Like Father

Title: Like Father
Author: Ky (Venom_69)
Fandom: Atlantis
Pairing: Sheppard/Weir.
Rating: Age Friendly
Summary: He will not become his father.
Words: 896
Archive: My site. Anywhere else, sure, just let me know where so I can come visit.
Disclaimer: Don’t own them, never will. Promise to put them back in the state I found them. Song’s not mine either. That would be Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses"
Author’s notes: Written for Stargate Weekly Challenges (

sg_challenges), Holiday Challenge #4 FATHER'S DAY, I hope this fits!
Date: 19/06/06
Copyright © to Venom, 2006

***

“Daddy don’t cry,”
After all that I’ve done wrong
I must have done something right

***

He doesn't freak out when she tells him that she's pregnant.

John nods, smiles, takes a deep breath and says, "Well, OK then."

It's not the most articulate he's ever been, that's for sure, but it's also not the worst thing he could have said.

The initial desire to scream Holy cow! What are we gonna do? and shriek like a girl was, thankfully, stomped down in a reasonably short amount of time. After all, with all of the new fetus-induced hormones racing through her body, it was pretty likely that he'd end up with some kind of blunt instrument rammed into his bal... er, heart.

His second desire was to chase after Carson with some kind of heavy object because, damnit, it was the Doctors job to requisition condoms for the base and if he kept buying faulty stock then this was bound to happen sooner or later.

The third desire was to shrug, put on his best innocent face and say, Well, It’s not solely my fault!

But he doesn't say any of that to her.

He doesn't do the insanely male thing and ask "How did this happen?" because he fears that if he does that, he'll never get to practice the 'happening' again.

And that would suck.

In the bad way.

Elizabeth stares at him for a few moments, her mental telepathy - and he is under no doubt that she has it - working overtime. "You're OK with this?"

He's not.

He's really really not.

John remembers his childhood.

He remembers how badly his father screwed up. And when he says 'father', he loosely means the man that came to visit every now and then, reeking of beer and tobacco.

He mostly remembers an angry man and his mother’s tears. Black and blue bruises that would appear sporadically, but often enough to be a consistent memory for him.

He remembers, once, watching as his father raised a barstool in the direction of his mother. Little John, perhaps 9 or 10, watched the big man wobble on his feet, unsteady for the alcohol coursing through his veins.

Certainly not role-model material.

John remembers the clutch of fear all too well and he promised himself that he would never put someone in that position.

But, for better or for worse, that was his father.

That was his screwed-up childhood: disappointment, missed birthdays, forgotten Christmas's and general heartache.

His father hated the military, too.

Thought that they were a bunch of Jar headed wankers. And John never corrected him on the difference between a Jar Head and an USAF officer.

Despite his love of anything with flight capability, John sometimes suspects that he joined the Military simply to piss off the man whose name appears on his birth certificate. He thought that all through basic training.

Then came the hand-to-hand combat and the weapons training.

Sure, most men in general love a good fight. Shoot 'em up, bang bang movies are also a generic favorite. It's a guy thing, he knows that.

But every time John smiled in a fight - simulated or not - or grinned as he shot a 9mm at a paper target, he would think, I am just like him. Violence runs in my blood.

He remembers one drunken night with an ex-girlfriend - who, at the time, he had thought he loved, but it turned out he just really liked her being naked - when he'd confessed the sins of his genes to her and announced that he would never have children.

She, in her equally inebriated state, had rapidly agreed that it was a bad idea to pass the Sheppard genes on.

It’s stupid, childish, unfounded, ridiculous and utterly insane, but he’s been thinking like that for over 20 years and he can’t just turn it off like a light switch.

“John?”

He hates lying to her, he’s very bad at it, but he can’t just ignore the flicker of light and happiness in her eyes. The swelling of her breast, the barely noticeable bump under her top, the radiance that surrounds her like an aura of peace. “I’m OK with it, really.”

“You’re not your father, John.”

Damn diplomat, he thinks, always could read me like a book. “I know.”

“It wont be like that for our son.”

“What makes you so sure it’ll be a boy?” He wont admit it, but despite his desire to never ever have children, he has imagined a little girl that looked just like her, running around the city and calling him ‘daddy.’

“Woman’s intuition?” She offers, a shrug and a smile accompanying her words.

He smiles with her, but his features become serious quickly. “I can’t promise that I won’t freak out at some stage.”

“I can’t promise I wont either.” She admits, moving forward to lean against his chest.

John’s arms automatically find their way around her. He’s still not sure how comfortable he is with this, parenthood is a big step – especially when you’re still a big kid yourself – but he wont let himself become his father, he wont put his son or daughter through what he went through.

There is one other thing he needs to know, however…

“Have you told Caldwell?”

“No, of course not, why?”

John grins wickedly. “I want to do it.”

***

End