John had never felt like this before in his life. It was sort of a cross between racing his bike down that long, winding hill at the far end of the park near the reservoir and snuggling under the covers with an extra blanket on top. Oh, yeah, and kinda tickly too, like slurping juice from the fuzzy skin of a peach.
"If you open your mouth, I'm stopping," Marianne whispered, jolting John out of his reverie.
It hadn't even occurred to John that this was an option but, now that Marianne had mentioned it, he guessed it was, since he had seen grown-ups doing it in some movies that his mom and dad didn't know he had watched. And he'd even sometimes caught his mom and dad doing it too. Gross.
"Let me try again," he said, shifting closer to his cousin where they crouched together in the hiding place they'd disappeared to. There probably wasn't a lot of time to experiment that much, since they were still a bit exposed and could be easily found by anybody who was looking for them, so John was determined to get the most that he could out of his first real kissing session.
When he moved his head back into position and placed his lips on Marianne's once more, John was surprised to feel that her mouth was a little open, the end of her tongue touching his lips and trembling there. He gasped a bit in shock, opening his mouth to do so, and before he even realized what was happening, he and Marianne were doing it too, just like in those movies, and the sensations he had felt a few moments before were nothing compared to these new ones coursing along his nerves and making his head start to pound.
Unfortunately, the sensory overload also diverted John's and Marianne's attention from the outside world, and when he was roughly jerked to his feet by the collar of his shirt, John's cry of alarm reached the ears of the adults sitting in the backyard, who came running when the sound was quickly followed by angry shouting.
When Chuck and Devon rounded the house, closely followed by Casey, they saw Marianne, dirt on her hands and knees, trying to shield John from an enraged Eddie, who was reaching around her, punching and kicking the air as he screamed incoherently. Finally, he yelled out, "You touched my sister! I'm going to kill you!"
Chuck and Devon ran to Eddie to get him under control while Casey stood behind his namesake, both hands on the boy's shoulders. When John looked up at the tall agent, Casey shook his head slightly from side to side, and the boy relaxed from the ready pose he had adopted, one that Casey had recognized from his martial arts training. One that could have put enough power into John's foot or fist to kill a full-grown man, let alone a ten-year-old boy.
Eddie had finally worked out enough of his frustration to at least subside and, tears wetting his cheeks, he sobbed into his sleeve. Devon was down on one knee in front of his son and Ellie stood to the side, a worried frown on her face as she held on to Marianne, who was calmly surveying the scene, once more the picture of prim self-control.
Sarah and Ilsa stood apart from the rest behind CJ and Lisa, who were goggling round-eyed at their brother. CJ mouthed, You kissed her? and Lisa laughed quietly behind one hand when John nodded back a triumphantly emphatic Yes!, for which he received a light but sharp cuff on the back of the head from his Uncle Johnny.
Unbeknownst to young John, Casey had caught Chuck's eye, then Sarah's, his brows raised as he subtly gestured towards their child, and he received the merest of nods back from them both before making his next move.
"Come on, Romeo, we're going to have a little talk, you and I," Casey whispered. John's face fell at this bit of information but there wasn't much he could do about it when Casey grasped the boy's upper arm and marched him across the lawn and into the house next door. Once they got inside, Casey ordered, "Sit!" and John numbly complied, every trace of his usual brash manner gone and replaced by, if not fear, at least a creeping dread.
So what Casey said first took him completely by surprise.
"You're, what, now, ten? Kissing girls already? Way to go, kid."
John raised his eyes to look up at Casey, who was standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest and grinning down at the boy with a look of pride on his face. This only lasted as long as it took John to begin to smile, however, after which Casey's expression changed into a deadly serious one. Turning to pull a chair up facing John's, the agent sat down uncomfortably close to the already unnerved boy, as though this were the start of a long, brutal interrogation.
If John wasn't going to get in trouble for kissing Marianne, then why had Uncle Johnny dragged him over here? He looked up into the agent's face when Casey hadn't said anything for almost a minute, and since that's what Casey had been waiting for him to do, it wasn't long before John found out what the problem was.
"You almost blew your cover out there, boy," Casey began. He paused for a moment to let this information sink in and smiled grimly when he saw that John had realized what precisely he had done that could have caused this terrible breach to occur.
"I was going to fight above my probable skill range," John muttered, dropping his head down, embarrassed at a mistake any baby would have known better than to make.
"Exactly," Casey stated. "So what are we going to do about it?" he asked, waiting expectantly for the answer.
"Say I've learned my lesson and forget it ever happened?" John hazarded hopefully, raising his head as he did so. He was dismayed, however, to see that his attempt at lightening the mood hadn't worked and Uncle Johnny was not going to let him off that easily.
"What we're going to do," the agent explained, "is get you some focus training. Teach you better control. I've noticed that you're a good fighter but you lack discipline. CJ's not as good a fighter but he's got more control and brains to go with it than any kid his age has a right to."
Casey paused again to underline what he was about to say next.
"You, on the other hand, are going to get yourself killed with your smart mouth and your reckless ways. Therefore, we're going to have to teach you to respect what it is you can do. And that can't be learned sitting behind a desk in a classroom. So, John Alan Bartowski, when all this party stuff is over, your butt is mine."
John was overjoyed at this news. His Uncle Johnny was going to take him on as a student personally! This was great! He was going to learn so much! It was going to be – well, judging by the look on Uncle Johnny's face, it was probably going to be lots of hard work and very painful, but it was still just about the most exciting thing that had happened to John so far.
The boy got off of his chair and moved to one side, placed his feet and his palms together carefully and, bowing from the waist, solemnly said, "Yes, Sensei." He remained bowed down until he felt Casey's hand on his shoulder and heard his uncle's low chuckle.
They turned to leave the house and re-join the party. As they walked back across the lawn, both the man and the boy were smiling and Casey put a collegial arm around John's shoulders. In a low voice, Casey inquired, "So did Miss Marianne ask you to do the kissing?" and when John grinned up at him and nodded Yes, the agent grinned back and said, "Good man."