you won't find him drinkin' at the tables

[theorized]

The thing about Natalia is, she's capable of just about anything. This is a fact that Chase keeps at the forefront of his mind on most days, letting himself sink into his work, letting himself focus without needing to overly worry about what she's doing for her job. If she needs to contact him, she will. If he needs to reach her, he can. It's a type of dynamic that he's never quite had before, forced to flourish on his own while still enjoying mutual support and respect.

It might be the healthiest relationship he's ever had.

When a day passes without a single word from her, Chase doesn't mind. When two pass, he doesn't think too much of it, sending a text just to keep himself on her radar, just to let her know that he cares.

When five days have passed, somehow the arbitrary line finds itself underneath Chase's feet, and he just knows: she's gone.

He takes the last two for himself, trying to sort his thoughts on the matter. She's not the first person to vanish from Darrow, and Chase doesn't think it's so simple as a crime keeping her out of reach. No, there's a way out of this, there's a way out of limbo, uncertainty, and the cracked ground of faith. He just hasn't found it yet.

Maybe that's okay, but it doesn't stop him from feeling the ache in his chest.

Sliding his hands into his pockets as he walks down the street, Chase can only think of two places to head, and one of them feels off-limits as of yet. Leaning lightly against the frame, Chase knocks sharply on Russell's door, hoping that the other man's home. He probably should have called ahead of time, but... well.

Things are bound to slip his mind more now.

Comments

[boo_fuckin_yah]

"Oh, Jesus, man," Russell says, shaking his head with a laugh. It's not all that funny, he just doesn't know how else to react, not when he has absolutely no idea whether or not he wants kids. It's always been the kind of thing he thought he'd do eventually, but Ogden Marsh hadn't exactly been brimming with eligible young women and not many people ever moved into the town. Now that he's in Darrow, it's different, but he's still not sure.

"It's been a long time since I was in a relationship," he settles on saying. "Since college. I'm not sure I remember how to be a boyfriend, never mind someone's husband or father."

[theorized]

Chase stops in the middle of a swallow, both brows raising as he turns to look at Russell. Maybe he shouldn't be terribly surprised; plenty of people go for years without being in a relationship, but there was always something about Russell that made Chase think that he'd try. (Not that he's spent all that much time wondering about the dating habits of his friends.)

"Really?" he asks, blinking. "Man, I thought that you'd be that kind of guy all the girls are after. Man in uniform, stand-up guy. I assumed you just wanted to play the field."

[boo_fuckin_yah]

Russell gives a snort of laughter and shakes his head, trying to imagine all the women in Ogden Marsh wanting him. David had been lucky, with Judy coming into town to take over the doctor's practice, but that didn't happen often. "Back home, everyone wanted to get out of town. All the girls around my age, anyway. They don't want some small town cop who's never gonna get outta Ogden Marsh."

He pauses to take a sip of his beer and shrugs. "I guess it's different here. I just gotta figure it out."

[theorized]

Chase pauses more at that description, and it clicks a little at last. He can't imagine staying in a small town, even though he'd spent some of his childhood nestled away in sparsely populated regions while his father sought out labs that afforded him more freedom to do his research. Now, he wants things to be fast-paced, he wants things to be larger than life, wants to slip in relatively unnoticed and be allowed to make his own decisions in a region where they'll still be large in impact.

A dense, busy city tends to be the best for that.

"Definitely different," agrees Chase at last, then reaching out to clap a hand on Russell's shoulder. "Tell you what. Let's book a back room at a restaurant sometime. Invite your friends, I'll invite some people from work, we can have a grown-up party. Mingle. Talk about life like the stuffy adults we are."

[boo_fuckin_yah]

If he's honest, Russell isn't so sure he likes the sound of that. It reminds him a little of the party he went to, the one Molly practically had to dress him for, and he remembers how uncomfortable he was at that place. It's not that he's incapable of being an adult -- he's responsible and he's been taking care of himself for a long time -- but he's not sure he's that kind of adult. Still, he'd do just about anything for a friend and if Chase thinks it'll help, maybe it will.

"Sure," he says. "But if I'm inviting my friends, it'll pretty much just be you, me, Delta and Molly." He has other friends, of course, but those are the closest, the people he'd trust to make him feel comfortable.

[theorized]

"I didn't realize you were close to Molly, too. Stearns, right?" Chase asks with a broad grin, pleased at his network being more closely tied than he previously thought. "Well, that'll make it easy, at least there'll be one person there we can both lean on. I might invite a couple of people from work, but it'll be a low-key thing. Beer, drinks, somewhere small with a clearance for dance and music, that sort of thing."

There's a chance that Russell's a little more closed off than ideal for that kind of a party, but if there's one thing Chase believes strongly in, it's in pulling people out of their shells.

Gradually, anyway.

[boo_fuckin_yah]

Russell gives a little laugh at that, because he knows he leans on Molly an awful lot already. Although his friendship with her is very different than the one he had with David, she's certainly as close to him as David was and that's fairly rare.

"Yeah, that's her. And it's a good thing she'll be invited, since she'll probably be the one dressin' me," he admits with a grin.
Anytime he has to look presentable, anytime he has to wear more than jeans and a t-shirt, he turns to her. "But, okay. You got yourself a deal."