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Robert Tofflemire was going to be in bed for a while.
He knew this was going to happen: he was an impulsive idiot all around. Less and less had he found things like stickers, lollipops, lockpicks and pens in the void that his hands constantly reached into, and more had he just been finding magazines, pins and triggers-- the metal kind.
Robert wasn’t an idiot. He just had no explanation for himself.
Yet, even though he knew he wasn’t going to be in bed for long, due to the high demand of Sigma-10’s availability during the month, he still considered the sudden hospitalization a blessing in disguise to get away from frontline stress for two seconds. Additionally, in an act he could only call a premature Christmas miracle, he was very much still alive. Employees had walked away with way worse than him in the beginning days of the month, not to mention the fact that, just because it’d been a while since someone died, didn’t mean he was safe from everything. The strain of the power vacuum inside his heart that the burning hatred left behind as he’d bled out and the memories of being stabbed with his own insulin years prior made his head throb.
Cecil’s question, meanwhile, worsened his headache. It’s not like he kept track of the items after he used them. It’s not like it hurt Robert to pull anything out of nothing, mentally or physically, and it wasn’t like his lifeline was exactly measurable... not like the unpredictability of Sloth’s Pit made it any easier.
He remembered he wasn’t alone in the medical room when some footsteps came closer to him and he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Despite the fact Liv had been around him for nearly a year, he felt like he was taking in her features all over again. Maybe it was the blood loss.
Without any bandana atop her head, he could see her healthy, thick and dark roots peeking out a lot more visibly now. Her strands of platinum blonde made her look like she’d been grazed by a stylish lawn mower-- Robert didn’t mean it as an insult, anybody who survived a lawn mower was worthy of Excalibur. She had noticeable eyebags, home to eyes slightly darker than his own that reminded him of hot cocoa on a winter night. Little scars dotted her entire body, like a matched pair to Robert. Her hands were perfectly calloused along the tips of her fingers, so the sides of her hands were still soft. Akin to Robert, she hadn’t shaved any of her arm hair, or at least he assumed from what he could see poking out from underneath the tactical gloves she was wearing.
She was in the semi-formal uniform that lots of Site-87 employees wore when they were technically at work but had no immediate assignments: a formal white shirt with dark blue pants; a bulletproof vest with her surname emblazoned in bold white text on the back; a dark blue long sleeve undershirt that held other necessary projections like elbow and arm guards; and armor to cover everything from her belt to her ankles. The cherry on top was the combat boots, in Robert’s opinion. They were oddly comfortable, and he supposed that if that was the reason why their budget was kind of shit during the cold months, it was worth the investment. The tight comfort of the boots made him wish he hadn’t tried to blow up a car at point blank.
“How you feeling?” Liv hummed in a low tone.
“Poor.” Robert answered plainly, tilting his head into the shoulder where her hand sat. “Doing better.”
“Any pain in your chest?”
Robert heaved a heavy breath out to test whatever theory she had. “Am I on painkillers?”
“I heard they were light.”
He shrugged. “Either you’re wrong or I’m unkillable.”