Chapter Text
"Is there a problem, Miss Pauling?"
Despite it all, her fingers were trembling. "It's the… BLU Soldier and RED Demoman. It looks like they've become…"
The words knocked each other around inside her mouth, refusing to leave. Somehow, her conscience was tugging at her; what she was about to say could land two men (two friends) into an early gravel pit. Dammit. She'd gotten attached.
The Administrator huffed on her cigar, looking expectantly back at her, and as those half-slid mascara-covered eyes batted at her, she remembered what all this was for. She gripped her clipboard tighter to her chest and tried to forget it all. Anything for her.
"They've become… friends."
"For how long?" The Administrator's response was so immediate, Miss Pauling half-wondered if she already knew.
She flipped through a few of the files on her clipboard. "Within the last six months. They met at a projectile weapons expo. It uh… seems to have blossomed into a lifelong friendship." She picked out a particular photo she'd snapped of the two - and for a moment, she felt a smile creep onto her face at the sight: Soldier heaving a tankard of ale, Demo's arm well wrapped around his shoulder. They were almost cute, if you forgot that they were bloodthirsty mercenaries.
The Administrator snatched the photo off her fingers, squinting at the shiny film with two gnarly fingernails. "This, this, friendship, you call it. This won't do at all." She took another hurried huff of her cigar, looking half-worried, half-murderous. Miss Pauling tried, in vain, to look away from her lips and the harried way they carried her cigar.
"What are we going to do?" she asked. Two quick bullets were the usual solution in a situation like this. She prayed that she'd have at least an hour to dig the gravel pits this time.
Smoke began to fill the air, leaving Miss Pauling feeling light-headed and slightly dizzy. "Friends, eh?" the Administrator taunted, jabbing a finger at the photograph. "Friends that will talk about their jobs, about us. This friendship must be eliminated."
It was times like these that Miss Pauling knew when to interject, when to leave the Administrator alone. They were a duo of push-and-pull, and Miss Pauling tried hard to swallow down the emotions that threatened to surface when she thought about her and the Administrator as a duo. "What will we do?"
"In my experience, Miss Pauling," the Administrator snapped back, still half-lost in a haze of her own thoughts, "nothing kills a friendship faster than a romance."
"A romance?" Her cheeks blossomed a bright cherry red at the words that she had never thought would've come out of her boss' mouth. "Uh-
"They'll be so obsessed with each other, they won't have time to talk about their jobs… and about us." A smirk was starting to play out on her face as she fiddled with the television knobs so that both Demo and Soldier's faces would be visible. "Make them dance. Make them kiss. Make them mad. Make them so utterly in love with the other so that they would rather die than be apart."
She then leaned in, close to Miss Pauling's face, a sickening smile on her wide, purple-stained lips, until Miss Pauling could feel her breath on her cheek. "Will you do that for me, Miss Pauling?"
Maybe she should say something. Or… maybe she shouldn't. Romance. Between... who exactly? She bit her lip. "Yes, Administrator."
"I'm up, I'm up…" Demo groggily walked to his front door. Honestly, he had half a mind to answer the door with an ol' pipe bomb for waking him up this bloody early.
The door was once again hurriedly knocked before he got to it, a nervous sort of thunk-thunk. Throwing the thing open with a rather drunken swing, Demo blinked wearily at the source of his woes: a short, purple-dress lass with glasses. Oh, wait. It was that short purple-dress lass with glasses! Ehh, what was her name again?
"My name is Miss Pauling." Hell, was he so gone that he said that out loud? "Demo, I have something for you."
Slapping a palm to his one intact eye, he squinted up at the sun that was far too bright for whatever time it was. "Mmm?"
Purple-dress lass pushed him, er, wait, her name was... Miss Pauling, right. Miss Pauling pushed him a rather large and suspicious-looking cardboard box. Well, he was never one to deny a good box. Ripping the masking tape off, he fumbled around the packing peanuts to find…
"Ehh... a rose?"
Miss Pauling was currently and unsuccessfully trying to hide her reddening face behind her clipboard. "Uh. Yep. Heard they're in season."
He sniffed the rose. It smelled as roses do. "Yer meaning to tell me ye woke me up for a rose?"
"Well, it's a pretty nice rose," she argued, and Demo did have to agree there. It was a rather nice rose.
"But wha' am I ta do with yer rose?"
Miss Pauling looked at him rather expectantly. "Give it to someone. Someone special. Maybe someone who'd like a rose from you, someone like-"
"Like Sniper!" he exclaimed, jabbing a finger into the sky.
"Like… Sniper?"
With unusual gentleness, he brushed the petals of the rose with the back of his palm. "'Cause...'cause he's all prickly-like on the outside, aye? But really he's justa a softie. Ye get it? Aye. The lad'll get it."
A pause. Miss Pauling let out a groan that Demo blissfully ignored. "You're drunk, aren't you?"
Demo barreled on, without a care in the world. "Sniper's a good lad. He's gon' love this... to pieces. Thanks, Miss!"
"Uh." Miss Pauling felt like taking one of Demo's stylized castle swords off the wall and stabbing herself repeatedly. "You're welcome."
As the door was closed in front of her face, she slammed her head into her clipboard. Who was the bigger idiot here, the drunken cyclops, or her?