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When that unbridled sense of self-reliance finally whittled itself down to nothing, when he finally realized he needed a helping hand, Scout had Pyro. Pyro was always nice. Always happy. The way they walked with that cheery sort of saunter, the kind of strut that made you know they were having a good day, made their joy evident. The way they talked, muffled by their mask and unintelligible yet still clearly mirthful in its tone, made their joyful mood clear, and when they signed, it was bubbly in that same sort of manner. They were sweet, far too sweet, like biting into a giant ball of cotton candy before washing it down with a piece of cake and some Bonk!— that kind of sweet. Sure, they were evil, just as evil as the rest of their coworkers were— maybe even more, with the way they relished in the fiery deaths they caused— but that was fine. They were all evil. They were all crazy. At least Pyro was nice about it. At least Pyro was nice to him.
When Scout was sick, really sick, the kind of sick where all you could really do was moan in misery and throw up, Pyro had his back. They wouldn’t tell anyone what was going on when Scout left the barracks with hoodies clinging uncomfortably to sweaty, feverish skin. They wouldn’t tell anyone what was going on when Scout came back with a bag of groceries held in trembling hands. They wouldn’t tell anyone what was going on when Scout entered Pyro’s room, sniffling and sneezing and all but collapsing onto the smooth surface of Pyro’s clean, tiled flooring. They wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t utter a peep, no matter what had happened or what the circumstances were, even as Scout groaned out a plea for help, a mind consumed with craving begging for its fix. Scout was grateful someone finally had his back— even if the reason they had his back was just that he had threatened to kill them if they didn’t. For someone whose job it was to die all the time, they sure seemed scared of death. Though it wasn’t like Scout could judge all that much; he used to be afraid of it too. The keyword being used to.
When Scout needed someone to give him his hit, hands too shaky to do it on his own, Pyro was there. They knew their way around the needle far better than Scout ever thought they would, too; the way they so effortlessly embedded the metal into the red of his veins made it clear how skilled they were in the art of injection. Even when he had started using up all the veins in his arms, even when the track marks and the bruises and the bandages did their best to conceal crimson red blood, Pyro was able to parse out the good veins from the unusable. Scout gave them the powder, the spoon, the lighter, and the syringe, and they just knew what to do, knew how to start, knew their way around the drug like they were an addict like him. But Pyro wasn’t like him. Or, at the very least, Pyro wasn’t like him anymore. He knew they weren’t because he had looked, searched in his withdrawal-induced panics, hoping and praying that maybe they had some smack or some fent or something left for him to shoot up, but they didn’t, and they never did, and they never would, no matter how long he rummaged. He had looked. He had checked. So they weren’t using.
“T-Thank yah Mumbles. Like, actually. Thank yah. Yah literally— yah literally m-my saviah right now. Yah don’t— yah don’t even undahstand.” Scout's back was pressed against the cool surface of Pyro’s bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling, the arm closest to his coworker stretched out and shaking in anticipation. Or withdrawal. Or both. Probably both. His eyes traced the ceiling fan blades as they went in circles. “Yah don’t e-even undahstand what— what yah doin’ fah me, pally. Yah don't even get it.”
Pyro’s room always had this sterile feeling to it— like a hospital room, or maybe even a jail cell— but that sensation never seemed to bother him like it did when he was in those places. In Pyro’s room, it was a comfortable kind of sterility, the kind you let yourself sit in, let yourself relish in. Maybe that was why he liked coming there so much; not just because Pyro never snitched on him, but because there was an aura of cleanliness Scout couldn’t help but get lost in when he entered the place, a feeling not quite replicated anywhere else in the building. His own room had become utter chaos over the past few months, festering into a cluttered mess not even someone as quick-witted as he could fix, time and effort he simply did not possess needing to be invested into the area in order for it to be tidied up. And with addiction came a depressive feeling, the kind that hindered him severely, his only source of contentment coming in the form of a drug meant to suppress the energy he'd need for something like cleaning his room. Not to mention his hygiene had also begun to suffer, so being in his room sometimes felt like he was just suffocating in everything, making the downward spiral he was falling into so much worse than before. But this? This was relief. This was comfort. This was as close as he could get to getting help, as close as he could get to getting healthy. He hated doctors and he hated Medic and he hated the thought of telling anyone with any sort of respect and authority over him what was actually going on, but with Pyro, there was calm. Even if they weren’t actually helping him, even if they were just pumping the poison slowly killing him into his veins, it felt like a treatment. The idea of treatment felt like paradise. Scout wanted paradise.
At first, Pyro tried to talk verbally, but whatever words they were attempting to say were lost by their gas mask, making the things they had chosen to tell Scout at that moment completely unintelligible. He knew that some of the others, the ones more intelligent than him, more sociable than him, could understand Pyro’s words, but he couldn’t, and he had never been able to. Not when he was sober, not when he was sick, and most definitely not when he was high. But he had taken a few sign language classes in school because he had been failing English, he already knew French (why was it even offered in school? Everyone knew how to speak it!), and Spanish was for losers, so American Sign Language was all he could do to barely skirt through the rest of high school and make it to graduation. And, as it turns out, Pyro knew it too, if in a far more sophisticated manner. So Scout was glad he had taken those classes, if just for the fact that he and Pyro had an actual means of communication.
Gloved hands ignored Scout's previous statement, instead asking, “When are you going to quit?”
“When I feel better.” It was short. Simple. When he felt better, he’d quit. He hadn’t felt better yet. Maybe he never would. That was fine with him.
“If you keep getting high like this, you’re not going to feel better. Someone is going to find out.”
Pyro’s response caused a flash of fear to ignite deep within his stomach. Or maybe anger. Or both. “They’ll find out about alla’dis when I’m— when I’m dead, Pyro! Now— now gimme my shit b-befoah I— befoah I—!” Just as he was about to finish his sentence (which, frankly, had no real end), a sudden spark of nausea punched him square in the gut, and instantly he knew what was going to occur. Shooting up from his lying position on the ground, he fumbled around, desperately, in search of the trashcan he knew was somewhere in his general vicinity, the misery of his withdrawal finally forcing itself into the forefront of a mind preoccupied with its cravings. He was seconds away from puking his guts out on Pyro’s floor, and he had done that enough times before to conclude that Pyro probably wouldn’t be so kind about it this time, so he needed to find it. Where was it? Where the fuck was it?!
A bin was quickly shoved into trembling, clawing hands, and he retched up nothing but bile and snot into it. He let himself be laid back on the floor when it was all over, a paper towel he didn't recognize the origin of wiping excess vomit off crackled lips.
The argument and the frustration Pyro themselves had started seemed to flutter away as soon as it came, stripping them of what little anger a heart like theirs could contain and reducing them back to their kindhearted core. Pyro was almost parental to those they deemed weak and needy, Scout had observed, and, in the moment, that long list of people deserving of their love and attention notably included Scout, sick and despairing, with the cure to his ails resting solely on Pyro’s shoulders. Pyro combed a hand through sweat-soaked hair, much to Scout’s mounting frustration.
“Come on man, yah don’t gotta tease me like this!” He whined, his body subconsciously leaning into the comfort of his coworker's fingertips, so starved of relief that all he could do was push into whatever reassurance he could find, regardless of how he himself felt about it. “Jus’ give me my hit already. Please, dude, I’m sickah dan a dog righ’ now!”
He knew he was probably just imagining things, and he knew that it was impossible for it to actually be true, but, for just a moment, Scout swore he saw a look of what could only be reluctance in Pyro’s eyes. Or, well, the glass placed over their eyes, more accurately. You were completely incapable of seeing the mercenary's pupils from behind the goggles. A feeling wormed its way into Scout’s heart at that, a feeling one only described as guilt, but he had felt it enough times over the past few months to find it was easy to choke down in the moment. But still, Pyro nodded, and still, they took their hands away from the runner, leaning out of Scout’s peripheral vision, fingers once used to carefully clean sweat off his skin and wipe snot from his nose now reaching for his cure. Pilfering through the supplies Scout had given them, they mumbled indescribably, slowly beginning to prepare his heroin. Scout let his mind wander.
Pyro had this odd, almost uncanny cat clock in their room, the kind that had those swiveling eyes and pendulum-swinging tails. Scout had never exactly liked it, but it wasn’t his room, so he never let himself make a fuss about it. But now, when was he spread out on the cold linoleum flooring of the other mercenary's room, the only sounds to distract him from his ailments being the quiet bubbling of boiling water, the drone of the ceiling fan, and the repetitive clacks of plastic striking plastic? He couldn’t tell whether he was relieved by the clock or driven mad by it. A part of him wanted to angle his head to look at it, to glare at it, to let it know how much he despised it and its Cheshire cat smile, but the effort of such a motion felt like too much, and the noise it made helped ground him, helped distract him from his ails. Not to mention he had already pushed himself to his limits by just going out and getting everything. A man like him deserved breaks every once in a while, right? So he simply glowered in silence. Though, Scout was quite the impatient person, and the longer it took for Pyro to finish getting his fix ready, the angrier he got. Pain quickly turned into desperation.
“Friggin— what’s takin’ yah so long, dipshit?! Yah don’t gotta be takin’ dis long, yah’know! Please, man, yah takin’ too long! I need it. Yah know I need it!” Scout suddenly burst out. He sounded mad, real mad, the kind of mad that only really happened when something truly blood-boiling had occurred, but really, he was just desperate. Desperation made people angry, made people irrational, Scout had learned. He’d seen it before, seen it with the people around him, seen it in his brothers and his classmates and the people on the streets and sometimes even his Ma once in a while. He’d seen it before, seen it in his coworkers and his teammates and his enemies and his employers. He had seen it in everyone he had ever known, everyone he could possibly think of, from the most downtrodden of residents of the Boston slums to the poshest of mercenaries on the New Mexico battlefield. He knew everyone had experienced it; everyone had felt that feverish sort of turmoil that came with anticipation. He just felt it more. That’s what dope does to you. “Yah know I need it, an’— an’ yet yah still stall it, yah still stall it even though yah know I’m sick. I’m sick, I’m so sick, but you’ah dah one dat’s really sick fah taking so long tah fix me! If I went tah someone else, they’d do it fastah. I can do it fastah, an’ I ain’t even able tah hold a gun propahly righ’ now! Yah— yah bein’ nuthin’ but an ass tah me right now, Mumbles! Really!”
Pyro was never an angry person. Always nice, always kind, always sweet in a way that made Scout sick to his stomach— because really, nobody is that kind to people like him for no reason. Nobody is kind to people like him without wanting something in return— and yet Scout had still been expecting Pyro to respond to Scout’s blatant lambasting with agitation, or at the very least an odd sort of annoyance. Rather than doing that, however, Pyro instead flicked off the lighter, grabbing an alcohol pad and wiping off the Scout's arm. They didn’t sign this time.
While normally Scout could never quite understand the muffled speech Pyro always exhibited, there were a few times when he could comprehend it. Certain smaller sentences he had heard enough times that they were engrained into his skull, context clues from conversations he eavesdropped on letting him know the basics of what the pyromaniac might have meant. So, when they spoke again, instead of being greeted by incoherence, he was met with a phrase he could translate. A simple “I know.”
“You know? You know?! Are yah even listenin’ tah me, Mumbles?! I called yah sick, pally! I called yah a dipshit when you’ah dah one dat’s tryna fix me! Why ain’t yah sayin’ nuthin’ ‘bout it, ass hat?! Why yah jus’ takin’ it?! Yah ain’t s’post’a jus' take it!”
With a few more horizontal swipes of the alcohol pad, Pyro dragged the wipe off Scout's skin, moving their body into Scout's view before signing, "You're sick. When you're sick, you don't know what you’re saying. You're too miserable to be anything but mean. Your mind isn’t right.”
“Well— well fuck you too, Pyro! Fuck. You. Too.” Huffing in indignation, Scout rolled his eyes, a sour look overcoming his features as his gaze moved blearily to his coworker's walls. What a help they were! He put all this time into getting his shit, all this time into grabbing what he needed, only for the one person who promised they'd help him to do nothing but hurt him even more. He felt sick, he felt awful, and yet Pyro acted like he wasn’t like this, like he didn't need this. Scout needed this. Scout needed his hit. Why wasn’t Pyro letting him have his hit?!
A few moments passed by before the latex of Pyro’s glove tapped at Scout’s cheek, forcing the man’s gaze to flutter back into Pyro’s peripheral. “Are you ready?” they signed in inquiry.
“Yes, I’m friggin’ ready, Mumbles. I’ve been ready fah dah past five minutes! Give me it, Pyro, please, give it tah me! Yah don’t even get how much I friggin’ need it right now!” Scout didn’t care if he was begging. He needed this. He needed this bad. He almost had half a mind to sit up, clasp his hands together, and start praying for the pyromaniac to finally get this over with. If he wasn’t as weak as he was, he’d probably do it.
A nod was all Pyro gave in response before they wrapped a tourniquet around Scout’s arm, the elastic digging into his flesh a reassurance for the man. He never used a proper medical tourniquet for this kind of thing— the random cord he had stolen from Engineer did its job just as well, and he didn't even have to pay for it— but he couldn't deny it was far more comfortable, if a bit itchy against sweat-soaked skin. Another one of the many luxuries that came with coming to Pyro’s room for this, he mused. As the mercenary finished tying the band around his arm, he felt the sensation of latex tracing down the meat of his limb, stopping when it found the right vein and sticking a syringe needle into its surface. Scout shuddered.
The moments right before the rush of the injection were one of Scout's favorite parts of shooting up. That mind-numbing sense of anticipation, the feeling of knowing what's about to come and knowing your misery is about to end, those few seconds proceeding the euphoric rush of endorphins that blossomed in his head as soon as the drug entered the bloodstream? It was heaven. His breaths picked up steam, and he almost started hyperventilating, eyes squeezing themselves shut, just imagining the pooling of ichor in the syringe as Pyro checked to make sure they had truly hit the right vein. Time almost seemed to slow down, as if he had been frozen in ice, what should have taken only a few seconds feeling like minutes; it gave him a chance to think, a chance to reflect. He had done a lot of that as of late, but a little more wouldn't hurt. Right?
Before Scout came to New Mexico, before Team Fortress had all come back from defeating Gray Mann and his robot army once and for all, Scout knew nothing about anything. The only times he ever witnessed people using junk before all of this was when he was back in Boston, forced to guard the bathroom as one of his brothers— James, was it?— shot up inside, his Ma none the wiser to her child's blossoming heroin addiction. An inward chuckle was all he could think of as a reaction to the memory, knowing that he had turned out just like James had, doing the same things he did, down to the ways he excused it and the people he confided in about it. Except Scout was on the other side of the country from his Ma at this point, so it wasn’t her job to keep her sons in line like that anymore. It didn't help that he hadn't called her in a few months since all of this started, anyhow; he sometimes wondered if she was worried about him, if she was mad at him for not sending any money her way. He missed her, whether or not he would admit it. And, as he did with everything, he refused to admit it.
The first time he had gotten high, truly gotten high— Tramadol worked wonders as a spark to the burning fire that was his addiction, but it didn't quite give him the rush he had since become obsessed with— he was lost, confused, and sick, the pills he had been stealing from Medic no longer doing the trick to cure the withdrawal, forced to explore the underbellies of Teufort’s quieter streets to find his cure. The town was known for the stupidity of its people and the lead poisoning of its water supplies, but underneath it all was a budding drug scene, residents tired of cigarettes and lead water forced to become crafty in order to satisfy their more carnal urges. It was no secret the entirety of the town hated him and his coworkers— he had 6 entire months and a near-death experience to figure that out!— but that was a problem easily fixed with a hoodie and a pair of cargo pants. He could just taste the musk of the town's dusty alleyways deep within the back of his throat, could just feel his heart skipping a beat as a man no older than he was tied a belt around his arm, teaching him how to find the right vein to shoot up, showing him what he had to do in order to get the Skag ready to inject. But when it finally entered his bloodstream, finally rushed through his veins, it felt like a punch in the face. The loosening of his shoulders, the gasp that had been stuck to his lungs since the beginning of time, the feeling of pure euphoria, pure warmth? It was everything. He felt like everything.
Scout had lost the feeling of pure paradise that came with the first high a millennia ago. He recalled how that second high felt, the third and the fourth and the fifth coming soon afterward, so close to perfection yet so far away at the same time. Like an itch he didn't know he had that had finally been scratched with that first high but never again soothed, a piece of himself uncovered with that first high never quite found again. For a while, he chased that feeling, chased the dragon that was that high, but as days turned into weeks turned into months, the quest for pure euphoria turned into nothing more than a dependence. Without heroin, he was broken, he was sick, he was miserable. No longer did the high feel like bliss to him, now nothing more than a way to keep him going, a way to keep him stable. And sure, he still felt that initial burst of calm, of blanketing solace, but no longer was it the feeling he truly yearned for when he got high. All he wanted for now was that sense of normalcy, that feeling of humanity he had since lost, for the eternal emptiness carved into his soul by the drug to be filled by something, anything. Was that so much to ask? Was feeling human again so much to ask?!
Pyro pushed down on the syringe plunger. As his ticket to normality finally arrived, he couldn't help but wonder what had gone wrong. Even as that mind-numbing sense of euphoria spread across his body, the calm pushing away every other thought from a brain so often filled with chaos, he couldn't help but ask himself what he could have done to fix this. What mistakes had he made that led to him getting where he was? But, just as everything else had, that too flew away in the wind, replaced with nothing but eternal peace, an ever-lasting stillness. Maybe, just for now, just for this inconsequential moment in time, he could let it go. He let it all float away.