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Scout was bored.
Not an unfamiliar predicament for him in this hellhole of a base, unfortunately. He frequently found himself in this situation. Turns out there wasn't much you could do in terms of fun when you were stuck living with eight - seven? - other men in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. Sometimes, if the weather was temperate (which meant anything below 80 degrees), Scout could whinge enough to convince one of the others to help him practice his batting and catching. That usually gave him something to do for at least an hour.
It definitely wouldn't be happening today, though. Especially now that it was the peak of summer, and the sun was beating down hard enough to make anyone who went outside sweat like a pig. The chances of doing anything outdoors aside from (miserably) fighting were in the negatives. Hell, Scout had gone out for a mere half hour earlier, just to attempt some solo batting practice against a wall, and ended up retiring early because his damn shoes were practically flooded with sweat. He would've stayed for longer, totally, but he remembered Soldier saying something about trench foot, and honestly? He didn't want to risk it.
He had come back in, not yet defeated, and hunted down Pyro in the base, only to find them cooped up in their room, laying on the floor in front of a plug-in fan like some sad rubber pancake. Scout tried to convince them to set up their kiddie pool outside, using the idea of a splash fight as leverage, but the asbestos suit-clad firebug was adamant about not setting foot out in that heat. Figures. If Scout was worried about trench foot, then Pyro was probably worried about trench body. If that existed.
As everyone else either seemed to be napping, reading, watching a movie (Spy kicked Scout out after he made a singular complaint about the cheesy plot), or tinkering with their weapons, Scout gave up on getting any meaningful entertainment out of anyone and decided to trudge down to the infirmary to check out whatever Medic was doing. The doctor was usually up to something, be it dissecting some unrecognizable creature or harvesting the organs of an animal he got shipped in. While watching a fucked-up version of Operation wasn't exactly on Scout's favorite list of activities, it had to be miles better than sitting around on his ass and feeling it go numb.
Not to mention, with the medbay being located under the rest of the base, it was much cooler in temperature. Scout relished in the creep of cold air as he descended the wooden steps, and felt no shame in flapping his shirt to get some circulation going between his flushed skin and the thin fabric. He only hoped he didn't smell like a sweaty dog. Maybe he should've slapped some cologne on. If Medic was working on something and Scout had any opportunity to feign interest and get close to the guy, he wanted to take advantage of that.
For no reason, of course.
After reaching the end of the basement hall, Scout paused in front of the infirmary doors, conducting a quick physical check on himself via his reflection. He didn't appear too flushed. No noticeable sweaty spots on his shirt, thankfully. And he was definitely wearing underwear. He lifted up either of his feet, checking for mud on the bottoms of his shoes. It hadn't rained in forever, but it didn't hurt to make sure - Medic was very particular about stuff being tracked into his lab.
Deeming himself presentable, Scout knocked a couple times, waited, then pushed the doors open and entered.
His hopes of wringing some semblance of fun out of the rest of the day dissipated instantly.
It looked like a damn tornado ran through the entirety of the medbay. Cardboard boxes were everywhere - some were stacked in piles of two or three, others were shoved in clusters against walls, some were just sitting in the middle of the floor. A few were even on the operating table, which surprised Scout, since Medic always took great care to keep that surface sterile. Piles and piles of papers were strewn about, some having fallen over, and good lord doves were all over the place. Scout counted 5 of them in just one corner, perched on stacked boxes as if they had claimed territory. He yelped as one dived towards him out of nowhere, clearly trying to make an escape through the still-open medbay doors, and the runner hurriedly shoved them closed. "Jesus Christ- Doc, are you in here?"
No response. Scout sighed, kicking absently at a stray cardboard lid as he made his way towards the center of the lab. Sheesh, the place was a complete mess. Scout wasn't much for neatness (he still hadn't put up his clean laundry from last week and now his dirty clothes were tossed on the floor), but it was strange seeing the normally spotless and sanitized lab suddenly turned into what looked like the world's most unethical garage sale.
Approaching the operating table, he opened up one of the boxes out of curiosity, only to be met with careful stacks of manila folders. Lame. He'd been hoping for something freaky like a disembodied arm or whatever. That would've been an interesting twist to what looked like a complete bore fest.
He was going to start rummaging through the other boxes on the table, but was alerted to the sounds of shuffling and knocking coming from a room tucked in the corner. Medic emerged from the doorway seconds later, arms full of... more boxes. Thrilling. He bent over to set them in a corner, then dusted himself off and turned to head back into the room - without noticing Scout, which was pretty much a crime.
Scout cleared his throat. Medic stopped dead in his tracks, head swiveling towards the other mercenary, expression like that of a deer caught in headlights. The older man visibly relaxed when he recognized the younger, and he smiled warmly. "Oh, Herr Scout! Es tut mir leid, I didn't hear you come in."
The runner realized he'd been standing there holding the box full of documents open, and hurriedly closed it. Didn't wanna seem like he was peeking at any of the doc's personal belongings - even though he technically was. "Oh, yeah, uh, sorry 'bout that, I called for you but I guess ya didn't hear me." He awkwardly stepped away from the operating table, tripping over a smaller unseen container and catching himself on a rolling tray. "Shit, sorry - what's with all the boxes, man? You gonna do a garage sale or somethin'? I don't think anyone in Teufort wants orangutan lungs."
Medic chuckled, nudging some of the boxes aside with a foot to clear a path towards Scout. "Nein, it's more like spring cleaning. Or, I suppose it's summer cleaning now." He began flipping through one of the stacks of paper on the stainless steel table. "I meant to do this last month, but I had to closely monitor Sniper after his kidney replacements. He seems to be doing much better with those elephant ones!"
Scout winced in disgust, talk about TMI, and stepped over to Medic's side, stealing a glance at the papers he was rifling through. Seemed like it was all written in German, but he probably should've expected that. "So... what's all'a this?"
Medic hummed in reply, studying a particular page closely. "It looks like they're old notes on an unsuccessful experiment of mine from some years ago." He shuffled the papers into a tight stack and held them out to Scout. "If you could do me a favor, bitte, and set these on my desk with the others."
Scout, for once in his life, demonstrated couth in how he carefully took the stack from the taller man, not wanting to fuck up such a simple task and disappoint him. Any chance to prove himself to Medic he'd gladly take. He shuffled over to the large metal desk across the room, plopping the papers down and peering at some diagram drawn on the top page. "Uh, if it's a failed experiment, why keep the notes? Ain't it just takin' up more space?" He pulled the rolling chair out from the desk, unceremoniously flopping down onto it and grabbing a couple pages off the top of the stack.
"Even if an experiment yields unfavorable results, you should keep your notes on the materials and procedures so it can be replicated in the future!" Medic's voice came from further away now, indicating he'd returned to the back room, and he spoke louder for the other to hear him. Scout didn't really know what any of that meant, and he definitely didn't know what any of the notes said, but at least the illustrations were cool. There was a kickass drawing of a crocodile with two heads, and below it, a cross section of its modified internal anatomy. Scout hoped that wasn't a human brain.
He could hear the doctor somewhere behind him now, setting down more boxes, and he swiveled around in the chair to flash the page towards the other man, grinning cheekily. "Dude, a double-headed gator? I want whatever you were smokin'."
Medic gave a questioning look, his head quirking to the side - Scout thought it kind of made him look like one of his doves - and he approached the runner, taking the paper from him and adjusting his glasses before squinting down at it. "Oh, I remember this," he said. "I wanted to create a domestic trainable crocodile that acted as a more efficient guard dog. One set of jaws is already incredibly powerful, but imagine two of them!" He gave a short laugh, and handed the page back to Scout, waving a hand dismissively. "It didn't work out, sadly."
"Wait, you actually did it?"
"Of course."
"What happened to it?"
"Infection, it died after three days. Very unfortunate."
Scout stared up at the doctor from his seat, face set in utter disbelief. Medic must've taken some kind of pleasure from his reaction, because he laughed again and ruffled the younger man's hair before turning to head towards the back room once more. "If you'd like something to do, feel free to help organize some of these boxes. Ones filled with papers can go by the wall next to you."
Scout visibly perked up at that. Another opportunity to prove his worth, and one so simple he'd definitely excel at it? Absolutely. Anything to make him look better in the doc's eyes.
He stood up, abandoning the freakish crocodile notes, and stretched his arms out, grunting as he felt his shoulders pop. He gazed around the large crowded room.
Damn. He may have bit off more than he could chew. Suddenly the amount of boxes and papers felt overwhelming, and for a flicker of a moment, Scout briefly considered telling Medic that he was actually really busy himself and was gonna head out now, sorry. Nah, that'd be rude. He already made a silent commitment to do this by not objecting to it.
Besides, maybe there'd be something worth finding in all those old boxes. Maybe something that Medic had forgotten, stuffed away for decades. Maybe something embarrassing. That'd be funny. Scout wandered over to one of the piles positioned in a corner near the doors, and shooed away the doves that guarded it. He flipped open the first box on the pile, and, yeah, okay, he should've expected it to be more papers. Maybe he should ditch those hopes of finding anything neat.
The next 30 minutes were spent opening boxes, being disappointed by heaps of notebooks or journals or stray pages, and scooting them over to the wall with the others. At this point, Scout was begging in his mind to find something other than papers upon papers. He'd even accept a dead animal. Or a petrified body part. Then again, if he opened a box to a severed head, he'd probably freak out. But also, it had to be more interesting than... he squinted in confusion at the title scrawled across the cover of the notebook he was holding. Interspezies-Paarung von Musteliden...? Okay. Whatever that meant. Yeah, a head would definitely be cooler.
Things became pretty monotonous after that. Mere minutes felt like they spanned hours, and Scout had to frequently stand up and stretch his legs to prevent them from cramping or going numb. He'd fallen into a routine at this point. Open box, immediately see papers, close box, shove to wall, repeat. The runner tried to make small talk with Medic between the man's trips to the back room, but judging by the other's rushed tone, it was obvious he was just trying to get this over with. Scout wondered how long Medic had been working at this mess. A glance at the clock mounted above the infirmary doors showed that he himself had only been down here for about an hour, and he was already starting to feel restless. He'd given up on finding anything neat or gross a while ago. And while the carefully drawn sketches and highly detailed diagrams in some of the notes warranted an interested glance or two, Scout was honestly wishing he were back in his room reading comics instead. The only reason he stayed...
He looked behind him, craning his neck to peer across the room at Medic, who was writing on a clipboard. At some point, he had ditched his labcoat, revealing the waistcoat and pressed dress shirt underneath. He looked smaller without the large garment fanning out behind him. Slimmer. Scout wondered how he kept in shape, then supposed all the running around while carrying heavy equipment probably did it for him. He hadn't noticed his eyes had been resting on the outline of the man's hips until Medic walked away, tapping a pen to his chin as he disappeared into the other room.
Shit. He thanked his lucky stars that Medic hadn't noticed him staring. The younger man brushed an arm across his face, as if it would wipe off the light blush that had spread across his cheeks, and tucked his head down, hoping the distraction of sorting boxes wouldn't allow for any more stray thoughts.
So far, he'd made some significant progress, with the path to Medic's desk completely clear of obstacles. He figured that'd be the best place to start, so the doctor wouldn't have to step around cardboard landmines to reach it. Which was definitely a good thing, because the runner didn't want to imagine what kind of catastrophe one of these containers would create if it was kicked over. It turned out an awful lot of those boxes were chock-full of whatever medical or scientific notes Medic had taken over the past three decades. Scout, with his minimal knowledge of any sciences, wondered if it was actually a hoarding issue or if it truly was just preservation as Medic had stated. And if it was preservation... surely there was no need to keep this much. As he pushed a particularly large box against the wall with the others, he made a mental note to never let his comics collection get this bad.
After the path had been cleared, Scout found it easier to sort through the remaining boxes on his side of the medbay. Medic had stopped going in and out of the back room a while ago, and was now on the opposite end of the area, joining Scout in the effort to sort his belongings. The older man didn't seem as hurried as before, and Scout was finally able to get some actual conversation in, which he'd been dying for.
To be fair, it was mostly him talking. Not that Medic appeared to have any problems with that. Unlike the others, the doctor never shushed Scout or left the room once he started yapping away. It was something he had noticed a couple times before. Even if Medic wasn't looking in the runner's direction as he talked, he'd offer intrigued hums or nods to whatever Scout was saying. And, listen, Scout wasn't emotional by any means. Nuh-uh. He wasn't some kind of sensitive wuss, even though his (very healthy, mind you) fear of cockroaches would say otherwise. But to have someone listen to him talk about his day or tell stories of his brothers back home and not be immediately uninterested kind of gave him butterflies in his stomach. Or maybe he shouldn't have eaten the expired yogurt from the fridge this morning. Either way.
At the moment, Scout was telling Medic about the time one of his older brothers had found a nest of rats in the hood of his car - which was totally crazy, they were huge rats, as big as his hands - but his tale was cut short when one of the boxes he'd flipped open wasn't full of papers. It appeared instead to be full of books, really old ones by the looks of it, and Scout reached in to grab one out of curiosity.
The book's age was immediately apparent as Scout tugged it from where it had been nestled between some much larger ones. There was an awful lot of dust on the aged leather cover, and there didn't seem to be any title, not even after Scout had wiped it off with his shirt. He flipped it around to discover an absence of detail on the back as well. God, please don't be another journal.
The runner sat back on his knees and laid the book on his lap before opening it. The first page, yellowed around the edges, was empty, and so was the second. Scout tried to be as gentle as possible with the pages, because he was seriously worried that even the tiniest slip-up would rip a corner or something and then he'd have ruined one of Medic's books, which was a worst-case scenario right now. He didn't want to find out how he'd react to a pissed off Medic. A Medic pissed off at him, actually.
He flipped the page to reveal the third, which did appear to have writing on it. The only problem was that it was in cursive, which Scout admittedly had trouble reading. He hadn't really paid attention when learning it in school, because, c'mon, he can print just fine. From what he could make out, though, it didn't seem like the handwriting was in English, and the only way he could tell was because some of the letters had those little dots over them. He forgot what Medic called them. But they were definitely there.
Scout turned the page and a pile of something fell on his lap.
He jolted where he was sitting, but upon closer inspection, Scout quickly realized it was just a bunch of photographs. He visibly relaxed, relieved that he hadn't unleashed some animal's pelt or dead insects or whatever hides in old dusty forgotten books. Setting the open book on the floor, Scout gathered up the photos and stacked them in his hands as if they were a pack of baseball cards. The lighting where he was sitting wasn't too great, so he decided to get up and move back to the rolling chair at Medic's desk, leaving the book behind.
Once he'd settled himself down in the office chair, he turned on the cheap plastic desk lamp, aiming it towards the center of the table's metal surface. The first photograph in the stack appeared to be of a lake, and Scout could make out what looked like a small fishing boat in the middle of it. The photo behind that was similar - just some scenery, this one being of mountains in the distance. It looked like this picture had been taken on the boat, because whoever took it was sitting on the end of it, and the other half could be seen in the corner of the picture.
Scout huffed through his nose, slightly disappointed. He'd finally found something interesting and it looked like it was just a bunch of vacation photos. He aimlessly flipped through photo after photo of forests, lakes, mountains, tossing them onto the desk as if they were duplicate cards.
He was about a third of the way through the stack when the nature photos stopped, and the one Scout was holding now was of a little boy standing in front of the fishing boat from before. Scout leaned his head down to get a better look at the faded picture, some of it having washed out over the years.
The boy in the picture was pretty young, Scout figured maybe 7 or so. He was wearing a collared shirt and slacks, and his dark hair fell in long bangs over his face. The kid was smiling widely, his eyes upturned behind big round glasses, and he was clutching a huge snake in his right hand. Scout's eyes widened. Okay, maybe not huge huge, but the thing certainly spanned the kid's height. Its mouth was open, exposing its sharp fangs. Scary. He noticed a caption written on the bottom portion of the photograph, and thankfully, this time the writing wasn't in cursive. "Eine große Schlange gefangen!" Guess whether it was in cursive or not didn't matter, since Scout couldn't understand it anyway.
Setting the photo beside the lamp and away from the previous ones, he studied the next one in line. Again, the caption was legible to him. "Im Inneren eines Fisches." The same boy from before, this time proudly holding a large fish. If that dark spot in the middle of its body and the mess next to the kid's feet were anything to go by, Scout assumed the fish had been completely gutted. He grimaced, remembering the time back home when one of his brothers had caught a small shark in the harbor. They'd all been determined to cook it, hard-set on the idea of shark burgers, but the utter bloody disaster that took place in the kitchen sink had gotten his brother a whooping and all of them grounded. Scout set the photo aside. Yeah, not a fan of fish guts.
The photograph underneath the fish one was much more interesting. Here, the kid looked older, probably in his tween ages, and he was sitting on a bicycle by an empty dirt road. There was a small tweed basket mounted to the front of it, with a little grey rabbit poking its front half out. Upon closer inspection, Scout realized the rabbit was missing a front leg and an ear. The caption read "Flaumchen geht auf Reisen".
Scout took another look at the kid, squinted, and then briefly felt his heart drop. The boy's dark bangs were cut a little shorter, just above his thick eyebrows, and his glasses were better fitting, still circular. Still dressed in a collared shirt, this time wearing khakis. But for some reason, he couldn't tear his gaze away from the kid's face. Something was off. Maybe it was the cheekbones? Or maybe the fact he still had the same wide, toothy smile as he did in the other photos? Scout knew he had never seen this kid in his life, since the photo was probably older than him, but he felt like he had.
Swallowing heavily, he leaned back in the chair and called across the room. "Hey Doc, who's the kid in this photo?"
Medic, up to his knees in boxes, placed the one he was holding down and began to make his way over to where Scout was seated at the desk. "Photo? Where did you find that?"
Scout reached his arm out, holding the photograph up to the man as he approached. "In one of the boxes over there. It fell outta some old book. Who's the kid though?"
Medic took the picture from the runner's hand, once again pushing his glasses up on his nose and inspecting it. Scout watched the doctor's expression change from curiosity to confusion, his brows furrowing together. Then, a slight quirk of his upper lip, and he chuckled quietly, his face settling into a soft smile. "Oh, Gott im Himmel, that's me."
Scout couldn't help how his jaw dropped. Yet again he was staring at the doc, completely dumbfounded, but Medic was unfazed. "You said it fell out of a book, ja? What book?" he asked, looking down at Scout. The younger man fumbled for words, but pointed over to where he had left the object on the floor. Medic retrieved it, briefly skimming through it, and took another look at the picture he was still holding. "Strange, I think this may have been a photo album at some point. Or it was supposed to be. Were there any other photographs when you found it?"
Once the initial shock had dissolved, Scout cleared his throat, turning in the chair to grab the other pictures off the desk before replying, "Yeah, like I said, they all just kinda, uh, fell out. Into my lap. But none of them ripped or anything. I think. I dunno. I was real careful though." Ugh, he was babbling. He couldn't help it, not after that twist. His thoughts were all jumbled now, and he tried to push down how his heart flipped at the very real possibility of seeing a Medic his age in the photos. "Hey, uh, I'm not tryin' to pry or somethin', 'cuz um, I know it's kinda personal - I think - but why were these all hidden away in a dingy old box? Like, me personally, I keep pictures of me 'n my folks on my bedroom wall."
Medic had taken the photos from him, gathered up the scenery ones from earlier, and was now taking his time flipping through them with a thoughtful look on his face. Scout heard him mumble something under his breath, but he couldn't make out what it was, and then Medic said, "I must have forgotten about them when I moved here. I suppose these were eventually packed away in that closet to make room for more important things." He smiled again, turning one of the photos around so Scout could get a view of it. It was the lake one. "This was where I grew up, in the rural part of my hometown. My father was a farm vet."
Well, that made a lot of things make sense. The obsession with animals' anatomy and body parts, for one.
Scout had a lot of questions, but he didn't want to bombard Medic with them. Not when the older man was concentrated on the photos, holding them up towards the overhead lights and tilting his head. Scout had never seen Medic look so solaced, and he wondered how long it'd been since he'd last seen these pictures. It was strange, seeing him study something so closely and not be grinning with wild ideas or covered up to his elbows in blood. It was a good look on him. The younger man felt his chest tighten at how the doctor's usually sharp features appeared softer, his grey eyes brighter than usual, the small wrinkles around them more noticeable. Scout hoped he wasn't blushing again.
Scratching behind his ear nervously, the runner swiveled the chair around, trying to appear calm, collected, and not too eager. "So, uh, s'it cool if I see some of those?"
Wordlessly, and without looking away from the picture he was holding, Medic offered one of the photos to Scout, who took it delicately, as if it were a thin sheet of glass. He copied the doc's movements, holding the picture up towards the light, and was able to make out the image of a much younger Medic, perched on the hood of what looked like a very nice car. The way he was posed threw off the feel, though. The car was cool-looking, for sure, but that was kind of lost with the way the youthful man on the hood sat with his hands folded in his lap like it was picture day at school. Regardless, Scout found himself staring the younger version of the doc for a little longer than he'd like to admit, biting the inside of his cheek. After realizing he'd probably been looking for too long, he whistled. "Mannn, that car is sick. And you left that behind? I woulda lived in that thing."
"It needed a lot of upkeep," Medic said, setting another photo on the desk next to Scout, as if to discard it. "I think we sold it just before the war. I wouldn't have been able to bring it overseas, anyway."
Scout leaned over to look at the picture on the desk, and made a choking noise in his throat. Not on purpose, of course. But he didn't like the twist of jealousy in his gut when he saw the photo of Medic, young and handsome, interlinking arms with a girl. They were both dressed in formal attire, with Medic wearing a proper suit and tie, hair neatly combed and swept back. Scout felt like someone had just shown him a picture of a rotting corpse filled with squirming maggots. His voice came out unexpectedly small. "You uh, had a girlfriend."
"Hm?" Medic had propped himself up on the desk, sitting on the corner, and glanced down at the photo he'd tossed away. "Oh, heavens no, she was a friend of mine. I believe she was going to school for dentistry. Or optometry. I can't remember."
Scout licked his lips, hating how dry his mouth suddenly felt. "But it looks like you're on a date. You're dressed up all nice."
Medic rubbed at his neck, looking away. "Nein, we were..." He trailed off, and Scout noticed he seemed to be thinking about his words carefully. "We were friends, but her girl friends dragged her to a party, and she didn't want to go alone. She spent a long time convincing me to act as her date. I can assure you there was no romance involved." Scout's shoulders slumped in relief, which Medic definitely noticed, because he reached down to muss up the runner's hair once more. "Trust me, medical school was stressful enough! I certainly didn't want a relationship on top of that."
Scout said nothing, only picked up the pile of photographs Medic had set down during his explanation and started to spread them out on the empty space of the desk. There were quite a few pictures of Medic during his schooling years, he noted, a lot of them having been taken in a lab with other students. One showed Medic and another man, both in lab coats, posing a model skeleton into giving a thumbs up. The two men were doing the same, big smiles included. "I can't believe you were a normal doctor at some point," Scout mused.
"Am I not normal now? How rude," the older man teased, clearly messing with the younger. He had been holding the empty photo album, and fiddled with the pages a bit before pushing off from the desk. "I should probably put those in this, eventually. Just so I don't lose them again."
"I could help," Scout blurted out, then tripped over his own words in an effort to cover up his excitement. "Uh, if you want, I mean. Or uh, I've got an idea - you could do like I mentioned and tack 'em up on a wall or somethin'. Like on this board." He rapped a fist against the cork board posted over the desk to emphasize his point. "Engie's got somethin' like this in his workshop, and Demo's got pictures of his family pinned on the inside of his door." He only knew that last bit because of a reckless mission to sneak in and steal some gunpowder from the Scot's quarters. Making fireworks with Pyro and all that.
Medic thought for a moment, then nodded. "Not a bad idea," he said, then plucked a few papers off the board. He skimmed over them before shrugging and crumpling them. "Just old appointment schedules. I hang them outside the lab doors as reminders for everyone now, anyway." He pulled a carton of tacks out from the top drawer of the desk.
They spent a good ten minutes like that, just sticking various photos to the board, with the stray comment from Scout or context from Medic. The more embarrassing ones didn't get hung up, like the picture of Medic with the girl, or one that had been taken after his first surgery as a licensed doctor. Scout tried to convince him on that one because of how hilariously exhausted he looked, all messy hair and eye bags, but Medic insisted that it wouldn't fit well with the others.
Which, to be fair, Scout could understand. Because once they had a nice chunk of the photographs pinned up, it was a proper collage of Medic in his younger years, bright-eyed and hopeful. A testament of the man's past and journey to the present. Although...
"You don't have any pictures past your doctor years?"
Medic cringed at that, sucking his teeth and making an eehhh noise. "I don't think anything after that is too noteworthy... I have pictures of my doves? If that counts?" Scout's unimpressed expression told him no. "I honestly haven't thought about it."
The runner stood up suddenly, leaning over the desk and subtly bouncing on his feet in excitement. "Oh man, we gotta do that then. Engie's got a camera I could borrow. And I know how to work it, too. We could get a picture of ya with your birds and stick it on the board with the other photos!"
The reaction from the doctor wasn't as enthusiastic, and he shook his head while tucking the unused pictures into the pages of the photo album. "Nein, it'd feel too professional. I don't want to put something like that on there."
"Then I'll take it with you!" Scout interjected, grinning. "I mean, that wouldn't make it professional, right? I ain't wearin' fancy clothes or anything. And we could do a cool pose. Or see how many birds we can hold on our arms. Somethin' besides just standin' there." It must've been a pretty convincing argument, because Medic paused, looking off to the side and thinking. Then he bowed his head in resignation, and Scout knew he won. "Alright, ja, that could work."
"Hell yeah!" the runner cheered, pumping a fist in the air. "I'll go see if Hardhat knows where that camera is! I ain't gonna take long, promise!" he called over his shoulder, already dashing for the exit.
Medic shook his head, smiling as Scout left a flurry of surprised doves in his wake as he sprinted out of the infirmary doors.
The cork board in Medic's lab was a proper collage of him in his younger years, bright-eyed and hopeful. A testament of the man's past and journey to the present. And recently, a new photograph had been added - one of him and Scout, both smiling, with Medic in his casual wear and Scout donning the oversized lab coat. Both of them had an arm bent in front, with a dove perched upon them - Archimedes on Medic's arm, and the hen the bird had chosen as a mate on Scout's arm. A caption was written on the bottom of the photograph.
"Mit Liebchen arbeiten."