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After a spike in shapeshifter activity caused a concern for civilian safety, Chase proposed they regularly patrolled Centium City as a precaution. No one really wanted to argue with their Mission Leader TM, so one-by-one they grudgingly added their names to Chase’s civilian-babysitting schedule. Oliver wished he hadn’t.
Apparently, one of Roman and Riker’s younger brothers was an inventor. A damn good one at that, too. Maybe not Davenport level, but still — one heck of a smart-ass, if you asked Oliver. Why would you ask Oliver, you ask? Well because being shot by an enhanced gun fucking hurt.
It turned out patrolling alone was not a good idea. Even before Oliver was shot, it was already such an obvious idea that they were supposed to be in rotated pairs — Chase with Bree or Kaz, Bree with Chase or Skylar, Kaz with Chase or Oliver, Skylar with Bree or Oliver, and Oliver with Kaz or Skylar — but Bree and Skylar had just gotten back from a 4 hour patrol, and Kaz was exhausted from an incident the previous night, so Oliver flew off the balcony alone.
Of course, he could have gone down to mission command, and asked Chase if he was free to join him, but he assumed the older man would yell at him to ‘get lost’. It wasn’t like they could stay in a room longer than 15 minutes one-to-one without some sort of argument, so how could they possibly complete a patrol together without being at each other’s throats? Still, Oliver wished he’d put up with the smart-ass’s egotistical whining for a couple of hours because fucking anything was better than being shot.
It happened too fast. Oliver was prepared to run into one or two troublemaking shapeshifters, not five, and when three were distracting him from the front, the other two snuck in from behind. Their aim was perfect. One bang and a bullet was lodged into his leg. He fell. Collapsed onto his knees. Screamed. There were no words to describe it other than a sudden, tortuous, unbearable pain.
What happened next was a blur. Oliver sort of remembered the shapeshifter’s pausing to observe their damage, before they closed in, but something stopped them from finishing the job. A storm whirled around him. His ears rang. Thunder crackled. A high-pitched sound. The humming buzz of some sort of lightsaber. Shadowed figures whirled around him as his vision shook and blurred, and he succeed to the pain and a bottomless pit of black.
When Oliver woke up, he was attached to machines, surrounded by the hums of equipment, in a medical bed. It took him a moment to realise it was the makeshift superhero hospital he’d helped Kaz set up in the underground tunnels, and not the Mighty Med in heaven.
Said hero was sitting on the chair beside him — eyes red, cheeks stained, and hands shaking — and Oliver resisted the urge to call him a wimp when he made the most ugly, gut-wrenching sound. ”You almost bled to death.” Kaz sniffled, finally speaking a coherent sentence torturously long after Oliver had come back to the land of the living, and furiously rubbing with eyes with his sleeves. “The bullet passed through an artery and shattered bone, and you went into major shock from the pain. Chase was covered in your blood when he carried you back. If he hadn’t—“
”Chase… saved me?” He refused to believe the words that came out of his mouth. Chase. Chase Davenport. Their Chase. Saving him?
Kaz immediately fell into one of his rambles; explaining how Chase had been monitoring the tracking device in his suit in case there was any trouble, and heard his screams through his comm. His voice only sped up, hands waving frantically, as he explained how Chase found him on the verge of consciousness, and processed to beat the living shit out of the shapeshifting siblings. Oliver zoned out on the part, where Chase actually carried him back to the penthouse, but he got the idea. Once Kaz finally calmed down, Oliver took his first breath of silence to ask him to get Chase.
He needed the information from the source. Chase didn’t really give a shit about him, right? He was just…—ensuring the shapeshifters didn’t win an advantage against them! It wasn’t like they were friends. Coworkers at best. Enemies at worst. The only reason one hadn’t killed the other in their sleep was because Kaz acted as the mediator between them. To Chase, Oliver was just another soldier, another body, another tool, to use in the war. Unless…
Chase came down to the makeshift medbay in a bloodied shirt. Judging from his lack of wounds, it was either from Oliver or the shapeshifters, but what concerned Oliver the most was the fact that Mr Clean and Tidy and Perfect in Every Way was yet to change his clothes.
“I didn’t know you cared…” Fell from Oliver’s mouth before either of them could muster a proper greeting.
“Cared?” Chase frowned, scrunching his face in what Oliver liked to call his ‘confused by stupidity’ expression. “About what?”
“I don’t know…?” Oliver sighed, trailing off, weakly. “About… me…?”
Something flashed across Chase’s eyes, and his expression darkened. “You’re a fucking idiot.” He grunted, jaw clenched hard, and strode strongly toward him. Oliver didn’t have the time to flinch away, before Chase grabbed his shoulders, and— pulled him into a kiss?!?!?!?!?
Oliver moaned against his lips; then pulled away, panting. “Fuck.” He hissed, lips already red, wet, and swollen. “That was…”
Before he could finish the thought, Chase pulled him into another. This time, Oliver didn’t pull back.
Okay, maybe he didn’t hate his mission leader, after all.
(He was actually very hot and sexy and a good kisser and saved his life— or whatever!)
”Thank you for saving me.”
”You’re welcome. Just don’t be stupid next time.”
”I know. I’m an idiot.”
”I am aware.”