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Language:
English
Series:
Part 2 of Genderbent Batch
Stats:
Published:
2025-10-02
Completed:
2025-10-15
Words:
1,737
Chapters:
3/3
Comments:
16
Kudos:
10
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73

The Batch Lasses: Two-step

Summary:

Crosshair’s bad habits include cigarettes, weaponized commentary, and making Hunter forget how to use words. Not that she minds.

A cutaway with Hunter and Crosshair from the genderbent batch.

Notes:

For context: InkyCloneJoestar and I decided to throw our Bad Batch casts together in an RP for fun, and it got me wanting to write more Crosshunt. So here are a few scenes from their time hanging out on Barton IV with a parallel Bad Batch :)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Crosshair had quietly managed to sneak away at some point in the evening, retreating presumably upstairs, but Hunter wouldn’t be surprised if she were scrounging around the barn floor looking for a desperately lost cigarette. The other batchers filled a little part of her heart that Hunter never knew she needed filled…and…okay, she had to admit, even Ventriss wasn’t as bad as she thought. So far. Subject to change.

But it was a lot, and it came to no surprise when she noticed that her sniper had inevitably escaped. Part of her wanted to sneak away and hide, too, but the mantle of leadership, even on friendly ground, compelled her to put up a good face for a respectable increment of time. Fortunately, Wrecker’s yawns hastened the timeline for an acceptable goodnight. Hunter trotted up the stairs, pulse running a bit faster. For her.

For Crosshair.

She paused outside the door of the room they’d shared last night with little thought. With more guests in the house, she doubted doubling up would be a problem, and if it was, they could suck it. But like, nicely, because this was…family.

Family. It was a strange but pleasant word to say.

She cracked open the door, and stepping inside, her heart dropped a bit when the bed bore no witness to her ill-tempered counterpart. A small part of her wondered if Crosshair had taken the notion to sleep elsewhere. Hunter bit her lip and spun towards the door to check the other rooms and hopefully convince the little monster to come back with her, y’know, if you want, please–

Except that she didn’t need any convincing, because as she reached for the door, it swung open. A familiar lanky figure raised her head, hand still on the doorknob. She smelled like cigarettes.

Even with her meticulously disaffected slouch of the hips, the sniper was imposing at over 6 feet of blessed height. And 6 feet of well-trained scowl.

“Am I interrupting something?” Crosshair asked with a pointed eyebrow.

“No…I was actually just about to look for you-” Hunter rubbed her neck. She felt a blush coming, kriff. “Wanted to ask where you were staying tonight.”

Crosshair tilted her head, picking her words carefully. “I’d presumed here. Should I have been presuming elsewhere?”

Hunter looked down because that was easier than facing the perfectly crafted neutrality on Crosshair’s face. Her perfectly sharp, shit-eating little terror-inducing hellraising blessed face. Hunter shook her head, because it was easier than words.

Fortunately, Crosshair seemed to understand.

The door clicked shut behind her as the sniper took a measured step forward, hand dropping from the knob. Hunter could feel her staring at her like a bug under a microscope, and she fucking knew what she was doing. Trying to get her to make the first move, because she was the leader, leaders knew what to do, leaders made decisions and were confident in them, leaders acted, didn’t diddle and stand around like–

A gentle hand on her hip, then another broke Hunter from her thoughts. Long fingers, the only fingers that mattered—Hunter swallowed, couldn’t look up. Sergeants shouldn't stare at the ground, sergeants should look up–

A tapered finger curled under her chin and tilted her face up for her.

“Wanna stay with you.”

Whatever wasn’t broken in Hunter broke right then and there as she looked up (the goddamn tree) into those open, amber eyes. They were never this soft, always narrowed in some sort of squinty leer…but like this, she noticed how big they were. Had Crosshair always had these eyes? Instinct kicked in and she wrapped her arms around her before she could think too hard, ducking her face in Crosshair’s chest, pulling her tight.

“I want you here too.”

Hunter felt her stiffen, but only for a moment of surprise, not repulsion…disapproval…annoyance…She breathed in the scented layer of cold ozone and tobac, face pressed to Cross’s shirt. A bit of animal smell too, from the chickens. Smelled right. Smelled like her.

Crosshair ran a tentative hand through Hunter’s hair. “Hunter, I can feel you sniffing me-”

“Then stop me-” Hunter mumbled into her shirt.

Crosshair snorted lightly. “You’re weird.” She ran a hand through her dark hair again, gentle. It felt…heavenly. Hunter closed her eyes. She felt a warm breath as Cross dropped her chin, murmuring into the crown of Hunter’s curls. “I like weird.” It was practically a whisper.

I like you.

Hunter swallowed. A small step back, then two, and Crosshair followed, one step, then two, matching her steps as her never-spoken always-had partner in every dance but this. One step, then two, long strides perfectly tailored to fit her shorter lead, oh, the irony. Another step, their ankles brushed, and Hunter felt herself briefly collide with the bed before the matching footwork in her partner’s calculated follow put her between her, above her, and oh-

Oh fuck, yeah, there was no way Hunter was coming out of this alive.

Chapter 2

Summary:

In a classic me move, we skip entirely over spice straight into existentialism.

Chapter Text

“Crosshair, where do we go when we die?”

It caught Crosshair off guard, which was impressive, because Crosshair had successfully, she’d thought, managed to guard herself against most things by now. That this breach came from a mountain of fluffy blankets only vaguely resembling Hunter should have been more concerning for a litany of reasons. Instead, she stared at the open night sky above them, and shivered.

The quilted mound beside her lifted an arm again, offering shelter. Crosshair stared up a bit longer, and then accepted it this time. It was no joke– Barton IV was cold.

A few moments of tussling thick blankets over assorted limbs and Crosshair was soon wedged up against Hunter’s back. She pulled the blanket tighter across her back, wrapping them together in a satisfactory cocoon. Of course, Hunter had to immediately roll over and undo all of her hard work to face her and stare. Like an innocent psychopath.

Where do we go when we die?

“You’re serious?” Crosshair asked, half scoffing, half curious. Hunter just rested her chin under Crosshair’s shoulder, staring up at her with those puppy eyes that apparently craved existentialism as a post-coital salve. The sergeant raised her shoulders in a slight disaffected shrug. So clearly, yes, very much yes.

Crosshair shrugged, propping an arm behind her head. “We die, we die.”

Hunter rested her cheek on the crux of the sniper’s chest, doling out thoughtfulness like it was free.

“What.” Crosshair looked down her nose at the damn puppy eyes. Kriff, she’d never liked dogs before.

Hunter wriggled up higher in the blanket cocoon and ran a gentle thumb over Crosshair’s cheek, weaponizing affection as she bored down with that hopeless look that demanded a real answer. Crosshair shivered. It was cold.

“You think that’s…it?” Hunter asked, running her thumb thoughtfully through the short, near-white hair. Something was on her mind.

Crosshair closed her eyes. “Why do you care?”

Hunter was quiet.

“I…dunno, I just…forget it.”

They stared at the cosmos. The cosmos stared back at them. Crosshair let her focus drift across the nebulas above her, electric, overwhelming, untouchable.

Go on, they said.

“Maybe I care…that you care.” She shouldered the sergeant into a closer cradle on her side, shifting Hunter above her. Framed against a crown of stars. Wordlessly convincing Crosshair to say stupid shit that only invited stupid answers.

“I-I don’t want to lose you, Cross.” Hunter frowned. “I know everything…ends. We die, it’s what we were made for.” The frown deepened, and she curled tighter against Crosshair. “Can’t control that, but I…” her voice drifted off.

Crosshair pushed a stray hair off Hunter’s face before propping that arm too behind her head. “But you can control what happens after?"

A hint of anger flashed across Hunter’s face. “Fuck, maybe, what’s the whole point if you can’t?”

Crosshair looked up at the sky. She hummed, chewing her cheek. “I think we were on the wrong side of the test tube for that luxury.”

Hunter was quiet. A sigh froze briefly into a small puff of smoke. Crosshair felt the crackle of the cold nip at her face. Stars twinkled, untouchably bright. So many of them. Too many, cramming themselves down her throat, overwhelming, perpetual, impossible, enormously insignificant. She looped an arm around Hunter while still transfixed in their gaze.

Heaven had been full on arrival– the writing was in the stars.

Heaven’s full, so I’m headed–

“–Straight to hell.” Crosshair whispered.

Hunter knew, and Hunter understood.

 

…They lay together like that for a long time.

Chapter 3

Summary:

A tiny snapshot of what happened between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 ❣

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Crosshair slotted against Hunter in half-controlled collapse. The bed sagged below them with a creaky thunk, groaning springs belying their age and an implicit familiarity with this sort of thing. The noise from Hunter, on the other hand, suggested the exact opposite.

She gasped, but that may have also been because Crosshair took little precaution to not fall on her, and was now straddled with all 6 feet plus of thorny sniper, who, for all her grace, was currently smothering Hunter like an oversized sack of potatoes.

“Cross–” Hunter muttered as she shimmied out from under Crosshair’s chest. A softer portion of her chest, she couldn’t help but ignore. Her shimmying didn’t get very far before a steady hand stilled her escape. It almost felt….cautious?

Long fingers closed slowly over Hunter’s hip, and she could feel the rapid patter of the sniper’s heartbeat in them. It felt…possessive. Her other hand clasped over Hunter’s other hip. Definitely possessive.

It was hot, and yet Hunter had to be trapped down here and be too damn short to see the little monster’s face. That had to change. Without warning, Hunter hooked her thighs around Crosshair’s waist, linking them together by her ankles, and pulled her down. Hard.

It was very effective. The sergeant liked this very much.

It was all too easy to then flip the little bastard beneath her. After all, they’d spent years practicing it. However, Hunter immediately realized she had no clue what to do next. Sparring usually involved tapping out or…biting.

…Perhaps Hunter did have a clue. It made her shoulders tense in conditioned anticipation of the next move.  But Crosshair just stared, and karkin hells, she’d never seen a look like that before on the sniper’s face. 

So she leaned down to kiss it.  And Crosshair reciprocated, willingly.

Notes:

I meant to write more but my pea-sized attention span had me wrap it up here.

Hope you like!

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