#royd x robert

[mimorugk]

Homies who kiss each other good night, on the lips of course.

[koko-heads]

LET ROBERT ROBERTSON KISS MEN 2025

[vinylsoul]

the more i think abt it the more roydbert (?) or just royd x robert has so much potential. i love the way that they started off as friends without wanting anything from the other but working together towards a common goal of wanting this mecha man suit to work.

sure, their first meeting was kinda awkward but royd's probably one of the only people who never committed an HR violation against robert, or was physical with him. robert is also very eager to listen to him and genuinely wants to know more about the guy, leading to the (really hot) "i'm both" dialogue. and with him wanting robert to have his own mecha man suit unique from the other mecha man suits, royd might be the second guy to genuinely make robert laugh out of complete exhilaration. in that moment, he looked like a kid who got his first present, and royd also looked proud that he was the one who created that and made him smile and laugh like that.

listen, all their life is filled with rough and tumble. but the thing that separates royd and robert from the other ships is that robert doesn't need to guide him or handhold him and say "it's okay ull be okay ure great ure doing so well". he's just a guy who was caught stealing from radio shack and he's nornal than any other of the people that robert has worked with.

we also see that royd puts a lot of expectation on himself (something that robert can connect with tbh) but at the same time he also has confidence in himself that he can accomplish something (something that robert also sees himself in). not to mention the fact that royd does see the best in people and is an incredibly warm guy.

he sees invisigal as a little sister, he probably sees chase as an uncle and blonde blazer as some type of big sister. he probably sees the z-team as his siblings even if they aren't all that close, but he's still willing to spend some time with them!

it's this pairing that radiates a lot of warmth, and there's a lot of resemblances between them that can be shared without ever walking on eggshells and feeling judged. they feel safe with each other, and they can talk about their interests all day because it's what they're passionate in. they have a lot of potential for tenderness too as robert can anchor royd when his sense of self-worth comes knocking, and royd can do the same for robert too by showing him that he is not his father. that he is his own person.

like idk a LOT to think abt with this particular ship i think i might write for them soon-ish IM GOBBLING IT TF UP

[mateosoftblanket]

Ya know little known fact that you’d have to dig in the ship tags for on my soulmate au fic I have posted.

Royd is also going to date Robert in the fic and the soulmate au, Royd has lore my guys >:3

Do with that as you will, I also ask that we call Royd x Robert-

- MechaMechanic *gestures Wildly*

This man had me dream boat sighing the entire game, AND THE LAST TWO CHAPTER SCENES THE TWO OF EM HAD ARE MAGICAL!!!

[falling-star-cygnus]

Flustering a Stone Wall might genuinely be my best performing fic like… ever???

y’all are GENUINELY insane!? HELLO??? THANK YOU SM??? ↓ 497 comments and ALMOST 20K HITS, ARE YOU JOKING!?

bonus Royd drabble for you, you all deserve it: -> Flambae and Punch-Up -> Malevola and Sonar -> Coupé and Prism

Robert often spends his breaks and mornings with Royd down in the lab- even after the recovery of the Astral Pulse, even if the Mech doesn't really need maintenance. He just likes the man's company ↓ Z-Team is more than a little pissed when they find out their favorite dispatcher is disappearing to- what the fuck, Bobbo? Who the hell are you ditching us for- oh. Ohhh. Yeah, no okay, that's fair ↓ They walk in on Robert with his head buried in his arms, sound asleep to the ambient noises of Royd working- with the man in question draping his sweater over the skinny man's shoulders. And- he's so nice?? But also very, very firm when he needs to be "Aye, but serious- quiet down 'fore you wake 'im up, yeah?" "S-sorry.." ↓ They've long been kicked out filed out when Robert is gently nudged awake for second shift, so much warmer than he'd been when he'd slipped off. He stretches out his arms in front of him- almost like dazed kitten with the little grunt he makes "You gotta eat more, bruddah, or you gonna keep driftin' off in he'e." ↓ Robert stills like he's been caught in a lie "C'mon, man- you too? Why's everyone on my diet lately?" ↓ He stands up with a crunchy stretch, raising his arms high above his head to get aaalll the little crackles and stiffness out, when his knuckles bump against Royd's shoulder. "Oh, shit, sorry- mm??" ↓ Royd was already in the process of wrapping his hands around Robert's waist, and his fingers overlap. Not by a lot, just the very tips of his middle and ring fingers, but holy shit!? "That's why." ↓ The dispatcher practically shuts down when Royd squeezes before letting go- frozen in place even as the large man goes back to his work station. Robert slowly, very very very slowly, exhales "...I think I just discovered something about myself.." "Whatzat?" "Uh... nothing- bye!"

[synille]

HEAR ME OUT -- Roydbert Propaganda Full Package:

My Roydbert lives in Dispatch’s negative space: after the calls, in the recovery hours, in the rooms and interactions canon implies but doesn’t linger in. It’s canon-parallel narrative about survival becoming relational. About a wrecked machine discovering a new path to optimization by two men who accidentally build a system where them being partners is inevitable, and inextricable.

Canon gives us Robert as a man shaped by catastrophe: grief, violence, a body that fails him, and a nervous system that never learned it was allowed to rest (RE: eyebags doing narrative labor). Canon even drops that he has seasonal depression. Conversely, canon gives us Royd as a man shaped by friendliness, by cultural continuity, and by a kind of physical power that is deeply practiced in restraint and accommodation. I write their relationship as the point where those two trajectories meet — not explosively, but magnetically.

Because Royd is the man rebuilding Robert’s “armor”: his suit, and by proxy, what the suit means to him.

Fundamentally, Roydbert to me is not a contradiction of Dispatch’s canon — it’s what happens when you follow its emotional logic all the way down. I write my Roydbert to track the game’s themes about re-engineering yourself, rehabilitation, and building a life where people don’t just function, but prosper. Where they make real connections. Where they become and feel like better people. Why shouldn’t Robert and Royd find genuine happiness, too?

I answer that by having them find it in each other.

Robert is a struggling hero drowning in isolation. Royd, by design, is someone who just happens to pick the engine of Robert's heroism back up, dusts it off, and reminds Robert that his time as Mecha-man isn’t over — that it can change shape into what he calls the "Robert-suit" from day one of making it, instead of ending without Robert's legacy included.

And in doing so, Royd inspires Robert to heal, reframe, and rise back into the mantle in his own right. Royd is not the foundation. He’s the engineer who keeps asking, “How does this actually work, and where does it break first?” and then helps him build around it.

I write their bond full of body metaphors because their love is about bodies: Robert’s body in the suit, the mech as a body, Royd’s massive body and how it mirrors the scale of the mech, the SDN building being custom-built for heroes and workers who are Royd-sized, the off-screen rehab Robert went through after his coma. All of it is one long conversation about accommodation, power, and survival.

Roydbert exists for me because Royd is literally put in charge of rebuilding the thing Robert describes as his life. And Royd doesn’t just “fix” it. From the very beginning, he insists they’re making a Robert suit. Custom. Built around him. For him. Which lets that mechanical process parallel Royd helping Robert slowly rebuild what the suit is to him: his legacy, his relationship to heroism, his sense of worth, his future.

In the most literal way possible, Royd takes on the challenge of saving Robert’s “life” without flinching — through setbacks, logistics, design problems, and institutional limits — and the only time he seriously hesitates is when he realizes he has hurt Robert in the process.

That is not subtle writing. That is the metaphor in neon pink impact font on the wall.

And yeah, let’s be real: Royd is gorgeous, their size difference is hot, and it’s also genuinely interesting to work with. SO many ideas on that.

Royd is one of the only people in Robert’s orbit who is emotionally steady, conflict-capable, boundary-literate, and socially warm without being invasive. He makes Robert feel pleasant. Safe. Seen. Any other dynamic would exhaust Robert. Royd doesn’t.

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The spine of how I write them:

How I write them centers on four things: care, consent, continuity, and culture.

Care, as in the daily mechanics of survival. Accessibility is not background texture in my Roydbert — it is the romance. Love shows up as infrastructure. Affection shows up as systems. Royd’s gentleness is not a personality quirk; it is a learned skill. Robert’s attachment is not weakness; it is a body re-learning how to live, this time thriving instead of surviving. And on Robert’s end, care shows up in how seriously he takes Royd as a person: how deliberately he accommodates Royd’s body, time, labor, and limits, just as Royd does for him.

Consent, as emotional pacing. I’m not interested in conquering arcs or “fixing” Robert, or turning Royd into a magical all-knowing POC brown healer. I write Robert’s dependence, fear, sexuality, humor, and regressions as trauma-logical. I write Royd’s boundaries, fatigue, desires, irritations, values, and individuality with equal seriousness. Royd doesn’t rescue Robert out wrecks; he sits with him while the smoke clears, and they both figure out what’s next. Their intimacy grows the way physical therapy does: incremental, negotiated, sometimes messy, sometimes heavy, and meaningful in ways that sneak up on you.

Continuity, as respect for canon. I keep them inside the events of the game, not above them. Their bond develops in the margins — after calls, in recovery rooms, in mech labs, in the work Dispatch doesn’t show you. Nothing about Roydbert erases the world. It lives inside it.

Royd is shaped by people and by the core ethics of Hawaiian culture. By family structures that assume interdependence. By cultural continuity where strength is relational, not extractive—where knowledge is shared, where accessibility is generational wisdom, and where care is not a personal favor but a communal technology. His carefulness and consideration is not reflective of softness; it is a lifetime of training.

Royd comes from a worldview where aloha is lived through action, where ʻohana is built through daily tending, where kōkua and laulima mean problems are solved with many hands instead of singular heroes, and where mālama frames care as stewardship rather than rescue. He moves through the world assuming kuleana for what enters his relational orbit, seeking lokahi and pono—balance, rightness, sustainability—over conquest or endurance. (**For more details on these values, scroll down to the bottom; I have a glossary of these terms)

What is important is that these fundamental ethics Royd embodies is the exact antithesis of everything Robert has internalized. Robert lives through neglect, catastrophe, and instrumentalization and takes the pain and endurance it on the chin without thought, because he has lived in such a way that taught him bodies are resources, safety is solitary, and value is output. Does he know, in theory, that this is probably not ideal? Certainly. Does he practice that? No. He doesn’t have a reason to, simply because otherwise has never really been an option for him. It just doesn’t come to mind at all.

Royd does not dismantle that perception nor way of living by force or voice. He outlasts it by miles and in doing so, proves to Robert that there are better ways to exist through life and living. Robert’s defenses and toxic ideas slip away from him naturally instead of by arguing with them. The mechanism through which he overcomes them is simply by observing Royd living differently in the same space, and treating optimization as something not only expected, but also something you do with someone, not to them. Safety and comfort is the baseline environment instead of feelings earned by Robert's endurance, forcing Robert to contend with the idea that HIS competence does not require disposability and sacrifice. He learns that seeking intimacy does not weaken or make him or his systems more vulnerable, but that it stabilizes them. He learns in practice instead of just in theory how reliance can be intelligent, being protected does not erase heroism…and that care is not a debt.

Royd is not offering Robert a coping strategy: he is offering him a different worldview that fundamentally makes more sense and is easier than his own, down to the logistics themselves—something Robert cares about, deeply. And because of how closely they work, because of how much time and reverence go into optimizing the mech, they accidentally begin optimizing each other. The mechsuit is the bridge, and the rest is inevitable.

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Where Roydbert hits hardest for me:

Where Roydbert becomes especially powerful for me is at the cultural fault line between them.

Robert is a man whose entire life has taught him that safety equals solitude. He was neglected, instrumentalized, turned into a mechanism long before he ever became part of a mech. His value has always been framed in output: what he can endure, what he can build, what he can power, what he can fix. Even in Dispatch, his brilliance is filtered through machinery. He is positioned again and again as a core component of moving something much bigger than him alone, not as someone that knows how to be held (which is also why his housewarming party was so peak in concept to me, because it is the first time he has a community to 'hold' him through pain, and the idea came from Visi, Royd, and Malevola's initiative). He tells Chase after Visi punches him prior to the meeting in Blonde Blazer's office; tough love is the only love he knows.

Royd comes from something else entirely.

Royd is shaped by people and by Hawaiian cultural ethics that assume interdependence. By family systems. By a worldview where strength is relational, not extractive — where bodies exist to move with and among other bodies safely, where knowledge is shared, where accessibility is generational wisdom, and where care is not a favor but a practice. His carefulness is not softness. It’s training. It’s habit. It’s an embedded way of being.

But Royd is not a walking value list. He’s a man negotiating his inheritance as he settles on the mainland and into his job(s), both with his family and his life outside of them.

He navigates the individualist world and cultural norms when he himself carries aspects of his culture, much of which centers aloha as lived action, ʻohana as daily tending, kōkua and laulima as shared labor, and mālama as stewardship. He believes in kuleana — responsibility born of relationship — and he aims for lokahi and pono: balance, rightness, sustainability. But he also lives inside institutions that casually load him with the heaviest tools, the biggest builds, the most dangerous prototypes, because he’s large, capable, and low-rung enough that people don’t question it...and is given no additional support at work.

Royd gets handed hero machines, weapons, and experimental tech constantly. He jokes it off as being lower-level. But it mirrors something deeper: he’s used to carrying. At work. I imagine that maybe, this is the way he is at home, too. Emotionally. Logistically. He is good at being the one things rest on.

So when Royd says, “Not my ting, bro. I like da work I do. I’m good at it,” at the end of the game when Rob asks him if he's ever thought about being a hero, that line matters a lot to me. It isn’t humility. It’s self-knowledge. He likes building. He likes maintaining. He likes making systems livable. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel the weight of being the one people default to.

Robert sees that.

Robert doesn’t just receive care from Royd — he reflects Royd back to himself. He treats Royd’s intelligence as obvious. He builds on his ideas. Thanks him. Praises him. Makes his labor visible. In a world obsessed with scale and spectacle, Robert gives Royd something rare: specific recognition. Peerhood. Delight.

Robert inspires Royd because Robert is a hero. A designer. A survivor. A man who keeps adapting. Who wants to learn. Who listens. Who changes his behavior when new information appears. Royd admires that deeply. He is overjoyed to work on the mech not only because it’s cool, but because it becomes a shared language. A place of mutual pride. A place where Royd’s care and Robert’s brilliance get to exist in the same sentence.

Robert is also a genuinely good friend. He notices Royd’s effort. He laughs with him. He affirms him. He accommodates Royd’s body without hesitation. Makes space without spectacle. Treats equity as normal. Royd finds that grounding. He also finds Robert charming. Funny. Soft-faced. Freckled. Earnest. He likes his big brown eyes. He likes how eager he is to learn. How seriously he takes what Royd says. How carefully he repeats Royd’s pidgin, not as novelty, but because he wants to understand him.

And yes—Royd finds him charming. He finds him funny. He finds him a little cute. He notices his soft freckles and his big brown eyes. He is endeared by Robert's strange sincerity, and how much he wants to learn and help, and how well he does both. Robert makes Royd feel content. Confident. He makes him feel appreciated. He makes him feel useful in ways similar and more varied than some of the ways Royd’s culture values usefulness. He is exceptional not just in what he can contribute, but in heart, soul, and spirit. He’s the most marvelous man in the world.

Roydbert is not only infrastructure and trauma and philosophy—it is also admiration. Fondness. Affection. A crush that grows out of genuine liking. Maybe Royd doesn’t get “”as much”” out of the relationship developmentally speaking compared to Robert, but that doesn’t mean he gets nothing, and that doesn’t mean what he gets is valueless. Relationships don’t need to be tit for tat like thwt, and the ones that are fail for related reasons.

Roydbert is not only care systems and trauma logic. It’s admiration. Fondness. A crush that grows out of genuine liking.

And yes — Royd also struggles. With expectation. With being “the big one.” With being good at carrying. With wanting to be more than what he provides. Robert gives him space to be a man, his man, not a role or part of something bigger. Just the two of them, in a little world of their own, getting by and navigating this new kind of love and companionship.

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The mech is where all of this converges:

Royd protects Robert the way the suit does. Scale. Shield. Buffer. Lift. Stabilize. Over time, that parallel stops being coincidence.

Royd doesn’t just rebuild the suit. He is a core part of how Robert’s relationship to it shifts.

Royd tells him the day they meet: they’re not just making a mech-suit. They’re making it a Robert suit. That reframes everything about what they’re doing and what it means from the very start, because from that day on, fundamentally, the mech stops being a legacy Robert is trapped inside or forced to carry alone. It stops being a machine that consumes him. It stops being a coffin, a monument to what he’s lost, a shell of all he is worth. It becomes something shaped around him. Something that is FOR him. Something that protects him instead of hiding him. Something that expresses him. Something that is his, instead of the mantle of men before him who never did a damn thing for him but die.

Through this, Robert starts to imagine himself not as an output interface, but as a person whose needs can be designed for, too. His heroism doesn’t disappear. It rounds out. It becomes livable.

Royd gives Robert a future with the suit instead of a life inside it, or missing it. Robert gives Royd a place where his engineering, patience, accessibility knowledge, humor, and care get to matter — not just functionally, but personally.

They are not just building a machine.

They are building a shared body. A shared language. A shared world.

And in that world, I think being partners stops being a decision and becomes inevitable

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Glossary:

Aloha: Often translated as “love,” but culturally an ethic of behavior: presence, care, generosity, patience, welcome, and responsibility. Aloha is love expressed through action—feeding people, noticing them, softening power, showing up, and maintaining connection.

ʻOhana: Family understood as an interdependent structure, not only a bloodline. ʻOhana is built through shared life, care, responsibility, and continuity. It assumes people belong to each other and survive through networks, not as closed systems.

Kōkua: To help, assist, support. Kōkua frames help as a natural response to relationship, not charity or hierarchy.

Laulima: Literally “many hands.” A concept emphasizing shared labor, collective problem-solving, and cooperation. Strength is multiplied by distribution.

Mālama: To care for, protect, preserve, and tend. Mālama frames care as stewardship and maintenance, not crisis response. It applies to people, land, knowledge, and systems.

Kuleana: Responsibility born of connection and belonging. Obligation arises because something is in your relational orbit, not because it was assigned.

Lokahi: Harmony, unity, alignment. Lokahi centers balance within systems and relationships, seeking arrangements where people and environments support one another.

Pono: Rightness, moral balance, proper alignment. Pono carries an ethic of restraint, justice, and relational accountability—power used in ways that restore rather than dominate.

[electrikworm]

I'm so surprised that Royd/Robert isn't a more popular ship. Just look at them!

You'd think that based on that size difference alone people would be all over these two

And that's not even mentioning how great every scene that has Royd and Robert interact is. The fact that they're both working on the mech also means they need to spend a lot of time together, so lots of fanfic potential there too

[liololli]

Something something making out with Waterboy while you're both being pillow princesses for Royd and Robert.