Lt. Col. Franklin Clay (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
manfromclay) wrote2026-02-03 04:46 pm
manfromclay) wrote2026-02-03 04:46 pm
Self Indulgent Fic
Author's Note: I wrote this for me. Because it was in my head and would not leave me alone. Enjoy!
The bar in Hell’s Kitchen is crowded for a dive. It’s clearly a local favorite. There’s a mix of suits and blue collar taking up the bar and scattered tables. The most expensive thing on the menu is a twenty-year old scotch from a middle of the road label. The most popular drink is beer from the tap, also from a middle of the road label.
Clay sits at the bar with a cold scotch in hand listening to the noise around him, eyes darting each time someone moves too fast or speaks a little too loud. He can see three of the four exits in the bar. There’s definitely a backdoor past the bathrooms but he doesn’t have a clear line of sight down that small, dark hallway.
Six people in the room are armed in some way. The biggest gun in the room is the .45 pressed against the small of Clay’s back hidden by his loose suit jacket. The biggest knife in the room is the hunting knife on Pooch’s ankle hidden under his jeans. There’s a shotgun behind the bar that he could reach in a minute if he’s slow about it. Fifteen seconds if his life depends on it.
No one sitting at the bar with him thinks this way.
There’s a celebratory air all around him. Not part of him. Around him.
The familiar brim of a hat appears in the corner of his eye. Clay takes a sip from his glass as Cougar orders. He turns his back to the bar immediately after keeping his eyes on the rest of the room. Sharp eyes watch the pool table in the back where most of the celebration is happening.
Now someone at the bar with Clay thinks the same way.
“You good boss?” Cougar asks after completing his visual sweep of the bar.
Clay ducks his head a moment then turns to look at Cougar’s profile. A check in on the one member of the team not scamming the locals at the pool table.
Jensen’s goofy attitude and big glasses trick a lot of folks. He’s a wicked pool shark. Pooch is egging the whole thing on and keeping the peace when tension breaks out. It’s as well coordinated as any op they ever ran. Clay’s not watching the game but listening.
No one lets Cougar play because none of the locals will play against him. Everyone in the room can tell Cougar’s too good. These people aren’t that stupid.
“I’m good,” he says after assessing the man next to him.
They’re the same, him and Cougar. They intended to be part of the military until they died somewhere in a God forsaken part of the world. They’ll never be soldiers again.
They won their lives back as much as a really good lawyer - Clay still has unanswered questions about how Jensen found a blind defense attorney in Hell’s Kitchen willing to take on the US government and the CIA that Jensen has not satisfactorily answered - and the threat to expose Max’s plans as a CIA agent acting right under the government’s nose can get them but the military doesn’t want them back.
The Losers are too infamous. Too well known. Special Ops was out the window when their faces were plastered all over the news multiple times, first with their deaths and second when they came back from the dead.
Stealing the Army medical helicopter didn’t help them win any favors either.
Neither did working with Aisha who disappeared the second she confirmed Max’s death for herself. His blood running down that crane in the port of LA wasn’t enough. Clay stood over her and Max’s body as she cut his ear off and spit on his corpse.
She was gone before Jensen showed up with the stretch yellow Hummer.
A part of him regrets it. A part of him accepts it’s for the best. A part of him knows she’ll turn up again because of her father’s blood on his hands.
But they have their lives and a hefty payout from the US government to keep their mouths shut about Max’s plan to super nuke the world in an effort to give the US an edge in global politics. It’s a reason to celebrate. Enough of a reason for most of the Losers, at least.
The two of them at the bar don’t have it in them to join in fully. No military means what? Clay doesn’t have an answer. He knows Cougar doesn’t either.
Does Cougar go back to his family in Texas? A family who will ask too many well intentioned questions and try to somehow fold their traumatized eldest son back into the family. Clay knows Cougar’s father would love it if his first born son, the heir, would take over the family’s cattle ranching business.
Clay knows Cougar would rather lay in three inches of snow with sleet coming down on him for three days like that op in Siberia than go back to ranch work. He can’t. After everything he’s seen… After his first unit… After that helicopter of kids…
And himself? Well, there’s no family for Clay to have awkward conversations with. There’s just him and the loss of the military structure that kept him from going to prison. There’s the blood of his best friend on his hands and the knowledge that he failed his men. He failed.
Clay turns a little more on his bar stool and looks to the pool table. Pooch and Jensen have won their game. They clasp hands in one of the numerous handshakes the team has and then Jensen flashes their winnings to Cougar and him at the bar. Looks like sixty bucks to Clay from this distance. Not bad.
Cougar shows his amusement and pride with a slight tip of his head and a quick flash of a smile. Jensen does one of his stupid victory dances.
Not bad.
Clay takes another sip and lets the scotch burn down his throat before he speaks. A little liquid courage for the landmine he’s about to step on. “You know that thing we don’t talk about?”
Cougar glances at him, right eyebrow slightly raised. There’s a lot they don’t talk about. Special Ops fucks you up in ways a civilian can’t imagine. There are plenty of things the Losers do not talk about even though they lived through the same trauma and bullshit. Not to mention all that came before they were Losers.
They used to talk enough with military health professionals to keep doing their job. They talked to the brass when necessary. They all knew the right things to say to stay active and stay in the field where they didn’t have to talk at all because the guys didn’t talk. They understood.
He tips his head slightly towards the pool table. “That thing.”
No one else would catch the way Cougar’s mouth tightens or the sudden tension in his shoulders. No one else would see his eyes dart for a split second to Jensen before he deliberately looks away. Clay knows his men. He knows what to look for.
That thing they - Cougar and Clay - never talk about.
Clay’s good at people - usually - and he’s even better about reading his men - usually. He pushes that voice in the back of his head that sounds like Roque very deep and ignores it. He probably knew before Cougar was even fully aware of his feelings about their tech.
Their loud, weird, and boisterous tech who never belonged in the Army but fit into the Losers like the missing piece.
Their loud, weird, and talkative tech who understood the subtle shifts in Cougar’s expression and body language even better than Clay did and it was Clay’s fucking job to understand his men and know their moods better than anyone.
Their loud, weird, and relentless tech who is just as dangerous as the rest of them but seems harmless.
The one guy Clay’s ever seen Cougar get soft around the eyes over. The one guy Clay’s ever seen make Cougar laugh. Not a chuckle or a whispered breath of a laugh but a real one. The one guy Clay would bet Cougar’s ever had a gay thought about.
The first son of a Texas Catholic Latin-American ranch family? Clay imagines it’s worse than the US Military when it comes to accepting other lifestyles.
He and Cougar have talked about that exactly once before. Clay had to. He didn’t ask outright but Cougar made it clear. There was nothing to ask about because if there was he couldn’t do his job.
Made sense at the time. As close as they all were, as tightly bound together as a unit could be with a shared language and shared trauma, there was a line. Cross it and their effectiveness could be compromised.
Roque’s voice in the back of his mind again. The warning signs. The things he missed because Clay couldn’t find himself after the wreckage of that chopper. The fucking promise of revenge that would magically make everything fucking better again blinding him. Aisha making him deaf, dumb, and blind with her siren call of revenge.
And the man himself, Roque, using his trust in him as his CO, as his friend, to lead them all into that final trap that was supposed to be their deaths. Every which way Clay was compromised…
Clay shoves Roque back into the grave.
Cross that line and maybe when Cougar should act he freezes. Maybe Jensen does. Maybe nothing goes wrong at all except a big middle finger from the universe and someone ends up dead anyway. There’s no easy way to come back from that. There’s no easy way for the Losers to come back from it either.
Cougar wouldn’t jeopardize the unit.
Clay gets it.
They never talk about it.
Except now. Now they can talk about it.
“Got no reason not to try,” Clay says as he turns back to the bar and gives Cougar the privacy he needs for this conversation. “We’re all going to drift now. Nothing to hold us together like before. You can never be a soldier again. He can’t either. You two can drift in the same direction if you say something.”
No centralized military housing. No safe houses in exotic world locations. No hellholes in the middle of the desert/jungle/tundra. Clay knows what happens without an anchor to hold them. Clay knows what happens when he grips so tight what he wants to keep bleeds through his fingers.
Pooch is going to start his life with his little baby and wife. He’s got plans to start a mechanic business of his own, maybe get into customizing cars too. Maybe get involved with a flight school so he can keep his aerial skills sharp too. Pooch sees a future for himself.
Jensen’s going to find a job as quickly as possible. Probably a few jobs given how bored he gets doing one task at a time. His settlement money is going to his sister and niece to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Jensen’s plans are what they’ve been since he joined the Army: take care of his sister.
Cougar. Clay. They’ve got nothing. No plan. No ideas. Got their lives back but lost their purpose.
But Clay sees something for Cougar. Clay’s the one who’s supposed to make the plans. Make the calls for his men and set them up in the best position for success. He’ll listen to input and information but it’s his call at the end of the day.
“Fuck it, Carlos, what the hell do you have to lose?”
Cougar’s eyes snap to him at the use of his real name. When’s the last time any of the Losers called him that? Clay can’t honestly remember. It’d be like someone calling him Franklin.
Cougar’s tongue peeks out and gently wets his lips. “Him.”
Clay snorts. “Gonna lose him anyway.”
To the drift. To whatever Jensen settles on to take care of his family. To some pretty girl who sees the appeal in loud, muscled, and genuinely sweet. To some friend of Max’s who’s waiting for the right moment to take them out.
That’s another conversation none of them have but are very aware of. It’s why they’re all armed. Why they’re all still watching the exits and making plans in their heads if something goes wrong. Clay cut the head off of the snake but a snake capable of what Max was capable of has contacts who will miss his money and the promises of more.
They’ll come for the team that slaughtered their cash cow. It’s just a matter of time. Like Aisha.
“Take the shot,” he orders with a slight curl to his mouth. Smirk. Smile. Hard to say. “And then we go back to not talking about this.”
The bartender appears with Cougar’s ordered drinks. The cold beer bottle brushes against Cougar’s elbow before the man turns around looking away from the pool table.
“Yes, boss,” Cougar says as he collects the drinks.
Out of the corner of his eye Clay watches Cougar disappear. He listens to the noise at the pool table pick up again.
Celebratory.
The bar in Hell’s Kitchen is crowded for a dive. It’s clearly a local favorite. There’s a mix of suits and blue collar taking up the bar and scattered tables. The most expensive thing on the menu is a twenty-year old scotch from a middle of the road label. The most popular drink is beer from the tap, also from a middle of the road label.
Clay sits at the bar with a cold scotch in hand listening to the noise around him, eyes darting each time someone moves too fast or speaks a little too loud. He can see three of the four exits in the bar. There’s definitely a backdoor past the bathrooms but he doesn’t have a clear line of sight down that small, dark hallway.
Six people in the room are armed in some way. The biggest gun in the room is the .45 pressed against the small of Clay’s back hidden by his loose suit jacket. The biggest knife in the room is the hunting knife on Pooch’s ankle hidden under his jeans. There’s a shotgun behind the bar that he could reach in a minute if he’s slow about it. Fifteen seconds if his life depends on it.
No one sitting at the bar with him thinks this way.
There’s a celebratory air all around him. Not part of him. Around him.
The familiar brim of a hat appears in the corner of his eye. Clay takes a sip from his glass as Cougar orders. He turns his back to the bar immediately after keeping his eyes on the rest of the room. Sharp eyes watch the pool table in the back where most of the celebration is happening.
Now someone at the bar with Clay thinks the same way.
“You good boss?” Cougar asks after completing his visual sweep of the bar.
Clay ducks his head a moment then turns to look at Cougar’s profile. A check in on the one member of the team not scamming the locals at the pool table.
Jensen’s goofy attitude and big glasses trick a lot of folks. He’s a wicked pool shark. Pooch is egging the whole thing on and keeping the peace when tension breaks out. It’s as well coordinated as any op they ever ran. Clay’s not watching the game but listening.
No one lets Cougar play because none of the locals will play against him. Everyone in the room can tell Cougar’s too good. These people aren’t that stupid.
“I’m good,” he says after assessing the man next to him.
They’re the same, him and Cougar. They intended to be part of the military until they died somewhere in a God forsaken part of the world. They’ll never be soldiers again.
They won their lives back as much as a really good lawyer - Clay still has unanswered questions about how Jensen found a blind defense attorney in Hell’s Kitchen willing to take on the US government and the CIA that Jensen has not satisfactorily answered - and the threat to expose Max’s plans as a CIA agent acting right under the government’s nose can get them but the military doesn’t want them back.
The Losers are too infamous. Too well known. Special Ops was out the window when their faces were plastered all over the news multiple times, first with their deaths and second when they came back from the dead.
Stealing the Army medical helicopter didn’t help them win any favors either.
Neither did working with Aisha who disappeared the second she confirmed Max’s death for herself. His blood running down that crane in the port of LA wasn’t enough. Clay stood over her and Max’s body as she cut his ear off and spit on his corpse.
She was gone before Jensen showed up with the stretch yellow Hummer.
A part of him regrets it. A part of him accepts it’s for the best. A part of him knows she’ll turn up again because of her father’s blood on his hands.
But they have their lives and a hefty payout from the US government to keep their mouths shut about Max’s plan to super nuke the world in an effort to give the US an edge in global politics. It’s a reason to celebrate. Enough of a reason for most of the Losers, at least.
The two of them at the bar don’t have it in them to join in fully. No military means what? Clay doesn’t have an answer. He knows Cougar doesn’t either.
Does Cougar go back to his family in Texas? A family who will ask too many well intentioned questions and try to somehow fold their traumatized eldest son back into the family. Clay knows Cougar’s father would love it if his first born son, the heir, would take over the family’s cattle ranching business.
Clay knows Cougar would rather lay in three inches of snow with sleet coming down on him for three days like that op in Siberia than go back to ranch work. He can’t. After everything he’s seen… After his first unit… After that helicopter of kids…
And himself? Well, there’s no family for Clay to have awkward conversations with. There’s just him and the loss of the military structure that kept him from going to prison. There’s the blood of his best friend on his hands and the knowledge that he failed his men. He failed.
Clay turns a little more on his bar stool and looks to the pool table. Pooch and Jensen have won their game. They clasp hands in one of the numerous handshakes the team has and then Jensen flashes their winnings to Cougar and him at the bar. Looks like sixty bucks to Clay from this distance. Not bad.
Cougar shows his amusement and pride with a slight tip of his head and a quick flash of a smile. Jensen does one of his stupid victory dances.
Not bad.
Clay takes another sip and lets the scotch burn down his throat before he speaks. A little liquid courage for the landmine he’s about to step on. “You know that thing we don’t talk about?”
Cougar glances at him, right eyebrow slightly raised. There’s a lot they don’t talk about. Special Ops fucks you up in ways a civilian can’t imagine. There are plenty of things the Losers do not talk about even though they lived through the same trauma and bullshit. Not to mention all that came before they were Losers.
They used to talk enough with military health professionals to keep doing their job. They talked to the brass when necessary. They all knew the right things to say to stay active and stay in the field where they didn’t have to talk at all because the guys didn’t talk. They understood.
He tips his head slightly towards the pool table. “That thing.”
No one else would catch the way Cougar’s mouth tightens or the sudden tension in his shoulders. No one else would see his eyes dart for a split second to Jensen before he deliberately looks away. Clay knows his men. He knows what to look for.
That thing they - Cougar and Clay - never talk about.
Clay’s good at people - usually - and he’s even better about reading his men - usually. He pushes that voice in the back of his head that sounds like Roque very deep and ignores it. He probably knew before Cougar was even fully aware of his feelings about their tech.
Their loud, weird, and boisterous tech who never belonged in the Army but fit into the Losers like the missing piece.
Their loud, weird, and talkative tech who understood the subtle shifts in Cougar’s expression and body language even better than Clay did and it was Clay’s fucking job to understand his men and know their moods better than anyone.
Their loud, weird, and relentless tech who is just as dangerous as the rest of them but seems harmless.
The one guy Clay’s ever seen Cougar get soft around the eyes over. The one guy Clay’s ever seen make Cougar laugh. Not a chuckle or a whispered breath of a laugh but a real one. The one guy Clay would bet Cougar’s ever had a gay thought about.
The first son of a Texas Catholic Latin-American ranch family? Clay imagines it’s worse than the US Military when it comes to accepting other lifestyles.
He and Cougar have talked about that exactly once before. Clay had to. He didn’t ask outright but Cougar made it clear. There was nothing to ask about because if there was he couldn’t do his job.
Made sense at the time. As close as they all were, as tightly bound together as a unit could be with a shared language and shared trauma, there was a line. Cross it and their effectiveness could be compromised.
Roque’s voice in the back of his mind again. The warning signs. The things he missed because Clay couldn’t find himself after the wreckage of that chopper. The fucking promise of revenge that would magically make everything fucking better again blinding him. Aisha making him deaf, dumb, and blind with her siren call of revenge.
And the man himself, Roque, using his trust in him as his CO, as his friend, to lead them all into that final trap that was supposed to be their deaths. Every which way Clay was compromised…
Clay shoves Roque back into the grave.
Cross that line and maybe when Cougar should act he freezes. Maybe Jensen does. Maybe nothing goes wrong at all except a big middle finger from the universe and someone ends up dead anyway. There’s no easy way to come back from that. There’s no easy way for the Losers to come back from it either.
Cougar wouldn’t jeopardize the unit.
Clay gets it.
They never talk about it.
Except now. Now they can talk about it.
“Got no reason not to try,” Clay says as he turns back to the bar and gives Cougar the privacy he needs for this conversation. “We’re all going to drift now. Nothing to hold us together like before. You can never be a soldier again. He can’t either. You two can drift in the same direction if you say something.”
No centralized military housing. No safe houses in exotic world locations. No hellholes in the middle of the desert/jungle/tundra. Clay knows what happens without an anchor to hold them. Clay knows what happens when he grips so tight what he wants to keep bleeds through his fingers.
Pooch is going to start his life with his little baby and wife. He’s got plans to start a mechanic business of his own, maybe get into customizing cars too. Maybe get involved with a flight school so he can keep his aerial skills sharp too. Pooch sees a future for himself.
Jensen’s going to find a job as quickly as possible. Probably a few jobs given how bored he gets doing one task at a time. His settlement money is going to his sister and niece to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Jensen’s plans are what they’ve been since he joined the Army: take care of his sister.
Cougar. Clay. They’ve got nothing. No plan. No ideas. Got their lives back but lost their purpose.
But Clay sees something for Cougar. Clay’s the one who’s supposed to make the plans. Make the calls for his men and set them up in the best position for success. He’ll listen to input and information but it’s his call at the end of the day.
“Fuck it, Carlos, what the hell do you have to lose?”
Cougar’s eyes snap to him at the use of his real name. When’s the last time any of the Losers called him that? Clay can’t honestly remember. It’d be like someone calling him Franklin.
Cougar’s tongue peeks out and gently wets his lips. “Him.”
Clay snorts. “Gonna lose him anyway.”
To the drift. To whatever Jensen settles on to take care of his family. To some pretty girl who sees the appeal in loud, muscled, and genuinely sweet. To some friend of Max’s who’s waiting for the right moment to take them out.
That’s another conversation none of them have but are very aware of. It’s why they’re all armed. Why they’re all still watching the exits and making plans in their heads if something goes wrong. Clay cut the head off of the snake but a snake capable of what Max was capable of has contacts who will miss his money and the promises of more.
They’ll come for the team that slaughtered their cash cow. It’s just a matter of time. Like Aisha.
“Take the shot,” he orders with a slight curl to his mouth. Smirk. Smile. Hard to say. “And then we go back to not talking about this.”
The bartender appears with Cougar’s ordered drinks. The cold beer bottle brushes against Cougar’s elbow before the man turns around looking away from the pool table.
“Yes, boss,” Cougar says as he collects the drinks.
Out of the corner of his eye Clay watches Cougar disappear. He listens to the noise at the pool table pick up again.
Celebratory.