#worst medical experience this far I never knew routine stuff like that could potentially hurt so immensely

[thetriggeredhappy]

Hi! Just wanted to say I adore your writing :) I can’t get enough of it! Ever considered sniperscout where Scout drags Sniper to a game at Fenway Park?

well NOW I'm considering it!!! well NOW that's on my brain!!!!

(warnings for probable baseball inaccuracies and talk about sniper gettin real freaked out about crowds. also supreme gayness)

“—and that guy there is Tony Conigliaro, he’s been on the team for a while now and he really doesn’t play games out there, and that over there with the big nerd glasses is John Curtis, new guy, it’s his first year and he hasn’t been on the plate hardly at all yet, thank god, and he’ll probably stay in the box the rest of the game considering who we’re up against—“

Scout had barely stopped talking since they got within a line of sight of the historic Fenway Park, and while usually his chattering was somewhat calming for Sniper, a good distraction and a source of laughter, it was suddenly significantly less effective. Sitting in a baseball stadium with several hundred rows of seats behind him filled with complete strangers in late June heat was, as Sniper had decided, extremely stressful.

“And the, er, the other team,” he tried to say, throat dry. “That’s the New Jersey blokes, right?”

“New York. The fuckin’ Yankees. That’s one reason the stadium is so packed, we hate those guys, it’s a whole thing,” Scout explained, eyes fully lit up. He was fully in his element, gesturing with both hands and talking a mile a minute, and if Sniper didn’t know otherwise he would ask if he’d somehow found a store in Boston that sold his terrible energy drinks and bought the place out. On one hand, Sniper liked seeing Scout so happy about something, but on the other hand, it was pretty clear that Scout wasn’t actually paying great attention to everything around him, he was so wrapped up in his excitement.

Sniper focused on taking a deep breath and thanked his foresight not to eat breakfast that morning—surely he’d have thrown it back up by now.

One opinion that Sniper very decidedly kept to himself, at least partially because he cared about Scout very much and preferred that they continue dating, was that entertainment sports were objectively the worst thing on the planet. They were wildly hyped up by the audiences, with practically cult followings, hosted in sardine can arenas with many people yelling and food and drinks being spilled and jostling and the rows of seats that you had to squeeze by other people to escape from and the smell of sweat and conflicting foods and unclean bathrooms and blaring intercoms that he could hardly understand the words through and players potentially getting severe injuries just for the amusement of dozens of people watching them and—

He didn’t like them, was the long and short of it. The experience, the concept, any of it. He was okay with Scout going on about the latest game he saw on TV or heard on the radio, with hearing him recite statistics by heart, with the other man’s general enthusiasm, at least somewhat because he knew Scout probably had a big dream at some point about being a baseball player. But something about all the theatrics and noise just gave Sniper a headache.

Maybe it was having grown up in Australia, where every day was just kids challenging each other to constant shows of strength, starting fistfights over cricket matches, wrestling being both a competitive sport and as common of a delay as unexpected traffic was. He had no idea. Whatever it was, he very much didn’t want to be in that stadium.

Except... well, he’d wanted to do something special for Scout’s birthday, and he’d been a little homesick recently, and he’d been really excited about the upcoming game and all, and Sniper knew how much it would mean to him to go see it in person. He knew it would make Scout happier than anything else in the world to give him a chance to see his favorite place in his hometown. When Sniper showed him the plane tickets, he’d looked about ready to get down on one knee then and there.

And Sniper thought he could handle it, he really did. But now here he was, chest tight, hands shaking, stomach performing an acrobatic routine, very much on the verge of ruining this whole gift just because he couldn’t keep his nerves in check for just a couple of hours.

He really needed a cigarette, but he’d told Scout a few weeks ago that he was trying to quit again. He really, really needed a drink, but he wasn’t sure if that was even allowed in a public baseball park, and didn’t know if he could keep it in his stomach even if it was. He really, really, really needed Scout to do the thing where he held both of Sniper’s hands and quietly talked him down from where his brain was trying to push him over the edge. But he could stay calm. He could hold it together at least into the second inning, surely, then find somewhere quiet to get some air, then be all set for another two innings, rinse and repeat. How many were there, six? He was fairly sure it was six. He just needed to stay calm.

The crowd around him screamed as some man hit the ball with the bat and sent it very, very far. He tried his best not to visibly wince. Not that it particularly mattered—Scout didn’t notice his plight, too busy also jumping to his feet and cheering.

He could do this. He could do this. He wasn’t going to have a meltdown in a baseball stadium. He wasn’t going to have a freakout at 2pm on a weekend. He was better than that. He could do this.

“Hey, hey,” Scout said suddenly, tugging on the sleeve of his shirt insistently. “You’ve never been to a baseball game before, we should get some food! We got this special hot dog here, the Fenway Frank, it’s been around, like, longer than Medic probably. They got a whole special recipe about it, most stadiums got hot dogs and stuff but Fenway’s dogs are the actual best ones on the planet, seriously. They’re probably about to switch, Yastrzemski is up next but the guy after him’s a total schmuck and we’re already on two outs, so maybe that’s when we can go see if we can snag—“

Sniper just nodded, momentarily losing track of Scout’s voice as a group of men nearby started howling with laughter, making him have to focus hard on not tensing up.

“—and would you look at that, Seibert fucks it up, who’s surprised? Okay, let’s go!” And his hand was being taken, and he was being pulled along out of the row and up the isle in the same direction as plenty of other spectators.

He was barely present at all as they waited in line at the concession stand, focusing on using his time in a relatively quieter area wisely, trying to be stealthy as he took deep breaths, clenched and unclenched his fists in the pockets of his vest (the vest, hat, and sunglasses being the parts of his uniform that he rarely took off, even when otherwise in civilian clothes). Scout meanwhile continued on his little lecture, going on about some history and facts about the park itself, then funny stories about times he went to Fenway with his brothers, then offhandedly mentioning some player who he’d idolized growing up and didn’t quite know why for the longest time but now that he was thinking about it maybe he just thought the guy was hot—and hey, they’re at the front of the line, could he get like three, actually four franks and—

Somehow, Sniper found himself standing out of the way of foot traffic holding four hot dogs and a bag of popcorn as Scout shuffled around the wild assortment of food that he’d purchased just so he wouldn’t drop anything on the way back to their seats.

Sniper took a quick stock of himself and realized all at once that he would definitely not be making it back to their seats.

Scout’s mouth was moving, and Sniper was hearing the words somewhere behind the sound of laughing and yelling and cheering and the announcer and the sound of sneakers on concrete, but the words seemed to just pour right back out of Sniper’s brain like water through a sieve. He looked down at his hands and saw the way they were trembling, almost on the verge of violently, muscles clenched tightly enough to almost hurt as he was wracked with tremors all the way up his arms—

“—iper, really, I’m getting freaked out too now, you listening?” Scout asked, and Sniper lifted his eyes again. His entire expression was contorted with worry, with fear, all the earlier excitement and joy and light extinguished and replaced with alarm. Scout moved to shove packs of candy into his own pockets and his bag almost frantically, freeing up his hands, and he quickly relieved Sniper of what he was holding as well, freeing up a hand so that Scout could take it in his own, still fumbling a little bit. “What’s up, what happened? What’s wrong?”

Guilt, like a shovel to the back of the head, immediately dizzying in intensity. The first words to pop into his head were an apology, but they and everything else were driven out as there was another holler from the crowd up above. Belatedly, he realized that maybe he wasn’t dizzy from the guilt, maybe he was dizzy because his breathing was shuttering too-fast through his chest. His mouth moved, and he said something, and he was pretty sure it was supposed to be comforting, but Scout was just frowning further, moving to start pulling Sniper along by the hand, quickly through the crowd.

One good thing about the East Coast, Sniper was finding out, was that nobody cared about what anyone else was doing the majority of the time, and a grown man leading another grown man along by the hand like a toddler didn’t draw any strange looks, or any looks at all.

He blinked back to reality as he realized that things were much quieter all of a sudden, and he glanced around, noting that there seemed to be significantly fewer people. They were by the wall regardless, and the hot dogs that Scout had been so excited about were no longer in either of their hands. He knew that because instead Scout had laced their fingers together, was squeezing his hands in a way that was immediately comforting.

“Hey, is this any better?” he asked, his volume kept low. Sniper nodded. “Okay. What happened back there? You really freaked out on me for a minute. Looked pale as a sheet, started hypervascilating.”

Sniper took a breath or two to steady himself a bit, swallowed hard. “Hyperventilating,” he corrected, voice weak despite his best efforts.”

“Whatever, that thing where your breathing is all wrong,” Scout brushed off. “Whatever the hell it’s called. Seriously, what set you off?”

A few more breaths to steady himself, to search for words in his scattered brain. When that didnt work, he tried talking anyways. “Noises, crowds, the jostling, the, the people standing behind me practically breathing down my neck, it’s all, just, it’s just a, it’s a lot,” he managed, just barely tamping down on a stutter.

Scout squeezed his hands again. “Sheesh, even stadiums? Usually these places are way better for my paranoia stuff,” he said.

“Not just the work thing,” Sniper corrected, words tumbling out in a way that was far too clumsy and a bit too fast and practically unintelligible. “Just my regular, nervous, sort of, just my usual nerves but they’re, worse with crowds. Bigger crowds are worse.”

Scout glanced around their vicinity very briefly. The crowd only seemed to be thinning more and more. “Babe,” he finally said, voice very quiet, “I thought you said it wasn’t a big deal, that you didn’t think it’d be bad for you to show up at a big game.”

Guilt again, because he probably did say that at some point. “I just thought I could try anyways, it’s your birthday and, and all of that, and I wanted to do something good for you, and, and I didn’t want to ruin it just because I’m a bloody wreck is all—“

Scout’s eyes widened in surprise, and he was releasing Sniper’s hands, working out of his hold to instead cup his face in his hands. “Babe, I’m not worried about the birthday thing, I’m worried about you, are you serious?!” he exclaimed, still quietly. “I’m just upset that we’re even out here if it’s gonna freak you out this bad!”

“Thought I’d just try,” Sniper protested, practically under his breath, “I thought since, I thought, you’re always absolutely aces, you’re good to me, thought I’d try and—“

Scout was shaking his head. “There’s a difference between, like, when you listen to Sex Bomn with me for the twentieth time even though you don’t even like that album, versus flinging yourself facefirst into a full-blown freakout just because you wanted me to get to see a game in person for a weekend trip!”

“You’re always,” Sniper tried, and his voice wobbled and gave out, so he tried again. “You’re always telling me about home for you, and I just thought you’d like really being able to show me in person instead of just pictures and pointing at the screen on the telly when a game is on.”

Scout just looked at him for a few moments. “Snipes, you know they give tours of this place, right?” he asked, incredulous. “Like, actual tours? When it’s basically empty and not half as loud?”

Sniper looked right back at him.

“And you could’ve just got tickets for like, the game a few days ago? Which was against fuckin’ Baltimore, which is Baltimore, which nobody gives a shit about because it’s Baltimore, so it wouldn’t’ve been even like a quarter of the way as packed?”

“The hell is Baltimore?” Sniper asked, beginning to see that perhaps he was somewhat slightly an idiot.

“Exactly.” Scout squished his cheeks under his hands, released, squished and released. “And it ain’t even about seeing a game, or like, headed to a Fenway Park with you. I was just...” He muddled for words. “I was just excited because you wanted to... I mean, y’know. Go to Boston with me, see all this stuff from before you knew me. Even if one of us woke up this morning with, like, a total stomach bug or a wicked hangover or something, and we couldn’t go to the game, I would’ve been okay with it. Maybe disappointed about not getting a real actual gen-u-ine Fenway Frank from the place itself, but it’s... as long as I got to spend the day with you, maybe got to show you a little bit of what all I grew up with, that’s already a way happier birthday than I ever thought I’d get past the age of like, twenty-four. I figured it was all downhill from here, and then...”

He trailed off, eyes trailing over Sniper’s face slowly, like memorization, like recall. Sniper realized that his hands had stopped shaking at some point, and reached up to thread their fingers together again. “And then?” he prompted, voice quiet.

“It’s my birthday, you don’t get to make fun of me for being a sappy son of a bitch,” Scout warned, and there was that light back in his eyes again, his little dimple making an appearance at the corner of his mouth.

“Fair enough,” Sniper shrugged.

Scout squeezed his hands. “I thought it was all downhill from here, with all the, y’know. Having to get a job killin’ people thing,” he shrugged, maybe more casually than he should’ve been able to. “Figured it was just gonna be me getting older, that I’d already sorta hit my peak at some point in high school before everything went to shit. Figured it was just gonna be worse and worse. And then I looked around one day and... I figured out that I had you around. And the rest of the guys, the team, love ‘em to death—don’t tell ‘em I said that—but especially you. And, I dunno.” He smiled at Sniper. “Upswing, y’know?”

Sniper, had he not a crippling fear of embarrassing himself in public and the ability to do so without probably maiming them both, would’ve dipped Scout down into a kiss right then and there. As it was, he settled on pulling Scout into a hug and fighting back the sting in his eyes. “Don’t do that,” he warned, voice somewhat steady. “You know I get all emotional when I go mental like that. I will start sobbing all over you.”

“Do it. Cry,” Scout challenged firmly. “I’ll break you, so goddamn help me. C’mon, do it right now!”

“Nope,” Sniper said, squeezing hard and smiling at the wheeze he managed to elicit from Scout as he squished the air out of him. “Won’t do it. Can’t make me.”

“Don’t even test me,” Scout managed once he was released from the embrace, rolling his shoulders and getting the air back in his lungs. “I’ll fuckin’... compare thee to a summer’s day or some shit. I’ll get all poetic. Swear to god.”

“Uh huh. And how much Shakespearicles do you have memorized?” Sniper asked.

“All of it,” Scout bluffed without missing a beat.

Sniper rolled his eyes, even as he smiled. “Where are our seats, by the way?” he asked.

“Other side of the stadium, basically. I walked us over to the Yankee side, it’s usually emptier,” he replied, and leaned over to the ledge on the wall right nearby them. Sniper blinked, surprised at himself for not having noticed their hot dogs and drinks and whatnot lined up precariously. “Guess you were right about me not wearing like, literally all of my Sox merch.”

Sniper nodded, paused for a moment. “I was really out of it, wasn’t I?” he asked, guilt resurfacing.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Scout chided, elbowing him and handing over his food. “You’re still at a net positive for good boyfriend deeds for the day. You flew me across the country on a weekend trip to see a rivalry game in my hometown with a week’s notice even though you knew it’d freak the hell out of you. You’re still the best boyfriend ever. Of all time.”

“That’s you, actually,” Sniper replied.

“Shut up and take my compliments. Birthday boy’s orders,” Scout said, hefting his bag to sit more comfortably on his shoulder. “Birthday order number two, let’s get the hell outta here. We’re way down anyways, and I don’t see the Yankees letting us have a comeback. If we go now, I can probably catch the last inning on the radio back at the hotel.”

“Any other birthday orders?” Sniper asked, bumping shoulders and elbows with Scout, walking as close to him as he could get away with as they began making their way out.

“Yeah. Eat that hot dog, it’s fuckin’ delicious. These three are mine.”

Sniper shrugged and obliged.

(Scout was absolutely right. It was delicious.)