How Did You Get Here? - [RED!Engineer x F!Reader]

Chapter 1

A/N: The song has nothing to do with the story, but I referenced it so I thought I should share it. Fun fact about me, my brother showed me this song back in 2009, he then had me play his Orange Box copy of the game on his Xbox 360 and that's how I got into TF2. It's been 11 years, and I still have this song and a few others on my old ipod.

[----]

If someone had told me a week ago, I would meet one of my favourite characters of all time, I would've told them they were batshit crazy – but would want to learn more. Well, here we are. My favourite character from one of my favourite video games, sitting comfortably on my bed in nothing more than grey sweatpants and a white muscle shirt, scribbling down highly sophisticated notes on one of my note pads. Not to mention the fact that I have my arms wrapped around his shoulders, watching him jot down said notes. This isn't the weirdest part of the story though, trust me. You'd think this was some crazy Pixar movie, right? A Wreck-it Ralph 3 even? I mean, I guess he is my Boo, but, I think the best place to start would be from the beginning.

----

It was about this time last Monday. I had decided to try something new and go back to school after a few years of working fulltime. There was a booming demand for historians in the area, and I decided I'd dip my toes in it because why not. History was, interesting. Not my strong suit but it was a thing. I was in four courses: Europe in WWII, America in WWII, the British Commonwealth in WWII, and The Gold Rush period on the West Coast. You see, I had a preference in recent history, and a weird fascination for politics. I was currently working on an assignment about the British Commonwealth's involvement in the war, which related to me greatly – but I won't bore you with the details. We had to choose one of the countries in the commonwealth to write about how they were impacted during the war and what impacts they made on it. I chose Canada because it seemed easy.

I had a massive cup of coffee/tea beside me as I scrolled through a barrage of videos for research. As I found one that looked interesting, I noticed a suggested video that had Nintendo characters re-enacting WWII. Kirby was Hitler. Then my mind began to wander all over the place. I missed the good old days when I was young, naive, and spent late nights playing video games. The memories flooded back to me, spending countless hours with my friends playing miscellaneous games. Some of my friends played Mario games, others played Call of Duty, but me? I played Team Fortress 2 religiously. I can't remember how it started, it was probably the memes or Heavy Gaga's Babyman, but I spent so many hours killing others as the various classes. There was just something so invigorating about knocking others down in a bloody fashion. Funnily enough, or may not funnily enough, my favourite character was based on the outside content and not necessarily because of the gameplay. When I was in peek-obsession, I adored the Engineer, specifically the RED one. Maybe it was his voice actor doing an incredible job, maybe it was how others portrayed him in fanfictions or visuals or source film maker videos, but I loved the adorable short Texan.

My interest in the character never seemed to truly fade, considering I could feel my cheeks heating up as I reminisced. Then my video ended, with nothing of value taken from it. Considering how distracted I was, I decided to take a well-deserved break and make myself something to munch on, hell, I even considered turning on TF2 and playing a match or two.

As I rummaged through my fridge to grab my favourite munchie, I heard a loud crash coming from my laundry room. Not being one for confrontation, but also not one to be afraid and defend my territory, I grabbed the baseball bat I had tucked away in one of the drawers – maybe TF2 left a greater impact on me than I had thought.

With great stealth, I slunk my way to my laundry room. My bat was at the ready, resting on my shoulder as I held it tightly. The door was closed, but a bright light was emanating from underneath. Then I could hear angry muttering. There was someone in there alright, they sounded male and pissed. I propped my bat up and turned the doorknob, pushing the door open to reveal the intruder.