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Electro only realized it because Otto became comfortable. Even after Otto had lowered some of her walls just enough to start dating didn’t apparently mean she was an open book. Oftentimes when Electro would try to earnestly ask about bits of Ocks past encounters or her present condition Otto would redirect. This left Max with the frustrating task of reconstructing her own girlfriend from puzzle pieces. Of course she had the option of asking her other girlfriends for clues, but Flint was kept in the dark as much as Electro and apparently Alexsei viewed the medical information Otto shared with her as strictly protected by HIPPA.
“Come Onnnn you never even finished nursing school!! You didn’t even take an oath you can share Something about doc with me!” Electro groaned as they lightly banged their head against the shielded uv lamp currently baking their nails. Sitting in Alexsei’s big bed in their shared room.
“That is not how any of this works malyshka but good try” Alexsei responded as she evens out a coat of dark red on her own broad nails.
“BUT she’s my girlfriend! Your metamore! Maybe even more with how you three have been giggling around closed doors.” Max huffed. The nail timer went off and the uv lamp clicked off as they pulled their hands from the little oven to throw a pillow at Alexsei. It was swiftly blocked by one of Flint's hands stretching out and changing the pillow's trajectory to land in a pile of plushies.
Flints returned to his own routine of buffing charcoal powder into his imitation nails before replying, “yeah it’s not like any of us are trying to be subtle exactly”
“Except for Ock! God I thought dating a super villain would be like 80% exposition and dramatic monologues! I’m lucky if I can figure out her favorite type of coffee… meanwhile I’m like an open electronics manual to her!” Electro grabbed the same pillow and hugged it close to their body with a huff. They leaned back to lay in Flint's lap as he put down his wire nail buff and started to pet Electro’s mane of static.
“Well it’s not like you arrived here in the best condition Sparky” he cooed as his fingers tangled in their curls.
Electro furrowed their brows, they then turned in Flint's lap suddenly and blew an obnoxiously loud raspberry on Flint's inner thigh. Flint exploded with a betrayed laughter and scattered particulates as he tried to push their head away.
“Hey hey! Ok! we’re all fucked up! We should all probably know each other’s issues now stop it ya little torturer!”
Electro turned back to face up at Flint with a dignified smile, “exactly! I mean. Like. We all know that none of us are exactly textbook human specimens! And the rest of us act like it! I have my discharge station, you two have maintenance days. What about doc?”
That question lingered a little heavier in the air as Alexsei sighed, her nails now under the uv lamp.
“It’s not like she ignores her own issues. Not totally. She did give me run down of accident and medications when she first learned of my knowledge of bodies. Lots for brain, lots of preventatives. She’s… better at taking them now that I’m here” she ended with a huff. Her gaze softened as it landed on Electro again. “Malyshka she will tell you of her issues when she is ready.”
Electro began to groan but was cut off by Alexsei, “or you may just be able to tell her issues because she can be painfully obvious at times” her tusks poked past Alexsei’s top lip as she smiled wide.
Electros lifted their head from Flint's lap. “And what do I do when I realize those issues?”
“Well you treat her the same way you’ve treated us. Like you said we’re not exactly textbook specimens ourselves” Alexsei smirked as she pulled her hand from the uv light and showed it off to her girlfriends.
“Pretty” Flint complimented as that had apparently ended Electro’s line of inquiry. Electro untucked the pillow from their core and smacked it against Flint’s jaw in a fit of giggles. His face dramatically crumpled before reforming with a wicked smirk.
“Oh lightning bug you just made a big mistake…” before coming down on Electro with a sandstorm of sharp little kisses. Electro giggled wildly and Alexsei only pretended to be annoyed as she tried to paint the nails of her other hand while getting as little sand involved as possible.
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Otto had never considered that perhaps the women that she slept with wanted her exactly. Sure, they might want her skill, her intellect, her ability to take control. But why would a lover want to see her body? Otto never considered it much to look at even before the accident. She was already broad and hairy, her body already refusing to take part in any semblance of conventional beauty.
Then most of the skin of her left side came off and giant mechanical arms were welded to her flesh. She was left a husk of her former self and built Doctor Octopus from inside that dry hot loneliness. She lived each day like some animal in a sci-fi dystopia, surviving, adapting as needed, and continuing her work.
When she looked at herself in a mirror. She didn’t want to share the image she saw back with anyone. At the best her own self image was uncompromised by her incessant hallucinations, that was luckily increasingly the case after Alexsei joined Otto’s living space. She really didn’t like to linger on how her mind would send memories and paranoia to her visual processing center. She thanked whatever force unseen that Alexsei and Flint never commented on the towels over mirrors when she first invited them to her home.
When Otto didn’t have to deal with visions pulled though her mind, her own self image was still, literally, horrible. In the mornings the camera feeds from her actuators were the slowest to come online, leading her to be significantly less coordinated. With her thick dark glasses Otto could see colors and rough shapes. She could navigate a space she knows pretty well but until her hidden mobility aids all came back on daily tasks were a struggle. Without her glasses Otto did not want to admit how bad the blobs of overwhelming light became.
She didn’t view it as lying to her girlfriend when they were doing some adjustment work on one of the actuators one evening in the lab. Suspended by a wire set up, panels along the actuator arm open, both Otto and Electro knew just how intimate this was for her. But the work needed to be done and Electro could give measurements of potential difference down to a single nanovolt with just their fingers at two contact points. That was incredibly alluring to Otto regardless of the vulnerability demanded. As two other actuators worked behind her back setting up a replacement circuit, one stayed hovering over Otto’s shoulder pointed at her defective sister as the offending actuator lay in its wire harness and chirped meekly at Electro.
Electro gave the arm a sympathetic glance from under welding goggles, a spark occasionally jumping from their fingertips into the large metal housing.
This was till Electro had apparently been feeling too warm about Otto and a particularly big spark arced from Max into the head of the actuator. The arms central lens immediately blacked out and slumped slightly, Electro turned their nervous expression to Otto. She sat there with a confused expression from under her own thick dark lenses. Electro noted how quickly the other actuators dropped what they were doing and how quickly All of them were pointed squarely on Electro and the offending actuator. Electro quickly removed her hand from the housing. All of the actuators behind Otto’s back turned to follow Electors hand, while Otto’s head stayed aimed at the actuator.
Electro opened their mouth, but Otto cut in. “Don’t worry. Just a little technical issue. Please leave me to repair Mo on my own.”
Electro held up their hands, “Shit ock I’m sorry! Did that hurt? Are you ok? I can help fix it.” But. As many questions as Electro had, all Otto had to do was cross her human arms and answer with;
“Maxine.”
Electo’s hands fell to their lap. They got up and headed to the door. Looking back at Otto one more time before leaving the lab all the way. Three actuators had remained suspended in the air, pointed and following Electro like a predator's gaze. Oddly, Otto’s head had stayed in the exact position it was the moment the final actuator's feed went down. Electro filed that away with some other targeted questions to ask other girlfriends later as they slinked out of the lab and heard the automatic sliding door shut behind them.
Inside the lab Otto’s world was spatially fractured. She did not have 2 complete ocular streams combining with four independent gray scale camera feeds. Otto Octavius had severe cataracts and light sensitivity that only painted a cohesive image when supplemented with definition from all four of her actuators. This is how Otto’s brain had desperately made a bid at normal vision post accident. It was choppy. Her actuator camera feeds were designed to notice subtle changes in reaction material. Edges of equipment and fine needle readings, not supplements for daily living, certainly not devices for socializing. Even one suddenly cut off like that was disorienting. The other feeds demanding readjustment for her mind to even begin to paint another three dimensional picture. Electro hadn’t meant it. She knew that. She sighed as space became sharp enough for her to continue her work slower than before. Compensating actuators gently handling their sister and clicking components back into place before life returned to the limb. The camera feed from Mo blinked back to life and pointed itself at Otto by instinct. Otto looked at her own weak smile from the camera feed trickling back to her mind.
“.. Hi Mo.” Otto reached out and pet the actuator with one human hand. The caw of the actuator pressed into her palm in response. Otto sighed, “I’m going to have to figure out some way to explain this. Aren’t I?” The actuator could only make a chirp of sympathy.
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Electro woke up pressed against Otto’s stomach and chest. They slowly adjusted their body in pieces until they faced Otto’s sleeping face. Otto kept her room nearly pitch black at night, the only light creeping under the doorway from a window in the hall, and Electro’s own small blue glow. They could see the details of the scarring along the left side of Otto’s face, stars of silvery pink flesh tessellated from the broad patterns across her chest and shoulders, up her neck and leaving three distinct scars up the side of her face. The top one was normally obscured by glasses, the one edge dangerously close to Otto’s closed left eye. The faint edges of scars and the natural wrinkles of Otto’s droopy eyes left it hard to tell exactly how much damage with her eyes closed. It’s not like this was the first time Electro had woken up in Doc's room, it was a part of their weekly routine by now, but it was still hard getting an unadulterated look at their girlfriend. Otto only really took her glasses off after she turned off the lights, and while Electro could faintly make out the scars, catching glimpses of Otto’s milky eyes, they had decided to not press right away. They were forming their own theories and considered what Alexsei said about Doc being painfully obvious. They considered some other pieces of evidence as Otto sired.
Shifting under Electro’s arm, Otto began to open her eyes before registering Max’s glowing face and shutting her eyes again.
“Mmmm… Maxwell, you're eager this morning. Very bright..” she murmured in a sleepy tone.
Electro thought about how their heart felt in that moment, they really were glowing at a minimum but tried to will less voltage into being, and eventually just shifted away from Otto and sat up, “Sorry Doc! Uh.. good morning” they said sheepishly as Otto lightly squinted in roughly the direction of their face.
“Good morning electro, could you please hand me my glasses?” Actuators were beginning to chirp and buzz to life around them as Otto’s systems came online. Electro reached for Otto’s thick dark glasses on the bedside table and turned back to face Otto. Otto had a human hand held out from under the covers, her face still in the approximate direction of Electo’s face. Electro held the glasses for another second and cocked their head, looking at the cloudy blue of Otto’s eyes. Electro’s brows furrowed, and they placed the glasses in Otto’s hands. Otto moved automatically to put her glasses on and Electro could make out her blinking hard a few times from behind the dark lenses before settling. Then Otto smiled as her gaze settled better on Electro.
“Did you like last night darling?” Otto’s human hand landed on Electro’s bare waist and traveled upward in a way that made them shiver.
Electro’s mind returned to the prior night as their train of thought was pleasantly interrupted and they giggled, “yes I did…” As they began to pepper kisses across Otto’s cheek. Otto pulled them close as the actuators slumped around them rose up, one sluggishly turning to look at Otto and Electro.
They went from the peaceful embrace of new lovers on a lazy morning to getting up pretty quickly from there. Mostly because of Otto. She reconnected her harness belt and threw on a flannel shirt over her undershirt while sitting on the edge of the bed. Electro was on their feet and changing into spare comfy clothes from a duffle bag in the corner of Otto’s room. Going down to the kitchen they both began morning routines. Otto normally had a smoke before she began to make coffee for herself, actuators pointed at the open window for a few minuets from a table near the kitchen. Her human hands working by habit as smoke began to lift from her lips and Electro started the coffee maker. Five minuets later Electro approached the little table Otto was sitting at with two hot mugs in one hand and a milk and a creamer wedged under her other arm. Otto only turned back when Electro set the mugs down.
“…. That was fast.” Otto said, one actuator turning sluggish from the window to look at Electro as well.
“Well sorry I don’t know how to use your fancy shmancy espresso pot! The keurig is a lot faster anyway.” Electro pushed the one mug towards Otto before popping the top off the creamer and pouring a generous amount into their own mug.
“Ah.. thank you. Keurig coffee…” Otto looked down at the mug with suspicion, actuator lens joining her. “And milk?”
Electro paused for a second as she looked at the milk two feet away from them both on the table. The train of thought could not be off the track long. “… here you go.” Electro slowly said as they moved the milk right next to Otto’s cup.
Otto, or maybe her actuator registered it, “thank you.” Otto picked up the milk and undid the cap. She looked at her coffee cup. Her one actuator also aimed at her coffee cup.
Otto proceeded to pour milk directly onto the counter two inches in front of where her coffee cup ended.
“Fuck.” Otto quietly said as the actuator near her began to go for the paper towels and one sister arm jointed it. Electro sat there with a furrowed brow. Not angry but thinking. They had jumped a little when realizing the spill but then things just clicked into place and suddenly it was painfully obvious. Otto made quick work as the other actuators began to turn from the window and help her clean. Within a minute the spill was gone and Otto was successfully pouring milk in her coffee with multiple actuators watching this time.
Electro waited for her to have a sip and place her mug back down before asking Otto, “so… how much do you see?”
Otto still coughed when getting the question. Her face went through a series of expressions until it settled on something like defeat. “Maxwell. You know my eyes were injured during my accident”
Electro landed their hands against their thighs, “you’ve told me one sentence about that and haven’t said more since!”
Otto tapped her fingers in procession against the porcelain of her mug. She turned from Electro and huffed.
“Following my accident I developed a severe cauteracs in both eyes as a physical pressure response to the radiation. There were some attempts to correct this but this mostly made it so that my left eye was not completely blind.” Electro fought a grimace they were glad Otto was tuned from, they then looked up at a chirping actuator staring down at them with some guilt.
“The actuators do significantly… compensate. And I’ve found I work best with all of them online to create cohesive depth perception. Hence why only using one as the rest calibrated for the morning was… less than successful.” She turned back to electro, their eyes roughly meeting.
Electro's shoulders dropped. They reached out their hand and took Otto’s “That’s all I wanted to know. Was that so hard?”
Otto paused and squeezed Electro’s hand back. “No it wasn’t.”
“It was probably pretty disorienting the other day in the lab when Mo’s camera turned off?”
“… yes it was. I knew you didn’t do it on purpose but I felt like I was going to throw up.” Otto chuckled out at the end. “I guess it would’ve been better if you had known. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, I can understand why.” Electro scooted their chair closer to Otto while still holding her hand. “What… how does my face look to you?”
Otto’s head cocked to the side. The actuators still around her started to slowly bob and weave around max as Otto attempted an earnest answer.
“Through my eyes and glasses? You’re a remarkably beautiful series of blue yellow and white circles and lines. When I take my glasses off your scars are always too bright for me…..” Electro almost said sorry but Otto held up a hand. “Through my actuators you’re a cohesive living form. I can see your edges and features, tell what you’re wearing, your expression.” As she explained one of the top actuators came closer to Electro’s face. “I can see those cute little dimples you get by your smile. And I think you’re stunning. If it was any worry..”
Electro grabbed the actuator and placed a big smooch directly on one claw, the arm chirped and nuzzled against electros hair before settling around their waist as Electro wrapped their arms around the actuator. “I think you show how attractive you find me like… all the time babe <3”
“Good we wouldn’t want that point muddied” Otto replied as two actuators helped scoot her chair even closer to Electro’s and Otto placed her head on Electro’s shoulder.
“You know. Maybe you don’t need to wait till you have evidence and I spill milk in front of you to ask about some of my… conditions. And I can try and do a better job of letting you know what I need.” Electro grinned wide as they caught a glimpse of Otto’s eyes under her glasses, Otto looked back up at her and squinted a smile. “You are bright Maxwell, but it’s really such a beautiful light.”