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"I do propose something else for the bioweapon, by the way." y/n spoke, his hands holding the medical bed in which he rested on. "You do have the heads of the animals that died of disease still, ja?"
"I do, aber... warum?" Ludwig asks, his voice quiet given that it was late in the night what they were discussing and it was just them both there in the med bay.
Y/N laughs with purpose, drawing a breath as if he got a very interesting story to tell. "People in medieval times used that. In catapults, but with... another kind of... animal. Primates." He explains, moving a hand in a vague way.
"Siege of Caffa, doc. The Genoans did that to the Mongols that were dying of Bubonic Plague in the fourteenth century. Then the Mongols left." He explains, seemingly lost back in time.
"Was... *Oh.*" Medic stops messing up with whatever he was doing with a sense of realisation that they were referring to some obscure bellic thing that happened a long time ago. Sometimes he forgot that that one wasn't a regular man like him. "One of the first accounts of biological warfare, I know zhat much..."
"Yes, precisely. However we could make this more interesting, plus the fear factor on the other team, you know? But tell me about that tomorrow, I'll give you time, Ludwig." The dark haired one adds, looking at their own nails.
Medic, even if tired as he was right now looks in their direction immediately when his name is called so casually. It was never said with that softness, with that... tone that made him drop Heavy's heart with a unceremonious, gushy plop.
[...]
Well, shit. Medic who was so focussed on his experiments, in his things related to medicine has found something in someone who, two months ago he didn't even care too much because they were another freakish being that was part of Teufort and the RED team. Scientist.
A scientist wasn't required when there was people like himself and Dell, true scientists in their fields. Y/N was a scientist of what, exactly? Another doctor like himself but with a penchant for herpetology, pests and old historical epidemics? A plague doctor?!? No. He didn't need a plague doctor who was in France in 1630 measuring the length of Louis XIV's tapeworms, no. He didn't need someone who spoke German with him or that wasn't bothered by his habits of feasting mentally on carnage under the guise of knowledge and he certainly didn't need to see a smile with a diastema directed at him at 3 in the morning, before they headed to their quarters.
It was madness, madness!
Except that his heart (not the one in his hands) beat faster when he remembered something that they told him, giving a rare praise about his stitching. And when they discussed together things that no one else had the stomach to over dinner.
...
He was in love for the first time – ever since he was a boy in Allgau when he fell for a girl of his neighborhood that was often sick with a weak immune system. This love was different, though. Death wouldn't touch Scientist, Y/N wouldn't run away when they found out about what he did. That Scientist was a similar one to himself – and Ludwig's long life love.
[...]
In the darkness of his sterile bedroom, Ludwig thought about what he would say to Y/N, how he would confess if he got the guts. A poem of one of Mikhail's books about a certain man in Siberia who needed to confess his heavy heart to an Orthodox priest before it dropped like a burlap sack full of heavy rocks and made him drown in feelings came to his mind and, in that moment, Ludwig felt like he understood the poem. Under the worst conditions ever – at the crack of dawn, in love with Y/N.
Irrevocably.
FIN