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Shrapnel. Just one part of the job of any Demolitions Expert that was worth keeping around just about anywhere, one part that this particular Demoman had always had a bit of an issue with remembering to account for (something that ran in the family, apparently, judging by the dozens of oil painting family portraits riddling the family home of Scots dual-clad in eyepatches). He always remembered to keep his head on steady when it came to accounting for the way structures would fall–borderline got a degree in architecture and physics for that purpose, even, learning about load bearing walls, about studs, about pillars (cosmetic and otherwise), accounting for the windage of the thing.
But the shrapnel , that was an entirely different beast. The mess of it, really. The little variables. Those tended to get scrambled a bit, the same way his mind did when he was ample or scant a quarter of a glass of whiskey at the start of his day, and opting for pushing it all aside to just detonate the damn thing was only sometimes alright, only sometimes a thing of glancing around after the fact and noticing a shard of glass the size of his breakfast plate embedded four inches deep into plaster a foot off from his head.
Today he’d opted for the self-confident man’s way of detonating, as he chose to just pack up and fully fucking skeddadle before the BLUs could catch him trussing up his project of the day with bombs and wires like one would use bulbs and string lights on an evergreen–that is to say, in layman’s terms, he detonated it with his back turned. A bit of a shame, as he liked to take note of how things went down, so if it went sideways (or sideways in the wrong direction, perhaps) he could analyze it after the fact, maybe learn something. This time, especially a shame because that meant a shard of wood and three of its friends (was it three? Five? Ten? He couldn’t tell, actually) embedded itself into the muscle of his uppermost left shoulder.
“The trapezius,” a teacher had told him in a sidebar-type anatomy lecture during one of the art classes he’d taken when he was young, pointing on the little replica bust of Michaelangelo’s David, then up towards the neck. “And that much more prominent in this particular piece, the sternocleidomastoid.”
Words like that were what he tried to focus on as he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to figure out where the hell the shrapnel had ended up between where he’d felt it and where he’d picked the tweezers back up. This wasn’t like at the base, where frankly it was more worrying to not hear shouting at any given day, he and several others of the team were staying at a motel at the moment, their missions that week being just far enough from the base that they couldn’t just drive to and from. Already the bloodstains on the carpet were going to be pretty bad, sounds of a man shouting in agony would be investigated at least some amount, and he really didn’t want to deal with that.
The trouble was that it was his left shoulder. If it was his right shoulder, it wouldn’t be an issue. Inch of head turn, pluck of tweezers, one-two-three and he’s done. But no, it just had to be on his left. In the eyepatch’s hemisphere. And maybe he could really crane his neck (and sternocleidomastoid) and get an eye on it, but that would also be flexing the enshrapneled muscle in question. And the mirror in the tiny bathroom might be helpful, if not for the fact that it would mean pilot controls on trying to pull the things out, and trying to account for already lackluster depth perception.
He tried carefully to feel out where the splinter was, one more time, and bit down hard on where he’d pressed his own shedded shirt between his teeth to keep from crying out, and readjusted the tweezers, trying to find it again.
Trapezius. He’d taken Latin once, learned a bit about root words. Maybe that was from ‘tri’, as in three, because it connected in three places–once at the neck, two towards the shoulder joint.
Another bite hard enough to make him think this might be yet another shirt to scrap into rags as he found and pulled on something, maybe shrapnel or maybe not.
Sterno-cleido-mastoid. That one was an easier guess–sterno like sternum, cleido like clavicle, mastoid like a mast of a ship, helps turn the head. Connects at the sternum, specifically at the clavicle, and–
Alright, that one was definitely not shrapnel. Good lord.
He was still seething through that one when there was a knock, a one, two-three rhythm, and the door opened.
“Woah, holy shit,” Scout said, as if his own shirt didn’t appear to be smoldering slightly and one of his eyebrows and some of his bangs weren’t partially burnt off. He propped his bat next to the door and tossed his bag onto his bed, moving a few steps closer. “You look like hell.”
“Hello to you too,” Demo greeted through a mouthful of shirt, so mostly it just came out a vaguely pained mumble.
“You, uh, need a little help there?” Scout asked, looking sympathetic but hesitant. “Uh, let me just uh–”
Demo spit his shirt into his lap as Scout moved to presumably wash his hands free of soot, hurry in his step. “No, no, I, I’ve got it, darl,” he assured quickly. “I know you get a bit, er, squeamish–”
“The hell I am,” Scout protested right back from out of his sightline over the sound of running water. “I mean, it’s not needles. I fuckin’ hate needles. But I can, uh, this should be fine. Like, seriously.”
“I’ve had a handle on it, truly,” Demo tried again. “Look, I’ve got, er–I’ve got some shards out as it is.”
And he did. He had one shard sitting on the table on a now-ruined washcloth, next to a bowl of water he had been planning to wash back off with once he’d made enough progress. By the scoff he heard behind him, it wasn’t particularly impressive.
“Look, I’ve only got to get enough to keep a lid on things until I can see the Doctor,” Demo said. “We’re headed back after sundown tomorrow, y’ken?”
“Yuh-huh,” Scout said in the deadpan that Demo had learned to understand meant he wasn’t being believed, and was maybe in trouble. “And you’re gonna do crap all day tomorrow with like, wood crumbs in your shit. Because we ain’t supposed to use the healing module things Doc gave us unless we’re for sure disaffected and stuff.”
“Disinfected, darl,” Demo corrected.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I said that.” The water shut off, and a moment later the tweezers were plucked out of Demo’s hands. “You’re not stopping me. C’mon. I’m like, way more stubborn than you.”
Demo sighed, facing forward again. “Ach, fine . But if you faint on me, don’t say I didn’t go on and tell you.”
A scoff from Scout, and a brief pause, and a hand gingerly against the uninjured part of his neck, and Scout started in.
Admittedly, Scout was fumbling a lot less. He went pretty slow, seemed hesitant, but he didn’t fumble. Slow movements, pausing, and quick plucks. A hand reaching into his line of sight to drop the new shard with its friends.
“Christ on a bike,” Scout mumbled, “this really fucked you up. What’d you do?”
“Shed got absolutely shagged.”
“Shit, yeah, that’ll do it,” Scout seemed to shrug, and another pluck. “It’s all like, splintered. It didn’t get you anywhere else?”
“That’s what the vest is supposed to be for. Covers the vitals. Padding thins out up towards the shoulders, though. Same one that was on fire a week ago, as well,” he explained.
“You didn’t fix that yet?”
“Patched up the main body. Replacement was supposed to be here in a few days.”
“Bad luck, huh?” Scout murmured, and sighed a little. “Alright, uh, you might wanna put your shirt back in your mouth for this one. I’m gonna grab the big pieces now, and they’re kind of, uh. Kind of way in there.”
“Ach. Steady on,” Demo said, rolling the shirt and biting it again.
This time, the plucks became hard yanks, followed by a hard squeeze to his opposite shoulder for a few seconds in reassurance and to ground him through the wave of pain following, a wince of sympathy. He blinked through it and flashed a thumbs-up, and then came the next one, rinse and repeat.
“C’mon, you’re a champion. You’ve got this,” was one reassurance he got. Scout seemed to be good at those.
He was genuinely blanking out as much as he could by the time the squeeze to his opposite shoulder became a pat. He blinked, inhaled, exhaled, until the room stopped spinning quite as much. He wiggled his fingers a few times and they weren’t cold, so he was at least confident it wasn’t blood loss, which was good. If he bled out after all of this, he was going to be pretty upset.
“Alright, just little ones now,” Scout said, and he exhaled again in response, spat the shirt back out. “You’re a legend, babe. Seriously.”
“Legend yourself,” he mumbled, cleared his throat. The urge to apologize flooded into his mind, and he paused before he could.
Scout had talks with him, sometimes, when they were alone. Usually just off of tangents of tangents of tangents. Demo would say something about… well, anything, about his family sometimes, or a story from that day’s grocery shopping, or about an interaction he had in high school, it could be any recollection. And usually, Scout would laugh with everyone if it was in front of the team, but when they weren’t, he wouldn’t laugh. He would get this look. Just like when he walked into the motel room and saw the shrapnel. Sympathy and hesitance. Worry. Concern.
And he would say these things, like, ‘Hey, it’s messed up that your mom said that to you’. Like, ‘Hey, it doesn’t really matter if the gal at the register was looking at you weird, you’re a grown man, y’know?’. Like, ‘I don’t think that’s stupid. I think it’s cool that you like all this science stuff, and all these books about magic and whatever. It makes you happy, doesn’t it?’
Would say things like, ‘You know you don’t gotta apologize for wanting to hang out with me, you’re literally my boyfriend, dummy, you already know that I like you!’. Like ‘I don’t mind when you have these downswings and stuff, I just wanna help make you feel better, make sure you’re gonna be okay. I’m not mad because you feel like shit, I’m mad because you don’t ask me for help when you totally can and definitely should.’ Like ‘Y’know, if you feel bad about feeling bad or whatever, you can just, like, say thank you instead of stewing in it. Get the feelings and shit out. Just try it, okay?’
So, “Thanks for the help, darl, I mean it,” was what he went with instead of apologies.
“Yeah, yeah,” Scout mumbled, followed by a pluck. “No problem. No way in hell you’re getting these out yourself. Were you seriously gonna just try and do it alone on this one?”
“...Maybe,” Demo said, drawing the word out much longer than it needed to be, hoping that would earn a laugh rather than a lecture. He was right, hearing a scoff, and smiled at it.
“Well, you’re a dummy. Just because you’re all good with the, uh, eyepatch situation, like, most of the time? Doesn’t mean you gotta just tough it out when it’s causing an issue.” Another pluck. “Like, seriously, though, I forget it’s a thing like most of the time. Pretty sure Hardhat having the goggles messing with the peripherals is a bigger issue for him than literally half your vision gone. It’s nuts.”
“Well,” Demo said, “not really half my vision, y’ken? More like, er… A third or so. Less, maybe. Most of your sightline is both your eyes working together. I can just turn my head and compensate, see?”
“...Huh. Touché.” Another pluck. “Didn’t you say somethin’ about it messing with your like, uh… what’s it called? Depth periphery?”
“Depth perception.”
“Yeah, that! Like–yeah, because you’ve gotta shoot too, right? And it’s like, different, but it’s still shooting. Is that not, like, pretty annoying?”
“Nah. Hardly,” Demo replied. “I don’t use sight for that much, is the thing. It’s all maths.”
“ What are you even talking about,” Scout deadpanned.
“It’s arcs, mate. Just standard trajectory with the stickies since they play where they land, then a general sort of winging it for the pipes, but if I shoot straight at them in the first place the bounce doesn’t matter. I shoot at a set velocity every time with the gun, I make a guess at the distance, and the thing shoots in a straight line. So I just, er, memorized the arcs.”
“Fuckin’ what did you even just say.”
“Because it’s–if I’ve got velocities and all that memorized, all I’ve really got to calculate for is the angle of the shot, right? And, and also height just a bit, but we’re all usually on the same ground. So all I have to adjust for is angle, maybe time if it’s particularly far, but the bombs are only in the air for, what, one or two seconds? And now I’ve got it practically to muscle memory. Just took a bit of practice.”
A few beats of silence.
“Apologies for the physics lecture,” Demo tried to laugh, “I realize this is all a bit ridiculous–”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Scout cut in, voice firm. “Okay. Okay, babe? Listen real quick? Okay, what are you even doing being a merc. I’m so wicked serious right now.”
All he could muster was a sound of vague confusion.
“Like, can you not just go be a fuckin’ college professor or whatever? Or like, straight up a–a fuckin’ scientist? Like, you gotta know how insane that is. You gotta know how crazy insanely smart you gotta be to do something like that.” Scout placed the tweezers on the table and picked up the bowl of water, starting to clean off the area of the wound. “You literally make your own bombs and weapons and stuff already, and now this? What are you even doing here? Go make a billion dollars making planes and shit already!”
“Don’t care much for aerospace engineering, shite’s boring,” Demo protested under his breath.
“Babe.”
“It’s the family trade!” he finally said. “Explosives as far back as the invention of gunpowder and the Celts getting their hands on it. Might as well do it right, I’m the only son in the main branch of the family, I can’t just abandon it.”
A hard sigh from behind him, a pause. The pain had died down to a general rawness, prickling alongside Scout so carefully cleaning around the wounds. “I guess. I dunno. Just… you’re so goddamn cool. I dunno how you haven’t noticed that you’re so goddamn cool.”
The prickling had progressed into his chest, beneath his sternum, beneath his clavicle, a tightness forming. He couldn’t seem to help it once Scout started getting all… sweet. All quiet.
Scout was like shrapnel. Not in terms of pain, in terms of… he couldn’t ever seem to account for him. To plan for him. He could plan for the columns of Scout, for him being excitable, always looking to try something new, always encouraging, earnest even. He could account for a general gung-ho attitude and a stubborn core and a sweet, squishy heart down beneath all of that. But he couldn’t account for this. Couldn’t ever seem to remember it until it was embedding itself into his ribcage.
The times when he wasn’t loud and brash and shameless. Where instead he was quiet, and he was worried. And he was looking at him with two soft, sad eyes, at the shrapnel in his shoulder or the empty bottles on his table or the project he’d worked on without rest for days in a row or the sleeping through an entire weekend without once getting out of bed except to go to the bathroom or refill his flask.
When he pulled the truth out of him, one splinter at a time. Painfully. Instead of squeezing his shoulder, he would find Scout clutching both arms around his midsection, hugging him so tightly, as if he never wanted to let go, face buried in his neck (sternocleidomastoid) as he said, again and again, earnest, honest, that it was okay. That it would be okay. That Scout was there for him. That Scout loved him. Not in spite of anything about him, but because of it. Because that’s who he was. And the tweezers hurt less, every time, stung less than the way his eye did in those moments. Even if he knew deep in his heart that there may never come a day when he can fully believe all of it.
Scout wrung out the washcloth one more time, brushed it gently over the whole of the area, squeezed his shoulder. “Alright, I think I got it all. I’ll, uh, I’ll go phone the Doc, ask if we’re cool to try and use one of those healing, uh… whatever-the-fucks,” he said, voice back to usual, self-assured.
“Thanks, mate,” Demo ground out, and got a pat on the shoulder for his trouble. “...Love you.”
“Aw.” He felt lips peck at his temple briefly. “Love you too, babe. Fix that vest next time, alright? I’ll be right back.”
That, at least, Demo could believe. He could get to the rest some other day.