Work Text:
The attack wasn’t going exactly as planned.
RED Spy had gotten into enemy territory just fine. The run-in with the Demoman and the subsequent chase that riddled his body with bullet wounds had been unfortunate, certainly, but accounted for. Slipping away under cloak and pressing his back against a blue dispenser, he had let the simple presence of the BLU Engineer trick his attackers into leaving with no more than a word of caution to their teammate. The fully fledged sentry gun banning RED from the hill they were supposed to capture stood tantalizingly close. With his wounds almost fully healed, Spy could hop over the dispenser and bring his team to victory with a quick stab and a simple placement of a sapper.
The Engineer tending to his sentry looked over his shoulder, towards his dispenser. “It’s rude to stare, y’know.”
And there was the snag.
Spy had been standing idly for a minute now, still hidden by his cloak, leaning over the top of the dispenser and watching the Engineer move from sentry to ammunition crate and back, huffing under the weight of the scrap metal he carried in a bundle over his shoulder each trip. The desert sun gave a pinkish tan hue and the gloss of sweat to his thick arms and traced thin lines of light over every hair. His sentry gun would start to click unusually, and he’d set his wrench to it and work the damaged parts away with solid, deliberate movements only appearing uncontrolled when a stubborn bolt suddenly gave way to the Engineer’s force. His methods had an oddly hypnotic quality the RED Engineer’s lacked, and Spy had once again forgotten to keep a sigh from escaping over the whirring and clanging.
Now the Engineer looked his way, and Spy couldn’t help but notice how his rounded chin softened his square jaw. Engineer’s words might have come off as harsh had a crooked smile not betrayed amusement, or had his Texan drawl not lifted into a softspoken lilt.
Spy prepared a quip of his own. “Ah, but my role is one that requires a great attention to detail.”
“Well, in that case, I suppose I can understand you stickin’ around a while.” Engineer’s goggles hid his eyebrows, but the slight incline of his head was not lost on Spy. “Wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?”
Spy held his tongue. Of course he wouldn’t, but he couldn’t say as much. Not here, not now, not when he shouldn’t have even been talking to this man in the first place. A week ago, his knife would have long since found its way to Engineer’s back by now. If not for the incident three days prior… if he hadn’t been truly at the edge of survival, dragging himself to the nearest dispenser uncloaked, undisguised, losing consciousness when a rubber glove touched his wrist… if Engineer had opted to kill him rather than simply switch his cloak on for him and let him rest in the soothing aura of the dispenser… things would not be much different today. But he didn’t kill him. Engineer had spared him after everything, and Spy just couldn’t bring himself to throw that gesture out the window.
On the other hand, his team would surely grow suspicious with each second he hesitated. And to say nothing of what the Administrator would do— he’d seen what had unfolded when she discovered the increasing mercy between RED’s Demoman and BLU’s Soldier. If she found out about this, Spy almost wished she’d insult his intelligence by trying to trick him in the same way she had done to them. He suspected the alternative would be termination from mercenary business in the most grim and final sense.
Engineer had turned back to his sentry, humming a country tune. Spy swallowed the butterflies rising in his stomach, reached into his jacket for his knife, and inched forward.
A triumphant scream of farewell spoken in German, accompanied by some more colorful words Spy didn’t care to translate, rang out through the dry air.
His Medic crested the hill, blazing with Übercharge alongside his Heavy. Demoman trailed behind them, stickybomb launcher lobbing spiked mines into the nest of machinery. In a mighty blast the sentry fell, Engineer collapsed under the spray of destruction, and that was the end of it.
“Hallo, Spy!” Medic grinned wildly, and his body jittered with residual Übercharge energy. “I hope we didn’t interrupt anything.”
Spy snorted. If only he could voice the fortune of Medic’s timing. Instead he settled for a handwave. “Even if you had, the result we needed was achieved. If BLU wants this point so badly, let’s see them take it with their own guns.”
“Couldn’t have said it better,” his Soldier said. “Can’t pat ourselves on the back just yet, though. We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. Let’s turn this push into a roll, boys!”
Scout thrust a fist skyward. “You got it!”
“Right behind you,” Spy added. It wasn’t a lie; he did remain behind them, watching them charge ahead while he set off at a more hesitant pace. He pulled his knife out of his pocket and studied the blade. Sunlight highlighted every facet in the sharpened edge. It should have been in a few more backs today, he supposed. After all, he had a job to do.
But the blade wouldn’t look so beautiful covered in the Engineer’s blood.