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Oh the bittersweet regret of slipping back on your clothes when there is yet still a warm bed waiting for you. To re-dress in view of a lover, who does not rouse, does not see, and the loneliness of that makes it all the harder to bear. If he were awake now, they could at least exchange a few ‘just a couple more minutes’ and ‘a little longer won't hurt nobody’, wringing out their time together before Spy was forced to make the adult decision and slink away into his own base. That itself was its own sort of misery, but at least they could wallow in it together.
But no, Engineer needed his sleep. If it hadn't already been an indisputable fact in Spy's mind, then it was proven again as he sat on the edge of the bed and the Engineer didn't even stir, despite the ancient mattress sagging so dramatically his body dipped. Spy brushed his fingers along his lover's face, “jusqu'au matin, mon amour.”
Engineer only breathed out, hot and dry, and mumbled something in his sleep. Day in and day out with this one, always something to look at, always something to be distracted with. Spy wasn’t above pulling every dirty trick in the book to get his love to come to bed, especially since he was convinced that the RED would simply work right through the night if Spy weren’t here.
Spy placed one last farewell kiss against Engineer’s temple, and took his leave.
The long hours since he’d had his last reprieve of nicotine made his hands shake slightly as he closed the workshop’s door. It must have been nearly three in the morning, and they quaked as they often did when he went a full night without a break. This was probably a good thing. If not for his body corralling him to its schedule, he might not wake when it was time to make himself scarce.
He had no fear of fishing for a cigarette as he stepped into the base. He’d walked these halls many times before, and knew the way from the Defense Wing to the sewers was guaranteed to be clear by this time of night; the Demoman went to bed early and the Heavy was nearly impossible to wake, so he brazenly did not even cloak as he strolled along and brought the lighter to his lips.
Which is how a normally so cautious man managed to crash headfirst into the Soldier likewise stepping into the hall.
Spy fell back, clattering gracelessly into the wall and cringing so much at the noise that it took him several precious seconds to even realize it was his Soldier he had just bumped into.
“Oh, hello Spy!” the BLU Soldier greeted warmly.
“Soldier? Where-? How-?” Spy stammered, his unlit cigarette hopelessly forgotten. “How did you get in here? And what in God’s name were you doing in the RED Demoman’s room?”
Soldier shrugged. “Probably the same thing you were doing in Engie’s.”
Spy sputtered, and almost swallowed his cigarette.
“…A rousing game of cards to keep the mind sharp!” Soldier belatedly concluded his statement. “Nothing like cards and beer with an old war buddy.”
“Yes. Cards,” Spy said, increasingly aware of the volume of his conversation with Soldier. “Of course I would love to discuss...cards, but we really must begin to move from-”
“-And of course can’t have cards and beer without some stories from the good old days,” Soldier went on, apparently still not done with his original thought. “And war stories lead to gabbing like a couple of hens, and gabbing leads to bearing your innermost fears and insecurities, and soul-bearing leads to finding comfort in the one man who’s been with you all these years, and the embrace of one’s truest friend leads to exploring each other’s bodies, and all that crap leads intense and life changing prostate stimulation. You know. The usual.”
This time, Spy did swallow his cigarette.
During the extended hacking period where Soldier valiantly tried to help by slapping Spy so hard on the back it felt like his vertebra were going to pop out his front, the pair became aware of the sound of someone rousing further in the base. Or more likely multiple someones.
“Merde,” Spy hissed when he could finally breathe. “I do not want to know…any of that. We need to move. Now.”
Spy gave no more heed to Soldier’s shit, grabbing him by the sleeve and putting them both on a tear to the base’s one escape route. Unfortunately, when they reached the entrance to the 2Fort sewers, the door into the deep was firmly shut.
“What?” Spy demanded, jimmying the handle to no avail. “This is never closed.”
“Oh yeah, I closed it on my way in. Wouldn’t want anything sneaking up behind us.”
The fine strand holding Spy’s sanity frayed and snapped, but before he could lay into the Soldier another rumble of various REDs conversing with each other prompted him to reach for his lockpicks instead. He was barely thirty seconds in before Soldier piped up again.
“Everyone in this damn base sure is fussy,” he mused. “Don’t they know we have a battle on tomorrow?” His normal speaking volume echoed dangerously down the barreled hallway.
“Shut up, Soldier,” Spy said.
The pick snapped off in the lock.
“What even is this crap?” Soldier barked. “Back in my day we would have simply kicked the door down! Preferably with a bazooka! Those things are for filing ladies nails, not sending doors back to the God that made them.”
A rising murmur of voices paused at the top of the stairs as though listening, then was replaced by the clatter of feet going down grated steps.
There was no time to try again. If they pressed themselves against the curve in the concrete maybe they could avoid the flashlight beams but Soldier was still talking-
“And all this new age hippie crap about cleaning under them. If the dirt wants to be there then by Abraham Lincoln it has self determined to be there and no one should-”
“Soldier.”
“-We never ask an eagle why there’s rabbit viscera under his talons so why should we-”
“Enough.”
In retrospect, Spy may have put too much force behind slamming his hand over Soldier’s mouth. If he had been a bit more delicate, Soldier wouldn’t have backed up in surprise, wouldn’t have gotten their legs tangled up together, and wouldn’t have sent them both wheeling—inevitably—over the rail.
Spy was just pushing himself out of the water, having landed in an incredibly unfortunate position across Soldier’s body, when a flashlight swung down upon him and alighted them with its accusing gaze. A raised hand—instinctual, like a roach scuttling from a bulb—blocked just enough of the beam that he could make out the detestable figure of the RED Medic peering down at them.
“Eugh,” Medic said, his whole face wrinkling as though he had seen said roach walking across his toothbrush. “BLUs.”
A muffled call of inquiry called from higher on the steps.
“I said there are BLUs in our base. And they appear to be…” Medic cast another derisive look down the few feet into the ante-sewer. “…Fornicating.”
Spy barely had time to groan internally before his second least favorite RED joined the peanut gallery.
Sniper made a similar face to Medic. “Gah, nasty is what that is. Don’t you two have your own sewer to shag in?”
“Wait? There’s screwing going on down there? Tell me this isn’t like the time you made me go all the way across the base because you wanted to tell me two possums were doin’ it underneath the porch.”
The unholy whine of Scout floated into the vault. In what felt like an impossibly scant amount of seconds, the entire RED team had crammed themselves into the hall, enjoying the sport of gawking at the pair of BLUs in their humiliating situation. So busy were they quipping at each other, they did not notice Engineer stepping nervously from foot to foot at the back or the party. Nor did they notice, as Spy did with a bit of venom, the Demoman, who was completely unsubtly trying to pull his turtleneck over a slew of hickies.
“So what do we do with ‘em?” Sniper asked eventually.
“Gotta be honest, don’t like the idea of a couple of BLU pervs getting all frisky in our sewer. I mean, c’mon man. It’s our sewer.”
“Little Scout has point. Only REDs should make love in RED sewer.”
There was a chorus of agreement.
As if this weren’t bad enough already, Soldier, outraged, spoke up, “we were not the ones getting frisky, we-”
Spy completed the much-delayed action of slapping his hand over Soldier’s mouth. “What he means to say is that it is frankly none of your business what we do or do not get up to.”
“It does when you do it at our base!” Scout said. “I pee down here.”
“I don’t,” Sniper said sagely.
“I think,” Engineer, mercifully, spoke up, “that these BLUs have learned their lesson. Why don’t we send ‘em back to their base, and trust that if they don’t want to end up like this again, they won’t come back. Sound fair?”
“I think that’s a great idea!” Demo said, very quickly and very loudly.
“Mmrr-huddada.”
As several barrels pointed over the edge (no mercenary worth their salt went to bed without at least one sidearm tucked in the bed frame) Spy managed to shoot Soldier one last glare before they were sent through respawn. It was unlikely that it actually found its mark.
“Good morning Spy!” Soldier greeted as he retrieved his mug of coffee.
Spy did not lift his head off the table.
This bothered Soldier not the slightest. He cheerfully took his mug, poured it into his helmet, and began drinking from that as he went outside to do his morning drills. The BLU Sniper, also seated at the table, watched him go with a raised eyebrow.
Once Soldier was safely out of earshot, he turned to Spy. “So. Gotta ask.”
Spy groaned. He had expected the ‘rumor’ to come out eventually, but to have reached BLU base already? The only explanation was that there was yet another illicit RED/BLU pairing in the works, and it showed exactly how Done he was that he didn’t care the slightest to find out who. He wanted to do nothing except go back to work, find Engineer at some point during the day to explain himself, and wait for this all to blow over.
“What, bushman?” he asked to the tablecloth.
“The RED sewer? Why? We got a perfectly good sewer over here on our side.”
Spy groaned again. This was going to be a long week.