Author's notes: The third commissioned story for my Fanfiction Fundraiser, and we have espionnerouge to thank for it! This is the very first het story I've written for TF2 as well, and talk about a rare het pairing, at that. I hope I did it justice.
The soundtrack I listened to while writing this is from the Road to Perdition OST, Ghosts. The title of the story is from L'amoureuse, a poem by Paul Eluard.
Spy awakens to the waning sound of Scout's shout. She lies stiff in her bed with eyes wide open, the sheets beneath her drenched with cold sweat. She's in her room alone, but the sound is so real to her that it cuts her like her balisong.
It takes an eternity to get out of bed, to stagger to the bathroom and cleanse herself of the sweat, the dream. She avoids the mirror as she splashes water onto her face. She expects to see the sink bathed in red, bleeding like she thinks she is from throbbing eyes and nose. There is nothing but water swirling around and round. She pats her face dry with a towel, and avoids looking in the mirror and avoids thinking about Scout's shout, about his face as he'd shouted, the way the tendons of his neck had stood out as he threw his head back in the moonlight, the heat of his belly and the bunching of sinewy thighs between her legs.
That path leads to hell.
She's already been there more times than she cares to remember.
By the time the entire team is in the conference room, she is in her finest battle outfit. She is a primed weapon ensconced in the sanctuary of her mask. She is an enigma to the world. An enigma to herself.
There is a great deal of boisterous ranting from Soldier, irate protests from Medic and gravelly placations from Heavy. She doesn't hear any of it. Scout is staring at her, and she doesn't look back. His shout is still resonating in the air. The warmth of his war-bound hands still scald her.
The instant Heavy slams down one gigantic hand on the table to terminate the meeting of the day, she swivels around and marches to the exit. She is in her finest battle outfit, and her armor is invulnerable to the blazing gaze of piercing blue eyes from under the bill of a dark brown cap.
She doesn't look back.
She is ten years old. She has just killed her first man with a kitchen knife.
He is one of the Heer, the land forces of the dreaded Wehrmacht. There are two metal discs hanging from his sliced open neck. They each bear a serial number, unit identity and his blood type. She is ten years old but already she brims with fury and hatred for these German soldiers who've murdered her parents in their home in Île Saint-Louis on the Seine.
"I hate you," she snarls in French into the pallid face of the dead man. "I hate you."
She stabs him in the neck once more. It doesn't bring back Maman and Papa. It doesn't make her feel better. She stabs him anyway, and doesn't look back at the corpse when she walks away.
In a year's time, she will be given a folding pocket knife by a man from the Deuxième Bureau who'll train her to slay a human being in dozens of ways.
"It's called a balisong," he says, opening it with an elegant flip before passing it to her.
Nineteen years later, it still feels right in her hand.
Nineteen years later, she will experience the one moment she hesitates to kill with it, and the balisong will never feel the same in her hand again.
This is what happens the night before she dreams of Scout, what happens to make her dream of him for ages to come: She and Scout clash in a shaded passage between lofty buildings of their Teufort base, their voices smashing together like bloodied swords at breaking point. Scout attacks with his words like he does with his baseball bat; swiftly, brutally, without mercy. She retaliates like she does with her balisong; lightning-fast, fiercely, ruthlessly.
She doesn't remember what they were fighting about. She remembers instead the raging storm in Scout's eyes, a storm of fire that starts in her too. She remembers his breath rushing, the fire erupting inside her, crashing to the ground when Scout lunges at her and pins her under his total weight. Her lungs and belly void themselves of air. He wrenches her short, brown hair with both hands. He's growling deep in his throat, flashing fangs in a rictus of animalistic madness. He's about to slam her head on pitiless desert soil and her hands flit like shadows and suddenly, the blade of her balisong is pressing into the fragile skin of his neck. It pulsates with his frantic heartbeat.
They stare into each other's wide eyes. Their panted breaths mingle in the icy air.
The beat calls to her.
The balisong falls away onto sand, leaving a thin line of red on Scout's skin.
Their lips collide and clash like their words had; impulsively, violently, fervently. Clothes rip apart under relentless fingers. Scout's hands and tongue find her soft breasts and her aching wetness and lick flames into the very marrow of her bones. She tastes blood. She tastes the sweat of Scout's neck, the saltiness of his heaving chest, the sweetness of his rock-hard cock and drowns in it. He howls at the moon when she sinks down on his cock and surrounds him to the hilt in one stroke. They are polar opposites and they hate each other so much, they hate but Scout is filling her completely, seamlessly with every frenzied thrust into her. It feels lethally hot and unbelievable. It feels like coming home.
She moans and clenches with the terror of it and suddenly, she is in Île Saint-Louis again, the Seine flowing noiselessly nearby. Sunshine smiles upon her and she sees him there, running towards her in a suit and bowtie, a bouquet of roses in hand. He smiles like the sun at her. The brilliance hurts her eyes and she shuts them. Something in her thrashes in pain.
When she opens her eyes, she is on her back. She still burns from her excruciating orgasm. Scout is coming on her naked belly. She shakes to the core at the intensity on Scout's face, at the tendons of Scout's neck standing out in the moonlight, at Scout's hands clutching her breast and hip like a lifeline.
"I hate you," Scout rasps later, after they've separated and have the safety of a thousand miles between their souls.
She tastes blood and sweat and ashes in her mouth. She senses the cooling stickiness of Scout's emission on her skin. She sees the shock of whites around Scout's blue irises, the slump of his shoulders, his lax mouth. She sees his trembling hand clutching at his chest, as if something within it has broken.
She watches him limp away, and wonders if this is what it feels like to be a corpse bleeding out from a fatal wound.
She is thirty-nine years old, and she watches a young mercenary from Boston sprint towards her.
I hate you, she murmurs as Scout passes, oblivious to her cloaked presence. He dashes by without hearing her. He has the enemy intel in hand, and he's grinning like the sun and he can't see her.
"I hate you," she murmurs once more.
It doesn't bring him back. It doesn't make her feel better. She doesn't say it again, but she looks back as she walks away, at his fleeing figure and the costly, broken cargo he carries inside him.
Fin