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For Moe, the worst part about being a villain was the morning after.
Sure, causing mischief and mayhem around town sounded like fun on paper. And in practice, it was pretty fun. Hiding on rooftops, engaging in a good fight, escaping in the Dynamobile… that was the fun that kept him going. Nothing was more enjoyable than a good heist with an even better battle to boot.
But waking up the morning after, when all the adrenaline had left his body, and having to deal with the consequences of his actions? Yeah, that sucked.
Moe was never a good fighter, and in his years as the Dynamoe he really hadn't gotten much better. He didn’t really see a reason to learn to fight; most of the time he just relied on his tools to get him out of a bad situation. Hell, most of the time he didn't really need to fight at all. On the occasions that he ran into Ninjoy, he would simply lead her on with a few quips before quickly escaping.
Sure, in the past they may have fought, and Moe had taken a few good hits from her during that time, but that was the past. They could never hurt each other now. Moe's girlfriend may technically be his arch nemesis, but he could never hurt her. And she could never hurt him. So now it was all just silly quips and loud talk.
That didn't stop any wannabe heroes and villains from hurting him though. Despite never actually capturing him, Ninjoy’s popularity had spiked massively in recent years, which had only led to copycats attempting to catch him, whether to impress her or to prove some point about how much she sucked at her job. Moe could usually defend himself from them, but some of these people were intense. It was common for him to sustain injuries from these wannabes. And as it seemed, the previous night was no exception.
Moe hadn't even opened his eyes yet, but he was already wincing. His arms felt sore and bruised (not good), he could feel the pain of deep scratches across his body (really not good), and his ankle felt like it was throbbing and swollen (really not good). Whoever or whatever he had fought last night had done some serious damage. He didn't want to look though. Instead, Moe opened his eyes and immediately directed them to the clock on the wall across from him. 9:34am. It was way past his usual wake-up time, but the pain made him not care as much as he usually would. Thank god his store was closed today.
Closing his eyes again, he tried to think back to what had gone down the previous night. Slowly it began coming back to him. He had broken into the Greasy Gear Garage, only to have been met with some random vigilante wannabe hero when he got out. They had fought, the guy had a knife, and Moe had at some point been thrown into a pile of bushes before he escaped. He hadn't even been able to take anything from the garage. The entire night had been worthless.
Well whoever that person was, they had given Moe the worst beating in a long time. And he was paying for it.
Moe opened his eyes again and began to examine his injuries slowly. Indeed, his arms looked to be developing bruises. To his relief, they didn't look to be super serious. He also noticed the presence of shallow to deep scratches, no doubt from a mix of the bushes and the guy's butterfly knife. None of them looked serious enough for Moe to immediately get up though.
His eyes drifted over the rest of his body. Most of his injuries were what he had predicted; a mix of bruises and cuts, caused from being beaten and thrown around. He had gotten lucky that his face seemingly escaped with little damage. Despite its silly look, his mask was efficient at keeping his face safe in fights.
It was only when he got to his ankles where he saw the real problem. The right one was deeply, badly bruised and swollen. Crap. He prayed to god that it wasn’t broken.
Moe moved as quickly as possible (difficult to do considering his condition) to feel around the injury. He touched the bone gently. Slightly tender, but not too bad. He breathed a sigh of relief. At least it was a sprain, not a fracture. Much easier to cover up. He would have to see a doctor today though. He would probably get a friend to take him too; it was easy to lie to people who didn't know his identity.
Moe's ears suddenly perked up. Someone was shuffling around in his apartment.
Shit.
Someone was playfully talking to his dog.
His eyes widened in panic.
Shit shit shit shit.
Joy was here.
How the hell was he going to explain this to her without her freaking out?!
If Joy was one thing, she was observant. She would immediately know something was up once she saw him limping around his apartment. And she would immediately be all over him, scold him for being reckless without her around, and then spend the next night going after whoever he had encountered to teach them a lesson. And he didn't want to cause that stress on her. She had enough to deal with without her mask.
On the other hand, watching her break her morals to personally target someone was extremely attractive.
Moe blinked, bringing himself back to reality. Attractiveness aside, Joy would figure out that he's not out of bed soon. And that would be the first red flag to something being wrong. He had to get out of bed now. Much easier said than done though. The moment he went to move his leg, he realised there was a big issue.
This was a really, really bad sprain. Much worse than anything he’s ever had. He immediately winced and hissed out in pain as soon as his foot settled on the floorboards. His ankle was in much worse shape than he had expected. He wasn't sure if he'd even be able to disguise it.
The noise coming from outside the door went quiet.
"Moe?"
"I'm alright!" Moe started frantically looking around for a way to actually get out of his room without passing out from the pain. "I'll be there in a second!"
Mapping out his route, Moe placed his weight on his good foot and gripped the nearest surface- that being his dresser. Even without the sprain, the rest of his body was so sore that he just wanted to lie down again. But now Joy definitely knew he was awake, so not leaving would only make her more concerned.
Using the furniture, he hobbled his way to the door slowly. Now that he was standing up, a small amount of light coming from under his blinds illuminated his clothing. The light made him notice a few small, dried stains on his shirt. Huh. He must have still been bleeding when he went to bed. At least it had appeared to had stopped now.
Once he reached the door, he checked himself quickly. He silently thanked his past self for dressing in long sleeves; it was much easier to hide the more superficial injuries. Joy, hopefully, wouldn't be around long enough to notice his injuries. He opened the door and was immediately greeted by Joy.
The light shining from his windows was blinding, and yet Moe could not tear his eyes from Joy. She always had this effect on him. It was hard to explain, but she was just incredible with everything she did- even when she was crouched on the ground, doing something as silly as baby-talking to his dog. And even after all this time of dating, it made his heart flutter just watching her. She just had that effect on him.
Hearing him enter, Joy began to smile, but it immediately dropped as soon as she saw Moe.
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine!" Moe grinned in an attempt to trick her. "Just didn't sleep well."
Joy was not convinced. She stood up and began walking over to him. And in a dumb effort to try and convince her that he was fine, Moe tried to walk backwards into his room.
He immediately yelped and collapsed. Joy caught him before he hit the ground.
"Moe, what happened?! Are you alright?!"
The pain was so sharp that Moe couldn't even open his eyes, let alone respond. He could feel her rolling up his leg pants to get a better look at the injury.
"Porca puttana, Moe who did this to you?!" There was no anger in Joy's voice, but Moe could hear the slightest bit of panic. "Do you know how serious this is?!"
"...No?"
Moe could hear her mumble more Italian to herself as she set him down gently on the ground. He opened his eyes and watched her as she started rushing around his kitchen, getting an ice bath made. This was exactly why he didn't want to tell her- now Joy was running around, stressed out of her mind, over an injury that could have been avoided if Moe wasn't reckless and didn’t decide to engage in a fight.
"Sprained ankles are serious Moe," Joy came back out of the kitchen with a bucket of icy water. She walked past him however, placing it down in front of the couch. "You could damage your ligaments even more, or make the injury even worse."
Moe pulled himself to sit up. He watched as Joy walked back over to him, before proceeding to scoop him up from the ground. The sudden action startled him a bit and made him wince from the contact; he always forgot how strong Joy was, able to lift him as if he weighed nothing.
His wince did not escape Joy's observation.
"Do you have even more?!"
"Uh, just the usual," Moe couldn't look at her. "You know, like a few bruises and uh… maybe a few cuts?" His voice trailed off sheepishly.
Joy only sighed in response at that, a sign that she was upset.
Joy placed him down on the couch. She rolled up Moe's pyjama pants and placed his foot into the icy water. Despite the cold, it was an immediate relief from the pain. Moe sighed and leaned back; he was already feeling a lot better.
He could sense, however, that Joy was very tense. His eyes followed her as she rushed back to the kitchen to grab a first aid kit. He felt really, really bad. Joy wasn't usually the type to fuss around over him- and when she did, she was never visibly stressed over it. Then again, Moe wasn't usually injured like this. When he thought about it, this was probably the most hurt he had gotten when out in his alter ego without Joy around.
Joy grabbed his hand, rolled up his sleeve, and began examining his arm injuries. Moe was pretty bad at reading faces, and Joy was very good at masking her emotions when she wanted to, so trying to read her emotions mega sucked. Luckily for Moe, he had gotten much better at reading Joy's subtle language to tell that she was upset. The fact that she was being so quiet was a red flag. Most of the time she would start bantering with him about how he needed to be more careful.
"Are they really that serious?"
Joy was still focusing, now examining his other arm. "Your cuts don't seem to be," Joy looked at him. "Do you remember what you got attacked with?"
Moe furrowed his brows, trying to remember. "I think it was a standard butterfly knife. The guy didn't really look that experienced. And I fell into a bush at some point too, I remember that."
"Ah. That's good then," Joy lightly dabbed at a deeper looking cut before looking at her fingers. "And at least you're not bleeding. You never know with these new guys. Some of them have some pretty bad tricks up their sleeves."
"I think he was just some wannabe hero," Moe lifted up his shirt to let Joy look at more injuries. "I don't even remember what he said to me, something about needing to stand up to evil because Ninjoy clearly won't."
Joy scoffed at that, the slightest hint of a smirk on her face. "Please, you should've told him that I could take you out in one night if I wanted to."
Moe smiled. It was nice to see Joy being the slightest bit playful again. That was a good sign. His smile dropped quickly though. He still couldn't believe how much stress he had caused on her over this. He had to apologise.
"Joy?"
"Mm?"
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Joy looked at him. "For what?"
"For making you stressed over this," Moe averted his eyes away. "I didn't realise how bad the sprain was or just how beaten I was until this morning. And then I didn't want to make you stressed out over me so I tried to hide it. It was really stupid of me to go out and get my shit wrecked for nothing. I'm really sorry."
Joy was quiet. Moe reverted his eyes back to her. She seemed a bit confused. Slowly though, her expression softened and she smiled at him.
"Oh, Moe," Joy grabbed his face and kissed him. "Never apologise for something like this. I'm just worried for you."
Moe blinked, taken aback by everything she had just said and done. "Are you sure?"
"Of course. I love you. I just want you to be safe." Joy's hands gripped his own. She sighed. “Really, if I’m upset about anything, it’s that you didn’t tell me as soon as you got back. I don’t want you to sit in pain and make it worse because you don’t want to stress me out. You’re just gonna make me even more stressed doing that. And to be honest…” Joy started rubbing her thumb against his hand nervously. "...I'm scared you're going to get hurt and I won't be able to help, or it'll be too late. Especially with all these randoms running around acting like the big good hero. I'm worried they're going to take you too seriously and try to actually kill you."
"Take me seriously?!" Moe gasped, pulling back dramatically. "Are you saying I'm not a serious villain hellbent on taking over this town?"
"You know what I mean!" Joy nudged him gently, although she was smiling. "I'm just worried, okay?"
"I know, I know," Moe smiled at her, grabbing her hands again. "Thanks for worrying about me. And I promise I won't get thrown off next time. I just need to start taking note of people better."
"...And?”
“And I promise to call you next time for help.”
Satisfied that Moe did not need any extra care, Joy moved closer to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. Moe noticed however that despite her seemingly content look, there was a spark of something more intense in her eyes. It was subtle, but it was there, and it made Moe feel giddy as she spoke to him.
"So, Moe, I'm just curious. Did you get the name of whoever you fought?"