Chapter Text
The day is winding down at SDN Torrance as the last callouts from second shift come back to base. Malevola and Sonar are in the break room while the rest of the team are heading back in, they got an easy callout and by the time they finished resting up ready to go out again shift was over.
“Can’t wait to get home and check my portfolio. I got some sick NFT’s dropping tonight, gonna be a big hit”
“Babes, you know I love you but I don’t care about your financial bullshit.”
“C’mon Mal, let yourself be free of the burden of poverty. Invest in Sonarcoin. It’s going viral, it’s going places. You could go places. With it. With Sonarcoin.”
The hybrid keeps going and Mal tunes it out. She loves Sonar to bits, they’re best mates and she remains committed to being his NA Sponsor as he works on himself but sometimes she really does wish he’d give the finance bro stuff up. Or at least, leave it at the door when he clocked on.
She sees Waterboy returning from a callout and heading towards the locker rooms and makes a decision in her head, anything has to be better than crypto talk right now.
“Sorry buddy, I gotta go. I need to talk to Wetguy about… something, a callout today actually. See you later, or tomorrow, or whenever!”, running out the door as she speaks, it’s not entirely untrue either. They’d had a big ol’ fight with a gang robbing the airport earlier and he’d taken a few hits.
Sonar sits there a little perplexed for a moment before shrugging and pulling a pack of twinkies out of his pocket.
Mal catches up to Waterboy in the corridor and puts her arm round him. He immediately tenses up, as if awaiting some form of messing about. It prompts a brief moment of reflection in Malevola. They’ve very much opened up to Waterboy as part of Z-Team, toned down some of the jokes and jibes. They make an effort to help him improve, as best they can without seeming like they care too much, and often come to his defence, like Punch-up with Rob a couple of weeks ago when he was sick.
However, for him to react the way he did when Mal barely even touched him made her worry they were maybe still being a little too harsh on the guy. That thought wasn’t helped by what he said next:
“M-m-m-ma-malevola did I… are you..?” he sounded apprehensive, “C-c-c-can I he- need.. What d-yo.. Can I help..? You…?” It actually made her feel a little bad, she must’ve startled him pretty badly running up to him like that.
“Just wanted to check in on you Waterboy, you took quite the hit earlier today when we were at that airport hanger brawl.”
“Oh.. oh! Yeah.. I’m.. uh.. I’m.. alright, yeah. I’m okay. T-thanks.. Though.” he stammers out, a little red in the face. “I need to uh- go. Go.. shower! Yeah, long day, huh.. Thanks.. Ma’am.. I mean, Malevola”
At that he scurries off towards the locker room, clearly a little overwhelmed by the conversation, leaving her standing there. She’d nearly missed it against the backdrop of his incredibly awkward conversation skills but she’d noticed really heavy bruising all around the back of his neck. Must’ve been from that fight, no wonder he’d tensed up so badly when she’d swung her arm round him, that must be pretty painful judging by the red and purple splotches.
Showering was actually pretty painful today, Waterboy had to admit. He’d been thrown hard into a stone wall at one point during the earlier brawl and he didn’t want to make a fuss so he hadn’t told anyone but now it was really hurting. He’d heal up soon enough and his grandma had a medicine cabinet to rival a hospital ever since she’d found out he was working in the field, he just had to get cleaned up and get home.
Turning off the water, he wrapped a towel round his midriff and walked back into the locker room. He was a little lost in his head as he grabbed his normal clothing from his locker and sat down for a moment, letting the aching sting from his shoulders and back wear off before agitating it again. What he hadn’t noticed was the 6ft 6” half demon leaning against lockers behind him, intently watching the large spread of bruises on his back.
“Your backs looking a bit like a veritable Jackson Pollock, Babes” she said as she stepped towards him.
“Hwha! W-w-what are y-yo.. You..” he’s so startled he jumps up off the bench, nearly losing his towel in the process. He just about manages to keep a hold of it, the last thing he needs is ribbing about exposing himself to Mal. He looks up at her and finds his voice. “You shouldn’t b-be in here M-Mal. It’s the men’s l-locker room.”
“Yeah, well. Someone didn’t tell us they took a real battering today.”
“I’m f-fine,” he sits back down on the bench.
She wanders over and sits next to him, probably a little closer than appropriate but when’s that ever stopped her. She puts a hand on his shoulder, which is nowhere near as damp as it usually would be, she tries to be gentle in respect to the bruises but there’s still a sharp inhale of breath as he feels the sting.
“Hey. You did good today Wetguy, no shame in getting a little bruised and broken.”
“It’s Waterboy. My name is Waterboy.” he said with a firmness she was absolutely not expecting.
“Thought your name was Herman?” she asks, genuinely a little confused.
“I d-don’t like it when you all call.. N-nam-.. When you c-call me names.” his defiance already started to crumple slightly.
Oh. That did actually make Mal feel kinda bad? She’d just assumed he’d understood it was banter, a joke, part of the Z-Team dynamic. After all, none of them actually put any malice behind the names, especially since he’d proven himself in the defence of LA. They were all kinda proud of the guy.
“You know we’re not calling you names to hurt you right babes?”
“Y-yeah, s-sure. It feels l-l-like it.”
“None of us mean it in a bad way… it’s just kinda.. Our way of showing we care?”
“I guess..”
Right. That’s enough being nice about the names. She came here for a reason and that didn’t include a heart-to-heart.
“Anyway. I came here to help, if you’ll allow me?”
“H-help how?”
She looks from his bruises, to her hand, and then her shoulders with a waggle of her eyebrows. Waterboy goes a little red in the face.
“Don’t get excited big guy, i’m gonna use my life transfer to try and heal your bruising,”
“Oh, o-okay, a-are you sure? I can manag-” he’s cut off by an odd feeling, as the aching starts to feel… distant? Like an echo of the pain he’d felt earlier. He notices her shoulders turning into a mottled patchwork of purples and blues. A few more seconds of odd sensations go by and then her hand withdraws. He almost misses the warmth.
She hisses slightly as she rolls her shoulders, the bruising already healing away.
“Credit where credit's due babes, you got some grit to be walking around with that. That stung”
“I d-d-didn’t want to make a f-fuss at the end of shift.”
“Well I've done what I came to do, get home safe Waterboy.” she stands up as he stutters a thanks out. She can’t resist being a little cheeky though and her tail pulls the towel off him as she walks out, heels clattering along the tiles as he stammers awkwardly behind her.
---------------------------------------------------
Following that shift, Mal does actually make a concerted effort to try and be nicer to Waterboy. She tells herself it’s her trying to live up to being a ‘hero’ or something but she can’t quite shake the moment he’d stood up to her, no stammering or quivering. It really did make her feel a little bad, they all knew despite their pasts he never treated them as anything other than fellow heroes and friends and she couldn’t help but feel they’d let him down a little.
Hope Robert never hears this, he’d probably put me forward for some leadership training or something corporate.
It’s small things. She and Sonar had taken him to a party a few weeks ago after drinks at Crypto and the guy had seemed to really taken to it. As silly as he’d looked in his bright yellow suit, it’d been nice to see him grooving along to house music. Didn’t think he had that kinda taste. So she decides to message him about music and it turns out, Waterboy has taste. Wide-ranging taste for sure but he seems to like all the right stuff. So they talk about music sometimes.
Then the manic shift happens where Courtney has to dispatch while Rob’s out. She was happy enough that Punch-up had stepped in to defend Waterboy but she was even more delighted to discover in the general chatter of the day that he played poker and had apparently cleaned house.
Over a couple of weeks, she tried her best to remember not to call him Wetguy, checked in with him after particularly hard fights in case he was injured again, and they ended up messaging after shift. Not every day and not always for long but enough that he felt he was actually being heard and seen. He returned the favour, checking in with her after long days or when he knew she’d had bad callouts. He was shockingly attentive.
It led her to two rather startling realisations.
- Despite the stammering awkwardness and overbearing damp face to face, it turned out that Waterboy was actually kinda cool.
- Furthermore, despite never in a million years imagining this outcome when Rob selected him for Z-Team to replace Coupe, she realised she actually considered him a real friend. Not a workplace acquaintance, an actual honest to devil friend.
The team had noticed it a little as well. Flambae had called him Waterbitch after a particularly nasty job had left him sitting in the breakroom zoning out. She yelled out a very sharp “Hey!” with a tone that very much said ‘cut that shit out’ before she even realised it. Flambae had looked over defiant, which she responded to in kind. He’d then stormed out muttering ‘but he is a bitch’. Waterboy had just given her a grateful smile that warmed her heart.
There’d been a couple of jibes from Sonar, Prism, and Visi about her being ‘protective’ of him. She was surprised there wasn’t more from Punch-up and Coupe but she suspected Coupe didn’t want to rock the boat on her second chance, and she knew of all the Z-Team it was Punch-up that had the softest spot for Herman, given how often they worked together.
Waterboy had continued to improve though, mostly on his confidence. He stuttered a little less, made less water when nervous. He pushed back a little more against the team, something she was sure was to do with Robert giving him a little coaching. It was good to see, he was finally finding his voice.
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The day had been like any other, a Kaiju here, school talent contest there. She was currently on a job dealing with the Cult of Cha’ad. If she was being honest she was getting a little tired of coming out to deal with these, they were practically popping up for rituals every other day, mostly just to meet her. She signed four autographs at the last one, not that she didn’t appreciate her fans, it was just getting a bit boring by now.
There was one good thing about this job, she was paired up with Waterboy. They’d forgone the usual portalling to the job to walk and talk, a nice change of pace for the both of them. He’d really come out of his shell, at least with her, he pretty much didn’t stutter around her anymore unless the topic veered too close to awkward territory. Conversation flowed pretty freely and he managed to crack a couple of jokes that got proper laughs out of her, they were still a little awkward and dorky but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
A crackle in their ears at the comms came in.
“Mal, Waterboy, got a pretty violent B&E around a block away from you. How close are you to finishing? I know you’re scheduled back for break but I might need you to go straight to this and then I'll let you go to lunch early for longer.” the steady tones of Rob came through.
“Nearly done, just wrapping up the fanclub meet”
“I c-can wait for b-break. Absolutely Robert”
“Guess I can too but I'm gonna hold you to that longer lunch!” She was always going to say yes to the B&E. Robert had unfortunately instilled quite the work ethic in her over the past few weeks and she was currently tying with Flambae for 10th place on the Torrance leaderboards. She really wanted to break the top ten, the longer lunch break was basically just extras at this point.
The cult disperses, candles blown out and robes placed back in backpacks as the otherwise normal people return to their daily lives.
The B&E was at a small engineering firm a block away. Rob gave them further details as they jogged over. A small gang was trying to steal some tech being developed by a local firm and had started getting pretty rough with the staff. A security guard had walked in on it and it’d all gone to pieces.
“How’d you wanna play this then boss?” she asks on the comms
“I’ll leave it in your capable hands Mal, but Waterboy, please be careful. Lotta electronics and tech in there. Let’s try and avoid too much collateral damage.”
“Aye a-a-aye Robert”
Looking around the building, it was clear that they were mostly focused around the loading bay at the rear of the building. She decided on a classic approach, head on. So that’s what they did.
It wasn’t a particularly long or messy fight but there were two major points of interest for Mal. The first was that she noticed a few times while she was fighting but Waterboy was holding back (presumably out of concern for damaging things with his water), he was watching her with a curious expression on his face. She could’ve sworn he gave her an updown at one point. He’d definitely… looked at her before. Glances at her ass, tits, she’d even clocked him watching her tail once. She was used to attention by now but she hadn’t expected it from him.
The second point of interest was just as they were wrapping up the fight, one of the villains they were fighting revealed he had super-strength by kicking several crates of equipment towards them. She ducked one, portalled away a couple more, with another sailing past her. Finally she managed to subdue him and tapped her earpiece.
“Robbie babes, we’re all clear here. A little bit of a mess and some equipment broken but nothing down to us. Gonna wrap up and head back in.”
“Good work you two. I’ve cleared it with Mandy. You've both got an extra hour for lunch. Don’t waste it.”
“Always knew we were your favs Rob” she says with mirth. She disconnects from comms as the rest of the team start loudly complaining about their extra lunch break.
“Well Waterboy, sounds like we’re hitting the town for lunch!” she yells out excited, before realising she’s not heard from him in a while. Hasn’t seen him either. It’s then she hears a very tired groan from another part of the room. Walking over, she notices the characteristic yellow outfit sprawling on the floor, with bits of tech strewn around him. Ah. Shit. That last crate must’ve wiped him out.
As carefully as she can she helps him to his feet, making sure to keep an eye out for anything that’s out of place. Mostly he just seems a bit dazed and battered. She gently checks him and finds no broken bones, though he seems to be getting wetter with contact.
“Come on big guy, let’s get you looked at.”
She opens a portal straight into the SDN Med Bay and with him limping alongside, heads through.
The on-duty doctor nods thanks as she helps him to an examination chair. She considers staying with him but then she hears his stomach growl and an idea forms. Leaving the room, she portals out.
She returns around 40 minutes later to find the doctor has gone and Waterboy sat with a bandage around his waist and otherwise looking less dazed. She holds up a greasy bag with her tail.
“Hungry big guy? You took quite the hit. Again.”
He laughs a little and just nods.
“T-thanks Mal.”
“No worries Herm, though we really gotta work on your dodging and blocking.”
“Ha, yeah, I guess.”
They eat in quiet silence and when they’re finished she grabs up the rubbish and puts it in the trash before sitting back next to him. He keeps avoiding looking at her properly, like he’s upset or ashamed, Mal can’t resist bringing it up.
“I saw you looking earlier, you know.”
“Uh.. I.. uh. D-don’t k-know what you mean..” the stuttering started to return.
“Yeah you do babes, it’s alright. Who wouldn’t wanna look at this?” She flicks her tail round at him for good measure. He stiffens and goes completely red in the face, eliciting a hearty laugh from the half-demon.
“Where’s the doc?”
“He’s on lunch. Said there was nothing to be done other than wait for the b-bruising.”
“Huh, well let’s see if we can do something about that.”
She begins preparing to life transfer, placing a palm over his abdomen and grimacing as the heavy bruising transfers over. It’s absolutely nothing she can’t handle but she still takes it slow. She can feel him breathing heavier but she’s not sure if that’s because of the pain or because the half-demon he’d been checking out is now feeling him up.
“Uh you’re getting a little bit… damp again Herm”
“S-s-sorry. I’m nervous.”
“Why? I’ve done this before. Nothing to worry about.” She knows why but she's prodding, pushing for him to step out of that comfort zone and say it.
“It’s uh.. Not.. not the h-healing Mal…”
She’s covered most of his upper body by now and healed from whatever she’d transferred, there’s just a mark on his cheek left.
“Oh?” she says in the most innocently evil tone she can muster. “What then Herm?”
She puts her palm over his cheek and feels him gasp, never in a million years had she ever imagined she’d be sat here in the med bay on lunch break caressing Waterboy of all people. It wasn’t like she loved him. Didn’t really know what she felt for him but she had kinda enjoyed him checking her out in a way, she’d have to reflect on that later. But now she was up close and personal so she could look at him properly. He was kinda cute actually, his awkward smile so endearing. So she thinks for a moment. After all, life is for living. Fuck it.
She curls the hand on his cheek around to the back of his neck, enjoying the look at his eyes open wide with surprise, then she pulls him forward and kisses him hard. He stiffens up and for a brief moment she’s a tiny bit worried she’s just landed herself in tremendous hot water with HR but then he starts to kiss back. It’s awkward and messy, like he’s never actually kissed before. Another brief moment of panic that she might actually be his first kiss. It’s all teeth and he isn’t really using his tongue at first. They pull apart.
“I uh…”
“Damn, that bad huh?”
“No I huh.. I liked it.” he looks down a little bit with embarrassment
“Good. Good.” she nods and then curls her tail under his chin. “Wanna keep going?”
“Y-yes Ma’am” he says, with a slight tinge she couldn’t quite place. Was he.. Flirting? That had to be an attempt at flirting.
They crash back into each other again and the kissing is a little less awkward this time. He seems to have relaxed slightly and they’re now just making out, less teeth and more tongue than earlier. It’s a little tamer than she’s used to but it’s definitely fun and isn’t life all about having fun?
She feels one of his arms start to explore, testing the waters of gripping her. She decides to help him out by pulling one of his arms round her when there’s a loud crash and they both look startled at the noise.
There stands Robert leaning against some piece of medical equipment that’d clearly been rolled into the wall by him backing into it as he’d come through the door. His shirt is half unbuttoned and his hair messy, courtesy of Visi who is practically climbing on to him, her jacket half off. A lone strand of drool dangles between their two mouths as they look over at Mal and Herm.
Robert speaks first, if only to go “uhhhhh”
“Wrong room, don’t mind us” Visi says quickly before dragging them out and shutting the door behind them. The last thing Mal and Herm catch is whispers of “holy shit” and then shoes scuffling as they resume the activities that’d led to them crashing in.
“O-oh god.” Waterboy stammers.
“Fuck. That was kinda hot.” says Mal.
“W-what if they…”
“What Herm? What if they tell people we were making out? They were definitely planning on doing more than that. I think we’re good.”
“I.. y-yeah. I guess.”
“Anyway, where were we?” she says with a grin, tail curling back round him as she glances at the clock. “We’ve got at least another forty five minutes till the second shift, we might as well use it.”
---------------------------
Rob and Courtney are sitting on the futon that evening, not really watching the TV, just enjoying each other's company as they talk.
“So uh. Waterboy and Malevola?” Rob decides to bring it up, had to. They’d waited all day to talk about it.
“Never in a million years did I ever see that coming.” she says with a chuckle.
“No wonder Herm's been getting more confident as of late, here I thought it was my pep talks and encouragement.”
“Clearly something else is driving it.”
“Clearly indeed.”
“Wonder if they’re dating or just fucking?”
“Classy as always Court.”
“Hey, it's a valid question. Kinda shocked more of Z-Team hasn’t paired up yet.”
“Well. Whatever they’re doing it’s not really our place to get involved. Especially now we’re in a state of MAHN.”
“MAHN? What the fuck is ‘MAHN’?”
“Oh I call it, Mutually Assured HR Nightmare, ya know. Cause we walked in on them when we were clearly trying to get on with something completely inappropriate for the workplace. Neither of us can report the other to HR without getting ourselves into trouble.”
She smirks. “Didn’t seem to bother you at the time.”
“No. No it didn’t. Probably should’ve done though. Last thing I want is to have to explain to Mandy why were were fucking on a examination chair.”
“Sounds kinda hot to me, you know I love playing nurse”
“Maybe we can get you a little hat and everything”
“Ooof, really lining up to fulfil one of teenage Robbie's wet dreams”
“Teenage Rob was more into angsty brooding loneliness but kinda, yeah.”
The laughter echoes around the apartment.
----------------------------------
Earlier that day
Second shift was finishing and Mal was so grateful there hadn’t been any lingering awkwardness. She got sent on two jobs with Waterboy and he seemed to have settled back into his normal routine again, slightly dorky and awkward but effective at his job. They were on their way back from the last job of the day when shift ended, so they both turned off their comms.
“I.. uh.. Had a l-lot of fun today.”
“Ditto babes”
“I just w-wanted to s-say I don’t… don’t..”
“Don’t be nervous, just say it”
He seemed to straighten himself up at that and carried on.
“I don’t e-expect anything f-from you. I r-really enjoyed it earlier when we kissed b-but I'm happy if that’s all it is.”
Well that was oddly sweet. She’d never have a guy say that especially after she’d come on to them.
“I appreciate that Herm.”
They left it at that. There wasn’t really much more to say. I mean, how do you put into words what had happened? Mal couldn’t even rationalise it too much. It had just seemed fun and right in the moment and now the moment had passed and it seemed they might actually be able to just be normal about it. What a day at SDN Torrance.