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There weren’t many animals out by RED base. The birds and most other prey creatures had been long since scared away after years of gunfire and explosions, and most of the larger animals by the lack of prey to feed on and the combined efforts of Engie and Sniper to scare them off. They had snakes occasionally, and raptors set on hunting those snakes, and plenty of insects, and every other month or so the base would gather a rat besides Spy, but for the most part the mercenaries had driven away every animal that they weren’t actively feeding. It was eerie sometimes, not hearing sounds of or seeing evidence of anything out in the badlands besides them.
Maybe that’s where Scout’s idea came from.
Sniper was woken from a dream he immediately couldn’t remember by the feeling of a hand shaking his shoulder lightly.
“Babe,” Scout mumbled quietly. “Let’s get a cat.”
Sniper blinked once or twice at the ceiling, at the poster Scout had tacked there. Pretty much every square foot of the four walls of Scout’s room and the majority of the ceiling had at least one poster touching it, some actual full-sized ones for movies and music stars, others just the covers messily ripped off of magazines. Apparently, according to Scout, the process of collecting all the pages had taken, quote, “like, basically forever”, unquote. The poster he found himself staring at was from the film Pillow Talk, and held the faces of two of Scout’s favorite actors, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, staring out from it almost too-cheerfully. At first it had sort of startled him to wake up and have two people grinning down at him be the first thing he saw. He’d gotten used to it surprisingly quickly.
“A cat?” he repeated, voice still raspy with sleep.
“Yeah.” He didn’t look down, just felt the way Scout’s head tilted against him and could visualize how his face pressed into Sniper’s arm just below the shoulder. “Maybe a kitten. Kitten-cat. Just some little orange guy.”
He tilted his head just enough to look at the clock on Scout’s table. It was just past eleven, not that it was easy to tell with the blinds on the windows drawn. Saturdays were the one day of the week that Scout ever slept in, on account of him usually setting it aside for crashing. Whenever he dropped off of his energy drinks (which he generally did over weekends), he always crashed, and hard. He was left unfocused and drowsy and sometimes with headaches for at least half of the day, and was vaguely nauseous for the other half. He got better by the second day, and seemed overall unconcerned when explaining the whole situation to Sniper in the first place. He said that he figured the pros of his energy drink diet through the week outweighed the cons. Sniper tried not to worry about it too much aloud.
“Thought you were a dog person,” Sniper said.
Scout shifted lightly, curling in just that much closer. “Yeah, I know. I just figured, because dogs usually want a lot of attention, y’know? Cats are cool with bein’ left alone a lot of the time, usually. Can just sorta hang out and they’re fine, and then it’ll be totally down with the getting pet thing. I like ‘em about the same, really, so... I dunno. Just figured.”
Sniper moved a hand up to card it through Scout’s hair, scratching lightly and letting himself smile as he felt Scout melt at the attention. “Well, sorry to break it to you, but I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Sniper mumbled. “I’m allergic to cats.”
Scout’s head tilted in a way that suggested he was looking up at Sniper’s face. “I thought you lived on a farm as a kid?”
“Yeah. We didn’t have cats, the barn had cats. Didn’t listen to any of us, just did their job and kept the vermin and the like away. Two mollies, a grey tabby and a calico. Every few years or so some stray tom would run by and we’d end up with a litter of kittens.”
“Were they cute?” Scout asked.
Sniper smiled. “Adorable. It was the one time of year when I was popular at school. Had kids asking to come visit the barn to see them for all two months until they were old enough to sell. Awful scratchy little hoons, though. Practically feral, on account’a being raised by the two barn cats. S’why my mum wanted me to let over whoever asked, playin’ about with kids helped domesticate ‘em. Even if I was snifflin’ the whole time.”
He was aware that Scout didn’t really always get what he was talking about when he rambled about things back on the farm. Having grown up in the city for twenty or so years, he didn’t know much about any animal besides cats and dogs and a passing knowledge on rats. But he liked hearing about Sniper’s life back home before he’d left, and was starting to pick up plenty from context clues.
“You woke me up just to ask if we could get a cat?” Sniper finally asked, making sure there was a note of laughter in his tone.
“Basically,” Scout confirmed.
“...Basically?”
Scout squeezed lightly. “Also I missed you.”
Sniper smiled, tilting himself up enough to look down at Scout. The hand that had been resting in Scout’s hair moved to cup his cheek. “Mate, I’m right here,” he laughed, thumb stroking across just under his eye.
“Yeah, but you were asleep. I missed... talkin’ to you an’... all that dumb junk,” Scout mumbled.
“Aww,” Sniper teased. “Look who woke up sweet today. C’mon, get up here.”
Scout complied, shuffling himself upwards, following the way Sniper’s arm around his back pulled him just that much further up as he shifted onto his side, and Sniper pressed a kiss to his forehead, then his temple, then beside his eye, then a few against his cheek until Scout was laughing. Only then did he pull away to look at Scout.
“Well, here I am,” Sniper said, smiling himself. “What’d you want to talk about, besides the cat thing?”
“Basically just the cat thing,” Scout replied.
“Basically?” Sniper prompted.
Scout’s ears were going a bit pink. “Also just...” He paused, took a moment to fix the quilt over them, pull it up to their shoulders from where it was resting near their waists. “Also just that I love you a bunch.”
Sniper’s expression softened. “I love you too,” he murmured, voice gentle.
Scout nodded, rolling in a bit and closing his eyes.
“Hey. Look at me,” Sniper requested, pushing on Scout’s shoulder to roll him back again. Scout did so, blinking. “I mean it. I love you.”
Scout’s dimple made an appearance as he smiled sheepishly, glancing away again. “I heard you.”
“I know you heard me. I just wanted to say it again, because it’s true. I love you.” He kissed Scout on the cheek again, a lingering one this time. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Scout replied, face getting pinker, grin gone goofy.
“Mmm.” Sniper considered his face for a few seconds, then leaned in, pressing a few more rapid-fire kisses across his cheek where he could reach. “I love you,” he murmured again between each one, until Scout’s grin had broken down into giggling, the other man clinging to Sniper’s sleep shirt, face burning.
“Alright, alright,” Scout finally protested, shifting forward into the sanctuary of Sniper’s shoulder and neck to protect himself from any further onslaught. “I get it. Listen, I love you, but also you just woke up and you need to brush your teeth or somethin’, babe.”
Sniper chuckled, holding Scout close with one arm and stretching out with the other, brushing his glasses aside to get to the box of mints Scout kept there at his bedside along with no fewer than ten other knick-knacks of varying degrees of usefulness. He popped two in his mouth, starting to crunch on them idly as he put the box back.
“You know you’ve gotta *actually* brush your teeth at some point, right?” Scout asked, muffled into his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t imagine you want me getting out of bed just yet, bun, and I don’t much want to get up either,” he replied.
Scout hummed.
Sniper just held him close for a little while, petting through his hair, his own eyes starting to feel a bit heavy.
Scout hummed again, pressing in closer. “I still miss you,” he mumbled.
Sniper frowned. “Love, I’m right here,” he said again, just as quietly. “Awake, holdin’ on tight, terribly in love with you—what else do you need?”
“Nothin’, you’re already the best,” Scout replied, voice soft.
Sniper pet through his hair, giving him a peck on the head. “Sweet’eart,” he borderline whispered, “I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do. I want to. What is it?”
Scout sighed slowly, shakily. “I just don’t ever want to leave. This, here, right now. I wanna stay here forever, I, and I know that’s dumb and we can’t do that, we gotta...” He shifted his face, kissing just under Sniper’s ear for a moment. “...Gotta go get somethin’ to eat, and gotta go to work on Monday, and gotta... get up and shower and all that stuff. But I don’t wanna. I wanna just stay like this with you. Forever.” He took a shaky breath, exhaled. “And I’m just, I’m so stupidly tired and I wanna go to sleep, but if I go to sleep then I’ll miss some of how long I do get to be here with you. And I don’t wanna do that.”
“Oh, Jeremy,” Sniper sighed, hugging him in tight. “I miss this too. But I’m not your life, you know. I’m where you come back to after the rest of your day, and I’m not going anywhere on you. Because I love you, and as far as I’m concerned, that sort of thing aren’t temporary.”
Scout didn’t say anything, just shifting slightly. After a long moment, Sniper reached a hand between them, putting it over back of one of Scout’s and lacing their fingers together to coax him into letting go of his shirt. He then drew that hand up, pressing a kiss to Scout’s knuckles. Scout drew back to look at him, and Sniper thought he caught them glistening, so he pressed in again, this time a kiss to Scout’s palm, followed by one on the inner wrist, then one just below that, and back up to Scout’s knuckles again.
Scout pulled his hand in to press a kiss to the back of Sniper’s hand in return, and he was smiling again when he pulled back away, even if his eyes might’ve been wet.
“You make me really happy, y’know that?” he asked, voice wobbly, if warm.
Sniper smiled right back, fighting the way his eyes stung. “I’m glad,” he said, so honestly that it scared him a little bit. He swallowed hard, pulling Scout’s hand in to rest just over his heart. “I’m glad.”
Thinking about it again, later, still wrapped in blankets and arms, legs tangled, Scout dozing against his chest, Sniper thought that maybe he could handle sneezing a bit, for the sake of having a cat, and making Scout happy. Maybe he could look into it. Maybe for Scout’s upcoming birthday, as a surprise. Maybe an orange one, with white on its paws to look like long socks, and he’d joke with Scout that he couldn’t even hardly tell them apart, and that would make Scout laugh, hopefully every time he looked at it, even when Sniper had to go work and the cat was the only one in Scout’s room to be there to cuddle up to him and look at and appreciate all the posters. Maybe that would make Scout feel better, at least a little bit, would help him remember that Sniper planned to stick around, if nothing else then because knowing him, he’d love that cat just as much as Scout within two days of knowing it, even sneezing.
Scout made him really happy too, after all. It’s what he deserved.