igotacrossbow | open post

Cougar gives a soft exhalation. "I like Miami." Playing pretend like this and avoiding thinking about the real world is more than he deserves right now, but it's helping him to keep from going over the edge. He buries his face in her back and rubs his nose back and forth, feeling a strange dissonance between wanting to joke and feeling empty inside.

"You were the prettiest woman at the pool," he informs her. "In your bikini."

Cougar's breath is warm and damp against her neck. It's distracting in the best possible way, and she's grateful for it.

She laughs, squirming a little to adjust her body against his. "I do look good in a bikini," she agrees. Just because she's tall and gangly sometimes doesn't mean she's a troll. She knows she's got a good body, and when she wears swimsuits she gets a lot of stares. Part of that is because of her scars and tattoos, but most of it is because of her hip-waist ratio.

He doesn't know what to do.

It would be so easy to block out the whole world and only let the two of them exist as they are in this very moment. He's in love with Jensen and has been for longer than their undercover gig the last time, but now that he's hiding under the guise again, he feels like he's taking advantage. And yet, at the same time, when he closes his eyes it's just burning bodies and tiny angels and he needs some good.

"No se que hacer," he admits, feeling the pain of it pushing out his breath. What if this isn't a week or a month? What if he's adorned this persona for the rest of their lives to avoid whoever is trying to kill them?

He's silent behind her for long enough that she assumes he's done talking and it's time for their nap, long enough that she lets her eyes close and focuses on the warmth of his hand in hers to distract her from the path her thoughts want to take.

But then he speaks up again, murmuring Spanish into the knobs of her spine, and she opens her eyes. It takes her a second to translate, and she's not sure she's done so correctly, but she gets the gist of his meaning.

"It's okay, Cougs," she whispers, twisting in his arms so that she can face him, her hand lifting to push some of his hair out of his face so he can't hide under it and she can see those pretty brown eyes of his. "Carlito. We'll get through it together. Whatever happens, I'm with you."

There's so much more to discuss. Clothes and plans and stories and everything they need to cover in order to make sure that they won't be found out. They should also be finding a way to get home, but every time he tries to think he gets derailed by the thought of all those angelitos and the fire.

Then he gets distracted with his arms around the women beside him, the one he'd been working his way around to asking out, properly. That's what the charm bracelet had been for. Little cats, hearts, and computers, a message to decode that he loves her.

"Sleep," he agrees quietly. "Time for sleep."

Jake's mind is already whirring quietly in the background like a laptop on standby, sifting through ideas for what they could do for a living, where they could find a house, inside jokes and stories that will make their relationship look real.

Luckily, they already have lots of inside jokes and stories between them, so that shouldn't be too difficult.

Lying on her right side with her left hand cupping the side of his neck, Jake can see the ring glinting at her in the dim light of the room. It's distracting, and for a brief moment, she almost manages to believe it's real.

"Okay." She sighs and wiggles against him again, curling her leg around his and lifting her chin slightly so he can tuck himself against her. Sleep sounds like a great plan right now.

He should be more worried about how comfortable this is, but right now, he can't think of anywhere else he'd to be. He dreams of nothing at all and when he wakes, it's screaming. He doesn't know where he is, the children are dead, and he's not able to do anything about it.

Sweating, he bolts from the bed and reaches desperately for his gun, but it's out of reach. "JJ," he breathes out, panicky. "JJ."

"I'm here, Cougs," she promises, scrambling to her knees on the edge of the bed as he flings himself off it. She's definitely not asleep any more, Cougar's scream and the elbow to her face more than enough to wake her, but her voice is still scratchy with it, and luckily it's dark enough that she can hold her hand to her aching eye socket without it being too obvious. "It's okay, it was just a dream. You're safe."

He calms down, but the wildness is still there lingering around his edges. It's what means he doesn't see that she's holding her eye until a second later and a rush of ice goes down his back. "I hurt you," he says instantly, keeping his distance because he knows that their story might hit a rough spot or two, because the last thing he needs is for the cops to come show up because someone thinks he's been abusing his wife.

"Lo siento," he apologizes, breathing out the words. He kneels onto the bed and pries off her hand so he can get a better look, having to turn on the lamp so he can see what he's done. "I'll take the floor, from now on," he says darkly.

She rushes to reassure him. "It's fine," she insists, stubbornly refusing to let him pull her hand away from her face, at least for a while.

There's nothing to be done for it now, and she shrugs philosophically. "Seriously, Cougs, it's fine. I've had way worse before, you know that." She reaches for his hands and doesn't let go, pressing her thumb into the pulse at his wrist and holding on. "Don't be fucking stupid, you're sleeping in the bed with me. I'm not made of glass just because we're technically dead."

He doesn't want to sleep on the floor and even the thought aggravates him by being too far away. Except...

"If we're married, you can't walk downstairs with a black eye after we introduced ourselves as a couple." It's the most he's said in a long time, but the problem is that he can't see how they're going to get concealer. More than that, they shouldn't have to. "I hurt you," he says, gutted and miserable. After today, that's the last thing he's wanted to do and he's hurt her, the woman he loves.

"Well then, tomorrow, you're going to go get me a big pair of bug-eye sunglasses when you go get breakfast, and then I'm going to go shopping for concealer," she decides, pulling on his hands and crab-walking back on the bed so that he has to follow her and they can lie the fuck back down, already.

"And if it'll make you feel better, I'll clock you in the face too, and then we'll match."

He's still breathing heavily and with some distress. And yet, she's tugging him back to the point that he collapses on top of her the last bit of the way, which puts them flush against each other. It leaves Cougar breathing hard and heavy, unsure if he should move.

"I hurt you," is all he says again, tenderly touching her face and wanting, so badly, to do nothing but kiss it better.

His mind must really be cracking apart if he's thinking things like this.

The weight of Cougar's body sprawled over hers isn't necessarily familiar, but it is grounding. She can feel her heart beat slowing as she relaxes more, looking up at him as his hair swings down to shade his face.

"Just a little," she allows, reaching up to tuck his hair behind his ears as he carefully traces the edge of her eye socket with painfully gentle fingertips.

She can't read the look on his face. If she didn't know better, she'd think that he was fighting the urge to kiss her, or at least kiss her cheek. Absently, Roque's constant comments about how codependent they're getting surface in the back of her mind, but she pushes them aside so she can focus on this moment right now.

"You were dreaming, Cougar," she points out quietly, her hands settling on his shoulders. "I shouldn't have gotten so close."

"Even if I was dreaming, it ended with me hitting you." That's the terrifying part. He doesn't want to think about how many times that it might happen or the pain that she's experiencing because of him. He wraps his arms around her waist and lets his fingers slowly curl. "I can't do that again."

Breathing out slowly, he eases back so he can look her in the eye. "Let me sleep on the floor, please."

"If you try and sleep on that floor, Carlos Alvarez," she threatens, pulling out the Mom Voice her sister has perfected, "then I'm going to going to get down there right next to you. I'm not leaving you, okay? Not tonight of all nights."

It's really tempting to cup his face in her hands and lean in to kiss him, just a chaste peck to his lips that could be as platonic as possible. Too tempting.

She curls her fingers on his shoulders, digging them in. "You could hit me a hundred times and I wouldn't let you sleep alone."

She's not going to let this go. She's only going to follow him, which means that he should just give in. Beyond that, he's so exhausted that he can't find it in him to fight anymore. Letting out a pained sound of complaint, he lets his forehead fall to the fabric of his t-shirt on her body, giving her a determined look.

"Then tie me up," he insists. "Put gloves on me."

He lets his head drop and her hands automatically lift to pet over his hair, smoothing it down the curve of his scalp and not even caring that it's a little greasy and dirty. He didn't indulge in a shower the way she did, but somehow that's better. It makes this feel real.

"Cougs, if you wanted to get kinky with me, all you had to do was ask," she teases, forcing a lightness into her voice that sounds as fake as it feels.

Still. She slides off the bed and finds the plastic zip ties they all carry, grabbing a handful before climbing back on the bed. Luckily, the headboard is a fancy, wrought-iron kind of thing, perfect for attaching restraints to. She loops one of the ties around one of the bars, then reaches for his hands. This part she does as carefully and gently as possible, because she knows they all of them have bad memories of being restrained. She makes sure they aren't too tight by wiggling her fingers between his wrist and the plastic, and then loops the ties through the one on the headboard.

The fact that she basically had to sit on him to do all of this is something she didn't really pay attention to until just now.

"How does that feel?"

If he's honest, it aches just a little given the angle of his arms, but he's grateful that in this position, he's not going to end up hurting her at all. He wills his hips to stay on the bed and not push up, but it's a hard thing when she's sitting above him, as hot and tempting as she is.

He nods, breathing out a sigh of relief. He will ache in the morning in his shoulders and his elbows, will feel the strain, but he won't hurt her. "Now, you stay with me," he promises.

She sits on his stomach and braces her hands on his chest and squints her eyes suspiciously at him, but he seems much calmer now, so she figures he's really okay.

"Now, I stay with you," she agrees, huffing out a breath that's close to a laugh and letting herself lean down to buss a kiss to his cheek without even thinking about it. "Idiot man."

Scrambling off him is the perfect excuse to hide how pink her cheeks might be, and she reaches over to turn off the lamp before settling against him again, resting her head on his chest and sliding her arm around his middle. His heart beats a steady rhythm beneath her ear, and she syncs up their breathing without even thinking about it, letting him soothe her into a state of calm so that she can drift off to sleep. Her eye smarts, and she knows it's going to be blue tomorrow, but for now she can ignore it.

"Do you need another pillow or anything?" she asks, her voice loud in the stillness of their room.

"Shh," he coaxes, because with the threat of hurting her passed, Cougar can relax the way he hadn't been, before. He rolls his shoulders back a little and listens to the crack before he gets comfortable

He does sleep, this time, and while there are nightmares, his writhing is at a minimum now that he's in Jake's arms. He breathes in the warmth of her, her smell, her presence, and he calms down. He knows this is a terrible situation, but if it's one that allows him this closeness with her, he can make do.

When he wakes, there is another pressing problem that she's sure to feel. Tied up to the headboard with a beautiful woman on top of him is bad enough. When it's Jake and they're pretending to be married, it becomes a terrifyingly dangerous one.

Jake is slow to wake. She always is, being such a night owl, but this morning is worse. First, she's been fighting against insomnia for days, and it's all caught up to her. Second, she's so goddamn comfortable curled up around Cougar the way she is, her fingers tangled in the hem of his shirt and one leg curled possessively around his thigh.

Grumbling as she drifts to the surface, she presses her face more firmly into his chest, aware of a wet spot beneath her cheek.

"I drooled on you," she mumbles, lifting her head a little and blinking fuzzily at him. "Sorry."

He's going to be aching with it in a little bit, which is a bad thing for him. He doesn't need to ruin things between them when they haven't even started. Controlling his breathing with deep, slow breaths, he tries not to let himself push up into that heat. "It's no problem," he promises softly, staring down at that little spot.

He feels awful, now, but it's a rested kind of awful. Once he showers and eats, he thinks he will feel like the new man that he is. "Martinez," is what he says softly, having thought about it all night. "My mother's maiden name." He nods, as if to say that they'll use that.

Jake wants to stay curled up with him all morning. The room is dim and warm, the poor A/C unit doing its best to keep up with the demand they put on it but just not quite managing it, and Cougar smells comforting. Like sweat, and leather, and gun oil. "Mm, okay."

She rolls off him, flopping onto her back and stretching slowly, pointing her toes and reaching high up above her head, the hem of his stolen shirt riding up her belly as she makes baby dinosaur noises under her breath. When she's satisfied, she slumps back and turns her head to look at him. "Alright, lemme get you out of these, then," she says, reaching out to pat him on the chest before pushing herself up so she can go hunt for the knife she needs to set him loose.

She's not oblivious to his current predicament, she has eyes, not to mention she'd just been curled up with her knee pressed between his legs, but she's also been living with four men for over five years, so a little morning wood is not something she's oblivious to. She doesn't read into it any more than that.

A few quick slices of her knife, and Cougar's free to lower his arms. "Alright, Señor Martinez, you owe me breakfast and a new pair of sunglasses, so hop to it." Her voice gentling, she reaches out and picks up his hand, rubbing her fingers carefully against his wrist where the skin is a little red. "You okay?"

He does ache. His wrists are red and he doesn't know how much they will swell and ache later, but for right now, he's glad that he hasn't hurt her more during the night. They've slept in the same vicinity before, but never like this. It's left him feeling like it's a habit he could get in the habit of. He could get used to waking up with her curves and warm body pressed to his.

"Fine," he assures her with a rub of his wrists. He strips off his shirt and leaves it in a ball on the floor, the pants following next as he heads to the shower to blast hot water over his aching muscles, wincing when the sluice of hot water stings his wrists. He wanders out with the towel slung around his waist, the glint of a golden ring odd on his finger.

"Breakfast?" he suggests.

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