>>2 I can see how he ended up looking like an OC, but that wasn't my intention. Hopefully this post smooths his character out a little; if it doesn't, I'd be grateful if you could point out whatever I'm missing. >>5 Things will be less interesting It's hard putting emotions for situations like these into words while sounding sufficiently detached at the level I believe Engineer would be. Updates will usually be around this length, by the way. ------------------------------------------------------------ Engineer waited until Medic had shut the door before sitting heavily on a workbench and kneading his temples. He was an apricot, sort of; just not at the moment. He’d just come back from his two-week leave, a little bit of which he had spent in Bee Cave. Bee Cave-- that was the problem. The Texan had been in the closet for his whole life, and the one person who’d known had been his best friend in high school. Best meaning only, and friend meaning communal keeper of secrets. Apparently the idiot had gotten loose-lipped just a week before Engineer had left for Bee Cave, and the whole town became informed of the fact that he was homosexual. Talk about bad luck; Engineer’s brief stay in his hometown had been spent listening to those uneducated hicks spit slurs at him while he carried his bags to and from his hotel. It hadn’t even been a stay; the girl at the hotel counter, his middle school seat partner and his date to his first high school dance, had pushed his money back over the counter with the back of her pencil like she couldn’t bear to touch it and told him that they “couldn’t let no faggots stay in this God-fearin’ town, not even if they paid.†It hurt. It hurt beyond belief. It surprised him, at first, because he had thought nobody knew, but afterwards, running to catch the bus when the hotel had rejected his reservation, he realized it tore a dripping hole in his chest to see people he’d grown up with calling him a faggot. Bee Cave was a small community; everyone dropped their work at the sign of entertainment and came out to vociferate their piece of mind. It didn’t help that even the people who were visiting the little town from elsewhere joined in on the jeering, and it really didn’t help that the kids started throwing trash at him too. He had nightmares for the rest of his vacation, two long, miserable weeks which he spent at a motel in Austin. A mercenary with eleven PhDs, having nightmares about a mob of bigoted ranchers! It sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud, but the hurt sank right into what used to be his iron core. It had a figurative crater in it now; a figurative crater the whole goddarn size of Bee Cave. Getting on the train back to the war felt great; on the platform, he had been fine, excited, even, to meet the new team, until the resident Demo and Soldier started whispering in the back. His heart rate started rising when he heard Soldier’s gruff, American accent; it was probably because he didn’t particularly like Soldiers and their abrasive habits, rather than because of the whole vacation drama, but either way he’d kept it under control well enough. Then Scout had to start yammering. The man’s voice made his whole body tense-- the runner was an adult, sure, and his accent was totally different, but the pitch of his voice was reminded him of the teenager at the bus stop who had thrown fist-sized rocks that had made fist-sized bruises ‘round his shoulders and on his forearms that still hurt like bitches even after two weeks. It just grated on his nerves. He was so focused on shutting Scout up he forgot to be gentle about it. Of course, with Scouts, talking at them only made them talk back, so Engineer got rid of him the most surefire way he could think of. “He’s connected to respawn,†had been the only thing he could think to say before he decided he really didn’t feel like explaining. He had relaxed as Medic guided him off; there was no way he’d mistake that hacking German accent for any American one, and the man’s intelligent bearing made him seem less susceptible to any preference-related paranoia. It was unreasonable, he knew, to think that his new team would find out even with his time-tested competence at being discreet(and that a man’s intelligence signified his defense against popular opinion), but he indulged his emotional insecurities to keep his blood pressure down. His question about intelligent conversation in the workshop wasn’t just some kind of precaution, though; he genuinely preferred a stimulating discussion to some repetitive prattle about topics he couldn’t care less about. He made a note to speak with the Heavy and the Spy, but he wasn’t too sure about the resident Sniper-- the last time he’d heard, being gay was against the law in Australia, and he didn’t want know how the Aussie would react if the topic ever came up. The Engineer just needed a little time. The adrenaline pumping through him during battles would suppress his nervous reactions, but for the rest of the day, he was probably going to be a wreck. He was definitely getting better, though; the trauma from that one encounter should be wearing off by now. He would apologize to the runner tomorrow, he told himself, if the man could shut up for the length of time it took to beg pardon; otherwise, Scout might just have to go through respawn again. Cracking his neck a few times, the Engineer pushed himself up from the bench and set out tidying the place. He’d need to put aside space for Irene, when he got her reassembled, and the welder needed to be replaced. Matter of fact, a lot of the equipment looked like it had seen better days. He’d make a list for the next supply train. The Texan set into the steady, comforting routine of reorganising equipment, and for a few hours he didn’t think about anything but machine parts.