For them, it works.
Chapter 2
Chase is fourteen and has been going to the little house in the woods several times a week for almost seven months when he sees Tyler at the grocery store.
It’s not the first time he’s seen Tyler around Harrisburg—it’s a small enough place and sometimes he sees the older man’s leather jacket vanishing out of the corner of his eye, especially when he’s out with Ben, but it’s the first time he’s seen Tyler and had to interact. His smile goes wide and happy as he eyes Tyler’s cart with a proprietary air. “You need pickles.”
“I bought pickles last week,” Tyler says flatly.
“Yeah, well.” Chase grabs two jars and drops them into the older man’s cart with a smirk. “You need more.”
Tyler rolls his eyes, but doesn’t protest. He tenses a little, looking past Chase before he glances at the boy and backs up, saying, “Be careful going home.”
Chase nods, grinning, and spins the cart to find his dad walking down the aisle toward him slowly. “Get the pasta?” he asks.
John blinks at him. “Huh?”
“Mac ‘n’ cheese, Dad. Did you get the mac ‘n’ cheese?”
“Yeah, yeah, here.”
“Great! We need asparagus and apples,” Chase says and John trails the boy steering the cart like they’re on a goddamn race course—but he looks back, just once, to see Tyler still staring at the packages of beef, and wonders why the hell he was talking to Chase.
~*~
He was a good parent when Nora was alive. Everyone in town said so, when he took Chase out, when Nora leaned into his side at department functions. But more than that, Chase was always there, grinning and bouncing around him when he got home. Sometimes he’d catch Nora watching them, her eyes soft and fond, and she’d kiss him, tell him that he was a good father.
He didn’t care about the rest of the world’s opinion—Nora thought he was a good parent, and that’s all that mattered. She took the lion's share of the work, sure, because of his long hours, because she was with Chase constantly, because she was patient in a way he didn’t know how to be.
God, he misses her. He misses her sweet smile and the dinner she usually burnt and the way Chase was so loud around her.
He’s quiet now, and John has no idea how to bring him back out, to make him talk. He knows he was a good parent once, but he’s painfully aware that he hasn’t been a good parent since Nora died.
Chase is staring at the tile, something speculative about his curious gaze.
“Problem, son?” John asks.
Chase shrugs. “Did you put in the tile?”
“No,” he says, and then, through a tightness that feels choking, he adds “Your mom, she put it in.”
Chase’s head comes up, his eyes wide and hopeful. For a moment, it feels like she’s there, a living thing between them conjured by speaking of her, and it hurts, how much he misses her.
He breathes, forces his hands to stay steady, and says, “Was thinking about watching a movie tonight. Interested?”
Chase nods, eager eyes a tiny bit wary, and for the moment, tile is forgotten.
~*~
The tile comes back up a few days later when he finds scribbles in Chase's notebook, abandoned on the table while Chase makes dinner.
John wonders about it and almost asks if Chase thinks they should renovate—maybe Nora won’t feel like she’s haunting the house if they change things, but then the notes vanish and Chase mentions a field trip his class is going on, so he reaches for a beer and forgets about it.
It lingers though, summoned back when he finds dusty jeans in the laundry and a tab open on his laptop with different tile designs. There’s a pattern here, and he doesn’t know what it means, and that—well, it bothers him.
When Nora was alive, Chase was an open book, without a single secret. Now, though...
Sometimes, when he pulls up and finds Chase smelling like wind and sweat, and his cheeks flushed, when he sees unfamiliar handwriting on his son’s homework, when Chase says something dry and cynical and so much older than his years—
He knows Chase is keeping secrets. He only wishes he knew what they were.
~*~
“What’s wrong?” Tyler demands, not even looking up as he laces up his boots.
Chase scowls. “It’s polite to say hello, ask about my day before you demand to know what’s wrong. Maybe nothing is wrong.”
Tyler straightens and gives Chase an unimpressed eyebrow. “Hello, Chase. How was your day? What’s wrong?”
Sarcastic bastard. Chase ignores him, snagging a Coke from the fridge and a banana he slices. He alternates between feeding himself and Lucas, eventually muttering, “I got detention at school. Dad’s gonna be pissed.”
“Was it fighting again?” Tyler asks. He adds a cup of peaches and a spoon for Chase and waits, radiating impatience.
It’s not the kind of impatience he feels when he’s at the station, with his questions being tolerated but not really acknowledged or answered. This is impatience laced with concern and care, thick with emotions, something Tyler doesn’t deal with well.
“Yeah. But it wasn’t my fault,” he mutters.
Tyler is quiet for a moment. “I got into a lot of fights when I was younger,” he says, and Chase blinks at him. Tyler doesn’t talk about his past. Neither does Chase—it’s like an unspoken rule in the RV and cabin, that they don’t discuss what they’re both running from.
This—it feels like an offering, and commiseration, and Chase isn’t sure what to do with it.
“It doesn’t help. I know—it’s easy to be angry, and you should be, because it wasn’t fair. But fighting isn’t going to fix anything and you’ll get hurt.”
“I know,” he says miserably.
“But sometimes it feels like if you don’t let it out, if you don’t hit something, you’re going to explode out of your skin.”
Chase stares at Tyler and once again wonders what the hell the older men went through. Because—
“Exactly.”
Tyler steals a slice of banana.
