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Chapter Text

It had been a close call at the end of a week full of close calls.

Mutt was barely running. Despite the flurry of repairs they had been doing during the day, Kane had attacked every night for five nights in a row, and this one had been particularly brutal.

Mike ran an account of damage in his head as he headed back to Burner’s HQ. 9 Lives was doing okay and Stronghorn was built like a tank, but Whiptail had taken serious damage to its rear end. Mutt was in the worst condition of the cars; three of her cannons were fried, and the passenger side door had - had huge strips of metal torn out of it –

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t think of that bit of damage objectively. He couldn’t stop obsessively going over the moment where the biohound had struck the car in just the right way, where Mike had been fast but not fast enough and the claws and teeth and fangs went straight for Chuck. The heart-stopping moment where Mike had jolted the wheel and stood on the gas and been sure that it wouldn’t be enough to stop the metal claws from tearing right through Chuck. His heart had lodged in his throat as he’d watched that claw tear into the arms defending Chuck’s chest before momentum finally kicked in and the hound was whipped off the side of the car.

Chuck was only a little the worse for wear for it, but he was bleeding – “my arm,” he’d said shortly to Mike’s questions – and was now staring at the ceiling, breathing steadily and carefully not looking at his own blood.

All the Burners took their own hits; that was part of the deal. But for some reason – maybe because he was his copilot – it was a lot harder to accept that when it was Chuck’s blood getting spilled for the cause.

When they pulled up to the garage, Mike was out of the car right away, mentally inventorying – get the cars in for repairs, do anything necessary to make them drivable, save the rest until morning. Everyone needed sleep way more than they needed a few extra lazers, at this point.

But first.

He grabbed Chuck’s shoulder, wincing when he got Chuck’s blood on his hands. He’s checking him over without words, glancing down and feeling a little sick at how much blood has seeped into Chuck’s shirt, and more at how the sleeves are tatters of torn fabric.

“Shit,” Mike said, suddenly rearranging priorities. “We have to get you inside, get these sewn up – “

“Stop babying me, Mike.”

Mike blinked, glared up at Chuck. “Babying you?”

Chuck was glaring up through his bangs, looking pale and drawn. To Mike’s guilt, he tilts his head to check for red eyes; they were pure hazel. This was all Chuck, and he was yelling at Mike.

“Yes! Or what else would you call this? I’ll live, Mike, I’ve had worse. And you sure didn’t seem to care 15 minutes ago, when you were showing off for the oh-so-grateful citizens.”

“I was what? I was doing my job! I just wanted us to get home!”

“And is part of your job standing up on a pedestal and taking all the credit?” Chuck pushed Mike away with his good hand, and swayed dangerously from the motion. For some reason, this just made Mike angrier at Chuck, at how unreasonable he was being when he so obviously needed help. Mike’s help.

“Well maybe if you stood up for yourself and took some credit this wouldn’t happen!”

“I shouldn’t have to ask my best friend to acknowledge me for my help, when I manage to give it!” Chuck yelled. “Besides, I was bleeding in the car while you smiled and waved in the wreckage of the Kane bots that you couldn’t have destroyed without my help!”

Mike’s stomach clenched.

That wasn’t how it had gone down at all. Chuck was being unreasonable, ridiculous, and Mike was opening his mouth before he could be sure what was going to come out of it –

“You’re so obsessed with the glory, Mike!”

“Can’t you just grow a spine?”

An unnatural silence fell over the garage.

Mike – Mike was a tangle of emotions, of a desire to yank what he’s just said back into his mouth, to wipe that look off of Chuck’s face, to gather him in and carry him upstairs and make Jacob patch him up as best he could. Because goddamn it, Chuck’s blood was still on his hands and in Mutt and dripping onto the floor and all over Chuck, and now on top of that those might be tears pooling in the corners of Chuck’s eyes.

Just as Mike noticed this, Chuck dipped his head fiercely down, hiding his tears –

And catching sight of his arm properly for the first time, on the way he was forming a tiny puddle of blood on the floor of the garage as his arm continued bleeding sluggishly.

Chuck let out a high squeak and swayed dangerously. In a move of more instinct than anything else, Mike rushed forward, catching Chuck before he could crumple to the ground.

For all his fire of a minute before, Chuck was out cold. Limp, he seemed dangerously cold and pale, and his blood was now coating the front of Mike’s shirt.

He was an idiot. He was the hugest idiot in the world, and the worst best friend, and none of that really mattered half so much as getting Chuck medical attention, now, before the issue stopped being his arm and started being blood loss.

Glancing around the garage, Mike discovered that at some point in the last few minutes, the other Burners had left them to it. He appreciated it – at least they had only witnessed part of him being a terrible friend and a terrible leader – but that meant he had to get Chuck upstairs himself.

He wrapped his friend up in his arms and started pulling.

When he entered the main area, Texas looked up from the coffee he was nursing and said, loudly, “Wait, did you kill him?”

Mike flipped him the finger and pulled Chuck in to the already-prepared first aid room with Jacob in it.

“What’s wrong?” Jacob said the moment he got in, rushing forward, all business in a crisis. Mike felt a small bit of weight go off his shoulders – Chuck was in the best hands they had. He deposited Chuck on the makeshift medical table that Jacob had, pushing off an empty oil can to clear space. Once Chuck was settled, Mike stepped quickly back, wondering if conscious-Chuck would want Mike anywhere near him right now.

“His arm,” Mike said quickly. “He just passed out from seeing the blood, but he’s been bleeding for a while.”

Jacob wasted no time, stepping forward and starting to examine Chuck’s arm. “Anyone else hurt?”

“Not badly,” Mike said. Dutch had some bruising – minor whiplash, at worst – from when a laser had hit the rear of Whiptail, sending his car spinning. Mike had been hit by some of the shrapnel from Chuck’s door, but between the battle, and Chuck’s injury, and their fight, the adrenaline hadn’t drained out of his system enough yet to even know where he was bleeding. It was nothing they couldn’t deal with on their own.

Jacob looked up from where he was starting to clean Chuck’s arm to look at Mike strangely. “Unless you’ve picked up some medical knowledge in the past couple days, you’re not doin’ anyone any good standing there,” he pointed out. “Go get some rest, boy. He’s going to be fine.”

Mike hadn’t realized that that was what he was waiting to hear, but his shoulders fell and the tightness in his chest loosened a little at those words. “Alright,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something – to ask Jacob to let him know when Chuck woke up, but Chuck probably wouldn’t want to see him and – he shut it again. “Thanks, Jacob,” he said instead, and rushed out.

Mike ran through the remaining damage to Mutt, checking that he had four working wheels and at least one gun. Right now, a few hours of sleep were worth more than any repairs that he could do. He was already running on dangerously little energy, and maybe if today, he’d been a little more awake, he might not have –

He took a back way to his room to avoid passing through the lounge where Dutch and Texas still were. Once he was  there, he tore off his shirt – still covered in Chuck’s blood, Christ, it was on his hands too – and threw himself down into his bed.

As he stared at his ceiling, exhaustion fought with guilt in his stomach, making him feel nauseous. He took deep breaths and closed his eyes, trying to let himself succumb to the mounting exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” It had only been seconds since he’d thrown the biohound off of the car, and they were still in battle, but Chuck had been silent since his scream when those claws came through Mutt’s door. Mike was ready to leave the other burners to this and –

“I’m fine,” Chuck said in a gasp. He let out a whine, a small sob, and Mike looked over to see – Christ that was a lot of blood on his chest, please don’t let him be –

“Where are you hurt?” He asked. He fired at a biohound and hit it, and felt an even deeper jolt of satisfaction at its explosion.

“My arm.” Which was bad, really bad, but Mike feels a nauseating jolt of relief anyways.

This wasn’t working. It replayed behind his eyes on endless repeat, the few seconds when he had seen the blood smeared like a gash across Chuck’s chest, torn right through his ribs. The knowledge that it very nearly – inches, centimeters – had been that brutal.

For all that Mike desperately needed it, he didn’t sleep that night.

Forfeiting for the moment, he threw on a new shirt and went back down to the garage. Mutt had huge gashes in the passenger’s side, the door almost entirely off, but that wasn’t what he was going to deal with first.

Two hours later, Mutt was passably cleaned and the door was patched enough to be at least functional if they needed to head out again in a hurry. He was going to need a new door, and a new paint job, in the long run, but with Kane on the offensive right then, the best he could hope for was safety. And if the metal he had used to patch the door had been a little thicker than maybe it had needed to be – well.

Chuck was asleep on the cot next to the medical table where Mike had put him. He was cleaned up, his tattered shirt removed, his arm stitched up in a way that showed it would hurt like a bitch in the morning and leave a hell of a scar, but probably not permanently damage his abilities.

For all that he looked better, though, the sight of Chuck still made Mike’s stomach clench.

God, this was a mess. They were both over-tired and over-worked and over-worried, but that didn’t excuse anything Mike had said. He wanted Chuck to be awake now so that he could apologize, so that he could pull Chuck into his arms – if Chuck would let him – and pet the pale skin of his shoulders and be insanely grateful that Chuck was there and breathing and not dead. Wanted to pet at Chuck until he had no choice but to forgive Mike, kiss the freckles on his shoulder until Chuck forgot the other stupid things that had come out of Mike’s mouth –

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

What?

Mike sat up abruptly, staring at Chuck, his severely sleep-deprived mind taking a second to catch up with the meaning of his thoughts.

Thoughts of kissing Chuck. (Thoughts that hadn’t exactly been best-friend material before that, for that matter.)

And for all that Mike was now intensely embarrassed and gaining a sense of dawning horror, he still wanted to kiss Chuck. That wasn’t going away, the feeling aching like an old bruise when he poked at it.

With a sense of panic that felt totally appropriate to the situation, Mike’s mind raced through thoughts. He tested himself, thought of kissing Dutch, Texas, even Julie, Julie who was very pretty and very female. His stomach twisted in mild disgust at Texas, but otherwise, all was quiet. He combed slowly over the idea of kissing Julie, but – nothing.

In dread, Mike brought to mind an image of kissing Chuck. It would be weird, at first, because they were such good friends, but he could – he could get used to it. It wasn’t that weird, wasn’t like it was the first time he’d considered kissing a guy. He could get used to combing his fingers through Chuck’s hair, to Chuck smiling and laughing so close that Mike could feel it in him, to the warm second of anticipation before they –

Oh. Oh, god, Mike thought.

He stroked Chuck’s hair, his face, his heart giving an uncomfortable twist of fear and pleasure when Chuck turned his head into Mike’s touch.

Chapter Text

Although Mike’s realization still roiled uncomfortably in his stomach, when he went back to bed he crashed, deeply and heavily, into sleep.

He awoke almost 12 hours later with an uncomfortable start with the feeling of being late for – something. He glanced at the clock and discovered that it was the early afternoon, and it clicked into place; nobody had woken him up. There were no Kane attacks, no deliveries or urgent repairs to take care of. There was still plenty to do, but the team had let him sleep.

Mike wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

He cleaned up until he felt the most human that he had in days and then headed up to the main area, where Dutch and Texas were sitting, collaborating – or maybe arguing – over a disassembled gun they had spread out on the table.

“Hey, here he is!” Dutch greeted with a smile when he spotted Mike, putting a screwdriver down on the table.

“Yeah,” Mike said, sitting down next to them, trying to work out what was so great about this particular gun. “You guys didn’t wake me?”

“You needed the sleep, man,” Dutch said. “We all did. It’s been a hell of a few days. And Kane’s been quiet since the attack last night. Maybe he needed to get some sleep, too.”

“Or maybe Texas scared him off,” Texas cut in from the other side of the table. “So can we modify this thing to shoot lazers or what?”

Dutch rolled his eyes, and Mike said, “So where’s Chuck?”

A look passed between Dutch and Texas that Mike had a strange feeling meant I told you he’d ask that. “He’s out doing deliveries,” Dutch said. “Nothing too dangerous or important, but we’re a bit behind, and he said he had them.”

Chuck, for all that Mike gave him shit, was actually turning out to be not too terrible a driver. He was meticulous and careful, but, just as with almost anything Chuck tried to do, extremely competent once he set his mind to it.

He still couldn’t hold his own in a Motorcity car fight, though, and it made Mike’s stomach twist a little to think of Chuck out there on his own. But Dutch wouldn’t have let him go if he didn’t think Chuck would be safe; he had to have that much faith, at least.

“Good,” Mike said, “I – he was okay doing that? With his arm?”

“Jacob patched him up fine,” Dutch said. “He’s not going to be doing any heavy lifting anytime soon – “ Mike snorted – “but he’s fine to drive a car and carry around some of the smaller parts.

Mike nodded stiffly, trying to tell himself that he was glad that Chuck was up again, and not disappointed that he hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him. He walked away from the table, heading towards the garage. He had things to do, anyways; even after the work he’d done last night, Mutt needed repairs badly, and there were a couple upgrades that were becoming less “upgrades” and more “necessary.” He didn’t want to go into the next fight with Kane with anything less than the best that they had.

“Mike!” Dutch’s voice followed him down the stairs to the garage. “Mike, wait a minute!”

Mike leaned against the wall in the entrance, giving Dutch a second to catch up. “What’s up?”

Dutch stared at him for a minute, and Mike felt uncharacteristically self-conscious. His realization about Chuck hummed uncomfortably under his skin until he was sure that Dutch was staring right at it written on his face – I definitely have the hots for and might actually be in love with my best friend.

Yeah, this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having.

“Look – are you okay, man?” Dutch asked. He stepped in close to Mike, not trapping him against the wall, but close enough to be sure they weren’t overheard. “You seemed pretty shaken up about Chuck last night, and that – whatever that was with you guys after.” When Mike averted his eyes and didn’t say anything for a minute, Dutch added, “Look, it’s been a really long week for all of us. I just want to know if things are okay.”

Mike drew in a long breath, fully prepared to lie through his teeth, and said, “I don’t know.”

That wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. Shit. Why had he said that?

“You don’t know,” Dutch said. He stood in Mike’s space for a minute, and Mike met Dutch’s eyes and held his ground, because, yeah, he didn’t know. He didn’t know why he’d said half the shit he did, where Chuck stood in the situation. He had no fucking idea why it had to be Chuck that he suddenly had to be thinking about in a whole new light.

“Look,” said Dutch, “Mutt needs a new propulsion line, or that lag on your turns is going to keep getting worse.” Mike blinked at the abrupt change of subject, but Dutch just smiled at him and started walking over to the shed of parts. “Let me help you out.”

Gratefully, Mike fell into the work. Installing a propulsion line was tedious, but necessary – it was held in alignment by a lot of bolts that needed to be individually loosened and then removed. For the first ten minutes, they worked in silence, and Dutch seemed perfectly alright with not pushing Mike anymore. Silence weighed on Mike, though, and barely ten minutes in his mouth just started running without his permission.

“Hey, Dutch, just – it was just, last night, after the rest of you cleared out, I said some stuff to Chuck.” He took a deep breath, loosened another bolt. Dutch was a few feet to his left, but Mike didn’t look at him. “Stuff I really, really shouldn’t have said. I was just – I just want him to be safe. And I can’t always be around to do that, and I mess up sometimes. And I want him to be able to do that, even when I fuck up.” He choked off, and then forced himself to start working on another bolt. Dutch was silent for a minute.

“Look, Mike,” he said, and he could tell that Dutch had slid out from under the car. “I know we’re all your friends, but it just takes eyes to see that Chuck is special to you.”

“Hey,” Mike said, starting to slide out from under the car and then reconsidering. It was really cowardly of him – since when did Mike Chilton start running away from conversations? – but some talks were just better to have without eye contact. “You’re all – “

“I know, yeah, we’re all a team,” Dutch said. “But we’re not total idiots – well, can’t speak for Texas, but. We all know that Chuck’s your best friend. You guys are inseparable. It’s just part of the dynamic.”

“Well… yeah,” Mike said slowly. He slid the portion of the pipe off now that it was loosened, and as soon as he slid it out from under the car, Dutch had the new piece in his hand.

“My point is, man, of course you’re going to freak out when Chuck is hurt. But you’re acting like he can’t take care of himself. If you hovered on me half as much as you do on him I’d be telling you to step off so fast it’d make your head spin.” Mike blinked at this revelation. He hadn’t felt like his worrying about the burners had been quite that disproportionate, but, well. Hindsight.

“Just show some faith,” Dutch said, as Mike tightened up the final bolt. “You guys are a team. Show that you know he can take care of himself.” Mike slid out from underneath the car, unable to find any more excuses to be there. “Also, apologize.”

Mike drew in a long breath and let it out. “When’d you get so good at this?” He asked.

“I’ve got a little brother,” Dutch said, and clapped Mike on the shoulder. “Alright, I gotta start patching up Whiptails guns before Kane wakes up again.”

Dutch was halfway across the garage before Mike called, “Hey. Thanks.”

It’s almost evening when Chuck walks into the garage and Mike lays eyes on him for the first time that day. Chuck doesn’t look much worse for wear, his sleeves covering up where is arm is probably still bandaged, his slouch a little more pronounced than usual but otherwise fine.

Mike had planned this. He knew what he wanted to say to Chuck, had been psyching himself up to it all day since his talk with Dutch. But as he watched Chuck lock eyes on him and then quickly look away, gathering up some part from a workbench in the corner, he couldn’t go talk to him. His heart beat hard in his chest, and he noticed for the first time how much he watched Chuck.

Watched the way he flipped his hair out of his eyes and cast a hesitant smile at Julie; watched the way he was favoring his right hand.

Mike wondered just how long he’d managed to have a massive crush on his best friend without noticing at all.

By the time Mike finally got up the courage to talk to Chuck, chuck was nearly walking out the door carrying another car part and what might be some kind of dinner, courtesy of Jacob. He had to jog to catch up, calling out “Hey, Chuck, wait.”

Chuck stopped short, nearly dropping the bagel-thing he was eating, not turning to face Mike. Mike ran around to the front of him, stopping short and too-close.

Once there, though, he found that nothing was coming out of his mouth. He’d known what he’d wanted to say – Mike Chilton was rarely at a loss for words – but they’d all fled as soon as he was face-to-face with Chuck, close enough to pull towards him and just hold him until Chuck figured it all out for himself.

(That might take a while, but Mike was pretty sure he’d be ok with that.)

“Uh,” he said, and Chuck seemed to snap out of his deer-in-headlights mode.

“Look, Mike, I kind of really have to deliver this part – “

And then Mike noticed Chuck wince as he shifted the car part away from his left arm, and the guilt was seizing at him all over again, overriding all the awkward and all of the sense, too.

“I think, if it’s ok with you, you should ride with Dutch for a while,” Mike said.

That wasn’t. What he’d meant to say.

Well, it was, but only in a way. He wanted Chuck to be safe – he wanted to address some of the issues with having Chuck in the passenger’s side. He wanted to show Chuck that he trusted him, that he knew he could perform even without Mike hovering over his shoulder.

(He also never wanted to have to wash his best friend’s blood out of the passenger’s seat ever again.)

He knew immediately that that wasn’t how Chuck took it, though. “Chuck, I mean – “

“No, Mike,” Chuck said, and pushed past him. Mike, feeling helpless and incredibly stupid, didn’t resist. “I think I got it.”

Mike watched Chuck walk away, and wondered if he could just never be allowed to talk, ever again, since he couldn’t seem to stop digging his own grave.

“What the hell, Mike,” Dutch snapped in the lounge that evening. “That is not what I meant.”

“Look, it’s just for a few days,” Mike said. “Just – look,” he swallowed hard, “you told me to show some faith, right? And what better way to do that than to let him get out there?”

“He works best in Mutt,” Dutch said. “He helped build Mutt.”

“He helped build all the cars,” Mike pointed out. “All our computers are basically all him.” He took a deep breath. “If Chuck can hack a Kane computer while hanging upside-down twenty stories in the air, I’m confident he can work out of Whiptail.” He crammed a piece of pizza in his mouth – leftovers, questionably offered up by Jacob. Dutch watched him chew through it with the look on his face that said he was very nearly done with Mike’s shit. “Just do this for me,” he said. “I hold back, with Chuck in the car.” Dutch raised an eyebrow. “We can’t afford that right now. Just – for a few days, Dutch. See how it works.”

Chapter Text

“I just,” Chuck stammered. “I don’t know what to do.”

Chuck hadn’t actually meant to meet Julie at the tiny cyber café a few miles from the Burners HQ. He’d gone there to be alone, to – well, he’d admit it, to mope.

But Julie knew him well, and he’d barely been there for 10 minutes when she’d walked in the door, ordered a coffee, taken a seat in the chair next to his, and said, firmly, “What is going on?”

It had all come tumbling out: the argument with Mike, the stupidity of it all, Mike kicking him out of Mutt, and how “Mike hates me, I think, and I don’t blame him!”

“Mike does not hate you,” Julie said, as though the very idea were impossible, and Chuck let his head fall to the table with a thunk.

Truth be told, Chuck thought it was impossible, too. Mike had never, ever, been anything but supportive of Chuck. He could be insensitive sometimes, but he had never shown any sign of not caring about him.

This past day had put some doubts in his mind, though, and once there, those doubts festered quickly, driven by Chuck’s own insecurities. He was ashamed of snapping at Mike in the first place, and doubly ashamed of everything he’d said after that. His mouth ran away with him sometimes, but it was never that bad, and as much as Chuck wanted to pretend it was just the exhaustion and the injury talking, it hadn’t been.

Chuck was frustrated. He was frustrated with adoring Mike as much as he did, and getting nothing in return. He was frustrated with having Mike so close, so affectionate, so concerned, and yet having that barrier between them that Chuck didn’t know how to even approach.

He was, frankly, completely and totally frustrated with having Mike right there, his forehead almost against Chuck’s, and being both too smart and too afraid to just lean forward and kiss him.

All these thoughts tumbled in his head, but all that came out to Julie after the pure facts of what had happened thus far was “I don’t know what to do.”

“Apologizing seems like it would be a start,” Julie said.

“I know,” Chuck sighed. “I do. I know. I just – “ want him to apologize first seemed stupid, inadequate, childish even in his own head. “Mike still seems mad,” he said. “Maybe we just need some time to cool off.” It wasn’t totally untrue. Mike had told him to ride in Whiptail, after all.

(That still hurt, with a pain that Chuck didn’t even really want to deal with right then. If he needed any more proof that he had seriously damaged his friendship with Mike, that was it.)

 “Ok,” Julie said, skeptically. “But I think you should deal with this soon. It’s… not right, to have the two of you fighting. It makes everything awkward.”

Chuck felt the guilt of dragging everyone else down with his and Mike’s fights, and he took another sip of his coffee to help choke the feeling back down. “I know,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Jules.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Julie said. She turned her body to face Chuck and put her hand on his arm in a contact so reminiscent of Mike that it hurt almost as much as it comforted. “We just don’t like to see you guys upset. Even Texas has noticed that something is wrong.” She sighed. “You and Mike are the closest of any of us,” she said. “It just… doesn’t seem right, to have you two not as a pair.”

Chuck looked at her, at her genuine concern and her real faith that they would work this out, and he gave in to his urge to lean forward and place his head on her shoulder, melting into the comfort she was offering.

“I like him so much,” he muttered into Julie’s shoulder.

Over the next day and a half, Chuck became an expert at avoiding Mike.

It wasn’t something he’d had a lot of experience with before, but the fact that he and Mike were nearly inseparable up until this point made avoiding him all the easier now. He knew when Mike was going to be hanging around HQ, and made a point to be out on deliveries when he was. He knew when Mike was probably going to be in the garage, and avoided it like the plague when that happened. His sleep schedule had always been off from Mike’s, so he just went to bed later than him and got up after Mike had already left. Plus, blessedly, somehow, Kane was giving them a reprieve; since that last terrible fight with the biohounds, there had not been so much as a Kanebot spotted in Motorcity, which meant no battles and no awkward rides in Mutt – except, right, he wasn’t riding in Mutt anymore.

So, yeah, Chuck was avoiding Mike very well. It was an unexpected talent. It didn’t really make Chuck any happier.

Kane’s silence still gave Chuck a sinking feeling, and he spent at least some of the time avoiding Mike anxiously scanning the sensors and barriers that protected Motorcity, waiting for something to go wrong.

The rest of the time, though, there was plenty to do. They were behind on their custom parts orders, which was their main source of income and which was mostly Chuck and Dutch’s responsibility. By some unspoken agreement, if they needed a part from a junkyard, it was always Dutch who went and talked to Mike.

Mike, meanwhile, had to repair Mutt, and then help with repairs on the other cars. There were guns to install and new parts to find, and – for all that he kept glancing at Chuck every time Chuck was in the room – he knew they might not get another chance to brace themselves for Kane’s attacks.

So Chuck buried himself in making parts in the deepest corners of the garage, in running those parts all over Motorcity, in running test after test on the defense matrix and anxiously trying to predict where Kane would strike next.

Sometimes, he even managed to not think constantly about the fact that he’d lost his best friend because of his own…  social ineptitude.

(Chuck was aware, on some level, that there was a chance Mike wasn’t that angry with him. That those glances he kept sending Chuck, that Chuck couldn’t read before he hurried away to do something else, anything else, might be as hurt and lonely as Chuck felt.

But then he thought of how Mike had said “Maybe you should ride in Whiptail,” and his face when Chuck had told him he was obsessed with the glory, and his stomach dropped to his feet again and he kept on running.)

It was inevitable that he couldn’t run forever, though.

The evening of his second day of avoiding Mike, Chuck was anxiously checking over the defense grid again, trying to decipher the weird glitch in the west gate. The gate was online as usual and all tests said it should be running fine, but a small corner of the gate was sending all kinds of conflicting data and occasionally shorting out entirely. It could be nothing, or it could be a huge, massive something, and there was really no way to tell from just the information his computer was giving him. The easiest way to tell would be to reset the gate, but that would involve having the gate offline, even if just for a couple minutes, and that made Chuck very, very uneasy.

He leaned back, worrying his lip as he tried to make a decision, when suddenly his chair leaned back a lot further than he’d intended.

His arms whirled and he yelped before a voice said, too close to his ear, “Relax, Chuckles, it’s just me.”

Chuck’s arms stopped whirling, but his heartbeat doubled, his whole body tensing. No, no, he hadn’t braced for this, he couldn’t deal with Mike’s – with whatever was going on with Mike, not right now.

“H-hi Mike,” Chuck stuttered, turning around in his chair. “I, um, just working on the west gate, it’s having some kind of trouble – “

“Chuck,” Mike said, “I really think we need to talk.”

“Oh,” Chuck said in a small voice.

A silence hung between them for a second. Mike was standing pretty close to Chuck’s chair, and Chuck wasn’t really used to looking up at Mike like this. It made him nervous, made him feel even more powerless than usual. (It was also, he couldn’t help thinking, a really great view, highlighting the strong set of Mike’s jaw, and thoughts like that were so not helping anything.)

After that moment, Mike let out a long breath, his shoulders slumping. “Look,” he said. “I know things are – tense, between us. And – the stuff I said, when you were injured – “

“Mike,” Chuck said, “What you said was true – “

“No, Chuck, it wasn’t!” Mike snapped. “It – you’re – it wasn’t.”

Chuck swallowed hard, hope blooming in his chest. It was amazing how he could be so hopeful it almost hurt, after just two days of fighting with Mike. I’m hopeless, he thought, and it didn’t quell the lightness in his chest as much as it should.

Mike seemed to stumble over his words again, and it struck Chuck that that was unusual, for Mike. Words were a thing Mike was pretty good at. He didn’t stutter like Chuck, always seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say, what the person he was talking to needed to hear. The way he was speaking now, though, was so hesitant.

“It wasn’t true,” he said. “But I still think we need to talk. There’s – some things, a thing, that I need to tell you, that I really think you should know, that might affect how you see – us.”

“Ok?” Chuck squeaked. The hope in his chest was shrinking. This all felt weirdly like a breakup speech, and Chuck wanted to run the other way, wanted to cut Mike off, wanted to say “I don’t care, I don’t want to hear it, let’s just be friends again, let’s just be the way we were, it will kill me slowly but I don’t know how to live without you anymore.”

He couldn’t force any of the words out, didn’t even know where to start.

“Look,” Mike said. “That night, I watched you get hurt – I had to – and I –“

Chapter Text

All at once, Mike’s heart dropped and his stomach clenched. “I knew it,” he said, cutting off his almost-confession to Chuck. “It’s Kane.”

A second later, Dutch’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Guys, we have to move,” Dutch said. Before he even finished the phrase, Chuck and Mike were rushing up the stairs together, into the main section of HQ. Up there, chaos was already breaking loose as every Burner scrambled to go from relaxed to battle-ready in a matter of seconds. “We’re getting distress calls from the west, near the Landview apartment complex. There’s Kane bots surrounding the area, and a the tips said it looks like they're setting up around every major enterance and building.”

“They’re attacking the whole complex?” Chuck panted as they reached the top of the stairs.

“Looks like it,” Julie said, already jumping down to get in 9 Lives. “There’s hundreds of people in those apartments, and the Kane bots aren’t letting them out. I don’t know how long we have.”

“Let’s go,” Mike said, his mind halfway through constructing a plan of attack.

He was already in Mutt, with no recollection of jumping down to the car, before he realized Chuck wasn’t following him.

I didn’t tell him, Mike realized. He didn’t know where he and Chuck stood – and Chuck probably didn’t know, either.

Chuck glanced at him, clenched his fists, and then turned and called a phrase to Dutch, jogging over to Whiptail and climbing in.

But then they were at the largest apartment complex in Motorcity, and there was no more time to discuss it.

It was technically a victory, Chuck thought, but it didn’t feel like one, not at all.

Chapter Text

They were going to be okay.