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You’ve spent one too many nights alone, and you need some company. At this point, you’ve decided that you’d rather embarrass yourself and look desperate in front of your colleagues than weather another night alone in your cold empty bed.
You know it’s late, ungodly late, and you see that it’s a long shot. Everyone has long since fallen asleep; even the constant whirring and banging from Engie’s workshop had dissolved away much earlier in the night. Nobody had been or would be stirring for several hours now.
But you’re desperate for some form of meaningful human contact.
So you go to the only person who you know will be awake despite the hour.
As it turns out, even he has abandoned his usual work station, the various notebooks scattered around his desk and a few vials of dark red fluid left to stand overnight the only remnants of his presence. A barely noticeable stink of decay is detectable under the obnoxiously powerful chemical scent of bleach. A few doves are awoken as you enter, and they coo down at you softly, tilting their heads in curiosity at the unfamiliar person in their home at such an odd time. To be frank, it’s quite strange for the medbay to be this quiet.
You maneuver over the clutter on the floor and turn your attention towards the far wall. If he isn’t up working, then he must have retreated to his bedroom for the night. That’s probably your best bet.
You’ve never been in there before or even seen it; you barely even know where it is, but on the far wall there is a door outlined by a warm orange glow, and you think that must be it.
Building up the nerve, you go over, slowly bring your hand up, and knock. A pause, followed by a creak and light footsteps. You take a deep breath.
Medic opens the door, squinting down at you blearily, looking very tired and somewhat confused. He’s in a robe with long sleeves, left partially open in the front, and a nice pair of matching slippers. The sight of him alone sends waves of warmth and relief pulsing through you out of instinct. You shudder gently at the thought of how vulnerable you’re making yourself. He is a man of science; surely he’ll understand your feelings— but by that same token you can’t help getting a sense of dread that he’ll only brush your needs off as being foolish or a waste of his time better spent on more practical things. That little thread of anxiety keeps winding itself tighter and tighter around your stomach as the reality and humiliation of having to ask for this sinks in.
“Ah, it’s only you…” Medic breaks the silence as his more baggy than usual looking eyes come to focus on you. His voice is soft and low, with a warm tint of what you thought, perhaps wishfully, was fondness. The usual whimsical tone is lost in his tiredness; he seems almost dead without his charm and quick wittedness. He rubs both eyes with his pointer and his thumb. “What do you need at this hour?”
He hadn’t meant it unkindly by any means, but you still wring your hands nervously. Is he annoyed at you for disturbing him? Your brain is screaming at you to leave right now, to ditch this whole thing and go back to bed so you can both forget that this ever happened. But you’ve already come this far, and you don’t want to make him mad at you for showing up at his door in the middle of the night for nothing. So you tell him you only want to talk to him. Which is sort of true.
“Ah… I see.”
You guess he thinks that you wouldn’t be coming to him this late unless it was for something important, so he opens the door wider and steps aside.
“Come in…”
It’s like stepping out of a medieval dungeon and into a beautiful warm hug of a room. You are immediately enveloped by a pleasant clean scent, nothing like the burning sterile odour of the medbay, as well as a wall of sudden, nearly complete silence as the door is shut behind you. It’s so cozy here. Everything lying on your shoulders is lifted for a beautiful moment as the rest of the world around this one room fades into obscurity.
Medic sidles over to straighten some of his belongings out, despite everything looking perfectly orderly. You’re honestly shocked at how charming the place is; nothing like the scattered papers and blood stains and grey metallic gloom that hangs in the air of the rest of his quarters. Most of this place stinks of rot and terror and chaos; this room is silent and quaint and properly rustic. There are worn wooden floors that creak their welcome as you move across them and nice white and yellow wallpaper that bubbles in the space, completely detaching it from the grim goings on of the outside, almost making it feel like its own little pocket dimension in a suspended state of reality. Modest antique-looking decor adorns the walls; a porcelain doll here, a few beautiful landscape paintings there, pinned moths in a frame up on that wall; there’s even an old record player in the corner. Shelves hold little trinkets that are long past their use, although they seem to have a lot of effort put into their upkeep.
“I apologize for the clutter… I’ve hardly had any time to organize with this project the Administrator has given me, on top of my own research. It is rather quite fascinating what blood can do when you hit it with the right kinds of cosmic rays— I should show you what I’ve been working on sometime.”
Despite his clear exhaustion, his passion and eccentricity still remain intact, shining through the cracks in the cloud of fatigue surrounding him; he keeps that perfect straight posture as well, back tight as a bowstring, heels a small but measured distance apart.
He blinks a little, probably realizing now is not the best time for him to be caught up in his interests.
“But I suppose your coming here doesn’t concern that. Please, have a seat.” He motions toward his bed; it’s not huge, but not small either, and the comforter is pulled back; a copy of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” sits neatly on the covers with a sticky note bookmark placed about three-quarters of the way through. He must have been reading in bed when you arrived. The mattress squeaks a little as you rest your weight on it; the spot where Medic was lying is still warm, almost as warm as you imagine the man himself to be.
“I would make us some tea, but unfortunately Sniper used my last kettle as an impromptu jarate, aheh.” He sits down neatly next to you, back still perfectly straight, one hand holding each knee. “But you are obviously here for something rather important, if you came this late.”
He looks over at you expectantly, his piercing blue hawk-eyes somewhat softening in the yellow lighting and the warm glow of his own exhaustion. You still find yourself having to break away from his intense gaze, letting your eyes wander to the bookshelf on the far wall, silently and unconsciously examining the titles and covers.
Medical textbooks on the top two shelves, philosophy books on the next three down, and fiction on the bottom most shelf. All arranged alphabetically.
He sees your apprehensiveness and approaches the subject more sensitively.
“Is this a personal matter? If it is anything medical, I assure you there’s no need to be embarrassed to speak to me about it. I’ve seen my fair share of foreign body pelvic x-rays, my friend.” He chuckles, perhaps in the hopes of bringing your mood up in turn, but you just shake your head. “Ah, I see. This… is an emotional matter, then?” You nod. He contemplates this for a while, calculating his course of action.
“Hm. What seems to be troubling you then?” His posture relaxes slightly. You still can’t bring your eyes up to meet his, and instead you look past him, at an empty birdcage in the corner. It barely registers in your mind to wonder what it’s doing there when his doves sleep outside in the medbay.
A long moment passes. Even without looking at him, you can feel Medic trying to hide his impatience.
“Y/n… I cannot help you if you don’t at least tell me what’s wrong.”
Impulsively, you grab his arm by the sleeve, not knowing how else to tell him what you need. You can feel the tears welling up over the lump in your throat; the words you need can’t come out through it. You turn away from him in the hopes that he won’t look at your breaking face, vainly attempting to regain your composure by staring at the items on his nightstand.
A glass of water, about two thirds of the way full.
An old alarm clock.
A box of tissues.
A jar of white feathers, each with a carefully labelled tag with a name on the end.
And through the building tears, a framed photo of a group of people you do not recognize.
“I cannot read your mind, y/n, please just tell me what the problem is so we can both go back to—”
You turn your face to him as you finally begin to cry. There’s no stopping the tears now as they flow freely down your cheeks, soaking Medic’s nightclothes.
“…Oh… oh, y/n…” He gingerly brings his hands up to your face, gently cupping your jaw and wiping your tears aside. “Oh… I’m sorry… I… misunderstood the situation. I did not realize it was like that, I—”
His hands on your face are comforting, but you need more. You reach out blindly, desperately, needing to feel more of him against you. Sturdy warm arms pull you up into Medic’s lap and wrap firmly around you, securing you against his bare chest and his warmth.
“Oh, my darling… what’s wrong?” He cradles your body in his. “Er— you don’t need to talk, if you don’t want to, but I’d like to know… hm. Never mind. I apologize.” He keeps running his hand over your head and you gratefully bury yourself further into him. He is staying quiet now, despite the palpable curiosity and the clear activation of his problem solving brain. Maybe he had learned a thing or two from Heavy.
His demeanour shifts now that he knows what you need, as he gently rocks back and forth with you, resting his cheek on top of your head. Finally, finally there is warmth and love and light as you cuddle into him with his broad hand gently running over your back.
You stay like that for a long time.
“You must feel safe, if you came to me, of all people.” He chuckles half heartedly and rubs your back comfortingly. “It’s… been a long time since I’ve done this for anybody, you know.” He gently presses his face into your neck, still rocking with you gently.
“…You’re very warm.”
You stroke your fingers through his hair after you’ve calmed down a bit, earning a big sigh out of him. His shoulders relax in your arms; you hadn’t even noticed they’d been tense. In fact, there’s a definite jitteriness to him melting away that you hadn’t picked up on before. You feel a little shitty for not noticing.
“I must confess, I’m rather deprived of this sort of intimacy myself.” The way he squeezes you gently is a silent plead; “Stay here with me tonight,” says the way his fingertips ghost the nape of your neck. His ego will never let him say it outright, of course; he is too proud to admit to wanting or needing something from you. A request from a patient, however, you know he cannot deny. And so you tell him you want to stay, and he, of course, agrees.
He squeezes you a little tighter, inhaling deeply.
“I was hoping you would say that.”
His openness catches you off guard. He’s never been that blunt about his own emotional needs before, at least not to you.
“Come lie down.” His gentle arms guide you down to lay your head on his belly. “Please.” It’s soft and warm and everything you’d hoped it would be as you squeeze gently on his tummy. He pets your head absentmindedly, letting you adjust as needed and picking up his book. His breath is still shaky as he sighs. You ask him quietly about the story.
“Ah…” He holds it up so you can see the cover. “It’s about a scientist called Dr. Jekyll who creates a potion to separate his good and evil sides, which ends up creating a second evil personality of sorts he names Mr. Hyde.” He smiles as he explains.
But something else is there. You can see it in the way his hands still tremble slightly and the way he stares off into space instead of looking directly at his book. You understand it all too well and place your palm on his cheek, gently bringing his attention over to you. He leans in subtly, and you gently take his book and place it on the nightstand to wrap your arms around his torso and lay on his chest. He makes a small noise, perhaps of surprise, and then he starts calming down for you; you can hear it in real time as you listen to his erratic heartbeat slowly, hesitantly soften out into strong, distinct thumps against your ear.
“You’re like a weighted blanket…” His face finally relaxes before it scrunches up into a silly adoring smile— not the sinister one he wears when he’s dissecting a patient on the table or when he thinks he’s God, but a real, genuine, contented smile that furrows his brows and wrinkles his crow’s feet.
And in that moment it’s everything to you.
He’s beautiful.
You turn your head to get comfortable, and your eyes are caught again by the framed photo next to you. The pictures on the nightstand have been staring back at you the whole time you’ve been here, the mystery in their frayed yellow edges and faded faces calling out to you. Patting Medic’s chest, you sit up, scooting over to look at them. You glance back at him expectantly.
“These?” He sits up with you and pauses, hesitating before reaching out and picking one up. He gazes dolefully down at it and brushes it with his fingers as if it will crumble to dust and blow away if he isn’t too careful with it.
The image he holds up is old looking and vaguely yellow. It’s of an older woman, somewhat robust and pleasant looking, with a taller gaunter man holding her shoulder gently. At their feet is a little girl, only a toddler, and a small boy, maybe six or seven, with a big smile plastered on his bespectacled face. They’re standing in the grass in front of a house.
You realize with a start that the young boy is him.
“I… was just going through things.” His voice has a distant sad ring to it. You move in closer to show your interest; it’s rare to find him in a moment of vulnerability, let alone have him open up like this. Whatever information you can get, no matter how little, you’re happy to learn. You want to catch and hold onto all the little pieces of himself he throws out at you forever, tiny scraps of a beautiful inner picture you desperately wish to see, but are happy having nothing but small delicate fragments of.
“I remember this home well. I spent most of my childhood here.” So much complexity paints his face; warmth and nostalgia and regret and apprehension and longing and deep sadness and, and, and. So many huge unspoken emotions that you would never dig to the bottom of even if he told you his whole life story here and now. It’s strange to see him like this; you’re so used to him living and thinking so in the moment that it never occurred to you that there was ever a before that he could have been caught up in.
You touch his arm and gently ask if you can know who the people are.
“Ah, yes.” He points to each of them in turn. “My father, Felix. My sister, Agathe. Me… And my mama, Agnes.” His voice hangs on to those last words, and for the first time since knowing him you can sense a deep hollow inside him where something important should be. “I remember baking bread with her a lot around this age. We had our aunt over and she took this picture.”
You tentatively rest your head on his shoulder, gazing down at the image with him. You tell him how nice they all look together.
“Hm.”
He smiles, but remains fairly silent for a long moment.
“I have many more of these, somewhere. I’m sure I could find them if you’d like to see.” You ask him if he’s sure, but you’re not about to turn down the opportunity.
“Yes, quite.” He stands up and kneels down to pull something out from under his bed. It’s a dusty old box, which he pries open and carefully begins digging through. Framed portraits and folders of paper are brought out and set aside; what he’s after is a stack of photographs near the bottom. He sits neatly back where he was before and hands you the pile, trusting you with the giant black and white stack of his memories. He looks at you expectantly, scooting over to peer over your shoulder as you sift through them.
There’s one: It’s of a baby swaddled up in a soft-looking cloth, their face swollen and red; they’re fresh. The writing on the back reads “Herbert.” You ask if it’s him, and he nods. He’s very small, even for a baby. It’s hard to connect this tiny, helpless little thing to the man beside you with blood still caked around the edges of his fingernails.
“I weighed only about 6 pounds. My family thought I would be a runt; I was quite sickly as a young child. I surprised everyone when I managed to outgrow my father.”
You smile in amusement and move onto the rest of the pictures; a slightly older version of him, maybe a toddler, sitting on a couch clumsily holding another fresh-looking baby, you guess his sister.
A few of his mother and fathers’ wedding photos, including one of his mother dancing with someone who must have been Medic’s grandfather.
Some pictures of him slightly older again around his house, bruises and scrapes along his legs, showing off stuff he’d brought in from outside; one shows him holding a frog up to the camera lense.
Class photos and pictures of him in school clubs throughout the years.
A family picture, where there is a subtle but definite distance between everyone and Medic’s father.
Him in a graduation hat.
Him waving to the camera in what you guess to be an airport, dragging a suitcase behind him.
“That’s when I came here,” he explains. “Not for this job, of course— I was only 17. I came here for college.”
You nod in acknowledgement. That made sense.
Pictures of him in labcoats in the middle of various procedures, goofing around with classmates, and in dorm rooms working on projects.
Him and a woman, holding hands, standing in front of the building that you assume to be his college, both waving at the camera.
Him posing with several cadavers mid-dissection— surely he wasn’t supposed to have taken those. You hear him chuckle behind you.
Then there comes a shift.
Suddenly he is in a uniform in all of them; in the military, you guess.
Him sticking his tongue out with his helmet covering his eyes, making him look a bit like Soldier.
Him and another man sharing a canteen; probably in training.
Him in a bar, drinking with a group of others, the man from the previous image included.
Him in a field medic uniform.
Him and said man wrapped in each other’s arms, laughing, Medic’s face buried in his neck. This one feels forbidden somehow, like you’ve reached the deepest layer of him and are left standing on tissue paper over a huge empty abyss. You quickly move on.
Him at a synagogue with his sister, both dressed in black.
Him sitting on the bench of a graveyard.
Him feeding pigeons on that same bench.
He and Archimedes many years later, as well as a growing flock of doves.
Setting the stack aside and digging deeper into the box, you uncover a few sketches of what you think might be the medigun and a few other things, although they look a bit more crude than the current design. You catch a glimpse of a full body CT scan; it looks like a human body, although vaguely… off somehow, with strange proportions and growths. Medic reaches into the box before you can examine it any closer and takes it out.
“Ah! I was looking for that for my research. What a strange thing to happen to somebody. Very fascinating.”
You aren’t stupid; he’s usually good at lying, but his skill is shabby from how worn down he is. You decide not to push him about it though— it’s just a picture. He’s already sharing plenty enough of his personal life with you anyway. He puts it away in one of his drawers.
Turning your attention back to the box, there is a strange dusty book with a cover you can’t quite decipher and… what appears to be a human finger at the very bottom underneath everything. You pull it out and snort, handing it to Medic.
“How’d that get in there? I thought I had this displayed somewhere… Hm.” You’ve learned not to question the bizarre body artifacts he has around the medbay.
There’s something else at the bottom there that you want to get to; it’s shiny. You reach down and grasp two chains, pulling them out of their hiding spot. It’s a pair of dog tags that had been laid on top of each other, sitting peacefully gathering dust beneath everything else. You pull them further out of their grave and hold them up to the light, trying to read their engravements: Herbert H. Ludwig. Him, obviously. And someone called Robert A. Fernsby. You jump as you hear him gasp over your shoulder. There’s a moment where the room holds its breath as you feel Medic’s hands wrap gently around yours, grasping the one that had the unfamiliar name on it. He takes it from you and holds it gently, like he’s seeing a ghost, his fingers delicately tracing the outline of the letters.
And then he squeezes.
He has the most sad and longing look you’ve ever seen on his face. It’s almost uncomfortable, looking this far into him; the unimaginable depth of all the small expressions he makes, all the creases in his face as his body folds in around the metal piece. Instinctually, you wrap your arms around him and let him break down.
You’ve never seen him cry before; he was almost the last of the mercs you ever thought you’d see it happen to. You’d clearly uncovered something brutal and heavy and painful for him to be moved to an emotional display in front of you, so you meet him with apologetic words of comfort.
He seems a lot smaller, like this.
It takes forever for his body to stop shuddering against you. It takes awhile, but he sits up and wipes away his tears, too tired to be embarrassed and too upset to be defensive. He sniffles.
“I miss him…” He gazes wistfully across the room, wiping his face with a tissue. “He was very dear to me.” You nod, cupping his jaw gently.
“I’m sorry that I broke down like that… you came here for comfort from me, and I…”
You shake your head and assure him it’s perfectly fine, and that he probably needed it. You’re happy to be there for him, no matter how bad things are for you.
“Maybe…” You scoff at his pride and remind him about what he always tells people about the health benefits of crying.
He sighs and gently places the dog tags aside on the bedside table and rests his head against you, the tension in his body melting away.
“Thank you, y/n… for being here. For listening.” You nod again, fully embracing him as he yawns.
He’s nowhere near as wound up as he was when you first arrived; the exhaustion seems to be affecting his movements and alertness more, his blinks growing longer and more drawn out and his head bobbing every once in awhile as he begins to doze off.
“I… I was having nightmares about him.”
You begin to rub his back in sympathy.
“When you knocked on my door, I mean. That’s why I was awake. That’s… why I’ve been awake these past few nights. My hands were too shaky to write in my notes or do anything of use this time, so I tried to go to sleep.” He snorts.
“Obviously that didn’t work.”
You nod in understanding.
“But… I think I might be able to sleep, now that I have company.”
He clings to you and presses you up against his chest, sighing deeply as he dries the rest of his tears. He’s been through a rough few hours, you can guess by the relief you can feel coming off of him. Comforting him like this, you realize maybe him and the baby in the first picture you saw perhaps weren’t so different after all.
“Thank you again, y/n…”
You cuddle him as close to yourself as you can, feeling all of the loneliness melt from your being as you press your ear against his torso and listen to the cacophony of his internal workings: his heartbeat, steady now, his breathing, the gurgle of his digestion. He’s a lot more human than he lets on.
He reaches out and turns off the light, plunging you both into sweet silent darkness as he wishes you good night and drifts off into a much needed good night’s sleep.
You’re just glad that you can make him feel heard.