#burningblu

August sat alone in the corner of the mess hall, feet pulled up on the chair with his knees up in front of his chest. His hands held a mug of hot chocolate in his lap, which he nursed quietly--this position let him see the whole room, while passing mostly unnoticed.

He knew he probably should approach some people--he’d been on this team for a while, apparently, so they should know him--but people-watching was easier, right now. Maybe he could get a feel for them, this way. A feel for who was loud and who was quiet, a feel for what everyone was after. Or, at least, a feel for what his teammates looked and sounded like. The RED Spy was a little too smug about how easily he fooled August with his disguises. Surely the asshole had tells, but he couldn’t see them if he didn’t know anything about his teammates anyway.

It wasn’t too often that one ran across someone on the same team and with the same class as oneself. Because of this, Naseem didn’t really have much opinion on BLU Pyros. It wasn’t inconceivable for one team to have two Pyros, he supposed--teams with two Scouts or two Soldiers certainly wasn’t unheard of, and to be honest it seemed to function fairly well. But two of one class meant your team had to be missing another, because this strange war had its own strange set of rules, for some reason, and those rules said nine men per team.

Well. Nine people. Naz was making an effort to update his language to fit the times. Ladies worked alongside men, these days. 

Chuck slowed to a stop by the BLU dispenser, bouncing on his blades a little as the healing beams rejuvenated his muscles. It wasn’t the same as a Medic’s beam, sure, but it was still relaxing, and it was almost the end of the match, so...

He heard the announcement of the match’s winner, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it, leaning his body against the machine with a little huff. The end of a match always lead to an adrenaline crash, but it had gotten worse since he had come back. 

Lucy wasn’t afraid of spiders, but she didn’t like them, either. If asked, though, she would absolutely deny the squawk that she made as a stupidly large spider walked across her desk. She would also deny throwing the book it was on across the room.

Lucy straightened the papers on her desk, looking over her appointment schedule. It looked like her next appointment was... a BLU Pyro. Dot Muller. As usual for the Pyro class, her file was slim. She wondered if they would take the mask off, or if the conversation would be through a wall of rubber. Not that she was opposed to a patient with a mask, but it made reading facial cues a lot harder.

Not My Type | Alright | Cute | Adorable | Pretty | Gorgeous | LORD MERCY

“What? No. I thought you were keeping track of where we were.” 

August stopped and frowned at her. They were in the middle of the desert, looking for something Pauling had sent them after--a hidden base, or something. He was in a t-shirt, since they were outside, and his arms were already suffering under the sun. 

“Well…” she hesitated and for a moment looked very small and afraid. That moment quickly passed. “It’s…the problem I have is with me. How I look, I mean.”

She tapped the hard plastic of her mask. “It’s rather hard to hide something that’s nearly the size of half of your face. And no matter where I go, I get stared at. As if I’m some kind of creature.”

Lucy hummed, somewhere between thoughtful and sympathetic. She made a couple marks on her paper before speaking. 

“It is hard to change how others view you,” she pointed out, “but what we can work on changing is how you feel about yourself, and how you react to the opinions of others. And both of those are admirable goals.”