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Chase Davenport doesn’t sleep much.
The penthouse has a bathroom, just one for all of them to share. The others are all locked behind Mr. Davenport’s bedroom door. Blindly, he turns the tap on and splashes water over his face.
He’s tired, and grimy, and he doesn’t sleep much but he wishes that he could.
See, Mr. Davenport had decided, when Chase was maybe 2, or 3, that he didn’t need to sleep. He does sleep, because Mr. Davenport is not as talented as he thinks he is. He still sleeps because he has to sleep, but he can’t really rest, never ever—in fact, his brain only whirs itself into exhaustion every seven days, when he manages to actually shut off. It’s still two days away, that good night of his. When he collapses into a heap and, quite literally, passes out. He’s already craving it.
Biting his nails and letting down the team.
In the mirror, the Chase Davenport looking back at him is haggard. Deep, dark circles and strands of hair fallen over his forehead where he’s sweat his product out. Things he isn’t weighing heavy on his shoulders.
Mission leader. Youngest sibling.
Tall.
He’s not winning any points for hygiene right now, either.
The lack of true sleep has been getting to him more here than ever before. Maybe it’s because his roommates—thanks, Mr. Davenport, for still making him share—keep him up every night.
It’s not even their fault, it’s just his super senses. He can see the light of a phone, or hear the tinny sound of music through earbuds even through his soundproofed capsule. He can sense the shift of vitals not yet at rest. The beating of two hearts, the body temperatures; Oliver freezing, Kaz fever-hot.
Skylar, snoring down the hall.
All this to say: he’s exhausted. Their mission today had nearly killed them, and now he can hear the slow, subtle sounds of the rest of the team regrouping downstairs. Oliver and Bree are laughing at the TV. Kaz is on his ever present mission of trying to teach Skylar how to cook.
And Chase is here, in their shared bathroom, because they only have the one.
He won’t sleep for another two days.
It happens so suddenly. He’s looking at himself in the mirror, and then he’s looking at many reflections of himself, fractured and fragmented, cradling his fist to his chest.
He’s bleeding. Running diagnostics. Interpreting the data.
You just punched the mirror, asshole.
One bathroom, one mirror.
Bree is going to kill him.
Shards of glass on the vanity and abrupt silence from downstairs.
It’s his fault, about the mission. It’s always his fault, these days, because the last time he was blameless, he was 14, still locked in a basement with his siblings. Still liked.
They’re entering the building. Chase has the map on his display, leading them into a maze of identical hallways.
He sits on the side of the bathtub, gingerly trying to flex his fingers. Hissing when it hurts.
He stops outside a door like all the others, and double—triple—checks to make sure it’s the right one. He scans for life signs. Then, he scans again.
The blood is starting to drip onto the bathmat. When he leans back, holding his arm close, the blood runs down to his lap.
No life signs.
He curses, a rarity. Shit. Shit. There shouldn’t be any danger. Shit! There shouldn’t be anything in there at all.
Skylar turns the doorknob, and the world explodes.
He’s not crying. He’s just so fucking tired that his eyes are leaking. The hand that’s bleeding is really, really starting to hurt.
Someone is coming up the stairs.
It’s his fault for not scanning for explosives. The building was empty because the building was rigged to come down.
No one died, but they could have. They would have, if Skylar hadn’t been the one to open the door, taking the brunt of it while Chase’s forcefield sprang to life. He’d only just managed to shield everyone else. They’re all injured, albeit mildly. They all could have died!
The bathroom door creaks open. His eyes, at some point, have squeezed shut. He calculates the probability of who it might be before they even start to speak.
“Chase? What happened, are you okay?”
Kaz.
He thought it would be Bree.
“Can you close the door,” he says, because he’s listening to the TV and the sizzle of oil left unattended in the pan downstairs, and it’s not just that; it’s how one of their neighbors is pouring a glass of water, and another is brushing their teeth, and, down on the street, a discarded gum wrapper scrapes across the sidewalk. Scrape after stuttering scrape.
Everything, all at once.
Super senses, and how he can’t fucking sleep, and how he has all of this technology shoved into his head—the smartest man alive—and he still didn’t think to scan for explosives before it nearly got them killed.
“I’m gonna need to take a look at that hand, alright?”
The door is closed, and Chase can still hear everything. It’s only a little easier to tune out.
“Dude, did you punch the mirror?”
His throat struggles to work as he looks up. Kaz’s eyes are squinty and dark and always rolling around in his head like the world is a big fun joke. “Yeah.”
“…Okay, why?”
I didn’t like what I saw. I almost got us killed today. I can’t sleep, Kaz. I can’t fucking sleep! “I—I’m not sure.”
Kaz doesn’t believe him. Or, he might. It’s never easy to tell what other people are thinking. He’s still two days away from sleep. He feels like his brain is melting out of his ears, although that might just be leftover blood from the explosion, trickling down the side of his neck.
“Careful,” Chase says, absent, as Kaz picks his way toward him. “There’s glass.”
“Yeah, I got that from the way the mirror is in a million pieces.” Kaz reaches him after what feels like an eternity, lashes fanning out and casting shadows on his cheeks. “And, like, half of those pieces are sticking out of your hand. Holy shit, dude, you really went for it, huh?”
Chase feels his mechanical jaw snap. “I get it. I screwed up and no one likes me. It’s fine.”
Kaz’s face twists. “What? What are you talking about? That’s not true—“
“Great, so I’m wrong about that, too.” He hears himself laugh, all bitter and petulant. Selfish. Childish.
He averts his eyes. Watches his flesh ripple around the shards of mirror piercing his knuckles.
A million little reflections. Awkward silence.
The way blood spiderwebs over skin like it’s remembering the veins.
“Can you give me your hand?”
Pain begins to register the moment he extends his arm for Kaz to see. It burns up his nerves, radial and vibrant. Worsening as Kaz gently takes his hand and forces his fingers to splay.
“Sorry,” he says, strained, as if he’s feeling what Chase is feeling. As if it hurts him, too. The healer, obeying his hippocratic oath. “Stay like that for me?”
Chase watches Kaz clean up his mess. It’s not well done—it’s Kaz—and it makes him feel even worse. At least they’re both less likely to get glass shards in their feet.
Kaz comes back with the first aid kit, analyzing the situation before beginning to pick at the glass with tweezers.
It’s as he reaches Chase’s third knuckle that Chase asks, “Why are you doing this?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, I know it hurts but I have to—“
“No, I mean, why are you helping me?”
Kaz blinks down at him. Shuffles on his feet. “What?”
“I almost got us all killed today, and then I got mad and punched the mirror, and it’s—everything is my fault, but you’re helping me. Why?”
Another pieces of glass gone. Dropped into the plastic lid of the first aid kit with a little thunk. “Today wasn’t your fault, Chase.”
“But I—“
“Dude, unless you set those explosives yourself, I don’t want to hear it.”
Thunk. Thunk. “I still should have—“
“Stop it!”
Kaz yanks his hand, just enough for pain to lance up to his shoulder. “Ow!”
“Sorry.” Kaz doesn’t look sorry. “But I’m serious. You did your best, okay? They were one step ahead, that’s not on you.”
“My best would have been to scan for explosives.”
“Well…” Kaz shrugs, tugging at the biggest piece of glass. “You’ll know for next time, then.”
Thunk.
“Is that all of ‘em?”
“I can’t tell.” Chase turns his hand over, flexing, wincing at the wounds. “I don’t know.”
“Let me keep looking.” Kaz sits heavily on the bathtub rim beside him, dragging Chase’s hand into his lap.
It’s closer than Chase wants to get. It’s too close. They’re breathing the same air, and Kaz is touching him, skin to skin, palm to palm, fingers at the pulse point of his wrist. Kaz’s heart is beating at a steady 99. Their legs are pressed together from knee to ankle. Chase won’t sleep again for days.
“Oh, hey, look at that. Got another one.”
“Ow! Do you have to dig around so much?”
“…Did you have to punch the mirror?”
Chase isn’t the best at reading tone, but he knows a rhetorical question when he hears it.
“Now stay still, I don’t wanna lose it.”
He watches the top of Kaz’s head as he works. Thick, dark hair, that curls lightly at the edges when it starts to get too long. Like it might be clean despite how often Kaz denies understanding shampoo. Covered in just a bit of exploded door.
He reaches out, and brushes drywall from the surprisingly soft curls.
It happens the same way as punching the mirror—sudden, inexplicable—except instead of pain it’s his uninjured hand scratching lightly at Kaz’s scalp. Petting him like a dog.
The absurdity of his action hits him as Kaz tenses, going still where he’s holding him in place.
And yet, Chase doesn’t pull away. He just shifts, threading his fingers through Kaz’s hair to push away the dust and debris. Littering the floor.
When he’s done, he puts his hand back on his lap. Blood runs down his other knuckles and gathers in Kaz’s palm.
“There,” Kaz says, and his throat sounds tight. Pained again. Hippocratic. “Do you think I got them all, now?
Chase flexes. It hurts, but it doesn’t sting like glass moving around inside of him, anymore. “Yeah. Thanks, I can take it from—“
“I got it,” Kaz says, gripping his forearm tight enough for Chase to believe him.
The alcohol burns, and the Neosporin soothes it again, until finally Kaz is wrapping his hand loosely in gauze, deft at circling each finger without ever pulling it too taut.
“Perks of working in an ER,” he says, triple checking the gauze the way Chase triple checks everything else.
“You were good at it.”
“I was just a kid.” Kaz laughs, and he looks up again, finally, like the world is funny. Committed to laughing along. “I probably still am. Don’t tell Mr. Davenport that.”
“Sure, as long as you don’t tell him I was the one who broke the mirror.” Chase splays his fingers, testing the gauze and finding it near perfect. The ache in his hand persists, but he can tell with a glance at his display that he hasn’t broken anything. Kaz’s remedy will heal him. It’ll just take time.
“Well, this was fun,” Kaz says, standing, speeding back up to his usual level of energy. Chase hadn’t even notice he’d slowed. “But I’m starving, and it’s almost midnight. What do you say we get outta here so we can eat.”
“Skylar burnt the aromatics,” he says. “Three and a half minutes ago.” He can smell it, yes, but he’d also heard her loudly complain about the difficulties of cooking.
“…What on earth are aromatics.”
That gets him to laugh, startled into it as Kaz good-naturedly shakes his head. “Come on, Kaz! You’re the chef!”
“That doesn’t mean I know all the fancy ass words!”
“You know, onions, carrots, celery. That sort of thing.”
“Oh. I get it. Wait, she burnt them?!”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Chase pats Kaz on the shoulder, and he means sorry about everything. The mission, the mirror, the petting Kaz’s head.
Kaz looks at him from the corner of his down-turned eyes. “You’re good, Chase.”
Chase is tired, and bleeding, and bruised from the bombs. He won’t sleep for two more days, not really, but he will regenerate overnight in his capsule. There are a lot of things he isn’t anymore—and an even longer list of things he never was—and yet, for a moment, in the relative privacy of the only bathroom that they have, Chase looks down at Kaz, and he believes him.
Kaz bumps their shoulders together. “Skylar, though, I’m going to kill. I told her very specifically not to burn my veggies!”
“Good luck killing her. I mean, if the bomb couldn’t do it…”
It feels too early to joke about until Kaz smiles so wide his dark eyes disappear. “Clearly, you haven’t seen how protective I am of my a-ro-ma-tics.”
They walk downstairs together, and Chase’s brain continues to whir itself into exhaustion, and Skylar’s burnt the vegetables so badly that they have to throw away the entire pan.
Still, they’re all together—his mildly injured team—as they fight over what pizza to order, and when they decide on four individual pies, one for each of them, and hamburgers and fries for Bree, Chase thinks about single bathrooms for five people and glass shards embedded in his hands. About mushrooms and green peppers on his pizza, about dirt, and dust, and drywall, about explosions and their aftermaths, and about how he will—inevitably—dare Bree to eat one of her hamburgers in a single, massive bite.
She’s never refused a dare before, and tonight will be no different. Chase won’t sleep for another two days, but he’s awake now, letting them put on a cheesy movie just so they can all laugh at it.
Kaz gets up to sit beside him halfway through dinner, and Skylar cheers as Bree manages to fit the burger in her face, and there is a long, long list of things that Chase is not.
As Kaz’s warmth radiates over to him, he considers that, just maybe, there are a lot of things he is.