Work Text:
It’s hot, and the sky is so goddamn blue he feels like he could swim in it.
He doesn’t know where they are. Sniper (and while this was before they were hired killers, it’s hard to call him anything else sometimes) seems to be taking them somewhere, which is what he does anyways, and he usually doesn’t tell Scout where they’re going or where they are. So really, all Scout knows right then is that they were still in Mexico (probably).
He’s sitting outside on the dusty ground, leaning against the camper, because the AC broke and maybe that’s where they’re heading, somewhere to get that fixed. Hopefully. He’s tired of having the windows down, and letting dust and dirt from the road blow into the cockpit of the van and get into his root beer. Anyways, he’s sitting outside because inside is a literal death-sauna, and you’re not supposed to leave people in hot cars and-slash-or vans. Did that rule only apply to babies? And dogs?
I probably count as a dog, he thought, head tilted down to the book in his lap. It had a harsh blue cover with big text and a little red guy and it was Sniper’s. Sweat clings to him like another layer of skin, and he has to wipe his palms off on his shorts before he can flip the page because holding the book gets his hands all hot, like the rest of the damn place wasn’t hot enough.
He had a bag of candy resting beside him that Sniper had picked up from a gas station while he was dozing in the passenger seat, and he had given it to him before he had left to go hunt so Scout didn’t die of hunger like he always complained about doing every time Sniper took a little too long with dinner. Scout had glanced at the packaging enough to know before ripping it open that there was two flavors in the bag: a cherry one and a blueberry one, or something along those lines. And that it was sour as hell. Nice.
He popped a thick tab of the candy into his mouth (it was one of those hard candies you either had to suck on forever or just crunch the fuck out of) and danced it around with his tongue as the sourness sizzled away near painfully. Even through the sting he could taste the artificial flavor he had grown to love. Blueberry.
What was he talking about?
Dinner. That got him thinking about Sniper. He wasn’t here, off hunting still, and Scout was too heat-exhausted to come with this time around. Sniper was a weird guy. That’s what Scout thought when they first met, anyways.
When they first met. Scout still remembers it. He wonders if Sniper does, too. He dreams about it sometimes.
Cornfield. Corn for what feels like miles. Stalks and stalks of fucking corn. It felt like insanity. It was just as hot then as it was now. Scout had recently just entered Mexico, because nobody wanted his head off in Mexico (yet). He had stolen clothes from a laundromat by a stroke of luck, and he was suddenly regretting it as the dirt-caked long sleeves and baggy pants were nothing but a hindrance under this onslaught of heat. Pure heat.
He was covered in scratches from pushing through the sharp stalks, and he felt blood running down his cheek, or maybe that was sweat. The cuts on the bits of his exposed skin definitely fucking hurt from something pooling in them. And the corn seemed to never ever end, and he wondered if he had died some ways back and this was Hell, and Hell was as hot as he had been told by the church-boys that hung around the neighborhood, and he could not even bring forward the ability to scream as he felt something bite his leg, and the word serpent rang in his head as he somehow found the energy to break into a sprint.
Looking up, Scout finally saw something. The top of a camper van, and holy fuck, someone was probably out there, and the corn was gonna free him soon, and Scout physically could not bring himself to stop. He barreled through stalks and stalks of fucking corn until he broke into the clearing, collapsing to his knees and drawing in lungfuls of air, gasp, gasp, blood and sweat dribbling down onto the yellow-green grass below. A shadow loomed over him, and Scout lifted his head, shaking from exhaustion.
And was met with the barrel of a rifle between his eyes.
It was Sniper, though he didn’t know it yet, and the sun high in the sky beaming down around his head, hiding his face in a shadow, had made him look like an angel in that moment. Scout had nearly cried.
Scout still laughs at the memory sometimes, because months later Sniper had told him he was actually scared it was like, a big wolf or something, or a snake or some other dangerous animal or what the fuck ever. Honestly he thinks Sniper wishes it was an animal he could’ve just shot the head off of sometimes, if not because threatening someone with a gun is very illegal and when accidental it’s illegal and embarrassing, but because of what came after. Because out of everyone it was Scout.
He crunched down on the candy in his mouth after he had sucked all the sour coating off of it, and quickly dug into the bag for another. Still sour as hell. It was another blueberry.
It’s kind of hard to remember what happened after that. It was so long ago. He was like sixteen, and he ate people. He was always starving, and he was always craving meat. He had felt like he had rabies.
And then Sniper came along. Their first weeks weren’t the most pleasant. Scratch that, their first year wasn’t the most pleasant. Sniper had let him live with him for a reason he can barely recall now— but he remembers it was supposed to be temporary.
Well, four years kind of crosses the line for temporary living, yet he still gets scared that if he pisses the guy off too much he’ll just dump him on the side of the road and leave him back at square one.
It was really awkward at first. Sniper was extremely solitary, and Scout was extremely paranoid and scared and many miles from home. But the first meal that Sniper made for him, it felt like heaven on his tongue. And he had to wait until the fuckin’ guy walked back in to tell him that, because for the first six months the guy wouldn’t eat with him, he’d go outside no matter how dark it was.
Another candy. Blueberry once again.
It got colder. Scout had basically just turned sixteen when they met, it was the month after, and months later it was suddenly December. The van was quote-unquote ‘insulated’, which basically meant it kept the snow out but not the cold, or something. It got freezing at night, especially in the winter months, and apparently Sniper finally took pity on his shivering form one night when he nudged him up from the booth with his two blankets and flattened pillow and invited him to share the bunk with him, and Scout did not miss how the other man was also trembling.
It was scary. Having your back to another man you barely know when you have known nothing but fear of the human race for a good while kind of does things to you.
But it was fine. He was fine. Eventually Sniper had mustered up the courage (was it courage? Did he care that much?) to propose something that would be beneficial for both of them, and long story short he found his head tucked into the taller man’s collarbone for the next few months until it started to warm up, bodies pressed against each other and warming each other finely.
Lil’ firecracker, Sniper had called him, low and almost to himself, before holding the other tighter to his chest at the sudden chill that had flitted through the van. It had done something weird to Scout’s chest, something he had not truly felt for years at that point.
He was ten, and his brother was nearly out the door before he had called out to him. It was early, like 3 AM, but the shuffling from down the hall woke him up.
He had asked his brother where he was going. He had this job. A job that made him leave for weeks, up to a few months at a time sometimes. Scout had asked time and time again why he couldn’t just find a job that let him stay in the town, stay in the area, stay with him. He had told Scout that it just wasn’t that easy sometimes.
But instead of just telling him where he had to go, or pulling out a big map of the states like he sometimes did to show the younger how far he was going, or whatever, he had just given Scout a pained smile.
He told Scout it didn’t matter too much. He’d be back in a few weeks like usual. He hugged him a lot tighter than he usually did. He told Scout he loved him.
Scout had watched his beat-up old car pull out of the driveway, and drive off.
Yeah, it made him feel like his brother had made him feel before he fucked off to God knows where forever.
Doesn’t matter. Scout thinks about something more positive. Scout thinks about the first time he saw Sniper smile, wholly smile.
Literally unheard of at that point. It was like, what, maybe the next year after they had met? Scout had just turned seventeen a month ago. They had caught rabbits, Sniper with a traditional bow-and-arrow, and Scout with something a little more natural: the teeth in his mouth.
He had tossed the catch over to the other, but he had seemed to decide something then and there. After making Scout grab his skinning knife, he said I’m gonna teach you how to skin your kills.
He remembers being so nervous about it, and the comforting warmth of the others hands over his, guiding him through it. He doesn’t even remember why he was nervous in the first place, even with the guy’s reassurances that it doesn’t matter if he messed it all up, he still wanted to prove that he could do it.
When all was said and done, blood from the limb removals staining into the bottom of the shirt and the pants he nicked from the older, and two freshly skinned rabbits cooking away, he had looked up. Sniper had seemed so proud, actually grinning and smiling like it was the best day of his life ‘cause he’d taught Scout something.
It was hard to believe just a year prior, the guy had held a gun to his head and nearly splattered his brains over rows of fucking corn stalks.
Scout, after popping another artificially flavored blueberry tab into his mouth, finally pulled his head out of the clouds and glanced down at the packaging in his hands.
It said ‘blueberry’ and ‘cherry’. The brand’s special little silly names for ‘em, anyways.
He peered into the nearly-empty bag.
It was all blueberry.