Shannon hated to do what she was about to, but there was unfinished business, and she didn't want it hanging over her head any longer than it already had, she already felt guilty that she'd known since yesterday. They'd been excitedly discussing his idea for about half an hour now, but she'd kept glancing at Andrew, who was pointedly refusing to meet her gaze. "Boone," she interrupted, "Andrew had something he wants to tell you."
Boone caught the tone of her voice, this isn't going to be good, he surmised. "What?"
Andrew threw her a look, wondering why now, when Boone looked so happy, happier than he'd looked in weeks, why spoil it? He wondered if that's why she'd chosen now, so he'd feel guilt not only for what he'd done, but for spoiling Boone's high point.
He looked at Boone, working his mouth, but no words coming out. Claire suggested they go into the small sitting room that adjoined the kitchen, they headed across the room and Boone closed the door behind them. Shannon looked both apprehensively and sadly at the closed door, not wanting to be either of two inside that room right now. The guilt that Boone was going to feel at the news that Andrew knew the truth, being matched by Andrew's guilt at how he came by the information. Claire stood uncomfortably for a moment, before making up some excuse about checking on Charlie, and leaving the kitchen.
Shannon sat back down at the kitchen table, cradling her coffee mug in her hands, staring blankly at the contents.
After about fifteen minutes the door opened, she looked up, immediately noticing that they'd both been crying.
Andrew turned to Boone, "I'm sorry," he sobbed.
"Me too," Boone hugged him briefly before the boy turned and fled across the kitchen and up the stairs.
She crossed the room to her husband, and pulled him into her arms. He hugged her, breathing deeply and slowly, trying to calm himself, a hitch in his breath every now and then, but she could tell that he wasn't actually crying any more.
He pulled away from her after a minute and went to sit at the table, crossing his arms on the surface and resting his head against them. Shannon fetched him his cup of tea and sat across from him, reaching out to stroke his head.
"How long have you known?" came his muffled question.
"Yesterday in the car," she continued to run her fingers through his hair.
He sat up in the chair. "How did you react?"
"I was driving, and then you started having that nightmare, I didn't really get a chance to react all that much. I just told him we both loved him, that Sydney might have been a mistake at the time, but we were never sorry we had him." She looked at him sadly.
"And what about what he did? Breaking the house rules like that?" he waited for her answer, still looking betrayed, like a puppy who'd fetched a ball when told and then received a smack on the nose for his efforts.
"Like I said, I didn't get a chance, I didn't do, or say anything about it," Shannon shrugged in apology.
"I don't know what to do, he needs to be punished, but I'm at a loss here." Boone knew they'd been right in not revealing his somewhat inauspicious conception to Andrew, but it still felt wrong to discipline him.
"Boone, didn't you ever eavesdrop when you were a kid? When there was something going on that you felt you needed to know about, but everyone else thought that you were just too young to know?" Shannon frowned a bit like she was remembering some circumstance from her own childhood.
"When my dad was dying," he grudgingly admitted his own transgression. God she thought, he's so precious, after all this time he still looks guilty about it. She wondered if they'd canonize him at some point, Saint Boone, she laughed to herself, then reconsidered, she may consider him God's friggin' gift to humanity, but he was all too human at times.
"Me too, with my mom," She stared at a spot on the table, remembering. "Maybe just carrying around the guilt for the last six months has been punishment enough?" She suggested.
"I don't know." Boone shook his head, shrugging, then coming to a decision. "If I look at him all hurt and let down, he'll just avoid thinking about what he did, so he can not think about why he made me look that way. But, if I act like nothing ever happened, then he'll think about what he did all the time, wondering why I haven't done anything about it."
She breathed a little laugh at his logic, "You're pretty smart, aren't you?"
"I raised him by myself for six years, I learned a little bit about how he thinks." He smiled, still a touch sadly.
Andrew ran up the back stairs and threw himself on the bed in the guest room, hugging Boone's pillow against his chest, crying into the fabric of the pillowcase. Once he calmed down a bit, he sat up and carefully put the pillow back in its' place, before leaving the room. If one of his parent's decided to come up to shower and change, he definitely didn't want to find himself alone in the same room with either one of them right then.
He headed down the hall to the room he shared with Aaron. The other boy was still sound asleep, so he flopped down on the foot of Aaron's bed hoping for a reaction. Not getting one, he repeated the motion until Aaron sleepily stirred and woke.
"What happened to you?" he asked seeing Andrew's red-rimmed eyes.
"I got in trouble with Boone," he sniffed. He would never have let one of his friends from home see him this vulnerable, he got picked on enough for being a nerd as it was, he couldn't afford to be labelled a cry-baby as well. But this was Aaron, as close to a brother as he was ever going to get, and the only person his own age who'd be able to understand the situation.
"You never get in trouble," he responded, surprised. "What'd you do?" Suddenly interested, he sat up, pushed himself up the bed and leaned back against the headboard.
"I listened in on their conversations in their bedroom when Shannon first got back." His head lowered, he glanced up from under his brows to see Aaron's reaction.
His eyes widened, "In your head right?" Andrew nodded. "That's pretty bad. Did he ground you or anything?" This time getting a shake of the head in response, "Did you find out anything good?"
"Yeah," he knew Aaron didn't mean good as opposed to bad, but good as in juicy, because what he'd found out certainly didn't fit into the first definition.
"What?" Aaron leaned forward a little.
"Oh just stuff," he shrugged, off handedly. The little tidbit of information he'd picked up was certainly nothing he wanted to share, especially with Aaron, not knowing if the other boy was aware of his own dubious existence.
"Oh," he leaned back, disappointed.
"You bring friends home to play?" Andrew changed the topic.
"Yeah, of course," he frowned at him like Andrew was an idiot. "Doesn't everybody?"
"I don't," he answered in a small voice.
"Why?" Aaron frowned again.
He'd brought friends home all the time when it was just Boone and he, but with Shannon back on the scene, things had changed. He could just picture the look on one of his friends faces when they went in the den to watch TV and found the two of them in one of their frequent lip locks, or came in the back door to the sight of Shannon sitting on Boone's lap, his hands buried in her hair, so caught up in each other they weren't even aware of their entrance.
"Your folks kiss like that in front of you? Ew gross," was Aaron's observation.
Then there was the whole ESP thing. Boone had been pretty strict about its' use, with few exceptions insisting on verbal communication only, but Shannon was a rule breaker by nature, and he'd noticed that the rule was being stretched farther and farther each day. What would one of his friends think if they suddenly started spouting seeming non-sequiturs?
"And most of my older friends have a crush on Shan," Andrew said. "They're always asking if they can come over to the house, right after they ask if my mom's home."
Aaron was starting to wonder if he gave the gate keeper the message from the ogre; would it get him past the monster so he'd reach the next level in the video game they'd been playing yesterday? He may have been chronologically older than Andrew, but mentally he was far, far younger, more actually ten than Andrew was anywhere near nine and a half, after all he had Charlie as his role model, while Andrew had Boone, and their whole mind link. There was no doubt that Charlie was much less serious than Boone.
"And half the girls in the school have a crush on Boone. The last parent/teachers night, the first one Shan's been to, when we went through the halls, it was like they were super models or something, everyone turned to look at them, I know they're both good looking, but gah!" He rolled his eyes. "And I think my English teacher for this year has a thing for my dad, in the interview she kept giggling." He hung his head, "God, it was so embarrassing."
Yeah, Aaron was pretty sure that was the secret, the gate keeper just needed to be given the message. He looked over Andrew's shoulder at the computer.
"But I'm not actually embarrassed by them," he rushed to add. "Well, except for the whole kissing thing. I think they're really cool, actually. I really like them both. Of course I love them both too, but I really like them. Shan's so totally not the mother type. And Boone's just a really great guy." He realized that he'd completely lost Aaron and gave up on trying to explain the complexity of his relationship with his folks. Quickly reading what the other boy was thinking, he nodded his head in agreement. "Yeah, the message, we should try that." They both scrambled off the bed and started the computer, rapidly becoming absorbed by the game, Andrew's earlier concerns completely forgotten.
Sawyer pushed open the kitchen door, "Where's that fuckin' Oasis wannabe?"
Boone looked up, and Shannon turned in her seat at the sound of his voice, rising to give him a kiss. "Now Sawyer, that was last night, you'd both had too much to drink, let it drop."
"Dick head," he muttered, then spied the pitcher, "that Bloody Mary's?"
Boone nodded. "You make 'em?" Boone nodded again. "You're okay, Metro," he complimented Boone, not bothering to apologize for slamming him into the wall last night. He turned to get a glass from the cupboard, and filled it from the jug. Sipping, he nodded and smiled, "just about perfect. You're one fine bartender, boy." Boone didn't bother to point out that the "boy" was now thirty-two.
Claire showed up with a bleary eyed and less than chipper Charlie, who also poured himself a glass of the tomato juice, vodka and spices combo. He silently took a seat at the table, well away from Sawyer, who grinned at his obviously hurting host. "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" He'd had even more to drink than Charlie, but, like he'd once informed Boone, who, at the time, had been in the same state as Charlie, he was a professional, and had years of practice.
Boone popped the cork on the champagne and made Mimosa's for himself, Claire and Shannon, then started on breakfast.