A/N: This man is living in my head rent free for now. Anyways please leave notes, reblogs, and interactions!
Warnings: Suggestive/Implied smut MDNI
It was monotonous, a drawl, but it was one of the safer jobs. Not to mention, the SDN had great benefits. Being a dispatcher wasn’t your dream job by any means, hell it was just happenstance that you ended up there. But it was what you did, and it made a difference you supposed.
Royd had a big mouth, it was in passing you heard it. Robert Robertson, what kinda name was that anyways, and Mecha Man being one in the same. You were never one of those groupie types. Not really a whole fan of the cultish way these people idolized heroes. But you thought he was pretty admirable. A normie with no powers was able to pave a way and be there for his community.
Waterboy got your desktop wet, they moved you to where Chase sat. The geezer could work from the records room anyways. That’s how you ended up his cubicle neighbor. That’s how you ended up helping him with a tweak in the system. That’s how you ended up bringing him a mug too when you refilled your own coffee. That’s how you ended up going to dinner with Robert Robertson.
You could see it, the guards up, the tension at some points. You didn’t mind though, everyone had baggage. You didn’t mind his snark or his bluntness. In fact, you welcomed it. The HR nightmare that was Visi and Mandy behind him, it seemed he finally felt like he could talk to someone without pretense. It was gradual, comfortable, and easy with you. You felt it too.
You were tracing the scars on his stomach one day. After you had finally gotten him to move in. Beef was in his own little doggy bed, the two of you on the couch. A comfortable silence, like always, until he piped up.
“Never really thought I could have this.” He muttered.
You looked up at him from your lean against his shoulder. “How come?” You asked him with a soft tilt of your head.
“Just didn’t think I was the happy ending type.” He shrugged.
That made you snort in response. “I’m your happy ending, huh? You really know how to make a girl blush.” You snicker. He gave your side a light pinch in retaliation for your teasing
“You know, most people would just take the sappy moment and swoon.” He rolled his eyes.
You let out an amused scoff. “If you wanted a girl who’d swoon then guess you struck out. If I was a swooner who’d give you your happy endings?” You snicker once more as your hands trailed down his stomach. He caught your wrist before you could tread too far.
“You know, when we first met I really wouldn’t have believed anyone if they told me how much of a menace you were.” He rolled his eyes.
You mirror his reaction as you sit up straighter. “I think it’s funny you’re trying to act like you weren’t just as nasty when we first got into it.”
He raised his hand in mock surrender. “Never said I wasn’t. Just making an observation of how impressed I was to find out you could move your tongue in that many directions.” It was your turn to pinch his stomach. He let out a soft, amused huff.
“Funny enough, don’t even need my tongue to bring that Mecha dick up.” You hum. He laughed at that letting go of your wrist as you started your path downward once more.
He sucked in a breath as you palmed him from his shorts. “Fair enough. Am I gonna get that happy ending then?”
You grin and shift, straddling him. “Let’s find out.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Real heroes have a smell to them.
If pressed to describe the smell, Malevola would lie and say, “Heroes smell like gumdrops and free healthcare, babes.” If pressed by Sonar specifically, she’d admit, “There’s not a word for the way souls smell, good or bad. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something… or trying to buy your soul. Seriously. If someone says they can smell a soul, they’re probably a demon, Vic. It’s critical that you know that. Don’t talk to other demons. They don’t love you like I do, babes.”
The point is, it’s not something Malevola feels compelled to mention since souls, their weight, and their metaphysical morphology aren’t largely considered polite conversation. Telling someone they smell like they’re going to hell is kind of a dick move and, honestly, even demons can’t say for sure how it all works.
Souls move in mysterious ways.
God doesn’t. Because God isn’t there. Souls, though? They’re real and they move through the universe(s) in a way that just might mean something and if she believes in anything at all, it’s movement and momentum. It’s not a faith that any cultist who ever stalked her has ever found a satisfactory answer, but like gravity it’s a force she can feel. Evidence enough to stake value on.
“Sounds like quantum physics to me,” Sonar once said, lying on her couch, drunk as an alternative to being high on his drug of choice. “Everything,” he’d insisted, “sufficiently unexplainable gets quantum.”
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s all fucking confetti. Malevola doesn’t know.
She can’t confirm or deny that the ‘hell’ she is from is the damnation that so many believe in and kill over. What does she know? With certainty? She knows their new dispatcher Robert Robertson—skinny, deadpan, vaguely suicidal in a corporate dread kind of way—smells like a bright summer’s day. (Again, remember, souls don’t smell like anything. What the fuck does a ‘bright summer day’ even smell like? That’s bullshit.)
But he does. He smells so fucking bright it burns.
