She'd insisted on finishing out the semester - because, for God's sake, there was only two weeks left, and she didn't want to be that girl who was making up her finals. Even with what Elisha kept reasonably pointing out (at louder and louder volumes) was a perfectly valid reason to be making up her finals. She wasn't going to let Jesse win the battle of public relations, a statement that had had her dad groaning theatrically and wondering out loud why his children were basically his father.

The dads had, therefore, spent the next two weeks at the Park Plaza while Sarah had thrown herself into her NYU classes headfirst and refused to think of anything but Greek Architecture and the History of Urban Design until she'd passed all her exams. Then, of course, she didn't have that to concentrate on, and she was on a plane home with her parents and one very worried older brother.

In Chicago, it was kind of easy to pretend none of it had happened, Sarah thought as she spun in the swivel chair in her dad's study. Not entirely; neither of her dads were going to let her do something like...pretend it hadn't happened, as much as she sort of wanted to do just that. But she sure as hell had no risk of ever running into Jesse. She wrinkled her nose as she caught the direction her thoughts were starting to go - she could transfer to a college in Chicago and get almost the same program. She'd definitely never run into Jesse Vaughn-Mackenzie in Chicago. He'd told her a dozen times that he was amazed someone like her came from the Midwest.

God, she thought, why hadn't she dumped him in the first week? The world would never know.

Sarah shook her head as she heard the front door slam, and spun in the chair again as a way too serious-looking version of her baby brother (she had fifteen minutes on him, it counted) started past the study. "You took your damn time," she said, and half-smiled, half-smirked as he swung his head to stare at her. "I was thinking maybe that Ollie got scared by the idea of Kagan Family Togetherness and the two of you were hightailing it back to L.A."

Gael could still feel the way Seth's fingers had dug into his arms as he pushed him back against the wall. He way his body hurt as Seth forced himself on Gael. It was the first time something like that had ever happened. It was the first time he had ever felt out of control of a situation.

It had started the night before, when Gael was coming back from a friends. He had been planning to crash as James' apartment, but then James hooked up with a girl at the bar. Gael hadn't felt the need to listen to him having sex from the couch...so he'd taken a roadie, and taken himself home. Or, rather, almost home.

Seth, he guessed, had seen him...because the man caught up with him as he had been about to go up. They talked, in hushed words, and Gael had been so reluctant. 'I'll be in so much fucking trouble', he had said. And yet Seth had someone gotten out of him that no one was expecting him, so it wasn't likely to be anyone looking for him. And before he knew it, he'd been heading up the elevator in Seth's condo and into his living room.

This time, Seth closed the blinds, and the world seemed to be cut off from them. And they just talked, at first. Seth apologized and said he'd never meant for Gael to get into trouble. As he spoke he rubbed Gael's leg, squeezed it, and smiled softly. Then he got them drinks. He'd always let Gael drink, from the start- it had been part of the appeal at 17. But now Gael just sort of wondered about it a little, he was already drunk and wasn't sure he needed more. But he drank.

And things went from there. First it was an innocent kiss, then a more insistent one. Seth's hands groped, and exploded. He whispered in Gael's ear about how much he ached for the boy, how much he'd always ached for him. Gael said no, then. Reaching to stop Seth's hand as the man tried to pull at the fabric of his jeans. He repeated himself over, and over. Louder. And the more he insisted Seth stopped, the more forceful the older man became. The more violent.

The next morning, Gael felt numb as he showered...changed. He flinched when Seth reached up to gingerly, lovingly stork his hair, whispering apologies in his ear. Gael felt more used, he thought, than loved. And when he tired to protest Seth's earnest pleas, Seth Monsour reminded him that things wouldn't have been so rough...if he hadn't tried to say 'no'.

Walking up to his own condo building, Gael chewed his bottom lip as he fumbled out a cigarette. It wasn't something he did often....smoking. But right now, he thought, he really needed one.

Christmas was a strange little thing these last few years. It was both a happy...and not happy situation. Maybe it was because Leon had died just after Christmas three years ago. Noelle had been a senior that year, and they'd been about to celebrate her letter of acceptance into Columbia. After, she didn't go to Columbia. Gael always figured it was only partly because their grandparents had convinced her to go to Oxford, and partly because of the memories.

Still, Christmas had always been one of Leon's favorite times of year. As such, it had somehow become Gael's...even Noelle liked it. Those feelings all mixed into one, and just made things difficult at times.

But this year, Gael thought as he finished trimming the tree- things were different. By the time Noelle and Daniel got back from the airport....he had transformed their condo into the Christmasiest place he could make it.

And he'd done something else. Something...that was time for all of them to do. He cleaned off Leon's desk, and piled decorations on it. He boxed up the laptop, Leon's favorite books, he even raided Daniel's badroom and carefully packed away Leon's things into boxes. He'd even cried a little, though he'd tried to scrub most of it from his face by the time the others got home. And yes, he thought, Daniel was probably going to be upset with him for it. But...it was time, wasn't it? Three years, and nothing had ever changed in this place. They had all just sort of frozen themselves in place.

But he did leave the pictures. He couldn't quite make himself pack those away.

The years hadn't always been kind, but they were good enough. It started a while ago, he guessed, the swollen ankles and feet. He always chalked it up to just getting older. It came with the shortness of breath, and he felt light headed from time to time. He figured it was all just...getting older. And nothing ever came up during his physicals.

So he kept doing what he always did. He ran every morning, two miles, as he listened to NPR streaming on his phone. He came home, showered, kissed Elisha good morning and they shared breakfast. After coffee, and a few hard to deny suggestions of staying home...Hadyn would leave for the hospital. He had given up Emergency medicine, and just ran the pediatrics department at Laurie. It gave him more '9 to 5' hours, and let him enjoy his new found empty home, sharing it with Elisha.

But today was different. Today something was wrong. Hadyn made it half a mile into his run before he started gasping for air. His head felt as if it were spinning, and he limped his way home. It took him five minutes to get his front door open, and he stumbled into the house. He reached up to his chest, wincing and groaning.

"Elisha," he called out, hearing the man in the kitchen. "Elisha!" The next thing he knew, his legs and body seemed to give out.

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.

It was his last shift at Masonic, and they sent him off with a flourish. Cora swapped with another of the nurses to work the graveyard with him, and brought him a cake she'd made for him that morning. She then spent the whole night telling him that if he ever needed her to come knock some smartass over the head at Laurie, he just needed to call. She'd 'come a runnin'. He was going to miss Cora the most.

Pat's send off to him was to ensure that every one of the weirdest cases that night came his way. There was the dildo that, uh, 'accidentally' ended up someone's ass. He didn't really ask, but he got the story about it anyway. Then there were the boys who somehow ended up with split heads. They 'fell', and that was their story. Mom, however, seemed to suspected they'd been daring each other to do stupid flips off the shed behind the house. Hadyn just tried not to judge anyone on the matter. Adam was back, asking about the tumor again. He wanted to know if he'd be allowed into Laurie so that Hadyn could scan his head there.

Hadyn said no.

Most of the night was fairly boring, really, but it was peppered with things at random. And for once, Hadyn was legitimately walking out the door at 6am, smiling and waving at the people who'd given him a happy send off.

"Hey," he said, turning back to Elisha as he walked toward the car. "Don't tell me, you spent the night working?" He grinned though, leaning in to steal a happy kiss. "You know, I should be scolding you if you have been. But I might let it go for coffee..." And sex. He could really go for some hot and steamy morning sex before he passed out. And wine.

Glass was a relatively dangerous art, but wasn't that dangerous if you were careful. Which Elisha was, as a rule. Today had been an anomaly, really - which was probably why Rhiann was freaking out next to him in the waiting room.

"It's just a minor burn," he told her mildly. "It's going to be fine, you know." Unspoken was the fact that they both worked with fire. And that he'd really like it if she got a grip.

"I know," she started, but then one of the nurses' voices cut across the crowded room like a bull horn. "Elisha Kagan! Come back with me now," and Rhiann flopped back in the chair. "I'll drive you back when you're out," she muttered.

Shouldn't be long, he thought as he followed the nurse, cradling his arm in his hand and then flopping down on the gurnee she waved him at. "Need anymore painkillers, sweetie?" she asked. "Otherwise, the doctor will be in to check that burn shortly."

He waved his good hand. "Nah, I'm fine. The triage nurse got me taken care of."

"Doctor'll be in shortly then," she said, and pulled the curtain around him. He leaned back. Hadyn was, he was pretty sure, on rotation tonight. Maybe he'd run into him.

Hadyn stared at his coffee with a look of betrayal as he yawned. He was not a fan of his current rotation, he thought to himself. Surgery was too long, and time consuming for him. Still, his advisers were set on trying to convince him to take it on. 'You're really quick to it', Dr. Thompson had told him last week, 'took too it much faster than the others. You'd make a fine surgeon.' But honestly, it wasn't what he wanted. He was the top of the class, though, and everyone was trying to sway him to their cause. And they were causes.

He'd already decided what he was going to do, though. Even if he couldn't bring himself to break Dr. Thompson's heart, yet.

Standing, Hadyn closed his notebook with his application to Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago's residence program for Emergency Medicine, and he picked up his coffee. Family Care was what he thought the world needed more of, and honestly it was something he thought he could enjoy. Maybe even Pediatrics, but he imagined he would grow uncomfortable with only ever tending to children.

"I need a life," he decided as he turned to walk out of the coffee shop with his coffee in hand. He was clearly still lost in his own thoughts, though, as he ran right into someone else- splashing his still warm coffee onto the other man's shirt. "Oh, damn. Sorry...I..." he looked up, and for a moment seemed to forget what he was going to say. "I'm, I'm sorry. I wasn't looking. Uh, let me get a napkin."

Smooth, man, Smooth.

It wasn't, Ollie thought grudgingly, a bad view - the blue of Lake Michigan as far as the eye can see, almost like an ocean. Of course, it was July; give it six months and it was going to be white and gray desolation as far as the eye could see. He'd lost his mind, obviously.

Though it wasn't as if there was a good way to say no. Ty had tolerated California - he'd never liked it as well as Chicago - but he'd stuck San Diego out until a couple of years past Ollie's eventual retirement from the Navy. With Elisha past retirement age himself and Ty being the only one interested...well, it did have a feeling of inevitability.

"Why don't you and Chris go explore Michigan Ave.," he said to Ellie. "We're just going to obsess over where your dad's blu-ray collection should go, so you're not going to miss anything here."

Besides, he was getting a feeling from the occasional sidelong looks that Ty wanted to ask him how we was handling the fact that Elisha was about three miles away.

Ollie wasn't quite back yet. Another month and the ship was due to roll into the harbor, the flight squadron would fly in hours before the ship itself docked. Still, that was some time off and Ty had come to a rather startling realization that being alone in San Diego was possibly the worse thing for him in that moment.

So he'd told Ollie that he was going home for a while. After Carlos came back from the dead, he...couldn't handle things. And he hadn't wanted Sarah to barge in on him the way she promised to if he didn't do...something. Anything.

He hadn't told her he was going home, though. Not until she called him angrily from his front door demanding to know where the hell he was, and promising that he better not be dead or she'd bring him back and kill him herself. Though, telling her he'd just landed in Chicago did seem to steal a lot of her thunder.

And maybe he should have told his parents he was going to just show up, seeing as neither of them were home when he let himself in and looked around. Neat and orderly as ever, their home seemed still foreign some how. But he moved to his bedroom and put his bags on the bed and looked about for a while. Nothing seemed to ever change in that home, and maybe it never would.

Eventually, though, Ty found himself in the kitchen. It took a bit of searching to find the bottles of liquor, the old habit of hiding them likely to never die for his parents. Pouring himself a glass he sighed a little, before moving to the back porch and sitting heavily. At least he could still drink and smoke in private with no one knowing he was there.

Ollie had convinced him to come back, at least for the rest of the week. It was possibly the last holiday for Debbie, and despite his frustrations- Ty needed to be with family. That did not, however, mean he was going to go inside right away. He parked the car on the side of the street and climbed out before looking up at the house through the snow and sighing.

What on earth did he ever do to be the heart of so much drama?

Pulling out a cigarette he leaned against the car as he lit it. It was freezing outside, but at least smoking was a valid excuse for standing outside like a stubborn idiot.

One thing to could be said about holidays in the Kagan home- it was always dramatic. In those rare moments that Ty was under the same roof with the rest of them, there was usually screaming between him and someone else at some point. Heather suspected that he was still dealing....dealing the war, the sudden child thing, mental illness. It probably didn't excuse him, at all, but there was some of his behavior that familiar.

"Ty's taking Ollie to the airport." Heather, said after Hadyn and Ollie had disappeared from the kitchen. Hadyn to deal with, as usual, the screaming. Ollie left to pack up the rest of his stuff, coffee in hand. And that left Heather and Micah to, well, fend for themselves. "Do you think drama can be bred into a family line?" There had to be some sort of explanation.

There was something a bit annoying about having to share a house with a girl- especially when she was the only girl, and thus doted on in a rare, special way. She wasn't even a mother, just a sister- and that somehow made her gold. Or at least that was the way Tyler saw it when he bothered to pay attention to what was going on. Still, it was annoying expect that she had a rare, blessed collection of Disney movies still. And while he'd not admit to it? Tyler did have a soft spot for them.

They reminded him of childhood, and honestly? Gave him a whole truck load of reasons why his moods could be done.

Today he was sat on big chair in the living room watching Brave while everyone else was out of the house, pigging out on some of Izak's stashed cookies and drinking soda. Ah, life was perfect when no one else was around.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man, regardless of how many buildings he might own or how many staff he might have, will on a biweekly basis find himself slumped in the shoe department at Nordstrom, surrounded by more bags than should be counted.

At least that was Elisha's experience.

Luckily, the number of buildings he owned and the amount of staff he had on payroll meant that the very sympathetic sales associate (who was also very grateful for the extra commission that an Eicheln-Kagan visit meant) had brought him coffee. Which he was sipping as he eyed his younger sister, and her shoes.

"How do you even find stilettos with fish on them?"

Did squid count as a fish? He wasn't sure.

Leona Matthews was not a fan of being at work late on a Friday night, especially when her boss was preoccupied with his love affair. And love affair was pretty much the only way to put it when it came to Hadyn Novak's thing with Elisha. They weren't 'together', but come on- she could see the look that crossed Elisha's face when Hadyn's number popped up on caller ID. It was like a damn love struck puppy.

All of which was a moot point at the moment, except that she was organizing Elisha's filesfor his Monday board meetings because he'd decided to skip out to see his player. But all that aside? Now was the time for getting out and away. She rode the lift down and was all but sprinting through the lobby, heels click and clacking against the marble floor before she spotted a silent lurker.

"I'm pretty sure now is the time to leave- because it is dark, and Friday, and all that." She said, smiling at the other person. "Buy you a drink, love?"

Dad had texted just before practice that he was going to be late again - and Mom was in London tonight, anyway, sleeping off her last international flight - so David hadn't seen much point in going home. Probably would have just been Rosa's enchiladas, he thought. Not that it was a bad thing, but sitting at the kitchen island in their silent apartment wasn't exactly his idea of a good time.

Of course, the problem with going to school where he did was that everyone else he knew - even the other guys on the team - were too worried about whether they'd get into Notre Dame or Stanford or wherever to do anything that might approach fun. Never mind they'd all been admitted now. Hell, he was even admitted now, even if his five acceptances didn't have Ivy cachet. They were all stuck in the habit, even now that grades didn't matter anymore.

Well, whatever, he thought as he sacked out on a bench and glanced in all directions before he slipped a joint out of his pocket. Just a few more months of this, then they'd all be away. It probably didn't much matter now.

He barely saw the shadow of someone coming by him as he was lighting up, and David's eyes flashed upwards, uncharacteristically sharp and incisive for a moment. Then he saw who it was, and he grinned.

"Hey, Kagan. You're out late. Riding herd on your baby sis?"

They were supposed to be in class still, but Izak and some of his friends had decided to ditch- which they could, because they were seniors. It was like they'd earned some sacred right to ditch their pretentious, ego-inflated professors. What did it matter, anyway? Gradation was just a few weeks away, and no one honestly was making them do anything any more. Plus? Izak had always been the moderately good kid (at least with school), and ditching was exciting. It felt like he was rolling the dice of fate.

"Yes, alright. This is what I'm talking about- Michigan Avenue, shopping....why are we shopping? Shouldn't we be like....taking over the Field Museum?" Not that shopping was entirely horrible. His father, Hadyn, had a weakness for it. Pretty much explained why he was the one Sarah went to with her womanly things- Hadyn was practically a woman at times. Izak liked to think he was more like Elisha, both of them chilling on the couch. Sometimes watching a bit of football, or baseball, or...something with a ball. Yeah- he was definitely more Elisha.

Turning around, Izak looked at the others he was with- and then he spotted the one that didn't belong. "What are you doing here?"

Leon wouldn't say he'd lied, exactly. It was more like watching a comedy of errors unfold before him, and in some sort of perverse amusement he hadn't corrected anyone's assumptions yet. The gist of the story seemed to be that the company had done an outreach with the University of Chicago and hired two interns. One was this bubbly tech-nerd of a girl who sported Beats headphones while wearing her ultra trendy Anarchy tees, and the other hadn't shown. Or so Leon assumed, as he eavesdropped from the HR office.

Instead the receptionist had told the HR lady, Sarah Hamilton, that Leon was the intern Mrs. Hamilton had been waiting on. All because he'd arrived precisely at the right moment to fix the receptionist's computer. Ideally, he thought as he stared down at the papers sport the name Roger McLaughlin, the proper thing to do would be to explain the confusion- but where was the fun in that? Besides, he could be a Roger. No one would think twice of it, either, as they'd never asked for his ID. And Roger, whoever he was, had obviously not been that interested in the gig if he hadn't shown by now.

So he smirked, and lightly started to fill in the address for his pay check, and the information for his direct deposit. Besides, IT was a much better fit for him than being a messenger about Chicago- which was bloody cold at the moment. And the only person who was ever going to know, or give him side looks for it would be Daniel. Leon doubted, though, that his boyfriend would say much given that he'd been content to steal bandwidth when Leon had hacked into their neighbors wireless router. Free internet was better than nothing, after all.

"Uh," he started when he heard someone come in, "I filled it out, anything else you need?" He did, at least, need to get the package for Mr. Kagan, up to his offices just in case the poly was discovered. He did need at least one job.