Chapter Text
“Oh my god,” Julie says. “Oh my god, ohhh my god. What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to have to deal with it,” Chuck says. “We’re just. We’ll deal with this. Oh my god.”
“I’m so tall,” Julie moans. “And I’m hungry again! How are you always hungry!?”
“I don’t know! It’s normal! I’m normal!”
“Chuck, you’re not normal, you’re like seven feet of eating robot and now I’m stuck with that and what if it’s forever!”
“Julie! Calm down!”
“Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll just do that!” Julie throws her hands in the air. “I’ll just freaking do that right now! Look, here I go, I am totally calm except for your freaking endocrine system is GARBAGE.”
“Hey,” Chuck says, and looks kind of hurt.
“Oh my god,” Julie says again, and paces in a little circle. Then she paces in a bigger circle, trips over a wrench, falls over, and lies on the floor in total defeat. It’s been an hour since she and Chuck got their brains or minds or souls or whatever put in each other’s bodies by a crazy old machine in some buried ruins and things haven’t improved from the initial, disastrous explosion.
“Maybe we should have lunch,” Mike suggests. “And like, think about this.”
“I am really tired of thinking about this already,” Chuck says grimly. He pushes his hands through his—Julie’s—his hair, messing up the smooth line of the bangs and scattering the long dark fall of his—her?—hair even further. It’s kind of all over the place right now, spread out across the back of the couch and Mike’s shoulder. Neither of them know how Julie manages to keep it all together.
“I can’t stop thinking about it!” Julie says from the floor. “Like! You’re going to have to be me now—”
“Yeah, we already said—”
“And go up and live in Deluxe! Like! A lot! Chuck, I live in Deluxe and have a job and a dad and stuff and OH MY GOD MY DAD. ”
This makes her curl up in a tight, horrifying ball, big knobbly hands over her pale hair, and start to wheeze. Julie never talks about her dad. Everyone knows not to ask her. There is something weird and wrong with Julie’s parent situation and she never, ever, ever likes anyone to even bring the subject up. Usually she just laughs kind of awkwardly and changes the subject. Right now she seems to be having one of Chuck’s weird little fits.
“Um,” Mike says. “Buddy?”
“Crap,” Chuck says, and gets off the couch very carefully.
“Can’t—” Julie gasps, “you can’t, you can’t, you can’t go, Chuck, you can’t you can’t he’ll kill you CHUCK, you CAN’T—”
“Whoah, whoah, okay, easy there,” Chuck says, kneeling down by Julie’s shivering side. He starts to rub a circle between her shoulders and Mike wonders if maybe he should have been doing that for Chuck. Only, Chuck’s never asked him to, and doesn’t even like Mike to pay any attention to him when he’s like this. Maybe Mike should be... not looking at either of them right now.
“Can’t, you can’t, you can’t,” Julie hiccups, while Chuck makes small shushing noises and just sits there with her. Instead of winding down into a tightly controlled quietness like Chuck usually does, she just—she actually—she starts sobbing, choking for air. Mike hasn’t heard that noise in a long time. It’s kind of really painful, actually, to listen to both of them, so Mike gets up and goes into the kitchen to make lunch.
*
Over food, Julie looks flushed and miserable, eyes red-rimmed when she pushes overgrown blond bangs out of them. Chuck looks deeply embarrassed, and nibbles awkwardly at the sandwiches Mike’s thrown together.
“Okay,” Julie says roughly, and frowns at her voice. “Okay,” she says, a little higher. “We have to... figure stuff out. Make a list. Or a chart or something.”
“Mmm. Yeah, you can just hang out here and do whatever until we figure out how to fix it, but I’m gonna need a lot more info on like, whatever it is you do to... be you.” Chuck touches his red lower lip, thoughtfully, then looks at his thin pale fingertips. “Like, does this stuff come off?”
“Ha,” Julie goes, finally cracking a smile. “Yeah, there’s makeup remover in Nine Lives’ glove box. A whole kit of stuff, really. We can go over it.”
“Yippee,” Chuck says, and he sounds just like Julie, really. Mike laughs, and then feels really weird about it.
“Maybe you can have Claire do your makeup the first couple mornings, I don’t know,” Julie says. “Is that okay? That’s probably not okay. That’s not going to be okay with Claire. She really doesn’t like yyy—crap.” She winces. “You have like no filter when you’re not all scared.”
“Tell me about it,” Chuck sighs. He frowns, folding and unfolding his hands together, apparently fascinated with the shape of them.
“She’ll be okay if I ask her really nicely,” Julie says. “And promise to owe her like a million bazillion favors forever. And you don’t get weird on her.”
“Julie, this is already peak weird,” Chuck says. He wiggles her fingers at her. “Also you have abnormally tiny hands.”
“Shut up, no I don’t!” Julie protests, voice cracking indignantly. “They’re normal hands!”
“No they are not! Look!” Chuck grabs Mike’s hand and—he is really not used to Julie doing that, Julie’s hands pulling him around like Chuck does—and spreading his—her—fingers against his palm. Mike stares in fascination down at the cool, soft, pale skin against his. Her thin, elegantly tapered fingers barely go to his second knuckle.
“See,” Chuck says.
“They’re normal!" Julie protests. "That’s normal! We’re not all freaking huge!”
Julie’s body still smells like her, too. Mike kind of wonders if that’ll change or not. It’s definitely... peak weird, like Chuck said.
Mike says, “Hey, I wanna see—” and grabs Julie’s hand. Chuck’s hand that Julie has now. She shuts up abruptly and just stares.
“Oh,” she says. “Huh. Wow.” Chuck’s palm is totally familiar to Mike, warm and dry, with a slightly buzzing pulse somewhere under his skin. The long fingers flex against Mike’s as Julie stares at Chuck’s hand, the way it overlaps his at every fingertip.
“Huh,” Chuck agrees, looking at their hands together. “I guess I am kinda big. It doesn’t feel like it on the inside.”
“Really,” Julie says dryly. “Because I’m sure feeling it.” She slots her fingers through Mike’s and squeezes, head tilted curiously to one side. Mike grins and squeezes back, then plants his elbow on the table.
“Hey, come on, armwrestle—let’s see—”
“No fair,” Chuck says. “I couldn’t take you in either body—”
Mike is abruptly wrenched across the table as Julie slams his arm down, knocking plates aside, his shoulder hitting hard. He whoops in startled delight.
“I knew you were holding out on me!” he crows. Julie is staring down at her hands again, starting to grin.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay, hang on, I wanna try something.”
“Julie—no, guys, come on!” Chuck says. “Uncool!” but Julie’s already sliding out of the booth, arms held out wide for balance, tripping on her own feet. She catches herself before she falls and whirls around, then grabs Mike off the table and picks him up.
“Oh my god,” Chuck says from the booth. “Julie! What the heck!”
“Chuck! Did you know you could do this?” Julie’s got an arm under Mike’s thighs and another under his back and is just—holding him. Up off the ground. He slings his arm over one narrow shoulder for balance but it really doesn’t look like Chuck needs—like Julie needs any extra support, in this body. She actually just kinda hefts him in the air like he’s a sack of potatoes.
“Put him down, you’re gonna throw out my back or something!” Chuck yells.
“No, this feels fine. Holy crap, Chuck! This is awesome! Mike, did you know he could do this!”
“Nope,” Mike says with complete honesty.
“I wonder how long I could carry you around,” Julie says, and walks in a careful circle. “Oh man. This is crazy.”
“Put him down!” Chuck yells again.
“You’re not even frickin’ tired!” Julie yells back. Then she frowns and adds, “But you’re hungry again. Huh.” She sets Mike down, gently, and then her face lights up again, completely transparent even through the overgrown hair. She’s right, Chuck has no filter.
“I’m gonna pick up a couch,” she grins.
Julie tears through the base, laughing, electric, and she does actually pick up a couch, and then in no particular order an engine block, a shelf, an armchair, and a balloon tire. Then she sways, panting and sweaty, and goes, “Mike—? I don’t...” and sits down hard.
Chuck, who’s given up telling her to cut it out and has just been following them around, arms crossed, mouth tight, goes “Ha.”
“Uh. Buddy.” Mike sits down by Julie, and amends that to, “Jules. You... okay in there?”
“Mmnfgh,” Julie goes and flops her head down on his shoulder. “...dizzy.”
“You need to eat,” Chuck says. “And not freakin’ overclock my systems.”
“Izzat what it was...?”
Mike gets Julie upright and slings her arm over his shoulder. It’s familiar but strange, too, Chuck’s never put this much weight on him, or frowned in this weird, bleary, disoriented way. Back upstairs, Mike tips her into the booth and Chuck shoves a couple more sandwiches into her hands, then glares at her while she tears into them frantically.
“I guess the list I leave you is going to have to be pretty long, too,” he says. His calculating, disappointed frown is completely indistinguishable from one of Julie’s.
*
The lists are finished, with a lot of last minute revisions and some bickering and one excruciating half-hour where they both make Mike go away to let them talk about private stuff.
But finally, they take Nine Lives and Mutt up to the northside Deluxe entrance ramp to meet Claire, Chuck in Julie’s body in Mutt’s passenger seat, hands clamped tensely around the safety harness, fussing with the strap adjustments. He’s a lot calmer in Julie’s body, watchful rather than nervous, intent on just a couple personal screens rather than frantically distracting himself with immersion into Mutt’s digital systems, and he doesn’t start screaming until at least a hundred miles per hour past his average. He completely makes up for it by being absolutely piercing. Before the drive, Mike doesn’t think he’d ever heard Julie actually shriek, about anything, ever, and by the end of the drive Mike is profoundly grateful for that.
“Well, at least we know you can scare the crap out of me no matter what,” Chuck says breathlessly, as he fumbles the harness open and lurches out of the car.
Nine Lives has been maintaining almost complete radio silence, though the yellow squad car has stuck faithfully to Mutt’s tail the whole way up. It rolls to a halt by the entrance ramp, powers down, and then just... sits. Mike and Chuck exchange an uneasy glance.
“I bet she’s just trying to get her knees out from under her chin,” Mike says, and elbows Chuck, who staggers. Julie hadn’t been happy about trying to squeeze Chuck’s long legs into her custom-fitted driver’s seat.
“Yeah, ha ha,” Chuck says, rolling his eyes, and elbows Mike back, who winces. Man, he’s got sharp elbows now. Chuck jogs across the space, a lot less unsteady in Julie’s body than the reverse, though still noticeably less confident than Julie in her own body. Mike follows at a bit of a reserve, uncertain if he should be intruding on another... thing. Another Chuck-and-Julie private freakout thing.
Chuck’s got the driver’s side door open, by the time Mike makes up his mind to go all the way over and see, and Julie’s wrapped her long arms around Chuck's narrow back, face buried against his shoulder. She’s shaking all over, muffled little gasps and curses, and Chuck’s petting the back of her head, over and over.
“It’s okay,” he’s saying, “you’re okay, it’s okay, just breathe, you’re okay now.”
“Stupid—” Julie gasps out, “freaking—this is—I’m so—”
“It’s okay. Breathe.”
“This is so freaking stupid Chuck, oh my god, why is it—why are you—I can’t, I can’t stop, I can’t—”
“Julie, it’s okay, it just happens. Breathe.”
She makes a long, horrible high-pitched whimper, shudders a final time, and goes kind of limp. When Mike catches a glimpse of her face it’s wet with tears and utterly miserable and he looks away immediately.
“The longer you’re upset that you’re upset, the longer you’re upset,” Chuck says, low and private, still running his hand over Julie’s hair again and again. Her hands are fisted in the back of his vest, now, big knuckles white with tension.
“I couldn’t stop,” she mumbles. “Why...?”
Chuck shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just like that.”
“Jeez.”
“You okay?”
“No!”
“You’re okay. Come on, get up. Have a walk.”
Julie stumbles as she unfolds out of Nine Lives, arms crossing tightly over her chest, shoulders hunched in, head hung low and defeated. Humiliated. Mike’s seen Chuck like this too many times and he really, really doesn’t like it.
“Are you gonna be good to drive back?” Chuck asks her, as they stumble kind of pointlessly around the perimeter of the entrance area.
“No. Yes. I know how. I know how. It’s MY CAR!” Julie clenches her teeth around the shrill scream. “It’s my car, Chuck, she’s mine! I made her, I can drive her, she’s—I have to—I have to!”
“Hey. Breathe.”
“You can drive! You can drive, and I can drive, so why can’t I—why—”
Julie makes a noise horribly close to a sob, scrubbing her face with the back of her wrist, but after that she breathes.
“It’s just like that, with me,” Chuck says, and his face is cold and very bleak. “I don't think you can fix it, it's just how my brain is. I’m sorry.”
When they get back to Nine Lives, Julie puts her hand on the roof.
“Mike,” she says, and Mike jumps a little.
“Yeah? Can I do—anything?”
“I’ll ride back with you. We’ll use the tow line for my car.” She runs her hand along the roof, lets it drop off. “I can figure this out in the garage. We’ll do tests. Controlled environment.”
“Okay,” Mike says. “Yeah, that sounds great. We’ll get everything figured out, Jules, don’t worry.”
Chuck makes a quiet little hah, but steps back when they look at him.
“I’m gonna go,” he says. “It’s not a long walk up, right?”
“No. Maybe ten minutes. Claire’s got a rental pod to fly you back—home—with.” Her face screws up again and she shudders. “Are you going to be okay? With—everything?”
“I’ll be fine,” Chuck says. “I’ll call if I need anything.”
Julie nods. She runs her hand over her car again, then starts trudging towards Mutt as Chuck nods at Mike and sets off on his own course.
Julie starts screaming a hundred fifty miles before Chuck’s average freakout speed, and then tries to grab Mike’s steering wheel.
“Whoa!” Mike yelps, elbowing her off. “Cut it out, man, stop!”
“SLOW THE HECK DOWN,” Julie yells, going for the gearstick. “WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”
“We’re not going to die, we’ve never died, we’re fine,” Mike says firmly. “Chuck’s okay with this, you know!”
“HE IS NOT AND I’M NOT EITHER,” Julie yells, and tries to get his wheel again. Mike is suddenly really glad Chuck doesn’t want to drive, because dealing with someone who thinks she can do better than him and really really wants to try at two hundred miles an hour is kind of an event.
“You can get back in Nine Lives if you want!” Mike lets her know.
“I WANT YOU TO SLOW THE ABSOLUTE CRAP DOWN,” Julie yells. “I AM GOING TO HAVE AN ACTUAL HEART ATTACK, MIKE! I AM ACTUALLY GOING TO FREAKING EXPLODE, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, SLOW DOWN.”
Frowning angrily, Mike slows down. He slows all the way to a hundred, like a granny or something. It should be a crime to drive this slow.
“You know it’s gonna take longer to get back the slower we drive, right?” he asks. “You could just close your eyes or something and we’ll be home before you know it. No problem.”
“Lots of problems,” Julie says, breathing fast and shallow. “Me. I am a whole lot of problems, right now, a lot of them, happening all at once, this is not okay. Slow down!”
Mike drops to ninety.
It is a very long ride home, and when they finally get to the garage, Julie gives a final, quivering whimper and then faints. Mike sighs, runs his hands through his hair, then goes and drags her off to a couch to recover.
*
Once Julie’s back on her feet, however unsteadily, she doesn’t seem to want to sit back down, as if she can make up for instability with momentum. Mike’s never had a problem with that kind of attitude, himself, so he does his best to keep her fed and busy and a couple hours go by pretty well. They clean the kitchen, then reorganize one of the storage rooms Mike was meaning to get to earlier, then go fix up Julie’s crash room for more regular occupancy.
“Yeah, I can’t sleep in this,” Julie says, looking around at Chuck’s bedroom. She kicks at the crumpled jeans on the floor, then a nasty-looking sock, and snorts. “I didn’t know he was a slob!”
“I make him keep it to his room,” MIke says. The mess in here makes his fingers itch to start folding, but Chuck would know it was him who did it, so he just sort of stands there with his hands in his pockets while Julie raids the Probably Clean Pile for a couple pairs of jeans and shirts and, uh, yeah, that’s underwear, Julie is now touching Chuck’s underwear, this is weird. She folds them herself and drops them on top of a couple pillows, then scoops an armful of miscellaneous computer parts into a box and adds that too.
“I like to work on stuff before bed,” she explains to Mike. “Or like if I’m up at night. You know it’s nice to keep busy, when, uh...”
“I know,” Mike says. But he didn’t know Julie got nightmares too. He should have. He pats her back, and she jumps a little, then smiles at him hesitantly.
Julie’s room is mostly a workroom, with a quilt thrown over an old loveseat in the corner on the rare occasions Julie overnights somewhere in the base besides a recovery room cot or a rec room sofa. Julie drops Chuck’s pillows on the loveseat, then seems to do a doubletake. She looks back over her shoulder at Mike and grins, pointing.
“Oh man,” she says. “I am small. Mike, what the heck, look at that! How did I ever fit on that, it’s like a little dollhouse bed!”
Mike shrugs and grins back. “You’re a sports model,” he says. “We can’t all be, like, stretch limos.”
“Pfff. I’m gonna go steal Chuck’s cot.”
“Need help—?”
“Don’t you dare. I love this crap.” She dashes out the door, and when she’s back in a couple minutes, she’s breathing hard but carrying the whole bedframe and mattress and everything by herself, grinning from ear to ear. She drops it with a resounding clang!perpendicular to the loveseat, then flops onto it and stretches out, long arms thrown up over her head, blond hair going everywhere.
“This is so cool,” she says. “Why doesn’t he throw stuff around like all the time? It’s so cool.”
“It’s pretty fun to watch,” Mike admits. “I guess he’s just kind of a modest guy.”
“It’s always the superheroes that are all modest,” Julie says casually. “If I were like you guys I’d brag nonstop.”
“You are, though,” Mike says, surprised.
Julie points casually at the loveseat. “Sports model, Mike.”
“Size doesn’t matter!” Mike protests, and she giggles. “Hey, shut up, I mean—you know what I mean!”
“Yeah, I know. You’re sweet.” Julie sits up, rubs the back of her neck. “I do my best, I guess. I’ve been keeping up with you all just fine. Right?” She sounds like she’s trying to be flippant, but Mike knows that stressed edge to Chuck’s voice a little too well.
He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Julie, we’d all be dead without you. Like, a lot. You’re important.”
She looks up at him, smiling a familiar, painful smile, one of Chuck’s exactly, and how had he never noticed that from her before? That anxious doubt over her worth, her place with them, that same insecurity? She's always seemed so confident, before now. Proud, even.
“Thanks, Mike,” she says softly. “You know I won’t let you down.”
“You couldn’t,” he says firmly. “You’ll never. I know.” He gives her shoulders a firm squeeze, then straightens up before it can get weird.
“Hey, you wanna give driving Nine Lives another go? We can fix the seat spacing—”
“No!” she yelps, then swipes her bangs back from her face, frowning. “I mean... I want... huh. I wanna check everything over, first, give her a tune-up? It felt like she was just gonna fall apart on me when I was driving her earlier, I couldn’t stop thinking about how long it’d been since I checked the stabilizers. Can we check the stabilizers? What if they fail like, halfway through and I splatter myself over like ten miles. Or the—the tire pressure, one of them could blow—”
Her voice is pitching upwards, squeaking with distress, and Mike says hastily, “Yeah, it’s cool! I don’t have anything else to do today, let’s work on her. We can go over everything, do all the safety checks. Make sure there isn’t a bolt out of place before you hit the road again.”
Julie smiles at him gratefully, runs her hands through her hair again.
“Cool,” she says, relieved. “Okay, yeah, great.”
They check out Nine Lives inch by methodical inch, Julie’s secondhand anxiety fading quickly into a much more normal possessive enthusiasm. Nine Lives is a great car, sturdy and imaginative, packed with buffers and boosters and holotech, with more than half of a Kane Co personal transport pod folded into her compact angles to keep the ride smooth and light. Julie could probably crash the cruiser through a couple buildings without getting knocked around too much, Mike figures, though luckily she hasn’t had to yet.
It just feels good to work on a car, open her up and make sure everything’s running right. To try a couple tweaks, scrub out a little gunk here and there, check some filters, polish a couple dials and rims. And a couple hours pass just like that, busy and comfortable.
Then Dutch and Texas come sneaking into the garage, holding really big bundles of angular stuff wrapped in dirty sheets.
“Hey, guys,” Mike says, and they both jump. Texas tries to hide his bundle behind his back, can’t quite manage it, and just turns all the way around instead to hide it with his whole body.
“H-hey, Mike! Chuck!” Dutch says brightly. “Great to see you guys! Uhh... I thought you were out with Julie today in the Canyonlands?”
“Yeah, they got messed up, so we came home early.” Mike frowns. “I called you guys a couple times, we could have used the assist getting back up to ground level.”
“We were busy!” Texas says. “With important --”
“Super boring errands for the Cablers,” Dutch says. “Way across town from, uh, you guys, and like, also the Robot Roundup. Like as a hypothetical example of places we were really far away from today! Ask anyone.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mike says, narrowing his eyes. “Maybe I should ask the Mama’s Boys. Cuz it kind of looks like I might need to be making them another formal apology.”
Tennie comes into the garage with a black eye, a pronounced limp, and an X-16 Autocleaner cuddled against her chest. When she sees Mike she squeaks and scurries behind Dutch.
“You said they’d be out of the base today!” she hisses.
Mike gives Dutch a very, very disappointed look.
“Haha! Uh! Well it’s been great catching up but look at time, we’d better get Tennie back home, right now. Bye!” Dutch says, and hustles Tennie right back out of the garage, Texas tip-toeing hastily after them.
Mike gives a long, deep sigh, and lets his forehead thump onto Nine Lives’ roof.
“Eh, we’ll fill them in on me and Chuck later,” Julie says. “I don’t want Tennie to know about this. The Cablers gossip worse than the Amazons, especially about weird tech disasters, so it’s just as well they’re all busy.”
“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to get the Noogie Of Repentance from Junior,” Mike grumbles. “That guy’s got the sharpest knuckles in Michigan.”
“Good thing you’ve got the hardest head,” Julie says.
“Hey!”
They go over Nine Lives from hood to hubcaps until Julie is swaying on her feet, yawing, and Mike takes the screwdriver out of her hand before she can drop it again.
“Bedtime,” he says.
“Oh, right,” she says vaguely, and looks around. “Gimme a ride to... oh. Nn.” She brushes her bangs back from her face, and there’s something raw and scared in her eyes, the way she looks down at Mike.
“Right,” she says again.
They scrub off fast in the garage’s big sink, stripping grease and sweat off with spare rags and the harsh handmade lye soap Jacob gets by the brick, and Julie recovers enough to splash at Mike and giggle when he swats her with a wet rag. She strips her shirt off when Mike does, like neither she nor Chuck have ever done—like she thinks Chuck does with him, apparently—and Mike does his best not to stare at the thick white lines of surgical scars Chuck’s body has all over his chest, where he was cut open over and over. Julie doesn’t act like they’re a surprise, and he wonders what she knows about Chuck that he doesn’t.
Then she pokes him right in the ribs, a calculating expression on her face, and he yelps at the tickle and jumps about half a mile. It’s a lot easier not to stare like a jerk when you’re under a deadly tickle assault, and they chase each other up to the kitchen.
Julie pretty much falls asleep in her bowl of oatmeal, and Mike has to keep poking her, but finally it seems like she’s gotten enough calories and can be left alone to go to bed and like, not starve to death during the night.
“So, uh... this was fun,” Mike says, before she closes her bedroom door on him. She gives him a wry smile, leaning against the doorframe.
“Yeah,” she says. “Weird as heck, but. I wish I had more time to just hang out with you guys.”
“Well, you’ll have a little,” he says. “I mean, until we get all this fixed.”
“Hopefully just a little.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, uh... goodnight,” Mike says awkwardly. He’s never felt awkward with her or Chuck before, or at least not really, but this situation is just... so weird. Julie smiles at him again, hesitates, then pokes him a final time in the ribs. He yelps, smacks her wrist, and closes the door on her firmly.
“Goodnight!” she says, muffled.
He’s smiling as he heads off to his own bedroom. Weird doesn’t have to mean bad, he figures.
*
Mike’s a little startled to find Chuck—Julie— in the bathroom when he wanders in to brush his teeth. Chuck’s not an early riser, he likes later shifts. Julie apparently likes to get up and at ‘em early, just like Mike, but there’s a familiar sleepiness slowing her down.
What’s significantly less familiar is she’s got her own fancy Deluxian girl hairbrush out and is experimentally brushing her blond hair this way and that. The air of the bathroom is warm and humid and smells like her soap, that fancy indescribable chemical sweetness.
“Hey, cowboy,” she says, voice low and sleepy-rough, and that’s— an interesting combination. To hear. “Think Chuck’d kill me if I took his bangs up a couple inches?”
“Uh,” Mike rubs the back of his neck. “He wouldn’t be happy. It’s some kind of, like, ex-techie thing he’s got. They don’t cut their hair after they... quit.”
“Mm. Great. If this lasts long enough I can get my regular hairstyle back.”
Mike thinks about Chuck in a couple years, hair in smooth blond waves past his shoulders, brushing it back with his long fingers.
“I guess!” he says, waving the thought away. “But we’ll get you two out of this before then, I’m sure. Don’t worry.” He essays a pat to Julie’s shoulder. This close it’s obvious that she used her own cleansers and stuff but didn’t know what to do about Chuck’s morning scruff. She catches him looking and grimaces.
“Yeah, this isn’t part of my usual routine,” she says, and scratches her jaw. “...Kinda cool though.”
“Uh-huh,” Mike says. It’s kind of a recent development that it’s been part of Chuck’s routine, Mike still doesn’t need to do all that much to stay presentable.
“Hey, you could show me!” she says. She flips the mirror open in a flurry of elbows—Mike has to duck—and grabs the old fashioned razor, then waves it around. Enthusiastically. Mike catches her wrist hastily and she pauses, then flushes, laughing at herself.
“Okay, whoops, didn’t mean to shave you,” she says. She glances over her shoulder and takes one slow, over-careful step backwards, to sit on the closed toilet lid. Once she’s sitting she’s actually a lot closer to her usual height, a little under Mike’s shoulder level, but her lit-up grin is all Chuck. Like this is A Project.
“Sure, dude—Julie. Gimme a sec.” He fixes his morning breath fast, a little self-conscious with her watching him this closely, bouncing one knee in place and pulling on her fingers as she waits.
Then he picks the razor up, takes hold of her jaw, and realizes he has no real idea how to do this from the other side. He could either admit this—not so bad—or fake it—probably bad but also, more fun. Or just go off-script entirely, very fun. He gets out Chuck’s shaving cream and sprays Julie right in the face, then cracks up at her indignant shriek.
She grabs the can away and sprays him, then grabs his arm with her free hand when he tries to dodge away and slams him face-first up against the wall. It’s very surprising to both of them, and there’s a long, tense moment where he can feel her warm breath against the back of his neck, smell girly soap and shampoo and the hand clamped around his arm is like iron underneath the hot skin. Then Julie hooks the collar of his shirt away from his back and squirts a really unforgivable amount of shaving cream down the gap.
“Oh, it’s ON,” Mike breathes, and spins them out into the hallway. They leave an incredible, foamy trail of destruction all around the base, Julie moving a lot faster and hitting a lot harder than Chuck usually—almost always—does, but also slamming into every possible wall and tripping over stuff that isn’t even there. Eventually when they're rolling around on one of the landings, the can runs empty, and Julie gives a huge sigh and throws the thing over the edge of the hideout. She lets out a triumphant HA! at the distance it gets, listening with satisfaction to the way it clatters faintly away.
“God, okay, Chuck’s body has some serious perks,” she says. “I want to be all enhanced and whatever too! This is amazing.”
Considering she’s sitting on Mike’s legs with both his wrists trapped casually in one of her hands, Mike thinks he can understand the sentiment.
“Just don’t overdo it again,” he says. “I don’t think there’s a fridge big enough to keep up with you if we spend all our time horsing around like this.”
“Killjoy,” Julie says. “You’re just mad I whupped you.”
“I’m not mad!” Mike protests.
“You’re jealous!” she laughs.
“I’m getting a cramp!”
“Okay, okay. You big baby.” Julie gets to her bare feet, slipping and scrambling a little in all the foam, and stretches out her arms and shoulders, arching her back. Chuck really is a big guy, when he’s—when his body is—held all the way up and out, not folded awkwardly in on itself.
“Man!” she goes. “I can’t believe he lives like this. It’s like everything’s turned up to eleven like all the time. Everything! Emotions, sensation, physical—stuff—processing power—everything. No filter. Did you know?”
Mike wipes some foam off his face. “Not... really,” he says, feeling kind of like a bad friend. “He doesn’t like to talk about himself much, you know. You, uh... you don’t either.”
“Well, I guess it’s easier to talk about other people,” Julie says frankly. “Maybe less ethical, though, I dunno.” She bounces a little on the balls of her feet, then slips on shaving cream and sits down hard. “Dang, I would really like to stop falling over already!”
“You’ll get it eventually,” Mike says encouragingly.
“Blargh, eventually.” Julie wipes foam off her neck. “...I need another shower. Do you guys ration water down here? I forget.”
“Uh, well, the hot water runs out after awhile, but like, a long while,” Mike says.
“Cool, cool, we can both take one. Uh... man.” Julie surveys their trail of destruction. “Haha, wow. Shoot.”
“Let’s deal with this... later,” Mike decides. He and Julie manage to get to their feet, and they head back to the bathroom much more furtively than they came out of it.
“Right, so, okay, shaving,” Mike says, Julie once more sitting down. “Well, we definitely aced the shaving cream step.”
Julie’s lips quirk up.
“Now... shaving.”
“Do you actually know how to do this, Mike,” Julie asks, which is such a Chuck thing to say, too, Mike laughs.
“Yeah!” he says reflexively. “I mean—I’ve done it.”
“Mhm. Well, just don’t cut off bits Chuck would miss,” Julie says. She closes her eyes and waits, and Mike takes hold of her jaw very carefully. He’s really aware right now of the skin under his fingers, and the steady pulse, and the soft rhythm of her breath. He starts moving the razor over the appropriate areas, peeling away broad stripes of white foam to show the smooth pink skin underneath. He rinses the razor off a few times. It seems like he’s doing okay. Julie’s gone really still.
“You okay...?” he asks, his voice coming out weirdly soft. Quiet. They’re very close together. Peak weird, he thinks.
“Mmhm,” Julie sighs, just as soft. “...Feels kinda like when... Claire does my makeup. ‘S nice.”
Every line of her is loose and relaxed, her eyes hardly even twitching under closed lids. Mike thinks about Claire leaning over Julie like this, hand on her thin throat, thumb running over the soft curve of her jaw—touching her mouth, putting that bright lipstick on—and he has to take a long, careful breath in and out.
“Right,” he says. “Okay. Cool.”
He finishes up and steps back to let her check out his work. She peers interestedly into the mirror.
“Yep, it’s Chuck,” she says. “Good job, dude.”
“Thanks!” Mike feels weirdly proud. “Guess between you and me we can keep—all this—in working order, right?”
“Yeah, piece of cake,” Julie agrees. Her grin’s crooked on one side, wry and perfect. She plants a hand on Mike’s chest and pushes him out into the hallway.
“I’m gonna wash off, again,” she says. “Gimme a sec to fix all this up the rest of the way. Clean the other stuff or something, you can go next.”
“Right! I, yeah, right—” the door closes, and then the shower starts running, and Mike realizes with a sudden, stupid jolt that Julie is—Chuck is—they had to have come to some kind of agreement about this kind of thing, right? You don’t take a shower with your clothes on. And even if you kept your eyes closed the whole time, still—there’s stuff you have to touch...
Well, that part of this whole thing is definitely not Mike’s business right now. Or ever! He turns resolutely away from the bathroom and goes to get a mop.