Yes, kiddos, I write het. And I write non-M rated things sometimes. Get off my back, yo.

(jk, enjoy, guys!)

RED Engineer had never considered himself a romantic—not when a human factored into the equation.

He could sweet talk a sentry into doing his bidding, or bring a power grid from the brink of distress with a bouquet of wire and a love song of careful logic. Any time a litany of experimental engineering left the Engineer's lips, his teammates could trust that whatever ornery piece of machinery wasn't working quite like it ought, it very soon would be.

Engineer knew the concept of love, and he saw it reflected in every polished surface, and every scratched and roughly painted piece of scrap. He poured it into his machines, into his work and experimental weaponry. His work was his entire being.

Then, he met her.

She was his polar opposite—tall, slender and couth, she was everything a Spy should be and more.

He'd never considered himself a romantic. Not until he met the sole female RED Spy.

She was an experiment, a blip in the smooth running machine of war. They needed more bodies to fight in the never-ending battle against the BLUs. Woman had taken jobs bred for men during the Second World War, why not allow them a place on the RED battlefield?

Engineer knew by the end of her first rally meeting that she was more than capable of doing her duties. Much unlike their previous Spy, she was ready to step forward and take control of the situation instead of skulking in the back of the room. The lady Spy brought the air of a leader to the front of the table, once Soldier (unwillingly) relinquished it to her daintily gloved hands.

She had a plan, a tongue to lash down any opposition, and a cold gaze to make her point clear. She was not there to be a woman. She was there to be a soldier, a RED Spy, a killer. She was no different from any other Spy. The cut of her suit and the tenor of her voice was the only thing separating her from the men in her position.

Though, she did mention rather smugly, one critical difference was that she was superior to them.

Engineer knew a bluff when he saw it—and he didn't.

The woman performed perfectly on the battlefield. If one of the team attempted to stray from her plan, a curt word and carefully controlled amount of snark could reel him back into line.

He didn't know when it started, but soon, every time her voice rolled across the communication system, Engineer's heart seemed to skip a beat.

He noticed that as her command lengthened, the RED Spy secluded herself more and more. When she first joined, she took meals with the rest of the team and subjected herself to a period of social interaction with them before and after. It was an adequate amount of time for them to see her as a person, but not long enough for them to attempt to become fond of her.

In direct defiance of her plan to stay a part of the team yet distant, Engineer found himself seeking more time with her socially.

It was several weeks after her arrival that she dropped the appearance of social convention and began spending more and more time secluded in her room. Engineer watched her carefully during rally meetings, and meals—practically the only time she spent with the team—and he noticed something different about her. It was subtle, a sort of change in the way she held herself: still proud, and demanding, but minutely softer, like her manner was more of a front than a second skin.

She made her first mistake just as he was starting to notice the differences.

The plan had been a standard disable, engage and capture. Disable the sentry, engage the BLU Engineer and capture the intelligence. Between herself, Scout and Demoman, they should have had it cinched.

There were two different versions of the story, one from Demoman and one from Scout. The RED Spy said nothing when it was all over, she merely let the other two argue over what really happened in the intelligence room.

She had either uncloaked without a disguise, or uncloaked and then hesitated, but all three of them had ended up in respawn while the Engineer and his Sentry lived. While they had been cycling through respawn, the BLUs had rushed the remaining RED team and taken the intelligence by sheer numbers.

Soldier had touched the BLU Intel, but died when he met a wall of BLUs returning to their own intel room with their prize.

When the RED Spy stood to exit the briefing room, Engineer followed her out.

They'd spoken briefly in the past, always polite conversation, or a discussion about the mechanics of her equipment or strategies for the field. He had never crossed that careful boundary she had seemed to erect between the professional and the personal. Toed it, certainly, but never yet stepped across.

"You alright, Spy?" He asked, pausing a doorway away as she unlocked the door to her room.

She merely nodded and he thought he saw the faintest tremor in her chin.

"Hey, now… you wanna talk about—"

"Engineer, I mean this with all due respect, but, as you Americans say, 'butt out.' " As soon as the words left her mouth, the door shut and he heard the click of a lock.

Engineer stared at the door, his teeth working nervously at the inside of his cheek. He'd seen that tremor, and he knew what it was from. He knew what all this was about, and he wasn't about to just let it drop.

He stepped forward three paces and turned to knock on the door.

"Go away. I have no wish to speak to anyone."

"Spy, open this door. We need to talk before things get worse."

"What 'things'? I am fine, as I requested," Engineer pulled out a key ring and selected the master key to insert into the lock, "go away—" Spy turned, in the middle of loosening her tie and the collar of her shirt, and paused as she saw him standing in the open doorway.

There was already a wine glass sitting next to an expensive looking bottle on her desk, carefully missing the edges of the report papers strewn across the surface.

"I'll have one too, if you don't mind." He mentioned, nodding toward the bottle and taking off his hardhat as he entered the Spy's room.

"Get out." Spy told him. What he could see of her cheeks had gone crimson, and he saw that tremor again.

"Not until we've talked over this."

" 'Talked over' what? There is nothing to talk about. I made a mistake, and it will not happen again!" Spy hissed, circling closer to him like a jungle cat approaching a hedgehog—two animals of entirely different origins going head to head in a battle of stubborn will.

"Yes it will. It will—" Engineer held up his gloved gunslinger hand when she attempted to speak over him. "It will if you don't do something about the stress."

The Spy's mouth pressed into a thin line, and the Engineer knew that he'd hit the nail right on the top of the head.

"Now then, if you have a spare glass…" He smiled and moved to sit in an under stuffed chair across the room from her bed.

The Spy opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out a second glass without answering.

Engineer wasn't sure if he could classify it as a first date, but as he left her room, the RED Spy pressed a gentle kiss to either cheek.

The next day, things went smoothly. Though the team seemed a little bit leery of their Spy's dependability after the previous day's fiasco, the battle ended in their favor, and they were right in the palm of her hand again.

As they returned to the base after stowing their weapons in the respawn room lockers, Spy slipped up next to Engineer and squeezed his hand. He felt his heart flutter at the contact and looked up, his fingertips dancing along the warm leather.

"Would you care to join me after dinner for another talk?" She asked, her hand slipping away and leaving his own certain that he'd been grasping for a ghost moments before.

" 'Course." Engineer nodded, a small smile curving his lips.

It wasn't until a week after that that Engineer realized just how smitten he'd become with the woman.

Soldier had more to say at their debriefing than usual, and Engineer often caught himself staring at Spy. She hadn't had anyone to talk to, she hadn't had a confidant to which she could complain about how much of a brat Scout was, or how boorish and loud Soldier was—apparently she was convinced that his irredeeming qualities grew with every passing day, and admitted that she was having trouble keeping him in check more and more.

When Spy had finally had enough of Soldier's rambling about faulty Sun Tzu teachings, she stood and left the room. Engineer followed soon after, shaking his head at Soldier's misuse of the words "therapeutic" and "visceral."

He knocked as usual, and was told to enter. The door was already unlocked.

Spy sat in the chair he usually occupied, and seemed to be half-finished with her glass of wine. His own glass sat empty next to the bottle, and he topped her off before sitting in the wooden desk chair and stretching his legs out in front of him.

"What do you see in me, Engineer?" The Spy asked after a long moment of examining her glass.

"Ma'am?"

"What do you think when you see me?" She rephrased her question without looking up from her glass.

It didn't help Engineer understand the request any better. Strength, brains, legs that he was sure stretched for miles beneath the barely-flattering cut of her suit pants, a sense of character that was rare in a man and downright surprising to find in a woman, and, of course, patience. Patience with the rest of the team, and patience with him as he parsed out which qualities he would tell her about and which ones he would keep to himself.

"Well, you're strong and smart. You can keep Scout and Soldier in line. You're clever, quick witted and you know how to get a man eager for battle." Engineer told her, watching her lips slowly curve up into a small smile.

"Mmm…" she hummed, reaching up to rub the back of her neck. "Thank you, Engineer, for your words and your time." Her smile broadened, and Engineer was sure that it was the most genuine emotion he'd seen on her face. "You're a very honest man. I hope that I haven't misplaced my trust in you."

"No ma'am." He blurted out, pausing to clear his throat before continuing. "I mean, everyone's gotta have something to relieve the stress of the job."

"Ah, yes, your projects… I do hope I'm not impeding you from completing anything important. Your time this past week has not gone unappreciated."

"If you were, I wouldn't be here," Engineer replied readily, honestly. Perhaps a bit nervously.

The Spy smiled at him and took a small sip of wine. She closed her eyes, seeming to relax a bit before she stood and set the glass on a small end table with several novels resting on it.

"Do you mind if I request the same treatment as yesterday evening?" She asked, and Engineer was fairly certain that the catlike fluidity to her movements was meant to seduce him into compliance.

Spies.

He chuckled and reached up to pull his goggles off his eyes. " 'Course." He nodded his head toward the bed, and the Spy began unbuttoning her shirt. She did it fluidly, without the preamble of stripping one might expect of a woman whose hips had moved like hers right before he agreed.

There was an undershirt beneath her crisp white dress shirt, and suspenders held her tailored dark red pants up around her slim waist. She discarded the suspenders, and the pants seemed to sag, dropping to rest on the widest breadth of her hips.

"You been eatin' alright?" Engineer asked, standing as she sat on the bed and untied her shoes.

"… since it is you asking, no. Well, yes. I eat as much as I normally do, and then I feel nauseous." She looked up at him and cocked her head to the side. "It is just another of your stress symptoms, no?"

"Yup." Engineer sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "Make sure you talk to Medic about that—"

"No." She stood, one shoe off and the other untied. "No one can know about this… this…" her accent deepened for a moment, and he held up his hands.

"Alright, now, keep it together, darlin'." He told her, stepping forward to take her hand in his own flesh and blood appendage. "It's alright." He didn't stop massaging the back of her gloved hand with his thumb until she took a deep, calming breath and sat back down on the bed.

In the past week he'd found that she was just a beautiful bundle of nerves and worries. There was always something niggling into her mind to try to sow seeds of dissension.

He knelt in front of her and reached down to tug her pant leg up so he could get at her shoe. He finished loosening the laces and wiggled it off. "Mind if I start down here?" He asked, gently capturing her freed foot and allowing the appendages of his gunslinger to gently palpate around her socked sole.

She smiled at him and shrugged before leaning back on the bed and sighing. He massaged her foot until it was limp and useless. He made his way up her ankle and calf, keeping the movements of the individually moving pieces light and pleasant. When he made it to her narrow knee, he released her right leg and moved to her left. He started at the foot and made his way up to the knee, careful to spend every bit of time on relaxing and caring for it as he had the right.

She sighed appreciatively every now and then, but was ultimately silent, allowing him to work as he pleased. He thought it was odd that a Spy would allow him such familiatiy. "An excellent judge of character," was what she had said the previous evening, when he'd asked if she felt nervous with him standing behind her, rubbing the knots out of her shoulders.

As he worked his way up the fronts of her thighs, he wondered what she could possibly see in him to bring out this much trust.

"Alright, I'm gonna shift you on the bed." He told her, keeping his voice low and calming.

The Spy nodded, and allowed him to shift her slight frame to slightly off center of the bed. He moved up to adjust the pillow for her and then tapped her side to indicate she should roll over onto her stomach. "It is too much effort…" she murmured, cracking open an eye to smile at him.

Engineer chuckled and walked around the bed to gently wiggle his hands between her back and the bed. One at her lower back and the other beneath her shoulders, it didn't take much effort at all for him to roll the Spy into the middle of the bed.

"Want your wine back?" He asked, glancing at the glass across the room.

"Mm… just here on the bedside if you would." She assented, thought she sounded rather unwilling to allow him to stop his work on her tense muscles.

He took the opportunity to get a good gulp off his own glass, hoping it would make his thoughts calm down a bit.

Engineer set her glass on the table and removed his own work boots before pulling a leg up to sit on her bed. Her took her hand and gently tugged the leather glove from her long, pale fingers. Rather than used his gunslinger, he worked the thumb of his human hand along her palm and rolled the tips of his fingers along the delicate lines of the top. She smiled, her cheek resting on the pillow, and her eyes following his movements, almost hypnotically.

"You are quite good at this." She murmured, trailing her short, manicured nails along the inside of his forearm when he moved father up to give her wrist a proper, gentle rubbing.

"Humanities courses are… a little strange." Engineer chuckled, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. He passed his hand farther up to the thicker muscles of her forearm and circled his thumb gently, careful not to give any one spot too much attention for fear of irritating the area rather than soothing it.

"Hmmm… I would not know, I never attended University." She admitted, arching into a stretch as he arrived at and began kneading up the soft swell of her deltoid to her shoulder.

"Reckon I attended enough for the both of us." Engineer chuckled, keeping his eyes steadfastly on where his hand was working and not the Spy's lovely blue eyes, or the way her body lengthened and contracted when he hit just the spot to encourage her into another stretch.

"Mhm… I reckon you did." She purred, appearing to dissolve into putty beneath his hands. He worked his way down the left side of her back, paying particular attention to the muscles following her spine. When he reached the swell of her rear, he shifted farther down the bed and moved on to the back of her thigh, daring to rub small circles all the way up to the brink of immodesty, but not quite going where he felt he shouldn't.

Once he had finished her left side, he stood and took a sip of wine on his way around to her right. There was a light clink of metal on glass as his gunslinger adjusted to cup it more firmly, but his prosthetic was a fine-tuned piece of machinery. It wouldn't leave so much as a scratch on the delicate surface.

The Spy rolled reluctantly onto her side to take a sip of her own wine, and he could just imagine the way that her lips curved in a gentle smile as she savored the flavor and careful attention he'd shown her left side. He waited patiently for her to lie back on her stomach, but she instead rolled onto her back.

"Engineer, I hope that you don't think it's rude of me to ask… but do you have any intentions?" Spy asked, watching her wine swirl and cling to the sides of her glass before dripping back down to the bottom. Her eyes flicked over to look at him just as he attempted to work his mouth for a third time.

"Intentions?" He finally asked, soft and, he hoped, confused.

"Mhm, this is… well… sharing wine, giving massage… it is all quite romantic under the right circumstances, I was just wondering if you were here as a suitor or merely a friend." She took a sip of wine as Engineer considered her words.

"Romantic?" He asked, reaching over to set his glass down on the floor next to the bedpost.

"Yes, well… I think it is." She told him, her hand slipping into his own.

"Huh, just… never thought of myself as the type." Engineer admitted with a wry chuckle. If the Spy thought it was romantic, then by golly, it most assuredly was. His hand contracted around hers, and gave it a squeeze. "Hypothetically, if I did have intentions… would you have any aversion to it?" He asked, his gunslinger fidgeting nervously upon the bedspread.

"Hypothetically," she mimicked him, "I would need a dinner, alone, first in order to make that decision."

"I'll go get two plates from the mess hall?" He suggested.

She smiled at him. "How romantic."