FYI this fic can also be read on AO3 under the same title and author!
"I stab the stupid shopkeeper!"
Sighs and groans come from around the table. "Scout, lass…" began Demo, already reaching for her bottle.
Scout slapped the much-scarred, always faintly sticky surface of the canteen table. "It's what my frickin' character would do!"
Not to be outdone, Soldier slammed her own hands against the table, making Spy's teacup rattle. Soldier was horrified, in her way. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT! THIS MAN IS A SMALL BUSINESSMAN, THE BACKBONE OF THE COUNTRY'S ECONOMY!" 'This country' of course being the U.S.; Soldier was still a bit confused about the concept of the Wednesday Night Game, and was playing herself, rocket launcher and all. Somehow, Pyro made it work.
Scout stuck her chin out. "Jolene the Mean is a badass rogue, she's never paid for anything in her life, she's slashing prices over here!"
Heavy leaned forward. "Shopkeeper knew important information about location of evil Astrid Morinta's vampire headquarters. Should have threatened with little knife first, then stab."
Spy let her thoughts drift as the roleplay devolved into bickering. Not that she didn't enjoy the game Pyro had created; it was often the highlight of her week, though she would refuse to admit that fact even under quite enthusiastic torture. But sometimes - many times - she did wish she could've been playing it with different people.
Normally she'd be spending her evening manipulating the team into succeeding against Pyro's little problems despite the team's chaotic tendencies. Or, alternatively, attempting to twist the game's rules into letting her illusionist character get away with frankly ridiculous stunts, an often-difficult task; Pyro could be disturbingly cunning in their role as mastermind-cum-storyteller. Despite presenting as a simple-minded creature under normal circumstances, they had something of a sixth sense when it came to Spy's ploys. Either way, a fun little game beneath the Game and all its opportunities for proper acting.
She had to admit, though, that today her heart wasn't in it. And as they did with frustrating regularity, her thoughts went straight back to The Hu- The Exchange of Platonic Human Touch. She knew, with cold certainty, that she shouldn't have agreed to it. She had taken the offered stabs gladly enough, but it was pyrrhic at best.
She even knew exactly what was bothering her about it. But that knowledge didn't help.
Distantly, the yelling started. She lit a new cigarette, but merely held it, staring contemplatively at the lit end.
The human need for touch was an addiction that generations of spies had not been able to uproot, and had thus declared some integral part of the psyche for most individuals (being spies, they of course then immediately turned to weaponizing this need against others.) It was a hindrance in her line of work, certainly, when you couldn't trust anyone within figurative or physical arm's length. One of the many reasons that operating as part of a family worked so well - when you grew up visiting an aunt's house to eat home-baked cookies and learn about poisons with your cousins, you could probably trust said aunt and said cousins for a friendly embrace after a long mission a few decades later. Probably.
Affectionate touch, ideally; neutral touch, at the minimum. No touch…
That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it. Out in the wider world, she had her resources for dealing with this tedious little problem. But locked in this contract, in the middle of nowhere - she was shriveled up and parched.
Spy watched the smoke wisps curl up from her cigarette.
She'd been doing well there, for a time. So well, in fact, that she'd almost forgotten about that weakness. But while the urge might subside for a time, it never left entirely; it always simmered below the surface, ready to flare up again.
And that brief touch with the Sniper had, apparently, been enough to awaken that hunger. She hadn't thought it would register to whatever part of the hindbrain monitored her touch levels any more than it did when she had to fight hand-to-hand to get a stab. She would've thought that even her hindbrain understood the concept of 'enemy,' and of 'disgusting.' But apparently…apparently not.
"Mirajinoir?"
So here she sat, as the desire - the craving - ate away at her. Such a simple need. Such an aggravating, uncivilized, primitive one.
She could have reciprocated…
Spy stubbed out the cigarette, vicious. Enough wallowing. She needed a solution.
"Mirajinoir, what do you do?"
Someone elbowed Spy in the ribs. She looked up, and glared around the table.
"Mirajinoir loots the corpse and the store," she said. "If the shopkeeper is dead, we may as well make the best of the situation."
Everyone considered this.
"Then I cast an illusion of the store in its previous state, which should last long enough to safeguard our escape."
Pyro made her roll some dice, and they all looked to Engie for the interpretation of these oracle bones.
She flicked a few beads on her abacus, which she'd pulled out tonight in some peculiar Engie idea of fun. "The spell lands, and will last an hour."
Spy smirked, had Mirajinoir swirl their cloak and say something pithy, and sank back into her reverie as soon as the attention of the group shifted.
At previous bases, she'd been able to sneak out once in a while to get her fix, but Badwater was in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Even a weekend's drive wouldn't get her to a large enough town to have the kind of women (and, more rarely, men) that she would need to consult for something like this.
This, Spy thought, was one of the many reasons the U.S. was rubbish. A civilized continent wouldn't have this much nothing in it.
Perhaps she could simply abstain again, until the need sank below the surface again. But at the thought, the hollow, hungry craving hit her again, weary and angry and cold, and she had to control the urge to curl in on herself.
It seemed that would not be an option.
She considered the options available to her, and winced.
"Mmph."
She snuck a look at Pyro, whose blank glass gaze peeked out over top of their standee. The BLU Pyro was a decent enough…individual…when it came to extinguishing teammates and quite creative when it came to their Wednesday campaign, but they smelled far too much like their counterpart on RED for comfort. Hell, Spy couldn't even stomach crème brûlée these days - freshly caramelized sugar hovered olfactorily close to the burned-marshmallows-and-sulfur scent of the Pyros.
"Whaddya mean, I can't carry all these swords? Don't you see these wicked guns?" She flexed, poorly.
Scout would declare it to be 'sissy gay dyke shit,' because she was terrified by any kind of genuine emotion or earnestness (unlike Spy, who simply scorned it). Also, it would be like hugging a squirming toddler.
"INSUBORDINATE! PYRO SAID NO GUNS ALLOWED AT GAME NIGHT. PYRO, SCOUT IS BREAKING THE LAW!"
Soldier would also think it was sissy gay dyke shit, and while the woman didn't really understand what that was, she would think it was sissy gay french dyke shit, which would threaten Spy's ongoing fiction that she was a true-blue American gal from the great American state of Quebec.
Also: no. Absolutely not.
"For you, little baby thief-Scout, I will carry this loot. But only two swords! New bard-singer Feodor Rachmaninoff still has weak arms."
If sufficiently bribed, Heavy could be an option. However, Spy had definitely seen - and more importantly, heard - the post-match hugs Heavy gave Medic. Those sorts of crunches and snaps would doubtless be interpreted by Spy's hindbrain as violence.
Besides, Medic would kill her for it.
"If yer offerin', lass, I've got the makings of a few wee potions here that need carryin'..."
Demo, while well-meaning, didn't have the best concept of personal space under normal (drunk) circumstances, and Spy refused to give her any license to invade further. There was a difference between touch that was requested and touch that was inflicted, and Demo under the influence perhaps did not have the depth perception to tell the two apart. Spy had been training drunk-Demo in a pavlovian sense for a while now. It would be a shame to confuse things.
"Y'all should use that owlbear of yours to dispose of the body. Two birds, one stone."
Engie was a possibility, she supposed - she was intelligent enough and might even understand the issue without explanation. Yes, perhaps a scientist like her might even be in similar straits and would welcome some kind of arrangement between them -
And then Spy remembered the harmless prank she'd pulled on the woman a few weeks ago. It was hardly anything, really - just a few screws swapped between boxes, a few wrenches re-labelled with the wrong measurements. What was the difference between a ⅜ and a ⅓ anyway? Who cared? What kind of nonsensical numbers were those, anyway?
Nonetheless, Spy thought she might not quite be forgiven yet.
Even now, weeks later, whenever she and Engie were in the same room those gloves would creep towards their toolbelt with clear malicious intent. What elaborate revenge fantasies were hidden behind those goggles, Spy couldn't imagine.
In Spy's defense, she had been quite bored that afternoon.
"Yeah nah, mate, not sure I want to give Pandamoa a taste for human flesh…"
BLU's Sniper was an impressively anxious individual at the best of times, and got extra nervous around Spy in particular, no doubt due to her experiences with the RED Spy. Honestly, Spy was glad to spend her days dueling the RED Sniper instead; she seemed to be made of sterner stuff, even if their hygiene was on par. How BLU Sniper managed to hit anything at all, rabbity as she was, was remarkable.
On top of that, she had - Spy wrinkled her nose - clammy hands. Ugh.
"Vhat nonsense! The shopkeeper is coming too, I'll have him stroll out under his own power. Ve can interrogate his zombified corpse later."
Medic, obviously, was not to be trusted anywhere near mental weaknesses or physical body parts. Besides, Heavy would kill her for it.
Spy frowned, and pulled out a new cigarette. This was a pointless exercise. She could list all the reasons in the world, and none of them mattered, because asking to exchange platonic touch with any of her teammates would ruin the careful fiction Spy had built over the years.
The rest of BLU had a variety of explosive weaponry to do their talking for them. Spy, meanwhile, had a small knife, a revolver, and her aura of mystery and fear; despite a lifetime of elaborate deception, vicious cunning, and cheekbones to die for (people often did), underneath it all she was, regrettably, just as human as anyone else. So she worked very hard to build and maintain a reputation around allies and enemies alike, an intricate mask of distant cruelty, self-centered mercuriality, and cold untouchability. It wasn't even much of a lie.
Spy didn't go to other people for help with her problems. She was other people's problems.
And that was it, really - she was untouchable and inhuman as a matter of both business and proclivity, but right now she needed to be a little touchable, perhaps even mildly human. But she couldn't have both.
The BLUs were allies, but only temporary ones. She did not and could not trust any of them.
The REDs were even more laughable as options; even if any of them countenanced Spy's sly hands anywhere near them, the maintaining of the fiction was doubly important. If they started thinking of the enemy Spy as human, they would start imagining her to have human limits and capabilities as well. The mental image of Spy in their heads did more work than she ever could, spurring them to paranoia and distraction.
And Miss Pauling rarely visited in recent years, being too busy with the Administrator's more exciting pets and projects. Besides, it never did to reveal any kind of vulnerability to one's employer.
Which left…her. Ugh. Che cazzata.
Down the table, someone tackled someone else. It really didn't matter who - Spy was long accustomed to this kind of childishness. Other members of the team piled on, so she took the opportunity to slip unnoticed from the room and start pacing the hallway outside.
The RED Sniper. Somehow, Spy had known she would end up with this conclusion.
Well, she supposed, she wouldn't have to explain the issue.
And even if she did reveal herself to be human and vulnerable, sufficient subsequent applications of a knife to the Sniper's spinal cord would reinstate a healthy, practical fear of her soon enough. She certainly got enough opportunity.
No, she thought, the Sniper was no threat. She was beyond distasteful, but compared to the alternatives…
She paused and stared out a window to the dark desert beyond. Setting her mouth into a line, she turned back to pacing.
Target now acquired, she needed only to plot the event. Crime. Heist.
Under normal circumstances, it would simplicity itself to manipulate the Sniper into begging Spy for another session, thus getting what she wanted without exposing a single hair of vulnerability. She could drop subtle verbal hints or perhaps provide a few deniable touches here and there, whetting the Sniper's touch-appetite the way hers had been.
But the former method of attack would involve having regular conversation, and they didn't do that. Aside from an occasional volley of obscenity, their relationship was strictly….well, not professional, because professionalism (and Spy's life in general) did not have a place for jarred urine, but something perhaps on the same planet as professional.
The nonverbal approach would be just as suspicious - the Sniper didn't have Spy's caliber of mind, of course, but she did have a low animal cunning. And she might instead take it to mean Spy was flirting with her and respond in a nonproductive and - knowing the Sniper - brutish manner.
On top of that, it occurred to her, the way the Sniper had spoken about the issue was entirely casual - she might not even experience the craving as intensely Spy did. Didn't she have a history of spending months at a time out in the wilds of Australia and elsewhere? She was perhaps alike to some sort of tactile camel, then, drinking a friendly touch once a year or so and entirely content the rest of the time. Whereas Spy both liked and needed people, even though she despised most of them.
A live grenade tumbled into the hall. Spy absently kicked it back into the canteen without breaking stride.
But then again, wouldn't the Sniper speak dismissively of a true vulnerability when talking to an enemy, especially one of Spy's nature? She had to know that she was handing Spy a potential weapon against her.
But then again again, perhaps that was evidence that it was no vulnerability at all; after all, the Sniper had approached her nemesis and natural predator for her request. She had a whole team of REDs, including the RED Spy (if she for some reason wanted to spend time with that tawdry vixen) to request from. She had tossed the weakness at Spy as though it was nothing, and perhaps it was.
And so Spy's train of thought went round and round until she had reasoned herself into a corner. She was back at the window, staring grimly out at the crescent moon hovering over the desert.
She did not dare start some kind of psychological campaign. The risks of the Sniper catching on and then never permitting another exchange of platonic human touch were too high. She knew the woman well enough to know that she was extraordinarily, mulishly stubborn when she wanted to be.
Therefore (being without any other options to speak of), Spy needed to do what she most hated in the world:
Make an honest request.
Why, yes, BLU Pyro is the true creator of DnD/GnG (I think we all know that 'Gygax' is the kind of nonsense fake name only a Pyro would think up). If for some reason you want to hear the oddly elaborate backstory, hit me up. 'Astrid Morinta' is, of course, the child of an anagrammer.
Jolene the Mean - Ever since I saw That One Comic I have fully believed that Dolly Parton is fem!Scout's Tom Jones. Also, I think it would be very funny if Scout chose to be a rogue. Like parent, like child.
For returning readers, I do think male!Spy in WaLHBE also had this reaction; however, he was so surprised and confused by the event he was able to bury it under being Big Mad. This time, everything being out in the open like this - without a mystery to distract her - forces fem!Spy to actually face her actual problem.
-—-—-
che cazzata - Italian; what bullshit
Spy is an international traveller, and collects obscenity in other languages like a magpie. In anything but the direst of straits, French is far too pure to sully with such rudeness - but other languages? Absolutely.