Chapter Text
It’s a long way down.
He’s high up. Much higher up than any fourteen year old should be without company. Rain beats down on his hunched back, as he stares mindlessly at the overcast skyline. It’s violent, the storm having gotten multitudes worse in the time he took to get to the roof. The drops come down with so much force that it almost hurts.
Herm’s breath catches in his throat as he peers over the ledge. Shaking slightly, he presses his nails into the flesh of his palms, focusing on the prickling pains. Oh, God. He hasn’t cut his nails in a while. They’re brittle, broken in places. Sharp when they dig into the wet skin of his hands.
The sky above him flares a bright white for a split second, and Herm flinches violently, nearly losing his footing on the wet gravel. His heart jumps to his throat, and his eyes widen in panic. But he doesn’t know why they widen in panic, because wasn’t the whole point of being up here to lose his footing on purpose?
Oh, God, everyone’s right. He’s pathetic.
A gust of wind tears past him, howling viciously. He can hardly hear it over the ringing in his ears. With a quiet gasp, he stumbles weakly to the side, hands flying up to wrap around his bare arms. He should’ve put on a jacket. He didn’t think he’d be here for long.
The ledge is right under him. He’s half a step from plummeting to his end.
He’s wet. Soaked. Drenched. Classic Herm.
A crack of thunder. He flinches again. It resonates through the sky, ringing through his ears, so close and so loud that he can almost feel the rumbling in his body.
Herm actually liked the rain. The only times in the world when he could ever feel normal was when it rained. He liked walking through the bustling streets, liked watching people whip out their multicoloured umbrellas and squeak in surprise when it started coming down. He liked jogging quietly alongside them, nothing out of the ordinary with his damp skin and sopping wet hair plastered to his face.
“Kid, you want to share my umbrella?” Someone had asked him the other day as he stood next to a bus stop on the way home. “You’re soaked!”
He’d smiled awkwardly and shook his head no, not trusting himself to formulate a coherent response.
It was nice, the rain. Usually. Now it really wasn’t. Maybe it was the temperature, or the ripping wind, or how the typically soft raindrops felt like bullets pounding against his skin. Or maybe it was the height of the building, and how he could hear cars honking from all the way down. Or maybe it was just… maybe it was just everything.
He was going to do it today. He got onto the roof and everything, too. All the way up, just to stand at the edge and wallow for a bit and then come back down?
It’s embarrassing. Nobody’s even here except him, and he’s still embarrassed.
He’s about to turn around and head back towards the stairs.
He’s halfway through the movement when a blast of wind knocks him off balance, the wet gravel rolling out from under his sandals.
He falls.
Before he can even scream, he thinks to himself: ‘I’m going to die in a Phenomaman t-shirt.’
He screws his eyes shut and waits for the end.
…
CLANG!
It doesn’t come.
“NOT THE PLACE FOR SKYDIVING!” He hears an echoing voice shout distantly.
A dull pain throbs through his left side as he nervously cracks an eye open. Is this the afterlife? It’s too wet to be the afterlife. At first, he just sees a whole bunch of gray. And then his eyes focus, and he starts to see more blue.
“You good, kid?” A familiar voice calls out to him. It’s mechanical, almost like it’s being spoken through a microphone, and something in Herm’s chest jolts at the sound of it.
And then he sees it. A glowing blue ‘M’ on the chest of a robot suit.
He nearly rolls off the arms of his savior.
“YO!” Mecha Man cries. Herm feels the metal arms shift surprisingly gently around him, and wonders if this is just a really weird and specific dream. He pinches himself, and hisses in pain. No, definitely not a dream. “Don’t move, you’re gonna fall again!”
“S-sorry!” Herm squeaks. “I’m, like, um, I’m kind of a—”
Herm cuts himself off when he realizes they’re not going back to the building he was at before.
“Where—where are we going?”
“I’m going to be real with you, I have no clue,” Mecha Man responds blankly. “This is, like, my first time doing this.”
A bright flash of lightning nearly blinds Herm, and he screws his eyes shut. Somehow, the rain comes pouring down even harder. A mechanical tsk noise can barely be heard over the din of the storm. “Oh, crap. We gotta get inside.”
“NO!” Herm cries.
He can’t see Mecha Man’s face from behind the suit, but he can feel from the slight twitch of the arms that he wasn’t expecting the outburst.
“Kinda not up for argument, kid. I’m not letting you back on the roof.”
“There’s…” Herm coughs wetly. Maybe he’s coming down with a cold or something. “Th—there’s. A gazebo. In the—a park. Near here.”
“You want us to stay outside in this weather?” Mecha Man asks incredulously. “Dude, you’re in a t-shirt and shorts.”
“C–can your suit fit through any doors?” Herm snaps back. Immediately, he slaps his hands over his mouth. “Oh, no. Sorry—apologies.”
Mecha Man doesn’t respond for a second, and Herm seriously considers rolling off and plummeting to his death again. After a second he feels the metal arms shrug slightly. “Fair enough. Where’s the park?”
Herm peers over his titanium cradle, before the sight of the city below him knocks the breath out of him. He feels like he’s falling again, feels like he’s going to die. But he spots his school, so he knows it’s close.
“Woah,” Mecha Man says. “Don’t look down.”
“Y-yeah,” Herm agrees. “‘S over there. T–to your lef—your right. The water tower. Next to it.”
Without a word, Mecha Man turns towards his right and increases his speed slightly, the large frame of the suit blocking Herm from the rain. He feels the lightness in his chest as the two descend, like the floatiness of going down an elevator. A really fast, big, cold elevator, cradling him gingerly in its arms.
The reality of his situation is starting to settle in.
The two of them land gently on the wet grass. With a slight amount of difficulty, Herm sits upright, then hops off Mecha Man’s arms. He wasn’t tall enough to reach the ground from the height he was at, but he jumped off anyways. The soles of his feet meet painfully with the ground, and he squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that Mecha Man won’t think he’s a loser.
Oh, God. Mecha Man. Mecha Man just saved his life. Mecha Man.
“You good?” Mecha Man asks, the robotic voice tinged with concern. “You gonna be okay?”
“Mecha Man,” Herm mutters, staring up at the suit. It towers over him, and the soft blue that it glows through the storm makes him feel like he’s looking at some sort of angel. His own guardian angel, made of titanium and wires. “You’re Mecha Man.”
Mecha Man doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, to his absolute shock and horror, a latch opens up and an actual guy crawls out. Much more gracefully than Herm had, he hops off the suit, dusting himself off.
“Yep,” Mecha Man says, stretching his arms. Herm can hear some of his joints cracking. “And you just tried to hop off a ledge. Wanna talk about it?”
Herm stares at him, dumbfounded. Mecha Man seems to realize that he’d said the wrong thing, and he visibly grimaces. Now that Herm can see his face, he realizes that the man is… incredibly young. His eyes have deep bruises under them, and a teeny tiny bit of stubble dusts his chin, but honestly, the guy only looks a few years older than him.
“That was really fucking bad,” Mecha Man mutters. “I am so sorry. Fuck, uh… Jesus. I’m bad at this.” He drags a hand down his face, before flicking away the rainwater that’d soaked his face. “Christ, it’s coming down hard. You sure you don’t want to go inside somewhere? There’s gotta be a cafe or somewhere around here we can wait out the storm.”
“It’s… it’s fine, I—”
“Nah,” Mecha Man says. “C’mon. Before we both die of hypothermia.”
Before Herm can say anything in protest, Mecha Man grabs him by the arm, and he tries to ignore the flutter in his chest at the contact. Everything that he had in his mind before that moment shorts out.
He looks into the man (boy?)’s eyes and sees that they’re a shade of warm brown.
“I’m a—a big fan,” Herm whispers.
Mecha Man looks at him sideways, before grinning widely. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The McDonald’s is entirely deserted. It was the only 24 hour place the two of them could find near them. Besides a few night shift employees and one grumbling janitor, it’s just the two of them in the entire store.
“Thank God for that,” Mecha Man breathes, taking a bite of his burger. “I’m not in the mood for people.”
Herm nods solemnly in agreement. He takes a sip of his hot tea, sighing in relief as it warms him up. He’d cracked the lid off to stir in some cream and sugar, so he was being exceptionally careful to not spill any.
Being constantly wet had acclimated his body to being cold all the time, but being in a windy thunderstorm for hours was pushing his limits. A shiver briefly wracks his body, and he sets down his cup before any liquid can spill out.
“Do you…” Mecha Man clears his throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Herm looks up. “Huh?”
“Why you were up on that roof,” Mecha Man says, slightly awkwardly.
“Oh.” Herm avoids eye contact. “I’m. Um. Not having a good day.”
Understatement of the century.
Mecha Man’s gaze flicks briefly to the bruises and cuts on Herm’s shoulders, but thankfully doesn’t comment on them. “Fair enough,” he sighs. “I’ve had a shit day too. Check this baby out.”
He rolls up his sleeve, showcasing toned muscles and a gnarly laceration that went all the way up his forearm. Dried blood is caked all over his skin, smeared carelessly across every inch Herm can see. A trickle of fresh crimson drips lazily from the wound. Herm gasps.
“Oh my God!” He cries. “What—what happened?”
“Classic kaiju attack,” Mecha Man grins. “Got me right through the suit. I’m high as fuck on painkillers right now. Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have showed you that. How old are you, like, 12? Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me?”
“Can I—” Herm reaches timidly for his arms. “Can you show—I see?”
Mecha Man shoots him a weird look, before he shrugs. “Sure.”
He holds out his arm.
Herm blinks at it. It’s a lot deeper than most of his injuries, and Mecha Man’s loopiness probably indicates that he has some level of blood loss.
“P—please don’t freak out.”
“Takes a lot to freak me out, kid.”
Herm huffs a quiet laugh, before he sighs. Anxiety prickles at his gut. Mecha Man is definitely, certainly, 100% going to think he’s a freak after this.
Whatever. The bleeding is kind of freaking Herm out anyways.
Herm puts his palm to his mouth and lets a bit of water escape it, before gently placing it on Mecha Man’s forearm. The man yelps, yanking it away.
“JESUS!” He cries. “Dude, what the—”
“S–sorry!” Herm cries, holding his hands up in surrender. Water trickles down his palms as his nervousness spikes. “You said—said you wouldn’t freak out!”
“I didn’t think you were going to do that!” Mecha Man snaps back. He glances, panicked, at his arm, before realizing...
The wound has stopped oozing blood.
“What the f…”
“I sh—should’ve… should’ve told you,” Herm mutters. “Sorry.”
Looking from his arm to Herm and then back again, Mecha Man blinks in shock. “Powers?”
Herm shakes his head. “Not—not very. Not great. S—slow, it’s slow. Not good at it. Few days of. Healing. But it won’t s—scar. Anymore. Probably.” His eyes flick to the multitudes of other scars Mecha Man has on his arms, and wonders how he got them. “I just wanted to s–stop the, uh, bleeding.”
Mecha Man looks at his arm in wonder, before grinning. “Sick. What else can you do?”
Herm shakes his head fervently. Mecha Man wouldn’t be able to tell what exactly his powers were since the rain had them both soaked, but Herm wasn’t exactly keen on him finding out. Bodily fluid generation was a disgusting power to have. “I don’t—I don’t. I, um, I’m not—”
“Hey,” Mecha Man says gently, putting a hand on Herm’s shoulder. Herm’s heart splutters at the contact, and he forces himself to look Mecha Man in the eyes. His lashes are really long, beads of rainwater studding them like diamonds. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m just a really bad conversationalist.”
Herm’s heart leaps to his throat.
“I don’t think—You’re not a—not a bad conver—con—talker,” Herm replies timidly. Mecha Man takes his hand off his shoulder, and it takes everything in Herm not to reach for it again. “I’m. You’re not bad.”
“Dude, the first thing I asked you when we got on the ground was why you wanted to kill yourself,” Mecha Man says dryly. “I’m shit at this.”
Despite himself, Herm laughs. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’m not—not good—the bar’s pretty l—” he cuts himself off, burying his head in his hands. Why can’t he be normal for just one second?
When he looks up, Mecha Man is still looking at him expectantly, finishing off his burger. Herm’s chest twists, for some reason. He’s waiting for him.
“The—the bar’s pretty—pretty low. W—with me.”
Mecha Man doesn’t even say anything. He just holds his hand up in a fist. Nervously, Herm fist-bumps him, and Mecha Man clicks his tongue and shoots him a finger gun. Herm feels his face heat up.
“Fourteen.”
Mecha Man wipes a smear of mayo off his mouth. “Huh?”
“I’m—I’m not twelve. I’m fourteen.”
“Huh,” the other man muses. “Could’ve fooled me. You’re tiny.”
Herm bristles. “I’m not—I’m a decent height!” He cries. “You’re tiny!”
“Okay, maybe I’m not tall, but I drive a huge fuckin’ robot around town. That adds at least a foot to my height. Like, spiritually.”
“That’s not—that’s not how that works!”
Mecha Man throws his head back and laughs. It’s high pitched, boyish, and it’s pretty. When he talks, he does a—something to his voice, as if he’s trying to make it deeper and more intimidating, but… there’s none of that in his laugh. It’s pretty. He’s pretty.
Oh, God, what is he thinking?
“Oh, Jesus, you’re funny,” Mecha Man snorts. “You know, I never—”
A loud beeping suddenly cuts him off. Blinking a few times in rapid succession, Mecha Man checks his wrist and taps a band on it twice, and Herm watches as a hidden metal sheath unfolds and projects a light blue map of Torrance into the air. A bright red dot flashes on and off near one of the docks, and Mecha Man curses under his breath.
“Fuck. Kid, I gotta go.” He reaches out and pats Herm on the head. “You’ll be fine on your own, right? No more amateur skydiving?”
“N—no more amateur skydiving,” Herm stammers.
“Awesome.” He hops off the stool and grabs the brown paper bag that contains the rest of his fries and some chicken nuggets. With a smile, he mock-salutes Herm as he slinks out the door.
The silence in the room is deafening. Herm puts his hand on his cup of tea again, and finds that it’s just lukewarm now.
And then the door opens again, and Mecha Man peeks his head through. “What’s your name, kid?”
Herm looks up, his heart racing. “I—um. I’m. My name’s…”
Mecha Man stands there, waiting.
“Herm. Herm. My name’s Herm.”
Mecha Man’s face splits into a wide grin.
“See you around, Herm.”
The door swings shut.
“Y—yeah,” Herm whispers to nobody. “See you around too.”