igotacrossbow | open post

Pooch had once accused Jake of acting like a kicked puppy when he was afraid he'd upset someone, slinking around their base with his tail between his legs. It's that much worse when it's Cougar that he's worried about. Looking even more like a chastened dog, he practically whimpers sadly as he makes scrambled eggs and toast, one of the few meals he can cook without burning everything.

It's ready by the time Cougar comes into the kitchen, and he sets a plate down in front of her when she finally takes a seat, sniping at Aisha in a way that makes Jake profoundly nervous.

He stops behind her, settling one hand on the back of her chair, and gives Aisha a pointed look over Cougar's shoulder.

"Aisha, can you give us a minute?"

Cougar's never forgiven her for shooting him, and he'd really rather not try to talk to his girlfriend while she's having a deadly staring match with their slightly psychotic bankroll.

"Okay, papi," Aisha sing-songs on her way out, which is the last straw for Cougar. The pistol is out of the holster and the only reason Aisha doesn't get a bullet in her shoulder is because the safety is on. By the time Cougar's clicked it off, she's ducked around the corner, leaving Cougar to swear under her breath about nosy bitches who poke their nose into everything.

Cougar shoves the safety back on and slams the pistol on the table, shoveling eggs into her mouth while the nausea is still gone, taking advantage of the moment.

Cougar whipping out her gun to point it at Aisha's retreating back has him yelping out an alarmed "Jesus, Carla!" at her as he scrambles to try and hold her back.

Aisha doesn't seem to be worried about her narrow brush with death, cackling as she darts down the corridor. Cougar, even grumpier than before, starts cramming the food he cooked into her mouth, fast enough that he gets a little concerned.

Cautiously, he finds himself a seat and scoots it closer, frowning at her. "Cougs, babe, what's wrong? Was it something I did? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I know I can be kind of an idiot sometimes, but it was an accident I swear. Whatever it was."

Cougar snorts when Jake uses the word 'accident' and gives him a disbelieving look. "Yes," is all she says, heavy and emphatic as she turns to her toast, tearing it apart into pieces viciously, chewing it as she tries to think of how she's supposed to tell him. He's going to figure it out, but there's a cowardly little part of her brain that wants to just let it go and wait until then.

Pooch, seemingly unaware of the danger of the room, heads to the coffee maker, eyeing Cougar as she steals Jake's toast, too. "Shit, I haven't seen anyone eat like that since..." his idle words trail off and he blinks, stares at Cougar, then at Jensen.

She can't shoot Pooch, but she sort of wants to.

How can she really be this obvious?

"Y'know what, I'm going," Pooch says, jutting a finger to the door before he makes a daring escape.

Pooch is more or less ignored so that Jake can instead stare imploringly at the side of Cougar's head, wanting to reach out and push her riotous curls out of the way so he can see her, but too afraid to risk his hands lest she try to cut them off or something.

She seems pissed enough to try, and he wouldn't put anything past her.

After Pooch has beat his hasty escape, he can't keep quiet.

"What did I do?" he begs, seconds away from clasping his hands together and falling to his knees to get her to tell him what's wrong. "I'm sorry."

Both their toast finished, Cougar pushes the plate aside and slumps back in the chair, her stomach barely showing at all. It just looks like she's had a big meal and it's only that she's so lean and wiry that there is any hint of a bump. "You didn't do anything wrong," Cougar says, not wanting Jake to suffer like this. "Promise," she insists, giving him a long look.

She breathes out and doesn't know what to do. He deserves to know, but not here. "Come," she says. "Bedroom."

He doesn't notice her stomach yet, too busy staring at her face, wanting desperately to know what the matter is but not knowing how else to ask. He's asked, and she's refused to answer beyond confirming his fear that it was his fault, and now he doesn't know what to do.

It's almost enough to make him angry, but there's a cast to her face that shows that she's just as scared as he is, and that doesn't lend itself well to anger.

"Okay," he says, pushing up to his feet and wringing his hands together. He wants to help her up, but has a feeling that wouldn't really be appreciated, so he does nothing.

Cougar gets up, slings her rifle over her shoulder, and tucks the pistol back in the holster. Maybe with her hormones, it's not a good idea to be carrying this much heat, but at the same time, she's not giving them up, not now that her clock is running out of time. She lets her boots tramp heavily on the floor until they're back in their little shared bedroom, where Cougar lingers by the dresser, thumb brushing the candid photo of the two of them, grinning like idiots after Cougar won Jake the biggest prize at the carnival with her sharpshooting.

They could take the child there.

If there is a child.

The thought accosts her and though she hasn't considered it (she's a good Catholic girl, for the most part), it rears its head now. Standing, back to Jake, Cougar takes off her leather jacket and drapes it over the chair, pacing a little, anxiously. "I went to the doctor," she starts.

Carefully, Jake shuts the door behind them and stands in front of it, blocking her exit so she has to talk to him but also potentially giving himself one just in case she snaps or something. Not that he thinks she would but...

She's acting so weird. He's getting worried.

"Yeah, I know," he says slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Oh god, you aren't sick are you? Are you dying? Is it cancer?"

She shakes her head, turning around to face Jake as she sits on the edge of the bed once she's disarmed, leaning down to pry off her boots so she can rub at sore feet. Sitting in the crawl space gets her away from everything, but it makes her ache.

"I'm pregnant." There, she said the words and in English, even. There's no chance that Jake won't be able to understand what's happening. She eyes him warily, hoping his legs don't give out on him.

For a second, he's pretty sure she's just fucked up the translation in her head, and she really means something else. But then he realizes that's a stupid thing to think, and he's right back to being stunned.

"...Pregnant?" His voice doesn't crack, but it's a near thing. He almost asks if she's sure, but she'd been to the doctor the night before, so of course she's sure.

Swallowing, he forces himself to focus. Don't fall down, Jake. Stay strong. "H-how far along?"

Cougar raises her brow very slowly when Jake reacts the way he does. She not entirely surprised, but it's a little disappointing when there's nothing but shock on his face. She had hopes that one of them might handle this properly. "Two months," she replies, hands on the bed so she can lean forward, shoulders rounded.

"It's yours," she adds, like that needs to be said.

"Of course it's mine." He might be completely blindsided, but that doesn't mean he thinks she's been sleeping around on him. And even if she had been sleeping around on him, she's smart enough to use a condom with strangers...

Oh, man. The condoms. She'd assured him she'd been on the pill, that it wasn't the right time of month for her to get pregnant...

Wow, he's an idiot.

Swallowing, he sidles a little closer and sinks to his knees in front of her, carefully reaching out to settle his hands on her knees, trying to catch her eye. "If you... if you don't want... I'll go to the doctor with you. If you want me to. If you don't want...it." It's unfair to ask her to carry this baby when he knows it's almost certainly going to mean the end of both their careers. He doesn't even know if she wants kids. Jake does, of course, but he's not the one carrying the little critter.

This is the problem. Cougar is a good Catholic girl, for the most part. Yes, the fucking outside marriage isn't good, but she's not a saint. Now, she's pregnant outside marriage and she's not sure whether she wants to keep it or not. She knows what happens if she does that, though. Yes, she keeps her career in the army, but she's going to lose Jake. He might say it won't matter, but it will. It will eat at them because he wants kids and she'll have taken that away.

And why? Because she's not ready now? She does want kids, someday, but she hadn't considered it possible, especially not after Bolivia, the sins of which she feels heavy on her back, still. "I don't know what to do," Cougar admits frankly.

"You have time to decide," he assures her, stroking his palms over her knees.

If she's only two or so months along, that means the baby has only just graduated from fetus to embryo status, and it barely has facial features. The brain isn't developed yet, it might still have bits of a tail, it barely has arms and legs. There's still plenty of time to decide whether or not to keep it. It's hardly bigger than a penny.

He can't helps taring at her stomach now, covered by her shirt as it is. There's a baby in there. His baby. He tries not to let himself think about the fact that he's a father, that he could have a family, a real family. He wants it, more than he can say, more than he's willing to say. He doesn't want to force Cougar into making a choice she's going to resent him for, not when there's a baby concerned. He'd been unwanted. He doesn't want to put his children through that too.

"Are you okay?" he asks instead, trying to focus on the immediate things as opposed to letting himself dwell on his ridiculous dreams of fatherhood. "Do you need anything?"

"Upset I made a mistake that led to this without planning," Cougar admits, easing one hand to her stomach like she can somehow make a decision as she touches where the baby is growing. "I don't think I can end the pregnancy," she admits, because no matter what she feels, there are parts of her faith that are hard to deny.

And after Bolivia, one more child's soul on her conscience isn't something she thinks she can bear.

"One of us would have to retire," is what she says, and she's never thought about it, is the problem. "My family..." Cougar exhales sharply, because 'will probably disown me' is very much true.

He's relieved when she says she doesn't want an abortion, but he tries not to let that show. Cougar had always seemed like a lone wolf type of woman, the kind of has a career that she fought hard for and isn't willing to give that up for anyone; not a man, not children, not her family, nothing.

"I'll do it," he offers immediately, not even having to think about it. There are other techs in the Army who are perfectly capable of doing the job Jake does, even if they don't do it with the same flair and panache he does. He isn't as vital to the team as Cougar is. And he can do computer stuff from home, he doesn't need to be traipsing all around the world to be useful. Not like Cougar.

Hell, even if she doesn't want to keep the baby, he'll take it. Her Catholic upbringing might make her unwilling to abort the fetus, but that doesn't mean she wants to be a mother. Jake can be a single parent.

Cougar swallows the fear in her throat. If he's offering to keep the baby, to retire, there's a part of her that wonders if he would do it without her. Let her work because that's what he thinks she wants. And then, then, Jake would meet a normal woman with normal habits and emotions and she would lose him.

"I wanted a family," she admits, staring down at her socked feet. "I wanted to plan it." With a boyfriend who might then be a husband, or even another woman. Cougar had been intending to have things in line. "To have a home where we would raise a happy child, one who never has to hurt."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, feeling like this is somehow his fault. He's fucked up her plan for her life.

Scooting a little bit closer, he tries to catch her eye again, trying to look as steady and responsible as possible. He can do this, Cougs. He can be a good dad to your child.

"I can get a house," he promises, already making plans about just how to go about doing that. He'd want to be close to his sister, so that he'd have a support network already in place... But what about Cougar's family? Should he try and buy a house close to where they live so the baby can be near his or her grandparents? Shit, he doesn't even know if Cougar's family know about him. He's never asked.

Well, that's beside the point now.

"Stop apologizing," Cougar growls, her anger building up to the point she can't keep it in. She takes advantage of Jake being so close to smack him in the chest (though lighter than she could) and gives him a frustrated look. "It's not your fault. I love you, you're the only one I would've wanted this with." She keeps her gaze slightly aside, just in case she has to end up watching a bad reaction to those words.

"You're not raising this baby," she says, but before he can feel the pain of those words, she finishes, "not without me."

The fact that she thinks Jake would react badly to him hearing that she loves him is the most ridiculous fucking thing in the world. His face lights up, his expression torn between overjoyed and overwhelmed. He doesn't even squawk at the smack to his chest, reaching up to catch her hand and duck his head down to kiss it.

The rollercoaster of emotion takes a sudden drop, though, when she tells him he's not raising her baby, his stomach dropping out and leaving him feel hollow and broken before she continues.

"But what about your career?" he asks quietly, like he hasn't just promised to give his up for her.

"If I let you raise the baby, you will. And you will be the best father," Cougar knows. "And other women will see. Other women will love you, want you, and one of them, someday, will have you while I'm gone." She knows this. She knows that if she goes back to a career, she loses Jake and probably the child, somehow.

She shrugs, like it's a matter of fact thing when it's not. When it's something that's been tearing her apart. "Besides," she says quietly, and realizes as she speaks that it's the truth, "I don't know how many more lives I can take before it breaks me."

"That's not true," he protests, but he knows she's probably right. If he stays home with whatever children they have, loving them, taking them to school, supporting them at their sports games and school plays, he's going to meet other moms, and he might even meet one with whom he can share a life. He won't mean to, but he'll wind up turning to this other mom when the kids need picking up and he can't make it, or when he needs an extra egg for something, and before he knows it, they'll be a couple.

He sidles in as close as he can, between her knees, and slides his arms around her waist so he can hold on to her loosely as he looks up at her. "Okay," he says, rubbing one broad palm against her back, not questioning her decision. If she doesn't know how much longer she can do this, then they'll find something else for her to do that won't weigh on her so much.

"I can get the paperwork started, if you want to go. Clay is going to be pissed, but..."

Cougar stares down at him, her brows pinched and knitted together, not sure she understands. She gapes at him, because now it just sounds like he's going to stay while she goes. "Jacob," she snaps. "If you're staying now that I'm retiring, you're going to get my last shot bullet in your dick," she warns.

The way his eyes widen sharply has nothing to do with the threat to his dick — okay, not much, any threat to his dick is one taken seriously, especially from a sniper — but to the fact that she thinks he'd offer to leave and then change his mind in under five minutes.

"What?" he splutters. "No! Carla, c'mon. I said I'd leave for you, for the baby. I meant it. If you want to do this, then I'm in. One hundred percent."

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