Wow, I'm at chapter 12 already? I don't know how that happened! Anyway, thanks so much for all your support, and please let me know what you think!

Also, someone asked who I think Bones looks like...the fangirl jury is a bit out on that, but I think I've heard everything from James Marsters, who plays Spike on Buffy (the majority of twitter peeps pick Marsters), to Henry Cavil, or Gabriel Aubry...if you're a Bones fan, who do you picture? He's kind of veiled on the covers of the Night Huntress books...

Sookie

I knew things weren't good when I came home to find Stella curled up on the couch in the fetal position, and Eric and the kids gone.

I sat down at her feet and handed her a piece of the chocolate I'd made a beeline for when I got in the door. "Where's my family?"

She took it and looked up at me. "They went to see Pam. You can go over if you want. I didn't want to."

I looked at her sad eyes, dark from not sleeping. "God, tell me Eric told you why he'd been acting weird."

She shrugged. "Yea, he told me. It doesn't change much though. Sookie, we never even talked about getting married. I feel like we should have at least had a conversation about it, you know?"

And then I told her something I really wished someone had told me ten years earlier. "Stel, men are idiots. They don't think like women, or at all sometimes. I'm sure he assumed it was what you wanted, and was trying to be romantic about it."

"He didn't tell me though, even though we were fighting. I thought we'd decide together when we wanted to get married. We have a very egalitarian relationship, for the most part. And he asked Dad? What the fuck is that about?"

I remember when there was a time I'd cried for an entire afternoon because Bill had had no one to ask for me when we got married. How times had changed. "Covering his bases?"

She rolled her eyes. "We're not traditional. Why is he trying to force us into this traditional box all of a sudden?"

I thought about it, in terms of my own life. "You know, I think in a lot of ways, men really like the idea of marriage. I didn't care with your dad, not really, anyway. Not as much as he did, and he's far from traditional. Hell, we got married like three days after I got divorced. It was kind of wild. Anyway, I guess being traditional in that sense is important to Johan."

"You know, if I ever envisioned getting engaged to, it would have been part of some silly moment we had, and he wouldn't even have a ring. He'd just ask me, because the moment struck him, and he decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I didn't want him to think about it for three weeks and go buy me some cookie cutter ring. That's not us at all."

I smiled. "Stel, I went ring shopping with him. It wasn't like that at all. And he didn't plan it for ages or anything. And for the record, he picked a very you ring at an estate jeweler. Nothing from Tiffany."

She softened slightly. "I don't know. I just don't know how I could have just been left out of this very big decision in this day in age."

"Again, back to men are idiots. Has he called you?"

She shook her head. "I told him not to."

"Well then you should call him, and at least talk it out, now that you have all the information. You guys have been together for six years. That's a lot to let go of."

She glared at me. "I know it is."

Yep, the Pam shone through, from time to time, especially when it came to being stubborn. "Okay, well, I'm going to go over to Pam's then. Give you some alone time."

"Thanks," she mumbled.

Pam and Alcide's condo was kind of ridiculous, but I had to admit I was a little jealous whenever I visited. I had no idea what kind of cleaning staff she employed to keep things white and pristine with a two year old. My kids were like tiny bulls in a china shop when we visited.

I smiled, smelling something delicious as I got off the elevator. Maybe duck. I was starving.

Eric and the kids, as well as Pam, Alcide, and Gabby, in a tiara were seated around her huge dining room table with an amazing spread. "You started without me?" I said with a grin, sitting next to Eric and squeezing his hand.

He smiled. "Well at first we weren't sure if you'd come and then we figured you'd catch up, and the kids got tired of waiting."

Ce grinned, holding a carrot dangerously close to the white linen placemats. "Aunty Pam made it."

Pam snorted, her tan setting off the white everything perfectly. "Kids will believe anything. It's catered. I had Yvetta arrange it." She smiled at their maid, who was busying herself with what looked like coconut cake in the open kitchen. I would have hated Yvetta working for me, since she was stunning and about twenty-five, but it didn't seem to bother Pam.

Perhaps for obvious reasons.

We all dug in, and chatted about rather mundane things. When Pam got up to the washroom, I leaned over and whispered in Eric's ear. "Did you tell her about Stella yet?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Thought we'd have a nice dinner before she tells me what an idiot my kid is." Pam adored Johan, probably more than Stella did. Certainly more than Stella did right now.

"Awesome." I grinned, raising my eyebrows at Alcide across the table. "How was the Bahamas?"

"Good. I played lots of golf." he grinned at Gaby, who was making a worse mess than either of my kids. "How's the new job?"

"Good. Busier than the old one."

We acknowledged each other somewhat silently. We weren't very close.

After dinner, Alcide and Max went off to play some video game on his Wii, Ceci curled up on Eric's lap and went to sleep like Lily did sometimes, and Gaby went to bed in her room.

Eric cut to the chase. "Pam, Stella and Johan have split up. She's staying with us for now."

Shit, was she still going to be there when Eric left? I didn't know if I had it in me to take care of an angsty twenty-something plus two kids. "We're hoping they'll work it out. I think I may have had her convinced to call him when I left to come over here."

Pam narrowed her eyes at both of us. "That girl is a fool."

Eric raised an eyebrow at her. "That's not for us to decide."

Pam crossed her arms. "Well that's going to make for a lovely Thanksgiving. Maybe you can set her up with that handsome subordinate of yours Sookie, the British one."

I nearly choked on my white wine spritzer. "No, I don't think we'll be doing that. I still think they can work it out. They both want the same things, but they had very different ideas of what it would look like, that's all. I think if they talk it out, then they'll be fine. Just fine."

Pam sighed at Eric. "She doesn't know us very well, does she?"

Eric shrugged. "We're good at talking, her and I. I think we're the exception though. That's probably why she's mistaken." He looked at me. "My guess is that she goes into stubborn mode and that's the end of it. Look at Pam and Alcide. It took her years before she talked to him again when she got gun shy."

"That's just one example. I don't think they'll do that." I furrowed my brow. "I think they'll work it out."

Well, I wasn't completely wrong, but I wasn't exactly right either.

The rest of the weekend was a series of sobbing and screaming matches in my living room, and when we were lucky, the basement, while Johan and Stella attempted to work through their issues. Finally, by late Monday evening, Eric had had enough.

He raised an eyebrow at me from our new home in the kitchen since we'd been all but barred from the living room, before making the step I'd been banking on him making for days."Look, Stel, you're welcome to stay here, but I'm sick of this. You're never going to make up in front of us, so go home and make up already. We don't need to hear your same argument on a loop. We've heard it for three days now. You're upsetting the kids."

She glared at us both, and they gathered up their winter gear and left. "Why the hell did that take you three days?" I said, my head in my hands.

He blinked, before sighing loudly. "I didn't want her to feel forced out, but fuck, I'm over it. They're ridiculous. I didn't think Johan had it in him."

"I need a glass of wine. Thank God I haven't been working."

"This was supposed to be a nice week," he groaned. "And while it's been nice to be home, I certainly could have done without this."

Eric

Sookie stood up, her hands on her hips. "You're the reason it's happened. If you'd just told her, then she probably would have been fine."

I rolled my eyes, and leaned my head back."Can we not fight about this too? Haven't we heard enough fighting?"

"We're not fighting about it," she snapped. "I'm going to bed."

"Fine." I stood up and followed her in. We hadn't had sex since Stella interrupted us on Thursday. Clearly fighting wasn't good for anyone. I hated seeing my daughter so ripped up emotionally. We both undressed without a word and crawled into bed. "You know, I wouldn't care so much about this, except it's really messed up our time together. I thought we'd get to go for dinner, and spend some time together. Instead, we've been comforting the kids all week."

She pouted. "I know. I thought we'd have a happily engaged couple on our hands by Thursday. Maybe they went home to have make-up sex and she'll come by with a ring tomorrow."

"I don't want to think about my kid having make-up sex, but I hope you're right."

She sighed. "We need to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I don't know how we got stuck hosting this when Pam has a catering service."

"We can cater dinner if you want. I don't care."

She sighed. "Does it make me a failure if I order in? It's like ten people, plus kids. Shit. What the hell was I thinking?"

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "How did we end up doing this?"

Sookie shrugged. "Well, it was just Pam, and then it was Stella and Johan, and then Bill asked if we wanted to go to their place, and I said no, because Selah is a terrible cook, so then they were coming, and then his mom needed somewhere to go because Lorena is a bitch, and then there was Bones. I don't know."

I patted her head. "Next year we'll go to the Hamptons, where there's only a table for four. And let's see what we can order in."

She exhaled loudly. "You see, if you were here, you would have talked me out of this. You're not allowed to go again. I'll put you on house husband duties if anyone asks you again."

"Chained to the slowcooker?" I laughed. "Barefoot and pregnant, perhaps?"

She snorted. "Minus the pregnant. Did you not just deal with three days of a screaming adult child? I think we're done there."

"I agree. Wholeheartedly. One more Northman woman is all the world really needs."

Sookie grinned. "She's a Stackhouse too. See how well she entertains herself and how good she is in social situations? Those are not Northman traits."

"Fair enough." I smiled, as she straddled my lap, and I wrapped my arms around her back. "Hi there."

She buried her face in my neck. "I'm not ready for you to go again."

I moved her head so we were face to face, and I moved the hair out of her face "It's three weeks. And then I'm back for good. We can do three weeks standing on our heads."

She sniffed a little. "I know we can do it, but I don't want to."

"And that's fine. I don't want to either. I get to go back and deal with that grad student," I kissed her. "and you're not there, and I don't want to be anywhere that you're not."

We woke up late the next day, finally forced to open our eyes when the kids came to join us around nine. We all cuddled for a while, all of us seemingly pleased to be free of Stella's woes, at least for a little while. Max said she hadn't come back last night, so I took that as a good sign.

It was nice to have Sookie home and not at work for a few days. I could almost see her getting more relaxed as she found someone to send over a turkey with all the fixings, and with her and I at the grocery store, the kids were easy to manage. We spent a wad on appetizers and other things, deciding that we'd try and do a soup in the slow cooker, and throw together a salad.

Stella came back for the night that evening, simply saying that they'd decided to give peace a chance and that Johan would be coming for dinner. There was no ring, but she certainly seemed more relaxed.

Which was good, because it meant I didn't have to kill him.

After some careful negotiating, Stella agreed to watch the kids on Wednesday evening so Sookie and I could go for dinner. She also agreed not to have Johan over, because I didn't want them getting back into around the kids.

We went Mexican, once again sliding into our little table and sinking into our little Eric Sookie bubble, safe from all the horrors of the outside world. After a few margaritas and a tequila shot, and Sookie's foot oh so carefully in my lap, I leaned across the table. "Let's get a hotel."

"Only if you call Stella," she giggled. "I'm wearing my new underwear."

Needless to say I called, and after listening to her whine about breakfast, she agreed. But only if Johan could sleep over as well. At that point, I didn't care, as long as she promised not to inflict any psychological damage on the kids in any way. She agreed.

"We're good." I said, as she continued stroking me with her foot. "But we're going to have to get in a cab soon, so let's save that for the hotel, unless you want our waitress getting an eyeful."

She grinned devilishly, sliding her foot back in her shoe. "Fine."

We called around and ended up getting a room at the Hudson, and after another drink, we got in a cab and made our way over, looking like a couple of fools, as we checked in.

"The receptionist thinks we're having an affair," Sookie whispered, giggling as we got in the elevator. "She was ring checking."

"We do look a bit sneaky, and we don't have any luggage," I whispered back, pushing her up against the elevator wall and kissing her hard. "And married people don't have hotel liaisons. We're supposed to be having missionary sex on Saturday nights for thirty minutes a week."

"If you're only going to last thirty minutes, we wasted the hotel room," she whispered, going for my belt as I fumbled with the room key. "And we could have just done it in the cab, or the coat closet at the restaurant."

I snorted. "Listen to you. Who knew you were such a fan of exhibitionism?"

She tugged at my pants, adorably irritated with the button fly on my jeans. "You did. But this is better for tonight."

When we woke up the next morning, I had the mother of all headaches, and from Sookie's serenading in the bathroom, it was obvious that she felt even worse than I did.

"How much did we drink last night?" She groaned, looking up at me from the toilet, her eyes bloodshot.

"I don't know. I have a mother of a headache though. We should get home. It's nearly checkout time."

Her eyes went wide. "Like, it's almost noon?"

I nodded. "Eleven-thirty. I sent Stel a text to tell her we were on our way, and she said it was fine, which I guess means her and Johan are okay."

"Everyone is coming at four. Shit, Eric." She washed her face and tugged on her clothes from last night. "We have to go."

"Stella's going to clean the kids up and run the dishwasher. The food's not coming until three. We're okay." I pulled my clothes back on, glancing at my hair in the mirror and quickly realizing that without a shower, there wasn't going to be much I could do with it. "Come on, we'll get a cab, and we'll get home, and everything will be fine."

She frantically checked the room, making sure we weren't leaving everything. "Except I feel like I'm going to..." And then she rushed to the toilet.

I sat on the floor beside her, holding back her hair, since that was one of the unspoken marriage vows we'd once joked about. For better or for worse, for drunkenness or sobriety. I patted her back, as she finally picked her head up. "You'll be okay. We'll stop for some grease on the way home and get some water in you."

She looked at me, pouty. "I haven't drank like that in years. I think they made those with extra tequila. I was thinking it when I was drinking it. And we missed McDonald's breakfast."

"We'll find something." I pulled her up. "Come on now."

She let me get her out the door, and we checked out and got a cab uptown, stopping for some fries on the way. When we got in the door, it was chaos, with Pam, Alcide, and Gaby already there, and our kids still in their pyjamas.

"We're parent fail," Sookie whispered, as we pulled our shoes off.

"Pam sleeps with maid," I whispered back. "And Alcide doesn't care, because he sleeps with her too."

She grinned. "I knew it. And that does make me feel better."

"Do you suppose they'd cut us some slack if we showered together, in the interest of saving time?"

She shook her head. "Not a chance."

So we traded off, me getting the kids ready while she showered, and her starting the sides while I cleaned up. I felt bad, because I knew she was still retching in the toilet every so often, but it seemed to be passing slowly. Pam was, of course, rather useless when it came to dinner prep, instead opting to make a job of ignoring Stella and innocently flirting with Johan.

Still no ring on her finger. She noticed me looking, and gave me an eye roll. "Don't go there, Dad," she whispered, catching me in the basement trying to find some wine.

"I wasn't going anywhere. It's your life."

She leaned against the wall, scuffing her toe on the floor. "I'm going to move back with him, but we're not doing that right away."

"Whatever. Like I said, your life. I just want to see you happy." I passed her some wine. "Now, I'm going to vanish for ten minutes and go and check on Sookie. She's not feeling great."

Stella's eyes went wide. "Jesus Christ, she's not pregnant again, is she? I don't want to babysit a third kid. Your two are enough." And then they went wider. "But you haven't been here, so it wouldn't be yours. Dad, what's going on? Did Sookie cheat on you?"

I rolled my eyes at her. "Because we plan our family around your babysitting desires. No, she's not pregnant, and of course she didn't cheat one me. She's hungover. We both are. So don't push it today."

She chuckled. "You guys are like children. Or maybe teenagers."

"Look, when you've got two kids and you haven't seen each other in months, then you can judge. Now, take this wine upstairs and don't speak a word of this to Pam."

I found Sookie in the upstairs bathroom with Ceci sitting beside her, crosslegged. "Dad, Mom has a tummy ache."

I leaned in the doorway. "Yes, she does. Sook, you going to be okay?"

She turned around, pale and sweaty and nodded. "How much time do I have?"

"An hour."

"Shoot." She pouted. "Nothing's ready."

I shook my head. "I started the soup and they just dropped off the catering. Bill's bringing dessert, and Pam brought some gelato and a cake. We're fine. Stella is sorting out everything the caterer brought."

"You and Daddy look tired." She stood up and patted Sookie's head. "I'm going to go play with the baby." She took off in search of Gaby, who would always be the baby to her, even though they were only a couple of years apart.

"We do look tired." I chuckled, rubbing her back.

"We're too old for this." she groaned, pulling herself up. "Maybe I have food poisoning. I don't think I've ever been this sick."

"Please don't taint our Mexican place with your lies, woman." I raised an eyebrow. "You are awfully sick."

"Well we have guests, so I guess I'll have to be sick later." She linked her arm with mine. "Besides, I have to make sure you don't alienate my most valuable colleague."

"Oh, I'll be a perfect gentleman." I winked at her.

She rolled her eyes. "I don't think you know the meaning of the word."

We made our way downstairs, and I herded the kids into the kitchen, while Stella and Sookie finished setting the table.

Bill, Selah, Liz, Charlie and Zoey arrived about ten minutes late, griping about traffic, and carrying a lot of wine and pie. Bill nudged me as he walked by.

"The ghost of husband future hasn't arrived yet?"

I nudged him back. "You think you're funny, huh?" I raised an eyebrow at him. "The buck stops here."

"I'm just kidding, of course." He chuckled. "Sookie wants me to talk to him about editing a book of ethics readings, so you're off the hook for small talk for a while anyway."

I smiled. "I am capable of being civil."

He snorted. "Like you used to be with me? I wasn't a threat then either and you were a complete and utter asshole. But maybe you've grown. Matured. Does this mean I don't get to look forward to a dinner full of sexual innuendoes about how you're sleeping with Sookie? Because that's really why I'm here."

"There are children present. There may be innuendo, but it will be well veiled," I smirked. We both glanced at the door as we heard footsteps at the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me, our final guest has arrived."

Bill grinned. "This was totally worth a few pies and some wine. I'll see you inside, Northman."

"Blow me, Compton," I muttered under my breath, as I opened the door. "Crispin, welcome to our home."

Not.