A/N: This is part of The Man and the Egg series, taking place several months before The Man and the Egg. This story plays with the timeline and characters in S2, so here's the gist, with obvious spoilers for Season 2: Seth starts working at the Bait Shop, and Seth and Alex start dating after Rebecca is already back on the scene. Let's just imagine that Seth still got in trouble around the time of Sandy and Kirsten's anniversary, but for un-Alex-related reasons. Seth and Alex are also seeing each other for longer in this story, so it's stretching out their relationship before Alex gets together with Marissa.

Please also see end notes if you're so inclined to want to know a bit about my thought process with some of these stories and how they fit together.

TW: For implied/referenced child sexual abuse.

The Wake Up Call

By: Flannel_Mafioso

Sandy's phone buzzes, loudly clunking up and down as it vibrates against the nightstand.

Groaning, he reaches blindly towards the offensive noise. As his hand closes around the phone, his barely open eyes register the red glow of his alarm clock, which announces the time as well past 3am.

A jolt of panic wakes him up more fully, his brain quickly cycling through who could be calling him at this hour, and to deliver what news.

Ma, he thinks, heart picking up in his chest.

But it's Seth's name on the screen.

Sandy stands up, muscle memory kicking in as he slides on his slippers before padding towards the door, flipping open the phone as he goes.

"Seth?" He whispers, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

There's a crackle of static.

"Seth?"

"Dad?" Seth's voice sounds small and far away. He's breathing heavily.

"Seth, what's wrong? Where are you?" Sandy makes a beeline for the stairs, fully awake now.

"He found me." Seth lets out a hoarse sob. "H-he said he would find me."

"You're okay," Sandy huffs into the phone. "I'm coming."

Seth was having a nightmare; that was it.

It had been so long since the last one that Sandy had been caught off-guard, but that was it.

They used to have a plan worked out where Sandy would leave his phone on and by the bed in case he couldn't hear Seth shouting for him, or in case Seth woke up too disoriented or too scared to walk through the dark house to find him.

They hadn't had to use the plan in a long time, but it had been the plan.

Sandy takes the stairs two at a time.

"He said he would find me." Seth's breath is coming in short harsh bursts.

"Everything's okay," Sandy assures him. "I'm here." He throws open Seth's door, already mentally preparing himself for the scene ahead.

It's been awhile, but this calls up his muscle memory too, kneeling in front of Seth and talking him through his nightmare, assuring him that he's okay, that he's home and he's safe and the violence and terror of the past are just that-in the past. And Sandy can clean up any vomit that needs cleaning up and disentangle any sheets that need disentangling and make things right again,inasmuch as he's ever been able to do that.

He flicks on the light and turns the corner.

He stops short.

Seth's bed is empty.

Seth's bed is neatly made.

Seth's room is empty.

It occurs to Sandy that he can hear Seth hyperventilating through the phone, but he doesn't hear that same sound anywhere in the room.

"Seth?" Sandy presses a hand to his chest, trying to sound calm and in control although he's pretty sure he's on the verge of hyperventilating himself now. "Where are you?"

He tells himself that Seth is probably hidden away in some remote corner of the house. Maybe he'd tried to come downstairs to wake him up and gotten confused and turned around and ended up in one of the random auxiliaryrooms in the Cohen house.

"I-I don't know," Seth gasps out. "I don't know where I am, Dad."

Sandy swallows a lump in his throat, trying to ground himself, trying not to become engulfed by the anguish and confusion in his son's voice, and the panic rising in his own chest.

"Seth, sweetie, everything's okay," he says gently. "You've just had a nightmare, okay, but I'm going to find you right now. Can you look around and tell me what you see?"

"I don't know where I am." Seth gasps for air. "He took me. H-he said he would-"

There's noise on the other end of the phone, crackling and static and then a sound like a door opening and the through-line of Seth's labored breathing, and for a moment Sandy's heart stops in his chest.

No,he thinks. That's impossible.

It could be too easy to get sucked into Seth's nightmares, to the memories he was reliving and the terrors that were playing out in his mind. It didn't feel fake, or like it was only happening to him, had always been something that Sandy had experienced on a deep visceral level that he could still feel the reverberations of days later.

That was all this was, just that again, after so long of it not happening, he tells himself, as he runs from Seth's room and starts to race around the upstairs, pushing open doors and listening for the sounds of his little boy struggling to breathe.

The phone is still pressed against his ear as he searches the house.

"Seth?" There's a female voice faraway, but just audible on the other end of the line. "What are you doing?"

It doesn't sound like Kirsten.

"Are you okay?" The same voice asks.

There's more static and garbled sounds and Sandy thinks he hears Seth saying something, but the phone is moving or he's losing service, and he can't make out what Seth might be saying or what's going on, or where he might be.

And then the line goes dead.

ooo

"I don't know where I am, Dad."

Seth's voice, so small and so broken, rings in Sandy's ears as he's now taking the stairs two at a time going down.

He's not really sure where he's going or what his next move is until his eyes fix on the poolhouse.

Ryan.

Sandy bursts into the poolhouse.

"Ryan?" He turns on the light, swiftly making his way to Ryan's bedside. "Ryan?" He shakes Ryan's shoulder.

"S-Sandy?" Ryan blinks awake, squinting groggily up at Sandy. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

"Are Seth and Summer back together?" Sandy spits out urgently.

"What?" Ryan rubs at his face, glancing at his bedside clock. "It's three in the morning and you want to know if Seth and Summer are back together?"

Sandy shakes his head, frustrated with his own panicked incoherence.

"I can't find Seth," he blurts out. "He's not in his room. I don't think he came home last night. Is he seeing anyone?"

It's too much to explain at once: the phone call, the female voice on the other end of the line.

"Alex," Ryan offers,sitting up in bed. "He might be with her."

"Alex?" Sandy hadn't heard of an Alex before, and suddenly Seth is with an Alex at three in the morning?

"Yeah, uh, Seth's manager." Seeing Sandy's confusion, he adds, "At the Bait Shop." Noting Sandy's continued confusion, Ryan adds "at work."

"Work?"

Seth had a job?

At a bait shop?

Sandy shakes his head again. That was well beside the point.

"Do you know where shelives?"

"Uh, yeah." Ryan's brow scrunches, trying to recall the relevant details through the fog in his just woken up brain. "I don't know the apartment number, but it's that place down by the pier, the one with the billboard with the weird cowboy on it."

"You're sure?" Sandy knows the place, or the vicinity anyway.

"Yeah. I dropped him off there once." Ryan's eyes wrinkle in concern. "I can come with you," he offers, already starting to pull back his covers.

"No, you stay here in case he comes home, okay? And please leave your phone on." Sandy starts to get up "Thanks, Ryan. I'm sorry to have woken you up," he calls over his shoulder.

"It's okay," Ryan says. "I'm sure Seth is okay," he adds, though Sandy is already out the door by the time he gets the words out.

ooo

Sandy speeds toward the apartment building, nursing a pit of dread in his stomach as he mentally catalogues all the evidence of his poor parenting as of late.

He hadn't known that his son had a job, or that he was seeing someone, let alone seeing someone long enough to be spending the night at her place.

And it was part of Sandy's nightly routine to check in on both boys before he turned in himself. He usually caught them before they'd gone to sleep, and so even if it was the only facetime he snagged with them that day, he'd take those few minutes to ask how things were going, the perfect opportunity for Seth to share that he had a new job or a new girlfriend.

It also would've been the perfect opportunity to realizethat Seth had neglected to come home that night, and to realize it around 11pm, not through a phone call waking him up at three in the morning.

But it was also part of Sandy's nightly routine that he'd been failing at, now neglecting more often than not.

The summer without the boys had thrown him off his routine somewhat, but that was no excuse for Sandy having no idea what was going on under his own roof.

It was also a pretty flimsy excuse.

It wasn't the boys' absence that got him out of the habit.

In fact, as soon as they'd come back, he'd grown to relish even more those few minutes of one-on-one time at the end of each evening, secure in the knowledge that his boys were home, that he could trade a few jokes with each of them, hear a little bit about Ryan's Physics class and Seth's efforts to win Summer back.

And then Rebecca had come to Newport and Sandy had let himself get distracted, pulled back into her orbit and the chaos that came with it, and now he was, again more often than not, not even home at 11pm to check in on the boys.

He'd slunk in around one that morning, undressing in the dark of his room, not wanting to disturb Seth or Ryan's slumber by popping his head in to check on them.

And not wanting to get caught.

He didn't check on his sons because he didn't want to get busted for being out so late.

Seth would've immediately clocked it and made a smart comment about it that hid a question in there somewhere and a concern somewhere even deeper.

Ryan would've immediately clocked it and never said a word about it, but there would be a question and a concern in there too, in the way his eyes would narrow and look away and his jaw would twitch, and Sandy would imagine that he and Seth would compare notes and theories at some point, the two children in the household trying to piece together what was going on with their parents but being too tentative to really confront it, those lines between adult business and kid business so blurry and so hard to navigate within a family.

Sandy realizes through his self-condemnation that he's there, squealing to a stop in the parking lot of the apartment complex by the pier with the billboard with the weird cowboy on it.

He also realizes that he has no idea where to start looking for Seth.

He throws open his car door and is contemplating banging on doors until he finds his son when he spots a familiar lanky figure not far in the distance, leaning against a porch railing and talking to a girl.

"Seth!" Sandy jogs in the direction of the lanky figure.

Seth's head jerks up, mouth twisting into a pained grimace as he catches sight of Sandy.

"Oh good, my dad's here." Seth's grimace deepens. "And in his pajamas and slippers. This is...just the development I was hoping for."

Sandy pulls up short, taking in that Seth is standing upright and spouting sarcasm and looking-other than a subtle redness around his eyes and a light flush to his face, visible under the glow of the porch light—-basically intact and like himself.

The girl beside Seth is wearing skimpy shorts and a tank top, and other than looking tired and thoroughly confused, is quite stunning.

Sandy wonders how old this girl is, this girl who is dating his teenage son and is apparently his manager at work and has a large tattoo on her arm and no parents in sight at three in the morning.

"Um, Alex, this is my dad, Sandy Cohen." Seth gestures weakly at Sandy,looking down at his feet. "Dad, this is Alex. I was just explaining to Alex here about my unfortunate sleepwalking condition and the really fun humiliation that comes along with it." Seth's eyes dart up and flash at Sandy.

"Right, yes." Sandy nods, suddenly feeling the full awkwardness of the moment as the adrenaline in his system slowly peters out, the danger seemingly over, leaving some combination of being furious with Seth, concerned about his mental well-being, and relieved that he's safe. "It's, uh, nice to meet you, Alex," he says to the girl.

"Nice to meet you," Alex responds, arms crossed self-consciously across her chest, at the same time as Seth comes out with "Nice is debatable here, right? Like we're not landing on *nice* here, are we?"

No one looks at each other for a moment.

Seth clears his throat. "And Dad, I'm just about to explain to you how this was all a rather unfortunate accident and how there's no need to hand out any kind of punishment over it," he says.

"Yeah, we didn't mean to fall asleep," Alex chimes in, although she still can't quite look Sandy in the eye. "I swear."

"I believe you," Sandy says to Alex. "And I certainly don't hold you responsible for my son's actions." He gestures to Seth with a tilt of his head. "Seth, we'll talk about this on the way home."

"I'll meet you at home," Seth responds. "I have Mom's car." He holds up his keyring in evidence.

"You'll ride with me and we can pick up Mom's car in the morning," Sandy counters. "Alex, is that okay?"

"Sure. There are always free spots anyway," Alex says.

"I'm really fine to drive." Seth's voice is low, eyes flashing at Sandy again, perhaps urging him to be cool around his new girlfriend.

No dice on that one.

"I don't want you driving right now. Not this late, and not after..." Sandy pauses, eyeing Alex. "...sleepwalking."

Seth bites his lip, looking like he's tempted to argue further, but also like he knew there was more to be lost than to gain by pushing things.

"I'll call you later," Alex says softly. She reaches out and squeezes Seth's arm, offering him a little smile.

Sandy instinctively averts his eyes from the affection between them.

"Okay," Seth mumbles, shoulders slumping, a hangdog expression on his face as he listens to Sandy and Alex exchange stiltedgoodnights.

"C'mon." Sandy motions for Seth to follow him, and Seth dutifully trudges along beside him to the car,hands jammed into his pockets.

ooo

"You didn't have to come here." Seth's voice is sullen as he clicks his seatbelt into place. He leans back against the headrest and sighs.

Sandy's eyebrows shoot up.

"Really?" He asks. "That's how we're starting this conversation? No, 'Sorry Dad, for the massive cardiac event I just gave you'?"

"No, I just..." Seth breaks off, frustrated. "I'm sorry. I just meant that I tried to call you to say I was coming home."

Sandy pats the pockets of his pajama pants and realizes that, in his haste to leave the house, he must've dropped his phone somewhere along the way.

"I didn't get your call," he explains. "But even so, I would've come anyway. I meant what I said back there. I'm not comfortable with you driving like this."

Seth doesn't say anything for a beat, and Sandy imagines that he's probably biting back an instinctive "Like what?"

He probably didn't want Sandy to answer that question.

Seth could be a bull in a china shop when it came to speaking sometimes, and other times he was meticulous and vigilant and incredibly careful, tiptoeing deftly through a minefield.

"How did you even find me?" he asks instead.

"Ryan." Sandy looks both ways before pulling out of the parking lot. "Which reminds me; can you let him know we're on our way home? I want him to be able to go back to sleep."

"Okay." Seth flips open his phone and his fingers start flying. "Thanks for at least showing up in your least offensive pajamas," he adds, smirking a little down at his phone. "That was mortifying enough without Alex being treated to your Berkeley shirt with the gaping hole in the armpit."

"Hey, that's my favorite t-shirt."

"It can barely be called a shirt at this point. I'm just grateful I didn't have to introduce Alex to my dad and his right nipple at the same time."

Sandy snickers at that, then frowns, recognizing Seth's efforts to transition them into lightness and distraction and casual conversation.

It would be infuriating if he were only trying to avoid the consequences of his actions, but instead Sandy also got to feel nervous and unsteady, unsure of how to meet Seth in the conversational minefield they'd taken a break from for the past few years.

Seth had always been far better at it than he was.

"Are you okay?" Sandy asks abruptly.

Seth snorts. "I'm fine. I mean, I might die of actual shame, but what else is new?" He snaps his phone closed.

"What you said on the phone-"

"I don't remember what I said on the phone," Seth interjects sharply.

"I'm not so sure I believe that," Sandy says softly.

"Yeah, well, that's your problem," Seth shoots back.

"That's quite a tone to take with me right now," Sandy points out. "Do you have any idea what you just put me through?"

And Seth's tone itself feels like a hint. Seth had been savvy enough and emotionally guarded enough for years that he didn't tend to lash out when he was in trouble. He soothed, he placated, he rationalized and made excuses, and sometimes he got cute or tested the waters with a joke or two to try to soften the damage, but he was as slow to get angry as he was slow to get to most emotions, and he typically withstood parental lectures without digging himself any deeper with his attitude.

"I-I'm sorry." Seth sounds genuinely contrite. "I just really have no idea what I said. I'm sorry if I freaked you out. I didn't mean to put you through anything."

Sandy squeezes the steering wheel under his hands and then slowly loosens his grip.

He hesitates in these moments, hesitates on the brink of saying too much, of bringing too much out of the past that had been neatly tucked away for so long.

Seth playing dumb is probably a hint too. Even if Seth didn't remember what had happened, he could almost certainly guess somewhere in the vicinity, but if Sandy was going to push the conversation, Seth was going to force him to do what he could so rarely do and spell it all out very directly.

"You were...I mean..."

Seth tenses up beside him, probably surprised that Sandy was even taking a stab at calling his bluff.

"You said..." Sandy swallows. "You were talking like...like you needed my help...like someone was hurting you..." He pauses, steadying himself. "Like...like, he hadtaken you."

Sandy is immediatelyflooded with guilt and relief and a little horrified nausea to have put that all out there, to have invoked Steven knowing what that did to Seth when the past and his pain and his nightmares were reflected back to him.

Seth doesn't respond.

"Seth?" Sandy ventures.

"What?" Seth mumbles.

"Do you-do you think about it a lot?" Sandy asks softly. "Because it would make sense if you did, especially with-"

"No," Seth cuts in. "I barely think about it at all." His voice wavers just a little, only perceptible because Sandy has been listening for it. "It doesn't really affect me anymore."

"You know I really wish that were true, Seth."

"You don't just get to decide that it's not, Dad." Seth's voice is cold. He exhales sharply. "Look, I didn't fall asleep there on purpose."

"I know," Sandy says. "I mean, I figure-"

"But I've done it before," Seth explains. "On purpose."

"Oh." Sandy takes that in.

"And it's been fine, when I've done it on purpose," Seth goes on. "I guess if I know where I am when I'm going to sleep, my brain knows how to figure out where I am when I wake up."

Sandy nods slowly, following Seth's argument, understanding why he'd just admitted to spending multiple nights over at Alex's apartment, putting himself at risk for greater punishment but trying to save himself from further scrutiny of another kind.

"I think this was just a one-off," Seth adds lightly. "Nothing to freak out about. Truly."

Sandy swallows, blinking heavily, struck sharply and suddenly by the intensity of what it must have been like for Seth, waking up confused and frightened and not understanding where he was, everything around him strange and unfamiliar and threatening, and Seth knowing immediately that Steven must have-finally, after all this time-come for him.

It was too much, it was too heavy, to think that that fear, that belief that he could be taken at any moment, might live perpetually in the front of Seth's mind, always feeling like it was a moment or a heartbeat or a single misstep away from coming true.

"Yeah." Sandy's voice is thick and raspy as he slows to a stop ata red light. "You're probably right." He glances at Seth.

Seth's body is hunched up, seemingly as small as he can make it,his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He looks like he's shivering, or maybe shaking.

Sandy reaches out and turns on the heat. He clears his throat.

"So I take it you've been sleeping together, you and this Alex?" Sandy is entirely aware of what he's doing as he's doing it, aiding in Seth's recovery as he steers them away from The Trauma and back into a more typical parent-child interrogation.

He's not sure it's a good thing, this rescue mission.

"Yeah," Seth answers sheepishly. "And before you ask, we've been safe."

"I'm glad to hear that," Sandy says. "I'm not so glad to hear that you've been sneaking out to spend the night over there. Where are Alex's parents?"

"She...doesn't exactly live with them," Seth admits.

"She doesn't..." Sandy's eyebrows shoot up yet again. "Exactly how old is she?" He braces himself for an answer in the early-to-mid twenties.

"Seventeen," Seth answers. "She's just...uh, emancipated." He mumbles the last word quickly.

Fantastic.

While Sandy's been sneaking off to see Rebecca, his son has been at his emancipated girlfriend's house with no adult supervision to speak of.

He supposes he should be grateful if protected sex is the worst that's gone on there—if that's the worst that's gone on there.

Butit feels like Seth is playing with fire, almost daring the past to resurface, sleeping with a new girl who he couldn't have been seeing for that long.

And although the rougher side of town wasn't exactly rough by moststandards, Alex's apartment complex was still a far cry from Seth's bedroom in his locked house in his gated community.

On the other hand, look what had happened to him in locked houses and gated communities.

"And there's still the matter of your grounding."

"Or we could just agree that I've suffered enough," Seth suggests. "Or agree that it was totally an accident that will never happen again."

"Except apparently it's happened multiple times on purpose," Sandy points out.

"I knew you were gonna hold that against me."

"And what if something had happened one of those other nights? What if there'd been a fire and we didn't know you weren't home? Someone could've-"

"I'm sorry," Seth interjects. "Really. It was stupid, and I wasn't thinking."

"No, you weren't." Sandy sighs. "And even though tonight was an accident, it was an accident that happened because you were being careless."

"I know," Seth agrees. "And I really am sorry, admittedly deserved grounding aside."

"I know." Sandy slows to a stop at the top of the Cohen driveway and puts the car into park. "What's say we sleep on the whole grounding thing and hammer out the terms tomorrow? Does that sound okay?"

"Okay."

"And you know Seth, I'd like to meet the girl you're dating before you start going out,and especially before you start spending time at her place." Sandy pauses, tipping his head to one side. "Your mother and I are also really going to need to think about whether we feel comfortable with you being over there at all with no parental supervision. You know, youcan always invite Alex over here."

Sandy expects a protest at that, something about how Sandy and Kirsten coddle and infantilize him and set humiliating restrictions that none of his other peers have to deal with, but Seth just snorts.

"I really don't think that's going to be a problem," he says. "I doubt Alex is going to want anything to do with me after all that. I was already punching above my weight class there, but now..." he trails off with a glum shrug.

Sandy feels a pang imagining that too, whatever it was that Alex had witnessed and however it was that Seth had tried to perform damage control, how quickly he'd been able to recover when he realized where he was and what was happening.

Seth starts to pull at the door handle.

"Seth..." Sandy puts a hand on his arm.

Seth turns to him, eyes hooded and wary.

"I'm sorry about what happened tonight." Seeing Seth open his mouth to protest, Sandy holds up his free hand. "I know, I know. It's nothing to freak out about. I just..." His voice drops a little. "I'm really sorry for anything that takes you back to that time."

Seth hesitates for a long moment, his face just barely illuminated by the porch light filtering its way into the car. He ducks his head a little, just out of the light, obscuring his features in the early morning dark. He fumbles at the door handle.

"Yeah, well, what are you gonna do, right?" He mumbles, shouldering open the passenger door and stepping out of the car.

ooo

Sandy turns the key in the lock and then stops there, unleashing a long sigh.

"Hey Seth," he starts as he turns around, but he stops short again, Seth having somehow disappeared on him.

That's twice he's lost him in one night.

There's a gagging sound from the bushes.

"Seth?"

Seth's head pops up from behind the bushes.

"Sorry, uh." His head disappears again and he produces a few hacking coughs before he stands fully upright. Swiping a hand across his mouth, he stumbles over the lip of the driveway and comes to an ungainly stop in front of Sandy. "Mostly a, uh, false alarm there." He looks down at his sneakers.

Sandy starts to reach for the key again, but stops, exhaling sharply between his teeth.

"Seth, I think we really need to be talking about therapy for you again," he says, before he can give himself time to reconsider.

"What? Why?" Seth's voice spikes.

"Seth..." Sputtering and at a loss for words, Sandy's hand sweeps across the air, indicating everything that had gone on in the span of the last hour.

Was this something that really needed explaining?

Was Seth really that oblivious or that hard-headed?

"We just agreed that this was a one-off," Seth argues.

"We didn't agree," Sandy says. "You said it and I-"

"Said I was probably right," Seth points out.

"Yes, in that moment I said you were probably right, but I don't know that that's what I really believe," Sandy says slowly, measuring each word carefully. "I think there's a lot you still try to hide from me about what's going on with you."

"Whatever," Seth mutters, rolling his eyes.

"And you know, I was never really comfortable with you quitting therapy in the first place."

"Oh yeah, that's the most important thing, what makes you comfortable," Seth shoots back.

"That's not-" Sandy cuts himself off, recognizing the hundred foot stone wall of Seth's body language, his eyes staring fixedly at the ground, his jaw clenched in a scowl so tight that he can see a muscle pulsating an angry staccato beat in the side of his face.

They aren't getting anywhere on this, not tonight, maybe not ever.

Sandy takes a long slow breath and holds it for a few seconds before letting it out.

"How about we table this one for the night too and just go inside?" Sandy suggests.

Seth nods.

ooo

Sandy closes the door behind them.

"I'm gonna go up to bed," Seth announces, already heading for the stairs.

"Hey Seth?"

Seth stops, shoulders slumping, and reluctantly turns back towards Sandy.

Sandy wonders if Seth is aware of the imploring look he's giving him or if it just comes on naturally and subconsciously, that Please Dad, I am begging you, just drop this expression that Seth has practiced and perfected since his preteen years.

"What?" Seth asks.

"I don't know about you, but I had a little bit of an adrenaline rush back there, and I don't really see myself falling asleep right now."

"Okay..." Seth eyes him cautiously.

"I also know I haven't been around so much lately, and I'm going to fix that. I think we're about due for some quality Seth-Dad time, and there's no time like the present, as they say."

"Are you inviting me to go fishing right now?" Seth's brow wrinkles in confusion.

Sandy snickers. "I was thinking we could start with a little tv or something."

That seemed like the best of the not-great options, knowing as Sandy did that Seth was unlikely to sleep at that point, was much more likely to spiral if left alone with his thoughts, and, given how he'd been responding to him that night, very likely to bristle and lash out if Sandy suggested keeping him company in his bedroom until he fell asleep.

Seth mulls it over, perhaps considering those very same things, perhaps recognizing Sandy's attempt to save him from being alone with himself.

Sandy braces himself for that latter possibility, for Seth's anger or his defensiveness.

"Is this, uh, 'quality Seth-Dad time' thing part of my punishment?" Seth asks finally, mouth quirking into a mischievoushalf-smile.

"It can be, if you want to turn down my current offer. Maybe we can get some good bonding time in cleaning out the garage this weekend." Sandy raises his eyebrows.

"Point taken. TV sounds good to me," Seth says. "I love TV. The backbone of the Cohen household, I've always said."

"That's the spirit." Sandy claps a hand on Seth's shoulder, and guides him in the direction of the couch.

ooo

They sit on the couch, Seth sitting down as far from Sandy as is humanly possible while occupying the same piece of furniture.

They'd settled on an old sitcom on TV Land, one Sandy remembers watching with Seth when he was younger. He remembered pointing out to him all the turns of phrase and signs and affectations that were meant to show that the main character was Jewish, although no one ever outright said that she was meant to be Jewish.

Looking down, Sandy smiles a little, realizing that, without thinking about it-muscle memory kicking in yet again-he'd plopped a throw pillow onto his lap, harkening back to earlier times, times when Seth was sick or sad or having a bad day. Sometimes Seth would hide away in his room and refuse to come out, but sometimes Sandy could coax him out of his solitude with the promise of hot chocolate or a normally forbidden bowl of pre-dinner ice cream or the umpteenth home screening of Mrs. Doubtfire.

And if it was a really bad day or a really bad sickness, Seth might rest his head in his lap and they might talk a little or they wouldn't say much of anything and Sandy would card his fingers through Seth's curls and listen to the soft whistle of his son's breath moving in and out.

"Hey Seth, feel free to stretch out if you want," Sandy offers.

"I'm good." Seth doesn'tlook away from the screen.

Somuch of Seth's life takes place elsewhere now, in all kinds of places and with people and relationships Sandy can only know about from what Seth is willing to share or from what Ryan accidentally lets slip or from what Seth isn't effectively able to hide.

And, Sandy thinks, reflecting upon his own actions in the past few weeks, what he's actually present and there to hear about or to observe.

Of course, it wasn't just people and relationships; it was Seth's internal self, his thoughts and feelings, the after effects of The Trauma that Seth tried to downplay, and that Sandy, admittedly, hadn't really noticed in awhile.

Although maybe he had; maybe part of Sandy just stubbornly didn't want to put those pieces of the puzzle together, wanted to take things like the way that Seth was hard on himself, the way that he never felt good enough for the girls he dated, and make that be about typical teenage insecurities, his son comparing himself, with all his turns of phrase and affectations and his gangly body and his curly hair that all signaled his Judaism, that signaled all of the ways that he stood out so starkly amongst his largely blonde and largely tan and largely Gentile peers, and inevitably questioning how he measured up.

But didn't Sandy see other things, hints and whispers and sometimes shouts of The Trauma's continued hold on him? Weren't there other things that weren't so easy to explain away?

Didn't he notice the restless nervous hypervigilant way that Seth bobbed and weaved through the crowds at Newpsie parties, the way he studiously avoided men of a certain age?

Hadn't it just been a week or two ago that Sandy had spotted Seth across the room at one such party, backed into a corner, flinching and shrinking under the meaty hand of some colleague of Caleb's that was locked on his shoulder, the older man standing too close to him, no doubt trying to chat him up about school and girls and his intentions for joining the family business one day?

And Sandy had known in thatmoment that what he was seeing wasn't Seth bored or irritated or weary of small talk, but Seth looking very plainly like a frightened rabbit, frozen with his foot in a trap.

Sandy had known it even as he'd tried not to know it, as he'd tried to liken it to Kirsten's exasperation with the Newpsie crowd and their inane conversations, their gossip and their chatter that drained his introverted wife of her precious social energy.

Seth was more like his mother than anyone else seemed to recognize; that was all.

He liked to talk, but he also hated to talk; that was all.

Still, he'd gone over to Seth and to Caleb's colleague whose name he couldn't remember, and Seth had mumbled an excuse and darted away, and then Caleb's colleague had turned to Sandy, blasting him with his liquor-soaked breath and standing too close to him now and clapping his meaty had on his shoulder now, and Sandy had experienced him as odd and a little off-putting and on the drunker side of tipsy, but harmless enough.

But couldn't some part of him not help but wonder then what it was like for Seth, what it was like to be cornered by this tipsy man, to be the recipient of this tipsy man's attention, to feel trapped under it, even in a sea of people?

Maybe Sandy had needed something like tonight, something of a wake-up call, taking him back as it did to that horrible realization so many years ago that there was so much of Seth's life that had taken place elsewhere then too, that though Seth's world had seemed small and reasonably pleasant and contained, there was a whole other life that Sandy hadn't realized he'd been living. And with that were the otherrealizations, that it wasn't just shyness that had made him quiet and wary around strangers, and it wasn't just modesty that made him freeze up when people got too close or topics of conversation got too uncomfortable.

It made him sick to think about it too much, but there were times when the stark reality of it hit him, sharp and fast and unexpected, a fastball to the gut, just like it had been tonight, picturing Seth waking up in some girl's apartment, convinced that his abuser had finally made good on his promise of revenge, his promise that it would never be over.

The glow of the tv lights flicker across Seth's face, and Sandy studies him from the corner of his eye.

"I don't know where I am, Dad."

Sandy shivers, Seth's voice echoing in his head, little and lost and helpless.

"I don't know where I am, Dad."

And Sandy's not sure how to find him, or if he's really found him tonight, just because he picked him up and brought him home, and just because he's slouched beside him on the couch right now, calm and quiet and composed, chuckling a little at the tv, at yet another oblique reference to the main character's Judaism, and just because he's tall and lanky and sporting a respectable patch of 4am stubble, looking to all the world like any teenage boy approaching manhood at warp speed.

"I don't know where I am, Dad."

Sandy wishes he knew how to bring his son back to him.

ooo

End Notes: I try not to over-explain my writing, but wanted to touch briefly on how this story fits into The Man and the Egg universe, given that Seth, when confronted by Sandy about how his trauma symptoms are resurfacing, acts like he has no idea what Sandy is talking about. Part of me is contemplating editing The Man and the Egg to throw in a quick reference to the events in this story, but in my mind, it kind of works either way. To me, Seth is digging in his heels that what happened at Alex's was a one-time thing, so I imagine Sandy dropping it at some point and paying closer attention so that can he find "better" evidence to show that Seth is having a hard time, not just that his trauma can occasionally be triggered by some kind of freak occurrence. Hence, Seth acts like there's no reason for Sandy to be concerned, and Sandy comes to the table talking about Seth having a nightmare for no easily identifiable reason (amongst other things) in The Man and The Egg.

As always, thanks for reading and please feel free to share any thoughts you might have.