Author's notes: Here be the second commissioned story for my Fanfiction Fundraiser, courtesy of the lovely unicornsandbutane AKA Req! I'm darn happy to finally write a story for another of my TF2 OTPs, Spy/ Sniper. I think I should give a little warning that this story can be rather…dark in certain parts. (And oh hey, posted on Valentine's Day!) The soundtrack I listened to while writing this was from the Carnivale OST, His Name Was Michael. A haunting tune I felt was apt for the story.
Desiccated leaves crackle beneath his bare feet. Twigs scratch the bare skin of his face and arms. Light filters through elliptic, jagged leaves and winks at him. He doesn't know if it's sunlight or moonlight. He glances down and finds himself naked. He must have left his clothes in his room. Left his balaclava too, but he is unperturbed by this.
He's here again, in this temperate forest of ancient giants that graze the heavens. He touches smooth, whitish bark and traces the horizontal stories written in its skin. He smells caramel in the air. He walks on. Dark, slick soil licks his toes and sighs under his weight.
After an eon, he stops. He waits in the center of a small clearing and listens to the high-pitched wail of a bird. He ignores its warning cry.
He rears back, just a little, when the gargantuan, wolf-like creature emerges from the shadows. In the years to come, he will know it to be a dingo, with its broad head, pointed muzzle, erect ears and massive fangs. In this time and place, he dares not give it a name. He dares not utter the name it's given him before.
It towers over him, a dozen feet tall. They stare at each other, he into its golden, scorching eyes and it into his stark, blue ones. He's here again, frozen in place as the majestic beast nudges its nose against his head and sniffs and growls. Its teeth are inches away from his flesh. Its breath singes the skin of his neck and chest.
The balisong in his hand sings in its arc through the cold air.
The forest is blown away by the beast's roar. The sky shatters and turns to red in awe of the deafening death hymn. More red spills onto the forest floor, onto his belly and legs as the balisong carves through neck tendons and arteries. He watches the gleam fade from golden eyes, until he can no longer see, until something warm and wet blinds him.
This is how it will always end between them.
This is how it must always be.
Sniper lies in a growing pool of blood beneath the midday sun. The bullet's gone through Sniper's torso, through the liver. He doesn't have much time left before he dies and is Respawned.
Spy is tempted to touch the perishing man. He stands mere feet away. Cloaked, invisible. He has no concerns about Sniper retaliating; Sniper's rifle is at least twenty feet away on the sand and that damned kukri is nowhere to be seen. Sniper is becoming paler by the second, lips colorless and parted, eyes half-lidded behind yellow-tinted sunglasses.
Spy's hands burn in their gloves. They yearn to be free of their leather prison. To lay themselves on Sniper's mouth and nose and stopper them until Sniper is writhing and fighting for precious air. To lay themselves on Sniper's palpitating chest, over the struggling heart and bear down as it quivers and then stills. To lay themselves on Sniper, and feel.
"… I know you're there."
Sniper's abrasive whisper is as loud as a dying wolf's howl. Spy freezes and stares down at him, holding his breath. Holding it until streaks of red dart across his vision.
"… I know ... you're …"
Spy exhales, slowly. When Sniper doesn't react to that, he kneels down beside Sniper and stares at the droplets of sweat dotting the supine man's forehead and upper lip. He wonders what those droplets taste like. He wonders whether Sniper's blood will continue to stain his shoes even after he washes them.
Sniper gasps at the gloved hand wrapping around his neck. Spy hasn't removed his glove. He can't, not if he wishes to stay away from that twilight forest and its unearthly beasts.
Sniper's whole body jerks once. Then it arches up, taut like a drawn bowstring, before collapsing onto crimson ground.
Behind those yellow-tinted sunglasses, Sniper's open, lifeless eyes are golden.
In the darkness of night, they are both beasts, the incarnation of rage and enmity and something that neither man will name. They rip at each other while tumbling across unforgiving, sparse ground. Spy's jacket has disappeared along with his waistcoat. Sniper's shirt is frayed all over, buttons gone, a ghastly veil scarcely covering a broad, hairy chest and lean abdomen.
Spy wrings his gloved fingers in Sniper's hair. He knows it's hurting Sniper by the way Sniper bites his shoulder through his untucked, torn open dress shirt. He snarls and bares his teeth even as they roll and come up hard against a plank wall. His hands seize Sniper's hips, strong enough to bruise. He shoves Sniper even rougher onto the ground, yelling wordlessly when Sniper bucks and kicks and lands a punch on his face. His balaclava does nothing to soften the blow.
The pain is good, and he is hard, so fucking hard, and he wants to fuck Sniper now.
"Ya bloody fuckin' FROG!"
He bares his teeth again as he yanks down Sniper's unzipped pants and his own. The insult isn't new to him. He's almost disappointed that Sniper is rehashing it instead of generating more original, crueler invectives. Then again, Sniper doesn't talk as much anymore. He doesn't either. There are far more enjoyable acts to be experienced.
"Fuck you, fuck – oh, oh god, fuuuuck –"
He feels like a rabid animal as he thrusts into Sniper's slick ass. He feels like the Alpha dominating his subordinate, like a king claiming his mate for all to see. He feels the heat of Sniper's flushed face, feels Sniper's crossed ankles behind his pumping hips, Sniper's hands scrabbling against the dirt and those lurid, rampant cries, escalating as Sniper comes all over their stomachs and convulses so exquisitely.
He feels so much. Too much. He buries his face in Sniper's sweaty neck as he comes deep inside the man he hates with all his heart.
And later, after cloaking himself, while Sniper sprawls panting in the moonlight with his come trailing down lithe thighs, he sees Sniper's eyes without the sunglasses shielding them for the first time.
They are blue and haunted. Just like his.
He's here, once more, in this temperate forest of ancient giants and otherworldly creatures. He's here in the same clearing, naked, standing, breathing. Waiting. There is no warning call this time. No crunching leaves, or buzz of insects.
The gargantuan dingo appears without noise. He lets it nudge his head, sniff him, nuzzle his face. They stare at each other, it into his stark, blue eyes and he into its even bluer eyes, brighter than the crescent moon above. He isn't surprised when he shuts his eyes and opens them to see a familiar man in the dingo's place, naked as he is. In this time and place, Sniper's lips are soft and inviting. Sniper smiles at him with crinkled eyes. Sniper's eyes are blue, so blue.
The balisong slips from his hand and vanishes.
He finds himself spread-eagled on a pile of fresh leaves and makes a display of himself, pushing out his belly and bucking his hips. He hums when Sniper slides between his legs and pushes them apart and wraps one hand around his neck, stroking the pulse there. They sway to a music that only they can hear, like a thunderous thrumming of red in veins, or the rising beat of the hooves of warhorses across the plains.
We are the same, you and I, Sniper murmurs into his ear as Sniper plunges deep into him, their flesh smacking to a rhythm older than the universe.
This is a dream, just a dream, he murmurs back, and he feels his balisong with each thrust, stabbing through his chest, cutting the withered organ in it into a billion irretrievable pieces.
Today is the last day.
His team is already gone, departed on their train out of this hellhole they've killed and died in for a year. He's here in the opposing team's Infirmary, cloaked, standing next to the one occupied bed, staring at Sniper asleep. He feels worn to the bones. He feels drained, like he's been emptied of everything worthwhile and it's all outside of him now and he can't protect it.
His eyes lock on Sniper's heavily bandaged right arm resting upon a beige blanket. It's suffered severe injury resulting from the grenades of his team's Demoman, that much he knows. Severe enough that their Medic is unable to fully heal it. With the conclusion of their contracts, Sniper will be shipped out to a TF Industries-sanctioned hospital for further treatment. After that … the future is a blank to him.
Everything worthwhile is outside of him now, and he's failed to protect it.
He feels the hollowness echo within him.
He feels the caress of a somnolent gaze upon his face.
"Stay."
Sniper's eyes are open. They hone precisely on him, as if Sniper can see him. As if Sniper has always seen him.
There should be nothing inside him. He should walk away now, right now, before he's devoured and there's nothing left of him.
"I will kill you," he whispers raspingly after he uncloaks.
He doesn't realize his voice thrums with a song that only Sniper can hear.
"An' wot makes ya think you don't, every time you leave?"
From afar, he hears the rustling of leaves, the hum of cicadas, the mating call of a cockatoo. He feels living, caramel-scented, whitish bark beneath his fingertips and reads the horizontal stories written in its skin. They are the stories of two majestic creatures, two rare equals who have found each other. Two who are the same.
They stare at each other, into each other's old, blue eyes. Sniper is quiet when he sheds his balaclava, but his eyes crinkle. Sniper's eyelids flicker when he leans down and nudges Sniper's forehead with his nose and sniffs and makes a low sound in his throat.
His balisong remains sheathed in his jacket.
"M'not dreamin', am I?"
"No, âme sœur. You're not."
This isn't how he ever imagined it would begin between them.
But this is how they were always meant to be.
Fin