It is a very long summer.

The year before, surrounded by cousins and isolated by grief, felt like a familiar memory, but it feels different somehow. This summer, surrounded by cousins, Chase is isolated by choice and fury.

He spends his days inside, reading and writing, a silent, sullen presence that his horde of cousins avoid after a week of trying to draw him out is consistently met with snarls and insults.

Granny watches him.

He knows she watches, her dark beady eyes following him as he leaves the house, as he jogs down the long winding driveway. When he returns, sweaty and breathing heavily, pink with exertion, the weight of her gaze settles over him once more.

She watches him as he struggles less everyday through his workout routine, every day the exercises growing a little less difficult for him to complete, until he comes back from the library with a smile and a new stack of papers to he curse his way through a new routine for days.

She watches him but doesn’t press for details, doesn’t demand he talk, and he doesn’t really mind it. He’s used to being watched like a sideshow freak.

He misses Tyler and Lucas, misses the quiet RV and the steady noise of Tyler working on the house. It’s nearly suffocating how much he misses them.

And how furious he is, still, with his father.

Dad calls once a night like fucking clockwork, so Chase sits in silence on the phone, listening as he fumbles through a conversation that doesn’t say anything.

Some nights, when loneliness aches in his gut and the house feels too full and loud, he curls on his little bed and thinks about the promise Tyler made. He wants to believe Tyler, that he’ll get Dad to change his mind, but as the summer wears on, endless and lonely in a strange sort of exile, he starts to wonder.

Maybe Tyler is happier with him gone.

Maybe his Dad is.

Maybe everyone would be.

~*~

“You will come here. Now.”

John huffs and rubs a tired hand over his face. “I can’t.”

“He needs you. He will not talk to me or his cousins, and he’s hurting. You will come now, John.”

“How bad is it?” he asks, and she makes a low, wordless noise. “I’ll be there by the weekend,” he says finally.

Far away, she nods, watching her grandson, Nora’s boy, sitting curled up, small under a tree in the yard, gaze vacant and lonely.

~*~

It’s a long summer.

For the first time since Chase arrived in his life, Tyler struggles with his control. He stops working on the house and sulks with Lucas in the RV. He runs, sometimes, when he thinks he can leave Lucas alone, something he feels guilty for.

The truth is, he knows that Lucas misses Chase too—and that he can’t run out the fury and loss, so he sits there, silent and unmoving.

Tyler takes up working for a local contractor. He comes home tired and pleasantly sore to a shabby RV, then his nights are quiet.

They’re quiet and they’re interminably long.

“How did this even happen?” he grumbles, slicing his steak angrily. “I didn’t want anyone else.”

Lucas is as silent as ever.

He didn’t. He’d lost enough, and given enough up voluntarily, that letting someone close enough to hurt him—he never meant to do that, but Chase didn’t really give him a choice. He arrived and never really left. And somewhere along the way, Tyler stopped wanting him to.

Sometimes, when he’s leaving work, stopping by the grocery store or the diner for dinner—Chase would be furious but then, Chase isn’t here and isn’t that the whole point?—he sees Chief DeWitt.

It’s infuriating because he knows Chase is gone, spending the endless summer with his extended family in Washington. It’s infuriating because he understands the Chief’s concern—better than anyone could, he understands.

But he can’t understand sending Chase away. He can’t wrap his head around how making Chase spend the summer with people who don’t know him, who don’t care about him, could possibly be better than Tyler and Lucas.

He doesn’t understand how John could send him away, how John couldn’t see how desperate Chase is for his father.

Thinking about it doesn’t help his anger—after he sees John coming out of a bar downtown, Tyler goes home and brings down a wall in the house.

With his fists.

He still emails Chase weekly exercise updates, and getting the one-word responses from him leaves him unsettled.

He has nightmares, and he has dreams that leave him shaken and quiet, while Lucas stares at nothing.

He wonders what Chase dreams of and if the cousins who surround him are being good to him. He wonders if Chase has forgotten him. Forgotten them.

Sometimes, when the moon hangs heavy and bright in the sky while the summer stretches endlessly on, he thinks maybe it would be better for them—for Chase—if he did forget.

~*~

He thinks that would be true if it weren't for the dreams.

~*~

When he sleeps, he dreams.

And in his dreams, he can run, the forest wild and real under his paws. The wind ruffles his ruff and ahead, his brother stands still, tail high and ears pricked.

He can hear it, the call Tyler is chasing, faint and far away, so he throws back his head and howls. Tyler joins him, an eerie, beautiful song, and from the distance, he can hear the calls and yells of—

Chase.

The boy who spoke to him, who reached for him, who read him stories and curled into him on dark nights, who made his way into their pack with nothing but a smile full of loneliness and determination.

He howls again, but it’s joyful this time, and he runs, desperate to reach the Pack member in the distance, the one he misses with an ache he can’t pronounce, the one who’s vanished. Tyler talks to him, tells him why, but it doesn’t matter, because Chase is gone and the scent of him is fading.

He bursts through the woods and skids to a stop on the ancient grounds of the Reid lands and Tyler barrels into him, bowls him over with a huff and a snarl, biting at his ear as they wrestle and wait.

He pauses when the howling comes.

Chase.

He sounds sad. Lost. Confused.

He tilts his head back and howls, calling for his lost packmate with Tyler until his eyes are closed against the sky and his throat is dry and sore, but Chase never comes to them.

~*~

He’s at his mother-in-law’s house for almost two hours before he sees Chase. First, he shuffles off to shower, rest, and eat, then the uncles want his attention, and the cousins clamor for it. He drinks it up, the big, loud family he doesn’t see often but adores. It’s easy, getting swept up in them, in letting himself pretend for a moment that he’s here without Nora.

That lasts until he walks into the backyard and sees Chase, dancing through martial arts forms.

Immediately, John notices he’s thinner than when he first left to come here, thinner and pale with an almost sickly cast to his features. But it’s the way he’s left in a circle of isolation, carefully avoided, that really drags John’s attention to him.

Granny’s home is marked by a lack of space, by the family living on top of each other, so deeply in each other’s pockets that boundaries are blurry at best. The cousins sleep piled in beds and on couches, curled together like puppies, and they spend the days the same way, a knot of always moving limbs and high voices and flashing smiles that can’t be separated into individuals.

Chase stands apart, separate, solitary. Quiet and still and alone.

He looks, John realizes with a start, like he had those first few months after Nora died, when his son was a ghost haunting an empty house, a shell of himself.

“Go,” Granny says abruptly, and John gives her a pained look. She softens a little, presses a bottle of water and a paper towel wrapped sandwich into his hands and nods at the boy again. “Go to him.”

John goes.

The cousins have run off, the sound of them distant shrieks of laughter, so John knows damn well Chase is aware of his approach, but he doesn’t react, just glides through his forms with a smoothness he doesn’t recognize in Chase, a liquid kind of grace that reminds him of—

Reid.

His mouth tightens, but for the first time, he wonders if he didn’t get something very wrong.

Chase comes to a slow stop and finally gives his father his attention. He stares, blank and unblinking, as John offers him the sandwich.

“I’ve missed you,” John says and Chase’s lips twist into a smirk. “You look—it’s good, your exercise.”

“Krav Maga,” Chase fills in, and John nods. Something dark flares in his son’s eyes for a moment. “Tyler taught me.”

John goes still.

The first instinctive anger isn’t what Chase needs. And he’s beginning to think that maybe—maybe—he was wrong. Maybe he should have listened to Chase about Reid.

“Why?” he asks, keeping his voice quiet, undemanding and without anger. Chase shrugs and looks away, a private smile playing on his lips.

It’s the first one he’s seen from Chase in two months, since he ran away and Reid brought him home. And it’s not for him. It’s a smile that belongs to the memory of Tyler.

“He said it’s a good way to get out my anger and aggression without getting into fights.” Chase gives him a mocking sort of smirk as he balls up his paper towel and crusts, then heads back to the house.

~*~

“You can’t leave him here, John. He’s miserable.”

“He’ll be miserable at home, too,” John protests.

Granny stares at him, her eyes narrow, shrewd and knowing. “Not if you stop hiding from him. Whatever it is that you did to piss off Chase—you can fix it, but not if he’s here and you’re there.”

He looks at Chase, sitting on the porch swing with a notebook he scribbles furiously in. He’s alone, the way he always is.

“Yeah,” he concedes with a sigh. “Ok.”

~*~

Finding Tyler Reid is difficult. It’s strange, because he seemed to be in endless supply while Chase was in Washington, a too constant presence that reminded John of his son and why he’d sent him away.

It takes almost a week, a long week of Chase sitting silently in the station, immersed in comics and his sketching, a week of watching him exercise in the backyard and jog around the neighborhood. It’s a week of living with a silent son who doesn’t even bother glaring at him—he just ignores John with a pointedness that makes him ache.

In the end, he doesn’t find Reid—Reid finds him. He approaches his cruiser as he’s picking up dinner for him and Chase.

“Why—why is he back? You said the summer.”

There’s something in Reid’s eyes that makes the decision for John.

He’s a cop. He’s spent twenty years trusting evidence, long enough to know that sometimes—sometimes the evidence is wrong. Sometimes you listen to your instinct and gamble.

“Because he was miserable. Being there isn’t what he needs.”

Reid looks away, gets a visible grip on himself, and John says, “He’s been miserable since I dragged him away from you, Reid. And I’m starting to wonder if maybe that’s something I need to pay attention to.”

He’s so tense, like strung wire ready to snap. “What are you going to do?”

John sighs.

~*~

He shifts in his seat as Dad turns the cruiser off the main road, driving into the forest. He glances at his father, but doesn’t ask—because if he’s wrong, if they aren’t going to the house in the woods, he doesn't want to know.

He wants to believe for a few minutes that Tyler and Lucas are waiting at the end of this winding road through the trees.

When Dad turns again, onto a smaller, overgrown drive Chase knows too well, he lurches in his seat, scrambling for the handle and Dad reaches out, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait for me to park, son,” he says, mildly exasperated.

Chase shivers and twitches, and as soon as the cruiser stops, he’s bursting out, almost falling in his scramble.

Tyler is there, and Lucas, and they are so real he wants to cry. He makes an abortive half step toward Tyler and then stills, glancing at his Dad.

Unfair accusations ring in his head, too recent and dirty wrong no to dismiss, and it keeps him still, trembling, not touching.

Tyler glances over him, his gaze that familiar intense searching Chase can’t ever forget, and for the first time in months he feels settled in his skin, seen and present and whole.

“Washington not agreeing with you?” Tyler asks mildly.

Chase snorts a laugh. He wipes his face, aware he’s crying. “Lucas looks like hell, dude. Are you even feeding him?” He moves then, because even his overprotective father can’t possibly view Lucas as a threat. He adjusts the light blanket on the older man’s lap and grins at him. “Hey, buddy. Missed you.”

Tyler clears his throat, and Chase glances up, grinning as he takes the offered orange. He begins peeling the orange and looks at his Dad.

He’s standing near the cruiser still, something unreadable on his face that makes Chase want to squirm and snarl protectively, hide the Reids from him, from the whole world.

He keeps that strange urge tucked away and picks the stringy white pieces off the orange slice before offering one to Lucas, an echo of what he did for his mother when she was too tired to move. Something in Dad’s expression softens, and Chase breathes a little easier, stealing a slice of orange and glancing at the house.

He wants to ask about it. Hell, he wants to demand so many things, but he doesn’t. He presses that down, with the urge to protect and the need to throw himself into Tyler’s arms, and says, “What are we doin’ out here, Dad?”

“I thought maybe you could show me.”

Chase glances at Tyler, confused, and Tyler smiles and nods.

“Your dad—he’s not wrong to want to protect you. You need that, Chase. But he’s willing to listen when you say this is important.”

Tell him why, goes unsaid, but it’s heard, echoing through the little clearing. Chase feeds Lucas another slice of orange and considers what to start with.

“I—I don’t know how to tell you,” he says, and Dad’s expression goes tight and hurt, so he hurries to add, “but maybe—if you watch? We can show you.”

~*~

He is forgotten.

For maybe thirty minutes, Chase is anxious, casting nervous glances at him before his gaze skitters away, but then, as Reid turns hotdogs on the grill and Chase moves around him with lettuce and diced fruit and buns—he’s forgotten.

Chase fits here.

He’s talkative, chattering a mile a minute as he trots around preparing lunch, telling Reid and Lucas about his summer, about his training and the books he’s read—he addresses those comments to Lucas and he sounds almost apologetic, his expression sad until Reid nudges him and says, “I finished reading the book you two were on. He’s been waiting for you to get back, so you can start Fellowship of the Ring.”

Chase grins at that, his expression wide and sunny. “I’ll read you a chapter after lunch, ok, buddy?”

Lucas doesn’t respond. Of course Lucas doesn’t respond, he’s fucking catatonic, but it doesn’t stop either Reid or Chase from talking to him, including him in their conversation like he can actually talk back.

It’s—strange. And sweet.

The whole thing is strange, if he’s being honest. Reid is quiet, but there’s a small smile on his lips as he listens to Chase, and he’s aware of Chase, in a way that is almost disturbing, except that it’s not.

It’s puzzling because he doesn’t understand it, the way Reid listens, the way he’s careful to burn Chase’s hot dogs just the way he likes them and leave the best slice of watermelon for him. He doesn’t understand the way Reid is quietly chiding when Chase tells him about how hard he’s been pushing himself during his months away.

He doesn’t understand the way Reid reaches out, almost absently, when Chase stumbles and trips, righting him wordlessly before he pulls back, never lingering, because if Chase has forgotten John leaning observantly against a tree in the shadows, Reid definitely hasn’t.

He doesn’t understand the stack of paint chips Reid passes Chase after lunch and the bark of laughter that punches out of him. “Kitchen?” Chase says, grinning at him. There’s a smear of ketchup on his chin.

Reid rolls his eyes and shoves a napkin at him. “Yeah, I finished the drywall and tile last week. Time to paint.”

Chase hums thoughtfully and leans into Lucas’s space—and that’s strange, the way he’s tactile with Lucas, constantly touching him, reaching for him, adjusting his shirt or ruffling his hair or tugging up his light blanket. Chase doesn’t touch Reid, but he can’t seem to stop touching Lucas.

“What do you think, Lucas?” he hums, flicking through the paint chips quickly, while Reid cleans up their lunch. He cants a look at John, offering lunch silently but John waves him off, not willing to break this quiet spell.

Chase is happy, happier than John can remember him being since before Nora died, and it’s here, with these two men who are damaged and wrong for him, and still—

“This one,” Chase says, tapping a pretty shade of yellow, and he smiles, a tiny bit sad. “I like this one.” Reid is quiet until Chase exhales and adds, “It reminds me of tulips? Mom’s favorite flower was yellow tulips.”

Reid’s gaze darts to him, almost defiant, before he drops a hand on Chase's shoulder, squeezes it briefly.

“I’ll get the paint tomorrow.”

Chase nods and cuddles into Lucas’s side.

“I’m gonna read to him for a while, then I’ll help you inside, ok?”

“Take your time, Chase,” Tyler says, and leaves the pair there, a book in Chase's hands and Lucas staring sightlessly as Chase starts to read.

John watches, and he doesn’t understand, not completely, because they feel like family, which doesn’t make sense.

How are they possibly family? How did Chase ingrain himself so deeply in their lives that even months later, he fits, seamlessly?

And how much was he hurting his son by ripping him away from them?

~*~

“You understand why this makes me nervous?”

Reid gives him a disbelieving look and laughs. “Yeah, Chief, I understand a lot better than you probably think. He’s fifteen and this terrifies you.”

John frowns, because there’s something there in his voice that makes him want to push, to demand answers, to dig until he understands that knowing tone.

He doesn’t.

“Twice a week. He can come out here twice a week. But Reid, if I ever think you’ve hurt him—”

“If I hurt him, I’d let you do whatever the hell you want to me. I’d dig the hole for you to bury me in.”

John stares at him and nods. The conviction in Reid’s eyes is terrifying.

Chase bangs out of the RV and gives Tyler a dusty smile. “Bye, Ty,” he chirps and slides into the front of the cruiser.

“He won’t like it, being restricted to twice a week,” John predicts.

Reid shrugs. “He’ll accept it—it’s far better than the alternative.”

John dips his head in agreement and turns away.

Reid clears his throat. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing this for you, Reid,” John says evenly, a spike of anger in his belly.

Reid nods seriously. “I know. But I still want to thank you.”

He falls back a step and John slides into the cruiser. Chase is almost purring where he’s curled against the window, dropping rapidly toward sleep. John sighs.

He hopes like hell he’s doing the right thing here.