Disclaimer:  7th Heaven and its characters are not my property.

Background:  This story builds on the episode where Simon gets drunk at the party, and also on Sophronia's fanfic piece, "The Real Story".  As the chapters progress, this story will resemble the actual show less and less.

***

Simon Camden was grounded again.

This was not surprising, considering he had been caught drinking spiked punch at a senior party.  Actually, caught was not the right word -- more accurately, he had been ratted on.  But that technicality didn't matter, because he would have been found out anyway.  There was no keeping a secret like that from super-snoopers Eric and Annie Camden, no matter how hard he could try.

In fact, for Simon it had seemed an effort to do almost anything anymore without parental interference.  For example, it had been an accomplishment just convincing them to allow him to go to the party.  When he had first asked, his mom had laid down the law and told him, "No."  Surprisingly, his father had overruled her.

Even more surprisingly, his mom had acquiesced and allowed Simon to go.  It wasn't like her to relinquish control that way – especially with the iron-fisted way she had been ruling the entire household recently – and so he had expected to spend another boring Friday night getting his weekend homework done early.

What a pleasant surprise it had been when Morris had finally shown up, promised to look out for Simon, and survived the inevitable barrage of questions, such as:

"What are your intentions?"

Simon's mother had actually asked Morris that.  How embarrassing!  It was clear that his parents were not yet living in the twenty-first century.  Thank goodness Morris had played cool and the two of them had escaped the Camden kitchen together.

Once they had arrived at the party, Simon had subconsciously known he had the option to drink if he wanted to.  After all, they had arrived in Morris's jeep, plus Simon didn't have his license yet.  Combining those two facts, Simon figured that automatically made Morris the designated driver.

Of course, Simon hadn't actually gone to the party with an explicit agenda to drink.  He had assumed there would be alcohol at the party, but he hadn't known it for certain.  Therefore he had only planned to mingle with the in-crowd, and to disprove the notion that he was a goody-goody preacher's son.  But really, what better way to do that than to have a drink or two and loosen up a little, if the opportunity were to present itself?

Still, he had never touched the stuff before, and he had worried about how he would handle it.  Every time his family had talked about it, they had made it sound like it was poison.  That's why he had been nervous, but also excited, when Tom and Mike, the cool kids, had taken him out to the backyard and shown him the "party table".

Simon had known he could not drink from the keg.  There would have been no way to cover himself and pretend he didn't know what he was doing.  The punch, however, had been a different story.

The second the first drop had hit his tongue, he had known it did not taste right.  He had known it, but feigned ignorance.  After all, he was Simon, the preacher's son, from the moral family Camden.  He was a representative of the family that was always holy and good.  How would he know what alcohol tasted like?

Hence he had figured he could play the naïf, and he had been right.  In fact, it had been laughable – but also a little sad – how easy it had been to convince people at the party that he didn't know the punch was spiked.

And so he had kept drinking it, letting himself lose control, becoming the life of the party…until Morris had found him staggering back toward the house with his fly still unzipped from having taken a leak in the bushes.  Thank goodness Tom and Mike had been too drunk to remember how to put film in their cameras.

Morris.  If it had been anyone else who had "rescued" Simon from the party, he would have been angry.  But how could he have been angry with Morris?  The guy had survived an interrogation from Eric and Annie – the Reverend and the PsychoMom – and somehow he had still managed to get Simon to the most bitchin' party of the year.  So there was no way Simon could be mad at Morris for dragging his drunken ass back to the jeep and taking him home halfway through the night.

***

Home.  Simon's memories of this part of the night were a little less clear.  Thinking about it now, he fuzzily remembered vomiting in his brother's car; hiding out in the garage treehouse to cover his drunkenness from his parents; his siblings sneaking him into the house to sober him up; Morris spilling the beans to his parents and blowing his cover; the stern speech his little sister, Ruthie, had given him about being a better role model; and his apology to his parents, taking responsibility for it all.

At the time he had meant it, really.  Never again, he had told them.  Never again will I touch another drop of alcohol.

But in retrospect all the bad elements of that night had just felt like a bad dream, unreal.  And the good elements had felt so liberating.  No longer had he needed to behave like the saintly son of a preacher.  All responsibility had been waived.  The punch buzz had lifted the Camden burden, turning the party into nothing but a good time – an oasis, in a desert of torment.

An oasis, because it wasn't so easy being the preacher's son.  No one wanted to be his friend.  Whenever he tried to make friends, they alienated him because they said he judged them for their every little action.

And of course he couldn't help but be that way, because that was how he had been raised.  He had seen his family send his sister to Buffalo for an entire year, just for drinking half a beer and hanging out with kids who smoked pot.  He had been shamed by his family, just for wearing baggy clothes and hanging out once with kids who listened to rap music.

Increasingly, his father had overreacted to any behavior that fell outside his narrow guidelines.  Ever more frequently, his mother had snapped at anyone who defied her.  Also his brothers and sisters had seemed to be turning into zombies who no longer questioned their parents, and they always seemed to be pressing Simon to conform to standards he wasn't really sure he believed in.  With the family pressure mounting every year to live up to these Camden standards, how could he possibly be normal?

Thinking about it now – and he had plenty of time to think since he was grounded – Simon decided that was the main reason why he had drunk the spiked punch.  He had hoped to lose his inhibitions, and for his peers to see the real Simon Camden, the one who knew his family was full of shit but was too afraid to admit it…when he was sober.

But he could think of another reason for drinking the punch, a reason he didn't even want to admit to himself.  He had been trying to impress Morris.

Simon still couldn't figure out why the guy had been so nice to him that night.  Morris seemed to be the only person in school who was nice to him anymore, and Simon had wanted so badly for Morris to think he was cool.

Drinking the punch hadn't really seemed to do the trick, but it hadn't repelled Morris either.  After all, he had "fulfilled the promise he made to Simon's family" and taken him home.  He really hadn't needed to do it; he could have left Simon to drink himself into a coma at the party.  But he hadn't.  He had even come back to the Camden house later to check up on Simon.  Of course, that had blown Simon's cover with his family, but it also had shown that he cared.

It was a strange feeling for Simon to think that someone outside his family cared about him.