Written for Magellan's birthday. I think Magellan is a pretty cool guy; eh draws amazing genderbends and doesn't afraid of anything; not even the Battle of Mactan.

Sniper had no problem working with women. His own mother had worked her arse off for years, something she had never failed to gently mention in those awkward teenage years of his when he'd been looking for a job but couldn't quite find anything that suited him, so he wasn't shocked or put off by the notion. Still, he couldn't deny that he took some issue with the female Spy he worked with.

Sniper considered himself a fairly well put together, professional sort of person, even if he did spend a lot of time roughing it outdoors and pissing in jars and murdering people. He still brushed his teeth, combed his hair, dressed himself presentably, and made polite conversation. He still had standards, for Christ's sake.

This woman had no standards that he could agree with. Her suit was form fitting and left little to the imagination, much in the way a flight attendant's might, but with none of the excuses of lecherous men designing the uniform. High slits in her skirt exposed the tops of her stockings and inches of pale flesh; her low top was equally daring, giving tantalizing glimpses of her cleavage. It wasn't the sort of attire one associated with a wholesome woman.

Granted, Sniper wasn't sure why he expected her to be wholesome in any way. She was a Spy; the entire profession was greasy, unworthy of respect, and he had no doubt that her... distracting choice of dress made it easier for her to gain the "trust" of men. Still, even if he did realize how strange it was to expect anything but scandal from a woman of that sort, he avoided her and told himself it was mostly because she was a backstabber than it was because she was, as his mother might say, a scarlet woman.

His plan might have worked if they hadn't been on the same team, which placed them in the same base. It was extremely difficult to avoid someone when they shared a living space with you; even more difficult when it turned out that your company was stingy to the point that there was only one locker room. Sniper couldn't figure out if they had designed the building without mixed sex dwellings in mind and simply left it as it was despite hiring a handful of women, or if some higher-up had been laughing to himself as he looked at the blueprints, imagining some sort of harlequin romance taking place. Whatever it was, Sniper was not pleased.

The matter was made even more difficult by the fact that Spy appeared to have no shame about her body—not that women should be ashamed of their bodies, he hastily amended in his mind, but surely there was some... unspoken rule, some universally agreed upon idea that an unmarried young lady ought not traipse around a building full of men in only her underthings.

As he struggled between the conflicting impulses to stare and to run from the room, she caught his eye and grinned. The way she strutted up to him with only a red towel hiding her assets made him stiff as a statue in more than one way.

"Having a conflict of interest, Monsieur?" she asked sweetly, patting his cheek. "It's all right to look... I've shown more, in worse situations. At least you're more pleasant to look at than some of my enemies." She closed his gaping maw for him with a finger and smiled before walking past, just as the Scout (another girl, and this one young and impetuous) walked in.

She whistled. "That's floozy's got you so tight around her finger, and it's been, what?" She consulted the bandages on her left wrist as though they were a watch. "Four days? Damn. You're a goner; I gotta ask her for tips."

And, though he wished he could deny it, Sniper truly was a goner. He was no stranger to love; he knew the rules as surely as she did, and though he might have been jumping the gun, he was thinking of a full commitment. Not that he would tell her. No move would be more ridiculous than grabbing her hand, pulling her into his sniping nest, and saying, "You won't get this from any other man."

For some reason he did it anyway. As he dragged Spy (whose lips were quirked as though she knew exactly what was going to happen) over to his favorite hidey hole, he blamed the faerie tale romances his mother used to tell him. He wasn't supposed to be so impulsive; he was a hardened professional, a cold-blooded killer, a damned bloody idiot who was dragging a beautiful woman up to his secret place to bare his raw heart to her spontaneously.

"I just want to tell you how I'm feeling," he said quickly as they stood together in the shade of the hideout. "I've got to make you understand."

Spy hushed him with a finger on his lips, smirking. "No need." She took off her large, concealing sunglasses, slid off her scarf. "I know how you feel. It's like we've known each other for so long, like your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it. Inside, we both know what's been going on; we know the game, and we're going to play it right now." She reached for him, and he for her, reflecting with amusement that without her heels she would need to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him as she was now.

He slid a hand down her back, over the sweet curve of her bum, and groaned. She knocked his hat off and scratched him lightly with her nails in retaliation. As they pulled apart, breathing heavily, Sniper grinned. "How are you feeling?" he asked, only half-joking.

Spy lightly took off his aviators and pulled at his collar. "Don't tell me you're too blind to see."

With a growl in the back of his throat, Sniper pulled her down on top of him. They made quick work of each other's clothes, and quicker work of each other. (To make up for their swiftness, they had two repeat performances.) As Sniper lit Spy's cigarette with the stub of his own, both leaning in to make it work, he smiled. "I think I'm never gonna give you up."

Spy looked away to blow her smoke through the window, and turned back with a grin. "Fantastique."

p.s. you just got rick roll'd