Chapter Text
C hase doesn’t slam the door shut; his footsteps are no louder than normal. Still, Anti slews around from where he’s been drifting, one foot in the ether and one in the noise of the physical world, and instantly roots himself to the physical world.
The strings are taut with displeasure, and Chase himself tastes of misery, thick and cloying, and it makes the static in the back of his head prickle with warning. It’s been quiet, these last few months– the static, that is. Usually nothing more than a soothing roar, it bristles now, the peace of the home disturbed.
He’s careful to keep his words lazy, and as unaffected as he can manage, as he peels himself out of Chase’s shadow. “Jackson say something stupid?”
“The conversation was fine,” Chase tells him, tiredly, and Anti hums at that, shadowing his footsteps. Chase meanders into the kitchen, and just… pauses, staring at a cabinet that Anti knows he hasn’t touched in a long, long while.
In the end, he only pulls out a pot, and a mug, and a wooden spoon. Anti squints at the assortment, but brushes it off as the least important thing about this entire situation.
“It went fine, which is why you’re sulking like someone who kicked your puppy,” he says, dryly, and Chase doesn’t turn around. He also doesn’t respond, which makes Anti… pause, and reach out to thread his fingers through his strings again. They hum, low and mournful, but also… thoughtful.
Not a hint of regret, though, despite the flicker of anger.
Anti shakes his head, and hops up onto the counter, bracing his forearms against his thighs. “I can’t actually read your mind, you know.”
“You can make a pretty good guess at it, though,” Chase snipes back, and Anti shrugs because- he’s not wrong. He presses forward, still.
“Can’t help you if you don’t talk, you know.”
That pulls a snort out of Chase, and Anti tests the strings again- bitter, that time. Bitter, and… surprised? Chase clears it up for him in the next sentence, murmuring quietly as he stirs the melting chocolate into the milk, “if you told me, three years ago, that you wanted to help me, I would’ve gotten you checked for- senility, or some kind of head trauma.”
Anti cocks his head, and decides that now is definitively not the fucking time to get into philosophical arguments, instead making a sound that he hopes can, vaguely, be construed as “and?”
Chase seems to get it, however, because he only huffs another thready laugh, and glances at Anti over his shoulder.
“Don’t think you can help with this one, Anti. Just give me and my squishy-ass brain some time.”
“I can help,” he points out, and this actually seems to make Chase hesitate. The strings don’t tense with the anxiety that the mention of them usually brings, but the thought of it is there, a note quavering as if it’s about to break.
It isn’t, however, a no, and carefully, he allows his static to seep through the strings.
Chase does tense at first, pouring the cocoa into the mug- he stutters only enough for a few drops to fall awry, but marshalls himself nonetheless, and sets the mug down gently, as Anti coaxes another measure of quiet through the strings, piece by piece.
Inch by inch, Chase’s shoulders drop, and tension that Anti hadn’t even seen at first seeps out of his back. He hides a smug, smug smile, and hops off the counter to wrap an arm around Chase’s shoulders, guiding him to the couch.
“Didn’t have to,” Chase murmurs, and if Anti listens, really listens, he can hear the reproach in it.
Anti, however, has grown to be a master at ignoring these types of things, and pulls him onto the couch with him; Chase comes with him easily, and mostly willingly.
He’s always sweet like this, pliable; Anti likes his bite, but Anti likes him gentler, too, and relaxed.
“Just relax,” he hums in response, and cards a hand through Chase’s hair, gently. He gives it fifteen minutes, tops, before Chase falls asleep; he’ll have to remember to set aside that mug before then. “You’ve had a stressful day. Whatever Jackson said, you don’t have to worry about it. Just breathe.”
He watches each word sink in, down to the very bone, and Chase curls into him, strings thrumming drowsily. This was better, in the long run, he thinks, and it’s not without a hint of pride. They couldn’t take care of him, not the right way.
Here, though, he doesn’t have to worry the same way.
Here, it’s just the two of them, amidst the lull of the static and the hum of their strings.