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Sniper has always liked driving at night. Ever since his father decided to allow him to drive the bashed up ute in the paddocks when he was fourteen. There’s something about the headlights tearing through the darkness, revealing the ghostly silhouettes of the gum trees; there’s something about becoming an unstoppable entity made of speed and machinery, the bush an endless canvas to paint through.
At night, the badlands don’t look all that different from the outback.
Back home, you’d have to watch out for the roos, especially in the low light of the twilight hours, but Sniper always had this uncanny sense of when to slow down to avoid the jumping bastards. They’d stare at him wide-eyed, as if hypnotised by the headlights, then bolt out of the way as the sense of impending danger finally hit them, before the car ever did.
Sniper smiles to himself. He’s dealing with jumping bastards of a whole other kind now. Ones he can’t help but collide with, over and over again.
He focuses his eyes on the road and turns up the dial on the car radio as if to drown his train of thought with sound; the late night programme is playing a Frank Sinatra song.
Somehow his thoughts always seem to go back to the Scout.
It’s been a few weeks now since they began their odd relationship. It started with awkward, drunken handjobs on off-days, which of course led to sloppy blowjobs and frantic buggery in hidden corners of the battlefield. Scout referred to it then as “friends with benefits”, but these days it feels like they’re spending more time on the benefits than the friendship. Not that it bothers Sniper that much.
Lately Scout has been keen on invading the camper van, each time attempting to stay over after they’re done fucking. Bloody idiot. He should know better than to try to get sentimental.
If he was a better man, Sniper would have called it quits, telling Scout to walk away before he gets hurt, but truth be told the arrangement is awfully convenient; the Yank always seems eager for a good root, and well, he’s easy on the eye. It feels too bloody good to give it up now: he might as well savour this while it lasts, until the other shoe drops. Until Scout inevitably moves on and stops coming to see him.
Savour it, stay in control, don’t get attached. Be professional. You’ll be right, mate.
A road sign riddled with bullet holes announcing that Teufort is only 30 miles away pulls Sniper out of his reverie.
The time is three twenty-nine A.M.
He’ll be home soon enough.
* * *
The strident beeping of the alarm clock.
Sniper groans and slowly opens his eyes to decipher the time. He then opens them wide in a panic as the realisation kicks in. He’s late.
“Shit!”
He jolts awake, his head hitting his camper van’s ceiling with such velocity that he thinks of the telltale sound of a critical hit. “Fuck!”
Fuck’s sake.
He walks through the base’s halls as briskly as he can while haphazardly putting his clothes on, and he’s still buttoning up his shirt when he finally reaches the resupply room. The rest of the team is of course already there, listening to—or perhaps only pretending to be listening to—Soldier’s pre-match strategic soliloquy.
He pushes the door open and enters the room, and as he beelines to his locker, he feels all of his teammates’ eyes on him. God, he hates the attention.
Soldier interrupts his monologue, “Sniper! You should know better than to show up late on the battlefield, son! This war is serious business and it will be taken as such!”
Sniper nods at him and salutes nonchalantly, at which Soldier answers with a booming “Dismissed!” before seamlessly going back to his speech.
“Thought ye were a professional, mate.” Demoman gibes in a low voice as Sniper plops himself beside him on the bench. He turns to the Scotsman with an unamused glare that softens as soon as he sees the man’s grin. “Ye didnae miss much. Late night?”
“Turned in ‘round four-thirty. Barely slept. Bloody knackered.”
“Aye, well, take it easy, lad.”
“Cheers, mate.”
Sniper then casts a cursory glance across the room in the direction of Scout, who’s clearly been staring at him this entire time. Their eyes meet briefly, then Scout looks away, instead grinning and finding a conversation partner in Pyro.
“Mission begins in sixty seconds.”
The marksman wearily grabs his hat and checks his weapons. It’s going to be a long day.
* * *
As the mission begins, Sniper climbs into one of his favoured nests for the area, somewhere he can survey most of the battlefield through his scope.
He takes out the enemy medic with a headshot, then their pyro with one, two, three body shots. Sniper swears under his breath; that should have been another headshot. When he looks through the scope again, he catches a glimpse of Scout amidst the general chaos, assisting Soldier as they both push through to the next point. He sees that the runner is grinning wildly as he guns down his enemy counterpart. At least someone’s having a good time.
Sniper sighs, lights himself a smoke and focuses back on the enemy team. Despite himself, he feels his mind drifting again towards his… whatever that’s going on between him and Scout.
It would be a lie to say he doesn't know how it started. He had noticed Scout’s interest in him, and he still feels a tinge of guilt about taking advantage of the other man’s eagerness for his own gratification. Truth is, nobody’s ever really paid this much attention to Sniper before; it would always be one night stands with complete strangers, or he’d be the one getting attached despite knowing full well the other didn’t feel the same way.
“So, you’re back and I don’t even find out until we’re all about to start the freakin’ mission?”
“Gah!” A shiver down Sniper’s spine. How did he not sense the presence behind him? Is he really that distracted? He grabs his kukri and points it in the direction of where the voice came from.
Sure enough, at the sharp end of the kukri stands his team’s Scout, his hands held up above his head, a defiant smirk on his face.
“Jesus, Snipes, I know you’re wicked happy to see me but you ain’t gotta point your knife at me.”
Sniper narrows his eyes and tilts his head in suspicion, but his arm keeps steady. It sounds like Scout. It looks like Scout. It’d better be Scout.
The cocky smile on the Bostonian’s face slowly turns into a frown as he realises Sniper isn’t going to let his guard down until he makes sure it’s really him. He huffs in indignation.
“Oh, screw you, man. I ain’t a spy! I can’t freakin’ believe you’d even— here, look at this,” Scout hastily unbuckles his belt and starts lowering his pants, “You know what this looks like, would a spy know what this looks like, pal?”
Christ.
“Alright, fine! You’re you! Keep ya bloody daks on!” Sniper sighs and puts his weapon away.
“What, you point your big knife at me all ya want but I can’t show you mine? I see how it is, pally,” Scout then grins at him.
Sniper scoffs. “Righto. Your big knife. Well, good chat, mate.” He turns around and directs his attention to his scope again, feigning to ignore Scout, knowing that this will only get him more riled up.
“Man, c’mon, you’ve been gone for so freakin’ long, ain’t I allowed to miss ya? I jerked off thinking about you everyday, y’know.”
“Uh-uh. Sounds to me like you have too much free time on your hands.”
Scout sighs, rolling his eyes. “I’m tryin’ to be sweet here, Snipes.”
Sniper shouldn’t be enjoying it this much, getting this hothead worked up. Teasing him like this. It would feel cruel if it didn’t feel so good.
A pair of hands wrapped in grip tape run across the marksman’s back, then along his chest, settling there as Sniper feels the runner’s warm body press against his back, and the hint of an erection. Scout then gently nibbles at his left ear, breathing and sighing into it, trying to get a reaction out of the marksman, who feels his cock stir lazily at the open display of arousal—and affection—from the other man.
“C’mon Snipes, I want you so bad, what’s stoppin’ us from doin’ it right now? I can be quick!”
Sniper considers the question silently. Scout is right. What’s stopping them? Of course they could “do it” here and now. After all, he hasn’t had a root since before he left two weeks ago, and he never wanks while on a contract—you should know better than to lose focus on the task at hand. He could let Scout fuck him; it’s true, the impatient wanker wouldn’t last long anyway. It would be quick and dirty.
It’s tempting really, terribly so, and his half-hard cock seems to agree, but an idea springs to his mind.
A much better idea.
He grins, then turns his head to the side, his face so close to Scout’s face that their eyelashes almost touch.
“What’s stopping you, is that if you leave me alone for the rest of this mission, I reckon I’ll give you the best time you’ve ever had in your entire bloody life.”
“Oh yeah? What are ya gonna do, huh? Let’s hear it.”
Sniper leans back and into the crook of Scout’s neck, and whispers in his ear. As the words pour out of his mouth, he watches Scout squirm, his eyes widening, his face turning red as he bites his lower lip. The marksman cheerfully thinks to himself that he hasn’t seen Scout this flustered in a while.
“Hah. Hey, okay. Alright. I-uh, cool, I’ll see you later, Snipes.”
Scout plants a small kiss on Sniper’s left cheek, stands up and bolts out of the room, barely giving the marksman any time to respond or even wave goodbye at him.
Sniper wipes his cheek with the back of his hand, sighs, and finally returns his full attention to his rifle.
Later on, the sharpshooter notices he hasn’t seen Scout running around the area in the last few minutes. Maybe he should be worried. He looks around through his scope, across the battlefield and into windows and—there he is. Hunched over. He’s… oh.
He’s having a wank. Sniper’s brows furrow, but he doesn’t look away.
Scout’s probably the only bloke in the team who knows exactly where all the hidden rooms and dead angles are. He wouldn’t willingly expose himself like this unless he wanted to be watched, and the only person who would even be able to see him is… well.
Alright then.
He watches Scout pleasure himself, going through great effort to keep his own breathing in control as the arousal pools in his lower abdomen. He imagines the sounds Scout must be making, the way his soft moans would sound filtered through his headset’s microphone. He keeps watching avidly as Scout strokes himself faster. Sniper wonders if he’s calling his name through barely suppressed gasps. He’s never been good at lip reading.
Then, of course, Scout looks in his direction and grins. The marksman suddenly feels dizzy; he’s not used to being gazed back at. Not on the battlefield, not ever. Why is this making him feel exposed?
Sniper, his pants too tight around his crotch and his senses too entranced in this filthy spectacle, only notices the butterfly knife plunging into his back a fraction of a second too late.
* * *
Sniper pushes the heavy door leading out of the main building and walks into the courtyard leading to the barracks.
The day had ended in a defeat, one that the sleep-deprived sharpshooter can’t help but feel at least in part responsible for.
“I’ll see ya in my room,” Scout had told him shortly before leaving respawn to head to the showers, clearly in a hurry to get back to his quarters. Sniper scoffs and smiles to himself thinking about the runner’s agitated demeanour. As obnoxious, arrogant and cocksure as he can be, in those moments Scout is almost cute.
He pushes another large door, entering a long corridor with doors—each one adorned with a nametag with the corresponding mercenary’s insignia and class name—on each side. Electing to live in his camper since the day he arrived in Teufort means the dorms are an area of the base he rarely ever goes to, unless he has a reason to.
And what a reason, he thinks. Like a fox chasing a rabbit down into his burrow.
He reaches Scout’s bedroom door and takes a deep breath before knocking: one knock, a pause, then two short knocks. Same as when Scout knocks on the camper van’s door. Sniper sighs, surprised at himself for not just memorising the pattern, but so effortlessly and mindlessly repeating it.
Muscle memory seldom lies.
He hears some shuffling from inside the room, then the door opens: Scout appears in the doorway, wearing nothing but a singlet, white briefs and his knee-high socks. He’s smiling, sort of sheepishly, the outline of his dick faintly visible through his underwear. It’s ridiculous how attractive the man looks like this, Sniper thinks, his own prick twitching awake.
“Hey, man. Come on in.”
As soon as Sniper steps into the room, Scout slams the door shut behind him and pushes the marksman against it, quick hands finding their way under his shirt, eager tongue finding its way into his mouth. Sniper tenses at the touch then relaxes into the kiss, placing his hands on the other man’s pert arse, a gesture at which Scout hums approvingly.
Sniper feels himself grow harder as their kiss deepens. Scout’s left hand slides from under his shirt to rub his open palm against Sniper’s crotch, to which the marksman responds by grunting and fondling the runner’s rear. Lips still interlocked, Scout—ever impatient—deftly unbuttons Sniper’s shirt, and breaks the kiss to glare at and wrestle with a particularly stubborn button. He finally undoes it, followed by the rest of the buttons, and ogles Sniper’s now bare chest with a satisfied, smug grin on his face. Sniper smirks back and gently pushes Scout towards the bed with one hand, unzipping his own trousers with another.
“How did ya like my show earlier?”
Of course he’d ask. But if he thinks he can get praised by simply asking…
“Was alright. Earned me a knife in me back courtesy of the enemy spook.”
Scout laughs as he hops onto his bed. It’s a pleasant, gentle laugh. Guileless, not at all like the way he jeers and heckles on the battlefield.
It’s a laugh that makes a man’s heart beat faster.
“Aw man, wish I was there to see it. You sittin’ there all hot and bothered and then—” He does a poor impression of Sniper getting stabbed.
It’s truly amazing how quickly Scout goes from ‘bloody lovely’ to ‘pain in the arse’. A real roller-coaster ride.
Flustered, Sniper grabs the jar of Vaseline on the nightstand and for a split second thinks about Scout wanking in bed—every day, thinking about him!—and takes another second to breathe, before shifting into his most charming, lecherous self.
“Here, why don’t you put up another show for me, dollface?”
He throws the Vaseline at the runner, who catches it effortlessly.
“Go on, open up for me.”
“Hah. You ain’t gotta ask me twice.”
The runner takes off his undershirt and underwear. He then glances at the marksman and winks as he leaves his socks on. Sniper feels himself blush, and curses internally at how quickly Scout had noticed his… inclination. And how nonchalantly he indulges him. Like a lover would. He scoffs, shakes his head and removes his own trousers and underwear in a single motion, languidly tugging himself while watching Scout open the jar of Vaseline and apply copious amounts of it onto his right hand before positioning himself on his knees, arse up.
Scout twists his head and looks back, making sure Sniper is watching him—he is, intently, cock in hand—as he breaches himself, letting out a long moan. He starts slow, then picks up his pace, his exaggerated moans getting more obscene with each time he pushes his fingers back in, calling Sniper’s name as if it was Sniper’s fingers that were fucking him.
It reminds Sniper of when he was on a stakeout in an adult cinema in Melbourne a few years prior. His target, on his buck’s night, had led his mates to see a porno there. The sounds of the woman in the film, gasping and moaning, didn’t quite make sense; they were pointedly fake, and yet were enthralling enough to give the entire group a raging stiffy.
He thinks about how Scout isn’t that much better an actor: It’s obnoxious. It’s loud. It’s Scout all over. It’s objectively bloody fucking annoying and yet—and yet!—Sniper is more aroused than ever. He continues stroking himself, and thinks about earlier, when he was watching Scout touching himself, debasing himself just for him, and how he wondered about the sounds he was making.
There’s the answer.
“Hahh, Fuck, Snipes, feels so good… ah, I could just… cum like this,”
Each syllable punctuated with squelches and gasps; Scout, cheeks and ears flushed, locks eyes with Sniper, and smirks again: a far cry from his bumbling awkwardness and nervous chattering during their first encounters, and another reminder that he knows exactly what he’s doing. What he’s doing to him.
That’s when Sniper decides he’s endured enough teasing.
“No you won’t.” He growls in a low voice that he hopes sounds dangerous.
Standing at the edge of the bed, he hoists his right knee onto the mattress to be level with Scout and aligns himself behind him. He runs a hand along the runner’s back, who shudders and sighs with pleasure at the touch. Good. He then traces circles around Scout’s entrance and removes the other man’s fingers from it, lazily poking his pucker again and again with his cockhead as he slicks his length with more Vaseline, counting down in his head until the moment Scout loses patience.
“F-fuck, c’mon man, just put it in already!”
Yeah. There it is.
“What’s that, mate?”
“You heard me! Get on with it man, we ain’t got all night! Fuck me already, will ya?!”
Sniper chuckles, once again feeling slightly guilty for getting such a kick out of teasing Scout. But it’s only fair, isn’t it?
He pushes his cock into Scout, who winces and gasps before relaxing himself and snuggling his face into his pillow, both men overcome with an incandescent wave of pleasure as Sniper slides in his full length. The marksman closes his eyes and exhales, taking in the sensation.
“Fuck, Scout— Far out, you’re so bloody warm.”
Scout’s face resurfaces from his pillow. “…And tight?”
Sniper laughs. “And tight.”
He starts moving, pumping into Scout in a slow rhythm, careful to keep his basest urges under control and not go too hard or too fast just yet.
The filthy sounds of skin hitting against skin along with Scout’s muffled moans—sounding a lot more genuine now, thankfully—and his own muted grunts have an almost hypnotic effect on the marksman, who leans onto Scout’s back and plants a dozen kisses along his spine, fucking into him as Scout moves his hips in rhythm to meet his thrusts.
“Hah, yes… ah— Snipes…”
Fuck, alright, he’s missed this. Being ensnared in Scout’s perfect tight hole. Feeling the man’s athletic body heat from the inside; a balm enveloping the cold-blooded shadow of a man that is Sniper, making him feel more like a real person. A real man.
What he would do to keep this warmth close to him.
“This all you got, pally?”
Scout’s voice pulls him out of his fevered trance, the man’s head twisted towards him again, an expression of defiant pleasure on his flushed face. Sniper elects not to say anything, gripping Scout’s hips with his hands as he drives his cock into the Bostonian with a feral intensity.
“Fuck, fuck… yes!”
Sniper hears Scout’s lust-filled profanities turn into moans, getting louder with each thrust.
Too loud. Sniper pulls out, pushes Scout who lets himself be flipped over onto his back, and kisses him again.
He murmurs, “Ya better be quiet, mate, don’t want to alert the others, ay?” Scout shivers and nods, panting heavily.
Sniper considers the sight in front of him; Scout lying on his back, his cock standing proud, staring back at him expectantly.
God, Scout looks good like this. For all his posturing and bravado, he’s a genuinely good looking bloke. Covered in sweat, his hair elegantly messy, the hint of a confident smirk on his lips. It would make any man go crazy.
Does he realise what it’s doing to him?
He enters Scout again, and oh, my god, fuck, this angle is even better. He takes Scout’s neglected prick into his hand and the other man whines and melts into the touch as he strokes him in rhythm with the rolling of his hips.
“Feels good… being inside ya…”
He wants to last. He wants to last and make Scout beg for it. Wipe the smug grin off his face and replace it with unbridled desire.
To put it very plainly, he wants to fuck Scout’s brains out.
But Sniper already knows he’s not going to last. As he groans and thrusts deeper into Scout, he already senses the alluring tendrils of climax, urging his hunter’s instinct to chase it down. There’s no fighting it.
“Scout. I’m close.”
A warning, more to himself than to the runner. But Scout nods, panting heavily, and wraps his calves around Sniper’s back as if to encourage him, and the marksman brings his right arm under the runner’s head and lifts him up, bringing their faces closer as he thrusts into him with renewed vigour, never taking his eyes off Scout’s face.
And that’s when the low rays of the setting sun that have been gradually filling the room fall on Scout like warm headlights, lighting up his eyes and making him glow in a golden sheen of glistening sweat as he stares back into Sniper’s eyes, and at that very moment in his big, light blue eyes there is no trace of malice or mischief, only lust, openness and genuine affection.
At that very moment the word that lingers at the back of Sniper’s mind is—
Sniper’s mind goes completely blank as his orgasm catches up to him, hitting him with such intensity that he thinks of the telltale sound of a critical hit for the second time that day. He grunts out Scout’s name as he spills inside him, filling him with an ungodly amount of hot spunk in one, two, three spurts, each wave weaker than the last.
After a solid minute or two, he’s brought back to Earth by Scout’s strained voice calling his name.
“S-Sniper… Touch me— I need to c-cum... F-fuck, ya better let me fuckin’ cum now…”
He opens his eyes and glances at Scout through half-lidded eyes.
“Yeah?”
The runner looks close too, he’s gripping hard on the bed sheets; his prick is throbbing, swollen and slick with copious amounts of pre-come. The slightest touch, the slightest friction would make him go over the edge.
And his face—his flushed and open face—is the loveliest part of it all.
“C’mon… just touch me…”
Like a man possessed, Sniper leans forward between the runner’s open legs and presses his tongue on his dripping hole, tasting his own seed. He flattens his tongue and licks upwards, languidly tracing the line on the man’s taint and following it until he reaches his balls, and keeps on licking. He watches Scout, swearing, shuddering and panting and finally spurting all over his own chest with a series of drawn out whimpers.
It’s a lovely sight: Scout, completely spent, eyes half-shut, his chest slowly rising and lowering, covered in his own cum while Sniper’s still oozes out of his twitching pucker.
Sniper chuckles. “You’re a doughnut.”
“What?” Scout, still recovering from his orgasm, looks at him, blissed out and dopey. Bloody lovely.
“Filled and glazed. Doughnut.”
Scout’s face illuminates as he finally understands, and with a wicked smile he throws his pillow at the marksman’s face.
* * *
A quiet moment in the dark, past the blissful afterglow and its sticky aftermath. Two men lying on their backs on a single bed.
Sniper feels the mattress shift under the weight of Scout propping himself on his side; he turns his head towards the other man and his eyes meet Scout’s, disarming and light blue.
He has a satisfied little smile on his face. Utterly punchable—no, kissable, the sharpshooter thinks.
“What.”
“You called my name, Snipes. You never call my name when… y’know.” A light chuckle. “When you cum.”
Sniper, feeling blood rush through his ears, grumbles a vague response. It’s true, it isn’t like him. And it isn’t like him to be so lost in pleasure that he doesn’t remember doing anything of the sort.
“It’s hot. I like it.”
The marksman lets out a quiet laugh and shakes his head. “Goodnight, Scout.” He doesn’t wait for an answer as he feels his exhaustion finally take over, drifting into sleep easily for the first time in weeks.
* * *
Sniper wakes with a sharp breath. He feels Scout’s warm body pressed against his back, the man’s arms wrapped around him. It isn’t like him to stay the night, he thinks to himself.
It’s still dark out. As his eyes adjust to the low light, he considers his surroundings in silence, and extricates himself from Scout’s tight embrace, eliciting a soft sigh from the sleeping man.
The marksman goes to pick up his discarded clothes, quietly sliding his underwear and trousers back on.
Scout’s bedroom isn’t as messy as Sniper thought it’d be. On the walls are posters of various baseball players and rock’n’roll bands, pin-up pictures of scantily-clad women, postcards from New England, and Scout’s own Polaroid photos.
Sniper then realises he has only seen glimpses of Scout’s room before this. For someone who happily invades his private space, the runner has always been oddly secretive about his own.
There are many things about the Bostonian that still elude him. You’d think someone as outspoken and obnoxious would be like an open book, but instead the more time he spends with him, the less he understands why the runner still decides to stick around; surely the sex can’t be worth the effort.
He glances back at Scout, making sure he’s definitely asleep. He then leans forward, examining the Polaroid pictures; most of them pictures of the team, taken around the base and on their nights out in Teufort’s dingiest bars.
And then, there’s the pictures of Sniper. Most of them are candids, snapped while he’s reading, cooking, working, talking. Smiling in most of them. He remembers frowning right after hearing the click and whirring of the camera, trying to snatch the pictures from Scout’s agile hands, being outrun. Always outrun.
He looks at himself as if looking at a familiar stranger. A stranger who smiles in pictures.
All of these snapshots paint a clear picture to him, about how much he’s opened himself to Scout. How comfortable he’s let himself become over the past few months.
Does Scout know what he’s doing to him?
Sniper looks back at the bed, at the runner, still fast asleep, breathing softly. He could go back to bed, back to warmth, back to Scout. Maybe he will wake up beside him in the morning and Scout will smile at him and he’ll feel like the luckiest man on Earth.
Maybe.
He feels himself blushing. How foolish to hope that something that nice would ever happen to him. How terrifying to even try to find out if it would.
If he was a better man, he’d stay. He’d go back into Scout’s warm embrace.
But the Sniper is a man who watches from afar. Out of sight. A professional. A coward.
And he needs a smoke anyway.
As he quietly leaves the room, Sniper thinks about the roos that would jump out of the way, scared straight, their presence revealed by fast approaching headlights.
He thinks about how he’s not all that different from them.