Hunter enters as the (ex_gravedigg366) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-27 22:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | dorian gray, hawkeye |
Who: Callum and Hunter
What: Callum is, like, spy.
Where: Callum's Motel
When: A while ago.
Warnings/Rating: Some language.
The motel off of Fremont wasn’t anything to write home about. Small rooms, stained ceilings, and bedding that was thoroughly bleached, it was simply a roof over one’s head. But it was as much of a home as Callum had had in some time, the space lived in and comfortable only in the way a shitty hotel room could be. Currently, the small table in the corner was occupied with a spread of Chinese food, including the ‘shitty little dumplings’ that his brother had requested. A six pack sat on the floor nearby and Callum lounged on the bed, idly scratching Max behind his ears as he watched some old rerun of a sitcom on the ages old television.
Callum knew quite well that he was waltzing into something dangerous with this ‘talk’ he and his brother finally needed to have. He trusted Hunter not to go blabbing things to anyone, but that didn’t mean Shailee would be happy in the slightest about him talking. But Hunter was family, and it had been a long time since Callum had felt any kind of familial connections, and with Maren’s death, he wanted to preserve those for as long as he could. Which meant breaking rules, coming clean, at least in as much of a way as he could. He owed Hunter that much.
Rolling over onto his side, Callum found the ratty old tennis ball that Max favoured, and giving it a toss towards the closet of the bedroom, he watched the dog scamper away to retrieve the ball, a faint grin coming to his lips.
Hunter was tired of losing out when it came to family. They all got screwed on that roulette, and Hunter had run off early because Zee had seemed like everything that home wasn’t, somebody safe that cared about him, but not too much, just enough that Hunter could watch his eyes turn right toward him and see the guy smile, not frown or throw anything or come at him with a fist or worse. He’d left his siblings behind on the assumption that they could leave if they wanted, that he couldn’t be Zee. Hunter thought he couldn’t protect anybody and he was so afraid of failing at it he couldn’t even try.
After Maren, after feeling her being dead when she was missing, hearing she was dead from some stranger, and finally seeing it happen himself, Hunter found out that he could lose even if he wasn’t protecting. He had left years ago and it wasn’t supposed to hurt when he lost something he didn’t have. But it did. It hurt a lot. It hurt so much Hunter felt crazy about losing something else. He thought if he saw Callum get shot too he might just come apart into pieces, so many pieces that he wouldn’t want to pick himself up again after. He was angry at Callum for doing that to him, even if he hadn’t yet got around to getting shot yet.
He left Fluff the Collie at Zee’s, and he put on a clean shirt before showing up at the ugly motel. It didn’t look like anything to Hunter’s eyes, just a place, and he’d seen worse, been to worse, stayed in worse. He threw his fist on the right door and turned the knob without waiting for permission.
Callum looked up at the sound of the knock, giving the tennis ball one last toss before he rolled off of the bed and onto his feet just in time for the door to open. He gave a lazy stretch, crooking a thumb towards the table in the corner. “Yeah, go on. Let yourself in. See how you are?” he said with more than a little tease in his voice. “Glad to see you found the place. Didn’t get mugged on your way over here, did ya?” It was still strange to be in the company of his brother, someone he missed out on a lot of years with, but the strangeness didn’t leave to discomfort. Just an awkwardness that didn’t yield quickly. “I got those dumplings you were wanting,” Callum said as he pulled a chair out and dropped down into it, pointing at the waxed paper container with said dumplings. “You’re not allergic to anything, are ya? I can’t remember.”
Hunter wasn’t sorry about letting himself in, and he had done it for two reasons: one, so he didn’t have time to hesitate, and two, so he could see what Callum was doing before his brother really had time to prepare. The motel room was nothing, but Hunter looked around and saw no guns on the wall (not exactly a rare sight in Montana) or anywhere else. He didn’t see any secret spy stuff that would make him angry, or anyone he could take the anger out on. Instead he saw a cute dog chasing a ball and a serious spread of food.
Successfully disarmed, Hunter pulled the door shut behind him and strode in on his heavy boots, hands in his pockets while he waited to greet the dog, and then the man. “Not that I know of,” Hunter said, shaking his head. Allergies, seriously. “If I had a food allergy, mom would have killed me by accident years ago.”
It was conversation to fill the space as he watched Hunter enter. There was no missing the way he glanced around, likely looking for something incriminating to Callum’s secretive job. But there was nothing, at least nothing visible at first. The bedside table held his travel plans to Kuala Lampur, where he would be joining Shailee in only a matter of days, but otherwise, work was elsewhere, not tucked in this shitty hotel room. “Just making sure,” Callum said idly as he gave Hunter a nod, already moving to plop food on one of the paper plates that was set out. The dog came up to sniff at Hunter for a moment, judging him as friend or foe before scampering away to retrieve his slobber-covered tennis ball, dropping it at the other’s feet with an expectant wag of his tail.
“Raegan agreed to watch him while I was gone,” Callum offered, snapping his chopsticks apart, managing to break the top off of one which just caused him to curse and try and break off the offending piece with one hand. “Hate having to leave him with people when I’m gone. But hell, traveling isn’t easy with animals, so you do what you gotta do, right?” Callum kicked out the other chair. “Sit. Eat. Have a beer.”
Being in the same room with Callum put strange pins into Hunter’s spine and neck. Callum had never hurt him, nor did Hunter think he would, but the cadence of his brother’s voice took him home again. Stained carpet, the chatter of an anonymous tube television, the sour smell of leftover dinner from three days ago, and menace lurking around every corner, waiting to catch him unawares. It made Hunter’s skin crawl, unconscious though it was, and he tensed, waiting for a blow that wouldn’t come.
To ease it, he went down to one knee after establishing with the pup who was in charge and that nobody was an enemy. He gave the dog’s ears a rub and then picked up the soaked tennis ball to give it a hard spin at the wall. It bounced off the peeling wallpaper and went shooting around the room, giving the pup some work. Hunter sat where he’d been told, and he rooted around in the bag for a fork. He was no better at chopsticks than Callum. Worse, even. He popped a dumpling in his mouth using his fingers while he searched. Awkward silence extended.
“So,” Callum started after they had both had a few bites and the start of a beer, idly dumping several packets worth of soy sauce on his food, giving it a stir with one of the forks they had found hiding in the bottom of the bags. “I promised you some answers, so go on. Ask whatever it is you want to ask and I’ll give you the truth.” The truth being heavily modified, but he hoped it would satisfy Hunter’s curiosity. As much as Callum wanted to be boldly honest with his brother, he could not forgive the contracts he had signed, the non-disclosure agreements, the piles of paper that promised he wouldn’t leak information to anyone who was not immediately involved. Being truthful was one thing, being sent to prison for terrorism against the country was another. He had a fine line to walk between the pair, and he just hoped he didn’t fall off of it.
Hunter knew that he wasn’t as smart as a lot of people, and he knew that Callum had been the smartest in town. He could always talk himself out of trouble, and Hunter had envied the talent. He stuck a fork into his chow mein and avoided looking over at his brother, concentrating on his question. “I want to know who those people were that were shooting at you,” he decided, for the first one. He poked at the chow mein a little bit more, flopping the noodles to one side first and the next side a moment later. When he applied himself to the beer it was more earnest, and he drank half of it in a pull. “And if they are like to come here.”
Simple questions like this, Callum could answer. He waited until he had swallowed down his own mouthful of meat and veg before answering, wiping his mouth clean with his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know the ‘who’ exactly. They were looking for someone with my set of skills, and they only told me as much as they wanted me to know, which was next to nothing. Data gathering. Breaking into security systems. Hacking. They paid me for my set of skills and I did what they needed me to do.” One shoulder shrugged up and Callum leaned over to give Max a quick rub on the top of his head, watching as the dog settled down between his and Hunter’s feet. “And no. They aren’t coming up here, that I can guarantee you. Pretty sure most of them are dead, and none of them knew my real name. We’re safe from them. Promise.” The words were honest, nothing shifted around or changed for Hunter’s sake, because the question didn’t dig into who he actually worked for. If they stayed this simple, Callum knew they’d get off lucky.
Hunter turned his head to scrutinize his brother’s expression. Like most men, Hunter assumed that he could tell when someone was lying to him, that if he looked hard enough he could see through to their hearts. In reality, Hunter was no better at reading men than the puppy at their feet, and like most people who had grown up as they had, the Westerbergs were all good at lying. He took it as truth, and it was really just a roll of the die that it was. “What do they do with your skills? You break it or you hack it and then what happens?”
“Then I sit back and see if anything else needs to be done and wait to get paid. Sometimes I get caught if shit goes wrong, but most of the time, it’s pretty cut and dry.” Leaning forward, Callum jabbed his fork into the container of sweet and sour, popping a piece in his mouth to chew. “That’s what you saw. When shit went down. It doesn’t happen often, but it does. Kind of comes with the job, I guess. I’d say I’m used to it but...” Callum trailed off, glancing off to the side with a shrug of his shoulders, tipping back half his beer.
Hunter stopped chewing. A noodle was hanging out of the corner of his mouth as he stared at his brother. “What do you mean, you get caught. You get caught. The bad guys, the bad guys with guns. They catch you when stuff goes on?” Hunter didn’t like that at all, not one bit. It was a shockingly selfish thing, a concern of potential loss. He remembered the rattle of things attacking him--attacking Callum--that feeling of being pinned down without escape. The bravery, that escaped him, because it wasn’t what would lose things.
He could see the way that bit of information affected Hunter, his brow furrowing down slightly before he gave a shake of his head. “Not like me, personally, but the people I’m with. I don’t work for nice people, and they aren’t trying to break into nice people’s shit. So yeah, sometimes shit goes down. I tend to be on the edge of it when and if it happens, so when it does, I grab what I can and I run and find a nice safe place to hole up until everything settles down.” He gave a shrug and tipped back the rest of his beer. “That doesn’t happen that often. I could sugar coat it for you if you’d rather, but you wanted honesty, and I’m giving you honesty, even if you don’t like it.” And it was plain to Callum that Hunter didn’t particularly care for any of what was being said. He had no idea how that memory of his, undoubtedly from Argentina, would affect his brother, and it was quite clear then and there that even though they were made from the same people, there were some fierce differences between them.
All the alarm bells behind Hunter’s eyes went off. His gaze narrowed suspiciously, and abruptly he looked like the child from Montana, the one with dirt and blood all over his face that was as unpredictable as elk in the fall. It made him look young, stupid, and violent. “What do you mean, not nice people? You know that Maren was working for ‘not nice people’ and then they got pissy one day and killed her? What kinda warning you need?” Hunter thrust his bendy fork into the box of noodles with special vigor. Maybe they were all just hick stupid and they were going to get killed one by one. Hunter was not resigned to that, and though Callum might be smarter, Hunter didn’t think that meant he made better decisions.
“Christ, Hunter,” Callum put his fork down and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, massaging away the headache that was rapidly developing behind his eyes. “It’s not like that, okay? Because I’ve got people watching my back now that I didn’t have a year ago. I don’t do this shit on my own anymore, because if I did? I wouldn’t be here right now, alright? I don’t know how much more clear I can make this.” Callum finished off his beer and pulled another from the six-pack, cracking open as he got to his feet. “I’m not gonna end up like Maren. It’s just not going to happen like that.”
If the act of getting up was supposed to usher Hunter out the door, it didn't work. It wasn't that he didn't pick up signals, because he did--in fact he picked up unfriendly signals a lot faster than most men--but in Callum's case he just ignored it. He reached out and took one out of the remaining cluster of beers, cracking it and settling back on his seat, blue jeans working a little bit as he got comfortable. "Be sure of it," was all he said, but he also looked somewhat mollified. Anger hinted at truth to Hunter, and when people got angry he felt like they were a lot more likely to give him truth than when they were happy and smiling. Life, sadly, had not disabused him of this notion.
Callum getting up, pacing, it wasn’t meant to try and run Hunter off, and if his brother had done that, Callum would have given chase. It was one of those moments where he wasn’t entirely sure what to say to get his point across, agitation born into movement, a restlessness he couldn’t entirely shake. Half the beer was drained as he glanced back towards Hunter, catching the words, and giving him a short nod in response.
Leaving Hunter to the noodles, Callum grabbed up the remote to the television and turned it back on, some pre-season football thing on that he didn’t really give two shits about, but it was noise, it filled the air where there weren’t words to do it for them. The carton of sweet and sour was grabbed and Callum moved to occupy the foot of the bed, jabbing his fork repeatedly into the box time and time again for another bite. If there was anything that Callum knew how to do, it was to be quiet, to live without having to fill the space with words, and he was pretty sure that Hunter would find some value in that as well.
After a chug that took in a good third of the beer, Hunter pushed it aside and picked up his box of noodles again. He'd sit there all night, eat Callum's food, and if there was more beer he might get drunk on that and sleep with the dog. It would help his peace of mind a lot more than anything his brother said.