Archive of Our Own

Spy had been called Corentin as a boy, and a young man. He was small, and he was thin, and his face was too sharp and shallow because the war had only ended seven years before his birth, and France was still recovering, and he had an older brother who remembered his father well enough to not want to talk about him because it made his face red and his eyes watery, and a mother who smiled when he asked about Père despite how sad the rest of her seemed to get, and told him that the day he was born Père held him in his shaky, weak arms and kissed his head, quickly, because he was ill, and told him how proud of him he was because the doctors had been afraid petit Corentin would not make it five minutes past birth and yet here he was, ten minutes out of the womb, and it was only five minutes more, but Père was so proud, because that meant five more minutes he got to see his youngest son. Maman would tell him still Père was proud of him, even though he had died not long after they brought Corentin home--tuberculosis, she said. He'd gotten it from a close war friend who later died holding Père's hand in a trench, and Maman would grip Corentin by the shoulders, by his small, thin, pale hands, and she would look him in the eye, and she would tell him, "Corentin, do not go to war. I do not care if you have to flee the country, don't go and fight. Promise me this." And she would ask the same of Luis, his brother, and they would both nod, and they would both say, "Yes, Maman," and then she would walk them to school, or they would go and kick a ball around in the mud, and Corentin would say to himself, Of course I won't fight, I promised Maman.

Corentin dabbled in intelligence work. He liked the lifestyle, he liked the risk, he liked the stealth. The information obtained was not as important as the act of obtaining it, and so he took commissions from petty politicians looking to further their own campaigns and wealthy wives who suspected their wealthier husbands of infidelity. They would often ask him to kill said husbands, and Corentin would refuse, because the thought of taking one man's life away via power of his own felt too unfair and too close to the fighting his Maman made him promise to stay away from. He did it young, he was still a teenager, but not yet old enough for anyone to try and force him to fight, because the next war started when he was fourteen, and so to get work without lying about his age and getting shipped off, he said he'd done it his whole life, that he'd been made to as a child, and they always believed him, because he put on such a good act, and he made enough to get his mother and brother better lives, and live how he wanted.

And then he turned eighteen, and someone found out, and someone made him fight, and he killed his first target in an enemy base somewhere near his hometown in the process of stealing intel, stabbing him in the back with the knife he'd been issued, and he stood there covered in blood, shaking, crying, because he hadn't wanted to kill anybody, and he hadn't wanted to fight, and he hadn't wanted to break his promise.

He faked his death, and he fled, and resumed his petty work with a mask over his face and the next time someone asked him to kill, he frowned and he lit a cigarette and he said yes.

This work led him to a neighborhood of apartments in Boston, and to a woman named Dahlia, with dazzling blue eyes and a beautiful smile and seven young boys all clamoring at the window to see who this man was that their mother was chatting warmly with at the door.

Corentin hardly understood her at first, not for lack of fluency in English, but for lack of fluency in Boston English, where the accent was different and the grammatical rules were different and the colloquialisms were different. But bit by bit he started picking up what she was putting down, and helping her with the boys, and buying her and her family dinner because she was not paid enough as a waitress to give them hot meals every night, and he ended up staying far longer than his work required, and soon she was gripping his arms, looking vaguely panicked, halfway excited, and telling him she was pregnant, and it was absolutely his, because after her husband left she'd sworn off men until she'd met Corentin.

Corentin could help wrangle seven boys that were not his own. But the idea of taking care of a child that belonged to him was frightening.

And yes, that infant, that small, early baby that he held in his arms less than nine months later, eight months maybe, was certainly his, because she had the same nose, and the same eyes, and the same shock of white-blonde hair Corentin had had as a boy before it darkened and turned black. Dahlia wanted to name the child Jeremy, if they had been a boy. Corentin told her it was a handsome name. And here he was, with a little girl, and Dahlia was crying with relief because she'd had too many sons, and she asked him what they should name her, and Corentin did not know.

Nothing came to mind. He blamed his detachment from the moment, but somehow, somehow, he knew the child would end up being Jeremy regardless of what Dahlia named her. Corentin just held his daughter, and told her, softly, that he was sorry.

He did not kiss her head and tell her he was proud of her, as his father before him had.

The second world war ended a month later. Corentin stayed as long as he felt he could. Corentin stayed until Dahlia had her feet under her more than she had when he first met her. Corentin stayed until his daughter was just past one year old, and then he took Dahlia aside, and he told her he was not fit to be a father. He told her he was a liar and a killer and a coward and that a man like that had no place in a girl like his daughter's life. He wanted her to grow up well, he wanted her to grow up like her oldest brother Charlie, he wanted her to look up to a good man, not the bastard Corentin felt he'd become after his years of running and hiding for money, after breaking his promise to Maman, after resigning himself to murder.

Dahlia let him go. She didn't say much, and the boys looked betrayed because Corentin was the second man to walk out on them, and Corentin made sure to send payments every month because he wanted Dahlia to stay afloat, but the second he walked out the door he ceased to be Corentin and simply became Spy.

And so when Spy gets contracted for these Gravel Wars, after impressive work in Russia and Vietnam, and sent to New Mexico, and he sees their scout saunter on into the base and he looks just like Dahlia and he looks just like Corentin, all this backstory, all his life, comes flooding back to him, and he's certain this is some cruel joke, a divine prank set upon by whatever god is responsible for Spy's fate.

That's his--that's his boy . That's Jeremy. That's a life he left behind out of fear and unworthiness, that's two decades of his son not having a father to ask about being a boy, and to then help his son become a man, and there's nothing he can say about it.

Why did he still choose Jeremy after all those years? When he realized himself did he ask his mother what he might've been named? Does she know? Corentin had loved the name Jeremy, despite his fears for the future. He had thought it upstanding and handsome and so why had his boy chosen a name Corentin himself so readily endorsed? On whose suggestion? Dahlia's? She had had no problem accepting Corentin's partiality to men, nor that many days he preferred her to use them to address him instead of him. Did Jeremy know this? Did he know how safe he was there? Spy burns to ask, burns to tell him it's okay, we know, because if Jeremy suffered at any fault of Spy's, if Jeremy thought he was in any way unable to tell his mother he was a man, Spy wants to correct it.

No matter. Jeremy is Jeremy. Spy will not worry himself with such frantic, unwanted questions.

It seems by the end of the first year, everybody except Scout knows Spy is his father. Well, except Scout and Soldier, but Spy has doubts that Soldier knows how to count past three, so him not being able to pick up on Spy and Scout's relation is understandable. And Scout harbors an intense hatred and anger for his absent father, and when he's hateful and angry he becomes bluntly unobservant, so even if Spy was maskless, and even if Scout remembered him, the chances he'd recognize Spy are slim.

As it is, Scout seems to dislike Spy heavily, and Spy feels the same, if only because he finds Scout's negative attitude toward him monumentally grating, and maybe because he knows, in a way, he deserves it. Scout always wants to get on his nerves, and Spy, in his increasing age, is finding those nerves are ever shorter than they used to be. He retaliates with violence, and Scout takes it in stride, and if they fight in front of the others, Spy can feel everyone's eyes on him specifically, like they're saying, "That's your son, you bastard." 

Miss Pauling looks uncomfortable about the situation, given that she knows most everything about the two of them. Engineer seems resigned. Heavy doesn't understand why Scout doesn't know, nor why Spy doesn't say anything. Even Sniper says something to him about it, once, laying in bed with him, legs tangled together, the backs of his knuckles gently stroking back, and forth, and back again, over the sharp line of Spy's unmasked cheek.

"Ya can't outrun this forever, love," he murmurs, staring up at the ceiling. "Someday he's gotta know."

Spy sighs. "After all you and I have been through to get to this point I would hope you would be the one to leave the topic alone," he grumbles, trying to be betrayed about it, and failing when Sniper laughs, because Spy hasn't felt this way about a laugh since Dahlia.

"Mate, he's just a kid," Sniper points out. "I know he's twenty-six but he's still jus a lil anklebiter. This ain't fair to 'im."

Spy turns his head to kiss the hand Sniper has on his face. "You are turning me soft."

Sniper chuckles again, and Spy can feel it vibrate in his chest. "I'd like ta think that's a good thing."

Spy falls silent for a moment, and Sniper moves his hand down to squeeze Spy's reassuringly. "I am… afraid, Mick," Spy finally admits, much quieter than he intends. "I was when he was born and I am now. I have not been a good father. I have not been a good man. I don't deserve to try and mend what I broke."

Sniper turns on his side and brings an arm up to pull Spy into his chest. "Nunna us are good men, Spook, least not in th' way we'd like us ta be. We've all done bad things. We're all filthy sinners an' we got blood on our hands an' skeletons in our closets." He runs a hand through the short black and grey curls on the nape of Spy's neck, slides it farther up into the thicker, softer waves. "But we're fightin ta make the rest 'a the world better, yknow? An' we're doin the best we can and wanna be better. So I think you're a good man, Spook, despite everything."

Spy hesitates. "What if he hates me more?"

Sniper shakes his head. "He's hurt he never had a dad," he says softly. "An' he'll definitely be pissed atcha. But I think he'll trust ya more afterward an' warm up to ya."

Spy nods and pulls himself closer to Sniper. He doesn't deserve his love either, but they've had that talk too, and Sniper won't let him be like that about himself, and so he keeps it quiet and holds on tight.

A year later he watches Sniper get shot in front of him. They're in New Zealand, far from home, far from respawn, and Sniper falls, and he dies, and somehow Medic revives him later, but he dies . Spy is already reeling from this, and then from Sniper joining him, shirtless with fresh autopsy scars, and then the plan goes wrong and Spy has a bullet wound to the knee and Sniper is fucking naked and he asks for Spy's coat which of course he denies because the material is extremely rare and--

And then there's Scout. Jeremy.

"Mate," Sniper murmurs, and nudges Spy, and Spy has to prep himself, because there he is, his boy, his son, bleeding out on the floor, asking him if he's going to be okay, and Spy regrets everything.

He regrets that he can't even be Spy, let alone Corentin, to tell Jeremy that he's his father. He's so angry at himself, using his disguise like a coward, but he finally tells Jeremy he's proud of him, and he holds him close, and as soon as he feels Jeremy's chest stop moving, his heart stop beating, watches his eyes roll shut, the disguise sloughs off, and he rips off his mask, and he squeezes Jeremy's small, small body against his own and presses his face against his still-warm chest and an ugly feeling burns at the back of his throat until he can't hold it anymore and he sobs.

The last time he held his boy like this was on his first birthday, when they still called him the wrong name, and he held him right against his shoulder, and he fought tears because he had already made up his mind to leave, and he told Jeremy he loved him. "You'll have to take care of your mother for me," he'd said, though he knew Jeremy didn't really understand what he was saying. "I'll be leaving soon and she'll need someone to remind her of me. Can you do that for me?"

Jeremy had laughed, and flashed him a bucktoothed grin--those front two being the only two he had in--and grabbed Corentin's face. "Da!" was all he said, and Corentin teared up, and hugged Jeremy tight.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you," Corentin had whispered then, and he whispers it now, feeling the warmth leave Jeremy's limp, fragile body.

The silence in response only makes him more pained.

"What am I going to tell your mother..."

"Love," Sniper calls. "We gotta go, we got company on its way. You have ta leave 'im, neither one of us are fit ta carry 'im."

Spy gently lays Scout's-- Jeremy's- -body on the floor, and finds his hat and dog tags--the chain had snapped and they'd fallen off--and lays them on his chest. "We'll come back for you, Jeremy. I promise."

And he slides on his mask, and wipes his eyes, and leaves with Sniper, who softly asks if they should bury him, later, and Spy wants to forget this, because it's still so fresh and his cheeks are still wet under his mask, and makes a crack about Sniper hiding a shovel up his ass, and they've just reached the end of the hall when Jeremy heaves in a breath, and coughs, and sticks his hand in the air, and Sniper looks overjoyed upon turning around.

"Well, I'll be," he laughs, and Spy, internally thanking every god that's ever existed, sighs heavily about his wasted words over Jeremy's corpse.

It's days later, when Spy's taken him to Medic, because you don't get your digestive tract shredded from inside out and die from it and come back completely fine, that Scout, that Jeremy, levels him with a hard look.

"I'm not stupid, Frenchie," he grumbles. "I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid." His long, strong, calloused hands, his mother's hands, knot in the blanket on the hospital bed, knuckles scabbed and scuffed, a few nails bruised black and chipped at the ends. His left wrist is an ugly purple and green from where he'd cracked it against a robot, somehow managing only to sprain it and not outright snap it.

Spy sits next to the bed, leaned forward on his knees enough that his lower back is sore, and his right elbow digs dully into the muscle of his thigh just before the bend, and his hand cradles his face, rubbing fingers hard into his forehead where a headache has raged for days. He maintains eye contact with Scout.

"Makes no fuckin sense for Tom Jones ta be my dad, I'm almost as old as him," Scout continues, brow low, eyes dark. "You didn't even--" His voice breaks, and he gives his head a single shake to compose himself. "You didn't even try ta do his voice. It was you. It was all you. Fuckin French accent an' tobacco smoke. What the fuck you mean you're proud 'a me? You don't… you don't get ta be proud 'a me, you weren't there . My ma an' my brothers can be proud 'a me but not you."

Spy says nothing. That seems to suit Scout, because his chest expands deep and he sits up a little more, fire in his sharp, gunmetal eyes, his father's eyes, ready to say his piece, ready to unload whatever vitriol he's harbored over the past twenty-seven years, and Spy is content to let him, because he feels he owes him that much.

"You fuckin left, " Scout snarls. "Ma told me you died but my brothers knew because they saw you go an' they never said nothin about it but I knew they hated you for it. Their dad left an' then you came an' then you left too and I knew it, I always knew you didn't fuckin want any of us. Why was it me that made you go, huh? Why was I the last straw?! Didja not want a fuckin baby girl or somethin cuz surprise, asshole, I ain't one an' ya left for nothin! " He takes a breath, his face is red, his eyes are rimmed with tears. "You left Ma to take care of all eight of us all by herself an' you were never there when I realized I was different an' ya couldn't help me with school an' ya couldn't fuckin be a father! Ya waited until I was dyin ta tell me, surprise, Jeremy, this grade-A asshole is your dad, and even then ya couldn't even fuckin take off your mask for once!!!" His chest heaves, and he holds Spy's stare, and his eyes follow the movement of Spy's hand as he reaches up and pulls off his mask and tries to straighten his hair.

"Scout," he starts after a beat. "There is not a single day that I don't say those things to myself about what I did. I regret every day walking away, because at the time I thought you'd be better off without me. I had become a dangerous man with a dangerous job and I didn't want that to be what you or your brothers looked up to. I didn't want anyone to find out about you either, because they would find you all, and they would kill you." Spy pauses. "And looking back, maybe nothing would have happened to you if I'd stayed. I was not ready to be a father but had I known for sure things would be okay I would have stayed. But it was wartime, and it still is, and I didn't want to put you at risk. I tried to pay your mother every month, and if I couldn't make it one month, I'd double the amount the next." He sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face. "She and I thought it best to cut all ties beyond those payments, just in case. She told you I was dead because it seemed to be the wisest thing, even if all your brothers knew the opposite. I suppose she would have told you the truth one day, if I hadn't come back."

Scout's face is unreadable, for once. Spy doesn't like it. It reminds him too much of himself. "Did you plan on comin back?"

Spy takes too long to answer. "I do not know," he finally says, and Scout stiffens. "I considered it. I thought about it often. Any hesitation was due wholly to my own cowardice and I justified it by telling myself I'd probably be dead before I got the chance, or that it would be far too dangerous to visit. In truth I was scared of what you would think of me. I was scared of what I'd come back to." He meets Scout's eyes. "But I need you to listen to me, Scout. I did not hesitate to return because of you. I did not hate you. I did not… not want you. You were the best thing that had ever happened to me and I was so afraid of ruining what I had, and what I now realize I had already ruined by leaving, that I kept myself away. And I know now that was selfish. But at the time I thought I was acting in your best interest."

There's a long beat of silence. Spy knots his fingers in his hair, he can feel himself losing his grip, he's supposed to be cold and emotionless and here he is, fully breaking down, unable to bear it any longer.

"Father knows best, eh?" Scout eventually says, quietly. He sounds cool. He sounds past the point of upset and now is righteously, calmly, angry. "Father knows what's best for his lil boy so he leaves him without a dad for almost thirty years. I know what's best for me, Spy. I know me better than anyone knows me an' I know I needed a dad. Charlie was cool but he was still just my brother. I wanted a dad like they had. I wanted you. They talked about how ya were before ya ran away and they loved you and I wanted ta know that guy. An' then I show up and start workin with you an' ya still hide it from me for like, four years? What's your fuckin problem?"

"I am a coward, Scout!" Spy finally snaps, ripping his hands from his scalp, feeling hot tears in his eyes, and Scout, Jeremy, looks startled, but maybe not so much at the outburst as the actual emotion on Spy's face, because the man knows he's crying now. "Is that what you want to hear?! Nothing I do now can fix what I did then and you think I don't know that?! That I'm just saying all these things to try and appease you?! I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I did that I shouldn't have and everything I did not that I should have. You have every right to be angry and you have every right to tell me how angry you are and I don't deserve your forgiveness and I don't deserve to be a part of your life but will you please do a bastard the mercy of letting him apologize and try to make himself a better man?!"

Neither of them speak. Spy hides his eyes in his hand and takes deep, wheezing breaths, biting through his lip, trying and failing to stop the tears. He can hear Scout trying to even out his own breathing, and the zip of his fingernails scraping over the blanket. A clock ticks somewhere in the distance, one, two, three minutes. A door opens, and there's a flutter of wings, the coo of a dove, and faint, affectionate German muttering as Medic greets Archimedes.

Scout takes a shuddering breath. "Looks like our time's almost up, asshole, on account 'a the Doc," he murmurs. "You got a lotta fuckin things ta work on." He pauses, then sighs, and looks at Spy. "But maybe I do too. I'm still fuckin pissed atcha, an' I probably will be for a while. But… you're a miserable sack 'a shit an' I made ya cry which I didn't even know ya could cry, an'... I don't… well, I think makin ya cry is good enough revenge for me." Jeremy extends a hand. "I'm givin ya one chance, Frenchie. That's it. Fuck up again and I won't even look at you."

Spy timidly takes Scout's hand--how are his son's hands bigger than his own?--and shakes it, once, firm. "Thank you, Scout."

His son cracks a half smile, and despite it not reaching its full potential, Jeremy looks genuinely triumphant, happy, even. "Yeah, yeah, I'm da best, you grovelled before me, you love me, all that shit. Scram, I got a check-up."

Spy stands, and pulls his mask back on, hastily wiping his eyes. "I will leave you with another revelation," he says, smirking, because if it isn't fun to tease Jeremy, even given the circumstances. "If you are not aware, Sniper and I are involved. This means he is also technically your father." And Spy strides out, past Medic, giving him a grateful nod, while his boy, Scout, Jeremy, yells at him from the bed, entirely flabbergasted.

Scout warms up to him faster than he expected. They have a few more melodramatic, emotional talks, and they are able to tolerate each other's presence longer, and at some point Spy finds Scout standing in front of his door looking miserable, and Spy pulls him in, and Scout, little Jeremy, doesn't want to talk about it, but he eventually throws his arms around Spy, and cries into his chest, and Spy holds him and tries not to cry himself, hushing him and whispering "Ça ira, mon petit, ça ira," and he doesn't know if Scout understands him, but his sobbing eases, and he eventually falls asleep.

Spy decides then to teach him French. It's a horrible idea, he soon finds out, but he does it anyway, because he feels he's missed out on the chance to teach his son, and he finds he likes teaching him, even if Scout stops paying attention five minutes in and starts fidgeting.

But he gets it, is why it's horrible. Spy can drone on while Scout stares out the window or winks at Miss Pauling through the door--"Elle est lesbienne, Scout, fais attention!"--or draws admittedly well-done cartoons of Spy dying in various outlandish ways, but he still absorbs everything Spy tells him like a sponge. Spy only knows this because each lesson he begins with Scout putting together a sentence based off what he learned the session before, and the little rat always puts on a big smile and leans back in his chair and says something fluently, even if the Boston accent inhibits some of his delivery, and even if he keeps getting confused on which adjectives go where--something Spy clarifies many times, with 'short or common adjectives come first, the rest come after, and some can change the meaning of the noun.'

"Toi… petit lapin arrogant," Spy mutters to him one day, and Scout laughs.

"Ouais, bien, tu es une horrible grenouille," he grins. "How's that for French insults?"

Spy leans back and folds his arms. "You will not get very far in France if you only know how to offend people, petit Scout," he sniffs. "But yes, you are making progress."

"Aw, hell yeah!" Scout pumps his fists in the air. "Maybe Miss Pauling will like me now!" And he gets up and runs out the door, presumably to show off his skills.

Spy calls after him, "Il est douteux, Scout!! She still only likes women!" But he knows he either cannot hear him or isn't listening.

Understanding French, Spy realizes, is ultimately the worst part of teaching his son the language. Normally, Scout would roll his eyes at Spy's soft pet names for Sniper, whispered right into his ear in the dining hall when he wants to leave and get lost in Sniper's sheets, or said quietly but not quiet enough while discussing battle plans. But now that Scout knows what Spy is saying…

It makes calling Sniper mon plaisir quotidien embarrassing when Scout chokes on his ridiculous soda and points and stammers, "Your what?! Your daily pleasure?!!"

Spy reserves that one for when he's sure Scout isn't around.

Their bond grows as time goes on, and Scout teaches Spy just as much as he teaches his son, sometimes more. One of those things is tolerance, patience. Now, Spy has patience mastered, and then some, but his is the kind of patience that requires one to remain soundless and perfectly hidden till your quarry is vulnerable. Scout, however, teaches him to take his eccentric and excitable mannerisms as they come, and to wait for Scout to be ready to fully let Spy into his life again.

Spy had not expected it to go quickly, but he hadn't expected it to take the better part of a year either, so when he's assigned a solo mission, he does not make much of a production of telling his son he's leaving, because if he did so with all the sap and fatherly love he could muster, Scout would surely scoff and tell him to beat it.

Of course, telling Sniper is a no-brainer; he's always had a hard time processing potentially life-threatening things like this, really, but when he pulls Spy in close the night before he leaves, he can feel his marksman's chest trembling as his arms squeeze tight, and so Spy presses hopefully-reassuring kisses to Sniper's cheek and temple.

Fraternization is frowned upon. Forming romantic relationships is dangerous. Both Spy had never had qualms about experiencing before, despite the rules, but now it makes it all the harder to leave, especially with Sniper telling him not to die, believe me, it ain't worth it, hurts like a bitch too.

Especially with Scout telling him roughly the same, and gripping his arms, and looking away, and telling him, "You better fuckin come back this time. I'll never forgive you if you don't."

Spy awkwardly pats him. He wants to say he can't guarantee his survival, but then Scout looks up at him with wet, red eyes, and Spy's chest tightens, and he pulls his boy, Jeremy, into his arms.

"I will. I promise you I will," Spy murmurs.

"Swear it, asshole."

"On what?"

Scout's chin quivers. "On--on--not Ma, no, but… on, uh, my Tom Jones merch," he babbles. "High value stuff, and you owe me the value of all of it if ya don't come back." 

Spy smiles just a little. "That will take a lifetime to pay off, Scout, and, may I remind you, I only have about half of that left."

"I guess you'd better come back then," Scout sniffs. "Don't… don't fuckin tell anybody I said this. But… I need you to come back. You're--" His breath catches, and Spy pulls away to look at him.

"Scout…"

"It's--god, you can call me Jeremy, alright? You don't have ta… you don't gotta keep me at arms' length like that," Scout huffs, voice thin and watery. "I'm givin ya permission. Call me Jeremy."

Spy falters, throat suddenly tighter than it had been before. "Jeremy."

Scout, Jeremy, nods, and he takes a deep, wavering breath. "You fucked up a long time ago an' I gave ya a second chance an'... an' I think you've done… a good job making it up ta me." Spy stares back at Scout, Corentin stares back at Jeremy, and his son swallows, bringing a hand up to palm away tears. "You're… you're my dad. I don't wanna lose you again."

Spy breaks, and he pulls Scout in close and ducks his head so that it's tucked into Scout's neck and he squeezes him tight, and past the shaking in both their shoulders, he manages to say to him, "You won't. I'll come back."

Scout nods hard, and his fists tighten into firm knots in Spy's coat, and for the first time ever he's not of the mind to care about the wrinkles. At once, it feels as if Corentin is back in that little Boston apartment, rocking his infant son back and forth late one night in an attempt to soothe his cries and grant Dahlia some much needed rest, all worries and anxieties about being a good and worthy father thrown to the wind if only for this moment, singing a soft little lullaby that only his mother had previously sung to him and that he would let no one else hear him sing, not even the woman asleep on their bed, smiling exhaustedly down at the quickly relaxing baby in his arms, telling him, voice just above a whisper, Bonne nuit, mon trésor.  

Spy pulls away, and grips Scout's shoulders, hard. "Don't--do not do anything dangerous while I am away," he wavers, and Scout nods dutifully.

"N-no worries, pops, I ain't plannin on it," he says, smiling, but worry still lingers in those round grey-blue eyes, grey-blue like the flat of the sea before a storm, grey-blue like cold hard metal, grey-blue like the last vestiges of daytime sky before the night takes hold, and Spy almost starts, because, for the umpteenth time, when he looks into those eyes, he sees a much younger version of himself, the one that hadn't yet been hardened by war, the one that had promised Maman he wouldn't fight. Freckles dot Jeremy's face, more than he'd had when he started working for RED, freckles Spy is loathe to admit originally came from himself, and a thin scar notches neatly through the young man's left eyebrow, warped with the crease of concerned muscle right over his eyes. Scout's voice breaks him from his thoughts, continuing again, softer this time, "An'... Sniper said he'd help keep me outta trouble for you." His smile spreads a little wider, and the worry-lines relax. "Guess he really is another dad for me. Don't tell 'im I said that though."

Spy's mouth twitches upward, and he finds himself suddenly laughing, hard, and any remaining tension radiating off his son melts away as Scout joins him. "He would hate to know either of us were referring to him as your second father," Spy snorts, absurdly, and Scout doubles over with the strain of laughter.

"Man--I should jus start callin 'im dad for fun now an' see what happens--"

Spy pulls a hand up to cover his mouth, attempting to stifle and contain his mirth. "Yes, please do, I look forward to whatever complaints he may have about it!"

They eventually calm themselves down, and give one last goodbye, and then Spy is on his way.

His return is loud, and unceremonious, as Scout bolts at him from the barn doors, laughing wildly, and Sniper jogs haltingly behind--never the runner--and yells, only barely audible above the slowing whir of the helicopter blades, something about why on God's green Earth was Scout calling him dad.

A smile breaks across Corentin's face as he pulls off his mask and is slammed into a hug by Jeremy, and then both are lifted slightly as Mick embraces them in a powerful, if awkward, hug of his own, chuckling and muttering under his breath, "Can't buggerin believe I like you two."

It's the closest thing Corentin has felt to home in nearly thirty years, and damn it, it might as well be.