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Hunter hears the footsteps walking down the hallway behind him and he prays they keep walking and don’t detour towards the door which leads to the balcony upon which he is laying. Tonight is not one that he wants to be found.
Alas, luck has rarely been on Hunter’s side, and the door slides open soon enough and even over the overpowering smell of the rain, he knows it’s Crosshair. Better than some long-neck, he supposes, but he’d still rather be out here alone.
The sound of the rain hammering down on him is annoying, but it’s better than the buzz of the lights inside, and it’s hard to keep his eyes open with the rain pouring into them, but he learned to swim with his eyes open a long time ago. Crosshair’s head appears in Hunter’s vision soon enough, peering down at him like he’s a nutter, which he probably is, yet that doesn’t mean Crosshair can look at him like this.
Hunter lifts his arm over his head, his hand curled into a fist and he bashes it against Crosshair’s shin. Crosshair lifts his foot and bangs it against Hunter’s head, hard enough that his ear rings, but not so hard that it really hurts.
‘Di’kut,’ Crosshair mutters.
All the same, he moves to Hunter’s side and, with all the grunts and groans of a man three times his age, lowers himself to the floor next to him and lays out flat. He grumbles for a few minutes, wriggling about on the duracrete and Hunter rolls his eyes at his fussing.
‘Will you hold still?’ he snaps after a moment, harsher than Hunter had intended, but the rustling and constant jostling next to him is pissing him off.
‘How is this comfortable for you?’ Crosshair complains, though he does lie still per Hunter’s request. He knows when not to push it with Hunter.
‘When did I say it’s comfortable?’
It’s not comfortable, at least it’s less comfortable than the shitty cots they have in their barracks, but it could be worse. The hard floor digs into his shoulder blades, his head hurts where it sits on the ground and his blacks are completely soaked through, making him shiver slightly, but he’d still rather be out here.
‘Then why the fuck are you here?’ Crosshair retorts. ‘It’s freezing,’
‘Exactly,’
Crosshair pauses and rolls his head to the side to stare at him. Hunter can feel the judgement in his silence.
‘I don’t understand you,’ Crosshair mutters, turning his head back to look at the sky.
Hunter hums in agreement. He doesn’t understand himself, either.
‘How did you know where I was?’ he asks. Crosshair huffs.
‘I didn’t. I’ve been sneaking around for an hour trying to find you. Do you know how many long-necks nearly caught me?’ Crosshair tries to sound like it was a real hardship, but Hunter knows he’d have spent an entire day searching for him if he needed to. He’d whinge and complain about it afterwards, but he’d do it.
‘Oh… sorry,’ Hunter says nonetheless, because it’s easier to play along with Crosshair’s annoyance than think of something else to say.
‘Think they’re ready to be shot of us, we’ve been a pain in their backside for the last nine years,’ Crosshair points out. This time, it’s Hunter’s turn to huff at his brother.
‘Well, they’ve got their wish. We’re leaving in three days,’ Hunter says bluntly.
He hears the hitch in Crosshair’s breath, the way his heart speeds up just a little before settling back into its usual rhythm.
‘Where to?’
‘Ryloth system, got some Seppy base to infiltrate. They want information, said to keep it clean. Figure I’ll let Wrecker blow it up when we’re through,’ Hunter explains. He blinks away some of the water in his eyes, but it only burns more as the droplets trickle down his cheeks and cling to his lashes.
‘He’ll like that,’ Crosshair responds lightly. ‘When were you gonna tell us?’
Hunter sucks in a deep breath, keeping his teeth clenched to keep the water from finding its way into his lungs.
‘Whenever I get up off the floor,’ he says, his tone just as light as Crosshair’s.
Crosshair sighs loudly in the way he does when he’s psyching himself up to do something nice. It takes a lot of effort for him to do it, at least that’s what Hunter knows he wants everyone to think.
‘When I was younger, I was excited to go out for the first time so I could…’
Crosshair pauses, and takes a deep breath as if the next words are causing him great pain to utter. Hunter, oddly, finds himself cracking a little grin to himself at his brother’s turmoil.
‘...so I could see the stars,’ he finishes off.
Hunter nearly laughs.
The idea of Crosshair, tough, unbothered Crosshair, wants to see the stars seems ludicrous. But Hunter manages to hold himself back, knowing that for some reason, this all means much more to his brother than he will ever understand.
‘You can’t see them here, it’s always cloudy… I don’t know, it’s stupid. I just always wanted to see them,’
Hunter rolls his head over to look at Crosshair.
‘We’ll see them all. Every single one of them. I promise,’ he tells him. It feels stupid, at surface level, but Hunter can tell it means a lot to his brother.
At that moment, Hunter’s stomach growls loudly and he curses it’s betrayal of him as he turns back to the sky. Crosshair doesn’t need his brother’s enhanced hearing to notice it.
‘You’re hungry,’ he points out, as if that hasn’t been made obvious.
‘It’s fine,’ Hunter tries to brush it aside, but his brother is a hound with a fucking bone.
‘You haven’t been eating,’ Crosshair pushes.
‘It’s fine,’ Hunter repeats in a low voice, one that would have anybody else backing off.
Not Crosshair.
‘They changed the menu last month. You don’t like the new food,’ he continues. Hunter shakes his head gently, too much movement causes too much of a headache right now.
‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ Hunter retorts. ‘Well, it is that I don’t like it, but it’s more than that. It’s that I can’t stand the thought of it, that the idea of putting that filth in my mouth makes me want to tear my fucking skin off and then pluck my bones from the muscle inside,’
There’s another pause. Again, Hunter feels the judgement, but not in the unkind sense. Just the brotherly type that he’s known all his life.
‘That’s a bit dramatic,’ Crosshair deadpans.
Hunter snorts. ‘That’s rich coming from you. Mr Give Me My Toothpick Or I’ll Tear Your Tongue Out Your Mouth,’
Crosshair doesn’t respond to that.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asks instead. Hunter hadn’t expected that. He’d expected a joke or to be made fun of, not such genuine concern.
They don’t talk like this. It’s starting to weird Hunter out, but he’s too tired to read too much into it, so he tries to go along with it. He shrugs his shoulders gently, the movement has his shoulder blades dragging uncomfortably against the duracrete below him. He can hear the scrape of his blacks against it and he winces at the sound.
‘I don't know,’ he admits dejectedly.
It's never been this bad before. Hunter has never been so viscerally disgusted by the food set in front of him, but even just the smell of the mess hall is enough to have him turning on his heel and walking the other way.
‘You've never met any of the growth markers they expected from us. If you were a reg you'd have been discarded years ago,’ Crosshair points out, as if that fact hasn't been drilled into him since he could walk.
‘Thank you, Crosshair, that's really helpful,’ Hunter scoffs.
‘I didn't say it was helpful,’ Crosshair says.
The rain continues lashing down on them, Crosshair has begun shivering where he lays. Hunter is laying still, relishing in the numbness that has taken over his body, a brief reprieve from the agony of clothing on his skin, of the feeling of the hairs on his arms rubbing between.
‘We should go inside,’ he says quietly. He doesn't want to go in yet, but he knows that Crosshair won't leave him out here, and the poor man is about to start losing toes judging by the way Hunter can hear his teeth chattering.
‘Thought you'd never say that,’ Crosshair mutters, quickly jumping to his feet, clearly eager to get back into the dry building behind them. Hunter doesn’t miss the way he stumbles slightly as he stands on undoubtedly numb feet.
When Hunter hesitates to get up, Crosshair stands over him and extends a hand downwards. He stares at the offer for a moment, one that has been offered so many times, but has never held such unrelenting weight behind it. Reluctantly, Hunter grasps the outstretched hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet.
‘Come on, vod. You need some rest, stars know we'll be running low on that soon enough,’ Crosshair tells him quietly as he guides the pair of them, dripping rain water from their hair and fingers, back towards their bunks.
And Crosshair is right. This is the moment they've waited for since they knew who they were. The day they receive their first orders, their very first mission, hopefully one of many. Hunter always thought it would be an exciting moment, but as he allows himself to be pulled down the halls and stuffed into corners when one of the long-necks walks past, all he feels is hollow.
Gone is the wonder of being a cadet, the excitement of knowing that their lives will have such intense meaning to the people of the entire galaxy. In its place sits the understanding that has come with age, because they will mean nothing to anyone else, just another number. Another slab of meat to protect them in war, and when they die, nobody will care.
Nobody but their brothers.