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If you asked Robert if everything was alright, he’d lie through his teeth to say he was perfectly fine, he just had a small headache. The kind of thing someone gets over quickly with some painkillers and a glass of water. If you knew Robert you would also know he was "lying through his fucking teeth!" in the ever so subtle words of Chase who would also remind anyone that "If that motherfucker admits to feeling pain get the fucking ambulance here yesterday!" whenever Robert looked a little pale.
Of course, Chase isn't here to call him out on his bullshit.
The holiday rush of people doing idiotic things isn't exclusive to paramedics, because just as many fools decide to commit crimes in the rush as people who stick led bulbs where the sun don't shine. They needed those ambulances right now for those same civilians, not an ex-hero who couldn't keep his shit together.
He'd power through the way staring at his monitor made him feel like he was going to throw up for his team. For this city. For the people trying to have a good time with a light bulb. Unfortunately.
Robert had been sitting long enough for his legs to lose feeling. The shifts had gotten only more intensive with the crime rush, from subscribers who demand porch parcel thieves be caught to massive heists in banks and jewellery stores. More dispatchers end up taking time off to celebrate Hanukah, Christmas, the Solstice and the coverage area to meet the demand widened. The teams get smaller as heroes cash in their time off. The hours get longer to try and cover the holes, the Z-Team stayed one of the few teams that remained intact. Most of the Z-Team don't celebrate anything and those that do are either prevented from meeting with their families because of the conditions of their 'parole' or find the holiday pay too alluring.
They're left to pick up the slack. It compounded with an enormous headache.
It also left him with a numbness in his arms and a crick in his neck. His back aches from hunching over a computer set just too low. Robert kept going back to squeezing his arm to maintain sensation in both of them. The lack of movement slowing encroached in the form of static. The static so all encompassing that he had almost missed the latest call coming in.
The shrill sound of the call fading out alerting him to what had been a blind spot in his vision. He swung around, having been angled slightly away from his computer where the call icon should have been clear in his periphery if it wasn’t for the haze it had slowly become. The edges of his sight giving way to tiredness.
Holding himself back from a guttural yawn, he fumbled with the mouse to grab the details of the call before it was too late. Robert became more thankful every day that he wasn’t the one that had to talk to their customers and instead just got packets of information. He wasn’t the most personable on a good day let alone when he hadn’t gotten good sleep since the month started.
“Alright, Malevola, Ssonar, I’m goin’ to need you two to take thiss one.” Robert’s tongue felt too big for his mouth, caching on his words. “S-seemss to be a hostage sit… down… down near the docks. Negotiate, protect the workers- and the cargo, try to keep things diplomatic, prepare for a fi-ght.”
The pair in question reply with separate affirmatives before portaling and flying off respectively. He’s not free to get sorted on the call of yet another package thief (Coupé and Invisigal seem to be handling them with terrifying efficiency) because a certain agitating and grating voice decides to chip in.
“Hey, hey! Who let this motherfucker in on the alcohol early! He’s starting to sound like Wetboy!” Flambae had too high an energy level for Robert to deal with on a normal day, let alone one like this.
So, he ignored him.
He ignored him…
He ignored him…
…
He was pretty good at this.
(He was so good, that the lights that danced in front of his eyes seemed closer to very good a daydream than warning signs. He was so good, that he missed the call for backup because his sight started to blot around the edges. His peripheral vision became vague mess of colour before flickering black.)
A master of procrastination on the matter of his own health, Robert started to realise it was a problem about when the blinking didn’t clear his blurring vision.
However, his dilemma is short lived. Instead, his blaze of panic was interrupted (rudely might he add, can’t a man have a panic attack in peace, heroes these days) by the arrival of Malevola, hauling an injured Sonar through a portal. It was most likely deliberately placed behind his desk instead of the medical wing because they’re all unbelievable, dramatic idiots.
Robert very rarely got the opportunity to see the teams less…in your face… powers. Sure he has seen Coupé’s knives often enough, usually landing between his fingers and accompanied by an equally sharp glare. Sure, Flambae threatens to cremate him at least twice a day. Sure, Invisigal was still getting caught in places she shouldn’t be when she realised that she had overestimated how long she could hold her breath for. Sure, Prism decided to show off more days than not with her doubles and sure Malevola, Sonar, Punch Up and Golem had their whole -everything- going on to the point you couldn’t miss it even if you tried. But the small things? Those were rare. He rarely saw Malevola or Waterboy heal a teammate, it was always when they were on the move and he didn’t need cameras to monitor that. He’s only seen Golem split up a few times. Golem doesn’t call for backup much. The only team member he’d ever really caught flying was Flambae, and that was probably only because he kept testing how far he could go without a flight licence before anyone called him out.
Robert rarely got to see his team in action, and despite being raised around the Brigade he rarely saw any powers except for Chase’s when he was a kid.
Internally, Robert was debating over how much he wished he could have seen how Malevola’s wound transferral worked, study it and part of him was glad that the Z-Team wouldn’t have more blackmail in the form of the childlike wonder that Malevola would have seen in his eyes.
They really didn’t need any more blackmail on him.
He shuddered. The thought of Coupé’s dossiers was enough to sober his more childish impulses. He’d caught a glimpse of the ones she had on Waterboy and Phenomaman already… he feared for the other members with how much longer they’d been around, those two already had way too many files on them and they hadn’t even been here for half as long.
More through habit than any malice for himself, Robert found himself lying through his teeth when Malevola asked him if he was alright. In spite of what he implied to Malevola, not being able to see shit is (predictably) not normal for him. He, usually, could see more than just a black void. The fact he wasn’t able to tell the difference between his eyes being open and shut, if not for the pressure of his eyelids, did concern Robert on a deep, purely subconscious level. Although it was the kind of subconscious that only revealed itself through fucked-up dream metaphors he’d get on the rare occasion sleep didn’t allude him. If Chase ever confronted him for being a self-sacrificial fool he’d just claim the pure confusion of a Z-Teamer having any kind of concern for his well being startled him.
“Mal, I’ve been ‘ere all shift. You think I got- I got an immaculateconcussion or someshin’”
“Look Rob, Robert, it’s a simple question.” Malevola seems particularly unimpressed with him. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
The best disarming tactic was a shit eating smile and a deadpan voice.
“Eleven”
It doesn’t work.
“You’re seeing a doctor if you keep being this hard to get.” Malevola had him hoisted over her shoulder with ease and his protests to movement fell on deaf ears. He flailed pathetically in an attempt to seek freedom. He was unsuccessful.
“I was kiddin! kiddin!” He held his breath and hoped whatever higher power was out there smiled on him. “It was two!”
She stopped, turning Robert’s body in a way he assumed was supposed to make him meet her eyes. Something shimmered and flickered in his chest. A lucky guess.
“Wrong.” And she moved forward, faster. “It does answer the question to why you wouldn’t look me in the eye”
And the flickering thing died. Fuck.
The world kept falling apart around him, the sounds blurred alongside his eyesight. Pressure felt alien. Hands were over him and in him and no where close. Held and dropped in every moment simultaneously. One hand held itself, the sensation floating on top of each other until he couldn’t tell which one had been there originally.
And then the pain flared white.
And the world said it was painless to fall backwards. To run and escape from the pain. To sleep. To leave behind a world that was already sensationless.
And so Robert let what was left of his senses fall through the cracks. And slept.
When Robert wakes up the first thing he expected to smell was the stench of antiseptic that came with the SDN hospital rooms. This was not what he is greeted by. Instead the smell of burnt food and smoke fills his nose and the distant sound of an indistinct argument meets his ears before it was inevitably drowned out by a smoke alarm and a lot of coughing. Home, sweet, home. An apartment block mostly comprised of college students who couldn’t cook, midlife crisis sufferers who never learned how and the lone 86 year old grandfather who tried to teach them all how to.
A panic shot through his spine when his body finally noticed that the sheets he had laid down on are satin. Or Robert assumed it was satin, it could have been cashmere for all he knew. But the specifics didn’t matter. He’d broken into some rich big wigs house to bleed on their stupidly soft bedsheets.
He hoped Chase would take good care of beef as Robert rotted away in a cell.
Hell, he probably wouldn’t get long to rot. Both Mecha Man and Robert Robertson III had pissed off enough criminals to get him a… warm welcome. He hoped Chase could pay for his funeral arrangements because Robert sure couldn’t.
”Chad was trying to cook,” Janelle interrupted his spiralling thoughts. Robert always thought she’d have had a room that smelt more like something rare expensive and imported. Or if she was on a budget something that reminded her of reading perhaps. He didn’t expect Lavender. “Alice says he’s pretty good at it.”
“That candle isn’t doing shit to disguise the smell of burning food.”
She let out a small laugh. It was more of a cough really but it was about as close as she’d get. The ex-assassin was “too composed” for a fit. Even if everyone else would argue Robert just wasn’t funny enough.
She half-dropped something onto the bed before prying it open. A cheesy smell filled the air between them.
”Courtney started to detract him by arguing about his meal choices, Chad took the bait and he’s too animated to keep an eye on stirring at the same time. Hence, burning.”
“I heard it really went down hill when she tried to rope Bruno in, apparently the fact he can’t taste just lent kudos to Chad’s argument.” Malevola chimed in from somewhere behind him.
The sudden sound caused Robert to jump up. Janelle moved the pizza boxes between them so he didn’t flatten them with the sudden movement, letting him tumble instead. He landed hard.
“Court then decided to claim Chad was being constructist for excluding his view point.” Malevola was seemingly unfazed by Robert’s fall. “I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.”
Robert looked back at Janelle, doubt festering.
“So you’re telling me you could predict the exact way that conversion was going to go to order takeout from a pizza place that takes twenty minutes to deliver when that argument only started at best five minutes ago?” His voice drips with suspicion. “You’re not Shroud Coop.”
Robert managed to fiddle his way to a slice, Janelle’s hand preventing him from covering himself in tomato sauce despite his attack on her character.
”No, I couldn’t.”
She paused. Her need for drama undoubtedly apparent. With the full extent of his exasperation, Robert tried to communicate “get on with it already” with only his eyes.
”I did however see how much spice he put into your ‘get well soon meal’ and didn’t want to have to send you to the infirmary.”
Robert squawked with indignation and managed to leap in the general direction of where Janelle should have been but finds himself swatted aside.
“I don’t think Courts gonna forgive us if we mess up her and Mandy’s bed with pizza grease.” Malevola gripped his hands tight and noticeably away from the bedsheets that probably costed more than all the lamps in his apartment combined.
Robert let out a guilty look and rolled onto his back, lying diagonally across the bed. Keeping his hands across his stomach. He could live like this. A smile crept across his face as he let the thought, and the grease of fast food pizza take him to a more planned sleep.