Chapter Text
Flambae's left front tooth is declared dead on arrival at the emergency dental clinic.
Apparently, putting a knocked-out tooth on ice just kills the exposed nerve faster.
Flambae assesses the damage in the green plastic hand mirror the dental technician had given him before she left the room to prepare his discharge paperwork. He removes the cotton ball jammed unsightly between his teeth, hissing at the pink bloodstain revealed—wincing, as the sound pulls cold air sharply through the tender gap. The red-swollen, sewn-shut gum makes his remaining teeth glare like bright ivories. His lips pale in comparison.
"My gorgeous face is fucking ruined!" he moans, his tongue fumbling every sibilant through the new ungainly gap. Frustration pricks at his eyes. He can't believe he's getting this choked up about losing a tooth, like some kind of pathetic, bedwetting toddler. His emotions feel as raw as an exposed nerve—although the anesthesiologist assured Flambae this was a natural side effect of the sedative he'd been given.
As if he doesn't have enough problems keeping his emotions in check.
"There, there," Punch Up soothes, patting Flambae's hand as the pyrokinetic powerhouse pouts in the dentist's chair. "It's not as bad as all that, lad."
Coupé leans gracefully against the counter as she peruses one of the clinic's brochures. "You could get a gold filling," she idly suggests, velvet voice dismissive. Flambae appreciates that she isn't indulging his humiliating histrionics. "That would be quite the statement piece. And it would match your... sunny disposition."
Punch Up sends Coupé a look that could only be described as theatrically withering. "Let the man grieve first before ye ask him to move on, for heaven's sake!" he scolds, shaking his head with an air of disappointment so exaggerated that it's obvious he's only trying to lighten the mood. Flambae appreciates Punch Up employing a bit of his showman's melodrama to invite a bit of levity to this miserable pity party. It makes him feel like his distress isn't entirely unwarranted.
Flambae was trying to rehabilitate his public image, wasn't he? And a prominent missing tooth just made him look like he got in fights all the time. Which he did, obviously. But superheroes aren't supposed to look like that. They're supposed to wipe out the scum of the Earth while somehow remaining above it all. Pristine. Superior. Untouchable.
Nothing untouchable about getting a tooth knocked clean out of his fucking face.
The most humiliating part was that Mecha Man hadn't so much as laid a finger on him.
That stupid suit was in shambles, but the man himself was evidently still completely untouchable, somehow. Despite being a regular-ass, garden-variety human.
Flambae has never been so humiliated. The sting in his gum pricks, a sharp thorn of shame—while even downtrodden and out of commission, Mecha Man stays as rosy as ever.
Just his fucking luck.
—
"I'm driving," Flambae says, swiping for his keys as Coupé lifts them out of reach on their way to the parking lot.
"Not on the good pain meds, you're not," she coolly replies. His eyes narrow as she spins his keyring around her finger. He might be loopy from painkillers, but he doesn't think he's imagining the smug lilt to her upper lip.
"Ah, be a good sport, Flambae," Punch Up cajoles, patting his flank as he walks alongside him.
Flambae turns his simmering ire on Punch Up with an incredulously raised brow. "Whose fucking side are you on?" he demands.
Punch Up lifts his palms in a sign of peace, glancing with a furtive smile at Flambae's flexing fists. "Whichever side gets us home in one piece!"
Flambae's other brow lifts sharply to join the first. He tongues the gap in his teeth pointedly.
Punch Up's appeasing expression falters momentarily. "... Erm, without losing any more pieces of ourselves," he sheepishly amends.
Flambae scoffs, then winces when it makes his swollen gum sting. He's really got to stop agitating it like that. But his pain tolerance is good, no matter how tender he is, and he isn't distracted in the slightest from throwing an unimpressed glower Punch Up's way.
"You're not tall enough to be raising the bar that high," Flambae snaps.
"Ohoho! Is that how it is?" Punch Up asks, rolling up his sleeves with a game grin. "If you've enough sense to give me backsass like that, I'd say you're probably good to drive yourself home, after all. Eh, Coop?"
"Boys," Coupé says calmly as she opens the driver side door of the Firebird, "behave."
While Flambae is busy rolling his eyes, Punch Up calls, "Shotgun!" and lunges for the passenger side door before Flambae can.
Flambae's still half-numb mouth turns down into an outraged sneer. "Uh, you're about a foot and a half too short to be sitting in the passenger seat by California state law, wise guy."
"Hah!" Punch Up laughs, his mustache curling smarmily. "Since when do you give a flying fuck about traffic laws?" he demands.
"Since right fucking now," Flambae replies.
"Is that so...?" Punch Up says, rubbing his stubbled jaw with an exaggeratedly pensive look. "Well, then I guess we're out the buy-in for that street race next week..." His mustache curls in the smarmy way it does when he's convinced his victoy is assured. "You gonna pay me back for my portion, then, boyo?"
Flambae groans loudly, rolling his eyes in defeat as he gestures in succinct disgust toward the passenger side door. Punch Up gives him a shit-eating grin as he opens the door and pulls the passenger seat forward. Flambae hunches his shoulders and crawls under the seatbelt and into the backseat like a fucking animal.
"There's a good lad!" Punch Up guffaws as he rights the passenger seat and climbs in, just as Coupé closes the driver side door and buckles her seatbelt. Punch Up doesn't bother, because he's too goddamn short for the cross-belt to do anything but lay awkwardly across his face, and if he flies through the windshield then the Firebird is going to be hurting more than the thickheaded strongman is, even if he skips on the concrete like a flat stone across a lake.
Flambae slouches morosely in the backseat, legs bent, arms folded. He catches Punch Up's eye while the asshole is throwing him a sidelong grin. "If you fly through my fucking windshield, you're buying me a new one."
"Fair 'nough," Punch Up says with an agreeable shrug. "Coop's a damn good driver, though. Relax, lad. Your girl's in good hands."
Flambae straightens just enough to put on his own seatbelt, burying the indignity of sitting in the backseat like Mom and Dad are picking him up from goddamn soccer practice.
He throws an impish grin at Coupé in the rearview mirror. "Can we stop at McDonald's?" he asks, embellishing his voice with a subtle whine.
Punch Up's nose wrinkles in his periphery, but Coupé obligingly replies as she turns the key in the ignition, "We have food at home." Flambae snickers as Punch Up groans. "... And the dentist said no solids for twenty four hours."
Flambae rolls his eyes as his lip twitches into the vanishing ghost of an unwilling smile. "Yes, ma'am."
Coupé shoots him a quietly amused, faintly challenging look—but perhaps she takes pity on his injury, because rather than throwing back another volley of banter she very gracefully breaks eye contact and puts the car into gear, pulling out of the parking lot with the precision of an aircraft pilot.
Then she rounds the bend and actually pulls into the nearest McDonald's drive-through, just to buy him a chocolate milkshake. It's Punch Up who has the last laugh as Coupé hands Flambae his comically kid-sized beverage without looking. She also orders for herself and Punch Up, dropping the bags into the agreeable strongman's ample lap.
"If you get crumbs in my car, they'll never find your bodies," Flambae fumingly reminds them, prying open the lid of his insulated travel cup.
"I know," Coupé smoothly assures him, in the tone of one who recognizes a genuine death threat when she hears it. "It's for later."
Flambae doesn't have anything to say to that, so he slouches in the back seat of his car and drinks his milkshake in silence.
—
Coupé delivers them to Flambae's apartment timely and without incident. He finds no fault with her parking job, and none of the grease from their takeout bags has made its way onto the upholstery between Punch Up's lap and its final destination clutched in his fists.
Coupé tosses him his keys, and he swipes them from the air with an upward tilt of his chin in acknowledgment.
"Bad luck tonight," Punch Up says commiseratively. "That's what we get for tryin' to go drinking on a Thursday, I reckon."
"We can always try again tomorrow," Coupé suggests. "I imagine we'll have more takers."
"Ugh," Flambae groans, "but the bar's always fucking packed on Fridays." That was why he'd wanted to go tonight. Who knew he'd run into the piece of shit who rocked his shit all those years ago—and get his shit rocked again?
The injustice and indignity of the situation stings all over again.
"Eh," Punch Up says with a breezy shrug, "we'll figure somethin' out, won't we? Always do."
"Guess so," Flambae mutters. He tongues the gap in his tooth distractedly, then sighs in something like defeat. It's been a long night. "See you guys tomorrow, then."
Coupé and Punch Up share a look, and Punch Up is the first to voice the findings of their private exchange by asking, "Are you sure you don't want to call out tomorrow?"
Flambae scowls. "What, you think I'm gonna pussy out of work just because I lost a fucking tooth?" he demands, his short temper flaring to life now that the sedative has begun to wear off.
"You're going to be on painkillers," Coupé reminds him.
"And Sonar's on cocaine every day that ends in 'Y'. What? What's your fucking point?" He rolls his shoulders like he's raring up for a fight. "If you think I'm gonna be dragging ass, then I just won't fill the prescription. That work for you?"
Their raised voices haven't gone unnoticed; one of the windows of Flambae's neighbors lights up with a dim yellow glow. A triangle of shadow splits open the blinds. Flambae narrows his eyes at it. It vanishes as quick as it came.
"Oh, no, you should fill it," Punch Up says in the voice of one imparting sage advice. "Save it for a rainy day if you don't need it."
Flambae gusts out an exasperated sigh. "I don't know why you two bother lecturing me when you're no better... Hey, Coop," he says suddenly, "can you take this chucklefuck home?"
"That's the plan."
Flambae waves a dismissive hand. "Then get lost." He lowers his voice as he starts to turn away. "And thanks, or whatever."
Punch Up beams like an Irish sunrise. "What was that?"
"I said fuck off," Flambae calls over his shoulder as he approaches the door to his apartment building.
"Hope ye feel better in the mornin'!"
"See you in five hours."
Flambae groans softly at the unwelcome reminder of the late hour. Coupé scoops the strongman under his arms and flies away in a whirlwind of shadow.
Weariness seeps into Flambae's bones with every heavy step he takes up the discolored concrete stairwell. When he reaches his apartment, he fumbles the lock for several embarrassing seconds before the key slides home and admits him over the thin welcome mat and onto the threshold.
He doesn't bother turning on the lights. He locks the door behind him and hangs up his keys, peeling his suit off his shoulders without ceremony. The taut material slides off easily the moment it clears his shoulders, and he pulls his phone from his pocket and checks the time as he kicks the rest of the skintight suit off his feet.
3:21 AM.
Flambae sighs so heavily that his apartment is briefly illuminated by the weary flame his exhalation creates. He absently navigates to the bedroom by memory and the dim light of his phone, paying more mind to his notifications than his surroundings. As he traipses into the bedroom, ankles bumping furniture as he feels his way through, he belatedly follows up on a video Prism sent him earlier in the evening. He offers up his usual scathing commentary, picking apart someone else's fashion disaster with all the wit he can muster at three o'clock in the morning. But unlike Flambae, Prism is sensibly asleep.
Lucky her.
Flambae slumps onto the bed, dismissing his messages in favor of adjusting his work alarms to wake him a little earlier than usual. He knows his ass needs a shower, but he doesn't really want to deal with that shit right now, so he's just going to have to do it when he gets up.
He tugs his hair loose from its tie and runs his hand through it. He scratches his scalp and thinks, fleetingly, that it's lucky Mecha Man only doused him with water. If Flambae had alcohol in his hair, he doubts he'd be able to sleep with the pungent smell of alcohol and burning hair wreathing his head like a miscreant's acerbic halo.
Although maybe he wouldn't have tripped on an ice cube and lost his fucking tooth.
Flambae drags a hand down his face.
What a day, he thinks wearily, putting his phone up on the charger and burying himself in the blankets. A strand of hair tickles his cheek. He blows it lazily away and buries his face in the pillow.
What a shit end to the week. Flambae tongues the gap in his tooth, helpless to the morbid compulsion. He thinks better of it when he tastes iron. He slows his breathing as best he can, trying to sleep so the day can come sooner, and he can get it over with faster.
At least he has the weekend to look forward to.