It was the fuckin' team was what it was, couldn't keep their crooked old noses to themselves. Wasn't their business what he did off the field, was it? No, fuck no, fuck that. Wasn't their business if Scout had these big ugly bags screwing up his perfect face, jumped at the slightest sound, was dropping God-damn dishes because his hands were shuddering. He owned a ninth of the plates anyway, he could break them if he wanted to. (He didn't want to, but whatever, he didn't make mistakes, didn't have accidents.)

But nope, nosy bastards had to get all up in his face like it would do them a lick of good. Jesus Christ. Grew up fighting for attention and now he couldn't get the attention offa him. It wasn't even chicks, just crazy old men, what the fuck. So far he'd shaken off the Demoman and the Heavy, both with wildly different approaches to finding out what his problem was (he didn't have a problem): Demo had slung an arm around his shoulder and tried to get him drunk enough to spill. He'd not counted on his younger teammate actually being able to hold his damn liquor, something Scout was plenty practiced at, thank you. Heavy, on the other hand, had just bodily hauled him up after dinner the other night and tried interrogating him. ("Scout has broken six bats over RED skulls today! Is good, very proud, but unusual—why?" "Holy Christ, big man, lemme go!") Once he'd thought the Soldier was about to lay into him, but the vet had just straightened his back, thrown him a salute, and barked, "Today I collected no fewer than thirty-eight filthy RED teeth from all over the point! Glad to see you've outgrown the ballerina slippers, son. Keep it up!"

But that had been over a week ago. Before he started losing sleep.

The Engineer said, "No, you just stay right there."

He wasn't even looking at Scout, couldn't even do him the honor, all his attention on his dumb guitar. Around them, the summer night sounds bled in through the open barn windows. The Harvest base was always noisy as shit after dark, crickets and birds going wacko. Scout quit testing his bleeding legs and dropped back down onto the haybale, scowling. "Thank you," said the Engineer.

The guitar twanged unpleasantly, and they both winced. Engineer adjusted something on his robotic hand, and started twisting the tuning pegs with mechanical precision. "Thought we could have a talk, maybe."

"Maybe?" barked Scout. "Oh aw man, dang, sorry, didn't think you turnin' your little rustbot on me was your way'a sayin hey let's talk, maybe!" He hocked one at the miniturret. It beeped in alarm, barrel jerking down to follow the spitball and fire off a single bullet at it before going right back to watching him. "You don't fire on teammates, hardhat!"

(Looking back on it, he should have expected something like this. The Engineer was friends with that thing, after all.)

"How else am I supposed to get you to hold still?" Engineer said good-naturedly. "I ain't doin' it out of spite. Dispenser workin'? You shouldn't oughta be in any pain."

Scout just growled, swinging his leg enough to thump the humming blue machine with the toe of his shoe. "Get to the point, grandpa."

"Son, I am thirty-nine. You want old, you talk to the Medic." The Engineer chuckled, plucking at a string. "Don't you tell him I said that, though. Hoo boy, no. Now," he said, finally putting the damn instrument down and settling those creepy goggles on Scout. God, you couldn't see his eyes, the lenses were so thick. He never took them off, either, least not that Scout had seen. "Now why don't you tell me what's been eatin' ya?"

"Nothin'."

"You don't want to do this dance with me, Scout," Engineer said. "You won't win. It ain't a hard question, an' it's done got pretty obvious. Hell, y'let that sniper tag ya right in the ear today. Ain't got the intel in over a week. Team's takin' the hit 'cause'a you, so spit it out, we'll figure it out together. I'm here to help."

Like hell he was. But God damn it. "It's your pet freak," Scout snapped. "Friggin', friggin' ghoul, you're its best friend anyway, no way you don't know 'bout this—"

Engineer put up a hand. "Whoa there. Who?" His voice had filled up with curiosity.

"The Pyro!"

"Pyro? What's Pyro done?"

"Fuckin'—what ain't it done, Jesus, I can't get two steps without it bein' right there!" He definitely didn't shudder, folding his arms close to himself. "I turn a corner and it's sittin' watchin' me, I come outta the bathroom and it's there, I go get a drink at two in th'morning an' it's in the kitchen with its freakin' sledgehammer. The sledgehammer for God's sake!" He couldn't keep control of his own damn hands, he pushed his headset down around his neck, ripped off his hat to fidget with it. "Like it's waitin', fuck me. Hey," he said abruptly, fixing Engineer with a glower. "You, you hang out with the freak, you tell it to lay off me or so help me I'll beat it stupid with its own flamethrower. You tell it that 'cause that's what I'll do if this don't stop." He brandished his hat at his teammate for emphasis, bristling with every word.

The sentry beeped in alarm, and a short hail of bullets tore the cap from his hands. It flew against the wall and fell to the ground, ripped to scrap. They both stared at it in silence, and the minisentry gave an almost cheerful kind of cheep. "Screw you too, buddy," Scout told it.

With a shake of his head, Engineer settled back and scratched his chin. "Well."

Scout felt his already-thin patience snapping one strand at a time. "You think I'm kiddin'?"

"Just wait a minute," Engie said. He'd started doing the thing with his robotic fingers, the weird tic he'd developed some time in the last few months: stretching them all out simultaneously, then closing them back into a fist one wired joint at a time. "I know Pyro's a little off. You an' him never did quite get on, did ya? But heck, Scout, Pyro wouldn't go outta 'er way just to—"

"You know that axe it's got, the one it put barbed wire all over?"

The Engineer stopped to collect his thoughts, to follow Scout's interruption. "I do, yes."

"I found the fuckin' thing halfway through my door last week."

Engineer was silent. Scout leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, glowering. "You tell that freak to keep away from me. Or else."

The Scout's problem was that he was just way too easy to tease.

The Pyro had determined this through process of elimination. Engineer was out of the question, obviously; Soldier and Demo were both oblivious (though for very different reasons); Spy, Medic, and Sniper all were unshakable. And Heavy seemed much too dangerous to harrass.

So that left Scout, who had long ago developed a habit of staring at the team's pyrotechnician anyway. All the Pyro had done was start staring back.

And then maybe taken it a little further.

It was just so easy to employ ambush tactics on the base, where everyone's guard was down and no one was expecting anything. And the Pyro got so bored. During the summer months the fireplaces were never turned on, and everyone complained if so much as the littlest campfire was lit. Every conceivable modification to both the flamethrower and axe had been made, and they never got any new books in during the weeks or months the team would be stuck on base; Teufort's bookshelves had a disgustingly poor selection.

So of course the Pyro was going to try and find something to do. And the Scout, in the Pyro's opinion, was always in need of getting knocked down a peg.

What next? The axe trick had worked wonderfully, the idea swiped from the last spooky movie Demo had been watching (well. "Watching" was a strong word. It was more that the TV had been on and the Demo had been in front of it, nursing a hangover. Maybe Medic had been watching it?). That was the day the Scout got hit by the other sniper, a first. The Pyro had been tickled. How far could this thing be taken?

So when the Engineer had sat down earlier, before dinner, and said, "Seems Scout thinks you've got it out for him," the Pyro just shrugged. "No, now I mean it. You've got him right spooked."

"Jrrsht plhhyng."

"Well, I know that," Engie said, "and you know that, but Scout don't know it."

What was that thing Heavy always said? "Bhhbhy."

The Engineer chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Yeah, yeah. But give him a break, alright? He's sufferin' by now, ain't doin' so well in the field. And we got no Scout, we got no intel—"

The Pyro bristled. "Nhh-uhh!"

"Now don't go takin' offense, you're plenty good at it too. But that's really Scout's job."

His words fell on deaf ears; the Pyro was sulking now. Engie looked a bit stumped for words, and then the dinner bell rang. He looked over his shoulder, then back at the Pyro, and smiled. "Just lay off him a while, alright? I'm sure he'll get over it. C'mon."

He left. The Pyro did not follow.

Capturing intel was certainly not something only Scout could do.

It got worse.

He heard muffled breathing constantly, now. Scout started seeing bursts of flame in the corners of his vision here and there, never entirely sure if he was imagining it or not. Yesterday the RED scout beat him in their ongoing game of "how many baseballs can I hit the other scout with in a row," which had never happened before, and that was just kicking him when he was down, really. He spent his nights curled up in the corner of his bed, waiting, paranoid and exhausted. Angry with the freak who'd made it its personal job to make him feel like he was in one of Medic's deranged horror films.

Yeah. Angry.

(Angry didn't even begin to cover it.)

It broke one morning when he stumbled into the canteen, desperate for the incredible coffee Demo brewed in the early hours. He'd become a regular, in dire need of something to keep him awake these days, and Demo had taken to saving him his own mug. It was spiked as shit, hair of the dog or whatever, but Scout was so far beyond caring.

So he'd stumbled in, right, looking forward to the only good fucking thing he had to look forward to anymore. The rich, bitter scent hit his nose as he staggered into the kitchen, and his mouth started watering. Jesus, he'd gotten such a caffeine addiction—

—and the fucking Pyro was there, leaning against the counter, casual as anything. It didn't even look at him when he came in. And it was holding his mug, and the mug was empty.

Something in him just snapped, went crack in his head. That was his mug, his coffee, the only fucking thing he felt like he had right now thanks to the fucking Pyro.

It didn't matter the pot still had coffee in it. It didn't matter that both Demo and Sniper were there in the canteen, watching curiously. Before he knew what was up he'd shoved the Pyro hard against the counter. Later, he wouldn't even remember what was coming out of his mouth, just that it was raw and loud and made his throat hurt, wouldn't remember he'd ripped the mug from its hands and had it raised menacingly in the air until both the other mercs wrestled it away from him. Together they hauled him (snarling, fighting) away from that blank, staring mask.

Somehow they got to the hallway, and it didn't really occur to Scout that the Demo had pinned him to the wall. The Scotsman said something and it didn't even register, not so much as a blip on Scout's radar, so he thumped him one across the chops.

That worked. "Ow, shit, whaddya—"

"Can it, boyo, we've heard plenty," Demo said. "Now jus' the bloody hell was that?"

"Put me down, one-eye, put me down, I'm gonna go turn that freak's head inside-out!"

"Over coffee?" Sniper interjected from where he watched by the door. He peered over his shoulder back into the canteen. "You've gone and spooked Pyro. No friendly fire, lad, you know that."

"Get bent, stretch," hissed Scout, wrapping both hands around the arm that held him and digging his nails in.

Demo didn't have the most patience in the best of times. Scout fast found himself yanked away from the wall and then he was being bodily marched to his dorm, tossed inside. Stay here today, Demo said. Cool your heels, get some damn shut-eye, you've gone loony.

Incredulous, Scout didn't even try to argue. The initial burst of rage-fueled adreneline had left him, replaced by something that burned slower and deeper. But there was nothing he could do about it now.

He threw himself down on the bed and passed out.

The Engineer had gotten cross when he heard about the Scout. That was a nice way of saying that the Pyro was going to catch it at some point in the near future. Engie didn't take kindly to being defied.

This whole thing was starting to lose its shine, anyway. Scout's outburst in the canteen had left the Pyro with an unlikely amount of bruises. Holding the flamethrower was hard with a bunk elbow; firing the flare was worse. The RED intel stayed safely put in its room no matter how many times the enemy sentry went down. And Engie was mad, and both Demo and Sniper knew something was up, and that the Pyro was behind it.

Be done with it, then. All the Pyro wanted, after getting trounced six times in a row by the enemy Scout, was a nice, quiet evening … put weapons away, trot off to the privacy of the dorms, relax for a while. Give the Scout a break, fine.

It was dark in the Pyro's room, save for the little rainbow night-light that had been there as long as anyone could remember, and the lamp was across the room. Halfway to it, the sound of the door creaking shut filled the silence. The Pyro turned just as the lock clicked.

"Yo, mumbles," growled something, and the Pyro froze at the sight of a dark figure leaned against the door. There was no time to react; it closed the gap between them in two long strides, and a hand shot out, fisting in the blue rubber of the flame suit hard enough to bruise (again). The Scout drove them both ahead, and very suddenly the furthest wall of the room, nearly the corner, was pressing flat against the Pyro's back.

Scout wasn't much taller than the Pyro. He was substantially thinner. That didn't, apparently, keep him from being imposing when he really decided to be: he seemed to loom, outlined eerily by the faint light, his face sharp and dark and lined with anger. Being tired and run-down wasn't helping the Pyro out at all, either, especially not when the Scout raised his bat and very deliberately slung it over his shoulder. The Pyro knew that bat, that one particular bat. It was the oldest one Scout owned, and he bragged about it all the time: aluminum, studded with shrapnel, riddled with dents and ugly rips in the metal. The Pyro had seen what it could do.

"I don't know what you're fuckin' doin, creep," he said, voice low, dense, like thunder. "I don't fuckin' know why, but that don't matter none, 'cause you gonna listen ta me now, and you gonna listen good, hear?" He leaned forward, pressing his victim harder against the wall. "You eva' been to Boston, smokes? You know what it does to ya, growin' up poor in a shitty Boston neighborhood?"

With a sudden motion he pitched the bat forward, driving it square up under the gas mask's filter. The Pyro's head jerked up, thumping into the wall, and Scout watched patiently as his teammate squirmed in pain. He twisted the handle, grinding metal against the rubber padding, real slow. "Growin' up like that, all it does is take kids an' turn 'em into junkyard dogs. Into guys like me."

The Scout fell quiet a moment, studying the blank, black mask. His expression contorted, growing foul. "Lemme tell you a story. I got me a sister back home, yeah? Real lady. 'Bout my age. Now a little before I come join BLU, all my brothers, they done went off t'the war, so it's just me an' her an' my ma. Man'a the house right here."

He lowered the bat, letting the Pyro's head drop. A instant later it was back, Scout's hands curled tight over either end and pressing it lightly against the Pyro's neck. "So. One day my sis comes home all roughed up an' cryin', an' I'm like, yo, what the fuck? 'Cause my sis ain't some pansy flower, see? She don't let punks push her around none, it takes some real winners to make her cry. And turns out some guys been on her case somethin' awful lately on her way home from work. Can you believe that?

"So I go the next day an' I find these dudes. Real creeps." (A hairline grin. "Just like you!" It vanished.) "They gimme the big tough guy act, pull out their cute little pocket knives an' brass knuckles. So I introduce 'em to my bat here." The warped aluminum pushed further against the Pyro's throat. It was getting hard to breathe, the air coming in loud stutters through the mask's filters.

"We have a nice little tea party in a back alley there," Scout continued. "Fuckers ain't even heard of tough. So's I give 'em a sample. An' when I'm done, they don't get up again." He leaned in closer. "They don't. Get up. Heck, might still be there for all I know. So I walk outta there just fine. An' nobody ever bothers my sister again."

Finally he pulled the bat away, swinging it over his shoulder. The Pyro slumped, breathing heavily, suddenly the loudest sound in the room. "What I'm sayin' is you are gonna stop," Scout said, after a few seconds. "You are gonna stop this Psycho act like yesterday, or so help me God, I will beat your stupid head in 'til there's nothin' left but brains oozin' out that mask of yours. And ain't nobody, but nobody, gonna save your ass then. Not Engineer. Not anybody." He went silent for a moment, staring into the black void of the mask's eyes. "Are we clear, pal?"

Silence. Then the Pyro keeled over with a strangled cry as Scout's knee jerked up into his teammate's gut. "I said, are we clear?!"

"Yhh—yrrsh—" A wretching, hacking cough issued from the depths of the gas mask. It twisted into a muffled yelp when the bat slammed down onto the Pyro's back. "Wrrr clrrrr!"

Scout let his weapon drop to the floorboards with a heavy thump, watched as the Pyro's legs gave out. He prodded the heap of rubber with the dented tip of the bat, and got no response. "Glad to hear it," he said, softly.

He did not leave right away, instead standing there, staring down at his fellow mercenary. From the floor, the Pyro could only just make out the satisfied little smile on his face. But eventually, he turned. Walked away.

He pulled the door shut quietly behind him as he left, leaving the Pyro alone in the dark.