Work Text:
The story had wrapped up hours ago — some minor fairy tale about a miller's daughter, nothing memorable except that Buddy had spent the whole thing fondly threatening to turn Chase into a toad and somehow never quite managing it. Now they were back at the Hollow Farmhouse, sprawled across the back porch furniture in the lazy gold of a late afternoon, and Buddy — now-former villain Key, professional grump, self-appointed thorn in Chase's side — was fast asleep with his head in Chase's lap.
Nobody had planned it. He'd just kept complaining that the porch swing was uncomfortable, shifted twice, muttered something about Chase's shoulder being "marginally less awful than the armrest," and dropped off mid-sentence. Chase hadn't dared move.
Deacon came out with two glasses of lemonade, took one look at the scene, and stopped dead on the top step.
"Don't," Chase whispered, before his cousin could say anything. "He'll wake up and pretend none of this happened and then deny it forever."
"I wasn't going to say anything." Deacon lowered himself into the other chair, setting one glass within Chase's reach since his hands were otherwise occupied — one of them idly carding through Buddy's dark hair, smoothing the fringe back from his forehead the way you'd pet something small and unimpressed with you.
"You were absolutely going to say something."
"I was going to say he looks like a cat that's decided, against its better judgment, that you're tolerable." Deacon took a sip of his own lemonade. "Which, frankly, tracks. You've been feeding him for weeks."
"I have not been feeding him." Chase's fingers kept moving anyway, slow and steady, and Buddy made a small sound in his sleep and pressed his face further into Chase's leg like he was chasing the warmth. "I gave him a granola bar one time."
"Three granola bars, a bag of jerky, and candy bars. That was my money."
"That's not— Okay, that's a little bit feeding him. And I got him vitamins, too. He looks like he's kept in a shoebox half the time, so you can't really blame me."
Deacon smirked into his glass, the particular smug quiet of an older cousin who has been proven right and intends to enjoy it for as long as possible. He didn't push it further, though. That wasn't really his style — Deacon needled, he didn't dig.
"He'd hate this," Chase said after a while, quieter. Not worried, exactly. Just aware. "If he woke up right now and saw... he'd never let me hear the end of it. Or he'd bolt straight back to being unbearable for a week just to prove he didn't need the nap."
"Probably." Deacon glanced over, something a little softer than his usual dry deadpan in it. "You don't seem too bothered."
"I'm not. He's exhausting when he's awake and he's exhausting about being asleep too, apparently, but—" Chase shrugged, careful not to jostle the head in his lap. "I don't know. He never lets his guard down. Not even a little. This is the first time I've seen him actually look like he's not braced for something."
Deacon was quiet for a second, watching the two of them — his cousin, who trusted people far too easily and far too completely and somehow always seemed to land on the ones worth trusting; and the ex-villain Key who typically acted like kindness was a trap being set for him, curled up and unguarded and, if Deacon was being honest, looking almost harmless with his black eyebrows relaxed and his usual scowl nowhere in sight.
"For what it's worth," Deacon said, "I don't think he'd actually mind. Not really. He'd just need to complain about it first. Loudly. At length."
"Obviously." Chase smiled down at the top of Buddy's head, still stroking through his hair in slow, unhurried passes. "I'll let him. He's earned a good sulk."
Buddy, for his part, slept on — brow smooth, mouth slightly open, one hand fisted loosely in the fabric of Chase's shirt like he intended to keep him there whether he admitted it later or not — utterly unaware that his two "least" favorite people in every storybook he'd ever ruined were, for once, in complete and quiet agreement about him.
Deacon finished his lemonade first. "I'm telling Prunella."
"Deacon—"
"She'll want to make a drawing."
"Deacon."
But Buddy didn't stir, and Chase didn't stop petting his hair, and the porch stayed golden and quiet a little while longer.