Title: Happy Hour at the Lucky Turtle Drink and Dance Dance Dance
Author: Brigantine
Fandom: The Losers
Characters: Aisha/Clay, Cougar/Jensen (implied), but mostly just everybody.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1500
Summary: In which the Losers clean up after a nice bar fight, have a little breakfast, and Aisha has discovered something unpleasant from her past coming up fast in her rear view mirror.
A/N: I had an epiphany while riding home on the bus the other day, so although I had liked the original version (or I wouldn't have posted it, obv.) I went ahead and gutted this by about half, and revised the surviving half pretty extensively. That has never happened before. Very odd.


*****

“We didn’t start it baby, I swear!” Pooch points to the shiner blossoming beneath his left eye and complains to Jolene via satellite, "This was not our fault!"

It’s just shy of half past six, and the new morning sun is cresting the eastern silhouette of Phuket, casting them in its low shadow as it overreaches the city to spark off the turquoise waters of Patong Bay. Clay and Aisha sit together on their small balcony that looks west over Thawiwong Road. Beyond is Patong Beach, and then Patong Bay, and past that the Andaman Sea, brewing thick, heavy rags of silver and black clouds into a new monsoon season drifting slowly toward shore. Aisha fancies she can already smell the rain.

Clay is winding a strip of gauze around Aisha’s right wrist. She’s annoyed with herself. She knows better than to strike full force with her bare fist. She can handle a lot of punishment, but the fact is she’s a one hundred and twenty pound female, and punching a man nearly twice her size in the face comes with a price. She was sore for three days after she and Clay had their pyrotechnic acquaintance match in the hotel in Bolivia.

Behind her, at the small table just inside the French doors of their little apartment, Jolene's laughter comes through the laptop's speakers. "I believe you sweetie! Nothing you could do, absolutely."

“I blame this on Jensen,” Pooch grumbles.

“Hey,” Jensen protests from the sofa, “I was an innocent bystander! Or would that be dance-stander? No, that's stupid. Anyway, I was merely attempting to preserve my personal boundaries when I slugged that guy!”

“Not what his friends thought,” Pooch argues irritably. He sips at a glass of warm soy milk sweetened with honey, and adds more shredded pork to a bowl of hot johk.

Clay rumbles, amused, “Not sure it would have made any difference, Pooch. That shindig was well under way by the time Jensen got sucked into it.”

Jensen half turns from where Cougar is cleaning up a long, shallow slice along his right forearm. “And, might I add, those ivy-league, stick-assed, go-go-girl-molesting doorknobs sucked all the happy right out of a perfectly good night of surrendering to the hip-hop fusion and gettin’ handsy with each other in public.”

“Quit moving,” Cougar scolds mildly.

Jensen bats his eyelashes, challenging coyly, “Make me?”

Cougar smirks at him, “First we stop you from leaking.”

“It’s not that bad," Jensen claims. "I hardly even left a blood trail.”

“Sí? No big deal, eh?”

“Ow! Well shit, if you poke at it! Ow, don’t poke at it!"

Cougar growls softly, "Stop. Wiggling."

"You are very mean,” Jensen informs him. “I am feeling put-upon and frustrated, just fyi.”

Pooch demands, “Am I gonna have to sleep on the couch again, you two? Do not make Pooch sleep on the couch again! It has been a long damn night, my head hurts, and my girl is in a galaxy far, far away.”

Jolene giggles, “Now you know how Chewbacca felt.”

“Oh my God,” Jensen yelps, “Pooch has got the best girlfriend--"

"Wife!" Pooch corrects. "Wife, mother of my child!"

"--wife ever! Hey, are there any of those little deep-fried Chinese donut thingies left? I am ravenous. Is that-- Cougar, you’ve got sequins stuck in your hair. They make you look sparkly and festive. You should keep doing that.”

“See,” Pooch admonishes helplessly, “this is what happens when you let the boy stay out late and get all keyed up past his bedtime.”

Reluctantly, Aisha turns away from the odd comfort of their squabbling and pitches her voice low, “Clay. There’s something you need to know.”

He looks up, still working steadily, gently on her hand. The binding isn’t strictly necessary, Aisha thinks, but Clay seems to want to do it. “Something wrong?”

“Ever since we left Macau I keep catching glimpses of a guy I worked with a few years ago. Unofficially, Sinn Féin, but...”

Clay looks her in the eyes, his hands stilling. “…but officially, not someone Sinn Féin would acknowledge?”

“We parted due to some pretty adamant ideological differences.”

Clay raises an eyebrow.

“These people liked to up the civilian body count, just to make a point. They enjoyed it. Plus I kind of got the feeling they planned to shoot me after the job was done. I killed one of them on my way out. Name of Cam Denny. I’ve been seeing his brother Niall out of the corner of my eye.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. Spotted him in Bangkok yesterday afternoon. Sorry, we were busy... I wanted to think, okay?”

“You figure this Denny guy will pick a time, try to take you out?”

“Maybe. But it’s not…” She frowns. “I can handle myself,” she says, then, when Clay snickers and squeezes her damaged hand a little, “Shut up, you know I can.” She looks toward Pooch, making faces at his infant son from thousands of miles and oceans apart. Aisha can hear the little one squealing with glee, Jolene laughing at them both. Beyond Pooch Cougar and Jensen have disappeared.

“He might not come at me directly,” Aisha warns. “Not at first. I killed his brother. That’s going to factor.”

Clay asks, “Anybody got a file on him? Something with a photograph, so we can all get a look at him.”

“Scotland Yard. MI-6, probably the C.I.A. Yes, someone's got him, I'm sure of it.”

Clay tears off a piece of medical tape and begins to wind it around the edges of the gauze wrap. “We’ll get Jensen on it. If we know what he looks like we can deal with him.”

“Yeah,” Aisha says, trying to sound reassured. “Clay, I don’t… “ She looks out at the bay, her glance sweeping the horizon, little sailboats beginning to appear now on the swells. She turns back to him, swearing softly, “Fuck, Clay, I did not expect to land here, like this.” She wonders if he will understand all that she means, without making her explain.

Clay has finished taping Aisha’s wrist and he simply nods, his usual steady, rumpled self, except for the recent sprinkling of go-go glitter sparkling on his shirt, and the noticeable odor of various spirits spilled randomly over his clothes. He’s still holding onto her hand. She pretends not to notice.

If Niall Denny hurts any of her people – if he hurts Clay, or Pooch, or Jensen, or Cougar to get at her, Aisha will cheerfully rearrange him. She will find a nice, private venue, and take her time, and she may or may not do him the mercy of killing him when she’s finished. Aisha has no doubt about this, and Denny probably expects it.

But revenge does not restore the dead.

Cougar and Jensen reappear in the dim living room behind Pooch, looking slightly more disheveled than earlier, and quietly happy. They re-settle on the sofa, sitting close together. Cougar starts peeling a papaya using a short, broad-bladed knife. He’s shirtless now, and even from her place out on the balcony Aisha can see the large, dark bruise forming on the cusp of his shoulder from when he intercepted a steel bar stool that had been meant for the back of Pooch's head. Jensen picks up a banana, peels it halfway down, and makes a show of first licking, and then biting off the end of it. Cougar chuckles quietly at him and keeps peeling the papaya. Jensen carefully traces the blurred edges of the bruise on Cougar’s shoulder.

“Before I got tangled up with you Losers, I never had to worry about protecting anyone other than myself,” Aisha complains.

Clay laughs softly, his expression sympathetic. “We are a heavy burden, I know.” He raises an eyebrow at her. "You looked pretty happy back there as the middle of a Cougar and Jensen dance-wich."

"Who knew Cougar had that kind of nasty rhythm?" Aisha scowls at him ineffectually. "That is beside the point."

Clay reminds her, “We’ve muddled through worse,” and he smooths down the clean edges of the tape he’s wound perfectly around Aisha’s swollen wrist, his big hands crossing warm over the bandaged span of her palm, the sore back of her knuckles.

Aisha nods in agreement and then, impulsively, she rests the palm of her other hand against Clay’s cheek, his perpetual stubble ticklish against her skin. He regards her inquiringly, the beginning of a smile tilting his mouth, shining in his dark eyes. Aisha leans forward and kisses him, sweet and lingering, and not really sexual at all. She doesn’t care if everybody sees.


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