Work Text:
Henry Creel was a man now, as society had so arbitrarily decided. He'd moved up from Cub Scouts to the real deal, the actual hiking and canoing and rock-climbing shit.
Which was all well and good. But it was less time to feed cats and dogs to his spiders. And more time around that stupid Harrington guy. On their first troop outing, he had settled into his sleeping bag the moment the sun had set. Despite hiking all day in the hot Arizona sun, the night had quickly chilled the rocky landscape, and his sleeping bag was zipped around all but his head. Other scouts talked about lame shit like birds they had seen that day, drinking their body weight in tuna can water and girls in their school. Henry wasn't sure how the topics were related, they didn't seem to have to follow the careful dictation of courtesy and manners. Harrington would just stoke a fire, dance around it like it were some ritual, yell about "pissin' in the woods" and interrupt whoever was speaking with a new topic when he felt like it.
All that talk of pissin' in the woods was getting to Henry, though. As scouts laughed and threw marshmallows at each other, (Harrington catching several by mouth) he struggled to unzip his sleeping bag. Damn thing must have caught on a sock or something. He didn't even have the slack to wiggle a hand through. He sat upright in his bag—looking every bit like a green canvas worm—and tried to push a hand through, but there was absolutely no space for it.
He considered wiggling upright somehow but that still didn't give him a solution for actually pissing in the woods. He would just have to hope the zipper would fly free when he got there. His bladder protested painfully as he tried to wiggle his legs behind himself to get upright.
And then Harrington socked him with a marshmallow. His weak, birdlike bones were no match for the Eagle Scout's pillowy sweet curveball.
"Creel, Creel catch. Catch Creel."
Henry was laid back by the continued onslaught of marshmallows, hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes.
"Hey—cut it out! I'll tell the scoutmaster on you!"
It was an empty threat. Henry didn't know the scoutmaster, but he probably wouldn't care. He didn't actually care to remember anyone's name in troop 577, but Harrington unfortunately was a name oft repeated. He was an Eagle Scout! His name fell with adoration from everyone's mouth.
"You looked like a caterpillar. I'm just feeding the wildlife."
"You know we aren't supposed to feed the wildlife! Insects don't eat marshmallows, they eat decomposing corpses. Like my spiders!"
"He's talking about the spiders again! Can you shut up about spiders, Creepy Creel?"
"Not physically. They're a superior insect."
Another scout, who was white and as such virtually indestinguishable from Harrington, rolled over in his bag to yell at Creel. "Oh, brother. This guy stinks."
Harrington squatted down, throwing another marshmallow at his forehead. "If it weren't for the scout code and some bullshit ethics about respect that only extends to people who look like me, I'd excercise some good ol fashioned hazing."
The scout from the other bag sat up, motioning Harrington to throw a marshmallow towards him and catching it in his mouth. "You think that's annoying? We're pretty sure he took my sister's cat. And lit it on fire. Then squashed it. He's actually a bad person, which is saying a lot for the 50s."
Henry couldn't help his smug, vain self from interjecting. "Actually, I believe I squashed it first, then lit it on fire."
Another scout—who was also white because the Boy Scouts of America was still unintegrated and would be until the 70s—groaned, joining the conversation. "This guy sucks. Y'know what? Saving you from drowning at Pottawatomie wasn't worth it. I wouldn't even care if they took my lifeguard patch away. I would push you in myself so you could drown a second time."
Harrington laughed, but paused, looking around. "Do you guys... Do you guys smell something?"
"It's piss!" One of the other white scouts helpfully supplied.
"Geez, I think Creel peed himself!" Harrington shouted. He picked up his walking stick he'd been dancing around the fire with moments before and pointed accusingly at the growing wet spot on the bag.
"What are you, nine? Dude, how are you still pissing yourself?"
Henry could have helpfully explained that his zipper was stuck and shown as much to his fellow troop members, but at that moment he was still in the process of pissing himself. He couldn't think of anything particularly intelligent to do or say other than insult.
"Fuck you, Harrington! I hope you choke on one of your God-damn marshmallows!"
The troop collectively gasped with 1950s sensibilities towards profanity and taking the lord's name in vain.
Harrington looked around the campfire, at the scouts who all hated this guy, at the puddle of piss in the middle of their camp, at Henry's stupid smug pet-murdering face sticking out of his sleeping bag.
"Let's get him!" Harrington yelled, rallying his army of white preteens.
And so, armed with pinewood derby cars, neckerchiefs adorned with metal slides, and crude child-sized hiking staffs, they beat the small child in the sleeping bag. Understandably, the combination of being rejected by his peers and good old fashioned violence of 1950s white male socialization was very taxing on his psyche.
So now, as much as he would like Max to die, doing so would be mildly inconvenient. Plus, those child-sized hiking boots hurt and he'd rather not have to remember.