Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worst thing about the match being caught in a stalemate was the energy of it. Being trapped in that strange place between fighting and resting, between alertness and relative relaxation. The fact that it made the day drag on longer was no good, and the looming fear that any moment something would change and they would lose was also no fun, but really, the feeling of being a coiled spring just waiting for the action to start back up, weapons all reloaded and wounds all patched and healed, knowing the if but waiting on the when, it was awful.

Sniper in particular was fairly irritated about them, mostly because generally during stalemates, he would be tormented by the enemy Spy, who seemed to get bored extremely quickly. That left Sniper with an additional layer of tension going on, with the only real measure he could take to try and not get backstabbed a few dozen times in a row to be changing nests fairly frequently, which left him only a little less frazzled.

He’d only just sat down in the barn that made up the outskirts of the current battlefield when he got lucky enough to hear the telltale sound of a dispersing cloak and a knife flipping open.

No. Absolutely not. The bastard had killed him four times in the past twenty minutes. He would not get a fifth.

In the space of a moment he’d leapt to his feet, seized his knife and spun around with a snarl, a vicious swing going a long way to make the Spy reel backwards and to buy Sniper a moment to get bearings on where he was and where he might move next.

The Spy’s next move was to back up and glance for the nearest door or window, but no, he would not be getting away, not after being such a bastard. Sniper darted forward, feigning a swing at his kneecaps only to instead thrust upwards, knife sliding cleanly up into the Spy’s ribcage.

“Why don’t you go ahead and stay dead for a while?” Sniper snarled, and yanked the knife out, and kicked him to the ground.

Relative silence for the three seconds it took for the Spy to stop struggling on the ground. Full silence for the five seconds it took before Respawn pulled the corpse away.

“That was kind of hot,” chirped a voice from up above him, and Sniper nearly had a heart attack.

He glanced up, and there, looking down at him, lying in the rafters that supported the loft with a hand propping up his chin and a grin on his face, was Scout.

“How the hell’d you get there?” Sniper asked, trying to shake off his alarm.

“I’ve been up here, man. I was up here before you showed up and went all one-liner action hero. I was asleep.” Indeed there was a layer of laziness to the way Scout spoke and moved, usually reserved for shortly after the team woke up in the morning or for late, late at night.

Sniper exhaled, relaxing minutely, moving to wipe his knife off and pick back up his gun, glancing it over to see if it’d been damaged when he dropped it. “I’m not gonna ask why you were up napping in the rafters instead of out doing your job,” he said dryly.

“What job?” Scout scoffed. “It’s a stalemate.”

“There’s still bastards that need killin’. That means you’ve still got a job to do,” Sniper said firmly.

“Yeah, plenty’s guys around to fight,” Scout said sarcastically. He pulled his pistol from the waistband of his pants, aiming it at make-believe enemies. “Pew, pew. Really givin’ me a workout. Pew, pew-pew. C’mon Snipes, I need backup here against all the just, the waves of guys attackin’ us right now.”

“I get it,” Sniper said flatly.

“Just the crazy amount of dudes currently attackin’ is that I’m supposed to be stoppin’. Because you told me to do my job.”

“I get it, Scout.”

“Just the absolutely bonkers number of totally real people I’m totally in combat with right exactly now, this like, action hero movie’s worth of enemies. With like, me being the protagonist. Just that many guys.”

“Scout, I get it.”

“And you’re just like, sittin’ around lookin’ pretty while I’m doin’ all the work here. Shittiest love interest ever, in this, the movie where a bunch of guys attack us.”

Sniper shot Scout a glare, then went to start adjusting his scope.

“Hey, but y’know what’s weird, though?” Scout asked, voice perking up as he changed subjects abruptly.

“What?”

“How you always just like, glare at me or don’t respond when I say flirty stuff like that, instead’a tellin’ me to knock it off.”

Sniper turned his head to glare again, not speaking.

“I mean, sometimes you say stuff like “Oi, bugger, go away, I’m concentrating” or “Bloody hell, can this conversation wait, piss” or somethin’, but you never tell me to actually stop.” Scout tilted his head just to one side. “What’s that all about?”

“I don’t sound like that,” Sniper grumbled.

“See, even now when you’re all pissed off for some reason, you’re still not telling me to quit. You’re just changing the subject. I just thought that was kinda funny, y’know?”

“Hilarious,” Sniper drawled.

Scout sat up, and dropped down to hang from the rafter he’d been perched on, swinging once and dropping to the ground. For a brief moment Sniper was convinced he was about to watch Scout break both his legs, but Scout dropped into a roll and ended up back on his feet again, brushing hay from himself, otherwise unscathed.

And then he was walking up towards Sniper, crowding into his space. Sniper took a step back instinctively, and Scout took two forward. Sniper’s back collided with the wall, and then Scout was stood practically on his toes, looking up at him with that same curiosity, that same half-grin. Sniper’s pulse pounded in his ears.

“So what’s the deal, then?” Scout asked with a surprising amount of neutrality, eyes flickering to give him an up-and-down. “Is it that you’re… scared of me, or something? Is that it?”

“Of course not,” Sniper half-scoffed, glancing away, only to have his credibility instantly put into question as he jumped at the feeling of Scout fiddling with his vest’s zipper.

“Funny way of showin’ it,” Scout commented in turn.

“Look, this just isn’t something that…” Sniper managed to stamp down a shiver before it could roll through him at the feeling of Scout’s right hand moving from fiddling with his vest to instead slide to rest under it. “…That coworkers should do, particularly in our line of business.”

“What, you don’t trust me?” Scout pouted, nonetheless keeping his hand on Sniper’s waist, his left one moving to mess with the bullets Sniper kept stocked in his breast pocket.

“S’not that,” Sniper gritted out, looking away entirely to stare out over Scout’s shoulder, trying to ignore how nice all this contact felt. Admittedly, it wasn’t something that happened to him often outside the context of battle. “It’s just… not very professional.”

“So we keep this quiet,” Scout shrugged, tilting his head to try and goad Sniper into looking at him again. “I ain’t askin’ for some whole big thing, roses an’ chocolates an’ all that. Not unless you’re about that. I just wanted to… y’know, try somethin’ out. See if we’d work.”

“If we’d work?” Sniper echoed, eyebrows drawing together, still not quite able to meet Scout’s eyes.

“Yeah. I mean, I’m pretty bored, talkin’ with you is almost always pretty fun, and you’re just pretty. Figured we could work somethin’ out. But then you went an’ started playin’ some game where you didn’t give me a straight answer or anythin’ to go on even though it was pretty damn clear I was hitting on you.”

Sniper’s jaw tightened.

Scout’s subtle motions stopped for a second, presumably as Scout considered him. “Look, I’m not gonna like, force the issue, here. You tell me you don’t want nothin’ to do with this, I’ll leave you alone. Won’t even be mad, just like, a little disappointed. Because I’m serious. Cards on the table? I really wanna try this. But this definitely isn’t gonna work unless you show up voluntarily. So you tell me straight up, “Get away”, and I’ll walk away and I won’t ever bug you again like this. I’ll cut it out with the makin’ passes at you and we’ll both get outta here like none’a this ever happened. That’s all you’ve gotta say, is “Get away”. And I will.”

“Fine. Get—“ Sniper started, eyes locking on Scout’s again, only to pause.

Scout’s expression was something Sniper had never seen on him before. A bit serious, largely earnest. There was hope pretty clearly written across his features, and the whole pretense of smugness was gone. He wasn’t playing around, he was making a very honest, open offer.

Sniper’s breath caught in his throat. “Get…” he tried again, because he’d meant it, this wasn’t something coworkers should do. He was a professional, he had standards for himself, standards that pretty clearly meant not doing this sort of thing with any of his teammates. And besides that, Sniper really wasn’t in a position where he should be… dating, or whatever else Scout planned to propose. And he’d never even been any good at dating back in the past, and he wasn’t sure if he’d even enjoy it. But both of Scout’s hands had migrated to his waist beneath his vest, and stroked over his sides with a surprising and uncharacteristic gentleness. Like Scout was waiting for that second word. Like he was almost sure it was going to come, any moment, and Sniper’s voice caught.

Scout looked at him. He looked at Scout.

Then his eyes flicked up, and widened slightly.

In the space of a moment, he’d seized the pistol from Scout’s waistband, firing one, two three shots off towards the doorway. The first pinged off the wood, but the second two connected, one with an invisible chest, the other with an invisible forehead.

Scout half-turned, eyebrows raised, to regard the Spy that slumped to the ground just inside the barn, and the way it disappeared after a second. “Nice shot,” he commented, voice appraising. “How’d you catch that?”

“Saw the hay on the ground move,” Sniper replied, hands falling to tuck the pistol back where Scout put it, only to linger there for another few moments.

Scout hummed. Silence between them for a few seconds before Scout turned to look back at him again. He didn’t speak, just looked up at Sniper, displaying an amount of restraint just then.

Sniper finally let out a sigh, shoulders sagging, pulling Scout in a half-step closer. “Y’know what? To hell with it. Fine.”

Scout perked up immediately, lighting up like a firework show. “Really? You mean it?” he asked, his smile stretching across his face wide and unabashed.

“Yeah. Not like I’ve got any real reason to say no. You’re not so bad,” he managed to joke, his own face making a valiant attempt at a smile.

Scout laughed, and the pressure of his hands increased as he leaned into Sniper a bit, positively glowing. “Yeah. Not so bad.”

Chapter Text

There were quite a few things that you learned to get used to when living with eight other mercenaries of varying degrees of mental stability and proficiency in English and sobriety. The presence of firearms around every corner, the near-constant possibility that someone would get in an argument (or altercation) with someone else, a lingering and implacable odd smell that went beyond what buildings primarily housing men usually had.

And of course, there was often blood or property destruction present.

But there was one individual who preferred not to partake in the general mayhem the others tended to get into (outside of the arguments, on the basis of him being a complete bastard). So that did make the Engineer take pause.

Admittedly, Spy was playing it very cool. He was walking perfectly normally, at a regular speed, and Engie was preoccupied with making sure he didn’t spill any of the tools he was lugging to his workshop, fresh off of an attempt to talk to Medic about a potential dispenser redesign.

But he did catch it, out of the corner of his eye. It took a moment to process, but then he was stopping, turning, eyebrows furrowed.

“Uh, hey, Spy?” he called hesitantly.

Spy stopped, but didn’t turn. “Yes?” he asked evenly.

“Is that blood?”

He couldn’t be sure, because the blood he thought he’d seen was mostly on Spy’s face, and Spy still wasn’t turning. A beat of pause. “No, it’s not,” Spy said. His voice was still very even and controlled.

“I was just askin’ because it looked an awful lot like blood,” Engie said, shifting his gear a bit lower, starting to frown now. “And if it’s blood, I don’t think you’d try and hide it unless it was yours and you were embarrassed.”

“You are mistaken,” Spy replied easily. “I am fine, there’s no blood to speak of.”

“Awful rude to have a conversation with your back facin’ someone.”

There was a beat of pause.

Then Spy sighed. “This really isn’t worth starting something over, is it?” he asked, largely rhetorically. He turned around with a second, more dramatic sigh, and Engie got a chance to actually see his face, and his eyebrows shot up.

“Sheesh, what in Sam Hill happened to you?” he asked, taken aback by the wounds visible despite Spy’s mask covering much of his face. He already had an amount of swelling going on just above his eye, and his nose had apparently been bleeding at some point, as well as his lip being split, or maybe having been cut on his teeth.

“I’d rather not say,” he replied bitterly. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go to the medical bay so I can continue with the rest of my day.”

“No good,” Engie said, shaking his head, hefting his tools again to readjust them. “I was just there. The Doc’s not in.”

Spy’s expression soured. “Of course. Wonderful. Perfect. Merveilleux. Just what I needed.”

Engie sighed, adjusting the load he was carrying once more before starting to walk again. “Alright, c’mon then,” he said simply.

There was a pause before he heard the sound of pristinely polished shoes clicking to follow him. “Might I ask why?”

“I’ll just set you up with a dispenser an’ get you cleaned up,” Engie replied. “I’m no doctor—not medically, at least—but I should at least be able to patch you up until the good doctor comes back around and can take a look at you, provided it’s that serious.”

“It is not. Nothing terrible. A small dose of healing vapor should be sufficient,” Spy answered.

In no time at all Engie was at the door of his workshop, inputting the code and stepping inside, Spy following close at his heels. Given their… arrangement, could they call it? Spy had long since gotten used to loitering in Engie’s workshop for spans of time. There wasn’t a particular pattern to Spy showing up, or how long he generally stayed (partially due, Engie suspected, to the man’s lingering paranoia that he earned from his profession), but he did show up relatively often.

Engie put down the dispenser and let it start setting itself up while he went to fetch one of the folding stools he had leaned up against a mostly-clear section of the wall. He brought it over to where the build was making some progress on itself and set it up, and Spy only looked a little exasperated at the thought of sitting on it before he complied, not without brushing it off first.

Engie sped along the process of building the dispenser, and it was only another moment before it was humming to life, releasing a steady stream of healing vapor into the air around it.

“Alright, now let’s get you cleaned up,” Engie said, moving to his workshop’s sink and getting some clean towels, starting to wet one. “Might as well, while I’ve still got you here.”

“I cannot help but feel you are enjoying this,” Spy hummed, the slightest tint of amusement in his tone.

“Maybe a bit,” Engie conceded, returning and looking over Spy’s face. “I reckon this might be a bit difficult with all that fabric in the way, y’know.”

Spy paused for a second, looking him over critically, before rolling his eyes and moving to pull his mask off. “Fine. I suppose the damage of you seeing my face has already been done,” he murmured.

There were a few more bruises on Spy’s face that had been hidden, but they were fading with every slow breath Spy took. He tilted the Frenchman’s chin up and set to work wiping away the blood that had started to dry over the lower half of his face, mostly from the nosebleed, with the wet cloth.

“Not too much blood, lucky for you,” Engie said quietly after a few moments of silence between them. He looked Spy in the eye long enough to flash him a smile. “I imagine you’d hate to get blood on the collar of your shirt.”

“I know how to get blood from my clothes, who exactly do you think I am?” Spy replied, the usual bite of his voice softened by the way an answering smile tried to pull at his face.

“Hold still, now,” Engie chided, finishing cleaning his lip, starting work on gently wiping at a smear that had gotten caught just above Spy’s eyebrow as he’d removed his mask. “Ought to be another minute or so before the swelling goes down. The vapor don’t do much for that.”

“I’m aware,” Spy said, scoffing but nevertheless staying still.

Engie put aside the wet cloth, moving to finish up with a dry one, and then he was done. “There. All cleaned up,” he declared, still holding Spy’s chin in his hand.

Spy hummed. They looked at each other for a moment. It was only then that Engie realized they were very close together.

He was just a man. He couldn’t resist the impulse. He leaned in and gave Spy a brief kiss.

Spy returned it without drama or fanfare. It only lasted a moment before they pulled back away again.

“Ow,” Spy mumbled, raising a hand to feel at his still-swollen lip.

“Oh. Sorry,” Engie apologized.

“Hm. Kiss me again and I’ll consider forgiving you,” Spy said, and Engie breathed a laugh, leaning back in to comply.

When he pulled back again, Spy looked rather pleased with himself.

“So. Care to tell me what happened to get you all mussed up in the first place?” Engie asked.

Spy’s expression promptly fell. He stewed for a moment. “One more, and maybe I’ll tell you,” Spy decided.

Admittedly, that did get Engie to laugh. The third kiss took a bit longer, with Spy tugging on one of the straps of his overalls to keep him in close when he tried to pull away.

They did need to breathe at some point, though, and Engie raises an eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling you’re just tryin’ to get me to forget I asked you a question?” he mused.

Spy grinned, a sheepishness lying just under it. “Guilty as charged,” he acquiesced.

“So? What happened?” Engie prompted.

Spy groaned, burying his face in his hand. “I fell down the stairs,” he mumbled.

A pause. “You what, now?”

“The stairs. I fell down them. It was quite a tumble. I thought, well, how very lucky I was that nobody was around to see it. But it also hurt considerably, and I didn’t want to walk around with such bruising for the rest of the day until battle tomorrow, so that is why I meant to go see Medic.” Spy dropped his hand, looking up at Engie, trying for a smile again. “That’s it. You caught me.”

Engie felt almost like he wanted to laugh, but also Spy had been kind enough to be honest, so he pushed down the urge. Instead he gave into a different one, tsk’ing and giving him a sympathetic peck on the cheek. “Aww. Poor thing,” he hummed.

Spy rolled his eyes. “Regardless. Thank you for being kind enough to help me. And thank you in advance for never telling anyone that this ever happened.”

“Yeah, ‘course I won’t,” Engie said. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

Sniper’s hand was cold and clammy, alternating between lying very, very still, and gripping back hard enough to nearly hurt. That said, Scout preferred the second one. It helped him convince himself that Sniper still had some strength left despite the shivers that wracked his body and the inability to keep food down, as well as him not quite managing to properly fall asleep, never for more than ten minutes or so and never too deeply, the pain or the fever shaking him conscious all too soon.

It was supposed to just be a simple contract. Out in the jungle, taking out some business rival of their boss, Mr. Saxton Hale, who’d invited him to the area under the pretense of a hunting trip to “make amends” between them. The hit itself was relatively easy, but extraction had taken a turn for the worse.

The team had consisted of Scout (playing the role of distraction), Sniper (who would be making the hit itself), Demo (to take down the building the target was in, to destroy evidence), and Pyro (to help with the evidence destruction and to be there as backup if something went pear-shaped).

But then when they were on their way out, Demo was delivered a shotgun round into the back, and they were forced to use almost all of their meager supply of medical fluid to try and get him walking again. And they’d managed it, and gotten out safely.

But Sniper, quietly during the worst of the chaos, had taken a bit of fragmentation to his leg. He stopped the bleeding, wrapped the wound. Assumed he would be fine until they could get to a supply cache and raid it for more medical supplies, or until they could get back to the base. All he’d need is some crutches until he got there. Nothing major.

And then it’d gotten infected.

Scout listened to the shaky, raspy in-and-out of Sniper’s breathing, the way it rattled around inside his chest far too much. Either he would survive the night and be well enough to travel by the next day, or he’d…

Or…

Scout rubbed over the back of Sniper’s hand with his thumb. To bring things around all the more, it wasn’t the most opportune time for part of the team (and by extension, probably all of the team) to find out that he and Sniper were… involved. There wasn’t really much excuse for the way Scout had been acting, with them being “best friends” only explaining so much. Somewhere around the point that Scout started holding Sniper’s hand and sitting at his bedside all hours of the day, the excuse (no matter how true) had kind of fallen apart.

Sniper jerked suddenly, pulled awake from his almost-sleep, and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments with obvious confusion, clearly trying to re-orient himself.

“Hey,” Scout said quietly, squeezing his hand once.

Sniper’s fingers twitched in what Scout sincerely hoped wasn’t Sniper’s best attempt at reciprocation. “Hey,” he replied, voice weak and raspy. He cleared his throat lightly, wincing at how raw it still was. Scout had almost needed to leave the room when Demo had taken the shards out. He really, really didn’t like listening to Sniper in so much pain. The changing of his bandages was easier, but only barely.

Scout didn’t look down at his leg. He just looked at Sniper’s face.

That wasn’t great either. His expression was all twisted up in a grimace, and he shifted his head slightly, clearly unwilling to do much else. “What time’s it?” he asked, voice a creak.

“Just after nine,” Scout lied, award that Sniper couldn’t see the clock very well from his position and his lack of glasses.

“How long was I out?”

“About an hour,” Scout lied.

That left Sniper to sigh, gritting his teeth. “I suppose Demo’s not back with painkillers yet?” he asked, hopeful.

“Not yet. Said he’d radio when he was on the way back,” Scout said.

A second sigh. “Damn.”

Scout watched a series of expressions flit across Sniper’s face as he shifted his weight minutely.

“Why did two of us have to get fucked up?” Scout asked, dropping his head to press his cheek into Sniper’s forearm. “Seriously. Why do we suck at our job?”

“It happens. Just bad luck is all,” Sniper said, hand twitching again in a weak attempt at a squeeze. “Can’t help bad luck, or bad intel.”

Scout looked at him quietly for a few moments. He turned his face down. “This isn’t what I wanted,” he said softly.

Sniper didn’t reply.

“I wanted to…” He drew shapes on Sniper’s hand with his thumb. “…I wanted to go and, and head out and sightsee when this mission was over. We were supposed to have a layover in New York, an’ you’ve never been on the East Coast. Not with me, at least.”

A weak attempt to squeeze his hand. Scout squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

“And, I wanted to… one’a these days, maybe, we…” He needed to swallow back a lump in his throat. “You’ve never met my family, and my, I’ve got all these nieces an’ nephews and stuff, and hey, what kinda uncle would I be if I didn’t bring over a genuine Australian to meet them? A shitty one, that’s what.”

The slightest intake of breath. Scout didn’t look up. Couldn’t.

“And—I wanted to meet your folks too,” he said, feeling himself rambling but not caring enough to stop it. “See your house. All the dogs you were tellin’ me about. I’ve never been on a farm before, if you can believe that. Born-and-bred city boy, all that crap. Maybe I’d like it. I dunno.”

His eyes were burning. So was his throat.

“And—and I wanted to,” Scout tried, and his voice was rough, but so was Sniper’s, so it was probably okay. “I wanted to, travel with you. Go out and see stuff, maybe, when all this was over. It wasn’t supposed to… you weren’t supposed to, to get all messed up an’…”

His voice finally broke, and now he was the one gripping too-tight on the other one’s hand.

“It ain’t fair,” he choked. “It ain’t fair.”

“I know, Roo. I know,” Sniper said softly. A beat of pause. “Get up here. Hurts seein’ you all broken up and not bein’ able to hug you. C’mon. Breakin’ my heart, ‘ere.”

Scout only paused for a moment before he complied, moving to wrap his arms around Sniper, pulling him in close. Sniper gave a grunt of discomfort as he managed to force his own arms up around Scout despite protesting muscles, and they remained there for a good moment.

“Who says we can’t still do all that, aye?” Sniper asked after a moment. “C’mon now. I thought you were supposed to be the optimistic one. Can’t have you goin’ all grim on me now. Bad for morale.”

Scout pulled back enough to look at him, and Sniper winced as he forced his arm back around to cup his face.

“Go on then. Perk up,” he said, trying for a little smile. “I can’t look that bad, can I?”

Scout’s eyes were watering in earnest. His voice caught in his chest, grating against his ribcage. Sniper’s expression faltered.

“Really. What’s that look for?” he prompted.

Scout reached up to cup Sniper’s hand to his face, sniffling, furiously blinking back tears. “I just, I feel so fuckin’ useless,” he admitted. “You’re lyin’ here sick an’ hurtin’, and I—I can’t do anything. It’s killin’ me.”

Sniper gave him a little smile. “Hey, now. You’re doin’ plenty,” he corrected gently.

“Cryin’ like a baby isn’t helpful,” Scout said with a huff.

“Maybe not. But you’ve been here,” Sniper said, thumb rubbing over Scout’s cheek, “at my side, watchin’ out for me. Helps put me at ease, otherwise bein’ as helpless as I am, I’m sure I wouldn’t sleep a wink. And you’ve been holdin’ my hand, helpin’ keep me distracted from the pain. Telling me I’ll be okay. Not laughing at me for being such a useless lump. Or complaining about how bloody gross my leg looks, because I know it looks gross, I’ve seen an infected wound before, they’re nasty buggers.”

“Are you really tryin’ to comfort me right now?” Scout asked disbelievingly.

“A bit,” Sniper confirmed. He tilted his head, ever so slightly. “Roo. What I’m getting at is that… you, here? This helps me. It really does.”

Scout sniffled again. “But what can I do, to make you feel better? Other than that?”

Sniper’s face was pale, and shiny with sweat, but his eyes were surprisingly clear. “Just smile. I really need you to smile right now,” he said, voice wobbly.

Scout blinked at him.

Sniper took a breath, exhaled. “Scout, I’ve gotten hurt before—par for the course—and I’ve gotten pretty badly sick as well. But this is…” He had to take another breath. His voice was weak, shakier than Scout had perhaps ever heard it. “Roo, this is scary. I’m… I’m scared right now. I just need you to tell me it’s going to be okay. Just a little smile, that’s all I’m asking.”

Scout looked at him, swallowed hard. Leaned in and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. When he drew back, it was easy to bring a smile onto his face.

“Yeah. You’re gonna be okay. It’s gonna be alright,” he said, and managed to believe it, at least for a second, seeing the relief on Sniper’s face, the way the tension melted from his shoulders.

“I’m gonna be okay. It’s gonna be alright,” he repeated back.

It would be alright. It had to be.

Chapter Text

Sniper had long since buried his face in his hands, trying his best to pretend that he wasn’t associated with the other hooligans accosting the bartender despite the fact that his uniform matched theirs and he’d clearly visibly entered the establishment with the rest of them.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Sniper murmured to nobody in particular.

Engie, to his credit, being the other designated driver for the night, gave him a consolatory pat on the shoulder before ordering himself some kind of low-proof craft beer that was advertised, and an ice water. “We’ll be here a good few hours I reckon, imagine there’s time for you to get one drink at least,” he shrugged.

“If I get one drink, I’ll just get tempted,” Sniper replied.

“Fair point,” Engie conceded, and moved off to keep an eye on the attack team, who’d all taken to trying to get in on a pool game happening towards the back of the bar.

Overall, the night was a blur of various headaches for Sniper, and he was almost relieved to see it over, except that when they went to make a head count ten minutes before they would be headed out back to base, they realized a few of their number had gone missing and Sniper was sent to track them down. Pyro he found lighting a trash can on fire just around the corner, and Spy was smoking outside of a different, immediately classier-looking bar that seemed to serve mostly wine as opposed to the wild drink specials of the one they’d decided to go to. Both were hauled back to the place they’d parked, where Sniper found the tail end of an argument being broken up between the team.

Engie looked considerably frazzled, and Scout was pouting, and Soldier was holding his jaw, which even then looked like it was bruising. Engie turned to him as he approached. “Well, Stretch, two things,” he said. “First, it turns out it was a good idea to bring the truck and the bread van. Our good Demo’s down for the count, and will probably need to be lyin’ down in the back seat. But I think we’ll need to switch on who’s drivin’ what. You know how to drive stick shift?”

Sniper felt his already thoroughly soured mood beginning to ferment. “Explain.”

Engie rubbed the back of his neck. “Now I know you took the van on the way here, and it’s what you’re more used to in terms of maneuverability an’ all, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have any of these lot in the bed of the truck like before, and… we’re gonna need both vehicles occupied anyways. Since some of our teammates,” he said pointedly, shooting a look at Scout and Soldier, “have gone and gotten in a fight again and I’m not convinced they won’t start up again if they’re stuck in a space together.”

Sniper dragged a hand over his face. “So I’m drivin’ the truck?” he asked.

Engie rubbed the back of his neck. “Well. Also you’re gonna need someone in the passenger seat,” he added carefully.

“Truckie, why.”

“Like I said, we can’t have a fistfight in the back of the van. You can take your pick on who you want with you, Scooter or Solly, but, I’m gonna need to ask you to take at least one.”

It wasn’t a terribly tough decision. “I suppose I’ll bring Scout, then,” he said begrudgingly. Soldier was banned from taking shotgun (in every sense of the word) for a good reason.

Engie nodded, and tossed him the keys to the truck. “Alright, well, besides that I’m ready when you are,” he said, and started shooing their group along, trying his best to heft Demo to his feet.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Sniper called again, but within a few moments he was left standing in the parking lot alone with Scout anyways.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, just watching the team go through the ordeal that was trying to get half a dozen highly intoxicated murderers in the back of a van.

“Sup?” Scout finally asked Sniper, grin lopsided and self-satisfied.

“Let’s just go,” Sniper sighed, leading the way towards the truck. “The sooner we get back to base, the sooner I can be done with this whole mess.”

“What, you got other plans?” Scout asked, bumping shoulders with him amicably. Scout tended to get more physical with other people when drunk, he’d found, either in the way of slinging his arm around a teammate cheerfully or clocking someone in the jaw. For now, it seemed he was drifting towards the former.

“Yeah. Headache medicine and waking up early to get myself breakfast so I don’t have to deal with you lot and your hangovers,” Sniper replied, needing to lightly push Scout towards his side of the truck to get him to stop following him like a duckling.

“Sounds like a real party,” Scout said, clambering gracelessly into the passenger seat, needing to take a few valiant attempts before finally managing to get his seatbelt done. “Can I come?”

“I believe I said something about not dealing with you lot and your hangovers,” Sniper emphasized, turning the key and fighting the engine a bit to try and get the battered old truck started.

It wasn’t until the engine finally turned over and the truck rattled to life that Sniper processed the uncharacteristic silence from his passenger. When he looked over, Scout was moping, slouched, staring out the passenger window, wearing the most kicked-puppy expression Sniper had ever seen.

“You can just keep pouting,” he said nonetheless, shaking off the immediate guilt that such an expression stabbed into him and instead turning his gaze to the rear-view mirror as he sent the truck into motion, starting to exit the parking lot. “Really. This is as pleasant as I’m gonna get for the rest of the evening.”

“What’d I even do?” Scout asked, the hurt shining through his voice and still hitting him despite Sniper’s dogged avoiding of eye contact. “What’s your problem?”

He clenched the steering wheel hard in his left hand as he shifted through gears with the right, released. “I don’t happen to enjoy going out and… “being social”, or whatever it is that you lot seem convinced is so great,” he replied. “It stresses me out. And usually I get to at least get myself smashed to try an’ take the edge off it, but I’m the other driver for the night, so I’m not allowed to have anything. Frankly, I’m tired of talking to, to people. So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate some peace an’ quiet.”

To Sniper’s immense surprise, the little lecture and request of his actually worked. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes into the drive and Scout was still being quiet and relatively still in the passenger seat. They were making fairly good time, and it seemed the remaining half hour’s drive back to base would go without further incident.

“You’re really grumpy, y’know,” Scout said suddenly, and the peace was ruined.

Admittedly, the twenty minutes of quiet had done some good for Sniper’s nerves and temper. “I’m aware,” he said levelly.

“You should lighten up, have some fun once an’ awhile,” Scout insisted.

“I do have fun,” Sniper protested, a bit more quietly now. “Just not when I’m driving.”

Quiet for a second. “Like, when you’re actually driving, or when you’re supposed to be driving like, later?” Scout asked.

“The second one. Don’t know exactly how much fun can be had when I’m behind the wheel without getting in a wreck,” Sniper replied.

Quiet for another second. “Plenty,” Scout said.

Sniper furrowed his eyebrows. “What?”

“You can have plenty of fun,” Scout said.

His eyebrows remained furrowed. “I… don’t think I follow,” he murmured.

Scout was suddenly leaning bodily over the gearshift and slinging an arm around Sniper, startling the hell out of him and making him concentrate very hard to keep from swerving off the highway. “Careful,” Scout chirped unhelpfully, and Sniper could see his grin in his periphery.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Sniper practically growled.

“Havin’ fun,” Scout said, undissuaded. Sniper wasn’t aware when exactly Scout got his seatbelt off, but it was pretty clear that it was gone given how close Scout was to him now. “Cool it, maybe.”

“Hard to cool it when I’m goin’ well over a hundred kilometers per hour in a stick shift and there’s someone leanin’ over the gear change.”

“Dude, this road’s got two lanes and it’s the middle of the night and there’s nobody anywhere the hell near us.” The hand Scout had slung around him moved to start mussing his hair out of order. “Relax. It’s fine!”

The panic simmered down a little bit, but only slightly. “There’s still road signs. And this isn’t even my truck.”

“Hey, hey hey hey,” Scout said in a voice that might’ve been soothing if not for the fact that he leaned even further over the gearshift to use it, chin leaning on Sniper’s shoulder. “It’s cool. It’s fine.”

“Can I ask why you think this is a good idea?” Sniper asked, tightening his grip on the wheel as Scout shifted again.

He shrugged, moving Sniper’s shoulders in the process, car swerving only slightly. “You said tonight sucked, right? And was stupid an’ boring? Might as well make it interesting, yeah?” He leaned in further, having to use his right hand to steady himself, putting it on the seat between the gearshift and Sniper’s leg. He felt the end of Scout’s nose brushing against his pulse point. It made his heart thud more than the swerving did. “This is interesting.”

To be fair, it was.

“Wouldn’t‘ve pegged you as a cuddly drunk,” Sniper said, a weak attempt at humor. “Thought you were more the, the hittin’ type.”

“I am hittin’,” Scout pointed out, right hand starting to idly pick at the outer seam of Sniper’s jeans. “Just, on you.”

Sniper had to clear his throat, swallow hard to buy time to formulate a response to that. Scout’s hand dropped from his hair to brush over the front of his throat, catching on his adam’s apple. “I feel like you’re,” he tried, and had to swallow again to make his voice steady, except Scout did that thing with his hand again and it threw him right back off balance. “I feel like you’re gonna, either not remember this on account’a being so, so hammered, or you’ll remember but be…” Scout’s hand migrated to rest just above his knee and Sniper jumped bodily, making Scout chuckle. “But, but be… embarrassed about this, and… not wanna talk to me ever again.”

“Maybe,” Scout admitted. “Or maybe it’ll be nice.”

Sniper felt a shiver catch in his shoulders. He could practically feel Scout’s grin, bared teeth millimeters from the skin of his neck, from his pulse point. “Nice?” he repeated weakly, accent twisting the word in a way that made him cringe internally.

“Yeah. Nice,” Scout insisted, and finally leaned up far enough to lie a kiss at the hinge of Sniper’s jaw, slowly, giving Sniper every opportunity to push him away, as if he hadn’t had enough already.

His breath was shaking. His hands, too. There was admittedly a spike of adrenaline running through him, only partly due to the danger of their situation, and it gave his limbs a distinct tremble. Hopefully Scout was too drunk to notice.

Hopefully Scout was sober enough to remember this, though, as well. Sniper, for the first time all night, was glad that he himself was.

Chapter Text

Coldfront was, speaking completely objectively, the worst place on earth.

Now, Scout knew cold. He was better off than most of the team when it came to cold, beaten only by Heavy (three steps away from a literal actual bear) and Pyro (who Scout wasn’t even completely convinced felt pain, let alone things like temperature). Growing up in Boston, so close to the seaboard, family unable to pay the heating bill every other year and with hole-filled hand-me-downs as his only option for clothing, it made him get used to feeling cold really quickly. He knew when to start pulling on two pairs of socks and a second t-shirt under his jacket to keep warm, knew to eat a hot meal whenever possible and keep out of the wind and to only start worrying about his extremities the moment they stopped aching with cold. He knew cold.

But Coldfront, in the dead of winter, was cold cold. Frostbite-after-twenty-minutes-of-exposure kinds of cold. Negative-twenty-windchill-in-the-height-of-day kinds of cold. Heavy-putting-on-gloves kinds of cold.

The fact that they almost always got stationed in Coldfront for at least part of the winter every year was what started to convince him that their boss straight up hated them.

He always felt especially bad for Sniper when they were stationed in Coldfront. He didn’t know how to stand to best hold in body heat or to take off your jacket to thermoregulate when indoors, and didn’t ever really have major cold to deal with anyways. He was born and bred and built for raw, sweltering, pavement-boiling heat, and couldn’t do cold. The first year they ended up in Coldfront, the first night ended with Respawn firing up at one in the morning and Sniper stumbling out of it, having frozen to death in his camper while he slept. He was left cold and miserable from the weather, and horribly stressed since he could no longer sleep in his camper and instead had to bunk with everyone else, something he was very much not used to.

A necessity of the cold was having the mercs pair up and share rooms during the worst of the cold half the time, as only some rooms had heating or stoves or fireplaces, and there weren’t enough for everyone to have one room for each of them, and they needed the additional bodies to heat rooms even that much more.

Once Scout and Sniper became… best buddies, it was unspoken that if everyone was going to be rooming together, they’d pair up to share, an immediate improvement of the previous arrangement of Demo and Soldier and Scout sharing a room, with Soldier and Scout getting in fistfights frequently enough for Engie to stick a dispenser in the hall outside and Demo being enabled to drink even more than usual once he had people who were willing to drink with him on hand at all times.

The room had two twin beds, but right up front, the two of them pushed the twins together to make one large bed, already knowing they would end up sharing.

Scout finished off his nightly routine by shoving more wood into the stove that stood inconveniently in the middle of one wall, then moving to get under the three quilts they’d piled on the bed to join Sniper. Sniper didn’t hesitate to pull Scout over, as he was growing used to. Sniper was faintly shivering, even under the blankets, and had informed Scout on more than one occasion that he was like if a hot water bottle was a person. Scout was okay with dealing with Sniper’s cold hands for the sake of cuddles, not that he’d ever say it out loud. He had a reputation to keep.

With their combined body heat, the cold of the room was chased away fairly quickly from under their multiple blankets, and soon they were left feeling toasty for the first time since the previous night. Sniper’s shivering faded away, and he slowly started untensing, Scout helping him along by kneading at his shoulders idly. He gave a soft noise of approval, well and truly sinking into Scout.

“Y’know the one good thing about this awful place?” Sniper murmured, voice muffled by the pillow he’d buried his face in.

Scout hummed in question.

“Get the excuse to hold you like this all the time,” he said. Scout’s heart swelled in his chest, and he felt a goofy smile pull at his cheeks despite his best efforts.

“Sappy,” he chided quietly, holding him a bit tighter for a second.

“Maybe.”

Scout chewed on a thought for a few seconds, considering whether he would be laughed at if he said it. Given how cheesy Sniper had just been, he doubted he would, but he did think about it for a minute regardless.

“Y’know,” Scout finally said, making up his mind, “I remember when I was a kid, we, uh, there were some years when we didn’t have heating. There was this one winter when I was little—like little little—when we didn’t have heat an’ it got real cold at night, and so one night I just, went into Ma’s room and asked to share with her for the night because it was so freakin’ cold. A few of my brothers—we, uh, shared a room, y’know?—wanted to know where I ran off to when I didn’t come back, an’ they ended up sharin’ too. We ended up with like, the four youngest an’ Ma all piled on a queen-sized for the night. It was, uh…” He realized all at once that he probably sounded ridiculous. “…It was nice.”

Sniper hummed, and it was quiet for a second. “Did somethin’ similar as a tyke. M’dad hated it. Thought it’d make me soft, headed to share the bed with my mum every time I heard the dogs barkin’ outside tryin’ to send up the alarm about some predator or another wandering too close.” A short pause again. “And maybe it did. Dunno. Did help at the time, though.”

“I just had my brothers for that sorta thing,” Scout hummed. “I ever woke up from a nightmare, I’d just be in a room with like at least five dudes who all could and practically have scalped a guy for pickin’ on me. Upside of bein’ the youngest. And if I ever did call in Ma on someone, that’s, uh, yikes. She takes no hostages.”

“Your mum sounds pretty great,” Sniper said.

“So’s yours,” Scout replied.

A pause. “Yeah. Most’a the time,” he agreed carefully.

Scout tilted his head a bit. “What’s the hesitation?”

Another pause, longer. “Just… she did… her best,” he said, just as carefully. “She couldn’t help… the, the fact that I was… fact that I am, just…”

Scout tilted his head a bit further, but Sniper pulled him closer, keeping his face out of sight.

“She couldn’t help that there’s somethin’ not right with me, and she tried to help me work around it,” he finally settled on. “Did what she could. Didn’t kick me out. Still… talks to me an’ all, even though I ran off.”

Scout frowned. “Not right with you?”

Sniper shook his head lightly, exhaling. “It’s a lot. I’ll… explain later,” he said. “I just wanna enjoy this.”

Scout was still grappling with the concept of not being unconditionally fond of one’s family. His brothers pissed him off, sure, and he sometimes went a good week or so being mad at them, but he would never hesitate to say that they were good overall (except to their faces). No matter how annoyed he was with them, he would never waste a second jumping into a fight to defend their honor, just as they always did for him. The thought of not having that was…

It made his chest hurt to think about. He didn’t get it.

“Don’t you miss them?” he asked quietly. “Don’t you miss being home, and… and goin’ around town seeing what all’s the same, what’s different, and… and talkin’ about what all the neighbors have gotten up to, and what the latest drama is, and…”

Sniper shrugged lightly, careful not to dislodge Scout. The motion did move the blankets just slightly, and a tiny burst of air flooded into their haven under the blankets, surprisingly refreshing. “Never really had that,” he said quietly. “Town was a while away from the farm. A good few miles’ walk got me to school if I cut through the brush, but town was always a drive. And the house was… the house was work, usually, shepherding, takin’ care of the land, the few non-sheep we had. I suppose I have the van, but that was always just me, and I was always moving.”

“But what was home?” Scout insisted, a grief sinking into his chest at the prospect Sniper was explaining.

Sniper was quiet for a few moments, thinking, and just that pause made his chest ache even worse. “Dunno what makes somethin’ count as one,” he admitted, voice gravelly.

Scout thought for a second. “Just… somewhere safe, somewhere that makes you… feel good. Like, like you’re allowed to relax, like you can just… be, like nothin’s gonna go wrong, and… like you’re…” He took another second. “Like you can just recharge there, and if somethin’ does go wrong, that’s where you can go to recover. It’s… a place you know, and it’s reliable, and it’s safe.”

Sniper was silent. Contemplating. Scout counted a good dozen heartbeats before he spoke again.

“When I’m with you, I’m home,” Sniper finally said, voice quieter than ever before, and all at once Scout was paralyzed. He tried to pull back enough to look at Sniper, but Sniper wouldn’t budge.

“Hey. Look at me,” Scout requested, hand stroking over Sniper’s back in what he hoped was a soothing motion. Sniper did pull back after a second, and Scout cupped his cheek cautiously, aware that suddenly this moment became fragile, that breaking it might just be irreparable. He chose his words carefully. “I’m gonna be the kinda home you’ve got for a long time, alright?” he said softly.

Sniper had to break eye contact, blinking a few times, stubbornly holding back the wetness in his eyes, swallowing hard. “Thank you,” he said, voice thick despite his best efforts.

“Hey. I mean it,” Scout said, tilting his head to get back in Sniper’s line of sight. He tried for a smile. “You’re stuck with me.”

That got him a smile and eye contact, at least for a moment, before Sniper pulled him back into an embrace. “I hope so,” he said. He took a breath, exhaled shakily. “God, I hope so.”

Chapter Text

Sniper wasn’t particularly a morning person. It took him half a pot of coffee to even open his eyes all the way, and then another cup or two to carry him though the first part of the way until lunch. He was much more of a night owl, but he forced himself to adapt if only to keep his head in the game when it came to his job with RED. He needed to be professional.

Pouring himself his second cup of the morning, he eyed the bright blue t-shirt and cap draped carelessly over the edge of the chair at his table and the individual occupying half of his mattress and admitted to himself that his professionalism only really extended so far.

He finished drinking enough coffee to keep himself awake and went to get in the shower, through with getting cleaned up and fairly towelled off in about ten minutes, and shaving and brushing his teeth in another five.

He left the tiny tiny bathroom to go chug himself another mug’s worth of coffee before he got dressed and saw that his… what were they, exactly? More than friends, certainly. Well, he saw that the BLU Scout had woken up, and was apparently setting to work on breakfast.

“Mornin’,” he chirped, ever the morning person, glancing Sniper (still clad in a towel around the waist) up and down once before returning to what appeared to be pancakes.

Sniper had to blink a few times before he could process what he was looking at. “Is that my shirt?” Sniper finally asked, looking at the rumbled button-up that his… whatever had apparently decided to put on.

He ducked his head. “It was cold,” he said a little sheepishly, ears starting to go red.

“Too cold for your own shirt?” Sniper asked, raising an eyebrow.

Scout ducked his head that much further.

“Well, step over, I need to get dressed,” Sniper instructed, shooing the BLU to one side to get access to his cabinets.

“Or you could just not,” Scout suggested easily.

“You wish,” Sniper retorted just as easily, fishing out a pair of pants.

He should probably have been a bit more worried about how easily he was talking with someone on the other team. Their little ‘friendship’ was eighteen steps beyond not allowed, and could get either of them sacked in an instant. Beyond that, he had nothing beyond the Scout’s word to prove that he wasn’t being used for information or on the road to manipulation or sabotage.

Then again, the Scout could say the same. So maybe they were even.

“By the way, you’re gonna be out of pancake mix,” the Scout said lightly, not looking up from the pan in front of him, ducking slightly to let Sniper glance in the cabinet over him.

“Are you really going to eat that many pancakes?” Sniper asked, finishing buttoning up his slacks.

“Oh, for sure. You haven’t seen my appetite. Uh, same goes for the syrup,” Scout said, pushing the sleeves of the shirt up to sit above his elbows where they’d fallen down.

“That bottle is half full.”

“I said what I said.”

Sniper huffed a laugh, rolling his eyes as he pulled on a pair of socks. “Well. Thank you for breakfast anyways.”

“Who said any of these were for you?” Scout teased, shooting him a lopsided grin.

Sniper moved to stand behind Scout, wrapping arms around his waist and holding him against his chest, still bare and a bit damp from the shower. “The fact that it’s my camper and my pancake mix and my syrup,” he replied.

Scout leaned into his hold easily, flipping a pancake onto the already sizeable plate and moving to pour another. “I guess you have a point,” Scout sighed.

“Mmm.” Sniper looked down, tracing his index finger in a circle against Scout’s side, grinning when that made him stifle a laugh, ticklish. “You look good.”

“I always look good,” Scout said cheekily.

“True.” Sniper kissed him on the temple. “But you look especially good in my shirt.”

“It’s massive on me,” Scout said, moving to push up his sleeves again. “Like one’a those sleep shirt things, kinda. And red really ain’t my color.”

“Well I like it,” Sniper said simply, kissing him on the cheek now. “Maybe just because it’s my shirt. Has my symbol on it and all. Feels a bit like I’m sayin’ you’re someone I’ve got a claim to.”

“I don’t think you can get dibs on a person, babe.”

“Well if you could, I imagine wearin’ a shirt with their insignia on it would be a good first step, aye?”

Scout turned his head to kiss him head-on in reply, a lazy, easy sort of kiss that left Sniper feeling satisfaction deep in his gut when they pulled away a moment later.

“Or maybe this is just my way of stealin’ your shirt,” Scout said, grinning at him.

“Try it,” Sniper dared, putting on a faux threatening tone ruined by his own grin, ducking in to press rapid-fire kisses across Scout’s face, making him laugh.

“You’re gonna make me burn the fuckin’ pancakes,” Scout managed to protest between his laughter. “You’re eating the ruined ones, asshole!”

“Sounds fair,” Sniper didn’t hesitate to say, diving right back in, digging fingers into Scout’s sides as well.

That set Scout off further, the pitch of his laughter instantly rising, trying to fight Sniper’s grip on him. “You’re such a dick!” he gasped.

“Mmhmm,” Sniper hummed in agreement, tormenting Scout for only a few more moments before he pulled away to let him breathe, laughing a bit as well, Scout’s tone infectious.

“Fuckin’ fine, I’ll give the shirt back,” Scout said once he had reasonable control over his breath, face red, still smiling despite himself.

“Don’t you dare,” Sniper replied, mussing his hair affectionately.

Maybe he could learn to be a morning person. Maybe just for this.

Chapter Text

“This is going to hurt.”

“Ow!”

“I said it was going to hurt.”

“Yeah, and it fuckin’ hurt, so I said ‘ow’. That’s how things hurting works, Doc.”

Medic sighed, eyeing the remaining two dozen needles on the tray, then Scout’s bare back. “Herr Scout, if you are going to complain the entire time, I can go and get a different volunteer,” he said begrudgingly.

“Oh, don’t even worry, I’m gonna complain the entire time,” Scout said, voice slightly muffled from him being facedown on the operating table. “But also I’m pretty sure nobody else is gonna agree and I’m a last resort, so, you’re just gonna have to deal, Doc.”

Medic only considered that for a few moments before picking up another needle.

“So what’d you say this was called, again?” Scout asked, head turning just slightly. “Acu-picture?”

“Acupuncture.”

“And—ow—why do people do this? Because so far this sucks.”

“Oh, plenty of reasons,” Medic said, eyeing the chart he had before him for a few moments before picking up the next needle. “Performing it on this area of the back is supposedly good for…” He squinted, pushing his glasses up a bit. “…Dizziness. Which I understand has been a problem?”

“Uh, yeah, I—ow. Yeah, I think I just need to like, drink more water.”

“Hydration is not the problem, nor blood loss,” Medic said, picking up another needle. “It is something I could feasibly give you medication for, but it is not often I get the chance to practice attempting alternative therapies.”

“What, like what Sniper does on the weekends?”

“Don’t tell me what Herr Sniper may or may not do on the weekends. I would rather continue pretending I don’t know for plausible deniability.”

“Apparently Miss P visited for a bit and did some with him.”

“Please do not tell me what Miss Pauling and Sniper may or may not participate in recreationally so that I can please have plausible deniability,” Medic said, pushing the needle in a bit faster than he’d done previously.

“Ow.”

“Regardless. While that may be a sort of… remedy, for certain problems, that is not what I mean. I was talking about treatments that are not necessarily condoned by the scientific community due only to lack of research despite a consistent trail of evidence pointing to it being effective in certain patients when done correctly, mainly because the treatments stood long before research was nearly as standard and often don’t have single individuals to credit and the community is wildly biased against older remedies. Mainly they’re things that seem strange but are often extremely effective for reasons unknown.”

“Isn’t that like, everything you do?”

Medic paused. “Herr Scout, my experimentation is research,” he said.

“Yeah, but it’s all kinda weird, and painful, and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it still works anyways. So it’s basically just like architecture.”

“…Acupuncture,” Medic said when he realized what Scout was talking about.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“To be fair, it is not intended to hurt,” Medic said, ignoring the little ‘ow’ Scout said as he pushed in another needle. “There are often interesting sensations, but very little actual pain. The gauges of my needles should be the correct size, I believe I just need more practice.”

“Is that why you cut people open all the time too? For practice?” Scout asked sarcastically, and yelped when Medic flicked one of the needles.

“No. That is research.” Silence between them for a few moments, broken only by Scout mumbling more ‘ow’s. “How has your other treatment been working?”

“My what?”

“The… Koffein, caffeine, the, er, energy drinks.”

“Y’know, it’s—ow—it’s weird,” Scout said. “Because the guys drink coffee, and you European guys drink tea, and it’s always a thing that I hear, like, it’s supposed to wake you up? But it doesn’t wake me up at all. Coffee just makes me kinda wanna throw up and makes my hands shake a lot more, and tea tastes fuckin’ gross because you people have wrong mouths or something—ow! Hey!”

“Hmm?” Medic asked, feigning innocence.

“That one was on purpose!” Scout accused.

“No, no, of course not,” Medic said lightly. “Continue.”

“…Uh, but yeah, I don’t like tea. But the caffeine in a can, that stuff works great. All the making my brain shut up from coffee but none’a the nausea. Keeps me focused, makes me… notice stuff that matters, and not just, like, everything all the time always. And less of the zoning out.” A pause. “Does make my head hurt, though, when I back off of it again on weekends an’ stuff. And makes me sick when I don’t drink it for a while.”

“Hmm. Perhaps easing in and out of drinking it…” Medic mused quietly. “Regardless. Thank you, Herr Scout. This is important research.”

“You don’t gotta call me that, y’know,” Scout said, tilting his head down obligingly when Medic moved it.

“Was?” Medic asked, picking up the chart to look more closely at it.

“Herr Scout. Isn’t that kinda like saying ‘Mister’ or somethin’?”

Medic hesitated for a second. “…Not perfectly, but essentially, yes,” he replied.

“Well, you don’t gotta call me that,” Scout said, wincing hard at the next needle, pushed in carefully near his hair line. “Fuckin’ ow. You can just call me Scout.”

“Why do you say that?” Medic asked, frowning, and consulted the chart again.

“I mean, we’re teammates more than just co-workers. And, hell, I kinda figured some of us guys were… y’know, buddies,” he said, voice getting quiet towards the end. “And you know my real name anyways, it’s in my file. And probably a bunch more stuff about me that none of the guys know. Maybe that anyone knows. So… I dunno. Seems kinda weird to keep being all formal about stuff. Even Spy’s calmed down about it at this point, and that dude’s a total dick.”

Medic considered for a moment. “Perhaps I simply prefer to remain professional,” he said, a little stiffly.

Scout barked a laugh. “What are you, Sniper?” he asked, a little disbelieving. “And even that guy smokes weed on the weekends.”

Medic smacked Scout on the lower back where there were no needles, huffing. “I told you not to tell me about that!” he said, not a little irritated. “Now I will need to address it!”

“Or you can pretend I didn’t say anything,” Scout suggested.

“That would require me trusting you not to tell anyone that I know about it.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Scout said, lightly and easily in a way that made Medic have to pause for a few seconds.

“And why should I believe you?” Medic asked next.

“Dude, I literally just said we’re friends maybe two minutes ago,” Scout scoffed, and Medic could practically hear his eyes rolling. “Seriously, are you sure you aren’t the one with the memory problems? Or the attention issues?”

Medic set his jaw, and had to fight hard to keep emotions from welling up in his chest. “My memory is fine,” he said a little stiffly. One more wince from Scout, and his tray was empty. “There. Should be done.”

“Hey, by the way, one more question,” Scout said, trying not to move too much.

“Yes?”

“How come you didn’t ask to do this to the big guy?”

“Higher pain tolerance. I would not know if I was doing things incorrectly,” Medic answered. A pause. To be fair, Scout had been very nice, had had the courage to be almost alarmingly open and honest. He could afford to drop the professionalism, at least for a moment. “And I’ll admit that I find you occasionally entertaining, and enjoy our conversations. Your enthusiasm in what I have to say is admittedly refreshing.”

“Aww,” Scout teased. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Hmm. Clench your teeth, it is time to take these back out.”

“Aw, man.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Scout didn’t often make requests of Sniper. Of the whole team, really. He didn’t like asking for favors without offering an immediate kind of repayment—take his turn making the team meal and he’d take your next one, let him borrow your penknife to open a can and you could have some of the can’s contents. Simple one-to-one trade-offs. And half the time someone asked him for help, Sniper noticed that Scout didn’t really ask for repayment, not unless it was truly a big ask.

So this was strange, which told Sniper that this was either important, or a means to an end, with accepting the request something he likely wouldn’t risk if it was just about any other teammate making it. But it was Scout, whose meanest trick he’d ever intentionally pulled on Sniper being offhandedly mentioning “updog” in front of the whole team during a meal, which prompted Sniper to ask what that was. And then to get him again a few days later with “a matterbaby”, but he did apologize for that one a few moments later. So Sniper figured he was probably okay.

The request was fairly straightforward. Scout had been watching Sniper wipe his knife down of blood after a humiliation round between matches and asked fairly casually whether Sniper could teach him how to fight with a knife.

“Sure,” Sniper shrugged without thinking too hard about it.

Scout paused, stilling where he’d been rocking on his feet. “Nah, seriously,” he said, a bit insistent. “I mean it. I really wanna learn.”

Sniper looked over, and Scout glanced down at his own feet. “Why?” Sniper asked.

“I dunno, I mean… I can deal with my bat,” he said, hefting the heavy slab of wood in question from one shoulder to the other. “And I can throw a punch—learned that real quick back home—but uh, I can’t do knives. Like, hand-knives, those I’m okay at, I did knife-fights sometimes with these other punks from the baseball team, but the big knives like that I’ve got no practice with. And Demo’s too busy to teach me how to use swords, and Spy knows how to fence but he’s also basically the worst person I know, so, figured I’d ask you. If you ain’t too busy, I mean.”

Sniper considered for a few moments, looked over the knife in his hands, glanced at Scout in his periphery. Scout had started fidgeting with his grip tape.

“I don’t really have any practice weapons,” Sniper said after those moments. “And I’m not exactly a teacher. We’d be using real knives, and you’d essentially be learning by doing.”

“I’m cool with that,” Scout shrugged.

“Might get hurt. Things can go south awful fast when there’s weapons in untrained hands,” Sniper warned next.

“Then we get Hardhat to set up a dispenser,” Scout chirped, lighting up a bit as he realized Sniper still wasn’t saying no.

Sniper paused, considering for a few moments longer, before he sighed, resigned. “Alright, fine. But,” he cut in as Scout started to fist-pump, “I’ve got packing to do for the next base transfer, we’re due to be kicking off any day now. It’ll have to wait until we’re settled again. Might even have to wait until we transfer back to the home base depending on how long we’re out.”

“Okay,” Scout agreed quickly. “Just tell me whenever, man, I don’t ever make plans I can’t drop.” A pause, then Scout spit in his palm, extended his hand. “Shake on it. We got a deal?”

Sniper mirrored him, and their palms met with a wet slap. “Deal.”

The next transfer was four days later, to Sawmill, which was unseasonably sunny and warm within a few days of their arrival, the sky much clearer than it usually was in late spring. That meant Truckie called “bug season” and forced Soldier to start keeping his raccoons outside of their main basing area for fear of fleas and ticks. Unfortunately for Sniper, that meant he could no longer leave food alone for any longer than five minutes outside or else the raccoons would flock to it like vultures to carrion. And he himself could barely stay outside for longer than a few hours before mosquitoes left him pock-marked with bites.

But even with all those irritations happening, it was only a few days before he was approaching Scout.

Scout appeared to be busy trying to bust down the wall of one of the sheds by bouncing his baseball off of it over and over again, but stopped when he caught sight of Sniper, eyes lighting up.

“Yo, knife time?” Scout asked.

“Not if you call it ‘knife time’, no,” Sniper replied, ticking his head back in a motion for Scout to follow him and beginning to walk towards his camper. Scout was following at his heels in a second.

Sniper ducked inside his camper for a moment and returned with two knives, each in their respective sheath. He handed one to Scout, the other sheath going on his own back. “There. Feel free to carry that along the way to start gettin’ used to the weight of it,” Sniper instructed, striking out towards a shed a few dozen meters away from where his camper was parked. “I picked up some health kits from Resupply. Shouldn’t need a whole dispenser yet, not today at least.”

“What’re we doin’ today?” Scout said, falling into step next to Sniper, hefting the knife in his hand.

“You’ll be learnin’ how to handle the blade without takin’ your own damn arm off,” Sniper replied.

“Okay, cool, but like, when do I learn how to fight with ‘em?” Scout asked.

Sniper ducked into the shed and returned with a box of scrap wood blocks, dropping it on the ground next to the health kits. “When I’m sure you won’t bloody well hurt y’self,” he replied. “First things first. You’re holdin’ it wrong.”

The first half hour was spent just stood across from Scout, showing him how to hold a knife for a swing and stab versus a chop, how to hold for a block, and how to stand to keep his legs and free arm out of the way.

“Why’s this knife different than yours?” Scout asked as Sniper moved his elbow for him into a better position, eyeing the knife on the table that stood against the shed.

“Mine’s more for the hunting portion of hunting. Skinning animals and the like, and to kill them when I don’t got projectiles. Yours is for the travel part. Cutting a path, gettin’ a shelter up, firewood, that sort of thing. Bulkier, less likely to dent. More a tool than a weapon, really. Better for practice. God’s sake, what’d I just tell you about keepin’ your other arm back?”

Scout self-corrected before Sniper had the chance to do it for him. “That why you call it that? You use it to actually whack bushes?” Scout half-laughed.

“Yes. Stand higher.”

He raised his stance a bit, having fallen during the perpetual shifting that Scout seemed to be incapable of preventing himself from doing. “I mean, I guess that makes sense,” he said, half to himself. “You still say it weird, though.”

“Well maybe you sound weird to me, ever consider that?” Sniper replied.

By the time Scout could shift into and out of a proper stance, Sniper was feeling a bit more relaxed, partly due to the easy banter that seemed to flow between the two of them. They fell into something of a rhythm, and it made Sniper gradually feel less self-conscious about giving instructions.

“Right,” Sniper finally said, moving back to the box of wood scraps. “Next we’ll see where you’re already at in terms of handling a knife.”

He picked up a little rectangular block about the size of an egg and threw it overhand at Scout.

He could see the instant that reflexes kicked in, and in a moment Scout had shifted out of the correct stance and into something lower, swinging the flat of the blade like it was his baseball bat. With the simultaneous sound of a clang and clack of the knife and chunk colliding, the piece of wood was sent sailing out towards the horizon line.

A second of silence before Sniper sighed and Scout started to flush.

“Uh,” Scout started to say. “I’m guessing that I fucked that up.”

Sniper shot him a look over the top of his sunglasses. Scout’s gaze fell to the floor. “We’ll work on it,” Sniper said, tone flat.

The remainder of the time they spent before sundown was Scout learning how to handle swinging at something accurately using a weapon with a maximum thickness of about three millimeters instead of one with a diameter of sixty-seven. Scout was at least hitting some of the blocks by the time it started getting too dark to see very well, and swore to come back again the next day to keep at it.

And he did. It was slow going, took a day or so, but he did. He learned to hit things nearly every single time, and the times he didn’t end up with a piece of wood solidly skewered on the blade, it’d glance off the side. Sniper shifted to small slabs of wood about the size of paper, to give Scout practice using the point of the knife in the motion of a thrust rather than just the edge to swing and chop. Only the first one and a few after ended up giving Scout bruising along his arms as he missed, and by the time a week had nearly passed, Scout could handle a knife competently.

“You’re probably one of the better teachers I’ve had,” Scout commented lightly, pushing the plate of wood off the knife, a heel bracing the little plate while he pulled with both arms.

“How d’you figure?” Sniper asked, fighting back the smile that tried to pull at his face.

Scout glanced up at him, grinning in that lopsided way that he did, his distinctive buck teeth poking out for a moment. “Haven’t thwacked me upside the head with a ruler yet,” he replied cheekily.

It took Sniper a good second to wrestle down that smile, and to push the amusement from his voice. “Still might hit you with a slab of wood if you’re not careful,” he warned, frisbee’ing another plate towards Scout.

A simple lunge and upward thrust and Scout had caught it dead center. “I’ll be careful.”

A necessity Sniper found to using chunks of scrap wood as target practice was that the knives went dull far faster than they did when going into flesh. He spent the seventh day of their training week showing Scout how to maintenance a knife to keep it in good condition. Scout sat next to him on the ground and watched carefully as he demonstrated cleaning the blade off, sharpening it, and how to re-wrap the hilt when the leather or tape started to wear thin. For Scout’s knife, which was made of iron, he showed how to polish and prevent rust from forming on the blade, and explained what to do if rust did form.

Scout was a surprisingly attentive listener during his impromptu lecture, which was both good and bad, because Sniper kept finding himself getting a bit distracted and he was sure it was very noticeable. Because he’d never really been close enough to Scout to notice, but there under the scent of heavy-duty bugspray and sweat and the lingering hints of blood and gunpowder that clung to all of them just as stubbornly as their regrets, he could smell that apparently Scout used a different kind of soap than the general-issue type most of the others had. He fancied that it might be something with mint, and it mingled well with the smell of pine that permeated the air around them.

The few times he lost his train of thought, Scout prompted him again, until at some point the lesson gave way to a discussion about the kinds of things Sniper would eat when he was out walkabout, doing his hunting and tracking before mercenary times, and that too gave way to tales of his adventures until crickets ushered them away and back to their respective living areas to sleep. Sniper had no clue whether Scout did, but he knew he himself barely slept a wink, too busy tumbling words over and over in his head, still feeling both guilty and sated by the fleeting memory of the way it felt when Scout’s arm kept brushing against his own with each wayward gesture.

The next time Scout came around, the box of wood didn’t come out of the shed. Instead, there was a dispenser humming not far away.

“Holy shit,” Scout said, eyes widening in half-time to his grin, teeth on full display. “Time to fake-fight?”

“To try, at least,” Sniper said, tossing him his sheath, and it was caught with only a bit of a flinch on Scout’s part. “I’ll teach you to block from either side and above, then to parry, then I’ll let you try havin’ a go at me.”

Scout’s eyebrows shot up, and Sniper rolled his eyes.

“By which I mean swinging a knife,” he clarified.

“I was about to say,” Scout laughed, tossing his sheath carefully aside along with his bag. “Damn, didn’t even take you to dinner first.”

Further hilarious commentary from Scout was put on hold for a little bit while Sniper adjusted his arms up into a block from the left, then the right, showing him which part of the palm to place against the flat of the blade so it wouldn’t cut into his hand, but also wouldn’t be knocked aside to give way to the ever-important meat of his head and shoulders. He had Scout try again with his non-dominant hand, and then he took a few very careful pitifully slow and very light swings from assorted directions to give Scout ample time to shift into the correct position to block him.

“Why do I get the feelin’ you’re just enjoying makin’ me wave my arms around?” Scout asked when Sniper’s swings made him move in a slow arch to keep blocking.

“Why do I get the feelin’ your stance is wrong again?”

Scout laughed even as he shifted, and Sniper took an extra fraction of a second before he figured out the location of his next swing.

Parrying was simpler, relying on a similar motion as to when Scout deflected attacks with his bat. Sniper had to chide him a few times for his inclination to move out of the way rather than redirecting the weapon, but to be fair, he figured the majority of the time Scout would indeed be fast enough to get back in time.

The clouds were going pink by the time Scout had parrying and blocking effectively down to a mere half-speed below normal without mistakes, so Sniper postponed Scout attacking until the next day, instead moving to show Scout the best places to stab to try and take enemies down quickly.

“For a chop, you’re nearly just as effective landing them on the upper shoulder as you are the neck,” Sniper said, pointing to various points on himself as he spoke. “If you sever the muscles near the neck, you can cripple the ability to counter-attack as well as panic your opponent. Swinging is more aimed to maneuver your opponent and their weapon to where you want them, but if you’re going for damage, the knees and elbows are a fair shot, as well as the waist if they leave their waist open enough to attack.”

“Can this thing crack a rib?” Scout asked, looking over his knife critically.

“No. But you can do a fair bit worse with a thrust. That’s where you’ll get be real hurt in. You’ll do well hitting anywhere in the abdomen, but the cleanest hit will be up through the gut and into the ribcage. You can puncture a lung, maybe even sever the spine, and if you’re lucky you can get the heart.” Sniper pantomimed the motion with an invisible knife on Scout, taking hold of his shoulder to do so. “Now, as I’m saying this, keep in mind that the same goes when a knife is headed towards you. Never let someone else get in this close with a knife of this size unless it’s on your terms and you’re able to get right back out before they strike back. You’re quick enough to manage it. That’s what this reach on a blade is good for, keeping someone at bay until you know you can hit them where it hurts. Careful of getting boxed in, keep your distance.”

Scout nodded, clearly trying his best to sort all of the information away in his head so he could remember it. “What if they’re keepin’ their body safe?”

“Up into the underside of the jaw will work fine if you think you can reach without leavin’ yourself exposed and vulnerable,” Sniper said, tapping at the underside of Scout’s jaw with the hand that had pantomimed the knife before, and he got a whiff of mint under the smell of extra-strength bugspray, and he froze.

They were standing awfully close to each other. Scout had to tilt his head up considerably to look at Sniper in the eye. The knife was held almost limply in his hand, as of threatening to drop any second. His lips were slightly parted, eyes wide, almost sparkling with the way that the light filtered through his eyelashes. Buck teeth.

Sniper cleared his throat lightly, glancing to one side as he took a generous step back. “If your opponent is considerably taller or shorter than you, don’t bother tryin’ to go for the under-jaw,” he said, voice stiff, eyes locked on the ground not far off. “Just go for a chop. Even if it’s not the best, it’ll still do. Just remember to get back out again. And don’t let go of your knife unless it’s an absolute last resort, and if you do, just try and escape. Unarmed you won’t stand a chance, and you can always just go get another knife. Not worth gettin’ skewered for.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scout said. A pause. “Gettin’ late. Anything else you wanna say, or do you wanna call it a night?”

“Think we can call it,” Sniper nodded.

“Okay,” Scout said, and his voice was only a mite less chipper than usual. “See ya tomorrow, Snipes.”

He almost didn’t.

Sniper woke up the next morning to a light drizzle coming down, largely overshadowed by high winds. By the time the match ended, the rain was heavy enough to leave everyone soaked only moments after they left Respawn, and by the time Scout was due to practice, it was nearly impossible to see through, thunder shaking the ground, winds thrashing the trees wildly and reminding Sniper why there were only pines other coniferous trees around rather than deciduous ones. Nothing much else could withstand the weather.

Except Scout could, apparently, because a knock came on Sniper’s door.

He jumped up and dashed to open it quickly, and saw Scout on his stoop, shivering and soaked to the bone, clutching his hat in one hand and the frame of Sniper’s door in the other to keep balance despite the way the wind wanted to rip him away.

“Sup,” was all Scout could say before he was yanked inside and the door was closed again.

“Bloody maniac, bleedin’ lunatic,” Sniper chided under his breath, bustling around the camper and slamming cabinets open and shut to gather towels as quickly as he could. “Hell were you thinkin’, headed out here in a storm like this?”

Scout, who was still shivering water onto the floor and was halfway to making himself an indoor swimming pool, just shrugged. “Figured I’d see if you were still up to spar,” he tried. “Didn’t think so, but wanted to make sure you weren’t out there waitin’ or nothin’.”

Sniper huffed, dropping a towel on Scout’s head and another at his feet before he could further ruin the already-long-trashed carpet. “Of course not, in this weather. I was half worried you would stand out there waitin’, to be honest, but I just glanced out the window, didn’t go runnin’ out there like I’ve got a death wish.”

Scout shrugged once more, or maybe just shivered a bit more violently for a second. “Well… I mean, I don’t wanna be weird or nothin’, but, while I’m in here we could try an’ have a lesson,” he suggested lightly.

Sniper rolled his eyes. “As if we’ve got the room. No, mate, no practice today. But you’re not headed back out into that madness, neither. Give us y’hat, I’ll put it aside. You’ll just keep drippin’ unless you towel down your hair.”

Scout handed his hat over, and shook his head like a wet dog. Sniper would’ve complained, but then Scout looked up at him with bright eyes, hair sticking up in every direction.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Scout said.

Sniper turned to set Scout’s hat on the tiny table, then went to try and dig out at least one more towel. “What is it?”

“I could teach you somethin’,” Scout suggested.

Sniper’s hands froze for a few moments before he continued moving. “Such as?”

“Well…” Scout trailed, leaning over to a drawer Sniper had left open, plucking up a tattered old deck of cards. “…Ever played Snap?”

The remainder of the rainy afternoon and evening was Scout teaching him how to play what felt like just about every card game under the sun. He gathered from assorted stories that Scout didn’t have much growing up, but one thing he did have was a deck of cards and a wide pool of people willing to teach a kid how to gamble. At some point Sniper broke out his liquor (nothing great, but not horrible either), and they ended up relaxed, joking, talking easily and loosely and happily. It was hard to tell the time, especially with the downpour outside, but at some point Sniper did get up to grab his watch, and he was almost distressed by how late it was.

“Time for me to head out?” Scout asked at the look on Sniper’s face, shoulders slumping slightly.

“Dunno when the rain’s gonna pick back up,” Sniper shrugged, noting that things had died down, at least for the moment.

“Ah, well,” Scout shrugged, moving to pull his shoes on. “Same time tomorrow? If it’s too bad out for knives, then for cards? Practice or not, I do like hangin’ out with you, y’know.”

“Sounds good,” Sniper said honestly.

It was cards the next day, but the one after that was good (if windy) and they did a bit of review before jumping right into Scout learning to attack.

He was a natural. Even in half-time, Sniper found that Scout’s attacks were focused but felt too random to keep up with, and after only about two days they were ready to try real sparring, a natural back-and-forth rather than letting one of them attack the other for a little while before switching.

And Scout was even more of a natural at that. There were one or two close calls where either of them did a particularly good move, and it was only through the grace of their going slowly and their own reflexes that someone didn’t get hit.

Sniper’s legs ached by the end of their little back-and forth. Scout complained that his arms were similar.

“You’re picking all of this up quick,” Sniper said as they both tended to their weapons briefly before they turned in.

Scout ducked his head slightly, face reddening. “Uh, yeah. Thanks. I’m, uh, just real good at this I guess,” he said.

Sniper didn’t say anything to that for a few moments, just raising an eyebrow, his own motions paused.

“Okay, so maybe I’ve been practicing on my own a little,” Scout finally admitted, shifting, glancing up at Sniper. “I just, I wanna do a good job. So… I did a little extra homework.”

“I could tell,” Sniper said honestly.

“Really? How?” Scout asked, eyes widening.

Sniper grinned. “You’re still getting the stance wrong.”

Sniper had Truckie double-check on the dispenser, and then they were sparring for real, no delayed speed. He informed Scout to just commit, that since he was still so new it wasn’t likely he’d be able to actually hurt Sniper just yet. Scout agreed.

He blocked extremely well, even if he backed off a bit too easily. He seemed to rely on chops a lot and the security that the blade being in front of him provided. Sniper tried to leave either side exposed to get Scout to come out of that shell. It wouldn’t do well to develop a tick like that so early.

Scout took a few swings and nearly unbalanced himself.

“Stance,” he said evenly, backing off a bit to give Scout a moment to fix himself.

“Right,” Scout said, following after him.

Scout attempted a thrust up towards Sniper’s middle. He was parried, and Sniper spun to smack Scout in the waist with the flat of his blade, not hard enough to do real damage.

“Watch your flank,” Sniper instructed, moving back as Scout took a swing to get himself some distance.

“Right,” Scout said, in pursuit.

Swing. Swing. Sniper took two in return, backing Scout up, who didn’t seem quite aware enough of his surroundings until he felt grass under his feet and realized he was only two meters from a wall. Scout swung low at Sniper’s knees, and Sniper backed up a half step before his rebuttal, a chop with both hands, and Scout’s heel hit wood.

“Red,” Sniper said calmly, the pause word, and they both froze. “Awright. You’re backed into a corner. Your back is to the wall. Without looking around, tell me what’s on either side of you.”

Scout kept his eyes locked on Sniper’s face, slightly out of breath. “Dispenser and table are to my left,” he said after a second. “Nothing to my right.”

“Which means your options are what?”

“Either do what seems safest and smartest, which is go right,” Scout said, “or do somethin’ crazy.”

“Unexpected,” Sniper corrected. “Only crazy if you know for sure it’ll never work.”

“Right. I’m good,” Scout said, breath back to normal.

“Good. Green.”

Scout went to thrust up towards Sniper’s jaw and instead fell, rolling between Sniper’s legs.

By the time Sniper had sorted out in his head what all had just happened, Scout was behind him, and he swung his knife as he turned, making Scout step back.

“That would’ve been a good time to try and hit me,” Sniper said, swinging again and circling to get himself away from the wall. “You’re holding back.”

“Yeah, because I don’t wanna kill you on accident,” Scout said, backing up as Sniper thrust towards his chest, only barely parrying in time to keep a knife out of his sternum.

“You won’t kill me,” Sniper replied easily, taking a swing, backing Scout up farther and farther as the runner tried to figure out how to get back on the offense. “Go on. Give me your best shot.”

Scout swung his blade to meet Sniper’s in the air with force, surprising him, sending his arm wide and leaving his chest wide open. In the span of a second, Scout had a hand on Sniper’s shoulder, and had the flat of his knife pressing against Sniper’s upper stomach and chest.

“Checkmate,” he said, so terribly, wonderfully, horribly, incredibly, awfully, perfectly proud of himself, buck teeth, mint, smile ticking that much further upwards, weight shifting, eyes glittering, and Sniper kissed him.

Overhead, the wind ruffled through the trees, making each individual needle shiver, bringing a few droplets of water to collide uselessly with the pines and the ground. Sniper pulled back away, inhaling, exhaling with the way the branches swayed.

Scout’s knife dropped to the ground. His eyes were alight with wonder.

Sniper didn’t even try to hold back a little laugh. He’d tasted like spearmint.

Chapter Text

Stumbling into breakfast ten minutes later than he usually did earned Sniper some glances, which quickly transformed into stares.

Shuffling to the coffee pot and not even bothering to check what brand was in it, Sniper poured himself a cup. His shirt, the same shirt he wore the previous day, was rumpled halfway to hell, collar sitting all wrong and sleeves half-pushed onto his elbows. His boxers were equally mussed up, and as Sniper tipped his head back to chug his mug of coffee, hair sticking up in every direction, Heavy and Medic glanced at each other with raised eyebrows as a bright red mark under his ear became fully visible. Pyro was clearly trying their damndest to further muffle a laugh. Sniper just rubbed at his eyes, clearly still half-asleep.

Sniper plopped down in one of the two empty seats left at the table, the one to the right of Demo, who had to bury his face in his arm to keep from laughing, his shoulders shaking wildly, as the room got a view of his neck under his collar, still unbuttoned, which appeared to have been attacked by a wild animal.

Sniper didn’t notice the barely-stifled laughs of almost everyone else around the table. He also didn’t notice who was sitting directly across from him and looked about five seconds from committing the real kind of murder or exploding.

“Good morning,” Spy said, voice perfectly even, facade of calm almost perfectly intact except for the various muscles in his face twitching with hardly-repressed rage.

“Mmhmm,” Sniper hummed, voice slightly hoarse, head falling to rest on his arms.

Further chuckling from the table. Engie tried to hide his smile behind his mug, glancing at Spy, whose rage was somehow still growing.

“So Scout is late,” Spy observed neutrally.

“Mmm,” Sniper agreed, blinking at his coffee cup a few times before burrowing into his forearms.

“Any idea where he might be?” Spy asked, voice the kind of perfect calm that nobody in the world used.

Sniper’s head slowly lifted, revealing a mask of horror. He glanced around the table, suddenly fully awake, and for the first time noticed the way the whole team seemed to be mere seconds from collapsing into laughter.

Demo, still nursing a hangover, suddenly connected that last pair of dots, and started laughing in earnest. “Aye, finally got around to it, did ya?” he cheered, knocking his elbow against Sniper’s, who tried to repress his own grin under his coffee mug. “Took ya long enough, Mundy!”

“Stuff it, Tavish,” Sniper replied back easily, rolling his eyes, not without fondness. “Not anyone’s business what goes on in my bedroom.”

Heavy needed to gently hit Medic on the arm as the doctor almost collapsed under the force of trying not to laugh. Spy was going beet red under what little skin his mask showed of his face. He was clenching his fists so hard the leather of his gloves creaked. Neither of the pair across the table from him noticed.

“Wait, really?! Thought you two just had a pash, you’re tellin’ me—“

“Leave it, Tavish,” Sniper said, shaking his head to himself with a little grin.

“Can’t hardly! One’a my best mates gets with another of ‘em, can’t expect me to tone it down!” Demo protested. “And that’s not hardly an answer! Yes or no?”

“As if I’d say yes here in front of everyone,” Sniper huffed.

Demo was off and laughing again, rocking back in his chair with the force of it. “Damn well right! Up top, you saucy assassin you!”

Sniper took the high-five, his reluctance act slipping for a moment and showing that he was indeed clearly rather proud of himself.

Engie’s willpower cracked for a moment, collapsing forward with a short wail of laughter in his place on one side of Spy. Suddenly Spy’s hand was on the inside of his own suit jacket, and Engie hurried to take his shoulder as he tried to stand. “He doesn’t know, Spook, c’mon now,” he protested quickly even as he continued laughing, “he doesn’t understand!”

Spy shook him off, and leaned both hands on the table before him, cigarette case in one of them.

“What? What doesn’t he know?” Demo asked, looking over at Spy, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t understand,” Sniper agreed. “What are you lot still laughing about? What’s funny?”

Spy set his jaw, taking a deliberate breath to calm himself. “Bushman, being that I hate you more than every member of the other team combined, and that likewise you have no particular fondness of me, there is something that I believe you should know, should you decide to continue this behavior,” Spy said stiffly.

“Yeah?” Sniper asked, mirth fading a bit.

Spy opened his cigarette case, maintaining a venomous eye contact with Sniper as he fished through the slips of paper that made up the space behind the cigarettes themselves. No, not paper—photographs, Sniper realized as Spy slapped down two photos on the tabletop in front of him and Demo.

One, the one on the left, was a picture of Spy, a woman, and a baby. Spy looked largely the same, albeit a bit more lively, even in the faded photograph. A phrase in French was written at the bottom, and while Sniper had no clue what it said, Demo hummed in confusion, glancing up at Spy, who looked stony.

The second photo was something else—a picture of a boy, surely not even in his teens yet, wearing a baseball uniform, grinning widely at the person holding the camera. A distinctive pair of big, buck teeth and slightly-too-large ears were what really rang a bell in the back of Sniper’s mind, and he suddenly realized who the person in the photo was, and through a few more leaps of logic, what is meant that Spy had these two photos with him at all times.

He went white as a sheet, staring up at Spy with a horror unlike anything he’d ever felt before. A muscle in Spy’s jaw ticked.

It took Demo another few moments, his hangover fighting him all along the way. But suddenly he understood, and he was out of his seat in an instant, positively beaming.

“HOLY CHRIST,” Demo shouted, “SNIPER FUCKED SPY’S SON!”

Sniper was frozen in much the same way that most prey animals froze in the moment before they were killed. Spy appeared to be earnestly trying to murder him with a stare, and those around the table couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t manage it.

In the mean time, Demo had started in on some almost hysterical laughter, and a good portion of the rest of the team was following behind him.

“SNIPER FUCKED SPY’S SON! LADS, SNIPER FUCKED SPY’S SON!” Demo repeated over and over, taking a lap of the table and high-fiving everyone in turn. “HE FUCKED SPY’S SON! HIS SON!!! SWEET SHITE—“

“Understand that every time he shouts it,” Spy intoned to Sniper below the sound of Demo and the team hooting and hollering and making a ruckus, “I will kill you one more time, each more painful than the last.”

Sniper was still frozen, and therefore didn’t reply.

“LAD, YOU BRAGGED,” Demo insisted, shaking Sniper by the shoulders for emphasis. “YOU BRAGGED ABOUT FUCKIN’ HIS SON, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM! RIGHT ‘ERE ACROSS FROM HIS EGGS! YOU FUCKED HIS SON LAD! YOU HIGH FIVED ME OVER IT!”

Spy drew a pistol from within his jacket, putting it on the table next to his cigarette case.

Demo cleared his throat, sitting back down. “Not funny. Not funny at all. Very serious,” he amended, voice quiet. “Very serious situation.”

“I, er,” Sniper began, eyeing the gun on the table. “I feel the need to clarify, that’s not what happened.”

Spy raised an eyebrow. Demo blinked. The remainder of the team followed suit, each recovering quickly from their own laughter. “What? What d’you mean, lad?”

“The, er, the other…” He spun his finger in a circle, then thunked his forehead against the surface of the table, scratching idly at the hickey beneath his ear. “Other way around.”

A beat of complete silence before utter pandemonium, and the first of several times that Spy killed Sniper following the incident.

Chapter Text

Sniper didn’t previously hang out in the watchtower so much. He was more used to hanging out in and around his camper. But a lot of things changed when he went home and found his parents dead. Maybe too many.

The watchtower, though, it was nice. He’d gotten quite a few things up there for the sake of comfort. A cooler, a mattress for when he couldn’t stand sleeping in the camper, a shoddy table and some empty crates for chairs, blankets and tarps. A stack of magazines (both ammo and reading material), one of the dimestore books he’d picked up however many years ago that he could practically recite cover to cover, and a few packs of cigarettes as well as a lighter. He hadn’t smoked much back Before—always thought it was terrible sniping etiquette. The glowing end of a cigarette was a dead giveaway to the position of one’s head. But he’d picked up the habit around the same time he realized the phantom pains in his chest probably wouldn’t be going away any time soon.

He liked it up in the watchtower. Closed space and all. Quiet. The addition of the various furniture and the like just gave him a good excuse to keep staying up there.

He probably couldn’t have dealt with getting all those things up there alone. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

Scout took to hanging out with Sniper, and was happy for the extra work to do. He said he needed to be kept busy, even more than he had Before. Sniper didn’t question it. They’d all developed habits. He didn’t call out Scout on the way he’d started crossing his arms more, sitting with his back to the wall. The way he clearly didn’t enjoy being alone, always perched himself near the window. In return, Scout didn’t ask why Sniper hardly slept in his camper anymore, why Sniper stayed away from water.

They didn’t talk about it. They just didn’t.

There were a few things they’d broken silence about, at least a little bit. Mainly their shared complaints about having to do the whole routine Medic assigned them with each of their wounds, a salve that needed to be reapplied every day to try and help fade their scarring a little bit.

They took to something of a routine. An excuse for Scout to not be left alone for too long. A reason to make Sniper talk to someone for a period of time; he knew he’d gone back into his shell over the course of all of those months alone in that too-empty house, and probably needed the human interaction, or else he’d end up right back in his hermitage. Scout was nice enough to inform him that he appreciated his company fairly regularly, so at least there was that. Unless Scout was just trying to be polite. Sniper tried not to think about it too hard.

Regardless.

Generally the routine would go about the same. But today, Scout was a bit late. It only took a few moments to understand why.

“Hey,” Scout said, pulling himself up from the ladder in the same way he always did, favoring his right side as he crested the edge. “Sorry I’m late. Got some chips.”

Sniper caught the bag when it was tossed to him, and Scout settled on the windowsill as he looked them over. “These all for me?”

“I mean, if you want. Not that hungry,” Scout shrugged.

Sniper nodded, put the bag on the ground by his leg. He wasn’t that hungry either. He was never sure if it was for the same reason as most of the others.

“Well, seein’ that I’m late an’ all, wanna just cut right to it?” Scout asked, half a sigh.

“May as well,” Sniper shrugged. “Take your shirt off.”

Scout started pulling himself free of his shirt as Sniper went to pick up the tube of balm from the table.

Sniper could pretty well handle treating his own scars, what with them all being on his front and the underside of his biceps. But Scout could only handle some of his own, given how it curved awkwardly around his side and a bit up his back. And he added that since he couldn’t really feel much of the area around where the worst of it was, it was hard to do the application of the scar treatment… stuff. So he’d asked Sniper, nervously, eyes averted, if he could maybe help. So he did.

Even now, a good few months after What Happened, a good two months after he’d started the little routine of helping Scout, Sniper was still taken aback by the scarring, the wound. It left a nasty pit in Scout’s side, his ribs poking out abruptly beneath his skin from the wound in a way that made Scout look almost sickly, starved. Were they the types to talk about it, Sniper might’ve chided Scout about how visible the ribs on his non-wounded side were, would’ve told him to try not to skip meals. But they weren’t the types, and Sniper wasn’t a hypocrite regardless, so instead Sniper was left to bite back the worry that crested in his chest every time he caught sight of the progressing visibility.

“Okay,” Scout said, lifting his arm and tilting himself so that Sniper could set to work. “My question of the day.”

“Shoot,” Sniper said, warming the lotion-like substance between his hands. This was the other part of their routine—Scout would always bring Sniper a question, something to try and get Sniper to open up a bit. The questions were never invasive, always lighthearted, sometimes even joking. They worked well.

“Do you believe in paranormal and supernatural stuff?”

“Dunno,” Sniper replied, setting to work on the backmost part of the scarring, making sure to try and get the lotion in the worst of the pitting. “Not really sure what counts.”

Scout hummed. “Okay, then what about UFOs and stuff? You believe in those?”

“Yes. Because anything can be an unidentified flying object. That’s just a classification of object. Not somethin’ to be believed in,” Sniper replied.

“The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“That’s what UFO stands for. Unidentified Flying Object.”

“…Oh. Well, okay then wise guy, how about aliens an’ stuff? You believe in those?”

Sniper started working his way slowly around to Scout’s front, where Scout could probably handle doing this himself, but Sniper did it anyways. “Infinite universe. Assumin’ we’re the only place where life’s happened would be awful cocky.”

Scout huffed a laugh. “Okay, like, smart aliens, though,” he elaborated further.

“Intelligent life?”

“Yeah, that.”

Sniper shrugged. “Hard to say. Probably a good chance of it.” He paused for a moment, putting a hand on Scout’s shoulder to tilt his torso a bit. It was hard for him to doubt much of anything these days, after he’d visited the lost land of New Zealand. “Doubt it’s ever been here, though, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

“There was this one just batshit dude I met,” Scout started, the ‘in jail’ modified remaining unsaid. “He kept goin’ off about like, how aliens made the pyramids, and stone hedge—“

“Stonehenge.”

“Yeah, that. And all this other stuff too. Kept sayin’ there was no way anyone could’be built all that stuff, and started goin’ off about Area 51 and all that.”

“What’d he say about Area 51?” Sniper asked, smearing the last of the scarring, the minor stuff near Scout’s navel that was already fading fairly quickly.

“Dunno. That’s around when Spy killed ‘im.”

Unprompted, Sniper got more lotion on his hand, eyeing up the other scar on Scout’s chest. “Lunatic.”

“Who, Spy or the dude?”

“Both.”

The other scar on Scout’s chest, he didn’t talk about. Sniper knew the one down on his side he knew was what left Scout dying in a hallway alone, but this one he was fairly sure was more recent. Shortly after Scout had started visiting Sniper every once and a while, before he asked for help, there’d been a few days where Scout had his upper chest wrapped in gauze and didn’t come by.

It was large, spanning in a wide circle about the size of a dinner plate, right across the middle of Scout’s chest. It had discoloration across parts, crinkled like a burn, pock-marked from Scout picking at it.

Sniper started on that one, and Scout’s gaze fell to one side, aware that Sniper had kind of a thing about eye contact sometimes.

“Uh,” Scout started to say, and Sniper’s fingers tickled with the vibration of him speaking. “Engie was sayin’ somethin’ weird today.”

Sniper hummed in question.

“About…” He hesitated. “About… us all maybe bein’ dismissed. Sent home.”

Sniper faltered, but kept his expression stoic. “Hm. Why?”

“Miss P…” And there was another hesitation, as had been happening pretty much every time Pauling came up in conversation. “…We were kept here because there weren’t much of anyone left except us. But I guess she’s bringin’ on new people.”

Sniper frowned. Hummed again.

“I dunno. He just… mentioned it.” Scout kept staring off to one side. “Where would you be headed?”

“Dunno,” Sniper said. “Home, I suppose.”

“Alone again?”

Sniper hummed in confirmation.

“Think there’d be room there for a friend?”

Sniper looked up at him. Somewhere along the line, Scout had shifted from not looking at him to not looking at him.

“You’ve got folks,” Sniper said, not sure how else to say it.

Scout hung his head. “I… I can’t go back there,” he said quietly. “I… I just can’t. I even think about lookin’ my Ma in the eye after all that and I just… I can’t, okay? Just figured it was worth askin’. Not good for you to be out alone like that. Two birds, y’know?”

“You really ought to go see your mum,” Sniper said carefully.

Scout laughed humorlessly. “And tell ‘er what? That her youngest son died and… and…”

They didn’t talk about it. They just didn’t. They didn’t.

“And what?” Sniper asked.

“Doc said it wasn’t real,” Scout managed. “That none’a it was real.”

“Said the same to me,” Sniper replied.

They didn’t talk about it.

“I’m gonna sound fuckin’ insane,” Scout half-laughed, hanging his head further, cradling it in one hand.

“You won’t,” Sniper assured. “C’mon. Tell me.”

Scout didn’t lift his head. “I saw God.”

Silence. “What?”

“I saw God, man. I…” He shook his head, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck, I don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”

Silence. Silence. They didn’t talk about it.

“I saw my parents.”

That got Scout to lift his head, eyes wide. “Huh?”

“My mum and dad. I saw ‘em. Talked to ‘em. Made peace.”

Scout just stared at him.

“There…” Sniper’s eyes fell to Scout’s chest scar. “There’s plenty of room at the house. Back in Oz. You’re welcome to stay there if that’s where I wind up goin’.”

“And if it’s not?” Scout asked, voice as raw as his scar looked.

“Then you’re still welcome to head out with me, if that’s really what you want.”

Scout’s eyes fell, his shoulders sagging in relief. “Thanks,” Scout said quietly.

It was quiet between them for a few seconds. Sniper capped the tube, setting it aside. He picked up a box of cigarettes, pulling one out and setting to light it.

“.I don’t know how long I was layin’ there,” Scout said. “I kinda thought nobody was ever gonna find me. I’m gonna be fuckin’ annoying, I ain’t gonna hardly ever leave you alone.”

Sniper managed to put up a smile. “That a promise?”

Scout laughed. It almost sounded real this time.

Almost.

Chapter Text

He didn’t know why he did it. He didn’t know. He shouldn’t have. He really shouldn’t have. It was a mistake, it was stupid, he wasn’t thinking, he’d just messed up, they’d come onto him, he hadn’t seen Scout in a long time, he didn’t intend to let things get so far—he had any number of excuses lined up in his head, but the moment he looked Scout in the eye, they flooded from his brain, just leaving him with the guilt.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Scout stared at him, not in the same way he so often did when he saw Sniper in just his tank-top undershirt, this time with a blankness in his expression, a lack of understanding, or maybe an unwillingness to understand. Sniper’s blood was cold, his heart was heavy, his head was all shaken up.

He stared at the mark on Sniper’s neck, distinctive, and most notably not having been there following any of the times the two of them had been together. In his scramble to say something, anything, Sniper said the stupidest thing he’d ever said, hand moving to cover the hickey.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

As if there was any way it could ever be anything else. Scout was too smart for that. Just about everyone in the world was. His face had contorted with understanding, with disbelief, with anger, with shock, with horror, with a sadness Sniper had never quite seen on him before.

He’d punched Sniper in the face and stormed out the door.

It was the next day. Sniper hadn’t dared to step foot in the base, not knowing what fate would await him. Not knowing what fate he deserved. Not a good one, he was sure.

Sniper heard feet crunching on the gravel outside, and sat up, eyes lighting up.

Scout didn’t knock his familiar one, two three rhythm, just opening the door and walking in. He didn’t look at Sniper, opening one of the drawers without pause or fanfare.

From it, he pulled a few of his shirts. He unslung the backpack from his shoulder and unzipped it, calmly putting them inside.

Sniper’s expression fell.

“Scout?” Sniper asked carefully.

Scout ignored him, moving to the tiny bathroom, pulling his soap and toothbrush and shampoo and towel from the area and putting those similarly into his bag.

Sniper stood, slowly. “…Love?”

Scout didn’t so much as flinch. Next was one of the drawers in the kitchen. He pulled from it a deck of cards, a sketchbook, a bag of pens. From another drawer, a pack of gum, and some assorted knick-knacks that had been living in Sniper’s camper since before the two of them even started dating.

“Love, please look at me,” Sniper said, not proud of how his voice wavered.

Scout didn’t. He moved past Sniper to the bed, picking up a blanket from it, a sleep shirt from the ground, one of his hats. The blanket and shirt were folded before he stuffed them in his bag. He didn’t rush, didn’t hurry, the absolute picture of calm.

“Please, just say something,” Sniper tried, taking a half-step towards him, starting to reach out.

Scout moved past him again, to the space next to the door. He picked up a set of keys from it, calmly working the one to his room off of the ring, and the little bauble that accompanied it as well. It went in his pocket. Then he knelt, tying the strings of a pair of athletic shoes together and slinging those to the backpack. There was another pair of shoes there that received the same treatment.

“Scout, don’t ignore me,” Sniper pleaded.

Scout stood again and moved to the box of records, flipping through them and setting several of them on the counter.

“Can’t we talk about this?” No reply. “Scout?” No reply. “Jeremy—“

Scout moved abruptly to a drawer, opening it with force, shoulders shaking for a moment, and Sniper’s heart sank through the soles of his boots to shatter on the ground when realization hit. He took a photo album from the drawer, flicking through it, starting to take pictures from out of it, tossing them on top of the records.

His throat was tight, threatening to suffocate him. “Please. Please, love. Yell, scream, cry, please, just say something, anything.” Scout’s hands were shaking. “Please. Love.”

He put a hand on Scout’s shoulder, and Scout spun to face him for the first time since he’d entered the camper, batting his arm away almost violently, and Sniper’s breath hitched on a sob when he saw Scout’s face.

Scout’s eyes were bloodshot and red, and he had dark circles under them almost deep enough to match Sniper’s black eye. Scout’s eyes flickered over his face, and his breath was shaky, the anger falling away to reveal, for only a moment, a mix of betrayal and hurt and grief and sadness and confusion and knowing that made Sniper’s heart crumble to dust at his feet.

“Anything,” he pleaded under his breath. He went to cup Scout’s cheek.

Scout moved away before it made contact, turning to pick up the stack of records and photos and walking to the door.

There at the threshold, he paused. Only for a moment. He looked back over his shoulder, looked at Sniper, eyes damp, and lost, and for a moment, regretful. Sniper’s own finally overflowed, stinging at the wound Scout had left the previous day, the only time Scout had ever hurt him, in all the time they’d been together. The only time at all.

“Please,” Sniper asked once more, voice quiet. “Anything.”

Scout went to speak, but the breath caught in his throat. His adam’s apple bobbed. He closed his mouth again. The regret faded away to a kind of bitter acceptance, and then Scout was gone. The entire way back to the base, he didn’t look back. Not even once.

It was a mistake. It was just a mistake.

Chapter Text

One of the things Engie simply needed to get used to with Spy was how particular he was about keeping clean.

He didn’t shower with everyone else, Engie was aware. He knew that because he knew the layout of the pipework on the base, and knew that there was another bathroom branching from Spy’s smoking room. He wasn’t sure how one would access it—maybe from the room directly via hidden entrances, maybe from somewhere else nearby. But Spy showered often, and he made trips often into town to get his clothes dry-cleaned and pressed. And when they were stationed away from civilization for a while, he knew Spy kept up the habit, washing and ironing his clothes himself.

That was one thing that did make Engie curious, though. The fact that Spy was so particular about staying pristine, and yet still he so often went to be with Engie in his workshop. Home to grease and oil and sawdust and rust and metal, always smelling faintly of spray paint.

He’d decided that there were a few options to explain what might be going on.

Firstly, that Spy was indeed a cleanly person, and just liked Engie enough to put up with his workspace, aware that he really did enjoy his work and therefore couldn’t be pulled away from it very easily.

Secondly, that perhaps Spy’s cleanliness was a charade, and he didn’t particularly care in any real way, and it was just something used to exude an air of superiority much in the same way his scalding speech and calculated body language did.

Thirdly, Spy’s cleanliness was something enforced in much the same way that a good portion of his secrecy was, that it was part of his job description in a similar way that Soldier’s involved him marching the halls and Sniper spending time in the watchtower and Scout running errands for everyone and Heavy being a peacemaker.

Well, that last one probably wasn’t in Heavy’s job description. He was just like that naturally. Regardless.

He tended to favor the first one, even if he was aware that believing it was the first one just made him a downright sap of a romantic. But in terms of being sappy and romantic, he’d never really beat the Frenchman, he knew. He settled for little gestures instead, leaving all the roses and candles and grand declarations to the other man to do.

Admittedly, as much as his grimy workshop was surely a hassle for Spy to deal with, there were things that Spy was about that he himself didn’t so much work well with. In the same way Spy balked at leaning on a sawdust-covered workbench, Engie fidgeted at headed out to nice dinners and the like for dates.

He’d grown up in a small town in the middle of nowhere—there was a price to privacy for a family of born-and-bred geniuses—and due to his grandfather’s and father’s paranoia and overall seclusion he never even really knew about having guests over. Dressing to the nines and headed to a restaurant so expensive they didn’t list prices, sampling wines and sitting with elbows always off the table and never pouring his own water and staring down at far too many forks before him, it was downright stressful. And worst of all that stress meant he often slipped, forgot the purpose of him being there, forgot to focus on his date.

So he made Spy do yet another compromise. At least half of their dates were decided by Engie rather than him. So he settled for small diners, family-owned types of places, full of the smell of the same coffee and the same pancakes and the same bacon and the same hash browns that had been served the past twenty years of the establishment being open. Places where instead of a suit plucked straight off a walkway in Europe, he wore a pair of pants stained with paint around the knees, and a long-out-of-style jacket that had been far too big for him when he’d nabbed it from some hapless frat boy in college and only now in his later years when he’d put on equal parts muscle and fat was starting to fit correctly.

Spy’s habits died hard. Engie was half sure he didn’t own a single shirt without buttons (besides his undershirt, but Engie was fairly sure walking out in that may as well have been the equivalent to walking outside in boxers), and his pants were spotless and pressed, and his shoes were shiny. But he did roll his sleeves up to his elbows, and didn’t tuck the shirt quite so neatly, and didn’t even bring a vest, which was a considerable leap down from the suits that he wore whose prices rivalled that of his old, beaten-down stick-shift truck.

Most often, Engie asked him out to breakfast. He didn’t necessarily have an opinion on most restaurants, but he knew when a diner had good breakfast food, and the one in town (at least, the one without wanted posters) most certainly did.

Sometimes he did ask Spy to dinner, though, on busier weekends, if only for the very different feeling of it.

Leaving one of the nice restaurants Spy was so kind as to take him to, Engie was still stiff, still just a bit embarrassed by the looks he’d garnered with his thick accent and his version of politeness, and wide awake as a result.

But walking out of one of those little diners, stomach full of food that was mostly grease, usually late at night (the places often being open until halfway between dusk and dawn), Engie was always relaxed, feeling well at ease, well calmed, satisfied.

He did watch as Spy surreptitiously tried to pull his sleeves down to cover more of his arms, a half-step behind as Engie went to the counter to pay. Night in the desert was a bitter kind of cold, the kind of cold that animals had to have evolved to tolerate, and suddenly Engie was a bit sympathetic towards the fact that the other man hadn’t brought his layers with him for once.

Waiting for his change, Engie finally just sighed, looking over Spy. Twig like him would practically freeze to death walking to the truck, let alone waiting for it to kick on what meager heat it could provide.

All at once he was shrugging off his jacket, pulling himself free of his sleeves, ignoring the goosebumps jumping up on his now-bare arms in protest. “Take my jacket. It’s cold outside,” Engie said simply.

Spy looked almost startled, holding up a hand and shaking his head on almost instinct. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly—“ he started to deny.

Engie rolled his eyes, draping the thing around Spy’s shoulders before he could further protest. He noted the slight bend Spy put to his back in order to allow such a thing. “Just take it,” he said, allowing himself a little smile.

He was somewhat surprised by the way Spy didn’t immediately start inspecting the coat over his shoulders, instead crossing his arms across himself to grip at it, pulling it on more securely, and looking over Engie’s face. He looked at his expression carefully, then glanced over his now-bare arms, then back to his face again.

Engie shrugged under the scrutiny, smile widening a touch. Spy fought back a smile of his own and pulled the jacket tighter over his shoulders. It didn’t fit in the slightest. It made Engie chuckle.

They left the tip and left the establishment, headed for Engie’s truck, parked on the far side of the parking lot out of a paranoia that never quite left when they got off the battlefield.

It was something Engie didn’t really think about until the moment it happened.

He stood to the left of Spy, his keys held loosely in his left hand, and all at once felt something bump the back of his hand near his wrist. He glanced down, and saw Spy’s hand there, and when he looked up, the other man was looking at him with a kind of interest. Spy’s hand bumped against his own again.

Engie grinned as he finally understood the hint, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation as he laced his fingers through Spy’s. And it was then, all at once, that he realized he didn’t really hold hands with Spy. Not while going places, and certainly not in a public area. He wondered why for a moment, if maybe it was paranoia, if maybe it was pride, but the thought fell away as Spy’s thumb brushed over top of his own idly and he realized Spy had taken off his glove.

“Thank you for the jacket,” Spy said quietly.

Engie squeezed his hand. “This isn’t my giving it to you forever,” he chided jokingly. “I’ll want it back eventually.”

Spy hummed. “Maybe someday,” he said airily, and damn him, it made the poor Engineer laugh.

Little gestures. Little ones. Maybe they were all the more important.

Chapter Text

One of these days, he’d figure out how to get Sniper out of his shell. He was sure of it.

He’d tried just about everything he could think of. He’d invited Sniper to the movies, to tag along to help with a shopping run, out to eat at three kinds of restaurants for lunch and two for dinner. Hell, he’d ended up roping Sniper into a double date, himself set up with a fiery-tempered girl who’d dumped a drink on his head and then written her number on his arm, Sniper with the tag-along friend who apparently needed to get out more. The date hadn’t gotten much of anywhere, the girl and him half-arguing the whole time and Sniper and the other girl staring at their plates and hardly even chiming in when invited. It had taken a bit of pestering to get Sniper to go out again after that.

He dragged Sniper to team meals, to bars, to clubs, to casinos. To a museum, to the farmer’s market, to a flea market. And each and every time he brought Sniper somewhere, the man ended up pacing along beside Scout, hands in his pockets, quietly chiding him when he got argumentative with civilians and quietly laughing at him when his bad luck had him making a fool of himself.

He just wouldn’t open up. Scout told him story after story, showed him all his own interests, presented every kind of joke he could think of, and the guy wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t start telling his own jokes, wouldn’t start telling his own stories. Wouldn’t commentate on the things around them unless directly asked, and never once suggested where they should go next.

If Scout didn’t like a challenge so much, he would’ve ripped his own damn hair out.

The fair was his last resort. If he couldn’t get Sniper to open up somehow with the excitement and variety and overall greatness of an entire fair, then he was denouncing the man as a robot who did not feel things or have real emotions and turning him over to Engie for further study.

This was the middle day of the fair, meaning it was straight up bustling. Every stand had at least two people at it, and all the food booths had lines, and all the rides had even longer lines, and the number of teenagers stood around with each other was downright astronomical. This was a big fair, too, one of those harvest-type once-a-year nothing-else-ever-happens-in-this-state festivals that people would come from all over the place to go to. Engie had a lot to say on those kinds of things, and in fact had been the one to suggest Scout go check it out after hearing about it from some other old person when he was out doing some work-related supply run stuff.

Scout was most excited, as he often was, by the food.

The first thing they did once they got in the place was beeline to the first booth, some caramel corn thing, to get a small bag of it. Sniper commented lightly on his restraint. The second was to go to the next booth, which sold cotton candy. They got one cone to split between them. The third was to go to the next booth, which was one of those fair-specific food trucks. Sniper was starting to catch on.

“Aren’t these… well, the same sorts of food you can just find in a city somewhere?” Sniper asked, voice lowered so that only Scout could hear him.

Scout put on his best expression of complete shock and offense. “What! No, it’s totally different! The hell you talkin’ about? Fair food is awesome!”

“I mean… I’m not so sure, mate,” Sniper said carefully, glancing over the colorfully-painted sign.

“I—okay, hold on,” Scout instructed, and turned to pay as he was handed his latest portion of food, the Bucket ‘O Fries. “I mean, c’mon, check this out! It’s a bucket of french fries, what’s to dislike?”

Sniper looked at him blankly as they walked away from the food truck. Scout breathed in and began to elaborate.

“I mean, okay, the quality of the fries? Not great. I’ll admit, they’re fuckin’ shit, garbage oil sticks, and they’re also just straight up delicious. They’re the best trash. They’re the truck stop diner bacon of french fries. They’re tasty nightmares. I’m literally gonna like, sweat oil and salt after eating these, and it’s absolutely worth it. You can’t get this specific brand of perfect awfulness anywhere but at a fair. And, and? It’s in a bucket. That’s hilarious. Food in a bucket is awesome. Like, it’s maybe the closest a food place can get to calling its customers animals without making them eat from a trough, and I’m all about it. And you get to keep the bucket. Like, I just have a little plastic trash-lookin’ bucket now. What part of this isn’t objectively the greatest?”

Sniper considered the question. “Well, don’t imagine you’ll be able to eat all those,” he said after thinking about it for a moment. “So, not ideal.”

“Dude, don’t even worry about that. Best part of a carnival like this? They’ve got all this horrible garbage food, and like thirty feet away—“ He stopped in his tracks, and Sniper stopped as well, following his line of sight. “—They have spinny rides that’ll make you puke.”

Sniper was still. Scout watched him, waiting for a reaction. “Rides make you throw up?” he asked after a second.

“If I eat a whole fuckin’ bucket of french fries before I get on, then hell yeah they do,” Scout said cheerfully.

Sniper considered that, or maybe just stared at the ride and all of the screaming and hollering people aboard it.

“How many foods come in a bucket, y’think?” Sniper asked.

“Uh, you got fries,” Scout said, lifting his Bucket ‘O Fries to demonstrate his point. “You got fried chicken. I went to this place once with chicken tenders in a bucket with fries.”

“So just a combination of the first two,” Sniper said.

“Oh my god, what? Dude, no way, fried chicken and chicken tenders are wildly different, you kiddin’ me?” Scout gasped. “Barely the same food group!”

Sniper shifted his feet, still watching the ride. “How’re they different?”

“Don’t even get me started, man,” Scout warned.

“Do you even know the food groups?” Sniper asked next, voice flat in a way that Scout had learned meant Sniper was joking.

“Sniper, as a connoisseur of absolute garbage, you insult me,” Scout deadpanned back. “Let’s take some laps of the games and stuff before we go on the rides, I gotta have time to appreciate these fries before they’re being sent into a trash can.”

Sniper shrugged in agreement, following Scout as he started off towards some of the games.

Scout blew a good twenty dollars on the bottle ring toss game, pleased to hear Sniper chiming in every time he made a particularly bad throw. The next booth over had Scout making a repeat performance with the cane ring toss game, except he did manage to win himself exactly one prize, a sticky hand which only ended up directly in his pocket due to the look of immediate dismay on Sniper’s face when he saw Scout wielding it.

“Hey, if there’s one of those shooting games here, think you’d wanna play it? Show up some people?” Scout asked.

Sniper shook his head. “Mate, even out here in civvies,” he started, plucking at the shoulder of Scout’s civilian t-shirt and the chest of his own choice of clothing, a green-grey button-up, “I imagine an Australian washing out the place and a Boston bloke cheering him on would earn enough looks to get us recognized. Especially since you’ve still got the hat and I’ve the glasses.” He tapped first the bill of Scout’s hat, then the side of his own shades.

“Then we fake some accents,” Scout said cheerfully.

Sniper raised an eyebrow, which Scout had long learned was the closest thing to emoting that Sniper managed most of the time. “As if you know how to fake accents,” Sniper said, a note of disbelief showing through.

“What, you think I don’t?” Scout challenged, bumping elbows with him partially by accident as they needed to squeeze between two gaggles of people.

“Do one, then,” Sniper said simply.

Scout cleared his throat, raising his chin. “Oi, look ‘ere, mind tellin’ me where you might find a hotel ‘round ‘ere?” Scout said in an approximation of a lighthearted British accent.

Sniper stared at him. “The hell’d you learn to do that? That was damn well spot on,” Sniper said, both eyebrows raised now.

Scout kept grinning, ducking ahead for a second to squeeze between two intersecting lines of people. When Sniper caught back up he started explaining. “Me an’ one’a my brothers spent these two summers pullin’ this scam,” he started to explain. “We’d pretend to be tourists in town for tour group stuff, sneak into tour groups around the middle’a the day with these old busted cameras he got off people and fake accents so people thought we were from somewhere else, get into buffets for tour-specific stuff and eat for free and leave again,” he explained. “First summer we did it for like two months straight with different tours, second summer we only made it a month in before we had to cut it out.”

“Why?”

“His ex-girlfriend apparently got a job as a tour guide. That was, uh, the second time I ended up in custody that summer.”

“Hooligan,” Sniper murmured in a way that made Scout unsure if he was being made fun of, scolded, or congratulated.

They ended up at the ball toss at some point, which Scout did end up knocking out of the park a few times until the attendant told him to please move along already, reasoning that they already had a frankly ludicrous number of stuffed animals. Indeed, Sniper was carrying three large ones, and Scout had another one in the arm not carrying assorted food.

“I’m namin’ this guy Cotton Candy,” Scout said matter-of-factly, hefting the blue-pink-and-white rabbit up higher as it started to slip from his grip. “And I’m naming that guy Fry Bucket.”

“Which one?” Sniper asked, glancing between the three stuffed animals in his hand.

“That one,” Scout said, bumping a the yellow-and-purple-and-white-and-black slightly-suspicious-looking cat with his elbow. “Because the colors are bright like the bucket.”

“What about the other two?” Sniper asked.

“Eh, they’re yours, up to you.”

Sniper didn’t speak for a moment, just shifting the stuffed animals a bit. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t got a use for four of these guys,” Scout shrugged. “Already I’m thinkin’ about whether Pyro’s gonna want Fry Bucket or Cotton Candy more.”

“What’s that second name about?” Sniper asked. “Is that a brand?”

“…What?”

“Cotton candy.” Sniper’s accent wrapped around the words strangely. “That a specific kind? The, er, blue-pink stuff?”

“…Of cotton candy?” Scout asked slowly.

“Yeah. It’s fairy floss, so is cotton candy then just a certain—“

“It’s fuckin’ what?” Scout asked, eyes lighting up.

Sniper paused for a few seconds. “…You people made up your own name for somethin’ again, haven’t you?” Sniper asked, sighing.

“Fairy floss? Okay, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about that name.”

“No, we already did this with the bonnet and hood thing, and the… prawn and shrimp thing. So you people call it cotton candy. Noted. Moving on.”

“So like, the tiny winged girls, fuckin’—so goddamn Tinkerbell, she brushes her teeth, right? And she’s gotta be thorough. Ain’t gonna get no gum disease here in fuckin’ Neverland, no way, no adults here so no dentists so that’d go pretty bad. So she’s gotta floss, right? And she uses a goddamn cloud-lookin’ pillowy thing? It’s fairy floss?”

“I didn’t invent all of Australian slang,” Sniper interjected. “You can’t judge me for my country’s choice in naming things. I can’t help it.”

“It’s cotton candy, man! It’s cotton, like outta some kinda pillow, made with sugar. I don’t get why you would call it somethin’ else.”

“Apparently Ireland and those blokes up there split the difference, called it candy floss,” Sniper added in before Scout could get too carried away.

“It’s still not floss! Couldn’t pick a different one? Called it, what, fairy cotton?”

Sniper’s lip twitched up for a moment. “I’m nearly sure that’s some sort of code word for hooch, mate.”

“What the fuck is hooch? Are you speaking English? Am I in fuckin’ wonderland right now?” Scout asked, downright baffled.

“Hooch. Marijuana, cannabis. Mate, you said you grew up in the city, the hell you mean you don’t know what hooch is?”

“Who the fuck calls it hooch?! Man, I knew that Australia was weird, but seriously, it’s gotta be crazy down there,” Scout laughed.

They continued to wander the fairgrounds for awhile longer, and while Sniper was a bit more talkative than usual, Scout couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his imagination and his quietly trying to prompt Sniper into saying more. Eventually Scout could tell that the fairground was nearing closing time, crowd thinning alongside the various booths starting to close up shop and haul things away and lock stuff up for the night.

“I don’t think we’re gonna get around to that eating a ton of food and throwing up thing,” Scout said, a little bit put out.

“Sounds…” Sniper started to say, and stopped again quickly.

Scout waited. “What? What were you gonna say?”

Sniper hesitated. “I was going to say that it… sounds a bit juvenile, don’t you think?” he said slowly. “Not quite as fun as an adult.”

Scout considered that for a few seconds. “…Yeah. Maybe,” he conceded. “Haven’t done that since I was a teen. Might not be as great anymore.”

Sniper hummed. Scout kept talking, as he was used to.

“I mean, back then stuff was also pretty weird all the time,” he said, fidgeting with the handle on the fry bucket. “There was school, then practice, then I’d go home and have stuff with my brothers goin’ on all the time, some kinda shenanigans to pull. Now it’s just work, then I go do chores, then I’m all tired and don’t wanna do nothin’ except go to sleep, then I go to sleep and it’s the next day and I got work again. If I don’t got chores or whatever it’s fine, but man. When did I get all boring, y’know?”

“I don’t think you’re boring,” Sniper said quietly.

Scout looked at him, but couldn’t quite catch his expression the way he was holding the stuffed animals. “Huh? What’d you say?” he asked, fully aware but giving Sniper a chance to take that back or spin it into a joke the way just about everyone did.

“I don’t… I don’t think you’re boring,” Sniper said again, a bit louder now. “You’re interesting. You’ve got big opinions on just about everything, a million stories, a bunch of secret talents that only ever happen to come up at odd times. And you’ve got a lot of jokes. You’re…”

He trailed for a moment as they passed a small group of teens, chattering and laughing among themselves.

“You’re funny. You’re interesting,” Sniper said simply. “Not boring.”

Scout didn’t fight the smile that pulled at his face. “Well, look who’s gotten sweet all of a sudden,” he marveled aloud. Sniper readjusted the stuffed animals he was holding, bringing them closer to his face. “Well, speakin’ of sweet, want some more fairy floss before that place over there closes?”

Sniper nodded somewhere behind the layers of fluff and foam.

Their last stop was out towards the edge of the fairgrounds, the big ferris wheel they had set up. It was the tallest thing at the fair, no contest, and while it definitely wasn’t the biggest ferris wheel Scout had ever seen, or even been on, it was still surprisingly nice.

“Imagine that’s the sort that they need to break down to transport, rather than just keeping it on a trailer,” Sniper said almost offhandedly, following Scout’s line of sight.

“You know stuff about ferris wheels?” Scout asked, blinking.

Sniper shrugged. “Needed to for a job. Just the basics.”

“Huh. Cool.” Scout continued to look at the wheel. “Hey, I know sometimes they don’t shut those off at night, to like, promote the fair. Think they’ve still got an attendant working?”

“Probably not,” Sniper said, glancing around at the line of closed tents and booths around them.

“Wanna just hop on board?”

Sniper looked at him with a slight head tilt. “Why would we do that?”

Scout grinned. “Hey, we aren’t plannin’ on coming back here tomorrow, might as well make a grand exit and get kicked out,” he reasoned.

Sniper’s head tilted slightly further, almost disapproving. “We’d get arrested. The boss would be furious.”

“Assuming they call the cops and the cops get here before we’re gone. What’re they gonna do, be mad? Call our parents? Give us a stern lecture?” He elbowed Sniper. “Come on, let’s live a little!”

And then Scout was off, headed towards the wheel.

“I didn’t agree to this, technically,” Sniper said, hurrying to follow, voice slightly raised.

“But you’re gonna do it anyways!” Scout chimed.

Sniper did not argue that point.

The security was foolproof. A padlock and chain on a gate that was three feet high and had horizontal bars, as well as another lock on the control panel lever. Scout, known for his ability to jump vertically to well over his standing height, was quiet simply unequipped for such a challenge.

Sniper did have to hand over the stuffed animals before he could hop the gate, but soon Scout was placing Fry Bucket on lever duty and the other three nearby to stand guard, then he and Sniper were clambering into one of the cars and headed up.

It was going fairly slowly, to be fair. It took a solid minute for them to get only a bit above halfway up, and it spun them up backwards, meaning most of the view was obscured.

“Other wheels I went on usually spun the other way,” Scout commented lightly, kicking his feet up despite the slightly awkward angle. “Kept stopping to let people on and off, too. Way smaller, though.”

Sniper hummed. Silence fell.

Not long after they’d reached the apex and started heading back down again, Sniper sighed quietly. “I’m sorry if I got sharp with you,” he apologized, very serious. “I just… crowds aren’t much good to me. Too much noise, too much action. People too close. Gets me on edge.”

Scout was suddenly treated with the memory of just about every outing he’d gone so far as to take Sniper on, almost all of which involved crowds. “What?” he asked, taken aback. He pulled his feet down, sitting up. “Really? Dude, why didn’t you say nothin’? I’ve been takin’ you out to real bustlin’ places for like, two months!”

Sniper made a listless gesture. “Didn’t want to ruin your fun just because I’m a worrywart,” he replied, even quieter now. “And I doubt you’ve got many places you know that don’t involve whole masses of people. It’s your whole element.”

Scout couldn’t really argue with that. “Well, then I would’ve been letting you pick where we hang out,” he said stubbornly.

Sniper’s eyebrows drew together. “What? I thought you just wanted someone to bring with you when you went out,” Sniper said, clearly confused.

Scout blinked. “Dude, no. I’ve just been tryin’ to find a place you’d like to hang out in, see if I could get you to talk about anything. You’re always all quiet, I figured it was because you’re bored.”

“Of course not. Opposite, really. Gets overwhelming, I try my best to shut my mouth and pay attention.”

Scout needed a minute to loop his head around that. “Oh. Huh.” They reached the bottom of the wheel, but neither moved to get up, and they just continued on their steady path up again. “I… shit. Dude, I had no idea. I thought you were just hard to please.”

Sniper shook his head. “No. The places are always nice—this is nice—but I just…”

He trailed off. Scout waited for him to sort through his words.

“I just prefer… things like this,” he decided on. “Instead of noises and movement and close quarters and a hundred food smells.”

Scout’s mind went ahead and dealt with that one for a good minute. “Close quarters,” he repeated. “So this isn’t good either?”

“With other people, other folks,” Sniper clarified. “I’m fine with closed spaces.”

“Well, I’m other folks,” Scout said.

Sniper looked away, off to one side. “Not really,” he said, words almost lost to a breeze that decided to blow by just then. “You’re just Scout. I’m fine with you.”

Quiet again.

They made it to the top of the ride again, and Scout found himself relaxing a little bit. He tilted his head back.

“Can’t see the stars out here so good,” Scout said, looking up at the sky.

“Light pollution,” Sniper murmured in agreement, looking up as well. “I can hardly see any at all.”

“You’ve still got your shades on,” Scout half-laughed.

Sniper reached a hand up as if to push his glasses up his nose, and just kept his hand there on them for a few seconds.

“C’mon, not so many stars, by they’re still good ones,” Scout urged.

Sniper hesitated for a moment before he pulled the shades off, folding them, hanging them on his shirt. His gaze fell down below for a moment, then up to the sky. He had pretty eyes. There were some wrinkles around them, the kind of thing that meant Sniper either laughed a lot, or spent a lot of time in the sun, or a mixture of both. Scout realized he’d probably have his own pretty soon with his lifestyle. He found a lot of things funny.

Sniper briefly glanced at Scout out of the corner of his eye, then back away again.

“You’re staring,” Sniper said quietly, gaze falling to the tents and stands as they started on the inward down curve.

Scout looked away, also out at the area they’d just been in. Only a few places still had lights around them. The area was mostly dark, the tent blockings around them lit mainly by the gently changing lights on their ferris wheel. “You should take your shades off more,” Scout said.

Sniper shifted. “I use ‘em at work,” he replied. “They help me shoot.”

“You weren’t at work today, or any of the other times we went and did stuff,” Scout replied, tipping his head against the back of the seat, rolling his head to look at Sniper. Tiredness was creeping up on him, not in a cranky way, just in a lazy way.

“Why would I take ‘em off?” Sniper asked, not looking at him.

“So I can know where you’re lookin’,” Scout shrugged. “And because you look good, and they hide your face.”

Sniper’s eyes fell to his own knees, which he gripped in both hands. “Maybe that’s the point,” he said, voice rumbling against the lowest volume he could manage.

Scout kept looking at him, then back up at the sky as they made it to the upper half.

“Scout, I have a question,” Sniper said, eyes locked downward.

“Mm,” Scout hummed.

Sniper took a breath, exhaled. Looked over at Scout, made eye contact, maybe for the first time without the barrier of tinted, reflective lenses in the way. “Can I kiss you?”

Scout wasn’t sure what his expression was in the following several moments of silence, but it made Sniper tense, paling under the colorful lights, visibly sinking at roughly the same speed as the car they were in as they passed the apex.

“I’m sorry, I just—“ he started to stammer, backtracking as Scout did his best to mentally try and sort out the can of worms that was just opened. “I thought, we—ferris wheel, you sayin’ that I’m, I’m good looking, and—“

Scout saw the way he was fidgeting, fiddling, hands no longer able to be stuffed in his pockets to prevent it.

“—and you won those stuffed animals for me s’well, and you’ve been taking me to dinner, tryin’ to make me laugh, and—“

He couldn’t quite look at Scout, and maybe he could never quite look at Scout, and maybe that’s why he never took his sunglasses off. Maybe that’d why he kept his hat’s brim low. Maybe that’s why he held things up near his face.

“—and I just assumed, I, I’m sorry, I’m godawful at picking up the clues on that sort of thing, and maybe I just imagined things, I—“

“Do you wanna?”

Sniper’s rambling stammered to a halt. He didn’t look at Scout. “What?”

“Hey. Look at me.” It took a minute, but he did, tipping his head up first, eyes following a second later. Crow’s feet. “Do you wanna kiss me?”

Sniper managed the tiniest of nods.

“Out loud,” Scout added, voice level.

Sniper took a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to,” he said.

Scout tilted his head up for a second. They were headed back up and over again. Stars.

“Yeah,” Scout decided. “You can, if you want.”

Sniper had to take a second to process that. But then, slowly, he placed his hand on Scout’s shoulder. He second-guessed himself, hand moving instead to rest on Scout’s cheek, tilting his face only on accident, and then Sniper was kissing him.

It felt nice. Scout reached up slowly so as to keep from scaring Sniper away, an arm wrapping up around his shoulders.

By the time they pulled away, they were at the bottom of the wheel again. Sniper managed to smile at him, so visibly relieved and contented that it almost left Scout reeling, the sudden input of reaction making his head spin.

“You taste like fries,” Sniper informed him quietly.

Scout laughed.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Sniper knew he was about to be flung into A Whole Situation the moment he opened the door and saw Scout standing there holding what seemed to be a stack of folded clothes and wearing a particularly distressed expression.

“Hey, uh, I have a question,” Scout said immediately.

It took Sniper a second to find his balance enough to reply. “Er… what?” he managed.

“Do you know how to do one’a these?” Scout asked, picking a strip of fabric up from the top of the pile and holding it out.

Sniper took it, unfolding it and blinking. “What, tie a tie?”

Scout nodded.

“…Yeah, I do. Why’re you asking, though?” Sniper murmured, eyeing the stack of clothes.

Scout exhaled, and words flooded forth like a dam breaking. “Because I’ve gotta wear a stupid tie on a mission I’m not even supposed to be going on except Spy’s apparently busy on a different mission and so he can’t do it and I guess I’m the second best option, and I don’t know how to tie one because I’ve never put on a real one by myself before and I can’t ask Spy how to do it because he’s outta town and I can’t ask Medic because he’s apparently working on somethin’ too damn important to unlock his door and I can’t even find Heavy so now I’m askin’ you.”

Sniper needed a short pause after Scout finally stopped talking to sort out that short flow of information and figure out a fair response. “…Why did you think I’d know how to tie a tie?” he settled on.

Scout buried his face in the stack of clothes, groaning. “Because you wear a button-up shirt all the time, man, I don’t fuckin’ know! Can you help me with the tie or not?”

“I… well, sure. Not exactly like I’m… particularly busy,” Sniper murmured. “Just hold on a mo’.”

Sniper looped the tie around his own neck, flipped up his collar, and tied the tie with relative efficiency. A few seconds of fiddling and he had a simple but clean four-in-hand knot, which he then pulled loose and slid back off his head.

“There. Should be able to slide right back on over your head,” Sniper said, handing it back over.

Scout sighed with relief, visibly sagging with it as he took the tie. “Okay, sweet. I’ll be like, right back.” And then he was off and running towards the base.

It was about half an hour before a second knock came, and when Sniper opened the door, he felt like the wind got knocked out of him.

Scout looked a little flushed already, and ducked his head at Sniper’s expression, clearly misinterpreting his shock. “Fuckin’ hate getting dressed up,” he mumbled to his shoes. “I look like a goddamn waiter.”

Scout did not look like a goddamn waiter. He looked good. He looked extremely good and it was really throwing Sniper for a loop.

His suit was clearly of pretty good quality, the shirt and jacket fitting snugly to his shoulders and waist, the light charcoal-grey color accentuating the color of his hair and the tie bringing to attention the bright blue of his eyes. He looked sharp, and for whatever reason this particular attire pulled Scout from his general look of young-adult maybe-teen vague youth, suddenly landing him squarely in the category of “attractive young man in his prime”.

“Wow, you look… amazing,” Sniper finally managed, realizing suddenly that he still hadn’t spoken.

Scout’s head jerked up from where he was glumly fiddling with his cuffs. He blinked. “Oh. Uh… wait, really? You think so?” he asked, a hint of hope in his voice.

“Yeah.” He gave Scout another once-over, and suddenly noticed that Scout’s tie seemed to be out of order. “Seems you messed up the loop I did for you, though.”

Scout frowned down at his tie.

“Get in ‘ere where I can see better, I’ll just do it again,” Sniper said, stepping back inside the camper and waving Scout in.

Scout managed to pull the tie loose, and Sniper flipped his collar up and set to work.

It was only as he looped the tie around the back of Scout’s neck that he realized how close that meant they were standing. Scout was looking at him curiously with those blue blue eyes of his.

Sniper felt his face heating up as he dropped his gaze to his work, starting to figure out how to do a proper knot when it was on someone else. “So what’s the mission, then, that you’re supposed to wear a suit?” he asked, hoping to dispel some tension.

“It’s just down at some hotel casino in Vegas, I’ve just gotta break an’ enter to like, steal a bag or somethin’. Should only take an overnight,” Scout said.

Sniper had to take a second run at the tie as he realized it was going to be too short. He undid it and tried again. “Surprised you never learnt how to do this. Bein’ a scout an’ all.”

“I wasn’t in the actual Boy Scouts, thanks,” Scout replied, laughing a little. “I do know how to tie some knots, just not, like, the fancy kinds like this.”

Sniper took a half-step closer as he fumbled again and had to restart. “It’s a bloody nightmare tryin’ to do this backwards. Only ever needed to do it for m’self,” he mumbled.

Scout paused for a second, then quietly cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”

Sniper messed it up for the third time and sighed, undoing it again. “Awright, just—hold still,” he said, then moved to stand just behind Scout, trying again.

It wasn’t until he was stood there that he suddenly noticed how very close to Scout that left him standing. Scout’s hair—still wayward and messy, but not in a bad way, really—was practically brushing his nose, and he could smell that Scout had apparently put on some kind of cologne. But it was also much easier doing what he was doing from the correct angle, and he was done in only a moment, pulling the tie to sit correctly, flipping his collar down, and was able to step back again in no time.

“There, done,” he said, and realized Scout had frozen stiff as a board. “You can relax now.”

“Uh, yeah,” Scout said, shaking himself, fiddling with his cuffs again. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He went around front of Scout and tucked the tail of the tie, then adjusted his collar slightly. “Good luck on the mission, by the way,” he said when he was done.

“I’ll be fine. Just, uh, gotta make sure I don’t fuck up my tie,” Scout jokes. “Hey, thanks though! I owe you one.”

“No problem,” Sniper replied, looking Scout up and down again. “Really.”

“Nah, I owe you,” Scout insisted, and then he was off, moving out the door and towards the base’s equivalent to a garage. “Later, Snipes!”

God help him. Scout looked even better while walking away.

He shut the door.

Chapter Text

The Engineer was a man who solved problems in a way that was both practical and efficient. Medic was overworked and reaching his breaking point on the field when minor injuries apparently called for full health kits, teammates therefore leaving him to die, so Engie prototyped the dispenser. Heavy expressed frustration over having to run laboriously across the whole battlefield only to be left to die in thirty seconds once he got to the point, so Engie broke the seal on more of his grandfather’s designs and made teleporters. When carpal tunnel struck and he failed to give it proper rest, eventually making his writing hand all but useless, he replaced it with a mechanical one that wouldn’t betray him, parts replaceable just in case it did.

People were trickier. Issues residing in the category of “emotions” were much more nuanced, much more difficult to sift through for answers. Nobody—not even the Medic—could blueprint the human mind, after all. (That wasn’t to say Engie didn’t try.)

Frankly, he didn’t know how to help Sniper. He just didn’t. But he tried to do what he could, what Sniper would tolerate.

Most of the time, that involved setting aside a plate for Sniper at dinner, wrapping it in foil when the man didn’t turn up. Making a full pot of coffee in the morning and leaving it out for Sniper to pick up when he finally showed up in the base. Idly offering to do some work on his van when he could hear it struggling to sputter to life, offering him one of his own beers from the cooler he brought over when he went to do the work. It involved leaving invitations, giving Sniper opportunities to visit with him, to see him, to be near each other, but never, ever forcing him.

And then break came, and on the first night, when everyone had long cleared out, he saw Sniper’s van still parked where it always was, lights on.

He made enough dinner for both of them, wrapping it and putting it in the fridge. He made the extra half-pot of coffee. The plates remained untouched. The coffee went cold. The light stayed on, and never once, in all the time Engie spent working in the garage, in full view in case Sniper wanted to walk over and maybe snatch up one of Engie’s beers, did he see the man leave the camper.

Day three, it was something lingering in his mind. Day four, it was starting to get a bit worrying. Day five, he couldn’t help but glance over fairly often. Day six, he was filled with outright concern, and finally cracked on the seventh, went over to the van, knocked on the door.

Engie was a polite man, but an honest one too, and so he wouldn’t be afraid to say that Sniper looked like absolute hell. His hair, usually slicked back with gel to keep out of his face, hung scraggly around his jaw, which was coated in an uneven layer of stubble. He had dark circles like bruises, eyes bloodshot, and a pale pallor to his skin.

“What?” he asked in a horribly hoarse voice, and it was suddenly apparent that Sniper hadn’t spoken a single word in at least a week, and Engie felt a pang in his chest.

“Just came out to check up on you, Slim,” Engie said. He glanced Sniper over again, and that nickname rang uncomfortably true. The way his shirt hung on him almost seemed… “You haven’t been in the kitchen. I wondered if… if you’ve been eating.”

Sniper shrugged casually in a way that didn’t at all answer the question.

“…Why don’t we head out and get ourselves a meal?” Engie asked, keeping his tone bright, positive. “Dinner, somewhere that serves nothin’ that don’t come with a bucket’s worth of grease. My treat.”

Sniper shrugged again, not meeting his gaze. “Sorry, Truckie. Don’t think I’ll make good company just now. Awful tired. Raincheck, maybe,” he mumbled, voice awfully rough, almost pained.

Engie was eyeing Sniper’s shirt. It seemed wrinkled, and sat almost awkwardly. As if it had been hastily donned. The buttons were misaligned. Sniper held himself awkwardly.

“What were you doing before I came over here, Slim?” Engie asked, voice level, keeping his expression neutral, already almost positive that he knew.

“Nothing,” Sniper said.

Engie just looked at him.

“Raincheck,” Sniper repeated, moving to close the door.

Engie shoved his boot in the door before he could do so, expression hardening at the light, almost imperceptible wince Sniper had made when he’d moved his arm. “Slim, you can make this an awful lot easier on yourself if you just let me in so we can talk,” he said, tone low.

Sniper looked at him for a few seconds. A few more. Finally he exhaled, hung his head, and took a step back to allow Engie entry.

The door closed behind him, Engie leaned against it, arms crossed, regarding Sniper, expression stone cold. “Show me,” he said simply.

Sniper fidgeted with his cuffs. “Show you what?” he asked, a last-ditch attempt.

“What you’ve done. Show me,” Engie said, not giving Sniper even an inch.

Sniper seemed to realize he was cornered, but hesitated regardless. “You’ll be mad,” he tried.

“I’m already mad. I’ll be less mad if you show me,” Engie replied evenly.

Sniper’s hand went to one of the buttons on his shirt carefully, and he set about undoing them.

His undershirt was exposed, a simple white tank, and then Sniper stopped again for a few seconds. He wouldn’t meet Engie’s eye. Already Engie felt concern eating a hole into his stomach at how thin Sniper seemed to have gotten in such a short amount of time.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Engie’s expression faltered for a moment before he set his jaw again. “Just show me already,” he said firmly.

Sniper’s gaze locked on the floor, and he shrugged out of his shirt, and Engie felt his heart stop.

“Oh, Slim,” he breathed, a lump catching in his throat, and Sniper squeezed his eyes shut.

Sniper’s arms (his forearms in particular) were red and blotchy, skin irritated and inflamed, bright red trails scoring their way up and down the skin there. It was only as Sniper went to clutch at his arms, as if trying to hide, that Engie suddenly noticed the small amounts of blood there under Sniper’s nails, the light smears where he’d scratched at himself hard enough to bleed, places where clearly the wounds had started to scab only to be scratched away again.

He set his jaw, clenching it hard to fight back waves of upset. Sniper still wouldn’t look at him.

He moved to take Sniper by the shoulders, guiding him to sit at the little table. He went to dig through one of the cabinets, finding a first aid kit without much issue.

“When’d you do this?” Engie asked sharply, starting to unzip it and sift through the contents.

Sniper hesitated for a moment. “A bit yesterday, day before. A bit just before you showed up,” he replied with a nervousness that admitted honesty.

“Arms out,” Engie said next, ripping open a pad and drawing the alcohol wipe from it.

Sniper clutched his arms towards himself. “I can take care of myself just fine,” he said firmly.

Engie gave him a glare hard enough that Sniper only surrendered after a moment, holding out one of his arms.

He bit back sounds of pain, head tipped low to try and hide the way he was flinching with each swipe. Engie worked his way over the whole of Sniper’s forearm, then opened another packet for his biceps, which seemed like it’d been scratched at fewer times, but more severely.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, so terribly weak, so horribly fragile, the most stubborn and stoic man Engie knew reduced practically to tears, falling apart right in front of him.

“Please shut up. Just shut up,” Engie said, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of his tone. He started spooling gauze a bit loosely around Sniper’s forearms. He had to take a moment to compose himself. “Damn it Slim, how’d you let it get this bad? My doors have been open. They’ve been open this whole time.”

“I’m sorry,” Sniper said again, quieter now.

Engie didn’t reply to that, just tying off the gauze tightly and moving to make another sleeve on Sniper’s bicep.

The process was repeated on Sniper’s other arm. “You never have told me why you do this,” Engie finally said, despite the part of him that didn’t want to know, scared that it might just make some kind of sense.

Sniper shook his head to himself. “I get… caught, in my own head,” he managed, voice choked. “Can’t think. Start feelin’… paranoid. Keep thinkin’ I hear someone behind me. That I see movement. That I…” He had to take a steadying breath. “That I feel something crawling on me. On my arms especially. And I just… I try and scratch it off, scratch the feeling away. And then all at once I look down and I’ve done this. It’s worse when there’s scabbing.”

Engie finished wrapping his arms, moving to use the wipes to try and carefully clean out from under Sniper’s nails. “Have you tried showering? Something besides scratching to feel clear?”

“I’ve tried showering, yeah. Keep turning the water up until it burns me. Not better,” Sniper mumbled towards his shoes.

Engie moved to pull a few band-aids from the kit, starting to slice along the sticky part, and to wrap the band-aids over Sniper’s fingertips snugly.

Sniper watched him doing so, and suddenly understood what he was doing, why he’d wrapped his arms in gauze like that, why he was putting soft material over his fingertips. He released a dry sob, hunching forward to bury his face in Engie’s shoulder as he worked, humiliated, upset, grief-stricken.

Halfway through his other hand, Sniper finally spoke. “I’m a fuckin’ lunatic, Truckie,” he choked out, breath shaky as he tried to repress tears.

“No, you’re not,” Engie answered calmly. “You’re just a man, a scared one. And that’s alright. The part that’s not alright is you locking yourself away and hurtin’ yourself.”

Engie finished wrapping him up to make sure he didn’t cause any further injury, and moved to hold him, carefully so as not to accidentally irritate his wounds further.

“I’m sorry I got so frustrated,” he finally apologized. “I just… I know it ain’t a very good excuse, but really. I hate knowin’ you’ve gone and hurt yourself because you’re still scared to talk to me. What do I gotta do to get you to talk to me next time things get this bad? What do you still need from me?”

“I dunno. I just—I dunno. I’m sorry,” he insisted, pushing in closer.

“I know,” Engie said, holding him, all too aware of how quickly Sniper could begin to break. “I know. It’s alright.”

Chapter Text

Oddly enough, every hint the team ever got was because of Sniper’s shooting glasses.

Most of the team half-confused them for regular sunglasses purely on the basis of Sniper damn near never taking them off—he wore them indoors, on trips to the market, and, hell, they were often the second thing Sniper put on immediately following his towel when they were all stepping out of the locker rooms post-match. They, combined with the mumbling, the smoking, the long spans of silence, all very much lent Sniper a brooding atmosphere, a seriousness.

A seriousness that, all at once, it seemed that Scout stopped believing to be true.

He started, what felt like all of a sudden, buzzing in his little circles around Sniper, making far-too-obvious attempts at conversation, jokes, laughs. And Sniper was silent, letting him do his various jokes and laughs, but largely not interacting. The team agreed amongst themselves that one day soon, Sniper would snap on the boy and send him through Respawn once or twice to get him to piss off. He’d done it before, mostly for the infractions on his personal space of “messing with his glasses”, first at Soldier (who indeed probably would’ve broken them), then at Demo (who was just doing a joke), and Pyro (who genuinely had just been curious).

Then one day, in front of the whole team, about half an hour before battle, Scout moved to do yet another joke in a fruitless attempt at making Sniper laugh, and he reached up and plucked the glasses right from his face.

Several members of the team froze. Others noted the energy that had gone over the room and looked around for the source.

Scout, by the time most of the others had caught on, had slid the glasses onto his face and started in on his latest but, doing a terrible, Boston-flavored imitation of Sniper’s accent, saying a few of the phrases that usually seemed to come out of Sniper’s mouth during battle.

Sniper’s knife hung at one of his sides, his SMG at his other. It wouldn’t even be hard to take Scout down just then, especially since he was largely unarmed and clearly not expecting retaliation.

But Scout turned out to be right. The only response from Sniper was broken eye contact, a little shove on the shoulder, some murmured phrase. Scout laughed, and moved to slide the glasses back into place, and apologized for spooking him.

Apologized. Apologized. Scout of all people apologized.

Medic and Engie raised their eyebrows at each other. Demo averted his eyes with a pointed look towards Heavy, and sipped from his bottle.

The second hint wasn’t in front of everyone, it was just in front of about half of the team, the remainder that were present at a little celebration bonfire. Pyro was there, and Demo was there, and Engie was talking to Heavy when he noticed what was going on, falling silent mid-sentence.

Scout had been relatively quiet for a few minutes, alcohol having smoothed him down a bit, sipping from his bottle and staring off into space. Next to him, Sniper had fallen asleep at some point, hat tucked down, arms behind his head, leaned back against the same log Scout had picked. All at once Scout was looking, then leaning over towards him, and Engie opened his mouth to tell Scout to stop, don’t wake him up or do whatever other ridiculous thing he was thinking just then.

But Scout didn’t, just gingerly sliding the sunglasses off of his face, folding them carefully, hanging them on the collar of Sniper’s shirt. A muscle in Sniper’s face tightened, and Scout just as lightly tugged the brim of his hat down until his eyes were shielded from the light of the fire. The muscle smoothed back out again, and Scout looked at him for a few long, long seconds, something difficult to read on his face.

Then he looked up and saw Engie and Heavy watching them, and he leaned back to his original position, staring pointedly off in the other direction and going back to his beer.

The last hint wasn’t even so much a hint towards the puzzle, more of… a solution, the page you flip to when you want to check your work, or maybe to cheat. And Pyro was the only one to see it, and was sworn to secrecy shortly after, so there wasn’t really anyone who could mind the cheating.

It was very late, and Pyro was stress-baking on account of a few too many arguments between teammates combined with a particularly ridiculous episode of The Brady Bunch. The TV set was still on in the other room, with Scout, Sniper, and Demo all sat around watching whatever was on it. The telltale snoring from the couch signified that Demo was very much asleep, and there was a murmuring just barely audible over those two noises.

Pyro thought they heard their name for whatever reason, and ducked their head out to investigate, and then became very quiet.

Scout and Sniper were stood very close together, talking quietly. Sniper had each of his hands at a terribly respectful place at the midpoint between Scout’s hips and his waist, and Scout’s hands were in turn clinging to the front of Sniper’s shirt, undoubtedly wrinkling it, almost untucking it from his pants with how he was twisting fretfully.

All at once, Scout’s hands loosened, and he reached up to pull the glasses from Sniper’s face, holding them loosely at his side as he looked over Sniper’s face. Sniper broke eye contact at once, gaze falling to the floor at their side.

“Look at me,” Scout all but whined, tipping Sniper’s chin back up towards his own face. “I wanna see you.”

Sniper seemed like he had something to say about that, but Scout still had two fingers crooked beneath his chin, so he just closed his mouth again.

“You’ve got pretty eyes,” Scout murmured after a quiet moment.

“Right, mate,” Sniper replied, the corner of his mouth ticking up.

“No, really. This real nice greenish-grey sorta color. It looks good.” Scout shifted on his feet, only slightly. “You look good.”

Sniper’s mouth ticked up just that much further, and his gaze flicked away again.

“Nah, c’mon, look at me. Just for a little bit, okay?” Scout said, almost pleading, hand falling to take hold of the collar of his shirt.

“You know I’m no good at that,” Sniper protested, almost under his breath, and Pyro really had to strain to hear the next sentence, only catching the latter half of it. “…too intense.”

“Well, sometimes intense can be good, y’know, in little bursts,” Scout said, and tugged his collar a little. “Please? For me?”

And Sniper took a slow, even breath, shoulders rising and falling in a gentle wave, and moved to look Scout in the eyes dead-on.

Sniper said something else just then, a moment later, but apparently even Scout couldn’t hear it. “What was that?” he asked.

Sniper said it again, and Pyro still didn’t hear it, but Scout laughed. “Well, nobody’s stopping you, huh?” he replied, and tugged his collar again, and Sniper bent down to kiss him.

A moment later, the shades slipped and fell right out of Scout’s hand, clattering to the ground.

They broke apart in an instant, and Scout was gasping, horrified, scrambling to pick them back up in the same moment that Sniper froze entirely. He was babbling out apologies, and Sniper just gently took the glasses, looking over them carefully.

“Are they alright?” Scout all but demanded.

Sniper hesitated. “There’s… a scuff on the lense,” he admitted, clearly trying very hard to keep his voice even.

And Scout was apologizing again, so feverishly, and Sniper was repeating a steady mantra of “it’s fine, it’s alright Scout, it’s fine, I can fix it, it’s fine—“ until he looked over and saw Pyro and froze up. Scout followed his line of sight and froze up very similarly.

“Oh. Hey, Mumbles,” Scout said. “Uh. Sorry about the noise.”

Pyro waved him off, giving a few words of comfort.

“You, uh… what, baking or somethin’ like that?” Scout asked, nervous energy running through his hands and making him fidget.

Pyro nodded and gave an affirmation.

“Cool, cool.” Silence. “Uh, how long you been standing there?”

Pyro shrugged and gave a loose reply.

“Uh… so you saw… the, uh…” Scout stammered, and suddenly he was having trouble keeping eye contact, too.

Pyro nodded, and was suddenly met with the combined babbling of both Scout and Sniper, first making excuses, then making admissions, then demanding Pyro’s secrecy.

They agreed without too much thought, and said, well, they hadn’t seen a thing, really, just Scout helping Sniper with his glasses, wasn’t that right? And both Scout and Sniper had nodded and agreed far too much, and that was that.

Until they did that in front of everyone else, Pyro figured, which they probably would. It was only a matter of time.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Christ alive, why do we even let you drink anymore?” Sniper grumbled, once again pushing Scout off of his shoulder and into a sitting position.

“Because it’s funny,” Demo smirked across from him, watching with no small amount of amusement as Scout leaned right back onto Sniper’s shoulder again.

“How come I’m never allowed to have fun?” Scout managed despite his mouth clearly not quite co-operating with him in terms of making words clearly and correctly. “You’re an asshole. You always get on my case about shit. How come you and them—and Demo and Doc and Heavy and, fuck, where’s Soldier?”

“He left half an hour ago,” Demo chuckled, also a bit tipsy but nowhere near where Scout was—or even where Sniper was.

“Well, he was here. And everyone else always gets to gets drunk except me! It’s not fair,” Scout said emphatically, clinging to Sniper’s arm now.

“Well why do you have to keep leaning on me and clinging like that?!” Sniper snapped, far more emotive than he usually allowed himself to be around everyone else, generally the one hint the team got that he’d had enough to drink.

“Because it pisses you off,” Scout replied, cheeky now, and Sniper shoved him straight over. “WOAH!”

Demo exchanged a look with Medic and Heavy, who were both a bit intoxicated as well by then, but were sober enough to roll their eyes at the shenanigans.

“How come you never have fun ever?” Scout asked next, really laying into Sniper now, shoving him on the arm once he got back into his seat and moved it back a safe distance. “You spend allllll your fuckin’ time being mad and grumpy then you get drunk and you’re just g—you’re madder and grumpier! Why can’t you have fun?”

“I can have fun!” Sniper protested, significantly more affected by the criticism than he would generally allow, and Heavy had to stifle a laugh as Medic mouthed the words “they’re gone” at him.

“Let’s—well I’m bored so let’s play something,” Scout said, clearly having already decided.

“Like what, seven minutes in heaven?” Demo snorted.

“Oh my god, we’re not high schoolers, Demo!” Scout groaned loudly.

“Spin the bottle, then,” he suggested next, clearly having a lovely time playing his own little game of “rile up the piss-drunk mercenaries”.

Scout considered that for a moment. “Oh-my-frickin’-fuck that’d be really funny though, right?” he asked Medic, blinking owlishly. “Like that’d be funny.”

“Hilarious,” Demo instantly agreed, thrilled at what turn this had all taken and the stories he’d have to tell Scout in the morning.

“Hey, hey mister uh—hey mister guy who can have fun, why don’t you go first then?” Scout challenged, taking the basically-empty bottle of beer from the tabletop directly in front of him and holding it a few inches from Sniper’s face.

“I’m not a child,” Sniper retorted.

“Well maybe you’re just a chicken then huh? Maybe you’re a chicken? A little bitch? You’re a little bitch?” Scout taunted.

Sniper scowled, taking the bottle forcefully and setting it on the table with determination. Demo’s eye was wide, and both Heavy and Medic’s eyebrows had risen considerably. He gave it a spin hard enough to send it clinking off of another bottle, shifting the course entirely. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was irony, but the bottle ended up pointing directly towards Scout’s section of the table.

Sniper looked rather pleased with himself all in all, especially at the shock on Scout‘s face. “What’s wrong, lover boy?” he goaded. “Did little, did the Boy Wonder over here not think this far ahead?”

“So what if I didn’t!” Scout challenged right back, face burning up. Medic was only barely managing to stifle a laugh.

“Too chicken to play a little game, are you?” Sniper prodded, just as viciously as Scout had not moments before.

“I ain’t chicken!” Scout declared, and grabbed Sniper by both sides of his face, and pulled him in and kissed him directly on the mouth.

It would’ve been a more poignant moment had Scout not pulled a little too hard without thinking of the amount of distance he’d put between their chairs, because it barely lasted even a second before they both lost their balance and tumbled out of them.

“Idiots,” Medic scoffed, rolling his eyes as Demo and Heavy both practically wound up rolling on the floor with how hard they were laughing. He did so again when he heard that Sniper and Scout, still on the floor, hadn’t stopped bickering.

“What do you mean it doesn’t count?” Sniper practically spat.

“It got messed up! Do-over!”

“What, mad that you’re a bad kisser, pretty-boy?”

“I’m a fuckin’ great kisser, camper-van!”

”Prove it.”

”Fine! Get over here!”

“Repressed idiots,” Medic self-corrected, less venomous but no less irritated.

Chapter Text

“So besides the kitchen thing, I think we can wrap up this meeting,” Miss Pauling said, tone bright, and there was a general commotion as all of the mercenaries tried to get up from the too-small and crowded table without anyone whapping anyone upside the head. 

“Have a safe journey,” Spy drawled as he left the room.

“Sure thing!” she chirped, starting to shuffle papers into order. “Oh, I need for… uh, Scout, Engie, and Sniper to all stay behind real quick, okay?”

Scout immediately took a seat again, while Sniper seemed fairly hesitant and Engie waited to finish up what he was saying to Soldier before he sat back down. The room was cleared fairly quickly, and quiet fell as the other mercs made their way off down the hallway, voices fading into the distance.

Miss Pauling waited until it was fairly quiet before she moved to pull a thick manila envelope, stuffed almost to capacity with papers, and passed it to Engie. “New orders, feedback on old projects, and details for when pickup is going to be on everything you’re actually done with,” she said, and Engie nodded, taking the envelope. “Besides that, the Administrator is really happy with your work. Keep it up!”

“Yes ma’am,” Engie said cheerfully, tipping his hardhat at her and leaving the room, giving a little nod to Sniper and Scout as he left.

“New contract?” Sniper asked, tone calm, assuming he was next.

“Actually,” Miss Pauling said, sighing a little as she pulled out a folder, and pulled a packet of paper from within that folder, and flipped that packet open, “I’m supposed to give you guys a reprimand.”

Sniper‘s expression went stony. Scout looked nervous. “Uh. Why’s that, Miss P? The boss is mad at us?” he asked, tone stiff.

“Sort of.” She pushed up her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose. “Okay. So you two know there’s the booth on-base with feed to the cameras in the hallways and the common areas and stuff, right? And that’s on a recording loop dating to about a week prior in case of any emergencies so we can get insurance claims, blah blah blah. And there’s nobody who monitors it unless something goes wrong or one of you guys breaks in there, which is not allowed.”

Sniper’s expression hadn’t shifted an inch. Scout looked a little less nervous. “Uh, yeah? We know that,” he said.

“Well there’s also cameras on most of the fields you guys do battle on,” she said. “Point caps, stuff like that. And that’s how the Administrator keeps up with the matches. She watches the point caps or where the briefcase is, stuff like that.”

“Okay?” Scout said slowly.

“But she likes to have someone sift through the footage sometimes on the slower battle days to see if anyone’s doing things they shouldn’t be doing out of sight of the combat—usually it’s just Spy being off-sides, Soldier doing… Soldier Things, you guys doing that thing where you dance around with the enemy team instead of fighting each other, stuff like that.”

Sniper might as well have been a plaster cast for how much expression he had going on. Scout was back to looking nervous with a vengeance. “Oh,” was all Scout managed to say.

Miss Pauling sighed, holding her face in her hand. “Look, I haven’t told the Administrator, partially because I’m not sure if she’ll even care since usually it’s between matches anyways, but she might get really mad at you if she catches you. But you two—you’re—I know both of you have enough free time after work to not need to do this between every other match.”

She shook the folder out onto the table, and both Scout and Sniper leaned forward to look at what seemed to be about three dozen print-outs of assorted pictures from the camera feed. All of them featured Sniper and Scout, front and center. Scout’s face was red, and Sniper’s expression almost cracked, face tightening.

“Seriously, just—at least just find a blind spot in a camera or something, it’s getting ridiculous,” she said, well into exasperated. “Or just make out on your own time, I don’t care, but—c’mon. Quit it.”

“You’ve got it, Miss P,” Scout said, the most sheepish he ever got, and Sniper mumbled something that sounded like “understood”.

“Okay. Great. Dismissed,” Miss Pauling said, waving them both off. scooping the pictures back up and starting to get her stack of papers in order.

Both Sniper and Scout were quiet all the way down the hallway and around the corner, at which point Scout promptly shoved Sniper.

“God damn it! You said nobody would see us!” he accused in a stage-whisper, face positively burning.

“You said you thought the cameras turned off between rounds!” Sniper challenged right back, volume similarly dropped, facade of calm breaking right in half.

“I thought they did!” Scout replied, and buried his face in his hands. “Fuckin’… shit, man. How long has she been waiting to call us out like that? I can’t fuckin’ believe this. Shit.”

Sniper sighed, squeezing Scout’s shoulders. “Well. At least it wasn’t as much of a disaster as you thought it would be,” he said after a second, clearly trying his damndest to find the bright side. “Here I thought we’d get sacked for sure.”

“Yeah… Miss Pauling is the best,” Scout mumbled begrudgingly.

“Exactly. So, we just… save it until after work,” Sniper said slowly. “Or… I suppose find one of those blind spots she mentioned.”

Scout nodded, hands falling back to his sides. He glanced over Sniper briefly. “I mean, we found out somethin’ else cool,” he added.

“And what’s that?”

Sniper was suddenly crowded into the wall, Scout stood practically on his boots, grinning up at him. “The cameras in the base aren’t monitored,” he murmured.

Sniper needed to take a moment to process that, swallowing firmly, glancing off to one side up at the camera lording over the hallway. “Suppose you’re right,” he confirmed. “So?”

“So get the fuck down here,” Scout laughed, pulling on the collar of his vest, and Sniper obliged.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Spy knew exactly the game that the Engineer was playing and quite frankly he refused to take any part in it.

One thing that Dell has apparently unfortunately realized was that, after so long of knowing him as someone who was generally smalltown-polite friendly at most, reserved in most ways excluding when his temper flared up (both in and out of battle), the various shows of unadulterated affection that he would sometimes spontaneously decide to dispense were enough to catch Spy off guard. Usually their interactions consisted of Spy deciding to approach the Engineer (both of them knowing full well that Spy wasn’t someone who would be found unless he wanted to be), then Spy leaving the offer on the table that they could perhaps be more romantic than their standing about and discussing work, then Engineer either taking it or leaving it from there.

Generally it was Spy initiating things, having to “put himself out there”, having to hold out that first hand. Partially because Engineer did sometimes feel uncomfortable, did sometimes feel strange about the compatibility of a short, stout southerner with a mean streak a mile wide and a French international agent of espionage wearing a suit worth his bodyweight in gold. Spy making it clear that he enjoyed the Engineer’s attention tended to soothe those worries. It also seemed that sometimes, Engie perceived the Spy as being… flighty. Easily startled. Which he was not, thank you very much, he just knew it was bad practice to let his guard down too terribly often (it would make him sloppy on the job) and the Engineer kept sneaking up on him.

Regardless, that meant that whenever Dell was the one to approach Spy with the flirting words, with the taking his hand to kiss the inside of his wrist, with the leaning in and fiddling with the edge of his mask or his tie or his lapels, well, it was unusual enough to be surprising, and often caught him off guard.

And apparently Dell found it very entertaining to catch him off guard whenever possible. He thought that, quote, “I’ll never get anything honest out of you unless you don’t get a chance to think about it first”.

And he had a point, but Spy didn’t enjoy that fact.

Dell’s latest game, apparently, was getting Spy to laugh more.

“You know, I wouldn’t press the issue, but it feels less like you’re not the type to laugh and more like you don’t wanna laugh,” Dell said to him one day, sat on a bench outside with him, having been convinced to take a break from working on his truck with the promise of shade, a beer still cold enough to have condensation rising up over the surface of the bottle, and company. “And most of the time when you don’t much wanna do somethin’, it’s either that you’re just stubborn, or you’re hidin’ something.”

“I’m not one of your equations, Laborer,” Spy deadpanned, content with smoking rather than drinking beer. “I’m a bit more complicated than that. I would have thought you’d pick up on that by now.”

“See, and then when you get real mouthy like that, that means you’re mad that I’m right,” Engie said next, smiling a little.

Spy fumed for a moment, glaring at him. “I could be rude for plenty of different reasons,” he finally said, tone lofty. “You can’t be sure.”

“I’m sure enough,” Engie shrugged, and hid his grin at Spy’s huff with a drink from his bottle. “I’m gonna get a real laugh outta you one of these days. Not the one where you’re being sarcastic, or when you’re cackling on the field, a real one. A happy one,” he decided.

Spy rolled his eyes. Dell and his obsession with Spy being happy. “Feel free to try,” he deadpanned.

The first attempt was Engineer trying to tell him jokes between matches, when he was half-distracted. Simple, silly ones, half ridiculous and half infuriating, finally resorting to puns when he couldn’t think of anything else. The best reaction he got was Spy being unable to surpress grins, huffing through his nose. The second attempt was made one evening late at night just before they went to bed, Dell suddenly digging fingers into Spy’s sides with intent. All he got was one half-alarmed cry and Spy escaping to the other side of the room within a heartbeat, then storming away and not speaking to Engineer for nearly two weeks, both for trying to tickle him and for startling him so badly.

He found it nearly on accident.

It was late—Spy finally stopped being angry with him and would even trust him to share the same bed again—and they were both tired. The Engineer had been busy all week, and a Spy had mostly spent his time catching up on a bit of reading, and overall they both found it very nice to have some time together again. Dell was coaxed away from work, and Spy was especially enjoying having someone warm and soft holding him, helping chase away the cold of the desert from his admittedly-bony frame.

Dell pressed a kiss to his shoulder suddenly, and Spy smiled, feeling all the warmer. “Finally feeling like paying some attention to your lover for once?” Spy asked, unable to get a sufficient amount of annoyance in his tone to make the comment biting.

“Finally caught you, more like,” Engie drawled, squeezing him where he had arms around Spy’s middle and pressing a kiss to his collarbone.

Spy managed to stifle a laugh only as it was starting to leave him, remembering too late that Dell had decided to play the ridiculous game of his. Admittedly, the game felt far away just then, and losing felt strangely alright with him. He tried to shake it off, to push away his own sentimentality for a moment. “Caught me how?” he asked, not having a very easy time with it.

“Off spending all your time in your smoking room,” Dell drawled next, nosing at his pulse point. “Probably listening to opera or some other unbearable thing.”

“Insulting opera,” Spy deadpanned, having to bite hard at the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling outright. “How very American of you, Laborer.”

“I’ll show you American—“ Dell murmured darkly, leaning up and starting to press rapid-fire kisses across Spy’s neck, under his jaw, across his cheeks.

He couldn’t help it, he really couldn’t. Maybe he was going soft working for Mann Co. Maybe he was going soft in general. Whatever it was, it only took a few seconds before Spy lost control over his giggling, then struggled against laughing outright.

“Dell!” he managed between wheezes, choking, stifling, trying to do anything he could to keep from laughing. “Dell, stop it!”

“No!” was his reply, also laughed, rumbling through the place where their chests pressed together in the most wonderful way, and then he was right back to kissing all up and down Spy’s neck again.

He giggled. He chuckled. He choked. He wheezed.

And then he snorted.

It was like a dam breaking. All at once, he had no control over his laughter, and it sounded almost too-loud in the empty room around them. He raised a hand to his own face to try to muffle himself as he continued snorting every few breaths, sure that his cheeks were on fire, absolutely mortified even as he started struggling to catch his breath.

He didn’t even have enough air to begin defending himself, or trying to distract from it, or to get angry with him for forcing the issue. And before he could get that air back, Dell had a hand—the flesh-and-blood one—pressed up against his cheek, warm and comforting. “Darlin’ if that ain’t just the cutest damned laugh I’ve ever heard in my life!” he gushed, laughing a bit himself, apparently finding it infectious.

“No!” Spy protested breathlessly, half-tempted to move away from the hand. “It’s ridiculous!”

“It’s precious,” Engie insisted, pinching his cheek lightly as if for emphasis. “That’s what you were hiding from me?”

“Of course!” he managed, eyes squeezed shut hard.

“Well stop it! I love it!” Dell said, laughter seeping into a sort of warmth, a sort of care, that made Spy feel an entirely different kind of overwhelmed.

“If you tell anyone—“ he started to challenge.

“I’d never,” Dell interrupted.

Spy knew that. He knew that Dell wouldn’t. Maybe that caught him off guard too.

Words escaped him for a long while, but finally he just pulled Dell’s face towards his own. The hint was taken, and Dell kissed him, firm but sweet.

“I’d never,” he repeated once they parted, softer now.

“I know,” Spy said, not sure of where this sudden bravery came from, but half-convinced that if he asked, the Engineer would be able to tell him.

Chapter Text

Spy stormed into the workshop fiercely enough that it kicked up sawdust near the door, so luckily Engie at least knew there was something wrong up front.

“What’d he do?” Engie asked, lucky enough to have the benefit of knowing that six out of seven of the people that generally could have potentially pissed off Spy are men.

“He’s such a brat, why does he feel the need to argue every point with me!?” Spy started in, indignant tone rising with every step he took as he began pacing the strip of space in front of the door until he switched entirely over to ranting and raving in French. Ah. So it was Scout again.

He waited until Spy was starting to get out of breath with the combination of yelling and pacing and waving his arms around before he interrupted. “Have you considered that maybe he doesn’t like listening to you because you’re always talking down to him?” he suggested, keeping his tone neutral and his eyes on the work in front of him.

“Because he’s pompous and stubborn and always acts like he knows everything!” Spy blurted, stopping dead in his tracks and throwing his arms out.

Engie took a moment to pull his goggles off of his eyes to instead let them rest on his forehead so he could better level a deadpan look at Spy.

It took a few seconds before Spy would even dignify that with an answer. “Why are you looking at me that way?” he snapped.

“I can’t help but wonder where the boy gets it from,” Engie said flatly.

“I beg your pardon, his mother is a very lovely woman who—“ Spy stopped talking for a second. “Oh, how dare you.”

“Look, half the issue is that you’re both stubborn as hell and won’t admit when you’re wrong, other half is that neither of you will talk to the other with any respect, other half is that you’re too damn similar and don’t want to admit it,” Engie outlined, the same message he’d said at least half a dozen times before.

“For an Engineer, you have some faulty math, mon beau. You have said there is a half three times,” Spy pointed out rather than addressing what Engie was saying.

“Which is why you two have a problem and a half with each other,” Engie agreed. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, all I can do is give you advice. But my advice is to try and just be nice to the damn kid for a minute and see how that works.”

“He doesn’t trust when I am nice,” Spy said flatly.

“And why the hell would he when you’ve been nothin’ but mean to him the whole time he’s known you professionally?” Engie pulled his goggles back into place and set back to work again. “He respects you a lot, but the way he grew up, he’s just gonna keep biting you back for as long as it takes for you to stop tormenting him. He’s never gonna quit this job and leave when all you’re showing him is one more challenge. Maybe if he trusted you, then he’d take your advice. But respect and trust are two different things, doll.”

Spy considered that for a few moments. His feathers were still ruffled, but more out of stubbornness than anything else. “He respects me, you said?” Spy deadpanned, clearly not believing it for a moment.

“Spy, you’re older, you’re taller, you’re wealthier, and you make it seem like you could have damn near any partner you could choose, man or woman. You’re book-smart and well travelled and speak five languages.”

“Six,” Spy corrected quietly.

“Six languages,” Engie amended. “And all he’s got going for him, far as he’s concerned, is that he can run fast, jump high, never live up to his brothers, and never know his father. And when he meets you, what do you do right out the gate? You criticize him. Is it a big wonder that out of all the older guys here, I’m the one he’s decided is a good mentor figure? If you played your cards right, you would’a been first pick. Instead he turned to me.”

Spy’s shoulders were sagging.

“Look,” Engie said after a second of quiet, putting his tools down even as he kept his gaze low. “I’ll put in a good word for you. Honest I will. But I’m not gonna tee the boy up for you to just knock him right back down a few more times. It ain’t fair to him, and then he wouldn’t trust me anymore, and then he won’t have anyone he’ll listen to about his wellbeing unless you try to call his mother to get her on his case.”

“You may have a point,” Spy admitted, which was about as close as he ever got to saying “You’re right and I was wrong”. He stood for a moment before he started making slight adjustments to his suit in the wake of his minor tantrum, adjusting his tie, his cufflinks, his mask, brushing off his lapels. “Thank you for… talking me down, I suppose.”

“You’re welcome, doll,” Engie said easily. Quiet for a moment. “You ever gonna come over here and kiss me hello? Hardly saw you today.”

Spy almost startled, and immediately went to oblige. Admittedly it was a tired kiss, short, but that close, they could both feel it between them, a kind of satisfaction over decisions reached.

“Speaking of unruly young people,” Spy started in once they broke apart, “I heard you had a phone call with Miss Pauling. How is she doing?”

Engie sighed and launched into the latest news on their chronically overworked boss-coworker-friend, and the next time Spy saw Scout, he was civil for a record twenty minutes before an argument broke out. A miracle. The Engineer couldn’t help but be proud.

Chapter Text

“Babe, we gotta go!” Scout complained, bouncing on the balls of his feet, bat in one hand and Pyro’s axe in the other.

Their reply was a flippant something and a hand waving at him to just take it easy, they were almost done. They couldn’t help the fact that lacing their boots up to battle-ready tightness took a little longer with their extra-thick gloves, and they wouldn’t even be late, so he could just take it easy. At least, he was pretty sure that was the gist of it.

“The gate’s gonna unlock any second, then we’ll only have like a minute until we gotta be out there,” he said, only getting more impatient with each passing moment.

Pyro waved him off again, still just tying their shoes.

Another fifteen seconds until they were finished tying their boot off, then they were taking a second to refill the fuel on their flamethrower, then they were standing up.

“Fuckin’ finally!” Scout crowed.

Pyro then took a few seconds checking their flare gun.

“Come on!” Scout whined, bouncing at almost twice the speed of before, glancing fretfully between Pyro and the door out onto the field. “I’ll totally leave you here!”

Pyro stopped what they were doing entirely to turn their head up to level a look at Scout, flare in hand.

He stopped bouncing for all of two seconds before he started up again. “Okay, so maybe I won’t, but I’ll be pissed if you make us late!” he self-corrected.

They said something along the lines of “we won’t even be late!”, exasperated now, finishing up checking over their gun with no rush at all and putting it back in its holster. Then, and only then, did they hold out a hand for their axe. Scout passed it over quickly (handle-first and blade-down, as he’d learned after something like three lectures on gun and weapons safety), and moved as if to bolt for the gate.

Pyro planted their feet, stowing their axe.

“What now!?” Scout demanded, agitated and absolutely not afraid to show it.

Pyro tapped the side of their mask, the part that one might call the cheek.

“Oh, c’mon babe!” Scout implored under his breath, pointing at the rest of the team waiting by the gate, several of whom were watching the spectacle.

Pyro tapped their mask again, the very picture of stubborn determination.

“Okay, fine, okay—“ Scout leaned in and pecked them where directed, exactly slow enough that he wouldn’t be accused of rushing. “Okay so we can go now!”

Pyro, however, seemed to disagree, because they looked at him for only a few seconds before sweeping him up in an embrace, physically lifting him off the floor bridal-style and making all sorts of sickly-sweet kissy noises, muffled by the mask.

“MUMBLES!” Scout protested loudly over the sound of teammates whistling and cat-calling and overall making fun of him, his face bright red. It was also that moment that the gate opened with a noisy clatter, and the team passed through. “BABE! C’MON!”

Pyro laughed, just moving to carry Scout through the open gate, still making cooing noises at him, much to his dismay.

They weren’t late.

Chapter Text

Sniper didn’t know what to expect when he opened the door to his camper, but it wasn’t Scout.

“Hey,” Scout said, looking him up and down.

Sniper’s mouth moved wordlessly for a few seconds before he found something to say. “Uh. Hey,” was all he could think of, and he winced at it.

Scout’s eyes fell off to one side of him, hands in his pockets. Sniper knew that something had happened to Scout during the months after the team disbanded, something that made him hesitant all of a sudden, fidgety, but he didn’t think he had any right to pry. “Remember when you said you’d take me on a road trip when the war was over?” he asked, tone flatter than Sniper remembered it being, but maybe that’s what he deserved, because…

“Yeah,” Sniper admitted, voice quiet. He had said that. But he’d said it because he thought he’d have time, thought he’d have a few months or years to try and get the courage to tell Scout a couple things, thought that when they went on a road trip it’d be something they’d do together not as the unlikely and close-knit friends they’d somehow stumbled into being, but as… “Yeah, I do.”

Scout looked up at him, only for a couple of seconds. There were dark circles under his eyes, a hallowness to him that felt uncomfortably like looking in a mirror. “Well, guess you have another chance,” he said, setting up like he was certain he’d be knocked right back down.

And Sniper hadn’t exactly thought of it that way. The team had banded back together again for the Grey Mann business (excluding Engie, who was apparently doing okay but simply couldn’t make it back for some reason he couldn’t say), returning to the base and everything once the Classic Team was sufficiently dead, only for Miss Pauling to suddenly break the news, that very morning, three days into their arriving there, that their final job had been completed and the money had been wired to their accounts and they were all free to go. In a way, it really was a second chance, one he didn’t think he particularly deserved.

He’d been getting a lot of those lately.

“Okay,” was all he could think to say, still too surprised to think of anything clever to say.

They left the next morning before sunrise, and if Sniper was being honest, he didn’t really have a destination in mind. He just started driving northwest, thinking about pine trees and quiet and time to think. Luckily, Scout didn’t ask for a destination. He just sat down in the passenger seat and turned on the radio.

The radio sufficed to fill in the uncomfortable silence between them for three days of driving. There was no talking, really. Even after months apart, they were capable of reading each other’s signals well enough that directions weren’t necessary. They’d wake up just before sunrise to eat a quick brekkie and start driving, they’d pull over once a day at a rest stop to top off the fuel and for Scout to go inside to get them something to eat, and they’d eat it standing up and leaning on the hood to stretch their legs, and then they’d keep driving until just before it got dark, then they’d pull over somewhere for the night to eat and go to sleep. Sniper would set up a tent for them, they’d both grab their sleeping bags, rinse and repeat.

No words needed. It hurt something in Sniper’s chest to realize that Scout still remembered what food he liked from their various 2AM weekend excursions to damn near anywhere that was still open and willing to sell food to strange half-drunk men.

Sniper hadn’t thought about their lack of words at first. Not until the moment when they’d briefly gone through somewhere with particularly bad radio reception and Scout couldn’t find a station for something like twenty minutes. That was the time when he most felt their silence, the empty space between them. From then on, once he noticed it, he didn’t have the courage to break the spell, the task seeming more and more daunting with each passing day of quiet, more and more like it’d need to be something truly important to not seem hollow, fake.

It was Scout who finally broke the silence.

“Aren’t you tired?” Scout asked, voice so quiet that Sniper was almost positive that he imagined it. But he looked over at Scout out of the corner of his eye, and Scout was looking at him instead of staring out the window. He swallowed hard, and realized all at once that he hadn’t actually spoken in a couple days.

“What do you mean?” he asked, voice a little sandy.

Scout kept looking at him, and Sniper had to break eye contact to look back at the road again. “It’s just… getting pretty late. We should stop for the night,” Scout said.

Sniper realized he was right. It had gotten dark at some point. They usually stopped sometime around sunset so Sniper would have plenty of light to set up the tent, but he’d lost track of time. Zoned out. Suddenly he became aware of how bone-deep tired he was. “Just a little further,” he mumbled, voice still rough, and Scout didn’t respond to that, just looking back out the window.

When they finally pulled over, it was into a proper campground, with fire pits and grills and picnic tables and everything. He set up a little fire before anything else, happy with the fact that it wasn’t exactly prime camping season and there were places for them to go be by themselves. The tent was up next, put up as quickly as he could without risking mistakes, partially because he was sure Scout was tired.

But Scout sat and waited by the fire instead of turning in the moment he could, just watching the flames idly. His face looked even more sunken in the flickering light, and it unnerved Sniper a little to see the way that life had faded out of his eyes just over the course of the little time they’d spent apart.

For a while, quiet. Sniper decided he might as well cook what meat he had left in his camper before it went bad, now that he had the chance, and he did so, bland as it was with so minimal a kitchen available to them. Scout ate without complaint, without even really looking at Sniper.

It occurred to him, trying not to be obvious about the way he was watching Scout, that the reason he unnerved Sniper so much was because he looked half-dead in a lot of ways.

The illusion was only furthered when Scout tossed his paper plate and napkins into the fire and moved to grab his bag.

Every morning and every night, Sniper now knew that Scout had a brief routine. Usually he’d do it while Sniper was setting up or taking down the tent. He had to change his gauze daily, the wound still lingering in some ways from where he’d gotten slashed open. He was no longer on the verge of death, but a few days of on-and-off medical fluid whenever Medic managed to dig up another batch didn’t do much for him, it seemed. Even after years of hunting and killing, Sniper couldn’t force himself to look directly at the wound marring the entirety of Scout’s side, instead watching the detached set of Scout’s expression as he rewrapped it.

But Scout caught him looking, apparently, because he spoke again. “Doc says I‘ll probably never climb again,” he murmured.

It felt very much like he was shot through the chest again. “Yeah?” he asked, voice soft.

“Yeah. And I just…” He paused as he finished up with re-wrapping the wound, pulling his shirt back down into place. “I just didn’t wanna go home until it healed.”

Sniper kept his expression controlled. That could take weeks, months even. And the scarring would probably never properly go away.

“And I know you probably won’t wanna deal with me that whole time,” Scout said next, giving him a tight almost-smile, immediately averting his eyes again. “But… I dunno. However long you’ll let me stick around.”

Sniper didn’t know how long he planned to “stick around”. There was the house, he supposed, probably still falling into ruin, but not much else to go back to.

“I heard about your parents,” Scout finally said, as if he read his mind. “I’m sorry.”

Sniper still didn’t know how to reply to that when people said it to him. He went with a simple “It’s okay.”

“Nah,” Scout replied easily, back to staring into the fire. “But… I dunno. Would you mind giving me a warning in advance for when you want me to leave you alone? I just wanna call my Ma to tell her when I’m going back.”

“Alright,” Sniper said hesitantly.

They started speaking again, mostly in little ways. A day’s rest at the campground before they hit the road again did wonders for morale, and communications being opened between them made things feel… easier, in little ways. In Sniper mentioning “Give me five minutes” when they went to a rest stop before he walked away to use the bathroom or something, in Scout going “hey, turn it back” when Sniper changed the radio station. For some reason, it made Sniper choke up a bit when one day, Scout so quietly murmured a “good night” out into the darkness of the tent.

They reached the upper parts of Washington, and hooked a right. They made it through Montana and into North Dakota before Scout asked the all-important question.

“Where are we going?”

It was asked over another campfire, at yet another campground, half-abandoned. Sniper stoked the flames for a few seconds before he decided on his answer.

“Anywhere you’d like,” he finally murmured.

Quiet. “I’ll get back to you on that,” he seemed to decide. They kept driving.

By the Great Lakes, they still didn’t have a destination, so Sniper broke out a map for the first time and figured out how to try to get them to Florida, for no reason other than the fact that it was far away, and bought him time, something he’d already run out of twice before—once when the team disbanded, and once when he died.

But they were talking more. They found themselves trying to catch up with each other without quite saying that they were catching up. They were back to discussing things, news mostly, although apparently Scout had gotten the time to do some reading during the months before the team got back together.

It was one night when Sniper was changing for bed and Scout ducked in to ask him a question that a topic was finally broached, a landline finally stepped on.

“What the hell is that?” Scout asked, sounding startled, and when Sniper looked up, Scout was staring at his chest. At his stitches.

He pulled on a shirt before anything else, suddenly self-conscious about the way the very tail-end of the stitching peeked out of the short sleeves under his arms. “It’s from when I got shot, and I…”

Died. The word hung in the air between them, paralyzing, horrifying. All at once, real.

“Did I tell you they tried to hang me?” Scout suddenly said.

Sniper blinked. “What?”

“After the trial. We lost the trial. They tried to hang me.”

“I thought Pauling saved you,” Sniper said hesitantly.

“Yeah.” Scout’s jaw was tight. “After they already pulled the lever. When you hang people usually it’s supposed to snap your neck. It didn’t. She got me down about a minute after they pulled the lever. Then I almost died on the way to get Heavy because I got clawed by a bear. Then Saxton Hale and his buff girlfriend almost killed me. Then I got stabbed fighting the Classics.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Sniper asked, voice tight.

“Because I need you to know that I get it.”

Sniper didn’t have words, all of a sudden, and Scout hesitated for a second longer before finally just ducking back out of the tent, looking a little disappointed. “No, wait,” he said, following Scout out quickly, into the light of the campfire, where he looked far too much like a corpse, far too much like delirium in a hallway, almost dying alone. “Wait.”

Scout just stared, waiting. Waiting for Sniper to be the one to speak first for once.

“When I got shot,” Sniper said, and his voice was already choked, damn him. “Even before that, I just, alone in that house, I…” He swallowed hard to dislodge the lump in his throat. “I thought about it a lot. Regretted it a lot. How I never got to say goodbye.”

Scout’s expression softened a touch, and he looked a little closer to the way he’d been before, a little more life back behind his eyes, and it gave Sniper the courage to keep talking.

“I wish I did,” he managed. “You deserved a real goodbye. You deserved something, anything. I should’ve said something.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want to say goodbye to you. And I knew if I ended up on a road trip with you, I’d… I’d never want to let go of you.” He wished desperately that he had his glasses on to hide his eyes, to hide how damp they were starting to get. “You were the first good thing to ever happen to me and I was scared you’d be the last and I just… I didn’t know what to do. But you deserved better. You always deserved better.”

There was suspicion in Scout’s expression now—not like finding out bad news, like realizing someone was trying to surprise you with something, like good news, like hope. Scout swallowed hard, looking down at the fire for a second, thinking over his words. “I know where I wanna go,” he said.

“Where?” Sniper asked, weak, damn everything he was weak.

“Take me home to Australia with you.”

Hope like nothing else he’d ever had before. He wanted to ask, “Forever?”, but all he managed was “Really?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed again, not meeting Sniper’s eyes. “We died and came back to life, man. I think that means we get to do whatever we want now.”

“Whatever we want?” Sniper repeated.

When Scout looked back up at him, he seemed more curious than anything else. He looked down between them, took a half-step closer, close enough that the toes of their shoes were lined up and touching each other. Then his gaze rose again. “Whatever we want,” he confirmed.

Out of all the things that came to mind when Scout said that, there was only one thing that he really cared about doing in any meaningful way, and he was lucky, so much luckier than he ever thought he’d be, because he didn’t even really need to move to do it. He leaned down to kiss Scout, and Scout met him halfway.

Chapter Text

“Climbs out the window of a bloody car, nearly gets crushed to death by debris, nearly gets sent flying off my van and off a cliff, jumps onto a moving bloody train and almost gets his head chopped off by bridges and, and tunnels, and, and, and—“

Sniper had barely stopped lecturing him since he’d gotten back to the outpost, even as his teeth refused to stop chattering. Having been trapped at a cliff ledge in frigid snow with open windows, unable to move enough to roll them up lest he unbalance and be sent careening to his demise, had left him both frozen and rattled in several senses of the word. Scout was pretty sure that Sniper would end up getting a cold or something. Scout was lucky that he’d elected to hitch a ride on the train they sent back to the BLUs rather than trying to hike it or waiting around long enough for one of them to get a car, or else there was no telling how long Sniper might’ve waited there.

“Well, I’m fine,” Scout shrugged, reaching to tug back into place one of the many blankets they’d piled on Sniper to try and warm him back up. He was still concerned in the back of his mind about frostbite, but Sniper had seemed to be okay in a cursory check, and likely couldn’t be convinced out of his blankets to check more thuroughly anyways.

“But you nearly weren’t,” Sniper insisted.

“Well I could say the same to you!” Scout half-snapped. “Almost drove off a fuckin’ cliff, almost froze to death—“

Sniper huffed, shaking his head. “First bloody action we get on this damn outpost, and it’s a train,” he griped, still wracked with shivers. “God I hate it here.”

Scout heard the telltale click of the kettle across the room and stood to go to it, practically scrambling to his feet to do so. He picked up the empty mug in front of Sniper before he walked over, refilling it with the next meager batch of hot chocolate. He kept asking for coffee, but Scout knew he needed to get some sleep once he was warmed up, and he was drinking something hot for the sake of warmth anyways, not to stay awake. He brought the mug back, and Sniper shrugged away enough of his cocoon to take hold of it in one trembling hand.

Some of it, Scout thought, might be theatrics. Sniper couldn’t handle cold to literally save his life, and tended to be the one piling on more blankets and layers between the two of them, even besides the fact that Scout was thin as a twig. But it also concerned him that it still hadn’t quite stopped, with them going on something like half an hour of Sniper finally being properly out of the cold. They’d done what they could to stabilize the van where it was, knowing damn well they couldn’t do more until they got another vehicle to help tow it back from the ledge, and that hour or so of near-heart attacks followed by another hour and a half of walking to get back to their shitty little shack had been…

Sniper had said he was pretty sure he was out in the cold for something like five hours. By Scout’s estimate, it was somewhere closer to seven. That was a long, long time.

He couldn’t remember how one treated hypothermia. He knew you weren’t supposed to take a hot shower (as if that was even an option, they barely had electricity thanks to their shitty little generator, let alone heated running water), knew you weren’t supposed to drink alcohol. Knew that a blanket and dry clothes were supposed to help, and drinking something warm. Knew to be careful about fires—a glance at the fireplace just to one side of them—because it would be tempting to get too close and to get burned. But he didn’t remember what else he was supposed to do. He knew that Medic had flippantly rattled off the exact instructions, but he couldn’t remember them. He was too shaken.

“You almost died,” Sniper said suddenly, as if realizing it for the first time all over again.

“Why are you so hooked on that?” Scout demanded.

“Because—“ He cut himself off, going silent for a few seconds. “Because of a lot of reasons.”

Scout just leveled a look at him, still waiting for him to elaborate. Sniper tried to escape the glare by taking a drink of his cocoa, but it was still there when he looked up again.

“Because I guess I just didn’t expect it. Didn’t… plan for it,” he said, struggling for his words. The shivering was starting to subside, occasionally pausing, breaking itself into long bouts rather than a continuous affliction. “And… I would’ve been upset.”

“Yeah, I’d fuckin’ hope so,” Scout snorted.

“That’s not what I—“ Sniper just cut himself off again, glaring down into his mug for a few seconds to gather himself again. “I just mean that if I’d known something might’ve happened, I would’ve… or, or rather I wouldn’t’ve…”

Sniper couldn’t seem to look at him. “What?” Scout prompted after a second.

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have said anything, a few days ago.”

He didn’t clarify. He didn’t need to. Scout knew exactly what he was talking about.

A few days prior. Scout had woken up first, done his patrols, and then when he got around to making breakfast, he’d made Sniper’s coffee as well, as he’d started doing at some point. Sniper had woken up shortly after, and had murmuringly called him a “bloody saint”, then a “bloody treasure”, then almost absentmindedly, he’d said “I love you”. And everything had stopped. And Scout stared, and Sniper stared, and neither of them spoke for a good few moments, shocked into silence. That had prompted something like a conversation, mostly just Scout asking questions, and Sniper stammering out answers and immediately backtracking, making Scout ask more questions again.

By the end of it, it was made clear that Sniper, apparently, had some kind of an interest in Scout. And Scout had only managed to respond that he did have an interest in Sniper as well, but he wasn’t sure. And then Sniper tried to get answers on that, answers that Scout simply didn’t have, and they reached a tense kind of stalemate that caused them to largely try and avoid talking to each other—a particularly challenging thing to do considering the total of two rooms in the shack and the oppressive cold outside of it.

This was the first time either of them had brought it up since.

“Why wouldn’t you have said anything?” Scout asked, voice quieter now.

“Because… I’d…” Sniper tried, choosing his words very carefully. “…I’d rather not have you die angry with me, or… have you die thinking I’m angry with you.”

“Angry? Since when am I angry with you?” Scout asked, befuddled.

“Since you—well since you started giving me the bloody silent treatment, is since when!” Sniper exclaimed.

“I thought you were mad at me, I was just giving you space!” Scout exclaimed right back.

Sniper looked frustrated, and buried it in the last of his cocoa, drinking with determination. His shivering was finally starting to fade. “Either way,” he said, tone back under control again. “I just… I finally told you, and then two days later, I almost lose you. It… I don’t know how I would’ve coped,” he admitted.

“Puts things in perspective,” Scout summarized, finally understanding what he meant. Sniper just nodded. Scout considered his own words, eyeing his hands, picking at the wrappings there. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a real answer,” he finally said.

“Any closer to having one?” Sniper asked, not much hope in his voice.

“Yeah. And it’s… it’s yeah.” He kept his eyes on his hands. “To whatever you were thinking of doing.”

Sniper looked at him for a few seconds. After those seconds, he moved aside his mug. “Well, first of all, get over here,” he grumbled, and Scout obliged, and the moment he was close enough, Sniper pulled him in to join him in the mess of blankets, embracing him, holding him close. His skin was starting to warm up. “Second of all, never scare me like that again.”

“You’ve got it,” Scout agreed, relaxing into Sniper’s hold. “But only if you don’t, neither.”

“Third of all, kiss me,” Sniper asked, less confidently than the previous two, as if not entirely convinced that Scout would listen to him, but he did. And then he did again, because despite being cold and chapped, Sniper’s lips were extremely pleasant against his own. Then he did again, and again, and again, right up until the point where Scout shifted and they unbalanced and almost broke Sniper’s mug.

Scout and Sniper both stayed away from cliffs.

Chapter Text

The moment Sniper walked into the common room after getting back from his mission, he was practically tackled to the ground.

”Snipes!” Scout cried, “You’re back!”

“Bloody—get off me!” was Sniper’s reply, startled, trying to push Scout off as he became immediately aware of several of their teammates staring and starting to laugh.

“No! I missed you!” Scout retorted, squeezing twice as hard until Sniper’s breath was squished right out of him.

“I was gone for three days!” he protested anyways, voice a wheeze, now focusing more on keeping their balance. “Well within Respawn range! I wasn’t even in any danger!”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t miss you, you asshole,” Scout pouted, only holding onto him for another second or two before he finally took back his own weight and stepped away enough to look him over, hands still on his shoulders. “Seriously, it felt like you were gone forever.”

“Three days. Only two nights, even,” Sniper reminded him, walking past to go into the kitchen.

“A billion years,” Scout muttered.

The next time he went on a mission, it was for three days again, and Scout complained just as much before he left as he did after he got back. The one following was only for two, and earned slightly less bemoaning, but the one after that, Sniper dreaded Scout’s reaction so much that he didn’t even tell him about it until about two hours before he left.

When he got back from it, a full week and a half later, you would’ve thought he was a private coming back from war like at the end of one of Pyro’s romance movies. He at least could give Scout a concrete time for when exactly he would be back, calling to the base from the airport, if only to keep from there being yet another scene in front of the entire team.

The second he stomped up the steps and in through the door of his camper, Scout was on him.

He didn’t even say anything first, no hello, no “how was your mission”, no greeting at all, just a pair of hands cupping his face and a mouth against his own. Admittedly, Sniper found it much harder to protest such treatment now that they were mostly out of sight of the rest of the base and had some modicum of privacy.

He kissed Scout for a few moments, the hand not holding his bag wrapping around his waist to gather him close. After a few moments he tried to pull away to speak, but Scout chased him, kissing him again, and when he tried to pull away again another few moments later.

He ended up having to physically push Scout back to get some air, at which point Scout was a bit red in the face, just as out of breath as he was. “At least let me put my bag down and get my jacket off,” he chided, not without an amount of fondness, running a hand up through Scout’s hair, the runner’s hat having fallen off somewhere during that second kiss, apparently having gotten in his way.

Scout’s reply was to seize the bag from Sniper’s hand and toss it behind him into the camper, hands then reaching to shove Sniper’s vest down off his shoulders, and he promptly kissed Sniper again, one hand migrating to the back of his neck this time to yank him down.

Sniper couldn’t exactly argue with that, and found himself unexpectedly charmed by Scout’s unfettered enthusiasm and mild desperation, putting both arms to good use by wrapping them around Scout’s back, shifting his stance slightly to pull him in that much closer. There was contact between their chests, Scout’s thigh bumping against his own as he was practically dipped, needing to arch to accommodate the way Sniper took control of the kiss fully and completely, making his knees go weak.

When Sniper finally pulled back, Scout’s lips were red, his eyes heavy, looking all the more breathless and dazed thanks to the way his hair had gotten all out of order at some point. His pulse was quick in his chest, Sniper could feel it when they were pressed this close, and it made him grin.

“Unpacking can wait,” Sniper decided aloud. “How’s about we go inside and I show you how much I missed you?”

It made Scout smile and flush, the sudden confirmation that Sniper had been pained by their distance too, and he managed a nod before Sniper’s metaphorical attempt to sweep him off his feet became literal, the Australian lifting him bodily and carrying him back across the threshold, kicking the door closed behind him and leaving Scout’s hat in the dust and sand.

Chapter Text

“TAVISH!”

“JANE!”

The speed they collided at, there right at the dead center of the control point, was such that they were both sent careening to the ground, rolling over a few times until they finally collided with a wooden barrier, somehow managing to cling to each other through the chaos and the dust. When Demo sat up and peered down at Soldier, his eye was brighter than Soldier had maybe ever seen it, his grin wide and giddy.

“You got the news too, then?” he demanded, about to bubble over and burst any moment like one of his little chemistry experiments.

“Yes! We are all honorably discharged until the next time of conflict!” Soldier crowed, helmet knocked back enough for Demo to see his thrill paralleled. “I planned on going and making a purple heart! But first I wanted to tell you! We did it, private! We won!”

“Sir yes feckin’ sir we did!” Demo agreed, laughing loud and unashamed, scooping Soldier up to hold him close. “Lordy, I never thought I’d see the day, let alone before either of us got grey hairs, aye lad?”

“I have several follow-up questions!” Soldier declared. “Such as, one: do I get to keep my helmet? Two: do I get to keep my shovel?”

“Don’t see why the hell not,” Demo shrugged, pulling back and moving a hand up to tilt the helmet in question back into place cheerfully, which Soldier grinned wider at. “Didn’t get asked for ‘em back, did we?”

“Three: do I get to keep Lieutenant Bites?”

“Lad, the raccoons never belonged to anyone to start with, reckon they won’t be missed,” he assured.

“Four: what now?”

Demo frowned after a moment. “What do you mean, what now?” he asked, a little confused.

He was familiar with the fact that Soldier’s moods often changed on a dime, switching up almost too quick to keep up with at times. Somewhere between one moment and the next, he’d shifted from overjoyed to concerned. He hummed for a second as he thought over his next words. “If we are not at war with each other, how will we see each other?” he asked, clearly confused.

“If we don’t have to fight, we can see each other all we want,” Demo said, keeping his tone light.

“Where? I have been told that I have an hour to pack up and leave the base before it and anything inside are destroyed,” he said matter-of-factly. “I am pretty sure that includes the dumpsters. I have no back up plan.”

Demo frowned. “Well, where’d you live before that?” he asked.

“I lived with Merasmus! He was a terrible roommate. He kept trying to kill me. And he never washed his dishes,” Soldier said, expression flattening at the memory.

“Before that,” Demo clarified.

Soldier was silent, jaw set in a way that very much implied he would continue to be silent for an extended period of time.

“Just, whereabouts did you come from?” Demo clarified further.

“Midwest,” he said shortly.

“It—what state, Janey dear?”

“Ohio. I am not going back to Ohio,” Soldier said firmly, and Demo was a little startled by the amount of ferocity in his tone, more than he generally used with Demo when they were off the job.

“Alright,” Demo said gently, squeezing his shoulder in a soothing motion and deciding it was probably a good idea to drop the topic altogether, “alright. Well, I’d need to talk to the old mum, but I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t much like the raccoons, or… your disposition in general,” he said, trying his best to word it politely.

“There are no allies for the raccoons of Company B,” Soldier said grimly.

“Right. So since living back with her isn’t exactly an option… we could really live anywhere,” Demo decided, shrugging. “Anywhere you’d like.”

“I would like to live in the United States of America!” Soldier declared.

“Fair enough. Contiguous?”

“Yes,” Soldier confirmed.

“Inland or coastal?”

He thought about it for a moment. “We must be prepared for assault by sea! So coastal.”

“East or West?”

“I do not care! As long as we do not live in California. I do not like the people in California.”

“Hippies?” Demo asked, grinning, already knowing the answer.

“Of course!”

“We’ll try East Coast, then. Hey, maybe New York, that’s where the Statue of Liberty is, aye?” Demo asked, elbowing Soldier. “Or maybe we’ll just go on a trip there to see it rather than staying long, that’s a bit close to Massachusetts, and lord knows Scout will tan my hide if I live that close and never pop in for a visit, aye? Maybe just go live south. How about Florida? Awful peaceful in parts of Florida.”

“Affirmative! As long as you and I also live close together,” Soldier said, very serious about his stipulation.

“How’s about we live in the same house?” Demo proposed, smile going a little sheepish as he realized what a question he’d just jumped Soldier with.

“Hmm,” Soldier hummed, considering the question carefully. “Do you promise to wash the dishes?”

“Absolutely,” Demo confirmed.

“And to not try and kill me with magic?”

“Only if we have a safeword,” Demo said, doing the elaborate head tilt he needed to do to wink without people getting confused.

Soldier laughed, loud and unashamed, and Demo couldn’t help his own chuckle rising up in reply. “Then you have a deal, private! Do you promise we can still fight sometimes?”

“Only for fun, and only as a joke,” Demo said, a little more serious all of a sudden. “And no weapons allowed. Besides that, we won’t have to. We don’t have to fight anymore, Jane. Never again.”

Soldier looked up at him, a slack to his jaw that suggested he was staring in wonder, the prospect clearly completely new to him. After a moment, he broke out into a grin, searching hard for what to say next. “Does that mean I get to kiss you now?” he asked, clearly excited.

Demo laughed. “As often as you want,” he declared, and Soldier didn’t waste a single second, leaning in to seal the deal, eager to sign on to enlist in whatever the rest of their lives would be. As long as it was him and Tavish.

Chapter Text

“Doktor!”

Medic did the favor of moving with Heavy’s momentum as he was lifted and spun in an embrace, chuckling and squeezing right back, until he was lowered back to the floor again and delivered a noisy kiss to either cheek. “Hello, mein Schatz,” he laughed, smiling up at the giant of a man. “How was your holiday?”

“Sisters are doing well, Bronislava finally was impatient and cut hair off again, Yanna asks many questions about attractive men I work with,” Heavy said, and squeezed Medic on the shoulders pointedly, making him laugh. “How is Doktor?”

“Better now,” he said simply, rising onto his toes to give Heavy a brief kiss, the man bending down to allow and prolong it. “And I am very happy to say that I am ready with your present!”

He led Heavy down towards the infirmary, which only had Heavy worried for a few seconds before he reminded himself that first of all, Medic’s office and room were also down this way, and second, they’d had a conversation about gift-giving and he’d already made Medic promise that his gift could not be related to his various experiments, saying that he didn’t want Medic to do any work over the holidays until they were officially back at work, to instead use this break to relax for once.

The door was pushed open, and it became clear with the smell of cleaning products and the dustless nature of the infirmary that Medic hadn’t exactly followed that to the letter, but he would forgive him—it wasn’t in Medic’s style to do something like let his infirmary remain dusty when he had even the smallest amount of free time. The doves in the rafters made a few sounds at them as they passed through towards Medic’s little office, and Heavy almost imagined it being their way of saying ”Merry Christmas, welcome home!”

Once they reached the office, Medic’s fingers fumbled on the lock of one of the large bottommost drawers of his desk, finally managing to get it open and taking a breath before moving to pull from it a large box, carefully wrapped in silver paper with a bright white ribbon. He put it on the desk, looking up at Heavy a little nervously. “Would you rather open it now, or…” he trailed, and Heavy smiled, bemused by the uncharacteristic hesitance that had suddenly overtaken Medic.

“Would like this very much,” Heavy said, and Medic nodded, pushing the box towards him. He took it, taking care as he first undid the ribbon and allowed it to fall away, then with carefully pulling the lid free. He was met with the sight of tissue paper, also white, which he pushed aside to pick up—

He looked up at Medic with wide eyes, and found the man searching his expression. A weak smile. “I am aware that—“ he started to say, and cut himself off cold as Heavy lifted the large book free of the last of the tissue paper, looking over it with no small amount of reverence.

“Doktor, where do you get this book?” he asked, voice very small. “Is not in print anymore.”

Medic’s smile relaxed only a little in his periphery. “Correct. It is not. I searched a great number of bookstores throughout Germany, and finally found one in Berlin that took particular pride in good quality copies of very old books.” He swallowed hard. “So that is the correct edition?”

Heavy carefully flipped open the book, eyes locking not on the more technical information, but instead reading through the foreword, finding every single word to be exactly how he remembered it. “It is,” he confirmed, voice even smaller now.

It was something he’d told Medic about once, maybe twice total. How his love of reading, of literature, of poetry and philosophy and everything else under the sun, had all derived from a big, beautiful book his father would read to him as a child. It was one of the few possessions they had that Heavy was truly fond of, a beautiful leather-like cover and binding with raised bands and pages gilded in a gold that wouldn’t dim, no matter how many years passed. He remembered sitting before his father and listening to his low, gravelly tone reading from the book, always starting at the foreword and then reading from whatever page Misha picked after that. And he was enthralled by the rhythm, the care with which every word had been written, and the ease with which his father would read them, having gone through the book more times than he could count even before he started reading it aloud to his son. It was the one material possession besides their wedding china that his mother had wept for when they were captured and deported following his father’s death.

It was beyond rare, had probably stopped printing long before Heavy was born, and he could remember every detail of it down to the number of pages and on which page each chapter started.

“You find this for Heavy? You search through all of Germany for Russian book for Heavy from very young?” Heavy asked, his already shaky grasp of English escaping him further as he was overcome with emotion.

“Yes.” Medic swallowed hard, looking down at his own gloves where he’d clasped his hands together. “Because… you already know that I love you very much, Misha.”

“I also love you, Doktor,” Heavy said, voice choked. He stroked his hand gently over the cover, brighter than he’d remembered it even in the shiniest of rose-tinted memories, before setting it down and bringing Medic into an embrace, having to work very hard to not crush him as so many feelings rushed through his ears and threatened to spill through his eyes. “Thank you. Heavy… cannot remember words. You have done great thing. Greatest thing.”

Medic didn’t reply verbally, just squeezing him back harder for a few moments.

They finally pulled away, and Heavy took a deep breath, mopping at his eyes and cheeks with the back of one hand. “Look what Doktor has done, has made Heavy cry like big baby,” he chided, and Medic laughed, taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket and reaching to stroke across Heavy’s stubbly cheek with his thumb to gather the tears he had missed.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said simply, so much more there behind his words that luckily did not need translated, putting his kerchief back away. “We can… take a few minutes before you give your gift, if you would like—“

Heavy shook his head, reminded all at once again about his own gift, weighty in his pocket. “I have gift here,” he said, patting at that pocket, thinking over his next words carefully. “But we must go to table before Heavy gives it.”

Medic inclined his head, but ultimately gave in and started leading the way back out into the infirmary.

Once at the operating table, Heavy surprised him by picking him up and sitting him at the end of it, moving to pull off his gloves only to press a kiss into the palm of either hand. Medic flushed at the attention, still not entirely used to the softer, more romantic parts of being in a relationship.

“Heavy has been… practicing what words to use, but… has been having difficult time with translation,” he settled in, eyes locked on his hands for now. “Plan was to ask for help from Spy, he knows Russian very well, but has not come back yet and there was not time…”

He stammered off, trying to get back on track. He took a deep breath, met Medic’s confused gaze.

“So Heavy will just ask in Russian, and Spy translates later if… if Doktor would like,” he said, and pressed a hand to his own chest for a moment, taking one last deep breath before he started in.

It was occasionally frustrating to Heavy that several of the Americans and English-speakers on his team thought he was unintelligent due to how poor his skills with the language were. In Russian, his mother tongue, his was a poet, a philosopher. There were times when even Spy had a difficult time keeping up with him and would ask him to slow down, and he’d been among the top of his class when he was getting his degree in literature, a focus on poetry. It frustrated him that he should have such a hard time communicating with his team, especially with his Doktor—the love of his life. So for the moment, he had to be content with speaking his poetry in his own language, to be eventually translated into English—or maybe directly into German, if Spy was willing to help that far—for him to understand.

In previous attempts at practicing what he meant to say, either in front of a mirror or in front of his youngest sister Bronislava, who had cried nearly every time, it had taken roughly ten minutes to get through all of what he wanted to say. This time, it was totaling up towards something closer to fifteen, slowed down as he indulged himself in kissing Medic’s hands between certain sentences. He half expected Medic to stop him, to tell him to get on with it, to get bored. But instead, Medic watched and listened to him attentively, even as he clearly didn’t understand more than the occasional word or phrase. There was an amount of confusion there behind his eyes as it became clear that Heavy was speaking about him, but he never interrupted, never looked away but for briefly when Archimedes landed lightly upon his shoulder, just listening quietly right up through to the very end, smiling when Heavy laughed a bit and frowning when Heavy grew choked up.

Finally, they were at the very end, and Heavy needed to swallow hard for the last few sentences. It was with his voice thick and his eyes wet that he gently got down on one knee and pulled his gift from his pocket, presenting the box there before Medic. ”So, my love, the light of my life, the man who saved my life and saves it every day each time he looks at me, who kills me and sends me to heaven with every kiss,” he said in Russian, and opened the box. ”Will you marry me?”

Medic had his hands clasped over his mouth, and even the doves had gone silent up above, Archimedes staring at Heavy with one beady black eye.

Medic began a breathed phrase twice in German before finally finding it. “We cannot be legally married,” he whispered.

“Is not about legal marriage,” Heavy assured, voice choked, not getting up from his place on one knee even as it began to ache, not lowering his hands even as they began to tremble. “Is about Heavy getting to promise forever.”

Medic’s eyes were rapidly welling with tears, and he moved to take his glasses off, sniffling, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve for a moment before he put them back on again.

“So?” Heavy prompted, voice weak.

“Yes, of course, yes, a million times yes!” Medic cried impatiently, moving forward to tackle Heavy in a passionate kiss, with enough force to nearly send even Heavy off balance to the ground. When he pulled away, Medic wiped at his eyes again, choking on a happy sob, taking the ring with more care than he’d even handled Heavy’s literal heart with, slipping it onto his hand with trembling fingers. “It is beautiful,” he managed, looking up at Heavy.

“Was grandfather’s, one of few things we could save,” Heavy explained, taking Medic’s hand to kiss at where the ring now sat. “Talked to sisters, to mother. All would like to meet you next time there is long holiday. Zhanna promised not to flirt with you,” he added with a wink.

Medic barked a laugh, still overwhelmed beyond words, choking back further sobs as he buried his face into Heavy’s shoulder. “I love you,” was all he managed to find the words for, weak into his pulse point and punctuated with a series of kisses.

“I love you too. Forever,” Heavy said. And he did.

Chapter Text

“Darlin’, care to spare an eye?”

Demo looked up from his own project—the last touches on some particularly finnicky wiring for a new potentially Spy-proof door panel—as Engie slid over a pad of grid paper to him. It was a page full of equations in the Engineer’s neat, blocky text. “I know I say it every time I see it, but I’d give my other eye for handwriting like this,” Demo joked, sliding the pad closer and starting to look over it critically. He squinted at it after a second. “Even if you do use the bloody imperial system still for some damn reason.”

“Just what I’m used to,” Engie shrugged, sitting back and rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness that came from hunching over a workbench for stretches of time.

Demo continued his way down the page, eye darting back and forth quickly over it before stalling for a few seconds near the bottom. “Twelve inches in a foot?” he asked for confirmation, glancing back up at Engie.

“Yup.”

“Made a mistake right here at the end, Toymaker, wrote the equation right but the answer’s by eleven, not by twelve.”

“Damn,” Engie sighed, taking the pad back and starting to erase. “Thanks, I would’ve missed that for sure.”

“Half the reason I’m here,” Demo returned easily, moving back to his own project. “Good on you for wanting to show your work, at least, makes checkin’ it a damn sight easier.”

“I noticed that, that you never write down anything,” Engie said, looking up at the way Demo worked without any kind of guide or diagram.

“Don’t need it. Keeping around paper’s a fire hazard in my line’a work, and takes up time besides. Nah laddie, all the diagrams I need are right up here.” He tapped at his own temple. “Only things I have hanging up in my workshop are a periodic table and a fire extinguisher.”

“You don’t have that memorized?” Engie asked, speaking even as he redid the math on the paper in front of him.

“I do, but just the order. Could probably copy it down if I had to, but, eh. Saves time to have a cheat in front of me.”

Engie looked up at Demo appraisingly. “I really do think it would be worth your time to take an IQ test,” he said, as he’d said a few times before. “Certified genius looks awful good on a job application.”

“So does the last name DeGroot, darl, I can already get a job damn near anywhere I bloody well want, even with an eye knocked out and a half-dead liver,” he laughed. He flicked a switch and snapped shut the box, holding it closed while he pressed a few buttons, hearing them beep and watching the lights flicker back at him accordingly. “Should be all set with this.”

Engie put aside his pencil and stood up, moving to pick up a tray of tools and screws. “Alright, might as well install it now,” he said.

Demo nodded, stretching and grinning as there were a few answering pops in his back. “Lead the way, lad,” he said cheerfully.

He did so, making sure the other door was unlocked before they let the main one close and lock behind them. The instillation of the new panel was a quick affair, especially with Demo’s expert hands, and it was only half an hour before Engie was screwing it in place and testing it out. The door clicked open, and they grinned at each other, satisfied.

“Now, I’d hate to tell you how to do your job,” Demo started.

“But?” Engie prompted.

“But you know how he keeps breaking in here, right?”

Engie shook his head, brows furrowing above his goggles.

“Well, he can just unscrew these,” he said, pointing at the screws holding the box closed and to the wall. “Then pull the thing open, tinker with it how he pleases. You need something more secure than screws.”

Engie blinked, surprised. He hadn’t thought of that. “What, so… bolts?”

“Nah. Hand me that,” he said, and took the power drill from Engie. “Here’s what you do, some foolproof security solutions.”

He put the drill back against the screws and ran it, Engie immediately recoiling at the horrible noise as Demo stripped the screw, grinding the grooves away into nothing.

“Hell or high water, not a damn thing you can do about a stripped screw,” he said two screws in, and Engie had to admit that he had a point, even as he mourned the damage that doing so would do to his power drill.

“Might need to replace parts of that now,” he complained.

“Solly will break it within the weak, darl,” Demo pointed out, voice raised over the sound of the drill. “Good as scrap anyways.”

He finished off his little job, and they went back into the workshop for Demo to collect his wiring kit and for Engie to get back to his own math. “Care to stick around a while longer?” Engie invited, a little hope in his voice, pushing his goggles up for a moment.

“Ach, how am I supposed to say no to a face like that?” Demo teased, taking a seat again and watching as Engie kept writing. He rolled his eye after a second. “You and your damn imperial system nonsense, yards this, pounds that—“

“Well, I’m more pounds than yards anyways,” Engie joked, grinning up at Demo in a way that was vaguely self-deprecating.

When he did, he found that Demo was giving him A Look. “We gonna need to have another talk, lad?” he asked, voice nearly devoid of humor.

Engie huffed, looking back at his work, pulling his goggles back down. “Never needed to have one in the first place,” he grumbled back.

“I disagree,” Demo said a little sharply. “Love, I don’t know how many times I need to say it, but there’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”

“There just ain’t anything right with it, neither,” Engie muttered, starting to flush.

“You’re an attractive and intelligent man, Dell Conagher, and I’m lucky that I get to date you,” Demo said firmly.

“I’m half as wide as I am tall and balding, Tavish DeGroot,” Engie replied impatiently.

“Doesn’t very well damn matter, because I think you’re a feckin’ stud for it,” Demo snapped. “What’s weight got to do with anything in practicality, love?”

“It doesn’t bother you that you can’t lift me up to hug me?” Engie pointed out.

Demo stood up abruptly. “That’s a bloody challenge if I ever heard one, Conagher, pencil down and on your feet.”

Engie immediately began to protest. “You’ll hurt yourself trying, darlin’, don’t you dare,” he said quickly as Demo rounded the table.

“Didn’t nary ask a question, Conagher, I said on your feet,” Demo said, twice as demandingly, and Engie hesitantly obliged.

And to his surprise, Demo first pulled his goggles off from over his head, then put them and his hardhat on the desk next to them. Then, in one smooth motion, he hefted Engie under both arms and lifted him into the air, kissing him soundly on the mouth once they were eye-to-eyes.

Admittedly, the sudden departure from the ground startled him, made him lean forward, clutching at Demo’s shoulders with both hands as if to catch himself, surprised at the way the difference in height seemed to dramatically change the feeling of their chests pressing together. And for a moment, he felt less embarrassed by the feeling of Demo’s firm chest and stomach against his own softer one, instead left dizzy and a little giddy at the ease with which a Demo had lifted him off the ground, and idly enjoying the way Demo’s stubble felt against his face.

They broke apart with a smack, a sound similar to a jar opening, and Demo smirked at him for a second, joy glittering in his eye for a moment until he lowered Engie back to stand firmly on both feet.

“Any further questions, Toymaker?” he asked, full of a cheeky confidence, and Engie found himself struck dumb by it, simply shaking his head for a second until his brain stopped short-circuiting and words came back to him.

“Not at all, you were right,” he replied. “You were right.”

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that Scout was all that surprised to have Pyro end up as basically his best friend. He’d secretly been hoping that he’d get to be friends with a few of his coworkers when he’d taken the job, and Pyro was pretty close to him in age and shared a few of the same interests as him so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect to get along. It was just…

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it was a little bit of an honor.

They hung out in plenty of places—watching TV or playing card games in the common room, hopping into a car and heading into town to watch the latest movie once or twice (or like eight times if they both really liked it), sometimes out back to start a bonfire or something for the hell of it.

But Pyro’s room tended to be his favorite hangout location of theirs, because that was the only place where they were okay with taking off their mask and suit.

Pyro had tried very hard not to make a big deal out of it the first time they’d unmasked in front of Scout. He’d been confused about what they were doing unclasping the bottom of it, since they didn’t have any food with them or anything and that was the only reason they usually did that—to sneak bites of food beneath. But then they shucked the whole thing up and over their head, shaking their head to re-orient themselves, sending their hair—he’d never thought about what Pyro’s hair had to be like before, how had he never thought of that?—bouncing around their face loosely, half-flattened but clearly very naturally curly. Pyro had to take a moment to fish something else out of their mask, a cap of some kind, probably to hold their hair down, and they clearly were trying very hard to avoid eye contact, nervous.

Scout, for once, was at a loss for words, mouth flapping in a way that was probably pretty similar to a fish for something like thirty seconds straight.

“Hey,” he finally managed, pointing at his own face where assorted freckles dotted his cheeks. “We match.”

Pyro glanced up at him, a little startled, then barked a laugh, and it sounded so much better when it wasn’t muffled. They hesitated a few more moments before they pulled off their gloves as well and set all of the newly-shed pieces of uniform down on their cluttered desk, fidgeting severely. “I guess so,” Pyro confirmed, and Scout had never noticed before that they had a very slight accent, too light for him to pick out what it had to be. “I’d never, I couldn’t tell before. With the…”

They pantomimed something up near their eyes, words stalling on them. It took Scout a few seconds to get what they meant. “With the mask?” he asked for confirmation. They nodded. “Oh. Huh. So it’s kinda like your first time seeing me too, huh?”

Pyro laughed. “I guess so,” they repeated, scratching at their stubble self-consciously, or maybe just because they finally could, and then Scout made an effort to both just move on with the rest of what all they were planning on doing when they hung out and also with not staring too much.

The jump to stripping off their suit as far as the tank top and thick-but-tight sweatpants they wore underneath was done a few weeks later when Scout had demonstrated that he wasn’t planning on saying anything, and he was only a little surprised by the plethora of burn marks and scars dotting their skin. He’d noticed an awful lot of scars all over Pyro, and he figured it was probably from when Pyro had been working as a mercenary before Mann Co., something he was aware had happened but hadn’t been able to coax Pyro into talking about. But it was nothing heinous, nothing that he figured warranted a full-body suit to hide it.

He tried to work out how exactly to ask Pyro why they wore the suit without being weird or rude. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

“I appreciate it, you know,” Pyro said one day unprompted, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. They were sat a foot or so apart on Pyro’s bed and drawing, Scout sketching out a dramatic rendition of a particularly funny pose he’d seen the enemy Sniper land in when he died and Pyro apparently drawing yet another unrealistically bright technicolor landscape.

“What?” Scout asked, glancing over at them, more obviously than he’d been occasionally doing the whole time they’d been drawing together. They tended to do this really adorable thing where they stuck their tongue out a little bit when they were concentrating, and Scout had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from smiling every time he saw it.

“That you don’t…” They hesitated. “…I dunno. That you don’t try and guess, now that you’ve seen me.”

Scout tilted his head. “Huh?”

Pyro’s gaze flickered to him and back down again almost too quickly to see. “You keep… not calling me anything,” they said. “Except for dude sometimes, but, you call everyone that anyways. That you still try and use “pal” or “buddy” instead of “man” or “lady” or whatever.”

Scout blinked.

Admittedly, there had been a good month or two right after he joined the team where he didn’t know how to refer to Pyro, and had just gone with using “he”, figuring it would be the less offensive assumption for someone in a mercenary career. Then at some point Engie finally sat him down and explained things to him, and after about a week of stumbling he finally got in the practice of using “they” and other words that weren’t particularly for a guy or girl. He couldn’t say that he really got it in a lot of ways, but he’d worked hard to learn the rules on how to be polite, because he figured he owed them that at the very minimum, if nothing else.

“What do you mean?” he asked after a second.

Pyro turned the marker in their hand over and over again. “Back before I started wearing the suit,” they started to explain, gesturing loosely at the suit in question, laid down on the chair at their desk like a deflated second Pyro (and admittedly sometimes scaring the shit out of Scout when he forgot it was there and noticed it in his periphery). “I would try and tell people I worked with that I wasn’t a guy or a girl, and they’d say sure, whatever, who cares, as long as you can kill people. But they’d look at me and start referring to me as a guy anyways. Sometimes a girl, but not usually. And only as… as neither, or both, or whatever, when I corrected them and maybe for a little while after.” They scratched at their stubble again. It was getting longer, and they’d probably shave pretty soon, if Scout knew them. “And it’s just… I always wondered what it was. I’d try and go clean-shaven all the time, wax, I wore makeup once or twice even to try and balance it out, but all that did was make them refer to me as a girl more, or look at me weird. I couldn’t seem to find the middle. So eventually I just put on the suit so nobody would… get hints anymore.”

Scout frowned, but didn’t know exactly what to say. “That’s the fuckin’ worst,” he decided on.

“I know, right?!” Pyro gushed, as if the dam had broken and they were finally allowed to feel mad about it. They sighed hard, pushing their hair out of their eyes, even if they just bounced right back into place a moment later. “They always respected me professionally, but what’s it take for a person to get called the right name, y’know!? Did they want me to wear a stupid t-shirt with instructions on it!?” Another sigh, then they looked up at Scout with those deep brown eyes of theirs, the ones that flooded Scout with an inexplicable sense of comfort. “And I guess I just wanted to say thanks. For not… I dunno. Being weird.”

Scout nodded, hesitated. “So I’ve been doin’ that right?” he asked suddenly, unable to stop himself.

Pyro smiled at him warmly. “You’ve been doing great, probably the best job anyone’s ever done,” they assured, and Scout knew his own smile was probably goofy and stupid looking, but he couldn’t bite it back.

“Thanks,” he said, having to look away, and Pyro laughed.

“And, I dunno. There was also this weird thing where I tried to date for a while and people kept not taking me seriously, then one day someone finally gave me a shot but got all weird and just straight up asked me what equipment I had on the second date and it was the worst.”

“I mean, none’a their fuckin’ business is what unless they’re asking if they should pack a condom,” Scout scoffed.

“Right!? It just sucked because most people would say “oh, I’m just into girls” or try and like, swing it as if I’m a guy and therefore it was totally cool, and only twice did I find someone who would go for whoever and one got weird about it and the other one is the person I took on two dates. Only person who ever gave me any real respect about it could only go on one date with me, and she was only cool because she kind of had some special circumstances going on too, then she had a contract abroad and we had to cut things off. And I just—I dunno. I wish people who went either way would… I dunno.”

“Hey, I fit that bill, and I’d totally date you,” Scout said, and then realized what he’d just said out loud.

Pyro was staring at him openly, mouth a little agape. They tried to start talking twice without success before finally managing it on the third attempt. “You’re bisexual?” they asked, a little surprised.

Scout immediately began backtracking. “I mean, I, I dunno,” he said quickly, looking away, face on fire, “I, it isn’t like I’ve ever really even gotten to date any, anyone but a couple girls and stuff, and, I, thinking and doing are kinda two different things, and y’know, labels and, and…”

They raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, yeah, I think I’m bi,” he finally admitted. “But you can’t fuckin’ tell anyone, got it? The guys already get all up in my grill about callin’ me gay all the time and, and Medic asking when the coming out party is and, and Sniper going all “what’s with the pride meeting?” and shit like that, I just, I don’t need any more of that fuckin’ nonsense, okay?”

“You know half of them do those jokes because they’re not straight either, right?” Pyro asked flatly.

Scout blinked. “The Doc and Snipes are gay?” he asked, surprised.

Pyro gave him a look.

“…Okay, I guess that’s, that tracks,” he admitted. “But—how many, who all’s…?”

“Far as I know, just Medic, Sniper, Heavy, and Spy, and those last two are also bi or something like that, and I think Demo doesn’t really swing any way,” Pyro said. “You really didn’t know? I thought they were pretty out about it.”

“Nobody tells me anything!” Scout said defensively.

“That’s fair. But… I dunno, I’m obviously not gonna go out and break out the news with confetti and streamers for you, but… I think they wouldn’t really care,” Pyro shrugged. “If anything they’d just try and wingman for you more.”

Scout thought about that for a while. “Man, what are the odds that we’d get a goddamn queer collective out in the middle of a fuckin’ desert?” he asked suddenly.

“Have you maybe considered that the people who’d go out into a desert away from civilization might be queer people trying to be more themselves where they can’t get as much backlash?” Pyro suggested.

“…Shit. That makes a lot of sense actually,” he admitted.

Quiet for a few seconds. “Let’s circle back around to that part where you said you’d totally go for someone like me,” Pyro said suddenly.

Scout pulled his hat down over his face, feeling it go red again. “Shut the fuck up, dude,” he protested, annoyed at how whiny it came out. “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”

“Do you think about making out with me a lot?” Pyro asked, tone clearly teasing now, and Scout groaned.

“Oh my god, shut up,” he muttered. “I come out to you and you just start fuckin’ bullying me? That’s the play?”

“Duh,” Pyro laughed, and pinched his cheek, making him flush further as he batted their hand away.

“I’m just sayin’ that you’re good-looking and funny and anyone would be lucky to date you, okay?” Scout finally said, trying not to let more embarrassment flood through his voice.

That got Pyro to grin sheepishly, picking up their drawing again. “You’re sweet,” was all they managed to reply with, quieter now.

“The sweetest guy on the planet,” Scout agreed, picking up his own drawing as well, and Pyro elbowed him in the ribs, making him squawk.

He ended up coming out to Engie offhandedly during their lunch break about a week later, and he only even managed it because Pyro was sitting and eating next to him, their knee pressing into his own and bringing him enough comfort to broach the topic. Engie was immediately supportive, and ended the conversation with a pat on his shoulder and by saying he was proud of him for having to courage to say something.

That gave Scout a burst of confidence, and he ended up dragging Pyro around for the rest of the day as he came out to other teammates as well, first Demo and Soldier right after battle (Soldier needed an additional few moments of explanation but overall they were both glad to hear the news), then Medic and Heavy where they were sitting playing chess in the common room (once Heavy got past the language barrier, he offered Scout a solemn high-five in solidarity, which he accepted gratefully). Sniper was reserved for the next day, outside where he was setting up the grill to take his turn making the team dinner (he was a little awkward for a moment, clearly a bit confused and not having expected anyone to come talk to him, but once he caught on to what Scout was saying he offered one of his rare smiles and a few supportive words). 

Oddly enough, Spy was the one that made him the most nervous for reasons he couldn’t pin down, maybe partially because he didn’t bring Pyro along, but he probably handled it the most easily, treating it as no big deal at all, simply pausing for a moment before giving a flippant “Alright. Was that all, mon ami?” and shooing him back out of his smoking room shortly after.

“Look at you,” Pyro said appraisingly when he showed up to hang out in their room, clapping him on the shoulder, clearly noticing the fact that he was practically glowing.

“Didn’t even get beat up or shoved in a locker,” he said cheerfully.

Pyro looked at him for another second or two before they finally just swept him up in a hug, squeezing him almost too-tight in their excitement. “I’m so proud of you!” they exclaimed softly, and he returned the hug, burying his face in their hair when he became sure that he wouldn’t get in trouble for it, surprised and delighted by how very nice it smelled. Vanilla-y and a little coconut-y, warm like everything else about them.

It was only through the combination of circumstances—riding the nervous high from being newly-out for the first time in his life, and being all wrapped up in a hug with his best friend, and his nose being greeted by the smell of the very appealing shampoo they apparently used—that he got the exact level of confidence to do what he did next. They pulled away from the hug finally to look up at him with that same proud smile, and he leaned down and kissed them square on the mouth.

It was three or four seconds before he pulled away again with a tiny, almost-inaudible little smeck. He smiled down at them, feeling the wildly spinning combination of euphoria and fear and excitement and apprehension and thrill and terror swirling around in his chest. Their lips were slightly parted, and they stared up at him with wonder. If he ever drew the moment, he would probably draw Pyro’s pupils in the shape of little hearts, the way they were looking at him just then.

“Oh,” they said breathlessly, and laughed a little. “So you were serious when you said you’d go for someone like me, then?”

Scout laughed, couldn’t stifle it, rising up through his chest alongside his heart. “Yeah, duh,” he said, voice tinted a little higher than usual.

“Well shit, then get back down here,” Pyro said, and tugged on his shirt, and he readily obliged.

Chapter Text

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The sirens were blaring, practically ear-splitting over every loudspeaker and through every earpiece, including Scout’s, which was lying on the floor not far away from him. ”Enemy RED in the base!” was the tinny, pre-recorded alarm message, and Scout could hear the rest of his team scrambling through the various hallways all across the base, desperately searching for whichever member of the enemy team managed to weasel their way in through their defenses.

He was definitely working through Scout’s defenses pretty quickly as well, but that was to be expected.

The mouth against his own worked with more determination, more conviction than the entire rest of the Scout’s team combined. Scout’s wrists were both held pinned up against the wall, more for the sake of deniability than anything else, and also because the Sniper seemed to enjoy the way that Scout fought to close the space between them again every time he pulled back for breath, flashing him half-annoyed half-desperate looks under the harsh red light of the sirens.

“C’mon,” he griped when the Sniper remained pulled away for just a touch too long, voice cracking just slightly where he tried to keep it at a murmur in case any camera’s microphones could pick it up under the klaxon, even here in a blind spot. The Sniper’s shirt was an almost alarmingly bright shade of red under the beam of the siren-light, and kicked his heartbeat into high gear, giving him a burst of adrenaline that made him fight to get a hand free for real so he could pull the man back in himself. The Sniper finally relented, sinking back forward again and kissing until his lungs ached and his head spun, drowning out the sounds and the lights.

Except, suddenly, the sound of boots, much too close, and they parted again, both panting severely. “Ought to go to the bar in town on Friday,” the Sniper hissed under his breath, far too hurried. “The one with the black paint on the door. Heard they’re having a special.”

“By the motels?” Scout asked, lip quirking despite being red and a bit swollen from where the Sniper had been biting at it. “With the jukebox?”

“Exactly,” the Sniper growled, grinning right back. “Out of uniform and all that. Ditch the hat and the vest and I’d look like a regular bloke. Might get away with it. You could too.”

“Our Demo goes there sometimes during the week,” Scout said.

“Then Saturday,” Sniper tried, and nipped just under Scout’s ear, once and twice, hard enough to make him gasp but not hard enough to bruise or leave a real mark. “Saturday, Sunday, I don’t care. I don’t bloody care.”

“Wow, giving up on that drink special? God, it almost sounds like you got a crush on me or somethin’,” Scout joked, trying not to seem too desperate even as he melted under the attention, voice wavering.

The Sniper pulled back and gave him a hard look, raising an eyebrow. “Now where would you get that idea?” he asked dryly, just loud enough to be heard over the sirens, glasses glinting under the spinning lights, the cacophony of panic around them leaving him largely unphased. “Me? For a BLU? You’re delusional. Maybe I just want you to go to the bar so I can kick your teeth in during my free time, how ‘bout that?”

“I’ll think about it,” Scout teased, and pressed forward, trying to get just one more kiss out of the man, but Sniper leaned back, glancing out to their left at the sound of shouting.

“No time,” the Sniper said apologetically. “Sorry.”

Scout did look a little beat up about it, but hid it well behind another little smile. “It happens. Just get on with it.”

“Really,” Sniper said, shifting his weight. “I’m sorry we have to—“

“I said to get on with it, you goddamn RED,” Scout teased, smile widening for only a moment before the fear of the sound of boots right around the corner drove it away again.

Sniper nodded fretfully. “Right.” He swallowed hard, took a breath, and his demeanor shifted, pressing Scout back against the wall with some force, face twisting into an angry sneer. “Tell me where the—“ was as far as he got into his sentence, voice raised, before Scout’s own Engineer rounded the corner, spotted him, and unloaded three shots from his pistol into the man. One landed in his lower ribcage, one a little higher, until the last connected with his head, sending him sprawling down to the ground away from Scout.

“Scooter!” the Engineer exclaimed, hurrying over to the Scout, gun still pointed at the Sniper just in case. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Scout said, a good facsimile of annoyed, rubbing at his wrist idly. “Yeah, I’m good. Bastard surprised me is all.”

“What happened?” Engie demanded, finally putting his gun back away as the Sniper’s body disappeared.

“Clocked me in the mouth right when I turned around, slammed me into the wall and tried to get me to say where our briefcase is,” Scout recounted easily, throwing in a wince for good measure. “Real low, sending in the Sniper on a suicide mission like that. REDs must be getting pretty desperate.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Engie said, clapping his flesh-and-blood hand on Scout’s shoulder amicably as the sirens finally stopped and the regular lights kicked back on. “Sheesh, the man really did a number on your lip, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Scout laughed, and slugged the Engineer on the shoulder as he passed by. “Dispenser still up by the intel room?”

“Sure is.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Once he was out of sight, Scout did not in fact go to the dispenser about his lip. Instead, he went back to his own room, and stayed there for the rest of the night, staring up at the ceiling and sighing to himself like a chick in a stupid goddamn romance novel.

He marked off Saturday on his calendar.

Chapter Text

“Firebug, care to pass me the—“

The screwdriver was in his glove before he could even finish his sentence.

“Thankin’ you kindly,” he said, rolling back beneath the truck.

“No problem,” Pyro replied.

As far as Engie was aware, Pyro took their mask off partially in a grand total of three situations, and fully in only two. They took it off fully when they needed to bathe and needed to cut their hair, and partially when they ate, when they used the telephone in privacy, and when they were alone with Engie in his workshop. Even then, the last one had taken a considerable amount of time to be entrusted with, and was only for ease of communication (since Engie knew his hearing was starting to go, a combination of age, bad genes, and having worked with guns for most of his life).

This was for a couple of reasons. For one, after so many years of wearing it near-constantly, Pyro felt a little vulnerable when their mask was off. There was also the issue of Pyro often getting overwhelmed by too many bright lights, too much sound and commotion, too many smells and actions and conversations at once—the mask was a good way of minimizing things. Pyro had also expressed that they had a vague discomfort with their own face and features, and would rather avoid thinking about it, or others being able to discern the details of what they looked like. “I don’t want anyone to have hints,” they’d said once, and Engie could understand that to an extent.

As it was, there were only two reasons the Engineer had the privilege of knowing what any part of Pyro looked like and getting to speak with them so often—the first being that, as a legacy Engineer, the third Conagher to work with Mann Co. in any capacity, meant he was practically the first person to be contacted when they’d gone and assembled new teams, with Pyro being among the first new recruits. He’d spent quite a lot of time talking to them before anyone else came to join the team, and as a result he’d been entrusted with a lot of information, and given the task of getting to introduce them to new people who hadn’t gotten used to listening to someone through a mask.

Once, they’d told Engie that he was their first real friend. That had really solidified things between them into a steady kind of friendship that Engie hadn’t had the privilege of since his years at university.

The other reason Pyro tended to like talking to Engineer the best out of the rest of the team—

”You worked through dinner again, by the way,” Pyro said in Spanish, words flowing a lot more easily.

”I know, I know. By the time I realized I was late, I would’ve missed it anyways,” Engie replied in kind, words only tainted by his drawl.

”If you collapse under that truck, it would take me a while to realize it, you know,” Pyro commented, and Engie could practically hear the way their arms were crossed over their chest, head tilted disapprovingly. When they were in a mask, their theatrical gestures were helpful to discern their emotions. Once out of it, they just looked a little bit silly. ”Hours, days.”

”You’d notice around the same time that you and Scout kicked the door down and demanded my help with the scheme of the week,” Engie chuckled.

“Oh! By the way, did you know Scout can speak Spanish?” Pyro said, switching back to English suddenly.

“No, I didn’t, since when?” he asked, surprised.

“I dunno what dialect it has to be, sounds, ah, I think Puerto Rican?” Pyro said. “He says he learned it in school then learned it better from talking to the other kids where he lived growing up. Spy kept saying it wasn’t real Spanish, but he learned from Spain anyway, so what does he know?”

“Didn’t think there were a lot of Spanish-speaking folks in Boston,” Engie said.

”There’s a bit of everyone everywhere,” Pyro said easily. “His accent is terrible, though.”

Engie laughed. “Yeah?”

“I mean, yours is worse, but…”

“Really? That bad?”

“You talk so slow!” Pyro groaned. “In English, in Spanish, no matter what you’re always lagging… behind… like this… all… the time. Scout is the only other person around here who talks like we have somewhere to be, you know?”

“Think he’ll catch on?” Engie asked, rolling back and fishing for a moment before he managed to find the oil rag he was using. “That that‘s the reason I can always understand what you’re saying and nobody else can half the time?”

”My God I hope so,” Pyro groaned. ”I’d rather he figures it out himself and doesn’t say anything. I kind of like having the privacy of being able to talk in peace, you know? I hope Spy doesn’t figure it out first, but that’s where the smart money is.”

”I’ll put my money on Scout, he’s brighter than people give him credit for,” Engie shrugged.

”Ha, I’ll take that bet!”

Chapter Text

The record player was the best purchase Scout had ever made.

They were laid out next to each other on the floor of Scout’s room, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, Scout’s fingers twined together with his own. They were laid out on the rug as opposed to Scout’s bed because the bastard had just dumped his largely-cyan pile of laundry there for folding and promptly outright forgotten to do the folding, and his desk’s chair was piled with loose comic books, and the little sofa was housing a backpack, a box of snack foods, his bat and headset, and about a dozen other assorted objects of varying levels of importance. In the record player was some album Scout had picked up—one of the newer albums in his collection, run about two years previously. Besides the latest hits, he actually mostly listened to a lot of older jazz, claiming it as a relic of his early and later childhood.

Scout’s favorite part about this album, apparently, were the titles of the songs. Sniper was more a fan of one or two of the songs themselves.

“The one after this is my favorite of theirs on this album, I think,” Sniper commented halfway through the fourth song.

“What’s your favorite overall?” Scout asked, sounding a little amused.

“Hmm. Probably “I Wanna Be Free”, from the first album,” he replied after a moment of thought. “It did well back in Oz, apparently.”

Scout nodded at that, Sniper could tell vaguely in his periphery. “It’s alright,” he allowed, and then they fell silent again.

Sniper never really knew what he’d be doing by that point in his life. When he was twenty, if you’d asked him where he’d be ten years later, he’d probably come back with a simple and confident reply of “Dead.” If you’d asked him the same thing five years ago, he probably would’ve given the same answer. Now, he didn’t know what to think. Thirty-five seemed ages away, unachievable, but he’d already been wrong before. He hadn’t expected to ever get around to coming to terms with the whole “liking blokes” thing, let alone dating, let alone…

Did people still say “going steady”? He was fairly sure they didn’t, not really. Regardless.

Scout’s hand was warm in his own, a calming presence rather than a vaguely nerve-wracking one.

Scout huffed a laugh as the intro to the next song played and he realized which one it was, while Sniper just smiled.

“Oh I could hide, ‘neath the wing, of the bluebird as it sings,” he murmur-sung along, looking over and squeezing Scout’s hand pointedly at the word “bluebird”, making Scout scoff and elbow him, face going red in a pleasing contrast to his shirt. Sniper smiled, looking back up at the ceiling again, and found it hard to keep from humming along to the song.

This was definitely a much more… normal lifestyle than he ever thought he’d have. He essentially worked a nine-to-five (or an eight-to-four, technically), with a steady fixed income and a set of coworkers. He got weekends off, and two weeks away in the summer, and nearly three in the winter. Death, while a nearly everyday occurrence, wasn’t a concern for him, and he was even permitted sick days (although he never bothered taking them). And he’d ended up together with one of his coworkers, in a relationship for almost a full year by then. Sniper had even told his parents about him.

It wasn’t enough for his dad, of course it wasn’t, but his mum seemed proud of him, of the progress he’d made. Away from turbulence and into steadiness, even if it wasn’t necessarily law school like she’d suggested during the better part of his growing up.

He’d mentioned that to Scout, whose only comment was a laugh and him saying that Sniper would probably look hot in a suit and tie.

Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean?

He started mouthing along with the next words lightly, with “to a daydream believer—and a homecoming queen?”, unable to articulate exactly what it was about the rhythm that so appealed to him.

He was happy. It occurred to him all at once, startling like a lightning bolt. He was happy. Maybe a bit uncomfortable with lying on the ground, getting a bit peckish as dinnertime approached, somewhat sleepy, but looking into his heart, he didn’t find his nearly-omnipresent nerves, or irritation, or fear of the future or the past or stagnation in the present. He just felt happy.

He turned his head to look over at Scout and found that he was already looking at Sniper, had been watching him mouth along with the words, and that he was smiling lightly. His dimple was making an appearance, and he glanced up to look Sniper in the eye. He was fairly sure Scout hadn’t had that many freckles when he’d first shown up in their desert, years ago.

Years ago. What a strange thought.

“Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean?” Scout sung along quietly, maybe teasing him, maybe just also caught in Sniper’s mild euphoria, the miniature heaven he’d found himself in.

To a daydream believer, and a homecoming queen?

Chapter Text

At least Scout had finally settled down, Sniper thought to himself, carding his fingers through his hair.

Sniper had seen him outside having a run, heading in circles around the base and surrounding land at a pretty brisk pace. It was something Scout did sometimes to clear his head, and Sniper would catch sight of him doing that pretty regularly, and so wasn’t too much concerned. Then, an hour later, when he looked outside and saw Scout still running despite the fact that it was getting dark, he’d gone outside.

And it hadn’t startled him that Scout was out of breath—jogging for an hour would do that to anyone, even someone as in-shape as Scout—but it startled him to see that Scout was breathing so heavily through his mouth. Then he realized Scout had probably been doing that for some time, because all at once he noticed that Scout’s nose was bright red and very swollen, blood all across the bottom half of his face.

He hadn’t even asked at first, just taking Scout by the wrist and pulling him back to his camper. He’d given Scout a glass of water (which was drained in about five gulps), cleaned the blood off his face (“Oh, shit, that was bleeding again? I thought that was just sweat—“), and gotten an ice pack for his nose.

“What happened?” Sniper asked once all that was taken care of, tone leaving no room for argument.

Scout’s head fell, and he remained silent.

“Bilby, if you don’t tell me who did this, I’m going to head inside that base and start putting holes in the first bloke I find,” he said matter-of-factly, aware that his voice was intimidating and trying very hard to keep anger out of his tone. “What. Happened?”

“I got in a fight,” Scout started, speaking slowly, carefully. Sniper was tempted to interrupt, to say yeah, clearly, but he didn’t, just letting Scout talk. “Spy was just, he was getting on my case again, and, and saying all kinds of fuckin’… garbage. About… just, it was… look, he was just on my case again, alright? And I, I mouthed off, and then there was a fight, and half the team came in to break it up, and I… went out to take a run, and then I just, I don’t fuckin’ wanna go back in there.”

“Alright,” Sniper said quietly, putting a cautious hand on his shoulder in what he hopes was a comforting motion. “Alright, you can… stay here tonight.”

“But you—“ Scout started to protest, but he cut himself off, setting his jaw.

“What? What is it?” Sniper gently prompted.

“You said you don’t want me in here on weekdays,” Scout said quietly, unable to look at him.

Sniper’s heart ached. “When did I say that?”

“Last week. You said…” Scout started hesitantly, glancing up at him.

Silence. “Mate, I, I meant about sleeping over, since we have work in the morning and neither of us gets to bed when you do, we’re always up talking until late, I—you’re always welcome in here, I just wanted to make sure we were both getting enough sleep,” he clarified.

“But we’ve got work tomorrow,” Scout tried next, looking increasingly lost.

“We can make exceptions,” Sniper shrugged, “it’s alright. As long as we don’t make a habit of it.”

Scout nodded hesitantly, still clearly unsure. “So I can sleep over?”

“Yeah. ‘Course.”

To be honest, Sniper wasn’t particularly used to having to tiptoe around Scout. He wasn’t in the practice of being particularly rude to people, and it generally took something excessively mean to get Scout upset anyways, so it wasn’t a concern. Scout had a pretty thick skin. Except… apparently he didn’t. Because all at once he seemed hesitant, jumpy, visibly trying to make himself seem smaller, even if he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

He urged Scout to go ahead and use his shower, found some of Scout’s pajamas that he’d left over and passed them through the door. Soon enough Scout was in bed with him, settled in against him, curled around Sniper’s arm with his head on his chest. And finally he seemed relaxed, as ease, like he wasn’t just sitting and waiting for Sniper to kick him out. When the nervousness melted away, it seemed that Scout was left exhausted, tired down to his bones.

“Snipes?” Scout asked quietly, voice very soft, after a long few moments of quiet.

Sniper hummed in answer to show he was still awake, going back to fiddling with Scout’s hair. It was very soft, even a bit damp, and it smelled like his own shampoo, something that made his chest feel warm the more he thought about it. “Yeah?” he asked after another moment when Scout didn’t immediately go to speak.

“Am I stupid?”

Silence. Stillness. Sniper had frozen entirely as the words and the weight behind them sunk into his mind. “No,” was all he managed after a second, words clogging his throat and choking him.

Scout seemed to sink. “I won’t get mad if you tell the truth,” he murmured, and he just, he sounded so very small in that moment, and it broke Sniper’s heart.

“Scout, that is the truth. Of course you aren’t stupid,” Sniper continued, free hand moving to squeeze Scout on the shoulder.

“Snipes, I can barely fuckin’ read, I almost didn’t make it through high school, I can’t ever remember anything important and I hardly even know English let alone—“

“Spy called you stupid?” Sniper cut in, just to be sure.

“And some other stuff,” Scout confirmed quietly. “But everyone calls me stupid. Because I am stupid.”

“No, you aren’t,” Sniper said firmly, anger bubbling away deep in his chest, but he pushed it back down for the moment, taking a deep breath and setting it aside for later. “You’re not stupid. Just because you don’t think quite the same as everyone else, that doesn’t make you stupid.”

“What if it does?”

“Bilby, it doesn’t,” he insisted.

“Well I’m sure not smart,” Scout scoffed. “I don’t—everyone here is either really smart or really good at what they do, and I’m just not, I’m just fast, I’m not cool or good at fighting or, or smart, and I, I’m not like the rest of you guys, I’m just dead weight, I don’t belong here—“

“Yes you do,” Sniper said, working hard not to snap. “You’re one of the most clever blokes around here. Not book-smart, the real kind of smart. The kind where you think of things faster, notice things, react quickly. And you’re a bloody genius at reading people when it’s important to, you’re almost always the first one to notice when someone’s acting fishy, and every time Miss Pauling comes around you always get a read on how she’s doing even though she doesn’t talk to you much—“

“Spy can do that, and Heavy can do that—“ Scout mumbled.

“But they’re also both at least twenty years older than you and either have a degree or were literally trained to read people. With everything working against you, you’re still bloody bright.”

“Clever, huh, can’t even read—“

“You slammed your way through the entirety of that Ghost D.A. series in a weekend,” Sniper pointed out.

“The kids version.”

“It was a thirty-six volume series with about two hundred pages per book. You realize that’s still impressive, right?”

“I still barely made it through school—“

“You realize that technically the Doc never went to school?” Sniper interrupted.

A pause. “What?”

“He never went to school. He was in through… what do you lot call it, elementary school? Then he was homeschooled for the rest of the required time, then he got an apprenticeship from his family and cheated his medical exams to get his license. He never even went to a real university, he just skipped to doing a residency.”

“Well he still knows what he’s doing. He’s batshit crazy, yeah, way too excited whenever he gets a dead body to mess around and experiment on, but he can only do that because he’s smart. What the hell do I know how to do?”

“Talk to people, get through places efficiently, what can hold your weight and how to balance, you always remember where you are and where you were and how to get there, you always know what people mean when they talk to you about things even if they’re bad at explaining, you’re the most empathetic bloody person I’ve ever met in my life—that’s intelligence. You’re intelligent.”

“Snipes, I can’t ever remember anything,” Scout all but snapped. “What’s the point of reading fast or knowing what people are talking about when I can’t think all the way back to breakfast, don’t know what day of the week it is half the time, always forget my chores and what I’ve gotta do for the day?”

Sniper took a deep breath. “Scout. That’s still okay. That still doesn’t make you stupid. Truckie forgets simple things like that too. So does Spy. They aren’t smarter than you, they’ve just got more practice at working around it. Truckie almost never remembers meals, Spy records things to listen to them back later.”

“He speaks like six languages,” Scout muttered.

“And he’s an arsehole in all six, what’s your point?”

For the first time that night, Scout laughed, even if it was just a little jump in his shoulders, a puff of air startled out of him.

“Bilby,” Sniper started in, voice gentle again. “You aren’t stupid. The blokes just… they pick an insult for everyone, is what it is. Soldier is insane, Demo’s a drunk, I’m a hermit, the Engineer is short. They don’t mean it, not really.”

“How come I’ve got so many, then?” Scout asked, tone not full of bitterness so much as… resigned insecurity. “I’m stupid, I’m scrawny, I’m loud, I’m annoying, I’m babyfaced, I’m uneducated, I’m rude…”

“No you aren’t, they’ve just decided to call you that,” Sniper was quick to correct.

“What’s the difference? If everyone thinks it, doesn’t that make it kinda true?”

“No,” Sniper said, carding his fingers back through Scout’s hair and feeling him relax at the attention. “No, it doesn’t.”

He kept petting at Scout’s hair for a little while, and Scout kept relaxing in increments. It was quiet for a long few moments, then minutes.

“I love you,” Sniper finally said, and Scout’s head tilted against him slightly. “And even if you were the dumbest bloke on the planet, I’d still love you. Even if you were all those things, I’d still love you. Because you’ve got a good heart, and you make me want to be better, make me want to work hard to deserve all the happiness you give me. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Scout said quietly. “I love you too.”

Silence.

“Night, Snipes,” Scout said, and he really did sound tired, terribly tired.

“Night, Bilby.”

-

The next day, Scout was still out of sorts, tired, lagging behind on his morning routine. Sniper turned the tables on what they usually did, offering to go get breakfast and bring it back to the camper for him. Scout agreed quickly, maybe too quickly, and Sniper pulled on his vest and hat and made his way into the base.

The kitchen was bustling, full to the brim with the rest of the team eating their own breakfasts of varying nutritional value. Sniper made his way to the counter where the main breakfast—eggs and bacon and toast, simple and straightforward and well-agreed-upon, it must have been Medic’s turn to cook. He packed up two little boxes and shoved them in his bag, then promptly made his way back into the main eating area.

He got one or two waves, an offhanded greeting. They all seemed unperturbed. Sniper wondered whether they’d even noticed that Scout was gone, and all the anger that he’d carefully pushed down bubbled and spilled over all at once.

He picked up one of the few empty chairs at the table and slammed it back down against the ground. The resounding BANG of wood against concrete immediately drew the attention of the entire room.

“Bushman,” Spy greeted calmly from his immediate left, almost bored-looking. “Here to break our furniture, I see.”

“What’d you say to him?” Sniper asked, voice cold enough to freeze over hell.

Silence in the room, the few mercenaries not already looking alarmed quickly shifting to do so. All except Spy, who just sneered. “You’ll need to be more specific, I’m afraid,” he said with faux politeness, an undercurrent of venom that would have most people backing down.

Sniper was not most people. “What did you say to Scout yesterday?” he clarified. “Tell me what you said.”

“Oh, before he threw a temper tantrum and stormed off to hide in his room like a spineless coward?” Spy asked airily.

“He’s not in his room, Spook,” Sniper said, the deadly cold hardening further. “He’s not anywhere in the base. Now tell me what you said to him.”

In his periphery, troubled shuffling, glances, concern. Spy did no such thing, just rolling his eyes and producing a tape recorder from within his jacket, rolling it back expertly and stopping after a few moments, letting it play.

“—don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” came Scout’s voice, slightly odd-sounding, different on tape than it sounded in real life, as well as apparently being a bit distant.

“Yes I do,” came Spy’s voice, slightly louder. “You’re an idiot, and a man-child, and a coward, and are only in a desert shooting your little gun at men who can’t die because you couldn’t possibly get a job anywhere else. You’re lucky that Miss Pauling took pity on you and gave you a job here, or else you’d be lying dead, overdosed in a ditch somewhere along the east coast just like everyone else you ever knew. And the moment someone faster and more literate comes along, that’s where you’ll be ending up anyways. Before you do, pass along an apology to your mother for the inconvenience of a funeral.”

Spy clicked the button again to stop the tape, cutting off the sound of Scout starting to yell something. Then Spy moved to say something, probably snarky, probably clever, but it never made it out of his mouth, because Sniper’s fist connected with his jaw at high speeds.

As the Frenchman was sent sprawling out of his chair and to the ground, swearing, and several members of the team moved to stand up and start protesting, but Sniper squared his shoulders again and turned to level a look at them, and they promptly stopped. He shook out his hand, glaring coldly.

“I’m guessing none of you lot said anything, did you?” he asked, still cold. “Just pushed them apart when Scout stood up for himself.”

The silence spoke for itself.

“Here’s what’s going to happen now,” he continued when it became clear that nobody had anything to add. “You lot are going to stop with your little jokes. Stop your fun little game where you make fun of the littlest bloke here. And you’re going to apologize to Scout for the way you’ve all been acting. This isn’t the schoolyard, and you’re all far too old to be acting like bullies just because he hardly ever bothers standing up for himself. And if you don’t, if you keep acting like children, you’re going to regret it.”

“You plan on knocking the whole team out cold, son?” the Engineer asked down the table, his own tone sharp. “Or are you saying Scout’s gonna try?”

“No,” he said. “Neither of us. That’s not what I meant.”

Quiet for a second.

“You’re all willing to lose Scout over this?” he asked flatly, looking around the room. Several of the team couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re alright with Scout leaving, quitting this job, rather than you lot putting in the effort to stop being complete fuckin’ bastards to him all the time?”

“Where is he? Where did little Scout go?” Heavy cut in to ask.

“Is the lad alright?” Demo asked, genuine concern etched across his face.

“I found him when he was out for a run,” Sniper replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Nose bleeding and all. Acting like he’d just seen a ghost. He talked to me. Maybe because I’m not a complete and utter cunt to him.”

Guilt seemed to be a common factor in most of the team’s expressions. Pyro had one hand up against their mask, body language that of upset.

“He told me he thinks he’s stupid. Worst bloke on the team, not as good as any of you lot. The weak link. Says he doesn’t think he belongs here. Wonder where he got that idea?” Sniper asked, the cold rage back in his voice again, and there were glances again, looks exchanged. “I’m not going to tolerate any more of what I just heard. Any of you in my line of sight start treating Scout like that again, there’ll be hell to pay. Because I’m not going to let you lot chase off the one good thing that’s ever happened to me just because you think you’re being cute.”

He shifted, looking over at Spy, who was still on the ground nursing his jaw, looking equal parts pissed off and concerned, something peeking through the anger, something that told Sniper that he really hadn’t ever considered the consequences.

“And if any of you give a damn about Scout, you won’t ever let that—“ a flippant gesture towards the fuming Frenchman, “—happen again. Do we have an understanding?”

A chorus of answers, all in the affirmative. Sniper nodded once, and promptly left the room.

-

He and Scout walked into the locker rooms to finish suiting up, and the place fell quiet.

Scout’s head sank, eyes falling to the floor, and he kept his head down as he walked to his locker, starting to wrap up his hands. He was doing that thing again, where he tried to make himself very, very small. Sniper sat down directly next to him as he pulled on and tightened the laces of the boots he generally wore into battle, and even that simple act of solidarity was enough at least to make Scout’s hands stop shaking so violently.

The click of expensive leather shoes on concrete, calmly coming towards them. Sniper felt the runner shift beside him, looking up, but he didn’t bother, keeping his eyes on his task.

“Scout,” Spy said, tone as aloof as every other day of the year.

“Just fuck off, Spy,” Scout mumbled, and perhaps Spy didn’t hear it, but Sniper did—the waver in his voice.

“No. I have something important to say,” Spy replied, tone even. A very brief pause fell. “I’m sorry.”

Sniper’s gaze flicked up. Scout went tense next to him. “What?”

“I apologize. I was out of line yesterday. I said several things which I very much regret. I sincerely did not think you cared enough about my opinion of you that my insults would in any way hurt, and clearly I was wrong, and so, I am sorry.” His words were awkward, not in the way of them being forced, but in the way that told them that Spy was uncomfortable, clearly not much used to giving real apologies.

Silence for a second before a Scout figured out how the hell to react to that. When he did speak, his voice was tight. “What, did Medic make you come over and apologize or something? Did Hardhat yell at you?” he asked, frustration filtering through.

“No. They did not. It just became very clear from your reaction that you were upset, and now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m…” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

Scout was quiet again. Sniper glanced at him. He looked confused, mostly. “Okay,” he finally said, very much lost on what to do.

Spy nodded, looked away. Seemed to chew on his words for a moment. “And I take back what I said,” he added, quieter now. “You are not someone that could be easily replaced on this team. You play a very important role here, and… you are good at what you do, and we are all very fortunate to have you here on our team.”

Scout outright didn’t reply to that, visibly at a loss for words.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Spy finally said, glanced between Scout and Sniper, walked away from them and towards the rest of the team, a stiffness to his posture.

Sniper watched him go, saw the way the rest of the team glanced at Spy, saw Spy starting to talk quietly to Heavy and Demo, the latter of whom glanced back towards the two of them. Then he looked at Scout, hoping Scout didn’t see the overt way they were interacting, and saw that Scout very much wasn’t paying attention to that. Instead, he had his head ducked, and was starting to sniffle, eyes welling up.

“Wait, Bilby, what’s wrong?” Sniper asked quickly, a hand on his shoulder, ducking to try and get a good look at his expression, confusion and concern mounting.

“No, I, it’s just—“ He sniffled again and swallowed hard, hurriedly wiping off his eyes with his forearm as a few tears started falling. He took a few seconds to compose himself, and bent further forward when he cracked again. “I just, I think that was the nicest thing any of the guys have ever said to me.”

Sniper took a moment or two to process that, a series of complicated emotions rising in his chest, before he simply moved to pull Scout into a tight hug, his own throat becoming tight.

His gaze rose to the rest of the team, most of whom seemed to be watching them with some amount of concern and confusion. He flashed them a thumbs up as covertly as possible, and they relaxed, returning to what they had been doing.

They all became much nicer to Scout, still occasionally ragging on him, but largely dialing it back to a normal level, to the level they gave just about everyone on the team rather than him being the common target. And it took a while—a long while—but Scout seemed to brighten, straighten, smile more, relax more. And god, was Sniper happy to see it. God was he happy to see it.

Chapter Text

”Are you doing alright, mate?”

To be honest, that wasn’t the worst line that Jeremy could’ve gotten, but fuckin’ seriously.

It wasn’t as bad as his brother Joey, he had “Your shoe’s untied” on the left, and Petey got the nightmare scenario and just got “Hey, how’s your day?” on the right, but the thing that really frustrated him was that it wasn’t even the reaction phrase. That was the opening phrase, meaning they had to say that to him first before he could respond with his own line, and if they were asking if he was doing alright that had to mean something bad was gonna happen and he’d probably look stupid in front of his soulmate and not have a good response or whatever because he’d just, like, fallen in the harbor or something.

Turned out, by the time Jeremy was twelve, he was starting to find out that bad things happening to him was gonna be a consistent issue. He had bad luck, worse than all his brothers combined, and over the course of all that time he got an awful lot of “Are you okay, dude?” and “Are you alright?” from a lot of people. But none of them ever got it exactly right, missing the crucial few words, nobody ever saying “mate”. Nobody ever asking him that in a voice that felt dark orange.

“Y’know,” his Ma said to him one day when he was sulking, twenty-two and still soulmate-less and with a terrible time at job hunting to boot considering his most recent cast, luckily on his left arm so he could still glare at his mark. “It does have a hint at least.”

“That I’m gonna be a total klutz forever?” Jeremy sulked.

“That your soulmate isn’t gonna be an American, sweetheart,” his Ma corrected gently. “He’s probably gonna be British, or Irish, something like that. They’re the only ones who say “mate”, right?”

“Didn’t you also think my dad was gonna be a Canadian?” he asked suspiciously.

“Honey, I’m not magic, I don’t know everything. I thought it was unrealistic to think it would be someone actually from France,” she said, a little haughty.

She was one of the lucky people to get a really specific phrase, in a language that wasn’t her own no less. It was in French, and when he’d asked as a kid what it said, she’d laughed and said it meant “I promise I had a much more intelligent line to say, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.”

She always said his dad had died, and worn the traditional covering to show that someone’s soulmate was dead, to hide where the words had gone black. But once or twice he’d glimpsed her wrist, and to be honest, the words looked more navy blue.

“Why the heck am I gonna talk to a British person?” Jeremy asked, sulking again.

“World works in mysterious ways, J-Bear,” his Ma shrugged.

She was right. Because a few months later, he was in a particularly terrible situation, and he received a phone call asking if he wanted a job.

”I’m seriously, actually, 100% going to murder you.”

It hadn’t shown up until he was four years old, which Mick’s parents had a bloody field day with, and once they were good and tired of dealing with that conundrum they moved right along to address the fact that in reply to whatever their son was going to say, he was going to promptly be threatened.

Great.

He ended up baking under the sun just like everyone else in his god-forsaken country, which only made the bright, cherry-red phrase stand out all the better. His mum tried to be supportive, honest she did, but even getting bullied at school every other day never led to him finding anyone, and she wasn’t all that surprised when at age nineteen he packed up the bare essentials and left home without a word.

He had an idea in his head. He’d heard before of people, terrible people, who used the idea of soulmate to do… bad things. To manipulate people, to make them stay in bad relationships because they thought this one person could and would solve all their problems. And if his soulmate’s first words to him were a threat…

He’d admit if he was asked that he was a lonely person. He didn’t ever seem to fit with anyone. Nobody ever seemed to understand what he meant once he started actually talking, being honest. And he didn’t know if he would have the strength to get out of a bad situation if he was promised up front that this person would understand him. He was pretty sure he would put up with a lot of bad things just for the sake of genuine connection.

So he decided he wouldn’t ever find his soulmate. He’d go off to do hunting and tracking in fuckall nowhere and nobody would ever bother him and he’d never need to deal with a soulmate. He didn’t need one. He’d be fine alone.

When he eventually turned to killing people for money, some part of him deep down wondered if he was just getting too lonely and giving in to what fate had in store for him. If becoming an assassin was the most pathetic, fucked-up bid for someone’s love that had ever happened in history. People did threaten to kill him a lot in that line of work. And more often, people actually tried.

Eventually he got a job offer out in America, more consistent pay and all for the same job, less moving around required, and he took it. He was getting up there in years, and he had a feeling that if he hadn’t found his soulmate by the time he hit thirty, he never would.

Jeremy got a new name: Scout. And his new coworkers—“teammates”, as the very pretty lady who unfortunately didn’t ask if he was doing alright had specified to him—were from all over the place. And he’d had high hopes for a minute as he realized one of his teammates was Scottish, but when he spoke face-to-face with the guy he’d instead greeted him with a cheerful “Pleasure to meet you, lad!” and his reply of “Yo, so you’re the Demoman?” had elicited exactly no response, so that was a bust.

He spoke to the Pyro, as briefly as possible since they freaked him out, but they’d similarly not seemed to react to what he first said to them, and neither had any of the rest of the team. Hell, the Heavy had outright brushed him off up front and the Sniper had given him exactly one up-and-down before he’d left entirely.

So cool. Great. New job with people who didn’t care. Nice.

And he found out more and more as time passed that they very much didn’t care. Most of the team could hardly tolerate him for more than ten minutes at a time, Spy he could barely put up with for two sentences, and even though he eventually got to be better friends with Pyro, and Engie eventually started putting up with him more, they still got annoyed with him pretty quickly. Pyro basically ignored him once they reached their limit, and Engie would essentially kick him out of his workshop.

And… to be honest, he didn’t feel totally comfortable talking to them about certain stuff. He felt a little bit like he’d get laughed at. And his once-every-two-weeks phone call home sometimes wasn’t enough to deal with various stresses and he usually was more interested in hearing their news than complaining anyways.

He didn’t know why he went out to the watchtower. Maybe because he was out for a run and it just happened to be in his line of sight. Maybe because it occurred to him that Sniper could keep a secret, wouldn’t tell the guys about whatever he ended up talking about. Maybe because he felt like he didn’t really have any other options.

Anyways, he ended up climbing the watchtower, asking Sniper if it would bug him if Scout sat around and hung out for a while. Sniper didn’t reply, just glancing at Scout over his shoulder briefly before returning to his scope. And then Scout made it exactly three minutes before he started in on talking. “I dunno I just think it’s funny that Spy thinks I’m rude when he’s always the one starting shit for no reason—“

And Sniper didn’t interrupt him, didn’t say anything, didn’t chase him off. He sat there, staring down his scope, occasionally pausing to take a drink of his coffee, for about two hours. Two hours of Scout just talking, thinking out loud.

It was nice. So nice that Scout cut himself off, eventually said goodbye and left the tower again, sure that Sniper would get tired of him and he’d never be allowed back up there again.

It became a weekly thing, every Monday Scout would go up there and talk to Sniper. Talk at Sniper, more like. And Sniper would listen.

One of the days, Scout said something, something he couldn’t even remember, because it was overshadowed by the thing that immediately followed it—Sniper laughing.

He’d never heard Sniper laugh before, he didn’t think. Not in the real way, anyhow. Sniper didn’t talk much. He’d occasionally mention something over the comms, and once or twice Scout heard him cheering along with the rest of the team when they won a match, but overall, he was a man of few words. So getting him to laugh…

He thought about it a lot.

Sniper didn’t entirely get why Scout started talking to him.

He tried so hard—so hard—to be left alone. He put on a scowl and wore the brim of his hat low and carried his knife off the clock and didn’t say hello or goodbye. He wanted to be left alone. He deserved to be left alone.

Scout, apparently, didn’t notice. And halfway through Sniper trying to figure out what to say to get the kid to leave, he started telling some story about his brothers back home, and…

He never got around to it. He never… got around to telling him to leave. And once Scout had that foothold, had that… constant nature, that consistency, once Sniper knew to expect him every Monday two hours after the team dinner or half an hour before sunset—whichever came first—he found himself…

God damn it. Enjoying Scout’s company. He liked some of the phrases Scout used. He talked in an interesting way. It was pleasant to listen to. And he was honest, uncomfortably honest at times. He told Sniper about all sorts of things that he figured it was safe to say nobody else knew about.

He talked about his family. His mum. His dad, who died, and then later he corrected himself to say his dad, who disappeared, who probably left, words in navy and not in black. He talked about growing up in the bad part of town, about never being allowed to walk home from school without at least one of his older brothers there until he was eight, when he started carrying a knife on him because sometimes none of his brothers showed up for him, until he was twelve, when he just started running there and back every day after baseball practice to save the trouble. About shoplifting, about getting a job delivering newspapers the second he was legally allowed to, about older brothers going in to work sick and Ma working two jobs to try and support them all when they got too sick for work, too sick for anything for a while. About what he did with his paycheck—he kept some pocket change for himself, to buy records sometimes, or posters, or snack foods for when dinner sucked, or fast food or drinks at the bar when he had time on the weekends. The rest of it—every goddamn penny—went back home. One day, maybe his Ma would never have to work again.

He wanted to tell Scout about his own sad life story. Climbing up the tree outside school and throwing rocks at the bullies who chased him, starting to skip classes and smoke towards the end of his schooling just to try and look a little more intimidating. About his dad scoffing at him when he tended to use a gun to chase off predators from their flock of sheep instead of fighting them hand-to-hand like a good Australian. About running away from all of his problems, and how killing animals, especially people, seemed to be the only thing he was ever any good at, and how sometimes that really did bother him, a lot.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t convince himself that Scout cared, somehow. Visits jumped up to twice a week, Monday and Thursday, same time. It was hot for a while, and he went into town one Sunday to pick up two cases of beer, hauled a cooler up into the watchtower, and left three beers next to where Scout sat and three next to himself about ten minutes before the kid showed up. When it started getting cold at night, he brought up his own quilt like he always did, but brought up the spare as well, left that on what he’d mentally started thinking of as Scout’s Crate. Scout drank the beers, and used the blanket, and would talk for his two hours and then say goodbye and not mention anything to Sniper when they went out to battle the next day.

It…

He didn’t like that he enjoyed it so much. He didn’t like looking forward to it, didn’t like perking up when he heard the ladder rattling, didn’t like hanging on to every word and the increasing frequency at which Scout was making him laugh. He didn’t like how much harder it got every time to bite his lip and hold back from chiming in.

He was a killer, he reminded himself. A hermit from absolutely nowhere Australia who didn’t deserve the company of other people. This was the best thing that could’ve happened to him, and he couldn’t push his luck. If he pushed his luck, then he’d drive Scout away and be left alone again. Scout only talked to him because he was quiet anyways, because he was a mystery. Remove the mystery, and the draw would be gone, and he’d be all alone again. Already this was selfish; he should just shut up and be grateful.

He stared down his scope and drank his coffee and was grateful.

A bad day at work, followed by a bad weekend, had Scout hesitating at the base of the watchtower.

Some part of him was rational, and knew he was being ridiculous. But another, stronger part of him couldn’t seem to make his feet move, was repeating a steady mantra to him.

Not wanted.

Sniper didn’t like him. Sniper didn’t want him around. Sniper was just too polite to turn him away, too nice, and was annoyed with his constant talking and wished he would go away but didn’t have the courage, didn’t want to be rude. He wasn’t wanted. Or maybe Sniper just pitied him, maybe Sniper just heard his assorted sob stories and thought, man, poor little idiot kid, might as well set out a blanket for him and let him talk. Maybe Sniper was collecting everything he said for blackmail.

The worst idea to run through his head: maybe Sniper had never been listening to him in the first place.

If Sniper wanted him around, he would’ve said something, right?

Scout didn’t go up into the watchtower that day, or the following Thursday. He didn’t bother looking for Sniper in battle, sure that Sniper would be ignoring him the same way he always did, pretending he didn’t exist the same way he always did.

When he went to the store that weekend, hoping to pick up some chips and soda, he found himself staring at a six-pack of beer. He didn’t even particularly like beer, usually, he preferred other drinks. But he was looking at this six-pack of beer, and he wound up buying it.

It wasn’t some cheap garbage, it was craft beer. It was more expensive.

He drank exactly three of the six and tried not to think about it.

Scout was gone. He never showed up. Sniper ended up getting so freaked out about it that he went to check the Medbay, sure that something bad had happened. Medic was there, working on something bloody, but not Scout. And Scout wasn’t in the workshop either, or the workout room, or the rec room. He got a lot of strange looks from his teammates as he asked around. For some, it was the most he’d spoken to them in months.

He was halfway to Scout’s room when he realized he was probably being strange, manic. Scout was allowed to not want to come visit him. He wasn’t offering anything. In all the time—six months, he realized, they’d been doing this for six months—that Scout had visited, all he really had to gain was Sniper occasionally humming or laughing, and exactly three beers on the hotter days and a tobacco-scented blanket in the winter. There was no reason for Sniper to expect him to show up on the little schedule that had been established. He started to feel silly.

Then he didn’t show up on Thursday either, and…

He felt worried, of course he felt worried, obviously he felt worried. One of the only good things to ever happen to him, and it just stopped showing up one day. And he wanted it back. God, he wanted it back. Two days and he already felt more lonely than he ever felt in his life. Maybe having felt even the smallest glimmer of companionship had made him soft, but damn it, he wanted to feel it again.

He made a decision.

Scout was lacing up his shoes before battle on Monday when a pair of boots stopped in front of him. This wasn’t strange. What was strange was that it wasn’t the calm amble of Engie, the sturdy stride of Heavy, the confident stomp of Soldier, or the crisp stride of Medic. No, it was an awkward shuffle. A rough clearing of a throat. He looked up, and it was Sniper.

He froze up. “Uh,” he said. “Hi.”

Sniper was looking at him. That was strange. In something like 95% of their interactions, Sniper was facing away from him down a scope, occasionally viewed in profile as he took a sip of beer or coffee, depending on the weather. And the other times were in battle itself, both of them otherwise preoccupied. But now Sniper was looking at him, thumbs shoved in his front pockets. After a second he moved to take off his sunglasses and immediately glanced off to one side, tapping them against his palm.

It looked like a nervous tick. This was strange. Sniper was never like this. Scout was confused.

Sniper glanced towards the rest of the team, all a short ways away, chatting amongst themselves at various volumes. When he spoke, his voice was rough and low and quiet. If Scout had to describe it, he would call it a dark orange.

“Are you doing alright, mate?” he asked, tone hesitant.

Scout remained frozen. Stared. Stared.

“It’s just,” Sniper continued, stumbling awkwardly with his words, unable to make further eye contact with Scout. “You haven’t come around in a while, and I suppose I just got… worried, that something happened—“

Scout got to his feet, whirled around, and angrily started digging through his locker, jaw clenched. He eventually pulled forth a pocket knife and angrily started ripping the grip tape from his right hand. He didn’t say a word.

“I’m sorry,” Sniper said quickly, holding up his hands, taking a step back. “I, I just thought it was odd is all, I didn’t know if—“

Scout silenced him by holding his now-bare wrist directly in Sniper’s line of sight, a few inches from his face, Sniper flinching back minutely at the motion. When he realized what he was looking at, his eyes widened. He looked at Scout. Scout looked at him.

“I’m seriously, actually, 100% going to murder you,” Scout said calmly, matter-of-factly, and Sniper had never thought about it before, but he would absolutely describe Scout’s voice as a bright red. Shaking hands moved to undo his watch, and he held his own wrist, the left, out for Scout to see.

Silence for a few seconds. “I—“ Sniper started to say, but was cut off by Scout.

“I cannot believe that you’ve never once since I’ve met you ever talked one-on-one with me. You’ve never said a fuckin’ word to me, Snipes,” Scout said, more than a little pissed off.

“I didn’t realize,” Sniper defended, a little weakly. “I thought… I thought I had.”

“Man, how many people can say they fuckin’ monologued to their soulmate for hours and hours before meeting them, huh?” Scout asked, hands on his hips now.

“I’m sorry,” was all Sniper could think to say.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Scout declared, glaring at Sniper hard. “I’m gonna meet you after work like usual at the watchtower, and you’re takin’ me to go get pizza, and I’m gonna eat pizza while you talk about yourself. You’ve got about—“

He did some math in his head.

“Somethin’ like sixty hours or so of talkin’ to do to make it even,” he decided. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Sniper agreed weakly. Scout moved to sit down and start lacing his shoes up again, but before he could get to it, Sniper spoke again. “I’m… glad you’re okay.”

Scout looked back up at him. The sudden influx of nervous honesty on Sniper’s face made him feel surprisingly guilty. “Sorry. I just… got all up in my own head. I figured I was probably pissing you off, so I stopped going.” A pause. “I wasn’t pissing you off?”

“No,” Sniper replied. “Not at all. I… liked… having you around.”

Scout fought hard against the smile threatening to take hold. “Good to know,” he finally said.

“And I should’ve said something earlier,” Sniper continued, words flowing forth in a rush. “I should’ve told you, I should’ve—let you know. I really should’ve.”

“Well,” Scout shrugged, and finished tying his laces up, and stood to face Sniper head-on. “Now you told me.”

A pause between them, Sniper clearly working very hard to maintain eye contact.

“It doesn’t have to be pizza,” Scout amended, picking at his remaining hand’s worth of grip tape. “It can be anything. I just wanna hang out, like, away from base.”

“Like a date?” Sniper asked, slowly, hesitantly.

“Sure,” Scout shrugged.

A pause again. “Pizza’s fine,” Sniper seemed to decide.

“Alright,” Scout said, and smiled at him. “Alright. I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah,” Sniper agreed, and took his cue to walk away. He stood off to one side of the rest of the team, moving to take a drink of his coffee. His wrist caught his eye, and he looked over the words again, and for the first time in his life, they didn’t bring him dread. They brought him hope.

Chapter Text

“So who’s the poor unlucky sap that got stuck with you?” Scout asked out of the blue one day, sitting across from him as the team dug into the meal of the day.

“Excuse me?” Spy asked, arching one eyebrow.

“Y’know,” Scout said, tapping at his own wrist. “I mean, you’re pretty fuckin’ old, you had to have met yours by now, huh?”

Spy’s expression closed off. “I met my soulmate young and she died a very long time ago,” he said flatly, and turned his eyes back to his meal, assuming the conversation to be over.

“That’s not true,” Medic said calmly from next to him.

Spy stiffened. Scout blinked. “And how,” Spy asked, “would you know that?”

“Your mark still has color, do you take me for an idiot?” Medic asked flatly. “You took off your glove for your medical assessment when you arrived here.”

“And why exactly would you tell people that?” Spy stressed, gritting his teeth.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Medic said airily. “Why is it that the orders for birdseed that I keep placing keep getting cancelled? There are many mysteries in this world of ours, Herr Spy.”

Spy continued to shoot daggers at him for a few seconds, only changing his attention to then glare at Heavy when the large man started chuckling from the other side of Medic.

“That trick wasn’t gonna work on me anyways, Spy,” Scout said flatly. “I’ve heard that lie before.”

“You’ve what?” Spy asked, baffled.

“My Ma used to feed me that same bullshit when I was a kid,” he elaborated, looking a little bitter. “You probably just got walked out on too, except for being a total douchebag.”

“You’re wrong,” Spy said, fist clenched, extremely tempted to take his knife from his jacket and end this conversation. The only issue was that he was pretty sure Scout’s arterial spray would get into their food. He considered it anyways. “I’m the one who had to go elsewhere, and it was for a very important reason. We maintain an amount of contact. Any further extremely personal questions, or will you let me eat my meal in peace?”

“What kinda line did you get anyhow?” Scout asked.

Spy sighed, rolled his eyes. He didn’t even have to look at his wrist to remember the words, in a lovely, vibrant, lavender-pink, looping scrawl. “It says “Hey there, how are you doing tonight, handsome?” on my right hand. She was a waitress, I was sitting alone,” he replied, tone still dry.

Silence for a few seconds. Scout was staring at him. Spy had anticipated being made fun of, or some other benign yet annoying thing. Instead, Scout’s expression seemed to be darkening.

“That’s weird,” he said slowly. “My Ma always said her line was somethin’ like that.”

Spy’s eyebrows furrowed. “Is that right?”

“Yeah. And, uh, the line she got back was in French.”

“That’s not all that strange. You’re from some big city on the East Coast, plenty of foreigners,” Spy said flippantly.

“Yeah,” Scout said. “I’m from—“

“New York,” Spy finished in the same moment Scout said “Boston”.

Scout looked more than a little offended. “What the fuck, you think I’m from New York?” he scoffed.

“All you big city Americans sound the same to me,” Spy said, playing it off, looking bored to cover up the panic starting to well in his chest. “And they are practically the same thing.”

“Alright, I’m gonna go ahead and summarize how I feel about that particular statement with a solid fuck off. And anyways, no, I’m from Boston. Completely different.”

“And what exactly was the phrase your mother had?” Spy asked, very much scared of the answer.

“Some French bullshit, but in English it’s somethin’ dumb like… like, “I was gonna say somethin’ real smart, but now I don’t remember it”, somethin’ like that.”

“Or perhaps “I promise I had a much more intelligent line to say, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it”? Does that sound right?” Spy asked, throat dry.

Scout stared again. “Yeah. Exactly. Word for word.”

Complete, dead silence.

Now, you’d think that after so many years being a spy, over two decades as an agent of espionage—dear lord, he was going on three, actually—he would be able to control his expression in all situations. However, based on the fact that he was pretty sure he had exactly zero blood remaining in his face and his eyes were wide as saucers, you would be wrong.

“You son of a bitch,” Scout managed.

Spy cloaked and fled the room as complete chaos erupted.

Chapter Text

“Hey Hardhat, think we could—“

“Now’s not a good time, Scooter. You run along now.”

“Yo, Snipes, you busy?”

“Yeah, actually. Got things to do. Sorry, mate.”

“Mumbles, what’s up?”

“Mmm-phm. Bmm!”

“Demo, what are you up to, man?”

“Defusing a bomb, lad, best you go on and leg it. Probably to the other end of the base. And maybe find some headphones.”

“Hey Soldier—“

“Not now, Cadet! I am currently engaged in a battle—of wills. Private Munches once again has fleas and they are very contagious. It is in your best interest to retreat now!”

“Hey Heavy—“

“Heavy is welding. Leetle Scout should leave.”

“Hey Doc—?”

“Nein. No, I don’t need to know what you were going to ask. I do not care.”

“Spy—?”

“Clearly you’re desperate if you’re trying to talk to me to find something to do.”

Scout puffed out a breath of air, slumping. “Look, I dunno either, okay? We get the first real break for the first time in like two months and all the guys still sit around acting like they have better shit to do.”

“Have you considered that they’ve also been looking forward to a break and have things they have been saving for that break?” Spy asked, not even looking up from his newspaper.

“I mean, maybe. But c’mon, it’s ridiculous! I’m not asking to like, go do a whole thing all day, I just wanna hang out a little bit!”

“A shame that I am busy,” Spy said, sighing in faux disappointment.

“With what?”

“Anything else.” He waved Scout off. “Go on. Get a hobby or something, something besides pestering all of the rest of us like some kind of annoying dog.”

Scout sulked, leaving and heading back to his own room.

The rest of their first day off, Scout ended up mostly messing around in his room. He flicked through some comics, got bored, flicked through some other comics, got bored, paced around for a while listening to a record before he lost interest in that too and wound up trying to take a nap. About five minutes after he laid down he realized that was gonna be a no-go, and he ended up so frustrated that he cleaned his whole room, right down to vacuuming under his bed. He was up until about two in the morning cleaning and putting stuff away before he realized what time it was and tried to lay down to go to sleep.

He finished cleaning after he went and grabbed breakfast for himself—kitchen entirely empty—and then was left standing in his room, looking around aimlessly for anything else to do. He rearranged his whole little bookshelf, sorting his comics by franchise then by hero then by issue.

He got lunch early. Kitchen empty. Halls quiet, only the sounds of machinery in the distance to tell him there was anyone else around.

By the time he finished eating, he was pretty much desperate for something to do, so he did rounds again to ask the team if anyone needed help with anything. He got a pretty harsh dressing-down from Engie about interrupting him when he was focusing hard on work, very important things. Soldier rambled and ranted at him for about twenty minutes, at which point Scout realized Soldier was barely even talking to him, and was mostly just talking to himself. He tried to track down Spy for an hour to try and ask to borrow his car so he could go into town and find literally anything to do, but the guy wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and he eventually gave up. He got desperate enough for something to do that he even went over to the infirmary, and was pretty sure he would be roped into some dumb experiment or something, but it turned out that Medic was stitching something into Heavy, so even that was a no-go.

So he just went back into his room again.

It had been kinda nice at first, having a place all to himself. As a kid he could count on his fingers how many times he was left alone in any capacity, and then as a teen he found peace and quiet to be pretty scarce. But then his brothers all graduated, and started moving out one by one, and he was left there pretty much alone, just him and Ma. And even then he was constantly surrounded by people, the walls thin in their apartment.

But then he moved out west for the job, and suddenly it was really freakishly quiet. And it kind of blew his mind at first, the quiet. He appreciated it. Especially considering most of the time all he had to do was go in the common room to find someone to talk to. He realized, with his pool of people he could potentially talk to so limited, that he was kind of a clingy person, needed to talk to people a lot.

He got lonely quick.

He remembered after he graduated, splitting up laundry into a once-a-week thing instead of a once-every-two-weeks thing just for the sake of having more time around other people, even if he wasn’t talking to them. Ma kinda got in his case sometimes for how much he would go get food somewhere besides at home, but he kinda had to, kinda needed to talk to someone else on the daily or else he started going stir-crazy. Started feeling bad and gross, started in with having all kinds of dumb ideas running through his head.

Mostly ideas like, maybe the team wasn’t that busy and they just made excuses and tried to seem busy because they didn’t like him. Ideas like, well he already knew that they didn’t like him, he was a lot younger than most of them and a hell of a lot stupider and they called him loud and annoying pretty much on the daily. Ideas like, none of them ever really talked to him besides during battle, and maybe they were just trying to be polite when they did talk to him, and when was the last time anyone asked how he was doing? Ideas like, maybe they really did just hate him. Ideas like, maybe a lot of people hated him. Ideas like, if literally everyone he talked to on a regular basis—all eight people—didn’t like him enough to hang out with him for a little while when they got their first break in forever…

Ideas like, did he really not have any friends? Ideas like, wasn’t that pretty pathetic? Ideas like, well, if he didn’t have any friends, if nobody liked him, did that maybe mean that he deserved it?

Scout stayed up staring out off into space and occasionally getting up and pacing around until about two in the morning.

Scout was up early the next day, and paced for just about the hour and a half in anticipation for his usual call home—once a week unless he said he wouldn’t be able to the week prior—before giving up on waiting and just calling early.

It got picked up in the middle of the fourth ring, and by then, Scout had already tangled the phone cord in his fidgeting.

“Hello?” came an immediately familiar voice, and he relaxed.

“Hey, Ma,” he greeted.

“J-Bear!” she practically gasped. “Honey, you’re two hours early. Why are you callin’, shouldn’t you be at work?”

“We’re on a break while some maintenence stuff is happening,” Scout explained, starting to untangle the cord. “And, y’know. I’m wicked bored.”

“All caught up on chores, then?” Ma asked, already the warning note in her voice that meant he might be in for a little bit of deserved nagging.

“Yeah, actually. Cleaned my room finally, all good on laundry, organized some stuff, all that,” he replied. “I was gonna do groceries, but my usual ride places is, uh… ghosting on me a little.”

“Well, are you getting enough to eat?” Ma asked next, sounding worried.

“Oh, no, yeah, I am,” he said quickly. “I’m just, y’know. I gotta eat like, canned beans and stuff like that for a while.”

“As long as you’re eating,” Ma said firmly.

And Scout went to say something else, to start going on about how he was so annoyed with his teammates, see, because they were all being total assholes, right? And then Ma would say something to him, and he’d feel better, because every time he told Ma about something that was going wrong he always walked away feeling better.

But Ma started talking again.

“Honey, I’m really sorry,” she started in, and it was clear that she meant it, and Scout’s heart dropped. “But I can’t really talk for long. I had plans today, and I’m already running late.”

He couldn’t speak for a moment due to the fact that his heart had suddenly jumped into his throat. “But Ma,” he said, brows furrowing, “what about the phone call?”

A short sigh. “I’m a little glad you called early, actually, that means I can ask you—would it be alright if we didn’t have our chat this week? It’s just that your older brother is finally stopping back in town for a little while—“

“Ma, which one?” he asked with a laugh, managing to fit some humor into his voice even as he forced it not to wobble.

“Oldest, sweetie. Anyways, I’m headed out to go meet him for lunch actually, and then we’re gonna come back to the house and chat and all, your niece is real excited to meet the cat, and I’d feel terrible if I left to go talk on the phone for an hour when I have guests over—“

“Yeah, Ma,” Scout said, bracing himself to lie through his teeth to his mother. “It’s totally fine. No worries. We’ll just talk next week, it’s no big deal.”

“You’re a lifesaver, sweetheart,” Ma said, and meant it, and Scout winced. “I love you, we’ll talk next week for sure, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. Love you too,” he said. And he listened for the sound of the phone being put down, and he sighed, breath shaky on the exhale. He only put the phone down when it started to beep at him, and then continued to fiddle with the cord for a long while.

“The problem is that to send a bullet that far and that straight, the force needed is fairly strong. If you tried to fire this round out of a proper rifle, it might just explode in the barrel, mate,” Sniper explained, turning over the bullet in his fingers.

“So we fire one to test it,” Demo shrugged.

“Not out of my gun we won’t,” Sniper replied, raising an eyebrow. “If you’re aiming to send explosives long distances, best to just stick to rockets or canons or the like. Biggest boom you’d get shooting an explosive round like this anywhere over a hundred meters or so would just be a firecracker. It would just be distracting.”

“Distracting. Now there’s an idea,” Demo nodded, starting to scribble something down on the paper in front of him. “Now here’s a concept, lad; smoke rounds.”

Sniper considered that for a few seconds, tapping his own pencil against the side of the table. “As in proper smoke like a flare, or as in just some sort of, er, blocked visibility?”

“Either,” Demo shrugged.

“Again, anything too flammable would go off in the gun. Maybe some sort of,” he said, gestured loosely for a moment. “Maybe just a round full of some sort of fine powder that would go up when the casing shatters against a wall? Hell of a heavy round I think, probably need a special gun for it. What sort of powder like that wouldn’t be flammable?”

“Well, technically speaking, everything is flammable, if we want to get down to what the word flammable means,” Demo replied, pausing in his own writing. “But there’s a few things that might work. A good powder for that might even just be potassium bicarbonate, that’s easy enough to come by.”

“Why’s that?” Sniper asked.

“Well, most commonly it’s used in fire extinguishers,” Demo shrugged. “I imagine that could really do a number on someone else’s guns or machinery, as well. And I wouldn’t need to put in a budget request to our boss over it, I could just snag the spare canister we keep in the kitchen.”

“Tavish, how often do I tell you you’re a bloody genius?” Sniper asked, watching Demo scribble down some formulas with practiced ease.

“On the weekly, must be,” Demo replied.

“Might end up going over the regular amount during this project, because you’re an absolute bloody genius.”

“Thankin’ you kindly, lad,” Demo said, flashed him a grin.

A knock at the door to Demo’s work space. Sniper got up first, moving to open it.

“Oh. Hey, Snipes,” Scout said, looking surprised to see Sniper answering the door.

“G’day,” Sniper greeted, a little confused. He stepped aside to let Scout in, slightly befuddled.

“Hey, Demo,” Scout greeted, saw the spread of different papers and bullets across the table. “Uh, you guys workin’ on somethin’ in here? You busy?”

“Very,” Demo agreed, stretching his arms up over his head, back aching from being hunched over paper for a bit too long. “You need somethin’?”

“I, I mean, nah. Not really. Just wanted to see if you—uh, either of you guys—were free is all,” Scout shrugged, putting his hands into his pockets.

“We’re working on a project,” Sniper replied, moving to go take his own seat again.

“Trying to figure out the mechanics of a new kind of sniping round,” Demo elaborated. “We’ve just moved on to the part that’s all math and chemistry and physics and the like.”

“Yeah?” Scout asked, a little fidgety, a little awkward.

“Yeah,” Demo nodded. Picked up his pencil again. “Gonna be awfully boring, I imagine.”

“Especially since you don’t really have the head for this sort of thing,” Sniper said, a little jokingly, glancing up at Scout. “Might ask to use you for target practice with it later though, if you’re still bored around then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mundy,” Demo chided, then grinned. “Lad’s far too skinny. Even a marksman like you’d never be able to hit him, aye?”

Sniper laughed, and Demo laughed. And then they looked over at Scout, and Scout wasn’t laughing. He was just stood there, shifting nervously. Not the same kind of nervous as he got when he’d poked and prodded at Heavy a little too long and finally just got hefted up and put somewhere high up that he’d take a while to get down from, or the same kind of nervous as when Spy pulled his knife out and started flipping it open and closed during an argument, because both of those had an amount of “do it, I dare you” in them, an amount of “bet you won’t” in them.

But this time, Scout just looked tense. A little too wide-eyed, a little too avoiding-eye-contact. His chest rose and fell in a breath that looked far too deliberate and therefore awkward.

They both stopped laughing, just looking at him. “Lad, something the matter?” Demo asked, expression falling.

“Yeah, you awright, mate?” Sniper asked, turning in his chair to regard Scout.

Scout removed his hands from his pockets, fiddling for a few seconds. Then he looked up at Demo, then at Sniper, then at Demo again. He opened his mouth to say something.

He burst into tears.

Sniper startled, and Demo’s eye widened. They looked at each other, Demo largely with concern and Sniper with open alarm as Scout hunched forward, burying his face in his hands and crying openly.

A brief nonverbal argument took place, then Sniper was standing, moving over.

“Scout, mate,” he started gently, awkwardly, and after a second put a cautious hand on Scout’s shoulder. “Scout, what happened? What’s wrong?”

Scout moved to cling to Sniper’s shirt, tears redoubling, and Sniper stiffened, freezing up, eyes going a little wide. He shot a look at Demo that could not have more clearly read as “help me”.

Demo quickly rose, moving over. He put a hand on Scout’s shoulder to test the waters, and when Scout didn’t react poorly, he pulled the shorter man off of Sniper and into a hug. Scout crumpled into it immediately. Sniper settled for standing just to one side, patting Scout on the back once or twice.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Scout managed, and Demo shook his head, hugging all the tighter.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, lad. It’s alright. What’s got you so blue?” he asked, tone calm and level.

“Just—just, a lot, okay?” Scout managed, and Demo nodded, tucking Scout’s head under his chin after a second. “It’s just, everyone’s all busy doin’ important shit, and I’m just—just sitting around, and I wanna help, but everyone keeps telling me I’m bugging them and bein’ a fuckin’ nuisance, but I’m really bored and it’s really lonely out here and I—I miss Boston and I miss my family and I’m fuckin’ tired of eating whatever garbage we keep stocked in the kitchen but I can’t go into town because Spy’s being a dick and I can’t fuckin’ find him to borrow his keys, and I’m just…” He burrowed in closer to Demo, taking a shaky breath. “And now I’m bothering you guys while you’re working on something that actually matters.”

“You’re not,” Demo said right away, squeezing him tighter for a moment. “No expiration date on maths, aye?”

“And you’re not a bother,” Sniper added, tone dripping sincerity. He paused for a second. “It’s alright. I’m not going to be upset with you for talking to me.”

“Snipes, you and I both know I’m fuckin’ annoying,” Scout all but snapped, only lacking venom because he didn’t seem to have the energy for it.

“No,” Sniper replied, and exhaled. “You don’t annoy me. I like having you around. You… and Demo s’well I think,” he added, looking over at the Scotsman before glancing back away again. “You’re the best mates I’ve ever bloody had, awright?”

“Can’t imagine there was much competition for that, ya feckin’ hermit,” Demo said dryly, arching an eyebrow.

“Stuff it, Tavish,” Sniper scoffed, flushing, pulling his hat off and shoving it into Demo’s face, making him laugh. “Bugger off, ruining the moment. Absolute piker.”

“I’m still sorry,” Scout said, quieter now, and Demo and Sniper stopped their shenanigans for a moment to listen. “I just feel bad. I’m being a total baby, getting lonely when nobody talks to me for like, two days.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Demo shrugged. “Just means we need to watch out for you better, aye?”

Scout made a noncommittal noise. Sniper and Demo looked at each other, then Sniper spoke.

“We really are working on something, but… you can hang about in here if you’d like,” he suggested lightly. “Might get boring and all, but it’s nothing classified.”

“Just tinkering,” Demo agreed. “Would that help at all?”

Scout nodded, sniffled. “Okay.” He paused for a few moments before he finally pulled away from Demo, wiping his eyes with the his forearm self-consciously, unable to maintain eye contact. “I appreciate it, guys. Really. You guys are the best.”

“No worries,” Sniper said, and gave him a parting pat on the back before he went to pull up the spare chair, situating it between he and Demo’s chairs before sitting back down. Scout took a seat, pulled his legs up onto it to sit cross-legged, and looked down at the papers.

“What were we saying, potassium bicarbonate?” Demo prompted, taking his own seat.

“Right. Might need to talk to Heavy about using his welding materials, but we’d need a real finnicky piece of tech to make the thing without making a bloody mess,” Sniper said.

“And it can’t be from a standard press, we’d want to go for extra precision on a bullet that’ll be going through a sniper rifle,” Demo agreed. “Might need to talk to the Engineer, ask for an hour or two in his shop to borrow his metal casting nonsense.”

“Maybe. Does that, er, potassium carbon whatsit, does it melt down?”

Scout just sat and fiddled with the bullets on the table while they talked, and eventually snagged a piece of paper that wasn’t being used and started to doodle idly. And Demo and Sniper could both tell pretty soon that his mood had improved significantly, shoulders squaring and head being held higher even as he hunched over his piece of paper. And for the rest of their break, Scout took to sitting with either Demo or Sniper while they worked on various things, and at the end of their break, on the last day before they headed back to work, Sniper borrowed Engie’s keys to his truck and the three of them went out to get the greasiest fast food they could find.

And Scout felt better. Really, honestly, better.

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Scout had dropped by both to hang out and to listen to the game that night, not wanting to deal with the hustle and bustle of the common area and arguing over what the radio would be set to. And apparently his team won, and then the radio was shut off, and Scout was just finishing off the beer Sniper’d handed him earlier, fingernails tapping against the glass as he looked up at the map on Sniper’s wall.

It was criss-crossed with various marks in varying colors of pen, fading after having had it for so many years, so many contracts.

“Is travelling, like, fun?” Scout asked suddenly out of the blue, looking at the map.

Sniper shrugged. “Can be. Or it can be stressful, if I schedule contracts too close together,” he replied. “What, don’t you count base transfers as travel?”

“Nah,” Scout said. “Not really.”

There was another long pause.

“So it was mostly just… when you were on contract for stuff, then? Before you worked here?” Scout asked.

“Mostly,” Sniper confirmed.

Fingers tapping on glass. “Must’a paid well.”

“Mercenary work usually does,” Sniper shrugged.

Scout took a drink, put the bottle back down again. Looked at it. “I keep forgetting that most of you guys have kinda been, like… doin’ all this shit for years and years. Like, outside of the team. One of those things of like—like when you meet someone and they mention their hair used to be way longer or shorter or whatever and you just can’t imagine it because you’ve only known them lookin’ one way.” Fingers tapping on glass. “That you’ve, like… pretty much always been used to all this.”

“You weren’t?” Sniper asked.

Scout shrugged. “I mean, I pretended. Took a few months to start getting used to it. The dyin’ thing was new for everyone, so that was fine, but… not much of the rest of it.”

Sniper’s brow furrowed. Scout continued after a moment, clearly uncomfortable with the silence.

“I mean, I guess it was kinda like how you guys all had to get used to livin’ with a whole bunch of people. Like, Heavy kinda got it since he’s got all those sisters, and Engie had a bunch of roommates in college and stuff, and you just live out here so you don’t gotta deal with that shit, but I’m the one who lived with like half a dozen other guys for most’a my life growin’ up, y’know? So everyone else had to kinda play it cool with that, and I had to play it cool about killin’ people, it balances out, right?”

Sniper looked him over. Fingers tapping on glass.

“Yeah, nah. Those aren’t the same thing,” Scout said quietly, ducking his head a little.

“You’d never…?” Sniper asked slowly. Saw Scout recoiling a little, changed directions. “Most everyone got recruited from some sort of criminal background. You saying they picked you up right out of… a desk job or some other nonsense?”

“No,” Scout said, voice a little quiet. “No, I… I did what I had to do, alright? And… I always kinda figured if it ever came down to it, I’d… keep doin’ what I had to do, to stay alive, to make it back home again. But I never got beyond fistfights, mostly. Knife fights. Shit like that. Never killin’. So… this was new.”

Sniper shifted. “I could never tell, if that makes a difference,” he mentioned, trying for a lighter tone, and Scout’s lip only quirked for a second before dropping again.

“…Snipes, let me ask you a question real quick,” Scout suddenly proposed, sitting up a little and looking up at Sniper for maybe the first time since the conversation started. “Do you think what we do in our day job counts as murder?”

Sniper considered the question. Scout elaborated.

“They come back again. So if nobody’s really dead, then it’s like nobody died, and if nobody died then nobody got killed. Then technically there’s no killer.”

“I don’t think it counts,” Sniper said decidedly. “Like you said. Nobody’s dead, nobody’s a killer.”

“I… feel like maybe it does,” Scout said carefully. “I feel like it’s about intent, y’know? Like… you’re tryin’ to beat the shit outta someone until they quit breathing, that’s killing, even if they don’t really die. Like in those murder mystery books and whatever where someone gets like, shot in the chest and then fakes dyin’, and the person thinks they killed someone. Ain’t that kinda still murder?”

Sniper sat back, looked at Scout, his fidgeting, the guilt on his face. “I think that’s a real Catholic way of looking at it,” he finally said, and Scout looked up at him, a little surprised. “You said you were raised Catholic, right?”

“Yeah,” Scout nodded.

Sniper exhaled, tilting his own bottle around idly, watching the few drops at the bottom rolling around, considering his words. “I don’t think it’s about intent,” he decided. “I think it’s about… cause and effect. The effect at the end. I don’t think you’re responsible for much of anything that goes on in your own head—you can only control that so much. All you can really control is your actions, and if your actions are automatic or out of your control, more of a… fight or flight response, then you can only control whether you take responsibility for it.”

“What if you do somethin’ and then somethin’ happens that you didn’t mean to happen?” Scout asked.

“Then you still need to take responsibility, if it could be your fault. And… that goes for good or bad, right or wrong. If you’re brilliant on accident, you’ve got to take responsibility. If you do something awful on accident, you’ve got to take responsibility. It goes both ways. Assuming that everything makes you a bad person—that causing lethal harm to someone who can’t die makes you a murderer—that’s just a very Catholic way of looking at it. Constantly finding yourself at fault, assuming you’ve done something wrong, deciding that every choice you make is…” He trailed, losing track of his words for a second.

“Is…?” Scout asked, and when Sniper looked up, Scout appeared to be clinging to his every word.

Sniper paused for another second or two. “Assuming that with everything you do, you’re responsible for the worst possible outcome of the situation regardless of whether it happens or not,” he finally decided. “Everything you do, thinking of the worst case scenario and deciding you’ve earned the guilt of that happening whether it happens or not. But you can’t live like that. You need to focus on what’s actually happening, what you’re actually capable of. Not the semantics surrounding whether you’re technically, legally, morally a murderer. Intention isn’t much of anything, really, but result is, and what you’ve done in our day jobs has never resulted in anyone being dead in a way that matters.”

He finished his little soapbox rant, and wished he could take a drink to dispel his nerves, but his bottle was empty. Scout seemed to be considering something.

“…Sometimes, Miss P sends you on jobs,” Scout said slowly, looking up at him. Sniper nodded. “You kill people on those, right? Real people, not people that come back.” Sniper nodded, more hesitantly. “Do you… count that?”

“Yeah,” Sniper said, concentrating every molecule of his body on making his voice light. “That definitely counts. I’m making independent choices, knowing the result will probably be someone dead, and then someone’s dead for real.”

Scout took a drink, set his bottle down, nodded. Like he’d already known, already come to terms with it, which he probably had. Like he’d only asked because he wanted to know what Sniper thought. Paused. “Sometimes I go on contracts. And it ain’t exactly my job to try and clear out places, I’m more of a… get in, grab somethin’, see somethin’, fuck right back off again before I get shot,” he said. “I’ve never pulled a trigger on someone who dies for real. Only ever maybe whacked someone upside the head if I gotta get past them.”

“Not a killer, then,” Sniper said simply, but Scout shot a look at him and he stopped again.

“Here’s the thing though, is I go in there and figure out where shit is. Where they store explosives, where the exits are, who lives and sleeps where, the layout of places,” he continued. Tipped his bottle from one side to another, drained the last of it and leaned to drop it in the trash can. “Snipes, I ain’t an idiot. I know Miss P thinks I am, all the guys think I am, but I ain’t an idiot.” The bottle shattered against the bottom of the can, startling Sniper a little. Scout didn’t flinch, though. “I know Miss Pauling goes, or sends someone else, and kills basically everyone in there once I tell her how to get in.”

 He got comfortable again, shifting a little. Sniper just watched him warily.

“That’s basically the same thing as me putting the bullet in their head myself, isn’t it?” Scout asked, looking back up at him, expression hard to read.

Sniper hesitated. “Maybe,” he said slowly. “But… I don’t think I’d count that, either. Not properly.”

Scout sank back, and that hard to read expression shifted into frustration. “Look, okay. Maybe I don’t personally kill people,” he said, tone short. “But I sure as hell hurt people. Sure as hell fuck up their whole shit. And I dunno if that’s worse, but it’s not that much better. Like, Jesus Christ, I mean, everyone on the team’s got nightmares these days, I can’t hear a car backfire in town without wanting to take a swing at someone. I won’t be able to make it living with regular people once this job finally runs out, and neither will most of us, and neither will most of those other assholes on the other side of the field. In all the ways that matter, that dumbass piece of shit kid Jeremy died on his first day on the job. He doesn’t exist anymore. Now,” he said, and his throat seemed to go tight suddenly, and he looked off to one side, swallowing hard. “Now I’m just Scout. Now I just hurt people. Because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.”

Sniper didn’t know what to say.

Scout swallowed again, visibly steeling himself. “I’ve got another question for you,” he said.

“Go on,” Sniper prompted gently.

“Is a killer someone who’s killed people before,” Scout asked, “or is it somebody who tries to kill people because it’s the only thing they know how to do?”

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The sound of one shiny black Oxford shoe tapping irritably against the lineoleum of the floor was what eventually drew Pyro to glance up from where they were patching a tear near the cuff of their flame suit. They looked up and processed first the chubby orange cat being held out towards them, then the torn-half-to-hell sock in that cat’s mouth, then Spy’s deadpan expression.

“Your animal has once again decided to pilfer from my living space,” Spy informed them, lip curled in a sneer.

Pyro hummed an apology, moving to take the cat in question with much more gentle hands, tugging the remains of the sock from his mouth and moving to pet at his head. Lucky almost instantly moved to roll over onto his back and bat at Pyro’s gloves happily. Pyro laughed and passed the sock to Spy, who more snatched it away than took it.

“Thank you,” he said, voice venomous.

“You know,” Pyro signed between the cat attacking their glove. “He only gets like this because he wants to play.”

“Not my problem,” Spy all but snapped, turning and leaving the room at a brisk pace. “Control your animal.”

Pyro sighed, looking back down and scratching at the cat’s cheek.

“Engineer!” Spy all but screamed later that day, storming up the hallway towards the man in question’s workshop, loud enough that the Engineer actually heard him over the sound of his drill and powered it down, glancing up in time to see him stomping through the door.

“Howdy,” he said cheerfully, biting back on the immediate amusement he got from how perturbed Spy seemed in that moment.

“Would you care to tell me why I found this in front of my door?” Spy hissed, holding up a handkerchief. Engineer craned his neck to look at what was in it, and his eyebrows rose for a moment before his smile ticked up at the corners.

“Looks like lil’ Sissy left you a present,” he chuckled, glancing back down at his work again. “Means she likes you. And besides that, that she’d doin’ her job catching mice.”

Spy absolutely fumed. “I don’t believe dead rodents constitute as gifts, Tinkerer,” he managed through gritted teeth, dropping the handkerchief on the desk.

“Fair enough. Makes sense you’d feel threatened, being a rat yourself,” Engie hummed.

A pause as Spy took a moment to be deeply indignant, scoffing in disbelief. “I won’t stand for this—this disrespect!” he finally managed.

“Then sit down,” he said with a shrug, nudging the stool next to him with his boot.

“I’m going to kill that cat,” Spy finally said, voice firm, and left the room.

“No you ain’t, and we both know it,” the Engineer drawled after him.

The sound of quiet cursing in French, approaching the Resupply room. Several sets of eyes turned in the direction of it, and finally Spy came into view, picking at his suit angrily, the absolute picture of annoyance.

“Yo, what’s got your panties in a bunch?” Scout snickered.

“Forget your lint roller at home?” Demo chimed in, also grinning.

“Yes,” Spy said, glaring at the two of them. “And unfortunately, a stupid, terrible animal has decided to ruin my suit.”

“Oi, be nice, Scout can hear you,” Demo joked, and laughed as Scout slugged him on the arm.

“Well, yes, he is indeed terrible, but I meant a certain someone’s horrible beast of a cat,” he said, glare turning towards Pyro. “I’m not sure when, but at some point today, the boy one decided to lay on my suit.”

“That does sound like Lucky,” Pyro signed casually, returning to refilling the canister on their flamethrower. “It’s not so bad, though. It’s just a little cat hair.”

“Oh, ‘just a little cat hair’, isn’t that rich,” Spy deadpanned, continuing to pick at his suit. “Of course. Évidemment. It’s not as if this suit couldn’t pay for me to destroy, clone, and then destroy that cat again.”

Pyro just laughed as though he was joking, which was actually the most infuriating thing they could’ve done. Spy continued to swear and threaten the cat under his breath until well into battle that day.

The Spy jolted awake at the sound of a loud, plaintive meow.

He sighed hard, rolling his eyes and turning over to try to get back to sleep again. A second and third meow followed the first, though, and finally after a minute or so of the yowling, he shoved off his blankets and stood, muttering angrily under his breath.

He swung the door of his room open. “Quoi?” he spat down at the little orange cat sitting patiently just outside.

She meowed softly and darted past him into the room.

“Non. Sûrement pas. Non.” he said firmly, strolling after the cat, who darted beneath his bed. “Get out from under there. We aren’t doing this.”

The sound of paws scuffling against the ground, then a long silence.

“Fine, have it your way,” Spy muttered, shutting the door and moving back to bed. “Enjoy being trapped in here until morning.”

In the morning in question, he woke up to the sound of purring, and the feeling of kneading against his arm. He looked over and saw Sissy looking at him with narrowed eyes, paws pressing against his bicep beneath the blanket, and finally she curled up there, still purring like an outboard motor.

“Non,” he said again, sitting up and dislodging her as he left the bed. She simply stood and moved into the recently-vacated warm spot, still rumbling quietly. “You think you’re clever, do you?”

She blinked up at him slowly, tail swaying slightly.

“Don’t insult me. This isn’t going to work. I am a cold, bitter, heartless man, and I am impervious to these weak attempts at winning me over,” he said firmly.

She yawned, stretching briefly. Spy scoffed, turning away and starting to get dressed.

Twenty minutes later, a knock at his door. It was the Engineer, helmet in his hands, looking worried.

“Uh, now Spy, I know this might be a strange request,” he opened with, making Spy raise his eyebrows. “But Firebug is a little concerned, hasn’t seen Sissy since last night, and we were wonderin’ if you’d help us look for her, I know it’s early and all—“

Spy turned away, bending and scooping up the cat where she was moving up just behind him, presenting her to the Engineer wordlessly.

He blinked, carefully taking the cat. “Oh. Thank you.” A pause. “Was she here all night?”

“Oui.”

The start of a smile. “Finally warmin’ up to her?”

Spy scoffed, walking out of the room and kissing the Engineer on the temple in passing before continuing off down the hallway. “Not a chance,” he said easily.

Spy sighed heavily as Lucky jumped up into his lap as he sat in an armchair in the common room looking through the paper, pooling there happily and purring like he wasn’t in very real danger. “Terrible. You are a terrible creature. I hate you,” Spy deadpanned down at him, but Lucky just shifted to bat at his tie happily. “You’re awful. One of these days I’m going to put you in a box and leave you by the side of the road for the coyotes. Do not test me.”

Lucky shut his eyes, still purring like he had nowhere to be.

“I need you to understand that, asleep or not, I will be standing and leaving this chair eventually, and I will be doing so as though you are not presently on my lap. The only potential issue with this plan is how very fat you are. Otherwise, I have no qualms with this.”

Lucky continued to purr, blinking up at him briefly as Spy shifted the newspaper and continued reading.

Pyro stopped dead in their tracks as they passed through, starting to giggle as they looked at the scene. “New friend?” they signed when Spy noticed them there.

“Potential new hat,” he said darkly, and Pyro laughed, moving into the kitchen. “I don’t know why you laugh when I say these things! I’m not joking!”

“Sure you aren’t,” they poked their head out to sign, and returned to the kitchen.

Spy mumbled more curses, even as he briefly dropped a hand to pat Lucky on the head begrudgingly.

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It was strange, because Scout wasn’t a mercenary, not really, not in any way that mattered.

The other guys, for the most part they could bond over being mercenaries back before they joined the team. They’d all travelled some amount, sometimes been hired on to do things with other mercenaries, all had various stories to share. And there were phrases they could say in a stilted tone that the others would furrow their brows and nod their heads sympathetically at, some kind of secret code Scout had never learned except as a second language from talking to them.

So there were some things Scout never really considered to be anything he’d need to worry about. Losing limbs or getting massive scars? They had Medic and the Quick-Fix. Being stabbed in the back? Maybe if Spy was being bitchy again, but they all had to live together and inhabit the same space for the foreseeable future, and there were few gigs as cushy as immortality and immunity from the legal system at large the majority of the time, and there wouldn’t really be any kind of benefit to it as far as Scout could tell. Danger to one’s family? It was part of their contracts that all relatives and loved ones would be protected as long as they were part of the team and for the ten years following their departure.

Dying for real? As long as they were on the base or somewhere near it, that wasn’t a concern.

There were only a few people who went properly off and away from bases for any reason. Heavy when he went home on break, but he was also always off radar and could fend for himself. Spy on missions, but he’d been doing those literally longer than Scout had been alive, so he wasn’t particularly at risk. Sniper when he was hired on for a hit, but he shot at people from the opposite side of the continent anyways, so he wasn’t all that worried about it, especially since the only injury Sniper had ever contracted had been when he’d fallen from his perch and broken his arm like a dumbass, and even then Sniper was more embarrassed than shaken by it.

Sniper tried to have a conversation with him about it a few times. But he also would sometimes Spycheck people randomly on-base, couldn’t sleep with his back facing a door or window, was always strapped when he went into town even when they were in range of the base, slept with a knife nearby, all sorts of other things. He admitted up front that he thought he was probably just being paranoid. But Scout sat through it with him those few times, listened to Sniper explaining that he wouldn’t be upset if Scout moved on from him if he abruptly went missing, even if he wasn’t proven dead. That he would want Scout to move on with his life.

Down the line, there were other conversations too. About what they would do when their contracts ran out. Maybe they’d move in together. Maybe meet each other’s families. Maybe get some pets. One maybe after another, all sorts of theoreticals.

Miss Pauling came back to base personally one day, basically unannounced. Demo dropped by the laundry room where he was working on some chores to tell him she was there and needed to talk to him about something. Scout had pointed at the washing machine and asked if it would be quick, since he didn’t want his clothes to get musty. Demo said he didn’t think so.

Miss Pauling explained the whole situation to him, slowly and clearly, the conference table used for team meetings covered in a light dusting of papers. Explained the date and time that they’d received their last update from Sniper, off on a mission in northern Australia. Explained the date and time that they’d gotten some kind of attempt at contact from Sniper, not when he had an update scheduled, but the contact was cut off several seconds later. Explained where the tracker Sniper had carried—standard procedure for off-base missions—had last pinged before it stopped broadcasting, at roughly the same time that the attempt at communication was made. Explained that on a perfunctory investigation by a contact in a nearby city, they’d found Sniper’s camper van, reduced to a charred, black husk. After a very short amount of time indeed, it was soundly determined that Sniper had been the victim of a car bomb.

He waited through the whole briefing for the part where she told him how bad it was, how long it would be before they could get Sniper back on base again and back in action. As things continued and she got around to telling him what all they’d managed to recover from the remains of the vehicle, he started to realize that Sniper wouldn’t be coming back on base again.

He was granted one week of official leave to travel to Australia for the funeral and to sort through some things. On the first day there, dizzy and disoriented from jet lag, nauseous and uncomfortable in the abrupt change of season, he spent several hours sorting through the meager pile of belongings that they’d managed to get from the van. He first sorted between what things belonged to him—various knickknacks and whatnot that he’d left in there over the years—and what things belonged to Sniper. Then he sorted between what things he would want to keep, what things could be returned to their employer (mostly weaponry and such), and what things should go to Sniper’s parents.

He had to wear a suit to the funeral, and he only owned the one. The first time he’d worn it was for his court date. The most recent time he’d worn it was on a date on Valentine’s Day to a fancy restaurant. Sniper had muddled his way through putting in a reservation a whole four months in advance, and they’d needed to drive almost an hour to get there (even speeding a little bit), and after the dinner they’d spent another hour just wandering around the town and talking and laughing and it was maybe one of the best days of Scout’s life, besides how annoying it was to get into and out of a suit.

And now he was putting it on a short few months later for a funeral.

He met Sniper’s parents in that suit, at a funeral with an empty casket. An upset, distraught elderly couple, who squinted at him and his accent and asked him exactly how he knew their Mickey, a father who’d scowled at him when he averted his eyes and mumbled that he was a friend, a mother who’d looked at him so knowingly and had to reach up quite a way to pat him on the shoulder comfortingly, but who wouldn’t say anything not long later when that father had demanded that he get out, having decided that Scout and any of his other “crazed blood-money coworkers” could stay the hell away from the funeral they’d all earned for his son.

For the last four days of his official leave he went home. Dropped off any of the things that he didn’t need, in his old room. He was reminded of how much he loved his Ma, because she hadn’t asked anything about why he was there, only how long he had until he needed to leave again. All he could think about for the first day was what she would’ve said to Sniper if it was the other way around. The fact that she would’ve needed to reach to pat him on the shoulder.

She asked the first question on the second day, in the morning as Scout leaned against the counter and ate breakfast. He’d left a few things on the table, and she’d seen some of the pictures there, and who was his friend? The one in the sunglasses and the suit? She didn’t want to pry, and knew that he wasn’t allowed to talk about his job or anything, but it was just that she hadn’t seen him smile like that in years.

He told her everything. Of course he did. And maybe he shouldn’t have, because he wasn’t supposed to talk about his job, but he did. And she nodded, and asked a few questions about what she didn’t understand, but by the end of it she didn’t make any comments, say anything derogatory about his choice of date, just pulled him into a hug and said that she was sorry.

He admitted to her, quietly, that some part of him didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Was sure that he’d somehow been okay, because they couldn’t find a body, so maybe he was okay, maybe he was alive somewhere, maybe he wasn’t really gone, maybe maybe maybe. One maybe after another. And she’d quietly assured him that it was okay. It was okay to believe in that. That maybe that was what would get him through the next however long. But that it was also okay to move on, eventually. As long as he didn’t get stuck.

He wondered, if his own dad was around, if he would’ve tried to kick Sniper out of Scout’s funeral. At least he knew that his Ma wouldn’t have allowed it.

When he got back to base, nobody said anything to him. Nobody asked. They left him alone, for the most part, left him to his own devices. Miss Pauling let him know on the return briefing that they’d tracked down the people that did it, and they’d been dealt with. When pressed, she informed him that all of the members of the group responsible for his murder had been killed.

Scout wasn’t a mercenary, not really, not in any way that mattered. But he wished, desperately, more than he could ever put into words, that he could’ve been the one hired to do it.

Chapter Text

His contract expired.

Somewhere along the line—wonder when?—apparently his work had gotten ‘sloppy’. He’d gotten ‘erratic’. So six years after what all happened, when his contract was up to be renewed, Miss Pauling gently urged him to let it expire and to just head home.

It wasn’t like he had a good reason not to. He didn’t particularly get along with any of the team (anymore). A few of them had come and gone—Pyro apparently got reassigned somewhere and was gone overnight, and at some point Demo decided to leave mercenary work altogether to get a real, proper, legally sound job somewhere. Both of them had been replaced.

Their new Sniper wasn’t as polite as—

She was even more of a recluse, although she got along alright with Heavy sometimes. She was also Russian, which probably helped. And Scout felt a little bad about how much he hated her. She couldn’t help what happened. It wasn’t her fault. She was just picking up the baton on this job. Someone had to do it.

Mostly he just ended up avoiding her. And everyone else.

Exactly once he’d tried to take up dating again. Someone had gotten particularly sweet when he was out at a bar, and they’d flirted for a little while, then they’d suggested they both head somewhere else, and that they had a car if he wanted to—

He quietly stammered his way through a refusal. The vague guilt and unease reached a head the second he thought about getting in a car.

He’d needed to sell his car and get a motorcycle instead, at some point. The idea of getting in a vehicle had become an irrational fear, after he’d seen a picture of the wreckage, smelled the acrid smoke on the salvaged belongings.

That was one reason he took a plane home and had all his stuff shipped separately.

That meant that it was a few days of wearing only his old clothes when he got back, waiting for the rest to show up. And those were a little hard to squeeze into, he’d really been a lanky fuck before he became a mercenary.

The only thing he had at home that fit right was the suit, left there hanging in his closet to get eaten by moths.

The suit and the boxes of things were all shoved into the far side of his closet, and they stayed that way. He felt like maybe he wouldn’t ever be ready to look at them again, and in the meantime, they just made him feel guilty.

For the first two months after he got off work, he didn’t really do much. He stayed home, stayed out of trouble. Put his things away, sorted through what he wanted to keep and what he could just get rid of, either selling it or scrapping it if it was just kinda garbage. He tried to catch up with his brothers a little bit, the ones left in Boston still, but he didn’t get very far, feeling weird and disconnected.

After two months, he finally felt bad about Ma constantly tip-toeing around the topic of employment or hobbies (not that he needed to worry about those—he had enough money saved to not worry about much of anything until he was like, eighty), and he started trying to look for work, or maybe just something to keep him busy. For a month or so he looked into becoming a bartender, but the hours were a little weird. He thought about trying to get into doing baseball on some professional level, but he was getting a little old to be going into it for the first time since his late teens and early twenties. He very briefly looked into doing the cartoons for the newspaper—he was pretty good at art by then—before he found out they would require some amount of actual schooling for it.

So he ended up latching onto that, and started heading to the library five or six days a week to spend a few hours there studying to get his GED. His Ma supported him wholeheartedly on it, and got around to telling him, about a month into his new routine, that she was really glad he found something to do, something he wanted, that he’d just seemed so miserable, before, waiting around for something to happen.

Maybe she was right. He was waiting around for something to happen. He got the speech from Miss P—“ten years following your departure from the team, you and anyone nearby you will be kept in the system, and if there’s anyone who tries to bring you harm we’ll catch them before they can, and here’s a phone number to call if anything suspicious happens that you want looked into”. To him, that meant “someone might try and kill you”. So he did stay strapped when he went places, looked over his shoulder, kept an eye on doors and other potential exits.

So when he got back from the library one day and saw a car parked out in front of the house, at least he was prepared.

He thought fast. Kept driving past the house and parked a little ways down the block—he could drive the bike back later, it didn’t matter. He unlocked the door as quietly as he could, pushed it open with his shoulder, pistol drawn and cocked, falling back into old habits maybe a little too easily considering he hadn’t been a mercenary for almost a year and a half.

Voices from the living room—not from the TV, and not Ma on the phone, because he could also hear the TV, and there was a commercial playing that he recognized, one that didn’t involve Ma and a second, much deeper voice.

He steadied his hands, rolled his shoulders, and stepped into the room, leveling his gun directly at the head of the person within.

First he took stock of the fact that Ma was indeed there, sitting on the couch, looking relatively relaxed and entirely unharmed, if surprised to see him there and also with a gun. Then he took stock of the room, saw that there was only one other person here, the one he was pointing a gun at, the one who had slowly raised his hands up to either side of his head. Potentially unarmed, it was hard to tell with his baggy jacket—

Wait a minute.

Scout frowned, squinted, looking over his face a little more closely as realization started creeping into view.

He tried to imagine, for a second. What exactly would seven years do to a guy?

Maybe he’d end up with his hair growing out a lot longer, from close-cut to hanging down around his ears. Maybe with a beard, relatively clean but still a bit messy in some ways. Maybe he’d get new clothes, his eyes would sink a little bit more, would start to crinkle at the corners. More freckles, more spots maybe. Aged, scarred. Maybe he’d be wearing glasses. Maybe, despite all of that, he wouldn’t look all that different at all.

“…’llo, Bilby,” Sniper said quietly, hopefully, voice rough, and maybe he meant to say more, but he didn’t get the chance, because Scout lowered his gun, marched three steps forward, and slapped him clear across the face.

It was a hefty slap. The smack noise was practically ringing, and his hand stung like a bitch, and he’d hit him hard enough to knock his glasses off to clatter across the floor, and his head snapped back at the force of it, and the noise he made was satisfyingly pained.

“Right. Probably deserve that,” he croaked, and maybe he meant to say more, but he didn’t get the chance, because Scout tucked back away his gun, grabbed Sniper by the sides of his head, and kissed him square on the mouth.

It was a hard kiss, hard enough that he got Sniper to do that thing where he made an undignified little squeaky noise of surprise, caught off guard by it. He only melted forward for a second or two before Scout was pulling back away again.

“You fucking piece of shit son of a bitch cunt I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Scout practically snarled.

“Jeremy,” his Ma admonished from the couch.

“He’s right,” Sniper said weakly.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Scout insisted, just as fiercely. “What the fuck happened to you?!”

“There was a—“ Sniper started explaining, but Scout cut him off.

“Car bomb between 2:45 and 2:50 PM twenty minutes away from the nearest city limits,” he listed off, “I know that, but what—seven fucking years, Snipes!”

“I know,” Sniper said, voice flimsy. “First two years were recovery and physical therapy, next four were trying to get legal papers and apply for a visa to get back into the States again.”

“That bad?” Scout asked, still angry but faltering.

“Needed reconstructive surgery on… most of the left side of my body. Lost some teeth,” he said, and tugged his lip back on one side to show him where three teeth, the three behind the canines, were a slightly different color, then dropped his hand again. “Plenty of scars. Might be, er… missing a lot of those freckles you liked. And… voice comes and goes sometimes. But, Australian miracle medicine, I’m much better than I was.”

“You grew your hair out,” Scout noted next, carding his hands up through it.

Sniper laughed. “Lost half my teeth and needed a new coat of paint on the whole left of me, and you’re worried about my hair?” he chided.

“It’s just new, thought you hated it getting long,” Scout shrugged.

“Y’know,” his Ma said, sounding all too amused by the proceedings, approaching with Sniper’s glasses and handing them over to him, “you’re lucky you showed me those pictures all those years ago, Jeremy. Otherwise, strange guy shows up at our door askin’ about your work name and all, I would’a started blasting.”

She nodded meaningfully towards the table beside the couch, and Scout saw that indeed she had a gun there, taken from its place where he kept it stashed by the door as a “just in case”.

“Thanks, Ma,” he said, smiling a little.

“No problem, sweetheart,” she said, and patted him on the arm. She glanced between him and Sniper and scooped up the firearm from the table. “I’ll just go put this away,” she said, and left the two of them alone.

“Would’ve been easier to track you down if you’d given me more to go on than ‘southern Boston’,” Sniper said, eyebrows rising. “And if I didn’t need to be so careful about how I asked.”

“Huh?”

Sniper’s expression fell a little, and he raised his hand to fix his hair where Scout had mussed it up. “Look, you know the rules. Employer keeps an eye out for us for years after we leave. That means if I asked through my usual methods of tracking people down, that’d send up flashing red lights somewhere. So I… needed to take extra precautions.”

“Miss P told me they took care of the guys that tried to kill you,” Scout said, frowning.

“I went off radar for almost two years without official leave,” Sniper murmured. “And it wasn’t on purpose, but I don’t think they’d believe that. They might try and kill me if they find out I’m still alive. I’m a loose end.”

Scout’s heart dropped.

“Only cut it close once,” Sniper said, gaze falling. “But that was enough for Miss Pauling to get in contact with me, to try to talk to me. I… I told her I’m done, I’m out of mercenary work, and… just as a precaution I have to do a few things now. Check in on the regular. I wear this,” he said, pushing his sleeve up to show off a bulky device on his wrist, bigger than a watch. “It’s tracker. Makes sure I’m only in the places I say I’m going. Had to get a visa by myself, get transportation by myself, and it cut my protection time in half so now I’ve had to hire on someone to guard my parents and keep them safe, but now she’ll keep it secret that I’m alive. They’ll stop looking for me in two years, and if by then I’m still playing by the rules, I’m free. Back to normal life.”

“She said it was okay that you be here?” Scout asked. “In the same city as me? She wasn’t worried about that?”

“Told her why I was coming here,” Sniper shrugged.

“And what’d you tell her?” Scout asked softly.

They looked at each other.

“I… didn’t want to assume,” Sniper said quietly, carefully, looking over his face. “That you’d… I, I understand if you’ve moved on. Seven years, declared dead—“

“I didn’t,” Scout said just as quietly.

Sniper gave a breathless little laugh, cupping his face. “Bilby, I told you to,” he tried.

“Well, so-rry,” Scout said next, throat a little tight, hands on his hips, “Mister—Mister Legally Dead. Sorry I didn’t jump into speed dating the second I got the news. What, you—you wanted me to have kids by now?”

“Wouldn’t blame you,” Sniper shrugged, and kissed him, and pulled back away. “But… I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Well I’m glad you’re glad,” Scout mumbled, and kissed him, and pulled back away. “So…?”

Sniper was smiling, wide and unashamed. “So one day at a time,” he said quietly. “We can talk about it more in a bit. First, mind if I use your phone?”

“Why?”

“Meant to call in to check with Pauling in—“ He glanced around to find the clock in the room. “—three minutes or so. And… I ought to tell her I’ve made progress. And… that we’re sorting out details. Might call you over to talk to her too.”

“Yeah, go ahead. Hallway by the kitchen,” Scout directed, and kissed him again, and again, and again, until Sniper urged him down and off before he was late calling in.

He found himself in the kitchen, looking out the window. Ma was unloading the dishwasher and humming. In the hallway, the sound of talking, long pauses, more talking.

“He seems nice,” Ma said quietly, and shot Scout a smile, and Scout smiled too.

“He was—is,” he corrected quickly, flinching a little bit.

“How you feelin’?” Ma asked.

Scout looked down, crossed his arms over himself. “Y’know how in movies there’s that bit people do, all “feels too good to be true” or whatever?”

“Uh huh.”

“Kinda the opposite. It feels… like him being gone wasn’t real. And now stuff is real again.”

“Like you woke up?”

“…Yeah. Yeah, exactly,” Scout confirmed.

“I could tell,” Ma admitted, and stretched to reach the cabinet to put things away once they were good and dry. “Been a zombie since you got back, seems like maybe you’ve been a zombie for a while.”

Scout moved over to help, taking the dishes that belonged in the higher shelves and starting to put those away. “Sheesh, was I seriously that obvious?”

“It was pretty bad.”

“…Is that, like… normal? Or… healthy?” Scout asked carefully.

Ma laughed. “Sweetheart, how should I know?”

“But you know, like, everything.”

Ma pinched him on the cheek at the compliment and he squawked a complaint, and she laughed.

“I don’t know if it’s healthy,” she finally replied. “And… maybe it’s not about whether it’s healthy. Maybe… it’s just one step. And, hey, it worked out, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, and smiled. “Yeah, it did.”

“Bilby,” Sniper called, leaning in to look through the door to the kitchen, phone cord visibly all stretched out. “Wants to talk to you.”

Miss Pauling ran through a brief check to make sure he was indeed Scout, then asked a series of questions. Whether he felt safe with being around Sniper on the regular. Whether Sniper would be staying with him on the regular, and the fact that instead of extending security to cover him, she’d need to just go more lax on Scout’s security to make sure Sniper wasn’t found out.

He was fine with that. All of that.

After the phone call, after a few more questions, he dragged Sniper upstairs and flung open the door to his closet, digging through the dusty old boxes with purpose. Then he was pulling out an item and shoving it directly into Sniper’s chest.

Sniper put his hat back on, and Scout couldn’t help but yank him down into another kiss at the wave of nostalgia and familiarity as Sniper nudged his glasses up and looked at him and asked if it was on crooked, the same way he’d said a hundred times before, a hundred years ago.

And, hopefully, he’d say it a billion more times, for a billion more years. Scout would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

Okay, so—okay. So it wasn’t exactly one of those problems that he could call home about where he could be like “hey Ma, how did you always get the grass stains out of my baseball pants?” and she would go “cold water regular wash then rubbing alcohol and a rinse or just wash and bleach if it’s white, dummy” and that would be that. And it wasn’t exactly one of those problems that he could call home about where he could go “hey Ma, I’m kinda worried about life stuff and kinda wanna talk it out but it’s embarrassing so I wanted to talk to you specifically” then followed by like an hour long conversation laden with both of them rambling and getting sidetracked.

And it wasn’t exactly one of those problems where he would go to Medic like “hey Doc how come since I started working here I feel jumpy and exhausted all the time” and Medic would prescribe better diet and exercise and an actual sleep routine alongside having more prep time before and after battle to warm up into it and back down afterwards. And it wasn’t exactly one of those problems where he’d be playing poker with the guys and go “hey so I tried to go on a date again and it went bad again because she got annoyed with me and left after like half an hour” and they’d give him wildly different advice and play out wildly ridiculous scenarios just riffing off of each other and joking around and he didn’t really know what to do any differently but at least he felt better.

He was actually pretty sure he couldn’t talk to anyone about this, and he was actually pretty sure that he was going to drop dead as a result.

Because yeah, there was the spare guy from math class in high school or upperclassman on the track team who Scout would look up and down and kind of a little bit sort of wanna make out with, but that was like, one guy, and only for maybe an hour at a time, and he didn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want. So he could go ahead and take that secret little tickle at the inside of his ribcage and shove it deep deep down and desperately try not to think about it or talk about it to literally anyone.

And it worked great! It was a great system! Because he didn’t not like girls, girls were great, he’d totally go out with girls and be more than satisfied, so nobody needed to know that somewhere in the very back of his mind, guys were also kind of a little bit on the table. Like, when in the movie where the guy spins the bottle and it lands on another guy and they both flinch and spit in disgust, Scout would always go “I mean, I would do it” in his head. Like, he would say yes if someone asked and he knew they could keep it quiet. Like, he was always a little bit jealous of the people back home who were out and proud and could kick around the South End holding hands with dudes and seeming not particularly scared about it.

But this wasn’t some guy in math class or on his track team. This was a crush on someone he shared a base and fought a war with. Worse, two someones. Worse, two hot someones.

Worse, his best friends.

That was the part he felt the worst about, when it came to his crush on Demo and Sniper. He felt so guilty, all the time. Out getting drinks on the weekend and trying not to stare too hard when they laughed at his jokes, so different and so distinct and so nice. Trying not to blush when they assured him that they didn’t think he was annoying when apparently everyone else on the planet who he’d ever tried to date had disagreed. Curling his hands into fists instead of reaching over to lace his fingers together with one of them. Both of them. Biting and chewing his lip to absolute goddamn shreds like he used to do in middle school to keep from saying anything embarrassing and getting caught. They trusted him on some level, and there he was, glancing at them and looking at them and feeling like his heart was going to swell up and spill out of his mouth any second and they had no idea.

It would help if he knew how to talk about any of this. He didn’t know how to have tact, or how to talk about things like an adult. He generally did one night stands at most, partially because most people couldn’t stand him for much longer than that. He was frustrating to be around, contrary, always mouthing off, loved to argue too much, liked playing dumb games. And he tried to be up front about that with people, but either they’d check out of that conversation around then and leave him be, or they wouldn’t believe him and they’d ditch him somewhere down the line.

He wasn’t in a lot of relationships.

Maybe that was part of the problem, is he didn’t ever wanna dive too deep with people, was always just joking around or making light of stuff and not taking it seriously because he had to expect whoever he tried to date to leave him in the dust the second he got to be too much. So that meant he never really… learned how. How to talk about things seriously, how to have those conversations. Even his usual pick-up line, the walking right up to someone and asking if they wanted to have sex with him, that felt so non-serious, so much like a joke, even if it was a really great way of establishing “hey I’m not necessarily looking for a long-term relationship right now with you but this is what I want and I’m gonna be entirely up front and you can shoot me down right here right now and you won’t look crazy or weird at all”.

After however long of being friends with all the guys, but in particular Demo and Sniper, it felt almost disrespectful to reduce things to a joke. But he didn’t know if he had it in him to set up what he wanted to say and be super honest with them and get all vulnerable, not when he was so sure that he would probably be shot down.

Like, just because they hung out with Scout voluntarily from time to time, that didn’t mean they would want to date him. Who knew if they even liked guys? Probably not. Who knew if they even actually liked him, personally? Also doubtful, as far as Scout was concerned. That would make them two of very, very few people who would even just put up with him when they weren’t required to.

It was… frustrating.

He just… he knew that if he told either of them, they would be understanding, probably. Sniper didn’t have it in him to be outright rude to anyone he considered his friend, and Demo always seemed to know what Scout meant when he rambled about anything. They wouldn’t be mad.

Still, his brain continued to hit him with useless “what if”s on what all could go wrong for him, and they held him back from doing or saying anything at all.

Months of that. Entire months. And ultimately, he was too much of a coward to crack open that particular can of worms. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

It was a work night, so Sniper insisted they don’t get properly blasted when they went out drinking, but they did have a nice solid buzz and a nice healthy appetite, so they’d dragged their asses to a truck stop diner (the nearest place open so late that wouldn’t give them weird looks), and they’d squeezed into a booth a little away from the bulk of things to keep from having to watch their words in case the topics switched over to talking about work.

And it was like it always was—easygoing, friendly. Steady rhythm, steady laughter. Scout got teased on the regular for his face going red whenever he slipped up or forgot a word when speaking and Sniper had to fill in the blanks, and Demo got flicked with the fry bits left on Scout’s plate whenever he had a particularly good zinger, and Sniper got put on blast for his unique vocabulary that he claimed just “wasn’t an American thing”.

And Scout sat there, across the booth from the two of them, pulse quickening, hands kind of sweaty, wishing he wasn’t such a coward.

“Know what’s got me thinking?” Demo asked, nicking some food from Sniper’s plate and ignoring his grumble of protest.

“What?” Scout prompted.

“How you,” he said, pointing at Scout with a fry for emphasis, “haven’t gone on a date in ages. Used to be that you couldn’t hardly do diner runs because you had a date to catch, these days you’re the one suggesting them.”

“Yeah, well…” Scout shrugged, trailed, the cogs in his heads throwing up smoke as he desperately tried to think of an excuse.

“Bloody got his heart taken, doesn’t he?” Sniper asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nah, nah, he’s given up on Pauling,” Demo corrected before Scout could pick that idea up and run with it. “Told us months ago.”

Sniper turned that raised eyebrow to Scout, who shriveled a little bit. “Well. Didn’t know about that. But that’s not exactly who I was talking about.”

His heart dropped to his toes. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Well, there was that month or so after you started slobbering over Pauling where you were like this, and weren’t dating, and were acting like a right mess,” Sniper shrugged, and god damn it, why did he have to be so observant. “And then there was a gap of time, and now you’re back at it, but apparently not for her.”

Demo was also looking at Scout, and he sunk in his chair, face on fire. “Well. Not like it’s a total mystery,” he admitted. “Been a bit obvious about it.”

“You figured it out too?” Sniper asked, blinking, as Scout tried to figure out whether he could make a break for it. “Thought you didn’t know.”

“How could I not know?” Demo scoffed. “Blushing like a damn schoolgirl, laughing at every joke—“

“Forgetting words, making excuses to go drinking—“ Sniper agreed.

“Getting flustered over compliments—“

“Paying for meals—“

“I, okay,” Scout scoffed, maybe the worst bluff of his life. “Who exactly do you two dummies think I’ve got a crush on, then?”

“Him,” they both said, jerking a thumb towards each other, then they were both blinking, heads spinning around.

“Why would he have a crush on me?” Sniper asked.

“What makes you say that?” Demo asked at the same time.

Scout was barely visibly over the edge of the table, hiding his face in his hands.

“You’re the one he’s always running a mile out from base for to knock your damn door down to get you to go to breakfast,” Demo pointed out.

“You’re the one he’s always pestering with the scheme of the week and bugging to set off some fireworks with after hours,” Sniper pointed out.

“Yeah,” Scout agreed, voice a squeak, knowing he was caught.

“Well, which one of us is it, lad?” Demo prompted.

“Yeah,” Scout agreed, mortified.

Silence, for almost twenty seconds. “Oh,” Sniper finally said quietly.

“You’ve… got a thing for both of us?” Demo asked hesitantly.

Scout nodded.

Another silence. When Scout briefly peeked through his fingers, Demo and Sniper seemed to be having a non-verbal discussion that appeared to morph into an argument of some kind, both gesturing and mouthing words at each other in turn, occasionally jerking their heads towards Scout meaningfully.

“I’m sorry,” Scout mumbled.

“Don’t be, lad, nothing wrong with that!” Demo was quick to assure, and reached over across the table. Scout met him halfway, and Demo squeezed his hand tightly. “Look, we—we can figure something out! Right, Mund?”

“Right,” Sniper was quick to agree, also reaching across the table, following Demo’s lead. “It’s—it’s bloody 1971, mate, right? Modern era and all, we—we’ll figure it out.”

“What, like… like, all three of us?” Scout asked, blinking.

“Sure! Why not?” Demo shrugged, and he had a great point. Why not?

Scout was quiet for a few seconds, processing. “…Feel like we’re skipping over the part where—you’re—you guys like me?” he asked, surprised.

“Bloody showing up to a diner at two in the buggering morning just to spend time with you, aren’t we?” Sniper pointed out, grinning a little.

“…Shit, you totally are.”

“So? That sound alright with you?” Demo asked, raising his eyebrow.

“…Yeah. Yeah, it does. Fuck yeah! Yeah,” Scout agreed quickly, waiting for the catch. The addendum.

Apparently the addendum was that then when they went back to base they hung out in Demo’s room and made out a little bit, and y’know what? Pretty good addendum.

Chapter Text

Spy was being far too sweet, which was his first hint that something was wrong.

Coaxed always from work to get something to eat, his choice made a bit easier by the fact that Spy had gone to the liberty of making dinner for the two of them. Not anything as fancy and involved as he probably would’ve liked, there on a bench together in his workshop with fluorescent lights and not candles, but delicious and pleasant nonetheless.

Spy had finished eating first, and taken to being all kinds of distracting, one hand wandering over his back and the other on the table in front of him tapping a slow, pleasant rhythm as he talked about some of the details he could disclose from his most recent mission. Once that conversation came to a close, Spy instead took to being even more outright distracting, kissing at the Engineer’s jaw and along his face in a way that would probably make most people absolutely melt.

But he was a little more used to such displays, behind closed doors and in the security that privacy provided, so he merely smiled and leaned into it, appreciating the affection without trying too hard to push for more. Spy was like a cat, in some ways—he would dispense his attention and loving gestures whenever he saw fit, but might flee at a moment’s notice if he felt trapped at all in it.

It was just that all of this was a good bit more effort than Spy generally went to—already an unusually high amount—and in a different way that usual, not to mention entirely unprompted. So the Engineer was a little bit worried.

He didn’t push it until he was done eating, and cleared their plates away, and told Spy that he had a bit more work to do but it could wait a little while. And he returned to being fawned over for a short time before tucking a hand under Spy’s chin to tug him into a long, slow kiss, and when he pulled back, then and only then did he say anything.

“You feelin’ alright?” he asked gently, quietly, and Spy’s eyebrows rose.

“Do I not seem to be?” he asked, light and teasing.

“You seem a little too alright,” Engie shrugged, and kissed him again for a lengthy moment before he pulled back and continued. “And it’s nice and all, but I worry, you know.”

Spy hummed, looked over his face. Pulled him into a series of short, almost playful kisses before he pulled back a bit further to reply. “Well. I suppose I just have some things on my mind,” he said simply. “Not necessarily unpleasant things, merely large ones.”

“Penny for your thoughts?” the Engineer asked.

“They’re worth much more than that, mon cher,” Spy joked, and his expression fell back to a neutral sort of contentment a moment later. “I suppose it isn’t so much… regrets. Just what might have been, would things have been a little different.”

“More “what if”s, not “what if I hadn’t”, then?” he asked.

“A little of both,” Spy admitted. He considered his words for another few moments, and the Engineer did him the favor of relinquishing eye contact to instead return Spy’s earlier affections, kissing beneath his jaw and ear and ignoring, as he always did, how odd the fabric of a mask felt. “I was simply thinking about how, had I met you twenty years ago rather than five, I might have killed you rather than fallen in love with you,” he finally admitted, and the Engineer stopped.

“…Uh huh?” he asked, pulling back to look at him.

Spy nodded. “I just suppose it’s… interesting to think about.” A small smile. “I was a different man back then. Much more cocky, much less scarring.”

“Wonder whether those might be connected somehow,” he joked.

His smiled widened just a touch. “I wonder.” Spy then leaned in to kiss at him some more.

“Think we’d have ended up like this if we met now, not five years ago?” Engie asked, tilting his head obligingly to give Spy access to the space below his jaw. “If we hadn’t been hired on together until now?”

“Assuming I was still alive,” Spy demurred against his pulse point, “and still willing to be hired here, and still fit for mercenary work, then… I don’t see why not.”

“Another five years from now?” he asked next.

“Again, assuming I would still be alive,” Spy hummed.

“You don’t think you would be?”

“I’m almost certain I wouldn’t,” Spy snorted, pulling back to look at him. “Already it was a combination of exceptional skill and astronomical luck that I made it far enough to be hired here, mon cher. I should not like to push that further.”

“And you think if we’d met earlier, you’d’ve killed me?” he asked next.

“That was my primary reason for meeting interesting new people, yes, was that I was hired to kill them,” Spy agreed, laughing a little. He leaned in for another kiss, this one brief. “Or perhaps, upon being hired to kill you, I would have instead fallen for your sweet Southern charms and given up a life of espionage altogether, mon beau, who knows?”

“Think I could’ve made a farmhand outta you?” he laughed, disbelieving but not upset. “Gotten you to settle down and go domestic, while I kept at work on my machines?”

“Well,” Spy hesitated, eyes flickering away for a moment, posture shifting. “It would not be out of the question, I’m sure.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It is not out of the question now, either, which surely means something,” Spy said, a touch fast, a touch clipped, not quite entirely looking at him.

Silence, for the several seconds it took for the weight of that to sink in, then he kissed Spy again for a long moment to buy the time to think of a response for that. When he pulled back, Spy looked a little tense. “Think you’d be happy like that?” he asked quietly.

“I’m… not sure,” he admitted. “Perhaps… I would still enjoy traveling, and… I do enjoy keeping up with world politics. But I’ll admit that I’m getting a little tired of fighting and murder. It’s lost the thrill, somewhere along the line. And when this job is over, I’m not sure I could commit to it for much longer, and… already, in most ways, you’re…”

He waited for Spy to sort his words out, clearly having a difficult time with them, unable to look him in the eyes.

“Already in some ways you fill that sort of role. A… place to return to. An anchor, almost.”

“Lighthouse?” he suggested lightly.

“Lighthouse, tether, safe haven, there are plenty of words I could use, mon chou. But… by this point in my life, the idea of somewhere and someone to return to after traveling is extremely appealing.” Spy smiled a little. “I suppose I may be getting old.”

“Well, apparently much younger and you’d be stabbing me in the back,” the Engineer joked, and Spy’s shoulders shook lightly with a silent laugh. He paused. “I guess we’ll wait and see. I don’t think I’ll ever stop working for Mann Co. in any official capacity, legacy Engineer and all, but… my father and grandfather both got to settle down at about this age, don’t see why I wouldn’t be allowed to.”

Spy nodded at that, paused for a long moment. When he spoke, his tone was much more lighthearted. “I intended for this conversation to be much more romantic. And with slightly more fanfare than a Tuesday night with work in the morning,” he admitted, just a little bit self-deprecating.

“You made me dinner,” he pointed out.

“…I did,” Spy agreed.

“Might have a candle or two around here somewhere,” he joked.

Spy raised his eyebrows. “Why do I get the distinct impression that you are making fun of me, mon cher?” he asked.

“Now where would you’ve gotten an idea like that?” he chuckled, and planted a kiss on Spy’s cheek.

A little hum. “Well. We can talk about it more later. As it is, I’ve taken up far more of your time than I should—“

“Always welcome in here,” he reminded.

“But not for terribly long when you have work to do,” Spy returned, and moved to stand. “I will be seeing you.”

“Have a good night, Spy,” he said, knowing well what it looked like when Spy was a little uncomfortable with the amount of honesty he’d dispensed and needed time to collect himself.

“You as well, Tinkerer,” Spy said, and disappeared from sight with a wave, and within two minutes the smell of his cologne and cigarette smoke faded from the room, and the Engineer was left entirely alone. And he didn’t particularly worry about it. Spy made it clear that he’d always come back eventually.

Chapter Text

He really did legitimately hate the fact that he always made such an idiot out of himself in front of people he liked.

Like, he had literally no problem just hooking up with people. Absolutely no shame. See someone good-looking, walk up, ask them if they wanna bang, either get slapped or get in a car. He didn’t feel even a little bit bad about it, he was just being really honest about exactly what it was he wanted. And plenty of people respected that he wasn’t one to play stupid games.

The issue was that as soon as he got like, more than moderately invested before he could cut to the chase, he was absolutely fucked.

Miss Pauling was a great example. The situation surrounding him first meeting her was such a whirlwind and so weird that he didn’t really get a chance to ask her out, and so he’d just sorta been left to stew on it, and then he got cheesy. Started thinking about all kinds of romantic shit. And that was a complete fuckin’ mess for like, literally years until he found out she was seeing some girl and promptly stepped off because he was a hopeless romantic, not an animal.

And that had like, sucked, but at least he was functional. He only saw Miss P like, on the monthly maybe, and usually just over the phone or whatever and not in person. At least he could spend the vast majority of his time being exactly as much of a doofus as he usually was and not just a soppy sappy mess.

But then. Oh, but fucking then.