Work Text:
"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"
There was more bitching than there was blood, so Clay barely looked twice when Cougar and Pooch dragged a groaning Jensen back into their current safehouse. Aisha startled a little at the sheer noise the hacker was capable of making but she'd get used to it eventually. It had been only three months since that cluserfuck in L.A., after all.
"Motherfucker, owwwwwwwww..."
"Oh quit your moaning," Pooch muttered, dropping Jensen none-too-gently onto their dining room table/Jensen's office desk/Cougar's surgery gurney. Jensen moaned pitifully when his head bounced off the pock-marked old oak and Cougar glared a bit, on top of the glaring he was already doing.
Expression aside, Cougar's hands were gentle as they probed at Jensen's obviously-dislocated shoulder. The hacker whimpered and Cougar replied with a low stream of Spanish that Clay was going to pretend he hadn't understood. Like he was going to ignore the concern that softened rounded vowels into something almost affectionate and certainly warm. Clay had certainly never received the same focus when he went to the sniper for first aid, which almost made it more difficult to ignore.
"Idiota! ¿Qué pensaba usted? Habría sido fino." [Idiot! What were you thinking? I would have been fine.]
"I know," Jensen replied, quiet because Cougar was leaning close, and breathless for some reason Clay wasn't going to think about. "Because you're a badass."
There was a moment in which Cougar was close and Jensen's eyes were wide and open. Then Pooch bumped the table with his hip and swung the first aid kit within Cougar's reach. The sniper's gaze flickered across everyone in the room still watching him before settling back on Jensen like he had never looked away.
"Esto dolerá." [This is going to hurt.]
Jensen nodded without a sound and accepted the belt Pooch slipped between his teeth without comment. Those blue eyes were wet behind scratched glasses but Pooch didn't say anything and neither did Clay when he came over the lend body weight and steady hands.
"The floor would be easier," their C.O. said but Cougar shook his head immediately.
"It's dirty," was all the explanation Clay got before the sniper was up on the table with a foot braced in Jensen's armpit and clammy hacker fingers clutching his forearm.
"Wait, what about painkillers?"
"A-a-after. Aw fuuuuck," Jensen moaned, body starting to tremble as Cougar leaned back, a breath at a time. Interminable minutes later, when even Clay's hands on Jensen's good arm were shaking ever so, there was a low pop and the body beneath their grip jerked, trying to curl into itself.
Pooch swiped a scrap of previously sacrificed t-shirt over a pale hacker forehead before stepping back and taking Clay with him. Cougar moved into their absence and fussed quietly in Spanish until Jensen was nearly asleep on the hard table, taken out by injected painkillers and Cougar's hands warm on his pain-sweaty skin.
While the hacker dozed and Clay went back to the supernatural-horror-thriller paperback that Jensen had tossed at him earlier in the week, Cougar sat at the man's side with a look of familiar concentration on his face. At first it seemed that the sniper was holding their tech's hand or cleaning his gun, since that expression wouldn't be out of place with at least the latter activity but a walk-by told Clay that Cougar was using the tiniest pair of tweezers he'd ever seen to pluck practically invisible shards of glass from sensitive computer-genius hands. His stride hitched in surprise and he rounded up Pooch for a loudly announced supply run.
"What in the hell happened, Pooch?"
Pooch looked vaguely uncomfortable and Clay tried to tone down his obvious displeasure with his team's injury. He took another sip from his terribly overpriced coffee and levelled the sergeant with a glare.
"Well, we were free-climbing and--"
"Free-climbing? Around here?"
"It was kind of Jay's idea and..."
Clay sighed. Jensen hadn't been the only one to notice Cougar growing increasingly tense and twitchy lately but Clay had hoped the sniper would be able to last out their between-Max-sightings downtime. Of course Jensen hadn't been able to ignore their sniper's tension at the confinement; Clay was only surprised that he was surprised by it, really.
"So the idiot corporeal decided Cougar needed some fresh air. Where did you go, then?"
"There's a quarry outside of the city. Trevor at the convenience store on the corner said that it's been abandoned for years so I guess Jay thought it'd be the best place."
Clay could feel the headache building behind his eye and wondered what sort of clean-up he'd have to run tonight. They really couldn't afford to be leaving a trail, not with Max still out there.
"And?"
"And, well, it wasn't as abandoned as we'd hoped."
"Of course it wasn't," he muttered under his breath, wondering when commanding a team of grown men had really turned into babysitting. Pooch wasn't usually caught up in the messes of the trouble-twins.
"Anyway, I said we should get out of there as soon as we heard the trucks but Jensen wanted a closer look and... Long story short, Jay had to climb down a cliff-side to get Cougs."
"Hm."
He knows that isn't the whole story but Clay has been with these Losers long enough to know that if Pooch isn't telling him the whole story, he probably doesn't want to hear the whole story.
"Anything that will be a problem?"
"Uh, no one, no."
"Well, good, then."
Clay didn't bother asking for anything more. Jensen would be fine in a couple of days and in the meantime, Cougar would be busy keeping the hacker from bouncing around the ceiling and re-injuring himself. That should keep them both occupied, since they were often found wrapped up in each other. And he wasn't asking about that, either.
"I can't believe you got caught."
Jensen was still groggy from the painkillers and his body hurt but Cougar's thigh was a warm line against his side and the smell of gun oil had pulled him from his sleep.
"Yo no fui 'cogido,'" [I did not 'get caught'] the sniper grumbled, reaching over that sleep-hazy head to grab a lukewarm glass of water with a purple bendy straw stuck into it. Jensen sipped gratefully and chuckled under his breath.
"Did too."
"Por lo menos yo no me caí un precipicio." [At least I didn't fall off a cliff.]
The hacker poked Cougar in the side and pouted quietly.
"As if you've never fallen off anything before."
"No al tratar de rescatar alguien," [Not while trying to rescue someone] was the smug response and Jensen poked him again, harder.
"No fair mocking the injured."
"Inválido."
"Hey!"
From Pooch's perch just across the room, the hacker and the sniper were totally focused on each other. He'd grown used to being superfluous when they got like this; he would die for any of these brothers but Pooch knew that Cougar and Jensen would leap without looking just to save each other from a bruising injury. They took it that extra crazy, obsessive step.
Jolene would have--and had--looked at them so wrapped around each other, rolled her eyes, and muttered something about oblivious men that he wasn't supposed to understand. But Pooch did understand. He was just waiting for them to get it.