The thing that really terrified Nick about the whole situation was being a parent without the guys around, or at least speaking to him. The four of them had been raising him for so long he forgot how to be himself without them, didn't really know who that was, and suddenly the tour was over, the charity functions were finished, and he was faced with an indeterminate number of months alone with a little girl who had no one else to depend on.

He knew it had come as a shock, his decision to stick with The Firm for his solo career, and he wished they hadn't found out the way they did, but even so. They were angry with him, and suddenly he felt younger than he had in ages, and older.

So he did what anyone would do.

He got drunk.

It didn't occur to him until later, when he had a headache and a headline and social services on the phone that resisting arrest and drunk and disorderly behavior might jeopardize the adoption. Money being what it was, he ended up with merely a warning (from social services -- the judge gave him community service), but still.

He was a father, without having ever really been a kid. He had a full-time nanny for Freddie, but he was still the parent, her only parent, and he had to raise her on his own and he hardly felt raised himself. And there was nothing to do for it but get on with the parenting.

If Kevin had been talking to him, Nick would have mentioned the profound respect he'd developed for his older brother.

Maybe.

If he'd been feeling really charitable.

Of course, Kevin wasn't speaking to him, and he wasn't about to call and leave grovelling messages on Kevin's machine, going on and on about his love and respect and deep, overwhelming fear. Even if it probably would have gone over better than, "Fuck you, you fucking asshole. Fuck all of you. I hope you burn in hell, after a long, lonely, miserable life. You. You could at least be fucking *happy* for me. Asshole."

Freddie, he discovered, knew a lot more than she let on. Or maybe all 4-year-olds were perceptive. In any case, he knew she'd picked up on the tension, because she climbed into his lap, curled her hand into his shirt, and told him, "I love you, Daddy. Forever 'n' ever 'n' ever, always, I promise."

Nick looked down, startled, and whispered, "love you too, darling."

"And I'll always be your best girl, I will, even when I'm a hundred and ninety. I'm never ever gonna leave you."

Nick hugged her tightly, and remembered when he'd been naive enough to think families always worked that way, that brothers were always stuck with each other.

"You'll always be my best girl," he told her fiercely. "Always."