"Good Lord, bushman, what are you doing out here?"
The Sniper gritted his teeth; he knew he was late for his usual rendez-vous with the Spy, and he had been expecting the masked man to show up soon, but that didn't change the fact that at moment, his lover's presence was just a bit grating.
"I'm calling my mum," he explained with an exasperated sigh. "Could you wait a bloody minute?"
The frenchman exhaled a cloud of smoke, leaning casually against the payphone that the Sniper was hunched next to. He frowned at the other man, flicking some ashes into the sand. "You've been standing there with the receiver pressed to your face for twenty minutes, cher. Perhaps she's out of the house."
"Naw, naw, she's home, she always stays home on Mother's Day, and dad makes her a casserole so she doesn't have to do the cooking for once, and-"
"Well, perhaps they are home, and she's a little busy at the moment," suggested the Spook with a devilish grin. "Your father is a very forceful man; I'm sure he wouldn't want her to take a phone call while they were in the middle of fu-"
"Oh, stuff it, won't you?" The Sniper snapped, shooting his partner an unfriendly glare as he wound the phone cord anxiously between two scarred fingers.
"Is something troubling you, mon amour?" The Australian grumbled something, but the Spy was still in a playful mood, and didn't want to switch to serious conversation just yet- "Alors, if I have misjudged your father's bedroom capabilities, perhaps you could send me to your mother as a Mother's Day gift? Not that I am itching to wander, of course, but if you asked it of me, I would be glad to give the wonderful woman my-"
"Shut. Up." The Sniper's growl was low, cold, and quiet, and though he claimed he could never be intimidated, the Spook silenced himself immediately. At least five minutes passed in complete quiet, with one man furiously inserting quarter after quarter and redialing the phone every time he heard a beep, and the other smoking and watching with concern, eventually putting out his cigarette on the top of the payphone.
Finally, he had to say something. "Mon cher, I really think she's not going to pick up. Perhaps if you tried again tomorrow? You could..." The Spy trailed off when he saw the look on his partner's face.
"Last time I talked to her, I told her, you know?" He explained with a hollow voice, never taking his eyes off the buttons or removing the receiver from his ear. "I told her about you."
A chill of guilt squirmed somewhere behind the frenchman's sternum as he murmured, "Oh, mon coeur..." His gloved hand reached out to touch the Sniper's shoulder, but it was intercepted by the other man's stern, strong left arm, and an iron grip clenched around his wrist. The Australian's eyes never moved from the phone. "Look," the Spy tried, "I am sure she is not home, and if you just call her tomorrow, you...you can..."
"She picked up. No, don't look so excited-the first time, the first time I called today, she picked up. Then as soon as she heard my voice..." The cord rattled against the payphone's metal siding; the receiver was shaking in the Sniper's hand. Suddenly, it fell, and the spook twisted out of his lover's tight hold to twirl around and catch it.
"That's enough for today, petit," he asserted quietly, attempting to finally hang it up, but the bushman grabbed for it wildly, reclaiming it and holding it tenderly, as one would a baby or a beloved pet.
"No, no, I-" the lanky assassin choked out the words, finally gazing into the eyes of the man standing there with him. "I just...let me try one more time, okay?"
The hopelessly hopeful crack in the Sniper's voice told the Spy that after "one more time," there would be "one more time," and a million "one more times" after that. He sighed, and pressed a kiss to the other man's unshaven jaw. "One more time, mon amour, of course," he whispered, wrapping his arms around the usually unshakable gunman, who was dialing the same old numbers once again.
As one more time became twenty more times, the immaculate frenchman became more stiff from standing up than he was worried about the effect of dust on his suit, and he sank to the ground, sitting in front of his lover's feet, wrapping his own legs behind them, and leaning against those knobbly knees, hugging the wiry thighs. Eventually, the Sniper, too, became tired-or maybe he just ran out of quarters-and he sank into the dirt with him, letting their two bodies intertwine as the receiver fell, forgotten, to the ground. They stayed that way for a long time-not kissing, not carressing, not moving at all-simply huddled in the dust holding each other as the sun set. They stayed that way until the sky grew dark, and then, they simply shifted, lying flat on their backs as the Spy held his lover's hand, stroked his palm, and whispered stories his own mother had told him about the constellations, the legends behind the stars.