Chapter Text
“Oh, Scar!” Grian calls into his office, two tupperware containers in his hands. He rounds the corner to see a very sleepy professor with his head slumped over his desk. Grian, being the pesky bird he was, quietly placed the containers on a desk and slowly approached Scar. He went behind his wheelchair, leaning over it to get a good angle near his ear. “Scar!” He whisper-shouted into his ear, making the man shoot up in surprise with a gasp.
He looked around for the perpetrator, coming up blank until Grian started laughing behind him. “You scared the daylights out of me!” He shouted, turning to see the man in his usual red sweater behind him as he leaned over and laughed.
“Sleeping on the job, are you?” He teased.
Scar let out an offended gasp. “No, I am not. There's no one here except you, and I certainly can't teach you anything. You hardly respect me.” He shook his head and caught sight of the tupperware, leaning across the table to retrieve his. “Oh my gosh, I forgot you said you'd bring pasta.”
“I respect you. Look at my famous pasta waiting for us,” Grian smiled. He sat down across from Scar and brought out a couple forks for them to dig in.
Scar's eyes were still drooping with drowsiness, but this sure helped. He grabbed a fork and opened the steamy container to find, “Penny pasta. My favourite.”
“It's not penny, it's penne,” Grian corrected.
“That's what I said. Penny.”
“No. You're saying it with an ‘ee’ sound at the end. It has an ‘ay’ sound at the end.”
“Oh, can I just eat my penny-ay in peace?” Scar concluded the conversation by shoving more than a fork-full into his mouth.
Grian couldn't help but smile to himself. He quickly leaned back and took a few bites of his food, worried that Scar would be able to see the light blush on his face. Yes, Grian found it a bit ridiculous that this man with a doctorate's degree in architecture couldn't pronounce penne, but on the other hand… he was crushing hard and Scar being unable to pronounce penne was kind of adorable.
Sure, it had been years, and sure, he hasn't said anything. So maybe it was a high-school level of keeping his emotions in, but he found it very fulfilling to make lunch for the both of them. Despite having pretty much no time to do so, he didn't mind using his mornings to make food if it meant spending this time everyday together.
“You won't believe what my student said today,” Scar started, looking up to see Grian already staring at him. Unphased, and probably unaware, he bulldozed on, “I was talking about greek-o… greco-rosan… greco-ronam–”
“Greco-Roman?” Grian supplied.
“Yes– architecture and one of my students started talking about aliens and how there's a theory that they taught humans everything about building and stuff. I just sat there, because what am I supposed to say? It was a very compelling story, but completely unrelated to the fact that I'm trying to teach them how to make buildings and I started to think maybe they're implying I'm an alien, so…”
Grian giggled as he watched Scar wave his hands around as he spoke, emphasizing seemingly random words. “You're quite close to being an alien, with that power of yours.”
Scar's hands stutter, his soft smile fading ever-so-slightly. “What power?”
Grian looks awkwardly at Scar. “You know, your power to mispronounce any word,” he said, knowing it was a running joke between them.
“Oh, yeah,” Scar laughed, brushing off his weird attitude. “I guess they found it funny I can't say it.”
“Oh, you said it wrong in front of them, too?” Grian mused. “Let's hope you spell it right for the exam.”
Scar rolled his eyes before lightly gasping and looking back to Grian, “Speaking of, please proofread it for me. I can't have the same thing happen again.”
“Oh, gong be spelt as ‘dong?’” He chuckled.
Scar hid his face in his hands, leaning over the table, “Don't remind me.”
-
Scar got home a bit later than he thought he would. Gods, he was so, so tired. He placed his keys on the counter and beelined to his room. He laid down, yes in his work clothes, and almost didn't hear the sound of his comm going off next to him.
He felt around for it on his night stand and pulled it to his ear, pressing on the screen until he heard a click. “Cuuubbbbbb, what is it?”
“You have to come in the next 30 minutes if you want me to fix your suit.”
Scar sighed deeply, feeling a weight on his chest. “Yeah… I'll be there in a sec.” He heard the light click, telling him Cub hung up.
He sat up slowly, feeling his legs ache from the stress he's been putting himself through, but he stood and grabbed his cane. He packed up his Hotguy gear into a mildly inconspicuous duffle bag and made his way out the door, grabbing his keys off his counter as he did. So much for getting a nap in.
He walked down his apartment hall, 3 doors down, and walked right into Cub’s flat. On one counter, there were piles of clear containers with various redstone components, on his couch was a few crochet projects, and on his table was his unofficial Hotguy costume workshop.
Cub was sat at his kitchen table, reading a book in a very bored looking way, not even turning to look as Scar entered his living room. “You're here very late, sir.”
“I was busy at work,” Scar told him. Truthfully, Grian had caught him in a discussion about the lack of trains in the U.S. and it sparked a very long and heated discussion between the two.
“Just give me your suit so I can fix it up,” Cub said, holding out his hands. Still, despite knowing exactly how heavy the duffle bag would be, he buckled a bit at the weight. “Gosh, what do you have, robotic legs in here?”
Scar shrugged with a smile before sitting beside Cub and resting his cane against his chair.
Yes, he did in fact have robotic legs in there. Given to him by the Hero Commision, they were hefty 20 pound legs that gave him the ability to walk despite the limited mobility they had regularly. Cub, a Hero Commision fixer-of-things, happened to be his closest neighbor and helped him get things done without having to go 3 miles away to the Hero Commision office.
His legs were pretty much constantly in need of repair due to the nature of being a vigilante or Hero or whatever the people called Hotguy that day. His legs got shot at, sliced up, or simply screws got loose from him running a lot.
“Not bad, you didn't completely wreck these this time,” Cub mused as he pulled the legs out of the bag. “I only see a couple pulled wires!”
“If they're functional without those wires, why are they there?” Scar questioned, shrugging his shoulders.
Cub shook his head, “They're there as a safety just in case you pull the other life wires.” He points to the opposite side of the robotic leg, split open to show the inside. “This wire holds the power supply and this one connects to your body to send the impulses your brain has to this leg. There's duplicates on the other side because they don't want you to just randomly fall in a fight.”
“Blah blah blah, redstone, Hotguy, legs,” Scar blabbed. “Fix ‘em and let me nap.” He rubbed his eyes and grabbed his cane before walking to the couch to lay down.
“Yes, please sleep. You're a maniac with how little you rest,” Cub said, collecting a box of redstone parts and getting to work.
Scar dozed off, hearing the buzzes and sparks coming from the table. His legs ached from the previous night, but he knew he'd have to go out to deal with the issues that have been cropping up in Hermitopia.
-
“So, we've got a heist planned on East Trader's road in about an hour. We'll go in and stop them. There's a creeper hybrid and a wolf hybrid that we know about,” Tek reported, holding out his hand to help Hotguy onto the roof from the fire-escape stairs.
Hotguy nodded, taking his hand and stumbling a bit as he got on the roof. He rebalanced himself, adjusting his bow over his shoulder. He adjusted his split color glasses on his nose with a smile, pushing some of his hair away from his eyes. “Heist on dog food this time?”
“Surprisingly not,” Tek smirked, rolling his eyes. His hair was slightly smoldering as usual, making his blond hair glow a little. “I hear it's a redstone factory owned by the Commision.”
"Oh.” Scar grimaced, “that won't be fun.” He looked at Tek awkwardly, “sure you should be going?” No amount of fireproof clothing Tek wore would save that building from catching.
His tail swished back and forth behind him as he laughed. “Well, I'd rather not go in and make the whole place go kaboom, so I've got a partner for you. He's in training.” On the other side of the roof, Hotguy spotted a man looking over the city in what seemed to be a miniskirt. “Commission's planning on pairing you two.”
“Huh?” Hotguy was not informed of anything of the sort. Or he was and he didn't check his comm, but that was still crazy! “Since when?!”
“They started talking about it a couple months ago when they got him in the training program.” Tek shrugged. “Apparently he's been a vigilante for a while, but now he's becoming an official Hero.” They both gazed at the man who turned, his wings becoming visible as he looked over at them two through his heart-shaped pink sunglasses. “Heard they want to call him Cuteguy.”
Hotguy craned his head to meet Tek's red eyes, his jaw slackened. “I've never met him and now he's basically got another version of my name?”
Behind Hotguy, a voice rang out, “Hey hottie.”
Hotguy jumped nearly out of his skin, turning around, pulling his bow off his shoulders.
The man with the wings and miniskirt was on his left, completely out of nowhere! Upon closer inspection, the miniskirt was actually a pair of flared shorts with 2 huge bows at the ends. He had ombre pink-to-black fingerless gloves that led Hotguy to the avian's sly smirk. The wings on his back and around his ears were also ombre pink-to-black, but significantly more eye-catching, in Hotguy's opinion. He dropped his bow and huffed out a breath. “You scared me!”
“I can tell,” Cuteguy smiled mischievously.
His eyes went down to this so-called ‘Cuteguy's’ legs, which were covered in black stockings and he had adorable white heeled boots with pink soles and little wings on the sides. Okay, maybe Hotguy understood the name. Hotguy felt his cheeks redden and he looked over to Tek. “I'm supposed to work with this guy?”
“He's got super speed. Should help you out quite a bit,” he chuckled, pointing out how he'd been able to get across the roof so fast. “Could be a visual distraction to the enemy, too.”
Hotguy sure wished he could cover more of his face now. While people couldn't really see through his glasses, his red cheeks and crooked smile while he looked at the cutie behind him would surely betray him.
Tek seemed to immediately see through Hotguy's futile attempt to hide it and smirked. “Well, it seems I'll be on my way since you two will be working on this mission.” He saluted casually with two fingers and started down the fire escape. “I sent everything to your comm. Have fun!”
Hotguy turned to look at his new partner, but found no one on that side of him. “Other side, pea-brain,” a voice called to his right.
“You were right there a second ago!” He argued, turning quickly to see Cuteguy gazing at his pink nails- well, actually they were talons- as if they were more interesting than Hotguy.
“Keep up,” Cuteguy said, flying right above Hotguy with a few quick wingbeats. He sped past him and to the East without looking back.
Hotguy shook his head and smiled. He sprung into action, feeling his robotic legs strain a bit as he pushed off the edge of the building, bringing his legs in as he landed on the next rooftop, rolling to disperse the impact.
Meanwhile, Cuteguy, flying with no super speed, did flips and swerved between buildings as he looked back to see Hotguy pursuing him. Hotguy looked ahead of him to jump and grab onto another fire escape, and when he got to the top and looked around, Cuteguy was gone.
He heard a loud clank, where Cuteguy landed around 10 feet behind him, sitting on an AC unit, a leg crossed over the other and he yelled, “slow poke, back here!”
Hotguy spun around, reeling to keep himself balanced on the rooftop's edge he was about to jump from. He looked back and forth a couple times from the sky to Cuteguy. “See, I do want to point out the fact that you're crazy, but it's overshadowed by the fact I just heard you say ‘slow poke.’ When's the last time I even heard that?” He laughed, waving his hand around with a scrunched up face.
Rolling his eyes, Cuteguy stood and crossed his arms with a sly smile. “Calling me old, Mr. Hotboy?” He challenged, waiting to see if the other had an eloquent response.
Hotguy's eyes widened a bit before he decided it was all in good fun and settled into a playful gaze. No real problem. “Yeah, what's the last movie you saw? Uh- uh- Charlie Chlaplin- uh… Chaplin?”
“You seem real confident about that,” Cuteguy regarded. He started across the roof before switching his direction and sprinting straight toward Hotguy, arms outstretched.
“Oh, woah, woah, woah,” Hotguy looked behind him to see the edge of the roof and awkwardly tried to scoot to the side. It was too late as he was scooped under the arms into Cuteguy's grasp and blasted into the air at super speed.
His eyes latched shut instinctually as he screamed against Cuteguy's chest, hearing the wind whip against his ears as he dug his fingers into the other man's back to ensure he didn’t free-fall. The cover of night was very fortunate in this situation, and he hoped this wouldn't end up on anyone's news feed.
“Can't be slow now,” Cuteguy snickered, a chirp coming through in his laugh.
Hotguy got the slight confidence to open his eyes a moment to stare incredulously at the man currently flying him across the city. “How is this a necessary measure?!” He shouted, afraid to move much more. He watched as Cuteguy's feathers rustled in the wind, especially his aural feathers around his ears, which tickled Hotguy's nose a bit. He looked at the black makeup around the avian's eyes, shrouding the upper half of his face like lace to keep his identity hidden. His eyes were glowing a light purple, which caught Hotguy's eye. “When did your eyes turn purple?”
Cuteguy giggled, “that was a quick change of topic.” The world turned upside down and Hotguy felt his ears pop as they spun around high in the air.
He screamed more, “You're gonna kill me!” He closed his eyes again, Cuteguy entering what felt like a free-fall from however many hundreds of feet high up they were.
Cuteguy giggled, suddenly spreading his wings out to slow their descent. “More your speed?” He asked, letting them drift along peacefully.
The altitude chilled Hotguy’s ears and he was scared to pull his face away from Cuteguy’s shoulder. He feared he'd developed a rapid onset phobia of heights. “Please get me down,” he said, trying to sound calm, but his voice wavered both in pitch and in volume. He saw a peek of the distance between his legs and the ground and immediately, with a screech, clutched harder to Cuteguy's costume. “Blondie, please!”
Cuteguy chirped a laugh and squeezed Hotguy. “I'm getting you down, you're fine.” With a few thrusts of his wings to soften the landing, he set both their feet on the ground gently. Still, Hotguy clung to the shorter man, his face hidden. “We're here,” Cuteguy stated plainly, pulling his arms away from the Hero's waist.
Hotguy slowly stood back, surprised he didn't feel an impact when they landed. His robotic legs didn't always register feeling, and farther down his legs, he didn't feel anything at all. So when his feet landed down softly, none of the impact traveled up enough for him to actually feel.
He looked up at the windswept hair of Cuteguy, trying not to stare. “I-” his voice cracked, but he corrected it to sound a bit more confrontational, “I can't believe you'd do that without asking.” He crossed his arms and looked away in a show of opposition, when in fact, it was to close off his body language that showed his heart was beating fast, not only from his fear of heights.
Cuteguy stepped forward, trying to get a look at Hotguy's face. In his most genuine voice of the night, which was still a bit teasing, he said, “oh, are you scared of flying?”
Hotguy raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, “no, noooo,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand and a scoff, “I'm just not a fan of… uhhh… y'know.”
“Doing things you're not prepared for?” Cuteguy supplied.
“Yeahhh!” He nodded, still waving his hand back and forth. “Not scared of heights. At least I wasn't until now.” He quickly stopped his pacing and turned, “and that's not to say I'm scared nooowww… just that being up in the air…” he paused, “it's different. Very different.” He concluded, dropping his arms to his sides and sighing.
Cuteguy rolled his eyes with a smile. “Sure.”
He turned to look at the factory they came upon. It was concrete, covered in graffiti, and caked in grey and green dirt. The roof was a series of panels that seemed to be worn down sheet metal, clearly patched in some places by garbage bags or poorly fitted replacement panels. On the facade, there was the outline of a previously removed sign that read “Hermitopia Redstone Supply,” that hadn't been exposed to the elements as long as the rest. He looked down to check the small comm on his wrist. He tapped it and a message came up with details about the heist they were about to bust.
“Yeah, we should get down to business,” Hotguy said, taking his place standing beside Cuteguy a few feet from the edge of the roof.
Their comms both lit up, Hotguy adjusted his glasses and quickly read over it. “So, I'm thinking… let's find a weak point on the roof where we can spy into there and wait until we see the robbers break in.”
Cuteguy looked over to him with a poorly hidden grimace. “You think that's gonna work with the state of that roof?”
The Hero crossed his arms and frowned slightly, gazing across the road at the fallen panels at the side of the building, “Well, that's a factor.” He tapped his chin with his pointer finger inquisitively.
“There's quite the simple solution here, brain man.” Hotguy looked over at Cuteguy's smug smirk.
“Aaand…?” He prompted.
Cuteguy huffed an amused breath. “You can wait here,” he smiled incredulously, “and I go over there.” He pointed to a rooftop facing another part of the factory. He spoke in a somewhat condescending tone, but it went right over Hotguy's head and he nodded with a grin.
“Sounds good to me,” he took out a spyglass from his pocket and leaned on the parapet to use it. “Just alert me if you see something. I'll have an open comm for us to talk.”
Cuteguy stood for a moment, a bit baffled at the man in front of him. “You're calling me old cause I said slow poke and now you have a spyglass?” He scowled, confused. “Where did it even come from. Your whole get-up is skin tight!”
Continuing to gaze through his copper spyglass, he dismissed Cuteguy with a wave, “the heist is supposed to start real soon, so get another vantage point.”
With a sneer, Cuteguy uses his super speed to fly himself to a building parallel with the back face of the factory. When he landed, he stole a glance back at Hotguy, who was happily looking through his spyglass. Is he serious? Cuteguy thought. It seemed genuinely ridiculous and not in an endearing way; more in a how has Hotguy been a Hero for this long, kind of way. At least eight years, to Cuteguy's knowledge, fighting crime and solving criminal cases, and he uses a spyglass?!
“Are you scouting out my crazy good looks or the troublemakers?” A voice bursted out of Cuteguy's comm. He jumped and glowered down at the device strapped to his wrist.
“The only troublemaker I see is an overgrown toddler given a Hotguy costume- oh waaait-”
“Focus!” Hotguy grumbled. “I see a… goat… creeper? Something. He's green with goat horns and some cyborg parts. He's coming in from your side. Keep an eye out.”
Cuteguy shut his mouth and quickly started spying the alley below him.
There he was, goat horns, scarred green skin, and metal arm. Behind him was a dark brown haired man with fluffy ears and a tail. Both were wearing black shades and holding giant black bags behind them.
“These look like the people Tek warned us about,” Cuteguy reported, whispering while toeing around to try to get a better look at what they were doing. “They've also got a car, it seems like. There's keys dangling from the cyborg's belt loop.”
“Okay. I'm coming in,” Hotguy declared without any deliberation.
He pulled his grappling hook from his belt and threw it to land on the building Cuteguy was at. The robbers looked up and saw Cuteguy looking down at them, then started to tear open the side entrance to the building.
Fuck! He thought, he just gave away my position!
Hotguy swooped in, jumping from his rope right into action. He kicked the dog-hybrid to the ground, and turned to see the creeper hybrid breaking in. “Woah, slow down there, buddy,” he quipped, laughing at the man using the crowbar.
Suddenly, the force behind the crowbar cut in half. He was hardly pulling the door open at all and looked incredulously at Hotguy. “What the heck?”
Behind him, Cuteguy let himself jump down from the roof and join in the battle. The wolf hybrid got up and threw a punch into Hotguy's side, using his slight stagger to get past and kick open the door. Together, the two robbers ran inside and started filling all the bags they brought with redstone products.
Speedily in after them, Cuteguy tackled the creeper to the ground, trying to wrench the bags from his iron-grip hand. The cyborg fought back by sinking a short knife attached to his robotic hand into Cuteguy's side, leaving the latter leaning back and wincing, his wings flapping in pain behind him.
Hotguy raced into the factory, assessing the scene before him. He pulled his bow over his head and yelled, “Halt!” His eyes glowed a light red, his face caught in an angry scowl. He nocked an arrow and watched as all three of the people before him froze. He slowly approached Cuteguy's side, his gaze unwavering from the two villains staring at him. The room was eerily quiet as Hotguy lightly toed Cuteguy's heel. Cuteguy furrowed his brows in confusion that he was able to move again, looking between the two frozen villains.
“What are you doing?” He asked, hesitantly standing and pulling out a knife, trying to ignore his bleeding side.
It was so quiet, they could hear a pin drop.
Hotguy ignored the question. “There's some rope on that far wall. We need to wrap them up to bring them to the police.” His voice was firm and low. His eyes never stopped glowing or made contact with Cuteguy's.
Still, the avian nodded and speedily grabbed the rope and started wrapping the two hybrids. The trance seemed to break as soon as the rope touched their bodies. The creeper hybrid held up his arm and a latch released the knife in his hand, his movement stopped short when an arrow flew right into his leg. The dog hybrid bounded toward Hotguy, freeing himself from the unfinished rope, and held out his claws to swipe.
Hotguy dropped his bow, leaned forward, grabbed the villain's arm and twisted it, flipping him around to land behind him on his back. Hotguy brought out another rope from his utility belt and tied up the dog's wrists. “Tough luck, puppy,” he quipped as he fastened the knot.
Meanwhile, Cuteguy kicked the creeper's legs out from under him and pulled the rope tight to stop him from getting up. He wrapped the rope a couple more times around his legs before calling it a day and tied it off. He stood back and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up to see Hotguy ogling at him in a not-so-discreet way. “Let's get these two out of here,” he said, breaking Hotguy’s stare.
He nodded, “yeah. I'll take a picture of their license plate really quick just in case.” He walked out, bringing his comm up to his face, leaving Cuteguy to listen to the villains struggle against their restraints.
“This isn't the end, yet, Doc,” the dog hybrid panted, pulling at his wrists.
The cyborg-creeper-goat guy, Doc, huffed, “give it up, Ren.”
Hotguy came back into the building through the busted down door and sighed, looking at the door with a grimace, “I'll call someone to fix that up… right now, let's get these goobers to the station.” He leaned down and grabbed the dog hybrid, throwing him over his shoulder. He smiled at Cuteguy, waiting for him to grab the other as Ren writhed around in his arms.
“Let me go, you stupid little Hero!”
Cuteguy shook his head and threw Doc over his shoulder (with much less grace) and followed Hotguy out of the factory. “Did you really just say ‘goobers?’ And you have the nerve to make fun of me?”
Hotguy snickered, “I think slow poke is worse.”
When Cuteguy looked over at Hotguy, he noticed his eyes were back to his normal green and he couldn't help but stare curiously. He wondered what power the Hero had been using. It seemed to stop people in their tracks and he'd never seen something like that before. He honestly found it kind of creepy.
They arrived at the police station and dropped off the troublemakers. Hotguy made a call to the Commision reporting the capture and license plate, and requesting for someone to repair the broken door.
As they were walking down the street to begin their nightly patrol, Hotguy turned to look at the avian. “You did well out there. Never seen super speed in person. Kind of trippy. Also never been flying before, so that was scary.”
Cuteguy smirked. “Well, if you weren't such a slow poke, I wouldn't need to fly you there.”
“There it is with that phrase again!” He laughed, exasperated. “Where does it even come from? Chlarlie- uh- Charplie- gah!” He sticks out his tongue before shaking his head. “Charlie Chapsin.”
Cuteguy laughed, but quickly doubled over when he felt the gash in his side. “Forgot about that,” he winced, out of breath and held his side.
Hotguy immediately dropped a knee and examined the area. “When did you start bleeding?” His voice was immediately back to superhero mode; serious and stern sounding.
Cuteguy removed his hand tentatively so Hotguy could see. “It's not bad at all. Just a small gash from the creeper guy.” The wound wasn't too deep, just in a bad place that took a lot of movement.
“We're going to the Commission to get that healed up,” Hotguy said, pulling some bandages from his utility belt and wrapping it around Cuteguy's waist.
The avian backed away and snatched the roll of bandages from the other's hand. “I'll do it myself. It's really not bad enough for a healer,” he argued, wincing a bit as he tightly wrapped the wound.
“No, I'm taking you to the healer whether you like it or not,” he raised an eyebrow, “It's whether you want me to drag you there or you walk there yourself that you can control.”
Cuteguy pulled a face, furrowing his brows and glaring at the man still on his knee. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.” He tied off the bandage and straightened his spine, walking off down the street.
Hotguy pushed himself back to standing and followed after him, surprised by how fast the man walked normally at such a stout height. “Are you even using your power right now?”
He shook his head, “no, you're just really slow.” He debated saying ‘slow poke’ again to really grind Hotguy's gears, but decided against it, for fear of laughing too hard again. In reality, he was using a bit of his super speed, but not enough to hurt himself more.
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
They walked a couple miles together over to the Hero Commision building, which was unassuming on purpose. There was another Hero Tower building, which was the “official” place for Heroes, but rarely used by actual Heroes; it was more for training new Heroes, auditions, symbolic offices and the like. The Commision building here was unassuming because Heroes would come in without their uniform from time to time on the base level to get outfit repairs or any other sort of non-emergency medical things done. On the upper level was the emergency room of sorts where injured Heroes would come in after a fight to get healed up. The lower level was a collection of offices for Commision officials that would keep track of crimes, resolutions, and plans. There was a lower lower level with stacks upon stacks of files ready to be sorted, then another room on the same level with all the sorted files.
Through the back entrance from the alley, Hotguy scanned his comm to let them both in. They made their way to the elevator and Cuteguy leaned against the wall as the doors shut.
“I could have helped you walk or carried you,” Hotguy said, watching the avian slump over in pain. “I hope walking didn't make it worse.”
“I'm fine, really,” he assured, sitting back up and dismissing the other with a wave of his hand. “Tis but a scratch.”
“Oh, now we're going Shakespeare, huh?” Hotguy smiled, holding out his arm for Cuteguy to lean on as they walked out of the elevator.
Ever stubborn, Cuteguy blazed on without the help and went to the desk. “Small gash on my side from a serrated knife.”
The person nodded and directed them to a room to sit down. Immediately, a healer came in and took a seat beside the patient's bed, where Cuteguy was lying and taking the dressings off the wound. The bandages came back bloodied and he gasped a little at the amount, considering he thought it hadn’t been that bad. Hotguy took the bandages from his hand and disposed of them with a worried grimace.
“What happened there?” The healer asked, bringing his hand to the wound with a pair of thin gloves.
Cuteguy winced at the contact, “nothing too bad. Just a knife to the side. Didn't go too deep.”
“He's been walking around with that for at least an hour,” Hotguy butted in, “I'd be surprised if he didn't reopen it a couple times.”
Snitch, Cuteguy thought.
“I see…” the healer spoke. “Lay back and I'll have to use some antiseptic before I go ahead and heal the cut closed.”
The healer turned to gather the materials and Cuteguy laid back in the bed nervously. Hotguy offered his hand to him and was met with a confused look.
“It burns… thought you'd need something to grip onto,” he shrugged.
Cuteguy gave him a dirty look, his aural feathers puffing up in defense. “I'm fine by myself.”
“Alright,” Hotguy stood. “I'll leave you to it.”
He exited the room just as the healer placed the antiseptic on Cuteguy's wound and he could hear a wince and pained coo escape his throat. Hotguy headed back downstairs to see if he could get someone to check on his robotic legs before he would head out. When he found no techs he knew were in, he walked right out and started to head home, feeling his chest tighten as he thought about Cuteguy.
He thought he looked so amazing when he was fighting. The way his wings splayed out to correct his balance, and his angry eyes glowed purple as he used his power. Despite that, he was so very stubborn, which was very cute, but Hotguy worried it would cause problems if he wasn't willing to tell him about that gash he got.
Either way, Hotguy- no, Scar- Scar needed to lie down and get some rest. He had work tomorrow.