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Jensen wakes up in the dark and everything hurts.
Seriously, everything. He’s pretty sure he can feel the small bones in his inner ear grinding together. Somewhere close to his head, there’s the sound of something falling. The air is so full of dust it’s hard to breathe.
Jensen blinks a couple of times, but the darkness doesn’t get appreciably brighter. There’s that horrible creeping sense of closeness, something right in front of his eyes. He coughs, and something pings, bright white-hot pain in his side. Fuck you, floating ribs, thinks Jensen, why’s it you always gotta break?
It takes him a moment to realize that he actually said that out loud, and another to think that addressing his own ribcage is probably not rational behaviour, and then something shifts by his ear.
“Jensen,” says Cougar, and in half a second, claustrophobia or not, Jensen’s brain is back online.
“Cougs,” he says, or he tries, even though it comes out more like a cough. “Cougs, are you okay?”
“Leg’s pinned,” says Cougar in that tight, controlled way, which could mean this is surprisingly actually not so bad or I am in the worst pain of my life, holy fuck, depending how you read into his enunciation. He doesn’t say anything else, but that’s the Cougar-pause where Jensen’s supposed to fill in his own status.
“I’m great,” says Jensen, and tries not to think about why he can hardly breathe. It’s the dust, that’s all. “It’s great under here. Visit scenic Pile of Detonation Rubble, population you and me.”
Fuck, it’s just the dust.
Cougar snorts, and suddenly there’s fingers stroking along his neck. “I’m close,” says Cougar. “Hang on.”
There’s the close sound, so close, so claustrophobic, of falling rubble, and Jensen can’t even line up a knock it off you crazy fuck, you’ll bring it all down or even last time you said that, I was underneath you and going crazy, before Cougar’s warm body is pressed along his side. It feels so good he can almost tamp down on the flare of pain that bites through his abdomen.
“Can’t get any closer,” says Cougar, and jesus, he almost sounds apologetic. Jensen wants to laugh, but he really probably shouldn’t.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Lefty’s caught over there somewhere.” At least, Jensen thinks it is, judging from the pain and the fact that he can’t move his fingers. “Serves him right,” says Jensen. “He was never as dextrous as old righty here.”
“Fuck,” says Cougar, and Jensen has never met someone who can fit as many layers into a simple one-word profanity as Cougar. It’s one of the more endearing things about him.
Everything’s quiet for a few seconds. Jensen tries to time his breathing, one-two-inhale-exhale, tries to get his ribcage to expand, and oh fuck that’s graduated to stabbing pain and that’s not good. That is the opposite of good. And Cougar’s six inches away but he couldn’t do shit even if he could move, so Jensen bites down hard and tries shallow breaths instead.
“We should go to New York,” says Jensen, abruptly, when he can talk again. He has to stop then, and clench his jaw against the pain, but he can’t let that stop him. “I mean, I like it there.” Cougar doesn’t say anything, just breathes quick and sharp through his nose, and yeah, he’s dealing with his own problems over there, so Jensen keeps talking.
“New York,” he says again. “We’ll get a place by the park and go running and you can beat up muggers. I’ll fix computers for sweet old ladies and we can live on sushi and Korean grocery food until we figure out how to cook things that don’t come in heatproof plastic bags.”
“Jensen,” says Cougar, and he doesn’t say anything else.
“Come on,” says Jensen. “You and me. New York.” He smiles a little, even though it hurts. Feels like a busted tooth, and goddamn, there goes his perfect dental record. “We gotta get out while we’re young,” he half-sings, and fuck, he’s pretty out of it, because that was his and Jane’s bedtime song when they were kids, and he has a quick flash to his mom singing along with the cassette deck in the truck. He blinks, but he still can’t see anything.
“Springsteen’s from Jersey,” says Cougar, but he hasn’t said no.
Jensen grins, and he doesn’t care if no one can see, and he doesn’t care that it hurts. “I’m going to marry you, Carlos Alvarez,” he promises, and he means it. It’s legal in New York this year, and. Well. If this all goes fucking south later—if there is a later— he’ll blame it all on the head injury he’s pretty sure he probably has, but god, he doesn’t want to.
Cougar’s quiet for a long, awful moment, long enough that Jensen has time for a flash of true, gut-clenching terror. Then Cougar’s hand finds his in the dark, and their fingers curl together.
“This isn’t,” says Cougar, finally. “How I wanted to ask you that.”
And Jensen would whoop and punch the air if he could get an arm free, and if there wasn’t eighteen tons of building rubble balanced precariously four inches above his face. He starts to laugh, but it turns into a coughing jag, and oh fuck, there it is, he really can’t breathe this time.
“Cougs,” he manages to get out, “This might be a little worse than I thought.” And there’s that very particular brand of silence, where Cougar’s biting down on emotion hard and then—
“Jensen,” says Cougar, “Jensen, breathe.” His voice is quiet, steady, but his lips find Jensen’s in the dark and he kisses him anything but steady. Cougar kisses him, and it’s heat and desperation and life and okay, Jensen’s bleeding out, but he’s not dead. He kisses back, tasting blood and dust and Cougar and he gropes outward, finds Cougar’s hand with the one that isn’t pinned, and winds their fingers together.
Jensen has to stop when he suddenly can’t breathe again, and he turns away and tries to cough. Pain flares bright in his chest and there’s fresh blood in his mouth. He can’t get any air, and he gasps.
I love you, he wants to say, I fucking love you and I want us to be together until we’re dead, which is looking like it’s going to be a hell of a lot sooner than he was hoping for, and fuck, fuck, this is not fair. He tries to squeeze Cougar’s fingers, but his arm’s feeling like deadweight, and then he can’t feel much at all. “Jensen,” says Cougar, and no, no, that is not a Cougar tone. That is an order of magnitude too freaked for Cougar. “Don’t you do it,” he says, and he is fierce and freaking out, and oh god, Jensen is so stupid in love with him, he doesn’t even know what to do.
Everything’s quiet for a little while, or maybe Jensen just stopped hearing things, because suddenly Cougar’s talking again. “Jensen,” he says, softly. His lips find Jensen’s ear, and Jensen wants to lift his head, get closer, but everything’s a dizzy blur, and moving hurts too fucking badly. “Baby,” says Cougar, so soft it’s barely a breath. “Don’t leave me.”
There’s a sound, then, something far away, like rubble shifting. There’s a sound, then, that if Jensen strains his ears and uses his imagination, might be Pooch yelling. Maybe.
Cougar twitches, and Jensen closes his eyes, terrified and in pain and out of his goddamn head in love, and tries to hold on.