White Noise . The Losers . One-shot . Shifter!Verse
Author: Faithunbreakable/ pprfaith
Title: White Noise
Series: Shifter!Verse. Prequel to Here Be Dragons, set after There Are Wolves. Use the tag, svp.
Rating: R for past violence.
Summary: Why talk so much? - Cougar, Jensen, a human and ninjas. Pre-Movie AU. Shortish.
Warning: This might, quite possibly, eat your brain. Also, a ninja!rant, which, personally, I find kind of... scary.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
A/N: vesselandpestle is the awesomesest beta ever. Everytime I get insecure and start flailing, she gets me back on track. Thanks, dear!
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White Noise
.
Cougar sits in the far corner of the room, the parts of his rifle spread out on the upside-down crate in front of him. In his line of sight are the door, the only window of the crappy room he calls home for this mission, and both of its other occupants.
His hands smooth along the metal of his rifle, the rag smelling of gun-oil and sweat. It stings his nose and calms his nerves at the same time. He needs this, needs something to focus on other than the silent war happening between Jensen and their latest handler.
Jensen is set up on the only real table, right in front of the window. He’s typing away at one of his laptops with one hand, playing with a rubber ball with the other. He squeezes it, drops it to the floor, catches it again, rolls it between his fingers, throws it in the air. It’s an endless rhythm, up, down, around, again.
After three months with the younger man, Cougar knows he will keep the routine up for hours on end, never deviating. He has come to expect it as much as he expects Jensen’s babbling. The white noise has actually begun to soothe him. It’s not like he needs his hearing to detect danger. Not when all his other senses more than make up for it.
So he lets Jensen do as he pleases, only silently wondering why. Why the toys? Why all those words?
Henderson, their handler, on the other hand, has no tolerance for the hacker’s games. He is a ball of tightly coiled anger and nerves sitting at the foot of one of the beds, glaring.
They have a new handler for every mission and a new mission every week. Cougar knows how the military works, knows the only reason he and the hacker haven’t been disappeared yet for causing too much trouble is that they’re damn good. No-one hacks like Jensen and no-one shoots like Cougar and together… oh, together. When they told Cougar he would work with another, he assumed the man would end up dead like all the others that couldn’t keep up with him.
When he met Jensen and smelled the cat in him, saw it slink around his ankles, he thought they might not survive even this one mission with each other. But to his endless surprise, they work. They work well. Bird and cat, natural enemies. Somehow Cougar’s iron control and Jensen’s capacity to not appear as a threat make it possible for them to still be here, together, three months later, and, in Jensen’s words, kicking ass.
Cougar has never worked with anyone for longer than a month.
He is starting to trust the other shifter. It feels strange. The bird caws and feathers tickle his insides. It makes him restless, this quiet voice telling him it’s okay to relax around the blond. It’s never okay to relax. Never.
“Jensen!” Henderson finally barks, his patience used up. He stinks of anger and fear, sharp and acidic. He knows that, out of the three of them, he is the only one that can be replaced. Knows that others like him have been replaced, a dozen times over in the past few months. “Stop fucking around, soldier, and do your fucking job!!!”
He stands abruptly, ripping the brightly colored ball out of Jensen’s hand, throwing it against the wall with all his human strength. It bounces off, almost hitting Jensen in the face. His hand shoots out at the last possible moment, catching the ball half an inch from his glasses.
Stillness. Cougar puts down the scope in his hands and waits.
Henderson is utterly frozen, staring at the hacker he just yelled at. His fear rolls through the room, a wave of sweat and piss, followed closely by hunger and rage, the animal desire to pounce and tear. At his feet, Jensen’s shadow coils tightly, getting ready to spring, to burst out of his skin.
Then the blonde takes a deep breath, lowers his hand and starts talking. “Wow, did you see that? That was totally badass. I mean, did you see me, with the ninja super catching skills, except, I’m actually kind of sure ninjas don’t get attacked by rogue balls all that often, unless it’s some kind of super secret weapon because, like, if they aren’t trained to fight them, then they’d be the ultimate weapon, right? So you throw a ball at a ninja and he just…drops. Do ninjas drop? Or do they land silently and gracefully, even in unconsciousness? I always figured those bastards wouldn’t know how to make a sound if you poked them with a needle, kind of like my friend Cougar over there, right Cougs?”
The hunger recedes, the fear follows, the moment passes. Henderson straightens, runs a hand over the front of his sweat-soaked shirt. “Stop babbling and do your fucking job. With both hands, this time. I’m going for dinner.”
Jensen salutes and dutifully puts down the ball. Henderson slams out of the room with a bang, completely ignoring the sniper in the corner. They both listen until his footsteps disappear into the busy crowd on the street below.
Then Jensen picks the ball up again and resumes his game, typing with his other hand, fingers moving unnaturally fast. Twice as fast as before. Cougar frowns as he finishes with his rifle, putting it down to lean against his knee.
Jensen, sensing his look, smiles widely at him. “Dude,” he says. His accent is broad and very American. Sometimes it grates on Cougar, how utterly mundane the other man can appear. “Don’t gimme that look. I’m not gonna play human when the idiot’s not around. Plus, like this, I get the job done in right… about… now.”
He hits the enter key with gusto and spins once in the old office chair he acquired from somewhere, hands in the air. He throws the ball at Cougar, who catches it with the same swiftness and accuracy the hacker displayed moments ago. He keeps the ball and Jensen pouts before standing and throwing himself across the bed, head dangling over the edge. He looks at Cougar upside down, grinning stupidly.
And Cougar finds himself squeezing the silly toy and asking, “Why talk so much?”
He has wondered for a while, but seeing the hacker’s mouth run off at Henderson just now was enough to push the question into words. Cats are silent and graceful. Most of the time, Jensen is neither.
He frowns at the sniper, upside down, glasses slipping toward his forehead. He pushes them back into place with one finger, yawns. If he were in cat form, he would be washing himself. Obviously, the question is too personal.
But then he frowns, closes his eyes and says, “I tell you, I get a favor from you.”
Cougar considers, rolls the ball between his hands once and then lays it down in his lap. Jensen will not ask something too outrageous. “Si,” he agrees.
Jensen smiles and lays his hands on his chest, scratching at the taut material of his lurid shirt. “You’re a born, aren’t you?” he asks.
Cougar nods.
“Well, I’m not.”
Surprise.
In the months he has known the hacker, Cougar has never witnessed the things that typically identify a non-born shifter. Jensen’s control is perfect, his shift smooth and as painless as it can be. He keeps his mind in his other form and has full access to his cat’s superior abilities in his human body. Cougar simply assumed the man was like him, born with the other already inside him.
“I know,” Jensen continues, “I’m awesome. But I’ve had a long time to practice.”
His customary smile fades, replaced by something darker, something Cougar never suspected the man to be capable off until the first time a mission went wrong.
“I was eight,” the blond says, staring at the ceiling. “My mom’s boyfriend lost it. Killed her, then went for Janie. I jumped between them.”
From his silence, Cougar can surmise the rest. An eight-year-old against an angry, fully grown shifter. It is a miracle Jensen is alive today. The hacker snorts. “Wouldn’t have made it, if Janie hadn’t gone for mom’s gun. She emptied the whole clip into him.”
He sounds proud.
“Afterwards, in the foster homes, I needed to learn control fast. So I started talking, talking, talking.”
Too personal. Cougar wants to withdraw his question because to know the answer is to know Jensen and he does not get close to others. Birds of prey fly alone, not in flocks. And Jensen is not even winged. And yet, he doesn’t. He wants to know. Wants to know how a child coped with having a fully grown predator in his head.
Cougar’s other self grew with him, year for year, day for day. Non-born do not have that luxury. What invades them along with teeth and claws is always fully grown, always hungry.
“It was…,” Jensen stops, suddenly, interrupts his own story, breaks off. “It’s habit after all these years. The noise keeps the cat down.”
Quick and clean. A few sentences to summarize a struggle that must have lasted years. A few words to describe something that Cougar has seen grown men break on.
He wonders how anyone can look at Jensen and see someone weak, someone malleable when he is so obviously anything but. Jacob Jensen is made of steel and blood.
“So,” he says as he rolls onto his stomach, grinning again, the past packed away again, neatly. Cougar sees a phantom tail twitch, a split second of animal and human bleeding into each other, feels the shadow of wings arch at his back in response. “That favor.”
Cougar waits.
“Full moon in three days. We’ll have lost The Idiot until then. Run with me?”
Cougar considers. They have worked together for three moons, but they have always split at sunset, each going their own way, observing their own rituals. Outside the moon, a shift is a shift. But when the moon is full, there is more to it than simple mechanics. Magic, Cougar’s mother called it. When the moon is full, you keep only those around that you trust.
“What happened to the man who infected you?”
Because the gun was certainly not loaded with silver and the bullets did not kill the man.
Jensen, who was bouncing on his bed like an eager kitten, stills. He reaches up to pull his glasses from his face and looks at Cougar with naked, blue eyes. “I caught up with him when I was fifteen,” he says, voice flat.
Cougar nods. “I will fly with you,” he says.
.
In other news: Still sick as the neighbors' butt ugly mutt. If you want to sign up for the Wishlist 2010, go to my lj. Post is tagged.
Title: White Noise
Series: Shifter!Verse. Prequel to Here Be Dragons, set after There Are Wolves. Use the tag, svp.
Rating: R for past violence.
Summary: Why talk so much? - Cougar, Jensen, a human and ninjas. Pre-Movie AU. Shortish.
Warning: This might, quite possibly, eat your brain. Also, a ninja!rant, which, personally, I find kind of... scary.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
A/N: vesselandpestle is the awesomesest beta ever. Everytime I get insecure and start flailing, she gets me back on track. Thanks, dear!
.
.
White Noise
.
Cougar sits in the far corner of the room, the parts of his rifle spread out on the upside-down crate in front of him. In his line of sight are the door, the only window of the crappy room he calls home for this mission, and both of its other occupants.
His hands smooth along the metal of his rifle, the rag smelling of gun-oil and sweat. It stings his nose and calms his nerves at the same time. He needs this, needs something to focus on other than the silent war happening between Jensen and their latest handler.
Jensen is set up on the only real table, right in front of the window. He’s typing away at one of his laptops with one hand, playing with a rubber ball with the other. He squeezes it, drops it to the floor, catches it again, rolls it between his fingers, throws it in the air. It’s an endless rhythm, up, down, around, again.
After three months with the younger man, Cougar knows he will keep the routine up for hours on end, never deviating. He has come to expect it as much as he expects Jensen’s babbling. The white noise has actually begun to soothe him. It’s not like he needs his hearing to detect danger. Not when all his other senses more than make up for it.
So he lets Jensen do as he pleases, only silently wondering why. Why the toys? Why all those words?
Henderson, their handler, on the other hand, has no tolerance for the hacker’s games. He is a ball of tightly coiled anger and nerves sitting at the foot of one of the beds, glaring.
They have a new handler for every mission and a new mission every week. Cougar knows how the military works, knows the only reason he and the hacker haven’t been disappeared yet for causing too much trouble is that they’re damn good. No-one hacks like Jensen and no-one shoots like Cougar and together… oh, together. When they told Cougar he would work with another, he assumed the man would end up dead like all the others that couldn’t keep up with him.
When he met Jensen and smelled the cat in him, saw it slink around his ankles, he thought they might not survive even this one mission with each other. But to his endless surprise, they work. They work well. Bird and cat, natural enemies. Somehow Cougar’s iron control and Jensen’s capacity to not appear as a threat make it possible for them to still be here, together, three months later, and, in Jensen’s words, kicking ass.
Cougar has never worked with anyone for longer than a month.
He is starting to trust the other shifter. It feels strange. The bird caws and feathers tickle his insides. It makes him restless, this quiet voice telling him it’s okay to relax around the blond. It’s never okay to relax. Never.
“Jensen!” Henderson finally barks, his patience used up. He stinks of anger and fear, sharp and acidic. He knows that, out of the three of them, he is the only one that can be replaced. Knows that others like him have been replaced, a dozen times over in the past few months. “Stop fucking around, soldier, and do your fucking job!!!”
He stands abruptly, ripping the brightly colored ball out of Jensen’s hand, throwing it against the wall with all his human strength. It bounces off, almost hitting Jensen in the face. His hand shoots out at the last possible moment, catching the ball half an inch from his glasses.
Stillness. Cougar puts down the scope in his hands and waits.
Henderson is utterly frozen, staring at the hacker he just yelled at. His fear rolls through the room, a wave of sweat and piss, followed closely by hunger and rage, the animal desire to pounce and tear. At his feet, Jensen’s shadow coils tightly, getting ready to spring, to burst out of his skin.
Then the blonde takes a deep breath, lowers his hand and starts talking. “Wow, did you see that? That was totally badass. I mean, did you see me, with the ninja super catching skills, except, I’m actually kind of sure ninjas don’t get attacked by rogue balls all that often, unless it’s some kind of super secret weapon because, like, if they aren’t trained to fight them, then they’d be the ultimate weapon, right? So you throw a ball at a ninja and he just…drops. Do ninjas drop? Or do they land silently and gracefully, even in unconsciousness? I always figured those bastards wouldn’t know how to make a sound if you poked them with a needle, kind of like my friend Cougar over there, right Cougs?”
The hunger recedes, the fear follows, the moment passes. Henderson straightens, runs a hand over the front of his sweat-soaked shirt. “Stop babbling and do your fucking job. With both hands, this time. I’m going for dinner.”
Jensen salutes and dutifully puts down the ball. Henderson slams out of the room with a bang, completely ignoring the sniper in the corner. They both listen until his footsteps disappear into the busy crowd on the street below.
Then Jensen picks the ball up again and resumes his game, typing with his other hand, fingers moving unnaturally fast. Twice as fast as before. Cougar frowns as he finishes with his rifle, putting it down to lean against his knee.
Jensen, sensing his look, smiles widely at him. “Dude,” he says. His accent is broad and very American. Sometimes it grates on Cougar, how utterly mundane the other man can appear. “Don’t gimme that look. I’m not gonna play human when the idiot’s not around. Plus, like this, I get the job done in right… about… now.”
He hits the enter key with gusto and spins once in the old office chair he acquired from somewhere, hands in the air. He throws the ball at Cougar, who catches it with the same swiftness and accuracy the hacker displayed moments ago. He keeps the ball and Jensen pouts before standing and throwing himself across the bed, head dangling over the edge. He looks at Cougar upside down, grinning stupidly.
And Cougar finds himself squeezing the silly toy and asking, “Why talk so much?”
He has wondered for a while, but seeing the hacker’s mouth run off at Henderson just now was enough to push the question into words. Cats are silent and graceful. Most of the time, Jensen is neither.
He frowns at the sniper, upside down, glasses slipping toward his forehead. He pushes them back into place with one finger, yawns. If he were in cat form, he would be washing himself. Obviously, the question is too personal.
But then he frowns, closes his eyes and says, “I tell you, I get a favor from you.”
Cougar considers, rolls the ball between his hands once and then lays it down in his lap. Jensen will not ask something too outrageous. “Si,” he agrees.
Jensen smiles and lays his hands on his chest, scratching at the taut material of his lurid shirt. “You’re a born, aren’t you?” he asks.
Cougar nods.
“Well, I’m not.”
Surprise.
In the months he has known the hacker, Cougar has never witnessed the things that typically identify a non-born shifter. Jensen’s control is perfect, his shift smooth and as painless as it can be. He keeps his mind in his other form and has full access to his cat’s superior abilities in his human body. Cougar simply assumed the man was like him, born with the other already inside him.
“I know,” Jensen continues, “I’m awesome. But I’ve had a long time to practice.”
His customary smile fades, replaced by something darker, something Cougar never suspected the man to be capable off until the first time a mission went wrong.
“I was eight,” the blond says, staring at the ceiling. “My mom’s boyfriend lost it. Killed her, then went for Janie. I jumped between them.”
From his silence, Cougar can surmise the rest. An eight-year-old against an angry, fully grown shifter. It is a miracle Jensen is alive today. The hacker snorts. “Wouldn’t have made it, if Janie hadn’t gone for mom’s gun. She emptied the whole clip into him.”
He sounds proud.
“Afterwards, in the foster homes, I needed to learn control fast. So I started talking, talking, talking.”
Too personal. Cougar wants to withdraw his question because to know the answer is to know Jensen and he does not get close to others. Birds of prey fly alone, not in flocks. And Jensen is not even winged. And yet, he doesn’t. He wants to know. Wants to know how a child coped with having a fully grown predator in his head.
Cougar’s other self grew with him, year for year, day for day. Non-born do not have that luxury. What invades them along with teeth and claws is always fully grown, always hungry.
“It was…,” Jensen stops, suddenly, interrupts his own story, breaks off. “It’s habit after all these years. The noise keeps the cat down.”
Quick and clean. A few sentences to summarize a struggle that must have lasted years. A few words to describe something that Cougar has seen grown men break on.
He wonders how anyone can look at Jensen and see someone weak, someone malleable when he is so obviously anything but. Jacob Jensen is made of steel and blood.
“So,” he says as he rolls onto his stomach, grinning again, the past packed away again, neatly. Cougar sees a phantom tail twitch, a split second of animal and human bleeding into each other, feels the shadow of wings arch at his back in response. “That favor.”
Cougar waits.
“Full moon in three days. We’ll have lost The Idiot until then. Run with me?”
Cougar considers. They have worked together for three moons, but they have always split at sunset, each going their own way, observing their own rituals. Outside the moon, a shift is a shift. But when the moon is full, there is more to it than simple mechanics. Magic, Cougar’s mother called it. When the moon is full, you keep only those around that you trust.
“What happened to the man who infected you?”
Because the gun was certainly not loaded with silver and the bullets did not kill the man.
Jensen, who was bouncing on his bed like an eager kitten, stills. He reaches up to pull his glasses from his face and looks at Cougar with naked, blue eyes. “I caught up with him when I was fifteen,” he says, voice flat.
Cougar nods. “I will fly with you,” he says.
.
In other news: Still sick as the neighbors' butt ugly mutt. If you want to sign up for the Wishlist 2010, go to my lj. Post is tagged.