Hello! I really love your work! Are you still taking Doomcio requests? If so, may I request some injury care with Akande taking care of Lucio? Double points if it's something to do with Lucio's inability to walk without his gear (that headcanon hits me in the feels)
I am so sorry this has taken an age to respond to! I also apologise for how this may render, I wrote it on zero sleep. Thank you so much for the support, @rottenadel! <3
Rainy Day (Canalso be read on AO3)
Doomfist | Akande Ogundimu/ Lúcio Correia dos Santos (T)
Lucio wishes he just stayed in bed that morning. Akande wishes Lucio would stop protesting his help.
"Hey, I don’t work for you.”
Akande smirks. “We’re going to make it.”
Straddling Akande’s lap, arms slung over his shoulders, the look Lúcio gives him is incredulous–almost betrayed for daring to doubt. “Of course we’re going to make it.”
Akande shrugs, relief sinking in. He allows himself a little smugness, ignoring the droll stare narrowed on him at point blank range. “Of course.”
In the low light of Lúcio’s sonic amplifier, their shadows ebb and flicker on the narrow tunnel walls in a soft wash of remedial gold. One sprained wrist ago, the speaker began to spark after Lúcio threw down his sound barrier. Lúcio has finally allowed Akande to inspect the injury (after the third time he asked). That’s how he knows Lúcio is worried.
“You were favouring your back?” Lowering the bandaged wrist, Akande follows Lúcio’s eye when the DJ ducks his head.
“It’s not–you know. Just feels loose sometimes when I don’t have the chance to stop.” Lúcio yelps, arching away from the hands that slide around his waist, up and under his shirt. His hands close over Akande’s, eyes darting to the deep shadows at their backs. “We don’t–”
Even in the dimness, Lúcio’s cheeks glow. Akande watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, breaths loud and unsteady. Slowly, the hands on Akande’s let go.
The underbelly of London’s omnic city stretches deep. Its tunnels, alleys and shanties cluster and burrow upon themselves in configurations that even their combined effort is struggling to discern. When they tipped over the platform of Kings Row’s old power station, it felt like a short plummet. But if their logic holds and Lúcio’s readings are correct, they fell at least thirty stories. Four hours later, they’re making slow progress, and they’re both feeling the strain of the landing.
If only that was all they had to worry about.
"I confess I didn’t realise the city grew so far down,“ Akande peers through a narrow gap in the curve between steel wall and low ceiling. Is that light on the other side? Is that a conveyor belt–
"You’d be surprised where people will go to be free. Or where they’re pushed when they’re out of options. That’s the last time I try to save you from a fall,” Lúcio grumbles with a gentle wince, and he stiffens when Akande’s thumbs dig deep, massaging tight circles through the cluster of nerves around his tailbone that are giving him so much trouble. “Nnh….”
"I would have recovered if you did not interfere.”
Lúcio trembles under the strength of his touch, sweat beading his temple, and he levels Akande with a hot glare. “How are you this ungrateful?”
It just makes Akande smirk wider. He reaches for the last vial of Lúcio’s healing liquid, and the tunnel’s light fades from wheat gold to a pale, aurora green. Lúcio doesn’t protest when Akande pours it into his palm, warming it between his hands, so he must approve of Akande’s intention. “My own frog prince, fresh out of water.“
"You’re not even funny,” Lúcio protests through gritted teeth.
“And all you’ve done is complain all day. People say you are a positive force; I don’t know who they’re talking about.”
"It was raining,” Lúcio mourns, as though that should explain everything.
Akande muses at the distant hum of generators, vibrations thrumming within the walls. The air is cold, not a natural source of light in sight. This is a world unto itself. “I doubt they have the concept of weather down here.“
"I was supposed to stay in bed.”
You could have, Akande muses while Lúcio braces his hands against Akande’s abdomen, the touch warming through the thin, sleeveless shirt. Akande looks from those hands into Lúcio’s face, but the other man is scowling at his collar instead. Lúcio flinches, chest pushing out, when Akande applies pressure to a particularly hard knot of muscle around the dip of his spine, skin slippery with sweat and Ziegler’s solution.
How many hours had they been running now?
A sharp knuckle under his pec yanks his attention back to Lúcio’s narrowed glare. “And you were supposed to stay away. This was my day off. I was gonna order in. Turn off my phone. Just me and the last season of whatever, with the storm on my window.”
Akande smiles. “It does sound attractive.”
"I wouldn’t have invited you.“
“Then why did I wake up in your bed?”
Lúcio’s gloved knuckles gently buff him against the jaw for that.
Armored thighs tighten around Akande’s waist with a stifled grunt of pain. Carefully searching Lúcio’s face, Akande palms the warm skin of the DJ’s waist, squeezing gently, fingers dipping below his belt to trace the seam of carbon fibre, duraplasteel prosthetic and flesh. This is all he can do for Lúcio until they can get him to a doctor. “Better?”
Lúcio’s hands close around his wrists, jaw clenched. As Akande holds his eye, and Lúcio searches him right back, the air seems to warm and thicken. He’s keenly aware of Lúcio’s heavy weight across his hips, how his breaths are slowing. Lúcio’s hand rises and palms oil grease with a light touch against his neck. His attention falls to Lúcio’s mouth, soft lips relaxing their scowl.
A sharp bark ratchets from the shadows at the end of the tunnel.
They stiffen. The hands on Akande’s wrists have tightened to an iron grip.
"Slowly,“ Lúcio urges, and slides to his feet as Akande stands. His skates come to life with a quiet hum, and not for the first time Akande wishes those lights had an ‘off’ setting.
"They don’t give up,” Akande can’t help but be impressed, searching the fathomless dark for signs of movement, backing Lúcio up behind him. “I want to bait one back to the surface.”
"We’re barely staying ahead!” Lúcio hisses, and he may be completely justified but this is for science. The things Akande’s team could learn from one of those, how and why they survived…. “You wanna let them catch up? They nearly took your arm off!“
Akande clenches the fist of his gauntlet. The inlaid dart barrels of his opposite knuckles are shredded, but his hand is still intact. Repairable. “Every city has its defenses. Even here, there is something to learn.”
“You weirdos and your experiments! I’m not dying for your education!” Lúcio snarls, fingers tight on his arm. He tugs insistently, amplifier against his hip. “I got one boost left. C'mon, we gotta go.”
"I heard you,“ Akande hushes him, still watching the dark.
Lúcio shoves off of him, muttering under his breath. “Shoulda stayed in bed this morning.”
The barks grow louder, a clanking scuffle of metal claws on steel that splits Akande’s ear with their whine. But it’s the grind of rusted gears that makes his shoulders hunch, the sound of an old terror, wretched and broken and sprinting towards them at breakneck pace. A pale, red glow breaks the veil of the dark – then another, then a blur of more. Dozens of eyes of nulltroopers and slicers, remnants of a failed uprising. Cannibalised. Revived.
Akande meets Lúcio’s eyes, narrowed in determination. He looks to the long stretch of shadow ahead of them, and nods.
