I rather like the humorous way Australian society is backwards. That it's perfectly fine for women to sport thick mustaches and have a huge penis grafted to their own bodies for a weekend, but a transman can't request permanent male plumbing.

>>55
Thank you, and I think I see the problem in my effective communication-- the Sniper's hand-loss joke was less 'I don't want you touching that unless I don't have a choice' and more 'I know you're offering because you want to be supportive, not because you ever want to do it, and I won't ask you unless I have to'. But, in re-reading, I can see how that really didn't make it in.

>>56
Thank you! I really, really worried about getting to this chapter in particular (I feared that 'writing a sci-fi quick fix to a real world problem' trap), because with the way TF2 presents Australia, the tech is there, but there are still other barriers... Anyway, glad it worked for you.


Ch. XII

---/-/---

The Spy is quiet for a while come Sunday morning, and taut as a bowstring even while having his neck nuzzled at.

"Are you thinking about it?" The Sniper sighs.

"Well, I haven't forgotten about it, if that's what you're asking."

"You think I ought to do it?"

The Spy lets out an ungainly snort and flops onto his side. The turning of his back doesn't feel like a shut-out-- it displays too much trust to-- but the Sniper would rather have eye contact.

"Cher, the man I fell in love with wouldn't make his decision based on what I think about it."

There's a tiny hint of bitterness, when he says 'love'. The Sniper rolls onto his own side, draping his arm over the Spy's waist, his bandaged-up hand finding a home over the man's heart.

"No. If I'm gonna install anything permanent in the old corpse, it'll be for me. That doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about it, reckon. I mean, I do love you. You probably knew about it before I did..."

The Spy relaxes. It is a slow process, each of his muscles bleeding out tension until he is lax and malleable in the Sniper's hold, a soft smile on his lips.

"I would not have been so confident as to say I knew it before you did... At least, I am pleased to have some confirmation of the fact..."

"Yeah? C'mon, last night must've tipped you off good, the doctor who put me on the damn cream didn't even spend as much time up in there as you did."

"Then I suppose I worried over nothing." He sighs.

"Yeah, right, you worried." The Sniper rolls his eyes, before stopping short. "You worried?"

"Not 'worried'. I mean, I said it, you didn't, I would not say I worried, but I took note of it."

"Not big on saying stuff as much as doing stuff."

"I know. Maybe it was easier to focus on an imaginary slight than to think about the fact that people can just go get new genitals where you come from."

"Just cocks."

"Oh, just cocks."

"Premium on masculinity." He grumbles.

"Then... maybe... Wouldn't it be acceptable, for you to be one? If that is what your countrymen prize--"

"Cartoon masculinity." He shakes his head. "You saw the damn things. You've seen the ads from Mann Co. too. I probably could and no one would bat an eye, if what I wanted was to be one of them, if I wanted to bulk up and fuck women with a giant cock. I don't, so... shit out of luck, yeah?"

"Maybe. I don't know-- I don't understand it."

"Course not. You only get to see the stuff they let out of the country. Tech only gets out when the rest of the world is about to catch up to it. Enough to keep hold of the market, not enough to really share any meaningful advances. Folks are more normal out in the countryside, out where there's no Australium stockpiled, but hell, that's almost worse. Some yobbo in the city at least thinks everyone ought to want a cock, normal people sort of think it's silly, grafting on a bunch of useless stuff just for looks."

"Yes, I suppose at that size it is just for looks. The 'Large' was... not... I mean..." The Spy dithers. There's a surge of interest just remembering it.

"You would actually want that thing, what, in you?"

"If you have a fake one in the same size somewhere."

"Seems excessive to me."

"I admit just once I would like to try something that big. I wouldn't ask you to have one grafted on, but we could buy one."

"Yeah. Could find one sometime."

The Spy has other questions, about the surgery, the culture... about all of it. He saves the rest, turning around for a quick peck before getting up and heading for the bathroom, leaving the door unlatched as he goes through his morning routine.

He lets the Sniper lounge around in bed while he goes down to the lobby to fetch two cups of coffee. He doesn't expect him to have much success in getting dressed without a little bit of help, and he certainly doesn't expect him to attempt a shower with his bandaged hand. The Sniper may be surprisingly clean for a man who lives in a van and hordes urine to use as a weapon, but he isn't fastidious enough to be bothered.

When the Spy returns to the room, the Sniper accepts the coffee with a grateful, easy smile.

"Breakfast of champions." He lifts his cardboard cup in a toast.

The Spy meets it with a gentle touch of his own, a gentler smirk. It's amazing the number of expressions he has that fit under that banner. They range from mild amusement to disdain, from love to hate. His lips curve almost naturally into the state, and the Sniper wonders if he's even seen them all.

"How about next weekend I don't hurt myself and we have a lot more fun?" He offers.

"Is that a promise?"

"Dunno... will you bring me coffee in bed even if I'm not an invalid?"

"Hm... ask me very nicely and I might."

The Sniper smirks back at that, resting his bandaged hand at the Spy's hip. "Oh, I can ask very nicely."

"I'll bet you can." The Spy leans in, his lips grazing the Sniper's cheeks, avoiding a kiss deep enough to share the taste that develops on the tongue in the middle of a cup of cheap coffee. He just wants the closeness. It's incredible how close they've gotten already, and he likes having a moment to chart the deepening trust between them from its early days on. It doesn't matter how many times he goes over it in his head, it always seems unbelievable. He was twelve years old when he decided that miracles didn't exist, and now, pushing forty, he wonders if there is such a thing as a quiet miracle. A man-made miracle. It still defies logic and it still requires faith, even if it is not from the hands of any God.

I think my favorite part about this thread is when an actual trans person expressed a complaint and everyone just kind of shoved that aside.

Way to go, guys. Way. To. Go. </sarcasm>

>>58 Under most circumstances I would agree, but if the complaint you're referring to was >>46 , I don't think anyone was shoving aside their critique--they had a valid point, but it would only really apply if the doctor in question was anyone BUT the Medic.

Fandom tends to play fast and loose with his characterization; however, Anne sticks pretty close to the canon portrayal of Medic in most of her stories, at least from what I've seen. And canon-Medic is not a guy who gives a crap what sexual anatomy you come equipped with, just as long as it's not currently falling off and/or on fire (literally or symptomatically.) Anne has even confirmed that he hung out with a very open nightclub crowd when he was younger--a lot of people tend to view Germany as All Nazis All The Time until 1945, but trans* individuals were around, pre-war. Given what we've been told about Medic in this story, it's very likely that he knew (and was probably great friends with) at least one or two people who went by names that weren't on their birth certificates.

And that means >>46's critique does not hold up under scrutiny. I know a trans* person's opinion on a story like this carries a LOT more weight than others', however, I still think that you need to look and see if it applies to it at all, because one person's particular experience doesn't automatically make all their criticism 100% accurate and true. If it applies, then it applies--but if it doesn't? Your individual experience is not a universal truth. Particularly in a universe that has yetis and Australium and Abraham Lincoln with a rocket launcher.

Sorry for the long argumentative comment, it's just that I wanted to say all this when it came up and didn't, so these thoughts have been sitting with me for a while now. I do have some minor critique of my own (story is great, just noticed a few things that don't feel "right" to me), but I'll hold off on that for now and just say that I've enjoyed it so far and I think it's very sensitively-handled, which is more than I can say for a lot of other TF2 stories. (Even some that don't involve trans* characters at all.)

>>46 >>58 I really am sorry if my comment came off as trying to shove their opinion aside; I was just sort of thinking aloud as I figured out why I didn't find the Medic's acceptance of Sniper to be too unbelievable, but obviously my opinion isn't nearly as informed or aware as a trans* person's would be.

I think that what Anne is doing is difficult to get right because it is a serious situation in a ridiculous setting. Sure, we can shrug and say "everything in TF2 is crazy; this doesn't need to be the same as in the real world," but I feel like that's walking a dangerous line, because this fic does deal with the very real and serious issue of trans* acceptance. To simply ignore things like having trouble accessing proper medical care would be irresponsible, but to cast Medic as a typical doctor would be incorrect. I'm not sure what the solution is here.

as some one who.. lets say is dealing with a change in gender at the moment... I have truly come to love and value your story Anne. at first i thought perhaps it would be another story attempting to use trans* in it and failing miserably. but I see you have done the research. And you know the stuff. I am not offended at all about any of this. I absolutely love this story. I hope to see you continue this for a long time. I applaude you Anne. so very much. its hard to say. but when I read the scene where sniper tells his family I cried and cried. I too went through an almost eirily similar time with my own folks when the time came to let them know. thankfully my fiance was there with me and as hard as it was i pulled through. my father and I still get into little spats. btu this whole story has been one emotional trip for me and I have loved every moment of it. I just thought you should know. thank you for writing this. thank you.

>>60 Apologies if it came across as me saying that you can't do serious situations in ridiculous settings, that wasn't my intention. I only brought the silly stuff up because of something said in the original comment. This fandom has a lot more freedom to interpret canon than any other that I've been in, but I still think that in a universe that's canonically made of silly hats and ludicrous phlebotonium science, you have to be careful how you insert Serious Real World Issues lest you end up in "grimdark for the sake of edginess and angst" territory--which, to me, means you've got a bad story, or at least a cheaply-written one. Anne is certainly not a bad or cheap writer in the slightest.

I feel like the implication that Sniper has had a lot of trouble finding halfway-decent doctors is apparent in the story, but for the sake of argument, say the chapter had played out in a way that matched real world experiences. It would have involved the Medic being, at best, unable to understand the concept of Sniper being a transgender man, and hostile about it at worst. That's out of character for Medic in all kinds of ways, especially with the bit of dialogue regarding his past. If this was actually what Anne had written, I would have had a mountain of criticism about his characterization--Mr. Kritzkrieghuffer von Van-Stealer coldly saying something along the lines of "I really do not understand or accept the idea of you being a man with female genitalia" is OOC as hell. The worst thing I can imagine him doing is asking way too many personal questions in a fit of curiosity, or trying to figure it out from a medical perspective, but he would ultimately have an attitude of "Whatever, you do your job just fine and you've saved my ass from a messy Respawn more than once--if you want me to call you a man then I shall continue to refer to you as Herr Sniper, and we can pretend this conversation Did Not Happen."

Anne has a good grasp of these characters and what they would do in a given situation, and I think would be a discredit to her as an author (as well as a discredit to the story, the characters, and the universe they live in) to ask her to twist the Medic's personality to resemble some, in my opinion, absolutely shitty close-minded asshole doctors that a reader has interacted with in real life, all for the sake of supposed authenticity. That's the main point I'm trying to make here.

(Apologies in advance for this gargantuan comment.) Firstly, Anne, thank you simply for having the guts to write. That alone warrants applause. And to write something that deals accurately and just as sensitively with FtM experiences, well, bravo. More than content, however, I have to say I admire your writing choices, stylistically and plot-wise. You know just where to make us laugh, and where to make us cry, and you know how to keep us anticipating our next emotion. So bravo again for writing a fic that is both sensitive and of sound prose. But all this has been said by others previously...


There have been some comments made regarding Spy's 'easy' acceptance of Sniper, and the level of believability in this. I have to leave my two-cents-worth-of-opinion-and-self-insertion here on this topic. I am not a transgender person, but I am in a relationship with a transgender person, and I have to say that Anne's portrayal of the relationship from Spy's perspective has been very pleasing to me thus far, and no I don't think Spy's acceptance of Sniper has been an easy one. Certainly, it has been easy for Spy to support Sniper from the beginning, but this is simply expected; being in a relationship with a trans* person can be 'all or none' in terms of support - if there is no support, or not enough support, there is no relationship. Evidently, Spy is aware of this, or else why would Sniper have allowed him to stick around? Not to mention the fact that Anne specifically wrote them as friends even before they began their relationship. Thus, Spy's support should have come easily, given that Sniper is a man for whom he genuinely cares. An easy acceptance, though? I don't think so. Anne has made it clear, with appropriate Spy-esque subtlety, that there are aspects of Sniper that he does have difficulty accepting, even if he says otherwise (Spy is still Spy - just because he is a protagonist here doesn't mean we don't have to take anything he says with a grain of salt). But what is acceptance, really? In my experience, acceptance is knowing that your partner has a daily battle with the toilet seat and acknowledging that your own feelings toward that fact may not be pleasant, but you still wake up in the morning wanting to say 'Hello, I love you'. Acceptance is knowing your lover may not be able to please you in all the ways you like (but then how many of us can say all of our past and present lovers have known how to please us exactly and immediately) but also having the capacity to overlook that fact simply because your partner is someone who you appreciate, physically, intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically. Aesthetics, as I understand, are especially important here for Spy. This is one of the few fics I have read in which Spy is more appreciative of Sniper's personality, his mannerisms, his habits, his physical appearance and his sheer masculinity than he is appreciative of the sex. More often, I've seen Spy barely tolerating Sniper in favour of some great sex. And you know what? It takes a skilled and courageous writer to write sex that is bad, or has something intrinsically disconcerting about it. We can see Spy is very disconcerted by Sniper's genitals, but he accepts them because he is invested in Sniper as a person, and as a man: this, in my experience, is realistic. Is it easy? No. But I've been told I make it look easy, so I suppose Spy has that in his favour as well (and let us remember, Spy is good at glossing over the truth.) I'm not saying that it's easy to lie about acceptance, I'm simply saying that it is very easy to be supportive of someone special to you, and that makes acceptance, which is not the same thing as support, look just as easy.

Perhaps (and more likely) the issue people are having here is in regards to Spy's character? In that being case, I think Anne has done as well as she possibly could appropriating both Spy's and Sniper's characters into this scenario. Trust is the main topic here, for Spy as a character as well as for Sniper as trans*, and Anne has addressed that trust is something that they have garnered over time (it is easy to forget, while reading this fic with all its time collapses, that their friendship and eventual courtship has been built over an indefinite number of weeks and months, not days). Trust is an issue for Spy in any universe he is put in, whether he is taking it or giving it, and say what you will about Sniper and Spy as a pairing, but I think Sniper, also in any universe, is most likely the merc to whom Spy will offer his trust, for any number of reasons. Sniper is solitary, Sniper is generally quiet, Sniper is not a man who can be easily blackmailed, Sniper is in many ways Spy's antithesis, and most importantly for this fic, Sniper has secrets of his own. If Spy is going to give his trust to anyone, and give it willingly, then it is going to be someone who understands the value of it, and won't betray it under any circumstances. I think Anne has established that Sniper is that someone. So why shouldn't Spy have supported, accepted and trusted Sniper with at least a certain degree of readiness, given that Spy likes Sniper, enjoys his company and shares similar experiences with him? And, I'll be honest with you all here, in my experience, I think it would be much easier to gain the trust of a Spy than that of a transgender person, at least where this level of trust - good and real trust - is concerned. And let's face the alternative: if Spy didn't support and accept Sniper from the beginning, then that would have been that, Sniper would have written him off and this story would have ended very quickly. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.


Lastly, I would just like to say, aside from the issues some may have with Spy in this fic, I find his conduct with Sniper pretty accurate in terms of the relationship. From asking questions to the fear of asking questions to exchanging gender/sex experiences to comparing hand sizes to being extremely cautious with touch to simply being occasionally ignorant and desperately trying to change that fact: these are real things that I have experienced in my relationship, and it was very nice to see them reaffirmed here. So, all in all, thank you, Anne, simply for sharing this with us. Honestly, can't thank you enough. (Apologies again for this excessively long comment.)

>>63

I really enjoyed reading your comment.

Okay, first, a blanket 'Wow, thank you', because whether it's praise or nitpicking, the level of thought going into the discourse in the comment section here blows me away. (I won't lie, I'm happier when it's praise, but I appreciate the nitpicking when it comes. Keeps me honest.)

I love you guys, and I've done more in-depth research for this fic than I have for any other (and more than I've done for some college papers!), and it really makes it worthwhile to hear that what I've written has resonated with some people.

(also, captcha says 'His urothei', which... I don't know about you sometimes, captcha...)


Ch. XIII

---/-/---

Sunday night, he lets the Spy drive his van all the way back from town, the knuckles of his good hand white where he grips at the dash.

"I can't believe you don't trust me to drive."

"She takes some delicate handling!"

"I have spent more time driving than I have plumbing the depths of-- I mean, I know how to drive a van!"

"Nothing between my legs is gonna kill us both of a windstorm pops up all of a sudden."

The Spy snorts at that, and it only takes a few moments of him trying to smother his amusement before the Sniper is chuckling along with him.

"I don't think a windstorm is likely, mon beau."

"Yeah, 'kay. Just... keep an eye out."

"For everything." The Spy promises.

He parks a little further from the base than the Sniper usually keeps himself, the back of the camper to the base to keep them hidden from sight as they slide out of the cab.

"The Medic--" The Spy starts.

"I know, believe me, I'm going. Gotta be better than the last time."

The Spy makes a small, satisfied noise at that, giving the other man a quick goodbye kiss before vanishing. The Sniper slouches toward the base, arm carried carefully. At least the Medic is in residence tidying up the little infirmary.

"Couldn't persuade you to pull out the medigun, could I, Doc?" He leans against the wall, holding his hand up. "Climbing accident over the weekend."

The Medic gives him a sharp look over the rims of his glasses. "And will there be any point in lecturing you? I would let you all suffer your weekend injuries to teach you a lesson about personal responsibility, but then I would be facing BLU all by myself! Ah-- Of course! You were not here. Every man in this base has been a walking disaster zone. We had a kitchen fire, a surprisingly gruesome accident with a spoon at breakfast... You know, I almost admire that one, it takes a special kind of skill for a man to debilitate himself with a spoon... Soldier chased Scout up onto the roof and they both came crashing down, the Engineer sliced his hand open in his workshop..."

The Medic sighs heavily, before glancing back up at the Sniper's rapidly ascending eyebrows.

"So, typical weekend." He finishes. "That spoon one was hilarious... I mean, what are the odds? It was his only eye!"

"Doc." The Sniper interrupts, when the Medic's cackling seems to have distracted him from the matter at hand. "While we're young, yeah?"

"Of course, it's in the office, this way. I just finished calibrating it for Monday. Want to be in top shape, after all."

He follows the other man through the small door off the infirmary, to where the medigun is dominating his desk, a set of tools scattered about and the personal photos all moved out of the way.

Most are of birds, or old black and white pictures of his graduation, and his parents. There is one, of a woman with a strong jaw and a soft halo of pale curls. Just the shoulders of a pretty floral dress or blouse are visible. Her smile is shy and soft, and there's a gentleness in her eyes that the Sniper can't imagine the Medic prizing.

"Lili." He nods, following the Sniper's eyes. "I asked her to marry me... Too late, as it happened."

The Sniper waits until the job is done, before unwinding his bandages and dropping them in the bin marked MEDICAL WASTE. He gives the photo another look.

"Someone else steal your girl?"

"In... in a manner of speaking. She was the only woman I ever loved-- perhaps we would not have been a perfect match, there were things... We could have come to an understanding, if I had asked her sooner. She was a singer..."

"Not in the nightclub where girls throw rubber cocks around?" Sniper chuckles.

"They were all like that, for a while." Medic says, a nostalgic smile washing over him. "I think it is easy for everyone to forget, but we did have fun in Germany, before the war. We had a lot of fun... girls in trousers, boys in dresses, people who were both or who were neither, and everyone dancing with anybody. She was classier than that-- she didn't throw anything at anyone. She just sang, early in the evening, before the rowdy acts. When the place was just filling up... And after, we would talk. I didn't see the writing on the wall soon enough. Maybe others did, but when I was not drinking and having fun with beautiful people, I was working my ass off, and when I was not assisting the surgeons, I was forgetting the stress of work by drinking, and usually with someone in my lap-- or me in someone's! And then raids on nightclubs started. I thought if we married, no one would be suspicious... we could say we were saving up money to start a family... all that. Well. As I said, I asked too late."

The Sniper isn't sure what to say to all of that. He hadn't come in for a deep heart-to-heart, but maybe, with what the Medic knew about him, it was only fair.

"Sorry." He says at last.

"So am I. For her... and for you. I have kept up with any kind of research that could have helped her, even knowing the likelihood of her having survived the war is... I have kept up with it, and sometimes I think I could improve it, just as a thought experiment." He sighs. "I don't know a single thing about doing the opposite."

"Oppo--" He blinks. "Oh. Er. Doc... Thanks for being sorry, but-- Not necessary. I mean, if we're on the same page, you're talking about surgery..."

The Medic nods, still staring at the picture on top of his filing cabinet.

"I'm good for now." The Sniper shrugs. It sounds stupid once it's out, but it's true...

"Good for now?" The Medic's brow furrowed. "You don't want to change?"

"Not desperate for it."

"Lili was." He nods a little, sucking his lips in. "I was going to use my work in the hospital to forge her a new old birth certificate, so we could get married, and then... then I thought I would figure out the surgery, no one needed to know about it. There was so much she was heartbroken over, things I knew I did not have the ability to fix, but I thought I could figure out enough! If I'd gotten her out of Germany maybe... I let that area of research go to others, after... I keep up with it, but my work here takes focus. And invulnerability is a very rewarding development. I just promised her so much..."

The Sniper nods. "Well, at the moment, I don't need any... work done. If I did... You're really interested in swapping out genitals?"

The Medic laughs at that, quick and surprised. "You may call it that, yes."

The Sniper chews the inside of his cheek a moment, then nods. "Wait for the developments that come out of Australia, then. We, uh... We're already doing a lot of organ replacement, so..."

He doesn't bring up the brochure-- it's bad enough mentioning any technological developments, and if he handed the brochure over and anyone else saw it, it could mean his visa. Still, he knows this will follow the same pattern-- if someone outside the country makes a big enough step forward, he knows the Australian doctors will jump in with what they have. At least that way the Medic knows where to look, even if it's the 'opposite problem'.

Maybe, he tells himself. Maybe if the Doc proves good enough about keeping secrets, he can throw him the brochure, even if it isn't quite what the man's been working out in his spare time.

At least he leaves the office understanding why the state of his genitals had been so quickly and quietly accepted. He realizes on the walk back to his camper that that had really been the sticking point-- that he didn't know why the Medic was so easy about the whole thing. Now that he knew this, he didn't expect to be the subject of a surprise experiment-- well, no more than anyone else on the team! He expects it's why the Medic told him as much as he did, not because he was particularly keen to dig out the ghosts of his own past, but because there might always be a question otherwise.

"Appreciate the help on the wrist," The Sniper calls back, from midway down the hall. It doesn't cover the half of what he appreciates, but he reckons the Doc gets it, as he hears the faint response float out after him, words too muted to catch, meaning clear enough.

A part of him wants to tell the Spy about it, but he knows he won't. Doctor-patient confidentiality may not normally work both ways, but it will be enough to promise the Spy that the Medic really doesn't care about that, without breaking a friend's trust.

Back in his camper, he's uneasy again, though the Medic has nothing to do with it this time. It's the longest he's gone in a long, long time, without calling home. No matter where he'd been in the world, he managed to talk to them once a weekend, Monday at the latest, and if he couldn't call, he wrote. Now he's done neither since that last call...

He's half-afraid they wouldn't answer, if he did. He's half-afraid they would. How much time do they need? Without knowing if talking would make it better or worse, he's afraid to do anything. He could show up on their doorstep, after his contract with RED is up, and they could either let him in or turn him away then, but he's not so sure that's right, either.

He misses their voices. Even the terse grumpiness his dad had adopted when he took up mercenary work... well, moreso than usual. He misses thinking of the station as his home, a place he could go back to no matter how far he roamed and no matter what he did. He misses his mum's cooking, and his dad's stubborn refusal to take things easy in his golden years, and the way everything in that house is older than he is-- and he doubts his dad has replaced anything much since he's been gone-- and kept working.

He misses being their kid, but he doesn't miss being their daughter, and he doesn't know how that's supposed to work. He can really only hope it will.

You're one of the only writers on TF2chan who can really capture Medic as he appears in canon. Capable of being serious, but more often ridiculous and completely absorbed in capital-S Science. This Medic here feels like the type that would tell an amusing story about the time he removed someone's skeleton without their knowledge while he's elbow deep in your guts. I love him!

Thank you!

(argh, I lost a chunk of this chapter because of a stupid error, so... hopefully I fixed it well)

Ch.XIV

---/-/---

Wednesday night, he tells the Spy what he can, confessions measured out in small doses, only his own feelings. The rest stays bottled up inside. There's only so much he's prepared to admit to, when it comes to his own homesickness and half-formed regrets. It's easier to say he'd half like to hand the brochure on the surgery over to the Medic to see his face. Still, he sneaks in some admission of longing, in between lighter stories of life on the RED base in the early part of the week.

"I am not much a part of team unity." The Spy admits, with a soft snort. "I think things run normally. I brought something, if you want to... If you are interested in hearing."

He digs out a folded and slightly-crumpled sheet of BLU stationery, unfolds it to display a tight, spidery scrawl, each letter tiny and tilted, with little spatters of ink at the end of each word.

The words are in french, but the Sniper nods anyway.

"I copied down just some bits... some bits and pieces of a poem, I found it in one of the old books I had brought with me, I was flipping through it last night and I thought of you. I thought so strongly of you at it."

"Read to me." The Sniper smiles, settling against him.

"Caressant l'œil distrait l'épaule de la mer
(Ma sandale est mouillée à l'aile décousue)
Je sens ma main gonflée sur ta chaleur moussue
S'emplir de blancs troupeaux invisibles dans l'air.

Vont paître mes agneaux de ta hanche à ton cou,
Brouter une herbe fine et du soleil brûlée,
Des fleurs d'acacia dans ta voix sont roulées
Va l'abeille voler le miel de leurs échos."

"What's it mean?" The Sniper interrupts, as the Spy draws a breath.

"Well... I cannot do a poetic translation, but... euh, 'Caressing the shoulder of the sea with my eye distracted, my sandal wet and the wing unstitched, I feel my hand swollen on your mossy heat, full of white flocks invisible in the air. From your neck my sheep to your hips graze, browsing a fine grass burnt in the sun. Flowers of acacia are in your voice rolling, the bee will steal the honey of the echoes'. It... it begins by calling to a shepherd-- the whole poem does. That is why the sheep, I expect."

"Mm."

"It's to a man-- they all are. This one is more ambiguous than some-- it mentions men and girls both. There was more. About sheep and horses and the sea, and roses and pearls, and being flayed open, and tongues caressing things... too long to copy in full, or for me to try to translate with any artfulness. But the feeling it gave me was very much of you."

"'S nice. Don't think I've ever heard a dirty poem by a woman."

The Spy laughs. "Oh, cher, the author is not a woman."

He blinks, the realization slow in dawning, and the Spy laughs all over again before he can recover.

"You-- You frenchmen just let pooftahs publish indecent poetry? Bloody hell, I could get to like France."

The Spy collapses against him with another bout of laughter, before wiping at his eyes and kissing the Sniper's cheeks. "If you are a good enough poet, mon amour, you may publish indecency to your heart's content, provided you go through the correct channels. Sadly, I cannot write odes to your genitals. I am a decent flatterer but at best a mediocre poet, the most I could get away with may be writing of your arms and lips."

"For the best. Don't need the world reading dirty poems about my stuff."

"Mm."

"Reckon you know I'm no poet. A limerick, maybe. Dunno if there's a market for dirty limericks in France." He chuckles. "Hey... how do you get used to it?"

"Used to what, cher?"

"To... to being alone in the world."

"I am not alone in the world, now. That, I find difficult to get used to, but I am glad of it."

"How long does it take, to be all right, when you don't-- don't have a family?"

His smile falters. "Oh... Mon beau, mon beau... my circumstances were dire. I had known few relatives and few friends. It was not easy to lose those that I had, but I was so lucky to have my own life that I pushed through that. I did not have much choice. No time to mourn the way I might have. You still have a family. They still have a chance to-- to mend things. Don't mourn them too soon."

"Just afraid to call, yeah?"

"Give them some time, then, and yourself. You are their only son-- you are all they have as well, yes?"

"Yeah. Only child. So are both my parents."

"Then they will be glad to hear from you again when you call. You are what they live on in. I don't mean to say it will be easy, I can't imagine what it will be like, but I cannot believe they would rather lose their only child. No parent can want that, can they?"

"Dunno. Things are... atmosphere's not real accepting out there."

The Spy gives his jaw a quick nuzzle and holds him tight. "So it will be a process. You need to decide if it will be better for you to take a chance on that process, or to cut ties completely before you can know."

"No. I don't want to do that. I just don't know how to get them to understand." He shakes his head.

"Well... then maybe they do not need to understand to love you. I think my parents would not understand me. I kill men for a living... I have done things for money, and my clients have not always been in the right, and not every job I took was out of necessity. Even if they could accept that I would never be the type to give them grandchildren, could they understand the work that I do? But, I like to believe that even if they were baffled by me, or dismayed, they would love what was theirs. I was young when they died... too young and in too-dangerous times for us to have butted heads the way that parents and their grown children do. I did not learn their flaws, or chafe under their expectations... There is so much I do not know, about what family life ought to be like. Maybe that is the only reason I have some idealism left there. It is the one place I have never discovered the truths that lead to cynicism."

"Good." Sniper chews on his lip.

Outside of the romantic nature that their time alone together allowed for, he doesn't think there are very many arenas in which the Spy is not cynical. Their kind of work-- the Spy's kind especially-- engenders a more-than-healthy amount. It's nice to think there's a little oasis of the soul, apart from him, where the Spy lives in an ideal world. The reason behind it is a shame, but he loves every affirmation he finds of the Spy's capacity for unconditional love, and every little speck of optimism in the face of a hard life.

"I'd like a family, you know." He says, when the camper has been silent long enough. "With you, and... dunno. I mean, I always have. I trust you to be part of it."

The Spy beams up at him and gives him a squeeze. "And I you. I have gone a long time with no family, I should like to call you mine."

"Would you want a kid?"

The Spy shakes his head. "I adore them... my life is too dangerous."

"Will it always be?"

"I don't know. But there are some rather strict laws against kidnapping, and I have a difficult time imagining you pregnant."

"Yeah, nah. There's other ways to work it out, if... if we ever retired, and you thought... Anyway, now's not the time to worry about it."

"No... not the time to worry about it. A fine enough time to establish our feelings for now on the subject, but not the time to make any plans." He chuckles softly and drops a kiss to the Sniper's chest. "I need to go. I keep wanting to fall asleep in your arms..."

"This weekend, then." He gives the Spy a tired grin and lets him slip out of the bed. "Hey... What if we drove up out of the desert? Someplace with trees that turn, it's getting to be the time for it. We wouldn't have much time, but it's not like we wouldn't have a bed. And the town's so dry the trees aren't even green in spring, so it's not like seeing 'em in September's any kind of a treat. Just a change of air..."

The Spy nods, leaning against the bunk to linger a little longer. "I would like that. I do get sick of all the dust sometimes. I miss proper seasons. Somewhere, there are apples hanging from boughs and I will not swelter through my shirt after half a minute under the sun."

"All right. Friday night come out and meet me soon as you can, and I'll start us driving."

They kiss again, they part, and on Friday, the Spy is later than the Sniper thought was implied by 'as soon as you can', but he comes bearing an armload of Tupperware containers with pale blue lids.

"Have you eaten?"

The Sniper shakes his head. He'd been expecting to head out early and hadn't bothered. This adds another delay, but not really any later than if they'd eaten with their own teams and met up later.

"If you want something you can eat while you drive, I suppose we can save the peas and potatoes." The Spy reasons, passing off two of his containers.

"Sounds good. We'll always need to eat later, and I've got a small fridge."

The Sniper stores them in the camper and opens the passenger side door of the truck for the Spy.

"So. Introducing me to the finer points of fancy french cuisine?" He teases gently, pulling out onto the flat clay and heading for the road out past the bases.

"No, actually. I borrowed the recipes from a teammate-- apparently, mine start too many arguments." He smirks, popping one of his containers open and handing the Sniper a hand-sized pie.

The moment he bites into it, the Sniper is transported, and the flatness and familiarity of the terrain is a handy thing to fall back on as he lets his eyes close a moment.

"Fuck that's good..." He groans. The quality of the meat is not as high as home, but the seasonings might just be better, and it's the closest thing he's had in a long time that he hasn't made himself. He could never get the crust right on a meat pie, anyway, gave it up as too fussy.

The Spy has two containers, and after they've both finished their separate pies, the Spy wiping his hands delicately on a handkerchief and the Sniper wiping his own hand off on the front of his shirt, the Spy opens the second and breaks a half a loaf of bread into two near-equal hunks.

It's sweet and not quite familiar, outside of being a fairly basic raisin bread. It's no recipe he knows, but bread is comfortingly familiar in any form, he thinks. The pleasant yeastiness, the mouthfeel of it. It could stand to be denser, but that's just the Sniper's own taste, and if the Spy likes his a little lighter, it's certainly nothing he can't compromise on. It's free bread, after all.

The bread may have been a staple, but he would bet anything the Spy had made a point of asking his own team's sniper for a good dinner recipe. He didn't expect 'coincidence' when the Spy was concerned, he expected careful planning, and the timing was enough to make it suspect.

It's... nice. He'd never really had anyone do something like this for him. No one close enough to want to, since he left home-- he certainly hadn't ever had the kind of lover who'd make him dinner before. On the heels of his admission of homesickness and worries, and on calling the Spy good as family, it definitely seems deliberate to him to find a familiar dish as part of their dinner.

When they stop driving for the night and retire to his bunk, he doesn't have time to thank the other man, before his shirt is being stripped away. It's gentle more than voracious, and the Spy turns him around and kisses his back, between his shoulderblades.

He stays where he is, neither of them speaking, as the Spy kneads at his back, seeking out all the places that tire after a long day of sniping, and all the ones that will protest a long day of driving. He's clinging to the bunk and ready to let his legs just give out by the time the Spy is done relaxing him.

"Thanks." He sighs, turning for a kiss. "You're fantastic."

"I am. You are lucky to have me, I am a gem." The Spy grins. "Ah, no, you are a treasure. Only remember how good I am to you on nights like this one the next time I am an idiot, all right?"

"Yeah."

The Spy finishes undressing him, and he pulls himself up onto his bunk, and pulls the Spy into his arms after. Between the desert night outside the camper and the man bundled up close against him, and especially with a full belly, it's easier to fall asleep than it's been in a long time.

Truly wonderful. I don't even know how you do it.

>>68
Thank you! (some days, I don't even know how I do it... but I guess I have been writing most of my life one way or another, so eventually I had to get good at it...)

(captcha just said 'worshipful Union' at me...)

Ch. XV

---/-/---

The worst part of the road trip they've undertaken isn't all the time spent in the cramped cab, and it isn't the fact that they know it really won't be a getaway so much as a long drive, a quick look around at something that isn't desert, and a long drive back. The worst part, to the Spy, is when they roll to a stop just to the side of the ill-defined road and the Sniper tells him that if he's got to go, this is the time and place-- unless he wants to try borrowing a jar while they're moving, an action he doesn't suggest.

The Sniper is the one who has to grab a funnel and worry about getting himself clean and dry after, the Spy only has to pull his zipper down and go, and it still takes him longer. He can't make himself do it, for long minutes, feeling like an idiot as he stands out in the dirt with his cock in his hand.

"Look, if you're prissy about germs--" The Sniper startles him, popping back out of the camper. "Sorry. I mean, if that's the problem, I've got wipes. Don't pull that face, sometimes a couple of baby wipes is the closest thing to a shower you get out in the middle of nowhere. Long as you bag 'em up to toss when you get to civilization. I mean, 'specially out in the desert, you can't waste the water rigging up a camp shower."

"I feel exposed." The Spy grumbles.

"Happens when you're pointing your junk at the road." He snorts. "If you want, I'm done, you can use the other side and I promise not to peek."

"You've seen it. And that's not-- I just-- Outdoors..." He shudders, but even though both sides of the van are just as open, once he's not facing what passes for a road, it's a little bit easier.

He accepts the sanitizing wipe, even though he's fairly certain it comes with a mocking smirk. There's a waste bin with an airtight seal at the lid in the camper, its sleek, futuristic lines marred by the fact that the Sniper has scrawled 'biowaste' on it in permanent marker, and the Spy drops the wipe in and doesn't think about the contents. He doesn't think about the contents as hard as he can not-think.

They drive on a few more miles after that, before pulling over to sleep. It's not much distance, but the Spy is grateful for it somehow. It just puts the site of his struggle to piss outdoors further from them, and that he can appreciate.

In the morning, the Sniper makes a pot of coffee and mushes the leftover peas and potatoes that the Spy had brought together. It doesn't look appealing, but after he gives it a little reheating, it tastes fine-- not at all like a breakfast food, but the Spy embraces that more readily than he did the bathroom break. Part of the road trip experience...

It strikes him that this is their first honest 'trip' experience. The drives into town are long when compared with the average work commute, but not like this, and once they get there, they spend the weekend together normally. This is just the two of them in the Sniper's van, trying to make it to someplace that experiences weather before they have to turn back and hurry 'home' to the bases.

He winds up dropping to his knees after breakfast for a quickie-- it will eat up time, but it might keep them from biting each other's heads off on the road. At least, that's how he rationalizes it, and the Sniper turns to the side in his seat and grips the edge of the little table and spreads his legs for him in anticipation, not yet dressed in anything but the undershirt and boxer shorts he'd slept in.

There's a sharp tang to his sweat, almost metallic, that the Spy used to chalk up to being part of the battlefield, back when all they did was chat a little between fights. The barrel of his rifle, his personal supply of ammunition, the well-kept blade of the kukri, those things added into his own personal aroma. It was odd to find that it was just him, but not unpleasant. He liked the lingering reminder of the other man's skill with his preferred weapons, and that little note of metal-- or of blood-- provided that.

He feels more confident, after the last weekend, when it comes to handling the Sniper's genitalia situation. As unpleasant as he thinks it was for both of them, it did remove some of the creeping terror, and now when his tongue or his hand slips a little, he doesn't jerk away too quickly, merely slides back up to where he's wanted and doesn't dwell on a fleeting touch. He's sure that part of it is the new familiarization he has, but it's less the physical mapping out as it is the reassurance of knowledge. There's none of the viscous wetness he dislikes in women, just soft warm folds of skin, and if in the course of stroking up and down the Sniper's thighs, one thumb brushes against him there, he gets no complaint.

He lifts his head, giving the Sniper's clit a couple slow tugs between his first two fingers. "Any way you like to be touched that I don't know about yet?"

"You're pretty good at figuring me out." The Sniper grins down at him, one hand joining the Spy's, guiding him a little. "Why, you want some help?"

The Spy does-- he's glad to hear he doesn't need it, but he loves watching the way the Sniper's hand covers his. He loves having the reins taken away, and the sureness behind the heavily-lidded eyes that gaze down at him.

"Fuck, Spy, you've got good hands... Yeah, that's right, touch me there, want you to, bring that mouth up here..."

That request he's more than willing to satisfy, open mouth sliding up the lean muscles of the Sniper's abdomen, to the wide flat expanse between the small, flat breasts.

The Sniper kisses him once, hard, before directing him back down to his chest.

"Teeth." He hisses.

The Spy lets his teeth scrape over the jut of a collarbone, lets them close gently but firmly over one hard nipple, until the Sniper's hips push forward against his hand and still for one long beat, until the Sniper's hand drops away from his own and he hears a long sigh.

"Perfect." He winks down at the Spy, tugging his boxers back up into place and giving the other man a hand. He backs him up against the bunk and wraps a hand around him, takes him standing.

The Spy doesn't think handjobs have any right being this good, but the Sniper pins him into place with his whole body, holds his wrists together over his head and sucks big bites into the side of his throat as he works him, and cleans up the mess with the hem of his own undershirt.

The drive is still a long one, but every time he gets irritated with the Sniper, he reminds himself of the look the other man gave him back in the camper after breakfast, and presses a couple of fingers to one of the bruises on his neck, and it's enough of a reason not to start a fight over something unimportant.

They reach a town not so different from the one where they spend most of their weekends-- the only difference is that it's up in the foothills, where the rain falls more than once a year, and there are trees starting to turn. The Sniper parks near an orchard and the Spy steals a couple of apples.

The cloak wasn't strictly necessary, but he feels like showing off.

They have little time to enjoy the crisp air, the difference from the desert-- if they don't turn back, they won't make it to the bases in time.

Spy makes the Sniper pull over again, when they pass the fruit stand that the orchard owners operate. He pays them double what they ask, more than enough to cover the little bit he'd taken off the trees.

"Some tip." The Sniper says.

"I can afford to." He shrugs, mouth a tight line. He spends the next hour staring out the window dead ahead.

"I just mean it was nice of you." He only adds it after enough time has passed.

"I doubt I am the only person to hop their fence and take a couple. I am the one who can pay for them, though. Maybe I covered the tab for another thief. It's not easy to raise food."

"No. Don't reckon it ever is."

"I have no compunctions against stealing, mind. But I don't like to steal food. Information? But of course. Valuables, once or twice, when the price was right and the owner could stand to part with them-- or deserved to. But food? I can afford to buy food. I am never going to go hungry."

"Sure." The Sniper nods.

They drive on until after dark, mostly in silence. When they finally crawl into bed, the Sniper wraps the Spy up in his arms and nuzzles into his hair until he relaxes. He doesn't think he needs to ask, about whether or not the Spy has stolen food before. Even if he didn't have a reasonable idea of the answer, he thinks he knows enough about when it isn't time to ask a question.

Ch. XVI

---/-/--

The plans they make grow more and more solid, as the end dates on their respective contracts near. Less like stories they tell each other and more like things that might happen.

The first time the Sniper calls his parents after coming out to them, he gets the answering service and doesn't leave a message, but when he calls back on Sunday, before heading back to base, his mother picks up.

There's still an awkward tightness to her voice, when she does recognize his voice, and the conversation isn't long, but she says 'we miss you, Vic' before they hang up.

It counts for something.

The Spy stays late, when they pull into the Sniper's usual spot outside the RED base, slipping into the camper with him instead of disappearing back to the BLU side.

"I don't have to be back until morning." He offers, stroking the Sniper's cheek.

"Yeah, nah, you should though. I'm good. Really."

"Are you?"

"Think so, yeah. I think mum will come around, maybe not-- maybe not all the way, I dunno, but... I believe her, at least. When she says she still cares, I believe her. Maybe a visit wouldn't be a mistake, when we're out of here. A short one."

"If you will play tour guide for me, when we go... once I know my way around a little, you can leave me to sightsee and go to your parents'... and then you will come with me? I have been looking into finding a place to settle down-- I mean, as well as anyone can look, from an ocean away. It's a start."

"Yeah." The Sniper nods. "It's a start."

"Let me stay a little while?"

"Little while." He pats the bed, climbing up first to give the Spy an easier exit and then offering him a hand after.

It's strange to think about how long he's had the Spy in his life as more than an enemy. The way they take their time makes it hard to measure right, and when he does he's shocked at it. Measuring from when he showed the Spy his old childhood picture, instead of from the start of their friendship or their relationship-- that was the real tipping point, for him-- it's amazing how much time he's managed to spend with another human being, letting him get in close.

"Would it be stupid to... to ask about you meeting them? My parents. Nah, it would be, forget I said anything..."

"If you want me there, I will go. You can introduce me however you like and I will stick to your story."

"I don't know what they'd think of you. I don't want to drag you out there and put you through it all just for them to hate you... and I don't-- I don't want... What if it wasn't you they hated, even?"

"I enjoy not being hated." The Spy yawns, pulling the Sniper's hand up to rest over his chest.

"I want them to like you, but... I bring a man home and they'll think... You know?"

The Spy nods slowly. "I suppose it all depends on whether or not you are comfortable with your parents knowing you are a homophile."

"They're not gonna think I'm a homophile!" He snaps. "They're gonna think I'm a bloody woman with a mental problem! Hell, that's already what they've been thinking, isn't it?"

The Spy bites down on the inside of his cheek and doesn't rise to the bait-- there is an impulse, to point out that it's no use snapping at the one person who thinks of him as a man first regardless of the state of his genitals, but he didn't stay just to start a fight. He wanted to stay so that the Sniper wouldn't be alone with his stress.

"Sorry." The Sniper noses the back of his neck a moment later. "You didn't deserve that."

"I understand. Well... I don't... I don't understand well. But I know it wasn't meant for me."

"Fuck. I want them to know I'm settling down and quitting my job and happy with someone. I just don't want the questions. But they'll have questions whether I'm alone or not, and maybe I would rather have you with me. I just don't know."

"You have some time yet to decide."

"Yeah. Time to decide a lot of things." He sighs. His thoughts stray back to the brochure and the surgery. Even if it wasn't for him... could he get a weekend with one, to know for sure? Was it even possible to get something that wasn't ridiculously oversized?

He could get a hysterectomy, at least. Get rid of all that and have marginally less to worry about? Maybe yanking all the lady business would be for the best. With or without the graft, he hates the idea of having a doctor tell him he's got ovarian cancer or something, he doesn't think he could deal with that. His lungs or his stomach or anything else, that would be fine. Fly back to Oz and get an organ replacement done, he has the money.

He thinks the Spy would understand that. He can ask again later, for the Spy's opinions on the rest... not just the subject of him having or not having a cock, but what he'd think about the outpatient recovery and how he'd handle it if it wasn't permanent after all, and what it would be like just to live with.

He thinks again about showing the brochure to the Medic-- still risky, but the Medic has been very good about his secret, and a decent friend besides, even if he's low on the man's priorities out on the battlefield.

He pulls it out, as the Spy leaves the bed.

"Thinking about having it done after all?" The Spy turns back to look at it with him.

"Dunno if I'd go that far. If I could get one that was mine? I'd do it, sure. Some days I wake up feeling like it belongs there. But other days I wake up and I don't feel anything at all about any of it, and maybe that's better than grafting on something that doesn't fit me."

"Maybe it is." The Spy allows.

"I was thinking about handing it off to the doc as a curiosity. I mean... you and me, we'll be heading off there by Christmastime, won't we? Could pick up an up-to-date one, who knows... Who knows, right?"

"I certainly don't." The Spy snorts, giving the Sniper's arm a squeeze. "If you take it back with you after or tell him to burn it once he's read it, just so that it can't accidentally be found by someone else. I have done enough snooping through our own infirmary to know the places are hardly so secure."

"Snooping in your team's infirmary? I thought what we had was special, you and me and my drawers being rummaged through." He teases.

"Oh, believe me, yours are the only drawers I intend to rummage through, mon grand. But I rifle through cupboards when I find them unlocked... just a fair warning."

"Spy... if I-- if I got this done, you know... you know there's a difference between doing something because of you and doing something for you, right?"

The Spy cocks his head to the side, returning the Sniper's earnest look. "Go on."

"If I'm getting a surgery, a permanent surgery, I'm the only man I'm doing it for. It's not a toy and it's not a present, it's my body. It wouldn't be for you."

"Even I am not so vain as to presume."

"Well, you're pretty vain."

"Mm. Carly Simon wrote a song about me once."

"Sometimes I can't tell whether or not you're joking..."

"I joke, I joke." His hand finds the Sniper's again. "I know."

"Still... that doesn't mean... It doesn't mean..." The Sniper struggles, giving the Spy's fingers a squeeze. "Before you, I didn't have many... much... I sucked a stranger off in a loo in Italy once, and another outside a nightclub, fuck if I remember where, and there was a bloke I'd do regular favours for before I left Australia for the last time but he never saw me naked. And there was the girl with the temporary cock who I went home with because I was new to the city and I thought it meant she was like me, only it turned out she just thought I was a lesbian and we might as well both experiment while she had it on. That's it. And I could get myself off fine and I didn't care."

The Spy bites the inside of his cheek again and wonders if he should feel guilty about his own sexual history, in light of that. Still, he can tell getting the story out is difficult enough without his interrupting, and he would like to hear the rest. He nods and doesn't speak, and after a moment, the Sniper lets out a grateful sigh and manages to continue.

"I never would have asked about whether it was possible to get one custom made, because I didn't really look at sex as something... reciprocal. Learned to like sucking cock well enough, but letting anyone else get me off was uncomfortable. It would have been just as uncomfortable if I had had a cock. Just not wired right to... to deal with people, yeah? You know what it's like to struggle to trust someone to touch you. A lot of it's just that. I never would have bothered because I learned to get comfortable in my own skin, but I never got comfortable with someone else's, 'til you. So. Thanks, for that."

"You are more than welcome."

"And that's the difference, I guess. Between doing it for you and doing it because you... you and me could have a future and maybe that future, maybe I do change my body some. If you asked me to, I'd dig my heels in and refuse, but you haven't. So... I don't know. I know there's one I want and I know there's one I don't, and the cock graft all depends, I guess."

"Tell me about the others." Spy leans against the bunk heavily and allows himself more time.

"Would like to have all the internal stuff taken out. Might freeze the eggs, if... if you ever did want to have kids that were ours, if we could ever find someone who'd carry 'em, and I don't know if that's possible. Maybe no one would. There are places it wouldn't be safe to ask. Maybe we'd have to lie to make it happen. I don't know. It's just a thought. But first I want all the, the stuff out of me."

"Considering what I have learned of medical science in Australia, not an unreasonable desire." The Spy nods. "What don't you want-- aside from having a Tom of Finland drawing soldered onto yourself."

He snorts. "Mastectomy. I mean... I never had much there, they're easy to hide... Why bother?"

He pokes at one, expression wry. The tissue dips at his touch and jiggles as his finger pulls away, and then it's still except for his breathing. The Spy's own contemplation of the Sniper's chest is more thoughtful, one thumb very gently circling a nipple. He doesn't play around with the slight bounce, just watches the nipple slowly stiffen.

He tries to put himself in the position. Would he bother? Maybe he would, if he were graced with a more generous bustline, but the Sniper has a point... going under the knife for such a little difference?

"Maybe someday you'll put on some weight around the middle and they won't stand out. But if I am the only one seeing them, I have no complaints." He nods.

"Yeah." The Sniper chuckles, touching the Spy's chin to draw him in for a quick peck. "Just be another set of saggy old man tits. Thanks."

"As you said, it's your body."

"Damn straight. But you make having a body more fun, so..."

He glances at the door and then back to the Sniper. He gives one last look at his shoes and jacket, and climbs back up onto the bunk.

"I will wake up in time." He murmurs, pulling one of the other man's arms around him. "I don't feel like making the trip just yet-- no moon out."

"Right. Don't want to sprain an ankle out between the bases at night." He holds the Spy close. It's easier to put the big decisions aside for the future, when he has the Spy's breathing to help even his own.

Ch. XVII

---/-/---

Friday night, the Spy stops the Sniper from leaving the camper.

"You don't wanna drive up to town?"

"In a bit." He guides one of the Sniper's hands to his waist, places his own on the man's shoulder.

They don't dance, or even sway, but they stand there and gaze at each other a long sweet moment before even leaning in for a kiss.

"One for the road?" The Spy offers, hooking two fingers into the Sniper's waistband. "I've been thinking about you all day..."

"Act like we haven't seen each other." He snorts. "Saw you today."

"You wrestled me to the ground and stabbed me today." The Spy corrects. "It was very awkward, I respawned with a hard-on and everything."

"Aw, poor baby."

There's mockery in his voice, but he tugs the Spy in close and grabs onto his backside with both hands, and the Spy rocks forward onto the balls of his feet with a little gasp and a grin.

He turns them around, gets the Sniper on one of the seats and kneels down, stripping off and discarding the other man's trousers so that he can position himself between his thighs.

"Touch me?"

"That was the plan, mon beau."

The Sniper places his hand over the Spy's and guides him down, watching the man's eyes widen.

"Just like this," The Sniper directs, leads the Spy past his usual stopping point to stroke up and down his labia.

"I... I thought you didn't really like it."

"I like it." He sighs. "Just on the outside..."

"All right." The Spy breathes, watches the progress of his fingers as the Sniper's hand falls away. It's different, touching him this way on purpose-- he'd stopped freaking out over an accidental touch, thinking he'd understood the difference between 'preferable', 'not-unwelcome', and 'uncomfortable'. Now he has to restructure the way he thinks about the Sniper's genitals again.

It's easier this time. Brushing aside a few thick dark curls and watching the Sniper's clit grow a darker pink, he can deal with it-- if he imagines the clitoris as that proto-cock, then he can try to frame this new action as something eh could see himself doing. After all, going down on a fully-functioning cock, he'd be paying a fair amount of attention to the balls, giving an occasional teasing touch to the perineum. If he looks at it that way, he can understand it a little better, can imagine that even with the differences in the lay of the land, the sensations are the same he would want to give any lover.

He keeps up a light touch, and watches the signs of mounting arousal with fascination. So unlike any other man, and yet the Sniper remains comfortingly male throughout. Even with the Spy's face buried between his legs, even with his tongue tracing a careful line up the Sniper's labia, right where they start to open under his touch, there is none of that wet, female smell, that odd sweet muskiness the Spy has never been at ease with, only the same sharp smell of the Sniper's sweat, of salt and iron.

He's gotten used to having just four centimetres of length to suck into his mouth, to the semi-firmness and the way his tongue can play around with it. It doesn't offer the same satisfying ache in his jaw as a session with one of the toys does, but it's real.

He does wonder if he would prefer the Sniper with the surgery. It's a question he doesn't know how to answer, without giving the wrong impression. He likes the smell of the Sniper, and the taste and the feel of his skin, and the heat of him-- those are all things that the toys and the hard rubber surrogates can't give. There are things he wants that he knows the Sniper's body as it is will never provide... but the things he needs? The things he needs, he gets. He has never been a man willing to risk losing something he needed for something he merely wanted. He wants to be bent over and fucked and feel skin and heat and the Sniper's hips thrusting into him. He needs to be held once or twice a week and trusted with secrets and allowed to leak out bits and pieces of his own. He wants to have his head held down on a nice hard cock and swallow down the release. He needs to have someone who knows what he is and loves him anyway, and he thinks maybe he needs to love and to care for someone in return.

And he has learned to take more enjoyment than he ever thought he would in the things that they can do, and the pleasure that he does give. It may not be a mouthful, and it's certainly impossible to deep-throat, but he can accept the trade-off, being able to suck at the Sniper and feel him come apart, over and over. For a while, he uses just one hand and his mouth, the other dropping down to press against his own insistent erection. Whether he means to tame or to encourage it, he can't tell himself.

He gets him off twice, just with hands and mouth, before rising shakily to his feet, to let the Sniper return the favor-- or half of it. It doesn't last as long as the Spy would like, with the Sniper running the little bullet-sized vibrator up the underside of his cock before sucking him off, applying it on and off to the base and the tightening sac even as he does.

"You are wicked." The Spy groans, snatching the toy away.

"Yeah."

"So am I." He drops back down to one knee, leaning up to suck at one nipple, thumb circling the Sniper's clit. He holds the vibrator alongside, waiting a long moment before turning it on.

He pulls away from the nipple, and the Sniper gasps at the sudden introduction of air, feeling colder than it used to after the heat of the Spy's mouth. The Spy nuzzles his way across the Sniper's chest, murmuring soft words smeared into incomprehensibility by kisses. The Sniper's heart rate is picking back up, breaths growing ragged and harsh again, and he grins, before laving the other nipple with his tongue.

The Sniper yanks at his mask, pulling him back long enough to get it off, and his hand grips the Spy's hair hard to direct him. The Spy merely moans his approval at the tactic, nipping at everything his mouth is guided to, both hands still hard at work between the Sniper's legs, one holding the toy and the other teasing and stroking. He combs his fingers through the thatch of hair, clearing it away to make his job with the vibe easier, and he brings the Sniper to orgasm twice more before he gives into the protest his knees are making.

"That... that is a new record, yes?" He grins up at the Sniper after, wiping at his chin to clear away his own saliva.

The Sniper fixes his pulled-up undershirt, but he doesn't bother rebuttoning his work shirt. "How long was that?"

"An hour."

"Fuck. Yeah. Really?"

The Spy picks up the Sniper's arm, checking his watch. "An hour. Perhaps a little less."

"Bloody fucking hell." The Sniper sounds awestruck, grinning up at him. "C'mon. Let's drive out to the hotel, you can put your feet up in bed. I'll put some ice on your knees."

"Ha ha."

"Massage?"

"Mm, better."

The Sniper helps fix the Spy's zipper, before they move around to the cab.

"I was thinking about tomorrow night." The Spy says, after they've driven a little while in silence.

"Yeah? Probably for the best, think I'm done in for tonight." The Sniper chuckles. "Nah, what about tomorrow night?"

"There's a nice restaurant in town... I mean, not that the Sugar Pine is not nice, but... well, do you... do you get tired eating two or sometimes three meals there a day every weekend?"

"I'm pretty easy to please. I can always order something different if I get tired of burgers, anyway."

"Right. Of course. But... I mean, 'nice', by the standards out here-- It is not as though there is a strict dress code, so... You could just dress as you always do and we could go see if the place is any good."

"Yeah. Could do." He nods.

"I just thought it would be nice to take each other someplace a little bit... I mean, 'fancy' is not a word I normally ascribe to restaurants that have big wagon wheels hanging in the window, but... For once, you could have a steak instead of a burger."

"What, like a real date?"

"The Sugar Pine is real..." The Spy shook his head. "But this other place is... it is not more 'real' for a date, but I... I would like it more."

He falls quiet again, looking out the window.

"I like steak." The Sniper nods again. "Long as I don't need a tie, you can take me anywhere."

He relaxes, even laughing a little. "I think these weekends that I am there is the only time anyone in that town owns a tie that is not just a leather cord strung through a little brass cow skull."

"Then tomorrow night we can go get a fancy dinner. Hell, maybe before we leave this place for good we'll even try out that little Mexican place out past the museum."

"Maybe." He reaches over and squeezes the Sniper's thigh. "Thank you."

"'S nothing."

"It is something to me." The Spy slumps back into his seat, eyes closing. He rests them for the remainder of the drive.

I keep commenting on this but whatever, it's because I freakin' love it. They're so in-character, it's written really believably and yeah. It's angsty but not *about* angst. It has a trans* theme but isn't all 'the gimmick of this fic-is transness!' At its heart, it's well-written Sniper/Spy. This has basically become my headcanon.

Also, not to speak for others at all, but for me as a trans* person, this is probably the best trans* fanfic I've read in any fandom.

Okay, I'mma stop raving now, I just really fucking love this.

>>72

Thank you so much, and I'm so glad to hear. I definitely set out from the original request fill to write about a Sniper-who-happens-to-be-FtM, and not OMG-a-trans*-person-who-I-guess-is-Sniper, so I am very relieved to get confirmation now and then that it doesn't feel gimmicky.

Ch. XVIII

---/-/---

Saturday night, they both order steak. The Sniper asks for it 'so rare it's bloody', with the chips and a beer, and the Spy orders his own on the well-done side of medium with the soup and a glass of wine.

Neither the soup nor the wine is what he would have expected, in some of the restaurants he's enjoyed closer to home, but by local standards, both are enjoyable, and it's as easy to relax there as anywhere else in town. The tablecloths aren't long enough to play footsie beneath the table, but they don't attract much attention. The restaurant serves a smattering of local businessmen and farmers and ranchers, in various combinations, and the Spy is relieved not to stand out among families and 'ordinary' couples. He pretends to talk business whenever anyone passes by their table, and that seems to satisfy the waitstaff and their fellow patrons.

For the most part, he holds his tongue until they return to the hotel, but he is glad to have been able to try the place, and he's gladder to see the Sniper enjoy himself.

He's still locking the door of their room, when the Sniper collapses onto the bed with a groan.

"Well, I'm ready to not move for a couple hours." He announces.

"You could have taken a doggy bag."

"Sorry 'bout your romantic evening." The Sniper lets out a belch, giving his belly a pat and the Spy an apologetic look.

"Don't be." He shakes his head and slips out of his shoes, joining the Sniper on the bed. "I don't mind... I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it is not too long before we have our freedom now, is it? And I enjoyed dinner, so, thank you for that."

"Yeah. Good steak. Glad you brought it up."

"Mm."

After a moment, the Spy reaches over to lace his fingers with the Sniper's. There's something just a little wonderful about the idea of being too full and contented after dinner to think about sex, and to not feel cheated by it. He doesn't think he's ready to call the honeymoon phase over, but it's nice to know that when it does end, he'll still enjoy overeating and falling asleep next to the man.

"I could get old and boring with you." He laughs.

"Nah. Never. Old, maybe."

"You are sweet, and if my mouth tasted less like onions, I would kiss you for that."

The Sniper leans over and kisses his cheek. "That do?"

"That will do." He kisses the back of the Sniper's hand in return. "Remind me to brush my teeth, when I feel like standing up again."

"Brush your teeth when you feel like standing up again."

"Ass."

The Sniper chuckles and rolls over to lean against his shoulder, slinging an arm across him. "Yeah, you like that about me."

"But of course. I adore your ass. It is small and it is flat but it is the only ass for me."

They share a laugh, and doze off in their clothes before waking up around midnight to take turns with the bathroom. The Spy trudges back to bed last, still running his tongue over his teeth having brushed them.

"Guess we are a bit old and boring tonight." The Sniper smiles, glancing at the clock. He claims the kiss he'd been promised, pulling back the covers for the other man.

"You don't mind it, either?"

"I don't mind it. Got someone to be boring with, don't I?"

"That..." The Spy snorts. "That, I think, is just about the definition of romance."

"Yeah, make fun."

"No, I mean it, I do. It's all very well to have the flattering and the flirting, but when it is over... I just want someone I can be boring with, don't I?"

The Sniper doesn't say anything to that, but he wraps an arm around the Spy and spoons up to him.

In the morning, he wakes up feeling more apprehensive than frisky-- he'd hoped, after just falling asleep the night before, that Sunday morning would find them both in the mood. Instead, it seems he can't keep the future off his mind. He looks forward to getting out from under the companies' thumbs, for the both of them being free to talk to each other whenever and wherever they liked, instead of worrying about being branded as 'traitors', but he's had so long to be able to put off making real decisions about his life, and so long to put off worrying about seeing his parents again. Having a real deadline on his contract changed that. His life would be changing for the better, of course, but... that didn't mean it would all be easy.

"I think I do want you to meet my folks. I just don't know how to pull it off." He murmurs.

The Spy kisses his shoulder. He'd known when he woke that it wasn't an easy morning, had felt the tension bleeding out of the Sniper. At least now he can follow the line of reasoning behind the unrest.

"We'll figure something out."

"Yeah. Well we can keep saying 'there's time to think of a way' until there isn't, so... 'scuse me for wanting to know how."

"Of course. If you want, you can introduce me first as a friend and not a lover."

"Dunno. I... I want them to know. I just don't want to tell them."

He nods. "They are your parents. If you absolutely cannot decide upon a course of action, then I will step in and be the one to say something, but unless you ask me to, I leave handling it to you."

"Hell... I don't even know what I'm doing with my own self anymore, how can I know what I'm telling them?"

"When the time comes, I really do trust you to know. You have strong instincts. You know yourself, and you know your family, and when push comes to shove you will find the answer you need to find."

"What would you tell them? If we were going there today and I told you I couldn't, what would you tell them?"

"I would tell them I was your good friend." The Spy nods carefully. "And I would let them know that I trusted and cared for you. And I think that I would let them take what I said as they wished to. I do not like to force things, you know... me and subtlety. But if I was asked, I would say that I loved you."

The Sniper nods along with him. He's not sure if that's the approach he would choose to go with, but as the Spy says it, he realizes he couldn't have expected different.

"What about the surgery? What would you have me do with that-- Honest, now. If I was at a real loss when we got there? I know, I know, 'don't ask me', but really, what... what would you want?"

The Spy sighs, eyes closing. "Honestly? Honestly... I want to feel nothing but you when you fuck me. But you have fingers, I could still have your skin against mine, I could still have some living part of you inside me, so... If they could give you the body you truly wanted, I would say of course you should, and if they can't, then I would not. And if you really want to know what would please me? Then... then maybe for just one weekend, I would ask for you to try that temporary graft, just to see, for both of us... I would never expect you to change for me, but if they have the technology for something temporary, then maybe I would ask just for one weekend... You could ask me for anything in return, you know?"

"Yeah?"

"Of course. I don't know what." The Spy shrugs uncomfortably. "It is only fair, though, isn't it? If there is any little procedure I could undergo to give you a weekend of some experience you wanted."

"You don't need anything like that." He shakes his head. "Say I do get just a temporary graft for a weekend while we're in the city... I don't know if I could, I don't know... I don't know how to talk to a doctor about that. They don't make 'em for me, and--"

"Of course. As I said, I have no expectations--"

"Lungs."

"What?"

"It's a bigger deal than a temporary graft, but it's not too different. I told you, yeah? About the technology being developed growing new organs... Well, would you?"

"Get new lungs?"

"Yeah."

The Spy thinks about it. If Australian medical technology could do the kinds of things the Sniper has told him about, then he supposes it must be even better than what the Medic has at his disposal, and if that's the case, then perhaps growing a new set of lungs and having them put into himself wouldn't be such a horrible undertaking.

"Can you smoke?"

"That's the point." The Sniper laughs. "No one would bother getting new lungs if they were just gonna quit."

"Very good. I will get them even if you don't want the surgery." He nods. "And then I will enjoy filling them with smoke. But... Look. If you want counsel on this, I am not the one to give it. I am too invested in you-- not only in your body, but in you, all of you. And I do want things, and I will always be afraid of mis-speaking, or in weighing your wants against my own and putting too much or too little stock where I should. Maybe... maybe if you trust your Medic, you should show him that brochure, and ask him what he thinks of it all. He will have the distance and the professional insight that I lack."

'Professional' wasn't the first word that sprang to the Sniper's mind when he thought about RED's Medic-- then again, even if it wasn't always, by this time 'trustworthy' was. He had been warring with whether or not he could show the Medic, and with the Spy's urging, he thinks it might not be a bad idea.

"You don't have to commit yourself to any course of action, you know." The Spy says, cuddling up to him firmly. "I just think you could get better advice than mine."

"Yeah. Maybe. But... I'm still glad you were honest with me."

"I have never wanted to be dishonest with you." The Spy says, stopping short at the absurdity of it and looking up at the Sniper with a smile. "Imagine me, hating to be dishonest. But... It isn't my decision. I would be very happy if you had a cock. I did not want to make you think that this makes me unhappy with you now."

"Appreciate it."

"I think I am getting pretty good at making love to you, anyway." He grins, allowing a certain amount of swagger into his voice. "The other night, I did very well."

"Yeah."

"I could do as well today, after a cup of coffee. Maybe better, if you are interested in breaking any records?"

The Sniper laughs and shakes his head. He's not sure he feels up to breaking any records... but he's gotten his head back on to the point where he can at least appreciate the offer, even if it's a while before he wants to act on it.

"Remind me to brush my teeth, when I feel like standing up again." "Brush your teeth when you feel like standing up again."
Oh god I do this all the time, and it drives my mother crazy.

I know I don't comment often, but usually it's because I'm only good at giving critique, and there is absolutely nothing about this I would change. It's just so freaking beautiful. Just know that I read every chapter with profound fascination, and eagerly await the next.

>>74
(I am used to everyone in my family doing that, actually...)

Thank you so much! I am just happy to know you're reading, even if you're not a critiquer.

Ch. XIX

---/-/---

"Doc? Have a minute?"

"A minute? Usually?" The Medic appears from around the corner, carrying an armload of files. "I'll just get rid of these..."

He dumps them into an open cabinet drawer and leaves them un-filed, motioning the Sniper into his office to take a seat.

"Thanks." The Sniper moves the articulated skeleton out of his chair, hanging it back on his hook.

"And-- Sorry, don't mind Fritzie!-- What is on the old mind then?"

"Been thinking about... surgical options, in Australia. Dunno if it's smart-- they've got the tech, but... Well, I mean, here, you'd be interested in this."

He tosses the pamphlet down onto the Medic's desk and watches the man's eyes grow wide-- unlike the Spy's reaction, the Medic's is for the science, and not for the product. He doesn't give the sizing chart a second glance as he looks over the carefully-staged pictures of the hospital's facility.

"And they can grow all sorts of parts like this?"

"Organs, yeah. Skin and muscle's easy enough. Last I was in the country, you couldn't do bone 'cause it kept wanting to grow and it'd develop spurs too easy, but it's not like I keep up on these things anymore. Started with hearts and lungs."

"Oh, how fascinating! The trouble that would have saved me... Ah, but... of course, you are not so interested in hearts and lungs."

"Not in the market for any, for myself, no."

"Well, there is not very much scientific information here, for me to offer an in-depth professional opinion on, but it seems safe and sanitary. Or is it a general apprehension over surgeries? If that is it, I would be more than happy to rummage about in your insides until you are used to it!"

"No-- No thanks, Doc." He holds up a hand. "Nah, my problem's... I mean, hell, look at the smallest size they offer!"

The Medic does, nodding. There is absolutely no shock on his features after making a more thorough inspection of the 13" 'Large'.

"Decent." He says.

"Decent?" The Sniper feels as if he's gone through the looking glass.

"Now that one is pretty big." He taps the 'Saxton Hale' model, and the Sniper sputters. "I suppose."

"They make you sign a waiver to get that one!"

"Pshaw, waivers!"

"I can't walk around with one of those strapped to me!"

"No... No, I suppose not. It's not for everyone."

"Besides... I don't want something that looks... Well, fake. And like everyone's."

He doesn't mention his plans for a hysterectomy-- he'd trust the Medic to be able to remove anything from him and fix him up after, but he's not sure he could be healed without it just coming back. Respawn would put everything right back where it used to be as well. And he just doesn't want to discuss his internal organs with a man who takes so much joy out of playing with them.

The Heavy comes in while he's still dithering over a way to explain his surgery qualms, carrying a chess set under one arm and a tea tray on his other hand, and the Medic's blase attitude towards the size options for permanent grafts clicks into place. He finds he can't meet his teammate's eyes.

"Sorry-- I interrupt!"

"Nah, just, er... just leaving."

"The Sniper was kind enough to smuggle an Australian medical pamphlet out to me, I had mentioned my interest in new surgeries." The Medic covers a little more smoothly, letting him take the pamphlet back. "It really is fascinating technology."

The Heavy nods and sets his little burdens down on the desk, uninterested. Clearly, the Sniper decides, he hears enough about surgery.

It wasn't as helpful as he'd hoped, and he wonders why he thought it would be. Not as though he ever expected Medic to hold all the answers...

He looks over the pamphlet again himself, once he's alone in his camper with the door locked and shades drawn.

There was almost no space devoted to the fact that customization was available... did it mean that he could get something more in-scale to the rest of him? Something that was his and his alone, completely unremarkable? The kind of thing no one would expect was grown in a vat?

Even if it did... would it be safe to get it done? He wasn't going in with a mangled blank where he'd once had male genitals, he was going in... he was going in as a man with a vagina, and that was something he couldn't expect the doctors back home to understand. For that matter, would it even be safe to get the work he needed done? To expose that part of himself to scrutiny, even to get it removed, it meant at least a small surgical team and whoever handled hospital paperwork knowing, and he couldn't pass for a masculine woman anymore...

There's a soft but urgent rapping at his door, breaking him out of his increasingly hopeless reverie, and he's surprised to see the Spy appear when he opens the door. He pulls the man in, even more surprised to see how shaky he is.

"We agreed not 'til Wedn-- Spook? Hey, what's the matter?" He locks the door again, quickly, before taking the Spy in his arms.

"Anamarie." He exhales the name, clinging to the Sniper's shirt and resting his forehead on one shoulder.

The Sniper rubs his back, long sure strokes, and waits a moment before asking. "Who?"

"Anamarie, my cousin, I thought-- Twenty five years I thought she was dead. I got a letter. She discovered me again, through the real estate agent I had been phoning on weekends, to try and find a home to retire to-- her, her husband works in the office, he does the paperwork there, my baby cousin, she has a husband!"

He hugs the Sniper hard, grinning wide.

"That's-- Good, that's good." He kisses the Spy's temple and holds him another long moment, mind taken off his own troubles. If the Spy has had a miracle, then maybe he'll get his own. And maybe, even if he doesn't, it won't matter so much. "I'm glad you've got family."

"I thought she was dead. She was a child then... her mother was one of the few relatives who did not disown mine. And then that whole side of the family was gone." He shakes his head, drawing in deep breaths. "All this time if I knew one thing it was that I was alone. Now I have family."

He pulls the letter out of his pocket to show, and the Sniper can hardly read a word, though the handwriting is neat, but he lets the Spy recount it in his own time, and picks out the words he can.

There's a recent photograph folded up in it that the Spy beams over, of a woman in a big straw sunhat with a tiny baby in her arms.

"This is Michel." He holds it up, pride and reverence written plainly on a face used to hiding everything. "My nephew. For simplicity's sake, let us just say 'nephew'."

"He's cute."

"She... She won't mind you, I hope. Oh, no, she can't... after everything, she cannot. I am the only blood relative she has-- except for the baby-- and... Well, you know better than I do, don't you? I just need for her to like you. I want to be in their lives... Look at him, he's so small... don't you think he needs uncles?"

Uncles.

The Sniper nods, wrapping his arms back around the Spy.

He still wanted his parents to accept him as he was, desperately. He wanted them to accept the Spy as well, but he didn't really expect them to-- not both. He didn't dare hope for so much from them, but maybe the Spy's cousin could, if they couldn't. Maybe there could be someone out there in the world who would be all right with them.

"I think I want the surgery." He mumbles, lips pressed against the side of the Spy's head. "Don't get excited, 'cause I still don't think I can."

"If you want it, then--"

"It's not simple, Spy."

"I am not saying it is simple. I am saying if I need to blackmail a doctor into doing it for you and saying nothing--"

"It's a team of doctors, it's not just the surgeon, it's the bloke gassing me up, it's the nurses, it's everyone involved in growing the thing before it's grafted on and everyone who sees my paperwork."

"I can get to the whole hospital if you need me to. Everyone has secrets. And people who don't have secrets have loved ones. And if there is a man in that place who has neither, even you Australians are not bulletproof. If you decide that this will make you more comfortable then I am with you and I will do what it takes."

"I don't need it. I think I want it, but if I can't do it, I don't need it. I never would have, if it didn't exist, you know? I mean... I always kind of thought I ought to have one, when I was a kid, but I wasn't stuck on it. And I'm not stuck on it now... just. I'd never have to worry about being found out, if I had one. It'd make things easier. No more creams, no more funnels. I mean, even so..."

"Is it not more than a mere convenience to you?"

"Course it is. But I'll live, yeah? I mean... wouldn't be able to go four times in a night with one, probably. Not four times in an hour for damn sure. I just... We're starting a life someplace I've never been, with people who've never met me. And if I started it with a cock, then that's all people will ever know. I want that."

"Cher, they're not going to see you naked. No matter what you do or don't do, everyone that I introduce you to will know you as a man, and no one will think there is any need to question it. If you want one for you, I will make certain it is safe for you to have the work done. But do not start worrying about what the world thinks now, that is not you."

"... Thanks."

"De rien."

"Retirement's got me on edge, reckon."

"Ah. Well... enjoy the last of your contract, then, while you have it. And when it is up, I will help you enjoy your retirement, no worrying."

"A little worrying. There's still my parents to deal with."

"A little worrying." The Spy allows. "But you know yourself, mon beau, and I know you. The rest... the rest we will handle."

You have no idea how I would like to able find something that is charming, witty and intelligent, something that would say I much I love this fic, the characterization, how the subject matter is treated (and how much it means to me on a personnal level) ... but since I have no way with words, I'm afraid you'll have to settle for "I love this."

>>76
Thank you very much! It means the world to me as a writer to hear I've written something that touches people personally, so... yeah, thank you, so much.


Ch. XX

---/-/---

They start driving their first night as free men. It isn't until midnight that they get a real move on, both of them kept late at their own bases signing papers, promising their silence to the companies in return for hefty sums of money and halfhearted words of thanks for their years of service.

The BLU team has stayed up-- the Spy told them that he wouldn't be sticking around for one last drink, but that he would not mind one last round of handshakes, and most of them have gathered around out of curiosity. He didn't leave with the emissary who took his final paperwork back to BLU, but he'd made it clear he wouldn't be there in the morning.

They watch, from windows and open doorways, as he crosses the field, drops his suitcases next to the RED Sniper's battered camper, and shakes the man's hand as if it's a lifeline, the two patting each other's shoulders warmly before the Sniper stows the Spy's things in the back, and they both climb into the cab of the truck, and they don't understand it at all.

They stop in town, and wake the young man holding the desk down at the hotel. The Spy exchanges a couple of friendly words about the graveyard shift while he picks up their room key, and then they lock themselves in.

"Last night here." The Sniper pats the bed, watching the Spy's long-familiar security routine.

"Oh, and you care to make it a memorable one?"

"Maybe a memorable last morning. Tomorrow... Tomorrow, one last go on the town?"

"We could certainly get it all done in a day, but then when would we drive?"

"Make tomorrow our last night in town? Drive Sunday?"

The Spy nods, stripping down to his underthings and grabbing his toothbrush. The Sniper gives him the first turn at the sink, pulling back the covers as he gets off the bed and heads for the bathroom, and stealing a brief kiss in passing.

"Could fly out of Albuquerque... be a stopover maybe in Hawaii, but we'd get there." He calls, turning to talk over his shoulder.

The Spy makes a face and the Sniper sighs, rolling his eyes.

"Problem with Albuquerque?"

"If we drive out to the coast, we can just fly straight there. I am not making a stopover in the tropics-- instead of enjoying the sights, all we will experience is the humidity and the airport. Besides... Albuquerque sounds dreary. This town... this town is all right, because it is ours, you know? But I have no love of the American southwest on the whole. And... it seems more like saying farewell to a country if your last sight of it is the sea."

"Gonna be the last you see of it from the air, either way. But fine. Wouldn't mind it... give me more time that way." He finishes up with the bathroom, before coming back out and joining the Spy in bed. "I mean... gonna have to sell the old girl, ain't I? Pack everything up and say goodbye to her, camper and all."

"I hadn't thought of that." The Spy frowns. "I will help you pack."

"Could get seventy five bucks for her, reckon. She runs, and she'll be cleaned up a bit when I sell her off-- for both, you think? Seventy five? Hell, that's my flight back to Oz. Have to clean me up for that." He rolls his eyes again, shaking his head. "Think you can promise not to laugh."

"I could promise not to laugh." The Spy grins, sly, rolling himself into the Sniper's arms. "You own a suit?"

"Had to buy one. For flying, and I wore it once or twice for meeting clients, back when I was freelancing. Feels too stuffy for me and I don't look good as you do. And I hate the way I look with a clean shave. But I guess I don't mind having shoulders."

The Spy laughs. "That is a definite part of the appeal. You have seen what I look with and without."

"Like you without."

"Mm. Not too skinny?"

"Next to me reckon you look just fine. Gotta admit, I like having a couple pounds of muscle on ya."

"Oh? For pinning me down and having your way with me?" He teases, before a yawn stops him. "Oh... oh, I suppose I have been wearing myself out on paperwork."

"Same." He yawns as well. The hour on the road hadn't helped his case any, but he liked staying up to talk. Considering the change they had ahead of them, it wasn't as though he'd been able to get to sleep without it. "Hey... we'll be right. Yeah?"

"We will be. One more night here, and then we'll drive to San Francisco. Pack up... sell your van... make love in a very nice hotel... fly to Australia..." The Spy trails off sleepily.

The Sniper is up a little longer. There are so many things he's not sure he's ready to face once they get there. He can get rid of the truck, and the camper, though he's not happy about it. It's too much trouble to move them from the US to Oz and then to France, he's got better things to do with his money and his effort-- cheaper to sell it and buy something else than to ferry it twice, with that kind of distance. He doesn't think he'll have any trouble buying some used junker once they have a place to call home, and they can afford to rent something for a little while, to visit his parents.

He's not ready to think about visiting his parents. He's gone through so many changes since he saw them last... he's barely spoken to his mother on the phone since telling them, he hasn't heard his father's voice at all... the last thing he'd heard his father say was 'everyone knows we have a daughter'.

He holds onto the Spy hard and tries to push it out of his mind, but it's a long time before he does, and it's late when he wakes up.

The Spy is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking fresh and awake and clean, smile bright.

"You've got no idea how glad I am to see you." The Sniper shakes his head, voice hoarse.

"Maybe a little idea." He strokes the Sniper's cheek with a firm hand, and there's a warmth that comes over him that's visible, as he occupies himself with feeling the rasp of his lover's stubble and the planes of his face. "Brunch at the Sugar Pine? If we hurry they will still be serving waffles, I do not know if you care about waffles... And tonight we can even try that little Mexican place if you like, I don't need steak again."

"Would like waffles. And Mexican for tonight. Thanks."

He sits and stretches, aware of the Spy's admiring gaze when he twists to both sides. He smiles at the brush of fingers along his ribcage.

"Got a clean shirt, could shower after brunch. To get there in time." He rolls out of bed, stopping in the bathroom for a quick piss and a very perfunctory wash-up at the sink, before pulling on an old denim work-shirt. It had been in the back of his tiny closet for years, the one thing RED wouldn't let him wear even on his weekends...

The Spy doesn't mention it, though he lets the Sniper catch him looking, and he does not try to hide being affected by it.

"Brings out your eyes." He says, off-hand, during the short drive. It's all he says about the shirt, but the Sniper figures that's for the best.

He looks better than he ever has, with no mask and no gloves, and the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up. There are clear tan lines on his face, and his forearms and hands look so pale, the kind of pale the Sniper has let himself believe only existed in their bed, it's so strange to see him out in the sun.

"That much skin's gonna give me ideas." He teases, parking the truck.

"If you want to have ideas about my forearms, cher, you are welcome to them." The Spy laughs.

"Your hands?"

"Oh... Oh, you go ahead and have ideas about those." He smiles a little, head ducking down-- not to hide a blush, but to give himself a moment to hold onto the thought, the implicit come-on, the new freedom. A moment to take it all, savor it just a little, and put it away until they were alone again.

The dark grey trousers hug the Spy when he moves, something that's so much easier to notice when there's no blazer in the way, and the Sniper walks behind him as they head inside, glad he's the only one with sunglasses-- he suspects they'd be dawdling to try and get the best looks at each other if the Spy had the same freedom to let his eyes wander in public.

The waffles are good-- as is what he steals of the Spy's omelet. The coffee, of course, always better than at the base. He can't wait to take the Spy for coffee in Australia. It's the one thing he can look forward to with no qualms. Even if he can't find a way to get the surgery he really wants, even if he can't get through a day with his parents, they can get a really good coffee. If that has to be worth the trip, then he promises himself it will be.

They walk around the outside of the museum again after brunch, the Spy's hand gripping his elbow as they pass the big stamp mill.

"I promise I won't climb it." He grins, taking the opportunity to lead the Spy down a hill to where the general store sits. He picks up a little food and bottled water for the drive and the Spy fails to find his brand of cigarette, and they pass by the laundromat and stop into the bakery, barely big enough for them both to stand at the counter.

By the time they get to the little Mexican hole-in-the-wall, the Spy feels like he really has seen the whole town. He has eaten in Spain, and he's had the Engineer's cooking, which sometimes veered into the 'tex-mex' territory, and this is different from both, but it is not wholly alien. When his dinner proves spicy, he follows it with the chips sitting on their table, while the Sniper washes his own down with a couple of beers.

It's not bad, even with the heat. He doesn't try any of the Sniper's-- the meat was unspecified on the menu, which he never takes as an encouraging sign-- but he offers a bite of the relleno when no one is looking their way, and loves the way the Sniper moans in pleasure at the taste of it.

Back in their room, they lean over the sink together and brush their teeth before squeezing into the same bath. They trade a couple of handjobs, and laugh around too many kisses to count, and when they hit the bed at last, the Spy gets the Sniper off again before pulling the covers up over them both.

"Told you I'd have ideas about those hands." The Sniper sighs.

"Never stop having ideas about them."

"Sleep tight." He drops a kiss to the top of the Spy's head. "Driving tomorrow. 'S sixteen... seventeen hours 'r so. Gonna wake you early."

"Mon grand, I look forward to it." Spy yawns, rolling over to press his back into the Sniper, reaching back to pull an arm around himself.

The Sniper, never one to miss such a clear invitation, spoons up behind him. It's easier to sleep than the night before had been, and before he knows it, he's waking in the morning.

"Got some good memories of this place." He says, nudging the Spy awake. "But I think I'm ready to say goodbye."

"Well..." The Spy rolls over, stretching his back out. "We have a future to get to, I suppose."

"Yeah. S'pose so."

They linger more than the Sniper intends to, packing up and getting ready in the morning. It's too much to keep their hands to themselves, and he lets the Spy's confidence rub off on him as they set off. There's nothing worrying will accomplish before they get there, after all...

Ch. XXI

---/-/---

In San Francisco, the Spy takes him to a restaurant overlooking the bay. The tablecloth is real and heavy, and reaches the floor, and even in his one suit, the Sniper feels out of place there, but the way the Spy lights up is worth it before he even tastes the food.

The Spy is in his element, dressed well and all but seducing their waitress over the wine list, though when she isn't looking, he winks at the Sniper.

"Leading the poor girl on." He whispers, shaking his head.

The Spy shrugs. The message is clear enough-- it helps their case, after all, for the Spy to play lothario with any woman who happens to pass near enough. It's not as though the Sniper suffers a moment of doubt over it. He's had the Spy's fingers in his own vagina, and that's proof enough for him that the other man isn't after any more intimate contact with something similar.

The Spy frowns a bit over the wine list after the waitress leaves them to make their choice, before offering it to the Sniper.

"They are all reasonably local and four years old or younger, so if you have any preferences..."

"Such a snob." He grins, shaking his head. "Sure the cheapest cab sav on there'd make me happy. Nice selection on the dinner menu, for seafood. Don't trust much when I can't see the ocean. Stuff out of a can's safe, but beyond that... can't eat seafood out in the desert. What do you like?"

"I haven't looked yet."

"Aw, fresh oysters..."

The Spy looks up, going a bit green. "I am afraid I put very little stock in the reputation of oysters to have a positive effect on me."

"Mussels?"

"I... You order what you like. No shellfish for me. Sole, maybe-- Oh, definitely sole."

"'Right." The Sniper nods, perusing the menu a little more. He doesn't know how strong the Spy's objection to shellfish is-- if he doesn't like the taste or the texture, or if seeing anything whole on the half-shell would put him off, or if it's an allergy he doesn't care to draw attention to. On the off chance that it is an allergy, he lets the opportunity for fresh cioppino pass. The rainbow trout looks fine.

It is fine, when it comes, and the wine is as good as anything he's ever had. Not quite the same as back home, and not quite the same as anything he'd sampled throughout Europe, but certainly no worse. The Spy's sole is better, when a little bit is passed to him on a bread plate.

"Bloody hell, I should've ordered this." He sighs, eyes rolling back.

"More capers than I would have used, but still... isn't it?" The Spy nods. His attention drifts back and forth between the meal, resting on his entree, on his wine, out the window on the sea, and then, coming back to burn into the Sniper. He never rests for long-- too long, the Sniper figures, and they would both want to do something about it.

After dinner, the Spy orders espressos, laying the charm on thick with their waitress and slipping out of one shoe to caress the Sniper's calf beneath the table.

"She likes being flattered by a charming man because the tips are usually good with the charmers." He whispers, when she's out of earshot. "Between the two of us, though, I am not the man she has been looking at the longest."

"G'wan."

"Mm. She makes eye contact because I engage her first. When she is over there at the bar with the other servers, she glances back at you."

"It's the suit. Gives me shoulders." He shrugs it off, shaking his head.

"Mm-hm. Maybe. I'll have to tip enough to make up for her heartache when I am the one who goes home with you." The Spy chuckles. He only laughs harder when the Sniper kicks him lightly under the table. "The service has been prompt and reliable, she deserves it. Personally, I hate it-- it took me too long to get in the habit, I am used to having the gratuities added up for me on the bill."

"Yeah? You always trust the staff to mark you up what they're worth?"

"To me it is worth it not to have to do all the fiddly math on a full stomach, after half a bottle of good wine. What if we took the tiramisu back to the hotel?"

"What if I already have something back at the hotel?" He keeps his voice low, nervous, but there's no one near their table, and the Spy raises one eyebrow, leaning back in his chair with a smile.

"I leave the matter in your capable hands, then." He takes a sip of his espresso, holding the Sniper's gaze through a long, slow blink.

The hotel they're staying at is nice-- extravagantly so. The Sniper had said he'd be fine staying at the motor lodge up the street, and the Spy has yet to explain what he found so hilarious about that.

They have to park at the corner, and they walk past the place to get to their hotel, and the Sniper understands. From the sound of the place, it is not conducive to quiet relaxation. More to drinking and socializing... The Spy nudges him and points out an open door.

"That's where you wanted to stay."

"Well... seemed cheap and easy."

"The very definition of it." He laughs. "And of the clientele."

There's a boy out on a stoop who's been looking towards the place, rubbing sweaty palms on dirty jeans, and when they pass by, he gives them a quick glance, with the wide-eyed look of a dog who knows it's done something wrong.

The Spy chuckles, beckoning to him as he breaks away from the Sniper, and whispering a few words.

"He was going to go anyway." He says, looping his arm through the Sniper's.

"Yeah. Pretty familiar with that look."

"I told him to leave his wallet at home first and put a condom in his pocket. Not to drink everything he's handed. I don't know if it will stop him, on the drinking side, but he won't get robbed at least. He's been watching the place days now, if I'm any judge."

"Are you? Any judge?"

The Spy nods. "For me, I was not afraid to walk in-- the queer nightspots when I was growing up were respectable enough, compared to other places. Coffee shops and bars full of self-proclaimed artists, generally. But it felt like a long time, before I took any real advantage of them. It was enough at first to have them exist. I could breathe inside these places... Well, as much as I could ever breathe, out. It was one less mask to wear. I know what young boys look like when they are itching to taste something that has been forbidden them, by outside forces or in."

"Would've given anything for there to be an honest place for it." The Sniper sighs. He's not at ease with walking down the street arm in arm, but he trusts the Spy-- he knows the other man wouldn't do it if they weren't passing through the one spot where it was safe to. The Spy is the only other man he knows who understands caution the way he does, a bone-deep need, a razor's edge between mastering a fear and being a slave to it.

"Tell me about you, then. Where could you go?"

"Inside." He shakes his head.

The Spy releases his arm a little farther up the street, and they walk a foot apart until a crowd outside a bar forces them back together. Not, he gathers, like the bars nearer the motor lodge.

They don't say anything else until they reach the room, and the Sniper strips down to his underthings and rests on the bed while the Spy secures the place.

"I loved smelling the ocean, today." He says lightly, finishing up his routine and loosening his tie. He drops his jacket onto a chair, his waistcoat. "And dinner... was the trout good?"

"Was. Wish it had been with that sauce--"

"The beurre blanc. Yes. Some time I'll make one, it isn't hard, sauces. What about you, what do you do in the kitchen?"

"Not much. Love barbecuing, though."

"All right. You grill the meat and I will make the sauces, and we'll get along just fine." He drops onto the bed. "Tell me about where you used to go."

"Anywhere you could buy a drink, if it wasn't too crowded." The Sniper shrugs. "Never expecting to meet blokes, of course. I-- I couldn't."

He leaves that right where it is, and the Spy doesn't push. "You wound up meeting a couple, before me. That's good. I adore the thought of being the last man to have you, but I would hate to be greedy with you, cher. It is poor taste to begrudge a man his wild oats, isn't it?"

"Dunno. Found places easier when I left Oz. Never... never easy. Never knew how to ask about it. Scared to death I'd get caught if I tried coming onto a bloke. Even when I looked like a girl I was. Y'know... didn't want-- didn't want someone coming home with me thinking things were-- Anyway. Guess I got the experiences I needed, and that's all that really matters. If there's experiences I haven't had yet, then either I don't need 'em, or you're there to give 'em to me, so... yeah."

"And what experience am I giving you tonight?"

"Giving you one, actually." He feels his face heat.

It had been the slow work of many evenings without the Spy, turning a couple of old belts and some assorted scrap into the harness, and then knitting a lining for it to keep old worn edges from biting into his skin anyplace delicate. When he pulls it out, he's struck anew by how ridiculous it looks, but with the cock fitted into it, it's at least clear what the function is.

The Spy looks up at him with an almost tentative delight, surprised and unsure.

The hard rubber cock is nothing new in and of itself. It's the one he's fucked the Spy with before, just holding it in his hand. A little bit larger than the one he had settled on, the one the Spy still sometimes sucked on while playing with him. A little bit larger than what he felt right with. It fit his hand, but not as easily as the other one... and it was knowing that this would have felt a little too big that made him sure the standard grafts would be unbearable to live with.

"For me?" The Spy kisses him softly. "Mon grand, you shouldn't have... now I am going to keep you in bed past checkout. We might even miss our flight."

He laughs and grabs the Spy for a longer kiss, fumbling to get his shirt unbuttoned and off as fast as he can.

Once they're undressed-- and once he is outfitted-- it's strange, looking down and seeing it aimed out, the base resting firm and flush over his pubic bone, no hands keeping it in place. It's not quite like looking down and seeing a real one, the harness 'cozy' is knit from multi-coloured scrap yarn and somewhat spoils the illusion, but he doesn't mind that.

With the condom and the petroleum jelly, he can no longer see the glaring difference between the firm rubber and the colour his skin should have been, and once he's sinking it into the Spy, all he can think about is the way it looks, his hands firm on the pale, slim hips... there is an old bullet scar at the edge of his hand, a more recent mark up a centimeter from his thumb. The Spy's shoulders are an haute relief, his arms folded and his head dropped down, and the arch of his spine a series of bumps and dips in the hard shadow of the bedside lamp.

He remembers the tight heat of the Spy around his fingers when he'd prepped him for it, imagines how good that would feel if this was just a little more real, that kind of perfect even pressure, that slickness and fire... His mouth will do, or even his hand, or even just the weight of his gaze.

He thinks he could settle for that with no regrets. He wants to fuck the Spy hard enough to wear him out, wants to scratch that itch for him 'til he can't see straight. If that means finishing himself off after, he won't be sore over it, not as long as the Spy is watching.

The Spy has to angle his hips, has to keep them lined up, but once the Sniper finds a rhythm that works, he's happy to let him carry on-- more than happy. He's ecstatic. He had considered shopping around, in the more discreet leather goods stores, in the right neighbourhoods of the city. It never occurred to him that the Sniper would not only beat him to the punch, but have built his own.

It seems only right, at that. The Sniper has a full collection of things he's bought, and the Spy would no longer be surprised to see him know his way around a sex shop, but this was clearly something he'd started work on when they'd been meeting on weekends and stolen evenings, between the bases. And while the toys, the fancy Australian high-tech ones in particular, were one thing-- something that needed buying-- the Sniper did have a certain self-sufficiency. It made sense that he would want to fix this up himself, when the Spy thought about it, in the fleeting moments when the Spy could think about it.

He doesn't even mind feeling the straps when the Sniper's hips snap into his, not when it means feeling the weight behind each thrust, a little real contact, hairy thighs against his own and the Sniper's front curling over his back. He's fucked out by the time the Sniper stops, so far beyond his own orgasm, slumped in the wet spot and gasping out a name only he knows, not even the one that had been whispered to him, but its french form.

"Fucking chafes after a bit..." The Sniper laughs weakly, pulling the cock out in as smooth a movement as he can, one thumb wiping up a smear of Vaseline. "Gonna take this off."

"Mm." The Spy rolls onto his side, smiling up with glassy eyes. "Incroyable, tigre. Merveilleux."

"Good." He grins, getting the harness off and tossing it to the floor. With the condom, the toy itself will be clean when he needs to pack it. If he needs to, he can throw the harness' lining in the wash with his socks.

He doesn't bother with looking for another toy, knowing he's left the bag too far from the bed, just makes sure he has the Spy's full attention before he starts tugging and rubbing at his clit with one hand, and a nipple with the other. The Spy groans, and though he doesn't know the words, he understands the meaning clear enough, and the hand that creeps up his thigh in spite of the Spy's exhaustion.

He spits onto a couple of tissues from the nightstand to clean up, taking care of both of them, pulling his undershirt back down when the chill is too much.

The Spy protests moving, but he finally gets them both under the covers where it's not so frigid. It's been years, and his body still feels like it should be summer... he wonders if it ever won't. Maybe all that time in the American desert has helped, where aside from the changing night sky and one brief rain, there were no real seasons to speak of.

He'll enjoy that about going back to Oz, too, he decides. The warmth. The Spy will complain-- it'll be a shock after the foggy January chill in San Francisco, too much like what he wanted to get away from when they left the desert. Still, not like he plans on taking him up into the outback...

No. Just to his parents'...

So much for forgetting that for the night.

He sells the truck and camper both in the morning, to the nearest used car lot to the airport. It's still quite a cab ride, but he doesn't mind it. The worst part of the whole thing is getting all his luggage checked, and then they're on the plane, and the air hostess is giving him the eye.

"You're the smooth talker, how'd I become the-- What are they looking at me for?" He hisses.

"The animal magnetism." The Spy sighs, eyes closing. "I don't know how they put up with this job, it seems like getting paid to have your ass pinched and fondled by men in cheap suits."

"Yeah? I'd do it for free." He jokes. He thinks it's safe to-- anyone overhearing him will only think he means pinching the girls.

"My suit cost more than my plane ticket." The Spy grumbles, before pausing to look the Sniper over. "... Me also, come to think of it. You clean up all right in a cheap suit, you know?"

"We'd get kicked off the damn plane for being a public nuisance." He decides, accepting a pillow and blanket. "Wake me when the drink cart comes around, yeah?"

"But certainly. Wine, beer, cocktail?"

"Beer. Chicken, if there's an option, for supper. Ah, just wake me."

The Spy leans back a little in his own seat. He has the window, but with the Sniper dozing, he can't look out it. He keeps his gaze on the aisle, alert.

No danger comes, of course. He finishes a cigarette before the drink cart comes by, drops the butt into the ashtray hidden in his armrest. There is one family, a couple in too-loud shirts and a boy of ten or so between them, but all the other travelers are businessmen.

In the end, most of the businessmen stay on board, to go on to Japan, when they finally deplane late that night, and the Spy can hardly believe the terminal when they do.

"What--?" He stops, pointing at a screen with the up-to-date flight information. There's one at every gate, and he thinks it's his vision for a long moment.

"Easier than making everyone go up to the board at the front, yeah?" The Sniper shrugs.

There seem to be miles of clean white plastic and chrome accents. It's like stepping off the plane and into an elegantly designed future, except that nearly everyone around them wears denim cutoffs, Hawaiian shirts, and hiking boots. Most of them carry small white Dictaphones-- at least, that was his first thought, until he sees that they have screens just as thin as the displays at the gates, and he hears a voice coming out of one.

"Mobile." The Sniper explains.

"Mobile...?"

"Phone."

"N-no. No. I have seen a mobile phone. It is... it is like-- this, with buttons, but--"

"That brick Miss Pauling's got? Thing's older'n I am." He snorts. "Best thing you can leave the country with, course. Come on, gotta get you cleared to get in."

The Spy nods, fishing out his passport, but when they reach the desk and the man asks if he's a foreigner, the Sniper just asks him if he wants to fight about it and they're being let through with a hearty slap on the back.

"Formality." He shrugs, shaking his head as though it's all some silly little thing, and not completely insane.

"But--"

"Yeah, not necessary, mate." The man waves his passport off.

"Ah, just stamp it." The Sniper passes it between them, and it gets stamped.

The baggage carousel announces things in a soothing voice that sounds less-- or more-- than human, and the cart that the Sniper brings over to load their belongings onto hovers.

"There... are no wheels on that."

"Spook, after teleporters and respawn and all of that, this is weird?"

"It's a bit much all together."

"Well... Look. Countryside'll be better, right? I promise, people just keep using things 'til they don't work anymore out there, nothing bright and new."

The Spy nods, following him out and hailing a cab-- the cab, he is a little relieved and a little disappointed to note, has wheels.

The hotel suite is practically a small apartment, the Spy is disoriented by the sunlight coming through the big windows.

"What time is it?"

"Three in the afternoon tomorrow." He laughs. "You've done this before."

"Never this far."

"Go on and have a lie down, join you in a minute."

The Spy pulls the blinds in the bedroom and closes the curtains tight over them, before getting ready for bed. Everything is clean and white, there and in the adjoining bath, and if being in the future didn't give him such a headache, he thinks he'd enjoy it more. Not just the time difference-- it's true, he's traveled most of the world-- but the future of it all, the little mobile phones with tiny television screens in them, and the hovering luggage carts, and the computer voices.

The Sniper takes a long moment in the suite's sitting room, to look out at the city. He's never loved the cities like he has the wilderness, but a part of him still feels like it's good to be this close to home. Terrifying, for all the reasons he doesn't want to think about yet, but good, and if it hasn't changed too much, then he'll be able to show the Spy a decent time. He hopes some of the restaurants are the same as they were, but it's been a long time since he's seen Adelaide.

(Continued thanks to everyone who's been reading, and also to Cosmic Tuesdays who's been keeping me in line on this one-- and to whom I will say I wound up being crueler to Spy than I originally intended...)

Ch. XXII

---/-/---

"Thank you. For waiting to do this together." The Spy whispers, when he wakes up feeling adjusted to the local time at last.

"Yeah? What else was I going to do?"

"You know... I mean, you stuck around an extra month after your contract was up, for mine."

"Half a month. Anyway, wanted this bad as you-- worse. This part, I mean."

The Spy nods, walking his fingers along the Sniper's ribcage for a long, quiet moment before he's gently shoved away.

"Coffee." The Sniper grunts, rolling out of bed. He doesn't move as fast as he could, not with the Spy moving to sprawl out in the center of the bed, half-tangled in the bedsheet as he stretches out under the ceiling fan. "Sweetheart, you are a sight..."

"Coffee?"

"I'm going, I'm going. Lazy."

"Retired." The Spy purrs. "I can afford to be."

He isn't lazy long. After breakfast-- and after tangling himself around the Sniper in the big-enough-for-two shower a while-- he heads down to the business center in the lobby.

It's a nightmare to navigate. He expects a bank of payphones, but instead there are several small shelves between waist and chest-high lining one wall, each with several strange-looking outlets, and one machine that he first mistakes for an automatic teller machine, except that it has a full keyboard, and instead of withdrawing cash, the man who slides a card into it does nothing but type, eyes on the screen.

Finally, he finds the phone booth, and both the payphone itself and the phone book chained to a shelf are slightly dusty with neglect.

He uses a false name and an American accent to call the first hospital in the book. They can't offer the kind of customization he's looking for, but the second can.

"Can this surgery be performed on someone who doesn't have-- I mean, who hasn't had-- Can you do a permanent graft onto a person with a vagina? I... I am calling for a friend."

There's a brief silence on the other end of the line, and then a different voice is apologizing for his wait.

"Sure we can." The doctor assures him, once he's promised he hasn't been waiting long.

"You sound comfortable with the request..."

"Oh, doesn't bother me! Done a few. Hell, shouldn't be surprised, right? I mean, I'd think anyone'd pick being a man if you had the choice."

"And you would be able to remove all the-- the... original parts? This is no problem?"

"Shouldn't be, nah. You're free to bring your friend 'round, you ask for Doctor Patterson and they'll make you an appointment to get sorted."

"Thank you." He grips the phone hard and doesn't hear anything else that's said on the other end.

When he gets up to the suite, the Sniper is staring out at the city again.

"Thinking about places I ought to take you." He smiles. "Could go to the zoo, or the big botanical garden... I mean, dunno if either of those interests you, but you ought to see something."

"Royal Adelaide Hospital." The Spy leans against the door.

"Y'all right?"

"I talked to a man on the telephone downstairs, he said he's done permanent grafts before, for people in your situation-- don't worry, I didn't use any names. I didn't even use my own voice. They do custom work and he'll take care of the hysterectomy. If this is what you want, you can have it."

The Sniper sits down hard, and the Spy moves to his side, curling up in his lap and stroking his arm.

"What, he'd just... just do it?"

"He talked about it like it was not a problem for him at all. And the receptionist who put him on for me said they can do them to your specifications-- whatever those are. She said that there are some accident victims who would rather have exact replicas than standard models. Not many, but for those who do, it's the place..."

"I dunno." He sighs, shaking his head. "It's... it's worth looking into, isn't it, then? Thanks. I-- Thanks."

"If it makes it easier... you know?" The Spy shrugs, lifting himself up for a quick peck on the cheek. "Maybe you know exactly who you are without it, but if it will make it easier for your parents to understand, then--?"

"Dunno if it would. Temporary grafts are a dime a dozen in the big smokes, having a cock doesn't mean they have to take me serious. Not that I'd be whipping it out at the dinner table or-- But hell, I dunno... maybe just knowing it's there'd make it easier to handle them. Hospital's by the zoo and the garden, if I'm remembering it right. Maybe... maybe I'll go down just to talk about it, meet up with you someplace fun?"

The Spy nods slowly. He would like to be there with the Sniper for... well, for anything. He understands why he can't be. There's only so much a 'friend' can do without being suspect, even if he lied and said he was a relative, he couldn't really be there... If the Sniper was actually having work done, he could hang around the waiting room, but for this...

"Meet me at the zoo after, then?"

The Sniper nods, tugging the Spy back down into his lap for a moment longer.

He feels better for it. He doesn't know if he would get the same amount of comfort out of being held, as he gets from holding the Spy and feeling him relax... it's helped in the past, but it isn't the same. When he's not sure how much control he has over his own life and the Spy rests in his arms, he can at least feel like he has all the strength necessary to protect the man, and if he can feel strong enough to care for someone else, then he has to reason he's strong enough to handle himself. The Spy doesn't trust easy, and he trusts the Sniper. Sometimes that's enough to make things look at least a little more all right, knowing the Spy believes in him.

They part in front of the botanical garden, with a handshake that has to stand in for everything else. From there, the Spy goes to the zoo, and the Sniper goes into the hospital with the notes the Spy has written out for him.

Doctor Patterson is about his own age, with a thick moustache and dark blond hair, and a wide, easy smile. He looks as trustworthy as any doctor the Sniper's ever met-- the Medic, after all, took years to earn his trust, and Patterson looks far less mad.

"Asked my... erm, my cousin to call-- phone died on me, so..." He fidgets on the table. "About the surgery."

"Right." Patterson hands him a brochure, newer and more informational than the one he'd been holding onto for so many years, the one he'd picked up up north before leaving the country. "You probably feel like your situation's a pretty... odd one. And it's rare, but nothing new under the sun, yeah?"

"Uh... yeah."

"See, with an adult, it's easy enough to get the permanent graft done regardless of what you're starting out with, but it's next to impossible on an infant, so for... well, probably as long as kids have been born in hospitals, if one's born with both sets, the doctors can only really fix it in one direction. They usually do it without telling the parents, if they can-- that's been my experience, in talking to colleagues who deliver babies. Do the easy fix and pray for the best. And every so often the kid grows up knowing something's missing, even if his parents never even know."

The Sniper nods, feeling his stomach turn over. It's still not him... but he doesn't think he can say as much.

He'd been a home birth. His parents had driven out to the hospital a few times, when his mother was pregnant, and once when they thought she was going into labor, but when he'd been born, he'd surprised them with it. The midwife had barely gotten out to the station in time to meet them, when his father called. The way his mother told the story, the old man had done most of the delivery himself. 'Just like with the lambs', she'd said.

He wasn't going to correct the doctor, though, not if this narrative was the one that could get him a hysterectomy at the least. He needed all that out of him, and maybe if he could really get it, the graft on top, and if he had to lie and say he'd probably been born with a cock too, he'd say it as often as he had to.

It was exhausting just discussing his options, but he left with several pamphlets and a follow-up appointment, and that did feel good.

Patterson recommended a weekend with one of the standard cocks, before he left. He could see the man's reasoning-- it was something to try out before he committed to the extra expense of designing one from scratch, and it wasn't as though Patterson knew how well he could afford it. And of course, if he could survive a weekend with the Large, then he it would be a piece of cake to get used to carrying his own around all the time. It was something to keep considering.

When he gets to the zoo, he doesn't wander too long before he finds the Spy cooing over the red kangaroos. It's cute... the exhibit doesn't get a lot of traffic, after all-- anyone who wants to see a kangaroo only has to leave civilization and wait. The Spy has an animal to himself, talking to it while locals pass through quickly to get to the elephants.

"You don't want to see something more exotic?" He laughs, joining the other man.

"I came to Australia, I want to see Australian animals."

"Late lunch?" The Sniper offers.

"In a bit."

He watches the Spy watch the roos a little longer, before they leave. He feels better about the appointment, by the time they do. Maybe the surgery still isn't for him-- still was never designed with men like him in mind-- but it's a little closer than he'd thought. It's not completely out of his reach.

They stop into a little place to pick up something to go. The Spy is still in high spirits, still insistent on experiencing the country to his fullest ability, and the Sniper figures that means cuisine as well.

"Roo burger?" He offers, showing the Spy the menu.

"Is that what they call it for the tourists?"

"Ah... no. That's... that's what it is. That's the meat."

The Spy is aghast. "You eat them?"

"Well, sure."

"But they live in zoos!"

"They live everywhere. I was just offering, since you wanted to eat local."

"I wanted to eat local, I did not want to eat the locals-- I just saw them, with the-- the long eyelashes and the sweet faces, why would you eat them?"

"You don't eat cute animals in France?"

"Not zoo animals!"

"Fine, fine. I'm not gonna make you eat zoo animals." He promises. He orders brumby, which he figures fits the bill as far as 'Australian' and 'not a zoo animal' goes, though he's surprised to see it on the menu. He can't think of any local mobs, when he'd worked around them it had been up north.

Back in their suite, the Spy puts aside his unease with unspecified meat-- the Sniper had ordered it, and the Sniper knew well enough what he wouldn't eat, after all... had seen which menu items he'd refused in the past, and had promised it wouldn't be any of the animals he'd seen in the zoo. If he had to guess, he would put it as some kind of local beef, maybe a particular breed of cow, and the dish smells fine.

It's on the second bite that something bothers him enough to ask.

"Brumby? It's horse." The Sniper shrugs.

When he'd been working the land and wild mobs of horses had led to erosion problems, they'd broken some and killed others, he'd eaten it before and he'd made some money selling them. He'd seen horse on the menu in a few places in Europe, though he'd never bothered ordering it before. He doesn't see any reason not to tell the Spy what they're eating, with that in mind, and he certainly doesn't expect the strangled cursing cut short by the Spy being violently ill.

"Sorry... I'm sorry..." The Spy wipes at his mouth, voice weak and watery.

"Hell, I'm sorry." The Sniper leads him away from the table. "Not agreeing with you?"

"N-no. Horse does not agree with me."

"Didn't know. No-- forget it, I'll clean up."

He deposits the Spy in bed with a glass of water. When he gets to bed after cleaning up, the Spy curls up against him, faraway look on his face.

"They stole it first." He whispers.

"What's that?" The Sniper cards his fingers through the other man's hair.

"The horse. The soldiers took it. We never found out who they took it from, either, but it was dying. It was dying, and so were we. When the supply lines were sabotaged, they merely stole from us, everyone in town was starving. We-- my friend and I-- we stole it, in the middle of the night. It came with us, with no hesitation. We shot it, in the woods. I was faster, and I saw better in the dark, I ran all the way into town and woke the butcher, we carried the tools out. Everything that was edible, we smuggled back into town. Not enough, but a few people didn't starve who might have."

"I didn't know."

"Of course you did not know. I have never told you. I do not like to steal food. I don't... I don't like to think of the things I did when I was desperate. I am sorry about spoiling lunch, it isn't your fault."

"Hush. Dinner we'll-- we'll just have something simple. Soup or pasta or something."

"All right. Tell me about your appointment."

"Went okay. He... he'll do the hysterectomy, says it's no problem, and... and maybe the other thing. He recommended walking around with a temporary graft a couple days, said I ought to be sure it's for me before I pay for a custom job. Said he could do a ladies' cock for the weekend, they're smaller, but... Well. 'm not much interested in getting a ladies' anything, anyway."

The Sniper takes a couple of deep breaths. The Spy had shared, so could he.

"The girl... one I slept with. I was new to the city, away from home for the first time, really... Cut all my hair off soon as I could, dressed in work clothes all the time. Long before I started in with any hormones, but when I was in town, I mean... I got exposed to low levels of australium, not enough for the moustache or anything. Getting off-track, was gonna tell you about the girl."

"The girl with the cock." The Spy nods.

"I heard her telling her girlfriends about it, in the bar. Fucking hell, but I thought I'd walked into a brave new world. I thought she was like me. She had pigtails and a moustache and she was wearing a long skirt, heard her say it wouldn't fit in her old shorts, but... So I went over and asked her about the surgery, was it easy, could anyone get one. She said sure, a temporary graft didn't even cost that much, she'd done it with her mad money." He snorts. "Someday maybe I'll have enough distance to think it's funny. I thought she was a man, working on changing, and she thought I was a woman-- one who slept with other women, on top of it. Couldn't either of us have been wronger."

"When did you know you were wrong?"

"When we got to her place. It was just... feminine. Too feminine. I mean, I had things that weren't always the... the manliest. Stuff my parents bought me, things I couldn't much help, or even things I liked, just that weren't what most blokes considered manly. It's not like I saw a pink throw pillow and said 'oops, this one's a girl', but... the way the whole place felt, you know? It felt like a woman's home. She said she'd never done it with another girl, but she thought she ought to, just while she had the cock for the weekend, and was I all right to try it, and... well..."

The Spy merely looks at him, arms coming up around his waist.

"It didn't feel right blowing her off. I'd gone home with her hoping to talk about... about trying to change, about making myself right, and how did she manage it, and then it turned out she was just a-- a bloody sexual tourist, and that it was normal. Fine for girls to do for fun, not fine for... for me. But she was nice. She didn't have to be. Out on stations, plenty of girls cut off their hair and dress same as men, just 'cause it's easier, no one thinks anything of it, but in the city I stood out, and she was real sweet to me whatever she thought about me. I didn't think it would hurt to experiment."

The Spy nods, smiling wryly. "I would have enjoyed it more if the women I have had to sleep with had come with cocks..."

"Yeah, well. It hurt like hell, I hated having her up there. She was careful and all, didn't even bleed, but it hurt. It was over fast-- guess they're sensitive when they're new, dunno. I pretended to like it fine. She held me after-- I did like that... times I think it was worth the godawful pain of it because she held me and made me breakfast. I couldn't get that with anyone else, you know? Before you, the other... other times I've gotten someone else off, it's been out the door-- if there even was a door. Back then I appreciated just being held by someone."

"Now?" The Spy squeezes him.

"Yeah, course I like you holding me. Not always right after sex. Hormones I guess, 'cause she was before all that and I just wanted a cuddle mostly. After I started with 'em I was horny more often-- all the time, for a while. And now I kind of... it changes, yeah? I keep myself stable as I can with it, and I'm never not me, but..."

"Mm. But it depends, on how recent the injection. I know, I've... noticed, I suppose, little things... just little things."

He nods along with the Spy, before rolling onto his side so that they can face each other. "They could do the surgery, and... and I might. Doc made a big deal out of telling me I'd be sterile, but... I mean, course I would be. I-- I asked, about freezing the eggs. He said not to get my hopes up about it, but he thinks I'm a bleeding hermaphrodite--"

"Wait, why does the doctor thing you-- What?"

"Intersex, that's what they call it." He shakes his head. He doesn't know if the term helps any, he doesn't know if the Spy has ever heard it. He'd only ever heard of it in animals, before Patterson went 'diagnosing' him, and those were all sterile.

"Why does your doctor think you are intersexed, then?"

"Because it's easier to give parents a healthy baby that's got one easy gender, and it's easier to take the prick off than deal with the-- y'know, that whole mess, on a newborn. He said sometimes one grows up and wants his stuff back. Figured maybe I ought to let him think maybe that's what I am, if he'll do the surgeries for me that way. Got the impression there aren't that many other doctors who do this. Permanent grafts for folks who come in with one thing and want to leave with another."

"I see." The Spy nods. He doesn't, not quite. He's not sure if this is a blessing or a headache. The Sniper seems to be treating it as a bit of both.

"Was born in the house." The Sniper says, unprompted. "I... I'm not that, either. Hell... bloody fucking hell, it's like every time I talk to a professional I know less about what I am. No... no, that's not true. Medic... Medic was actually... pretty good. But-- I mean--"

"It is not exactly the answer we wanted. Maybe it's the answer we need, for now."

"Maybe. If it's safer to do it this way, I don't mind him thinking what he likes about what I was born with. I mean, the whole point of it all's I want the whole world thinking I was born with a cock, don't I? Not that I need the whole world thinking about my-- But just to get to be myself in public and not have anyone guess at... at all that. So... so if Patterson thinks I came out of the womb with extra parts, that doesn't bother me, except..."

"Except?"

"Except he might toss everything if he thinks I'm barren anyway, so... I want the eggs. I want everything out of me, but I'm not ready to say that I'm never gonna be a dad. Yeah, well... maybe it won't matter. I mean, who'd ever have a kid for us?"

The Spy scoots down the bed, to move into the Sniper's lap again, his forearm resting along the thigh, hand curling around one hip. He doesn't have any answers, not to that. He doesn't want the Sniper to have to give up on anything. He doesn't want to give up on it himself, he'd seen families walking through the zoo, parents smiling after their children... he'd lost hope years ago when it came to having a family of his own, before the Sniper brought the question up one night between them, and now...

Now he wants to be the father holding onto a little hand and reading the names of the animals to someone small. It's not the most realistic dream he's ever had... but it's a hard one to shake now.

I suspect this doesn't have more comments because we are all waiting with baited breath for the next installment.

This is so good.

captcha: matiomo pleas

pleas sage

((Last night, there was a weird computer error that ate over half of this chapter, so I'm hoping that my re-write is as good... I could only recover a nigh-unusable first draft.))

Ch. XXIII

---/-/---

The Sniper finds it odd how easily he adapts to life, with RED behind him, to lazing about hotels waking up next to the Spy every morning, and watching television in bed while the Spy makes odd-hours phone calls in French. He still thinks he'll be glad to get out of the city, but it's not so bad being there with the Spy. He loves how the man reacts to the local tech, a combination of eager and curious want, and cautious mistrust. He loves gadgetry, practical or otherwise, but has no idea what to do with anything more cutting edge than his own old spy gear had been. In any other country on earth he would have been fine with that, and here the world has outstripped his understanding.

When the Sniper looks into buying a mobile phone-- not yet sure he'll commit to it, but if the visit to his parents go well he's willing to buy the best model he can leave the country with-- the Spy is taken with how 'science fiction' the old phones look.

"Well, sure, compared to those bricks they'll sell to other countries. It's the best thing I can buy here and then travel with, but it's nothing like the new ones everyone's walking around with nowadays." The Sniper says, turning one over in his hands. It's like the model he'd had, when he'd been living up north, but when he'd left Australia they weren't quite as old, and he couldn't take it with him then. It's comfortingly familiar, next to the downright futuristic things with the touch screens.

"This is older than that?" Spy holds up the two phones, brow furrowing. "Then why does the new one not look like something from the future?"

"In what universe is this not something from the future to you?"

"Yes, yes, of course it is-- but... this one looks like on Star Trek." Spy demonstrated, flipping the thing open and then closed. "We... we watched it at the-- we watched it every week, before I started going out on weekends."

The Sniper nods, and it's not hard reading between the lines, they both have to be careful to excise any mentions of the companies from their speech in public.

"All right, well, look at the new one." The Sniper shakes his head, fumbling through a demonstration. Technology had definitely made some headway since he'd been out of the country, but he wasn't adrift the way the Spy was. He understood it well enough to be amused-- albeit guiltily-- at the Spy's glassy-eyed stares. He set it back on the display stand, turning to the girl at the till. "Might come back for one of the old ones to travel with, I'll know in a week or so if I need to."

"All right." She chirps, waving them off.

The Sniper drags the Spy past the more confusing shops, anything too technical or too dizzying in its use of digital displays, and buys him a coffee before they head back to the hotel.

"See enough of the city for today?" He asks. Since the zoo, they've visited the botanical gardens and a couple of old churches, the heavy, traditional architecture providing some haven from the bright, shiny future-world around them.

"I had a fine time, mon homme, but yes, I think I will be happy to spend the rest of the evening in."

"What's that one?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, I reckon I know what 'beau' means, and not as though 'grand' was something tough to puzzle out, but what's that one?"

"Mon homme? Only what you have always been. My man."

"Oh." He smiles, hooking an arm around the Spy's waist. "Yeah. Guess I am."

"Since before I ever got my hands on you, the one for me." He rests his chin on the Sniper's shoulder, grinning like a particularly pleased cat.

"Go back in tomorrow, at the hospital... Nervous about it, to be honest."

The Spy takes his hands and tugs him towards the suite's little sofa, and once the Sniper is seated, the Spy curls up next to him and rests his head in the other man's lap.

The Sniper is grateful. For the implicit trust, the strength he can borrow from it, for just the comfortable weight of it... and mostly, for the way the Spy doesn't ask him questions right away.

"Are you having second thoughts?"

"Yeah. No. Not-- I want this. I... I really do, I want to-- just, breathe easier with it, y'know? I need to have the hysterectomy, know that much. Every time I think about my insides it gives me the creeps, and now it doesn't have to. I can just be done with it. It's still a big deal. Wanting it doesn't make it easy to go through with, just like having the technology doesn't make it easy to get."

The Spy squeezes his knee. "What if your Doctor Patterson knows there is a deadly assassin in the waiting room expecting you to come out happy?"

"Don't think that'd help me any, but I appreciate the thought." He chuckles. "I'm looking forward to being done with it, yeah? To just... Don't laugh?"

"Laugh? Never."

"I thought I was gonna get one." He stares off into the distance, mouth twisting into a self-deprecating smile. "I realized there was a, a mistake with everything, when I was a kid, so when kids my age were going through puberty, I... I mean, it wasn't like a long-term delusion or anything, but for just a little while, I really did believe it'd just... come in. Like the universe would just get with the program and realize I was a boy and I'd wake up some morning after a visit from the cock fairy. You said you wouldn't laugh."

"I am not laughing at you, cher. But you cannot ask me not to laugh at 'cock fairy'."

"Yeah, been getting a couple visits a week regular from the cock fairy all year." He snorts, smacking the Spy's shoulder lightly.

"I walked right into that one, did I?"

"You did."

"So now you will get one. Better late than never?"

"Think so. Hope so."

"Do... do you remember when I asked you if we could go out someplace nice for dinner?"

"Sorry..." He frowns. "Had so much on my mind I must've-- what were you feeling? Could find an Italian place--"

"No, no-- The steakhouse that we went to."

"Oh." The Sniper relaxes, his fingers finding their way into the Spy's hair to stroke gentle little circles across his scalp. "Yeah."

"I have been thinking about it. Just... This surgery, to me, is steak. It's the nice dinner and the dim lighting. It is what I prefer."

"So what am I before the surgery?"

"You are you. The parts... I mean, what you have between your legs right now, maybe that is the Sugar Pine. I tried some things, I enjoyed them, every meal that we ate there was just as real as the one we had in the steakhouse. They were real dates because I was there with you. And if you were only comfortable eating in little places like that, I would be happy to... to do that, for the rest of my life I think. If I was there with you. But I do like restaurants with tablecloths and dim lighting."

"I like steak." He manages.

The Spy laughs. "I just wanted to say... I will be glad, to have you do this if you want it. I will enjoy it very much. But... It was all real because I went there with you, you know? You are the man I have been making love to, and the man I would like to keep making love to. Everything else is the same. Everything we did before was real to me, it was not just a placeholder for this."

"I know that. I... hell, it's why you're here, isn't it? We wouldn't have lasted a year and a half together if I was, or if I thought I was."

"A year and a half-- It hasn't been that long?"

"That long, since I told you about me."

"Oh." He tilts his head, kissing the top of the Sniper's thigh through a soft-worn spot in his jeans. "... You said you could find an Italian place?"

The Sniper laughs at that, long and loud-- longer and louder than it deserves, he's sure, but after everything his body only needs the slightest excuse for levity.

He cleans up. With the heat, he doesn't plan on anyplace that requires a jacket, but he wears the trousers from his airplane suit, and the shirt. The hungry look the Spy gives him is worth bothering with the tie.

La Trattoria is nice-- at least, the Sniper finds himself attracted to everything on the menu, while the Spy occasionally brightens and then scowls over descriptions.

"'S matter?"

"Everything on this menu is hiding shellfish."

"Allergic?" He figures he might as well ask this time.

"No... Maybe. I wouldn't know. We never... I've never tried, I don't intend to start. It doesn't appeal enough. And sausage always feels like a gamble when I don't know the man who made it... Ah! Fusilli alla contadina! Now that... that looks irresistible."

"Mind if I have the prawns?"

He nods. "Feel free. I take it we are near enough to the ocean for it."

"Might show you the beaches, before we leave." The Sniper grins. The Spy nods again, expression bright if not wholly committed.

The avocado seafood is exactly what he wanted it to be, everything he's missed about eating this close to home. He doesn't offer any, out of deference to the Spy's shellfish avoidance-- something he absolutely can't understand, but then, he hardly minds eating all of them.

The Spy rhapsodizes on his pasta anyway, making indecent noises over every sauce-drenched vegetable, sucking almost obscenely at a large piece of broccoli before finally just eating it.

"Definitely the right choice coming here the day before the surgery, and not the day after." The Sniper grumbles. "You know, watching you eat sometimes is an uncomfortable experience."

"Oh please." He grins, licking his fork. "As if you have never put me through hell at a restaurant."

"... Have I?" He shouldn't be as proud of that as he is, he knows.

"Every lunch that you have stolen my pickle spear at."

"You don't like 'em. I do. I don't s-- oh. Right. Yeah, that. Maybe we're not restaurant people." He chuckles. "I could be a takeaway person."

"You could be a person who cooks, even."

"Maybe. Long as I don't have to do all the work."

His instructions for the night before the procedure warn against alcohol, and he orders a coffee instead of a glass of wine.

"I am getting gelato." The Spy nods decisively.

"... Really?"

He drops his voice down to a near-whisper, bobbing his eyebrows. "In public, it may be my very last chance."

"You're such a bastard." The Sniper rolls his eyes, but he orders dessert for them both anyway.

The Spy winds up eating half his peach melba for breakfast the next morning, with a reminder not to eat or drink anything before the hospital.

The procedure itself is less than a blur. The nurse shaves him with professional dispassion and he's covered back up and asked to count backwards and the next thing he knows he's struggling to tell them the drugs didn't take and he's coming out of it too soon, only for Patterson to laugh.

"You're all right, mate. All done, just healing you up." He promises, grinning down through the lifting fog.

The lasers remind him of Medic, warm and red and healing instead of cutting, and the instructions fly by him but he's given another pamphlet about aftercare that explains everything.

Back in the hotel suite, all he can see is a new scar not far from one hipbone, short and already healed over to the point it looks old.

Past that, his skin is too smooth, but the cock... that's all his.

"How do you feel?" The Spy smiles, coming to perch on the end of the bed, a cup of tea in his hands. "You can have this now?"

"I feel... I feel good. Bit off still-- Yeah, I can have that. Thanks."

"You feel like you did the right thing for yourself?" The Spy passes him the mug and rests a hand on his leg, warm from the heat in the ceramic, seeping through the cool bedsheet and into the Sniper's bones.

"I do."

"What's it like?"

"Not the best-looking cock in the world."

"Well-- I mean, do... do you take it back, or--?"

"No, that's the point." He laughs. "It's just me. It's... just... Me. It's about average and I..."

"You are pleased with it." The Spy smiles, relaxes. "Your shoulders sit higher, did you know that? I never noticed how much weight was always on you... you bore it so well for as long as I have known you. But there is a weight missing now. I like seeing that."

"I couldn't be happier. It's mine. It's not a factory model, and I could walk around naked in a gym locker room once the hair grows back and everyone in the place would think I'd had it all my life-- I've never been able to be in a locker room, not with people. I don't have to be afraid of that anymore, d'you know how weird that is? There's nothing to find out. No yeast infections and estrogen creams and piss funnels and no hiding... just me."

The Spy curls up low on the bed, to wrap his arms around the Sniper's thighs and butt his head gently into one hip. "Good. I'm glad."

He nods, resting a hand on the Spy's head and sipping at his tea. He still feels worn out, still punchy from being sedated, but he can feel the difference in himself. The weight of having something there that's a part of him. The way walking from the cab to the room he could feel it-- still bandaged carefully to his thigh, then, to make it easier for him to walk after coming out of surgery.

Better, that he couldn't feel what he no longer had. The physical awareness of that space up within him and the folds of flesh that moved when he did. It had been at its worst between puberty and the hormone treatment, when even when he wasn't on his period, he could feel a baseline wetness there, something slick and uncomfortable that he could never get rid of. It was easier to ignore when he started drying up, but it's a strange relief to be free of it completely. It's the one thing he didn't even take into consideration, that he would feel so much better just not having all that.

Best, though... best is what he barely touches on with the Spy, the security of having the proper genitals. He's admitted to some fears. It was hard living with the team, back in those days, knowing how easily they could turn on him if he ever picked the wrong time to shower and got himself caught, how easily they could go from being the men he trusted with his life to the men who'd beat it out of him. He's never believed he could take even half the team on in any kind of a fight, and if the Engineer had ever really turned on him, he wouldn't have respawn to fall back on-- not that respawn would be any kind of a mercy if the team had found out about him.

There are other fears, that he's never told the Spy about. Similar fears that he didn't dare speak of.

The Spy knows what it's like to worry about being beaten by an angry mob with opinions about what he does with his genitals, after all. The Spy could understand that whether or not the Sniper raised the subject, he's traveled the world and not only to the places where it was safe for him to prefer men. The Sniper knows that, and he's been grateful for it once or twice, because it let him talk about his own fear with the knowledge he'd be understood.

He hopes to God the Spy doesn't have any idea about the rest of his fears. There are worse things than the threat of being beaten to death every day, and he'd rather keep that to himself.

Now that he can leave that fear behind him, he feels good. He hadn't realized he could feel this easy, and the Spy takes his tea as he drifts off. He wakes up to the smell of something warm from the kitchen, and he lies in bed just sniffing at the air as it deepens and changes.

He pulls himself out of bed, walking a little awkwardly as the grogginess wears off and he grows more used to the way his own body moves now-- the packer gave him some practice, with having something there, but it's different having honest flesh there, attached to him.

He sits carefully at the little breakfast table between the kitchenette and the suite's living area, and there's an answering warmth swelling up in his chest when the Spy beams at him from the stove.

"Just so you know, I'm in love with you. Probably terminal." He says.

The Spy takes a breath, shaking his head and smiling.

"You're ridiculous." He accuses, setting down a bowl of soup. "Asparagus vichyssoise. I picked it up fresh in the market while you were in surgery. And the chicken."

He returns to the stove, messing about a bit before bringing over a plate. The chicken breast is clean-- no rubs, no sauces, just a pan, a drizzle of olive oil, and a pinch of salt, and the Sniper appreciates it. He doesn't feel in any mood for something fussier than that, but he does reckon the protein will help, and while his mother had never used the word 'vichyssoise', it's not so different from the soup she used to make when the asparagus came in in her little vegetable garden.

It's a potent reminder, half the reason for this trip was to see her-- well, to see both his parents-- but it's still the most comforting thing he can imagine, even if thoughts of his old home have been comfortless lately.

He takes the weekend to get used to the new addition to his anatomy-- something the Spy proves very helpful with, and not just in the ways he'd anticipated. It takes him long enough to get over having a hair trigger, and he does miss the lack of a refractory period, but the Spy offers tips about dressing and avoiding too-easy injuries out of bed, and only mocks him a little bit when he catches him standing naked in front of a full length mirror and gyrating.

"Making sure it's attached right." He says, face heating.

"No you're not." The Spy snorts.

"Nah. I'm not. Come on, though, you did the same thing when you were thirteen, I'll bet."

"Twelve. I was an idiot when I was twelve."

"Nah. Anyway, 's hypnotic."

"I never thought I would say this, mon grand, but put some pants on."

He does, though he notes it doesn't stop the Spy from groping him every time they pass by each other.

It's very hard to glare when he doesn't mean it. Half the time it doesn't even feel sexual-- there are times, of course, when the Spy drapes himself across the Sniper's back and leers and caresses, but there are times when he is merely moving past the Sniper to get to the kitchenette or the bathroom and he gives him a squeeze with the same breeziness he would a peck on the cheek. It's kind of nice.

It can't last, of course. Once he feels up to driving, he rents a ute and tells himself they can't put it off any longer.

"No groping in front of my parents." He says, as they leave the city and hit half-paved roads.

"Of course."

"You know you didn't have to dress up."

"I wanted to make a good impression... Besides, all I have is suits."

The ride is silent a long time after that, but it's not the longest they've spent in a quiet vehicle. Every so often the Spy squeezes his shoulder or his knee, and he drives on.

Soon enough, sheep dot the fields to either side of the road, and finally, the little red house at the heart of the Mundy station comes into view.

"You're going to be all right." The Spy promises.

"Yeah."

"I am right behind you."

"Yeah." He smiles. It's tight, but real, and he's never been happier to feel the Spy at his back.

It feels like an eternity between his knock at the door and his father answering. The years apart have changed the old man, but not much. A little less of the gray hair around his head, a little more depth in the lines of his face, but he's still so much the man the Sniper remembers, that in his mind's eye he sees him, with a full head of dark hair, sunburnt and smiling and the tallest man in the world.

"If you're here to work, we can use you." He grunts, looking the Sniper over before doing a double take to the Spy. "You know we hire jackaroos around here and not lawyers."

"He's just here with me-- He's-- He's here with me, Dad."

His father's mouth falls open and works soundlessly, and then he steps aside, jerking his head. "So this is you now. Your mother expected you a month ago."

"Sorry." He shuffles into the house, head down, and the Spy follows at a careful distance.

"Yeah, well, of all the things to be sorry about, I don't suppose a month even ranks. It was years before that, after all."

"Dad..."

His mother comes rushing out of the kitchen, and in a way seeing her is worse. She doesn't hesitate to hug him, but she's seconds from crying and he doubts it's just gladness.

"Come in and sit, and-- Oh, and your gentleman friend, I-- There's a kettle on, I... Are you well?"

"Yeah, Mum. I am, thanks."

His father snorts, and he flinches, shooting the Spy a warning look.

"Well. You don't call this well? I mean-- I mean, look at you!"

"He looks just like you." The Spy says mildly.

The Sniper's father ignores him, though his mother makes a small sound, her hand covering her mouth, and the Sniper can't tell if that's good or bad.

"What happened to you, Princess?"

"Don't call me 'Princess', Dad. This is just me."

"Bullshit. This is the city, and all that garbage, we never should've let you go off, look what it's done to you! Should've kept you away from all that, it's not decent down there!"

"This is who I'm supposed to be. It's who I've always been. I stopped trying to tell you for so many years because I got so sick of hearing I was wrong, but this isn't something the city did to me."

His father shakes his head. "Who you've always been, like hell it is, you were never like this before, not when you were little! You never complained about being my little princess then!"

"What, when I was a kid? Dad, you could have called me 'hey, you fucking little shithead' and I'd have followed you--"

"Don't you use language like that in front of your mother!"

"And I'd have followed you to the moon!" The Sniper continues, raising his voice. "I'd have done anything to! I wanted to grow up to be you!"

His father falls silent, and so goes the room, and he realizes he's the only one standing, that he's just shouted down his father, that his chest is heaving and he doesn't know if he's going to cry or be sick or run or what.

"I wanted to be like you." He repeats softly. When the Spy reaches for his hand, he grips it hard, letting himself be guided back to the sofa.

"'m taking a walk. Don't wait up on me." His father says, and the belligerence is gone, replaced by something sad and bewildered. He grabs his hat and is out the door before any of them can speak, not the way the collective tongue of the room has been tied.

His mother's eyes are wet, and when she moves her hand from her mouth, her voice wavers, but she finds it.

"Was there ever a time... I mean-- Did I do something? Too much, or... or not enough? I know it wasn't the cities, lamb... but when was it? Could we have done anything different?"

"It's not your fault, Mum. It's just me." He shakes his head and doesn't meet her gaze.

"You look so different. But your friend's right, you-- you're the spit and image of him. You... I remember. You had a doll. Your father's brought it up a few times, saying you were normal then."

He nods. 'Baby', it's rather unimaginative name had been. He'd dragged it along behind him when he'd followed his father, to show it the animals, or the equipment, to pass along every little lesson he was given, eager to be told he'd be a good dad someday.

His mother shakes her head, blinking. "I remember, though... I do remember. You wanted to, to practice being a father, and we said you were mistaken, you'd grow up to be a mum. And you never played with it after that. Has this really been-- all this time?"

"Long as I can remember."

"Oh." She nods and looks down at her hands and he wishes he didn't have to hear the sob hiding behind the deep breaths she takes. "Oh."

"It isn't anybody's fault. I'm not unhappy like this, Mum."

She looks at Spy, for a long moment. "Is he-- Your friend-- I mean--?"

"You mean am I in love with your son?"

"My--? My... son. Yes. Of course. Well, you know all about this, I can't imagine he tells a lot of people. How do you tell people?"

"Don't, mostly. Told him. I just needed a friend who knew."

"Have you... ever been a girl?" She asks.

The Spy laughs. "Only one weekend when I was very, very drunk. No, no, I have never-- I've been what you see before you. All the parts are original."

"But you... How do you get used to it?"

"Because I am in love with your son."

She bites her lip and looks between them, before sighing and placing a hand on the Sniper's knee.

"Is this all right with you, Mum?"

"I always wanted you to settle down with a nice man-- one who could support you! I always thought you'd have a white dress and children, but... I don't suppose it would have been any easier if you'd brought a woman. I don't know what your father will say."

"If he notices."

"Do you want the guest room?"

"I dunno."

"Vic... I want you to stay. Just for tonight. Just to see if we can't... can't come to some kind of an understanding. It's been so long since we've known you. If we ever knew you... You're the only child I have, lamb, and your father isn't going to send you off."

"Isn't he?"

"Not if he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight-- not if he wants to sleep in his own house tonight! Just try with him. Just try with him for one day."

"I loved that miserable bastard."

"Dear, we both loved that miserable bastard and we both still do." She picks herself up, and after a deep breath, the tears are gone. "I'm sorry I ignored you so much growing up... I didn't know what to do about it then and I don't now. That's one thing I could have done differently, I saw this coming and I thought it would go away if I let it. I thought you'd get over it... I suppose there's no chance--"

"None."

"No. Of course not. Oh, heaven's sake, where is your father, he knew I needed his help on dinner and he's run off on us..."

"Allow me." The Spy stands smoothly, offering her his hand. "I am not useless in the kitchen."

She hesitates. "We needed a chicken killed, I ought to go and--"

"Not a problem. Point me in the right direction. It's been years, but I assume it is like riding a bicycle, killing a chicken."

"Oh-- Well, they're out-- Are you sure, you're dressed awfully nice for it--"

He hands his blazer to the Sniper and strides out with her, and the Sniper watches through the kitchen window as the Spy kills and cleans the bird with all the efficiency of his days on the battlefield.

His father comes back inside with them. He doesn't say anything about the Sniper's outburst, or about the argument leading up to it, but he nods to the Spy as he carries the chicken into the kitchen.

"Your friend's not as useless as he looks."

"No." The Sniper grins. "He's not at all useless."

He frowns. "Wait... this isn't someone you're bringing home to meet us? Well that means you're going to stop all this nonsense, isn't it?"

"What nonsense, Dad?" The Sniper doesn't think he needs to ask, but he does, his stomach sinking.

"This man nonsense. I mean, you're not-- I mean, maybe I don't know what the hell you are nowadays, but you're not a pooftah!"

"How do you know? Someone make you the expert on spotting pooftahs?"

"Well, you know, they're all-- all like that, and you're... I mean, you won't do anything girly anymore, will you? So what's this?"

"This is me, that's all. I keep telling you, I'm just me and that's all I can do. And you don't need a limp wrist and a purse to fall in love with a man."

"Men don't fall in love with men, and if you were a man and I'm not admitting you are because that's crazy talk, but if you were a man, you wouldn't be queer!"

"Why not?"

"Because! Because you look-- Because you're not-- Because I didn't raise you to be! And I've never met a pooftah who was--"

"Michael Allison."

"What?"

"Paul Whitford."

"The hell are you on about?"

"You remember them?" The Sniper folds his arms.

"Paul and Michael. They were good men. Worked here when you were a little thing, yeah. What's that got to do with anything? Oh-- Oh no. On top of the whole list of ridiculous things I've heard today, you're not telling me those two were queer."

"Moved halfway across the continent to a place where no one knew them or anyone they used to know, to a place where they could go days without seeing a single soul besides us-- days without seeing us even, sometimes, and they never talked about their families, much less to them. Well, and I caught them kissing no less than twice, out past the old barn."

"That's ridiculous." His father shakes his head, but there's no conviction.

"And then there's old Henry."

"Old Henry Sattler? No, that is crazy-- that man was old enough to be MY father!"

"It's not a new invention, Dad. Goes back to the Greeks at least. Hell, there were probably cave pooftahs. He had another man's medals from the war hanging on his wall and everyone knows he never married. Face it, you've known four queers and none of them are anything like what you expected."

"If you like men, why couldn't you just stay a girl?"

"Because I'm not a girl. Because I hated everything about myself until I left civilization and I didn't have to think about it. It took me so long to live with myself... I like who I am now, Dad. You don't have to like me, too. It'd be nice, but I'm not holding my breath."

"You left, you look like a whole different person, like a stranger-- You changed your name!"

"Y'can still call me Vic. You could call me son, but... I mean, I get it, Dad."

"But you don't call yourself Vic. You call yourself something else. A name we didn't give you."

He digs out his wallet, handing it over. "I went through a few names looking for one that was mine. I like this one. But it says there Victor's my middle name and Mundy's my last."

"You're not a stranger." His father nods at last. "I don't know who the hell you are, but tell me I used to."

"Dunno."

"I was the first person to hold you-- Your mother tell you that? When you were born. You were ugly and you cried and I was never happier. I knew you then. I guess I haven't known you since."

"What's it like? Being a dad?"

"Bloody terrifying. We weren't ready for you. We were proud of you."

"I quit that job you always hated, you know. For good."

He nods slowly. "Maybe that's a start, then. I don't know how to talk to a son. I never thought I would need to know. I don't know how to think about you like that. I don't. Did you really want to grow up to be like me?"

"Course I did."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

There's nothing else to say. They barely look in each other's direction all through dinner, and after, in the guest room, the Sniper pulls himself into the Spy's arms, buries his face against his chest, and lets himself cry again. Not half so hard as he had after that first honest phone call, but there's a hitch in his breath and the tears he hadn't been willing to shed in front of his parents. There's relief and frustration in it together.

"That was honestly better than I hoped for." He says, voice flat.

"Does your father accept you?"

"It's hard to tell with him. He doesn't understand but he stopped shouting. He misses what he never really had."

"He doesn't recognize what he did have. It sounds as though you were an adoring son... it is a waste of his time to try and miss an adoring daughter, when the adoration is what remains the same."

"Tell him that."

"Maybe I will."

"Don't." His hands tighten on the Spy's arms.

"All right." The Spy sighs, cradling him close and kissing his temple. "All right."

Oh my God, I love this.

Damnit, I started bawling once you brought in the story about Baby, and I'm still going.

Thing I've been wondering, does Sniper still have to take testosterone shots? Men lose majority of their testosterone production if they lose their balls so did Sniper receive just silicone prosthesis? Also you did mention that he would be sterile but is he ejaculating something?


...I feel like perv asking these.

Thanks, all! (and continued thanks to Cosmic Tuesdays, who contributed a bit that I really liked while letting me bounce ideas around, so a couple lines made it in that she wrote, though I will not spoil them here)

>>85
And with the graft, it's all grown using Sniper's DNA, as Spy's set of fresh lungs will be, but for a very different purpose, so it is sort of... carefully-cultivated flesh, that doesn't do quite everything.

(Don't feel like a perv asking, because I put way too much thought into what this whole advanced-Australium-technology-cock-graft would entail and what the end product would be like, and what the advertising copy looks like... And I realized that because for most people it is highly cosmetic, that the scientists developing it would come up with a way to get the thing to produce a useless ejaculate. It's generally a reconstructive surgery for, say, injuries received while fighting wild animals, and somewhere along the line there was bound to be a man who lost the whole kit and caboodle and wasn't satisfied with a replacement that couldn't come properly... Like I said, I put way too much thought into the whole history of the procedure, down to the use of medical lasers in the healing process and ad copy to try and make money selling them to women as temporary novelties)


XXIV

---/-/---

The Sniper answers his mothers questions over the last of breakfast, the ones she can make herself ask. He's distracted by the Spy's absence-- the Spy had expressed an interest in the sheep, and sheep was the one subject his father was comfortable talking about, so he let the Spy come out to watch some of the day's work.

"I've got your Christmas presents." She says, pushing away her mug, with the last dregs of her coffee, shaking off the last of the uncomfortable conversation about his surgery. She'd assumed he'd had the work done before he left Australia, was surprised it was so recent. "Yours came in the mail, we got them safe. Your father won't say anything, of course--"

"Course."

"He liked everything fine. Hard giving anything to your father, he never asks for anything, but you can't go too wrong with coffee and he gets new socks from me every year..."

The Sniper nods, following her in to the hall closet and then to the sofa. He recognized the nervous prattle-- his mother was never the type to fill comfortable silences, and she'd go hoarse trying if she was, but she couldn't let an uncomfortable one rest. 'More comfortable chairs', she'd always called it, her habit of bringing up something new whenever things grew too awkward.

He opens the box first, pulling out a sweater-- it has too much shape to hang quite right on his frame, and not quite enough length, but it's pure undyed wool for the yarn, with thick cabling.

"Didn't know what your measurements were, I tried to go off the last one I made you. I-- I guess I thought you'd be bigger, or-- shorter... Haven't seen you in so long. Well, you definitely got your shape from your father's side of the family." She shakes her head, with a nervous laugh. "I thought you'd want one, I know you're all over the place, and..."

"It'll come in handy, Mum, thanks." He nods. "We're, erm, we're going to France after this, and it'll be winter there."

She hands him the second gift, large and flat and wrapped in glossy red paper. It feels more like a book than like another box, and he runs a couple of fingers around the edge, finding the spine and then the top. Definitely a book, but a big one, a coffee table book.

He expects photographs of home and places like it, to fall in line with what she'd said about his traveling. Instead, he peels back the paper to see the tattered dust jacket of an old friend.

"Library was having a sale. You were the last person to ever check it out, I... I don't know. I thought just to throw in with the sweater, you might like it, or..."

"Yeah. Yeah, I love it."

"I used to take you... It wasn't all terrible, was it, being our daughter?"

"No, Mum. It wasn't terrible to be yours. I just... I was never a girl. That's the only thing. There's nobody I'd have rather belonged to. This was my favourite book in that library, did you know?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't. There were others you checked out two, three times. You only got this one once."

"Well, it was... big to carry." He shrugs. "I'm glad you bought it. I'd've been disappointed if I made the trip back out to that library and it wasn't there."

They laugh at that a little, his mother shaking her head again.

"You've been all over the world, there's nothing for you in a library no bigger than the living room."

"Nah. Not anymore. There was then, though. I was always happy you took me. You did things right with me, Mum. No one could've done everything right, who would've known how? But... When I was ten, remember?"

"Going on eleven. You were afraid of gym." She nods.

School hadn't been every day-- they hoverbussed the station kids into town a few days a month, for exams and to turn in projects, and when he was older, for gym classes. The rest was all air school. Kids who lived further out than they had, he assumed, saw less of a real schoolhouse than he had, and there were kids who lived in the townships proper who must have gone every day, though at the time he'd found that unfathomable.

The gym classes had been terrifying, the idea of being split off with the girls, the idea that when he was older he'd be sharing a locker room with them, a shower. He wouldn't get the same options as the boys, who would get to join in with the town boys' sports, even if it was only a few days. But there had been archery... Archery had been worth it. He'd liked it enough that his parents had gotten him a bow and arrow that Christmas. Wanting to encourage him in liking something, he wouldn't wonder-- that whole year he'd been anxious about so many things, as the world started stacking the deck against him and his impending womanhood became a grim spectre on the horizon. His father had set up targets for him out back of the barn, and archery took his mind off of everything, up until puberty finally hit.

"Yeah. Was. And a lot of things, really. You were good about it. You tried to be, even if you didn't understand."

"Thanks, lamb."

"I'm sorry... if I wasn't what you wanted. But I'm not sorry that I'm me today. If that makes sense. I'm doing real well with just life. There's a man who's good to me. I don't get itchy in my own skin now. I hope that's good enough."

"Oh... you know that's what I wanted for you. Maybe I didn't want it like this, but... I mean, you're safe and you're healthy. If that's all I come away with, it's enough for me."

She doesn't sound wholly convinced, but he appreciates that she tries. He puts his gifts in the guest room, pausing briefly outside the pale pink door down the hall. It hasn't been painted since he's been gone, he can still see the 'V' scratched into the paint.

He doesn't reach for the knob. He doesn't want to know how little has changed inside.

The Spy surprises him, ducking into the guest room after him.

"Thought you were out with the sheep."

"I was. There are a lot of them."

"Yeah. Mum said they bought off the neighbours' land a couple years back, I've got it in a letter. They're... they're really expanding the place. Wool, mostly. And selling a good stud ram's worth a tidy bundle. Mum used to make cheese sometimes, maybe she still does. Not to sell, just small batches."

The Spy's eyes go round at this, and slightly glassy, the look the Sniper only sees him get over food-- and not so different from the look he gets over sex. "It has been so many years since I've had a good sheep cheese..."

"Yeah? Could ask about it."

"I think your father likes me, you know."

That gives the Sniper pause. It would be hard to tell, but then, the Spy had plenty of practice reading people who didn't make it easy.

"How do you figure?" He asks, feeling a little trepidation over it. He's not even sure how well his father likes him, it feels like too much to ask, for him to like the Spy, but he can't help wanting it.

"Well, he was showing me some of the sheep. Fine animals, I asked the appropriate questions, said some things about the spread of land and the weather. He asked if I had a lot of experience killing chickens."

"And you said?" The Sniper asks, leaning forward. There's a definite chill of dread going down his spine at all the answers the Spy could have given.

"I said 'and men'. And then he asked me 'so what kind of bloody pooftah are you anyway' and I said 'the French kind'. And I would call what he did a smile, on his face. Perhaps not on anyone else's. And then he told me that the man in the living room was his little girl, and if I was to be sniffing around his Princess that I had better not hurt him."

He rakes a hand across his face. "My father, the man who hates mercenaries and still calls me 'princess', that's the man you think likes you because you admitted to being my boyfriend and killing people?"

"Pretty much." The Spy shrugs.

"So this weekend's a washout."

The Spy laughs and takes his arm. "Come on, show me around. Where did you like to spend your time when you were younger?"

"Tromped all over the place mostly. Sheep cheese what you grew up with? I was gonna ask Mum about it for you."

"No. No, we had mostly cow's milk cheeses, near where I am from. But then I started to travel, you know. I found an Ossau-Iraty in Basque country that was to die for. That one I like even more than Roquefort. And Roquefort, you can only legally name so if it is made in Roquefort."

"Bloody take your cheeses seriously in France."

"We do."

"All right, come on. She'll be in the office about now, reckon."

He leads the Spy to the back of the house, where his mother is indeed in the office, typing away at a keyboard connected to a small beige cube with a screen.

"Shouldn't be surprised." The Sniper groans, joining her at the desk and giving the monitor a pat. "This thing's about as old as I am, Dad's not replaced it?"

"It still works." She shrugs. "Anyway, I'm glad he let me computerize the place when he did, we're too big now to do without."

"Computerized?" The Spy inspects it, running a hand over the squat body of the thing. It's plugged into the wall, but he can tell that there's nothing beyond that, no banks of cards. Just the little box with the screen, the keyboard, and... "What is that?"

"That's the mouse."

For a moment, he wonders if he's forgotten how to speak English. It looks nothing like a mouse, it looks like a palm-sized oval of rough beige plastic with a big, square depressable button.

He gives up on trying to understand, shortly after, and everything stops when the Sniper's mother laughs and turns to her son with her next question.

"You haven't shown your friend the hovercar, have you?"

It's enough to make him forget that he was there to ask about cheese. Hovercar.

The Sniper's parents own a hovercar.

He has seen things hover in the city, but this, this is something completely different. He'd been told everything out in the countryside was old, and now there is a hovercar, and the Sniper's mother speaks about it as if it is not news.

"I would like to see this hovercar." He nods.

"Yeah, all right." The Sniper puts a broad hand on his back, he can feel the heat through his shirt and it's almost unbearable with the heat of the day in general but he needs the touch to ground him, with the promise of a hovercar.

When they get out to the garage, there is a very ordinary vehicle parked there, mud-spattered and dinged up, and bigger than the one the Sniper had rented. Up at the ceiling and connected to the wall by a thick cord is the hovercar.

It doesn't make the hum he had expected, from a hovering car. It doesn't make any sound at all. There's a small control on the cord, which the Sniper uses to guide it out, before reeling the cord into an open panel on the hovercar's side.

It's built like a car, with fins and headlamps and a convertible top, not at all like a little UFO, and the silence is unnerving.

"I thought the future would make more sounds." He shakes his head, climbing carefully into the passenger's seat.

"Future?" The Sniper laughs. "This is forty-seven years old!"

He hops in far more easily, and the Spy clings to the door handle as it dips slightly with the Sniper's weight and evens out again, still with nary a buzz.

The Sniper drives high enough to clear the sheep and the fences, and the animals barely notice him passing over them, shrugging off the shadow and the slight breeze as unremarkable.

"Mum started me learning to drive on it-- this one's hers. Hovercars are usually ladies' cars, out here. They don't bump around on the roads, see." He explains. "The ute's better for getting work done. Dad never saw much point in buying a special trailer to go with the hovercar when he could drive sheep anywhere they needed to go without."

"He doesn't seem like the type to buy a hovercar."

"Mum did. She was pregnant, said she wasn't rattling me around on the bad roads. Like I said, they're ladies' cars. And it was an old model, they got a good deal on it, and it's run ever since."

There's too much the Spy can't understand about Australia, and the hovercar typifies it all. He loves it, he especially loves it when the Sniper starts really speeding along through empty fields, but he can't fathom this magnificent piece of technology being considered something only a pregnant woman would need. The countryside is closer than the city was, to what he'd always imagined Australia to be, but there are still surprises.

"Can we sneak out to it again later?" He grins, as the Sniper slows down again and starts to turn back.

"Don't have to sneak."

"It's the principle of the thing, cher. To the backseat."

He rolls his eyes, but he parks it, hovering by a tree, and climbs over his seat. The Spy is a little less bold in following suit, they still rest so high above the ground, but with a death-grip on the Sniper's hand, he swings himself over into the back.

"Hello there." He grins.

The Sniper chuckles, pulling him close for a few slow kisses. They don't go any farther than that, and the Spy rides back in the backseat, not willing to brave the climb a second time, with the top down and the car hovering.

"Now I can say I have necked in a hovercar." He sighs.

"Yeah? Who to?" The Sniper laughs, shaking his head.

"To you."

"Yeah, all right."

After dinner, there's a soft cheese to go with the coffee, with a warm, nutty taste. The Spy praises it extensively before being told its provenance, though it's no surprise to him when the Sniper's mother blushes.

The Sniper's father keeps him in the kitchen after, and the Sniper himself stays near the doorway, pretending not to be listening in.

The voices are too low to make out, though his father's tone is the same curt directness he's come to expect, and the Spy's is earnest, reply short.

He moves away before they reemerge, but there's an obvious truce between them, if not a real warmth.

In the guest room, he doesn't need to ask. The Spy smiles wryly and tells him everything.

"I don't think he believes you need special protecting, mon grand." He promises. "But I think he is aware that even retired, we live a dangerous life. I think he is aware that loving me is dangerous, if he understands nothing else. So, he has tasked me with keeping you safe, if I must endanger you with my... poofiness."

"Dunno whether to laugh or cry." The Sniper groans.

"Maybe he only knows how to care for a daughter." The Spy shrugs.

"Yeah. He said as much to me."

"At least he does care, even if he goes about it badly. I promised. You are more likely to protect me, if we ever wind up back to back in a fair fight, but I promised. That's what he needed to hear. It will get easier. The hard part has been dealt with, now it is just... Anamarie cannot wait to meet you, you know."

"She can't wait to meet me?"

The Spy grins, clutching the Sniper's hand between his own. "I said on the phone I have a man, she asked if he was a serious man. I said 'serious about me', and she is excited to meet you. There are a couple of houses to look at, she says she has a favourite for us. There is room for a garden, and the chicken coop she says needs a little repair, but we could have our own chickens, and there is a large garage, and great fireplaces, and she says the kitchen is big enough. It's outside of town a little ways, she said, but I told her that's good for us, I thought... I thought you'd like it."

"Yeah. Probably would. Hey, got something to show you."

He pulls the book out, opening it across their laps.

There are old adverts and magazine covers, and the Spy realizes a few pages in what he's looking at.

"This is your library book."

"They were selling it off. Mum picked it up because no one'd checked it out since me." He nods, smiling. "See, there's you."

He stops on an ad for socks, with a man pinning one into place, and points to another for shirt collars. The Spy traces a finger over the picture.

"I would have to peroxide my hair again for this to be me." He says, finding another well-dressed man with darker hair. "Could I be here?"

"Sure. You've been blond before?"

"When I was young." He frowns.

"Like you with dark hair, anyway."

"Oh!" The Spy turned another few pages and stopped, his finger going to a man in a red shirt and a brown hat, with beautifully detailed forearms, and an arrow of dark hair on a bared chest. Nothing about him was exactly the Sniper, but the whole effect was perfect. "You!"

"Think they ever meet?" The Sniper grins, flipping between the two pages.

The Spy rests his head on a shoulder, snaking an arm around the Sniper's waist. "Of course. And fall in love. It is not easy, but they do."

"Do they have much in common?" The Sniper asks, turning to the picture of two men intimately sharing a living room, the one that had changed his life so long ago. Neither of them is the man stoking a furnace in the other painting, but he can pretend.

"They both adore coffee, and they are both very demanding about it. And they both know what it is to kill a man. And they both want this... this quiet home that is theirs."

"Good enough for me."

"Good enough for both of us. Or them."

He closes the book and sets it aside, cuddling down with the Spy in his arms.

"Your mother's craft room is very nice." The Spy yawns, and the Sniper is sure it's just his way of making important information sound off-hand, because his mother never had a craft room, not before he moved out.

He sleeps a little easier without the ghost of his childhood lurking down the hall. She deserves a craft room, anyway. Good place to organize all her yarns.

They leave early in the morning, and the Sniper feels good about how things went. They didn't go perfectly, but by the end of the weekend, his father had been using the right words about half the time, even if it was sometimes a bit grudging... he could live with that. Could live with being called 'Princess' as long as it came with a 'he' in the same sentence.

The whole trip back to the city and then the flight to France is blurry in his mind. The Spy made a call from the airport, he knows that much, and then the flight.

He's immensely thankful for the sweater, even slightly ill-fitting, when they land. He's half frozen before they get to their hotel for the night, and the cold is enough to make his chest ache the next morning when they drive out to meet Anamarie and her family.

She speaks perfect English with a slight accent, half her native French and half northern England-- her husband speaks it haltingly, but he greets the Sniper and the Spy as warmly as he would old friends.

Michel is still tiny, and the Sniper's chest aches all the more watching the Spy hold him and coo to him.

Anamarie's house is cozy, not far from the real estate offices, and dominated by a large kitchen, with two small iceboxes flanking a double-stove, rather than a single refrigerator. The Sniper still feels a chill he's unaccustomed to, but the only word to describe this home is warm, and after the fight it took to wring half-compromises from his father, it's so nice to be introduced simply as the Spy's man, and accepted as such, and then just to be accepted.

While Spy has the baby, and her husband runs around the corner to pick up paperwork for the houses, Anamarie talks to Sniper. She has a picture on her mantle of a teenager, a boy, in a handed-down and much-patched jacket, with a little girl in his lap, both of them blond.

"Is that him?" He touches the frame.

"That is us. I was living with his parents... it was safer. We were brother and sister for a while. Then they smuggled me to England. I always thought he died in the war. My parents did, and then his mother, and then he went away with his father to do one of those things that it wasn't safe to talk about... the last thing that I ever heard was that something went wrong, but friends got me across the channel and put me with a family, and I worked for a while to get the money to come home... And now here we all are!"

"What was he like?"

"Maybe not much different." She smiles. "He doted on me. When we all lost everything, he made sure that I ate... he went hungry for me some nights, but he lied about it to me, and I believed him then. And I suspect that there are things he did that I would not name... but in the end we survived it all. Look how good he is..."

He does, in spite of and because of that ache. The Spy's ease with Michel is painfully sweet, how natural it is for him to cradle the boy and speak to him in a musical lilt.

"What I wouldn't give for one..." He sighs.

"You want children?"

"Yeah. Yeah, but... I mean, what are you gonna do, right? I never could've had my own, and..."

She nods. "Michel is the best thing ever to happen to me. I was never sick with him, isn't that strange? I thought for certain I would be-- that is how you know you are pregnant, yes? I was sick all the time before him, though. And then when I was carrying him, it stopped. And now I have him and the whole world is brighter. I would do nothing but have children all the time if it was up to me, I think, but then I would be overrun with them." She laughs.

He doesn't ask her then-- they haven't known each other nearly long enough, to ask a favour like that. But he wonders if she might, if the Spy asked her, carry a child for them.

They drive up to the house, and it's far enough from town to be quiet, to have plenty of space around it, and a good place for starting a garden. Everything that was promised.

"I don't need to look at any others." He says, and the Spy signs the papers with a broad grin while he hastily builds a fire in the fireplace.

It's a good way to celebrate buying the place, he thinks, lighting that first fire. It's certainly a good way to warm up a bit.

They move in, bit by bit, and not much in the house needs fixing up. It comes with two cats, they discover, a pair of animals that had been making their territory around an old dilapidated barn on the property, and who are only too happy to move their center of operations to the screened-in porch.

Minou is a big scarred tom tabby who turns into a sweetheart for Spy alone, and Puss is smaller, black with patches of white, and generally gregarious. He figures they must have had human owners once, and figures they must have been brothers.

"You should take 'em in to get fixed, before we have a paternity suit on our hands." The Sniper says, watching Spy smoke on the porch with Minou winding around his ankles.

"I don't know... I haven't seen any lady cats coming around."

"It's not a big deal for them, Spook, they're animals. Hell. It's not such a big deal anyway. The parts don't need to be productive to be fun." He chuckles.

"I'll call the vet, after the weekend. Tonight... Tonight is dinner at Anamarie's."

"Yeah."

"I was going to bake. I told her I would."

He sounds graver than the Sniper thinks baking calls for.

"You want an extra pair of hands?"

"I do." The Spy nods, putting out his cigarette and giving Minou a final pat.

"So what are we having?" The Sniper asks, running the water until it's hot and washing up.

"Fish, bread, fruit." The Spy shrugs. "Wine."

"Yeah, gotten used to that one." He laughs.

They spend the afternoon on bread, the Spy showing him how to braid it and then stepping back as the Sniper does a neater job of it. The Spy brushing on an egg wash, the Sniper hovering near the oven to soak up a little extra heat while the Spy makes tea.

"How warm are your hands?"

"Hm? Warm." The Spy shrugs, rolling his mug between his palms.

"Good. C'mere and put your hands up my shirt until my nipples unfreeze."

"Oh, pauvre bebe... Come on, it's practically spring."

"Since when is early February practically spring?" He grumbles, relaxing just a little as the Spy leans against his back and slips ceramic-warmed hands up beneath his undershirt, tenderly rubbing over his chest until a little of the chill-induced soreness fades.

"This year it's close enough." The Spy shrugs against him and kisses his shoulder. They rest against each other until the bread is done, and the Spy wraps it carefully in a tea-towel.

"Hate to see what you call a real winter if you think this is close enough to spring." The Sniper says, but when they get to Anamarie's for dinner, the house is warm enough that he forgets his complaints.

Here's the part where I warn those who hate WAFFy kidfic to accept the previous chapter as a nice, optimistic ending to an angst-tinged saga. I am not normally a writer of babies-ever-after style endings, but... man, this Sniper just really wanted to be a dad and at some point that took the reins. (and it doesn't hurt that I love Spy interacting with children, even if he does teach them to kill)

Ch. XXV

---/-/---

Villers-Bretonneux is nice-- even if he can't get used to the cold that lingers on through March, he can get used to the town, to people who don't tell him he 'doesn't look Australian', people who smile broadly at him and ask him if he's there on holiday visiting the monument, and are more than helpful when they learn that no, he's moved there.

He enjoys getting used to the food, both what he and the Spy make around each other at home or eat at Anamarie's, and what he finds in the town proper when they do go out. And he absolutely loves the bookstore, with a small, carefully-stocked English-language section, where he finds a new Patrick White novel.

The proprietor smiles knowingly at him over half-moon glasses, after watching him with the Spy, and he's seen men walk and talk as closely as they do without any sense of impropriety. The bookseller doesn't give any of them the same knowing smile. He doesn't know if the discount is for being Australian or because of the Spy, and the old photo behind the counter of the bookseller arm in arm with another once-young man. He's not sure which is less uncomfortable, but once they really talk about literature, he's willing to accept the discounts as being merely for a friend.

It's the bookseller-- also a Michel, who smiles warmly when the Sniper says 'that's my nephew's name'-- who tells him about the museum. He can feel the Spy watching him, and can practically feel the man holding his breath, when directions are given.

"Suppose I can remember Rue Victoria, yeah." He nods, tone mild. He turns to give the Spy a smile. "What, am I making you late for something?"

The Spy relaxes, shaking his head. "Only if you decide to rush over today."

"Oh, no-- next month! Next month they put on the big to-do." Michel-the-bookseller insists. "And football starts, next month. I still go to watch, I am sure you can tell to look at me it has been many years since I have played."

"... Real football?"

He nods. "It isn't imaginary. No, no, Australian rules."

"Wouldn't mind watching." The Sniper grins. "Never used to play, myself... I was a scrawny kid, no one wanted me on their team."

The Spy takes his arm, smiling softly, and manages to remove him from the bookstore.

They buy wine-- or rather, the Spy does, frowning over several bottles before one meets his approval. One for home, because he'd rejected it so sadly for dinner at Anamarie's, and one to take. It isn't their usual night, but the Spy had objected to asking her on Friday.

It's much less formal, and it's the first time he's had anything other than fish at one of her dinners, the main dish for the evening a leek quiche.

After dinner, he lets the Spy talk to her in private, though he watches intently.

If they were strangers, he would have thought it was a marriage proposal-- the Spy had dropped down to one knee to play with little Michel, down at her feet, and hadn't bothered rising to ask. He sees the Spy turn to her and clasp one of her hands between both his own, can see the anguished anticipation written all over his face even in profile, and the way hers lights up before she nods and laughs and kisses his forehead.

He walks back to the kitchen where the Sniper is waiting, as if on air.

"She will. She will. She says it will make her happy to do it. You should have heard, she made it sound as if I was the one doing her a favor, and... and there-- I said, there is nothing I can ever do to repay this, but she says don't be silly. I am silly!" He snorts in disbelief at the thought, and the Sniper keeps his own mouth shut. "She... she said I would be good. I was already so responsible with a child at sixteen when I spent so much time watching her, and... And she said she thought you, too, she knew you wanted..."

He nods. "I told her I envied her a bit, having a kid. Didn't come close to asking her to have one. You told her about the eggs--?"

"I told her about the eggs."

"... Where did you tell her we got them?"

"I said you got them from Victoria, and they will have to ship from Australia, or we will have to go there to have the fertilization done. She didn't ask more."

"Safe to get it done anywhere. Once the Americans started sniffing around in vitro fertilization, our scientists had to jump in and say we'd got it down pat, any hospital ought to be able to."

"Well... can they ship them?"

He nods again. "Got specialized containers, they'll make it from Adelaide to Paris fine. She'd go far as Paris for it, that's only two hours... For a thing like this, she'd want a big hospital, yeah?"

"I would."

He wraps his arms around the Spy and leans into him, cheek to cheek.

He's not ready to celebrate being a dad just yet. There's always the chance it won't take. But he's ready to celebrate the fact that there really is a woman who's willing to carry the baby for them.

He has a lot to celebrate, if he stops to think. He's made enough peace with his parents, that with half the globe between them, he can breathe easy. He's glad not to have spent longer under their roof, with his father, but he's made enough peace. He has a home where no one knows who he used to have to be to the world, only who he is-- he has family there, thanks to the Spy, and a real friend who trades book recommendations and stories about living with a husband.

It's more than he ever thought he was going to have. He laughs, leaning heavily on the Spy as his knees threaten to give out on him, and then the Spy is laughing too, and holding him tight, kissing his cheeks.

The time they spend waiting for it to be real is hell, and he finds himself jumping at every phone call, instead of ignoring them as Spy's domain. He can't even make himself go down to watch the young men playing football, until the day he sees the Spy all but collapse after only a moment on the kitchen phone.

"It took." Spy says, receiver loose in his hand, and the Sniper is across the room before he's told his feet to take him there, and the Spy's face is between his palms, the Spy's mouth opening to his.

"Es-tu la?"

He fumbles to take the receiver from Spy, the two exchanging an embarrassed grin.

"Yeah. Yeah, we're-- Hey. Hi. Here, we're here. Just-- He was just giving me the good news. You feeling all right?"

"Marvelous!" Anamarie laughs-- at him, he's sure, but she never sounds unkind when she does. "You are going to be a father, how do you feel?"

"Good. Grateful. Excellent."

"I'm glad."

The Spy is leaning heavily on the counter, and he holds the receiver between them and tries to keep up as the two switch over to rapid French.

Spy brings flowers when they see her next, and an impossibly large box of very fancy chocolates. He's already learned how to feed and diaper Michel, back when the boy was small enough to need bottle-feeding, and before he ran from every attempt at diapering, and she walks the Sniper through the process as well, laughing and putting a finger to his lips when he tries to thank her again after.

"I could not be happier. First, this one thanks me as if he has not given me the entire world, saving my life when I was small, and now you... I love being pregnant. I can't wait for all the changes."

"I always thought it was... something women put up with for the sake of having kids. I didn't know anyone liked being pregnant."

"I do." She nods. "I told you I was sick often before Michel, and never with him?"

"A bit."

"Pain, too, in my joints... my wrists and my knees, mostly. And I was always tired. I could never find a doctor who could tell me anything, I stopped looking for one after a while and I just tried to live my life. It started when I was thirteen, I think... sometimes not so bad, sometimes terrible. And then, when I was carrying my baby, nothing hurt... well, maybe not nothing, but everyone made me think it would be terrifying, and instead... I just felt so calm with him, and so happy, and I stopped being sick all of the time. And I had a little person growing inside me-- and girlfriends said it was worth all the soreness and the sickness for that, but instead of being sore and sick, I was free. For the first time since becoming a woman, I was free, and nothing anyone ever told me prepared me for how wonderful it was to know I had this... this ability to nurture life."

He nods through her speech, dumbfounded. The idea that there were different ways of experiencing what his mother always made sound so universal was new. The idea that there were women who loved being pregnant not because of the attention and not because they'd get a baby, but because part of that state of being was good... that was still hard to fathom. He still had nightmares about being back in possession of a working uterus sometimes, and he couldn't imagine being so downright beatific if he was ever in her shoes.

Then again, it was nice knowing she didn't ever expect him to.

During the months that follow, they visit as often as possible, and never without something-- cut flowers, or the last thing the Spy had heard her mention craving.

He still hasn't called his parents-- he's not sure when he's supposed to tell people, is afraid to do it too early. He waits until she asks him about whether his own family knows, to decide it's all right to call them.

His father is perplexed at the news, his mother ecstatic. A grandchild, he decides, patches up a multitude of sins, at least in her book.

He tells them it'll be a surprise, when they ask if it's a boy or a girl. The nursery is greens and yellows, and he's already knitted a layette set in the undyed sock yarn his mother sent towards the end of winter.

She'd taught him, but he never thought it was too feminine a skill to shun-- his father could knit as well, though he didn't devote much time to it. It was just something you learned to do in case you ever needed it, especially growing up surrounded by sheep.

He likes making the baby things, sturdy and neutral and warm. It'll be a winter baby, after all, and he wants to be ready.

He planted a tree-- a bay laurel-- early in the pregnancy, out in the yard. The Spy had been out with him while he dug, laying out a vegetable garden, with the earth soft enough, but he'd gone inside quickly before the Sniper got around to fertilizing it.

"I realized I couldn't plant when the kid got here." He tells Anamarie, when she comes over to their house for once.

The Spy makes an immense fuss over her, during the tour of the new garden and the visit indoors, and she gives in and lets him, though she exchanges a few glances with the Sniper that let him know she appreciates the fact that he doesn't join in on it.

"Women have children, it doesn't make me special-- it certainly does not make me porcelain!" She laughs, when the Spy has left for the kitchen to get tea. "I was built to do it and I feel better than I have since just after Michel."

He nods. "How big is it?"

"Bigger. I just had my visit with the doctor-- I know the sex."

He waits until the Spy is back in the room, not sure he wants to know. The Spy does.

"A girl." She smiles, taking the Sniper's hand and placing it over the swell of her belly. "She's right here."

Once the Spy isn't holding a fully-laden tea tray, he places his hand as close as possible.

"A girl." Spy breathes.

"I told my parents it was going to be a surprise."

"Did you want to be surprised?" The Spy frowns. "I'm sorry-- I like to know everything."

"No-- No, I don't need to be. I'd rather not tell them yet, though. The nursery's yellow, and... I mean, they'd... They'd go overboard if they knew what to buy for, that's all."

The Spy nods, understanding. "Of course. Well, they can send teddy bears and the like, things that work for either, without going overboard, I am sure."

"Thanks."

The Sniper continues to tell people that they don't know yet, after that, and the things he brings into the house are gender neutral. The Spy buys a few things with yellow roses, and a patchwork stuffed animal with both pink and blue, and doesn't give away the ruse.

"Do you want an English name for her, or French? I mean, she is growing up here... but if there's one you like, everyone will know her Daddy is Australian, it would be fine."

"Dunno. Haven't thought about what to name it. Could just see what comes to mind."

"Her." The Spy says firmly. "We know that now, and we ought to have at least an idea about what to name her."

"We don't really, though, do we? I mean, I'm... I turned out like-- I mean, what if the kid's like me?"

"Then we will be flexible when the time comes. But unless I am told differently by our child-- and our child will know we will understand-- then she is a her."

"Spook--"

"I like the nursery as it is. And I will not force any notions on her, and if you don't want pink, I will not buy pink, but my daughter has a gender!"

"I don't want to wind up making the same mistakes my parents made with me." He folds his arms. "That's all."

"Do you really think you would? Of course you will not. Mon grand, my chair is not an 'it'. My table is not an 'it'. So how much more do you think my child will not be an 'it'? You can't just take sex away completely until she is old enough to declare herself, don't you think that is far more confusing?"

"No." He clings to it stubbornly, even realizing the Spy is probably right on that one. He means to change the subject, when he asks a question. "You're saying there's no way to say 'it' that isn't 'he' or 'she', then?"

The Spy's expression hardens. "Not in French. Of course, there is always 'that thing', but anyone who called my child 'that thing' would be unwelcome in my house, and I do not consider my position unreasonable."

"N-no. No, of course-- I just don't want to screw it up if the kid's like me."

"She is half yours, but she isn't you. You talk like you think she will be because you are one of her parents, but you are the child of your parents, they are both normal!"

There's a silent moment, and he can see the Spy's expression collapse as he realizes what he's said, but he doesn't care.

"So I'm not normal now? Good to know." He snaps, turning and striding out of the room.

"Cher, you know I did not mean--"

"No, I heard you loud and clear."

"Statistically average!" He follows. "You can admit that is a lot for me to translate to myself in the middle of an argument!"

"Yeah? Never heard you mistranslate something for yourself before!" He keeps walking, until he's at the opposite end of the house, in the formal sitting room where they rarely spend time on their own.

"I didn't mean it like that!" The Spy catches him when he has no house left to escape to, taking his arm.

He's not ready to turn around, he doesn't want to see genuine penitence. He wants to feed the ball of hurt sitting under his heart, wants to be angry because before that misstep, the Spy was winning the argument, and now the Spy is apologizing.

"Cher?"

He grunts.

"We've never really fought about something real before." The Spy says quietly. "And... I have let myself get a little lazy, living here again. I haven't argued in English in a long time. I am sorry."

"Yeah, you ought to be."

"I would never have... I don't think you are abnormal. I would say you are as normal as I am, but that is not exactly a compliment, either..."

He does smile at that, sitting down on the stiff, formal sofa, the one he doesn't sink into like the one they have in the back of the house.

The Spy curls up across the other end, his head in the Sniper's lap, his grip a little too hard on the Sniper's leg.

"I am so, so sorry."

"I know y'are, Spook. I never asked you to call me normal, anyway." He rests his hand on the Spy's head, scritching gently at his scalp as if he were a cat.

"It wasn't to lash out at you. It wasn't something I think. I adore you, you know that."

"I know that."

"I feel just awful."

"Well, quit it, before you make me feel awful."

"I already made you feel awful!" He buries his face against the Sniper's thigh and takes in a deep breath. "I wanted to never do that to you."

"Come on, now, you're taking it harder than I did."

"You're just saying that." He says, words smothered in the Sniper's jeans.

"I was hurt. But we were fighting. People get hurt in fights. We're done fighting now, aren't we?"

The Spy makes no answer, and the Sniper sighs.

It stung, but the sting faded once he let it. If the fight had been about anything else, he might have held onto it longer, but the man was looking out for the interests of their child, after all, and if the Spy thought of him as abnormal, he doubts they'd be settling down and having a kid to begin with.

"Make-up sex?" He suggests.

The Spy lifts his head, with a ghost of his usual leer, still touched with sorrow.

The Spy moves to the floor, to kneel between his thighs, and he still loves watching the Spy suck him off. There's something so rewarding about having the visual match the sensation, instead of merely accompanying it, and the things the Spy does with his foreskin now that he has one are incredible.

He'd offered to get himself done without, since the Spy didn't have one, and he wasn't sure if the Spy expected him to be cut or not. He's glad the Spy insisted on his keeping it-- glad enough, when it's just the Spy's lips nibbling at it, and gladder still when the Spy stands and drops his own trousers and lines them up so that he can stretch the skin over the head of his own cock.

"That's good," He gasps, sliding his hand over his cock, and then down the Spy's, before keeping his grip where they met in the middle.

"It's-- oh, good, do that-- it is not the filthiest thing I can think of, but I do like it."

"What's the filthiest thing you can think of?" He chuckles.

The Spy shakes his head. "The filthiest thing I can think of, we are never going to do, mon grand."

He grins, stroking tiny circles at the base of the Spy's cockhead. He likes the idea of the Spy having thoughts too filthy to go through with-- he likes the thought of the Spy having filthy thoughts in general, and between the minute slide of the heads of their cocks and the Spy's hands traveling across his body, he comes all too soon.

"I do have one filthy thought..." The Spy says.

He's beautiful, standing there with his face and chest flushed, with sweat-spiked hair and dark eyes, with the Sniper's come dripping down his still-hard cock.

The Sniper drops to his own knees, sucking the Spy down. The synthetic stuff is weird, not quite like any man he's ever tasted, not that the list is long. The Spy has never complained about it, and maybe it isn't so bad. After all, it's something his body does create now, even if by all rights it shouldn't. Still, he's happy enough to have the taste of the Spy's release follow, prefers it.

"That's our first time in the sitting room, yeah?" He grins, pulling himself back up onto the sofa and buttoning his jeans.

The Spy moves back to his lap, a frown tugging at his lips until the Sniper's hand is in his hair.

"Make-up sex means we're made up." The Sniper reminds him.

"All right."

"Spook..."

"Yes?"

"Before... I mean, were you-- Were you ever...?"

"Was I ever 'that thing'? Yes. No child ought to be."

"Oh."

"Yes." The Spy doesn't say anything else about it, though his expression remains faraway.

"Er, um... je... je suis des-- vraiment desole."

The Spy sits up, looking at him for a long moment, and he's not sure whether he's struggling not to cry... or not to laugh.

"You have nothing to apologize for, mon amour. And your accent is atrocious."

He smiles, glad they're back to normal after the miscommunications and crossed purposes. "If she's like me, then... then we'll tell her before she gets too old that-- that I was born a little... a little girl."

"Are you sure? Children repeat things."

"They can learn not to, if it's important. And if she can't, well... I mean, who's going to believe it?"

"All right."

"That way, she'll know she can tell us anything." He nods.

"Would you be happier with a boy?"

He thinks about it, for a long time. Would he? Would a little girl, a real, honest, girly little girl, be interested in the things he had to teach?

"I'll be happy if she's healthy. There are things I don't know about girls, real ones. But there are things I know too much about, and that'll come in handy. I... I wouldn't mind having a little girl think the world of her old dad, you know? And..."

"And?"

"I think my parents would like it-- and we're not telling 'em yet! But... maybe this isn't my chance to fix all the mistakes they made with me by raising a kid any better than they did. Maybe it's a chance to let them get to know a little girl who likes being called 'princess'. I don't know. I could love a little girl, of course I could."

"Good."

"Laurel."

"Hm?"

"You asked me about names. Laurel. It's... it's the tree I planted for her. And I like it, for a name."

"Laurel Avigail."

"What's Avigail?"

The Spy leveled him with a look that couldn't manage sternness for very long. "I knew you didn't even look at the books of names, and I even ordered one with all the meanings in English. It means 'father's joy'... I thought it was appropriate. She has two of us."

"Laurel Avigail." He nods.

They tell Anamarie, when they see her next. She's still serene as ever, placing their hands and telling them 'it's your baby, touch, touch!', and she sits between them on her sofa while they bend low to speak to the baby and her husband tends the stove.

Sniper's parents send some things-- a red ball, and a grey bear, and a white baby afghan, and a little wooden crocodile with wheels and a pull-string. The Spy orders a stuffed kangaroo that's as big as a real one and places it in the nursery.

The Sniper names it Jenna. The Spy nods along, until he admits that it's not really a creative name.

"Yes... you know, with your history, I am surprised I asked you to name our daughter. Your doll's name was 'Baby', your cat's name might as well be 'cat', and now the kangaroo is practically just 'lady kangaroo'."

"Yeah, well, I named the kid after a tree, so maybe you shouldn't have let me." He jokes.

"... My cat's name is 'cat'." The Spy laughs.

"Wait, really? No, your cat's got a name."

"Well, yes, but it's... you know, it is just the name of any cat, 'Minou'. It really isn't very different from 'Puss'."

"We're both terrible. It's a good thing you got that book, luv, or I'd feel sorry for our kid."

"She's going to be all right. At least it is a tree that already has a woman's name."

They end the night standing a while in the nursery, before going next door to bed. They've taken to ending every night that way, as the pregnancy has worn on. At first it was merely nesting, putting everything in its place, but as winter draws nearer and the due date with it, there's less that needs doing, and more their desire to soak in the space and the idea that it belongs to a baby.

"Come on, Daddy, bedtime." The Spy yawns, looping his arm through the Sniper's. "Sleep now, in a month and a half we won't get too many chances."

"We'll sleep when she does. Babies do sleep, I'm almost sure of it."

The Spy slants him a curious smile, and he sighs, opening the door and letting himself be led to the master bedroom. "Of course I meant to say 'coming, Papa'."

"Of course you did."

The Spy loves autumn, but he misses sharing a single set of pyjamas in the summer, himself in the shirt and a pair of his own boxers if he felt like bothering and the Sniper in the pants and an undershirt. Now, the Sniper bundles himself up in layers of cotton and flannel.

It's not all bad, of course-- he rather likes being used as a space heater.

"When we have her home..." He sighs, pulling back the covers and sliding into bed, and into the Sniper's arms. "Imagine it, in the family room with a roaring fire. You'll lie on the sofa with your head in my lap and a baby on your chest, and a blanket over you. You would be warm enough like that, wouldn't you, with the both of us?"

"Darlin', I'd be so warm with the both of you." He grins, giving the Spy a squeeze.

I am neither LGBT nor French, but I once saw someone on the internet say they pay very little attention to gender in gendered languages. "[For] example, I wouldn’t feel put-out in the least being referred to in the feminine gender in French, given that I am at least as female as any table I’ve ever met. ;)"

/and he's seen men walk and talk as closely as they do without any sense of impropriety/
Adding "and women" would have made me happier. It seems that a lot of gay stories don't acknowledge lesbians, and vice versa.

Neither of these are criticism; they're just things I thought of while reading this chapter. This is still one of the best fanfics I've ever read.

Oh my God, Anne, I...I've been having a really shitty day, but this was one of the greatest things I've ever read in my entire life. Honestly, this may have been a perfect-happy-family ending, but it didn't feel too fluffy. The fight--oh God, the fight sent chills up my spine--and all of that just made it so real, so still them, and I loved it. The last conversation gave me the biggest grin. You're perfect, never change, this is perfect. Wow. WOW.

This story is going to kill me, I'm being smothered with warm and fuzzy feels.

>>88

The stories-about-gay-men-largely-ignoring-lesbians is a valid point in the general sense, I agree. I didn't include an 'and women' for a few reasons-- for starters, structured like that, it would sound like a man arm in arm with a woman... and, of course, observing the world through Sniper's eyes, he's only ever been attuned to the existence of lesbians when he was being mistaken for one. Mostly, though, it's because there are so many places he would have traveled where women CAN walk arm in arm or hand in hand without anyone assuming they're lovers, but men can't do the same.

Anyway, thank you!

And thank you everyone else!


EPILOGUE

---/-/---

It's autumn again, crisp and chilly, but the oven throws off enough heat while the Sniper checks on the roast. As long as he doesn't leave the house, he can always find someplace warm enough to settle.

It doesn't feel like it could be autumn already-- it still feels like it was only yesterday that they were pacing the waiting room and asking each other how long a baby takes to be born... The Spy had been burning through his last pack of cigarettes, and the Sniper had bummed one or two, or maybe three, and they'd answered in a confused and confusing jumble when the nurse asked who the father was.

It had been a lot to adjust to, and all of it changed so rapidly. The Spy had done the feedings, at first, could find that natural position with the bottle that the Sniper was never comfortable with, but he always stepped in to burp her after. Between the two of them, he was the only one who didn't own a single shirt that couldn't be spit up all over. It was a division of labour they were happy with.

That had changed as well, of course, now that she was no longer so small he could hold her balanced along one forearm with her head cupped in his palm. Now that she was crawling at speed and starting to toddle... Now, of course, she could ask for a bottle and have it handed to her-- and the Sniper had learned pretty easily what babbled sounds were her attempts at 'biberon'-- 'bottle' and 'goodbye' she picked up in French, 'up' and 'hello' in English, and she would look out at Minou on the porch and say 'M'ou!'.

It would be silly to be jealous of the cat. Anamarie had assured him that some sounds were easier than others, and that the 'm' sounds were bound to come before the 'da's.

"Cher?" The Spy's voice from the family room has an urgent note, though not a worried one.

He takes the peas off the heat and trusts the roast won't burn in the time it takes him to see what the matter is.

"Need help with the little nipper?" He asks, coming into the room.

Spy is holding Laurel's hands, looking at her intently. "Again, ma belle."

She turns to look up at the Sniper, eyes bright-- a stormy blue, closer to the Spy's today than to his, but he's seen them shift often enough, dark to light. She has his nose, definitely, and curls that the Spy admitted were like his own when he was very young, and every time he looks at her he could swear he's seeing her for the first time and falling in love all over again.

"Up!" She demands, letting go of the Spy's hands to raise her arms to the Sniper.

"Oh, of course." He chuckles, coming around the sofa to lift her up onto one hip. He smirks over at the Spy. "This is what you've got me burning dinner for?"

"Honestly, when you were in the kitchen..." He sighs, shaking his head. He gets to his feet, coming to stand close to them both, one hand on the Sniper's back and the other gently covering their little girl's head. "Laurel? Can you show Daddy?"

"Daddy!" She repeats eagerly, and the Spy grins up at him.

He's floored by it. He's been waiting for it, since she started working at real words, and there it was.

"That's right, lamb. Daddy's here." He lifts her up higher and kisses her cheek, and tickles a giggle out of her.

"I'll peek in on dinner if you need me to." The Spy offers, but he feels more inclined to linger in the doorway, to watch them together. There's such a warmth in seeing his family, the softness on the Sniper's face that exists for her alone and the way two words from him can quiet almost any tantrum.

She'd said 'Papa' before 'Daddy', but he doesn't have any illusions-- she's Daddy's girl, and he couldn't be happier. There are things that he does for and with her, there are times she responds to him-- perhaps times she lights up the same way, but watching them together, he just draws such a sense of comfort from seeing how completely they adore each other, and knowing that if he asks for it, he can have two smiles turn his way, from two people he adores completely.

"Daddy's here..." The Sniper sits down on the sofa with her in his lap, her little hands clinging and grabbing at the neck of his sweater as she cuddles up close.

He'll take care of mashing the peas in a while-- it's one of the few things he knows he does a better job of in the kitchen-- but he trusts the Spy to get the roast. For now... for now, his daughter has asked for him by name for the first time, and she's got him for as long as her attention span demands.

I've passed by this story so many times, and finally decided to give it a look. So glad I did. I just read the whole thing in one sitting; it is now 6:45 in the morning. Given that I just read the entirety of it, I have far too much praise to give. Suffice it to say that that was every kind of amazing.

Oh, Anne. This has been beautiful, and poignant, and wonderful...I can't even describe how amazing this is. Just know that it is.

Oh my god this is beautiful. I'm a sucker for a beautiful story with a baby in the end. Kudos, Anne. You've got yet another winner here.

Defining a relationship as having someone with whom to be boring was extremely striking in a way I can't find the words to describe.

On a broader note, I absolutely love this fic, especially the part about Australia hoarding its tech until the rest of the world catches up. I always wondered why we never see more "modern" tech than we do in the TF2 world, and your reasoning explains it beautifully.

Also, the penis grafting idea was pure genius. In a society that upholds manliness as the pinnacle of life, even going so far as to holding that standard to women, I feel the surgery is something that definitely would arise, given the technology.

Just putting these links here for safekeeping

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35331260701/no-request-just-smut ((sex scene that was never included in Masculinity but that I really wanted to write))

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35194942059/request-fill-for-cosmic ((Prompt one: Sniper comforts Laurel during her vaccinations by telling her he used to have to give himself shots.))

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35333038878/request-fill-for-cosmic ((Prompt two: During a visit from the in-laws, Spy escapes to the porch to smoke, only for one to follow him.))

Just putting these links here for safekeeping, part 2

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35701403132/request-fill-for-anicofe ((Sniper and Spy bringing Laurel to her first day of school and the anticipation/anxieties both parents may have about it?))

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35700857105/request-fill-for-anon ((Sniper’s first time with his organic cock.))


http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35700416009/request-fill-for-cyan ((In the story, Spy mentioned that to him, being the receiving partner means more than just sex. Sniper remembers this conversation, the first time Spy admitted to having feelings for him beyond the simple comfort of companionship, and he thinks he might want, just once, to feel that same vulnerability.))

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/35699142925/not-exactly-a-request-fill-for-cosmic (( Not quite a fic request, but related - can you share your Masculinity playlist?))

Hope you don't mind me faffing about in your sandbox, Anne.
------------------------------------------
The next checkup proceeded as usual, but the Sniper could tell that the Medic was just about to burst with capital-I Ideas. "Wotever you're thinking, moi answer is 'no'. I'll foind--" he almost said 'someone who's actually qualified', but he stopped himself from expressing such a tactless sentiment, "I'll foind moiself a Doc should I desoide on surgery."

The Medic made a dismissive gesture. "I looked zee literature over, and eet seems too trivial a procedure for me to be bozzered wiz trying eet myself, to be honest." He pushed the glasses to the top of his face. "What I was thinking was, well--if your wish eez to be a man, why not go all zee way?"

The Sniper was well acquainted enough with the Medic to know that he meant no offense whatsoever, but a tinge of ice still crept into his voice when he asked: "All th' way to wot?"

"Gene serapy, of course. Granted, from what I haff heard, all of eet eez quite experimental and zee process could kill you permanently, which would be less zan ideal of course, but--"

The Sniper held up a hand before the Medic could launch into one of his techno-babble- and too-much-information-filled spiels. "In plain English, please."

The Medic gave him a look as if he couldn't be more obvious. "Don't you see? Eef you underwent zee procedure, you would be a man in not just your anatomy or on your papers, but een your very biology!"

The Sniper got up. "This conversation is over."

The Medic caught him by the sleeve. "At least think about eet. You can trust me--my only interest would be een zee experiment."

The Sniper kept walking. "I know. I don't want t' talk about it roight now."

"You have to stop being so touchy about zis," the Medic insisted. "Zis would literally solve all of your problems--"

It took the Sniper all of his self control not to punch the Medic in the face. "I don't have a problem."

The Medic made a noise of exasperation. "Zat eez not what I meant, and you know eet!"

"I don't care. I don't want to talk about this."

The Medic threw up his hands. "Fine! Do what you vant!"

>>97

asdfghjkl; mind?! My corner of the sandbox is wide open! I'm a bit flattered, really.

Haven't been able to keep up on this for a while but boy am I glad I came back.
There's so much that's so beautiful about this fic that I will never find words to express it, but that last bit, right there at the end, with the baby and Sniper finally getting to be called Daddy-
I was floored. Completely and utterly overwhelmed and I happily admit that I was in tears for several minutes, smiling like an absolute idiot the whole while.

Anne, you are a wizard, and I adore you.

I just found this addition to this amazing fic.

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/39828418810/request-fill-for-cosmic ((Now that you’re home, might I ask for a Masculinity-verse piece about Sniper, his testicles, and hormone delivery?))

I cried. I CRIED BUCKETS. I don't know why I hadn't found this sooner. Oh my gosh. I can't...

Daddy's girl. It killed me. My heart, it's been so squeezed. Thank you.

I don't normally read SpyXSniper, but this has started out very interesting.
I'm actually very upset because I had to stop reading around the billionth time Sniper asked Spy if he should get a real cock and Spy went on his gajillionth massive monologue about how he loves him all the same and he'd prefer if he had a real one but it's no big deal (pardon the pun) and then Sniper gets all huffy and says "I'm not doing it for you" AGAIN.
It might have moved on since then, but I just don;t feel motivated to continue reading, for fear of another ten posts f penis-angst.

From Anne's Tumblr

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/44856979584/ficlet-boudoir-photography ((In which I smash two SniperSpy alt universes together and see what happens, basically. An idea I had tossed around with Cosmic Tuesdays a while now, half in jest, and then she showed me the photoset I reblogged recently and I just had to go through with writing it, but… you know, caveat emptor, it was born out of cracky suppositions.))

Taken directly from Anne's Tumblr

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/61553253941/inspired-by-but-not-directly-about-that-sniper-spy ((After I reblogged it, got to talking with Cosmic Tuesdays about Sniper, Spy, and shaving in general… and eventually we got to me-needing-to-write-this. Masculinity-verse))