Another nice long chapter for ya today :D

Warning for some vintage midcentury internalized homophobia (of a flavor that sadly still turns up today to a smaller degree).

Spy leaned against Sniper's shoulder, and considered making her a different kind of proposition.

Sniper was great for resting against for thinking purposes; sitting next to her felt like finding a corner of a room where she could watch all the doors and windows.

Not that Spy actually rated highly the risks of anyone bursting into the camper, and if the REDs did do so Sniper would need to immediately shoot her as part of their cover. So really, it was an entirely unwarranted, illogical feeling. That knowledge did not change the fact that sitting with Sniper still felt like locking the deadbolts on a safe house, or successfully faking one's death. It calmed the paranoia - just a bit - and let Spy very nearly, almost, perhaps, relax.

Sniper was at her knitting tonight, working along the border of the beanie she kept swearing would be done any day now. Her hands moved rhythmically, almost hypnotizing in their regularity. Spy watched the flex of the tendons on the back of her hands, the occasional flash of a scar, the subtle dance of finger and yarn and needle.

Spy shook herself back to her original train of thought.

Anyway. Yes. Perhaps a proposition that would allow them some sort of enemies-with-benefits (all right, enemies-who-are-friends-with-benefits) arrangement. Then Spy could stop being so unspeakably lascivious all the time and could return to normal.

Admittedly, Spy had never had such an arrangement with someone who was already a friend before. What if Sniper developed unfortunate romantic feelings for her? Her targets always seemed to. It could taint their friendship.

But then again, Sniper was a professional. She could probably handle keeping their sexual and friend relationships separate the same way she seemed to have no issue keeping their platonic-human-touch and contractual-murder relationships separate.

She was getting ahead of herself, though. There was a delicate uncertainty to resolve first.

Because if Spy made a pass at another sapphically-minded woman, even if she was turned down they could probably resume being enemies-who-are-friends. With a straight woman, though, it was a much riskier gamble.

She couldn't just outright ask if Sniper was a friend of Dorothy, could she? Even a straight woman might know what that meant, these days. Nor had she seemed to know what The Price of Salt was, and just about every English-speaking sapphic Spy had ever met did…or had she? Spy frowned and tried to remember that conversation, now weeks distant. She hadn't confirmed or denied prior knowledge of it. She'd said something about pulp romances, but anyone could've assumed that from the cover alone. Hiisi vieköön…

All of her nails were, practical as always, kept short. Spy's eyes darted over and confirmed this.

Besides, Sniper had lived in the wild for years. She might not even know the shibboleths civilized lesbians used to signal their identities.

And Sniper had made it quite clear that first meeting what she thought of 'dykes'; to wit, how she was not one.

"You're awful quiet today. Plotting something?"

Spy looked over in time to see Sniper's sly, lopsided little smile.

"Who, me?" She returned the smile with a theatrically devilish one of her own. "No, merely wondering how long you've been working on that hat and how much you still have to go on it. Truly, I do not see the point. This seems like a tremendous amount of work for very small results."

Sniper allowed this blatant misdirection. "It's soothing, ain't it. Something to do with the hands on long stakeouts."

"If you say so."

"And at the end of it, you have a new hat or scarf or some such."

"I suppose it's a pleasant enough color," Spy allowed. "What would you call this, a noble violet?"

Sniper chuckled. "Oh, I never told you how I got this yarn, did I. Here, hold this a tick?"

Spy proffered her hands, and Sniper laid the half-finished beanie there, then continued to work on it as Spy held it.

"Remember when we were back in Frontier? Nice long sightlines, bomb cart that tries to eat ya?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Spy sighed. "Long sightlines…and an abundance of choke points in which to get caught by wayward explosives. My favorite. My calves remember those long, steep hills, too."

"Yeah, you had a whole bloody commute to get to me, it was bonzer. Well, we were close enough to an actual town there, so I'd roll up from time to time to resupply. Better alcohol, somewhat better food, stamps and the like."

Spy nodded. It was the last time they'd been near a large enough town for her platonic-touch needs, though even then she hadn't craved it as much as she seemed to these days. Maybe it was something to do with getting soft in her dotage. "Yes, I would occasionally go by to remind myself that other faces existed, even if they were just as hideous and uncultured as the ones around here."

Sniper stuck out her tongue at this, screwing up her face into something she probably thought was hideous but Spy's idiotic, biased brain decided was charming.

Spy rolled her eyes, matching her for childishness. "Very well, I was mostly there for the alcohol as well."

"Thought so. So one day, I'm walking back to my van when I see this tiny sign…"

The story continued from there: the little hole-in-the-wall yarns and crafts shop, the elderly proprietress, their shared love of knitting, the repeat visits, the friendly chats, the teatime, the bathroom trip, the wrong door -

"And there I am," said Sniper, with a rueful relish, "Lookin' down at what Scout would call a majorly dead dude."

"No," said Spy, delighted.

"That's right. Turns out she had her own cosy little hole-in-the-wall assassination business on the side, a regular Arsenic and Old Lace affair."

"Such a shame that the elderly have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet."

"Yeah, well, I thought that at first, but looking back later I think she was working for free."

"For free?" Spy frowned, thoughtful. "I suppose it might behoove an amateur to practice before charging for their work. But it would be a lot of labor and body disposal overhead until the contracted work started coming in."

"Yeah, it's too much work to leave money on the table, in my opinion. Professional or nothing, when it comes to murder." Her eyebrow quirked. "So I turn around to ask what she got paid for it and to swap stories, because you don't often meet other people in our profession and I wanted to keep making polite conversation. But there she is, swinging at my neck with a knitting needle!"

Spy groaned. "Oh no."

"Oh yes. Like we hadn't just been chatting about alpaca wools!"

"Talk about terrible customer service," Spy said, unable to smother a snort of a laugh at the sight of the innocent affront on Sniper's face.

"I was hooked up to Respawn, of course, so I was more peeved than anything else, but it still nicks me and it must've been poisoned or drugged with something. So I'm staggering around the place like a pickled jumbuck, trying to get her to see sense, and manage to disarm her. Just an old lady, after all, even if she had a vicious right hook." She rubbed her jaw in memory, then went back to her work on the beanie.

"As I told you before, grandmotherly spies do so love their poisons," said Spy demurely. "Tell me your symptoms sometime, I can identify whatever she gave you."

"She was a fatal fem, all right." Sniper flashed a grin. "Well, as soon as I had the upper hand, she starts screamin' bloody murder. Very ironic, I know…"

"The one time you weren't there for a contract."

"Yeah, it's like having your work follow you home from the office."

"As when the air stewardess asks if there are any doctors onboard."

"Exactly! I'm not getting paid for this, why am I here?" Sniper shook her head in disgust at the universe. "So a heap of do-gooders burst in, see me seemingly holding up this innocent old pillar of the community at razor-sharp needlepoint, and it all goes downhill from there. She's yelling, I'm yelling, the newcomers are yelling, and someone…"

Spy blinked, and realized she'd gotten distracted for god knew how long watching the animation on Sniper's face instead of listening to the story.

"...and of course, it caught fire."

"It always does, doesn't it," said Spy, rueful.

"You would know. So there I am, running through the streets, slapping at my burning clothes and swearin' a blue streak, and I might've still been a bit gacked because I got turned around and stuck down a dead-end alley. And I could hear them all comin' after me, picking up more yelly people along the way."

"A regular torches-and-pitchforks angry mob! Whatever did you do?"

"Panic, for a minute. I ain't designed for up-close situations, you may've noticed."

"Couldn't say that I have," Spy said innocently.

"Sure, sure. I realize I'm still holdin' the ball of wool we'd been talking about when I saw the dead bloke, and figure they'd probably get me for grand larceny too, in addition to the arson and the mugging and devil knows what else they could drum up."

"Bureaucrats," sneered Spies.

"Bureaucrats and sales flics," Sniper agreed, mangling the pronunciation charmingly. "So when the mob caught up, I figured they could go ahead and add murder to the list too. I took out the old biddy with a throw of her own needle into the eye - I do feel a little bad about that -"

"Don't," said Spy, briskly. "She deserved it."

"Dead cert, but she knew so much about the new nylon blends they've got coming out. It was a shame to destroy all that knowledge."

"Surely you could subscribe to a- a hobby magazine? Something not intent on murdering you?"

"Ah, it's just not the same. But that caused enough of a fuss that I was able to scramble over the fence, dodge a few bullets, get to the camper, and floor it back to base."

Spy hummed thoughtfully. "I had heard something of all this at the time, of course, but nothing more than the bare facts of the matter. I had no idea it was such a…rollicking tale." Not to mention the suspicious coincidence that they'd been moved on from Frontier not long after.

"The old biddy did die, far as I know, but she wasn't alive to see them discover all the bodies she buried in her basement, so I s'pose it worked out." Sniper sighed. "And all I ended up with was this here ball of wool blend and a healthy new phobia of the elderly."

"Truly, that grandmother is aspirational," said Spy, shaking her head. "On the off chance I survive that long, I'll set up a charming little shop in Valencia with…oh, I don't know, perhaps elaborately boobytrapped, overpriced pastries?"

"On the off chance I do, I'll come bother you there. Explosive or not, they can't be worse than the shonky biscuits our Medic inflicts on us."

Sniper's glasses had slid down her nose during the storytelling, and her eyes were half-lidded and crinkled with warmth and amusement. Spy found herself transfixed by those eyes, like a butterfly glad to pose for the lepidopterist's killing pin.

"Excellent," she managed. "If the targets - and any particularly rude customers - manage to avoid death-by-chocolate, I'll just send you out to finish the job the old-fashioned way. And to perhaps pick up some fresh mussels for the paella on the way home."

"If you tell anyone this I'll have to kill you, but," she leaned in confidentially, and her voice dropped low and husky, "I have a shellfish allergy."

Spy was suddenly viscerally aware of how her hands were sweating in their gloves, of how tight her tie was around her neck, of a familiar twisting heat coiling deep in her guts. "Your vulnerability is safe with me," she said, far too honestly.

"Ah, Spy," said Sniper, softly, and her mouth slipped into a slow, sweet smile.

"Yes, Sniper?" said Spy, just as quietly. Her heart was pounding, somewhere off in the distance.

"You're bloody useless. You've tangled my yarn."

Spy sat blinking for a moment. "Beg pardon? I haven't moved at all -" She looked down at her hands.

They were, somehow, snugly bound together now with cunning twists of purple yarn. She tugged, and the knots got even tighter.

"I take back everything I said," she said, chagrined, amused, and kicking herself for her…distraction. "You've handcuffed me quite handily, bushwoman."

Sniper cracked her knuckles, eyes dancing. "Don't worry, I won't tell the KGB how easy it is to catch France's finest with a little knitting anecdote."

"A wise decision, considering how I could probably still contrive to throttle you with this mess."

Sniper's mischievous little smile - Spy was deeply conflicted about what that smile made her want to do, but it was thoroughly unprintable either way - only grew. "Well, then all I'd have to do is this."

She reached forward and tugged one line of the bindings, and the entire assemblage of knots fell apart, leaving just the half-made beanie.

Spy, delighted, leaned closer. "Do that again!"

So Sniper tied her up again, hands warm and strong and thrice-damned competent, and Spy did her best to ignore the interesting scenarios her libido insisted on supplying.

"I see, the knot under the thumb -"

There was a knock at the door.

They looked at each other. Sniper's eyes were very wide and very grey over the tops of her glasses.

"Piss," she breathed.

"Kindly refrain," Spy hissed back, de-yarning herself with a pull on the key string. She was out of the booth and cloaked in a moment. "All will be well."

"Right," said Sniper, and seemed to center herself. She walked over to the door, glanced back to confirm that Spy was safely invisible, and opened it.

"G'day, Demo, how you goin'?"

"Ey, lass, someone else here too? I thought I heard talkin'." The RED Demo poked her head under Sniper's arm and looked around the seemingly empty camper. Her gaze moved over Spy without stopping.

"Ah, piss, musta been talking to myself again," said Sniper, with convincing sheepishness.

Demo sighed. "Sniper, this is why ye've got ta spend time with other human beings once in a while. Tisn't healthy to sit alone all day and talk to yer rifle like this."

"Er, well…" Sniper trailed off, and shifted her weight. "Not the best at talking. And people."

Spy disagreed with this thoroughly. She regularly spent hours with Sniper, in comfortable silence or not, and she didn't do that with anyone who wasn't a pleasure to be with, platonic touch arrangement or no.

"Lass…" Demo was looking up at Sniper with disarming verity and concerning sobriety. "We've all been working together for…hell, I don't e'en remember how many years now. And I don't think we've ever had a- had a real conversation before, ye ken. We have a drink together occasionally, and that's the end of it. I feel like I hardly know ye."

This was ridiculous, in Spy's opinion. Sniper was obviously reserved and quiet, but eminently approachable, and a good listener. And talkative enough when she was comfortable - not five minutes ago she'd been making Spy laugh with that anecdote. Clearly, the REDs had never bothered to get to know her.

Sniper was stiff and awkward at the door. "Nothing to really know, mate. I just shoot people for money. I'm not very interesting, I promise."

That was straight-up untrue. Spy restrained herself from uncloaking and smacking the other woman.

"I don't believe ye, but I can't exactly prove ye wrong, can I?" There was another sigh. "Anyway."

Sniper said nothing. She turned her head a little, and Spy could see she had withdrawn into her unreadable-behind-the-glasses face.

"So, ye comin'?"

Sniper continued to look blank.

"…Pyro's Arts & Crafts Night? We missed ye last week."

Sniper started. "Bugger. Forgot."

"Right."

The awkward silence pooled a moment, and Sniper said, "I'll be there. Need a tick to dig up my knitting."

Demo's eye moved to where the knitting was still clearly visible on the table. Spy rubbed her temples. She could probably teach Sniper a thing or two about believable lies.

"Sure, aye. See ye then."

Sniper nodded, then shut the door. As Demo's gravel-crunching footsteps faded into the distance, she leaned against it a moment, shoulders drooping, and rubbed her face.

"Stop laughing at me," she grumbled, quietly. "Not the best at coming up with lies on the spot, all right?"

Still invisible, Spy walked over and threw a comforting arm over her shoulders. "On the contrary, you did well for a - shall we say 'prevaricatory hobbyist'? So, Arts & Crafts Night, eh?" She already knew about it, of course, just through general snooping.

"Yeah, it's a nice time when the team manages to calm down for a bit. They're just…tiring, sometimes."

"I can sympathize. Our Pyro runs a sort of weekly storytelling-game, and while they have us well-trained at this point, half the time it devolves into slap-fights anyway."

"I believe it, mate. All right," Sniper straightened, squaring her shoulders like she was about to walk into a firefight. She grabbed her knitting. "Not sure when I'll be back. Stay if you like, or head home."

"Certainly."

"Don't forget to lock up, if you've ever done that before in your life."

"Hmm, I think I have heard of such a maneuver before. It would be like lock-picking in reverse, correct?"

"Something like that," said Sniper, and sent her a crooked grin. She turned to leave, and Spy watched the smile fade into that flat affect again.

The door clicked shut behind her.

She was still a little offended on Sniper's behalf. As always, the REDs were utterly oblivious to what was in front of their nose (much less behind their backs).

Speaking of which…Spy was tempted. Very tempted.

She had already checked the van for recording devices that first night, when she'd been waiting for Sniper to return to the camper. It was a reflexive search; just because the Administrator was thoroughly distracted by her newer interests these days was no excuse to let mission discipline lapse.

Now, though, she had different goals. And she'd been up and handed the opportunity, hadn't she?

But one thorough rifling through Sniper's effects later, she was none the wiser and even more frustrated.

What, exactly, was she looking for? A signed affidavit declaring Sniper to be of sound mind, hale body, and in pursuit of la chatte?

She found the dildo, of course - but that meant nothing either way. She shook off the intrusive mental image of her using the toy on Sniper, and turned back to pacing. Even a Playboy or the like would be something, but most women Spy had known intimately were less interested in that sort of thing anyway.

In the past during another one of their anecdote-exchanges, Spy had dropped a few casual mentions of previous female liaisons she'd engaged in in the course of espionage. Sniper hadn't reacted with offense, but neither did she show particular interest or any of the other usual female signs. Spy could imagine her mentally sweeping the knowledge into the same 'weird stuff Spy does for Spy reasons' box where she put Spy's explanation of her family's balaclava protocols as well as her habit of wearing two pairs of gloves to clean her guns. Spy supposed she should be glad Sniper wasn't outright homophobic. She wasn't sure she could continue being genuine enemies-who-were-friends with someone who despised what she was.

Sapphic tendencies were, as ever, an innocent-until-proven-guilty conundrum.

If Spy was someone different - someone not so paranoid, not so careful, not so risk-averse - she would throw caution to the winds and simply ask, like a normal person.

She tried anyway. "Sniper, are you sexually attracted to w- to women?" She couldn't get the words out properly, even in an empty room.

She wasn't nervous. Just paranoid, and for good reason.

Because Sniper wasn't stupid. She would know what Spy meant by such a question. And it would reveal Spy's…interest, and then everything would be ruined. Sniper was a generous person and might continue a friendship with Spy after politely turning her down. It might even regain a modicum of the easiness they enjoyed now. But no self-respecting straight women would relax in the arms of a lesbian they knew was harboring lascivious thoughts about them.

The generous bonds of female friendship had hard barriers when one was a threat. And Spy was a threat, no matter her intentions. She was a snake, taking poisonous advantage of Sniper's platonic touch with betrayal in her heart.

Spy had spent decades in a career that regularly required her to betray people who were foolish enough to think they could trust her, and she went to sleep each night with a conscience scoured clean of guilt. But this wasn't her career. This wasn't any of the meaningless seductions she'd performed for pay or for personal release. This mattered.

She adjusted her cuffs, frustrated, and took a last look around the camper to confirm that everything was just as it was when Sniper left. There was nothing here that could answer her questions.

On her way out, she followed her curiosity to where - by the sounds of the shouting - the RED Arts & Crafts Night was happening.

After double-checking her invisibility, she poked her head over the windowsill just in time to see that hussy of a RED Spy (wearing a tacky ensemble with a giant, ridiculous bow around her neck) duck out of the room. The woman was a coward, but by the looks of things her retreat was entirely justified.

Some of the REDs had clearly been trying their hands at pottery throwing that evening; the potter's wheel was currently whirring fast enough to create a corona of blue light, with little flashes of lightning arcing out occasionally. Spy could hear the high, whining hum of it even through the glass.

The Engineer was bent over the wheel with the bemused-yet-intrigued expression of someone whose "I'll just give the motor a lil' tweak" had birthed exciting new developments in the fields of electromagnetism and angular kinematics.

By the looks of things, the wheel had sprayed clay in long arcs around the room; thick streaks and globs alike splattered the walls, the ceiling, the other art-pieces-in-progress, and the inhabitants.

In a businesslike manner, the RED Heavy was dunking the Soldier in the clay barrel.

"YOU WILL NEVER -" splash "- GET ME TO TALK! -" splash "- THIS IS AMERICAN SOIL!" splash

"Would like Soldier to stop talking, actually," said Heavy. "This is why I am to be putting you in mud barrel."

"MY NAME IS MS JOHN DOE -" splash "- MY RANK IS MAGGOT FIRST CLASS -" splash "- MY CEREAL NUMBER IS KELLOGG'S SUGAR ALL STARS -"

Demo was cackling at this display, but as Spy watched she slapped her knee too hard, slipped on a wayward glob, and fell against the barrel. It tipped over, sending a wave of muck and a now-well-lubricated Soldier sliding across the room.

"WEEEEEEE! HELLO MEDIC!"

The collision with the Medic sent her into a puddle with an affronted squawk. The Pyro made a happy noise and crawled into the now-available barrel.

The Scout, naturally, was giggling with her own schadenfreude at the sight of their prim doctor with muddy bootprints up her front. "Fuckin' SKIDMARKS all down your tidy-whitie -"

She didn't see the Medic's terrifying smile in time before the good doctor grabbed a fistful of clay and dumped it down the Scout's shirtfront. Who shrieked, grabbed her own handful, and within a moment clay was flying fast and filthy around the room.

Even looking for her as she was, Spy spotted Sniper last. She was sitting in the corner nearest the door, looking resigned, with one long leg hooked over the armrest of her chair. She had a long splatter of wet clay covering her face and glasses, and her attempts to clear her vision just smeared it further on the lenses. Apparently deciding that matters weren't going to improve anytime soon, she stood and blindly felt her way toward the exit, knitting clutched in one hand.

Spy hissed when the wayward clump of clay smacked into Sniper's arm and hand, soaking the violet yarn instantly into a muddy mess.

Sniper whipped around, glaring unseeing back into the room, and her fists clenched. She was as a hawk, in the breathless moment before a stoop.

"Murder them all, ma chacal," whispered Spy, nose pressed against the window. "Destroy them."

But instead, Sniper's lips formed a tight line, and she stalked out. She slipped on a lump of clay at one point and thwacked into the doorjamb, but it was a magnificent exit nonetheless. No one else seemed to be aware enough to notice or appreciate it, so Spy was happy to do it for them.

Spy turned away, then, vaguely aware of a further explosion of muck caused by a thrown glob passing through the wheel's corona. She made her way around the building to where Sniper had exited, and found her already walking away, scrubbing at her glasses. So Spy tailed her, invisible.

Normally, Sniper had a long, loose, mile-eating stride. When she was very tired, Spy thought sometimes she saw the tiniest hint of a limp on the left leg, but couldn't be sure. An old injury, no doubt. At the moment, though, she was covering ground at speed with her angry strides, and Spy had some difficulty keeping up while staying silent.

Eventually, though, Sniper's pace slowed, and she let out a long breath.

"Still here? Figured you might be watching, possum," she said.

Spy was distracted from this peculiar appellation by the fact that she'd been caught out. "Ah…am I so predictable?" she said, stepping up beside the other woman and dropping her cloak. She fished out the lens-cleaning kit she happened to have in an inner pocket and handed it over.

"S'why I didn't dive in and start punching, honestly." Sniper shook her head, and set to work on her glasses. "Won't ask why or how you have this kit just laying around in that jacket of yours."

"Why on earth not? You are a pleasure to watch when you dispense justice against the deserving." Spy would pull up the memory of Sniper shoving the RED Soldier out the window whenever she wanted to be cheered up.

"I know you've got the morals of a snake in a hatchery, but…I don't know. Just didn't want you to see me lose my temper about something so stupid." She hunched her shoulders, shoving muddy hands into her pockets.

Spy bumped her shoulder against Sniper's. "On the contrary, absolutely everything in this job is eminently, enormously, supremely stupid. There is nothing but stupidity here." Her wave encompassed the two bases, the battlefield, the wide desert beyond, the very moon in the sky, and Sniper herself. "Everything except me, of course."

Sniper snorted. "O'course. Just like everyone 'round here is crazy except you too, eh?"

"Naturally," said Spy, lighting a cigarette with a flourish. "I am a beacon of intelligence and sanity in this incredibly stupid world of ours."

"You're…not completely wrong there."

Spy tsk ed. "No, no, that's your cue to recite some of the idiocy I have been the source of lately." She threw up her hands at the universe at large. "You are forgetting your lines left and right! I don't see how I can be expected to work under these disgraceful conditions."

Sniper did smile a little at that. "Y'know, if it wasn't for the mud on my glasses, I could've taken them all in clay-tossing."

"I don't doubt it at all. I expect you would be devastatingly accurate in your strikes."

"Headshots all around! Wouldn't know what hit 'em."

"Absolutely. Next time, know that you have my blessing to wipe the floor with them."

"Don't want to get involved yourself? Since you're so enthusiastic about it and all…"

"No no no," said Spy hastily. "I trust you can handle things quite capably. I am more than content to cheer you on from the safe side of a window."

They walked a ways further in comfortable silence, just the two of them under the gentle eye of the waxing moon. Eventually, Spy realized they'd come to the RED/BLU border, and they came to a halt.

Sniper grasped Spy's shoulder. Her hand was warm and strong, and Spy couldn't help but lean into it a little. "Thanks, mate. Not sure why I was spitting the dummy, really, I can probably wash the beanie out."

Spy patted that hand, and made a mental note to wash that glove - and that shoulder - thoroughly. Clay would not do the cloth any favors. "No worries, 'mate.' I'll stab them all for you tomorrow."

Sniper laughed outright. "Go out of your way for it, eh? So generous of you."

"I have been known to be magnanimous," Spy said, smirking her smuggest smirk up at her.

Sniper looked down at her, face falling oddly expressionless, and the hand still on Spy's shoulder tightened almost imperceptibly. Her lips parted, sending a long crack up the mud drying on her cheek.

A muffled yet patriotic scream pierced the night from the direction of the RED base.

"Piss," said Sniper, and sighed. Her hand slipped away, and Spy's shoulder was cold. "That's Soldier's 'I'm-getting-naked-and-wrestling-in-unsuitable-substances' scream. Honestly surprised it took her this long."

"Best of luck with that, then, O queen of unsuitable substances," said Spy, and fluttered her fingers. "Have fun with the mopping!" She vanished into the night.

"Coward!" Sniper called after her, but she was smiling.

Lesbians. Bloody useless.

The idea of these two not understanding the concept of serial killers is v. funny to me. Like, "Killing people, sure. But for free? Not sure about that, sis. Don't kill for exposure, know your worth."

Friend of Dorothy - people had to be a lot more subtle about determining whether another person was similarly queer back in the day. Through much of the 20th century, "are you a friend of Dorothy?" was used largely by gay men to safely establish queerness. Think of it as the "Do you listen to Girl In Red?" of its day. Amusingly, in the late 70s: 'Agents discovered that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy". Unaware of the historical meaning of the term, the NIS believed that there actually was a woman named Dorothy at the center of a massive ring of homosexual military personnel, so they launched an enormous and futile hunt for the elusive "Dorothy", hoping to find her and convince her to reveal the names of gay service members.'

Google images "Kellogg's Sugar All-Stars" and you'll see why it's Soldier's favorite cereal lol

-—-—-

hiisi vieköön - Finnish; lit. 'may the goblin take it'

pickled - Aussie; drunk

jumbuck - Aussie; sheep

gacked - Aussie; high/drunk

la chatte - French; literally, a female cat, but roughly equivalent to 'pussy' in that it can mean cat orrrr it can mean cis female genitalia/sex with women. An great bit of convergent linguistic evolution, there!

possum - Aussie; a small mammal. Different species than the North American opossum, and much more photogenic. The term is used as an endearment in Australia towards loved ones (but Spy does not know this, of course...)

spitting the dummy - Aussie; to be angry, but more in a 'overreacting in a childish manner' kind of way - a dummy is a pacifier.

bingus1man - Would you believe I've spent an inordinate amount of time watching dissections? xD I'd hate to be in the room (can you imagine the smell...yikes!) but as I don't have Sniper's allergy to seeing organs I instead have a blast watching innards become out-ards.