Proving Oneself Teaser/WIP

Anniversary Teaser/WIP

Summary: The Aussie and the Frenchman don't come to the little diner in town very often, but Dana always appreciates the break from backshift monotony that they provide.

——

Anniversary

[...]

The night shift, though, was when the Frenchman and the Aussie came in.

They were Dana’s favourite regulars, though “regulars” might have been a bit of a stretch: their visits were sporadic, and she’d only really seen them maybe seven or eight times since their first appearance almost a year back. They were some kind of contractors, part of the group working out of the old train depot in the desert, but while their fellows who frequented the town had garnered something of a… reputation in town, the Frenchman and the Aussie were never anything but friendly and courteous, if maybe a little aloof. They weren’t too hard on the eyes, either, which was always a pleasant treat during a long shift.

Their visits, infrequent as they were, followed a by-now familiar routine, so when the slightly janky glow of the dusty camper’s headlights pulled into the parking lot, Dana perked up from where she’d been leaning on the counter in a haze of stupefied boredom. The night so far had been even more quiet than usual, with not even the usual drunks staggering in. Any diversion would have been welcome, and this one was definitely more welcome than most.

She poured out two glasses of water, no ice, and two mugs of coffee from the good pot to the rumbling and squeaking of the camper rolling into its accustomed space. The engine chuffed to a halt, and she heard the muffled mutter of voices from outside as she set the drinks on a serving tray. The words burst into sudden clarity as the door swung open.

“-etter things to spend my money on.” The Aussie was the first to enter, holding the door open for his companion and tipping his wide-brimmed hat at Dana in greeting. “It still runs fine, and it’s not like I’ve got plans t’do any drag-racin’ out here.”

“It sounds like a wounded animal begging to be put out of its misery,” the Frenchman said, offering Dana a nod and small smile as he made his way to the booth in the smoking section with the least-scarred table, taking his usual seat in the bunkette with a view of the door. “Even the convict’s van doesn’t sound ’alf as bad, and it ’as made acquaintance with every ditch within twenty kilometres of the base. Even Engineer thinks it’s time to retire the poor beast, and ’e’s put as much work into keeping it alive as you.”

[...]

“Yer not worried ’bout Twinkle Toes gettin’ jealous?” the Aussie said, a smirk clear in his voice. The Frenchman snorted, and Dana returned to her place behind the counter just in time to see him rolling his eyes as he stirred three creamers and a sugar packet into his coffee.

“’Ardly. Even if ’e gets in that kind of mood, I only need ask ’oo it was that Wrenches punched in the face, and why, and ’e shuts up quickly enough.” He sipped his coffee and stirred in another half a sugar pack. He took a second sip, hummed in satisfaction, and set down his spoon.

There was a long moment of comfortable silence. The Aussie sipped his coffee and the Frenchman lit a cigarette. Dana was hanging the order ticket up for the kitchen when the Frenchman spoke again.

“’E told me ’is name, a few months ago. Not long after ’is… little tryst with the RED Scout.”

“No shit?” The Aussie blinked, his mug halfway to his lips. “How’d ya manage ta squeeze that out of him?”

“As if you could bear to ’ear the gory details, mon ami,” the Frenchman said with a chuckle, shaking his head. “I’ll ’ave you know, it was freely offered. Completely out of nowhere, and in French, no less. I’ll admit, I was surprised, and impressed.” He chuckled again, but Dana thought there was a sad quality to it. “It says a lot about us, non? A simple introduction is seen as the epitome of friendship, or romance.”

“Mm.” The Aussie took another sip of his coffee. “You tell ’im yours?”

Dana started wiping down the counter, keeping half an eye on the pair. She saw the Frenchman frown slightly, a more uncomfortable look than she had expected to see on his face. He took a sip of his own coffee, gazing into the mug for a long moment afterward.

“Non. Not yet,” he said, sighing as he set his mug back down. He took a drag from his cigarette and tapped ash off into the ashtray at the end of the table. The Aussie’s brow went up when his friend didn’t continue.

“He’s gonna start wonderin’ ’bout that, if ya don’t soon. Honestly, I’m surprised he hasn’t started buggin’ ya for it already, if it’s been a few months. Y’know how he is,” he said.

The Frenchman shook his head. “Better than you do, ami. I just play the ‘I’m a Spy’ card if he starts trying to pry. There is still enough mystique in’erent in my profession to allow me to keep ’im in the dark when I wish.”

“Uh huh.” The Aussie’s eyebrow stayed up, disbelief as clear in those two syllables as it was on his face. “And keepin’ him in the dark is still yer plan? Can’t say that’s what I was expectin’.”

The Frenchman raised an eyebrow of his own. “Oh? ’Ow so?”

“Just thought y’were a li’l more open with them as got their hooks fixed in ya, based on past experience. Kid’s practically got ya wrapped ’round his little finger.” The Frenchman stiffened visibly, shooting the Aussie a dark look, and the Aussie smirked widely. “Mate, eleven years is a long bloody time. I can read ya like a book, fancy-arse Spy nonsense and all. We both know, if that scrawny mongrel says ‘jump’, you ask ‘how high?’” He laughed and poked the other man in the shoulder. “You really are smitten, aren’tcha? With Scout, of all the bloody people. Fuck me dead!”

“Oh, wipe the grin off your face, bushman,” the Frenchman said, smoothing his suit jacket where the Aussie had poked. “You are acting like a twittering ’igh school girl.”

“Oh, this is worth twitterin’ over if anythin’ is, mate.” The Aussie’s grin only grew and he leaned forward. “Yer blushin’!”

“Ta yeule! I am no such thing!”

“You are!” The Aussie laughed again, and, even from behind the counter, Dana could see the flush rising in the Frenchman’s cheeks. “Ha! Gremlin’s got you twisted up like one a’yer own bloody ties! Christ on a bike, how the Hell did that happen?”

“You think I do not also want to know? Esti de câlice de tabarnak!” the Frenchman said, rubbing at his temples. Dana thought she heard him growl as he tapped ash from his cigarette a little harder than necessary. “’E is not at all up to my usual standards. Everything about ’im should be utterly repellent! ’E is loud, and crass. Not only uneducated, but seemingly willfully ignorant as well. ’Opelessly juvenile. Thoughtless, careless, infuriatingly sure of ’imself especially when ’e ’as no reason to be. Uncultured, ’yperactive to the point of trying even my patience, stubborn, rude-”

“And…” The Aussie still wore a smirk. The Frenchman gave him a dry look.

“And…” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tabarnache… ’E is surprisingly sensitive, even kind, when ’e puts ’is mind to it. More selfless than ’e will ever admit, and more unsure than ’e lets on, to the point that it really is endearing, in a way. Startlingly naïve in surprising ways. Almost painfully eager to prove ’imself, and so determined.” A small smile twitched his lips before it grew into a nasty grin of his own. “’E’s incredible in bed, too.”

The Aussie’s smile collapsed into a sullen grimace. “Ahh, and y’just had ta bring that up…”

“Hon hon hon. I can tease too, bushman.” The Frenchman chuckled. “Though, I must admit, it is not nearly as easy as it used to be.”

“Eh, I’ve put up with yer poncy ass long enough; I’m almost used to yer bizzo by now, scary as that is t’think about.” The Aussie shrugged, smile returning. “Don’t mean I like hearin’ the bloody details, mind you, but I’m not gonna lose my head. Consentin’ adults, and all that.” The Aussie paused and narrowed his eyes. “Scout is consentin’, right?”

The Frenchman gave his friend another flat look, pointedly ashing his cigarette. “Do I look like the convict to you?”

“Well, sometimes. What with yer disguise kit an’ all.”

“’Ow ’ave I not murdered you yet?”

“You have. Nine times by my count. Wait, ten. Forgot last week.” Dana saw the Aussie kick the Frenchman in the shin, and fought back a laugh. She had no idea what they were talking about, but their easy camaraderie and banter was really sweet to see. “It wasn’t my fault he figured it out, by the way; ya had no call stabbin’ me.”

“Oh, please. You could not ’ave pointed it out more clearly if you’d been ’olding a map. Thanks to your thoughtful guidance, ’e ’as started referring to me as ‘Poutine’, on occasion, rather than just ‘French Fry’. I am still trying to decide whether it is worth killing  ’im over or not…”

The Aussie laughed again, a rich belly laugh that wasn’t interrupted by a kick to his own leg or the rude gesture the Frenchman directed at him when the kick drew no response.

“Order up.”

Dana turned to the kitchen window and saw the collection of steaming dishes on the ledge. She gathered them up on her serving tray, throwing Chuck a quick thanks, and brought them out the Aussie and Frenchman’s table. The Aussie was still chuckling behind a hand and the Frenchman was finishing off his cigarette a little too nonchalantly.

[...]

In Vino Veritas Teaser/WIP

Decided I'm gonna start posting more completed chunks of some of the WIP shorts that I'm happy with. Fuck it, right?

This is the first smut short (this teaser will be cut off before the actual smut starts, though), and the first Spy/Scout-centric one.

Reminder that these are OCs! Not the canon Spy and Scout! They are not related! Yes, the age gap is there and big, but they are not family! I always loved how the Scout and Spy personality archetypes played off each other in a pairing back before canon introduced the squick factor, and now that I'm writing an entirely OC cast, I'm gonna let my boys have fun :)

For the WIP, only warnings are for Scout's language, as always. The complete version will get to the good shit ;) Starts a little after some intro that I'm not happy enough with to post yet.

Summary: Scout is drunk, and lonely, and horny. Maybe Spy's down to... talk?

——

In Vino Veritas

[...]

Imbibe. That was a good word. Where had he even pulled that from? He’d probably heard it from Spy. Spy was always using all those stupid fancy words, and saying way too many of them for someone to make sense of it. All those stupid frog words, too. Why couldn’t he just speak English like a normal fucking person?

Even if he did make French sound good. Real good. Like, sexy without him even being a chick, good. Scout shifted, adjusting his pants slightly at the familiar throb deep in his gut. Fuck, was Spy sexy? Maybe, kinda, if he thought about it. Spies were kind of sexy just by being spies in the first place, really—dangerous, mysterious, refined, and stylish by default—but Spy, his Spy, had an appeal entirely separate from his profession. The French and the accent was hot as fuck, and something about his eyes was just… enticing, drawing you in while still reading everything about you. And that little smirk he had, the one that made it feel like he knew something he shouldn’t, something about you, and he liked it…

Scout sat up quickly, his head swimming a little, as he felt another deep throb, this time in a much more interesting location. Okay. Okay, fuck. Fuck. He looked at his beer and finished off the last mouthful, trying to ignore the building tension between his legs and think for a Goddamn second. Okay, so Spy’s kind of sexy. He’s also kind of a fag. Scout’s horny and—fuck, he guessed he could at least admit it to himself—pretty fucking lonely. He’s not fucking gay, not by a long shot, but it had been a long-ass fucking time, and he was getting tired of feeling nothing but his own hands.

Fuck, was he really doing this?

Huffing out a breath, Scout pushed himself to his feet. He dropped the empty beer bottle onto the couch—he’d deal with it later—and straightened his hat and pants. He was a doer, not a thinker. He wasn’t just gonna sit around here chasing his thoughts in fucking circles all night. Fuck it. Let’s do this shit.

He almost stopped and turned back as soon as he was through the door. The hallway was thankfully empty, but it suddenly seemed like a really long way down to Spy’s room; it was all the way at the other end of the hall, after all. He shook himself with a soft growl, pulling his door shut, and started walking. Well, staggering. Maybe he was a little drunker than he’d thought. The tapping of his cleats sounded way too loud. He flinched a little as he passed each other door on his way down the hall, half-expecting to see heads poking out to ask about his late-night wandering, but none of the doors popped open, no one appeared to question him. In what somehow felt like both hours and no time at all, he was standing in front of the door marked with a blue knife.  For a few seconds, he just stood, swaying slightly, staring at the bland slab of wood and trying to force some order on his similarly swaying thoughts. Then he knocked.

The thunking of his fist against the door, again, seemed far too loud in the silent hallway. He fidgeted as he heard soft shuffling from inside the room. There were a few seconds, and the sound of footsteps drawing up to the door. He took a deep breath as the locks rattled and clacked, and then the door was swinging in, revealing a smoking, dressed down Spy. 

His suit jacket and tie had been abandoned, and his shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The first couple buttons of his shirt had been undone, revealing the lower edge of his balaclava and an inch or two of pale skin. He still wore his mask, gloves, and waistcoat, but he wore them as comfortably as another man might an old pair of sweatpants. He wore them well, too. Scout’s gaze had fallen on Spy’s face when he’d first opened the door, but now it started to wander. Spy looked skinnier without his jacket, Scout thought, with more defined hips. Like a really flat-chested chick, but… sharper.

“Bonsoir, petit. It is later than I would ’ave expected a visit from you,” Spy said. Scout blinked and looked back at Spy’s face. There was a warm, if somewhat confused, smile there. The mouth hole of his mask was slightly askew. Scout blinked dumbly again, and Spy raised an eyebrow. “Is there… anything I can ’elp you with?”

Scout took a deep breath, ready to explain himself, but nothing came out of his mouth as his mind completely blanked. Shit. Shit. He’d come down here for a reason, right?

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, a’course. Wouldn’ta knocked otherwise.” He frowned. He’d wanted to talk? About… about… “Wanted t’talk ’bout somethin’.”

“Something?” Spy said, lifting his smoke to take a long puff. The corners of his eyes were crinkled. Scout nodded, closing his eyes when the world started to wobble a little. Something. Something about… Man, it was hard to think with the floor rocking back and forth.

“Why don’t you come inside, petit?” Spy said, his voice tight. Scout opened his eyes and saw Spy clearly fighting a smile. His eyes narrowed—was Spy laughing at him?—but he nodded and stepped into the room.

The Frenchman’s sense of style and class was well on display here, from the sleekly outfitted king-sized bed tucked into a darkened corner, to the elegant but comfortable sofa and wingback armchair arranged in cozy proximity to a pair of dark wood bookcases near the door. A record player sat on one of the end-tables beside the couch, and the table at the sofa’s other arm bore a finely detailed crystal ashtray, and a decanter full of deep amber liquid with a pair of similarly patterned crystal glasses arranged beside it. Even the walls had been draped in large sheets of deep blue fabric, hiding the grimy concrete and subduing some of the light from the overhead fixture.

Scout weaved his way across an expensive-looking rug to the couch, and he flopped bonelessly at the end nearest the record player as Spy closed the door and latched his numerous locks (he was up to four, now). The world had stopped rocking for the moment, and Scout’s thoughts were forming a little easier, but he still felt pleasantly muzzy. This was a good level of drunk, now that he’d staggered his way through his brief case of the spins. Thank fuck for his stupid-fast metabolism.

He watched Spy move to his desk in another corner of the room, gathering up papers and placing them carefully in a drawer that was unlocked and then locked again with a small key drawn from seemingly nowhere. It always amazed Scout how Spy could do that, the little tricks of sleight of hand that came so naturally he didn’t even seem to recognize them. No matter how closely Scout watched those slim, gloved fingers, he could never trace their movements well enough to see exactly what Spy did. Case and point: though Scout’s eyes had never left him, he had missed the entire replacement of Spy’s nearly spent cigarette with a new one, only noticing that Spy had a fresh smoke when he took a seat at the other end of the couch.

“So, mon petit voyou,” the masked man said, resting an arm over the back of the sofa in a strangely casual gesture, “what ’as driven you to seek the pleasure of my company this evening? I believe that you said you wanted to speak to me about-” He smirked and took a drag from his cigarette. “-‘something’.”

Something. Oh… yeah. Scout felt heat starting to rise in his neck. The fog that had laid over his brain when he’d stood at the door had dissipated, and he remembered with unpleasant clarity just what that “something” was. He took a deep breath and straightened a little from his limp sprawl. He licked his lips and rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe comfortably drunk wasn’t quite drunk enough for this. Fuck his fast metabolism.

Spy seemed to understand. As Scout’s silence held, moving from thoughtful to awkward, he turned to the end table and poured out two fingers of the decanter’s contents into each crystal glass. He held one out to Scout, who took it and looked over it, giving it a sniff. It was definitely some kind of hard liquor, but it wasn’t very much. He said so to Spy with an eyebrow raised, and was surprised when Spy barked out a laugh.

“It is scotch, petit,” he said, holding his glass lightly on his fingertips. “It is not like your mediocre American whiskeys, to be guzzled with more concern for ’asty intoxication than any true form of quality. This is oak-cask aged ambrosia, meant to be sipped and savoured, enjoyed for the subtle complexity of its flavours, rather than something so pedestrian as mere alcohol content.”

Scout listened to Spy’s wordy explanation with a frown, and he gave his drink another narrow-eyed inspection. “Sounds stupid. And faggy. I betcha drink fuckin’ wine, too.”

“Naturellement,” Spy said, sipping his scotch. Scout sniffed his again and wrinkled his nose. “There is little in life better than a glass of fine Cabernet Sauvignon and a lovely rare steak. Though, good scotch and a cigarette comes close.”

“’Specially if it’s one of yer ‘special cigarettes’?” Scout asked, not without a touch of bitterness. Being stoned hadn’t really been that bad—he’d actually enjoyed it a fair bit, that first time, once he’d eventually realized what Spy had given him to smoke—but a little warning would have been appreciated. He took a hesitant sip of the scotch, grimacing a little at the burning it left on his tongue and in his throat. He had to admit, it didn’t taste that bad, and the fumes it sent curling up his nose felt sufficiently alcoholic.

“That was just funny,” Spy said, and Scout glared at him. It only made Spy laugh. “Seeing you and Pyro ’igh as kites was honestly the best entertainment any of us ’as ’ad in far too long. And tell me you didn’t enjoy it. Go on. If you can make me believe you, I will take over your share of the laundry for the next month.”

As tempting as the prize was, Scout had never been a good liar and he knew it. He flipped Spy the bird and took a larger swig of scotch as he grumbled, “Fine, it wasn’t that bad. Was still a sneaky fuckin’ trick.”

“I am a Spy, mon voyou,” Spy said. “I believe ‘sneaky’ is to be expected.”

He took a longer drag from his cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth for a moment. Scout could only stare in fascination as Spy let the smoke drift out in a thick, slow-curling cloud, and inhaled it back through his nose before exhaling it normally. Scout had seen that kind of shit in movies and on TV, but it looked even cooler in real life. Spy noticed his stare and smirked.

“As well as suave, mysterious, and dashingly ’andsome, non?” he said, and he mimed pushing hair back from his forehead, giving Scout a smouldering look. Scout snorted and, to hopefully hide the sudden flush rising again in his neck, quickly finished off his scotch; Spy’s glass was still mostly untouched.

“Bein’ suave ’n’ mysterious ain’t likely t’getcha much out here,” he said. “Just means ya got a fuckin’ nosy, pain in th’ass Scout pesterin’ ya for weed and booze and gossip.”

“And my devilish ’andsomeness?” Spy’s smirk grew. Scout made a face at him. The implications of the statement hit uncomfortably close to his recently recalled reason for visiting. He toyed with the empty glass in his hands until Spy held up the unlidded decanter with a questioning shake. Scout held out his glass and let Spy refill it, a little more than he had the first time. Scout took a swallow and swiped at his lips with a thumb, not meeting Spy’s gaze again. He could feel it on him, though; there was something unmistakable about the way having a Spy’s eyes on you felt.

Once again, the silence stretched. It didn’t quite lose its companionable quality this time, even if Scout couldn’t bring himself to do more than glance at Spy out of the corner of his eye. From what he could tell, Spy was more than happy to sit smoking and sipping his scotch. He was so patient, and calm. Understanding, if someone could be understanding and still be a sarcastic bastard sometimes. Scout sipped his scotch and coughed into his hand.

“Spy, d’you, uh… D’you ever get lonely?” he said, still not raising his eyes. Christ, he felt like a fucking chick, saying that, but Spy’s oak-cask aged ambrosia was working well with his earlier imbibing (imbibing? Was that actually a word?) to loosen his tongue. He’d never been that good at keeping his mouth shut anyway, once he got something in his head. The lack of immediate response made him round his shoulders, and he opened his mouth to take back the stupid, girly question.

It snapped shut again when Spy said, “Of course.” His tone was no longer playful and teasing. “Even in such a small space, with so many disparate personalities it is not easy to find… reliable companionship.”

“Companionship. Yeah.” Scout rubbed the back of his neck. Fuck it. He downed the rest of his scotch with a shudder, feeling it burn pleasantly all the way down his throat. He coughed again. “Y’ever… uh, get lonely in- in other ways? Like… the missin’ chicks kinda ways?”

Spy’s silence lasted long enough to draw Scout’s eyes up. He looked surprised by the question, but not displeased or, as Scout had feared, disgusted. He’d known Spy was kind of a fag—that was part of why he’d drunkenly stumbled down to his room in the first place—but that niggling little part of him, the South Boston boy who’d pummel anyone that said anything that could be even remotely perceived as gay, still expected to see some degree of distaste.

“You are asking if I ever weary of… lending myself a ’and, as it were?” Spy said, gesturing vaguely with his cigarette-bearing hand and sending swirls of smoke bobbing up toward the ceiling. Scout swallowed thickly and nodded. Spy surprised him again with a lazy shrug, as if it were the most normal line of questioning in the world.

“Bien sûr,” he said. “I may be a man of more varied tastes than the majority of the team, more willing to engage in—what do you like to call it? ‘All that faggotry’?” Another brief smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But finding not only reciprocation of my tastes, but the proper level of compatibility, is difficult, again largely due to working amongst those with such volatile dispositions.”

Scout blinked; those were a lot of long words. “Uh, what?”

Spy let out a sound that, if anyone else had made it, Scout would call a snort. “I am willing to sleep with men, but none of the men ’ere are willing to sleep with me, or I with them.”

“Oh.” Scout looked back down; he’d started fiddling with his cup again without realizing. His stomach was… fluttering. “Ain’t no one worth your time, huh?”

There was a light clink as Spy set his still barely touched glass on the end table. “I am a Spy,” he said again, slowly, “and a Spy must ’ave standards. There are a few I believe would be acceptable, ’owever, if they ever felt so inclined as to approach me.”

Scout stopped fiddling with his glass. “A few?”

Spy nodded and stubbed out his cigarette, blowing out a last plume of smoke through his teeth. “Engineer would be interesting, but ’e ’as made it abundantly clear that attempting to approach ’im about indulging such desires would be… unwise. ’E is a married man, after all. Sniper, obviously, ’as a certain rugged charm. ’E is surprisingly sophisticated for a man ’oo prefers to live out of a camper van, and we’ve known each other for over a decade now, besides. Medic is also intriguing.”

“Doc?” Scout made a face. “He’s so fuckin’ old, though. Even if he is, y’know, like, an actual fag.”

“More advanced age need not be seen as an impediment, petit,” Spy said. “An experienced partner can make encounters far more ex’ilarating.” Spy locked Scout’s eyes with his own. Scout’s fluttering stomach gave a nervous lurch. “As can an inexperienced one.”

There it was. That look and those words. Even Scout’s alcohol-addled brain (though it was less addled than he had expected. Or hoped. Fuck his metabolism!) could sort out the blatant implication behind them. He fully expected to feel disgust—to be walking across the room and out the door without even having to think about it, despite the fact that he’d been the one to come here in the first place—but it wasn’t there. There was just the army of eager butterflies that seemed to have taken up residence in his stomach, and a thundering in his ears that he thought was his heart.

Privacy

Second finished "Tales of Well" short (third chronologically). Still shorter than I'd like, but I'm happier with this one than "First Day", even if not much really happens.

Again, warning for unnecessary amounts of profanity, courtesy of Scout.

Summary: Scout was told to go get Pyro for dinner.

——

Privacy

“Yo firebug! S’dinner time! Getcha ass out here!”

Scout’s fist hammered out a staccato beat on Pyro’s door, and he leant against it waiting for an answer. His foot tapped impatiently, and he waited all of three seconds before he gave the door a few hard whacks with his palm.

“Pyro! C’mon, man, I ain’t standin’ here all fuckin’ night!” he yelled, more than loud enough to be heard through the flimsy wood panel. “It’s steak night, man, come the fuck on!”

He didn’t hear even the slightest rustle of movement coming from the other side of the door. He sighed and drummed his fingers.

He was torn. Dinner had started a couple minutes ago, long enough for Scout to get in one bite of mashed potatoes before Sniper had told him to go fetch Pyro. He’d argued, naturally—it wasn’t his fault if Pyro couldn’t get off his ass for steak night—but Sniper had given him that Look. The “do what I fuckin’ say or you will regret it” Look. Scout hated that Look. It was what had separated him from the delicious slab of beef that was now growing cold on his plate, if Demo or Soldier hadn’t pilfered it already.

However, in opposition to Sniper’s Look, Pyro had a very strict “stay the fuck out of my room or I will fry you like an ant under a magnifying glass” policy. The firestarter was serious about his privacy. As far as Scout knew, no one else had entered that room for even a second since Pyro had taken up residence, not even Spy. Scout was definitely curious—he’d spent more than a fair space of time since the move standing outside this door, trying to work up the nerve to go inside—but he wasn’t stupid, no matter what Medic all-too-frequently implied (or said outright). Satisfying his curiosity wasn’t worth getting barbequed.

But tonight, his steak was waiting for him. Pyro still hadn’t answered the door and the one bite of mashed potatoes he’d managed to scoop taunted Scout like a fading dream. Engie made the best steak and potatoes he’d ever tasted, and having only sampled one bite of one part of his meal, he was more than anxious to return to the table to finish stuffing his face. But he couldn’t go back without Pyro, or Sniper would be pissed. But Pyro wasn’t opening the door, and if he tried to go in to get him, he’d probably end up fried. He groaned in frustration and pounded his fist against the door.

“PYRO! Fuck man! I wanna go eat my fuckin’ steak!” He kicked the door and huffed. Fuck it, he thought. He took a deep breath, and gripped the doorknob. “I’m givin’ ya three seconds, then I’m comin’ to drag yer skinny ass out! One! Two! Threeee-eee… Whoa…”

Scout turned the knob and pushed. The door wasn’t locked—only Spy’s room had a lock, and that was because he’d bought and had it installed it himself—so it swung open easily. And revealed a brilliant sanctuary.

Plastic model planes hung from near-invisible strings pinned to the ceiling, which had been painted to look like a clear midday sky with a few wispy, scudding clouds. A globe-like fixture had been set over the overhead bulb, making it look like the Sun poking out to light the room. Large stretches of the walls were vibrantly painted with desert scenery—sand and broad red plateaus, hoodoos and prickly-looking cacti—and Scout saw a painted jackrabbit poking its head out from behind a tall wooden dresser pushed up against the wall.

Tall racks and shelves also scattered along the wall held a massive collection of sleeved records, cassette tapes, and CDs. A few smaller shelves held several well-worn paperback novels, some of which bore titles in what Scout thought was Spanish on their battered spines, and a huge number of magazines. A stereo cabinet sat next to a small cot in the corner, the former littered with discarded cassettes, pencils, scraps of paper, and a few near-empty water glasses that had yet to make their way back to the kitchen, while the latter was heaped with fluffy pillows and thick blankets. And Pyro.

It still shocked Scout to see Pyro out of his protective suit, even months after he’d first… encouraged the younger man to peel back the mask. He said he was only a few years younger than Scout, but he still looked too young for mercenary work. Without his suit, he was more scrawny than simply thin, and pale despite his Latino heritage. He needed a haircut—his shaggy black hair was almost to his shoulders, and his bangs flopped freely in front of his eyes—and his narrow frame made him seem far more adolescent than he claimed to be. The only thing that spoiled the effect somewhat was the livid burn scar covering his left cheek almost as far as his eye, and disappearing down under his t-shirt collar, reappearing from under his left sleeve to cover the back of his arm past the elbow; Scout didn’t want to imagine what had happened to cause a scar like that.

Pyro seemed content for the time being, though he hadn’t yet noticed Scout’s intrusion. He was stretched out on the cot, eyes closed and arms folded behind his head, a thick black cord connecting the massive headphones he was wearing to the stereo beside him. He was nodding his head and wiggling his feet in time to whatever he was listening to, and Scout heard the occasional hummed note float across the room. He also noticed that Pyro’s gear was piled in a heap at the end of the cot—flamethrower, axe, and fire-proof suit—occasionally being tapped by his bobbing feet.

Some part of Scout’s mind (a part that sounded suspiciously like Spy) told him to get out while he was still unscorched, but his curiosity won out over caution, as it so often did. He wandered over to a painted stretch of wall, admiring the detail in the desert scenery masking the grotty concrete. While he didn’t consider himself an “artist” by any means, Scout liked to draw and occasionally paint, and he could appreciate the subtle shading on the sand and cacti, and the curiously bright eyes of the rabbit that, he now saw, crouched behind a small patch of painted scrub hidden by the dresser.

Hasty shuffling from the corner drew Scout’s attention, and he straightened when he saw Pyro scrambling from the cot, fumbling the headphones off and staring with an expression not far from outright horror. Pyro didn’t speak—Scout had often wondered about Pyro’s silence on the rare occasions when he wasn’t wearing his mask—but he flapped his hands frantically at Scout, trying to shoo him toward the door. Emboldened by the lack of immediate violence, however, Scout ignored him and sauntered over to one of the racks of vinyl, flipping idly through. He recognized many of the bands and artists, but there were several others he didn’t know, many of which seemed to be in Spanish, like the books. He was impressed by what he was familiar with, though.

“Fuck, Py, this is amazing. Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Skynard, Floyd, Sabbath, Styx, Queen… Shit, is that fuckin’ Boston? I had no idea anyone else liked- Whoa!”

Scout whirled at a sudden flash of intense heat against his back, hands leaping away from the records as he spun. He found the gaping maw of a flamethrower only inches from his face, the pilot light flickering uncomfortably close to his chin. He staggered a few steps, tripping over a pile of what certainly smelled like dirty laundry even if had amalgamated into some sort of amorphous cotton blob, and he held his hands out defensively as he backed in what he hoped was the direction of the door.

Before him stood Pyro, lips pulled back to reveal his teeth in a feral snarl. He hissed, a purely animalistic sound. It might have been funny, the oversized weapon being supported by Pyro’s scrawny—if whipcord-muscled—arms, and him hissing and bristling like an irate cat. The small plumes of flame that fwoofed into and out of existence at the flamethrower’s muzzle killed any sense of hilarity, though.

“Whoa, Py, c’mon,” Scout said, bumping up against the wall and sliding toward the door with his hands raised in surrender. The flamethrower still followed him, way too close. “I-I just had t’come getcha for dinner. Y’weren’t answerin’ when I knocked so I just opened the door and- Aaah!”

A longer tongue of flame jetted out of the flamethrower, and Scout felt his eyebrows and the hairs on his arms singeing. He bolted for the door with a yelp, hearing Pyro growl. He made it into the hallway and the door slammed shut behind him, but he didn’t stop running until he barrelled into the kitchen. Incredulous and disapproving stares fixed on him from around the table, but he ignored them as he hastily slid back into his seat. Without a word, he started in on his steak.

He could feel Sniper’s Look, even if he didn’t look up to catch it. “Scout, we said t’go get Pyro.”

Scout shoved a piece of meat into his mouth and glowered at Sniper as he chewed. After the light roasting he’d just received, the Look wasn’t quite so intimidating. At least not compared to the current alternative to the punishment it promised.

“Fuck that,” he said. “I knocked and knocked and he wouldn’t answer, so I went in t’get him ’n’ he tried to fuckin’ toast me. Nuh uh, if he wants to eat, he can come out whenev’r the fuck he wants.”

Shocked silence held around the table. Aside from Scout, everyone had stopped eating, some with utensils still hovering over their plates. Heavy had frozen mid-chew, his cheeks comically puffed as he turned to stare at Scout. Engineer looked horrified, and also somewhat amazed.

“Y’went into Pyro’s room?” he said, setting his fork down carefully and lifting his goggles to scrutinize Scout without the impediment of their tinted lenses. Scout looked back, finally taking note of the unusual stillness and everyone’s attention on him. He shrank down in his chair somewhat.

“I had to,” he mumbled, “t’get Pyro to come out.” When no one said anything, he threw up his hands. “What should I have done? Ya told me t’go get him!”

The silence persisted. Scout scowled around the table before returning to his food. Everyone else’s eyes were either fixed on him or the kitchen doorway, waiting for the inevitable.

It came fairly soon after Scout had started eating again. Engie, Spy, Sniper, and Demo all watched as Pyro strode into the room, fully geared up, and stepped up behind Scout. The other watching eyes drifted up to him. Scout remained oblivious, shoveling in more gravy-smothered potatoes, until he was grabbed by the back of the neck by a rubber-gloved hand. He yelped and started to flail, but froze when a well-honed axe blade pressed against his throat. Pyro pushed him down until his face was nearly in his potatoes, never letting up on the axe head’s pressure, keeping it pressed in just hard enough to make sure that Scout felt nervous about swallowing.

Pyro leaned down slowly, tightening his grip and growling softly beside Scout’s ear. Scout whimpered, but cut off with a choke when Pyro pressed the axe blade in just a little bit harder.

Then it was pulled away, and Pyro released Scout with a light shove that sent his face straight into his meal. Scout sat up, sputtering and wiping away globs of potatoes and gravy, as Pyro wandered over to the dishes on the stove, loading up a plate for himself. He slung his axe over his shoulder and started back out of the kitchen.

He paused by Scout’s chair. Scout looked up at him, cowering, potato still clinging to his nose and bill of his cap. Pyro watched Scout cower for a moment, breaths hissing ominously through his mask’s filters, and delivered a swift, sharp smack to the back of the Bostonian’s head. It nearly sent him pitching into his plate again. Nodding to himself, Pyro left the kitchen without a backward glance, humming softly.

There was total silence for another few seconds after he’d gone before Medic also gave Scout a sharp swat. “Zhat is vhat you get for being a nosy little schwein. And you should count yourself lucky it vasn’t vorse.”

“Okay, again, what exactly was I s’posed t’fuckin’ do!”

“Just about anythin’s smarter than bustin’ in on someone who explicitly toldja t’stay the Hell out,” Engineer said, replacing his goggles with a sigh and picking up his fork again.

“Aye, we all knoo the wee firebug disnae like us in his space.”

“Da. Little Pyro enjoys privacy.”

“Would it’ve killed ya to try a little patience, mate, wait an extra minute for him to come to the door?”

Scout huffed and pushed his chair back, snatching up his plate. “Fuck you guys, I’m gonna go eat in my room.”

“As long as you leave Pyro alone, Scout.”

Scout didn’t pause, though he did throw back a light, “Fuck you Doc!” over his shoulder as he headed off down the hall.

Medic rolled his eyes and returned to his food, scowling, though a smile broke through his disgruntlement when Heavy gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. Demo engaged Soldier and Engie in a spirited, but friendly, debate about the strengths of Scottish whisky versus American whiskey once the speedster was out of sight, with Sniper throwing in his two cents if the conversation seemed to be devolving into an all-out argument. Order was always quick to reassert itself when the most rambunctious member of the team left the room.

Spy chuckled to himself and also pushed back from the table, gathering up his dishes and taking them to the sink. He’d finished eating quickly, as he did with every meal; he’d been in too many situations where food was scarce to shed the instinct easily in a non-civilian setting.

“Engineer, merci beaucoup. The meal was spectacular, as always,” he said, offering a small bow when Engie tipped his hardhat. “I believe I shall go ensure that Scout does not go out of ’is way to become char-broiled. Bonsoir, gentlemen.”

“Do not try too hard. Zhe boy could benefit from a sharply applied lesson or two,” Medic said, and Spy smirked as he lit a cigarette.

“Do not worry, Doctor, I truly only mean to stop ’im if ’e goes out of ’is way. ’Is usual reckless curiosity should offer the chance for lessons galore.”

Main Character Bios & Info

Bios for the main focus characters (BLU Scout, Pyro, Sniper, and Spy, and RED Scout, Engineer, and Sniper), with some extra random info for each! This is all info from the beginning of the series (unless otherwise noted), so some things are likely to change over the course of the shorts, but this is a little look at who the guys are when we first meet them :) Looong infodump under the cut! Enjoy!

——

BLU Scout (“Blue”)

Name: Aiden Marcus Knight Age: 23 Nationality: American (Massachusetts [Boston]) Time w/ BLU: 13 months

Height: 5’11 Hair: Light brown, crew cut Eye Colour: Hazel Skin Tone: Tanned Caucasian Build: Slim, broad-shouldered, defined legs Scars: Respawn error: axe wound (left side, abdomen, and back; inward to navel/spine [lowest two ribs are artificial]), bonesaw wound (right pectoral), kukri wound (left collarbone), gunshot wound (center sternum), gunshot wound (back, right shoulder), appendectomy, childhood injury (left calf) Other Distinguishing Features: N/A

Uniform Cosmetics: Ball-Kicking Boots, Track Terrorizer (After Eight), Backwards Ballcap (Air of Debonair) Typical Weapon Loadout: Scattergun, Bonk! (when available) or Pistol, Sandman

Likes: Sketching, painting (esp. graffiti/tagging), running, brawling, baseball (Red Sox fan), comic books (primarily Marvel, esp. Spider-Man), cartoons (esp. Looney Tunes and TMNT) Dislikes: Doctors, being ignored, being called stupid, being called gay Fears: Merinthophobia (fear of being bound/tied up, esp. his limbs [severe enough to induce debilitating panic attacks]), mild claustrophobia Habits: Fidgets, chews nails Disorders/Medical Conditions: Dyslexia, potential (very-probable) ADHD

Extra Facts:

Has eight older brothers, and he’s used to having to be the loudest—and most obnoxiously tactless and offensive—person in the room in order to make himself heard. It’s a habit he still hasn’t shed after over a year working as a mercenary, much to his teammates’ chagrin.

Generally, the only time he’ll willingly sit still for any stretch is when he’s drawing, whether it’s in a sketchbook or when he’s making a graffiti stencil. If forced to sit still and there’s any paper in reach, he’ll doodle to keep himself entertained (he always has at least a stubby pencil in his pocket) until the paper runs out. Then he starts getting annoying.

Surprisingly naïve for his age, and willfully ignorant of any topic that doesn’t catch his interest; if something doesn’t immediately hook him, he’s not going to engage. This, combined with his general lack of “book-smarts” (he dropped out of high school at sixteen instead of having to repeat grade ten; Ma was not happy), tends to lead to him being a colossal dumbass sometimes most of the time [he wasn’t supposed to be as stupid as he is, honest…].

Brawler. Prefers close combat to gunplay nine times out of ten; his Sandman is his favourite weapon, though if he gets really carried away, he’ll just start going at it with his fists. He loves the adrenaline rush of getting in a good punch to the face, or getting clocked himself.

Has an ungodly amount of energy, and puts most of it to work pestering and pissing off his teammates. Anything he can say or do to push someone’s buttons, he’ll say or do without hesitation. Aside from his general motor-mouthed offensiveness, he’s a big fan of pranking the team to the point that even Engie will have steam coming from his ears, and when he gets his monthly supply of Bonk, it gets easily a million times worse.

Really does care about (most of) his teammates, even if he is a complete jackass more often than not, and the affection is (mostly) returned, though he may not believe it so much. In the Team Garrison “family”, he’s definitely the annoying little brother, or unruly child, to the rest of the men.

Surprisingly friendly with Spy, to absolutely everyone’s shock; Spy is actually likely his closest friend on the team. Even though Spy spends a lot of his time “sitting around being boring”, Blue likes talking with him and tends to actively harass him less than the others.

Heavily repressed bisexual. Everyone else knows he’s at least a little into guys (he’s not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is), but he will loudly and vehemently—and sometimes violently—deny it if confronted.

——

BLU Pyro

Name: Guillermo “Billy” José Soto Age: 20 Nationality: Mexican (Santa Ana) Time w/ BLU: 12 months

Height: 5’9 Hair: Black, chin length, long bangs Eye Colour: Brown Skin Tone: Pale tan Build: Underweight, defined arms Scars: Third-degree burn (left arm, elbow to shoulder; left side, mid-ribs to armpit; back, left side, mid-back to upper shoulder; neck, left side; left cheek from jaw to cheekbone [primarily hypertrophic scarring, some contracture on left shoulder]) Other Distinguishing Features: N/A

Uniform Cosmetics: Pin-on button (“Born to Fry Spies”), Scorched Earth Stompers, Pyromancer’s Hood [received “Little Moments: Supply Day”], Firebrand [received around “Breakfast”] Typical Weapon Loadout: Flame Thrower, Flare Gun, Fire Axe

Likes: Fire, rock music (esp. Pink Floyd, Queen, and Santana), playing guitar, animals (esp. birds and reptiles), privacy, being alone Dislikes: His scar, his voice, Spies, being cold, the f-slur (and the various derivatives Blue comes up with) Fears: Suffocation, drowning Habits: Playing with lighters/lighting matches Disorders/Medical Conditions: Mild pyromania

Extra Facts:

Received his scar when he was fifteen, when he was trapped (along with his cousin and some friends) in a garage that was set on fire by some gangsters his cousin owed money to. A burning piece of the roof fell on his back and shoulder, and the scarring there is deeper; he has next to no sensation there and he’s lost some of his shoulder flexibility due to the tightness of the scarring. When he was nineteen, he set the house of one of the gangsters on fire, with the gangster and his family inside. They all managed to get out, but Billy was arrested for arson and attempted murder, and picked up by BLU while on trial.

Due to damage to his throat when he was burned, his voice sounds like he’s been smoking a pack a day since he was five: it is very deep, and gravelly. He hates how it sounds, and, along with his scar, it’s a major reason he keeps his mask on so much.

Major introvert. Spends most of his free time in his room, or out in the backyard burning things. He does make fairly regular visits to Engie in his workshop, but he rarely spends time with anyone else on the team. Even on the rare occasions that he hangs out in the rec room instead of his bedroom, he’ll usually rebuff attempts at conversation unless it’s about something important (or especially interesting).

Fluent in English, but can have trouble with vocabulary sometimes, especially if it’s not a word he comes across often. Part of the reason he enjoys spending so much time with Engie is that Engie can understand Spanish, as well as speak it a little, so he’s able to talk to someone in his mother tongue.

Has a massive collection of records, cassette tapes, and CDs; he’s almost always listening to something when he’s in his room. He also has a big box of mix-tapes that he’s created over the past year; he’s made a few for Engie and Medic, too.

Openly gay, though not everyone’s realized, so far. It’s not a topic that tends to come up a lot on the rare occasions anyone can corner him for a chat. Engie is aware—and doesn’t care, so long as it’s not being shoved in his face—as are Medic and Heavy. Spy also knows, though not because Pyro told him; Spy just sussed it out on his own.

——

BLU Sniper

Name: Peter Michael Allen Age: 38 Nationality: Australian (Northern Territory [primarily Outback]) Time w/ BLU: 11 years, 3 months [Sawmill vet; longest-serving merc]

Height: 6’5 Hair: Dark brown, short, messy, long sideburns Eye Colour: Dark blue Skin Tone: Well-tanned Caucasian Build: Thin, broad-shouldered Scars: Respawn error: knife wound (“Sniper scar”: left cheekbone and side of left nostril), kukri wound (upper right abdomen), knife wound (back of neck, spine), dingo bite (right calf) Other Distinguishing Features: Perpetual five-o’clock shadow

Uniform Cosmetics: Itsy Bitsy Spyer (blue doll), Triggerman’s Tacticals Typical Weapon Loadout: Sniper Rifle, Razorback, Machete

Likes: The outdoors, wildlife (esp. lizards and birds of prey), spiders, barbecuing, old movies (Golden Age), “oldies” music (esp. ’40s-’50s) Dislikes: Weak coffee, being cold, the dark, short doorways and low ceilings Fears: Blindness, canines (dogs, wolves, coyotes, etc) Habits: Smoker Disorders/Medical Conditions: N/A

Extra Facts:

Has been at this “war” a long time, almost since the initial reformation of TF Industries. Still tries to take things as seriously and to remain as professional as he can, but it’s been getting harder and harder to do. He’s not even really sure why he’s doing it any more, aside from maybe affection for his teammates, and not having any idea of what else he would want to do with his life.

Team Garrison’s unofficial leader, mostly due to seniority but also due to the other members of the team respecting him a great deal. He’s not exactly the “leader” type, in his mind, so he’s not likely to be giving orders or trying to tell the others what to do, but everyone listens to him when he speaks and he’s the one that they’ll come to with most issues they can’t handle themselves.

Spy’s “work husband”. The two of them have worked together since Spy was recruited at Sawmill, and have been friends for nearly as long. They know each other’s real names [*though it’s not required by their contracts, the mercs are strongly encouraged to keep their names to themselves], and are as close as two people can platonically be (there was an attempt to initiate a… deeper relationship on Spy’s part, years ago, but Sniper is asexual, so they remain heterosexual life partners). He received his Itsy Bitsy Spyer from Spy back at Sawmill, after they first told each other their names, and he gave Spy a Spycrab in return (Spy keeps it on his night table).

Not the typical loner hired by RED and BLU for his class. While he does enjoy his alone time, he’s more than happy to hang out with the rest of the team, spends most of his free time around the base rather than off on his own, and actually sleeps in his provided room in the barracks most nights, rather than in his camper. He’s also usually the first up and about in the morning; he lets Engie or Medic make breakfast (he can’t cook for shit), but he always makes the coffee.

Frequently “makes friends” with the wildlife and spiders around base. He fed and looked after a succession of squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, crows, snakes, and one great horned owl at Sawmill, and a gila monster, a red-tailed hawk, and several generations of wolf spiders at Teufort. He lets them stay wild and doesn’t try to domesticate them, but he inevitably ends up with at least a few critters in the vicinity that know his camper van and common sniping perches are safe places to chill and get a snack.

——

BLU Spy

Name: [REDACTED] Age: 41 Nationality: (Assumed) French Time w/ BLU: 10 years, 1 month [Sawmill vet]

Height: 5’8 Hair: Light brown, short side part (right), widow’s peak Eye Colour: Light grey Skin Tone: Pale Caucasian Scars: Gunshot wound (lower left abdomen), kukri wound (upper back, top of right shoulder blade to bottom of left shoulder blade) Other Distinguishing Features: N/A

Uniform Cosmetics: Blood Banker Typical Weapon Loadout: L’Etranger, Balisong, Disguise Kit, Cloak and Dagger, Sapper

Likes: Scotch, spy novels, cleanliness and organization (in himself, others, and his environment), swing music, crooner music (esp. Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra), privacy Dislikes: Uncleanliness, disorganization, chaos, ignorance (himself and others), surprises (even good ones), [hates] the RED Sniper Fears: [REDACTED] Habits: Chain smoker Disorders/Medical Conditions: [REDACTED]

Extra Facts:

Like Sniper, he’s been at this long enough to not take it too seriously any more, and as a result is much more open and friendly with his teammates than the majority of Spies. He still tries to maintain some degree of distance and intrigue (he is a Spy, after all), but he knows there’s no real harm in opening up a little and being on friendly terms with his co-workers. Most of the time. He has become… overly attached to certain teammates over the years, and when he has, it has led to near universally tragic results.

Nosy and gossipy; he loves to know everything that’s going on with everyone, as much as he can. He’s gathered more “intel” on both his teammates and opponents over the years than BLU and RED likely have, and knows more about everyone else than they realize (or would probably be comfortable with him knowing).

Was involved in a brief sexual relationship with the RED Sniper at Sawmill, shortly after the RED Sniper was first recruited. It ended poorly, to put it extremely mildly, and they’ve hated each other with a passion ever since. They will gladly take any opportunity to harm (or kill) each other, even during ceasefire, which has led to multiple unfortunate incidents over the years, several of which have spilled over to involve other mercs (usually members of the BLU team, unfortunately; Spy tries to keep their animosity strictly between him and the RED Sniper, but the RED Sniper isn’t as restrained).

Hates getting himself dirty in the course of his work. Tries to make most of his kills as bloodless as possible, or to keep himself at a safe distance if he needs to get… messy. While not as vain as his RED counterpart, he does take great pride in maintaining his immaculate appearance, even in the heat of battle.

Recently renewed his contract, despite being almost entirely disillusioned with the “war” at this point. He’s harboured a growing disquiet over the RED/BLU conflict for years, and he’s not quite ready to lose the “inside insight” he has on it as a mercenary in BLU’s employ.

——

RED Scout (“Red”/“Freckles”)

Name: Cooper Patrick O’Hare Age: 18 (almost 19) Nationality: American (New York [Brooklyn]) Time w/ RED: N/A [begins “First Day”]

Height: 5’4 Hair: Strawberry-blond, fade Eye Colour: Light brown Skin Tone: Lightly-tanned Caucasian Build: Thin, defined legs Scars: N/A Other Distinguishing Features: Buck teeth, freckles (literally everywhere: face [particularly over nose and cheekbones], neck, shoulders, back, legs, and arms)

Uniform Cosmetics: [*Acquired over the course of the shorts] Brooklyn Booties, Imp’s Imprint, Bonk Batter’s Backup Typical Weapon Loadout: Scattergun, Pistol, Bat

Likes: Dancing, cooking, baseball (Yankees fan), “classic” rock music (’60s-early ’80s), pop music, “kids’ movies” (Disney animated movies, G/PG-rated movies), animals Dislikes: Being short, his buck teeth, being treated like a kid, silence, being alone Fears: Deafness Habits: Chatters excessively Disorders/Medical Conditions: Asthma [mostly negated by injections provided before deployment]

Extra Facts:

A happy, bubbly extrovert. Will almost always seek out company rather than spend time alone, even if he usually just ends up chattering away at someone while he’s doing whatever he’s doing rather than chatting with them. He tends to not have much of a filter between his thoughts and his mouth, and he speaks without thinking a lot, but he’s easygoing enough that he’s not nearly as offensive to be around as his BLU counterpart. Overwhelmingly friendly, too; he’s willing, and will try, to make friends with anyone, unless they actively give him a reason not to.

Total babyface. Combined with his height, it makes him look like he’s fifteen years old at most, and it drives him crazy. He hates being underestimated and looked down on because of how he looks, and is quick to correct (with violence, if necessary) anyone who assumes his youthful appearance and general friendliness mean he’s easy to mess with. He is, however, objectively adorable, no matter how much it pisses him off.

Extremely flexible and acrobatic. Has been into dancing and gymnastics since he was a kid and, with the pre-deployment injections given to him by RED, he’s unbelievably nimble, even by Scout standards.

Quick learner, and not as unworldly as one might expect from someone his age. He’s still finding his feet in this odd situation he’s gotten himself involved in, but he chose mercenary work after taking a year off after high school, and it wasn’t just for the money.

He’s pretty sure he’s bi, but he’s never been in a same-sex relationship before. He’s definitely curious, though, and open to experimenting and figuring things out.

——

RED Engineer (“Wrenches”)

Name: Thomas William Harris Age: 34 Nationality: American (Georgia [Savannah]) Time w/ RED: 5 years, 3 months [Sawmill vet]

Height: 5’8 Hair: Dirty blond, buzz cut Eye Colour: Dark brown Skin Tone: Tanned Caucasian Build: Stout, broad-shouldered and -chested Scars: Knife wound (back of neck, spine), electrical burn (left wrist) Other Distinguishing Features: Robotic right hand (self-upgraded Gunslinger model), perpetual five o’clock shadow

Uniform Cosmetics: Builder’s Blueprints, Trencher’s Tunic, Packable Provisions, Hazard Handler Typical Weapon Loadout: Shotgun, Wrangler, Gunslinger, Wrench

Likes: Robots/robotics, machines, science fiction (TV, movies, and books), space/astronomy, working, bourbon Dislikes: Country music, crowds, shoddy workmanship, cruelty Fears: (Permanent) death Habits: Fidgets with Gunslinger Disorders/Medical Conditions: Insomnia

Extra Facts:

Tends to be quite reserved and distant with his teammates, though he’s easygoing and friendly enough with anyone who makes the effort to get to know him. He’s an amazing listener, and is the perfect guy to vent to with no fear of judgement. He has a fairly limited social battery, though; he’s more comfortable spending time with his machines than with other people most of the time, and can only take so much human interaction before he gets uncomfortable. He is actually on fairly genial terms with more members of the BLU team than of his own.

Has always been fascinated by machines and robots, to a near unhealthy degree, and is constantly coming up with new designs for gadgets, improvements to his existing gear, and potential mechanical implants, usually to the detriment of his eating and sleeping schedules. He hasn’t regretted cutting off his hand for his Gunslinger for even a second, and he would not be at all opposed to being the world’s first cyborg, if the opportunity ever presented itself. He also has a great deal of interest in the mechanics behind respawn and Mann Co’s other “developments”; he’s been officially reprimanded by the Administration for both trying to reverse-engineer various pieces of equipment and weaponry, and trying to crack open the intel more than once. [*The intel briefcases are specially sealed so the mercs can’t open them, even with all the weaponry at their disposal. Actually managing to open the intel briefcases is one of the few offenses in the mercs’ contracts that will result in immediate termination (read: permanent death).]

Strongly dislikes the RED Sniper. He’s disgusted by Sniper’s particular brand of cruelty, and hates to see him manipulating other members of the team. He’ll go out of his way to put a stop to it if he catches Sniper in a lie or manipulation, which has led to no little amount of animosity between them.

Has a veritable library of science-fiction media, from books to movies to homemade VHS recordings of Star Trek (original series and TNG, of course). He has also successfully made his own (briefly) working lightsaber and phaser, and has Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics engraved in the side of his toolbox. He’s not very conspicuous in his sci-fi fandom, but it’s obvious to anyone who cares to take even a cursory look.

——

RED Sniper

Name: Hollis Jacob Colling Age: 31 Nationality: Australian Time w/ RED: 8 years, 6 months [Sawmill vet]

Height: 6’2 Hair: Brown, short, messy Eye Colour: Brown Skin Tone: Well-tanned Caucasian Build: Thin, broad-shouldered Scars: Respawn error: knife wound (“Sniper scar”: left cheekbone and side of left nostril), knife wound (back, right shoulder), knife wound (torso, left pectoral to navel) Other Distinguishing Features: N/A

Uniform Cosmetics: Villain’s Veil, Crocodile Smile, Brim-Full of Bullets Typical Weapon Loadout: Huntsman, SMG, Kukri

Likes: Hunting, archery, the outdoors, being alone, violence, killing Dislikes: People in general, cities, being told what to do, not getting what he wants, the BLU Spy Fears: [Unknown] Habits: Smoker, stares Disorders/Medical Conditions: N/A

Extra Facts:

Gives off very intense vibes. Can be very charismatic when he puts his mind to it, but spending any significant time with him can be overwhelming in a very unsettling way.

Not a nice guy [honestly the closest thing close to an antagonist character in the shorts]. Enjoys violence for violence’s sake and seeing others in pain gives him that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. He was a professional hitman for most of his adult life before being hired by RED, and more than a few innocents that crossed his path met… unfortunate ends for his amusement. He spent a little over a year in prison after being caught “enjoying” one such innocent, and was picked up by RED while on the lam after escaping.

Will do anything he deems necessary to get what he wants, regardless of who it hurts and how much. He will lie, cheat, steal, and kill without remorse if he feels like it’ll benefit him.

Sadistically cruel to the Blues on the battlefield (and during ceasefire, though he exercises it less often off the field). He will try to make each kill as painful and drawn-out as possible, and if he can inflict a little lasting trauma (either emotional or physical) in the process, even better. He likes getting up close and getting his hands dirty, too; most of the Blues have at least one scar from his kukri.

A loner. He’s rarely seen around the base during ceasefire and on days off, preferring to spend his time in his nest or going out hunting. It’s not uncommon for him to disappear for a few days at a time if he knows there are no fights coming up. He’s always come back, (so far) so RED hasn’t had a problem with it, or at least not enough of one to tell him to stop [*like with revealing names, while it’s not strictly disallowed by their contracts, RED and BLU strongly discourage overnight trips off-base].

Respawn Errors Teaser/WIP

An actual coherent WIP, with (mostly) complete scenes and no randomly ending in the middle of a scene! Technically a WIP since there's going to be a lot more to this short; I guess this could be considered as part one of Respawn Errors? Even though I do want to post the whole short as one piece once it's done. I dunno, just wanted to throw this up.

Summary: Something's gone wrong with respawn...

——

Respawn Errors

You could always feel a respawn error. The fact that there was any feeling at all told you what it was. Respawn was painless, entirely sensationless even. You died, then opened your eyes again in the respawn room as good as new. It took ten, or fifteen, or however many seconds (depending on how often you’d died already), but it felt like no more than a blink. Just dead, then not.

Respawn errors, though… Whether it ended up just leaving you with a new scar, or rearranging your organs in all kinds of fun and painful ways, you felt it. Sometimes it was something as simple as pain or injury, but there was also full-body pins and needles, memory loss, nausea, panic attacks, dizziness: the whole list of shitty side effects.

This was different. BLU’s Scout had experienced more than his fair share of errors, enough to know what could be considered “normal”, under the circumstances. This time there was no pain, no nausea, none of the usual unpleasantness. Instead, there was a… giddiness. A flush of almost orgasmic ecstasy that raced from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He felt stretched, then compressed, and then the entire world—such as it was, in the void—pulsed.

He opened his eyes in the respawn room, gasping and stumbling as he hadn’t since his earliest days with BLU. Something was… not wrong. Different. His hands flew, feeling across his torso, arms, legs, crotch, head. Nothing felt out of place, and he didn’t seem to be growing anything new. He wasn’t spitting blood, and his memory was still intact; he remembered the RED Soldier’s shovel swinging in to split his skull all too well. There had to have been an error, though.

He looked around, and froze. He was… He was usually taller than the benches in the respawn room, right? Wait, of course he was taller than the fucking benches, what the fuck was was he thinking? Why did they seem so tall, then? And everything else, for that matter. The lockers were steel cliffs a good thirty feet away, and the handle of one of Hardhat’s toolboxes sat right at his eyeline.

“SCOUT?”

Scout yelped and covered his ears, looking up to see who’d screamed at him. Up, and up, and up… His eyes went wide, and his hands fell limply to his sides.

“Hardhat…? I- I think I need some help.”

——

There he was, the tricky wanker. Sniper rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. He’d been trying to get a clear shot on the damn RED Sniper for the last hour, but the bastard was always just too far around a corner, or just below a windowsill. Now he was sitting pretty, thinking he was so clever, ducked down behind a shipping container with his Huntsman and waiting to nip off any Blues who made it over the moat. Bloody drongo, Sniper thought, settling his rifle stock against his shoulder and laying his finger on the trigger. Gotta wait for just the right-

“Sniper!”

He jerked, scope jittering away from his target. God, he’d been sitting still too long if he was this twitchy. He cursed under his breath, gritting his teeth, and slowly turned from the balcony window he’d been sniping through.

“Truckie, you’d better have a damn good reason for interruptin’ my- What the bloody Hell!”

He leapt back from what Engineer thrust toward him. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. It looked to be a perfect, doll-sized replica of Scout. And it was cursing furiously in a tiny voice as it flailed and writhed in Engie’s hold.

“Lemme go, Hardhat! This ain’t fuckin’ funny! Put me the fuck down! This ain’t fuckin’ helpin’!”

Sniper bent down slightly, pushing up his aviators. “Strewth… Is that Scout?”

“Fuckin’ right it’s Scout, numbnuts!” The tiny figure in Engie’s hands pedalled his feet desperately before going limp with a defeated sigh.

Sniper couldn’t believe it. It was Scout, maybe a foot tall but otherwise still bearing perfect adult proportions. Engie held him with a hand under each armpit, though he was small and thin enough that one hand easily could have encircled his entire body. Sniper curiously tipped back the bill of Scout’s tiny cap; a baseball bat about as long and thick as a half-used pencil swatted his hand.

“Hey, fuck off!” Scout barked. His voice was high and almost tinny, but distinctively Scout’s for all that. “Will ya quit starin’ and fuckin’ help me? Hardhat’s just been runnin’ around lookin’ for ya, holdin’ me in this-” He looked over his shoulder at Engineer and bellowed schreechily, “-fuckin’ retarded way! I can fuckin’ walk, gears for brains!”

Engie frowned at Scout, but set him down on the crate that Sniper used as a coffee table during fights; Sniper’s tall coffee mug stood almost as high as Scout’s waist. Scout started to sit, but, realizing the mug would likely be taller than him if he did, remained standing with a scowl. He started pacing across the crate-top instead, his cleats making a soft tik-tik-tik against the wood.

Sniper did sit, and Engie as well—they were still beside the window in plain view, when all was said and done. Lighting a cigarette, Sniper watched Scout sulkily stalk from one side of the crate to the other, occasionally giving the coffee mug or that one exposed nailhead a kick.

“So… how in the Hell-?” he started, frowning when Scout winced and covered his ears.

“Christ, lower the volume, wombat,” he said. “Ev’rythin’s right loud.”

Sniper raised an eyebrow, but obligingly lowered his voice. “What happened?” He frowned at Engie. “Don’t tell me this is some kinda experiment ya roped him into?”

“Hell no!” Engie yelped, and Scout cursed.

“Seriously! Hardhat, we been over this!”

“Sorry, son, sorry,” Engie said, patting Scout on the head. Scout growled at him. “But this wasn’t me. I think somethin’s gone wrong with the respawn system. Real wrong.” He poked Scout in the side, which sent him stumbling halfway across the crate. “Tell him.”

Scout glared, rubbing his ribs, but he sighed and looked over at Sniper. “It felt like a respawn error, kinda. I mean, the fuckin’ RED Soldier bashed me, and I was actually feelin’ shit before I came back. It felt… nice, though. Kinda. I dunno!” He threw up his hands. “I just died and fuckin’ respawned like this! Hardhat was already there, and he brought me t’you so we could try to figure this shit out.”

“I think that when-” Engie made a soothing gesture when Scout flinched and opened his mouth to scold again. He said more softly, “I think that earlier, when the Demos went boom and took out halfa both teams, it was too many simultaneous respawns fer the system t’handle. Now it’s all… screwy. I gotta admit, I came out just a li’l before Scout and I felt the same kinda thing. Doesn’t seem t’be anythin’ wrong with me yet, though.”

“Bullshit,” Scout said. “Total bullshit. I get the fuckin’ Thumbelina treatment and Engie’s fuckin’ fine?”

“I said there ain’t nothin’ wrong yet, son,” Engie said. He looked uncharacteristically grim. “Who knows what mighta happened that just ain’t had the chance t’trigger yet?”

Sniper took a drag from his cigarette and scratched at the long scar running along his left cheekbone. “Has anyone else respawned since? D’ya know?”

“I saw the RED Scout bite it on our way over here, but I dunno if the Reds are havin’ the same problem,” Engie said, chuckling when Sniper blew a weak plume of smoke at Scout, who coughed and staggered, waving his hand frantically before his face. “I didn’t see any a’ours, but who knows what’s happened in the last couple minutes?”

Sniper grunted. The sounds of battle beyond the sniper deck hadn’t stopped during the course of their conversation. Scout was peeking out the window, having moved away from the smoke cloud and leaning carefully around the edge of the frame. He winced when blue Pyro-chunks went fountaining up in front of him.

“Pyro’s out,” he said, shrugging and stepping back from the window to lean against Sniper’s mug. “Maybe we should head back to the respawn room, meet up with him and see if anythin’s wrong.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea, Twinkle Toes,” Sniper said. He got to his feet, tucked into the corner, and plucked Scout up by the back of his shirt. Scout yelped and squirmed, but settled once Sniper lowered him onto his shoulder. He chortled—which was odd in itself; Scout didn’t chortle—and stood with his feet firmly planted against Sniper’s vest and a hand keeping him steady by gripping Sniper’s hat.

“Whoo! Hi-yo Silver! Awaaaaay!” he crowed, pointing in the direction of the respawn room. Engie snorted behind a hand, and Sniper rubbed his eyes with a weary groan on his way down the ramps.

“How is he even more annoyin’ when ya shave him down by five feet?”

“Less talkin’, more walkin’! Mush, wombat! Mush! To Pyro!”

——

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Breathing was hard, his limbs felt heavy, and his clothes were way too warm and tight. The RED Scout groaned, eyes squeezed shut, and laid a hand against his forehead, battling nausea and a throbbing pain in his temples as he respawned. What the fuck?

“Eugh, what the Hel- Mmph!”

Scout slapped a hand over his mouth. That was not his voice. That was not his voice. It was deep and a little raspy, and there wasn’t any of the usual (slight) whistly lisping that came from his not-really-that-big-fuck-you front teeth. The usual inflections were there, but it lacked the pitch and smoothness that he’d come to associate with his own golden pipes over the years.

He coughed and cleared his throat, and was about to speak again when he caught sight of the hand he’d coughed into. He stared, raising the hand, fingers spread, before his face. The fingers were long and slender, and clothed in black leather. Gloves. He never wore gloves, especially not gloves like these, which even to Scout’s eyes looked fancy and expensive.

“What the fuck!”

That voice! It wasn’t his voice! He looked down at himself, and wailed. There was no familiar red t-shirt and dark grey-brown pants, high white socks and worn red sneakers. Instead, there was finely crafted, almost brick-red Italian wool—suit jacket, waistcoat, and pants—and he could feel some kind of smooth, flowy fabric encasing his arms beneath the jacket. Even his underwear felt… soft. Kinda nice, actually…

“Ugh, Dio mio, what ith thith fresh Hell?”

Scout spun, and recoiled with a yell. That was him! He was standing there, a few feet away. It was like looking in a mirror, if the image in the mirror had suddenly stepped through and taken a life of its own. It spoke with his voice, muttering barely audible curses, and looked thoroughly disgruntled. Scout felt sick.

He cautiously shuffled forward and poked… himself in the shoulder, drawing a sharp flinch and a decidedly un-him-like sneer.

“Are… are you me?” he said weakly. The man that looked like him rolled his eyes and flicked him sharply in the forehead. The familiar gesture drew out an equally familiar response:

“Aw, fuck off Spy!” Scout blinked, and stared. “Spy?”

“Obviouthly, you mitherable petht.” Spy-in-Scout’s-body glowered, crossing his arms over his chest. Scout’s chest. Fuck, this was weird. “Ugh, why can’t I thpe- thpea- speak properly? Merda, thith ith- thisss isss-” He threw up his hands. “Nel nome di Dio! What ith wrong with you!”

“Wrong with me? I can barely fuckin’ breathe, my head’s fuckin’ killin’ me, I feel like I’m gonna puke, and I’m in your fuckin’ body, apparently! That’s what’s fuckin’ wrong with me!” Scout snapped back. “What the fuck is goin’ on!”

[...]

Spy was silent for a long moment, just looking at him, before he said, “Have you had a thig-” He closed his eyes, took a slow breath, and continued in a more deliberate and grating tone, “Have you had a cigarette since you respawned? Merda de Dio…”

Scout blinked again and opened up his—Spy’s—suit jacket, searching for the pocket where Spy kept his disguise kit. Spy rolled his eyes and Scout yelped when he slapped his hands away and dug through the jacket’s left inside pocket—and his pants pocket—to retrieve the disguise kit and an engraved Zippo lighter. Muttering to himself in Italian, Spy took out a cigarette, almost put it in his own mouth, then groaned and handed it to Scout. Scout reached for the lighter, but Spy flicked it to life himself and lit the cigarette for him before stuffing the lighter and disguise kit in his pocket. Scout’s pocket. Scout’s body’s pocket. Scout pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to shake off another wave of… he could only call it “existential confusion”. He’d put up with some pretty freaky shit in the time since he’d signed on with RED, but this definitely took the fucking cake.

He took a puff on the cigarette, grimacing at the taste and the burn in his throat and on his tongue. How could Spy smoke these things? Weed he could get behind, but cigarettes were just fucking gross. The throbbing in his temples almost immediately lessened, though, and the nausea receded. He even felt a little more relaxed. He took another puff, and crossed his arms over his chest as he slowly started feeling less like he’d been run through the tumble-dryer on high. He looked down at the still lispily muttering Spy (oh fuck, was he really that fucking short?) and let out a sigh.

“If ya buzz the esses like zees when ya talk, ya won’t lisp as much,” he said, “or keep yer tongue further back from yer teeth when ya say ’em.” He shrugged when Spy shot him a suspicious look. “I don’t want ya makin’ me sound like a fuckin’ lispin’ moron.”

“But that ith… is so far removed from the truth, I would not want to sound disingenuous,” Spy said, blinking and making a small sound of surprise; the lisp, and the slight whistling accompanying it, still clung, but it was definitely less pronounced. “It actually works. Huhn.”

Scout rolled his eyes. “After years a’speech therapy, I’d hope it fuckin’ works.” He took another puff and looked for a spot to ash, eventually settling on just ashing off to the side when no likely ashtray presented itself. “Now that y’can talk without givin’ yourself an aneurysm, will ya tell me what the fuck is happenin’? Is this…”

He had been going to say “normal”, but the word was so far from their current situation, he couldn’t get it out. Spy grimaced and looked down at himself, tugging at the hem of his t-shirt.

“No, this is not something I have ever heard of, or experienced, before,” he said. He examined his hands closely, frowning at the calluses on his fingers. “Respawn errors are a fact of life out here, but this is decidedly abnormal.”

“‘Abnormal’? Understatement a’the fuckin’ century there, pal,” Scout grumbled. In his (admittedly limited) experience, respawn errors meant a headache, or feeling dizzy, or needing to puke. This was… “This is so fucked up. What the fuck are we supposed to do? Die again and see if it gets fixed?”

“Under more ordinary circumstances, suicide may be preferable to our current situation,” Spy said wryly, “but if respawn is malfunctioning badly enough to cause-” His mouth twisted. “-whatever this is, I would rather avoid risking it failing completely if I die again. So, no, dying again is something that we should do our best to avoid, I think, if at all possible.”

“It was just a suggestion, Jesus Christ,” Scout said. “I don’t hear you offerin’ anythin’ to get us outta this.”

“Because I have not had a chance to think, between shepherding you through how to satisfy nicotine cravings and trying to figure out how your malformed mouth works.” Spy ignored Scout’s indignant “Hey!”, and rubbed at his forehead, shutting his eyes. “Ingegnere is our best chance to fix this, clearly. Respawn is facilitated by a machine in some capacity, after all. More complex than his sentries, but he is still more likely to have at least some idea of what to do with it than anyone else. We should go find him, and see-”

A sharp electrical bzzzt filled the respawn room and Scout and Spy both covered their ears with cries of pain. For a few endless, agonizing seconds, Scout felt like his entire skull was being criss-crossed by live electrical wires; it was as though all of the bones in his head were vibrating. His vision faded into a void of white, and he heard nothing but a nerve-piercingly high, almost electronic whine. It was like chewing on foil or hearing nails on a chalkboard, but a million times worse.

Then, in a blink, it was gone. Completely. No fading or winding down; just gone, as if a switch had been flipped. Scout let out a hard breath and lowered his hands from the sides of his head. Oh, come the fuck on! What now? He didn’t need any more weird shit on top of everything else going on right now. He looked quickly around the room. Everything seemed the same. Spy stood before him (still in Scout’s body, unfortunately), though he was now cursing and rubbing his ears, and nothing about the respawn room itself had changed.

Wait. One of Wrenches’s toolboxes sat a little ways behind Spy. That hadn’t been there before. Frowning, Scout stepped past Spy and reached for the toolbox’s handle.

The toolbox unfolded with a smart snap before his fingers came within an inch of it, and Scout yelled and jumped back as a sentry started assembling itself before him. The clack and rattle of metal was the only sound after that brief cry as both he and Spy stared, watching the level one sentry build itself up before settling with a sharp, high beep. The turret head swiveled around the room, more quickly than Scout had ever seen a sentry move. It turned its barrel first on Scout, then on Spy. It beeped again, swiveled back to Scout, then to Spy, still moving too fast. Scout frowned when the sentry let out another beep, this one shriller, almost a sound of alarm. He glanced at Spy, who was scrutinizing the sentry with an air of blatant disbelief. There was no fucking way…

Swallowing hard, Scout crouched down to the sentry’s level. Its turret swung back to him, its barrel extending and retracting as it continued emitting periodic alarm beeps, and Scout hesitantly reached out to lay a hand on top of it.

“Wrenches? Issat you?”

He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry when the sentry bobbed its turret up and down in an unmistakable nod.

——

Little Moments: Spy's Secret Teaser/WIP

Not cut for this one again, since it's short :)

Summary: Scout finally learns one of Spy's most jealously guarded secrets.

——

Little Moments: Spy’s Secret

[...]

“What does’at mean, anyway? ‘Tabarnak’?” Scout said, frowning. “I tried lookin’ it up in that French-English dictionary ya got me, but the closest thing I could find means ‘tabernacle’, and I dunno what the fuck that means, but it ain’t a fuckin’ swear word.”

Sniper barked out a laugh before he could stop himself, and he shoved a knuckle in his mouth as his cheeks flushed bright crimson with suppressed mirth. Spy glared at him, hissing, but Scout cocked his head to the side, curiosity instantly piqued.

“What? What’s so funny? I don’t get it,” he said. His inquisitive frown became a pout when neither of the older men said anything, though Sniper was failing to suppress a wave of giggles. “What is it? Spy? Tell me! What’s so fuckin’ funny? What? What? Whatwhatwhatwhatwhaaaat?”

Sniper lowered his hand and opened his mouth, but Spy growled, “Ta yeule, bushman! If you say a single word, I swear to God-”

“What is it? What what what what what!”

“He won’t shut up ’til we tell him, and y’know he’d’ve found out on his own eventually,” Sniper said in reasonable tones. He then choked on more laughter as Scout started poking Spy quickly and repeatedly in the shoulder, still demanding to be let in on the joke. It might be slightly maddening, but there was no denying the entertainment levels around the base went up exponentially when Scout had a fresh supply of Bonk. Spy snarled at Sniper; his glare demanded blood.

“I will flay you living, connard,” he promised darkly, snatching Scout’s poking hand and bending his wrist back until he yelped. Sniper only grinned.

“Lookin’ forward to it, mate. Scout,” he said, drawing Scout’s attention from massaging his over-extended wrist, “y’know how they speak French in a whole buncha countries, yeah? Not just in France?”

“Yeah?” Scout beamed, leaning eagerly over the back of the couch. Spy was growling curses—in English, French, and a couple other languages—steadily at the edge of hearing, but Sniper went on.

“Some a’them have their own ways a’sayin’ things, usin’ normal words, or religious words, as swears and such. D’ya know any a’those other countries?” he said. “Like, say, the one not all that far from yer own?”

Scout blinked, his smile fading into a thoughtful grimace as he tried to remember what countries were near the United States, and Spy clenched his hands into fists. He mouthed threats of various horrendous forms of retribution at Sniper, who just kept smiling as he watched Scout’s mind work. The young American’s eyes slowly went wide, and his grin returned, larger than before.

“Canada… Canada! Spy’s from fuckin’ Canada!”

“I am a dual-citizen-” Spy began sharply, but the words were lost behind Scout’s howling laughter.

“Canada! Holy shit!” He yelped as he inadvertently flipped forward over the back of the couch in his attempt to curl around his stomach, but he was still laughing as he landed half on the cushions and half on the coffee table. “Oh my God, didja grow up in a fuckin’ igloo? Didja have a pet moose? Or a beaver? Where can I buy the best maple syrup? Can ya play hockey? Ohmygod, ohmygod, can ya introduce me t’Bob and Doug McKenzie, ya hoser?”

Spy closed his eyes and got to his feet as Scout clutched his gut and screeched with laughter. Sniper was covering his mouth, but he could neither hide nor contain his own deep-throated chuckles, nor the deep crimson stain in his cheeks; he looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. Spy took a deep breath, and strode stiffly around the couch. He paused behind Sniper, gripping his shoulder and leaning down beside his ear.

“You ’ad best ’ope there’s a fight in the morning, bon ami,” he growled, giving Sniper’s shoulder a squeeze before stalking out, just barely clinging to the shreds of his dignity as Scout’s guffawed cry of “Poutine!” followed him into the hall.

Little Moments: Story Time Teaser/WIP

Another one that just needs a little bit of intro to be done. A lot of the Little Moments are like that, honestly :\ Ah well. I'll finish these shorts if it kills me!

Summary: Scout's hanging out with Spy, and he's bored. Spy comes up with a new way to keep him entertained.

——

Little Moments: Story Time

[...]

Scout tipped his head back over the arm of the couch to look at Spy. “What’re ya readin’?”

“Doctor No, by Ian Fleming,” Spy said. “Not ’is best Bond novel, but I like reading them in order.”

“Ain’t that a movie? The one with Sean Connery in it, bein’ some kinda spy?” Scout said, scrutinizing the cover of the book. Spy nodded, flipping a page.

“Oui. It is based on the novel, as are the other James Bond films.” He gestured toward his bookcases without lifting his eyes from the page. “I ’ave the first nine, if you would like to take a look.”

Scout shrugged, making a face. “Nah, I ain’t much for readin’. Gives me a headache.”

Spy frowned and finally looked up at Scout, raising an eyebrow. “Eye strain? I wouldn’t ’ave expected you to require les lunettes, cher.”

“My eyes’re fine,” Scout said, rolling them. “The words ’n’ letters just get all weird when there’s a bunch of ’em. The councillors at school when I was a kid said I had some kinda ‘learnin’ disabilities’—dyslexia, and AHAD or somethin’ like that—but I ain’t fuckin’ retarded. S’just hard t’read for too long.”

“Most learning disorders do not indicate mental retardation, petit,” Spy said. His frown had taken on a more thoughtful aspect. “Though, ADHD does explain quite a bit…”

Scout made an indignant noise, but Spy ignored him, closing his book and setting it on the small table next to the armchair. He got to his feet, stepping over to one of the bookcases, taking a slow drag on his cigarette as he looked over the collection of literature. He picked one book out and thumbed through the first few pages before shaking his head and putting it back. A few seconds later he selected another, and the process repeated itself.

It was on the fourth book that Scout’s curiosity finally bubbled over: “What’re ya doin’?”

Spy didn’t answer right away. He replaced an absolute brick of a book—Scout could see it was called The Stand thanks to the huge red letters on the cover—with a rueful smile and a shake of his head, then plucked out a smaller book a couple shelves down. He made a small sound of satisfaction after a perfunctory flip through and went to sit back in his armchair. Scout, sitting cross-legged and watching him with wary interest, fidgeted as Spy lit another cigarette and made himself comfortable.

“This,” Spy said, tapping a finger against the cover of the book he held, “is The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum. It is one of my favourite spy novels, full of globe-trotting adventure, conspiracy, intrigue, violence, and romance.” He smiled and ashed his cigarette. “I am going to read it to you.”

Scout blinked, then grimaced. “Oh, nah nah. No way. I ain’t sittin’ around for fuckin’ story time with Spy. Nuh-uh. M’not a fuckin’ little kid.”

Never mind that he liked stories—it was just the actual reading part that was hard—or that he had loved story time in kindergarten, and when the teacher would read from a good book in English class. And when Ma had read to him when he was sick, or when he had a really tough book for a book report. When he was a kid. He started to get up, shaking his head.

“You did say you were bored,” Spy said with a nonchalant shrug. There was that little upward quirk at the corner of his mouth. “I thought a story full of violence and cursing and sex might be more appealing than staring at the walls, but I could be wrong.”

Scout paused, halfway to his feet, and narrowed his eyes. Listening to Spy read did sound better than wandering around trying to find something else to do, but it was clear the other man was trying to entice him, and he couldn’t help but wonder why. He considered for a second, hovering in his half-seated position.

“It ain’t gay sex, is it?” he asked finally. Spy snorted out a puff of smoke along with a tight laugh and shook his head, rubbing his eyes as he clearly fought further chuckles. Scout sat back down, recrossing his legs and glowering as Spy got control of himself.

“Ahh, non, it is not gay sex, cher,” Spy finally said, clearing his throat with another light chortle. “You could do with more culture than Spider-Man and Bugs Bunny, and there are worse places to start than with Jason Bourne. And it should be interesting enough to ’old your attention for a little while, at least.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Bugs Bunny, French Fry,” Scout said, but he settled into a more comfortable position, elbows on his knees and chin in one hand. “But I guess I ain’t got nothin’ else t’do.”

First Day

The first finished short, though not the first chronologically. There's one more that comes before this one, but this was the first one I actually completed to some degree of satisfaction, and it's only the second one, so I figure it's not too far into the plot- and character-development to be posted. I might even end up expanding it, since it's pretty short, but, eh. I'll throw it up for now.

If anyone actually ends up reading through it, any critique is greatly appreciated; it's completely unbeta'd and I haven't posted any of my writing anywhere in years, so feedback is very, very good.

Also, warning for profanity and brief homophobic language. It's a short primarily about the Scouts, so there's no way the script's gonna be clean.

Summary: It's the new RED Scout's first day.

——

First Day

“Anyone get a good look at RED’s new Scout over the last few days?” Engineer asked, slipping the last shell into his shotgun and tucking the weapon into its loop on his belt. The BLU respawn room was quiet, and had been near silent before the question; they were always a fairly subdued bunch in the minutes before the buzzer. Sniper shrugged, digging a near miniscule crumb of dirt from under one of the tiny screws of his rifle’s scope.

“Younger’n ours, hard as that might be to believe,” he said, drawing a flipped bird from the young man in question and chuckles from the others. “Green as spring grass and jumpy as a toad on a hot rock. The Reds’ll probably break him before the fighting gets a chance.”

“Is it really all that surprisin’ if they do? Those guys are fuckin’ nuts,” Scout said as he finished wrapping his hands in their customary bandages and drew his heavy wooden baseball bat. “Lookin’ forward to bashin’ in some a’those psychos’ knees and heads today. Especially that fuckin’ Soldier,” he added in a low growl, swinging his bat in a whistling arc before him; Scout’s encounters with the particularly psychotic Red during the last fight had not gone well. Spy patted him on the shoulder and lit a cigarette.

“I’m sure you’ll get the chance, petit. When ’ave you ever known that ’elmeted madman to remain quietly on the rear lines?” he said. Sniper nodded, lighting a cigarette of his own and settling his rifle in his hands.

“Here’s hopin’, but don’t push too hard.” He looked around the room, catching each man’s eyes for a second as he pushed his aviators up the bridge of his nose. “Everyone keep your heads down today. We dunno what their new Scout’s capable of, and, small as he is, we don’t want him scoopin’ our case because we underestimate him. And their Engie seems to’ve taken a likin’ to the west alcove of their warehouse, second floor.” He looked meaningfully to Scout and Soldier, the latter of whom saluted sharply. “Don’t let it throw you. I wanna see low respawn numbers at the end of the day.”

Nods rippled around the room, and there was a chorus of rattling metal as weapons were hefted. The timer above the door ticked down, a high electronic beep marking each passing second. 16… 15… 14…

——

3… 2... 1…

The starting buzzer blared and the metal shutter rolled up, releasing a raging torrent of Reds. Scout jumped as a jet of flame washed harmlessly over him before Pyro charged past, howling behind his gas mask. Despite his very short training and the briefing on the train in, Scout still expected to feel his shirt burning off his back, but all he felt was the rough shove as Heavy pushed past him.

“Move, little boy-man!” he roared, and Scout jumped again, bolting out the open door and into chaos. He winced as one of Demo’s bombs exploded a few feet from him and one of Soldier’s rockets detonated not much further away. The Blues weren’t even in sight yet, but already Scout’s ears were filled with gunshots and explosions and battlecries. His teammates were bloodthirsty. He was beginning to realize that he was not prepared for this, not at all, but it was too fucking late to back out now.

He caught up to and passed Pyro as they exited the intel room, and saw flames gust out around him again—without feeling them—as he left the other man’s range. He heard muffled, guttural laughter behind him as he weaved his way through the warehouse, and clearer bursts of chuckling receded with the footsteps clattering up the ramps to the second floor. Pyro was messing with him, and the others were thoroughly enjoying it. Scout shook his head. He’d expected some hazing—he was the short, freckly, buck-toothed new kid; he’d have been surprised if people hadn’t fucked with him to some degree—but the apparent glee most of his teammates had taken in harassing him since his arrival unnerved him. He was honestly starting to look forward to encountering the enemy team.

The whizz of a bullet passing far too close to his head made him reconsider that thought as he sped out the wide warehouse doors. With a yelp, he dove behind a shipping container next to the train tracks, clutching his scattergun to his chest as his heart thundered.

Rockets started flying out the RED warehouse doors toward the train station in the centre of the field, and they were answered by a rocket barrage in return. Chipped concrete from their detonations pecked Scout’s cheek before he covered his head with an arm. He could feel warmth starting to trickle down from one of the more painful impact spots, and wiped his cheek, staring at the blood that came away on his fingers. The first blood he’d shed on the battlefield. He swallowed hard and peeked around the edge of the container.

Another whizz, followed by the pinging p-tew of a ricochet. Scout cursed and, questioning his sanity, he ran toward the moat instead of retreating back into cover. He wasn’t gonna just sit back and be a pussy for his whole first battle. He’d recognized from his training, short and disorganized as it had been, that the shots coming at him were sniper fire. He needed to get too close for the BLU Sniper to get a clear shot. To do that, he had to get over the moat.

There was a bridge a few yards away, but he didn’t want to be out in the open that long. It had to be straight over. No big: just ten or so feet of freezing, probably septic water. Right. Gritting his teeth, he took a deep breath and flung himself across the wide watery trench separating the RED base from the train station.

He grunted, his sneakers skidding on concrete, as he cleared the moat by at least six feet. He stumbled as he came to a stop and stared back at the distance he’d covered. Damn! Whatever RED had given him during his pre-deployment physical really did the fucking trick!

He hadn’t recovered enough to gather his bearings before something solid slammed into his gut, hard enough to double him up over it. He choked, eyes bulging at the sudden pain and breathlessness. He staggered back and stopped himself from going to his knees, if barely. He tried to raise his scattergun for a shot at his attacker, lifting his wide eyes to aim. This time he saw the heavy hardwood baseball bat coming at him. Straight toward his head.

He ducked with a hoarse yell, overbalancing and landing flat on his ass. He finally managed to lift both his gun and gaze to catch a glimpse of the enemy Scout’s blue-clad back whirling away from him with the momentum of his swing. For half a second, he could only stare at his enemy counterpart—the other man easily could have passed for one of his older brothers, in bad light—and that half-second was enough for the Blue to turn back, bat raised for another swing. Just in time for a load of scattershot to take him squarely in the chest.

He looked as shocked by the shot as Scout, finger still hovering over the trigger, felt. A hand rose to the gory mess of the BLU Scout’s front, absently fingering the bloody, pulverized meat and exposed edges of bone. Scout could only meet his opposite’s stunned stare with one of his own. Blood quickly stained the front of the Blue’s shirt, some dripping onto the concrete. He swayed, and blinked slowly, a glassy look coming into his eyes.

“You little fucker,” he mumbled, more incredulity than venom in his voice, and he toppled forward at Scout’s feet.

Scout’s eyes didn’t leave the corpse, and he didn’t move until, like a movie effect, the body started to fade. It grew steadily more transparent and then just disappeared, the blood fading with it, except for a few spatters on Scout’s shoes and pants. He scrambled to his feet, one arm folded over his aching gut, and frantically looked about him.

He saw Heavy emerge from the moat, his vest and shirt more than a little singed, and he saw the BLU Soldier explode into a shower of blood and meat chunks when one of Demo’s grenades hit him head on. His own team’s Soldier was coming his way, jogging along the edge of the moat, and Medic was taking swings at the BLU Demoman with his bonesaw and a maniacal, almost psychotic, grin on his face. Men were screaming, bullets and bombs were flying all around him… Scout swallowed hard. He had to keep moving, get into the BLU base, and grab their intel before he ended up getting blown away. He could take the time to process all of this once the battle was-

“Rule one of being a Scout, lapin.” He gasped as an arm wrapped around his neck from behind and something sharp jabbed lightly into his spine. “Do not stand still.”

The call of “Spy!” was still building in his throat when the knife slid home.

Then the cold white walls of the respawn room surrounded him and he stumbled, eyes goggling and hands shaking. Had he just… died? One of his hands flew around to his back, feeling for where the BLU Spy’s knife had entered, but there was no pain, no wound, not even a tear in his shirt. But he remembered feeling the cold steel splitting skin, the sharp dart of pain before he’d opened his eyes here.

He made it to the garbage can in the corner before he puked, but it was a very near thing. Yeah… he was definitely going to need some time to process this.

——

It had been a long day by the time the end-of-match siren blew. The Administrator loudly berated them all for failures, RED and BLU alike, but no one really paid her any mind. They were all too relieved to depart the field after hours of frenzy and pain for no reward. Still, despite the relief, the stalemate was painful. They had nothing really to gain from winning—a couple extra grand on their already exorbitant paycheques and a few congratulatory special supply vouchers—but losing was never a fun experience, and today they were all losers. Some were taking it harder than others.

“That little fucker!”

The BLU Scout growled, pitching his bat at the back wall of the respawn room as hard as he could. It rebounded a good four feet before bouncing a few more and slowly rolling to a stop at Spy’s feet. Spy picked up the weapon, and took a quick step back as Scout stomped across the patch of tile he’d just occupied.

They were the only ones left in the respawn room, the others having retreated deeper into the base to seek healing or relaxation as required. Spy had stayed behind when Scout did, wanting to make sure the younger man eventually did go to have his myriad bruises and cuts seen to once he’d worked through his anger. Knowing Scout, left alone, he’d fume and rant until he got tired or hungry, and leave the wounds festering until the next fight’s first respawn.

The young man’s headset had suffered the same fate as his bat in the course of his rage, though it had come to rest much closer to its original impact point against the wall, and he was in the process of wringing his hat in bruised-knuckled hands as if he blamed it for the embarrassments of the day. Spy had to pity him; there had been quite a few.

“That little shit! Six fuckin’ times! I died eighteen times today, and that…” Scout made inarticulate sounds of fury, strangling his hat more violently and then sending it flying into a bank of lockers. It hit with a resounding clang, echoed as Scout marched over to give the locker a hearty kick as well. “That fuckin’ shitbag cocksucker is gonna eat my fuckin’ bat tomorrow. Gonna shove it down his throat, out his ass, and fuckin’ floss him with it! Then I’ll shove my scattergun up his ass and blast away! Then shove my fuckin’ pistol up there and-”

“Scout, mon petit voyou, it was not that bad,” Spy said as he set the bat on one of the benches. He turned, meeting the younger man’s glare with a dry look of his own. “That look does not work on me. Stop it. You know I am right.” He lit a cigarette and took a seat next to the bat. “It was a long day, but we all ’ave days when our counterparts seem to single us out. Remember that week the ’Eavies were at each other’s throats?”

“This ain’t the same and you know it,” Scout said, shoving his hands into his pockets and giving the lockers another, more sullen kick. “It was his first fuckin’ fight, and I don’t even think he was tryin’ to run into me. I’d come ’round a corner and baby fucknuts is just standin’ there lookin’ clueless. Then he sees me and bam! I get one hit off, maybe two, then he blows me to shit!” He shoved his hands back through his hair, his anger returned in full force. “He blew my fuckin’ head off twice! That fuckin’… Rrrrgh! I’m gonna twist his head off that scrawny fuckin’ pencil neck!”

“Per’aps it was just beginner’s luck?” Spy suggested, shrugging and watching as Scout started to pace, shoulders hunched. “You are taking this too ’ard, petit. We all ’ave bad days, some worse than others. Today was bad for all of us, both sides. The new Scout threw everyone off.” He grunted and took a drag off his cigarette, puffing out as he grumbled, “’E certainly is speedier than expected, even for a Scout… and I don’t believe any of us anticipated that ’e’d adapt so quickly.”

Scout snorted and flopped down on the bench beside Spy, leaning forward with elbows on his knees; deep gouges packed with dirt and gravel were visible through a tear in the right knee of his pants. “Yeah, no kiddin’ there. Sniper was sayin’ how he almost didn’t make it up to the balcony in time to take his first shot at him. And you see how quick he got back across our moat after that one kill Demo got on him? I saw his bits fade out, and I was still pinned behind the train cars by their fuckin’ Soldier when he comes flyin’ back. He can move quick for havin’ such tiny legs.”

“’E is very small, isn’t ’e?” Spy said, chuckling, glad to see Scout calming down. “I wasn’t aware RED ’ad become so desperate as to start robbing the cradle to pad out their teams.”

“Really though!” Scout hooted, a grin splitting his face. “What is he, fuckin’ twelve? The Reds are gonna eat him alive.”

Spy smirked. “If their dégoûtant convict of a Sniper isn’t doing so already.”

“Augh, gross, Spy. I don’t wanna be thinkin’ a’that,” Scout said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. Spy raised an eyebrow in mock surprise.

“So prudish, petit! I never would ’ave expected it.”

“Hey, I just ain’t no fuckin’ cocksucker.”

“Tsk, typical American vulgarity. There is nothing wrong with exploring the pleasures that come from a more… masculine touch.”

“Sure, yeah, of course you’d say that, ya fancy candy-ass froggy fa- Ow! The fuck was’at for?”

“Oh, would you look at that! Your knee is bleeding again! We should get you to Medic before you say something else that you regret.”

“Aw, what, did I hurt yer feelin’s? Big scary Spy doesn’t like bein’ called a fag- Ow! Fuck, fuck, fine, I’m shuttin’ up! Christ, talk about sensit- OW! Dammit!”

——

The RED Scout still hadn’t left the showers. Somewhere in the bowels of the base was a monstrous water heater, which meant the water jetting from the showerhead was still steaming after over an hour, and Scout’s blazing skin could have served as a team banner. He’d stopped really feeling the heat a while ago, not long after he’d finished scrubbing himself almost raw with the near-caustic soap RED provided. It had taken longer than he’d expected to clean off all the gore and grime that had caked him at the end of the battle; there had been a surprising amount of it.

By the time the ceasefire siren had blown, he’d been on one of his longest “living streaks”, which meant he was one of those still cut, bruised, and shot up at the end of the day. Medic had been there, freshly respawned himself only a few minutes before the siren, when Scout had tottered back into the base behind Soldier, who had been bellowing at the top of his lungs and gesturing violently with his own severed arm. The doctor had proved more eager to examine their injuries, as thoroughly and at as great length as possible, than to provide healing, so Scout had added a not-insubstantial amount of his own blood to his outer layer of grime before being given a lick of healing from the medigun, just enough to heal the worst of his injuries, and told the rest was unlikely to kill him before his next respawn.

The partial healing of the wounds had not removed the evidence of them, though, so Scout had been left with smears of dried and drying blood caked onto his skin even under his clothes. That, on top of all the sweat and dust. There had been clods of disgustingly reddish mud in his hair and under his nails, and he’d almost puked again when he’d found a chunk of… something lodged behind his ear. He didn’t want to know where, or who, it had come from, or how it had ended up there. He’d just flicked it down the wide drain and scrubbed himself as if his life depended on it.

Actual cleaning had only taken up fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of his shower, though. Since he’d set the soap back on its shelf, he’d stood, and then sat, in the stream of hot water, watching the droplets trail across his reddened skin and the gleaming white shower tiles. Some of the others had come and gone in that time, but they had paid him no mind, save for Heavy’s malicious chuckles over “little boy-man’s sensitive stomach”. Scout had ignored them in return, staring blankly beyond the tile walls and into his frenzied memories of the day.

What horrified and sickened him the most about everything, he thought, was how little everything he’d seen and done did horrify and sicken him. He’d killed people, repeatedly in some cases, and seen others die in more horrific ways than he’d thought possible. The BLU Scout kept showing up wherever he went, it seemed, and he couldn’t deny the intense triumph he’d felt each time he’d killed the other man, after that first stunned kill. And the burst of savage satisfaction after he’d crushed that stupid BLU Pyro’s mask right into his face, seeing blood squirt out around his bat, through the crumpled filters and shattered lenses…

Scout hugged his knees tighter, resting his forehead against them and watching the thin stream of water falling from the end of his nose. He hadn’t thought that he’d enjoy killing so much. He knew it wasn’t… real, not during a battle with respawn waiting to snatch them all back from the jaws of “true” death, but it was still killing. Someone didn’t survive having their head shot off, or exploding into chunks, or being literally cut in half by minigun fire. There had been a definite rush in watching blood and body parts fly, and it had only grown more intense when he was its cause. He’d been in fights back home, beaten some guys real bad (if not quite to RED and BLU standards), but the adrenaline rush of a good fight was nothing against the pure, animal satisfaction he got blowing away Blues.

He liked it, but it felt wrong. Especially after seeing how his teammates had responded to the battle. They had been vicious, some of them, most of them, animals more than men. Heavy had been horrifying, bellowing laughter as that massive gun tore the Blues to shreds, and Pyro had been… monstrous. An alien, pyromaniac beast with a voice like nothing human. Scout had even seen Engineer chuckling darkly over the mangled corpse of the BLU Spy, his wrench and gloves dripping blood.

He knew he hadn’t been much better, after his third or fourth death and respawn. By then, the cycle of kill, be killed, respawn, repeat had settled with him, and he’d gotten a second kill on his BLU counterpart without the same feeling of shocked horror that had stymied him after his first. Instead there’d been a heady rush of feral exhilaration, and, from the moment the Blue’s corpse had faded after that second encounter, he’d sought more of it with a desperation that scared him, now that he had a chance to look back. The BLU intel had always been his true goal, somewhere in the back of his mind, but he’d been reckless in choosing his paths to it, more interested in how many kills he could get before his next respawn than finding the safest route. It had resulted in more than a few deaths of his own.

He sighed, folding his hands over the back of his head. There was that, too. The deaths. Respawn was nothing short of miraculous, bringing them back in perfect shape even after being dismembered or pulped or whatever else might happen to them, but they still died. He’d died more than twenty times, according to the board in the respawn room at the end of the day. And dying hurt. Some of his deaths had been like the first, instant and near painless, but others…

The BLU Scout had seemed to take special pleasure in tormenting him, drawing out every death that he could. Despite only being responsible for five of Scout’s deaths, he’d broken his legs, shattered his hands, broken his back, and only seen fit to actually end Scout’s life when the flow of the battle drew him onward. At least he had ended it, though. Scout had seen Demo after an unfortunate run-in with the BLU Pyro, where the sloppy-drunk Irishman had been granted no such mercy. Scout felt his gorge rising and swallowed thickly.

Why had he gotten himself involved in all this? Yeah, the money was fucking astounding, but this was only his first battle and he’d already seen men burned alive and blown to smithereens, and been riddled with bullets and beaten painfully to death himself. Was six figures worth turning into the kind of lunatic he saw in Medic and Soldier and Pyro? Was it worth all the pain? What would Ma say? He shivered in spite of the hot water. She’d always talked about the “dangerous men” she’d known in her younger years, but how could she approve of a son who enjoyed killing so thoroughly?

Scout lifted his face and scrubbed his hands over it with a groan. He wasn’t built for thinking about this kind of shit. He realized for the first time just how wrinkly his toes and fingertips had become and grimaced. He hated wrinkling up; it was why he never took baths. He got to his feet with another groan, trying to rub the sleep out of his leg and ignore a deep ache still settled in his ribs, and turned off the taps.

In the sudden absence of hissing water, Scout heard the tak tak of bootheels on the tile and he looked up sharply. The room was still filled with thick steam—how long had he been showering?—but he could make out a lanky, hatted silhouette near the sinks at the other end of the room.

“Y’finally finished up in there, Speedy?” There was no mistaking Sniper’s throaty drawl. “Was startin’ t’worry ya might’ve melted.”

Scout snorted, smiling in spite of the melancholy that had kept him under the shower’s spray so long. “I know I’m pretty fuckin’ sweet, but I’m not made a’sugar, Snipes.”

Sniper’s chuckle was a low rumble through the slowly dissipating steam. Scout liked him. He and Engie were the only ones on the team who had treated him like, well, a teammate since his arrival a few days ago, and Sniper had gone out of his way to help show Scout around before his first “official” day. He’d even fed him his first night, when Demo and Pyro had thought it would be hilarious to incinerate his dinner.

Sniper had brought Scout, still nervous and more than a little put-out by the hazing, to his “nest” (a small room, barely bigger than a closet, at the top of a very tall ladder that offered a view all the way across the battlefield) and offered him a bowl of hearty rabbit stew. “Caught the li’l buggers just outside the fence,” Sniper had said with pride. Scout had been reluctant to try rabbit, thinking of the twitchy-nosed little bunnies he’d seen on his train ride in, but in the end he’d emptied three bowls over the course of a nearly two hour long chat. Sniper was quiet and more than a little intense, but Scout couldn’t help but feel comforted by his unflappable presence in the midst of the rest of the team’s madness.

A fluffy towel smacked Scout in the face and he caught it as it tumbled down toward his chest. Sniper was grinning at him. “Better dry off and cover up before ya shrivel any more, Squirt.”

“I ain’t shrivellin’,” Scout said, though he did cast a self-conscious glance downward before he started drying himself. “Yer the one who’s peepin’ on my junk, ya dirty old perv, so…”

“So what?”

Scout blinked and paused as he was wrapping the towel around his waist. He gaped at Sniper for a moment, who was now clearly visible past the last lingering wisps of fog. He didn’t have his aviators on, and there was a fierce, hungry gleam visible in his eyes even from across the room. It was almost enough to make Scout nervous. He shrugged and cleared his throat, feeling a flush spreading up his neck and cheeks.

Then Sniper laughed. “Oh, relax, kid. Christ, the look on yer face!” He crossed the room and clapped his arm around the boy’s bare shoulders. “Let’s getcha somethin’ t’eat and maybe y’can tell me a little about those dark clouds y’were lost in when I walked up, eh?”

Scout blinked again, and then a broad grin stole across his lips. Intense, but comforting. After today, that might be just what he needed. “That actually sounds awesome; I’m fuckin’ starved.”

The Other Side of the Fence Teaser/WIP

This ones gets a little angsty, though not too much is there yet. Takes place soon after the previous short (untitled as yet, but Scout is tortured by the RED Sniper; it's not nice), and Scout needs to take some time to process... everything.

Summary: Scout finds himself thinking too much while out for a run, and decides to go a little further afield, out past the fence.

——

The Other Side of the Fence

[...]

[...] He was used to putting up with a pretty ungodly amount of bullshit out here: between the fights themselves, the respawn errors, and the nutjobs and queers on both sides of the field, he was surprised he hadn’t gone completely batshit already.

It had just been… a lot, lately. A lot. He’d had two bad respawn errors in the past week, the worse of which had put him through phantom pains of every injury he’d received since arriving at Well. He wasn’t sure if it was feeling like his chest had exploded or like a shovel was splitting his skull that had made him realize what it was, aside from random, mind-numbing agony. After a while, he hadn’t really given a fuck. He’d just wanted it to stop.

And Spy had been there, at least for part of it. That just made everything a million times worse. Usually, it was common practice to politely ignore anyone caught in the throes of a bad error, unless there was an actual injury involved. It was humiliating, being seen heaving your guts out, or stumbling around like a moron, or screaming your lungs fucking raw from pain and writhing around like you were fucking possessed. When the last of the seemingly endless torment of the error had faded, though, and Scout’s brain had started working again, there Spy had been, rubbing his back and muttering that everything was alright like he was some kind of sick kid. Never mind that it had felt really nice, after going through that monumental crock of shit. It was still embarrassing as Hell, knowing Spy had been there watching him scream and flail and cry. Having anyone there would have sucked, but the fact that it had been Spy just made it so much fucking worse.

Then there was trying to work out that whole what-the-fuck of a situation… He wasn’t gay—he knew, deep down, he knew that he wasn’t, no matter how Red and Pyro kept getting on his ass about it—but everything with Spy felt so… relationship-y. Him moving into Spy’s room like they were fucking boyfriends or something, the little pet names, the whole notebook thing and making-up after. It wasn’t really any different from how he’d felt with—and about—the girls he’d actually considered girlfriends, rather than just quick fucks.

And Spy had finally told him his name. It still sent a little thrill through him, just knowing that he knew, but it felt intimate in a way he wasn’t sure about. He was curious about everyone else’s names too—it was hard not to be out here—and, yeah, he’d told Spy his name ages ago, but something about knowing Spy’s, with everything between them, and Spy’s general “Spy-ness”…

Spy hadn’t stopped with his name, either. Scout had learned more about the masked man in the past few weeks than he had in the entire preceding year. He was forty-two years old (fuck Red for being  right, but forty-two still wasn’t that old), allergic to bees, had a younger sister, hadn’t lost his virginity until he was nineteen, had been engaged twice, and had “had relations” with five other members of RED and BLU over the past eleven years, not including Scout himself. The current RED Sniper, “the convict”, was one of them.

The RED Sniper… Scout huffed as he vaulted a boulder, rather than run around, and tried to ignore the sick chills creeping down his spine, and the almost-there feeling of coarse rope around his wrists. Fuck the RED Sniper. He knew that that was what was really messing with him, even if he hated to give the fucker credit for getting to him so much. The guy was fucking insane, though. He hadn’t tried for anything below the belt when he’d grabbed Scout a few days ago, thank fucking Christ, but Scout knew the creep had been getting off on hurting him and seeing how freaked out being tied up made him. It was sick, and terrifying.

[...]

He leaned forward as far as he comfortably could. Christ, it really was a long way down from up here, wasn’t it? Heights had never really been a thing with him, even before he’d been able to double-jump, but he could see why they got to people. It was freaky, looking down and knowing that if he fell, he probably wouldn’t ever get up again. He nudged a pebble over the edge with his toe, watching its tumbling and surprisingly lengthy descent. Yeah, scratch that “probably”. He’d definitely be buzzard food if he fell from here. No respawn to snatch his corpse back and revive him, out here past the fence.

He shuffled forward slightly. A few more pebbles joined the one he’d dropped, a clattering rush that seemed far too loud in the otherwise silent desert. He closed his eyes when seeing them bouncing off the side and edges of the rock formation on their way to earth made his stomach clench in an odd way. He took in a long, deep breath and, slowly, he lifted his arms out to his sides. He didn’t open his eyes, but he could feel the edge in front of him. He carefully eased himself up on tiptoe, the light breeze pushing gently on him.

“Aiden. Please don’t.”

His heels thumped back down to the rock. He lowered his arms and let out his breath. “I wasn’t going to.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Honest, Baz. I wouldn’t.”

Spy—Sebastien—stepped up to him, laying a hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing his mask. “While I trust your ’onesty, voyou, I would greatly appreciate a few more steps between you and the open air, if you don’t mind?”

[...]

Tales of Well Basics

What it says on the can. Basic background/world info on my TF2 shorts.

Maybe TMI before even posting any of the shorts, but I'm terrible at summaries, so I'd rather just throw up some basic info, to help keep any important setting/mechanics details in one place.

Also see: BLU team bare bones info! RED team bare bones info!

[Taken from ff.net summary] Primarily slice-of-life, romance, and cozy-fiction, with a smattering of action, drama and even, occasionally, glimpses of a larger overarching plot.

Entirely OC cast. Sorry.

Primary focus on the BLU team, particularly Scout, Spy, Pyro, and Sniper, though the RED Scout will also be taking a larger role as the shorts go on.

Pairings (not necessarily all at once): BLU Spy/Scout (not related!), BLU Red Oktoberfest (background), RED Speeding Bullet, RED Texas Two-Step, Scoutcest, cross-faction Flash Fire, Scoutcest-Flash Fire combo (is there a name for that?). [Apologies, but RED Scout is turning into a little bit of a manwhore :P]

Takes place at CP Well in the early 1990s (first short in the timeline takes place March 6, 1993), after the BLU and RED teams (Garrison and Rampart, respectively) transfer from a multi-year stint at Teufort. The majority of both teams worked with (or against) each other at Sawmill for several years before that as well.

One member of each class on each team.

Despite being on a Capture Point map, and participating in Capture Point matches, the teams also frequently partake in Capture the Flag battles, and there are the occasional King of the Hill days and Team Deathmatches thrown in for spice.

There are not fights every day, but the mercs will usually put in at least thirty to thirty-five hours a week on the field. Weekends are usually ceasefire time, but scheduling is erratic: the mercs can fight for nine days straight, then not at all for another five. Matches can last up to eight hours if victory conditions are not met, but stalemates/time-outs of this kind are rare.

Friendly fire is disabled during battle, but teammates can still make physical contact with one another. Friendly fire IS enabled during ceasefire.

Respawn exists, of the "reconstruction from a digital template" variety.

Respawn is enabled during fights, and enabled on a delay during ceasefire. Wounds taken in battle (or during ceasefire) remain until healed or respawned. If killed during ceasefire, but within the respawn area bounds, the deceased will remain in the “respawn void” until the beginning of the next match.

Respawning too often during a single match, or spending too much time in the respawn void, can lead to respawn errors, which can range in seriousness from scarring and minor memory loss to misplaced limbs and organs. Most respawn errors can be corrected by medigun/dispenser healing, a subsequent respawn, or simply the passage of time (respawn errors that fade this way [amnesia, phantom pain, or intense paranoia, for example] usually last no longer than ten minutes, though more severe ones can last for hours), but other errors can prove permanent, or permanently fatal. Usually, respawn errors will begin to appear after fifteen or so respawns in a single match, or more than eighteen hours spent in the respawn void, and the severity of the errors will, in general, be proportional to the number of deaths or time spent in the void.

Before their initial deployment, each merc receives a full medical physical examination from RED/BLU, where they are given injections that grant them increased endurance and pain tolerance, and generally increase their physical hardiness (as well as help to facilitate respawn). These injections also allow for Übercharge, and some classes also receive other abilities (Scouts’ double-jump, for example).

Supply deliveries come once a month, and shipments of improved weapons and gear usually arrive two or three times a year. Not every class will receive gear in each special shipment, though there is rarely equipment for less than three (though “equipment” might be a little generous; hats and other “cosmetic items” are included by this category).

Engineers can set up three sentries, one of each level. However, they are still limited to one dispenser and teleporter at a time.

And there we go. Again, probably way more info than anyone needs, but I'm a world-builder at heart; working out the background details like this is my catnip.