she/her, almost 30
ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkParagram
If you want to make fanart of my fics, that's really cool and I love it, but please don't ask to be monetarily compensated for your work because I don't have any interest in commissioning art!
Just wanted to put all this in one place, I'll add more as I go!
AO3
Series: Hands On (fics in this series are listed in chronological order, not necessarily in publishing order, but you can read them either way! At some point maybe I'll string all of them together with some transitional scenes and make an actual full-length fic, but for now they're just shortfics)
1. Trust Me (4.7k words, T-rated)
“We have a young girl with fire powers currently torching a cemetery. Sending you the coordinates now.”
Flambae whistles. “Damn, a cemetery? What happened to dumpsters or abandoned buildings? That’s the shit I set on fire when I was a kid.”
“Sounds like it’s grief related,” Robert tells him, clicking through the details of the mission. “The caller said the flare up seemed unintentional, probably caused by strong emotions. She was attending her step-father’s funeral when the episode started.”
“Poor fucking kid,” Flambae murmurs, sobering.
2. Touch Me (6.5k words, E-rated)
Before, he respected Robert as a hero and as a dispatcher, but that mission was what tipped him over into actually liking him as a person.
That’s also pretty much around the time he started to notice other things about Robert.
Like the freckles scattered across his cheeks in perfect formation, like a fucking American Girl Doll or some shit. Or the stupid dimples—little ones that only show up when he smirks or smiles or laughs.
3. Put Your Hands On Me (10k words, M-rated)
“Put your hands on me,” Robert commands, voice raspy with pain.
Flambae finally runs out of words, sputtering uselessly.
“Your hands,” Robert grinds out, gritting his teeth through another excruciating wave of spasms. “On me.”
“Bitch, now is not the time!” Flambae hisses. From his place on the floor, Robert can just barely make out the fierce flush spreading across the other man’s face.
4. Look At Me (12.8k words, M-rated)
He only really came out of it when Robert demanded he touch him. Which, fuck yeah, finally, but he was a little concerned about the timing. Of course, it turned out that Chad was just being a desperate pervert, because what Robert really meant was that he should use his hands to warm the muscles in his back.
The same hands that are currently simmering with barely restrained heat from the sickly surge of adrenaline Robert’s cry of pain gave him.
“Are you crazy?” he demands, feeling pretty fucking nuts himself as he imagines what he must look like, standing over a limp body and arguing with it.
AKA
Flambae's POV of Put Your Hands On Me
Tumblr Exclusive (aka small ficlets/ideas/unfinished pieces of fics that I want to finish and post on AO3 at some point)
Flambert getting into their first real, actual fight as a couple (suggestive but nothing descriptive)
Kidbert AU 1 2 (mentions of casual sex/threesomes but nothing descriptive)
Robert discovers he accidentally fathered twins with a couple he was a third for when said couple dies and leaves them to him
Immortal Robert AU 1 2 3 4 5 (temporary major character death, implied accidental harm to an animal in the first one)
Z-Team slowly but surely furnishing Robert's apartment by "forgetting" something at his place each time they have a movie night (no warnings for this one, super short and sweet)
Pre-Flambert Flambae being pathetically jealous 1 2 (one mention of a threesome)
a silly NSFW Flambert idea (mature)
Robert death idea (major character death)
Flambae realizing the number of freckles on Robert's cheeks matches the number of fingers on his hands (no warning)
How the team finds out Robert's half Korean (mentions of pregnancy, ambiguous loss of parent)
Flambae refuses to wear a cup and Robert makes it everyone's problem (suggestive)
Robert bruised Flambae's nipple and Flambae wants everyone to think it happened during sex (mentions of sex, obviously)
Robert and Flambae trapped in a shipping container (ambiguous ending, implied major character death/major injury)
I love it when people take fic writing seriously. I love when it's not 'Here's this dumb thing I wrote' and instead it's 'Here's this thing I put blood, sweat and tears into. Here's this thing I slaved away at, trying new writing techniques and editing over and over. Here's this dialogue that kept me awake at night. Here's this beautiful turn of phrase I thought up. Here's this thing that I wrote with vulnerability and heart, and I am proud to share it with you.'
I like to picture the Z-Team ruining Sonar’s sex jokes on purpose, just to be assholes. He’ll be complaining about how a lot of stores don’t carry his shoe size, and then he just lights up as he realizes now’s the perfect time for a dick joke. He quips, “Well you know what they say about big feet.”
And immediately there’s a chorus of jackasses sounding off.
“Clown shoes?”
“Clumsy?”
“Stupid walk?”
“Smelly?”
“Fugly.”
“Hey,” Sonar protests, “that last one was personal!”
“I mean, I can’t help it if it strikes a chord,” Flambae shrugs.
Constructive criticism is for things like grammar, punctuation, continuity. It is not for preference. Preference should only be offered when asked. Contrary to popular belief, authors do not write just for you. It is your responsibility to find works that suit your preference, not the other way around.
man y’all remember when the avengers movie came out and everyone headcanoned that all the avengers would live together in the tower and had all these cute posts about various fun ways they could interact and then the movies literally never had any of them even be friends
I want to state, for the record, that “all the avengers would live together in the tower” wasn’t collective headcanon, it was canon. The very last scene of Avengers (2012), the one they left us on, is Tony redesigning the tower, designing a living area for each Avenger. That was, canonically, what was supposed to happen, in canon, and they just changed their minds and decided to… not. For whatever goldarn reason.
Also it was canon for literal decades in the comics. First it was Avengers Mansion which was Tony’s Manhattan family home and then Avengers Tower when Tony built it. At one point Avengers Mansion couldn’t get their trash carried away because in order to operate in the US they had to be an embassy and NYC trash carriers don’t service embassies.
So you know how Flambae’s base intellect is 1 so canonically he’s naturally kinda stupid? Well I think it's a fun headcanon that every once in a while, this stupidity resurfaces in a comment so brainless that it derails the whole shift
An example:
Flambae: I don’t get all that shit about the Great Depression
Prism: What’s not to get?
Flambae: Everyone’s always talking about it like it was the worst thing ever. I could totally beat it
Robert: You think you could beat the Great Depression
Flambae: Why do you sound so surprised? You doubting me, Bob-Bob?
Robert, incredulously: Yes
Mal: What does that even mean? How are you beating the Great Depression?
Flambae: Well first of all, I can’t get a sunburn, so I stay out in the sun all day. Second, I get a cat, I let it purr on me—
Robert: Wait, do you think—
Prism: BAE, NO
Flambae: What?
Visi: Well we know one kid got left behind
Golem: Way behind
Flambae, confused and pissed off: What? What’s wrong with what I said??
Sonar: HE THINKS EVERYONE WAS JUST REALLY SAD
Flambae: Why the fuck are you laughing at me?!
Visi: This is your man by the way, Robert
Robert, dryly: I have some thinking to do, clearly
Metahuman with super healing powers whose entire job is that once a week they go to a nearby hospital and are put into a medically induced coma for 24 hours while all their organs and blood are harvested, and kept there until they've healed up again.
They get paid a small stipend by the Heroes Council for this, and they live off that.
No crime fighting, no obvious heroics, and they only took a Super Identity because it's technically hero's council policy. Nobody's ever seen them in a cape.
Every so often the Heroes council will release an official report to the public, and there'll be another bunch of news articles wondering how some unknown super calling themselves 'Meat Factory' somehow consistently holds the record for most lives saved across the city.
hey jsyk while hellofresh is dummy expensive and i wouldn’t reccomend it if you already know how to cook (if you’re a beginner like i was when i had it for 3 months, then it’s worth it), you should know that ALL OF THEIR RECIPES are free on their website and they all fuck hard
i will say that all the cooking instructions for veggies are pretty much the same (season with salt + pepper and roast on the top oven rack at 425F), but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
that being said, it also introduced me to methods i wasn’t at all expecting. i would have never thought to use cream cheese in my meat sauce, and now all my friends are constantly asking me to make my special rigatoni.
I am a person who uses Hello Fresh for realsies because it is a bit cheaper than groceries here and definitely cheaper than takeout, but we also remake the recipes when we want a specific one and don't want to wait for it to come around in the rotation again, and therefore I know The Secret Translations of Proprietary Ingredients:
"Cream sauce base" = make a roux, add milk according to how much cream sauce base you're supposed to have (ex: 4 oz cream sauce base = 4 oz milk)
"1 packet stock concentrate" = either one tablespoon Better than Bullion or, if you want to be really accurate, Savory Choice Broth Concentrate packets are available on Amazon and allegedly that's what they use
"Italian Heat Spice"/"Blackening Spice"/"Fry Seasoning"/etc.: I promise you someone on Reddit has figured out what spices they use and in what proportions for each mix, if it's not just a straight up branded mix (like McCormick Grill Mates Brown Sugar Bourbon spice mix)
"Roasted Garlic Herb Butter" (and other compound butters, like truffle butter) = they're literally Epicurean branded butters, they do not hide this, you can buy them online
"Sweet Soy Glaze"/"Ponzu sauce"/"Hoisin sauce" = literally Kikkoman brand condiments: they don't hide that, either
"Sweet Thai chili sauce" = any sweet Thai chili sauce from the grocery store will do. We use Blue Dragon or Taste of Thai because that's what we can get in our grocery store.
“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
Chad doesn’t know how long they’ve been in the shipping container, but Robert’s starting to look bad.
The mask is gone, sitting in a heap next to Robert with the rest of his armor. He’s currently in just the flightsuit, which is unzipped and pooling around his waist.
Chad hadn’t looked directly at him since he peeled off the top of the suit earlier, too conscious of the way his mouth went dry as the sweaty, scarred skin of his chest and abdomen was revealed.
But he made himself look a few minutes ago, just to check up on him, and he’s been hard-pressed to tear his eyes away since—not because he’s horny, but because he’s fucking concerned.
The first twenty or so minutes after they were sealed in, Robert combed the entire container, presumably searching for a way to get them out. Chad spent most of that time too busy raging to pay much attention. He only stopped blasting fire at the doors when Robert casually shoved in front of him to get a closer look.
(Robert was already sweating, even then. Torrance is in the middle of a nasty heatwave—record highs, the weather guy said. The container had already been baking in the sweltering sun, and Chad had just spent at least ten minutes heating it even more.)
Needless to fucking say, Robert wasn’t able to find a way out. From the outside, the shipping container had looked just like all the others in the shipyard, but clearly it was built with this exact scenario in mind. There were no weaknesses Robert could find, and no tools to try and create one.
The only thing in here was the old fashioned tape recorder near the back. ‘Was’ being the operative word, because Chad torched the stupid fucking thing to cinders the moment he realized what had happened: Chad had raced headfirst into a trap, too frantic at the sound of children crying to stop and think. And Robert had raced in right after him, scolding him about rushing into things. And then the doors had slammed shut behind them.
And they haven’t opened since.
Robert’s crouched by the far wall, breathing shallowly. When he first took the rest of his suit off, he was flushed red, but that must have changed at some point when Chad wasn’t looking—now he’s too pale. Chad doesn’t know what that means exactly, but he knows it can’t be good.
Chad’s huddled in the corner, staring at Robert and trying to keep a lid on his anxiety. The heat doesn’t bother him, but he fucking hates small, enclosed places. The space feels like it’s shrinking, bit by bit. The air feels thin.
It’ll be fine, he tells himself. Robert sent out an SOS. The team will be here soon.
Robert hisses suddenly, and Chad watches him collapse onto his ass and stretch his legs out in front of him. He doesn’t realize he’s fretfully tapping his fingers on the floor until Robert glances up at him.
“Cramp,” he mutters, massaging the muscles in his thigh. His skin is so pale he looks sickly, but he’s still dripping with sweat.
Chad looks away, his eyes falling on the scorch mark on the opposite wall of their prison.
He tried to melt through it earlier, after Robert failed to find a way out. But the material must have a high fucking melting point, because nothing happened besides the temperature ratcheting up even more.
At some point, Robert shouted at him to stop.
“There aren’t any holes in the container,” he said from his spot on the floor. He must have sat down at some point while Chad was focusing on the wall. He was flushed and sweating, and swaying just slightly. “The air that’s in here right now is all we have.”
He didn’t say it, but Chad heard the implication—by setting a fire in the container, he may have just cost them hours.
Horrified, he sank wordlessly to the floor on the opposite side of the container from Robert. The air suddenly felt a little thinner.
It feels thinner than ever now. Chad can feel it struggling to fill up his lungs. He feels light-headed, like he might pass out. He fucking wishes he could pass out, just to skip to the rescue part of this mess. But he has this terrible feeling that if he falls asleep now, he’ll never wake up again. That he won’t see the team rescue them, that he won’t make it to his niece’s soccer game tomorrow, that he won’t ever hug his parents or make his sister laugh again. That he’ll never hear Robert’s voice saying, “Great work today” over the comms or see that stupid freckled face or feel that pleasant drop in his stomach when they’re paired together for a mission.
He doesn’t want to fucking die.
“The air’s gone,” he gasps.
“No it’s not,” Robert says calmly, wiping sweat from his face. “You’re having a panic attack.”
“No, I can’t breathe,” Chad cries, clawing at his chest and throat. He can feel his heat rising with panic, sending the already sweltering box into even hotter temperatures. “Robert—”
Robert crawls to him on his hands and knees, and the bizarre sight only makes Chad panic more. Robert would never choose to crawl unless he physically couldn’t get to his feet.
Robert’s cold hand is on his chest, right over his heart.
“Hey,” he says lowly, slurring just the tiniest bit. “Slow breaths. You’re okay.”
“Robert,” Chad says again, unable to describe the liquid terror racing through his veins. They’re going to fucking die in here, he’s going to suffocate—
“Okay,” Robert murmurs. “You’re okay.”
And then he does something that shocks Chad right out of his panic: he hugs him.
Chad’s never seen Robert hug anyone. He lets people hug him—he regularly endures Phenomaman’s back-breaking embraces, and he lets other members of the team hang on him with only a longsuffering smile, but he never initiates. Every time he and Chad have touched, it’s always Chad reaching out first—fucking up his hair, shoving his shoulder, body-checking him in the hallway.
But right now he’s willingly putting himself in Chad’s space—his arms fold around him, one hand pressed to his upper back and the other petting clumsily over his hair.
With the sudden hysterical thought that he must be on a hidden camera prank show, Chad haltingly brings his own arms up and hugs him back, the fingers of his right hand settling in the divot of a huge scar on his back.
It’s not a comfortable hug by any means. Robert’s body is slick with sweat, and his damp hand catches on Chad’s hair, and his skin feels cold and clammy against Chad’s elevated temperature. Chad feels hyperaware of Robert’s bare chest pressed against his own, of the shallow rise and fall pressing it closer every other second.
It’s not comfortable, but it is comforting. Robert’s here. And as much of a bitch as he is, he’d never let a member of the team die on his watch.
They stay like that for a while, until long after Chad’s breathing has evened out again and Robert’s body has stopped feeling so cold against his. Every once in a while, Robert will murmur some nonsense encouragement, and chills race down Chad’s spine with each vibration against his ear.
When Robert does finally pull away, Chad almost feels pretty good about their odds of survival—right up until the moment he gets a good look at him. He realizes with a sinking feeling that Robert’s body not being cold anymore isn’t because Chad’s body cooled down.
Robert’s usually sharp eyes are hazy. He’s come back around to flushed again, his skin dangerously red, and when he reaches up to wipe the sweat from his forehead, his hand shakes just a little.
Chad rockets to his feet and crosses the container in a matter of seconds, getting as far away from Robert as he can. “You stupid bitch, why would you do that?! I’m too hot!”
When Robert leans back against the wall, it looks more like a controlled collapse.
He smirks at Chad. “So full of yourself.”
“It’s not fucking funny!” Chad snaps, folding in on himself and trying to keep his heat contained.
The smirk softens into a small smile, and Chad’s stupid heart skips a beat.
“I’m fine,” Robert murmurs.
“Shut up,” Chad tells him. “Don’t fucking talk to me.”
Robert nods agreeably and tilts his head back to rest on the wall, and the uncharacteristically easy compliance turns Chad’s stomach.
They spend the next however long like that, sitting on opposite sides of the container. Chad tries hard to keep his ambient heat pressed as close to his body as possible, but he can’t stop looking at Robert. And the more he looks, the more upset he gets. And the more upset he gets, the higher his temperature rises.
At some point Robert closes his eyes, and the sight of him propped up limply against the wall—breaths so shallow Chad can barely make out the rise and fall of his chest—makes Chad snap at him to keep his fucking eyes open. Robert obeys with hardly even a side-eye, and that only makes Chad spiral worse.
Eventually, Robert hauls himself up to sit on his own, and the sudden movement startles Chad so much he jumps.
“You have to melt the wall,” Robert tells him.
“I already fucking tried, bitch,” Chad says incredulously, trying hard to stay calm. “It wouldn’t work.”
“The melting point can’t be that high,” Robert says, and he’s slurring his words a little. “If you can just burn hot enough, you can melt through it and get us out.”
“But the heat has nowhere to go,” Chad argues. “It’s just gonna get hotter and hotter in here. And it’s gonna use up all the fucking air! If I don’t get through the wall quick enough, you’ll—”
“We’ll both die anyway if we just sit here,” Robert tells him bluntly. “Whether you use your fire or not, the oxygen’s gonna run out at some point, and we don’t know when the others will be here. Our comms aren’t working. We don’t even know if the distress signal got through.”
“The mech,” Chad says desperately. “Someone will see it—”
“I left it in standby mode at the entrance to the shipyard,” Robert says flatly. “Even if someone comes to investigate, there are a hundred other containers between here and there.”
Chad gets to his feet again, pacing in tight circles on his side of the container.
It’s a fucking gamble, either way. If Chad can’t get through the material, he’ll have burned up all their oxygen for nothing. Hell, even if he does get through, there’s no way of knowing if Robert will survive the heat.
But if he doesn’t try and they run out of oxygen anyway, both of their deaths will be on him. And even if they did still have enough air to wait for rescue, Robert won’t be able to take this heat for much longer.
As if hearing his thoughts, Robert suddenly leans over and heaves, coughing up bile onto the floor beside him and then almost pitching over into it.
On instinct, Chad starts to approach, wanting to put a soothing hand on his back or sweep his soaked hair away from his face or just sit near him.
Instead, he stops himself. The only thing he can do to help Robert is stay as far away as possible.
Well, not the only thing.
Robert catches him eyeing the scorched wall of the container, his foot tapping with restless indecision, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Time’s ticking down, Flambae,” he says hoarsely.
“Call me Chad, we’re definitely there,” Chad tells him, and then scrubs his hands over his face. “Fuck.”
“You can do this, Chad,” Robert says.
Chad looks down at Robert, half-dead with heat exhaustion and still trying to encourage him, and suddenly feels hopelessly sorry.
“It’s my fault,” he says bitterly.
Robert hums, squinting his eyes in confusion.
“That we’re in here,” Chad clarifies. “It’s my fault. I ran in without thinking. I got myself trapped in here. I got you trapped in here.”
Robert just looks at him for a moment, and Chad has to turn away from the empathy on his face. If Robert dies in here, it will be Chad’s fault.
“I forgot my utility belt,” Robert says suddenly.
“What?” Chad asks, his eyes flying back to Robert.
“I got distracted tinkering before the call came in,” Robert says. “I left it in the workshop, on the table. If I’d had it, I could have found us a way out. I could have—”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Chad hisses at him. “It’s not your fucking fault.”
“Then it’s not yours either,” Robert says firmly, and his eyes are the clearest they’ve been for a while.
“Bitch,” Chad mutters, turning away and blinking quickly against the sudden burn in his own eyes. “Always the fucking mind games with you.”
Then he takes a deep, shuddering breath, stands in front of the scorch mark, and hovers his hands just inches away.
“As hot as you can, as quick as you can,” Robert murmurs.
If this was any other time, Chad would’ve made a stupid joke. But he looks back at Robert’s flushed, sweaty face and drooping eyes and can’t find a single fucking thing funny about this situation.
Instead, he nods. And then he starts.
Chad can burn extremely hot, but it always takes some build up to get there. This time, he tries as hard as he can to hurry it up, to skip over the first ten levels and get straight to eleven. He keeps the flames concentrated on the wall in front of him, but he can feel the entire container filling with their heat, and it only makes him more desperate to burn hotter, to get this done as quickly as possible.
He feels light-headed and sick with the sudden surge of power, but he can’t stop. This is their only chance. If he fails now, that’s it.
He can’t look at Robert. If he sees him suffering, he’ll stop, and if he stops, they die.
He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he sees the moment the wall begins to warp and glow, and he presses his hands against it and burns hotter, as hot as he can, until finally, finally, it begins to give way.
Chad pulls at the material and it parts beneath his fingers until daylight floods in. The sudden burst of fresh air into the container feeds his flames, and with restored strength, he tears the wall apart until the hole is big enough to squeeze out of.
He immediately douses his fire, and the sudden stop is enough to have him swaying on his feet. But he did it. There’s air flowing into the container, and they can get out.
“Hah!” Chad says breathlessly, turning to grin exhaustedly at Robert. “I fucking did it! Ready to get the fuck out of here?”
Robert doesn’t respond. He doesn’t grin back and make some dry comment about ‘better late than never.’ He doesn't pull his mask back over his head and zip up his suit. He doesn’t haul himself up and stumble out into the fresh air, calling for his mech suit and for backup. He doesn’t hug Chad again.
oh yeah, for sure! lots of hurt/comfort to go around, more hugging, probably a kiss—I just haven't gotten around to writing it yet. but don't worry, the ending is definitely happy!
well, one of the endings is. the other one is pretty sad. but the True Ending is the happy one!
