Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Midnight was getting near. RED team had just won earlier today and the winning streak had just reached five. It was collectively agreed that they’d celebrate their victories with food, drinks and whatever entertainment they could get out of their base.  They all had different was to celebrate, the party was divided into different places, different areas of the rec room.

This time, Medic declined the offer to drink. Making time for him to teach Scout how to play chess. Not that Medic liked to teach Scout chess but the runner was so insistent on it and the cheap American beer didn’t cut it for the German.

Sniper was there on the side, to demonstrate how to play with Medic. He had a bottle of beer on him to drink, it was mainly for appearance sake and the beer was free anyways so why not?

They were at the small table near the kitchen counter. Medic and Sniper sat opposite each other, Scout sat between them to study how they moved and listened to the commentary during the round.

“And so you can only move your knight in an L shape in any direction even with a piece in ze way but it’s the only piece that can jump over other pieces.” Medic moves the horse away from its original placement.

“And the pawn can eat whatever is on the left or right of it. But not front, back or side.” Sniper commented as he moved his pawn to eat Ludwig’s horse.

“Oooo I think zhis is vone of my favourite rules. So listen closely.” Medic chuckled.

“So you see, I haven’t move zhat pawn. As you know, the first move of a pawn can be two squares or one.”

Medic moves his pawn up right next to Sniper’s pawn, the same one that ate the knight.

“Now you see-“ Medic kills off his own pawn by making Sniper’s pawn kill it.

“I forgot the name for this move but, this rare occurrence of a pawn being next to an opening pawn that moved two squares can be eaten and the pawn that ate the other pawn can be moved the side where the opening pawn was.”

Scout tried his best to understand, but his memory was getting foggy after the countless explanations.

“Screw this, imma go see what else I can do. This game is for nerds anyways.” Scout excused himself from Medic and Sniper, walking off somewhere else.

Medic rolled his eyes and sighed. Shaking his head while he re-arranged the chess pieces back to their starter positions.

“Maybe you should go easy on him doc’. He’s got half the brains to read and to write, maybe trying to teach him chess while listing every single rule to him every move ain’t gonna make him learn quicker.” Sniper tries to help Medic, moving his own chess pieces and giving Medic the rest to sort.

“Nein, I digress. Zhat boy has to learn with a fast pace one day or another. Learning takes time, Scout has no patience to do zhat.” The doctor brushed away Sniper’s hand. Refusing the help.

“Anyvay, want to play? I've been itching to play an actual round for quite some time.” Medic smiles at Sniper, the previous tension brushed off.

“Sure, mate.” 

Scout had ran off to Pyro, who was playing with their paper on the rec room's living room floor. They were making stunning origami of unicorns, birds and all animals alike.

“Heya Py’, whatchu doin’ here?” Scout sat next Pyro, staring at the paper and looking back at Pyro. He placed his beer down on the ground somewhere far enough for him not to accidentally spill.

‘I’m making origami, want to join me?’ Pyro signed, giving a piece of coloured paper to Scout.

“Sure bud! Maybe I could learn how to make these and gift these to Pauling as a gift. She’d probably like em’.”

‘Unicorn’, Pyro signed to Scout.

They'd take a paper out for Scout to use, then shortly taking another for themselves. They’d slowly fold the paper, waiting for Scout to finish the step before, and then continuing.

Scout’s hands weren’t so delicate with the paper. His clumsy movements and unevenly folded angles had an affect to the unicorn origami. He was now nervous that he might not be able to even make a figure of an unicorn out of the paper.

A muffled ‘ta-da!’ was said by Pyro, showing off the neatly folded unicorn origami in their hand.

“Uh-“ Scout showed his own craft in his hands, which was a bit wrinkled in a few places, the legs of the unicorn was uneven, making it unable to stand on its own. The origami flopped to a side and fell off his hands.

‘Lets try again?’ Pyro gave another paper to Scout, gesturing him to take it.

“Yeah, maybe another animal. Like that bird!” Scout points to a swan origami that Pyro folded before he was here.

“I see loads of people do that it has to be easy an’ stuff!” Scout tries to cheer himself up. He takes the paper from Pyro, nodding to himself that he could do this.

‘Mhm!’ Pyro’s muffled voice responded.

Their hands once again slowly folded the paper step-by-step for Scout to see and learn. Pyro went slowly this time and would even point out if Scout’s folding was off.

Scout tries his hardest to follow Pyro’s steps, folding them slowly and carefully trying to not cause a permanent bent in the paper.

His right reached for the edge of the paper, trying to fold it in another direction. Meanwhile his left hand held the rest of the paper. And he accidentally ripped it in half in an uneven direction. The paper was small and the big tear in the paper made it almost impossible to be folded or even used for other purposes.

Scout stood up, grabbing the paper and his beer. He took a deep breath before walking to the nearest trashcan, crumbling the paper before throwing it in.

Pyro could only look, they didn’t want to disturb the runner to try again, knowing that it’d probably get worse.

Scout ran off to another part of the rec room, the poker table.

He’d always go there to see the others play, not knowing how to do it himself. He was always embarrassed about it but he stayed silent, knowing the other mercs would just kick him out if he starts being a motormouth about it.

The fascination started when he started to drink more often with the more ‘mature’ mercs like Soldier, Heavy, Demoman, Spy and Engineer. He didn’t know why or how he’d get so close to them in the first place but hey, a win for getting into another social group is still a win as long as you don’t fuck it up.

There was a secret though, Scout had always secretly favoured Engineer’s sharp and witty skills at Poker. He’d always have his eyes at Engineer, even if it was just him collecting his cards up. Scout also noticed a few other niche details like how Heavy was always sitting at the last seat of the poker table next to Demoman, and Demoman sat next to Engineer, Engineer sat next to Soldier, Soldier and Demoman would be impulsive their cards, or how Spy was almost always the dealer never the player and his flushing techniques were always suspiciously planned for a few rounds to be unfair to Engineer.

He swore to himself he'd step up to Spy about it one day. When though? He didn’t know. The opportunity was never given to Scout.

Words like “flush”, “4 of a kind”, “3 of a kind”, “full house” and ect exchanged across the table. Scout knew a few of them, but some were a complete mystery to him. Bets were placed, ante up or whatever it was called was going a lot more often than usual today. They were starting to get loud, as if it were an invitation for Scout to do the same. But he never fed into the temptation, instead he leans onto the nearby wall and watches from afar. Sipping a few drops of alcohol to pass time.

“AuaaaAaaaa….” Demoman slurred his words whilst taking another gulp from his bottle of scrumpy.

“Demo, I think ya should take a break.” Engineer suggested whilst sorting through his cards.

“Nooo..l. I’m fine….yer just tryna-“ A loud hick and burp followed before Demoman continued, “make me… to… bail out.” Then Demoman fell onto the table, slamming his cards and body down the poker table.

“I think Engineer is right, Demoman drink many bottles. Need rest.” Heavy commented, he  stood up from his chair. Pulling Demoman’s chair, he picked up Demoman to the nearby couch. Demoman of course, protested with all his might, and all his might was a few weak kicks and angry slurring words that could barely be counted as yelling.

“Maybe Scout can join us. I’ve seen him eyeing us for a long time now, maybe us Americans can team up on that Russian bear and make him quit!” Soldier joked.

“I agree with Soldier. Et peut-être qu'il pourra enfin mûrir une fois qu'il commencera à apprendre à jouer au poker.” Spy laughed.

“C’mon boy, I know you’ve been waitin’ for this moment. I know you always eye on me like a hawk to a chicken when we play poker.” Engineer ushered Scout to sit at Demoman’s place.

A wave of embarrassment and nervous conscious flooded Scout’s mind, like a non-stop alarm ringing about a world end emergency. Yet he sat down at the warm seat that Demoman had left. His back was hunched over, out of habit. Not too long after, Heavy returned and sat back down at his chair.

“Scout joining us now?” Heavy said in amusement.

“Mhm, Soldier and Engineer’s suggestion.”

“Rare, Heavy must take chance to enjoy.”

“Well, let’s start this game shall we gentlemen? And Scout.”

Engineer nudged an arm at Scout, smiling knowing that Scout has been waiting for the chance to play poker for a long while since he started to drag him out of his workshop to go out and entertain him. Scout however, had no idea how to respond other than giving a small smile that was nervously faked.

Scout picked up Demoman’s cards from the table. Studying the cards, concluding that Demoman had a full house the entire time. Probably because Demoman was too drunk to even work out what cards he had. But then again, Scout’s anxiety couldn’t help itself and blinded his previous knowledge of poker. So he’d had to wait and see when and how to play it right.

“I raise bet.” Heavy idly said, he’d put a few poker chips onto the already piling pot of chips.

Instinctively, Scout did the same. “I raise it too.” He spoke a little softer than usual. He took five poker chips and put them next to the previous bet Demoman had. The total number of poker chips were more than Heavy’s now.

“This better be a bluff or I’m done for.” Engineer laughs, more specifically towards Scout. “I call.” Engineer added his amount of poker chips same to Scout’s.

“Maybe if you weren’t so focused on your cards labourer, you’d actually win the round by now.” The French added, while calculating what Heavy or Scout was planning out.

Scout took the chance to call out Spy’s blatant shuffle cheat.

“Yeah right, as if you aren’t shuffling the cards to purposefully mess up Engie’s chance of winnin’, I’ve seen it happen more than the numbers I know how to count. And that’s a lot.” Scout pointed a finger at Spy.

“Oh is that right you say? How’d you know? There is no evidence.” Spy gave a sly smile, proud of himself of taunting the younger man.

“You always do riffle shuffling, barely any bridge or any cuts.” Scout’s aggression persisted. He couldn’t let down the opportunity to embarrass Spy, and maybe he wanted to defend his favourite poker player in the whole of teufort.

“Boy, how did you even know what shuffle was what? For all you’re saying it could be nonsense. Juste un tas de mensonges made up by you.” The French reached inside his vest to grab a cig and lighter out. His hands were stiff and his expression was clearly conveying his anger.

“Looks like someone’s nervous for gettin’ called out.” Engineer teased at Spy. Eyeing at him.

“I call” Heavy quietly added an equal amount of chips into the pot.

Spy finally lit up his cigarette with a few failed and shakes attempts. He took a long inhale, puffing it out before resting the cig on an ashtray to continue.

“Scout right about shuffling cards. Riffle shuffling is always Spy’s favourite shuffle. It exists.” Heavy places down his cards. Showing that he did have everything for a straight. “You can play smart with Scout, but not play smart with Heavy.”

“Call. So Spy, you got anything else you wanna share about you being our dealer?” Engineer said whilst placing his fair share of poker chips into the pot.

“Raise! Frenchie, speak up!” Soldier did the same, but he had added more poker chips than anyone else. Making every player worry. It could be bluff, or Soldier actually had good cards to play without folding.

“Non, that’s not the case.” Spy takes the cig back up to his lips and takes another puff before putting it back.

Scout, Engineer and Heavy all called, leaving nothing else but to fold their unwanted cards.

Scout didn’t fold any since he knew he had the perfect cards to win. Heavy had folded two, he wanted a three of a kind but he was short of another same-ranked card. Soldier wanted to do a flush, but had accidentally folded the wrong cards and draw two useless cards.  Engineer folded a card, he was so close to royal flush but he just needed another king to do it, but as luck has it or whatever Spy did to the deck, he received a mundane diamond three. Which was close to the rest of his diamond cards.

By the end of the betting, everyone revealed their cards and Scout had easily won by using his full house.

“See! Told ja’! Spy’s been messin with the cards. Demo was obviously too drunk to even understand or hell see what card he’s usin’ so Spy puts a freakin’ full house into his deck!”

“It’s just beginner’s luck. Don’t keep pushing the allegations.” Spy says, scoffing and giving a glare at Scout.

“He’s just not admitting it! C’mon man just look at how defensive he got!”

“Da, maybe Scout right.”

“Frenchie, that true?”

“Heh, maybe it’s bout’ time we switched a dealer.”

“Oh I know! Maybe Scout can be our new dealer! A true American never lies or cheats his players!”

“Soldier said many things, but this is only right thing he say.”

“Well boys looks like we have a new deale-“

Before anymore can continue, Spy bursts out in anger. Slamming in the table with both of his hands.

“Well then we’ll play it again! I’ll bridge shuffle, cut, an overhand and whatever you want me to do to prove I’m not cheating!” He yelled. Everyone shuttered a bit. Even Demoman, who was shifting and tossing on the couch trying to sleep, gave a small squeak when Spy yelled. Except for Heavy, he was just annoyed.

The French collected the cards back from all the players, shuffling with a bridge tactic first, then a riffle, butterfly twice, then the bridge again. He glanced at his players, making sure he was proving his innocence to an attentive crowd.

“Make sure you cut it twice frenchie.” 

“Or thrice for some extra measure.”

The both were teaming up against Spy. Scout leaned next to Engineer, and Engineer sorta did the same. Short and simple glances of somewhat excitement exchanged from one another. Heavy and Soldier were more focused on the card and sipping the leftover of their beer.

Spy gave a heavy sigh, but did what Scout said nonetheless. He cut the deck thrice and started to give out the cards and preparing the round.

“Alright. I’m done.”

The cards presented on the table were all of unconventional manner for the players. Whilst the card all the players were varied. Scout had barely any idea of what to do with his cards, it was messy unlike how neatly prepared before. His panic system kicked in once more. Engineer however, for almost the first time in forever was close to having the perfect straight flush. 5, 6, 7, 8 clovers with a diamond king. He just needed to get a 4 or 9 clover to win. Heavy was also lucky, he was near a straight. 8,9, diamond, 10, 7 heart and a clover 7. Needing a 6 to finish his straight. Soldier wasn’t so lucky like Scout, he had an ace, a 7 heart, 2,3 clover and 9 diamond.

The betting was already intense, Heavy and Engineer were raising. Soldier doing it a little too but was only doing it for bluff. Meanwhile Scout was clueless and helpless. Following along with only calls to hope the raise would stop.

“Maximum bet.” Spy said following with a cough. Probably for dramatic affect, that or it’s the cigarette’s fault.

Soldier starts re-arranging his cards, Engineer and Heavy started folding. Scout wasn’t too sure, almost lost in his own world of ‘this’ or ‘that’ action. His hands started fidgeting with the cards and his own fingers, it was always like this and Scout couldn’t help himself nor did he notice it most of the time.

“Well then? Start folding. Unless you don’t want to.” Spy snapped at the runner.

Scout immediately started to fold, he didn’t care how many cards were folded down, it was purely impulse. Sweaty palms brushed through the deck, grabbing the cards and barely counting them.

“Alright men, you ready?” Soldier said, knowing he’d probably lose.

“Yup.”

“Yes.”

“I’m ready.”

The responses were quick and so were showing the cards.

Engineer and successfully did a straight flush. Aka he won the shitload of poker chips stacked up because of how much he raised.

Spy took back the cards and butterfly shuffled them before putting it back to the used cardboard box the cards came with.

“Engineer won. Happy that you’ve finally won Engineer? And your little fanboy over there gets to see you win?” Spy asking rhetorical questions at Engineer.

“Well, anything to stop you from messin’ with the deck. If you try that again, Scout being our dealer wouldn’t be a suggestion no more. Right Scout?” Engineer proudly patted the younger man’s back.

Scout was still in his obvious nervous state. Then when he felt a hand slapping right at his back, his postured was fixed, then it returned to hunch again. He quickly responded by nodding at Engineer, just to get a side eye from Spy.

“Anyways, it’s getting late. I suggest we wrap this up. We don’t have all night unless we lose to sleep tomorrow.” Spy like the heavy smoker that he is, starts grabbing another cigarette and lighting it to smoke.

“See you all tomorrow.” Spy’s voice echoed as he slithered his way back to his room.

Chapter Text

Spy, Heavy and Soldier walked off. Demoman had been long asleep on the couch, snoring softly. Pryo had left to his room sometime before hitting midnight. Sniper and Medic had left earlier when their round of chess ended with Sniper winning.

Most of the lights were shut off, the only light left was the fluorescent light hanging on top of the poker table.

Now the rec room was left with Engineer and Scout sitting at the poker table.

“Hey Scout? You doin’ alright? You’re getting shakes.” Engineer finally noticed how Scout’s hand was shivering.

Scout bit the underside of his lip, refusing to speak. His breathing was getting harder, he felt as if his lungs or heart could explode from the stress and tension he caused himself.

Engineer, having no idea what to do resorted to just stroking the boy’s back. As if it were working, Scout started to calm down a little.

“Engie, I wanna ask ya somethin’.”

“Yeah Scout?”

“How’d cha do it?”

“Do what?”

Engineer was confused. He hadn’t comforted anyone in a long while, he didn’t know what Scout wanted nor what he could do to help.

“How are you always so smart? Like- How don’t cha’ freeze when you don’t know an answer to something?”

Ah. That’s what he wanted to know.

“Well, I learn. Trail and error is important to the learning progress. If cha’ can’t stand to lose or don’t wanna see what happens if you try a different way, you aren’t learning you’re just following instructions.”

Knowing how much it eased the boy earlier, Engineer didn’t stop stroking Scout’s back.

“No, ain’t the case. I’ve never been good at learning. I could barely focus on things, I’m clumsy, I’m not smart and look at me Engie, I’ve been watching you play for who knows how long and I still don’t get the gist of poker or whatever type you were playing.”

Engineer shook his head. He pulled Scout closer with another arm, their chairs were now facing each other.

“Oh it ain’t like that.”

“It’s exactly like that.”

“But you can’t help yourself? Right?”

Now they were much closer than before. Scout was hunching his whole body on Engineer, weak hands giving the older man a somewhat hug. Some unnoticeable tears leaked down Scout’s eyes. Scout was used to ‘silent crying’, he was barely sobbing.

Engineer on the other hand, had two firm arms on Scout’s back. His left hand was still stroking Scout’s back, the left hand was left to carcass the neck and hair in a pattern with the other hand. Anyone with a right sense of mind or a guy with eleven PhDs would know that Scout’s crying.

“I’ll tell you what, you sure can be a crybaby sometimes.”

“When I’m sober I’m gonna wack you up with my baseball bat for sayin’ that.”

“Mhm.”

It wasn’t long till Scout fully plopped onto Engineer’s laps. Scout was taller than Engineer, but not heavier. The runner was now in front of Engineer, Engie’s arms were wrapped around Scout’s waist and chest.

“So, did Spy scared ya senseless when he screamed like a loony? Or is this just how you feel when you lose a game of poker drunk.”

Engineer’s head was lucky enough to be put over Scout’s shoulder to get a better view of the boy’s face and body.

“Spy wasn’t the only guy who pissed me off.”

“Who else then?”

“Medic, maybe Spy, and you too sorta."

Engineer never knew if he was the luckiest man in the world or was he doomed by Scout’s utmost pure innocence when he’s with him.

“How did I scare ya? Was I too good at poker?”

Engineer planted small kisses onto Scout’s neck. Scout of course accepted the generous kisses, leaning his head to the left to allow Engineer to have better access to his neck.

“You were winning, that’s all.”

Scout use his right hand to caress Engineer’s hair. There were enough for it to run smoothly through his hand.

“I’ll teach ya how to play poker better if ya want.”

Engineer stop kissing Scout, instead he returned to just hugging him.

“Nah, I still gotta learn chess with Sniper and Medic. Just so I can play a round with ya as soon as I become a master at it.” Scout leaned back more, allowing him to relax more.

“Mhm.”

They were usually like this. But it was never anywhere near the rec room. Or anywhere other than their own rooms and occasionally the workshop. Besides that, it was always the other way around with Engineer being the one who needed the comforting. But they both didn’t mind, they both liked it.

Both wanted to stay like this for a little longer. No wait that’s wrong—they wanted to stay like this forever.

But hey, it’s only a game of Texas hold ‘em.