A/N: Mwah. Baby!fic
Rating: PG
Season: Future
As always, feedback is much appreciated.
Carter's kid was babbling something incoherent – bubbling away as he lay in his car seat on the kitchen counter and drooling around the knuckles he'd shoved in his mouth. Jack found it somewhat ironic that he could understand about as much of what the kid was saying as he could when his mother was in full tech mode.
Staring at the kid as he waited for Carter to come out of the bathroom, Jack tried to look for any resemblance to any men he'd seen near Carter since he'd known her. A foolish occupation, he knew, because during the three years that he'd been working off-world on the training base, she could have met any number of new men that he wouldn't have known about.
Hell, she might not have had a relationship at all. Could have been a one night stand. Or been artificially inseminated. Any number of ways Carter could have gotten pregnant.
It had been weird for him. He'd seen her last April – she'd dropped by with a bunch of the top recruits he'd suggested go on a nice, peaceful test-run mission with SG-1 – and she hadn't been pregnant then. Certainly not obviously – though he was pretty damn sure Janet wouldn't let a pregnant soldier go through the gate. Nine months later, he'd returned to Earth for one of his bi-annual meetings with the Joint Chiefs to find that Carter was on maternity leave.
And there the kid was. Admittedly, he'd been about half the size as he was now and certainly less attractive looking but then the first time Jack had seen him had been four months ago, and all newborns weren't exactly beauty contestants after being popped out of an opening the size of...
Jack looked down at the slice of cake in front of him, wrinkled his nose and pushed it away. Suddenly, he wasn't feeling too hungry.
The kid continued to babble.
"What's his name?" Jack asked, leaning back to direct his voice towards her bathroom.
"Matthew!" she exclaimed, sounding a little miffed that he couldn't remember her son's name.
Jack made a considering face, trying to decide if the kid looked like a Matthew. In the end, he decided he didn't. Matthew suggested maturity, somberness and the cheeky looking, blonde blob in tiny jeans and a T-shirt with a banana on the front looked nothing like that. "How about Matt?" he suggested.
The kid pulled his fist out of his mouth with a wet pop and gave Jack a toothless, wet grin.
"Well, there aren't any other nicknames I can give you," Jack told him, reaching for a square of paper towel and then dabbing gingerly at the moisture around the kid's face. "Matt. Mattie. Matthew Carter. Smart name. Do me a favor, to balance out the inevitable IQ that you've inherited from your mother, learn the rudiments of a couple of sports? That way you won't get your head beaten to a pulp on the playground."
The fist waved in the air for a moment before Matt once again set about fitting the whole thing into his mouth and chomping on it.
Wondering, faintly, what the hell Carter was doing in that bathroom, Jack slid off his stool and went to investigate her fridge. Weird to see it full of baby food, he decided, pulling out a beer and remembering the days when all that was in her fridge had been healthy vegetables and nail polish. Not much for cooking was Carter, though it now looked like she was making her own baby food for Matt.
"Jeez, kid, look at these gourmet meals," Jack murmured, pulling out a Tupperware container and reading the label, impressed. Hell, *he'd* eat this stuff. He glanced back, not particularly surprised to see Matt was now slapping his hands against his face. "Guess you'd much rather chew off a limb, hey?"
Finally walking out of the bathroom, Carter went straight to check on her son. "Thanks for watching him, Jack," she said, making a face at Matt before reaching for the crumpled paper towel on the counter and wiping the kid's hands.
"That's okay." Closing the fridge door, he looked her up and down, admiring the outfit that certainly highlighted Carter's attributes. She'd certainly got her figure back.
Feeling faintly lascivious – three years and it was still *wrong* to check out his 2IC - he felt he needed to say something complimentary about her. That way, at least, he felt less like an old man checking out a much younger woman without her knowledge. "Nice...." What? What? Hair? Skirt? Shirt? "....shoes, Carter."
She looked at him in surprise, unclipping her son and picking him up to cuddle against her chest. "Nice *shoes*?"
"What? I can't say you're wearing nice shoes?"
She looked down at her feet. "They're flip-flops."
He really wished he'd kept his mouth shut. "Man, Carter. Stop looking at me like I'm an alien."
"I'll have you know," she shifted Matthew onto her other hip and the little boy eyed her earring with devilish intent, "I don't look at aliens like this."
"Good, because it would piss them off." Watching Matt closely, Jack knew the kid was about to make a move. "Ah, Carter, watch out for your...." The hand lifted, fat little fingers reaching.... Jack swooped over and grabbed the sticky little hand. "No, kid. Leave your mom's earrings alone."
"Thanks, Jack." She reached up and pulled out her earrings, dropping them on to the counter. " I keep forgetting. I guess I'll leave these off."
"At least until he's more interested in grabbing your hair," he suggested, smiling.
She smiled back, then the smile flickered as her mood changed from amused to curious. "Jack, what are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "Vacation."
"Seriously?" She reached for a loaf of bread that was resting on the counter and then dropped it into the bread bin, Matthew now drooling lovingly on her neck.
"Seriously. Thought I'd spend this one back on Earth."
Sam lifted up the plate on which his half-eaten cake was sitting. "Do you want the rest of this? You going up to Minnesota?"
"Er, no, thanks. It was nice." She nodded and dropped the remains of the cake in the trash, before putting the plate in the open dishwasher. "And yeah. Probably. Maybe."
Which brought him to the reason he was here in her house at half past eight on a Saturday morning.
"You want to come?"
Matthew cheerily grabbed his mother's nose just as her mouth dropped open. She shook him off and kicked the dishwasher door closed with the heel of her foot. "You're asking me to the cabin?"
"Isn't that what I just said?"
"I... it's been a while."
"Well, you know, we've both been busy." He looked at Matthew significantly and Carter followed his eyes.
"Do you..." Her hand cradled the back his head protectively. "I mean, I can't leave Matt here."
"No! I mean, both of you." Sensing he was being spoken about, Matt turned around and gazed at Jack. "I know you're on extended leave so I thought you might be free..."
She raised her eyebrows at that, seemingly surprised that he knew their schedule, and turned her head to stare at the vase of flowers on her window sill. "I guess... that would be nice."
It wasn't quite the enthusiastic acceptance that he'd been looking for, but it would do. Jack reached out. "I'll take the kid. You go pack."
Automatically, she handed over her son. "You want to go now?"
"Yup. I'm all packed." He lifted her kid up into the air and looked into his eyes. Matt's blue eyes widened in excitement. Or he could have been about to pee. "You know, he looks a little like Daniel."
"That's funny," Sam said, smirking and turning on her heel. "That's what everyone else says."
"You're joking, right?" Jack swiveled to stare at Matthew again, pulled him closer to his face, searching for tell-tale traits. Matthew blew bubbles happily at him. "She's kidding, right?"