Originally posted 5/26/07This story was written for the 16th Starburst Challenge at Terra Firma. The topic was to write about John or Aeryn teaching their child something the other parent doesn't approve of. Well, writing about John and Aeryn and a kid or two isn't exactly a stretch for me, but I'd already done the "Aeryn wants to teach the kids to shoot and John thinks they're too young" thing, so I decided to come at this from another angle. I really like the way this little piece came out....
Rating: PG-ish, depending on your tolerence for certain words
Setting: Moya, about 4 cycles after PKW
Spoilers: through PKW
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my universe, no money being made and no disrespect intended.
Thanks to imloco2 for the beta help, and to MadScientist and the bunnies for a little test drive. At least they thought it was funny!
The Birds and the Bees
John was standing in the galley getting a much-needed drink of cold pava juice after some hard work in one of Moya’s power conduits. His four-cycle-old son D’Argo entered the room with the DRD 1812 trailing behind him.
“Hey, D!” John said, saluting the boy with his glass. “Hey, 1812!”
The little red, white and blue robot beeped an acknowledgement and took up a station near the doorway. D’Argo cocked his head and peered at his father intently, but said nothing beyond a simple, “Hey.”
It seemed like the boy wanted something, and John finally prompted, “What’s up?”
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?” John asked. Waiting for an answer, he took a nice large gulp of his juice.
“That the daddy’s penis goes in the mommy’s ‘gina, and then the spoom comes out, and that’s how we got a baby,” D’Argo said in a rush.
Unfortunately, John lost it somewhere around “spoom,” and sprayed the counter with juice. “What?” he gasped when he quit choking.
D’Argo obligingly repeated the question, word for word.
Stalling for time, John asked, “Who told you that, sport?”
Dar shrugged. “Mommy.”
As if there could have been any other answer here on Moya.... John grabbed a cleaning pad and mopped up the counter, trying to figure out how to respond.
Spoom? What the frell had Aeryn been thinking? “Do you want some juice?” he asked hopefully.
The boy shook his head. “No thank you. I’m not thirsty. Is it true?” he persisted, standing on one foot.
John sighed. He wasn’t going to get away with the old distraction ploy on this one. “Yes, D,” he admitted reluctantly, “that’s about the way it works.”
D’Argo contemplated this answer for a few microts, and then nodded gravely and said, “Okay.” Curiosity apparently satisfied, he commanded, “Come on, 1812!” He turned and skipped out of the room cheerfully, leaving his father completely flummoxed.
* * * * * * * *
John stalked into the docking bay where Aeryn was working on her prowler and stopped about an arm’s length from her. Without preliminaries, he snapped, “Tell me you did not just tell D’Argo about sex!”
She looked up from the transfer circuit she was splicing and frowned at him.
“You told D’Argo about sex!” he repeated. “What were you thinking?”
She looked down at her belly, bulging large with their second child. “The baby was kicking. He asked how it got there.” She shrugged.
“You didn’t have to be so explicit!”
“I only told him the basics, John.”
“You told him about spoom!” John yelled. He glared at her, daring her to deny it.
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “What?”
Chagrinned, he just shook his head. “You told him about sex!” he repeated stubbornly.
Clearly fed up with the subject, she snapped, “I gave him a very basic description of
procreation. I didn’t offer to demonstrate!”
“He’s
four, Aeryn!”
“It’s a basic biological function! What the frell is wrong with you?” They glared at each other in silence until she suddenly drew a sharp breath and put her hand on her belly.
That took the wind right out of his sails. Concerned, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she told him automatically, but he could see her assessing her condition. “I’m fine,” she repeated after a few microts, and then reached her hands behind her and began to stretch her back. “Just too much bending over this frelling circuit.”
Sympathetic to her discomfort, and feeling slightly guilty about it besides, because it was his baby growing big inside her, John moved around behind her and displaced her hands with his. As he began to massage her lower back, she moaned in approval. “That better?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
They lapsed into silence again, this time more companionable, as he continued to work on the muscles in her back. After a bit, he stopped and slipped his arms around her and pulled her close to him, resting his hands on her belly. She leaned back against him, gazing ahead towards her prowler. She put her hands on top of his, and murmured with at least a hint of good humor, “I don’t know why I’m doing this again.”
“You know you love it,” he teased.
“I love motherhood, not pregnancy,” she corrected.
That brought his mind back to the issue with their firstborn and sex. “About D’Argo,” he began. She tensed up, and he continued a little more cautiously than he’d intended. “Where I come from, kids who are way too young to be doing the deed don’t need to know the details.”
“He asked me a question, John. I answered it. Didn’t we agree that we should always try to answer his questions, no matter how pointless or inappropriate?”
“I know, I know,” he said, remembering that in her world, children weren’t supposed to ask questions out of curiosity, they were supposed to follow orders and learn skills to become valuable members of a squad some day. He was the one who’d said they should encourage D’Argo’s creative inquiries.... He sighed, wondering why this bothered him so much. He wasn’t that much of a prude, was he? He was a guy, and guys talked about this stuff all the time.
Yeah, but to other
guys, not little kids....
The silence stretched until Aeryn rotated her head so she could see his face and demanded, “Well, what would you have told him?”
Good question. He thought about it and then admitted, “
Nothing springs to mind.” She opened her mouth to protest, and he preempted her. “Nothing that involved words like sperm and penis,” he said firmly.
Aeryn looked baffled. “He has a penis, John. He knows the word.” Her eyes widened suddenly in concern. “Did I upset him?”
“No,” he admitted reluctantly, shaking his head. “No, he was fine. He was just checking you had your facts straight.”
Her narrowed eyes asked very clearly, “Then what the frell is wrong with you?”
John thought about it a little longer. What she’d told their son was no more than what kids on earth would get from watching neighborhood pets or the Discovery Channel – or, hell, from walking in on their parents! D was fine. It was time to put aside his provincial human preferences for stories about the stork or the birds and the bees and accept that he was living in a different world, and that D’Argo would be none the worse for it. “Oh, brave new world,” he murmured, and bent down to kiss the top of Aeryn’s head. She turned around in his arms and lifted her mouth to kiss him back, grateful to put the issue to bed.
They were interrupted by a small voice from somewhere nearby.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, sport?”
“What’s spoom?”
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