sixthiterationlogs | 002; here's a fellow in blue jeans dancing with an older queen

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002; here's a fellow in blue jeans dancing with an older queen

WHO: Jake Jensen
WHERE: Edge of the woods/Jake's back yard
WHEN: August 8th, mid-afternoon
OPEN TO: OTA!
WARNINGS: Slightly off-key singing, but that's it
STATUS: Open

Waking up to find a small, yipping box on their front porch had definitely been outside the ordinary, but Jake had fallen head-over-heels in love with the little, wiggling puppy he found inside. He's always been a sucker for dogs. The first day had been spent mostly lying on the floor, playing with the little pup and letting it chew on his hands (he knows he shouldn't allow it to do that, but it's so cute), but then he had to braid it some kind of harness/leash get-up so he wouldn't run away. He may not have a name yet, but Jake would be absolutely devastated if he lost his smol dog son.

The sheet he'd wound up tearing into strips and braiding into a leash for the dog was a pale blue color, and Jake has to admire how it sets off the pale blue of the dog's eyes. His dog is so handsome! He'd taken him on a long walk around the village earlier in the morning to show him off, but then, unfortunately, duty calls. He'd promised Cougar earlier he'd start a wood pile, so despite the distraction of the puppy, he heads out to the forest to start hauling wood back to the house.

Using a rusty axe head that he'd managed to sharpen on a stone and fit with a new handle as the old one had all but rotted away, Jake manages to make it to the end of their little "yard" before the puppy's whining brought him back.

Which is how he finds himself with a dog leash in one hand and an axe in the other, singing to himself as he walks into the forest.

He's worked through most of Sam Cooke's greatest hits by the time he returns to the house, the dog leash tied around his waist so he can still hold the axe in one hand, the other being occupied with carrying the tree limbs he'd managed to hack down. There's a tree stump near the edge of what he considers the yard that will be perfect for splitting wood, and a scraggly looking bush he can tie the puppy to so he won't run away. It's as good a set up as he's going to ever get, so he sets himself to the task at hand, getting into a rhythm pretty quickly with the chopping.

He gets so into the swing of things that he actually starts swinging; his hips, that is. Dancing whilst chopping wood is a delicate maneuver, but he manages it, bopping along to his rendition of soul classics.

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"Cougs, I..." Jake flounders, at a loss for words. Which, as anyone who knows him knows, is a rarity.

He scrambles to his feet when Cougar backs away, feeling like he can't let this moment slip through his grasp but not knowing what to do about it. Cougar, famous for being non-communicative at best, has shockingly not given him much to work with. And what he has said could, technically, be taken strictly platonically. Jake could be reading too much into all of this, his idle wishful fantasies, quickly suppressed, bubbling up to the surface to fuck up his best and closest friendship.

The emotional whiplash between Cougar being pissy a minute ago and the way Cougar is smiling at him now is also disorienting.

"W-what did you read?" he asks, shuffling a little bit closer seemingly without realizing it, his hands flexing at his sides like he wants to reach out but is too afraid.

He has to do this right. Cougar is very bad at English at the best of times because he's never needed to learn the language. He's thinking that now, that needs to change. He must focus and get these words across right, or Jake will read into them wrong and he thinks they might not get this chance again. Maybe it's the isolation of not having anyone else here because it means there is no expectations on him.

There are many pretty women here, but without the army or Max, Cougar's instincts gravitate towards wanting someone who understands and is there with him. Jake has been curling up with him at night to soothe away his terrors, and he thinks that maybe, maybe he is just reading too much.

He reaches out to take Jake's hand into his, holding it level. "I think maybe, we do not talk enough about important things."

Jake has a bad habit of leaping to conclusions and assuming the worst, so perhaps it's a good thing that Cougar is trying so hard to choose the right words. On the other hand, the long pauses aren't doing anything for the nerves that have suddenly tied his stomach in knots, so it's more of a 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' kind of situation.

This is important, though. He bites his tongue to keep himself from blurting out anything stupid, and watches as Cougar searches for the words to speak his mind.

"We talk," he protests, his eyes wide behind his lenses as Cougar lifts his hand. "Well, I talk and you grunt, but it's the same thing."

"If you do not know how highly I think about you, then we don't talk enough," Cougar replies pointedly, because he still thinks that Jake is teasing him a little. He moves the pad of his thumb slowly over Jake's knuckles and taps twice against his palm. "Look," he says, sliding into the big stuff.

"I'm bad at showing this, yes. Before, I couldn't. We could not tell, if asked. And so I just made sure you would not find permanency with anyone else." He shrugs, all the apology Jake will get. Releasing his hand, he knows that it's not the most honourable of actions. "I'm not sure I deserve to ask for a chance."

It's not Cougar's fault that Jake has a very deeply internalized sense of low self esteem. Well, it sort of is his fault, as practically every time Jake has tried to score with anyone, anywhere, he's struck out because Cougar manages to turn on his nonverbal charm the moment he's making headway and whoever he's talking to immediately turns their attentions to his teammate.

Once, memorably, he'd managed to take a girl home, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find her trying to sneak into Cougar's room.

He never spoke about it again.

But this... Well, it's something of a vindication to hear that Cougar was doing it deliberately (maybe not with Megan, though), but that doesn't stop him from being irritated about it. What the fuck, Cougar. You don't do that to your bro, man, that's not cool. He'll yell at him about it later, though, right now he's busy.

"But Cougs, you're...you're straight..."

He raises his brow and shrugs, like he's not talking about a very serious topic. "Disowned at eighteen, wasn't for kissing a girl," is his even reply, not wanting to talk much of Jésus because he thinks the last thing Jake wants to know about right now is Cougar's ex-boyfriend. "Army," he reminds Jake pointedly, seeing as he wasn't about to get himself kicked out of somewhere twice for his proclivities.

"Don't get me wrong, I like women very much," he promises. "Not that narrow minded, is all."

"Oh," he breathes, more than a little stunned. "You never said," he continues after a moment, his eyes flicking back up to meet Cougar's after they'd drifted down while he was turning this new information over in his head. "You never even searched for gay porn or anything!" he accuses, his voice picking up a little more steam as the knowledge that Cougar likes guys too settles in. "I've seen all of your search history, even the deleted stuff — and trust me, you do not want to know the stuff Clay googles on his down time — and there was nothing!"

Not that it should matter, anyway. Cougar liking men too doesn't change anything, except in all the ways that it does.

The puppy, hearing Jake raise his voice, joins in with little yipping barks that Jake ignores for the moment.

"I wouldn't have told anyone. You could have told me."

It's because it's his personal life. If Jake had noticed, Cougar searched for very little outside of hat suppliers, weather, and the occasional check in to see what his sisters are up to (despite the fact that his parents would never let him contact them). He leans down to dig his fingers into the dog's fur, hushing him with a soothing, "Calmate", though he never takes his eyes off Jake.

"It wasn't important to the team," is his heated reply. "Why should I have told you?"

Cougar's reply makes him feel even more distressed than before. "Because I thought we were more than just teammates!" he exclaims, looking hurt. "I thought we were friends."

Yes, he's aware he's being a little hypocritical right now. He also hasn't told Cougar anything about the way his own eyes linger sometimes, but he's never done anything about those urges. Never. Not before the Army, not after. He'd never had much opportunity to do anything about it, even if he wanted, and he'd always been too scared to risk getting put in hospital by one of his fellow soldiers for being a fag.

It's hard to imagine Cougar being scared of anything, though, so it doesn't quite register that maybe he had those same fears.

"And what?" Cougar challenges. "You would have come out with me when I snuck away from the team to dingy, seedy bars when I needed something specific? Kept it from the team when Clay asked a question just close enough to be dangerous? Not flinched when I started to look at you too long where Roque would have seen and you knew why?"

He heaves in a sharp breath, having spoken too much.

"I'm telling you now," he says calmly. "As your friend."

"I would have gone with you," Jake insists quietly, his jaw clenched belligerently. "Or covered for you if you wanted to be alone. I—" his voice dies in his throat as he tries to explain that he wouldn't have minded going to those bars with Cougar for more than one reason, and none of them are because he's such a good friend.

"I would have wanted to go," he finally makes himself say, ducking down to pick up the dog so he can fuss with it and not make eye contact. "With you. To those bars."

Still mostly ducked over the wriggling puppy, he chances a glance up to see Cougar's face, knowing that he needs to see his expression to know what he's thinking. Cougar and plain words have never been close friends.

Cougar has his teeth on his inner cheek, absently chewing as if it's not flesh, but something else. He's clever enough and able to read between the lines enough to know what Jake is saying. The thing is, part of him has always known that. Where his doubt lies is more in the place where he'd never thought it geared towards him. "Pink shirt," he reminds him. "I knew."

He exhales and lets his gaze slide over Jake, his smile as filled with grief as it ever is when he thinks about something like this. "Maybe," he starts, roughly, "I need to stop being so selfish. I keep you from people you could be with, but I am not a good boyfriend." It hurts to say, but he thinks he needs to. "It's no good, though, thinking of you serious, with someone else."

"Straight guys wear pink!" Jake protests, forgetting his nerves for a moment in the rush of indignation at such strict gender roles. "And it was Beth's team!" He'd wear pretty much anything on a t-shirt to support his niece, a hot pink shirt with a big flower on the front is small change.

Jake Jensen has been called both a genius and a complete moron, but he doesn't have to be either to figure out what Cougar is saying right now.

Yes, this is all coming as a surprise, and part of him wants to wander off somewhere to process this, but he knows Cougar well enough to know that if he leaves, Cougar is going to dig himself into a giant pit of Catholic guilt and self-recrimination that will be next to impossible to haul him out of later. So. No running away to process. Time to process on the fly.

"You aren't a boyfriend at all," he points out, a little dazed. "I had no idea you even liked men in general, let alone liked me." Which is still fucking crazy to think about. He sighs, cradling the puppy up to his chest, letting it lick at his chin and wriggle even more in his arms. "So you want me, huh?" He likes to think he's handling this well, all things considered.

If Jake's head gets suddenly swollen as a result of this, it will only be Cougar's fault. He knows what he feels and knows that he also shouldn't be forcing himself on anyone, not with his issues. Maybe before Bolivia, it would have been okay, but he's still been broken then, too. "Put your shirt on," he says roughly, because his attention keeps getting diverted away.

To the rest, all he says is, "Yes."

"But it changes nothing," he goes on, "Remember? Not a good person to be with."

Cougar seems a little flustered, and honestly, that's what makes Jake calm down the most. He's used to teasing Cougar — not by flaunting his body or anything, but by giving him shit like a normal person — and now that an opportunity has presented itself, he grabs on to it with both hands. Metaphorically.

"Am I distracting you?" he asks, a small smile starting to curl his lips. It just grows larger the more he thinks about it, though. He's distracting Cougar. Just by being shirtless. Incredible.

Obviously, he's not going to put his shirt on now.

"Actually, I think it changes a lot of things," Jake insists, steamrolling over Cougar's martyr act. They've been friends long enough that he's able to spot it coming, and he's going to do his best to either ignore it until it goes away or not let Cougar get too far into it to begin with. "And I happen to think you're a great person, even if you're an uncommunicative bastard who tries to make decisions for me."

He knows from experience that Jake can often make poor decisions when left to his own devices. It's mainly because he's a young man with poor impulse control, half the time, and Cougar feels responsible for taking care of him. He likes it, too. There's no one else he'd let patch up Jake or watch his six. Out of all the Losers, Jake's the best friend. Still, he doesn't know if he trusts him to make this decision.

Nothing should change, even with everything out in the open.

"And yes, you are distracting," he huffs out, gesturing to him a touch wildly. "You know when you do physical activity, you are el más atractivo."

Cougar's complaining makes Jake look so quietly pleased, he resembles those Shiba Inu dogs in memes. Much happy. So pride.

"Is that so?" he asks, resisting the urge to put the dog down so he can set his hands on his hips and flex. He doesn't actually know that he's más atractivo when he does physical activity, because he's been in a group of men who are of similar ages and builds as him basically since he started putting on muscle. He's just normal. Tall, but otherwise normal.

And yet he's distracting Cougar. He can't believe it!

He's all but grinning now, so pleased with himself, when a thought strikes him and the smile dims somewhat, but just because he's thinking. "...Can I kiss you?"

Cougar stares at Jake, the pained look on his face a glimmer of what he's going through internally. "I told you," is his heavily accented reminder, "that I will not be good for you. And if we do that, it will only be a reminder of what we shouldn't do,' he says, feeling like dull knives are assaulting him in many ways.

He reaches down to get his boots back on firmly, tongue working his lower lip as he thinks about what that might be like (as if he hasn't already thought of this, many nights). He gestures for the dog, offering to take him.

"You don't know that," Jake insists, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "I think you'd be great for me. Who else should I trust to have my best interests at heart, huh? Jo? Peggy? Hell, Thorfinn?" He's fairly certain Cougar will go all growly caveman at him when he suggests alternate relationships, and that's fine by him, really.

A determined look forming on his face, Jake sets the dog down (much to its disappointment) and instead steps around it, reaching out to wrap his fingers gently around Cougar's elbow.

"Carlos," he murmurs, unconsciously licking his lips too, sounding a lot braver than he feels. "I would really like to kiss you."

He lets out a sharp sound of disagreement at the names, even though he knows he's not allowed to be jealous when he's standing there saying that it shouldn't be him. He breathes in sharply when he hears his true name, his gaze sliding to Jake's lips as he tries to keep up his stubbornness to avoid this going badly.

"Jacob," he begs, "you know I'll only drag you down with nightmares and issues."

The trouble is that he's not pulling away. He doesn't want to pull away.

Cougar's staring at his mouth now, which makes sense given the tone of their conversation, and Jake is suddenly conscious of his shaggy beard. Scratching a hand over his cheeks, he shrugs and gives Cougar a lopsided smile.

"That's going to happen anyway," he points out, a little too flippantly given the subject matter. "Because I'm not leaving you, and I know you sure as hell aren't gonna leave me, so..."

He inches closer some more, his thumb brushing against the thin skin inside Cougar's elbow.

"We might as well enjoy the ride, right?"

Cougar breathes in deeply into his nose and stares at Jake and how close they are, allowing his gaze to slip down again to his bare skin and his lips when he looks back up. "Jake," he gets out, barely more than a breath as he wars with his common sense and thoughts.

"You really want this? Not just because you can have it?"

He's heard Cougar whisper quite often, really, but he's never heard this breathy tone from him, the kind of nervous wonder that he tends to associate with starry-eyed girls in bars who don't understand what being a soldier really entails, too dazzled by their muscles and their scars and Hollywood movies that glamorize combat.

"Cougs, I've been basically in love with you for most of a decade," he points out, and then immediately goes beet red. It's one thing to admit 'hey, I think you're cute, let's make out,' and another to drop the l-bomb without warning.

That's not what he'd been expecting to hear. Honestly, Cougar had been thinking that he might be something of a conquest to Jake. Someone he wanted to bed in order to say that he'd done it. The only problem is that it makes Cougar even more desperate to somehow prevent Jake from falling into this rabbit hole of loving a broken man.

"I don't think you should kiss me," he dredges up the words even if they're painful to get out. "What good would I be for you?" he asks, unable to see an answer.

Growing more and more frustrated with Cougar's obnoxious propensity to act the martyr, Jake opens his mouth with something close to a growl to tell him what an idiot he's being, but then realizes he knows a much easier way to deal with this problem.

Reaching out, he grabs a handful of Cougar's hair and yanks him closer, his other hand slipping around behind him to press to the small of his back so he can't twist away when Jake leans in and deliberately seals their lips together.

002; here's a fellow in blue jeans dancing with an older queen

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