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He was minding his own business. He was just cleaning his own living space.
The wretched thing lay inanimately on the sink in his van, almost as if it were calling him, demanding his attention, mocking him. Making him think that maybe, after all, he was so utterly fucked. How could he allow such an object to exist in his vehicle as if it had any right to? How could he allow it to stay there when he knew damn well what it implied?
He picked it up and observed it.
A toothbrush.
A completely normal, regular toothbrush, a Mann Co. toothbrush that was standardly supplied to mercenaries, a thing that shouldn't mean anything to anyone but clean teeth. He had one of those himself, of course, and it was placed neatly in a cup on the sink. The problem was that this one wasn't his.
Maybe he should destroy it. Bring it to Pyro and have them burn it with their flamethrower, or give it to Demo and have him dispose of it with those chemicals of his, or leave it in Medic's lab anonymously and let him conduct experiments on it. Or he should bury it somewhere in the desert and wait thousands of years for it to decompose.
He did none of that. Instead, he put the toothbrush into the cup next to his own and then watched that sight and contemplated whether he liked it or not. He couldn't decide.
On one hand, there was someone leaving their germs in his home, stealing his Mann Co. brand toothpaste that tasted like soap and sleeping in his bed if the night got too long. And those long, long nights were one of the things that kept him from going insane.
On the other hand, that someone was (again) leaving their germs in his home, calling him a snail for living in a van and meaning it in a nice way, bringing him food and drinks, and not putting their toothbrush in the cup when it was clearly there to hold toothbrushes.
He had overreacted the first time, destroying the toothbrush would be too dramatic and unhinged and not at all professional. But maybe he should tell Scout to remove that wretched thing from his ubication. Would he get cross with him? Would he stop coming? Would Sniper mind if he stopped coming?
He would mind it a lot, and he minded that he even thought that in the first place.
Maybe he should just tell Scout to put the toothbrush into the cup.
And tell him that if he planned on leaving anything else in the van, he shouldn't just toss it somewhere because it could easily give Sniper a heart attack. He was well over thirty, after all, and at that age, you're basically a fossil with poor health that could get a heart attack at any given moment. Maybe, if he looked hard enough, he would find other inanimate objects in his vehicle that didn't belong to him. A shirt or a tank top or (hopefully not) a pair of underwear that got carelessly kicked under the bed at some point.
Out of morbid curiosity, he did check the space under his bed and fortunately only found his own underwear.
And he felt slightly lighter. He didn't need a reminder of what they were doing from time to time, maybe once or twice a week, to decompress. Thinking of it only made him feel more compressed and then he would get into a nasty loop.
He wondered what Scout thought about it. He didn't seem to be on the edge all the time, much unlike Sniper, and it was usually him initiating these meetups.
It started out after they had smoked some weed together and were laughing about the letter that Scout insisted on writing to his mother there and then.
('Dear ma im doing fine here. I picked up every lady so now i have to pick up genlemen maybe. I dont smoke gigarets but i drink beer with my freind sometimes.' He drew two stick figures with beer glasses underneath.)
Sniper then told Scout that he was an awesome smoking buddy but warned him that if he decided to follow the plan of picking up gentlemen, he could get into a nasty fight. And Scout started a playful fight with him and ended up biting him in the forearm, which made them both laugh once again, and then, once Sniper started feeling like he was operating on autopilot, like he was a robot, like he was controlling his body from outside, someone got an idea. Sniper thought (and hoped) it had been Scout.
The rest of the night was a little hazy and both of them were laughing the whole time while doing the unspeakable.
They spent the next month avoiding the topic, until Sniper decided to have some good old Mary Jane and Scout just so happened to barge into his snail home. As a good host, Sniper was willing to share his stuff, and as a good guest, Scout was more than happy. They spent the first twenty minutes looking for a pipe, and when Sniper concluded that he'd lost it, much to their dismay, he decided to improvise.
He'd learnt this trick from a guy back in Australia, and apparently, it was pretty good.
'What are you doing?' Scout had asked.
'Making a geebie out of a bottle.'
It wasn'r complicated. Just a couple of holes, push a piece of a ballpoint pen through the cap, put plant into the makeshift tube, and then watch water leaving the bottle and smoke filling it up, what a sight. Once it was full, Sniper unscrewed the cap and inhaled the smoke. He passed the bottle to Scout.
This was a fairly quick way to get high. They were done in a matter of minutes and went back to the van. They played cards for a while and when the weed finally hit them like a B-17 Flying Fortress, they stared at each for a moment and both knew what the other was thinking: Throwback to last time?
That's how they ended up in bed for the second time.
That was months ago. From there on, they didn't even need weed to do these things. And they became more frequent, too, going from once or twice a month to once or twice a week. There was no commitment, only a bunch of sex and the occasional beer or weed.
It should have been fine that way and there was no need for Scout to be leaving his toothbrush in Sniper's living quarters.
Now that he went back to the sink to finish cleaning, he noticed that the toothbrushes were touching. Ew. Disgusting. This was like kissing without anything that was fun about kissing, and Sniper thought that maybe he should call Scout, show it to him and tell him that now that their toothbrushes had kissed, they may do it as well.
No. He wouldn't do that.
And besides, why would he even want to kiss Scout? Having sex was one thing, a thing many men did in the military when no women were around, and that was fine; kissing, however, was not. That was an entirely gay thing to do and he was pretty sure that men in the military did not kiss their brothers in arms.
He left that cursed object where he had foolishly put it moments earlier and decided to go on a walk.