Chapter Text
Handcuffs rattle.
So, he lost the fight. That much is obvious.
Painfully so.
Everything from his knees upwards hurts, but the most insistent pain at that particular moment is his left shoulder. It feels wrong, not sitting where it should in the socket. He can’t feel his hands, wrenched up high over his head. A blank space on his mental map.
His is not the only body in the room.
He’s eye level with a crop top and a thin strip of tanned midriff. He can smell dollar-store perfume and the faint hint of sweat.
“How the hell does something like that even happen?”
A woman. She’s touching the side of his head. His ear — the messed-up one — fitting her fingers into the gap.
He’s not wearing his mask.
He flinches, twisting away from her — the girl with the purple skimask — and kicks.
It barely connects, but it’s enough to knock her out of her crouch.
She grunts, falling back with a curse, and now they’re eye to eye.
The concrete feels cool beneath him. There’s a bare bulb illuminating a room stacked full of boxes. TVs. Computer components. A basement full of stolen merchandise.
“Ow. Told the boys we should’ve tied your fucking ankles too.”
He’s breathing through the crackle and pop of broken ribs when he asks: Why? Why is he there, handcuffed to a pipe in the basement of some two-bit crime gang’s hideout instead of lying unconscious, or dead, in the street?
“Money, duh. You’re a superhero. Or were, I guess. Lotta people out there bound to have beef with you—”
Oh fuck, Beef. How long has been unconscious?
“---and we’re betting some of ‘em’ll even be willing to pay to have the chance to get even.”
“Look, I hadn’t pegged you guys as being the sharpest tools in the toolshed, but I think ransoming a retired superhero to a bunch of supervillians is a whole different level of stupid than you’re used to.”
The ski mask wrinkles as she scowls.
“Says the dumbass who tried to start a fight with his fucking arm in a sling.”
“A decision which I am very much regretting right now, in case you hadn’t noticed. How’s the orange guy, by the way? Concussed?”
“He’s fine. His vote was to weigh your ass down with bricks and dump you off the marina.”
“You took a vote? Very democratic. It doesn’t make what you’re doing now any less stupid. I’m figuring you guys are trying to get in contact with the Red Ring? We’ve got history after all and they’ve got a pretty strong presence in the area. They’re scumbags, but they’re criminally successful scumbags, so they should be able to afford a decent pay-out, right? I can see the logic.”
He’s looking in her eyes and sees a flicker of uncertainty. Or his eyes are tricking him thanks to his own not inconsiderable concussion. Either way, she stays quiet and lets him explain further.
“But there’s something you haven’t accounted for. Well, maybe two things. In case you weren’t paying attention to the TVs you were busy stealing, it’s been established that I’m pretty much insignificant and Shroud could really care less whether I’m dead or alive. Why would he bother paying money to finish a job he could’ve done for free months ago? Secondly, let’s imagine Shroud’s had a change of heart and he’s decided actually he would like to kill me after all. Why’s he going to pay a bunch of candy-coloured-smash-and-grab dipshits when he could just walk in here with his powered-up thugs and take your crowbar-wielding asses out of the equation entirely? Either way, I don’t think you’re getting paid.”
As if on cue, there’s a crash upstairs.
Voices shouting over one another, some becoming screams.
“Fuck. Undo these cuffs. Hey!”
“I-I don’t have the key.”
“Goddamn it.”
Robert hears the rapid pulse of energy weapons, vibrations rippling through the concrete. Furniture smashing. Walls crumbling. Laughter, more screaming, and a sharp, almost chemical scent — burnt wires and charred meat.
“Hide,” he says to the girl in the purple ski-mask. “Get down behind those boxes and fucking hide.”
She blinks when she turns to look at him, apparently bewildered by the way the script has flipped. Hesitation that almost costs her her life.
She scrambles out of sight less than a second before the basement door splinters open and a body slams to the concrete floor.
The guy’s a mess of acid burns so bad Robert can’t tell which of the Skittles Squad he’s looking at. It’s still eating through him, fizzing and hissing.
“Hey, Mecha-Man–Oops, guess I can’t call you that anymore…You down here, loser?”
Toxic, of fucking course.
“Yeah…I am.”
“Oof, no clever comeback, huh? Must be feeling pretty pathetic about now, bitch boy. Getting your ass kidnapped by bottom-feeders like this. Your dead daddy is probably disowning you in the afterlife as we speak.”
Robert grits his teeth.
He knows he’s completely fucked here. Short of a spontaneous mutation giving him the power of teleportation there’s no version of events where he gets out of this basement before Toxic comes down the stairs and sees his face.
Robert’s not exactly sure why that matters so much to him, given that he’s probably going to die sometime in the next twenty-four hours, but maybe it’s just one of those things that comes with the whole superhero territory. Without his mask, he feels naked, and considering Toxic’s dick is already swinging in the breeze that just makes it weird.
There’s a hiss as acid drips onto the wooden steps.
“Huh? Oh, sure thing Bossman. I’ll just—”
Shroud.
Robert strains against the cuffs. Pain lances through his dislocated shoulder, leaving him silent but panting as Shroud, and only Shroud, walks down the basement stairs.
A calm, measured, menacing thud-thud-thud as he descends, so much slower than the beating of Robert’s heart.
He doesn’t recognise the man.
He recognises the mask, of course, the coat and all the rest of his ominous supervillain get-up. It’s the same person represented over and over again on the evidence board in Robert’s apartment, the same person he saw in the steel mill through the hole melted into the mech’s hull — the last time Robert was truly Mecha-man.
But the man beneath it all?
He’s not so sure.
Shroud makes a show of looking all around the basement before he turns his face towards Robert.
The empty hollows of his mask, they’re meant to be intimidating. A crimson death’s head gaze.
Beneath the anger, Robert feels a bone-deep exhaustion.
“If you’re going to kill me—”
“I was almost certain there would be a guard left down here.”
“For what? Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
Shroud looks him over, silent. He seems to linger over Robert’s unmasked face.
“I saw your press conference this morning.”
It’s hard to judge his tone behind the mechanised garbling.
“So, you know I’m done then. You got what you wanted. Now, if you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
“This might surprise you, Robert, but I’ve never actually wanted to harm you.”
“Could’ve fucking fooled me. Fuck.”
Now that he’s awake and moving, all tense and hopped up with useless adrenaline, the pain in his arms is drifting towards an almost unbearable pitch. Every tiny, unintentional micro-movement seems to pull and tear at his nerves, while the numbness has teeth and is spreading downwards from his limp hands.
Shroud crouches down in front of him, one knee hitting the concrete. The movement is deliberate, like he has to think about it, and Robert tries to remember how old Elliot must be now. Mid-fifties?
About the same age Robert’s dad would be — if Elliot hadn’t shot him dead.
A gloved hand comes towards his face and Robert, without thinking, snaps his teeth at the outstretched fingers.
He pays for it, less than a second later, when white-hot spots of pain burst throughout his left shoulder joint and all he can do is try to muffle the scream.
He’s aware of Shroud reaching for something on the floor, holding it up. Robert’s eyes blur, but he recognises his discarded mask.
“Do you believe what you said?”
“Huh?”
“The press conference. You said you thought your father would be proud. Do you really believe that?”
Shroud turns the mask in his hands, lifts it like he’s going to…
Robert stays still, this time, as Shroud eases the mask back over Robert’s face, pulling it down until the eyeholes align.
“Y-yeah,” Robert says. “I do, actually.”
Shroud doesn’t respond, but a flurry of digits passes over the right eye of his mask. He gets up off the concrete floor and goes to the bottom of the stairs.
“Torque, get the fuck down here.”
At least it’s not Toxic, Robert thinks as a bulked-up goon with red ring implants glowing under the skin of his arms and neck descends into the basement.
Melted by acid is really not how Robert wants to go. If Shroud were to let him pick, he’d opt for a headshot. Straight to the forehead, out like a light.
Judging from the look of the guy in front of him, Robert’s about to be beaten to death. Considering he’s already good and tenderised after the Skittles beatdown, he can’t imagine it’ll take much. One good punch maybe. He’s sure Shroud’s got other things to do with his time, so this’ll be quick.
“Break those cuffs, and only the cuffs. Then go back upstairs and pry Blood Drive off of whatever poor fuck she’s got her hands on and tell her I need her…expertise.”
Okay.
Maybe it won’t be quick.
With the chain holding the cuffs together broken, Robert collapses onto the concrete shaking with the effort of not making a sound. His dislocated arm flops, wrenching muscle fibres and nerves, and as blood returns slowly to his hands every inch of skin begins to sing.
“...fuck…” he hisses, forehead pressed against the floor, scared to move until everything quiets down just a little.
Beneath the physical sensations, his brain is clawing frantically at the sides of his skull — screaming that he needs to move, he needs to keep his eyes on the goddamn supervillain in the room with him. He’s not safe.
He hears footsteps on the stairs.
He lifts his head up off the floor.
Blood Drive is short, with dreadlocked hair. A mask covers the lower part of her face, crimson red with a row of sharp, needle-fine teeth painted on it. Her eyes glow with Red Ring tech, coils of it running under her skin like snakes.
There’s blood up to her forearms, smeared across her neck and down her front.
Robert grits his teeth.
If it wasn’t for the purple masked thief hiding in the basement with him, he’d have lunged at Shroud already. More likely to break his own skull than the bastard’s nose, but at least he’d go down fighting.
Purple Skittle’s a piece of shit, for sure, but if Robert’s going to die here anyway then the last choice he gets to make is whether he takes her down with him or not.
Robert braces his right hand, still writhing numb and almost useless, against the concrete, enough to sit up and glare at Shroud.
Another flare of digits across the empty sockets.
“That arm needs resetting.” Shrouds tilts his head in Robert’s direction. “Carefully. Fuck it up, and I’ll have your eyes burn themselves out of your skull.”
Blood Drive nods, wiping her bloodied hands on her pants as she walks over to Robert.
He knows how this works. He’s been through it enough times. His left arm’s always been a little unstable, liable to pop out of the socket at the slightest provocation — ever since he was a kid. There are exercises he’s supposed to do, but he’s not been keeping up with them since the coma. There’s too many parts of him that need fixing these days. Just like his dad’s suit.
He relaxes the arm as much as he can.
Blood Drive also seems to be familiar with dislocation. She’s got the arm back where it’s supposed to be before Robert can prepare himself.
He manages to turn the scream into a string of bitten-off curses, but there are still tears in the corners of his eyes.
“That it?”
She’s looking over her shoulder at Shroud. She sounds disappointed.
Robert looks up as Shroud walks forward and hands Blood Drive a syringe full of milky white liquid.
“...the fuck is that?”
He can just about move his fingers.
He can throw a punch. He can fight.
He doesn’t have to make this easy for them.
“You’ll be familiar with this one. Propofol. If you’d prefer, I can get someone to hit you over the head instead, but that might risk rather more unfortunate side effects.”
“You’re kidnapping me? Why?”
Blood Drive reaches for the zipper at his throat, and Robert’s immediate reaction is to block.
“C’mon cutie, lemme find a vein. I promise I won’t bite.”
She grabs his wrist.
Everything in him is telling him to fight.
“If you’re not going to cooperate, I can call down a couple more of my guys to hold you down. Might not be enough space. They might have to move a few of these boxes.”
Robert goes still.
He knows.
Shroud fucking knows.
Part of him wants to fight regardless — Purple Skittle made her own bed when she decided to put on a mask and steal shit, and also when she went along with abducting a washed-up ex-super-hero and ransoming him to whatever villain wanted a piece of him.
She’d have watched her buddies toss you into the harbour to drown.
Robert looks at Shroud.
It’s not really Robert’s choice anymore, since Shroud could snap his fingers and have his goons search the basement at any moment, and Robert knows it’s stupid to trust the man who shot his father in cold blood…
He’s so fucking tired.
Blood Drive releases his wrist when he lets it go limp. He swallows down every instinct ingrained in him from the moment he was old enough to understand his father’s words, every lesson he taught.
He stops fighting.
Blood Drive pulls the zipper down to just above his navel.
“Damn. Looking like one of Victor Frankenstein’s motherfuckers there, hero boy.”
She pulls most of his right arm out of the sleeve and starts feeling it up searching for a vein.
Robert still doesn’t get why this is happening.
If Shroud wants him dead, what’s stopping him?
And if he doesn’t, then why isn’t he leaving?
The brawl earlier won’t have gone unnoticed. The cops, the local heroes — someone is going to come.
He keeps staring at Shroud but whatever the reason is, he’s not sharing it.
Robert won’t remember the scratch of the needle going in, just like he doesn’t remember being pulled, barely conscious, from the twisted wreckage of the mech. The milk of amnesia lives up to its name, blotting out even that which came before it.
At least this time he doesn’t dream…
#
…and the next thing he remembers he’s lying on his side. The floor is cool beneath him.
Bare skin.
He’s in his underwear and there’s something heavy wrapped around his right ankle. Metal. A trailing chain connects to the wall.
This is fucked.
He’s fucked.
Completely, utterly, irrevocably fucked.
Where the hell is he?
Everything still aches. All stiff. How long was he out?
There’s an odd taste on his tongue, on his lips — stale and plastic.
In the coma he needed machines to breathe for him, something to do with the medication and his weakened state. He remembers the feeling of the tube stuck in his throat, of the oxygen mask which followed after.
The sound of the chain clattering against itself and the floor as he moves feels loud, but it’s not the only noise he can hear. There’s whirring, the sounds of tools and grinding metal. It’s not overwhelming, like the chain, further away. Probably multiple doors and walls between him and the source.
The room is odd. Wedge-shaped. Like it was an afterthought, crammed in wherever there was space.
At the narrow end, to his left, there’s a window with dirty, frosted glass. It’s the only source of light, though Robert can see a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and a lightswitch next to the door at the wide end of the room.
At its widest, the room is maybe twenty feet across, tapering down to just three feet by the window.
The floor feels like epoxy, while the walls are painted concrete. There's no furniture, only a mattress and a thin blanket, but Robert can see holes in the wall on the far side of the room where a row of appliances were presumably once connected to the electrics and the water pipes.
A staff break room, probably, somewhere industrial.
The abandoned foundry.
Shroud’s Red Ring hideout.
Great.
Robert turns his attention to the metal cuff bolted around his ankle. A long chain — Robert needs to test exactly how long but there seems to be plenty of slack — connects to a ring, also bolted to the wall behind him.
He looks around, but there’s no obvious tape recorder with an ominous ‘play me’ note attached to it, so he doesn’t think Shroud has decided to diversify into Jigsaw style games. Didn’t some guy crush his foot in one of those movies? To get out of a cuff like this.
Robert’s not sure that, even mangled to a pulp, he’d be able wiggle his foot free. The cuff is tight—not enough to cut off blood flow, but enough that Robert knows it’s going to chafe before too long.
There’s a second door next to the anchor point.
Robert picks himself up off the floor to investigate.
It’s not an exit, but the door to a grimy looking toilet and sink. He tests the faucet and water, flecked with rust, flows into the basin. There’s a fluorescent light with a pull cord which switches on after a brief flicker of hesitation. Robert turns both off and shuts the door.
Next he examines the mattress.
It’s old and stained and reminds him of the mattress he hauled out to the dumpster underneath his apartment window, just as insurance in case he dropped Toxic — who he thought was just a regular human at the time — off the edge of his balcony.
It’s not the same mattress, this one is a little bigger, but Robert wouldn’t be surprised if it was also pulled from a dumpster.
The blanket is worn and smells gross and damp.
Robert doubts he’ll care once the sun sets and the temperature drops though.
As he picks up the blanket he notices a bottle of water and a couple of granola bars sitting on the ground behind the mattress.
He checks the water bottle for signs of tampering, but it’s apparently intact.
He leaves it where he found it and moves on to testing the length of the chain.
It’s got about six feet of slack, give or take a couple of inches. He can’t reach the far wall and he can’t get anywhere near the exit door. He can’t shut the toilet door over the bulky chain either, making the lock on it useless. Lying on his stomach, he can stretch just far enough to touch the wall at the base of the window.
If he threw something — the water bottle maybe — he could break the glass. But if this is the Llewellyn Steel Mill, as he suspects, then there’ll be no one around to notice.
Supposing he gets lucky and a glass shard falls where he can reach it — it’s not going to help him break the chain. He can’t saw his foot off with just a piece of glass — it’d never get through the bone — and besides, he’d bleed out long before he made it to safety, even with a tourniquet.
There’s no obvious camera, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one hidden away — watching him blunder around until he comes to a conclusion.
There’s no way out.
He’s not panicking.
He probably should be.
#
Villains are supposed to gloat when there’s a hero in their clutches, but hours pass and the sun goes down and Robert sits, bored and still waiting on a monologue, watching the door.
His eyelids feel heavy but he can’t relax.
He takes a few sips of the water and eats a half of a granola bar, rationing the remainder.
Eventually, he gives in and wraps himself in the foul-smelling blanket and curls up, still facing the door, on the old mattress. The chill of the concrete in this abandoned industrial behemoth is more biting than the unfinished floor of his apartment.
He tries not to think about Beef.
He did what he usually does when he knows he’s going to be out late, and left the food bowl with a little mountain of kibble. So Beef won’t go hungry…
For now.
The sounds of machinery carry on long into the night, and Robert stays awake through all of it. Each time he tries to shut his eyes his brain gets loud and his skin crawls until he opens them again and snaps back into a state of alertness.
It’s not entirely unfamiliar.
He used to have nightmares that left him like this.
Unable to switch off. To relax.
Probably some kind of PTSD, but he never got that confirmed definitively. It got better.
Mostly.
At least this time he’s got a reason to be jumpy, even if he knows that all he’s doing is exhausting himself.
He’s still hung up on the fact he’s not dead.
He’s actually a little pissed about it.
I was ready for it.
Maybe more than that.
He wanted it.
#
The sun comes up.
It takes a while before the angle of it is enough to light up the room.
The temperature is still on the chilly side of things, so Robert keeps the blanket wrapped around his body. As nasty as the fabric is, he feels a little less exposed with it on.
While the cuff on his ankle is the most irritating part of all this, the fact he’s only wearing underwear is a close second.
He guesses it’s supposed to be a mindgame, just like how he’s been left to rot for hours now.
His shoulder still hurts, so he spends some time stretching it — running through the handful of physio exercises he can remember. Most of the other injuries caused by the Skittles beatdown have faded into a kind of background hum.
He finishes the exercises, drinks another mouthful of water and it’s then that he hears what he’s been waiting for.
Footsteps.
It’s not Shroud. He can tell that much.
They’re fucking whistling.
#
Robert’s been doing this whole superhero thing for fifteen years. He’s not an amateur.
He knows how to gather information and how to conduct an investigation into someone.
They must have known what they were going to do for months.
Before Shroud even broke out.
“Hey, buddy. How’re you doing?”
Because there was absolutely nothing. No evidence. No red flags. Nothing to hint that the shitty, little gangster covered in tattoos was a literal toxic dick.
“Cosy, huh? Must feel just like home. You know, when I took off that blindfold and saw how you lived I realised we were doing you a favour blowing your sad ass up.”
“I want to talk to Shroud.”
“Not even gonna say thank you? I brought you breakfast.”
Toxic holds up another bottle of water and an energy bar.
Robert grits his teeth.
“Why the fuck am I here?”
“Yeah, I asked Bossman the same thing. Between you and me, I think you must’ve looked so pathetic tied up in that basement he just couldn’t bring himself to put you down. I don’t think he even really knows what to do with you. Which is why he’s left it up to me. So, if I were you I’d start thanking me for bringing you food and water.”
The slimy, shit-eating grin on the guy’s face is making Robert’s fists clench.
“No, I think I’m good,” he says, as cool and calm as he can manage.
“Hmm, thought you’d say something like that.”
Toxic kicks shut the door behind him, stepping further into the room. Robert forces himself to stay still.
There’s an acrid smell as Toxic’s arm transforms. The plastic on the water bottle warps and splits, the water inside bubbling and jumping as it contacts Toxic’s skin. Smoke comes off the energy bar wrapper, sizzling as the whole thing melts away.
Toxic keeps it up until there’s nothing left, just the sharp odour of burning plastic and water all over the floor.
Robert keeps his eyes on Toxic’s arm, the same way he’d keep in sight a gun or a knife. There’s still a few feet separating them, but with one lunge Toxic could close the distance. Robert’s seen what he can do to metal, what he can do to flesh.
“We had a watch party for your lame little press conference. I thought you were gonna cry when that old guy started talking about your dead dad and even deader granddad being all disappointed in you. Honestly, kinda a dick move. I’m surprised you didn’t try to hit the guy or just walk out.”
Toxic’s so close that Robert can feel the inside of his nose start to sting from the corrosive fumes coming off his transformed arm.
“What you said was real cute. You told me you hardly knew him, but you seemed so sure that he’d be proud of you for just staying alive even though you trashed his suit.
Y’know, I asked Shroud some more questions about your dad. I hate to tell you this buddy, but he sounds like he was kind of a jerk. C’mon, be honest with yourself. I mean, my dad was a fucking junkie but the guy still remembered my birthday at least. Sent me a couple dollars in a card pretty much every year, and he had four kids to keep track of. Your dad just had you, and he still forgot that shit? Ouch.”
Toxic pauses like he’s expecting a response, for Robert to try and defend his dad.
He didn’t forget.
He’s too tired for this. To argue, or to admit. To go anywhere near the messed-up tangle of conflicting thoughts and feelings. Tough love, that’s all it was. His dad wanted him to be strong, to survive—
—not this?
“Wow, nothing to say? It’s okay. Y’know, it’s probably a good thing Shroud killed your asshole dad. ‘Cus, well, if he wasn’t disappointed in you already then he sure as shit will be when I fuck your crying bitchass into that mattress and make you scream.”
Robert throws a punch. A second. A third.
Four hits before he starts to think, before he feels the sting of skin melting as Toxic, grinning, grabs his wrist and stops the fifth from landing.
Panic kicks downwards. He feels it in his knees as he tries to step back.
“Get the fuck away from me.”
Not his voice. No way that’s him.
“Aww, don’t be like that, baby. This could be good for you. You worried about this?” Toxic lets go, holding up his green arm. The skin starts to reform, covering over the poisonous core. Out of sight, but not out of mind.
“Don’t fucking touch me. If you do—”
“You’ll what? You’re not Mecha-man anymore, sweetheart, and even when you were it’s not as if you could beat me. There’s a reason the way they get rid of toxic waste is just burying it deep down underground. Not a lot of ways to stop me.”
Robert hits the wall.
There’s nowhere else to go.
“Just kill me.”
“That really what you want? Shit, it is, isn’t it? More fucked up than I thought, Mecha-bitch. Well I’ve got bad news for you, baby. I could just kill you, like you asked. Melt a hole through your head, or your heart. Make it instant, so you’re dead before you even feel the burn.
But that’s not how I’ll do it.
If I kill you, it’ll be slow. I can control it, you know. How fast the acid eats away at you. It could take fucking months if I wanted. I’d start with your fingers or your toes, all the little bits you don’t need. One layer of skin at a time, just constant pain. I could take bets on how long it’ll take before you’re begging to choke on my dick just so I’ll put you out of your misery a little sooner. Less than a week, I reckon. That how you want it? No? Be a good boy then and you won’t get hurt.”
Too close. His face. His breath on Robert’s neck.
He can’t.
Frantic. Sloppy. Doesn’t make a damn difference what he hits.
He has to—
“Well, that’s not good boy behaviour. Is Daddy gonna have to spank you?”
Robert freezes mid-strike.
“Ooh, did I hit a nerve? You don’t want Daddy to—Ha! Nice try, dumbass.”
His feet are no longer on the ground.
Wedged against the wall, with Toxic’s arm stretched across his upper chest and pinning him there.
He can’t kick, can’t drive a knee into Toxic’s groin like he’d wants to — like he tried to — because the bastard’s body is between his legs.
“There we go, that’s better. Yeah, just keep on looking at me like that, honey. You’ve got no fucking clue how hot you glaring like that is for me.”
Unfortunately, Robert does have a clue.
He can feel it.
Toxic’s pressed up against him, close enough that Robert can tell this isn’t just a bluff — a fucked-up threat to freak him out. Toxic is getting off on this.
“Can’t wait to see what you look like when you cry.”
“You’re going to be waiting a long fucking time then.”
There’s a hand on his face.
He wrenches his head away, shuddering when the hand follows. Fingers splayed, the scar it would leave unmistakable.
“Making it a challenge, huh? I like that. But I think you’re talking shit and you’re gonna bawl the minute I get my dick in you. Shit, I didn’t think to ask what side you bat for. So, have you ever taken it up the ass before? Or am I gonna be the first to make Mecha-man my bitch?”
Robert claws. He spits. He bites.
It doesn’t make a difference.
He ends up on his back, on the mattress, Toxic fucking smirking down at him as he holds him by the throat.
“If you keep struggling like that, I might decide it’s too much trouble to prep you, buddy. See, my superpowered dick can take it. Your normie hole…not so much. It’s up to you how you want this to go.”
It’s panic now, the thing swirling inside him. Scared in a way he hasn’t been for most of his adult life.
His hands, prying at Toxic’s fingers where they’re wrapped around Robert’s neck, ball into fists. He lowers them to his sides, turning his head away so he doesn’t have to look at the stupid, smug look on the scumbag supervillain’s face.
“Aww, that’s it baby boy. Daddy’s gonna take care of you, alright? Just be good.”
Robert shuts his eyes, goes still, focuses on not throwing up.
If he just doesn’t think about—
Toxic sliding his underwear down, his hands, bare skin.
—it, he can ignore it. Just…like an injury in the heat of a fight…like…
“Ooh, that made you jump. You seriously never had anyone play with your ass before? Or is this just for me?”
Fucking kill him. There has to be a way. Cut him into pieces. Robert doesn’t care, he’s not a superhero anymore, not one of the good guys, not…anything, anymore.
“Does that hurt? Sorry, babe, but you’re gonna be grateful once we move on. I know you’ve already seen what I’m packing, but let me tell you, it gets better.”
Toxic doesn’t let go, not even to shuck off his own pants, there’s always a hand, fingertips, a knuckle rubbing, kneading, pressing.
Robert feels sick to his stomach, but his mouth is dry, his throat.
“You gonna look at me when I fuck you, huh?”
There’s a hand on his jaw, tilting, stinging. Fumes that burn the inside of his nose.
“Yeah, you’re gonna keep your head right there or I’m gonna have to melt off some of those freckles. You got all these scars, but almost nothing on your pretty face. Behave, and it’ll stay that way, okay?”
The stinging shifts from his jawline to his hip. It’s gentle. The burn of slightly too-hot water, reddening the skin.
“Heh, looks like we were both wrong about those tears. I’m not even inside you yet, bitch.”
Lifted up. The balled-up blanket shoved beneath him. His lips clamp down on a plea, and open on a scream.
“Well if you weren’t so…fucking tense…it wouldn’t, mmhm, hurt so bad. Not for me, obviously. You feel just perfect for me, baby boy. So good for Daddy. Uh-uh, no hiding.”
Toxic pulls Robert’s arm aside, pinning it to the mattress and meshing their fingers together.
“There we go. Fuck.”
His tongue trails tingling lines over Robert’s neck, sweeping over his face, laughing at the shudder. Hot breath ghosting the shell of Robert’s deformed ear.
He won’t shut the fuck up.
Robert could deal with it if Toxic would just—
“Y’know, I think we’re having another breakthrough. ‘Cus everytime I tell you how sweet and good you are, you tighten up so fucking nice. You like that, huh? Trying your best for Daddy.”
He’s going to throw up.
He’s going to choke on it.
He can’t—
“Goddamn it, bitch.”
Flipped on to his side, his cheek pressed into the damp patch of vomit on the mattress.
He doesn’t realise Toxic had stopped — no longer inside him — until he’s back.
Everything itches and crawls. Toxic’s grip tightens, his voice getting louder, the longer it goes on.
“I wanna hear you beg for it, baby. You can do that, can’t you? Go on.”
Toxic grabs the back of his neck, pulling at his hair.
“Beg me. Beg me to go harder, or I’ll change form right now inside you.”
Fuck. No. Please.
“H-harder.”
His voice is little more than a whisper.
“Hmm, not quite. Try again, baby.”
Deep breath. Keep going.
“Fuck me harder. P-please.”
“Cute, but not what I’m after. I’ll give you a clue. It starts with a ‘D’.”
Robert shuts his eyes again.
“Daddy…please…”
“Fuck, I should have filmed this. So good.”
Teeth sink into his shoulder, pushing down, breaking skin.
He can smell his own blood when Toxic leans over and plants a kiss on his forehead. Robert feels it drying and tightening, itches to scrape it away. Shuddering with the need to be out of his skin.
There aren’t any more words, not until they’re done, but Robert can still hear them beneath every gasp and grunt.
When Toxic lifts off of him, Robert breathes in like he’s just resurfaced from beneath an icy lake. As soon as Toxic lets go of his legs he tucks them in, close to his body, trying to protect and comfort himself like there’s a single thing his dumb, powerless ass can do. He covers his head, blots out the sound of Toxic redressing as best he can.
When a hand runs down his spine he flinches and he hears a chuckle.
“Don’t tell me I broke you already? I was hoping to have a bit more fun with you before letting the rest of the gang have their turn. Don’t like the sound of that, hmm? Then let me see those eyes. That’s it. You wanna stay as my bitch? Sure you do. Oh, and you’ll probably want to get my cum out of you sooner rather than later unless you want chemical burns. See ya, buddy, I’ll let Shroud know you’re thinking of him.”
The door slams shut.