[There's a slight feeling just beneath his skin of small pokes, nerve endings sending electrical signals up to his spine and then crawling up his brain to tell him just how hard he had been pressing on those pedals he was sure Mutt had a dent beneath the metal from all his weight. His knees snapped at every movement, joints lubricating with effort and asking for some rest at every twist and turn, not needing to fold to make their presence known. There's an itch under his sternum that Mike knows won't fade any time soon, and that he'll have some trouble falling asleep until it's subdued.
Still he leaves the bathroom, his usual t-shirt and boxers on, towel wrapped around his neck after giving his head a violent rub dry, with the idea that they left a bit of his and Chuck's life in the crash site, and what lingered on them was, like snakes that grow out of their skin, scales that protected them better, that shielded them both into invincibility...
... while making them perfectly aware of how frail a human life is.
Still, the sweat and the grit went down the drain a few minutes before, and he felt he left that mere idea outside, beyond his bedroom door, where the lights were still buzzing to life and colored everything they reached, away from the dark air of the room where Chuck waited, probably drying his hair a bit better.
For the time being he just wanted to be with his best friend. He smiles.] Tired?
[Somehow, no matter on how many of these situations they find themselves in, Chuck always finds something new, freshly terrifying in each one of them, whether it's the feel of the dents in the road, the kind of growl Mutt did, or the tension in Mike's muscles whenever he clings to his arm, so tight that sometimes, afterwards when they're counting cuts and wounds (Chuck's the only one counting; Mike pretends they don't matter), he'd wonder if that bruise was a result of the crash or the way his fingers pressed too tight even through the fabric of the jacket.
It wears off, though. The wave of panic washes off exponentially with each deep, loud breath he takes right after he stumbles his way out of the car, and the layer of sweat, fear, ash and the realization they scraped too close to the line yet again, goes down the drain along with the tepid shower water.
As he waits for Mike to come back, he watches Mutt, the bobblehead they brought into the room with them (the car is wrecked again, but they would fix that later), her nose bouncing up and down with just a flick of Chuck's fingers. He sighs, but still smiles a little, not caring to dry his hair yet, a towel just stretched over the pillow under his head.
He glances towards the door as it opens, stretching his arms and legs a little with a yawn.]
A little. [He's more relieved than tired, honestly, and it's apparent in the way he rolls to rest on his back, a little restless. He can recognize, even if he doesn't get the same kick out of it that Mike does, remnants of adrenaline still travelling through him.] But I think one of these days I'm just gonna lose my voice.
[The smile grows into a full grin, and he reaches behind him to rub at the dampness behind his hair, where his hair grew fuller and it was slower to dry.
He sits down on the bed next to Chuck, looking at the bobblehead on the bedside table.] That's alright. We can send Mutt to fetch it when that happens. Right? Whossa good girl?
[He pats Mutt on the head very lightly, just enough to make its head tilts sideways as if it were a real dog, reacting to its owner's cooing. He moves his weight onto his wrists, and the strain on his shoulders is immediately noticeable to Mike. They could really use some rest.]
I'm still too awake, but we should try and catch some z's. Otherwise we'll be way too tired tomorrow.
[Chuck snorts, forcing himself into sitting up and grabbing his towel to dry his hair properly.]
Because that would work and all. [He says it in a mocking tone, though the mental image amuses him a little. He shakes his head, though it's almost imperceptible from under the towel draped over his head. After a few rubs he drops it down to his shoulders, heaving them down with a sigh.]
Yeah, try... [He doesn't sound too sure, though. He knows he won't get any sleep anytime soon, not while his mind is still going too fast, his muscles too tense and too tired to even try to keep up with it. But he'll be able to stay quiet and let Mike get some needed rest. Chuck could function just fine with few hours of sleep anyway.]
[Mike knows this, along with his sleeping schedules, habits and patterns, Mike knows how Chuck works and how he ticks, so he merely nods. He still thinks he could try, there was nothing to lose from that, but he figures that if anything, they could just slip under the covers and talk until the words were mutters, the replies were only hums, and then a snore or two from the both of them.
How many times have they fallen asleep like that, anyway?
He reaches for Chuck's shoulders, grabs the towel and rubs it gently on Chuck's head, like many times he's done before. It's fun, like giving him a friendly noogie, but one with a more useful function other than playfulness.]
[Chuck lowers his head without resistance, though he adds in a muffled voice.]
It's fine, Mikey... I think it's all dry by now.
[But it's barely muttered, and then he hums contentedly, closing his eyes and just enjoying that particularly tiny moment, and the way Mike's fingers press over the towel and against sore spots on Chuck's skull and neck.]
[It drags a quiet giggle out of him, and Mike's movements squish Chuck's cheeks together until he looks like a really weird and apparently long-haired fish.]
Miiiiikey... [He pinches Mike's cheeks in retaliation, laughing loudly at the weird expression he manages to set on Mike's face by just doing that. He wonders if he looks just as silly, if not more.]
Yes, Chuck--le... [The chuckle grows into a laugh, and Mike pulls lightly at Chuck's nose and cheek at the same time, then presses the skin of his cheek upwards to make another weird face.
He sticks his tongue out, making his own even worse.]
[The sound turns into a snort, and then into a chuckle, and he crosses his eyes in response (glad his hair is falling back on his head instead of covering his face as usual), exaggerating his own facial expression to match up to Mike's. Then he takes one hand from Mike's face to cover his own mouth as he laughs at the silly of it all, and at the both of them.]
[He laughs louder, crawls over the bed to his usual side while pushing Chuck's by the face - always gentle and with the familiarity of childhood friends - to lay back down again. The towel is forgotten somewhere, and he keeps snickering until he rests on his stomach on the mattress.]
[Chuck follows, laying back down where he'd been before, turned to the side so that he's facing Mike. He combs his hair away from under his cheek, shivering a little at the cold feeling they'd given him just then.
He's not even a little tired yet. But he could swear he felt the tension slip away from his shoulders, run down his arms and leave him, settling somewhere else in the room, in one of the dark corners that never matter whenever him and Mike are together.
He sighs, curling up a little because he's only wearing his boxers and a large t-shirt he took from Mike's drawer at random - he didn't even bother to steal a pair of Mike's socks along with it.]
[Mike folds and bends a little to reach low and grab the bundled blanket on the foot of the bed, pulling it up over them both. He shifts his weight for comfort and warmth, resting his head on the pillow with his arm slipping underneath it for better cushioning.
After a bit of just comfortable silence and staring, he snorts at a certain memory.] Oh, man, the time Stronghorn picked up 9Lives. How did Texas even think of that?
[Seemingly random, the memory makes Chuck look at Mike with some surprise, before it turns into a grin, and an amused voice that made it sound like he was talking and laughing at the same time.]
I think the point is he doesn't ever think. [Dumb luck, literally, made some of Texas's plans work sometimes, and under very specific conditions. And when they did, the whole thing going down always looked to them like something out of this world.]
[He doesn't need to tell Chuck that, he already knows. And he knows at times Texas can be a little inspiring in the most unusual ways.]
Yeah, it was kind of awesome. But lucky it didn't go south. Guess the reinforced body really was a good idea for Stronghorn.
[And it had been Texas's idea too (though not in those words exactly, more in the lines of making it manly, strong and hard on the outside). Go figure.]
[Mike smiles and reaches to ruffle his hair.] You and Dutch did a great job on that, bud.
[It's true. Mike's well-aware that if it weren't for their hard work in continuously making their cars stronger, faster and more efficient, there wouldn't be any Burner left. It's one of the reasons he never gets tired of thanking and complimenting them. He's just that thankful that no matter all the crazy stunts they [he] pull[s], no matter how many times their hard work ends up in a complete wreck, they're still there to build everything all up again, with even better new features.]
Yeah, we... [He smiles, glancing down with a little awkwardness to it, in spite of himself, and no false modesty either. He's well aware of his own genius, but Mike always finds an unexpected way to bring it up, to compliment him out of the blue, that more often than not leaves him at a loss for words.] We were pretty great with that too.
[He doesn't try to swat Mike's hands away, even as he scrunches his nose with a muffled whine. But after Mike's done messing with his hair, he combs it back again. He knows what it'd look like next morning if he'd let it dry like it was.]
[He lets him, relaxed, happy and oh so very comfortable. Letting his hand rest on the spot between their pillows, he sighs deeply, raises his head to turn and watch the bobblehead, which had stopped bobbing. He smiles as he rests back down, facing Chuck again.] Guess Mutt's already asleep.
[He doesn't really want to sleep though. He should, but he's still inwardly thrumming, like a car on hold.]
Figures. She's gotta be more tired than the both of us together.
[He grins at his own joke, and reaches over to pat the bobblehead one last time. It's not difficult to reach, Chuck's arms are long and he barely has to shift from his place to make it.] Good night, puppy.
[Mike can't help but let out a soft guffaw and a stream of laughter. He likes it when Chuck interacts with the bobblehead, mostly because it was something that rubbed off from Mike himself. He pushes half his weight off the mattress to nuzzle Chuck's nose, snickering.] Good night, Chuckles!
[And for old times' sake, he leans in to kiss his cheek. May as well.]
[Chuck lies back, his eyes wrinkled shut, and even though he tenses slightly, he still grins, feeling his hairs rest over the pillow, to both sides of his head. This is good, he knows it's one of the very few times Chuck truly gets to relax, to let everything else go, his brain discarding unimportant information, storing it in a box until the next crisis emerges and he has to dig through it all again, worry himself to exhaustion, until his nerve endings are numb and restless.
He tilts his head just a little, so that he can feel his own nose brushing, first, then pressing against Mike's cheek, and he breathes out any tension he had accumulated in his shoulders for that brief moment just then.] 'night, Mikey.
[Chuck's breath brushes over his ear, and Mike takes his time. He frowns, feeling, more than seeing, the skin surrounding his shoulders, down the triceps to his elbow, making the joint there itch, slowly crawl with goosebumps. It's the shirt, he thinks for a fleeting and foolish second. Something in the conditioner was tampered by Jacob's new concoctions and he was coming with some sort of reaction to it.
He knows it's not, though, because he's focused on how one of Chuck's freckles isn't a freckle but a light mole by his ear. He's never been one to fool himself. He took whatever came to him and rolled with it, even if those were well-aimed punches or...
a sudden need to hold his best friend tight against him for the entirely wrong [wrong? why wrong?] reasons.
He wants to tilt his head and nuzzle him further until his head turns, until he presses fully against him, until he nips at the earlobe that barely peeks from under Chuck's mane--
[At the motionless silence, Chuck opens his eyes. He opens his eyes, and they settle immediately on Mike's, suddenly all too aware of the distance, or lack thereof, between them. They always kept close in many ways, but this was a different kind of physical closeness, a new step in the progressive way they seemed to invade each other's personal space without even thinking about it. And Chuck knows, because he's not that naive or that oblivious, what this distance, and this pause meant. Mike's sudden approach and his breath suddenly settling against his own skin, that quiet hitch that Chuck could swear matched up with the noise his heart makes the exact moment it catches in his throat. And it stops beating - or maybe it's beating too fast, so fast he can't even tell it's still going anymore.
But he doesn't move. His breath shakes its way out of him, and his face burns like a curtain of fire rushing across his skin, but he doesn't move. Whether in a show of fear, courage or pure instinct, maybe all of them mashed together, he doesn't know, but he's there, and it's unaware and at the same time relentless the way he chooses not to move away.
[And he lingers there, breath slipping into his mouth and throat just as Chuck is breathing out, and he merely rolls his shoulders for comfort, eyes widening just slightly with the subconscious knowledge that he just swallowed something of his.
He wants to stay there, like that, for a while, watching the skin on the top of Chuck's cheeks flush, darkening the dust across his nose; the times and speed he blinks, and how his pupils suddenly widen just a little.
Mike could say that he knows Chuck's face like the back of his hand, but that would be a lie. He doesn't know the back of his hands as well: he never really looked at them closely, nor spent so much time watching them.
He tilts his head, watching him react to absolutely nothing, and everything caused by dead-on proximity, what it brings and what it takes away. Mike's trying to figure out his own reactions to that, but he doesn't stop looking, eyes drifting from the plane of his forehead to the grove of Chuck's chin, just below his lower lip.]
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Prompt: A bobble head in mortal peril - no really it's just an excuse
Still he leaves the bathroom, his usual t-shirt and boxers on, towel wrapped around his neck after giving his head a violent rub dry, with the idea that they left a bit of his and Chuck's life in the crash site, and what lingered on them was, like snakes that grow out of their skin, scales that protected them better, that shielded them both into invincibility...
... while making them perfectly aware of how frail a human life is.
Still, the sweat and the grit went down the drain a few minutes before, and he felt he left that mere idea outside, beyond his bedroom door, where the lights were still buzzing to life and colored everything they reached, away from the dark air of the room where Chuck waited, probably drying his hair a bit better.
For the time being he just wanted to be with his best friend. He smiles.] Tired?
hehehehe /)u(\
It wears off, though. The wave of panic washes off exponentially with each deep, loud breath he takes right after he stumbles his way out of the car, and the layer of sweat, fear, ash and the realization they scraped too close to the line yet again, goes down the drain along with the tepid shower water.
As he waits for Mike to come back, he watches Mutt, the bobblehead they brought into the room with them (the car is wrecked again, but they would fix that later), her nose bouncing up and down with just a flick of Chuck's fingers. He sighs, but still smiles a little, not caring to dry his hair yet, a towel just stretched over the pillow under his head.
He glances towards the door as it opens, stretching his arms and legs a little with a yawn.]
A little. [He's more relieved than tired, honestly, and it's apparent in the way he rolls to rest on his back, a little restless. He can recognize, even if he doesn't get the same kick out of it that Mike does, remnants of adrenaline still travelling through him.] But I think one of these days I'm just gonna lose my voice.
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He sits down on the bed next to Chuck, looking at the bobblehead on the bedside table.] That's alright. We can send Mutt to fetch it when that happens. Right? Whossa good girl?
[He pats Mutt on the head very lightly, just enough to make its head tilts sideways as if it were a real dog, reacting to its owner's cooing. He moves his weight onto his wrists, and the strain on his shoulders is immediately noticeable to Mike. They could really use some rest.]
I'm still too awake, but we should try and catch some z's. Otherwise we'll be way too tired tomorrow.
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Because that would work and all. [He says it in a mocking tone, though the mental image amuses him a little. He shakes his head, though it's almost imperceptible from under the towel draped over his head. After a few rubs he drops it down to his shoulders, heaving them down with a sigh.]
Yeah, try... [He doesn't sound too sure, though. He knows he won't get any sleep anytime soon, not while his mind is still going too fast, his muscles too tense and too tired to even try to keep up with it. But he'll be able to stay quiet and let Mike get some needed rest. Chuck could function just fine with few hours of sleep anyway.]
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How many times have they fallen asleep like that, anyway?
He reaches for Chuck's shoulders, grabs the towel and rubs it gently on Chuck's head, like many times he's done before. It's fun, like giving him a friendly noogie, but one with a more useful function other than playfulness.]
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It's fine, Mikey... I think it's all dry by now.
[But it's barely muttered, and then he hums contentedly, closing his eyes and just enjoying that particularly tiny moment, and the way Mike's fingers press over the towel and against sore spots on Chuck's skull and neck.]
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When he's done, he chuckles, pulls the towel down onto his face and rubs it there, just enough to get his cheeks moving.]
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Miiiiikey... [He pinches Mike's cheeks in retaliation, laughing loudly at the weird expression he manages to set on Mike's face by just doing that. He wonders if he looks just as silly, if not more.]
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He sticks his tongue out, making his own even worse.]
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[The sound turns into a snort, and then into a chuckle, and he crosses his eyes in response (glad his hair is falling back on his head instead of covering his face as usual), exaggerating his own facial expression to match up to Mike's. Then he takes one hand from Mike's face to cover his own mouth as he laughs at the silly of it all, and at the both of them.]
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He's not even a little tired yet. But he could swear he felt the tension slip away from his shoulders, run down his arms and leave him, settling somewhere else in the room, in one of the dark corners that never matter whenever him and Mike are together.
He sighs, curling up a little because he's only wearing his boxers and a large t-shirt he took from Mike's drawer at random - he didn't even bother to steal a pair of Mike's socks along with it.]
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After a bit of just comfortable silence and staring, he snorts at a certain memory.] Oh, man, the time Stronghorn picked up 9Lives. How did Texas even think of that?
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I think the point is he doesn't ever think. [Dumb luck, literally, made some of Texas's plans work sometimes, and under very specific conditions. And when they did, the whole thing going down always looked to them like something out of this world.]
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[In fact it had inspired him to do that drive over Stronghorn on reverse that one time. But he won't tell that to Chuck.]
He's the type of guy who'll go with his gut, anyway.
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Yeah, it was kind of awesome. But lucky it didn't go south. Guess the reinforced body really was a good idea for Stronghorn.
[And it had been Texas's idea too (though not in those words exactly, more in the lines of making it manly, strong and hard on the outside). Go figure.]
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[It's true. Mike's well-aware that if it weren't for their hard work in continuously making their cars stronger, faster and more efficient, there wouldn't be any Burner left. It's one of the reasons he never gets tired of thanking and complimenting them. He's just that thankful that no matter all the crazy stunts they [he] pull[s], no matter how many times their hard work ends up in a complete wreck, they're still there to build everything all up again, with even better new features.]
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[He doesn't try to swat Mike's hands away, even as he scrunches his nose with a muffled whine. But after Mike's done messing with his hair, he combs it back again. He knows what it'd look like next morning if he'd let it dry like it was.]
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[He doesn't really want to sleep though. He should, but he's still inwardly thrumming, like a car on hold.]
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[He grins at his own joke, and reaches over to pat the bobblehead one last time. It's not difficult to reach, Chuck's arms are long and he barely has to shift from his place to make it.] Good night, puppy.
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[And for old times' sake, he leans in to kiss his cheek. May as well.]
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He tilts his head just a little, so that he can feel his own nose brushing, first, then pressing against Mike's cheek, and he breathes out any tension he had accumulated in his shoulders for that brief moment just then.] 'night, Mikey.
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He knows it's not, though, because he's focused on how one of Chuck's freckles isn't a freckle but a light mole by his ear. He's never been one to fool himself. He took whatever came to him and rolled with it, even if those were well-aimed punches or...
a sudden need to hold his best friend tight against him for the entirely wrong [wrong? why wrong?] reasons.
He wants to tilt his head and nuzzle him further until his head turns, until he presses fully against him, until he nips at the earlobe that barely peeks from under Chuck's mane--
He takes a deep, slow and silent breath.]
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But he doesn't move. His breath shakes its way out of him, and his face burns like a curtain of fire rushing across his skin, but he doesn't move. Whether in a show of fear, courage or pure instinct, maybe all of them mashed together, he doesn't know, but he's there, and it's unaware and at the same time relentless the way he chooses not to move away.
And he waits.]
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He wants to stay there, like that, for a while, watching the skin on the top of Chuck's cheeks flush, darkening the dust across his nose; the times and speed he blinks, and how his pupils suddenly widen just a little.
Mike could say that he knows Chuck's face like the back of his hand, but that would be a lie. He doesn't know the back of his hands as well: he never really looked at them closely, nor spent so much time watching them.
He tilts his head, watching him react to absolutely nothing, and everything caused by dead-on proximity, what it brings and what it takes away. Mike's trying to figure out his own reactions to that, but he doesn't stop looking, eyes drifting from the plane of his forehead to the grove of Chuck's chin, just below his lower lip.]
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