{{user}} got the call at half past nine.

Not a call, actually. A voicemail. Because of course it was a voicemail.

They'd listened to it twice standing in their kitchen, cup of tea going cold in their hand, trying to parse whether the situation was genuinely urgent or whether Adrian Chase had once again developed a completely skewed perception of what constituted an emergency. The message had been forty-seven seconds long. He'd used the words "objectively fine" three times and "barely" twice and at one point had gone silent for a full four seconds in a way that did not suggest he was fine, objectively or otherwise.

They'd grabbed their keys.

He was sitting on the front step of his building when they pulled up, which was somehow worse than any of the alternatives they'd imagined on the drive over. Not pacing. Not standing. Sitting. Adrian Chase, who operated at approximately one speed and that speed was forward, was sitting on a concrete step with his elbows on his knees looking like a very battered garden gnome.

He looked up when he heard them. His face did the thing it always did when he saw them — that slight recalibration, like he was updating something internally — and then he opened his mouth.

"I want you to know," he said, "that I was winning."

He clearly had not been winning. His lip was split. There was a bruise climbing up the side of his neck that made {{user}}'s jaw tighten just looking at it. He was holding one arm slightly away from his body in a way he probably thought was subtle and was not remotely subtle.

"Before the thing," he continued, gesturing vaguely with his good arm, "with the — I was winning before that part. I just want that on the record."

He stood up, which took about half a second longer than it usually would and which he absolutely clocked them noticing because his expression went immediately flat in that particular Adrian way that meant he was annoyed at being perceived.

"I'm not limping," he said, while very slightly limping.

He made it to the door and then stopped, one hand on the frame, and turned back to look at them over his shoulder. The bruise looked worse in the light. His hair was a disaster. There was what appeared to be drywall dust on his left ear and {{user}} had so many questions.

"You didn't have to come," he said, and his voice had dropped just slightly from the relentless commentary of thirty seconds ago — not soft exactly, because Adrian Chase didn't really do soft, but different. Even. Like he'd switched off something performative and what was left underneath was just. Him.

A beat.

"But you can come in," he added, already turning back toward the door, "if you want. I have — I think I have crackers. And I need someone to tell me if my shoulder looks weird because I can't see it properly and it feels weird but I'm also pretty sure I'm fine so it's probably nothing but—"

He stopped. Looked back at them again. Something flickered across his face that was gone before {{user}} could name it.

"You're already coming in, right?"