Chase (#ONC2022) ✅

3:14 AM

It takes a while for Chase to fall asleep. His brain whirrs madly, his mind too active to give him rest. Which is really fucking annoying, because he knows that he'll have an exhausting day ahead of him and doesn't know what his new bed will feel like. 

But after a while, he drifts off into the best sleep he's had in a long while. It's only a while later, when he hears a clattering sound from outside his room, that he wakes up. At first he thinks that it's the morning, but a brief look at his phone tells him that it's still the middle of the night. A faint glow of light makes its way through the slightly-open door. 

Chase rubs the sleep out of his eyes, tasting the lingering salt of those McDonalds fries on his tongue. He reflexively reaches out to turn on his bedside lamp; he realizes belatedly, as his hand grabs empty air, that he's packed it already. He slides his feet out from the warm bed and onto the cold floor, swearing softly at the freezing contact. He stumbles towards the door and into the living room. The couch is empty, save from the crumpled heap of the comforter. 

His stomach plummets right into the ground. No way, he thinks, standing there dumbly for a moment and feeling the thought slowly infiltrate into his sleep-fogged brain. No way has he just gotten up and left at 3AM in the morning. He wouldn't do that. 

It takes him a few more seconds until he sees that Kyle's suit jacket, shirt and trousers are still on the floor beside the couch, and an indescribable wave of relief floods through Chase's body. He notices then that the light is coming from the kitchen and trudges towards it. 

Kyle looks up as he sees Chase's figure at the doorway, giving a jerky start before putting his hand to his chest and groaning. "Shit, Chase, don't scare me like that." 

Chase winces in the bright light and squints at Kyle, slowly focusing on the fork in one of his hands and the blue pot in the other. "What's going on?"

Waving the fork slightly, Kyle grins apologetically. "Sorry. You weren't going to eat this for breakfast, were you? It's the mac and cheese I found in your fridge. I woke up and was randomly hungry. Did I wake you up?"

"'S'alright," Chase says, his mouth still feeling like cardboard. He goes to the sink and pours water on his face, then rinses his mouth out and scoops some into his hands, drinking. "Wasn't gonna eat it anyway. You couldn't sleep?"

Kyle shakes his head through a mouthful of food, and all that Chase hears for a few seconds is the sound of him chewing the pasta. "No, I slept pretty well," he replies eventually. "Gonna go back to sleep in a bit, too. Sorry I woke you up."

Chase wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He gazes around the empty kitchen and its greasy hob that he's forgotten to clean. There's a shrivelled coriander leaf on the countertop, and he wipes it off onto the floor. "I thought at first that you'd left," he mumbles. 

"Me? Leave you in the middle of the night?" Kyle extends his leg to kick Chase lightly in the shin. He looks at Chase with the fork dangling from his mouth, before removing it and continuing, "I'm not some stupid one-night stand, Chase Collins. I'll be here in the morning."