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Sniper's standing outside, exactly where he told Spy he'd be half an hour ago. The assassin considers himself a patient man. Has to be, with the gig he's lined up here. But he's used to punctuality with the spook, and so here he stands, waiting, squinting into dry desert air. The sand always manages to get past his sunglasses no matter what he does.
When Spy finally appears it's with a disgruntled scowl that makes the minutes in the dusty desert worth it. He can't stop a smirk from spreading across his features as Spy walks to him, irritation evident in the slightly sped up motion of his normally so sophisticated walk.
"What took ya so long?"
"The Soldier is in one of his moods. It was difficult extracting myself from his particular show of strength."
Sniper almost asks if Soldier tried to throw Spy across the training yard again, but thinks better of it.
"Surprised you wanted to go to town in my bog standard campervan," says Sniper, instantly feeling bad for insulting her; his precious camper deserves better. "Thought ya'd have wanted a fancier getup."
Spy sniffs. "It will do."
"I bet ya just want my company, huh?"
Spy shoots him a scathing look, one that Sniper knows well. "I want the driving skills you possess, if that's what you mean."
Sniper knows better. Bloody hell, the man still tries to pretend they don't know each other better than a couple of mercenaries who share a base. Like they don't share the bed of his cramped campervan more often than not. Like Sniper hasn't seen more than Spy's smoking room.
"What, don't they teach little French boys to drive?" he says, sliding into his driver's seat, a position nearly as familiar to him as a sniper's nest.
"Only the very stupid ones," is Spy's reply, flashing white teeth at him as Sniper tries once, twice, and then a third successful time to start the campervan. He isn't sure if it's a smile or not, but he'll take what he can get.
It's already late afternoon. Neither of them wanted to spend one of their days off going to town for Spy's sudden impulse, so they both brushed themselves off after their final Respawn and put the killing to a rest in favor of going off to Teufort and the supermarket Sniper honestly can't remember if they have or not.
All those travel magazines that talk about the desert sunset aren't wrong, Sniper thinks absently as his hands maneuver the wheel and the rocky road, oblivious to the way that Spy is watching him. The only thing that the magazines neglect to mention is that there's nothing to bloody do when you're surrounded by sand and cacti for miles. Nothing to do but blow up a bunch of maybe-clones with the same faces as them. But he doesn't like to think about that, so he turns his thoughts back to how this desert is nothing like the one back home.
"Such a conversationalist," drawls Spy from beside him.
Sniper looks over at Spy, annoyed. His instinct knows the road so well he's confident enough to keep his eyes trained on Spy's for several seconds, a stare-down of sorts. They're both so engrossed in each other's gaze that they both fail to see their turn pass them by.
When he turns back to the road he settles back in, still having not said a word. He honestly doesn't get the need of some people to talk every second of every day, the way Scout does at any living body nearby, whether they're pretending to listen or not.
Apparently Spy finds the silence more stifling than he does, because he's fidgeting ever so slightly in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs, fingers tapping on the window. Sniper has to hide his smile at the signs of his discomfort. Their positions on the team are similar in the amount of skill and stealth it takes, but Spy is not accustomed to sitting in silence for long stretches of time.
He considers saying something as Spy taps a pretty rhythm out with two fingers on the window. Sniper squints as the sun hits his eyes, lowering in the sky, and brings down the visor. He glances at Spy, wondering how he can stomach the glare when Sniper can't, despite the sunglasses resting on his nose.
"Merde," is what finally comes grating out of Spy's mouth several minutes later, after they've passed another set of cacti with no distinguishing features and what might have once been a car as it rusted away in the hot, dry air. The car was the exciting find of the drive so far.
Sniper grunts in response, wondering what Spy's reaction will be. As it turns out, it's a glare so vicious that Sniper wonders if the BLU version of himself ever wets himself from fear. Not that Sniper isn't trained against that kind of thing, and he has to assume his counterpart is too.
Spy's glare seems to be all that he's willing to budge on. Not another word escapes from his lips. If conversation is to resume, the set of his jaw seems to say, it will be Sniper who opens his mouth first.
What a whacka, Sniper thinks to himself with a small smile, one Spy no doubt notices. If Spy thinks he can wait him out, well, he's got a surprise coming.
They drive. Sniper enjoys himself, both the land in front of him, so close to home that if he squints he can imagine the little home he grew up in carved out in any of this land, and the anxiety of the man behind him, clearly bored and restless the longer the silence stretches. Sniper has never considered Spy one of the more talkative of the bunch of killers stationed out in the desert, but the spook is quickly proving him wrong.
He's chuckling on the inside when he finally notices that something is off. It's dark outside. It shouldn't have taken this long for them to get to town.
"Uh oh," he says.
Spy springs into action, so excited he's all limbs, pressed against the door and the seat and even the ceiling. Sniper has to move to the side to avoid the onslaught of Spy's body parts flailing in his direction. "Ha!" he crows.
"You got me, I'm talking," he replies absently, slowing the campervan down to a halt. Spy looks at him in obvious confusion; or at least it's obvious to him, a man who knows what that slight parting of his lips means.
"Why are we stopping?" says Spy in what Sniper is sure is the absolute most irritated voice he can manage.
"I'm gonna be right honest with ya," says Sniper, turning to Spy with an arm slung over his cracked old steering wheel. "I got no bloody idea where we are."
Spy's expression changes from annoyed to worried right back to annoyed. He pulls a pack of cigarettes out and, at Sniper's look, opens the campervan's door and steps out into the desert. After a few seconds, Sniper joins him.
"If you say this stinking abyss is beautiful," says Spy, accent think as lets puffs of smoke escape his mouth in rings. "I will break your neck."
"Unimaginative," is Sniper's only comment.
"Just you wait! I will think of such imaginative ways to kill you that you will be quaking in your shoes."
"Is it imaginative if I told ya to imatine it in the first place?"
Spy's eyes narrow. He blows smoke in Sniper's face. Sniper coughs and rolls his eyes. "Do ya wanna get back in so we can figure out where we are?"
"Do we have to be inside your stinky van to do that?"
"It's a camperv— never mind. No, we don't. I just figured we outta turn around. Seein' as it's dark and all."
Spy looks up as if he hasn't noticed that the sun set a few minutes earlier. If Sniper is honest, he hadn't either. The darkness set fast around them, and the cold night of the desert is coming fast on its heels.
"Why are we doin' this in the first place? Why do you need to get the store so bad? You can order just about anything from the base."
"Just about everything. Not everything. But I did, in fact, put in a requisition. I need to pick it up in town."
"What didja need to buy so bad?"
Spy sighs. "I put in a large order for a series of…local products. From Russia, Scotland, the American South, Germany…you get the picture."
"Australia?"
Spy looks like he has eaten something sour. "Yes. Australia too."
Sniper mulls over that fact for a few minutes. Spy keeps glancing over at him, trying to read his reaction.
"You're an ace bloke, Spy."
"Have you tried speaking English? I hear it works wonders."
"You're better than ya let on, going out of your way to get food for the rest of us."
"I happen to enjoy cooking, and I want the people who will end up eating it to appreciate my efforts."
"Oh? So you spent your own money just so you won't hear Scout complain that he's had better back home?"
"You must admit that that gets rather annoying. His mother is a good cook, but not that good."
Sniper almost asks how he knows that, but he's not much of an asking guy. He frowns, wondering what Spy's got going on with Scout's mom, and how it affects Sniper. Mostly that last thing.
Spy is looking at him again. Sniper is starting to get real sick of this game they're playing, this not talking and pretending they're not paying attention to it. He looked back at Spy, meeting his eyes and hoping his softer intent comes across.
"What are you thinking, mon ami?" asks Spy.
The French at the end makes Sniper relax. Familiar words, ones he's heard spoken time and again, both on the battlefield and off it. The game is finally over, and Sniper can speak without risking Spy crowing an unseen victory over him.
"I'm thinking we're boned," says Sniper. He scans the dark horizon, squinting out of habit.
"Boned? Is that some Australian slang with which I am unfamiliar?"
"Naw. It's somethin' I picked up here. We ain't getting home tonight. We drove too long, and I don't know where we turned wrong. We gotta wait for daylight."
The Spy's sigh is legendary. Sniper thinks that if he'd made it back in the base, Sniper would have been able to follow it home. Then again, if he'd been in the base, he wouldn't have had to sigh in the first place.
"Then what do you suggest we do?" says Spy, the grind of his words so obvious that he must have been gritting his teeth.
Sniper points a thumb to the trailer. "I got a bed and amenities and all that in there. Let's pull off the shoulder and into the bushes and spend the night out here."
Spy stares at the campervan as though it has mortally offended every sense he has. Sniper sniffs just to make sure it doesn't smell bad. He's glad the results are good.
"Your campervan smells," announces Spy.
Well, Sniper thought the results were good. "You should lower your standards," he says, getting back into the driver's seat and pulling off the side of the ride and into the grass, the campervan bouncing along. Spy just stands there watching him as he does.
He probably regrets that as his suit legs brush long grass and wildflowers, trekking the few short steps to the campervan's new position with an expression of extreme distaste on his face. Sniper wonders if there's anything he can do to wipe that off.
"You look like ya smelled some nasty cheese. Then again, don't they got a lot of that in France?" he shouts as he slides out of the driver's seat and walks around to open the door of his little home.
"Hilarious. You are the one trick wonder of Australia."
"I got a lot of tricks, spook."
Spy's frown flickers, almost replaced with something else. Sniper will just have to work harder.
He switches the light on, illuminating the cramped surroundings. He's glad that he happened to clean semi-recently; there are only a couple jars and half a dozen bullets shoved to one side of his small table. Spy still wrinkles his nose at low ceiling and the cracked walls, because of course he does. Sniper finds himself awkwardly standing over his bed, eyeing the homemade quilts that litter it and wondering if they're good enough.
Spy hasn't spent much time in the campervan. He and Sniper usually meet in Spy's own quarters on base, or in his apartment off it. Or, when things are less planned, wherever they happen to be.
Sniper watches him carefully. As much as he hates to admit it, he doesn't want the other man to hate his living space. At least not too much.
"It'll do," is what Spy finally says.
Sniper relaxes slightly. A better response than he was expecting.
"I can make some food if ya want."
"No, I think I can wait."
Sniper searches his tone for disdain. He comes up with empty, although it did sound oddly flat. He's on edge, wondering many digs about his trailer he's gonna hear by the end of the night.
"Why do you live in a place like this?" he asks Sniper suddenly, slipping his shoes off and sitting on the very edge of Sniper's bed. Sniper watches him sit there, poised almost like a bird in his delicacy and, more importantly, his readiness to fly away.
"The freedom of it," is Sniper's easy answer, ignoring that this is so different than usual, that Spy has never asked him anything like this.
"Oh?" says Spy, dark gaze trained on Sniper.
Sniper begins pacing the tiny space, taking him practically from Spy's knees as he sits on the bed to the other side of the small space. Back and forth, back and forth, Spy's eyes watching him like a metronome. "I like going places. Having the ability to get anywhere I wanna, any time I want. I've got the freedom to go out and look at every sunset in the country. It's all in my hands, and you might not think it's much of a place, but this little campervan means I can do anything."
He finishes his soapbox rant and instantly feels foolish. This is why he doesn't talk. When he does, all he does is make a fool of himself. He doesn't like doing that with someone who's seen him naked.
"Let's go outside," says Spy suddenly, expression unchanged.
"What?" says Sniper, surprised out of his moodiness.
"Let's go outside."
"It's bloody dark out there! We just got in here. I know it ain't much, but—"
"Do you ever listen, or are your eardrums shot from the fighting, you idiot? Outside!"
Sniper follows Spy outside. There are no crickets, no noise, nothing that usually exists in the wild to denote the outdoors. There is only the still cool of the desert and the two mercenaries that stand in it.
Spy kneels in front of him, bringing to mind some ancient ritual that only the French must be privy to. Then he unzips Sniper's trousers, and Sniper realizes that this ritual is not so secret.
"What's this for?"
"I feel like it," is the irritable reply.
Sniper decides not to test his good luck and lets Spy draw his cock out into the air. He wonders why Spy decided to do this out in the open, a place where, theoretically, anyone could see. Maybe Sniper unlocked some part of the spook that longs for the open sky the way Sniper does.
Spy slaps his leg, and he wakes up out of his reverie. "What?"
"Pay attention to me when I give you a blowjob."
"Ya act like you're givin' me god's gift to mankind."
Spy's lips have a definite curve to them. "Perhaps I am, no?"
He begins lapping at the head of Sniper's cock, and he reaches out and clutches Spy's head, feeling the knitted fabric of his balaclava and the hair trapped underneath. He grips as best he can, breathing through his mouth as sensations begin in his groin and spread through the rest of him. Spy takes him into his mouth properly after that, licking stripes up Sniper's cock and following a vein on the underside with his tongue.
As always, it feels incredible. Sniper ends up throwing his head back and massaging what he can of Spy's scalp as the pleasure wracks him. Halfway through his hand is swatted away from Spy's head, and when his fingers return he begins to feel hair under his fingers. The meaning of that is not lost on him even in the midst of his pleasure— it only contributes to it, spiking his heady feelings with a tinge of something other than arousal. Need, maybe, but a kind more than the purely sexual one.
Spy is cupping and massaging Sniper's balls as he works on his cock, making sure to cover all his bases. The result has Sniper's cock pulsing with need in a few short minutes, and Spy knows his body so well that he knows just the right place to press the flat of his tongue, the right way to reduce Sniper to an incoherent mess in seconds.
Sniper's legs are going weak by the time Spy is done with him. His orgasm comes hard and strong, straight down Spy's throat as Sniper lets out a hoarse shout that echoes in the empty air. Spy draws back, delicately wiping his mouth with a handkerchief he has pulled out of nowhere, or, more likely, one of the many pockets he has hidden on his person.
"What did I bloody do to deserve that?"
Spy shrugs as he stands. "It will have to be one of the many mysteries of life."
Sniper stands and thinks as Spy heads back inside the campervan, apparently uninterested in reciprocation. When he figures it out he grins and bounds in after him, finding Spy reclining on the bed with a cigarette, managing to look elegant, disdainful, and superior all at the same time. He even pulls it off while lounging in a stained and worn mattress belonging to an Aussie that often forgets changing sheets is a common practice.
"I figured it out," crows Sniper.
"Figured what out?"
"You're a romantic. It was all that talk that got me a gobby."
"I cannot believe I am sitting in the same room with a man who just used romantic and gobby in adjacent sentences."
Sniper ignores this. It's a deflection technique, meant to throw him off his scent, and when they first met it might have worked. Not now, though, not the way he knows the Frenchman.
"It was all that talk about freedom and not setting down roots that got ya going. Ya only wanted to blow me because of that."
Sniper is slightly flushed now, his frown deepening.
"What a world," says Sniper. "Ya blew me 'cause you think my campervan is sexy."
Spy extinguishes his cigarette on Sniper's mattress. "You are absurd."
"But you like me, don't ya?"
Spy's response is a disgusted noise. Sniper closes the short distance between them, voice dropping an octave as he leans in to whisper, "I think it's cute."
"I am not cute."
Sniper plops onto the edge of the bed, shucking his shoes off and beginning the process of removing his socks. "Tomorrow after breakfast we can head back the way we came. I think I have some idea of where we are. When we get situated, we can head back and get your food, so you can make those fancy dishes that almost no one will appreciate."
"How cheering of you."
Sniper realizes belatedly how the last few words sounded. "Aw, shit. I just meant that none of them will really get how much work you put into them. Well, maybe Engineer or Heavy. And Medic, depending on the mood."
"So half the team?"
Sniper dumped his socks in a small pile of other socks that are also congregated on the floor. "Ya got me there, I'll admit it."
"And you?"
"Me?"
"Will you appreciate the dishes?"
There's a surprising amount of vulnerability behind Spy's words, some hesitation in his eyes that makes Sniper raise his hand to his balaclava, cupping his masked cheek.
"Of course I will," says Sniper. "I appreciate ya for a lot more than your cookin', but that don't mean I don't love that too."
It takes a moment for both of them to realize what Sniper has implied. Sniper covers his blush by kissing Spy, suddenly grateful for the dark sky outside.
"And I you," says Spy, his teeth bared as if the sentence pains him to admit.
Sniper chuckles. "I didn't know you loved my cooking."
Spy does not deign to reply. Sniper kisses him again.
"Let's go to bed," says Sniper. "I gotta repay you for the treat earlier, after all. Aussie's honor."
"I didn't know there was such a thing."
"You don't mean that."
There's a moment of silence before Spy says softly, "No, I don't."
They go to bed. Sniper finds himself glad for the circumstances that have landed them here, the forces that brought them to a desert in the middle of nowhere, to this a place where two men have the freedom to kiss in a campervan.