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Christmas was fucking cold, Gael thought as he walked down the street. His phone would buzz occasionally, and he'd pull it out to a snapchat from Carlos. At first those snapchat conversations had been pretty damn dirty, with pictures to go with it. Over time they were getting just more conversational, innocent.

This was not one of those moments as Gael watched Carlos's hips roll suggestively before he pulled the camera up and winked at it saying he missed Gael. And fuck him if he wasn't groaning a little, because he missed Carlos too. For more than the sex, which was probably just...wrong. The guy was in the Navy, Gael told himself. What could possibly come of a relationship like that? Carlos would break his heart, no doubt.

"Hey," a voice said, catching Gael's attention as he looked up. Seth Mansour was a sexy, middle-aged, mild-mannered, sexy a fuck accountant that lived next door to him. Gael had met his kids, and even grew up with the eldest daughter. And while she was pretty, her dad had always captured Gael's imagination. More so when the man and his wife got a divorce. He'd been 14, then. And like all 14 year old boys, he let his lower half do most of his thinking- especially when it came to watching Mr. Mansour from his bedroom window. And then he saw Mr. Mansour bring the first guy home, and Gael had always wondered if the man knew Gael could see into his living room from his bedroom...Because, well. There wasn't much effort to hide what came next.

"Hey," Gael said with a smile before he bit his lip. His phone buzzed again as Gael leaned against Mr. Mansour's gate. "Been a while."

Mr. Mansour laughed gently at that, nodding his head as he smiled a bit shyly. The man was not shy, though. At least not once they were behind closed doors. And Gael knew that well enough from first hand experience. And that had his body stirring at just the thought of it.

"Your dad's still working?" Seth asked as he bit his lip, looking Gael up and down lewdly. It was clear that he'd missed him, and their little...adventures. For a man who was 'new' to the gay scene, Gael thought with amusement, he'd certainly not gone at it timidly.

"Uh, yeah. For a while yet. He's taking next week off, which leaves me with a lot of free time. To catch up with friends..." He said stepping up closer as Seth grinned and laughed a little more nervously. Or maybe that was excitement. His phone buzzed again, and he ignored it. "You know...you could come by some time."

"You could come in, now." Seth countered, and Gael felt his heart skip a little. For a moment, his thoughts drifted to Carlos, and his heart sank just a little.

We're not dating, he told himself as he looked back up at Seth and grinned and nodded before he opened the gate and let himself in. They weren't dating. And he couldn't say no to this, he thought.

It was much later, and after a shower in Seth's bathroom, before Gael left the man's building. Seth walked him down, and even pulled him back for another suggestive kiss, grabbing his ass as he murmured something about Gael needing to come back upstairs. But Gael could only smile at him, kissing him again before he turned and started down the steps...

And then froze. Because Daniel Prochazka was not the person he expected to see standing outside the gate to their neighbor's building.

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He'd knocked off early, which was one of the benefits of being in charge. And also, admittedly, was something he was able to simply because of the long hours he put in while Noelle and Gaël were at school. There wasn't, after all, anything to come home to when the apartment was empty.

As such, the latest milestone had been reached ahead of time. He could afford to spend a little extra time with Gaël instead of waiting until the next week when Noelle was flying in from London. Or, at least, that had been the plan. But the apartment was empty when he'd come in, and when he checked Gaël's room - well, he'd gotten the kind of eyeful that was going to be burned into his retinas for all time. It was one of the times when he really missed Léon, he thought, scrubbing his hand over his face as he stalked back down to lie in wait. Not because Léon would have been much help on what he was about to have to do, but because it would have been someone to scream to. He didn't really have anyone to scream to these days when the kids drove him to it.

It was the thing no one ever told you about being a widower.

So he'd gone downstairs, and he'd pulled his temper into check as he waited. And waited. And tried not to visualize what was happening upstairs while he waited.

He didn't immediately speak to Gaël when his son turned and saw him standing there; he honestly didn't trust himself to. "Mansour," he said, though, in an arctic-cold tone that must have gotten the point across, because the piece of shit swallowed visibly and backed quickly into the condo building. Not that that was going to save him, Daniel thought as he aimed the same look at Gaël before he caught his arm in a grip. "Have you fucking lost your mind?" he hissed as he stared down at him before yanking them down to their own building. "What in the ever living fuck were you thinking?"

No thinking had probably been involved, he thought as he pushed Gaël into the elevator. Gaël had been doing this kind of thing since Léon had been shot in that convenience store. And honestly, he was as much at a loss at how to deal with it as he had been when he was sixteen year old trying to keep Léon alive.

Gael really didn't know what he was supposed to say, though his heart was certainly racing. He'd never been caught at something like that, precisely. Daniel had been told by others, of course. There had been the whole 'safe sex' conversation, and other such conversations. But...what the fuck, he thought. The only way Daniel would have known to be outside waiting would have been if he'd seen something, and Gael wasn't stupid enough to think Daniel... yeah.

He knew where his bedroom looked up on.

"I'm sorry," he said after the elevator doors closed, his heart beating so hard he thought it was going to crack out of his chest. "I thought...you were at work, and nothing happened...."

Gael winced a little at that. He didn't believe Daniel was going to believe that in the first place, and yet it still came out. As a standard defense to anything.

Daniel just stared at him for a moment before he punched the button for their floor. "Do I look like I was born yesterday?" He asked. "I never thought I looked like a fucking moron, but I don't know. I must. I saw you," he spat in an undertone as the elevator doors opened at their floor and he propelled Gaël into the apartment. "If I hadn't seen you, I'd still be operating under the apparently mistaken impression that my son was, at least, sticking with people in his own generation instead of hitting on men who are practically my fucking age."

He only had ten years on Seth Mansour, he thought. Jesus Christ.

"Sit down," he said, pointing at the living room couch. "I need a goddamn drink." Which was saying something; he'd hardly had more than a glass of wine while the kids were growing up, and even that had been rare.

Still, he thought, he was going to have to talk about something he had never in his life wanted to talk about with either of his kids, and at this point that required a little self-medication. In the form of the one bottle of whiskey he had in the house.

He tossed back the glass in two swallows and set it back down with a hard clink before he sat down across from Gaël and drew in a steadying breath. "How long?" he asked.

No, he thought, his father wasn't an idiot. And if he'd been in High School still, Gael would have certainly been more careful about things. He'd not have left his blind open, for one. He'd have called his dad and said he was 'out' so that Daniel wouldn't have even gone looking for him, for that matter.

So he sat, instead of trying to come up with something clever to say as Daniel pushed them both into the apartment. And he stared at the floor as his father took a drink, and stared at it longer still when the sounds of a cushion creaked, and Daniel demanded how 'long'.

And for a moment, Gael considered lying. 'Since this summer', he could have said. But that didn't seem like something that would fly. And they'd certainly had fun then, Gael and Seth had been at it for a while.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Gael looked up at his father, and then away again. "Since my junior year," he said so softly it might have been missed. He'd been 17 (Or at least, close enough to it), he thought. And yeah, maybe Seth had taken advantage of the fact that Gael was finding things hard that year. His father had just been murdered months earlier, his world was difficult, and while Daniel had been attentive to his children...he had been mourning too.

"I'm an adult," he said after a moment, softly. "I can sleep with whomever I want."

"Jesus Christ," Daniel muttered, and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes as he felt tears burning in them. He hadn't cried in front of his children since Léon had died on the table in the ER. He'd managed to keep it in even when his in-laws in their grief had blamed him for it, and had convinced his daughter to go to school in London - to be safe, thousands of miles away from him.

It therefore took a few moments before he felt like he could speak without his voice betraying him. He could feel Gaël staring at him even before he looked up. "Yes, you are an adult." Now, at least. "Yes, you can decided who you want to have sex with. I can't stop you. Hell, I didn't even try to stop you in high school, Gaël, and trust me, your sex life was one of the top reasons I didn't sleep at night." Not the only one, of course. But between that and being alone for the first time in his adult life, Daniel hadn't been getting much rest Gaël's junior year.

"But...Jesus Christ. You weren't an adult then! You were a kid. You're still a kid. My kid." He stood up and pushed his hands through his hair and paced across the room twice before he spoke again.

"Please tell me that at least you understand why I'm upset," he said. "Please tell me you at least get that."

He understood, he thought. It would have probably been similar to his or Noelle's reaction if Daniel had dated someone younger. Or just anyone. Not that his father didn't deserve to be happy, but it was just hard...It was hard to think that after everything they'd gone through as a family, that somehow they still lost.

Gael looked to the side, and saw Leon's laptop. It hadn't moved since that day, he thought. Hell, it probably wouldn't even turn on now.

Gael sniffed a moment, reaching up to rub his noise as he took a deep breath and thought things over. Daniel had that look, that anger mixed with disappointment, a look of heart break in his eyes that was hard for Gael to look at. And for the first time since that night, Gael felt his eyes sting.

Blinking, he pulled a knee up to his chest and wrapped an arm about it as he chewed on a nail. He didn't really know what he was supposed to say right now, anyway.

"I'm sorry," he repeated after a moment. "It..I...I'm sorry. I won't do it again." Sort of.

"I don't know that I believe you," Daniel said, as he sat down heavily. "I don't think you'll sleep with Mansour again." If he did, Daniel wasn't sure he was going to resist the urge to do something drastic. Like poison the man. He could do it; it'd be easy.

"But shit, Gaël, as much as this upsets me, it's not just Mansour. It's...all of it since you were sixteen." Since Léon had died. Daniel had shut the part of himself that needed a relationship and a partner off and focused on his children. Noelle had thrown herself headfirst in her plans to take over the world. Gaël had thrown himself into an increasingly self-destructive pattern of sex. "I want you to talk to someone about it."

He should have, he realized now, forced both Gaël and Noelle to therapists then. But he hadn't, and now he could see the price.

"Sex is a normal behavior," Gael protested a little half-heartedly. He wanted to say he was fine, but he didn't know. There was a certain fatality to it, he thought. His father, Leon, had been plagued with depression most of his life. And Gael wasn't blind to the demons that chased his father- hell, he was named for one. Being the namesake to a dead uncle, dead twin uncle at that, had had a strange affect on things growing up. There had been more than once Leon had said, or muttered rather, how much like 'him' he was.

Still, he took a ragged breath as he leaned back. He wasn't sure he believed himself when he said 'it won't happen again', but he'd certain be more careful about it. And hell, he liked having sex with people like Seth. It made him feel alive, it thrilled him to be the center of someone's attention in a why he couldn't be at home. Because as much as Gael needed his father to wrap his arms around him and tell him he was loved...

Daniel had needed Gael to be strong. Both of Daniel's children had seen just how hard everything had been on their father, and while Noelle hadn't been able to cope with it entirely...Gael had sort of taken it on. He cooked, stopped speaking French around the house, cleaned, took care of the house. Took care of Leon's cat until the poor thing seemed to die of heart break. It had sat on Leon's desk and chair and yowled for months after. And maybe Daniel hadn't thought his children saw it, his own pain. Maybe he thought he'd hidden the heartache in his eyes, because he certainly hid the tears...But Gael saw it.

And Gael thought it had been the last time he'd cried, himself. He'd sworn to himself he'd never cry, that he'd never lose someone else he cared for like that again.

And maybe that was why he didn't want to fall for Carlos Sanchez, really. Because losing someone was only something he thought he could deal with once. And Claire had drilled that home clearly, when she'd broken him a little more. Not, he supposed, that he'd been overly faithful in that relationship himself.

"Papa," he said, picking at his jeans on his raised knee. But he fell silent, not knowing what he even wanted to say. And for the first time in a long time, he felt his chest constrict as a warm tear hit is cheek. His breath was ragged as he ducked his head down into his arms, hugging his leg closer.

In the months after Léon had died, Daniel had sleepwalked through life. He knew that. He simply hadn't known how to deal with the world that didn't have Léon in it - even now, three years later, he couldn't quite contemplate the idea of dating someone. He might never be able to, really.

Léon had been the love of his life, full stop.

It wasn't until long afterwards that he realized what his emotional state had done to the kids; it wasn't, in fact, until Noelle had gone to London and it was just he and Gaël. Then he'd started to see how his son was coping and it was so painfully close to the way he'd coped, when he'd been fifteen, and his parents had died abruptly and violently. He shouldn't even be that surprised about Seth Mansour, because before Léon there had been Jamie MacAllister, a grad student who was without a doubt way too old for him.

Gaël was very like his namesake, and very like Léon, too. But in some ways he was very like Daniel.

He sat down on the couch next to his son and wrapped his arm around him, pulling him close. "Ça ira, Gaël," he murmured in rusty French. It had been three years since he spoke a word of it. "It will be okay. I promise." He pressed his cheek to the top of his son's head and closed his eyes as he hugged him tighter. "I love you so much, you know. So much."

Edited 2016-10-15 21:19 (UTC)

Gaël didn't think it was going to be fine, but he leaned in against Daniel and cried in a way he hadn't cried since he had been a small boy and a bully had given him a bloody nose and called him names. Léon had been there for that moment, and held Gaël while teaching him a few names to call his bully in French. But mostly, Léon was good for listening, and understanding when everyone else didn't seem to get it.

He missed his other dad so much more than he even allowed himself to believe.

"I'm sorry, he repeated over and over in French, until he get his head pounding. He also figured after a while that he wasn't five anymore, and really needed to stop sobbing as though he were. And when he picked up his head, his eyes were red and puffy...but the tears had stopped.

"I miss him," he said finally, taking a deep breath as he leaned against Daniel. "I just...wanted to stop it, to not feel like every second was..." He didn't even have a word for it he realized. He just wanted to not hurt anymore, and the sex with everyone did just that. Seth gave him excitement and a thrill in knowing what he was doing was wrong. And at first...Seth had also listened and comforted him in the pain of his loss.

He didn't think knowing that would make Daniel any happier.

"I didn't mean for it to go so far... I just liked the way it made me feel. All of it. I never...I didn't, I didn't want to disappoint you."

Daniel felt tears seep out from under his own lashes. "I know, I know," he murmured. He missed Léon too. There were times when he wished someone had just come and shot him. It wasn't as often now as it used to be, and his therapist had helped him process things so that even if he wasn't strictly speaking happy he was...okay. He was making it.

And he understood how Gaël would like the thrill of sex. It was a thrill. It did help you escape from the pain.

"You don't disappoint me, Gaël," he said softly, leaning back a little. "No, I swear you don't. But I want you to be able to be happy, and you won't be if you keep doing this. Not in the long term." Sex was as good a way to keep people at arm's length as any. Better, really, because of the nature of it. It seemed like it would do the opposite, it would bring you closer to people.

"I remember what it's like," he said with a crooked half-smile. "I don't expect you to stop. But I want you to be able to trust yourself to fall in love someday, too. I don't want you to take that possibility away from yourself."

Gaël almost laughed at that; that it was ever safe to fall in love when the things you loved hurt you...or were hurt, or died. He honestly didn't know if he could face it, the way Daniel had. But then his dad, both of them had lost important pieces of their lives. Then they found each other.

And his phone buzzed in his pocket. Wiping the tears from his face, he saw how Carlos had abandoned snapchat and texted this last one. Just one line- 'still with me?'

Gaël laughed at the absurdity of it. Maybe even the timing of it. Carlos had no way of knowing what had happened the last few moments, but Geal had last snapped him a 'just out of the shower' pic. He was glad those also disappeared unless he actively saved them too.

"I did meet someone," he said as he dropped his knee down and texted Carlos back quickly. "But I don't think it'll be much of anything. We do go on dates, though." He said, flipping to a picture of him and Carlos standing on a the beach.

Daniel would tell Gaël that as much as it hurt, as much as he wasn't...exactly happy now, he wouldn't have given up the almost thirty years he had with Léon for anything. He wouldn't have given up Gaël and Noelle for anything, either. He gave Gaël's shoulder a squeeze as he fished his phone out of his pocket and leaned back a bit. Even after today he drew the line at reading his son's text messages over his shoulder.

He smiled a little as Gaël spoke, though, his voice still rough from crying. "Yeah?" He said, raising his brows, and he leaned forward in hopes of seeing a nineteen year old college kid.

...Nope. Definitely not nineteen. But also not thirty-five, so maybe he should take what he could get here.

"He's cute." Hispanic, if Daniel wasn't mistaken, with very short hair and a wicked grin. He could see the appeal, which was probably just proof that he wasn't dead yet. "How'd you meet?" he asked, leaning back against the couch. Hell, the last time he'd talked to Gaël about someone it had been Sarah Kagan, and Sarah Kagan was at college in New York now. Gaël hadn't really come to him about Claire, which hadn't stopped Daniel from knowing that she'd hurt him.

As for it not being much of anything...Daniel doubted that. If that was the case, he thought, the boy in the photograph would have never rated a mention.

"His sister is a grad student at UCSD," he said, smiling despite everything. "She was one of the leads in Hamilton." Which was obviously as far explaining their first night as Gael was going to get into.

"He's also...in the Navy." He said, "so...I don't know. Probably won't last forever." He sniffed a little more, before he scrubbed his hair. "And....I like him. He probably thinks I'm so kid to pass time with, but...I like him."

It was just a thing, he guessed.

"I'll go, you know...to therapy. I think they have a free service on the campus."

"Hmm..." Daniel said almost noncommitally, smoothing down Gaël's hair a bit. They didn't know anyone in any of the branches of the military. Daniel's side of the family was a little too nerdy, and Léon's a little too not American. He did have a few concerns - mostly about the idea of his son falling for someone who might not come back.

But he'd just finished telling Gaël to trust himself to love.

"Maybe it won't," he said after a moment. "But you should give yourself a little more credit. You're your father's son, and I was mesmerized most of my life." Still was, if he was strictly honest about it. Even though he'd never see Léon again. "Your Navy kid probably likes you at least as much as you like him, you know."

He smiled a little, though. "Thank you," he said. "But I'll get you some local recommendations from mine. I think the budget can stretch to handle therapy appointments." He raised a brow. "And that apartment you've been asking me about."

"Really?" Gael asked, turning to look at Daniel with a bit more sparkle in his eye. "I mean...You...you just said we'd talk about it." But he certainly wasn't going to complain. His phone buzzed again, and he read the text.

Typing back he just sort of sat for a moment, staring at the coffee table.

"You wanna rent a movie, order pizza?" He asked as he leaned back and put his phone away. "Just, you know...Hang. The two of us." Something they hadn't done in a very, very long time.

He was becoming a sucker in his old age, apparently, Daniel thought. And for some reason he was more pro-apartment when it seemed like it might not be the revolving door he'd been afraid of.

He blinked, though before smiling at Gaël. It wasn't really like the smiles he'd had before Léon died, but it was a brighter effort than he'd put forth in some months. "Yeah, sure," he said. "That sounds good. But you know, we've entered the 21st century in this house. I do have Netflix."

He stretched to his feet and tossed the remote to Gaël. "Pick something out, kiddo. I'll get the pizza ordered."

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