In theory, Helmut and Bob's plan was simple, take some form of transport to the frozen remains of Grulovia and locate Helmut's body using the natural connection he had with it to bring them to the exact location in the frozen lake, then excavate his body and put his brain back where it belonged.
In execution…it was a lot more complicated to say the least.
First, and most obviously, Helmut had been classified as 'dead' for the last twenty years, so there was a lot of paperwork involved in updating his status to 'alive' and how exactly he 'came back from the dead'.
And secondly, was Bob.
Contrary to what Bob believed in his depressed and highly emotional state at the time, he hadn't actually been fired, which solved a few issues such as Bob getting to keep his 'Senior Agent' status. Instead, Bob had been placed on permanent leave until he could prove that he was no longer a danger to his fellow agents, which is what was causing problems.
With the knowledge that his husband was alive and Razputin's mental diving, Bob's mental state had already significantly improved. But two decades of a drunken depression didn't just magically go away, so Bob still had to prove that he was safe enough to reinstate as an agent by seeing a therapist, as mandated by Truman.
And even if Bob managed to prove himself worthy of reinstatement immediately, something even he had to admit would probably take at least a few sessions with his therapist, there was also a matter of him being classified as inactive for over a decade and a half, which would be more paperwork to wait on.
So, it was safe to say that, unless Helmut and Bob could magic up the money to pay for a trip to Grulovia and excavate Helmut's body all by themselves, their plans were on hold for a while.
Which is why, a week after the Maligula resurrection and defeat, Razputin found Helmut and Bob in Green Needle Gulch, trying their best to fix the damage that Mother Nature had done to the Feel Mobile.
"Hey, guys, how's it going?" Raz asked as he approached Bob and Helmut's brain.
"Well, Compton finally managed to convince the family of skunks to move out." Helmut said happily.
"It didn't do much for the smell though, I'm glad that I can have my plants go in there and clean it out for me." Bob commented.
"Come on, I doubt it's that bad." Helmut rolled his mental eyes.
"You don't currently have a nose." Bob pointed out.
"Point taken." Helmut relented. "Besides the skunks, there's still a lot of work to be done after the Feel Mobile is cleaned out. There's no telling how many rusted parts we're going to have to replace until we open the baby up, and replacement parts aren't going to be easy to find with how old she is now."
"I'm sorry that I didn't take better care of the van." Bob sadly apologised to his husband. "I-I should have at least covered it with a tarp."
"Hey, it's alright." Helmut said comfortingly as he rolled closer to Bob. "I know that you were in a bad place, I'm not mad."
Bob smiled down at his husband's brain. "Thanks."
Raz watched the interaction and fiddled with his helmet strap.
"Hey, Agent Zanotto, Agent Fullbear, can I ask you something?" He said.
"Sure, kid." Helmut responded.
"So, you guys are married, right? Like, husband and husband?" Raz shifted his feet.
While Raz had never seen the two verbally confirm their relationship status, the wedding that Raz had ran through while in Bob's mind didn't leave much room for alternate interpretation.
"Oh boy." Bob muttered to himself.
"Yes, we're married." Helmut said with a laugh. "We love each other very much and you know that there's nothing wrong with it, right."
Helmut had sort of been preparing for this sort of question.
Raz was only ten years old after all, and so was still learning about the world. So, a question about same-sex couples was likely to come up.
"Of course I know that." Raz stated with a 'no duh' tone of voice.
"Oh." Helmut said as Bob let out a relieved sigh, happy that he didn't have to have a 'love is love' discussion with the boy.
"But I was hoping that you could give me some advice. Like, how did you know that you really loved each other?" Raz asked.
Helmut hummed.
"It's hard to properly describe kid, I just knew that being around Bobby made me feel happy." The brain answered.
Bob smiled at his husband's words and nodded in agreement. "Helmut's singing made everything bright." He muttered.
"Oh." Raz said. "But, how did you know that it was that kind of feeling and not just friendship?"
"Why does this matter so much to you kid, you're only ten?" Bob asked.
"Well, it's just that I'm trying to work out my own feelings." Raz shifted awkwardly. "I mean, she called me her boyfriend and I called her my girlfriend, but I don't really know if it's just something we're saying or if it's true. There was that kiss."
"Hey, calm down kid." Bob said as gently as his gravelly voice could. "Why don't you sit down and we can talk through this."
"Okay." Raz said, sitting down with his legs crossed.
Helmut rolled closer to Raz while Bob took a seat on the camping chair that he'd set up nearby, too old to be able to go all the way to the ground easily.
"Ah, young love." Helmut marvelled. "So, who's the 'she'?"
"I-I don't want to say." Raz said. "I mean, it's not like it's a secret, but…"
"You still feel embarrassed to have other people know about it?" Bob finished for Raz.
He had been much of the same way, even though the other members of the Psychic 7 had seen his attraction to Helmut from a mile away, it still took him a while to be comfortable talking about their relationship and his feelings for Helmut with the others.
Raz nodded.
"That's fine, you don't have to tell us her name." Helmut assured. "Are you comfortable saying how you met?"
"Well…" Raz rubbed the back of his neck. "We met while at camp, two weeks ago."
"Two weeks?" Bob raised an eyebrow.
"Eh, actually less." Raz amended. "And, actually, we didn't spend that much time together, I was mostly off trying to earn my merit badges as quickly as possible."
"So, you spent a couple of weeks seeing each other around camp?" Bob asked.
"A day." Raz corrected.
"A day?" Helmut and Bob questioned.
"You were only at camp for a day?" Bob questioned further.
"Yeah, it turns out that the Coach was evil and kidnapping the campers because of mental issues, and I helped stop him and rescue everyone's brains. So, Agents Nein and Vodello, oh and Coach who is good now, decided to bring me along to help rescue Truman after they got word of his kidnaping the next day." Raz exposited.
Bob stared at Raz with wide eyes and Helmut's mouth would have dropped open if he had one.
"Geeze kid, it sounds like last week was hectic for you." Helmut said.
It was a wonder that Raz hadn't had a breakdown of some sort, if he did all that just before all the stuff involving Maligula, Gristol Malik and helping the Psychic 6.
"Yeah, I only just got finished writing all the mission reports yesterday." Raz said.
"Well, coming back to that particular issue later." Helmut decided to put a pin in that and go back to what Raz had come to them for advice on. "When did the boyfriend/girlfriend thing happen?"
Raz shrugged. "I don't know. L-she and I uncovered the Coach's plot and then she suddenly said we should kiss, then she called me her boyfriend just before she was kidnapped by the mutated lungfish that was kidnapping the campers for Coach." He explained.
Helmut and Bob looked at each other, Bob feeling the 'what the hell?' impression that Helmut was giving off. They would have to look up the mission debriefs involving Raz after this.
"Then, when I rescued everyone and confronted the Coach, I called her my girlfriend because…I don't know. I guess that I didn't want to insult her by calling her just my friend. And-and then we…kissed." Raz finished explaining, turning red slightly.
The husbands looked at each other again. A single day was an extremely quick timeframe for someone to declare them boyfriend and girlfriend, especially if they barely interacted like Raz claimed.
"Well, have you talked to this girl about it?" Helmut asked.
"I tried to." Raz said insistently. "But I was always too busy and she was dealing with her own stuff and didn't want to talk about it. And when we did finally have time to talk, the words didn't come out right."
The young boy huffed.
"And how can we even talk about it if I don't know how I feel? I mean, I know I like her, but I also know that relationships don't happen in a day." He added, sounding more and more frustrated.
"Hey, hey." Helmut rolled closer to Raz, his ball knocking against the boy's leg. "It's alright. Like Bobby said, you're only ten. You're not expected to figure this stuff out yet."
"Huh?" Raz questioned.
"Love is complicated." Bob said simply. "Even adults have a hard time classifying relationships, so you don't have to be in a rush to classify yours. Though, you are a bit young to be thinking of being in a relationship."
"If you and this girl want to call yourselves boyfriend and girlfriend you can go right ahead." Helmut told Raz. "It may turn out that you don't actually feel that way for each other down the line, or you could realise that you do feel romantically for her. And if you don't want to use boyfriend and girlfriend, tell her that you want to wait until you're more sure of your feelings."
"But won't that hurt her?" Raz worried.
Lilli was pretty confident in calling Raz her boyfriend, and Raz had already confirmed their relationship by calling her his girlfriend and kissing her. He didn't want to hurt Lilli's feelings by essentially 'dumping' her until he got a better understanding of how he felt for her.
"Maybe." Helmut said. "But it'll hurt you to continue being called her boyfriend when it makes you uncomfortable."
"It doesn't make me uncomfortable, I'm just not confident that it's right." Raz defended.
"Well then, all you can really do is wait. If the two of you realise that you just want to be friends, you may stop using boyfriend and girlfriend of your own accord without needing to speak about it. You're both young and relationships are flexible and hard to define." Helmut advised. "I used to know a girl who had a boyfriend for only a day because her friend said that they should date. And she was only eleven at the time."
"At least wait a few more weeks before revisiting the topic, after you've had time to properly process." Bob added. "With how busy you've been, it's understandable that you haven't had the time to understand your own thoughts."
"I guess." Raz agreed. "Thanks for the help."
"Anytime, little man." Helmut gave a mental smile.
"Hey, you don't get to call me little when I'm currently bigger than you." Raz grinned. "Look, I can pick you up like it's nothing."
To prove his point, Raz picked up Helmut's brain ball.
"Oh no, I've been caught." Helmut said dramatically. "Help me, Bobby!"
Bob laughed. "Sorry Helmut, you're on your own."
"Ah, such betrayal from the one I love." Helmut continued to joke.
Raz laughed as well, setting the brain ball on his lap.
"Well, I need to get a tool for the van. Do me a favour and keep an eye on Helmut, will you kid? He's still not got the best control of his ball." Bob said, standing back up.
"Hey, I rolled into the lake one time." Helmut said in mock offence.
"And I'd rather not have to fish you out a second time." Bob responded.
"Don't worry, sir. I'll look after him." Raz said dutifully.
Smiling, Bob left to find the tool he needed.
Bob sighed as he finally got back to the Feel Mobile.
It had taken him longer than expected to locate the tool he needed.
"Alright, I'm back." He announced, approaching where Raz was still sat on the ground.
"Shh!" Helmut immediately shushed his husband.
Startled, Bob walked around Raz to see that the ten-year-old had fallen asleep in the time he'd been away, the young boy slumped over Helmut's brain bowl where it was still positioned in his lap.
"It's not even the evening yet." Bob said quietly so as to not disturb Raz.
"Well, can you blame him? It sounds like the kid hasn't had much rest." Helmut pointed out.
Bob nodded.
Hopefully, Raz would start seeing his own therapist after the other agents had read and processed the reports of the events of last week. There was no way that a ten-year-old child, even a brilliant one such as Raz, would be able to process all that had happened without help.
"I should probably move him somewhere more comfortable than the ground." Bob said.
Bending down, Bob picked Raz up, careful not to wake the boy.
He then groaned in pain and quickly used his telekinesis to support his weight.
"Oh, my back." Bob hissed.
"I keep forgetting that you've gotten on in the years." Helmut said. "I wish I could help you with that."
"You can help me all you want once we finally find your body and get your brain back inside." Bob said as he carried Raz towards the Heptadome.
"It's a promise." Helmut said.
With Bob spending his free time fixing up the Feel Mobile, and the Feel Mobile itself being out of use, Bob had set up a temporary base in the Heptadome, which was remarkably intact considering Maligula's brief return had happened inside and what time had done to the rest of the old Psychonauts base, since it was closer than his greenhouse.
So, there was already a bed made out of large pillows set up to put Raz down on.
"There." Bob said, rubbing his sore back.
Pausing for a second, Bob removed Raz's helmet and goggles and set them to the side, then covered the boy with a spare blanket.
With Raz in a good resting place, Bob turned to go back to the van.
"Uh, Bobby, a little help." Helmut spoke up.
Turning around, Bob couldn't help but smile when he saw Helmut's brain bowl still being clutched by Raz. He had forgotten that his husband's brain was still in the boy's arm.
"His grip is too tight for me to roll free." Helmut said.
Bob leant back down and tried to free his husband, only for Raz to groan in his sleep and clutch the bowl tighter, like it was a teddy bear.
Helmut laughed quietly. "He's not for letting go, is he."
"I can't blame him, you are a comforting cuddle." Bob said. "Even when you're just a brain in a ball."
Eventually, Bob managed to pry his husband's brain ball free by swapping it for a much more comfortable pillow.
"Come on, let's look under the hood first." Helmut said as he rolled back to the Van.
Bob followed, leaving Raz to rest among the pile of pillows and blankets.
Author's note: Please Comment.
I literally squeed when I got to the third segment of 'Bob's Bottles' and saw that Bob and Helmut were not only in love but also married
They didn't actually say the word 'husband' or kiss (which is understandable since Helmut didn't have his own body), but it's still very clear that they were married considering the entire wedding theme surrounding the two and the figments.
Considering how obvious the relationship was, it's highly likely that Raz also picked up on it, so knows that they're people experienced in love that he can talk to.
And considering that the only other definite couples are his own parents, who it'd be awkward to talk to, and Ford and Lucy, which is a whole can of worms that it'd be hard to address, Helmut and Bob would be the obvious choice for love advice.
And Helmut's story about the eleven-year-old who only had a boyfriend for a day is my story. My friend at the time decided that her ex-boyfriend should be my boyfriend and told us to kiss, then we never spoke of it again (which shows how ill-defined the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' are for pre-teens).