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The world was quiet here.
Winter always had a tranquility to it, a stillness that suited the cold. Stanley Snyder had never viewed himself as a particularly introspective man, but in the quiet preceding a job, it lent itself well to the mood.
He sat perched on a thick tree branch overlooking a far clearing, a thin blanket of snow coating his head and shoulders, the barrel of the sniper rifle resting on the stand in front of him. The sky was bloated and grey, churlish and bleak, but the snow had stopped falling for the time being, and loose powder whirled in small eddies along the frozen ground below, glinting in the wane sun.
By his best estimates, it was nearing three in the afternoon. He had approximately two and a half hours left of daylight, and at least a two hour long ride back to base camp. The threat of spending a night in subzero temperatures wasn’t that frightening. It would be uncomfortable, miserable even, but this was a battle of wills, and he wasn’t going to be the first to blink.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
Stanley blinked, lifting his makeshift snow visor. He’d fashioned it out of a scrap of cloth when snow blindness threatened his vigil, and once it was off, it took him a moment to adjust to the unrestricted sunlight glinting off every article of white in sight. He palmed at the outermost pouch on his pants and pulled out the slim earpiece, tucking it beneath his hat.
“Yeah?” he grunted. “Thought I said not to call me when I’m hunting.”
Instead of Maxwell’s gravelly voice, a smoother one answered him. “I believe proper radio transmission etiquette dictates the use of ‘over’ when you’re done speaking. Over.”
“Xeno?” Stan blinked. “What did you do with Maxwell?”
“I relieved him of his duties after he came to me with the news that you still hadn’t returned from your hunting trip.”
Stan chuckled. Right. “You forgot to say ‘over’,” he told him, settling back into position. So, Maxwell went and tattled on him? Nah, that didn’t sound like him at all. Xeno probably realized he hadn’t checked in with him yet and went snooping for answers. “Thought you had some new big project going on today. Surprised you had time to be wonderin’ about where I was.”
“I make it a point to keep tabs on all of my men, Stanley,” came the terse reply. “That includes you.”
“Aw. I’m touched.”
A minute of silence went by, Stan adjusting his rifle and brushing away the snow to keep the barrel dry. The receiver in his ear crackled quietly in response to Xeno’s breathing. Beneath it, he could just make out the rhythmic click click click of his clawed fingers tapping against something hard. Probably the arms of his chair if Stanley had to hazard a guess. He wouldn’t have stayed in the radio room, not when he had his study wired up for moments like these.
“Stan.”
“Yeah, shug?”
The crackle of static that elicited was sharp. “I’m—I was still on the public frequency,” he muttered. The sound of some buttons being pressed and another hiss of static signaled the shift in their transmission feed.
Stan fought a grin. “Not anymore, though, right?”
“Stanley.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve been gone for nearly six hours,” Xeno recited, a tinge of annoyance threading his voice.
“And?”
“And I expected your hunt to take half that amount of time.”
Stan snorted quietly. The scope on his rifle numbed his cheek every time he leaned against it, but he was a professional; he knew how to phase that out. “How do you figure that?”
“You’ve been hunting sixteen times in the past four months. Every outing takes you roughly two hours, not including the time it takes for you to travel there and back. Adding in the increased difficulty of winter travel and sub-optimal conditions for wildlife migration habits, a conservative estimate of four hours seemed fair for a seasoned hunter.”
Stan raised a brow, watching the sun shift against the snow through the line of his scope. “Then why did you expect me in three?”
“Four hours is an estimate for a seasoned hunter, Stan. Naturally, I expect better results from you.”
Right. Stan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He shifted minutely, curling his toes in his boots to coax feeling back into his extremities. “Is there a reason you’re buttering me up?”
Xeno hummed, probably leaning back in his fancy chair as he fiddled with whatever experiment had caught his fancy today. “It’s not a compliment when empirical data suggests it as fact. You’re the best there is, so I’d be a fool to expect average results from someone I know to be above average in every way. What’s causing the delay, Stanley? If you need assistance, you should have called.”
Stanley blew a lock of hair away from his eyes. “Don’t need help. Just playing a waiting game, that's all.”
“Oh? Between you and a deer? How elegant. I wasn’t aware they required intricate mind games.”
“They don’t.” Stanley let out a breath that clouded the side of his gun. “Bears do.”
The radio crackled in the silence that followed. Out of habit, Stanley counted his heartbeats. His breathing slowed while he did it, petered out until only the occasional puff of condensed, frozen breath clouded his gun roughly once every thirty seconds or so. The white noise of the forest was deafening as even the birds began to stop chirping.
“Stan.” Xeno’s voice was sharp yet quiet, cutting like a knife so sharp that it barely disturbed the air even as it sliced through it. “Why are you hunting a bear?”
The corner of Stan’s lip lifted. The cold air stung his teeth. “‘Cause it’s hunting me.”
“Stan.”
“What?” He chuckled. “You worried ‘bout me?”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous the American black bear is?”
Stan lined down the scope to view the clearing he’d been watching for three of the six hours he’d been out here. “Yeah, you sound worried.” He’d noticed the weight of a predator’s gaze just as he’d begun hunting for deer trails, roughly an hour after he’d come across a dead doe half frozen to the ground. Mauled, neck snapped: everything about it suggested that another predator had taken it down. That part was easy to suss out. He’d barely needed to touch the carcass to know how the doe had been done in.
But he had touched it. He left his scent on it, disturbed the half-hearted mound of snow covering some of the deer from sight. It had been his mistake to assume wolves had been responsible for it; he should’ve realized sooner that wolves wouldn’t have left it untouched like that.
“One of the largest land-based predators on the continent is hunting you,” Xeno said tersely. “A little concern is warranted. What weapons did you take with you?”
“Handgun,” Stan said rotely, scanning the treeline for movement. It was nearby; the birds knew it, and they had all gone quiet. “Rifle, too.” He’d done what he could to mask his scent, but this was a black bear, not a deer. He could only do so much.
“You can’t take down a bear with a handgun.” Xeno muttered under his breath, figures and ballistic resistances and the approximate fire-power of their homemade weaponry. “You’re pushing it with the rifle as it is.”
“Got my bowie knife on my hip,” Stanley said with a chuff. “Y’know, if all else fails.”
“Don’t you even think about it.”
“I don’t know, Xeno,” Stan murmured, narrowing his eyes as some brush began to sway from more than just wind. “It’d make for one hell of a story.”
The air itself held a charge when the bear emerged from the treeline. Every sense, standard and otherwise, crackled as Stan looked at it through the scope. The beast was big, bigger than he remembered them being way back when, but not quite as huge as the grizzlies he’d seen up in Alaska. Something about the lack of humans and regrown wilderness must have contributed to them bulking up.
“Stan?” Xeno whispered. “You’ve stopped breathing.”
Stan barely hummed. It was the only concession he could afford to make as those rounded ears swiveled atop the bear’s head. Sound traveled further in the cold. One wrong move, one snapped branch or thoughtless noise and his position would be revealed. He curled his half-frozen fingers around the trigger and did the math in his head like he preferred. He wasn’t that far away in the grand scheme of sniping. It made taking the shot easier, but if he missed…
He wouldn’t, though. He never did.
The bear emerged fully, dwarfing the clearing with its size alone. Every breath it took sent enormous clouds of condensed vapor into the air, obscuring its face in regular intervals. The sway of its haunches as it moved belied the speed Stanley knew it had. That was the old story they told kids, right? A bear could run as fast as a horse. He’d never seen it in action himself, but there was no reason to doubt it.
Through the earpiece, Xeno’s breathing was a tremulous thing.
Stan exhaled all at once and moved the cross hairs until they lined up at his target-point. Energy, frenetic and dizzying, swelled up behind his eyes. All thoughts went silent. He heard nothing but the beat of his pulse in his ears layered beneath Xeno’s breaths. He was trying so hard to be quiet for him, like he knew.
Stan inhaled once.
When he let it out, he fired.
The shot rang out, severing the tenuous, fragile tranquility with something harsh, something lethal. Like a split cable, all of Stanley’s accumulated tension snapped, just like that. He let out a harsh sigh as warmth blossomed throughout his core. Fuck, that was good. Too good. Perfect.
“Stan?” came Xeno’s voice over the line, crisp and controlled but still trembling at the edges. He knew better than to doubt Stan when he took a shot, but it seemed that even he had trouble keeping some human impulses at bay. “Did… What happened? Did you get it?”
Stan grinned as he stared down the line of his scope. The dark brown mass had dropped where it stood. You couldn’t land a simple head shot on a bear and guarantee that it would put it down. Their skulls were thick, sturdy. Even modern rifles couldn’t always get through, and more than one hunter had met their end after trying it anyway. It was almost always safer to aim for the heart, pump a few shots into them for safety or, if you were just a little crazy and very good at what you did, you could go for the harder shot and preserve the pelt.
Stan angled the rifle a hair lower and centered the cross hairs once more over the bear’s eye.
It was ruined now. He’d hit it dead-on.
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, deep, a bit guttural.
Stan was crazy. He was also very good at what he did.
“Never stood a chance.”
Xeno’s laughter was quiet, relieved. “Ah, well. Good. We haven’t sampled bear yet; I’m sure your men will be happy to have some diversity in their diets.”
“Mm.” Stan removed his eye from the scope and licked at his chapped lips. His body ached subtly when he moved, and when he rested his spine against the line of the tree, he let out a low sigh that did nothing to mitigate the heat still simmering in his veins. He broke down his rifle with well practiced movements. His hands trembled a little while he worked. Adrenaline. He’d be shaky ‘til he did something about that. “I’ll save the pelt for you.”
“For me? How kind. I suppose it could be useful for crafting more winter clothing. The fat would have more immediate uses, I’d think.”
Stan’s thoughts turned to the fireplace they’d built into their bedroom. It had always been too hot in Texas for things like that, but in the new stone world, the winters were cold, even in the Bay. His tongue ran over his bottom lip to soothe the sting that followed when he smiled. That bear had to be seven, maybe even eight feet tall on its hind legs. Xeno laid out on that pelt… He’d be tiny. Just a slash of pale skin along that deep black fur.
The thought alone was heady, heady enough to make it easy for him to only just then notice that Xeno was still prattling away in his ear about all the uses for bear grease he could think up off the top of his head. Stan leaned against the tree and stretched one leg out along the branch while the other hung down. He ran his gloved hand down his chest and curled his fingers into a loose fist once he reached his thigh.
“Xeno.”
Xeno cut himself off in the middle of a spiel on the virtues of fat greased axle gears versus their synthesized oil. “Yes, Stan?”
"You alone?"
Xeno was silent for a moment, probably worrying at his bottom lip as he analyzed why Stan might bother asking. "Doctor Brody is outside the door of my study," he answered after coming up blank. "There was a malfunction with one of the lights and I asked him to fix it. Aside from that, yes. I'm alone."
Stan huffed, a puff of condensation streaming out. It was cold, cold enough to make him second-guess stripping off his glove to go for the cigarettes in his pocket, even if the smoke would warm up his chest. "Good," he breathed, palming himself instead. Too cold to take off his glove, too cold to take out his dick. "Talk to me, then, shug.”
“Talk to y—?”
“C’mon.” Even through the layers, Stan’s hand was enough. “Wanna hear your voice."
"Stan, what are you—"
When Stan groaned, the sound definitely traveled across the line. Xeno cut himself off, his teeth clicking audibly. "Oh. Um..." He said it shakily, like in that big brain of his running faster than a supercomputer he hadn't considered this possibility, this potential outcome. That had Stan tipping back his head, the bark of the tree scraping against his scalp.
Over a decade of this between them and Xeno still couldn't quite predict him; if there was anything hotter than that, Stan hadn't found it yet. Though, the steaming corpse lying in the snow down below came close. A shot through the eye that precise got the engines going, but that needy little clearing of the throat crackling over the line sealed the deal every single time.
“Are you… serious?”
Stan hummed.
"It's below freezing out there."
"Nothing slips past you, huh," Stan murmured, letting his eyes flutter as he focused on Xeno's voice, on that edge it took on when he was trying so damn hard to be stern but not quite passing muster. "You loaded me down with ten different temp gauges. Think I got it."
He could practically see the pout on Xeno's lips as he replied, "Then you should know better than to... to do that right now."
"Done it in worse places," Stan told him, and that much, at least, was true. He opened his eyes and took in the pristine woodlands, the glittering snow coating everything like one of those snow globes his mom used to keep on the mantle at Christmas. Didn't get much snow in Texas. It was novel, even if the cold biting at his cheeks wasn't. It got cold in the desert, too. "I'd be done faster if you learned how to sweet talk a man properly."
"Well, what do you expect me to say?" Xeno blustered, probably twisting his hands in his lap as he glanced at the door, praying to god and country that Brody couldn't hear him through the metal paneling. "We haven't... We haven't exactly done this since you were in basic."
Stan hummed, letting his eyes fall shut as a wave of warm pleasure rolled over him. He ground the meat of his palm over his covered length, letting that little trip down memory lane inch him forward just a bit. God, that had been hell for a lot of reasons. "You sayin' you're outta practice?" he mumbled, squeezing loosely, cupping himself until he was completely hard. “‘S only been a decade, give or take.”
"I'm saying that I'm... caught off guard. I don't know what to say."
"Not askin' for you to read off a script for me, hun." Stanley let out a weak groan. Wound up as he was, he’d probably get off to the Periodic Table if Xeno felt like reciting it to him. "Just talk. Tell me what you're doin'."
"I'm..." Xeno cleared his throat, grasping for propriety when the situation called for the exact opposite. "I'm... sitting in my study. Waiting for you to stop risking hypothermia so we can move along with the next item on today's list of tasks."
Right. The other officers had taken to calling it Stan's Honey-Do list when they thought he couldn't hear. He might've dressed them down for it, but they weren't wrong, and there was something kinda nice about them knowing, understanding. Before, it hadn't been so simple.
"Sure," he said, easing into it, smiling despite himself at the casual domesticity the apocalypse had wrought in him. "What else have I got to do for you today?"
"Well, there's... the matter of breaking down the beast you've just slain so unnecessarily. We'll have to break out the heavy duty draining frame for it. You know that I told you to take down a deer for us, Stan. A bear is a risk you didn't need to take."
"I was being proactive," Stan said, eyes fluttering as he glimpsed the steaming bear through the screen of his lashes. "Wasn't hibernating. Somethin' woke it. Would've been hell to pay if it wasn't put down."
"And I suppose you simply thought it best to handle it now instead of later?"
Stan's lips curled into a deeper grin. Xeno's voice was an octave lower. He was getting into it now. Good.
"You know much about bears, shug?"
Xeno let out a breath that crackled in Stan's ear. It sent a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "I know the facts, not the beast. Is it your turn to teach me something, Stan?"
"Hm. I’d teach you somethin’ if you were here.” Of course, Xeno would freeze to death in this cold. If they had an Arctic tent, though… God, he was getting lost in a different fantasy entirely. “They're ornery when they're woken up," he said simply, wondering if it was worth the risk to throw caution to the wind and take off his glove. His glove was fitted to his fingers like a second skin, else he'd never have been able to shoot in them, but like this, with his cock hard and his mind erratic, it felt too bulky, too limiting. "They're hungry, wild. Crazed from it. All the game's gone to sleep, hidden away 'til spring. A killer's no good when there's nothin' around to kill."
Xeno inhaled, just once. Sharp. Stan's ears pricked at the sound, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Xeno was now touching himself, too.
When he grinned, he did so with all his teeth to the wind. "You can't let a thing like that wander around," Stan said with a bit of a growl, the pleasure beginning to blur his vision at the edges. "Else...."
"Else what, Stan?"
They were miles apart but Stan swore he could smell Xeno even from here.
"Else it'll do what killers do," Stan panted, sagging against the trunk of the tree and he groaned loud enough to echo across the snow. "Can’t even eat what it gets, still wrecked from its sleep. It’ll kill and store it, kill to protect it even if it can’t eat. Just takes one track, one... one stray scent of me, of our scouts to... to lead it—oh, fuck , I'm close."
He’d be embarrassed if he didn’t know himself so well. The stakes had been high this time; ever since unpetrifying, they hadn’t been, not really. Survival was simple with Xeno and his men’s training under their belts. The land was easily tamed. Had been, at least, for a while. There wasn’t much to kill in winter, for him or the bear alike. It’d been awhile, more than that, an eternity since he’d last stalked another predator, since he’d last won—
“I can’t believe you. Doing that, there. It’s freezing outside, and…” Xeno trailed off, inhaling sharply. Stanley could imagine the conflict written across his face. He’d be curling his hands into fists, resisting the urge to touch himself again. Propriety and elegance were important, at least, that was how he’d view it, but it was the end of the world and Stan made sure to laugh through the line, low and as deep in his chest as he could get it to go.
“It’s just us here, hun, and you know how I get when the shot’s good.” Stan didn’t need to remind him, knowing Xeno knew it too. His voice made the argument for him, though. Xeno always liked it when he talked him through it. “Make some noise for me. You know how much I love hearing you say my name.”
“That’s… God, Stan.” Xeno made a high pitched noise that bled into a stifled whine.
“That’s it. Just like that. Touch yourself for me. Pretend it’s me doing it, just the way you like.”
Across the radio, Xeno whined again, sharp and pained. "Stan, come home," he ordered, probably wriggling in that chair of his, claws tossed to the floor. Did he bother to unbutton his coat? Nah. He'd need that to cover the evidence if he were interrupted, and there was no way he wouldn't worry, even if he locked the door tight.
"You want me, hun?"
"Yes," Xeno whispered, just like he used to way back when. "Yes, I want you. Come back. Now."
Stan bit down on his bottom lip. He bit down hard. He wasn't cold now. None of him was cold. "You gonna add somethin' to your list for me?" he asked, low and smooth. He was so close. "Somethin' only I can do for you?"
When Xeno sucked in a breath, it sounded pained. "Stan, please. I can't..."
A dull thud sounded over the line. Stan would eat his boots if it wasn't Xeno thumping against the back of his seat. God, he could see it so clearly, see it like he was there now. Xeno was so easy to rile up once he got started, like a chain reaction in one of those chemical contraptions that saw them from cavemen scrambling in the dirt to the royalty they were now. He'd be wriggling and writhing in his seat, touching himself so desperately as he thought about what sort of things his Stanley would dish out as soon as he got home to him once more.
Everything, Stan figured. He'd give him everything he had so long as he took it.
"You best come now," Stan told him as black began to encroach upon his vision, "'cause when I get back home, I'm gonna make you work for the next."
Xeno cried out sweetly, the sound sharp and partially muffled—he’d bit his own hand to keep it from getting any louder. Stanley bared his teeth and arched into his hand, and he was lucky, he supposed, for getting to do this here, so far from warmth and civilization. There was no one to hear him grunt as he came. No one, that was, but Xeno. It was quick and it was messy, and he might have dragged it out for longer if circumstances were different. But he'd been hard up ever since his finger pulled the trigger, and the sun was edging towards the western horizon more and more with every breath he took. It was fine that he ended this quickly.
He’d drag out the next one plenty once he got back home.
In the cradle of his ear, Xeno was chasing his own bliss. Stanley whispered to him, talking him through it, and it helped distract him from the mess he’d made of himself. The sensation of coming inside his pants was familiar in the way a bad hangover was, just a rush of warmth and dizzying pleasure that always preceded naive regret after. It wasn’t cold yet, but it would be soon. He savored it while he could and grimaced once the moment was gone, but even that couldn't last long, not with Xeno following suit just a few seconds later.
That breathy little "Stan" meant everything, after all.
"That's it, shug," Stanley murmured. "You did good for me. Bet you looked like a dream."
"Stan, I..." Xeno's breathing was labored. He'd never been the one with stamina between them, and it showed now just like it had when they were young. "That's... That was..."
"I know." Just like old times, really. Except this time? This time, Stan actually got to make good on his promises. No waiting for leave, no requesting permission to do what he'd always wanted to do. More than snipe, more than fight.
Xeno’s heavy breathing provided the backdrop as Stan unzipped his pants and cleaned himself off with the scrap of cloth he used to wipe down his gun barrel. He moved quickly, perfunctorily, hissing a little when the cold air stung his overheated flesh. Once that was done and he had everything stowed away, Stanley pushed away from the tree. He swung his legs over the branch and dropped onto the ground, letting the snow break his fall.
“Stan?”
Xeno’s voice was quiet, a little needy. It lit something in the pit of Stan’s stomach. Something warm. Something good.
“I know, hun. I’m here.”
“Are you coming back home now?”
“Yep.” Edge gone, he ran through his mental objective list and noted the cardinal directions. Stan pulled out the map he’d made of the area and quickly found his location. The snowmobile was a decent walk from here, but he felt plenty up to the task. "I'll mark my coordinates where the bear fell. Nothing will touch it by morning. Have the recon team come collect it now or at first light, I don’t care which, so long as they’ve got the proper equipment for it.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“Me?” Stan cracked a smile for the trees and the wind. “I'm heading back now. Think my commanding officer said somethin’ about having some work for me yet."
Xeno let out a weak laugh and inputted something with a dull chime. "Ever the professional," he said lovingly. "Make sure you don't start sweating. You really will risk hypothermia at this rate."
"Way ahead of you," he told him. He’d said it while Stan had already begun peeling off his outer jacket. "But I'm not worried."
"Oh?"
Stan stowed the coat through the straps of his pack, within easy reach for when he stopped sweating. “You forget? You kept me awake for 3,700 years once.” Kept him sane during basic and throughout the hellish years that followed. He inhaled the cold winter air and let it out hotter than he’d taken it in. Turning his head, he spared one last look at the bear half buried in the snow. It’s body would steam for a while before growing cold like the sleep that hadn’t taken.
Stan fought a smile as he oriented himself in the direction of the snowmobile and, ultimately, the castle.
"A couple more hours is nothing compared to that."