Title: A Boy and His Fish
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Pike, Kirk
Summary: Fourth part in Playtime ‘verse, set after Ready, Set, RUN!; Jimmy gets into trouble at school and Pike can’t fathom why.
A/N: Written for hora_tio, who deserves a gift for her longtime support of my fanworks. The request was a sweet bonding scene between child!Jim and Pike while they are doing something together, such as fishing. This niggled at me at first but I couldn’t quite place why until I remembered something from The Good Life. It references a photo, describing the scene thus: A fishing trip. Pike and Jimmy are standing next to each other, bearing fishing poles and one tiny fish between them.
And so a story was born. I hope you enjoy it, my friend!
Read here or at AO3

It’s terrifying to be a parent.

Early on, Christopher Pike is foolish enough to believe that he must be more qualified than most bachelors suddenly faced with fatherhood. He is a teacher of small children. He is praised for what he does and often told he does it well. But no amount of accolades and professional success prepare him for the day-to-day experience of parenting a child of Jimmy Kirk’s exuberance and willfulness. He spent one year running after Kirk as his teacher; then he spent a year and a half running after Kirk as Kirk’s mother’s boyfriend. Now that Chris is officially Jimmy’s stepfather, things shouldn’t be too different and any more difficult to handle, right?

He would say to that: Try living with the kid!

Whoever originally defined the role ‘parent’ left out a few key bits of information. A parent is not simply a protector-of-life, a role model, and a rule enforcer. A parent is the least appreciated, hardest working, lowest-rung-in-the-ladder individual in the universe. When a parent tries to be a pillar, the child knocks him down. Freedom is mistaken for restraint, and restraint denies freedom. And the concept of being friends? Impossible, especially with regard to a defiant seven year-old.

Pike sighs at this thought and slips to the next page of the document on the padd propped against his knees. He underlines a sentence with his finger and scribbles a note into the margin about his own experience. Then he moves ahead a few pages, anxious to find the solution to the proposed problem, a situation with which he is currently quite familiar. It’s titled When Your Child Ceases to Communicate With You.

The mattress beneath him shifts on the left side. “Chris,” his wife murmurs sleepily, “go to bed.”

“In a minute,” he promises. He really has to finish this chapter first.

Winona huffs softly, sounding more awake. “I don’t know why you insist on reading those things.”

“They’re called parenting guides.”

“A waste of time would be more accurate. I’m telling you that anything that book wants you do to is not going to work on our son.”

The use of ‘our’ gives Pike a little thrill. It still amazes him after all this time that Winona can so easily expect him to take on the responsibility of co-parenting Jimmy. He understands that marriage makes them partners in all things, but there is a miraculous aspect to it that never goes away for him. Maybe that is because he thought he would never have children of his own, which makes being a parent seem like a gift.

Well, he amends silently, not quite a gift all of the time. Probably from Winona’s perspective she is gratefully sharing the headache that comes with parenthood.

Pike definitely has one of those—has had one for nearly a week, ever since he retrieved Jimmy from the principal’s office at the local elementary school.

How can a seven year-old cause so much trouble?

Once again he turns his attention back to the book. With an urgency bordering on desperation, he reads the paragraphs as quickly as he can.

“Oh, Chris,” comes the amused sound of his name. “You’re hopeless.”

“I can figure this out,” he replies in earnest, “really, I can.” Hasn’t he been in charge of children for years?

Winona laughs, a throaty sound that Pike loves but that at the moment does little to comfort him.

“You’ll figure it out as you go like every other parent in the galaxy.” His wife turns over onto her side to face him and curls in close. “Now power that device off and kiss me.”

Pike weighs his options.

Winona pokes him in the arm. “Hey there, Admiral, don’t you know it’s impolite to leave a lady waiting?”

Chris tosses the padd to the night stand and gathers his wife into his arms. “I’m not an Admiral,” he counters only halfheartedly. His non-existent standing has long since become a joke among family and friends. Of Jimmy and his wayward group of pals from Little Star, only Spock still doggedly refers to him as Admiral rather than Mr. Pike.

He kisses Winona, putting aside his daily worries for the time being. It is Winona who pulls away after a long, amorous moment between them to make a suggestion. Pike is a little too distracted at first to cotton on to what she is saying.

“Fishing,” his wife repeats.

“Fishing?”

“Yes.” Winona kisses the tip of his nose. “Take Jimmy fishing tomorrow. You said you wanted to just last month.”

“But the book says not to—”

“Screw the book,” the woman in his arms replies succinctly. “Do this, Chris, and you’ll thank me afterwards. In fact,” she goes on to add with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “why not thank me ahead of time?”

Pike grins. “I think I can do that.”

~~~

Pike has never seen a boy drag his feet so slowly into the kitchen. Jimmy’s face is pink with sleep, and his hair is standing up in tufts. The sulky look on his face, Pike suspects, has nothing to do with being woken up early on a Saturday.

“Good morning, son.”

Jimmy drags out a chair to sit in at the kitchen table as slowly as he dragged his feet. When Pike offers him a plate of toast already coated in grape jelly and butter, his stepson just jams an entire piece into his mouth while looking slightly murderous.

The boy has had way too many sleepovers with his eight-year-old best friend, Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy. Pike doesn’t like this I-hate-the-world attitude at all, and he’s actually kind of afraid this experience is a precursor to teenage hormones.

My god, he takes a second to think on that, what would Jimmy be like as a teenager? The subsequent image is at best utterly terrifying.

Sipping at his coffee to fortify himself, Pike announces, “We’re going fishing today.”

Jimmy pauses in chewing. “Fishing?”

“Uh-huh,” the man agrees, making a show of looking at his watch, “if you can get dressed in the next twenty minutes.”

“AWESOME!”

Jimmy knocks over his chair in the process of running for his bedroom but he stops to make a pivot at the kitchen archway and sprint back for his second piece of toast. Cramming it into his mouth, he takes off again.

“Wash your face!” Pike calls after him. “Brush your teeth too!” He pauses to think on the boy’s habits, then adds at high volume, “And put on clean socks, Jimmy—clean socks!“

Pike fetches a few things they will need for the trip, makes a pit-stop by the laundry room, and is standing by the door to the garage when Jimmy comes pelting through the kitchen again.

Pike stalls him by lifting a hand. “Socks?”

The boy inspects a grass stain on one of his socked feet and shrugs. “What?”

Pike takes a clean pair of socks from his pocket and tosses it over to his stepson. “Change them. And put on these.” He points to the mud boots he positioned by the door. Jimmy wore them frequently last winter so Pike hopes they still fit.

The boy doesn’t complain once he has the boots on. Pike nods approvingly at his fishing partner and declares them ready for their adventure.

~~~

Jimmy fidgets for the duration of the road trip and tries to test out his brand new fishing rod in the cabin of the vehicle. Pike dodges being whacked in the forehead and warns the boy, “Don’t break it, son. I don’t have an extra one.”

But he does. He even has a backup to the backup. Maybe he went a little overboard when he bought the equipment. The salesman certainly seemed to encourage the enthusiasm for a “father’s first fishing trip with his son.”

“The first is always the most memorable,” the fellow had insisted, “and we have a great sale on our holo-cams!”

The holo-cam was the one thing Pike didn’t buy. He has that covered, he remembers smugly.

Speaking of things to come, he thinks, glancing sideways at his eager companion. “Do you know what happens when you catch a fish, Jimmy?”

“You eat it.”

“No, you take a picture with it as quickly as you can and then you put it back in the water.”

Jimmy frowns. “But I’m gonna keep my fish.”

Pike almost smiles. “We’ll see.”

Jimmy thinks on that. “Is it against the law to keep it, Mr. Pike?”

“In some places,” he replies easily. “We have to make sure that we don’t take all the fish from the lakes and streams—including the ocean—so that there will be some left behind to reproduce and replenish the populations.”

“My teacher says lots of animals are ex-stink ’cause we killed them and took their homes.”

“The word is extinct.”

“Ex-stinked.”

Pike chuckles. “Close enough—and your teacher is right. There’s one thing every person should have, and that’s respect for life. Not just for your own but for those around you, whether they are of your species or not.”

“Like the Vulcans. Spock says Vulcans cheersh all life.”

“Cherish.”

“Chair-rush.”

“Close enough.”

Jimmy plays with winding the reel back and forth before his next question. “…Mr. Pike? What if I still want to eat the fish?”

“Then we’ll take the fish home and eat him.”

“Okay.”

The remainder of the drive is spent in silence with Pike running through a mental checklist (safety jacket for Jimmy, safety line for Jimmy, first aid kit for Jimmy) and his young companion pressing his mouth to the window to make fart noises by blowing against the glass.

It’s going to be a good trip, decides Pike, and he smiles.

~~~

Lately, since the incident at school and the two-day suspension, Jimmy has become sensitive to what others say to him and his mood sours at the most innocent of remarks. This is motivated by a reasoning which Pike has tried and failed to comprehend.

As the two work in tandem to unload the gear from the hover car to the nearby dock, thinking nothing of it, Pike inquires about upcoming events at Jimmy’s school, which is a common occurrence in any curriculum (as he should know). Instantly the boy shuts down on him and becomes the sullen child whom Pike has come to dread.

While Jimmy stomps off with the tackle box, Chris prays that Winona is right and this trip will be cathartic. Concerned less about his own anxiety, he needs to know that Jimmy is not silently suffering. Being a parent, he is tasked with teaching the child to express the pain that comes with growing up in healthy ways but to do that he has to able to connect with him. It’s damned difficult to connect with someone who closes you out at the tiniest perceived slight or most benign question.

Pike comes abreast of the boy to find that Jimmy is surveying his surroundings with his nose wrinkled in an unimpressed fashion. “The water’s dirty,” the boy observes.

“This is a pond,” Pike tells him. “You can’t compare it to the Bay.” He pauses. “And unlike the Bay, you might see a lot of frogs here.”

As expected, the child perks up and looks about. But not seeing any of the amphibians right away that he can inspect, his discontent returns and he challenges, “Don’t people fish in the ocean too?”

Yes, Pike wants to say. In big, fast boats and crowds along the jetties and piers. He will take the boy fishing there eventually but when he’s a little older and a little easier to spot during the times he manages to slip away from his keeper. Right now, this is by far the safer option. “I’ll teach you how to catch shrimp some day. It’s done using nets. For now, let’s focus on something a little more classic in technique. Set the box down,” he orders.

Jimmy does.

Pike fits the child’s arms through a life vest.

Jimmy squirms and picks at the straps once the vest is buckled around him. “I’m growed up now, Mr. Pike,” he complains. “This is dumb!”

“Ponds can be much deeper than you expect,” Pike says. “Also, preventive measures are never dumb, Jimmy. If you can’t remember to be safe on your own or find yourself in danger, it’s little things like this,” he advises, “which could protect you when you’re most vulnerable.”

Jim wrinkles his nose again.

Pike contains the rest of his lecture (the child is already primed to tune him out) and focuses on attaching a line to the vest.

Jimmy watches Pike don a vest as well. When Pike doesn’t attach a cord to it, Jimmy lifts the one tied to him and asks, “What’s this for?”

Pike winks at him. “An extra precaution.”

“But what for?”

Pike demonstrations its use by tying the other end of the cord to a dock post.

Jim eyes the line. “You don’t have one, though. How come I have to have one?”

Oh, the many reasons (and experiences) he could recite as an answer. He settles on, “In case you fall in, this rope will guide you back to the dock.”

“Oh.”

Jimmy still looks slightly suspicious as he tugs at the rope to test the strength of its hold on the post. Then he seems to dismiss the thing entirely as he squats down and opens the tackle box. Pike takes the opportunity to point out the different kinds of tackle therein and explains how to use them.

“This is called a float or a bobber,” he says, lifting up an oblong object shaped like a child’s top. “And that’s a hook for the bait and, oh—!” He pulls out a pack of long gummy strings, one of which Jimmy immediately latches onto and tries to squish between his fingers in fascination.

“A synthetic worm,” Pike names it. “A century ago worms made of plastic were very popular as bait but with the breakthrough in food replication, a new, more ecologically sound material was created. This is biodegradable and something a fish could digest if it manages to get the bait off the hook.”

Jimmy smells the worm.

“It’s replicated, son,” Pike says. “It doesn’t have a smell.”

“Oh.” Jimmy hands it back to him. “But won’t the fish know it’s not alive?”

“Some fish,” he explains with a wink, “are too impatient for a meal to care.”

For the next twenty minutes, Pike teaches the boy how to tie the proper tackle to his fishing line and then lets Jimmy try for himself. After that, showing the boy how to cast the line takes more time. Pike enjoys every minute of it, especially when Jimmy gets frustrated because his fishing hook repeatedly catches in the back of his life vest and won’t be budged until Pike removes it. During these moments, Pike casts a look of longing down the road beside to the pond and thinks of the missing holo-cam.

“I got it!” Jimmy cries at last as his swing is strong enough to send the line sailing out to the middle of the pond. He hops from foot to foot and points. “Look, Mr. Pike! Look!”

Pike feels a pang in his heart, both from pride and sadness, and says without thinking, “I was hoping when I married your mom that you would stop calling me Mr. Pike.”

Jimmy’s arm drops to his side all of a sudden, and the boy turns his face away.

Seeing the child’s joy diminished, Chris feels incredibly guilty and has to apologize. “Sorry,” he says, meaning it, and without another word he casts his line out to meet Jimmy’s and takes a seat at the edge of the dock to swing his legs over the side, fishing rod in hand.

Reluctantly, it seems, Jimmy does the same thing, settling beside him. There is an uncomfortable moment while they stare out over the pond, watching the two orange dots that are the floats in the water.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Pike remarks after a time. “You can call me whatever you want to.”

The boy says nothing.

Pike adjusts his glasses. “Jimmy?”

Jimmy shrugs like Pike has asked for an opinion on some matter.

With a sigh, Pike braces his forearms on his knees and leans slightly forward, letting the rod sag a little in his hands. “Did I make you mad?” When a response is not forthcoming, he presses, “Did I make you uncomfortable?”

“…No.” The answer is there but barely a murmur.

How do parents have this kind of conversation? he thinks in despair. Instead of solving a problem, he has inadvertently created more. He wishes he could say do you want to talk about it? but having tried that once already (and in a kindly tone, too, he thought at the time) which resulted in the boy pretending Pike didn’t exist for three days is not an experience Pike wants to repeat. Maybe there is no best approach with Jimmy.

Pike pushes his glasses up his nose with his finger once again and makes his decision. “Jimmy, I think you might know why we came here today.”

“To fish.”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

The boy hunches his shoulders in such a way that Pike can almost see an outline of the knobs of Jimmy’s spine beneath his t-shirt.

“Do you think I’m angry at you, son? I’m not.”

Jimmy mutters something.

Pike add, “To be honest, I’m confused. There have been times in the past week that it seems like you hate to be around me. I can’t figure out why.”

Jimmy’s posture becomes tenser, and he adopts a look of concentration as he jerks sporadically at his fishing line.

Pike sighs internally. “Is it because I grounded you for the fight?” He doesn’t mention that the punishment had been a joint decision between himself and Winona.

Jimmy’s face could be granite, he is so determined to ignore the questions from his stepfather. The boy must be learning the skill from his Vulcan friend. That would be amusing to Pike if the reaction didn’t present such a problem.

Now that he is committed to the subject (regardless of a willing participant), he decides to bare all of his concerns. “I hope you know that grounding you doesn’t bring me any pleasure. We all have to learn that our actions have consequences. Negative actions have negative consequences. That doesn’t just refer to the punishment used to deter a person from doing unkind or hurtful things, Jimmy. You’ll understand this better when you’re older, but sometimes a punishment can be less painful than a wrongdoing that goes unpunished.” Pike glances at the child. “Does any of what I’m saying make sense?”

Jimmy shrugs.

“Well… to make a long story short, I know you know it’s wrong to hit people. I know you know that required punishment. But help me understand, son. Knowing it’s wrong and knowing what would happen afterwards, why did you do it?”

“I dunno.”

This time Pike does sigh out loud. “You don’t know. I guess that means you didn’t have a reason to hit him.” He says this in his most disappointing tone.

Jimmy responds with the tiniest of admissions, one which requires Pike to lean over to hear it.

“You think he deserved it?” Pike repeats quizzically. “But why would a nice kid deserve a broken nose?”

Jimmy lowers his fishing pole and turns to look Pike dead in the eye. “Finny isn’t nice, Mr. Pike.”

“Oh?” Thank god, thinks Pike. They might getting somewhere.

Jimmy looks away again. “He’s a dummy and a poop-head.”

Pike closes his eyes and wills himself to keep a straight face. So, so close and yet so far. “You’re old enough to describe him a little more maturely than that, Jim.”

“If the shoe fits,” retorts the child.

Pike chokes.

Jutting out his small chin in a perfect imitation of his mother when she’s feeling stubborn, Jimmy glares at their pair of orange tackle bobbing languidly in the water.

“All right,” Pike concedes. “Finny is a dummy and a poop-head—in other words, a bully?”

“Yeah.”

“Was he bullying you?”

“Maybe.”

“Bullying isn’t a ‘maybe’. It’s a yes or no.”

“I don’t wanna talk about Finny. I wanna fish.”

Pike is no stranger to this baleful tone. He is a teacher to preschoolers, after all. “You don’t have a choice. What did he do?”

Jimmy scratches at the tip of his nose.

Pike sighs long and loud and begins to reel in his line.

The boy stops scratching his nose to look at Pike’s hands in alarm.

Ever-so-calmly, Pike speeds up the reel.

“Finny called me a liar!” Jimmy blurts out.

Pike’s hands still. “Oh?”

The boy tugs at his bottom lip with his teeth. “‘Cause we were supposed to tell about our summer, and so I said I went on a trip with my parents.” Jimmy’s voice grows softer. “Finny said I can’t say you’re my dad ’cause you married my mom after I was born.”

Pike wasn’t keen on Finny to begin with, being of the opinion that anyone who pushes his child into fighting is No Good, but now he has a deep dislike for the child.

Jimmy picks at infinitesimally small pieces of lint on his shorts.

Pike sets the fishing pole in his hands aside on the dock, places his hands on his knees and endures a minute of uncomfortable silence.

“Jimmy,” he asks at last, “can’t I be your real dad?” When the boy doesn’t reply, he goes on to say, “I don’t think it’s fair that I can only be your step-parent because Finny says so. Who, by the way, is a very ill-informed individual. Do you know what a father is?”

Jimmy shakes his head.

“A father is somebody who wants to treat you like his son or his daughter. So, do you understand why I don’t like what that boy told you?”

“I knew he was wrong,” Jimmy says, straightening his spine.

“Yes,” Pike replies with seriousness, “I think he is very wrong. You’re the only one who can decide who I am to you. If you don’t want me to be your dad, Jimmy, then I’ll accept your wish because it came from you—but not from anyone else.” Pike hesitates before adding, “And that includes your mother. If your mom and I ever… aren’t together, I can still be your father, as long as that’s what you want.”

“Really?”

Pike presents his pinky finger, having seen Jimmy do this numerous times with his best friends when they make a pact about something. “I swear it.”

Jim hooks his pinky finger with Pike’s and gives the pinky a little tug. “Swear on the sacredness of my captaincy.”

Pike swallows a laugh. “I swear on the sacredness of Captain James Tiberius Kirk.”

Jim untangles their fingers and grins. Then he spits into his palm. “Okay, now swear on—”

“No,” Pike says firmly.

Jimmy looks from the glob of spit in his palm to the disgust on Pike’s face and back again. “Spit-swearing is how the Kwingons do it, Mr. Pike.” There is an echo of the child’s past lisp in his statement.

“Then it’s a good thing we aren’t Klingons. Wipe your hand, please, and not on your shirt.”

Jim obligingly wipes his palm on his shorts instead. With a huff, Pike picks up his fishing rod and tosses out the line to join Jimmy’s.

Jimmy starts to swing his dangling legs over the side of the dock and, after a couple of minutes, wants to know, “Am I still in trouble?”

“You bet,” answers Pike.

“How come?”

“Because no son of mine uses violence when he can use his brain instead.”

The boy slants a look at Pike. “Okay.”

Pike interprets that as message received. Swamped by a sense of triumph to finally have achieved something as a parent, he grins like a fool. It isn’t long before Jimmy is mimicking him with the grin, looking much more carefree than he has for a week.

“I’m gonna catch all the fish in the pond!” the boy declares.

“I’ll be just as happy if you catch none,” he replies.

“Maybe you can catch one too.”

Pike pats the bucket of pond water beside him which he had prepared in advance. “We’ll see.”

The sound of an approaching hover car (one that obviously hasn’t been to a tune-up shop in ages) grabs their attention. Jimmy’s eyes widen when it rounds the bend in the road and comes into view. “It’s Mr. Archer!”

Pike takes the boy’s fishing rod away just in time as the boy scrambles to his feet. Apparently, however, Jimmy has forgotten that he can go no farther the length of the rope attached to his vest and skips to a stop midway along the dock.

“James,” Pike warns him when small fingers start prying at the knot.

“Oh, ho,” calls the newcomer as he steps out of his car and onto the dock, “I spy a puppy on a leash!”

Jimmy comes back to Pike looking sullen and complains, “I don’t like this rope, Mr. Pike.”

“Is he still calling you that?” Pike’s friend wants to know.

“Jon,” Pike hisses pointedly. Then he demands, “Where have you been?”

Jonathan Archer stops just shy of the father-and-son pair and scratches at his disheveled hair beneath his floppy fisherman’s hat. “Didn’t you tell me to come late?”

Chris resists the urge to roll his eyes. Having been friends with the man for decades, he knows when it’s futile to argue back. “Did you at least bring it?”

Jon presents a brown satchel with flourish and grins.

Pike eyes the satchel dubiously. His worry is well-founded because the object that Archer takes from the bag looks nothing like the modern-day version of its kind.

Jon confirms the suspicion when he strokes it lovingly and says, “She’s a beauty, Chris. Nineteen-nineties. Wanna know how much I paid for her?”

“Nineteen—are you daft? Why didn’t you bring your holo-cam!”

“But this is a classic. An antique! It’s how all the pros do it,” Jon argues, fiddling with the buttons and knobs of the ancient camera. “I think if I press this one, it powers on.”

Having returned to his position beside Pike, Jimmy is watching Archer’s toy with interest. “Can I play with it?” he asks.

“No,” the adults reply at the same time.

The boy rolls his eyes, retrieves his fishing rod from Pike, and puts his back to them.

“Ah ha!” declares Jon when the camera makes a grinding noise after he finds the shutter release. Jon holds the thing up to his face with a gleeful expression and surveys the world through the camera lens. “This is definitely worth the credits I paid for it.”

Pike pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just take the picture, Jon.”

“Oh, I’m taking lots of pictures!”

As Chris listens to the click-click-whir of the battered-looking camera, it makes him wonder if Jon even knows how old-Earth-style film technology works. Damn it, he should have bought one of the holo-cams from the store!

“You’re freaking out,” Archer singsongs knowingly. “I can hear your internal agony.”

“I’m lamenting my faith in you,” Pike retorts.

“But I’m here with a camera just like you said.”

“And the damn thing isn’t going to work!”

“Yes, it will!”

Jimmy’s interjection of “…Um, Mr. Pike?” goes unheeded.

“No, it won’t!”

“Wanna bet?” challenges Archer. “Loser buys the winner a bottle of malt whiskey.”

“Winona says I shouldn’t enable your drinking habit.”

“Ha!” Jon cries. “Ha-ha! What is she talking about? What habit?”

“MR. PIKE!” Jimmy suddenly screams shrilly over both of them. “ITHINKIHAVEAFISH!”

Pike forgets what he was upset about in an instant. “Don’t let go of the rod, son!” he says, dropping his own fishing rod to the dock in his excitement. “Jon, ready the camera!”

“Aye, aye, Admiral!”

Pike hustles in close to Jimmy and coaches him through reeling the fish in. “Not too fast now,” he warns the boy repeatedly, whose nimble fingers are spinning the reel.

“But not too slow!” Jon counters.

Pike growls to the side, “Don’t break his concentration, Jonathan!”

“Ooh, did you hear that? That was the sound of my heart breaking, Christopher.”

Jimmy bounces on his feet. “I got it, I got it, I GOT IT!” he says enthusiastically as the fish finally breaks free of the water.

It’s a tiny thing, really, but Pike has never felt prouder. The fish lands on the dock with a wet thwap and flops around.

“Jon, are you getting this?” he demands.

“Hold on, Ants-In-The-Pants, something’s not right with my baby… What in fudgepops is this switch for?”

“JON!”

“I SAID HOLD ON!”

Jimmy has knelt on the dock to look more closely at his first catch. He notes as the fish’s frantic flopping begins to subside, “He’s gasping a lot.”

Ah, thinks Pike, here it comes. “He’s out of water, Jimmy. He can’t breathe.”

Jimmy jerks his head up to stare at Pike, wide-eyed.

Pike says gravely, “You’ve caught the fish, son. Deciding to eat him means he has to die.”

“Whoa, that’s morbid, Pike.”

Pike ignores his friend. “Actions have consequences. Decisions come before actions. That’s why you have to be very careful with your decision, because it dictates the action you will take. The consequence for your action is then your responsibility.”

Jimmy’s eyes shine with tears. “I won’t eat him.”

“Okay,” agrees Pike, “then let’s put him in the bucket,” and they do so without removing the line.

Jimmy swipes at his eyes and leans into Pike’s side to watch the fish until it recovers. Pike wraps his arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugs him close.

“I was mad that I had to say I’m sorry to Finny,” Jimmy admits. “I didn’t want to be sorry.”

“And now?”

“I made a bad decision.”

“Choosing to fight should never be an easy decision, son. Promise me you’ll think about all of the things that could happen should you fight with someone. If you are willing to take responsibility for any one of those things, then you can choose to fight—but always be compassionate about how you do it. The worst thing you can do is choose violence for violence’s sake. Understand?”

The boy nods.

“Good,” Pike tells him. “Now, if your Uncle Jon has figured out how to work a camera from another century, we can take that picture before we free our little friend.”

Jim rubs at his nose. “What if, someday, I might wanna eat a fish again?”

Pike smiles. “I’m counting on that, Jimmy. Until then, we’ll catch the fish and let them go. Sound good?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” Archer interrupts, “if the moral of the story moment is over between you two, my camera is definitely working now.”

Pike just shakes his head and collects his discarded rod. Jimmy catches his fishing line and lifts the fish out of the bucket. It flails madly. With an arm still around his son, Pike ignores the pond water being flicked into his face by the angry fish, grins and says, “We’re ready!”

Jon lifts the camera into position. “Say ‘Mr. Pike’s an ugly monkey!‘”

“Mr. Archer’s an ugly monkey!” cries Jimmy, grinning.

Click-and-flash.

“Say ‘Mr. Pike is—‘”

“JON, JUST TAKE THE PICTURES!” Pike bellows.

Jimmy is giggling—or he giggles until the fish successfully swings itself up in front of the boy’s face. Then the laughter turns into a shriek, and the boy reacts by slinging his catch in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately Pike’s reaction to a slimy, bug-eyed fish flying towards him is also his fatal mistake. His hasty scuttle out of the way takes him right to the edge of the dock. There he teeters long enough to realize the inevitable outcome of his perilous situation.

Click-and-flash.

“Uh-oh,” Jon says, lowering the camera as Pike plunges backwards into the pond.

But Pike hears nothing else Jon might add because it’s Jimmy who yells in alarm, “DAD!”

Jon will tease him later that he was grinning like a fool when he broke the surface of the water. Pike will never bother to deny it. Soaked and smelling of pond-scum or not, his first fishing trip with his son will always be his favorite one.

The End

Related Posts:

• Bring Out the Sun – from August 1, 2024
• Follow Me Dark – from November 30, 2023
• Say a Little Prayer – from November 10, 2021
• Twist and Take – from October 31, 2021
• Clear from the Battle (But Not the War) – from October 11, 2021

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