Probably won't do more vampires, but I won't say never-- that one just gave me a lot of trouble I wasn't expecting... I got all excited over the prompt, but it turns out it is almost impossible to turn something you dreamed into a coherent fic... Anyway, I had said I might do another prompt, before the thread autosaged again, so here 'tis: Spycest Working from the saying "At least give me a blindfold and a cigarette." No true violence necessary, and consent is preferred. Experimenting, perhaps? Do as you will. ~~~ (It turns out this prompt fit rather neatly into my personal TF2verse... When I'm writing 'Shuffle' from the POV of the main Spy, I can't really go into the background on the other spies' relationship, but... well, while I was in the planning/early writing stages of 'Shuffle' is I think when I first saw the prompt, so...) (also, it wound up porn-less. I might have to write more at some point...) ~~~In Isolated Moments~~~ Both spies dive into the small room under the first capture point at the same time, but the BLU Spy is the first to get his hands on the health kit. As he straightens, injuries ceasing to bother him, the RED Spy merely lands hard on the floor. "Well." The RED Spy looks up. His breaths come ragged, he can do little beyond trying to hold himself together. "Well." The BLU Spy adjusts his grip on his revolver. "At least give me a blindfold and a cigarette." He had had a cigarette, but during the mad race for the health kit, he had lost it. Not that he thinks his request will be taken at all seriously. Not that it really matters. The BLU Spy laughs, though, and drops down to his knees in the small space. "Why not? Unless we go into overtime, the round is almost over anyway... and here we are, far from any action." He offers one of his own cigarettes, places it between the other man's lips and lights it for him. There is a moment of heat between them as he does, and he coughs nervously and sits back. "So." He says. "So." The RED Spy nods, rolling onto his back. "Tell me about yourself. As long as we are waiting out the last minutes." "What makes you think it would be the truth?" "Absolutely nothing. I trust it would be an amusing lie, though." It is the RED Spy's turn to laugh. "For that, I will tell you the truth, if not much of it. I detest most of my team. I was born in Paris. I still think it is the most beautiful city in the world. When I was very young and very foolish, I wanted to write poetry." "I have no strong feelings about my own team, which may even be worse." The BLU Spy smiles. "I grew up in Calais, but I will allow that Paris is a fine city indeed. When I was young enough and foolish enough, I studied poetry. At University." "Who do you like? Baudelaire?" "I prefer Rimbaud." "I prefer Verlaine to Rimbaud." The RED Spy struggles to pull himself off the floor. The BLU Spy reaches over to help him. "Well, my main area of interest was in the poems of Arabic and Jewish Spain during the eleventh and twelfth centuries." "... I feel I ought to be impressed. I can't talk about poetry at all with my team, of course. Despite his looks, our Heavy is not illiterate, but he is Russian. I don't think they read anything that isn't impossibly long." "I broached the general topic once, with my own team." The BLU Spy admits. "And the Engineer brought up something called 'cowboy poetry'. It was awful." "Our Medic is impossible. His tastes in literature... dry." "Our Sniper's understanding of poetry begins and ends with something called a 'Banjo Paterson'." The RED Spy opens his mouth to speak, only to be snatched away to the resupply room and the start of a new round. He hadn't even noticed when the last round finished. ---/-/--- They seek each other out, after that. They discuss literature, and philosophy, they discuss food and wine. They arrange a meeting in the nearest town, and the BLU Spy brings a small and battered volume of poetry. "If you wanted to borrow it." He slides it across the table. The following weekend, the RED Spy solemnly moves their prearranged meeting from the restaurant to a hotel room. "The book you gave me-- I remembered to bring it back for you. The poems are... The poems seemed to me to be about men, were they not? It could be my own error, or some difficulty with translation, but..." "No. They are." "I see." He swallows hard, considering. When he returns the book, though, his hands linger. And he has moved them to a room, with a bed, a thing he would not have done if some part of him didn't plan for this. "I'd hoped... I know we ought to be enemies, but in the whole of this war, there is no one I have this much in common with. And when I mentioned Rimbaud, you mentioned Verlaine. And I'd hoped..." The RED Spy leans forward then, kissing him. "This could all be such a mistake..." "Yes. What would life be without mistakes, though?" "So very dull." He agrees, his hands already slipping under the BLU Spy's blazer. And this is shaping up to be the loveliest mistake he will ever make...