I've always considered myself to be terrible at writing romance. But, as it seems, romantic plots, subplots and the like are all what's up these days, so I figured I'd give it a shot, at least just for practice. So here's this. It mostly came from me installing Corvello's Fempyro, which is a nice, not-crazily-over-sexual Fempyro. Enjoy.
The RED Pyro of Upward did not consider himself a falling-in-love sort of individual. At least, not with people. Fire, sure, but people- that was damn near unthinkable.
But, as is the way of things, that is exactly what happened.
It was the Scout's fault, of course.
He had barged into the Pyro's room at the ungodly hour of four in the morning, waving around a bag full of something smelly and shouting for the firebug to get up. The Pyro, of course, pulled his pillow over his head and willed himself not to set the Scout on fire, a task he was sure he would fail if-
The Scout jabbed Pyro's side with his fingers, and Pyro decided that patience was not an option. He pulled a can of spray deodorant and a lighter from his bedside table, pointed them in the Scout's general direction, and let loose.
The Scout had been expecting this. He simply stepped back out of the impromptu flamethrower's range, grinning childishly.
"Ha! Knew that'd get ya," he smirked "Listen, Toasty, I need ya help."
The Pyro, had he been wearing his mask, would have muttered something nonsensical and left the Scout to figure it out. He was not wearing it due to the Medic's insistence, however, ("Your lungs are bad enough as it is! I do not want to have to deal with you dying every ozzer night!") so he simply glared at the Scout, buried the lower half of his face under a couple of blankets, and then muttered something nonsensical.
Unfortunately, the Scout had opted against trying to translate gibberish. He grabbed the poor pyromaniac's covers and pulled.
"Come on! You promised months ag- augh! Jeez, dude, get some PJs!"
Pyro looked at the young man's startled expression with one of bemusement. For God's sake, how long had the team demanded he not wear his suit everywhere as some bizarre show of camaraderie? If they saw his junk, it was their fault, not his.
Nonetheless, he grabbed a singed and dirty old pair of boxers off his bedside table and covered himself. He started to get dressed, too, because he knew the Scout well enough to know that he wasn't going to be getting back to sleep while the Scout was still breathing.
We could fix that said a voice in his head. He told the voice to shut it; he had already tried to murder the Scout a minute ago and it wouldn't be sporting to try again so soon.
The runner was fidgeting again. The Pyro knew why, of course: this guy had been a replacement for their old Scout after the old one got eighty-sixed by some rival gang while on break in Boston. But that had nothing to do with what was going down tonight.
When this Scout had first arrived, the enemy Spy had broken in and stolen every piece of baseball memorabilia he could carry, and then raffled it off in bits to both teams. The BLUs had mostly destroyed it, but some of the smarter REDs had used it to blackmail the beleaguered Bostonian."Oh, there's stickies up ahead? Well, boy, you better clear 'em or Cy Young here gets it." In fact, Pyro still had a rookie Rico Petrocelli and a couple Yogi Berras, just in case.
Blackmail was the last thing on the Pyro's mind, though, because tonight, they were going to continue that long standing tradition of pranking newbies. The BLU Spy and Pyro had been on shopping duty at Ward, the nearby port town, when an eighteen-wheeler carting gasoline decided it'd give them a Viking funeral. Their replacements came in today, and as the newest member of the team, it was the Scout's job to organize the prank.
The Pyro finished dressing, pulled his mask on, and followed the Scout out of the room while the latter briefed him on their upcoming prank, and mffmphed occasionally when his teammate got off track.
"...so youse guys told me, 'hey, we need ya to do a prank on these losers,' and I was like, hell yeah! I am the king of pranks. I remember back home, this one kid was smartmouthin' me an' my brothers, and we took him out to the baseball field and strung 'im up by 'is-"
"Mmphh."
"Right, right. So I though, 'what's the best prank to pull on a Spy and Pyro?' So I figures, well, Spys hate gettin' dirty, and Pyros love fire, right? So I think, how could I use those things against 'em? An then it hits me-flaming crap. Check it out!"
He said the last words just as they arrived at their destination. Pyro followed the Scout into the base's garage and immediately did a double take. The Scout certainly hadn't-no pun intended- half-assed his end of the bargain. A half asleep Demoman and no less than thirty bags filled with... the stuff sat in front of him. The Pyro didn't let himself overthink it. That was just nasty.
"It's all Soldier's," Scout said, grinning, "We told 'im that the Commies had been spying through the sewers ta steal American poop technology. Had 'im crappin' in bags for three weeks!"
"Whuh."
"Yeah, I know. So here's the plan: we're gonna set the bags all out in front a' their livin' quarters, you're gonna light them up, I knock on their doors, Demo puts stickies in the middle a' the crap, and as soon as they open up- boom! Ya got dat?"
"Uh-huh."
"Awesome. Grab a few bags and let's go."
He heaped about twelve of the little paper baggies into Pyro's arms and most of the rest into Demo's, before grabbing what was left and running excitedly out the door. The two remaining mercenaries shared a look, before Demo just shrugged and followed the runner, with Pyro close behind him.
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Thanks for any and all reviews, and the next bit should be out soon.
