~This story is set in the 'Family Ties' Universe, and it is set in the down time between chapters 24 and 25 of that story...about two weeks after the slumber party in 'Satan's Slumber Party.'

~Thanks to ilovetvalot for giving me the title and plot ideas for this story...based on her real life experience of seeing the movie opening weekend with her husband.

"Dammit!" Dave heard his daughter exclaim as she slammed the kitchen phone down on it's cradle.

"Hey, watch the language," he admonished as he opened the fridge and pulled out an apple.

"Sorry dad, it's just that Kayla and I were supposed to go see 'The Hunger Games' tonight and now she can't go!"

"Why not?" Dave asked as he polished the apple off on his shirt; Katie and Kayla were best friends and practically joined at the hip since the other girl lived only a few blocks from them. He knew his daughter had read the Hunger Games trilogy and she'd been talking non-stop about seeing the first movie for the past month. He figured it would take an act of God to keep her and Kayla from seeing it opening weekend.

"She got into a fight with her dad and now she's grounded for the rest of the weekend," Katie huffed angrily, wondering if any dad ever really understood how hard it was to be a teenage girl. If they did, they wouldn't ground them over a simple screaming fit.

"That sucks," Dave said, slipping into her vernacular. "Why don't you see if one of your other friends wants to go with you?"

Katie shook her head, "All of my other friends saw it last night; their parents let them go to the midnight showing," she said pointedly.

"Yeah, I know, I'm an ogre for not wanting my thirteen year old to be on the streets of DC at two-thirty in the morning. How ever do you stand me?" He asked sarcastically, but with a smile so she knew he was joking.

"It's hard, but somehow I haven't run away yet," she joked back.

"I guess you'll have to see it with her next weekend," Dave said as he cut the piece of fruit in half. Quickly coring it, he offered a piece to her.

"But I already bought the tickets for tonight," the teen practically wailed. "If I don't go tonight, I'm out twenty-five bucks." She racked her brain to think of any of her friends who hadn't seen the movie the previous night but she couldn't think of any.

"Twenty-five bucks?" Dave asked in dismay. "Movies are really $12.50 nowadays?"

Katie looked at him as though he he was crazy and nodded. "When was the last time you actually went to a movie? It wasn't a silent one, was it? You have been to theaters that have sound, right?"

"Very funny," Dave said and then thought for a minute. "I think I went with your mom a few weeks before she died," he told her.

"Wanna change that?"

"What do you mean?" He asked, a bit confused.

"Well, I already have the tickets and I don't want them to go to waste…do you want to go see it with me?" Katie asked, pretty sure that he would say no and honestly? She wasn't a hundred percent sure she wanted him to go since it was totally uncool to go out with your parents but she really wanted to see the movie and she didn't want to be one of those freaks sitting in the theater alone. To her surprise, he thought for a moment and then nodded.

"Sure Belle, I'll go see it with you." He surprised himself with his answer but, as he thought about it, he realized that she wouldn't be issuing these types of invitations much longer. No, the older she got the less cool it would become to be seen with him and he wanted to take advantage of this time with her for as long as possible. Did he really want to spend the evening in a theater full of teenagers? No, but he would make the sacrifice for her.

"Um, okay," Katie said as she got over her surprise. "The movie is at eight, so we should probably leave here at around seven so we get good seats."

Dave glanced at his watch. "It's five now, how about we leave in a few minutes and grab dinner beforehand?" He suggested, again trying not to think about the fact that in a few short years it wouldn't be him taking his daughter to dinner and a movie, instead it would be some hormone laden high school guy who only had one thing on his mind.

"Cool," the teen said enthusiastically. "Lemme just go to the bathroom and I'll be ready to go."

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Two and a half hours later, they pulled up to the movie theater and found that the parking lot was jam packed. Luckily, Dave found a spot as someone was pulling out of it, but it still seemed as though it was miles away from the front doors. Thankfully, once they got inside the theater, they didn't have to wait in the general line since Katie already had their tickets, but the line for snacks was another story.

"We're going to be here for hours," Dave grumbled as he saw the tween filled concession area.

"It usually goes pretty quick," Katie told him. "What do you want to get?"

"Whatever you want, Katie Belle," Dave told her. He'd tried paying her back for his ticket but she'd refused so he was paying for all of their snacks. Since they'd just eaten dinner, he expected that she wouldn't get much junk food. He was wrong.

"Hmmm," she said as she screwed her face up in thought and studied the concession stand menu. "How about we get a #2? It comes with two large drinks and a large popcorn and all of them get one free refill. Add a bag of Reese's Pieces to the order and we should be set, unless you want candy too?"

Dave shook his head, horrified at the amount of crap she wanted to eat. Free refills on the soda and popcorn? If he finished even one helping of each, he would end up in the ICU and she wanted to add more sugar on top of it? "Honey, that's a lot of food," he said. "And we just ate dinner."

"I know," Katie said, looking at him with puppy dog eyes, "But I'm still hungry and Kayla and I always get this much stuff."

"Okay," Dave said with a sigh; he couldn't resist that look and she knew it, which was why she was using it to her advantage. "I don't know where you put it all. You're lucky you take after Erin, she can eat just about anything she wants to without gaining an ounce of weight."

"Yeah, right," his daughter snorted. "Erin eats like a bird and when she does eat, it's all salads and healthy crap."

"It's salads and healthy crap in public, but Erin Strauss is a junk food addict in private. Hell, she has an entire cabinet in her office credenza dedicated to cookies, candy bars and potato chips."

"REALLY?" Katie asked loudly, trying to picture her prim and proper biological mother going on a junk food bender.

"Really," Dave confirmed as they moved to the front of the line. "She owes me for the number of times I've saved her from going into meetings with cookie crumbs on her blouse."

The teen was about to say more, but it was their turn and she wanted to make sure the guy behind the counter got their order right, so she focused on that. "Hi, we'd like a number two with a Sprite for me and a Dr. Pepper for the gentleman," Katie said, jerking her thumb at her dad, who was amused that she was ordering for him. "Also, can you please add a bag of Reese's Pieces to the order?"

"No problem," the kid behind the counter said as he started to pour their drinks. "You want butter on the popcorn?"

"Extra butter please," Katie responded and since she was focused on their order, she didn't see the horrified look that had come over her father's face. Extra butter? On a large bucket of movie theater popcorn? He was about to call his cardiologist and make an appointment for the following Monday just to be safe, but at that moment his heart got another jolt.

"That'll be $27.50," the kid told Dave as he set their snacks down on the counter in front of them.

The profiler's eyes bugged as he stared at the kid. "Are you serious?" He finally asked. "I have two sodas, a bucket of popcorn and a bag of candy and you're charging me almost $30 for it?"

"Sir," the kid said tiredly, as if he went through this numerous times each shift, "The prices are clearly posted on the menu."

"The hell they are!" Dave shot back. "The prices are in five point font! Who in the hell can read that?" He was about to ask to speak to the manager when he glanced over at his daughter and saw she was looking very uncomfortable. Not wanting to ruin their evening out, he slapped his Visa card down on the counter. A minute later, they walked away from the counter with their food, but he grumbled about it the entire way to the theater.

Once they got to their specific theater, Dave handed their tickets to the older ticket taker and pocketed the stubs. He was a little worried when the ticket taker gave him a look of sympathy as they walked into the theater and it became clear as to why he received that look less than thirty seconds later…the place was a madhouse! He and Katie were twenty minutes early and the place was still packed. As he scanned the auditorium for open seats, he nearly tripped as Katie pulled him up the steps. She stopped at the tenth row and the two of them stepped over many tweens in order to get to the seats in the middle of the row. Dave ordinarily sat in the back row as he generally did not like having people behind him but since this was Katie's night, he didn't say anything about it. Thankfully there were five empty seats between him and the kids sitting at the end of the row, so he didn't feel squished and, since the lights were still on, the glowering look he shot people as they eyed those seats ensured they remained empty.

Since they had over fifteen minutes until the movie began, Katie gave him a brief synopsis of the book since he hadn't read it. As she talked, he looked around in wonder at all of the kids and their electronic gadgets. It seemed as if all of them were either talking on their phones or texting to someone else in the theater and those who weren't using them for communication purposes were playing games or surfing the internet. Katie had been begging him for a fancy smartphone but seeing the way all of the kids were glued to theirs, he was glad he'd refused. Instead he'd given her a nice, simple cell phone that allowed her to make outgoing calls and texts, but she was limited to a certain number of texts per month. He wanted her to enjoy the world around her and he knew she wouldn't do that if she was glued to a smartphone.

Katie gave a squeak of excitement and Dave sighed in relief when the lights dimmed and the movie began…at least that's what he thought was happening. Instead of seeing the movie credits start across the screen, the theater audience was subjected movie previews. Many movie previews. As in six movie previews! So not only was he…well, Katie, paying to see the movie, they were paying to watch glorified commercials? When the hell had this started? It wouldn't have been so bad if the movie trailers they were playing were good, but they weren't. When had the Hollywood writers stopped caring? All he could see were bad plots pumped up by expensive special effects; there wasn't one in the bunch that he would voluntarily see.

It was during one of these previews that a woman, along with three of her children, sat down in the seats next to him. Since the lights had dimmed, Dave's death glare hadn't worked on them and the mother plopped herself down in the seat next to him. Great, so not only was he being forced to watch the trailers of movies he would never see, he now felt like a sardine. Letting out a huff of irritation, he reached into the bucket of popcorn his daughter was holding and raised his cholesterol level by a couple of points.

Surprisingly, once the movie finally started, which was seventeen minutes past the scheduled time thanks to all of the previews, he found himself getting into it. The plot was strong, the acting was good and he recognized a few of the older movie stars. He sat back and enjoyed it, until the woman next to him decided to get frisky with him.

At first he thought it had been an accident; she'd spilled her box of milk duds and some of them had landed in his lap. Since the candy at the theater was almost as expensive as gold, he didn't blame her for wanting to round up all of the pieces that hadn't landed on the sticky floor and he even helped her scoop some of the pieces off of his lap; that is until she gave his crotch a firm squeeze. He felt his eyes bulge in surprise and he quickly grabbed her hand and moved it away from him. She just flashed him a grin and resumed watching the movie. Dave just shook his head in dismay and also focused on the screen in front of him.

Everything was fine for about fifteen minutes until he absently began rubbing his shoulder. Suddenly he felt another hand on his neck and it started to massage it, along with his lower scalp. Once again, he firmly removed her hand and placed it on her side of the armrest. This time she looked at him afterwards and he gave a firm shake of his head but the woman just gave him an inviting smile and licked her lips sensually before going back to the movie. Less than five minutes later, however, he felt a hand on his upper thigh and it was moving dangerously close to his groin. Knowing he needed to put a stop to things once and for all, he surreptitiously reached into his pocket, pulled out his FBI credentials and showed them to the woman. Even in the dim lighting he could see her face go pale and then he lifted the edge of his shirt so she could see his sidearm. Upon seeing the glock at his side, she pulled her hand out of his lap like he was on fire and she left him alone for the rest of the show. Dave glanced at his daughter to see if she'd seen any of that, but she was intently focused on the screen and had missed the little sideshow and he was eternally grateful to the fates above for sparing her.

Once all of the distractions were taken care of, Dave got back to the movie again and he was disappointed when it ended; while it had been longer than two hours, he felt it could've gone on for much longer than that.

"So, what'd you think?" Katie asked as the lights came back on.

"It was really good," he told her. "I might have to read the books."

"You can borrow my copies, I have all three of them," Katie told him, finding it both odd and amusing that she and her dad would be reading the same things.

They both stood up and headed for the exit, along with hundreds of other tweens. Being a gentleman, Dave let the group of girls in front of them leave before them but if he'd known it would've taken them forever to gather up their things and then slowly step out into the aisle, he would've re-thought that decision. Then, to add insult to injury, when the girls finally did step into the main aisle, one of them swung her purse onto her shoulder and, in the process, nailed him right in the groin. Katie pretended not to see it, but she could barely hold back the amused smile that threatened to overtake her face.

Once they finally made it to the parking lot, they had to wait in a long line of cars in order to exit onto the main road. While they were waiting, Dave felt his frustration level steadily rise and he was just about to tell his daughter that he was never going to another movie again, when she turned to him and smiled.

"Thanks for going with me, dad," she said happily. "I had a lot of fun tonight and it was nice not going alone."

"I had a good time too, Belle," he told her, only half-lying. Sure, the crowds and the tweens and the handsy parents hadn't thrilled him, but this was his daughter and if she was happy, he was happy.

"They're already working on a sequel; do you want to see it with me when it comes out?"

And just like that, all of the misery and annoyance he'd suffered that night melted away. "Definitely," he said as he reached the front of the line of cars and navigated into traffic. "It's a date."

A/N 2: Don't forget to check out the Chit Chat on Author's Corner forum for fun challenges and discussions!