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Stars sprawled across the desert sky, countless and glinting, their light cool and dim compared to the warm light of Sniper’s campfire.
Sniper added another few branches to the flames. The winds were changing, bringing colder air, and clouds began to stalk across the sky, hiding the stars behind their bruise-purple color. The air began to smell like rain. Even as the night changed and the wind picked up, Sniper remained outside. He liked to be outside, with just the clean desert air, the smoky smell of the fire, and…
Spy?
“Hello, bushman,” Spy said as he melted out of the shadows.
“...evening, spook. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. Obviously.”
Spy walked closer. The firelight flickered across him, painting his blue suit deep orange and casting dancing shadows on the sandy ground behind him.
“Then why’re you out here in the middle of the night, bothering me?”
“Pyro and Soldier tried to make what they called a ‘midnight snack,’” Spy said, his thin lips curling with disgust. “The entire base stinks of burned sugar and the positively putrid smell of charred popcorn.”
“So you decided to crash my party?”
Spy raised his eyebrow, giving Sniper’s setup a derisive once-over.
“You are sitting alone next to your van with a fire and a bottle of terrible moonshine. Hardly a ‘party.’”
“You could’ve just said you wanted some company,” Sniper said, smirking.
“As though you would have been my first choice. I was simply going for a walk until the base air cleared, and I happened to walk past you and your disgusting van.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Bushman, you—”
Before Spy could finish, thunder crackled through the sky with deafening intensity, and the sky opened up, sending a sheet of freezing rain down toward the hard-packed desert dirt below.
Spy leaped into the back of Sniper’s camper with an undignified squawk.
“Oi! That’s my van!” Sniper said, still standing in the cold rain as it soaked through his clothes. Smoke and steam billowed out from Sniper’s fire, and the downpour extinguished it in short order.
“This suit cost me more than your van! I am not ruining it!”
“It gets covered in blood every single match, stupid.”
“Respawn repairs it. So, unless someone blows my brains out—”
“Tempting.”
“—you are stuck with me until the rain stops.”
Sniper sighed and climbed into the camper with Spy. He took his hat off and shook it, sending a shower of water droplets onto Spy, who cursed at him in French.
“This is just great,” Sniper muttered, pushing past Spy to light a lamp. The camper never felt claustrophobic before, but it never had a string-bean Spy standing moodily in the middle of it before, either.
“Like I wanted to hole up in your disgusting camper,” Spy hissed.
“Whatever,” Sniper said, swiping a pile of clothes off the nearest chair. “As long as you behave yourself, you can wait here until the rain lets up.”
But the rain didn’t let up. It rained, and rained, and then rained some more, which is how they somehow ended up drinking Sniper’s moonshine from chipped coffee mugs and playing cards at two o’clock in the morning.
“You are a filthy, lying cheater, bushman,” Spy slurred, his accent somehow becoming even more unintelligible. For someone who had as many bottles of fancy alcohol as Spy did, he sure couldn’t hold his liquor.
“You’re a real light-weight, spook,” Sniper said, watching Spy’s glazed eyes stare at his cards.
“Tu as le QI d’une huitre.”
“Aw, what have we said about using our kind words, froggie?”
“Ferme ta gueule.”
When Sniper won, again, Spy threw his cards in the air with a muttered curse, sending them all over the floor.
“You’re a sore loser,” Sniper said, giving the fallen cards a glance but not feeling like picking them up.
“Not as sore as your mother,” Spy said, his head sinking down onto the table.
“You’ve never met my mother.”
Spy slurred more unintelligible French, probably another juvenile joke, and Sniper didn’t bother trying to parse it out. Rolling his eyes, Sniper put his feet up and leaned onto the back legs of his chair. Cards were getting boring, even if Spy hadn’t just thrown them all over the floor.
“So, tell me, Spy—”
“Please, no insipid blathering,” Spy grumbled. “I get enough of that from Scout.”
“What’s the alternative? Dunno if you noticed, but we’re stuck here together, and I ain’t sleeping until you’re gone.”
“Silence.”
“You’re such a freak,” Sniper said as he took another sip from his mug. It wasn’t that he loved small talk. Hated it, in fact. But it was fun to mess with Spy.
“Alright, we’ll start with something easy, mate,” Sniper said. “What’s your favorite color?”
“I have no preferences.”
“Everyone has preferences. C’mon. It won’t hurt to tell me your favorite color.”
“Non. I am a wall, and inside of me is another wall.”
“Mm-hmm. And what’s behind that wall?”
“That’s fucking classified, bushman.”
Spy sat up suddenly, his balaclava bunched up around the bridge of his nose. “I am a nesting doll of masks and secrets.”
“Like the cutesy little nesting doll Heavy has in his room?”
Spy waved his gloved hand, his nose wrinkling up the same way Scout’s did when he got annoyed.
“I refuse to participate in this idiotic activity. I will not answer your questions,” Spy said. He pounded one fist on Sniper’s table. “Under my walls, there is a mask, and there is another mask behind that one!”
“Uh-huh. And what’s under that one?”
“Another fucking mask! Keep up!”
Spy’s head plopped forward onto the table again, sending another few cards fluttering down to the floor.
“What’s your favorite color?” Sniper asked again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” came the muffled reply.
Sniper took another sip of moonshine.
“Good talk, spook,” Sniper said. “I feel so much closer to ya now.”
“Ugh! Ferme ta gueule,” Spy hissed. “You are being like the Scout! Talk talk talk, never shut up. Until I want to strangle him! Bête comme ses pieds!”
“Dunno why you let him rile you up. That’s why he pokes at you so much, y’know. ‘Cause he knows he’ll get a reaction.”
“Like I’m going to take advice from a man who pees in jars,” Spy growled into the table.
“Suit yourself.”
Silence settled over them. Sniper had just about resigned himself to picking up the scattered cards when Spy stirred again.
“Lilac.”
“What?”
“My favorite color is lilac.”
“Groundbreaking.”
“You asked. Idiot.”
Another long silence, broken only by the incessant pounding of the rain and the occasional rumble of distant thunder. Sniper settled all four of his chair legs back to the floor. Spy really did seem to be asleep this time, his breathing settling into a low, even rhythm.
“Bushman?” Spy said, his voice low and sleepy.
“Hm?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“What is it, ya weirdo?”
“The Scout is my son.”
A long quiet stretched on in the wake of his words, and Sniper stared down at the back of Spy’s head, feeling like someone had just kicked him in the teeth. He waited for Spy to sit up and laugh with that stupid cackling snort he had, but Spy didn’t move. Sniper finally managed to make his mouth move again.
“…sorry, what, mate?”
Spy’s only answer was a long, rumbling snore.