Week 11 - UDC 2

51. Young

A soft click reaches his ears and Nick looks up to find his mother in the entry way between the living room and the kitchen, with a camera and a smile on her lips. She'd been the one to demand pictures the day before, and now... "It's a moment, isn't it?"

"Sure is," she said and then she sobered. "I have an empty album, if you want to get those pictures out and arrange them."

Nick turned back to find that Pete had that expression of blank confusion they'd slowly gotten used to. Was it because he didn't know how to react, or because it was a lot all at once? Probably both. "What do you think? Album, so you can look at 'em easier? Maybe tell us about what you remember?"

Pete frowned down at the envelope in his hand, at pictures his mother had apparently left undeveloped in her dresser drawers for years. "Does it have to be tonight?"

"No," Walt told him. "It doesn't."

"In that case," Helen said, getting their attention again. "I'll leave the empty album in your room on your dresser for when you are ready."

52. In-Between

That statement was met with silence and Pete staring down at the pictures, still, until Nick tapped his father's knee and made a motion for the picture in his hand. Walt blinked, startled as he handed it to him, and then Nick put the frame he'd been holding in the box, and put that on the floor. Then he tapped Pete's shoulder and made a motion for the envelope, which Pete handed to him, and he carefully put the loose picture back inside. "Okay. Not tonight."

"Nick?" Helen asked, curiousness in her tone.

Slowly, Nick sat down on the couch next to Pete and carefully put the envelope in the box. "Come over here, Ma. I think we should talk about why idiots think Pete is a perfect target with no sense of humor and his entire math class nicknamed him Tiny Terror. The pictures can wait."

"Reacting doesn't solve anything," Pete whispered. "I went through three placements in a year, reacting badly and having fights over things people said before Harry gave up and Mr. Jenkins..."

Walt shared a glance with Helen, who was also frowning. "Before Alan what?"

"Before he gave me a talk about controlling myself because I can't control anyone else or what they say."

Helen nodded as she sat down on a chair that she'd brought from the kitchen table. "I'm glad he did. Why were you reacting badly before and to what, exactly? Because I can't imagine you being the one to start it unless you had a reason, especially an emotional one."

Pete blinked, confused again. This close up, Walt was starting to wonder if anyone had asked the kid that besides Alan. "Dad would have called it Scuttlebutt. The rumors about how he went MIA. It'd get brought up, and..."

53. Old

"And gossip, because that is what the Scuttlebutt would be in this case," Walt mused into the ensuing silence. "Is painful." Pete frowned at him. "What?"

Pete shook his head. "Not important." Nick tapped him on the shoulder. "It really isn't, Nick."

"Wanna hear it anyway," Nick drawled. "Is it that we know what scuttlebutt is, or something else?"

"Else," Pete said after a minute. "Haven't heard good Navy talk that wasn't bad things said in my direction since Dad and Uncle Viper were last on leave together, and I'm not sure when that was."

Walt's gaze went to the box, to the pictures in the frames resting in it, because he had some idea of the when... "Oh. Uncle Viper? You have an uncle named Viper?"

"Sounds weird, doesn't it?" Pete's eyes went distant, as if he was trying to dredge something up and failing miserably. "Not actually my uncle, not really his name. Is it... call sign? I'm trying, but..."

54. Foolish

"Call sign sounds right," Walt put in. "If we're talking about pilots. And it's okay if you don't remember the particulars right now."

Pete glanced toward the hallway, then looked at Helen. "Is it really my room and not just the guest room?"

She smiled. "What kind of question is that that? I was waiting for you to unload your bags into the dresser without my saying it was okay. It is, by the way."

Pete glanced at Nick, who nodded. "I just... it's..."

"It's that next step?" Nick suggested. "Feels dumb to say out loud, but you hesitate to take it?"

"How'd you know that?"

Nick shrugged. "Took me three days to unpack my suitcase when we got here."

55. Wise

Walt felt like laughing at how odd it sounded when put that way, but he understood the feelings that Pete didn't quite have words for. Acceptance. Belonging, and this had happened quickly. "So... tiny terror?"

"I like complex math problems," Pete explained with a sudden grin. "Makes everybody else groan when I'm pushing Mr. Fredrickson to explain the complexity of something like a Koch Snowflake with fractal or topological dimension."

"Karen," Nick put in with amusement. "Who was the one who took me to admin today for locker switching, threatened him with a complex math puzzle yesterday for even trying to say he was fine. Did she do it yet, Pete?"

"Nope, and if she doesn't, I'm doing it."

Helen's lips were twitching from restrained laughter, if Walt's guess was correct. "But sure, you have no sense of humor."

"I can't threaten people with higher math when they're Freshmen in Algebra One, Helen. That's just mean." He paused. "It would make for an interesting conversation in the hallway for Mrs. Joosten to listen to, though."

Walt wasn't surprised at all when Nick lost his composure entirely and laughed outright. Honestly, he wanted to join him and had to bite his inner cheek not to.

A/N: In a previous set, Alan Jenkins actually took that picture of Duke Mitchell and Viper with him, because he wanted to ask questions at the base or look into things further, so it's not in the box, nor would any pictures of Viper himself be in that envelope, because Mrs. Mitchell was taking family pictures for her on-deployment husband. They ended up staying undeveloped until Chelsea Lowell found them due to circumstances.