My Son, The Alien 7
It's Better To Ask Forgiveness Than Permission
by Belladonna
URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asb/belladonna/mysont07.php
Summary: John convinces Shifu to do something that will possibly get them both into trouble. Then there's a visit that heralds trouble.
"Johnny."
John glanced over at the girl seated next to him in Honors Biology. "Bethany?"
Bethany smiled and leaned toward him after casting a wary eye towards their teacher. John couldn't help notice her tight baby blue shirt showing off her figure perfectly, (he was old, not blind!).
"I see you eating lunch with Shifu everyday. Is he going out with anybody?"
"Shifu?" John pondered the question. "Nah, I don't think he's interested in girls."
"He's gay?" Bethany asked in horror.
John smothered a smirk. "I think you could call him undecided. You can ask him out. All he can do is say no."
"Mr. Nelson, do you have anything to share with the class?" Mr. Turner, bane of biology students everywhere, intoned.
"Sorry Mr. Turner, I'm trying out for Yenta."
Mr. Turner snorted while all of John's classmates looked at him blankly, making him sigh. He was definitely too old.
~*
John had to laugh at the exasperated look Shifu gave him at lunch. "I am very disappointed with you, John," the other boy said severely, though the scolding lost its edge with the carrot stick that was being used as a weapon.
"Bethany, huh?" He smirked at the former ascended.
"Did I not tell you that they were too young for me?" Shifu demanded. "For that, you are coming over and helping me learn how to mow the grass, though why Jack does not just let it grow I do not understand."
"Because he doesn't want a meadow in the front yard." John snorted. At Shifu's look, he sighed. "Fine, I will admit that I was being sneaky and underhanded. And on the plus side I can torture the old man some."
"Jack and Daniel are not supposed to be home for two days."
John put down his milk. "Seriously?" he said, his mind going a mile a minute with ideas.
Shifu shrugged. "Jack has accused me of being too serious, on occasion, but yes."
~*
Shifu wished he could have taken the words back as he extricated himself from the flood of teenagers in his living room, lifting his sweaty hair off of the back of his neck. John had persuaded him to have a party, and now most of the people that he went to school with were gyrating to overly loud music, their drinks slopping onto the carpeting. It was a good thing that Hani was pouting in his room.
He knew he'd told Jack and the military that he no longer had his powers, but he'd figured he could fudge the facts, as Jack would say, with no one the wiser. At the moment though he seriously wished he could get into everyone's minds and ~send them home~!
An arm around his shoulder made him jump. "Don't even thing about it, Glowboy," John's voice grated in his ear, and startled a wash of warm feeling low in his body.
"What?"
"Drink this," John ordered, handing Shifu a cup of something pink and bubbly.
"What is it?" Shifu peered at the drink suspiciously.
John rolled his eyes. "It's practically fruit punch," he said over the loud music.
Shifu took a sip and was pleasantly surprised by its sweetness, and he was hot with everyone packed so tightly together that he drank it all in one swallow. "Oh!"
"You were supposed to sip it!" John's exasperated voice came and when Shifu turned to look at him, the whole world swam blurrily. He waited for a minute and it settled, but looking into John's eyes made him feel funny.
"What is happening?" Shifu whispered, moving closer to his friend, the sound of the party fading in his ears.
John swallowed hard as Shifu swayed towards him, the velvety brown eyes that were inherited from Shar'e making him think pretty dirty thoughts. "Um, let's get out and dance."
But when Shifu's eyes dropped to his mouth, John knew he was in fucking trouble. Helpless to resist, John let his head drop forward and was about to press his lips to Shifu's, (all the while his mind was ignoring the little robot running around in circles with it's arms waving, screeching 'Danger Will Robinson!'), when the music abruptly cut off.
"Well, well. I certainly didn't expect this," he heard Jack say into the sudden silence.
"Crap," John said, frantically berating himself for missing seeing them come in, while trying to keep the suddenly clingy Shifu upright. He winced when he saw Daniel surveying the living room with displeasure.
"Okay, let's have phone numbers of parents," Jack said, snapping his fingers.
"There was no alcohol, sir," one of the boys, Sean Marcus, whose father was a Major in the Air Force, said earnestly and there was a lot of frantic head shaking.
"Seriously?" Jack asked incredulously, sniffing one of the cups a teen offered him. "Geez, Shifu. What a lame party!"
There were snickers in John and Shifu's direction, while Shifu suddenly straightened up. "Thank you for coming to the party. I'm sorry that the old people came home early..." he trailed off and smiled at the laughter.
Jack checked each kid as they left, smirking at the chorus of 'Later, Nelson' and 'Next time make sure the 'rents are ~gone~, Jackson', assuring that no one had smuggled booze into the house. Apparently, despite the smoking (which made Daniel fix John with a scorching glare) there had been no liquor, just kids hopped up on caffeine, sugar and dancing. When Daniel shut finally shut the door, John and Shifu had settled on the sofa, Shifu sound asleep on his shoulder.
"So, I'll bet you a grand that this wasn't Shifu's idea," Jack drawled. "In fact, I remember doing something like when I was 17, though I had booze."
"And Pop tanned our, ~your~ ass, and we were grounded for like a hundred years," John grumped, feeling a little disassociated. "I didn't want Shifu to get arrested, just to have fun."
"Let me guess, you had the real thing, and gave some to Shifu?" Daniel asked as he regarded the picture of the two boys on his sofa curiously.
"He's a lightweight," John scoffed, but not without a smile to his sleeping couchmate. "I gave him like an ounce of wine with sparkling soda in it."
"Well," Jack said. "For future reference, don't. And maybe, oh, I don't know, ~ask~ if you can have a party?"
"Fuddy duddy," John muttered, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh when Jack got all offended.
"Am not!"
Daniel huffed a sigh at the two of them. "Let's get Shifu to bed." He and Jack had pulled up the boneless Shifu between them, when he tossed over his shoulder at John, "You can have the other guest room, and don't think we forgot about what you and Shifu almost did."
"Just kill me now," John moaned and let his head drop back onto the couch. He'd cut his losses and run but Jack would track him down and kick his ass to Minnesota, and for good reason if he hurt Shifu.
A couple of minutes later Jack came back out. "Beer?"
"Fucking A," John said.
Jack nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, then wandered back out to hand John a beer. They popped the lids and saluted one another silently before taking long drinks.
"So, is this about Daniel?" Jack asked evenly, making John panic for a minute, then get angry.
"No!" John said sharply. "And that's not fair to either of us, thank you very goddamn much!"
"Alright, take it easy," Jack said with an eyeroll. "Tell me what happened."
John sighed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on his beer bottle. "It was an impulse, I'll admit. But I like him, Jack. He's become a good friend, more so than the twerps I go to school with."
"You're lonely," he heard Daniel say softly from where he stood in the door.
"Ya think?" John said with a snort. "Shifu is the first person I've talked to in three fucking years that knew who I was. I felt like I was drowning and no one was there to save me, and there he was." He looked up and saw the understanding on Daniel's face, and let his eyes drop back down.
"You coulda..."
"Oh, please," he said scornfully. "I was going to do it alone, remember?"
"And O'Neill's need to be prodded with a sharp stick in the ass to make them get help," Daniel said dryly.
"Hey!" Jack and John chorused indignantly.
"Am I wrong?" Daniel asked, smirking as they subsided, both grumbling.
John put his beer bottle on the coffee table and covered his face with his hands. "What am I gonna do?" he groaned. He was a senior in high school, with a guaranteed placement to any military academy of his choice, which he couldn't do if he had a partner, but he'd be damned if he'd wait as long as Jack did to be happy.
"Well you can start with no more whining," Jack pointed out.
"And you can bite me," John replied sharply, but he sat back up with his beer, some of the tension gone from his shoulders.
"I know we haven't been there for you," Daniel said, holding up a hand when Jack opened his mouth, "but we're here now. And if you need ~any~ help, then all you have to do is ask."
Jack nodded, pointing his beer at Daniel. "What he said."
John snorted, deciding to just enjoy his beer and not ~think~ about the future.
"Hey, I don't think you said why you picked Nelson for a last name?" Daniel asked after a minute.
"I Dream of Jeannie," John and Jack chorused, exchanging a grin.
Daniel blinked. "What?"
"Okay, that's just sad," John said with a headshake. "Jack, you have shamefully neglected Daniel's pop culture education."
Jack chuckled. "Pretty ingenious, kid. There's no way the NID woulda figured that out. C'mon Danny," he said as he got to his feet. "Let's head to bed."
"Well," Daniel said as he stood to follow Jack, eyes twinkling suddenly. "Last I knew I wasn't blond, and don't get any ideas that I'm calling you Master."
"Whoa, hey!" John held up his hands. "I so don't need to know about your sex life!"
"Good night, Brat," Jack said, leaning over the back of the couch and cuffing John affectionately. "By the way, you and Shifu are cleaning the house tomorrow."
"Crap. I don't suppose Daniel knows any real genies?" John asked plaintively.
"You wish," Daniel's voice floated down the hallway.
~*
By now, the neighbors who were mostly retired or ex-military, in Jack and Daniel's neighborhood were aware that they'd taken in Daniel's step-son, and gotten a dog. It was the sort of gossip that had spread within a day, with most of the curious stopping by to welcome the new addition to the neighborhood.
Concerned at first, everyone expected that with a teenager the neighborhood would be overrun by more, but as the months had passed nothing had happened, the only exception being that evening's party. It had been a pleasant surprise that there had been no trouble afterwards except a couple of incidents of squealing tires, but by 1145 the neighborhood had quieted down again.
A couple of older veteran's, one a retired General of an older generation than Jack, and a retired Chief Petty Officer a couple of years younger, had trouble sleeping for various reasons. By coincidence both were up, standing in the kitchen windows taking medications for their ailments when both noticed the suspicious dark sedan cruising their neighborhood.
~*
Shifu rolled over, sleepily feeling Hani move with him. Jack had warned him not to let the pup sleep with him, but he didn't mind the company. The feel of someone sitting on the side of his bed made him open his eyes, and smile in welcome. "Oma!"
Oma smiled. "How are you, Shifu?"
He gingerly sat up, lifting the sleeping dog into his lap. "I'm doing well. I'm happy," he added.
"I can see that," Oma said a little wistfully. She petted the small dog, smiling when it grumbled and then curled into a ball.
Shifu knew his mentor well. "I chose to travel this path, Oma. No one suggested it to me. I wanted..." he trailed off, chewing his lip as he thought of how to say what he was feeling, "I wanted to know what it was like to have a family, like my mother had, and even the host of Apophis had before he was lost. I wanted to understand love. And Daniel and Jack have been wonderful to me, patient and understanding," he said earnestly.
"You do know that with happiness comes sadness. The candle doesn't always stay lit, the calm ocean contributes to the storm," Oma said seriously.
"I know," Shifu replied just as seriously.
Oma gazed at him for a long time. "So be it. Be happy, my child." She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead before glowing brightly and disappearing upwards through the ceiling.
Shifu nodded. "I will, Oma," he said softly, touching his forehead and opening his eyes, and he wistfully thought about John.
