Fic: Emotional (a Grandview story) Rated G
Title: Emotional
Series: Grandview
Rated: G
Spoilers: The pregnant Teyla ark of season 4 is mentioned at one point.
Warnings: Emotions running rampant all over the page
Word count: 2,309
Disclaimer: Sadly neither Stargate Atlantis nor her characters belong to me. If they did the show would have never been nor would it ever be canceled.
Summary: Rodney woke up when he turned over and didn’t feel the resistance of John pressed against his back. He turned on the lamp and put his hand on John’s side of the bed and felt the chill of the sheets that indicated that John hadn’t been there for awhile.
John had left the SGC early, called Rodney to let him know he was picking up Nathan, and was sitting on the couch watching Nathan build a tower with his blocks when Rodney came in.
“Dada!” Nathan exclaimed and rushed over to him.
John watched as Rodney picked up the toddler and settled him comfortably on his hip.
“How was your day?” Rodney asked as he sat on the couch beside John.
“Oh you know, horrible.”
“Why horrible?”
“Because Jack’s not keeping up his end of the deal. He said that I could go off world until my fifth month; I’m two weeks into the third month and haven’t set foot off world since we got the results of the pregnancy test. He’s got me stuck in my office with paperwork, some of which doesn’t even have to do with my team, who, I might add, have been going off world without me.”
“He just wants to keep you and the baby safe,” Rodney offered softly.
“Don’t give me that!” John snapped and stood up. “There is nothing dangerous out there anymore. No Goa’uld, no Ori and certainly no Wraith,” He walked around the coffee table and started pacing. “Of course it’s possible that we could run into something but I could deal with that pregnant or not! I could at least run away, I’m not that big yet.” He stopped and turned toward Rodney with his hands on his hips. “And Jack tried to say we don’t know what effect gate travel could have on a developing baby. I had to remind him that Teyla went through the gate all the time, she was captured by a psychopathic hybrid and went through hyperspace for most of her pregnancy and Torren is perfectly fine.”
Rodney put Nathan on the floor and stood up. “This isn’t a normal pregnancy, John. I’m sure that you haven’t forgotten that you are a pregnant man.”
John narrowed his eyes at Rodney. “Of course I haven’t forgotten, Rodney. I’m reminded of my gender every time I go to the bathroom, which I have been doing every fifteen minutes for the past two weeks! And I presume the act of urinating will get more and more difficult as the months go by and I get bigger.” John stopped talking and looked down at Nathan who had made his way around the coffee table and was now beating at John’s leg in a less than friendly way. “Is one year old too soon to tell if a kid is Bi-Polar?” he asked.
“John, Nathan is not bi-polar. You, on the other hand…” Rodney lifted his eyebrows and cocked his head slightly.
“I think he is, Rodney. When I went to pick him up he was happy and glad to see me. He ran over to me and I had no problems getting him out of the daycare or into the car. When we got home, his attitude changed completely and he wanted nothing to do with me what so ever. So I put some cheerios on the coffee table and let him be.”
Rodney looked around. “I wondered why there were cheerios all over the floor.”
~*~
Rodney woke up when he turned over and didn’t feel the resistance of John pressed against his back. He turned on the lamp and put his hand on John’s side of the bed and felt the chill of the sheets that indicated that John hadn’t been there for awhile.
He left the room and looked in on Nathan and found John sitting in the rocking chair with Nathan resting on his chest, Nathan’s forehead pressed against John’s neck.
“Did he wake up?” Rodney asked wondering why he hadn’t heard the baby monitor.
John shook his head. “I just wanted to be close to him when he couldn’t push me away.”
“Oh, John,” Rodney said sympathetically as he walked further into the room.
“I don’t know what I did, Rodney. I had to have done something though because he does not like me anymore. He won’t let me play with him or feed him or give him a bath. He doesn’t want me around anymore; he even wants you for the things he used to want me for.”
Rodney sighed and moved closer to John. “He’s just going through a phase, John. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Then why has he never gone through it with you? He even likes Sam more than he likes me right now.”
“Come on,” Rodney said and lifted Nathan out of John’s arms and laid him back in the bed. “Let’s go back to bed. If it’ll make you feel better, we’ll talk to Caroline about it tomorrow.”
John got off the chair and walked to the door with Rodney. “What’s she going to know? She’s not a psychologist.”
“I don’t know, but maybe she can find out if there is some stage kids go through at his age.”
“The hate your father stage isn’t supposed to happen until the teenage years at least,” John mumbled as he pulled the covers up to his chest.
“He doesn’t hate you, John,” Rodney said as he snuggled against John’s back. He put his arm under the blanket and started rubbing the bump on John’s belly under his shirt.
John moaned lightly, something Rodney noticed he did every time he rubbed John’s belly, and pressed back into Rodney. “I just want it to be like it was before,” he said.
“It will be, just give him time.”
Rodney laid in the silence, gently stroking John’s belly long after John had fallen asleep. It was hard to be so calm and reassuring to John when he had no idea why Nathan was acting the way he was toward him. John had always been Nathan’s favorite parent; he was the active one, the one who would sit in the floor for hours with Nathan, even when Nathan was too small to do anything but watch John play with the toys. Rodney had seen Nathan’s face light up like the sun when John walked into the room on more than one occasion. He’d seen Nathan leave something he couldn’t get his attention off of, just because John had said his name. Now Nathan didn’t want John to do anything more than be in the room, and as much as that hurt John it hurt Rodney just as much. Rodney hated seeing John hurting, and to have Nathan start this phase of life when John’s emotions were running wild made it that much worse. Rodney knew that Nathan was the center of John’s universe; he’d wanted Nathan even before Rodney was sure he wanted a family. It was hard to see Nathan acting that way toward John. As much as Rodney loved Nathan, he wished it was him that Nathan had the attitude toward right now.
~*~
“He’s not bi-polar or anything else,” Caroline Lam said after having spent an hour in a room with Nathan. “He’s a perfectly normal toddler.”
“Yeah? Watch this,” John said and moved toward Nathan.
“No duhduh!” Nathan said and swatted at John before running to Rodney.
Nathan looked up at Rodney and said “duhduh bad,” with a hurt look on his face.
“No, Nathan,” Rodney said a little more firmly than he intended, “daddy is not bad.”
“Why does he do that?” John asked as he sat in the chair beside Rodney.
“It could be any number of things,” Caroline said. “Have you yelled at him recently?”
“No!” John nearly shouted, “I have never yelled at him.”
“Have you and Rodney had a fight, perhaps he could have seen you as the aggressor?”
“John and I don’t fight, Caroline,” Rodney said. “We may argue from time to time but what couple doesn’t? And we don’t raise our voices in front of Nathan.”
“He’s afraid of me?” John asked, his heart break clear in his voice. He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair and left the room.
“Nice job, Caroline,” Rodney said and he stood up and picked up Nathan. “I wanted you to make it better, not worse.”
“Rodney I-”
Rodney was out of the office and walking down the hall before Caroline could get out whatever it was she was going to say.
“Sam,” Rodney called when Sam turned the corner. She turned toward him and her arms immediately went toward Nathan. Rodney let her take him and asked if she’d seen John.
“He got on the elevator as I was getting off,” she replied.
“Going up or down?”
“I didn’t see, why?”
Rodney gave her a quick review of what was going on between John and Nathan
Rodney found John leaning against the wall under a staircase. He had his eyes closed and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. His breathing was heavy and shallow and Rodney could see that John was barely holding on. A mix of hurt and anger played across his face.
“John,” Rodney said as he walked toward him.
“Go away, Rodney, I need to be alone.”
“No, John. You don’t.”
John opened his eyes and looked at Rodney and his eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “He’s afraid of me, Rodney. Whatever I did made him afraid of me.”
“He’s not-”
“I was afraid of my dad; did I ever tell you that?”
Rodney felt his stomach twist at that. “No, John. You never told me that.”
“When I was a kid, I was scared to death of him but not because he would hit me. He did hit me a couple times but I was afraid of what he’d say. I was never good enough, Dave was the perfect son and it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do I always got the short end of the stick with him.”
“John-”
“Rodney, you have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in a house with someone you’re afraid of.”
“John don’t,” Rodney had gotten good at reading John and he didn’t like where John’s thoughts were headed.
“Rodney, I-”
“It’s the pregnancy,” Rodney blurted before John could finish his sentence. Rodney hadn’t wanted to hear the end of it anyway.
“What?”
“It’s the pregnancy, that’s why Nathan is being weird.”
“What does my being pregnant have to do with the way he’s acting?”
“I talked to Sam; she said her brother’s wife went through the same thing when she had her second kid.”
John scoffed, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it does. Look, for Nathan’s entire life everything has been about him. You had done everything for him, you and he were best friends and all of a sudden, something’s changed.”
“Nothing’s changed, Rodney. I was still playing with him and feeding him and dressing him. All that changed was that I was pregnant, you can’t really even tell yet.”
“He can tell.”
“What, can he smell it?”
Rodney smiled and chuckled. “Something like that. Sam says she’s willing to bet we’re having another boy.”
John sighed, “What? Rodney, please stay on one subject right now, I really don’t feel like following you around a conversation.”
“I’m on the same topic, John. Look, I left Nathan with Sam, let’s go get some lunch and I’ll explain what Sam told me.”
John sighed. “Alright,” he said and pushed off the wall. “And when did you talk to Sam?”
“Right after you stormed out of Caroline’s office. That was a half hour ago you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t seem like it was that long.”
John chewed his porter house and listened to Rodney.
“Babies and toddlers are sensitive to the changes a person goes through during pregnancy. Apparently a pregnant person gives off some kind of… something… that toddlers can pick up on.”
“What does that have to do with Sam thinking we’re having a boy?”
“That’s the weird part-”
“You think? I was under the impression that the whole thing was pretty weird.”
Rodney glared at him lightly before continuing. “It must have to do with the survival of the fittest. You know how with eagle chicks, when one hatches it’ll push the other eggs out of the nest.”
“Yeah,” John drawled.
“Well, it’s been proven, probably not scientifically, that if a parent of a toddler is pregnant with the same sex as the toddler, that toddler behaves strangely. So, girl’s act weird when you’re pregnant with a girl, and boys act weird when you’re pregnant with a boy.”
“Well what if the parent is pregnant with the opposite sex?”
“Apparently the toddler would get more attached to the parent, more emotional and touchy feely.”
“So, I guess this means we don’t have to think about girl names then?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to trust this theory quite that much. It was probably tested by a bunch of pregnant women.”
“Who better to test a pregnancy theory than pregnant people?”
“I want to read about it in a scientific journal before I’ll consider classifying it as a scientific study. But no matter who tested it or whether or not it’s science, it lets us know that Nathan’s behavior is normal for a toddler with a pregnant parent.”
“So what do we do then? Just let you handle him for the rest of the pregnancy? I don’t want to just sit by and watch you raise him by yourself for the better part of a year.”
“We let it run its course. I’m sure it won’t last the entire time. And like you said, it’s kind of a bi-polar thing, he’ll have times when he wants you to play with him and he’ll have times when he wants you to leave him alone. I guess we’ll just let him dictate the situation.”
John sighed and stuffed another bite of steak into his mouth. “Okay,” he said around the mouthful.
TBC…