"Guten Abend, Scout. I think it vas about time we had a little chat."
As the Medic folded his hands above the desk, purposefully obscuring any identifying information on the document he was working on, the Scout continued to stare from the doorway - as if surprised the Medic was there at all.
Internally, the Doctor sighed. He didn't exactly want any of this to come to a close like this, either. He knew the talk would be awkward, personal - intimate. Too much of everything for his own liking, much less the Scout's comfort. As the words he had rehearsed in his head came blankly out of his mouth, he braced himself for the Scout's reaction.
"...You have not spoken in days. Not a word to any of us - and I must apologize, for I know that zhis vas caused by me." The Medic cleared his throat in discomfort. "I am... sorry, for how I reacted - how I must have seemed that morning."
Before him, the Scout was still by the open door, his hand lingering on the doorframe. His brow was furrowed - in disbelief? Or was it anger? The Medic assumed he was tired - because for some reason, he couldn't read what the Scout was thinking. Either way, the Scout remained silent.
"Please, do enter zhe room." Medic removed his round spectacles as he fidgeted with it's frame nervously. He'd made sure his hands were gloved beforehand - although working on paperwork with gloved hands were admittedly uncomfortable and clumsy - he didn't want to react in the case he had to touch the Scout again. That was why he was still up working, after all. "I do believe zhat zhis matter is important - and personal. To both of us."
This time the Scout's brow shot up, his expression contorting into what seemed to display confusion. Medic paused - somehow he had expected a different reaction. After uncomfortably clearing his throat for a second time, he asked again, quietly. "Bitte, Scout."
Hesitantly, the Scout closed the door behind him. As it swung shut, he slowly approached the desk, and stopped about a few feet before it - an impersonal distance. As the Scout folded his arms, clearly as uncomfortable with the situation as the Medic was - the Medic sighed. This was definitely the hard part.
"I- I must confess, I do enjoy your presence." The Medic said as he closed his eyes tightly, setting his gaze down to the spectacles in his hands as he opened them. "Do not take zhis the wrong way, Herr Scout - but ever since we started sharing a bed during ceasefire, I- I have started developing a certain fondness for you."
The Scout remained silent. As the Medic continued fidgeting with the frames of his glasses, the picture of the Spy peaked from beneath his gloved hands - his blank eyes staring at him judgmentally.
"Inappropriate as it is - inappropriate as this all is - I have developed certain thoughts towards you." The Medic sighed deeply, his nervous hands almost bending his glass frames underneath the pressure. He could feel his face growing red, and his heartbeat rising to what felt like a level of physical illness. As he reflected on all the thoughts and feelings he had been harboring towards the Scout since the beginning of the ceasefire, a certain sensation had been blooming inside the Medic.
A want - a yearning need for intimacy.
He wanted to say the truth, right there and then. He wanted to see the Scout smile. To see him wear that sheepish grin, shake his head, and accept the Medic - and his feelings alike. He remembered their first night - Scout's fears, and his vulnerability he had been showing every night since then. The trust in the Scout's voice when he talked to the Medic about his hobbies - and his joy. The simple things that the Scout did, like his toothless, slight smile as he read something he thought was neat, or the slight grunt of appreciation the Scout let out when the Medic told him a joke the Scout actually thought was funny.
As the mysterious, unnamed sensation built up inside the Medic - he thought about his fears. His fear of touching him. The fear that - if he ever even dared touch the Scout, he would wake him up - and the Scout would realize what the Medic's intentions were, and leave, to be distant with him once again. It was a fear that claimed that this was all just one happy dream. Just one brief moment that he would snap out of - that he would forget - if either of them ever dared to wake up.
His fear that, in the end, he would find himself alone again.
It was creepy, that he, and older man felt this about what was supposed to be his colleague. It was almost disgusting.
As Medic fought tears welling up beneath his eyelids, he finally glanced up towards the Scout, and pulled back, almost wincing.
Closer than the boy had been since he last noticed his movement - the Scout was now right in front of his desk. As the Medic looked up nervously into the Scout's face - he barely noticed that the Scout's right hand was touching the document on his desk - inches close to his own gloved hands. The Scout's expression was fixed, in a hard, unreadable gaze.
As the Medic subconsciously traced the boy's eyes down to the poorly printed, black and white picture on the page - he finally noticed something was wrong .
"Junge..." The Medic looked up at the boy, his voice barely a whisper now.
"...Who are you?"
~oOo~
Awake, and now more aware than ever, Scout could feel his blood boil.
He didn't know exactly what this feeling was - it was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. He felt like his heart was burning - and his head was filled with a dark, red fog. Before him, the Spy's smirk had slowly turned into a thin-lipped frown, as he noticed the boy's sudden change in demeanor.
"...What is the matter?" The Spy reached out for another cigarette. "Are you suddenly regretting your decision to cooperate?"
The Scout returned with silence, his darkened features alluding to his fury.
"Unfortunate." The Spy replied, talking to himself once again. Lighting the new cigarette with his small, tin lighter, he took in a deep breath of smoke, and sighed. "You do understand what happens next, yes?"
The already furrowed brow on Scout's face twitched in anger. There was a limit. A limit he could take. This was crossing it. He didn't know why - he didn't want to know why - but the thought of RED torturing and killing the unarmed Medic in his own base made him want to harm something. The thought of the Medic getting hurt by a face exactly like his own - the thought of the medic getting hurt by anybody at all - it made him want to kill.
And the Scout, at that moment, looked like he was ready to kill. His shoulders tensed, hands shaking ever so slightly - he fought off the need to explode and strangle the Spy. He needed to get out of there. He needed to get out of the car right now.
He needed a way out.
Seething through his clenched teeth, he managed to say a few words. In a low, almost threatening tone he had never heard come out of his body, he spoke.
"...I won't allow that." The spy raised a questioning eyebrow, as the Scout continued. "I can't allow you to kill me, not right now."
The Spy sighed, rolling his eyes. "Do not be so dramatic. It's just death. You've experienced this many times before." He snickered.
"I - " The Scout almost choked. "...I can't let that bastard harm him. Not him."
The Spy's expression stiffened, for a brief moment. As quickly as he showed any emotion, it was gone. "And what are you going to do about it?" He teased, casually reaching into his suit. "Your hands are tied, you have no weapons - and unlike you, I have a pistol." He pulled out the firearm, showing it off in the reflective glass as it glinted under the dim light of the car. "There is nothing you can do."
The Scout sucked air in through tightly clenched teeth, his mind running a mile a minute. He needed a way out, fast. He needed to stop RED before it was too late. What was the best way to do it? What could he use against the Spy?
Almost immediately - his mind went to the car. His willingness to assist the RED Scout, and his own choice in getting involved with any of this, despite the risk. Almost automatically, he opened his mouth.
"At least I'm not being lovey-dovey with some kid half my fuckin' age."
There was a pause. The Spy's eyes widened briefly before his expression contorted to that of an ugly, threatening sneer. Time lost its meaning after that.
There was a bang, then the sound of glass windows shattering. Smoke rose from the barrel of the gun as it steadied, the exit of the bullet pointed - just a few shaky movements away from the Scout's head.
In the car seat behind him, the Scout glared at the Spy silently. He hadn't flinched as the bullet soared from the gun - right into the rear window behind him. His muscles still clenched and his heart now roaring with adrenaline, he could barely feel the painful deafness that settled gradually in his head, as the bullet - very nearly - missed its mark. He was still alive. For now.
"Look," The Scout said monotonously. "I don't give a fuck about how ya feel, okay?" He continued very quickly as the Spy slowly readied for another round. "I ain't gonna talk shit, it ain't none'a my business." At this the Spy paused what he was doing with his weapon, his stunned expression betraying the slightly shaking hand on his gun. The spy remained silent.
"You've been smoking ever since I came into the car. Maybe even longer. I dunno." The Scout continued unwaveringly. "I know a tick when I see one, dude. You're fucking nervous. And if you're not, something's fucking destroying you from the inside. There's just some shit we can't fuckin' hide." The Scout shrugged. "I can see that - it don't fuckin' mean that I'm gonna tell, or that I fucking care."
At this point the gun had been lowered considerably. As the Spy remained stunned at the boy's surprising observational skills - the Scout continued to speak. "You care about the kid. A lot. I know. If ya didn't you wouldn'ta agreed to any of this bullshit." He dared a look into the Spy's now fully widened eyes. "It's fuckin melodramatic - the Scout doesn't need to know his dad. I know I sure don't."
"...But this shit's important to him." The Scout looked away briefly, as he cleared his throat. "It's important to him, and that's why you agreed to help the kid, right?" He looked back at the Spy, and before giving time for him to reply, he pushed quickly on. "You trust him. Somehow. You trust him, and that's important to you. That Scout's important to you - and that's why you'd do anything to appease him."
The Spy's gun was fully lowered now. As Scout gulped hard and closed his eyes tightly, tears now threatening to build up from behind his eyelids, he continued quietly. "...I know how that feels." He whispered.
"I know how it feels… to have somebody important to you."
As hard as he squeezed his eyes shut, there seemed to be no stopping his tears from falling. As he choked on his own feelings, he continued to blather on, unable to even open his eyes to see what the Spy was doing, or what he was thinking. Right now, his mind was on one person - and on one person alone.
"...Medic's important to me." He managed to say. "I can't trust nobody. I don't know how to trust people - even my own team - my own family. " He choked again. "There ain't nobody I know how to trust, nobody I can say the truth to." Tears fell relentlessly from his shut eyes. "But somehow...somehow, Medic's different. I dunno why. He's just fucking different. "
"...I haven't ever felt like this before, man. Like, I ain't ever felt safe, with someone, ya know? And I know some people wanna help me or some shit. I know there are people who try." Scout sniffed. "Snipes does. My ma does. Demo, Soldy, even the Hardhat fuckin' tries for me when I'm down. I know that." Scout opened his eyes painfully. "...These guys, my team - they're better to me than my fuckin' brothers ever were. They're my family. They all are." Slowly, he looked up to the Spy. "But Medic - The doc's different. He's different to me."
Before him, the Spy wore a confusing expression. His face twisted in what looked like sadness and sympathy - or was it pity? - he held his gun facing the ground, still facing back towards the Scout. Noticing the teary Scout's gaze now trained on his own, the Spy almost winced.
"...I see." He coughed gently, removing the cigarette between his lips and throwing it out of the window. "I understand."
The corners of his mouth rising to what resembled a thin, weak smile - the Spy gently put away his gun, onto the passenger seat beside him. "...I suppose it must have seemed that way, did it not?"
Tears still falling out of his eyes, the Scout managed to cock his head weakly to the side. "Whaddaya mean?" He asked weakly.
"That I love the Scout. In a romantic sense." He shook his head, the slight smile on his face still hanging on his sharp features. "I do not. But I do consider him as my son." he looked towards the Scout. "My real son...I never knew".
The Spy sighed. "The life of a double agent is... difficult. In some cases you must wear the life of another man's shoes - the life of a fictional man you've never known, and who has never existed. The duration varies. Sometimes it is only months - other times, it is years. " His eyes showed a glint of genuine sadness. "...And what do you do, if you fall in love with the life of a man you've never known? A man that has never even existed?"
His thin smile, still there, but void of any humor or meaning, trembled uncomfortably in order to hide the frown behind it. "I was deployed for years. I fell in love - we had a child." He took in a deep breath, and sighed. "I shouldn't have - I was in enemy territory, among the frontlines of the enemy military. Although, looking back, that was the only way I could have ever completed my mission - I still feel like I lost some of myself in the process." He sighed again, a bit more silently this time. "She was very much- she acted very much like the Scout." He inhaled, and almost choked on his words. "An amazing soldier, an amazing woman - she was brilliant."
"But my orders were to go after her relatives - her own family. And when we had the child, I had approached close enough to complete my mission." He paused. The Scout, his own tears now dried, nodded slightly, urging the Spy to continue. "...I did what I needed to do, and I left."
The Scout, his lips pursed tightly, asked. "...Did you regret it?"
The Spy looked back up, his forced smile softening, ever so slightly. "I do believe, you already know the answer to that question."
As silence befell the two, the desert winds roared around the abandoned shack surrounding them, and the car felt just a bit colder.
There was nothing left to say.