Spy didn't know how much Sniper remembered of The Crossbow Incident, and didn't dare ask.
And when Spy next tapped twice on the doorframe of Sniper's current perch, she had set down her rifle and opened her arms as if nothing had changed.
Nothing had changed, Spy told herself firmly.
Only after a little while in silence did Sniper speak. "The Doc says she accidentally flipped the switch on the syringe. Gave me the enemy portion and not the ally. She was…apologetic, in her way."
Spy (remembering again the RED Medic suspiciously near the perch, suspiciously distracted) privately suspected that the dreadful woman just wanted to see what would happen. She made a noncommittal noise.
Sniper snorted. "That'll teach me to ask for help from the team, eh? Would not recommend getting hit by that stuff, by the way. That new formula of hers is…not kind."
Her hand had started stroking up and down Spy's spine, the same way Spy had been doing for her that day. Was it intentional? Spy didn't want to draw attention to it if it wasn't, because she had to admit it was rather pleasant. Soothing.
Spy cleared her throat. "It certainly did not seem like an entirely enjoyable experience, from your perspective."
"Might have to give her crossbow an accident or somethin'," Sniper said, meditatively. "Wouldn't want anyone else to get hit by that stuff, enemy or no."
Her hand stroked up and down Spy's back. Up and down. Up and down.
Spy decided that the RED Medic's new formulae were going to have quite an accident indeed. It would not do to have such a weapon on the field. And perhaps the Medic herself would get sent to Respawn a bit more in coming days, to ensure she had less time for experimentation. "As you say…enemy or no."
There was a thoughtful pause, and Sniper said, " 'Preciate your giving me a hand, back there."
"Come now, bushwoman, I am a Sniper-stabbing savant," Spy scoffed, and tossed her head. "It is no trial to kill one more - and if you recall for a while there I was paying you for the pleasure."
Sniper made her own noncommittal noise, but released her. "Was more talkin' about the other stuff, but sure."
-—-—-
"This is getting excessive, bushwoman," said Spy, without preamble. "So. I have a proposition."
Sniper, standing in the door of the camper, looked in at her and said…nothing at all.
Spy continued, undaunted. "We are spending far too much of our working days in the pursuit of platonic human touch. I hypothesize that if we were to get it out of our systems after-hours, when there is less chance of discovery, then we would be better able to focus during the day."
Sniper just stared at her for an endless moment, face utterly unreadable, and Spy began to wonder whether she had made a tactical error. Perhaps turning up after-hours and lockpicking her way into the camper hadn't been the most socially acceptable thing to do. To be fair, it was widely agreed in her profession that privacy and personal space were rare resources, and not to be wasted on anyone who wasn't oneself. And naturally, she had broken into every mercenary's quarters multiple times over the past few years, but while a merc might suspect such an investigation, they would not find any evidence to actually confirm their suspicion. Not if Spy was half competent at her job, anyway -
Sniper cleared her throat, with care. "Might be worth a try. How d'ya want to- want to do it?"
"Take a seat." Confidence regained, Spy slid off the edge of the little bed - really, how did Sniper fit those long legs in there? - and swept a sarcastic little bow, gesturing toward the little booth-and-table against the wall of the camper. "Bring some reading material, assuming they teach the written word in Australian schools in between animal combat classes."
"Hardy-bloody-har. We only had three punch-centric classes a day, I'll have you know." Sniper sat in the booth, sliding to the wall, and Spy slipped in next to her, hip-to-hip and legs touching. Space was a little tight, so Sniper lifted the arm stuck between them and draped it over the back of the seat behind Spy.
"Perhaps if you had four, you'd be better at fighting me," said Spy.
"Mmm. Bein' awful prickly for a woman within headbutting range."
"You have me there - you are the most hard- and pig-headed individual I have had the displeasure of knowing in some time. You could probably headbutt your way through a brick wall, with no risk of any damage to the brain."
"Aw, Spy, you'll make me blush," she said, smirking. "Sayin' such nice things, getting concerned for the safety of my poor little brain and all."
Spy sneered back, and eyed their new position. "Yes, perhaps this will be enough," she said, gesturing to the line of contact at their shoulders and from hips down. "This way, we can do our own business while fulfilling our touch quota for the day. Be efficient, etcetera, etcetera."
"And you really think this'll work," Sniper said, following her gaze.
Spy nodded with perfect confidence. "I have no idea."
"Fair enough. What d'ya have there?"
Spy angled the book to show the lurid cover. "Just an old friend."
"The Price of Salt," Sniper read. "Didn't know you liked to read trashy pulp romances. I expected a philosophical treatise or a gun manual or the like."
"For pleasure? Good lord, what do you take me for?" She craned to look at the garish red cover of Sniper's novel. "The Day of the Jackal?"
"Thriller," grunted Sniper. "S'posedly based on a true story about an attempted assassination in France, though I have my doubts."
"So, another flavor of trashy pulp," snickered Spy.
Sniper, unexpectedly, grinned. "Absolutely."
She was unreasonable enough, however, to take exception to Spy putting her feet up on the table.
"You do not understand, bushwoman," Spy said sternly. "Since the day I was born, I have had the unquenchable need - as one needs water, or air, or quality tailoring - to have my feet up on something when sitting. It is a biological requirement."
"Biological requirement, my arse," she said with a snort. "I've a biological requirement to piss in jars and throw it at my enemies, but you don't take kindly to that, do you."
Spy huffed, and tossed her legs over Sniper's. "There, a compromise." She sent her a challenging look.
"Shoulda known you would figure out a way to make lounging around like a lazy git into a lifestyle."
She didn't, however, move to shove the legs off, so Spy privately declared victory.
They both turned to their books.
But reading with Sniper (as it turned out a few minutes later) was unexpectedly entertaining - because she provided her own commentary.
"Pig's arse!"
Spy blinked out of her book. "Hm?"
But Sniper was glaring at the book before her, eyes flicking over the page. "A sniper rifle hidden in a crutch? An interesting idea, but there's no way that wouldn't…"
Spy hid a smirk, and turned back to her book.
Some minutes later: "Still not all right with those damned mercury-tipped explosive bullets, they never work like they're advertised…"
Spy found that instead of focusing obediently on the page, her eyes kept drifting up to check Sniper's various astonished, affronted, and disgusted expressions as she read.
A groan, then: "That business with the honeydew melon - amateur hour stuff, mate."
A while later: "That's not how it went at all," she fumed. "The Baroness's death was a pure accident!"
Finally, she tossed the book onto the table and scowled at it. "No, the detective and the assassin did not share a long, respectful look before the Jackal died, noble adversaries to the end 'n all."
"And how do you know that?" Spy asked, curiosity finally overcoming caution.
"Because the assassin known as The Jackal," Sniper said, jerking her thumb to point at her chest, "Was busy not bleeding to death after rolling out of the window with a bunch of bullets through her shoulder."
"While I was not in France at the time of the, mmm, events that this novel purports to relate, I do remember the furor in the intelligence community afterwards," said Spy. "If I recall correctly, French law enforcement believe le Chacal - or, I suppose, la Chacal - remains thoroughly deceased."
Sniper snorted. "No surprise there. The cops, as ever, were damn incompetents. The book makes them out to be playing some kind of grand chess game against the wily Jackal -" she rolled her eyes expressively at this, "- but from my perspective, they were caught with their daks down. Only pure chance that blew my cover."
"That accords exactly with my own experiences with the French services," Spy said, shaking her head in mock sadness. "Sales flics, the lot of them."
"S'pose I should be glad the narrative puts such an emphasis on the Jackal being a professional, even if he - and he is a he in the book - does read like a manipulative little creep." Her eyes flicked to Spy, briefly.
"Really more my line of business," said Spy, amused.
"Didn't say it!"
Spy laughed at her outright. "So," she said, "How did you get away with your life, incompetent policemen or no?"
"Piece of piss, really, when they're looking for a man." She shrugged, then reached up and distractedly rubbed her shoulder. "You ain't the only one who can put on a disguise. And if I wasn't the best at it, they still saw what they wanted to see."
"They always do, don't they." Spy rolled her eyes.
"Didn't hardly speak French, so played the clueless tourist until I could get out of the country and to real medical help."
"The best lies are those with a little grain of truth in them. Though in your case, ma petite Chacal, it was perhaps more than a few grains," Spy teased, watching for Sniper's reaction from beneath her lashes.
She didn't disappoint. "Watch it, mate, I think I've got a honeydew melon around here somewhere -"
"I remain, as ever, entirely uncowed by melons of any varietal."
Sniper looked away and smiled, a little distant, a little wistful. "If it'd gone off, though, I could've retired with the winnings."
"What, and miss the thrilling action of the Gravel Wars? I am shocked you would even consider it," said Spy, in her least shocked voice. Though she was unexpectedly discomfited by the thought of there being someone else here in Sniper's place.
"Oh, I'm thrilled good and proper to be shootin' the same bloody heads day in and out. Real challengin' work, it is."
A comfortable silence fell over them, and Spy returned to her book.
Sniper looked out of the window for a while, that same wistful expression lingering. It was only when she said "Damn glad I never had to work retail, this sounds like hell" that Spy realized that she had started reading along with Spy on The Price of Salt. Spy felt rather smug.
"Indeed."
Poor innocent-idiot Therese, Spy thought, and not for the first time. The first time she'd read Salt back in '52, she'd been not too much older than the protagonist herself, though perhaps decades older in experience and world-weariness even then. The young were so tragically turbulent, weren't they - stuffed with overwrought emotions and forever-and-evers. Spy was well glad to be out of that nonsense.
Sniper's back hand had drifted up behind Spy, and started rubbing absently at the ever-stiff muscles of Spy's neck.
Spy tensed very slightly, and darted a look up at Sniper. Who was raptly focused on the book, lips slightly parted as she read the dramatic cross-country flight from Carol's terrible husband's private detective.
"That rat bastard and his wiretaps…!"
She seemed to have no inclination toward removing Spy's balaclava. Her fingers made soothing little circles through the fabric on a muscle knot at the base of Spy's skull.
Though it was dreadful to remember that she was these days older than Carol, even. Carol, who had been wiser and older and infinitely mysterious and confident, to Spy's (and Therese's) younger eyes. Horrible. Who decided that her novels would stay the same while she aged? She needed to know, for stabbing reasons.
This nonsense was all very tiring, she thought.
So Spy slowly relaxed into that hand, and by degrees, melted into the warmth of Sniper's shoulder. She kept turning pages, but found herself muzzily watching Sniper's face instead of the book as she vaguely planned the assassination of Father Time himself.
At some point, she felt Sniper slip the book from her drooping hand and murmur something indistinct.
-—-
Spy awoke, gradually, and had a long moment of blank, utter confusion.
She was warm, even hot, and her rooms were usually just a little too cold in the gap-windowed BLU base for comfort; usually she had to wear layers to bed and -
There was a soft, buzzing snore from above, and awareness came to her fully.
Spy's face was shoved into the warm crook of Sniper's neck, and she realized there was a wet patch of drool on her balaclava. Ugh.
And by the feel of it, there was a matching drool patch on the top of her head. Even in their off hours, Sniper managed to douse her with body fluids, she thought with a certain bleary humor.
They had gotten closer to each other at some point; Spy was currently half in Sniper's lap, somehow, which couldn't possibly be comfortable for the other woman. Spy was no lightweight.
What had probably woken Spy up was the abominable ache in her lower back; she hadn't fallen asleep sitting in years, and her back cried out for the generous support of her mattress. Spy scolded herself, and made a sour face at the awful taste of her own mouth. She was far too old to fall asleep on a handsome enemy of any gender in such an unsupportive position. No matter how comfortable their shoulder was.
Nonetheless, her overwhelming urge was to simply close her eyes again and deal with the fallout in the morning.
But then a muscle in her back spasmed, and she bit off a groan. "Fine," she breathed. "Fine."
She delicately extracted herself from Sniper's hold- hold? Ah yes, the arm Sniper had tossed over the back of the seat had, at some point, slipped down around her. It was heavy and warm around her waist - Sniper had annoyingly attractive, annoyingly weighty muscles from all that rifle-toting and archery - and Spy had some difficulty getting out of it without startling awake the other woman.
But Sniper proved a heavy sleeper. Even when Spy - in a belated attempt at moral behavior - attempted to prod her awake enough to send her to the little bed in the back, she just scrunched up further into the corner of the booth.
"Ngk?" Sniper said, intelligently.
"How you were not eaten in your sleep by feral wallabies is beyond me," Spy told her.
She tugged the extra blanket off the bed and tossed it over Sniper, who curled up in it.
"Your neck and probably your everything else will hurt in the morning," Spy warned, feeling the peculiar echo of her mother's voice come through her.
"Ngk."
"On your stiff neck be it, then."
That settled, Spy straightened, gingerly stretched her back, and wavered in indecision. She should go back to BLU base, to her rooms. She should open the door into the freezing darkness and make the long dark freezing walk back to her freezing rooms, where no one dared disturb her as she froze in the dark.
"Coward," she muttered to herself. "You are a coward and a fool and will get yourself into trouble if you do not cease this nonsense immediately and…"
She told herself all this as she shrugged out of her suit jacket, hung it neatly in the tiny closet with her necktie, relaxed her suspenders, stepped out of her shoes, flicked off the lights, crawled into Sniper's bed, shoved her face in the woman's pillow, and promptly fell back asleep.
After all, if Sniper wasn't going to use it, there was no point in letting it go to waste.
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith was published in 1952. It was very unusual at the time - there were certainly lesbian pulp romance novels around, but due to the shitty mores of the time, the others end with the sapphic pair split up, either pairing with men or dying (ugh). Salt instead ends happily, or at least hopefully. It's well written, too, with an existentially horrifying (and unfortunately still accurate) depiction of working retail during the holiday season. You can see why sapphic women of the time held on to it so.
Salt is a novel of extreme, conflicting emotions, and I figure Spy would find it entertaining for that reason - that she can watch other people having big dramatic feelings while she gets to sit back and eat popcorn. Also, the retail bit - a nice reminder to her of "I'd rather blackmail and assassinate my way through Venice than go undercover at a Sears again in the Christmas season."
The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth, 1971) is perhaps a little less historically significant, but it's decent for a proto-thriller. The Jackal [him]self, while vaguely described in the book for thriller reasons, is consistently described as tall, blonde, and grey-eyed, which I found an amusing coincidence.
Real Jackal-heads know that in the book the Jackal sleeps with the Baroness as part of his/her cover. Spy, of course, does not know this.
Warning for both books for period-typical terminology for people of other races, though it is a racism of terminology and omission only. Jackal does, however, have one bizarre late chapter where while the Jackal himself cleverly plays on other people's homophobia to move in disguise, the narration itself is disgusting when it comes to describing gay men.
-—-—-
pig's arse - Aussie; no way/bullshit/that's a lie
le/la Chacal - French; the [male/female] Jackal. With 'ma petite,' becomes 'my little [fem] jackal.' French has a lot of ridiculous-in-translation endearments, and afaik this is not one of them, so Spy here is making one up on the spot (along similar lines as 'mon loup,' 'my wolf') as a joke.
daks - Aussie; trousers, pants (American)
sales flics - French; dirty cops (a phrase used in the novel that amused me)
piece of piss - Aussie; easy
handsome - English lol; so these days this word is used almost exclusively to refer to men, but a few generations ago it was also sometimes used to talk about women of a certain type. A handsome woman is not necessarily beautiful, but she does have bold, strong features and a masc kind of confidence.
-—-—-
bingus1man: Well when you say it like that you sound like Medic ;P