Work Text:
It was the stupid ass hat that did it. That and the passage of time.
Pooch had been surprised, even glad, to see Jensen sober on the anniversary of the day Clay and Cougar bit it. He’d been dreading it for weeks, and Jensen had been getting steadily colder and more remote.
But the two remaining Losers had toasted their lost friends and been sad and missed a real life and cursed the shit that happened. And then Stiegler had showed up, the asshole. But even then, Jake’d been Jake and flipped the guy off and walked away. Sure, he went back to the sea, where he always went, but Pooch figured J had a right to miss what they’d had.
God knew he did.
Antigua had nothing to recommend it anymore. Nothing did. Jolene and the girls were home in Springfield thinking he was gone. Julius was probably thrilled. All Pooch had was Jensen, and now even he was drifting away. Maybe more permanently than Pooch wanted to admit.
Whatever Jake and Cougar had been to each other, Jensen had been torn in half by his death and left cracked. Most of time he struggled on okay, but the anniversary had been hard—harder even than other days that made them think of Clay and Coug.
Cougar's birthday had been a disaster—and Pooch hadn't even thought about it being his fucking birthday until he's had to stop J from getting beaten to hell in one of the bars in town. Pooch had known that one-year mark would be bad, but J was headed down a rabbit hole now, and Pooch didn’t know what to do about it.
Funny how Jake Jensen had gotten through so much shit in his life but one fucking Mexican cowboy was all it took to bring him down.
Because Jake was going down. This morning was proof.
“I’m going to Guido’s,” Jake had announced shortly. He looked almost normal, if you ignored the black smudges under his eyes. He’d spent the night drinking by the smell of him and how he wasn’t quite focusing. Hell, the way he was going these days, might not have been just booze. “Want anything?”
Pooch hadn’t, but he’d had a horrible feeling that Jake shouldn’t be let out without a leash. “I’ll come—never know what the hell he’s got cooking in the mornings.”
Guido’s was a restaurant a few blocks from their place. Served a good breakfast and a better lunch—pretty much whatever the owner could get that day or whatever he was in the mood for. It was summer, which meant the area was full of tourists mucking up the sidewalks. Pooch didn’t pay any of them any mind, and usually, neither did Jensen, so it was a surprise when the younger man stopped dead in the middle of the street.
“J, what the hell?”
“Cougar,” Jake whispered. It was full of hope and madness, that word. Scared the shit out of Pooch.
“What are you—” he began.
But Jake was off through the crowd and Pooch struggled to catch up to him.
“J, I don’t know who you saw, but it ain’t him. You know that.” God, I hope you know that.
“I know. I know, but...” He looked Pooch in the eyes and he was clearly more nuts than drunk or high. “It was him .”
They turned the next corner and it was Pooch’s turn to stop dead. On a stoop halfway up the street stood a man in a tank top and jeans, a leather hat on his head with long, stringy brown hair hanging down and obscuring his face. He was staring at the ground and he had a cigarette in his hand.
It wasn’t Cougar, but it was close enough that Jake’s grief-blasted brain wasn’t going to know the difference.
“Jake, wait,” Pooch said, grabbing for his friend.
Too late. Jake slipped by him and walked up to the man and knocked the hat off. Knocked it off like he’d done a million times before. Lord, Pooch knew if anyone else had touched that hat the way Jake did, Cougar would have killed them. But that wasn’t Cougar.
“¿Qué diablos te pasa, hombre?” the man growled, reaching down and picking up his hat. “¿ Estás volado? ”*
Pooch rushed up, ready for trouble, but the guy just brushed Jake off and walked away, muttering, "Pinche estúpido,"* under his breath. Jake, for his part, stood still as a statue and just… stared at the spot where Cougar had never been.
"Come on, man," Pooch said quietly, putting a hand on Jake's shoulder and shaking to get his attention. Pooch had sighed at the pain in his friend's eyes. Because there was fuck-all he could do about it.
"Let's get you home."
Which brought Pooch to now, sitting in a beach chair, drinking less than he wanted to and watching Jake stare at the ocean like a zombie.
Part of Jake—hell, part of both of them had died the day Cougar and Clay bit it. Burned out as completely as both of their dead friends. Pooch liked to think of himself as a survivor. He’d thought that about Jensen, too, once upon a time. Guy had had shit for a life before Clay drafted him into the team, and he’d still been upbeat, manic, even.
Now he was just a zombie wearing Jensen’s face. Seeing Cougar in any guy with a hat...
The sun was setting, and Pooch knew he should stay. He didn’t know why, but he knew it.
In the end, though, he decided to leave. Walk away with the last rays of the sun and leave Jake to work it out for himself. If he even could.
It was a decision Pooch had to live with for the rest of his life.
********
the end