Day 12 . Unseen . BtVS/Losers . Threesomeish slashy gen? .
Title: Unseen
Author: pprfaith
Summary: South African mall introspection. Sort of. Hints of threesomeness.
Prompt/Prompter: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/ The Losers, Some You Lose!Verse, Buffy, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen - for emony2
Rating: PG-13 for Jensen being a nutcase.
Warnings: Jensen being a nutcase, introspection, slashy undertones, overall kinda cuteness, severe lack of plot and Jensen’s rambling, stereotyping rant about South Africans, which, in no way, reflects my opinion, mkay?
Disclaimer: I do not own the fandoms I am writing in and I make no money off this. Fun, not profit.
A/N: Set an indeterminate amount of time after the current events of SYL. One to go. I might actually survive this month…
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Unseen
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Buffy liked people watching. It spoke to the predator inside of her, watching prey walk past, watching its movements, its patterns, its weaknesses. The human side of her paid more attention to funny behavior, to fashion. To wishes and dreams and hopes.
But whether it was slayer or girl watching didn’t really matter. She just liked sitting still and watching life pass her by. She liked knowing that it was her and her friends and family that made it possible for these people to go about their lives, unaware of what lurked in every shadow. She liked seeing that all the pain and sacrifice was not in vain.
They were at a mall today, wasting away the afternoon while Clay and Aisha checked out something Willow had dug up for them - magic only, Buffy had made sure of that. Max wasn’t going to get his claws into any more of the people she considered family.
Jensen unoccupied was a nightmare, so they’d decided to take him out for playtime at one of Jo’burg’s many malls. It was a monstrous building, all dazzling lights, glass and white tile, and it seemed strangely empty to Buffy, like it was only half filled.
She’d only been in South Africa a handful of times, but this had always held true. The more upscale a place was, the emptier it was. She was sitting outside a little café, sipping at a complicated coffee, watching life pass her by.
There was a woman with three little girls, all of them dressed in screaming shades of pink and lilac that stood out brilliantly against their midnight skin. Even the beads in their cornrows matched. Buffy was impressed and cringing in equal measure. One of the girls, a tyke of maybe four, was racing ahead, pressing her sticky little palms against every surface she could reach. Meanwhile, her sisters were circling their mother like birds of prey, pleading and begging for something they absolutely needed to have, right now, please. They weren’t speaking English, but the tone was clear enough.
Buffy remembered that tone of voice, her and Dawn, circling like those girls. The tyke took a turn too fast and crashed onto her knees only a few feet from Buffy, who winced and shifted to get up and help the little one. Babies didn’t scare her very much anymore these days. It was equal amounts good and frightening. But the middlest sister was already there, pulling the tyke to her feet, brushing her off and scolding her in a very motherly tone. She hitched the girl, not much smaller than herself, onto her hip and carried her back to their mother like a sack of potatoes.
Then they passed beyond Buffy’s range, the mother’s heels clicking and echoing on the tiled floor for a moment, before disappearing entirely.
Buffy found someone else to watch. Two boys, early twenties at the most, white this time. They were lanky and tall and dressed in neon colors, giant headphones wrapped around their necks. The blond’s weren’t plugged into anything, the cord trailing behind his back like a little tail. Just for looking cool then, she decided and smiled a little. The brunet caught her smile, thought it was for him and smirked back brightly, flirtatiously.
She raised one eyebrow, asking, really? She was at least ten years older than him. He shrugged with a roll of his shoulders, made a few dance steps and then turned back to his buddy, Buffy already forgotten.
They were overtaken by a wildly gesturing couple in designer clothes, then by a loudly chattering Indian family, an elderly married couple, a few lone business women sliding through the shops like sharks, sharp and busy. Many of them had phones pressed to their ears and were chatting with someone or barking orders. One was fiddling with her bedazzled, fake nails, picking at them like they had committed a crime, and scowling.
A few clusters of children passed by, still in their school uniforms, ties removed, cardigans stripped and tied crookedly around their waists. The older girls had exchanged black flats for glittery high heels and hitched up their skirts a bit. They made their boyfriends carry their school bags and swarmed from window to window, taking in all the fashion they weren’t allowed to wear to school.
Some of them looked in her direction, but none of them at her, not since the two boys. She liked it that way, liked not being the center of attention. She just watched them, catching snippets of conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear, occupying herself with conjecture about their lives, their likes and dislikes, their dark secrets.
A chair scraped next to her and Cougar descended silently, crossing his arms and stretching his legs long, crossed at the ankle. He didn’t say hello or even look at her, just sat next to her, solid and hot and smelling of gun oil and sweat, as always. Of all the people she knew he was possibly the only one who got this watching thing because he was a sniper and that meant he needed to have a voyeuristic streak a mile wide.
She smiled at the side of his face, then looked back out. The kids had moved on, making way for what was probably a woman with her granddaughter. They were cute, the younger leading the older, patiently listening to her rant about the ‘good old days’ with a smile on her face.
The waitress came by, all dimples for the hot guy in the cowboy hat, asking what he would like, please, thank you. She hadn’t been this friendly before and Buffy suppressed a roll of her eyes as she said,
“Coffee. Black and large. And for me another one of those.” She pointed at her empty cup and saw the waitress’s face fall a bit with disappointment. She muttered something about mutes as she left and Buffy snorted and then shook her head.
When exactly had she taken on Jensen’s habit of speaking for Cougar? And how did she know what to say? She looked over at him for confirmation that she had ordered right, and found him staring back at her, eyes dark and amused. Yeah, she’d ordered right.
“What?” she asked. “It’s not like you ever drink anything else.”
He didn’t move a single muscle, but inside he was laughing at her. She knew it.
Then a loud bang to the left drew their attention and, yes, how else could it be, Jensen came stumbling around the corner, righting his glasses, looking a bit like a confused squirrel. He looked around furtively to see if anyone had noticed his blunder and then straightened, shoulders back, head up, trying to look confident yet unassuming.
Since he was wearing his Petunias shirt again, the unassuming was pretty much a no-go. He strolled toward them, window-shopping as he went, until something in the small boutique across the way caught his attention. Since it only carried women’s fashion, Buffy wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he suddenly lengthened his stride and disappeared into the shop. She frowned briefly, then let it go, looking at Cougar instead.
He was smiling absently, a hazy look in his eyes, soft and unfocused. Open. He was tracking Jensen’s progress through the windows until he couldn’t anymore.
“You’re in love with him,” she said, not entirely blurting it, because she’d pretty much known, but this look, she’d never seen this look before. “Utterly, stupidly, irrevocably in love with him.”
The waitress came and went with their coffee before he tilted his head to give Buffy a look from under the hat. That he deigned to answer verbally at all told her a lot more than his simple, “Si,” alone.
Alright then. She smiled into her coffee, said nothing.
They both turned back to people watching, to Jensen watching, just like that, because Buffy had learned to appreciate simple and straight forward sometime in the past decade, and Cougar was that. They didn’t need very many words between them, predator to predator. Cougar was made of guns and Jensen and a cowboy hat and she’d watched him, too, long enough to know that. As long as she didn’t mess with those things, he wasn’t going to mess with her and they could crouch on rooftops together, could sit in cafes together, and watch the world pass them by, one oblivious civilian at a time.
Seeing, but unseen.
Except today, somehow, in a half-empty mall, Cougar didn’t play by the rules. Instead he picked up his coffee, took a too hot sip and said, “I’m not the only one.”
There was no accent in his words, because there never was when he wasn’t fucking around, wasn’t playacting the functioning mute Spaniard with the language barrier built around him like a brick wall.
There was no recrimination in his voice, but Buffy knew exactly what he was talking about anyway. Her. And her habit of watching Jensen a bit more than anyone else. He was… Jensen was very likeable, very lovable.
He was smart, for one, hellishly so. They’d once had a conversation that had started with inaccurate movies, moved on to medieval weaponry, to torture, to law, to philosophy and back to inaccurate movies and he’d had something smart to say on every subject. He was hot too, built like a brick house and nerdy as all get out, a combination that turned heads. And he was sweet and open and sometimes hard and deadly. He looked harmless but could kill a man with a toothpick and he never judged and always forgave.
What wasn’t to love?
So yes, Buffy had a crush on the kid. Which was a bit embarrassing, but mostly just one of the facts of life. If she was honest, she had a crush on Cougar, too, so it was fair. She just hadn’t expected anyone to cotton on.
The soft clink of a cup hitting a saucer brought her out of her thoughts and she looked up to find Cougar looking at her. Watching her.
He didn’t look pissed.
Interesting.
She opened her mouth to say… something, when a sudden commotion inside the boutique drew both their attention. There was yelling, someone flailing, a high-pitched female shriek and then Jensen being escorted out of the shop by a woman with an expression like a murder on her face. She yelled something in Afrikaans at him, shoved him outside the door, waved her finger at him and then stalked back inside before Jensen had finished regaining his balance.
He made a wounded keening noise like a puppy with its tail stepped on, pouted fiercely and then adjusted his ridiculous wireframe glasses with banged-up dignity and straightened his shirt, smoothing a hand down over the Petunias logo. He started muttering under his breath and Buffy tried very hard not to hear things like ‘lingerie’, ‘accident’ and ‘natural curiosity’. When Jensen and yelling were involved, it was better to have plausible deniability at all times.
She snorted quietly, exchanging amused glances with Cougar, who had a longsuffering expression on his face. Something a lot like see what I put up with?
Jensen, looking around to check if anyone had seen his humiliation, discovered them and broke into a grin, waving with both hands, and then, when he realized they’d seen, immediately turned sheepish.
He jogged toward them with a few long strides before asking, too loudly, “Did you see that? I mean, did you? Because that was totally…” He seemed to reconsider mid-sentence, “Please tell me you didn’t see that? Because that was totally not my fault, there was… like, scientific research, that’s what it was and that lady was rude, I tell you, rude and there was a…. an inquiry, that’s what it was and I did in no way behave inappropriately towards anyone at all. Ish. Sort of. I mean, it really wasn’t my fault and South Africans are just a mean people in general, which is probably why, in the movies, mercenaries always come from South Africa because did you see that woman? Did you? Totally a mercenary of doom. Except, obviously we’d be better. If, you know, we were mercs, which we’re not. We’re not getting paid, so we’re not mercs. Not soldiers, either, of course, anymore. But that’s just because….”
“Breathe,” Buffy snapped, because Jensen looked like he was starting to turn blue and she knew he wouldn’t stop. Sometimes Jensen couldn’t stop. It was like talking was his pressure valve the way violence was hers and at times they both needed to be stopped.
Cougs took care of it most of the time, by touching Jensen or simply occupying his mouth otherwise, but the hacker was currently out of his reach on the other side of the table so Buffy did the honors.
Jensen took a big, gasping breath and relaxed visibly, shoulder uncoiling. “Thank you,” he told her sincerely once he was breathing again, with a big, dopey smile on his face.
Cougar rolled his eyes and kicked out a chair in clear indication for Jensen to sit down. He did, picking his monologue about mercenaries back up, but at an easier pace, with less pressure behind it. Calmer. Buffy watched his big, flailing gestures for a few minutes until the waitress dropped by again and he got distracted from telling them all about his theory on why all ninjas were mercenaries for the evil League of Doom, Tee-Emm.
She found her gaze drifting again as his chatter faded into the background. There was an elderly couple inspecting the window of the boutique now, holding hands like teenagers. A girl passed them, with what could have been her son or little brother slung on her hips. A businessman with a headset stalked past, yelling at nothing and clenching his hand around the phone in his pocket. A bleach-blonde woman with a cancer tan exited the boutique, looked around and shot Jensen a venomous glare, which he noticed.
He ducked low in his seat, smiled sheepishly and adjusted his glasses again, even though they didn’t need it. Nervous habit. Jensen was always fidgeting. Sometimes, when he was really amped up and not allowed to talk anymore, he’d start typing out things on any flat surface he found, like there was a keyboard only he could see. Occasionally, Buffy tried to guess at words, but never very hard. Some things were private.
He was drumming his fingers on the table now, but it was only rhythm, not words. There was a coffee standing in front of him, which was probably a bad idea, but she wasn’t about to try and take it away from the hyperactive hacker. She valued her limbs attached to her body, thank you very much.
Leaning back and sipping her own coffee, she tuned back into his rant, which had segued into plastic explosives, of all things. Probably not a subject to discuss in public.
She turned her head to ask Cougar’s opinion on it, only to find him already looking at her with an intense expression on his face. She shifted a bit in her seat, unused to being the watched instead of being the watcher. A paranoid little voice piped up in her head, asking how long Cougar had been observing her while she was busy observing others.
She told the voice to take a hike and asked out loud, “What?”
Cougar shrugged, then smiled at her, toothily. On her other side, Jensen huffed at being ignored and threatened his best rendition of Journey’s greatest hits for all those who did not pay attention to him. She refocused her attention on him, feeling an itch between her shoulder blades that said she was still being watched.
Somewhere below her heart, the slayer purred in anticipation.
Game on.
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Author: pprfaith
Summary: South African mall introspection. Sort of. Hints of threesomeness.
Prompt/Prompter: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/ The Losers, Some You Lose!Verse, Buffy, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen - for emony2
Rating: PG-13 for Jensen being a nutcase.
Warnings: Jensen being a nutcase, introspection, slashy undertones, overall kinda cuteness, severe lack of plot and Jensen’s rambling, stereotyping rant about South Africans, which, in no way, reflects my opinion, mkay?
Disclaimer: I do not own the fandoms I am writing in and I make no money off this. Fun, not profit.
A/N: Set an indeterminate amount of time after the current events of SYL. One to go. I might actually survive this month…
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Unseen
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Buffy liked people watching. It spoke to the predator inside of her, watching prey walk past, watching its movements, its patterns, its weaknesses. The human side of her paid more attention to funny behavior, to fashion. To wishes and dreams and hopes.
But whether it was slayer or girl watching didn’t really matter. She just liked sitting still and watching life pass her by. She liked knowing that it was her and her friends and family that made it possible for these people to go about their lives, unaware of what lurked in every shadow. She liked seeing that all the pain and sacrifice was not in vain.
They were at a mall today, wasting away the afternoon while Clay and Aisha checked out something Willow had dug up for them - magic only, Buffy had made sure of that. Max wasn’t going to get his claws into any more of the people she considered family.
Jensen unoccupied was a nightmare, so they’d decided to take him out for playtime at one of Jo’burg’s many malls. It was a monstrous building, all dazzling lights, glass and white tile, and it seemed strangely empty to Buffy, like it was only half filled.
She’d only been in South Africa a handful of times, but this had always held true. The more upscale a place was, the emptier it was. She was sitting outside a little café, sipping at a complicated coffee, watching life pass her by.
There was a woman with three little girls, all of them dressed in screaming shades of pink and lilac that stood out brilliantly against their midnight skin. Even the beads in their cornrows matched. Buffy was impressed and cringing in equal measure. One of the girls, a tyke of maybe four, was racing ahead, pressing her sticky little palms against every surface she could reach. Meanwhile, her sisters were circling their mother like birds of prey, pleading and begging for something they absolutely needed to have, right now, please. They weren’t speaking English, but the tone was clear enough.
Buffy remembered that tone of voice, her and Dawn, circling like those girls. The tyke took a turn too fast and crashed onto her knees only a few feet from Buffy, who winced and shifted to get up and help the little one. Babies didn’t scare her very much anymore these days. It was equal amounts good and frightening. But the middlest sister was already there, pulling the tyke to her feet, brushing her off and scolding her in a very motherly tone. She hitched the girl, not much smaller than herself, onto her hip and carried her back to their mother like a sack of potatoes.
Then they passed beyond Buffy’s range, the mother’s heels clicking and echoing on the tiled floor for a moment, before disappearing entirely.
Buffy found someone else to watch. Two boys, early twenties at the most, white this time. They were lanky and tall and dressed in neon colors, giant headphones wrapped around their necks. The blond’s weren’t plugged into anything, the cord trailing behind his back like a little tail. Just for looking cool then, she decided and smiled a little. The brunet caught her smile, thought it was for him and smirked back brightly, flirtatiously.
She raised one eyebrow, asking, really? She was at least ten years older than him. He shrugged with a roll of his shoulders, made a few dance steps and then turned back to his buddy, Buffy already forgotten.
They were overtaken by a wildly gesturing couple in designer clothes, then by a loudly chattering Indian family, an elderly married couple, a few lone business women sliding through the shops like sharks, sharp and busy. Many of them had phones pressed to their ears and were chatting with someone or barking orders. One was fiddling with her bedazzled, fake nails, picking at them like they had committed a crime, and scowling.
A few clusters of children passed by, still in their school uniforms, ties removed, cardigans stripped and tied crookedly around their waists. The older girls had exchanged black flats for glittery high heels and hitched up their skirts a bit. They made their boyfriends carry their school bags and swarmed from window to window, taking in all the fashion they weren’t allowed to wear to school.
Some of them looked in her direction, but none of them at her, not since the two boys. She liked it that way, liked not being the center of attention. She just watched them, catching snippets of conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear, occupying herself with conjecture about their lives, their likes and dislikes, their dark secrets.
A chair scraped next to her and Cougar descended silently, crossing his arms and stretching his legs long, crossed at the ankle. He didn’t say hello or even look at her, just sat next to her, solid and hot and smelling of gun oil and sweat, as always. Of all the people she knew he was possibly the only one who got this watching thing because he was a sniper and that meant he needed to have a voyeuristic streak a mile wide.
She smiled at the side of his face, then looked back out. The kids had moved on, making way for what was probably a woman with her granddaughter. They were cute, the younger leading the older, patiently listening to her rant about the ‘good old days’ with a smile on her face.
The waitress came by, all dimples for the hot guy in the cowboy hat, asking what he would like, please, thank you. She hadn’t been this friendly before and Buffy suppressed a roll of her eyes as she said,
“Coffee. Black and large. And for me another one of those.” She pointed at her empty cup and saw the waitress’s face fall a bit with disappointment. She muttered something about mutes as she left and Buffy snorted and then shook her head.
When exactly had she taken on Jensen’s habit of speaking for Cougar? And how did she know what to say? She looked over at him for confirmation that she had ordered right, and found him staring back at her, eyes dark and amused. Yeah, she’d ordered right.
“What?” she asked. “It’s not like you ever drink anything else.”
He didn’t move a single muscle, but inside he was laughing at her. She knew it.
Then a loud bang to the left drew their attention and, yes, how else could it be, Jensen came stumbling around the corner, righting his glasses, looking a bit like a confused squirrel. He looked around furtively to see if anyone had noticed his blunder and then straightened, shoulders back, head up, trying to look confident yet unassuming.
Since he was wearing his Petunias shirt again, the unassuming was pretty much a no-go. He strolled toward them, window-shopping as he went, until something in the small boutique across the way caught his attention. Since it only carried women’s fashion, Buffy wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he suddenly lengthened his stride and disappeared into the shop. She frowned briefly, then let it go, looking at Cougar instead.
He was smiling absently, a hazy look in his eyes, soft and unfocused. Open. He was tracking Jensen’s progress through the windows until he couldn’t anymore.
“You’re in love with him,” she said, not entirely blurting it, because she’d pretty much known, but this look, she’d never seen this look before. “Utterly, stupidly, irrevocably in love with him.”
The waitress came and went with their coffee before he tilted his head to give Buffy a look from under the hat. That he deigned to answer verbally at all told her a lot more than his simple, “Si,” alone.
Alright then. She smiled into her coffee, said nothing.
They both turned back to people watching, to Jensen watching, just like that, because Buffy had learned to appreciate simple and straight forward sometime in the past decade, and Cougar was that. They didn’t need very many words between them, predator to predator. Cougar was made of guns and Jensen and a cowboy hat and she’d watched him, too, long enough to know that. As long as she didn’t mess with those things, he wasn’t going to mess with her and they could crouch on rooftops together, could sit in cafes together, and watch the world pass them by, one oblivious civilian at a time.
Seeing, but unseen.
Except today, somehow, in a half-empty mall, Cougar didn’t play by the rules. Instead he picked up his coffee, took a too hot sip and said, “I’m not the only one.”
There was no accent in his words, because there never was when he wasn’t fucking around, wasn’t playacting the functioning mute Spaniard with the language barrier built around him like a brick wall.
There was no recrimination in his voice, but Buffy knew exactly what he was talking about anyway. Her. And her habit of watching Jensen a bit more than anyone else. He was… Jensen was very likeable, very lovable.
He was smart, for one, hellishly so. They’d once had a conversation that had started with inaccurate movies, moved on to medieval weaponry, to torture, to law, to philosophy and back to inaccurate movies and he’d had something smart to say on every subject. He was hot too, built like a brick house and nerdy as all get out, a combination that turned heads. And he was sweet and open and sometimes hard and deadly. He looked harmless but could kill a man with a toothpick and he never judged and always forgave.
What wasn’t to love?
So yes, Buffy had a crush on the kid. Which was a bit embarrassing, but mostly just one of the facts of life. If she was honest, she had a crush on Cougar, too, so it was fair. She just hadn’t expected anyone to cotton on.
The soft clink of a cup hitting a saucer brought her out of her thoughts and she looked up to find Cougar looking at her. Watching her.
He didn’t look pissed.
Interesting.
She opened her mouth to say… something, when a sudden commotion inside the boutique drew both their attention. There was yelling, someone flailing, a high-pitched female shriek and then Jensen being escorted out of the shop by a woman with an expression like a murder on her face. She yelled something in Afrikaans at him, shoved him outside the door, waved her finger at him and then stalked back inside before Jensen had finished regaining his balance.
He made a wounded keening noise like a puppy with its tail stepped on, pouted fiercely and then adjusted his ridiculous wireframe glasses with banged-up dignity and straightened his shirt, smoothing a hand down over the Petunias logo. He started muttering under his breath and Buffy tried very hard not to hear things like ‘lingerie’, ‘accident’ and ‘natural curiosity’. When Jensen and yelling were involved, it was better to have plausible deniability at all times.
She snorted quietly, exchanging amused glances with Cougar, who had a longsuffering expression on his face. Something a lot like see what I put up with?
Jensen, looking around to check if anyone had seen his humiliation, discovered them and broke into a grin, waving with both hands, and then, when he realized they’d seen, immediately turned sheepish.
He jogged toward them with a few long strides before asking, too loudly, “Did you see that? I mean, did you? Because that was totally…” He seemed to reconsider mid-sentence, “Please tell me you didn’t see that? Because that was totally not my fault, there was… like, scientific research, that’s what it was and that lady was rude, I tell you, rude and there was a…. an inquiry, that’s what it was and I did in no way behave inappropriately towards anyone at all. Ish. Sort of. I mean, it really wasn’t my fault and South Africans are just a mean people in general, which is probably why, in the movies, mercenaries always come from South Africa because did you see that woman? Did you? Totally a mercenary of doom. Except, obviously we’d be better. If, you know, we were mercs, which we’re not. We’re not getting paid, so we’re not mercs. Not soldiers, either, of course, anymore. But that’s just because….”
“Breathe,” Buffy snapped, because Jensen looked like he was starting to turn blue and she knew he wouldn’t stop. Sometimes Jensen couldn’t stop. It was like talking was his pressure valve the way violence was hers and at times they both needed to be stopped.
Cougs took care of it most of the time, by touching Jensen or simply occupying his mouth otherwise, but the hacker was currently out of his reach on the other side of the table so Buffy did the honors.
Jensen took a big, gasping breath and relaxed visibly, shoulder uncoiling. “Thank you,” he told her sincerely once he was breathing again, with a big, dopey smile on his face.
Cougar rolled his eyes and kicked out a chair in clear indication for Jensen to sit down. He did, picking his monologue about mercenaries back up, but at an easier pace, with less pressure behind it. Calmer. Buffy watched his big, flailing gestures for a few minutes until the waitress dropped by again and he got distracted from telling them all about his theory on why all ninjas were mercenaries for the evil League of Doom, Tee-Emm.
She found her gaze drifting again as his chatter faded into the background. There was an elderly couple inspecting the window of the boutique now, holding hands like teenagers. A girl passed them, with what could have been her son or little brother slung on her hips. A businessman with a headset stalked past, yelling at nothing and clenching his hand around the phone in his pocket. A bleach-blonde woman with a cancer tan exited the boutique, looked around and shot Jensen a venomous glare, which he noticed.
He ducked low in his seat, smiled sheepishly and adjusted his glasses again, even though they didn’t need it. Nervous habit. Jensen was always fidgeting. Sometimes, when he was really amped up and not allowed to talk anymore, he’d start typing out things on any flat surface he found, like there was a keyboard only he could see. Occasionally, Buffy tried to guess at words, but never very hard. Some things were private.
He was drumming his fingers on the table now, but it was only rhythm, not words. There was a coffee standing in front of him, which was probably a bad idea, but she wasn’t about to try and take it away from the hyperactive hacker. She valued her limbs attached to her body, thank you very much.
Leaning back and sipping her own coffee, she tuned back into his rant, which had segued into plastic explosives, of all things. Probably not a subject to discuss in public.
She turned her head to ask Cougar’s opinion on it, only to find him already looking at her with an intense expression on his face. She shifted a bit in her seat, unused to being the watched instead of being the watcher. A paranoid little voice piped up in her head, asking how long Cougar had been observing her while she was busy observing others.
She told the voice to take a hike and asked out loud, “What?”
Cougar shrugged, then smiled at her, toothily. On her other side, Jensen huffed at being ignored and threatened his best rendition of Journey’s greatest hits for all those who did not pay attention to him. She refocused her attention on him, feeling an itch between her shoulder blades that said she was still being watched.
Somewhere below her heart, the slayer purred in anticipation.
Game on.
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