#i have so many prompts in my inbox yall i should really buckle down and make these shorter

[thetriggeredhappy]

Youre stories are realy good! If it's not to much to ask could I get one with 51"i cant breath"? Somthing with scout and whoever you think would be could with it please. Maybe also somthing to do with panic attacks if I'm not asking to much. Please and thank!

welcome to Dad!Spy hours featuring spy being a good dad just this one time. (warnings for what’s included in the prompt, and claustrophobia. tag this as ship and i’ll straight up end you.)

51.) “I can’t breathe.”

The team had a whole host of jokes about the cave systems. They’d all been joking around for years that there’d be a cave-in one day. “Better hope we get stuck with Soldier and his shovel,” Demo often joked. In return, Soldier would say the same thing about Demo and his explosives.

Ironically, it was the enemy Soldier and Demo that got them into this situation there at the end of the humiliation round, right near the end of the day, a few pre-emptive rockets fizzing their way into the opening of the cavern, a grenade bouncing itself exactly wrong, two support beams being cracked and practically shattering, bringing the tunnel down on their heads.

Spy caught sight of the horrified stares of his surviving teammates up towards the ceiling, and then he himself looked up, and everything went black.

Not with him being knocked unconscious. The lights had been knocked out, and while Spy was feeling rather battered and bruised by the various rocks and beam chunks that fell down, he was fairly certain he’d remained awake the whole time.

The sound of collapse faded away, and the ringing in his ears followed. He slowly stood from his place in a defensive crouch on the ground, blinking rapidly, trying to let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

It was no good. He couldn’t see even the smallest pinprick of light. No access to the sun, then. Hopefully that didn’t mean there was no airflow.

He fished through his pocket for his matches, lighting one, looking around his immediate area.

That gave him some slight bearing on his location, seeing one of the medical lockers in what little light he had available. He was roughly the same place he’d been in when the lights went out, and was therefore trapped in the section of the tunnel between the Respawn room and the exit. It was possible that other members of the team had dove to safety in the Respawn room, which he’d been rather far from regardless, and if not they were likely simply crushed beneath rubble. Regardless, he imagined that he’d be able to handle being alone for however long it took to—

His eyes landed on a particularly red rock and a flash of white near the bottom of the medical locker, and he realized, no, wait, he wasn’t alone at all.

He bristled, lighting the next match in his case as the first reached the end of its lifespan, stepping over the rocks scattered on the ground, and went to inspect Scout.

He was limp, unmoving, unresisting to being rolled over onto his back. Spy picked up his arm, thumb over the inside of his wrist. He was bleeding sluggishly from a wound just above his eyebrow, and was clearly knocked out cold, but he wasn’t dead. The sight of Scout so battered, to Spy’s dismay, had yet to stop causing him to feel discomfort. Inconvenient.

Spy began to do some mental math. He was aware (through means he was not at liberty to discuss) that the average human could survive roughly an hour when struggling to escape from an airtight space roughly the size of a coffin before falling unconscious. The space they were in was significantly larger than a coffin—a good three meters in diameter, a good two and a half meters tall, uneven. But it was also considerably dusty, and Spy’s lungs were quite frankly terrible, and that idea didn’t factor in for conversation or a fire-based light source. He guessed they could both perhaps live for two hours.

He went about pulling pieces of beam from off the ground, getting rubbing alcohol and some of the excessive amounts of gauze from the cabinet and quickly improvising a small, contained fire. With a light source solidified, he spotted Scout’s headset on the ground a few feet away from him, and picked it up, holding it up to his ear and fiddling with the little radio attachment. No noise, not even static, came through, and he deemed it broken, tossing t aside, deciding that avenue to get help was a lost cause. He managed to locate some ammonia tablets in the cabinet, snapping one open and holding it beneath Scout’s nose.

The young man shook awake, disoriented, visibly freaked out. The moment he had what he clearly assumed was reasonable control over his motor functions, he jolted backwards, scrambling away, and slammed his head against the cabinet behind him.

An inhale, then Scout started swearing a blue streak that Spy knew he only could’ve inherited from his mother’s side of the family.

Spy slapped him on the arm, stopping him from reaching up to touch the various bumps on his head. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Sit up.”

Scout blinked up at him with reflexively watering eyes, still wincing. “Spy, what the fuck?” he asked, confused.

“Sit up. I need to bandage your wound,” Spy commanded.

Scout was still disoriented enough to actually listen to him for once (possibly a concussion), and Spy began to set to work wrapping up his head before he could get any further grime into his bloodstream. “What the fuck?” he repeated after a second, blinking rapidly, looking out the corner of his eye at the scene around them. “Tunnel collapsed.”

“Would you like to use an article in that sentence, or are you strictly set on nouns, verbs, and phrases that involve swearing?” Spy snarked, unimpressed. “Yes, the tunnel collapsed. And I am currently unsure if the Respawn room is more or less horrible than here, so I would prefer you sit still while I try and do this.”

Scout obliged, even if he was gradually beginning to fidget in a way that Spy knew meant the disorientation was fading fast. “We can’t get to Respawn? And where are the guys?”

“No, and presumably that is where the rest of the team is.”

Scout took a second to process that. “But… how much of the tunnels collapsed?” Scout asked slowly. “How do we know that Respawn didn’t collapse too?”

Spy, tying off the gauze, stopped for a moment, considering.

“Or… the lights went out, right?” Scout asked, eyes locking on one of the shattered lightbulbs, sat dormant not far away. “How do we know the electricity isn’t down? How do we know that… that any of the guys even lived?”

It took Spy a second to think of a good response to that. “Well, I do not see any gore in our vicinity,” he replied flatly. “If Respawn was down, it would not have picked up their corpses. They are all most likely alive.”

He finished dressing Scout’s wound and sat back. Scout felt at it with his fingertips. Spy batted his hand away again. “Uh, so what’s the plan?” Scout asked. “We gonna just… start digging, or…?”

Spy gave him a deadpan look.

Scout rubbed at his arms, brushing away what dirt was still sticking to him. “Okay, sheesh. Well, what, then we’re just gonna be stuck here?”

“I can assume the rest of the team will try to excavate out shortly. Assuming their attempts to do so do not bring the tunnel down on top of us, we may be able to use one of the Laborer’s teleporters to get out,” Spy reasoned aloud. God, he wished he could smoke a cigarette, but already the place was starting to feel a bit stuffy from the smell of the little fire.

Scout shifted slightly, sitting up a bit more. He seemed unsettled. “So the plan is just to hang tight, then?” he asked.

“Yes. And while I understand that remaining in one place and not bouncing off the walls tends to be an issue for you, understand that I have absolutely no qualms sending you to go bicker and argue with the rest of the team in the Respawn room,” Spy said bitterly.

Scout didn’t need to know that that wasn’t true.

So Scout promptly went, as Spy liked to think of it, on his “best behavior”. That is to say he curled up to sit cross-legged and shut his mouth, starting to fiddle with and pull something apart—this time it was a small chunk of wood that was sitting nearby, leaving a small pile of splinters just in front of him.

And to Spy’s mild confusion, Scout then bent his head forward, closing his eyes tightly as if in concentration.

Usually, Scout being on his “best behavior” lasted roughly as long as it took for him to take apart whatever he was fiddling with, an average of three to four minutes, less if he snagged a pocket knife off of someone in the vicinity.

But at some point, Scout stopped fiddling altogether, just frowning harder. Five minutes had passed of silence from Scout, and admittedly, Spy was starting to get… not antsy, absolutely not, he was an adult, a professional agent of espionage, he didn’t get antsy. Suspicious might be the better word.

“What are you doing?” Spy asked, putting in the minimum effort to keep from sounding too immediately accusatory.

Scout puffed out an annoyed breath, apparently having been holding it for a few moments. “Nothin’,” he said. “Fiddlin’,” he amended, returning to messing with the block of wood between tightly-taped hands.

Spy bit back a positively pedestrian joke about not realizing Scout could play music, and further not realizing that he had access to a string instrument just then, to instead glare in preparation for Scout perhaps looking at him. “You’re being quiet.”

“You literally just told me to,” Scout groused, brow furrowing further, the look of such features far too familiar, too much like looking in a mirror.

“What are you planning?” Spy pressed.

“I’m not planning anything,” Scout argued. “I’m just… thinkin’.”

That was dangerous for the both of them. “What about?”

“If I tell you, will you shut up?” Scout asked, sighing heavily.

“Of course.”

Scout’s fiddling stalled for only a second. “I’m just, tryin’ to remember songs and stuff. Run through the lyrics in my head. Keepin’ distracted.”

A short pause. “That’s ridiculous.”

“You said you’d shut up!” Scout groaned, opening his eyes briefly to glare up at the ceiling, then promptly returning to his hunched position.

Spy bit back a patronizing comment about how sitting like that would ruin Scout’s back. “Why do you need to distract yourself, exactly? Is it that difficult to keep your mouth shut for longer than ten minutes?”

Scout dropped the piece of wood into his lap, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Look, I don’t wanna talk about it,” Scout snapped.

“You realize I will continue asking regardless.”

Another heavy sigh, scrubbing harder. When he dropped his hands, there was a bit of grime smeared across Scout’s cheeks from the dirt. They were closed tightly. “I’ve just got a thing about bein’ stuck in small spaces, okay?” he snapped, less confidently. “And maybe it’s…” He sighed again. “Maybe I’m just a little freaked out.”

Spy understood immediately. Unfortunately, his hard-won instinct to keep Scout at a safe emotional distance with harshness and bite leapt up before he could say anything comforting. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why are you getting so worked up?” he asked.

Another sharp huff. “You already said this place’ll probably come down on our heads any minute, here,” Scout pointed out, squeezing his eyes shut harder. “And I’m tryin’ not to think about it. So I’m just runnin’ through song lyrics and stuff. Baseball stats. Whatever doesn’t involve,” another huff of air, “thinkin’ about just fuckin’, suffocating and dying under a metric shit-ton of rocks and dirt.”

“What are you doing?” Spy asked, brows furrowed.

“Fuckin’ what?” Scout snapped.

“Your breathing. Why are you doing that?” Spy asked, noting the way that Scout’s chest rose and fell in sharp bursts, all wrong.

Scout paused, considered himself, then his eyes snapped open and he swore another blue streak, leaping up and moving to the medical locker.

“Mother fucker,” he enunciated, practically throwing things out onto the ground. “Really?! This is gonna happen now?!”

Spy dodged a roll of medical tape. “What are you talking about?!” he snapped.

“Fuckin’—oh, sorry, I thought you’re the—“ A huff of air. “—I thought you’re the guy who knows everything, huh? Didn’t know?”

Spy, who was admittedly flicking through what information he had about Scout, glared. “If you tell me what’s wrong, have you considered that I might be able to help?” he said, a bit huffy himself now.

“Like you’d even help me,” Scout scoffed, then coughed, narrowly avoiding knocking out a whole box of gauze. “Fuckin’—damn it!”

“Just tell me!” Spy insisted.

“When I was—a kid,” Scout managed, breathing labored, using one of the bottom shelves as a foothold so he could look up towards the top shelves, “I was—my Ma had all these kids, and, fuck, I dunno, I just—I guess somethin’ was, was wrong, and—and I got born too early or somethin’, and was all sick and, fucked up for a long time—“

Spy’s heart caught in his throat. He knew this part well. It was the part he’d been present for. He set his jaw, fighting back whatever expression was trying to surface.

“—and then I, I started to get better, when I was, startin’ to learn to talk an’ stuff, and movin’ around, and we thought I was just better,” Scout managed to gasp. “But my lungs were still all fucked up until I, I was maybe fifteen, and the Doc said when I got here that, that I’d probably had asthma, that if I’d just gone to a doctor over it, maybe somethin’ could’ve, been—“

Scout swayed, only barely catching himself, stepping down, gripping the shelves hard, other hand dragging up through his hair.

“—he said I wouldn’t get these no more, that my lungs were, all better now, but, showed me what to do any, ways, just in case, and I think all the dust and the, the fire smell and, the—“ Scout swayed again, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the door of the shelving unit. “I, fuck. I can’t breathe. Fuck.”

Spy was already on his feet. He took hold of Scout’s shoulder, turning him around, guiding him to sit down. “Stop talking, focus,” he instructed, not as sharp as he would’ve wanted. He fished through his own jacket pockets, and finally handed Scout a small plastic device. “Here.”

Scout took it in shaking hands, and managed to look it over. His eyes widened, and he glanced up at Spy. “You’ve—why do you—have—“ he tried.

Spy tugged on Scout’s arm, and finally Scout shut up, moving to take a controlled puff off of the inhaler, eyes falling closed.

A few beats of pause, Scout visibly trying to control his breathing, hand shaking severely. No visible change. “Sit up straight. Head back a bit. Try again,” Spy instructed, guiding him to do so as he spoke. “Breathe in slowly. It should take a few moments to begin to set in.”

Scout followed his instructions despite the tremors wracking him. Twenty seconds passed, still no change. “Why do you have—an inhaler?” Scout asked, breath a wheeze.

“Try again.” A series of conflicting emotions passed through Spy. “The Doctor gave one to me to deal with my weakened lungs. I’ve been smoking heavily for decades, and it has revealed previous problems with my lungs.”

Scout nodded absently, head tipping forward. He started to curl up in towards himself. “I don’t think—it’s working,” Scout managed, panic rising in his voice.

A lightbulb went off in Spy’s head, followed by a stab of pain in his chest as realization sunk in.

He went to try and take the inhaler from Scout, but it was held tight in his grip, only the firmness of the plastic casing making sure he didn’t crush the device and it’s contents. He gave up on that, instead sitting down next to Scout, shoulder-to-shoulder.

“Scout, you are not having an asthma attack,” he said, unable to help the patience in his tone. “You are having a panic attack.”

Scout’s brow furrowed further, knees curling up closer to himself. “No I’m—not,” he protested.

Spy went through the internal argument on his next move, his survival instinct telling him to just move to the other side of the room and pretend he didn’t care at all, to let Scout hyperventilate himself unconscious, his paternal instinct telling him to pull Scout close to his chest and rock him until the fear went away, the same way he did when Scout was just a sickly infant struggling for his next breath between helpless sobbing. He split the difference, putting a hand on Scout’s shoulder. “Yes you are. You’re scared because we are trapped in a small space, and you are deeply claustrophobic, and the situation is dangerous, and we do not know if the team is safe,” he said, voice calm, patient.

Scout shook his head in denial, a hand moving to pick at the gauze on his head. Spy pulled it away again carefully with his free hand before he could open the wound again, squeezing Scout’s wrist.

“Those are all completely reasonable things to be scared of,” Spy said softly. “I’m also quite nervous. But I need for you to calm down.”

“Easy for—you to—“ Scout tried to gasp, but gave up, voice falling to a whine, nearly a sob, hand moving to grip at Spy’s tightly enough to almost hurt.

“I know. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying you’ll be able to do this quickly. But this will pass, and you can help speed it along.” Scout didn’t reply. “I’m going to start counting aloud. If you cannot start making your breathing slow down, you can at least begin to even it out and make it regular. Understand?”

Scout managed a motion that might’ve been a nod.

Spy counted calmly—not too quickly, not too slowly—from one to ten. Then he did so again. And again. To help himself keep time, he tried to think of a song in his mind to count along to. He remembered some tune he’d picked up when he first attempted to learn to play piano.

By the time he’d gone through the song once, counting along steadily, Scout was at least following a steady rhythm in his breathing. Inhaling for one-two, pausing, exhaling for four-five-six. Spy started counting on an eight rhythm, and soon Scout had shifted to follow it, inhaling one-two-three, pause, exhaling five-six-seven-eight. Spy carefully slowed his tempo, a bit too slowly for Scout to likely notice in his state.

He stopped counting, and Scout’s breathing, while still shaky, was at least fairly regular and normal. “Do you feel better?” Spy asked after giving Scout a moment to just exist.

Scout squeezed his hand again, making the leather of Spy’s glove creak. “A little,” he answered, voice weak in a way that made Spy’s heart creak. A pause, Scout trying to figure out his words. “Just the. Breathing part,” he elaborated, unsteady.

Spy looked at him, then towards the fire as it sputtered suddenly. “Would talking help?” he asked. “I know that tends to be a crutch for you.”

Scout looked over at him, visibly confused, presumably by the lack of insult in Spy’s tone when he said that. He looked away again after a second. “No,” he finally said. “I just wanna… keep breathing.”

“Would me talking help?” Spy asked next.

Scout considered the question. He shrugged, aimless. “I-I dunno,” he managed.

Spy hummed. He thought for a moment, then began telling the first story that came to mind—another time he’d been trapped in a cave, albeit for different reasons. He spoke in French only, aware that this story contained details that were a bit embarrassing, and conflicted with a more self-aggrandizing version of it that he’d already told to the team at some meal in the past. Admittedly, outright lying to Scout just then felt excessively cruel, even by Spy’s standards, but he didn’t feel quite right telling the full, honest truth. Speaking honestly in a language Scout didn’t understand felt like a safe middle ground.

By the end of that story, then another one, then another one, Scout had relaxed again, sagging, visibly exhausted from his ordeal. Spy couldn’t see his watch, but he estimated that perhaps an hour had passed. The air felt thick, but not chokingly so, and warm from the heat of the fire having nowhere to go. There was still fear in the back of Spy’s mind, but it had turned to a non-present sort of fear, waiting to be called back rather than lingering in the center of his attention.

“Hey,” Scout said suddenly. “How did you know how to do that?”

“How to do what?” Spy asked.

“Calm someone down.”

Spy considered the array of answers he could give to that, and went, both despite himself and through great effort, with the honest one. “I don’t, not really,” Spy shrugged. “I simply did what I thought would help.”

“Why?” Scout asked, voice either very tired or simply sad. “You don’t even like me. You barely put up with me.”

Spy’s chest constricted. “I’m not cruel, Scout,” he chided.

Scout sagged. A pause. “What happened to my hat?”

“What?”

“My hat. My hat’s gone,” Scout said. “What happened to it?”

Spy hummed, then disconnected all points of contact with Scout—first releasing his hand, then taking his hand from his shoulder, then leaning away so there was no contact between their torsos. He then stood, moving across the room to the area he’d thrown Scout’s headset to pick it back up, pulling his hat from beneath the rock he’d found the headset beside. He handed both to Scout.

Scout’s eyes lit up. “Wait, holy shit, we still have my radio?” he asked, taking it and starting to fiddle with it.

Spy pulled the hat onto Scout’s head, snorting at how strangely it sat on him with the bulk of the gauze there as well. “Yes, but it’s broken,” Spy said.

Scout reached inside the earpiece, flicking some switch. The radio buzzed to life, humming the sound of static and white noise faintly from it. “Uh, no it’s not,” Scout said, raising an eyebrow at him briefly. “It was just turned off to save the battery between rounds.”

Spy blinked, watching as Scout flicked the dial in practiced, precise motions. “…Oh,” he said, feeling extremely stupid.

“Yeah. Hold on, I’ve got this,” Scout said simply, pulling the headset on and flicking the mic down, still fiddling with the dial even as he pressed the talk button. “This is Scout, rotating through all radio channels, does anyone copy? We’re still alive down here, we need some help. Anyone there? Repeat, this is Scout, rotating broadcast, anyone listening?”

Scout repeated himself a few times, flicking the dial every few rounds of sentences. He stopped suddenly on one, perking up. Spy perked up as well, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, yeah, copy that!” he chirped, excited. “Only just now found comms. Where’s everyone else? Over.”

Silence for a few moments, and Scout ticked off on his fingers as he listened, coming up at seven.

“Yeah, I’ve got Spy with me right here. We’re fine, just, uh, some bruising. Over.”

“I believe Scout has a concussion,” Spy added, leaning forward and raising his voice to speak through Scout’s mic.

Scout rolled his eyes, still holding the talk button. “You gotta say ‘over’, man. C’mon. Uh, anyways. Nothing real bad. Our only issue might be air pretty soon, we’ve got a fire to see but it doesn’t look like we’ve got any way out. Is Respawn up? Over.”

Silence. Scout went pale as he listened for a few moments. Spy could only faintly make out what sounded like the Engineer’s drawling cadence, muffled.

“Oh god. Okay. Uh, so should we start digging to find surface? Over?”

Silence again for a long few moments. Spy resisted the urge to tap his foot. Scout frowned suddenly, shifting.

“You’re crackling, you cut out for a second. Repeat last?”

Silence for a few beats.

“Copy that. We’ll just hang tight. I’ll keep comms on. Tell us if we get power back up. Over.”

Silence. A short burst of speech.

“Copy. Over and out.”

Scout pulled his hand down, looking over at Spy. “So, uh, power’s down. They’ve got light, and radios up, but the machines are down. No Respawn.”

Spy’s blood went cold. “Ah. I see.”

Scout shifted on his feet. “Uh. Yeah. Everyone’s fine, it managed to spit out what people got picked up before the tunnel collapsed, and Soldier and Heavy got knocked out, but Medic’s got everyone on their feet. They’re workin’ to dig us out, and they’ve made headway. Shouldn’t be long, they said. Apparently the Doc and Engie are on some James Bond improv shit tryin’ to get power back, and Soldier woke up and just started goin’ apeshit with the shovel.”

“Hm. Hopefully our Demoman doesn’t allow him to bring down more rubble,” Spy said dryly.

“Heh. Yeah. He was in the background yelling.”

Quiet for a moment.

“Anyways.” Scout handed over the inhaler that Spy had outright forgotten about. “Got anything else hidden in that Jacket of Holding?”

Spy hummed, tucking the inhaler back away and fishing for a moment. “Currently? I have three knives and two guns, my disguise kit, matches, a sapper, a pocket watch, a flask—ah, my apologies, four knives including the Swiss Army knife—and two things which I will not be telling you about.”

Scout fished in his own pockets. “I’ve got like, gum and pocket change and some string.”

“Why string?”

“For tyin’.”

…Fair.

Spy fished once more, suddenly remembering one pocket he didn’t check. “Ah. I do have—“ He pulled the item forth. “A deck of cards. No jokers, however.”

“Why no jokers?”

Spy shrugged. “They were gone when I stole them.”

Scout took the box, drawing the deck and starting to shuffle it. “Well, at least we’ve got somethin’ to do besides freakin’ out,” he said. Spy noticed that Scout still wasn’t prepared to look at the ceiling or walls around them, but he decided that was fair.

“Indeed.”

Scout finished shuffling, looking up at Spy with his characteristic grin right back in place as he took a seat on the ground. “You know how to play crazy eights?”

Spy raised an eyebrow. “Is that not the game you got in a fistfight over with Soldier because you cheated?”

“Damn right.”

Spy hummed, sitting across from him. “Very well. Let us play.”