Flaws

By Shahrezad1

Summary: there are times when Calhoun's coding is all too human. A series of very short moments. Hero's Cuties pairing.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Wreck It Ralph—Disney does. :)

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Chapter 3: Strength

If five years of marriage to the love of his life had taught him anything it was how to weather the storms. Especially on Bad Nights.

This was one of them.

The mattress shook as his wife uncurled herself from around his form. Felix had always been a sound sleeper before meeting his Dynamite Gal, but there was something about the removal of complete and total security which woke a man up.

It was a sense of wrongness somehow. An absence, as though everything important to him was being pulled away, leaving him bereft. Felix was familiar with the feeling even during the daytime (mostly when they had to go their separate ways and to their separate game cabinets), but it was stronger at night. When there weren't tasks to distract them from the strength of their bond.

"Tammy, sweetheart," he called out blearily, voice scratchy and eyes blinking. She said nothing, resting her hands on bent knees.

The silhouette of stiff shoulders shook in the dim green lighting of an 8-Bit alarm clock and he felt something inside of him sink.

"What's wrong?" the repairman asked, slowly coming awake as he crawled over a sea of covers to her side. But still Calhoun-Fix-It (she's insisted on the hyphenated name) said nothing. Until a sob escaped through enemy lines.

"Oh, honey-love," he murmured, wrapping an arm around one of her shoulders. Tamora turned fully to bury her face in his tiny chest, hand gripped on the loose tee he used as a pajama top, having long since abandoned the matching blue-with-gold-hammers set at her behest.

Then she cried. Moaning through tears about how Brad had died first and then Felix had, too. All before her very eyes, while she had been unable to do a thing.

The repairman curled himself around her as best as he was able, running gloveless fingers soothingly through her short, feathery hair. Never allowing his wife to see the tears making their way down his own cheeks.

Because every now and again there were nights when he had to be the strong one—for the both of them.