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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 4/?

Fandom: Team Fortress 2

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Scout/Sniper (Team Fortress 2) Characters: Scout (Team Fortress 2), Sniper (Team Fortress 2), Medic (Team Fortress 2), Spy (Team Fortress 2), Scout's Mother (Team Fortress 2), Other Character Tags to Be Added

Additional Tags: Trans Scout (Team Fortress 2), Trans Male Scout (Team Fortress 2), Trans Male Character, Tokophobia Warning, Pregnancy, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mpreg, (i guess it depends on your definition), Emotionally Repressed Sniper (Team Fortress 2), oh god just communicate you fucks, Established Relationship, Situationship?, Spy is Scout's Parent (Team Fortress 2), no beta I have no friends, Medic is a cunt i love him, Scout's Ma is the best, Discussion of Abortion, Unplanned Pregnancy, almost forgot that one

Summary: Sniper and Scout's relationship is in limbo, and neither seems to know if or how to fix it. Unexpected news finally forces a change, but whether it'll be for better or for worse is anyone's guess.

----

Mick met the dawn smoking a cigarette on the back steps of RED base.

He’d gone after Jeremy, of course, once his legs had started working again. To what end exactly, he didn’t know. Didn’t even question. His brain had packed it in some time after Jeremy had left and Mick had just started walking in the cold night air. Instinct drove his steps, drawing him toward the place where he’d feel most safe, where he could find comfort. And so, each stride brought him closer to Jeremy.

But then he’d stepped foot on the back porch and something cruel and visceral had ripped through him. He was there again, at that house on Adelaide Street, stepping onto the veranda and noticing for the first time that something was wrong. A part of him had known, back then, what he’d find when he walked through that familiar door. He knew well the stench of rotting bodies, and he recognised the black clouds of blowflies hanging in the air.

This time, Mick didn’t go in. Couldn’t go in. He knew – rationally he knew – that he wouldn’t find his dead parents in the RED base’s back corridor. They were thousands of miles away, laying where he’d buried them. Mick knew this, he did.

But caught somewhere unsteady between his fight and flight response, Mick wavered. His hands shook. In fact, all of him shook. He felt like his body might crumble under the weight of the New Mexico night breeze. Mick’s brain was skipping like a record; garbled thoughts died before they could fully manifest. All that made it through the noise were two words, echoing ad infinitum: not again.

Not again.

He stopped on that front step, and that was where he stayed.

By the time Mick heard the familiar sound of an Invis Watch decloaking, he was more or less fully recovered. He didn’t ask how long Spy had been there, sitting on that step beside him on a bloody hanky of all things to protect his precious suit. He didn’t say anything.

“I suppose it’s true that children marry their parents.” Spy said around a soon-to-be-lit cigarette. “I had hoped at least that Jeremy would have the sense to choose someone more like his mother.”

“I don’t like what you’re insinuatin’, snake,” Mick growled. It sounded more pathetic than fierce, like a wounded kitten. “You n’ I are nothin’ alike, and Je- Scout n’ I aren’t married. Never will be.”

“Où est un fusil de chasse quand on en a besoin?.” [Where's a shotgun when you need one?]

“Wot?”

Spy just sighed, “I want you to look at something.” He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a cigarette case. It wasn’t the one that housed his spy kit; this one was silver and engraved with swirling feather-like patterns that glinted even in the dim light. Spy flicked it open, revealing a stack of photographs on one side and a few expensive looking cigarettes on the other. He slipped out the photographs and handed them to Mick. “These stay between us, oui?”

Mick mumbled an agreement, studying the first photograph. It was of a woman, dark-haired and pretty with an upturned nose. Her hands rested lovingly over her pregnant belly, grinning widely at the camera. Mick had seen her image before, framed and placed at Jeremy’s bedside, but even if he hadn’t, he would have recognised her from that smile. Her son had an almost identical one, and Mick knew it well. “She looks like Jeremy,” He murmured, before chuckling just a little. “Or I s’pose Jeremy looks like her.”

Spy only hummed impatiently, hands outstretched as if waiting to snatch back his secrets. The man clearly did not enjoy being so exposed, and Mick would be lying if he said he didn’t want to savor that discomfort just a smidge. There was a part of him that was impressed, though, especially when he saw the next photo.

Mick knew Spy was Jeremy’s father – how could he not? – but he’d never expected the Frenchman would admit to it, even indirectly. And yet here Mick was, staring at a foxed and care-worn photograph of Spy standing proudly beside his lover, with their infant child in his arms.

A photograph where Spy was maskless. Mick studied his face, puzzling out the little bits of Jeremy he could see in width of Spy’s nose and the shape of his brow. And the ears. Jeremy had definitely inherited Spy’s ears.

“Don’t look so surprised, Bushman. There is still a face under this mask.” Spy stubbed out the butt end of his cigarette and took out another. “Quite a handsome one, I might add.”

Mick snorted, eyes still on the picture. He turned it over and was rewarded with a year (’46) and a line of text, written in a small, neat hand.

Jean, Gracie et…

The last name was crossed out, and beneath it had been written: Jérémy.

Mick moved on to the next photograph, and the next. Images of Jeremy as an infant, then a toddler, being held by his mother or aloft precariously between seven boys. Jeremy looking furious in the frilliest dress Mick had ever seen. Jeremy a blur on stubby toddler legs. Jeremy holding up a drawing and flashing tiny baby teeth.

And then, abruptly, the images changed. The photos charting the next few decades were candid, taken from afar and sometimes blurry. Jeremy trotting into a school with a backpack almost as big as him, his mother wiping tears from her eyes. Jeremy in a baseball uniform grinning wildly as he reaches home plate. Jeremy behind the wheel of a car, his mother looking panicked in the passenger seat. Jeremy, fist raised, jumping quite literally into a fight.

The final image was familiar. It took a moment, but Mick soon recognised it as the same photo that was taped to the wall of his camper, or a copy of it at least. It was a team photograph, taken right after their first victory on the battlefield all those years ago, and as far as Mick knew they all had a copy. Many of the mercs still sported injuries and torn, bloody clothing, but all faced the camera with pride. In the full photograph, Mick remembered, the father and son had stood to the left, but this copy had been cropped to centre them. Jeremy stood just behind and to the right of Spy, his left hand raised at the elbow with two fingers extended as if to hold an invisible cigarette. His right hand was held at chest height, palm up as if holding an open cigarette case. It was an uncannily accurate impression of Spy, who stood in that exact pose just in front of him, and by the look on Jeremy’s face, he knew it.

Mick had seen the photo countless times, but it was only now with the rest of the noise cut away that he noticed the way Spy’s head was tilted just slightly to the right, eyes on the runner. And was there a hint of fondness there, in that self-satisfied smirk?

For the first time - and somewhat reluctantly - Mick thought about how lonely Spy’s life must be. Mick was private, yes, but Spy took solitude to a whole new level. He lived his life faceless, nameless, and often literally invisible, haunting the halls of RED base like a self-important ghost. What was it like to live like that? Unliked and unloved, keeping pictures of the son you refuse to talk to in the breast pocket of your ludicrously expensive suit. How did it feel to hold the only image of you and your son taken this side of 1960, knowing you had to cut it out of a staff photograph?

It didn’t take long, however, for Mick to remember he didn’t give a fuck.

“Why are ya showing me this, Spook? Do ya want me to feel sorry for ya? Cause I’m not. Ya bloody well deserve it, ya prick.”

“Perhaps,” Spy said, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “But I am not here for me, Bushman. If comfort was what I desired, I’m sure I could find more… refined company from which to extract it. Non. I am here for my son and, if you can believe it, for you as well.”

Mick scoffed. “I doubt that.”

Spy rolled his eyes. “Let me be clear, Bushman,” He spat the moniker with some degree of force. “I do not like you. Nor do I like this affaire de coeur you have been engaged in with my son.”

“Well I’ve got good news for ya, Spook…”

“But - mon dieu! - I am telling you to stay with him.”

It took several moments for Mick to successfully make his mouth work. “Wot?”

“Don’t make me say it again, jar man.” Spy shuddered, which Mick thought was a bit much.

“But why?”

Spy took a drag from his cigarette, then another. Mick had already resolved to repeat his question when the Frenchman finally spoke. “Because, you crétin, you are about to make a terrible mistake – the same one I made thirty years ago - and despite what you might think I am not entirely heartless.” Spy brushed a thumb against his lip, silver curls of smoke still leaking from his cigarette. “I know about the pregnancy.”

“Pregnancy? What the bloody hell are ya talkin’ about?”

“Now is not the time to play the fool, Bushman,” Spy hissed. “You impregnated my son, do not give me any more reason to-”

Mick laughed at that, much to Spy’s fury. ‘Jer is not pregnant, Spook. Where the hell’d ya get that from?”

“Do you really think you can lie to me? I heard your argument last night!”

“I dunno what ya heard, but Jer didn’t say anythin’ about a pregnancy. There’s no way he is, anyway. I don’t even think he can-” Mick’s voice shriveled up and died in his throat.

“Oh merde.” Spy brought the palms of his hands to his forehead. “Il ne sait vraiment pas.” [Oh shit. He really doesn't know].

Mick didn’t hear him; panic had filled his ears with raw noise. His brain flitted from image to image at a blinding speed, barely lingering long enough to send a bolt of terror through him for each one.

Jeremy fleeing the battlefield, hand clasped over his mouth.

Jeremy choosing water over Bonk!.

Jeremy opting to wear looser and looser clothes.

Mick felt ill. He staggered to his feet, hands clasped together beneath his nose as if in prayer. The urge to flee shot down Mick’s legs, and he rocked unsteadily on his heels.

New pictures – daydreams - filtered through, ones he’d fought so hard to quash for so long: a little house in the woods, a home, a life. And now, in the centre of it, a child.

“No…” He whispered to no-one in particular.

Will it have Jeremy’s eyes?

“No!” Mick lurched toward the door. He had to get away. He had to-

A gloved hand gripped his shoulder. “Arrêt- Wait!” Mick halted his flight, but didn’t turn back, so Spy stepped around to face him. “Ils ne te quittent pas! You cannot get away from it!”

Mick made to side-step him, but Spy seized both of his shoulders in a death grip. His eyes were wide and molten, teeth bared in some kind of sneer. “Listen to me, Mundy!” He hissed. “When you leave a child, they don’t leave you. They stay with you. Always.” With that last word, Spy seemed to almost deflate. His hands fell from Mick’s shoulders.

Mick took the opportunity to flee.

#tokophobia warning

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