FIC: Leave the Light On

[nilchance]

Title: Leave the Light On
Author: nilchance
Rating: Adult
Pairing: The Losers (film), gen, Jensen/Cougar if you squint?
A/N: I, uh. Like to torture pretty boys named Jensen? That's pretty much it. Claustrophobia, missing fingers and that. Oh god, this makes me want to hide my face.



The second time Jensen seizes, he's not faking it. The coffin is too small to hold him; when he comes back, after the white lightning fills his head and empties it again, his whole body feels like a bruise from bouncing off the walls. His hand burns white-hot like it's being held in a campfire. His head feels like it's going to explode from hunger, from the multiple ass-kickings he's taken in the last week, from the oxygen deprivation that's going to finish him off. He probably already has brain damage, though Clay would say he went in with it.

He's going to die in here.

Funny. He's been shoving that realization out of the way for days, and now that it's come to get him... it's kind of a relief. He killed guards, he resisted torture, he kept on keeping on, but now he's out of options. He's buried in the ground, doped up and seizing and dying by inches anyway. Maybe Clay would've held on another week, but Clay's fucking crazy in the face. They cut off Jensen's fucking finger.

His team, they'll watch out for his niece and his sister. He knows Clay will. The kid'll get a soccer scholarship or something; she'll grow up with uncles and an aunt turning up at her games and stalking her dates in high school. It'll be all right.

(God, he wanted to see her grow up.)

He blinks a few times. There's dirt in his eyes. He can't see a thing, so he closes his eyes. Finally, he closes his eyes.

He wonders if Cougar's going to be there, waiting, watching his back.
****
They cast the ring down in front of him. Pooch's ring. Jensen remembers getting sunburn while they set up the tent for the wedding, Corona and laughter and the stupid look on Pooch's face while he danced with Jolene.

"They're not coming for you," the guy in charge says. "Won't you be reasonable?"

Jensen looks him in the eyes and tells him, "I'm going to fucking kill you for this."

They think that's funny. They throw the hat down, too.

Jensen nearly gets loose that time before they take him down.
****
Air. Light. Voices.

Words he can't wrap his head around.

"-- watch his ribs. Broken."

"I'm not sure we ought to lift--"

"No med-evac here. Lift him."

Pain.
****
"Son, what are you willing to do for your country?"

"Break into a lot of computers." After a moment, Jensen adds, "And I'm not your son. Sir."

Clay squints at him. Says, grudgingly, "Fair enough."
****
His sister is holding him. She hasn't done that since he was tiny and had a skinned knee. The world has dimmed out, and it rocks around them, though every time it does someone hisses like a kicked cat and someone else mutters, "I'm trying, goddamn it, this isn't exactly the highway!"

Weirdly, his sister smells like Aisha. Like blood.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. "I tried."

"I know." Her cool hands smooth over his forehead. "It's all right."

"Tell the kid I'm sorry. I didn't want to..."

"I know," she says. "I know." To someone else, she adds, "Morphine?"

The dark is trying to feel him up, unbend the crook of his arm. Jensen shrugs away from it and the pain scalds up over him again.
****
"You're not really a team player," the drill sergeant says, his arms crossed tight. "Are you, soldier?"

"Sir," Jensen says, "no sir." And thinks it's pretty good of him not to add, no shit, sir.

"Think you're pretty than everybody else."

Yes. It's been proven a thousand times. "Sir, no sir."

The sarge grunts. Puts his finger under Jensen's nose. "One day, you're gonna have to leave training, Private. And you're gonna have to trust your team at your back. That's the thing that makes men live or die. That's the thing that wins wars."

"Sir, yes sir."

Jensen manages not to roll his eyes.
****
Time passes in a technicolor blur: struggling and yelling and too much light. A blur of Spanish. Clay's rough voice, cracking.

When it stops, it's finally quiet.

Jensen lays there for a long few minutes, just blinking at the ceiling. His head is ringing like a struck bell. His whole body feels wrung out. He hurts too much to be dead, he thinks, but then he's never been dead so he wouldn't actually know. Also, if he was dead there probably wouldn't be an IV in his arm and-- he shifts, wincing-- a catheter.

There's a sound, like a chair being set from two feet back to four, and Clay leans into his peripheral vision. He looks like shit. He peers at Jensen for what feels like a full minute, then turns and calls out, "Coug?"

Jensen opens his mouth to say something, whether it's you look like hell or is everybody okay? or you came back, I didn't think you'd come back. It comes out a torn-up airless croak.

"Easy," Clay says, and sits on the edge of the bed. Grabs a styrofome cup off the shitty nightstand. "Here."

There's ice chips in the cup, which is good, but Clay has to hold it for him, which is less so. Jensen glances at his bandaged hand, missing one pinkie, and grimaces. It's that or crying like a little girl. Clay follows his eyes and looks so stricken that Jensen feels sick.

Cougar appears in the doorway, blinks at Jensen, and looks like he might have some kind of emotion for a minute. He's missing the hat, and he's about as wretched-looking as Clay, but he's alive and he looks undamaged. Jensen exhales.

"They're dead," Cougar tells him. Trust him to think of the important things. "All of them."

Jensen nods. It hurts a lot. He takes another ice chip. After a minute, Cougar nods to himself and sits in the chair Clay vacated. He takes Jensen's wrist, checks his pulse and his IV. He might be lingering some, but Jensen doesn't actually mind.

"You're in California," Clay says, falling into the dry rhythms of a mission brief. "You were gone for five days. Out of it for another three. We were taking you to a hospital tonight, if you didn't... And yes, somebody called your sister."

Jensen tries to look appreciative. Tries to ask, without risking another pathetic noise, about Pooch and Aisha.

"They're fine. Everybody's fine." Clay rubs a tired hand over his face. "We couldn't find you."

It would hurt too much to shrug, and take too much energy. Jensen spits his ice chip at Clay instead. Clay looks at it, then at him, then makes a cracked noise deep in his chest and has to go stand by the window for a minute. Jensen gets the feeling.

"I'm gonna..." Another tired hand over the face, like Clay's head is killing him. "I'll go tell Pooch and Aisha that you're up."

Up is kind of overstating things, but Jensen gives him a weary thumbs-up with the good hand. Fuck, he's going to have to learn how to type without that finger. He's going to have to tell the kid where his finger went. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he isn't the goddamn noble type. It isn't in his job description.

The door closes behind Clay, all careful, like he's trying to keep from waking up a cranky toddler. Jensen hasn't even gotten to be cranky yet.

"Three prisons before we got to you," Cougar murmurs. "We thought you were dead."

Thought you were dead too, Jensen thinks dizzily. With the good hand, he reaches out and pats Cougar's arm. He's real. He's there, and he's breathing.

Inhaling through his nose like he just took a bullet, Cougar ducks his head. He covers Jensen's hand with his own. He's trembling a little.

"It's okay," Jensen says.

It hurts like hell, but it's worth it.