Hi, everybody! I'm Elsie. I'm new to the TF2 fandom and fanfics in general.

Please enjoy this fluffy/bloody tale of friendship and science.

Credit to TheMidnightAssassin and Pemm whose fics "Aftermath" and "Sparkler"/"Cryoablation"/"Hold Your Fire" were immensely influential in the development of my headcannon Pyro.

It was a rare sunny day at Sawmill, the sort of warm bright day where parents forcibly disconnected their offspring from televisions and booted them outside. No doubt Scout would be running around, badgering everyone to start a game of impromptu baseball. Soldier would grab the Cardboard Platoon and go for a marathon ruck. And Demo wanted nothing more than to join him.

But, alas, sun or no sun, tomorrow was Monday. Monday required an ample supply of grenades and sticky bombs, and those things didn't make themselves. So Demo found himself in the workshop, slicing putty-like C4 into manageable bricks, with his only exposure to the sun coming through the open window.

It could have been worse, Demo forced himself to admit. The shop was nowhere near as much fun as a romp through the woods, but it was bright and clean and quiet. Pyro and Engie weren't quite as close of friends as Soldier, but they were still good people. Well, perhaps "good" was too strong of a word. "Efficient" might have been closer to the truth. So Engie might lord his degrees over the rest of them, and Pyro might fly into inconsolable rages every now and then, but at the end of the day, they knew how to do their jobs. And, more importantly, they knew how to let Demo do his. Demo could respect that. Pyro and Engie's presences comforted him, in a way. It was nice to know that he wasn't the only one sacrificing a Sunday afternoon for the sake of work.

Engie's sacrifice came with tunes; he hummed some country song Demo didn't recognize. He bent over the drafting board, pencil in his left hand, slide rule in his right, a drawling, lazy tune drifting out of him. Pyro sat on the floor near Engie's feet, a blueprint of her own before her. Actually, "blueprint" might have been something of an understatement. Every color of the rainbow covered that paper. Along with glitter. And unicorns. And, supposedly the design for a new flamethrower, though Demo couldn't see through the colorful chaos. Crazy-sweet little firebug.

Pyro's colors made Demo smile as he turned back to his work. On top of the ammunition, he needed to run more tests on his latest creation. After weeks for synthesis and endless washings with ice water, he had purified a new explosive. It was an oily, yellowish liquid that always seemed ready to detonate after the slightest shock. Unstable as a bad-tempered Scotsman, but nothing that a few rounds through respawn and a little butadiene couldn't fix. Or maybe he could use diatomaceous earth. Or PVC. God, he needed to be writing these ideas down. Demo turned away from the C4 and towards his Braille typewriter. He rolled a thick piece of cardstock onto the paper table and began.

May 24th, 1969

Made this week's worth of sticky bombs and grenades. Ideas of stabilization of compound 681 include:

· Butadiene

· PVC

· Diatomaceous earth

Will have to run test detonations and IR at a later date.

The typewriter dinged. Demo released the cardstock, inserted the sheet into his three-hole punch, punched it and added this sheet to a black ring binder. The binder's spine had a label, written in both print and Braille.

TAVISH FINNEGAN DEGROOT

LAB NOTEBOOK #47

Lab notebooks were not normally labeled as such. Most the time, their identity was obvious: a bound notebook with page numbers and a premade space of the table of contests. Once upon a time, Demo had been vaguely envious of such notebooks. They seemed so neat and compact compared to his bulky, clumsy binders.

Bulky or not, Demo had never so much as considered writing by hand. He would be blind someday, probably sooner rather than later. His eyes would go, but the neat for clean, accurate laboratory records would always be there.

"Pyro, what the hell do you think you're doin'?"

Engie's voice pulled Demo away from his thoughts. Sure enough, there was Pyro, one hand twisted in the cord of the shop's welding torch.

Pyro's hands flailed as she pointed to something on the glittery blueprint. "Mmmmph-hhmmmphm, mmmphm-hmmph, mmphity-hhmp." Only Engie could understand her mask-muffled speech.

Demo's eye traced the path of a few stray glitter particles as they fell to the floor. Pink glitter sparkling in the golden sunlight made a brilliant contrast against the concrete and steel of the workshop. The Braille typewriter always made Demo ridiculously conscious of color.

"Darlin'," said Engie, "If somethin' absolutely needs to be welded, let me do it. You'll burn the base down."

"Mmmphm, hmmph-rrmph."

"I know the equipment's supposed to be for everybody, but it ain't safe."

"Rrrmpph mmmphm."

Demo didn't want to look at his notebook any more. He fixed his eye on the C4, but it failed to take him away from his sudden melancholy. He hands had become heavy, the shop seemed dimmer, as if a cloud had rolled over the sun.

At least he was prepared for moments like these. There was ethanol in the shop's fridge.

Normally, Engie glared when Demo drank the laboratory-grade ethanol. It was an OSHA violation, the engineer said, and besides, there were probably trace amounts of benzene in it. No glares now, though. Engie and Pyro had managed to escalate their argument to one level below shouting.

"Because I said so, that's why."

"Mmmph, hmmph-mmph."

Demo tilted the bottle back and chugged. He could feel the drink more than taste it, a deep satisfying burn at the back of this throat. Once a third of the bottle was gone, he knew he only had to wait. The buzz would kick in and take the edge off all his feelings.

"Mmmph rmmph, rrrr-rrrmmph."

"Now there ain't no point in gettin' worked up like this."

"Rrrrrr."

"An' now I can't even understand ya. Calm down, child."

Ten minutes from now, thoughts of Demo's impending blindness would become hilarious. He slouched back in his chair, eyes focusing on nothing. On the edge of his attention, he heard a pop, like breaking the seal on a suction cup.

"YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!"

The voice was raspy and deep. Its unfamiliarity didn't shock Demo; it dawned on him slowly. He blinked, and there was Pyro, mask dropped clumsily on the floor.

Demo blinked and looked at the bottle in his hand. Were there contaminants in it? Some strange chemical that caused hallucinations? Or was he that intoxicated already? He blinked again, and nothing changed. He wasn't seeing double and the room was not turning backflips, so this was probably real. The secretive Pyro had actually taken her mask off. Was she really that desperate to yell at Engie?

"Not the boss of me." Pyro stood on her tiptoes, now lording a good four inches of the engineer. The height difference might have given Pyro an air of authority, but the crayons in her hand seemed to ruin the effect.

"Pyro, Py, calm down. You're prolly tired, an' that's why you're cranky."

Pyro suddenly froze.

"Now why don't you put your mask back on before…"

Engie was cut off when Pyro let out a screeching sound. She threw a quick glance at Demo, and he got a quick glimpse of her face.

God, that face.

Pyro dived for her mask. Then she was charging for the exit, pausing only to get the mask on straight. The door slammed and Engie and Demo were left staring at each other. The fresh silence seemed the echo around the room.

"Damnit," Enige muttered under his breath. "Right sorry you had to see that, Tav. She normally don't throw tantrums. Girl just needs a nap, and she'll be right as rain."

Demo nodded. Engie's words were soothing, that image of Pyro's frantic face was seared into his conscious. "Does, does she take off her mask often for ye?"

A slight chuckle. "Every now and again, when she needs some air. Ain't no thing, really. She's just awful shy, and she'd gotten to trust me."

The "too shy" part, Demo understood. He wasn't sure if there was such a thing as "too shy" with scars like Pyro's. His eyepatch attracted plenty of stares and unsolicited comments from strangers, and that was nowhere near as extreme as what Pyro had to deal with. If he'd had half his face and a good chunk of his scalp burned away, he'd have wanted to hide, too.

Thoughts of Pyro being gawked and mocked prompted him to take another drink. Engie heaved a heavy sigh. "Can't you go out in the hall and drink actual whiskey or something?"

If Demo were sober, he might have considered it, but by now, the darkly humorous buzz was upon him. He flipped Engie off and took another swig. Something crossed Engie's face; anger or disappointment or something. Whatever it was, it made Engie storm back to his side of the workshop. He returned to his blueprint and Demo returned to his bombs. Demo would still be able to finish them. He wasn't too drunk for simple bomb-making. Not yet, at least.

And that's it for Chapter 1. Up next: Engie and Medic have a secret chat.