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Scout’s heart pounds with every moment he steals from death, his vision clouding, and then sharpening and then, he's trying with desperation to remember what normal felt like. This is what happened: He got shot. He isn't dead, because Scout will never go out without a bang, but the rules of the universe don't exactly follow him. Yet, the universe adds, cruel as the first bully who ever stole his baseball cards.
So this is what's happening: He's dying, cowering with his back against a crumbling wall, hiding from the enemy forces. Does that count as a bang?
There's blood. Of course there's blood—it feels like it's everywhere, but he knows it's not—because he's bleeding, and he knows he'll die right here bleeding like new meat. What problem is it if he's brought back to life a second later? He's fine, it's fine, and this entire situation is just fine and dandy. Just another thing he won't write home about.
Everything would be okay, if it weren't for—
“Scout.” Narrowed eyes. A hidden face. A liar, a coward, the pinnacle of espionage.
Spy lingering above him. The fabric on his nose is wrinkling.
“The hell are you here for?” he jeers. It takes effort to keep his tone sharp, keep himself from slurring. Every breath feels like the greatest exertion a guy can take. “What, come to gloat? You wanna—” he sputters, and he thinks it's the hemoptysis coming down his chin, “You wanna show off your fuckin’ stealth to me?”
Spy never sees him when he's at his best, never sees him when he's run off from an enemy like he's got fire under his feet, when he's tricked someone good, when he's climbed so fast it's like he's got wings. The bastard never sees those moments. Only these ones where he can hardly manage to keep his eyes focused.
Scout isn't sure why it makes him so angry, but he is. He's mad. Irrationally, completely mad that this one guy he works with will never think he's great, will never know what he knows.
Spy is impassive.
“We are on the same team, poilu. It is natural I look for you when you are not found.” Scout frowns distastefully and, because he can never leave anything alone, apparently, he goes, “I will call the Medic. Wait here.”
“Nah,” Scout says, because he's already resigned to his fate and isn't about to get “saved” by some sneak in a suit. “Give it a few seconds. They won't catch me here, I can just… rest. For a couple seconds.” Not wanting to hear any condescending comment about his productivity, he adds, “I got moxie, I'll get ‘em good next time.”
“Moxie,” Spy snorts. He lowers himself to the ground, glances thoughtfully at Scout’s injuries.
Scout’s cheeks flame up. “Shut up,” he snaps. Spy doesn't get to make fun of him—not when he's got one foot down the grave and the other haphazardly keeping him settled up. “Jesus Christ. Can't a fella die in peace?” The other man opens his mouth—probably to say something sarcastic, something that drawls like the trigger of a pistol—but Scout isn't done. He spits, “Why you always gotta be here, man?”
For a second—for just a second—Spy flinches.
“Je suis désolé,” he breathes, and then, he's muttering more, his French heavy. Whatever he's thinking, saying, whatever he's suddenly so weak for, Scout can't tell and doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to hear it.
Scout’s eyelashes flutter, thick. The world tilts. It goes dark, almost like he's on the edge of drifting to sleep. Not quite there. He wants to be. He wants to die with some fire still burning.
Spy says, “You have time left. Everyone is busy. Nobody will say you here.” Spy says, “The next round’s the last. It'll rain soon, nobody likes to fight in the pouring rain, oui?” Spy says, “I won't leave.”
Scout growls. It takes effort, a migraine’s worth of effort, to open his eyes, to view the world with hate instead of this overwhelming clutching neediness. The kind children have for the bikes they never got for Christmas. For the fathers that never came home.
He can't run, so he wants to bite something. He can't bite something, so he has to snarl instead.
“You're not my fuckin’ dad,” he scoffs. It's unsatisfying, it's weak. He hates the way he sounds, the way he feels as much of a fraud as Spy is.
Spy looks at him.
“I know,” he says, slowly. As unreadable as invisible ink.
It's not enough. It's not enough.
Scout bares his teeth like an animal; sharp canine white smeared with coughed up red. He's got dog teeth, got dog blood in him too. He won't go down like this. “You can fuck all the way off. I don't need nothing from you.”
When he looks at Spy, he thinks, a mantra, a madness, Greyhound, Weimaraner, Boxer. Spy looks at him like a puzzle he can't solve, like a problem he can't fix. Scout’s skin crawls.
Spy leans forward. His movements are graceful, smooth, and Scout—whether out of blood loss or the other man's skill—barely notices what's happening until—
“What the hell are you—?”
His words die out, because Spy’s got him in his branchy arms, spotting some silk handkerchief at the blood of Scout’s shirt. It doesn't matter; it's all red anyway, and Scout is about to tell him that—not to waste his time, not to drain his energy needed for the battle, not to care anymore than he should—but he can't. He just can't.
“Damn it,” he mutters. His head bows. He hardly recognized the sandy ground below him. “Go to hell.”
“I'm already here,” Spy says back with the ghost of a smile. “I believe you were born there.”
Scout should hit him. He doesn't.
Just before everything restarted, before his wounds healed and he was brought back to life with a snap of his back and a weapon in his hand, Spy talked to him—minutes that felt like hours, seconds of French that felt like decades of decades of childhood—about the Vatican, about the myth of good American liquor, about bullets and guns and silencers. Scout let him. Oh, God, did Scout let that pretentious bastard talk.
His tongue was too heavy to argue, his vision flickering in and out of consciousness, and, suddenly, he couldn't feel himself. It was all numb, electric dullness, like the stinging minutes after the splash of rubbing alcohol, subsiding, not painful like it should be.
So Scout lets him talk.
He doesn't know why, and you better not ask. When he's brought back to life, the battle’s over because it's already raining. He watches Spy’s back as they enter the fortress. Scout nearly asks to borrow his umbrella, he almost demands for a reason. He doesn't do either of those. Instead, he nurses the space of his shoulder where there was once pierced flesh. A hole.
He thinks there should be a wound there. There's a lump in his throat. There should be a wound where someone shot a bullet.