The pyro woke with a start. The room was dark, familiar walls covered in drawings. Most of them were pretty weird, involving fantasy fairylands, dragons and overly detailed sketches of flamethrowers. They struggled, sometimes, with being a-gender; it got lonely having no-one to talk to about how hard it was to always appear male in front of the team. But it was a kind of armour, too: before joining BLU, 'he' had been called 'her', singled out and abused. It created a barrier between then and now. And of course, looking like they did, no-one would ever find them attractive, not that Pyro minded. Most of the time.
Medic sighed, noting the Demo unconscious in the lounge surrounded by empty bottles, and made a mental note to inspect his liver next time he got blown up. He continued on his way to his office in the dawn light, the first to rise as usual, and started to prepare his various weapons.
A few hours later and the team assembled in preparation for the upcoming battle, at Upward. As they were standing in line, waiting for the round to start, Medic noticed Spy, to his left, glance meaningfully at Sniper before the doors opened. But he couldn't spare it another thought as he turned the Kritzkrieg on the heavy and ran out of the gate, laughing maniacally as the huge Russian's minigun took down several of the red team. Their scout sprinted past, skilfully taking down the enemy soldier with his scattergun. Medic watched his easy confidence as he outmanoeuvred the the soldier, twisting and turning in mid-air with a grace the Medic truly admired, renewing his appreciation for the biomechanics of the human body. Meanwhile, the heavy lumbered along next to the cart, the complete opposite of Scout – slow, never without Medic by his side, always taking damage from all sides. The medic was snapped out of his thoughts as an arrow pierced his left eye socket and lodged in his brain, the last thing he saw as he died was the RED sniper, waving at him as he blacked out.
The BLU engineer noticed the medic go down, and quickly built a dispenser in the hope that the team could use that until the medic respawned. The soldier immediately came and slumped against the wall as the dispenser slowly healed the mess a shotgun had made of his chest. Engie winced in sympathy, despite generally disliking soldiers; the RED one was always blowing up his sentries. Just as the soldier was leaving, the Engie heard the hiss of a sapper on his hard-earned level 3 sentry and spun around to face the spy. He swung his wrench, knocking off the sapper to protect his sentry, but cried out in pain as the spy's knife tore through the muscle of his upper arm. He backed up against the wall, protecting his back. He quickly grabbed his shotgun and blasted the spy in the stomach, killing him and sending his body flying backwards, and continued to repair his sentry. He heard the click of a balisong flicking open and realised that the spy had a deadringer, with not enough time before he'd get backstabbed. He waited for the familiar lights of respawn but instead heard a deafening detonation. A rocket had just exploded the spy, smoke clearing to reveal Soldier standing triumphantly in the doorway. 'Thanks partner', Engie muttered, grateful to have been saved the pain of a knife in his back. While he upgraded his dispenser he thought back to the night before. He'd been chatting with Soldier, his closest friend, when they had fallen into a companionable silence. Or could it have been more intense than that? Soldier's eye contact had implied it, but… Engie was probably imagining it. Soldier wasn't like that anyway.
Spy's classy French cologne and quiet, expensive footsteps warned Sniper of his presence. He pretended not to notice, however, because Spy liked that. The Australian smiled as the familiar gloved hands held the butterfly knife to his throat. Spy gracefully span him around, against the wall, and kissed him with the blade still resting just above his collarbone. Despite being the shorter of the pair, Spy had no trouble dominating the sniper, who pulled him closer by the waist. As soon as the Frenchman felt him melt against him, surrendering completely, he pulled back, and with a slyly seductive smile, cloaked and left, leaving Sniper in a trance, missing his next three shots entirely, and hoping that the rest of the team hadn't noticed about him and Spy yet.
As soon as the round ended, the Demoman took a deep swig from his bottle, impatient for the alcohol to kick in. Thanks to the medigun lowering his tolerance, it wouldn't be long. He needed to forget that he was here because his brother had joined the Army, and died in action. But it was so much more than just that, although the Scotsman would never tell anyone about his past. The demo had thought that throwing himself into the mercenary work would help dull the pain, but at the end of the day it just wasn't enough. He didn't want to go to the medic about it, it was too personal, but it certainly wasn't healthy that he couldn't pass out. He glanced up to see Pyro watching him, but through his mask no one ever knew what he was thinking. Assuming he was a he, anyway.
Pyro watched the demo lean, intoxicated, against the wall, conflicting emotions of sorrow, concern and disgust flaring up. Their mother had turned to drink, as she was so against their gender and there was never any money and their father had walked out and Pyro was generally just such a freak. It had left them with a deep loathing for the destruction alcohol can bring, but they also wanted to help the demo. His aloneness was too painful for them to see, and Pyro cared about the team, and Demo had always seemed friendly, and was the best at telling what the pyro was saying through their mask. But he wouldn't want them to be intrusive so Pyro went back to their room.
Back at the base, Medic was surprised to hear a knock on the door of his office. The heavy often visited, but he never knocked. It was Scout who burst in, knocking a pointless exercise. 'Doc', he yelled, 'my leg hurts. Like it was healed and everything, but it didn't really help, what's wrong doc?' The medic sighed, and when the scout was on the examination table said simply 'Prepare for your examination!' while snapping on his gloves, and rolled up the scout's trousers as far as possible. It was obviously his mid-thigh that was bothering him, so the medic started there. He guessed that there was a bullet lodged near the bone – the medigun couldn't get rid of bullets, not a problem if they went all the way through someone. But when they get stuck… It had happened quite a few times with the heavy especially, because of his bullet-stopping power. The medic's practised hands felt between Scout's muscles, around the outer edge of his quadriceps. When he found nothing, Medic moved around to his inner thigh. He soon felt a small shotgun pellet, quite deep. When he touched it he felt Scout's breath hitch and heard a small gasp of pain; Medic often got so absorbed in his patient's biology, he forgot that they were a conscious human. He decided he would only need a local anaesthetic to operate, and so prepared the syringe. Scout flinched slightly but said nothing as the medic explained the basics of the procedure. He expertly injected the numbing agent as he did so and waited for it to take effect. He kept talking to Scout as he used a scalpel to cut through his skin, sometimes to reassure Scout, sometimes biological terms only he understood, and often in German. He used his fingers to reach again behind the quadriceps and pull out the tiny piece of metal. With this done he could use the medigun to heal the wound, which also counteracted the anaesthetic. Scout jumped up and left with a muttered 'Thanks, doc'. Medic thought he might have been walking a little stiffly as he left, and wondered if he should check he hadn't missed any shrapnel tomorrow. He liked working with the scout – a dagger to Heavy's chainsaw – more beautiful, refined, yet just as deadly.
Scout was glad the long corridor was empty as he left the medic's office. He turned into the corridor with the bedrooms on it, happy for once that his was the first door. AS soon as the door closed behind him, he leant against it and let out a deep sigh. So he was really turned on right now. Ok, he'd just had his inner thigh felt up and it got pretty lonely at night in the base, but really? He'd liked the way the medic's hands felt, so confident and unyielding. And a German accent can sound kinda hot… Wait, Scout, finding the medic hot? He tried to think back to their previous encounters, trying to find any emotion that would make sense of this. He only succeeded in blushing over the medic's delicately blue eyes, his fierce jawline, his hands, holding Scout on the table… Scout was ok with being gay, or bi or whatever he was, but would everyone else be? And to make matters worse, there was a routine medical check-up on Wednesday afternoon. He sighed again, trying not to think about it.
Pyro noticed that Demo had been unusually quiet, and particularly sober that evening. While the rest of the team chatted, or in the case of the soldier discussed battle plans with Engie, he had stared into a half-empty bottle, rarely drinking. So after he returned early to his room, Pyro couldn't help but follow out of concern. However, after no more than a minute had passed, he left and started down the corridor. Pyro quickly slipped into their own room as he passed, and then decided to follow him. He ended up leaving the base and walking for about ten minutes before Pyro began to worry. It seemed like he was set on heading out of respawn, and they couldn't just follow without saying anything. So they took a breath, and softly called out. Demo immediately span around, panicking, but relaxed slightly when he saw Pyro. He warily asked, 'What are you doin here? Why did you follow me?' Pyro replied 'I oh oohr ad, an I ant oo oo ee okay. An I ant oo alk oo oo, ithoot my ask.' 'You care about me? But why would you take off your mask now, when you haven't for so long?' Pyro took a deep breath, and took of their mask. 'Because I'm tired of being alone, watching you suffer.' Demo held back a gasp as he finally saw the pyro's face. He took in short, dark red hair and brilliantly green eyes. He looked… well, not very masculine. To the point where Demo wouldn't be surprised if he was a girl. 'I'm gender non-binary', Pyro explained, 'which means that although I'm physically female I actually identify as neither male nor female, hence looking the way I do. And I like to be called they rather than he or she.' Pyro's voice was a beautiful mixture of French and Italian, with maybe a subtle lilt from somewhere else, with a more feminine softness but deep and powerful.
