disclaimer: i don't own the characters.
(A/N) X-posted on my deviantart (it was on my tumblr for a little while)
Been trying to get more descriptive with my writing, as a result, I ended up with this and I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted to start over with Sniper/Spy. I didn't like how the other story on my account was going so I scrapped it. This is going to be the start of something epic I hope.
Enjoy.
That smell.
His smell, it melts and drips into the cracks of carefully tended memories, sticky sweet like heated sugar and as fleeting as the last signs of summer are brushed away by winter's sharp hands. It coaxes forgotten memories from beneath bittersweet layers of delicate silk. The scent seeps into every fiber of his being, rubs off with the slightest brush of clothing and lingers for hours later when respawn hasn't claimed his forsaken soul.
He denies that it dredges up memories of fragrant summers spent running through the woods, barefooted over ruddy stone and feeling the earth itself come alive to his puckish nature. Or how it reminds him of sitting pressed against his father's side, a succulent plum held reverently between piano wire thin fingers. Far reaching rays of the setting sun kiss cooled drinks on the table, made the sky look like the iridescent colors of a hummingbird's breast and he bites into the wine colored fruit.
The silver lining around his memory unravels faster than he can pick up the strands and the world around him is thrust into sharp clarity, a myriad of revolting smells and disturbing sights. His job, one of woven lies and careful facades, was the one thing he knew would never fail him.
It was an art form, he was the painting. Layer upon layer of exotic paints, each losing their vibrancy as the years go by, no longer did he see the world as an unending orchard from the window of his bedroom. Dull grays mixed with lurid reds and drab blues, the edge of his canvas had been reached and the vestiges of his sanity dripped off the edge into the abyss of time.
Time.
He had all the time in the world to perfect his art, to scrape away unwanted layers of festering paint. Some days he could feel the steady, chilling, brush against the walls of his mind as parts of him liquefied. Most days the paint merely stagnated, globed onto his crowded canvas and waited to dry as another infected layer.
The Spy takes his moment of hesitation, mulls it over with the taste of bile at the back of his tongue and lets it slip away into the caverns of his soul before continuing on, disregarding how bleak his life had become. Each corner he turned, the feel of sunlight greeting his face as he exited the building, it became one linear dream, tightly stitched together like the old patchwork quilts he remembered dragging around the house. Swathed in their warmth and familiarity he was once a caterpillar floating in the haze of love and comfort. To his misfortune the memories only served to unsettle the bile within him, he could feel it bubble up and overflow as he stabbed the unguarded back of RED's Medic.
Subsequently, as he drew back to a safe distance and peered from behind a corner, he watched and recited in his head the scene that was to follow. RED Medic drowned in his own blood, called out to the RED Heavy and together they wrote the last words of this fleeting, tragic, love story. Pulling out the weight against his hollow heart the Spy let it settle in his hand, waited for the enemy Heavy to kneel like the chivalrous knight he might have been in some Shakespearean drama years earlier and aimed. There was no dramatic music as he pulled the trigger, time did not slow down for him and when the Heavy was slumped over his doomed teammate, then he strode away. The Spy did not wait for conformation on his first victim's health, merely content to know his death was as slow and painful as his own
When ceasefire called the teams back, enticed them with a meal to eat and a bed to sleep on, the Spy did not come immediately. Standing, stoic and quiet he watched the usual suspects linger behind, combing the field for any sort of useful material. The Engineers buzzed around the desolate land like bees searching for that perfect flower, only to be thwarted by the tone of a lone Soldier, scolding and herding them away. The end of the day brought back the quiet of a desert's cooling wasteland and perfectly trained mercenaries, now domesticated dogs, taught to fear the consequences of making a ruckus in the night settled in. The whisper of a breeze ambled over the rock the Spy had taken a squatting position on, it, like most things, was not a refined position, but he could care less now.
From the darkness he felt the wind roll over his shoulders, bringing with it the tormentingly familiar smell he had not realized now conditioned him to think of his past in such a way it hurt. Layers peeled back, revealed beneath them memories still sore and vivid, he was still sickeningly fond of that house, with it's mahogany tables and ornate carpets.
"Have you come to shoo me away, like that bumbling Soldier?"
"I ain't one for bossing people around."
That voice.
Hisvoice. It rose and fell and wrapped itself around his heart, constricting tighter and tighter. There were no limits it seemed, to how the man could torture him. He wallowed in it, let it remind him he was more than a pawn on a chessboard, ready to die for the king he never saw.
The stone he had perched on overlooked a great deal of the battlefield, though just getting to it was an ordeal in itself. His eyes slid to look at the noise his company was making. In the darkness, beneath the moon he watched spidery long legs bend just for him, coming closer so as to press their thighs together. The man finally settled, his RED shirt washed out in the moonlight, but his glasses gleamed a territorial yellow. Like a spider he waited, patiently for his cunning victim to participate in the dance.
"Do you dream?" The Spy asks quietly.
"Sometimes, don't remember them too much though."
They breathed, quietly, evenly until they were matched, drinking in the air and chilling their lungs. Spy was not content to just sit there feeling the warmth of his tall companion, making him ache and burn around the edges of his canvas. Fire, he was the sun, he cauterized the seeping edges.
"I dream about my life before this."
"Yeah?"
"It is torture."
He takes a steadying breath, reaching out for a gloved hand and when it does appear, sliding into his palm, he holds it tightly. There is little warmth from beneath the leather and Sniper realizes the man must have been out there longer then he originally thought. The distraction he sees in the man's profile is troubling, he's seen this before, watched for days as his enemy degrades, erodes and washes away. It's days before he sees this mannequin of a hired killer come back to life.
"I must go."
Leather slips away, comes up to flutter along the edge of his jaw, calling him forward and into a kiss that barely lasts. The Spy is gone in a matter of moments, his smell lingering against the sharp edges of his chapped lips
P.S. I have a tubmlr now, feel free to stalk me~ look for link on my profile!
