Ch 39: Tubby Time
Sam filled the tub halfway, adding bubbles and dumping in the various bath toys they'd got when they took Danny to the toy store - two plastic ships and two plastic airplanes. The airplanes weren't really meant to go in the bath but Jack had said that if the Navy was being represented, the Air Force should be as well. He also had a pair of squishy fish that could squirt water out of their mouths.
Sam had quickly realized that giving Danny a bath meant sitting in the Splash Zone, which wasn't fun in jeans, so she had taken to changing into boxer shorts while she did it. It was also easier to sit on the edge with her feet in the tub. It made leaning over and washing his hair easier, especially if she needed to stop him from falling.
Danny had been happily splashing around in the tub, playing with the bubbles and having an airplane and ship fight with Sam that had nearly resulted in her falling right in with him when Jack knocked on the door. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah, sure," Sam called.
Jack let himself in and laughed. He'd decided they could do with a few pictures of Danny in a bubble bath, and was thus properly armed with the camera once more, although it was currently held down at his side, forgotten. He hadn't expected to find his 2IC in boxers, half in the tub herself. Both of them had stray bubbles stuck to them, and Danny greeted Jack by squirting him in the chest with one of his fish toys. "It sounded like you guys were having a party in here."
"Not a pawty, Dack, we are haffing a baff."
"Ah, my mistake." Remembering the camera, he held it up, calling, "Say cheese, kids."
"Just him!" Sam insisted, a little too late. Jack shrugged non-apologetically and snapped a few of Danny, who made himself a bubble-beard for even more attention. Setting the camera down on the counter as far away from the splashing toddler as possible, Jack commented, "You know, when I've bathed him he's always ended up crying when I washed his hair."
"Ah, you didn't do it right," Sam guessed.
"What do you mean? I leaned him back, I supported his neck, I poured the water from that cup so it trickled down his hair but not his face…" Since Sam's smile was getting bigger and bigger the more he talked, he finally stopped and asked, "What?"
"See? You didn't do it right. Danny, ready to wash your hair?"
"Kay Sam," he agreed.
She handed him the plastic cup they'd been using to wash his hair. He scooped up water and dumped it straight on his head, shrieking with laughter. He did it twice more and wiped his eyes, grinning. "Weady for da shampoo, Sam!"
She squeezed the baby shampoo into her hand and scrubbed it into his hair much longer than strictly necessary because he enjoyed the attention, then swished her hands in the water to rinse the suds off. "Okay, ready?"
"Yup." He closed his eyes, covering them with his hands as well.
She picked the cup back up and said, "All right, here it comes," before dumping the entire contents of the cup onto his head at once.
Danny giggled and called, "Again!"
"Let's let Jack try it," Sam suggested, offering him the cup.
He took it and copied her. "Huh," he said in amazement as Danny continued enjoying the process. He kept dumping water on the little boy's head until all the suds were gone and glanced at Sam. "All right, no need to look so smug over there."
"Sorry," she said around a big smile which completely defeated the purpose of the apology. "It's just that it sounds like you were so gentle and careful and everything… and he just likes to have the water dumped right on his head."
"Yeah, well…"
"No, I tried it like that at first too, but it seems that he gets nervous every time you try to tilt him backwards… maybe he's afraid of getting water up his nose or something. Plus most of the times I've given him a bath we've had enough time for him to play first and have fun, and you've usually given him emergency baths after he gets exceptionally filthy in the middle of the day."
Danny squirted her in the face with one of his toys, shrieking with laughter. She closed her eyes and waited as Jack chuckled. "Yes, definitely more fun this way," he finally said, handing her the towel she'd laid out for Danny.
She wiped her face, calmly picked up another squirty fish, and smiled at Danny. "We don't want Jack to feel left out, do we Danny?"
"Nope!" Danny declared.
Jack suddenly found himself being targeted from two different angles. When his fish needed a refill, Danny decided it was a lot easier to just splash Jack directly. "Hey!" Jack objected. "All right then, I'll use this," he said, reaching for the toy. Danny refused to hand it over, shaking his head and splashing Jack liberally to get him to back off. "Hmm, all right, be that way."
He turned to Sam and said, "All right, Carter, I am ordering you to relinquish that weapon."
She started to hand it over automatically, just out of habit, then quickly realized what she was doing and shook her head. "I'd like to see you trying to bring me up on charges for refusing to hand over a bath toy, Colonel. Somehow I don't think General Hammond would take you seriously."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Jack said absently, thinking it far more likely that Hammond would take him entirely too seriously, just in a completely different way. "Come on, you're double teaming me, here, you can't leave me completely unarmed as well." He made a grab for the toy she was trying to protect with both hands, getting sprayed in the face by said toy in the process, and grabbed both her wrists with his other hand, trying to get the toy from her without hurting her in the process.
Danny was shrieking with laughter and splashing them both - no longer certain whose side it would be more fun to be on. Sam was objecting and laughing as well as she tried to get away from him, and Jack, also laughing, was trying to convince Danny to switch to his team. "Come on, Danny, I've got her arms pinned, get her!" Danny squirted her obediently amongst all the noise and chaos, but then splashed Jack as well.
"Hey!" Jack objected, twisting towards Danny and pretending to try to grab him as well. Danny squealed and slid further along the length of the tub, and Sam screamed. Jack's lunge for Danny, while still holding onto her wrists, had made her slide right off the edge of the tub.
She grabbed his arm automatically as she started falling, and he managed to stop her from hitting the bottom of the tub too fast or hard, although the resulting splash left both of them, especially Sam, almost completely soaked. Danny, thinking they were all about to join him in the tub, got a little overexcited and tried to join the group, slipping in the process as he tried to walk on the slippery floor of the tub.
Jack let go of Sam's arm with one hand with the quick reflexes of so many years of field experience and managed to grab Danny as well, stopping his fall just in time - catching him draped over Jack's arm, his face only an inch away from colliding painfully with the faucet. The chaos over, they all froze in place, catching their breath for several long moments where the whole bathroom was suddenly completely silent except for the continued little noises from the water that was continuing to move around them because of their movements.
Then Danny broke the temporary silence by starting to scream and cry loudly. Jack knew he wasn't hurt, but wasn't surprised that the little boy had been scared by the near-collision. Sam quickly grabbed Jack's shoulder for leverage and got back upright, freeing Jack's other arm to actually move Danny, who latched onto him quickly and nearly managed to pull Jack into the tub on top of them with the force of his arms around Jack's neck, he was that scared.
"Hey, you're all right," Jack said, cupping the back of his head. The bathroom made everything echo, making the crying even louder than all the laughing had been. "We crashed that party well, didn't we?" he said absently as Sam gave up the pretense of trying to stay dry and just stayed right there in the tub, patting Danny's back as well.
When he felt her hand, he turned to her instead, letting go of Jack and burying his face in her neck instead. "I think bath time is officially over," Sam commented, stroking Danny's hair.
"I'll get your towels," Jack said, getting to his feet with a groan. He was so wet now he needed one as well, but the first order of business was to get Danny calmed down. He grabbed the towels and helped Sam to her feet in the tub carefully, as she was thrown off balance by having Daniel stuck to her like a koala bear.
"Dat was scaaaawy," Danny wailed as his sobs started gradually dying down, the fright wearing off. She continued comforting him as she stepped onto the bath mat carefully.
Jack helped her get the towel around Danny as best they could, considering he wouldn't loosen his grip on her at all, and said, "Let me mop up some of this water before you move off the mat." As he wiped off the floor around the tub with another towel, he said, "Now I know how we've been making so much laundry."
"Yeah," Sam agreed, rubbing Danny's back through the towel.
When he was finished mopping up the water, Jack tossed the towel into the hamper and said, "All right, Danny, can you come to me now so Sam can get dry too?" His crying now dwindling to occasional sobs and sniffles, Danny nodded and turned into him for the trade off. Sam picked up one of the other towels, but since her clothes were totally wet, she couldn't do much with it except wipe her arms and face. "Let's go get you in some PJs," Jack said to Danny, realizing she needed to change completely, whereas his jeans weren't yet completely soaked, so at least he wouldn't drip too much throughout the rest of the house. "That should get you looking less like a drowned rat, okay?"
"I not a wat," Danny objected with a loud sniffle.
Sam smiled and rubbed his back for a moment. "I don't think he meant that literally, Danny. It's just an expression."
"Yeah, he actually looks a lot more like the dog I used to have when I was a kid always did after I gave him a bath," Jack said slowly, as though he'd given the matter a lot of thought.
Sam laughed quietly, trying not to be too amused, worried it would hurt Danny's feelings if he thought they were laughing at him because he'd fallen.
Jack was trying very hard not to notice how cold his 2IC was becoming the longer she stood there in wet clothes, but he realized he probably wasn't doing a very good job when she blushed and lifted the towel back up under the pretense of drying her already-dry face. "Um, I'll go get him changed and everything, so if you want to take a shower to warm up or anything… or… yeah. We'll just be going now."
He shifted Danny to one arm so he could pick up another dry towel for both of them and headed out the bathroom quickly, Danny saying around the thumb that usually only ended up in his mouth while he was awake if he was scared, "Fanks for saving me Dack."
"No problem, Danny."
"And Sam. You saved boff of us, Dack you vewy stwong!"
"All in a day's work."
"Not stwonger dan Tea dough," Danny added matter-of-factly as Jack grabbed a fresh diaper and some pajamas and headed to his own bedroom to ensure Sam's privacy in case she decided not to take a shower - he still hadn't heard the water go back on in the bathroom.
He quickly got Danny dry, diapered, and dressed for bedtime, then stripped off his own wet shirt and dried himself off, changing into dry sweatpants and a tee-shirt. "Okay, kid. What do you want to do until bedtime?"
Danny thought for a moment and asked, "Piggy movie?"
Jack groaned. "Now how did I know you were going to say that? Look little buddy, we've got all sorts of other good movies to choose from. The doc left a good chunk of Cassie's collection and I've got a couple of my own that are way better than the piggy movie. Let's go have a look, okay?" He swung Danny up into his arms and asked hopefully, "Hey, have you ever seen 'The Wizard of Oz?'"
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