#back hurts > can’t sleep > want audiobook > no audiobook without library card > card downstairs

[exhaustedwerewolf]

ugh not my library account not working at 2 in the morning bc they changed my temporary iddddd

[aggressive-positivity-network]

mercs and nightly rituals? 👀

Those are the kind of off-the-wall asks I live for!

Spy:

The Frenchman has a very strict retiring routine.

It might have been because of his meticulous nature, or maybe because of his time at the academy, but he had almost a sixth sense for his bedtime as a result.

No one was really sure why he was so strict about it.

He has left in the middle of card games, arguments, and chats just because it “time for him to sleep.”

After a bit of prodding from Engineer - whom Spy trusts more than any of the other mercs - he reveals that the spy school he went to had alarmed halls that activated at a certain time. A few students had even died as a result. The habit had come from a place of pure terror.

Engineer is slowly trying to break the habit. Spy can now wait ten minutes after his usual time.

Spy puts his pajamas neatly on his bed, which he makes each morning, and turns on the fan so that his pillow can cool while he’s getting ready.

He makes sure all of his disguises are in the right place, takes off his mask and puts it on his coat hanger, brushes his teeth for two minutes exactly (again, an academy habit), and then changes completely into his pajamas.

Finally, he flips the switch next to his bed to activate his alarm system.

Spy goes to bed, sleeping on his back, and barely moving until morning.

And Scout learned the hard way that Spy keeps his butterfly knife in a makeshift pocket carved into the mattress.

Scout:

Can and will just konk out wherever possible.

He’s fallen asleep in Engineer’s workshop, outside, in his doorway, on the floor, against the wall...dude has even fallen asleep in the middle of hitting someone with his bat (NyQuil coma).

He will sleep anywhere, usually not his own bed.

His sleep schedule is also all out of whack, which is why he drinks so many Bonks.

He doesn’t have ADHD - his bloodstream is just pure caffeine and sleepy giggles.

If you get close enough to him, you can actually see dark circles under his eyes. He tells everyone they’re bruises.

“This...uh...Soldier punched me in the face! Yeah, that’s it!”

Boston boy, I love you, but please take a nap.

Take two. God dangit.

He very rarely changes into pajamas, he just strips and jumps in bed. He always brushes his teeth, though - he takes special care of his teeth.

Scout says their his “bread and butter.”

He also literally jumps in bed because he has a fear of somebody reaching out from under the bed and grabbing him if he gets in bed too slow.

Sometimes he even takes a running start.

He’s broken several bedframes that way.

Heavy:

Heavy has the standard fare: putting on his pajamas, brushing his teeth, and washing his face.

When he gets in bed, though, he picks up a book he got at the nearby library and starts to read it.

He has these small reading glasses that barely stay on his nose.

This is mostly to help him read and speak English, so he occasionally reads sentences that he doesn’t understand out loud.

He also has a legal pad next to his bed, which he uses to write down any words he doesn’t understand.

In the morning, he usually goes to Miss Pauling or Medic and asks what certain words mean.

He is currently at a middle-school reading level, and his favorite novel by far is The Giver.

He even bought the Russian audiobook so he could better understand the message.

He’s also a big fan of To Kill A Mockingbird, but he had an incident where Miss Pauling had to explain why their word for black person was so hurtful and why it should never be used.

Heavy didn’t understand at first, so Miss Pauling had to relate them to Russian slurs. Heavy understood really quickly after that.

His copy now has all the slurs blacked out in ink.

“What if Demo reads? I need to...disappear them.”

Sniper:

He almost always practices his shot before he goes to bed.

It helps him relieve all the daily stress.

You can tell if Sniper is having trouble sleeping because of the gunshots.

“‘Old on, mate, one more round.”

One time, after being ghosted for a date, he stayed up shooting until six in the morning.

The only reason he stopped was because he had tears in his eyes and couldn’t see the target anymore.

He ended up just sitting on the floor and cleaning his gun while trying to not get tears on the muzzle.

No one knew what had happened, but they did notice that Sniper stabbed his enemies a little harder and more violently that afternoon. He even broke a Scout’s spine because he walked on the body after withdrawing the knife.

Do. Not. Anger. The. Aussie.

Demo:

Demo drinks so often and so much that he usually doesn’t sleep during the night.

This has scared his teammates on multiple occasions, since you can’t exactly see uniform color in the dark.

He has been shot and/or trapped on multiple occasions, especially by Spy, who is a very light sleeper.

It got to a point where he now has to wear fluorescent bands so that people know he isn’t an enemy.

He also has a “sleeping eyepatch” that’s made out of the same cloth as his pajamas.

It has blue stripes and a little black X in the middle.

Engineer:

He tends to turn his light on and off many times before actually going to sleep.

Engineer also does this with his lamp, and if anybody ever walks by his room and asks why, he says that he needs to turn it off and on until it “feels right.”

He also checks every alarm system before he goes to bed.

And if there is a single update, virus, or false alarm, he has to get up and fix it.

He also tends to get very anxious at night, especially if he’s overtired or recovering from an injury.

If he and Scout are up at the same time (Scout gets nighttime anxiety as well) they make each other hot chocolate and watch MythBusters.

Engineer likes the explanations, Scout likes the explosions.

They either fall asleep on the couch or wait until Spy comes and makes his complaint known.

Since Spy’s so quiet, he has been known to move Scout, cloak as Engineer, and then scare the living daylights out of the Texan when he wakes up.

Engineer more than gets him back come next day’s battle, though.

Soldier:

Soldier has his own room on the other side of the base

And there is certainly a reason.

He fights with his pillow until he goes to sleep, making all sorts of ungodly noises.

At first the mercs thought Soldier was having some overzealous “private time”.

One night they walked in on him to find a triumphant Soldier body slamming his pillow.

He even drew Hitler’s face on it with a Sharpie.

I mean, he could be into that.

Honestly, no one knows.

Pyro:

As stated in a previous post, Pyro catches fireflies to use as a nightlight in order to go to sleep.

However, while the sun is still setting, Pyro winds down by sorting their shell and trash collection.

She sorts by color, then shape, then material.

If there are any new additions, he cleans them and put them in their own drawer.

They have a little plastic dresser they keep everything in.

Their favorite additions are pieces of broken glass from beer and whiskey bottles, bonus points if they are tinted a cool color.

They also have these sheets with a bunch of sheep and cows in nighcaps.

If they are feeling scared or overtired, however, they sleep in a unicorn sleeping bag surrounded by beanie babies she has collected over the years.

Fun fact: they sleep with their mask off, and for that reason, they usually sleep with a pillow on their head and their comforter on top of that to hide their face.

If they are in their sleeping bag, they zip it as far as they can upwards without struggling for air.

Medic:

You think you have a bad sleep schedule?

Hah! How cute.

He will run on energy serum and cocaine for an entire week, then disappear into his room for a few days.

And yet he always makes it to battle.

Some think he may have a clone, some think he has the ability to see the future. Neither would surprise anyone.

When he does sleep, though, he is fully clothed and usually holding either an organ or his bonesaw.

He has lost many specimens that way.

Archimedes usually wakes him up if he falls asleep at his desk, as Medic trained him to do. However, this doesn’t work very well if his head is down on his desk because of a mental breakdown. But hey, you can’t win them all.

Heavy has slowly been trying to change Medic’s sleep schedule. He’ll offer him tea around nine, or ask if he wants to go for a walk at eight. He’s trying to link relaxation with night.

It’s been working so far, but there’s only so much you can do.

Ms. Pauling:

What’s sleep?

@uprisist