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Sniper really does not like the enemy demoman.
His own Demo he honestly doesn’t mind - nice enough, a fun companion on game nights, smart enough to hold a conversation with, even when drunk as hell. And Scout likes him plenty, and wherever one of them goes the other tends to follow, so Sniper has spent a considerable amount of time with the Scot, and has genuinely come to enjoy his company.
The opposing demo can suck a dick, though.
Sniper blinks up at a smoke-filled sky, trying to think coherently past the pain washing over his body in intense waves, the feeling of blood dripping into his ear, the jolt that shoots through him when a shifting plank beneath him jostles his leg. Fuck. What just happened?
Right. Right, he’d been in one of his nests. One of the higher ones, lot of climbing involved to get situated. A rickety old thing, creaking and shifting with every step, a bit nerve-wracking but a great deterrent against spies. And… he’d put his gun down, just for a second, to refill his coffee mug, and there’d been a distant poomf sound below him before a sticky bomb came in through the uncovered window.
He looks away for one bloody second.
Somehow, he seems to have survived the explosion - though not by much. He knows what a bad head wound feels like well enough to register that this one isn’t too horrible, just extremely bloody, as head wounds tend to be. The rest of him, though…
Well. He’s certainly seen worse, but that doesn’t make this any better.
All he knows is he’s in a lot of pain, and he’s really starting to hate that demoman.
Okay. Alright, Mundy. You can figure this out.
Sniper closes his eyes, sucks in a deep breath through clenched teeth, and tries to sit up.
The next thing he knows, the sky’s been blocked off, and there’s a lot of weight on top of him that wasn’t there a few seconds ago.
He no longer knows what the hell is going on.
The Sniper is a professional. The Sniper is polite, efficient, and always has a plan. The Sniper is calm in the face of danger, aware of his surroundings, observant and prepared, no matter what.
But he’s also very human, and so when the pain gets too much and the surroundings get too confusing, the Sniper stops thinking, and allows himself to drift.
Somewhere on the battlefield, hidden away in some untouched corner, trapped and injured, lies the Sniper, waiting for someone to find him.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he next opens his eyes, it’s to the blaring sound of a klaxon horn. The world is spinning beneath him, vision too blurry to make anything out, but some muddled part of him recognizes the ringing in his ears as a signal - the battle is over. The match has ended, the teams can go back to base.
Respawn has been shut off.
Bugger.
He’s got to get up. He’s got to. But trying to move sends flares of white-hot agony racing through his body, from his feet to his head, blazing through his veins with every small twitch. Christ, it hurts, a pain unlike anything he’s felt in ages, even blown up and backstabbed as he is nearly every damn day. Next time he sees that bloody demoman he’ll be aiming for something much lower than the head.
Sniper can’t really keep track of time in his state, but he doesn’t think too much has passed when he hears a sharp bzzt in his ear, and voices flicker to life in his miraculously unharmed communicator.
“…gr …w-rk today…”
Okay, maybe it’s not completely unharmed.
“-calls for… -celebration!”
“Let’s… -eadcount.”
The speaker fizzes, a horrible staticky sound that makes him scrunch up his face best he can, trying to turn away from the noise, until he hears, clear as day-
“…has anyone seen Snipes?”
Scout. Scout, love of his bloody life, thank god.
The speaker goes silent, and a sudden rush of anxiety crashes through his chest. No, no, the damn thing better not bloody die on him, it’s his only hope to get the hell out of this. With the anxiety comes a familiar adrenaline, that last push that floods his body when he’s about to kick the bucket, that gives him the strength he needs to raise his arm through the agony and hit a trembling hand against the communicator, hoping, praying that it still works. Static bursts in his ear again and he flinches away from it, but when it clears out the voices return, apparently mid-conversation.
”…heard from… yet-”
”There… -plosion earlier…”
”…find him!”
He’s got to let them know where he is. He has to tell them. They’re searching for him, he has to help. He presses his hand to the little device, and his fine motor skills are absolutely shot right now but he can hope, he can hope.
“…Scout,” he croaks, the one word grating painfully against his throat, and the chatter cuts off in an instant, and then-
”Sniper! Snipes, thank g-… wh- …are you? Are… hurt?”
“Scout,” he mutters again, because his entire body aches with the effort of speaking, and he can’t really understand what’s being said, and he’s not entirely sure if he’s still alive.
”Ye- …me. Can… hear… -e?”
“Hurts,” Sniper says, and he hopes that’s a good enough answer to whatever question was asked, because it’s all he’s got right now. “Help.”
“Shit,” Scout says, and he hears that one just fine.
“…shh, let me-…” Another voice joins in, drowning out Scout’s, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Sniper. Can… you… hear… me?”
“Medic?”
“Yes! Gut!” Shuffling, static again. “Okay. Where… are… you?”
His mind blanks. Shit. Where is he?
”…Herr Sniper?”
“Trapped,” he mumbles, and tries to think harder about it. “Umm… at… one ‘a me nests.” Good, okay. More, they need more than that. “By… uhh… think, it’s the, the one, by the cliff?”
Silence, for just a moment, but long enough that he starts to fear the speaker’s gone out again. Then Medic’s voice is back, and god Sniper is tired but he almost swears the doctor sounds worried. “Okay. Danke, mein freund.” He’s still enunciating each word, but the speed of his speech has picked up. “Ve vill… find you. Stay… avake, ja?”
Stay awake. Right. He can do that. That’s what the doc always says, to stay awake. Usually followed by “don’t touch what’s broken” and “keep pressure on open wounds” but frankly Sniper feels like he is what’s broken, and there’s enough pressure on him anyways. “Yea.”
“We’ll… be there soon… okay, Snipes?” And there’s Scout again, slower this time, a raw sort of desperation audible in his tone even past the staticky bursts. “We’re comin’, doll. I’m coming.”
And really, Sniper does try his damn best to stay awake. He does. But as time ticks along and blood trickles from his body and the weight on top of him presses harder, harder, harder, that burst of adrenaline fades and is replaced with a deep-set exhaustion that sinks into his bones and numbs the pain and makes his eyelids feel heavier than they already are. He is so tired.
And then there’s a shout, a voice that comes from beyond the speaker in his ear, a sharp, terrified, familiar cry of, “OVER HERE! I SEE HIM!” from someone hidden from his view, and as multiple other voices join in shouting for him Sniper finds he just can’t stay awake any longer, and his eyes flutter shut.
He wakes, again, to a sound - a high, consistent beeping that he recognizes immediately as a heart monitor. And that was apparently all the energy he had to do literally any thinking, because it takes him significantly longer to figure out anything else about his surroundings.
Sniper’s eyes flicker open - and immediately shut again, because wow, the world is bloody bright. Where are his glasses? He starts to lift his arm, his goal being to feel at his face - only to find that he can’t move that arm at all, actually. His eyes open again on instinct, which he immediately regrets, but narrowing them makes it better and so he squints over at his right side, struggling to make literally anything out. He barely has a moment to mentally curse his combination of near-sightedness and sensory issues that both require the glasses before he suddenly realizes there’s someone laying next to him, curled up against his side, head resting on his chest. There’s a freckled arm thrown across his stomach, long muscular legs tangled with his own, and he has to blink a few times before it clicks. “…Scout?”
The younger man stirs, only slightly. Sniper nudges him, lifting his pinned arm just enough to shift him, and Scout jerks awake, head shooting up in surprise. He blinks, clearly a bit groggy, before he seems to realize what had woken him, and a wide, buck-toothed grin splits his face.
“Hey, Mickey!” he says, looking for all the world like he just won the bloody lottery, and the heart monitor picks up a bit but if Scout notices he does a good job of pretending otherwise. “‘M so glad you’re awake, babe, you were out for a while!” He shifts and turns until he’s better tucked against Sniper’s side, snuggling happily into him, seeming not to mind the fact that Sniper has yet to really respond to anything. “Ya feelin’ okay? Nothin’ hurt too badly?”
“…what happened?” Sniper rasps, because honestly, he is incredibly confused.
Scout moves again, just slightly, hand coming to rest on Sniper’s chest, right over his heart. “Right, ya probably don’t remember much. Well, you-”
“Scout, as I have told you several times now,” says a new voice, and Sniper looks up in time to see Medic enter the room, then freeze mid-sentence as their eyes meet. “Ahh, Herr Sniper! You are avake. Gut, gut. I vas just about to get on to zhis -” and he says something in German that neither of them understand but both of them get the gist of, “-about disrupting you again.”
Disrupting…? Oh. Then this isn’t the first time Scout’s gotten in bed with him since he’s been conked out. Sniper shrugs best he can, a lopsided sort of thing, and mutters, “Don’t really mind it, none. Like havin’ the little bugger near me.”
Scout sticks his tongue out at Medic, who huffs. “Be zhat as it may, zhere is far too high of a chance he vill accidentally disturb somezhing vital. I simply do not vant to risk it. And have my hard vork be undone.”
“Ahh, piss off, doc,” is Scout’s immediate response. “‘M bein’ careful. I don’ wanna hurt him.”
Sniper feels a smile creep onto his face even as Scout and Medic level a glare at each other, though there doesn’t seem to be too much heat behind it. Medic eventually relents, waving a hand in dismissal. “Fine, fine. Lay vith him. But do not come crying to me if somezhing goes vrong.”
Scout huffs one more time, for good measure, then turns to nuzzle closer to Sniper, though there’s a gentleness to his every move that isn’t usually present. Medic watches, and Sniper may currently be blind as a bat but even he can see the fondness in the elder’s expression - or at least, his body language - as he turns away. “Anyvay. Do you remember vhat happened, Herr Sniper?”
“Not really,” the younger man admits, and Medic nods and jots something down on a clipboard that he definitely did not have when he first walked in. “Just, uhh… falling? Being stuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut, thinking. “A lot of pain.”
“Mmhmm. Zhat makes sense.” The clipboard is suddenly gone from his hands, and he steps closer to what Sniper is only now realizing is one of the two hospital beds available at this base. “Vell, from vhat zhe team could figure out, your nest seemed to have collapsed vith you in it, and you vhere trapped beneath zhe rubble. Zhe match ended before Respawn could pick you up.” He reaches to a side table on his left that Sniper can’t quite see and hands him a pair of glasses. “Zhese are new, your prescription. Zhe ozhers vere destroyed.”
He takes them with a grateful nod and uses his free hand to shakily slide them on, a sigh slipping free as the world turns soft and clear, that familiar orange tint settling the sharp pain that had begun to form behind his eyes. “Thanks, doc. Uh. How long was I out?”
“Too long!” Scout says into his shirt, and Sniper jumps, having forgotten he was there.
Medic chuckles lightly. “About nine hours, I believe.”
Well, he’s had worse. Sniper nods again, and finds that he is suddenly incredibly tired, energy completely spent, a comfortable numbness settling over his body. He yawns, letting his head fall back, and Medic tuts softly, making his way back over to the doorway. “You are tired still, I see. Vell, normally I vould insist you stay avake for a checkup, but I doubt I could convince Herr Scout to move for one.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Scout confirms, balling his fist lightly in Sniper’s shirt.
“Case in point. So I vill simply leave you to it. Rest well, liebe vögel.” And with a nod and a dramatic swish of his coat, Medic leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Scout yawns softly, pressing his face into Sniper’s chest. “‘M glad you’re okay, doll,” he says, voice muffled, and it’s quiet enough in the room now that Sniper knows they both hear it when the heart monitor picks up again. “Ya scared me pretty bad.”
The older man turns, presses a kiss into his hair. “Love ya, roo,” he mumbles, and he gets a soft “Love you too, Mickey,” in return, and it’s enough for him to smile and let his eyes slip closed, finally allowed to peacefully fall asleep to the ever-present beeping of the heart monitor, and the gentle huff of Scout’s breaths across his neck.
They found him.