Chase's mind raced with the amazingly predictable outcome of the day so far thanks to his theory. It wasn't that he was doing theoretical experiments on his sister, he genuinely did care about her and love her, but it just helped that he knew Bree well enough to know what was coming. Bree had fallen asleep at around one o' clock after lunch and Chase had decided it best not to wake her, instead focusing on creating something a little more professional to use in presenting his theory to his brothers and Mr Davenport.
It was around four in the afternoon when the door opened finally, and now Chase was back on the couch, his theorising in the back of his mind as he remained where he needed to be, with Bree. Bree had woken up and had her eyes glued to the TV during the high-point in another one of her rom-coms which honestly weren't that bad but he would never, ever in a thousand life-times admit that to Adam or Leo. Chase had his arm around Bree, but he paused the movie and looked over at his family as they walked in the front door.
"Hey," he smiled as Davenport led Adam and Leo into the house; his meetings must have coincided with the end of school for him to pick them up.
"Hey," Adam pushed past Leo and Davenport, "How are you too feeling? Any better? I thought Mr Davenport would be fixing you instead of in meetings all day, I tried calling Chase, but –"
"Yeah," Davenport pointed at Adam with his thumb, "You two better explain why Adam thinks you're both dying from some bionic plague." He folded his arms at his kids, "And why," his eyes bulged, "You are not at school!"
Chase sighed and looked briefly at Bree; he wasn't going to make her tell their whole family about her break-up, although Adam and Leo had probably caught some wind of what was happening given the public setting of the incident.
"It's my fault," he immediately said before Bree could speak, not that she looked like she wanted to. "I thought Bree looked sick and I didn't want to worry anyone, but I wanted to stay home in case she glitched. I'm sorry I lied, Adam, I –"
"No," Bree shook her head and sat up, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie around her hands as she sniffed, "Chase, it's fine. I'll tell them."
"Tell us what?" Davenport's previously angry expression melted to something slightly more concerned, so Bree started speaking, but her lip quivered.
"Owen and I broke up," she confessed and looked down at her knees; Adam gasped.
"What?" his eyes widened, "Oh my God, Bree, that is so much worse than a bionic plague!" Adam jumped over the back of the couch to Bree's other side. "Dish. Tell me everything."
Bree immediately started crying and sobbing again; Chase glared at his brother. "Read the room, Adam!"
"Aw, Bree," Davenport sat on the footstool, "You alright? You want to talk about it?"
Leo just stared at the situation, "Yeah, I'll be in the lab."
Bree just stood up, uncomfortable at all the new attention on her misery. "I don't want to talk about it. I'll be crying in the bathroom." She supersped out of the room.
"Oh," Davenport stood and once she was gone, elaborated, "Good, because I had no idea where I was going with that."
"Right," Chase stood, finally kicked off the blanket and looked at Adam, then Leo, then his father. "All of you, in the lab, now."
Chase didn't say anything else as he led his father and brothers down into the basement, but once the elevator dinged and he walked into the lab, he finally caught sight of what he had drafted before.
"Right everyone," he led his family over to the cyber desk and spoke in hushed tones, just in case Bree would superspeed into the room and overhear him. "I have not been setting this up and watching girly movies all day just for you three insensitive bozos to come home and ruin everything, so listen the Hell up."
"Okay," Davenport sat down, confused but excited at the use of the colourful graphs and authoritative tone he had taught his son to use.
Chase, now happy with the attention he had gathered, drew everyone's gaze to a list of seven he had on top of a stack of paper displayed on the cyber desk. "To brief you all, Bree has just been dumped, so she is incredibly fragile. I already covered the pep-talk, Mr Davenport, so you don't have to worry about that," Davenport tried not to sigh with relief, he wasn't the best with comforting words. "Based off of Bree's past breakdowns and breakups – don't judge me –"
"Why?" Adam complained, "It's fun."
"Shut up, Adam," Chase pointed at him, but didn't look. He didn't have long to pitch this. "Anyway, I have compiled data from Bree's former upsets into a carefully detailed and outlined plan of how she is going to deal with this. I call it," he shuffled his papers smoothly and produced a title page, "The Seven Stages of Breeif." Leo laughed out loud at the pun, it took Adam a while, but even he eventually got there, but Davenport looked sceptical.
"Chase," he began, "Did you perform science experiments on your sister again?"
"No," Chase shook his head, but then looked down, "Just the one. And it's for her own good so it technically doesn't count. Anyway," he launched back into it before anyone could complain. "The seven stages are as follows: Denial, Anger, Uncontrollable Sobbing, Clinginess, The Bounce-Back, Philosophical Bree and finally, The Voldemort Stage. Now," he moved to the page which summarised the first stage. "Bree's Denial commonly includes insistence that she is fine, rejection of sympathy and if the truth can be obtained, a few tears. Now, the first stage has already happened. Last night when Bree got home, I woke up and she insisted she was fine, but I could see that she wasn't and pried the break-up out of her. She was so tired, she did actually let me hug her and cried a little, but she was fine when she went to sleep."
Adam, Davenport and Leo looked plain concerned.
"You let me sleep through it?" Adam looked at Chase, open mouthed.
"Maybe I should go check on her," Davenport stood up and Leo slammed his hands on the table.
"I'm with you, Big D, I'll get the ice-cream."
"Hold it!" Chase raised a warning finger and everyone turned, finally, to look at him again. "Stay, sit, listen," he told them and when they did, he carried on and moved to the next sheet of paper. "Now," he cleared his throat, "I cleared stage two this morning. The Anger Stage basically requires whoever is there to help her through this to get her as angry at the situation as possible, which is extremely important, because if she doesn't, then she'll be stuck in stage three. I showed her one picture of Owen on a canvass, and let's just say that Mr Davenport needs a new easel."
"Oh," Adam gasped and nodded at the same time, "I was wondering why there were scraps of wood and paper on the floor. I thought you'd had an indoor bonfire and made smores without me. I mean, favourite brother alert, Bree, Jeez."
"We'll make smores later, Adam," Chase sighed.
"Goodie," Adam clapped his hands, but Chase continued before his brother could.
"After stage two comes the Uncontrollable Sobbing Stage," Chase said, "No prizes for guessing which stage she is in right now." He began to pace a little at the head of the cyber desk. "This requires but three things to get her out of: junk-food, rom-coms and a Hell of a lot of tissues. I have spent this afternoon, after my success with stage two this morning, getting her deep into the sobbing, but our work as a family is done for stage three. We now just have to let her cry it out on her own for a little while, which won't be long, trust me, until, the horribly anticipated birth of stage four: The Clingy Stage."
"What's that?" Leo looked slightly horrified, which Chase liked because that was exactly what he was going for.
"If history is anything to go by, this is Bree's second longest stage," he went on to explain, "After she's cried it out and the initial shock wave of the first three stages blow over, she becomes incredibly mopey for a few days and huggy to everyone around her."
"Oh yeah," Davenport nodded and pointed an agreeing finger at Chase, "I remember when her hamster died, she was like a little barnacle."
"Wait," Adam stared at Davenport, his jaw open and his horrified eyes shiny, "Mr Squeakerson died?"
Davenport stared at his eldest, "No," he lied, "Mr Squeakerson was your hamster, who went to live on the hamster farm." Chase rolled his eyes as Davenport thought on his feet, "Bree's hamster, Miss Squeakerson died."
Adam nodded, "Phew, that makes sense."
"Hang on," Leo looked at Chase, "Back to the hugging, what do we do?"
"The only thing we can do, Leo," Chase ran a hand through his hair, "Wait it out. Bree is at her most depressed and it's her way of finding comfort. It can get annoying, but we have to be patient, otherwise she might go out of the chronological order and jump between stages."
"What happens then?" Davenport asks.
"Her chip explodes and she dies," Chase shrugged; everyone gasped, "Just kidding, I just wanted a reaction. No, the process just becomes longer and it's harder to break her out of it. We have to include her and make sure she doesn't feel alone and we have to be patient when she loses all sense of personal space, because Bree does that."
"Yeah," Adam stared off into nothing.
"Well," Chase cleared his throat, "So you're focused on the current and next stage, I'll pause for now, but I shall resume and conclude the briefing once Bree has reached stage four."
After Chase finished, he gathered his papers and Davenport just sat in a stunned silence.
"I should be mad at you for making Bree's heartbreak seem like a science fair project," he sighed, "But honestly I'm so impressed I can't be. I mean," he pointed at the graphs, "Is that the new shade of magenta I just installed in the printers?"
"Yep," Chase grinned.
"Nice," Davenport nodded, "Nice flare, simple yet effective theme."
"Thank you," he smiled, "Now, regarding stage three, do not engage to comfort for more than one supportive sentence, otherwise you'll just revert her back to the start of stage three. For stage four, do not mention Owen or relationships in any way for the same reason. Everybody break."
When Adam woke up the following morning, he immediately thought about his little sister. He wondered where exactly she was, if she had gone back to her capsule that night or if she had crashed on the couch. Either way, Chase's presentation had loads of really pretty colours and although Adam didn't have a fancy theory, he still knew his sister.
So he made to step out of his capsule. But he stopped. His legs weren't moving with the rest of his body and he tried to blink himself awake, but early-morning, groggy confusion meant he had to stop to rethink, which wasn't the easiest task.
Eventually, he looked down and when he saw her, he sighed. Bree was hugging around Adam's legs tightly, and now that he knew what was going on, he probably could move his legs, but he didn't want to wake Bree. Instead he tapped on the glass of his capsule to wake Chase.
His little brother sharply inhaled and looked around. When he saw Adam, Adam smiled awkwardly.
"Hey Chase," he whispered, loudly enough for Chase to hear, but not so loud that he would wake Bree. "I think she's in stage four." Chase nodded blankly; they loved Bree, but this was going to be a long couple of days, especially since it was the weekend. They couldn't even ween her off to people at school.