Author's Notes: I swear to you this story began life as a crack fic based off that 'Facebook Parenting for the Troubled Teen' video that went viral a couple of years back. (Epic in and of itself – I suggest you watch it if you've not seen it.) But then the muses started giving me other ideas, and they were so good I couldn't ignore them. Thirty pages later, this is the result. I do sincerely apologize that it's taken me a couple of years to post this one – it was done but unedited for the longest time. If not for the constant badgering of Chameleon777, I might never have made myself look it over to post.
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek, but I do own this idea. That counts for something, right? Right? Oh, well. You can't blame a girl for trying.
Tick, tick, tick.
Ethan Pike sat at his desk in his bedroom and stared at the clock on the wall. Outside his door, the sharp staccato of each tick rattled off by the antique timepiece on the living room mantle reminded him of the barking retort of a .357 revolver. He tapped the pen he clenched in his right hand nervously against the notebook laying open on his desk while his left knee bounced up and down. Concentrate. Figure it out. Get it done. Prepare.
Tick, tick, tick.
It was like listening to a death march, like he was waiting his life come to a brutal and abrupt end. Ethan normally wasn't a kid with a penchant toward melodrama, but if there ever was a day to be worried, it was this particular day on the calendar.
Today was the day the freshman class' midterm grades were released.
His were graciously describable as – ahem – subpar.
He knew this day was coming. But for the past few weeks and even privy to the inevitably awful outcome, he still couldn't bring himself to give a shit. He'd heard it all from his teachers, and quite frankly, Ethan was sick and tired of the pitying looks and the scolding tones. If he heard one more adult tell him, "You're such a smart boy…" while they wagged a finger in his face, he swore someone might come back missing a vital body part. He was well aware they were baiting him, and in any other circumstance, he would have taken the challenge and risen to the occasion. But instead, he mentally checked out in every sense of the phrase. Apathetic, Ethan was fully aware that his inability to concentrate coupled with an overwhelming sense of despair was about to lead straight to a very upset father and one of his patented Come to Jesus talks.
Ethan didn't expect it to go well.
The sound of the garage door opening signaled the teen's last few moments of life. He heard his father pull the city-issued car into the garage, cut the engine and open the door leading in to the kitchen. Heavy, booted footsteps marched in urgent cadence from the garage, through the kitchen and down the hall. As Chris made a beeline straight for his son's room, Ethan steeled himself as his father's easily distinguishable stride stopped outside his bedroom door. Without bothering with something as polite as a knock, Pike threw open the door and barged into his son's personal space.
"Do you care to explain this, young man?" Chris scolded without any kind of greeting, his tone low and menacing while he held up the damning evidence in his balled-up right fist. In his full uniform and with his lips pursed, Pike stood just inside the doorway of Ethan's bedroom. Paper crinkled as the lieutenant shook his arm back and forth, waving the proof of failure in his son's face.
"My grades?" Ethan snorted apathetically. Outwardly aloof, he tried to settle the butterflies in his stomach before he answered. "You can read, can't you?" Seated in front of his desk, the young man twisted back and forth on his swiveling chair as he crossed his arms over his chest. Bright blue eyes, identical to his father's and nearly hidden by a frock of sandy blonde hair, glared defiantly up at the older man a few feet away.
"Yes I can, and I really don't like what I see!" Chris exclaimed, taking two quick strides across the room before he slapped the piece of paper down on Ethan's desktop. He leaned heavily on his arms and inched his face into his offspring's personal space.
Staring blankly ahead, Ethan raised his left index finger and gently pushed on the handle of his father's service weapon. "Your gun is going to whack me in the nose. Back up," he said in a bored, uncaring voice.
"You have a lot of balls to say something like that to me, Ethan. You're lucky I'm not about to shoot you with it," he growled. Titling his head, his gaze bored into his son's before he added, "You're failing four classes, you have a D plus in social studies, and your best grade is a C minus in choir. Son, when I was in school, we got a C in music if we could find our seat! This is absolutely unacceptable!"
Shrugging, the younger Pike simply rolled his eyes. "Guess I'm screwed then."
Chris threw his hands up in the air. "What the hell happened to you? Don't you even care?"
Undeterred, the young man fired right back at his father, "I don't know. You tell me. Should I?"
"I would certainly hope so!" Pike answered, pulling out a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his uniform trousers. Disgusted, he unfurled the page and threw it on the desktop right next to the damning midterm report, tapping an irritated finger on top of the lengthy list printed neatly in black and white. "This is a list of all your missing work I had your teachers send me after I calmed down from the heart attack your report gave me. You have done nothing this semester!"
"I showed up. Didn't you always say that's eighty percent of life?" Ethan said, sarcasm and frustrating dripping from his tone.
Pike's face began to take on a pinkish hue as his blood pressure spiked. Pointing the index finger of his left had towards Ethan, he said in a low, menacing voice, "Don't you dare do that."
"What? Quote what you always tell me? Must be nice to be able to pick and choose when to apply all those little great tidbits of advice when it's convenient for you, Dad!" Ethan yelled, hopping out of his chair to bring himself face to face with his father.
"Ethan," Pike warned while he took an unconscious step towards his son. He made a conscious effort to steady his voice, slow his heart rate and even out his blood pressure before he replied, "You need to answer my question."
The teen knew his tone was about to drop into the realm of juvenile, but Ethan didn't really care. All he wanted was his father the hell out of his face. Snidely, he let his lip twitch while he responded with, "What if I don't want to care? It's all crap anyway."
"Your schoolwork is not 'crap' and if you want any chance at taking your driver's test next year on your birthday, you had better figure out an explanation for all this," Chris said as he ran a hand through his greying hair. "Jesus."
"I am so sick of you and mom hanging every little thing over my head!" Ethan finally exploded. "Every time I do something even remotely wrong, it's, 'You're not going to play hockey here,' or, 'Forget about the police explorer trip,' there! It's such fucking bullshit!"
"Watch you language!"
Ethan snorted sarcastically. "Once again, pot, meet the kettle. Have you even listened to the shit that comes out of your own mouth? I was swearing in context at age four because of you and your friends!" Ethan fired back. Before his father could open his mouth to rebut, the teen added snidely, "Sucks when your old standby plays don't work anymore, doesn't it?"
Growling under his breath, Chris checked his watch. He waved an emphatic left hand sharply through the air, effectively putting and end to his half of the conversation. "I am not doing this with you now. I just came home on meal to see if, on the off chance, you'd man up and tell me what's going on."
Ethan wandered over to his bed, all but collapsing on it when Chris turned his back. The teen slouched, laid his left leg straight out in front of him and pulled his right leg back in a hurdler's stretch position. Picking at a callous on his toe, he tilted his head and glared up at his father. "You're running out on me again? What is it this time? Wait, let me guess. Starts with Mc and ends with Coy."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, that's it."
"Hmm. That's kind of funny, Lieutenant," the teen began, stressing his father's rank. "I don't understand why you have work today when I saw the duty roster two weeks ago. You know – the one that you made? It said that you're supposed to have today off, along with yesterday and tomorrow. But you worked yesterday, you're on today, and I'll bet you're on call tomorrow. Gonna tell me why you're covering your sergeant's shifts again?" Ethan asked, crossing his arms defiantly over his chest.
"He needs the help," Chris answered flatly.
Rolling his eyes, the teen tossed his hands up in the air. His palms slapped the tops of his thighs hard while he replied, "Oh. Great. That's an awesome answer! It's totally one you would accept from me."
"That's different!" Pike shouted as his anger started to rise again.
Ethan scoffed. "How? How is your bullshit any different from my bullshit?! Explain that to me, O Great Knowing One."
"Because it just is, Ethan! There are a lot of things you don't know about – don't need to know about – with Len right now, so just leave it alone. You owe him that much."
"I owe him?" the teen answered incredulously while he pointed to his own chest in disbelief. "That's rich. You are such a fucking hypocrite, you know that?!"
Chris took a step, leaned down, and put his face a literal inch from his son's. A low, nearly feral snarl made its way from deep in Chris' chest while his jaw flicked back and forth. Rage boiled just below the surface, excising itself by the clenching and unclenching fists at Pike's sides. He pointed one hand right at Ethan's eye level when he warned in a low, hissed whisper, "You are on thin ice, Mister. And if you knew the implications of what you just said, you would eat those words and beg for forgiveness."
"See, I might feel bad if I actually knew what the hell was going on every time you and mom disappear. But since you won't tell, me, I just had to figure it out on my own. And I have. I'm not blind, Dad, or stupid. He's a drunk. I get it. Can we move on now?"
Raising his voice to the tone he often used on the street, Pike barked out, "Ethan Christopher Pike, you are so far out of line right now it's not even funny. We will talk about this when I get home. Until then, you are to sit here, do your homework and catch up with the laundry list of overdue assignments all your teachers emailed me. Goodnight, son."
Ethan felt his bedroom rattle when Chris slammed the door on his way out. The footsteps retreated, followed by the sound of his father's unmarked revving higher than what was probably acceptable as the older man pulled out of the driveway. Ethan let out the unconscious breath he was holding, collapsed back into the soft pillows on his bed and groaned out loud. Rubbing his hands across his face, he scratched his head and muttered, "And fuck you very much, too."
Yeah, that went well.
Next Up: Chekov attempts to lend a hand and things go horribly, spectacularly, unexpectedly wrong.
