Could you give us some cute fluffy scenes between Mars and Indie (if it's not too much trouble🙏🏼)? 😍😍😍
Mars stopped in his tracks, hands wrapped around the loops of his backpack. His big, big eyes blink, and he combed back the mop of hair on his face.
“What is what?” He says, tilting his head.
Nine almost buys it. That doe-eyed, innocent stare. Almost. He darts his eyes down to catch the boy swallow, and his boots shift around in the dried leaves.
“That,” Nine says again, pointing at something behind Mars. He knows he’s caught him out when Mars doesn’t look right away. When his eyebrows raise up into his fringe and he oh-so-coyly turns to look over his shoulder. He’s got it down to an art, but Nine has been around longer than the brat. He doesn’t miss that feigned jump of excitement, and the way the boy’s eyes hardly widen at the sight.
There is a racoon sitting on the trail behind them.
Mars looks at it, then he turns back to Nine. His cheeks are kinda blushy now, and his knuckles grip his yellow backpack tighter.
“I don’t know what that is,” he blatantly lies, even going as far to shrug. Nine lets him run his mouth, working his way into a deeper rut. “Is it a possum? I’m not… like 100% sure, I’ve never seen a possum with my own two eyes, I thought you were the outdoors -”
“It’s a fucking racoon Mars!” Nine snaps, yelling so hard the animal’s eyes bug out of it’s skull. It scampers back a few feet in fright, but never actually leaves. Mars has the same look on his face. Shocked, and a little sheepish.
“Oh,” the boy draws out, mouth a circle. He doesn’t blink. Just stares. Nine doesn’t normally snap like this. Is calm, and rational. But something about Mars gets under his flesh and makes him want to tear his skin off. The boy is still staring at him, and he even goes as far as to shake his head.
“I honestly didn’t even notice it,” Mars lies again.
He drops his backpack straps in favour of grabbing an invisible ball in front of him, squeezing his fists around it and he groans in sheer frustration. He pretends the ball is Mars’s head, and keeps squeezing until he crushes it in his hands. But when the imaginary head is as twisted up as he feels, the boy is still standing there, blinking like an angel.
“Why is it following us?” Nine whispers, but his voice is not gentle. He can tell Mars is gonna shrug again, so he grits his jaw in a way that makes the boy pause. Blink.
“I don’t…” He trails off when Nine narrows his eyes. He turns back to look at the racoon again, pressing his lips into a line. They’re chapped from the sun, but pink with blood. The racoon stares back at him expectantly, sitting up on it’s haunches like a god damned pet.
“I gave it some food,” Mars finally admits, looking away from the racoon but not at Nine. He stares down at the ground instead, hair falling around his cheeks. Nine takes a deep breath to steady his shaking fists.
“You’ve been feeding,” he starts carefully, “that thing our rations?”
Mars looks off to the side and doesn’t answer. Nine hears something snap inside his head.
“Our fucking rations?” He repeats. He stares at the rodent behind Mars and wants to rip his backpack off his shoulders and shoot the little thing, but he’s so mad that he’s scared he’ll shoot the boy instead. His fingers tense and he grabs his hair, muttering something under his breath. He’s not even sure it’s English, but it’s violent, and Mars understands it despite the language barrier.
Even the racoon runs away.
“Indiana,” the boy says very softly, raising his head. His cheeks are dark like his lips. “I didn’t-”
“Don’t call me that,” Nine hisses before he can finish, crossing his arms. He knows it’s childish, but his brain is so fried he can’t think of a more civilised thing to say.
“I’m not calling you a number,” Mars shoots back, crossing his arms to mirror the older man. He cocks one eyebrow, and if Nine wasn’t so mad he might laugh at how authoritative Mars thinks he is being.
“And I only fed it a little bit of food,” he adds quickly, jutting his hip out too. “I didn’t know it would follow me.”
Nine breathes out, staring out at the horizon. He can’t waste the day arguing with the boy about a fucking racoon. He breathes in, then out, focusing on the smell of the fresh, sunny day.
“How many times did you feed it?” He finally asked, his voice calmer. The sound of it had Mars perk up, his mouth pulled down but his eyes bright, and hopeful, and the colour of honey.
“Only once,” he promised, practically rocking forward on his feet. He looked over his shoulder again, hair flicking out. The racoon was still gone, and when he looked back to Nine he dared to smile a little. Enough to loosen the last knots in Nine’s shoulders.
“Okay,” the soldier mumbled, and dropped his arms down to his side. He had to look away from the charmingly stupid smile that split across Mars’s face. “But if I see it again I’ll shoot it.”
And make you eat it for dinner, he added in his mind, still wanting to crush the boy’s dumb skull between his hands.
“You won’t see it again!” Mars promised, grabbing the loops of his backpack.
Nine huffed, turning his back on the kid. He started walking, and could hear the younger man trail after him, feet quick and crunchy on the leaves as he struggled to match the other’s stride.
They walked for half an hour through the forest, pausing only when Nine stopped to track their location. His GPS was solar-powered, but Mars lingered at his shoulder regardless, practically radiating. It would have been annoying, but the GPS bleeped as the boy came closer, happy enough to substitute the boy as an artificial sun.
They didn’t speak for some time, boots treading over the earth. Birds chirped above, and every now and then something would rustle in the grass. Mars always hurried a little closer when that happened, and Nine would be lying if he said it didn’t give his ego a boost.
But then eyes prickled on the back of the soldier’s neck, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Mars,” he said through his teeth, eyebrows already knitted. “Am I going to see a racoon if I turn around?”
The boy was silent for a second.
“No,” Mars replied, drawing out the vowel. He must have seen Nine’s shoulders tense, because he quickly blurted out the rest.
“I mean! You won’t see a racoon,” he clarified. Nine turned and glared over his shoulder.
One literally sitting next to Mars.
They scattered when Nine dropped his backpack, yanking his rifle off the back. He hoisted it against his shoulder and aimed it at the forest where the rodents had run off to, narrowing one eye down the scope of the gun.
“Indie, no!” Mars screamed, dashing forward and actually slapping the side of the man’s head. Then he hit his bicep. His chest. Over and over, his ineffectual paw doing nothing but annoying Nine further. He kept hitting until the much, much taller man lowered his gun, and shoved Mars so hard he stumbled backwards and onto his ass. He landed in the grass, legs akimbo, and mouth open in shock.
“Dumbass!” Mars yelled, face flushing as his chest rose and fell. “It’s just a racoon, it doesn’t even eat that much!”
Nine aimed his gun at Mars now, but he’d done that so many times this past week it only made the boy scowl deeper.
“How many times did you feed it?” Nine growled. His finger lay flat near the trigger, not even daring to brush it. But Mars didn’t know that. “Tell me the fucking truth this time, you little asshole.”
Mars glared, his eyes bright pin-pricks of orange in the lush foliage.
“I’ve been feeding it for weeks,” he muttered, and his eyes seemed to glow. He glared up the barrel of the rifle, daring Nine to pull the trigger. God, he wanted to. Wanted to shoot him in the leg and see that matter-of-factly frown wiped off his face and replaced with pain.
“Rations,” Nine grit back. “For a week.”
He was past yelling. He couldn’t believe it. This was beyond words. He swore again under his breath, and Mars’s eyes flashed.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. Practically pouted. “They don’t eat much. Besides, you’re getting kind of fat anyway.”
Nine grit his teeth so hard he heard it.
“I’m getting fat?” He echoed, readjusting his rifle. Mars raised his chin, but glanced at the loaded weapon.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “You’re starting to look chubby.”
Nine felt his face go red, and against his better judgement he glanced down at his stomach. It looked the same as it always had, but just to be sure he dropped his rifle and hitched the fabric up a bit, pressing his fingers to the tight muscle. He lifted his shirt a little higher, flexing his abdomen, and shot Mars a look.
“Does this look chubby to you?” He said. He held his shirt up until Mars’s face turned pink and he looked away, staring in the direction that the racoons had run off to. He didn’t answer, so Nine dropped his shirt and smirked.
“Get off your ass,” he said, picking his backpack off the grass and readjusting it across his shoulders. Mars got up with a whine, brushing dirt off his ass.
“If I see those rats again, I’ll shoot you, Mars. Got that?”
“Yes sir,” the boy mumbled back, and Nine knew he was rolling his eyes without looking. He fell into line behind the soldier, not speaking again for the rest of the day.
Nine hadn’t experienced such silence since he begun travelling with the twenty-one-year old, and he was grateful to be walking up front so Mars couldn’t see the please smile on his mouth.
