Well this ended up being over a week later than intended, but real life has kept me busy. Sorry about that! In my usual style, this also ended up being a lot lengthier than originally planned. You'd think by now I'd be used to my chapters turning out far longer than expected.

Quick reminder that this is an entirely different ending from the other one, and continues on where chapter one leaves off.

The Sniper put one calming hand on the Spy's shoulder while reaching for his kukri. The Spy couldn't stand it. He felt like his skin was being scorched through his suit.

'Damn, that's an impressive temperature you've got. Almost like-'

The Sniper snatched his hand away as though scalded.

'Shit.'

There was something in that curse. Fear? Horror? Realisation? The Spy couldn't tell. He couldn't even keep himself upright anymore. Slowly he sank down against the wall until he reached the dusty floor. The Sniper loomed over him, staring down at the BLU, his kukri halfway out of its sheaf.

'Fuck. No, I'm probably wrong. Yeah. It can't be. Well, it better fucking not be...' the marksman muttered to himself.

The Spy scowled. He had no idea what the Sniper was babbling on about but it wasn't reassuring. The last thing you want when you're ill with some kind of mystery virus is a man who hates your guts making cryptic remarks in a worried voice. It really wasn't helping the Spy's mood at all.

'What is it?' he asked in a hoarse voice, 'What are you going on about?'

The Sniper wasn't one for deception. If he was saying something was wrong, that meant something was wrong. He wouldn't be making things up just to try and trick or scare his opponent. That was the Spy's job.

The RED didn't answer. He just slide his knife back into its holder and knelt down next to the Frenchman. The Spy flinched when the back of a hand was pressed to his brow, and turned his face away to break the contact.

'Oi, stay still,' the Sniper ordered gruffly. He grabbed hold of the Spy's jaw and peered into his eyes. Behind the orange-tinted aviators, the Spy could see the man's pupils flicking from one of the masked man's eyes to the other as he studied them intently.

'Ger 'off,' the BLU managed, though he didn't have the energy to even try and get himself out of the Sniper's grip. Or at least, he thought he hadn't. But when his enemy pulled his blue tie loose with his spare hand and began to unbutton his shirt, panic shot through the Spy, giving him new strength. He struggled and writhed, shrugging off the fingers scrapping along the third button down.

The Spy's mind was buzzing with shock and fear. He'd never expected this. The Sniper had never showed any sign of wanting to- wanting to do anything like this. The Spy had made countless jibes at his enemy over the months, accusing the Sniper of enjoying it far too much when they ended up fighting in close quarters. But really, that had only ever been to make the Australian angry and reckless. He'd never really believed that the Sniper had any kind of interest in him. And he certainly hadn't expected the man to start ripping his clothes off him while he was defenceless.

'Stop wriggling, you little bugger! Stay still, I'm only trying to help.'

The Spy continued to struggle. He really didn't see how this was meant to help him at all. Nails scratched over his skin as the Sniper yanked his blazer and shirt off of his left shoulder. The masked man shivered as cold air reached his burning skin. The sharpshooter pulled at the other side of his clothing to expose his right shoulder, then paused, frowning.

'Nothing... unless...' The grip on the Spy's jaw tightened, pressing his head back against the wall. A moment later he found out why as fingers dug underneath the edge of his mask.

The Spy made a gasping, panicked sound as the fabric was pulled up his neck.

'Calm down, I'm not going to pull the damn thing off, I just need to check!'

He used his grip on the Spy's jaw to drag his head to the left, then the right.

There he found what he was looking for.

'Oh,' the Sniper breathed, 'Oh fuck.'

He let go of the Spy and stood back up to pace the length of the room. The marksman pulled the battered slouch hat off his head and ran his fingers through his hair distractedly. The Spy watched him in exhausted, irritable silence, waiting for some kind of explanation.

'What a bastard. What a bastard,' the Sniper fumed to himself. The BLU felt even more annoyed at that. He hadn't done anything! It was his enemy who was being a bastard, acting all dramatic and secretive and frustrating. For once the Spy really couldn't see any reason for the Australian to be swearing about him.

'Who does that? Who goes to the trouble of doing half the job and then abandons the poor sod to it? That's just rude, that is! Bad practice. Bet it was some young upstart who thinks they can get away with anything now they're immortal!'

It appeared the Sniper wasn't talking about him after all. It also seemed that the Spy might be starting to experience auditory hallucinations of some kind because what the Sniper had just said made even less sense than the rest of this situation.

'Unless...' the sharpshooter stopped pacing and turned to glare at the Frenchman slumped on the floor. 'Perhaps...' He stepped closer and crouched down next to the Spy again. The BLU flinched, afraid the Sniper might decide to continue undressing him.

'Hmm, so, Spy. Let me guess, you've had an unusual encounter with a stranger over the weekend, haven't you? Someone drag you down a dark alleyway? Or jump you in the gents? Or-' a knowing smirk spread across the Sniper's face, 'Or some pretty girl seduced you into bed. Bet it wouldn't take much.'

The Spy started. Though he wouldn't say it was the lady who'd done the seducing, yes he'd certainly had an unusual encounter with her last night. The RED spotted his reaction and let out a bark of laughter.

'Tha's none... none o' your business,' the masked man slurred weakly, sounding like Demoman after a whole truckload of scrumpy, minus the Scottish accent.

'Oh, course not. None of my business at all. I don't care who or what you do in your spare time. But tell me, this strange sheila of yours, she a kinky one? Into, I don't know, biting, maybe?' He made a chomping gesture at his throat with one hand. The Spy raised shaking fingers to the mark on his neck. He had no idea where the RED was going with all this. It had to just be a coincidence that he'd guessed accurately so far, right? Maybe the Sniper had been secretly watching him and this was all some elaborate and nasty trick he was playing on the Spy.

'And her eyes, I bet she had real special looking eyes, right?'

No. There was no way he could have been close enough to tell that. Unless he'd hired the woman and she was in on all of this too.

For some reason the smile had slipped back off of the Sniper's face. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair again, leaving it standing up in places. He shook his head to make it fall back down again and, took of his glasses.

'Kind of like this?'

The Spy had seen the marksman's eyes before of course. As soon as he'd noticed that the Sniper hated being parted from his aviators, the Frenchman had gone out of his way to steal or knock them off of his face. Under the orange tinted glass the man's eyes were nothing remarkable, just a plain old brown, and rather tired looking.

Except... no, that wasn't true. How had he never noticed before? They were an incredible colour. Not a dull old brown, but copper, like the newest and shiniest of pennies. They filled his vision. Mesmerising. The brightest copper eyes.

Then they were gone, hidden away behind sunglasses again. It was as though the sun had shone on the Spy for the first time in years, only to be covered by clouds a moment later. He blinked rapidly, the after image of those strange eyes lingering like they'd been etched into his retinas.

'And let me guess, you don't remember much of that night? Probably think you had a right good old time, but for some reason your memories are all hazy, yeah?'

The BLU gave him a vague, dazed little nod. This was getting scary. Well, scarier. Maybe if he was in less pain and able to really think straight, he'd find flaws in the Sniper's little narrative. But as it stood, everything was matching up disturbingly well.

'How... d' you know? Know, all this?' he asked.

The Australian snorted. 'Call it an educated guess, mate. Now, just got something I'm wondering about. Where did you wake up the next morning?'

'Hotel.' The Spy had woken up there all alone, hadn't he? Then he'd come back to the base. Except the strange thing was, he couldn't remember the journey back at all. And he hadn't been late for the day's work even though that would have been a good two hours drive. Where'd he parked his car? Had he seen his travel bag anywhere that morning? He frowned to himself.

'Maybe not. Can't remember. S' all fu-fuzzy.'

'Ahuh, thought so. 'But the thing is, this isn't normal, you see. This isn't right.' He jabbed a finger towards the Spy's neck. 'You either bite to feed or you bite to change. You don't go pumping someone full of venom when you're just going to abandon them the next day. That's awful behaviour. Just not right. It's like...' he paused to find of an appropriate comparison. 'skinning a rabbit alive. Yeah, you'll get what you want out of it, but you're going to be causing it a hell of a lot of pain for no good reason.'

The Spy thought he must be suffering from more of those auditory hallucinations. The Sniper couldn't be saying anything he thought the man was saying. That'd be insane. He could relate to that rabbit though; the heat bubbling up inside him made it feel a though his skin were about to melt away, one layer at a time.

'Then again, there's some who enjoy it. Some who get a kick out of the taste of their own venom. See, you need to use just a little anyway, if you're feeding. Keeps people pliant and messes with their memories so you're fine to leave them alive. But if you're gonna change them, you need to use all your venom, and repeat the process every few hours until the transformation's complete.

'But this mysterious lady friend of yours, she's flooded you with venom, drained you, and left you to die. Left you to die real slow, bleeding out in that hotel room while the toxins run through you like a wildfire. 'Cept us here at RED and BLU aren't so good at staying dead, are we? Is there any chance you might have woken up in your respawn room this morning?'

The Spy tried to think back to earlier to work out what had really happened, but everything was too muddled and confusing and his head felt like someone had replaced his brain with shards of glass.

'Maybe. Maybe. Don't know. Don't understand. Anything.' There was a pause while the Frenchman swallowed and tried to pull his thoughts back together. He couldn't, they were scattered to the wind like funeral ashes. The more he tried to pull them together, the more he was left with just one fact. 'It hurts,' the Spy admitted. 'Everything hurt.' He expected the Sniper to mock him for showing weakness in front of an enemy. Instead he just sighed and rubbed at tired eyes beneath his glasses.

'Yeah, I bet it does, mate.' His words were heavy and sincere, not sarcastic like the Spy was used to. 'It must have taken a long while for you to die, else respawn would have fixed you up. But it didn't, meaning it left you with just one dose of venom in you. And that's not enough. It's changing you, but slowly. Too slowly. It's killing you and respawn doesn't know how to handle this so... Honestly? I don't know what's gonna happen in the end if you don't get help. Respawn will keep on bringing you back, but you'll end up too sick to live. So I guess you'll just keep on dying and dying and dying until someone shows you some mercy and takes you out of respawn all together.'

'Know just what to say to cheer me up, don't you?' the Spy joked weakly. Very little of what the Sniper was saying had sunk in yet. It was just too strange. Too impossible. Too cliché. This grim future he'd laid out for the Spy though... to die in burning pain again and again, the cruel parody of a phoenix... it would be something worse than hell on earth.

'Guess you're to have to get used to...' the Spy lost his train of thought mid-sentence and went groping after it with a frown. 'To fighting a new spy. Might not go as easy on you as I do.'

The Sniper snorted derisively and looked away from him. 'Yeah. I could do that. I could just do that, leave you here and have a nice break from the backstabbing until they give up on trying to save you and get a new spook in.' He sounded wistful. Tempted. 'Bet that's what you'd do if you were in my situation.'

The Spy didn't have the strength to argue back. Not that he really understood what the Sniper's 'situation' was anyway.

The RED turned back to look him up and down. The Spy was a wreck, his skin looked practically grey now, his mask was soaked to navy from sweat and shudders ran down his whole body every few seconds.

'Urgh. Of all the people though, why did it have to be you?' The Sniper shuffled reluctantly closer as he spoke, making the Spy cringe away. 'Oi, stop that. I don't want to be doing this anymore than you, trust me. I've been doing just fine nicking supplies from Medic; I haven't had to get all close and personal like this with a real person for months. God, I hate doing this. All the contact and heat and urgh. Now if you were a pretty looking lady, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But no, you're the bloody BLU Spy of all people. Christ, I just can't get a break, can I?'

It was almost a relief to hear the Sniper go back to insulting him. Almost. This was actually the most the Spy had ever heard him say at one time. In fact, it was probably more than he'd ever heard from the guy in all the months they'd been fighting each other combined.

Once the sharpshooter had pulled himself right up to the Spy's left side, he said, 'Right. Um. This is gonna take some, you know, touching. Just got to work out how I'm gonna do this.' His hands hovered awkwardly over the Spy, who couldn't bring himself to do anything but glare miserably at his enemy. Who, if the Frenchman's eyes weren't playing tricks on him, was starting to look rather flushed around the cheeks. In fact, he appeared to have gone bright red.

'Okay, so, um, just don't move, okay? Just stay still. This, uh, is gonna hurt a bit but I'm not actually, gonna be taking any, you know. No blood. I mean, who knows what diseases you've got?'

He leant in towards the Spy hesitantly, aiming for the left side of his neck, but then pulled away again.

'No, that wont work. Angle's all wrong. My face would just end up all pressed against the wall. I'll have to, uh, excuse me...'

It was a pity the Spy wasn't in any state to mock the Sniper, because he was currently acting like a flustered schoolboy going in for his first kiss. Though perhaps that wasn't the most welcome of comparisons, considering it was the Spy himself that the Australian was going for.

This time he leant across the BLU's chest and moved a hand to the other side of the Spy so he could rest his weight on it. He put his other hand under the masked man's chin.

'Shit, you're hot.'

The Spy managed a snort of laughter at that.

'I didn't mean it like that, and you know it!' He pushed the Frenchman's head back with more force than was really necessary and muttered, 'Bloody spook,' as he tipped his head to one side to get to the man's throat.

There was a brief sensation of teeth scraping against skin, then a sharp stab of pain. The Spy flinched and screwed his eyes up tight as a fresh wave of heat swept through him. It was like someone had replaced all his blood with petrol and then pressed a lit match against his neck. The BLU's breathing had been ragged before, but now it turned to uneven, gasping breaths as the burning spread through his lungs. He pushed at the Sniper's chest with trembling hands too weak to budge the marksman even an inch. The RED gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze but didn't stop.

It seemed an age before the Sniper finally pulled away, wiping a sleeve across his face to get rid of spit and blood. He pretended, for the Spy's sake, not to notice the tear tracks visible despite his mask, or the quiet sobbing noises he was making. The Sniper didn't know how to handle this situation. He remembered how agonising his own transformation had been, despite being handled properly and with his consent. But how did you go about comforting an enemy? Especially one with whom you shared a mutual loathing?

Despite hating both physical contact and the Spy, he found himself reaching an arm around the back of the BLU, coaxing him into clumsy hug. For a moment the Frenchman tried to resist, before giving up and slumping against the Sniper. The marksman patted him on back awkwardly, muttering instinctive reassurances like his mother used to do to when he was upset as a small child. He expected the Spy to pull himself away after a minute with a sneer and an insult. It was testament to just how much pain he must be in that all the BLU seemed able to do was to clutch at the Sniper's vest and cry. But he knew from personal experience that there became a point at which pain overrode all sense of shame or dignity.

The sharpshooter had no idea how this would all look if someone else were to come barging into his roost, but the distant sounds of gunfire and explosions assured him that the fighting had moved on without them.

After a while the Spy's breathing steadied, but he made no attempt to move away from the Sniper.

'Uh, Spy?' This whole holding his enemy in his arms thing was making him feel pretty uncomfortable.

'Spy?' Was he dead? No, he was definitely still breathing.

'Spy? Ah. Shit.' He was asleep. The Spy was asleep. In the Sniper's arms. Fucking hell. Now how would he explain that if any of his team mates happened to pass through this way back to join in the fighting? Or was it the other team that had pushed forward? He couldn't think of any good way of explaining to a BLU why he was embracing their Spy, or why the guy was sleeping on the job.

Except it was less that the masked man had fallen asleep, and more that he'd simply passed out from a mixture of intense exhaustion, stress, pain and toxins. It was probably for the best that he remained that way for now; any amount of the change that he could pass unconscious would be a blessing. The Sniper would probably have to bite him three or four more times over the course of the day, and it could be up to a week before the changes settled down entirely.

'Uh, lets just put you down, shall we?' the marksman muttered to himself as he shifted the Spy's weight as carefully as he could. He laid the unconscious man out on his side, and leant back against the wall next to him.

Really, the Sniper would've liked to go and join in the fighting; he hated being useless and his team weren't getting any help from him in here. But he couldn't leave the Spy. Couldn't abandon him to wake up alone and burning from the inside all over again.

Really though, why did it have to be the BLU Spy? Of all the people in the entire world, why him? Life was certainly going to be a lot more complicated from now on, and the Sniper would have to be the one who was there to guide the masked man through all of this. They were both going to come to resent that, he was sure.

As well as that, they were going to have an added difficulty. Not only would they have to keep the Spy hidden from the humans, they were going to have to keep him secret from their kind too. Because the thing was, turning someone without permission from the council? That wasn't allowed. That wasn't allowed at all. But that BLU was used to keeping secrets anyway. This would just be another to add to the list.

All the same, the Sniper couldn't help but worry. In all likeness they would be fine, but if they were ever found out... perhaps then he'd find himself thinking that letting the Spy die would've been the most merciful thing to do.

Nah, I think they'll be all right. Besides, Spy can go invisible.

So that's Sanguine all wrapped up. Maybe one day I'll revisit these guys and see how they are getting along. Or more likely, not getting along.

I don't usually add this sort of comment, but I haven't had any reviews at all for this story on FF and only three on AO3 so I'm not really sure how this stories been received, and if I should try more like this in the future or just stick to my usual stuff. So if you've got any thoughts or comments, including constructive criticism, I'd be happy to read them. I'd be especially interested to know which ending people liked best.