams. And then, there's Roque. Cougar should just be glad Roque has been avoiding his dreams.

He tenses up when Jake speaks. "Trapped away, no way to get revenge. All those kids we killed..." The guilt is swimming, impossible to ignore.

Frowning, Jake taps Cougar's rips sharply with his fingertips, a blunt pressure that should reverberate through his chest in an effort to snap him out of this. The last thing he wants to do is reminisce about Bolivia right now.

"Shh," he soothes, his voice gentle the way he gets when he's talking his niece down from a nightmare. "Just go back to sleep." Gently, he presses his hand to Cougar's ribs in time with his breathing, touching him like he's a pair of bellows he's trying to manipulate.

He's high strung and tense, which is why he thinks about swatting Jake's hand away, but the reminder that he's trying is what stays his hand. He breathes in sharply, and then exhales. It's the start of a process that will reduce his heart rate down to next to nothing, his breathing deep and steady.

What he needs is to shut his head off. He needs alcohol or a good knock to the head. "You sleep," he accuses, so he can sneak away and start pacing the canyon walls.

He just needs Jake to sleep so he can dislodge him.

"You sleep," he counters, using the verbal jousting skills he's honed from arguing with his eight year old niece.

He knows what Cougar is like. If he gives him any opportunity, his sneaky friend will slip out of the house and spend the night skulking around the perimeter of the town, stewing in his own guilt and self-recrimination. He's not going to let him do that.

So he launches into one of his bedtime stories for Beth, in the original German, weaving a complicated fairy tale in a low, soothing voice as he continues to sweep his thumb against the hard edge of Cougar's ribs. He's hoping the fact that Cougar doesn't speak German will make it easier for him to lull him to sleep, that he won't focus too much on the actual story but will instead let Jake's voice soothe him until he relaxes enough to sleep.

It's a language he doesn't understand beyond the niceties of getting around and the general terms you need in the Army. He finds that his breathing is steadying out without him even thinking hard about it, his mind going clear. He breathes out again and catches a few words in there.

Eyes closed, he rests his hand over his tattoo and his heart. "I'm not the princess," he warns, when he hears Jake describe her in the story.

"Du bist die schönste Prinzessin," he murmurs, interrupting his story to grin in the dark. Luckily, the night hides most of his smiling, and he launches himself back into the story without letting too much time go by, not wanting Cougar to let himself get worked up again.

He does make a point to change the princess from a beautiful blonde with sparkling blue eyes to a brooding beauty with black hair and deep, hooded eyes that are always shaded with a hat, though.

Cougar brought it on himself.

He grunts, because he might not understand that, but it bears the echo of Jake teasing him about something. Still, the language and the steady touch works like a balm on his nerves. His muscles start to relax and his nerves start to soothe.

This time, when the dreams come around, they're calmer. There's still the threat of an enemy within the canyon walls, but one that Cougar can't see. And through it all, he knows Jake is there, standing behind him. Stalking him, almost.

Cougar's body is relaxing even more, especially as it seeks out the warmth beneath him. He shifts, curling up his body into the smallest possible shape it can find and he grabs hold of Jake's shoulders to leverage himself to do so.

He can feel when Cougar finally falls asleep, the way his body grows heavier, relaxes against him. The relief that washes over him is almost ridiculous in its intensity, and his story falters for a moment as he closes his eyes and lets himself wallow in that, in the trust Cougar has for him to let him hold him like this while he sleeps.

But he started a story and he's going to finish it, dammit, which is why he starts back up again, murmuring quietly into the darkness of Cougar's room, not stopping even when Cougar twists in his arms and pulls himself closer.

As carefully as he can, he shifts his arms around Cougar's body, holding him close with one hand while he strokes his back slowly with the other; long, slow sweeps that will hopefully help him sink into a dreamless sleep.

Cougar's dreams go from busy and frantic to calm and nothing when there's a steadying pressure against his body and a hum of noise in his ear. It reminds him of sharing the room with the other men, because he'd never had the night terrors when he has people around him. He also never has them when he's being secured like this, but it's not a habit that's fair to ask of Jake.

When he wakes, it's still dark, but there's no screaming. Disoriented, he peers around blearily until he can make out the room and what he's lying on top of. Who he's on top of.

Jake is used to sleeping in close quarters with the rest of his team. He's even had to share his bedroll once or twice. But he and Pooch slept back-to-back; the only person he's ever cuddled while he slept — discounting his niece — has been Cougar. It's easy, familiar in a way, and by the time his bespectacled prince and the brooding princess ride off into the sunset together, he's tired enough not to even think about slipping out of Cougar's bed.

Instead, he just adjusts his hold on Cougar and closes his eyes, letting himself drift off into an easy, warm slumber.

Cougar breathes deeply in and starts to look for a way to escape the hold Jake has on him, but he's not sure why he wants to. He's comfortable and warm and the rise and fall of Jake's breaths are keeping him in a calm place, himself. Still, he can't stay here much longer, not when he's got other problems.

"Jake," he whispers. "Jake, déjame ir," he says, because he needs to take a trip to the washroom (thankful beyond measure it's not an outhouse).

Jake grumbles, not wanting to let go of the warm body curled up in his arms, but eventually Cougar's whispering filters through and he lets his arms loosen.

"Bwuh?" he mumbles, blinking slowly and trying to focus on the face that hovers above his.

Just the fact that he's able to sleep this deeply should be telling. Jake has never been much of a deep sleeper, having grown up in group homes in the foster system and then tossed into the Army at such a young age. He's never felt comfortable enough to let his guard down. But here, even in a place he's unfamiliar with, even though he doesn't know how to get home, he's able to sleep like the dead as long as he's in Cougar's bed.

Slowly, still grumbling, he opens his arms and lets Cougar slip free.

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