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Pete has officially been in Vegas' life now, longer than not being part of it. There is no-one else in this world that Vegas knows better, not even Macau and that is why he notices Pete's slight changes in behaviour, even if no-one else does.
It's the way that he absentmindedly takes the wrong car to pick Rome and Venice up from their afterschool clubs. The car Pete hates driving. The one that he once reversed into a bollard because the rear bumper protrudes oddly and somehow Pete forgot that at rather critical moment.
Vegas notices the changes in Pete's posture and in the choice of words he uses towards the kids. They're more... carefully chosen.
Still filled with his overwhelming love for them but there's something very subtly wrong about it. Something neither Venice or Rome pick up but that Vegas definitely does.
He waits because Pete never reacts well when confronted about his emotions before he's finished organising them for himself. Pete will come to him when he's ready to talk out what's happening.
It doesn't take long. Maybe a day or two before Pete crawls into his lap on the couch after the kids go to bed. He sticks his cold hands into the back of Vegas' shirt warming them on the flat planes of his shoulders.
They sit in quietness, Vegas holding Pete as much as Pete is holding him. There is just the hum of the air conditioning for several minutes until Pete finds his words.
"I'm just so jealous of them." Pete whispers into Vegas' chest. "They're so happy and unmarred."
Vegas holds him tighter, squeezing Pete in the way he knows soothes the other man. "I am too. They'll never be hurt in the ways we were."
"Does that... Am I bad dad for that?"
"Pete, you're a great dad. You're a great dad because you feel like that and they don't know. You're a great dad because you feel like that and you're loving them. You're a great dad because you're not passing the trauma on." Vegas says, carding his fingers through Pete's soft hair as he trembles in his now one armed hug.
"You're a great dad too." Pete says looking up for the first time in this conversation. His eyes are red and puffy, filled with tears that are ready to fall at any moment. It's hard not to reach down and kiss away the moisture that clings to his eyelashes like dew drops sitting in a spider's web but Vegas wills himself to. If only to prevent himself from crying, he can do that.
Pete is such a good father and Vegas is doing his best not to become his own father. There's nothing he fears more than looking in the eyes of Rome and Venice and seeing the fear in them that he and Macau have lived with.
But he knows that Pete would never let him get to that point. Pete is his safety belt. His everything.
"It ends with us."
It's a vow Vegas intends to keep with his life if necessary.