Who: Callum and Hunter What: The brothers reunite... kind of Where: A diner in town When: Recently! Warnings/Rating: None
The diner Callum had picked for dinner that night (if a meal at 2am could be counted as dinner) was a far cry from the lights and glitter of the strip. More greasy spoon than five star restaurant, the servings were large, the prices cheap, and the waitresses this side of impersonal which was perfect for someone like Callum. He had settled into a booth near the back of the place, his back to the wall, entrances and exits within his sight. His backpack took up part of the booth beside him, and papers were spread out over the chipped table, bits and pieces of the information Shailee had given him as part of his ‘welcome to the agency’ folder. More like ‘I hope the leash we’ve put on you doesn’t chafe’, but really, Callum had no room to complain. She was right. He was lucky to have been given a second chance, and if he fucked that up, it would be his own fault. It was time to change his tune, hard as it was to admit to it. But he was a survivor, he knew how to push through situations, knew how to keep himself alive, and he wouldn’t let this beat him.
The waitress, a tiny thing with bleached hair and enough makeup so she could pass for attractive, brought his food by. Chicken fried steak, extra gravy, extra mashed. He flipped a sheet of paper over to read the next page as his fork stirred everything together into a muddled mess. It didn’t have much flavour other than heavy, but it was food, and he could afford it. That’s all that mattered.
Hunter spotted his brother from just outside the diner. It had been years, but the family resemblance was all there, down to the way he held his fork. Hunter almost turned around right there, but for some reason he stopped himself and gave the older man a look through the greasy glass. Whatever he was doing, it looked to Hunter like Callum was doing well for himself. Cheap men doing day-to-day didn’t read files in manila folders, and he’d noticed that Callum’s writing was almost as clean and smart-sounding as Maren’s. He chewed on resentment for a few seconds and then gave up on his curiosity. Why the hell not.
So a few seconds later the rangy young man slid into the booth across from his long lost brother as if he owned it. He didn’t bother trying to read the file upside down, he’d never even tried to be good at letters and it would take them right-side up and him several minutes to come near comprehension. “Sticking around for a while, then?” he commented.
Callum glanced up as the bell above the door rang, catching sight of a man who would be recognizable to him in an instant. It had been over a decade since he had seen Hunter, but there was no way he would forget his brother’s face. Some of the files were pulled closer as Hunter settled into the booth across from him, not so much to hide them as to simply make room. “As long as I’m assigned here,” Callum said as he looked back down to the file, spearing a chunk of steak on his fork and chewing, his brow furrowed down. The answer was enough to make it clear that his presence in Las Vegas was not purely by choice. A swallow of coffee later and Callum glanced back up, giving Hunter a long look before he grabbed one of the menus tucked by the napkin dispenser and bottle of catsup at the end of the table. “Get yourself something to eat. It looks stupid if only one of us is sitting here eating.”
He wasn’t particularly surprised to see Hunter. Sharing a town together, even as one as populous as Vegas, meant that they would likely cross paths at some point, and it wasn’t as though Callum had a bone to pick with his siblings. He had been the first to leave, and he had his reasons for it, but he didn’t expect them to understand or even forgive his sudden disappearance. That kind of family was the sort where you did what you had to do, where you learned to survive by any means necessary, and leaving was how he had done that. “So where are you living at?” Callum asked around another bite of gravy and mashed, thumbing the corner of his mouth clean and wiping his hand on a napkin.
Hunter wasn’t happy with any of his siblings, but none of them had ever really clicked. He remembered Raegan as a strange little tagalong, and he had a fondness for her and for Maren (though he’d never admit the latter), but he wouldn’t confess to being more than simply related to his brother, the big man in the house he hadn’t even wanted to be in. He resented Callum for being successful after his departure, not for the act of leaving alone, and Hunter had an unspoken tendency to glorify any lives that he compared to his own. “Assigned to what,” he said, hoping to communicate his general disdain for Callum’s life just in case Callum was thinking how much better off he was than his little brother, dirty jeans and all.
Hunter waved off the menu but didn’t hesitate in ordering. He didn’t bother trying to charm the waitress, hardly even meeting her eyes as he ordered a steak-and-eggs with an extra side of hashbrowns and coffee. It didn’t matter to him what time it was.
The distaste was obvious, but really, Callum wasn’t bothered by it. Whatever it was that Hunter felt towards him, those were his feelings and he had every right to feel whatever it was he did; Callum wouldn’t try to change that. But if Hunter thought his brother to be ‘successful’, Callum was sure to burst that bubble eventually. It wasn’t until the waitress had left that he made any effort to answer his brother’s question, closing the folder of paperwork and pushing it aside, pulling his plate in front of him instead. “Here instead of prison. And that’s as much as I can tell you.” He wasn’t apologetic in his words, blunt and to the point.
“Oh yeah?” Hunter’s brows sketched upward. He’d done some time in local prisons, things like drunk and disorderly and an accusation of theft that a soft-heart had subsequently dropped because he was young and pathetic, but nothing serious, nothing that would force him to bargain with anybody. He inspected his brother’s face but decided that he could believe him, and it wasn’t a boast. The waitress brought his coffee while the steak fried, and Hunter tore open a sugar and dumped it in. He reached for the file without asking and pulled it toward him with blunt dirty fingers. He had a coat of blackish paint on his nails that had chipped away, but the third and fourth fingers of his left hand had black nails already, black and blue from an accident at work. It was obvious that Hunter did not work in an office.
Hands told a lot about a person, Callum had found over the years. His own held no calluses, but they weren’t soft from a life of sitting behind a desk. He was used to working with his hands, computers, tools, breaking into this and shorting out this, but obviously nothing like the work that Hunter was doing. Manual labor, then, and Callum filed that bit of information away for later. Another bite of chicken fried steak was being chewed when the file was tugged away from where it had sat to his left, and he made no move to stop him. If Shailee wanted to bitch about it, then she could bitch. Pulling it back would just draw attention to what was in it, that he had something to hide, and that was the last thing he needed right then. “How long have you been in Vegas?” he asked by way of drawing the conversation elsewhere, leaning back in his seat, slouched, the sleeves of his worn denim button down pushed up above his elbows.
Hunter was not typically out and about at the time of night. He worked day hours--crack of dawn until nightfall hours--but lately he’d been having trouble sleeping. Whoever it was in the back of his mind was keeping to himself (herself? no, himself), but he was still getting strange dreams, like whatever it was kept leaking over. He could never remember what they were, only that they were not pleasant, and after Hunter woke from such dreams the presence in the back of his mind was definitely not amused. This was significant only because the rest of the time he was generally amused. Hunter suspected Whoever-It-Was thought him petty.
Hunter opened the folder and didn’t so much peruse as study, sipping his coffee. “Few months. Got a job working trail horses few miles out of town. Was hoping Excalibur might pick me up, they pay good.” He might not like his brother, but the usual shields didn’t need to be up. They’d seen each other in pretty bad spots, and that left less to hide.
Callum was a creature of any hour you needed him to be up, and lately, the night was kinder to him than the day, and he suspected that had something to do with the man lurking in his head. He was a quiet one, which Callum appreciated, though Callum couldn’t think to compare to the confidence the sniper had. It was something to work towards, he supposed, but nothing he concerned himself with that much. Lately his concerns led more along the lines of settling into this new life with leashes and rules, handlers and guidelines, a foreign world that he didn’t belong in but was part of nonetheless. He had been a man who operated under his own rules, worked wherever the money was, and didn’t ask questions when the job was done and payment in his pocket. Things were different now. And he had to remember that.
The attention Hunter paid to the papers was somewhat alarming, but still, Callum kept his mouth shut. They detailed the rules, guidelines, drop off points, his housing, and the like. All in all it wasn’t completely interesting, and nowhere did it say who he was working for. “Horses. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me too much,” Callum commented as he took a drink of his own coffee, fingers curled loosely around the ceramic mug. “Are you hurting for money?” He wasn’t making much, just the stipend that was allowed to him on a weekly basis, and all access to the funds he had made working on contract had been cut off to him. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t at least offer help if he could.
Hunter shot his brother a look from under one brow when Callum mentioned horses, ready to cut back with some remark, but when the teasing didn’t come, he humphed and looked back down at the papers. Brow furrowed in concentration, Hunter dropped his chin back down to return his gaze to the paperwork. Rough fingers slid across the front of his shirt as Hunter absent-mindedly did his best to wipe his hands off before turning over the first sheet. He slurped at his coffee, reading down a line that went into so much detail about where Callum was to live that it took the description out of Hunter’s vocabulary. “This is some serious James Bond shit, Callum,” Hunter said, finally dropping back against the booth and putting one boot up on the seat next to Callum’s knee. He punctuated the opinion with a hard look that told him not to ask about money.
The look was enough not to have him offering again. If he was asked, he would offer, but that would be the end of it as far as Callum was concerned. He sipped at his coffee as he watched Hunter peruse the folder of information, lifting his brows when his brother abandoned it, his smile wry. “Serious, yes. Better than prison though,” Callum responded a moment later, shrugging it off with a sigh as he tipped his head back against the cracked vinyl seat back, eyes closing for a long moment. There was still a lot to think on, and Shailee kept coming back to mind, how he ought to be thankful, how he ought to be grateful he had even been offered any of this.
“Yeah, you said that already,” Hunter commented, smirking at the reappearance of prison into the conversation and giving Callum a look that he hoped adequately communicated how little he cared about Callum’s problems staying out of prison. He did, actually, care if his brother was in prison, but not enough to do more than get him out of town. (Not that he’d ever admit that either, unless it became necessary.)
Knocking his knee against Hunter’s boot, Callum sat up straight, reaching back across the table to retrieve the folder of paperwork, drawing it back towards him. “So where are you living now?” he asked, because he had seen the page Hunter had been on that detailed his own accommodations, the shitty motel room off of Fremont.
Conversation temporarily paused for Hunter’s steak to show up and for coffee refills to go around. When the waitress left again, Hunter sawed at his near-charred meat and chewed on his lower lip in thought. It wasn’t like Callum had been around to hear about Hunter running off with some guy, with all the sexual connotations that implied. “With some guy in his apartment.” He was intentionally flippant, and even shrugged. He didn’t see fit to actually mention he wasn’t sleeping with Blake.
“Some guy. Very descriptive.” But he didn’t push for more information, the question posed just to make sure none of his siblings were living on the streets. Callum didn’t have much to offer if they were, but there was some sort of duty in being the eldest, even if he had been away for over a decade. He paused for a while then, occupying the silence with polishing off another half of his dinner, mounding the rest of the mashed potatoes up into a tower before the plate was pushed away with the tips of his fingers. “Any other news?” he asked, folding his hands in front of him, fingers laced together. “Maren won’t give me the time of day, and I don’t really blame her. And I hardly know Reagan. How’s mom?” Callum had skipped town before she had passed, and he hadn’t bothered to look into that.
Neither had Hunter. He stabbed a piece of steak calmly and chewed on it. “No idea. Probably still where we left her.” Hunter liked to pretend he had no love for his mother, and he was pretty sure he didn’t if he ever thought about it, but eventually he’d learn that he was wrong. “Don’t have news for you, man. I took off when I got the first excuse, too.” Hunter ate, musing on Callum’s questions and wondering why the man bothered. It wasn’t like he actually cared, right? If he’d cared he wouldn’t have left. Hunter didn’t even try to pretend he cared about Maren and Raegan. Instead, he just snuck around and appeased his unwilling curiosity and concern in other ways, so they didn’t find out about it and ask him why he gave a fuck. At least he hadn’t even blinked about the gay thing. Hunter’s step-father would have been happy to take that out on his back with a willow switch--or anything that came to hand.
The fact that Hunter had left the first chance he got didn’t really surprise Callum in the slightest; they were were both made of the same stuff in many ways. But the lack of news struck few chords in him. There was no desire to seek out their mother or any news, and that was simply how it was. She was the woman who had given birth to him, and for all that it concerned Callum, it ended there. As for Hunter’s living situation, Callum was in no position to judge how anyone here lived their lives or who they lay with. Choices were the person’s own to make, and he wasn’t going to say whether he thought them right or wrong. He had done plenty bad in his own life, and he couldn’t give a shit what other people thought about that.
The waitress wandered by moments later, and Callum let her take his plate, ordering a piece of banana cream pie in its place, settling back in his seat to wait. Arms were folded over his chest and he simply studied this man who was his brother. He knew little about him, and if he had passed him on a busy street, it was unlikely he would have recognized him. Here, with few other people to distract, it was different. And strange. All four of them, a decade apart, and they ended up in the same place. It was too coincidental. “It’s strange. Finding all of you here. Just- never expected that to happen, y’know?”
Hunter, successfully disarmed of any overwhelmingly negative revelations to relate, focused on his food for several minutes, sawing at the meat and tasting old memories instead of the greasy tendons between his teeth. “Me either. The girls are pretty angry, but not shotgun angry. Maren put me up a few nights before her trailer got itself burned up.” Hunter licked the back of his fork and raised both eyebrows at his brother, as if wondering if he was going to comment on that little factoid. He wouldn’t admit to having any interest in Maren’s personal affairs, and yet... “Picked up this big dog, Great Dane blood in him, left him there to keep an eye on the place. Seems he and Maren so happened to not be there during the unexpected barbeque.” Saw, chew, chew.
The news of the fire drew a look from Callum, brows lifting in answer before the waitress brought his slice of pie, though it went ignored for the moment. “You make it sound like it was something suspicious with that fire,” he remarked after the waitress had made herself scarce once more. Callum eased back in the booth, giving a shake of his head before he looked out the window to their side, the city just as bright at this hour as it had been six hours prior. There was a lot he had missed out on, it seemed, and not all of it pleasant.
Hunter didn’t respond in words. He shrugged one shoulder, heavy and unhurried, and said nothing. He pushed away his plate, which had the remains of a t-bone on it and not much else. Callum was supposed to be mister secret agent man, if he was interested, he could figure it out himself. Hunter took a last deep swig of the coffee, and then pushed himself out of the booth. “Good to see you, Callum.” He said it with a certain dry crackle to his voice, just to make sure that he didn’t take the statement absolutely seriously.
Callum’s gaze followed Hunter as he departed the diner, less answers than he had when they had started, but it was something to think on, this entire family situation he found himself in again. Shailee had told him that if it became a problem, to let her know, and he wasn’t sure if this qualified as a ‘problem’. It was something, something to figure out, but he would do that later.
Tucking into his pie, Callum thumbed a text to his handler.
Met with the family. Not a problem. But awkward.
Pushing his phone away, Callum concentrated on the pie, the taste gone to cardboard with what was on his mind.