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They’re deployed to Hawaii for a month, Herc and Scott, corporate training and ethics seminars at headquarters. Put up in base housing, he’s pleased to see the small flat has two bedrooms, because Herc loves his brother, but he needs his space. Someone’s stocked it with sheets and towels, pots and pans, but they’ve neglected to put food in any of the cabinets. The fridge only has a torn-open orange box of bicarb shoved in the back and a couple empty ice trays in the freezer.
Scott dumps his kit in the front bedroom, the one with the sliding door and view of the water that Herc had hoped to snag. With a resigned exhale, he quickly hangs and folds his clothes in the dark back room and lies down for a few moments. Scott’s banging about in the toilet, shower already running and a puff of steam joining the already muggy air. Herc tries to focus on the lazy rotation of the ceiling fan, hoping it will lull him to sleep, help him in shaking off the cobwebs of the jet lag from the flight out.
The bed sinks next to Herc, pulling him groggily from his nap, the smell of Scott’s aftershave heavy in the airless room.
“You too thick to see the perfectly good bed out front?”
Herc swipes his palm over his face, rubbing at his eyes, wincing at the rasp of the three day growth on his jaw. “You too thick to see I was trying to get a little shut-eye?”
Scott rolls his eyes, sleep is negligible to him, he’s got energy like Chuck has, boundless and wild. “There’s no food.”
“Thanks, Einstein.” Herc’s not awake enough for the exchange, wants to toss Scott out on his ass and send him to the supermarket on his own to buy food if he’s so bloody hungry, but that would require Herc making a second trip to buy everything that isn’t beer.
To save them both time and energy Herc doesn’t have, he swings himself off the bed, ambles to the bathroom, splashes his face. He looks like he’s run to Oahu instead of flown, exhausted with dark circles ringing his eyes.
Maybe a month out of sims will do them both some good.
Herc palms the keys to the rental Jeep, heads downstairs with Scott on his heels. They decide to bypass the commissary, because the island really is beautiful and Herc figures they could both use a little room to breathe. Scott fiddles with the GPS system, trying to find a grocery store while Herc remembers how to drive on the opposite side of the road again.
He imagines it’s a shitty drive during rush hour, but for now, it’s relatively smooth, the windows are open, and the wide blue Pacific is in view for most of the ride.
Scott keeps pushing buttons on the radio, finally settling on one of the least offensive of the three stations. He starts talking about a trip they took to Thailand as teenagers that Herc’s nearly forgotten about until now.
“Remember the snake wine in the bazaar? Thought you were going to piss yourself.”
“Says the one who cried when he realized scorpion chicken actually included a real scorpion.”
Scott laughs and slams his hand against the window frame. “One - it was your idea. Two - I can’t read Thai. Three - you probably paid them off, it was just supposed to have chilies or something.”
Maybe Herc had palmed the guy a fiver or something just to see the look on his little brother’s face, seems like the kind of thing he’d have done. The two of them had nearly ripped each others throats out as kids, but they were still thick as thieves. Scott’s moved on to reminiscing about summers at their granddad’s house outside of Perth when Herc realizes they’ve been aimlessly driving for about thirty minutes.
“Hey, what’s the nav say?”
Scott flips the unit out. “Rerouting. Shit, forgot to turn up the audio. Looks like Kailua’s coming up, should be something there.”
Turns out the nearest shop isn’t too far away and Kailua’s a decent sized town. They stop for dinner first, Herc refusing to settle for burgers when there are burritos joints around. Scott charms the girl behind the counter into tossing in some chips and salsa, even springs for a couple beers.
Later, despite three or four wrong turns, the shots of ‘you can steer a Jaeger, but not a car, bloody idiot,’ that wear thin on Herc’s nerves, and Scott’s rowdy protests that peanut butter is not an acceptable substitute to spread on his toast, they escape from a Safeway relatively unscathed.
(Herc’s still shopping by himself next time.)