Okay, so I got addicted to these 5-and-1 stories O.o I can't help it! Hope you all like it though! :D
Disclaimer: Not mine! =/ (dammit! .)
OOOOO (1. Micro-size)
The first time Jensen and Cougar ever shared a room, Cougar nearly shot him. It wasn't just the fact that they were sharing a room, no, it was the fact that they were also sharing a bed. The hotel only had two rooms to offer, one with two beds and one with a single. Pooch opted to sleep in the van so that just left Clay, Roque, Cougar, and Jensen to rock-paper-scissors for who got the room with two beds. It wasn't even a contest. Both senority and the fact that Jensen was more than a little afraid of both Roque and Clay made it easier not to question their decision to take the room with two beds. That left he and Cougar in the room with one. Cougar looked like he was ready to hit something.
It wasn't like he had anything against Jensen but the kid could hold a conversation with a brick wall (usually Cougar himself) for hours without so much as taking a breath, let alone stopping. His conversations bounced off of about one hundred topics a minute meaning the whole brain-mouth filter thing was complete broken on him. Anything that came to mind immediately came to his mouth. Cougar felt his irritation double when he saw the room they were sharing.
It was a micro-size economy room; basically a fancy way of saying it was only slightly bigger than a walk-in closet. There was a double bed in the middle of the room, a desk held up on three legs and TV with old-fashioned rabbit ears. The bathroom consisted of a sink and a toilet and that was about it. The room looked too small for one person, let alone two. Jensen let out a slow whistle. "Wow, now I know what it feels like a sleep in one of those little capsule hotels in Japan." He took a breath before continuing. "Did you know they can fit about 700 people in one hotel because the little boxes are stacked right on top of each other and its easier to get more guests in-"
And the talking started. Cougar shook his head a bit and walked into the room, dropping his bag next to bed and taking out his gun. He settled himself to cleaning it, even though it was already spotless, because he was pretty sure if he wasn't doing something with it, he'd turn it on the babbling blond a couple feet away. He would never actually kill him, he knew how to shoot to avoid and major organs and arteries, but he was pretty sure it would still be counted as a felony.
Jensen continued to talk until about midnight when Cougar turned off the light. He laid down on the bed, his back to the younger man, and crossed his arms over his chest. Eventually, Jensen quieted down enough to where he could actually tune him out and fall asleep. He didn't take into account the fact that Jensen was a violent sleeper.
The computer tech had been with their team a little over two months and one thing they noticed about him was that anywhere they stayed, his room always looked like a tornado had swept through it. Whether it was the scatter of computer equipment everywhere or that his bed looked like a war zone, it was always well established that he wasn't the world's best housekeeper. But no one had had to share a room with him yet. Not til now.
To put it nicely, Jensen sleeps like he's been thrown out of a bus, long arms and legs splayed out all over the bed and completely invading other people's space. Specifically Cougar's. The Sniper jumps to alert when a hand whacks him in the back of the head and he whips around to see Jensen laying half-on and half-off the bed, looking for all the world like he'd just fallen out of an airplane with no parachute. He growls deep in his throat, a noise that usually terrified the younger man when he was awake. Right now, he was dead to the world.
Cougar turns and shoves him roughly, trying to regain a little bit of his side of the bed. Its like fighting with an octopus. He manages to get one arm and one leg off of him and rolls back on his side, facing the wall. Surprisingly, Jensen manages to stay on his side of the bed this time and shifts a bit, rolling onto his side as well and burying his face into the back of Cougar's shirt, right between his shoulder blades. The Sniper freezes, his entire body going rigid. He's not used to having people this close, let alone Jensen, and its making him uncomfortable.
Still, he doesn't have any room to do anything about it either. There's not enough floor space to lay on the carpet without ending up on top of their bags or the desk. The van is taken and he knows for a fact there's no other rooms open. With a sigh, he contents himself to lay there, staring at the wall and waiting for morning.
At some point, around 2:30, he feels his eyes begin to close and the stiffness in his shoulders let up a bit. Jensen is still pressed up against his back, clinging to him like a spider monkey, but he's warm and the even sound of his breathing is comforting. Cougar wonders how long its been since he slept next to someone. He contemplates that thought for a few more minutes before sleep finally wins and he closes his eyes.
OOOOO (2. Sleepwalking)
It had been established early on that Jensen was a sleepwalker. Anytime they switched places, whether they were staying in a hotel, apartment, house, or anywhere else they happened to camp out, the first couple night of being in a new place, Jensen would wander around the entire building in the dead of night.
It was odd at first, having the hacker stumble around the rooms, opening doors, putting walkie-talkies in the freezer, etc. Clay never really had a problem with it, Pooch would just laugh at him, and Cougar didn't say anything. The only person who would ever do anything about it was Roque, who kept a loaded dart gun under his pillow for just such occasions. Jensen had accidentally stumbled into his room one too many times and Roque had started darting him to get some peace and quiet. They'd usually find Jensen passed out in the hall, suspiciously crumpled next to Roque's door and wake up with no idea how he got there.
To keep this from happening (and having any lasting effects on the younger man's brain), Clay started assigning Jensen to a room with a lock on the door. Supposedly, having to unlock the door or struggling to open it would jar him awake enough to realize what he was doing. It never seemed to have any effect.
Cougar was awake, he had been for about an hour, and he could hear the blond bumping around in the living room of the apartment they were staying in. It wasn't loud, the others probably hadn't even noticed, but Cougar did. He heard him when he got up and opened the door. They were sharing a room again (two beds this time), because another safety measure Clay had come up with was making someone keep an eye on him, that someone being Cougar.
That never stopped Jensen from his late-night wanderings though; no matter how many times Cougar led him back to the room, the younger man would find a way to get back up and venture around again. Finally, he just got tire of it and let it go. It never hurt anything and as long as he didn't go near Roque's room, it didn't hurt him either. Win-win situation.
The door opened slowly and Jensen staggered back into the room, wandering over to the closet and then the window in a sleep-slowed shuffle. He was mumbling something, Cougar can't hear what it is, but he watches him carefully, making sure he doesn't trip and fall through the window and out onto the front lawn.
Jensen turned and walked back across the room, aiming for his bed, but when he got about half-way there, he stopped and sat down on the edge of Cougar's bed instead. Without a word, he laid down, back facing the older man, and goes still.
Cougar cursed softly in Spanish and turned to the younger man, shaking him lightly. "This isn't your bed." He says, keeping his voice low. He knew better than to startle a sleepwalker, the one time that had happened, Pooch got a black eye and a busted lip.
"Is too..." Jensen muttered sleepily, not bothering to turn over and face him. Cougar sighed and fall onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, muttering to himself. He has half a mind to shake Jensen awake and force him to move to his own bed but he figures its a wasted effort. It would probably just start the sleepwalking cycle all over again. With another sigh, realizing he's too tired to really do much of anything at the moment, he turns his back to the computer tech and falls asleep, comfortable with the fact that Jensen was at least back in the room.
OOOOO (3. Hacking)
Cougar could never understand how Jensen could stare at a computer screen for days on end; staring at one for an hour made his head hurt. But it didn't even seem to phase the younger man, maybe a reason why his eyesight was so bad. Still, he got his job done and that's all they could really ask for in the long run.
Cougar wasn't sure what day it was, let alone the time, all he knew was that it was late, the streets outside their hotel were nearly empty, and Jensen was still typing away at the computer. He didn't know what he was doing and even if Jensen tried to explain it to him, he was pretty sure he still wouldn't have a clue. It must have been difficult though because he'd been sitting in the same chair for almost a day and half and had only gotten up to go to the restroom a handful of times. He couldn't remember the last time he saw Jensen eat. But he didn't stop him; one thing he'd learned was that when Jensen was in full-hacker mode, disturbing him was like taking your life in your hands. The blond rarely ever had a temper but he wasn't afraid to whip one out if it interfered with whatever it was he was doing.
He found himself staring at the hacker's back, unable to even keep track of what his hands were doing on the keyboard. He could see the screen over Jensen's shoulder but it was nothing but lines of code that made absolutely no sense to anyone other than him. There was a slight decrease in the furious typing but other than that, there wasn't any sign that the younger man was giving up on the computer any time soon.
A few more hours passed and Cougar could just barely make out the first hints of the sun as it peeked above the horizon. A few people began to appear in the streets, shuffling around in the early morning hours to get ready for their day. They were in a small town, barely big enough to be called a city, and it was essentially just an in-between place before their next mission. A week at most if Clay had his way about it.
Cougar stopped, noticing for the first time that the room was silent. He turned and looked back at Jensen, curious as to when the frenzied typing had stopped. The blond was still sitting up, his hands resting on the keyboard, but his head had dropped down to his chest, neck hanging at an odd angle and making him look like a crash test dummy. It wasn't surprising, Cougar had seen him fall asleep sitting at the computer before, but it still bothered him that it got to that point. He knew Jensen took his job seriously but there's a time when you can stop and get a couple hours sleep too.
He stood slowly, walking across the room and gently resting his hand on the computer tech's shoulder. All at once, Jensen is alert, squinting at the screen and resuming his frantic pace, tossing a mumbled "hey" over his shoulder at the Sniper. If Cougar wasn't so sure Jensen would try to beat him to death with a laptop, he'd unplug the damn thing. Instead, he shook his head and spun Jensen away from the computer, suppressing a smile when the blond blinked owlishly at the darkness of the room. "Bed." He said simply, nodding to the two beds across the room.
"I can't, I'm almost done." Jensen whined, unable to hide the fatigue in his voice.
Cougar doesn't let up. "It can wait." He said, looking back across the room to the beds. Jensen's is completely covered in discs and folders, hard drives and papers he's printed off over the past few days. There's technical gear all over the bed, too much to really see any part of the mattress beneath it, and he realized it would be more difficult to clear it off than to simply dump him into the bed he'd slept in the night before. He'd been the only one to sleep the night before.
Before Jensen can protest any further, Cougar wheels him, chair and all, over his bed and unceremoniously empties him out onto the mattress. Jensen looked ready to say something else but Cougar shut him up by dropping a pillow on his head and wheeling the chair back to the desk. Jensen's sound asleep by the time he turns back around.
With a sigh, realizing now would be a great time for coffee, Cougar exited the room silently, leaving the hacker asleep in his bed.
OOOOO (4. Drunk)
It was Roque's idea to take Jensen out for his 25th birthday and get him completely shit-faced drunk. They were in another nameless town full of faces without names and names without faces and it was time to drown out the rest of the world with obscene amounts of alcohol. They'd started off the night at couple of dive bars, the kind that were known for having a bad crowd and good liquor because Lord knows they weren't worried about bar fights. They played a few card games, Roque rigging it so Jensen lost every other hand and was forced to down another shot. By the time they left the first bar, it was clear that Jensen wasn't going to be fit for much of anything for the rest of the evening.
They moved downtown to the more crowded bars and flirted with the girls that were dressed up for a night out on the town. Between Clay and Pooch, four girls bought Jensen a drink that night, one left him with a bright red lipstick mark on the side of his cheek and he got a few numbers written on the back of his hand in purple, glittery eyeliner. He wouldn't remember any of it the next morning, they were all pretty certain of it.
By closing time, Jensen had reached his limit and was face-down on the bar, mumbling along with the song blasting over the speakers. His glasses were sliding off his nose, crooked and uneven, and he was swaying even though he was sitting down. It was a group effort to get him off the bar stool and out the door without him falling flat on his face and it became a more drag/carry rather than him walking out of there on his own accord. By the time they got him back to the hotel, Jensen was giggling and mumbling drunkenly to himself, leaning heavily between Pooch and Cougar as they struggled to open the door without dropping him completely.
He and Cougar were sharing a room again and they figured he'd probably be the best one to keep an eye on the younger man that night and make sure he didn't succumb to alcohol poisoning or drown in his own vomit or anything else along those lines. It doesn't matter that Cougar's been drinking as well, they just toss the two of them in the room together and close the door.
Jensen grinned drunkenly for about five seconds before he shook his head and said "I'm about to throw up." He barely made it to the restroom before all of the liquor from the night came up with a vengeance. Cougar settled himself by the bathroom door, leaning against the door frame and wincing at every forceful heave that comes from inside. He knows its going to be a long night of hailing praise to the porcelain Gods before Jensen's purged his system of everything he'd ingested earlier.
About an hour and a half later, after the heaving had stopped and Jensen is slumped against the wall, miserable and still a bit drunk, Cougar walked in and scooped him off the floor. He smelled like liquor and mouthwash, an odd combination but at least he brushed his teeth after all of it. It took more than a little effort to man-handle him over to the bed and drop him on top of the mattress, deftly pulling off his shoes and dropping them on the floor next to the bed. Jensen muttered a slurred thank you before passing out completely, his face buried in the pillow and his glasses still hanging crookedly on his face.
Cougar simply nodded and walked to the other bed, realizing rather belatedly that Jensen had ended up in his bed again. He wasn't exactly sleeping in it and there was nothing wrong with the other one but it was still the fact that Jensen had ended up in his bed. Cougar just smirked to himself and fell onto the opposing bed, tilting his hat down over his eyes and falling asleep.
OOOOO (5. Jungle)
Cougar leaned back against the tree, staring up at the billions of stars that glittered overhead. They were in Belize, camped out in a wooded area away from town and for once, it was nice to be away from the rest of the world and enjoy the silence.
There was a perfectly good tent a few feet away but Cougar had made his bed (if you counted a sleeping bag laid over a pile of flattened weeds a bed) out here, it was cooler and he could see the stars. Most of the places they stayed were in the crummy parts of cities and the lights pretty much obscured the evening sky completely. Here though, the heavens stretched out infinitely, from one corner of the world to the other in a never-ending mural of stars. It was beautiful and serene and honestly, he couldn't think of any place he'd rather be.
There was a crunch of leaves behind him and he turned briefly to see Jensen approaching, a flashlight held loosely in one hand. "There you are." He said by way of greeting, sitting down next to the Sniper and leaning back against the tree as well. "I thought you went on some glorious, spiritual quest that no one else was allowed to go on."
Cougar smirked. "So you figured you'd tag along?"
Jensen just shrugged. "Can't let you have all the fun, can I?" He's silent for a second, a very un-Jensen-like thing to happen, and he's looking up at the stars. "Man, look at all of them..." He says softly, his boots scratching against the nylon fabric of the sleeping bag. "You don't get to see them that much where we usually stay..." He mumbles, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head back a bit further to see more.
There's a brief moment of silence before he begins speaking again. "You know most of the constellations don't look anything like they're supposed to." Without waiting for Cougar to question him, he continues. "Like, you know how Cancer is supposed to be a crab? Well, from what I see, that's either the crappiest looking crab or I'm just not looking at it right."
Cougar chuckles softly which is more than enough invitation for Jensen to continue. He rambles on about the names of the constellations, the stories behind them, how some them were named after some really ridiculous people ("Like Antlia, it was named after a freakin' air pump some guy invented!"), and how they related to the modern zodiac. He mentioned that it would take about 3,000 years to count every star in the sky, and even then there was a new star born every 18 days, and that one star, Sirius B, is so dense that a handful of it weighs about a million pounds. He chattered on for hours, tossing out random and useless trivia that Cougar didn't really care to know about but was content to sit and listen to on principal.
After a while, Jensen's long-winded trivia session fades off and his eyes begin to close behind his glasses. Cougar's still listening long after Jensen stops talking and slumps against his shoulder, falling asleep beneath the stars he's been rambling about.
OOOOO ( Cougar)
He jolted awake, gasping sharply and hands gripping the mattress. It takes several minutes before he realizes where he is and that there's not immediate threat in the room.. With a sigh, he sits up, passing a hand over his face in an attempt to rid himself of the nightmare that was still plaguing his thoughts. He'd had nightmares before, frequently actually, but it never made it any easier. It never made the fear and the panic lessen.
Tonight it had been Jensen; he found himself dreaming about the younger man a lot more lately. And unfortunately, it was hardly ever anything good. Jensen's lack of self-preservation made him and easy target which made him a virtual minefield for Cougar's already anxious subconscious. His dreams usually focused on Jensen being captured, tortured, killed before he can get there and coming in just seconds too late to do anything. Its frustrating, exhausting, and it scares the shit out of him every time. Tonight had been the same, another mission gone south, another nameless terrorist taking the hacker into some dark, forgotten room, and another minute too late. He shook his head, feeling physically sick to his stomach.
It was late, he didn't know the exact time but he knew it was late, and there was no way he was getting abck to sleep anytime soon. He sighs softly and swings his legs out of the bed, standing slowly and walking out of the room. He's not sure where he's going but he needs to get out of that room.
As he walks, the memory begins to fade just slightly but its still vivid in his mind. He shakes his head sharply, rattling the nightmare around in his brain like an etch-a-sketch that won't fade. He checks the locks on the doors, an unconscious habit he's developed lately, and turns back around. He can still see Jensen tied to the chair, bloody, broken, lifeless, and he's too late. Its driving him crazy.
Before he's really in control of himself, he's standing in the doorway of the younger man's room, looking in on his sleeping form. He knows its slightly psychotic to watch someone sleep but he needs to convince himself that the dream wasn't real and that Jensen's still breathing.
The younger man is oblivious to his scrutiny, sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed, one arm tossed above his head and his head tilted to the side. His breathing is soft and even, in and out rhythmically like nothing had ever happened.
The Sniper shifts, balancing on the balls of his feet as he tries to make a decision. Its childish to seek someone after having a nightmare, he hasn't done that since he was a little boy, but he can't help the longing desire to go into the room, just to be closer. Irritated with himself for being so weak, he walks into the room quietly and sits down on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake the sleeping computer tech.
Jensen is still unaware of his presence and he envies the fact that the younger man can sleep this soundly while he struggles to keep his sanity at night. He slides down on to the mattress, resting his head on the pillow that's been tossed to the side. Its so silent and so still that he can actually hear the sleep-slowed rhythm of Jensen's heartbeat through the mattress, the slow, even sound enough to lull him to sleep again.
"You wanna tell me what's bothering you?" The blond asks sleepily and Cougar nearly falls off the bed in surprise. How long had he been awake?
He's silent for a minute before answering, feeling ashamed for even having to talk about it. "Nightmare." He says simply, leaving it at that.
"About?" Jensen opens his eyes slowly and turns toward him, propping himself on his elbow.
Cougar wishes he would just drop the subject but Jensen is nothing if not persistent. He sighs, refusing to look at him. "You." He muttered more to himself than anyone else.
Jensen doesn't say anything, he doesn't need clarification. If the dream was bad enough to draw a badass like Cougar into his room then he was pretty sure he didn't want the details. Instead, he yawns, snuggling down into the pillows and inching a bit closer to the Sniper. "Well, I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon." He says with conviction and its true. He would have to be dragged kicking and screaming if it meant separating from Cougar (and everyone else).
The older man doesn't say anything, he just moves closer and hides his face in the warm crook of Jensen's neck. The blond smiles and wraps an arm around him lightly, closing his eyes and letting out a sigh. "You know, I was wondering how long it would take for you to sleep with me." He mumbles and Cougar rolls his eyes. Jensen just laughs and falls back asleep, taking Cougar down with him.
Hope you guys liked it! I'm up for suggestions if anyone has any and I'll be sure to credit you for them ^.-
