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When Carlos is fifteen, his mother, father and three sisters sit him down in the living room and explain to him that they support gay rights.
His mother delivers a quiet and short, but moving, speech on the importance of the individual human soul and the function of love in the act of redemption. His father talks at length about the chemistry of attraction, zoological examples and historical precedent. Maria, the eldest, presents a power point on the hulking computer in the corner of the living room, and while she sets it up, Josy talks about her math teacher and his partner and how they adopted their little nephew after his mother got sick.
His littlest sister, Bethany, hands him a picture of a rainbow she’d drawn in kindergarten that day.
All in all, his family gathers together for three hours to extol the wonders of the queer community and its history to a baffled, silent and slightly amused Carlos.
When they’re done, there is a moment of shared silence while they stare at Carlos before his father asks him if he had anything to say.
After a moment of reflection, Carlos turns to his oldest sister and looks her in the eye.
“So. You a dyke now?”
His mother’s exasperated sigh is neatly muffled by Maria’s shrieks and the barrage of pillows his sisters throw at him from across the room.
Head tucked and laughing as he runs from the room, dodging pillows and shouted invectives, Carlos can’t help but wonder just what the hell all of that had been about.
…
Three years later and Carlos is still wondering. He finds pamphlets in his school bag for the local GSA, his parents are both active members of PFLAG, and his sisters proudly display rainbow ribbons on their backpacks. When he brings home Susie Andrews (soon-to-be-prom queen, head cheerleader and NHS President) for dinner one night and tells his family they’re going steady, his mother just shakes her head sadly while his father lectures him on social expectations, heteronormativity, and how the construction of masculinity in America relies on outmoded and paradoxical expectations for masculine expressions of power and violence.
Maria just slaps him upside the head.
Bethany bursts into tears.
And Josy just laughs and laughs and laughs.
To say the least, Susie is not impressed.
So when he finds himself stranded at senior prom watching his date walk off with Bryce Langston (Captain of the football team, debate team president and the owner of a ’67 Mustang), Carlos guesses his family must have seen it coming and he goes over to hang out with Mark Armstrong (varsity lacrosse player, swim team captain and in possession of a smile that sets Susie’s to shame). He figures at least they can talk soccer, maybe grab a beer after the dance and head on out to the bonfire together.
If he doesn’t think of Susie after that? Well, Mark is a cool guy and doesn’t mind Carlos crashing his party. He has a good sense of humor, a way with words and doesn’t care that Carlos takes after his mother’s more taciturn conversational skills.
When he wakes up the next morning, hungover and apparently having passed out under the trampoline in his backyard missing his jacket, bowtie and about three hours of the night before… Well, stranger things have happened. The fact that Mark was similarly disheveled and tucked up against his chest like a puppy, arm thrown over Carlos’ chest and their legs tangled together… Well, stranger things could happen.
The fact that his family is remarkably unsurprised and Maria gives him a high five on his way into the kitchen?
Well, who the hell knew…? It doesn’t get much stranger than his family.
…
The day he leaves for basic, his mother gives him a long hug and tells him that while she doesn’t understand his decision, she loves him and is proud of him no matter what he does or how things turn out. His father tells him that he is proud of his decision to infiltrate the industrial-military complex and effect change from the inside out, hands him a book on military law and gives him a firm pat on the shoulder.
Bethany gives him a notebook she spent two weeks secretly developing. It’s half-filled with pictures of family and things she drew for him, and decorated with stickers of unicorns, hearts and her favorite superheroes, all carefully pasted over a drawing of the ubiquitous rainbows that cover everything she’d ever given him.
Josy slaps him on the back, calls him a fucking idiot and tells him not to get shot.
Maria approaches him last, hands him a box of condoms and gives him a long look, her dark eyes deep and her hands firm on his shoulders as she squares him off in front of her. There is a pause, and she looks almost sad before she playfully taps him on the forehead and tells him to be safe, sane and, above all, discreet.
He boards the bus, heavy at heart but hopeful, furtively stashing the condoms away in his backpack and shaking his head at his family’s antics. Even as fights back tears while the bus pulls away, he can’t help but think that a command for sanity is a tall order coming from his obviously deranged family.
…
Luckily, basic makes a lot more sense.
…
The military works out well for Carlos, nee Cougar. Basic is tough but having three sisters has prepared him surprisingly well for the verbal abuse, surprise wake-up calls, and clearly marked pecking order between those older, more experienced members of the corps and those new, cherry ones running around getting yelled at all the time.
He’s got a gun, which is nice, and when he proves to be good with it, they give him a bigger one.
Bigger is always better in Cougars book.
He doesn’t mind the communal living, the group showers or having to huddle in small tents for long periods of time. He actually kind of likes the running-jumping-climbing-trees bit and soon enough finds himself being pushed to complete the Special Forces training.
With a little more running, and a bit more jumping, they hand him an even bigger gun and tell him to get sneaky.
With three siblings and a hyper-vigilant mother, Cougar is already very, very sneaky. Clearly, this is something that no one expects considering their reaction when he sneaks into the officer’s camp one night and replaces all their pants with camo-colored underoos.
He gets a commendation, a letter in his file and six hours of CAPE but even when he thinks his arms might fall off before he finishes all his push-ups, Cougar can’t help but think that the view at roll-call that morning just might have made it worth it.
By the time he makes sniper school? He’s sure of it.
…
By twenty-five, Cougar is established as a top sniper in his field, quite the player when it comes to the ladies and the best wingman on whichever side of the Mississippi he happens to be.
His family still gives him sad smiles and shake their heads when he charms all the ladies on leave (take that Susie Andrews), but at least they stop leaving fliers for gay bars or DADT protests in his underwear drawer, or slipping him phone numbers to people he knows aren’t women. He still isn’t quite sure when they decided that they wanted a gay son, and he’s proud of them for being so open minded, but he just can’t be that for them. He likes the ladies, they like him, and he’s never felt that way about any of the men he’s met or worked alongside.
Well, there was that one time, but that didn’t count. Everyone knows that what happens on a classified military operation in a classified part of the world stays on a classified military operation in a classified part of the world.
And it wasn’t his fault.
Really.
From what he can remember, there’d been an accent, a coat, and a frankly disturbing reference about the availability of local wildlife.
It wasn’t his fault. He did it for the goats.
Really...
…
Stupid international military operations.
…
So crazy family aside, Cougar is feeling pretty good about himself, his new team (fucking Losers, fucking A), his CO and his masculinity when things take a turn for the weird… in his pants.
It all starts when the new guy (white, tall, smile to put Mark what’s-his-face to shame) starts going on and on (and on and on and on) about his new "bitchin’" tattoo while they’re on an op somewhere in the east end of Russia. He talks about it as a metaphor, as a rite of passage, as a ‘moment of symbolic transition from one phase of life to the next, you know, like a visual representation of metamorphosis’ (followed by a short digression on monarch butterflies, migration patterns and global warming), and finally, as a ‘totally sweet reason to take his shirt off in public.’
Which. Well.
Hm.
But Pooch is having none of it, and while Cougar pretends to check his gear for scuffs, tears, much needed repairs or freaking bedbugs (anything to keep him out of the figurative cock-fight going on between the two most vocal members of the team) he misses out on some critical cue in the conversation.
He’s alerted to something going wrong by the sudden silence, and he automatically reaches for his gun as he slowly tips his hat back to take in the rest of the room. Pooch is quickly categorized and dismissed, too smug to be an active threat at this moment, which leaves… Jensen…
O holy mother of god.
Jensen, who is currently prowling toward Cougar with what can only be described as a smirk on his face and bedroom eyes turning his normally frat-tastic demeanor into something a little more x-rated. Cougar freezes as Jensen takes one big hand and runs it up his chest, over his shirt and across to his shoulder before moving south to rub over his nipple which is peaked and barely visible beneath his thermal shirt. Jensen might be talking now, might be circling around Cougar who is caught sitting on a chair in the middle of the room with a gun in his lap. The same Cougar who might be cornered as Jensen takes that big hand and puts it on Cougars shoulder, circling around him and leaning in close to breathe a question in his ear.
Before he can react, before he can even process language, Jake “CrazyCakes” Jensen whips off his shirt and stands half-naked in the middle of shack just south of the arctic circle. His stomach twitches with the cold, his nipples stiff and his pale skin like cut granite, carved with deep grooves for muscles and seemingly lovingly polished by a master-artists hand.
And oh holy mother of fuck, what the hell is happening in his pants?
Cougars only coherent thought at this stage, barely pulled together between snap-shots of what his own hand would look like running down those abs, a half-formed question about the flavor of Jakes skin (sweet like candy with the bitter edge of sweat), and an aborted prayer to sweet baby Jesus for making half-naked men, is nearly lost in the sound of his entire life history clicking into place.
Pooch gets five bucks from Jensen when Cougar starts laughing, but it has nothing to do with Jensen’s total fail as a pick-up artist or his ‘white boy game.’ Rather, Cougar is too busy being the punch-line of his own epic rom com, finally clueing in to dramatic irony at play.
‘Well,’ he thinks as he slowly regains his breath, ‘at least my mother will be proud.’
…
Surprisingly little changes in Cougars life after this point. This is, in and of itself, somewhat telling.
…
So at age 28, Cougar is finally figuring out what it means to pine, to long and to moon. The last is especially disheartening, and he determines that something needs to give if he’s going to get his game back and go out there and get his gir… er. Guy. Dude. Person.
So here he goes. Embracing the insanity of his family and making one bold step for men who… get… men…
Cougar determines that he needs a game plan. He then determines that he needs to name this plan.
He calls it ‘Operation Mojo,’ and it is a go.
…
It turns out that it would have been helpful somewhere along the way to learn how to actually talk to someone he was attracted to. In the past, he’s relied on the ability to stare at someone intently, slink around a room a little bit and lure them in with a tilt of his head.
Jensen, well… Jensen doesn’t pay much attention to anything not making noise, and he already thinks Cougar is just a ‘creepy creeper made creepier by the creepy guys at the government’ and that staring is an occupational hazard for a sniper. Slinking around the room gets him nothing but Jensen showing off his latest “model walk! No, really you guys, I could totally rock the cat walk” and two hours of “I’m too sexy” being played at top volume on a high-jacked boom box. Head tilts, come-hither stares and a collection of previously seductive posturing only resulted in a flood of internet memes being spread around to the powers-that-be featuring owls, ferrets and, on one notable occasion, a baby duck.
Obviously, Operation Mojo is going to need some help.
…
The internet is useless.
…
Following the advice of one ill-starred self-help column, Cougar leaves an offering of Jensen’s favorite foods in his bunk during leave. Three hours, four Redbull, two packages of twizzler’s and an assortment of peeps, chocolate covered gummi bears, pixie sticks and sour ropes and Cougar has finally got his man, just not in the way he intended. Jensen hits supersonic about an hour into the sugar rush and downs the entire collection of candy in less time than it normally takes a full-grown marine to clear a plate during chow, and then decides to go running around base.
While Cougar appreciates that he’d been spot on in choosing all of Jensen’s favorites, he isn’t quite as impressed later on when Jensen hits the inevitable sugarcrash and, in reaction to the sugar/caffeine/jumping-up-and-down combo, vomits all over Cougars favorite boots and his last clean pair of jeans.
Cougar is positive that as a result of such romantic advice, someone somewhere is holding their beloved in their arms and whispering sweet nothings in their ear while tucking their hair away from their eyes and kissing them softly.
It’s only too bad that Cougar is holding back his beloved's hair while he pukes neon in a military toilet, babbles about Swedish fish and the Swedish conspiracy to undermine the French republic of gummis and promises to buy Cougar a new pair of jeans “that hey! Maybe actually fit your scrawny ass!” as soon as he stops gagging.
Clearly, the internet is wrong—romance, not chivalry, is dead.
…
His mother is, actually, quite proud. They agree to keep it between them a little longer though. Maria can be so loud when she is proven right.
…
Flowers. Well.
How was Cougar to know that Jensen had allergies and was only able to function in the field through the miracle of modern medication? And who knew Jensen could turn that color?
Or that an epi pen could work that quick?
Cougar loses another pair of pants to the ensuing chaos, but he considers it the least he could sacrifice after almost killing Jensen with a bouquet of lilies.
…
The next several rounds are met with unparalleled levels of failure. Offerings of knives left gift wrapped and unlabeled on Jensen’s bed lead Jensen to believe that he is being stalked by Roque. Before Cougar can intervene, he walks in on Jensen telling Roque that he just doesn’t like him ‘that way’ and that he respects their friendship too much to ‘act on our totally epic man-crushes.’ Mutual promises of ‘eternal bromance’ are exchanged before the conversation is over and it would have been almost…touching… had Cougar not wanted to slam his head repeatedly into a concrete wall and then maybe go snuggle with a land mine.
Guns lead to a similar discussion, only this one takes place with Clay… Cougar is thankfully absent for that conversation (and he never thought he’d be so happy to be crawling through a ditch surrounded by drug runners, but, there you have it…) but Pooch offers full details upon his return. Apparently, there had been an intense conversation, a swearing of fealty, and an exchange of blood (‘we are totes family now, yo. Brothers—to the end!’) before they decided to ‘hug it out’ and leave it at that.
Cougar’s sulking fit goes unremarked upon except through the circulation of another round of internet memes. He doesn’t know whether to be impressed or increasingly despondent when he finds out that at least at this point, he seems to most resemble a badger.
…
Operation Mojo is declared a failure and all losses unsalvageable.
While he would prefer to burn his ill-starred intention in effigy, he figures blowing up a drug lord's weapons cache will have to do instead.
The shot is clean, the boom is big… but Cougar doesn’t feel any better anyway.
…
It takes a while, but when Maria stops laughing, she turns to him and asks, “Did you ever think about just asking him?”
It may take him a moment, but he has to admit… No. No, it hadn’t.
…
With a little help from his family, newly minted ‘Operation Desperation’ is a go.
God help us all, Cougar is going to use his words.
…
So Cougar takes out his notebook, slightly battered and missing a few stickers from when little Bethany gave it to him (she’s now nearly grown, though she always draws a rainbow on the letters she sends him), and starts writing.
He starts by telling Jensen that he isn’t just some geek that accidently got onto a special ops team, that he is probably one of the strongest people that Cougar’d ever met.
He writes, “I saw you in Honduras. I know I never told you that, but I saw how you got that gun… how it had nothing at all to do with being lucky and everything to do with you.”
He writes, “Remember that time in Russia? With the tattoo? And the laughter? That’s when I realized I had a thing for you… Scared the crap out of me when I figured out what was going on and doesn’t it just make sense that I would have an identity crisis in a shack in the ass-end of Sibera. And I should probably get Pooch to give you your five bucks back, you totally stole me away with your skinny ass and your white boy game.”
He apologizes for the flowers, and the candy… He bitches about the knives and the guns, “Really? Clay? Roque? How could you turn to them when I was always so busy following your around, like a sunflower, head twisted around and always looking right at you? Creepy is one thing, freaking love struck is another… so thanks asshole for finding me less romantically available than Roque. And fuck you very much for the badger comment.”
He writes to Jensen about his sisters, his quiet mother and his slightly addled father (“you would love him, he talks more than you do and on almost as many levels”), about his date with the prom queen and his stint in basic. He talks about guns, manages to avoid most of that innuendo, and rambles on and on and on until he finds he’s on the last page and running out of room.
So he finishes it up. Writes it out, and draws a rainbow at the end, and puts it on Jensen’s pillow.
“So Jensen,
Check YES, or Check NO.
Always yours, regardless,
Cougs”
…
His mama is so very proud, and Jensen damn near talks his dad under the table. Bethany makes Jensen a rainbow pin, Josy introduces her girlfriend and their adopted daughter, and Maria sits smug and happy across the dinner table, flicking amused glances at the way that Jensen gesticulates wildly throughout the meal, apparently forgetting that he has Cougar's hand clutched in his.
Cougar, well, Cougar still thinks his family is crazy… but he thinks it might be growing on him.