Work Text:
You know I'll believe in anything
And you'll believe in anything
Because nobody knows you
And nobody gives a damn either way
— I’ll Believe in Anything, Wolf Parade
The explosion—by anyone’s account—was excessive.
Three BLU soldiers. Three. All in the intelligence room—something Spy had catalogued as a dangerous area weeks ago. The observation had been filed away—the same way he did with everything—quietly, precisely, and without feeling. Overall: efficiency. But, foolishly, he had not foreseen that three different soldiers would arrive at the same moment, three different directions, and bombard him. As though they had planned it, which they certainly had not.
BLU—specifically soldiers—were not known for their planning skills.
The first rocket chipped his shoulder. The next one almost hit him in the chest.
But Spy had been good at improv. What he did next, BLU could barely interpret clearly. The corridor filled with smoke, stretching thin within the hallways with the sound of a man dying that was no other than himself. A short, surprised, violent sound. The way real deaths sound.
Then—a pause, brief confusion from the opposition.
Then—the loudspeaker. THE ENEMY HAS KILLED YOUR SPY!
This wasn’t unusual. Heavy gave a slight grumble of something in Russian, Scout whispered a few profanities under his breath, and Medic sounded particularly annoyed that Spy had been injured.
In the spawn room, Engineer set down his wrench.
He stood still for a moment—like he was waiting for something to come that was never there.
Then he picked his wrench back up, walked to his level-three sentry and gave it a single tap that it didn’t need.
The body had not recovered.
Respawn was not guaranteed—everyone knew this. There was no paper, no contract, no debriefing.
The hum of the base's lounge area was still casual, ordinary. Scout playing checkers with Pyro, Demoman and Soldier cheering for a sports team that wasn't playing, Medic had already drifted to his office.
And Spy’s room was still not occupied.
But Dell Conagher was a man who built things for a living. He understood systems—and the system here had two irregularities that left him shakin' like a cat shittin' razor blades.
The first: the Dead Ringer.
He had seen Spy use it once—only once. Wrong place, wrong time. A minor hiccup. Spy had pulled it out of his pocket with the swiftness and precision of a man who had done it a million times over. Even though Dell knew he hadn’t. It was a watch—not for telling time—for telling lies, which perhaps was more useful.
The Engineer had asked about it once—only once. Spy had looked at him long, scanning his person, and then said “It is an eventuality, labourer.”
And they left it at that. Dell had nodded then went back to working on blueprints for—at the time—was the development of the gunslinger. Considering this, it must’ve been years ago since Dell mentioned it.
The second: three days after Spy’s death, his Mannboroughs had vanished from the common room.
Not stolen—he would’ve noticed if it was stolen. The ashtray moved approximately 4 inches to the left, and the cigarette case Spy used on the top shelf—behind Medic’s journal and in front of Sniper’s bullet case—was merely not there anymore.
Everything else was left unscathed. It was the work of someone known for rigor and modesty.
Dell finished his dinner, washed his plate, and went back to his workshop.
He didn’t say anything to anyone.
It happened the way he had expected it to happen, which was to say: quietly, in a place where neither of them had any particular reason to be.
The base lobby was always quiet at midnight—but it just so happened the Engineer worked best in the quiet. He came there when he needed serenity at night—a new environment—to get out of the workshop that smelled like sweat and metal.
He came there on the fifth night—and the door was twenty degrees more open than he had left it.
He sank into the cushions of his usual chair, exhaling dramatically. He placed his mug on the coaster next to it. “...You want some coffee?”
He left it at that.
Then, suddenly, the decloak sound. A red splotch that suddenly formed into the familiar Spy was hidden in the corner of the room, cigarette in hand. “...I suppose it could not hurt.”
Engineer smiled. “Go right ahead, Spook.”
Spy approached the counter—the one where they usually served meals during the day. Due to popular demand, the coffee machine was left on the counter for accessible usage. “It is burnt, ouvrier.”
“No shit,” Engineer guffawed. “I made it bout’ five hours ago.”
“I can make more,” Spy said. “You are permitted to try some, if you’d like. The way I make it is unparalleled.”
“S’ jus’ coffee,” Dell laughed, leaning back into his chair. “But go ahead. Reckon it’s a little late for caffeine, we have a match tomorrow.”
Spy pulled a vial out of his breast pocket. “...Ah. I do not imagine I will be attending.”
“Uh-huh,” Engineer hummed, “and that’s because, what, ya still fakin’ ya own death?”
Spy paused, then swallowed, then spilled the contents of the vial into the coffee pot after it was thoroughly drained of the burnt, amber coffee.
“...Precisely,” he muttered. “How long have you known?”
“Since the third day,” Dell said, casually. “Cigarettes.”
Spy made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“And you told no one, yes?”
“No one,” he affirmed. “Figured if you wanted to be dead, ya had your reasons.”
Spy smirked, focusing on the task at hand. “Observant, you are…it is nearly frustrating.”
“Hey,” Dell corrected a slouch, trying to get a better view of Spy’s busy hands, “what are you doin’ with the pot? Aint’cha got anything else to use? Like the sink?”
“Distilled mineral water,” he replied, tucking the bottle back into his pocket. “It is more efficient for cleaning.”
“You carry distilled water in your breast pocket,” Dell said in disbelief.
“I carry a great many things in my breast pocket, you would be surprised."
“At this point,” Dell started, “I genuinely would not.”
Spy set it aside, rinsing to satisfaction. He opened the cabinet, looking for the coffee filters.
“These,” he said, slipping a paper filter through two fingers, “are offensive.”
“They’re coffee filters.”
“Paper coffee filters,” Spy corrected with an eye roll. He closed the cabinet. Then, he reached into his inner left pocket, and rendered a small square of something that was definitely not paper.
“...Is that silk?” Engineer asked, leaning in a little closer.
“Laboratory grade, yes.” Spy unfolded it with care. “Grade four. Zero sediment. The mouthfeel—”
“Ya just said mouthfeel about coffee, heavens to betsy.”
“—is incomparable.” Spy fitted the silk into the plastic basket with little struggle, smoothing the edges. “The paper is in the wrong places, the oils are uneven. It ruins the body of the bean.” He paused. “Not that the bean you are using had much body to begin with.”
“Folgers?” Dell said, taken aback. “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with Folgers.”
Spy did not respond to this—like the idea was too silly to even entertain.
Dell watched him measure the grounds—it was more grounds than Dell had used, he knew that for sure. He had expected, less, finer, more European. Spy tamped them down with a non-standard, non-generic tool that he had pulled from yet another pocket.
“Salt,” Engineer echoed. “You’re puttin’ salt in it?”
“Maldon, yes, British,” Spy hummed in affirmation. “It suppresses acidity. It does not make it taste salty, don’t be concerned.”
He sprinkled an amount that Dell couldn’t even see with the naked eye.
“Do you ever do anythin’ without precision?”
Spy smirked, not turning around. “Ah. I choose every word carefully, ouvrier.”
“Every move, too?”
Spy nodded.
“Then why’d you let me find you?” Dell raised a brow, blunt. “Unless, of course, you made a genuine mistake,” he added.
An awkward, stretching silence. Engineer could hear Spy swallow ever-so-slightly.
“...I thought we were talking about coffee, non?”
“Right. That we were.”
Spy allowed himself to look pleased for a brief moment, which for him was the corner of his mouth making a very small movement upward. He replaced the coffee basket and picked up the carafe.
Dell watched him pour approximately. He estimated fifty milliliters at a time into the reservoir, then stopped, then waited, then poured again. He’d pour, stop, then pour again. He did it with the exact same rhythm as Dell had with his sentries.
“The heating element,” Dell said, “hm.”
Spy turned around, tilting his head.
“If you dump it all in at once,” Dell continued, “the basket floods and the grounds just sit in the swamp. That over-extracts the coffee and makes it bitter. You're throttlin' the flow, ain't ya?
“Homme avisé.” He measured another fifty millimeters. “Though, you should not have to ask.”
“Well,” Dell settled into the cushions. “I’ll be damned.”
Quiet, again.
Dell didn’t like it.
“The Armagnac,” Dell said, one breath.
Spy’s hand stilled on the vial—like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He turned to look at Dell.
“Breast pocket, left side,” Dell ruminated. “You went for it twice—thought I wasn’t lookin’. Or is that the uh, botanical aroma stuff?”
Spy assessed him, biting his cheek. “The botanical essence," he said, after the brief silence. “I do not use the Armagnac in company. It seems presumptuous.
“Use the Armagnac,” Dell said.
“Okay,” Spy granted. He reached into his left breast pocket and pulled out a very small, glass bottle. Dark amber, sealed tight. He held it up gently.
“One drop?” Spy asked.
“One drop,” Engineer agreed.
Spy uncorked in one swift movement using his thumb. He held it over the carafe—which was filling—and the silk filter was catching everything it was supposed to be catching and releasing everything that it was supposed to be releasing. And, for one second, he inverted it.
The smell that hit Dell was a little like the south of France. Or—the idea of it, maybe. He had never been. Underneath that, the night air comes through the lobby’s high, long windows. A smell that Dell had ignored for years, had stopped noticing, and suddenly noticed now.
“Huh,” he murmured, voice soft.
Spy sealed the cap back onto the vial. He turned around and grabbed two cups from the cabinet. One nice, ceramic one with not a single chip in it, and then Dell’s worn-through, dollar store mug.
Without being asked, he poured.
He set their mugs side-by-side on the coasters. The desk acted as a bridge between the two chairs, and Spy moved to the seat across from Dell.
“Table for two, please?” Engineer laughed, a desperate attempt at humor.
“You are not funny.”
“Right, right,” Dell conceded. “You don’t have a fancy mug for me, huh, pardner?”
“Your mug is tacky,” Spy hissed, “but I figured that you would prefer it.”
“How considerate,” Dell deadpanned, a smile on his face. “Thanks, anyway.”
Dell picked up the mug and drank.
He sat with it for a moment, letting the heat grow in his stomach.
“Well,” he said.
“Oui?” Spy scanned his face, searching for an emotion.
“I’ve been drinking bad coffee for thirty years.”
“I’m aware.”
Dell rolled his eyes. “Well look, I didn’t know I was drinkin’ bad coffee. Just thought I was drinkin’ okay coffee.”
“That,” Spy said, a slight smile gnawing at the corner of his mouth. “Is the saddest thing you have ever said to me.”
Dell laughed—it surprised himself. He heard Spy make a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, but was good enough for his standards—it had all of its warmth.
Neither of them said anything that one of them was supposed to be dead.
…The coffee was too good for that conversation right now.
“You’re gonna have to show me how to do all that,” Dell said, eventually.
“I am not.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Dell whined. “The water increments, at least.”
“Absolutely not,” Spy huffed. “You will bastardize it.”
“I have eleven degrees.”
“In engineering,” Spy added, “not coffee.”
“Is there a degree in coffee?”
“...Apparently there should be,” Spy said with such passion that Dell laughed again. The sound of it floated around in the lobby and didn’t stop haunting it for a while.
Day eight.
He heard rustling—marginally, sure—but there. He set down his wrench—sinking into his black office chair. He let out a sigh of relief that sounded a little like a groan, looser than he intended.
Then—
“You know,” he started, “it don’t hurt to say hi.”
Dell’s stomach did something complicated. He felt the eyes on him, the specific unexplainable prickle at the back of his neck, the kind that wasn’t just paranoia.
Though—there was a chance he was a crazy old man talking to his walls on a Thursday night.
He brushed that thought off. Worst case scenario. He’d had worse embarrassments.
The decloak noise. Again.
Ah. Right.
Suddenly—the corner of the workshop looked like RED mist—which then took the shape of the Spy’s standard appearance. What he believed to be standard, anyway.
“...Bonjour,” the Frenchman said, quietly.
“Bonjour,” Dell returned, pitching it badly on purpose. He let out a guttural laugh.
“Your French accent is terrible,” Spy noted, expression flattening.
“The joke went right over your head.”
Spy rolled his eyes and carelessly reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He rolled it in his two fingers—deep in consideration. He looked at Dell’s workbench over his shoulder. “Do you mind if I smoke, labourer?”
“Don’t mind at all,” Dell said. “Thanks for askin’.”
“You are welcome, Conagher.”
There was a blank space between them for a while—not an awkward one. A shared, mutual understanding that said—we have a lot to talk about but we’re not going to talk about any of that.
Smoke plumed from Spy’s mouth rapidly—to the point Dell had to wave a hand a few times to get the smoke out of his eyes. He found it mildly insufferable. And yet he didn’t tell him to stop, which was its own kind of answer.
“Spy,” Dell said with an idle tap to his project. “Why’d you leave?”
There it was. It was a little ironic—it aimed to draw out a confession but landed like one.
“...I gathered intel during the match,” Spy admitted, after a beat. “But not from BLU.”
“Not from BLU how?” Dell quirked a brow. “You sabatogin’ your own darn team?”
“Non. This intel about our—” a pause, “—employers.”
“An’ what could be so bad about em’ that you have to fake your death for two weeks, huh?”
“The administrator is working for both teams.” With a flick of his lighter, he lit a cigarette, staring intently at anything except the Engineer. He said it in the way of a man who had been carrying this for a while—flat and exhausted. “It was not in a briefcase. In BLU’s intel room, yes, I had ruptured one of their file cabinets.”
Inhale.
“Apparently—”
Exhale—
“—it wasn’t theirs.”
“...Go on.”
“I had taken a file—I presumed it was their battle plans—something useful, yes?” Spy finally looked up at him. “But it was a contract. For the BLU Scout.”
“Hold your horses, like—like our contracts? Like the ones she gives us for missions? You’re lyin’ like a no-legged dog.”
“...I do not lie about things like zis, mon dieu…” he murmured. “Not our mission contracts—the sign up ones, the contract you sign to stay with Mann Co. for an indefinite period. Hired until no longer needed.”
“Must’ve been a lifetime ago when I signed that.”
Spy nodded with slight acknowledgement. “But I kept lookin’. The BLU Scout was followed by the Soldier, then the Pyro…so on and so forth.”
“And then,” the Frenchman added, “it’s our contracts next. Our Scout, our Soldier, and our Pyro. Both BLU and RED were endorsed by Miss Pauling and the Administrator."
“Pauling?” Engineer gaped, stunned, trying to process it. “...Did ya take these contracts?”
“I’m getting there, labourer,” Spy said with an exhale of impatience. “Then—I found out—we are not fighting for land. Nor gravel. We—” He pointed between the two of them, “—are fighting for these two men—Redmond and Blutarch. Twins with an ongoing rivalry. Their father wants only one to survive. They have been fighting for decades. This war is not a war—it is an inheritance dispute.”
He let Dell sit with that for a while.
He had signed a contract—thinking about land rights, having a specific satisfaction knowing he was protecting something. He had built nearly forty prototypes to create the perfect sentry. He made sixteen weapon iterations, for a war that was, apparently, two old men in a room somewhere fighting over a will.
“As I’m grabbing intel—three Soldiers corner me.” Spy’s jaw shifted slightly. “Which I did not plan for. I was—I’ll admit—in a state of something approaching unadulterated shock. So I take the files, lock the cabinet, and then—” He reached into his inner pocket and tossed the Dead Ringer on the edge of the workbench, catching the light with a gold shine. “—I used this.”
Dell opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
“...When do you plan on coming back?”
“Soon.”
“Second question, what do ya plan we do about this…well, situation?”
“...Je ne sais pas.” He waved a hand and cleared his throat. “I don’t know,” he corrected. “I said I don’t know. I suggest we wait it out. I do not foresee our contracts lasting much longer regardless.” He stubbed the cigarette against the workbench—leaving a faint mark on the wood. Dell did not comment on this.
“Especially,” Dell added, “when they don’t know where the files for our contracts are.”
Spy nodded. “Oui.”
A beat.
“Reckon you aren’t going to tell the rest of the team?”
“Non.” His voice was certain. “Their performance would weaken, they would lose their composure, act rashly—do something ill-advised that couldn’t be reversed. I have thought of every conceivable way I can.” Habitually, he smoothed out his jacket. “None of it renders a good outcome.”
“An’ I wouldn’t?”
“You aren’t.”
“Suppose that’s true.” Dell shrugged, going back to refining his current project. “You fixin’ to watchin’ me work all night?”
Spy settled against the dormant sentry, unhurried.
“Virtually.”
Day ten.
Dell was elbow-deep into the mechanical guts of a mini-sentry when he heard the decloak noise. This time, he didn’t have to tempt Spy to decloak. This time, he didn’t look back at the air shimmering. It had become something of a mutual agreement. The smell of expensive tobacco assaulted his senses.
“Loiterin’ again?” Dell muttered, wiping the sentry with a wet rag.
“I’m observing the structure of your new endeavor,” he clarified, voice low. He leaned over the blueprints, his gloved hand centimeters away from the worker’s shoulders.
“Structure’s fine—the defense I’m strugglin’ with. It’s a stubborn one. Reminds me of someone I know.”
“Me, I assume?”
“You,” he agreed.
Spy let out a laugh, fingers tracing the edge of the blueprint. “You overcomplicate. Your machine does not need to survive war. Sometimes, it only needs to survive the moment, yes?”
Silence.
Yet, neither of them moved.
He thought about it, sometimes, in the spaces between work—what it meant that he trusted Spy.
It was not a simple calculation. Spy lied. Spy lied professionally, which was different from lying habitually, but only barely. Morally, the difference was hanging by a thread.
Spy lied. And yet.
There was a difference, Dell had decided, from a man who lied to everyone and a man who selected who he didn’t lie to. But he knew, or assumed, that Spy had not lied to him. He had withheld things—sure—that was certain. But he had not told him a lie—only danced around the truth.
(It meant something.
Pointedly, it was not nothing.
He had come to realize that was, in fact, quite a lot.)
His final conclusion was that Spy had come to him first.
Spy had looked at Dell and decided: yeah, he was worth trusting. He had left evidence—evidence only he would notice—he had put faith into the Engineer.
And, well, Dell was not a man who took things like that lightly.
Day fifteen—Spy had come back.
Not to the workshop—no—to the lobby. After a misson—when everyone was there.
The reunion was what the Engineer had predicted. The lobby erupted into what could only be described as a cacophony of disbelief. Scout was vibrating—voice heightening by the second. He made a noise that he would refuse to say was sob.
“See! See! I freakin’ told you! Nobody jus’ gets blown up and…stays blown up! Ya owe me ten bucks, Hardhat, I saw him!”
“Ya didn’t see a damn thing, boy,” Soldier barked. “SPY! You are two weeks AWOL. You are lucky I cannot confine you and then shoot you and then confine you again.”
Spy flicked Soldier. “Your grasp of military law is very flimsy.”
“You did not come to me?” Medic stared into Spy's eyes with intensity. “Very well. Though I must admit, reconstruction. It took fifteen days? That is…ah. Very interesting. Strange. Did you feel the atoms knitting themselves back together?”
“I am a man of many secrets, Doctor.”
Through the crowd of noise—Spy found the gaze of the Engineer.
Dell leaned against a far wall—arms crossing over his chest. He wasn’t cheering, but his mouth was tilted—just a little—in a way that Spy couldn’t interpret.
Spy walked over to him anyway.
“Took you long enough, Spook,” Dell murmured. “You know, the coffee’s cold.”
“The quality of beans remains a tragedy.”
“Yeah,” Engineer said. “The reports?”
“Complicated,” he replied, “but they are gone.”
“Good.” Dell nodded once. “Welcome back.”
Dell brushed a layer of sawdust off his desk before snatching the envelope resting beside his wrench. There was no sign of a return address. He hooked a thumb under the seal to open it.
Conagher,
I have never written this kind of letter—I want you to know that. I have written mission reports, false confessions, and several letters of introduction from people who do not exist. I have not written this.
But I am writing it anyway.
You have, without my authorization, become the person I look for when I enter a room. I want you to understand how inconvenient this is. My survival depends on my unpredictability—on ensuring no man could draw one line from any point to any other point and arrive, at the end of it, at me. You have ruined this. You have done it with being observant and offering me disgusting, terrible burnt coffee.
It is devastating. I hope you appreciate that.
I am not a man who stays. You know this. It is simply the nature of the work—the life—the consequence of a man who has worn too many faces for any of them to fit correctly or feel like home.
Your workshop is not a fine room. In fact—it is awful. The light is bad. The floor is concrete and not carpeted. There is a sentry in the corner. There is a constant ringing that assaults my senses.
Yet—it is the room I have been the most at home in in twenty years—and that is entirely your fault, and I want you to know that I blame you for it.
I am not asking for anything, Dell. I am simply informing you. That is all.
—Yours, in spite of better judgment, S.