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It starts quick. Scout is packing a bag, throwing in shit without folding, and leaving behind unfinished homework— fuck ‘em , he thinks, he ain't doing math for a school that basically kidnapped him—and he’s running wild like a released stallion on an escape. Scout is tracing his footsteps, and crossing road lines. Scout is peeking through corn stalks and throwing off his uniform coat, bag slung over his shoulder, his breath too fast for him to keep up.
When he stumbles onto the porch, he’s grinning like a devil, knocking loudly, singing out the American anthem. When Soldier opens that door, the bell jingling along like a musical preclude to chaos, his face is flushed pink as he asks, “ Scout ?”
Scout takes a bow, a slow dip of his head, spreading his arms, before he snaps back up just in time to see Soldier’s unimpressed face twist.
“Soldier, big guy,” he says, and, for a second, he feels surprise— good surprise, the kind of surprise that birthday parties and wrapped basketball cards have—that his name was the first thing out of Soldier’s mouth. It sounded burly and confused in the other boy’s voice—it sounded nice.
He was expecting “What the hell are you doing here?”, so… it was nice to hear something different. A little bit nice, don't get him wrong, he's not jumping for joy ‘cause somebody didn't curse his presence for once…
He does jump a little however, when Soldier puts his big hands on his shoulders and asks, red in the face, too close for comfort, “What in tarnation are you doing here?”
There it is.
Scout shoots him a relaxed, totally chill look.
“I'm takin’ you some place. Wear your best swimsuit.”
Soldier’s nose wrinkles. “I only have one.”
“Wear that one, then—It don't matter—today’s a fun day—”
“I’m supposed to be taking care of my sister today.” Soldier looks curious, but then stamps that curiosity down like it's done something to somebody. “It ain't a fun day. She needs me here, she's got the flu.”
“Well, where is she?”
“Sleeping.”
Scout peers at him with puppy dog eyes. (Which he does excellently, by the way.) “C’mon, is she really gonna miss you when she's sleeping?”
“She…” Soldier bites his lip, curls it back. He glances to a ticking clock, a cuckoo clock with Uncle Sam as the bird. “I don't know, but my mom put me in charge—I can't possibly betray her trust—”
“Na-na-na.” Scout shakes him off, reaches up, and silences him with the side of his fingers to his mouth. “None of that. You're having fun today. It'll be an hour, two hours at once.”
“What if she wakes up?”
“She won't.” Flu makes you sleep forever. Scout wasn't sick a lot as a kid, but when he was, he was knocked out. He didn't even open his eyes to see who was feeding him chicken noodle soup. “And if she does, bein’ alone for a while won't kill her. I was alone a lot when I was a kid.”
“I can tell,” Soldier mutters. Scout pretends he can't hear him.
“Bring a towel, sunshine,” Scout says, with a tiny smirk crooked to the left. Sly and cool. “We're taking a hike.”
“A hike?”
“Well, actually,” Scout thinks about it, how to format a sentence and all that. ELA always did him dirty. “We're going on a walk.”
“A walk?!”
Scout's brow furrows. He tries something, “We're going to Kroger.”
“A—a Kroger?”
Okay, so that's how it is, he thinks, seeing the absolute giddiness radiating off of him, like a kid with too much candy. Man, fuck Soldier.
“Hey.” He calls out, scowling, not really feeling too upset about it. “I can hear you repeating the last words of what I say. You ain't slick.”
“Repeating what you say? Ain't slick?” Soldier gasps, and, when Scout looks at him annoyedly, he breaks into an almost shy smile. “Sorry, uh… that was kinda…” he runs the back of his neck, where small brown hairs grow, “I liked that.”
Scout glitches out a little bit.
“Well… fuck,” he mutters, shakes his head. Louder, he says, “ Stop liking it. If you drive me crazy, who's gonna teach you about the wonders of disobeying the law? Huh, what, then, big guy?”
Soldier bites his lips, and then, his big paw comes out to hide his smile entirely. ( Fuck, why'd you do that? Scout thinks when he sees the large grin disappear, his fire bumming out all of a sudden.)
“S’pose I ought to keep you around then,” he says, and he looks across the far planes. Nothing but corn. “You're the only interesting person here, I reckon.”
“And the most handsome guy you'll meet everywhere else,” Scout adds. “Don't you forget that, and spread the word, too.”
“I'll tell every lad and lady I know.”
“Right,” he says, and then, gaze shifting away to examine the living room, the same kind of cowardly flicker that comes when you stare at the sun for too long, “You better.”
Scout’s jaw clenches tight as he looks away, making sure Soldier’s parents ain't home. It's not that he's afraid of meeting them, it's just that… well… he's not ready. Not ready to meet the two-parent Hotdog-and-Apple-Pie household Soldier probably, no, definitely, comes from. What if those people—good people, because someone like Soldier comes from the salt of the earth , a rare sort of decent—take one look at him and they know? Know all he's got is Ma and a clan of brothers. Know that he's fatherless and permanently wandering because of that.
Oblivious to his internal crisis about what a fatherless wimp he is, Soldier runs up the stairs, his heavy footsteps echoing in the empty home, and, when he returns, he comes back with a camper’s bag slung over his broad shoulder. God, he’s a unit. Scout would be impressed, if he wasn't a hundred times a million stronger… so he's just approving. Y’know, from one big guy to another.
“I left her a note,” Soldier says, burly and honest, tipping his chin as he walks.
He wants to tease him a little, but finds he can't, ‘cause that's just sweet. Really sweet. He can't imagine any of his brothers doing anything like that before him—not that they're bad brothers or anything, it's just that they're boys, tougher than most, born on the grimy side of town—and he finds the corners of his mouth turning up without his permission, his face betraying him.
“Good,” he says.
And then—dragging him back outside, hot sun on his skin, the taste of rebellion in the air—they make their way to the local pool.
“On with the journey!” Scout declares, striding forward, knowing the way perfectly despite only being here for less than a month.
The sun glimmers in the sky the whole way there, as though smiling at them. Soldier sings a song, the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away, and Scout learns the words by watching his lips.
“Many years have passed since I strolled by the river,” Scout says, decidedly off tune, “arm in arm, with my sweetheart Mary by my side—”
“It was there I tried to tell her,” Soldier sings, low, in a practiced way that he credits to his younger years in the church’s choir, “that I loved her, it was only there I begged of her to be my bride.”
“And long years have passed since I strolled through the churchyard,” Scout's accent, thick as margarine, merges and blurs the lines between these words, “she’s sleeping there! My angel! Mary, my dear!”
“I loved her, but she thought I didn't mean it.” Soldier looks off. “Still I’d give my future were she only here.”
Scout stops first. HOTEL RESIDENTS ONLY, warns a diamond sign in tangerine orange, stuck to a metal pole.
“Don’t nobody listen to this, do they?” Scout asks, a bit of triumph thumping in his chest. It may just be his heart.
“Nobody,” Soldier agrees. “You have to stay in the big hotel for you to come in—that’s the only way you're allowed to take a swim.”
Scout looks up.
“Good thing there's a fence.”
Soldier barely has a second to react when Scout’s bag is tossed up in the air, falling to the concrete with a heavy whoop —and then Scout is jumping up like a ninja turtle and climbing over that thing. (He looks really cool while doing this. Trust him.)
He stumbles to the other side. When he turns, he sees Soldier stand up a little straighter, curse under his breath, and hop up too. It's only when he feels the ground tremble, when he sees Soldier next to him, only then does he turn.
There's not too many people at the pool, which is reasonable, if you consider it's a Tuesday in August, but there's a random toddler, orange floaties clamped to his arms, floating aimlessly in the deep end and a small gaggle of other people that crowd the small jacuzzi to the side.
“This is against the law,” Soldier whispers, but his voice is so brash and bombastic that the girls sitting in the beach chairs look up anyway.
“If we get caught, you can blame me.” Scout swings his bag back into his hands. “You ready to go?”
“...Sure.”
Slippery bathroom floors almost make him skate across the pool’s changing room, but he manages not to fall. In the span of five minutes, he's got his swimming trunks on, his sunglasses propped on the top of his baseball cap. He looks pretty swag, if you ask him.
When he steps out, Soldier is already waiting for him. He's got that helmet still on, but that's not the thing that makes Scout’s eyes bulge out his head.
“Dude…” he says, surprisingly somber. “I think… this has gone too far.”
Soldier, dressed in American flag trunks , lifts up his chin, defiant, his defined chest swelling up with pride, his dog tags swinging as he places his hands on his hips. It would've been cute, if Scout wasn't so absolutely astonished.
“I will not be ashamed of my patriotism,” he says, and Scout isn't looking where he should.
“Whatever, man,” Scout mutters, rolling his eyes if only to distract himself a little. He saunters off, unbothered—and if he is a little bothered, it's because the heat’s getting to him and he would really, really like to get in the pool—knowing without looking that Soldier’s following him.
In a main character pose, Scout stands with his back turned to the edge of the pool. He teeters the edge, lets himself feel the dew, the cool side. Anything to get this heat away.
“You have that hat on.”
“It's a cap,” Scout says. “It's all-purpose, and you've got your helmet on.”
“Yours is made of cloth. It'll get wet in the waters.”
“So?”
Soldier stares at him hard. “If it gets wet, it'll make mold.”
“Yeah, yeah, mold s'mold, and you've got an eagle on your ass,” Scout quips. “We're both fashion disasters. Someone call Mackenzie Hollister.”
Soldier frowns, and comes dangerously close to pouting.
“It's not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I want to see you,” Soldier insists, and, mother of fuckin' god, he sounds so earnest, so honest, like he ain't ever lied before. Scout wishes he was lying, more than anything.
“What? You wanna compare hairlines or somethin’?” He asks, with a casual roll of his eyes. “You first. Ain't no way you're not bald.”
“I'm not bald,” Soldier defends, before he blushes. “No–not that there's anything wrong with that, but…”
“But?” Scout reaches up—god, he's gotta go on his tippy toes, he hates tall people—and pushes that helmet. “Lemme see.”
Scout’s nose twitches like a bunny’s. “This is vastly inappropriate,” he murmurs lowly, and, up, up, up, Scout can see his eyes better now. Blue wandering eyes that don't seem to be looking Scout head-on. In this moment, he can see everything slowly, moving at a butterfly’s pace, so, so close…
And their noses almost touch, and the helmet is tipping off, and Scout's eyes dart, for just a moment, to somewhere lower than Soldier’s eyes—and then—
“WAAAAAAH!”
Scout yelps—and, yes, you dickhead, that counts as a yelp—as the whiplash of this treason hits him. Submerged in water, floating on top of a loose pool noodle, he can only look up in shock. Horror. Betrayal.
“You just… you just…”
Above him, and disgustingly dry, Soldier’s face is flushed pink, a wide, damn silly grin splitting across, ear-to-ear. He's breathing hard and laughing even harder, so hard that he nearly trips into the pool with him.
His helmet’s off now, fallen to the ground, and he's got this short, choppy brown hair, the kind of hair real military boys have, overgrown a little. Nothing hides those dancing blue eyes anymore.
Scout nearly loses his breath and he looks away, curses loudly to cover up his surprise. “Oh, you little…!”
Without a second of delay, Scout pulls him into the pool by his leg, hands clutching around his thigh like some kind of horror movie monster, and, once the farmer boy is dragged, he pounces on him, the water rippling under his strides.
Soldier chokes back alarmed shouts—desperate glances to the teenage girls on the safe, dry chairs, and, in a last ditch attempt at getting help, a call to the toddler floating; he is promptly ignored—as he tries to dodge him, but Scout’s too fast to be avoided. He's a shark, all right. An orca of the Indiana pool.
Scout, wild-eyed and cackling, pulls him underwater, his heart pounding so loud it becomes a battle drum in his ear. Soldier’s arm is thick but he manages to tug tug tug until he's flailing.
I'll get you, he thinks, his thoughts making everything else muffled and quiet. A determinated stream of existence: I'll get you!
“This is attempted murder, you scoundrel! Against Indiana code thirty-five—”
“Under! Under!”
“Forty-two—”
“Sink the ship!”
“One-one—!”
“Down with the soldier!”
“I AM NOT DOWN! I AM WET!”
“You aren't wet, the water’s wet, buddy-pal,” Scout snickers, and he's so happy he might just burst, oblivious and dumb like a little kid who still hasn't learned you shouldn't cry. So happy that it turns goddamn stupid, because the next thing he says is, “don't worry ‘bout nothin’, you're still pretty.”
Soldier’s laughter fades like smoke in the wind, gone and then, everything is silent and clear and heard. His brow scrunches, and his eyes go wide, and he's staring.
Staring, probably, confused, weirded out, ‘cause Scout says the wrong things. It's a terrible habit of his.
Never one to apologize ( also a terrible habit), Scout is breathless for any other kind of remedy, response, something to say to fix this because what the hell? A sharp regret strikes him dead in the heart, a sinking moment of dread that is strong enough to pull a guy down into the bottom of the pool. The fuck did I do that? He thinks, unable to find a reason. A reason that makes actual sense.
“Fuck—” Scout says, and he laughs, a short noise that isn't very funny anymore. “I mean, like… you know.” He nods bobble-head style. “Y’know how it is, Soldier. You get it.”
“Yeah, I do,” Soldier’s voice is soft, crinkled and warm as the crackle of fire. Embarrassment twinges his tone. He looks down, short lashes fluttering, and asks, “Do they got the beach in your Massachusetts?”
“Eh.” Desperate to ignore his fumble, Scout thinks of the past. “They probably had beaches. I’ve never seen ‘em, though, could just be a conspiracy. I wouldn't know. But—they had ports. I used to go there all the time… with my brothers, sneaking around.”
He doggy-paddles to the side of the pool, hitches himself up on the metal ladder, looking cool and collected, not some little boy ready to cry. Beneath the cool water enveloping his foot, he can feel even colder metal. A type of texture he needs, ‘cause in the water, you're in a vacuum. You exist for longer than you think you should—creating waves with every step, splashes with every laugh, chlorine burning your eyes and, suddenly, there ain't no other life than this one. No other person than the one in front of you.
And Soldier is in front of him.
What the fuck does that mean?
He catches his breath, hard and short, and talks, talks like he talks about everything, “Had water blue, not Florida blue, but I liked it. It was murky and dark, you couldn't see the bottom of it. It was real, and the ships would pass by, and cargo would get unloaded and I'd sit and watch as people worked.”
Soldier can easily reach the shallow end’s ground, but Scout still sees him kicking to make sure he stays floating, sees him fiddling with his fingers. Refraction bends them, warps the view, makes it wobble.
“You think… you think they remember you now?” Soldier asks, almost timid.
“I was a dumb kid in a small town with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be,” Scout laughs, barking like a dog. “That’s a dime a dozen. Ain't no one would remember me unless I was causing trouble.”
Soldier looks like he wants to say more. He doesn't, and Scout doesn't make him. Who knew he could shut the fuck up? Ma would be proud—well, not proud. She'd be at peace for once.
He was always causing trouble as a boy. Scout doesn't regret it, because there's no room for regret when there's windows to climb into and red rules to break, especially when you've got brothers who won't let you play soccer with ‘em. Scout causes trouble. He is trouble. But—sometimes—only ever sometimes—he lets himself be quiet. Lets himself hear the wind, the splash of the ports, the metallic noise of the ships being docked.
It doesn't fit who he is. Scout is the troublemaker who gets caught, the loud mouth who can't shut up worth a damn, the wayward son with a grudge to pick and a mother to make worried (and disappointed, she's disappointed even if she doesn't show it).
Soldier should be disappointed too. Soldier should be furrowed-browed and shaking his head at the idea, should be accusing him of being a no-good law breaker (which he is). That's not what he's doing—Soldier looks at him like he can believe anything he says, like he's someone who isn't defined by how many write-ups he has.
“So you'd sit there,” Soldier begins slowly, watching him and only him, “and you'd just watch the ships?”
“I used to draw them,” Scout remembers faintly, an uneven hum in the back of his throat. “Had a—uh, a sketchbook and everything. Ma would buy me these shitty colored pencils. One of those art box kits for my eighth birthday. Used to draw shit all the time.”
“But… not anymore?”
“Nah.” Scout looks away, suddenly embarrassed. Why the hell did he even share that? He shakes his head at himself and his bad decisions. “That's girl shit, you know? Coloring pretty pictures while everyone else is playing baseball and drinking whiskey? My brothers would never let me live it down.” When Soldier’s stare is unconvinced, Scout desperately goes on, “I–I wasn't too good either. I wasn't no Picasso. So—I don't do it.”
“I think you should,” Soldier says. Too soft, the words coming out like sweet strawberry dew. Something's wrong with both of ‘em.
Scout laughs but, this time, his boisterous chuckle is subdued, coming out as fake and chemical as Red 40.
“I think you'd oughta mind your goddamn business, pal,” he says, with more bite than intended. He regrets it a millisecond later, when he sees the way Soldier just— deflates. “I–I don't mean it in a bad way,” he hurriedly adds, “it's just… you don't know what you're unleashing.”
It's a lame joke. Soldier looks a little less miserable though—and why the hell is he miserable that Scout’s giving up on his dreams? Seems a little unrelated, ain't nobody ever care that much, especially not on something that can't earn you a dime—so it makes being desperately unfunny a little less cringe.
“I’d like to see you draw.”
“You wouldn't. I ain't good at it.”
“I would, even if it was the worst thing I'd ever seen.”
“Have some faith,” Scout huffs. “It's not good , yeah, but it's… It’s not hideous. I'm good at scenes.” He can see Soldier begin to form a sentence, definitely a sappy one, which makes Scout interrupt before he can start, “ Not good. You're a fool if you think I'm doing the whole Monet thing.”
“ You make me a goddamn fool,” Soldier mutters in a way that he isn't clearly meant to hear but he does—because Scout Wilson always does what you don't want him to do.
And, fuck.
Scout… doesn't know what to say to that.
His throat closes up. He looks at Soldier, and Soldier looks at the pool’s floor, blue and white tile, stained off-color by years’ worth of chlorine and summer.
Never able to stand the silence, he speaks up.
“Hey.” His foot travels in slow motion underwater as he nudges at Soldier’s leg. When the other boy looks up, he begins, uncertain, “You wanna…”
You wanna forget all about this?
You wanna see my art?
You wanna tell me why you're being so weird?
Scout swallows.
“You wanna see me do a cannonball?”
“You can't,” Soldier says, matter-of-factly, with that tiny bit of hesitance at the end of his voice that tells him that the guy would very much like to see him flip over and launch himself into the deep end.
Scout’s smile sparks, and then, when he sees the curve at the end of Soldier’s rough lips, it widens.
“Watch me,” he dares, and, like someone who's only ever brave when he don't gotta face himself, he runs up the pool and breaks the rules so hard they both get kicked out.
(And then they sneak back in… on Soldier’s volition. Scout is a terrible influence. Strangely, he can't wait to be worse.)