The Next Day
Cassie happens to walk into the living room just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation that her father is having on the phone. "I just don't think it would be a very good idea to have a team night right now," he says, "Cassie is really having a tough time."
She walks in front of him with her arms crossed in front of her. Daniel looks sheepish.
"I want them to come over," she mouths.
He covers up the mouthpiece of the phone, "You're always so great about entertaining the younger kids. I just didn't want you to have to put up with that right now."
"I don't mind," she assures him.
"No, but seriously," Daniel says shaking his head.
"I could do with the distraction," she admits.
"Ok, my eldest has just informed me that team night is back on," Daniel says into the phone.
-0-
Tammy, Olivia, and Ty have all decided they are much too old to hang out with 'the little ones', and now spend team nights in some out-of-reach corner - in this case, Olivia's room - with Cassie and Ry'ac. They don't realize that the older two, on the cusp of adulthood, are taking just as much of a step down to be with them as they would be to hang out with the little kids.
"We have got to play MASHO!" Olivia exclaims.
"For sure, MASHO is the best!" Ty proclaims.
"What are you guys talking about?" Cassie asks.
"Oh, my God, you've never played MASHO? Seriously? How could you get to be that old, and never have played? Get a piece of paper," she demands.
Ty rushes to retrieve a piece of paper so quickly that he ends up finding one that is already full of fractions. He doesn't care so long as he can find a blank side. Olivia draws a huge square in it, and then turns to Cassie, and says, "Five dream guys."
"What?" Cassie asks, a little taken aback. She is not really ready to think about romantic partners right now. She's still in the 'guys are pig' stage. She's can barely tolerate being this close to her two almost-brothers, as Ty declared the SG-1 extended family's relationship to one another.
She didn't need to worry about it, because her five favorite music and movie stars pop out of the mouths around her.
"Horrible careers?" Olivia prompts after she scribbles the first responses down.
Cassie is about to list her own, but she feels like that would be a bit close to the bone for the fun that they're having now.
What follows, at least from the younger kids, is not a list of careers so much as a list of horrible things strung together with some sort of a verb at the end. Cassie's favorite was "bugger, snot, bodily fluid, poop classifier".
Even though Cassie has long thought herself too sophisticated for bathroom humor, she can't help but giggle.
Then comes a more serious one, "Good careers".
Silence, and all eyes on her.
She tries to come up with something, but all the words choke in her throat.
"Video game tester," Ty offers. It's not so much something he's interested in himself, but it is something all the boys he goes to school with are interested in. He feels like it's the correct response.
"Vet," Olivia pipes up with the correct response for girls.
"Teacher," Rya'c suggests his own career path.
"Secretary," Oliva says with certainly.
Cassie shakes her head, and Olivia rubs the word out with the back of her pencil, replacing it with a fruity sixth grade girl career choice. Afterwards there are lists of animals and cars and locations to consider, and several different numbers with wide-flinging ranges. Then Cassie has to close her eyes, and say "when" as Olivia draws a swirl inside of the box.
Then Olivia does some fancy counting to "reveal" Cassie's fate as she proclaims in an overdramatic swami voice.
Apparently Cassie is going to live in an Outhouse (the "O" in MASHO) on Mars with her 37 children. She's going to be a doctor who makes $12 a year. She's going to use a turtle for transportation, and have a pet mastodon (actually, all the "Pets" were extinct. Extinct animals were automatically funnier to middle schoolers). Her husband, whose career was "sewer rat" was The Backstreet Boys. Apparently, not a member of the Backstreet boys, but the whole band.
When the giggles from this dies down Ty proclaims, "Ok, it's my turn."
"Alright, little man, choose five girls," Olivia says at the same time that Ty reaches out to take the paper from her. Apparently, his version of it being his turn was that it was his turn to scribe.
"I can't play, I'm a boy," he says in horror.
"Right, that's why you're naming girls instead of boys. Let's not go celebrity this time either. It's got to be people from our grade at school."
Ty's eyes turn wide with horror, and he flees the room.
"Nice going, dork," Cassie says to her sister as she runs out of the room after him. She starts to follow the kid, but when she sees him disappear into her room across the hall, she decides she might actually need to tag team with an adult on this one.
"What did I do?" Olivia asks from her spot on the bed.
Cassie was kind of hoping to catch sight of Sam first. After all, this seemed like it might be a bit of a mother issue. It's Jack she runs into first, though, and he's between conversations. Walking by him now would seem rude.
"Hey, I just wanted to tell you that, ah, your son is a little upset. It's kind of a boy-girl issue, or not a boy-girl issue, maybe?" she stammers.
"Oh," Jack flinches, "And how exactly did this come up?"
"We were playing a game, and…"
"A game? What were you doing, spin the bottle?" Jack asks in horror.
"Gross! They're kids! No, this stupid MASHO game. It's supposed to predict your future or whatever. Anyway, he was supposed to name five girls he liked, and he sorta freaked."
Jack lets out a big sigh, "Where is he?"
"He went into my room," Cassie explains.
"Thanks, I like having you watching out for my kids," Jack says, touching her lightly on the shoulder as he mounts the stairs at something which closely resembles a full-on run.
He finds his son in the teenager's bedroom, jammed into the corner between her dresser and the wall. Jack sits down, and leans against another wall in silence.
"I don't want to talk about it," Ty says crossing his arms.
"Ok," Jack says, fishing a yoyo out of his pocket and offering it to his son.
Ty glares at him.
"Son, I love you."
"But?"
"No but."
Ty heaves a huge sigh. "We were playing a stupid game. It doesn't predict the future, and most of the things you write down aren't even real things that could happen. No-one has a platypus as a pet."
"I'm sure somewhere in the world…." Jack begins, but is cut off by a glare from his son. "You're right, it's a stupid game. There are thousands of reasons why you might not want to play. I'd be ok with any of them."
"I've always written before. You know, girls played the game, and I wrote down what they said. It was just weird to do it from a different angle," Ty says, nodding his head.
"Ok, maybe that's it. Or maybe it's just weird for you to be listing girls instead of boys."
Ty's head jerks toward his father's in shock and dismay, "I'm not gay," he says quickly.
"Ok," Jack says, nodding his head. Then there is a pause of about a beat before Jack says, "I just think it's important that you know your family would be fine if you were."
"You would be?" Ty says in shock.
"Of course. I love however my kids turn out," he says.
"Oh," Ty says after a few second pause, "It's just you're all macho and military, and…" he trails off with a shrug in his shoulders and his voice.
"And I really love my kids," Jack finishes.
"Well, I don't really like MASHO anyway," Ty declares.
"That's fine," Jack says with a slight grin at the firmness of his speech.
"I much prefer Love Hate Friendship Marriage," the child says.
"Oh?" Jack asks.
"'Cause Love Hate Friendship Marriage says I'm going to marry Jordan Morgenstern every single time."
Drat those gender-ambiguous names! Jack thinks. "Oh… so tell me about Jordan…" Jack says, hoping his son doesn't think this is prying. Jack is just dying to know. He's know there is a good chance that his son was going to be gay almost since he knew that he had a son. He really is fine with it, as he told Sam all those years ago, and as he is telling his son now. He just wants to know, like you would want to know the color of eyes your new baby might have.
"He's on my hockey team, and I know there is no chance he's gay, but…" Ty ends in a contented sigh.
Jack smiles. "My son's first crush!"
"You're not going to tell anyone that I'm gay, are you?" Ty seems concerned.
"I would really love to tell your mother. I can promise you that she is going to be just as cool with it as I am."
Ty considers this for a minute before he nods, "Ok, but no one else."
"Agreed," Jack says. Then he considers the kid before him, "You know it might not be a bad decision to wait until you're a little bit older to come out. Middle school kids are meaner than most. I just don't want you to be ashamed of who you are. You're hiding because there is something wrong with the world, not because there is something wrong with you. I just want that to be perfectly clear."
Ty starts to cry a little, and tries to hide it. He didn't want to cry during this discussion. He wanted to prove that he was just as buff and strong as any other boy. Jack scoots across the floor that separates them, and pulls his son in for a noogy. This causes the tears to turn for laughter. The noogy lapses into a hug. "I love you, son," he mutters.
"I love you, too, dad," Ty says warmly. A few seconds later he shifts away, "I wish I hadn't acted like such a freak in front of everyone, especially Olivia; she's my best friend. I mean, I just ran out of the room in the middle of a game? How am I ever going to go back there? Especially if I'm not going to tell them all?"
"You bring a board game."
"What?" Ty says staring at his father incredulously.
"You heard me, you walk in there with a board game in your hands, and your head held high. You don't mention anything about it. They won't either. They're your friends, Ty. It's no big deal."
"You think?" Ty asks self-consciously.
"Sometimes, when your mom isn't around to do it for me," Jack teases.