“I think I just made everything worse,” he said, releasing his hold on the counter so that he could turn around and pull his wife into his arms.
“Is that even possible?” Zoe asked with a heartfelt sigh as she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head against his chest.
“He thinks that we look at him like he’s a freak,” Trevor said, pressing a kiss against the top of his wife’s head as he tried to figure out how he was going to fix this.
This used to be so easy, Trevor thought, unable to help but smile as he remembered when Sebastian was a baby, the way that his face used to light up whenever he saw him and…
God, he missed those days.
He missed seeing a carefree smile on his son’s face, the way that Sebastian would run outside so that he could be the first one to tell Trevor about his day, and the mischievous look in his eye when he tormented his brothers. One day, Sebastian had been a happy, carefree kid and the next, he’d stopped smiling, stopped tormenting his brothers, and became too damn serious and Trevor had no idea why. He’d tried to talk to Sebastian, tried spending more time with him, gave him space, did anything and everything that he could think of, but nothing worked. Sebastian shut down, barely talking most days, and closed himself off, escaping into books and they’d been forced to watch it happen.
“Why does he think that we see him as a freak?” Zoe mumbled against his chest as her arms tightened around him.
“I honestly don’t know,” Trevor said, debating asking Jonathan about it, but he wasn’t the one that Sebastian confided in anymore.
That honor had been passed onto the adorable pain in the ass who lived to torment his son and was currently walking into the kitchen grumbling to herself as she headed to the pantry. With another grumble, Mikey opened the pantry door, grabbed the box of cereal that they bought just for her and with another sigh, shut the door and headed to the kitchen table. For a moment, Trevor watched Mikey as she grabbed everything that she needed from the cabinets and fridge before dropping down in a chair, pouring herself a large bowl of cereal and with one last grumble, opened her book with a heartfelt sigh as he stood there, debating doing something that he swore that he wouldn’t do, but…
“Mikey, can we talk to you for a moment?” Trevor asked, leaning down and brushed his lips against his wife’s before she could argue. With a softly whispered, “Trust me,” he released her and headed to the table.
“I’m not a snitch,” Mikey said, not bothering to look up as he joined her.
“That’s not what I–” he started to say when she cut him off.
“Snitches get stitches,” Mikey said only to ask with a sad shake of her head, “Do you want me to get stitches, Uncle Trevor?”
With a sigh, Zoe sat down next to him and reached across the table to pluck the book out of Mikey’s hands. “We’re worried about Sebastian, sweetie,” she explained as Mikey worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she considered them.
“Can I be honest?” Mikey asked after a moment.
Although, he wasn’t sure that was a good idea, Trevor found himself nodding.
“You expect too much from him,” Mikey said, making him frown as she turned her attention to her cereal.
“How so?” Zoe asked, getting up to grab the chocolate milk and a glass for Mikey.
“Take this morning for example,” she said, pausing to murmur, “Thank you,” when Zoe handed her the glass of chocolate milk. “You told him that you wanted to talk to him, but you never gave him a chance before you grounded him.”
“I messed up,” Trevor admitted with a sigh as he sat back in his chair.
Nodding in agreement, Mikey said, “I get why you’re worried about Sebastian, I do, but the problem is that he knows it.”
“What do you mean?” Trevor asked, frowning.
“It’s the way you look at him, watching him like you’re waiting for him to mess up and when he does, you kind of go overboard like you’re punishing him to stop him from doing something worse. The only thing that you’re doing is reminding him that you think there’s something wrong with him,” Mikey said with a sympathetic wince.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Trevor said hollowly as he tried to tell himself that she was wrong, but…
He couldn’t.
*-*-*-*
“Why must everyone in this family manhandle me?” came the sadly mumbled words that had Sebastian shifting his glare from the ceiling to find his father carrying Mikey over his shoulder and–
“That’s going to leave a mark,” Mikey said on a groan when his father dumped her on the bed next to him.
“What’s going on?” Sebastian asked, moving over so that Mikey could sit up only to release a pained grunt when the little brat shoved him out of the way and took his spot with a satisfied sigh.
“Let’s try this again,” his father said, sitting back down on the desk chair where he cleared his throat, shifted nervously only to follow that up by clearing his throat again and…
Apparently had no idea where to start, making Sebastian frown as he shifted his gaze from his father to find Mikey watching his father expectantly. When his father continued sitting there, looking at a loss for words, Mikey slowly nodded as she mumbled to herself, “I should probably go read my book,” and crawled off the bed, effectively abandoning him and giving him one more reason to be mad at her.
Once she was gone, Sebastian shifted his attention back to find his father gesturing to his iPad. “Your mother said that you were probably going to need a new iPad soon, something about running out of memory.”
Shaking his head, Sebastian absently said, “I don’t need a new iPad,” wondering where his father was going with this.
“Are you sure? Your mother said–”
“I don’t want a new iPad, Dad. It was a gift,” Sebastian said, cutting his father off before he could push the subject only to end up inwardly cursing himself when his father’s lips pulled up into a knowing smile.
A few years ago, Mikey had surprised him with an iPad simply because she knew how badly he’d wanted one. He’d been trying to save up for one for a few years, but something always came up, a birthday, Christmas, or he saw something that he knew that someone he loved would like and he’d have to start all over again. Just when he’d resigned himself to borrowing his mom’s iPad for a little while longer, Mikey had taken him by surprise and bought him one.
She’d done extra chores for her mom, helped her dad work on the house, did grunt work for Uncle Jared, shoveled snow, raked leaves, whatever it took to earn enough money to buy an iPad for him so that he could have one and…
He loved it.
“Do you want to continue going to therapy?” his father suddenly asked, taking him by surprise and making him wonder what Mikey told him.
“No,” Sebastian said with absolutely no hesitation.
“Okay,” his father said with a nod of understanding. “Then we’ll stop asking you to go, but I need to know that you’ll come to me if you have something that you need to talk about, okay?”
With a hesitant nod, Sebastian asked, “And if I mess up again?”
“Then we talk about it,” his father said, shooting him a wink as he left, leaving Sebastian sitting there, wondering just how long this reprieve was going to last.