Title: Rhyme and Reason
Author: amazonqueenkate
Claim: Jacqui Franco
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: (Set 2; #8, solitary)
Rating: PG
Summary: Jacqui only sees Sean twice a year, and this is one of those times.
Author's Notes: Another "I give Jacqui a random child" fic. I enjoy these.

Jacqui only sees Sean twice a year, once in December (for Christmas) and once in July (for his birthday). This July, he's a turning a surly sixteen and complains about life at home the whole way back from the airport.

"Dad and Tammy won't get me a car," he sulks, and Jacqui rolls her eyes. He's fiddling with the air conditioner, trying to find a setting beyond "arctic chill." Michigan, she knows, is never as warm as Las Vegas, and he finally abandons all hope and slumps back against the seat, three of the four vents aimed at his face. "I keep telling them that all the other guys have cars, but they're just being asses about it."

"Jerks," Jacqui corrects, and darts her eyes away from the road to shoot him a stern "look."

He rolls his eyes. "You call them asses," he points out. "Whenever you call for dad, you ask me if the ass is home."

"It's different with your dad and I, and you know it."

Sean snorts and turns to stare out the window.

Sean knows it, but Jacqui thinks to herself that it'd be easier if he didn't know. He's fifteen-going-on-thirty thanks to the number of knock-down, drag-out fights he's seen in this years and the larger-than-life epic that serves as his mother's life story. He knows his father's a chauvinist and both the literal and figurative definition of a bastard, a man who married the quiet girl in his physics class and got her pregnant during her last semester of undergraduate studies. He knows his father spent four years requiring that his mother be unemployed and miserable in their big house, a prisoner in their own home. He knows that his mother only left because she had to, not because she wanted to.

"They're having another kid," he blurts out in the kitchen a few hours later, slouching in a chair. Jacqui looks up from the dinner she's trying to make ... it's supposed to be stir-fry, but it's turning black and smoldering in the wok ... and frowns at him. "In October."

"This makes…three?" she asks, trying her best to sound disinterested.

Sean shakes his head. "Four." She snorts and turns back to the semi-edible collection of vegetables, nudging at them with a spatula. She can feel his eyes on her back; unlike his father, Sean watches everything and notices the minutest of details. Jacqui figures he'd be a great CSI if he had the patience for science. "House is getting really crowded."

"Only two years until college," she reminds him, not looking up. "You still looking at University of Michigan? It's a good school. I went there. Graduated ... "

"Yeah, yeah, magnum come loud or whatever."

"Magna cum laude." She glances over her shoulder and smirks. "Mock me, and I'll send you to bed without dinner."

Sean wrinkles his nose. "If that's dinner, I'd rather just go to bed."

Jacqui laughs and rolls her eyes, and he grins at her. His teeth are white and straight, the gift of a talented orthodontist. There's barely a scar on his forearm from when it broke through the skin when he was seven, a skilled surgeon's handiwork. His hair is cut in the shaggy "in" style, his clothes are nearly new, his shoes are still white. Even smiling back at her, his father's eyes but her unruly curls and awkward shaping, he looks out of place. Her kitchen wallpaper is peeling at the corners, after all, and there's pseudo-smoke curling out of her too-old wok.

She dumps the contents of the wok into the sink. "Pizza," she decides, and grabs her purse.

They talk and laugh over pizza, the comfort of old friends catching up after several long months of separation. His grades are better and he's considering fire-fighting school after undergrad; no, she's still not seeing anybody, but she figures that she's thirty-eight and not eighty-three. It's an odd connection, not really familial but not just friendly, and she wonders what life would have been like if she'd never walked out that door in the first place, if she'd argued with the judge who said her lack of work history and emotional outbursts were hazardous to her child, or if she'd flown back to Michigan once she had a job and a life and appealed the decision. Instead, Sean brushes his hair from his face and grabs another of the slices with the extra pepperoni, and Jacqui listens to stories about his friends, his girlfriend, his siblings, and his father.

"You know," Sean remarks as they separate at the doorway to the guest room, his duffle bag over his shoulder and a half-smile on his lips, "I could look into UNLV. For school."

He says it with such hope that, for a moment, Jacqui almost hugs him and wishes it into life. But she looks at her chipped hallway paint and thinks of her sputtering car instead, finally shaking her head. "You know we can't do that," she reminds him. "Your dad's footing the bill. Gotta do what he says."

Sean's face falls. "Ma, but ... "

"Sean, please."

He rolls his eyes and walks into the room, slamming the door hard behind him. For a moment, Jacqui stands in the hallway and stares at the door, biting back the lump rising in the back of her throat.

Then, she sighs and shakes her head. She only sees Sean twice a year, she reminds herself, and there's a reason for that.