Work Text:
“Chase. Cha-ase.”
He’s almost got the calculation worked out. Just needs to figure out the right interval to use. Doesn’t need to double-check the work, because, hello. Human computer.
“Chaaase.”
The dry erase marker squeaks against the board. Chase hates that. “What is it, Kaz?” he says flatly, without looking over his shoulder.
He hears the thump of what must be Kaz’s head against the desk. “I’m bored. I’m going to die of boredom.”
“It’s physically impossible to die of boredom,” Chase tells him, rolling his eyes at the theatrics. “I’m kind of busy here. Why don’t you go bug someone else?”
It’s Sunday; the team has the day off. Something about breaks being essential for morale. He’s trying to be more receptive to the needs of other people, but he just doesn’t really get why they need the whole day: he’d slept in until seven, speed-read the Dune series, picked apart all the scientific inaccuracies, made himself a smoked-salmon-and-avocado breakfast sandwich, and then lasted all of fifteen more minutes of relaxation before caving and holing back up in Mission Command around eight. It’s a little past noon now, and he’s made some pretty major breakthroughs in the last few hours. Maybe he’ll have cold fusion figured out by lunch.
Probably not, though, if Kaz keeps distracting him.
The pyrokinetic in question prattles on. “Bree went for a hike, like in the woods,” Kaz shudders, “And Skylar and Oliver went grocery shopping, and there was no way I was going with them, ‘cause last week I tried to flirt with one of the cashiers and accidentally spontaneously combusted the Coke I was buying, so I can never show my face there again.”
“Do we need to work on you controlling your powers around hot people?”
“Pfft, no. They work just fine around you, don’t they?” Chase pauses in his writing, and Kaz tacks on, “And Bree. And Skylar. Not that Oliver’s not hot, but he’s my best friend, so it kind of feels weird to say that, y’know?”
“Okay.”
“The point is, my powers are fine.”
“Yup.”
Kaz peels a sticky-note off the stack on the desk, crumples it into a ball, and lobs it at him. “Pay attention to me.”
“Kaz, seriously.” Chase deflects the next one with his molecular kinesis before it can hit him. “I’m trying to work.”
“You’re always working,” Kaz whines. “It’s our day off. Aren’t we supposed to be taking it easy?”
“Calculus relaxes me.”
Kaz makes an exaggerated gagging noise. “You know what else is relaxing? Video games. Blowing things up on the terrace. Generally causing mayhem.”
He’s persistent, if nothing else. Chase considers the merits of luring Kaz into the weapons vault and locking him inside. The promise of some peace and quiet is a good motivator, and it would keep him out of trouble.
Still, though. Kaz might have a tiny modicum of a point. His wrist is getting a little sore. Beating Kaz at a video game doesn’t not sound fun. Chase turns around to voice this internal debate and finds Kaz staring at him, an eager smile plastered all over his face.
It's the kind of grin that means he knows he’s getting what he wants. It’s the kind of grin that makes his eyes all bright and electric. It’s very irritating. It’s a little bit something else.
Chase caps his marker and points it at Kaz. “One hour.”
The smile, impossibly, gets wider. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’m serious. And you make me a grilled cheese.”
Kaz is already tugging him into the elevator.
“Chase.” Someone is shaking his shoulder. “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty. You’re gonna kill your neck like that.”
Chase blinks awake to the blue glow of the cyberdesk and Kaz, standing over him. They’re in Mission Command. Kaz is dressed in pajamas, flannel pants and a t-shirt too big for him, his hair tousled like he’s just rolled out of bed. Chase’s eyes cut to the analog clock on the display: it’s a little past three in the morning. There’s a mess of scattered notes in front of him. He was working on the schematics for a new device for Mr. Davenport; he can’t remember when he’d dozed off.
He rubs the sleep from his eyes. The dregs of a dream still poke at the back of his mind, but the details are trickling away. “What’re you doing down here?”
“What are you doing down here?” Kaz challenges. “Your capsule was empty, I thought you got kidnapped or something.”
“Not kidnapped,” Chase grouses, swiping at the console to try and figure out where he left off, “just working.”
“As usual.” Kaz shakes his head and takes up the stool next to him. “You talk in your sleep, y’know. Commonly caused by stress and sleep deprivation?” At Chase’s pointed non-answer, Kaz continues, “Who’s Sebastian?”
That gets Chase’s attention. He fixes Kaz with the most withering scowl he can muster, given the hour: “None of your business.”
“You were saying his name.”
“Do you ever shut up, Fireboy? Jeez.”
Kaz just shrugs, still smiling, “Nope.” Everything always seems to roll right off of him, which is half admirable and half insufferable. Chase is not like that, obviously. Though it would solve approximately forty-six percent of his problems if he were.
He’s not going to think about the fact that Sebastian apparently still has a chokehold on his subconscious. That’s going right on top of the years in the basement and the super-soldier alter ego and the knowledge that he was created to be a weapon of mass destruction in the pile of things to work out in therapy in approximately ten years. He has twenty minutes blocked out for a nervous breakdown next Tuesday, anyway, so it’s not like he’s repressing anything.
Chase picks his pen back up, but Kaz plucks it deftly out of his hand. “Kaz—“
“Dude. It’s the middle of the night. Go to bed.”
“You go to bed,” Chase snaps, fully aware of how childish he sounds, “I still have work to do.” Kaz stubbornly holds the pen out of reach, but Chase has a handy thing called molecular kinesis.
Except that, when he tries to bring the pen back to his hands, it goes flying across the room and shatters against the wall instead. Kaz crosses his arms, looking triumphant. Chase frowns. “That was my favorite pen.”
“Well, now it’s your favorite pile of plastic, ink, and metal. Kinda seems like your cue to get some sleep.”
Chase considers this. He hasn’t glitched in a while; it’s probably not a great sign. There’s a headache throbbing at his temples.
“C’mon,” Kaz knocks their knees together, and the brief point of contact is somehow the most convincing argument made so far. “Your eyebags have eyebags.”
Chase scoffs. “Says the guy whose skincare routine is bar soap.”
“Well, can’t improve on perfection.”
Chase rolls his eyes, but his resolve is chipping. He glances at the designs on the table. “I guess this stuff can wait,” he admits at last. “One day won’t kill anyone. Probably.”
“That’s the spirit.” Kaz beams, and then lifts his hand towards Chase’s face.
Chase tamps down the flinch in favor of smacking it away. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve got ink on your face.” Kaz rolls his eyes with surprising fondness, “Take a Xanax, man, jesus.”
Chase doesn’t get into the details of how benzodiazepines interact with a bionic nervous system, but he puts his hand down. There’s a smile at the corner of Kaz’s mouth as the pad of his thumb meets Chase’s cheek, a little bit amused, a little bit something else. His touch scorches; a side-effect, probably, of the pyrokinesis. The heat goes right down to his core.
“There you go.” Kaz flashes his thumb to show Chase the splash of blue ink. “Got it.”
Chase breathes out, chest strangely tight. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
His pulse feels erratic. Maybe the sleep deprivation really is getting to him. Chase clears his throat and busies himself with filing away the papers on the cyber-desk. “If Mr. Davenport chews me out for not finishing on time, I’m blaming you.”
Kaz laughs. “Okay, I can live with that.” He jerks his head towards the hyperlift. “C’mon, genius. Let’s get you to bed.”
In the end, he doesn’t get much sleep anyway, because he spends the night playing back the interaction in his head—Kaz’s hand against his face, how close they’d been. For no particular reason.
There are worse trade-offs, if he’s being completely honest. In some ways, it’s a little like dreaming.
“—you good? Chase. Ground control to Davenport?”
Chase blinks. Kaz is staring at him, waving a hand. There’s a smudge of ash on the crest of his cheek, sweat in his hair; the jacket of his suit is half-unzipped. They’re fresh from the fight, some small-time weather villain threatening to tear down Centium City, and Chase can’t get the image of it out of his head: Kaz, in the midst of the fray, his hands ablaze, every inch of him shining. Radiant. Beautiful enough to be blinding.
That’s when it hits him: Kaz is staring at him, because he’d been staring at Kaz.
Chase clears his throat, suddenly hot to the tips of his ears. The team gives him varying looks of confusion from the lopsided half-circle they’ve formed around the holo-desk. They’re supposed to be debriefing. Kaz was asking a question. Chase briefly considers curling up under the table to die.
“Sorry,” he blurts. “I zoned out, for a second there. What was that, Kaz?”
Over Kaz’s shoulder, Bree lifts an eyebrow at him. Chase very pointedly avoids her gaze. Kaz says, “I was just thinking Oliver and I could get started on a supervillain database, of sorts. Y’know, so you guys could keep track of their weaknesses.”
“That’s—yeah, that works. Great idea, Kaz.” Chase swallows; his mouth feels dry.
“O-kay,” Skylar casts him a glance and cuts in, ever the hero. “We’re all tired, so maybe we should wrap this up.”
Chase nods, trying not to seem too relieved. He needs to shower, and then maybe figure out how to hack his own brain so he can delete this whole interaction from his memory. “Sure. Yes.” He doesn’t look at Kaz. “Dismissed.”
He doesn’t get a chance to wallow, because afterwards Skylar grabs him by the wrist and pulls him up to her room. They do this sometimes. Cite important Mission Leader-business, and then steal away to gossip.
When the door swings shut behind them she gives him a scrutinizing look. “Are you okay?”
Chase frowns, shifting on his feet and trying to play it off. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you totally spaced out on us, and then you didn’t even put up a fight about ending the meeting early. You love meetings.”
“It’s been a long day.”
Skylar squints, crosses her arms. “You were staring at Kaz,” she says, and Chase cringes.
Skylar is always blunt, but sometimes she can be eerily perceptive. Normally Chase respects it, because it makes her an especially good leader, helps her key in to the signals he has more trouble picking up on. But right now he just hates it.
“Oh my god,” she says.
Chase shakes his head, entirely despising where this conversation is going. “No.”
“Wait. Seriously?” Her eyes are huge.
“Skylar—“
“Do you like Kaz?”
Chase wishes he’d let Douglas give him his siblings’ abilities after all, because then he could superspeed away from this conversation. He turns his cheek instead, trying not to let her see his expression. “I don’t,” he says, in earnest. He feels ridiculous; he’s been trained to withstand interrogations, but at the mention of his stupid crush he’s getting red in the face. “It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s Kaz. He’s—we’re friends. We’re, like, reluctant acquaintances, really. I actually find him kind of insufferable.”
Skylar smirks. “Well, you sound like you’re suffering.”
Chase groans and sprawls backwards onto her bed. Little neon pink stars speckle the ceiling; Kaz and Oliver had stuck them there to remind her of home. There’s a lopsided dipper shape, a faded blank spot where one of them peeled off. He closes his eyes and sees Kaz’s stupid million-watt smile, like a permanent imprint behind his eyelids.
“You can’t tell him,” he says finally.
Skylar curls up on the edge of the mattress. “Oh god, no,” she scoffs, and rolls her eyes, “Can you imagine how annoying he’d get? He doesn’t need the ego boost.”
Chase pulls a pillow over his face. “Put me out of my misery, please.”
“It’s not so bad.” She pats his ankle sympathetically. “He’s kind of okay, sometimes. And he’s a decent kisser.”
Chase emerges from the pillow to blink at her, and she gives him a sheepish smile. “It was one time, like a year ago.” She shrugs one shoulder and then mimes zipping her lips. “Don’t tell Oliver, okay?”
It’s not as bad as it could be. Or, it is, but he deals. Chase is good at compartmentalizing, after all: he has a color-coded calendar and a 76-page single-spaced to-do list to keep him occupied at all times, which makes it easier to remember that ultimately, his crush on Kaz is a distraction: from leading the team, from getting work done, from keeping his head on straight. There’s no point in mooning around about his feelings all day. He’s a mature adult, and he can handle this like one.
When he relays this to Skylar, she laughs in his face. “I don’t think mature adults avoid their problems until they go away,” she tells him, snagging an apple slice from his plate.
He swats at her hand. “I’m not avoiding anything,” he argues. “I’m just a very busy person.”
Skylar shields her eyes from the sun so she can raise an eyebrow at him. It’s a beautiful day, which gave Chase a half-decent excuse to skip out on going to the movies with Kaz and Oliver. Which has absolutely nothing to do with his thoughts on sitting inches away from Kaz for two hours, in the dark, while people make out on screen in front of them.
“You barely hang out with him anymore,” she points out, moving her legs to make room for him on the terrace chair, “You make up excuses to leave the room whenever you’re alone together for more than two minutes.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, you’re ridiculous. He misses you. He actually admitted that. To me. Do you know how dire things must be if Kaz is talking to me about his feelings?”
Chase feels a swell of something like hope, and then tamps it down as quickly as possible. If he entertains some pipe dream about a sweeping romance with Kaz, of all people, he’s going to lose it completely. “It’s not like that,” he insists. “In case you haven’t noticed, Kaz isn’t exactly subtle. If he liked me back, I think I’d know about it.”
Skylar gives him a long look, shaking her head. “You’re such an idiot,” she tells him finally, and steals another apple slice.
Chase sticks his tongue out. What does she know, anyway.
“Hey.”
Some studies say it’s a kind of sixth sense, to know when someone’s watching you. Chase isn’t sure if he believes in all that, but he feels the heavy weight of Kaz’s gaze on the back of his neck all the same, a sunburn kind of sting.
“Hi, Kaz.” He fidgets with his cufflinks. Doesn’t turn around. They’ve been invited to this Davenport Industries gala tonight, to be paraded around in front of all the investors, so Chase is drilling the mantras in his head—big smile, firm handshake, just enough humor to come off as charming, but not facetious. He tries to flatten his hair, but it won’t stay down. He feels like a kid playing dress-up.
Kaz hovers near his shoulder. “You nervous?”
Chase scoffs, “Mr. Davenport’s been training us for these sorts of things since we were kids. I know what I’m doing.”
“Right.”
He relents. “Maybe a little bit.”
A light laugh, more fond than teasing. Kaz says, “Can you give me a hand?”
They’re alone in the room. It’s a bad idea. Despite his better judgment, though, Chase turns around.
Mr. Davenport had given them matching tailored suits to wear tonight. Kaz’s fits him perfectly, sloping along the mantled lines of his shoulders, neatly trimming his waist. The top button of his collar is open, which isn’t exactly professional but makes him look looser, more like himself. His tie hangs undone around his neck. He gestures to it and gives Chase a crooked smile, “I suck at these.”
The pull of him: like gravity; Chase moves forward without thinking. “You don’t know how to tie a tie?”
“Didn’t come up much,” Kaz shrugs. Chase goes through the knots in his head: a windsor’s standard, but a kelvin adds a touch of class. He folds the thicker end over the thinner one and doesn’t look Kaz in the face.
It’s silent for a moment. Chase tries to tune out the sound of Kaz’s heartbeat.
“What’s your deal, lately?”
The question throws Chase; he fumbles the knot. Attempts to recover. “What?”
“You’re just,” he feels it again, the bore of Kaz’s eyes, “you’re—distracted. You’re always somewhere else.”
“I’m right here.” Chase pulls the end through the loop and moves to step back, but Kaz grabs his hand and holds it there.
“You know what I mean.”
Kaz’s pulse leaps against his skin. He smells like smoke, like a forest fire; Chase breathes it in and then realizes what he’s doing halfway through the inhale and stops himself.
He swallows. “There’s just—a lot going on right now,” he says, which sounds lame even to his own ears. “I’ve got a ton on my plate.”
“Okay, sure.” Kaz hesitates. “You know we’re a team, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And I’m—I mean, like, it’s me, dude.”
There’s something in his voice that Chase can’t read. He wants more than anything to know what it is, but if he meets Kaz’s gaze, he’s not going to look away.
“Kaz,” he says, very quietly.
There’s a beat. Kaz drops his hand.
“Right,” he shakes his head. “Forget it. Thanks for,” he gestures half-heartedly to his tie as he steps away. “I’ll see you downstairs, Chase,” he says finally, and then he’s gone.
The party is—fine. He makes a lot of witty-yet-flattering banter, shakes a lot of hands. Sometimes Chase thinks about this being his life in twelve-to-sixteen-years, a never-ending slew of Swiss watches and champagne flutes and small talk that doubles as carefully crafted code for under-the-table deals, and it turns his stomach. Tonight, though, it’s temporary. Manageable.
“You look like you’re having fun.” Bree keeps her voice low, just for his super-hearing. She looks classy, dressed in a black one-shoulder gown with gold bangles glinting at her wrists, but the image is cut by the fact that she’s currently hoarding a full platter of cocktail shrimp.
Chase doesn’t even really like shrimp, but he steals one anyway. It helps to have something to chew on other than his thoughts. “Is it that obvious?” He thought he’d been doing okay.
“Not to someone who doesn’t know you,” Bree shrugs. “What’s on your brain?”
“Everything, all the time,” he quips, but she follows his gaze across the room. There’s Kaz: in his perfect suit, with his brilliant smile, making half-flirtatious conversation with some intern in a tux and melting into the party as easy as anything. He glances at Chase once, just for a moment, and then doesn’t look back.
“Oh,” Bree says evenly, “I get it.”
Why does everyone keep doing that? “There’s nothing to get.” Chase scowls, feeling suddenly suffocated. He tugs at the collar of his suit, though he knows it makes him look childish.
“So you don’t like him?”
“Kaz is my teammate.” Chase swallows. “We’re—friends.” It sounds hollow even to himself. He’s never been good at lying to Bree.
She shakes her head. “Okay, sure. But you’re making this harder than it has to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bree wiggles the tail off a shrimp. “It means not everyone is Sebastian,” she tells him, with bluntness that’s predictable but throws him all the same. “You don’t always have to keep yourself away from what you want. I don’t get why you insist on torturing yourself.”
“I’m not—that is not—“
“Oh, so, you’re not so afraid that things will go wrong that you won’t even let yourself try to have a good thing?”
His stomach flips. The room feels impossibly small. He can’t do this right now, not here, not with her. “Don’t—psychoanalyze me,” he bites out. “You don’t know how I feel.”
“Okay, whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “If you want to be miserable so bad, go right ahead.”
Nausea curls in his stomach. Across the room, Kaz laughs at something the intern says. There’s a high-pitched ringing sound, somewhere distant.
Chase swallows. “Bree—“
“Don’t give me that, I’m trying to help you—“
“No, wait.” He hesitates. Too long. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
The room implodes.
The in-between is a blur. He’s aware of shouting orders at his team. Bree and Skylar speeding civilians outside. Oliver lifting support beams off the stragglers, flying Mr. Davenport through the window. Kaz, right there with him, the bright heat of him at Chase’s back, and then something groaning above them, and then—
“Hey. Smartie-pants. You with me?”
The air is ringing. Chase hears the voice from far away. It’s his cochlea, he thinks—distant, frustratingly foggy—just temporary overstimulation to the hairs, and nothing he hasn’t experienced before. It should clear up in a matter of minutes. Maybe more, if he goes back to sleep.
Someone taps his cheek before he gets the chance. “C’mon, Chase.” The voice lilts with a degree of worry, poorly concealed under feigned exasperation. “I thought the mission leader was supposed to stay awake.”
“I’m awake,” he says. Tries to say. The words stick together on the way out. What’s wrong with him?
“You pushed me out of the way of the giant pile of falling debris,” the voice answers, though Chase didn’t think he’d asked aloud. “Y’know, for a guy with a force field, you sure do get knocked out a lot.”
“Asshole,” Chase manages, and Kaz bursts out a watery laugh. That’s definitely Kaz. Even dazed, Chase recognizes it. He’s just not sure why he sounds so upset.
“Can you open your eyes?”
Yes, obviously, Chase thinks, and then is swiftly proven wrong: it feels like trying to pry apart a pair of giant concrete doors, something Adam could maybe do without flinching but which takes monumental effort on Chase’s part. Somewhere distantly, he registers that something hurts, but the pain is unreachable. A pinpoint in a vast, dark sea.
He finally cracks his eyelids and is met with minimal discomfort, mostly blackness broken by the dim glow of one of their emergency utility lights, not enough glare to really sting. Just enough to shadow the planes of Kaz’s worried face above him: his dark eyes, the twist of his mouth, the set slant of his jaw. There’s a bloody slash on his chin. His hair is salted with dust. He’s filthy.
“You’re beautiful,” Chase says, before he can stop himself.
The furrow at Kaz’s brow deepens. “You really are concussed.”
One hand rests against the curve of Chase’s cheek, but the other one disappears somewhere that Chase can’t see. There’s a gentle pressure just above his hip, but he feels that, as everything else, as if from the third person. His thoughts are scattered, which is what freaks him out the most. He likes it better when his brain works properly.
He blinks again and glances at the rubble that surrounds them. “We’re underground?”
“The building came down around us,” Kaz explains, chewing on his lip. Chase remembers it in pieces. “Comms are out. It hasn’t been that long, though. The others’ll find us.”
There’s something in his expression that Chase can’t decipher, the certainty in his voice belied by raw fear. He looks okay, mostly, but there are injuries that don’t always show on the surface: broken ribs, internal bleeding, things that can be deadly if left untreated. Panic constricts Chase’s throat. “Are you hurt?”
The concern only rises when Kaz makes a soft noise in response, tangled somewhere halfway between a laugh and a sob. “No, Chase, I’m fine, I—I’m—”
Chase doesn’t understand, doesn’t get what’s wrong, just knows that Kaz looks upset, and afraid, and that’s bad, and he should fix it; he reaches out a hand to touch Kaz’s face and then—holy fuck, holy shit, jesus, fuck—
“—you’re okay, it’s okay, just breathe, Chase—”
“What the fuck,” Chase gasps, when the white-out of awful, blinding pain finally coalesces into something comprehensible.
Kaz doesn’t even tease him for his language, because Kaz is crying. Chase has never seen him do that before. He gets it now, slower than maybe he probably should, but in part because it doesn’t fully make sense: Kaz is crying because of him.
There’s pressure above his hip, more prominent than before. The curve of Kaz’s throat bobs with a swallow. “Don’t look, yeah?” he says, but of course Chase does.
Several inches of a piece of rebar protrude from his side, the metal slickened with blood. Kaz is holding a pressure bandage to the wound, but it’s soaked through. Chase swallows a scream and it comes out a strangled whine. Fuck. Holy shit.
“That’s not good,” he says lamely, when he finally gets his breath back.
Understatement of the year.
Maybe it’s for the best that he’s not fully cognizant right now. It makes it easier to compartmentalize. He can only really focus on one thing at once, so instead of the agonizing, mind-bending pain and the panic of being impaled, he chooses to focus on the hand that has moved from his cheek up to his hair, carding through it with uncharacteristic gentleness.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Kaz murmurs above him. He’s warm. Even in the blackness his eyes are flare-bright. “The team’s coming. Just hang on.”
“Good thing I’m up to date on my tetanus shots.”
Kaz laughs again, a wet-sounding burst. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Blood loss, probably.”
“Jesus, Davenport.”
“You guys,” Chase wheezes, his breath rattling in his chest, “are always telling me to lighten up—“
“Shh.” The brief flash of fondness in Kaz’s expression morphs back into worry. The hand pets his hair with more insistence. “Take it easy. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a real doctor,” Chase mumbles half-heartedly, but just to be contrarian.
He closes his eyes. He wants to sleep. It’s cold, but Kaz’s hand is a focal point of heat, easy enough to lean into and drift.
“Hey,” the hand retracts to tap his cheek again, and Chase whines at the loss of contact. “Stay awake. You know damn well you’re not supposed to fall asleep with a concussion.”
He does know that, but he also knows that he’s fucking tired.
“Chase,” Kaz says, and this time it sounds like a plea. That, more than anything, is what gets Chase to reluctantly peel his eyes back open. Kaz hovers over him, haloed in silver-LED light, the familiar corner of his mouth turning upward in relief. It’s not bad, as far as motivation to stay conscious goes.
He must’ve said it aloud, because Kaz smiles a little more, though it’s wan. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
The concrete above them shifts then, as if just to break the spell. Chase jolts at the sound and then catches a cry between his teeth when the awful, horrible pain at his side crests anew. Black peppers the corners of his vision. But he’s supposed to stay awake.
“Kaz,” he manages, through his teeth, “talk to me.”
Panic lances Kaz’s voice: “About what?”
“Anything,” Chase gasps. “Please.”
“I broke a bone for the first time when I tried skateboarding off a roof,” Kaz blurts. “I was like, nine. My sister Kasey did it first, and somehow she was totally fine, but I got a compound fracture in my tibia. I was on crutches for a while, but I was actually kind of excited, because I thought it would be so awesome to get a cast. They gave me print-outs of the x-rays, and I had them pinned above my desk for a few years. I think that’s when I started thinking medicine was really cool.”
“So it wasn’t just,” Chase’s breath hitches on the vowels, “the superheroes?”
Kaz shrugs a shoulder. “I always liked stuff like that, I guess. I’d look after my little siblings when they were sick and stuff, patch them up after falls.” He smiles a little more. “The superheroes made it better, though.”
Chase gives an encouraging tilt of his chin. It hurts to breathe. “Keep going.”
“Um—growing up me and Kasey were the closest. She was only a year older than me, so we pretended we were twins all the time. We looked a lot alike. I guess we kind of drifted when we went to middle school, ‘cause we had our own friends, and neither of us really spent a lot of time at home. I kind of wish we were still close. Like you and Bree, y’know? But now it feels like I can’t go back to that, ‘cause I’d be keeping this big secret from all of them, and if I’m not careful they could end up in a lot of danger.”
Chase swallows. He wants to say something reassuring, but there’s just static in his brain where the words should be.
“Uh, my favorite ice cream flavor is mint chip,” Kaz continues, undeterred by the silence. Chase knows that, from the time they’d all gone out for dessert after a successful mission. He’d noted Kaz’s order and filed that information away. “Oliver says it tastes like toothpaste, but I love it. It used to be Rocky Road, but one time I had a whole pint of it and then rode the Cyclone right after, and I threw up all over the ride, so I can’t eat it without thinking of that. I had four goldfish for like a week when I was twelve—”
Kaz keeps talking. The cadence of his voice, a lighthouse, a lifeline: Chase does his best to focus on it, even as he’s starting to miss every other word. Kaz tells him about coming out to Oliver, about accidentally releasing a snake from the science lab. He tells him about Tecton and Solar Flare, and Mighty Med, with the pang of loss in his voice. Chase tries so hard to listen.
He’s cold. He can’t really feel his feet. The emergency light winks in and out.
He jerks back to consciousness with a scream. The pain in his side, fresh agony, just shy of too much to bear—
“—sorry, I’m sorry, Chase, you have to stay awake—“
The pressure eases, and Chase blinks the worst of the spots from his vision to see Kaz over him, guilt and fear flooding his expression. He reaches up a hand as if to cup Chase’s face again and then pulls it back abruptly when they both see that it’s covered in blood. Chase’s breath stutters.
“How long,” he pants, “was I out?”
“Just a few minutes.” Kaz swallows. His voice is rough, like he’s been shouting. “You weren’t waking up. I thought—“ He seems to reconsider, and clamps his mouth shut. His eyes flicker. “You’re freezing, dude.”
“Blood loss,” Chase fills in, no longer with humor.
Kaz chews his lip. “It’s slowed down, but it hasn’t stopped. I changed the pressure bandage, but that was the last one. I was thinking—maybe—“ He opens his palm, and even through the fog Chase understands.
“No,” he tries to shake his head and regrets it when his vision swims with more intensity. “Enclosed space. Fire would—suck up any oxygen we have left. We’d—suffocate.”
“Maybe not faster than you’re bleeding out.”
But Kaz isn’t bleeding out, and Chase would rather at least one of them make it out of this alive. He doesn’t say that, though. He just takes a breath. “Please, Kaz. Not—not that.”
The conviction drains out of Kaz’s face. He squeezes Chase’s hand, and Chase feels it only distantly. “Okay,” he says, “Okay, Chase.”
Chase tries not to close his eyes. The pain is ebbing, which he’s pretty sure is a bad sign. He shivers.
“Here.” Kaz fumbles with his suit jacket, pulling it off and draping it carefully over Chase. He shuffles around. Chase tries to track his movements, but the light is low, and he’s so tired. When he blinks again, Kaz is pressed against him.
“Hey,” Kaz’s face is close to his; Chase could count his lashes if he’d had it in him. The soft heat of him is familiar. “Eyes on me, okay?”
“Mhm.”
The pressure on his wound increases minutely. “C’mon, sleepyhead.”
Chase’s teeth chatter. He says, “The talking helped.”
“Yeah?” There’s an almost-smile in Kaz’s voice, just an echo of what it should be. “Usually you’re telling me to stop talking.”
“And you—never listen.”
“Face it, boy wonder, you love it.”
“I do.” His words slur, he doesn’t know what he’s saying. “I like your voice.”
There’s a beat of silence; it stretches in the dark. All the seconds are blurring together. “I like talking to you,” Kaz replies finally, with rare sincerity. “You listen. You remember stuff. You pay attention.”
“‘Cause—“ Chase wets his lips, fumbles, “‘Cause it’s you.”
Keeping his eyes open feels Herculean. The hand comes back to his hair. It’s warm. He feels like he’s dreaming. Chase shudders.
“Tell me more,” he says, from miles away. “Tell me something else.”
Kaz obliges. “I used to be scared of the dark. I had a nightlight until I was, like, fifteen. I wanted a pony for a really long time.”
The emergency light flickers again. Chase is drifting.
“I’m allergic to dogs. I hate coconut. I once got trapped in a computer.” His voice wavers. “I think I’m in love with you.”
It’s a good dream. He wants to stay in it. He really does try.
“Hey, Chase, no, no, look at me—stay with me—“
He’s already slipping away.
Chase wakes up with the sun on his face.
It’s not a feeling he’s used to after spending most of his life sleeping in a glass capsule in a basement. It’s midday-bright, and he’s lying in a bed too big for him. His head feels fuzzy, but not the piercing static of before—a soft kind of fuzz, like someone’s thrown a blanket over his senses. An EKG machine beeps steadily. There’s a tube that disappears into the crook of his elbow, pumping blood back into his veins. He is, startlingly, miraculously, alive.
There’s a crash and then a startled yelp from the other end of the room. “Chase! Oh my god, you’re awake!”
He blinks against the light, but he’d know the voice anywhere. “Leo?” Chase croaks. His voice is rough. “What are you doing here?”
Leo is at his side, then, the tray of hospital food discarded on the floor by the doorway. He trades it for the styrofoam cup on the table, helping Chase hold the cup and take slow sips from the straw. “What, my genius brother almost gets himself killed and you think I’m not gonna come chew him out?” He rolls his eyes, but the relief on his face cuts the sincerity of the jibe. He puts one hand on Chase’s forehead as if to check his temperature, which Chase doesn’t really see the point of. “Adam’s here too, but he and Bree went for a takeout run. We didn’t think you’d be up so soon.”
“How long have I been out?”
Leo’s expression flickers. His eyes keep roving over Chase like he’s gonna flatline, which Chase supposes is not an entirely unfair assessment. “A few days,” he says. “You were kind of in and out—you really had us going. Big D’s been flipping. Jetted us all out to this private hospital and everything—you think he’ll ever run out of secrets?”
Chase huffs as much of a laugh as he can manage, “Have you met the guy?” He doesn’t give himself much time to preen over the attention, because he’s not a child. If he’s secretly a little pleased about his dad fussing over him, no one else needs to know.
The drugs really must be slowing him down, because it takes a minute for everything else to hit him. When it does his heart jumps halfway into his throat. “The gala—Mr. Davenport—is everyone okay? What happened?”
Leo puts a steadying hand on top of his. “Everyone’s fine, dude. Breathe.” Chase does. “You guys got everyone out in time. A few minor injuries, but nothing permanent. Big D took Mom home to be with Naomi, but they’ll be back in a bit.”
“The bomber?”
“In custody. Some ex-employee of Big D’s with a genius brain and an axe to grind. He’s doing twenty-five-to-life now, so.”
Chase swallows. “I scanned the building. I should’ve known—“
“The bombs were built to get around security, including your scans. It wasn’t your fault.” Leo squeezes his hand, “You did good, Chase. Minus the near-death-experience part. Please stop doing that. Jeez. You think I would’ve gotten over it the first, like, twelve times.”
There’s a lump in his throat. He feels a little guilty, for making Leo worry. But he’d do it again in a heartbeat, if it meant saving—
Chase glances around the room, and then up at Leo, “Where’s Kaz?”
Leo cringes, and for a moment Chase is filled with overwhelming, mind-numbing panic, worst-case scenarios throwing themselves forward, and then Leo says, “Oh, he’s gonna be pissed. We finally get him to go take a damn nap and then you go and wake up the second he’s not here.”
The relief is staggering. “He’s okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. A little banged up, but mostly just worried about you.” There’s a knowing sort of smile on Leo’s face. “He’s been in here like, non-stop. Oliver had to actually carry him out so that he’d go get some real rest. You got yourself a real protective loverboy, huh?”
Chase flushes. “He’s not—we’re not—“
“Yeah, totally.”
“Leave me alone,” Chase scowls, “I just got impaled.”
Leo scoffs. “Playing that card? Real mature, Chase.” But he’s grinning.
The sight of it makes him stupidly warm. Chase tries to pull Leo into a clumsy kind of hug. “I kinda missed you, y’know.”
“That’s probably the drugs talking,” Leo quips, but it’s sort of watery. He tucks his face into Chase’s shoulder and breathes in. “Next time you wanna see me, just like, shoot me a text, okay?”
Chase laughs. “Deal.”
Over the next hour, he dozes off twice, and the second time he wakes up the rest of his family is there. Tasha reads him the riot act over Pad Thai. Bree calls him an idiot and an asshole and tangles their fingers together. Adam, predictably, punches him.
Mr. Davenport just kind of puts one hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. His eyes are hard to read. “I’m proud of you, Chase,” he says, only loud enough for him, and if he sounds a little choked up, Chase has to believe he’s imagining it.
They’re polishing off the last of the food when the door bursts open. All heads turn. Kaz stands there, his hair a mess, the buttons of his shirt crooked, his eyes fixed on Chase. “You’re awake.”
He sounds breathless. He looks beautiful. Leo clears his throat.
“Hi, Kaz.”
Kaz blinks, and then his expression turns suddenly sheepish. “Sorry,” he blurts. He’s still looking at Chase. He drags a hand through his hair, glancing around the room, “I just—”
“That’s okay.” Bree is already stacking takeout boxes and grabbing Adam’s hand. “We were just leaving, right, guys? Mr. Davenport, don’t you have to talk to the doctor about that thing?”
“I don’t—” He’s cut off by her elbow. “Okay, sure. Right.”
Tasha squeezes Chase’s arm. Bree gives him a pointed look as she herds everyone through the door. The blood loss didn’t kill him, apparently, but the mortification might.
Kaz hovers awkwardly on the other side of the room. He’s not normally like this—quiet, reticent, small. There are bags under his eyes; Leo had said he hadn’t been sleeping. And still, the sight of him makes Chase’s heart crawl up into his throat.
He tries for a smile. “I’m not gonna bite, y’know.”
Kaz huffs a laugh and moves tentatively closer. Chase is struck suddenly by how much he wants him in reach. He thinks of the hand on his cheek, in his hair, warm and solid; better, even, than the sunlight. He wants that back.
“Kaz,” Chase says, treading carefully, feeling lame and out of his depth and a little desperate, “Are you okay?”
“Am I—” Kaz makes a soft noise of disbelief, and then buries his face in his hands. “Chase, oh my god.”
“What?”
“You’re such an idiot.”
Chase sniffs. “Everyone keeps saying that. But I am, categorically, the smartest man in the world.”
When Kaz looks back up his eyes are rimmed in red. Chase’s stomach lurches. Kaz opens his mouth like he, too, is gonna chew Chase out—
“I’m not sorry,” Chase cuts him off before he can start. “I’d do it again, if I had to.”
Kaz’s expression crumples. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.” He doesn’t know where the sudden sincerity is coming from. He should shrug it off, he should shut it down, but Kaz had told him all those things down in the dark, and now he feels like it's only fair that he returns the favor. “Kaz, I wouldn’t even hesitate, okay? You’re—it’s—it’s not a question, it’s just a statement of fact: I’d do it again, and no speech you can give me is going to change that.”
“Don’t say that—“
“If it’s a matter of saving your life—“
“Do you have any idea how it felt for me,” Kaz takes a step forward; his hands are fists, he’s shaking, “to see you like that? To be doing fucking CPR on you? You asshole. Do you think I wanted that?”
“It doesn’t matter, it was my choice.”
“I want you here, Chase!” Kaz is right there, then, right in front of his face, “I want you alive!”
“I am alive.”
“You weren’t. You almost—you went into hypovolemic shock. I knew exactly what was happening and I couldn’t do shit about it, and if the team had found us even a few minutes later you would’ve been gone for good—“
He swipes furiously at his eyes. “Kaz,” Chase tries to reach for him but his coordination is still miserable, “Hey, look at me—“
“You weren’t breathing. You wouldn’t wake up—”
“Kaz—”
“I was fucking scared, okay, I’ve never been so scared in my whole life—“
Chase swallows. “Kaz—“
“I thought I was gonna lose you,” Kaz says. His voice shudders. “I thought you were going to die saving my life, and I’d be stuck having to live without you, and you’d never even know how much you—how much I—fuck, goddammit, Chase—“
Chase debates about eighty-three different ways to shut Kaz up in the span of a millisecond, and then does the stupidest one he can think of: he grabs Kaz by the collar of his shirt, pulls him down, and kisses him.
It’s more of a crash than a kiss, really. Their foreheads knock together, which is probably not good for the concussion, but Chase doesn’t really care.
Kaz makes a muffled noise of surprise, and then, miracle of miracles: he kisses him back. He kisses him the same way he does everything, with equal parts ferocity and warmth, like he can’t get enough, like he’s never going to stop.
A hand tangles gently in his hair. Kaz is half on top of him, though still somehow careful of everything that hurts.
“I do know, Kaz,” Chase says, against his mouth. “You told me, remember?”
Kaz makes a muffled sound that might be a sob. “You can’t ever,” he pulls away to press their foreheads together, “ever, do that again, okay? I’m serious.”
“What, kiss you?”
The laugh bursts out of Kaz, a sound Chase is suddenly and infinitely glad he’s alive to hear. “Shut up, dude, holy shit.” Kaz kisses him again. It’s sort of wet; it takes Chase a moment to realize that he’s crying, too. “You’re the worst, you suck, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to—”
“Me too,” Chase says. He’s thinking of Bree, telling him to let himself have something good. Okay, fine, he thinks, You win. “Me too.”
Kaz cradles his face. “I would’ve told you sooner. You didn’t have to almost die to get my attention, okay? Jesus, you’ve had it forever.” His eyes are huge, impossibly bright.
“Yeah, okay,” Chase says, beaming, and deciding right then that he’s never, ever going to look away again.