A/N: Additional content warning for this chapter, as there's some sexual content and descriptions, including description of some consensual spanking in a sexual context.
Chapter 5
The front door opens and closes.
Sandy looks up from his newspaper as Seth comes bopping into the room, giving his dad a nod of greeting before starting to riffle through the fridge.
"How was breakfast?" Sandy asks, before taking a sip of coffee
Sandy doesn't want to pry, but Ryan had been slowly starting to rejoin the human race, so even though it was just a breakfast out with the girls, it was hopefully a sign that things were getting back to something approaching normal for the boys.
"Good." Seth ducks down, peering down one of the lower fridge shelves.
"Do you have group tonight?"
There's the sound of glass jars jostling against each other.
"That was last night," Seth says flatly.
Seth had recently put forth the theory that Sandy asked when group was every week, not because he'd forgotten, but as a way to gauge whether Seth was still going, and so he could then revel in his subsequent delight when he confirmed that yes, Seth was still going.
That Seth was onto him on this one hadn't slowed Sandy down a step.
"So any plans for tonight?"
"I'm uh..." Seth's body contorts as he starts to reach for something that is clearly buried in the very furthest depths of the Cohen fridge. "I'm going to Summer's."
"Dinner here or over there?"
Seth emits a little grunt of frustration. "Over...there...ha! Yes!" He ducks his head again, seemingly to confirm his score.
"And you are eating okay these days, yeah?"
Seth snorts. "Yes, Nana."
"I'm your dad; I gotta ask." Sandy takes another swig of coffee. "You're in and out so much this summer, I barely see you eating."
"Mmm."
"So uh, Seth, can we talk for a few minutes?" Sandy asks.
It's at that moment that Seth manages to grab whatever it was he'd been after-it turns out to be the last can of Mountain Dew-and as he whirls around to stare suspicious daggers at Sandy, his can extraction becomes a bit less precise, his pendulous arm knocking over various cans and jars as he goes.
To his credit, Seth maintains his steely eye contact with Sandy, even as said jars and cans loudly clunk and clatter and roll around behind him.
"You can get that-"
"I'll get that la-"
Father and son cut off their overlapping statements, and the ensuing silence hangs awkwardly in the air.
Seth shuts the fridge.
"Is this a kitchen table talk, or a your office talk?" Seth's eyes narrow.
"The table's fine." Sandy hesitates, wincing. "Well, is Ryan home?"
Seth's expression sours. "He's still out with Marissa. So this is a your office talk, but at the kitchen table. Got it." His shoulders slump.
"Why don't we just talk, huh?"
Seth makes a face, but he dutifully trudges over to the table and takes a seat opposite Sandy. He cracks open the Mountain Dew can, but just kind of stares at it on the table rather than taking a sip.
"I just got off the phone with your mom," Sandy starts.
Seth looks away.
Sandy waits.
"Tons of fun being the middleman, huh?" Seth idly pokes at his soda can, his downcast eyes dulling whatever acerbic sting might've accompanied the question. He'd come into the room with some level of sunny-adjacent energy-probably the result of a morning outing with his friends-but he's fully deflated now. "What did she want?" he asks quietly.
"You don't have to say yes, but your mom asked if maybe you'd do a session with her and Jodi next time we go visit," Sandy explains. "And I can be there with you, of course, if you want me to be. Whatever you need."
Seth stares at the table.
A minute goes by.
"You can take some time to think about it too," Sandy offers, breaking the silence.
"She knows about it, right? Jodi, I mean. Like mom talked to her about it?"
Seth still won't look at him.
Sandy hesitates, realizing they're entering tricky territory.
"I think your mom needs someone to talk to about it," he says carefully. "You know, I was in therapy for a while too, when you were...well, years ago." Sandy swallows. "It helped."
It was something Sandy tried hard to avoid acknowledging with Seth, the wound that The Trauma had left in both of his parents.
Of course, it was also the blatantly obvious elephant in many a room in the Cohen house over the years, so he wasn't sure that avoiding the subject was doing Seth any real favors.
"Yeah well, you left me out of it," Seth mumbles. "Thanks, by the way," he adds darkly. "Do you think she talks about it at those groups they make her go to?" He slouches down a little further in his chair, resting his chin on his hand. "Like when I go there, does everyone know…" he trails off, lips twitching.
"Oh Seth. I-I don't really know." Sandy's brow furrows. "In a way, I really can't imagine your mother talking to so many people about it, but I don't know all of what she's sharing." He frowns. "I'm sorry this is something you're worrying about. I really had no idea."
Seth doesn't say anything, studying the grain of the table with apparent interest.
"And you don't have to do this, Seth. You can also sleep on it-"
"I can't." Seth coughs, then clears his throat. He sits up, more or less upright. "I can't do that with her. Jodi." He shakes his head. "I'm sorry for Mom. I'm really not trying to be a dick...I just..."
"You don't have to explain," Sandy says quickly. "I know you're not trying to be a..." he gestures with his hands. "...Difficult."
"It just..." Seth bites his lip. "It feels like when I was little, having to talk to...having to tell all those people I didn't want to." He looks up at Sandy finally, eyes large and dark and solemn. "I can't do that again." His voice cracks a little, and he clears his throat. "Not even for Mom. I'm sorry."
Sandy blinks. He doesn't know what to say.
It was stunning really, hearing Seth explain himself, hearing him speak in complete sentences about his feelings, not trying to avoid the question or kick the can down the road by agreeing to do it and then wriggling his way out of it the day of, or the minute of.
"It's okay." Sandy starts to reach across the table, but stops when Seth pulls away, slumping back into his chair. "And Seth, thank you for telling me how you feel about it. It means a lot that you trust me with that." He pauses. "I know we've never really talked about that time..."
"Yeah, well." Seth shrugs and sniffs, squirming in his chair. "I never wanted to. I still don't." He straightens up suddenly, doing a double-take, his face scrunching in confusion. "Wait, did that actually just work, just saying I didn't wanna do it?"
"I said you didn't have to do it."
"Yeah, but I thought you meant like how I didn't have to have a bar mitzvah photo shoot, or when Mom said I didn't have to wear a suit and tie to the Newpsies' Easter gala, or when I was eight and you said I didn't have to kiss The Nana goodbye even though she reeked of cigarettes and people keeping her distance from her would be kind of a natural consequence of that choice." Seth pauses to take a breath. "Or-"
"I got it." Sandy holds up a hand. "And Seth, I mean it. Your mom means it too. You don't have to do this, okay?"
"Okay." Seth nods, face going solemn again. "I'll take a walk with her again, or whatever else she wants. Just...not that."
"I...I mean, we respect that," Sandy says.
"Are we done?" Seth asks.
"Sure."
Seth starts to push away from the table, then pauses.
"Um..." Seth reaches out and strums lightly on the metal tab on his soda can. "Mom mentioned something about coming with me to see Dr. Max sometime, like when she's home." He shrugs. "I could try that, maybe. I'm not sure though."
"Okay." Sandy smiles at his son. "I'll let her know."
Seth nods, managing a tight-lipped smile as he stands up.
oooooooooooooooooooooo
Seth is in Summer's bedroom, and it's honestly a relief.
Her purple-walled canopy-bedded sanctuary had become his refuge that summer, a quiet place away from the raging storm of every heinous or awkward or stressful thing that had been happening in the past few months.
It was quiet there.
His brain was quiet there.
He gets the sex out of the way first.
Well, not gets it out of the way.
He likes the sex.
The sex is good.
It just takes a high level of focus to make sure things go smoothly.
Which is complicated by the fact that it's not always the same, day-to-day, what feels good or okay or doable and what feels bad or weird or not-doable.
Like sometimes, it's helpful and it's grounding to see Summer's face and the slow flush of red on her cheeks, or to feel the warm puffs of her breath on his chest as she pants and whispers his name.
And sometimes that's all too much, and he prefers to address the equally and identifiably feminine back of Summer's head, his eyes finding a point of focus in the waves of her dark hair, and then all that moaning and heavy breathing and the look on her face as he moves inside her can all take place somewhere else, somewhere in front of Summer, somewhere where Seth isn't.
But he's learned to be careful with his mind and his body, and he's learned how to tell the different days apart, so he positions himself behind Summer and he stares at a fixed point on the back of her head, and he spanks her a few times because he knows she likes it, and it feels good when he hazards a glance over and sees her hands close into fists around two handfuls of her silk sheets, and it even feels good when she moans Cohen, because he's learned how to know when it's okay to listen and when that will feel bad or weird or not-doable and he needs to tune her out.
He knows how to let in the good of sex and filter out the bad.
He knows how to make The Sex work for him.
It's really just the one moment that throws him off, Summer angling her head to look back at him, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her face scrunched into a wince that deepens with each thrust, everything he's doing to her reflected on her face as she pants and moans. And then her eyes find his and her mouth forms a little smile that turns back into a wince when he thrust again, when he hits some point inside her, and she moans his name again, only this time it doesn't feel so good or so okay or so doable and he feels something start to collapse in his chest.
He tries looking away, finding a new fixed point of focus, but his eyes go rogue and find the spot where his hand had struck Summer's skin, the red marks the size and shape of his hand and each of his individual fingers, and he knows that's not good either, to let his eyes stop there for even a moment.
But it's just a few unsteady moments amongst many more that are fine, and he finds a way to right the ship, to close his eyes and hold up the beams in his chest until Summer looks away and everything goes back to where it needs to be, neat and tidy and taking in the good and filtering out the bad.
So he's careful with his mind and body, and the sex is good.
oooooooooooooooooooo
They're lying in Summer's bed.
The sex is over and they're fully clothed and Summer's head is resting on his chest, and Seth has a glass of white wine in one hand.
Summer had TiVo'ed the last few episodes of Veronica Mars, and they'd decided to make an evening of it, a little mini-marathon for their viewing pleasure.
It's probably a mark of how boring Seth has become that this is exciting to him, the opportunity to shut off his brain and sip cold wine and melt into Summer's silk sheets and giant fluffy pillows, maybe give Princess Sparkle's tail a brushing if he feels like it.
But maybe boring is okay.
No one's getting shot, for one thing.
"Oh my god, Cohen. How are your hands so dry? It's the middle of the summer."
"Hmm?" Seth tears his eyes away from the screen, and Summer's looking at him, looking wide-eyed and mildly-to-moderately appalled.
"This cannot stand, Cohen." Summer fumbles around the sheets for the remote and pauses the tv. "Hang on-I'll be right back." She disentangles herself from Seth and from the sheets and scurries off, a tiny whirlwind of energy.
"Where are you going?"
A moment later, Summer bounces back onto the bed. She grabs Seth's free hand.
Seth looks down. There's a large dollop of something on Summer's hand.
"What are you doing?" He demands.
"I'm moisturizing you, duh." Summer squints at his hand. "These cracks in your skin are freaking me out."
"What? No." Seth snatches his hand away from Summer's. "You're gonna make me smell like that store at the mall."
"Relax, Cohen." Summer gives him an indulgent smile. "This is a totally masculine scent." She grabs his hand again.
"Are you gonna tell Ryan about this?" Seth eyes her suspiciously.
Summer snorts. "What, they don't have moisturizer in Chino?"
"Soft skin is a sign of weakness on the streets, Summer. You know this."
Seth quietly resigns himself to Summer's wishes, watching as she slowly rubs the lotion onto his hand, her small hand gently twisting around each of his fingers. She gestures with her eyes for him to lose the wine glass, and he obliges, sliding it onto the nightstand and forking over his other hand.
"You know Cohen, just because you're a boy doesn't mean you can't do nice things for yourself." Summer massages the lotion into Seth's other hand, her fingers soft on his skin. She looks up at Seth, a lock of dark hair falling in front of her face. "You should be nicer to yourself, Cohen," she says, eyes large and dark and solemn. She leans forward and presses a light kiss to Seth's forehead. She pulls back, looking at him.
Seth smiles at Summer, fumbling for something to say, but his head feels empty and quiet and like there's nothing really to say.
Summer sticks her tongue out at him and laughs a little.
Seth shakes his head rolls his eyes.
His dad and Dr. Max, they really don't get it, all the ways that he doesn't deserve her.