Chapter Text
Chase is the first one to see it, thanks to an alert he has set up for any significant social media posts regarding the Elite Force: a slightly blurry phone picture of Kaz kissing a blonde in a black-and-gold costume, accompanied by the text omg one of those elite force guys got a new gf??? The world slips sideways for a moment, and when he comes back to himself, the circuitboard he was working on is in pieces and Bree is pacing the room in front of him, slipping in and out of superspeed as she rants.
“I can’t believe this,” she’s saying, “I’m going to wreck him. No one cheats on my brother, no one.” She scrunches up her face at her phone before slamming it down on the counter. “In public?!”
She hasn’t touched him, but it feels like someone punched him in the chest. His brain skitters on one thought – no. Kaz is supposed to be different. He’s supposed to be the one who doesn’t hurt him. The one Chase can trust. He promised.
Bree wraps her arms around him, her chin landing on his shoulder, and she eases him down to the floor, which is good because he was half-collapsing that direction anyway. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs in his ear, and about that time, Oliver comes skittering through the elevator, half-wearing the bottom half of his mission suit. He trips because of that and only manages to not face-plant by semi-compensating with his flight.
“I just saw it,” he blurts out, hopping on one leg as he pulls on one leg of the suit. “And Kaz isn’t answering his phone. So what’s the plan? Are we tracking Kaz already? What’s Chase doing on the floor?”
Chase’s mouth opens, but words don’t come out. He has no idea what to say.
“Oliver!” Bree hisses. “Have some tact.”
“I have plenty of tact,” Oliver says, staring at her in abject confusion. “Why aren’t we mounting a rescue mission already? Kaz is in danger!”
“From what? Me?”
“I just saw it,” Skylar announces from the elevator, where she’s already fully suited-up in her own mission suit. “What’s the plan? Because I think I should be allowed to explode her this time. Now that I have my powers back.”
“That’s a good idea,” Oliver says. “But I get to freeze her first. She deserves to feel some serious frostbite.” He holds up his hand, which is already crackling with ice.
Chase… is getting the feeling he has missed something very, very crucial. “What are you talking about?”
“Spark’s back.” There’s a hardness to the way Oliver says the words, and Chase gets the feeling he’s supposed to know what that means, but unfortunately, he really does not. Oliver stares at him, and he stares back. “You’re kidding me. Kaz never told you?”
“Kaz’s ex-girlfriend,” Skylar adds, as if that information will make the situation better.
Bree makes a disgusted noise. “He’s cheating on Chase with his ex?”
“He’s not cheating! And she’s not his ex. Well, technically, she is, but she’s like, evil. She used to hurt him and it was really bad, he basically had the superhero equivalent of a restraining order against her.” Oliver kneels in front of Chase, who somehow still hasn’t managed to stand up. “Chase, Kaz would never cheat on you, and he definitely wouldn’t cheat on you with Spark. She’s dangerous to him. Just – look, really look at the picture.”
Chase really does not want to spend any more time than he already has looking at a picture of his boyfriend kissing another girl, but Oliver shoves it in his face. It’s a different picture this time, a little closer and less blurry. “Does Kaz look like he wants to be there?” Oliver asks.
The girl – Spark, Chase guesses – has one hand curled possessively around Kaz’s neck, and the other holding his body against hers. There is something weird about Kaz’s body language; he’s stiff, not leaning into the kiss. His hands are tightened into fists. Someone not feeling inclined to jump to the conclusion that Kaz is cheating might even say it looks like he doesn’t want to be kissing her.
Kaz doesn’t want to be kissing her.
What would you do to me if I broke up with you? Kaz had once asked him in all seriousness, as if he genuinely thought Chase would hurt him if they broke up. And afterwards he’d never explained what brought it on, even though Chase tried to make it as clear as possible that Kaz could talk to him about it whenever he was ready. And even though Kaz never said anything, Chase developed suspicions, because how could he not? He was waiting for Kaz to be ready to confirm it, but he assumed that there was someone in Kaz’s past who had hurt him badly.
It looks like that’s been confirmed.
Chase doesn’t feel much better knowing this than he did thinking his boyfriend was cheating on him, but he stands up, bringing Bree to her feet with him, because at least now there’s something to do other than wallow in his feelings. “Okay,” he says, “we need to mount a rescue mission.”
Time has not been kind to Spark. Oh, she’s still pretty on the surface, still has those blonde, popular girl looks that attracted him to her originally. But she’s gotten even more unstable since the last time Kaz saw her, which is pretty obvious from the whole kidnapping thing.
It’s kind of hard to remember exactly how it started. He knows she snuck up on him while he was distracted on his phone waiting for a coffee order, and at some point, she stuck him with a sedative. The whole encounter feels fuzzy and unreal but he’s not sure if that’s because she drugged him immediately or if he just froze up on seeing her. He remembers her forcing her lips over his and flying them away from the crowd that had gathered around them with phones raised (Chase, god, Chase, he hopes no one shows him those pictures), and then he wakes up with a headache and dry mouth, groggy and confused and chained to a sturdy metal chair that’s weighted down. And set up in a shower, which is weird as hell.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.” He flinches about as much as he can at the sound of her voice, which isn’t much with the chains holding him down, and turns his head to look at her. She’s been sitting on a chair of her own, legs crossed and her chin settled in the palm of her hand like she’s been watching him sleep. Which she might have – he wouldn’t put it past her. “I’ve missed you, Kaz.”
“Well, I haven’t missed you.” It’s not super-easy to try to fly, chained-up, from a sitting position like this, but he’s willing to give it a try. Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure the weights attached to the chair would be doing a good job of keeping it too heavy for him to achieve lift-off even if he wasn’t still a little out of it from the sedative. Damn Oliver for getting the super strength. “What do you think you’re doing, Spark?”
“When Mighty Med blew up and took half the superhero community with it, I was in a really bad place.” Spark swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and goes quiet for a long moment. Kaz waits silently, because he has nothing much else to do and also because he refuses to feel any kind of kinship in loss with her. “A really bad place,” she repeats. “But then I realized there was a silver lining. Y’know? Because Mighty Med, and all the people there, they were what convinced you to leave me. And without them around anymore, no one was stopping me from getting close to you again.”
He manages to raise a single finger in objection. “Uh, actually, how crazy you are convinced me to leave you – “
“So,” Spark continues, like he didn’t say anything, “I figured I’d just need to get you away from them, and we could get back together again. Like it used to be.”
Like it used to be. Like tiptoeing around her temper and still getting broken bones for his troubles. Like never being able to sleep right because of the constant paranoia that she could be spying on him at any moment. Kaz swallows against the reflexive bile coming up his throat at the thought. “It’s never going to be like that again.”
“I know you have powers now.” She grins at him and pats his knee. “I’m actually really excited to see what kind of team we can make. Of course you’re not as powerful as me, but you can be my sidekick – “
“It’s never going to be like that because I won’t let it,” Kaz says, and with some concentration, he ignites as much of his body as he can manage. To his disappointment, neither the chains or the chair melt, but the flames still make him feel powerful. For about the two seconds he manages to keep them going before Spark turns on the water.
Okay, now he gets why she tied him up in a shower.
“I did my research, Kaz,” she says, her voice gone weirdly flat. “You can’t stay on fire if you’re under water. And even if you could, you can’t burn your way out of those chains or that chair.”
“Okay, I get the point,” he says, spluttering a bit as water gets into his mouth. The water’s reasonably warm, but it’s still not really pleasant for a pyrokinetic to be soaking wet. “Can you turn it off?”
“No.” She lays a hand on his cheek and turns his face towards her. “You need to learn a lesson. And I don’t trust you alone.”
“You’re right here,” he points out.
“I think I’m going to have to get rid of Oliver and Skylar and what’s-their-names, the new team,” she says. “They’re only going to hold you back from me.”
“Wait – “
“I’ll make it quick.” She kisses him again, sweet in a way that she’s never been to him, before disappearing with a rush of air that he’d finally gotten used to associating with Bree and Skylar instead of her.
“Spark? Spark! Don’t, please!” She can’t have gotten far enough to not hear him, even with her superspeed, but she doesn’t reappear. Kaz throws all his weight against the chains holding him in place, but it doesn’t do anything. “Fuck!”