Ben stayed at his father's condo until visiting hours at the hospital, simply because he had no energy to go anyplace else. He tried to call Portsmouth Naval Hospital, but they refused to give him any information at all. They wouldn't tell him if Dave's flight had even delivered him to far-off Virginia yet, never mind if he'd survived the flight. The Navy didn't care that Ben had performed the surgery. The Navy didn't care that Ben had been working on the Solace for months, as a volunteer.

The Navy wasn't going to give him any information at all, simply because he wasn't a Navy officer with need-to-know permission. The man he spoke with told him, in a bored tone of voice, "Look, pal. You could be the man's husband, you could be his brother, you could be his father, you could be his goddamn clone, but if you aren’t Petty Officer Hopper's CO, I can’t tell you a damn thing. I'd be court martialed. While I appreciate that you're clearly pretty upset about this, you're not worth Leavenworth. Sorry."

Then the man hung up.

He roused himself to go out into the rest of the flat. Khadijah would need food and probably a clean diaper too. He found that his father had taken care of both things already, although the little girl held her hands out to Ben when she saw him. "I'm looking forward to being a grandfather." Flavien smiled as he handed his charge over. "I definitely miss this. I didn't even get to have this with any of my later children, you know."

Ben sat down on the couch and cradled Khadijah to his chest. "Really?"

"Really. I didn't have the heart." He sighed. "I missed you." Flavien looked out the window. "Mistakes were made, but you knew that. It's not the point. Have you managed to track down your young Sailor?"

Ben shook his head. "No. The Navy won't give me anything."

Flavien narrowed his eyes. "We'll see about that. I'm feuding with our naval secretary right now, but I think he'll be cooperative in matters like this." He sniffed. "We're feuding about family values, so I think he'll jump at the chance to prove his bona fides, don't you? It may take a few days, but he'll find out what you need to know."

"I'm sure he's busy." Ben didn't want to get his hopes up. "It wasn't just Americans who were hurt in the bombings. Plenty of French sailors and staff were in the area. He's got to be going insane trying to manage the investigation."

"He doesn't have far to go." Flavien snorted. "Besides, this young man is the father of my grandchild. That makes him part of my family, and we all go out of our way for each other's family. It's not a problem, Ben. Now, on to more immediate concerns. I ordered some formula to be delivered, and of course you had some clothes and toys for this little darling in the car. I might have gone a little bit overboard sending for a few more things, but she's worth it."

Ben laughed, in spite of the situation. "She gets that reaction out of a lot of people, you know." His laughter fell away quickly. "It was Dave who found her and brought her in. We couldn't save her mother. I tried."

"I know you did." Flavien patted his shoulder and laughed as Khadijah put his tie into her mouth. "I know you did. I should go to work, I'll need to talk to the American administration about all of this, but I'll check in later. Your guards have a car. If you want to go anywhere, they'll drive you both. That includes the hospital."

"I don't need a chauffeur." Ben scoffed and shifted Khadijah's position.

"I'm not taking any chances. I sent one for you two the other day because we had a credible threat, and the threat hasn't been lifted. There may be worse yet to come." Flavien hugged Ben and Khadijah. "I love you. I'll see you for dinner."

Ben smiled at him as he left. He'd spent years thinking his father didn't care. All it had taken was a bombing and a massive loss of life to prove otherwise. Ben would rather have avoided the large-scale death and destruction, but he was glad to start building that relationship again.

He spent some time trying to get through to the Portsmouth hospital in other, sneakier ways, but he still had no luck. Pretending to be a journalist or a corpsman got him nowhere at all. He finally gave up, got dressed, and headed to the hospital to see Aziza.

Aziza was clearly in a lot of pain, but she seemed happy to see him and Khadijah. It was hard for her to hold the baby, but that much contact clearly brought her some comfort. Khadijah, clearly, was delighted. She squealed and laughed with delight. "I was so scared," Aziza admitted. "I thought I'd lost her."

"Well, you didn't." Ben sat back on his chair and smiled wistfully at the pair. "She was completely uninjured by the blast. It seems like a miracle, really. My father found my old crib, from when I was a baby, and brought it over to the condo where I've been staying. He's a little in love with her I think."

"Your father?" Her eyes widened. "I thought you hadn't seen him in person since you were twelve!"

"I hadn't." Ben's smile turned into a wry grin as he spread his hands out wide. "He's been right there for me, though. Ever since I got back from the hospital, after the blast."

"Because, of course, you got right to work." She shook her head. "I wouldn't have expected anything else from you. Did the SEALs deploy? Is that why your Dave isn't here?"

Ben inhaled sharply. "Dave—Dave was hurt."

All of the color drained from Khadijah's face. "Oh no. Not…"

Ben closed his eyes. "He made it through surgery. He did. But when I called in the morning, they'd evacuated him to Virginia, and I can't get any more information. For all I know, he died in the night and no one's willing to tell me."

She reached out with her free hand and grabbed his hand. "Ben, they would have told you. Someone would have found a way to let you know. They wouldn't have left you hanging like this."

"I can't trust them. Not with something like this." He rubbed at his face. "My father's going to look into it. I don't know. I'm afraid of what he'll find out." He took in a deep breath. "But honestly, that's not your problem. Your problem is getting better. Once they think you're well enough to be discharged, you can come and stay in the villa with me and my father. If you'd prefer, you can stay in a hotel, but the villa might be more comfortable for you."

"I don't want to impose." She lowered her eyes. "I feel like I've already asked for so much."

"Aziza, you've given so much that it wouldn't be a problem even if you had asked for much. Which you haven't. Dad's got the space. He adores Khadijah, so he's got an ulterior motive in offering it. It's like a built-in grandparent." He grinned. "Would you believe he can even change a diaper and fix a bottle?"

"Really?" Her eyes widened. "That's amazing. My husband couldn't, until our second was born!"

Ben laughed, and they talked about kids for a little while, until Aziza needed to rest again. Then he took Khadijah back home.

The next day passed more or less the same way, and the day after that. Ben did finally get around to making inquiries about the rest of the SEALs. DeWitt, Toledano, Floyd, and Fitzpatrick had all been hurt badly enough to get evacuated. Van Heel and Buelen were laid up in Toulon. Of the corpsmen on the Solace, ten had been killed in the blasts. Hobson had been evacuated.

Ben would have wept over the number of injuries any other day, in private. Hospitals had become popular targets during his time with Borderless, and so he'd gotten used to colleagues becoming casualties. He didn't like it, but he was getting used to it. Right now, he couldn't cry for anything. All of his emotions were tied up in agitation over Dave's fate.

He got home from the hospital that day and headed up to his temporary home. His father was there, which was unusual enough for so early in the day. Flavien wasn't alone, though, and that was a bigger shock. Flavien sat at the dining table with Chief, Kelly, Adami, and Iniguez. A place had been set for Ben, too, and when Ben walked in and made his presence known Flavien jumped up and guided him to it with a jovial grin.

"Ben, we have visitors! These are friends of yours, I believe."

Ben followed his father to the table and tried to settle his nerves. The SEALs wouldn't be sitting around a dining table if they were here to tell him Dave was dead. Would they? Sometimes they did seem to treat death very casually. "It's good to see you all."

Flavien took Khadijah and brought her to her play pen. "The little darling doesn't need to help us eat our dinner, even though I'm sure she'd be curious about it." He wagged a playful finger at his substitute granddaughter, and she grabbed at it with a shriek.

Chief winced. "Dr. Michaud," he said glancing at Khadijah. "I wanted to apologize for letting so much time go by before we reached out to you."

Ben forced a little smile to his face. "We're sitting around a dinner table," he pointed out. "Please call me Ben."

"Okay. Ben, then." Chief glanced at the others. "When the bomb first went off, there was a lot of chaos. We had a lot of injuries we needed to sort out. Then the Navy helpfully evacuated some of our SEALs, including our CO, without notifying us first. That made a lot of things difficult while we tried to regroup and do something about the problem."

Kelly toyed with his fork. "And then, once we'd accounted for all of our personnel, it occurred to us that we had no idea how to get in touch with you."

Ben frowned, blinking. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Up until now, we just knocked on your cabin door." Adami chuckled. "Or we called Hopper, and had him talk to you. I mean sure, your dad's a pretty well-known public figure, but it's not exactly easy to call up the damn foreign minister on the phone, you know? It's all, 'Who are you,' and 'Why are you calling,' and 'We'll get a staff member to call you in the order your call was received,' but in French."

Flavien smirked. "We get a lot of calls. Half of them are from my ex-wives."

Iniguez shrugged. "Anyway, it took us a little while to track you down. It took a little while to track Hopper down, because they take privacy very seriously at Portsmouth."

"I know." Ben bit the inside of his cheek. "I've been trying to get in touch with someone over there."

"Have you?" Chief looked pleased. "I'll pass that on. Apparently this whole thing has been caught up in some ugly red tape. He tried to get someone to call you and tell you he was okay, but everyone he talked to thought he was confused."

Kelly blushed. "They had him pretty doped up on painkillers and sedatives, so he wasn't able to express himself as well as he usually would. And when he said he was looking for his partner, the father of his child, and the partner was you, well, people laughed in his face. Unfortunately, my husband was one of those people."

Ben frowned and shook his head. "I don't get it. Why wouldn't they believe him?"

Flavien put his hand on Ben's shoulder. "Son, I don't know your young man. And most Americans wouldn't know who I am. But they all know your mother. A celebrity, even the son of a celebrity, has a certain mythic status. They don't expect you to take up with normal men. They think you should be taking up with royalty, or other celebrities, or at least underwear models. Trust me." He made a face. "I've been there."

Ben turned his head to glare up at his father. "You haven't seen Dave. He could absolutely be an underwear model." He turned back to the men. "Really? They pushed him off because they thought he couldn't 'get' a guy they didn't even know?"

Iniguez snickered. "Yeah, well, you know what? Today your boy had recovered enough to mutiny, refuse to take his pain pills or sedatives, and walked right on down to Lt. DeWitt's room. DeWitt set them straight and put the fear of God or at least the fear of SEALs into that doctor right quick. They called Toulon, and Hopper got to call Chief. Who, it should be pointed out, grabbed the three of us and headed over here."

Ben pared away all of the excess words from the SEALs' story. "He's alive?"

Chief grinned. "He's alive, son. He's alive, recovering, and he's worried as hell about you. If I give you a phone number, can you call it?"

Ben pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I'll call him right now."

Chief handed him a scrap of paper, and Ben ran off to his room to make the call.

The other line picked up on the first ring. The speaker wasn't Dave. His accent was Irish. "Hello?"

"I'm looking for David Hopper, please."

"Is this Dr. Michaud?"

"Yes." Was that the wrong thing to say? He'd already been refused under his own name several times.

"One second, doctor. I apologize for not acting sooner." After a moment, the phone made a sound like the handset was being passed off. Then the most beautiful sound Ben had ever heard came through, loud and clear.

"Ben!" Dave's voice was hazy and cracked with pain, but it was him. It was him, and he was alive.

"Oh, my God." Tears poured down Ben's face, and he didn't care. "Dave, you're alive. I've been so worried about you."

"I know you have, babe. I know you have." Dave coughed weakly.

"Try not to work yourself up to a cough, love. You've got broken ribs, and you don't want them to move more than they have to." Ben wiped at his eyes. "Oh, my God, I miss you. I'm so glad you're alive."

"I miss you too." Ben could hear Dave's grin in his voice, even through the pain. "I can't talk long. I just wanted to tell you I love you, I miss you, and I'm alive. You okay?"

"I am now," Ben told him.

"The baby okay?"

"I'm fine, the baby is fine. Khadijah is fine, and Aziza's getting better. Thank you for fighting, Dave. Thank you for making them see. We belong together."

"Hell yeah we do."

The Irish guy got on the phone again. "Hopper's turning a bit gray here. I'm going to give him his pills now, if that's all right, Doctor?"

"Anything to keep him comfortable. Take good care of him, please. And don't let him get out of bed again until his lungs can handle it. I didn't like the sound of that cough." Ben cradled the phone closer to him.

"We'll do what we can, Doctor. These SEALs, though. Once they get something in their head, they'll do what's right, no matter what. We'll see you soon."

Ben beamed as he returned to the rest of the men.

* * *

Dave turned to Mal and gave him the smuggest grin he could manage, given the amount of pain he was in. "All right, Mal. You want my 'I told you sos' all at once, or do you want me to spread them out over time, in little dribs and drabs?"

Mal rolled his eyes and gave a good-natured grin. "I promise never to doubt your powers of beauty and persuasion again, oh jewel of the Appalachians. Now would you please take your pills? I know you've got to be in a world of hurt. I've had some of those injuries, you know. Not usually at the same time, I have to say." He held out a little paper cup.

Dave took the cup and tossed the pills back like a shot. It helped to swallow them if he didn't give his body time to reject them. "Oh, my God, I can't wait for these to kick in." He took the water Mal held out for him.

"I'm sorry we were such bad listeners that you had to resort to that." Mal licked his lips and looked down. Then he sat on the edge of Dave's bed. "You know, that's something I think we can all be kind of guilty of. We'll leave aside the class issue, because I should have fucking known better than to fall into that trap and I didn't. But seriously, we all need to do a better job of listening to patients. You were trying to reach out to your partner. Other patients try to tell us about problems or symptoms, and it's so easy to write it off as how they don't know what they're saying or they're just on the meds. I'm so sorry I was part of that."

Dave closed his eyes. His efforts of the day had exhausted him beyond anything he'd thought possible. Here he was, a big scary SEAL, and he couldn't walk between two rooms or talk on the phone. "I'll be the first to admit I wouldn't have expected us to be together, either. I hated him when we met."

"Really?" Mal chortled. "Well, it just goes to show. It sounds like he's a good egg. Was he really that worried about you?"

"It's this thing. His last partner died." Dave opened his eyes again. "When can he come home?"

"I don't know. I didn't get a chance to really talk to him, and I don't know when the rest of the platoon are coming home or if they're coming back with him or if he's coming back by himself. I'll try to get Trent to keep me posted, but he might not know yet." Mal gave him a sympathetic smile. "You rest up, boyo. We'll be keeping an eye on things from now on. I'll make sure you can talk with your doctor."

Dave smiled as the potent painkillers, sedatives, and sleeping pills took hold. He'd heard from his love. Ben was okay, Ben knew he was okay. Everything else was details.

True to his word, Mal made sure Dave got to talk to Ben for at least a few minutes every day. Using video chat put a strain on the hospital's wi-fi, but it was absolutely worth it. Seeing Ben gave him motivation to recover and helped him to stay in bed when all he wanted to do was to get up and pace.

Mal wasn't the only one to visit him in the hospital. Nick, Fitzpatrick's husband, brought him a tablet loaded with books and games for those times when he could stay awake. Boredom was a serious issue when you couldn't do much beyond lounge and look at the same four walls all day. Colin, Adami's husband, stopped in with his buddy Mansur a few times to check in and make sure everything was going well.

"We're still working on that story," Colin told him, hand resting on his burgeoning belly. "It's not like it disappeared once we shined a light on it, you know? We're finding new stuff out every day. It's good to get all of this stuff out into the public eye, but holy crap it's ugly in the light of day.”

Dave could believe it. He didn't even know half of it, but the little he did know was pretty hideous. "Ben's brother is a congressman. Out in California."

"Hm. Think he'll give us a scoop?" Mansur smirked.

"I don't know. It could be worth asking him. I don't know how close they are." Dave would be okay with talking to members of Congress, if it would bring Ben home.

For once it wasn't the Navy holding things up for them, either. As Dave recovered and weaned off the drugs, he remembered Ben telling him Aziza had been hurt. The next time he spoke to Ben he asked about that, and Ben winced.

"Yeah, she shielded Khadijah with her own body. She's hurting pretty badly. She doesn't have the luxury of a chartered medical flight directly to her destination, so we have to wait until she's well enough to travel." Ben looked away. "I want to be with you, I do. But she doesn't have anyone else to take care of the baby."

"No, I guess she wouldn't, would she?" Dave scratched at his beard. He knew the feeling of being alone all too well. The platoon spouses were doing their best to stick their heads in and make sure all the wounded knew they were appreciated and cared for, but it wasn't quite the same thing as having family of one's own nearby. "I can't blame you, I guess. Or her. Is Khadijah doing okay?"

"She's great. I swear she's bonding more closely with my dad every day. He's calling himself grand-père Flavien now. It's a bizarre thing to see, but it makes them both happy so I guess whatever." Ben's smile was indulgent.

"Are you still going to want to come home?" Dave was teasing, mostly. "It sounds like you've got quite the setup going in France."

"It is a nice setup. You know what would make it better? Having the man I love here with me. Connecting with my dad has been good. He's been supportive. I hope you get to meet him, because he's been so incredibly excited about you being in my life and part of our family. Dave, I'd follow you to Virginia. I'd follow you to Texas. I'd follow you to Guam. I'd follow you to freaking Alaska, and you know how I feel about being cold."

Dave hummed. "Maybe Fitzpatrick can design some cybernetic bones for Aziza and you can come home faster."

Ben chuckled. "Yeah, we'll see about that."

Dave wondered how much longer he was going to have to wait.

As the antibiotics took hold and killed the infection, his lungs recovered faster. His leg, too, healed quickly once the infection cleared. By the first week anniversary of the blast, Dave was off the oxygen and working his way back up to normal activity. They discharged him from the hospital four days after that, sending him back to his rental with strict instructions not to overexert himself and not to miss a single physical therapy appointment while he was hospitalized.

He didn't know what he needed therapy for. The only lingering problem was his ribs, and they had to be taped.

Still, he followed his orders. Instead of dedicating himself to PT, he focused on the apartment instead. The apartment had always been good enough for him. While they'd been on the ship, he'd felt the apartment was good enough for both of them. It had four walls, a kitchen, a roof. Who needed more than that? It was neat. It was clean. It had places to sit.

His last memory of Ben, though, wasn't of the ship. His last memory of Ben was of a luxurious villa in Toulon that he apparently thought of as a throwaway, a vacation place, just someplace to crash so they didn't have to deal with a hotel. Dave couldn't provide a place like that. It had been huge. It had been sumptuous. Dave had half expected Marie Antoinette to pop out from one of the spare bathrooms at any minute.

He tried to remind himself that Ben didn't need that, or want that. Ben just liked little comforts, like a bed big enough to fit them both with ease. Dave had been scrimping and saving for years. He could afford to get them a bigger bed, right? With some nicer sheets, too. That wouldn't be too extravagant. And sure, they'd be moving into a new house soon, but they could bring the bed with them.

He did some shopping around, and he found a bed frame he liked. He found a memory foam mattress he could appreciate, too, and he had them both delivered. The delivery guys carted away the old things, promising they'd donate them, and they wouldn't wind up in a landfill somewhere.

How else could Dave get an apartment he didn't own and wasn't keeping, ready to receive the man he loved? He cleaned out the refrigerator, not that he was home enough to let it get that grimy, and filled it with things Ben let slip that he liked. He even splurged and bought butter, because apparently that was a thing in France.

He decorated. He put up banners and bunting. Some of it would droop, he knew, but he wanted to have it ready just in case.

He visited his buddies in the hospital too. As they were discharged, he made sure he stayed social with them. He ran the risk of obsessing about Ben's arrival in the States if he wasn't careful, and no good could come of that. It wasn't something that was in Ben's control, and he'd just make himself crazy and build resentment if he did that.

So he went to bars with Floyd and hung out with Fitzpatrick and Nick and their boy at their place. He and Toledano couldn't go running, but they could hit the shooting range and waste some bullets for a while.

The American administration insisted the attack in Toulon had been carried out by Islamic terrorists. Dave couldn't remember the blast that had sent him into the guardrail, but he didn't remember any religious component to the thing. He checked with Mal, who confirmed his suspicions after conferring with Kelly, but no American publicly contradicted the official government statement.

As the investigation ramped up, the SEALs quietly slipped out of France on an undamaged Navy ship. Their prisoner, who had never been formally admitted to France, stayed in the brig. A week and a half after the destroyer Normandy left Toulon, it pulled into port in Norfolk. The entire platoon was back together, even including Miazga. They got together at Shifty's Too for drinks and to compare injuries, and then they went to their homes.

The only thing missing was Ben.

Dave returned to light duty once the team was allowed back to work. He'd been cleared to run and to do some light training, although most kinds of sparring and anything that might impact his ribs were strictly forbidden. He'd take it. He was sick of sitting around and fretting. Ben was alive. He was safe. They spoke almost every day. Ben wasn't going to choose to stay in France.

Dave was sitting in a classroom on base in Virginia Beach, studying demolitions, when Chief and DeWitt came to get him one day about three weeks after he'd been discharged from the hospital. "Come on," Chief told him, as they rushed through the hallway. "Get your dress blues on, Sailor. You've got a plane to meet."

"I do?" Dave blinked.

DeWitt rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. "Just take our word for it, would you?"

Chief drove him home in his mini van to help him get ready, and then they headed north at great speed. They didn't drive all the way up to DC, but only to Richmond, and Dave didn't know what to make of that. Did they make an injured woman change planes? That seemed cruel.

Security, inexplicably, let them through to go and meet the plane right at its gate, but the plane didn't seem to be a commercial flight. The light-up sign on the gate was dark, but plenty of police and men in suits clustered around the door as staff hurried to bring the ramp to the plane.

Dave, DeWitt, and Chief all stood to attention as the door swung open. Dave saw more men in suits emerge and fought the urge to yawn. Then he saw two he recognized—specifically, he saw Guard and Driver, from the day of the blast in Toulon. Guard flashed him a quick grin.

Aziza came next. She was wheeled down the ramp in a sleek black wheelchair, and she held baby Khadijah in her arms. Aziza's gaze couldn't stay in one place as she looked around the airport, and she seemed to try to sink into herself to make herself smaller.

Then came the face Dave wanted to see most of all. Ben wore a nice, tailored suit that showed off his tiny baby bump to advantage. He too looked around nervously, but when his gaze landed on Dave all of his tension vanished.

Ben had been walking next to an older, non-pregnant version of himself. The older man put a hand on his back and said something in French. Ben flashed the older man a grin and then ran over to Dave, flinging his arms around him.

He didn't squeeze. Instead he kissed Dave quickly and rested his head on Dave's shoulder. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you right now."

Dave broke down. He wasn't the kind of guy to cry in public, or even really in private, but he'd been waiting far too long to see his beloved. Everything had been so uncertain for so long, and it was finally over. "Ben," he whispered, clutching his lover to him. "Ben, you're finally home."

"Home is wherever you are." Ben kissed him again. Passers-by let out cheers, applause, and a few cat calls, but Dave didn't mind. They deserved applause after everything they'd been through, damn it.

The older Ben approached. "Good afternoon." His tone was amused. "I'm Flavien. I'm this one's father. If it's all right with your commanding officers, perhaps we could adjourn someplace a little less public? I've booked a hotel in Virginia Beach. That might be a bit more amenable to everyone." He held out a hand to Dave.

This, then, was Ben's father. It was the father who'd abandoned him. It was the father who'd helped him, and who'd apparently done so much for Aziza and Khadijah too. Dave took Flavien's hand. "Pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Dave Hopper, and I'm in love with your son."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Hopper. Welcome to the family."