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Sniper's not a huge fan of the weather at this new base--they're somewhere in the Northern US, and he wasn't exactly bred for temperatures below twenty-five, but he finds it's worth braving the perpetual moistness for the new base itself.
It's a drab, rickety old building, just like the lot of them, except this time it's built out of rotting wood that someone puts a new hole in just by walking four times a week. But--but, it's an abandoned factory, aged out of utility for that purpose, and old buildings like this are full of nooks and crannies.
Sniper is some kind of burrowing animal at heart and small spaces have always been a favourite of his, so this is an arrangement that works out well for him. It's something besides sitting in his van playing jazz and thinking about his guns, even if it is sitting in a small dusty room in silence thinking about his guns—and no one really cares for exploring so it's usually a safe bet he'll be left alone.
Usually. The good thing is that the stairs leading up to this particular room, fulla dusty tables with a nice look out into leaves and just about nothing else, act as a built-in intruder alarm with how creaky the stairs are. The bad news is that right now someone is thundering up those bloody stairs and he's in the middle of making great progress knitting himself a scarf.
It's not exactly Scout who he expects to see turn the corner--mostly because he's usually a lot quieter, has this tendency of sneaking up on people, and Sniper coulda sworn he just heard him calling points, or, laps or... is pitches a baseball thing? Somewhere outside.
But the little bugger is fast enough to make that plausible and more importantly looks like he wants something. "Hey... Snipes."
No harm in starting this off with a nice, round, "I'm busy."
"... Sunshine 'n rainbows," Scout mutters. Then he sees the knitting needles in Sniper's hands--a hideous smirk stretches across his face. "You fast-trackin' your grandma career already? Heh."
Scout brought a smell with him into the room. Something dark, and smoky, that settles itself in Sniper's chest. It's so intensely familiar but he can't quite place it. "What do you want?"
“What, is this weird? Something wrong, big guy?” And Scout gets a lot closer, wringing his hands together in a way he distinctly doesn’t do—
Metal flashes in Scout’s hand—Sniper grabs his wrist with unexpected ease and takes out his own blade, and his kukri glides into Scout’s stomach like a nice hot knife through butter. He lets out a high, pinched wheeze, though the lopsided grin keeps spreading across his face--as the shitty cotton crumpled under his fingers ripples into pinstripes, and the hand on his bicep morphs into smooth black leather.
"Maybe it'd do ya some bloody good to stop wearing that cologne," Sniper mutters. He steps away as much as he can with half his weapon sticking outta Spy--the closeness makes him dizzier than he'd like to admit, the smell of smoke and whiskey.
Spy just wordlessly clutches Sniper like any of this still hurts at this point in their jobs, and a thin line of blood starts trailing out between his teeth.
He already knew it, but the confirmation of it annoys him. "You wanted to get caught," Sniper says, grimly—through what would be a carefully-crafted facade of ambivalence to anyone else, but he knows Spy can look straight through him, read him like a bloody book, so he keeps on pushing the knife through his stomach until he can see the tip come out on the other side, glistening crimson.
Spy coughs for a little while before he seems to be able to work up the breath to respond. "You are not a very good host, are you?"
"Figure there's a bit of a difference between a guest and a bloody intruder, mate."
There's blood all over Sniper's shirt. Oh well. "The fact that you are yet to kill me indicates you are unsure where that line lies…” His eyes flick up teasingly. “Mon ami."
And the right thing to do after that, the professional thing to do, is to pull his kukri out and then shove it into Spy's face until he can't tell the difference between brain and gristle, but he still just keeps standing there with their faces way too close for comfort, frozen to his spot.
Spy notices his hesitation, of course he does. And somehow his smile keeps twitching wider, even as the rest of his face knits itself together with the effort of standing. "You seem to have made your decision."
"Do you have anything to do besides..." He doesn't want to find the word. "This?"
"Dinner," Spy says quickly. "Ah, picnics... weekends away..." He glances up at Sniper long enough to imply, and teasingly: "But no, nothing I can do alone."
"What about sitting here and bleeding out while I go find someone better to talk to?"
"But who is better to talk to," Spy gurgles, "than the man you spend all day on the battlefield ogling through your scope?"
He can't stop the blush from crawling across his face. "Not—ogling is a—I'm just doin' my job."
"And I am very much not doing mine. All I ask is one night." Then that hand shifts over to his chest, trails up to his neck.
"You have a motive you’re not giving here." They both know this isn't true. Sniper already knows he's going to leave this room having promised something he's not entirely sure about, but there's no point in dropping the charade just yet.
"Do you want me to beg, monsieur?" He must not respond quick enough, because he follows right away: "You have no perception of how dire the romantic prospects stand on my team, and you are, regrettably… so very handsome.” Smart fingers pass all the way up his cheek, dip just under the collar of his shirt, like there isn’t a knife in his stomach. “And I know there is something about me that attracts you, and you seem to be completely unwilling to cross the distance on your own, and I will refuse to continue standing for it." Spy pauses for a second to spit the blood out of his mouth and then turns back to Sniper and grins. "Kiss me."
That's the first thing he's said all day that actually makes sense. The next few seconds is a blur; thankfully there's enough blood in both of their mouths that covers up the fact that Sniper has no idea what he's doing and Spy very much does.
At some point Spy's legs buckle and he hits the floor with a loud thump--Sniper doesn't go with him, really takes him a couple of seconds of standing and blinking to figure out what just happened to him, and finally, finally, the image of Spy laying on the ground and choking on his own blood reminds Sniper that he is currently being paid to do a job.
The sound of him pulling his rifle off his back doesn't seem to perturb Spy at all; in fact, his smile still defies physics and finds room to grow, even as he writhes in the ground out of... what can't really be called pain anymore, but instinct.
With a gun-barrel resting on his forehead all Spy does is raise his hand and say: "I will see you on Friday. Shower."
All Sniper can find to say to that is "I shower," but that's muttered in the middle of the gunshot and at that point it's a losing fight. He knows Spy's just getting on his nerves. That's all the bugger does.
Arsehole didn't even bother to confirm that Sniper had any interest in seeing him, but... Sniper knows, with a heavy dose of shame, he probably implied the answer well enough on his own. Piss.