You have my attention.

Go on...

I'll just wait here, resting my chin on my hands and gazing at my computer screen.

I like where this is going.

SNUFF
PART II

“That’s…well no, it isn’t even possible. I mean yeah, I’ve smacked that little shit around once in a while, for like using my aftershave or just being a brat, but no, I mean, we can’t even, it’s not like—” Sniper knew he was just running at the mouth, nervous, not knowing what was being proposed. But you couldn’t actually kill your own teammembers. That had been covered in training, and the few friendly fire incidents after that had seemed to confirm what they'd been told. Behind him, Spy had brought a hand up to light a cigarette, which glowed next to Sniper’s cheek as Spy settled back down. The agent took the rifle himself, squirming forward across Sniper’s back and thighs until he had a grip he liked. Sniper thought he felt a throb in Spy’s trousers as he watched—no, more felt—him set up a shot.

It was fascinating. It was thrilling…nauseatingly so. He watched the buttery gloves grip the gun, one finger caressing the trigger guard. Cigarette smoke caught the laser, and gleamed.

“I had no idea y’knew how to use that thing.”

“Mein Schatz, I have picked off many a distant diplomat from rooftop sun decks. Now, watch.”

Sniper watched. He’d seen Spy kill before, of course. He’d bitten his knuckles as the invisible man had unveiled himself behind Sniper’s own teammates, coiled like a cat, and slammed the knife into them. After the two men had begun their…dealings…Spy began to notice his voyeur, often taking the time to glance up to the outdoorsman’s current nest, knowing that a gesture as delicate as a lifted eyebrow could be seen through the rifle scope. Sniper learned to hold his sight steady with one hand, while the other slipped under his belt buckle. And he helplessly bucked his hips into the ground, grinding into his own fist as Spy took longer than necessary to dispatch men that Sniper saw and spoke to in the barracks every night.

Afterwards, Spy would playfully slice the air above the bodies, assuming fencing poses for the benefit of his hunched and laboring audience, then meet him smelling of blood and fresh tobacco.

But this: not only to watch his lover kill, but to smell it, to feel his controlled, sharpshooter breathing, to absorb the hammering of his pulse, the damp heat of his burning skin—it was another thing entirely. Something new. Something visceral and real. In the clingy membrane of his balaclava, Spy looked like the reef sharks back home; he looked like the satin-scaled bushsnakes that could fell a man in heavy boots with a single stab. As he watched Spy settle into the gun, he saw himself: settling into the easy rut of the forever war. They were twin killing machines, obscenely pressed together in that snowblind, breathing smoke and steam like dragons. Amoral engines, without even the shark’s hunger or the snake’s fear to justify themselves.

Spy’s easy murmur brought Sniper out of his reverie: “Ah, here is one of yours…that idiotic ghoul in a cheap suit that you blues call a ‘spy’. Mm hn hn hn.” Spy dug his boot tips into the snow to either side of Sniper’s legs and dug his pelvis into Sniper’s spine. The tip of his tongue protruded boyishly.

He inhaled, tracking the other agent with the muzzle of the gun.

He exhaled.

Sniper flinched as the shot cracked across the gully. The distant BLU spy tumbled forward into the snow, and a pile of his own brains. Spy automatically cranked the bolt to reload, then turned away from the rifle sight and grinned. “Bello.” He pushed the gun back towards Sniper. “Now you.”

Oh, boy, I am glad that I checked back on this again.

Killing has never been so sexy. Honestly.
Please, do go on.

You have my undivided attention

PLEASE DO GO ON.

Oh, do want! Why is this so sexy? Love the comparison to reef sharks in particular, it's something I never would have thought of but it fits so well in a way...

SNUFF
PART III

Sniper took the rifle and settled it against his shoulder. The stock was warm from Spy’s shoulder, the barrel hot. The popcorn sound of the fight came up through his daze for the first time in minutes, and he ducked as a stray rocket dislodged snow from the viaduct above. He realized he was clenching his jaw, and forced it to relax. Spy was half rolled to the side, his legs draped over Sniper’s waist. He propped his face in one glove and took a drag, watching the sharpshooter watch him.

“You did not care for it?” Spy smiled. “You are conflicted.”

“Yeah, Christ, he’s a blue! He’s my teammate,” Sniper realized he was angry, “he lemme borrow a book last night.”

“What book?”

“Uh, ‘Ada’. Russian writer, Nabokov.”

“Ooh. Perhaps I have misjudged him.”

“It doesn’t bleedin’ matter!”

Spy shushed him. “I am sorry, I did not mean to poke fun. But your objections ring a little hollow. Exhibit A…”

Spy moved to cover Sniper’s back again, vanishing out of sight behind. A leather hand smoothed Sniper’s shirtfront and ducked under his belt. Spy spat his cigarette into the snow and buried his face behind the other man’s ear, inhaling sharply. Cool, thin leather closed over Sniper’s savage erection, and squeezed. He gasped, and blushed like a sunburn. “Ngh, lift your hips. Yes. Here I find you straining at the leash, and not a minute hence, you are paying lipservice—” Spy was ripping at Sniper’s cowboy belt buckle, talking low and fast through his teeth ”—to some misguided sense of pity for your precious brer bleu. Awful hypocrisy. You loved seeing me gun him down. Do you hate the man?”

“No.”

“Do you love him?”

“No!”

Spy chuckled, his grip moving in a slowly rhythm. “I am not sure you understand the nature of our mission here. We were all told how things work, of course, but somehow I think very few of us really ACCEPTED it.” The hand—now warm—slipped from Sniper’s jeans and grasped the back of his neck, pressing his face to his rifle sight. “Look.” Spy pointed to the field, where a fresh BLU spy was just shimmering out of sight. “He is disposable.” He pointed at a demo man being belabored by a scout. “So is he.” He pointed at a BLU medic, screaming for help as he was gunned down on the point. “And that one. Every one of us will ‘die’ a thousand deaths out here in the snow; in the red canyons; clinging to mountains; cringing in bunkers; under the wheels of trains; choking on dust and sand and blood—blood—blood.” Sniper sweated in fear, feeling the awful weight of the words more than he felt the flesh, the rasping chin, the snapping teeth. Satan was at his shoulder, and He was speaking the truth.

Spy went quiet and still, only breathing into the rifleman’s ear. “Now, do your ~fucking~ job.” He snatched Sniper’s chin, but turned his face gently, and looked into his eyes. The red mask was briefly unsettling, the color of the Enemy. The blue eyes stood out like reflections of sky in a puddle of blood. “Try to enjoy it, petit. This is what you—what we have, now.” He leaned past the man’s grip, and Spy’s mouth tasted of smoke, sweat, and the iron tang of cold air.

With Spy’s suitjacket stuffed under his hips, Sniper settled into his sight and looked for targets. Above and behind, Spy worked his jeans down, rubbed his ass and flanks with those fucking gloves. Leather brushing his bare skin, snaking between his buttocks, stroking, parting, teasing. Sniper shook, or shivered, wanting to turn over and take the man in both arms, take some of his tension out on the expensive collar, the fragrant neck. But the caresses kept him facing into the distant fray, stifling whimpers.

Spy gripped either cheek and spread them with his thumbs, bending to let his unclipped tie roll out a long dry lick, from the back of the tensed ballsack, up the intercrucial to stroke the acutely sensitive zones exposed by his grip. Sniper shuddered, bucked a little, tried to look over his shoulder. Spy smacked his ass sharply. “I want to hear that mule kick in the next thirty seconds, and I want it to count.” Sniper looked forward, trying to focus as Spy amused himself by following the tie with his tongue. “I love how you keep yourself clean,” he mumbled into Sniper’s ass. He licked and circled with his mouth, matching his insistence to the gradual relaxation of the muscles, finally pressing the strong, pink tip of his tongue through Sniper’s last clench, opening his jaw to thrust it in further. The other man pressed his hips up into the mouth, whining for more, trying to open his legs but caught in his jeans. “Angh…oh my g—fuck, jesus christ yes, yes, yes—” Sniper babbled and arched his back until Spy withdrew, resting one hand on the lower man while he rested on his knees and started to undo his belt. Sniper felt one gloved thumb slip between his cheeks and begin pressing into him, testing his resistance, teasing him with a tiny fuck. He responded earnestly, pleadingly, and was rewarded with Spy’s silky, foreskinned phallus pressing lengthwise along his ass as the upper man leaned into him, started whispering into his ear. “You will get what you want when I see you kill. Focus. I can wait. I can wait until they find us and send spies, rockets, bullets, or tiny morons with baseball bats.” Spy was grinding him slowly, letting his cock slide up and down Sniper’s ass. The anticipation was murderous. Sniper wanted to pin him down and force him in, but those weren’t the rules. And they had to keep a low profile. He imagined they’d both been conspicuously absent for long enough to arouse suspicion.
Sniper breathed, scanned the field, tried to ignore Satan enjoying Himself with mortal flesh. Spy pressed his cheek to Sniper’s. “Look, cher. There is my friend the RED Medic and his patient, that poor shellshocked hulk that calls himself a soldier. And aren’t they just traipsing along without a care in the world. I wonder wherever le bleu Sniper might have got up to…” Spy sat back and looked down, aiming a smart little globe of saliva at the point where his cock pressed against Sniper’s ass, ready, wetted, waiting for the rifleman to take the shot.
Sniper inhaled.
He exhaled.
He squeezed the trigger, and the soldier’s helmet shattered just as the rifle’s recoil shoved Sniper a half-inch backward onto Spy, who sank the rest of the way in with a great chuckling moan.
Spy let himself fall forward over Sniper’s back, trying to hold his thrusts to the bare minimum required to maintain sanity. “Now put that poor orphan quack out of his misery.” Another shot, which Spy rewarded with a slight quickening of their pace, and soon the gun was forgotten as they lost themselves in tangled mouths and sweat and snow.

CONTINUED IN PART IV

((whoops sorry about the formatting fuckup in the last paragraph there))

My dear you have me by tenderhooks.

Holyshit. I am so aroused right now.

That was by far the hottest Sniper/Spy scene I've ever read. And bottom Sniper? Hnnngh. You, sir, have made my day.

Have 100 free internets.

Hnnnngh- I like everything I see here.

I love you. May I bear your children?

Ooh, somebody pass me a fan, that was hot...

More soon?

Oh... Oh, wow.

This is ridiculously sexy. Please continue.

I keep rereading this and editing it past the point where i posted it. >:| After I'm done posting the Parts I'll upload the whole thing somewhere in a better-edited version.

>>18
Did you want a beta? 'Cauuse I'd beta the fuck out of this.

Email's up in the email field if you do.

>>19
Thanks very much for the offer! I am working with an editor now, and frankly I'm a little cagey about editing my own stuff, although Part I, especially, probably doesn't make it seem that way. :p I was all "heh i'll just write a fanfic, it'll be easy". HUBRIS. STUPIDITY. So I've got a much snappier set of chapters here and will be posting the next chapters with more forethought. And of course I'll put the whole thing up somewhere in an honest, edited state.

Everyone else: Thank you VERY much for your comments, especially CatDetective's, because holy shit I love your current story. I swear I didn't read it before I started mine, I think your rays of genius were just radiating over the whole board, like gay microwaves, when I came up with SNUFF.

Anyway, Part IV coming up. I hope you enjoy it.

SNUFF
PART IV

“Well don’t that beat all.” Engineer tucked his goggles up onto his forehead, to get a better view. He held BLU team’s mimeographed, stapled statistics in front of his lunch tray. The pages had just arrived via pneumatic tube, as they did every month, and were still a little curled from the delivery cylinder.

“What? Lemme see!” Scout bounced up, nearly upending his tray. The whole team, with the exception of Engineer, had long ago stopped bothering with the sheets of numbers sent from the Head Office. The columns of figures recorded the minutiae of the war, and when Engineer wasn’t poring over them in his workshop, they were kept in a briefcase in the intelligence room. Everything was accounted for, from gallons of water used in the showers, to family-sized cans of green beans consumed in the mess, to number of respawns, kills, environmental fatalities, average indoor and outdoor temperatures, number of rats captured in the pantry, and medical data gathered in the course of respawns. But it made the dinner conversation drag, to have to call out the customary bragging and bullshitting by checking the scores. Besides, everyone’s numbers stayed roughly the same—both teams advanced at about the same rate, one never really overtaking the other, like Alice and the Red Queen. Engineer had his own uses for the numbers, but wisely demurred if called upon to confirm or deny mess hall claims of killing streaks, inviting his coworkers to check the listings themselves.

“Go easy there, young man. Made me lose my place.” Engineer fished a pair of rectangular reading glasses out of his bib pocket and lit them on his nose. Scout jiggled impatiently, leaning on the back of the Texan’s chair. Engineer ran a fingertip down the columns. “Lessee…Sniper. RED kills, May: four hundred thirty five.” He paused and smiled as Sniper was clapped on the back and toasted. It was a significantly higher number than last time they’d heard a score, six or seven months ago. Engineer continued, “Here’s what’s got me stumped: BLU kills, May: one. Now what do you suppose that means?”

Fifteen eyes swiveled to Sniper, who froze in mid-sip. He lowered his mug. “How the fuck should I know?”

“Language!” Soldier barked from his armchair. Heavy patted his arm.

Sniper scrambled internally, panicking. Buying time, he stood and stretched, then angled over to where Engineer sat with the papers. Sniper took them, pretended to look them over, finally gave them a sniff. “Ah, well, there y’have it. Mimeograph’s almost out of ink. You can smell it. See how the printing’s gotten all light and patchy? Probably just a misprint. Like, a piece of their report imprint fell into ours by mistake. Something like that. Happens all the time. Hate to meet the bloke who only racked up one kill this month though, jesus.” Sniper gulped the rest of his coffee and excused himself. Shit! Bloody fucking christ, what a pathetic lie. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and hustled out to the patch of scrub gravel where he kept his RV.

The night was cold; the viaduct was above the snow line, even in early summer. Sniper stepped up and locked the door behind him, flopping sideways into his bunk, boots still planted on the floor, hands behind his head. He’d have liked to ask Truckie how the kill counters worked; he’d assumed it was based on surveillance cameras or respawns somehow, but now it seemed the weapons themselves did the tallying up. It was too late for suspicious questions like that. Sniper briefly brought his hands to his forehead and groaned. He hadn’t actually killed the BLU spy; he hadn’t even been wielding the gun when the man’s head blew up. The memory made him a little queasy; no one liked seeing their own colors run. Come to think of it, he guessed he’d never used anyone else’s gear. His guns were always there in the respawn when he woke up, familiar and constant as his own limbs, almost as intimate as flesh. He remembered how Spy had cradled that limb, caressed that flesh. In retrospect, it seemed filthy, invasive. Like unnecessary surgery. Like a probing pink tongue. He remembered how he had fixated on that peeping pink at the corner of Spy’s mouth as the agent settled in on his kill. How Sniper had wanted to touch that tongue, that little cresting bit of velvet tucked in the rough mandible. To nip it, pinch it, pull it out, suck it into his own mouth like a canned peach. You could lead a man around like that, as if on a leash. Trap a man’s tongue and the rest will follow. Spy’s tongue was silver. A silver tongue would be cold in this weather. He shook his head sharply—weird thinking. Get ahold of yourself. Relax.

He tilted his head back on the mattress, catching slats of moon through the venetian blinds, enjoying a ghost-memory of Spy catching his recoil on his cock, oh god. He dreamily put one hand in his lap, twisting his head to the left, catching the meat of his other palm in his teeth. He worked on the spot, imagining it was the other man’s slender neck. It was as far as he had undressed the Spy—he thought he could have peeled anything and everything else off the man, even with bullets thudding around them, but in skirmishes the balaclava stayed on. Spy had insisted, permitting only fingers and tongues pushed under the filmy hood.

Sniper’s thoughts drifted farther back in time, a month ago, their first real encounter. It had been in an outbuilding at the gravel pit—Sniper had been badly wounded, and ran to ground in a shack. His machine gun ammo had been exhausted in a poorly-executed dash from a pyro, who was now hunting him down. Sniper didn’t know if his kukri could hack through that awful rubber suit fast enough to save him from broiling alive, but as he drew himself back to bring the blade down on the hurrying footsteps, he heard gasps instead of snuffling, and stayed his hand. The RED Spy almost somersaulted into the little building, his suit scorched, balisong clutched desperately in one hand. They saw each other and froze, both men grimacing in fear, neither willing to take the bad swing that could open him up to a better one. Inevitably the rival pyros tracked their prey to the hutch and tempers flared; and it was all over except for the stench of burning rubber. Sniper watched the monsters burn, chest heaving, and only startled out of his defensive fugue when he realized his enemy was swatting flames off the sleeves of his bush jacket.

“Quit hittin’ me will ya!” Sniper hated how shrill he sounded then, the stress of the near-inferno had gotten to him, and now this fancy lad was flapping at his burning shirt. It was almost too much, and the spy had stepped back as he saw Sniper’s grip tighten on the big angled blade. They tensed, then looked away from each other, embarrassed to be caught in such a stalemate, but neither ready to go back to the fight.

Finally Spy lit a cigarette—white and tan, Sniper realized, not black like the spy he knew—and slid down the wall to crouch and smoke, regarding the area around Sniper, rather than the man himself. Sniper recognized this as what it was: a gesture of no-harm-meant, but he tightened up anyway. There was no telling how badly wounded the masked man had been when he stumbled into this hut. The pyros could’ve been some kind of setup; he wouldn’t put anything past those bastards. Better dead than RED, they always said.

“Please help yourself.” The spy was suddenly offering his open cigarette case, a neat row of clean smokes lined up under a little black ribbon. He still did not meet Sniper’s stare, keeping his eyes casually angled to the side, or lazily sweeping the view they had from their hiding place. Sounds of the fray had grown more distant. Sniper realized the nearby point had been captured, and his team had moved on without him. He was in the habit of taking his time to move to a new position anyway, hanging back to wipe his face and yes, have a smoke. But he’d never had company before. Could you poison a cigarette? He didn’t think so. And anyway, why would the agent bother? He could think of a dozen screaming reasons, but mirrored Spy on the floor ,with his back against the opposite wall, and reached out—farther than was practical, really, but you could never be too careful—and fingered one cigarette from the case. As he patted down his vest pockets he heard a click, and there was the assassin’s golden lighter hovering just beyond his unlit tip. Cautiously, he leaned in to suck at the flame, then touched the brim of his hat and exhaled. “Decent of you.” He realized too late he had said it in a way that implied the spy usually wasn’t, but the other man only smirked and nodded. Ten seconds of quiet piled on. They breathed and smoked, each listening to his own heartbeat winding down. Sniper dug the heel of his boot into the crumbly wood floor.

“Sniper. BLU team.” The bushman extended one sooty hand, and Spy shook it. His gloves were so soft, they were almost oily. “Spy. RED. Perhaps you are familiar with my work.” Sniper caught the twinkle in his rival’s eye, and snorted before he could catch himself. Suddenly both men were giggling ridiculously, the adrenaline ebbing as relief flooded in with nicotine, making them giddy. The giggles fell apart into hilarity so loud that even as he shook and wiped his eyes, Sniper worried they’d be found. After a while, he could speak.

“I—a hee hee hee—sorry mate, ahahah, but I think we should be going. Sounds like yer mum is callin’ you home.”

Spy was rubbing his forehead and giggling, but sighed in agreement. The Administrator’s flinty echoes had reached them both, even from the loudspeakers at the next point. Both men stood and dusted themselves off; Spy straightened his tie. There was a pause as neither of them volunteered to turn his back first. Spy held up three fingers. “Un. Deux. Trois.” A few more snickers as they slid out the door facing each other, almost touching, and backed away until both slipped out of sight behind boulders. Sniper remembered making it back to his medic in a state of exhilaration approaching drunkenness, a feeling that had stayed with him the rest of the night.

Baw, you're too kind. (I will henceforth think of myself as a gay microwave, though)

Oh gosh the end of this chapter was silly and sweet and wonderful... I like that feeling, of the first tumble forward into something like love.

Also, I pretty much love any solo Sniper times, especially that detail with the heel of the hand, it made it seem much more real.

Yeah, I wanted to segue into a Sniper solo scene but got a little sidetracked with flashbacks. >:|

>>23

I liked the flashbacks, they made me giggle.

More Please! I love it.

:D please continue~

"there is no friend like a reader" you guys! Thank you so much for all your support. I'm working on Part V right now, but taking more time to edit because rrgh, those first parts i posted are just junky compared to their current incarnations in my word processor, I've edited them so much since posting.

The bumps are so much appreciated. Thank you all very much.

And now you have me craving for MOAR

Please, take this bump. Enjoy it. Because I'm sure enjoying this, that set-up was just fabulous.

Checking in for the first time to let you know that you have one more reader eagerly awaiting Part V.

Never before has an adult fanfic had so much... control over me. Please, please, I beg you to keep this up.

This is currently the best thing on afanfic. I am really looking forward to seeing more.

This post has been deleted.

Hi guys. Thank you so much for the bumps over my long absence. I hope I can get this back on the rails. I also hope my italics tags are going to work.


------------------
SNUFF
PART V

Sniper woke up still wearing most of his clothes, one leg off the mattress, head thrown back, one hand down his pants, drooling on the other. This wasn’t unusual, he’d never been a sound sleeper—too high strung—so when sleep finally did take him down, it had to be an ambush. He extracted his hands, each soaked with their local fluids, and rinsed out his mouth and gloves in the van’s tiny sink while he brooded over last night’s dreams.

Hard to say exactly when reminisce turned to dream, but Sniper recalled snatches of weirdness as his hands rolled over themselves under the faucet—an extended, subconscious riff of the meeting in the shack: feverish mouths, desperate pawing at the red suitcloth, then the spy laughing queerly as Sniper’s hands became boneless and unresponsive, everything going wrong suddenly. He was still trying to undress the other man with useless hands, even with the horror of his rubbery fingers veering off the red jacket buttons, flopping at the ends of his wrists. He had backed away from an unblinking red beast, its mask stretched to bursting over gnashing jaws. He recalled waking up in a panic, disturbing the quiet in the van with a brief thrash. He’d fallen back to sleep, but now, standing at the sink, he resolved to drink less coffee before bed. Or more liquor.

Nothing more was said to Sniper about the reputed teamkill on the readouts, that day or the week following. He fell into a comfortable rhythm of successes, each day on the field closing with some personal satisfaction, even without a team win. He rarely glimpsed his lover through the scope, but wondered why the spy kept away. He’d done it before, often for reasons that were obscure. Sniper had learned to wait, thinking of Spy as something like a cat that let itself out as it pleased. Still, a flash of red suitcloth would give him a jolt, a sharp breath, and disturb his aim for a second or two.

He began looking for signs of the agent: his brand of cigarette butt in the snow, fine threads caught on shrub thorns, a whiff of smoke or cologne. Sniper spent the week undisturbed, and wondering. No messages arrived, though it would have been easy to leave them at the isolated RV. Sniper realized that the spy wouldn’t have had anything to say, even had he written. What would they talk about? The cafeteria meals, the other teammembers, the faint homesickness, the various pathologies that drove or smothered their comrades?

Sniper mused on this as he tapped his teeth with his pencil. It was two weeks without a trace of his demon lover, apart from glimpses through his scope. What was one possibly supposed to discuss with a ghost, an incubus, a serial killer? In this vacuum where they both lived and died, there was nothing to comment upon, except what was obvious to both of them. This was what Sniper attempted to do.

Let me tell you
About snow

Sniper frowned and put an X through the couplet. It read like a line from a television show, or worse, a Robert Frost poem. Nothing he’d bother anyone with reading, in other words. He began again.

How cold has the snow made us?
How frostbitten our fingers on triggers
How brutish are th

Jesus, what a bunch of tripe. Sniper sighed explosively and shoved his stool back from the tiny built-in desk. Handwriting was for third graders; real men used machines. He thought wistfully of his old Royal, doubtless rusting in a garage or a landfill. Traveling light meant leaving luxuries like typewriters behind, in the real world. But Sniper thought he knew where he could borrow one, just for the night.

Sniper just go to him!

This is my favourite fic, glad you're back.

SNUFF
PART VI



The viaduct base’s little sitting room—which BLU indulgently called “the Rec Room”—was warm and wooly after the icy walk from the RV. Sniper let himself in quietly, and pulled the door to. In front of the wood stove, where he always was, Soldier dozed upright with his gun in his lap, trench shovel against his knees. Whisky and pipe tobacco sweetened the room’s wartime fug—mildew, sweat, coffee, old carpet, new firewood. Sniper crept past the veteran, careful not to bump his throne.

He stopped creeping and let his boots scuffle and tap as he reached the hallway along the bunkrooms. It was only polite to alert the other men that someone would be walking past their doors. Sniper had moved to his RV in the first place because of the barracks’ nighttime murmurs. There were the predictable noises: belches, coughs, dropped boots, music and laughter. Then, the covert activity of nine men suffering the slings and arrows of long term sexual deprivation. After the first few weeks at work, after the back-slapping camaraderie of a new, shared venture had begun to tarnish, the team had seemed to repel apart. The diaspora sent the medic to his clinic early on. Engineer took to a cot out in his workshop. Soldier, exhausted from night terrors, took to “keeping watch”. And Sniper bunked in his van.

So it was with some reluctance that he made the long stroll past the bunks. A life in the bush had sapped his tolerance for close quarters; he didn’t relish overhearing the nightly noises again. But he was driven by the desire to make contact, to communicate in some way with his lover. This urge rode him like an itch, drove him out of his van and into the snow and gravel to “borrow a typewriter” from the doctor. He was vaguely aware of plans he hadn’t really made, to present his problem to the Medic, to throw himself on the mercy of doctor-patient confidentiality and find some poultice for this vulnerability, a vulnerability he could see turning into an obsession. The RED spy had found a pinhole in the sniper’s defenses, he knew now, and was gradually dilating it—a tug here, a tear there, a pull or a stretch until the devil could fit his entire body through. Maybe modern medicine had something for this, he thought. Maybe the doctor knew some grim German technique of stifling this weirdness, of returning some control to Sniper’s thoughts.

A door creaked as he walked past.

“Heya snipes; thought that was you. What’s doin’?”

Sniper startled out of his reverie, and turned. The scout was loafing against his doorframe, gilded with lamplight from inside the room. A damp-looking cigarette clung to his smirk, which was not unkind.

“Hey yourself. I was just going to ask the good doctor if I could borrow his typewriter. Time to write a letter home, and I never was any good with cursive, y’know?”

Scout laughed easily and shifted against the doorframe. The sniper thought about making a quip, something about Scout’s recent graduation from grammar school, composition notebooks, et cetera, but stopped himself as he glanced over the younger man’s face. There was stubble along that jaw—reddish-blonde, yes, but rough. Not peach fuzz. The very lightest of trace wrinkles at the corner of the eyes, and just starting to touch the forehead. Was the boy always a man, and they just hadn’t noticed? Or had it happened in the last few months, while Sniper wasn’t paying attention? He realized then, that he had always considered the scout a sort of mascot, a competent fighter yes, but certainly a child. And now, seeing the rough jaws, the wide shoulders, the muscular hands, he realized there were no more children amongst them anymore. The thought made him feel tired, suddenly, and sad. Scout met the bushman’s gaze, and brought his dogend up for a drag.

“Doc stays up late. Whyncha come in for a drink?” He swung the door a little wider and took a step back, letting his bandaged hand follow him over the doorframe. Was his voice lower, too?

Sniper stilled, breath caught at the invitation. Familiar abivalences pricked his brain—loneliness versus misanthropy, social anxiety, remembering irritation at the boy’s daytime rambunctious familiarity. But here, limbs slung across the lighted doorway like powerlines dipping across a prairie, Scout was not loud, not tense, not braying. In fact he seemed a harbor; calm, a languid frog in a pond of yellow light. A frog prince even, lithe and cool. More than anything, Sniper wanted to be soothed. And distracted. He wanted to be looked at, and spoken to—simple things. Human things.

“Sure.”

Yay, there's more! Ahh, I love this.

I like how someone finally describes Scout as an adult. I know he acts like a kid, but he really is at least close to being an adult.

SNUFF
PART VII


Sniper handed the joint back to the young man and subsided into a slouch, whisky warming in his glass, smoke tickling his throat. With no room for a sofa, the single bunk was the only seating available. Scout had swiped a few extra pillows from the abandoned rooms, and lined the wall along the bed, making a serviceable couch that faced a television perched on the sink. A little bathroom with toilet and tub was tucked behind, and Sniper wondered how the kid tolerated such close quarters. It seemed even smaller than the RV, but Scout’s personal effects decked every surface, speaking of a long and enthusiastic tenancy. Posters, photos, magazine clippings, and baseball cards were taped and pinned all around. They reflected the wide, shallow dreams of young men: their simple sexualities, their hero worship, their mistaking machismo for masculinity. Sniper exhaled, coughing a little. He wondered idly if Scout moved the clippings from base to base, or if he had a different hoard in each room. Johnny Carson mimed on the television, the volume turned all the way down to let the Coltrane record play on.

Scout pinched out the joint and propped it in the ashtray. He could see the sniper starting to drift a little wide, but that was okay. Let the guy unwind. Scout really had meant for them to just have a drink, but the drink made them talk and the talk swung to the only topic they had: the war, and what they did before the war, and what they’d do after. Scout had spent his life in a scrum of bouncing big brothers, chicks under his mother’s wings. When he signed up to the Builder’s League, he thought he’d traded one big family for another. The reality of the older mercenaries was a disappointment—these professional men were a jumble of strange traumas and subtle pathologies, and their scars kept a tally of violence that stretched for decades. They regarded the young recruit with something like pity. No one was more maudlin than an old soldier, and it seemed like looking at that jittery, gung-ho kid had just twisted the knife in their memories of real warfare. Scout wrote a lot of letters home, but his mother’s replies only told him how much the BLU censors had redacted before delivery. Sniper had listened to all this with whisky in his hand, and nodded, in the quiet way he had. Scout had offered the grass casually, and a touch gratefully. He thought the older man had looked a little guilty at his characterization of the other BLUs as standoffish. He felt lonely enough to take advantage of that guilt.

“Haven’t smoked in years,” Sniper mumbled. He shakily took a drink, a few drops escaping and rolling down his chin as Scout jostled the bed sitting down. Sniper swiped at them with a finger. “How’d you even get it in here?”

“Big brothers,” Scout replied, raising his glass in salute. “First thing they sent me, and a postcard from Cocoa Beach, Florida. I bought ma and everyone a trip with my first paycheck. S’funny, the postcard had been blacked out a little, but the pot was all there! Guess BLU don’t care about that stuff.” He sipped to the memory.

“Guess they don’t.”

Scout turned then, just to look at the older man, who was sunk so far back in pillows he was almost buried, his ropy body thrust out in front of him and angling down to the floor. He’d crossed one boot over the other and his hat was still on, drooping over his eyes as it mashed against the wall behind him. Scout couldn’t help but laugh a little, and the sniper looked up with bloodshot eyes. “What?”

“I dunno, you just look like one’a those paintin’s you see in hotels—you know, the sleepy cowboys on their rickety old horses, ponchos blowin’ in the prairie wind…” Scout wavered his hand across the whole room, miming a breeze over the wide, American frontier. Sniper watched the boy’s face as he swept the room, catching cold television light on one side, hot incandescent on the other. The colors made a halo in his pale stubble, in his trimmed hair.

“And you look like the moon,” Sniper returned, reeling a little from the pot. The young man frowned. “How d’ya mean?” “The moon, kid. In space, right, there’s no atmosphere. So the moon can’t hold onto any heat from the sun. Everywhere on the moon where there’s sunlight, it’s gonna be hotter than an oven. And everywhere there’s shade, it’ll be freezing. Colder than freezing. Been reading about it, about the astronauts and what they’ll have to wear to stay alive. That’s how you look in this light—hot on one side, cold on the other.” Sniper pointed to one of the boy’s cheeks, then the other, fumbling and rasping the stubble.

“Wow. We’re kinda poetic, y’know?” Scout laughed again, admiring the bushman’s rakish pose. Sniper took a dignified swig of his whisky in response, but hummed in surprise as the scout gave the bedframe a little shake, spilling another dollop of liquor past his chin. The boy caught the gunman’s hand as it came up to wipe his mouth, and leaned forward.

“Naw...let me.” Sniper’s eyes went wide as the pink mouth met his chin, and sucked.

He glanced down at the close-cropped head, and caught Scout blushing as he came up. Whisky glistened on his lower lip. “Aw, jeez, I’m sorry. It’s the grass, it makes me kinda, kinda, queer like this—” his apology was just noise, and Sniper could feel the boy’s pulse in his wrist, where Scout had grabbed him, still held him, radiating through his wrappings from his hot little veins. God he was adorable, sweet, soft. How Sniper had hungered for softness, and in this swirling golden moment he could give himself up to the liquor and the grass, he could shrug off the starvation the spy had inflicted, and let his guts come unknotted all at once. He wanted to feel more of that pulse.

With his free hand, he set his drink down on the bedside table.

I really, really like how this is playing out. Continue!

I just wanted to say that I really love your style of writing! It's very beautiful; you know how to pick just the right word to paint a picture of each scene in my mind, your characterisations are spot-on, the narrative flows smoothly - it's a pleasure to read this whole thread. I'll be checking back for more!

SNUFF
PART VIII


They started with his hands.

Scout inhaled sharply as the bushman pulled his hand—still wrapped around the older man’s wrist—to his mouth, and nipped the tucked-in edge of the athletic wrap. Sniper’s free hand took Scout’s wrist as he began to unwind the bandage, moving his chin in circles and pulling Scout’s hand away at an even pace, the strip playing out between them. Sniper finished one hand, the bandage piled on his chest, and started on the other, pulling Scout forward until he leaned across him, still sunk in pillows. Underneath, Scout’s hands were clean and pink, as warm as the gunman had hoped, lightly calloused, fragrant from the day’s wearing. He pressed one naked palm to his cheek, overcome with tenderness, and they both laughed with simple relief, and exhilaration.

Scout plucked away the bush hat, and tossed it onto the floor. Their eyes found each other, blue on blue, and Sniper felt an arrow pierce his chest: in the dueling glow from lamp and televison, the boy’s eyes took on a gas flame hue that Sniper hadn’t seen in two weeks. All at once, other features piled on: the finely-boned hands, too aristocratic for baseball, with long, smooth nailbeds. The pallor shining up under the farmer’s tan. Even something in the angle of the jaw, the set of the teeth, the swagger of the shoulders around the long, vulnerable neck. Scout stopped and searched Sniper’s stricken face. “Jesus guy, you okay? Listen uh, we don’t have to do this—”

“No no, no—just remembered something, is all. Thought I left the stove on in the van. But—I didn’t.” He pressed his unsteady mouth into one naked palm, then the other, pulling Scout onto his lap and leaning back into the pillows. “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.” Soothing him like he was still a child, whispering, talking himself down at the same time. It was just the pot. Or he had a type. It didn’t matter. Straddling him, Scout reared up into dimness and was still.

“You’re sure it’s okay?” He was biting his lip, and Sniper longed to worry at it with him. “Shh, yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, come here—” and he pulled, and stroked this quivering athlete’s beautiful arms, and captured the back of his neck at last, keeping up a gentle pulling, pressing them closer, letting his fingers plow the bristling nape like talons in mouse fur. But Scout was not a mouse, nor a boy, and the density of the young man made this obvious as he bent forward on Sniper’s thighs, pressing him into the mattress. He was lean and hard as a sport pony, and as his small, mobile mouth found Sniper’s earlobe, Sniper thought he could even smell an equine vigor about the younger man—sweet oats, green alfalfa, dirt, and leather, and iron buckles, and sweat, and life, life. He arched his head back into the pillows and let the beast graze on his throat—here was the drug, he thought with a sort of detachment, and how clearly it was making him see those pastures and paddocks (and pasterns and fetlocks, he added, fingers digging into Scout’s triceps, musing on his other muscles, thinking of hooves and cleats kicking up clods on the open grass).

“Stay with me,” Scout murmured, “don’t drift too far. We’re here.” He sat up and took Sniper’s hands in his own, kissed each palm, unbuckled the fingerless gloves and kissed them again when they were bare. They pressed their naked hands together briefly, strongly, so the palms stuck a little when they pulled them apart. Scout was breathing hard, and rolled back on his thighs to reach Sniper’s glass on the bedside table, drank, offered the glass to the man he straddled. Sweat glittered at his temples, and Sniper finished the drink before replacing it on the table. They looked at each other, breathing, waiting.

“Touch me.”

Sniper gave Scout’s arms a reassuring squeeze in reply. “No, I mean touch me. Touch me.” Scout was still, eyelids heavy. He gazed steadily at the gunman, waiting. Snipers first caresses were tentative, platonic. He moved to Scout’s shoulders, stroked his thumbs under the jaw, touched the adam’s apple, the impetuous chin, the lips. Then the ball of his thumb was sinking into softness, and he realized he was inside the scout’s mouth.

Lust went off in his body like a bomb. What had been sweet, suddenly burned and prickled, and he hooked his thumb over the colt’s lower teeth and pulled him down onto his chest, and didn’t take his thumb out until he slipped his tongue in. They moaned; Sniper nearly growling, Scout a hoarse tenor. They devoured each other’s mouths. Scout wedged his hand under Sniper’s head and twined a fist in his hair. The older man’s hands lost all semblance of civility and plunged down Scout’s spine and up again, then down to cup the spread buttocks, grip the bunched thighs. He pulled his rider’s hips down hard onto his own, forgetting to be ashamed of his erection. He reached into his pants and adjusted himself, then resettled the hard little ass on top. It struck him as terribly adolescent, to be drunk and stoned and fully clothed and grinding away in some tiny bedroom with jazz on the turntable, and he let himself enjoy it. He also let himself enjoy the view of Scout’s stiffening trouser front, and the hint of endearing self-consciousness as Scout let his own hand stray to his crotch and close around it, squeezing and caressing. The look of need the young man gave him was enough to send a shudder through the bushman, and he bucked his hips hard enough to make the Scout wince.

“I guess we’re both pretty skinny, huh” he panted, dog tags jingling.

“Mm,” Sniper mumbled over Scout’s fingers, which had found their way into his mouth. “Thorry about that.” Scout laughed happily, though it turned into a moan as Sniper sucked hard on his fingers, pulling them deep into his mouth. The older man looked up under his eyebrows, making sure Scout was watching, then parted two fingers with his muscular tongue and pressed the tip between them, stroking and probing. It was the most suggestive thing the Scout had ever seen, and it made him weak with need.

Sniper paused, kissing the much-suckled hands, and looked up at the man on his lap. He wanted the scout to tell him what was next, what he wanted, what he liked. He stretched luxuriously, pressing up into those resilient flanks as he did so, smiling. Finally he put his hands behind his head in an attitude of relaxation. “Well?”

“I think,” panted the young man, “that I’m going to need a shower first.”

wow

holy fuck
you dont know how happy this made me

Hnnnn....

Oh, lawdy, On most situations with Scout, I end up loving the situations but Scout is more a prop human then my mind's Scout. Shista,this was the best Scout I have seen. Not quite mature but definitely no longer a boy playing at being a man. I'm sincerely hoping this response was not overly biased, but that hope is sunk, lol.

I have a thing about hands. Needless to say that this latest installment made me very very happy.

Holy hell, I feel ashamed of my own writing whenever I read your work and now you've thrown Scout in.

I love this story though. Such wonderful description and such natural emotion to go with it. I can't express much more, words always fail me most when I need them to talk about what I liked. Keep it up!

Okay, I HAD to comment on this one. I just noticed the Captcha before going away from this page.

authority ofamage

I'm not sure what the authority of a mage applies to but... yes. Yes, captcha. TOXO's work is magical and very much an authority on something at least.

With all the comparisons of scout and spy sniper was making, I can't help but wonder.... Are spy and scout, um, related somehow?

You guys are so sweet. Thank you for your comments. I can't wait to get this republished somewhere in a cleaned-up version; this one posted here has a lot of stuff I've edited, fixed, or just improved in the file I've got on my laptop. I guess that happens to everyone who writes.

More soon.

Are you guys losing your minds from boredom yet? I know this scene is taking ages, but isn't that kind of how good, first-time sex works? All that tentative exploration, all that stopping to admire the view, all those little checks and balances of our self-consciousness and worry for our new lovers, and the time dilation of delirium.

Anyway, I hope it's working. Stay with me.

----------------

SNUFF
PART IX

“You need a shower worse than I do, hotshot.” Scout stood up and took Sniper’s hands, pulling him to his feet. They both reeled, leaning on each other and giggling, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

“You saying I stink?”

“Yeah, but it’s a good stink,” Scout mumbled, inhaling the older man’s fragrant neck. “You smell fuckin’ incredible. It’s like…jesus christ, you just smell good—”

“Come on, I want more than that. I give you a whole speech about bloody moonlight, and all I get is ‘fuckin’ incredible’?” Sniper grinned, holding Scout close and playfully bending his arm up behind him.

“Uncle! Uncle! Okay, you sadist, you asked for it—” Scout paused, his hips resting against Sniper’s. The gunner realized he still had a few inches on Scout, and that the kid must be all legs to be able to knock hipbones like this.

“You smell like all the good shit, y’know? You smell like booze, and grass, and sweat, and oil from your guns, and when you first came into my room you smelled like snow, and now you smell like I’ve been working you over for about two hours, ‘cause I have, and you smell like you wanna do something about it. You smell like the backseat of a Caddy at the beginning of the end of a really, really good night.” Scout’s voice had become more earnest and near, the longer he talked, and he murmured the closing metaphor into Sniper’s parted lips, their foreheads touching, and Sniper drank those last poetics straight from the softened mouth. The kiss was so slow, so light, that Sniper felt every pulse of blood through Scout’s lips. He let his tongue flow underneath the other, probing at those rushing veins for a rhythm, his hands stroking the youth’s neck and face very, very lightly. He played over the backs of Scout’s wide teeth; sucked on one lip, then the other, bit them lightly. With every tug at his mouth, Scout’s groin throbbed a response against Sniper’s thigh.

Scout began to lead them backwards, almost waltzing, reaching one hand behind him to pat along the wall and around the corner, where he fumbled to turn on the bathroom light.

“C’mon…this place comes with all the amenities. Ensuite bathroom, room service, fresh towels…you gotta take advantage of all this shit. Besides, it’s my turn.” He grinned and sat on the toilet lid, reaching sideways to the tub to turn on the shower, and pulled Sniper onto his lap. “Turnabout is fair play,” Sniper replied, and sat down firmly over what felt like a painfully solid erection. Scout grimaced, in that acute state between greed and oversensitivity, and amused himself with grinding up into Sniper while they waited for the water to warm. The temperature in the little bathroom bloomed as steam billowed from the tub. Sniper’s vision dimmed, and then Scout was laughing at him.

“I was wonderin’ how long you’d be able to keep those on,” he reached up to Sniper’s face and plucked off his fogged-up aviators, setting them on the toilet tank.

The gunner blinked and squinted—everything was bright, and blue, and as he waited dazedly for his eyes to adjust to a world without yellow lenses, he felt nimble fingers plucking at his shirt buttons. Scout leaned back as he undid one button, then another, starting at the older man’s neck and teasing himself with the incremental revelation of flesh. Sniper’s chest was silkily-furred, and Scout thought of red Australian wildernesses as he plowed his fingers over the tanned breastbone. He thought of the alien suns that skin had soaked in, thought of foreign dusts filming over the man’s form. He loved listening to Sniper’s voice—the accent made his American heart thump. Scout knew it was silly; he didn’t care, giggling at his own naivete as he slipped the final shirtbutton and gripped either side of Sniper’s well-traveled ribcage. The man on his lap was not muscular, but nor had he ever been fat. He had the ropy musculature and clinging skin of old guys who had spent their lives “skinny”, and sidestepped that middle-aged bloat, sliding right into “distinguished” without a backward glance. Scout wished fleetingly that he would meet the same fate in twenty years—here was a man he would not mind growing into.

But jesus christ, his pants ached. And this striptease was going to kill him, and the shower had already been on for ten minutes. “We’re gonna run outta hot water.” He stood, moving Sniper’s hips off his lap. The bushman leaned against the wall and let the kid loosen his belt and yank his open shirt off his shoulders. The steam was curling his hair, and dusting Scout’s with dew. He saw the runner’s movements become needy, then authoritative, and it felt delicious. His body went limp under the firm hands, and then they were both startlingly naked, and the hot water was abrading their delirious skin, and Scout’s mouth on his own felt almost cool, in comparison.

Please do NOT apologize for the slow speed of this scene, I am loving every second of it.

I absolutely adore careful detail, and the amount of time you take to describe each emotion and physical interaction is filling my stomach with butterflies.

You are lovely, this is lovely.

SWEET DELICIOUS FOREPLAY.
captcha: expect, withiin

I'll have to admit, I was disappointed for this to turn to the pairing I hate the most (better alternative would have been basically anything else; BLU Spy would have been ideal).

But I shall stick around, hoping for better times.

Eh, sex and good writing is sex and good writing. *shrugs*

I love your Scout, dear. Looking forward to the next portion of this deliciousness.

Don't you dare fucking apologize for the slowness. This is one of the hottest things I've ever read and it's rare that I come across such a fantastic depiction of one of my favorite pairings. Never stop. I'd have your fic-babies if I wasn't on the pill.

Well, okay. But this has to end sometime. So I'm calling it. It's time to close this chapter so we can move on to more important things than Sniper and Scout having absolutely delirious sex in a tiny, steamy bathroom.

-------------------

SNUFF
PART X

They held each other so tightly, they thought they might lose their balance. Time seemed to waver and drift, moving in sluggish throbs that built up against each of Sniper’s blinks, rushing past only when his eyes closed. He let his fingers loosen their grip on the body against him, let them slalom down the muscular back as Scout leaned in, humming in pleasure. Everything was slow, and slick, and almost too hot to stand. A strange desperation was closing in on Sniper, and he found Scout’s hand in the deluge and put it gratefully to his mouth, then kissed the boy himself, bringing their hands together down to their swollen cocks.

It was the simplest thing in the world to take each other from there. Scout uttered a little moue of surprise as he felt Sniper’s foreskin shift under his fingers, and looked down. The bushman, briefly embarrassed, met Scout’s grin and was assured that his new lover delighted in the novel shapes of his body. The didn’t speak, focusing on finding out everything they could by touch, all blushes and questioning glances and heads tipped back and groans of pleasure. Scout quickly intuited the purpose of a foreskin, and stroked the sliding length of his lover slowly, moving between their bellies. Sniper did what he could with spit, but it washed away so quickly.

Finally Scout reached out of the tub, into his trouser pocket, and came back with a little pan of hair pomade. The smell of bergamot and sandalwood enveloped them as he scooped a daub of the petroleum jelly out of the can. He spread it on himself slowly, acting out for Sniper a little, showing himself off. Sniper realized he had expected the American’s member to be as compact as the American, but the young man sported a startlingly large erection. It suited him, Sniper realized. It was proud, almost boastful, rounding out thicker in the middle, and as solid now as the runner’s thick, pale thighs. It looked out of place in Scout’s small hands, he mused, and slid his own hands down to replace them.

They played at gripping their erections together in slick hands and bucking against each other; they slid across each other’s bellies, they took turns caressing and gripping, and finally when both sensed a mutual determination, they brought each other off--firmly, intently, and messily. Scout howled his swan song on his toes, through teeth clamped on Sniper’s shoulder. The older man laid his cheek on the bent head and shook, stoic but for a guttural moan and trembling knees.

Scout recovered first, and started to soap Sniper gently.

“Why d’you suppose it does this,” he asked, making a face at the come turning ropy in the water. Sniper just smiled sleepily, and let himself be rinsed.

In ten minutes, they were both cleaned up and sitting chest-deep in the steaming tub. Scout had fetched the joint from the other room and relit it, his nude scramble making Sniper helpless with laughter, and returned to the tub with a slosh. And it was only then, through the clear water, that Sniper got a really, really good look at him.

“Jesus…you’re all shaved!”

“Yeah man. Why do you think I’m so goddamn fast?” Scout yawped in merriment at the outdoorsman’s shock.

“It’s real, uh, metropolitan of you. Very artistic.” Sniper was slightly disturbed, his realizations of Sniper’s maturity clashing with this almost prepubescent nudity. With his relaxed penis swaying harmlessly underwater, and his smooth white skin, Scout looked very much the kid again, and Sniper felt the beginnings of guilt and anxiety about what they had just done.

“You do…you do have some hair, right?”

“‘Course I do, Mister Humbert. Say, you worried about something? Wanna see my driver’s license?”

Sniper let himself be teased, the hot bathwater sapping his will to worry. Eventually Scout propped one graceful foot on his shoulder, and fetched a safety razor from the caddy. He whistled while he soaped his leg with a mug and brush, and let Sniper lick the fresh skin when he was done.

That was hot. HOT. I came buckets.

Oh hi. Nice of my thread not to just shit itself right off the board while I was gone for a month.

So um. Enjoy. I hope this all formats properly.

-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-

PART XI

He had to peel himself away from the hot, clammy boy.  Some inner alarm had jolted him upright, and he squinted into the filmy window: it had snowed in the night.  The room was all soft with it, blueish and still.  Scout sprawled over the tiny bunk, burning in his sleep like a steam engine.  They smelled of sweat, soap, and washed hair, the room still tropical with sex and bathing.

Sniper realized he had the echoes of the Announcer still ringing in his ears.  The broadcast repeated:

“Repeat: fields closed due to adverse weather conditions.   All service personnel to remain on standby.”

Sniper looked down at the young man, who slept on.  In the watery light, his features were clear and relaxed; an acne scar here and there, like little craters on a pale world, and the tender marbling of hot blue veins at his temples and eyelids.  His throat fluttered with his pulse, and Sniper admired the simple vitality of it.  Of him.  He stroked one of the shorn limbs, and mercifully disarmed the alarm clock on the bedside table.  Let the creature sleep.

—

“Come.”

The infirmary door was slightly ajar.   

“Herr Scharfschütze!  I see you very little these days.  Bitte, make yourself comfortable.” Medic rose to shake Sniper’s hand, then busied himself lifting cats off the opposite chair, then applying himself to the stolid-looking coffee service next to his desk.  “Milch?  Zucker?”

“Thanks, yeah.  Looks like we got a snow day.”  Sniper took the offered chair, reaching down to stroke one of the disenfranchised cats.  It purred; a little white cat with a smudge of black on its muzzle.  All of Medic’s cats looked this way; something to do with a breeding program.  Everyone had his hobbies.

“Ja.  We may be in here for some time.  See the height of the stuff at my windows!  It is like die Ostfront all over again!  Ha ha!”  The doctor’s teeth clinked merrily on his mug.  “Of what service can I be?  What are the symptoms?”

“No no, nothing like that.  Just thought you might have a typewriter I could borrow.”

“Of course, certainly.  But it is bad manners to come visiting, only to take something away!  We have nothing to do today; let us chat, my friend.  Tell me what it is you are writing.”  Medic propped his chin on a gloved fist, as if he were a coy gossip at high tea.

“Letters home.  Me mum always dresses me down for my handwriting, so I thought I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction this time.  She’s a tough old lady, but her eyesight is going.”

“Fascinating!  Cataracts?  Diabetes?  Myopia?  There are many interesting illnesses that affect the elderly in your country, I have read, some having to do with the wild and domesticated animals in the ‘bush’.  Perhaps you can tell me your opinion on the case study from the Sydney Medical School, where the patient’s moustache was afflicted with a skin and hair condition normally found only in sheep—”

And it went on like that for much of the morning.  Sniper relaxed into an easy patter.  Talking to the doctor was easy, as long as you didn’t try to pull him out of his conversational ruts—pathology, eugenics, cabaret—and the gunman’s mood was languid from the night’s exertions.  After a bout of particularly eager questions on his experiences with necrotic native spider bites, Medic’s little grandfather clock chimed 8 o’clock.  “Ach, mein Gott.  But I have kept you from your letters.  Let me fetch the machine, it is in the dispensary, for the labels,” and he bustled through the door to the storage room, leaving his mug behind.

Sniper idly scanned the office while he waited, Medic’s humming and clinking muffled by the closed door.  There were a few competent, charmless gouache studies of Alpine meadows on the walls, and battered file cabinets, and the clock.  The desk itself was scrubbed and squared up with its notepad, pencil cup and green felt blotter, a corner of which now bent up carelessly against the mug.  A scrap was visible underneath.  Sniper’s interest was piqued.  With Medic sounding reassuringly distant in the other room, he snaked his hand under the blotter and pulled out a battered photograph.

It depicted a boy of seven or eight years, sitting—no, tied—in a chair in a dark room, his round face and white button-up shirt overexposed by the flashbulb.  He wore glasses, short pants and knee-high socks with small, neat shoes.  His expression was enigmatic, strained; a shock of black hair fell over one eye.  

Sniper turned the photo over, the paper crisp and new.  There was neat, cursive handwriting on the back.

Remember—we have him.

What was this?  Sniper knew the doctor was a queer bird, but children tied to chairs?  And what did the note mean?  He slipped the photo back under the blotter as the door banged open behind him.  

“DOC!  Yo, I need my pills!” Scout clattered into the office, colliding with the back of Sniper’s chair.  The cats that had colonized the gunman scattered under the furniture.  “Jesus, sorry.  HEY DOC!  Sorry man, sorry.  I’m in a fuck of a hurry my alarm clock didn’t go off I’m late as shit--why are you here?  DOC, COME ON MAN!  Where is he?!”

Medic kicked the pharmacy door open in a panic, “Vas?! Who is hurt?”

“Easy kid, you’re not late for anything.  We’re snowed in; we’re off today.”

“Aw thank Jesus!  Man.  Hoooooo.” Scout leaned heavily on the chairback and exhaled explosively.  He seemed genuinely rattled, and his hands shook as he ran them over his buzzcut. “Why the fuck’d my alarm not go--um.”  He’d caught Sniper’s eye.  “Awright.  Listen, I’ll see you guys at the mess.  I guess there’s still breakfast, even if it’s a snow day.  Doc, I can come back later.”  The Medic nodded once, and Scout was gone.  

The doctor gave Sniper a brief, tight smile.  “Einen Moment. Der Maschine, of course.”  He returned with typewriter in arm, and handed it to the other man.  

“I really do not need it back any time soon, but if you would like to visit, I’m sure die Katzen would be happy.  You are good with animals.”  

“Sure, Doc.  I’ll pop my head in, next time I’m passing by.”

Sniper took his hat in his free hand, and settled it on his head.  Medic was looking at him strangely, which wasn’t unusual by itself--the doctor was eccentric, but to what extent, Sniper could never tell.  The German opened the door for his guest with customary good manners, but laid a hand on his arm as he moved to leave.

“That boy...I do not know what you mean to do with him, but kehre vor Deiner eigenen Tür.”

Sniper stared at the narrowed blue eyes.  “Pardon?”

“Do not shit my fucks, Herr Scharfschütze.”

As the door closed behind him, Sniper reflected on the wisdom of not correcting the idioms of a man who could remove—literally—all of one’s blood.

Medic keeps kitlers.

Medic keeps kitlers.

My day has been made.

Ooooh, more plot? I am excite! Thank you for providing another great chapter! This just keeps getting better and better, and I’m still in love with your writing style – you have a way of painting with your words that is very enjoyable to read. I also love your dialogue, how each character speaks in a very distinct fashion, just like in their ‘Meet the’ videos; it’s great to read.

I have a small question, though – I understand Medic’s veiled mind your own business, we have a very similar expression in my own language, but which English idiom is he going for here? I’d like to know so I don’t make the same mistake he is. English idioms are hard.

60 Thank you very much! The original German is apparently traditional, meaning 'only sweep your own doorstep' (mind your own business), but he really has no idea what he's saying in English in the second place because, as you said, English idioms are hard (also "don't shit my fucks" is something a friend has started saying and it cracks me up). Although I discovered in my research that a lot of English idioms are identical to German ones, which makes sense.

>>61
You’re welcome, and thanks for the explanation!

Yeah, the German proverb goes: Ein jeder kehre vor seiner eigenen Tür, dann wird die ganze Straße sauber, i.e. if everybody sweeps in front of their own door (minds their own business), the whole street will be clean (there won’t be any problems). In my native language we say to sweep in front of your own door (getting your own problems solved first) before sweeping in front of other’s (getting involved in their mess). It’s good advice in any case.

As for the don’t shit my fucks, I thought it might have come from a mangled English proverb that I wasn’t familiar with – I’m kind of glad it didn’t, since I won’t have to memorise yet another nonsensical idiom. I’ve been told that even excellent foreign speakers of English sometimes trip over the idioms, either failing to comprehend the meaning of the English ones or directly translating another from their native language and making no sense, and I really like how your Medic makes this mistake here as well – even if he didn’t use the occasional German word, it’d still mark him as a foreigner and a second- or third-language English speaker. I can relate to that. ;)

>>62
I'm glad to hear it's reading alright. All the Germans I know speak three or four languages, so I'm trying to base Medic's speech patterns on them. Also, if you ever have any questions about English, especially idioms and metaphors and colloquialisms, please hit me up. I only speak English, but I really speak it, if that makes sense. I love talking about English.

But mostly "don't shit my fucks" was a joke. The friend I was talking to about this chapter suggested it in jest and I decided to put it in because it's nonsensical in a very specific way, but mostly because it makes me giggle like an idiot.

This story has gotten wildly out of hand and I am currently doing all sorts of contortions trying to get it to end up at the finale. Thanks for sticking with me, everyone!

PART XII

There was nowhere to go.

Sniper checked each exit in the base, feeling claustrophobic after so long inside, but they were well and truly snowed in. It piled against the doors, impossible to shift. Lugging the typewriter, he ended up in the mess. At least it was somewhere to sit.

It was empty, a leisurely breakfast sitting picked-over on the counter. Sniper wasn’t hungry, but made a slice of toast for something to do. Engineer was spread over one table, surrounded by notepads and coffee, pulling printed ribbon through his fingers, paper that Sniper recognized as respawn ticker tape—machinery so vital and so sensitive had to be constantly monitored for malfunction, and the spawner dumped reams of tape every day. Sniper wasn’t sure what it was for. Engineer looked up at the sound of the toaster, and gave Sniper a friendly nod.

“Mornin’! You missed everyone; I think most of ‘em went back to bed.”

Sniper felt it would be impolite to sit anywhere but with Engie, so he slid in across from the technician with his toast on a plate. “Something wrong with the respawn? Seemed fine to me, last few weeks.”

Engineer tilted back in his chair and fixed Sniper with a bemused expression. “Really? Thought you’d seemed a little distracted lately, but gee! You really haven’t noticed the spy?”

Sniper’s guts dropped as he struggled to control a grimace of fear. Oh god—what did they know? “Spy? Their spy?”

“No, y’big goose. Our spy! Well, his body, to be more precise.”

Sniper stared at Engineer. Body? Was this some sort of homosexual lunchroom patter he hadn’t run into yet? “What?”

Engie leaned forward earnestly, brows knitting. “Shooter, our spy’s been respawning, headless, for the past week and a half. You really ain’t seen?”

Now that he mentioned it, Sniper thought he recalled seeing the BLU Spy’s corpse in respawn once or twice. He figured the RED sniper had found a good line into the base, or that the spy had simply gotten unlucky with ordnance tossed into their spawn room. It happened.

“You know, my spawn position’s a ways in front of his, but yeah, I guess I have looked back a couple times and wondered. You’re telling me he’s just…respawning? Without his head? Already dead?”

“No sir, he’s alive. For a minute or two, anyway. Then the body shuts down of course, and respawn picks it up and spits it back out, ad infinitum. Got no idea what the hell’s goin’ on! Or where his head’s at. Dunno if it got blown off and out of bounds, or if there’s something wrong in the machine itself. I keep tripping over him on the way out. Tried to shut down just his printer, just until we found his head, but couldn’t really do it without mucking around with everyone’s. I guess it don’t do no harm; just creepy is all.” Engineer looked haunted for a moment, then peered back down at the tape. He read a few more inches before sighing and leaning back.

“Spawner’s built with high capacity in mind, but I don’t feel right about letting it print all the time like that. Can’t be good for the contacts, and god knows what that kind of traffic is doing to his genome. It’s four degrees warmer in there than it should be.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, his cropped scalp, sighing. “They only told me enough about this thing to keep it running; I can only guess at the theory behind it.” Engineer looked up. “Aw, my apologies. This ain’t your concern. Must be boring.”

“Well no, wouldn’t call it that.” Sniper bit his toast. “Sounds like a goddamn freak show, actually.”

“Yep.”

They sat quietly, engaged in their own private musings on the nature of headlessness.

I love the headless spy reference hehehe

Not one, but two updates? Day made.

Oh my goodness. Two updates? Happy birthday to me.

Spybody! I giggled. Ah, headlessness, an endless source of amusement...

I feel sorry for the BLU Spy. I bet the RED medic is really enjoying having the BLU spy head in his fridge.....

PART XIII

It was awful, being canned up with the rest of them. After a weird night, weirder morning, and too much coffee, Sniper found himself actually pacing the hallway—something he thought people only did in cartoons.

He could distantly hear an argument from the sitting room, where the more sociable men tended to gravitate. The accents were clear even when the words were not, and he could dimly follow a back and forth between Demo and Soldier over something to do with the battle of Agincourt. Soldier often started fights this way; his “military history” was whatever made sense to him, with the names and dates cherrypicked from distant memories he had of the real world. With space and tempers running short, no one was in any mood to humor the old vigilante.

So Sniper paced. The smell in this part of the hallway was overpowering—through a door carelessly ajar, a scorched rubber suit was just visible on a bare bedframe, slouched and greasy. Bits of rubber waffled out through the bedsprings. Pyro never removed the suit, never so much as took off his gloves to pick his nose. Despite his self-imposed quarantine, the effects of stewing in an airless sheath were apparent—Pyro carried with him a stink like a tire fire in a frat house bathroom: it billowed through any room he approached, driving men and animals before it, like a red tide poisoning the sea. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, apparently pleased by his solitude.

Sniper paused, swathed in the unpleasant odor, an idea forming. He knocked, lightly.

“Afternoon,” he said, touching his hat. Pyro lifted one glove languidly and let it drop. Taking this as permission, Sniper opened the door and took a step forward.

“Listen, I think we’d all like to get out of here. I was just wondering…do you think you could spare your thrower, just for a minute? I just need to get back to my van; I know your piece’d make short work of that snowpack.”

The mask squeaked around to stare. The Pyro said nothing. The lenses were greasy with soot, and Sniper began to notice scorched cans of mess hall rations here and there in the jumble of Pyro’s bizarre hoard. With the labels burnt off, it was impossible to tell what he’d been eating. Sniper returned to the thing on the bed, prickling a little under the impassive gaze.

“I know it’s a favor; right, I’d owe you one. Just want to get back out to my own digs, y’know?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, trying to seem casual. Friendly-like.

Rubber squeaked as Pyro lifted a bottled soft drink to his mask, inserted a rubber proboscis from the muzzle, and sucked noisily. His gaze remained steady, the cola draining slowly.

“Look, I...please?”

Slurrrrrp.

Sniper thought he heard a muffled belch as he walked away.

-=-

“Just wanted a goddamn typewriter,” Sniper muttered. Talking to himself. That was another thing he thought only happened in cartoons. The pert little machine was sitting on a bare desk in one of the unoccupied bunkrooms. He shuffled around outside the door, loath to confine himself to an even smaller space. The little room was dim and musty, snow blinding the single, high window.

The metal folding chair was chilly. So were the keys.

and here I was looking XXX (he hammered Xs over his mistakes)
finding blood on the sno(you)w

that fox suit threadbarren, everywhere
rubbed sparse on the same paths

bullets riXXXXXXXX
bullets slipping the same holes
and holes catching cold only

Sniper leaned back, chair creaking. He re-read the page, chewing a thumbnail. It was better, certainly. Better than what he’d started yesterday, and better than nothing. In this sober afternoon, so far away from comfort or distraction, the RED spy’s absence came slithering back to bite him. The stupidity of what he was doing, the desperation of it, took hold suddenly, and he felt himself burn with shame. He shoved back from the desk and knocked his hat to the floor, rubbing at his temples. A grown man, writing bad poetry in a cold room, and for what? To impress a boyfriend? And not even that; just a perverse office fling: some sick, wartime, any-port-in-a-storm, battlefield cottage fuck. This was ridiculous—he was ridiculous. His degree in “contemporary literature” was ridiculous, which was why he had picked up a gun in the first place. The gun that had gotten him this job. His head hurt.

Tack. Tick. Clack clack.

Sniper’s eyes came up slowly. Keys depressed themselves on the typewriter as he watched, a new line appearing on the page.

but, soft! what sight from yonder snowdrift breaks
Ding. New line.
it is the beast, and juliet has a gun.

Sniper grasped blindly at the air around the typewriter, discovering cool cloth and solid flesh he could not see. Leather hands found his body, and he was swept into the arms of a ghost. “Forgive me,” it muttered, “it is a lovely poem.”

“Where—how did you—why are you here,” Sniper finally settled on one of his dozen pressing questions.

“Snowed in here with the rest of you, of course.” Sniper felt his hair being smoothed back from his face, his head cupped and stroked. The tenderness of it was disorienting.

“You’ve been gone—”

“Non. Not gone. Watching. Doing my job, yes, but watching you when I could. You put on a thrilling little show. I wish you moved like that when you knew you were being looked at.” Sniper was grinning foolishly, ducking his face into the gloves that held it, kissing them, nipping at them with his teeth. “I wish I could have touched you, several nights ago, when you were alone in your van.” Spy touched him now, Sniper’s shirt moving eerily, as phantom hands played over his chest. “You looked at though you were dreaming.”

“I was dreaming.” Sniper wondered if the unseen agent had touched him, had lit butterfly hands on his body as he slept helplessly. What would have stopped him? Perhaps he was responsible for the mess Sniper had woken up with. The idea was sickening, invasive. And thrilling.

“What job? What’s RED doing, sending agents in the off hours?” Sniper addressed his questions to the wall behind where the spy sat on his writing desk, still cloaked. It was maddening. “God damn it, what are you still hiding for? The fucking door’s closed.”

“Shhh…do not cuss at me. Think. Do you want some bleu oaf to blunder in and see me here?” An unseen glove patted Sniper’s cheek.

“Alright, but what use is sneaking around BLU at night?”

“None whatsoever, ma cher—unless ‘gathering intelligence about your enemy’ seems a worthwhile pursuit.” The sarcasm felt inappropriate, under the circumstances.

Sniper was silent, nostrils flaring. He thought he could hear the monster smiling at him; making him feel small and foolish.

“You are angry?”

“I—” Sniper felt his face burn.

“Of course, you do not know why you are angry. You know you have no right to be angry. That I owe you nothing.” The voice chilled, the hands fell away, and Sniper felt he had come unanchored from the room itself—that he was floating. After a moment, he dared to reach for where the spy had been, but only touched the wall.

A lighter clicked, and a plume of smoke rolled over his shoulder, issuing from nowhere. The voice came from behind him. “Ah, kochanie, I did not expect this naivete from one so well-traveled,” Spy sighed, his voice unctuous and pained. “But I suppose you travel alone.” That stung.

“I had a gift for you today; a symbol of my trust and affection. Now, I do not know if I should give it.”

“Well, is that so. Buttering up the ‘enemy’ now, I guess. Aren’t I supposed to beware of sneaks bearing gifts?” Sniper hated the petulant words as soon as they fell out of his mouth. At this rate, his face would burn away completely. I’m a grown man, he thought. His resentment for the spy welled like pus. He hated the hollow melodrama of this scene, this stupid snit he had been dragged into, hated this eurotrash lothario for ensnaring him, and especially hated how these taunts and dances and moues made him want nothing more than to fuck the prancing bastard—savagely, feverishly, exhaustively.

Sniper turned to face the voice, and reached out. The ghost did not evade him, in fact stood submissively while Sniper hooked his lapels, pulled him forward. He smelled smoky breath, felt the mask catch on his rough cheek. He blundered to Spy’s mouth, which burned and devoured just as he remembered. He shut his eyes, and the agent was there, in winter-lit memory. He opened them, and he was standing alone in a room with his mouth open, and his fists balled in front of him. “Turn it off,” he growled. “Turn off that goddamn gadget before I send you home the hard way.”

“This is the hard way,” Spy laughed, and pressed his thigh between Sniper’s legs. They were both straining at their trousers, and Sniper shoved until he was pressing his ghost against the wall.

“Turn it off, spook.” He pinned Spy and started invading his clothing, searching for the device that shrouded the agent.

“No. It would ruin your gift.”

“I don’t—”

“Shut up, and give me your hands.”

Spy caught Sniper’s wrists and guided them up, up to his elegant neck, still sheathed in his balaclava. “Go ahead,” whispered the Spy. “Close your eyes. It will be easier to find your way.”

“You want me to—to strangle you?”

“No, buffone. I want you to skin me.”

Oh, yes, more please.

Just, dying over here.

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of italics in spy's addition to the poem. Oversight on my part.

>>71
Anne, let's post filthwords about spy and sniper at each other, forever

I’ll join Anne in begging for more and dying over here!

You know, I love the English language too. For a foreign speaker, I’m quite the Anglophile; I can get high on just beautiful words alone, even if I’m reading a text that’s otherwise uninteresting to me, and I collect words—every time I come across a word or phrase or sentence I like or which is unfamiliar to me, I copy it to my notebook. There are published works I read that never warrant a mention, but I think I now have a full page from your fic alone.

Your prose is just delicious, invoking every sense of perception and teasing the imagination, a literary gourmet meal—the kind that, if it were real cuisine, I could never afford to taste. Thank you so much for sharing, and please, never stop! I’ll be delighted to eat read everything you write.

Toxo, please continue forever.

>>73

You're foreign? What's your first language? Your English is astonishing for someone who isn't a native speaker (well, writer in this situation).

This story is written so well.
“No, buffone. I want you to skin me.”
Oh god, that line. Your entire story is like one giant poem.

MANY THANKS!

>>73
I agree with 74. your writing, even in the comments, is just astoundingly good. Thank you for reading my story, and especially thank you for enjoying it the way you do, which is the way I hoped people would enjoy it. Have you read any Nabokov? Through my constant, slavish references you can probably tell he's my favorite writer. English was his third or fourth language, but I insist that Lolita is the great american novel, precisely because it was written by an outsider: the only person with a good view.

>>72

FOREVER.

(Captcha says 'command', so I guess that settles it. An exchange of filthwords has been commanded)

I don't know what a "surplus ercempi" is, Mr. Captcha, but it sounds sort of filthy, so go ahead and have some.

-=-

PART XIV

The mask.

Shut your eyes, the spy had said. Skin me.

His fingers trembled at Spy’s pulse points. He had stolen caresses under the balaclava before, even tongued the perimeter, but knew instinctively to let it alone. Spy’s face was intensely private, nearly obscene; unsuited for public consumption. And how Sniper had wished to consume it. In the swimming black behind his eyelids, the gunman thought of death adders rubbing their sloughed skins on the red rocks of his homeland.

Sniper opened his eyes, and found his fingers resting on nothing. He moaned in frustration.

“Let me see you; I just want—”

“Shh…liebchen, if your base is anything like ours, there are cameras everywhere, cameras even I have not found. Right now, the footage is only of a mad poet, becoming agitated and aroused in an empty room. Explicable. Odd, but not alarmingly so—not against the rest of these poor outpatients. Here—” the Spy shifted under his hands; there was the sound of silk, and Sniper’s vision was blotted out. “You may borrow this, if it helps.” Spy knotted the tie at the back of his head. “Try not to cry on it.”

Sniper bared his teeth and tightened his grip on the spy’s throat. He thumped his insolent lover against the wall, eliciting only a winded chuckle. But he left the blindfold on. It helped. His brain quieted in the dark. Again he thought of snakes, how their skins became prismatic after a slough, how they shone in the dust. His fingers loosened around the neck, crept down to the naked shirtcollar, slipped a couple buttons by feel. Between the lapels, he found the finely stitched hem of the mask, and slipped underneath.

This was as far as he had gone before. The throat was mobile and alive, jugular and trachea swimming in blood under thin, hot skin. It vibrated like a drum as Spy hummed encouragement, lifting his chin, stretching his expanse of neck as Sniper slowly peeled upwards. The material was membrane-thin and exquisitely giving; difficult even to feel against his fingers, it put up so little resistance. Sniper held the mask up under the chin and dipped his head to sample that naked throat, tasting sweat and aftershave, tonguing stubble. One hand traveled over the jaw, forcing the head back against the wall, firm and greedy, mask bunching around his knuckles. His fingers invaded the Spy’s mocking mouth, gripped his teeth, pried him open. The tongue lapped at him, moans hollow in the gaping throat. “Oui,” moaned the agent, squirming. Gripping the mandible like a landed fish, Sniper bit down on the filmy material and began to pull. It burst and laddered like a stocking, tearing away from the spy’s head in a silken web. He spat the stuff on the floor, pulling threads from his teeth. His pelvis knocked against his captive’s, pinning him to the wall. Still grasping the naked face in one hand, Sniper began to fondle it with the other. As the blind read faces with fingertips, so the blindfolded poured over the unmasked man.

Angles. A sense of sharpness, felinity. Planed cheeks, and a slightly cleft chin. Neat, arched brows. The skin fine, and slightly oily. The hair of medium length, combed back from a peaked hairline, a little matted from the pressing of the mask. His shampoo smelled of sandalwood. Delicate eyelids, smiling at the corners. Stiff, fluttering lashes. The already-familiar aquiline nose and succulent mouth. Without light or color to distract him, Sniper’s senses plunged into these explorations as if wading into a swamp. It was almost too much, too visceral, too tender. He could not help but wonder how it would feel to take the spy’s jaws in either hand, and pull him apart, climb into his splitting flesh, wallow in his iridescent organs. He smelled the forgotten cigarette, then sweat, then the expensive soap and cologne on his lover. Smelled his own miserable greed, his dusty clothes, his old snow. Realized he was breathing hard and stroking the alien flesh, massaging the lips and tongue. He withdrew his fingers from Spy’s mouth, leaned his wet hand against the wall, and tried to catch his breath.

“You should see yourself just now,” breathed the agent. “You are absolutely rampant. I believe you cannot decide if you want to fuck me, or kill me. It is gorgeous.”

Sniper heard him suck once on his cigarette, and flick it away. Breathing smoke, Spy closed in on his neck, nipping his jaw, storming under his shirt to suckle and tongue. The mouth descended where scouting hands led, buttons slipped, buckles undone, and at last, the long hard pull of a zipper. Sniper leaned heavily on the wall, arching over his crouching wanton, and tried not to tremble to pieces. The long ends of the tie slipped over one shoulder as he bent forward to set his forehead on the wall, reach down and—for the first time—entwine one fist in the Spy’s hair. He pulled experimentally, and was rewarded with a gasp. “Yes,” entreated the spy, letting the English trail into a hiss. The obscenities that Sniper wanted to speak, to command that the Spy perform, were entirely conceptual—so filthy and depraved, he could not imagine what language they’d be in. He only knew he wanted it, that he would hurt the kneeling man very badly if he was not indulged instantly, and when leather fingers freed him from his pants, he thrust home the moment he felt mouth, while speaking in tongues.

He had never had him like this, never on his knees, supplicating. Sniper felt he would go mad with power. He hit the Spy’s throat and kept pushing, knocking the back of his head against the wall, holding him by his hair while he let the man squirm, unable to pull away. Spy couldn’t breathe, choked off completely, and Sniper counted slowly to twenty before withdrawing. He rested, slick, on the gasping lips, but already Spy was murmuring, coaxing, entreating, and swallowing him again. Releasing his hair, Sniper set both fists on the wall and began to thrust into the mouth, firmly, relentlessly, the Spy whimpering, clinging to his belt to steady them. It was not long. A bubble of hot poison swelled, and burst across the Spy’s mouth. In the strangled language of orgasm, he was ordered to suck it down, the final spasms lapping at the man standing over him, receding, and leaving the conquerer damp and melancholy.

Sniper sank to the floor with his ruined ghost, and let himself twitch and tremble into a remorseful embrace.

“Shhh,” whispered the ghost. “Shhhhh.”

YES.

This is beautiful. This is like poetry, but then it's also porn, which makes it pretty much the best thing in the world.

I want to curl up with this chapter and let it whisper sweet dirty things in my ear always.

I read this latest chapter no fewer than 3 times at work today.

I hope you're happy, 'cause I know I am.

I don't post often (cause I'm a shy poster), but this.... this was just so... amazing, godly, tasty? I can't even think of a word that would do this justice. Also,

"A bubble of hot poison swelled, and burst across the Spy's mouth."

guh, forever sexy.

Oh...oh my god.

That was amazing. Gorgeous. Brilliance.

Like, I just...I give up writing forever. I can't...I just.../wow/.

This story is great! My only suggestion is that I don't think it really needed the sex. I suppose I could be biased, though, speaking as a gay man.

According to the captcha, I am 'being ngleed' right now, which is pretty much accurate. I really appreciate the comments.

>>81
Oh my god, right? I can say that, because it's not mine. I stole it from Nabokov:
A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs— the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

>>83
Now THAT is feedback you don't hear much around these parts, and I find it refreshing. You know what? This started as a sweet n easy fuck story with a gory gimmick, but around Part IV I think something in my brain snapped and I started getting all these...plot ideas. So many...too many for this one story, actually. So now it is a long and grueling fuck story with a whole gory storyline.

As an aside, Tim, would you be willing to contact me off the boards to answer some questions I have? I'm writing a thesis deconstruction of feminism in the TF2 fandom and I have always, always wanted to get the perspective of male fans, particularly gay male fans.

These next few chapters might get weird, everyone. Buckle up and take your protein pills.

Yet another wonderful chapter! I just love, love the sensuality of your writing, how everything is taste and smell and touch, and dirty and sweaty and not-perfect. Your characters are wonderful and your metaphors stunning, startling the reader and striking home the drama of the scene. Just delicious to read, but delicious in that guilty-pleasure fashion that leaves your readers sinfully glutted and still wanting more.

I also love your Sniper. Everything he does is so tinged with guilt, like he’s fighting himself every step of the way and still losing to his own baser nature. Spy is at peace with what he is, but Sniper seems in constant conflict with himself. It’s interesting to see a person usually so poised lose control and spiral down into half-madness. I wonder if Spy realises just how much he gets to Sniper—he probably does, and loves it, and deliberately stokes the embers of Sniper’s guilt. I’m looking forward to the subject of Sniper’s moment of infidelity with Scout being brought up between them, if it ever is. I can’t even predict how Spy will react to that, or whether he already knows.

This whole fic is just mmm—please, give us more!

(I like the sex, though. This is the most high-class porn I have ever read. I feel at the same time a better, cultured, more refined person for enjoying the penmanship—and a terrible one for delighting in the subject! Don’t you dare take away the sex!)

>>74
Thank you! My first language is Danish. I’ve learned English in school since the age of 10 and up through high school, opting for the extra A-level classes in my senior year. Other than that, my proficiency with the language stems from books and films, since foreign movies and TV series here are subtitled, not dubbed. I still make mistakes, though—some of them I later spot and rage over, others result from unfamiliarity with some obscure rule of grammar and those I’ll sadly never catch—and my spoken English is not nearly as good as this, since I don’t have a chance to practise often. I’m told I speak perfectly understandable English, but to my consternation with a noticeable Scandinavian accent.

>>76
Aw, you guys are making me blush! Thank you for the kind words on my commentary—yes, I really do enjoy reading this story, not just because of your luscious style of writing, but also for your intricate plotlines and fantastic characterisations. I would read this a dozen times, and have, and read it again.

However, I must admit that my familiarity with Nabokov consist only of a brief meeting in high school, where we were set to read excepts from his ‘Lolita’. After reading this and knowing your source of inspiration, I am going to buy the whole book as soon as possible! Are there other books you would recommend? I’m not picky!

>>85
I highly recommend starting with Lolita, and from there it's going to be a matter of personal taste. Laughter in the Dark is more of a screenplay than a novel, but still very good. Ada is my personal favorite, but its prose is even more purple than Lolita's, so it's not for everyone. Only for people that love books like black forest cakes, books that almost make you sick, they are so sweetly dense.

Back to our regularly-scheduled psychodrama, already in progress.


-=-=-=-

PART XV

He was not shocked when the Spy lifted him bodily, cradling him like a child, though the two men were not much differently-sized. He let himself be laid on the bed’s bare mattress, let his blindfold be removed. He was exhausted, and craved the tenderness more than dignity.

“Do you feel better?” Spy was stroking his forehead.

Sniper didn’t answer, merely sat up and salvaged his hat from where it lay. Settling it on his head, he noticed the wadded red balaclava on the floor. He picked that up, too. “Want this back?”

“No, merci. I have plenty.”

Sniper held it to his nose before tucking it into a vest pocket. Sandalwood.

“And to the winner, go the spoils,” Spy murmured. Guilt pricked at Sniper, and he turned towards the voice, floating above the indent on the mattress. What he had done with—to—the Spy was new to him; all that rage and helplessness was something he kept tightly screwed into jars, as deep in his psyche as he could shove it down. He had lost control, and it had emptied him out.

“Are you staying here?” Sniper asked. With me? he added, unspoken.

“Yes. I cannot leave, any more than you can. Not until the snow melts or we are freed somehow. I spent last night in this very room, in fact. Listening to you. Well, you and the boy.” Spy’s voice was casual—carefully so. Sniper imagined him examining his gloves. “His room is on the other side of that wall.”

Sniper said nothing. He had a sense of having expected this, and wondered how he had convinced himself nothing would come of it. “Listen, we—” he began shakily, “you and me never agreed to anything, this wasn’t…y’know…this isn’t—”

“Cher, do I really need to lower myself—lower both of us, actually—to explaining, in detail, why it would distress me, listening to you noisily rutting a fresh-faced co-ed? Please, consider my position: cowering in the very creche of the enemy, on a bare mattress, in a cold room, with only an extended soundtrack of betrayal to keep me company? Please,” he said again, and lit a cigarette, the flame flaring for a moment beyond the cloak. “I am a professional. Not an automaton.” His exhalation was melancholy. “I do not know why I exposed myself to you again, here, just now. I suppose I missed you. I assume you did not use protection with him?”

“Well, we didn’t do anyth—”

“Please! Spare me these awful details; do not relive your conquest on my account. It is just that I know things about your scout, things that make me fear for the medical records of your entire team.”

“He’s not like that; he wouldn’t be—”

“What? Fucking someone else?” Spy laughed mirthlessly. “Were you ever a twenty-year-old boy? Of course he is fucking ‘someone’ else. Dios mio, the things I have seen in this base put our discreet indiscretions to shame. Do you have any idea, any idea whatsoever, what sort of material an agoraphobic pyromaniac keeps around to amuse himself on long winter nights? You do not, because you are not criminally insane. As for your scout, I believe if the rest of the team weren’t a swarm of faggot-lynching paysans, he would simply take his door off its hinges and hang a red lantern in the hall. He embarrasses even the Burroughs novels he reads to the mirror.” Spy was chuckling now, almost affectionately. Sniper felt sick. “Non, non. Take your head out of your hands. Mon dieu, but you are adorable.”

Spy laid a phantom limb across the gunman’s shoulders. “You will agree that we must do what it takes, to make things right between us. Unless you wish to end this. I would understand, of course, but…you are so valuable to me…” A warm glove took Sniper’s chin, and as he watched, the cloak evaporated. His spy was there, but dressed in blue, gazing at him. Nonsensically, he realized how the blue of his eyes clashed with the blue of his mask. But it was the same man, only cleaner and better-shaved than he should be, under the circumstances.

“Cameras—?”

“They are in black and white.”

“But our spy is in respawn; if you run into someone, they’ll know.”

“We will not go far.” Spy took a drag, twinkling, and passed the cigarette to his lover. “Go and reconnoiter the hallway; see if anyone is there.”

Sniper did. Empty in both directions, and quiet but for voices from the distant mess. Medic’s office door was closed at the far end. “All clear.”

Spy glided into the hallway, taking Sniper in his wake. “Where we going?”

In reply, Spy reached out, and knocked gently on Scout’s door.

Flailing with joy. The tenderness wants to kill me, then the betrayal discussion did things to my heart, and guh... there is something dark and wonderful threading through here and I want to keep it in my pocket forever.

I was supposed to be shutting down and getting stuff done, and then this updated and I was all 'Whoops, that can wait!'

Gah, I want to know what Spy's going to do. I'll be here, twiddling my thumbs until you come back.

>>85
I'm totally a creepy person with the oddest impulse to help people learn, so if you're ever in want of someone to practise with...well, just ask. I don't know any Danish, so it might be hard for me to explain things to you, but I'm willing to try!

I want all of you to know that I make an actual literal fist of celebration every time I see there's a new comment. This is like writing a novel in a stadium where the whole town's there to cheer you on!

I was wondering about the nationality of your Spy. I'm assuming he's French, but multilingual? He uses an awful lot of Italian as well, so it somewhat confused me.

I mean, yes, the actual canon Spy uses some Spanish and some Italian phrases, but still.

Also, I love this fic. If it were an octopus, I'd hug it.

>>90
Thank you! I guess my Spy is officially "european", with a mixed accent and lots of fluent languages. Maybe he was even an army brat, growing up in so many different places that he has no official language or home.

I prefer sticking close to the cannon Valve spy, as I interpret him, where a lot of his lines were in languages other than french (prego, amigo, etc). In this story I'm also using him as a conduit for my obsession with word choice, in that he tries (as much as I am able to write, which isn't much, as an only-English speaker) to use the proper word for the proper expression, and reaches into many languages to do so. "Kochanie" is Polish for "honey", for example. He gasps "oui" when Sniper's got his mouth forced open, because it is a word you can still say with your mouth open (to a certain extent), but says "yes" when he gets his hair pulled, because it trails off into a hiss and that's the kind of sound I wanted him to make just then, the kind of sound I have made when my hair was being pulled.

At his core, I see Spy as very much the International Man of Mystery, who speaks everything from Esperanto to Cantonese, capable of sweet nothings in dozens of tongues.

I am at once devastated by and utterly in love with the idea of manwhore!Scout. As always, Toxo, your writing is achingly beautiful. I cannot wait to see where this story goes.

Oh my golly gosh this was... FANTASTIC. Your writing is beautiful. Simply beautiful. Text that is translated from one language to another has a certain stiffness to it, but this... This is like liquid or silk. You are a phenomenal writer. It's sexy and elegant and surprising-- your metaphors are unexpected but they always make sense and make at me look at the characters in new ways, which is probably what the ideal metaphor should do.

keep it up ahhhhhhh.

I love catching the story right before it falls off the front page. Forgive the missed day or two; I was busy with preparing for, and marching in, the Occupy protests yesterday. I hope everyone who participated had a safe and fulfilling day.

So this chapter was difficult to write. I'm prone to wallowing in my prose, as you have noticed, so writing genuine emotion is extremely difficult. Either I get it too glib, or too goopy, and I'm still not happy with how this ended up, but. I'd like to keep the story moving.

I hope it's readable.

-=-=-=-=-


PART XVI

“Heya guys, you caught me on my way out. Gonna go see the doc; been having some headaches, y’know?”

Scout’s eyes were vague and hungry, with lavender circles beneath. “Spy!” he looked at the agent as if stumbling, “They fixed that respawn thing, huh? Great! Yeah. Glad you made it out, man. Let’s catch up sometime; I’m late for my appointment, y’know how he gets—”

“I have just been to see the good doctor. He wished to examine me, to make sure there were no complications, from my technical difficulties. He will be busy for the rest of the day, but he instructed that I bring you these—” Spy flourished a little envelope at Scout, who snatched it and ripped it open, dumping two nondescript pills into his palm. “—for your ‘headaches’,” Spy finished, as the impatient patient bounced away for a mouthful of water.

Spy let himself in, beckoning Sniper to follow. He shut the door behind them. Scout had been listening to music in the listless afternoon, and the cluttered little room was dimming as winter sun withdrew.

“What the hell was that?” Sniper whispered, but the young man was back, looking infinitely relieved.

“Thank you, jesus,” he said, flopping down on the floor. He gestured to the bed. “Come in. Limited seating, guys. Sorry. You bored as me? I am so fuckin’ over this whole ‘snow day’ thing. Can’t even get outside to move around.”

Sniper was still smoking Spy’s cigarette—the agent pulled out two more and tapped them on his case. “Absolument, I am bored. May I offer you one? I find good tobacco often relieves my headaches.” He held it out, but not too far. Scout had to turn onto his knees and reach for it, but the cigarette eluded his grasp at the last second. Sniper saw the look pass between them—Spy smirking sweetly, teasing the cigarette just out of reach; the boy looking up, meeting the agent’s eyes, and falling in.

Scout crawled the last few feet, and sat on his heels at Spy’s knees. His lips parted to accept the cigarette that Spy placed between then, and he sat very still while the latter lit his own. And then, as if performing a benediction, the spy bent at the waist, laid fingertips along the young man’s jaw, and brought his hot cherry to the unlit tip. They sucked, coaxing the burn between them. The glow lit both their faces golden, and Sniper stopped breathing.

It was as if the holes in the balaclava were oddly-cut mirrors—Scout’s blue eyes and curled mouth were reflected perfectly in the older man’s face.

The bed creaked as Spy leaned back and inhaled lustily. “It is customary in the United States, to tip your deliveryman. And that is two deliveries for you, today. If you do not count the gift of fire.” He admired his glowing tip, propped on an elbow, sighing smoke. Sniper recognized these gestures, and his heart sank. He had fireside seats to a choreography of seduction, rehearsed into routine by a man so gifted at influence, that Sniper wondered why the spy ever bothered killing anyone at all.

And Scout didn’t stand a chance. The young man glanced at Sniper, then back to the spy. “Lucky for you, I’m seein’ double.” Spy rolled his eyes at this bit of flip, and crossed an ankle to the opposite knee. He tilted his head back, stressing the line of his neck while he exhaled, and Sniper realized he had never seen the man at ease until now. It was fascinating. The looseness of his spare limbs—limbs that would look malnourished on anyone else, but that made the agent look like a fashion model—the way they fenced triangles of space that leaned as he moved, isosceles to equilateral and back again. Scout ducked his head under the angle of Spy’s leisurely leg, emerging in his lap. The man tolerated the sweet, eager hands rumpling his jacket; he regarded his prize heavy-lidded, even bored. Sniper studied his utter comfort, in clothes that would make a lesser man itch and fidget. He didn’t belong with the rest of them, stuffed into a tin can in the middle of the wilderness. He could not possibly enjoy his time with these rough-skinned, terrestrial men—and Sniper counted himself in that number. He looked down at Scout, engaging every charm he could muster to coax a kiss from his coquette, and he could comprehend the kid: big family, dust, grass, laughter. Scout was measured in known quantities, as were the rest of them. But the man beside him, whose bony knee even now lit softly on his own, was, and always would be, a cipher.

He felt his thoughts go still. An odd sensation crept over him.

It was pity.

Sniper knew all about privacy and isolation, knew about wearing out your tires on red rock, looking for the next empty campground. But the secret agent’s solitude was of a different flavor. He lived and breathed human beings, smothered in them, always pulling them closer, devouring them whole. But Sniper could see that he never stopped to taste—and how could he? Intimacy was his profession. What did that leave for himself? Sniper clandestinely stroked the blue leather glove on the bedspread, his tenderness choking him. Spy smiled at him, and Sniper realized that his horror and helplessness over the past two weeks were not mysterious at all.

His affliction was simple: he was lovesick.

He was still gazing at the agent as the young man, beginning to sweat as his pill kicked in, piped up. “Hey! I didn’t know you guys were fags.” He stated it matter-of-factly, and Spy’s stinging slap came as a surprise.

“Language, petit.”

Scout looked wounded, his mouth open and glistening. “What the fuck, man. I know what that means. And I’m not fuckin’ small.” Those blue eyes glittered with something Sniper hadn’t seen before. His breathing was rapid, shallow.

“Oh?” Spy turned back to Sniper, speaking to him for the first time since they had arrived. “Is this true?” Sniper’s face warmed, and he looked down.

“Fuckin’ A it’s true. Hit me again and you’ll find that out the hard way.” Scout bit his lower lip, making no move to escape.

new walking dead update
TONIGHT'S AWESOME.

He looked down at Scout, engaging every charm he could muster to coax a kiss from his coquette, [...]
That alliteration was just lovely. This entire story is lovely. You don't know how much I needed this poetry, it satisfies so many of my needs. Here I was just browsing the chan and happened upon this treasure. Thank you. And please, never stop.

(God, in all these years, why haven't I thought of copying beautiful prose into a notebook before? Thank you, too, fellow anon, I'll be christening a notebook with several lines from this fic. And I'll be checking out Nabokov as well.)

>>96
You don't know how happy it makes me that someone noticed that. Although it was only after I posted that I noticed the sentence was kind of ambiguous in its subject (who's doing what now??). Oh well. More shit to fix in the rewrite. :I

Should be another update coming soon. I actually chopped about a third off this last update and put it in the next one, so I already have a head start wooooOOOooooo.

Alsoooo...other writers might find these links useful:

The Uncensored French Language: http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/French/Vocabulary/French-Uncensored.html

How to joke, curse, and talk dirty in French! I was hoping the site had one of these pages for every romance language but I couldn't find them. The site is sort of poorly-organized.

French Military Terminology and Slang: http://www.151ril.com/content/history/culture/3

Dozens of French armee' terms of familiarity for the whole team. I found snipers, engineers, scouts, soldiers of course--it's all there. This is why Spy calls Sniper a "parrot": French snipers were called 'parrots' and 'ducks' for how their heads were always popping up and down.

Magical Slang: Ritual, Language and Trench Slang of the Western Front: http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/slang.htm

Really good essay on the organic development of slang used by troops in the first and second world wars, how it tied into the morale and psychology of the soldier, and how it resembled tribal "taboo" magic. Really interesting reading, with examples from British, American, French and German military.

I love this thread so much. It’s turning into the ultimate literary appreciation thread – not only are we treated to a most delicious fic, but also book recommendations and now writing references! This thread is a perfect thread and I’m not ever leaving.

Toxo, you tease us! I can’t wait for your next update. The confrontation between Spy and Sniper on Sniper’s infidelity was everything I’d hoped for; I can’t decide whether Spy is genuinely hurt or if he’s just manipulating Sniper, or both, and I love that. Your characterisations are, as I’ve said before, wonderful, and it’s especially fascinating to me how your Spy is so opaque to Sniper and the reader both—I really can’t predict anything he’ll do, and that keeps me at the edge of my seat!

And I’m really looking forward to more Scout too. I like Scout, unlike most people visiting the ‘chan; he’s such a malleable character, and I love what you’ve turned him into. And Scout on drugs, oh god, that just really gets to me in all the right wrong right ways. You have no idea how relevant this is to my interests! ‘Headaches’, hmm? I noticed Spy dropping those inverted commas in there and it got me smiling in what I’m sure must have been a most unsettling way. I wonder what Medic is really slipping him, and why. Nng, can’t wait for more!

>>96.
Heh, you’re welcome. I started using notebooks years ago, when I was still learning the language; I became annoyed with having to put down my reading to check an unfamiliar word in the dictionary, so I started making notes of them and looking them up later. I still do that, though much more infrequently. Now, it’s mostly inspirational paragraphs or particularly beautiful word-constructs that I save in my books. This fic is a great source of both.

But i.. but... Write more! I NEEED more its so hard to find good fan fictions. It really is. Let alone good ones that have the characters personalities right and who write well, AND have good sexy times in it?

You need to continue this or .. ill come to your house and stab you in the back. lol. Not really.. just.. write.. more. Goddammit why you make me wait?! lol. I AM A FAGGOT HUMP MY RUMP

More more, i love you as a writer. Do it! do it for the sake of the fandom!

>>99
Hey thanks for the kind words and enthusiasm, but just some friendly advice: don't type like this. You're going to get underage b&.