A warming body next to me. Arms around me. Legs tangled. Warm breathing tickled my cheek. I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling. Lights were out. Susan probably switched them off at some point. Oh, yeah. Susan. She loves me.
I looked at the analogic clock which glowed in the dark. I may be childish but I found it pretty neat. The glowing parts told me it was time to get up in ten minutes so I decided to wake the sleeping princess.
"Hey.. Susie, wake up", I whispered in her ear and shook her gently but hard enough to wake her up.
"No.. leave.. my bananas alone", she mumbled and waved her arm and accidentally hit me in the face with it.
"Mnhhg? Max? Shit, sorry", she woke up. I smiled sheepily and stated:
"I wasn't going to take you bananas. No need to hit me."
"Bananas? What are you talking about?" she asked in confusion and scratched the tip of her nose.
"You speak in your sleep. You told me to leave your bananas alone", I grinned and petted her cheek.
"Shut up! I don't talk when I sleep", she yelled and slapped my hand away. First she looked angry but then she smiled. I smiled back. I wanted to kiss her. Then I realized I could. So I did so.
"We have to get up", I told to my lady scout.
We met Al, he saw right through us. He was happy for few days we were content. Happy. It was the best time of my life.. Till things went straight to hell from heaven. We had this battle and red team did something they had never done. They took some prisoners. Prisoners of war. And of course the girl had to be one of them. My girl.
For a day I worried my heart bleeding when I waited anxiously for our bosses to decide what to do with the situation. The blu team could do anything to her. And second day they kicked me in the face with a steel boot. Not literally of course.. But it felt like it. We were not going to go and save them. I tried to convince them it would be the right decision to go and fight for them. Tried to persuade them in all possible ways. I raged. I pleaded. And it was all for nothing. They just told me to go to my room. There were no fighting over them.
That day I just cried. I didn't let even Al in my room. No one was to disturb my agony. Then I really realized that she was my life and I was going to lose my life. And I wasn't going to let it happen. So the third day I want trough the base trying to find someone who had loved ones hold in the red base. I found two. A sniper called Blake and a demoman named Nathan and they were willing to assist me. Assist me in my almost sure suicide mission of saving Susan and of course the others. Alfred was willing too.
Fourth day was the day of action. I was surprised that I wasn't scared at all. I wasn't scared of dying because I had nothing to lose. I wasn't scared of getting caught by the leaders of blu team and getting punished. I would lose time but I'd fucking kill even them if I had to. I had my equipment on, I had my group and I had nothing to lose.
"This is a fucking suicide mission", the sniper mumbled and lighted a cigarette. We had gotten out of the base but that was fucking easy because Nathan got us a engineer to help us out. Would have been helpful to have him with us the whole way. But I was glad that we were out of the base. It was progress. One step towards her.
"You can fucking go back if you're afraid to die", I retorted and he just took a long drag of his tobacco.
"I am not afraid to die, mate. Seeking for death is just plain stupid", he answered and walked to my right side. I didn't feel need to answer to that. It was stupid. But it was worth it. Worth trying.
"Who are you ready to die for?" the demoman's voice asked somewhere behind me.
"Susan", I answered.
"You got the girl, hm?" Blake chuckled with mockery in his voice.
"Hell yeah, I have her. Or maybe she has me", I answered without looking at him. Al on my other side said:
"I'm here for Susan too. But I want all the others out as well."
"Love triangle? Well she's the only girl in blu, so.. no wonder", Nathan pondered.
"Just my best buddy. Susan's all for Max", heavy explained and patted me on my shoulder.
"Shut up, all of you. We are not on a picnic", Blake reminded us and I nodded. We definitely weren't.
That night in our little camp Nathan brought that same topic back up.
"Hey, Blake, right? You didn't tell us who are you saving", the demoman tried to approach Blake friendly and took a gulp of water before eyeing him expectantly.
"Neither did you", the sniper answered laying back and pulled his hat in front of his eyes.
"I'm here for a beautiful man", Nathan answered.
"Mate, you're weird. You can't call men beautiful", Blake argued and lifted his hat so his eyes could be seen again. The demoman just shrugged and said:
"Well there are beautiful men. Maybe you just don't see it."
They started to go on and on about everything. The arguing stopped when I said I'm off to bed. Soon there would be sweat and blood.
We found ourselves at the red base. The building had two entrances. Both had guards and a gate. The East Gate had a sentry gun so we could forget that. That turret would fuck us up big time. The West Gate had only two guards. A soldier and a sniper it seemed. I guess it was logical because the East Gate faced the direction of our base.
Blake and I thought of a plan. It maybe wasn't the smartest idea but we hadn't got that many options and we weren't strategists or anything. Our plan was pretty much based on distracting and luck. It felt more risky than getting wet when running in a rain. But still worth a try. I hoped.
Nathan placed some stickybombs on the East Gate and then we headed to the West Gate. Our sniper was ready to shoot the guards if they wouldn't leave their posts because of the explosion. We had to wait for the gate to open. It could be possible we would had to wait the whole day. Maybe even the next day. Which would be bad. But we were lucky. It's always nice when things go according to the plan.
The gate opened and some guy in a vehicle came trough it. Or he was about to come. I don't know if he was about to go and get some more supplies or negotiate or something else but he didn't get to do his job. The demoman of our group blew up his bombs at the East Gate and soon the alerted three at West Gate were dead by Blake's bullets.
"Can't we use that car when we escape?" Nathan asked. He had a good point there. I tried to think quickly before giving orders:
"Nathan, you could move that car a bit further away. Tell Blake to be ready with it. Then you could keep the reds busy with your bombs and Al and I will go in. Can you do it?"
"Alright, boss", the demoman answered. It was hard to sound understandable through a gas mask but he apparently got my message. He jumped into the car where he pushed the corpse out of the vehicle.
I didn't know when I had become the leader of this operation. Maybe I had been it the whole time. I didn't know but now.. Now we had to move fast.
It was hard to be sneaky with all my equipment and a heavy following me but all the hassle around us made it easier. Also the western side of the base were pretty empty in minutes. There were only few guards that didn't leave their posts and we handled them either with Al's fists or my fire axe. We couldn't make too much noise.
We were lucky again because we found the cell pretty fast. Our bases seemed to be almost identical but that probably was because the buildings were built at the same time, before this war. Then I saw her.
"Susan!"