#1 Robert​ Robertson fan

[taosdungeon]

Really liked @barmaideneevee idea: Rob has two cars - one from his dad (settled on a Chevrolet Camaro) and his own ..still can’t decide what

[4threset]

"—bury—your—heart, Aah, Pasión!"

[dlaserart]

A Robert for fun and me time. I might turn him into a keychain or something.

[s0rinarl]

clingy...

[cherryviolets]

Wanted to get this out of my system.. they make me so sick, you have no idea💔

tw: suggestive under cut

[oof-ouch-yikes]

"Mecha stuff?"

Flambae doesn't think he can be blamed for how long it took the words to sink in. He was tired, he was sore, he was fucking sick of wrapping these fucking plates in bubble wrap. He barely looks up from his task as Robert walks into the kitchen holding a years-old moving box. 

"Thought that stuff was already in the new garage?" Flambae asks absentmindedly, watching appreciatively as his boyfriend balances the box in one arm and wipes the sweat off his brow with another. One of Flambae's t-shirts hangs off Robert's shoulders, loose and well-worn after years of thievery. 

Robert shrugs, dropping the box on the kitchen table with a loud clatter. Flambae pauses, eyes narrowing slightly at the specific, familiar clinking and shuffling. His hands still from where he had been moving to cut more bubble wrap as Robert spins the box in a circle, head tilting to the side as he tries to gauge the contents veiled by cardboard. 

"Well, it's not one of my boxes. I always got mine from liquor stores." 

I know, Flambae thinks miserably, I was the one who actually unpacked all the shit you shoved into a closet. Robert spins the box this way and that, head tilting to the side as Flambae watches on from behind the kitchen counter. It's relatively nondescript, just a plain beige box, taped together with clear moving tape and a hasty label scrawled in black sharpie. 

Robert shrugs, nail scraping the edge of the tape in a bid to remove it. "Guess we gotta open it and see. It's weird, I found it way in the back of your closet. Almost missed it." 

He's got the tape halfway off by the time Flambae realizes what exactly his boyfriend is about to unearth. The plate Flambae had been wrapping hits the counter with a worrying clank! as he whips around the corner in a scramble to make it to the table in time. 

He's too late. Robert tosses the tape to the side and lifts the flaps, nose wrinkling at the plume of dust that shoots up. "The fuck…?"

It was easy enough to run away to Canada, right? Flambae could fly, he wouldn't even have to bother with the passport stuff. His parole officer would understand. Actually, he wouldn't, the guy was such a bitch-

"Chad."

"Yes, beloved?"

"Mhm. Mind telling me why you have a box of Mecha Man merch you never told me about?" A rifling of items, vinyl figures clinking against enamel pins shuffling against cardstock. "Specifically of Blue?"

"…I'm supportive of the arts." 

"…right." A shuffling of items once more. The crinkle of protective plastic over paper. "Woah, they were really generous with my dick size-"

"ALRIGHT-" 

[pinkdisc]

Do we see the vision or is this poop from butt?

[pinkdisc]

♡ Kiss the Match Ch.3 out now ♡

“What felt urgent enough that you called for an extra session?”

Chad drags a hand down his face.

A lot of things, apparently.

The words don’t come right away. He keeps looking everywhere except at her—at the bookshelves lined up too neatly against the wall, at the ceramic lamp in the corner with its ugly beige shade, at the rain slipping down the window in thin, crooked lines. Anything but Dr. Rosen, who sits across from him with her notebook balanced on one knee and the kind of calm expression that makes it impossible to tell whether she’s worried or just waiting.

A year ago, he wouldn’t have called for an extra session. A year ago, he would’ve laughed in somebody’s face if they suggested it. Mandated therapy was one thing. Showing up because he knew he was getting bad again and didn’t trust himself to just wait it out was another.

And yet here he is.

Finally, he mutters, “I saw a guy get dropped off a building on live TV.”

That gets her full attention, even if her face barely changes.

“Tell me what happened.”

“He was some hero getting exposed for taking bribes or whatever. Didn’t even matter.” Chad rubs his thumb over the seam of his jeans hard enough to feel the fabric drag against skin. “The point is, this fucking villain, Red Veil, had him by the leg, cameras everywhere, half the city watching, and then he just—”

He cuts himself off and flicks one hand downward.

“Dropped him,” he says. “Like it was nothing.”

The room goes quiet again.

Outside, tires hiss over rain-slick asphalt. Somewhere down the hall, a door shuts.

Dr. Rosen asks, “He died?”

Chad gives her a look. “What do you think?”

She lets that pass.

“And since then?”

“Since then, I can’t sleep for shit.” He lets out a laugh with no humor in it and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Or I sleep, and then I get punished for it.”

“What happens when you do sleep?”

He swallows.

“I keep seeing him fall.”

“The hero?”

Chad shakes his head.

“No,” he says more quietly.

He leans back, then forward again almost immediately, restless in his own body. Heat keeps gathering under his skin in little waves. Not enough to spike the temperature of the room. Just enough that he can feel it crawling over his arms and chest, asking to be let out.

“It’s not really about Kingfisher,” he says. “I mean, yeah, it’s fucked. Obviously. But I’ve seen murder before. I was a villain. I’ve seen people die.”

His thumb keeps working over the seam in his jeans. He only notices because it’s starting to hurt.

“It’s just...” His voice roughens. “Every time I think about it, every time I close my eyes, it stops being him.”

Dr. Rosen doesn’t interrupt.

“It’s Robert.”

Chad exhales sharply through his nose and leans back like moving will help. It doesn’t. His chest still feels too tight, like there isn’t enough room inside it for lungs and heat all at once.

She gives him a second before asking, “And when you picture Robert there, what’s the thought that comes with it?”

“That he’s already dead,” Chad says, too fast. Then he drags a hand over his mouth and adds, “Or that he’s alive and that’s somehow worse.”

“You’re afraid he might still be alive but suffering.”

His mouth goes tight.

“Yeah.”

“And not knowing feels unbearable.”

Chad huffs a breath and drops his head back for a second, staring at the ceiling. “For the first few months after he went missing, I kept thinking we’d find him. It was just a matter of time. We’d get a lead, kick down the right door, have some dramatic reunion, fix the problem, move on. Because Robert’s...” He catches himself before the wrong name slips out. “Because he’s a hero. He’s supposed to come back from shit like this.”

Dr. Rosen watches him carefully. “And now?”

His throat feels dry.

“Now it feels like I was being delusional.”

“Have you started to believe you won’t find him alive?”

Chad stares at the floor.

Belief sounds too deliberate. It’s felt more like his confidence has been wearing down a little at a time without him admitting it. Every bad lead, every dead end, every day without Robert has chipped away at the part of him that used to be sure they’d find him alive.

“I think,” he says slowly, “I think I’m getting used to the idea that there might not be an ending to this I can live with.”

The room stays quiet.

He can hear the faint hum of the vent. Rain tapping the window harder now. His own pulse making itself obnoxious in his ears.

Dr. Rosen asks, “Do you think it would be easier to know what happened to him? Even if the answer is terrible?”

Chad shuts his eyes for a second.

“I don’t know,” he says.

The words come out rougher than he means them to.

“I genuinely don’t fucking know. Because if he’s dead, then at least it’s over, and even thinking that makes me feel like a monster. But if he’s alive and I can’t get to him, or he’s—” His jaw locks hard enough to hurt. “Alive, and every day we don’t find him is another day something’s being done to him. Maybe I’m sitting here hoping for the version where he’s alive because it makes me feel better, not because it’s actually better for him.”

The heat jumps inside him with that one.

He has to force his hands flat against the chair arms and breathe slowly through his nose before it gets away from him. The fire in him is restless. He keeps it down by habit now, but it takes effort. More than it used to.

Dr. Rosen lets him get his breathing under control before she speaks.

“That kind of uncertainty can be especially painful,” she says. “When there’s no confirmation, people often get stuck between hope and grief. They can’t fully mourn, but they also can’t rest in hope. The mind keeps trying to solve it, and the body stays on alert because, as far as it knows, the emergency is still happening.”

“Great,” Chad mutters. “So what do I do about that?”

Her answer comes without hesitation, which annoys him a little.

“You stop asking yourself to solve the uncertainty emotionally before there’s an answer.”

He frowns. “What?”

“You don’t have to decide right now whether hope is helping you or hurting you, or whether grief would be safer, or whether one outcome would be easier to survive than another. Those are impossible questions when you don’t have the information. Trying to answer them over and over is just grinding you down.”

Chad looks at her for a second. “That just sounds like a really nice way of telling me to stop thinking about it.”

“It’s actually the opposite.”

She sets the notebook on the arm of her chair.

“I’m saying you may need different questions. Not ‘Which answer would hurt less?’ but ‘What do I need when I don’t know?’ Not ‘What ending can I live with?’ but ‘How do I survive the waiting without destroying myself?’ Those are things we can work with.”

He looks away first.

He hasn’t been handling the waiting well. It’s been fucking up everything. Sleep. Work. Eating. Every part of his life keeps circling back to Robert until sometimes it feels like he can’t think about anything else for more than five minutes.

Chad wets his lips. “There’s something else.”

Dr. Rosen doesn’t move. “Okay.”

He almost changes his mind.

Then he remembers the diner, the cold booth, the smell of burnt coffee, and the way one offhand comment from Chase had made his whole body go haywire.

“I...” He drops his gaze to his hands. “I think my feelings for him are maybe not normal.”

“What makes you say that?”

Chad laughs once, under his breath. “Because they’re insane?”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“We knew each other for what, a little over half a year before he went missing? We flirted. Kind of. We bitched at each other a lot. He got under my skin. I got under his.” Chad presses his thumb against his knuckle until it hurts. “That’s not enough to be this fucked up over somebody.”

Dr. Rosen studies him. “You think the intensity of your feelings means something is wrong with you.”

“Yeah.”

“Because?”

Because Robert would look at him like he’d lost his mind if Chad ever actually said any of it out loud. Because even now, the word love makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. Because he’s never wanted somebody like this before, not in a way that made his whole life rearrange itself around them.

He stares at the lamp instead of at her. “Because it’s too much. And because if I ever did say something, and he looked at me like I was a fucking weirdo, I’d have to move away and change my name.”

Dr. Rosen lets that settle before asking, “What makes it feel like too much?”

He blinks at her.

“What?”

“You’re not just saying the feelings are strong,” she says. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with you for having them. I’m asking what part feels wrong.”

Chad looks away again. “The intensity of it, I guess.”

Dr. Rosen nods once. “Okay. That makes more sense. And I think there are a few different things getting stacked together for you.”

She shifts slightly in her chair, her voice reaches him a little more directly.

“There’s the fact that he’s missing. There’s fear. There’s uncertainty. There’s grief. There’s guilt. And then there’s whatever was already there before he disappeared. Those things can build on each other without all meaning the same thing.”

Chad rubs at his forehead. “That’s fucking annoying.”

“I know.”

He lets out a breath. “It feels like my entire life is revolving around Robert, and I can’t make it stop.”

“What does that look like day to day?”

“I still go through every new Red Ring case with Chase after hours. Even when I’m exhausted. Especially then. He keeps assigning me to anything that might get us closer to Red Veil, and I keep taking it because...”

He trails off.

“Because?”

“Because if I stop, it feels like giving up.”

He thinks of the office  on the third floor. Of Visi sneaking in more and more often and pretending she isn’t. Mal quietly asking around among her supernatural contacts—because if Robert is dead, then talking to the dead is one more lead to chase. Phenomaman looking as wrecked as he did when Blonde Blazer dumped him, which annoys Chad in a way he knows is irrational. Coupé’s perfume lingering there sometimes too, which nobody comments on.

And Chase.

Chase, who used to get angry at everything and now barely gets angry at all, like somebody scooped all the life out of him.

That part scares Chad more than he likes to admit.

“I don’t know how to face Chase some days,” he says. “He’s still going through all of it. Every robbery, every theft, every case that might tie back to Red Veil. And I’m there too, but if I’m being honest...”

He looks down.

“I’m not even sure I still believe it’ll bring us to Robert alive. I think I’m there because Chase is there. Or because I don’t know what the fuck else to do with myself.”

Dr. Rosen nods. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.” Her voice stays maddeningly calm. “Structure can keep people functioning when hope is inconsistent. So can loyalty. So can not wanting to be alone.”

That last one drags his attention back to her.

Not wanting to be alone.

Which is exactly why he ended up at his mother’s house after the bar.

Home.

Rain on the windshield. His phone buzzing unanswered in his pocket. The front door opening before he even finished knocking. His madar taking one look at him and not asking stupid questions. Just stepping aside and saying his name the way only she does.

Chadjan.

The kitchen light had been on. His sister was still awake at the table, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other going still when she saw him. His niece had been asleep on the couch under a blanket covered in cartoon fish, hair all over her face, one little sock half off her heel. The whole house smelled like tea and onions and detergent and wet shoes by the radiator. Familiar enough to hurt.

He hadn’t even realized he was shaking until his mother put both hands on either side of his face and told him to sit down.

No questions at first. Just food pushed at him until he took it. Tea poured whether he wanted it or not. His sister talking around him instead of at him, like she knew if she came at him directly, he’d bolt. His niece waking up halfway through and climbing into his lap without asking, pressing her warm little face into his neck.

He can still hear his mother’s voice, low and worried and trying not to sound it.

Chadjan. Bokhor. Eat.

His throat tightens unexpectedly.

“I went to my mom’s house after,” he says.

Dr. Rosen is quiet for a second. “After the broadcast.”

“Yeah.”

“What made you go there?”

He laughs under his breath. “Probably the same reason Alice has been sleeping on my couch for a week.”

“You didn’t want to be alone.”

He nods once.

“Being in my apartment by myself is...” He shakes his head. “No. I can’t do it right now.”

There’s no point pretending otherwise. Alice showed up with some bullshit excuse about her shower being broken and then stayed for a week. He didn’t call her out because the last thing he wants these days is to be alone in that place with nothing but the fridge hum and his own head for company.

Dr. Rosen asks, “Have you been having thoughts of not wanting to be here?”

The question is gentle and direct in a way that makes his whole body go still.

He knows what she’s asking.

He thinks of the mall. Of flames. Of not leaving. Of how easy it had been, back then, to tell himself that if the whole thing came down with him in it, that would finally be the end. He thinks of the last few weeks, of chasing Red Ring across rooftops with the part of his brain that still knows the difference between reckless and suicidal running quieter than it should.

“A little,” he admits.

Dr. Rosen doesn’t react visibly, but her attention sharpens.

“A little as in passive thoughts? Wishing you could disappear, not wake up, stop doing this?”

“Not a plan,” Chad says quickly. “I’m not making a plan.”

“I hear that. I still need the full answer.”

He drags a hand over his face again.

“Sometimes it just feels like I’m fucking tired,” he says. “Like really, really tired. And the idea of having to keep doing this indefinitely makes something in me go blank.” He swallows. “I don’t want to die. I just... sometimes I don’t know how long I’m supposed to keep carrying all of it.”

Dr. Rosen nods slowly. He hates how relieved part of him feels to have it out loud.

“We need to make sure you’re not carrying it alone,” she says. “That means being specific when the thoughts shift from numbness to wanting out. It means using the people you already went to—your mother, your sister, Alice. It may also mean making the ‘war room’ and late-night case review off-limits on the nights when you’re most depleted, because those seem to be amplifying everything.”

Chad lets out a dry laugh. “You say that like Chase is going to love hearing I’m cutting back.”

“This isn’t about what Chase loves hearing.”

That shuts him up.

She continues, “If the waiting is destroying your sleep, your appetite, your concentration, and your sense of safety, then you need limits that protect you while the situation is unresolved. Not because you’re giving up on Robert. Because you’re trying to stay alive enough to keep going.”

He goes still at that.

Stay alive enough.

The sentence makes something in his chest twist.

Dr. Rosen watches him carefully. “What are you noticing right now?”

He looks down at his hands.

They’re too hot again. His chest is tight, his skin prickling. He can feel the fire pressing against the inside of his wrists, looking for a way out.

“Too much heat,” he mutters.

“Can you lower it?”

He closes his eyes for a second and tries. In for four, hold, out slow. The fire doesn’t leave. It settles a little. Stops crowding his throat. When he opens his eyes again, Dr. Rosen is still there, waiting him out.

“There’s one more thing,” he says.

“Okay.”

He stares at the floor.

“Since that hero died, it feels like everyone’s been getting quieter. The whole team. They’re still doing the work, still kicking the shit out of criminals, still chasing Red Ring all over the city. But it’s like...” He searches for the least stupid way to say it. “Like we’re all behaving too well. Like nobody wants to be the one who says out loud what we’re all starting to think.”

“That Robert may already be dead.”

“Yeah.”

The word tastes acrid.

Dr. Rosen rests her notebook on the arm of the chair. “Sounds like you’re not the only one afraid.”

He knows that. He does. But knowing the others are hurting too doesn’t actually make any of it easier. It just means nobody says the worst part out loud anymore.

The silence stretches.

Then Dr. Rosen asks, “Can you tell me what you need today, before you leave here?”

The question catches him off guard.

He expected homework. A breathing exercise. Maybe a very polite threat about calling someone if he kept minimizing the not wanting to be here thing. Instead, she wants to know what he needs.

He sits with that for a second.

“Something that isn’t vague bullshit,” he says finally.

One corner of her mouth twitches.

“Fair enough. Then here’s something specific. You cannot force yourself to stop loving him, stop hoping, or stop grieving before you have an answer. What you can do is stop treating the uncertainty like a problem you have to solve every minute of the day.”

He looks at her.

She goes on. “This week, I want three things. First: continue to sleep with someone in the apartment or stay with family if the nightmares are bad. No white-knuckling it alone. Second: no ‘war room’ after midnight. Third: when the image of him falling shows up, I want you to name what is actually happening in the present before your mind runs with it. ‘I am in my room. I am seeing an image. I do not have new information right now.’ It won’t fix the fear. It will keep the fear from turning into certainty.”

It’s practical enough that he doesn’t immediately want to argue with it, which is probably the best a therapy assignment is going to get from him.

“Okay,” he says.

Dr. Rosen studies him for another moment. “And if the exhaustion tips further? If ‘a little’ starts becoming more specific?”

“I call someone.”

“Yes.”

He looks back at the rain streaking the glass.

“I really did think we’d find him,” he says quietly. “At first.”

“I know.”

Chad swallows.

“And now I don’t know what the fuck I believe.”

Dr. Rosen’s voice stays soft. “Then maybe today isn’t about belief. Maybe today is about telling the truth about how scared you are.”

The words land hard enough that he has to look away.

Because the truth is, he’s terrified.

Terrified Robert is dead.

Terrified he isn’t.

Terrified that if Robert comes back, Chad won’t survive the relief of it.

Terrified that if he doesn’t, Chad will still keep revolving around him anyway, like his whole life got hooked there and never learned how to pull free.

He leans back slowly in the chair, feeling the heat shift under his skin, controlled for now but nowhere near gone.

“There’s something else I keep coming back to,” Chad says, staring past Dr. Rosen at the rain on the window. “I keep replaying the memory and wondering if I missed something.”

Dr. Rosen doesn’t interrupt.

“The fight against Shroud,” he says.

The rain keeps falling.

And before he can stop himself, he’s back there again.

continue reading on ao3 !!

[oof-ouch-yikes]

It's called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. 

Well, it's actually traumatic encephalopathy syndrome. The only way you can diagnose CTE is after death, the doctor says, laptop balanced on his knee from where he sits before Robert with a sympathetic smile and clinical detachment. 

Robert's sitting in a plastic chair in an SDN clinic room, mind blank for the first time in a while. It's not a good blank. It's the empty, ringing silence of a man who's just been ushered to an execution chamber. This- no, this can't be right. Right? 

Except it can, and it probably is. It makes sense given his history— Robert can't even begin to guess how many concussions he sustained during his tenure in the mech. At the time it was one of the easiest injuries to walk off, just a little headache and maybe some nausea or light sensitivity before he was hurling himself back into the game. 

"But it causes a lot of complications, especially the more you age. Unfortunately the research on CTE is still pretty new. Most of the treatment now will be symptom management and making sure you have a stable support network." 

Yesterday was their fifth anniversary, Robert thinks, nausea climbing the back of his throat as he twists the ring on his left finger and thinks about the fact that Chad will outlive him. Probably by a lot. 

He thinks about last week, sitting at their breakfast table and sipping coffee before they get ready for work together. He thinks about the way Chad set a plate of eggs and toast in front of him, taking his position at Robert's side (they always sat next to each other at the table, always) before clearing his throat. 

"Rob. We need to talk about this." 

Robert spears a piece of scrambled egg, chewing as his eyes drift to where they leave the news running every morning. There's an adoption event going on at the shelter later today. "Talk about what?"

"Don't play dumb, bitch, you know what I'm talking about. You haven't been… all there, lately."

"You calling me stupid?"

Chad narrows his eyes, pointing at Robert with his fork in between bites. "Stop deflecting." 

After a moment he sighs, turning to face Robert a little better, tugging a curl with something close to apprehension. "You've been different. You constantly lose things, you keep forgetting things, you keep having these mood swings and- and that's just not like you. I'm worried about you, asshole." 

Robert agreed to get checked out just to put his mind at ease. They had great health insurance and he would get a couple hours off work to be poked and prodded— he wasn't even that worried when they asked him to see a shrink. That placidity faltered a little bit when they ordered MRI and CT scans, ushering him out the door with discussions of a follow up appointment to go over results. 

He'd been trying so hard too, going on walks and stretching and drinking these godawful green smoothies because he thought it would give him a little more time with the man he loved. 

Green smoothies can't save you from a neurodegenerative disease, Robert thinks, head a million miles away as the doctors and nurses around him talk about next steps. He thinks about his dog and his husband and his beautiful little house. 

Robert Robertson looks down at the tiled floor and begins to mourn himself. 

[pinkdisc]

this is so peak holy shit

[kaleidanomy]

celebratory flambert backshots because my laptop is fixed yayy

[taosdungeon]

Professional HR violators

[pinkdisc]

chapter 2 of Kiss the Match is up <3

excerpt:

His lungs forgot how to work. Air went thin, then thinner. His heart was beating too hard, too fast, every hit of it rattling through him while the room seemed to tilt wrong around the edges. Every other sound in the bar dropped away until all he could hear was the television, the reporter’s voice, the crowd noise, all of it blaring straight into his skull. He shouldn’t have come. He should’ve stayed at SDN. Should’ve been with Chase. Should’ve been going through security cams. Should’ve been working.

read here: ‪‪ -`♡´-

[pinkdisc]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hello Flambert Nation ive come to deliver my villain!robert :p

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Dispatch (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Flambae | Chad/Robert Robertson | Mecha Man, Robert Robertson | Mecha Man & Z-Team, Chase | Track Star & Robert Robertson | Mecha Man Characters: Flambae | Chad (Dispatch), Robert Robertson | Mecha Man, Chase | Track Star (Dispatch), Blonde Blazer | Mandy (Dispatch), Invisigal | Courtney (Dispatch), Coupé | Janelle (Dispatch), Punch Up | Colm (Dispatch), Z-Team (Dispatch), Sonar | Victor (Dispatch), Malevola Gibb, Shroud | Elliot Connors, Golem | Bruno (Dispatch), Waterboy | Herman (Dispatch), Flambae | Chad's Niece (Dispatch), Flambae | Chad's Family (Dispatch), Flambae | Chad's Sibling (Dispatch) Additional Tags: Villain Robert Robertson | Mecha Man, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, enemies to its complicated to enemies to lovers, Bisexual Robert Robertson | Mecha Man, Robert Robertson | Mecha Man Has Issues, Switch Robert Robertson | Mecha Man, Switch Flambae | Chad (Dispatch), Sub Top Flambae, Dom Bottom Robert, My First AO3 Post, Obsessive Behavior, Flambae | Chad is so Whipped (Dispatch), and he hasn't even hit that, Safe Sane and Consensual, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Tagging as I go, ive never written smut before please bare with me, Robert Robertson | Mecha Man Has Augments, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashing, Shroud | Elliot Connors Being an Asshole, Getting Together, I'm Bad At Summaries

***  

Robert Robertson disappears right before the final fight with Shroud, leaving the Z-Team to win without him—and celebrate without really meaning it. Shroud still ends up behind bars, but it doesn’t feel like a win.

While they search for Robert, a new villain is on the rise stealing components, baiting heroes into bad calls, disappearing before anyone can pin him down. With every hit, SDN looks slower, messier and easier to break.

Flambae chases him like it’s the only thing holding him together, even when he can’t tell if it’s hope… or the need to prove he didn’t fail Robert.

A Villain Robert AU where Shroud gets his successor—and Chad refuses to let Robert stay lost.

[ka-mi006]

I finally finished this short comic!! I'm going to try and churn out more art while I have time 🫡

Close ups:

[s0rinarl]

mask stays on

[pinkdisc]

Been thinking about a cliché college AU Flambert with a side of betting: Chad, frat boy and football player, makes a bet with his friends that he can sleep with Robert Robertson, an engineering (or robotics) major and the one person on campus who genuinely cannot stand him.

The bet happens at a frat party after Victor and the others start giving Chad shit about “losing his edge,” which is an insane accusation to make just because he’s been bored lately. Nobody interesting crossing his path for a couple of weeks is not the same thing as him going soft, and he isn’t about to let them act like it is. One stupid challenge later, there is a hundred dollars on the line, a month to pull it off, and Chad, being Chad, shakes on it without hesitation because at that point it still sounds like easy money.

Then the front door opens, and in walks Robert Robertson with his friends.

Victor laughs so hard he nearly falls off the couch. Chad, meanwhile, is left wondering whether homicide counts as forfeiting, because Robert is the one person on campus he never would have picked for this. He’s too smart, too sharp, too self-contained in that maddening way that makes everyone else feel flimsy by comparison. He’s the kind of engineering and robotics major that professors know by name and other students talk about in the library like he’s some kind of academic cryptid. Terrifyingly competent, annoyingly unreadable, and, more personally, the reason Chad lost a tooth freshman year.

Or fine, technically Chad had been the one who tried to swing at him and missed. But Robert threw the water first, and Chad still feels like that should count for something.

So no, this is not ideal.

Still, there’s no way he’s backing out now, especially not with Victor already wheezing himself half to death on the couch. He spends the rest of the night trying to get Robert alone and failing spectacularly. Robert is never by himself for long. Mandy's with him half the time, and when she isn’t, somebody else always is—a classmate, a friend, a lab partner, some random honors kid who probably color-codes his notes. Every time Chad thinks he has an opening, Robert is already turning away, already leaving, already looking at him like whatever Chad is trying to do is too obvious to be worth acknowledging.

And that look, more than anything else, is what gets under Chad’s skin.

At some point Robert disappears upstairs, and Chad waits just long enough to avoid looking desperate before following him to one of the spare bedrooms with a narrow balcony off the back. Robert is standing outside with a cigarette between his fingers and, as it turns out, no lighter. Chad lights it for him, tries to make the gesture look casual, and gets called on it almost immediately. Somehow, in what becomes one of the more humiliating moments of his life, he then hears himself asking Robert if he would tutor him in Quantitative Decision Modeling, a real class he is absolutely bombing (and an excuse he made up on the spot to continue talking to him).

Robert lifts an eyebrow and says the price of any help at all is an apology for freshman year.

Chad gives him a terrible one first, obviously. It is defensive and half-assed and packed with enough sarcasm to ruin the whole effort, and Robert just stands there, unimpressed. So Chad tries again, this time admitting plainly that he was an asshole, that trying to punch him had been a stupid move, and that being drunk and pissed off did not make it right.

Robert studies him for a moment, exhales smoke into the dark, and says, “Alright. That’s probably as good as it gets from you.”

“So,” Chad says. “You’ll tutor me?”

Robert blinks. “I never said that.”

Chad stares.

“I don’t know what your angle is, but I wasn’t the only one who took that class. I’m sure you can find another tutor in no time,” Robert says, stepping back toward the doorway, and then, with a shit-eating grin, adds, “Thanks for the apology, though.”

Chad ends up standing there on the balcony, irritated, embarrassed, and strangely exhilarated, because for the first time in weeks he isn't bored anymore.

So he keeps at it.

He starts showing up at Robert’s job to order coffee. He appears in the library with increasingly flimsy excuses. He lingers outside classrooms he has no business being near, complains loudly about QDM in places where Robert can absolutely overhear him, and generally makes himself impossible to ignore. Robert tells him to get lost every single time. Chad keeps coming back every single time.

At first it's mostly persistence and irritation, with Chad treating the whole thing like a challenge and Robert refusing to give him an inch. Then Robert makes the mistake of glancing at one of Chad’s assignments, and maybe “mistake” is not the right word because inevitability feels more accurate. Chad has come armed with a half-finished paper so catastrophically bad it looks like it was written by a toddler, and Robert reacts to it like Chad had personally insulted him.

Eventually pity, money, and Chad’s utter refusal to disappear wear Robert down enough that he agrees.

And that's when things really start going wrong.

Because the tutoring is awful—genuinely, spectacularly awful—but not in any way that makes Chad want to stop. Robert is ruthless from the start, taking one look at Chad’s notes and informing him that they read like they were written by someone with a concussion. Chad, unwilling to let that stand, fires back. From there it only escalates. Robert says Chad has the attention span of a badly socialized puppy; Chad calls him an elitist snob with a superiority complex and a dangerous caffeine dependency. They spend entire sessions fighting over concepts Chad should have learned weeks ago, and somehow Chad ends up having more fun than he's had in months.

That’s the problem, really. Nobody ever keeps up with him like this. Most people either laugh, flirt, get flustered, or let him win eventually. Robert does none of those things. He meets Chad point for point, insult for insult, with dry, vicious little comments delivered in the flattest tone imaginable, and the meaner he gets when he’s tired, the more Chad likes him for it. Their tutoring sessions start to feel less like academic help and more like foreplay by combat.

Somewhere along the way, tutoring stops being just tutoring. It turns into coffee after the library, then diner food because they stay so late studying they get kicked out of the café. Chad starts walking Robert home after late-night sessions. Robert starts visiting him at practice. Chad begins showing up at Robert’s apartment with assignments in one hand and takeout in the other, and Robert complains every single time before stepping aside and letting him in.

The line blurs so gradually Chad barely notices it happening.

They still bicker constantly, still snipe at each other on instinct, but now Robert nudges his foot against Chad’s under the table when Chad gets too smug, and Chad knows what kind of coffee Robert buys after a terrible lab day. Robert learns that when Chad gets unusually quiet, it means he's actually trying and not just zoning out, and Chad—without ever meaning to—starts collecting details about him. What music he studies to. How he rubs at the bridge of his nose when he’s tired. How different he looks when he lets himself relax.

Chad starts finding excuses to touch him. A hand on his lower back. Fingers brushing when he steals Robert’s pen. His arm slung around Robert’s shoulders on the walk home, late enough at night that either of them can pretend it means less than it does. Their tutoring sessions turn into hangouts so naturally that by the time they're obviously dates, neither of them ever bothers saying the word.

One night Chad shows up at Robert’s apartment with food because Robert had mentioned, almost absentmindedly, that he hadn't eaten since lunch. Robert opens the door in an old sweatshirt, looks at the takeout bag, looks at Chad, and steps aside without a word. His apartment is cramped, cluttered, and overflowing with textbooks, wires, coffee cups, loose papers, mechanical parts, and half-finished projects. The kitchen table is buried under enough engineering debris that they end up eating on the floor instead. Chad makes a joke about getting tetanus just from looking at the place, and Robert tells him to shut up and hand over the chopsticks.

So they sit there shoulder to shoulder while the city outside the window slowly darkens, and the conversation drifts from classes to football to robotics to professors to all the tiny, useless details that make up a person. Somewhere in the middle of Robert explaining a project with his hands moving fast and animated through the air, Chad realizes he could listen to him talk for hours. Robert, for his part, watches Chad with that same sharp, assessing look of his, but there's something different in it now, something more curious than dismissive.

When they finally hook up, it feels less like a surprise and more like inevitability. Chad is leaning over Robert’s shoulder to look at a problem set, Robert turns to say something, and suddenly they’re too close. Robert’s mouth is right there, and then one of them kisses the other—Chad can't even remember who moved first, only that suddenly Robert’s mouth was there and then everywhere, and then Chad had him backed against the counter with his hands in Chad’s shirt and his teeth at Chad’s lower lip.

“You are so annoying,” Robert says into his mouth.

“You like me.”

“I tolerate you.”

“Liar.”

“Dick.”

It's messy and hot and a little mean in the way they both like best, all the tension of weeks collapsing at once. Chad had expected it to feel like winning.

Instead it feels like relief.

After that, everything blurs.

Chad finds himself wanting him with a kind of intensity that starts to feel genuinely humiliating.

Not just physically, although physically too, obviously. He wants the bickering, the texts, the tutoring, the late-night food runs, the way Robert looks at him when he says something especially stupid. He wants to keep sliding into Robert’s life until there’s no point anymore where one ends and the other begins. He wants it all in a way that should really alarm him.

After that, tutoring becomes the excuse instead of the reason. Chad ends up in Robert’s bed often enough that leaving a toothbrush just feels right. Robert falls asleep against him on the couch. Chad, who has never thought of himself as someone built for anything remotely domestic, discovers that he wants it with a sincerity that feels actively dangerous. He wants the sex, sure, and the banter and the thrill of matching Robert blow for blow, but he also wants the stupid small things: shared takeout, cranky mornings, Robert fitting himself into the shape of Chad’s life so neatly it starts to seem like he was always meant to be there.

Which is how Chad, against all odds and common sense, catches real feelings.

Naturally, that’s when things go to shit.

It happens during a hangout with Chad’s friends; it’s the first time Robert is meeting everyone officially. Victor, being Victor, says something offhand about how he still cannot believe any of this started because of the bet, and the room goes dead still. Robert looks from Victor to Chad and asks, “What bet?”

Chad feels every muscle in his body lock up. Victor’s face goes blank with horror a second too late, and Robert’s expression changes in such small increments most people probably would have missed it. Chad does not. He sees the warmth drain out first, then the amusement, then everything else, until what is left is cold enough to make him feel sick.

“Robert,” Chad says immediately. “Fuck wait, let me explain—”

“Fuck you,” Robert says, and leaves.

Of course Chad goes after him. Robert won't let him get close enough to touch, and after that nothing works. Chad texts, calls, shows up, tries apology after apology, and gets nowhere. At first he convinces himself he can fix it if he just finds the right words, but after a week passes he is forced to accept that this is not the kind of damage you can smooth over with words alone. He tries to do the mature thing and give Robert space, which lasts maybe two days before he completely loses his mind.

Flowers come first. Robert leaves them outside his apartment until somebody else takes them. Chad tries alcohol next, leaving an expensive bottle with a note attached. That at least disappears inside, though Robert still doesn't answer. Then Chad starts writing letters, because texting is too easy to ignore and because he needs Robert to see effort, to see proof that Chad is trying in a way he has probably never really had to try for anyone else. Some of the letters are apologies, some are explanations, and some are just Chad admitting in increasingly embarrassing detail that he misses him so badly he feels physically sick.

He even asks Robert’s friends for help, which is just as humiliating as it sounds. Courtney laughs in his face, curses him out, and says he deserves to suffer. Her girlfriend Mandy is gentler, though not by much.

“He’s hurt,” she tells Chad. “And angry. Which he gets to be.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Mandy asks. “Because every solution you come up with still sounds like you think effort should get you instant forgiveness.”

Chad hates that she's right.

He keeps trying anyway, just less carelessly now. He waves at Robert on campus and gets ignored. He holds doors open and gets brushed right past. He tries apologizing in person and Robert walks away before he gets three words out. Every rejection leaves Chad more miserable, more frustrated, and somehow more gone for him than before.

Then, because his brain is deeply diseased, he manages to switch into one of Robert’s classes.

The first time he walks in and sees Robert already sitting there, he gets exactly the reaction he anticipated: one long, flat stare that says, This again? But at least it’s something. That same week, the professor assigns a group project. Robert gets paired with some random guy. The random guy, after one suspiciously persuasive conversation with Chad in the hallway, suddenly decides he would love to switch groups after all. Robert is less than thrilled, but at least now he has to talk to Chad.

Being Robert’s project partner is not forgiveness. It isn’t even kindness. Robert works him like he's extracting payment from God himself, sending him for coffee, making him carry books, redo formatting, gather sources, print articles, and rewrite sections of the project until his eyes cross. Chad lets him. Half because he deserves it, half because being ordered around by Robert is still infinitely better than being ignored.

And slowly, very slowly, the ice starts to crack.

Not enough to call it fixed. Just enough to feel like maybe it could be.

Then Alice spots Robert in a coffee shop with another guy and reports back immediately, and Chad is there in under ten minutes. The guy is leaning in. Robert is listening. Chad sees red so fast he doesn't even have time to think before he's walking over, dropping into the empty seat beside Robert, and slinging an arm over the back of his chair like he has any right to do that.

Robert turns to look at him with terrifying calm. “What are you doing?”

“Joining you.”

“No, go home.”

The other guy looks deeply uncomfortable. Chad smiles at him anyway and says, “Don’t mind me.”

Robert closes his eyes for a second like he is praying for patience, then turns to the guy and says, “Sorry, looks like we’ll have to cut this short.” The guy leaves so fast it almost makes Chad feel bad. Almost.

The second he's gone, Robert rounds on him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Robert snaps. “What was that caveman ass behavior? Territorial pissing? Should I be grateful you didn’t beat your chest too?”

“I just—”

“You do not get to ambush me, scare people off, and act possessive after what you did.”

The jealousy that got him there drains out of him all at once, replaced by the awful realization that maybe he really has gone too far this time. Robert keeps going, laying into him about boundaries, entitlement, and how embarrassing his behavior had just been, while Chad visibly deflates in real time.

Then, after a long beat, Robert sighs.

“I was tutoring him,” he says.

Chad blinks. “What?”

“I was just tutoring him,” Robert repeats, slower this time, like he is talking to a complete idiot.

The jealousy vanishes so fast it leaves Chad dizzy. What replaces it is such immediate, stupid relief that it must be written all over his face, because Robert looks at him and rolls his eyes.

“You better make up for the money I lost not tutoring him,” he mutters.

“As long as I’m the only one you tutor, I’ll pay you triple.”

“Possessive dick.” But there is fondness in it now—tired, reluctant, buried under exasperation, but real.

Chad grins before he can stop himself and asks, “Does this mean I'm forgiven?”

“No.”

His face must fall in a way that gives him away, because Robert’s gaze flicks over him and softens despite himself.

“You’ll be making this up to me for the rest of our lives,” he says, and pulls him in for a kiss.

Not for long, just enough to shut him up and wipe Chad’s brain pleasantly blank, just enough to leave him staring when they pull apart because Robert still has enough dignity left for both of them and is clearly unwilling to do more than that in public. Robert takes one look at Chad’s expression and pauses, because Chad's looking at him like he's just been handed the sun.

And what Robert sees there, with a mixture of horror and helpless affection, is love. Or something ruinously close to it.

Chad swallows once, still dazed, and says, “Does this mean we’re getting married?”

Robert groans.

══════⊹⊱≼≽⊰⊹══════

the thought of robert walking chad like a dog was funny to me so thats how this came to be lmao

btw if you follow me for my villain!Robert don't worry im almost done heh

[masonxashxx]

(NSFW under the cut) I got a little silly here.