Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It had been a close call at the end of a week full of close calls.

Mutt was barely running. Despite the flurry of repairs they had been doing during the day, Kane had attacked every night for five nights in a row, and this one had been particularly brutal.

Mike ran an account of damage in his head as he headed back to Burner’s HQ. 9 Lives was doing okay and Stronghorn was built like a tank, but Whiptail had taken serious damage to its rear end. Mutt was in the worst condition of the cars; three of her cannons were fried, and the passenger side door had - had huge strips of metal torn out of it –

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t think of that bit of damage objectively. He couldn’t stop obsessively going over the moment where the biohound had struck the car in just the right way, where Mike had been fast but not fast enough and the claws and teeth and fangs went straight for Chuck. The heart-stopping moment where Mike had jolted the wheel and stood on the gas and been sure that it wouldn’t be enough to stop the metal claws from tearing right through Chuck. His heart had lodged in his throat as he’d watched that claw tear into the arms defending Chuck’s chest before momentum finally kicked in and the hound was whipped off the side of the car.

Chuck was only a little the worse for wear for it, but he was bleeding – “my arm,” he’d said shortly to Mike’s questions – and was now staring at the ceiling, breathing steadily and carefully not looking at his own blood.

All the Burners took their own hits; that was part of the deal. But for some reason – maybe because he was his copilot – it was a lot harder to accept that when it was Chuck’s blood getting spilled for the cause.

When they pulled up to the garage, Mike was out of the car right away, mentally inventorying – get the cars in for repairs, do anything necessary to make them drivable, save the rest until morning. Everyone needed sleep way more than they needed a few extra lazers, at this point.

But first.

He grabbed Chuck’s shoulder, wincing when he got Chuck’s blood on his hands. He’s checking him over without words, glancing down and feeling a little sick at how much blood has seeped into Chuck’s shirt, and more at how the sleeves are tatters of torn fabric.

“Shit,” Mike said, suddenly rearranging priorities. “We have to get you inside, get these sewn up – “

“Stop babying me, Mike.”

Mike blinked, glared up at Chuck. “Babying you?”

Chuck was glaring up through his bangs, looking pale and drawn. To Mike’s guilt, he tilts his head to check for red eyes; they were pure hazel. This was all Chuck, and he was yelling at Mike.

“Yes! Or what else would you call this? I’ll live, Mike, I’ve had worse. And you sure didn’t seem to care 15 minutes ago, when you were showing off for the oh-so-grateful citizens.”

“I was what? I was doing my job! I just wanted us to get home!”

“And is part of your job standing up on a pedestal and taking all the credit?” Chuck pushed Mike away with his good hand, and swayed dangerously from the motion. For some reason, this just made Mike angrier at Chuck, at how unreasonable he was being when he so obviously needed help. Mike’s help.

“Well maybe if you stood up for yourself and took some credit this wouldn’t happen!”

“I shouldn’t have to ask my best friend to acknowledge me for my help, when I manage to give it!” Chuck yelled. “Besides, I was bleeding in the car while you smiled and waved in the wreckage of the Kane bots that you couldn’t have destroyed without my help!”

Mike’s stomach clenched.

That wasn’t how it had gone down at all. Chuck was being unreasonable, ridiculous, and Mike was opening his mouth before he could be sure what was going to come out of it –

“You’re so obsessed with the glory, Mike!”

“Can’t you just grow a spine?”

An unnatural silence fell over the garage.

Mike – Mike was a tangle of emotions, of a desire to yank what he’s just said back into his mouth, to wipe that look off of Chuck’s face, to gather him in and carry him upstairs and make Jacob patch him up as best he could. Because goddamn it, Chuck’s blood was still on his hands and in Mutt and dripping onto the floor and all over Chuck, and now on top of that those might be tears pooling in the corners of Chuck’s eyes.

Just as Mike noticed this, Chuck dipped his head fiercely down, hiding his tears –

And catching sight of his arm properly for the first time, on the way he was forming a tiny puddle of blood on the floor of the garage as his arm continued bleeding sluggishly.

Chuck let out a high squeak and swayed dangerously. In a move of more instinct than anything else, Mike rushed forward, catching Chuck before he could crumple to the ground.

For all his fire of a minute before, Chuck was out cold. Limp, he seemed dangerously cold and pale, and his blood was now coating the front of Mike’s shirt.

He was an idiot. He was the hugest idiot in the world, and the worst best friend, and none of that really mattered half so much as getting Chuck medical attention, now, before the issue stopped being his arm and started being blood loss.

Glancing around the garage, Mike discovered that at some point in the last few minutes, the other Burners had left them to it. He appreciated it – at least they had only witnessed part of him being a terrible friend and a terrible leader – but that meant he had to get Chuck upstairs himself.

He wrapped his friend up in his arms and started pulling.

When he entered the main area, Texas looked up from the coffee he was nursing and said, loudly, “Wait, did you kill him?”

Mike flipped him the finger and pulled Chuck in to the already-prepared first aid room with Jacob in it.

“What’s wrong?” Jacob said the moment he got in, rushing forward, all business in a crisis. Mike felt a small bit of weight go off his shoulders – Chuck was in the best hands they had. He deposited Chuck on the makeshift medical table that Jacob had, pushing off an empty oil can to clear space. Once Chuck was settled, Mike stepped quickly back, wondering if conscious-Chuck would want Mike anywhere near him right now.

“His arm,” Mike said quickly. “He just passed out from seeing the blood, but he’s been bleeding for a while.”

Jacob wasted no time, stepping forward and starting to examine Chuck’s arm. “Anyone else hurt?”

“Not badly,” Mike said. Dutch had some bruising – minor whiplash, at worst – from when a laser had hit the rear of Whiptail, sending his car spinning. Mike had been hit by some of the shrapnel from Chuck’s door, but between the battle, and Chuck’s injury, and their fight, the adrenaline hadn’t drained out of his system enough yet to even know where he was bleeding. It was nothing they couldn’t deal with on their own.

Jacob looked up from where he was starting to clean Chuck’s arm to look at Mike strangely. “Unless you’ve picked up some medical knowledge in the past couple days, you’re not doin’ anyone any good standing there,” he pointed out. “Go get some rest, boy. He’s going to be fine.”

Mike hadn’t realized that that was what he was waiting to hear, but his shoulders fell and the tightness in his chest loosened a little at those words. “Alright,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something – to ask Jacob to let him know when Chuck woke up, but Chuck probably wouldn’t want to see him and – he shut it again. “Thanks, Jacob,” he said instead, and rushed out.

Mike ran through the remaining damage to Mutt, checking that he had four working wheels and at least one gun. Right now, a few hours of sleep were worth more than any repairs that he could do. He was already running on dangerously little energy, and maybe if today, he’d been a little more awake, he might not have –

He took a back way to his room to avoid passing through the lounge where Dutch and Texas still were. Once he was  there, he tore off his shirt – still covered in Chuck’s blood, Christ, it was on his hands too – and threw himself down into his bed.

As he stared at his ceiling, exhaustion fought with guilt in his stomach, making him feel nauseous. He took deep breaths and closed his eyes, trying to let himself succumb to the mounting exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” It had only been seconds since he’d thrown the biohound off of the car, and they were still in battle, but Chuck had been silent since his scream when those claws came through Mutt’s door. Mike was ready to leave the other burners to this and –

“I’m fine,” Chuck said in a gasp. He let out a whine, a small sob, and Mike looked over to see – Christ that was a lot of blood on his chest, please don’t let him be –

“Where are you hurt?” He asked. He fired at a biohound and hit it, and felt an even deeper jolt of satisfaction at its explosion.

“My arm.” Which was bad, really bad, but Mike feels a nauseating jolt of relief anyways.

This wasn’t working. It replayed behind his eyes on endless repeat, the few seconds when he had seen the blood smeared like a gash across Chuck’s chest, torn right through his ribs. The knowledge that it very nearly – inches, centimeters – had been that brutal.

For all that Mike desperately needed it, he didn’t sleep that night.

Forfeiting for the moment, he threw on a new shirt and went back down to the garage. Mutt had huge gashes in the passenger’s side, the door almost entirely off, but that wasn’t what he was going to deal with first.

Two hours later, Mutt was passably cleaned and the door was patched enough to be at least functional if they needed to head out again in a hurry. He was going to need a new door, and a new paint job, in the long run, but with Kane on the offensive right then, the best he could hope for was safety. And if the metal he had used to patch the door had been a little thicker than maybe it had needed to be – well.

Chuck was asleep on the cot next to the medical table where Mike had put him. He was cleaned up, his tattered shirt removed, his arm stitched up in a way that showed it would hurt like a bitch in the morning and leave a hell of a scar, but probably not permanently damage his abilities.

For all that he looked better, though, the sight of Chuck still made Mike’s stomach clench.

God, this was a mess. They were both over-tired and over-worked and over-worried, but that didn’t excuse anything Mike had said. He wanted Chuck to be awake now so that he could apologize, so that he could pull Chuck into his arms – if Chuck would let him – and pet the pale skin of his shoulders and be insanely grateful that Chuck was there and breathing and not dead. Wanted to pet at Chuck until he had no choice but to forgive Mike, kiss the freckles on his shoulder until Chuck forgot the other stupid things that had come out of Mike’s mouth –

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

What?

Mike sat up abruptly, staring at Chuck, his severely sleep-deprived mind taking a second to catch up with the meaning of his thoughts.

Thoughts of kissing Chuck. (Thoughts that hadn’t exactly been best-friend material before that, for that matter.)

And for all that Mike was now intensely embarrassed and gaining a sense of dawning horror, he still wanted to kiss Chuck. That wasn’t going away, the feeling aching like an old bruise when he poked at it.

With a sense of panic that felt totally appropriate to the situation, Mike’s mind raced through thoughts. He tested himself, thought of kissing Dutch, Texas, even Julie, Julie who was very pretty and very female. His stomach twisted in mild disgust at Texas, but otherwise, all was quiet. He combed slowly over the idea of kissing Julie, but – nothing.

In dread, Mike brought to mind an image of kissing Chuck. It would be weird, at first, because they were such good friends, but he could – he could get used to it. It wasn’t that weird, wasn’t like it was the first time he’d considered kissing a guy. He could get used to combing his fingers through Chuck’s hair, to Chuck smiling and laughing so close that Mike could feel it in him, to the warm second of anticipation before they –

Oh. Oh, god, Mike thought.

He stroked Chuck’s hair, his face, his heart giving an uncomfortable twist of fear and pleasure when Chuck turned his head into Mike’s touch.