“Kid, if you’re going to stop hiding—stop. All of it.”
“But Ben,” he trails off, looking conflicted.
Interesting. Chase didn’t question the Reids’ loyalty and acceptance—but he did question Ben’s. He wishes he was more surprised by that.
“If Ben can’t handle you playing while he sits the bench, maybe you need to reassess that relationship,” John says, and Chase retreats, looking conflicted and worried.
~*~
“Ty?” Chase says quietly, tucked in his favorite spot, pressed between Lucas and Tyler in the corner of the sectional. Tyler stirs, peering down at the boy. “Ben wants me to go on a double date with him and Brielle. She’s got a friend who she thinks I’d like.”
Tyler stares at Chase.
“I—I think I should.”
“Ok.”
Chase exhales and stares at his fingers, playing with the edges of Lucas’s blanket. “When you went back to school—it’s like you were accepting, or starting to accept, that you were allowed to have what you wanted.”
“And you wanted to date?” Tyler says, confused.
“No,” Chase says grumpily, flicking the werewolf. “But you taking something you want—that’s part of how you healed. And me—I have to stop hiding. This here is good for me, but if I use it to hide from the world, it’s not.” He looks up anxiously. “Right?”
Tyler stares at him, at this boy he never expected and can’t imagine his life without, and he nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”
~*~
He dates.
There’s girls Brielle knows, girls he doesn’t know, but pretty girls. The dates are awkward, but the more he goes on, the more fun he has.
He spends a month dating Harley, a pretty black girl with a wide smile and sleepy eyes. He kisses Cassie, a girl he’s known since he was a baby, a fumbling thing fueled by wine stolen from her parent’s bar as much as it was adrenaline.
There are times, when he’s got his arm around a girl and Ben is laughing with Brielle, that he feels like he fits here, that he isn’t a broken boy with a dead mother and more baggage than he knows what to do with.
And there are times, pressed against a pretty girl in a dark theatre, the unfamiliar taste of lipgloss on his mouth, that he feels lost, adrift, an imposter in a world he doesn’t understand.
~*~
He dates, and sometimes it even dips toward serious, toward relationship, but he never does stop dreaming about Tyler.
Chapter 9
Chase starts his senior year with a girlfriend, a starting spot on the football team, and a looseness to his shoulders that John hasn’t seen since before Nora died.
Ben was quiet and absent after tryouts when Chase made first line, and John stuck close to Chase—he almost broke down and called Tyler, but then Ben came back. He was subdued for a few days, but Chase was almost belligerently normal and eventually things went back to usual.
Ben starts jogging with Chase and he thinks it helps—not just Ben’s skills, but the fragile broken feeling thing that’s been hanging over them since Chase began to orbit the Reids.
~*~
Chase joins the cross country team at the instance of Coach, but he learns quickly that he likes it.
He likes running, and he thinks that's something he can blame on Tyler. It's strange that so many things in his life can be traced back to Tyler, to Lucas, to what they've brought into his world, intentionally or not.
Sometimes he wonders what would have happened to him if he hadn't wandered into the forest while his dad was drunk after his mom's death. He wonders what would have happened if Tyler hadn't been there to find him.
He can't imagine it, where and who he would be. It's like trying to erase his dad or Ben—it erases too much of himself to be possible.
~*~
Chase traipses into the house while Tyler is cooking, and his head comes up, tracking the boy as he crosses the living room to greet Lucas.
He's grown accustomed to Chase smelling like other, like people he doesn't know and doesn't trust, but they've all been sugar sweet and tart. They've all been female, the subtleties of their scent and arousal grating but recognizable. But this—
This is male and thick, musky. The scent of sweat and lust, but not just Chase. Tyler wants to snarl and snap, but he doesn't.
He finishes binding the lamb and slides it into the oven before he follows Chase, who has retreated to his bedroom. He’s sitting on his couch, grinning wide at his phone, and it irritates Tyler, just a little.
Chase is here and his smiles should be his.
He shoves that thought down and clears his throat. “Homework?”
“Nah,” Chase says, aiming his grin at Tyler, “I finished it with my new lab partner during free period.”
Tyler nods and then shifts. “Who is it?”
Something goes worried, almost scared, in Chase’s scent, enough that Tyler straightens, even as Chase stares at him blankly.
“Who's who?”
“Lab partner,” Tyler prompts gently.
Chase blinks. “Oh. Um. Ryan.”
Tyler nods and studies the younger boy, who’s fidgeting and nervous. and it makes something hurt in his gut. “You know I don’t care, right? If it’s a Ryan or a Cassie.”
Chase’s gaze snaps up to meet Tyler’s, color flooding his cheeks, and Tyler says it again. “I don’t care who it is, as long as they make you happy.”
Chase clears his throat and nods, jerky and uneven.
Tyler huffs. “Don’t hide too long, ok? I need your help on the potatoes Lucas likes. And I wanna work out.”
~*~
In October, Chase brings Ryan home and introduces him as his boyfriend instead of his lab partner. John stares at this surly teen with dark hair, a bad attitude, and eyes that watch Chase too attentively, and feels his stomach twist.
“Is it wrong to hate the kid?” he asks Reid when Chase drags Ryan to Tyler’s birthday dinner a few weeks later. Tyler gives him a bland look and John bristles defensively. “I don’t hate everyone.”
“You liked Cassie,” Tyler agrees, and watches as Ryan leans in to kiss Chase, dragging him away from Lucas briefly.
Neither man misses the way Ryan’s expression goes jealous and ugly when Chase laughs and twists away to fix a party hat on Lucas’s head.
“I hate him too,” Tyler admits. John passes him a beer and thinks this is probably not the kind of bonding Chase was hoping for.
~*~
Chase is shivering when he knocks on the door to the house in the woods in late January, wearing a thin white shirt and his favorite red hoodie, jeans soaked through and feet bare.
Tyler takes one look at him and curses, low and vicious, pulling him inside and trying not to think about how wrong it is for Chase to knock on the damn door.
He’s never knocked. Not even once.
Chase doesn’t even react when he’s standing in the bathroom and Tyler hesitates. “You need to warm up,” he says softly. Chase blinks and Tyler moves away, just long enough to turn on the shower.
“Chase? Can you get undressed and in the shower for me?” he asks, coming back, and Chase gives a nod that’s almost frantic.
Tyler retreats then, and he’s grateful he can’t smell blood or anything else on Chase because he already wants to kill something—someone—and he doesn’t know that he’d hold himself back if Chase were physically hurt.
When Chase emerges, he’s wearing a pair of Tyler’s old sweats and one of Lucas’s gray v-necks. He looks impossibly small. For a moment, he stands in the hallway, backlit by the light, tiny and still and fragile, and he whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Tyler whines and opens his arms.
Chase makes this noise then, a broken thing that leaves Tyler flayed open, a noise that hurts him, and darts across the room, scrambling into Tyler’s lap. He presses into Tyler with a low whine and Tyler wraps him up, holds him tight and closes his eyes. “It’s ok, sweetheart. It’s ok. You’re ok.”
/> ~*~
Chase never does talk about it, whatever happened between him and Ryan, but after that, he doesn’t date much.
Sometimes he goes out with girls Brielle or Ben set him up with, but it’s never intentional, never with the goal of making it into something lasting. He stays away from guys completely, a wariness in him that makes John ache to beat the hell out of Ryan.
Occasionally, though, he’ll come home sweaty, with eyeliner smudged under his big eyes and glitter high on his cheekbones, delivered to his door by Tyler with a terse goodnight and a stony look.
John doesn’t ask where Chase goes and what he does. He just trusts Tyler to keep him safe.
Tyler always does.
~*~
It’s strange, he thinks, that a man he was so sure would hurt Chase is the same man he trusts to keep him safe.
~*~
He doesn’t talk to Tyler about it, just cries in his arms that first horrible night, and he doesn’t talk to his dad, because his dad wouldn’t even arrest Ryan, he’d just kill him.
He sure as hell doesn’t talk to Ben, who would stare at him, wide-eyed and confused and earnest.
But he talks to Lucas.
“I think I knew he wasn’t a good guy,” he says, one night when they’re alone in the house, his copy of Slaughterhouse-Five forgotten in his lap. “He didn’t hurt me. I know Ty worries about that—my dad does, too. He wanted to. But he didn’t. I didn’t let him.”
Lucas doesn’t respond, but he seems attentive in that way he has. “I just—I wanted him to be a good guy. I wanted him to be the kind of guy I could count on.”
He closes his eyes and whispers the truth. “I wanted him to be like Tyler.”
It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, the first time he’s acknowledged it beyond panicked gasping denials after he wakes up wet and sticky.
He stares at Lucas, his cheeks burning and says, “I don’t want Ryan. I never did. But I can’t have what I want.”
~*~
Winter gives way to Spring and Chase slowly shakes the night with Ryan. He shies away from Tyler’s touch for a month or so, then leans into it with a greedy hunger that makes Tyler’s breath catch in his throat. He trains with a ferocity and dedication that Tyler hasn’t seen since the first time they started practicing together. He finally tells Chase it’s time for him to find a real teacher.
Chase scoffs and promptly ignores him, the way he does anytime Tyler says something Chase thinks is ridiculous.
He’s quiet sometimes, his gaze distant and his scent cloudy, but he’s coming back to life, slowly.
~*~
In early April, after his birthday, Tyler picks Chase up from school. That's strange enough, but the absence of Lucas makes Chase sit up straight, curious.
“He's at your house,” Tyler says, “Your dad has the night off and agreed to keep an eye on him.”
“Are you kidnapping me, Tyler?” Chase grins. Tyler smirks at him and slides a folded yellow paper to Chase. He stares at it wide-eyed, scent flooding with pleasure, and Tyler says nonchalantly, “You mentioned you wanted to go.”
Chase snorts. Mentioned. He’d told Ben and his dad and Tyler and random strangers that he wanted to go to the screening of the Star Wars movies in Clement.
At the theatre, Tyler waits patiently while Chase picks out an almost obscene amount of candy, adding Raisinets at the very end. He juggles the giant tub of popcorn and drinks while Chase bounces along with his plethora of candy, chattering a mile a minute as they settle into seats in the corner of the theatre, Chase tucked between Tyler and the wall.
He goes quiet and bright-eyed when the music plays, almost preternaturally still, and Tyler has to nudge candy and popcorn into his grip.
He wants to stare, wants to watch the happiness that shines out from him like a goddamn beacon, but Tyler thinks that would probably be weird. So he looks away, forces himself to watch the movie, and doesn’t react when Chase sighs and settles against him, a long familiar line of warmth.
~*~
It’s strange for them to leave the house, to go out and do things together. It feels like a part of the world they don’t get to have, a part of the world he’s never let himself ask for.
He loves it. The trip to the movies is perfect, a shining bright moment that’s marred only by Lucas’s absence.
He thinks, as he falls asleep that night, that it was as close to perfect as he’ll ever get.
~*~
It was the calm before the storm, he realizes dully.
He laughs, the noise echoing unpleasantly in the familiar waiting room.
“Chase, do you want to call someone?”
“Who?” he asks, his voice raspy and empty. “Who the fuck do you want me to call? My only fucking parent is in there.”
Marie Lodge steps between him and the doctor, blocking the man and everything he represents from Chase’s view. He gasps, his breath catching in his throat as tears burn in his eyes.
“Chase, I need you to call Tyler,” she says firmly, and Chase blinks.
Tyler.
Fuck.
The phone rings twice and he realizes how late it is as Tyler answers. “Chase?” he mumbles, voice sleep rough and deep, and Chase sobs.
“Chase?” Tyler snaps, and he sounds awake now, alert.
“Tyler,” he gasps, “Ty, I need—”
“Hey,” Tyler murmurs, and he can hear him moving, shifting. He hears the rattle of his belt and the beeping machines. “Talk to me, Chase.”
“Dad got shot.”
There’s a heartbeat of silence so deep it makes panic claw at his chest, then Tyler says, “I’m on my way.”
~*~
Chase is almost non-responsive when Tyler gets to the hospital, sitting unblinking in a chair. Tyler crouches in front of him, dipping to meet his gaze. “Hey. I need you to talk to me, Chase. What’s going on?”
“Dad,” he murmurs. Marie Lodge clears her throat softly and Tyler glances over at her before he touches Chase’s wrist gently. “I’m gonna talk to the nurse for a second, ok? I’ll be right back.”
Chase doesn’t respond, barely even reacts, and that more than anything else tells him just how afraid Chase is.
This isn’t like the night he showed up shaking and shivering after Ryan—this is something deeper and far more terrifying.
“How is he?” Tyler asks her.
“It punctured his lung. The doctor thinks he’ll be ok, but it’s going to take time. He needs rest and time.” She glances at Chase. “I didn’t think he’d react like this.”
“He’s terrified of losing John. After Nora—he can’t handle that. Even the threat of it,” Tyler says absently. “What can I do?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think we’re what they need right now,” she says, and Tyler resists the urge to snarl.
Chase is Pack. John is too, to a lesser extent. Tyler is always what they need.
“Just—take care of him. He won’t take care of himself, not right now.”
Tyler nods and goes back to wait with Chase.
~*~
John is in the hospital for a week—a week that Chase spends in his father’s hospital room, and when he can be dragged away, on Tyler’s couch. He’s quieter than Tyler has ever known him to be, withdrawn even after John wakes up and the doctors say he’s going to make a full recovery.
And then he comes to Tyler, his face pale and grim and determined. “I’m going to take him to Washington,” he says, “He won’t rest here, and he has to rest, Ty. He has to or he won’t get better.”
His gaze is flinty and far older than it has any right to be, this boy who Tyler has watched growing up—he shouldn’t look this old.
“I have to take him away from here, Tyler,” he says, implacable and somehow still pleading, and Tyler—he nods. Chase lets out a huge sigh of relief as he throws himself into Tyler’s arms.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers as Tyler hugs him and buries his nose in
the curve of Chase’s throat, drinking down the scent of him, of Pack, of home.
“You’ll come back,” Tyler says and he tries to ignore the way his voice shakes, the fear that eases into it.
Chase hears it though, and his grip tightens. “I will,” he says fiercely.
~*~
It’s different, this time, being here.
He’s surrounded by noise and cousins and his Granny’s caustic care, her sharp gaze. She shoos them away and gives Chase and John a room on the ground floor, near the back of the house where it’s quiet and restful.
But he isn’t the lonely grieving boy he was that first summer anymore, or the angry isolated one of The Summer We Don’t Speak Of.
He spends most of his time with John, but he doesn’t push his cousins away when they reach for him. He runs, but he lets them join him, laughs with them when he’s training. He drags John out when he’s healthy enough for it, sits him on the big porch swing his mother loved so much and reads in the sun, the babies piled around him like sleepy puppies.
“He’s better now,” Granny says and John nods at her. “I am glad. You didn’t lose him. And he’s happy. It is rare that you can have both.”
~*~
It’s different, and good, but he misses them.
They text constantly, a steady stream of meaningless chatter, of updates on John, and notes from Tyler’s classes—he’ll graduate in December and he’s nervous, and Chase is so damn proud it almost makes him giddy.
In June, Chase tells him that John is healthy enough to oversee a project he’s working on and promises a surprise when he comes home.
It helps. It’s not as lonely as he was the last time he was here.
Still, it’s not the same as sharing space with Lucas and Tyler, not the same as feeling their presence and carrying their warm familiar scents.
Leaving was necessary, and when he sees his father laughing without flinching, a healthy flush in his cheeks, fishing with his uncles—Chase is glad he did, that they left and gave John space and time to heal.
But he misses his pack so much some days, he aches.
~*~
He still dreams.
Sometimes, when he’s dreaming, he knows that the dreams are different. Important.
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