Chapter Text
Robert is tucked against his chest when he wakes up, a tiny puddle of drool dripping out of his half-open mouth. He’s a cute little thing, and Chad can’t deny that he’s genuinely starting to care for the man. Sometimes he even thinks that he ought to tell Robert the truth about who he is. Robert—at least the version of him that Chad has gotten to know—is a genuinely kind and caring person, and he deserves to know the whole, ugly truth of things.
He often has to remind himself that what he and Robert have going on is not a kidnapping. There’s nothing stopping Robert from leaving, besides the fact that he has no memories from before being found by Chad. Or money. Or actual possessions. And the fact that Chad has, so far, discouraged him from stepping outside as much as possible.
Yeah, the situation is a little fucked up, but it’s not necessarily a kidnapping. It’s more of an extremely dubious situation that shares several elements with a kidnapping.
Robert is a light sleeper (years of hero work does that to a person, even if they don’t remember it), so he wakes as soon as Chad pulls his arm away.
“Mhm?” Robert groans, “Is it morning?”
“Obviously. Come on, you can make us coffee while I take a shower.”
Robert has settled into the life of a housewife well. He had to be taught how to cook properly—either he didn’t remember the skill or, more likely, he never learned how—but he picked it up quickly enough. There were several nights Chad had to suffer through horribly bland white people cooking, but with enough guidance, Robert learned.
Robert handles the other duties of running a household well too. The grout of the bathroom tiles—which Chad had previously assumed was naturally a light grey colour—is now a sparkling white thanks to Robert’s hard work. He smiles as he steps into the shower and recalls coming home to Robert scrubbing the floors on his hands and knees.
He’d asked, “What are you doing?” and Robert had glanced over his shoulder for a brief moment before looking back at the floor and the cloth he was using like it should have been obvious.
“I’m cleaning the floor.”
“Right,” Chad had drawled, “I can see that. You do know I have a Swiffer, right? And why the hell are you only wearing boxers?”
“Didn’t want to get the bleach solution on my clothes,” Robert answered simply, as if this was the most obvious situation in the world, “and I do know. I mopped twice today. And vacuumed twice. And I took Beef for an hour-long walk. And then it was too early to start dinner, so I decided I’d see if I could clean the tiles better.”
He’d learned that day that when Robert wasn’t suffering from a major concussion, he had no idea how to just relax. He needed to be working, or if he wasn’t working, he had to have something keeping his mind occupied. Chad had considered, briefly, that Robert had some sort of ADHD before coming to the conclusion that Robert’s need to keep busy was just his subconscious mind recalling years of sleepless nights.
Robert hobbles off to the kitchen to start on coffee and breakfast while Chad gets his things together for a shower. As he turns his shower on—the same shower Robert cleaned to perfection a week ago—he wonders how he could have ever wanted to harm the man he now considers something like his boyfriend.
Of course, his original bad intentions when bringing Robert home had been directed solely at the man’s heroic persona.
Mecha Man: perfect, selfless Mecha Man. The hero who never sold out, instead choosing to remain independent. It was part of what made him special, alongside his lack of actual powers. Where every other hero worth their salt worked for SDN or was signed to a hero agency, Mecha Man remained stubbornly alone. He didn’t save those who could pay the fee, but rather anyone and everyone who needed help. Mecha Man was an infuriatingly good person, and that was who Robert was.
Or, at the very least, it was who Robert used to be.
Finding an unconscious Mecha Man amongst the rubble of his mechsuit had felt too good to be true. He’d been giddy, standing over Mecha Man’s body as if he had been the one to defeat the hero in battle.
“Hey, Bitch, wake up,” Chad had called.
But Mecha Man hadn’t stirred. Chad had kicked him, but Mecha Man hadn’t reacted beyond a pained groan. His eyelids hadn’t even fluttered in some illusion of consciousness; he had just been still. So Chad had flown him to his home, tied him to a chair, and waited.
He had just wanted to scare Mecha Man a bit; get some revenge for the time he spent in jail and his two missing fingers. He figured he’d rough the guy up some, perhaps return the favour of liberating a couple of fingers, and then toss the guy out to lick his wounds with the knowledge that Flambae was a real hero now and Mecha Man was old news.
But Mecha Man hadn’t woken up that day, nor did he the next. By the third day, Chad had been panicked, because he’d been holding onto the body for long enough that he was definitely going to be blamed for things. He’d needed Mecha Man gone, but he couldn’t bring himself to just dump the body back in the alleyway where he found Mecha Man. Knowing the types of creeps who had it out for Mecha Man (and he would know, because he was one of them), returning Mecha Man to the alleyway felt like signing the comatose hero’s death warrant.
Instead, he’d scrounged through every pocket of the Mecha Man costume he could find until he came across the jackpot: a housekey with the number “318” printed into it and a little keyfob with a rental company name on it.
It was a medium-sized rental company with about twenty buildings, but only four of them had three floors or more. By pure luck, the second building he had tried happened to be the correct one. The place had been depressing. Its only furniture had been a single plastic chair, while its only decoration was a corkboard dedicated to investigating Shroud and the Red Ring. Yeah, it had been a real sad excuse for a home, but Chad had felt it was better than dumping the guy in the streets.
Except Mecha Man had a dog, it turned out. A poor, fat creature who clearly had no one else looking out for it except for the unconscious man in Chad’s apartment. He’d been left with no choice if he didn’t want the dog to die. He had picked up the dog, grabbed Mecha Man’s wallet from the counter and a change of clothes from the closet (which Mecha Man only had about two outfits in. It had been so depressing.), and flew the dog to his apartment. He had figured it would only be another day, and then he’d be rid of them.
Clearly, that had not been the case.
Stepping out of the shower, Chad checks the time on his phone, only to pause when he sees the date. Today marks three months since he brought Robert home. Three whole months since he basically kidnapped him and began lying to him about their relationship. Three of the best months of his life, although he’ll never admit to anyone just how much Robert and his dumb dog mean to him.
He’ll have to bring home flowers, or maybe takeout from somewhere nice, or maybe do nothing because it’s not like three months should really mean anything. It just feels like a monumental celebration because he never expected things to last this long. He’ll have to ask Alice at work what he should do. She’s the only one who knows about Robert, and she’s also the one he goes to for all his relationship advice.
The first time Alice had come over after he brought Robert home, he’d panicked and tossed Robert out.
“Bae, you’re not going to believe this shit. You know that super exclusive place we have been trying to get into forever? They hired a new bouncer who is a fan of mine, which means I’ve got VIP privileges basically. We gotta hit the place up!”
“Girllll, fuck yes. Let’s go.”
“Hell yeah! Okay, so the club is closer to your place, so we’ll go there to pre-game and do our makeup?”
“Sounds good, Pri,” Chad said before he realized that he had an amnesic hero playing housewife in his apartment.
He’d rushed home after work and tried to make sense of what he was supposed to do with Robert. He couldn’t hide him in his bedroom, nor could he lock Robert away in the bathroom. Both of those were places he and Alice would float between as they picked outfits and did their makeup. The living room and kitchen were both off-limits, too, since they were open-concept.
So he’d tossed a jacket with a crumpled $20 bill in the pocket at Robert and told him to go.
“Do we need something at the store?” Robert had asked innocently.
“No, I just need you out for the night. Take your dog too.”
He honestly hadn’t expected to see Robert again. But when he stumbled into his building’s lobby at 3AM with a blood-alcohol content that would kill a normie, there Robert was, sitting in one of the lobby’s uncomfortable chairs with his stupid dog sleeping on his lap.
“Fucking hell, you’re still here?”
“I didn’t know where else to go. Oh, but don’t worry, I won’t bother you until the morning, or later if you need more time.”
He wasn’t sure whether Robert was trying to guilt him or was actually just that pathetic, but it had tugged at his heart.
“Whatever. My friend is gone, so you can come back up.”
“Are you sure?”
Chad snapped, “Yes,” then caught himself. It had been nighttime, but nosy neighbours were always listening for gossip to spread about the building. It was bad enough that people had no doubt seen Robert sitting in the lobby since maybe 6 o'clock; if they heard him yelling, he’d no doubt be painted as an abuser.
“Just come back up,” Chad had said.
The next time Alice came over, he told her about Robert. He didn’t mention Robert’s true identity, and Alice didn’t ask why he had settled with a normie civilian of all things. Alice only teased him for settling for a white boy, which was completely valid of her.
Chad makes his way to the kitchen-living room combo space to see Robert sitting at the bar counter. On the stove is a frying pan with a half-cooked omelet and next to the stove is the open carton of eggs. Robert has his head in his hands like he’s just woken up from some horrible nightmare.
Chad doesn’t dare move, lest Robert attack him. He doesn’t like the idea of burning Robert anymore, but he’ll do it if he has to. And he knows Robert is going to force him too, because he’s remembered. It’s so obvious from his posture and the way his face is scrunched when he slowly lifts his head to look at Chad.
“My leg,” Robert says, “hurts like hell.”
Oh. Robert’s right leg—the one that Chad has recently started to suspect suffered some sort of nerve damage during the Mecha Man crash—is propped up on the chair next to him. He’s probably going to need to take Robert to a hospital soon, but that’s something that can wait for another day. It’s their three-month anniversary after all, and if he’s taking Robert anywhere, it will be somewhere nice. Or—if not somewhere nice—it will be somewhere that is, at the very least, not a hospital with doctors who will no doubt have a lot of questions about why Robert looks like he’s been tortured before.
“You take Advil yet?”
Robert shakes his head no.
“I was at the stove when the pain flared. Only reason I didn’t fall over was because I grabbed the counter when the pain spasmed. I sat down before it got worse and have been sitting here since.”
The stovetop beeps in protest when Chad moves the pan onto a different burner. He tells it to shut up and calls it a piece of shit, which makes Robert laugh. Chad loves his apartment; it’s a nice place with excellent soundproofing and surprisingly reasonable rent for the amenities, but the appliances are the kind of fake-fancy that is really just terrible design hidden beneath a sleek exterior. Who thought it was a good idea for the stove top to beep loudly whenever someone put a pot or a pan on it? It was a stove top; it was meant to have shit put on it.
Chad turns the stove top back on to finish cooking the omelette Robert started, then pulls the Advil from the top shelf of the pantry. He passes the bottle to Robert, fills a glass of water, and passes that over too.
“Sorry I couldn’t finish your breakfast,” Robert says as he stares at the pill bottle, “I did prepare your lunch last night, though, so you can just take it from the fridge. And I got the coffee finished.”
“Bitch, worry about yourself. I can make my own omelette.”
Chad finishes the first omelette, serves it to Robert, then starts on a second one for himself. He expects Robert to complain about being taken care of, maybe comment that Chad is going to run late for work if he doesn’t hurry, but Robert just nods at him when the omelette is set down in front of him. That’s how Chad knows Robert is in absurd amounts of pain, because normally, Robert acts like a prey animal who doesn’t want his herd to notice his lameness and abandon him to the predators lurking nearby.
After breakfast, he brushes his teeth and checks the time again. He needs to leave now if he wants to drive to work and still be on time, but he doesn’t really care. He returns to the kitchen-living room and just observes Robert. He’s still hunched at the bar counter with his leg propped up and his eyebrows pinched. He looks like he did on their first day together: small, in pain, lost.
Chad feels a little bit guilty and a little bit not. It’s not his fault that Robert is in pain, but is it his responsibility as Robert’s sort-of partner to look after him? Should he offer to take the day off from work and take Robert to the hospital? But if he takes Robert to the hospital, will the truth come out?
It’s not a kidnapping, Chad tells himself. It’s not a hostage situation or any form of abuse, either, even if Robert has nowhere else to go. It’s their three-month anniversary, plain and simple. Who gives a shit how their relationship started, if they’re happy now?
He kisses Robert on the top of the head, then leaves for work. Robert won’t leave the apartment, Chad figures he’ll be in too much pain for most of the morning to so much as leave the kitchen, but that’s okay. It’s not a kidnapping, or a hostage situation, or any sort of abuse.
When he gets home after work, he will take Robert out somewhere for a drink. Because it’s not a kidnapping, even if he brought Robert home when the man was unconscious. It’s not a hostage situation, even if he goes out of his way to keep Robert inside as much as possible. And it is most certainly not any sort of abuse, because his only ill will was towards Mecha Man, and Robert isn’t Mecha Man anymore.