Losers Fic: See You in the Sky

[snowdarkred]

Hey, look! I wrote Losers fic that doesn't involve genderswitching! \o/ Though I'm sticking with the girl!Jensen icon, because it's the only Losers one I have.

Title: See You in the Sky
Author: snowdarkred 
Word Count:  ~700
Pairings: some vague Cougar/Jensen, but isn't that canon anyway?
Rating/Warnings: PG, none.
Author's Note: This is my foray into second person POV.   I wanted to open with You're waiting for a train, but I figured that that would be both dickish and obnoxious as well as untrue, so I decided not to. It was a close thing, though. (Also, this is somewhat incredibly loosely based on this prompt: After the helo crash, Cougar just can't focus on Jensen or get in the mood or he feels like he doesn't deserve to be happy yet. Cue Jensen intellectually understanding but emotionally insecure and maybe a bit ashamed that he can't get Cougar hard and he's totally unwilling to push the issue with Cougar. (Maybe one of the others points out what he's doing to Jensen.) Very loosely.)

Summary:   After seeing twenty-five kids blown out of the sky, Cougar wanders. Clay sets him straight.

See You in the Sky

You are watching the sun set. The sky is an array of reds and oranges that slowly temper off into purples and pinks, before slowly dissipating into the familiar hard blue. Your feet dangle off the edges of the roof, and when you move to get a better view of the street below, your water bottle knocks against your knee.

Jensen had given it to you that morning. It's bent and dented, but he had insisted that you wait while he went into the tiny bathroom and filled it with tap water. He said that he didn't want you to get dehydrated, and he had glanced away while he said it, so unlike the Jensen that you knew. Know. He'd been doing that a lot lately, ever since...ever since they watched as twenty-five kids were shot out of the sky. He doesn't look anyone straight in the face, and he avoids skin contact like he never has before.

You would do something about it – you don't know what – but you can't look at him without seeing flames in the reflections on his glasses.

But this morning, he had made you take a water bottle. You weren't headed anywhere – you never were, these days, just wandering and wandering the restless city. He knew that. He knew that you were just leaving so that you wouldn't have to spend the day with him, but he still made you take water in case you got thirsty.

The access door to the roof opens behind you, and you turn slightly to see who it is. You don't like having people at your back. You only marginally relax when you recognize that it's the Colonel.

He sits beside you like he has a right to; you watch as the alcohol in the bottle he holds sloshes from side to side. He's drunk, or as close to it as he ever gets, and you wish that you could be drunk as well. But as you shift slightly in anticipation of your own movement, the water bottle jostles against your knee again, and you abort the idea.

The Colonel doesn't say anything for a moment. He looks at the sun, sinking lower and lower into the horizon. The sky is a deep purple now, almost black, and you can see the first stars fighting for their place in the night.

“Pooch got a job,” the Colonel says after a while. You don't say anything back, but then, he isn't expecting you to. “Roque's been making noise about finding us some papers.” You remain silent.

The Colonel sighs. It's a long sigh, a heavy sigh. It's the sigh of an old soldier come home from a war, only to find that everyone had moved on while he was gone. It's the sigh of someone who has lost everything.

“Why are you doing this, Carlos?” he asks you. He sounds tired.

You shrug. You want to pretend that you don't know what he's talking about, but that's not true and he wouldn't buy it even if you found the words to say it.

“You're hurting him,” he says. He stands carefully, tottering on the edge of the roof. The sun is almost gone now, and the Colonel is reduced to a blank mass in the darkness, lit only by the lights from the streets below. “It's not his fault. Max—” You hiss instinctively at the name, but he doesn't stop.

“Max is the one at fault here. He's the one who gave the order. He's the one who killed all those kids. You acting like a pouting sixteen year old who's been burned by her boyfriend isn't going to stop that.” You look down at the street; anything to avoid his eyes in the dark. “He was there too. You being an asshole isn't going to help anything. It's not even helping you.”

You don't say anything as he leaves; you just watch as the last bit of red bleeds from the sky. When the stars begin to change, you follow him, taking the water bottle with you.