In his home office seated behind his desk, Dan Scott finally quit shifting his papers left and right and sneered in disgust at the results of his so-called labor. What the hell was he doing creating busy-work at this hour on a Saturday night? The top of his desk was now a shambles thanks to him, the dealership documents he'd meant to review completely and utterly disordered. He hadn't accomplished anything substantial since he'd come storming in here an hour ago – unless, of course, spreading clutter and confusion was supposed to be some sort of accomplishment.

Where were the damn invoices for the Cadillacs delivered last week?

And what the devil had he done with the spec sheets for the Chevy Blazers that were on recall?

Dan cursed a string and sifted fruitlessly through a sheaf of papers beneath his left elbow until his senses told him to watch his language, that he wasn't alone. In his peripheral vision he saw his firstborn son taking a tentative step into the room, and instantly, felt the palm of his right hand stinging almost as sharply as it had sixty minutes before. How this could be when the spanking he'd given Lucas was long since over Dan refused consider. He deliberately set his jaw and kept his attention concentrated on his desk, glancing up only briefly to make angry eye contact with the seven-year-old boy who had gathered tremendous courage to seek him out.

Eight feet away, Lucas noted his father's silent rejection and shrunk inside his pajamas. "Daddy?"

"What do you want?" Dan snapped.

Lucas flinched and blinked fast to clear the moisture that was starting to build again. "I know I was bad before. I shouldn't've hit Nathan."

"You're damn right you shouldn't have. You apologize to him yet?"

"Yes, I—"

"Good. Now how about you apologize to me for bruising my son and ruining my evening."

Hearing Dan refer to Nathan exclusively as his son, Lucas felt like he'd been slapped on the fanny again even harder than he'd been spanked earlier. He tried not to let the words hurt him, but they did. A lot. Within seconds, his chin began to wobble and the tears he'd been trying to hold back began to fall. "I'm s-sorry, Daddy."

"Uh huh, I'll bet." Dan shuffled his papers. "Go to bed."

Without another word, Lucas turned to go. A scowling Dan told himself not to listen to the soft crying or be swayed by it, but it was all he could hear and he just knew the thin shoulders were shaking again the way they'd shook upstairs after the spanking was over and Dan had jerked him roughly off his knees. Against his will, he looked up. On the verge of slipping out of sight, Lucas had one hand rubbing his bottom and the other knuckling the tears from his eyes. The second Dan saw this, he sighed.

"Lucas," he called quietly. "Come here, son."

Lucas didn't question his father's request or his change in tone. He turned around and obeyed the order without protest, sniffling hard as he shuffled directly to Dan's side. There, he found himself lifted into strong arms and hugged and given the love he'd been craving since the disappearance of his mom. This was exactly what he'd been wanting for ever since he'd moved in the previous year, so Lucas wrapped his skinny arms around the only parent he had left and buried his face into a warm shoulder. "I'm s-sorry, Daddy!"

The words were deeply muffled but Dan still managed to make them out. He held Lucas closer and rubbed his trembling back over his cotton pajama top. "I know, son, I know."

"I didn't m-mean to punch Nate so hard!"

"I know you didn't. I forgive you."

"I'm s-sorry, Daddy!"

"I believe you, son. Shhh. Daddy forgives you, okay? You're my boy and I'll forgive you anything."

To a weeping Lucas, it seemed like he'd been waiting his whole life to hear those words. He sobbed harder for several long minutes while he tightened his hold, needing this hug and those reassurances more than his seven-year-old self could ever express.

Surprisingly, Dan Scott understood. He knew he came across as hypercritical and unforgiving most of the time, a hurtful and ruthless sociopath who was friendless with good reason, but he also knew those were defense mechanisms built up after years of rejection and pain, betrayals and disappointments. He hadn't always been this way. Once upon a time he had been kind and thoughtful, and though he sensed he'd been too brusque a moment ago, he hadn't forgotten entirely how to be decent. He tapped into that reserve now and clung to it, wanting to be the only thing he truly was in this moment: a father who loved his son.

He stood up and carried Lucas with him while he paced the floor in his office, for once not thinking of his image, or his pride, or anything else except his boy. With every step he took he murmured soothing words of comfort, doing his level best to prove to Lucas that he was safe, and he was loved, and that his daddy would always be here for him in the end, no matter how angry he'd been previously.

Eventually, Lucas believed. He quieted some and didn't cling as desperately as before, his chest hitching less and less as he began to calm.

Dan shifted the slight weight in his arms but kept pacing until the small body he was holding stopped moving. He checked his watch and waited for another minute to pass, and only then did he walk Lucas to his desk top where he cleared a section then set him down gently.

As expected, the boy's face was a mess, so Dan reached for a box of tissues and helped him clean up. When Lucas looked halfway human again, Dan sat before him and gazed at him with compassion.

"Son, what happened with you tonight? Why'd you attack your brother like that?"

Lucas shook his head; he didn't want to say. He squirmed down from the desk and wormed himself onto his father's lap, turning inwards so he could hide his face from view.

Dan straightened him up so he was visible, but Lucas promptly dived out of sight a second time. The first-grader didn't want to relive his spanking or to discuss why he'd been so naughty earlier, but the elder Scott was insistent. He lifted Lucas away from him and plopped him once again on his desk, holding the lean waist in place so Lucas couldn't slide out of position. After that he repeated his question. It took three more tries to get his firstborn to open up and then another two tries before Dan understood his mumbles, but finally, Lucas admitted enough to get them somewhere.

"I was … I was jealous, Daddy."

"You were? Tell me why."

Lucas still didn't want to. As far as he was concerned, his daddy should already know the answer to that question, so he whined and began to cry a little as Dan kept forcing him sit up straight, not appreciating it in the least when his bottom got another tap. It got him to quit struggling though, so once Dan grew stern and told him to explain himself or else, a pouting Lucas sniffed hard then looked at him with eyes filled to the brim with accusation.

"I was jealous 'cause you always hug Nate good night 'n stuff, but you never do that with me. All you ever do is pat me on the head and I don't like it. I don't like it, Daddy! Tonight you even kissed Nate too and it wasn't fair. You're not fair to me! I want what Nate gets!"

Dan was taken aback by Luke's outburst but he recovered quickly. He studied Luke's stubborn young face a moment then arched an eyebrow at the unhappy child seated across from him. "Oh, you do, do you? You want what Nate gets? Do you remember how this situation came to be?"

When Lucas didn't answer, Dan leaned back in his leather chair.

"All right, I'll remind you," he said. "You moved in just before Thanksgiving weekend, little boy, and every day of that holiday, plus every day thereafter, you never once let me treat you like Nathan. Every time I tried, you rebuffed me, son, over and over and over again. You pushed me away each and every time I came close."

"No, I didn't—"

"Oh yes, you did. You told me – no, actually, you yelled at me – that I wasn't your father and that I was never going to be him as long as you lived. Do you remember that?"

Lucas pounded two small fists into his thighs. "But you're supposed to keep trying, Daddy! You're not supposed to give up on me! You're not supposed to! You just said I was your boy!"

As the words shouted in his face hit home and two fresh tears escaped a son who had never once cried before today in the five months since he'd moved in, Dan recoiled for only the briefest of seconds. An instant later, he stood up from his chair and lifted Lucas off the desk and back into his arms.

"You're right, son. I shouldn't have given up on trying to reach you because that's not what a good dad does."

Lucas scrubbed the moisture from his face then wrapped his arms around Dan's neck and squeezed. Neither father nor son said anything more until Lucas lay his head on Dan's shoulder. "It's okay, Daddy. I forgive you 'cause I love you a whole lot."

Dan tried to respond but his throat wouldn't let him. How long had he waited to hear those three words come from this particular son? It seemed like forever. A lump in his chest made it hard to swallow, but Dan persevered until he could speak.

"I … I love you too, son. I love you and Nathan more than anything in this world, which is why I need to ask you a favor."

"What?"

"I need you to speak up and tell me the next time I'm not being fair. You don't normally behave the way you did, so when you hit your brother, I should have talked to you like I'm doing now. I should have been patient. Instead, I hit you back without forcing you to explain and that was wrong and unfair. I'm sorry I spanked you."

Lucas drew back until he could look soberly into his father's face. "I'm sorry too 'cause it hurt, but you shouldn't be sorry that you spanked me 'cause you had to. I was bad; I was really, really bad."

"You weren't bad, son. You were—"

"Uh-huh, I was," Lucas insisted. "Nathan's my little brother and I'm supposed to look out for him, but I didn't and that's wrong. Uncle Keith never hurt you when you were growing up; he told me that all the time, so I shouldn't've picked a fight with Nate tonight. It was a bad thing to do. I … I deserved a really big spanking for it. I did."

As the youngster ducked his face in shame and reached back to touch the seat of his pajama pants, remembering how hot they had felt ninety minutes ago, Dan wondered how he could have ever treated the boy so harshly when he'd first walked into the room. He stroked Luke's soft blond hair then cupped his small chin and raised it.

"Hey, look at me, son. You made a mistake and then I did too, but we both learned our lesson so that's all over over now. You're a Scott and you're a good boy. More than that, you're a good big brother. I wouldn't tell you that if it wasn't true, you know that, right?" Lucas chewed his lower lip thoughtfully a moment then nodded. When he did, Dan continued. "All right then. I know you and Nathan haven't been close so far, but we're going to change that starting tomorrow, and when I'm not around, I want you to look out for Nathan and make sure he looks out for you too."

"For me?"

"Yes, for you," Dan repeated. "You're not his big brother by much, only a few months, so he's supposed to look out for you just as much as you're supposed to look out for him. I'm going to talk to him in the morning and make sure he understands that. Sound good?"

Lucas flung himself forward and hugged his dad tight. Over his shoulder, Dan hugged him back just a as closely before he re-settled the little boy on his hip, turned off his desk lamp and started for the hallway.

"Let's go," he declared.

"Where we going?" Suddenly aware of the time, Luke's open curiosity changed to low spirits. He was sure he knew the answer and he didn't like it one bit. "To bed, right?"

"No, not to bed. We're going out back so I can teach you the constellations like I taught your brother last summer."

Lucas didn't dare tell him he didn't need to, that Uncle Keith had already showed him how to find Andromeda and Cassiopeia and most the others when he was five. If his daddy was willing to teach him something, he was more than willing to learn. Besides, bedtime was being postponed and that definitely wasn't something that happened very often, so Lucas was full of silent smiles as he was carried through the mansion and out the sliding back door, their trek interrupted only briefly to collect a thick, raschel blanket.

Set down on his feet by the pool, the sky above dotted and welcoming, Lucas clutched the soft material in his arms while he watched and waited patiently for Dan to position one of the padded chairs far out in the middle of the backyard and then recline it to the perfect angle. As soon as Dan sat down and beckoned to him, Lucas hurried over and joined him. With his back against his dad's chest, the man's strong left arm hugging him close and their colorful blanket keeping them both nice and toasty, Lucas snuggled in and followed the pointing finger attentively. The fist-fight he'd had with Nathan was completely forgotten and so was everything painful that followed. His bottom didn't hurt anymore, but even if it had, he wouldn't have cared because none of that stuff was important now. The only thing that mattered was who he was with.

His daddy.

An hour later, the darkness in the backyard was broken by the flicking on of the patio lights. Seconds later, the silence was also interrupted by the sliding glass door rushing along its track followed by Deb's panicky sandaled footsteps.

"Dan? Dan, are you out here?" Dan opened his mouth to reply, but never got the chance. "Oh, thank God, there you are! Have you seen Lucas? It's way past his bedtime and I've looked everywhere. I can't find him and I—"

"Stop worrying, Deb. He's here."

"What?"

"Come look."

Deb hurried over then jerked to a stop at Dan's side. In her husband's lap, fast asleep and curled up as naturally as can be, lay her step-son, a sight Deb would have bet money she would never, ever see after tonight. Dan looked into her shocked face and grinned without apology, knowing exactly what was she was thinking: since moving into their house five months ago, this was closest Lucas had been to anyone in their family.

"What's the matter, Wife? See something strange?"

"I just ... I can't believe it. You spanked him so hard and he was so angry—"

"He's not anymore; we talked it out."

As Deb stood rooted to the spot, struggling to comprehend how this breakthrough had come about, Dan didn't bother to explain. He gazed down at Lucas with a love he could not describe and pressed a kiss to the boy's forehead instead, looking forward to the morning...