#so I can’t smoothly wipe it down like with typical shelves

[bookwyrminspiration]

you don’t know, when you’re a young innocent reader child who decides to start collecting books, that you’ve also decided to wage a losing war against all the dust in the entire world for the rest of your life

[marvel-medigeek-fics]

Tape My Heart

Relationships that form in the athletic training room are not allowed. Buck knows that. Eddie knows that. Everybody knows that. But it happens. 

—

Buck and Eddie spend a lot of time in the same room. Doing the same thing. They know the rules. So they stick to doing their jobs. Taping ankles. Listening to the griefs of their athletes. Watching the games. Looking in on practices. There’s times when there’s no one in the athletic training room for treatments, no games to preside over, and Eddie and Buck are alone. They fix the shelves, clean obsessively, but most of the time: they talk. They talk about Christopher, memories, and their athletes.

After the third double header of the week and the twelve thousandth wipe down of the week, the work is finally done.

“Finally!” Buck sighs in relief.

“Can we agree that the ad needs to stop scheduling 3 home double headers on the same week? Especially 2 weeks before finals.” Eddie replies, stacking the rolls of prewrap back in the cabinet.

“We’ll have to take it up with her.” Buck chuckles to himself, wiping down the table. Again.

“How many times are you going to wipe down that table?”

“Can never be too clean. A lot of people sweat on these cesspools.”

“No kidding. Hand me a towel.” Eddie grabs another bottle of cleaner and sprays down the whirlpool.

“It’s 11pm and we’re cleaning. What is up with that?” Buck says, continuing to clean.

“It’s part of the job. Besides, it’s therapeutic.”

“Way better than fighting people, I suppose.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about that.”

Buck just laughs, and cleans the same spot he was cleaning 5 minutes ago. He doesn’t want to leave, so he will make these tables pristine. He enjoys the alone time with his best friend, as bars and things outside of work don’t happen very often. The athletic training room is the place where they spend the most time, as such, it’s the place where friendships are made.

—

The rules of the AT room are simple: no complaining, no foul language, and nothing but professionalism. The head trainer is strict, and everyone knows to follow the rules. Some people don’t, of course, but they got taken care of real quick. Buck and Eddie both know, if they want to keep their jobs, they can’t be anything more than friends.

There was a few incidents that landed them with warnings. Buck with a few of the swimmers, and Eddie with, well, no one, except half the student body flirting with him. He never flirts back. He could have anyone he wanted, and he tells himself he never went for it because he loves his job and hates paperwork. But truthfully, there was something else that kept him holding back. 

He looked over at Buck, who was taping the shoulder of a tennis player. His enthusiasm is infectious, and he eminates what loving your job looks like. There’s no question that he loves his job. And he loves his athletes. Eddie isn’t like that. He cares, yes, but he isn’t like Buck. Sometimes he wishes he could be more like him, unabashedly loving to anyone around him. 

After he finishes taping, Buck looks over at Eddie, who is watching a sprinter on the zero gravity treadmill. He is so concientious and serious. Nothing gets past him. Sometimes, Buck wishes he was more like that. Buck’s always been light and breezy, and never been the one to pay attention to the little things. Maybe it’s why the two are always assigned to the same sports. They work well together. Buck has the big picture covered and Eddie covers the details. Where Buck has the empathy, there’s Eddie with the more serious things. 

--

“Week two of double headers.” Buck sighs, breathing in the stillness and the silence of the empty room before the chaos begins. Softball on Monday, baseball on Tuesday and a tennis tourney on Friday. Plus all of the regular practices. Buck thrives on the chaos, however, he still likes the silence once in a while. 

“You ready, Buckley?” Eddie says as he comes through the door a few minutes after Buck. 

“I was born ready, Diaz.” Buck grins. 

“Let’s do this.” Eddie gestures to the athletes behind him. 

30 minutes later, pre workout treatments are running smoothly and everything is alright. Buck is still pining over Eddie, but he can shove it down for the day. Eddie is still hiding his staring at Buck, but he can distract himself with the work. 

There’s no room for anything but doing their jobs. So they do them. Nothing makes for a more perfectly taped ankle than concentrating on not staring at the man you’re in love with. 

“You’re good to go,” Buck grins at his last patient for the morning, Emily. 

“Thanks, Buck.” There was a time when Buck would flirt, and try to get lucky. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He was Buck 1.0 back then, and the work it took to create Buck 2.0, and then Buck 3.0. He just didn’t want to throw it away. And then he would look at Eddie, and want to light the work on fire. The feelings were undeniable and hard to control. But if Buck had learned one thing from chronic pain after an injury, it was how to bite down the pain and shove it away. 

—

Braves are up by 3 and they’re up to bat. Emily taps her bat against the plate twice. The pitch comes through and the hit is perfect. Perfect, until it slices through the air into the third baseman’s nose.

Typical Eddie, he’s the first person out there. He sees all. Buck’s right behind him. They work perfectly together, checking the player for a concussion, and setting her nose.

There’s no confusion, because doing this, it’s easy. There’s no awkwardness when they reach for the same thing or when they tape the gauze. There’s no questioning the job.

It’s what happens after that leaves a lot of questions. After the game, the crowd is electric. But Buck and Eddie, they are calm. Cool. Collected.

“Heard anything about Teagan?” Buck says to clear the awkward silence.

“Who?” Eddie replies, restocking the tape supplies.

“The girl that got hit in the face with a softball.”

“Oh. Her. Yeah, she’s good. She’ll be back out there in a few days.”

“That’s great.”

“Greater still is that she thanked us. People don’t do that very often when they are dripping blood. Great end to a great day.”

There’s not a beat between Eddie’s words and when a Buck kisses him. Or when Eddie kisses back.

“Did that make it greater?” Buck says, his voice husky.

Instead of answering, Eddie kisses him again.

[dominodebt]

can’t sleep dump

I can never sleep the night before a new semester, so I dug out some old Overwatch WIPs that I probably won’t finish for something to do. Some of these are real rough (I didn’t really feel like cleaning them up) but it’s all I’ll be able to put up before I get back in the swing of classes.

Reyes wonders if he should knock, then decides fuck it, I’m the Commander, and lightly kicks the door open with the toe of his boot.

           She’s in there—because of course she is—and glances up in alarm at his sudden appearance.

           She looks frazzled—a far cry from the polished and perfectly put-together Mercy that had stood in her Valkyrie suit not six hours earlier, defending Overwatch’s work before a panel of UN ambassadors, flanked on all sides by Morrison, Amari, Reinhardt, Lacriox. And him, of course. He’d stood right fucking beside her, daring any of those self-important suits to try and talk down to her.

           Her suit had shone under the harsh lights of the assembly hall—wings spread wide, halo-shaped headpiece perfectly polished. Her voice had carried strong and clear through the lofty room, staring down the panel without hesitation.

           But now, she’s shed her protective armor, and stands in an old sweatshirt that bears some logo he doesn’t recognize across the front and leggings darkened with what looks suspiciously like bloodstains. Her hair is messily tied back, most of it falling forward into her face, and the dark circles under her eyes contrast sharply with the fairness of her skin and the bright blue of her gaze.

           He arches an eyebrow. “You look like shit, Doc.”

           Her surprise quickly melts to irritation, and he cracks a grin at the scowl she sends him.

           “Thank you, Commander,” she snips back. “Whatever would I do without your stunning insight?”

           He just chuckles at that, shaking his head as he eases into the infirmary, kicking the door shut behind him. She watches him out of the corner of her eye—probably wondering what the fuck he’s doing here without any apparent reason at two in the goddamn morning—but she obviously doesn’t care that much, because she smoothly gives him her back, bending back over her desk to pour over more documents.

           “Doc,” he tries, leaning back against the stainless steel operating table. “Do you know what time it is?”

           “Do not touch that, I just cleaned it,” she orders instead, flipping the page over to read the backside.

           He rolls his eyes—she can see out of the back of her damn head, he’d put money on it—and pushes off the table, standing with crossed arms in the middle of the infirmary.

           “Doc, for fuck’s sake, it’s two in the morning—”

           “So go to bed,” she cuts him off, giving the document a quick sign before picking up another. She glances over her shoulder, quirking an eyebrow. “Träum was schönes.”

            His expression darkens, unimpressed with her tone as she turns back to her paperwork.

           “You know, you could be telling me to rot in hell for all I know.”

           “Perhaps I am.”

           He scoffs under his breath. Typical Angela. Whip smart no matter the hour.

           “How do you say, stop overworking yourself and go the fuck to sleep in German?” he asks, pacing closer to peer over her shoulder. His sharp eyes catch the familiar header of a handful of KIA forms, and his stomach tightens. Goddammit Ange.

           She whirls around, back bumping up against the desk, hands splayed out behind her to cover her work, eyes tired and narrowed and lacking their usual spark.

           “Leave me be,” she tells him somewhat icily. “Please.”

           He wants to call her out on her bullshit—he knows all about trying to stay up past your demons, denying sleep to deny dreams—but he just sighs instead. She doesn’t need a lecture. Not from him, of all people.

           “Anything I can do to help?” he asks instead, dropping his arms as he stands over her. He glances around the infirmary—how she keeps the place absolutely spotless, he’ll never know—looking for something to offer. “I could wipe down that table I clearly contaminated.”

           She cracks a smile at this, reaching up to thread her fingers through her hair and push it out of her eyes. A small sigh escapes her, and her whole thin frame seems to deflate. She’s so small under all that armor. He forgets sometimes.

           “I’m serious, Doc. You look terrible.”

           “I feel worse, if you can believe it,” she murmurs back, looking across the room, eyes glassy and unfocused, hand still tangled in her hair.

           He shifts his weight, wondering what to do. People have always been Jacks’ strong suit.

           But then Ange never really fell into the normal category of people. She was always more of a person—a singular unit that he was more in tune with than anyone else.

(old Mercykill ficlet. it was supposed to be a simple character study but just kept rolling on. no idea where it was headed or what my plan was for it lol)

Amélie awakes with blood in her hair.

           She stirs slowly, allowing herself a brief moment to simply draw in a few breaths as she lies in bed, wondering about the dull ache she’s been feeling in her muscles lately. She shifts, preparing to push herself up, when her right hand knocks against something hard and cold.

           Her eyes snap open as her fingers curl around the sleek handgun she doesn’t remember putting under her pillow.

           Frowning, she sits up, retrieving the weapon and studying it in the pale morning light. It gleams as she turns it end for end and she tries to remember owning it, let alone going to bed with it. An idea occurs to her, and she relaxes, letting her muscles fall where they may. Her fingers immediately find their placement on the grip like she’s been handling weaponry all her life.

           Has she?

           She’s barely given the thought a moment of her time before some sort of mental shield slides into place, snapping her out of her reverie. Her puzzled expression drops into a cool mask of indifference as she sets the handgun on her nightstand, though a tiny voice whispers how strange it is to retain such a closed-off state of being when she’s clearly alone.

           Something else clicks into place. Her thoughts seem to evaporate as haziness settles over her mind like a fog, clouding her reflections.

           Shower. She pushes to her feet. She needs to shower.

           She strides across the floor of her bedroom to the bathroom, bare feet silent against the chilled hardwood floor. Something about this tickles her memory—she remembers laughing with someone, warm arms holding her, a teasing voice threatening to push her out of the cozy bed and onto the freezing hardwood floor. She’d laughed and laughed and held him tightly as she begged him not to—

           “Pitié,” she’d told him breathlessly, tears in her eyes as her laughter filled the room. “Pitié, Gérard!”

           Then, just as suddenly, memories from last night come flooding back to her—

           “Pitié,” the man had begged her, eyes wide and full of fear she he stared up at her. “Pitié, s'il vous plaît!”

           She stumbles into the bathroom on unsteady, unfeeling feet, slamming the door shut behind her.

           Once inside, she allows herself a few uneven breaths, gripping the sink tightly, trying to dispel the thoughts and commit them to memory at the same time.

           Had she been the woman? Had the man been Gérard?

          Which man? There were two in her memories—

          Had she killed him? Had she killed them both?

          Her fingers curl tighter against the marble sink as she fights the safeguards she knows reside in her mind. Slowly—despite her gritted teeth and clenched fists—they slide into place, and there is no sound in the bathroom but her slow, steady breathing.

          She opens her eyes, lowering her gaze in a long-memorized action that saves her from catching a glimpse of her reflection. Still, she can only run for herself for so long, and her expression sours as she studies her hand where it still rests upon the sink.

          The clash of color between her pale blue skin and the stark white marble makes her stomach rolls at the sight.

          Shower, Amélie. Take a goddamn shower.

          So she does, studying the now-familiar sight of blood washing down her drain as she scrubs the stuff out of her dark hair. Her skin is littered with cuts and bruises, and she knows—somewhere, something in her knows—those open wounds should sting under the hot water, but she feels nothing.

          When’s the last time she felt anything?

          The shields snap back. Amélie hastens to turn off the water.

          She dresses swiftly, and feels a fit of nervous energy settle over her as she paces around the apartment that she knows she’s been sleeping in for the past few weeks but has no memory of purchasing or previewing. There’s hardly any furniture and nothing on the walls or shelves.

          What happened to that vase Gérard brought back from Egypt?

          The question draws her up short.

          What vase? What Gérard?

           The door to her apartment suddenly swings open, and Amélie looks up to see another woman calmly stepping inside, closing the door behind her.

           Relief washes over her. This is what she’d been waiting for.

           The relief is tangled with confusion though, because don’t people knock before entering rooms?

           What people?

           Amélie shakes her head as if that will help shake her thoughts as she faces the other woman, who carries a handful of folders and papers.

           “You’re awake,” the woman remarks. Her voice is cold and harsh. It reminds Amélie of the broken glass she’d pulled out of her hair last night.

           She doesn’t answer. The woman doesn’t seem surprised.

           Wordlessly, the woman hands Amélie a photo—clearly taken at a distance and then blown up.

           Wordlessly, Amélie takes it.

           It’s a woman, she notes with disinterest. She’s wearing a doctor’s coat and holds a clipboard to her chest, smiling kindly at someone cropped out of the photo as she reaches out with an extended hand.

           Ocher eyes trace the woman’s figure, analyzing things she doesn’t remember being taught to see.

           Fingers and palm of her right hand slightly calloused, particularly the index—weapon experience.

           Narrow stance and poorly distributed weight—no military history.

           Friendly eyes and an open smile—

           Amélie hesitates. She has no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

           The thought throws her for a loop—she knows what a smile is, doesn’t she?—but the woman is watching her so she boots the mystery from her mind with the help of her ever-present mental buffers.

           “You want her dead?” Amélie asks bluntly. The question feels natural, but tastes oddly in her mouth.

           The woman nods. “Yes.”

           Amélie is suddenly seized with the desire to ask why, but she’s too drawn to the doctor’s expression. She wonders if she was ever that happy.

           She’s pulled back into the memory from earlier—the one with Gérard—and she sets her teeth.

           “Pitié!” she’d cried with delight.

           “Pitié!” the man had begged brokenly.

           A wave of nausea hits her, and she sways where she stands.

           The woman looks up, and Amélie gets the distinct impression she knows exactly what’s going on in her head. Even if Amélie herself hasn’t figured it out yet.

           They stare at each other for a brief moment before Amélie simply hands the photo back.

           “You can handle this, can’t you?” the woman asks.

           Amélie frowns. The statement is harsh—accusatory. Like there’s a reason behind it.

           Her gaze drops back to the photo. The woman’s smile burns a hole in her memory.

           Not even her mental shields can stop the sudden flood of voices.

           “Amélie, Amélie, can you hear me?” a kind voice, the voice an angel would have. Warm and gentle and drowning in concern.

           “Doc, you gotta get back! This place is crawlin’ with Talon—” a thick accent that is for some reason immediately associated with a bizarre belt buckle.

           “Don’t touch me, McCree, that is my wife!” a voice that Amélie knows, but cannot remember why.

           “I said.” Amélie looks up in surprise, having completely forgotten about the woman’s presence. “You can handle this, can’t you?”

           Something washes over Amélie. A blanket, of sorts. It numbs her to the outside world. She’d call it cold, but she doesn’t remember what cold feels like.

           “No one can hide from my sight,” she replies, in that low, dark voice that provokes pleas for mercy.

           A voice she knows is her own, but a voice she doesn’t recognize.

(Old. Very old. I think I have an even older version of this floating around on here. The idea was to follow Amélie as she turns into Widowmaker, but no matter how much I fought with the plot, I could never seem to get it right. A concept I really like but could never execute properly. Maybe I’ll try again sometime.)

Jack is talking, but Gabe isn’t listening.

           It’s kind of a usual thing.

           His trained ears catch on all the important words—fight, wound, emergency, McCree—but other than that, he lets his eyes and mind wander as Jack chatters on. The strike commander is either unaware of Reyes’ lack of attention, or so used to it that he ignores it.

           He gaze sweeps over Ana, talking happily with Reinhardt. As he watches, Ana breaks out in laughter at something the enormous man says, and he cracks a grin. Those two are so obvious sometimes.

           A sharp movement catches his eye, and he frowns, looking over to see a blonde in a perfectly pressed uniform standing alone a few feet away from everyone else, eyes downcast as she fiddles with something on the front of her blazer. A button?

          Reyes tilts his head, frowning as he watches her surreptitiously fumble with the medal pinned off-kilter to her chest. She clearly has no idea what she’s doing and wants no one to know.

           He steps away from Jack—dully aware that the Commander is still talking and this is obnoxiously rude, if not insubordination—and moves towards her, smirking as she continues to fight with the medal.

           “Everything okay, Doc?” he asks, smirking as she starts in surprise.

           She snaps her head up, eyes wide, before they narrow defensively.

           “Yes,” she snarls back. “Thank you very much. Sir.”    

           He laughs at that—he forgot how quickly her temper could flare—and crosses his arms, settling in.

           “Your medal’s fucked up,” he tells her, arching an eyebrow and looking pointedly at said fucked up medal.

           She scowls, blue eyes narrowing behind her platinum blonde bangs.

           “It is not,” she corrects him frostily. “I was just trying to—”

           Reyes sighs, cutting her off. “Valor medals are different than the other ones,” he explains, crossing his arms. “The pin’s sewn into the ribbon on the back, you kinda have to…here—”

          He reaches out, maneuvering the fabric of her uniform and weaving the pin through it quickly. He drops his hands quickly, stepping back.

           “There.” It’s absolutely ridiculous he should feel embarrassed.

           The doctor flushes darkly, looking at the floor. “Thank you,” she murmurs back.

(probably the worst thing I’ve ever posted lol this sucks so bad but in my defense it was like one of the first mercykill things I wrote. whatever. I’m tired and will regret letting the world see this in the morning but for now fuck it.)