Archive of Our Own

When did I become so numb?

When did I lose myself?

All the words that leave my tongue

Feel like they came from someone else

Where are my feelings?

I no longer feel things

I know I should

I'm paralyzed

Where is the real me?

I'm lost and it kills me

Inside

-NF, Paralyzed

The problem with the dream of running away from home is that Chase physically can’t. He needs to be hooked up in order to charge. In order to stay alive.

Even here, in Centium City, so far away from the Davenport Mansion, so far away from any place he has ever considered home (even that cool basement, the original lab, that he didn’t understand was too cold for a child to grow up in until he met Leo, who showed Chase that there was as much human as lab rat inside of him), Chase still needs his capsule. He still needs for his chip to be regulated.

But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t dream about it. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wish that he could leave, sometimes. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when he wakes up, green seeping away from his vision, and he thinks-

Well, Chase Davenport thinks that maybe he might like to see what it would be like to go to the beach. To travel across the country. To see the stars. 

(To kiss a boy. To know what it’s like to kiss someone who is cute, and that could be his, but that he doesn’t have to worry about turning on him. That he doesn’t have to worry about using him up until he is drained and unable to cry into his own pillowcase, because he’s never had a pillow to cry into.)

To see a world that is at his fingertips, any time he searches his chip for data, for photos and videos that other people have captured through their own camera lenses.

But he knows that he can’t leave. He knows that there is no way that he can visit the places that he wishes, because that would involve abandoning his team, and Chase Davenport is now and forever will be, first and foremost, the product of his fathers’ hands. The answer to his makers’ aims.

So Chase swallows down his aches, the moments of his life that he finds his own body stolen out from underneath of him, and he bites down on protests and arguments and his own dreams and stays exactly where he’s supposed to be.

He knows he doesn’t get to run away.

He had that option literally ripped out of his possible programming a long, long time ago.

---

The first time that Chase thinks about running away is when Spike comes out for that goddamn football game.

It’s Chase’s first day at school, the only thing that he’s dreamed of his entire life. 

All Chase ever wanted was to get to learn out in public. To get to explore a real library and not just the code scrolling through his own head. To get to eat shitty cafeteria food, because any food has to be better than the pellets that they were forced to eat to stay in “proper working condition.” (And he was right- he remembers at least a little bit of the food, alright, and the greasy pizza had tasted what he imagines manna in the desert tasted like, in that fantasy book he reads in his religious studies class called the “Bible.”) To get to be a student, to answer teachers’ questions, to be himself.

But instead, Spike came out, and it turns out that everyone likes Spike better than him. Everyone has always liked Spike better than him.

Chase wants to run. He literally gets to packing a bag and running through plans on how to sneak out the door during family movie night to celebrate the first successful week at school.

But Mr. Davenport has a point. He ripped out Chase’s flight option. He replaced it with fight, because that’s the only way that Chase can be useful- though Chase will never be as useful as his siblings, because he’s not as strong, he’s not as fast, he’s not as charismatic or flashy or anything.

He’s just glue, and he’s stuck.

And so Chase stays around. He swallows and sets the bag down, fixes a smile on his lips, and goes out to spend time with his family, because they might like the version of him where he has no control more than they like him, but they still love him, right?

Right?

---

Then there’s the time that Spike comes out during the magic show, and the time that Adam brings out Spike just to win that date with Sabrina, and he emerges from both of those times to laughter or even people mad at him, but no matter the response, there’s no one who would listen to him when he says that’s not my fault.

And there’s the time when he’s trapped under the avalanche and no one comes to save him but Douglas.

And there’s a moment when it looks like they are all going to be taken by the government, and all three of them run away, but they end up coming home-

And there's the time that he’s overridden. Fully overridden. He nearly wrecks his entire family because he overrides Adam and Bree, and he’s dangerous.

God, Chase is dangerous, not just in the uncontrollable way he’s dangerous when he’s Spike, but in the way that someone else can control him. That someone can use him as a weapon against his siblings, against his family, against the only people who have ever been even remotely kind and tender with him.

It’s only Leo that manages to free him. Only Leo that manages to help him get free.

If it wasn’t for Leo, if it wasn’t for his brother, then Chase would have burned down the world and taken his siblings down with him, under Krane’s control, under Douglas’ control.

And every time, Chase thinks- 

I might be better off away from this place. Away from the missions, where I can’t be relied upon, where I’ll either snap into Spike or be overridden into a monster. Either way, I’m not in control-

(And even if I was in control, who would want that?)

But if he left, if he ran away from his capsule- he would glitch in an instant, and who knows what kind of damage Spike could do then.

And Chase couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let himself become a liability like that.

So Chase stays around, even if it’s an utter disaster.

---

Chase actually gets out of the door after Sebastian. He actually breaks down after everything with Sebastian is said and done, gets halfway to the mainland on the speed train, and ends up sobbing in the train car, because it’s the closest he’s ever come to privacy. It’s the closest he’s ever come to being alone.

Chase's entire life has been spent in a glass capsule, every inch of his skin meant to be observed and measured and calculated, every action and reaction meant to be taken as data in the never-ending experiment that is his existence.

And now, his first true heartbreak ended in the entire bionic project nearly being overthrown. The fate of the world rested on Chase's ability not to kiss a cute boy that would end up betraying him, and he failed in keeping things right. In making things better.

Chase Davenport can't be a hero if he can't be relied upon not to let the part of him that never got to be a normal teenage boy take over.

Spike and Sabrina, Sebastian and Chase- no attempt he's ever made at romance has ever worked out for him. He really, really shouldn't let himself make the sorts of decisions that teenagers do, because he doesn't get the luxury of fucking up, not when he has a bionic bomb inside of him, ready to be set off by the smallest of issues.

Chase doesn’t even make it to the mainland before resolve settles into his bones and he sets the car on reverse to send himself back to the Island.

Because he cannot let Sebastian and Krane win.

He was built to fight, not to fly.

Everyone has made that so very clear.

No one needs a bionic boy that leaves when things get hard. Who lets the enemy get the best of him.

And even if Chase let his heart get in the way of doing his job as a hero right, he’s not going to let that happen again. He’s not going to let anyone get one over on him just because they were cute and flirted with him through the subjects that he loved and made him feel valued and held him in a way that made him feel cherished-

Sebastian was a liar. No one can ever love Chase like that, he knows that, no matter how much he might ache for it. No one wants Chase for him, and not just the bionics inside of him, the important role he plays under Mr. Davenport.

(But he will be damned if he lets another boy break his heart and tempt him to betray his family again. That is not going to happen. He is going to go down fighting, go down swinging, before he lets that happen.)

So Chase stays around. He stays a mission leader, and becomes a teacher at the bionic academy, and after that goes to utter shit because he falls in love with the wrong person, he agrees to the new mission in Centium City, away from the one brother who ever began to understand him, away from Tasha’s confused but continuous support, away from anyone who could soothe the all-too-human ache that pounds away at the inside of his titanium-laced ribs.

He’s stuck in a tower with a bunch of strangers with biology that seems impossible, who don’t get bionics, who don’t get what it’s like to be locked in a basement for fourteen years and then be expected to be a person.

One of them is an alien. The others are ordinary teenage boys- and Chase has a notoriously bad track record with those.

But maybe the fact that he won’t be able to connect with anyone will be a good thing. Maybe the fact that he can’t get overly emotionally involved with these people will be a good thing, because maybe that will prevent Spike from taking over. Maybe Chase can be more bionic than boy. Maybe that will help.

---

But when you have a ticking bomb inside of you, no matter how much you try not to shake it, no matter how much you try not to aggravate the switch, it’s going to go off.

It’s just inevitable.

---

The first time that Spike comes out when the Elite Force is a thing, Chase is seriously tempted to run away again.

Or, at least, he is for about fifteen seconds.

The urge lasts less every time it happens, he’s noticed. He knows that there is nowhere to go. No way he can be someone else, no matter how much he might wish to.

He’s used to Spike by now. Or, if not used to him, at least resigned to him.

Spike is just…how it is.

People like Chase better when he’s not himself. When he’s not abrasive, and arrogant, and too much for anyone to handle.

After Chase comes back to himself, Bree doesn’t bat an eye, while Skylar nods at Chase after the fact and Oliver even congratulates Chase for a job well done, crowing about how cool it is that Chase has an anti-hero alter ego.

Kaz, on the other hand, stands and stares at Chase, almost concerned, and Chase isn’t sure why, but he can’t quite concentrate on what Kaz is thinking.

The mission is over. They succeeded. Spike got them out of the situation at hand, and that’s all that matters. They’re all safe, and they survived, and it doesn’t matter that Chase doesn’t remember how they did it, because they did do it.

Chase knows that his hands shouldn’t be trembling as he reaches for the bottle of water in the training room. That he should just be used to his own body being taken over by an outside force- or, rather, the most inside force of all. He knows that he should be used to waking up to the commando app having done exactly what the name says. He knows he should be used to not mattering at all.

Maybe, if Spike took over more often, he’d be able to handle it better. There’s just enough time between the Spike takeovers that he doesn’t quite get used to the way that it feels for the override and commando apps to kick in in a wash of neon, poisonous green over his senses and then to wake up, knuckles bruised because Spike slammed Chase’s not-so-super-strengthened knuckles against a wall or someone’s head or some other hard surface that is too much for human skin to handle.

But since Chase gets just enough space to breathe, just enough space to forget that this is how people like him, that this is how he protects people, especially since they’re down one bionic with superstrength and another with a super-arm-

Chase swallows. Hard. Adam’s apple bobbing.

And he takes a drink of water.

He’s going to need to make a mission report and get back to training and just…not let this affect him.

Even if he didn’t have the issue of charging at night. Even if he didn’t have the issue of not knowing how to build a capsule, because even Douglas and Donald aren’t quite sure why exactly the original ones worked so well. Even if he didn’t have everything inside of him holding him back.

Chase can’t run now, because he’s in charge of the mission. In charge of the team.

And there is no one left to fall back on. Douglas, Mr. Davenport, all the rest- they're busy.

And Chase needs to be a leader.

Chase is an adult, now. An adult who didn’t get to go prom because Adam used Spike to steal his date, an adult who spent the vast majority of his life in a basement, an adult who knows all too well that he was never socialized properly because he was “special” and thus could never fit in in a team of superheroes, much less the ordinary population.

And Leo is gone and Leo was the only one who ever seemed to register that the override and commando apps stole something every time they were used and-

And Chase needs a break. He needs a breather. He needs a getaway.

But he doesn’t get to have that. He’s too important, his responsibility too great, because Mr. Davenport is busy handling Davenport Industries and the bionic teenagers and Chase is fine. He’s built to be a leader (even if no one has ever respected him), he’s built to be the smartest man on earth (even if every newer bionic model has an updated version of his chip and thus faster computing power), he’s built to be better than human (even if all he’s ever wished is to prove himself as surely as a normal kid would, with his report cards on the fridge and his dad smiling at him and telling him that he’s proud) and god, Chase doesn’t want to run away, he just wants to see Tasha and Leo and he wants to remember that he’s loved, in some small way, and-

And-

Kaz finds Chase in the training room, slamming his fists into the punching bag.

“Whoa, Chase,” he says, eyes going wide, “You’re going a bit hard.”

“I’m fine,” Chase bites out, not even pausing in training to do the sort of things that Adam and Skylar and Bree can do without blinking, because their powers are more useful, their powers are more well-suited to missions, to protecting people, and all he is is a machine, a computer that people listen to when they feel like it, “Just doing the training that everyone else does-”

“We have heavy hitters, man,” Kaz says, and his voice almost seems like it’s supposed to be reassuring, but nothing can relieve that itch beneath Chase’s skin, that reminder that he’s always been seen as the most useful when someone else was in control of his body, “We’ve got Skylar and Oliver and I and even Bree-”

“Which makes me the weak link,” Chase snaps. “Which makes me the one who would fail the team if we got into a situation where we need everyone to step up to the plate.” Chase lets out a small, sharp laugh. “Maybe if I was stronger on my own, there would be no need for Spike to come out. I can’t fly, can’t run, by fucking design, and maybe if I can fight, then maybe then I won’t have to let out the other side of my chip. I can just…be.”

There is a certain wistfulness in Chase’s voice that he hasn’t indulged in in so long, since before the Elite Force, since before the Bionic Island, since before Sebastian and that first kiss that turned into a goddamn nightmare, and Chase really shouldn’t be left in charge of his own decisions, should he? 

Chase always manages to fuck things up when he gets to be in control of things. He always manages to make the wrong decisions, trust the wrong people, from Marcus to Douglas to Sebastian. And even if Douglas ended up being more on their side than not by the end of it all, in the meantime-

Chase nearly shudders at all of the wrong decisions he’s made. Smartest man on earth, his fucking ass. The smartest man on earth wouldn’t have made the choices he did. He wouldn’t have trusted the people that Chase did.

Maybe it was a good thing that Mr. Davenport took away his ability to run. When Mr. Davenport decided to not let the boy have more of a voice than the bionics.

Chase goes back in on the punching bag again, and it’s harder than he ever was before.

He feels something split in his knuckles, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop.

He has to get stronger. He has to prove himself, because if he’s not his mind, then he’s nothing at all, and the leader of the mission can’t be nothing at all, he can’t be weak, he has to prove himself-

But before the next blow lands against the punching bag, someone’s hand reaches forward and-

Catches Chase’s hand.

There is no one that has ever tried to catch him. Because why would they? Adam was the threat, and Bree was the one who sometimes sped out of control, and you need a net for both of them, but not for the boy who was never smart enough to make his bionics justified.

Kaz turns Chase’s hand over, handling the broken and bruised and split flesh with the sort of tenderness that no one ever treats a bionic boy with, because he’s supposed to be stronger, he’s supposed to be able to take any blow without breaking.

But Kaz is different. Kaz is tender, and he is gentle, and he looks at Chase with some sort of sympathy as he says, “You might be bionic, but you’re also human. And you’ve gotta take care of yourself, man.”

It is incredibly unfair that Kaz is the first person since Leo to show Chase any sort of understanding of the human side of him.

(In this moment, Chase’s heart aches for Leo, and for Tasha, and even for Grandma Rose, because when he lived in the Davenport mansion, when he lived with them, he got to be a teenage boy. A stunted teenage boy, sure, whose bionics always fucked with his ability to be a person, but still, it was a glimpse at normalcy. It was a glimpse at the life as an ordinary nerd that he'd always dreamed of having.

He has had to be nothing more than an adult and a leader and more than anything, bionic, for so long here in Centium City. It has been so long since he’s gotten to lay down and even approach relaxing.

He misses Christmas. He misses Grandma Rose passing him hard candies out of her giant pocketbook, speaking of him as fondly as she did Leo. He misses Tasha's hugs, and her insistence that they were a family, and misses Leo, and the way he'd been so excited about having a brother, and the way that things had sometimes blown up in their faces, but at the end of the day, they still were a family.)

And it's not fair that right now, faced with the smallest sliver of kindness-

Chase crumbles.

He’s not supposed to crumble. He’s supposed to be the next generation of the human race. He’s supposed to be a leader, and a hero, and unassailable-

But all of a sudden he can’t breathe, and there is a sob trapped behind his teeth, hitching at his throat, and he can't speak, he can barely breathe-

Kaz guides Chase over to the side of the training room and taps the screen on the dashboard that makes the wall flip open, the first aid kit sliding out.

"You don't have to-" Chase's voice stutters, and that never happens, he's supposed to be the smartest man in the world, without his bionics and his forcefield and his molecular kinesis, all he has is his words, and what is he going to do when he fails- "It will just heal itself on its own-"

"Yeah, not gonna fly," Kaz says as he gets Chase to sit down, "Hippocratic Oath and all that."

“God, when did you get so good at this?” Chase asks, and there is something thick in his throat. Something wet, like mucus, like the involuntary contraction of muscles that happens when you’re about to cry, and he doesn’t do that, he’s above that, he’s fucking bionic, he shouldn’t be falling apart-

Kaz smirks. “I was a doctor, if you don’t remember.”

Yeah. Shit.

Things have been so overwhelming lately. So much to keep track of. So many moving parts on every mission, the previous team structure of the trio having to be reoriented for five people instead, all with strange new powers and biologies and physics-defying abilities that Chase doesn't quite understand.

So it makes sense that for a moment, something like that slipped his mind, in the aftermath of a barely-successful mission, one in which they only succeeded because Spike took over and saved the day.

But now that Chase has some semblance of his mind back-

“You saved my life,” Chase says, “There’s no way that I could forget.”

Kaz shrugs. “Well, you’re the only one who does. No one else ever does. I’m just the idiot with the fire powers, now, and that's all everyone needs me for."

Chase has never seen Kaz as just an idiot.

Okay, maybe in those first few moments of knowing each other, far before the Elite Force even began, when they switched brains and the world was falling apart, but back then, it was hard for Chase to see anyone as smart, on the same level as him, still buried so deep within the myth of the "Smartest Man On Earth" that has been so thoroughly debunked since then.

But never since that first day, in the Mighty Med hospital, when Kaz had been the only person other than Chase to ever use Chase’s intelligence to do something good, when Kaz had saved his goddamn life-

(And considering the amount of damage that Chase has done over the years, he thinks that Kaz wielded Chase’s brain far more gracefully than Chase ever could.)

“Well,” Chase says, “You’re a damn good doctor. And no one should ever forget that.”

The smile that Kaz gives Chase could light up a dead man’s veins. It feels impossible. It feels like something he hasn't earned.

“I miss getting to be a doctor," Kaz says as he continues to bandage up Chase's hands, his calloused fingers tender, delicate, against Chase's split knuckles as he spreads ointment, as he tucks in bandages, with the sort of care that Mr. Davenport never showed. “Anything you miss, about life before being a hero?"

“I don’t…” Something inside of Chase's chest aches. "I don’t know if I can miss something I never had. I liked school, once I was let out of the basement, but Spike was there since the first day of school, and-" Chase swallows. "I knew, from my first day at school, that people preferred me when I was Spike. That I was cooler when I was trapped inside of my own head, blinking my way awake to find out that someone else had stepped into my body. And everything else- ever since Mr. Davenport took us from Douglas and raised us, all I've ever been meant for is being a hero. Doing missions. Following orders, and proving myself to the Davenport Industries board as a valuable member of the research team, and more missions, and, well-" It slices something inside of Chase open to admit the truth, but it has to be said, if he's going to be honest with Kaz, if he's going to give Kaz what Kaz has given him: "Any dreams of something else were just that: dreams. That's it."

“You know what you need?” Kaz asks.

“A shock to the head?”

Kaz shakes his head as he tucks in the final bandage. “A goddamn vacation."

For a moment, Chase almost lets himself picture it: a vacation with Kaz, to somewhere in the world with gorgeous architecture or biodiversity that he could explore to his heart’s content. Costa Rica or Cordoba, Tam Đảo or Taiwan. 

They could see rainforests or mosques or skyscrapers, and they could find a great comic book place for Kaz, and they could go through the heroes together, and Chase could listen to Kaz speak for hours without feeling bored, because he's always been interested when Kaz speaks, and maybe they could talk comics together, and maybe even lean in towards each other over top of a couple of panels-

And Chase can’t allow any of that. He can’t afford any of that.

Because the last time that he let his personal life distract from things, the last time that he indulged a dream like this, everything fell to shit, and maybe if Spike had taken over, everything with Sebastian and Crane never would have happened, Chase’s heart breaking to goddamn pieces all over the Bionic Island because he was stupid enough to let a cute boy get to his heart.

“We have a mission to execute here,” Chase says, pulling back from Kaz, from his tender touch against Chase's hand. "We cannot get distracted by vacations when there is so much to take care of-"

But Kaz doesn't flinch. “You deserve to be a person of your own," Kaz says, because he's more stubborn than the superheroes that he worked on, "Not what other people program into you." He tucks the first aid kit back into the wall. "So just one day, man, if that makes you feel better. Lemme give you just one day, Chase Davenport."

Just one day. 

Just one day.

The siren call of a single day off is hard to resist. Hard to imagine giving up.

Chase has never had a proper day off. School was school- it was fun, yes, because Chase loved learning, but there were bullies and Principal Perry and bionic issues interfering with classes and his siblings.

(There was Spike.)

And then, beyond school- there were presentations outside of school. Business meetings with Mr. Davenport, missions to complete. Even trips to the Arctic Circle or to space were for the sake of missions.

Chase didn’t even get a chance to stand at the windows of the space station and look down on the earth and the stars, he was so busy doing everything for the sake of what had to be done, focusing even when his discovery of his molecular kinesis threatened to derail everything.

God. Chase was so busy competing with his siblings and trying to prove himself and getting swept up in the endless quest to shine in his own right, more than just as the physically-weaker piece of the family puzzle, that he never took a moment to look at the goddamn stars.

A life in the basement, and that’s where he ended up: in space, and yet not taking the chance to look at the sky.

He never got a moment to himself. Never a moment to decide what he wanted to do himself.

Kaz's offer feels like it's worth more than its weight in gold. Like it is a once in a lifetime opportunity that Chase is never going to get again.

“We can do whatever you want, man,” Kaz says, holding out his hand, and it shouldn’t be this attractive an offer.

But Chase looks at Kaz, at his tender, careful, skilled fingers, at the sweet curve of his mouth, tantalizing as the sugar that Chase was never allowed as a kid, because bionic soldiers needed to eat a dry regimen of pellets, and Chase, for the first time in the year and a half since Sebastian, thinks-

Well, he almost lets himself think-

I’d like to see what it’s like, to think of myself as cherished.

God, even if it's a fantasy. Even if it's just a dream.

Chase swallows and for the first time in years, the first time since Sebastian, he lets himself take a chance. He reaches out and takes Kaz's hand and lets himself be pulled down to the coatrack to grab jackets and then head down the elevator, ignoring the debrief, ignoring the capsule, ignoring all the usual procedures.

---

They go to the planetarium first, of course, because Chase wants to see the stars and here they are, just within reach.

Chase Davenport doesn’t believe in wishes. He believes in proof, in the cold glass of a capsule beneath sleeping fingers rather than wishing on shooting stars.

But Kaz drags him along, and insists that Chase make wishes on meteor showers, and Chase wants to do it, for Kaz, but he can't help himself.

Chase cheats. He finds himself glancing at Kaz out of the corner of his eyes, instead of at the stars, and he finds Kaz looking right back at him, smiling from ear-to-ear, something soft in his gaze that Chase wouldn't mind being caught by.

And Chase finds himself wishing for more days like this. More days with the stars, with Kaz, with Kaz's hand in his, with the end of the world looking so much like the beginning of one.

But then, once they're done at the planetarium-

Chase is hesitant to ask for the second half of the day. What young adult wants to spend the day at someone else’s stepgrandmother’s house?

But this is what Chase wants. He wants warmth. He wants the closest thing to love that he can find.

He wants the reminder that he does have a family, no matter how disjointed it might be, no matter how much he sometimes feels like more bionics than boy.

And so, they go.

---

Chase knows that it isn’t normal, for you to show up at the house of your step-grandmother’s house with a cute boy that you’re just barely beginning to wrap your feelings around.

But Grandma Rose takes a single look at him, clucks her tongue, and fifteen minutes later finds Chase and Kaz in her living room with her cat curled up on Kaz’s lap as he charms Grandma Rose as Mr. Davenport never could have, a plate of cookies and hard candies on the table in front of them and hot chocolate in a mug in Chase's hands, warm through the bandages that Grandma Rose fussed plenty over when they arrived.

It’s absurdly domestic, for a boy that spent his life living in a lab, for a boy who always had to be a bionic hero before he was ever a boy, in the sort of way that Chase has ached for, for so long.

Getting to watch Kaz with Grandma Rose feels like something that someone else would get to have. Like a life that Chase could have lived, if he had not had bionics woven into every facet of his body and his life.

At one point, Kaz goes to use the restroom, shifting the cat onto Chase's lap- where it is clearly not as pleased about things, given how stiff it is, but it doesn't hiss and claw, so Chase takes that as a win as he grabs another cookie.

“Now, Chase, I know that you never…came out of the basement, or whatever the kids are calling it nowadays,” Grandma Rose says, voice absolutely confident, and Chase nearly chokes on his food, because he lived in the basement the entire time she was visiting Tasha and Donald and because no, he hasn’t come out of the closet to her. Hell, he’s not sure he’s come out of the closet officially to anyone, though with the way that Leo tried his best to console Chase after he buried himself in the sand post-Sebastian, Chase has the feeling that at least Leo has figured it out. “But this boy of yours- I approve of him, unlike your father.”

“Wait a minute,” Chase says, eyes going wide. “Do you think that he’s- that he’s my-”

“You don’t exactly just bring a “friend” ‘round to meet your grandmother,” Grandma Rose says, “And that boy was looking at you like you hung the moon- as he should. You should only date people that are head over heels for you, who know your worth.” She sniffs. “At least my daughter knew that when she started dating your father.”

Chase knows that his chest should only be expanding or swooping at the idea of a boyfriend, that he should be panicking over the idea of someone getting that close to him.

But today, Kaz has been nothing but wonderful, and more important than any boyfriend could ever be, Grandma Rose called herself his grandmother.

Chase has a family. He knows that. He has two siblings, and a biological father in Douglas, and another brother out there in Daniel.

But he calls everyone by their names. He’s never had a Dad. He’s never had a Papa.

But now, he has a grandmother, because Grandma Rose took one look at him and decided that he was hers.

Chase surges forward to wrap his arms around Grandma Rose, and she smells like mothballs and (no surprise here) rose-scented perfume, and it’s one of the best hugs that Chase has ever had, because here is a family member that accepts him unconditionally. That loves him, Chase Davenport, not the brilliant bionic brain or the Spike behind the skin or anything like that. That is just happy that he trusts her enough to come out.

Maybe, if this is what running away feels like, then Chase might have to do it more often. He might have to let himself have the sort of break that he never let himself before.

---

Eventually, at the end of the evening, they do have to leave Grandma Rose's house with a tupperware container of cookies underneath of Kaz’s arm, because Grandma Rose insists on feeding them all sweets.

And Chase is not someone who's really gotten gifts in his life. Sure, living with a billionaire allowed him to buy gadgets and things, but it was never about the things, y'know? It's about people thinking about you. Making things with care. Giving things with love.

And today, between Grandma Rose and Kaz's gifts, has been the most cherished that Chase Davenport has ever felt in his entire life. They gave him the sort of day that he has never been allowed before, where he gets to make his own choices, where he didn't have to think about bionics or missions, where he could just be a nerdy guy who gets to experience what it's like to be a grandson and a friend and just a...guy, years after his childhood stole all of those things away from him.

“God, I’m gonna need to come back for some more cookies some other time,” Kaz says cheerfully, "Your Grandma can really bake a mean snickerdoodle, y'know?"

Chase nods, but instead of answering the question aloud, he reaches out and takes Kaz’s hand in his.

"I need to thank you, for all of this," Chase says, and there is a certain sincerity bleeding through his voice that he doesn't know how to cover up- if he even wanted to cover it up.

Kaz shrugs. "No problem. Honestly, thank you. This was a pretty great day, y'know," Kaz says, "Been a long time since I've gotten to spend any time with family that wasn't just me thinking I'm never gonna be the center of attention, am I? There are so many siblings ahead of me and behind me, so many older ones with so many accomplishments and so many younger ones that are cuter and more attention-grabbing and just...sweeter. I don't know if I've ever been someone that someone actively wanted around or paid attention to. I just kinda got...lost in the mix. So getting to spend time with your grandma-" Kaz's smile melts into something sweet and fond. "That was really nice."

"You really did charm her," Chase says.

Kaz grins. "What can I say? I'm the most charming person I know, even if some people can't see it."

It's the truth. Chase has found himself charmed by Kaz completely involuntarily for so long, now. 

"Trust me, I know the feeling," Chase says with a laugh, and he hopes that it comes across as sympathetic, not mocking. "I know a thing or two about people liking other people more than you. Especially my siblings. Even the Other Guy. People have always liked him more than they like me." He snorts. "I'm not even the person that people like more in my own body, isn't that a fucking trip?"

Kaz looks at Chase. Really looks at him. Looks at him so long and so hard that Chase almost wonders if Kaz is looking for something.

"You are the best version of you, Chase. Wouldn't just want to spend an entire day with some random guy, would I? Fuck everyone who ever thought that an override was better than you."

Chase's fingers tighten around Kaz's, and it does something unexplainable to his heart when he feels Kaz squeeze right back. 

"I have never had anyone say that they prefer me to The Other Guy," Chase admits. "Never had anyone who just...wanted to spend a day with me. So...thank you."

Kaz grins. "Absolutely no problem, man, like I said, this was a banger of a time-"

There is an anxious knot ratcheting up Chase’s throat, but he knows that if he didn’t say something, he’d regret it.

Today, he spent the day with two people that want him, not Spike, not the bionics, but him.

And he wants to see if Kaz just might- if he might also-

Could Grandma Rose have been right, about the way that Kaz looks at him? That Kaz looks at him like he hung the moon?

There is no way that that could be true, because if anything, Kaz is the sun, all fire powers, all brilliant warmth, all heart-melting heat.

And yet-

Kaz likes him.

He just spent the whole day going to the planetarium, and meeting his grandma, and-

And Chase never really got much of a chance to read romance novels or watch Bree's rom-coms, too busy working on homework and indulging and science and scraping to prove himself, but he did occasionally take the chance to read comic books, and those had romantic plot-lines, sometimes, when for one brief moment a hero would get a chance to go on a date with their love interest, and Chase thinks-

Stargazing would fit that bill. Meeting the family would fit that bill.

(Staring at Chase instead of the stars would fit that bill.)

And so he pulls Kaz forward, raising his arms up to loop around Kaz's neck, and pulls him in for-

It's a foolish thing to do. A reckless thing to do, devoid of logic, devoid of planning.

There are so many things that could go wrong with this. So many ways that Chase could end up regretting this. So many ways that Chase could find himself wanting to run away again, because every attempt at romance before this has ended in tragedy and if he lost Kaz, the only person in his life who currently sees him as a human, then he doesn't know what he would do-

But Chase spent the first fourteen years of his life living in a basement. More than two-thirds of his life in the cold, and the clinical, and the cramped.

Chase and Kaz's mouths meet and fire licks up Chase’s spine, as hot as Kaz’s powers, as warm as a hearth in winter.

And in this moment, as Kaz's fingers fly up to the back of his neck to curl around his neck and into the nape of his hair, as Kaz pulls him in tight against him, a hand on Chase's waist, opening his mouth to kiss Chase back as firmly as Chase has ever kissed anyone, Chase has never felt more human in his life.