Hey, all! Figured I'd make it a thread of it's own, since the plot of 'For the Birds' has wrapped up, but here's the transformation of Medic/Heavy subtext into text. ~~~prologue~~~ Even though it was now possible to ubercharge any member of the team, I spent most of my time in battle with Heavy. It was not exactly a departure… I heal the others, of course, when needed, even overheal them, if that is the strategically sound thing to do. And they are a good team, of course, but… He cares for me. Not the way I care for him, I don’t dare hope, I would not wish to damn him this way even if I did, but he cares. I follow Soldier about sometimes, and he thinks only about how many of the BLU team he can kill. I follow the Demoman sometimes, and he thinks only of how much he can destroy—and it is alarming how he has grown to include himself in the list of things which may be destroyed. I follow Heavy and he shields me from attacks, shouts to me not only about his own well-being but about mine. He gave me a sandwich. Which may not sound like much, but it was a big deal. It has been harder and harder, not to think of him that way. I have lain awake at night, shaking, in a terrible mixture of fear and lust. Nobody else has done this to me. Herman was a kind boy, and not bad-looking, when we were at school, but neither was he good-looking, and he was always so dull. Fritz was brilliant and well-read, but so serious. There was never any time with Fritz to talk anything but schoolwork, and he had a face like a slab of granite with a permanent scowl. Nicolaus was tall and strong and noble-looking, but that was all there was to him. I could not fall in love with any of them. I was in love with Heavy now. He was everything. It was hard to take joy in a love like that, not because I feared it was unreturned, but because I could not imagine myself kissing another man, taking pleasure in another man, without hearing the sharp clicking of heels in my mind and feeling iron hands dragging me away, the sure knowledge that to be shot in an alley would be not a punishment but a merciful reprieve. I knew what real punishment was. I had seen it. I looked for a cure. My own natural pickiness had saved me, and the ability to lie, but if I could cure that abomination inside me, it would save us all. A series of inoculations, and then, happy lives as ordinary, clean members of society. It wasn’t fair. There had been such a false sense of security for a while. Friends who came back from Berlin with stories of men dancing with men, boys in evening gowns singing in nightclubs, decadent things, and all of snatched away before I could partake, replaced with prisons, starvation, beatings. I stopped looking for a cure, after a time. There were better things to do with my time, better places to be. America, with her offer of mercenary work and experiments that bore fruit, yes. Suspicions, always, but never of the truth. Almost funny, that anyone old enough to remember the war will squint at me and think ‘He is a Nazi, or he was one’, when all those years I had more reason to fear them than anybody. Heavy never asked me about what I did in the war. The fact that my country marched on his he dismissed out of hand—RED hired us both, and we were teammates. He treated all the others the same way, regardless of political climes. I don’t mean to say I was so special. He could have asked me, and I would have told him as much of the truth as I dared, I would not have taken offense. And as our friendship carried on, I told him several stories from those years, of my work as a young doctor, and my general disinterest in politics, aside from voting the way my father voted, social democrat. I patched up boys from the tank corps, yes, when I worked in the hospital, but I would have patched up anybody that they brought to me. I worked on my experiments, mostly, and I was young and foolish then, and prone to more failures than successes. I had friends, whose numbers dwindled, whose patriotism dwindled further and whose disillusionment grew. I had co-workers who felt the same and co-workers who felt the opposite. Like most people, I had little idea of the real horrors of the war, beyond those that touched me personally, though as a doctor I suppose I saw my fair share of horrors. I never asked him, either, though he would have been a young man, and more than ordinarily suited for war. It seemed polite, that I not dredge up a past that might be painful. He shared what stories he wished to share, the same as me. The language barrier always worse for my Heavy, but I was always happy to coax the ideas from him, happy to wait while he searched out the proper words. I could not regret coming to love him. He deserved every ounce of that love, he was a treasure to me. Maybe I could never speak it, maybe I could never have it, but I could feel it, sweet and painful deep inside me, and know that at the very least, this magnificent man considered me to be his friend. And I would be his friend, the very best friend that he could have.
Very nice and bittersweet, looking forward to the next chapter.
Oh, go ahead, Medic. He's totally into you anyway. This is a nice story.
There is so much love in this, I want to go out and hug something. I await future chapters eagerly!
Oh my god, yes. I love this. I practically *drooled* over "For the Birds", and I'm already eagerly looking forward to further chapters of this story! It's just so good! <3
I love this so much. I loved "For the Birds" and I'm so excited for future chapters. Please keep up the great work.
Captcha says 'Noverm provides'... I don't know who Noverm is, or what he/she/it is providing, I only know I am providing more fic. (has been hard to do as much posting as I'd have liked while traveling, so it's late. I kept getting interrupted when I tried to work on it...) ~~~one~~~ On Friday after the daily warfare had ceased, I returned as I always do to my office. I did not expect to see Heavy there already-- last I'd seen him he was in perfect health, the two of us separating from each other as the day's end sounded. I had barely paused in the supply room to place a few things in my locker, and he had headed in for dinner, or so I thought. He had an anxious look, and something cupped in his hands. "What is the matter?" "Do you want this?" He held his hands out to me, and I saw the dove curled feebly in them, nuzzling into the warmth, and would that I were he. "Little bird has broken wing, maybe also other broken things. Was starving outside, but..." "On the table, bitte, on the table." I hurried to collect the old medigun that I kept in the office, its place in my locker and on the field gone to the latest and most improved model. I had never tried it on my birds... I suppose I had never needed to. Still, it would work. It should work. The healing did nothing for the poor thing's scrawny state-- he was a large bird, but skinny, near to starved. Still, he gave an experimental flap to the wing which had been so badly damaged, and cooed in what I fancied to be appreciation. One bent leg also healed, and he regained the patches of feathers he'd been missing, even the pinfeathers stripped from the broken wing. "Little bird was trapped." Heavy patted its head. "I thought... because you lost one, maybe..." "Maybe." I carried the new arrival over to Eumenides. He barely left his little nesting place nowadays-- I had to bring his food and water to him, place it nearly under his beak before he would eat or drink. He only got up to do his business away from where he slept, and even then, he did not go far. It made him easier to clean up after than some of the others, at least. I just had to put newspapers down next to the nest. I put the bird into the big hollow place that Euripides used to fill, and nudged the food and water to him. It was a pleasant surprise to see Eumenides perk up at having a new friend-- he preened his new housemate, they both ate and drank, made friendly-sounding little sounds to each other. "Is good?" Heavy's hand landed on my shoulder, solid and warm and not un-gentle. "Yes. Almost a miracle. I thought I would lose this one, too." I confessed. "They don't mate for life, of course, but none of the others shared his... sensibilities. So he's been quite lonely, I think." "Other little birds like bachelor life?" He laughed. "Other little birds like the frauleins." I coughed and pushed at my glasses. "I have none. So. Perhaps they are not lonely bachelors, perhaps when they go outside, they have many little dates to choose from. Eumenides is just... strange." Heavy stroked his find again, then Eumenides. "I like this bird." "Eumenides? Yes, it doesn't surprise me, he's always liked you." Eumenides had taken to Heavy the fastest, even. It took the others much longer to warm up to him, to realize that he didn't mean to hurt, but Eumenides would fly over and perch on his shoulder right away when he came in to the operating theater-- back before Euripides died and I moved the poor listless widower into my office. We watched them for a bit. I was all too aware of the hand that still stayed on my shoulder, even as the other patted the birds or rested on the desk, or hung by his side. "This is good bird." He sounded decisive, squeezing my shoulder once before letting go, and giving Eumenides a final parting stroke. It was only after he'd gone that I realized the true extent of the miracle find, when I saw the way they curled together and realized that, underfed, wounded, bedraggled, lost as he'd been, it was no new bird Heavy had brought me, it was Euripides. It had to be. Yes, it would be even clearer, once he'd regained the weight, but somehow he had survived out there, trapped, perhaps, until Heavy found him and brought him home. "So," I gave each of them a pat. "Die Liebe wachst mit der Entfernung, eh?" Eumenides cooed balefully up at me and went back to grooming his missing beloved. "It is not my fault I never found him. You, you are going to be impossible now, aren't you? You will like Heavy more than me? Well... No, I cannot blame you." I let the birds be. If I saw him again at dinner-- I felt I was sure to-- I could explain to him how astronomically lucky it all was. And if I was so moved, maybe it would go unremarked upon if I expressed my gratitude with a firm hug. Friends hug, after all, in times of jubilation. There is nothing wrong with that.
Euripides!!! Heavy is a hero! That's so cute. And now medic has an excuse for a hug. Yay. As I said before I have much love for this.
Oh, poor Medic! I'm still loving this story -- so glad you decided to do a sequel.
Oh, I'm enjoying this story immensely, Anne. It's simple and sweet jeez I just can't say enough good things. That last paragraph was perfect, I can't stop smiling! Going to go back to lurking now, just had to let you know how fabulous you are.
Oh my God the squeal that came out of my mouth when I learned it was Euripides. I am looking forward to this hug or whatever results out of it. You write wonderful Medic introspect.
Thanks, all! ~~~two~~~ I allowed myself to be carried away-- had wondered if I would be too self-conscious, when we spoke again, to bring the news up, to embrace him. But the embrace came. I squeezed and patted his great strong arms, laughed as he did the same to me, a grip that should have been bruising but was instead immeasurably gentle, like the little touches he favours my birds with... "Then it is good we never have little bird funeral." He laughed, thumping my back heartily as we sat down to eat. "Yes. The prodigal son returns." I chuckled. He nodded blandly, before turning his full focus towards dinner. But after his plate was cleared, he lingered in his seat while I finished. "It is good, for Eumenides. Now I can move him back in with the others-- I had to put him in my office, because when I tried to feed him, Archimedes would always come and steal his food, before he could eat hardly a thing!" "Good, good. Little birds take care of each other, then?" "Eumenides takes care of Euripides," I said, thinking back to the preening. "Euripides... Euripides reminds Eumenides to take care of himself." "Maybe Doktor needs Euripides, too." Heavy laughed. "I'm very happy to have him back, thank you." "We will train him to say Doktor works too hard even on weekends. Otherwise, Archimedes will also eat all of your food." This was perhaps a little too near the mark. On more than one occasion I have lifted my head from my research only to find my lunch half pecked away. This is always the doing of Archimedes-- Homer did once blunder his way into my coffee, but he does not stray from his own little cup of seeds. Hippo is well-behaved, and wouldn't steal from me. Even when he is in good spirits, Eumenides is not fond of breadcrumbs, he is unlikely to come after a sandwich or a bit of toast. His favourite is the sunflower seeds. Well, now that Euripides was back, he was probably actually more likely to help Archimedes eat my lunch than he was to remind me to eat it, but... But the whole idea was... silly, yes. Cute, yes. And... and the concern from my friend warmed me far more than it should have. "It's strange..." I toyed with my fork. "Both of them being male, I mean. I... I have thought that perhaps I should study them-- I mean, to find out why-- To see what in the brain makes them that way. But..." I shrugged uselessly. "But?" "I could never cut up the brains of my birds, not unless they died naturally. I like birds." The Sniper dropped into the seat opposite mine with a snort. "You cut up all of us." "You respawn if I make a mistake." I jabbed my fork in his direction. He shrugged and rubbed idly at his chest, glowered down at it. "That is not comforting. Anyway, dunno why I got one of your implants. You never make me invincible." "There is little point in it." I allowed. "You underwent the operation for the same reason as the Scout and the Spy. I cannot account for all futures. There may be a time when it is not a waste, when it is the only measure that will save the day. You would feel stupid, if that day came and you had balked at letting me give you a new heart. A better heart." "Sure. Fine. So what are you trying to learn from bird brains? Maybe you can slice up the Scout." Heavy laughed. "Is funny! Little Scout is not smarter than Doktor's birds!" "I doubt he suffers the same pathology. It is not the level of intelligence that interests me." And besides, though I did not say it, I was no longer in desperate search of a cure for that pathology that I did share. "Pathology?" Heavy cocked his head to the side. "So little bird likes other little bird." "Well, they..." It was hardly dinner table discussion, but I felt it had to be said. "They do engage in... mating behaviour." "I don't think mating's indicative of a pathology." Sniper smirked. "Birds do it, bees do it." "I don't have any females." I folded my arms across my chest. "I am aware of what birds normally do." "I wouldn't worry about 'em. Animals do that stuff, it's dominance. Puts 'em in the right spot in the pecking order." He rose. "Anyway, let me know if you want to cut the Scout's noggin open, I've got tranqs I'd give you a lend of. He's been on my last nerve all week." Euripides and Eumenides were not an issue of dominance, of course, but the Sniper did not know this, could not know it. He never spent so much time with them. And that was for the best. If that sort of thing could be mistaken as a kind of fight, by the casual observer-- or non-observer-- then that was good. "Is nice, though, for little birds." Heavy said, after the Sniper left us. "If birds can be in love. Is good. I can show you something?" "Bitte." I nodded. He led me back to his room, and my heart thudded sickly in my chest and in my ears, teasing me with my own stupid wishful thinking. Inside, he beckoned for me to sit beside him on the bed, and then he pulled out an old photograph, tattered around the edges. The woman in it was beautiful, even I could see that, with a round and pleasant face, hair and eyes healthy and shining. Even in portrait, you could tell that she would have ample curves. Her high, round cheeks suggested the rest of the body. She was so lovely that it made you ache. It made me ache, the way he smiled proudly. "Natascha Ivanova." He said. One of his guns is named for her... It is one thing to know you never had a chance, but to know that someone else has the thing you wanted so badly... "She is a beauty." "Is old picture." He pulled out another. Natascha Ivanova was there, in all her glory, and even in the modest dress, I could see I was right. The curves are ample, and there was a tiny girl on her hip, with some of the mother's loveliness already shining through in her. There is another figure, half cut off by a fold in the photograph, a boy of ten or so. "The girl is lovely, too." I said, my mouth dry, my stomach strange and ill. His smile grew warmer. "Ilyana. Wait, this is only half." He unfolded the picture. On the other side of the boy, there stood a man, tall and broad-shouldered with a bristling beard, and to his other side a youth, somewhere between fifteen and twenty, laughing and sinewy. "Aleksandr Petrov." He tapped the bearded man, then the youth. "Pavel Petrov. The two brothers-- everyone called them Sascha and Pasha." "Sa..." "Sascha and Pasha and then also little Mischa... In this picture, five years old." The little girl could not have been more than two, and besides, hadn't he called her Ilyana? I looked at the boy who had been folded in half again. Five? No-- unless... If he'd inherited all the height and muscle of his father, the softness and gentle weightiness of his mother... a combination of their good looks, the striking features combined in a face too young to be ten, yes... "These are your parents?" I asked, mind struggling to catch up. "And your uncle and sister?" "Da. Before bad times. Even when bad times come, my mother says, this is okay. She has had not a very long lifetime, she tells me, but she has all the love of ten lifetimes, and this makes all the difference. If something happens, I must look after Ilyana and Aleksandra-- Aleksandra, born after my father dies-- and not cry for her. But, is all right now-- I protected all three of them. My mother is still alive, even." "She really is beautiful." I should not have touched his hand, perhaps, but I did. "Old picture or not. I'm sure she still is. Thank you, for telling me all of this." He did not remove my hand from his, not even as time stretched on. "I do not mind telling Doktor. I... like your birds." And in the most blessed moment of clarity, I understood that it wasn't what he'd meant to say, and that he understood, all those times I had been unable to say the things I meant-- if not in full, understood at least that I meant more than I could say. I leaned up, half-stood, so that I could reach. I kissed his cheek. "Thank you." I whispered. "Thank you." He caught my hand in his. For a long moment again, we stayed that way.
Oh my dear, this is so lovely. Am I meant to want to hug everyone in this story? Because I do.
Oh, man. This is so cute.
Not gonna lie, I wasn't too far from blubbering like a little girl. "scientists sionsoca" Even chaptcha likes it!
This is such a beautiful story. So beautiful.
~~~three~~~ Once I had been taken in his arms, once I'd been truly kissed, old fears suddenly seem ridiculous. Even if those phantoms were to become real, to march on this room with their jackboots and Lugers, what then? Let them all come back from the dead, from the mists of time. Against Heavy, what then? Two men, five men, ten, twenty? It would not matter. Against my Heavy, even made flesh they would be as tissue paper. I could have laughed from the relief of it, as he held me close and I learned to forget fear. The past can raise no armies against me, but even if it could, so what? We respawn, death holds no great threat to us. And how many would have to come after us before we would fall? Even unarmed, even without my medigun to heal us as we go, even then he could work his way through a great many enemies. And he would not let us be separated, he would not let us fall, not to my old ghosts, nor to anyone. I could tell, from the way he held me, from his kiss, from the whispers against my temple-- words in Russian, but I needed no translation, the sweet tone told all. I could tell that with him I was safe. I let him remove my glasses, again, so gentle for such big and powerful hands, so that he could take my face in those hands and kiss me, long and tender and brimming with ardor, and that time the glasses did not get pushed up awkwardly to one side. The idea of those hands going other places was overwhelming, both with longing and terror. But now at least, my only fear was of my own inexperience, and the idea that I might do something wrong, might make obvious my lack of knowledge. On that evening, we did not progress far. My head spun as it was, perhaps that was best. I needed to control myself, to bring that terrible wanting to heel. Yes, I could have those things now, the touches and the loving, I could speak of my desires without fear, but it was important to me, first, to have some mastery of those desires. Otherwise, I would be a mess our first time, no better than some simpering virgin girl with no brains and no imagination. I would need to plan things out in my own mind, to think on how to act and what to do, and how to keep at least a fraction of my wits around me when next I was alone with him. Still, even the little things were wonderful, beyond wonderful. I had been prepared to live the life of a monk, after all, without even those. How much better, to be kissed and cuddled? How much sweeter, to feel the reverent brush of fingertips across my cheek and the puff of a whispered endearment? How much finer, to love and be loved in even the tiniest and most innocent ways, in this little secret bower? ... Well, perhaps that is too poetic. It is not so much a secret bower as it is a room that should have housed two or three fighting men and instead slept only one... Still, it was a haven in its own way, and a secret love must flower someplace. Even with no psychic ghosts to punish me for my difference-- and no longer could I bear to call it a sickness, not knowing that he was the same-- it must be kept secret. Who on this base would understand? Who in the world would understand? It was amazing to realize how little would have to change outside of this room-- in front of the others, we would look the same, he has always been overly-familiar in his friendship, it would not look at all strange for him to stand so close. He has hugged everyone on the team at least once, generally after a spectacular victory. He had even kissed my cheek before, once, the first time that the men of RED had a little holiday party and we all got tipsy... No, nobody would think it strange at all to see the two of us, gazing at each other with fond smiles and more touching than might be meet. Something in the Russian soul, they would think, and me going along with it because you can't really argue with a man that large. Nobody ever needed to know that I always thrilled to the touches and the smiles, and they never need to know now that on one day, I sat on his bed with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder and he kissed me, over and over, in bursts of three, never need to know about the little laughs we shared over nothing or the way I reached for his hand instead of the other way around. No. No, nobody needed to know any of this. But all of it happened, and it would all happen again as often as we could steal the time.
Oh man, this is great I am so glad I checked back.
This is the best. And I might, um, I might have something in my eye . . .
Wow, this is really good writing. I love how realistic and well-developed this relationship is, and how you make it feel so honest.
That was so sweet. So beautiful. I'm not crying. Really. Just somethin' in me eye.