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The ground is wet beneath Robert’s feet as he stands with his back to the brick side wall of the smoke shop he stands outside of. The smell of petrichor fills his senses, the aftermath of the world’s grieving. It’s late at night, the only roamers of the streets being those who drank too much and those with far too many thoughts to remain still.
The perimeters of the box of cigarettes fits smooth where it’s pressed to the crevices in his palms, fingers curved over the letters on the front. He bought it not so much for the taste as for the price, the lowest of which he could find among the rows of boxes.
He flips the box over and raps the filter-side against the heel of his palm for several seconds, a ritual of packing he’s come to perform more often the last couple of weeks when the shifts seemed to start dragging as much as they did drain him, hour after hour after dreadful hour.
He grabs the edge of the clear cellophane and tears it off the box, shoving the remains of the translucent wrapping in his jacket pocket. The top of the box is flipped open, revealing the cigarettes which sit side-by-side inside, the swath of orange folded around white. The box sits cradled in his palm as he observes the white rounds of the filtration at the top of each smooth, circular stick.
Smacking a finger against the top of the box, a few cigarettes emerge from where they’re huddled in the tight pack. His hand raises, fingers pinching a stick at the far left of the row to pluck it out. It slides out with a quiet shick, and he observes it where it remains just afloat the box between his index and middle finger.
The top of the box is folded over to meet the bottom partition, enclosing the cigarettes inside. His elbow raises up and backwards as he drops the cigarettes into his jacket pocket, and with the same hand his fingers curve around a red lighter which is pulled out and laid bare to the dim fog and dark of the night. He knows as he looks at the cigarette and the lighter the reprieve in the form of the sense of taste isn’t what he seeks as he stands here, at this moment, under the shed of light from the crescent moon.
He inhales shaky as he looks at the lighter and the cigarette side-by-side, and exhales something slow and weighty as his lashes flutter at the thought of what is about to come.
With a hand that now trembles, the cigarette is lifted to parted lips which enclose around the filter end. The lighter lifts, his other hand a shield against a cultivating flame, and with a press of his thumb against the red fork and a strike of the flint wheel, a flame ignites like the sprout of a firework in spring. Amber, fluid, warm and bright amongst the curve of his hand the flame glows, the electrifying promise of burn against the frigid rigidity of his cold skin tantalizing as it is frightening. The promise of burn, to fill gaping wounds with feeling so intense it chokes.
He sucks one, two short and firm drags, a pull of smoke, the float of a weightless sensation sizzling a passage in his head to make the weight his body bears on his feet feel a little lighter. His lids feel less overbearing as his face slopes skyward and the cigarette moves out from between the circle of his lips. He blows the smoke out and watches it rise high above him to fade.
The cigarette comes down to rest by his hip before it’s brought up again. He draws from the end, exhales a dark plume of fog, his shoulders slumping, suddenly more aware of the way his skin hangs on his face, the weeds in the cracks of the asphalt beneath his soles. The cigarette descends again as he ashes it, crackling sparks of debris flitting from the end and down to the damp ground to flicker, douse, die.
He continues to smoke until the cigarette is halfway finished.
Another trembling drag filled with little purpose is what reminds him of his task.
Fingers that are often nimble rise to clumsily undo the buttons of his light blue shirt, uncaring of changing after work, popping the first few open. He can feel his ragged exhales beneath the dance of his fingertips, which clear fabric to display the clammy expanse of skin of the left side of his chest.
His breath hitches as the cigarette rises to his mouth, and this time the smoke doesn’t soothe its way down his throat but abruptly stings like bitter seasoning. When the cigarette departs he coughs, watches the ash fall like snowflakes on a winter evening.
Slowly, shakily, the end of the cigarette comes to hover above the space just under the jut of his collarbone, red and hot as molten lava.
His hand oscillates back and forth with such intensity he tightens his grip, his heart beating to the rhythm of a pendulum built of fear.
He watches the concurrent existence of the pale skin of his chest, the cigarette end, his hand for a time he measures in heartbeats so erratic he feels his pulse in his ears.
Weakly muttered, hardly audible, “Pain is how we know we’re still living.”
The cigarette shakes, shakes, and shakes, poised over him like a blade over skin.
It shakes until something akin to reckless, liquid courage culminates from within every single living molecule of his being.
He presses the ember forward and into the soft of his skin.
The first thing he feels is:
hot,
hot,
hot, hot, hot.
Every single moment that passes is one where he hopes the temperature has reached its limit.
He is proved horribly wrong when it only continues.
The burn crescendos into a such an awful point of contact so painful and agonizing, like the stab of a knife that submerges its entire breadth yet traverses still deeper, that a desperate and humiliating noise rips from him loud and ugly, the sheer, overwhelming amount of mind-numbing unpleasant sensation shredding his will to remain stoic to dust.
All he can think is that it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
He can hear the sizzle of his skin even after he’s ripped the end away like the grill of charcoal under heat. It’s as if every single fibre of his being has centered down onto the crater where his skin seems to bubble, expand, deflate, very cells being diverged and reoriented to make way for the excruciating punishment that he has executed onto himself.
He hears himself pant once he’s risen from under the flood of torment, loud and heavy, saliva dribbling from his lips, eyes clouded and unseeing. He reaches up and finds his cheeks to be slicked wet.
The cigarette drops down to his side, his head drops back against the wall. He remains in such pain he cannot even find the energy within himself to utter an expletive, so he continues to gasp and hope that he finds this awakening of his body into an ember alight and alive from cold apathy to be the reason he stays another day.
He has no other reason but this.
There is nothing for him to expect but the pain that singes his nerves into dazzling infernos of heat, a reminder that he feels. To melt the cold, burn the numb, heighten all sense to a place only the smart of a bruise, the lick of blood from a wound, the loss of fear and embrace of that which consumes takes him.
To succumb to the eternal sleep that remains a taunt of promise, to offer his grip in a handshake with the deity of death, to relent, to sacrifice, to lay down in a place as warm as it is unfeeling.
There is nothing more he wishes for then to close his eyes for a final time.
May all my sins die with me when He deems me worthy of wings, he catches himself hoping on the nights when he draws from his body beads of crimson repentance.
“Robert?”
Sharp, pointed anxiety makes his head snap down to look at who is standing only feet away from him.
Flambae stares at him with an expression wholly unguarded and honest. His jaw is slack in disbelief, brows drawn in what seems to be perplexity. He’s dressed in civvie clothing, an outfit dark and revealing of his chest hanging loosely off his frame.
It takes Robert far too many uncomfortable heaves to find his voice, for the accomplishment is impeded by the ruinous state of his ghastly thoughts.
“I think—you’ve, uh,” he rasps awkwardly through pants, “got the wrong … guy.”
Flambae’s brows furrow, and his familiar angered expression flits over his face quick as the spread of wildfire in dry season. “Oh, trust me, I wish I could forget what your stupid face looks like.” His expression maintains its intensity as he asks with complete seriousness, “What the actual fuck are you doing?”
The comment spurs Robert to remember what he must appear like.
The crumpled state of his shirt, the cigarette hung limply between his fingers. His breathing, his limp form against the wall. His only small mercy is the burn concealed beneath his jacket where it’s angled close against him.
He looks an absolute horrid sight and Flambae knows it full and well.
He ultimately decides he has two options to consider: to talk or to run. With the pain sending his head to a place where he cannot seem to form coherent thoughts in succession well enough to be able to construct a reasonable lie, he knows very well it is the latter.
“Like I said, you’ve got the wrong guy,” he mutters and pushes himself upright with his unoccupied hand, fingers digging into the moss clinging to the brick behind him. He hopes Flambae doesn’t catch his grotesque wince in the shroud of dark as the cigarette is promptly dropped at his feet and suffocated with the sole of his shoe like the crush of a plant, stubbed out. He turns furtively, taking a step forward and away while placing deliberate effort into not hissing through his teeth.
Flambae predictably moves forward and grabs his bicep with a hand. “Stop fucking acting weird. What are you doing?” he asks with what may truly be concern.
Robert shakes his head, nausea threatening to bubble and spill from his throat and onto his shoes where he stands if he doesn’t begin to move. “Wrong guy,” he utters stupidly for the umpteenth time because he hasn’t a clue of what else to say.
“I do not have the wrong fucking guy and you fucking know it, bitch. Turn around. What are you hiding?”
Panic and acid rise in his throat, and with only instinct and slipshod thinking as his guide he drives his foot down as hard as he can onto Flambae’s own.
Flambae, caught off guard and distracted, breathes a pained noise and releases him. “Bitch, what the fuck—”
Robert, with no further preamble, bolts and begins to run with such speed he may as well have been running for his life.
“Hey!” he hears Flambae call behind him, which prompts him to run even faster.
The pinpricks of nausea and pain grow to be stronger with each bodily gasp Robert expels and intakes, the rush of it so strong he’s left dizzy and disoriented as a drunk in the dead of night with no means home. He runs and nearly stumbles into a wall, earning himself a look of confusion from a passerby who tries to ask him a question that he ignores.
He manages to run all of a few moments before it seems Flambae gathers his bearings and begins to run after him, footsteps heavy on the ground behind him and sounding closer and closer.
“Shit—” Robert turns the corner sharply—
—only for Flambae to tackle him into a wall with such force, pressing the burn directly into contact with a surface, that a broken yell is absolutely torn from his throat like the spurt of blood from a cut.
Flambae keeps his hands pinned on him though his body angles back. “What—what the fuck? I didn’t push you that hard, but—shit, you’re a fucking normie, that’s probably why. Shit. Sorry.”
Robert’s reply is another gasp for air he cannot seem to find, the pain so strong he feels faint with it. The bubbling in his throat is powerful enough he promptly turns his body, folds, and vomits. He hacks and spits, fluid searing up his throat and overflowing from between chapped lips, splattering onto the ground.
“Oh what the fuck!” Flambae yells, alarmed, taking a full step away yet hovering close. “Did I hurt you that bad?”
Robert with driblets hanging from his lips husks, “Not your—eugh—fault …” Not quite a lie, but not quite the truth with the exacerbation of the pain.
Flambae observes him and pats down his jean pockets for something that he doesn’t find. It seems he catches what Robert tries to hide because in the next moment he says in a tone that declares he is seeking to verify what he suspects, “Wait. Stand up.”
Robert stays folded, continuing to rasp weakly into the fabric stretched over his knees.
Flambae’s tone hardens into something no-nonsense, “Robert. Stand up.”
The direct mention of his name is a thought highly controversial to Robert as he shakes his head. The act works against him when another spike of nausea shoots through his head. “No.” He knows the protest is futile hard as he might try.
Flambae catches his shoulder with an unyielding hand and forces him upright regardless. Robert hears a breath leave him at what he sees.
“What the fuck is this?” he asks, sounding as shocked as Robert imagines he looks.
Robert coughs and drags the back of his arm over his mouth, the slick of his stomach acid and its contents painting a rather rotten shade over the plush of his jacket sleeve. “It’s nothing—”
“Did someone do this to you?” is asked in a way that is purely emotional.
Robert’s eyes narrow and he turns to smack Flambae’s hand off. It leaves easily though he is fully aware Flambae could manhandle him whichever way he pleases if he so chooses. “No, and it’s none of your business so leave it alone,” he tells him in a voice stern as it is weak.
Flambae scoffs a noise caught between a laugh and a wheeze. “Leave it alone?”
A furrow of his brow. “You heard me.”
“Why the fuck would I ‘leave it alone’ if there’s someone out there fucking burning people and that person obviously isn’t me?” Flambae’s hands throw up and out to drop at his sides. “This is the work of a fucking criminal, Bob-Bob.”
Robert keeps his line of sight hard on the ground as he talks.
“And trust me, I know all about burns and fire and everything. They hurt real fucking bad and scar like a bitch, too. Super destructive shit. So why don’t you tell me who did this so we can, like, get a reward for making Torrance safer or some shit?”
Robert presses his lips thin, blood seething hot with indignation as he expels in a low voice, “You gonna let me leave or keep lecturing me?”
Flambae’s head tilts forward, face caught in another befuddled expression, “Why the fuck aren’t you telling me anything?”
Robert says nothing.
Flambae’s expression shifts again as realization seems to hit him like the unexpected splash of water. His jaw loosens and his brows raise. “Wait. Did you …” He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing, seeming to imagine in his mind’s eye the state he found Robert in. “... Did you burn yourself?”
Robert sniffs and spits fluid onto the ground. “Respectively, stop asking questions, Chad,” he snaps.
Flambae doesn’t even seem to register the comment. “Why would you do that?” he asks quietly, shell shock contorting his face, the look of incredulity softer on his sharp features than his typical one of vexation.
Robert remains silent.
Flambae stares at him for a time too long to be anything but comfortable. He teeters his weight from one foot to the other, considers something, and at last decides with the commanding authority of a royal figure, “We’re going to the hospital.”
That seems to be what douses the warmth of Robert’s lethargic attitude into something piercing and awake. He shifts toward Flambae, eyes wide, voice a harsh yell, “What? No—no fuck no!”
Flambae tilts his head up from where he already stands taller than him. It’s as eye-roll inducing as it is infuriating. “That looks third-degree to me.”
Robert’s hands shake with both shock and frustration. He didn’t think he had held the ember that long against himself to constitute such a grave injury. As he breathes, all he can feel is the burn, his migraine, and anger rooting a pit deep in his chest. “Who cares!? I have a first aid kit at home, I’ll be fine!”
Flambae’s eyes narrow at him. He looks at Robert with something close to genuine pity; the thought makes Robert want to reach out to shove him away and run again. “Why are you so defensive about this shit? Just looking at it makes me feel like I’m going to hurl. It must hurt like fucking hell.” He leans closer to better scrutinize it. “It’s gonna fucking scar, too.”
Robert’s mouth gaps open before he says, “So!?”
Flambae shrugs as if the solution is easy, unnervingly level-headed. “So we’re going to get it treated right now.”
Robert jabs a finger in his direction and states with contempt poisonous enough it kills, “If you think I am going to the hospital with you this late to treat this then you oughta book yourself a visit to the nearest damn psych ward.”
Flambae’s brows shift into a slant that conveys disapproval, though he remains otherwise unfazed. “Either that or I’ll call Malevola and she’ll come heal you. After she beats the living shit out of you for doing this.”
Robert stands in disbelief potent enough he sways with it. “Can’t you just—just pretend you didn’t see this?”
Flambae’s answer arrives quick as his ability to spring flames from fingers, “No. Whatever this is—it’s, like, not okay.” Rare honesty is something Robert hears within those words despite their half-hearted delivery.
Robert’s shoulders lift with the motion of his hands as he gestures at him while stating, “Like you’re one to talk.”
Flambae frowns harder. “I am one to talk! It’s either the hospital or Malevola so you better make a decision now.”
Robert glares at Flambae intensely enough he zooms out of focus, heated emotion blurring his vision. “And if I don’t?”
Flambae shrugs. “What, you think I can’t fold you in half like a fucking twig and fly us to the nearest emergency room? You weigh what, a hundred twenty?”
“More than that,” Robert replies quickly, ears pinkening at the thought.
Flambae, abnormally astute, catches it with a lopsided grin. “That put an image in your head?”
“No,” Robert spits.
“You’d be lucky to bed this hot piece of ass, Robbo,” Flambae tells him, running a hand through his locks, smiling with far too much ego.
“Like I would want to,” is what Robert responds with, fatigue clear in his voice.
Flambae rubs his fingers over his eye as if bored or tired, his golden rings glinting in the illumination from a streetlight before he says, “You do know that third-degree burns can kill you, right?”
Robert stares at his own shoes as if the answer is written there. Looks up. “I can treat it at home.”
Flambae laughs this time, loud and unreserved, and Robert watches the way his shadow’s shoulders shake where it’s cast onto the pavement behind him. “With what? A fucking bandaid?” His brows raise at him as his chin dips toward his chest, the sarcastic question of really? found within his face. “Be honest with yourself.”
Robert spends the next few moments trying to find the hint of humor within the curves of Flambae’s face and comes up empty-handed.
“Why do you even care!?” he asks and finds that he truly does seek the answer.
Flambae blinks at him like the question is stupid. “Why do I care about not letting my boss die in the middle of the street or in his shitty place? It’s called basic human fucking decency, Bobby.”
“Like you would—” Know is left unsaid as he shuts his mouth, breathing harsh through his nose.
Flambae yawns, eyes watering. “Tick-tock, better choose fast. Oh, what’s that sound?” Flambae asks the sky, facing upward before his head lowers and he cups the hand with dismembered fingers around his ear. “The sound of you getting sepsis due to your untreated third-degree fucking burn,” he sing-songs with a touch of passive-aggressiveness as badly as he did in The Sardine. “Oh, and my plans going to shit because I had to see your mug outside of work. Fucking sucks because the guy I was meeting looked decent enough I wasn’t going to have to turn the lights off when we got to the good part,” he mutters under his breath, practically petulant.
Robert scrubs a hand over his face and groans. He considers it—the hospital trip would attract more attention, would cost him more than he could possibly even think about affording. Malevola, on the other hand, was a co-worker and he did not need any more unnecessary attention to this incident.
He thinks for a few heartbeats before Flambae is able to supersede his decision.
Says at last with no small amount of discontent, “Fine, Malevola.”
Flambae’s mouth quirks as he whips out his phone. “Good.”
“None of this is good,” Robert murmurs quietly enough Flambae doesn’t hear as he brings the phone up to his ear.
Flambae shuts his phone off after a minute of conversation and begins to steer Robert toward a bench far down the street.
“I can walk myself there,” Robert says with far too little air, his arm slung around Flambae’s broad shoulders.
“Look, I really don’t wanna have to carry your unconscious ass around if you fall like I’m some kind of killer who forgot to bury their victim so just shut up,” Flambae tells him, readjusting his grip on his waist and his forearm.
Robert finds no retort and chooses to keep silent as Flambae drops him on the edge of the bench. He collapses onto it, head leaned over the backrest, eyes half-lidded. His breathing is burdened by pain, chest tight.
“Fucking told you! Don’t fall asleep or I really will have to take you to the hospital,” he can hear Flambae say.
Robert, observing him through bleary vision, responds with the voice of someone who awoke from a sleep far too short, “I won’t.”
Flambae mutters something in a language he doesn’t comprehend, likely many different obscenities in rapid succession by the tone, pacing the space in front of him.
They wait for only a few minutes before the fabric of very space ripples, colors itself an angry red, and tears itself open in front of them. Out from it emerges Malevola in pajamas. She wears a cropped, off-the-shoulder shirt bearing the faded words Harvard—no doubt stolen from Sonar—over a pair of sleep-shorts hung low on her waist. Absent from her face is the rouge of her lipstick and eyeshadow, replaced by a drowsy sleepiness that is evident in her slow blinks.
She rubs an eye with the heel of her palm. “This better be good,” she mumbles, her voice accented and slightly warped, the portal behind her closing.
Flambae has enough respect to appear a little regretful at having woken her up as he responds, “As good as it gets. Or bad. As bad as it gets.” He waves his hand in the air. “You know what I fucking mean.”
Malevola angles her body toward Robert and suddenly appears more awake upon sight of his precarious position where he’s half-hanging from the bench. “You told me Robert got burned bad?”
“He did. Third-fucking-degree bad.”
Any and all traces of her relaxation are erased as her stance goes rigid. “Oh, shit, seriously?” Her eyes are wide with surprise. “Robert, what the fuck happened?”
Robert lifts his head, heavy as a stack of bricks. “I—well,” he murmurs, wondering if the pain has sent him into delirium when he cannot bring himself to finish the sentence.
“He burned himself,” Flambae answers plainly.
Malevola scrunches her expression into one that asks for elaboration. “With what?”
“A cigarette,” Robert mumbles weakly, eyes focused on anything but them.
Malevola’s face transitions through several phases—shock, one of thought, one of confusion and settling finally on horrible realization. “Are you—wait—Robert, I wasn’t aware that you—self-harm?” she says like the word is something heavy that needs to be lowered onto the ground with care. “Since when?”
Robert swallows uneasily. “I feel like I’m going to pass out so if you wouldn’t ask anymore questions then that would be really appreciated.”
Malevola stares at him. Moves toward him. “Well the moment you don’t look like you’re dead on your feet I might as well turn into Ron Iddles,” she rebukes as she leans toward him, helping him shrug his jacket off his shoulders. She notices the traces of vomit which serves to intensify the worry on her face.
“Who?” Flambae questions, eyebrow raised.
“Australian detective with a conviction rate of ninety-nine percent. Wild stuff.” She unbuttons Robert’s shirt further and moves it out of the way. Robert knows she sees the burn when she winces with her entire face like somebody just hurt her. “Ooh, God, that’s gotta hurt,” she mumbles, wasting no time in cupping her palm over the wound.
Something akin to a stinging fizz surrounds the wound, and Robert gasps, fingers scrabbling on the edge of the bench. He grinds his molars together hard enough he wouldn’t be surprised if she had heard him. He can feel himself shaking, and she lays a grounding palm on his bicep. “Sorry,” she whispers.
“And that’s why you don’t play with fire,” Flambae unhelpfully mumbles as he stands off to the side and watches them.
“Hypocrite,” Robert croaks in a heavy breath, perspiration dripping down the nape of his neck, his chest, his face.
Her hand finally ascends after what feels like hours. “It’s not life-threatening anymore but you still need to get it checked out.” Robert nods lazily, a single bob of his head up and down.
She looks at him. Really looks, like she has no other business in the world but to observe him and memorize each and every detail of his face. Says in a tone unfitting of her usual sereneness, “What caused you to feel like you needed to do this?”
Robert rubs the back of a wrist across his forehead. “You really want to get me into the specifics right now?”
Malevola rises, the pad of her flip-flops on wet ground. She looks at Flambae and he at her with a look so startlingly similar Robert briefly considers the idea of telepathy at play. “We might just have to tell Chase about this,” Malevola mutters. Flambae says nothing.
Robert’s body bolts upright, wincing at the pull at his burn. It’s more sore than painful now, at the very least. “Chase? Oh, oh no no you are not doing that!”
Malevola whips toward him and says with genuine frustration, “Would you rather us let you keep hurting yourself like this? This is self-destruction, I’ve seen it before and I see it now!”
Robert knows she’s right, the thought irritating. “I just—don’t tell him, alright? He’ll never leave me alone. I’ll be guarded to the point where—shit, I won’t even be able to go to the bathroom without someone in my space!”
“Then maybe you should have thought of that before doing this,” Flambae states, unusually pensive.
Malevola clicks her tongue, shifts her back toward them. Stares at something he can’t see. Turns again. The actions provide Robert an estimate of how hard she must be thinking. “Listen. I’ll make a deal with you,” she says with a reprimanding tone. “You are booking a doctor’s appointment and signing yourself up for therapy and you are sticking with it.” Her gaze narrows. “And if we catch you doing something like this again, then we tell Chase, and Mandy, and we get you inpatient care because I’ve seen what this does to someone, Robert, and it’s really, really hard to watch.” Her voice wavers at the end, and she gazes at him with sadness.
Silence lapses in favor of Robert’s voice. It is laden with enough tension it is as palpable as their presence.
“Okay,” is whispered at last.
Her cupid’s bow is pronounced in the small smile she summons. “Okay?”
Robert nods once, small and tentative.
“Okay.” She looks down at Flambae, who sports a grim look on his face as he looks between the two of them. Silence and the sound of their breathing ensues.
“Thanks for calling me,” Malevola says at last. Robert can’t place whether the gratitude is genuine or not.
Flambae shrugs, meeting her eye. “It was either you or the hospital and I let Bob-Bob make the decision.”
The fact brightens her face. “Did you? Well consider myself flattered, Robert, though I think the hospital would have been a better idea.”
Whether it is due to the pain or the exhaustion he manages only a weak response, “Yeah, uh, no problem?”
Malevola smiles full and well, now, as she hitches her broadsword from her back and swings it over and in front of her. She raises her arms and slices down, renewing the burst of heat, energy, and finally the portal. “Let’s get you home.” When he doesn’t get up she asks, “Can you walk?”
“Uh …” Robert drawls.
Flambae walks forward and heaves his arm over his shoulders again. “Just let me help you, bitch.”
Robert lets Flambae bear most of his weight as his hands readjust on his side and his wrist. Slow steps ease their way forward.
“Hey, um,” Robert starts. His eyes water. “Thanks, Mal.”
Malevola bears her teeth in a grin at him. “Least I could do for you, babes.” Her smile drops when she says with full seriousness, “But don’t you try testing the boundaries of that warning I gave you just now. I’m no snitch but I’m no bystander, either.”
Looking sheepish as he responds, “Will do.”
Flambae tightens his grip on his wrist briefly as a way of getting his attention. “No thank you for me?”
Robert scoffs, refraining from retorting with something snarky. He really could have ended up in a situation much, much worse without him he realizes now. “Thank … you,” he grits.
“Good little mutt,” Flambae cooes, snickering as he avoids Robert’s weary swat at his shoulder.
“I don’t need to be third-wheeling this,” Malevola tells them as she flanks one side of the portal, arms crossed. Her expression is amused.
Robert’s eyebrows scrunch. “Third-whe—there is no anything to third-wheel.”
“Not my type,” Flambae reiterates.
The last thing Robert sees of Malevola before she submerges into the depths of the portal is a smirk hung over her shoulder directed at them.