((You'll have to forgive me my starting this so soon, I'd meant to wrap the other up first, but fff this update, it's giving me ideas.)) Ch. I- And Then There Were Nine... -/- It had begun with eighteen men, and wave after wave of robots. With the RED Scout's funeral, they were down to eleven, or at least, that was the headcount they were satisfied to make, for the most part. It was the RED Spy's voice, uncharacteristically brittle, that broke the silence and the illusion. "Gentlemen... I am afraid... this whole thing is... pointless." "If we can't prove we're better than those damn robots, there won't be work for any of us! You can't just slink off like a bloody coward and think life's gonna be fine for you someplace else, you heard the tape!" The Sniper-- RED's, and for some time now the only-- shouted him down. "Then I will not work. I can afford not to. Or do you have nothing more precious than the idea of defending your record against these things? They cannot be reasoned with. They will not stop. And we cannot stand against them much longer, now that there is no respawn to fall back on." The group shifted uncomfortably at the mention. Few of them liked to think about respawn when they had it-- it was almost too big to comprehend. Some shrugged it off as unreal, some told themselves it was only dreams, near death experiences, rescues they didn't remember or weren't conscious for. Some drank. Living with it was strange and terrible, but losing it was worse. "Fight if you want to. It doesn't matter to me. But we are going." It was the 'we' that really changed things. Losing one Spy, when they had another to fall back on, that was something they could tolerate as a unit, even if it was something not all of them could reconcile as individuals who had come to rely on each other. The Scout took a moment to react, surprised. "Wait-- Wait-- We? Fuckin' no way are you talking about you and me we!" "I am." "You can't!" The Soldier-- BLU's, once, and now the only-- stood. "He's the only Scout we've got! If you want to run like a pansy-ass french coward, that's one thing, but you can't take our last Scout!" "I promised his mother!" The Scout looked betrayed at the revelation, and a little angry, and then resigned. "I promised his mother." The RED Spy repeated, his head bowing. "The boy we lost today is barely any older. And maybe... maybe there is no way, to stay, and to be sure. I could defend him to my last breath but what does that mean to a horde of robots?" "Well... well, she needs someone to take care of her. Guess it-- I mean, it didn't used to be for real." The Scout rubbed at his neck. "Shit. We can't just leave everybody." "They do not have to stay." "Hell we don't!" The Soldier piped up. "You do not." "No." The BLU Spy shook his head. "You do not. The boy does not. Maybe I do not, but I have yet to reach that point. Some of them do. The workings of a soldier's mind are incomprehensible, to men like you and I." He offered a half smile to the RED Spy, and a firm handshake to the Scout. "I'm not pussing out." The Scout shook his head. "No. You are becoming a man." The BLU Spy nodded. "So go home to your mother, remember what you learned here, and apply it to a better life than this one." "You guys really think you can make it without me?" "We can but try." The BLU Spy shrugged. He stepped back to let the others say their goodbyes. The last of the BLU team gathered around the Scout-- the Engineer, the Pyro, and the Medic wishing him well, and the Soldier reluctantly granting him an 'honorable discharge', and a medal. The remains of the RED team were less warm, in their goodbyes to the Spy, but there was an awkward shuffle, a handshake from RED's Medic, a pat on the back from the Demoman. The Sniper had nothing to say to him, but the Heavy stepped in to give both the Spy and BLU's Scout a parting hug. "No Scout." The Demoman shook his head, as they returned to their huddle short two members. "Two docs still." The Engineer said. "We could still make a pretty good run of things, with two docs, plus a dispenser. Long as we keep those walking bombs off my tail, we'll have that too." "But the robots will still come." The BLU Spy lit a fresh cigarette, blowing out a plume of smoke. "No one asked you, you-- you big downer!" The Soldier crabbed. "It is the truth. How long do you intend to keep on doing this?" "Until those robots put me in the cold, dark earth! Or until I have wrung every drop of precious oil from their lifeless metal bodies! Preferably the second one!" "You can't." "No one can." The Sniper sidled over, extending a hand, and the Spy handed over a cigarette, lighting it for the other man. "Unless..." He paused, leaning in, their eyes meeting. "Unless what?" The Spy turned suddenly, striding over to the Engineer. "What do you know about robots?!" "Not half so much as I'd like, but more every day." The Engineer grinned up at him, picking up a fallen metal arm and gesturing with it. "They got some limitations. Any luck, I'll be able to tailor some of our weapons, make us a mite more efficient at scrapping 'em." "But what is the first thing that you know about robots?!" The Pyro supplied an answer, which the Spy failed to understand, but the Engineer just shook his head. "Only in books, pardner. These robots got themselves no problem with violating your Asimov's law." "Your answer, Labourer." The Spy snapped his fingers. "Well. They're... They're robots, dagnabbit, what do you want to know? You want me to go into their programming?" "Suffice to say they have programming. They are built. Made. By men." "... Sure. Well, your prototypes were. I imagine these fellas roll off of an automated production line," "And if we knew where that production line was?" The Spy pressed. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his sapper. "Our recently departed friend has shown you something of what one of these can do. I do not know if he has ever performed sabotage on a larger scale. I only know my own credentials, on that front." "And?" The Spy waited, with a little smile, as the cobbled-together team leaned in, almost as one. "I singlehandedly brought a munitions factory to its knees. A grinding halt. Fire, panic, they never truly recovered from everything I did. I do not know if it is true, but I heard that the floor manager was in a state of catatonia for weeks." "Bull hockey." The Soldier crossed his arms. "You weren't there." A sneer flashed across the Spy's face, real anger instead of his usual amusement-laced contempt. He fought for his composure, and lost it again. "You weren't there! And I swear, if I hear you-- one more time!-- imply my countrymen are cowards--" "Whoa there, easy!" The Engineer grabbed one of the Spy's arms, the Sniper reached for the other. The Spy shook his teammate off, though he allowed the restraining hand from the man he used to fight. For a moment, he seemed to settle, with an apologetic embarrassment over the outburst. "I seem to remember a certain U S of A saved a certain France's ass in a certain W W tw--" The Soldier started. The Spy lunged at him, the Sniper barely holding him back long enough for the Engineer to jump back in. "WHO'S ASS DID YOU SAVE?!" "Look, nobody needs to fight over it," The Engineer tried to soothe, casting about the group. The Pyro had moved to stand behind the Heavy, putting the biggest possible shield between himself and the fight, but the Demoman stepped in to help, pulling the Soldier back and whispering to him. "Because it wasn't mine! It wasn't anyone I knew! You go around spouting some storybook version of history, and you don't know a damned thing about people!" "I know a damn thing about not surrendering!" "Surrender?" Another sneer, and this time the contempt had returned, but with none of the old edge of amusement. "What is surrender?" "It's a disgrace." "For you. Maybe. A straightforward thing." The Spy stepped back, shaking off his guard, straightening his suit. "For me, do you know what surrender is? Surrender is another name you give to war. Another mask. Surrender is the thing that you play act at, so that your enemy never sees the knife coming. If my enemies see me as weak, or as cowardly, this is another weapon for me. But you... you have worked next to me from the beginning. And you need to respect me. Because I have never run from something that I did not return to destroy." The Soldier did not admit to any wrongdoing, or make any apology, but his expression faltered, and seeing that was enough for the Spy. He turned away, walking to the window of the room in the factory where the men had holed up. "Somewhere, there is a factory where these robots are in production. It would be better, to go after that, than to let them demolish our forces any further. They have cut us in half. Would you let them halve us again?" "That's all well and good, but we don't know where this bloody factory of yours is." The Demoman pointed out. "A general idea." The Spy murmured. "I have it narrowed down. A little more work and it could be found. It would be helpful, of course, if you could get in touch with our current employers, they would be able to employ resources I do not have, in finding it." "I'll see what I can do. It's down to the wireless after the robots blew up the phone lines." The Engineer said. "Just try. There is only so much I can do fighting one robot at a time. If I knew where they were coming from, I could do much more." The Sniper followed him out of the room, catching him at the far end of the corridor. "Where're you headed?" "Out. I don't... I don't lose my cool, not like that, in front of people. I need some space." He shook his head, tugging the Spy back. "Out's not safe, even at night." They had learned that the hard way. They'd believed the robots shut down at night, hadn't seen any at first. It was the BLU Sniper who had left the safety of the 'home base' they'd built within the factory, and learned that any movement would 'wake' them. "Out of the room, at least." "Never know if they're lurking somewhere, come back in. Only place that's really secure. Pride's not worth losing your head." "He's been pushing my buttons since we were both hired for BLU." The Spy shrugged. He sucked down a deep drag from his cigarette, 'til it was down to the filter, tossing it down on the hard concrete floor and lighting another. "That's all." "Sure. Everyone's got a teammate they butt heads with." "Who was yours?" He shook his head. "Never stuck around to find out. All of 'em maybe. Not a real social animal." The Spy snorted, and the Sniper grinned. "No. Me also. But they were my team." "Yeah. Take care of 'em from afar..." "Right." They exchanged a brief smile, before the Spy let the Sniper lead him back in. The men were settling down for the night, the Engineer setting his sentry up in case the robots changed their MO, the others arranging their bedding. There were a couple of old futon mats, one rubber mattress, a few sleeping bags, a scattering of pillows and blankets... When it had been eighteen men, they slept in shifts, with not enough to go around, and now, with the RED Spy and the Scout driving away in one of the last vehicles still intact and running, everyone had something to call his own for the night. It was funny, how things had changed... At first, the room had been split, RED to one side and BLU to the other. BLU's Soldier and RED's Demoman had been the first to bridge the gap, and even now they had a pair of sleeping bags side-by-side, whispering to each other, the occasional soft chuckle from their corner of the room. The Pyro still stuck with the Engineer, and with BLU's Heavy and then their Demoman gone, their Medic stuck close to those teammates as well. He spread himself around in battle, where RED's stayed glued to his Heavy, during the fights and during the evenings, and the group as a whole seemed willing to write their closeness off as a product of Heavy's Russian sensibilities. He wasn't the friendliest man anyone had ever met, not by a long shot, but if he decided he liked someone, he was as touchy-feely a man as you were likely to see. The Scouts had begun by sticking near their teams, and then, as they learned they had more in common, near each other, staying up late to talk baseball just like the Soldier and Demoman talked bombs and rockets. The RED Spy, like his counterpart on BLU, and like the remaining Sniper, kept to himself, staking out a spot for himself as far from the rest as he could, but he had always given himself an eyeline, to the BLU Scout. The Spy felt it was probably just as well they both left when they did... it seemed wrong, cruel, to keep the Scout there when his old opposite had died. It was an ugly death, on a boy too like him... He had been less careful about keeping his own distance, as the nights wore on. Now, on that night with the RED Scout dead, the BLU Scout and his fellow Spy gone-- and if any two could make it out in spite of the potential for those motion-sensitive robots, it would be them, the RED Spy with his invisibility, the Scout with his speed-- now, the Spy let the Sniper pull his sleeping bag up close. "Gets to feeling different, when we lose someone." The Sniper admitted. "More anxious. That energy in the air." The Spy agreed. "Like..." Like any one of us could be next, but he wouldn't say that. "Hard to get any rest, nights like that." The Sniper nodded, glancing sidelong. "Thought I'd offer a little company, if you felt the same." "My company, you would be happier without." He smiled sadly. "Never know until you try." The Sniper shrugged. The Spy shook his head. He felt like they were having two separate conversations, at that point. The offer of company was fine, for most of the men. He suspected RED's Heavy and Medic of being more than close friends, but allowed that he could have been wrong, and if he was... Well, if he was wrong about them, then he was in a category all his own, among them. And the kind of company he itched for on restless nights was not the kind he was being offered.
Oh god Another masterpiece uploaded on tf2chan You made me jizz in my pants already
Yes, oh my yes. This is fantastic. I love Spy's rant at Soldier, and just. Wow, just everything.
Ugh my feels, they hurt I love this I can't wait for more, such emotion...!
I really like this, it's interesting and very well-written. But damn, Sniper, you jerk, you worked with RED Spy for years and now you'll probably never see him again, give the man a freaking handshake!
((heh, Sniper's just a little sore-- not that he'd admit it-- over the team getting 'abandoned'... he expresses it through jerkishness. Though, if anyone wanted to see some Sniper-and-Spy-getting-along action from me...)) Ch. II- And Then There Were Eight -/- In between waves of robots, when they could clear enough of the things out to take a break, the new team did what it could, to take care of themselves, and each other. The upgrades, when the Engineer could figure some out, when the team could afford to pay the company for supplies, those helped. It smarted, paying. If there was one thing you could say for the two late Manns, it was that they had been willing to take care of their teams. They had paid the mercenaries handsome salaries, and provided the bases with necessities. Saxton Hale did no such thing. The Sniper didn't feel ready for retirement, the only reason he was willing to pay his employer for the 'privilege' of fighting the robots. He considered the robot snipers an affront, an insult. Machines that stole-- or at least, approximated-- his likeness, just so they could steal his jobs. But that was only if he couldn't prove he was better. They had to be expensive, robots that ran on money. He considered just making his price competitive. It wasn't the money he needed, as long as he had enough to live on... as long as he got paid, a professional had a price, but he could be flexible on what that price was... During the breaks, while the Engineer worked on using the resources Mann Co. did send-- the resources Mann Co. sold them-- to make their upgrades, the Sniper hunted. He didn't always have luck, the fighting, the tanks, that all had a way of scaring off the wildlife. Still, sometimes he was lucky. It had been jackrabbits, only a couple, since the whole mess with the robots began. He'd seen wild turkeys come through, before they'd been moved to the Mann factory, one of the bases not too far away, but he hadn't seen them in a long time. The bighorn seemed almost like divine providence. He almost didn't get back in time, was luckier still when the Heavy spotted him struggling to drag his kill home before the robots returned. The big man came out to sling the carcass over one shoulder, and they hung it up inside their safe area, on a hook the Heavy bent out of what had been a robot's leg. That night, when the only robots left are in their strange sleep mode, and the men gather back inside where it's safe, they're down by one, though none of them saw the BLU Medic fall. "One doc." The Demoman sighed, taking a swig. It's his second-to-the-last bottle, and he'd wanted to make it last, but that didn't look as likely anymore. He offered it around to the remaining BLUs, and only the Soldier took him up on it. "We'll look for him in the morning. Not safe now. But when there's a gap, we can bury him." The Engineer nodded. The Sniper had been butchering his kill, carefully piling cuts of meat onto the big table, scrubbed down to be gleaming clean before he'd begun. There was very little he slopped into the metal wastebasket at his feet, carefully portioning out the lean, and the fat, and the marrow-rich bones for stock, if it came to that. He was just a little choosier when he got down to the digestive system. Some things weren't meant for even the desperate... Still, he imagined he could pass the stomach and maybe the kidneys on to the Demoman and see something come out of it. Anything closer to the esophagus than the rectum he kept without qualm. "You are kidding me." A gloved hand slid between table and wastebasket, catching the last thing he had to dispose of before he could call it good and set to cooking some and hanging some to dry into jerky. "Hm?" "This is... like a big sheep, yes?" The Spy gestured to the bighorn-- such as it now was. "Something like it." "Amourettes." The Spy made no further elaboration, but the Sniper watched him take the very last bottle of scrumpy-- with a sniff and a moue of distaste-- and start cooking, at the makeshift little stove the Engineer had built them. "I don't suppose we have garlic." He sighed. "Don't suppose we do." The Sniper shrugged, looking through the cache of foodstuffs they did have. Cans of soup, mostly, two bottles of ketchup, one of mustard, and salt. "Parsley?" The Spy's frown had gone from distaste to something almost mournful. The Sniper snorted. "They need a good meal, you know." The Spy shrugged and shook his head. "Losses do not help morale. Food will." There was one onion left, behind a bag of dried beans, and the Sniper presented it. The Spy smiled. "Thank you. For the whole thing, I mean. How did you find him?" "I swear... I haven't been a church-going man most my life now, but if God himself hadn't wanted me to bag him, I wouldn't have." He blew out a shaky breath. "Think your Engineer could make a smoker?" "I think he could make anything if you gave him enough scrap metal. Which is the one thing we are in no danger of running out of, here." "Meat'll keep longer that way. And you're not gonna feed the whole team on that." "No." The Spy smiled again. "It is a little treat, though." The Sniper set a stew up, next to where the Spy worked, with the pieces that didn't seem fit for too much else, with the dried beans. It would take a long time, probably be breakfast more than dinner, but there were cuts of meat that could be cooked for the night. After a moment, he picked up the bighorn's heart. "I could make it edible, but I could never make it appetizing. Don't suppose you know how?" "I am french." The Spy winked, taking it. He stared at it a moment, something introspective washing over him, and the Sniper had to wonder at what the man was thinking. The Sniper watched, as the Spy's lips moved over foreign syllables, soundless, his focus wholly on the food. He offered the Sniper half of his first dish, while they worked together at turning the kill into a couple of good meals for the team, and while the Sniper never would have called it a 'treat' unprompted before, he had to admit, his did melt in the mouth. "Who'd've thought, yeah?" He chuckled. "Bollocks and scrumpy and an onion, but hell, it goes down easy." "Well. Port would have been better." The Spy said, taking bites between attending to the stove. "Sorry about your doc." "So am I." He nodded, moving to lean against the table a moment. "I didn't like him much at first. We turned out to have more in common than most, out here, though... I cannot... I can hardly believe, tomorrow night I will not be eating with him." "Tomorrow's Saturday." The Sniper shook his head. It was harder to keep track, the robots didn't take weekends. "You'd have been a free man anyway if things were the way they used to be." "Oh, I am rarely free." The Spy gave him another wry grin, before sliding out of the way so that the Sniper could stir at the stew. "Yeah, well... You know, I always thought..." "Thought what?" "Thought you'd be... more squeamish, somehow. Which is probably a stupid assumption on my part, since you go around killing people for a living." "My father was a butcher. There was never a time I had a fear of blood." The Spy shrugged, offered over a portion of the now-cooked heart before whistling to the rest of the men and setting out food. "When I was ten, I learned to kill. Sheep, not men." "It's funny..." The Sniper looked down at his plate. "I could never stand mutton." "You liked this enough." "This is wild." He squirmed. "Game. We raised sheep for wool, I guess I'm softer on them than I am on people." The Spy laughed. "Well, they are profitable to you alive, then. For us, they were profitable as meat. If it is any consolation, it was done kindly." "Sure. You've got a light touch." "I mean it." He moved away from the crowd at the stove, to watch the men eat from afar, smiling warmly when the Sniper followed him. "It's best if they're not afraid. I suppose this one was not, he never knew you were there." "Sure, right. Yeah." They spent the rest of the evening in silence, outside of little acknowledgements, when the team praised the hunting or the cooking. Even those who turned down the Demoman's offer of booze toasted the BLU Medic, as they had the RED Scout, and all the others before, with whatever they had, with water or with coffee or with tea. That night, when the Sniper made another offer of company, the Spy beckoned him closer, and passed him a faded photograph, in black and white, a girl with her dark hair tied up under a scarf, laughing at the camera from behind a loose curl and a large basket of linens. "My mother. It is the only photograph I carry, she has been dead too long to be harmed by it." He said. "And... well. You know. With all of this, maybe I will be, too, before long. Even if I survive this all... There is no one alive now who knows any of my secrets, no one but me, and..." The back of the photograph read 'Noemi Benoit', and the Spy smiled a little, as he watched the Sniper read it. "Not her married name, and so not mine. Most secrets I plan to take to my grave, but it is a burden to hold every single one. You offered me company. Do you think you can stand it, to live under the weight of trust, from a man who does not give trust lightly?" The Sniper dug through his vest pockets, passing over a picture of his parents. No names written on it, it had been taken by him, and he didn't need his own parents' names. "The oldies. With any luck, I'll see them again, one of these days." He laughed. "It's like a real war now, isn't it? Sitting up at night showing off our families and hoping we make it." "A real war." The Spy agreed, with a weight to his voice the Sniper wanted to do something about, an impulse he was unused to.
Oh man, this is fantastic! I love Spy and Sniper cooking together and sharing small secrets.
Ch.III- And Then There Were Seven --- The Spy avoided his own teammates, after the next loss, couldn't bear them. The Engineer was pulled from his work to try and offer comfort, which only made him angry-- they couldn't hope to get anywhere, if the Engineer couldn't get on the wireless, couldn't make contact with Mann Co., couldn't find out where the robots were coming from. The Pyro was unsettling at the best of times, and moreso when he, or she, or it was tutting softly and offering a singed polka-dotted handkerchief. The Soldier was the worst. He absolutely couldn't stand to watch the Soldier lose his battle against tears. Without BLU's Medic, and with RED's focused on the Heavy and rarely willing to leave the safety of the big man's shadow to seek out his other teammates, the Demoman had finally gone down. He'd made it a longer time than he might have, they all had, but both he and the Soldier found themselves hit hard without a second medic on the field, and in the end, only the Soldier was rescued in time. They had watched him struggle through disbelief, had held firm for him when he hit anger, but now, with everything sinking in, all the Soldier had left were tears for his dead friend, had been shaking with the force of them, trying his hardest not to let them out, while the Pyro and the Engineer both held onto him and promised it was all right if he did. The Spy wanted to get away, but there was no safe place to get to. "He was your teammate, too." He acknowledged, when the Sniper came to stand at his elbow again, in their shared corner. "Yeah. He was a good man. Shame to lose him." "He's not going to last." The Spy sighed. It was a revelation, but once he had it, he knew it was true, and there was little he could do. "Hm?" "The Soldier. He will want revenge-- against robots!-- and... this is all too personal to him now. He has been angry before, and upset. He mourned our Demoman, and our Sniper... our Heavy, our Medic. Your Demoman got him through it, though. He took the Medic going well, but now... Oh, the Engineer will try, and the Pyro. But there is no point to it. He's lost too much now, and he's not the kind of man who can take losses like this. Every one is someone he couldn't protect, killed by a robot he could not destroy in time. It's going to make him careless." "Bloody hell, you're a ray of sunshine." "It's true, though." "What about you?" "I didn't know him well." "No-- I mean-- All of it, the team. Everyone. How are you taking it?" "What kind of man am I, do you mean?" He smiled, though there was nothing very happy about it. "I have born losses. I do not see in absolutes. I do not make these things personal." "Right." "But, I admit... I would much prefer winning." The Sniper laughed softly, slinging an arm around him. "You and me both, mate." "Loss cannot break me." He shook his head, his own arm coming up around the Sniper's waist. "I have already lost everything once, and I am here. I can lose it all again, and... Not to say it would not be difficult. Losing men is difficult. Even my sang-froid is not so perfect. But I am in this with clear eyes and clear head." "Glad to hear it. Same here, in case--" "I have no need of wondering." He tilted a sly smile the Sniper's way. "You are a part of the team, but you are apart from the team. You have no one to lose, not the way he did. And I expect that even if you did, you would not become careless in your grief. No, you would become cold." The Sniper shrugged. "Well, you know what they say. Don't get mad, get even." "I have seen you mad." He rested his head on the other man's shoulder, and the Sniper didn't need to look down at him to know he was smirking. "You used to come out of respawn swearing bloody revenge at me." "That's different. That whole war was different." Another shrug. "Come on. Let's eat." They had moved onto the canned soup, their supply of fresh meat run out, but all of the Spy's hopes that it might improve the Soldier's mood a little were dashed, when he sobbed out a complaint and pushed his portion away, and no amount of the Engineer's entreaties would change his mind. He stayed between the Engineer and the Pyro that night, though it was at the Pyro's insistence, and he slept in the Demoman's sleeping bag. The Spy moved himself closer still to the Sniper, until he was practically in the man's arms. By the time he woke up, he was. They didn't discuss it, not through the quiet, sad morning, and not through the day's first wave of robots. The Sniper shared a nest with the Engineer, the Pyro trotting back and forth between the dispenser and the front lines, the Soldier and Heavy falling back on occasion for ammunition, and the Medic switching between them, even though the Soldier never called for him. The Spy crawled back to the dispenser once, injured, but only once. He spent most of the day disguised, sapper in hand. Somehow they made it through the day without the Soldier breaking-- he'd been reckless, and he hadn't given much thought to his health, but the Medic had kept an eye on him, and 'reckless' was not quite the same as 'death wish'. When night fell at last, the Pyro volunteered for dinner duty, turning their meager pantry contents into something burnt but edible, while the Medic worked on healing the Soldier, and the Engineer and Heavy worked at upgrading weapons. The Spy was smoking in the back corner, when the Sniper came to stand by him. "I thought you might avoid me. After the morning." "I thought you were avoiding me." The Sniper chuckled. "Was gonna apologize for, er..." "Cuddling?" "Yeah. Didn't mean to." "I know." He looked down at his feet. "'Smatter?" "Absolutely nothing. I don't mind it, you know." The Sniper let out a sigh, dropping to the floor. After a moment, the Spy sat as well, and the Sniper leaned against him. "Thanks. I figure... I mean... I think we're all starting to need it. I don't just mean feeling lousy when we lose somebody, either, but it's a real war now, it's not what we signed up for, and we're not getting anything for our trouble that we can't scrounge ourselves. Fuck, Doc and Heavy have been spooning for a week now, and Pyro's always sleeping right up next to your Engineer-- or your Soldier, now he's not got Demo to stick close to." "And we have each other?" The Spy got out another cigarette, lighting it and passing it over. "That is fine for me." "Fine for me." His smile fell. "May I be honest with you?" "That'll be a laugh, you and me honest." The Sniper grinned. "Yeah. Fire away." The Spy's tongue failed him. He could muster no suavity for the situation, for the secret whose time had come. "Spook?" Sniper gave him a nudge. "C'mon, spit it out, mate. Can't be that bad." "What if it is?" "I gotta say, if you're going to tell me about a time you killed a man, it's not gonna shock me." He deadpanned. "What if I fucked him instead?" "What, for a job?" The Sniper asked, uneasy. "Would that bother you?" "Well... Dunno, maybe. I mean, not that it's my business anyway, and not like I know so much about how spy stuff works, but I guess you've got to seduce people some of the time. I just never thought about having to go through with it, or--" "I don't whore myself out for clients." "Oh. Then fuck whoever you want, I guess." The Spy laughed. "Thank you." "Why?" "I don't know. I just... I didn't want to spend the night... cuddling, and letting you think I was-- I mean, I didn't want to-- Look. I expect nothing, and I will appreciate a warm, breathing body that I can hold onto during the night. But I did not want to feel as though I was using you and deceiving you in the bargain, that's all. I do like men." "Okay." "Okay." He nodded. The Sniper leaned against him again, settling until he was comfortable, his head on the Spy's shoulder.
Excellent chapter, I really liked it.
You write Sniper/Spy entirely too well.
Oh, poor Soldier! I felt so sorry for him for losing the Demoman... It's interesting to see how Spy and Sniper's relationship will evolve after Spy's confession.
Looking forward to the next chapter. It's heartbreaking seeing the team without the luxury of Respawn, and seeing them stretched to their limits with little supplies and little hope. I have the feeling this can only end in tears, but I'll be damned if I stop reading.
I almost held out, you know. Was keeping it together, even with the whole opening of getting Scout home to his mom, and Jane and Tavish finally reconciling their differences and then- Spoiler Alert, but God- Jane, fuck, Jane-! Finally got his buddy back and- Jesus Christ I can barely see to type, I'm crying so hard.
Sometimes I think that, despite the flood of positive commentary that excellent writers often receive on this board, in this fandom--that even that is not enough, and that writers like Anne are borrowing familiar characters to tell more serious stories, that her wit and thoughtfulness will never quite be appreciated for the depth of storytelling they represent in her fics. I'm just pleased every time she writes something, because it pulls me into thinking about these things.
Oh! Oh no, all my feels! Augh, the feels, what do I do with them?! You're going to break my tender little heart, I just know it. TT^TT Dammit video game fandom being good at things and causing legitimate FEELS in me. Stop ruining my edgy post-postmodern exterior! Bwaaaaaa... I'm not outwardly crying yet but you're gunning for the waterworks, dangit.
15 Not to come off as backseat modding, but please, please remember to put "sage" (without quotes) in the email field when replying to a thread that hasn't updated in a little while, friend. If you do that then it doesn't bump the thread up to the top and make people mistakenly think the story has updated.
...Please Anne let this have a happy ending, haha! Oh my heart is being tugged, the words, and the characters... I look forward to the next update...
Are you going to continue this?
I love this fic. I hope you come back to it one day!