The Next Night

Cassie knows it's really too late to be going over to his house. Good girls just don't call up boys at nine o'clock at night out of the blue. She's probably past the point that most people would think it's a booty call. But hey, it's James, and he's going to understand that she had to wait until the kids were in bed. She doesn't mind leaving them with her father when she knows that all of them are probably going to be asleep.

"Hi," he says when he opens the door.

"I'm sorry to come over so late," she says.

"No problem, do you want a beer?"

Cassie freezes, thinking that maybe this whole thing was a mistake, "You know I'm only eighteen, right?"

"If you're old enough to raise kids, you're old enough to drink in my book," he says.

"Ok," she says, following him into his kitchen. He pops open a beer for each of them, and gives one to her.

"I broke up with Dominic."

James's eyes soften, "Are you ok?"

Cassie nods her head, "Yeah, you were right, it needed to be done."

"That doesn't make it easy," he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

He understands even that, the difficulty of her doing what she told her to do.

"So, what are we Cassie? Are we friends or more?" he asks.

He turns to her, and kisses her. It's the longest, most effective kiss of her life. Dominic never kissed her with that much skill, although to the boy's benefit, he might have had a bit more passion. She's almost weak at the knees from just the actions of his tongue. Already her mind is wondering to other uses for the agile tongue of his.

Lord, they've only kissed, and it's already better than some of the sex that she and Dominic had.

"Wow," she mutters.

He grins. He knows he's a freaking good kisser. That should take away some of the appeal for her, but if she's honest with herself, it doesn't.

He starts to kiss her again, and somehow, both of their beers get set down, and she's up against the wall in his hallway. His hand is between her legs, and she is rocketing toward climax faster than she ever dreamed she could be.

"Stop!" she whispers.

For a second, just a second, there is a gleam of something that scares the wits out of her. His hand makes two more motions before it stills, just like he's telling her, "I don't have to listen, but I will."

"What if Jaden came out here?" she whispers, because she really doesn't want to stop completely. At this point she's not even sure that her body would endure her stopping completely.

"He's in bed."

"I know… I would feel a lot more comfortable if we went into your bedroom, and locked the door."

"It's more exciting this way," James says in a voice that sounds a bit toddler. Maybe he isn't quite as grown up as she thought he was.

"Maybe I should just go home," she hedges. She doesn't like to throw her weight around, but that looks like it's the only way that she's going to get what she wants.

He scoops her up, and carries her to the bedroom wither her legs wrapped around him. Once inside of his bedroom, she finds out that kissing is the thing that her new lover is the worst at.

Dominic was childish in more ways than one.

She's got a real man now.

The Next Morning

Daniel makes excuses for his eldest while he got the rest of the children ready for the day. He said that she stayed over at a friend's house. He's not sure if Olivia is buying into it, but at least the boys are fooled.

The whole time, he is panicking inside. He knew that Cassie was having sex, but she'd never stayed out all night before. Maybe this new man… had hurt her (if that's even where she was). Maybe she had gone somewhere and been hurt. Maybe she'd gotten into a car crash trying to drive somewhere. Maybe someone had stolen her out of her bedroom window.

He drops the boys off at day care, and Olivia off at school. Then he debates whether he should call her school, and excuse her. He decides against it, because he doesn't actually know that she's not there. Besides, it would make him look silly, or guilty, if something was really wrong.

He calls the house a dozen of times through the day, and wishes that Cassie had taken the family's cell phone with her when she went wherever she was.*

He can't focus on anything all day. What has happened to his baby girl?

He leaves work early to make sure Olivia gets picked up from school on time, but when he gets there, Cassie is already sitting there in her car. He wants to go up to her, and shout, but that's not the sort of thing that you do in front of classes of middle schoolers. It's not even the sort of thing that you do in front of your middle school daughter.

So he waits. He waits through an entire night of life in a family.

Then, when the kids are all in bed, he walks into her room.

"Where were you?" he asks, in a voice that sounds far calmer than he feels.

"At school."

"I mean, where were you all night?"

"Out," Cassie says, pushing past him in an attempt to get to her room.

"'Out'? What do you mean 'out'? Out where?"

"I'm an adult; I was out."

"You were out with James, weren't you?" Daniel asks.

Cassie can't hold back a grin, and the grin gives her away.

"You're cheating on Dominic?" her father asks in anger and disappointment.

"No, I wouldn't cheat on him. We broke up."

"I'm sorry," Daniel says, this confession taking quite a bit of the wind out of his sails, "But you can't just sleep with someone you hardly know."

She rolls her eyes, "I know him."

"You went on, what, one date? And then you spend the night with him."

"Mom wouldn't have cared."

"Your mother was fine with you having sex in the context of a committed long term relationship. That doesn't mean that she would be fine with this."

"Well, we can't really ask her, can we? What with her being dead?" Cassie says spitefully.

They stare at each other for a few seconds, "You're not staying out all night anymore."

"You can't control me," she says back.

He sighs, it's a deep one, coming up from his soul, "Cassie, you're still my daughter. You're still in high school. You're still living in my house, and you are not going to spend the night at the house of some man who has got a decade on you."

He has the trump card in there. It's so buried amongst the other rhetoric that it's possible that he doesn't even know he has it.

The truth is she does need a place to live, at least until she graduates from college and becomes more self-sufficient. If she moved out of her house, it would mean leaving her siblings all alone, and she's pretty sure that she couldn't do that to them.

Two Months Later

Daniel doesn't approve of her boyfriend. That is just a fact that Cassie has come to live with, as plain and simple as the color of her hair or the street that she lives in.

This particular fact is a bit inconvenient at times, to be sure. It means that she has to sneak around and see him behind his back, but it's not like it's that hard to do.

When Daniel's on a mission, Cassie invites her boyfriend and his son over to her house. She bribes her siblings with candies or cookies to keep them from telling on her. Well, mostly she bribes blabbermouth Will. Drew is too young to really tell, and Olivia is too afraid of the conflict that it would cause to utter a peep.

When Daniel is home from a mission for too long, so long that Cassie think she is going to die if she doesn't see him, she'll leave school during her lunch break to have a romantic meeting at his house, or office, or just have lunch at some nice restaurant.

She loves how grown-up she feels when she is with him. Actually, she loves how grown-ups she feels all the time. She is only a month away from graduation. Her classmates' thoughts have turned to partying and college.

She's daydreaming about how nice it would be if her boyfriend and his son lived with her full-time, and the internship at an accounting firm that just might turn into a full-time gig come summer.

Sometimes, she even thinks about marriage, although she knows that James' mind is probably nowhere near there right now.

They're young, they can take a few years to decide.

One Month Later

Cassie is the first of "SG-1's babies", as Jacob Carter dubbed them, to graduate. Everyone rushes to start "traditions". It's mostly the ones that are all huddled together in age that come up with them, her sister being the ring leader. Everyone participates, even Rya'c, whom she calls a trader. She vows to get him back when it's his turn a couple of years down the road.

It starts, apparently, with all of the younger children dragging her out of bed at three in the morning for breakfast. No, this is not breakfast in her own kitchen, because that would not be humiliating enough, this is breakfast at IHOP.

No, she's not allowed to put on clothes. Yes, they did borrow Teal'c's bunny slippers. Yes, she does have to wear them. Oh, great, Jack has a matching hat.

There is also a wand.

There are also magic words, pronounced by Drew in a language all his own, and which seems to consist chiefly of spit bubbles.

The strange part is, Cassie loves every minute of it.

Her graduation day continues with toasts over coffee and orange juice, and kiddy meal for the graduate. The return to her house, and let her get a few more hours of "beauty sleep before the big day", as Ty proclaims it.

Then they all start preparing for her party. It's overkill. It's a lot of overkill. The whole house and yard are covered with decorations, and there is enough food around to feed an entire universe. The house is full of laughter, jokes, and hope.

For the first time since her mother died, Cassie realizes that she's disappointing them, not just her siblings, but all of them, her huge extended family. They all want her to grow up to be successful, and she chose another path, and that isn't exactly fair to them.

*Remember that this story is set when the show aired; in other words, more than a decade ago. Back then, it was uncommon for teenagers to have their own cell phones.