#watch me do a silly little dance as I grin about communication and healthy/unhealthy coping methods

[clxckwork-sun-n-moon]

looking at the toolbox fools in particular, two prompts to choose from:

"You can't keep it bottled up forever." and/or "How long did you think you could hide that?"

i might have a catharsis communication/ hurt comfort agenda here hehe >:3c

mmmm yes we are serving some good catharsis tonight

(bounty hunter Eclipse is from naffeclipse, detective AU is from sunnys-aesthetic)

---

Smoke (2172 words, no CWs)

Eclipse had been sitting in the workshop for ten minutes now, and his mechanic had barely said a word to him beyond “Hey, make yourself at home.” They’d been working on a limb project the whole time, and considering the amount of grease scraping their elbows they’d been roughly this amount of busy the whole day.

He sat at the work table. They worked. He leaned across on his elbows. They worked. His fingers tapped slowly on the table surface. They worked.

A thin wisp of steam vented from the back of Eclipse’s neck as his optics narrowed.

“Busy day?” he asked.

“Mm? Yeah, pretty busy,” they replied, briefly glancing up from the leg they were wrist-deep in. For a moment Eclipse wanted to breeze past the table, grab them from their work, and curl up on the sofa until they weren’t sweating and their hands didn’t tremble. But he didn’t. He would be good, he could be good.

“Have you taken a break at all today?” he pressed in further. There was a twitch, a telltale squeeze as the mechanic tightened their grip on the screwdriver in their hand.

“It’s fine, I’ve just been working on back-up things,” they replied.

“Didn’t realise you could have a busy and a lazy day,” Eclipse kept the pressure down, and the mechanic didn’t buckle so much as show a crack in the edge. They let out a long and slow breath, before quietly continuing to pick through the leg’s innards, setting peeling wires aside for later inspection.

Eclipse’s fingertips dug into the metal table surface. Just a notch.

“Have you been getting up to anything?” he asked. “Getting outside the workshop at all?”

“Mmm. Not much.”

Oh, now he definitely wanted to grab, but this time to scruff and sit them down and find out what was hidden behind the low words and quiet attitude and inability to look at him in the optics. Stepping around the side of the table got the mechanic’s attention finally, as they paused in their work to look over and up (and up a bit more).

“What’s wrong?” Eclipse rumbled. 

“Nothing!” It was like their whole body had puffed up, the way their shoulders tucked up to their ears and arms folded in with elbows sticking out.

“You’re not talking about something.”

“Because there’s nothing to talk about!” Their gaze flicked downwards, narrowing as they looked back to Eclipse’s face. “So says the guy with a busted ankle. How long did you think you could hide that? Honestly, the way you hold your weight to one side says it all-”

“And you have been working non-stop since the morning, maybe even last night.” Dark bags under the eyes, sweat-swept hair, a tremor on the knuckles. Eclipse ducked down, lifting the mechanic easily into his grip to set them on the worktable - only they abruptly curled inwards, painfully whining.

That was not a usual response to Eclipse’s level of strength.

Immediately he set them on the table, eye to chest, but easier now for him to pull at their shirt. The mechanic smacked at him, cawing and fluttering and spluttering, but he tugged the hem from where it’d been tucked in and pulled it up.

Purple and green. A violent splattering of colour adorned the side of the mechanic’s lower torso. Some of it was sparse dots but the largest bruise was most definitely the size and shape of a regular human boot’s sole.

Eclipse stared. Servo ticking wildly as he absorbed the sight, taking in the details, the depth of florid violet and sickly green.

“Clip?” Hands against his cheeks pulled Eclipse from his daze, optics going from black to yellow once more. His mechanic dragged him back to their face, the distant exhaustion turned agony now turned a soft regret. 

His shoulders sagged. Leaning in, he pressed his forehead against their’s as they drew circles along his sunrays. Together they waited for the burst of energy to seep away to the corners of the room.

“Let me down so I can fix your ankle,” the mechanic said quietly.

“Do you have anything for the bruise?” Eclipse replied.

“Some lotion. Nothing fancy.”

Humming in understanding, Eclipse scooped his hands under their arms, waiting for them to grip on before he lifted them back down to the floor. He kept a hand on their back as they moved to one of the stools, and kicked off his shoe with the toe of the other. While he sat, they rummaged in one of the drawer, pulling out several screwdrivers and a set of pliers that they slid into small loops on their belt. Then they kneeled below him, rolling up the trouser leg with professional focus.

“I don’t see anything straight off, what happened?” the mechanic asked.

“Kicked something harder than I should have.” Specifically someone’s rib-cage. Eclipse was built well but kicking things (people) over and over had consequences. Who could have expected that? The mechanic squinted a touch disbelievingly before going into the ankle joint.

“...Oh, yeah. You’ve popped part of the joint connection to the leg, I can rewire it back into place and strengthen the back part of the foot so this won’t happen for a while.”

“Good.” Eclipse leaned back in his seat, gritting his teeth as the panelling of his calf was pried open. As much as there was comfort in familiar, reassuring hands, it didn’t necessarily reduce the discomfort as someone else opened him up to fix problems he was well accustomed to. Metal clinked away as the mechanic did the work they promised. Moments of hissing wire and quiet tension that grew and fell. Silently they propped his foot up onto their knee, to better open it up and examine the supports inside. Under the screwdriver, the low wire ache ebbed away, leaving behind a comfortable emptiness. A lack of pain.

“Give that a try,” the mechanic urged. Eclipse lifted his foot free, setting it flat on the ground and testing the ankle joint, back and forth.

“Much better,” he said, giving it a little stomp for good measure. The mechanic huffed, pride filtering through the exhaustion, and left him to set his trousers and shoes back to normal while they packed the toolkit away. When they turned back, he was already stood to full height, a hand extended to settle between their shoulders.

“Your turn,” Eclipse rumbled. The mechanic shifted, eyes widening a touch. Surprise? Panic? A bit of both? But they didn’t argue, folding underneath his hand as they led the way around to their washroom. Rummaging through one of the cupboards, they retrieved a small pot of lotion, handing it over to Eclipse. With them sat on a spare stool, and Eclipse on his knees, they were both almost about the same height level.

They unbuttoned their shirt, pulling the undershirt hem up and aside for Eclipse. Daubing some of the lotion onto a finger, he began to work it into the patches of mottled skin that he could see.

“Easy,” the mechanic muttered. “You don’t have to press down so hard.”

Eclipse gave them a brief look before continuing his work. Silence seeped into the room, lit by a partially fizzing light bulb. For such a menial task, Eclipse took it with a combination of reverence and repulsion - it was still his mechanic but the work was ugly, and these bruises would need to be looked after with care until they healed. How easy these bodies were to break.

For now though, he would kneel. 

“Who did this?” he asked. A name, a face, a location. Anything to spark a trail.

“I don’t know,” his mechanic replied, shrugging briefly. “I - I was having a bad day. Bad week. I just wanted one thing to go right so I got dinner at Chica’s and just…some guy decided to mouth off on one of her waitresses.”

“You stepped in to defend?”

“I cracked him across the jaw.” They snorted, and Eclipse could feel the muscles contract under his hand even while they winced. “Fighting on linoleum floors is…tricky. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Eclipse muttered as he rubbed his thumb across the wide sole-shaped bruise. A size six? Maybe a size seven. He could consider it later.

“Honestly, I wasn’t even doing it to defend her. I was just mad. I wanted an outlet and that was the easiest one that I could see in the moment.” The admission was unbidden, and a surprise to that much as well. Especially since earlier talk had been like prying blood from a stone.

Wiping the last traces of lotion away, Eclipse inclined his head, nodding that the work was done. The shirt hem was left to fall again. While he didn’t say anything, he did offer his hand after getting to his feet, and the mechanic took it to shuffle in his wake out of the washroom. 

Back inside the workshop, they took charge again, this time guiding Eclipse towards the main sofa - the easiest place to be held and a favoured spot for both. They sat down, he sat down next to them, and they scrambled their way over his lap to lay against his chest.

“How long were you holding onto that anger that you decided to start a fist-fight?” Eclipse asked, genuinely curious. He had seen plenty of his mechanic’s fire and knew they were entirely capable of protecting themselves (most of the time), but going from zero to one hundred on the compulsion to hurt someone was not something that fit into his view of his raven.

The response was to press their face into his chest and remain quiet. Once several long seconds had passed of this, he sighed and began to card his fingers through their hair.

“You need to find an actual outlet when you get overwhelmed,” he chided them quietly. 

“Strong words from the bounty hunter,” was the cloth muffled reply.

“I’m serious. You can't keep it bottled up forever. You could have talked to me, if I’d know you were stressed.” His fingers tapped against their cheek, soft contact on soft skin.

“I…I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Little bird, the reason I don’t talk about my work is because it’s confidential.”

“And you shoot people.”

“Sometimes I shoot people. If you need to complain about your workload, I can listen.”

The mechanic sagged in his arms, head shuffling so they could peek up to look at him.

“How do you deal with strong emotions?”

Eclipse hesitated. For a long time. Thoughts slipping backwards towards metal and sanguine, before he felt his mechanic pick up his hand and start playing over his fingers, as if they knew he needed tethering in the moment. Or maybe they were trying to tether themselves.

“I smoke cigars,” he replied. 

“You don’t have lungs though.”

“It’s - it’s the act, not the breathing.” His eyes flickered over them, the way their head tilted to the side. Bringing out a cigar, Eclipse flicked his lighter open. It felt wasteful now, without the desire for the spark, but still the calm rolled over him as the red embers began to wrap around the end of the cigar, smoke starting to wisp and roll into the air. They watched quietly, shuffling sideways to kneel on the sofa. 

“...It is hypnotic, in a way,” they commented finally.

“In a way,” Eclipse agreed. “...Do you want to try it?”

“Like actually smoking it?”

“I’ve heard humans like it. Seen them smoking it. And cigars are meant to be better than cigarettes, more…flavour.”

The mechanic’s nose wrinkled, but they shuffled in closer, taking the cigar from offered hands. As ever, they put their trust in Eclipse’s palm to hold and protect, as they lifted the cigar to their lips, breathed in - and started choking immediately. Smoke spluttered out of their nose like a dying dragon, fitting to their wheezing. Eclipse patted them (not too firmly) on the back, waiting for the thick coughs to return to spluttering and then back to gulps of air.

“No,” they muttered, passing the cigar back. “No, absolutely not.”

The smoke and embers were extinguished fully by Eclipse’s palm, and he shoved the wasted tobacco back in his pocket. Small coughs continued to rise from the mechanic, eased by circles he drew on their back. 

“If you have someone you can talk to, maybe you should,” he pressed the issue further. “I…didn’t. For a long time.”

“Hence the coping method of setting a little something on fire.” The small laugh wasn’t hearty, and the smile didn’t reach their eyes. But the fall of their shoulders wasn’t one of defeat. “Well, since I’m not the keenest on mild acts of arson, maybe I could…I don’t know. Talk a bit more.”

“It doesn’t have to be me,” Eclipse added. “Just someone.”

“...Thank you.” They folded into his arm, which settled around their waist. Now at least as the pair shared silence in the room, it was breathable.

#clockwork writings #offer of a toolbox #bloodstain fool #watch me do a silly little dance as I grin about communication and healthy/unhealthy coping methods