Ch 6
They reached the store in a few minutes. Jack grabbed a cart and instructed the kids to stay with him. They were very excited, still running on sugar and caffeine, and excited to be getting toys. "We need to do the clothes first," he insisted, steering them to the little boys' department first, feeling slightly more comfortable there than in the girls' department, which from where they were looked like it was just a mass of pink.
"Okay, pick out what you want to wear," Jack said to Daniel.
Daniel looked around, shifting on his feet a bit awkwardly. "By myself?" he finally asked.
"You guys don't pick out your own clothes?" Jack asked, wondering when kids started having their own opinions about what they wore.
Daniel and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. "No I guess," Daniel said.
"I don't like ruffles," Sam announced firmly, crossing her arms.
"Yeah, I had a feeling on that one, princess. Okay, well, let's try it this way…" Jack started trying to help Daniel pick things out, making sure the boy got pants and shorts too, since Daniel seemed mainly interested in picking out shirts. He found some clothes with dinosaurs on them and got genuinely excited about them, and soon there were a variety of clothes piled in the basket. Sam had picked out a few shirts in the boys' department too. Jack had just shrugged unconcernedly when she'd held the first one up hopefully - it had an airplane on it. Grinning at him, she'd put it in the basket with Daniel's things. After getting pajamas along with several packages of underwear and socks, Jack finally decided it was time to brave the girls' department.
Before they moved on, he did one more quick inventory of what they'd got to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything important.
In the minute he was studying the basket's contents, he lost the kids.
He looked around, up and down all the rows he could see from where he was, and groaned. "Sam? Daniel?" he called loudly, pushing the cart around looking for them.
He found them a few minutes later - after getting several looks from other customers. They were hiding under a nearby rack of clothes, apparently engrossed in a game of hide and seek with each other. He actually found them by following the sounds of their giggling, because they'd been so engrossed they hadn't even heard him calling for them.
He was bored too, so he couldn't blame them entirely, but he did need them to behave. "It's not safe to wander off in stores," he told them both firmly, picking up Daniel and putting him in the front child seat of the basket. He shoved the clothes to one side of the basket and put Sam in there with them.
Scowling at their confinement, the kids objected the whole way to the girls' department. When he realized he needed to figure out what sizes Sam needed, he picked her up again and set her on her feet. "You keep a hand on this basket at all times, young lady," he ordered, as Daniel whined that it wasn't fair for her to get out and not him.
"Yes, sir," Sam mumbled, looking sufficiently rebuked.
A passing pair of women, one much older than the one pushing the cart, which had a baby in a carrier in it, stopped to look at them. "What adorable twins!" the woman with the baby gushed, while the older woman seemed dissatisfied with the way Jack was handling them; her scowl certainly said so, even though she didn't say a word.
"Thanks," Jack said quickly, steering them down a random row just to get away from them.
Sam, for all her earlier statements that she didn't care what she wore, turned out to be much pickier than Daniel. Jack held up item after item to her hopefully, and she shook her head or wrinkled her nose at them repeatedly. She was happy enough with the stuff they'd found in the boys' department - and completely thrilled with the little makeshift SG-1 uniforms Jack had assembled with olive cargo pants and black tee-shirts, but she was shaking her head firmly at every dress Jack held up.
"You don't like dresses, okay, let's move on," he finally said.
"I like some dresses," she insisted. "They're comfortable, so long as they don't look disgusting! you can twirl around and jump and they float like you're flying, especially on the swings."
"Okay, well, are there any here that you like?" Jack asked, getting frustrated. He followed her around aisle after aisle after that, feeling very much like whining along with Daniel, who was getting bored and sick of being in the cart. Finally, Sam found three dresses she was happy with, and after that it got easier. Two pairs of overalls, jeans, and several pairs of shorts made their way into the basket, but she had more trouble finding shirts she liked than Daniel had.
"They ALL have pink on them! Or RUFFLES!" she whined impatiently.
Gradually, the pile in the basket grew as they found the rare item that was sufficiently non-ruffly and non-pink for her tastes.
She did get excited when they found the pajamas, so much so that Jack was seriously thinking they should just get as many pajamas as she wanted and she could wear them all day long for all he cared.
"I need underwear," she reminded, pointing him to the proper aisle.
"Don't you want to pick those out too?" he asked - at this point he wouldn't have been surprised if she had a preference on that either.
"I don't know what size!" she said.
"Oh." he picked up the nearest package and read the complicated sizing chart on the back, lifting her up and down experimentally by the armpits a few times to try to gauge her weight. "Okay, it looks like a 3T to me," he finally decided, hoping he was right and tossing a package into the basket. He got a few more, a large package of socks, and sighed with relief that the clothes were done. At the last minute, he grabbed the next size up in underwear too, just in case. There was no way he was coming back here if the other ones were too small.
"Toys now?" Daniel asked hopefully as Jack let him out of the basket - they were running out of room anyway.
"Shoes now," Jack grimaced.
Both kids sighed and they all headed to the nearby shoe department. Two pairs of absolutely tiny boots (because once he saw them he knew they had to have them to complete their little SGC uniforms), sneakers, and sandals later, and they were finally headed to the toy department. Here Jack didn't even try to keep the kids too close to the basket - he just wanted to be able to see them. Luckily they stayed together for the most part, running ahead until they found something they wanted to look at more closely, but not splitting up often, only occasionally, as when Sam got bored waiting for Daniel to pick out a lego set, and Daniel got tired of listening to Sam debate the various merits of a stuffed dog and a stuffed bear.
One the basket was as full as it could be, Jack had to stop them. "Okay. There's not as much variety here anyway. Let's get out of here."
"What about our special reward?" Daniel reminded.
"Oh, yeah. Well, you were pretty good here… I guess we'll go to the other toy store, and you can get something there. They'll have more stuff there anyway and we'll start with an empty cart. Oh, wait, we have to go find car seats for you guys first, remember?"
It took a while to locate the section that had those items, particularly because the kids were getting antsy again and trying to wander, and there wasn't room in the cart anymore for Jack to keep them confined in there. He finally found the booster seats, which were with the other car seats for smaller babies, and was baffled at the different makes and models, trying to determine which size they needed. Finally, he resorted to asking an employee for help. The overly-cheerful employee spent about five minutes gushing about how adorable his "little twins" were, then went on to explain the various pros and cons of about four different seats that all met the legal requirements for the kids' weight group.
"Which one's easiest to install?" Jack finally asked. Sam, who had been hopping from tile to tile up and down the aisle with Daniel, had just returned to his side and was leaning into him tiredly, hanging onto a fistful of fabric at his knee. Jack had a feeling they were finally starting to come down from their sugar-high, and he did remember from his days with a small child that the crash was often even worse than the high. He had a feeling they weren't going to last much longer in the store - either of them.
As he watched Daniel trudging back over to them, bored now without Sam to jump around with him and getting a little worn himself, Sam reached up to him hopefully with both arms in the universal request to be picked up, with a plaintive, "I'm tired… my head hurts."
He picked her up absently and turned back to the employee as Daniel took up Sam's prior spot leaning into his leg. "Please, we just need two of whichever one is easiest to install."
"Well, this one is easiest, I think," she said. "But we only have one out here. I can go check in the back…"
"No, thank you! Which one is second-easiest?"
"This one, I suppose…"
"Okay," Jack said, shifting Sam to one arm and grabbing the box awkwardly. He stuck it in the seat Daniel had occupied earlier, while the employee slid a second one under the basket for him. "Thanks," Jack said quickly.
He steered them towards the front of the store, moving a bit awkwardly since Sam had no interest in walking again and Daniel was clinging tiredly to the basket, which Jack was having to steer with one hand since he was carrying Sam.
He finally got to the checkout line and started piling things one-handed onto the conveyor belt. it seemed to take forever.
That was Daniel's opinion, at least, one which he repeated frequently.
It took another thirty minutes - and much muttering of various colorful phrases under his breath so the kids wouldn't hear - to get their purchases secure in the bed of his truck and to install the seats in the back, while the kids watched tiredly from the front seat. Sam was whimpering that her head hurt, and started crying when Daniel startled them all by accidentally honking the horn.
Jack finally got the seats ready for them and strapped them in, then reached into the bed of the truck and fished out two of their new purchases - a purple stuffed unicorn Sam had picked out, and a green brontosaurus Daniel had picked out. He handed a toy to each kid. Sam hugged hers, wiping her eyes tiredly, and got quieter. Daniel started talking to his with a tired sniffle.
Satisfied, Jack started the car and buckled his own seatbelt, smiling to himself as he heard Daniel shakily introducing himself to the stuffed animal, like he'd heard him introduce himself to countless aliens over the years. "H-hi, I'm Daniel Jackson."
Five minutes out of the parking lot, both kids were asleep. He decided the trip to the toy store would have to be postponed. He took them back to the base, driving the long way so they'd sleep longer in case they woke up when he moved them. To his surprise, they were completely zonked, and he was able to carry them both in at once, one sleepy (and in Daniel's case, drooling) face smushed into each shoulder. Not knowing where else to take them, he went back to the infirmary, but it was a much less restful place during the day than it was at night.
Janet smiled at him sympathetically when he entered with his arms so full, and came over to him after handing off the chart in her hand to one of her nurses. "Hammond ordered the VIP suite set up for you," she said quietly, rubbing the sleeping little backs absently. "Are they okay?"
"Yeah, it was just a long trip. I need a nap too."
"I bet. Well, I have a few minutes, I can help you get them settled in there."
"Thanks, Doc."
They headed to the elevators again, and she led them to the largest VIP room, opening all necessary doors and so on along the way. Whereas the room usually held one large bed, the bed had been removed and replaced by three of the narrow twin beds that were in everyone's quarters on base. The seating area remained the same. Fraiser turned down two of the beds, then took Sam from him carefully and put her down in one of the beds, while Jack put Daniel down in the other, pulled off his flip flops, and pulled the covers up around him. He turned to see that Janet had done the same to Sam.
"There's a ton of stuff in my truck for them. Can you stay with them while I get it?" he asked tiredly.
"Sorry, sir, I need to get back to the infirmary. If you'd like to give me your keys, I can have a couple of Airmen bring everything in for you and you can stay with them."
"Thank you," he said gratefully, handing her the keys.
She nodded, and couldn't resist adding from the doorway, "I guess you've learned your lesson about sugar and caffeine in such massive quantities, Colonel, so I won't say 'I told you so.'"
"Funny, sounds like you just did," he muttered after she'd gone. Although to her credit, he had to admit he'd never been admonished by the doctor in such a gentle tone before.
He collapsed onto the third bed and didn't even move when the Airmen started bringing in bags ten minutes later, other than to wave a tired hand of thanks at them as his keys were put on the dresser.
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