1 . Name: thebicolouredhydra @ 2015-01-15 08:04

This was for Secret Santa 2014 over on tf2promptfest on tumblr. My first time writing Demo, and I really wanted to avoid making him the insensate drunk that I often see in the fandom.

...

It was hard to tell which annoyed Demo more: that the bottle was just beyond of the reach of his outstretched fingers, or the fact that his left leg had been blown off. He huffed out a sigh that sent the parched dirt swirling away from his mouth and, unhelpfully, into his eye. Irritating in more ways than one.

The RED Soldier had blind-sided him and shot a rocket right at his feet. It'd had the combined effect of slamming him backwards into and through the wall of the building behind him, and of separating his lower leg from its vital, upper section. Demo had no idea if that lonely limb was in one piece. It seemed irrelevant right at this point. After all, what was he going to do with it if it was? He didn't have any band-aids on him, and he'd used the last of the gaffer tape over an hour ago. It'd be as useful as attaching a roast lamb to the stump anyway.

He scrunched up his face, trying to shift the drying grit from under his eyelid, and let out a few choice phrases that he felt adequately described his disappointment that the rocket-blasting leg-separator hadn't finished him off. The bastard could at least have knocked him a bit closer to the fucking bottle!

Demo stretched futilely again but the bottle was at least two feet away. Unbroken as well, unlike him, but visualising his arm elongating hopefully towards it like a thirsty snake was the only thing that was distracting him from the viciously acidic pain flowing up his thigh.

Maybe if he just lay here, someone from RED would either come along and end this physical perjury, or he'd bleed out and go through Respawn. He wasn't all that keen on trying to stand and hop back into the fray, nor was he that interested in seeing what the inside of his knee looked like.

It wasn't until he opened his eye that he realised he'd passed out. All-in-all, this was turning into a really shitty day. The mission had been a debacle, he was missing a quite crucial leg, the scrumpy remained obstinately too far away, like a sulking child, and the blossoming hangover headache was competing with the ragged torture chewing its way up his body. Why hadn't he died already?!

The crunch of gravel behind him came as a welcome relief.

"An Nì Math, yeh took yer bloody time!" He pushed himself up off the ground so he could turn to face his approaching executioner. The setting sun seared into his eyes, rendering the figure into a silhouette, but he recognised the shape.

Ah. Maybe not so welcome a relief after all. He let his forehead drop down on to the ground, wishing he'd dragged his way over to the bottle, smashed it and cut his own throat. It would've been a lot less messy.

"You appear to be missing a leg, Herr Demo."

Demo banged his head slowly and morosely on the dirt, the smell of his own blood swirling around him. "Aye, I had rather noticed that, but thanks for pointing it out. Any chance we could skip the disembowelling today and go straight to the death bit?"

"No, I think I'd like to keep you alive."

"Oh, grand."

The boots crunched their way around his bowed head, and Demo just managed to catch sight of the cheery orange lid of a hypodermic needle dropping to the floor. His hand shot out and grabbed the Medic's wrist and, wonder of wonders, avoided impaling his hand on the worryingly long sliver of metal heading for his neck.

"Christ, I thought you were the other one!" he gasped, but he kept his grip tight around the blue latex. Their own team's doctor wasn't that averse to questionable medical practices and Demo had learned to be wary regardless of what colour the doctor wore. "What's with the needle?"

Medic blinked, a bland expression on his face. "Sedative."

"What the hell for?"

The doctor turned his head briefly towards Demo's feet. Well, foot. "Dismemberment tends to be painful."

"It does sting a wee bit, yes!" Demo agreed in a rather shouty fashion. "And so does a needle in the neck. Where's your bloody Medi-gun?"

Medic shrugged ever so slightly. "Back at the base."

Demo gaped at him. It must've been the tacit questioning of Medic's unprofessionalism that actually prodded the doctor's expression out of blank and tipping into piqued.

"The mission finished over an hour ago," the German responded with a faint stain of exasperation in his voice. "You didn't show up, so I came looking for you."

"Without the Medi-gun?"

The doctor shifted slightly in his crouched position, a crease of annoyance between his brows. "We thought you might have passed out drunk somewhere."

Demo rolled his eye at that. "I spend my entire day drunk without passing out. Why would today be any different?"

Medic cleared his throat gently. "To be fair, you have done it before. Several times, if I recall correctly. Did you not fall asleep on the stairs to the sewers just last week?"

"I was resting with my eye closed!" Demo shouted, making the doctor lean back slightly.

"Some would say that is a definition of sleep, Herr Demo," was the rather snotty reply. "You really should let me give you this sedative."

"So I can wake up with Christ knows what-all sewn into or stapled on to me? You're havin' a laff!"

"There's no need to get upset. I thought you might want the trip back to base to be a little less painful." The doctor drew his arm back in acquiescence. It was enough to make Demo reflexively weaken his grip for just a fraction of a second which, unfortunately, was long enough for Medic to abruptly switch direction and slam his arm forward. The needle sunk into Demo's neck with an unholy hiss.

"Taigh na Galla orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrughhh!" Icy numbness spread from his neck to his face, and his head dropped back into the dirt with a clunk. Demo's last thought before he passed out a second time was that for an old guy, the doctor sure could move fast when he wanted to.
~
When he came to again, he was looking up at the surgery room ceiling with a surprising yet welcome lack of headache, neck sting or leg torture. There was, however, a very peculiar sensation going on around his liver. It probably had something to with Medic having his arm up to the elbow in Demo's torso.

"Is that normally how y' fix a severed leg?"

"No," said Medic, missing the heavy sarcasm, and continued his exploratory while the healing beam of the Medi-gun parted around his arm and sank into the frankly alarming incision in Demo's abdomen.

"Did yeh drop yer fookin' keys in there or somethin'? What the hell, doc! I didn't sign up for this shite!"

"I haven't had the chance to study the liver of a high-functioning alcoholic," Medic explained, as if that made it all alright.

"A drunk, you mean," Demo snapped.

Medic actually looked up at his crotchety tone. "Oh, I've seen plenty of drunks' livers, Herr Demo. No, you're something very special."

That actually made Demo blink. The way the doctor had said it sounded suspiciously like a compliment, albeit a bizarre one. But then, Medic was kind of a bizarre person. Or freaky. Yes, freaky would be a better term. He got excited or fascinated about the weirdest things. Usually things that involved cutting into bodies and reassembling them into something unmentionable.

"Your capacity to ingest substantial amounts of alcohol while remaining significantly competent is quite fascinating." The doctor did something with his hand that sent a peculiar and rather awkward fluttering through Demo's midriff.

"Doc, I've seen what your concept of "study" involves. Does this mean I've got some cadaver's hand or baboon's bollocks stitched to my liver?"

"Not today, no." Medic said that without a trace of amusement which made Demo wonder if the man actually possessed a sense of humour, even a poor one.

"Well, quit gropin', get yer bloody hand out and stitch me back up, cos I'm leavin' in thirty seconds. Assuming you've bothered to put me bas leg back on!"

"I've noticed that a great deal of Scottish contains insults," said Medic, showing a conspicuous lack of removing his hand from Demo's guts. "Is it a national sport?"

"Scottish Gaelic, thank you very much!" Demo yelled. "I aint from the Lowlands, you Austrian ghoul!"

Medic raised his eyebrows at that and moved his fingers in such a manner it made Demo flinch from the... well, it wasn't pain - the Medi-gun saw to that - but it was a sensation that Demo wasn't keen on feeling while Medic had his hand where nature had never intended.

"I aint kiddin', doc. I'm outta here with mah guts dangling around my knees iffa have to." And since that didn't seem to be swaying Medic in the slightest, the ante needed to be upped. "An' I can make life very unpleasant for yeh durin' downtime, so it's fifteen seconds and countin'."

"You'll put vanilla soup in my boots again?" Medic asked calmly, rolling his gaze up to the ceiling as he rummaged about for who knows what up in Demo's chest cavity. "Or put scorpions in my coffee, or rig the base's toilet seat to explode when it's sat on? Oh, I cannot imagine how I'd be able to put up with anything like that."

Demo squashed down a slight flare of guilt at being correctly identified as the perpetrator and decided he might need to revise his understanding about Medic and sarcasm.

"It's not vanilla soup, it's custard," he pointed out. "Five... four... three... two... one."

Typically, Medic kept his hand in right until the very end of the count.
~
It might've been that skerrick of guilt that made him sidle up behind Medic the next morning as they were waiting for the mission to start. It was a failing Demo had. Once he was identified as the mischief maker, it was like some distant cousin of buyer's remorse. "Scamp's shame" his mam called it and would then box his ears. Of course, up until the point of discovery, Demo had no qualms whatsoever about being a prankster.

"Hey doc, how about you peel yehself off the meat shield and let me look after you today?"

He could almost hear the raised eyebrows in Medic's cool response.

"Whilst I appreciate the gallant offer, Herr Demo, you will understand if I distrust your motives."

"Still angry about the toilet seat?"

"I do also have a responsibility to everyone on the team."

"Ah, but they cannie look after you like I can," Demo tried in his most charming voice.

Medic just snorted at him which Demo actually found a little hurtful.

"I'll let you fondle my liver afterwards."

He shouldn't've been shocked that his throwaway line was actually being seriously considered, but Medic's narrowed eyes and tilted head made him realise that it was being taken as a genuine offer.

"No promises," Medic warned stonily.

"From you or me?" Demo asked with a rising sense of panic as to what he'd actually just gotten himself into.

Medic just gave him a tight-lipped smile in response.
~
Truth be told, a large part of bartering for Medic's assistance was Demo's need to blow RED Soldier up a few dozen times in retaliation for blasting his leg off yesterday. Demo was rather old fashioned when it came to that sort of thing, and no-one revelled in a vendetta quite like a Highlander.

It turned out that not only was he able to accomplish this noble goal, but also branch out into a bit of unexpected offensive intel-stealing. It seemed that when you had an attentive Medic behind you, all manner of things were possible. It had worked better than Demo, and indeed the RED team, had expected.

"What did you do? Bribe him with bratwurst?" was Spy's caustic comment in the locker room.

"Ah, ye jus' jealous," Demo replied, unlacing his boots nonchalantly. "Maybe if you didn't stink of cigarettes and garlic, you'd get a bit o' love." Spy hissed and slid out of the room.

Medic deigned not to give any indication he'd heard Spy's remark as he returned back from the showers, nose in the air and bollock-naked. Sniper had said it was a German thing, this wandering about with no clothes on. Demo hadn't asked how Sniper knew that, but it did seem that Medic was singularly unperturbed by nakedness, whether it be his own or that of others. It perturbed Scout, though. He was always griping about "having to look at old man's balls" and questioning Medic's ulterior motive for not covering himself with a towel "like normal people".

"Laddie, no-one's got yeh in a headlock in front of the doc's groin," Demo pointed out, dropping a boot to the floor with an emphatic clunk. "If it bothers yeh, dinnae look." He saw Scout open his mouth to undoubtedly let forth some crass accusations. "Unless you're into tha'. Cos you sure do spend a lot o' time talkin' about it." He liked to think he heard Scout's mouth snap shut again as he walked by the boy.
~
Maybe he was into that. After all, it was true: Scout did carp on about it a lot. Everyone else just rolled their eyes and kept their gazes fixed about a foot above Medic's head when they were in the change rooms. At least until he got his clothes back on again. The rest of them had just tiredly accepted it as another one of Medic's bizarre behavioural traits. And to be fair, it wasn't like Medic wandered about the base nude like he was the deviant that Scout was accusing him of being. It was only in the locker room before and after a shower. Demo didn't know what Scout was fussing about. It wasn't like the doctor had a body that was terrible to look at. Or anything. Sort of.

Demo blinked at the ceiling and tried to think about something else.

"Herr Demo, are you alright?"

"Other than having y' fingers flirtin' with me guts?"

"You did agree to it. Have you changed your mind?"

Demo pressed his lips together and jiggled his leg, trying vainly to distract himself with something other than what Medic was doing.

"No."

"It's just that you're very quiet."

"Mmm."

"You haven't sworn for quite some time. Are you ill?"

Demo tried to fit the square notion of Medic into the round hole of sarcasm again, and failed. He sighed. "I need a drink."

"Can it not wait?"

"Y' wanted to study the liver of a high-functioning alcoholic, doc. Wouldn't me drinkin' improve the data?" He tried not to shudder as Medic ran the fingers of both hands around his liver.

"Variables are for another day, I think."

That brought Demo's head up from the table. "Oh, you reckon this is gonna happen again, do yeh?"

Medic just stared back at him with those unwavering blue eyes while his hands did something that, in Demo's opinion, skirted far too close to the suggestive. Or it would have been suggestive if it wasn't Demo's liver he was doing it to but something else no he really needed to not think about please dear God don't think about that just lay there and think about foot fungus or puking 'til your eye watered or the ten-day-old bloated carcass of a raccoon that he'd sat on when he and Scout and Pyro were hiding in a dumpster because Spy was on an angry rampage because someone God knows who had replaced his cognac with gripe water and cod liver oil just anything other than what Medic was doing with his hands!

"You appear to be sweating rather a lot."

"Withdrawals. Uh, doc, can we finish this another time?" Demo asked plaintively in a strangled voice, not realising that he was committing himself. "I think my liver's had all the groping it can take today."

Demo drank rather a lot after that. Even for a high-functioning alcoholic.
~
The next day's mission didn't go quite so well. It began OK, but then took a nosedive when Medic got his face smashed into a wall.

"Shall we try again, Herr Demo?" The soft voice behind him made him clutch the broken shield a little tighter as the countdown neared the start.

"Haven't you seen enough of my liver, doc?" His attempt at levity failed to quash the peculiar sensation that coiled around his stomach.

"You did say we could finish it another time," Medic reminded him with an utterly straight face. "And yesterday was so much fun."

Which bit? Demo wondered, and then decided he didn't want to know after all.

The trouble was that neither of them had put two-and-two together until it was too late. Although Demo had benefited from Medic's company the previous day, as a rule the two of them didn't often fight alongside each other for more than brief spurts - not the way that Medic and Heavy or even Pyro did - so they were lacking that valuable knowledge of how their respective weaponry performed in concert. It never occurred to Demo that the Chargin' Targe and the Quick-Fix were a potentially dangerous combination. For Medic, at least.

Demo had seen the chance to slip past a particularly annoying mini-sentry and taken it. By the time he'd realised that he should've warned Medic about the sudden increase in speed, the doctor had face-planted almost comedically into the brick wall to Demo's left. He heard more than saw the impact, it being on his blind side, after all. Medic sure let Demo hear what he thought about the crucial lack of communication, blood streaming down his face from a busted up nose and fractured cheek. It made Demo realise that his own language wasn't the only one to incorporate a fair amount of swearing.

Bafflingly, Medic had seemed far more angry about the heels of his boots getting ripped off in the futile attempt to stop the alarming forward acceleration he'd been thrown into. That's what Demo had surmised from the angry, incessant slew of German being shouted at him right before the Medic flounced off. And with that, he was operating solo again.

Not so bad. They won, at least. If only just. Plus there was the additional benefit that the others in the team didn't get a second day of a perceived lack of medical attention and start griping aloud about some secret arrangement going on that didn't include them. That was a batch of questions Demo really didn't need.

But Scout, nosy little shite that he was, had sniffed something out. One always knew because he'd place himself right in front of you, bat resting across one shoulder, chewing that disgusting gum and squinting at you like he was cleverer than Hercule fucking Poirot.

"D'ja get into a tiff with ya girlfriend or somethin'?"

Subtle. Demo tried one of those signature Medic blank looks on him.

"It jus' tha' the doc was sniffing your ass like a randy dog yesterday and this mornin', and then suddenly..." Scout mimed an explosion with his hand. "Poof!" Demo didn't know if Scout was smart enough to make a double entendre. He sure as hell knew that Scout wouldn't know what "double entendre" meant.

"Change of tactics, laddie. You should try it sometime," Demo parried back, trying to look a damn sight calmer than he felt.

"Hey, I capped the point way more times than you did, and I didn't have no stick-on doctor to do it!"

Attacking Scout's sense of pride was always guaranteed to distract him.
"Seriously, though, how d'ja do it? I been trying to get him away from that Russian fatball for ages and no dice. What makes you so special?"

"Well," said Demo, feigning reluctance and scratching his chin with his thumbnail. "I'll tell yeh, but..." He mimed looking around the empty locker room theatrically. "Yeh gotta keep it a secret," he told Scout in a ludicrously loud whisper, leaning towards the boy as if to reveal said secret. Scout, eternally lost when it came to matters that involved him being taken the piss out of, leaned down expectantly to where Demo was perched on the bench. "I let him touch my liver."

Scout gave him a look that screamed volumes. "You fucken sicko!" he denounced, disgusted, and stalked off.
~
He wasn't hiding in his workshop. Not at all. It's just that he had some modifications to make to his sticky bombs and now was a real good time to do it. It didn't have anything to do with wanting to avoid having Medic grubbing through his insides because the man was still probably still seething mad and likely to pull all of Demo's intestines out on to the floor.

Just him, the bottle, and some highly explosive materials. A much more familiar territory than exploratory surgery, and certainly an adequate distraction from things Demo would rather not be thinking about.

Medic, however, had other ideas about that. To his credit, he'd sat on the empty stool on the other side of the work table in silence, watching Demo work as if he didn't have a tedious and pissy lecture waiting in the wings. At first, the silence was welcome. Then it got a bit creepy. Then it got outrageously awkward and Demo felt obliged to say something because the thought of Medic staring at him was unnerving in the extreme.

"It wasn't deliberate, y'know." He put the screwdriver down and tried to be as earnest as he possibly could. "I just been so used to workin' alone that I didn't think to warn yeh."
Medic just stared at him from behind his glasses, no expression, no hint that he'd actually heard what Demo had just said, which wasn't helping Demo's anxiety in the slightest.

He tried a more apologetic tack. "I'm real sorry about yeh face an' all."

Medic's eyebrows shot up at that.

"Ah, no, that's not quite what I meant," Demo hastened to add, getting even more flustered. "Y' face is just gasta an' all but I, ah, that is, what I'm tryin' t' say is-" Dear God this was turning into a train wreck and getting worse the longer he kept his mouth moving. He desperately compelled himself to think about foot fungus, explosive puking and rotting raccoon carcasses but that just made him think even harder about precisely what he wasn't supposed to, so he just clamped his mouth shut and looked at a point about a foot above Medic's head.

"I do have my clothes on, Herr Demo, in case you hadn't noticed."

Demo was forced to drop his gaze back to Medic's face in the valiant hope that the doctor didn't know that he'd been thinking about the German in the nude, despite his best efforts at derailing those thoughts with repellent imagery.

"Ah, you noticed-"

"The way you all look a foot above my head when I am unclothed? Yes, I have noticed that quaint custom. Perhaps I should go forth into battle totally naked given how it seems to unsettle grown men so much."

Demo looked down at his hands, trying not to put any visuals to that concept.

"On that particular topic..." Medic rolled on.

Demo winced. Inwardly, he thought, but probably not.

"I think it is necessary for us to have a lengthy discussion on how this arrangement is to work most effectively."

Demo started to panic. Was this a German thing? Was he suggesting they engage in some kind of illicit act provided that they ticked metaphorical boxes of efficiency?

"Fungus puke carcass!" Demo yelled reflexively before he could stop it, scattering tools all over the table and on to the floor.

"Is that a rude Scottish Gaelic expression from your Highlands, Herr Demo?" asked Medic with a confused look on his face. "We can go through this another time if you prefer."

"Yeah, that'd be 's math sin, doc, if ye don't mind!" was the slightly muffled response. Demo had his head in his hands, trying to get a grip on himself and failing dismally.

"As long as it's before the next mission," Medic added.

"That soon?" Demo squawked. "Does it have to be that soon?"

The doctor paused noticeably before responding. "Yes." He drew the word out with an upward lilt at the end, turning his head to one side and giving Demo an odd look through narrowed eyes. "I'd rather not be spitting out broken teeth and brick dust a second time, if that's all the same to you."

The flood of relief was so strong, Demo could actually taste it in his mouth. "Oh. Oh! Y' mean battle tactics! Sure, nae bother!" He took a hearty swig from the bottle at his elbow and tried not to cough as some of the rum shot down his windpipe.

"Hmm," said Medic, thinning his lips and getting up to leave. "Oh, and Herr Demo, you still owe me at least two hours on the operating table for that variable data. Bring as many bottles as you feel you need."

"Jesus, doc, is my liver that fascinatin' to yeh?"

"Yes," was the laconic response. "It's..." Medic stopped by the doorway, searching for the right word. "Very large," he sighed.

Demo snorted. "Size queen." Under his breath, he thought.
"Let us assume that I don't know what that means, shall we?" Medic suggested without looking back.
~
They managed to work something out. Well, in terms of battle tactics. It didn't take long before RED realised that keeping them separated was a wise course of action, which just meant that they switched their approach until RED's defensive strategy changed, and then they went back to a short burst of explosive collaboration. It was sorely tempting to spend longer periods of time together during a battle since it worked so well, but it wasn't smart offensively: RED began to wise up to it pretty quick, and Scout started to bitch about dogs sniffing bums before ten minutes had passed.

Medic also found a way to get his hands in Demo's open torso for far more than two hours. He even managed to convince Demo to hold his own liver at one point, though that didn't last long and the doctor seemed a bit disappointed that Demo wasn't as overjoyed at the size of the organ as he was. He supposed it was big, but he'd not seen that many disembodied livers to compare it against, so decided just to take Medic at his word.

It was during one of these bizarre liver-centric exploratories that Scout barged in on them. Rather fortunately as it turned out, because the little bastard had continued to suspect some kind of sordid act going on between the two of them and was determined to catch them at it. Which he did, but it probably wasn't the sordid act he was expecting. Demo supposed that letting a man repeatedly dandle his liver wasn't precisely normal, but if it meant Scout backed off, satisfied that they were just a "pair of sick, gore perverts" and not something else, that suited him just fine.

And besides, if he could lay down for a couple of hours at a time, drinking, all in the name of "determining the hierarchy of heredity and environment", he was quite happy to take it. It had nothing to do with the increasingly addictive sensation of Medic's fingers sliding adeptly through his innards.

He frequently wondered if Medic was actually that good with his hands or whether it was just the Medi-gun making it seem that way, but such thoughts tended to make him sweat and had the doctor asking about Demo's irregular heartbeat.
~
One day, not too long after Medic made some interesting stained slides out of a liver biopsy that even Demo thought were quite pretty, he noticed that the doctor was looking uncharacteristically pensive. And since it was right before the beginning of a mission, Demo thought it important to ask why.

"Herr Demo, if I were to ask you a question, would you respond honestly?"

Demo froze. It had to be coincidence that the doctor had asked such a thing the morning after he'd had what was probably the most lurid and disgusting sex dream he'd had the fortune to have. In his unconscious mind at least, Medic really was that good with his hands. Especially when they were focussing on bits of Demo that didn't require a scalpel to access.

"I dunno, doc. I guess I could try," said Demo, bracing himself for the world's most awkward and ill-timed question.

"The RED Medic... has he ever..." The doctor paused and exhaled heavily out of his flared nostrils. "...done anything inappropriate to you?"

Demo blinked. "What, y' mean like trail his fingers repeatedly through the lobes of my impressively gargantuan liver?"

He'd meant it as a joke, something to lighten the mood, but he saw immediately that it'd been the wrong tack to take. Medic's expression barely shifted, but Demo saw the tightness around his eyes at the insouciant comment.

"That is completely different," Medic pointed out rather prissily. "I am very careful to make sure you do not feel pain."

That made Demo frown. "Doc, why are yeh asking about this?"

Medic turned his head away and stared rather fixedly at the wall, mouth clamped tightly shut. The refusal to answer didn't trouble Demo as much as the sheen of sweat across the doctor's forehead did. Medic didn't sweat. Not like this. Even on the battlefield Demo couldn't think of an instance where he'd seen the man sweat. He'd just figured it had something to do with the Medi-gun and thought no more of it.

"Has he?" Medic kept his eyes trained on the whitewashed bricks.

Demo was starting to think that perhaps a question about involuntary nocturnal ejaculation was preferable to this line of conversation. He felt oddly reluctant to being totally honest in the way Medic was asking, as if saying anything negative about the enemy Medic was a reflection on their own team's doctor. He tried his best not to think about what the RED Medic had a predilection for if he caught Demo with his pants down around his ankles. Metaphorically speaking, of course!

"He's... very thorough," was Demo's diplomatic and pathetically vague response, but it made Medic's jaw clench nonetheless.

"I see," was the equally understated response. The Scot wondered if the doctor was conscious of running the tips of his fingers slowly up the serrated blade of the bonesaw hanging at his belt.

Perhaps the odd exchange had coloured Demo's viewpoint, but it certainly seemed that Medic focussed an inordinate amount of attention on his doppelganger that day. At first it was quite subtle... a gentle nudging in the right direction, a happenstance meeting between the two Medics that devolved rapidly into a cat-spitting fight and sharp utensils being drawn and swung. Nothing untoward. But the frequency of it increased as the day went by until Demo found he was having to move at a belting run to keep up with Medic instead of the other way around. He could almost see the doctor's pupils dilate when the RED Medic came into sight. Fortunately the tactic worked in their favour since removing one of the enemy team's source of healing was having a significant impact in hampering RED's push into BLU territory, but Demo wondered how long it would take before Medic decided that even the solid wall of flesh and gun of the RED Heavy wasn't enough to stop him from going for his counterpart's throat.

The thing with joining the dots is that one can draw a line between any two points, even if it meant bending that line into a curve to go around other points. It didn't necessarily mean those should ever actually be connected. But when there was a third point set between those two extremes, well... that suggested some valid association. When one could draw a straight line through all three points, there wasn't much doubt.

At the time he hadn't thought anything of it, but the previous day Demo had stumbled across the two Medics driving bits of sharp metal into each other while having a shouting match. That itself wasn't unusual, but the RED Medic had flicked his gaze over to where Demo was standing and got a weird look in his eye, which was understandable since there was most of a bonesaw jammed up into his chest. But he'd looked back at the BLU Medic and spat out a sound just before he'd bled out and died. And since BLU Medic collapsed a few seconds right after him with a Vita-saw splitting his guts in two, Demo hadn't got a chance to ask what actually happened.

The mission finished not long after, and Demo had been immediately co-opted into one of Scout's harebrained schemes to give Spy the shits by getting Pyro to set fire to the Frenchman's tie collection. After that, all three of them had to make themselves scarce to avoid getting a balisong in the throat so Demo hadn't seen Medic until the morning.

In an almost repeat performance of yesterday, Medic had spotted the RED doctor retreating back around a supply building and shot after him like a greyhound. Demo decided that this had gone on long enough. If Medic kept doing this, RED would notice and use it to their advantage, and they were already worryingly close to pushing BLU all the way back to Respawn. Perhaps there was more than just RED Medic around the corner of that building which meant that Demo couldn't just throw his hands up and leave the doctor to it. He'd have to go around there and haul his arse out of the firing line.

But by the time he'd gotten there, RED Medic was already down on the ground with a bonesaw in his sternum and on his way to Respawn. The blood almost completely covered the blue of Medic's glove, his hand still tightly clutching the weapon's handle as if afraid the blade would slip free of bone and flesh.

"Doc, I'm a fan of grudges as much as anyone, but what the fook is going on with you two?"

Medic flexed his fingers, dropped his shoulder and dragged the bonesaw out from the corpse with a sickening sound.

"I didn't care for his diagnosis."

The third point that made the line straight.

It hadn't been just some random sound that the RED Medic had made yesterday. It had been a word. And not a German one, because the RED Medic had deliberately made sure that Demo had heard it, if not understood it until much later.

"Liar."
~
"Hmm, probably not a good idea," said Sniper, squinting at Demo through his aviators. "The doc didn't look too happy. Best leave him alone." He shut the locker door with a metallic clang and loped off with Pyro trailing his heels.

When Demo had gotten back to the locker room, Medic was already gone, which was pretty out of character because the doctor always liked to be very thorough with his ablutions after a mission. He'd asked some of the others where the German was, but beyond saying he'd vanished right after returning to the base, no-one could tell. Except for Pyro who seemed to be saying a lot but providing very little meaning.

It had actually been Sniper that had translated the muffled nonsense coming out of Pyro's gasmask in that weird way the Australian could. Scout sometimes acted like he knew what Pyro was talking about, but Demo had his doubts. Sniper just listened patiently to what Pyro was honking and distilled it down to four words.

"Up on the roof."

Where the bird coop was.

Sniper was probably right, but Demo had gone up there regardless, a bottle of something finer than he usually drank that he'd stashed away where Scout couldn't find it. He'd never seen Medic drink much alcohol beyond an occasional beer that he'd always condemn as grossly inferior to the German equivalent, but perhaps now was the time for something a bit stronger.

But when Demo got to the top of the stairs leading to the roof, he couldn't go through with it. It seemed wrong to intrude, even if his intentions were good. He didn't think Medic knew he was there. Facing away from the doorway and slouched down in a rickety and weathered wooden chair, his precious doves perched on or around him providing whatever solace birds provided to their carers, Medic was staring off into the distance, the foot of one outstretched leg rocking back and forth on its heel slowly.

Demo backed away, and left the doctor to his solitude.
~
Heredity and environment. Medic talked about that a lot. Demo had thought it had just been something the doctor had focussed on when it came to Demo's liver, but he'd heard the man speak of it in other situations: whether they were all a product of their environment or their genetics.

Being a drunk, or a "high-functioning alcoholic" as Medic insisted on calling him, was far less of a stigma to bear than being gay. Admittedly, people tended not to open their arms wide and welcome a worshipper of the bottle, but they generally didn't attack them physically, verbally and emotionally. Demo came from a reasonably long and glorious line of alcoholics, and it was hard to tell which out of heredity and environment was the prime factor. He certainly had no idea if he came from a long line of gays. There were some things that a family just didn't talk about, even when drunk.

An advantage of being a well-known soak was that was often the key identifier that people attached to you. For Demo it went hand in hand with a few other identifiers, but "drunk" usually came first. "Ah yes, Tavish McGroot, the drunk, black, one-eyed Scotsman." Four identifiers were more than enough to mark him, so he chose to embrace them with gusto lest someone decide that a fifth one was necessary. "Ah yes, Tavish McGroot, the drunk, black, one-eyed, Scottish shirt-lifter." Because no-one wanted to be known as a shirt lifter. No-one.

He thought back over all their recent exchanges and couldn't find anything that definitely pointed to Medic making any kind of sexual overture towards him. Nothing that indicated that Medic was even that way inclined, except maybe his calm reaction to Demo calling him a size queen. Even that was a thin connection. It might've been down to a lack of linguistic knowledge and colloquialisms. No, if a man's head was turned by another man, he made sure as hell no-one knew about it, because a lot of other people didn't take kindly to it. Especially men.

Oh sure, there were stories about men in war, men in jail, men who spent a lot of time in each other's company in places where there were few to no women, stories of unspoken arrangements that were kept out of sight, if not utterly secret. Just men helping each other out. Nothing more than that. It could never be anything more than that. For all Demo knew, some of his own team-mates might have such arrangements between each other, but he'd seen little that hinted at it that went beyond conjecture, so either it wasn't going on, or they were keeping it damn well hidden. Scout was always guaranteed to make some homophobic comment with a fervency that made Demo wonder if it was a case of "doth protest too much", and Soldier was also known to make remarks that on the one hand probably sounded to him incredibly patriotic and centred around teamwork, but on the other hand frequently sounded homo-erotic to Demo. For a spell, he'd wondered if there was something going on between Medic and Heavy because they did spend a lot of time together, both on and off the battlefield, but in those rare moments when homosexuality came up in conversation, Heavy always looked confused and seemed not to understand the concept of it. And Christ only knew what was going on between Sniper and Pyro because they seemed to share some form of mutual understanding that evaded everyone else and made Demo think that it might've extended into the bedroom but y'know that weren't none of his business what they got up to.

And besides, it was all pure speculation as to what the RED Medic had accused the doctor of lying about. It might have had nothing to do with sexual preference. The fact that particular topic had been preying on Demo's mind a lot recently was most likely pairing bias with guesswork, and it was rare that combination ever proved trustworthy. But whatever secret the lie was there to protect, that someone else knew of it had clearly unsettled Medic in a way that Demo hadn't seen before. Prior to this, he couldn't recall ever seeing the doctor ill-at-ease. Medic wasn't a man to be easily spooked. So it must have been something he didn't want anyone else knowing about.

As the clock ticked into the first hour of the new day, Demo gave up thinking about it. It seemed fruitless and was just going to get him into trouble. He took a long swig from the bottle until it was drained dry, and stood decisively. Best to go stand under a cold shower for five minutes and then go to sleep.

The expectation that the locker room would be empty at this hour was an understandable one, but incorrect nonetheless. He could hear that someone was in the showers, which presented quite the dilemma for Demo because he really needed that cold shower, but if he went in there, Christ only knew what the other occupant would think of the stubborn erection that Demo was currently on the path to sporting.

The awkward fact that parts of male bodies stood to attention, as it were, was something they all had to deal with, especially in the mornings. But since most of them showered in the evening, it was an awkward bodily reaction that they were usually able to spare each other the visual reality of.

Demo looked at the clothes strewn all over the locker room floor. If he were to guess who was in the showers from the carelessly discarded dirty clothing, it would be Scout. But since Scout was a terminal slob and would scatter his laundry far and wide if Dell wasn't fast enough to pinch the boy's ear between gloved fingers and force him to pick up after himself, it was probably a wrong guess.

Demo stood in the middle of the locker room and wondered if he could get away with wrapping a towel around his waist and holding another towel right in front of his groin and then go stand right under the shower without putting them aside. Really, all he needed was a good blast of cold water in a strategic area and he'd be sorted, and whoever else was in the shower would just think Demo was drunk and forgot to take off the towel before getting soaked, and didn't drunk people stand in cold showers to sober up? Demo didn't know for sure. He was a high-functioning alcoholic and not a drunk, after all.

Maybe it was Pyro. Demo had never seen Pyro shower, but he assumed they must wash. But Pyro was unfailingly stubborn when it came to the possibility of taking either their suit or their gasmask off, so that would necessitate waiting until no-one else was in the vicinity before washing. If Demo walked in there, Pyro would probably freak out and go straight for the flame-thrower. And Spy was also pointedly reluctant to shower at the same time as the rest of them, but Demo reckoned it had as much to do with Spy being an uptight snob than anyone seeing what he looked like with his mask off. The bastard probably washed himself with champagne.

Perhaps he should wait. Just turn around and come back in fifteen minutes, but Demo was really tired and didn't want to fall asleep right after using his hand to deal with his awkward problem because that would be messy and gross and he hadn't showered for over a day and this was just ridiculous for God's sake just get in there and get it done!

But of course it had to be Medic in there. Of course. Like a glorious confluence of fucking awkward moments. Demo would rather have stumbled across an uncovered, outraged Pyro reaching for a fire-axe, and he would've backed away swiftly if he hadn't wanted to forgo enjoying the unhindered view of Medic's backside. Ordinarily he'd not be able to give it much consideration lest someone else catch him looking, and it sure wasn't helping to address what he was trying to hide with the towels, but Demo had a rather prurient fondness for men with Medic's body shape. Trying to snatch brief glances wherever he could to form a patchwork image that he could use at night had become a more common, and rather dangerous practice for him, so being treated to the opportunity to get an eye-full of one whole half of the doctor's naked body wasn't to be wasted.

Being one of the fastest runners on the team probably had something to do with the way the man was built. He had speed and strength where Scout just had speed, so his muscles were longer and leaner and flowed very nicely up to his rear, into a narrow waist and up into some impressively defined shoulders.

Yeah, this wasn't helping Demo much, although his tricky groinal issue would probably be solved before he could dash back to his room if he kept staring any longer. He took a step backwards and then realised that Medic had his hands clutched around the taps and his head resting against the tiled wall, and since his back had turned a noticeable shade of red where the water touched, he'd been standing there for a not insignificant amount of time. It wasn't the posture of someone experiencing a lightness of being. Demo knew this because he'd been there himself the few times that his highly-functioning alcoholism failed to save him from an absolute skull splitter of a hangover. Sometimes all you could do was stand under the shower as still as you could and try not to die.

He cleared his throat. In that way people do that said "hey I'm about to make you aware that I'm here when you probably don't want me to be so do whatever you gotta do to make it less embarrassing cos you've got two seconds to do it".

Medic didn't move.

"Hey doc? Y'alright?"

Nothing.

Demo frowned. Surely the man wasn't asleep. Demo had never been able to master falling asleep standing up, and he'd given it a red hot go on a number of occasions. He approached the showers gingerly, spare towel still held resolutely against groin.

"Doc?"

Medic sighed. "What is it, Herr Demo?"

"Somethin' botherin' yeh?"

No response.

"Only, you seemed to be dealin' with quite a vicious looking vendetta today and it aint seem to be improvin' yer mood none."

A long pause. "It is nothing you need concern yourself about."

"Is that y' way of telling me to fook off?" He said it as gently and as non-threateningly as he could, but Medic still chose not to answer or even show any reaction to the question. Yet he must have shifted his shoulders just enough to change the angle the water was hitting at. A few drops ricocheted off his skin and on to Demo's arm, and that was when Demo wished he'd been sharp enough to spot that there had been no steam coming off the water. So Medic was either drunk or-

Ah. Ò thì! Perhaps Demo wasn't the only one sporting an awkward problem. "Well, I'll be off, then," he blurted out clumsily and took a few steps towards the door.

"I don't want him touching you."

The admission stopped him dead, his shoulders tightening. "Why now? Why him?"

No response.

He turned back around. "I mean, it's kinda ego-boostin' an' all the way you're fighting each other over m' liver but d'yeh think that's really-"

"You know that's not it."

Demo really didn't know what to do in this situation. He'd only come close to something like this once before, and the other guy had been three sheets to the wind so they'd finally danced around the issue, refusing to ask the question that neither of them felt they could dare to voice but it still ended up in a swift, fervent and messy sexual encounter that sometimes Demo thought back on quite fondly and that he'd be really keen to have happen again but not if he had to sound out whether Medic was taking an equally circuitous route to the same hopeful outcome and this really wasn't making the increasingly large problem behind Demo's hands any easily to manage but Jesus Christ he'd rather not attempt it if there was a chance that wasn't what Medic wanted at all and before he knew it he was standing under a sheet of icy water swearing through clenched teeth and his hand clamped around a cold tap.

"Sweet fookin' Christ, how can y' just stand under it like tha'?!" he yelled through chattering teeth, the towel around his waist glued to his skin and providing no respite from the bone-splinteringly cold water.

"Is it helping?"

"Not in the fookin' slightest!"

Medic's body must've been numb for him to be able to not even flinch at the water temperature. He just kept his forehead resting against the tiles, eyes closed and giving the impression of ease but Demo saw how tightly his hands were gripping the taps.

"No, I've found it doesn't always work."

Demo dropped his gaze below Medic's waist, finally able to see the other half to complete his mental map of the man's body. He was right. It didn't work.

"Tell me, Herr Demo, are you still looking a foot above my head?"

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

Medic rocked his head to one side, eyes opening slowly to stare at him. He looked odd without his glasses. Smaller. Less knowing. Certainly less threatening. Demo could see that the cold water had turned the man's lips a faint bluish tint and the end of his nose a shade of red that matched his back. With a terrified fascination, he watched the hand that detached from the tap drift towards him, one outstretched finger pushing aside the towel-clutching hand with a slow and almost accusatory determination, to then slip over the edge of the sodden towel around his waist. With an abrupt and jolting swiftness, Demo found himself dragged across and in front of Medic, pinned smack against the tiles. For an old guy, the doctor sure could move fast when he wanted to.

The cold water sluicing out of the shower head made him gasp raggedly into Medic's mouth, but he wasn't about to stop drawing the doctor's tongue greedily into him, relishing the way it twined with his own, a stark and hot counterpoint to his chilled lips. He had to push against the Medic's chest to get him to release his bottom lip from between the man's teeth.

"We're takin' a real risk here, doc. Someone walks in, an' we're done for."

The water stopped flowing. "Then you'd better get moving, hadn't you?" The growled order sent Demo's mind shuffling through a range of fantasies in his head like they were a deck of cards. Since there was no time to ask specifically what Medic wanted, Demo took a solid guess and slid his back down the tiles. Threading his fingers through thick, damp hair, Demo closed his hand firmly around the base of Medic's cock and opened his mouth. The unspoken invitation was eagerly accepted, engorged flesh sliding over his tongue to be gripped by suckling muscle. One hand slipped around the back of his head to stop the uncomfortable press of skull against tile as the doctor pushed in deeper and deeper, back arching so that the length of his torso was stretched out taut, allowing Demo to see the way his muscles bunched and relaxed rhythmically with each thrust. It was too tempting not to run his hand up that wall of brawn as it glistened wetly, the light catching the contours in a flowing flicker.

The throb in Demo's groin swelled and built as Medic plundered his mouth, hips swaying forward and back in an increasing arc until the entire length of him was driving in and out, hot and firm and delicious. A side effect of being a copious drinker was that Demo knew how to open his throat and it was a skill that Medic was clearly taking a lot of delight in, whispering with each heavy exhale words that Demo couldn't understand. He ran both hands down and along the length of Medic's thighs, back and around and up to those firm buttocks, squeezing and kneading them in time with each thrust. He splayed his fingers wide and slipped them briefly between each cheek, and was rewarded with a low groan.

But that would have to wait for another time because Demo wasn't about to rush through that particular delicacy, and it was a lot trickier to pretend that you hadn't been doing anything unsavoury when someone else walked in on you while you were balls deep in a guy's arse. And Demo really, really wanted to spend a lot of time balls deep in Medic, preferably without embarrassing interruptions.

He gripped the doctor's hips and pushed back, emptying his mouth and standing up until they were face to face again.

"Y'know, doc, I never told yeh, but y' real good with y' hands so how about you use 'em on somethin' a bit lower down than me liver?"

The disappointment in Medic's eyes switched into a sharp resolve.

"Spit!" he ordered, holding one hand, palm up, before Demo's mouth.

The sodden towel was ripped from his waist and there was barely time for his cock to appreciate being freed from its icy, wet prison before it was enveloped in slick warmth. Demo's breath hitched in his chest as Medic began to stroke his hand firmly and smoothly from head to base and back again, treating the tip to a delicious, slippery twist that made Demo's legs shake.

"And what will I be studying tonight, Herr Demo?" Medic hissed quietly, his mouth so close to Demo's that the blade of a scalpel couldn't have fit between them. "How heredity and environment can sometimes work hand in hand to produce something truly spectacular? I'll be sure to add a footnote that your liver isn't the only thing about you that's very large."

"Size queen," Demo gasped, pressing his fingertips futilely against the wet, cold tiles behind him.

That got him a low chuckle and a long, deep kiss that held him trapped as Medic's unoccupied hand cradled his balls and tugged gently, making the Scot's toes curl up tight, and he realised that the way the man had stroked his liver had been more than just suggestive. Demo wondered if anyone else could claim that they'd had their liver wanked off, let alone more than once, but the thought fractured and dissolved as questing fingers slipped around his balls and between his legs to tease him until he couldn't stand it any longer.

He flattened his hand into the small of Medic's back and pulled him closer so that he could trap the man's erection against his own, admiring the contrast in their skin as they slid against each other. Soft, silken flesh shifting against a thick and hardened core. Veins swollen and feeding desire with urgency. Each juicy tip getting slicker and darker as they nuzzled against each other, finding a rhythm that had them straining to hold back.

It wasn't long before they both had a hand clamped tightly around the fervent manifestations of their lust for each other, squeezing them together with a dizzying enthusiasm.

Demo was at something of a disadvantage from the way Medic was pushing him back against the tiles, the man's hips scooping up sharply so his cock could slide along Demo's length in a dominating and possessive manner. The unbroken stream of German being murmured determinedly in his ear was both disorientating and carnal in its effect, and the sight of the thrust and slide going on between their hands drove Demo closer and closer to orgasm.

"English, doc, English for fook's sake!" Demo begged, feeling the flush of heat spreading up his neck and the tell-tale drawing up of his balls that told him he wasn't going to last much longer.

"Oh, Herr Demo, next time I am going to fuck you until you cannot stand," Medic groaned in his ear. "Is that what you want to hear me say? Is that what you want me to do? If you think I am good with my hands, just imagine what I can do to you with my cock."

And with that, he was over the edge, cursing and shuddering, head thrown back as Medic sank his teeth into his neck, long fluent gouts bursting forth and splashing up and along his abdomen and chest. There was nothing he could do but ride out the painfully sweet contractions of his orgasm as they thudded through his groin and wrenched everything greedily out of his balls, trying desperately not to allow his legs to buckle from under him. The long, wet sweep of Medic's tongue running up his torso, lapping up the lines of hot pearly fluid, forced a strangled moan out him.

He watched Medic pull away from him, saw him run his tongue over his own bottom lip and slide his fingers through his hair to push it back off his forehead, admiring how dishevelled he looked and how his muscles rippled tightly under his skin after their exertions.

"Do not be long, Herr Demo," Medic warned him smoothly, as if he hadn't just dick-fucked him flat against the wall. "Pyro will be along soon, and I have learned that they really don't like company when they shower." His hand shot out and turned the cold tap to maximum before he left, leaving Demo hollering a vow of revenge at the doctor's retreating backside.