you’ve met with a terrible fate

You and Robert were a walking HR Violation. 

If someone were to find out about your 'thing', you’d argue that you weren’t a hero on his dispatch team, at least not anymore. You just happened to work in the same office, take lunch breaks at the same time, attend required meetings together, dogsit Beef every so often, and fuck in the broom closet when you had five minutes to spare. But at least you weren’t a supervisor and supervisee. Anymore. 

Now that would be well below your morals. That had to count for something. 

Even if both of you agreed never to let anyone at the office find out about your weekend rendezvous… or the goddamn broom closet.

You were a responsible young woman now, so it was a surprise that you’d even consider being in whatever the mess of a relationship you had with Robert. An ex-villain—the first of the Phoenix Program to ever make it out of the Z-team and into a ‘normal’ team.

You clocked in to work ten minutes early every day, worked late when Blazer needed a hand, and worked your goddamn ass off harder than someone like Phenomoman could even imagine. You might not have been a hero who had her face on billboards and cereal boxes—the kind of hero that children wished to meet one day, or wanted to be when they were older. But you were trying your hardest to be a goddamn hero, and you were proud of it. 

Gone were the days of villainy—your mind once clouded by hate and the desire to ruin everything you touched. This was your penance. It had been over six months since you changed your path, and you still carried enough guilt to swallow you whole. It was the sole reason you pushed yourself as far as you did because the mere idea of falling back into your old, destructive patterns knotted a dark pit in your stomach.

Somedays, it felt as though the weight of the world rested on your shoulders when you put on your hero suit; it bore down on you until your entire body and mind ached with burnout.

No one saw the cracks shooting through your hard-working exterior. No one except Robert Robertson III. Christ—what a fucking mouthful.

Robert was the only one who saw the struggle you hid so well. He knew you had been pushed out of the Phoenix Program a few months too soon, but Blazer had high hopes for you. You reminded her of herself when she was younger, and so she pushed you harder than anyone else in the Z-Team.

The ex-superhero met you on his first day of dispatching, two weeks before you were set to graduate from the program. You were the only one who’d found success, and as such, Blazer didn’t want the rest of the team holding you back and decided that Robert would be best to lead them apart from you. You’d never forget that first meeting in Blazer’s office.

You sat in one of the chairs, palms sweaty and certain that she was going to cut you from the team. That was when Robert came in—big brown eyes, freckles akin to constellations and an apathetic, yet curious, look in his eyes as they lingered on you, which made your heart roar. You worked with him closely the following two weeks, as both Chase and Blazer figured you would be the best one to give him the lay of the land until you departed from his team two weeks later, when you were promoted to Chase’s team.

There were plenty of moments during those two weeks when you knew that Robert was going to be trouble. The easy banter, lingering stares as you both quietly ate lunch in the break room, as Prism and Malevola shared gossip as loudly as they could.

It took all of four weeks for the two of you to become familiar with each other in tight spaces.

The familiar feeling of calloused fingers in your hair remedied the ache in your heart that you hadn’t realized was there. Lips on your neck, easing the heaviness in your lungs. Five minutes nearly every day, your bodies tangled in the broom closet. Muffled whimpers behind Robert’s hand, toes curled inside your boots and being forced to breathe goddamn-near manually for ten minutes into your next shift while your mind ran rampant with everything Robert—needing more.

You got more, and you figured that karma ought to be on your side now.

•

“You’re exhausted,” Robert said, his back turned to you as he stood in his kitchen, opposite the island you sat at. Your mouth opened to speak, but he wasn’t finished, “And don’t try to come up with some menial, shitty excuse as to why you’ve been working late all week. If you told Blazer you were tired, she’d understand. You know that, right?”

A hot cup of coffee was placed before you, and brown eyes settled on your half-asleep face. It was eight at night on a Friday, and you had just finished filling in late for another team. You needed sleep more than you needed coffee, but you begged Robert for a cup.

It had become a bad habit these days, winding up at his apartment instead of your own. At least with your presence around every weekend, it was enough to get him to buy a futon sofa, which might have been the most uncomfortable thing you ever slept on. At least you mostly fucked on it.

“She needs my help. Torrance needs my help. It’s worth being tired sometimes.” You argued back petulantly, a pout hidden behind your coffee cup. 

Robert’s stare made you sulk, two scarred hands on the countertop. Fingers tapping over the surface as a chill ran up your spine. “You sound like a goddamn cliche. A really frustrating one, might I add,” he returned, his voice low and gravelly from a week’s worth of dispatching the Z-Team. Fridays were always hard on him.

You frowned, licking residual coffee from your lips. “But it’s the truth. If not me, then who else?”

“Literally anyone else at SDN,” his voice swelled with frustration, a tone that was mostly reserved for bad dispatching days. “You’re working yourself to the fucking bone, and you act like you’re the only hero there to pick up the pieces that fall between Blazer’s hands. There is, quite literally, over fifty other heroes.”

It was always annoying how right Robert always was, as if he wasn’t 5 years your senior and had a handful of experience as a hero above you. It was already enough having Chase throw you tidbits of wisdom every working hour, so when Robert gave you unwarranted advice—you bristled.

“That’s not fair!” You huffed at him. Your hands tightened around the mug, and your eyes crackled with lightning—a symptom of your power. “You know why I stay late, it’s more than just—”

“Who are you even trying to prove yourself to?!” Robert’s voice matched your volume, and you only then realized you’d been shouting at him. His voice softened, “You’re a hero. Don’t… let whatever guilt or regrets eating away at your mind make the decisions for you. You’ll get yourself killed.”

The coffee was forgotten on the counter, driplets running down the side from where it had spilled when you took a sip. It was growing cold, but the air between you and Robert was running hot, and you hated it when you were both stressed because you hated being honest with anyone, let alone yourself. You preferred to bottle up your emotions and save them for your SDN-issued therapist, who had you learning a multitude of coping mechanisms for your stress that you might not have been working on well enough.

“I’m sorry,” his voice cut through the tension. Bare feet padded over the flooring as he walked around the island and to where you sat, hunched over and tears welling in your eyes. “Hey, look at me.” 

Calloused fingers cupped your cheeks, forcing you to look up into those doe-brown eyes that warmed your heart and reminded you of why you tried so hard. You wanted to be a hero like him—like Mecha Man. You didn’t want the glory and fame; you just wanted to make a difference as he had. The most challenging part was that you had it, but you couldn’t see your own success as easily as others did.

He blinked a few times, taking in the few moments to admire your watery eyes and pouting lips, “I’m just worried about you, and you never talk to me about how you really feel, then we just start bickering… or fucking.”

You snorted, lips pulling into a pathetic, lopsided smile.

“How about we take it easy for the night, yeah? I might not have a TV, but I have a phone, and I’m sure we can find some shitty movie to hate on tonight.” His voice was a rhythmic hum, and you couldn’t do anything but agree to his terms for the rest of the evening.

Legs were tangled on the futon with a fluffy blanket strung across your bodies. A terrible B-list film played on his phone, but instead of being propped up by his hand, it was face down and nearly falling off the edge of the makeshift futon-bed. It had been long forgotten about for ten minutes now, as were your pants and underwear.

“Fuck,” you breathed out against his neck, his stubble tickling your face. Two of his fingers prodded deep inside you, curling just right so your toes curled and you whined.

Robert shifted your bodies until your back was on the futon, his lips finding your neck and leaving a littering of kisses and bites that marked your skin with bruises that would be gone come Monday. You hardly cared; your hero suit mostly covered anything that he left on your skin—a bad habit of his that you didn’t feel like correcting.

The two digits inside of you worked harder, earning delicious sounds that fell from your lips and had Robert’s trousers tightening with each passing second.

The blanket fell from your bodies as you hooked an arm around his neck and rocked your hips in rhythm with his fingers—meeting each forward press of his hand. The heavy, throaty sounds from him vibrated against your jaw.

“Tell me…fuck. Tell me that you’ll be good next week,” Robert demanded breathily, his words hot in your ear as he suckled on your lobe, then moved to run his teeth against the shell of your ear. Your lips quivered in response, and you didn’t answer quickly enough because he removed his fingers from your aching cunt until you listened.

His thumb barely brushed against your clit, leaving you clenching desperately around nothing.

“Robert,“ You whined, kicking a foot at the blanket, but giving in so easily, “I-I promise. I’ll be good. No more staying late… Please.”

“Good,” he cooed into your ear, and you fucking melted as he devoured you. Teeth sank into the skin between your neck and shoulder, two fingers plunged deep into your pussy once again and fucked you at a quick pace that milked whimpers from your lips as you grabbed at his shoulders—fingernails digging at his scarred skin.

You fucked yourself against his fingers again, meeting the pace again, but this time needing release so fucking desperately. You felt his cock against your bare thigh, still hidden beneath his work pants, but you couldn’t give him attention even if you wanted to because you were so fucking close and focused on the pleasure building inside you.

Those expertly working fingers were bringing you close to the edge. His thumb has joined in and rubbed at your swollen clit in tight little circles that made you dizzy.

“You’re so good,” he whispered into your ear, heavy breaths of air tickling at your skin as his other hand, buried into your hair, tugged at the strands. The praises earned mewls of pleasure and satisfaction from you, who was practically purring for him. “You listen… so well. God, you’re beautiful. Fuck—“ He’d lost his thoughts when he started rubbing himself against your thigh.

His strained cock behind his work pants found perfect rhythm and friction against your thigh.

You were shivering under his touch, nails scratching down his back. Toes curled, heat building in the pit of your stomach, sending electrical shocks to the tips of your toes and fingers.

Robert sucked at your skin just below your ear, pitiful whines reverberating deep from his chest as he focused so hard on making sure you were met with the release you deserved. “Come on, baby. Come for me, okay? C’mon…” He mumbled against your skin messily, teeth grazing your skin. Grinding his cock against you, fingers pushing deep inside your hungry cunt—you were close. So fucking close, and Robert could tell by the way you’d gone almost silent. 

Your eyes were fluttering and rolling back, nails no longer digging into his skin, but instead your arms tightened around his neck. Your thighs twitched, and your cunt tightened around his fingers. 

Both of you felt the orgasmic wave crash through you, grasping at each other to keep yourselves steady as your names rolled off of each other’s tongues—not stopping until you were a tangled, heaping mess over the shitty futon. 

Robert was on his back, your head on his shoulder, hair clinging to your sweaty forehead that he brushed away. The sound of the movie playing on his phone was muffled, knocked to the ground somewhere. Neither of you cared to look for it, the sounds of choppy dialogue and music lulling into the distant city noise that came from his open patio door.

Blinking tiredly as you looked up at Robert, a smirk graced your lips, “Did you come in your fucking pants?”

“Fuck off,” he retorted, embarrassed, cheeks burning a wild red that highlighted his freckles. He tried shoving you away from him playfully, but you were quick to straddle his lap—a bright smile pulling at the corners of your lips.

Robert looked up at you, lying beneath you. Your eyes gazed over his features like you were looking at him for the first time. Freckles below his eyes, scattered over his cheeks like a puzzle. Scars over his chest and arms that you wished to memorize under your touch. His right ear had missed part of its outer shell like a cat that survived a harsh winter. You adored every ‘imperfection’.

And those eyes—big and brown. They stared up at you the same, as if memorizing you.

When you were with Robert, your walls shattered down. Everything that weighed you down was still there, but he helped you lift it. He was the only person in the world who forced your vulnerability to show, and you didn’t mind.

A laugh rumbled from your chest, the sound of laughter echoing through his studio apartment.

“What?” He asked you, smirking with widened eyes, watching you in awe. “A guy can’t finish in his pants anymore?”

“Anymore? Jesus… No, it’s not that,” you managed to sputter when the laughter settled. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m just… happy.”

His smile widened to a toothy grin, and you felt your heartbeat stutter. “Okay, ‘Just Happy’. Why don’t we take a shower?” He asked, hands grazing over your bare thighs. Fingers brushing softly at the skin that prickled with goosebumps.

“We? I’m not the one who came—”

A hand covered your mouth, and you laughed behind it as Robert pushed you back against the futon once again. He was chuckling lowly, shaking his head at you before he leaned forward and began to press kisses to your neck, then down to your stomach, where your shirt had lifted to reveal your stomach.