A/N: Although this is (perhaps weirdly) one of my favorite stories I've ever written, I never actually anticipated writing another chapter to this one, but then things pop into my head and take on a life of their own. There will be one more chapter after this.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to review if you're so inclined.

ooo

Sandy stares off into space, absently twirling his pen around his fingers.

After saying goodnight to Seth, he'd come downstairs and told Kirsten that he'd forgotten a few work things he needed to get done before he could watch a movie with her.

In truth, he needed time to brood.

He wouldn't have hated having someone to talk to right then, but his therapist didn't take calls after hours, confiding in hisMa was both unhelpful and, according to Kirsten, off-limits, and Kirsten herself couldn't really handle any topic of conversation that existed even adjacent to what Seth had gone through.

Sandy wasn't sure where the swim trunks fiascowould fall on that spectrum for Kirsten, but he'd kind of given up trying with these things.

It never seemed to end well.

So he said goodnight to Seth, begged off Kirsten for themoment, and hid in his office.

He'd made a note in his calendar to call Dr. Max the next day, and then,so hisexcuse to Kirsten was only a lie in spirit and not in letter, he'd poked through the file for a recently assigned court case, but found he couldn't really make heads or tails of it.

The image kept flashing through his mind-Seth huddled in the corner of the fitting room, breathing heavily between clenched teeth, both of his legs black and blue and purple and brown, looking like they'd gone ten rounds in a prizefight.

And then there were other flashes, his mind's eye filling in the moments those bruises were created.

Seth, alone and feeling what?

Angry?

Sad?

Scared?
What was he trying to do?

Punish himself?

For what?

Seth didn't really do anything wrong, not beyond your fairly typical thirteen year old boy stuff. Muddy shoes on the couch, a neglected chore here or there, a broken tchotchke every now and then, but his panic when confronted tended to soften the parental reaction to almost nothing.

Sandy would find him standing over the shards of a broken vase, looking close to hyperventilating as he tried to stammer out an explanation, eyes wide, looking at his dad like he expected him to beat the daylights out of him for his carelessness and for the loss of one of the many largely interchangeable pieces of decor in the Cohen household.

He'd never raised a hand to Seth in his life, had barely even raised his voice to him in the past few years, and though he tried to assure himself that Seth did know this-that there was no possible way his son could be afraid of him-Seth's immediate reaction was still panic and distrust and a desperate need to escape.

Seth never meant to cause any harm, except maybe to himself.

He was careful. He'd been careful since he was a little boy, maybe since they moved to Newport.

Careful was a strange thing for a little boy to be.

Sandy should've known there was something wrong.

It always circled back to that, didn't it?

It scared him and it confused him, what Seth was doing to himself.

That he was doing it to himself, but also that Sandy had had no idea he was doing it to himself.

He'd thought they were done with secrets.

He didn't think Seth couldn't keep a thing like that from him anymore.

Sandy had become careful too, or he thought he had.

But if Seth could keep a secret like that, what else could be going on under Sandy's roof that he had no clue about?

Sandy's finger slips, sending his pen flying off in a random direction. He hears it clatter to the floor somewhere in the dark depths under his desk. He imagines himself getting on his hands and knees and blindly scrabbling around the wood floor, picking up lint and hair and dust before his hand finally closed around the pen.

Just the thought is exhausting.

Deciding he'll leave it for another day, for a version of himself with more energy for such a search and rescue mission, Sandy turns off his desk light and wearily rises to his feet.

ooo

He finds Kirsten in the Jacuzzi.

"I changed my mind about the movie," she says, as Sandy closes the patio door behind him.

"I can see that."

Kirsten has laid their towels and robes out on a patio chair, and there's a bottle of wine and two glasses at her elbow.

She has also, apparently, neglected to wear a bathing suit this evening, this fact, and her slender body, illuminated by the Jacuzzi lights.

Sandy's eyebrows raise and Kirsten grins, noticing him noticing her state of undress.

"Care to join me, Mr. Cohen?" Her eyes twinkle.

"You uh, you aren't worried Seth might come down?" Sandy asks, instinctively looking towards Seth's bedroom window.

"His light's been off for a while," Kirsten says. "Plus, I think he knows better than to come out when we're out here...after last time."

Sandy gives a wan smile at that, but he pulls his shirt over his head and shucks off his sweatpants to the soundtrack of Kirsten pouring wine into two glasses.

He settles against the wall of the Jacuzzi, closing his eyes and taking a long sip from his glass, trying to let the water and the wine and his wife help ease the tension from his body.

"Hi."

Sandy opens his eyes to find Kirsten standing in front of him. Despite all the stress of the day and the thoughts churning in his mind, he's able to recognize that she looked beautiful, and that he was unspeakably lucky to be in that particular Jacuzzi with that particular woman wrapping her arms around his neck and tilting her head back invitingly.

"Hi," Sandy says softly. He stoops forward to kiss her, and she brings her body closer, burying a hand in his hair.

Kirsten pulls away after a few moments, pressing a hand against his chest and taking a little step back, eyes searching his face.

"Are you okay?" she asks. "You seem a little...distracted."

"I'm okay," Sandy says. It never ceased to amaze him the way she could read him like that. "Just work stuff, you know. Having trouble getting my mind off it, I guess."

"Work stuff?" Kirsten looks skeptical.

Which is fair.

Sandy wasn't known for letting work stuff prevent him from enjoying a little Jacuzzi canoodling.

"You sure there isn't something else?"

"I just..." Sandy trails off, weighing out hisnext words.

And it was hard, coming home and not having anyone to talk to.

"...maybe we shouldn't make Seth go clothes shopping for a while."

Kirsten's brow furrows. "What happened?"

"Nothing really." Sandy looks away. "But you know his sizes well enough, and you've said he'll pretty much wear whatever you pick out for him."

"Pretty much," Kirsten agrees slowly, "but there's only so much longer that's going to last. He's almost fourteen. And with all the growth spurts, his sizes are all over the place." She eyes him suspiciously. "But there's something you're not telling me."

"I just get the sense it's hard for him."

Kirsten grabs her wine glass and leans back against the opposite wall of the Jacuzzi.

"Sandy, why don'tyou just tell me what happened?"

Sandy sighs, not sure if there's a way to put it that won't upset Kirsten.

Reluctantly, and leaving out the bruises on Seth's legs, he gives Kirsten a basic outline of the afternoon: the boy's fitting room being closed, marching Seth to the men's department, Seth all the while just a little bit surly and a little bit uncooperative, which obviously should have told him something but didn't, given that he'd been about to leave Seth alone in the fitting rooms without a second thought and without asking him if it was okay.

"He was calling out for me to wait, but I didn't listen."

"You left him there?" Kirsten's eyebrows raise, and Sandy's sure he sees a hint of reproach there.

"I know," he says wearily. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

Kirsten gives him a gentlesmile. "Sandy, you just made a mistake. It's okay. These kinds of things are going to happen."

Kirsten sees this hasn't quite done it for him. She crosses back over to his side ofthe Jacuzzi. Setting her wine glass down behind him, she loops her arms around his neck again, looking up at him solemnly.

"Sandy, you try to be so perfect with all this, like it's going to fix it somehow." She arches an eyebrow pointedly. "You know you can't fix this, right?"

"I can try not to make it any worse," Sandy points out.

"You made a mistake, and he'll move past it," Kirsten insists. "He's not always as delicate as you think he is."

"Do you-do you think it's like that all the time for him, worrying that something's going to happen wherever he goes?" Sandy asks. "I really thought things were getting better, and now I just can't stop thinking that he must go places and look at everyone like—-"

"Sandy, you have to stop beating yourself up about this," Kirsten interjects sharply.

There's a warning in her tone, and Sandy hears it.

Still, he can't fully reel himself back.

"He's never going to trust me again."

"He's going to trust you again." Kirsten's voice is firm. "He's always going to trust you." She pauses, looking away. "You know how he can be. If he's upset, he just needs a little time to sulk and then he'll cool off."

Sandy smiles a little, despite himself, despite everything.

He also recognizes the shifts in Kirsten, not just in her tone, but in her eyes no longer quite making contact with his, her mouth tightening at the corners.

"Just like his mom?" Sandy nudges her shoulder lightly with his own. "I've waited out my fair share of Kirsten Nichol sulking sessions in my day."

"Just like his mom," Kirsten agrees, shaking her head. "We can't all talk everything to death like Sandy Cohen." She moves closer to Sandy again, pressing her body against his. "You have a big heart, Sandy, but you make yourself crazy with all this."

"I make you crazy," Sandy counters.

Kirsten looks thoughtful for a moment.

"You make us both crazy," she ultimately concludes. Standing on tiptoes, she kisses him deeply, and Sandy finally lets himself get lost in the moment with her.

It was nice, being able to talk with Kirsten. It wasn't like talking to his therapist, where he was pushed to only care about what he thought and felt, where no one would weigh in so directly to let him know that it would be okay, that Seth would need time, but that he'd be forgiven, that their trust could be healed, that it wasn't the catastrophe it had all felt like in his head.

He adjusts his arms around Kirsten's waist, looping his leg around her's anddrawing her even closer to him.

A guttural yell rings out above them, shattering the quiet night air.

Sandy and Kirsten break apart.

"Shit," Sandy hisses. He turns and starts to boost himself out of the Jacuzzi.

His foot knocks into one of the wine glasses, punting it across the patio. There's the sound of tinkling glass where it lands. He swears again under his breath and starts to fumble for his robe as he looks between the house and wherever the wine glass ended up.

"I'll take care of it," Kirsten offers. "You go."

"Are you sure? I don't want you to hurt yourself." Thinking better of the robe, Sandy grabs his towel and runs it roughly over himself.

"I can clean up a glass, Sandy."

There's a loud thump from above.

He must've fallen off the bed again.

Sandy tosses the towel aside and grabs his sweatpants.

"Daaaad?" Seth's voice is wobbly and uncertain.

"See?" Kirsten says. "He'll always trust you."

There's an edge in her voice that Sandy doesn't have the bandwidthto unpack at the moment, as he's struggling to pull his sweatpants on over still damp legs.

"Yeah well, I did this," Sandy says.

"You didn't do this, Sandy," Kirsten snaps.

"Except he hasn't had one in almost a month," Sandy points out, fumbling for his shirt.

"Hmm." Kirsten takes a sip of her wine. "Iwasstarting to get used to the quiet."

There was that edge again, and with it came something else familiar, a sharp stab of anger as Sandy pulled his t-shirt over his head.

Sometimes he thought about what he'd heard about parents who lost a child, how often they'd end up splitting up. He'd read that parents who went through that kind of grief didn't know how to talk about the loss, didn't know how to coexist with each other and with each other's grief, and would sometimes have entirely different needs that they couldn't seem to bring into alignment.

Seth wasn't dead, but they were all grieving nonetheless, and there were times he wondered if Kirsten wanted to leave him and all traces and all memories of what happened behind.

But he can't deal with that right now.

"Daaaaad?"

"I'm coming," Sandy calls. He tears open the door and bolts for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Seth yells something else, garbled and unintelligible.

"I'm coming," Sandy booms again, reaching for the handle on Seth's door.

He throws it open and strides quickly down the hall to Seth's bed.

"I'm here," he says.

ooo

Sandy flicks on the light switch.

There's a by now all too familiar acrid smell in the air.

Seth looks up at Sandy from the floor, watery eyes squinting against the sudden overhead light. His mouth opens and closes a few times, lower lip trembling, looking like he's trying to speak but nothing is coming out.

"Hey it's okay. I'm here." Sandy kneels in front of Seth. "Can I help you back into bed?" He reaches for Seth's arm.

Seth flinches away, whimpering and shielding his body with his arms.

"I-I'm sorry," Sandy says, mentally kicking himself because he knew better than his current performance, knew better than to rush things and skip steps, and it was the worst possible time to be off his game.

He'd made this mess, and he was making it worse by the second.

"I didn't mean to—I mean..." He inhales a long slow breath.

His apologies and explanations weren't going to help anything either.

"Okay, not ready for that yet? That's okay." Sandy pitches his voice low, practically crooning. "How about I get you Captain Oats?"

"I-I co-couldn't find him," Seth stammers.

"I can find him," Sandy assures him. He looks up, scanning between the two nightstands.

The Captain isn't in his usual spot, right where Seth could easily roll over and reach him at a moment's notice.

Dr. Max had stressed the importance of things like that, everything being in its place, routines being predictable, so that Seth could know what to expect, wouldn't have to go searching for him in the middle of the night.

Every night before bed, Seth was supposed to make sure that Captain Oats was on thenightstand, and every night when he came in to say goodnight, Sandy silently confirmed that the Captain was where he was supposed to be.

But now he isn't, and Sandy can't remember if he did that part of his job, checked to make sure that Seth had everything he needed.

Sandy spies the Captain's black eyes peeking out at him, the rest of his body pinned between the back of the nightstand and the wall.

"He must have fallen." Sandy scrambles to his feet to rescue the plastic horse.

"He was here, Dad. H-he—-" Seth's voice wavers as he gulps for air.

"Shhh…it's okay." Sandy swiftly returns to Seth, shoving the plastic horse into his trembling hands. "You don't have to tell me anything. We're just gonna help your mind start to think about something else, okay?"

Seth doesn't respond, but he takes Captain Oats with shaky hands and starts to silently go through the familiar steps he'd learned from Dr. Max; he doesn't need Sandy's prompting anymore.

Sandy doesn't know what Seth had been about to tell him, what he was going to say about Steven.

Dr. Max said that it wasn't good for Seth to talk in detail about his nightmares, that dwelling on them too much would make them feel more real, and that it was best to just help him move on, but that wasn't the only reason that Sandy cut him off.

He never wanted Seth to finish that sentence, never wanted to know what he would tell him about Steven when he was still in the throes of a nightmare.

It made Sandy sick to think about it.

He still felt bile rising in his throat when he thought about the day he'd found out, when he'd had to stumble out of his son's closet and down the stairs and ruin his wife's life, stammering and gasping for air as Kirsten had said"Sandy, what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong; you're scaring me."

Two minutes before, she'd been walking in the front door, ready to pick out takeout and recount to Sandy her dad's latest attempts to undermine her at work, and then he went and destroyed her.

He didn't want to know more than he already knew.

He could barely live with what he did know.

Sandy watches as Seth runs two fingers down the Captain's muzzle, then runs them down his mane, then places his index finger on each of the spots on the Captain's flank, lips moving soundlessly as he counts each spot.

It's astounding what can start to feel routine after you do it enough times.

Seth looks up at Sandy before quickly looking away.

"Feeling a little better?" Sandy asks.

Seth nods.

"Are you good to get back into bed now?" Sandy offers his hand to Seth as he rises to stand.

"I, uh, I just wanna brush my teeth." Seth sniffs, then swipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

"Okay."

There's an awkward few moments of silence, Seth not yet moving.

"Seth?"

"Can you..." Seth trails off, chewing on his lower lip.

"Can I what?" Sandy's brow furrows. "Anything, kiddo. What do you need?"

"Can you-" Seth exhales a short sharp breath. "Can you come with?" He mumbles the question, eyes downcast, mouth contorted into a grimace.

Oh.

"Of course." Sandy offers his hand again, but Seth ignores it.

Using the bed for leverage, Seth slowly rises to his feet. His legs wobble beneath him, and Sandy has to resist the impulse to reach for his arm to steady him.

Sandy follows Seth's unsteady gait to the bathroom, pausing along the way to grab the little trash can Seth kept by the side of his bed-another part of the routine, another object with it's exact place in the room, and the source of the acrid smell in the air.

Seth squeezes toothpaste onto his toothbrush as Sandy carefully dumps the vomit into the toilet with a muted splash and flushes. He pulls out the plastic grocery bag lining the little trash can and carefully rolls it up, dropping the dripping bag into the bathroom trash.

With nothing else to do at the moment, Sandy perches on the lip of the bathtub and tries to study Seth without looking like he's looking at him.

It seemed important for him to do this for Seth, to make things feel as normal as possible, to help him feel as normal as possible, like none of it was weird or a big deal or meant anything in particular about him.

Sandy was probably deluding himself into thinking he could have any impact there.

Seth rinses his toothbrush and places it back in the holder.

"Um, could you...?" Seth's eyes flick over to the toilet and then away. "I mean, don't...but uh, could you-"

Oh.

"Of course." Sandy's tone is even and impassive, as if Seth had asked him to pass the salt at the dinner table.

He crosses the room to stand in the doorway, turning his back on Seth, but keeping himself visible.

The sound of liquid hitting porcelain fills the small space, overlaid by one short, ragged sob, barely audible and swiftly followed up by a few hacking coughs, echoing off of the tiled walls.

Feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion, Sandy sags sideways against the doorframe and closes his eyes.

ooo

They return to the bedroom and the next part of the routine commences.

Seth settles back under the covers while Sandy turns on the lamp on the far nightstand and turns off the overhead light, then tucks a new plastic grocery bag around the edges of the little trash can and returns it to its faithful spot.

He grabs two well-worn comic books from the shelf and hands one to Seth, who flicks it open and holds it in front of his face.

Whether or not he was actually reading it or just turning a page every now and then was anyone's guess.

Sandy drags the armchair out of the corner, placing it and thus himself in the proper spot, also within arm's reach of the bed.

He does all these small things, so carefully and so precisely, as if it will actually be anything more than placing a band-aid over a gaping wound, trying to plug the hole in the Titanic with a pinkie finger.

He knows that Kirsten's right, that he will never fix anything, but it feels like a betrayal not to try, not to make himself crazy over this, over every little detail of it, where Captain Oats went and where the trashcan went and what tone he struck when his teenage son asked him to accompany him to the bathroom because he was too scared to go alone and that the comic book he handed to him struck just the right tone for the moment-engaging enough to take his mind off whatever nightmare was playing in his head, but not dark or disturbing enough to compound the horrors.

Sandy slumps into his armchair, opening the second comic book and holding it in front of his face, eyes glazed over as he flicks to the next page every so often.

In some indeterminate amount of time, Sandy looks up at the sound of paper rustling, watching discreetly as Seth slides his comic book onto the nightstand and turns over, wriggling around a little before finally settling into one spot and letting out a long, heavy breath.

Sandy waits until Seth's breathing starts to even out before closing his own comic and placing it atop Seth's on the nightstand. Staring absently at his sleeping son, he heaves his own long sigh.

With Seth asleep, he could go back to his bedroom-Kirsten sometimes asked with some confusion and possibly some irritation why he almost never returned once he went up-but he's too afraid that Seth will wake up and need him again and then have to figure out how to find him again, and that would be something out of its place, a betrayal of the routine and the sameness.

It always made more sense to Sandy to close his eyes and get what sleep he could and accept the crick in his neck and the dull throbbing he'd carry in his lower back for most of the morning and part of the afternoon.

It was a small price to pay, and he knew he deserved much worse than that.