Oh, my gosh, sorry this took so long! I had a big blow-up fight that landed me on computer restriction... Fortunately, I found a way to get off of restriction without compromising my position in the battle... Anyway...

This chapter's also short, and quite silly as you can tell by the title, but I hope it makes y'all laugh!

And leave reviews, as always!

When Bacon Attacks

The clock read seven o'clock when Lou rolled out of bed, unable to sleep because of her little son's antics—dancing, as Jo called it. Hadn't it been only two days ago Lou had said to Jo that her baby was a couch potato and destined only to be a couch potato?

He's getting his revenge, she thought to herself. And he ain't gonna quit till he's aggravated you to death and made you eat your words. Seems little Xavier's taken stubborn lessons from his mama. And now that I think about it, his daddy ain't all that passive either.

The scent of a good breakfast cooking reached Lou before she was even in the kitchen, and immediately hungered and drawn by the aroma, she found Uncle Jesse making breakfast just like every other morning she'd been here at the Duke farm. Country breakfasts were the only way to start out the day, even if one had constant morning sickness like Lou and lost that breakfast soon thereafter.

"Well, good morning, Uncle Jesse," she greeted the old man.

"Good morning, Betty-Lou," he returned from where he was standing at the stove. "Did you sleep well?"

Taking a seat at the table, Lou shook her head. "No, sir, I didn't. Xavier insisted on kicking me all night."

"You and Bo are gonna name the baby Xavier?" he asked.

"Well…" Lou started, looking for a way to say this. A moment's thought brought her the answer. "Bo doesn't have much of a say in the baby's name. I want to name the baby Xavier, but Bo hates the name. He keeps insisting that I can't and won't name the baby that." Reflexively, she threw a glance over her shoulder to where Bo himself slept on one of the living room couches. "But I'm gonna, bright as day."

Silently, Uncle Jesse nodded tightly. He didn't say so, but Lou knew he thought she was being unreasonable. But kindly, he let the whole conversation just drop and she didn't feel obligated to pour more gas into that fire.

Eventually, Lou had to say something. "I wish I could cook," she said, observing Jesse's practiced hands. "That would be nice."

"You mean you can't?" Uncle Jesse asked. "How did that happen?"

"Well, first off, my mama died when me and Jo were pretty young," she replied slowly. "All of six years old, we were. My dad wasn't much of a cook himself, and we had no aunts or grandmas to teach us either. So we just grew up not knowing how to cook much of anything. I knew how to heat stuff up, and that was about it. Well, in the time since, me and Jo have picked up small bits and pieces of cooking skills, but nothing worth mentioning."

"Well, that's gonna be hard for you being a wife and mother soon," Uncle Jesse informed her.

"Yeah, it is."

"You can come and help me," he offered. "Frying bacon is really easy, and I'll help ya."

"Well, alright," Lou said, standing and walking over to the stove. "What do I do?"

Handing her a fork, Jesse explained shortly. "It's ready to be turned. Just take the fork and flip the pieces over so they can cook on the other side." Lou started to comply, and he quickly added a warning. "Watch out for the grease. It'll—"

But it was too late. Hot grease jumped out of the pan and landed on Lou's outstretched hand, burning her. She yelped in pain as she withdrew her hand, clutching it in her other one. Under her breath, she quietly cursed the bacon and swore she'd never get the hang of this.

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When Bo awoke, the sound that greeted his ears was a string of nasty cussing in a quiet feminine voice. It took him a moment, but he recognized the voice as Lou's and it prompted him to sit up and see what it was that had her so aggravated.

What he saw was her standing at the stove with Uncle Jesse, her hand curled back tightly, almost to a fist. She was biting out the curses under her breath, and shaking a fork at a pan out of which bacon grease was leaping and popping.

"Having a fight with the bacon, are you, Lou?"

"Yes!" she practically shouted. "And so I come to a decision: I'm not learning to cook. If you're that hungry, you can get up and make it yourself!"

"You're crazy, you know that, woman?" Bo rolled his eyes as he stood. "Just plain crazy. You can learn to make bacon, just give it another go."

"Like I said: if you're that hungry, you can make it yourself." With that, Lou plopped herself down at the table, folding her hands around the bulge of her son over the top of her silken nightgown. "I don't have the patience now, certainly and probably won't later on."

"Don't worry, I'll do it now," Uncle Jesse cut in before Bo could argue. "You can always learn that stuff as you go along."

A groggy voice from the bedrooms turned all three heads. "Well, what the heck are you people arguing about so early?"

"Bacon, and cooking," Lou replied.

"Oh, how fabulous."

Bo had never heard such sarcasm come out of Jo's sweet little mouth. Either Lou's overbearing personality is rubbing off on her—God help us all if that's the case—or she's really tired.

"Lou's given up attempting to cook after five seconds of trying," Bo said.

"That bacon grease hates me," Lou protested. "I swear it had it in for me the whole time. Burned the crap outta my hand, that evil stuff."

Bo started to laugh, until Lou shot him an angered look, at which he quickly quieted.

"So, I'll give it a go," Jo said as eagerly as Bo had ever heard. "Let's see if the grease has some odd vendetta against me too."

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As it turned out, Lou was the bacon's only enemy. Jo got it all cooked with ease, and at breakfast, it all quickly disappeared—some even went into Lou's stomach, despite her anger at it.

But less than an hour after breakfast ended, as Lou walked outside just to sit on the front porch, the bacon came to attack her again.

It started with the average unsettled stomach, then quickly progressed to finding its way back out of Lou, burning her throat along the way. Right out of her mouth and off into the grass, it went. It wasn't so bad in comparisons to past cases and only part of it came back up, but Lou hated it just the same.

And so after it was done, she silently cursed morning sickness and pregnancy in general.

When she'd exhausted that, she just went on cursing other things that made her situation what it was.

Oh, I forgot to mention... I'm going out of town for the holidays, starting on the 23rd. I won't be back home to my computer until about New Year's, and I'll try and get all that I can done, but I'm not sure how much that'll be. Hopefully I'll get right down towards the finish line... :D Oh, and I'm already planning a sequel, if you folks'll read it!