Chapter Text
Henrik sat on the sofa with a book in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hands. Yes, it may have been extremely late at night, but he didn’t mind. The mindless thoughts that circled the doctor’s head could be obscure and required a lot of attention to maintain, and he didn’t get that chance often.
Nothing felt better than a few hours of perfunctory nothing. No doctor duties, no operations, no things that needed to be done. But most importantly: No Anti. None of that mania-filled glitch to bother his family, his friends. All was well in the calm sea of thoughts and warm numbness.
Then his phone rang.
It vibrated in small bursts, the odd sensation making him jump as he fumbled around the depths of his jean pockets. Nobody should’ve been calling at that hour, much less awake. Worry settled in immediately when he read the name that displayed:
Chase.
Crying immediately filled the other end, sending Henrik’s heart into a spasm and his head into an array of overlapping panic.
“Chase? Chase are you there? This better not be some sick jo-”
“I-I’m so sorry,”
The small voice crack accompanying hysterical sobs left no room for interpretation. His voice was practically incomprehensible with more spews of stuttered speech lingered on the end of
the line. Henrik just listened on the sofa, his leg bouncing anxiously.
“S-seventeen days, Hen.”
Chase broke into a more frenzied rant, going off in a slur about nothing comprehensible. All the words morphed into one long phrase with empty meaning.
“Chase, where are you right now?”
Henrik stood and paced as time passed. The absence of a response lingered on Chase’s side of the phone.
“Chase, are you th-”
“Apartment...c-c-cold…”
The crying was muffled into a more manageable heave of breaths. The soft sound of Henrik’s footsteps was lost within the foggy haze. No calm. No fear. Just numb. Numbness in the most negative, wretched form. The dissociation with reality for moments at a time to flicker between reasoning and panic, then back again.
“What do you mean by seventeen days?” He asked, throwing open the door of his dwelling out into the pouring midnight rain.
No answer. Just crying.
“Chase, I’m coming to get you. Don’t leave your apartment.”
“No...no please don’t. I-I’m f-f-fucking fine.”
The hostility caught the doctor off guard, his body tensing when he sat in his car. Chase wasn’t like this. Chase was never like this...unless?
***
It felt like an eternity of knocking before Henrik finally decided to open the apartment door himself. He tried to get more out of Chase during the car ride, but nothing worked. Just sobbing. Incomprehensible blubbering that lead nowhere but the call getting cut short by signal problems.
The creakiness of the apartment door startled him, even though he knew it shouldn’t have. It was like a horror movie; the apartment was echoey. The area felt a lot larger in the darkness, when he barely recognized any of the stuff he stubbed his toe on or ran into.
He called out Chase’s name, hoping there would be some sort of response from the empty shell of the home. Feeling his hand against the wall, he searched for a lightswitch. Nothing but the rough texture pricked his fingertips.
Approaching where he believed the hallway to be, he stopped. A bright light illuminated down the corridor. Soft sniffles slowly reverberated in an enveloping cocoon down the never-ending path of dread he walked down. He was shaking to the core, knowing there was no reason to be. Still, he felt as if something was going to jump out at him the moment he entered the heavy-lit room at the end.
He knew Chase must’ve been in there, the crying was the giveaway. Nobody cried like he’d heard Chase cry. Chase cried pain. He cried with the passion of a thousand clouds pouring hail into an empty road. He cried disgust and rage with every second that passed. He cried loud and low and frenzied and every other word to describe mere panic.
Henrik immediately identified the light source as the bathroom when he got close enough to the door. The crying was switching between a soft wheeze and exasperating gasps for air with barely an inbetween.
“Chase?”
He slowly pushed the door open, blinded by the sudden brightness of the light. There, on the floor, was Chase Brody. His cap was off, misplaced from the scene. His body swayed even though he was slouched over an object in his hand. A picture frame, filled with photos of his family that shined brighter than ever before, and a bottle of whiskey that was 3 quarters of the way empty.
So that’s what he meant by seventeen days…
Henrik’s heart sank when he kneeled down in front of the disheveled form in front of him. Chase really did this to himself?
“Y’know, I never really got why some o’ ya even care.”
Chase lazily looked up from the picture frame, his eyes puffy and his nose red. The bloodshot tint didn’t help his appearance either.
“Chase...I didn’t know-”
“‘Course ya didn't. You don’ know, Stacy doesn’t…”
He paused, his eyes welling up with tears again, the soft croak in his voice noticeable with every sound.
“Stacy took them away from me...” He slouched, his breathing a heavy and low rumble in his chest.
“I...I can’t do this anymore…”
Chase’s expression switched from hostile to a blank stare quicker than any time before. Alcohol did that to him, as Henrik had known, but didn’t expect the frustration to disappear like it had.
He took another swig, but Henrik snatched it once it was almost gone. Nothing hurt more than to see a life draining away from the vulnerable, unrecognizable figure in front of him.
“Chase...chase what happened? You were doing so well and-”
“I used to think love was real, y’know?”
Henrik flinched at the answer, his mind attentive and his interest piqued. His head tilted to the side, much like a dog begging for something.
He was begging. Begging for an elaboration, begging for some form of answer to Chase’s problems.
“I used to think I could be happy. Th-that I could be someone special.” Chase rubbed his eyes, staggering to finish his words coherently.
“Sh-she stole it away from me. Stacy stole...everything from me.”
Henrik’s expression softened as his form caved. No amount of prescriptions or emergency diagnosis could fix this. Nothing he was trained to do could fix this.
“I’m so sorry Chase…”
Chase reclaimed the bottle from the doctor’s hand and drained the fluid dry. Nothing stopped him, it was pointless. The last bottle in the apartment, most likely.
Tossing it to the side, Chase ruffled the disordered mop of hair on his head. Nothing about him looked stable. Yes, it could’ve been the swaying, or the bags under his eyes, but something more was off.
“Why didn’t you say h-how bad it was?”
Chase turned away, tugging down on the sleeves of his shirt and staring at the ground as if it had a map to every answer in existence. His eyes watered, but his expression didn’t change. Just a blank stare into the tile floor.
“Scared... I was scared of you.”
Henrik was taken aback. He asked the question hoping for no answer but got a punch to the face. He wasn’t angry, wasn’t sad, wasn’t...anything other than shocked. He expected the wave of emotions to come gradually, but they never hit. Just the stagnant feeling of surprise he didn’t know how to get rid of.
“Why me?” his voice a cacophony of sounds in a moment of frustration, “Why be scared of me? What have I done to make you afraid of me, Chase?”
He could feel his own eyes dull, his own voice change pitch into a louder yell with every fragment of a thought.
“I...I-”
“You what? You made some sort of concept in that head of yours, and turned me into a monster? Is that how it is? Do you believe me guilty for all of this? Please, Chase, just tell m-”
“I didn’t want you to…to hurt me.”
Chase’s lips quivered, though nothing else about his expression changed. It was as if he was a statue or a painting of some sort. He was cowering, scrunched back into the wall with his knees to his chest and his head low. Not a glance was shared between the two. Only his own violent shaking made him look at all alive.
It was Henrik’s main cue to back down. To give the other man as much space as possible. Although the bathroom was small, he scooted back as far as he could.
“Why would I ever hurt you?”
“I...I don’t know…It’s just--”
“Has anyone ever even hit you before?”
Chase responded with a silent worried look. His mouth may have moved, but no sound made it past the static haze.
“Who hurt you, Chase?”
Nothing. Nothing but the lost-in-thought emotional stare into the void. An uneasy feeling rose in Henrik’s chest, but he ignored it as best he could. Nothing felt more wrong than that moment. No feeling separate from another.
“What are you keeping from me?” He inched closer, careful not to raise his voice or make sudden movements. The fragility of the form in front of him was out of place.
Chase rolled up his sleeve, revealing a large bruise on his bicep. He winced whenever his fingers brushed against it. It looked fresh, the purple-blue colors dark and prominent on the pale skin. Tears began leaking out of his eyes, but no other sound was made.
“Did...did Stacy do this?”
Chase shook his head and mumbled something.
“What?” Henrik inched closer.
“It was An-“
Chase stopped, wide-eyed, staring at the bathroom door. The sea of darkness beyond put him in a frenzied trance.
Henrik turned his head the same direction but found nothing there. Even if he stuck his head out of the doorway, nothing could be seen. Just an empty hallway.
“Chase, when was the last time you slept?”
“Thursday...no wait—Friday? I don’t...I don’t remember.”
At the minor mention of sleep, Chase’s eyes grew heavier. The dulled shade made him look lifeless, as if there was really nothing beyond the mask of a face he put on.
He untensed, he wearily leaning his head on the wall. Despite the tile bathroom not being a comfortable napping spot, he found a way to make it work nonetheless. Before Henrik could even comprehend what was happening, Chase was passed out.
Henrik sighed, preparing himself for having to carry the dead weight to his room (or the couch, if he could find it).
“What am I gonna do with you in the morning?”
***