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Herman was a rather smart man. He knew this for a while now. It was the beginning and end of the perpetual conundrum he had to call his life, a poignant way to rephrase what his grandmother always drilled into him.
You’re not stupid, Hermy. Just perpetually haunted by thought and plausibility, two concepts a dumbass’ll never know with a shotgun to the chest.
She truly had a way with words, all stern and Spanish, even if it did take him 24 years to remotely internalize an iota of them.
A sense of self is contingent on a mind-dizzyingly large number of things; such was the gift of consciousness. How Herman speaks in the haven of his internal auditorium, how it sounds to his ears as they leave his bumbling lips, and how others absorb and react. Most of the time, some comparatively merciful facsimile of a circumstance he had calculated would manifest before his eyes, much to his well-veiled chagrin. It wears a boy, a teen, and a man down after a while, leaving whatever is left brittle and raw.
It was thereby a miracle, him finding a place in the batshit insane petri dish labeled Z-Team. Well, they were, also miraculously, Y-Team now, but the promotion hadn’t settled in yet, not for any of the members, anyways. Z-Team also just fucking sounds better, objectively, as Flambae had eloquently put.
“Herm! Herm, fuck!”
Speak of the devil.
“Put this shit out, quick! Before Prism comes back out!” Chad whisper-shouted as he uselessly motioned at the flames on the previously-shiny grill. Malevola let out a string of curses beside him, stomping out something smoking on the ground.
Herman pushed himself up from the ledge of the pool, padding his way over to hurriedly extinguish the growing fire.
From inside the house through the opened sliver of the sliding door came a familiar shout, “What the fuck was that?!”
“Nothing, Trick, damn!” he replied before sealing his lips apologetically. He smacked the side of Herman’s arm in thanks as he grabbed two bottles from behind him, throwing one towards Malevola as she stood up from cleaning whatever she was stepping on.
“I'll fix it for her later. But I swear she has some mental-psychological connection to every belonging she has ever. Makes me think this grill’s some kind of light projection-thingy of hers.” He took a sip. “Jesus, this tastes like shit.”
“Is that how her illusions work?” Malevola wondered aloud around her drink.
Herman flicked his hand away from the two before picking one up himself. It was Redbridge. The image of Chad grumbling while buying gluten free beer invoked bubbles of laughter in the young man’s chest. Especially considering the week of endless verbal bullying and teasing, albeit considerably mild compared to their early relationship, that followed Herman’s random celiac diagnosis.
He turned around with an opened bottle to two pairs of warm-hued eyes looking his way. Herman scattered to remember what his devilish coworker last said.
“O-oh, uh, she—Alice, she probably, most likely, just he-heard you guys. Easily. K-Kind of loud, just now.”
Chad scoffed dramatically. “Heard us, my ass. It was all you, Waterboy, with your stupid fucking mouth hose.”
Malevola flicked her bottle cap at him. “His ‘stupid fucking mouth hose’ saved your dumb ass. I’m gonna head in and distract her.”
“Yeah, yeah you go do that. I’m going to look for real alcohol. You’re dismissed now, noble minion.”
It was, in a way, getting better. How he felt around others, how others felt around him, how he felt hearing himself talk and act around these wonderful asshats. Of course, something Herman would never say out loud, but he found that it’s just as respectful to call things as they are.
Lingering bouts of imposter syndrome and his signature stutter hadn’t magically gone away by any means, far from it, and he didn’t feel the need to have it disappear anytime soon either. Maybe even ever. But there was a specific comfort in an actively resolving dissonance between knowing he was capable and feeling it so. Thoughts, plausibility, feelings, and certainty began to slot into their respective places, catching whiffs of what “belonging” means inside Herman’s chest. Everything was making some semblance of sense.
The sound of a weighty, sliding door opened and closed again.
Well, almost everything.
“What’cha doing out here?”
The dreadfully low voice knocked gently on Herman’s sternum. A soft, grounding presence on a good day and a bane of his entire existence on a better one. An emphasis on the latter was in order, as Robert zipped down his gray jacket, inch by inch revealing scar tissue and skin. Dry and taunting, down to the swim trunk waistband. An itch to run away pooled beneath his feet.
Herman quickly swallowed the drink to respond, stopping himself from choking just in time. “O-Oh, I was to-taking a break! Not that it’s too bad—loud, I mean, indoors—inside.” He huffed and paused, letting himself open the window between his brain and his mouth a little wider. He knew Robert wouldn’t mind. “Just wanted s-some fresh air. Was thinking—considering going back but Chad and Manev-Malevola came outside to use the, uh, th-the grill. I-I’m gr-glad I stayed.”
Robert peered over next to the younger man nursing a quarter-empty drink at the drenched outdoor appliance. He exhaled a small laugh as he shook his head. “Idiots. Thank God you did.”
Nodding in agreement, Herman felt droplets squeeze out from his pores once again as he offered a smile and tilted his head towards the drinks.
“I’m good, thanks though.”
The two men stood in palpable silence, as if waiting in line for something unattainable. Herman felt his heart threaten to lodge itself into his throat. The one thing, the one final, mechanic pebble lost in the sole of his shoe plagued him. A wandering, lingering, inexplicably lost feeling in the shape of a man far bigger than life. It had been a couple weeks since Herman was able to accept the reality of that pebble, and proximity to the source proved to be an exacerbating factor in the discomfort that befell of its existence. Avoiding and running away seemed to be the most reasonable course of action.
Robert regarded the telltale signs, step by step, in Herman’s facial expressions and actions that always preceded a distinct empty space in the form of a puddle. The man of action did plenty of watching at work, and he was a staunch believer in work life balance.
With the clink of the glass bottle on the granite countertop, Robert grabbed the bottle neck with little remaining space left above an increasingly moist hand.
“Wanna hang out here for a bit?” Fiercely determined brown eyes bore into Herman’s own blues, immediately softening along with his grip. “Unless you’ve had enough fresh air?”
Herman jumped without a thought, “Not at all!”
Before any atom of embarrassment was able to join in on the reuptake, the younger man was enraptured by Robert’s delightfully light chuckle. A bumpy song coincided with a group of cheers led to a loud, Colm-colored “fuck you.” Herman found himself moving, led back towards the pool with a beer bottle still in both of their hands acting as a railway coupling. Ignoring their millimeter of contact was excruciating to attempt.
“Is the water too cold?”
“Huh? Oh, n-no, well yes—or, I’m—am not the best person to ask, I mean.”
“Temperature doesn’t really bother you, I’m assuming?”
Herman lowered to the edge of the pool at the deepest end along with the other, hand on the chilled glass waiting for Robert to pull away first. “You’d a-assume correct. Ly. Correct. I adjud-adjust very quickly, and i-it’s nice.”
An easy back and forth of small talk bounced around, but it was as if every word was poured through a filter before release. A paradoxically comfortable yet staticky silence took a seat between them.
There had been some real improvement in puddle-making on Herman’s part over the past several months, but anxiety was an incessant, never-ending game of Russian roulette. Just that every chamber was loaded unless your brain forgot once every 2 years to buy more bullets. Herman noticed his water slowly crawling its way towards the end of Robert’s jacket, seeping into the soft material. An idea announced its presence after embarrassment and allowed itself to be mulled over. He could remedy this.
The comfortable feeling of being submerged in water enveloped the man, covered from shoulder to toe in a unified temperature. No certain spots over his body in a suit warmer, cooler than others. Staying afloat quite easily, Herman turned slowly back towards the older man still sitting. Robert had been intently watching again, for some reason Herman couldn’t possibly fathom. Well, that would be a lie, frankly speaking. He wondered if he was, for a lack of a better word, caught. Statistically, he shouldn’t be far off. He wasn’t the best at being slick by any means.
“D-did you… need to talk a-about somewhere—something? Important, maybe?” he cautioned.
Robert pulled himself out of the subtle daze, fingers gripping a little tighter along the curve of the pool’s ledge as he supplied the other with a small smile. “I was going to ask you the same thing, actually.”
A bead of water trickled down the back of Herman’s neck. Worry wove itself into his eyes, reminding him of how bare his face was without his goggles. He didn’t believe Robert was testing him by any means, but the jitters when faced with one was familiar and destabilizing.
The younger man lifted his hands to the cool stone beside Robert, thumb rubbing along his knuckles as he searched for a way to present an answer, any answer.
Only a question came to mind.
“You n-noticed…?”
“Y–up. Sure did. Wasn’t very hard either.” He looked down at his gently kicking feet in the lit water before giving the unsubtle man a quick glance. “You don’t have to tell me, Herm. I’d never do that to you. But… if I did something wrong I’d like to know.”
Robert opted to push a little further despite being faced with Herman’s indecipherable eyes. “So, if you’re in a generous mood tonight… I’m all ears.”
As he so often was. One of the many damning things about the man, besides being a legendary and, well, real superhero. No strings attached to the good that he did, does even. The seemingly passionate way Robert moves through life in saving others that directly conflicts with the reality he was entrusted with knowing months ago, with how he moves within himself. The hero couldn’t care less about what happens to him, as it was a guaranteed consequence he had internalized generations before. Better off allocating that care and energy towards others, he reasoned.
I guess that when you shit on fate and control as often and surely as I do, it’d be pretty damn stupid to be surprised if you get shat on back.
Herman felt a wave of clarity wash over him, as did regret. The most reasonable course of action, his ass. His stubborn efforts to stay clear culminated into no possible way for Robert to act or fix or help someone else. To help Herman. Simply another bad thing to have happened to Robert Robertson the Third and he was the reason. An opaque need crackled in his chest. He had better do enough caring for Robert to make up for the damages and losses.
“I care—I feel for you,” Herman blurted out.
A flatline in sound and time. The atmosphere horrifically still and crickets shutting up the one time you wished they hadn’t.
The absolute worst fucking way Herman could’ve gone around doing so. Zero out of ten, fifteen thousand notes.
Robert’s eyes blew open, his perfect brows shooting upward, still as a statue. Would begging for a family history of cardiac arrest to turn into a family present-right-now of cardiac arrest be a bad thing to do? Experts named Herman figure no.
“I-I-I meant—mean! I mean f-for the—just, the weeks I spin—spent a-avoiding you. I didn’t—couldn’t figure out what to, uhm, do with…”
Herman’s voice fizzled out to nothing mid sentence. He might as well propel himself up until he withers into a husk of a hot water bottle straight into the stratosphere and explode. But the best he could do was stick his forehead to the stone ledge and stare down into the forgiving pool water.
The younger, fraught man missed the whirlwind of thought and emotion Robert found himself at the center of. The swirling, storming feeling of joy in confirmation and return of something so damning and slippery as love. Or, whatever was a notch below love in terms of intensity. He didn’t want to jump any kind of gun, especially now.
“Herm, I—”
Herman shot up, locked and loaded. “You, you don’t have to—never have to defibri—re-reciprocate, Robert.” Herman’s words struck through, unwavering and genuine like Coupe’s knife through tough leather.
Robert felt his brows furrow, upwards in confoundment. “What do you—”
The younger man never found it easy to interject anyone, but this moment felt right to him. Somehow. “Most, well maybe not most but a bit—a lot of people, I think, would rather not even have it. At all. It b-being, y’know, my feelings for, um.” He wasn’t sure how to finish his sentence, giving Robert only a pause and received concerned patience in return.
“… I’d be grateful if you just know—take—accept them, for you. Yourself. E-even for a short while and—and, um, want to give it back.”
The pool light in the mellow tail end of twilight muffled the sounds of the team indoors and the low music playing by the grill, illuminating Herman’s own blue eyes. Robert set aside the thought of them resembling a much more unpredictable version of the astral pulse’s glow.
The weathered hero knew he had a palpable magnetism to him. It wasn't the first time someone thrust upon him romantic feelings he’d either enthusiastically returned or… didn’t. But this. This was new. It was simply a statement of reality from its conception. A truism to Herm, while a painful and significant one. There is no function, no expected end to such a personal mean. It is as it was, neither a request nor a gift.
Such an ardent kindness only Herman could spell out implanted a strange twinge in Robert’s diaphragm. It pulled him down somewhere important, somewhere necessary.
“Herm.”
“Y-Yes?”
“You think you can make another person stand in the water next to you?”
“I’m n-not sure I compet—completely follow…”
Patient and anticipatory silence from the seated man gave him with not much solace or certainty.
Beyond puzzled and in the middle of some intense, self-beratement, Herman earnestly eked out, “Sure, yes. I haven’t—not tried bef—!”
The world was a swirl of a clear blue, the darkness supplied by his own eyelids, and salty water coating the tip of his tongue.
“R-Robert??”
Herman rushed to hold the other by his upper arms, trying to focus on creating a rather shoddy step in the water for Robert to stabilize himself on. Robert wiped at his face with his other arm resting where he was sitting just seconds prior, ignoring ramblings about his jacket still being on and a mix of a dozen “what”s and “why”s.
They were finally at eye level. A trickle of water journeyed and hung over the dispatcher’s eyelid, surface tension battling gravity in his sincerity.
“It is pretty nice.”
A callused thumb hovered above, waiting for some semblance of permission. A quiet, microscopic nod allowed it to softly trace along Herman’s brow bone, down along his temple, a quick stop at his cheeks, and a final rest around the curve of his long neck. Every centimeter, millimeter, finally more than one, of contact sent electric jolts down the younger man’s long spine.
“In every possible circumstantial permutation you thought of while saying all that, you’d be wrong, Herm.”
Herman’s jaw dropped. “I-I, but you—you’re—you can’t..! That’s n-not possi—”
“Believe it, kid.”
He continued, just a bit closer, “Caring and feeling for someone looks like a million different things, Herm. You tell me if I got it wrong.”
Eye contact was out of the question. Herman searched the water below them for an explanation for all of this, the answer incredulously squirming deep within his core.
A wet hand traveled up and over Robert’s own sure one, shaking in its warmth. He brought it back to his cheek, unable to stop himself from leaning into the rough palm. Herman shook his head.
Robert found himself breathless at the sight, the touch. Robert Robertson the Third was not the smartest man of all time, nor was he one who could afford to simply have things he wanted. No matter how much he wanted to see his father, no matter how much he wanted the Mecha suit to last a little longer, he was always relentlessly left stripped down to nothing. But ever since Blazer had floated down from the light at the end of his busted-arm tunnel and a certain coworker had begun to infiltrate each and every corner of his stretched out consciousness, the latter didn’t seem so definite. Permanent. He’ll have to build a SDN shrine when he gets back home.
“R-Robert..?”
A light, exhaled laugh and an impossibly fond look pervading the man’s expression gripped Herman. He had half a mind to look behind for the real recipient.
“Nope. I am in make-out distance from you, Herman. Just us.”
Robert seized the moment before Herman had a chance to apologize, moving in in a rush as if promising collision. Instead, the older man’s lips tenderly pressed against the other’s, in reverence and mirth. A hundred-thousand latent emotions exploded in every comprehensible direction, impatient and liberated at last.
A sickly sweet, warm breeze perforated through the honeysuckle bushes along the perimeter of Prism’s backyard in order to flow through and around the two. Another dull roar of laughter from inside the house, and a siren going off in the distance did little to nothing to ground the unified figures drifting in the water. Herman found his hands gripping the shoulder seams of Robert’s drenched jacket as if his life depended on it, bringing him desperately closer. The other chuckled through the kiss, angling to the right to taste and revel deeper, just a bit harder. Herman had an incredibly little amount of experience in this department, seeing his little fleeting whimpers escaping his chest without his consent and breaths shaky through the nose.
Robert pulled away, thumb gliding over the novice hero’s bottom lip. Herman could still feel the ghost of whatever the hell just happened lingering and meandering around the digit.
“God, Herm, you can’t be doing that on our first ki—”
Herman heard only mumbles and delicate pants as his ears rang and his soul fell asunder. It wasn’t enough and he feared it never would be, being touched and looked at like this. He grabbed Robert’s shoulders and pulled him into an all encompassing embrace. Only the man trapped in the pair of lanky and surprisingly strong arms heard the doors slide open a smidge, followed by a suspiciously Courtney sounding “fucking Christ” before they were once again left to their own accord.
A tighter squeeze. “Rob-obert, I… I thought—think I need to hear it. F-from you. Th-the-there’s ju-st no way—what that m-meant—it is what I think it is in fealt—reality.”
So much more silently, a cross between a whisper and an inhale, Robert could barely make out the others’ words slipping just past his ear. “If….. too cruel…”
Robert sighed. “And you’d deserve it.” He melted into the warmth emanating from Herman’s entirety before pulling away. It felt important to see his face.
“You won’t leave my mind alone, Herm.” He smiled, genuine and dim. “It’s not the prettiest place up there, you’d know, but… You found a spot and you just won’t leave.”
Herman’s line of sight shifted from Robert’s eyes to his hairline to his freckles to his lips and back to his eyes. Robert wondered what it was exactly that Herman was so intent on finding.
“I want reality to reflect, well, this,” he continued as he pointed at his head, “if… that’s also what you want.”
It was everything Herman had ever wanted since the moment he was conscious and thrusted into society. Since he met Robert. Since he met Mechaman. It was another brilliantly miraculous brick slotting into its spot in his long, weary path towards self actualization, and it made him the luckiest man alive.
“Y-you have n-no idea, Robert, how much I’ve wanted—needed, you… I-I mean you want—I want nothing more.”
A heavy pang attached itself to Robert’s heart, accompanied by the eye-blinding beatitude of Herman’s blissful words, making everything feel so effortlessly weightless. Maybe being in water helped.
Robert’s hands had a mind of their own as one held the cusp of his neck and the other tucking in loose hairs behind Herman’s ear before finding purchase on a straightened shoulder.
“I feel the same and more.” Another breeze intruded the moment, but this time scentless and unwaveringly chilly. Robert sneezed a normal, manly sneeze. “Goddamn.”
A quiet chuckle transformed into full fledged laughter, loud and unafraid to take up space.
“What’s so funny?”
Herman wiped his eye, smiling and letting the bits of giggle-residue flush themselves out. “Nothing, n-nothing. L-let’s go—head inside. Dry up.”
With a suspecting squint, Robert nodded and waded beside the younger man towards the edge before a hand stopped him on his shoulder. Herman scooped Robert up to let the water maneuver the both of them out of the pool. The older man felt himself flush as he blinked and found himself sitting up on stone once again, Herman kneeling on a knee beside him.
“You… are just full of surprises.”
Immediate and familiar sounds of floundering bombarded Robert’s left ear. “I-I-I-I-I thought I’d h-help because it’s harder to g-get oust—out of a pool than g-g-get in—not that it’d be ha-hard for you but compra—comparatively—”
Robert pecked a kiss on the hilarious, soft lips again. “Yum.” An equally hilarious silence ensued as he stood up, sliding off the soaking wet jacket to wring dry.
Fifteen steps towards the backdoor and a resounding “Y–um?!” hit the back of Robert’s head. For the hundredth time that night, he laughed. Upwards towards the darkening sky, as if to prove something, to someone.
“Get over here already, it’s getting cold!”
Pitter pattering caught up to the sound of Robert’s sandals, his free, non-wet jacketed arm succumbing to the magnet embedded around the curve of Herman’s waist. He felt milliliters of tenseness ooze out of the other man’s form. Robert liked the idea of a warmth that was certain and in search of his own. He had an unruly feeling he wasn’t alone.