begin teh plottins!
warnings: bastardized com-movie-verse (plus a teeny bit of Criminal Minds and Covert Affairs). bare hintings of slash. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus f*** and s***).
pairing: Cougar/Jensen pre-slash.
timeline: pre-movie/pre-comic. exactly three days after getting back to base from his trip to Holly's in Certainty.
disclaimer: the Losers belong to DC/Vertigo.
notes: 1) to my experience, the best computer-friendly snack is low-crumb dry cereal like Kix or Pops. 2) black dossier = a term for the top secret file of someone cleared for black ops. that person's regular file will contain big blank spots and a lot of inaccurate information, both to keep his black ops work secret and to help keep his personal life safe. 3) the SR-25 (Stoner Rifle number 25) is a standard US Army sniping weapon. while smaller-caliber and shorter-range than a Barrett, it is more portable, semi-auto firing, and can be more easily silenced/suppressed. 4) a surprising number of people name their favorite weapons (Roque's probably got names for all his knives).
SIC = Second in Command, also abbreviated 2IC.
CO = Commanding Officer.
NOC = Non-Official Cover; the spies who will get in big, big trouble if they get caught. (contrast to Official Cover, spies who take cover jobs that will grant them diplomatic immunity if they get caught.)
SOP = Standard Operating Procedure.
SEAL = Sea, Air, and Land; the Navy's primary special operations force. their qualification and training process is notoriously rigorous and yields the Swiss Army Knife of special forces operatives. they have a reputation for being some of the best snipers in the world (seriously; sniping from a boat? not easy!).
Delta = Delta Force, the top badasses of Army Special Forces. super-hush-hush, usually dressed to blend in with civilians. they could tell you that they eat bad guys for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...but then they'd have to kill you. seriously, these guys are like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.
SERE = Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. training to avoid or deal with being captured; the most basic level is administered to all service personnel on an annual basis, but those at above-average risk of being captured and interrogated receive additional, more strenuous SERE training.
Section Eight = discharge for psychological reasons (such as a complete nervous breakdown or a psychotic episode).
Plottins
There are, generally speaking, two kinds of SIC.
The first kind of SIC will do what he can to help solve little problems in the unit before they become big enough to bother the CO with. The CO might be a hardass (and it's usually expected of him to some degree), but the SIC will get you hangover cures, caffeine tablets, a couple hours of privacy before you rip somebody's head off and wear it as a hat…whatever it takes within a certain grey area to keep the unit in optimum operating conditions.
The second kind of SIC will rub salt in the wound and tell you to learn from your stupid fucking mistakes (but will probably smooth things over with the CO the first few times you screw up).
Lieutenant William Roque (and even three years after the fact, he was both proud and slightly stunned that he'd gotten his commission) was the second kind of SIC. He figured if Clay was gonna be a fucking pushover about most things, he'd make up for it by being the hardass. Nobody would benefit if both halves of the command team were lax.
But experience had taught him that—learning experiences be damned—he needed to tattle on Jensen at the earliest signs of misbehavior, because the kid had zero fear of Roque (and conversely Roque had a healthy fear of a certain sniper who would probably do unspeakable things to him if he ever carried out his threats).
So he was on his bunk, blithely honing his knives to feign disinterest while Clay stood over Jensen with a slightly pained expression.
"Jensen. What are you doing?"
"Hacking," Jensen replied, downing another handful of dry cereal.
"I can see that," huffed Clay. "What are you hacking into?"
"CIA black dossiers."
Clay grimaced. "We're not on an assignment, Corporal. Why, for the love of God and Star Trek, are you hacking into the most heavily guarded secrets of the CIA?"
"Second-most heavily guarded," Jensen corrected. "NOC list has three more firewalls and way better encryption. Combined favor to one buddy named Auggie and another buddy named Penny. He asked me to check their security, she asked me to get the dirty goods on an asset who may be doing bad, bad things. If you turn it sideways and squint, it's totally legit."
Roque tried not to show his skepticism (after all, he was pretending not to pay attention).
"And you're just doing it out of the goodness of your heart?" Clay asked flatly.
"Hell, no," laughed Jensen. "I'm keeping one of these bad boys for myself."
"That's…even more illegal than the rest of it."
Jensen rolled his eyes. "Please. If the CIA and FBI don't know better than to expect a hacker to make off with some juicy intel in exchange for services rendered, there's no helping them. It's safer with me. And it's not yours, Colonel Stoneface, so you can enhance your calm. Though I was surprised to see you've been divorced twice. Domestic abuse, really?"
"She clocked me with a cast-iron skillet," Clay grunted. "I consider that grounds for divorce. What the hell do you want with the classified portions of a Black Ops asset's file?"
"Do you have any idea how much they either delete or alter when they clear somebody for Black Ops?" Jensen typed something up and pointed at his laptop screen. "Date of birth, place of birth, hometown, family members, schooling, unit and training history…if it ain't immediately pertinent to healthcare, it's erased. Same as the way our field ops dogtags all have aliases on 'em. Don't you feel kinda shady, dealing with people who do that kinda stuff?"
Clay just gave the kid a long, steady look. "This is the third time in as many days I've come in here to see you doing something 'shady' yourself. I'm calling your sister." And he stalked out of the barracks (presumably to his office).
"She'll tell you I'm engineering a rainbow toilet explosion," Jensen called after their CO.
Roque paused in sharpening his second blade. "Whose file you grabbin'?"
"Cougar's," Jensen answered, still typing. "Middle of five children, only boy. That must've sucked. Graduated high school with a four-point-oh. Captain of the soccer team, captain of the rifle team, dated every girl on the cheerleading squad…Cougs was livin' the American dream, man. Well, Mexican-American—twice as many kids."
Roque made a face. "Why the hell does the CIA keep track of who their operatives dated in high school?"
"It's SOP, in case they turn out to have dated a terrorist."
"Yeah, well…statistically speaking, he must've by now," Roque muttered under his breath. In all the time Roque had known the sniper, Cougar had never been terribly picky when it came to knocking boots. Every girl on the cheerleading squad? Probably more like every girl in school plus half the guys.
Jensen kept scrolling through the file. "First participated in the President's Rifle Match at age seventeen, placed tenth, the highest of any civilian that year…and has since won every time he participated. That's badass."
Roque nearly pointed out that Jensen could just ask Cougar about those things like a normal human being. Then he thought a little longer and figured Cougar wouldn't answer those kinds of questions, no matter how huge a crush he had on the dipshit hacker (especially the part about being the only boy out of five kids; Roque knew from experience that younger brothers were used as dress-up dolls). "Why ya wanna know that kinda shit, anyhow?"
The blond stuffed some more cereal in his mouth and crunched mutely for a while. "Best way to assure a successful hunt is to know your prey," he replied philosophically. "Sun Tzu said that the victorious general only fights a battle he has already won, so I figured a little intelligence-gathering was in order. SEAL training, Delta-level SERE…preferred weapon SR-25…they even know her name's Isabel. 'View psych profile (y/n)?' 'Y,' please."
Roque blinked and gestured with the knife in his hand. "You start puttin' down bear traps baited with porn and cotton candy, I will file the Section Eight myself."
.End.
