Chase doesn’t say anything, but Tyler squeezes his neck briefly as he walks out. Something small and scared inside him loosens as he starts his homework.
~*~
He can’t really put his finger on what changes after that day, when Tyler finds out who his father is—but it does. The older man is still gruff, grumpy and sharp some days, teasing and funny on others, and Lucas is still quiet and unseeing in his chair.
But it’s easier. Tyler seems less tense, and he touches Chase now—steers the boy around the house with a hand on his shoulder while they're working, moves him with a hand to the back when Chase spends too long at the sink, pushes him out into the dusk with a friendly hair tousle.
It’s like Tyler is letting himself breathe around him now, and Chase wonders why—what about his mother being dead makes Tyler trust him?
~*~
In mid-November, when the days turn dark and the nights turn long, Tyler starts walking him home, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, shortening his stride for the younger boy. Some days, he takes Chase’ bag wordlessly, and Chase bounces a little bit lighter, talking about school and what they’re going to do tomorrow on the house, and that Lucas ate two whole cups of applesauce today and did Tyler see the new trailer for the Marvel movie, mouth moving a mile a minute as Tyler listens.
Tyler always listens to him, a quiet attentiveness that reminds Chase of Lucas.
Sometimes, he thinks that’s why he likes going to the house in the woods. Everyone else in his life is too busy, too impatient for his constant stream of thoughts—but Tyler isn’t. Tyler listens when he talks about nothing and seems to always hear the tiny bit of something Chase doesn’t mean to sprinkle into the babble.
Lucas listens because he has no choice, but sometimes, when Chase is mumbling about World War II or Aurora, the pretty redhead he’s crushing on—sometimes he feels like Lucas is listening with attentive interest, like if he could respond, he would.
~*~
Tyler doesn’t mention Thanksgiving to him and Chase doesn’t bring it up. He goes by the RV in the morning and is quieter than normal, something he knows Tyler notices.
One of his favorite things about them is that neither push him when he goes quiet, respecting the still raw grief of his mother’s death. He snuggles into a blanket that usually drapes Lucas’s legs and listens to Tyler read The Hobbit, half asleep until Tyler nudges him.
“Do you want pancakes?” he asks. Chase nods, blinking away sleep and tears that hover too close, and stays there, tucked in the strange feeling of home that they always bring, while Tyler grumbles softly and cooks him pancakes.
When they’re sitting down and Chase has cut Lucas’s into very small bites that he feeds the older man carefully, Tyler says, almost shyly, “My dad—he used to make us pancakes, when one of us were sad.”
Chase stares at him, stricken, until Tyler nods at his food. “Eat before it gets cold.”
He does, and for a while, he forgets the empty house that smells stale and cold. Tyler makes him forget until it’s time to go home.
~*~
“He was sarcastic,” Tyler says slowly. Chase blinks at him and he shrugs. “He lived with us after college. He was my best friend, but he was always a sarcastic bastard, always playing some kind of mind game, usually four at the same time.” Hhe pauses, smiling fondly. He stirs the chicken and rice he’s making for dinner and shrugs again. “I don’t know, he was just Lucas. Usually trouble, but always fun. Moody, sometimes. Mom said he had the ego to rule the world, if only he had the motivation.” Tyler’s lips quirk a little and he glances at Chase, listening raptly at the table. “He was a lot like you, actually.”
Chase grins, hiding it in his homework. He thinks there are worse things than being similar to someone Tyler loves.
~*~
It’s mid-December when Chase arrives, his nose red and his teeth chattering, and Tyler frowns at him as he clangs into the RV—he stopped knocking within a week of it arriving outside the little house—because he’s anxious, shifting on his feet. His bag is missing.
“Where’s your homework?”
“I—um. I don’t have any.” He hesitates, and then, in a rush, says, “I’m leaving. I won’t be able to come back until after New Years.”
Tyler goes very still.
Chase squirms. “I know—I know you don’t really care, but I would worry if you vanished. I wanted to tell you.”
“Chase,” Tyler says, in a tone he rarely takes with Chase, a tone that cuts him off cold, stills the words in his mouth.
Chase slumps, miserable.
“I’d worry,” Tyler says gently. The boy’s head comes up, eyes widening hopefully, and Tyler smirks at him. “Now, we’re going to start tearing up the kitchen floor. Can you stay?”
Chase grins and nods, reaching for his gloves.
It’s only when he’s tired and after Tyler has fed him soup and hot chocolate before walking him home, that the older man grips him by the shoulder and says, “Be safe while you’re gone, ok?”
Chase nods and hesitates, there in the tree line. He throws himself into Tyler, snuggling into him in a quick, fierce hug. Tyler huffs softly, squeezing the back of his neck reassuringly, then nudges him away.
“Go on, then.”
Chase goes.
~*~
When Chase comes back to the house and the RV in January, it takes a week before the quiet, haunted glaze in his eyes fades away and he starts talking to Tyler and Lucas the way he did before.
Tyler doesn’t say anything about it, just drapes an arm around the boy’s shoulders when it’s time to walk him home, and fills up his quiet spaces with talk about tile and what he’s making for dinner.
It isn’t perfect, this quiet thing the three of them
