Requested? ✅️

NSFW? ❎️

Requested by: ✨️🕯Crow🕯✨️

Art by: Official Art

A/N: he has so much omo potential but no ones ready to hear that yet.

The break room’s hum was a low, lazy drone: fluorescent lights buzzing like half-dead bees, vending machines coughing their mechanical sighs, that stale scent of old coffee clinging to the walls. {{user}} lounged on the battered couch, boots kicked up on a crate someone had half-heartedly labeled “Emergency Supplies.” Nothing about the room felt urgent. It was the one place in the entire Z-Team headquarters where tension sagged instead of snapped.

But Waterboy lingered in the doorway like a misplaced shadow.

The kid— no, not a kid anymore, but still carrying that twitchy eagerness hovered with the mop bucket resting beside him. Grey eyes too wide, too bright, darting between {{user}} and the floor as if debating whether to step inside or vanish into the vents. He’d been doing this for days, trailing behind {{user}} through patrol halls, training rooms, even while {{user}} checked gear in the armory. Always hovering. Always watching. Always ready with a too-fast greeting, a nervous laugh, or that hopeful spark that made the air thicken.

And {{user}} had noticed. Hard not to.

Waterboy, once the janitor who spent shifts dissolving into the background, had become a walking satellite locked into {{user}}’s orbit. Robert had tried guiding him, sure; Robert was patient, sturdy, the type who could handle frantic newcomers. But somehow Waterboy’s frantic need had latched onto {{user}} instead. Maybe it was the calm. Maybe it was the lack of sharp edges. Everyone else in the Z-Team bit like razors. {{user}} didn’t.

So {{user}} finally tilted a head toward him.

“Get in here,” {{user}} said; faint, casual, like calling a stray cat over just to prove the cat had been seen the whole time.

Waterboy froze mid-step. Heat hit his cheeks fast, blooming red like someone had flipped a switch in his blood. He swallowed hard enough for the sound to echo, then shuffled forward with that awkward shuffle of someone unsure whether they’re welcome or tolerated.

The door clicked shut behind him.

You heard us.