A/N: Just a little something I thought of the other night. Hope you guys like it.

Disclaimer: I own a very large nothing.

Warning: There's a rather important spoiler given away from "My Finale" in this, even though that's not what the story is about. Thought I'd warn you guys anyway though, just in case.

My Functioning Dysfunctional Parents

When I was little, I never questioned the insanity of my parent's relationship. Never wondered how they could go from holding hands to biting each other's throats. Never wondered why Mom smirked at a snide remark from Dad rather than storming away angrily like all of the sitcom moms did on TV, or why Dad's face would light up with something akin to affection when Mom shot back with a comment of her own. Nor did I wonder why they called each other by their first names rather than "Mommy" or "Daddy." Why wouldn't they call each other by their first names? Yeah, I called them mom and dad and all of that stuff, but I still knew what their first names were. Was I not supposed to know, or something?

I didn't realize how weird my parents were until I was in kindergarten.

Various classmates would invite me over to play. And by "invite me over" I mean run to their parents, tell them they liked me, and then have them call my parents to set up a play date. I'm not judging or anything. I did it too. It's just kind of funny how it works when we're younger, isn't it? Anyway, moving on…

I remember being mystified at the way my friends' parents would interact with one another. They'd call each other weird names like bunny or muffin or cupcake. I think it freaked me out, to be honest. And on the rare occasions where I was over and it seemed like they were mad at each other, well, the way they handled it confused me even more. One of them would go to say something, notice their son with his friend in the other room, look back at one another, and run away. Maybe my friend couldn't hear them yelling like wild banshees, but I could. That baffled me too. Why are they going into hiding? It's just a fight. And why did they have to yell so loud? Mom and Dad fight a lot, but they don't really do the whole yelling thing too often. More like a back and forth sort of arguing; playful, almost.

And yet this trend continued from house to house, playmate to playmate, and I started to understand what I was witnessing. I was observing normal interaction between parents. Father and Mother; happily wed. This was how that basic dynamic was supposed to work on a day to day basis, wasn't it? Well, then that meant only one thing: My parents were not normal, were they? Sure, they both had their wedding rings, but they never really talked about themselves as being a married couple. They were Mr. Cox and Mrs. Sullivan and don't you damn forget it. And even through that shared belief of, "Don't link us together because it's easier for you to understand," there was an obvious bond that would always, in my mind, make them Mr. Cox-Sullivan and Mrs. Cox-Sullivan. But I digress…

Even as a child, I felt the need to test this new revelation of mine. Maybe it was by a stroke of coincidence that all of my friends' parents acted the same. Maybe mine were normal and I just didn't have enough examples to base them off of. So I invited them over, one at a time, for a play date. And by invite, I mean – Right, sorry. Already covered that, didn't I?

Anyway, it didn't take too long for me to realize that my parents weren't, as predicted, normal. Don't get me wrong; they were great hosts to my friends. Mom always had snacks to give us after school and, as long as he wasn't working, Dad would help out with whatever it was I ended up asking him. "Can you drive us to the park? Can you push us on the swings? Can you buy us some ice cream?"

But through it all, they never stopped behaving like themselves. If they decided to go at it, they did their usual bantering right in front of us. This didn't faze me in the least, but I kept a close eye on my friends, noticing their bewildered stares as their gaze darted between my mom and my dad like a wild ping-pong match.

What I hadn't expected as a result of my experiment was that fewer friends were being allowed over. It was stupid of me to have assumed that my parent's arguing wouldn't reach the ears of other parents from their children. I remember coming home from a friend's house and telling my mom and my dad what it was I did that day, so what would prevent them from sharing the oddity that was Jack's parents? "They fight all the time! Yeah, right in front of us! Um…I don't think they ever yelled. Oh! And they have different last names too. Divorced? What's that? Oh. No, I don't think so. They wear rings like you and Daddy. They're funny though, Mommy. The other day, Perry – 'Who's Perry?' Jack's daddy, silly! What do you mean how do I know? Jordan calls him that all the time!"

And so the only way I could play with my friends was if I went over there. This, of course, made me angry. Unfortunately, I ended up feeling angry at the wrong people.

After school one day, I asked my dad if he'd drive me to one of my friend's houses. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Jack-O, I'm pretty beat. He can come over here though. How about I call his mom and see if she'll drop him off?"

"He can't…"

"He can't come over?"

"He can never come over…"

"What're you talking about? He was here last week."

"You don't understand…"

"Tell me then. What's wrong? C'mon, Jack, you can tell me."

It was said out of love, and yet I shot back at him, for the first time ever, out of confusion and anger and a desire for some kind of normalcy. "None of my friends can come over anymore because of you and Mommy! You guys ruined everything! Why do you always have to fight all the time? Why can't you just be normal? Why don't you have nicknames for each other? I don't understand!"

To finish off my temper tantrum that would put a child during their "terrible twos" to shame, I stormed away, bottom lip out, and slammed my door with a vigor I didn't even know I possessed. I was surprised when only a few minutes later, Mom came and knocked on my door, voice calm as she told me she'd give me a ride over to my friend's place. I wanted to ask where Dad was. Why it was she was giving me a ride and not him. When we crossed the living room to get to the front door, he wasn't there, but their bedroom door was closed. Mom gave it a glance that I could only interpret as worried, which really scared me, before quietly leading me to the car. I wondered if she knew what I did, because she didn't really talk much. I didn't either.

--

Later, at my friend's house, we decided to watch a movie; a bowl of popcorn set between us. I wasn't really paying attention though. I was distracted by my own outburst from earlier, and wondering why it was Dad didn't drive me. And suddenly I had the horrible, horrible fear that he didn't love me anymore. It made me sick to my stomach and, while I was still angry that my friends weren't allowed to come over because of their behavior, I really wished I hadn't yelled the way I had. I didn't want to cry in front of my playmate, so I decided to distract myself by focusing on random objects through out the room.

I don't know why it took me so long to notice, but my watery eyes eventually landed on my friend's family portrait. There was the mom and the dad and my classmate right between them. They were smiling hard. So hard, in fact, that it struck me as borderline comical. I knew from first hand experience that my friend never smiled the way he was smiling in that picture. Not that he was a sad kid; he laughed and played with us all the time, but in the picture he just looked like a cartoon character, and his parents looked no different.

My mind drifted to one of my favorite photos of all time; still is, actually. It was at my Dad's fiftieth birthday party. Uncle JD threw him a surprise one at Sacred Heart, which was really impressive since he didn't work there at the time. But my JD's clever like that.

Anyway, sometime during the night, though I don't exactly know when it was, my Aunt Carla started taking pictures. One of them, my favorite one, was of all of us. I'm on Dad's lap and Jenny is on his back; her tiny arms circling his neck as she nuzzles her face playfully into his hair. One of my Dad's arms is circling my waist, while his face is turned towards Mom, who is looking at him too. Their lips are curved upwards, just slightly, but it's noticeable; very noticeable. And their eyes share that same spark they have when they banter, but there's something else there too. For the longest time, I thought it was a captured moment of happiness; just a moment. But as I sat there and stared at the strained portrait of my playmate's family, I realized it was a lot more than that. My parents weren't just happy in that moment. It was a reflection of their happiness as a whole. Happy with their life, happy with their children, happy with each other. Affection; genuine love and affection. That's what it was. And while I was only a kid, I can remember thinking quite clearly to myself, "Are they in love?" as I stared at the faces of what I was led to believe was normal; the faces of my friend's parents staring back and telling me otherwise.

And to their portrait, I silently said what my Dad would say in a situation such as the one presented to me. "Blow it out your ass!"

--

When I got home, I headed straight for my room; my earlier fear about my Dad not loving me anymore still weighing heavily on my mind. I was scared, though he'd never given me any reason to be, when I opened my door and found him sitting on my bed. He smiled. This wasn't unusual, of course. My Dad smiled at me a lot. But the softness around his smile was something I didn't get to see very often. I liked it, though I didn't like the trace of sadness I detected there.

But I was young. What did I know?

"Hey, kiddo. Can we talk for a minute?"

Hopeful that the nickname meant that he still loved me, I nodded, head down as I made my way over to where he sat. Pulling myself up onto the bed, I was promptly picked up and set on his lap, in which I responded by snuggling further into his hold. I didn't quite know what was going on, but my fear from earlier was subsiding. Before he could say anything, however, I had to get my own thoughts out first. "I'm sorry," I blurted, voice suddenly on the brink of tears. "I was really bad earlier…"

"Yeah, but if it hadn't been aimed towards me, I would've been proud. That was quite a rant, kid."

I smiled, knowing full well that meant he'd forgiven me. Still, I wanted to know what it was he wanted to say. I wanted to tell him what I had realized too.

"Listen, Jack…I'm sorry your friends' parents are –" Here he stopped to breathe. I'm sure he wanted to call them something rather than say what he said next, but he carried on all the same. "I'm sorry your friends' parents aren't letting them come over anymore."

"Not all of them, though. Sam and Izzy still come over."

"Yeah, but I mean your classmates; the parents who don't know us very well."

"I know…"

"I'm sorry about that, Jack-O, I am. Your mom and I… I think if kids your age – Okay, scratch that. I think if anybody isn't used to how we talk with one another, they're bound to be a little surprised. But the thing is, half of the time we're fighting, we're not really fighting. It's…it's kind of…"

"It's how you play?"

My Dad stopped there, clearly surprised that I had observed them enough to come to this realization, but he smiled, proudly, as he took in my latest query. "Yeah, kiddo, exactly. And sometimes we don't do that, you know? Sometimes we hold hands. Sometimes we kiss. But other times, we just like to go at it. The scary part is that we don't do that kind of thing na-hearly as much as we used to. But we're always going to act like that from time to time. I don't really know why, to be honest, but somehow, we're functional in our dysfunction.

"But I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't know your friends' parents were such – I didn't know your friends were bothered by it. Your mom and I are going to turn it down when they're over though, okay?"

"Daddy…?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think I want you to."

In what Uncle JD would call, "A rare twofer," I surprised my father twice within the span of less than a minute. "You don't?"

"I like you and Mommy just as…just as you and Mommy. And my friends' parents…they can blow it out their ass!"

I didn't get to say stuff like that too often, but when I did, I loved watching my dad's reaction. He'd always attempt to tell me not to use that kind of language, but the lesson never stuck since he'd be laughing the whole time. And then, of course, I'd always join in, giggling away, and it would just be me and him – laughing our asses off to the point where Mom would eventually walk in the door and ask what in God's name we were doing. Jenny would toddle in soon after, giggling just because we were, and Dad would scoop her up with his free hand and kiss her belly in that buzz-like way all adults do to babies and toddlers. And while my mom would just roll her eyes, the corners of her lips would pull up into the slightest of grins, and I would wriggle further in my father's lap and think quietly to myself, "I love my family."

A/N: The last line is a play on Dr. Cox's, "I love our family," when he and Jordan scare away a mother who comes up to them, while they're at the park with Jack, during Season 3. Anyway, I know this was kind of fluffy, but the idea just popped into my head the other night when I was getting ready to head in. I wrote the concept down, but have been putting off writing it since I was focusing more on the other story, but it wouldn't stop knocking at my brain, so wah-la. Anyway, hope you guys liked it. Until next time!