Santana grimaced when she felt small tiny hands smacking her awake, wondering what she could do to teach CJ that hitting people was wrong. He wasn't violent he just seemed to like people's reactions when he did it, especially when it woke them up from a dead sleep, and judging from his giggling he was waiting for her to yell at him. "CJ, what have I told you about hitting people," she scolded trying to stifle a yawn. She fails and reaches down to pick up CJ who immediately squirms away from her.
"Daddy? Where Daddy? I hungy." CJ informed her bluntly reaching towards his mom's hand to tug her up.
Santana blinked, she could smell the French Toast from here, which meant that Charlie was attempting to spoil her with her favorite breakfast. "What are you talking about CJ? Daddy's in the kitchen."
"Nuh-uh." CJ disagreed with a shake of his head. "Stranger's in the kitchen."
It's enough to get Santana out of bed in a hurry, there wasn't supposed to be a stranger in the kitchen. CJ was two though, so it was impossible to really tell what he meant, maybe Charlie had invited someone over and had gone to the bathroom. "Let's go find out shall we?" She said picking him up. She winces he needed a diaper change but right now the most important thing was finding out who was in the kitchen. She'd make Charlie deal with CJ's dirty diaper later. She presses a finger to her lips and CJ smiles brightly but doesn't say anything as she slowly makes her way to the kitchen.
Her racing heart calms as soon as she sees that Charlie is indeed alone in the kitchen. He grins at her and she immediately notes the lack of facial hair, and the smooth look, "I made French Toast!"
"And you shaved," Santana says dryly, blinking and looking at CJ who immediately gripped her tighter, "Daddy's right there," she murmured. "He just shaved his ugly beard. See—"
"No. Where's daddy?"
Charlie sighed. "CJ, it's just me." He assures for what has to be the tenth time this morning. "It's Daddy." He shoots a frown at Santana, trying to hide the hurt that his own son didn't recognize him. "He practically bolted out of here before I could take care of his diaper."
Santana waves it away. She can take care of a dirty diaper, but CJ seemed downright scared of the 'intruder'. "You probably should have waited until he was awake, so he could see you shave it off. You might have to grow it back and then shave it off in front of him a few times so he understands."
"I can't just grow it back." Charlie huffs. He'd been growing that beard more or less since the day he had gotten divorced. Sure he could stop shaving for a couple weeks, but it wasn't going to be the same. He wasn't a super hairy guy to begin with and he had only needed to have it trimmed once in a while.
Santana smirks at him, trying not to find amusement in his exasperation. "It's your own fault for growing it in the first place."
Charlie scowls and is about to say something, when Max tumbles past his mother rubbing his eyes. "Are you fighting again?" he asks with a yawn, not noticing his father's new look.
"No, I'm simply pointing out that your father should have never grown that beard of his. He was just about to agree with me because shaving it has scared CJ."
Max's head whips towards his father and he stares at him, his jaw dropping. "What did you do to your face?"
"Excuse me?" Charlie questioned.
"Your beard? It's gone! Why?" Max demanded to know.
"Because I wanted to get rid of it." Charlie explains vaguely.
"But you looked cool!"
"No, he looked like someone who didn't know what a razor was, this is much better," Santana insists moving closer to her ex so that CJ could get used to him. "This was how he looked when you were a baby and growing up, I don't know why this surprises you."
"What did you do to your face?"
Everyone turns to look at Bela and Max grins. "That's what I said!"
"Everybody's a critic." Charlie grumbles, turning back to the French toast lest he give his family anything else to tease him for. "I should just eat all the French Toast and make you all watch. Last time I make breakfast for any of you."
"French toast without any bacon on the side? What are we animals?" Santana teases, grinning when CJ looks up at the word bacon and turns to Charlie.
"Bacon! I want bacon!"
Charlie groans and wonders what he had done to be cursed with such terrible monster children. "Bacon's in the fridge." He rolled his eyes when all three of his kids cheered. Whatever, at least they stopped giving him shit about being clean-shaven.
~O~
An hour later and the breakfast dishes are piled high in the sink and CJ has been thoroughly scrubbed down from the syrupy goo monster he had managed to become thanks to Charlie's diligent efforts. Once he had brought out the bacon, CJ seemed far less terrified of his freshly shaven father. He stands in the doorway, watching as Santana finishes sanitizing the kitchen table. He almost doesn't want to say anything, the comfortable silence too fragile for him to want to break it so early.
But Santana feels him watching and looks up. "If you're just going to watch me work, at least sit down so you stop being a creeper."
He smiles sheepishly. "Sorry, I can get started on the dishes—"
"Don't worry about it." She shrugs it off. "It's the least I can do since you both made breakfast and had to deal with the crazy protests about your gross beard."
He smirks, rubbing his hand over his clean-shaven chin. "I didn't realize they were so attached to it." He admits. Yeah, he's had the beard for a while but his kids acted like he chopped off his own arm or something.
Santana stills and then turns toward the sink. She's still reeling and isn't sure how she's supposed to feel. Sure, waking up at what must have been the ass-crack of dawn to find some schmuck willing to fix his terrible attempt at shaving so he could be home before anyone else woke up, seems like it should be a huge step but she just feels confused.
He notices the tensing of her shoulders and frowns. "Is something wrong?"
She blows out a breath. "No?"
Charlie furrows his brow but stays quiet. He's known Santana almost longer than anyone and he knows when she's trying to work through things in her mind. Sometimes staying quiet lets her open up more than if he were to press her.
Finally, she sighs and turns around. "Why did you do it?"
"Do what—? The affair? I don't know. I was stupid and young and believe me, if I could go back—"
"No." She cuts him off quickly. She doesn't need to re-hash old wounds. Though it is something that they'll need to talk about, he can't claim that he didn't know. He knew, he had to know, how was she supposed to trust him not to do it again if he didn't know? "I'm not trying to bring this up again, at least not now. I just mean, the beard. Why? Why did you shave it off?"
"Because you asked me to."
"There are a lot of things I've asked you to do, and you've never slunk off to get it done the next day." She points out. "So what is different this time? What changed?"
"I did." Charlie stands, coming around the table to close the distance between them. "Fuck Santana, I messed up. Not just seven years ago. I messed up because I thought that there was even a chance that I could do this without you. I listened to my dad and—shit, if I could do it all over again, I would. I swear I would. I miss you and I'll spend the rest of my life regretting what happened. But if there's even—if I've even got a shot at earning your trust back then I'm there. There's nothing that I will let come between us again, especially not a stupid beard."
She searches his eyes, seeing nothing but sincerity and for a second it's as if everything else around them falls away. She closes the gap between them, gripping his t-shirt firmly between her hands and pulling him close.
He closes the distance, his towering frame melting against her in a perfect fit. It's different from the other times, the frantic kisses and sometimes mistakes that they've made since the divorce. This feels far more fragile.
He pulls away a little when he feels his dick start to stir. The kids are just down the hall and he can't do this again if it doesn't mean forever. "What does this mean?"
"It means that I'm tired of pretending I don't still love you." She explains simply. "I want—I think we owe it to ourselves to try again." She needed to know if it would work out between them.
He blinks and is tempted to pinch himself. This can't be—he's dreamt of this moment and yet here it is right in front of him. "I think we should keep this between us for a while."
Santana pulls back arching her brow. "Seriously?"
He nods, even though he feels it pains him to admit it, he knows it's the right thing. "We don't need the kids—or god forbid the press—giving us any more pressure than we already have. We can't just go back to where we used to be. I know I'm different than I was a year ago and if we're going to start over we need to start slow. I don't want you coming out of this looking like the bad guy."
The words are far more mature than she expected and while she doesn't disagree with him, she doesn't like the idea of keeping secrets. But the fact of the matter was, that they weren't good, things weren't good between them. She still didn't trust him, not with her heart. "Since when did you get so smart?" She says finally blowing some hair out of her face. "So what do we do? I mean we've got three kids together, it's not as if we're young and we're trying this again from scratch. Dating isn't going to fix this. How do we fix us? How do I trust you again?"
It's enough to give him pause, he truly hadn't thought that far ahead. "A therapist?"
Santana raises a brow, "You always said that therapy was a load of shit."
"You agreed with me, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how to earn your trust back. My word to you means nothing right now, I don't even know where to begin or how to start repairing the damage. Quinn said I should stop letting my dick do all the talking for me because that's what got me in trouble in the first place."
Santana snorted at this, "Of course she would say that. We could try? A few sessions I guess. We'd have to find someone who won't go blab it to TMZ."
"I can ask Sue if she knows anyone to recommend? I'll tell her that Quinn was asking." Charlie offers.
"Sure, if you want her to kill you. Might as well tell her so she knows what to do and who to trust. Besides Quinn lives in New York—"
"'Are we going to see aunt Quinn and Beth?" Max asked popping his head into the kitchen and noting how close his parents were. He blinks when they immediately jump apart. "What are you doing?"
"Your mom was feeling my face." Charlie explains.
"Why?"
"Because it makes your dad look like a normal person again," Santana explains deciding to go with that.
"Oh. So are we going to see Beth?"
"No. Quinn will probably hand her over, or keep me locked away." Charlie made a face.
Santana raised a brow, "Worse than Bela?"
"Worse than Bela."
Santana winced. "We'll see your cousin when she can crawl and can sleep through the night. Besides CJ gets jealous when your dad holds other babies. I think he likes being his dad's baby."
Max nods and studies his parents again, "Are you sure you two aren't doing anything?"
"What do you think we'd be doing Max?" Charlie asks honestly.
"Sex?"
"Gross, not in the kitchen! We eat there!" Bela groans and looks at her parents.
"We weren't having sex—Max what have we said about sex? You're seven! You're not supposed to know what it is and our clothes are on!"
"Right. Aunt Brittany said you can have sex with your clothes on—"
"Aunt Brittany is never babysitting you again." Santana informs him turning to look at Charlie.
"I've been saying this for years." Charlie grumbles and reaches to pull Max into a hug. "Come on, let's go for a run."
"Dad, no." Max groans trying to run away. "Mom save me!"
Santana rolled her eyes and tried not to smile, this was her family and maybe it was time to finally fight for it.
