Hello, all! I've a little crossfaction Sniper and Spy dramedy here for your perusal. This was inspired by a beautifully done fanart I ran into somewhere that, well, I believe the technical term is "hit me right in the feels." And then, because my brain apparently works like this, what I wrote ended up in an entirely different direction. It's done by the amazingly talented Damien Murphy and can be seen here if you remove the spaces: identitypolution. deviantart. com/gallery/32674557#/art/Mercy-252337284?q=gallery%3Aidentitypolution%2F32674557&qo=13&_sid=7499743 In an amusing twist of fate it was in turn created as a response to AnnetheCatDetective's marvelous fic Mercy--which makes this little fic of mine a fan fic of a fan art of a fan fic of a video of a game. Holy smokes... At any rate, rest assured that all Australian slang herein is very, very badly abused, and will probably continue being so. Meanings should be clear from context. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The RED Sniper had a problem. He gazed through his scope at the battle raging below, keeping half an ear and a nose alert for unwelcome visitors creeping about, and sighted on the BLU Demoman lurking just barely behind cover below. The man was playing cat and mouse with the RED Soldier currently hurling rockets and incoherent imprecations in his direction, darting in and out of cover to lure the Soldier into firing all his rockets. Once he was reloading and therefore vulnerable, Sniper knew, the Demoman would charge with an enormous grin and an equally enormous broadsword, and the Soldier would undoubtedly have to make the long, humiliating trip back from Respawn, telegraphing his position to the entire battlefield with his curses all the while. Sniper leaned forward slightly in anticipation. “Come on, you Scotch-drinkin’ Scot, edge out just a bit more…†What the Demoman didn’t know, though, was that he was being watched from on high by the most Australian Angel of Death in history. He ducked into cover once more, then darted out just a little farther than before— BOOM. “Now you’ll be prancin’ about with your head empty of eyeballs, you old sod,†Sniper mumbled, chuckling to himself. “Heh, see you again soon.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. Sniping, when one got down to it, didn’t exactly use all the brainpower it could. Between waiting for the perfect shot and waiting for the next perfect shot was a lot of time for reflection and thought. When he’d started out in the sniping business he’d never have thought it, but planting exquisitely aimed bullets into medulla oblongata could be surprisingly relaxing at times. Not today, though. Today Sniper had a problem to solve. BOOM. “Oi, physician, heal thyself from that.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. Years ago he’d been wandering through one of the nameless little towns that dotted the bush like dusty turtles hiding from the sun and picked up a science magazine of sorts from their limited collection. He must have paged through it a dozen times before the cheap paper fell to pieces in his hands—you had to get your entertainment where you could in his profession—and some of what he’d read lodged in his mind like jerky between his teeth. Human beings needed to touch other human beings once in a while, it’d said. Not necessarily for a root, even, just to remind the bits of the brain that went back to monkeys huddling together in trees that they were an appreciated monkey, and a useful monkey, and a safe monkey that had other monkeys watching its back for big catlike things with sharp teeth and a habit of sneaking up on inoffensive little monkeys and stabbing them in the back and then laughing at the poor monkey and mocking its personal hygiene and then sauntering away because it’d killed the monkey for no better reason than for the fun of it, and if that wasn’t the most odious, unnatural thing he’d ever heard he’d drink his own Jarate. At least, that’s how Sniper remembered it. BOOM. “Let’s play Russian Roulette, big guy. Whoops. What, couldn’t you outsmart that bullet too?†Round, chamber, ka-chik. And so Sniper had read the article, and mentally masticated the idea with the slow patience of snipers everywhere, and finally decided that while he was no egghead like the doc or Truckie, some of what it said rang a bit too true to his experiences to be the usual scientific bunkum. He’d thought about how sometimes he’d come back from months wandering the great full-nothingness of the Outback without seeing hide or hair of his own species, of being truly alone in the way that only endless emptiness and the wide flat bleached-blue sky could make him feel alone. How he’d stroll into some nowhere town dusty and burnt and worn and fall into the first bed of a lady of negotiable affection he met, then end up sitting hip-to-hip with the rather confused sheila and tell her about the time he had to sleep in the corpse of a water buffalo and then use it to make a fire, jacket, spring-loaded animal trap, makeshift water filtration system, and highly fashionable hat. At first he’d thought this peculiar habit was just due to his own emphatically illegal and sinful proclivities, but then, he puzzled, why go to the ladies at all for what usually ended up as an expensive massage and storytelling session? With the remains of the magazine now used as halfway decent toilet paper, the answer was clear. BOOM. “That awkward moment when I see myself in my own scope. Real clever there, spook. You almost made me think I was the bloody useless one.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. Sniper liked to think he was a friendly enough bloke, but as a social butterfly he was decidedly drab and wary, prone to awkward silences and throat clearings. The kind of butterfly that didn’t flock, perhaps, and shot down hummingbirds and feasted on their sweet flesh while the other butterflies averted their antennae and went to much more interesting patches of flowers. Come to think of it, sniping led to some very odd trains of thought as well. Picturing himself as the doctor his parents wanted him to be—well, that was always good for a laugh too. His bedside manner would probably be even worse than the doc’s. Considering that the last time Sniper went in to the infirmary with an injury after-hours (minor burns, as Pyro had been in charge of cooking dinner) he’d found the Medic happily regaling Scout with news about the very interesting tumors he was growing as a result of his overconsumption of Bonk! Atomic Punch, that was an achievement indeed. Sniper was a loner. On base he stayed alone in his nests and van more often than he joined the others, and not only because every third night ended in a possibly alcohol-fueled brawl. He already spent several hours a day watching them through his scope; why on earth would he want to get any closer than that? Sniper was a loner; he’d known it ever since the first time he’d gone bushwalking alone and felt the sheer overwhelmingly beautiful sound of complete and utter silence. He’d realized then how crowded his head was normally with other people’s voices and thoughts and presence, how complicated the world was when other people were constantly spewing words and breath and feelings into his personal space all the time. Alone, the world was simple. Just him and his rifle under the sky. Sniper was a loner, yes. But that didn’t mean he always wanted to be alone. BOOM. “The only times I for one believe in magic is when I put a bullet through your creepy little eye before you find me, you mute lunatic.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. It had been a year since he’d joined this lucrative, engaging, utterly pointless little war, months since he’d more than brushed the fingertips of someone handing him something or tussled in the dirt for his immortal life. As sure as day followed night in response to the lack he’d seen the souring of his own mood, his rising willingness to use Jarate when it wasn’t strictly necessary, how he was starting to deviate from the sniper’s code and delight in death instead of remain separated from it. It was one thing to feel quiet satisfaction from a good day’s headshotting and mock your enemies for their incompetence. It was another entirely to have fun shooting them in various embarrassing body parts and watch them flop around hilariously until they finally bought the farm. BOOM. “Ah, Engie, it’s a wrench to see you go. Sorry for tearin’ you a structurally superfluous new eyehole there.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. Once—when he was younger and a good deal more of a boofhead than he was today—he’d gone swimming off of Queensland on a lark. He’d opened his eyes underwater and come face-to-tentacle with a box jellyfish and a whole mob of its mates. That’s what this felt like now, a creeping, spine-tingling Spy of a foreboding come to murder all his happier thoughts. And, deep within him, squashed to the side by overgrown kidneys and too much coffee, he had a quiet terror that in this endless war of trivial death and pointless carnage he might end up a crazed gunman after all. It was time, he decided, to remind himself of his own humanity. To remind himself that he wasn’t a crazed gunman, but an assassin, and the term made all the difference in the world. So, as he did all things, he approached it like a professional. Logically. Calmly. Not like a baby sheila who needed a hug and a hankie and a bloody tea party. He was sure he only needed a bit of non-murderous touching—a single embrace, perhaps. The real question was who was to be his mark. Target. Victim. Touchee. There, those were terms he was much more comfortable with than “hug,†which made him wince whenever he thought it. “Embrace†was almost as bad. BOOM. “Sorry I couldn’t preserve that one for your collection, Soldier. You’d best try to get ahead somewhere else.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. He thought first of his team, being the decidedly less dangerous option. The Demoman was out, being composed entirely of—as far as he could tell—volatile liquids, volatile vocabulary, and volatile explosives. And he had no intention whatever of getting his body parts too close to the Medic. Besides, Heavy would probably kill him for it. He’d seen what happened whenever a joyful Heavy hugged his Medic after a victory and heard the distinct sound of cracking ribs, and he had the feeling that being crushed to death did not count as a proper hug to his monkey-mind. Besides, Medic would probably kill him for it. Spy wasn’t even an option. Same team or no, the man would doubtless scheme to use it all against him somehow, and Sniper’s day was too full of avoiding nine people’s attempts to murder him in various inventive ways to add one more enemy to the watch list. The thought of hugging Soldier entered his mind and was expelled so fast he got mental whiplash. The mental simulation of the event simply refused to appear, which he was rather grateful for. The man would probably see it as evidence that the hippies had finally perfected their brainwashing technology and attempt to beat the brainwashing out of Sniper with his shovel, yelling about how it was all a result of the Soviets putting fluoride in the icecaps and sending radiation into their minds from their alien-technology-driven spy satellites, which meant they’d kidnapped God-fearing American aliens and torturing them with communist cabbage soup until they gave up the American plans for building a giant, rocket-launching eagle robot, and how since every patriot was to throttle the Russkies whenever they could he, Soldier, would have to throttle Sniper until he stopped being such a goddamn sissy and got back to putting beautiful un-sissy American bullets into the sissy skulls of their sissy enemies. Sniper winced. The fact that he could predict Soldier’s ear-bashing…well, perhaps he had been here a bit too long. The Pyro was an odd one, no doubt about it—and if their decidedly erratic-to-unknown personality didn’t disqualify them then the fact that it’d be like trying to hug a rubber hose probably did. Besides, Sniper had no idea whether the being under the mask was male, female, animal, vegetable, or mineral. He didn’t make a habit of hugging ladies who didn’t ask for it, and if the Pyro was actually a fire-breathing dragon like Scout had insisted they were when he drank thirteen cans of Bonk! in one sitting, then he didn’t make a habit of hugging dragons either. It didn’t do to encourage the beasties. The Engineer was a nice enough bloke whenever Sniper ran into him, good for a beer and a chat, but Sniper had the distinct feeling—something in the way light glinted off those goggles he never took off, perhaps, or how he talked to his machines with a warmth he never had for mere people—that the man despised human contact. The man had cut off his own hand and replaced it with a mechanical one, for goodness sake, and for no real reason as far as Sniper could tell beyond the fact that it was human and therefore forever inferior in his eyes. It unnerved Sniper to no end, yes, but he supposed it made sense; the Engineer solved practical problems, and humans were inherently impractical. If Scout actually stayed still long enough for it, he’d probably struggle the whole time, then yell about pedophiliacs or poofs or something equally ridiculous for the next three months. Sniper had no intention of opening that can of worms. And that, perhaps, pointed to the underlying unwillingness he had to choose any of his teammates; he didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. They’d slap each other on the back after a good round and he was pretty sure he’d caught Heavy and Medic at actually cuddling once, but that did not mean they would appreciate their resident not-a-crazed-gunman up and hugging them for no apparent reason. He’d probably be spy-checked to the point of respawn in moments for such uncharacteristic behavior. They made a great team despite their individual…idiosyncrasies…and Sniper didn’t want to throw a wrench into perfectly serviceable gears by coming across as weirdly touchy-feely and probably a bit creepy. He did live in a van, after all, and he supposed some berks might take that the wrong way. Furthermore, he certainly didn’t want to plant any seeds of suspicion where there hadn’t been any before. Those kinds of suspicions could only grow, as he knew from bitter experience, and he had no intention of encouraging his team to start looking at him in distrust and disgust. He was stuck with these men for what—with Respawn technology and Mediguns—might be a very long life indeed. It would do no good to alienate them now. BOOM. “Looks like the snipe really does exist! Pity they’re extinct now.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. That left…not a lot of options. Not that there were all that many to begin with in the middle of the desert. They were similar enough that all his concerns about his teammates applied to their opposing numbers. Not to mention that (a) they’d be trying to kill him the entire time, and (b) he didn’t even come into physical contact with most of them during the average battle—he’d never even seen his counterpart without the aid of a scope—so his options were even more limited. Didn’t come into contact with any of them, most days…except for him. His long-honed anti-Spy instincts immediately opposed the idea, the long-abused space between his shoulder blades prickling unhappily at the mere thought. And yet, and yet…did he truly have any other options? The alternative was to go without, and that thought was like running into those jellies all over again. BOOM. “Again, doc? Looks like you need to practice more medicine afore you come back. That was just pathetic.†Round, chamber, ka-chik. Desperation was the mother of both bloody brilliant ideas and bloody stupid stunts, after all, and the more he puzzled over the problem the more it seemed like not such a bad idea after all. His opposition to choosing his own team’s Spy didn’t apply here; the BLU Spy would probably try to use it against him somehow, but Sniper was always on guard for cunning subterfuge from that direction anyway. And Sniper much preferred the idea that when the attack inevitably came, it would be a literal backstab, not a figurative one. Besides, it was widely agreed—even by themselves, if grudgingly—that a good fifty percent of everything the Spies said was hidden sarcasm, an evasion, lying by omission, half-true, or an outright lie. The enemy Sniper cheerfully embracing the bane of his existence? Nobody would believe such a ridiculous notion. And, hell, if it threw the bloody backstabbing bastard off his game even a little—or, better yet, disgusted him so much he bothered someone else for once—he’d count that as a double win. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concrits (especially a Critzkrieg), questions, random thoughts, threats of violence, major revelations, terrible puns, and kittens are all very, very welcome. Thanks for reading, and the next part should be up soon!
This was excellent. It felt very in-character for Sniper, and I really enjoyed the humor. I enjoy dramedies in general, but I loved the language you used to write Sniper's thought process. I can't find anything wrong though except for a couple instances of you using the emmdash would look better if you used parenthesis instead. Can't wait for the next chapter.
This is really, really good. Very well-written, funny, in-character. This is definitely an excellent story! I suggest you pick an actual nickname, because it's a pity that such a good writer goes by "Anonymous." I'm rooting for Sniper to eventually get together with Spy (since you implied that he is gay), but only after a lot of hilarious fighting. Do you plan to make this story a long multi-chapter fic, or are you planning to stop at 2-3 chapters?
This is hilarious. I'm looking forward to Spy's reaction.
OP here~ @2 Thank you! I see Sniper as an often-serious but laid-back guy, with a both a certain amount of pride in his abilities and a touch of self-deprecation, with practicality held above all else. It's great to hear that this isn't a completely bonkers approach to his character. And, yeah, it's pretty obvious who my favorite punctuary child is—it's like my duct-tape or something, and there's only so much duct-tape one can use before things get—just a bit—ridiculous. @4 Thanks! That poor poor Spy. He's got no idea what's coming for him, does he. @3 Thank you! It's great to hear that on a no-hugs 'chan like this. And there will indeed be hilarious (at least to me) fighting This is my first TF2 fic and I wanted to see how it'd be received before venturing further, but since I haven't been doused in Jarate and charbroiled yet I suppose I've no excuses not to share my incredibly humble pseudonym with y'all. (I'm also currently chuckling to myself about what you said about rooting, as I just spent an unhealthy amount of time with an Australian slang dictionary to write Sniper's chapter.) Ahem. As it currently stands this sort-of-ambiguously wraps up in three parts with plenty of ideas how to continue if I want (and I certainly do). The way I usually write is with the entire thing done before I start posting because reading really good, never finished WIPs makes me sad, so this is unusually carefree for me--and I'd like to apologize in advance if this never gets finished. In the meantime, here's the next part! How will Sniper's totally-not-crazy scheme play out? How will Spy react?? WILL THERE BE BAD PUNS?! (of course there will, who do you think you're talking to?) [translations of horrible French at end of chapter] ------------------------------ The BLU Spy crept along the hallway, stepping around charred blotches—clearly one of the Soldiers or Demomen had decided to take another explosion-filled tour of the area—and leaping lightly past the creakier boards. Despite his active cloak, he moved with great caution. The RED Sniper had unnervingly good instincts at times when it came to the Spy’s presence, and long-range specialist or no, he was dangerous when cornered. Like an animal, Spy scoffed silently. Animal instincts and bestial brawling. No humanity at all. He’d probably been raised by dingos, a baby so stringy and unpleasant even they wouldn’t bother eating. He edged an eye around the corner, and there was the man himself, hunched over his rifle like a lanky Neanderthal protecting his dinner, one thumb absently caressing the stock. There were none of the terrible yellow jars in sight, but that did not mean there were none. He knew that from horrific experience, and he shuddered at the memory. Half the time he was certain the filthy man did it for no better reason than to piss him off, pun very much not appreciated. Sniper’s overlarge pig-sticker sat on the window ledge, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. Spy eyed it thoughtfully; if his initial attack went awry (as laughable an idea as that was for an assassin of his caliber), knocking the crude thing out the window before Sniper could get to it could assure his victory. He slipped into the room to the corner behind Sniper’s perch and considered for a moment the method of execution. Knife to the back or gun to the head? It was so hard to decide sometimes. The Ambassador, he decided. His balisong meant he’d get closer than he’d like, with the possibility of blood on his suit always a clear danger, and the Sniper of all people didn’t deserve the intimacy. Instead he’d press the cold muzzle of the hand cannon to the back of Sniper’s skull, knocking his ridiculous hat over his eyes as he did so, and Sniper would tense in that delightful way he had of pretending he wasn’t tensed, as if he could fool a man with the Spy’s training, inclination, and creepily nosy pastimes. Spy would savor the split second of anger and fear that would roll off the man when he realized with the cold finality an Ambassador to the back of the skull tends to engender that he was going to die, and then, finally, Spy would pull the trigger. Spy might even say something sardonic and cutting before he killed him this time. He was feeling generous today. Yes, he thought. It’d be perfect. Perfectly still, perfectly silent, he watched the Sniper at the window, waiting for the perfect opportunity to drop his cloak and strike. Perfectly, of course. It was only a few seconds later that Sniper tensed ever so slightly, and Spy knew he was about to fire. Spy didn’t know exactly how to describe the movement, even after all the times he’s watched the Sniper shoot—it wasn’t tension, exactly, because sniping depended on a relaxed focus for proper aiming, but an…awareness, perhaps. As if all the previously spread attention of the man—on the grumbling of his stomach, perhaps, or on the breeze floating across his neck, on the texture of the trigger beneath his finger and beating of his heart—was suddenly focused on one single point, one single laser dot on one single skull in one single moment. It was impressive in its own way, Spy supposed. Not nearly so impressive as what Spy did, though, which was cunningly pretend to focus on one thing or nothing in particular while actually paying attention to something completely different, but he had no time for such thoughts now because— —the Sniper smiled, ever so slightly, and fired. At the same time, as the thunder of the rifle filled the room and deafened both men, Spy dropped his cloak and drew the Ambassador in one elegant motion, the small sounds fading seamlessly into the echoes of the report. The Sniper chuckled lightly as he reloaded. “Well, boy, I’d say you’re all legs and no brain. But there’s bits of it all over the place now, so I s’pose that can’t be true.†The Spy rolled his eyes—such unnecessary drama for such a trivial accomplishment, truly, had he a humble bone in his body?—and inched forward, eyes on the imaginary bulls-eye where the occipital bone met the parietal. He raised the Ambassador, the light shining sweetly on its sleek barrel, and smiled to himself. Perfect. It was perfect right up to the point when Sniper leapt to his feet and smacked the gun out of Spy’s hand and out the window. Spy let out a little cry of indignation. He had no right to ruin his perfect kill like that. Some people were so unprofessional. And then the man had the gall to smirk at him. “There you are, you yellow no-hoper! Been waitin’ for you to show your slimy face.†He said it like he was laughing inwardly at some private joke, which rang several paranoid little alarms in the Spy’s already quite paranoid brain. He couldn’t remember, afterwards, what he opened his mouth to say then. Something condescending, undoubtedly; ‘ “Is its presence in your dreams not enough, bushman?†’ perhaps, or ‘ “Compared to your horse-faced offense to beauty, it’s no wonder you’re desperate to behold what little you can see of mine,†‘ mayhap. But the golden invective never got the chance to fall from his lips, died unvoiced and alone in the vast distance between thought and reality. He couldn’t remember, afterwards, what he had intended to say at the point, but he certainly remembered what happened next. Because the Sniper, with all the furrowed-browed, coiled-spring, single-minded intensity he put into lining up the perfect shot, proceeded to leap forward in a single long-legged stride and throw his arms around the Spy before he managed to avoid the unexpected move. The Spy immediately prepared for the impact with the ground that a tackle made inevitable, already mentally flicking through how he’d escape from the hold, slip his balisong out of his sleeve, and give the stabbing the bushman deserved for getting his suit dirty. It was thus to his considerable surprise when his back didn’t hit the ground and, in fact, remained perfectly upright and un-dirtied. The Sniper stood stock still, arms around the Spy firm but not tight, so close the Spy could feel his nervous pulse jumping in his neck and feel his wiry hair against his cheek. And there he stood for several long seconds, seemingly content just where he was. It took a frankly embarrassingly long time for the realization to sink in, though in the Spy’s defense his days were usually filled with people assaulting him with weapons, not open arms. The Sniper was…embracing him? De quoi. It took a lot to flabbergast a man who interacted on a daily basis with fifteen men, one woman, and two species-indeterminates who could turn the DSM-II into a Bingo game, including among their ranks men who listened to their lunches’ exhortations for violence, narcissistic juvenile delinquents, urine-hoarding barbarians, latter-day Dr. Frankensteins with none of the former’s human decency, a workaholic alcoholic statistical impossibility, insanely paranoid mechanophiles, one unprofessional disgrace to the balaclava, and several individuals whose version of reality was so utterly divorced from actual fact it had taken the children, the house, the sports car, the bank account, and the baseball trophies, had moved to another country altogether, and was not only not taking any more calls from reality but was actively holding its hands over its ears and loudly singing happy little songs whenever it tried to talk. De quoi. De quoi de quoi de quoi. The Spy was, nevertheless, flabbergasted. But the Spy wouldn’t be a Spy if he couldn’t adapt quickly, and “versatility†was, in fact, the middle name of one of his aliases. He let his instincts take over as his conscious mind fell back to regroup in the face of this impossibility, and as if by themselves his arms snaked around his enemy. The Sniper seemed to relax at this movement, and he turned his cheek against Spy’s head, stubble rasping against his balaclava as he let out a slow breath. And with that Spy’s brain finally caught up to the turn of events and proclaimed in no uncertain terms that while it still as of yet hadn’t the least idea what was going on or why, there was one thing it was very, very certain of. The knife slid from his sleeve with nary a whisper. It opened with a soft clik-snik. And sank into Sniper’s back, slipping neatly between ribs and into vital organs and—more viciously than was probably necessary—was ripped out again. Sniper shuddered, then sagged against him, a pained breath slipping under the collar of Spy’s suit and down his back. Spy shivered involuntarily at the sensation, got a hold of himself, and shoved the other man away. The Sniper crashed back against the wall, aviators and akubra falling away, before sliding down it, legs clearly unable to hold his weight any longer. A long, dark smear of blood traced his path down. He looked up at Spy, eyes focusing with a visible effort. “Thanks for standin’ still, wankah,†he said, flashing a characteristic half-smile uncharacteristically tinged with blood. “I needed that.†The wet, sucking sound of each breath showed Spy’s knife must have punctured a lung. Spy’s mouth worked for a moment in frank astonishment before he found something reminiscent of his usual scornful tone. “You must be even stupider than I thought, you suicidal madman, I stabbed you!†Sniper blinked up at him, eyes already glassy. “Well yeah. Of course ya did. Ya don’t blame a croc for bitin’ your head off. ‘s in its nature.†Spy kicked him savagely. “I am not a filthy reptile, bushman,†he hissed. “And Spies do not do…whatever that was.†“What it bloody well…looked like…o’couse…thought you were…smarter than that…spook.†His breaths were coming in bubbling gasps now. “Ta, thassa…weight off me mind…Cheers…†“That was not an answer, you—Stop dying when I’m talking to you!†The Sniper merely gave him another vague smile, too far gone to understand anything at all. Spy stared at him long after he stopped twitching. ------------------ I'm given to understand "De quoi?!" means about the equivalent of "What the hell?!" The DSM-II is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is used by psychologists to diagnose mental problems. It's currently actually at the fifth edition, but as this isn't a modern setting I used the second edition, which came out in 1968 (when RED's group was recruited). Apparently the fact that this is an alternate universe is not enough for my mental fact-checker. ~Concrits (especially a Critzkrieg), questions, random thoughts, threats of violence, major revelations, bad puns, and kittens are all very, very welcome. Thanks for reading, and the next part should be up soon!~
Dang it, forgot to italicize some stuff there. Okay, everyone, gonna give you the freedom to mentally italicize WHATEVER YOU WANT here. I know, I know. You're welcome.
Just one of the lines that made me laugh: "He’d probably been raised by dingos, a baby so stringy and unpleasant even they wouldn’t bother eating." This was written very much in character and the following insults were just golden, thank you for the laughs. I'm eager to see where this is going.
Great chapter. Please don't be done with this, I want this to keep going and going! My bit of crit would have to be against the "flabbergast" paragraph. The chapter is from BLU Spy's perspective and flabbergast strikes me as a very un-Spy-like word. And while the run-on sentences worked well with Sniper in the previous chapter it doesn't flow as well with Spy. The whole sentence itself doesn't seem to flow well. The "one woman" mention threw me off, too. Like, is Spy talking about Miss Pauling or the Administrator, or perhaps Scout's Ma? The sentence didn't need to be so long, everything after "Bingo game" was unnecessary. You already illustrated how mentally odd both teams are, making the sentence go on lessened the impact. Again, I liked this chapter. I wonder if Spy's bemusement is going to drive him to demand answers from Sniper next time. And if Sniper has filled his hug quota (considering Spy didn't hug him back properly) or if he's going to have to come up with other ways to hug the Spy.
Artist of the inspiring art piece here~ Great work all over. I wasn't sure how you where going to pull off a fanfic about getting a hug (maybe because I can't write for beans) but you really did a good job of it and made it much more in character than I could have hoped for! I particularly enjoy the smart lines from Spy. Awesome job, don't ever stop writing and I'm very flattered that my art could be the inspiration for your writing.
This keeps being great! Sniper/Spy is my OTP, but the vast majority of Sniper/Spy fics are either fluff or serious drama. I love comedy, so I'm really happy to read a <i>funny</i> S/S fic! I'm looking forward to the next chapter :)
I've been away from the TF2 fandom for a while, but boy am I glad I came back to glance over the new posts! Amazing stuff, keep it up!
this is great! I hope there is a lot more to come.
The best line in the whole thing (and there were quite a few contenders) was "stop dying when I'm talking to you!" I let out an unladylike snort.
~AUTHOR RESPONSE TIME~ @7 and @13 Thank you! Those were two of my favorite lines too. I'm not too proud to admit there was a certain quantity of muffled sniggering in the library as this was typed out. But it's okay, the librarians already avoided my eyes whenever they see me. Now they carefully back away without making eye contact, which is even more fun. For the former, I have an entertaining little headcanon that at some point toddler!Sniper was accidentally left in the wilderness when his father attempted some classic Australian father-son bonding time and ended up being taken in by a mixed-species dingo/kangaroo family. Hence his crazy wilderness skills and Soldier's claims of a kangaroo wife. For the latter: Silly Spy, it's your own fault he's dying, you can't exactly blame him for that. Except if you're the Spy you apparently can... @8 Yes, that paragraph felt a bit forced when I wrote it, but I couldn't figure out what parts were messed up and needed to be changed so I just kept it all in. No wonder I couldn't find them—it was *all* messed up! The 'one woman' was intended to mean the Administrator since they appear to meet the relatively-normal seeming Miss Pauling comparatively less—but yes, now that you point that out it does seem a bit ambiguous. Thanks for this, future editions will be fixed accordingly. And as for your wonderings...well, you'll get the answer to at least one of those soon... @9 It's wonderful to hear I'm not bringing shame and dishonor upon your art—more than anything else I'd love to do it justice. @10 Thank you :) One of the great things I like about the TF2niverse is how many different directions you can take things. The canon we have is really silly but also really blackly humorous, and the situation of the mercs can be seen very darkly indeed or as utterly ludicrous. With some fandoms you see only silly fics or only serious ones, and I'm glad TF2 lets us go to all sorts of places. (And, yeah, now that you mention it I don't remember reading many silly Spypers myself.) @11 and @12 Thank you! I hope there is more too, since it's a riot to write. We'll just have to see how long I can get my easily-attracted-to-shiny-objects mind to focus on this... This next chapter not only took longer to write, but is longer in and of itself. The blame I rest solely at Spy's elegantly shod feet; not only is Sniper-humor rather different from Spy-humor (which took me a while to realize properly), but even the two's thought processes are different. While Sniper sees a problem off in the distance, draws a straight line to it, and works single-mindedly along that line until the problem is finished or he is, Spy's mind darts about, ducking and weaving and making strange connections and doubling back and circling and popping up in strange places in a frankly exhausting (and exceedingly parenthetical and tangential) manner. Also, Tentaspy? What Tentaspy? No Tentaspies here...
~ACTUAL STORY TIME~ (Warning: Contains unnecessary amounts of fail!French) The moon glided through the night sky, a goddess dancing through the darkness, pale and ethereal, beautiful and peaceful. Miles away from any other human habitation, the light pollution was little to none, and above the slumbering bases the desert sky opened dark and wide and endless. Far above the Milky Way swirled and sprawled, constellations drifting in a stately waltz across the night sky. Stars glittered with all the cold beauty of shattered glass. The BLU Spy ignored it all as he finished off another cigarette and stubbed it out with the practiced and furious motions of someone who’d probably die of lung cancer before they turned fifty. Sherlock Holmes had had what he called three pipe problems. Looking at the sad little ashy pile by his shoe, the Spy decided he didn’t want to know what kind of problem qualified for this much nicotine. And what a problem it was. Spies, as a rule, stayed aloof from the doings of ordinary mortals; their jobs depended on the cultivation of an aura of inscrutability, of mystery. Take away a Spy’s mystique and you merely had a man with a few gimmicky gadgets and a cute little knife, running around in the hot sun in a tailored suit. In a way, he supposed the Spy’s attire was in its own way and for a very different reason comparable to the Pyro’s mask and suit (while remaining infinitely more tasteful); where Pyro’s protected its wearer and terrified the enemy with its sheer mute implacability, the balaclava-gloves-suit combination served to isolate the Spy from the world and isolate the world from the Spy. There was a clear boundary between the two—here is a Spy, and here is all the unimportant dross that is not a Spy, and never the two shall meet. It was an elegant arrangement, and one the Spy was quite content in. After all, in the real world one did not always have the luxury of ever-regenerating three-piece Italian suits, much less being able to wear a balaclava in public without being tackled by SWAT teams. With only eyes and mouth visible, the Spy was a mysterious, enigmatic, terrifyingly sharply-dressed creature, an unreadable ghost everywhere and nowhere and right behind you, more trickster god than mere human. A man of many faces, none of which were his own. As far as the teams were concerned, the costume was the Spy, and the Spy was the costume. And the costume did not encourage hangers-on or friendly overtures or even unnecessary conversation. And that was just how the Spy liked it. Secretive. Distant. Untouchable. Untouchable. In this moment, it all boiled down to one realization: Spy did not know the last time he had touched anyone with friendliness. He didn’t know the last time he’d touched someone without gloves. He didn’t even know the last time he’d touched someone without being in the process of killing them or vice-versa. Spy huffed a breath through his nose. It wasn’t his fault there weren’t any women or men in the nearby towns worth his time. And as for the various individuals within the warzone, the fact that a rather large percentage were trying to murder him on a daily basis was not an issue—one didn’t get far along the distinctly non-Euclidean career path of a Spy without taking a certain delight in flaunting rules whenever one happened to saunter past one—but the fact that an even larger percentage’s seeming last flirtation with sanity had left it crying into its beer and pouring out its insecurities to the indifferent bartender definitely was. While a certain amount of out-of-the-box thinking was to be welcomed in the bedroom, the Spy had concluded, when one’s lover thought they were the box it was a bit too much. And spying was a lonely job, he’d known that when he signed up—well, if one could call “signing up†having one’s door broken down by seven burly men and one burly parrot with a keen interest in the contents of his grey matter. But still, but still…the Sniper’s actions had taken him by surprise, and now there were consequences—among them a probably unhealthy number of quite expensive European cigarettes. The Spy did not like being taken by surprise. In his profession, coincidences were never happy, luck was never a lady, and surprises were never, ever parties. Like a peeved dragon he puffed a smoky breath out into the night. Anyone watching the base would probably get the impression they had an extra chimney. He was nauseated, nauseated. It reminded him, for whatever reason, of the lip-curling, vaguely gastrointestinal uneasiness he felt whenever he ran across the Medic and the Heavy sharing a sandvich together with far too many glances and throat clearings than were required, he was sure, for the consumption of a single quasi-foodlike item. It was no wonder he felt ill—after all, he’d just been in contact with an unwashed, filthy, jarate-fondling barbarian. Even his rare trips to Respawn that day hadn’t washed away the phantom stains on his back where the degenerate’s hands had rested—and, mon Dieu they were disgustingly large. The Spy’s own hands were perfectly proportioned for picking locks and both operating and sabotaging delicate electrical equipment, with the finesse to toss a cigarette butt onto dead enemies with an elegant flick and the facility with sign languages to silently insult the Soldier whenever he went off on his little tangents, the gestures penetrating as far into that helmet as his words ever did. (The Scout could go drown himself in liquid radioactivity for all he cared. ‘Ya know what they say about guys with big hands,’ indeed. The Spy had immediately responded with some choice comments about the Scout’s mother’s known proclivities, then killed the other Scout five times the day after in front of him, taking care to delicately slice through his Achilles tendons first. Never let it be said that the Spy didn’t know how to resolve matters diplomatically.) It was with a clinical Spy’s training that he’d memorized the details of the earlier…incident …(‘Any intel is good intel,’ as the code went). The Sniper’s hands had been blunt-fingered and broad, with long pads of callus and several crooked fingers—setting bones in the bush didn’t always work out properly, the Spy supposed—and his hands had been two large patches of heat on the Spy’s back, even larger than he’d expected without the giant knife or long rifle to make them look smaller in comparison. They’d been close enough that Spy could smell him without the usual salt-copper of blood overlaying everything, and if that wasn’t a marker of how incredibly wrong the incident had been, he’d drink Sniper’s Jarate. Even now he felt dirty. He’d died and showered and changed into completely different clothes since then, but he still felt as though he had unwashed Sniper…ness…all over him, a sensation somehow even worse than when he was soaked in at least two of the man’s bodily fluids. Yet…the Sniper hadn’t smelled all that unwashed; he had to admit it in the privacy of his own mind, for the sake of the intel if nothing else. Worn leather and gunpowder, sweat and musk, coffee and (strangely enough) peppermint, but not actively unwashedv, er se. Even the memory made certain parts of the Spy’s hindbrain want to howl at the moon, and truly that was even worse, because it meant that apparently Sniper’s beastliness was catching. Another cigarette butt joined its ill-used brethren, but the Spy’s hand paused before the next ritual of tobacco cremation could begin. Instead it slipped down beside him and picked up the battered akubra that had lain there in the darkness. Thrown clear in the fight—if one could call that bizarre display that—it had been out of the range of the dissolution field put off by the Sniper’s Ãœbercharge mechanism, so that like the blood splatters it hadn’t disappeared when Sniper’s body had. (Despite his best skulking and snooping, even the Spy did not yet know where their bodies vanished to after death. He had a sneaking suspicion, though, (as only a Spy’s suspicion could sneak) that the Medics were being paid in all the cadavers they could dream of. He could only hope that was why they laughed so joyfully when they brandished their bonesaws.) At any rate, Sniper wouldn’t miss it; he’d have respawned with a fresh body and identical headgear, none the wiser for Spy’s minor piece of thievery. Which was how Spy preferred to work: with he the wiser and everyone else the lesser. So what the Spy took it; after all, he should have some recompense for the gross violation of Sniper-Spy combat, even if it was only a probably lice-infested hat. He turned it over in his hands, examining it more by touch than sight. There, the brim, curving up sharp and roguish on one side to meet the arch of the crown and back down again. There, the hatband, smooth and dusty with, amusingly enough, peppermints and old eucalyptus leaves tucked inside. “Well, that would explain the smell…†The Spy had never been one for taking trophies, like the Soldiers’ and the Demomen’s ridiculous and malodorous head fixations (and they always seemed so surprised when the smell started after barely a few hours in the desert sun—frankly, sometimes he didn’t know why he bothered with these cretins). He’d been trained too well by a life in espionage to do something so blatantly idiotic as keep evidence of one’s crimes in one’s personal effects. It was all Sniper’s fault—as if he needed more evidence of the man’s boorishness. The Spy had arrived for their confrontation well prepared for their usual deadly dalliance and the Sniper had gone and changed the game. This was deeply unfair; deep down in his twisted, nicotine-stained soul he was utterly certain that only Spies were allowed to change the rules of engagement. He was the sneaky, underhanded one and the Sniper was the blunt, blatant one. He was the one who did mysterious, incomprehensible things and then refused to explain why and the Sniper was absolutely predictable one with merely the incomprehensible accent. The Spy invested in delicate technology, stabbed people with elegant slivers of Toledo steel, and fooled eight paranoid men and one paranoid monstrosity from the depths of Hell itself on a daily basis with a literally paper-thin disguise. The Sniper, on the other hand, threw his own piss at innocent bystanders. The difference was clear. That must have been what…unsettled…him so, Spy decided with a rush of relief. It was practically a betrayal of their unspoken contract of warfare. The Sniper had deviated radically from his allotted position in their relationship, and a radical Sniper was an erratic Sniper, and that was dangerous. There was no telling what the man might do next. For all the Spy knew he’d finally give into his baser instincts and start slinging his feces as well. He tugged off a glove to examine a tear in the brim with his fingertips—a tooth mark, it felt like, from for all he knew a tangle with a man-eating kangaroo. The night air was cool and alive on his sense-deprived skin, the worn felt coarse and soft under his fingertips. He should probably get rid of the hat. Add it to the daily bonfire, perhaps; it wasn’t as if the Pyro cared what he so happily incinerated or could tell anyone if she did. His hands paused in their inspection. But then again, one never knew when something like this could come in handy. His disguises contained illusion only; he couldn’t actually doff Soldier’s helmet or snap Medic’s gloves and everyone knew it. Yes, he decided with frankly puzzling relief, it might be worth keeping the filthy thing if only to give verisimilitude to his Sniper disguises. He tossed the hat down again with a careless flip. His conveniently combined disguise kit and cigarette case (truly, it was as if it was made with him in mind) flicked open in his palm of very nearly its own accord. A few well-practiced seconds later, and new lit cigarette materialized in his fingers. He made it dance over his knuckles like the world’s most cancerous gymnast (a skill lingering from a few tense months hiding from the Ukrainian mafiya as an artistically awful street magician) as he reconsidered his smoke-belching train of thought. Obsessively focusing on the Sniper’s actions now would only get him into trouble, he knew from experience. Early on in his career he’d been so focused on his target’s tantalizing back before him that on more than one occasion he’d been oblivious to the warning whistle of a rocket or the sinister hiss of a flamethrower or the sickening squelch of a fish. There was equally little use charging blindly at the insurmountable, incomprehensible wall of a problem that was the Sniper’s actions; the Spy way was to slip and circle and dodge and poke and pry at all angles until his knife found a weak point or the problem collapsed under the assault. Instead he needed to strafe and slide. Instead he needed to go about things…diplomatically. The world needed its sheep-willed shepherds as well as its boorish butchers, yes; but if years sashaying through both the soirees of the rich and famous and the tenements of the desperately poor had taught the Spy anything, it was that the world also needed its diplomats. People who could, with a delicate word here, a subtle knife there, tear out the stitches of reality and refashion it at their leisure. In this simple little game as in life, he was the silent, unobtrusive power behind the foolish blusterings of lesser men. Let his teammates play with the blunt, blasting blunderings of bombs and bludgeons and baseball bats; he could outclass them all with only his wits, his lies, and a very sharp knife. The Spy was a very good diplomat. People would do all kinds of things to make him halt his negotiations. Like that Sniper, who could be unhealthily creative when it came to killing inoffensive Spies. “Bah!†The cigarette crumpled in his grip. There he was again, the horrible man. The Spy’s thoughts kept circling back to his bizarre actions, as though the incident was a stain on his suit chafing against his skin and his sensibilities. What possibly could have spurred the Sniper to assault him so? For the sake of all that was well-tailored and sophisticated, why? Either of the Medics, trying out new drugs? Side effects of the Jarate pills? A robot or clone duplicate? Alien intervention? The latest fad? Magic? They all seemed equally ridiculous, and for each one he could only regretfully, logically rule them out. The Sniper had shown full awareness of what he was doing and no other personality changes; Jarate side effects would have all turned up by now; the Spy’s own investigations had brought up no hints of anything untoward; the alien invasion had been defeated easily by a team of Australian accountants in ’53; it seemed impossible that the Sniper was one to succumb to fads, much less that fads even had a way of getting on the base or would consist of hugging one’s enemies; and Merasmus had been so busy trying to beat the Soldier to death with his own helmet that the Spy was half convinced he hadn’t even noticed the existence of the more unobtrusive members of the teams. He sighed. Even a ridiculous reason would be better than this mystery. And the Spy did not like mysteries. That was not precisely true. The Spy loved mysteries, in fact; but only when he knew their answers and no-one else did, and then he could smirk and look ineffable as the unknowing fools around him stumbled about. As the ignorant victim of a mystery now, it was not nearly so fun. He paused. He could, of course, simply ask the Sniper why he had acted so. He snorted. That would involve admitting—either outright or implied—that he did not, in fact, know everything about everyone, ever. As that was a concept harder to stomach than the results of Pyro’s attempts at Crêpe Suzette (“No, en flambé does not mean—ah, merde.â€), the Spy concluded he would need to divine the reasons himself. He rose and began to pace. With the others he might pace as he declaimed for dramatic and psychological effect, a circling shark in the bloody waters of their verbal skirmish. Here, as alone in the darkness as he could ever be here, he allowed himself to pace simply to think. The Soldier’s business was rockets. The Pyro’s was fire. The Medic’s was dis- and re-memberment. The Scout’s was being annoying to the point of other people’s suicides. And the Spy’s was, when one got down to it, people. Contrary to infuriated popular belief, the Spy had not, in fact, made an art out of manipulating people. He’d made a life. It took all the theatrical skills of a con man, a magician, an escape artist, and a politician to fool them time and time again, a constantly shifting panoply of tiny details that seemed simply too true to be faked. Until it turned out that they in fact could be, and also, you were dead now. As his Maman had always told him—though admittedly in rather different circumstances, like baking and cross-dressing—“Le bon Dieu est dans le detail.†It was those personal little details that convinced the other team that he was who he claimed to be, and that meant finding and noting those personal little details of both teams in the first place. He didn’t mind. While he scorned their company, people were fascinating, and he delighted in studying them as a child with a magnifying glass might study ants on a bright day. So the Spy watched everyone, when they knew he was and especially when they thought he wasn’t. He watched them, and learned their little quirks and tics and embarrassing secrets and porn stashes and secret dreams. He watched them, and no one could watch him. And there, perhaps, was the nub of the problem. The Sniper couldn’t possibly have known how much his little gesture would rattle the Spy. The Spy knew his opponent far too well for that; every instinct he had insisted that the man wasn’t capable of such bizarre subterfuge. Unless—and at the thought Spy went very still—unless the Sniper was far more cunning than he ever suspected. That he was playing a very long game indeed. After all, before today every instinct he had insisted the man wasn’t prone to fits of embracelepsy, either. The gears of dreadful realization began to turn. They eighteen perpetrated what was objectively quite horrible violence on each other’s bodies every day; the only real route of attack left was psychological. Mind games. The Spy played those every day with his opponents, but he followed the rules of the game; he didn’t tweak his equipment into performing anything it wasn’t made for, he constrained his efforts to drive the opposing side mad to business hours, and he kept his own counsel in the matter of any embarrassing secrets he happened upon in his investigations. He could change all that in a moment, certainly, but he liked to think of his sticking to the rules as a self-imposed challenge. Because as a master of his craft he needed no crutches, and because cheating for such petty reasons was beneath him, and because the Spy knew himself to be a gentleman in a world of cretins. But the Sniper wasn’t a gentleman, as he proved every day in a thousand little ways. Nothing was beneath the Sniper, because the Sniper was already lower than dirt. And he was a petty, petty man who cheated with all the subtlety of a rhinoceros rolling in cayenne pepper. The Spy would have seen a honey trap a mile away, but this? This was strange and awkwardly vulnerable and utterly ingenuous, and quite possibly the most diabolical weapon he’d come up against. Thin lips thinned further around the cigarette. A Spy lived and died by the quality of his intel. Even the idea that he could have been so mistaken made his fingers twitch toward his watch and his gaze dart like a panicking minnow, the hair on the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably under his balaclava. It was only when he found himself donning his best innocent expression of oh-hello-I-am-definitely-your-teammate-thank-goodness-you’re-here-no-they’ve-got-no-sentries-around-the-corner-this-time-I-promise-let’s-charge-in-blindly-what-fun that he realized how ridiculous he was being. This was the RED Sniper he was contemplating having out-Spied the Spy. Every instinct he had insisted that the man, while not exactly thick, per se, didn’t have the corkscrew-in-a-hurricane mental twistiness needed to play at his level. The man had low animal cunning, yes, but not by any means the cerebral power to match wits with the Spy, who’d once assassinated an actor on opening night, took his place, and performed his part without anyone realizing the change. (The assignment had only required the assassination; Spy had always wanted to try his hand at Iago.) He made something of a hobby of watching the Sniper, after all, and the man had never shown any evidence of being a mastermind of Moriarty-esque proportions before (which would be needed to best the Spy, naturally), even during situations when he couldn’t have possibly known the Spy was watching. But then the treacherous, suspicious little Spy’s Spy that lurked and coiled in the deepest, blackest parts of his mind wound itself around him and nipped his ear with pointed teeth until he listened to the abyssal hisses that had saved his life on more than one occasion. If the hug—he mentally handled the word with all the fastidious of a housewife who’d discovered a dead mouse on her pillow—hadn’t been some kind of cunning new weapon, what purpose could it have possibly served? There was no other, Spy was certain. Not between the Sniper and he, contractual and personal nemeses that they were. And the Sniper had shown in the past a proclivity for unconventional-verging-on-insane warfare, it was true. What kind of maniac would duct-tape a car battery to an aboriginal shield and expect anything good to come out of it? And, true, a certain, very small amount of good had come of it, as it turned out. The discovery had given the Spy a shock, to say the least. And then there was that bow of his, a piece of technology so ancient, in the Spy’s opinion, that it should have gone the way of burlap and unfiltered cigarettes long ago. On a field full of men with rocket launchers, miniguns that shot bullets longer than the Spy’s emphatically raised middle finger, and outright alien technology, the connard brought an archery set that could have been from prehistoric Gaul. It had stone arrowheads. Stone arrowheads. Not that the Spy himself didn’t negotiate his way through many differences in opinion with nothing more than a knife barely as long as his not-tiny-at-all hand, but he was the Spy and therefore superior in every fashion to his fellows. Waltzing out into the open with several sticks and one string and expecting to dominate anything other than one’s own common sense was something else altogether. And yet, somehow, the Spy himself had ended up pinned to an embarrassing number of walls with those same stone arrowheads, not to mention the corpses of his colleagues slumped like lazy scarecrows around the battlefield with hand-fletched shafts through their eye sockets. (He’d sent the Sniper the bill for the mending of his poor torn suit. It had come back wrapped around an arrow and shot through the silk rose in his lapel. The fact that it also went through his three layers of hand-stitched Italian tailoring, his heart, and the wall behind seemed almost incidental.) And then there was the Jarate. He couldn’t stop a shiver at the far-too-plentiful memories of his soaked clothes sticking to his skin, how after he would kill the grinning Sniper—grinning, always grinning when he did it, the fils de salope, as if he did something to be proud of—in the fastest, most vicious way possible he’d practically throw himself in front of gunfire until he woke up in Respawn, the stains out of his clothes but still, indelibly, on his soul. Even the Spy, who readily admitted (to himself, at least) that he had all the morals of a bathhouse viper, knew a line of human decency had been crossed with the invention of Jarate. A man who collected his own waste to toss at those of his peers who merely happened to disagree with his choice in sartorial palette was a man who had no respect for anything outside his own sadistic entertainment. It was a psychological weapon, he could see it now. He could see it all now. This entire time the Sniper had been playing mind games with him, and he’d been too blinkered by the rules of the silly little game they played out here in the desert, his foolish confidence in his own intellectual supremacy, and the man’s unwashed barbarism and seeming simplicity to see the true machinations that underlay every shot of the Machina. It was a very Spy thing the Sniper had been doing, and he swallowed hard at the thought that all this time he might have been playing tiddlywinks with a chessmaster. He had the sudden urge to put out his cigarette. Didn’t snipers hunt at night by the cherry-glows of their victims’ bad habits? (In lieu of the tobacco he quickly snuffed the urge. Paranoia could only get one so far. Besides, he was on the roof of the building on the far side from the RED base, tucked in a corner with two obvious and three not-so obvious exits, all five suffused with squeaky tiles, unexpectedly slippery edges, a completely accidental glue-and-feathers spill, a nonstandard amount of marbles, and one banana peel. The Spy had a friend in the Boy Scouts.) There was another issue at hand as well—Spy wasn’t sure why this newest addition to the Sniper’s arsenal perturbed him so much. Surely, the realization of the man’s true nature was the real danger here, yet he found himself thinking back on the event itself again and again. The Sniper had somehow divined the Spy’s hitherto-unknown secret weakness and acted accordingly; the Spy had been caught off guard, and in those few seconds before he grasped his self-control and his knife, he’d actually responded to the gesture and returned it in kind. It was remarkable how natural the movement had felt, and he wondered if perhaps it was something inborn in all humans to reciprocate gestures of affection, no matter how false or meaningless. And, as tarnished and twisted and cynical as his humanity might be at times, the Spy was still human enough to indulge in something a normal person might do once in a while. (Sometimes. Perhaps. He drew the line at gardening. Fresh air was made for those who didn’t have cigarettes, and dirt was unnecessarily dirty, and living plants were far less interesting even than dead people, who weren’t exactly the life of the party themselves.) Looking back at the day’s peculiar event with the advantage of hindsight, he even found himself wishing he’d thought to tug off a glove or two— “Ta gueule,†he snapped. There he went again, circling the same thoughts like a greedy child staring at a forbidden sweet. He’d been attacked by seemingly much more dangerous weapons in the past, sauntered out of honey traps and vinegar traps alike. But this? This was strange and awkwardly vulnerable and utterly ingenuous, and quite possibly the most diabolical weapon he’d come up against. There was a simple solution to this, he knew. If he would simply go on with business as usual the Sniper might conclude his newest trick was ineffective and discard it. As his Maman had always told him, if he would just ignore the attacks and pretend they didn’t bother him then his enemies would give up. Spy considered this option for a long moment, staring at the cherry-ember of the cigarette between his fingers as if he was the Pyro and could divine the answers he sought through flames. And suddenly smirked. He, the Spy, cowed by a little unorthodox warfare? For that was what this simple solution meant, at its core. That all it took was a little psychological sortie to make him a twitchy, sharply-dressed mess. “Ridiculous,†he told his cigarette. “Absolutely ridiculous.†This was not the squabbling antipathy of playground bullies. Spy was up against a man who would truly stop at nothing to achieve victory, and if this was not nipped in the bud, chopped into bits, burnt to a crisp, plowed with salt, and made lewd remarks about its mother now then there would only be something far worse next. The Sniper had pulled the wool over his eyes, yes—but now the Spy knew what was really going on. And the Sniper needed to be punished for his crimes. For trying to beat the Spy at the game he’d invented in the womb. While the Spy had loved his mother, in the matter of his childhood antagonists his Papa had given him much more useful advice: Aux grands maux, les grandes remèdes. Against an enemy who stopped at nothing, he’d simply have to stop at nothing too. “You wish to play, mon petit loup? You wish to fight unconventionally? Very well.†Eyes hooded, he blew a long streak of smoke into the night, then ground the last cigarette butt beneath one sleek Italian loafer. “Then let us play.†--------------------------------------------------------- FRENCHNESS Le bon Dieu est dans le detail: God is in the details. Interestingly, the more common variant today, "the Devil is in the details," did not come into circulation until 1975. connard: equivalent of "ass" with connotations of "idiot" (though with a rather different literal meaning) Ta gueule: difficult to translate due to Frenchness, but somewhere in the area of "shut the fuck up" and "are you fucking kidding me". Aux grands maux, les grandes remèdes: “One must defeat evil with the same type of evil.†That is, fight fire with fire. French proverb. mon petit loup: "my little wolf". While this can be taken literally, it is also used as an endearment (interestingly, reminiscent of the Australian connotations of "bastard"). I have a small but persistent headcanon that the Spy uses endearments when he's being condescending or falsely seductive, not when he's being genuinely romantic. ~Concrits (especially a Critzkrieg), questions, random thoughts, threats of violence, major revelations, bad puns, and kittens are all very, very welcome. Thanks for reading, and the next part should be up soon!~
Ooh, I liked this very much. Again, it felt very in character for Spy. It's funny how much of a mindfuck the RED Sniper has given BLU Spy...and he didn't even intend to. It's also funny how offended Spy gets at the idea of Sniper preventing him from doing his job. Spy admits he's not morally superior to Sniper but there's still this almost "innocent" picture Spy paints himself who just wants to go about his day backstabbing like usual but this brutish Sniper is ruining it all. It's interesting how hugging one-another is so ingrained in our humanity. That physical touch has been simultaneous comfort and survival. The Eighteen Perfect Idiots may be of varying degrees of crazy, but they are still human.
"he delighted in studying them as a child with a magnifying glass might study ants on a bright day." Loved this line, very 'Spy' indeed. You write Spy's mind track very well, going round in circles and making funny connections but always keeping his priorities and standards at the centre. I thought poor Spy was turning into a nervous wreck but I'm glad he pulled himself back to Earth. I eagerly await for the next instalment of this fic.
You've captured the personalities of our favorite mercs very well indeed. Even with adding your personal touches, the inner monologues read like they come from the character's themselves (quite, in their own voices, perfectly). A rich, poetic prose glues it all together. Not only am I impressed with this fan-fiction— mon cheri— I predict you have a future in writing professionally. Very well done.
You already know what I had to say about this. I only hope you'll continue. :P
Delirious, stop bumping inactive threads.
Sorry, I kept forgetting that if you don't put "sage" in email it bumps it to the top.