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“This is fucking boring.”
Jamie shoots Butch an irritated look from where he’s sitting across from the other man in the canoe, his brows drawn together as he tries his damnedest to untangle his fishing line from the third piece of driftwood he’s ‘caught’ that day.
“No shit,” he grumbles, spitting out some mud as he tries to break the line off the wood with his teeth. He lets out a frustrated huff, gripping his rod in both hands as he raises it up and fights the urge to just chuck the whole damn thing into the Potomac. He hears Butch snicker, and he whips his head up.
“You’re like a goddamn feral,” Butch teases with a laugh, reaching over and snatching the rod from Jamie’s grip. He digs in the pocket of his jeans and pulls out his switchblade, flicking it open and carefully beginning to cut the line away from where it’s tangled in the driftwood to try and save as much of it as he can. He kicks his boots playfully against Jamie’s sneakers, noticing how the canvas high-tops are completely soaked through from the puddle of water they’d managed to slosh into the canoe earlier as they tried ungracefully to board it from the shore. He just shakes his head, a smile on his face, knowing that if he brings up the topic of appropriate footwear to the younger man it’ll just earn him a bruised shoulder.
“This was supposed to be like… meditative or some shit,” Jamie says with a sigh. He rubs his hands over his freckled face and ruffles some of the dust out of his sun-warmed hair. Butch just gives him an incredulous look.
“Where the hell did you get that idea from?” He finishes cutting the driftwood free and tosses it behind him into their small pile of ‘catches’ – which is really just a collection of junk at this point – before reattaching the hook and bobber and handing the rod back to the other man. He leans over and grabs his own fishing pole, squinting against the reflective ripples in the water to check on his bobber. Still absolutely no bites.
Jamie shrugs, suddenly looking a little bashful. “I dunno,” he admits. He reaches back into the salvaged can of cram they were using as bait, tears a chunk out, and works on preparing his hook again. Not like it matters much, he tells himself. He can continue to go through the motions perfectly and not catch a single thing. A little bit like everything else in his life, he thinks bitterly. His fucking bad luck.
After a moment of silence, Jamie continues. “Apparently my family came from a long line of fishermen on my dad’s side. He passed down some stories about it. Told me they were tradition or something.” Jamie shrugs. “Anyway, he taught me that you were s’posed to reflect on yourself out here. Get some peace and quiet.” Jamie finally says. He sucks the excess cram off his fingers, his tongue burning at the sudden saltiness, and casts his line out again, his bobber floating a few feet from Butch’s. Butch looks up at him, snapped out of his own thoughts.
“Huh… like, Wasteland fisherman?” Butch asks, deliberately choosing not to tell him how he thinks the whole ‘peace and quiet’ schtick is a load of brahmin shit and instead focusing on the first part of what he said. He’s always intrigued whenever Jamie tells him about his family, at least after they’d learned that he wasn’t born in the vault. The idea of generations of Arroyo’s managing to survive out here long enough to pop out the rascally kid he sits across from kind of amazes him. He sets his fishing pole back down against the side of the canoe, sure that it would be fine – he hasn’t gotten a single nibble in the past three hours.
“Nah. I’m sure some of them might’ve been, but we don’t really know much about closer generations of my family. We only really knew about some of my prewar family – something about some records my dad’s dad had kept on his terminals after searching our surname through databases in some place that used to process immigrations, or some shit. The occupation listed there was fisherman, apparently.” Jamie finishes and Butch hums thoughtfully, trying to imagine what Jamie’s granddad might have looked like.
Jamie winces when he thinks of his dad and has to shake the thoughts from his head. As if his face reflecting back at him from the clear surface of the clean water isn’t enough of a reminder of what he’s lost of his family and himself to of Project Purity – he looks like his own father’s ghost and even carries his name.
Butch’s fishing pole snapping against the side of the boat brings him back out of his thoughts, and he flinches back away from the canoe’s edge, the quick motion causing him to almost tumble out the other side as the boat sways dangerously.
“I got one!” Butch practically shouts and lunges for the pole, straddling the seat of the canoe and bracing his legs against the floor as he begins an awkward tug-of-war match with whatever is on the other end of his line. Jamie perks up with a huge grin on his face, all thoughts of his troubles momentarily forgotten, and hovers over Butch nervously.
“Make sure you don’t reel in when he’s pulling on the line! And try to give it some slack!” Jamie parrots what his father had taught him on their one and only fishing trip in the Wastes months back and digs around in their mess of a canoe for the rickety net they brought with them. Butch just gives an annoyed grunt, his face crinkled in concentration as he pulls on the line.
“This bastard is fuckin’ heavy!” He complains, giving the rod a yank that rocks their canoe again. Whatever they have hooked is pulling them ever so slightly to the opposite shore and splashing like crazy beneath the water.
“Scoot,” Jamie orders. He tosses the net aside – it’s obvious that whatever’s on the other side of the line won’t fit in it now - and moves on unsteady legs to sit behind Butch, reaching his arms around the other man’s waist and grabbing the fishing pole to help him pull. What the hell are they dealing with here?
By the time they begin to make some progress in reeling the fish in, they’re about halfway to the shore and completely out of breath. Butch laughs hysterically between pulls, his eyes squeezed shut in glee, and Jamie can’t help but laugh in return. His palms are sweaty, his white-knuckle grip on the fishing pole beginning to slip.
“Is it trying to pull us out of the water?!” Butch says suddenly, elbowing Jamie to look at the swiftly approaching shore. They’re hauling ass at this point, almost as if… whatever they hooked had suddenly caught some footing in the shallower water. Jamie’s eyes widen and he immediately lets go of the pole to root around in their bags. As he does, Butch careens forward from the sudden lack of support and just barely catches himself with his elbows against the edge of the canoe. He curses, “CHRIST, Nosebleed! Some warning next time!”
Jamie has only just gotten his hands on Butch’s shotgun when they finally catch a glimpse of their ‘fish’ as it breaks the surface of the water. At this point, they’ve reeled it in pretty close and the wake left behind the huge creature emerging from the stagnant part of the river capsizes their canoe just as they crash into the sandy shore.
With a chorus of yells both men topple over into the shallows. Jamie squeezes his eyes shut and lands on his back with a thud, his arms stretched up over his head holding the shotgun out of the river. The water feels like a cold slap to his face, and he comes back up gasping for air. He looks over to where Butch has landed hard on his ass, noting that the fishing pole is being tugged out of his hands and quickly away from him. He looks and sees the fruits of their labor – an albino Mirelurk with the fishing line wrapped around one claw.
“MIRELURK!” Butch yells, scrambling to his feet and running over to Jamie. He pulls the other man up and grabs the shotgun from him just as the Mirelurk turns toward them and begins clambering over the old canoe that groans and splinters beneath its weight.
“Shoot it! Shoot it!” Jamie practically shrieks and pushes against Butch’s arm, urging him to hurry when the Mirelurk picks up speed and barrels toward them. Butch nods and fights the urge to run, taking a breath and bracing for the recoil as he lines up his shot. Jamie flinches when he hears the crack! of the rounds exploding from the gun and shattering the vulnerable part of the Mirelurk’s fragile front shell. His ears ring from the close proximity of the shot and he grimaces, about to cover them until he realizes the monster is still running full speed toward them. Shit!
He grabs Butch and tackles him to the ground, shoving them out of the way as the huge, mutated crab stumbles past them at an alarming speed and crashes hard into the shore. It lies there face-first in a mound in the sand and they watch it with wild eyes from their position on the ground, ready to book it at any hint of movement, but it’s motionless and quiet – dead.
Jamie rolls off of Butch and flops down next to him, both of them looking up at the endless expanse of bright blue sky as they struggle to catch their breaths.
“Still think fishing is boring?” Jamie snaps and Butch begins to laugh again, the sound starting as a snort and bubbling slowly from his chest before he’s full-on wheezing with laughter. Jamie sits up and looks down at him like he’s insane.
“What about this was funny?!” He asks, shaking Butch’s shoulder. He can’t help but return the grin, though. Seeing Butch happy always manages to make him smile. Butch wipes his hand down his face as he sits up, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and hopping to his feet. He reaches down to pull Jamie up with him, a huge shit-eating grin on his face.
Jamie’s ears suddenly feel hot as he watches Butch, noticing the endearing gap between his two front teeth and the splash of sun freckles over his now sand-dusted face. He swallows, his heart racing. “What?” He repeats again, his throat dry.
“I caught a motherfucking fish.” Butch beams even more and looks incredibly proud of himself as they turn and walk over to his ‘catch.’ He kicks it with the toe of his boot a few times just to ease his own worries of it springing back to life.
“It’s not a fish! It’s a crab, they’re different.” Jamie argues and crouches down, grabbing the edge of the Mirelurk’s shell with Butch as they flip it over with a heave. Jamie doesn’t mention that technically he did catch it with a fishing pole, and that technically they are going to have it for dinner. He doesn’t want to give Butch the satisfaction, especially considering the only thing he got out of this trip is his collection of stones and driftwood that was currently crushed under their broken canoe.
“It counts.” Butch says, the grin still plastered on his face. He pulls a combat knife out of a holster on his belt and settles down on his knees in the sand, tapping the sharp edge of it against the shell. “Look at this bad boy. You ever see a white one before?”
“It’s an albino, I guess.” Jamie says, leaning close to inspect it. He lifts the claw that’s tangled in their fishing line. “What a mess, we aren’t salvaging this.” He drops it back into the sand with a thud.
“The fuck’s an albino?” Butch asks as he cuts into their prize, grimacing and holding back a gag as he begins to butcher it. Mirelurk is good meat, but it reeks when it’s fresh.
“You know, like that one story Brotch made us read in like 8th grade, Moby Dick? It was about that sea captain and the giant albino whale.” Jamie snickers and walks the few paces back to their canoe. He flips it right-side-up with some effort and drags their valuables out of the muddy water, clicking his tongue in disappointment when he notices their bags are completely soaked through. “You’re lucky he didn’t eat your leg.” He teases.
Butch looks back at him and pouts, blowing a messy curl of his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, I never read anything ol’ Brotch assigned. Waste of time. Like it would’ve taught me anything useful out here.” He grumbles.
Jamie laughs and drops their stuff next to a rock outcropping near their canoe. It looks like it would provide some decent shelter against the wind and by the looks of their soaking clothes and supplies, they’ll have to stay the night unless they want to catch hypothermia. “Maybe it could’ve taught ya how to catch a real fish.”
“It still counts as a catch!” Butch whines.
“It’s not a fish.” Jamie shoots back in a sing-song voice, biting his tongue to hold back the huge grin that threatens to break through. Butch jumps up from what he’s doing and turns to him, his face red, but mirroring the same smile that Jamie is trying so hard to hold back.
“It. Counts.” Butch grits between clenched teeth puts his combat knife away, buttoning the sheathe into place against his hip. They stare at each other for a moment, their eyes locked in a staring match. Jamie’s grin finally breaks free.
“Does no-“he cuts himself off with a yelp as Butch lunges for him playfully. He laughs so hard he thinks his chest might burst as he takes off in a run down the beach, Butch hot on his heels as he begins to chase him.
He knows Butch’s legs are much longer than his, but he can hold his own – at least for a little while. And even though the inevitable ending is Butch catching him in a tackle, he can’t say he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s something they’ve done since they were boys stumbling around in the grey fluorescence of the vault, constantly finding their way back to each other like it was fate, and it feels like home.