Title : A Vacation – That's Not Frightening At All
Author : peaceful_sands
Fandom : The Losers
Characters : Aisha, Clay, Jolene, Jensen, Cougar, Pooch
Rating : PG-13
Prompt : Losers, Aisha, A vacation, where all she does is relax? She's embarrassed to say she doesn't know how.
Disclaimer : All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
A Vacation – That's Not Frightening At All
Clay and Jensen have spent hours poring over travel brochures, murmuring and muttering about this and that, all of it beyond Aisha's experience. She is not about to tell them she has never really taken a vacation before, not the kind they are describing anyway.
It didn't taken long before, just as she expected, Jensen fetches his laptop and sets it up beside them. What she doesn't expected is a spreadsheet, but there it is in all its multicolored, multi-columned glory. Each possible destination has its own column and below a list of comparable data grew. Services offered, number of pools, restaurants and bars, museums and galleries in the vicinity, local transport connections; the list to her mind seems endless and she isn't entirely sure what he intends doing with the information once he's finished collating it all.
Then, and only then, does he start on his internet search. She assumes he is looking for flights or hotels or something like that, but apparently not. He and Clay have already decided on one hotel for each possible destination, now Jensen is down to the nitty gritty of sites that she has never even heard of like Trip Advisor.
She had never realized so much went into planning a vacation. She had assumed it was just a matter of walking into an agency and saying I want to go here and pay this much, but clearly from this whole routine the team have got going there is a lot more to consider. She doesn't really want to admit that it's only serving to make her more anxious about the forthcoming trip. Her gaze settles again on Jensen. He looks like a kid about to be given free rein in a sweet shop.
It's when she hears Jolene telling Jensen to find out some more information that she really begins to rethink the whole 'going with them' scenario. She figures if Jolene had asked for high chairs or baby sitting, it would have made sense, but instead she's asking for masseurs and beauticians. Aisha wants to shake her and demand to know what she's going to need them for.
In the end, she knows when she's almost reached her saturation point – one more drip and she'll be running before anyone else can even ask what's wrong. That afternoon, when Jolene announces that she is going to the mall, Aisha asks if she can come too.
She does her best to ignore, the staring eyes and shocked expressions on the rest of the team's faces, but it isn't that damned amusing. She gives them a vicious glare before following Jolene out to Pooch's latest vehicle, an alright looking SUV. There's nothing remotely disreputable about it at all. Jolene hops into the driver's seat and swings out on to the road without a word. They've almost reached the mall before she says, "So, is everything okay, Aisha?"
Aisha nods abruptly, a move that couldn't telegraph any clearer the whole lack of okay in her everything. It takes her another moment or two before she can actually get the words that are backed up inside out. "So . . . what exactly does everyone do on one of these vacations?"
Jolene smirks for a moment. She glances across at Aisha and seems to rethink her response. Her expression softens and she says instead, "They relax, girl. Why? What do you do on a vacation? Are you one of those active outdoor pursuits type? Jay can find somewhere with all that kind of stuff too. You know snorkelling, scuba, paragliding, whatever. Just tell him when we get back."
Aisha's face must clearly show her horror at the suggestion because Jolene adds, "You don't like that idea? You're a skier. Man, that sucks, I so wanted to just relax in the sun, but hey, if that's your thing we'll fix it. Jay will find us somewhere."
"I've never skied in my life." Aisha could kick herself for giving so much away.
Jolene frowns. "So . . ." She looks completely confused. "What's the problem with relaxing in the sun?"
"I don't relax. Relaxing gets you killed."
Jolene lets out a surprised laugh, follows it with a "Huh!" and then seems to give it some thought before saying, "You know Jensen's good at his job, right? You know Jensen would make sure that wherever we went was safe?"
"Clay thinks this is a good idea."
"Yeah, he does," Jolene agrees."
"That should tell everyone that it's not," Aisha finishes bluntly. "I'm not stupid. I've heard what happened with Emma and Amber and . . ."
"Yeah, but they were girls, women . . . bad women. This is a vacation and Jensen's got it under control. Cougs and Lin will double check when we get there and –"
"It won't be a good idea. Relaxing is never a good idea and anyway . . . Jensen can't relax."
Jolene can't help but laugh at that thinking of Jensen's usual hyperactive personality. "I think you might be surprised about that one."
"I'll kill him."
"Who? Clay?"
"No, Jensen. I'll be lying there, with nothing to do and nothing to distract me and I'll be doing this relaxing thing and he'll drive me insane and I'll kill him. This is not a good idea."
"Lin and Cougs won't let you kill him. Stop worrying about it. It's not going to happen. Now what else do you need to get before we go? Bikini? Swimsuit? Anything else?" Jolene seems too calm for this to be a good thing, but Aisha trails round the mall after her, buying things as Jolene prompts and wondering how she got herself into this mess.
In the end, it's sort of better than she expects. There is sun, lots of it, along with sea, sand and a pool. Jensen had booked them into a resort that's so isolated and reclusive that there are barely any tourists.
She's surprised by the rest of the team's reactions as well. Jolene and Pooch seem happy, they have their moments when they splash and play in the water with the little one and times when the baby sleeps in the shade beside them as they lie and rest in the sun. Cougar prompts Jensen at times to take the baby and give them some time alone while keeping the baby out of the sun, but it isn't because Jensen's disturbing everyone. It takes her a while to realize it's actually a ruse for Jensen's benefit. Of them all, he's the one who's most in danger of burning in the sun, despite the copious amounts of sunscreen he's plastered on.
She's surprised by the lack of chatter but Jensen just seems to collapse on to a sunbed and half the time she's not even sure he's awake. Like Cougar, he always has a book with him and sometimes she even sees him reading it, but for the most part he looks like all the hyper ran out of his active and he's just out for the count.
At other times each day, she sees the three 'boys' challenging each other to ever more ridiculous feats in the pool – laps, dives, holding their breath underwater. There's one pool with a log over it. It's nothing to cross it with their training but that's presuming the other two aren't underneath trying to shake it. Jolene just laughs at them all and Clay seems to be content to just ignore them so long as there are no complaints from staff or other guests.
Clay lies out on a sunbed, eyes half closed for most of the day, but she knows he's watching his team, and their surroundings. They all are. They're relaxed but not stupid. Max is still out there and despite all of this, none of them have forgotten that fact.
By the end of the week, she's almost ready to relax herself as she finally begins to accept that maybe they do know what they're doing and possibly they can relax without putting themselves in ridiculous amounts of danger. In fact with another week of this, she might just be ready to let her own guard down . . . a little.