Chapter Text
Doc had entirely too many assignments to grade tonight, which was a bit of an issue, given he was bleeding out. It was his own fault for being stupid–he should have been more prepared. Besides, bleeding out might have been a bit of an overstatement, but there was a lot of blood pouring out of the gash in his calf.
It wouldn’t stop either, which was another problem. He winced and pressed his good hand against it, staunching the flow somewhat. Rain fell freely from the sky, soaking his clothes, chilling him to the bone, and drawing more blood from the gash. Great.
At least the alleyway he had landed in was empty. It was best to see the positives–the little things in life.
He probably should have the forethought to carry around bandages or something on him. He didn’t have much space to, aside from the small compartments in his metal arm, which housed a myriad of screwdrivers, wrenches, and other small multitools. Admittedly he could’ve found some space in his backpack, which held nothing but his failed experiment–a powerful spring-loaded grappling hook gun.
It had worked… until he reached the top of the three story building, of course. Naturally, it didn’t fail when he was only a few feet off the ground. The damn thing had waited to snap until the plummet was deadly.
He had managed to catch himself on a rusty ledge, which had slowed his fall to the ground somewhat, before it had snapped under his weight–his arm was not light. Still, his metal arm’s grip saved most of him, but his leg had not made it out unscathed. Doc knew he wasn’t up to date on his tetanus shots either… oh, well.
That wasn’t at the top of his priority list at the moment. He was still bleeding, and the rain was annoying. Primarily, he was pissed that the grappling hook hadn't worked as intended either, but that was something he could fix. In fact, he already had a few ideas about what might have gone wrong.
The wire needed to be thicker, the spring was too unwieldy… Once he could weld the whole case shut, it would probably function a bit better too… Doc shook his head–he was getting off topic. He had no bandages, and there was currently blood leaking between his fingers. Priorities.
He knew he needed to keep pressure on the injury, but Doc quickly took his hand off it, shrugged off his wet hoodie, yanked his damp shirt off, and put the hoodie back on, quickly tugging the hood back over his head. What he was doing wasn’t exactly illegal but… Doc couldn’t imagine that anyone would be pleased he was testing a dangerous contraption in the middle of an abandoned alleyway.
The shirt made a decent enough bandage, and he quickly wrapped it around his calf, hissing as he pressed his hand over the whole thing, pressing it into the wound. He wouldn’t bleed out. Probably. Hell, he wasn’t a doctor, despite his name. He didn’t feel dizzy though, so the blood loss was manageable for the moment.
Doc shuffled back, so he could lean against the cold, damp, dirty brick wall of the alleyway. It was almost nice, getting a little time to himself, if he didn’t think about the cold or the way his wet clothes were sticking to his skin, or the throbbing in his leg.
He sighed. The cut on his leg had been unfortunate, but he hadn’t really been expecting the fall, so that wasn’t entirely on him. The grappling hook though… Stupid. He had made a miscalculation somewhere during the build and design process.
For the past few weeks, he had been holed up in his university’s various labs and open work rooms, and occasionally his own desk at his apartment, designing, building, and tweaking his project. He had tested it before trusting it to support his own weight, of course, but there were still things he hadn’t been able to account for.
There were a lot of things he hadn’t seemed to be able to account for, recently. To put things loosely, Doc wasn’t sure what he wanted. He was after something though. He had just begun a PhD, sure, but… He couldn’t really see himself teaching in a classroom long term, or working for some fancy company somewhere. Wearing a button down into the office, slogging through the day with everyone else… What a nightmare.
Doc built stuff, and he was good at it. He enjoyed it. He did not, however, enjoy other people telling him what to do, but he knew that with the career options he was facing… The future wasn’t looking too bright for him if he really wanted to do his own thing.
Still, he needed money since he wanted to build things, but that meant he needed a job–aside from assistant teaching–which would take up all his free time, meant for building things. An endless cycle. One Doc was determined to break.
He had bounced around a few ideas. The grappling hook had been his most recent passion project that had come to fruition. If he could get that working… Selling it was an option, but how many people realistically needed a grappling hook? Plus, that would bring him lots of unwanted attention, from people who wanted to hire him, which would suck him into the endless corporate drain, which was exactly where he didn’t want to end up.
But Doc didn’t have to sell it. In fact, he was keen on keeping his secrets. So what could he do with a grappling hook?
As bad as it sounded, the first thing that came to mind was crime, but hey, he needed cash. He quickly pushed those thoughts from his mind though. They were unrealistic, and at the end of the day, getting arrested would not be good for his health. He didn’t think they were going to let him build things in jail, which simply didn’t work with him. There were just some things he couldn’t live without.
He also had unrealistic fantasies of swinging around the city like Tarantula Man, but he knew he had neither the acrobatic skills nor the dexterity to pull that off. He also only had one grappling hook, not the two he would need. And it didn’t even work. Doc couldn’t imagine himself in something as abhorrent as green and orange spandex either, but that was beside the point.
Once he got the grappling hook working, then he could figure out what he was going to do with it. Then start working on his next project. He didn’t know what it was going to be yet, but he could dream. The world was at his fingertips.
And if there was something he couldn’t reach, then he’d bend the world until he could. Simple as that.
Doc grunted, and carefully pushed himself to his feet. The shirt around his leg was slowly turning red, but he had tucked it in so it was held in place. Walking home was not going to be fun, but the longer he waited, the worse it would get. Did he even have bandages at home? Eh… whatever.
He could sleep it off or something.
He made his way back onto the main road, wiping rain out of his mechanical eye, which was casting a very faint green glow across his face. Was there a way he could fix that–mini windshield wipers perhaps? Doc pushed that thought to the side and continued on. While his eye and arm were his pride and joy, now was not the time to be thinking about improvements.
Doc could still hear them though, despite his attempt to turn his focus elsewhere. The soft hum of electricity running through them, across layers upon layers of wires, was pervasive. He could usually tune that sort of thing out–the phantom hum of electricity only he could hear–but not when his head was pounding and his leg throbbing in pain. He looked down at his metal arm, tracing the faint glow of flowing lines of electricity, wires illuminated in a way that only he could see.
Most of the time, being able to hear and see nearby electrical signals was quite useful. But not tonight, when all he wanted was to get home in peace. At least his ability only worked in a very small radius–a little more than his arm’s length.
Having to hear every telephone pole and car nearby would have been unbearable, even though he had long since gotten used to the sound. He was grateful that the range didn’t span very far.
To his relief, he hadn’t wandered too far from his apartment. The octagonal shaped building, aptly named The Octagon, was one of the nicer places to live in this part of the city. Being an assistant teacher had its perks, after all. The building had rooms and balconies lining the sides, a massive hole in the middle, and a glass dome on the roof. Even from the ground floor, he could see rivulets of rainwater, running down it on the outside.
He usually took the stairs, just to keep in shape, but that was not happening today. There was no one else waiting for the elevator, which was a relief, because they probably would have started asking questions about the blood that was now running down his leg.
Wonderful. At this rate it was going to stain his socks.
Doc made it upstairs, fumbled with his keys, and jammed them into the lock, hoping that Ren wasn’t home. It was wistful thinking, on a rainy week night. Luck was not on his side, because not only was Ren home, but he was sitting in the living room, on the couch facing the door. There was no hiding now.
He stepped into the apartment and toed off his shoes, setting them on the mat to the side. To his right was the living room, with an L-shaped couch, and a few crates filled with Doc’s valuable metal scraps. On the left was the small kitchen, and Doc could smell a pot of something spicy steaming on the stove.
“Hey, dude, what–” Ren cut himself off, as he looked up from his phone. “What the hell happened to you, dude?”
“It’s paint,” Doc said with a grimace.
“Paint does not look like that. Come sit down man, what happened?”
Doc breezed by the living room, straight back to the door that led to the hallway with their bedrooms and the bathroom. He limped into the bathroom, injury hurting a lot more than it had been just a few moments ago.
“You better not be ignoring me,” Ren said, following him at a slight distance, tone concerned. As he got close, Doc could see the faint outline of the phone he had slipped into his pocket, lit up with blue lines, denoting the circuits beneath it that carried electricity. Electronics were easy for him to see, but even Doc couldn’t make out the faint electrical signals ever present in the human body. That was fine by him–it would have been annoying otherwise. He pulled his gaze away quickly, so Ren didn’t think he was weird for staring at seemingly nothing of note.
“I’m not,” Doc said hoarsely, sitting on the lip of the tub, and swinging his injured leg over, so at least the blood would flow down the drain, instead of onto their tiled bathroom floor. He peeled off his wet socks and let them sit at the bottom of the tub, rolling up his pant leg to see the blood stained shirt he had turned into a makeshift bandage.
Ren gaped at the sight. “What happened?”
“I fell,” Doc said, which wasn't a lie. “Tell me there’s something useful in there,” he muttered, gesturing to the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
“Oh, right,” Ren said quickly, yanking it open, and rummaging through its contents. He tossed things in Doc’s direction as he spoke. “Uh, we’ve got rubbing alcohol, painkillers, cold medicine, a thermometer, whatever the hell is in here,” he added, throwing over a white box with a red cross on it.
Doc took the white box and the rubbing alcohol. The rest wasn’t very useful to him. He opened the container to reveal several rolls of bandages. Perfect. “Hey, you aren’t squeamish are you?”
“No, I- HOLY SHIT DUDE,” Ren yelled, as Doc unraveled the shirt wrapped around the gash in his calf. “YOU NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
“It’s fine,” Doc said, although it hurt pretty bad. The bleeding actually looked like it had slowed down a bit, which was good, but it still hurt like hell. Doc imagined he had a pretty high pain tolerance, but this was bad enough that it was hard to think about anything else. Bearable, but by no means fun.
“Doc, what happened?” Ren asked, leaning against the wall. He looked a little pale. Worried.
“I told you, I just fell, doing something stupid.” He set the bandages to the side and uncapped the rubbing alcohol, a sharp scent hitting his nose. This was not going to be pleasant.
“I know that, but how-” Ren cut himself off in astonishment as Doc held the bottle over his leg and tipped it.
Fire raced up and down his calf, like a thousand tiny knives had been simultaneously shoved into the open wound. He bit his lip and grimaced as he hastily set the bottle down with shaky hands. “That…” he said hoarsely, “Might have been a mistake.” The pain didn’t alleviate, and he had to force his gloved metal fist to unclench itself, briefly checking to make sure his glove hadn’t slipped down too far.
He hissed through his teeth and turned the water on, running his leg under the tap. Red water flowed freely down the drain, but with the stinging alcohol gone, the pain had returned mostly to normal. “Ow,” Doc said succinctly.
Ren, now sitting on the floor and fanning himself, gaped at him in shock. “Doc… Why would you do that?”
“I don’t want it to get infected. Pass me that towel.”
Ren did so, and Doc patted the cut dry. “My towels…”
“My leg,” Doc muttered. “See. It’s barely bleeding.”
He made a disgusted sound. “Oh, Doc, wrap it up. I can’t look at it,” Ren begged, covering his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Doc muttered, unraveling the bandages. He pretended like he knew what he was doing, but he really didn’t. All he knew was that they needed to be tight, and on the thicker side. There was some antibiotic cream in the white container as well, which he applied to the edges, before wrapping his leg in bandages.
The cut stung, but not as miserably as before. Now, Doc felt tired. Spent. “You can look now.”
“You really are something else,” Ren said, shaking his head. “What happened?”
“I… fell off a wall.” He hated lying to Ren. It made his insides twist in a way that hurt even more than his bleeding leg. The problem was, he knew Ren worried. About everything. A lot. Including him, although Doc normally wasn’t out doing anything dangerous. He didn’t need to know either–Doc had always been a more private person. Some of his doings, he liked to keep to himself. His powers, his cybernetics… Some things were just private matters.
“You fell… off a wall?” Ren repeated.
“I slipped.”
“Why were you climbing a wall?” Ren demanded, exasperated. “It’s dark and raining, dude.”
“I… I know.” They were unideal conditions–perfect for testing his grappling hook in. If it had worked in the pouring rain, it would work anywhere. It hadn’t though, so it didn’t matter.
Ren just shook his head and relented. “Do you want dinner, at least? You should really make an appointment to get that checked out.”
“I’ll have dinner,” Doc said, ignoring the other statement. He stood, still dripping wet from the rain. “I’ll join you in a minute, gonna find some clothes.” Ren nodded, and Doc slipped off to his room, shutting the door behind himself.
His room was a mess, the bed dragged into the center of the room, and every other surface littered with diagrams, notebooks, tools, and incomplete projects. It was chaos, but Doc knew exactly where to find whatever he needed. There was an empty spot on the floor where he set his backpack containing the grappling hook. He stepped over the disassembled rocket launcher (it had a problem where the gears would lock up, not to mention the lack of rockets) and shuffled by an old version of his eye that he had taken apart to clean.
The room was surprisingly quiet, for being so full of electronics. Doc knew it was best to keep them off, so he wasn’t distracted by the faint humming and didn’t have to stare at billions of overlapping, glowing lines, signifying the existence of some sort of electrical current. The outlets were bad enough, though he had maneuvered his bed into the center of the room so he didn’t have to hear them when he slept.
He changed quickly, stripping off his wet clothes and replacing them with dry ones. The long, black glove over his metal arm was removed. He kept it on in public, mostly to protect his arm from external wear and tear, but also to avoid the staring. The questions. He didn’t mind people knowing about it, but walking around with a green-lit mechanical eye was bad enough.
Ren was really the only one who knew the full extent of his cybernetics–living with him, there were some things that were impossible for Doc to hide. Doc rarely showed his arm off though, and Ren had always been chill with it. He didn’t ask the invasive questions Doc dreaded, and had never really commented on it.
There was nothing he could have appreciated more. Ren really was a good roommate, especially since he had to put up with him of all people.
Doc spent a few moments popping open some of the compartments and latches on his mechanical arm, to make sure the internals dried properly. He only had to make that mistake once–he never failed to dry it out after learning about the horrors of growing mold in his arm. Never again.
With dry clothes, Doc felt like a new person, and he scooped up his laptop so he could actually get some grading done. He needed to stop putting this off until the last minute, but whatever. Procrastination wasn’t the worst of his flaws.
When he came out, Ren was in the kitchen, mixing whatever soup was on the stove. There were also two plates of steaming noodles on the table, leftover from last night’s takeout. Doc lowered himself into a chair with a wince, and lifted his injured leg so it could rest on the one opposite him.
Ren set a bowl of soup down for each of them. “Are you going shopping tomorrow? I’ve got a list,” he said, pushing a folded scrap of paper towards Doc. “But I can do it if-”
“I can,” he interrupted, tucking it into his pocket and flicking open his laptop, watching its internals light up, as electricity flooded across circuit boards covered by the keyboard. Screens were difficult for him to look at–they were backed by electricity after all, which meant that whatever image he was seeing was usually overlaid in glowing lines of electrical signals.
Televisions were fine because he sat far enough away, but he needed to focus to be able to look at a computer for a while. It was just noise he had to filter out, and while Doc could do it, he didn’t always enjoy it. He had taken a preference to hardware for that reason–less screens.
“Are you seriously grading right now?” Ren asked.
“I need to. It’s due tonight.”
“You almost died, dude.”
“It’s just a little scratch,” Doc muttered.
“Unbelievable. You’re an idiot.”
“Yes.” He really was. Doc was trying not to think about everything he needed to fix, and the diagrams, and random ideas he had for his eye. No. Now it was grading time. Doc hated grading time.
There were some real idiots out there who liked to call themselves scientists. Idiots that couldn’t do the simplest advanced calculus, or fluid dynamics problem, or even tell the difference between wrench sizes. Idiots. But grading and assistant teaching paid well enough, so Doc would suffer. Tonight he had coding assignments to look at, for an easy class he hadn’t even taken. He wasn’t even in that major, but the professor had begged him.
The universe was lucky Doc was such a merciful man.
Anyone else simply would have snapped long ago.
Not Doc though. Sure, his anger could get a little out of hand when a situation got messy, but he was good at reigning it in. Pouring it into his work and being productive, instead of letting it fester. He was just level headed like that. No sense in getting worked up over a problem–anything could be fixed.
Doc sighed to himself and pulled up the assignments he had to grade. It was going to be a long night, but with his leg throbbing, he needed some time off his feet. He had nothing but time.