Chapter Text
1:21 P.M.
“Why are you such a skinny ass bitch, Bitch?” Flambae folded his arms over his chest as he leaned against one of the break room’s walls.
Robert stood in front of the vending machine, wordlessly watching the $1 bill being eaten through its slot. He presses two buttons to command the machine to push the golden cakes. It hummed as the row’s coils twisted, slowly but surely moving the treat forward until it met the edge and fell into the gaping maw that was the machine’s opening. Robert sticks his hand in and grabs them. He silently maneuvers to a table and unwraps them with a pinch-and-pull. He grabs one of the cakes and bites into it, tasting the vanilla and creamy goodness explode in his mouth.
“Is that seriously all you're eating?” Invisigal phases in the seat across from Robert, staring from his face to the Twinkie, then back to his face. “I’ve never seen you eat anything besides those goddamn things since you’ve been here.”
“They’re good,” Robert responds simply, taking another bite.
“But they’re not an actual lunch.” Visi stares pointedly at the treat.
“I’ll live.” A third and final bite of the first Twinkie.
“Clearly fucking not,” Flambae says sharply, standing up straight before walking over and towering over their dispatcher. “You look like you are one lost meal away from being blown away, Mecha Bitch.”
Robert stares up at the flame hero blankly, slowly unwrapping his second Twinkie and taking a bite. “So?”
“So,” Flambae hisses, “answer my fucking question.”
“You’re asking so nicely, Flambae,” Robert drawls, his voice laced with sarcasm as he takes a second bite. “Quite frankly, I don’t see why it’s any of your business.”
“Ay, lad, don’t be that way.” Punch Up enters the breakroom with Coupé silently following behind. She gives a silent greeting nod to Robert, which he reciprocates. “We’ve been wonderin’ a while. We’re just a bit worried, ‘tis all.”
“I am not worried,” Flambae corrects, walking back and taking his spot on the wall. “I just don’t need Mecha Dick here to die on us from starvation because of his poor life choices. Then we’d have to deal with another fucking dispatcher that doesn’t know what they’re fucking doing.”
“That’s probably one of the nicest things you’ve ever said about me,” Robert says, feigning just how touched he was before taking the final bite.
“What?” Flambae’s lip twitches, a snarl threatening to form.
“You think I’m good at my job.”
“No,” Flambae says curtly. “I didn’t say that. That’s stupid. You’re stupid.”
Robert gives a disinterested shrug, crinkling the Twinkie wrapper in his hands to trash. He decides to polish off his meal with shitty, lukewarm coffee and stalks off to the nearly empty coffee pot.
As he pours himself a mug, Punch Up speaks up, “Seriously, lad, why ya skin and bones? Ya need a nice meal to bulk up those muscles of yers, like good ol’ Theresa and Susan right ‘ere!” Punch Up flexes, his biceps bulging underneath his shirt.
Visi, the slightly more perceptive one in the room besides Coupé, mumbles, “Does it have to do with the explosion? When you first lost the suit?”
Robert stiffens, the coffee pot in his hand stilling as he abruptly stops pouring. He peers behind him—what he feels like is subtly—but finds the former villains staring back at him, awaiting an answer.
He places the coffee pot down with a sigh and his mug halfway full. He turns, facing his miscreant group, and leans back against the countertop.
“Not really. Kind of. Maybe?” Robert rubs the back of his neck, mulling over how to explain everything. How he was broke. How the suit was the source of his broke-ness. How his basic human needs were at the bottom of his priorities list—below Beef, below the suit. Sure, the explosion didn’t help since it was the reason he was put into a months-long coma, his muscles atrophied from disuse. But that incident was just one of many fucked up issues in his life.
He looked at Visi, who peered back at him with eyes that searched for any scrap of an answer. Just by how she asked the question, guilt still hangs over her from blowing his suit to Timbuktu. While he may have forgiven her, he should’ve expected that she couldn’t immediately get over it. Fuck, he’s probably going to have to bug her like a fly to convince her that he doesn’t care about what she did—at least not as much as before.
“Look,” Robert begins, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Even before the suit blew up, I ate like shit. The suit drained money from me like a goddamn vampire, so most of my money went towards it and taking care of Beef. Can’t let the guy starve just because I decided to cling to the family legacy.”
Flambae narrowed his eyes at Robert before clicking his tongue. “That sausage you call a dog has enough fat on it to last at least three winters. You could’ve afforded to eat one good meal every once in a while.”
“I feel like you are seriously underestimating how much money suit maintenance takes.”
“Right, because I’m not a Normie and can fight with my actual body and not hide in a suit, Bob-Bob.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Robert rolls his eyes, unwilling to fall into whatever back-and-forth argument Flambae wants to trap him into. He fixes his gaze into his mug, watching the borderline dirt-water mirror his reflection back at him. “Anyways, as I was saying, couldn’t eat much when I had—have—little to no money to my name.”
“But yer dad was the Mecha Man before ye. Can’t ya use the money from, I dunno, his life insurance and shit to pay for everythin’?”
Robert stared at Punch Up knowingly, an eyebrow just barely quirked at the question, until the man figured out the answer to his own question.
“Ah, I see.”
“And honestly, being in a coma really took a hit to my incredibly masculine frame—”
“YOU WERE IN A COMA?!”
The collective shout from the Z-Team members almost makes Robert’s ears ring. Visi, Coupé, and Punch Up stared at Robert with wide eyes, while Flambae’s brows knitted together and his scowl deepened.
“Ah, fuck. Did I not tell you guys about that? Thought I mentioned that when I told you about the whole Mecha Man secret identity thing.”
Visi stood up from her chair, hunched over the table, and slammed her hands down on the surface. “No! You didn’t! Probably because you were too busy trying not to become a pig on a spit when Flambae tried to roast your ass.”
“Yup, that’d probably do it,” Robert shrugged. “I’d say that’s a good reason for it to slip my mind.”
“But that is indeed important context to explain your physique,” Coupé commented, her gaze scanning Robert’s body. “Can I ask how long?”
“Couple months.”
“MONTHS?!”
“Jay-sus Christ on a pogo stick, Rob,” Punch Up dragged his hand over his face. “Are ya allergic to taking care of yourself or somethin’?”
“You could say something like that.”
There’s a beat of silence, the members of Z-Team exchanging glances, as if they were having some conversation Robert wasn’t privy to. Visi pulls out her phone, her fingers quickly moving across the screen. Each tap makes a soft click, and after a final tap, a swoosh noise follows.
Her phone pings like crazy shortly after. She reads the incoming messages, nodding along as they come. Once her phone quiets down, Visi speaks, “Alright. That settles it then.”
“What settles what? The fuck kind of telepathic conversation did I just witness?”
“Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant Dan.”
“You’re literally ex-villains, that’s all I can do. Also, again, that’s not even funny and makes no sense.”
Visi waves him off dismissively. “Seriously, you don’t need to worry about a thing. Just let Z-Team do what they do best.”
“Fucking shit up? Wow, I am calmer than Gandhi himself.”