A/N:

This is the first chapter in which I introduce Tenctonese characters. If you're unfamiliar with the (marvelous!) television show Alien Nation, you may want to take just a moment to do a Google Image search.

Sadly, as of this writing, the TV series isn't streaming anywhere; I think the movie (original/different cast) is, but it's not nearly as good as the TV series. I have always been glad I caught the TV series first. The writers and producers put a great deal of thought into making their aliens alien. Without getting into too many info dumps, I've tried to put some information in the chapter about the Tenctonese.

Again, while I realize that in some ways the addition of the extra crossover seems superfluous, it was part of the original set of stories, so rather than remove it, I hope to somewhere down the line write some more Alien Nation (TV series) fanfiction/crossover fanfiction

Chapter Fifteen: Monday, December 26, Glen Oak, CA

Eric found his wife, dressed for the day, hair and makeup done despite the early hour, in the dining room, surveying the spread she'd laid out on the table. There were bagels, cream cheese, sliced cheese, hard boiled eggs, fresh strawberries, and raspberry jam, and the table was set with one of the good tablecloths, the kind she only brought out for special occasions…or special company.

"Don't you think you're over-doing it a bit?" Eric he asked.

"Why aren't you dressed?" Annie asked, rather than answering.

"Because it's nine o'clock in the morning and day after Christmas." Short of a church emergency, today was one of the few days he could count on as a day off, and he was determined to enjoy it as long as possible, preferably in his bathrobe and pajamas.

"Eric! They're going to be here in half an hour."

"They're not staying for breakfast," he reminded her. "They're just here to pick up Simon."

"Their plane doesn't leave until almost one o'clock and it doesn't take that long to get to the airport. There's plenty of time for them to eat a bagel and drink some coffee. Besides, it's an almost six-hour drive from San Francisco. They're probably hungry and tired of driving. I want to meet these people Eric, not just have them swoop in and whisk my son away."

"Annie—"

"Good morning!" Lucy hollered from the kitchen. "Mom?"

"In here!" Annie called back.

Lucy handed her father a box from the bakery, down on the promenade. "Why aren't you dressed yet? They'll be here in half an hour!" She turned to her mother without waiting for an answer. "I hope I got the right stuff."

Kevin came in behind his wife, Savannah in one arm, a bag from the market in the other; he looked as happy and enthusiastic as Eric felt. "Morning."

"Yeah," Eric nodded. Then, "What is all this?"

"Scones," said Kevin. He sounded as enthusiastic as he looked.

Lucy, on the other hand, was beaming with pleasure. "With…." She pulled a jar of clotted cream and a pound of imported butter out of the grocery bag Kevin was still holding.

"None for you," Annie informed him.

Eric set the box of scones down on the table while Lucy proceeded to dig more clotted cream and two packages of deli meat out of the bag. "Don't you think you're going a little overboard?" he asked his wife.

"What's the occasion?" Ruthie asked, coming in through the kitchen door.

"Why are you still in your pajamas!"

Ruthie gave her mother a sour look. "Because it's the day after Christmas?"

"Just go upstairs and get dressed. You too," Annie said to Eric. "Lucy, would you put the scones and that meat onto a serving plate for me?"

Before anyone could move, the doorbell rang.

"Oh no," said Annie. "It can't be! They're not supposed to be here for another half-hour."

"I'll get it," Eric offered. "Ruthie, go upstairs your brothers. All three of them. Annie, you and Lucy finish up in here. Kevin…just keep doing what you're doing."

"But…you're still in your pajamas!" Annie protested.

"I'm sure nobody is going to care. Annie, it's the day after Christmas," Eric reminded her patiently. He left them in the dining room and headed to the front door. When he opened it, he found, in addition to the upper middle-aged couple they'd all anticipated, three Tenctonese adults—one very pregnant—and three Tenctonese children, ranging in age from somewhere around the twins' ages, to probably the same age as Ruthie.

"Devin and Roberta Wells?" he asked the human couple—although it occurred to him after he'd said it that he might be wrong. Eric didn't like what the assumption he'd just made said about his unconscious biases. It had been nearly twenty years since that Tenctonese slave ship crashed in the Mojave Desert, nearly twenty years since the human race was forced to accept irrefutable proof that they weren't alone in the universe. Eric liked to believe he was one of those who had seen the arrival of the Tenctonese as proof of God's grace, proof of His mercy, as an opportunity for the human race to let go of their petty differences and embrace a better future. He liked to believe that he stood with the majority of people on the planet. So, just because neither of the two Tenctonese men on his doorstep could be Caroline Chandler-Wells' biological uncle, didn't mean one them wasn't her father's step-brother, adopted brother, or foster brother.

But before he could apologize for possibly putting his foot in his mouth, the human man extended his hand. "Reverend Camden, so nice to meet you." He stood about Eric's height and looked about the same build; his hair was dark, slightly greying, a little long. He had three jagged scars on his left cheek, like he'd been scratched, or more likely clawed by something considerably larger than a housecat. His eyes were brown. His grip was friendly.

The woman next to him was slender and dark skinned with long curly black hair and a sincere smile. "Reverend. Mrs. Camden." Her added as Annie came up behind Eric.

"Oh. Hello." Annie sounded…disheartened. Probably panicking. Nobody had mentioned the Wells' friends were Tenctonese and while Eric firmly believed his wife stood with the gracious, generous majority of humanity, he also knew her breakfast plans had not taken Tenctonese dietary demands into account.

"Please, come in," Eric invited them.

"Yes, please," Annie echoed.

By then, Simon, Ruthie, Sam, and David had come downstairs, and Kevin, Lucy, and Savannah had joined them from in the foyer.

"You have quite a family," the pregnant Tenctonese man observed.

"You have no idea," Eric muttered. The other chuckled.

"Mommy said we were getting company," Sam said.

"But not Newcommer company," added David.

Eric placed a hand on each of their shoulders. "I'm pretty sure Mommy didn't know."

"I hope we haven't caused too much disruption," said the Tenctonese woman.

"Not at all," Annie extended her hand. "Welcome to our home."

"Thank you. I'm Lyla Hancock, this is Johnathan my husband, and our children, Beryl, Tobin, and Moora. And pod." She favored her husband with a warm smile. "And this is Sam Hill." She drew a bashful seeming Tenctonese to the front of their little group. "Sam has honored us to be the binnaum for all of our children."

Eric knew enough about Tenctonese culture to understand that was, at the very least, highly unusual. Binnaums, the Tenctonese third gender, outwardly male (at least to human eyes), formed such a small percentage of the Tenctonese population that they were discouraged from forming attachments to the couples they assisted in conceiving and were not typically a part of the lives of the children that resulted from those pregnancies. "It's please to meet you, Sam," Eric extended his hand. There were only a handful of Tenctonese families in Glen Oak, but none in the immediate neighborhood. "This is our Sam. And our David." He watched with a mix of fondness and pride as the boys shook hands with Sam and the others exactly the same way as they would with anyone else. "Our daughter Ruthie," he continued. "Lucy, her husband Kevin, their daughter Savannah, and of course, Simon."

"Thanks for picking me up," Simon said. "I know it was a little out of your way."

"It's our pleasure," Devin told him as he gripped Simon's hand.

"Don't let him fool you," Roberta teased. "Dev just wants to check you out."

Simon laughed. "I don't mind. I'd want to check me out if I was in his position, too."

Johnathon Hancock took half a step towards Kevin and Savannah—then paused. "May I?" he asked, before coming closer.

"Of course," Kevin handed Savannah over, much to the delight of the pregnant man.

"She's beautiful," Johnathon said to him, and then Lucy, while their older two children rolled their eyes, a trait they must have picked up from humans, clearly to the chagrin of their mother, who shot them each a look of rebuke.

That didn't stop Beryl, the oldest, a girl, from leaning over to Ruthie. "Pregnancy hormones. He's been cooing over every baby he sees."

"That's quite enough," Lyla told her.

Eric watched with interest as Sam Hill joined Johnathan in "cooing" over Savannah. "She truly is remarkable. All children are, of course. But your daughter is one of the loveliest human infants I've ever seen. How old is she?"

Kevin grinned, and Lucy beamed with pleasure. "She'll be a year-old next month," she told them.

"It's such a precious age," Johnathon beamed right back.

"How far along are you?" Kevin asked him. "I mean…."

"It's perfectly safe to travel," Johnathan assured him. He cast a look back at his wife. "No matter how anxious some people are about it."

"If you end up delivering this pod in New York—"

"If that happens, we will be fine," he assured her calmly. "We will be amongst friends. Joel has delivered hundreds of Tenctonese children."

Devin Wells placed his hands on Lyla's shoulders. "Everything will be fine," he promised her.

On the other side of the room, the twins had struck up a conversation with Moora, the younger of the two Tenctonese girls, and Tobin, their brother who looked just a little older. Eric cringed when they asked if they could touch the Hancock children's spots, but they took it in stride and said "sure", as long as they could touch the boys' hair.

Eric flashed an apologetic smile at Lyla and Devin, who still stood behind her.

Lyla smiled back. "I have found that children are more often than not innocent in their curiosity—as long as they haven't learned prejudice from their parents."

"Oh, no, we would never…!" Annie began, clearly still flustered. "I promise, we're not like that."

"Your warm welcome into your home demonstrated that, Mrs. Camden," Lyla Hancock told her, her tone warm.

"Please, call me Annie. And please, come in and sit down. There's food in the dining room." She began ushering them towards the dining room. "I'm sorry about all the dairy. Nobody told me…I mean…I wasn't expecting…but there's jam and scones and I have orange juice. I really didn't…I'm really not—"

"Annie." Lyla laid a hand on her shoulder. "The fact that you are aware and self-conscious of what we can and can't eat speaks even greater volumes than your kind welcome."

"We should have asked Cathy to warn you," Devin added. "Come on, Simon, why don't we get your bags out to the car."

Roberta leaned over to Eric. "I promise we'll get him back to you in one piece. And thank you, by the way," she said to he and Annie both. "You have no idea how much I was not looking forward to stopping at a diner."

Eric shut the front door behind the Wells and the Hancocks… and Simon… Annie closed her eyes.

"It wasn't that bad, Mom," Lucy told her gently.

"Yes, it was," said Ruthie.

Annie opened her eyes just in time to see the angry look Lucy shot her sister.

"She's right, Luce," Annie told her. "It was a disaster."

"It wasn't a disaster." Kevin came in from the kitchen, to get more of the leftovers—a lot of leftovers. Besides not being able to eat dairy—sour milk was intoxicating, much like alcohol was to humans—Tenctonese couldn't eat cooked foods, like hard boiled eggs or deli meat. She'd found pulled some raw vegetables from last night's salad out of the fridge, apologizing with every move, terrified they were going to think she was one of those people, the so-called "purists", so many of whom came from within the religious (or supposedly religious) communities around the world. There was nothing Christian about those people. Nothing Jewish or Muslim, either.

Eric put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. "At least it wasn't like the kugel," he teased.

Despite everything—or maybe because of it—she laughed. She'd been trying so hard to impress Richard and Rosina, mostly to prove they didn't have a problem with Matt dating a Jewish girl.

To prove we're not like those people….

Anti-Semitic.

She closed her eyes. In the end, it had all worked out.

But Matt and Sarah were adults when they met.

Simon and Caroline were children.

Well, she was. Simon…. Sometimes she looked at Simon and saw glimmers of the man she'd always wanted him to grow into.

And other times, all I see is a little boy….

She let her husband hold her. As long as Roberta Wells kept her promise, as long as they brought Simon back home to her, Annie would be able to convince herself that everything would be all right.