In Vino Veritas Teaser/WIP

Deathmatch Teaser/WIP

Some beginning, a complete chunk of middle, and the end *headdesk* I'm sorry, I just can't write linearly. It's a problem...

This one's going to be mostly Spy-centric, taking a look at his thoughts on and relationships with Scout, Sniper, and the RED Sniper in particular. A little attempt at a fight scene, too (not sure how well I pulled it off, though).

Summary: The Administration introduces a new match-type. No teams. Last man standing wins.

——

Deathmatch

[...]

“Wait. She said ‘deathmatch’,” Engie said slowly, frowning. Scout shrugged, picking more dirt and gravel out of his shoes.

“Yeah, so? Deathmatch. Big fuckin’ deal. We done it before,” he said, flicking a pebble caught in his cleats across the room. “Go out there, bash the Reds, try not to get bashed too many times ourselves-”

“‘Deathmatch’, she said,” Engie repeated. The horror in Spy’s face said he alone yet understood. “Not ‘team deathmatch’.”

Scout froze in the midst of picking at another stubborn pebble. A thankfully inactive grenade dropped from Demo’s limp fingers, bouncing wildly across the floor until Sniper stepped on it. Both were gaping at Engie, as were Medic and Heavy, the former of whom shared Spy’s look of abject horror. Soldier was the only one not stunned to some degree by the observation; even Pyro stood clutching his flamethrower to his chest, looking nervously between the others, while Soldier waved his shovel and bellowed about treason and bureaucrats, for which he seemed to have an equal hatred.

A screeching electronic sound drew everyone’s attention to a small slot in the wall. A chugging series of beeps filled the room as a long piece of paper came sliding from the slot, creeping out inch by inch, until a ripping sound came from the other side of the wall and the paper fluttered to the floor. Spy was closest and he stooped to pick it up. He read through it as Scout inspected the slot—he’d wondered aloud at its purpose in the past and his curiosity was once again piqued—and the others shuffled and fidgeted uneasily as they waited for Spy’s report. It was brief, when it came.

“We are in for a fun day, mes amis,” Spy said grimly, scowling as he passed the page to Sniper, who skimmed it quickly before shoving it at Engie with a curse.

“Deathmatch,” he growled as Engie started reading with a more critical eye. “No teams. Last man standin’ wins. That means full friendly fire.”

“Hhhr shhht,” Pyro moaned, looking down at his flamethrower with a mournful droop to his shoulders. Active friendly fire meant Spy-checking—fully half of Pyro’s job on most days—was next to, if not entirely, impossible.

Spy gave the weapon a look that was significantly more distasteful and muttered, “‘Oh shit’, indeed.”

“Ten respawns apiece, yeah, and full friendly fire, sorry Py.” Pyro moaned again and Engie gave him a sympathetic smile before he continued, “The other respawn rooms’ve been opened up and we’ll get shuffled randomly through the ones on our side every time. Other’n that, it’s pretty much just kill whatever moves ’til yer th’only one left. We’ll all get respawned back in after someone wins, at least; s’not gonna be seventeen of us hangin’ ’round in the void ’til the next fight.” He passed the paper back to Spy. “There’s some in there specifically fer you about yer disguise kit and whatnot, and some fer Doc, too. The rest is just the usual bull. ‘You signed up fer this, y’can’t pull out now or else,’ yadda yadda yadda.”

“It is bull!” Scout popped up straight, hobbling a little until he got his left foot settled back properly into its shoe. “Total bullshit! I didn’t fuckin’ sign up to shoot you guys!”

“Vhile I’m sure ve all appreciate zhe sentiment, Scout, I am also sure you are likely zhe least qualified to argue over vhat you, or any of us, signed up for,” Medic said drily, rubbing his chin. “I do seem to remember zhe vording of zhe contract being slippery, and, knowing you, I doubt you spent a great deal of time sorting zhrough zhe specifics.”

Scout puffed himself up and started to step toward him, but Spy gripped the back of his shirt to stop him without looking up from the paper. His face was looking more and more grim the longer he read.

[...]

“We could simply ignore this little ’iccup, of course—only kill the Reds, like we would during any normal team deathmatch—but I ’ighly doubt the Reds will do the same. We’d likely be down to killing each other in the end, regardless.”

[...]

“If yer holdin’ any grudges, now’s the time t’get ’em out, I s’pose,” Sniper said.

[...]

——

The report of a sniper rifle coming from above him made Spy freeze. Ahh, so there he was… He crept forward, using the boxes in the RED warehouse as cover until he could tiptoe up the ramp toward the RED Sniper’s perch. If he could kill that fils de pute at least once today, he could die—well, “die”—a happy man. That beastly convict… He had suffered the man and the indignities that had accompanied him for too long to let any opportunity to kill him slip by.

He heard another rifle crack, this time followed by a distant wailing cry. A very familiar wailing cry. Spy’s stomach dropped and he started creeping faster, trying to move as quickly as he could while still maintaining stealth without resorting to his cloak. The convict had a tendency to play with his targets, even when he wasn’t using that damned bow of his, and that had been Scout’s all too distinctive scream. As if Spy needed another reason to hate the bastard.

There was another shot and another scream in the time it took him to fully ascend the ramp, and Spy’s jaw was clenched so tightly his teeth squeaked against each other. He found the RED Sniper kneeling beside one of the windows, his focus fixed entirely on what lay at the other end of his scope. The smile on his lips was smug.

“Can’t run so fast now, eh Zippy,” he murmured, shifting the rifle against his shoulder, and only two decades of professional experience kept Spy from hissing out his rage. Instead, he drew a deep breath through his nose, activated his cloak, and moved up behind the oblivious Red. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the convict fired again, and his hand trembled holding his knife as the subsequent chuckling that came to his ears sent a spear of pure rage through him.

Fil de pute de câlisse de- He could see out the window, see the convict’s target in the distance, sprawled just outside the train station entrance. Scout. One of his legs appeared to be missing from just below the knee, and the other was a red mass above. There was also a wide dark patch staining the lower right of his shirt. Even up here, Spy could hear his frantic, but quickly weakening, cries for Medic.

The RED Sniper popped the spent casing from his rifle and slid in a fresh round, letting out another smug chuckle. Spy couldn’t hold back a growl, and he saw the convict start. Spy dropped his cloak as the convict pushed away his rifle and started to rise with a curse. Let the connard see him. Spy didn’t give him a chance to straighten fully anyway.

“You should not ’ave done that to my Scout, you filthy condamner,” he hissed, driving his knife into the back of the Red’s neck so hard he pitched forward through the window, kukri not even half drawn. Spy held on, riding the corpse to the ground, and he calmly but quickly stepped away as they struck concrete, folding his balisong back into his pocket.

He couldn’t hold his calm long, however. Scout. He found himself sprinting toward where he’d last seen Scout’s mangled form, thankfully surrounded by a pocket of battlefield quiet. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or pained that Scout wasn’t there. He’d already died and respawned, so at least he wasn’t suffering any more, but Spy knew it must have been a horrible death to go through. Scout never handled slow deaths well.

Spy shook his head and ducked into the train station, reactivating his cloak. He had to look after himself, first and foremost. During a match like this, so much sentimentality was likely to cut short his already diminished chances to win the day. Scout did tend to draw it out of him, though… He grimaced when he heard the beeping of a sentry in the direction of the BLU base and started back toward that side of the field. He had to try to get through to the end of this, and hopefully help facilitate that end’s coming a little sooner. No matter how much Scout’s pain twisted in his guts.

——

[...]

“Tell you what, mate,” the convict said, wiping a line of blood from his chin with a predatory smile. “You win. I’ll let ya kill me, if I get to take that Scout a’yours for a spin, eh? Gettin’ kinda tired a’mine; could use some fresh meat. Yours has got… spirit, and-” His grin widened. “-judgin’ from his hollerin’ earlier, a fine set a’lungs. I like that.”

The words hit Spy like a dash of ice-cold water; every muscle twitched to instant tensity, and his skin felt suddenly drawn tight across them. He didn’t recognize the feral roar that echoed through the room as his own, didn’t remember closing the space between himself and the filthy convict. He found himself swinging his knife with reckless abandon and, though there was none of his usual finesse in the flurry of swipes and stabs, he still felt the blade find purchase far more than once.

The convict’s amusement quickly faded, and he met Spy’s furious attacks with growls of effort, turning aside the butterfly knife with his kukri whenever he could, but finding the sudden onslaught too vicious to keep razor lines of red from being opened all across his face and arms and chest. Every line drawn fuelled Spy’s fervent desire for the bastard’s death. He slashed harder, and faster. The convict grunted, one eye squinted shut against the blood streaming down from a wide cut above his brow, and shoved forward, kukri held across his chest like a shield.

He managed a couple more swipes, but Spy was unprepared for the push. He stumbled back a step, and that was enough opening for the convict’s longer blade to carve a long, deep line down his thigh. The pain flared through his fury and bloodlust, overpowering them, and he staggered to the floor, hissing at the bolt of agony that spread from his leg. He tried to get his arms under him, but the convict delivered a sharp kick to his ribs that had him collapsing onto his stomach, and then planted a firm and surely feculent boot in the center of his back.

“Well, that certainly touched a nerve.” The boot pushed down, and Spy screamed as the blade of the kukri drove into his forearm. “Wouldn’t’ve thought that arrogant, loud-mouthed mongrel would be the type fer a fancy-pants French poof like you.” Spy ground his teeth against another cry as the kukri jabbed in again, higher up his arm. “Must be somethin’ special in the sack, eh? Can’t imagine you takin’ it from a brat like him, but the kid’s prob’ly still virgin tight after nothin’ but your pencil dick. Lookin’ forward to findin’ out…”

“Funny, I really don’t think it’s any a’your concern, mate.”

Spy’s rapidly returning fury was doused by shock. He couldn’t see from his current angle, but he recognized Sniper’s voice. The BLU Sniper. There was a growl above him, and Spy choked when the kukri twisted vindictively before being withdrawn from his arm. He rolled onto his back, cradling his arm to his chest, and watched as the Red Sniper stalked toward the Blue. His Sniper stood just inside the intel room door, looking weary but otherwise freshly respawned. He held his rifle as if it weighed a hundred pounds, not set at his shoulder for a shot, but still pointing squarely at his RED counterpart.

“Shoulda hung back, mate,” the convict said, pausing and starting to circle, juggling his blade from hand to hand, as Sniper stepped further into the room. “Let me take care a’him, nip me from a couple dozen feet.”

“Thought about it.” Spy could hear the weariness from Sniper’s face echoed in his voice. “But I figured the frog’d probably rather me pullin’ the trigger on him than you.” Sniper raised his rifle to chest height. “’Sides, I’ve wanted to do this face-to-face for a long while.”

The convict darted forward and to the side, growling like an animal, but not moving far or fast enough to avoid the rifle’s long barrel as he closed in. Sniper flicked it up under his opposite’s chin almost lazily when he got close, steadying the heavy stock against his hip, and he pulled the trigger without shifting so much as his gaze. There was something comical, Spy thought, in the way the convict was propelled backward, lax body trailing after his ruined head. Then he came to earth with a dull splat, and started to fade.

Sniper was at Spy’s side, helping him to his feet, before the body had fully vanished. Spy groaned, his wounded leg nearly buckling under him, but Sniper kept him steady, not seeming to mind the copious amounts of blood as he helped him to the nearest wall so he could lean back against it. Spy’s arm was a blaze of pain, but numbness was starting to creep into his fingers. He flexed them, hissing as they filled with pins and needles, and a renewed stab of agony drove into his forearm. He fumbled in his jacket with his other hand until Sniper held out a cigarette to him. Sniper’s were a decidedly inferior brand, but it would do.

“Merci, mon ami,” he said, holding it to his lips and letting Sniper light it for him. He shuddered and took a long drag. “I did not relish the idea of ’aving that salaud take ’is time with me. Things were already bad enough.”

“Yeah, it looked like a good time to step in. That, and I saw on the respawn board that you two were the only other ones left, and I meant it about wantin’ to kill him up close and personal,” Sniper said, arms crossed over his chest. “Surprised he had you in such dire straits, though.”

Spy grunted. “Rest assured, I did not expect it either. My cloak ran out at the worst time, and we ’ad a lovely little tussle before ’e… touched a nerve.” He flicked ash from the cigarette, frowning. “I reacted more strongly than I should ’ave.”

“Sounded like ya had plenty cause, from what I heard at the tail end there,” Sniper said, and a cold, hard lump dropped into Spy’s stomach. It must have shown; Sniper shook his head and went on, “Relax, mate. It ain’t none a’my business, any more than it’s his or anyone else’s. I won’t say nothin’ t’anyone.”

Spy nodded slowly, feeling the lump in his gut loosen, and he took another drag. He watched the other man as Sniper propped his gun beside him and lit a smoke of his own. He was a good man, truly, for all that he could be utterly uncivilized and uncouth. He had acted as Team Garrison’s unofficial leader for years; even Soldier deferred to him almost without question. While tactless, blunt curiosity and an inability to keep personal secrets seemed to be universal traits shared by the members of the BLU team (and Spy was self-aware enough to include himself amongst them), and despite a genuine concern of his own for the rest of the men, Sniper was exceptionally discrete and never one to pry unless he felt there was a real, pressing need. Spy felt he could trust him near unconditionally, startling and strange as that was, even now after over a decade of professional acquaintance.

No one else would learn of Spy’s relationship with Scout from him, Spy was sure. And Scout wouldn’t hear anything about the convict’s threats, or how damnably effective they’d been.

A sudden wave of dizziness washed over Spy and he bowed his head, resting his forehead on his palm. His other hand was numb again, and the loss of feeling was creeping up his wounded arm. He huffed out a sigh.

“Ugh, we should get dees over weed,” he said, grimacing when he heard the thickening of his accent. He had lost more blood than he’d thought. “Ma tête feels like eet ees full of coton.”

“And how’s that any different from usual?” Sniper said, smirking. Spy rolled his eyes at him.

“Hon hon hon, monsieur ees so funny,” he said drily, grinding out his cigarette against the wall. He reached under his coat and withdrew his revolver, holding it for the other man to take. “No offense to dat beastly rifle of yours, but I would radder leave my ’ead at least somewhat eentact. Call eet a Frenchman’s vaneety.”

Sniper frowned. He took a long moment to stub his own cigarette, blowing the last of the smoke out slowly, eyes on the gun. He drummed his fingers against the wall. Spy’s hand started to shake—the revolver was heavy in his blood-loss weakened grip—and Sniper sighed, taking the weapon. He frowned at it, flicking open the chamber and snapping it shut again.

“Y’sure, mate? I don’t mind givin’ ya the win,” he said. Spy grunted.

“Oh, ouais, I ween and must ’obble my way back to base so Medic can ’eal me, eef de blood loss does not keell me first,” he said, snorting in a very un-Spy-like manner. “I am not so eager for de respawn void, mon ami. I’d radder be put out of dees meesery so we can all put dees maudit jour be’ind us.”

Sniper chuckled, hefting the revolver. “Fair ’nough, I suppose. Alright.” He pushed himself away from the wall and snapped the gun up so its barrel pointed right between Spy’s eyes, posed like a spaghetti-Western gunslinger. He smirked. “Any last words, ya froggy bastard?”

Spy observed the theatrics with a blasé expression. “T’es osti de criss de con.” He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Can you-” He swallowed past a wave of nausea. “S’il te plaît, do not tell… mon voyou about…”

“No need to worry, mate. He won’t hear a word from me.” The gun barrel pressed against Spy’s forehead, refreshingly cool even through his mask. “See ya on th’other side.”

Breakfast Teaser/WIP

The BLU team (except for Soldier) is pretty tolerant of Red/Freckles whenever he comes around to visit Pyro and Scout by this point. He's not nearly as much of a jackass as their own Scout, during ceasefire at least.

Summary: Freckles decides to thank the Blues for not shooting him on sight every time he drops by.

——

Breakfast (tent. title)

[...]

Freckles was not who [Sniper] expected to see, humming to himself as he shimmied and slid through the kitchen on bare feet, pulling dishes and utensils from various cabinets and drawers. The kid was wearing one of Pyro’s t-shirts (Sniper recognized it instantly as one of the ones Scout had defaced; that lurid shade of pink was certainly distinctive) and Sniper was fairly sure he was wearing a pair of Pyro’s sweatpants as well, the cuffs rolled up several times to keep from dragging on the floor. He’d assembled a fair collection of food on the counter: a mound of potatoes and two onions, already peeled; the brick of cheddar from the fridge; several peppers of various colours and sizes; two packs of breakfast sausages; and two cartons of eggs. Aside from the potatoes and cheese, Sniper knew that none of it had come from their actual supplies; they’d used up the last eggs a few days ago, and they hadn’t had any vegetables (aside from the potatoes, if they could even really be considered vegetables) shipped to them in longer than he liked to think about. Freckles must have made a grocery run on his own.

Sniper stayed just outside the doorway, far enough back for Freckles to not see him as he puttered around the kitchen, setting bowls and other dishes on the counter, and once checking the oven, opening the door a couple inches and nodding in satisfaction at whatever he found. Something seemed to be eluding him, though. After placing a spatula on the counter, he started searching more intently through cupboards and drawers, muttering to himself. Sniper had to stifle a laugh when, after a minute or so of hunting, he pulled a chair over to one of the counters and stood on it, so he could see onto the higher shelves. Freckles had such a big attitude, it was sometimes easy to forget just how short he really was. He saw what he wanted, apparently, because he cursed softly and started trying to get something from the top shelf that, even with the chair, he was hard-pressed to reach.

As Sniper watched, the chair started slowly skidding along the floor, scooting quarter-inch by quarter-inch further and further from the counter as Freckles tried desperately for whatever he was looking for on the top shelf. Freckles didn’t seem to notice: he was standing on tip-toe at the chair’s edge, his tongue poked between his teeth and eyes half-squinted shut as he tried to jam most of his arm into the cupboard. Sniper stepped forward just as the chair gave an almighty screech and shot back a few inches all at once.

“Wha- Huuk!”

Sniper caught Freckles by the collar of his shirt, keeping him from crashing full-on into the counter, and steadied him as he stumbled a step. Freckles’s eyes were wide when they locked onto him, and he froze with one hand rubbing at where his shirt had dug into his throat and the other gripping the counter. Sniper let go of the back of his shirt and looked down at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Somethin’ just outta your reach there, Freckles?” he said, not unkindly. For a second, Freckles only stared at him, wary as a rabbit under a coyote’s eye. Then, slowly, he straightened and gave a nervous little cough.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah,” he said, pointing to the shelf he’d been searching and dropping his eyes. “The cheese grater.”

Sniper walked over to the cabinet and looked in. He had to pop up onto the balls of his feet to catch sight of the grater, tucked toward the back of the top shelf, but he extracted it without stretching too much and held it out. Freckles took it with a mumbled word of thanks, but he didn’t look up. When Sniper didn’t move or say anything further, he backed up a slow step, then another and another, until his back bumped up against the countertop next to the stove.

“I’m, uh… I’m just makin’ breakfast,” he said, with a weak gesture at the food on the counter, “if that’s cool?”

Sniper smiled. As much as part of him wanted to tease, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Freckles really looked like the kid he was, standing there in too-big sweatpants, clutching the cheese grater and staring at his bare feet. Sniper had to admire his balls, too, for all his present nervousness. Spending the night at the enemy base and staying to make breakfast in the morning? Sniper wasn’t sure if he’d do the same, put in the kid’s shoes.

“No wukkas, mate. Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, pulling over the chair Freckles had been using as a step-stool and taking a seat at the table. He nodded at the heaps of food. “Feelin’ a bit peckish, eh?”

Freckles snorted and Sniper saw the beginnings of a relieved smile forming on his lips before he turned to the cutting board.

“It’s not all for me. I’m not that much of a pig ’less I’m totally baked off my ass. I, uh-” He shrugged and started grating the cheese into a large bowl. “I just figured I’d say thanks, y’know. For all you guys not murderin’ me whenever I come over. ’Cept Helmet-Dick, but he’s not here, so…” He stopped grating and looked over his shoulder. “There’s coffee, if ya want. The second pot’s got some a’Spy’s fancy hazelnut shit in it.”

“Stealin’ Spy’s coffee? That’s a bold move, mate,” Sniper said with a smirk. He got up and poured himself a cup of regular coffee, taking it back to his seat. Freckles flashed him a buck-toothed grin.

“Ah, I already steal his weed and his booze,” he said, popping a piece of cheese into his mouth. “Well, Blue steals it for me, but same difference. ’Sides, he can still get some, s’long as he gets up b’fore I drink it all.”

Sniper snorted out a laugh and took a sip of his coffee. It was good and strong. He hummed and leaned back in his seat, watching as Freckles finished with the cheese—the bowl was filled with a heaping mound of cheddar almost as tall again as it was—and started chopping the potatoes into roughly square chunks. His motions had the ease and speed of long practice, and when Sniper continued to stay silent, he started humming to himself again, just on the edge of hearing. Sniper thought he recognized a Beatles tune. Taking another thoughtful sip, Sniper popped his feet up to rest on one of the other empty chairs around the table, one ankle crossed over the other.

“Gotta say, yer one a’the last ones I woulda expected t’see in here first thing in the mornin’,” he said, startling Freckles into stillness. “You bein’ RED aside, I’ve been at this nonsense a dozen years, and I can count on one hand the Scouts I’ve known who’d willin’ly be outta bed before noon on a day off. And I can’t think of any who’d’ve cooked breakfast for the whole team. The whole enemy team, at that.”

He saw Freckles blink. “Oh. Uh, yeah. Well, Ma always told me to be a good houseguest.” He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I just never expected t’get- I guess it hasn’t really been a warm welcome, but, all things considered, the fact that none a’you guys have tried blowin’ me away just for bein’ here deserves some kinda ‘thank you’, right?”

“If it means a free, home-cooked meal, I’m not gonna disagree,” Sniper said with a smile, lifting his coffee cup to the boy in salute. Freckles shot him another brief grin before focusing back on the potatoes. “So, y’do this often?” Sniper said, nodding again to the food when Freckles looked back over his shoulder at him. “Cookin’. Most blokes out here can’t even cut a sandwich in half without cuttin’ themselves, or use any appliance but the microwave without settin’ the whole bloody place ablaze.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, I like cookin’,” Freckles said, drawing an onion over to the cutting board and shoving the chopped potatoes into two large casserole dishes (Sniper hadn’t even known they had a single casserole dish, let alone two). “Ma worked a lotta nights, and it gets pretty borin’ just eatin’ McDonald’s and TV dinners, ya know? Chicks love it, too. I told Blue—yer Scout, I mean—but he don’t believe me: if you can dance ’n’ you can cook, you can drop any chick’s panties halfway to China without even tryin’.”

“Really?” Sniper said, surprised. “No offense, mate, but given yer track record since ya’ve been here…”

Freckles stopped chopping for a moment, and Sniper could see the back of his neck and tips of his ears flushing red. He cleared his throat and returned to the onion after giving himself a shake, his shoulders a little more hunched than before. The silence stretched, leaving Sniper’s prompt unanswered, and Sniper smiled a little.

“Look, no judgment, kid. I’ve been around Heavy and Medic for ages, and I saw more shit back at Sawmill than I ever wanna think about sober. Or drunk, for that matter. It’s just a surprise, that’s all,” he said. “Given how happy y’seemed with Wrenches and seem with Pyro, and how quick y’got to business once y’got here, I figured the sheilas just didn’t really get ya goin’.”

“Nah, nah, they totally do!” Freckles said quickly. “Chicks are awesome, man! I love boobs! S’just, uh…” He shuffled uncomfortably. “S’just… y’know…”

“Actually, I don’t,” Sniper said, a smile coming back to his lips. “Not even a little bit.”

“What, seriously?” Freckles stared at him. “Y’said it yerself, ya been doin’ this shit for-fuckin’-ever.” He scowled slightly and added, “And everyone loves to keep tellin’ me that the last RED Scout was the fuckin’ Teufort bicycle, throwin’ himself at everyone he could, fuckin’ twenty-four seven…”

“Never did learn t’ride a bike,” Sniper said musingly, recrossing his ankles more comfortably. “Wasn’t much use on walkabout; th’Outback’s too rough, ’less you’re willin’ to put in an ungodly amount a’work and carry an ungodly amount a’shit. Easier t’just run with a van.” He shook his head and huffed. “Last RED Scout was a loony little root rat. Ask anyone. Even if I was inclined t’ward blokes, I wouldn’ta stuck my business anywhere near that mess.”

“And Spy never tried for nothin’?” Freckles said, onion chopping entirely forgotten. “I find that kinda fuckin’ hard t’believe. Y’been on the same team with him for years, right? And he ain’t exactly… the straightest ruler in the drawer.”

Sniper snorted and said, “Oh, you better believe the damn frog bloody well tried. His first few months at Sawmill, he tried cozyin’ up to me and th’other Sniper on the team near every other day. Persistent git.” He shook his head and shrugged, taking another mouthful of coffee. “He gave it a rest after the piss jars, though.”

“Piss jars?”

“Yup,” Sniper said. “When y’find the perfect perch, y’don’t wanna miss the shot just ’cause ya gotta answer the call a’nature. By the time Shades and I got sick a’Spy’s pesterin’ ’n’ innuendos, between the two of us we musta had, eh, three or four dozen jars.” He chuckled, remembering the look on Spy’s face when the nest’s trapdoor had swung open, and he’d seen what came of pushing Snipers too far. “Never knew the frog could scream that high.”

Freckles stared at him for a few seconds more in stunned silence, but he was soon clutching his gut, guffawing loud enough to wake the entire base. Sniper sipped his coffee, watching as Freckles’s face grew more and more red and he had to grip the counter to keep himself upright. Tears followed soon after, and before long he was gasping between desperate, snorting “hee hee!”s. By the time he wound down, wiping his cheeks and still letting out the occasional breathless giggle, Sniper had finished off his coffee, poured himself a new cup, and returned to his chair with his feet kicked up again.

“Hoo. Hoooo. Holy shit, my sides hurt. Ah, fuck me, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so fuckin’ hard. Jesus.” Freckles turned back to the cutting board and resumed dicing the onions, his shoulders still quaking with mirth. “Fuckin’ piss jars… Jesus fuckin’ Christ…” He snickered again.

Then he froze. Sniper frowned as, stock still, Freckles sniffed at the air, like a dog. To Sniper’s shock, he turned sharply to his left, growling and hefting the knife in his hand as if he meant to use it on someone, rather than just the vegetables.

“Spy, I swear to God, if you get even a single fuckin’ flake of ash on the food, I’m shovin’ this knife straight up yer fuckin’ ass.”

Sniper blinked as Spy shimmered into view at the corner of the counter, one arm crossed over his chest and the other hand holding a cigarette to his lips. Sniper shook his head, impressed. There was another point to Freckles’s card. Sniper had been at this long enough that he could usually tell when Spy was coming and going, even cloaked, but the kid had caught him while Sniper hadn’t even had a clue.

Spy was giving Freckles a thoroughly unimpressed look, not at all swayed by the rather large chopping implement in his hand, despite the threat. He blew out a puff of smoke and deliberately ashed his cigarette into the sink.

“I am shaking in my wingtips,” he said drily, pushing the knife away with the tip of a finger. “You ’ave quite the nose, lapin.”

“And those things fuckin’ stink,” Freckles shot back, jabbing the knife at the cigarette before turning back to the cutting board with a huff. “It’s a miracle y’can sneak up on anyone at all. Ya really gotta smoke that shit in here while I’m cookin’?”

“I am a Spy; I always smoke,” Spy said, pouring himself some coffee—and giving Freckles a dark look when he smelled the hazelnut—before mixing in some cream and sugar and taking a seat across the table from Sniper. Freckles rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, but ya don’t hafta smoke here,” he said. “Y’could just fuck off and not be a total fuckin’ prick. Shockin’, I know, but it is an option.”

Sniper coughed out a brief laugh and Spy cut him a look before he said, in a too-sweet voice, “It is, but why bother when being a ‘total prick’ is so much more entertaining? Besides, I can’t ’elp but be a little suspicious of the RED Scout ’elping ’imself to our kitchen. You could be trying to poison us, for all I know.”

“For all you know. Right. Sneaky, back-stabbin’ fuck,” Freckles muttered, finishing chopping the onions and putting them into the casserole dishes with the potatoes. He jiggled the dishes a little so everything sat evenly, drizzled them with oil, salt, and pepper, and slid them into the oven. “Just stay outta the way, assface. And I meant it about the fuckin’ ash, too.”

He tossed an ashtray onto the table, and Spy glowered at him, very pointedly tapping ash into it. Sniper hid his growing smile behind another sip of coffee. As much as he considered Spy to be his best mate, it was still pretty damn funny, watching him being stood up to by the diminutive Red.

Spy took another drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke toward Freckles as he exhaled, and said, “Well, well. Someone ’as certainly grown a backbone lately. I can remember, not so long ago, that even being in the same room as one of us in our own base would ’ave ’ad you running like the little rabbit you are.”

“Yeah, but that was before I really got to know the guy y’let fuck ya,” Freckles said flippantly. He had leaned back against the counter and was cracking eggs with one hand into another large bowl held in the crook of his other arm. He gave Spy a mocking grin. “I mean, if ya let Blue up yer ass, how scary can ya be? I could kick his ass with my eyes closed and my hands tied.” He shrugged as he cracked another egg. “Besides, if ya fuck with me too much, I know Py’ll barbeque ya for me. He’s good like that.”

Another small chuckle escaped Sniper and he could only shrug as well when Spy leveled a glare at him. “Sorry, mate, but he’s got a point. Pyro’d slow-roast any of our asses if we mess around too far with his beau off the field, and you know it.”

Spy let out a huff and took a sip of coffee. “It would be just my luck that it is the pyromaniac ’oo despises me that decides to fraternize with the most easily ’arassed member of the enemy team…”

“I dunno ’bout easily harassed,” Sniper said, sharing a smile with Freckles. “Y’saw what he did to his own team when they kept pushin’ him.”

“Damn right,” Freckles said. He was viciously churning the eggs in the bowl with a fork, turning them a goopy golden yellow. “Just ’cause I’m short and freckly-”

“And buck-toothed,” Spy put in maliciously, “and young enough to be most of ours’ son.”

“-don’t mean I’m easy to push around,” Freckles finished, flicking a stray piece of onion at Spy. He set the bowl down on the counter and prepared a cup of coffee for himself—Spy’s coffee, with enough cream and sugar in it to disgust any true coffee drinker—as Sniper laughed and Spy wiped at the spot the onion had impacted his balaclava with a grimace of distaste. Freckles hopped up to sit on the counter beside the cooking supplies, swinging his legs slightly so his heels bumped out a light beat on the cabinets, and smiled at the two Blues. He swallowed a mouthful of his coffee and gestured with his mug.

“Even with Py outta the picture, I could still kick yer ass,” he said. “Bein’ nervous before was just ’cause I wasn’t sure how shit worked yet. I thought it was just ‘rahr rahr, kill the other team’ all the fuckin’ time, ceasefire or no. I mean, yer Soldier’s kind of a dick that way, but the rest a’ya ain’t so bad. Not bad enough for me t’be jumpin’ outta my skin every five seconds, anyway.”

“Ahh, we’re all old hands at this point,” Sniper said. “Except for Pyro and Scout, of course, and Soldier’s a… special case. The rest of us, though?” He flapped a hand. “For me, plain and simple, it’s not worth the effort if I’m not gettin’ paid for it, and you’re not doin’ anythin’ I’d wanna kill ya for. Most of the time, anyway.”

“It does feel like a waste of effort. Not that it takes very much, but still,” Spy grunted, returning Freckles’s stuck out tongue with a sneer of his own, ignoring Sniper’s returning amusement. “I ’ave better things to spend my time doing.”

“Yeah, ’cause smokin’ and drinkin’ and sneakin’ around watchin’ people are sooo important. Who would constantly invade our privacy and give us all fuckin’ cancer if we didn’t have you?” Freckles said, rolling his eyes and sipping more coffee. “Ya do gotta get Blue off, I guess. I mean, he’s already a total fuckin’ shithead. I don’t wanna know what he’s like when he’s pent up. That’s kinda important.”

“Rosso is right. You are a truly monumental pest,” Spy grumbled, giving Sniper’s chair a kick when he couldn’t keep his snickers contained. “What are you giggling at, bushman? Where is your espirit de corps? You should be defending my honour against this miserable RED interloper.”

“I make it a policy not t’piss off anyone makin’ me food, and this is good fun,” Sniper said, then paused. “Nah, hold on. Watchin’ ya bein’ taken down a peg is ‘good fun’; watchin’ Freckles do it to ya is bloody hilarious.”

“Ha!”

[...]

Moving Day teaser/WIP

The first short chronologically. Been having way too much trouble just getting my wording right when I try to continue it (it's just the BLUs arriving at and exploring the new base and getting settled in ffs) but I've got the opening and part of a scene later on (separated by [...]) and I figured, fuck it, I'll throw it up. Probably end up deleting this post once the full short is done, but it's been bugging me having the second short be the first one that I posted anything for :/

It's pretty safe to assume any short with one or both Scouts in it will have excessive f-bombs; this one does.

Summary: The BLU team arrives at their new home.

——

Moving Day

Sniper had never thought his camper van small. For one man with limited spatial requirements and little desire for luxury, he thought it was perfect. It had a tiny kitchenette with a stove, fridge, and diner-style table, a cubby bed tucked up over the cab and a pull-out folded into the sofa along the back wall (and the kitchen’s table and benches could be converted into a bed, too, in a pinch), and even a little bathroom with a shower and flush toilet. He’d seen some of the monstrosities that tourists liked to roll around in, more full trailer homes on wheels than proper camper vans, and could only shake his head, wondering who could possibly need so much extra space.

On the long drive from Teufort to Well, however, he had to wonder if maybe something a little bigger would have been so bad.

It was supposed to be a simple two hour drive, moving Builders’ League United’s Team Garrison to their new base. A few dozen clicks or so of empty desert backroad—boring, but easy. Easy, if one didn’t consider the innumerable potholes in the barely maintained road, or the fact that there were nine mostly large men jammed into the camper’s few, not very large seats in hundred-plus degree heat. It was now approaching the midpoint of the third hour of their two hour trip, and none of them were particularly happy about it.

Despite multiple stops already to stretch their legs and get some air—and once to replace a tire fallen victim to one of the many, many goddamn potholes—everyone was feeling hot and cramped. Even up in the cab, with the windows down to allow in as much breeze as possible, it was sweltering, and bloody bright. Sniper could feel a rager of a headache building in his temples after so long staring at the black strip of asphalt in the endless waste of sun-baked dirt—even through his sunglasses, it was like staring into the Goddamn sun—and Spy, in the passenger seat beside him, had discarded his suit jacket in a rare concession to the heat. There had been a few grumbles from the back, but so far, most of the team had had the courtesy to keep their dissatisfaction to themselves in such tight, uncomfortable quarters, so as to not make the extended trip any more unpleasant.

Most of them.

“Are we fuckin’ there yet?”

A chorus of displeased groans followed on the heels of that most hated of road-trip questions, and Sniper’s tightening grip squeaked on the steering wheel. He’d known it was coming—really, it surprised him that it had taken this long—but he still had to unclench his jaw before he could reply.

“No, Scout,” he grated out, trying and failing to keep the annoyance from his tone, “we’re not there yet. Can see the base, though; shouldn’t be much longer.”

The heat-distorted silhouette of their future home had first risen out of the craggy desert landscape in the distance not even a minute before, and had only just begun really gaining distinction from its surroundings as the road’s meandering track led them on toward it. Sniper judged they had another five minutes of unnecessary twists and turns—maybe fifteen, on this shithole road—before they reached it. If Scout could’ve kept his damn mouth shut for just another fifteen minutes…

The sounds of scuffling and scrambling were accompanied by another outburst from those in the back, seemingly propelling Scout into the camper’s cab on a wave of outraged cries. He nearly impaled himself on the center console in his haste to see out the front windshield; Spy pressed a hand to his skinny chest to keep him from throwing himself straight into the glass. Scout didn’t seem to notice: he was still fully leaning into Spy’s hand when his face split in a massive grin at the sight of the structures looming in the distance.

“Fuck yeah! S’about fuckin’ time!” he said. Sniper rolled his eyes when Scout leaned further into the cab, finally brushing away Spy’s hand and fully blocking Sniper’s view of the road as he tried to get a look at the speedometer. “Christ, why’re ya goin’ so fuckin’ slow, wombat? We’re almost there and yer drivin’ like my fuckin’ gramma.”

Sniper shoved Scout out of his way with a hand in the face, and said, “I can’t go any faster if I can’t see the bloody road. Gonna send us straight into another pothole, and I don’t have a second spare tire, so unless ya wanna walk the rest a’the way?”

“I could probably get there fuckin’ faster,” Scout griped, but he subsided somewhat, bracing himself crouched in the cab’s threshold. He popped up every few seconds, though, to peer out at the slowly approaching base. He reminded Sniper of—funnily enough—a wombat, peeking in and out of its hole. A very talkative, vulgar wombat.

“Seriously, who the fuck drew up this road? A straight fuckin’ line from here to there, how hard would thatta been? They can afford to pay us hundreds a’grand a year, and they invented fuckin’ respawn, for Christ’s sake, but they can’t fill in a few ditches and blow up a few rocks so we can have a fuckin’ straight road? Wait, is that fuckin’ train tracks? We’re drivin’ through the desert in the fuckin’ hobo rape-van, and we coulda taken the fuckin’ train?”

“It’s not a ‘rape-van’, ya bloody whelp,” Sniper growled, tugging the bill of Scout’s baseball cap down over his eyes and cutting a glare at Spy when his cough didn’t quite cover a tight chuckle. “There’s no direct line from Teufort to here. Drivin’, even on this sorry excuse of a road, is faster than havin’ t’switch trains three’r four times.”

“Man, if the Reds got ta take the train, I’m gonna be so fuckin’ pissed,” Scout said, straightening his hat. “What if they got there already an’ they’re fuckin’ with all our shit?”

“The base and battlefield ’ere are far larger than at Teufort, and ’ave far superior security,” Spy said, taking a drag from his ever-present cigarette. “The battlefield is fair game, but there are bulk’eads at each barracks’ entrance, so the Reds should not be able to get in.” He held his hand out the window to let the wind take the ash from the tip of his cigarette. “We won’t need to worry about that ostie ‘Alarm-o-Tron’ nonsense any more, at least, with a proper security system in place.”

“Hey, I liked the Alarm-o-Tron. There was some fun shit on there,” Scout said, grinning. “‘The RED Spy is a woman!’ Fuckin’ classic.”

“Mmm, Rosso never ’as quite forgiven you for that, ’as ’e?” Spy said with a chuckle, and Sniper had to smile. That had been a good few days, after Engineer had finally given into Scout’s pestering and showed him how the enormous alert board in the Teufort base’s basement worked, even if Scout had eventually turned his Alarm-o-Tron antics on his teammates. Seeing the Reds losing their minds over the sporadic (and usually ridiculous) alerts blaring through their base (“The RED Sniper is about to explode!” was one of the BLU sharpshooter’s personal favourites) had provided better entertainment than they usually had in months.

“M’still not convinced the RED Pyro ain’t a fuckin’ vampire,” Scout said, a thoughtful frown crossing his face. “I mean, we never seen him out a’that suit durin’ the day, and he’s a bloodthirsty motherfucker, always usin’ his fuckin’ axe… Why else would the Alarm-o-Tron have ‘is a vampire’ on it if someone ain’t one?”

“Because RED ’n’ BLU are run by a buncha loons,” Sniper said, snorting and rolling his eyes. The camper bumped over a raised patch of asphalt, and he winced when something started rattling under the bonnet. He could see the road actually leading into the base now. One more turn and then a surprisingly straight stretch to the barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding the compound where they’d be spending the next God knows how long resuming their endless battles with the mercenaries from Reliable Excavation Demolition. He gave the dashboard a reassuring pat.

“Almost there, sweetheart,” he murmured, wincing again as another bump increased the violence of the rattle. “Not even another mile, y’can do it.”

“Adorable,” Spy said, raising an eyebrow. “Per’aps we can finally put the poor thing out of its misery once we arrive, if its valiant effort to get us the next few ’undred feet doesn’t do it for us.”

“Ah, blow it out yer ass, Spy, she’s fine,” Sniper said, hunching slightly over the steering wheel and adding under his breath, “Yer fine, yer fine, just a li’l further…”

Thankfully, despite the increasingly concerning sounds coming from the engine compartment, and Scout’s renewed complaints about the speed of Sniper’s driving with their destination “literally right fuckin’ there, man, come on”, the camper managed to make it past the fence and into the expansive courtyard at the rear of the BLU base before letting out a groaning wheeze and shuddering to a grateful stop. The relief in the sighs and groans of those in the back was almost palpable. Scout clambered over Spy and out the passenger door with a whoop, ignoring the Frenchman’s irate curses as elbows, knees, and cleats jabbed into him in the course of his scrambling passage.

[...]

Sniper saw the red dot on the wall half a second before Scout darted past him, and managed to catch the hem of the younger man’s t-shirt just before he passed out of reach. The echoing crack of a rifle shot accompanied Scout’s yelp as he was yanked backward, and a not insignificant hole appeared in the concrete wall where his head would have been. Spy raised an eyebrow at it, taking another puff off his smoke.

“It seems the Reds are already ’ere,” he said, and Scout started cursing, jerking his shirt out of Sniper’s grip and bolting to the window he’d almost been shot through. Sniper stepped up beside him with a sigh, looking out across the field at the RED base, as Scout started bellowing threats and swears at the top of his lungs.

The RED Sniper was making no attempt to hide himself; he stood in the window of the battlements directly across the field from theirs, rifle raised. The red dot of his sight returned, making Scout hit the deck with another yell as it passed over him, and Sniper crossed his arms over his chest when the little red light drifted there.

“Yeah, we see ya. Wanker.” There was another crack, and he felt the wind of the shot as it passed his cheek. He didn’t flinch.

“Fuckin’- He knows we ain’t fightin’ yet, right?” Scout said, peeking up over the windowsill.

“Of course he does. He’s just bein’ a bloody dipstick,” Sniper said, glowering when his RED counterpart waved, and offering a rude two-fingered gesture in return. He glanced at Spy, who was leaning against the wall beside the window. “Y’know he won’t actually shoot ya. Not yet.”

“While your trust in that filthy convict is encouraging, I’d rather avoid the risk,” Spy said, blowing a plume of smoke toward the window. Another bullet cut through it, making it curl into two distinct, swirling clouds. Spy rolled his eyes. “Ouais, I’ll stay ’ere, out of sight, merci beaucoup.”

Team Garrison (BLU) Bare Bones Basics

What it says on the can! Some details about my BLU boys. Eventually might put up proper bios for everyone, but for now, just some very basics about who they are. Scout, Pyro, Sniper, and Spy are the primary focus on the BLU team, so they've got a little more info. I'll throw up the RED one soon, once I've actually got it done (it won't be as long, though).

BLU - Team Garrison

Scout

Age: 23 Nationality: American (Massachusetts [Boston]) Time w/ BLU: 13 months Height: 5’11 Hair: Light brown, crew cut Eye Colour: Hazel Build: Slim, broad-shouldered, well-defined legs Distinguishing Features: N/A

[Technically the main character? At least in the beginning.]

The prototypical Scout. An arrogant, loud-mouthed, hard-brawling boy from Boston, with a single ma, eight older brothers, and enough energy (even without his monthly supply of Bonk) to drive even the most patient of his teammates up the wall.

The biggest pain in everyone’s ass. General levels of tolerance for him and his antics range from Engie and Sniper’s resigned acceptance to Soldier and Medic’s near-homicidal antipathy.

Unapologetically offensive (though racism is generally off the table. Homophobia is fair game, though). Curses constantly, insults everyone he meets, and loves to push people’s buttons to see how much of a rise he can get out of them.

Pyro

Age: 20 Nationality: Mexican (Santa Ana) Time w/ BLU: 12 months Height: 5’9 Hair: Black, chin length, long bangs Eye Colour: Brown Build: Underweight, defined arms Distinguishing Features: Third-degree burn scar: 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)

Almost never seen out of his suit and mask, and rarely spends time with the rest of the team. He showers and eats on his own, and barely leaves his room during ceasefire, usually only emerging for the occasional visits with Engie in his workshop, or to burn things.

He was “convinced” to show his face by Scout several months ago at Teufort (during a very long weekend of Bonk-induced harassment), and hasn’t really forgiven him for it yet.

Is only really comfortable around Engie and Medic. He will only speak to the two of them willingly without his mask, and if he’s not in his room, Engie’s workshop is the next best place to look for him.

Sniper

Age: 38 Nationality: Australian (Northern Territory [primarily Outback]) Time w/ BLU: 11 years, 3 months [longest-serving merc] Height: 6’5 Hair: Dark brown, short, messy, long sideburns Eye Colour: Dark blue Build: Thin, broad-shouldered Distinguishing Features: “Sniper scar”: left cheekbone and side of left nostril, perpetual five o'clock shadow

Team Garrison’s unofficial leader.

He and Spy have been on the same team since Spy was recruited at Sawmill a decade ago. He considers Spy to be his best friend and they give off major “old married couple” energy, despite their relationship being entirely platonic. 100% heterosexual life partners.

More friendly than a lot of Snipers, and is seen around base more often during ceasefire. He has a camper van, but it’s more a means of transport than a home. He actually sleeps in his provided room in the barracks most nights, and is usually the first one up in the morning (he makes the coffee).

Spy

Age: 41 Nationality: (Assumed) French Time w/ BLU: 10 years, 1 month Height: 5’8 Hair: Wouldn't you like to know? Eye Colour: Light grey Build: Slender Distinguishing Features: N/A

Like Sniper, more friendly and less reserved than one might expect of a typical member of his class. He’s been at this “war” long enough to not take things too seriously any more, and he’s grown to have at least some degree of affection for the rest of the team over the years.

Incredibly nosy, and a shameless gossip. Knows more about the rest of the team than they would ever expect.

Surprising absolutely everyone (including himself), he’s found himself on unexpectedly friendly terms with Scout. He’s one of the few that Scout will actually sit down with long enough to have an actual conversation with.

The Rest

Soldier: Utterly devoted to the cause, and expects the best from the rest of the men, to an often infuriating degree.

Demoman: An alcoholic, one-eyed, Black Scotsman. Suspiciously similar to the Team Fortress Demoman, Tavish DeGroot. The “fun older brother” of the team; one of the few members of Team Garrison that tolerates, and even sometimes enjoys, Scout’s particular brand of obnoxious, hyperactive jackassery.

Heavy: Uncle Heavy. Laid-back and easy-going, more than willing to sit and chill with the guys, drinking a few beers and shooting the shit. Very protective of his team, especially Medic (his “husband”).

Engineer: The team dad. Quiet, friendly, and down-to-earth. Always willing to sit and listen to any of the guys’ problems and try to help them sort through them. The only married merc, and the only parent: he has two young daughters (nine and eleven years old) back home that he will gladly talk anyone’s ear off about.

Medic: The chronically exasperated mother-hen of Team Garrison. Austrian, despite Soldier’s unwavering belief that he must be German (due to German being his mother tongue). Oldest merc at 58 years old, a fact which Scout never lets him forget. Has a pet turtle dove named Rokitansky (after the Austrian physician and pathologist [not anything to do with rockets in spite of, again, Soldier’s certainty that this is the case]) who lives in the Infirmary. Has been in a loving relationship with Heavy since their days at Sawmill.

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.

——

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?”

[...]

A Special Cigarette Teaser/WIP

'Nother WIP. Gonna keep putting up chunks I'm happy with. Hopefully having it up somewhere will help prod my brain back into gear :) As with any of my WIPs, a [...] indicates where the rest is going to eventually go.

Summary: Scout won't shut up, and Spy offers him a cigarette, to get him out of everyone's hair.

——

A Special Cigarette

[...]

“Scout!”

The sharp shout and forceful click of Spy’s cigarette case cut off Scout’s verbal tirade. Spy held one of his precious cigarettes vertically between thumb and forefinger, making sure Scout could see it. It was different from his usual tobacco-delivery vehicles: it was white instead of brown, and thinner, with a twisted tip rather than flat. Scout’s eyes fixed on it and, just for fun, Spy moved his hand back and forth. Scout didn’t seem to realize his gaze followed it, like a dog watching a ball, until Engineer couldn’t quite manage to muffle a snort of laughter. Scout shook his head and glowered at him before turning back to Spy. Spy held his eyes as he laid the smoke on the coffee table before him.

“In return for your agreement to immediately take your ’yperactive, jabbering self elsewhere and save the rest of us a collective psychotic break, I will give you one of my… special cigarettes. If!” He held up an arresting hand when Scout started reaching. “If you take it outside. I do not wish to listen to your virgin lungs ’acking your way through it.”

And it will keep you out of our hair for a few hours at least, Spy thought, lowering his hand and smiling as Scout darted forward to snatch the cigarette. He bolted without another word, the pat-a-pat-a-pat of his steps rapidly retreating down the hall, and Spy heaved a heavy sigh of relief, hearing it echoed by Engineer and Medic.

“Thank God,” Engineer said, returning to his blueprints. “If I’da known that was all it took t’chase him off, I’da taken up smokin’ months ago.”

“Ah, but it is my ineffable charm that makes it look so tempting, non? Besides, mon ami, you lack the… Machiavellian spirit required to manipulate the boy,” Spy said, taking one of his usual brown cigarettes from its case and setting it between his lips. He was smirking as he lit it. “I would feel worse about it, but even I can ’andle only so much of ’is exuberance.” His smirk widened as he blew out a plume of smoke. “And it’s not likely to do ’im any ’arm, so long as ’e is not more paranoid than ’e lets on. Or Soldier finds ’im.”

Engineer gave him a curious look, but Medic smiled in a decidedly evil manner. “Ah, I zhought it did not look like vun of your usual zigaretten. How strong vas it, exactly?”

“Strong enough to keep ’im occupied until dinner, at least, though ’e is likely to have quite an appetite when ’e returns,” Spy said, shrugging when Medic cackled. Engineer’s confusion deepened.

The hard-hatted man frowned between Doc and the too-smug Spy. He knew he was missing something, and he wasn’t sure that the “special cigarette” Scout had absconded with was quite so harmless as Spy seemed to think. He gave his blueprints a longing look, then sighed and set down his pencil, getting to his feet. Though he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, he had a feeling someone should follow Scout and keep an eye on him. Just in case.

——

It had taken Scout way too long to find a way to light the cigarette. He’d tried the kitchen, hoping for matches, but there had been nothing for him there. He’d pestered Demo for the use of his matches or lighter until the damn cyclops had chased him out of his workshop, hollering about “sensitive chemicals” and “needing to concentrate”. Sniper’s nest had been empty, and he was never going to risk going into Pyro’s room again. Finally, his search had brought him to the base’s rear courtyard, and it was there he found his salvation, or at least an ignition source.

Sniper stood at a small folding table set up beside Engie’s “baby”—a double-decker barbeque converted from two halves of an old oil drum and various scrap Engie had pulled from the seemingly unending piles in his workshop; Engie had gotten BLU to bring it along with his truck when the team had moved—while Pyro carefully arranged charcoal briquettes and pieces of scrap wood inside. Though the plates heaped with meat on the table took Scout’s attention for a moment, thoughts of barbeque making his stomach gurgle in anticipation, he was mostly able to keep his focus on the happily humming firebug in the heavy rubber suit.

“Yo, Py, y’got a light I can borrow- Whoa, shit!”

Pyro spun quickly, and he had his flamethrower in his hands. Fuck, where had he been keeping that thing? Scout threw his hands up when the weapon’s muzzle swung to point directly at his face, though he was forced to lower them again when he dropped the cigarette, fumbling to catch it without crushing it. His flailing, and Pyro’s soft growls, drew Sniper’s attention, and the sharpshooter raised an eyebrow when he saw what Scout held.

“Well now, whatcha got there, Twinkle Toes?” he said, stepping forward and resting a hand on Pyro’s shoulder. That settled him somewhat; he stopped growling, at least. Scout flipped Pyro the bird—and had to dance back when Pyro let loose a small jet from his flamethrower—before he held out the cigarette for Sniper to inspect.

“One’a Spy’s smokes,” he said proudly, puffing his chest out. “It’s special, too; he said so, and it ain’t brown like all his other ones. He told me to come smoke it out here, and I was lookin’ for fuckin’ matches, but Py’s out here so I thought I’d ask him for a light.”

He cast a glare at the younger man, but Pyro’s hostility had faded into genuine curiosity over the small white cylinder in Scout’s hand. He leaned in close to peer at it (or Scout assumed he was peering from behind the huge lenses of that creepy-ass mask), and even gave it an experimental prod with one rubber-gloved finger. Sniper smiled and straightened, tipping his hat back.

“Looks special, alright,” he said, scratching his forehead with a chuckle. “Well, I hope y’have fun. I’ll make sure t’throw a few extra hot dogs on the barbie for ya.”

“Thaaaanks…” Scout said, frowning as Sniper turned back to his meat preparation, and he returned his attention to Pyro. The firestarter was still staring at the cigarette in his hand with something that Scout was fairly sure was awe. “So, ya got a light?”

Pyro straightened and Scout flinched when he swung the flamethrower’s muzzle up again. This time, though, he held it at a comfortable distance, tilted so the pilot light sat at prime cigarette-lighting height. Scout whooped and offered his profuse thanks as he set the cigarette between his lips and carefully leaned forward. He’d seen Spy light his smokes hundreds of times, if not off the end of a flamethrower. Just hold it to the fire and inhale-

The first rush of smoke came with a burnt, earthy flavour he didn’t find entirely unpleasant, but it was also accompanied by an intense, scratchy burning in the back of his throat that had him doubled over hacking. He steadied himself with his hands on his knees, choking and coughing until he was half sure he was going to die. The burning slowly faded, however, and he was left with a dizzying lightness in his head when he was finally able to straighten up. He swayed, holding up the cigarette to peer at it critically.

He took another puff, more carefully, and held the smoke briefly in his lungs before exhaling; Pyro watched him in blatant fascination. Scout still coughed, but it wasn’t as harsh and didn’t last as long. By the time he’d finished, he felt… floaty. Light. It actually wasn’t half bad.

Five minutes later, Engineer found himself looking upon a strange sight as he came out the base’s back door. Pyro sat cross-legged by the trunk of the scraggly little tree that shaded the rear of the courtyard, while Scout hung upside-down in front of him by his knees from one of the tree’s lower branches. The speedy Bostonian seemed surprisingly sedate, even considering his odd position. As Engie strode up, he took a puff from the “cigarette”, holding the smoke in his mouth before blowing a stream toward the filters in Pyro’s mask. He giggled before he’d finished exhaling, and the remaining smoke ended up being expelled by laughter-laced coughs.

Sniper still stood by the unlit barbeque, but his full attention was on the pair at the tree. He looked over at Engie when he got close, grinning unabashedly. “Gotta say, it’s one’a Spy’s more entertainin’ notions, eh?”

Engie shook his head, tucking his hands in the pockets of his overalls, and said, “The Hell did he give the kid?”

“Just a li’l of th’old ganja, if I had to take a guess, mate,” Sniper said, his grin widening impossibly further when Scout leaned forward to blow more smoke at Pyro and ended up falling from his branch into Pyro’s lap. It was a short fall; Scout was giggling again seconds after he’d landed on the firebug. “S’pose if anyone could get their hands on it, it’d be the spook, but Scooter musta been runnin’ ya pretty ragged for him to resort to it.”

“Oh, he was doin’ that fer certain, damn motor-mouth,” Engie said, smiling as he watched Pyro roll a still-giggling Scout off his lap into the dirt. “So Spy gave him weed?”

Sniper chuckled, nodding. “Yup. Recognized the smell right away, but I doubt the kid’s run across it enough to know it. Gotta say, we shoulda thought of this earlier. Whatever ganj Spy can get his hands on is probably strong enough to slow down a stampedin’ elephant, never mind a hyperactive scrawny manchild.”

[...]

Scout Hunt Teaser/WIP

The last WIP that I'm happy with (for now)! Will probably be posting little blurbs and random info posts from now on, at least until I'm happy enough with more of the WIPs to post them, or I actually (gasp!) manage to finish some more shorts.

A new match-type is added to the rotation: Class Hunt. First up: the Scouts. The Scouts just have to survive for six hours against all the other mercs. No respawn for them (and only five respawns apiece for each of the others), but they get perma-crits, and passive healing (with overheal) when standing still. It's a loooong day.

This is more toward the end of the short. I have more before it but it's not quite as coherent yet.

Summary: The Administration throws in a new match type: Class Hunt, and the Scouts are up first.

——

SCOUT HUNT

[...]

The cheery triple beep of a level three sentry echoed up from the second floor of the warehouse, along with Tex’s not-so-apologetic, “Sorry boys!”

“Bite me, Hardhat,” Blue called through the hole in the floor, leaning back against the wall with a groan. He’d lost his hat at some point in the last hour or so, and he looked as spent as Red was starting to feel. Red had never really considered how much energy it took to run for his life for almost six hours straight. Dying sucked, but at least respawn was rejuvenating in its own way. This “passive healing” shit just wasn’t cutting it.

[...]

“No, shut up and fuckin’ listen t’me,” Blue growled, jabbing Red sharply in the chest. “They’re gonna start tryin’ to smoke us outta here if we don’t move soon; they have to or they lose without even tryin’. Yer smaller than me, and y’got yer Bonk. Y’just gotta fuckin’ book it soon as I start gettin’ blasted, and find somewhere to fuckin’ hide. They’ll have a harder time findin’ you than they would me, and y’just gotta keep away from ’em for ten more minutes. Long as ya don’t get yerself fuckin’ killed, I’ll respawn back in and we fuckin’ win. Easy shit.”

[...]

“You better not fuckin’ die, chucklenuts,” Blue said, stepping up to the edge of the hole leading to the lower floors. He took a deep breath, grimacing, and shut his eyes. “Ahhh, this is gonna fuckin’ suck.”

Red cracked and chugged his Bonk so he wouldn’t have to watch Blue take the step over the edge, but he could hear the all-too-triumphant beeps of the sentry below before the air was filled with nothing but machine-gun fire and explosions. He didn’t hesitate. The Bonk wouldn’t have let him even if he’d wanted to: the now-familiar, exhilarating rush made him feel like he’d explode if he stood still.

[...]

Everyone turned at the soft groan behind them, and there was Scout, falling forward to his knees but looking otherwise perfectly fine. Spy was at his side in a second, alternating between bitter and soothing mutters as he checked him over, and Sniper quickly joined him, giving Scout a clap on the back. For once, Scout offered no complaints about the fussing; with his head hanging, eyes closed, and shoulders slumped, he looked completely exhausted.

“S’still today?” he mumbled, finally brushing away Spy’s hands when he started to pull away his cap. Sniper smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Still today. Siren just went,” he said. “Freckles zipped right on back to his side as soon as ya dropped down. Guess no one over there was able t’nip ’im.”

Scout nodded, a small smile touching his lips. “Knew the li’l fucker could do it…” He laid a hand against his forehead and let out a long breath. “Fuck, m’tired…”

[...]

“Yo, Hardhat.” Engie turned to catch the grim smile Scout gave him. “Yer daughters? Second they turn eighteen, I am all over that shit. Fuckin’ count on it.”

“Wha- Hey- Hell no, boy! Disproportionate response!” Engie yelped and sputtered as Spy helped Scout deeper into the base, starting to take a step after them. He stopped when Sniper chuckled and patted him on the shoulder, though.

“Ah, let him have it, Truckie. Poor kid’s had a rough day.”

Little Moments: A Ticklish Situation Teaser/WIP

Another Little Moment that's mostly done, this one even more so than the others. Why are a few opening sentences so hard? D:

Summary: Pyro and Blue make a very important discovery about Freckles.

——

Little Moments: A Ticklish Situation

[...]

“Ozzie! Oz, save me! Oz!”

Sniper stopped in his tracks at the desperate, pleading cry behind him, and looked back into the rec room. He blinked slowly. Freckles, face bright pink and horrified, seemed to be trying to climb over one of the arms of the couch, his chest pulled up onto it and hands desperately clutching for anything he could use to pull himself further. Pyro and Scout were rather effectively preventing his escape attempt, though. Pyro was seated squarely on the small of Freckles’s back, one of the younger man’s legs bent in his hold so he could trap it under his arm, and Scout had the other leg by the ankle while sitting on the back of his knee. Freckles’s boots and socks had been haphazardly tossed in the vague direction of the rec room door; Sniper nudged the nearer of the discarded shoes with a toe.

He raised an eyebrow at his two teammates, who’d frozen guiltily in place at his appearance. 

“Interrogatin’ the enemy, then, are we?”

The shift in the three young men’s faces was priceless. Pyro and Scout shared a truly evil grin, and poor Freckles, who’d started to look hopeful when Sniper stopped in the doorway, now wore the expression of a man seeing salvation snatched away from right in front of his nose. His eyes went huge and he renewed his frantic escape attempts, panting curses when the two Blues atop him remained unmoved. Pyro, his grin almost feral in its intensity, drew a finger down the arch of the foot he had trapped, resulting in a panicked yelp. Scout firmed his hold on Freckles’s other ankle and turned his grin on Sniper.

“Exactly,” he said. “Interrogatin’ the enemy. Gotta torture him, figure out what he knows.”

“No no no no no-!”

Sniper shook his head, giving Freckles an apologetic smile, and pointed a warning finger at Scout.

“He pisses ’imself, you two are cleanin’ it up.”

And he continued on his way toward the kitchen, not fully able to contain his chuckles at the frantic shouts rising behind him.

“Nononono nooooo! Ozzie, come back, come baaack! Save meEEEEeeheeheehee! Fuck shit! AHHHhahahahahahaha!”

Scout vs Scout Teaser/WIP

Longer one (a little over 6k words), but ends pretty abruptly again. Still, I'm happy with most of it, so *ta-da*.

Some homophobic language and lots of cursing in this one. Scouts do be like that.

Summary: The Scouts at Well get to know each other a bit better, on and off the field.

——

Scout vs Scout [tent. title]

“I will never stop killing you!”

Those words rang in the RED Scout’s head as he respawned yet again, his BLU counterpart’s gloating face filling his eyes. That fucker. That absolute, shithead motherfucker! All day, he’d been on Scout’s ass: chasing him down every time they caught sight of each other, always yelling trash-talk and insults, unerringly blocking him every time he tried getting further across the field than the train station. He seemed to have made it his mission of the day to piss Scout off.

Scout had suspected his opposite had had a problem with him from his first day on the field, and the frequency—and annoyance level—of their clashes during today’s fight certainly lent credence to the idea. He had no sweet clue why, though. He was being singled out, and for what? What had he done to piss the BLU Scout off so bad?

It was infuriating! They had been sent out here to kill each other, yeah, but he still tried to be sportsmanlike, not going after any one member of the BLU team unless they kept getting in his way. As far as he could tell, no one else on the team had the same problem with their counterparts. What the fuck was that other Scout’s problem?

Growling, Scout pulled down the brim of his cap and tightened the wraps around his hands. If that asshole wanted to fuck with him so bad, so be it. He wasn’t going to make it nearly so easy for him this time.

——

BLU’s Scout gave Medic a thumbs up as he bounded down one of the train station ramps, on his way back toward the RED base. They’d pushed ahead pretty hard today, and Hardhat had a nice little sentry blockade set up just on their side of the central train tracks. None of the Reds had made it across since he’d finished setting up, and Pyro diligently bathed everyone who passed, and the empty air around the sentries, with flame to keep the RED Spy at bay.

The Reds were mostly holed up in their warehouse, poking their noses out the door and—most often their Soldier—making the occasional mad dash into the train station and across the central tracks, only to be blown away by three turrets’ worth of rockets and machine gun fire. Scout grinned when he heard Engie’s maniacal laugh behind him as the level three sentry once again reduced the RED Soldier to meaty rain; he was certainly enjoying himself.

Scout cleared the RED moat in an easy hop and leapt onto one of the train cars perpetually lingering on the RED base’s tracks. He popped a few rounds off at the enemy Pyro, who’d peeked out just a little too far past the warehouse door frame, but he was on high alert for the RED Scout.

The look on that little shit’s face the last time he’d killed him, oooh, it had been priceless! He looked forward to trying to bring it back. Maybe a little too much, but that fucker had been a pain in his ass since he got here. Something about the kid got under his skin, and it wasn’t just that he kept popping up whenever Scout least-

“Rrraaaaagh!”

Scout turned quickly, trying to find the source of the enraged, and strangely high-pitched, battle cry. What he found was a hundred and ten pounds of furious New Yorker, lunging straight into him and sending them both flying off the end of the train car. Scout landed hard on his back with a whoof, the air whooshing from his lungs as he skidded a few feet along the concrete before coming to a stop. He was dimly aware of his tackler’s weight atop him for half a second before he saw the RED Scout bounce and tumble away.

He rolled over and struggled to get an arm under himself, gasping to fill his aching lungs. That little shit. Scout was gonna kill him, once he could breathe again. He shuffled unsteadily to his feet, bent double as he tried to get his wind back, and a bat cracked him solidly across the shoulders. His chin collided with the concrete when he pitched forward, and he tasted blood as the tip of his tongue got caught between his teeth.

Okay, breath or no, he was gonna fucking murder this brat.

He spat and pushed himself to his feet, quickly stepping back to be out of Red’s range. He whipped out his own bat to square up against his foe, panting hard. Red was glaring at him, feet wide apart with his bat in a high two-handed grip, ready to swing. He was fresh out of respawn, the only dirt smutching his shirt and pants being what he had picked up when he’d tackled Scout off the train car. It was funny, the cleanliness and batter’s stance combined with the rage twisting his freckled, child-like face. Scout sneered.

“Wanna die again that fuckin’ bad, huh?” he said, twirling his bat in his hand. “Come on, cockfag, whaddaya got?”

Red let out a roar and launched himself forward in lieu of a proper response. Scout knocked away his first two vicious swings before slamming him solidly in the arm. Red hissed, but instead of cowering away as Scout expected from previous experience, he took a hard swing in return, hitting Scout’s shoulder with a meaty thud. Scout took a couple steps back, switching his bat to his other hand with a curse, but Red kept on him, swinging again and again. Scout was able to turn the blows, mostly, but one jarring, clanging strike of bat on bat sent his weapon spinning out of his numbed hand.

He dove without even a thought for his guns, a more primal drive taking over; he didn’t need his guns to destroy this little fucker. He tackled Red just above the knees, sending them both back to the ground. Scout crawled up until he could grip Red’s bat-wielding hand and slam it against the ground. Red let go of his weapon, but only because he seemed to prefer his knees and fists in such close quarters. Brilliant white spots bloomed across Scout’s vision as a fist crashed into the side of his head, and a dull ache spread from where a knee was planted firmly in his ribs. He jammed his own knee into Red’s stomach and was rewarded by a choked yelp, only to find himself shoved roughly away by a sneaker-clad foot and a hand in his face.

There was an odd near-silence over the battlefield, now. Both sides had stopped shooting, sixteen men watching in amusement, disbelief, frustration, or concern as the two Scouts struggled with each other like boys in the schoolyard. Hissing and growling, yelping and cursing, the  two young men rolled across the concrete, punching, kicking, elbowing, kneeing, and head-butting each other with murderous intent. They seemed to be evenly matched, Scout’s greater height and weight offset by Red’s squirrelly quickness. For every swung fist, there was a retaliatory elbow or knee, and by the time Scout managed to pin Red beneath him—a knee digging into the small of Red’s back as he wrenched an arm behind him—they both bore blackened eyes, split lips, and noses streaming blood.

“Ready to call ‘uncle’ yet, fucknuts?” Scout growled, pressing Red’s arm down into his back at a painfully awkward angle. Red cursed and squirmed as much as he could, wriggling in an attempt to rip his arm free.

“Fuck you,” he spat over his shoulder. His writhing managed to overbalance Scout, and Red promptly straddled his stomach, aiming quick, hard punches at Scout’s face and chest. “What the fuck… is your problem?”

“My problem?” Scout yelped past his arms, thrown up to defend his face as best as he could. “Aside from you bein’ a fuckin’ little shit?”

“I never fuckin’ did anything!” Red yelled, throwing a relatively weak, but well-aimed, punch at Scout’s throat that had him choking and squawking. “You always come after me! The fuck did I ever do to y-Aaah!”

Still coughing, Scout rolled, pinning Red again and wrapping a hand around his throat, pressing in until he could feel the raging heartbeat under his palm. Red grunted and wheezed, his hands tugging at Scout’s but really only catching the bandaging wrapped around it.

“Fuckin’ shithead,” Scout said, using his free hand to pummel Red’s ribs. Red groaned, and Scout could hear the heels of his sneakers pounding out a frantic beat on the pavement. “Ya come in here, show me up yer first fuckin’ day, and every day after that yer always in my fuckin’ face! I can’t fuckin’ turn around without seein’ you runnin’ off. Yer always… fuckin’… there!”

Each of his final words was punctuated by another hard body blow. Red’s eyelids were starting to flutter and Scout slammed his head down against the concrete, drawing out a choked whine. The movement also allowed Red to draw a quick breath. It was small and shallow, but clarity bloomed in his eyes. When his head was pulled up again, his fist rabbitted out to strike Scout, surprisingly hard, in the crotch.

Scout gasped, eyes bulging, and he fell to the side, curling into a ball and cradling his injured manhood. Red gasped as well, more deeply, then choked, rolling onto his side as hard coughs wracked his thin frame. For a long moment, both of them were too focused on their own pain to even remember the other’s presence.

“You… fuckin’… cheated…” Scout eventually moaned, trying to curl in tighter around his damaged goods. Red glared at him, rubbing his throat and spitting a thick gob of bloody saliva to the side.

“Cheated? We’re tryin’-” He coughed harshly but his voice still rasped. “We’re tryin’ to fuckin’ kill each other, shit for brains.”

“You punched me… in the dick! You fuckin’…!” Scout trailed off with another groan. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

“You-” Cough, cough. “-were fuckin’ stranglin’ me!”

“We’re tryin’ to kill each other!”

“That’s what I said!”

“Ya don’t hit another guy in the fuckin’ dick, man! It’s rule number one!”

“Anything goes when yer gonna die!”

“Oh yeah?”

Scout’s foot lashed out, and he caught Red with a much more forceful shot between the legs than the younger man had bestowed on him, and with his cleats. Red let out a strange warbling gurgle as his hands flew down, clutching at himself as Scout laughed and rolled onto his back.

“Yeah, take that, fucknu- Guh!”

That was Red’s shoe, hammering into his groin. Cursing, Scout found himself back on his side in the fetal position, glaring at his counterpart through watering eyes as he fought not to puke. The kid glared back, panting, and for another long moment they stayed that way, the ability to enact their murderous fury stymied by pain no good man should have to feel.

“You two dumbasses done yet?”

The shout came from the RED Engineer. Scout sat up slowly with a wince, noticing for the first time the two lines of men who’d been watching his battle with Red: the Blues had come to the edge of the moat, and the Reds were gathered behind their train tracks. He looked back at Red, who was also taking the time to notice the assembly. The kid was in rough shape. So was he. He still wanted to beat him to bloody pulp, but the adrenaline of the fight was fading, and his balls hurt. Maybe it could wait, at least until his next respawn. When Red looked back at him, he shrugged.

“We done?”

Red glowered, but then sighed, flopping back. He still hadn’t released his crotch, and he looked as tired as Scout was starting to feel. “Fuck, man, I guess.”

“Good.” Scout drew his pistol and fired a single shot into Red’s skull. The body jerked once and then was still. Scout holstered the weapon as it started to fade, and he waved at his team. “Yeah, guys, it’s all good! We’re do-”

His head exploded into a cloud of skull fragments and fine red mist.

The clatter of the RED Sniper’s empty shell casing hitting the ground seemed very loud in the sudden silence. The two teams stared at each other across the moat and train tracks. Weapons were hefted uneasily on both sides.

“Anyone up fer a thirty-second truce?” the BLU Engineer suggested. A gently lobbed, red-banded grenade was all the answer anyone needed to that.

——

The metallic tink as Scout hit another baseball over the train station toward the BLU base relaxed him in a way nothing else could. It was a sound from childhood, from long summer afternoons with his brothers, where they would take turns with their one dented old aluminum bat, trying to hit the ball harder and further than everyone else. It hadn’t been until he was fifteen, and two of his four brothers had moved out, that he’d been able to reliably outshine his siblings. He smiled, tossing a new ball in his hand. He’d managed to hit a ball almost two blocks once, but he’d done it while he was alone at the old lot; no one had believed him, even though he’d broken the windshield of old Mister Mulhaney’s car. He was fairly sure his brothers still didn’t think he’d actually done it.

Scout lobbed up the ball in his hand, smoothly raising his bat as he watched it ascend. Despite the tensing of his muscles in preparation, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so calm. He kept his eyes on the ball as it started to tumble toward earth, then swung, explosively uncurling his arms and feeling the satisfying crack of bat meeting ball. Another light tink filled the night air, and his smile widened as the ball soared up over the train station, clearing its roof by a good twenty feet, and disappeared onto the BLU side of the field.

He had to laugh. He’d found an entire crate of baseballs in his room when he’d moved in—apparently RED had continued sending the “ammunition” in the brief time that the team had been without a Scout—and he’d filled two buckets before heading out to take his current place by the moat. One bucket was already empty; he’d been out here for over half an hour. He could just imagine the Blues’ faces when they emerged from their base in the morning to a couple dozen baseballs underfoot. Just a little payback for today.

He bent to reach for another ball when he heard the unmistakable thump of a baseball hitting the ground off to his left. He straightened, frowning, and glanced over to see a red-stitched white orb rolling slowly away from the moat. He started toward it, but stopped when there was another thump behind him. Then another, and one more back toward the first. Then a gurgly plonk as yet another ball was swallowed by the moat.

“Think these’re yours, chucklefuck.”

Scout rounded his shoulders and refused to look toward the train station, and the owner of that infuriating, snarky voice. He plucked another ball out of the bucket and tossed it up with a growl. “Can you not seriously leave me the fuck alone?”

He swung again and this time the ball was lower. Instead of popping it up over the train station, he sent it shooting straight across the moat. He was rewarded by a thud and a yelp. He smirked. Not bad for not having aimed.

“The fuck was- That fuckin’ hurt, ya little psycho!”

Scout rolled his eyes and swung his bat up onto his shoulder, turning to face his complaining counterpart across the moat. The BLU Scout was rubbing at his ribs and scowling glumly, his other arm working to contain a shifting pile of baseballs. Some were scattered at his feet and, as Scout watched, one teetered precariously at the edge of the moat before falling in with a bloop. He raised an eyebrow, slinging his other arm up to cage his bat against the back of his neck. He expected to feel absolute fury at the sight of the Blue after the misery they’d put each other through on the field that day, but though there was anger simmering deep in his gut, mostly what he felt was cold frustration.

“It was supposed to hurt, numbnuts,” he said. “Fuck off. I’m sick a’yer dumbass face after all that bullshit today.”

“Fuckin’ Christ, I was just bringin’ yer fuckin’ balls back!” Blue threw one across the moat and, tink, Scout sent it flying back over the train station with a quick swing. Blue blinked, eyes following the ball’s arcing path, and he sounded impressed when he said, “Hey, you ain’t half bad.”

“No shit,” Scout said, taking up another ball from his bucket and sending it soaring after the other with ease. He was almost able to forget Blue was there in the toss and swing motions, and the simple satisfaction that came with that echoing tink. But then the ball was lost to sight and his eyes drifted back to the annoyance across the moat. He sighed. “Seriously, can ya fuck off? I just wanted to hit a few balls and relax, okay, not deal with the biggest shithead on the planet.”

“Fuckin’ Christ, yer a brat!” Blue threw up his arms in a cascade of baseballs, one of which flew up and came back down solidly atop his head. He cursed and rubbed at the sore spot, glaring when Scout laughed. “Fuckin’- I’m not here t’be a dick, dumbfuck. I saw the balls when I came out for a run, figured I’d come see what y’were doin’.”

Scout narrowed his eyes, lowering his bat so he could lean on it. “Why wouldja wanna do that?”

Blue shrugged, and Scout tensed a little when he stepped up closer to the moat, but he just took a seat on the concrete by the water’s edge. “Dunno. M’curious. Me ’n’ old Red used t’be- well, we wasn’t really friends, I guess, but we didn’t fuckin’ hate each other’r nothin’. I guess I wanna try to, y’know, get a read on th’enemy or whatever. Maybe figure out why ya piss me off so fuckin’ much.”

“That’s easy: I’m better than you,” Scout scoffed, taking a seat across the moat from Blue and setting his bat across his knees. Blue snorted and picked up one of the balls nearby, juggling it idly from hand to hand.

“Yeah, sure y’are. Not like I didn’t kick yer ass today, even after ya fuckin’ dick-punched me,” he said. He paused for a moment, then lobbed the ball across the moat. Scout caught it. “Yer numbers ain’t any better than mine, neither.”

Scout tossed the ball back lazily, scoffing again. “Yeah, but they ain’t worse. And you’ve been here way longer than me.”

“Not way longer,” Blue said, arcing the ball high on his next throw. “Our team only got here when you did, and I only been with BLU… a year ’n’ a half, I think? Maybe a li’l less? ’Cause I joined up just before Pyro.”

“Just proves my point. You been doin’ this more’n a year, and I’m already makin’ yer numbers.” Scout bounced the ball up in his hand before pitching it across the moat. It made an audible slap as it hit Blue’s palm, and Scout chuckled when he shook out his fingers. “Figure I’ll be runnin’ circles around ya in a few more months.”

“Pff, yeah right,” Blue said, rolling his eyes and flexing his hand. “Yer forgettin’ that yer stuck with RED. Bein’ around those psychos’ll make ya just as fuckin’ stupid ’n’ useless as they are in no time.”

Scout frowned, catching the ball distractedly when it sailed back. He rolled it back and forth between his hands. “They’re not all that bad…”

“Are you kiddin’ me? Those guys are fuckin’ nuts!” Blue hooted; he didn’t seem to notice—or care about—the furrow building in Scout’s brow. “I’m pretty sure yer Medic’s an actual, honest-to-fuck Nazi; yer Heavy’s a Red—like an old-school Commie Red, not just a RED Red—and I’m not sure yer Pyro’s even fuckin’ human. Yer Demo’s an even worse drunk than mine, and yer Soldier is lit-er-al-ly fuckin’ insane; ya seen him talkin’ to his shovel yet? Oh, and yer Spy’s a fuckin’ fag, always tryin’ t’crawl up Hardhat’s ass—my Hardhat, not yours.” He shrugged. “I mean, I guess yer Engie’s not so nuts, even if he did cut off his fuckin’ hand for that robot one he’s got.”

“What!”

“Oh yeah, man, you ain’t seen it yet?” Blue grinned, taking hold of his right wrist and shaking his hand limply. “Fuck, man, it’s wicked nasty. Wicked cool, though, too. It can do all kindsa crazy shit, like, it’s got pliers and a little blowtorch in the fingers ’n’ shit. Kinda makes me want one.” He wiggled his fingers, gazing at them critically, and shrugged again. “But yeah, you guys got the blueprints ’n’ shit for a fuckin’ robot hand one supply run, and yer crazy-ass Engie didn’t even fuckin’ hesitate. Just shng! Off with his hand. My Hardhat just about puked when he heard.”

“Fuck, I had no idea,” Scout said, goggling. “I guess I’ve never seen him with both gloves off before. Fuck…” He shook his head, and his frown returned. “And, uh, what about Sniper? My Sniper. I mean, RED’s Sniper.”

The tips of his ears were getting hot, and Blue’s smug smirk only made them burn hotter. “What, ya worried yer fuck-buddy’s nuts- Whoa, hey, watch it! What is it with all you fags gettin’ pissed at me lately?”

Scout growled, reaching for another baseball. “You watch it! And whaddaya mean ‘you fags’? I seen you ’n’ yer Spy, bein’ all lovey-dovey over on yer barracks roof.”

Blue froze, and it was his turn to start goggling. The baseball he’d picked up for a retaliatory strike on Scout rolled from his lax fingers and joined its more adventurous brothers for a swim.

“You seen me ’n’ Spy?”

“Yeah,” Scout said, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. “Not like I fuckin’ peep on ya or nothin’! I’m not a fuckin’ perv. S’just I go with Snipes up to his nest sometimes, and it’s high enough t’see yer base’s roof.”

Blue sat slightly stunned, still not having moved, hands hanging loosely in his lap. “Shit… Spy’s gonna be fuckin’ pissed.”

“I swear to God, I only ever saw you two, like, once!” Scout said. Blue shook his head and sighed, finally shifting to rub his eyes.

“No, fuck, I don’t give a fuck about you,” he said. Scout made an indignant noise, but Blue went on, “Spy hates yer fuckin’ Sniper. Haaaates him. I dunno the history—s’from before my time—but I know it’s nothin’ good. If Spy finds out he can see us, probably has seen us… And, fuck, I mean, I don’t like it much neither. He’s the fuckin’ RED Sniper, and he might not be as crazy as the others, but he’s fuckin’ creepy. Knowin’ he can see me off the field makes my fuckin’ skin crawl. How high up is his fuckin’ nest, anyway? The moon?”

Scout snorted, but said nothing. So Blue thought something was off about Sniper too, huh? Scout didn’t like admitting it, even to himself, but Sniper was… yeah, “creepy” really was the best word. Not in a spiderwebs in a dark hallway kind of way, but in a reclusive neighbour with a record kind of way. Scout never really knew what he intended until it was already happening, and his glances were always too intense, too… laden. Laden with what, he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t something bad. Wrenches had warned him about Sniper, too, in a roundabout way; Scout didn’t think Wrenches liked Sniper much more than the BLU Spy did.

“He’s… real intense. Like, scary intense sometimes,” Scout said. He picked up a baseball and started lightly tossing it up and down, giving his hands something to do as he spoke, and his eyes somewhere to rest besides Blue’s discomfited face. “It’s real hard sayin’ no to him. But he’s not… he’s really not that bad. Just kinda scary, ’specially if he’s mad. He almost put his kukri through my head one night when I wouldn’t leave him alone.”

Blue whistled through his teeth. “Yeah, that’s pretty fuckin’ intense alright. Makes Spy seem downright fuckin’ tame, not that he’s anywhere near the creep yer Sniper is. No offense.”

“Some taken,” Scout grumbled and Blue huffed out a laugh.

“Fuck you. At least Spy ain’t tried stabbin’ me. He’s just a sneaky fucker, always poppin’ up when I don’t expect him to,” he said, and he grinned. “Kinda like you, fucknuts.” He laughed when Scout threw his baseball at him, turning it with his shoulder rather than catching it. “Hey, y’should take it as a compliment! Showin’ up outta nowhere like ya do, without one a’them cloakin’ devices, is a fuckin’ talent, man, as much as it pisses me off.”

“I am pretty fast.” Scout couldn’t help the prideful grin that crossed his face. “I was fast before I signed up for this shit, and whatever RED did to me before they shipped me out pumped me into overdrive. It almost makes all the killin’ and dyin’ worth it, even without the boss paycheque.”

“Aw man, just wait ’til ya get yer first new gear! They send us such cool shit, man, y’gotta- Wait. Wait here.”

Scout blinked when Blue hopped to his feet and sprinted back toward his base without another word or backward glance, nearly tripping over one of the scattered baseballs in his haste. Scout realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it. Honestly, leaving didn’t even cross his mind. His annoyance with the other Scout had faded, leaving behind intense curiosity. Beyond contemplating Blue’s apparent (though less likely seeming, now) hatred of him, Scout had wondered about him more than once. Despite a few obvious differences, they were remarkably similar. Young, foul-mouthed, cocky, full of boundless energy, and an intolerable pain in the ass to all but a few of their teammates. It was kind of spooky, but kind of cool.

A sudden resounding crack split the air and Scout jumped to his feet with a yowl, gripping his upper arm below the shoulder where a white blur had just collided. He glared as Blue stepped out from behind a train car on his side of the moat, twirling a hardwood baseball bat in his hands. Blue wore a cocky smile, and when he saw Scout watching, he switched to the same batter’s stance Scout had used in their scuffle earlier in the day.

“Revenge for the one ya hit at me, chucklefuck,” he said, giving the bat a few swings. “Come check this shit, though, man. Fuckin’ beautiful. Could send a ball straight over the Green Monster with this baby, no sweat.”

Still rubbing his arm, Scout stepped to the edge of the moat to get a better look, then shrugged to himself and hopped over; if Blue had been planning on killing him, he could’ve sent that last ball at his head instead of his arm. His new agility still amazed him somewhat—he’d cleared the ten or so feet of moat like skipping over a puddle—and he shook his head as he closed the distance with Blue.

Blue didn’t seem surprised or concerned by his approach. He held out the bat for Scout’s inspection proudly, a swaggering grin on his lips. He even let the Red take the bat and give it a few experimental swings.

“They sent me that just ’cause I’m so fuckin’ awesome,” he said. “Had a note in the crate and everythin’, sayin’, ‘Yo, yer such a badass, here’s this wicked sweet bat to beat skulls in even better with.’ It’s pretty kickass, huh?”

Scout thought this must be the kind of bat angels played baseball with. The weight was just right, and the tape-wrapped grip settled perfectly against his bandage-wrapped palms. He gave it a few more swings, whistling through his teeth and giving it a more thorough examination. Though a long strip of electrical tape wrapped around the head seemed to be keeping a crack in the wood from widening, it looked otherwise pristine, the grain of the wood gleaming under the train station’s floodlights. The Sandman was emblazoned in bold black letters just below the taped head.

“It’s a pretty bitchin’ bat, alright,” he said, handing it back with a small pang of regret. It made his own dented metal bat seem downright dinky in comparison. Blue nodded, swinging off his shoulder bag and unzipping it.

“Fuck yeah. And that’s just the tip a’the iceberg. Here.”

He tossed a can at Scout. Catching it, Scout was immediately stricken by the blazingly purple label, and the symbol that, he was pretty sure, meant radiation. That the symbol had replaced the “O” in “BONK Crit-A-Cola” made him slightly wary, and the ingredients list wasn’t very reassuring.

“‘Water, radiation, sugar,’” he read, raising an eyebrow. “Yer shittin’ me, right?”

“Trust me man, that shit is like… fuck, I don’t even know what it’s like, it’s just awesome,” Blue said. “Try it! They’ll prob’ly be sendin’ some for you too, eventually; old Red was gettin’ it.”

Scout frowned, but popped the tab on the can. It hissed and fizzed a little before settling. He sniffed it cautiously before taking a sip. It didn’t smell bad and the taste was like cola, but… electric. Something about it made his tongue tingle and his stomach flutter with the most intense case of the butterflies he’d ever had in his life. He didn’t realize he’d drained the can until he gasped to fill his desperately deflated lungs. Electricity jittered up his spine and along his arms. He felt like he could shoot lightning from his fingertips if he tried.

“Hoooooly shit! What is that stuff?” he said, staring at the empty can. Blue laughed, and Scout looked up. He was just in time to see Blue standing twenty feet away, preparing a pitch.

He saw the ball leave Blue’s hand, and felt the grip of his bat filling his own. He didn’t remember drawing it, or dropping the soda can, but he distantly heard the hollow aluminum clatter tinnily to the ground. He wound the bat up over his shoulder. His muscles bunched in that familiar, comforting way, and his eyes latched onto the approaching ball. He was a coiled spring, and when the ball was close enough, he released.

There was the cheery tink he had grown accustomed to, but higher, sharper. A high whistle filled the air, followed by a deep, startling bwang as the ball left a deep indent in one of the nearby train cars. Blue whooped with delight and jogged over to examine the impact.

“Hoo fuck! There’s a fuckin’ hole, man! Ya dented it deep enough to make a fuckin’ hole!” He pumped his fist in the air. “Let’s see fuckin’ Soldier pull that shit off! Even Heavy probably couldn’t do it, not with a fuckin’ baseball!”

Scout stared, and then grabbed one of the baseballs still scattered about from Blue’s earlier gathering. He threw it up and laughed ecstatically after his swing sent it into the side of the train station with a crack. Even from where he stood, he could see a tiny new crater in the concrete, amidst the many pre-existing deep cracks and bullet holes. Blue hooted again, throwing up both hands this time as he bellowed with triumphant glee.

There was nothing quite like a little wanton property damage to bring two young men together.

Scout reached for another baseball, but stumbled as the unnatural energy from the soft drink faded all at once. He let out a hard breath and leaned on his bat, steadying himself as the world gave one lurching tilt before settling. He still had to sit down roughly when a flurry of white spots flashed across his vision.

“Yeah, the crash hits kinda hard,” Blue said, and Scout looked up to see him settling on the ground a couple feet away. “Totally fuckin’ worth it, though, right? Can crack right through Soldier’s helmet on that shit. Still not as good as regular Bonk, though.”

“That’s not the regular shit?” Scout asked, grabbing the empty can and inspecting it again. Blue’s grin reached from ear to ear.

“Fuck no, man. Regular Bonk is different, and a million times more awesome,” he said. “Bonk’s like… It’s… I kinda imagine it’s like mixin’ the strongest fuckin’ coffee y’can get with a assload of cocaine. Yer literally fuckin’ untouchable. Like, if yer faster now than y’were back home, Bonk makes ya a gazillion times faster than that.

“Medic says I should stop drinkin’ it or it’ll kill me for good, but it’s too fuckin’ awesome, and tastes too fuckin’ good. It’s the only reason I’d wanna join RED; you get cherry flavour.” He sighed. “They only send two crates a supply run, though. I always go through it in, like, a week. I mean, the Crit-A-Cola’s pretty good, but it ain’t the same.”

“How often do they send stuff?” Scout asked. “I mean, I know we get food ’n’ supplies ’n’ shit once a month, but do they send new weapons and stuff then too?”

“Not every month,” Blue said, shrugging. “I been with BLU almost a year ’n’ a half, like I said, and I got my Sandman, Bonk, and the Crit-A-Cola; they only started sendin’ me the Bonk every month after I’d been at Teufort, like, six months or somethin’ like that. And they sent me some fuckin’ hats and clothes and shit, too.” He made a face. “S’fuckin’ weird, man. They send us all this super cool shit, invented stuff like the medigun and th’Übercharge, and double-jumpin’, and fuckin’ respawn, but then next thing ya know, they send us fuckin’ dorky-ass clothes like we’re a buncha fuckin’ girls…”

Scout frowned and cocked his head to the side. “Whaddya mean, ‘double-jumpin’’? I saw Doc Über Heavy once, but I ain’t seen… the fuck d’ya mean?”

Blue fixed Scout with a deeply incredulous stare. “Oh, fuck right off. I see ya flippin’ around and doin’ fuckin’ gymnastics ’n’ shit like a fuckin’ spaz all the time. Ya musta double-jumped at least once.”

Scout glared at Blue and flipped him off. “Fuck you. I wouldn’ta asked what it was if I’d done it. The fuck is double-jumpin’?”

Blue stared at him in total disbelief for a few more silent seconds, then popped to his feet so fast that Scout jumped up himself and took a couple wary steps back. There was no hostility in Blue’s face or movements, though. If anything, he looked offended.

“What, did they not fuckin’ tell ya before shippin’ ya out?” he said, and he spluttered when Scout shrugged, pushing his cap back as he shoved a hand through his hair. “Fuckin’ shit, man! Double-jumpin’ is what makes ya a fuckin’ Scout! Jesus! Look!”

And he leapt straight up into the air, a solid seven feet. Just as he reached the apex of the jump, he kicked at the air, and Scout’s mouth fell open. Instead of starting to descend, Blue shot further upward, maybe another three or four feet, and arced through the air to land atop the train car Scout had dented. He held out his arms in a ‘Ta-da’ gesture.

“See! Double-jumpin’! It’s what Scouts do!” He crouched at the edge of the train car, grinning down at Scout. “Y’seriously had no clue?”

“Wh- Fuck, no! What the fuck, how do I-?”

Scout jumped, but he didn’t feel anything special or different as he reached the peak. He still got up just as high as Blue had in his initial jump, but then he thumped back down to earth with a curse. What had Blue done? Just kind of… kicked the air? Scout huffed and glared up at Blue when he laughed.

“C’mon, man! Just do it! Yer a Scout! We run fast, we hit hard, and we fuckin’ double-jump!” He straightened and hopped down from the train car. Another little mid-air hop just before he hit the ground popped him up just enough that his cleats barely made a sound as he landed. “Don’t think about it, just do it. Just jump, then jump again before ya hit the ground. Easy.”

“Oh yeah, fuck the laws of physics, right? Like, gravity? Who cares?” Scout said, giving Blue a flat look.

[...]