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[bonk-soda]

Engiespy week 2022! August 20-27

A week of prompts to inspire the community  to show your love for engiespy! This is a casual prompt week where you can participate any number of days, and write or draw any version of engineer and spy you like! Stock versions, OCs, AUs, monster mercs, all are welcome. ❤️💙 You may of course include other mercenaries in your works as long as engiespy is the focus.

When the day comes for the prompt, post your art / writing on tumblr, twitter, or instagram (can link to AO3 for written).  Be sure to tag #engiespyweek2022 and #engiespy, and say what prompt you're inspired by.  Please follow the guidelines of the platform you post on, and tag appropriately, especially if your prompt fill is of the spicy variety. 😏 

Here will be each day's prompts so you can prepare and get inspired:

Day 1: "Musically inclined" Dancing, playing an instrument, music tastes, singing (maybe to each other?).  

Day 2: "Cultural Differences" Spy and Engie come from very different countries!  How might their cultural differences clash, for good or bad?  Food tastes, what languages they speak, local customs, holidays, regional jokes...

Day 3: "The Obligatory Beach Episode" Every show has one, why not TF2?  The boys finally get a vacation day.

Day 4: "Angst day / Opening up"  Time for FEELS.   Give us that delicious angst, a little post angst hurt/comfort, or perhaps showing a side of themselves to one another they hide away. 

Day 5: "Stars" I am making this one  really open to interpretation! I hope it sparks your inspiration.

Day 6: "Crossfaction romance or drama"  specifically for anything crossfaction Spy Engie.  Usually makes for a little extra drama or danger. 

Day 7: "Dress Up FREE SPACE" - Anything you want…but has to include the boys in clothes besides their stock uniforms. 😏

[bonk-soda]

“You can’t dilute a war crime”

[Scout/Soldier/Pyro/Demo/Spy baking fic / based on this post]

They weren’t supposed to be gone for long.

Spy tries to keep that in mind as he watches Scout and Pyro pull down kitchen equipment from various cabinets and shelves like they were racing to see how many items they could displace. Demo is to the side, pulling ingredients from the fridge with little caution, looking back and forth between the fridge and Soldier sitting on the counter, loudly reading off of an ingredients list. The dry ingredients are already haphazardly placed around the counter, and the flour had already been spilled.

Engie and Heavy had gone to the store that day, promising to return back to the house soon with groceries and new supplies for the garage. With Medic having work to do, and Sniper- where was Sniper?- being out of the house as well, Spy was the only responsible adult around. There was no assigned agenda today, and it wasn’t long before the kitchen mercs were looking for something to do. Spy, for one, was mostly impressed that they thought to ask for a chaperone, if not vaguely distraught that he was here, watching his companions bake instead of reading in his smoking room.

He would survive this, though, he supposed. The question was if the other mercenaries would.

“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.

He turns towards the group to scold them over this forgetfulness as he hears the garage doors opening. The Engineer and Heavy must have returned, and looking around the kitchen, at the still-messy countertops, filled sink, dark smoke, and awful war-crime baking… The five of them had explaining to do.

[bonk-soda]

Ailment

Dell Conagher uses his foot to knock on the door, knowing there's a chance he wouldn't get a response. He knows Spy isn’t doing well, which means he won’t be in a good mood. It might have been safer to pass by the door, to not bother him and let him recover on his own time, but the Engineer wouldn’t do that to a teammate. He’s going to make sure Spy is alright. Even if it kills him.

Eventually a muffled "Come in, laborer." can be heard from inside.

Engie sighs quietly— he might huff if he weren’t trying to cut Spy some slack— and pushes the door open and stops in the doorway to study the situation. Spy is in bed, completely covered in blankets to a point where Dell has to second-guess whether he’s there. The lights are off except for a lamp beside the bookshelf, but it’s enough to dimly cover the room. A fire crackles onwards at the side of the room, the wood recently replaced, making the room a comfortable temperature. The room is pristine, and for once does not heavily reek of smoke.

"Hey Spy," he says as he walks in, holding a plate of food and tea. He sets the plate on the table in the center of the room and brings the mug to the beside, pulling medicine from his overall pocket as well. "I heard that you're not feeling so good." He stands beside Spy's bed, holding the tea and starring where Spy's face should be.

Grumbling comes from under the covers. "Who told you about my illness?"

Engie shrugs, even if Spy couldn’t see it. “That’s not important right now.” He wouldn’t mention the coughing, the sneezing, the mumbled complaining, the sighing that could be heard halfway across the base… It was only time before Pyro asked him about the situation. Though he made plans to come anyways. “I brought you a drink and medicine.”

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.”

Spy stares at him like he’s impressed with the audacity. It’s the only confirmation Engie needs that maybe he was closer to right than Spy wanted him to be. He looks back to his guitar and continues playing something, and at some point, Spy complies, admittedly alright with his presence.

[bonk-soda]

i don’t know why this is going on my sideblog but it is

what if heavy and engie work together? heavy doesn’t have a speed advantage, so instead he slows down the player. engie can set traps around the map that you have to look out for (bear traps, rope traps, tripwires, etc), and if you’re caught it’ll alert heavy of your location. so you have to figure out how to save yourself before he reaches you. and if he does, you’re stuck fighting off bullets while trying to untangle yourself.

or what if he could poison food? like how in survival games, you have to drink water or eat food to keep your health and hunger bar up. if a heavy has been in the area of a ration pack, there’s a 50% chance whatever you consume hurts you and slows you instead of healing you, giving heavy the chance to come back and shoot you. (sandvich, medicine packs, trying to connect things.)

he’s also the most likely to team with medic because i think they deserve it, and a horror game version of a heavymedic pair sounds awesome

survival horror game thats just a random ass civilian who stumbles into a round of tf2 and has to survive until the match ends. theres only 1 of each merc but theyre all present and each have different mechanics. you can hide from scout but not outrun him, and you can outrun spy but not hide from him. sniper's dots are bright but theyre very small and the only signifier of his presence so pay attention. never touch machinery laying around, because if you damage it, engineer will come looking

oh my god. ohhhh my god. I love this.

there’s an American flag hoisted somewhere on the map; when you first encounter it, a cutscene plays where you trip and hit the thing holding the rope in place, so now it constantly slowly drifts downward. you have to periodically come back and raise it up because you Never Let The Flag Touch The Ground- if it does, death by Solly. it acts as a sort of timer mechanic, like the Puppet in fnaf 2

Pyro works with Spy in that they’re both foils to hiding. with Spy, you just can’t sit still for too long or he’ll catch up to you, but Pyro comes through and lights hiding spots on fire- so you have to be careful which hiding spot you pick so that you don’t get burnt during one of their spychecking patrols

Demo works as a foil to running; he sets sticky traps and sets them off if he sees you running through it. it’s technically possible to sneak through one without him seeing if he’s checking multiple traps and you’re fast enough, but it’s very hard

Medic roams the map, usually he’ll find another teammate and stick with them but sometimes he wanders on his own. if you run into him while he’s wandering, it’s like Scout but amped up- he’s not *quite* as fast, but his laughter and loud footsteps make it scarier. he’s harder to hide from too. if he’s with a teammate when you run into him (or the teammate), he’ll activate Über and together they’ll give chase. the chase rules are the same as whatever teammate he’s with, except now they’re faster and any fighting back mechanics (throwing stuff, leaving tripping hazards, whatever) don’t work until the Über wears off

not sure what Heavy would do, if any of the other mods have ideas please add it !

[bonk-soda]

obligatory modgod addition, putting it on my sideblog this time

i like the idea of agnostic scout. his ma was a good christian, and his siblings were too, it was a pretty specific household. none of the children were left out if the religious traditions, and it seemed like none of the siblings cared, because they would have participated anyways. but scout only followed along with them because it was the household standard. everyone did this, didn’t they, even if they didn’t believe in everything being said?

he soon found out that wasn’t the case when he left the household, and was quick dropped his mercenary job. cue the religious crisis of loving your neighbor, but it’s your job to kill them on the daily. it’s not fun to question your own standards and values, he has a small religious crisis late at night sometimes when he actually sits down to consider all the wrong he might be doing. he actually ends up talking to some of the other mercs, and the general consensus is that he’s not in the wrong for questioning because, while some of the other mercs can’t relate, many of them can. they all have different ways of handling it, and slowly he learns how to do the same.

uh team bonding moment

Ik Christian Scout is a popular idea, but I personally hc him as agnostic- he grew up in a really religious household but realized that he was only going along with it because he had no choice, not bc he believed (I need to stop projecting onto him agh)

I've posted a couple jokes about lapsed Catholic Scout which is a pretty similar idea and also some funny projecting on my account. Definitely do not read Scout tf2 as actually religious but he uhhhh makes. things. for. Easter?? still? I don't know what other ethnicities do for their holidays what's like the Boston version of Dia de los Reyes

[bonk-soda]

*team dying noises in background*

[bonk-soda]

first post. solly doodle.