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Lin Ling’s eyes shone gold when he transformed. Perhaps it was the effect of the transformation sequence, Nice thinks to himself; the ribbons glowing gold and wrapping themselves around his frame. Some of the glow had to have been reflected in Lin Ling’s amber brown eyes, engulfing it in blinding gold, framed by soft brown tresses with a stray lock of shocking white. The remnant of Nice’s influence on him.
It wasn’t often Lin Ling used his full hero regalia, which was easily accessible via his belt buckle. The younger man favoured the more comfortable tracksuit look for his Hero patrols anyway, citing that he needed to look approachable for civilians to come to him if they ever needed help, much to Miss J’s chagrin.
Nice was of the opinion that it was probably far more comfortable than the form-fitting white and gold monstrosity Treeman seemed to enjoy putting their heroes in anyway. (Lin Ling had no comment, but he’s sure the younger hero agrees.)
Whatever the case, it was a fun little tidbit Nice discovered for himself when Lin Ling transformed into his hero outfit mid-fight between a particularly nasty villain and his entourage of minions during their routine Hero Patrol.
The gold bleeds out once the outfit is fully formed around Lin Ling, leaving behind his usual warm amber brown in its place, hardened with determination to take down the villain with minimal civilian casualties. Nice is jolted out of his staring when Lin Ling meets his eyes, the older hero blinking rapidly as his hand tightens around the collar of the mindless minion he’d been handling.
The Commoner grins at him cheekily before jumping right into the fray.
He releases the collar from his grip, ignoring the indignant squawk of the minion as they plummet towards the ground while Nice twirls mid-air to plunge downwards, meeting his target’s stomach with his knee and pinning them painfully with a loud crack in asphalt, a crater blooming forth from the force. With the grunt successfully incapacitated (with a few broken ribs but that was neither here nor there), Nice chanced another glance towards Lin Ling’s direction.
The gold in Lin Ling’s outfit sparkles in the reflected afternoon sunlight, the Commoner currently preoccupied with attempting to punch his way through a particularly annoying barrier seemingly constructed out of Fear, the villain within laughing maniacally in smug relish. The older hero watches his junior struggle with his task, tilting his head as he watches Lin Ling’s muscles flex and stretch underneath the skin tight material, eyes considering.
The villain’s main form of attack came in pulsing soundwaves, the neon purple a blinding force that slams into its victims. Lin Ling dodges most of it skillfully, sometimes getting slightly nicked but otherwise alright.
Sensing trouble behind him, Nice leans his head to the side, narrowly avoiding a punch aimed at the back of his head, languidly grabbing the arm of his assailant and efficiently flipping the man and pinning him flat on the ground. All the while, aquamarine eyes never leave the Commoner’s frame for long, as if magnetized towards his Junior.
He doesn’t step in to help more than clearing off the grunts and keeping them busy; Miss J was clear that Lin Ling had to be seen fighting the main villain this time. Discourse online about how Lin Ling had been riding on Nice’s Trust values coattails had tanked his numbers, nothing too serious but it was better for the optics that Lin Ling was actually seen doing some Hero work. The drones would take care of that, hovering just close enough to get a good view of the battle unfolding in X City’s shopping district, courtesy of their ever opportunistic manager of course.
Nice frowns slightly, casually weaving through clumsy attempts to harm him as he considers his younger hero colleague. Lin Ling was holding out well, his hero regalia doing its job in keeping him relatively unharmed and Trust values working fast to repair what the Hero regalia could not protect. His gaze is drawn again to his Junior’s amber brown eyes.
The colour of Lin Ling’s eyes shifted in different lighting, appearing almost black in the shadow of the skyscrapers and glowing amber as they refract the afternoon sun, the colour fading and brightening as the Commoner battles his foe. He’s doing well, some of his hero training as Nice shining through in his swift twirling kicks and frankly impressive backflips, but his attack style was undeniably Lin Ling with his reckless punches.
He’s dragging it out, Nice realizes, dodging yet another attack and dealing with the assailant as swiftly as he did their comrades. Tiring out the enemy so he could not hope to keep up the barrier and Lin Ling could finally land a decisive hit.
Nice summons his bracers, the gold glinting dangerously as he approaches his targets with newfound determination. Better to get this over with so they could go home to Hero’s tower.
-
Even with Nice distracted, the grunts were no match for Treeman’s Mr Perfect. Nice stacks the unconscious bodies in a neat pile off to the side for law enforcement to collect (already en route thanks to Miss J), thinking idly about lunch plans when his earpiece crackles with his aforementioned manager’s voice.
“Nice, we need you down to the Commoner’s location, stat.” A weight drops to his stomach, dread filling him as he spins on his heel and takes off into the skies. Lin Ling must have moved from his previous location in Nice’s vicinity while the older hero was distracted with the goons. Nice takes in a sharp breath as he realizes that he no longer had Lin Ling in his sights.
A familiar anxiety builds in his chest and threatens to choke him where he levitates, but he can’t fall now. Miss J’s urgent voice relayed Lin Ling’s current location and Nice pinpoints it immediately from his vantage point. The older hero dives towards it, pushing his worries aside as he focuses on getting to the Commoner as fast as his powers could allow him.
The worry is mildly assuaged by Miss J’s assurances that Lin Ling was alright, just required some back up just in case as the Fear-fuelled villain had somehow gotten his hands on another dosage of the stuff. Nice knows the worry would not fade until he could confirm it with his own eyes but quietly does as told.
He arrives in record time, noting to Miss J that the collateral damage had been minimal. Considering Lin Ling had been essentially chasing a hamster ball of a villain, it wasn’t hard to tell why. The streets were still lined with curious civilians, onlookers eager to get rare footage of an in person fight between Hero and Villain. Nice immediately moves to clear the way, directing civilians away from the danger zone and to discreetly check Lin Ling for injuries from where he is.
He remains just out of sight of the drones, careful not to interfere with Lin Ling’s battle with the villain and only focuses on keeping civilians out of harm’s way.
Thankfully, the Commoner is relatively unharmed save for a few bruises and light scrapes from what he could see, and the fight was wrapping up well. Despite the extra dosage of Fear, the villain could not maintain the barrier for long due to the instability and Lin Ling finally manages to punch straight through.
The purple orb shatters like a glass ornament, and Lin Ling seizes the chance to strike, his right hook finding its mark clean on the villain’s stunned face. Nice can't help the grimace on his face; he’d been on the receiving end of such a punch before, it was a miracle Lin Ling didn’t break anything. Probably because the Commoner had held back against him that time in the arena.
It didn’t seem that Lin Ling had such reservations for the villain though, a sickening crunch indicating that the younger hero had at best broken a nose or at worst, caved the guy’s face in. Nice wasn’t sure which was better as he watched the villain fly back a few feet, landing in a crumpled heap against a building.
Onlookers erupted into excited cheering as Lin Ling whips his head up, startled as if he hadn’t realized he had an audience. His amber brown eyes find Nice’s aquamarine one in the crowd and the older hero’s shoulders relax minutely, relieved that the battle is over.
From there, law enforcement took over, cordoning off the area and putting the criminals away. Nice hovers on the edges for a bit, allowing Lin Ling to bear the brunt of the media storm that surrounded him from his successful fight. He watches as Lin Ling scratches the back of his head sheepishly while he answers the flurry of questions bombarding him, probably downplaying his role in taking down the villain.
The public loves it when he does that. They call him humble and love him for it, Nice would call him stupid. Lin Ling should take whatever credit is due to him and then some, he deserves it. It's a pity the person himself doesn’t think of it that way though, Nice already knows he’d be flippantly brushed off if he tries.
The knot in his stomach eases significantly once Lin Ling finishes up with the reporters, relief flooding him as Nice finally allows himself to float down towards Lin Ling’s level. His fingers twitch to fix Lin Ling’s dishevelled appearance but he refrains, opting instead for a slight smile as he congratulates Lin Ling on a job well done.
“Thanks for your help too, Nice-qián bèi. You cleared the minions so I could focus on the main guy,” Lin Ling grins, and even then, smudged with dust and covered in a motley of injuries, he’d never looked better. Truly embodying his Hero insignia of a sun, Nice resists the urge to squint.
“I just did what I could, you were the one who had it handled,” Nice hums casually, bumping shoulders with the younger man. Lin Ling laughs in response, shy under the attention. It makes Nice want to tease the man further, but they’re cut off by the arrival of their ride back to Hero’s tower.
“You’re taking a shower once we get home,” Nice hums, ducking into the vehicle first at Lin Ling’s insistence. He didn’t need to turn around to know the younger man was rolling his eyes at him, the cheek of his Junior.
-
“Nice, seriously, am fine,” the older hero pays Lin Ling no mind, cornering the younger hero on the couch and yanking his sweater up to reveal a bruised torso, ignoring the scandalized yelp. His lips purse into a thin line, aquamarine eyes flashing before he lets out a sigh. Trust Values were finicky in this sense: only injuries that could be seen would heal immediately, Nice knows this fact intimately by now.
The scent of Lin Ling’s body wash floods his nostrils, the younger man having just got out of the shower before being bullied into letting Nice inspect his injuries.
“Let me get the ointment on you at least,” Nice murmurs, pinning Lin Ling with a chilled glance that tolerates no arguments. The younger man wisely clamps his mouth shut and nods.
Nice slides off the couch elegantly, making his way briskly towards the hidden cabinets near the wall. The first aid box greets him with its stark white container against grey inset walls, all medications packed within easy reach if Nice needed them. The bottles clinked gently within as Nice brought the box towards the coffee table.
Lin Ling makes a face at his approach, but obediently tugs his shirt off. The damage wasn’t too bad this time, Lin Ling’s hero regalia had softened most of the blows as intended. What was left behind was surface level and would heal in a few days but Nice preferred to tend to them himself.
Nice works quietly but efficiently, gently dabbing ointment on the worst of the bruises. Lin Ling doesn’t make much noise save for the occasional hiss, the only consistent sound in the apartment suite the soft clink of glass as Nice sets bottles of ointment and creams out to tend to Lin Ling’s injuries.
The evening sun bathes the entire room in warm hues of orange, the colour staining Lin Ling’s brown eyes and amplifying the amber inclusions. The gold is back, which reminds Nice of his thoughts earlier in the day, and in the relative safety of their shared abode, Nice decided he wanted to voice them to Lin Ling.
“Your eyes turn gold sometimes,” He murmurs quietly, eyes flicking back down to Lin Ling’s bruised side. Nice surpasses the urge to wince in sympathy at the angry blot of purple, if he showed any weakness here, Lin Ling would insist he was fine to avoid his Senior’s worry.
The younger man makes a soft questioning noise at his statement.
“Gold? Hm, probably a trick of the light,” Lin Ling offers as an explanation, twitching in reflex as a cold gel is applied on a particularly bad gash where an attack had gotten the better of him. “Why? Does it bother you? Can’t exactly control how light reflects though.”
Nice huffs, not quite a laugh but not entirely unamused either by Lin Ling’s thought process. He caps off the ointment once Lin Ling is deemed sufficiently taken care of and presses a light kiss on the exposed shoulder blade of his unsuspecting Junior. He turns to busy himself with clearing up the mess, re-arranging the first aid kit to satisfactory organization and tossing stained tissues.
“No, gold is a good colour on you after all, I like it,” He replies casually.
Nice doesn’t need to look to know Lin Ling is flushed red from his spontaneous affection and compliment, starting from his cheeks and meandering down to his shoulders. It was adorable how far the blush travelled, and if it were any other evening, one where preferably didn’t have Lin Ling covered in bruises not formed by Nice’s hands, he would have started something.
As it stood though, Nice was not keen to further aggravate the injuries and would have to be content merely showering Lin Ling with soft affection that evening. Not that he was complaining of course.
“Besides,” Nice pauses for dramatic effect, helping Lin Ling dress and finally indulging in carding his hands through damp hair, pushing it away to reveal more of his Junior’s face. Nice curls the white lock of hair around his finger and smiles down at Lin Ling’s confused face.
“You look good in my colours,” the resulting splutter from his lovely Junior pulls a laugh out of him, genuine and loud, echoing throughout the apartment. When he manages to stop, Lin Ling doesn’t even look offended by it anymore, instead regarding Nice with a fond expression.
The gold returns as the sunlight shifts with the setting sun, Lin Ling’s eyes catch the stray beams and glows, golden and bright, like the sun he is. Kissing him was to be expected then, slanting his lips against Lin Ling’s gently, Nice thinks to himself that Lin Ling does look really good in his colours.