-1Title: Small Favors: Little Incidents
Author: Eve8
Rating: G (for now)
Summary: Inspired by something Janissima did with one of her series, and a request from a reader called Kitty whose penname I unfortunately do not know to "borrow" Jordan for a story of her own, I have decided to do a series of stand alone stories involving the family created in Small Favors and Small Favors 2. Each story will be one chapter, and in each chapter I will tell you how old the children are supposed to be. They are mainly going to be random stories that we either originally considered to be incorporated into Small Favors 2 or based on real life stories that could be easily adapted to the SG1 world - as this first entry is. I have no idea how many of these there will be. When I feel "finished," I plan to re-organize the chapters chronologically. I hope those of you who have been asking for another story with these characters enjoy.
Author's note: I have a nephew named Seamus. For short, we call him "Sea," which, for those who might not know, is pronounced "Shay." I have not spelled the name phonetically in the story, but spelled it as you would a nickname. The same applies for "Cheyenne," just so that there would be uniformity. Her name is meant to be read as "Shy" when it's "Chey." I hope that makes sense.
Small Favors: Little Incidents
General Jack O'Neill could tell when he saw his daughter walking to the truck - stomping to the truck would actually be a more accurate description - that she had had a bad day at school. Arms crossed firmly across her chest, hair even more disheveled than usual at this time of day, one knee sock scrunched down around her ankle, and a scowl firmly in place (a scowl identical to the one her mother tended to wear after a meeting with that Dr. McKay fellow), he glanced in the back seat when she was halfway to the truck, where his five year old twins were trying to play-fight with each other from their respective booster seats.
The booster seats were at opposite ends of the vehicle was for precisely that reason. But apparently they'd smuggled the collapsible light sabers good old Uncle Teal'c had given them into their backpacks today, because they had solved the problem of how to reach each other across the vast distance of the backseat, and were having an enthusiastic battle despite their restraints.
"Seamus! Cheyenne! Cut that out!" he said, reaching over into the backseat to grab the "weapons." "You're not supposed to bring your own toys to school. You know that. Not to mention fighting in the car."
"We're not fighting, Daddy, we're just playing," Cheyenne said innocently, giving him big brown puppy dogs eyes and holding out her hand hopefully, wanting the light saber back.
"Yeah, you're playing now, until one of you hits the other one just a little harder and someone gets upset, and it turns into a real fight."
"Aww, Daddy," Seamus objected as Jack shrunk the light sabers back down and kept them in the front with him.
"We're BORED!" they said together.
"Well, you won't be bored for long. Jordan's almost to the car and it looks like she had a bad day. So if I were you I'd be as sweet and adorable and quiet as possible on the ride home."
"We're going home? I thought we were going to, you know, the MOUNTAIN," Cheyenne said, carefully stressing the last word to show that she was actively remembering the rule about referring to the SGC outside of the SGC.
"Not today, Chey," he said. "My last meeting of the day got pushed back because the geeks weren't ready, so I knocked off early to come home and play with you guys."
"Yay!" Seamus said happily, clearly over the loss of his light saber.
There was a loud thud as Jordan tossed her backpack into the bed of the truck, and as she yanked open the passenger door Jack saw just how upset his daughter really was. She looked on the verge of tears, and Jordan very rarely cried. "Hey, Jo. What's wrong, buddy?" he asked.
Rather than opening the side door to get into the backseat, she slammed the door behind her and climbed over the front seat, which she knew annoyed her dad. That she did it right in front of him without even saying "hello" told him how upset she was.
Deciding to let it go, he started the car and watched her in the rearview mirror until she was buckled into the middle seat. She cast an annoyed look at the twins, who were both looking at her curiously, but a bit scared, then caught his eye in the mirror and asked impatiently, "Can we just go already?"
Knowing that it was usually better to let her fume for a while before you tried to talk to her in depth, he started driving.
"Why are we going home?" Jordan demanded when she saw the direction they were going.
"Daddy's gonna play with us!" Seamus spoke quickly, sounding as though he considered himself very brave for answering.
Jordan rolled her eyes and said pointedly, "I need Mom."
At those words, Jack swallowed hard. A problem that she only wanted to talk to Sam about? She was only ten years old, for cryin' out loud! It couldn't be… it shouldn't be anything she wouldn't want to talk to her dad about, right? She wasn't old enough to have any sort of girl problems, was she? He shuddered at the thought. Jordan was ten, but the children in her class were much older, because she was in the seventh grade. He supposed he should have been expecting her to mature faster as a result of it, but… he couldn't complete the thought.
"Uh, Mom will be home for dinner," he offered.
"Great," she said sarcastically.
Jack was about to warn her about the tone when Cheyenne piped up. "Daddy, Jordan's being sarcasmic!"
"Sarcas-TIC, dummy," Jordan said.
"Hey," Jack warned, as Cheyenne's lower lip began trembling. "Kindly keep your foul mood to yourself if you don't want to talk about it, young lady."
"Fine!"
Jack sighed. It was going to be a long three hours, waiting for his wife to get home.
xxxxx
Jordan stomped off to her room after dumping her backpack just inside the door. Jack decided to check on her sneakily until and unless she emerged ready to talk, and turned his attention to the twins, who were running around and shrieking excitedly to make up for how long they'd had to be still and quiet in the car.
After changing them out of their school uniforms into play clothes, he went outside with them. They played on the swingset for a while, and then wanted to ride their bikes. Jack took them into the driveway, strapped their helmets on, and watched them riding up and down the sidewalk and driveway, racing each other on their tiny little bikes with training wheels.
As he watched, he noticed that Cheyenne wasn't even really using her training wheels for balance at all. When they came back over to him, he called, "Halt!" and put his hands up. They both braked in front of him, looking up at him with expectant grins. "I think someone is ready to try riding without training wheels!"
"Me, me!" they both yelled, raising their hands eagerly.
Jack privately thought that Seamus wasn't quite ready, because he didn't have the balance that Cheyenne did yet. But he knew there was no way to let Cheyenne try it alone. With twins, he found, it was a constant struggle for balance. You didn't want to halt one's development so the other one didn't feel left out, but you didn't want the other one to feel jealous or like a failure if there was something they couldn't do yet that their twin was ready for. He thought that it was probably easier with one being a boy and the other a girl, and imagined parents of twins that were the same sex had even bigger issues to deal with.
"How about this," Jack suggested. "I'll take the training wheels off Cheyenne's bike, and you can both try riding it. That way, if nobody can do it yet, I only have one set to put back on. And if you can both do it, then I'll take them off yours too, Sea."
"Okay, okay, okay!" they both agreed, as Cheyenne climbed off her bike.
xxxxx
When Sam approached her house, she saw that most of her family was playing in the driveway, even though it was about ten minutes till dinner time. Then she did a double take as she saw that Cheyenne was zipping around on her bicycle without training wheels.
Seamus was sitting on the front stoop, coloring with sidewalk chalk, his bike abandoned in the yard.
She parked at the curb, and got out quickly.
"Mommy, look!" Cheyenne called immediately, waving with one hand.
Waving while riding, she hadn't quite mastered. She wobbled unsteadily, tried to break, and was about to fall when Jack grabbed her by the armpits so she didn't fall with her bike.
"I saw you riding from all the way down the street, sweetie, that's great!"
After being set on her feet, she ran over and hugged her mom tightly, the helmet she was wearing hitting her in the abdomen uncomfortably. Too excited to be still for long, she ran back over to her bike.
"One more time, then we have to go in," Jack said firmly as he helped her onto it.
Sam caught Jack's eye and nodded her head to Seamus. Jack shrugged and said, "He said he's tired. I had to stick by her in case she fell."
Sam had to agree with that, but she had another concern. "What about dinner?"
"We ordered pizza, Mommy!" Cheyenne reported eagerly.
"It's a celebratory day," Jack supplemented. "Oh, and it's a bribe to get Jordan out of her room," he added.
"What's wrong with Jordan?" Sam asked in alarm.
"I don't know. She only wanted to talk to you. I'm scared."
"Hmm." Seamus's problem had to be easier to solve than Jordan's. She went over to him and sat down on the step. He was drawing a dinosaur. It was chasing a smaller figure who looked a lot like his twin sister. "Hi, Buddy. How's it going?"
"Okay," he responded.
She noticed that he had a band-aid on his elbow. "Did you fall?"
"Yeah! My elbow was bleeding and my knee too!" He pulled up his pants to show her where his knee was bandaged as well.
"Oh, no," she said sympathetically. "Does it still hurt?"
"No. I was brave," he said dramatically.
"I'm sure you were." She pulled him into her lap and cuddled him.
"I'm not a baby, Mommy!" he objected, clearly expressing something he was already feeling before her arrival, since he couldn't ride the bike the way his sister could.
"I know, but I missed you today. Didn't you miss me?"
"Yes."
"Well, that has nothing to do with being a baby," Sam assured him. "So, your sisters are in rare form today, I take it. Jordan's being Grumpy Girl and Cheyenne's tearing around like a little speed demon."
"Yeah, and I just want to play by myself," he said firmly.
"Okay. Sea? Do you remember when Chey was crying because you learned to write your name before she did?"
"Yeah. She said I had a easier name so it wasn't fair."
"So what did you do the next day?"
"Learned to write her name."
"And then?" Sam prompted.
"She got even madder."
"Then?"
"I taught it to her."
"Then?"
He shrugged. "She wasn't mad anymore, I guess."
"What about math? Who's better at math right now?"
"Jo."
"I mean between you and Cheyenne."
"Me!"
"Uh-huh. What about drawing?"
"Chey draws better bears and dogs… but I draw the best airplanes and dinosaurs!"
"That's right. You know there are some things you're better at right now than she is, and the other way around too."
"Yeah! I'm better than her at almost everything at school! Even at nap time! She's terrible at nap time!"
"Well, yes, I suppose that's true." Sam decided not to point out that both of them were extremely gifted intellectually; it was just that Cheyenne was more interested in playing than learning to read and do math at the moment. Yet both of them could hear a song on the radio once and then sing it word for word. "So, how about now? Want to come inside with me and get cleaned up for pizza?"
"Yeah!"
"Do you feel better, sweetie?"
He nodded. "Mostly. Cheyenne was still bein' mean about it though. She only let me try it on her bike a tiny bit, then she said I had to go back to baby training wheels and let her ride her big girl bike."
"Well, she shouldn't have done that. We'll have to talk about that later. When we talk about the picture you drew of your sister getting attacked by a dinosaur."
"Aw, they're just playing tag, Mommy," he tried hopefully.
"Nice try. Come on, let's go wash up."
xxxxx
By the time the pizza arrived, the twins were inside and cleaned up for dinner. And they had done one of their weird twin silent apology things nobody else in the family understood and were now the best of friends again, leaving Sam to conclude that there was no point in bringing it up again.
Thorabelle, their grey and white cat, came loping into the kitchen, which signaled that Jordan wasn't far behind. Sure enough, she came skulking in carrying something behind her back. She climbed into her chair and slapped a piece of paper down on her mom's plate, waiting nervously. Sam came over with the drinks she was carrying, set them down, and picked up the paper.
After reading it, she set it down, took a deep breath, and stated, "You're suspended. Again."
"Come on, mom, it's been like four months since last time I got in trouble!" Jordan argued. "That's way too long to count as an 'again.'"
"Well, that's a terrible start to a conversation," Jack remarked as he set the pizza down.
The twins reached for slices eagerly, while Sam put salad on everyone's plates.
"What did you do?" Seamus asked around a mouthful of pizza.
"Yeah, what did you do?" Cheyenne echoed curiously.
"I didn't do ANYTHING!" she told them stubbornly. "It's my stupid science teacher. She doesn't know ANYTHING!"
"Oh, it's a science problem," Jack said, clearly relieved.
Sam smiled at him, knowing he had been dreading much worse. God forbid she had a personal feminine problem, or even worse, something to do with boys.
"Mom, you don't know what happened," Jordan said plaintively.
"Yeah, because you wouldn't tell me!" Jack put in.
She sighed and said, "Daddy, you wouldn't get it."
"It says here," Sam interrupted, not wanting to get too far off track before they found out what had happened. "That you got into a heated argument with your science teacher and tried to get the class… riled up against her?"
"It actually says riled up?" Jack asked.
Sam nodded and passed him the disciplinary slip, which they had to sign. He read it and sighed, setting it aside for the time being.
"That's not what happened!" Jordan insisted.
"Well, then calm down and tell us what happened," Sam said.
"Mom, she was teaching the second law of thermodynamics totally wrong! All I was doing was pointing out that she was doing it wrong and telling her how to do it right! Then she got all mad and said if I was such a know it all I could just teach the class myself! So I got up, went up to the front, and started TRYING to teach it, but before I could even say much of anything, she sent me to the principal and wrote me up!"
"Well, did you know she was being sarcastic when you went up to the front of the class?" Jack asked.
"Yes," Jordan admitted.
"Then you shouldn't have done it; you knew you were being a smarta… a… brat, didn't you?" Sam prompted, glancing at the twins after censoring herself.
"Yes," she admitted again. "But mom, she was teaching it WRONG!" Jordan implored.
Sam sighed. "What exactly did she say that was so wrong?"
"She said that it was totally universal, that EVERYTHING was deteriorating into chaos. And all I did was say that that was ONLY true when the thing you were talking about was totally static! When it was in a total state of equilibrium! And that there weren't many things that stayed that way for very long, so it wasn't accurate to say that EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS TENDING TOWARD CHAOS! Then she told me I didn't know what I was talking about so I tried to explain it simpler like she was one of the twins and I was telling about how if you heat a glass of water from the bottom up, well, you know the rest of it, Mom… and she wouldn't even let me finish that! She said I was being argumentative and showing off and if I knew so much I could teach the class myself, so I said, fine, I will, and then they'll learn things that are actually true… and that's what really happened, Mommy." Her cheeks were pink and she was breathing hard after getting upset again.
"Uh… wow, Jo, I didn't know you knew so much about the second law," Sam said. "Where did you learn that?"
Jordan shrugged. "I dunno, I heard it somewhere, I guess. But I'm right, Mommy, I know I am. And she is WRONG to say it's universal without explaining the conditions better."
"I agree," Sam said.
"Whoa," Jack interrupted.
"I don't agree with what you did, Jordan," Sam clarified quickly. "But I agree that if she has a student who has questions or wants a clarification, she should give it. But you know what? She was just introducing the subject. Probably most if not all of the other kids in your class didn't even know what she was talking about. So to be fair to them, she had to start from the very beginning, in very easy terms. Just like when you were helping us teach the twins their alphabets, remember?"
"Yeah. But she wasn't gonna say the stuff I was saying later on, Mom! She didn't believe it was true!"
"Well, you know, she's teaching you the basics," Sam said, somewhat weakly. She was trying to explain that while she agreed with her daughter in principle, the way she had confronted the teacher was inappropriate. "Look, next time you disagree with something the teacher says, wait till the bell rings, then go up and ask her about it. Don't do it in front of everyone else. And if she still doesn't believe you, then come home and tell me about it, and we'll see what we can do. Maybe you can put some information together and take it to her."
Jordan thought about that while picking at her pizza somewhat moodily. It clearly wasn't what she wanted to hear, but she finally seemed to decide it was a solution she could live with. She gave a sullen, "It's not like I was telling her it was possible to make a perpetual motion machine or something," took a big bite of pizza, and then cheered up considerably, even congratulating her sister on mastering the use of a bicycle without training wheels, and claiming she had been watching from her bedroom window some of the time.
After dinner, the kids went off to play together. As they were cleaning up the kitchen from dinner, Jack asked, a little upset, "Why was she so sure I wouldn't understand her problem?"
"Because you would have sympathized with her, but you wouldn't have really understood how fundamentally unbearable it is when someone gets something wrong like that. And, since most of the knowledge I've amassed since working at the SGC is classified, I know exactly how she feels every time I look at what mainstream astrophysics is up to."
"Isn't that an oxymoron?" he teased. "'Mainstream astrophysics'?"
Laughing, she swatted him with the hand towel she was using. "You know what I meant."
"Hey, I'm relieved that was all the problem was. I was afraid some horrible twelve year old boy 'asked her out.' Or, you know, something bad happened, like before gym class, or… something."
Sam decided it probably wasn't the best time to point out that since she had been in a class with children two years older her entire life, when Jordan actually did become interested in boys, in all likelihood the ones she'd be interested in would be older than she was.
"This is your fault, you know," Jack said. "When I was in school I couldn't have cared less whether what the teacher said was one hundred percent accurate or not. She gets that from you."
"Yeah, but I wouldn't have been so blatantly disrespectful for the educational equivalent of a chain of command," she countered. "THAT, she definitely gets from you."
Jack didn't have much of an argument for that. He shrugged good-naturedly, smiled, and said, "But we love her anyway."
"Yeah, we love her anyway," she echoed, a second before something crashed in the living room and a chorus of voices called loudly, "I didn't do it!"
xxxxx