A/N: After writing 'Man to Man,' I had several requests to show the whole Mariano family together (Jess, Rory, Jessica, Oliver, and Laura) I can't say that's exactly what this is, but it does include a little of both Rory and Oliver and a lot of Jess and Jessica. Laura won't be born for another couple of years, though. I've been picking at this for awhile. For those who love 'Pay the Piper,' here's a glimpse of Jessica at age 9. Hope you like it.

Both Rory and Oliver were taking a nap, and Jessica was in her room with a book, which left Jess with the increasingly rare opportunity to sit and write without distraction, which he did for almost ten whole minutes. But, the noise coming from down the hall made him pause and slide his wheeled office chair across the room before standing and exiting his sanctuary. Jess ducked his head around the corner. It seemed there was a vehement tongue-lashing going on in the next room, with the recipient being either notably silent or nonexistent, and the one administering this thorough dressing-down was his little girl. After the incidents of the day before, it was a little worrying, but the tone wasn't defiant. It was scolding.

He walked in, catching the tail-end of a sentence. "-at me when you're the one who's rotten and smelly and awful!" She was crouched down in front of Oliver's portable bassinet, where the little cub was beginning to squirm and make small whimpering noises.

"Hey!" he stepped in, taking the stance of a line-backer, if such is possible to do while crouching down to the level of a bassinet. "You do not talk to him like that," he said pointedly, locking his eyes to hers intently, even as he reached into the bassinet with a caress to soothe the innocent little boy she'd affronted, and keep the whimpering from turning into a full squall. "What's going on?"

"Nothing." She said the word quietly, her little chin tucking guiltily inward.

Jess' eyes filled with concern and he leaned in to make eye contact again, speaking more gently. "He's a baby. Why would you be talking to him like that if nothing was going on?"

His little girl turned silent for at least twenty seconds as she was wont to do when she didn't want to answer. Sharing the same tendency, Jess understood, and watched her patiently until she was ready to respond.

Finally she looked up at him.

"I thought you said it was okay to be mad at Oliver." Jessica's mouth tightened into a scowl, her miniature brow patently adorable wrinkled in the middle above her large brown eyes.

Fewer words were more challenging to deal with as a parent than I thought you said. Jess held his breath, bouncing on his ankles for a second before shifting to a sitting position and heaving a prodigious sigh. "Yes…I did. But, this isn't what I meant."

Her little frown deepened, but when he patted the floor next to him, she sat there, looking up at her dad's face.

"You can be mad at him all you want." He pursed his lips, pausing, and turning to look into her eyes. "But you can't take it out on him." It was obvious by the look on her face that this made no sense to his little girl.

"Being mad is a feeling."

"I know," she said softly, but with a kind of a lilt that indicated that he was silly for thinking she didn't know that.

"Feelings aren't good or bad… They just are. They're just there. It's what you do with those feelings - the things you say, and the things you do…the way you treat people, that's important."

He watched her shake a strand of hair out of her eyes, crinkle her nose and then blow at it its itchiness before trying unsuccessfully to grasp it between her fingers or wipe it away. Seeing the troublesome thread, he reached forward and brushed it away for her, and she blinked up at him, listening.

"When I told you that it was all right to be mad at Oliver, what I meant was: if that's a feeling that you feel, you shouldn't be mad at yourself for feeling it. You shouldn't feel guilty. And you shouldn't tell yourself that it's not how you feel. That'll just make things worse. You've got to say, 'Yes, I am angry - and that's okay.' But, then you've got to figure out what to DO."

"How?" Such a simple question with such profound implications, of which her wide eyes, the color of sunlight through strongly brewed tea, had limited comprehension.

He licked his lips, thinking for a moment. "In this instance, you'd probably want to look at the situation objectively…that means stepping outside your feelings for a minute and just thinking. And, you can think to yourself: 'Yeah, I am mad that he has his own mom and dad, and I don't. But, he is just a baby. It isn't his fault that he was born into this family; and he didn't take my mom away. None of it really has anything to do with him. And, he is my brother. I should be nice to him. After all, even if I'm mad, I do love him.' That way, you aren't ignoring your feelings, but you don't let them control you."

He knew this was a lot for a little girl to take in; and she was staring at the patterns in the carpet, mulling it over. He tried to think of a way to make it clearer…something she could relate to.

Taking a deep breath, he tried again. "Feelings are a lot like books on a shelf. You know, some books you pick up, and you read them - and you just fall in love with them. They're just…the best thing you've ever read. No matter how many times you read them, you just can't get enough." At the fervor of his voice, enunciating their shared passion, her eyes lit up, and he could tell she was right there with him. "You'll read them over and over, and quote them to anybody who'll listen. You think about them all the time, and you learn from them, and maybe even change the way you do things because of those books. A lot of times, they never even make it back onto the shelf!"

She nodded excitedly, and he smoothed her hair back, smiling softly at the kinship they shared.

A soft breath later: "Other books, you take them down and read them… but for whatever reason, you just don't like them." He squinted and shrugged. "You read them. You give them a fair chance; but they're just not something you'd wanna read again." A slower nod from his little girl acknowledged this. "You take whatever you can learn from the book, but you shut it…and put it back on the shelf."

Even when Jess talked for long times at a stretch-which he was apt to do with his quiet little girl more than anybody else he'd ever met-he still did so with long pauses, as it still didn't come naturally to him, and since that also allowed her to think about the things he was saying, let the synapses build their bridges and reinforce them until they'd hold.

"Feelings are the same way. Some feelings you just can't get enough of. They're wonderful! They're great! You'd feel that way every single day of your life if you could! You want to spread those feelings all over the whole world, and let them put their color into everything you think, everything you say, everything you do. You just can't put it down."

The metaphor was working. Her eyes were shining again.

"Other feelings pop up in front of you, and you just don't like them." The eyes clouded over instantly. She was mirroring every curve, every rise and fall, as if they were parallel sides of a railroad track. "They make you feel rotten inside, and you can't get rid of them fast enough. But, you really should think about them, see if you can learn anything from them - say, 'That's a feeling I have, and that's fine.'" He took a deep breath.

"But, in the end, what you want to do with them, after you give them the attention they deserve… You shut the book, and put it back on the shelf. Don't let it poison your mind, or make you say or do things you'll be sorry about… Put it away. Sure, it might come toppling off the shelf and hit you in the head now and then; or you might even pick it up and give it another read someday, to see if there's something you missed. But it's not something you need to keep reading all the time. It's not a book you wanna recommend to people you care about. It's best…kept up on the shelf."

He reached out to brush the tumbling hair from his little girl's pondering eyes. "Does that make sense?"

Her lips twisted thoughtfully for a moment before she nodded, looking up at him.

"So…no more yelling at your baby brother, at least 'till he's old enough to do something to deserve it?" he asked, cocking a smile at Jessica as he stood up.

She stood up along with him, tilted her head, and her lips twisted the other way.

"What? You think he already does stuff to deserve it?" he asked, his tone sufficiently mock-indignant to show that yes was not the correct answer.

"No…" she said slowly. "But, I do not like diapers," she told him firmly, and he couldn't help but laugh.

He crinkled up his nose and shook his head with a grimace. "Nobody likes diapers!"

"They're gross," she added definitively, though her dad's humorously blech tone did make her dismay turn slightly comic.

"Very," he conceded, nodding; but, squinted again with a decided look. "But, you do know he can't help that, right?"

Jessica's small shoulders raised and lowered in a monumental sigh that preceded the words: "I know," and a slumping frown that made her dad chuckle and scoop her up into his arms.

His voice turned to a playful growl. "So, no…more…yelling…at…baby…brothers," he reiterated, punctuating each word with a ticklish poke that made his little girl squeal and writhe giddily. He stopped the tickling and raise his eyebrows. "Okay?" She just sat there smiling quietly at him, so he resumed the growly voice and the tickling, employing the most playful coersion known to man. "Okay?"

"Okay-okay-okay-okay-okaaaaeeeeeeeeey!" she squealed as she found herself turned upside down with her head dangling by the cuffs of his pants. Jess turned it into a flip and landed her squarely on her feet, realizing that she was getting heavy enough he wouldn't be able to do that much longer.

Jessica, recovering from tickle-aftershock laughter, caught her breath and gathered with difficulty her static-charged flyaway hair.

At a cooing sort of squeak, both of them looked over at the bassinet and saw little Oliver's tiny eyebrows puckered inward in worry and a tiny lip threatening to turn into crying any second. This tickling and squealing and topsy-turvying was too much, and in baby world must have been scary…but still teetering on the brink of actually scared. So, Jess tipped the balance by picking the little boy up and bouncing him, which wasn't scary at all.

Jessica leaned toward the little one with a sigh and addressed him once again, "I don't ever hate you," she assured the bouncing infant who was now gurgling and enjoying himself very much. "I don't love you all the time because sometimes I get angry about things that aren't your fault. But that doesn't mean I don't love you, okay?" The happy gurgling seemed like agreement to her, or at least as close to agreement as he was capable of giving. "And even if I am mad, I still mostly love you all the time." The speech was grave and apologetic and sealed with a kiss to the velvet cheek.

Jess couldn't help but smile at the unprompted making up and rumpled his little girl's hair and gave her a squeeze with his left arm, holding Oliver close with his right. Rory appeared on the stairs without any audible warning footsteps, and he looked up with the look of a scapegrace caught in some kind of mischief. Her eyes sparkled at him and her lips, though not laughing or even molding into an outright smirk, betrayed how much she loved happening upon the three of them so embraced.

Jess raised an eyebrow, every inch as impish as the moment before, though being affectionate to one's children is hardly a misdemeanor. "So much for naps," he shrugged.

"Or writing," Rory responded.

"Or writing," he nodded sagaciously, but with a twinkle in his eye.

Rory strolled over with eyebrows raised high and a deliberate innocence, ducking under Jess' shoulder to join the family hug, effectively wedging Jessica between the two of them, gazing upward. Jess' heart swelled into a complete circle…a wholeness…even if just for that brief moment, and he longed with all of his heart to keep this book off the shelf, open, and never-ending.

A/N: It occurs to me that for those who have never read "Pay the Piper" this story may seem OOC. Jess Mariano helping someone else to understand and cope with their emotions? Makes me curious what you think. What's your impression of this? ...whether you've read the previous stories or not, really, I'd love to know your thoughts.