The floorboard creaked, and Sniper was armed in a moment.

"No knock," she said, turning to face Spy. "Thought you were supposed to be sneaky, possum."

She carefully leaned her rifle against the wall and made a few warm-up swishes with the kukri. There was weariness in the cant of her head, perhaps resignation in the line of her shoulders.

"That floorboard betrayed me," said Spy, in mock affront. "It didn't creak the last time you were in this perch." She also may have stepped on it harder than she should've, in a contemptible attempt at self-sabotage after days and days of her careful Sniper-diet. What kind of spy wanted to get caught?

"Well, nothing for it," said Sniper, and squared up. She rolled her shoulders and raised the kukri. "On guard."

Spy hesitated, looking at that weariness, and at that resignation. "Are you quite certain? I can just as well return later if this is an inopportune time."

Sniper hesitated too, but seemed to come to a decision. "Nah. Nothing for it, just something I need to sort out."

Spy tucked her revolver away and flicked out a knife instead. It was, as ever, comically small next to the length of Sniper's blade, but it was really only her most obvious weapon - more of a symbol of challenge than anything else. "Very well. Allez," she said, and Sniper lunged.

They clashed; they fought; they moved against each other, and moved together.

Spy hardly needed to think consciously about attack and riposte. Their bodies knew each other, she knew Sniper's step in this dance of theirs, this violent striving tango, this razor's edge between death and the little death.

The give and take, the lunge and dodge, the counter and counter-counter and counter-counter-counter -

And this is why she'd stepped on that creaky floorboard, she could admit it to herself; for the intimacy of the rhythm of their blows, their shared panting breath, the sweeping heat of movement and touch and impact.

So much better than an empty stab in the back. At least while her blood sang in her veins and adrenaline sparked in her fingertips, she wasn't thinking about how this must end - after all, one of them might get a lucky blow in and end things in an instant. A crime of passion, rather than cold premeditation.

This wasn't moral, but she would take what she could get - she would take their cursedly platonic touch, and she would take the brush of that punch just barely missing her cheek, so close she could've turned her head and given a love bite to those scarred knuckles. She would take the whisper of her knife at Sniper's inner elbow, leaving the faintest red line along the delicate tendons there as, in response, the bushwoman yanked her arm away.

She would take the slash that…actually connected with her shoulder, which was not intended, and come to think of it, Sniper wasn't exactly in lockstep with her today after all, her movements half a beat too fast in their dance, her mouth in just a little too grim a line -

'Just something I need to sort out.'

An attempted arm-lock came to an end when Sniper headbutted her. Spy staggered back, and carefully felt her way around her newly broken nose just as she mentally felt her way around whatever this was. Not that Spy was at all adept at helping people feel better (usually rather the opposite), but some things had worked in the past with Sniper, hadn't they?

"That was an excellent shot you had on our Demo earlier," she ventured, and bent like a sapling around a thrust. "The midair ones are always rather impressive."

Sniper just grunted, and sidestepped a leg sweep.

Spy slid away from her riposte. She bit the inside of her cheek, and asked lightly, "Has that ill-mannered RED Spy been bothering you again? I could certainly do with a project - I don't torment her nearly so much as she deserves."

"Nah," Sniper said shortly, and punched, and Spy just barely managed to turn and tense her abdominal muscles in time to avoid the wind being knocked out of her. She hissed with the impact and tried again.

"Everything all right at home?"

Uppercut, jab -

"Fine."

Block, dodge -

"Why -"

"Stop talking," Sniper interrupted, tightly. "Please," she added, and the creeping sense of wrongness crawled up Spy's spine and tripped a whole mental wall of paranoid alarms.

She tossed aside a moment's advantage and fell into reflexive defense as she thought.

There wasn't someone watching them, was there? No, Sniper wasn't using any of the signs they'd set up to signal such an event.

She redirected another thrust with a touch of her knife, and accepted a glancing punch to her injured shoulder in exchange for a tidy kick that shoved Sniper back with an oof.

Had - and at the thought, despair clenched around her throat - had one of the RED Spy's poisonous truths hit home after all?

She spun to avoid a slash, and used the momentum to slam an elbow into Sniper's oversized kidneys.

No, she thought, after scrutiny of Sniper's inward-facing distress. She'd said please. Something was wrong, but it wasn't that.

A kick connected solidly with her knee with a crunch. Spy tried to focus on the fight again, but it had long since lost the faux high, the gossamer link snapped. She was fully distracted by this worrying mystery, and Sniper had thrown herself into the fight with none of her usual phlegmatic efficiency, but with a jerky, frenzied passion.

Their dance was again just a rote tussle in the dust, a meaningless death-to-come bought and sold by their idiotic employers. Pain endlessly inflicted, and not even for cruelty's sake.

So it was no real surprise to her when she finally failed to fully divert a kukri strike. The blow wrenched the knife from her hand, tearing a chunk off her glove - and hand - in the process. She felt only a sort of relief.

Spy relaxed in a theatrical sort of way, and straightened. "Ah, you got me after all," she found herself saying in her usual tone. "You win this round, bushwoman. But I shall have my revenge." She wiggled her eyebrows in comic threat.

Sniper, breathing hard, did not relax. Her knuckles were white around the kukri's handle. She seemed to be looking through Spy, somehow.

Spy opened her mouth to outright demand Sniper tell her what was upsetting her so, because this was wrong, and was she somehow drugged again? - but it twisted, somewhere between thought and tongue, and what came out instead was, "It's a good thing you won that, you know how I despise having my fingerprints so scandalously naked like this. I would hate to live through a torn glove."

She fluttered her bleeding hand like a coquette waving to a swain. "Ah - my apologies," she said, as the movement sent a drop of blood onto Sniper's cheek.

Sniper's attention now seemed to be fixed on that hand, in an oddly intent sort of way. She didn't move.

"This is usually the part where you shank me with that pig-sticker," Spy teased, and hated herself for it.

She tugged out a handkerchief with the non-flayed hand and dabbed the blood off the other woman's tense cheek. "Not sure why I bother, you messy creature," she murmured, feeling sick and useless in the face of whatever this was, and her own inability to do absolutely anything but make shitty quips when something serious was so clearly wrong. "Is this jam on your collar?" She dabbed at that too, and fussed at where one corner had flipped itself up again.

Sniper inhaled.

Sniper exhaled.

And turned the kukri and pointed it away.

"No," she said. "Kill me."

Spy frowned up at her. "Nonsense, you disarmed me." And finally, a bit of truth slipped out, if in disguise: "I am entirely at your mercy, bushwoman."

"I know you have more knives, Spy," Sniper said, and what should've been said with wry humor was instead said with factual flatness.

"Naturally," said Spy, unable to do anything but cling futilely to her light tone as she hung over the unknown, turbulent depths of this conversation. With a magician's flourish, she palmed four more knives into view, then away again. "Fully disarming me would take all day and some rather intensive surgery."

Sniper didn't smile. She reached out, grabbed Spy's shirtfront, and shoved her up against the wall.

"Kill. Me." she snarled, and slammed the kukri into the boards by Spy's head.

The realization clicking into place distracted Spy entirely from the sudden heat of Sniper's body pressed against hers, from the wrinkles even now being made by Sniper's fist in her shirtfront.

Spy, yes, she had been weak and dilatory and, frankly, compromised when it came to killing Sniper. But she'd been confident, overconfident in Sniper's continuing ability to kill her.

She hadn't noticed. She hadn't noticed. She'd been so wrapped up in her own pain that she'd missed that even their friendship was hurting Sniper. She thought again of how she'd leaned too hard on that creaky floorboard instead of taking a silent stab, all because she wanted an excuse to be selfish.

She'd miscalculated again, and badly. This entire affair had just been a series of miscalculations on her part, hadn't it - miscalculations that had led to the most happiness she'd experienced in…a very long time, admittedly, but miscalculations nonetheless. Her amateurish overconfidence, her idiot obliviousness sending her blundering face first into mistakes that hurt both of them, time after time after time. Learning nothing, solving nothing.

But as her Maman always said - as she drilled the young Spy on proper strangulation angles, and showed her tricks to get bloodstains out of cotton, and taught her how to talk to boys to make them give her what she wanted - bons nageurs sont a las fin noyes. Good swimmers often drowned.

"Bushwoman…" she began, and for perhaps the first time in her life had no idea what to say next.

"I know you have fifteen fucking ways to kill me from this position," Sniper ground out.

"Nineteen, actually," Spy said, scrambling for time.

"So do it."

They glared at each other, and Spy wanted to do nothing more in that moment than bypass her own coward tongue and what little remained of her conscience by closing the last few inches between them, to kiss and caress that distress from Sniper's face, to whisper in her ear of her deeply-laid plans to escape this hell-war, to whisk her away somewhere where they need not hurt each other for anything but mutual pleasure.

Instead, Spy drew herself up. "First, kindly release my shirt. I just ironed that this morning."

Sniper's shoulders relaxed a little, and she released her hold and stepped back with a muttered apology. She glanced away, clearly embarrassed by what she would probably call an unprofessional display of emotion.

Spy pulled the kukri out of the wall with a yank. She took the other woman's dear hand in hers and wrapped it around the handle of the blade, and watched as Sniper, taking her meaning, tensed again.

"Second: no," Spy said. "You won that fair and square by the rules of the idiotic war we're both promised to, and that's me admitting it." She guided Sniper's hand and the blade to point it at her heart. She'd be damned if she got decapitated on a day like today. "No doubt I shall get you next time. So it goes, you know this as well as I."

"Spy -" There was something like pain in the word.

Spy inhaled, and - " 'Professionals have standards,' " she spat, as cruel and mocking as she could make it, because it needed to be.

"Don't you bloody dare -"

"Professionals take out the target. 'Be efficient,' was it?"

Sniper fell for the bait, and clearly knew she was doing it. "Damn you," she growled, eyes wild, and thrust.

In a moment, she'd jerked the kukri out again - gallant as ever, Spy thought behind the distasteful squelch from her chest cavity, glad of the faster death the withdrawal would bring. Sniper flung the kukri across the room with a hiss, and Spy was vaguely disappointed to see, as ever, that her heart's blood was no different-looking than the rest. No sense of drama there, she thought hazily, already fading.

Sniper stepped close, and reached to support her as the strength drained from her limbs and she sagged against the wall like a broken doll. Sniper eased her into her arms in their achingly familiar, achingly comforting hold, and leaned her forehead against Spy's.

Her voice was quiet and sad. "I'm a long range specialist for a reason, possum." Her hand stroked up and down Spy's spine. "How do you do it?"

I don't, Spy thought. "Betrayal...s'in my…nature," she said instead, and watched as the black spots in her vision clouded Sniper's face.

"Don't believe that."

"Idiot," Spy whispered, fondly.

And opened her eyes to the blue-white ceiling of Respawn.

-—-—-

Spy was pleased with herself when it only took two attempts to pick the camper's lock. It meant that whatever that alcohol in Heavy's shot contest was, it couldn't have been very strong, even if it had put a lightweight like Scout out with one shot. Spy usually didn't get in on the team's elaborate drinking games, but after two long weeks of slow restriction, she felt like she needed to blow off some steam for a night. And - as the shot contest had continued - perhaps allow herself a little bit of Sniper as a treat.

Not that the camper van's lock was much of a challenge. It might not have even been locked at all, actually, upon reflection.

Either way, she clearly wasn't that drunk. Just tipsy, really.

The door swung open, and she looked at it in some puzzlement. Ah, right, there was something she needed to do. She knocked twice on the doorframe. "Boo!" she called inside, cheerily, and strolled in, only weaving on her feet in an attractive, slinky kind of way.

The lights were off, and no one was home.

This was even more puzzling, before realization struck. She thunked herself on the forehead.

Obviously, if tonight was BLU's Friday night campfire singalong-cum-party-cum-drink-off, it was also RED's Friday night campfire singalong-cum-party-cum-drink-off. Therefore, Sniper must be at that.

She turned around. Well, she could certainly go bother her there instead, right?

A thought occurred, and she frowned. The rest of the REDs would be there. Spy did not like the other REDs. They were quite rude whenever they found her out and about during the workday, even though she was just doing her job. They would be extremely rude if they realized the BLU Spy was amongst them in their off-hours.

She would just wait until Sniper came back. "No worries, mate," she told herself, then tittered at her terrible mockery of an Australian accent, which would probably make Sniper laugh so hard coffee came out her nose. Again. That had been a good day.

She smiled at the memory for a little while.

She sat down at the booth, folded her arms, and waited.

-—-

Someone was shaking her shoulder. Spy opened her eyes, and realized that her arms had fallen asleep where she'd lain her head against them on the table, and were now waking with painful needles. Then she realized her neck was stiff from dozing off with it at that odd angle.

Lastly, she realized that Sniper was home, and talking.

"...know you've probably got oh-so-important secret Spy business to take care of, but it's been a hell of a week and I've had no one to properly commie-, er, commiserate with about the shonky records they sent in the last train, broken in half before I even got 'em out of the sleeve. Not that you should feel, er, obligated or anything," she tossed her empty beer can into the bin without looking, and it hit the rim once before finally rattling in, "I know you always take a hell of a risk visiting and all, and I wish I could pay you back somehow and - hell, mate, I'm sorry about the other day, you were right, I was acting like a damn melodo- melodramatic amateur and you shouldn't have had to say anything, I feel like a right drongo about it and did I say I'm sorry? I meant to -"

Through all this Spy stared at her, uncomprehending, and was stricken mute.

Why why why were women so beautiful? She was just an aging, all-too-mortal frenchwoman, and there were such beings of light and glory as her walking around on this pedestrian earth? She was not worthy to gaze upon Sniper, to witness the strength of those scarred hands flicking through the motions of brewing decaf. The fine pale hairs on her cheeks were the first glimmerings of dawn, her long straight frame the axis on which the world turned; the dirt under her nails was the primordial clay of femininity, that birthmark on the sweep of her collarbone the signature of Gaia herself on a masterpiece of creation. The grace of Atalanta in her arm as she fumbled, then caught the mug slipping off the counter; the rough-sweet melody of her voice saying things that Spy…wasn't listening to…

Realizing she hadn't blinked in a full minute, Spy did so, with some concentration.

Oh no, she was incredibly drunk, wasn't she. She hadn't gotten this drunk in years.

"Everything all right in there? You haven't said a word, and your face is doing weird things. Am I talkin' too much? I'm damn well talkin' too much, aren't I. Sorry, had a few." Sniper was bent over her, oh sweet Aphrodite so close, a perfect little off-center crease between her eyebrows. She pulled off her glasses to clean off a smudge, and Spy was pinned to her seat by those lovely clear eyes, stripped bare and seared to the core by the merest glance. The eyes of grey-eyed Athena herself, they were, drawing her -

Sniper sniffed. "Have you been drinking? " She said it with growing amusement. "You never have more than one!"

She was dimly aware that Sniper was being unusually chatty, and Spy had nothing to say that was comprehensible, much less something that wouldn't compromise her entirely. So she reached out, drew her in, and shoved her face into the bushwoman's stomach.

Sniper rubbed the back of Spy's head. "Aww, possum, you're absolutely trollied, aren't you. Are you always a quiet drunk?"

Spy, overcome by lesbianism, nodded.

She could feel abdominal muscles flex as Sniper inhaled. Her thumb stroked back along Spy's temple. "Spy, I…" Her voice had turned…odd, but she was cupping the side of Spy's head now, and all the brainpower Spy had at her disposal at the moment was devoted to reporting back: 'warm.' She leaned into the hand.

Sniper continued, "Do you- when- if- " She cut herself off, sighed, and said, "No no, I need to, need to not ask you things I shouldn't ask that sober Spy wouldn't want to answer, even though I just want to know, want to know…" another breath, "...all your secret spy state secrets and embarrassing anecdotes and…"

Spy made a muffled objection at the word 'secrets.' She had lost track of all the negatives somewhere in that sentence, because English was an insane language thrown together by idiot madmen, but all the beautiful secrets in the world were hers to hoard, she knew that much.

"You're the easiest person in the world to talk to and somehow the hardest, y'know? You don't know. Wanker." Sniper wobbled a little on her feet, and sighed. "As fun as this is, I'm halfway shickered myself and too bushed to think straight, so I s'pose you'll crash here tonight. C'mon, up you get."

This was all quite incomprehensibly Australian to Spy's ears, but Sniper looked rather tired, which matched Spy's own state at the moment, so perhaps she meant to go to bed. Spy should leave then, right? She really didn't want to. She always had to leave and she never, ever wanted to, and that felt tremendously unfair all of a sudden, so much so that she briefly considered turning into a blubbering mess on the off chance that it would improve matters.

But instead, Sniper hauled Spy to her feet and gently shoved her toward the bed at the back. "Though you should drink some water first, boofhead." She handed a mug over.

Spy, willing to do just about anything said in that tone of voice, obediently drank. It tasted faintly of coffee.

Sniper, she thought, would probably taste like coffee. Would it be seductive if Spy said she wanted to drink her too? No, she decided after deep thought. That sounded like some kind of vampirism.

She handed the mug back and leaned, bonelessly, into the crook of Sniper's neck. "Hn," she said instead, cleverly. Sniper didn't have any right to be so comfortable when she was so bony. She didn't have any right to feel this good to hold, either. She was so, so glad she didn't have to leave after all.

Her breath was warm and beery, her cheek so soft where it was tucked against Spy's head. "You'll want to take off the jacket, I s'pect. And your shoes. And the silk scarf…tie…thing?"

Spy was only too happy to comply. She was briefly consumed by the urge to continue taking off clothing to see what would happen, but the single shred of self preservation left to her finally roused itself enough to set off alarms at the thought. This was Dangerous.

"God, you and your bloody waistcoats," Sniper muttered, and Spy was momentarily arrested by concern for the cleanliness of her attire. She couldn't see any blood, but surely, a keen-eyed Artemisian huntress like Sniper would spot such things. By all rights, Spy should absolutely be turned into a deer and hunted for daring to gaze upon her at all -

"How 'bout the waistcoat? Suspenders? Blouse? Er, bra? I could loan you a shirt and shorts -"

Oh yes, that. Dangerous. Spy shook her head, urgently, and the room spun.

"All right, mate, calm down," Sniper said, holding her by the shoulders and making soothing little circles with her thumbs. "Keep on whatever you like."

Spy's vision steadied after a moment, and Sniper prodded her onto the bed. Spy rolled until her back was against the far wall.

"If you end up chundering, we're doomed, but I need a new mattress anyway," Sniper said, practical as ever. "Anything else you need before I fall face-first into my pillow?"

Spy frowned up at her. "Blob," she said. This was important for Sniper to know, somehow.

Unfortunately, Sniper did not seem to understand this clear, if laconic, warning.

"Blob," repeated Spy.

"Blob?" Sniper looked beyond confused. "Is this some French something-or-other?"

"Blob," said Spy, and tugged urgently at her balaclava.

"Ah, blob," said Sniper, and laughed, and her laughter was as sweet and satisfying as ambrosia from the gods or…something… "Just a tick."

She dug in one of the cabinets under the bed, and pulled out a scrap of cloth. "S'one of those sleep masks. Think this'll work if I wear it?"

Relieved, Spy nodded.

"Ace," said Sniper, and grinned down at her. "Gotta preserve the santi- sanctity of the famous Spy face-blob."

And Spy, utterly lost in that grin, smiled painfully back.

With the last bit of self-control remaining to her, Spy turned over so her back was to Sniper, clenching her tempted, traitorous hands under her chin.

There were the suggestive sounds of clothing being removed behind her, then the suggestive sound of Sniper briefly losing her balance and bonking into the wall. It was somehow equally charming.

A minute later, they were both crammed into the little cot, and Sniper's warm back was pressed against Spy's.

"You better not be a blanket hog," Sniper said, and pulled the quilt up.

Spy was a blanket hog, but refused to confess until she was caught with figurative blood on her hands. And maybe not even then.

" 'night, possum." Sniper yawned, and flicked off the lights. "You're gonna be proper embarrassed in the morning, and I'll tease you for it."

"Bonne nuit, ma chacal, " whispered Spy, long after the other woman had started snoring.

I admit, I was very rude back in chapter 6/7 when there was Only One Bed and nothing happened ;)

These are deffo two of my favorite scenes here! Hoping there isn't tooooo much tonal whiplash between them - I thought about splitting them up into two chapters but that seemed rude to y'all lol. Besides, they're both in the same arc of Spy struggling to keep her resolution to slow-ghost Sniper.

Spy had a bit of a classical education, or at least a Lesbos(ian) one lol. Don't feel you need to look up the various figures of Greek mythology she mentions there (unless ya want to), though the "turning into a deer" mention is a reference to the myth of Artemis and Actaeon which I think may provide some insight into Spy's mindset here.

The phrase "Spy, overcome by lesbianism, nodded" has lived rent-free in my head for months now. It was probably the first thing I actually knew about about this scene.

-—-—-

bons nageurs sont a las fin noyes - French; lit. 'good swimmers are often drowned,' more generally 'don't let your competence lead you to overconfidence.'

shonky - Aussie; poor quality, iffy, off

drongo - Aussie; an idiot, but the particular kind of idiot that spends their time stepping on metaphorical rakes.

trollied - Aussie; full-on drunk, wasted

shickered - Aussie; drunk

bushed - Aussie; tired, exhausted

crash - Aussie; stay (in a place) and sleep

chundering - Aussie; vomiting

bonne nuit - French; good night

Just as Spy gets purple-prosey and powerfully gay when drunk, Sniper gets chatty and even more Australian.