AIM RP Log: In the Kitchen, Pt. 2

[sapoteur]

Who: BLU Spy and RED Engineer
When: A little later
Where: Common room kitchen
What: The dessert course.

"Soldier. Couple days back." He stared at the table, not particularly wanting to remember. "Tried t'take over watch so he could catch a little shuteye. Wound up tellin' me I oughta take a hike 'cuz I didn' care enough f'r his tastes." His face darkened a little.

"Oh!" It was only Soldier. Spy chuckled. "You did not really think he would actually leave watch to you, did you?"

"Thought he might have a care f'r his own welfare f'r a change." Red's voice was curt and slightly defensive. "Can't afford t'have him fallin' asleep out here."

"Oui, but he is a Soldier," Spy said, smiling a little. Foolish creatures, them. "They tend not to worry so much about themselves." Like some people she could mention. "And you are a RED besides. If he did not trust you to be alone with me just outside the common room, he would certainly not leave something he personally feels responsible for to you." It was all just a misunderstanding, really. "You should not take it personally."

"S'posed t'be on th'same team," Red grumbled, although much of the venom had gone out of his voice at the reminder. The man he'd needed to reason with to negotiate Spy leaving the common room hadn't been what he'd seen on the rooftop. Not for the first time, he kicked himself for being a sentimental old fool. "'N here you are tellin' me th'same thing he did."

Not quite sure what to say to that, Spy took a turn staring at the table too. He seemed resolved to stay here even though there was no satisfaction or obligation in it for him. But she couldn't very well guess at what could make it worthwhile for him to. Still...

"I would think that RED chose to send you to our base for a reason," she said finally. "They do not always make sense, but they are still in the business of making money." As to what that reason should be...

"You know it may have been? At the time you arrived, there were very few RED's compared to our team after our new recruits arrived. It would have been very much like our team was just Sniper and Scout and I." With the obvious advantage that most of RED was comprised of forward classes instead of support. "Perhaps they were hoping you would assume leadership over them, like you used to before. Help them win despite being outnumbered."

"Thought that at firs' too." The memory made him unutterably tired. He took a sip of his coffee, by now stone cold, and shook his head. "Wasn' f'r lack of tryin' we kept losin'. Nobody could've won with a Medic 'n a Spy against all those people. Not even him."

Spy snorted. "At least you had a Medic."

He glanced up. "What w's he s'posed t'do, uber me?"

"Why not?" Spy didn't see what was so unbelievable about the notion. Sometimes an unorthodox approach did wonders. "We did not have a Pyro, so we would not have been able to fight back. You could have beaten us all with your wrench. It would have been hilarious."

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow, staring at her until he was reasonably sure she wasn't kidding. "S'no way I would've reached any've you," he said flatly. "Would've put Dok's 'n my life at risk chasin' after you. By th'time uber wore off the guns prob'ly would've tore us to pieces."

Spy laughed. "At our base, lives really are not that big a loss. We get them back, after all. But I suppose it helps to go into a charge with a particular goal in mind. One only has ten seconds to work with." She grinned. "You could have just run for Engineer's guns and laughed at him while you "helped" him build."

Red opened his mouth to contest what she was saying, then stopped and pressed his lips together, looking away again. "Still wouldn't've gained any ground," he insisted, sounding a little sullen. "Considerin' you'd all be alive. Wouldn't've stayed alive long enough t'take advantage." It was true, however, that her plan had at least been more dynamic. He'd tried and discarded the more reasonable approaches one after the other as Dok and Remi had looked on. Gunny would probably have thought of better, he thought. Or at least known better how to keep their spirits up loss after loss. He gathered his lower lip between his teeth.

"Well, no," Spy conceded. She'd lost none of her good humor about it though. "I think, though, there comes a point where you have to just give up and realize that trying to actually win is a lost cause. That is perhaps not what our employers would like to hear, but when they short our teams, they really only have themselves to blame. But we cannot very well just refuse to work, so it helps to keep people in good spirits if you just decide to have fun with it." She chuckled. "I think there is some satisfaction in spiting our companies when they leave us with little to work with by using it on silly things."

His face fell a little further. "'M not --" He sighed, looking away and setting his mug down. "Not th'right guy f'r that kinda thing. You know." The look he shot her would have been accusing if it weren't for the almost pleading cast to his features.

Spy smiled. At least he had not delusions about it.

"No, I suppose not," she said. "Why were you trying to make Soldier go to sleep?"

"Told you already. Can't have him noddin' off when th'sentry busters get here." The answer was reflexive. He glanced at her again, wondering why she was asking questions she already knew the answer to.

"He keeps watch every night though. I should think he should be used to sleeping during the day."

"He don' hardly sleep at all, 's the issue." He looked away. "Guess he figures without him nobody's gonna watch. Nobody trustworthy, anyhow."

"Hmm." That was no good at all. Soldier was one of their heavier forces. Without him, they'd be at a large disadvantage. Red was right to try to encourage him to sleep better, but a direct approach would never work as long as he was on the other team.

"Soldier reminds me a lot of the Soldier we had when I first arrived." She was sure Red remembered him. "I think it will take a lot of work for him to truly see you RED's as non-threatening. But if it's just his own well-being you are worried about presently, then you should organize other people, BLU's of course, to watch for him." Spy could, obviously, do this herself, but Red clearly needed to task to occupy himself with. "Once he is secure in the rest of his own team watching through the night, then you can try to start integrating RED's into the watch as well." She consider for a moment, then added, "Or perhaps you should arrange that people watch in pairs, to make sure they do not fall asleep by themselves, so that RED's must included too."

"'N why would anybody listen t'me?" The idea wasn't necessarily a new one. He'd thought often that a constant threat of robots ought to mean a duty rotation to ensure fairness, and wondered why no one better qualified had bothered to start one. "Can't even lead two people, let alone eleven."

"I think you underestimate the respect the others have for you," she said simply. "If you asked, I am sure they would do it." After all, they mostly did things when she asked and she didn't have nearly his air of authority.

He regarded her heavily, disbelieving. When she didn't appear to recant her position under the weight of his gaze, he added, "Ran RED into th'ground. 'N every time I go 'n talk t'people out here they seem t'think I insulted their mother."

"You should perhaps avoid talking about how pointless what we are doing is. People are very high-strung here and not really in the mood to be told that," she suggested, cheerful as ever. "And I doubt very much anyone thinks RED losing all that time was your fault. We BLU's sympathized deeply." Not enough to let them win, of course, but they did at least let RED out of their spawn room.

"Made it my fault when I tried t'fix it." He was tired of looking at her. "Should've tried carin' a little less, I s'pose."

For a moment he let his gaze rest in his lap. When she didn't reply, he looked up to see her eyebrow arched high in what he guessed might be skepticism. He frowned a little, not understanding what she had to be skeptical about. Perhaps, he thought after a moment's puzzlement, some softhearted womanly affection was blinding her to the truth. She'd always held him in an undue amount of regard, perhaps unjustly.

"Nobody's gonna want me tryin' t'tell them what to do, Spy," he informed her as gently as he could.

Spy rolled her eyes. Cared, her ass. He did as he always did, which was work amazingly on the field and then hide in his workshop afterwards. But it was clearly not worth arguing about.

"You are not going to tell them," she said patiently. "You are going to ask them. Politely. As if they have a choice about it."

"'N they're gonna say no, 'cuz they oughta know better by now." This time he kept on with his staring at her, as though in the hope that her stubbornness would make sense if he frowned at it enough.

"They will not. Most of them, anyway." She rather thought Orwell would probably complain that it was some grave mistreatment being made to stay up outside all night like everyone else. "One does not ask these things because they are the boss. You ask because it is for theirs and the rest of the team's own good. Because it needs to be done. And knowing that, most of them will oblige without argument."

Red sighed, bringing his head to rest against his fingers as he rubbed his eyes. Her words sounded too much like sense for comfort. Sure sign of trouble, he thought.

When he spoke up, his voice was flat and muted as though it came from far away. "He ain't gonna like that, y'know."

"Who? Soldier?"

"Who else?" Orwell, he thought. Rod. Remi. All the people he might have otherwise got on well with and protected. He'd done nothing to deserve the trust of any of them.

"He will like it plenty. Above all things, his interest is in the team's wellbeing. And his being rested is part of that." Spy frowned into her cold coffee. "He is just prioritizing badly. He should have been the one to arrange a watch rotation himself. I had thought he had, actually." And just not asked her to participate in it, that's all. "But he seems to think that if someone else is watching, then they will be in such poor form that the whole team will suffer, whereas he has the endurance to watch and fight at the top of his form. He just needs to be given an opportunity to see this can be done in a better way."

"R'minds me a lot of somebody else I know," Red groused to himself, staring miserably at his mug. He glanced up and noticed Spy doing the same. "Y'want more coffee?"

"Please," she said, pushing her mug within his reach. She was interested to see if he knew how she took it. "He is warming up to the other RED's, I think," she told him. "So it is not completely hopeless. He seems to get along well enough to the Demowoman to arrange a party at least."

"Haven't talked t'her yet." He'd noticed the extra presence on-field -- with how loud she was it was hard not to -- and had carefully set about avoiding her otherwise. Another woman. At least at this base they could play at making war in relative peace, he supposed. He was surprised Soldier hadn't steeled himself against such distractions.

"She is very friendly. You would not think so to see her on the field, but she is."

"S'nice." Having gotten to his feet, he picked up both mugs, thankful for the distraction of heading back into the kitchen. Another forward class was all fine and good, but if Spy was trying to steer him toward talking to the interloper, he figured she could save her breath.

There was still plenty of coffee left in the percolator, but in his absence it had gotten cold. He flicked on another burner, trimmed the flame down, and set it atop, settling down to wait.

"Mostly. She calls me a hen."

Red snorted, folding his arms. He guessed she did have a big nose, he thought, but mercifully didn't say.

"It is not funny," Spy said, though her tone belied her own amusement about it.

"Speak f'r yourself," he said, grinning a little at what he could see of the table.

Spy harrumphed jokingly.

"Of all the things you would laugh at," she noted.

"S'prised you ain't shocked I'm capable've laughin', period."

"I am a little surprised, I will grant you that. I was not sure your face did that."

One corner of Red's mouth perked up. He glanced over at the coffeepot. There was much about him that Spy didn't know, but for once he felt somewhat at ease with what she did.

"Usually, if I am there, it looks more like this." Spy furrowed her brows, frowned a little, and leaned over so he could see through the doorway.

It took him a moment to attend to the fact that he was supposed to be attending. Once he did, he took in her features in confusion for a moment before snorting at the ridiculous-looking whole they presented. "Cut that out," he ordered through his giggles. "Does not."

"How would you know?" Spy asked, dropping the face and resuming her own teasing one. "You cannot see your own face when I am there to see it."

"Seen enough've it." He was getting hold of himself by then, rubbing his eyes and exhaling. "S' just how my face is, you realize."

Spy smiled and sat back in her chair and out of view.

"Oui, I do. You make that same face when I am disguised as other people too, so I had to figure you could not be always making that face just because you knew I was lurking."

He snorted in reply, turning to catch the coffees before it boiled. Much as he claimed otherwise, his expression was considerably softened.

"I was glad you were back though. It felt like I was learning to Spy again," she told him. "But being on the same team with you is better. There is less being hit in the face that way."

"Don' tempt me," he warned her, smiling over his shoulder at the table as he filled their mugs again and reached for the sugar. "Thought I'd have t'knock some sense into you once you started in on me leavin' f'r my own good."

"I am already full of sense," Spy said.

"Full've somethin', all right." He stirred his coffee, frowning a little at her cup. "How you like yours?"

"With milk and sugar, please."

"How much sugar?" An important point, he thought, taking a preliminary sip of his own cup.

Oh. Well, she should have said.

"A spoonful."

His eyebrows lifted a little, impressed at her fortitude. A spoonful of sugar descended into her cup. He took an extra for his as well before moving on to collect the pitcher of cream. He added a small dollop to her cup, stirred, frowned, thought about inquiring as to the approximate shade she wanted, and then decided that if she was going to be picky she should have fixed her own coffee.

His duties done, he carried both cups out and set them down on the table, studying her face to assess his performance.

Spy accepted her coffee and smiled at finding it to be within the the acceptable range of beige. She took a sip and savored it for a moment before an amusing thought occured to her.

"Soldier is exhausting himself as the rest of us can sleep, and yet we are in here in the middle of the night, drinking coffee."

Red snorted. "Grad school. Don' affect me much." Still, she had a point. "Guess you don' have that excuse, huh."

"I am used to late hours. I used to work from the evening to early morning and never really got out of the habit." She chuckled. "The nine-to-five is still a bit of a struggle, even after so long."

His eyes narrowed in confusion. "What'd you --" he started asking before remembering he wasn't supposed to be interested in such matters. Still, the number of professions for women requiring them to keep such hours were scarce. She didn't look like a nurse to him. At least not the kind of nurse he'd want tending over his sickbed.

Giving him an inquisitive eyebrow at his imcomplete question, Bleu gauged before choosing to answer it. She had technically been many things as a Bunny, but she chose perhaps the most complex of her positions to explain her job. There was something about just saying she was merely a Bunny that she felt he probably would scoff at. As if she were not smart enough for anything else but checking coats and delivering drinks.

"I was a croupier. By the end anyway. At the London Playboy Club," she told him fondly, speaking of good times gone by.

"Hell's that?" The words "Playboy Club" echoed dully through his head, two semantic components that ought to have meaning but that his mind refused to process.

"A blackjack dealer," she said merrily, peeking over her coffee mug. "Or sometimes roulette or punto banco too, but they usually gave me a blackjack table." The blackjack tables had her standing closer to the guests.

Red's eyebrows contracted a little more as he puzzled that one out. It wasn't quite as morally deficient as he'd feared, but still fairly dubious. "Teacher's association didn' like you?" he guessed, studying her. She was pretty, he guessed. He didn't know if she was pretty enough to justify an expense on the part of anybody else. The nose complicated things.

"What?" Spy's face scrunched in confusion. "I... I was a passable student," she said, not sure what that had to do with anything.

That netted her a brief chuckle, although the issue still remained awkwardly on the table. "'Mean far's your career goes," he said, a little more delicately. "You jus' didn' feel like nursin', or what?"

"Oh! Well..." She hadn't really planned to have a career, had she? "It did not actually occur to me to ever get a job. That is not how it is usually done in my family. It was just that I was vacationing with friends and they were doing Bunny auditions and we went in for fun." Spy smiled at the thought. A total lark ended up being a long-term engagement. At least until her mother ruined it. "I only went to college after I got the job. They will pay for you to go."

He hmphed to show that he'd heard, still turning the concept over in his mind. "Girls in college," he mumbled to himself, shaking his head slightly and taking a sip of his coffee. Playboy girls in college, he amended, glancing at her as though fearful she was about to take her top off. "Well," he said shortly. "You're here now."

Little as the thought thrilled him. It was lucky the men had managed to keep their minds on the task at hand, considering.

"Oui! It was very lucky I studied theatre. It seemed a frivolous choice at the time, but it turned out to be important to them in picking me for Spying." Really all the skills they had chosen her for possessing were matters of luck.

As far as he was concerned it was still and would forever remain a frivolous choice, but he guessed she hadn't brought him a sandwich to hear him bitch about it. He sought for a politer way to end the conversation and found himself somewhat lacking. He'd hoped his earlier brusqueness would have meant they could talk about something other than her sordid past. Maybe she should have stayed out there, he thought. He was sure there were plenty of men who would fall all over themselves to be in his position. The thought was not cheering.

"Lucky," he echoed, without much feeling, and took another sip of his coffee.

Oh. He was getting bored. She had talked too much about herself.

"It is good to have somewhere to be and a thing to do."

Now he felt a little guilty. Whether or not that constituted an apology in disguise, and if so why she hadn't just elected to say she was sorry, was somewhat beyond him. He frowned at his coffee cup before grudgingly deciding to take the bait. "How'd you wind up doin' all this?"

Not at all what she was expecting. And not terribly welcome either. Still, Spy looked up from her coffee and smiled graciously.

"Please do not ask me about that."

He was more confused than ever, but at least they had managed to agree on something. "Gladly," he muttered, wishing he'd stayed in the shop. At least there the rest of the room would have made sense.

Spy frowned.

"It is nothing personal. It just was not my finest moment, that is all." Then, though not quite what he'd asked, she added as somewhat of a concession. "I was chosen because I speak a lot of languages and have an acting degree."

"Mm." He took a sip of coffee, more than half-wishing it were something stronger. "Didn' know you had t'be picked for this insanity."

"The companies have many methods of recruitment, I have learned," Spy explained. "I was not actually picked by a company at first. They trained me with a group of Spies and then divided them out evenly between RED and BLU. They do this for other classes too. But most people apply to one or the other directly, I think. Did you apply or did they ask you?"

"There w's a brochure." It seemed like forever ago.

"Was it specifically for Engineers?" Spy asked, intrigued. "What did it say?"

He shrugged. "Don't r'memeber exactly. Just a rundown've the company. Some've the weapons I'd be workin' with." He ran a thumb along the rim of his mug. "'Bout threw the first one away."

"Oh," Spy said, a little disappointed. "Ours made it all seem very exciting, but we did not get to read them until after we were signed up." She snorted. "Our last Engineer, though. He thought we were actually building things. Being a Builder's League and all. He must not have read the brochure."

"Dunno that he got one. Haven' heard of anybody else that did." He leaned back a little in his chair. "Kinda figured it w's 'cuz of my aunt sendin' them my address. Not sure how anybody else got here when y'come down to it." It was a perplexing thought, and one he'd never really thought to wonder about before.

"I think the companies do go out and look for people with the right qualifications," Spy surmised. "Being approached for the work is not unheard of. But of the people who have told me about it, most of them sought their company out."

"Overqualified, 'f anything. Surprised they bothered." They'd been lucky that he'd neared the end of his useful work, he thought. And that he'd been bored. But he guessed that hadn't been anything new.

"It is not?" Spy asked, curious. "I thought you were a phys..." Physician? No, that was medicine. A person who practices physics was called something else. "You do physics, oui?"

"Yeah. Theoretical physics." He gave a one-armed shrug. "Practical stuff's just a hobby. W's more Rich's kinda thing."

"Rich?" Spy inquired.

"You didn' know him." The truth was the easiest way to reroute such a hassle of an inquiry. "Went t'school t'gether. He adapted 'n built most've the tech stuff."

"Oh." Strange of him to speak of this person as if she should have recognized the name. But no matter. "This must be so easy then," Spy said, smiling a little. "If you theorize on things you cannot know for sure, the things that are certain must be so plainly obvious. Easy like bumper pool."

He blinked at her as though she were speaking a foreign language. His mind lingered for a while on the two unfamiliar words and the utterly meaningless totality they presented when taken together before doing its best to dismiss it and focus on the rest of what she'd said. "Not 'xactly. Different kinda challenges." He gave a one-armed shrug, leaning forward to grasp his mug again. "S'nice, though. Gettin' t'work with your hands. Doin' somethin' that matters."

Spy laughed. "Obviously it is not the same. You have to work on more than one plane. But you have to figure out how to angle things so they hit the right things. You probably even do the math to figure it out."

He frowned at her over his coffee. "'Mean, yeah. 'Least guesstimate 'f I can't sit down 'n do the calculations myself." A sip of coffee distracted him momentarily from his puzzlement. "Thought everybody did that."

"Engineers, maybe," Spy said. "There is math you can do in billiards too. That is why there are diamonds around the edge of the table, to help you figure it out. But I am not very good at numbers, so I just guess at it." She was still a formidable opponent though. She'd had years of practice. "I bet you would be good at it. But I would have a chance at beating you at it too."

"Never tried playin'." He shrugged. "Not real big on games outside've checkers. Time investment w's prohibitive."

Spy brightened at the word "checkers". "Do you know how to play chess?"

"Know how, never liked it much." He downed another sip of coffee. "Recreation shouldn' require that much thought, s'what I always figured."

"Hm!" Spy acknowledged thoughtfully. "That is surprising."

He studied her. "What, y'figured I w's the kinda person who'd stake my intellectual reputation on a board game?"

Spy looked up in great surprise at the question. Then she her face fell back into her smile.

"I should hardly think chess is a great indicator of intellectualism. It is about being able to stratagize on a whim more than being really smart," she said. After all, it couldn't require that many brains if she could win at it. "Non, I meant it was surprising to me that you preferred not to think so hard when you are meaning to relax. I assumed you were doing even more difficult thinking when you are alone in your closet."

"Depends." He set the coffee cup down again, in some surprise that she was interested enough to inquire. "There isn' a whole lot of thinkin' goes into the day to day around here. There's times I come back 'n sit down, do differentials 'til I'm blue in th'face jus' for the hell've it. Give my mind somethin' t'do." He glanced up at her, wondering if she even grasped what he was talking about. Unlikely. "Mos'ly I ain't in. Off doin' maintenance. Sometimes I play a little guitar 'f that all gets dull."

"Wow!" Spy said, impressed. Who knew he getting up to all of that in there. But then- "What is a differential?"

"Calculus." That word was probably too big for her too. "Math stuff. You wouldn' understand."

"You do math for fun?" Spy asked, her face scrunched up as if the idea were itself a complex mathematical problem. "How do you have fun at that?"

He shrugged. "S'hard t'explain t'somebody who isn' a mathemetician," he confessed. "Has t'do with -- I dunno. Seein' how it all fits t'gether. Seein' an order t'things." He stared into his coffee cup. "Knowin' a part've th'whole 'n inferrin' the other parts 'til you c'n see how th'whole thing moves t'gether. When it all works out neat." A little smirk curls his lip. "When it don't it gets even more fun."

Spy had a smirk of her own going. No, she understood. He was absolutely right. Their respective hobbies were really not so different.

"Like a team, except with numbers instead of people. Oui?"

"Used t'be people 'stead've th'numbers," he nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the table. The thought sent a weary echo through him. "But yeah. Numbers don' change much."

"Is it not the parts that change that make it so things do not work and need to be figured out?"

Red's brows contracted. "Huh?"

"You said you like it when the differentials do not work out neatly. Because you have to figure out how to make it work? Doesn't people changing make a team not work until you figure out how to get them to?"

It was a good question, and Red's eyebrows contracted again as he glanced up and then down at the table, turning over the concept in his mind. "S'different," he said finally. "Too many unknowns. Las' place -- I dunno 'f I told you, but -- 'mean, I got taken around t'talk to everybody firs' thing. Team did everythin' t'gether. We all knew each other."

"That sounds wonderful."

"Cept for all the dyin', yeah, it wasn' bad." He snorted. "New folks come in. But they do it gradual-like. Rare t'have th'whole team replaced overnight."

"Hmm." But that didn't happen here. If that was the sort of change he disliked to work with, then logically, he should have been having plenty of fun figuring out the machinations of his current teammates.

"It would be nice if our base could be like that," she said. "No one ever dies here so it would be even more worthwhile to be that familiar."

"Either that're we'd all be killin' each other anyhow. Tough t'tell." He gave a joyless little chuckle at that.

"I wonder though," Spy said, staring into the remainder of her coffee thoughtfully. "I honestly think most of the problem is that no one is acustomed to having to be this close. But if we could get them to learn to like it, things would probably be much nicer once we return to our own base. And our own bedrooms."

"Think it depends on th'team 'n the people," Red said stubbornly. "Some teams're better at gettin' on than others. 'N like I said, cruel as it sounds, think it's a li'l easier t'get along 'n respect people when you all know your days're numbered 'n you're all you got. On'y got so much time t'make a good impression 'n half've 'em don' last long enough t'start showin' their bad sides."

Spy was silent for a long time. Then, cautious to keep her face neutral in case he found the idea ghoulish, she said, "Maybe we should make them think respawn is broken."

Red snorted. "Doubt it'd work. S'losin' your first teammate that tends t'drive the point home. Not much you c'n do t'replicate that. Humanely, anyhow."

Spy shrugged, letting the notion roll off as a joke. "We could always kill the other Engineer and say it was respawn. He might even think it was humane compared to respawning."

"Way he carries on sometimes I'm kinda surprised nobody's got to it yet."

Spy snorted. "It is certainly not for lack of trying."

"Really?" Red raised an eyebrow.

"He did something to upset Sniper and Sniper took advantage of respawn always being on to make a point about it." Spy frowned her disapproval of the situation. "He did seem to mind his manners a little better after that though."

"Oh, that." Red shrugged. "Thought you meant somebody'd tried t'kill him f'r good. Think Sniper jus' prefers corporal punishment."

"Yes, well, constant respawn does throw a wrench into the idea of killing him permanently," Spy explained cheerily. "We would have to take him off base to do it properly."

"Off base ain't far." The gleeful way she proposed it made him grin.

"Not for us. He would probably complain about the walk."

"Since when's that news. Complains about everythin' else from what I c'n hear."

"It is better than nothing." Which was about as much as his predecessor amounted to.

"Days I wonder about that. Y'know what they say about bein' in bad company." He gave her a lazy smile. "Sounds like you folks jus' haven't had much luck in the Engineer department lately."

"My opinion of him put me in the minority," Spy said. "The rest of the team, I am sure, preferred him to the one we have now."

"'F he w's quieter I could see why." He was overstating his case slightly, and frowned. "Don' reckon a memo'll make him stop cryin'. Seems t'me from the second he arrived he w's kinda askin' for somebody t'kick him in th'teeth, knock some sense into him."

"He does fight though. And he is nothing if not resilient." And though he hadn't had any opportunity to prove otherwise, Orwell was not, as far as Spy yet knew, a traitor.

"That don' matter. He can't work with people. That siren goes off --" He paused, remembering the siren no longer existed -- "Tank starts up, whatever, s'a cue t'check your issues at th'door 'n get to work. He don' do that."

"He also does not faint on the battlefield nor beat up his teammates with his robot fist because he is hallucinating and drunk."

There she was again talking about things he'd never seen and heard for himself. "W'll, no. I c'n only gauge by what I seen. 'N from what I seen he ain't a good match f'r out here. Or anyplace else, by th'look of him, but s'pecially not out here."

Spy shrugged. "I feel safer with this Engineer than the last one."

"'N yet you're still here plottin' t'kill th'one we got." He gave her a one-sided grin.

Spy laughed. "That is the thing of it. If this one gets too far out line, no one will mind if I bury him."

Red snorted. "Win-win situation, huh."

Spy flashed him a grin. "Precisely."

"Hnh." Still smiling slightly, he dropped his gaze to the table, shifting a little in place. Outside Soldier would be beginning the watch, he thought. "Guess 'til he gives us th'excuse we'll jus' have t'get by with tryin' t'beat some sense into him."

Stifling a yawn (and making a funny face at it), Spy hmm'd an agreement.

"I should perhaps be going to sleep," she said, chuckling. "Soldier probably would not appreciate the hours I am keeping." And on that note... "If you think the Engineer will argue about the night watch rota, or if anyone else will either, give him two nights and let him pick which one he wants. He might be more agreeable if he thinks he is getting a choice about when it fits into whatever it is he is doing otherwise."

"I w's plannin' on it," he agreed, watching her get up from the table. "'F I c'n figure out how t'get into the memo system sometime soon I'd like askin' everybody what shift they'd prefer. Late night's been killin' me anyhow." He glanced down at his empty coffee mug.

"Not that you'd know it by th'look of things, I guess."

"You always look like you are working too hard," Spy told him. She gestured at his coffee mug, offering to take it with her own to the kitchen.

He probably was, he thought with a sad kind of uneasy feeling. He surrendered his mug with a nod of thanks. Even without speaking to most of the team, he worked until he slept. Without anyone to break him of the habit he would likely continue to do so indefinitely.

No wonder he'd resorted to keeping such odd company. "Might be." He caught the tail end of her as he got up from his chair and she disappeared into the kitchen, and elected to hover, hands on the back of his chair, until she reappeared.

After giving the cups a quick wash and putting them back in the cabinet, Spy came out of the kitchen. She was mildly surprised to see that the Engineer seemed to be waiting for her. She expected him to be still sitting there staring at the tabletop or else to have sneaked out while she was gone.

"You are going to assist Soldier in watching then?" she asked, unsure why he was waiting for her.

"Guess so." He didn't flatter himself into imagining the other man would be waiting for him or wondering where he'd gone, but he guessed it would be something to do. "'Leas' 'til one've us gets sick've it 'n leaves." He glanced at her for a moment or two, aware that some kind of goodnight gesture was necessary but uncertain what would be appropriate. "S'pose I'll, uh, see you soon enough 'f there's anythin' exciting t'report."

"Oui," Spy said, bemused at how awkward he seemed to find the end of their evening together. "We will see each other tomorrow. When the robots come." What a world where he might actually look forward to such a thing as seeing her.

"Mmhmm." Or even sooner, he thought, though that didn't bear much repeating. He guessed it was the kind of thought that might keep other folks awake at night. "Well, uh -- g'night, then."

"Goodnight, Engineer." Spy smiled briefly, but chose not to acknowledge the effort he seemed to be having to make. Instead, she opened the door and held it so he could follow her out. "See you tomorrow," she added before she headed off in the opposite direction towards the barracks.

He nodded stiffly, watching her with his thumbs hooked into his belt until she disappeared through the door of the barracks unmolested. Once he'd made sure no further rogue 'bots had appeared, the Engineer glanced up to the rooftops. The cryptic figure of Soldier had long since made himself comfortable on the opposite battlement; he sighed. It would be a long night from here, and whatever other company he was in for would likely be far less pleasant.

Better get it over with. He trudged to the staircase and started to climb.