1 . Name: Anonymous @ 2011-11-24 12:29

Alright, so I read through the rules and this should be okay but just making sure; it's alright to upload works as long as the credit goes to the original author? It's beautifully written and relative to our interests, plus Annes old fanfic "The Defiant Ones" got posted here by someone else...?

I got couple of more if this is permitted. Feel free to delete thread or ban me otherwise.

So here we go;

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(untitled)
Author: Tokidoki Fish
Rating: PG-13 for language, I suppose
Pairing: Engie/Sniper, Sniper/Spy
Summary: Engineer solves practical problems. He's not so good at the emotional kind.
Author's Notes: OH GOD IT'S SO BAD. I regret everything I've ever done! Blame Glasgow!


Strange to say, but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for Sniper and I to become friends.

It wasn’t as if our jobs brought them at all into contact with one another – I could go entire battles without seeing, let alone speaking to him. But off the field, after battles, we had drifted into a comfortable sort of camaraderie. For all that our jobs were wildly different, once you got down to, we were fairly similar. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself taciturn, but I didn’t run my head like Soldier or Scout, so it seemed when Sniper got the itch for conversation he knew where he wouldn’t get too much of it. And we had both spent time under big, endless skies – Bee Cave was plenty close to Austin, but between PhDs I had spent some time out in the west Texas oil fields. Fewer animals that could and would kill you if given half a chance, and more danger of being blown right up. Not to mention for all that his father might call him a crazed gunman, I don’t reckon there was anyone on the team more affable and easy-going off the clock. So we got on well, and as the months wore on, it became something of a habit for us to make out way up to the battlements in the evening, to drink coffee and talk. Sometimes I may have run off into technical details, and sometimes Sniper lost me when he went on about things more quintessentially Australian, but, well, that was alright.


Things started to go a little pear-shaped after everyone found out about Medic and Heavy. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but considering the noise Scout made about it, I’m willing to bet the kid had walked in on them. But considering one of the parties was Heavy, however, there wasn’t much he or anyone else could do but make noise. (“Anyone”, in this case, was referring to the Soldier, who claimed the only thing worse than Commies and queers was Commie queers.)

“Just – fuckin’ CHRIST,” the Bostonian had eventually settled on, sitting between Sniper and me at dinner. “I mean, I know we’ve been out here for a while, but – God damn! Look, fatty I get, he’s so fucking big we’re probably all a pretty good substitute for whatever they call women in Russia, I bet they can’t be any uglier or hairier, but th’ Doc – he’s just a fag, ain’t he?”

“Well no one can question that logic,” I drawled, and while Scout obviously didn’t catch the sarcasm, I could see Sniper’s mouth twitch up into a bit of a smirk on the other side of the kid. The only reason I did was because I had been watching him for most of the meal; Sniper had seemed strangely subdued tonight, and it had started to niggle at me. But Scout had moved on to the apparently horrifying possibility that the Medic was the “man” in their situation, so I focused on him again, and said “Kid, why the hell is this botherin’ you so much? You jealous?”

Across the table, Spy snorted. Scout sputtered, red-faced and embarrassed, but it shut him up.

That night, on the battlements, I looked over my cup of coffee at Sniper, and hummed, “So, never got your thoughts on today’s big news.” Even without being able to read the bushman’s expression terribly well in nothing but the glow of his cigarette, I could tell he hadn’t been expecting that.

“Well – hell, suppose it’s not my place to say anything at all,” he replied, at last, slowly. “’S their business, isn’t it?” Presumably he had assumed I wasn’t the type to bring it up at all; and it if were anyone else, he’d be right. But with Sniper I hummed again, nodding a little, and looked out to the RED base.

“It’s just – well, with how quiet you were at dinner, I thought maybe you might have somethin’ in common with ‘em,” I replied, at length, scratching my jaw innocently. Sniper choked a little on his coffee.

“Th – th’ hell, Truckie, what makes you say that?” he asked, when he had recovered. I chuckled a little, rolling my shoulders.

“Never heard you talk about a – shiela, ain’t it, back home? Even when I mention ‘em,” I noted. “Fact you get pretty damn quiet when I do.” Sniper didn’t have an answer to that, so I went on, “’S not like I caught you peeking in the shower, or anything. Just, well, you know. And it’s not like I care any, either. Far as I’m concerned, what people do in their bedroom’s their own business.”

Finally, at last, the Sniper snorted, and I realized I had been tensed up, waiting to see how he would respond, only when I felt myself relax. “Not that I go around advertising it, but that’s not th’ reaction I get from most people,” the Australian admitted, eventually, and I grinned at him.

“Well, I guess I’m not one of ‘em,” I said, and moved on.


So there was that. I hadn’t really been looking to push the other man any further, so most of what I had was just theory: Sniper was homosexual, or at least attracted to men it a substantial way. And while I said I didn’t care, I was a bit perturbed to find I did care, or at the very least I kept thinking about it. I hadn’t been lying when I said I didn’t have a problem with it, certainly, men get lonely out on the oil fields same as anywhere else, away from their homes and families and one errant spark away from a closed-casket funeral. So I had learned to let these things roll off my back, but my mind kept worrying at the information, like some new equation that I knew meant something, needed to be used somewhere important, but couldn’t completely figure out just yet.

So I put it out of his mind, or tried to. Things seemed to get back to normal, and then Sniper stopped showing up for coffee. Not completely, granted, and not all at once: one week he missed a day, the next week two, but nothing else changed, so I was content to let it well enough alone until there was nearly a week of no Sniper. So I went looking, first to the base, and then out to the camper when that proved fruitless, telling myself I was just worried instead of petulantly upset that I was being ignored. I never actually got to the knocking part, though – my hand was raised to when I heard what sounded very much like a moan from inside, and froze.

It happened again. Definitely a moan, and not one of pain.

I ended up standing stupidly for a minute or so, staring at the door. Well that explains that, I guess. You’re not gonna hang out with one of the boys when you had something like that waiting at home – okay, maybe in Sniper’s case the example didn’t work too well, but. By the time I kicked myself to stop standing around like an idiot lest Scout or someone show up and start making a real scene, I realized I could make out actual conversation, or at the very least someone talking, from inside. Leave. Keep right on walking, Engie; this ain’t your business. But with a quick glance around to make sure I was alone, I still ended up pressed carefully up against the thin door, listening.

“That’s right,” the voice was saying, and even muffled I could recognize Spy’s voice, low and rough. “You love it, don’t you? You can’t get enough of this, yes? Tell me, what would you do to have me fuck you right now?”

“Anything,” Sniper rasped back. “Anything, just – please –”

“Oh, bushman, so desperate. If the rest of the team could see you now. Beg me.”

I didn’t want to hear it. But still, it wasn’t until the Frenchman did something that made Sniper shout that I finally managed to pull myself away. I went back to my shop, and in a sea of blueprints tried to erase the memory of how wrecked Sniper had sounded, and how I imagine he must have looked.


The next day, I started watching Spy and Sniper. Spy – well, Spy was always a self-satisfied prick, but he seemed to have a little extra spring in his step, which I supposed he expected. Thing is, the same could not be said of Sniper. He looked like he was getting less sleep, but that was about all; in other words, he hardly looked like a man in a satisfying… well, whatever the hell it was, because if he and Spy were spending any time together outside of bed, it was the best kept secret on the base. It was frustrating, and it just got worse when the damned Spy apparently noticed me watching and started smirking all the time.

So I was a little less than graceful when I finally got Sniper back up to the battlements and started out with, “So, Spy, huh?” Still, the way Sniper spit out his coffee was pretty amusing.

“What?” the Australian said, then realized there hadn’t exactly been a lot of context with that query, and started trying to cover his ass. “I mean, me and – Spy what?”

I snorted a little. “Convincin’, buddy.”

“Yeah, Truckie, yeah,” he muttered, reaching up to knock his hat back a little and rub his forehead. “So how in hell did you find out, exactly?”

“Not important,” I replied, and I went on without giving him time to press the point. “What I’m wonderin’ is why? Unless there’s some evidence of him givin’ a damn that I’m missing.”

“Who says he has to give a damn, anyhow?” he asked, taking his hat off completely to run a hand through his hair. “Stress relief, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t much seem to be workin’ in your case,” I noted, dryly, and it made Sniper shrug up his shoulders.

“I take what I can get, mate,” he responded, sweeping his hair back and replacing the hat. “And that usually isn’t much.”

Something about the tone of his voice, as much as he tried to sound casual, made me feel vaguely ill. I couldn’t find anything else to say - couldn't figure out how to say what I wanted to, moe like, and the conversation didn’t pick up again. We parted early, that night, and that was the last time we met up for one of those friendly conversations.


I’m not the type to brood. It doesn’t do a lick of good sulking about things; I’d much rather get his hands dirty fixing the problem myself. Of course the problems I usually solved were practical, not messy collections of feelings I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to get sorted out at all, and so, for at least a few days, I brooded.

What I told myself, initially, was that I was Sniper’s friend and had no business getting that deeply involved in his personal life, even if his personal life, at the moment, involved a highly unhealthy arrangement that wasn’t even one-sided. But I had never been all that good at lying to myself, and even that damned Spy could tell, well – I was jealous. Because damn it, I wanted to be the reason Sniper’s voice went low and wrecked, wanted to bring something good to the Australian’s life. And the fact is I had wanted to for a while, which was obviously a while too long.

So after the next battle, I caught Sniper coming down from his perch. He looked surprised to see me, but not nearly so surprised as when I wound a hand in his shirt, hauled him down to bridge our none-too-inconsequential height difference, and kissed him. Saying it was different than with a woman would not only have been cliché but a given; Sniper’s lips weren’t as soft, or full, and there was the unfamiliar rasp of stubble against my cheek. But hell, it was good, and when he wrapped an arm around me and kissed back, it made my stomach do something swoopy and embarrassing, which thankfully did not translate into an (overly loud) sound against Sniper’s mouth as I sank into him with relief.

But eventually breathing was necessary, as were explanations, so I broke the kiss and sank back on my heels again. Sniper was a little red, and more than a little shocked, but he eventually licked his lips and managed, “Truckie, what –”

“Even if it is just stress relief,” I answered, plenty red myself, “I was thinkin’ I’d like to be the one you got the relief from, if it’s all the same to you. Because I don’t want you to have to settle for what you can get – you should get to have what you want, and – well, hell, that may not be me, but I reckon I’m still a sight better than that damned Sp –” Which was where Sniper cut me off with a kiss. Which was possibly even better than the first time. And when we separated again, he was smiling, and I decided right then and there that I wanted nothing more than to see make Sniper smile like that as much as possible.