Chapter Text
Chase was hunched over a hunk of metal moving wires and muttering to himself, lost in the world of machinery. He didn’t even register the noise of the hyperlift.
“What are you up to, you freaky little genius?” Kaz leaned over him to look at the piece of technology.
Chase jumped and his finger touched a live wire, and let out a high pitched yelp. Chase shook his hand out to relieve the pain.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Kaz apologized. “What are you working on?”
“I’m updating Mr. Davenport’s cryoblaster,” Chase said, expecting Kaz to leave out of immediate onset boredom.
“What’s a cryoblaster? And why does it need to be updated?”
Chase was (very) shocked that Kaz was still here. “A cryoblaster is an old invention of Mr. Davenport’s. It can freeze somebody in a big block of ice in a matter of seconds.”
“Cool. Why are you updating it?” Kaz was genuinely curious, and relieved that Chase didn’t immediately force him out or write him off.
“Right now it can only produce normal ice that can be melted or broken. If I can figure out a way to make it so the ice is unbreakable and unmeltable, it could be useful in stopping the shapeshifters,” explained Chase.
“I can help test it if you want, I’m very good at breaking things, and melting things,” Kaz added after remembering his superpowers.
“Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”
“So, how does it work?”
“It sucks the water out of the surrounding air, freezes it, and shoots it out.” Chase gnaws on the inside of his cheek. “Right now, the only idea I’ve had was to make the ice colder, but it still melted in about the same amount of time. I just can’t figure it out.”
Kaz tentatively touched Chase’s shoulder, “Well standing here, glaring at the machine isn’t going to help. You need a brain break.”
“What? No, I can’t just take a break.”
“You can and you will.” Kaz didn’t allow for any arguments as he grabbed Chase’s upper arm and dragged him to the hyperlift. Both boys knew that Chase could break free if he wanted to. Chase pouted and grumbled and made no attempt to move away from Kaz.
Kaz guided him to the kitchen island and pushed him onto a chair.
“Do you eat eggs?” Kaz was pulling out what seemed like random ingredients.
“What?”
“You’re a vegetarian and I know that eggs can be a sort of gray area.”
“Oh. Yeah, I eat eggs.” The conversation finally caught up to Chase. “You don’t have to cook me anything. You already made me those tacos. Delicious, by the way.”
Kaz pulled out four eggs and prepared a pan. “I like cooking, plus, I think you’re the only one here who won’t complain when I try out new meatless recipes.”
Chase moved to sit where he could see Kaz’s process. “How’d you learn to cook?”
“Well, sometimes I was the oldest in the house. Parents working. My older siblings had already moved out or were also working to help with bills. It was either learn to cook, or have the little ones going hungry,” said Kaz. He took out the four pieces of toast from the toaster, and deposited four slices of bread into the toaster
“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t imagine,” Chase attempted empathy.
Kaz cracked the eggs into a bowl and began mixing. “Ah, don’t be. It wasn’t so bad, never a dull moment. Couldn’t be lonely, even if I wanted to.”
“Still, it was difficult enough trying to wrangle Adam, Bree, and Leo, I applaud you for remaining sane.”
“Yeah, I only met the guy once, but I have a feeling Adam could create as much chaos as half my siblings combined.” Kaz stirred the eggs in the pan until they were a fluffy scramble.
Chase laughed at that, “Sometimes yeah. It was hell when he made a duplicate of himself.”
“I have got to hear that story some time.” Kaz began cutting the tomatoes.
“It was definitely something.” Chase couldn’t get the smile off his face. He hated it.
“Sounds like it.” Avocado was spread on the toast, and given a sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Kaz presented Chase with two sandwiches on a plate. “Bon appetite.”
“Thank you. And it's pronounced ‘appetit’.” Chase couldn’t resist correcting the boy.
“I know, but I like ‘appetite’ better. Now, eat your food.” Kaz bit into his own sandwich.
When Chase took a bite of the meatless sandwich, he was almost angry at how good it was.
After a few hours of Chase working on the cryoblaster and Kaz flipping through comic books, looking for anything that could help, Kaz claimed he needed to stretch and gave Chase a clap on his shoulder as he walked to the hyperlift.
He found Bree sitting at the desk next to her capsule, painting her nails.
Kaz knocked on the door frame, “Hey, you got a sec?”
“Kaz! What’s up?”
“Chase is kind of giving me a ‘mad scientist’ vibe with how often he’s in Mission Command, working on some machine or analyzing something. Like, I appreciate how much effort he’s putting in but should we be worried?”
“Yeah, he does that. Always has. When he’s invested in something, it gets his full attention. Well, until he realizes that he’s a person with human needs, such as eating or using the bathroom. Sometimes, he even sleeps.” Bree joked.
“Oh, okay.”
Bree cursed as she messed up a nail.
“Alright, give your hand here.” Kaz pulled the chair away from Skyler’s desk to sit next to the speedster.
“What?” Bree was confused and trying to fix her nail polish, which only served to mess it up more.
Kaz just grabbed the bottle of nail polish remover and a few of the cotton balls Bree was keeping on standby.
“This is just disgraceful. What did you do without me?” Kaz remarked as he began stripping her nails of the shoddily applied polish.
Once her nails were bare, Kaz started applying the polish in thin precise strokes.
“How’d you learn how to do this?” Bree regretted breaking the quiet.
“My younger brother wanted to wear nail polish to school but was scared so I did both of ours and we wore it together. Plus, my sisters used to use me as a model.” Kaz lightly blew on her fingers.
“That’s so sweet. I never had anyone to do this with. Except one of my ex-boyfriends, Owen. He was great but we really just worked better as friends.” Bree smiled as she thought about how obvious Owen was in his mission to spend time with Adam.
“Why’d you guys break up?” Kaz motioned for her to give over her other hand.
“He came out as gay.”
Slightly shocked, Kaz almost messed up one of her nails. “How’d you take it?”
Bree shrugged as much as she could without jostling her hands, “I mean- I guess I was shocked but I wasn’t offended or angry or anything. And the breakup didn’t hurt much because, in hind-sight, I was more interested in the attention he gave me than him as a person. What about you?”
“What about me?” By this point, Bree’s hands were done and Kaz got to work on his own, using Bree’s nail polish.
“Who was…” Bree thought for a second. “Your first crush?”
“Outside of comic books? Stephanie. She made sense, you know? Feminine, pretty, popular, and mean to me. I never had a chance.” Kaz never looked up from his nails.
Bree asked, “So why did you like her if she was mean?”
Taking a chance on the girl, Kaz explained, “I didn’t actually like her. But I always heard other guys talking about girls and I thought I was supposed to, too. So I decided I was just gonna pick a girl completely out of my league to have a crush on.”
“And Stephanie was out of your league, so she made sense?” Bree put the pieces together.
“Yep.”
“Did you ever have an actual crush?”
“Yeah. He was one of my favorite superheroes, I almost died of shock when I actually got to meet him. Until he turned out to be evil and working with The Annihilator to kidnap Sky.” Kaz finished his left hand, and offered his right to Bree. “Do you want to try again on me?”
‘I’m sorry, that must have been hard.” Bree took the nail polish and concentrated on her movements. “I had a guy who was kinda similar. Troy saw how much I liked him and used it to his advantage to get to Chase’s chip. He turned out to be an android, and I fried his circuits. Super embarrassing, I guess neither of us have had much luck.”
“I guess not.”
“Sucks for us.
“No. It sucks for them. We are just too awesome for people to handle.” Kaz always was good at cheering people up.
“You’re right.” Bree did one last brush stroke on his thumbnail, “How does it look?”
“Not too shabby.”
Bree tilted her head in a small bow, “Thank you for helping me.”
“It was like spending time with my sisters. Besides, I couldn’t let you completely ruin your nails. Now could I?”
“No you couldn’t. And now that I know you’re so good at this, I’ll be asking for your expertise again.”
“Well, you know where to find me.” With that, Kaz pulled his chair back to its rightful place and left the room with a small wave.
Bree was left admiring her hands.