Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“What the fuck, Chad.” Robert groans, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes hard enough that he can see little bursts of color. He drops his hands with an aggrieved sigh and looks through the glass window of the SDN medical room Flambae had been portalled into.

He’d wanted to go in, check on the other man (and maybe chew him out), but it seems like the doctor had beaten him to the punch and was currently flashing a penlight into squinting ochre eyes. 

Chase stands beside him, hovering an inch above the ground and looking on impassively from their observation window. “Kid, I told you. There’s a reason they’re the villains who got caught.” Normally Robert would have snapped back something about his team trying their best and how everyone makes stupid mistakes sometimes. He couldn’t defend this one. 

There had been a kaiju terrorizing Torrance, a big one. Robert had sent nearly half of the damn team in an attempt to get it to calm down and keep it from crushing any more family homes. They had gotten pretty close, gently nudging it back to the seaside when Flambae decided the process was taking a little too long and pushed the monster’s back. While he was on fire. 

He maintained that kaiju skin should be too thick to feel fire through right up until he got backhanded and went flying into the side of a paper mill. 

The doctor steps out, jotting something down on her notepad as she lets the door click shut behind her. Robert is moving before he can think about it, fist clenching and unclenching at his side. 

“How is he?” He tries to toe the line between concerned friend and concerned boss and ends up just sounding a little pathetic. He was worried about a subordinate, okay? Sue him. He ignores Chase’s snort behind him as the doctor glances up. 

“You’re…?” 

“His dispatcher.” Robert cuts in, voice tight as he shoves his hands in his pockets so he feels less tempted to tear at the skin of his cuticles until they bleed. 

The doctor just nods, eyes trained on the clipboard in her hands before she levels him with a weary look. “The bad news is that he definitely has a concussion. It’s fairly severe.” 

Robert glances through the glass window again, brow furrowed as he takes in the super. 

Flambae is sprawled out the best he can be on the thin bed, squinting up at the ceiling tiles in the darkened room. He’s still in his suit, the material littered with tears and little rips and stained with blood. He almost wants to chew the doctor out for not cleaning the scrapes but knowing Flambae he barely tolerated being evaluated in the first place. 

“The good news is that he should recover quickly.” The doctor continues, following his gaze to observe her patient. “He’s powered, meaning that his recovery time should be significantly shorter than a human’s. I’m putting him on medical leave for at least three days followed by an evaluation and gentle return to work. I would advise against any physically demanding calls for at least a week following his return. ” 

Robert nods along with the words, trying to commit them to memory even as his attention keeps slipping back to the sickening crunch of well over two-hundred pounds of muscle hitting solid brick. “It seems the other physical damage is pretty minor, just a bunch of surface level cuts and scrapes.” Robert nods again. Good. That’s good. 

“There is one other thing.” Robert looks back to her just in time to catch her barely-concealed wince. “He’s experiencing typical symptoms following a concussion of this magnitude including retrograde amnesia.” Robert blinks, brain shuffling through the scant catalogue of medical terminology he had picked up in his time as a hero.

“That’s where he’s forgetting stuff, right?” She nods and tucks her pen back into her pocket. 

“It isn’t too severe. He still knows who and where he is but he’s experiencing some gaps. He’ll need observation for the next few days while he readjusts but it should all return in due time. If it doesn’t, bring him back and we’ll redo the MRI and CT. We gave him some stuff for the pain so he might be a little out of it.” Her phone buzzes and she pulls it out of her pocket, sighing down at it before looking back up at the two men. “You can go in and visit, I’ll send a nurse to take care of his other injuries.”

With that she spins on her heel, phone up to her ear as she walks in the opposite direction and tennis shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Robert lets his shoulders drop, watching Flamabe through the window as the man picks at the torn fabric of his suit. 

Chase drops a hand on his shoulder with a look that Robert can’t quite discern, somewhere between pity and amusement. “You okay?”

Robert sighs but nods. “Yeah. I’m the reason he’s hurt. I sent him on that call, it’s my responsibility. He’ll probably just punch me a little early this month.” Chase gives him a look but chooses to bite his tongue, instead crossing his arms over his Blonde Blazer-esque get up. 

“Stupid fuckin’ kid. Where’s the rest of those assholes? Usually they like to crash the party.” 

“Busy. I told them to finish up with the kaiju and then clean up. Doubt they’ll do the second part but I figured I could stall them for a little bit to give him more rest.” 

“Figures. I should go too, kid. You would not believe how much goddamn property damage that fuckin’ Godzilla knock-off caused. You gonna be good on your own?” Robert nods, unwilling to tear his gaze away from where the thin bedsheets are spotting with blood. He hears Chase sigh and then he’s gone in a blonde blur, leaving Robert on his lonesome in the sterile hall and debating how the fuck he’s going to approach this. 

Truthfully he’s a little nervous. They’ve grown closer since Shroud’s defeat, relationship less strained now that Flambae can take his frustration out on Robert once a month. Prism likes to call them frenemies, which Robert thinks make them sound like teenage girls, but it’s probably the most accurate term for whatever kind of fucked up truce they’ve come to. He’s navigated this weird ass dynamic for long enough. He can do this.

He takes a steadying breath and pushes the door open. His approach is tentative as he makes his way around the bedside, eyeing the vitals monitor. Flambae is running at a cool 105.6 degrees, a number that would make him nervous if it was literally anyone else.

“Flambae.” The hero’s head rolls to the side, movements lazy and sluggish as he tries to pick out the location of Robert’s voice. Robert braces himself on the bedside rail, clutching the plastic and leaning over him to try and get a better look. He just barely resists pulling out his phone flashlight to check size and reactivity. “How are you feeling?”

Instead of a typical retort, calling him a bitch or weak or a normie or anything to settle the anxiety in his chest, Flambae stays silent. Simmering orange eyes study him, narrowing in the darkened room. Half of his hair has come loose from the typically meticulous ponytail, wavy strands falling his face and caked in dust. Robert feels the silence of the room around his throat like a vice, opening his mouth for a follow-up when he’s beaten to the punch. 

“She didn’t tell me she was sending the hot nurse.” His voice is low, raspy in a way Robert is sure is supposed to be seductive but sounds a little more like he swallowed sandpaper. He grins up crookedly, eyes shamelessly dragging over the column of Robert’s throat. “Not that I’m complaining.” 

Robert blinks. Once. Twice. 

He… he wasn’t expecting that. 

He flounders for a few seconds before forcing himself to unfreeze, fingers in a vice grip on the rail as he clears his throat and leans back. “I’m not the nurse. Sorry to disappoint.” Flambae just grins, eyes never leaving Robert as he tries to put a respectable distance between the two. 

“No?” He tries to sit up, scowling once he realizes that the bed has been reclined flat and he doesn’t have the energy to support his full body weight. He tries to play it off and Robert is so tempted to laugh at the faux-casual shrug. “Good. Means you’re not violating any patient privacy bullshit when I ask you out to dinner.” 

Robert barely suppresses the strangled laugh that threatens to rip itself out the back of his throat. He shakes his head, trying to muddle through the bafflement and put on some veneer of respectability. “Chad. You’re concussed. You’re very concussed, actually. Do you remember what happened?”

Flambae squints at him again, shrugging. “I don’t fucking know, I was doing superhero shit. I’m a hero, you know, a really fuckin’ good one. I control the fire and the flame-”

“-and your skin does not burn, I know.” Robert sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face while he tries to figure out what the fuck to do. It’s clear Flambae doesn’t know who he is and he can’t quite figure out if that’s making this easier or much, much more difficult. “How are your other injuries?” 

Flambae shrugs, eyes still wandering up and down Robert’s silhouette. It was shocking for a lot of reasons, the least of which being the magnitude of times he had been told the uniform ‘did nothing for that already concave ass’. How hard had Flambae hit that building for Robert’s desk jockey uniform to hold any kind of appeal? 

“Mmh, I think I need someone to kiss them better.”

“Okay. The doctor said she’ll discharge you after the nurse takes care of your injuries. When the nurse gets here I’ll go to your locker and grab your stupid fucking workout clothes and take you home. Sound good?” 

He would ask Malevola to portal him home but he’s pretty sure she’s still pissed about Chad trying to burn her in his newly-concussed state. 

Flambae begins to nod before he pauses, eyes widening almost comically. “Wait, wait, hold the fuck on. You know my catchphrase.” Robert nods, trying his hardest to not roll his eyes. It wasn’t nice to roll your eyes at concussed people. 

“How could I possibly forget.”

“And you know which locker is mine? You know where I live?”

“Yep and yep.”

“And… and you know my name.” 

“Yes. Are we going somewhere with this?”

The pyro seems frozen, utterly fixated on the man before him before his face splits in one of the widest smiles Robert’s ever seen. He scrambles up, eyes glowing and fatigue seemingly forgotten in favor of hauling himself as close to Robert as he can without falling out of bed. “Holy fuck, you’re my boyfriend?” 

“What.” 

“Holy shit. There’s no way I pulled you.” Chad is nearly vibrating with the deeply incorrect realization, eyes taking Robert in with a renewed fervor. “Stupid fucking concussion, the doctor said I would have forgotten some stuff. You’re adorable, what the fuck.” He grabs Robert’s wrist, tugging him back towards the bed for a closer examination. 

How the fuck did they end up here?

“Flambae, hold o-” He starts, interrupted by the door slamming open so hard it cracks against the wall. 

“Hey, ‘bae! Thank fuck you’re alive, you cannot leave me alone on a team with those bitches.” Flambae hisses at the sudden entrance and recoils from the noise, his grasp on Robert’s wrist tightening. He leans his temple against Robert’s chest before squeezing his eyes shut. Robert and Prism make eye contact in various states of bafflement.

There’s about a million things Robert could say right now but he settles for trying to calm the man with his face against his chest. “The, uh, the noise. The concussion. He’s sensitive to noise right now.” She nods slowly, crossing the rest of the distance so she can stand at the other side of Flambae’s bed. 

“My bad. How are you doing, babes?” Flambae grumbles slightly before peeling himself away, turning to face her with a look that has only ever spelled trouble for Robert. 

“Girl.” His voice is lowered like he’s trying to whisper but the effects are mitigated with Robert standing less than a foot away from the conversation. “I have a boyfriend and he’s so fuckin’ cute.” Prism pauses before looking up at Robert. 

“That so?”

“Uh-huh. Look at ‘im!” The two swivel to stare at Robert, Flambae with sparkling eyes and Prism with something like aggressively concealed amusement. “He’s a little skinnier than I usually like them but look at those fucking puppy dog eyes.” 

Robert bites back a sigh. “Alright, Flambae, we-”

“Wait, fuck. I don’t know your name.” He looks up at Robert, the glimmer in his eyes dropping in a half a second. He sounds genuinely distraught by the fact, tears pooling in the corner of his eyes. He sniffles. “I forgot my boyfriend’s name.”

What kind of fucking painkiller did they give him? 

Robert is reaching before he can think about it, desperate to keep those tears from falling as he guides Flamabe to rest his head against his torso again. Flambae sniffles harder as he wraps too-warm arms around Robert’s waist and drags him into a desperate hug. 

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. The doctor said this was normal.” He tentatively pets Flambae’s shoulders. “It’s Robert.” 

Flambae halts his sniffling, pulling back to look at him with wet, critical eyes. “Robert? Really?” 

“Alright, Chad, you-”

Another knock on the door interrupts the conversation, a nurse in light blue scrubs stepping through the doorway with a clinical smile and tray of supplies. “Hey, heard we had some scrapes that needed cleaning?” Robert nods, smiling awkwardly as the nurse bustles around the cabinets in the room and collects the rest of his supplies.

Robert tries to pry Flambae away, biting back a huff when the man just makes a protesting noise and squeezes him tighter. “Flambae.” 

Nothing. 

“Chad.” 

Nothing. Fuck. What if…?

“...Baby, you gotta let me go so they can clean your injuries.”

Flambae loosens his grip, fixing Robert with a soft look that is doing weird things to his insides. “You’re getting my stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ll come right back?” 

Robert nods, gently untangling himself from the reluctant grasp. “I’ll be right back. Prism, can you…?” She nods, eyes never leaving the interaction until Robert is beckoning her outside. 

Robert makes sure to close the door gently once they’re in the hall, eyes readjusting to the fluorescent lights. Prism stands opposite where he slouches against the wall and massages the bridge of his nose. He can feel her sharp eyes on him the entire time. 

“Roberto. What the fuck is wrong with him?” Robert drags a hand over his face before wearily meeting her gaze. 

“He’s concussed pretty badly. The doctor said he has retrograde amnesia— it’s temporary, don’t worry. I went in to check on him and he didn’t recognize me but somewhere in between saying his name and offering to take him home he got it in his head that I was his boyfriend.” Prism raises a neat eyebrow. 

“And you didn’t correct him?”

“He didn’t give me a chance. Besides, the guy is high as a kite right now.” They look through the window to watch Flambae make meaningless, meandering small talk with the nurse as the scrapes on his chest are cleaned. “I figured breaking the illusion would do more harm than good, especially since it’s temporary. The doctor says he needs supervision for the next few days so he doesn’t accidentally kill himself. Can you do that?”

She’s nodding before he even finishes the sentence. “Course. I get time off, right?” Robert look is deadpan as she grins, giving his shoulder a light shove and stepping back towards the door. “Kidding. Mostly. Grab his stuff, I’ll take him back to his place.”

The trip to the locker room is uneventful. Robert grabs the flame-decaled duffel bag, dropping in the flame-decaled sweatpants and flame-decaled jacket. And Flambae said his sense of style was fucked, Jesus. He tosses in the products he sees the man uses after their workouts, debating which hairbrush the man seems to bring between the gym and home before saying ‘fuck it’ and just grabbing all of them. 

The return from the locker room is a little more eventful. Robert pushes open the door with the bag over his shoulder expecting to see a half-naked bandaged man. Instead he gets a half-naked bandaged man who is sobbing into Prism’s side. 

“What the fuck?” The two whip around to see Robert, Prism sending him an irritated look. Seems like she got the concussed-Flambae treatment as well. He drops the bag, moving over to the bedside with a pinched brow. “Flambae, are you okay? Are you in pain?”

Flambae refuses to look at him, arms crossed as he bodily shifts so his back is to Robert. Prism is gently petting the hair now fully undone from the ponytail, her eyes weary but her lips twitching with amusement. “Flambae? What’s wrong?”

The other man refuses to answer but his crying has been mostly reduced to huffs and sniffles. “Hey. I don’t know what's wrong if you don’t tell me.” There’s a muffled sentence, undecipherable against Prism’s suit but from the tone Flambae is less than pleased with him. 

He needs to switch tactics. He casts his eyes heavenward, pleading for strength before levelling Prism with a look that says ‘this does not leave the room’.”

“Hey, sweetheart.” He drops his voice, searching for a gentleness he hasn’t used in years. “I’m sorry. What did I do wrong?” 

Flambae turns slightly, just enough so Robert can see the tear tracks carved down his face and fuck, that was not a pleasant feeling. He mumbles again, words still incomprehensible. Robert hesitates as he remembers the man’s tactility, pausing before he drops a hand on Flambae’s shoulder. He lets his thumb gently stroke soft skin and steps close enough that his knees bump against the bed. “One more time, please.”

“You don’t wanna go home with me.” His voice is small and devastatingly sad. Robert feels like a piece of shit and he doesn’t even know what he’s done. 

“Why do you think that?”

“Alice said she was gonna stay with me. I thought-” He sniffles again. “I thought you were.” 

Robert has had to make a lot of difficult decisions in his lifetime. He had to make hard choices every day as Mecha Man, he had to choose who to cut from the team, fuck, he had to choose whether he wanted Shroud to live or die. Those things are easy in comparison to the bullet he has to bite now. 

“Hey, hey. I’ll stay with you if that’s what you want. I just didn’t know if you would be comfortable with it. You don’t even remember me.” Flambae finally moves, eyes simmering as he wipes tears away and faces Robert. 

“I mean, I don’t remember who you are, but I remember you. You feel… safe.” 

And… fuck. What was he supposed to do with that? 

“Okay. I’ll take you home, I’ll stay with you. Does that sound good?” Flambae shuffles closer to Robert, refusing to make eye contact as he returns his arms back around Robert’s waist and shoves his face into the starchy fabric of his SDN uniform. “Verbal answer, please.”

A huff. “God, you’re so fucking annoying. Yes, that sounds good.” Robert couldn’t help the relieved exhale at the abrasive words. So Flambae hadn’t been completely lobotomized. He laughs, running a still-tentative hand through dusty hair. 

“There he is. Do you want to change now?” 

Flambae shrugs, rolling his head so his cheek is smushed against Robert’s ribs. “No. I want to shower before I change and the showers here fucking suck. I wanna go home.” 

“Alright, come on.” It’s an awkward shuffle to the end of the bed especially since it seems like balance was one of Flambae’s biggest weaknesses at the moment. Robert is increasingly glad about spending so much time in the gym trying to return to his pre-coma build as he wraps a heavy arm around his shoulders to support the uneasy weight. 

It’s an even more awkward shuffle to push the costume back over bandaged shoulders but they manage it with only a moderate amount of swearing. 

The trio makes it down to the parking lot and between Robert and Prism they manage to get Flambae in the car and buckled in without too much hassle. Robert closes the door as gently as he can with a murmured ‘one second’ before turning to Prism. 

“How the fuck am I supposed to do this? He hates me.” The woman just shrugs with a smug grin. 

“Correction, Bob. He hates Mecha Man. Robert is his sweet, average boyfriend. Just don’t fuck him. Or do, I don’t really care, but he might be pissed after he gets his memories back.” Robert just sighs. He’s been doing that a lot today. 

“Fine. Hey, do you mind-” She waves him off. 

“The team has Beef, I’ll let Mandy know you won't be in for a few days. Go take care of my bestie, yeah?” 

Chad is fixing him with a look from the passenger seat as Robert gets in the car and buckles himself in. “You guys were talking for a while.” Robert shrugs as he adjusts the rearview mirror, dropping his phone in the console and starting the engine. 

“I just asked her to take care of Beef–my dog– and let everyone know we’ll be gone. You have everything you need?” And with an affirmative hum Robert is pulling out of the parking lot, swallowing the anxiety in his throat. Chad was going to kill him for driving his car.

He was already hyper-protective over the thing, especially after Phenomaman left it in the shop for two weeks. And Robert may or may not have his driver’s licence. Obviously he knew how to drive, he piloted a several ton mech for well over a decade, he just hadn’t had the time as a teenager to get his permit. Which meant he never technically got his licence. What Flambae didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. 

The car was comfortably silent, ambiently warm in the way that rooms tended to be when Flambae was in them. Robert can’t keep himself from checking the man each time they hit a stoplight but he ceases quickly enough when those worried glances are met with winks. 

The drive is quick enough, Robert piecing together hazy memories of post-bar crawls with the team when Flambae’s was the closest option. The complex was as nice as he remembered, the kind where there’s a shared garden and kids go door to door to trick-or-treat. 

He slings the duffel over his shoulder once again and supports the other man as they make their way up to the condo. Robert unlocks the door with the keys Prism had shoved into his hand, Flambae shuffling forward while leaning his weight against the walls. 

Robert hears him collapse on the couch from the entrance. He briefly wonders if he should be concerned but reasons that as long as he didn’t actually fall it was fine. He rifles through a few kitchen cabinets before he finds cups, filling one with water before digging through the bathroom cabinets for concussion-safe painkillers. 

When he finds his way to the living room Flambae is face down on his couch, legs and arms hanging over the side. Robert closes the blinds of the frankly insane number of windows, turning off all the lights as he moves along. It was midday, still bright enough that they could function by the scant natural light. 

“Okay, that cannot be comfortable. Come on, drink some water.” He’s met with grumbling, Flambae sitting up to accept the pills dropped in his hand and water pressed into the other. He’s so… compliant. It was a little weird. 

Robert drops to sit next to him, pulling out his phone to see a text from Mandy saying his time off will be logged as sick leave and to ‘Enjoy the break!’. Right. Break. 

When he looks over Flambae has leaned back, eyes shut as he slouches against the admittedly very comfortable couch. Robert once again wonders how well a life of villainy pays and what percent of those assets were seized after the arrest. He reaches out to drop a hand on his leg before instinctively freezing. He’s going to need to get over that. 

As far as Flambae knows they’re in a long-term committed relationship. People in long-term committed relationships didn’t hesitate to touch each other. If Robert was going to keep this charade up for a few days he was going to have to get over himself, future consequences be damned. 

“Hey.” He lets his hand fall onto the muscled leg, mindful of the little scrapes that hadn’t warranted a bandage but still looked fresh. “Do you want to shower yet?”

Flambae hums, eyes still closed. “In a minute. M’ tired right now.” 

“That’s normal. The meds you're on probably aren’t helping. Just rest for now, okay?” He gets a hum in return before Flambae raises his arms. “What?’

“C’mere. Wanna cuddle.” Robert shifts on the couch, glad that Flambae can’t see him and how he’s sure discomfort is etched into every line of his body.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.” 

Flambae opens one eye with a raised eyebrow. “And why’s that?”

“You-you don’t know me.”

“Sure I do. You’re my partner.” He sits up slightly to tug at the hem where Robert’s shirt has come untucked. “I may be concussed, I may not remember who you are, but I know that I really want you in my arms. Come on.” 

Robert inhales. Exhales. Shuffles sideways on the couch until his stiff shoulders are pressed against Flambae’s. The man scoffs, not even opening his eyes as his arm snakes around Robert’s waist and hauls him closer. The air is punched from his lungs as he scrambles to adjust himself in a way that speaks to comfort and not ‘I’m cuddling with my kind-of enemy’.

He hurries to kick his shoes off, tucking his legs under himself and letting his head fall on Flambae’s shoulder. He wraps his arms against himself and tries to remember the few times hookups had stayed the night for some semblance of aftercare. 

It’s not like he had never been in a relationship, okay? He had. Just… not a lot. And not for an embarrassingly long time. Mecha Man left little time for relationships that spoke of the future. The few times he had tried inevitably ended with his partner saying they felt like he wasn’t putting any effort into the relationship. Which he wasn’t. 

So, yeah, he felt a little out of his element as the furnace beneath him happily sighs and tucks a broad arm around his waist. “I was right.” Flambae murmurs. 

“About what?”

“This feels…” The temperature in the room ticks up a few degrees as Flambae exhales, completely lax beneath him. “Right. Correct.” 

Robert just hums back, hesitating only a second before turning to rest on his side, draping an arm over Flambae’s waist and settling his face in the crook of a warm neck. It is nice, and for a few minutes Robert is able to delude himself into thinking this is something he could actually have. 

Despite how admittedly comfortable he was, Robert isn’t able to fall asleep. Flambae was out like a light, snoring gently and grumbling each time Robert tried to worm his way out of the embrace. 

It’s not that he wasn’t tired, he was always tired. Robert is sure he could have taken a wonderful nap on an actually comfortable couch sprawled over a human heating pad. He just couldn’t keep his mind from racing. 

This was unethical, right? It was one thing to passively agree with an assumption made by someone with brain damage in a bid to keep the peace and an entirely different thing to reinforce that idea. He was a weak man and he was going to be here until that loose piece was knocked back into place and Flambae remembered just how much he hated the man currently cradled in his arms. 

How would he react? It’s not like Robert thinks he’s actually going to be killed. Just grievously injured. And, yeah, Flambae has been making leaps and bounds in his time on the team and court-ordered therapy but how would he react when the memory snapped back into place and he saw Robert in his living room? What if it happened after Robert had been coerced into more cuddles? 

Would he be mad? Embarrassed? Would he-fuck, would he think Robert was taking advantage of him? As much as they liked to argue to the contrary, neither of them were stupid. They both knew there was a tension, tucked away behind darting eye contact and sips of shitty beer in shittier bars. 

He needed some kind of plan. Plans were good. Plans were how he survived. He could toe the line of plausible deniability between caring friend and caring partner well enough that hopefully Flambae wouldn't be too mad. He knew for a fact that Flambae and Prism slept in the same bed all the time. But they were best friends. Robert and Flambae were… whatever the fuck they were. He just hopes this is over sooner rather than later. The less time he needs to keep up the illusion the less he’ll have to answer for later. 

And how long would he be stuck here? The doctor said a couple of days but Robert was well aware of the variability that came with concussions. He didn’t even have any of his stuff. Fuck, would Flambae notice that Robert didn’t keep any of his stuff here? Maybe he could convince him they only started dating recently. Still, though, Robert needed his toothbrush and clothes and… actually, that was kind of it. 

After Shroud, SDN corporate had been a little more willing to approve his salary so it was no longer ‘under review’, but even with a slightly more stable income Robert had found himself flailing. He had been an adult long before he was eighteen but no one took his hand and taught him what that actually entailed. What kind of things did adults have? Rugs? Blenders? 

He had been bullied into a mattress and sheets after the team claimed they could hear his back cracking over the comms but he had stopped there.  He had food, a roof over his head, and a loving companion. What else did he need? 

He still needed a toothbrush. 

After maybe an hour of spiralling Robert managed to squirm his way out of the embrace. He used his time to quietly rifle through various cabinets to familiarise himself with the place. It would be embarrassing if Flambae thought they were dating and Robert didn’t even know which drawer had the forks and knives. He would have felt bad about it but he needed to at least try and maintain the illusion. He was making a lot of justifications to himself lately. 

He did manage to find a still-packaged toothbrush in the back of a bathroom cabinet behind a shocking variety of lubes he assumed to be fire retardant. What kind of regulations were there for that kind of thing? 

The sky eventually begins to darken, Flambae still gently snoring on the couch. As much as Robert wants to let him get his rest he also knows that a torn, dirty suit is the furthest thing from comfortable. 

He drops a hand in Flambae’s hair, gently carding his fingers through the well-maintained waves and dragging his nails over his scalp. The other man turns into the touch, pressing his face into the contact like a cat. Robert continues his treatment until sleepy golden eyes slide open.

“Hey. You should take a shower before you eat.” Flambae groans in protest, eyes slipping shut once again. “That suit can’t possibly be comfortable. Don’t you want to clean up?”

“Mmh. Want you to pet me more.” 

“Come on. The sooner you shower and eat the sooner you can get in bed.” A single eye opens to glare. Robert glares back but he doesn’t cease the motion of his hand through onyx waves. 

“Ugh. Fucking fine.” He manages to stand with only a little support this time and the two of them shuffle down the hallway into the bathroom. After a few minutes of back-and-forth they agree that while Robert will not help him shower (much to Flambae’s continued protests), they’ll leave the door open so Robert can get to him quicker if something happens. 

Now, with the sound of the shower running muffled from where Robert stands in the bedroom, he finds himself at a loss. If they were dating Robert would know his preferred sleep-clothes situation, right? He didn’t seem like the type to sleep fully clothed. Just boxers, maybe? Fuck it. 

He digs through drawers until he finds the softest and most well-worn pieces of clothing, tossing them on the bathroom counter before he finds himself standing aimlessly in the kitchen. 

It’s not that he can’t cook. He can, but it was always about subsistence. What was the point of spices unless they were going to give him another hour of energy as Mecha Man? Even now it’s not like he had a particularly refined palate. He was always cooking for one (two, depending on how many scraps made their way to Beef) and had never been dissatisfied. But now there was someone else. Someone to impress. 

He digs through the fridge relieved to find a few containers of already prepared food. Between this, scrambled eggs, and takeout Robert could probably keep the two of them alive for a few days. He’s pulling the reheated rice out of the microwave when he hears the bathroom door swing open. 

Flambae is yawning, eyes lidded and jaw nearly unhinging with the force of his exhaustion. He seems comfortable enough in the clothes Robert provided, hair forming ringlets and dampening the shoulders of the faded t-shirt. He drops at the table with a huff, squinting through the lights Robert had to turn on as he moves through the kitchen. He’s trying to project an air of ease and familiarity. Like he belongs here. He’s not sure how well it’s actually working.

“How are you feeling?”

Flambae slouches against the chair with closed eyes. “Like I got thrown into the side of a building. My head hurts.”

“Makes sense. The drugs they gave you have probably worn off by now but you should be good to take another dose of painkillers after we eat.” Flambae doesn’t respond as he cracks open an eye to observe Robert. “What?”

“It’s weird. I don’t remember you but I do.” He tilts his head like the situation is going to make any more sense at an angle. It’s a little cute. “Like, I don’t have memories of you or anything but you don’t feel like a stranger. You feel… comfortable.” Robert is very proud of himself for swallowing the lump in his throat. 

“I feel comfortable?”

“Mhm. It’s like I don’t even realize how tense I am until you walk into the room and my body is relaxing.” He shifts in his seat with a thoughtful expression. “You work better than every other anxiety medication my psychiatrist has thrown at me.” 

Robert chooses to stay silent. He feels a lot of things about those statements, chief among them being guilt. Flambae would never tell him these things unconcussed— hell, he probably didn’t feel that way unconcussed and had just latched on to his caretaker, someone handling him with soft hands and gentle words. 

A few minutes later Robert is sliding a bowl and fork in front of him. They eat in silence, Flambae in exhaustion and Robert in apprehension. He feels the need to fill the silence but Flambae looks a second away from face-planting into the lentil curry Robert had dug out of the fridge. 

“How’d we meet?” Flambae seems relaxed as inhales another mouthful or rice but the anxious tap of his socked foot against the floor betrays him.

That’s an easy enough answer. “Work. I’m your dispatcher.” 

“Huh. We didn’t get in trouble for that?” 

“Nope. We had to fill out paperwork and the team had a field day with it but it wasn’t a big deal.” Flambae makes a considering noise. 

“Who made the first move?”

“I did. We had been flirting over the comms for a few weeks and I asked you out to dinner.” The food tastes like ash in his mouth with how easily the lie comes. 

“How long have we been dating?” Fuck. He didn’t have an answer to that one. The question is simple enough but Robert finds himself running through a million different answers in a scramble to pick the most plausible. Flambae is pushing his food around the bowl, brows drawn in something like irritation before he looks up. “Sorry about all the questions. I just… I feel so out of the loop.”

“It’s not your fault.” Robert tries to comfort and is met with a frustrated huff. 

“Isn’t it, though?” Flambae is clenching his fists, food long forgotten. “I got myself hurt on a call like a dumbass and now I can’t even remember my own fucking partner.” He pushes the bowl away to bury his face in his hands as he slumps over the table. 

Robert pushes his own bowl away to reach across and lace their hands together. Flamabe doesn’t look up but his grumbling slowly recedes. “Hey. It’s okay. It might actually be for the best that you don’t remember before we started dating.”

Flambae peeks up from where he’s hiding his face in his arms. “Why’s that?”

“We, uh, didn’t like each other very much.” Robert winces and he tries to figure out how to phrase this diplomatically. “You called me a bitch every ten seconds and I sent you to deal with exploding sewer systems.”

“Huh. How’d we work it out?”

“You punch me sometimes to get the frustration out of your system.” Robert expects a laugh, maybe a quick jab about how he deserves it. He does not expect a low, miserable noise from the man across from him. 

Flambae looks genuinely distressed as he pulls at his hair. He whines, a low, pitiful thing as he blinks up at Robert in desperation. “I’m- am I abusive?” 

“No! No, no, that’s not it.” Fuck, wrong way to approach this to someone with limited cognitive functioning. “It’s just that you get a lot of built-up frustration at me since I boss you around all day.” 

“That’s not an excuse!”

“I can take it!” The words are met with a horrified wail. “Fuck, no, I just mean that we spar sometimes. We train together as an outlet for your anger issues.” That’s true, actually. 

Flambae refused to ‘let the weights kill you before I get the chance’ and Robert had plenty of combat experience so they decided to train together on occasion. It had been working out well enough, especially since Robert now had his own outlet for the frustration of every time he had to process a subscriber compliant Flambae had a part in. 

“You’re not abusive, I promise. You’re great. We’re just a little unconventional.” 

He looks unconvinced but returns to picking at his food. “We spar?”

“Yeah. I wanted to maintain my skills now that I’m behind a desk and you’re the only person in the gym at the same time as me.” Flambae looks curious at that and sits up a little straighter. 

“Were you- are you a hero?” There it is. 

“I… used to be. I’m retired, kind of?” Robert avoids eye contact as he pushes around the rice in his bowl. “I don’t have any powers and the years started to catch up with me. I still wanted to help though, so dispatching seemed like a pretty good option.” 

“Which one?” Robert looks up to see Flambae staring at him, eyeing his frame like he can see through the shirt and pick up whatever information he’s trying to glean. “Which hero, I mean.”

“I, uh…” He can’t tell the truth, he can’t. “It’s complicated.” It’s a bullshit answer and they both know it but Flambae seems unlikely to call his bluff. His gaze falls to the scars on Robert’s fingers and follows them up to the scars visible beneath rolled-up sleeves. 

“Did I know?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Do you not want to tell me because we’ve fought about it?” Robert’s head shoots up in surprise. Where was this level of situational awareness and perception when Robert is trying to teach him aikido? 

“Yeah.” 

Flambae nods, chewing thoughtfully as he watches Robert. The conversation trails off from there and the silence Robert anticipates as being tense and taut instead feels… soft. He could speak or he could stay silent and neither option is wrong. It’s nice. 

They finish eating and Robert collects their dishes to load them into the dishwasher. Flambae for his part seems perfectly content to just watch, eyeing his every movement until Robert returns to the table to offer him a hand. 

“Come on, I’ll tuck you in.” Flambae takes the hand but pauses, narrowing his gaze. 

“Fuck you mean, tuck me in?”

“It’s simple enough, usually people with loving parents-” Flambae rolls his eyes and uses Robert’s hand to pull himself standing. 

“Shut the fuck up. Are you not getting in bed with me?”

“I was planning on taking the couch. Do you want a stranger in your bed?”

He’s met with an even more aggressive eye roll. “Bitch, we’ve been over this. You’re not a stranger. I’m tired, come on.” With that Robert is hauled from the kitchen and down the hall. He wants to protest, wants to say that he basically is a stranger but any protest he has would only serve to make the situation worse. 

Flambae is in the process of dragging him towards the bed (Robert’s pretty sure he planned to actually toss him on the blankets) but manages to stop it with a firm tug.

“At least let me shower first. I’m not as gross as you were but I’m not messing up your nice sheets.” Flambae huffs but doesn’t protest, dropping to sit on his mattress. “I’ll be quick.”

“You better be, I’m fucking tired.” 

“You know you can sleep while I’m showering, right?”

“Nah.” Robert just shakes his head and tries to bite back the upward turn of his lips. He starts to unbutton his shirt before deciding ‘fuck it, I’m skinny enough’ and starts to pull it off over his head. It was kind of nice not having to unbutton and re-button his shirts all the time. 

There’s a choked-off sound behind him. Robert turns, forgetting he’s in the process of taking his shirt and is thus temporarily blinded in his quickness to find the origin of the noise. He pulls it the rest of the way off, tossing the fabric onto the bed and turning his attention to Flambae. 

“You…” His gaze falls and Robert internally curses. This Flambae hadn’t seen him shirtless before and is staring at his torso with an expression Robert can only parse out as muted horror. Flambae saw him shirtless for the first time long after his reveal as Mecha Man and Robert was met with a snide (although noticeably uncruel) remark about scar cream. But this Flambae had the barest amount of context. 

He knows it’s unattractive. He learned his lesson after a few too many pursed lips and averted eyes from his hookups. He reaches for the shirt on the bed, preparing to pull it back on in a bid to ease the stifling discomfort in the room. He’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder and is manhandled into facing Flambae. 

Robert expects him to speak. He doesn’t. Instead of words, anything to break the tension his mutilated body has caused, broad hands come to rest on his bony waist. Robert shivers, the rest of the room cold in comparison to the deliciously almost-too-hot touch. He keeps his gaze averted, eyes firmly fixed on the bedroom carpet. 

He tries to parse out some kind of comprehensible sentence and ends up with, “Sorry. Forgot you… forgot.” His words are met with a shake of the head and a tightening grasp. 

“I know you’ve probably already told me, but.” The words are low, soft like this Flambae has already figured out just how much of a rabid, feral stray cat Robert has the tendency to be. It’s a little humiliating. 

Robert tries to shrug it off. “Got blown up a few times. Would not recommend, didn’t even get a t-shirt out of it.” The words are met with a harsher shake of the head. Flambae still isn’t meeting his gaze, eyes trained on the massacre of skin before him. 

“No. These are all different ages.” A thumb gently brushes over a scar on his stomach, starting just below his belly button and disappearing below his waistband. “How long were you a hero?” 

“Fifteen years, give or take.” There’s a beat of silence as the hands on his waist still. 

“And what age did you start?”

“When I was… sixteen? Seventeen?” Flambae shakes his head once again but this time Robert can’t quite figure out which emotion those narrowed eyes are conveying. “I inherited it. When my dad died I had to take over.” 

Flambae is moving, hands shifting from his waist to press Robert into his chest. It’s a little aggressive, the air punched out of his chest in a puff as a tender hand tucks Robert’s face against his neck. Robert lets himself be moved, doesn’t protest as a chin rests on top of his head and two arms keep him firmly trapped against a wall of muscle. 

“It-” Flambae starts to speak but his voice falters, the normally brash and sure accent faltering as he exhales. “You were so young.” His voice is devastatingly fragile. 

Robert feels nauseous. He’s being handled like he’s a soft thing and he’s not sure where to put his hands. He settles for wrapping his arms around Flambae’s back as the other man’s hands fall on a collection of vertical scars just above his waistband. “Those are surgical scars. I have some… spine issues, and they had to replace some of the discs.” 

An answering hum. “Is that why you retired?” Robert shrugs. 

“Part of it. I’ve had my fair share of being thrown around and it’s finally catching up to me.” Robert is trying to keep his tone light, to say ‘Please look away’ and ‘I know it’s not pretty’ with each uneasy shift of his body. Flambae ignores him, ignores the way Robert seems to shrink back from the embrace and instead presses a kiss to the crown of his head. 

The room is silent as Flambae holds him but Robert can hear every word in the way the room temperature increases and hands clutch him a little tighter. They stay like that for a few minutes, long enough that the warmth starts to make Robert sleepy. He’s tired enough that he strains to hear when Flambae starts talking. 

“Shower.” He murmurs. “Shower, change, and get in bed with me, okay?” He talks like Robert is the one injured, like Robert is the one in need of care but Robert is a weak, weak man so he just nods until Flambae pulls away. 

He means to shower quickly, to just rinse off enough that he doesn’t feel the staleness of the office air but he gets a little distracted by the blissful shower pressure. He’s in the middle of brushing his teeth when he realizes that he doesn’t have backup clothes. Goddamn it. 

He briefly considers just wearing the same boxers, but what if Flambae thought that was weird? What if he thought Robert was scared to share clothes with him? He was, but that’s besides the point. Ah, fuck it, if he was going to be stuck here he was going to wear clean clothes. 

He walks out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, going straight for the dresser and glad he snooped earlier so he didn’t look like a dumbass while he looks for a pair of boxers that are small enough to probably not fall off in the middle of the night. Flambae is already in bed, tucked beneath the sheets and watching Robert with lidded eyes. 

“You’re too fucking skinny.” He says once Robert has his back turned and drops the towel to change. “Do I not feed you enough?” Robert shrugs, picking the towel back up to dry his hair as he turns back around. 

“You try. You bring me lunch sometimes. It’s hard for me to gain weight.” Robert ducks back into the bedroom to hang up the towel, grateful he had the foresight to drop the duffel bag in the bedroom. He digs their phones out, setting them up to charge before he hesitates in front of the bed. “You sure?”

“Yes, Rob. I’m sure.” The sheets are pulled aside in an inviting manner. “Come on.” 

Robert sighs but drops a knee onto the mattress to haul himself on. The mattress is big, big enough that they could easily sleep through the night without ever touching each other. Flambae seems to have a problem with that, immediately wrapping an arm around his waist so Robert lands on him in a heap. 

Robert shuffles, trying to get comfortable even as he’s being dragged closer. “Chad, hold on!” He’s soundly ignored as he’s gathered to a warm chest, huffing but letting himself be manoeuvred. Flambae seems to be using Robert as a weighted blanket, dragging his body on top of his own so Robert is forced to sprawl over his larger frame. Robert is trying very hard to ignore the intimacy of such a thing. 

He ends up with his face tucked against Flambae’s neck. His eyes are already heavy with exhaustion from the day. “I’m glad you’re here.” Flambae murmurs into his hair. Robert is too tired to respond with anything other than a questioning hum. “I get anxious. A lot. I’m sure I’ve told you that. It makes it hard to sleep sometimes, y’know? But this helps.”

Robert just nods, Flambae’s skin blissfully warm beneath his mess of scars. He tucks himself a little closer and sighs when broad hands begin to drag up and down his back. For the first time in a long time, sleep comes easily. 

Chapter Text

The first thing Robert notices is the warmth. Actually, the first thing he notices is how cold his arm is in comparison to the rest of his body. It takes him a moment, consciousness returning to him in pieces before he registers that somehow, only the top half of his forearm is cold. 

He refuses to drag his eyes open, mind still half-asleep and unable to comprehend anything other than ‘warm, comfy’ and ‘cold, bad’. He does manage to register that the room is still dark beneath his closed lids and he internally sighs. He starts to roll over, moving to check his clock and mentally calculating how early is too early to clock in when he’s stopped by a vice grip on his waist.  

He freezes, suddenly wide awake and wincing as the morning light filtering through drawn blinds hits his sleep-dilated eyes. The pressure on his waist intensifies and he tumbles back down from where he had propped himself up on his elbows. 

In his sleepy bafflement Robert decides to do what he does best: take a mental inventory. 

First things first, he was currently being crushed to Flambae’s chest. The man hadn’t woken with Robert squirming but it seemed even his subconscious had a problem with Robert trying to leave the bed. He’s tempted to fight back but he fears any more sudden movements would wake the man beneath him. Robert would prefer to keep him sleeping as long as possible. 

He’s sprawled across Flambae’s torso, his body seemingly having been reclaimed as a weighted blanket. His head landed in the crook of Flambae’s neck, well-conditioned strands tickling his face as a warm, strong arm sits heavy around his waist. The hold isn’t quite possessive but it’s not not that, either. Either way it’s going to be very, very difficult to wriggle out of this hold without waking the other man.

Next, he realizes that it was in fact not dark outside. It was still what some may consider early, the light from the windows holding a softer quality than late-morning did. Robert tries to figure out what time it is given the fact that he's currently being held hostage and thus does not have access to a clock. Maybe seven or so? 

Surprise flickers through his thoughts. He can’t remember the last time he naturally slept past maybe five A.M., sometimes woken by his alarm but more often woken by his thoughts racing before he can even register that he’s no longer dreaming. 

He’d like to lie to himself and say it was a fluke but Robert Robertson does not lie to people, let alone himself. He always slept the best when he drifted off while clutching his heating pad. This was like that but the heating pad is clutching him back. 

He tries to relax into it. He tries to relax into the sleepy, soft embrace and to enjoy the warmth that seems to thrum beneath his skin with every breath the man beneath him takes, but he can’t. He enjoys this, he does, but all he can think about is what would happen if Flambae woke up with his memories. 

That thought sends a bolt of panic racing through his veins. He starts to recoil, pressing himself down so he can slide under the arm draped over him but he’s stopped by an irritated grumble. 

“Stop fuckin’ moving.” Flambae mumbles, eyes still shut as his fingers tighten on Robert’s hipbone. 

“Sorry, sorry. Gotta use the bathroom.” Flambae opens a single lazy eye to evaluate Robert. Whatever he finds must satisfy him because he just sighs and lets his arm fall away. Robert shuffles off the bed, aching joints hissing in protest from being inactive so long as he traverses a too-soft mattress. 

Robert is washing his hands, debating how long he can justify staying in here to avoid crawling back into bed when he remembers that he’s the person responsible for their continued survival. His sigh is more of a hiss as he pads down the hallway towards the kitchen, pulling open the fridge with a dread. 

He knows for a fact that Flambae can cook and he can cook well. Unfortunately post-concussion was one of the worst occasions to put someone around knives and fire and— actually, the fire would probably be fine, but Robert was unwilling to take chances. Hell, Robert barely trusts himself in this kitchen. The coffee maker makes far too many weird noises and he gives up in fear of breaking it.

He settles on something easy: eggs and toast. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to figure out where the bowls were (while silently cursing Flambae for placing the dishes so high in the cabinets) but he’s nothing if not adaptable. He’s standing in front of a spice cabinet, hands on his hips as he tries to figure out what combination of seasonings are the least likely to get him mocked. Salt and pepper, obviously, but was garlic and onion powder overdoing it? He couldn’t even read half of these labels, what the fuck-

“Excuse me.” Robert looks over his shoulder to see a sleep ruffled Flambae with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s frowning, his hair frizzy since he fell asleep with it wet. Robert is distantly reminded of those kittens who puff themselves up to look threatening. “Why the fuck are you not in our bed?”

“I’m making us breakfast.” Robert decides on a seasoned salt he vaguely recognizes, turning to the eggs in the bowl to continue. “You’re healing, you need to eat.” 

“Mhh, I’m healing, I need to sleep.” Flambae crosses behind the island Robert is working on, shuffling up behind him. Robert takes a breath and physically forces himself to relax as a broad chest presses against his bare back and a pair of arms wrap around his torso. Flambae sighs, resting his chin on Robert’s shoulder and watching as he breaks the yolks of the eggs and stirs them. “But I can’t because someone is a filthy liar and didn’t come back to me.”

Robert rolls his eyes at that. Drama queen. “I’m trying to keep us alive, okay?” He tugs himself out of the grasp, moving towards the stove with the bowl and nodding at the table. “Go, sit. You can bitch at me while resting.” 

“Bossy little bitch.” Flambae huffs but complies, making little comments under his breath as he drops back down into the same spot as last night. Robert is trying his very best to figure out how this stove works while also looking like he’s been in the same room as a stove of any kind in the past decade. “Are you just like that?”

“What, bossy?” 

“Yeah.” Flambae replies, the sleep-husk of his voice beginning to wear off. “The first thing I learned about you when I woke up is that you love to order me around.” Robert cracks a small smile as he pours the eggs into the not-quite preheated pan. 

“Well, I am your boss. Kinda.” He grabs a spatula to start pushing the ribbons of eggs around. “I literally boss you around for a living.”

Flambae makes a questioning noise. “How long have you been our dispatcher?” He pauses. “Wait, I’m still on the Z-Team, right?” Robert turns, leaning against the counter with spatula in-hand so he can face the other man while he talks. 

“Yeah, you’re still on the Z-Team. I’ve been your dispatcher for… eight months, I think.” Flambae nods, slouching against the table. Most of the curtains are still drawn from last night but Robert had opened one hoping he could limit the amount of light the super had to endure while he was healing. 

The light is warmer now, beams streaming through at just the right angle to land on the table and highlight the reddish wood grain. Flambae closes his eyes and leans into it, chest moving up and down slowly as he soaks in the warmth. The golden light falls over him like it was meant to be there, his hair shining and the olive of his skin tone faintly shimmering. He’s gorgeous. Robert forces himself to look away. 

“How soon after that did we start dating?” Robert turns away from the scene in front of him to stir the eggs. They don’t actually need stirring at this point but he needs something to do with his hands. 

“A month, give or take.” His words are met with a soft hum and the kitchen falls silent save for the low sizzling of the eggs in the pan. It’s kind of nice, actually. He forgot how therapeutic cooking could be with all the Twinkies and protein bars he subsisted off of. 

“I was kind of surprised,” Robert starts as he pushes the eggs around the pan. “That you believed it so easily. That we were dating. If I woke up to that I probably would have started running in the opposite direction.”

Flambae shrugs, face propped up against his hand as he leans against the table. “Eh. It was a surprise for sure, but Alice was there and I trust her.”

“Oh, that’s right. What happened when I was in the locker room?” 

Robert turns after a few seconds of silence to see Flambae with his eyes diverted, an embarrassed wince on his face as he tugs at a strand of his hair. “I mean, not a lot. She said she was gonna take me home and keep an eye on me and I kind of spiralled. Sorry about… all that.” Robert just shrugs again, body lax as he moves to put bread in the toaster. 

“Not a big deal. You were pretty out of it. I would have laughed but I already felt bad about you getting injured on a call I sent you on.” 

Flambae shakes his head. “Not that. The, the clinginess. I’ve probably already apologized for that but I can’t exactly remember, so.” Robert pauses, frowning. 

“I don’t think you’re clingy.” Well. “I don’t think you’re that clingy. You’re injured, it’s normal.” Flambae groans and rubs his face before sending Robert a glare, like he’s the one who’s making no sense here. 

“No. I don’t remember us before this, but I know what I’m like in relationships. I’m a needy, jealous, clingy bitch. I’m thanking you for dealing with that.” That statement makes Robert feel a lot of things so it takes him a second to parse out why exactly the words make his gut twist. Honesty, he realizes. 

These are things that Flambae would never, ever tell Robert. These are the things he would tell a partner, not his boss, not his kind-of-friend-kind-of-enemy. Robert is getting all of this information unearned, offered up freely and he feels sick with it. This isn’t for him. 

He clears his throat, grabbing two plates from the cabinet (which are also placed too high), plating the eggs as the toaster pops. “Well,” He says as he grabs silverware and carries them over to the table. “It hasn’t been a problem so far.”

Robert slides the plates onto the table and drops into the seat opposite. They eat in silence for the first few minutes, Robert making a pointed effort to not stare at the man in front of him as he nibbles on a piece of whole-grain bread. Maybe he wasn’t looking enough. Would Flambae think it’s weird that Robert’s not looking at him?

Robert looks up and oh, wrong decision. Flambae is looking back at him. Like, really looking at him, staring like Robert is a puzzle and he hasn’t figured out if he’s missing a piece or not. Robert forces himself to swallow the mouthful as eyes-turned-flame by the sunlight pierce into his own. 

He tries to break the tension. “What, is the food that bad?” Flambae takes a second to respond, blinking slowly before shaking his head. 

“It’s fine. Horrendously basic. Have I not taught you how to cook?”

After five minutes of back and forth Flambae reluctantly allows Robert to clean the kitchen (‘If you cooked, I’m cleaning. This is an equal contributions relationship!’) under the condition that Robert must join him in the living room when he’s done. Robert was perfectly happy with this deal until he starts hearing… noises, from the living room. Far too many noises. He’s cursing the fact that he can’t see the living room from where he’s loading the dishwasher with each thump and muttered ‘oh shit’.

He braces himself as he dries his hands. It can’t be that bad, right? He makes his way, turning into the living room when-

“Wha-!” A bundle of fabric hits his face before he can even see what he’s walking into. Robert freezes in his tracks and looks down at whatever had just been chucked into his face and landed in his arms. Sweatpants. He looks back up when he sees Flambae snickering at him from the couch. Ass. 

“Not that I’m not loving the view, but I need you to get completely comfortable.” He drops onto the couch. Robert blinks, looking down and realizing that he's been walking around the apartment in nothing but Flambae’s borrowed boxers.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before.” He mutters, letting the sweatpants unfold to step into them before he pauses. Get comfortable? 

He properly looks at the living room and with growing horror he realizes that the couch is covered with pillows and blankets. The little coffee table has been littered with items of all kinds– books, candles, a laptop– and none of them are filling Robert with any confidence. 

“What is this?” He tries to keep the tremor out of his voice. He’s not sure he succeeds. Flambae, the bastard he is, just lights up from the mound of blankets he’s fallen against. 

“In the very small amount of knowledge I have about you, I have deduced that you’re physically incapable of relaxing. I, on the other hand, am fantastic at it.” He’s grinning as leans forward, igniting the tip of his pointer finger and lighting a candle on the table. “And we have nowhere to be. So.” He pats the vacant spot on the couch next to him. 

“Come cuddle.”

Hell. Robert is in hell. 

In the few minutes that Robert left him unsupervised, Flambae seems to have planned their entire day. What does this day include, you may ask? Nothing. They’re doing nothing. All. Day. 

“I tried to look at my phone earlier and–yeah, I know, hold on– and couldn’t do anything for more than a minute before my head started hurting again. But, I realized that if I turned the brightness down on the TV, I’m fine.” Flambae is clicking through the menu as Robert drifts over to the couch in a daze. “I’m thinking, we binge the first season of Desperate Housewives. Then you call Alice for me so I can keep up with my girl without screentime. I’ll cook lunch, something to actually put more meat on your bones.”

“You’re not cooking.”

“It’s my kitchen!”

Flambae settles at the crook of the L-shaped couch, arranging blankets and pillows on either side of himself before dragging Robert with all the dignity of a scruffed kitten. Robert wants to fight, wants to bite and snipe at the man to make it clear that he’s letting Flambae do this, that he could fight back if he wanted to. Robert exhales as he’s dragged between Flambae’s legs, his back pressed against Flambae’s chest and a plush throw blanket is tossed over their laps. 

Grandmothers. Yeah, that’s it. He’ll send Flambae out on calls exclusively to grandmothers with lost cats or who need help carrying their groceries. He’ll keep a close eye on the Torrance sewer system, too. They always needed help. The only reason Robert doesn’t scramble off the couch to go hide in the bathroom is the unfortunate knowledge that his friend is brain damaged. Stupid fucking kaiju. 

As much as he hates to admit it, Flambae is right. Robert has no idea how to relax. He’s not really sure if being dragged into kicking and screaming is helping very much but he tries to unclench his muscles and let the smiles come a little easier with every ridiculous plot point. 

The most unexpected part of all of it is how tired he suddenly finds himself. It’s not even noon yet, he shouldn’t be tired, but sleep croons a gentle song as Flambae drops his chin on Robert’s head, clutching his scarred waist like he’s a life-sized stuffed animal. It's really, really comfortable. 

He begins to doze without even realizing it. One second his eyes are as pleasantly heavy as the TV drones in front of them and the next there’s a noise dragging him out of a sleep that’s just as heavy and sweet as molasses. 

“Hn?” He tries. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes as his jaw cracks open in a yawn. “Wh’d I miss?” There’s a sigh against his ear. Robert would turn but he’s still trapped by the man draped over him. 

“Nothing, Rob. Go back to sleep.” The words are gentle, meant to ease him back into comfort but never let it be said that Robert Robertson III is not a contrarian. He brings a warm hand to rub at his face, brain sluggishly catching up as he watches a gaggle of women on the screen. 

“No, I’m up, what’s wrong?” 

Flambae sighs long and weary against him. “I’m trying to remember you and it’s not working. I thought maybe if I did this it would trigger something but-” He interrupts himself with a frustrated growl. 

“I keep trying.” Flambae pulls his arms away to massage his temples. “The worst part is that I know you’re in there but every time I try to actually remember it just-” He cuts himself off again to pull at his hair. 

“Hey.” Robert twists enough to grab his wrists and gently pry them away. “No rush, okay? If you strain yourself too much it might actually make it worse.”

“I- fuck, I know that, but I just.” Flambae sighs. “I just wanna remember you.” The words are spoken so softly and pitifully. They hit like a punch to the gut. 

“It must suck to have lost memories.” Robert tries. Flambae rolls his eyes but nods. 

“Yeah, it does, but I’m upset that I can’t remember you. I know that you’re important to me. I know that, I can fucking feel it.” The temperature of the skin beneath him is starting to shift from a comfortable simmer to the dangerous crackling of a bonfire. Robert needs to run damage control. 

“What’s it like to have missing memories?” Okay, maybe not the best distraction given the circumstances but it clearly works, Flambae releasing a tense breath as the heat beneath Robert’s skin begins to recede. 

The thing is, Robert is pretty sure he has a few missing memories of his own. He knows that pain has a tendency to let things slip through the cracks. More than a few of his scars have questionable origins— he can guess by the shape and age but so many of the specifics are lost with each pass of a needle through skin. 

“It’s weird.” He mumbles against Robert’s hair. “Hard to describe. It’s like… sand. I think it’s that kid sand that you can pick up and squish together but I try to pick it up and it all just falls through my fingers. It’s really annoying. I think… I think the worst part is that I’m missing so much of us.”

“How so?”

“I just feel like I’m missing out on it. Which, that’s fucking stupid, it still happened to me but… I don’t know. I feel like I woke up and I had everything handed to me on a silver platter. It sucks.” 

Robert frowns. “What, you woke up from being violently concussed and felt it was your dose of good karma?

“Shut the fuck up. Let me try to explain, those court-ordered therapy sessions have to be good for something.” Flambae’s arms wind around his waist once again, tighter this time. “Have I told you about my dating history?”

So, so much. “Some of it.” 

“Hm. I didn’t really feel comfortable enough to date until I had a better handle on my powers.  I wasn’t in my first relationship until my mid-twenties which just… felt so embarrassing. Buh-buh-buh, shutthefuckup, I know it’s not, but you tell that to a sad gay teenager.” Fuck. Fuck, this wasn’t a list of his hookups, this was emotion. Robert wasn’t equipped to handle this. 

“Looking back on it I kind of realize that I wasn’t actually attracted to my first boyfriend. Maybe attracted is the wrong word. I thought he was hot, I liked kissing him, but there was no chemistry. Ugh, that sounds so fucking cringe, but it’s true. I sort of figured out that I didn’t want to be in a relationship because I was genuinely interested in the other guy, I wanted to be in a relationship because I needed proof that I could be loved. I made them feel that way. Me. Maybe that’s fucked up or whatever, using someone in an vulnerable situation for emotional validation. I mean, it is, but I didn’t know what I was doing.” Flambae is on a roll now, the accented words ringing in Robert’s ears as his fists tighten in the throw blanket.

“Anyways,” He sighs. “I kind of took a break from dating. Hookups were fine. Great, even, but nothing that involved commitment. I’ve never really been one of those date-to-marry types but the older I got the more I wanted… companionship, I guess. I wanted someone I was attracted to, drawn to, and who I could stand being in my kitchen. Not a lot of people met all of those requirements. It seems like giving good head and being able to hold a conversation are mutually exclusive for a lot of the guys I’ve met.” He scoffs. 

“I decided, okay, I’ll set my standards. I want someone that won’t make me feel trapped in something like marriage. I want someone who I can make dinner for and watch a movie with and then immediately go have hot kinky sex with. Those things can’t cancel each other out.  I think it was probably self-destructive, deciding I’ll set my standards so impossibly high that no one can ever reach them.”

“And this… this kind of feels like a dream come true ‘cause I wake up and there’s a man next to me and he’s hot and kind of a bitch but I always want to be in the same room as him. I don’t just tolerate him, I actually want him to be there. Do you know how fucking picky I am with the people I want to be around?” 

“That’s why I was acting weird. This morning, I mean. I was scared, you know? You seemed like the whole package and I thought surely, surely I haven’t found a person who meets my impossibly high standards. I’ve been alone for nearly forty years. But I walked into my kitchen and you were there and it was just right. It’s like every part of me looked at you and said, yeah, I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

“So. Yeah.” He leans back, crossing his arms and looking out the window in an effort to avoid eye contact. “I’m kind of having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I found you.” 

Robert is at a loss. He knows he needs to say something. He pushes himself off of Flambae’s lap, shoving himself to the opposite end of the couch so he’s not tempted to lean into the soothing warmth once again. 

The words are spilling out of him before he can think better of it. “I’m not the whole package. I get why you might think that but Flambae, you’re missing so much. You don’t remember our history, you don’t remember how long it took, what it took for us to get to this point. You’re putting me on a pedestal and you’re going to get your memories back and you’re going to be so angry with me.” Robert feels his nails dig into his palms as dread mounts in his chest. 

“I’m-I’m not a good partner. I’m a workaholic, I can barely keep myself alive most days. I barely sleep and the sleep I do get is terrible because I always have nightmares from my past. I have a lot of things I probably need to get diagnosed but I haven’t because I’m scared that if I told someone the truth I would be in a psych ward for the rest of my life.” 

He’s pretty sure he’s hyperventilating at this point, breath coming in terrified little pants. “My body barely works the way it’s supposed to anymore, I’m tired all the time and every part of me hurts constantly and I’m covered in scars that never healed properly and I haven’t been anything close to attractive in years and I just- you don’t want this!”

Tears are rolling down his face and dripping onto the borrowed sweatpants as he tries to heave in proper breaths. He’s always been a fucking crybaby and the anger at that fact only makes the tears come quicker as his fists clench at his side. Goddamnit. Fuck. 

His head is buzzing like a jar of shaken bees and he feels like he’s about to explode or melt into a puddle on the couch or just fucking die-

“Can I touch you?” It takes a second for the words to register. He sniffles and continues to refuse eye contact. 

“Azizam, let me give you a hug. Please.” Robert is hunched in on himself from his end of the couch and his muscles are so tense they hurt. It makes his movements especially jerky when he nods. 

He’s gathered into warm, warm arms, tucked against a chest that’s becoming more familiar. His breath is hiccuping as his face is once again pressed into the crook of Flambae’s neck and he feels like air around them shift as he’s carried back to their spot on the couch. 

He’s adjusted on Flambae’s lap before a blanket is pulled over him and a soft hand begins to card through his hair. When Flambae speaks again the words are so, so soft. 

“I’m sorry.” Flambae’s voice is rough but far steadier than Robert’s.

His voice is raspy, nearly a croak as he asks,“Why?” 

“I know how I act in relationships. I’m clingy, I’m needy, but I take care of my partner. The fact that you seem so… unused to this makes me think I haven’t been treating you right.”

Robert’s brain is firing on one half-functional cylinder so it takes him a second to parse through what that’s supposed to mean. “No. No, I was serious yesterday. You’re… you’re great. I’m just really fucked up.” 

“Mhm, maybe. But so am I.”

The conversation tapers off. Robert feels pathetic for crying at an emotional conversation of all things and then letting himself be held like a child but he’s coming to realize that this whole ‘talking about your emotions’ thing is kind of exhausting. So he lets himself be held. 

He listens to Desperate Housewives still playing on low volume, listens each time the A/C turns on and off, listens to the gentle rumble of cars passing on the streets outside the window. He listens to the inhales and exhales of the man holding him, the steady thump of his heart. 

After… however long, he pulls his face away from skin that smells like the kind of campfire you roast marshmallows over. Flambae dips his head to meet Robert’s gaze and his heart twists in his chest as he sees tear marks to match his own. 

“Sorry.” Robert eventually manages. “I didn’t really mean to… blow up like that.” Flambae blinks at him slowly before shrugging. He leans forward and brushes a heartbreakingly tender kiss to his cheek. 

“I’m not mad at you. You let me hold you.” Robert just nods slowly. He’s not really sure how he’s supposed to move on from here. In the stories the main characters always had their big emotional moments and then fucked off or died or whatever. How was he supposed to navigate this when neither of those were an option? 

By sleeping, apparently. His eyes feel heavy again and he slumps back into the embrace. “M’tired.” He mumbles. 

Flambae hums in agreement, his chest rumbling in a way that makes Robert’s skin vibrate. “Me too. Nap time?”

Robert nods against him. “Nap time.” The blanket is adjusted over him and he’s asleep once again. 

By the time he wakes up Desperate Housewives is paused. He squints up at the ceiling, body lax and pleasantly warm with sleep. At least, until he realized that there wasn’t another body next to him. 

He shoots up on the couch, heart pounding as he takes in the environment. The scant light he’s getting through the blinds tells him that it’s late afternoon, closer to dinner than lunch by now. The candle has burned down nearly halfway. 

His head swivels at the sound of a clink in the kitchen, eyes narrowing. That fucker better not be cooking. He drags himself out of the mound of blankets, shuffling over the blankets and pillows that had fallen onto the floor in their day of ‘rest and relaxation’. 

“-too. But it’s been good so far.” Robert turns the corner to see Flambae standing in the kitchen, phone tucked to his ear and he cuts an assortment of fruit. He’s halfway through thinly slicing an apple. Robert chooses to stay silent, leaning against the wall and lingering in the shadows. 

“It’s been really good so far, actually. He’s… I can’t remember his coffee order or his favorite color or anything, but it’s like every other part of me knows him. Yeah, fuck you too. Calling me cringe, fucking bitch.” Robert bites back a smile as he drops the slices into the bowl. “Yeah, I’ll let him know. Love you too, girl.” 

He pulls away to hang up and Robert chooses to be kind by waiting until he’s finished with the apple, setting down the knife when he speaks. “Tell me what?”

Flambae yelps, shoulders shooting to his ears before he scowls over at Robert. He picks the knife back up just to point it at him. “You’re a sneaky motherfucker, you know that?” 

Robert just grins and pushes himself off the wall. He leans against the counter to watch as an orange is neatly sliced into segments. “Watcha’ doing?” 

“Snacks. I was hungry when I woke up, figured you would be too. Here.” He pushes the bowl over and Robert grabs a single raspberry to nibble on. “Don’t do that shit, eat the berry.” Robert rolls his eyes but tosses it in his mouth. 

“So,” Flambae starts. “That was Alice.”

“I figured.”

“She was just checking in. Asked a lot of questions about you. She asked whether or not you had run for the hills yet.” Robert huffs a laugh. “She said she’s pretty sure Chase is planning to murder them all in their sleep so I need to hurry and heal so you can get back in the office.” 

Flambae drops the orange slices in the bowl, licking the juice off of his fingers before he drops the knife and cutting board in the sink. “She also said that in case you’re going insane Blazer wanted you to look at some code shit, I don’t fucking know. You’re a hacker?”

Robert brightens at the prospect of work to do. “Kind of. I’m good with computers.”

“God, don’t tell me I’m dating a geek.” He squawks when Robert starts pelting him with blueberries. “Hey, fucking quit that-!”

They end up back in the living room, Flambae newly enraptured with the show as Robert balances the borrowed laptop in his lap. Flambae is fully laying down in his blanket nest, curled on his side as Robert leans upright against the other armrest. He’s kind of having a blast, actually. He never really realized that he could be comfortable and a workaholic. 

They stay in their prone positions until the sky properly begins to darken. They ordered Thai food a few minutes ago, Robert completely locked in on the code in front of him as he tries to hunt down a syntax error.  

“Oh. Huh.” Robert glances up from the laptop for half a second. Flambae is staring at him with a quiet wonder on his face. It’s uncomfortable for a lot of reasons that Robert is too much of a coward to name. 

“What’s up?” 

A slow, easy smile crawls along Flambae’s face. “I remembered something. You.”

Fuck. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” 

“I remember your first day. When you introduced yourself on the comms. Holy fuck, your last name is Robertson?” Robert rolls his eyes and tries to suppress the upturned twitch of his lips as the ice-cold terror in his veins seems to melt. Nothing bad yet. 

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. That's it?” He tries to return to the pointless endeavor on his screen and is quickly halted by a gentle hand on his wrist. Flambae is closer now, much closer and in the process of shoving himself in between Robert’s legs. 

“Nope.” He snatches up the laptop, Robert lunging for the device but forced back down with a hand on his chest. For his part Flambae sets it down gently on the coffee table before turning to meet Robert’s gaze with a delighted one of his own. “No more working. I remember you. I ever tell you how hot I thought your voice was?”

Robert clears his throat and tries to suppress the blush he’s sure is creeping along his cheeks as he’s being pinned down, but Flambae isn’t finished. “I heard your voice on the comms and immediately wondered whether or not you were into dirty talk. Wait, are you? Fucking amnesia!”

Flambae neatly slots himself between Robert’s legs, his eyes simmering dangerously as he rests his face on Robert’s stomach. “Come on! I deserve to know about our sex life!” 

Robert was unprepared for this one. He hadn’t even thought of this one. What was he supposed to say? They had incredible, mind blowing sex every single night? He decides to keep doing what he’s been doing: toeing the thin line of truth as carefully and tentatively as humanly possible. 

“I do.” Flambae lights up beneath him. 

“I’m so fucking lucky. You ever think of going into audio porn? Actually, don’t answer that.” He grins widely as Robert laughs and brings his hands up to begin smoothing back the stray strands of hair falling into the face of the man glowing in his lap. 

It’s as soft as he always thought it would be. It’s a little wilder today, not tamed by product or hair ties and thoroughly sleep ruffled but that makes it even easier for Robert to gently coax out the tangles. Flambae hums, eyes sliding shut and skin heating pleasantly as he leans into the affection. 

Robert’s never had a cat. He’s thought about it before— they’re independent, generally clean, probably one of the best pets to have if you’re not home very often. He had been looking at local shelters but a small, skinny little black-and-white puppy stumbled into his life before he actually got the chance to do anything. 

He’s pretty sure this is what owning a cat is like, he muses as a slow drag of his nails over scalp pulls forth a rumbling sigh. He’s held power over people before. Actually, that wasn’t right. He’s held the lives of hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in his hand and it had never gotten to his head. 

This, though? A grown man melting like putty in his lap with each pass of his fingers through thick hair? That was intoxicating. They stay like that until the doorbell rings and Robert has to physically shove Flambae off of him so they can tip the driver. 

Robert is thinking a lot of things as he sits cross-legged on a plush couch, eating pad thai, watching a terrible murder mystery and sitting curled into the side of the man who held him while he cried. The main thought, though, is: I could get used to this. It’s only a little scary this time. 

Chapter Text

They wake up on the couch together, tucked back into the crook of the couch with Robert snuggly sandwiched between Flambae and the cushions. He wakes up a little slower this time, his breaths slow and measured as his lungs fill with the intoxicating scent of musk and slow burning wood. Robert pauses, inhaling again as he tries to figure out what kind of wood he’s reminded of. Pinion, maybe?

He winces as he tries to sit up but is quickly stopped as a low, aching pain lances up his spine. Oh, that’s right. Falling asleep anywhere other than an orthopedic mattress after thirty was tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment. He shuffles, trying to move a little so he’s lying more on his side. 

“If you run off again I’m tying you down.” Flambae mumbles, the arm that’s apparently been beneath Robert this entire time snaking up to secure a hold on his waist. Robert doesn’t respond, still far too sleep-addled to put up much of a fight. 

He hums and lets his eyes fall shut once again. He’s not trying to sleep anymore, he’s far too awake for that but he’s trying to savor this. He knows his time with this is limited. He should try to absorb every detail of this so he has something to look back on when he’s laying on the floor of his apartment again. 

Robert’s tucked neatly into Flambae’s side, curled into him with his back against the cushions. He sighs lazily and blindly lets his free arm grope until his own arm is slung over Flambae’s waist. 

“Wasn’t planning on it.” He mumbles back, voice muffled against long hair. “M’ comfy.” Flambe chuckles. It’s a warm, amused rumble and Robert feels the corners of his lips upturn. 

Robert arches up into the touch of a hand in his hair and turns his face into the broad palm. 

He’d normally feel at least a little embarrassed, a little self conscious, but he really can’t be fucked to care. He’s let go of so many inhibitions over the past two days, why should he stop here? What does another second curled against a bonfire matter when the forest is going to burn down anyways? 

His jaw cracks as he yawns, earning Robert another low chuckle from the man beneath him. “Hmm, sleepy.” Robert lets a scathing eye slide open. Flambae just grins back. 

It seems they’ve woken a little later today, likely given how late they stayed up to finish the first season. Flambae claimed he hated to leave things unfinished but Robert has a sneaking suspicion he plans to make them watch the second season. Flambae has forgotten his memories of the past few months, right? Robert thinks he could probably distract him with rewatching Heated Rivalry. 

The morning is lazy. After Flambae seems to have gotten his fill of morning physical affection (or stopped pouting every time Robert tries to pull away) the two of them meander to the kitchen, their motions slowed by the undemanding quiet of the apartment. Robert leans against the counter as Flambae turns on the coffee machine and studies his movements with a critical eye to copy later. 

“Milk or sugar?”

“Just milk.” A mug is slid in front of him and Robert feels the tension seep out of his shoulders as the scent wisps up to his nose. He takes a sip, eyes sliding shut as he lets the almost-fruity taste of the coffee roll around his palate. He has no idea what kind of coffee Flambae buys but it’s not instant so it’s automatically better than 95% of what he’s had before. 

He keeps his hands wrapped around the mug and watches as Flambae moves around the kitchen. Even missing a couple of months there’s a familiarity in the way he steps, probably muscle memory more than anything. Robert narrows his eyes as he sees him pull out a couple of eggs from the fridge. 

“You’re not cooking.”

Flambae turns to him with an indignant tone. “Why not? It’s my kitchen.”

Robert takes another sip of coffee and eyes the way the other man ducks to pull a frying pan out of a cabinet. “Your coordination is fucked, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What, like burn myself?” Fair enough. 

“Fine. No knives.” Flambae somehow looks even more offended at that as he stops midway through grabbing a cutting board to glare at Robert.

“I’m not eating plain eggs and toast again.” Robert tilts his head to the side and lets that thought rattle around for a second. He pushes himself off the counter to slip behind the island and snatch the cutting board out of Flambae’s hand. “Hey!”

Robert grabs a knife out of the block, sequestering himself a portion of the counter with the cutting board and knife as he grabs the onion that had been dropped onto the counter. “Sliced or diced?”

“...Diced.”

Robert sips his coffee as he’s handed and then hands away more onions, tomatoes, garlic, watching as Flambae pushes them around the pan on a low flame. Robert has no idea what’s being cooked but by the time Flambae is dropping eggs into the pan he’s draining the last of his coffee with a rumbling stomach. 

They eat silently with refilled mugs, basking in the natural light from the windows Flambae insisted they could reopen. Robert spears a crumble of what he thinks is feta, popping it in his mouth and letting the slight saltiness coat his tongue.

“Any new memories?”

Flambae shrugs as he tears off a piece of toasted naan and tosses it in his mouth. “Nope.”

“You don’t seem very upset by that.”

“I’m not.” Flambae turns towards the window, chewing thoughtfully as he watches the cars pass on the street beneath them. “I mean, I’m not happy about it or anything, but… I dunno. I figure I’ll get them back eventually. What’s the rush?”

Robert feels his stomach clench. “Right.” He takes another bite, larger this time in a bargain for time as he chews. Strangely, one of the hardest parts about the past few days has been figuring out what to talk about. 

Actually, that’s not true. Flamabe has question after question, most of which are about Robert and their past. It’s been hard to avoid not blatantly lying but Robert feels like he has some kind of duty to provide the man with as much truth as he can. 

The hard part is the nature of the conversation. He’s used to their bickering back and forth, their name-calling and cursing and snide remarks. He’s not used to Flambae asking him what his favorite season is or how much butter he likes on his popcorn. The lack of a demeaning tone is especially disconcerting. 

“Can I kiss you?” Robert whips his head up to lock eyes with Flambae. The man is smiling a soft, knowing thing as Robert struggles to swallow the rest of his mouthful.

“Sorry.” Flambae shrugs, still grinning as he leans forward to plant his elbows on the table. 

“I wanted to ask before. Like, way before, actually, but you were barely willing to cuddle with me.” He rolls his eyes at that, taking another sip of coffee before continuing. “And I would be a willing and active participant.”

Robert can feel his brain backfiring. There is literally no correct answer to this. Either he says no and the man across from him starts pouting or he says yes and he gets punched twice this month. It’s a very lose-lose situation. “And don’t tell me that you’re basically a stranger or whatever the fuck, that’s such a cop-out.”

Robert sips his coffee as slowly as he can justify delaying his response. “I don’t know.”

“Fuck you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know, Flambae.” Robert’s tone is exasperated and he immediately feels bad as the man across from him frowns. “Sorry, sorry. I just feel weird about it. Like…” He sighs. 

“I just feel like you’re missing so much context and it feels like I’m taking advantage of you.” Flambae sets down his fork, studying Robert for a few beats before crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. He maintains the silence long enough that Robert starts to feel uncomfortable. 

“Were we fighting?” 

“Sorry?”

“Before this,” Flambae clarifies as he tracks the movements of Robert’s fork. “Were we in an argument? Is that why you’ve been holding me at arm’s length?”

“No,” Robert answers before he can think of the potential utility of that response. Technically, they were always fighting. “No, nothing like that.” Flambae frowns again, hand coming up to thread through his hair. 

“Do you not like kissing?”

“I don’t know, it’s fine?”

“It’s fine?”

“It’s great!”

“Okay, then. I’m telling you, even with my lost memories and no context and all the other shit, that I want to kiss you.” Flambae leans forward on the table, arms crossed with a complicated expression. He sighs, letting his gaze fall onto the table. “I’m not going to force you or anything, obviously. But you’re right there and I can’t kiss you?” 

Robert busies himself with trying to peel the skin off a cooked tomato to justify keeping his gaze down. He can almost physically feel his neurons firing as he tries to dig himself out of this hole. 

“Alright. We’ll make a deal.” Flambae perks up at those words, the orange of his eyes sparking back up. “When you remember me, and I mean fully remember me, you can decide whether or not you want to kiss me.”

“Deal.” Robert has barely finished speaking by the time Flambae is responding, looking up just in time to see Flambae fully process what he just agreed to. “Wait, fuck-”

“Too late.” And with that Robert is standing once more to gather their plates. He tries to tidy while Flambae is in the shower, subtly tucking some pillows and blankets back in the bedroom but hopefully not enough that he’s immediately called out on it. 

He sweeps, he puts away the rest of the dishes, and he thinks. 

He thinks about a lot of things, actually. For the first time in a long time he wonders if he has the potential for a life like this. When he was a kid his future seemed pretty cut and dry: become Mecha Man, marry a woman, have a kid to continue the mantle and die honourably. 

That plan changed quite a bit along the way and Robert’s vision of a picket fence was fractured with every new slash of a blade or slice of a claw through his skin. Well, that and the very aggressive bisexual awakening but the point was, he realized he probably wouldn’t get his happily ever after. He sure as hell wasn’t going to condemn another kid to a lifetime of this misery.

And he was fine with that. He really, genuinely was. Some people weren’t destined for lives of softness. It was unfortunate but that was simply the hand he was dealt and he was perfectly okay with that. 

The problem is that he’s realizing something. He’s realizing that a happily ever after doesn’t have to include a wife and two-point-five kids and a golden retriever. It could just be… this, the scent of coffee still lingering in the air as he finishes wiping down the counter with a spray that smells like lavender. He can hear the shower running, the way the water hits the tile as Flambae does whatever the fuck he’s doing that’s taking so long. 

This is more obtainable. This is possible, he realizes. He imagines coming home after a long day to crash into a too-soft couch, imagines a pair of warm, broad hands rubbing that spot between his shoulders that always tugs uncomfortably as they argue about where they want to order for dinner. 

That realization makes things worse because the thing is, he could have had this life. But he can’t. He knows he can’t. These few days existed in a vacuum, isolated from the outside world and the history that comes with it. Maybe he could have had this if he had just met Flambae in a bar. Maybe if Robert hooked up with him and caught feelings or caught his eye from across the gym, he could have had this. It would have been possible.

His chest aches with the thought. 

He’s trying to distract himself with a crossword on his phone when he hears the bathroom door creak open. The air is permeated with steam the scent of Flambae’s absurdly expensive shampoo and conditioner, a scent he’s become intimately familiar with since the moment he stepped through the front door. 

Flambe drapes himself over Robert’s shoulder from behind the couch, watching as Robert tries to figure out the name of a ‘Nutty Alpine cheese’. Robert leans his head back against the cushions to see a very damp, very shirtless Flambae leaning back over him. He scowls as water from damp hair drips onto him. 

“You cleaned.” Flambae says, frowning and putting his hands on his hips.

“Yeah,” Robert replies with a raised brow. “That’s generally a good thing.” Flambae narrows his eyes for a couple of seconds before dropping next to him on the couch with a huff. 

“I feel bad.” He mumbles with crossed arms. “You’re doing all the work, I should be taking care of you.” 

Robert looks back up from his phone with an amused glance. “Last I checked you were the one with a concussion. You’re not supposed to do anything other than resting.”

“I know that but I should be cooking and making sure you upgrade from twink to twunk. At the very least.” Flambae pauses and eyes him consideringly. “How often am I cooking for you?”

“Uh, it depends, I guess. Sometimes?” 

Flambae gets that little crease in his brow that means he’s thinking, evaluating the situation and not liking what he’s finding. “What?”

“We’ve said we love each other, right?” Robert feels his heart palpitate in his chest. He clears his throat and tries to look away without immediately showing his hand. 

“Why?”

Flambae makes a frustrated little noise. “Because cooking is my love language. If we’ve been dating for seven months I should have been trying to put more meat on your bones but you look like one of those cartoon stray cats with their ribs sticking out.”

“Hey.”

“I’m serious!” The crease in his brow softens along with the cadence of his voice. “I just want to know why I haven’t been taking care of you.”

Robert swallows around the lump in his throat. “You’ll get your memories back soon enough, right?”

“Right.” The word falls awkwardly flat in the silent living room. They watch each other for a few seconds before Flambae nods to himself a few times. “What’s this about gay hockey players?”

They end up back on the couch, Robert continuing his fruitless endeavors with the crossword and Flambae watching the screen utterly enraptured (‘How the fuck was this allowed to air?’). He never thought that he would be cozy as a grown-ass man but that’s exactly what he’s feeling, wearing a too-large borrowed sweater with feet tucked under him and not-so-subtly using Flambae as a hot water bottle. 

Three episodes later Flambae is standing up, displacing Robert and absolutely not leaving him pouting. “Where are you going?”

The best phrase to describe Flambae’s smile is ‘shit-eating’. “The bathroom.” He says, immediately turning on his heel towards the kitchen. 

Robert can’t quite stomp down the wave of fondness as he calls, “No knives!”

“Yeah, yeah, mom.”

The noises are perfectly unsuspicious for a solid forty-five seconds. There’s a crash from the kitchen followed by a string of colorful swears and Robert is moving before he can even think about it. His socked feet skid on the floor in his dash while already running through worst-case scenarios. 

He knew he shouldn’t have let him cook, his coordination wasn’t nearly up to par but that fucking grin got him. Okay, future note to himself: look away from Flambae when he was setting rules. 

He whips around the corner into the kitchen to find Flambae standing in front of the stove, cursing as he holds a kitchen towel currently on fire. It takes him all of a second to put the flames out, likely more surprised than anything but Robert is unaccustomed to sharing a living space with someone fire-resistant and is thus panicking as he sees flames on bare hands. 

“Are you okay?” The words are punched out of him as he moves forward, grabbing Flambae by the shoulders to inspect him. Flambae lets himself be moved and it’s making Robert panic. “Fucking answer me, did you hurt yourself?”

“You’re Mecha Man.” Robert’s heart drops out of his chest. 

They stare at each other for a long, long moment. Robert has never been good at reading people and finds himself particularly irritated at that fact now more than ever. Maybe if he knew what the blankness of that expression meant he could act, get ahead of the problem. 

“You remember.” It’s not a question. Flambae nods after a few seconds in tight, jerky motions. “You remember me.” Another nod. 

He needs to speak. He needs to say something. 

“I’m sorry.” He barely manages those pitiful, meager two words. He should say something else. He can’t. 

“I should go.” Neither of them move for a few seconds. The air feels thick when Robert realizes there’s only a few inches between their faces. He swallows thickly around the growing ball of emotions in his throat. 

The look on Flambae’s face is deeply complicated. He’s watching Robert, really watching him, tracking each twitch of his muscles and the bob of his throat. Flambae takes a step forward, reaching an arm out as Robert takes a step back. 

“I’m gonna- yeah.” Without another word he turns on and half-walk half-runs to the bedroom. 

His movements are frantic as he changes, snatching up his phone and desperately grateful that he didn’t actually have anything to pack up. He’s out of the bedroom in less than a minute before he’s pacing down the hall, ducking into the living room to snatch up the shoes that had fallen astray. 

He moves towards the door and he can see Flambae from the corner of his eyes, unmoved from his spot in the kitchen. He should apologize more. He doesn’t.

He yanks open the front door with a little more force than strictly necessary. He’s hyperventilating as he jogs down the stairwell, far too anxious to wait for the elevator to come up to the level. He’s not sure he could even stand still at this point without going into respiratory distress. 

He crashes his way outside and starts walking. He barely knows the area, has no fucking idea which way is which but he needs to put some kind of distance between himself and the building lingering over his shoulder. 

He walks, and he walks, and he walks. 

He comes back to himself after… some time. He’s not really sure how much time. All he knows is that when he left the sky had been meandering down from its crest in the sky, a sky now painted with soft pinks and oranges. He should stop. 

He halts himself on a sidewalk in a neighborhood he does not know. His breath is shaky as he pulls his phone out of his pocket– he remembered to grab his phone? – to call an Uber. He isn’t leaning against a dark-stained fence for too long before a car is pulling up beside him. The driver takes one look at him, nodding once to himself before he starts driving. He doesn’t put on any music or try to speak. Robert gives him five stars. 

His head is empty as he’s unlocking the front door to his apartment with the keys that had somehow not fallen out of his slacks. He instinctively listens for the excited pattering of nails on the floor, his heart sinking when he remembers that someone on the team has Beef. He is well and truly alone here. 

His movements are robotic as he moves towards the shower. He’s not really sure why that’s the first thing he thought to do. The water pressure is pathetic as he looks at the floor of the shower, imagining each soft touch and gentle word whispered against his skin slipping down the drain. He dries himself with his single towel, pulling on a pair of boxers that do not smell like another person and sinking to the mattress on his floor. 

It’s dark. He’s still not sure what time it is, phone abandoned on his kitchen counter, but the dark meant sleep, right? Sleep was good. Sleep brought him many, many bad things but it did offer one good thing: a reprieve from the most pressing bad thing.

Sleep does not find him that night. 

It scares him how easily he fell into domesticity. He always knew that this was something he couldn’t have. A life like that requires a partner and when he died in the suit he was going to leave them behind. That was a cruelty love couldn’t justify. That’s why he stuck to hookups, stuck to relationships that didn’t linger or send him good morning texts. 

This was a mistake, he thinks, laying on his mattress without a bedframe and outfitted with the cheapest sheets Ikea had to offer. He knew it would be but he was greedy, he was greedy and he was weak and he wasn’t sure how he was going to move on with life now that he knew what he was missing. He feels particularly cold as he throws himself on his side with a huff. 

His eyes land on the sliding door of the balcony. He has an idea. It’s a stupid idea and the fact that it was something he was even considering makes him the worst kind of pathetic. He rolls off the mattress and shuffles across a dark room with far too many lamps. 

Robert slides the balcony door open and sighs as he’s hit with a rush of warm California summer night air. It’s far from fresh, the smell of gasoline and barbeques itching at the back of his throat but he nudges the door a little further open. 

He drops back down onto the mattress and grabs for the comforter that ends up on the floor more nights than not. He balls it up, punching the material into submission until he can close his eyes and pretend the weight of another person is pressed against him as he curls against the bundle. It’s a weak facsimile of what he had but combined with the uncomfortably warm air creeping along his bare back the buzzing in his mind slowly begins to recede. 

He doesn’t sleep so much as he drifts, flashes and fragments of dreams flitting behind his eyelids as his arm tightens around the bundle of fabric he’s clutching. Eventually his bones begin creaking after a period of stagnation not accompanied by rest. 

He forces himself out of bed and finds that it’s a little easier than he expects. Oh, he realizes peripherally. It’s because there’s not someone to pull him back in. He moves to slide the balcony door shut but pauses, leaning against the frame.

The sun has just begun to rise. It's too early for the sun to have begun cresting over the backdrop of buildings he looks out upon but the sky is already beginning to lighten with hues of pink and orange. He lays back down on his mattress, eyes trained on the scene until the birds have begun singing and the early risers among his neighbors have begun opening and closing their doors. 

He spares a moment to be grateful that he isn’t one of those people. It was Wednesday when he went home with Flambae meaning he gets the full weekend to figure out his next steps. 

He decides that he’ll request a transfer to dispatch for another team. It’ll hurt, yes, but he thinks they’ve grown enough to not immediately run off whichever poor kid got stuck with them next. He justifies his decision by saying it’s the right thing to do, that Flambae shouldn’t be forced to work with him given the extreme ethical violation he just spent three days committing. He ignores the voice that whispers in his head and tells him, ‘You’re so pathetic you can’t even look at his icon on the screen’.

The day passes sluggishly. He doesn’t move until the hunger demands it and even then he ignores it as long as he can. He’s not used to eating breakfast and he curses his traitorous body for growing accustomed to three square meals so quickly. The protein bar tastes like ash in his mouth. He gets through half of it before abandoning it on his counter. 

He feels so listless and isn’t sure why. This has always been his life: if he’s not working he’s sitting in his apartment with the lights turned off as he debates where he went wrong. It isn’t until the silence of the apartment becomes stifling that he understands that he simply got used to having another person to force an activity onto him. He thinks about doing the crossword and immediately remembers the way the orange of Flambae’s eyes flickered in amusement as water landed on Robert’s cheek. It was enrapturing, like watching the edges of a campfire. 

It isn’t until midday that he thinks to check his phone. It’s not that he’s expecting anything, really, he just wanted to check the time so he knew how long he had to wait until it was socially acceptable to go drinking alone. 

--

Your Favorite Flaming Homosexual 🔥

i’m sorry. 

--

His heart stutters in his chest. He can’t even manage his usual annoyed grin at the contact name Flambae put himself under. Why was he apologizing?

Robert chews his lip as he tries to figure out how to respond. Under normal circumstances he might not respond, might put the phone face down back on the counter and leave him on delivered but the thought that Flambae might think he’s somehow in the wrong here makes his stomach curl in a multitude of unpleasant ways. 

--

Me 

You have nothing to apologise for. 

Your Favorite Flaming Homosexual 🔥

then why did you run away like your ass was on fire

--

Despite himself he can’t suppress the twitch of his lips. 

--

Me 

I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. 

Your Favorite Flaming Homosexual 🔥

bob are you fucking with me rn 

i’m not kidding 

Me 

?

Your Favorite Flaming Homosexual 🔥

either you uber your pathetic ass back to my apartment or i pick u up

which one

--

Maybe it speaks to how far gone he was that he replies with a simple:

--

Me

I’ll be there in twenty. 

Your Favorite Flaming Homosexual 🔥

you fucking better i will not hesitate to kidnap you

--

Robert tries to work through everything swirling around his head on the drive over and firmly settles on: I don’t know. It’s complicated but it’s a little freeing to admit to himself that he just… doesn’t know. Not that he’s happy about it or anything. He feels like he’s walking to the gallows as he hangs his head, punching in the floor number for the elevator. 

He hesitates in front of the door. He briefly wonders if he’s going to get an even more vicious reenactment of the night of the houseparty and then decides, ‘Yeah, that’s fine’. 

He knocks. Once, twice. He hears unnaturally soft footsteps, feels the way they gently vibrate the floor as the occupant gets closer. He braces himself as the door swings open. 

Robert realizes that he had been bracing himself for an entirely different kind of hurt. Flambae looks so scared. The blood rushes in his ears, everything in him screaming in protest as the man in the doorway curls into himself. 

“Hey.” Robert manages. 

“Hey.”

They stare at each other for a few beats. 

“Should I come in, or…?”

“Oh, fuck, yeah come on.”

He steps through the door, letting it shut behind him as the standstill resumes in the hallway. Robert clears his throat and summons the years of bravery as Mecha Man to force the words out of his mouth. 

“I’m so-”

“You’re not-” The words overlap and they pause. They stare at each other again. Robert can’t say he’s thrilled with how much eye contact he’s had to make lately. 

“I’m sorry.” He rushes out before Flambae gets the chance. “Flambae, I’m so sorry. What I did was completely unacceptable. I should have just let Alice take you home. I… I understand if you never want to see me again. I’ll call Blazer and let her know I’m requesting a transfer.”

Robert expects a lot of things following his words. Anger, sadness, anger, maybe a sharp right hook. He does not expect confusion. 

“The fuck are you talking about?” Robert falters. 

“I- there’s a huge imbalance between us now. I understand if you don’t want to work with me anymore.” Flambae blinks, pausing before taking maybe one of the largest breaths Robert has ever seen. Smoke curls out of his mouth on the exhale and Robert wonders if Flambae has taken the batteries out of the smoke detector.

“We’re clearly on different pages here. Come on.” He turns and Robert watches as Flambae walks to the couch now devoid of fabric and plush to drop down. He pats the seat next to him and Robert is vividly reminded of Flambae patting the couch the exact same way before Robert was yanked into his lap. 

He forces his feet to unstick, movements deeply hesitant as he joins the man and leaves a solid foot of space between them. Flambae turns to face him. Robert faces himself firmly forward and because Flambae is the strongest between them, he talks first.

“I’m not mad at you. I know I need to make that clear because if I don’t sit your skinny ass down and tell you, you’re going to get stuck in that big head of yours and go running and we’ll be right back where we started.”

Flambe takes a second to consider his words. The living room feels so silent with the TV off and neither of them talking. 

“Did you think about what I was feeling?” The words aren’t cruel. Flambae is looking at him, voice far too soft as he genuinely asks Robert, “Did you think about what I might have been feeling when I got back eight months of memories and realized that Mecha Man was in my living room, lying on my couch and wearing my clothes?”

He… he had not. “I didn-”

“Shut the fuck up.” The words do not hold the cruel bite he expects. They make the jagged edges of the cavern in his stomach sharpen a little further. “Shut the fuck up, and listen to me.”

Flambae closes his eyes, taking a deep, deep breath and exhaling as Robert turns to face him. “I was scared. I was fucking terrified, actually. Robert, I spent two days basically professing my undying love for you and the first thing you did when I realized was slam the door shut in my face.” 

 Robert is a terrible person. He is selfish and cruel and inconsiderate and he does not deserve to be alive. 

“I appreciate the fact that you were so unwilling to ‘take advantage of me’ or whatever the fuck you thought you were doing, but.” He trails off, gaze dropping to his hands picking at the inseam of his pants. “I didn’t feel- I don’t feel that way because I was concussed. I feel that way about you. Currently. I want you here.”

He finally looks up to make proper eye contact and Rober feels nausea mount in his chest as Flambae tries to blink away the tears collecting at the edges of his eyes. “I want you here. I want you in my kitchen, I want you in my bed, I want to force you to watch Desperate Housewives with me and cook while you cut the vegetables.”

His voice holds a raw, shaky, cracked quality. “Fuck, Robert, I want you in my life, fuck our history.” His hands are trembling as he grips the fabric of his shorts, breaths shorts and quick. 

Robert’s head feels fuzzy and his vision is far too bright. He knows he needs to respond but he feels two seconds away from passing the fuck out with how overwhelmed he is. 

“Okay.” He croaks weakly, more in acknowledgement than actually continuing the conversation. Flambae’s jaw clenches and unclenches. “Okay. Uh. Are-are you sure?” And Flambae is growling as he lunges forward to crush his lips against Robert’s.

He freezes on instinct, everything in his head disappearing in a second with the sensation of hot lips pressed desperately against his own. He feels hesitation in the way the passion begins to wither but he manually forces himself to move, fucking move before he’s reaching out and desperately grasping for the man in front of him so Flambae doesn’t get the chance to pull away. 

There’s a gasp against his mouth as his hands find thick hair and yank Flambae closer to him. It’s messy, it’s desperate, it’s hideously uncoordinated but it’s everything and more Robert hoped it would be when he was lying alone on his shitty mattress. His head is filled with a much better kind of fuzz as teeth find his bottom lip and a too-hot tongue forces its way into his mouth.

They pull away for air, the two men flushed and gasping. Robert watches as a thin, shiny strand of spit connecting them snaps. His next breath is a little more desperate. 

“Is that enough proof?” Flambae asks, his chest heaving and the fire in his eyes dancing beautifully. 

“I-” Robert’s voice cracks and he flushes. “Yeah.” They pause, staring at- wait, fuck this. Robert leaps forward, crashing against Flambae and sending the both of them tumbling off the couch and onto the floor. His mouth is back on Flambae’s, slower this time but no less heated. 

Hands find his waist and Robert grins into the kiss, cradling a defined jawline as he adjusts so he’s properly straddling the waist beneath him. He’s met with a pleased hum and the hands on his waist tighten a little more. He can barely think with how deliriously happy he is. Or maybe that’s the lack of oxygen. Jury’s still out on that one. 

He pulls away after another unclear amount of time with their tongues down each other’s throats to peer down at the man beneath him. His chest flutters as lidded eyes peer back and a pink tongue darts out to moisten kiss-bitten lips. 

“You’re more emotionally intelligent than I thought.” Robert tries to steady his voice. He’s pretty sure he fails but he doesn’t mind so much when burning ochre eyes roll with an amused crease. 

“Court mandated therapy, Robbo.” He leans into where Robert still cradles his face, eyes sliding shut with a blissful sigh. “And I’m like, the only one between us without self-worth issues.”

“Ha, ha.” Flambae turns to nip at Robert’s fingers, hands squeezing his waist once again as Robert flicks him on the forehead in return. Robert lets his body fall forward, voluntarily pushing his face against Flambae’s skin and smiling as the scent of smoking wood fills his lungs. 

He shifts his hips as he gets comfortable, lacing his arms around Flambae’s neck to bring him even closer. How possible that is when they’re already chest-to-chest is unclear but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try. He grins when there’s a pleased rumble beneath him. 

“Keep that up and I won’t be able to wait until after our first date to suck your soul out of your dick.”

Robert can’t quite bite back the giggle that tumbles out of his mouth as he asks, “You sure you remember how?”

“Oh, fuck you.”