Chapter Text
Whoever said that the body gave up after the age of twenty five was scarily on point. Robert would have loved to find that person, be it god or the devil himself, and give them a piece of his damn mind. His brain was fried after too many nights spent on patrol, but the free coffee in the break room provided here helped. His spine was so stiff that it felt impossible to bend, and the base of his skull throbbed painfully as he camped out. Today was absolute ass, marked out on his overfilled calendar with a seminar on personal safety at El Camino. It wasn't something he usually had the time for, and he certainly didn’t now, but the college president had all but begged. Something something in mass burglaries and assault on campus or whatever, he couldn’t remember.
Robert checked the watch shoved under the sleeve of his suit. 12:28 PM. He theoretically had about thirty minutes to cram in a nap if he felt like it. Throwing his boots over the arm of the chair he’d flopped himself into, he laid his head back and closed his eyes. God it felt good to be staring at the back of his eyelids for change.
His R&R session lasted all of five minutes, literally screeching to a halt at the sound of shoes skidding on polished linoleum and a hard crash from the hallway. Robert shot up from the chair, adrenaline spiking at the sound of a potential threat as he made his way to the door. He peaked through the crack, half expecting a fight or an armed assailant, but the hall was practically empty but for one person.
On the floor, sprawled out on the back and groaning unhappily, was perhaps the gangliest motherfucker Robert had ever seen, having the unfortunate combo of coke bottle glasses and braces. Under him was a small patch of water.
“Couldn’t have hurt them to put up a wet floor sign?” He asked rhetorically as he offered a hand. “You alright there?”
The poor kid blinked up at him, glasses hanging off his nose. “Wha-? Oh! Yes-I mean this isn’t -this is my fault.”
His hands flitted around as he talked, jittery and nervous, and most definitely not moving to get up. He was oddly damp for someone that’d only slipped in a puddle.
Robert decided he was too tired to really give a shit about that though.
“Not your fault kid. That’s on maintenance.” He held his hand out farther, holding back the impulse to just pull him up himself.
Eventually he got the memo, letting out a quiet thanks as Robert hauled him up. The dude was easily a full head taller than him when he stood up, even when slouching. The fuck were they feeding him and where could he get some, asked the sleep deprived part of his brain.
The kid adjusted his glasses, giving them a good wipe with the end of his sleeve. “N-no, you see I, um, this is mine. Water! My water. Just kinda, leak-“
He stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide with recognition and a healthy dose of panic.
“Y-you…! You’re-“
Robert was used to this by now, the slack jawed surprise as they realized just who it was they were talking to, and oh good god it’s-
“Mecha Man?” He finished his sentence, more than ready to disappear from this conversation. “That’d be me. In the flesh, or whatever.”
He tried for a smile, but the muscles there could only muster a pained grimace. It didn’t seem to matter as his audience of one stared at him with a nervous, starstruck energy practically dripping off him.
“YES!”
His hands clapped over his mouth in embarrassment, face pale and covered in what Robert had originally thought was sweat, but there was no way in hell one person could produce that much without keeling over. Robert could hear his ears ring from how loud he’d yelled, though the sensation was nothing new.
Ah, he realized, powers. Unfortunate, but none of his damn business.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that you’re you, and-and there’s all t-this.” He gestured around at the big mess of wet. “It’s a lot…sorry.”
It was sad, this lone dude fidgeting in his own drip like a dog left out in the rain, and it made Robert feel like an absolute ass just standing there staring at him. He heaved a tired sigh and placed a hand on his shoulder, trying his best to be comforting and ignore the unnervingly vicious water seeping into his glove.
“Hey, don’t sweat it.” He cringed at his poor choice of words, but soldiered on. “What’s your name?”
“It’s,um…it’s Herman.”
“Right, Herman. You don’t gotta apologize for this. Like-“ he paused to laugh, somehow moving past exhaustion into delirious amusement. “I’m not the one that ate shit. You’re good.”
“But-“
“Nah, no buts. Obviously you can’t help it so I’m not gonna stand here and lecture you on something you can’t control.” It felt like the heroic thing to say, or so he hoped. He liked to think it was the kind of spiel his father would have pulled out his ass. “What matters is that you don’t have any brain damage. Do you?”
He gave him a look around, careful to avoid slipping himself as he checked for any sign of bumps or bruises. Herman stood stock still, his hands shoved awkwardly in his armpits as he avoided eye contact.
“N-no, I’m good. Totally…fit as fiddle. Heh…yeah.” His face was pulled tight, cheeks flushed in what Robert could only guess as shame. Suppose he couldn’t blame him for feeling that way. “But t-Thank you. I-I-I appreciate-It means a lot coming from you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah! You’re like my s-second favorite hero behind-after Phemo-Phenomena-“
“Phenomaman. Right, thanks.”
Jesus, he knew how to kick a man when he’s already down.
“It’s like, seriously, an h-honor to meet you. Just wish-I’d like it better if i-it wasn’t like this.” He said earnestly, biting his bottom lip so hard that it must have hurt. “So embarras-embarrassing.”
Place him in this situation with literally anyone else and Robert might have agreed. Honestly he would have usually ran away from this kind of obvious fan interaction like a man on fire, but there was something about Herman that made him hesitate. He was nice enough, polite to a fault even. The real answer was that this was the exact kind of ego boost Robert needed on a shitty day like this.
“That was nothing.” He insisted, eyeing the clock on the wall. The time between him and his speech was quickly dwindling. “I literally fell down into the sewers last week. You can’t beat that.”
“You…what?” Herman laughed, visually relaxing. “W-was it you? The suit?”
“Both unfortunately. Smelled like shit for two whole days after that.”
A chase that’d gone horribly sideways, both figuratively and literally as his suit had gone offline, plummeting them both into horrible septic waste. He’d tried desperately to hose down the inside of his mech to no avail, both the stains and the stench sticking to the fabric of his seat. Reupholstering had been added to his growing list of expenses he couldn’t afford.
If that had been his reason for taking a paid seminar spot, he’d never say.
Herman laughed, his voice cracking around water at Robert’s sad attempt at conversation. It was nice to hear, the concept so far removed from his everyday life at this point. When had been the last time he’d actually talked to someone off the clock? Did the guy that worked the drive-thru window at the McDonald's down the road from his apartment count? He decided not to dwell in that thought too long.
“The point is I wouldn’t care if you grew two heads or shot fire out your ass. And you,” Robert paused to poke Herman’s chest for, wholly uncalled for and possibly intrusive, emphasis. “shouldn’t give a shit what I think. Live your life.”
He didn’t get a response for a moment outside of glassy eyed shock. A thought was forming behind the thick wall of Herman’s glasses, but it seemed that his brain and his mouth were having trouble connecting.
“I-what I mean to say-or I mean…oh god.” His voice trailed off as the color on his face grew more pronounced. He turned so red in fact that Robert wondered if he might self combust.
The moment, thankfully or unfortunately he wasn’t sure, was interrupted by the loud clank of heels.
“Ah! There you are.” A rather short, hurried looking woman approached him, clipboard white knuckled in her grip. She took Robert by the elbow with a surprising amount of strength and pulled him along down the hall. “I’m sorry for the rush, but we’re running behind schedule. If you’d just follow me this way please.”
Not like he had much of a choice there he bemoaned tiredly.
He turned back to his short lived companion, mouthing an unexpectedly earnest sorry, and saw him deflate in real time. It made Robert ever so slightly tempted to bail from his self imposed responsibilities. One reason among many, but still.
“Of course.” He agreed, trying his damnedest to break out of her hold in the politest way possible. “Just a moment if you don’t mind.”
He inclined his head toward Herman. From the look on her face, she must have completely missed him until then. How that was possible, Robert couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Oh! Herman, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there. Perhaps my eyesight's getting worse than I thought.”
She brushed it off with a laugh, one that Robert might have found convincing if not for Herman’s tight lipped smile.
“It’s n-not-no, no problem Dr.Sellers.”
He gave her a very restrained, very drippy thumbs up.
“Are you joining us for our campus safety talk? The auditorium is filling up quick, so you’d best grab a seat.”
She didn’t wait for an answer as she grabbed Robert’s arm again and swung back down the hall, narrowly avoiding a slip of her own as she navigated around the growing puddle. It was fairly large by then, inching out at a rapid rate.
Robert turned back as best he could, contorting himself to wave at Herman. He waved back, eyes comically wide behind his lenses as he finally cracked a genuine smile. It felt gratifying to see, being able to make someone’s day just a fraction better than it would have been otherwise.
Like most things in Robert’s life, he wasn’t sure when last it had happened, if ever.
“This way please.” Dr. Sellers marched him on, out the hallway and far away from Herman and his little puddle. “We’re very glad to have you here Mr…it feels odd calling you Mecha Man. Is there anything else you go by?”
“Um, no just-Mecha Man’s fine.”
It wasn’t.
The rest of his afternoon dragged on, the clock barely ticking forward as he dryly read from his stack of cue cards. The crowd was about as enthused as one could expect from a group of young twenty somethings, most of them nodding off, and the occasional camera flash from some of his more annoying, socially lacking fans. The only thing missing, or rather the only person missing, was Herman.
He wasn’t too proud to admit that he’d scanned the crowd for him, bored curiosity egging him on to find the kid under different circumstances. Either he’d failed to show or Robert was blind. Bets were up in which of those options were worse. It wasn’t a memory he felt any particular way about, nor that he went out of his way to think back on, but every now and then it would pop into his head. That unbidden, frankly annoying want to know about the life of a stranger you only met once.
It wasn’t worth dwelling on, or so he told himself.