It ain't long, but here it is. Sudden inspo. Thanks, Outlaws, for the overwhelming rush of nostalgic sadness. Cause... who needs canon?

Very song-centric, though by no means must you know the songs to enjoy the one shot. They just make it more emotional. For me, at least.

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Hamlet had never appreciated Horatio's knackered old pickup more than that night.

His father came home late again. His mother cried and yelled. His uncle growled and snapped. Hamlet sat, trembling, upstairs. His father eventually dragged him down by his collar. He went a little numb, so he didn't feel the hits or hear the shouts, but all he could feel was the need to get out.

He allowed himself to breathe when Horatio opened the front door. Horatio sent glares around the room, the hate in his eyes completely at odds with how gently he held Hamlet to bring him out and away.

Hamlet fell asleep against the leather of the passenger seat, holding Horatio's hand.

When he woke up, they were parked somewhere far away and the tinny sound of country music bled through the windows. The smell of car exhaust hit him like a tidal wave when Horatio opened the door.

"Just a gas and supply stop," he said with a soft smile. "You were out for a long time. It's nearly noon."

Hamlet groggily reached for Horatio in what the latter assumed was an unbelievably lazy request to link their hands. He complied.

"Where're we headed?" Hamlet asked as they pulled out of the gas station.

"Objections will be accepted, but I was thinking Hill City," Horatio said.

Hamlet went wide-eyed. "Christ, Horatio, yes," he breathed, and then turned to stare out the window. Tentatively, he added, "The cabin at Slate Creek, right?"

Horatio laughed. "Yeah. Mum and Dad don't go during the rally. They go straight on to Sturgis. By the time they'd like to be in the cabin, I'll have requested they let us stay."

Hamlet grinned, and said nothing.

Once they were far out of sight of any manmade structure, Horatio pulled over and retrieved a bundle of medical supplies from the trunk.

"Get out, I gotta make sure you don't need to go to a hospital once we hit Rapid City," he called through the windshield. Hamlet rolled his eyes as dramatically as possible and opened the door.

It was strangely intimate, he noticed: sitting on the hood of the truck as Horatio delicately cleaned and bandaged the bruises littering his torso. Hamlet would be lying if he said he didn't go a little breathless when Horatio pressed a few gentle, feather-light kisses along the scars on his wrist. Even after a thousand of these moments, the sheer amount of care and love Horatio could give in a simple gesture was enough to bring tears to Hamlet's eyes. It was his constant universal complaint that the love Horatio handed out so freely wasn't always given back to him.

Good thing you're here to make up for it, Horatio had responded the one time Hamlet voiced these thoughts. Hamlet had kissed him into oblivion immediately afterward and they never spoke of it again.

"You ever been to the Badlands?" Hamlet queried as Horatio disinfected a scrape above his hip.

"Too many times to count." Horatio paused to raise an eyebrow at him. "With my cousins, mostly. You know that."

"Y-yeah, but I was just thinking, since I know you think Rushmore's overrated and we probably won't go north far enough for Sturgis, and your folks would be there anyway, maybe we could camp for a few days? Or, like, drive through it, at least? I mean, this is your domain, you know best, but I was just wondering-"

Horatio very effectively shut him up by pecking him on the lips.

"It was the plan in the first place," he explained, not without a slightly patronizing lilt in his voice. "Pine Ridge, then up to Keystone and Rapid. Cuts through the edge of the park. There's a perfect little spot with a creek and a million grasshoppers that's about the best escape from reality I've ever seen."

Hamlet suddenly pulled him into a hug, and Horatio wheezed slightly with the impact. Hamlet exhaled against his shoulder.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"Anytime, and you know I mean that."

It was silent as they got back into the truck. Hamlet's fingers found Horatio's again and they sat for a long time, both lost in their heads. Horatio eventually turned on the radio.

"Oh, God," Hamlet groaned as I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow began crooning from the speakers, "I don't think I can stand another second of americana, not after being stuck around Claudius for fuckin weeks-"

And just like that, Horatio was chuckling and shaking his head but turning the dial, and the pleasant, smooth vocals were replaced by rough and strong ones in Hotel Yorba.

"I was watching with one eye on the other side!" they both yelled at the same time, and then descended too far onto laughter to continue for the next several lines. When they reached Let's get married / In a big cathedral by a priest / Cause if I'm the man that you love the most / You can say I do at least, there was a fleeting moment of eye contact, but the happy tension in the air and Hamlet's squeezing Horatio's hand that much tighter made up for any words they might have said.

~~~

True to his word, Horatio did know a perfect little spot by a creek with a million grasshoppers.

The grasshoppers were the first thing Hamlet noticed, in fact, because there was one landing on his leg the second he set foot on the coarse grass.

Horatio laughed at him as Hamlet tried with increasing apprehension to remove it. When he finally managed to do so, ungracefully flailing an arm until he batted it off, Horatio came over to his side of the car to give him a quick lesson in what he explained his cousins had labeled "hopper handling."

"This is the best part, though!" Horatio exclaimed, casually holding one of the demonic little fuckers between his thumb and forefinger. "If you can get thread or sometimes dental floss under the first set of legs but over the second, and you manage to tie it real tight, you've got it on a leash! Course, you tie it too tight and you've got a dead hopper, but that's just practice."

"Kinky," Hamlet said automatically, and got a hopper in the chest for his trouble. The insect used his shirt as a sideways springboard and flew off into the foliage.

"It's a grasshopper, you horny man."

"Only for you, babe."

Horatio sighed in the way only he could, turning his back on a grinning Hamlet to open the trunk of the car. Hamlet followed and wrapped his arms around him from behind.

"Denied," Horatio said. "Not in broad daylight and not on the ground. I happen to know that this is quite possibly the most uncomfortable ground to lay on in all of South Dakota, which, mind, means worse than the pinecones of Deerfield."

Hamlet snorted. "You happen to know? From experience?"

Even though he couldn't see it, he knew Horatio's eyes went wide as he spluttered, "Dammit, not like that!"

Hamlet giggled helplessly while a flustered Horatio dug several blankets out from under a cooler.

"Look, you know what I meant, and I'm still saying no. We at least need to check out the creek first. It's been two decades and I haven't found an arrowhead yet."

~~~

Hamlet didn't find anything at all. He walked behind Horatio, which meant his eyes were otherwise occupied whenever the other stopped to pick up interesting rocks or bent down to examine anything vaguely arrowhead-shaped. Despite this, Horatio found what he believed to be a pendant along the bank.

~~~

"You know we have to go back eventually," Horatio said into the night air.

They were sprawled over a blanket on the roof of the truck, shivering into each other but both silently refusing to break the perfect moment. Hamlet adored the vastness of the sky above them and the chatter of crickets instead of people, so different a noise from the city bustle he was used to. Horatio just adored Hamlet. Specifically the reflection of the stars in his eyes, but also Hamlet in general.

"I ain't goin back to em." Hamlet's southern drawl, which he was usually much better at smothering, bled through now due to the beer he was sipping. "I'll go back for MSU, and cause you're goin, but I ain't goin for them. I don't owe em nothin."

Horatio smiled to himself. You could take the boy out of Texas, but you couldn't take the Texas out of the boy.

"Yeah, well, it's a big state. You don't need to see them at all if you don't want to."

Hamlet nuzzled further into Horatio's jacket. "I don't wanna. They can fret themselves to death over me all they goddamn like, but I'm stayin with you. Y'ain't gettin rid of me now. Not after this."

The magnitude of what he'd done hit Horatio suddenly, and he pulled Hamlet that much closer to compensate. Hamlet had expressed his need for escape as many times as there were stars above them, and it finally happened, even if they did have to go back for college come autumn. For now, for a summer, they had a truck and each other and a cabin a few towns west, and Hamlet's shitty family was three states away so he had room to breathe, and maybe, just maybe, they'd be okay.

Hamlet made a small, happy noise that sounded suspiciously like a lovesick sigh, and pulled Horatio into a slow kiss.

(Yeah. They'd be okay.)

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Where did this headcanon come from? Can someone please tell me, I have no fucking clue-

Go watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? because Goerge Clooney is the best human and I love him so much. Appreciate Tommy with me. And also the frog that valiantly played Pete. Poor Pete, he dun been turned into a toad...

And faeries, you don't owe em nothin.