#might be posting this to my ao3 by the way. so look outu for a shameless self-promotion at some point

[tf2fansderogatory]

scout day

okay we know hes got rabbit theming with the domination voicelines but in my head i take it one step further

"mon lapin" (my rabbit) is a thing to call your son i think and so whenever i daydream i have one universe where scout just cries every time he hears anything rabbit related because he tried learning french and he found out what it means

in other words: hes a blorbo so i make him suffer

it turns out, to some degree, that Spy's eternal smugness is his downfall, something predicted by everyone ever. at the beginning his coworkers were greeted with usual wariness, caution, dodging questions and obscuring answers with well-placed bribes and cryptic threats and careful strategy; it only took him a few days to lower his guard just a tiny bit, and realize his coworkers were mostly obnoxious lunatics with very few coherent thoughts to any of their names, and once he knew who to be careful around he let his guard drop most of the rest of the way. it turns out, if you say something enough you begin to believe it on some deeper unconscious level, and you are an idiot isn't really an exception. It becomes a mantra. Eventually, he decides his teammates are incapable of even normal English and, therefore, absolutely would not know or be able to learn to speak French, so he lets himself be a little less careful. His constant little French phrases are sort of a compromise between secrecy and some other need he doesn't want to put a name to; in some way, it allows him to say anything he wants right to his disgusting coworker's faces without facing any repercussions whatsoever. To Spy it seems like a flawless solution.

But, well… maybe he lets it spiral a little too far. Scout gets the worst of it, and he knows it--everybody's already figured out he's probably insulting them to their faces and have accepted it as a normal fact of life, but Scout's watched him do it to other people and Spy does not do it to other people like he does it to him. It never fucking stops, for one, a constant train of syllables running in-between actual English sentences--and especially when Spy's scolding him, or complaining about his clothes or his voice or the gap in his teeth or the black eye that could've been very easily avoided if he didn't just go in swinging like a fucking idiot--or, the worst of it, when it's dark in the rec room and Scout's reading comics and Spy's in the other corner reading whatever he reads and everybody else is gone and you could cut the air with a knife, and Spy gets this weird little light in his eyes as he mutters and doesn't really hide the fact that he's watching Scout out of the corner of his eye. Drives him up the fucking wall. So he mail-orders one of those stupid little French-to-English books, starts keepin' a little journal of all the stupid shit he says, and asks Engie to help him out when he realizes he doesn't know how to spell French at all (and when the letters on the page are swimming too hard for him to keep his head straight).

Engie disappears for a few hours and when he gets back it's with a big fucking pile of books all about French, plus another big handful of notepads and recording devices. Scout says he doesn't care about it that much, but he does, and as Engie sees it if this is a way to get Spy to stop going through his goddamn things he'll take whatever path he can go. Over the next few days they collect information, spell the best they can, start organizing and translating bits and pieces of it; what they find is mostly insults, as expected, a few pleas for mercy, though Engie comes across a few lines spoken to him that he has to read back a few times to make sure Spy's actually calling him handsome.

Scout's asleep for most of it, to be completely frank. Letters were never his strong suit, but Engie's perfectly happy to truck along on his own. One night, one of the longer ones where he's mostly just there for moral support, Engie nudges him awake; he looks worried, almost, and Scout rubs his eyes as he shoves a torn-out page of a notebook into his face.

It says, highlighted among dozens of nondescript sentences, in Engie's barely legible chicken-scratch: My rabbit, you make my life so difficult. I wish you took more care of yourself. You don't deserve to live like this.

He sees it smeared all over the rest of the page, in the French Engie's still working through--mon lapin, mon lapin. My rabbit. And Engie gets another grave look, and points to a sentence near the bottom, in a considerably neater font.

He says: "This one's 'my rabbit, you look just like your mother'."

Medic runs a DNA test, for a good portion of both Engie and Scout's paychecks. Scout sees a little rabbit plushie in the window of a stupid little chachki store as they make their rounds around Teufort and Demo, who's a little too tipsy to be driving, is surprised when Scout starts sobbing, curled up on the shitty vomit-dusted leather.

Spy gets a visit, after most of everybody else has gone to bed. The broken nose he has when he shamefully stalks into the kitchen for breakfast and promptly leaves doesn't really surprise anyone, and neither does Scout's sullen silence for most of the morning into the afternoon. Spy stops going through Engie's things. French, formerly ever-present, vanishes from his general speaking patterns. There would be a celebration among the team, were it more appropriate. Everyone mostly just watches Scout stare at the rabbits running around outside, scowling, and feels bad for him.