Fic: The Nursery (a Grandview Story) Rated G
Title: The Nursery
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Warnings: over spending
Word count: 2,484
Series: Grandview
Disclaimer: Sadly, neither Stargate Atlantis nor her characters belong to me. If they did, the show would never have been nor would it even be cancelled. We may have to move it to Cinemax though.
A/N:
Summary: Rodney tilted his head to the side in disbelief. “John, all the things we’ve done together, all the crap we’ve been through and I’ve never seen you give up. How can shopping for the nursery bring you down so far so fast?”
John growled and walked away from Rodney. Rodney shook his head, sighed and followed him two aisles over and watched as John plopped down in a fluffy pink rocking chair and flicked the reclining stool up.
“John,” he said as he walked over.
John looked up and him. “I give up Rodney,” he said.
Rodney tilted his head to the side in disbelief. “John, all the things we’ve done together, all the crap we’ve been through and I’ve never seen you give up. How can shopping for the nursery bring you down so far so fast?”
John looked away and blew out an exasperated breath. “They’ve got boats. They’ve got trains, they’ve got cars, they’ve got busses and fish and turtles and stars, but no planes. I didn’t see one plane on any of that stuff Rodney, not even a helicopter.”
“Oh,” Rodney said, seeing what was bothering his husband, “there was a helicopter on the transportation set.”
“One helicopter. One helicopter and all kinds of cars and busses and motorcycles and crap like that.”
“Well then, let’s just go with a color. I mean he’s your son so we already know he’s going to love flying, we don’t need to shove it down his throat. An airplane set would be nice, but there’s no point getting upset about it if they don’t have one. We’ll pick a color that matches the nursery, clean lines, symmetrical.”
“Symmetrical,” John repeated, brightening a bit, “mathematics.”
“Yeah, mathematics. It’s something we both like, something we’re both good at and considering that Nathan is our son, he’ll appreciate it. He’s not your ordinary baby John, we need to treat him like the genius we know he is. He’s a perfect mixture of Sheppard and McKay, and neither a Sheppard nor a McKay would want to be surrounded by turtles that are the wrong color, or stars that are the wrong shape, or boats with sails that no self respecting sailor would ever put on their boat.”
“Okay,” John said, his mood obviously lighter.
“Now let’s go back, we’ve got a lot to do over the next two weeks.”
They’d looked at every bedding set in the store, then went to another store and looked through all the bedding sets there.
“Rodney, this is a lot harder than they make it out to be on those commercials,” John said. He looked down into the cart and curled his lip at the three bedding sets they’d ‘settled’ for.
“Well, what do you expect? It’s not like we’re shopping for an animal, this is our sons’ bedroom.”
“I guess the angel baby one is alright but it’s really kind of fuzzy. I heard fuzz is one of the things you shouldn’t put in a baby’s bed.”
“I kind of like the one with numbers on it,” Rodney said. “Numbers on one side of the comforter and straight lines on the other side. Can’t really get more mathematical than that.”
“But it’s brown Rodney, brown is not a baby color, brown is depressing.”
“Alright, then what about the white one?”
“It’s white Rodney; do I really need to go into why white in a baby bed is a bad idea?”
Rodney pressed his lips together and let out a long frustrated breath through his nose. “John, we’ve got to do something, there are only two weeks until he’s born and we have nothing in the nursery except a rocking chair.”
John sighed, “Okay, we’ll get these three.”
Rodney jumped when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He’d set it to vibrate last night when he and John went to the movies and had forgotten to change the setting after. He dug the phone out of his pocket and furrowed his brow at the new text message “Who’s texting me? Everyone knows I hate texts,” he said as he downloaded the message.
A picture appeared on the screen and his eyes went wide. “John,” he said, “I think Sam may have just found the solution to our problem.” He handed the phone to John and smiled as John’s face went from depressed to overjoyed in two seconds.
John pulled out his own cell and dialed the number. “Where are you?” he asked in a hurry.
They’d grabbed the numbers bedding set out of the cart, and Rodney grabbed the other one he liked that John had said no to because it had too many pillows and was also brown (although there was blue in it and Rodney hadn’t intended on putting the pillows in the bed), Rodney liked it because it had all the symbols from the computer on it, (*,%,@,#). They paid, then rushed out of the store and found Sam in the bedding aisle at Babies ‘R’ Us. She was clutching a large zippered plastic bag and standing beside a display. John went over, wrapped her in his arms and kissed her cheek.
“Hey,” Rodney protested jokingly.
“It’s the last one,” Sam said as she pried herself out of John’s grasp, “I guarded it with my life. I was actually coming to buy baby clothes. Now that I know he’s a he I could go all cute and gender specific.” She handed John the plastic bag.
“This is perfect colonel; it’s exactly what I was looking for this morning.”
The crib set was light blue, pale green and a little bit of tan, the comforter looked kind of patchwork, there were four large squares with smaller squares between them, the smaller squares were blue, a few were tan and two of them were desert camouflage. Two of the large squares were blue with a helicopter inside and the other two were tan with planes in them. The bumpers were the same colors with a plane in the blue rectangle in the rear center. The sheet was beige and had tiny helicopters and planes on it.
Sam handed John a box that had been hidden between her and the display.
“I actually had to make them take that off the display because it was the only one left. They didn’t want to do it, but I flashed my air force ID and that was really all it took,” she told him.
It was a mobile, there was what looked almost like a parachute hanging off the arm, and dangling from the chute were two helicopters and two planes that matched those on the bedding perfectly.
“Sam, you are a wonderful person,” Rodney said, “I thought he was going to have a massive coronary trying to find a crib set, either that or suffer a brain aneurism.”
“Oh I’m not done yet,” Sam said, “I’m going to make sure you don’t leave this store without spending an insane amount of money on that nursery. It’ll be your just desserts for waiting so long to do it.”
Sam led them to another aisle and Rodney mentally assessed the damage with everything John stuck in their cart. Matching curtains, a floor mat, a laundry hamper, a diaper bag, a bag that hung on the back of the door that Rodney had no idea what was supposed to go in it, a lamp, a picture frame, border for the walls. They hadn’t even gotten to the furniture yet.
John chose a glossy mahogany baby bed, the kind that grows with the kid to a toddler bed then a twin bed. He picked the matching dresser and changing table which was a lot like a dresser itself, it had cubbies just under the flat top for diapering supplies Rodney guessed, and drawers under them. He found large wooden letters painted dark blue and bought the letters of Nathan’s name.
“Okay John,” Rodney said finally cutting him off, “I think we’re done, we’ll be lucky to get this stuff home.”
“I’ll help,” Sam suggested, “I borrowed Cam’s truck.”
Rodney was forced to do the cooking that night; John had sealed himself in the nursery after they got home and hadn’t come out. Rodney heard some banging and more than a few curse words but every time he asked if John needed any help he heard that John had it under control.
Rodney knew what the deal was. John had remained calm for the duration of the pregnancy, Rodney had been the one to do most of the freaking out, but now they were down to the wire. In twelve days they’d be heading to Vancouver for the birth of their son, and it was finally hitting John full force that they were about to be parents.
It was more John’s growling stomach that got him to come down for dinner than anything Rodney said.
John came downstairs with an armload of boxes; he put them into hallway to the garage and left them there. He dropped himself in a dining room chair and Rodney sat a plate of hot spaghetti in front of him.
John made a yummy noise and thanked Rodney.
“You get done?” Rodney asked while they ate.
“Mmm,” John hummed and nodded, “did you know that cribs don’t come with mattresses? We’ll have to go buy one.”
“That’s no problem, we’ll do that tomorrow.”
“And that grow with me bed, I think putting that together was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life.”
“Maybe we should have gotten a regular crib.”
“No, then we’d have to do this all over again in a few years when he needs a toddler bed.”
John wouldn’t let Rodney into the nursery until it was finished. So they went out first thing in the morning and bought the crib mattress. John took it up to the nursery and ten minutes later he called Rodney up.
John met Rodney in the hall outside the closed nursery door; he turned Rodney, stood behind him and covered Rodney’s eyes with his hand. John opened the door and led Rodney inside.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Rodney said softly.
Rodney opened his eyes and his breath paused in mid inhale. The dark bed stood out against the light blue walls. The bed was against the right hand wall, with the changing table not far from it on the same wall. The dresser was on the left hand wall with the airplane lamp sitting on it. The laundry hamper was under the windows that were now covered with the matching curtains; the floor mat was on the floor in front of the bed. Above the bed, ‘Nathan’ was spelled out in dark blue letters that contrasted perfectly with the lighter blue background. There were two airplanes hanging from the ceiling, one in the rear right hand corner and one in the front right hand corner. The mirrored closet doors were behind the bedroom door.
The crib was complete with the bedding set and the little teddy bear Sam had gotten him for Christmas was sitting in the corner. The picture frame was sitting on the dresser beside the lamp and Ronon’s baby boots were sitting in front of the frame. The rocking chair was in the rear left hand corner. John had put the boarder up and it pulled the room together. Rodney turned and noticed the thing he had no idea what it was for was hanging on the back of the door and John had put the numbers bedding set inside it.
“John…” Rodney said but nothing followed it. “John…” he said again.
“I know Rodney,” John said through a smile, “I know.” He pulled Rodney into his arms and hugged him tightly and kissed him deeply. “Almost time,” he said when he broke the kiss.
~*~
John had been on his leave for a couple of days now, Rodney decided that he wanted to work until the day before they left, working on all his projects and the ancient devices were what was keeping him from going insane with impatience.
John’s way of holding off driving to Vancouver and telling them to take the baby a few days early, was shopping. The dresser in the nursery was now filled with jumpers and sleepers and rompers and onesies. John had managed to find a tiny tee shirt with Jonny Cash on it. And he’d apparently found a specialty tee shirt shop because Nathan now had a onesie that said ‘my dad’s a pilot’ on the front and ‘my other dad’s a genius’ on the back. Rodney had asked what the point of the shirt was, or what the punch line was. John had replied by saying “It doesn’t need a punch line Rodney, it’s the truth’.
It was easy to tell which father bought which item of clothing. The closet wasn’t full, but it would get there soon if someone didn’t stop John and Rodney from buying something for Nathan every time they left the house.
There was a pair of khaki pants and the blue shirt that went with them buttoned up, had a collar, and the layered look with little white sleeves that came from under the short sleeves of the button shirt.
On the other side of the closet there was a pair of jeans and a black tee shirt to go with them.
Ronon’s boots now had company on the dresser; there was a tiny pair of combat boots and a pair of New Balance tennis shoes.
John had eventually gotten tired of shopping and started putting things together. There was a highchair in the dining room even though Nathan wouldn’t be using a high chair for awhile. In the corner that Ronon’s chair had been during Christmas, was the baby swing, in an empty corner of the dining room was the jumper, the bouncy seat sat beside the couch, the batteries were in it and it was ready to go. The excer-saucer was in front of the picture window at the foot of the stairs.
The house was littered with signs of a baby. There was a stack of liquid infant formula covering one corner of the counter in the kitchen, and a rack that was filled with baby bottles sat beside the formula. Sitting on the stove was a small silver pot that was designated for formula heating
John and Rodney figured they were about as ready as two parents could be.
John and Rodney were leaning against the head board; it was dark and raining outside. The showers were one reason Rodney didn’t like April. The rain was pecking on the window again as they sat there with the baby book between them.
~Dear Nathan,
We’re ready. Your room is finished, we have plenty of clothes for you to wear and plenty formula for you to drink. All your baby things are together and waiting for you.
In two days we’ll leave for Vancouver, you’ll come home with us not long after that.
The long wait is almost over, you’re almost with us. Just a few more days.
Love forever,
Daddies
TBC…