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“How early were you?”
His rival Spy shifts his shoulders into leaning more heavily against the cold cement of Gorge’s A Point supports, and his lips twitch into a guarded smile, humouring.
“Perhaps a few minutes. Mere impatience, I promise.”
Spy, himself, maybe the original, maybe not, hums his satisfaction and steps into line beside the other. The different tints of their uniforms hardly matter, do little to disguise that they’re both dashing rogues and heartless traitors to the core, or so say the masks and their colleagues. It’s not so surprising that eventually they would seek solace in each other, being the only pair for many kilometres who might best understand what this is like.
“Impatience to see me, or your cigars?”
“It can’t be both?” And they share a chuckle, cautiously tailored to only go as far as friendly and keep some semblance of wariness, nothing more threatening to their respective teams. Nothing that would seem too close, too attached. Spy’s ribs ache with the exertion of holding himself back, so he tugs his case from its pocket and holds one out for a light.
“No flourishes tonight?” The opposing Spy offers a smirk, and his lighter, but he shifts his posture into something more open, the only way they can safely show this kind of concern. Hard to say which of her cameras are working tonight.
Spy takes a drag, too long too early, just for the excuse to sigh it out. But perhaps that’s all it ever is.
“I’m so tired,” he murmurs.
The other Spy’s easy atmosphere deflates, slow enough, but still too fast for Spy, and it makes him wish he’d never said anything just for the sake of keeping that casual cheer they both need far too much. He aches more, differently, in harmony with the other weights on his person that only seem to build. His counterpart takes his own smoke-filled inhale, but it doesn’t puff him back up to what he had been.
“... Désolé. I am as well.”
“It’s not your fault.” Because it isn’t, they both know somewhere under their skin that neither of them can fix each other’s deep-set meaninglessness, the hopeless feeling they both have when they remember this is all for nothing, and they might as well be too. They’d still manage to blame themselves when it’s inevitably lasting instead of something chased away by small comforts, even if such things are easing compared to the rest of their lives.
“I wish it was. Then I could blame myself and then you might manage to get yourself away from here for your own sake.”
“But then I would blame myself instead, and we would be no better than when we started,” Spy laughs. It’s foolish, they both are, and it’s just enough to drown out the dull roar of his worse thoughts.
“We’ll just have to be tired together instead.”
Their eyes meet, and they share a smile like it’s the secret to ending everything. Fleeting, hasty, but with an almost passionate urgency. The daredevil in Spy flares up, and he forces himself to shiver instead of throwing away all the pretense, the rules, the masks, blames it on the cold instead of the borderline need to touch this other man, hold him and kiss him until they both feel real again. Let the world find them unstoppable, strengthened as a single supporting unit. He knows it’s a fantasy he can’t test, even regardless of his small rational thoughts telling him it never works out that way, not really, but he wants it so badly he thinks he might die on the spot. He takes another drag like his sanity depends on it, and it’s enough of something else to focus on.
“I would like that.”
“Even if it might not last?”
He closes his eyes, thinks if he doesn’t he’s going to lose the little game he plays with himself, with her and her jobs, her rules, her delicately seeded paranoia of betrayal whenever this sort of agreement arises between teams. Losing would be showing his weakness is right here, as if it isn’t already plain to see.
“Especially then.”
He snaps himself alert as his counterpart laughs, really laughs, not the guarded things they need to use, and it’s whole and sad and fills the dry night air with something other than cigarette smoke and residual gunpowder.
He cracks a smile, throws caution and his nerves to the wind. “Too indulgent of me?”
The other Spy laughs more, or maybe he’s sobbing and hiding it well. They both hurt and it’s too risky to acknowledge in the open, but they both know. “Not at all. I thought the same thing.”
They settle into silence after that, if not for the sake of avoiding her then for avoiding each other. It stretches on seemingly infinitely until it’s over, and they have to decide if they want to stay with only smoke and their closeness to keep the chill out, or part ways until tomorrow’s skirmish where they’ll inevitably see each other and spar under the pretense of murderous rivalries. Where they’ll inevitably contemplate stopping and disappearing together to chase their comforts away from this pointless war, and inevitably choose their contract and routine over the terrifying realities of freedom. They’ve danced like this before, and they will many times after.
“Next week, again?” he asks, eventually, softly, and the other Spy nods.
“Perhaps later in the evening, though. I will say when I know more.”
“Of course.”
And then the steps to their dance change, with the rhythmic clicks of an opening balisong as his only warning. He’s caught too off-guard to turn and sidestep, has his breath forced out of him with the sudden heavy pressure of someone exactly your size holding a knife to your throat, and he watches his counterpart with surprised wide eyes. The other looks calm, if thoroughly apologetic, and Spy feels a pang of despair and betrayal before he realizes the blade edge pushing on his adam’s apple is the safe one.
“Désolé, it’s better I appear threatening if I’m this close. I… I wanted to say I will miss you very dearly, but, this was stupid of me.”
“Non. My only objection is that I can’t return some sort of farewell.” They are both stupid.
They are both even more stupid when they lean in closer and share a kiss, and then it must be too short and too sad for either of them to be satisfied. So they leave as quickly as they can without another word, cloaking and following their opposite paths back to their warm, unwelcoming bases, and Spy will do all he can to keep from speaking of it, of this, of what they are to each other.
He aches terribly when they have their feigned fight the next day, and he fails to crush the feeling with some sort of falsified revenge plan when he loses their match.