Disclaimer: the kids are mine. Nothing else though

"Be nice to the new baby, Jojo."

Rick smiled at the television screen, watching a nearly 13 year old DVD. Johanna was three years old, Kate was laying in a hospital bed cradling their newborn son.

"Johanna, this is Ricky," Kate said as the toddler left her father's arms and crawled across the bed toward her mother and new brother.

"Bay Icky?" she asked, pointing to the baby.

Kate smiled and nodded. "Baby Ricky."

Johanna crawled closer to Ricky and Kate. "Gentle, Jojo," Rick warned as Johanna kissed her baby brother's forehead.

Rick jumped when he felt Kate's arms come around his shoulders. "When are you coming to bed?" she asked, kissing his cheek softly.

He inhaled deeply, not taking his eyes away from the screen. "I still have thirteen years of birthdays and Christmases to get through."

"You have to get through them all tonight?"

"I'm just wondering what happened to my baby girl. Where did we go wrong with her?"

"We didn't do anything wrong. She's just… sixteen. It's a tough age, for any girl. For a boy, even. I remember stories about you being quiet the handful at that age."

"But Alexis was perfect. I thought maybe rebellion skipped a generation."

"Alexis was a miracle," Kate told him, walking around the couch to sit next to him. "You got lucky." She curled her legs underneath her, draping one arm across his stomach and leaning her head against his shoulder. "We got lucky. Look at our family, look at the life we built. We have four beautiful children together. Everyone's healthy and remotely happy. All in all, I'd say we did pretty good."

"I just want Johanna to have every opportunity open to her, so she can do whatever she wants."

"And she does, she can. You've provided everything she could ever want or need."

"But if she doesn't graduate high school…"

"Who said anything about her not graduating? I remember you bragging about getting kicked out of every prep school in the city, you still graduated."

"I don't want her going to one of those short skirt and knee sock schools. Marlowe at least gave the girls options to wear khakis."

Kate smirked. "Nice double standard. There's also public school."

"Public school?" he said with a sneer.

"Hey." She swatted him in the chest. "There's nothing wrong with public school and Beacon High is a great school."

"Yeah, what we need is to make her more like you," he teased.

"I turned out good."

"Well, except for your questionable grammar." She hit him in the chest again, he laughed. "At least now we know where Jo gets this hitting thing from."

"Who did you kill?"

Jo looked up from a book she was reading, sprawled on her bed as her brother, Ricky walked into her bedroom. The corner of his mouth was pulled into a grin, one of the many traits he'd inherited from their father, but he was the only one of the four children without his blue eyes.

"I didn't kill anybody, moron."

"I heard Mom and Dad talking," he told her, pulling out her computer chair to sit in. "You got kicked out of school."

She shrugged. "Green's not really my color," she said, looking at her brother, dressed in his dark green polo shirt and khakis from Marlowe Academy.

"So you're not gonna tell me?"

"Why would I?"

Ricky shrugged. "Holding things in will give you an ulcer."

Jo rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "You sound like Aunt Lanie." She looked at her ceiling but Ricky didn't move. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

The younger teen shook his head with a quick shrug. "I just want to know what happened. You broke that Maria chick's nose."

"Good." Ricky couldn't help laughing at Jo's quick reaction. She sighed and sat up to face her brother. "Look, you can't tell Mom or Dad, ok?"

"Was it about that Caleb guy you wrote about in your diary?"

"When did you read my diary?"

He smirked again. "Tell me what happened at school and I won't tell Mom and Dad about page 56."

"Jesus. Fine. Someone at the 12th put her dad in jail for cheating on his taxes or something."

Ricky blinked. "So… you hit her?"

"She was gonna… take it out on Mom. She put her dad in jail, I heard her threatening to kill her."

"What does Mom even have to do with tax evaders?"

Jo shrugged. "She's captain. Apparently that makes everything that goes on in the precinct is her fault."

"Should we be worried?"

"We should always be worried about Mom. Not in this case though."

AN: for anyone wondering what Jo, Ricky and the other kids (who will be introduced in the next couple chapters), here's a post on my tumblr with actors I would have play them: beckettsbitchface{dot}tumblr{dotcom}/post/60357217 880/for-anyone-wondering-here-are-rick-and-kates