If The Costume Fits…
{ G | John/Rodney }
part of the Fine Print verse
*
October 31st, 2016
“Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. DAD! DAD!”
“Oh my god, what?”
“My face is itchy.”
John counted to ten and ground his teeth so hard they squeaked. Because ten hadn’t been enough the first, second, third, or fourth through twelfth times he’d tried it, John went ahead and counted to twenty-five. Meryse gave him a pained look and wiggled her face, trying to ease the itch, which was endearing enough to cut the count down to twenty. When John felt it was safe to open his mouth without yelling, he hovered a finger in front of Mer’s face.
“Where?”
“Here.”
Mer made a stabbing gesture - or rather, she pointed, but her sleeves still covered her hands so it became more of a vague indication of her entire face. John took a guess and scratched the tip of her nose.
“Here?”
“No, here.”
“…Here?”
“No, Dad, here,” Mer replied, like she was talking to an especially slow puppy.
Just as John began to seriously contemplate infanticide the door swished open and Rodney blew in, dumping Alex in John’s lap and Olivia on the couch.
“Did you know that more than half the children on Atlantis are dressed as Wraith this year?” Rodney demanded.
John didn’t even bother to answer him because a) it had always been a popular costume and b) Wraith were really freaking scary, even to John. Especially to John, because he had kids now and it had been bad enough when it was him and Rodney and his team and Atlantis he had to worry about, but now he had progeny, and ‘Wraith’ had become synonymous with nightmares and sleepless nights. For both him and the kids.
“Did you know that it’s a lot harder to pin sleeves on a squirming child when you have no help?” John shot back. He set Alex to figuring out where Mer was itchy and got off his aching knees.
Rodney pulled the olive costume over Olivia’s head (“Get it, John? Olive!” “That’s it - I want a divorce.”) and glared at John. “It’s not my fault all those strings of horrid orange lights blew a circuit and I’m apparently the only person on the planet that knows how power relays work!”
“When are we going to the party?” Meryse demanded. It seemed her face wasn’t itchy anymore because Alex was keeping himself busy by digging around in his nose.
“Oh for the love of - do you at least have a tissue?”
From the guilty look on Alex’s face John made the correct assumption of ‘no’ and pulled some out of his pocket. That was another thing about fatherhood he hadn’t anticipated - the transition into ‘human Kleenex box’.
With a loud zip Rodney finished with Liv’s costume and thrust her towards Mer, who shrugged back her sleeves and pulled the squirming toddler to her chest. Now that her hands were out, it would be so much easier to pin Mer’s sleeves, though John would never admit it to Rodney.
John rolled his eyes and crisply finished Mer’s costume while casting side-long glances at his son. “Alex…what are you dressed as?”
Alex gave him that look that was so totally McKay (he’d seen Rodney, Jeannie, and Madison do it, so it was definitely inherited), the one that made him feel so, so stupid.
“I’m a wormhole. Duh.”
Blue jumpsuit; tin foil spots; long spiral tail. “Gotcha.”
“Are we leaving soon?” Meryse demanded.
“We would have left by now if your father had helped me here,” John grumbled. He glanced around for Rodney. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Rodney absently held up two pillowcases with one hand while he marathon typed with the other. “I just need to email Radek about tomorrow’s diagnostics -”
Satisfied with Mer’s sleeves, John kissed her forehead and yelled: “Who wants candy!”
Mer handed Liv off to John and she and Alex hopped up and down and hurled themselves at Rodney, who had no choice but to follow when they pulled him off his chair. They swiped their pillowcases from his hand and raced each other out the door, not waiting for their parents to catch up.
“Don’t drown in the apple dunk!” Rodney called after them.
John snorted and set Olivia on the ground, putting one of her hands in Rodney’s and taking the other. “That’s some pretty good advice, Dad,” he mocked.
Rodney grinned crookedly at him. “Of all the trouble a wormhole and a Wraith Queen could get into in a room full of lesser Wraith and candy, drowning is probably the least of our problems.”
—-
After piling the kids on Meryse’s bed (“But Daddy, my belly is too full to go anywhere!”), John and Rodney collapsed into theirs. They were sweaty and sticky and still a little bit grossed out at how Ronon had practically inhaled his candy apple, but only two kids had cried when Mer, in her capacity as Wraith Queen, tried to order them around, and only one scientist had cried when Alex, in his capacity as Rodney’s son, had called him an idiot and explained to him exactly how his costume was in fact an accurate representation of a Lorentzian wormhole.
“You know, I think we need to work on their social skills,” John muttered against Rodney’s shoulder.
“Pfft,” Rodney replied. “Who needs social skills when you can beat people into submission with your brain?”
“Mer doesn’t have any friends, you know. If she could just be nice once in a while…”
“It doesn’t matter - they still like her. She’s got all that Sheppard charm.” Rodney waved at John’s hair. “She got all your good genes.”
“And all your rude ones,” John retorted.
“Can we fight about this tomorrow?” Rodney asked. “I’m traumatised by everyone else’s kids.”
John was tired, too, so he thought the lights off and pulled the covers over them both. Rodney slung a leg over John’s hips and stole most of John’s pillow, but John snuck his cold hands under Rodney’s shirt, so he figured they were even.
“If Alex gets sick from all that candy, you’re cleaning it up,” Rodney sleepily warned him.
“Okay,” John agreed. After all, he had been the one to unintentionally instigate the Tootsie Roll-eating contest between the marines, which Alex had thought was totally cool and decided he wanted to join in.
“And if Elizabeth has nightmares about tiny Wraiths invading Atlantis,” John retorted, “I’ll just remind her that Mer’s costume was your idea.”
Rodney grunted a response into John’s neck. John grinned and brushed a kiss against Rodney’s forehead, the same way he kissed the kids when he tucked them in, and waited for the soft sounds of Rodney’s sleep before he joined him.