A/N: Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter! This one came to me because I wanted to write some Clay/Jensen friendship- it's set pre-movie, only a few months after Jensen joins the team. It's a bit more stream-of-consciousness than I usually write, so hopefully it's still comprehensible.

xxxx

It happened fast- so fast, that in the minutes and hours to come, Clay couldn't remember exactly what happened. There'd been bad guys shooting at him and he'd been pinned down, bullets pinging near his head, and he had no clue where Jensen was.

"Jensen!" He roared, reloading his gun with cold-numbed fingers, snow blowing into his face. He'd forgotten how much he hated Russian winters. There was no response from the hacker and Clay hoped that he hadn't been killed but suspected that that might be likely. He liked the kid; had liked him since that first moment those few months ago that he'd shown up, spiky hair and glasses and all. He told himself that the kid's obvious worship of him didn't have anything to do with it, but he was lying.

"Jensen, damn it, answer me!" Still no answer, more bullets, and then he was flinging himself over the log and shooting at everything that moved, at everything that remotely resembled a person, surviving the only thought that was running through his head.

And then it was quiet.

Clay stood up, lightly fingering a small graze on his upper arm, then walked toward the area the Russians had been using for cover. One, two, five dead bodies, all blood and staring eyes and there, in the middle, his target, the man he'd been sent to take out.

"Alpha One to Bowie, mission complete."

"Roger that, Alpha One, rendezvous is open and ready."

"Copy that, Bowie, I'll be headed your way as soon as I locate Pinball."

Silence for a moment on the other end of the line; Jensen's still new and Roque's been teasing the crap out of him, but Clay suspects that the other man cares more than he'd like to admit. He knows for a fact that Cougar and Pooch have already taken to him.

"What's Pinball's status, Alpha One?" That was Pooch, a slight waver to his voice that Clay hadn't heard since that mission where Roque and Clay had both been hit and Cougar had been knocked out and Pooch and Jensen had been forced to salvage the mission.

"Not sure. Alpha out."

Clay straightened up again, wincing as his back popped, then headed toward the van where the hacker had been headed in an attempt to steal the mission files they'd needed.

And stopped dead.

Jensen had somehow managed to get around behind the Russians' defenses and had been providing Clay with backup fire. Now he was lying in the snow, writhing slightly as blood poured from a wound in his gut.

"Jensen?" Clay whispered, realizing something horrible as he dropped to his knees, taking off his coat and draping it over Jensen's legs.

"C-Clay?" Jensen whispered. His glasses were gone, knocked off somewhere, and he gazed up with unfocused eyes at the leader that he adored so much.

"Hey, kid," Clay said, heart sinking as he took in the red-tinted snow.

"Think- I think you m-messed this one up, s-sir," he stuttered, one hand gripping the wound as the other scrabbled in the snow in a desperate attempt to find something to grip. He settled for grabbing hold of Clay's lower pant leg, bunching it up between blood stained fingers and blue tinged fingernails.

"Shit," Clay whispered, quickly shucking off his pack and digging through it for the first-aid kit. "I'm sorry, Jensen. I wasn't looking-"

"'S okay," Jensen mumbled, looking at him with those damn loyal eyes.

"It's not okay," Clay muttered, gently prying Jensen's hand from the wound and shoving a wad of gauze onto it. Jensen moaned weakly but was unable to do much more than thrash a bit, and Clay forced himself to ignore the bad feeling that was settling into his gut.

"Bowie, this is Alpha One, Pinball is hit, repeat, Pinball is hit. We need an extraction, now."

"Damn. Roger that, Alpha One, we're on our way."

Clay turned back to Jensen, taking in the other man's alabaster skin tone, the quivering body.

"Jensen, you stay with me, you hear me? You just hang on, wait for ol' Pooch to come get you."

Jensen nodded weakly, gulping in air in huge ragged gasps.

"S-sorry," he whispered, groaning as Clay shoved another patch of gauze down.

"Don't be. This is my fault," Clay said, hating himself even as he said it. People went down from friendly fire all the time. But never before his men, and sure as hell never from his gun. He was too good for that. His men were too good for that.

He was jolted back to the present when Jensen's gasps turned into an ominous gurgle, and Clay turned him onto his side, watching with horror as blood trickled from the hacker's mouth to add to the stained snow.

"None of that, Jensen," Clay said as Jensen started to go limp. "Jake? Jake! Come on, son!" Jensen roused slightly, looking up with those unfocused eyes and showing red teeth in a weak attempt at a smile.

"C-Clay," he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut as a wave of pain washed over him. "Hu-hurts."

"I know," Clay answered, rooting around in the bag for a small syringe of morphine. He knew that with Jensen coughing up blood, the hacker's respiratory system was already under stress, but Jensen was already slipping into shock and he was concerned that with the frigid temperatures, the hacker wouldn't be able to recover from that.

"I've got some morphine right here, okay? You'll feel better in no time."

"Liar," Jensen said, breath hitching. Clay smiled wryly as he plunged the syringe into Jensen's thigh. Jensen didn't react at all except to let out a small sigh as the pain meds started working.

"Better?" Clay asked. Jensen shrugged.

"Went from a t-ten to a s-se-ven."

Clay swore under his breath. He wouldn't risk an overdose, but Jensen was declining at an alarming rate.

"C-Clay," Jensen whispered again, eyelids fluttering. "C-can't, I can't, damn i-it, I-"

"Jensen," Clay said, gripping one of the hacker's cold hands and pressing on the wound with the other, "Don't try to talk. You're okay."

Jensen shook his head weakly, his mouth forming the words I'm sorry even as he started to choke again.

"No, no no no, don't do this to me, kid," Clay said, rolling Jensen again and watching as an alarming stream of blood spattered to the ground. Jensen didn't respond, his whole body trembling as he gasped for air that just wasn't coming.

"Jensen, come on," Clay said, pressing more gauze against the huge exit wound on Jensen's back. Shit!

"Mojito, what's your ETA?" Clay asked, rolling Jensen back onto his back and checking for the pulse that was too slow, the breaths that were too shallow.

"Eight minutes, Alpha One."

"Make it three."

"Roger that." Pooch sounded worried, and Clay could hear Cougar loudly demanding something in the background.

"You hear that, Jensen? You'd better hang on or you're gonna have some very pissed guys after you. Jensen? Jensen!"

Jensen was limp, his lips brushed with a light tint of blue.

"Damn it," Clay muttered, knuckling Jensen's sternum. Nothing. "Damn it!" He dug in the first-aid kit again, coming up with a breathing barrier, then laid his ear over Jensen's chest. No rise and fall, and his pulse was barely detectable.

"Nuh-uh, not that easy, kid," Clay said, covering Jensen's mouth and nose and administering two quick breaths. Blood covered his hands and the ground and Jensen and everything and Pooch wasn't going to be fast enough this time and he had just killed this kid, just killed his own man-

"Clay! We gotta get him loaded up! We've got the local ER on standby- oh, shit, is he breathing?"

Clay paused between breaths, shook his head, resumed breathing. Cougar ran up next to him with a mask for Jensen, a rebreather mask that he'd whipped out of seemingly nowhere, and Clay squeezed the bag as Roque and Cougar carried him to the van.

"No, no no," Pooch muttered, looking in the back seat and flooring the gas.

Fifteen minutes later (fifteen minutes of Jensen not breathing and then breathing on his own and then not breathing again, fifteen minutes of pressing on a bloody torso, fifteen minutes of Cougar holding Jensen's limp hand and whimpering in the back of his throat) they roared into the hospital, Jensen getting carted away on a stretcher, blood soaking everything.

Three hours later he was still in surgery.

"What the hell happened?" Roque demanded. He hadn't stopped pacing for the last half hour, likely the result of four cups of coffee.

"Things went to hell, fast, and then it was just- it was chaos. And then I, uh, I shot Jensen."

"You shot Jensen?" Pooch said, running a hand over his head. "Shit."

"Yeah," Clay said. "I know."

Cougar said nothing, but Clay didn't miss the slight hint of hostility in the glance he shot him.

Another hour and Jensen was in ICU, blood snaking into his arm and Russian doctors telling his team that he wasn't out of the woods yet and that his stomach had been perforated and part of his small intestine removed, and there was the chance of infection or other complications.

Clay sat next to the hacker, took in the tubes and wires and beeping machinery and quietly promised to himself, to his team, to Jensen that he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

He would die first.