tf2 sideblog

“Hey Spy! You gonna help?”

Spy doesn’t glance from his spot leaning against the doorway, his vision already focused on pulling out a cigarette, his fingers tapping on the side of the case. “No,” he mumbles as he lights it. “I am simply here to ensure that you don’t burn the house down.” He didn’t even know what they were making. When Soldier puts down the ingredients list, he steps forwards to look it over.

Demo joins him, putting the milk down on the counter as the fridge door closes behind them. “Not bad,” he offers like a promise that this wouldn’t be a disaster, slinging an arm around Spy.

“It’s like reading directions to purgatory,” Spy judges, shrugging Demo’s arm off and squinting like he was hoping the instructions would change before his eyes. It was an old Great Depression recipe, simple enough outside obscure ingredients. “And I’m expected to watch you bake this?”

“Even better, you’re expected to help!” Soldier announces, bouncing past him to grab more dry ingredients. He shoves a box of baking soda and a ladle into Spy’s arms, getting white powder on his suit and walking away. Spy’s inhale can likely be heard across the base, but he’s stopped from his lecture by Pyro walking up to him.

“Please?” They sign. “I wanted you to come so that you could help. You told me that you liked baking.”

“Alone,” he signs back. “The recipe you chose looks like it’s insulting me.”

Pyro beeps, upset by the comment. “I chose the recipe!” And Spy huffs. “You still owe me a favor.”

“This is what you want to redeem your favor for?” Nodding. “Ugh. Fine.” He sounds like an exasperated parent, but if this is what he owed Pyro, fine. He would participate in baking.

Soon, Spy is tying an apron around his waist and taking the last ingredients down from the cabinets. Scout and Soldier are arguing over what the instructions mean; Demo is finding measuring tools, and Pyro, the whisk.

“Will you hand me the recipe?” Spy asks in a scolding tone. “I don’t care to listen to you two bicker over what one line means.” He leans to snatch the book away.

Scout holds the book over his head, “Come and get it, Spy!”

Cue a five minute sequence of Spy hunting Scout around the kitchen for the recipe. Eventually Spy ‘cheats’ and cloaks before knocking Scout off his feet and taking the book.

“Don’t play games with me,” he retorts as Scout complains and rubs his leg, walking back to his original position and reading the recipe. He scowls. “‘Bake to your liking’? Mon dieu, none of this is my liking.”

“We know,” Demo comments, drinking from an unnamed bottle he’d pulled from the fridge when the chase happened while Pyro helps Scout stand. “But ye promised to make it with us. Now c’mon,” he says, walking over and gently pulling the recipe away. “We still need the molasses and cinnamon.”

The first part of the baking process goes better than Spy will admit. The others (he won’t consider himself a part of this still) manage to spill the dry mixture a few times, but keep the wet mixture upright. Pyro had found the whisk and is put in charge of using it. It’s only into the later parts that things begin to go wrong, moreso than before. He had never been particularly religious, but today might be the day he starts praying.

“Eggs!” Scout reads the next step of the recipe. He already has flour covering his shirt. “… How many?”

“I don’t know. It just says eggs.” Demo points out from beside him, finger running along where the amount should be.

Spy is about to make an appropriate suggestion when Soldier starts breaking eggs and adding them. “Five eggs?”

“One for every person here!” Soldier announces proudly.

It’s a sweet enough notion, but “Soldier, you left the eggshells in.”

“For flavor! There’s calcium in those shells!”

He receives a look from Spy that could kill someone.

Pyro huffs from behind the mask and starts to pick them out with Scout’s help. Soldier gets distracted by Demo reading off the next part of the recipe, lucky enough for the others. And Spy begins to clean up the kitchen and put away anything they weren’t using, placing the seven wooden spoons and three separate bowls that they had gone through so far in the sink.

Eventually Demo pads over and sits on the counter beside the sink where Spy is rinsing off the last of their tools. “I don’t get the feelin’ ya like doin’ this.”

“It’s a little late in the century for this sort of war crime.”

Demo stares at him. “We commit war crimes every day, and yer worried about our baking?”

He points to the current in-use bowl like it would come alive at any moment. “I have fair reason to be, Demoman. I’ll be calling the United Nations by the time we’re through.”

At some point Demo leaves him alone to help make sure everything else is alright. The offense team finishes putting the recipe together and manages to put it in some sort of oven-safe container. Ten minutes later and the team of five is standing around the tin, waiting for the oven to finish heating.

“I didn’t know tuberculosis had a color scheme.”

“You don’t have to be so negative!” Pyro scolds Spy in sign. “I think it looks fine.”

“It’s a Great Depression recipe, what kinda expectations were we supposed to have anyways?” Scout adds, holding the recipe up and looking between it and the baking.

“It represents the Great Depression well,” Spy says as he turns and leaves, trusting that someone could put it in the oven and pull it out when everything is through.

This, of course, is not the case. An hour later, he’s fighting through rising smoke to open the oven and pull out their project. (‘Their,’ of course, is not including Spy, according to him.) Apparently Soldier had dragged Demo off to show him a new rocket launcher, and Pyro and Scout had started reading comics in the room next door, leaving no one to watch the oven.

Spy drags the tin out and sets it on the counter as he turns off the oven. His four other mercenary companions peer at the scene from the doorway, collectively nodding to each other as they decide to blame Spy for the incident. After all, they agree, he had been the designated responsible adult.

He rests his hands on his waist and stares at this project before lifting one to wave away the last smoke. “This looks like a felony.”

“Unconstitutional or somethin’,” Demo mumbles.

Eventually Spy shoves the blankets away to look at Engie. Dell can’t help a small laugh, because he’s never seen Spy so miserable. He looks wary, pale, horrible. This couldn’t be much more than a common cold, and yet it floored him. “I do not need your offerings, Engineer.” Despite all these ailments, he manages to sound bitter.

“I didn’t say you had to take it.” He shrugs again and sets the items down. “Just that I brought these for you. And I have food on your table back there.”

Spy sits up and takes the mug anyways. He can tell already from the scent that it’s mint and lavender; the Engineer knows his tastes well, it seems, even if it’s not a topic they’d ever discussed. (Of course, Dell had asked Heavy about the tea to be confident, but his tea preference was more obvious than Spy thought.) Engie hands him the medicine as well, a dark liquid, and tells him how much to take. Scowling, Spy takes it before drinking his tea.

Engie rests his hands on his waist. “You ain’t going to thank me today, are ya?”

“I won’t thank you tomorrow, either.”

“You always thank me eventually,” he points out, shifting to turn towards the door. “I’ll come back to check on you tonight and bring you food, if you’d like. I’d hate for you to stay miserable for so long.”

Spy huffs. “If you truly did, you would send Medic.”

Engie raises an eyebrow. Both of them remembered what happened last time someone was ill under the care of Medic. Poor Soldier.. Spy regards this memory with a nod. ‘Fair.’ Dell would take that as something.

He formally turns to towards the door and begins walking to it, figuring it’s best to leave his teammate alone now to suffer under the blankets. “Is there anything else I can get for ya?” He still offers when he’s reached the door, looking back at Spy, knowing he should at least offer something, even to his insufferable teammate.

There’s a long silence. Spy had been looking at the place where Engie was standing before, so he takes a guess.

“You want my company?”

He’s met with more silence at first. Spy doesn’t have an instantaneous response, as though it caught him off-guard to be asked something like that. Eventually he gains his grounds. “Of course I don’t. I want to be left alone, laborer.”

Dell decides to push his limits. “Let me get my guitar and come back, how about that?” When he’s met with a third bout of tense silence, he turns to do such, kicking the door temporarily closed. Not what he expected to be doing with his day, but it’s better than letting his teammate suffer alone.

Spy sighs. He did not want Engie’s company, he repeats to himself, he should have objected. And yet, he had made no objections. He’s normally so quick on his feet, what had failed him?

Engie returns with his guitar, and pulls a chair beside Spy’s room. Spy is trying to ignore him, reading a book with his half-empty tea on the beside counter, but is failing to. He laughs softly to himself and idly starts playing a song he knows will be recognized.

He can tell Spy has stopped paying attention to the words on the pages in front of him. His eyes have stopped scanning the pages, he’s started tapping on the edge of his page. He raise his head. “How long are you going to play your insufferable tunes?”

“I thought you liked this song,” he hums instead of the next line. “It’s always the same, it’s just a shame, that’s all…”

Spy eventually places his bookmark, sets down his book, and takes Engie’s company, as though it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, even though his expression reads like it is. When Engie finishes the song and does his little bow, he asks “Are you going to leave me alone now?”

He shrugs and continues to play gentle music on his guitar. “Y’know, sometimes people appreciate having company when they’re ill, stuck in bed without much to do. I understand you might not be one of those people, but I thought you would prefer it to loneliness.”

“I am not lonely.”

“A distraction from your illness then.”