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There were three glasses on the table, and they were at varying levels of fullness. They weren’t even all glasses; one of them was a mug with large red, block text printed upon it. The beverage of the evening was beer - a variety that Sniper had criticized for having ‘too many consonants on the label’.
Still, he drank it from his #1 Sniper mug without further question. Alcohol, after all, was alcohol.
More notably, the table wasn’t really the dining room table, per se; it was the examination table in the infirmary. Clean, and accessible because Medic was part of the little entourage.
Spy was the third member of the party, and he’d snorted in amusement at Sniper’s comment about the consonants.
“I doubt your taste in alcohol is any better. I have seen your choices myself, and I remain unimpressed,” Spy said, shooting the marksman a half-smirk.
Sniper rolled his eyes, huffed, and reclined in his chair. Pulled up to the examination table were three of the orange plastic chairs normally kept outside the medbay for mercs waiting to be patched up.
Medic nudged Spy at his side with an elbow, and turned to Sniper across the table from him.
“Ignore him,” the doctor said, with a slight wave of his hand in the air. He was prone to making hand gestures to accentuate whatever he was saying. “He’s sensitive about the topic. Remember when he headed down to Teufort with the others, and how they visited the local bar?”
“Docteur-” Spy began, a note of warning clear in his voice.
“Ja, well,” Medic continued, shoving Spy’s hand off his arm without a second thought. “He got blackout drunk. Oh, you should’ve heard him the morning after! He needed so many painkillers I almost thought it’d be better to send him to respawn so as not to have him deplete my supply and-”
Spy stepped on Medic’s foot as hard as he could, which probably didn’t do much considering the boots.
Sniper and Medic burst into laughter, loud enough to fill the whole infirmary. Spy resisted the urge to sweep his hand across the table and send the beverage containers to the floor. When the two were done, Medic patted Spy on the shoulder.
“You lose yourself only once in a blue moon,” the German said. He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, accidentally smudged his glasses, and removed them to clean them.
Spy snatched them out of his grip. “Our teammates are far worse, I would think,” he said in agreement, putting the glasses on.
“Ach, don’t be so childish!” Medic exclaimed, reaching for his glasses.
“Oh, you should’ve seen earlier today,” Spy said, leaning back to avoid the doctor’s grasp.
“What happened?” Sniper asked, sipping from his mug, trying to conceal his toothy smile behind the ceramic rim.
“The second last round,” Spy continued, shoving Medic’s hand away from his face. “The enemy Engineer was about to get a sentry nest set up. Always a dreadful sight, that toolbox of his. You know it would’ve been so easy for me to just sneak up on him and stab him.”
Sniper narrowed his eyes at Spy through his aviators and under the brim of his hat, making him look shadier than usual.
“And did’ja?” he asked.
“Non,” Spy replied, frowning at the memory still fresh in his mind. “The Demoman startled him with a stickyjump. Pyro and you, docteur-” Spy pointed at Medic. “-Were right behind him. In fact, you were tailing the Demoman prior to his jump, and yelled very loudly when he performed his jump. Thank goodness Pyro was there to provide a new pocket for you.”
Medic gave Spy a withering look because the Frenchman still had his glasses and now he was being mocked, too.
“The Engineer had been startled by the Demoman. I was right behind him. I decloaked. I had my knife up. And you know what happened after?”
Medic looked sheepish. “Well...”
Spy plucked Sniper’s aviators off of his face, to which the marksman replied with an indignant squawk.
Peering at his fellow supports through the different lenses, Spy said, “Pyro waved at me. Do not ask me why they found it a fitting thing to do, all things considered. Now even that wasn’t enough to tip off the Engineer about his situation. Scout ran past us, screaming at me, at you, at Pyro. He was on fire. But he did not need to call out my position. Needless to say, the Engineer sent me to respawn, but I blame the rest of you.”
Sniper resumed his barking laughter. Medic was red but still glaring at Spy, who started to giggle. When Sniper started to hiccup and Spy started to snort, Medic laughed too.
“Okay, but seriously,” Sniper said, in between gasps for breath. “Give me my specs back.”
Spy handed the glasses to Sniper and the aviators to Medic just because he could. Sniper shrugged and put them on. Medic paused and squinted at Sniper for a few moments before putting on the aviators.
Spy sat back down on his chair and sipped at his glass of beer. He was clearly the least drunk at this point and he wished the rest of the team could see Medic and Sniper wearing each others’ glasses, even if the rest of the team was poor company most of the time.
But that was why the support crew spent their evenings in the infirmary. For peace and quiet, which was attained before the drinking really started going.
“Sniper,” Medic said. “Has anyone ever commented on how blind you are?”
“Alright, first of all-”
“He can’t shoot without the glasses, docteur,” Spy chimed in.
”Mate-”
“Sniper, it’s alright,” Medic interrupted, grinning. He pushed the aviators up on the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
“Damn right it is,” Sniper grumbled. He gulped down more beer. “You’re almost as blind as me.”
“I am not-”
“Alright!” Spy interjected. Quicker than Sniper or Medic’s reflexes could respond, he took the glasses off of each of them and swapped them back to their original owners.
“Please, regale me in a story of your own day. Either of you,” Spy said. He reached down to the floor, where more beer bottles were sitting and waiting to be opened.
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe what I had to deal with today,” Sniper said. “Your story ‘bout the Engineer reminded me.”
“Go on,” Spy replied.
“Right. Well I was snipin’ in one of my perches. Not the usual snipin’ spots, but a wooden shack, y’know? It ain’t a bad place to be, just a li’l out in the open, really. But I s’pose the bein’ out in the open thing was why when I was bein’ shot later, there was a damn Mini Sentry right behind me!”
“Ach mein gott,” was Medic’s comment.
Spy’s comment was a great deal of laughter, snorting included. “You didn’t hear the sentry being built right behind you?”
“Nope,” Sniper sighed, downing the rest of his drink. “I was a bit occupied. Loud battle, anyway. He must’ve really wanted to get revenge on me for all the fully charged bodyshots. Any more beer?”
Spy nodded and took out a balisong from his inner suit pocket to remove the bottlecap. He filled Sniper’s mug back up. Medic had a quarter left in his glass, but Spy topped it off anyway, along with his own.
“The sound of a sentry gun being constructed is difficult not to notice,” Medic said, raising an eyebrow.
“I was occupied!” Sniper cried, indignant. He sipped from his mug with a scowl on his flushed face. “How ‘bout you then, doc? Anythin’ happen to you today worth talkin’ about?”
Medic’s eyes widened, then he made a face and looked down at the glass in his hands.
“As the team’s Medic, you should believe me when I say that I experience notable... things... daily.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sniper said, nodding. “I’ve seen. You’d be surprised what I catch in the scope.”
Medic looked thoughtful. “I’ve had plenty of bad experiences during our gradual loss today. For example, the usual, with Herr Scout.”
“Him running his mouth again?” Spy asked.
“Well, ja, of course - that’s a given. But when I say ‘the usual’, I mean him calling for me to heal him when he will not stop moving! He’s just jumping and hopping back and forth, yelling for help in front of me and complaining when I am not fast enough.”
“That does happen pretty often,” Sniper said, pointing at Medic in acknowledgement. His elbow on the table bumped into his mug and he would’ve knocked it over had his other hand not been around the thing, though its grip was loose at the most.
“Ah, but the worst today!” Medic continued. He shook his head ruefully and took another swallow of the beer as if he could not bear to go on without the alcohol in his system.
“The last round, actually. I was healing the Demoman. I remember when he’d stickyjumped away from me earlier like you say, Spy, but I decided to forgive him. Our work is work, after all.
“He was kind enough - if ‘kind’ is the right word - to go easy on the jumping. Of course, he never quite stops, but taking it easy is better than going as high as Herr Soldier. And... you wouldn’t believe what he did.”
“Don’t leave us hangin’, doc, what’d he do?” Sniper asked, made sufficiently curious.
“He stickyjumped and strafed off the cliff. Right off of it. There was no saving him.”
Sniper and Spy were rendered speechless for a long, silent parcel of time.
“Oh, no,” Spy whispered, eyes wide.
“Oh, ja,” Medic replied, nodding slowly at the Frenchman for dramatic effect.
“That’s awful,” Sniper added.
“It is. I watched the look on his face turn from determination to pure horror and I was feeling a little horrified myself. More beer, if you’d be so kind, Spy.”
Spy refilled Medic’s glass, even though he’d only taken a few sips from it.
“Why’s it so hard to be a support class?” Sniper asked, drumming his fingers against his mug.
“The others underestimate our abilities to help, far too often,” Spy responded.
“I mean, Spy, c’mon... you’ve also got a stick up your arse and-”
“I do not!” Spy snapped, slamming a hand down on the metal table.
“Achtung!” Medic yelled, but it was too late. Spy’s almost-full glass and Medic’s actually full glass had been knocked over by the force.
“Fifth time,” Sniper said. He took an all-too casual sip from his mug. “But who’s countin’?”
“Evidently, you are,” Spy quipped, getting up to fetch a towel.
Medic settled back down on his chair. “What’s sad is that this is still not as pitiful as our team’s performance today.”
“Yeah, I blame the others, too,” Sniper said.
“Too eager, too rash,” Medic mused, swirling a gloved fingertip in the beer.
“A shame, really,” Spy agreed from the sink. “Wasting our efforts on their foolishness.”
He returned to the examination table to mop up the spillage, and rinsed the towel when he was done.
The three lounged for a little while longer, soaking in the pleasant, companionable silence. Thinking about the day and the many other days they’ve had to lament their teammates together in the comfort of the infirmary. Sharing a drink or five, often from Medic’s personal stash of German beer like right now.
Finally, Medic picked up the last three bottles sitting on the floor between his and Spy’s chairs. It was from sheer luck that their legs or feet had not knocked them over earlier.
“The honours, if you will,” he said, pushing them over to Spy to uncap.
Spy popped the tops off with his knife, and handed a bottle to Sniper, then Medic.
“A toast,” Medic called, only now starting to slur a bit. “To us, the support trio.”
They clinked their glasses together and continued to chat, long into the night.