Ch 10: Snow and stuff

After breakfast, everybody gradually got cleaned up and dressed. The kids were busy playing with their new toys, arguing with each other, and having a genuinely good time. Jack looked around for Carter but couldn't find her, so he located Emily and said, "Hi. My bag's in your room, I was wondering if..."

"Oh, of course. I'm sorry, go right ahead, please. We're all dressed and everything."

"Okay. Thanks." He knocked on Carter's bedroom door, which was closed, and a little voice called, "Come in." He entered the room. Gwen, Kieran, and Piper were sitting in a triangle on the made bed, playing a board game.

"Hey, guys, whatcha got there?" he asked.

"Hi ho cherry-o," they answered.

"Want to play?" Gwen asked.

"Ah, no thanks, not right now," he said, going over to his bag. He grabbed it and headed for the bathroom. The door was open, so he went on in, stopping in surprise. "Uh, sorry," he said quickly.

Carter was sitting on the edge of her bathtub in her robe, still damp from a shower. Sydney was standing in front of her with wet, tangled hair that Carter was trying to comb out.

"Hi Uncle Jack," Sydney said with a smile. "I didn't take a bath last night because I was taking apart Auntie Sam's computer, so I had to take one this morning, but when I was done Mommy was getting the twins dressed, so Auntie Sam's combing out my hair for me."

"Uh, right. Good. Sorry, Carter, your sister told me nobody was in here," he explained.

"That's okay, Colonel. We'll go into the bedroom," she said, standing up and ushering Sydney out of the bathroom.

Carter paused, looking at him in concern. He supposed he must have had a funny look on his face, because she touched his sleeve lightly and said, "You okay?"

"What? Yeah, I'm fine," he said, smiling quickly. She nodded, but didn't look convinced. He shut the door behind her after she left and sighed, turning on the water in the shower, twisting the knob much harder than necessary. He wondered, as he showered, if it was too late for him to return Carter's gift for a robe that wouldn't gap open like that... just in case he was ever in the vicinity of his 2IC in a robe again. It was probably a very good thing Sydney had been there.

He showered, shaved, and towel dried his hair, then dressed in his remaining clean jeans and a black sweater. When he left the bathroom, the previously crowded bedroom was empty, although the game the kids had been playing was still in the middle of the bed. He set his bag down and started to head downstairs.

As soon as he stepped out of the bedroom, he immediately jumped over a remote control car that tried to eat his feet. Matty was laughing at the other end of the hall. He briefly entertained the idea of giving the car a swift kick down the stairs, but before he had time to weigh the pros and cons of that, the two identical twins, who were scarcely more than babies, came out of another room, crying.

Julia was right behind them, looking concerned and suddenly much older than her five years. "What's wrong?" Jack asked.

"We were playing beauty shop and Gracie got hairspray in her eyes," Julia explained.

"Oh. I can fix that," he said quickly, looking back and forth between the twins.

They were both crying, so he grabbed them both and hurried back into Carter's bathroom, Julia following quickly. "Why are they both crying?" he demanded as he started running the tap and looked around for a washcloth.

"I dunno, Kailey got scared when Gracie got hurt," Julia explained, sliding one of the girls down the counter and away from the sink, so he assumed that one was Kailey.

He filled a little paper cup with water and turned to the howling one. "Okay, tilt your head back. This might hurt a little bit but it'll feel better real soon..."

He guided the little girl's head back, pointed up at the ceiling, and held her eye open as gently as possible. He flushed all the hairspray out and patter her face dry. She was still crying, but no longer screaming. "Better?" he asked, peering into her eye carefully.

She nodded, sniffling, still crying a bit.

"Good."

"I... want... my...Mommy," she finally sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck.

"Okay, no problem, we'll go find her," he said calmly, rubbing her little back. He set the other one on her feet. Julia took Kailey's hand and led the way downstairs.

The downstairs scene was still pretty crazy, but this time it wasn't the little kids' fault. As he entered the living room, he stopped at the sight of his 2IC with her much larger brother in a full Nelson. Jamie was struggling to get away, but having little luck. Her other brothers were all cheering for one or the other.

"Umm, hey, Carter, where's your sister?" he called.

"Kitchen," she answered, glancing at him and smiling to let him know this was okay and apparently normal behavior for them.

"Right," he said with a nod. "Carry on." He followed the two little girls who were already on their way to the kitchen.

Emily was indeed in the kitchen, apparently in the middle of a lot of cooking, with the help of her sisters-in-law. "Jack, have you seen Sam, she's supposed to be in here helping," Emily said upon seeing him. She smiled at the kids and it quickly turned to a frown. "What happened?" she asked, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and coming over to them.

"Gracie, are you okay?" she asked quickly, taking her daughter from Jack. She held her tightly, rocking back and forth slightly, and looked to the other two for an explanation. Jack wondered how she had been able to tell which one he was holding from the back of the girl's head, but decided it probably wasn't the right time to ask.

Julia explained the situation to her, and by the time she was finished, Gracie had stopped crying completely and her breathing was back to normal. "Poor baby," Emily said quietly to her when the story was over. "Good thing Jack was right there, wasn't it? What do you say to him?"

Gracie lifted her head off her mom's shoulder and said, "Thank you."

"No problem. And she's in the living room wrestling Jamie."

"What?" Emily asked, confused.

"Sam. You wanted to know where she is," he reminded her.

"Oh, right. Well, I don't blame her, they've been bothering her nonstop..." Emily muttered absently, hurrying into the living room.

She soon returned with Carter, who looked normal except that her hair was slightly messed up.

"You know, Carter, I'm not entirely sure it's fair for you to use your combat training against your civilian brothers," he commented, leaning forward on the counter top.

"Hey, I lost every match I ever got into with them when I was little because I was so much smaller than they were. Trust me, it's fair."

"All right."

Chris poked his head into the kitchen. "Hey, Jack, some of us are going outside with the kids to play in the snow. Wanna come?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, turning to Carter. "You coming? Oh, no, that's right. You've got to cook, don't you... well, have fun," he said with a sarcastic smile, hurrying after Chris. An apple whizzed past his ear and smashed into the door as it closed behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, Jack found himself outside with Chris, Anne, Jamie, Mark, and all of the kids. "You want to do it now?" Mark asked, turning to his brothers and Jack.

"Yeah, before we get too cold," Chris answered. "Jack, you are about to be let in on yet another Carter family tradition," he informed him.

"Okay," Jack agreed.

"Right, it's going to be extra hard this year with all the snow drifts," Jamie commented.

"What exactly are we doing?" Jack asked.

"It's... sort of a relay race," Chris explained.

Mark was dividing the children up. "Okay, Matty, you're with Chris

."

"Woa, woa, woa," Chris said, holding his hands up. "He's way bigger than anybody else."

"Yeah, so you only get Matt and... Lily. All right?"

"Yeah, all right," Chris grumbled.

"Okay. Jack, you can have Conor, Piper, and Kailey. I'll take mine and Sydney. And Mark... Julia, Rory, and Grace."

All the kids went over to whoever they had been assigned to, all looking excited and especially cute bundled up in their thick coats, snow boots, hats, mittens, and scarves.

"All right, so we run to that tree over there, grab a kid, run back, grab another kid, run back, grab the third kid, and come back," Chris explained quickly, sending Lily down to stand by the designated tree.

"Nice try," Mark said, stopping her. "You've got two, Matty's got to go down by the tree."

"Fine, Matt, get down there."

Conor and Piper automatically headed after him, along with Sydney, Julia, and Kieran.

"So, when you say 'grab...'" Jack started.

"Yeah, by the end you should have three kids hanging onto you," Chris explained. "It's kind of stupid, I guess. Dad and our uncles used to do it when we were little, we still do it even though there are kind of too many kids now."

"I'm too old for this," Jack grumbled. He looked at Jamie, the oldest guy out there next to him. He was probably at least seven years younger, and probably hadn't had one knee surgery. Still, he thought. He was leader of the nation's flagship team in their first line of defense against alien invasion. So he had that going for him.

And the kids were so excited there was no way he was going to back out now. Plus he wanted to beat Carter's brothers.

"All right, Anne's in charge," Jamie declared. Once everyone was ready, she started the race.

Then everything happened very quickly. Even though it was just a friendly tradition, Jack's training wouldn't really let him do it any other way than to go flat out at the task until it was done, without paying attention to what was happening around him.

As he ran back towards Anne with Conor piggy-backed, Piper laughing hysterically because she was thrown over his shoulder, and Kailey more securely in his other arm since she was so little, he realized he was actually about to win.

"Fall, fall, fall!" the kids he was carrying all started to yell as soon as he got close to Anne. Chris was right next to him and he collapsed into a large drift with his pile of kids and they all lay there, panting and laughing hysterically, so he shrugged and did the same, wincing as his neck wrenched a little.

"That's gonna hurt later," he muttered. Yup, definitely too old for that. But all the kids were red faced, grinning, and covered in snow.

"We won!" Conor was yelling, jumping to his feet and making a valiant effort to pull Jack to his feet.

"Not uh, we won!" Matty yelled.

"I think it was a tie," Anne declared. Chris pulled Jack to his feet and brushed snow off his shoulders for him, grinning.

"I can live with that," he stated.

"So can I," Jack agreed.

Mark and Jamie were pretending to be very upset about losing. Mark was 'sobbing' hysterically, clinging to his brother, who was 'comforting' him and glaring at Jack and Chris.

"We lost to our baby brother and the old guy!" Mark wailed.

"HEY!" Jack and Chris both objected, looking at each other. Chris got a glint in his eye that instantly reminded Jack of Carter (I know, sir, we'll just hook up this electrically charged seaweed to the gate...).

Chris turned to his brothers and said, "All right, well, the old guy and I are about to humiliate you further!" He scooped up a lot of snow and showered his brothers with it, then jumped behind a large drift. Jack followed him and they started piling up snowballs for a fight.

All of the kids they had been carrying soon joined them, wanting to be on their side. Sydney defected to their side as well, grinning sheepishly at 'Uncle Jack.'

Ten minutes into the snowball fight, Anne started extracting the smallest children and taking them over to build a snowman, which was probably a pretty smart idea, because the fight was getting pretty rough.

Both teams froze as the back door opened. Emily and Carter were standing there, looking concerned. "You're freezing the children!" Emily scolded.

Everyone exchanged looks for a few seconds. The kids all had pink cheeks, but they looked okay. Plus they were clearly having a blast.

"We're fine, Mom!" Sydney called.

Anne brought the younger ones inside, but as soon as they had disappeared, Jack couldn't help it. He wanted to see what would happen.

So he threw a giant snowball at Carter, hitting her square in the chest.

All the kids around him immediately pointed at him, ratting him out. "Traitors," he said, grinning at her and shrugging.

To his surprise, she calmly shut the door without a word.

"Uh-oh," Chris said quietly.

"You're in biiiiiiiiiig trouble," Rory said.

Jack gulped,and a second later the back door opened again and Carter came out all bundled up, looking like she wanted to kill him. "Crap," he said under his breath, diving back behind the fort again.

The fight resumed between everyone, but from that point on, Jack's only real target was Carter. For her part, she seemed to have been waiting for years to be allowed to throw things at him without being worried about a court martial.

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A/N: Personally, I don't really like my previous chapter very much, so I wanted to rush and get this one up quickly.