thecatinahat | (no subject)

"You threw it at me," Cougar replies, irritably, because what was he supposed to think when Jake crumples up his confession and throws it away. He could say so much more, like how letters can take hours if not days and how he can get the right words on the page instead of a conversation. He could point out that his letters had still been brusque and to the point, at times.

Instead, he follows orders and sits back down, raising his brow when Jake keeps the letter. He tries not to let the guilt overwhelm him when Jake talks about how he hadn't felt like he could talk to him, which only gets worse when he brings up that Cougar hadn't told Jake about his personal life, which is true.

"Because I was telling you everything," he points out. "Because when I wrote you letters, I could hide under them and not have to drag out the words," he says, with a gesture that pulls from his core. "English, talking, it's hard for me. Writing? Easier. And when I started to fall for you, I couldn't tell you without you understanding how much I felt."

"Because I'm mad at you!" he points out, throwing up his hands. "You lied to me for god knows how long! I think I can be a little angry right now!"

He's not doing this to hurt Cougar. Watching how unhappy he looks doesn't make him feel good. But it's important that Cougar realize just how upset Jake is by all this deception, how hurt he feels that he never knew that his main confidant had been sleeping across the room from him for years.

"I didn't know it was you! Cougar..." He sighs, pulling his glasses off his face so he can rub his palms over it all the more effectively. "I know English is hard for you. I know. And if it's easier for you to write... You could have still written to me, even if I was in the room with you. I don't want you to become me, talking a mile a minute. I know I'm annoying, I talk too much, words just fall out of my mouth without thought. You don't need to be me. But you like me? You want to make me happy? I need to know how you're feeling. Talk to me. Write me notes. Whatever works. But I need to know."

He knows that he had lied, for his own sake and cowardice. He knows this, and yet he still feels like he doesn't know that he could have done it any other way. After all, he'd been too broken and scared and hadn't ever lied in the letters. He doesn't think he could have been there for Jake, not in the way that he wanted. "Not annoying," he says firmly, which is something he's said in the letters. He's known it was Jake the whole time, so he had written to him like Jake did know it was him.

He had never held back like that. The only difference is that he never talked about it when they were in a room together. "I want you. I love you." He shrugs, like it's the simplest thing in the world to say. "I want you happy. And, it's important for you to know that I'm still broken."

"You want to be happy?" He shakes his head, regretfully. "Not with a broken man like me. You will just cut yourself on my sharp edges, trying to make me better. It's why I'm telling you. You deserve to know," he says quietly. "And I want you, selfishly. But I also want you to move on, be happy."

Jake was about to open his mouth to try and argue with Cougar some more when he drops the L-bomb, and for once in his life, Jake Jensen is found speechless.

He just gapes for a little while, something that has the unfortunate side-effect of allowing Cougar to carry on with his stupid martyr routine, but he's too stupefied by the revelation that Cougar loves him for some godforsaken reason to do anything to cut him off before he builds up enough steam to convince himself to walk away.

"Carlos," he whispers, completely ignoring the idiotic speech Cougar is apparently determined to give. "You're such a fucking idiot, man."

Lurching out of the computer chair, his sudden movement sending it spinning drunkenly out from beneath him, Jake lands with a heavy thump on his knees in front of Cougar, reaching up to grab his hands in both of his and hold on tight. He's forgotten his glasses by his laptop, which means the stare he's giving Cougar is a little unfocused around the edges, but hey, this gives him a great view of Jake's baby blues.

"I'm still mad at you, for the record," he says, but the little smile curling his lips belies that statement, as does the way he lunges forward to press a clumsy kiss to the corner of Cougar's mouth.

How can this be a shock? Cougar is confused, because he'd thought that he'd been extremely clear in his letters and his actions that he values Jake above everyone else. Maybe he should have cross-stitched that into a pattern, because he's not sure how 'I want to take you home to my family' somehow translates to this.

He still thinks that it would be a mistake to do this, but he's shaking a little as he lets Jake wind closer, reaching out to stroke his thumb up and down Jake's cheek when he kneels in front of him. He leans back when Jake lunges up, tugging him with him onto the bed in one smooth little yank.

"Te amo, querido," he exhales against that little chaste kiss, turning to steal a little bit more of one.

But Jake didn't know the letters were Cougar!

Jake lets Cougar yank him up onto the bed with him, a little clumsy and uncoordinated but happy to go along for the ride. Especially when the ride includes more kissing.

He uses his bulk to press Cougar down onto the mattress, pleased beyond measure that his sister's guest room has a queen sized bed and there's no Army-issued barrack bunks in sight, and plants a hand beside his head so he can hold himself up enough to look down at his best friend and confidant. "I can't believe I'm in love with such a moron," he breathes with a little laugh, leaning in to kiss him again. "And people call me stupid."

He makes a noise of objection in the back of his throat to be called a moron and stupid, but his cowardice might be better seen as exactly those things when looked at in this light. He lies flat on the bed and allows Jake to push him down, letting his knees fall apart and his shoulders dig into the bed.

"I meant all the words," he says, grasping Jake by the chin to stop the kisses, for just a moment. "About my family. And you. And how I want to take you to my mother."

He gives him a rueful smile. "I asked you for advice on how to woo you, but you never gave it."

Cougar stopping the kissing train gets a noise of protest from Jake's throat in return, but it dies down quickly when Cougar continues and Jake finds himself suddenly nervous at the prospect of meeting Cougar's family.

"Do you really think she would like me?" he asks, nearly blushing. Jake is not good with parents, he doesn't have the right experience to know how to deal with them. And if they're Cougar's parents... "I want to make a good impression."

He huffs, thumping Cougar on the shoulder. "You didn't give me any details, bro. People like to be wooed differently. I couldn't give you advice because I didn't know it was me!"

"Of course they will like you, you are my corazon," is his reply, thinking that his sisters and his mother will not let Jake go once they have him, and he will have to pry him away if Jake still wants to go home with him.

Cougar gives a soft sound as he gives Jake a dubious look. "You gave no advice. I did not know how to woo you because I was in the dark. And you always wanted women." He had said that in some of his earlier letters and he still means it.

"Yeah, but you're a moron," he reminds him with a smile, reaching in to tuck some of Cougar's tousled hair behind his ear. "Your judgement can't be trusted."

All the stories Cougar told him, as A, about his family have left Jake with a kind of idealized, Norman Rockwell-esque vision of them. It's intimidating as hell, because Cougar seems to love them so much, and he's not used to that. How do you deal with parents who pester you to come visit them all the time, who chide you for staying away, when his own mother only contacts him when she needs something?

Jake doesn't hate his mom, but he doesn't love her the way he thinks he's supposed to. It makes him feel guilty as hell.

"You're the only guy I've ever..." he trails off, the blush on his cheeks deepening. "I enlisted at sixteen, Cougs, I never got the chance to do anything about it. Girls were safe."

Cougar isn't so virginal and untouched, but he doesn't think that he ought to get into the details of that (or, well, remind him of the details seeing as he had written it all down in a very thorough letter talking about his past experiences). "I thought when you only flirted with women that you wanted just them," is his reply.

He slides his blunt fingernails over Jake's scalp, digging in and dragging them over. "Come home with me? Let me start apologizing for all those months I didn't...not telling you."

He leans forward and up to claim another kiss, desperate for it.

It will take him a while to remember all the stories A has told him about his life and apply them to the man Jake knows. For now, he's happy to keep focusing on the moment, shifting his weight a little to be more comfortable.

"Serious?" he asks, his eyes lowering for a moment, his lashes fanning out like he's a shy teenager and not an adult with a kill count higher than most people could believe. "Okay. I'll go home with you," he agrees after a few moments of letting that request sink in as he lets Cougar kiss him again. "If you promise they're going to like me."

"Of course, serious," Cougar grunts, because he can't imagine a world in which he wouldn't want to bring Jake home. He tangles up his fingers in the fabric of Jake's shirt and grabs him in tight so he can haul him down in between the V of his legs, aggressive as he works his teeth over his lips before nipping. "My sisters will fight over you. They will try and steal you away from me."

"They cannot have you," he warns, very ambitious.

If Julie walks in on this, she's going to get the wrong idea.

Or, really, the right idea, let's be real.

"They can't have me," he agrees, feeling a little bit smug that Cougar is so certain his sisters would try to fight him for the dubious honor of having Jake as their own. "Though I doubt they're going to try very hard once they actually get to know me."

"You always do this," he complains when Jake starts to put himself down again. "You talk as if you are not important or not special, but you are. I love you," he says heatedly. "Do you think my love is not worth much? Do you think I would give it to just anyone?"

"No," he says firmly, creeping his fingers slowly inside of Jake's trousers to rub a little at the small of his back. "Stop being like that, if I am to stop being a moron."

Five minutes of Cougar telling him he loves him because of who he is isn't going to undo almost a quarter century of hearing the opposite. Cougar is going to have to put up with Jake's low self esteem for a very long time.

"Alright, I'll stop," he says, but what he really means is 'I'll stop talking about it.'

Cougar narrows his eyes, not entirely sure that he trusts Jake to somehow actually stop, but he will take his word for it. Leaning up to kiss Jake firmly on the corner of his lips, he moves to push at Jake, giving him a look that says he'd best get up because Cougar has a point to make and he needs some room to do it.

"Up," he says heatedly.

"What? No!" Jake pouts at him as much as he can, not wanting to go anywhere. He's had idle, guilty fantasies about getting between Cougar's thighs, he doesn't want to be pushed away.

But, then again, he can never say no to Cougar ever, so he winds up clambering to his feet. "This better be worth it."

Cougar shifts to where he can sit on the edge of the bed again, expectantly as he stares at Jake, summoning him away with the slightest flick of his fingers. "My letters," he says. "Go find them." Specifically, he wants Jake to find the one where he'd talked about one of his deepest fantasies, of being held down by the wrists and taken apart until his control bled away from him.

"You will know the one. It talks about my wishes."

Jake can't help it, he flushes brightly when Cougar mentions the letter that had nearly caused him to spit out the drink he'd been sipping the day it arrived, the letter he'd hidden at the bottom of his pack like it was a porn mag and he was a guilty teenager just discovering them for the first time.

He does as he's told, moving to the desk, and the drawer he keeps A's letters in.

Fiddling nervously with the edge of the envelope, he returns to stand before Cougar again. "Okay," he says quietly, chewing on his lip.

Cougar settles back on the bed with one knee drawn to his chest lazily, elbow splayed out atop it. He reaches out for the letter so he can read it off, as easy to remember as if he'd written it just today. "Sometimes," he reads, "I think I want nothing more than to be held down. Someone's big, firm hands to bruise my wrists as they pin me to the bed, hips locking me in place. And then, with such love and care, they will take me apart until I can do nothing but squirm and sob and plead for more."

"I cannot ask this in the army," he keeps reading, but now his gaze is higher and on Jake, "but sometimes, I want to give up all my control and be fucked the way I cannot be anywhere else."

He's read that letter so many times, it's embarrassing, he could basically almost quote along with it. It sounds way better in Cougar's hoarse baritone, though. "Jesus, Cougs," he breathes, his hands clenching at his sides. "You know how many times I've jerked off to that letter?"

Inching closer, he almost bangs his shins on the edge of the bed. "I don't have any lube," he points out in a soft whine, sounding pained. "Or condoms. My niece lives here."

Cougar just cocks his brow upwards and sets the letter reverently down where it won't be crushed, before he reaches out to take hold of Jake's hand in his own, yanking him back towards him so that Jake topples on top of his body one more time, cushioned by the kiss Cougar offers up, biting and hungry and determined.

"So then, I do what I suggested in another letter," he says with a shrug, thinking of the one where he'd talked about getting on his knees (if only vaguely).

"Which letter?" Jake asks, hushed, his eyes wide as he slowly inches his hand down to Cougar's hip, holding on for a moment before carefully sliding beneath the hem of his shirt, like if he does it slowly enough he won't be found out and Cougar won't make him stop.

Julie is supposed to be picking Beth up from school and then taking her to soccer practice, so they should have the house to themselves for the next few hours, but Jake can't help feeling like someone will come bursting in at any moment and break this up.

"What do you want to do? ...To me?" The thought of Cougar doing thing to him is thrilling and a little frightening all at once. He obviously has more experience than Jake does in this arena. He'll make it good.

Cougar grins at the hand under his shirt, leaning forward to press a peck of a chaste kiss to Jake's lips just because he can, a little harder because it's not easy to tear himself away, and then he rolls them over so that Jake is on his back and Cougar is straddling him with some space between them, working on getting his pants down.

"Be a good boy and stay quiet," Cougar advises. "And you will find out."