b i t c h .

Something is off… Robert couldn't put his finger on it at first but as the day progressed and meeting concluded with no one being bodily hurled across the room, he intuits one thing: that Flambae hadn't once boasted about his achievements that day. One would think that he would, shouldn't they? It was a chance to highlight the fact that he was (and remains) Z-team's top performer, even with stiff and ever more aggressive competition.

It's… weird… Wrong… Like when all the birds in a forest go silent at once.

Still, Robert didn't think anything was necessarily wrong. Chad had cleared some kind of breakthrough today by pulling off the night impossible; quelling a massive fire by absorbing it. To Robert, it wasn't the outlandish request that it turned out to be in hindsight. After all, isn't that all just part and parcel of control? What was mastery over 'the fire and the flame' if it can't be conjured and dismissed at will?

Robert knows better now. That's not how physiology works. Expelling and absorbing don't necessarily work on the same systems, Sherlock.

Okay… This is bad…. The foreboding settles in Robert's gut like lead and he jostles at the backs of the retreating Z-team as they bottleneck in his way, pushing and squeezing and slipping through like the threading of a needle.

What's lit a fire under his ass? he hears Punchup mutter. ❝My guess is, he's gotta go real bad, or change his pants,❞ Sonar shrugs, like that sort of thing happens everyday. Robert has no right to clear that up, besides which he's accepted that he's the walking punchline in the office, so he just sprints to the break room… then the restrooms… No sign of Flambae's tell-tale boots in the stalls, nothing.

If he hasn't left the premises entirely, that'd leave the gym and locker rooms.

When he sees Chad, he's in even worse shape than he thought… The man is hot and steaming, and not in the consciously alluring way. Moisture is actually turning to vapor all around him. It is a good time to note that the amount of skin Chad shows off is actually a good thing today. He can see coils and striations of light moving underneath… It looks like someone's lit a candle within an alabaster vase. It looks like fire is fighting Chad's blood.

Chad staggers like he's wounded, and Robert rushes forward, laying hands on him so instinctively that he doesn't question whether or not his skin would just melt off his hand on contact. It doesn't, thank god, but the man's temperature is heightened even for him.

❝No, you're not fine. We need to get you medical help,❞ Robert insists. His hand is steady on the back of Chad's neck, where he feels the tension of muscle twisting against itself. He lurches, unsteady on his feet half a beat later, like he's subconsciously agreeing with Robert's assessment, like his body is just begging for relief, pride be damned. ❝Come… just lean on me… Gonna get you under the water for a few minutes… Try and… stabilize you and then get you to a doctor…❞

It might be the first time he's glad that the showers and locker room of SDN are below ground… It might be hot at ground level, but past bedrock, it's 55° or lower, year round. Without the benefit of heating, the water in its natural state is even colder, and he's placing a lot… maybe WAY too much trust on that.

the body doesn't just surrender a heat crisis; it makes it miserable, it renegotiates at fuckin' knife point. his skin is still throwing off heat even under the assault, at first the freezing water turning to nothing on contact before it can even do its fuckin' job; around his forearms the air shimmers - a reflex, a last-ditch muscle memory of combustion. for one instant every nerve in him panics; fire rushes up on instinct, trying to answer the assault with more violence because that is what fire does, that is what he does, except eventually the flare sizzles under the water and leaves him shaking with his teeth bared.

fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Flambae claws a hand at Robert's shirt, just whatever solid piece of him is nearest, because the floor has become fuckin' slippery and his legs have resigned without notice. his spine follows with a shudder, folding forward under the spray; his right hand slips once before it catches, missing fingers making the grip uneven, old damage and new fever turning the motion clumsy. water pounds through his hair, sends dark strands plastering over his face and neck; his half-peeled suit now clings to him in black folds, flame motifs drowned and shining, his chest heaving like he has been dragged out of a burning car and not, technically, been the burning car.

too much. jesus fuck, it is too much.

Flambae squeezes his eyes shut as water runs down his face, over the gap in his teeth, into his mouth when he tries to breathe. heat still roils under his skin in hideous waves, but the chill is trying to carve into it now, forcing the furnace down degree by vicious degree. it hurts. fuck, it hurts. this is sickness pain, harsh and intimate, the kind that strips a man down to trembling meat and the horrible knowledge that he did this to himself. the cold should feel good; some buried part of him recognises that it is probably helping, that the mean bite of it is dragging him back from whatever bright edge he had been standing on with his stupid boots planted and his arms open like come on, then. take a fuckin' swing.

but heat sickness does not bow out with manners, it fucking fights on the way out, rakes its nails through his bloodstream, makes his vision pulse orange and his stomach roll until he has to press his forehead somewhere against Robert's shoulder just to stop the shower from spinning.

--and Robert is talking. Robert is always talking, in that deep, controlled, practical fuckin' voice.

what's going on in there?

Chad. like he has the fucking right-- what a fuckin' question.

Flambae emits a scorched rasp against Robert's shirt, swallowed almost immediately by the thunder of water. ironically, inside his head everything feels bright and empty; a gutted house after the fire crews leave, walls standing, all the furniture blackened into shapes nobody should touch because one wrong breath and the whole fuckin' thing falls into ash. Flambae does not have an inventory; there is no clean answer sitting somewhere between the fever and the nausea and the stupid, desperate gratitude of Robert's hand still holding him upright.

he's just a little ... unwell. a little prone to letting himself overheat.

more. pull more. take more.

that he understands. work does not look at him with guilty fuckin' brown eyes, and refuse to reach. work does not make grand gestures that turn into fuckin' plasma blades under the tropical sun. it does not touch the back of his neck like it still knows him and then expect his body not to remember every other way those hands have held him.

it did not sit across comms for days, however long this fuckin' age has lasted, voice clipped and professional, as if the two of them had not left pieces of themselves in sand and seawater and never gone back to collect the fuckin' bodies. he woke up hollow and finding no performance loud enough to cover the emptiness.

Flambae had stopped chasing. threw himself at the work instead.

truth is, he knew it was getting bad. and yet he just kept going; because stopping meant feeling the shape of the hole Robert left. because every ordinary workday since the holiday has felt like being asked to walk past his own fuckin' grave and make small talk beside it. he's been absorbing fire for days, swallowing everything down and tamping it flat under the performance of not giving a shit about a single fuckin' thing, and, surprise, the bill has come due.

his fingers tighten on Robert's forearm. too hot still, even under the water. shaking. he swallows, throat working around smoke and water and the raw scrape of his own fuckin' pride. his eyes sting, from the shower, probably. from the steam. from the cold hammering over his skull. from absolutely anything else in the world except the fact that Robert is right there and Flambae has missed him so fuckin' badly it has turned into a second skeleton under his skin. his orange eyes flicker open, feverlight trapped behind wet hair; he looks up at Robert from too close, and that is another mistake, because close is where all the damage lives. close is Mecha Man standing inside the man Flambae wanted and wearing his voice. close is the sickening little gap between what Robert will do to save him and what Robert has never done to keep him.

and then there's the horrible, nagging knowledge that if his body had finished cooking itself from the inside, he is not sure he would have minded until it became inconvenient for someone else.

that thought should scare him. but mostly, it just feels unsettlingly quiet.

he looks away immediately, and his knees dip again, body dragging him a fraction lower before he catches himself against Robert, who does not vanish when more of Flambae's weight spills onto him; six foot four of overheated muscle and misery, reduced to clinging under a shower like a drowned matchstick with fuckin' tits. "s-shit," he hisses, eyes squeezing shut. the fever keeps changing shape. the worst of the burning pressure behind his skin and eyes has started to loosen, to leave behind cramps, tremors, the sickening afterglow of power abused too long. his bones feel hollowed and filled with hot sand. his heart keeps tripping over itself. every breath judders in and out like his lungs need convincing.

"'m dying ... leave me be."

he is not dying ... probably. the fever makes him dramatic, okay? the heartbreak helps. he can feel both moving through him, heat and hurt tangled so tightly they have become the same fuckin' beast, pacing the cage of his body with bright eyes and bloody paws. water keeps running into his mouth and he spits weakly to the side, coughing once, smoke and steam mixing in the wet air. the heat sickness has started chewing through the last clean lines of his understanding, delirium smearing Robert and the shower and the locker room into one cold, roaring blur, so Flambae only manages to sag harder against him before the rest of the world goes white.

Each breath exhaled from his lungs is jagged and hoarse, a heavy pain that feels like a knife twisting in his chest, blood hot on his face, pooling from his nose, from between his teeth. Sound felt weird and distorted, the constriction of the muzzle around his head an awful weight and even in the darkness of the room, it's difficult to make anything out.

He'd gotten grabbed, snatched away during a dispatch that had been a setup. A means of capturing him so Shroud could take advantage of the Mega Bat. He wanted to turn Victor against SDN, tried to implant in his head that they didn't care about him, but he'd refused, fought back as best could in the circumstances, and he surely paid for it.

Even laying on the floor now, he could feel the extent of the damage: broken ribs, the sharp pain in his chest might be a collapsed lung, and a few other broken bones here and there that sent aches and pains all across his body. Burns from Toxic too, just yelling at him to hurry up and change already.

Most of the time, he was left to the silence to stew in the fucking loneliness.

But today, there's a new sound outside that heavy iron door.

The sound of fighting, of gunshots and yells to evacuate. Flurries of footsteps sprint by his prison but none of them move to open it. Something was happening, sounded like a war, and for a moment, he swears he can see through that small little window in the door the glowing red eye of Shroud's mask peering in on him one last time.

It conveys everything i that single look, our time is not yet done. Then he's gone, like a ghost, like he'd never been there to begin with.

Victor flinches hard when the door slams open, ears pinning back and eyes squeezing shut, trying to make himself look as small as possible where he's stuck on the floor, unable to even stand. His hands quiver from where they're bound behind him, flinched back like that'll stop Shroud from bringing more pain.

He wants the Bat. He wants to fuck with his mind and turn him against his team. I had expected Robert to cut you, Shroud had said. Guess I can still be surprised sometimes.

The pain does not come though. In fact, the freezing cold room begins to burn hotter, and Victor's eyes open slowly, only when a familiar voice breathes a relieved, "Vic..."

Flambae burns there in the doorway, pure light and warmth, pure destruction and violence. His eyes gaze only once across the scene of Victor lying there, looking every bit of pathetic and wounded, and it's almost like someone dumped a bucket of ice cold water over him, his flame extinguishing sharp and sudden.

He shifts a bit, can't move that much with every limb feeling lead heavy. "Chad..." He manages to warble through the blood in his lungs, through the muzzle, trying desperately to convey just how happy he was to see him.

then some fuckin' Red Ring goon had said containment level. someone let slip that fuckin' hybrid; and whatever reasonable fuckin' leash SDN had clipped around his throat burned through in one clean second.

he hits the first barricade like a meteor with a fuckin' grudge, shoulders first, fire roaring off him in violent sheets of orange-white that turn the corridor into noon; both metal and men scream. good. fucking let them, let every masked freak in Shroud's little basement hear him coming, let the whole place learn what a bad fuckin' idea it is to kidnap Sonar.

Flambae does not slow down; bullets spark and die against the furnace of him, little stupid silver insects evaporating before they kiss his skin. one catches him high on the arm before he flares hot enough to melt the next volley in midair, but the sting is distant, he barely feels it; someone rushes him with a shock baton and Flambae catches the bitch by the vest, lifts him clean off his feet and drives him through a glass partition hard enough that the whole room behind it erupts in glittering shrapnel. another tries to run, but Flambae sends a crescent of flame across the floor in front of him to pen him in, and keeps moving while the man drops his weapon and pisses terror down his own leg.

that one gets to live with it.

the deeper he goes, the colder the building gets. it is fuckin' wrong, the air stripped thin and sterile, all pungent disinfectant and iron under the smoke. cells with heavy doors line one wall, and drains cut into the concrete, as if whoever designed this place had looked at people like Sonar and decided animal was the kinder fuckin' word. the thought hits Flambae so hard that his vision flashes hot-white.

they had put him somewhere like this.

Victor with his clever mouth and his huge brain between those huge fuckin' ears and those pearly eyes like two full moons; who curled around books and melancholy music and games about sad dead kingdoms of bugs like the world had not spent enough time making him feel fuckin' haunted already. who had fuckin' trusted him. who had been gone for days while Flambae fuckin' tore himself open looking.

the next door does not get opened, it gets fuckin' erased. Flambae drives one burning fist through the lock mechanism, twists until the metal runs soft as candlewax, then rips the whole thing off its hinges. heat flows outward, alarms shrieking above him, red lights spinning over the walls. for a second the corridor becomes a throat full of fire and panic; he can hear people shouting evacuation orders somewhere ahead, heavy boots and gunfire; someone yelling Shroud's name like a prayer and a curse.

that coward bitch is nowhere to be seen, but he has more pressing matters now. Flambae launches himself down the hall on a blast from his hands and heels, low and fast, trailing fire behind him like a comet tail; a shutter drops in front of him, and he hits it with both feet, flame bursting around his body as the impact caves the reinforced steel inward. the whole fuckin' thing tears free with a groan and skids across the floor, mowing down three goons who had the misfortune of standing behind their little safety precaution.

"where is he?" Flambae snarls, landing among them. one of them groans, whilst another scrabbles for a pistol; Flambae plants one boot on the gun and melts the barrel flat against the concrete.

"wrong fuckin' answer."

there is a map on the wall behind them, half-lit by emergency strips. bright and furious eyes tear across it until he finds the lower west wing. for one horrible second the entire world narrows to the image of a caged Sonar, and Flambae almost loses the shape of himself; flame climbs his shoulders, his hair, his jaw, licking where anger becomes an ugly fuckin' spectacle. he thinks of Shroud looking at Sonar and seeing a tool, a monster, a fuckin' freak to break and point at SDN like a loaded gun; he thinks of Sonar alone in the cold while Flambae was out there following bad leads.

he should have found him sooner. fuck! he should have burned every door in the city until one of them opened onto Sonar.

"Flambae," Robert's voice cracks through the comm, distant under static, "status?"

Flambae does not answer at first, because he is already running.

"found the place," he says after a moment, voice raw from the fire in his throat. "anyone between me and him, I put them through a wall."

and he does.

Flambae catches one by the back of the vest and slams him into a control panel hard enough to make it spark and die. somewhere ahead, beyond the smoke and chaos, there is one heavy iron door. Flambae stops so sharply his boots skid through ash; his body knows before his mind catches up; every nerve in him pulls forward, every hot, stupid, terrified fuckin' piece of him reaching for the same answer.

behind that door, the cold leaks out like breath from a grave. he sees movement through the window. a shape on the floor. the fire roaring around him falters, one hand punches into the lock, heat pouring from his palm in a focused blaze; the mechanism glows, warps, and finally gives. Flambae rips the door open so hard it slams into the wall and buckles there, and the room reveals itself in one merciless flash: concrete, restraints, blood, the awful fuckin' muzzle, Sonar folded on the floor.

Flambae's flames go out. the sudden dark makes the emergency lights look sick and red over his face, and his chest locks so tight it feels like his heart has tried to climb up behind his teeth and fuckin' choke him. all that rage, all that feral violence, all that fire chewing through steel and men and walls, and it crashes uselessly against the sight of Sonar's bound hands, the blood at his mouth, the way his body cannot even arrange itself into dignity because they have taken that too, the cruel room built around his suffering. the burns; fuckin' Toxic. he knows the signature, has seen what that brand of cruelty looks like on a body.

then Sonar says his name. trying so hard to convey something through blood and iron and a muzzle that gets put on animals, and not even animals deserve it--

Flambae drops to his knees so hard the concrete cracks under him.

"yeah," he breathes, and the fire comes back low around them, no longer a weapon but a trembling corona of heat pushing the cold away from Sonar's skin. "yeah, baby. I'm here. I got you. don't move, okay? don't you fuckin' move."

his hands shake. careful, careful, fucking careful, he tells himself, because rage is useless now, because Sonar is not a door to break open or a bitch to burn. he is fuckin' hurt, he is looking at him through those pale eyes, dimmed by pain and still somehow so violently beautiful that it makes Flambae want to scream until every light in the building bursts. he touches the muzzle like it is a bomb.

"they put this fuckin' thing on you."

the metal is cold enough to bite. Flambae's thumb traces the clasp, finds the mechanism, melts the smallest pin with a thread of flame so thin and controlled it barely smokes; he loosens it without pulling, without jarring Sonar's head, every breath held fuckin' hostage in his throat. when it comes free, he does not throw it-- he wants to. fuck, he wants to hurl it through the fuckin' wall, make Shroud eat every bolt. rip Toxic's dick off and feed it to him. instead he sets it aside because Sonar needs him present and not feral.

not yet; later, he will be feral enough to make fuckin' history.

"med team," he snaps into comms, voice turning vicious the second it leaves the small circle of warmth around Sonar. "lower west wing. bring a stretcher and if anybody comes in here without clearance I will personally redecorate this place with their fuckin' spine."

Flambae burns through the binds at Sonar's wrists next. his whole body aches to gather him up, to put him against his chest and carry him out through every burning hallway like some stupid knight in a slutty suit, but fear has finally found something useful to do; it makes him careful.

"it's over," he murmurs against the fur on his forehead. "you hear me? he's gone. and if they come back, I'll burn the fuckin' air out of their lungs."

it hurts worse than the bullet graze, than smoke in his lungs; under the gratitude there lies a black ocean of failure. he should've found him sooner. his jaw tightens, orange eyes burning wet-bright in the red gloom, and he swallows, throat working; heat trembles over his skin, brighter wherever his anger tries to surge past control. he presses his palm to the floor beside Sonar, grounding himself in concrete instead of touching too much, too fast. he won't think about that. he won't, he can't, he'll think about it later in some corner somewhere where Sonar doesn't have to watch him lose the thread of himself.

danger's part of the job, yeah. he knows that. they all do and sign up anyway. but this wasn't just danger; this was them deciding Sonar wasn't a fucking person. this was them deciding that meant they could cage him, hurt him, shove a muzzle on him like he was something to be owned. Shroud doesn't get to do that and keep living easy.

boots thunder closer, and outside is full of the distant sounds of evacuation, of his own teammates mopping up whatever Red Ring stragglers Shroud left behind. Flambae's head snaps towards the door, fire flaring instantly across his shoulders, coiling down his arms in slow, seething ribbons. for a moment he is all teeth and light, every inch of him a warning carved in flame; he rises only halfway, one knee still planted by Sonar, putting himself between him and the door without thinking. the first SDN medic appears with a kit and freezes at the threshold.

"slow," Flambae warns, fire quelling when Robert assures him through the comm. "tell him what you're doing before you do it. no sudden grabs. nobody fuckin' touches his face unless they have to. nobody fuckin' crowd him."

his gaze drifts to the hallway; somewhere out there Shroud is slipping through shadows. Flambae can feel it like a hook in his chest; but right now, he has nights to spend awake at Sonar's bedside. days to follow him from room to room until Sonar gets sick of his hovering and tells him to fuck off. weeks to learn every flinch, every nightmare, every place the bastards left pain behind. he will be annoying about medication, fuckin' unbearable about food. he will sleep badly, if he sleeps at all, and wake at every sound because once is enough; once is too fuckin' much.

and after Sonar is safe, after he is warm, after no one can reach him without going through Flambae first, Shroud will learn what it means to be hunted by something that does not get tired.

Flambae looks back down at Sonar, and the violence in him becomes molten around something protectively tender.

"eyes on me, Vic," he murmurs, staying close, keeping the room warm, mostly keeping himself between Sonar and the world.

"I'm taking you home."

❛  please, please, please ... i can't take it anymore!  ❜ 🔥

❝You'll take it, and you'll like it,❞ Robert counters, as he slides another lube slicked finger into Chad, making it a count of three.. Thee of his thick, gnarled fingers sunk deep into him down to the knuckle, and waited as Chad shook on hands on knees, face down on the bed.

❝Oh, fuck…. if you could see yourself right now,❞ Robert murmured softly. He kissed the muscled rise of Chad's ass, and felt hot, sweaty, tremulous flesh under his lip. His free hand traces his index finger along the tip of Chad's lovely cock as it hangs down, heavy and erect between his legs, leaking obscenely. He trails up upward… along the underside of his cock in and unbroken line to his balls… That hand retreats for a moment, and returns in the form of a sharp slap on Chad's ass…. Right on the spot he'd kissed just a moment before...

the stretch of those three thick fingers is an obscene, exquisite fullness that keeps dissolving the inside of his skull every time Robert crooks them, or pauses, or just--

fuck. Flambae is being fucked open on them slow enough to make him insane, that every pulse of pressure feels like Robert is fuckin' studying him, checking where he gives, where he tightens, where he breaks. the bitch probably keeps score: former arsonist, responsive to praise, spanking, and being talked to like a fuckin' problem.

Flambae pushes back.

his hips roll, greedy and shameless, ass lifting into the touch like his body has decided to swear allegiance to Robert's hand, pride be damned; the slap still burns bright across one cheek, the sting of it sharp and sweetly humiliating, a perfect hot print blooming under his skin. and beneath it, he can still feel the kiss on his ass and the scrape of stubble against sweat-slick skin like static. he can feel his own cock swinging heavy between his thighs, leaking onto the sheets in a dirty little rhythm, still tingling from where Robert traced it, and the sight of it, the thought of Robert fuckin' seeing it like this, makes his gut twist.

"fuck you,"

he gasps, the sound wrecked and soft around his ragged breathing. the gap in his teeth catches the words, gives them that faint whistle he'd murder anyone else for noticing. he says that while spreading his knees wider, his right hand dragging against the sheets, maimed digits curling uselessly with the others as he tries to grip fabric and ends up singeing it instead. there is something so fuckin' lewd about all the ways Robert has fucked and ruined him and still looks at him like he wants more; because it means Robert is enjoying this like Flambae is something to be savoured, and he hates how much his pulse spikes at that.

he turns his head just enough to flash Robert the wet glint of one orange eye over his shoulder; his face is flushed, lashes clumped, mouth swollen from biting down on every noise he failed to keep.

"you wanna--aahn, find out?" he pants out, words melting into a shaky moan as he deliberately clenches around the invading fingers, squeezing them tight.

"nnh ! stop teasing me and fuck me already."

his narrow, slutty hips twitch again.

"c'mon, Rahbert ..." the brat in him tries to bare its teeth, tries to make a throne out of begging and sit on it naked, but there is an undeniable whine laced in it; Flambae's breath shudders uselessly and his spine dips. his perfectly muscled ass stays lifted, open, offered, every inch of him a vulgar little confession he cannot shut the fuck up. if Robert doesn't fuck him right now he's gonna fuckin' lose it.

and then-- oh, he'll clench on him so fuckin' hard he will forget his own name. Robert inside him, making him fuckin' take it while that smug voice cracks when Flambae clamps down around him on purpose, when he throws all this trembling beauty back into his lap and dares him to survive it.

A quick survey of the area proved that the Team wasn't back yet, or that they were going out as a unit for lunch today, which gave Victor ample time to stroll on through the front door, clock-in, and then settle heavily into a chair in the break room with a long, deep sigh.

It'd been a hellish time, but it's been done. It had to be done. It needed to be.

He scrubs a hand down his face, ransacking his brain with how he was going to explain his absence to everyone. Victor probably should have told them himself that he was going to take the workday off, but he didn't. He knew himself too well, would have ended up talking his way out of it, and then all these heavy feelings would continue to persist for who knows how long.

Despite going through with it, Victor wasn't sure he was fully ready. When you've lived a large chunk of your life, smothering it all under that thin veneer of being high as a fucking kite.

He'll think of something to tell them, something that'll sake their curiosity just enough that he didn't have to go too in-depth with it. Not until he's able to get his thoughts together and better himself at thinking every look aimed at him will just be fucking pity.

Victor's gaze raises just in time to make eye contact with Flambae.

Fur fluffs up instantly as he jumps in alarm, nearly falling out of the chair he's pushed himself into. How the sparkler was able to sneak up on him this time was unknown, he had been so quiet, and he's thankfully able to catch himself on the table before he and the chair went tumbling to the floor.

"Ohhh hey Bae!" Victor's voice sounds foreign in his own ears. He'd slapped on that fake persona so fast that he barely had time to make sure it fucking fit. Ohhh shit, he can already see Flambae's expression changing.

He looked pissed. Or relieved? Or both???

"Uh...y-you didn't go out with the others??"

he stands in the break room doorway with one shoulder against the frame, arms folded across his chest, all that arrogant posture arranged into something that wants to be casual but fools absolutely fuckin' nobody with eyes; especially not Sonar, whose pale, moon-drowned eyes are wide with alarm as his gaze catches Flambae's. he startle-jumps hard enough to nearly take himself and the chair to the floor, which normally Flambae would find hilarious, and instead he watches him scramble upright and slap on a voice like something has climbed into his throat and he's trying to make a puppet show out of it before anyone notices. Flambae notices, and he wishes he fuckin' didn't. he knows Sonar's voice well enough now to clock the seam in it, the performance of normalcy stretched over something else.

"nope," he says flatly. his gaze scans Sonar, checking, counting; no obvious blood, no knife wound this time, which ... well, the bar is so fuckin' low it is currently kissing hell's linoleum. still, Sonar looks like ... shit - still beautiful, but exhausted; it makes Flambae's chest go hot and tight until he wants to punch the vending machine.

he steps in and lets the doorframe go behind him; heat comes with him, a low pressure shimmer crawling over the stale break room air. he stops near the table instead of circling it, because if he gets too close, he might touch; and if he touches, he might forget the fuckin' speech he has been rehearsing since sunrise - the one where he says yeah, whatever, man, people get busy, I don't care, except every version of it died the second Vic--Sonar looked at him like that. he clenches his jaw, and his tongue worries the gap in his front teeth.

"figured someone should be here when you decided to turn up."

Flambae's mouth twists as soon as he says it; he looks away, gaze landing on the counter with the open box of protein bars he left there. anything but the pale shine of Sonar's eyes and the fake brightness sitting over his face like badly applied stage make-up.

"--the fuck were you?"

he finally asks, choosing the least graceful doorway into this conversation. the accusation comes out sharper than he wants, but it comes out exactly as mean as part of him wants; it holds a frustrating blend of worried wrapped so tightly in irritation that even he can't always tell them apart anymore.

Sonar has been gone since the birthday, after the private celebration with the stupid little domestic softness of it, after all that careful, mortifying tenderness Flambae had put together with his bare fuckin' hands; after he had let himself lay beneath him, hair down and his guard loosened, pretending the date on the calendar was just another number instead of a chance to get closer ...

no word or explanation - just left with this absence, sitting fat and smug in every room Flambae walked through. and logically, sure, Sonar is a grown-ass bat man, a genius, a rich bastard with mysteries and trauma and probably twelve houses Flambae has not yet redecorated. he does not owe Flambae a signed permission slip every time he leaves the building-- he knows he should leave it, toss out something throwaway, so they can both pretend the last however-long was nothing, and the evening was what it was, a beautiful dream-like thing that Flambae has been turning over in his hands like glass, and whatever Sonar needed to do with the day after is his own fuckin' business.

logically.

except Flambae had checked his phone too many fuckin' times; he had told himself not to be weird, then got angry because worrying made him feel like a dog pathetically left tied outside a shop. his brain had started making little films, all of them starring Sonar bleeding somewhere, or high, bored of him, regretting him, slipping back into some part of his life Flambae had no key for

--Sonar with somebody else. that one had been especially fuckin' charming; really improved the ambience of his morning. the team was out, which meant there was nobody else's noise to fill up the space inside his own skull where the loud and inconvenient fuckin' thing was currently circling like a wildfire biting its own tail, considering all the ways that the person who has quietly become important to him could be not fine, and then has to talk itself back from the edge of it every few minutes--

the silence is growing fangs and claws and he hates that Sonar can probably hear what his heartbeat is doing. his fingers flex against his own bicep. pick a fuckin' lane, Chad. his voice lowers into a grumble.

"you could've texted, you know. I thought we were--shit, nevermind."

he hates that he sounds like something with its belly exposed; as if Sonar might laugh, or apologise, or explain, or worse, look at him with those big wide eyes while Flambae has to decide whether to forgive him before he's had the satisfaction of being properly furious. then the irritation ebbs, not leaving because fuck that, it pays rent now, but the concern underneath shows his bright orange orbs.

"you look like hell,"

Flambae inhales deeply to calm himself down. he shifts his weight, uncrossing his arms only to plant one hand on the back of the chair opposite Sonar. he does not sit, because standing lets him pretend he is not one wrong word from either snapping or crawling into Sonar's lap like a fuckin' idiot with abandonment issues. "...gonna talk about it?" the sharp edge is still there; his eyes return to Sonar's, and the upset in them is real, but it is not clean - it is tangled up with relief so keen it hurts, jealousy he has no fuckin' right to, and a fear that has been gnawing quietly through his spine since the first unanswered message.

What is your muse’s favorite place(s) to be touched?

Are there any foods that are like aphrodisiacs to your muse?

Are there particular scents/sounds that turn your muse on?

Does your muse enjoy dirty talk? Do they like to do the talking or being dirty talked?

What are some subtle gestures that get your muse in the mood?

How does your muse communicate to others they they’re in the mood?

How does your muse flirt?

How does your muse approach someone they want to sleep with?

What are some physical things your muse does when they want someone to sleep with them?

How does your muse approach one-night stands versus long term partners?

Is your muse very physically intimate?

Is your muse very emotionally intimate?

Does your muse enjoy cuddling after sex?

What are the requirements for your muse to sleep with someone?

Does your muse use protection? If so, what kind?

What is a fantasy your muse has?

Is your muse noisy in bed? How noisy? What makes them reach that level?

Does your muse enjoy teasing? Giving or receiving? How long can they stand it?

How does your muse respond to people making advances on them?

What is a kink your muse has? How would they bring it up to their partner?

What is one sexual insecurity that your muse has?

What kills the mood for your muse instantly?

What gets your muse in the mood instantly?

Does your muse enjoy roleplaying in the bedroom?

Does your muse prefer gentle lovemaking or rough sex?

Is your muse the type to fall in love from having sex or to leave it be?

What was your muse’s first sexual experience?

What was your muse’s best sexual experience?

What was their worst sexual experience?

Does your muse enjoy kissing? Caressing?

What is your muse’s favorite part of sex?

What is one area they’re great at during sex?