Just shy of 2500 words of Price and Nikolai looking after Ghoap twins
The thought of saying "no" hadn't even crossed his mind when Simon had approached him one morning with a request; Soap had a sister's wedding to attend and it would have been too stressful to take the little ones with them and John's agreement had left his mouth before it even fully registered.
Price understood the rarity of such a request coming from Simon, the level of trust it meant he held in his past captain for him to leave his pups in his care. It was a privilege that John would never take for granted— watching Simon grow into himself from the young bright eyed sergeant, standing by him during his time as Ghost, and then getting to watch him allow himself the softness that his life could off and build a little family of his own; and Simon was a typical omega in the sense that he was fiercely protective of his young and had no issues with proving that to any perceived threat.
Soap had come around a couple days prior with a car load of kit that, at the time, Price had scoffed at with a joke about the alpha being dramatic— Soap had only barked a laugh at him before continuing into the house with a fold-up travel cot under his arm and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Between them, they had gotten the house baby proofed and the room set up; the baby monitors hadn't crossed Price's mind and he nodded along to Soap's explanation on how to use them and emphasised that he needed to check that the microphone on his end was off unless he had wanted to restart their night routine from scratch.
It had been endearing to watch the man set up his pups' nest, spending long moments to roll up blankets to make a buffer around the edges and piling more soft blankets within the centre before loosely covering the collection in another blanket; he had explained that pups would work it themselves, even at such a young age they knew what they wanted, driven by instinct.
Really, John doesn't know what he had gotten himself into.
The boys had arrived mid day, the twins having been fed and happy and after an extremely extensive run down from a very bristled Simon, he was left alone with the pair in their car-seats staring up at him with big, round, curious eyes.
Tommy and Isla were beautiful pups and there were no doubts in who their dad was— Simon's genes hadn't even tried— they were the spitting image of Soap with dark hair and bright blue eyes, chubby and frankly massive for their age, he remembers Soap mentioning it was a "MacTavish thing" when Price had first visited them after the birth.
"Right, what should we do hm?" he asks, hands on his hips and doesn't expect a reply, he's pleasantly surprised when Isla babbles back at him, pointing at nowhere in particular.
"Take after your dad, do you? Bet you talk you mum's ear off yeah?" he chuckles to himself, crouching down to unclip them from their chairs; finds himself fighting with the buttons and straps as sticky fingers grip at his hands.
"Mmummumm." Tommy mumbles to himself as Price sets him on his feet, before moving on to Isla's buckle as she makes her displeasure known at being left restrained while her brother was freed.
"Your mum's not here lad, stuck with me I'm afraid," the buckle goes much easier this time and soon Isla is also placed on the floor, "there you go sweetheart."
He hears the shrill noise of his phone, picks it up without a second thought when he sees who was calling.
"Nikolai, now's not really the time, I've ah, one moment…" John holds the phone between his ear and his shoulders as he reaches forward to use Tommy's bib to mop up the milk spittle running down his chin but quickly learns that apparently that wasn't the right move because the boy starts screaming, startling his sister who in follows suite with her own piercing wails. "Hey hey, what's this fuss for hm? You had a drool all over you you muppets, come one, we don't have to do all that do we?" He places the phone on the floor next to him and shuffles closer, "Sh sh, come on, we're okay, I can't exactly leave you like that can I? Your dam will kill me."
He doesn't even notice he's doing it at first, but the soothing trilling coming from his throat feels natural, something in his nature as an omega long neglected and ignored; not on purpose, he was confident in his ability as a captain and secure as a man and as an omega, but years of prejudiced necessity was a bitch to overcome but this felt real, safe.
"Johnathan?"
Shit.
It wasn't like Nikolai had never heard the noises he could make, they've known each other for god only knows how long now, he had sat with him through his surprise heats eve,
"Nik, sorry about that "
"You should not call children muppets."
"Shush."
"I am just saying-" John can hear the smug teasing in his voice, and doesn't even bother to smother the eye roll, looking to the since quieted twins for support— they only stare back at him but he accepts it as support.
"Did you want something Nikolai?"
"I am outside."
Oh.
"Oh"
"I can leave?" Something in John's chest strangely aches at the idea of turning the alpha away
"No no, you can come in, it'd be good to have another set of hands if nothing else. You know where the spare key is."
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The sight of Nik laying on the couch with a pup laying on his chest, bottle resting against his neck while Isla fed with a large hand resting on her little back, shouldn't effect him as much as it did. He finds himself stood there with Tommy wrapped in a thick warm towel, uncaring of the way his his wet sleeves stick to him from when the water had soaked up through the cuffs of his shirt as his heart aches and something old and familiar squirms in his stomach as it always had when he saw Nikolai being, well, Nikolai.
"There is bottle." Nik points to the coffee table where there is a baby bottle next to a hot mug of what he assumes is tea— knows whatever it was is decaf because Nik knew that John didn't like to drink caffeine so late when there was no reason for him to be up.
The twins are greedy to a fault, good eaters and determined in how they suckle away at the bottles' teats, just as Simon said they were with a lighthearted insulted comparison to Soap.
Price lays against the arm of the couch, feet pushed into the space between Nikolai's side and the back cushions while Tommy sits in the crook of his side with Price's arm wrapped around him and holding the bottle to his mouth. He has a short story book held awkwardly in his other hand and the air is filled with his rumbled reading and the occasional flip of a page as they all settle down for the night.
John had to admit that it was hard to bring himself to get up again, would be more than happy to stay exactly where he was and risk the crick in his neck that he knew he would get all so that he didn't have to do away with the feeling of a little body asleep against him and the sight of a slumbering Nikolai on the opposite end of the couch with the little girl star-fished over his chest; the baby soft purrs its own lullaby, rhythmic and soothing and joined by his own louder, though no less gentle, purring.
It takes effort to lift himself form his position, Tommy held to himself and still lost to dream land as John works on standing up without jostling him too much.
"Nik…" He lightly pokes him and the alpha wakes up just as calmly— John had found out early on that the mad never did startle when it was him waking him up, assumed he was so attuned to the omega's scent and presence that he never felt threatened; John wasn't exactly sure how he felt about that knowledge but decided that it didn't matter and simply filed it away as another 'Nikolai-ism'.
"Bed time?" Nik questions, looking up at him with such an open expression that John's heart seemed to take as an excuse to flutter away rapidly in his chest.
"Yeah."
Getting the twins upstairs was no issue at all, they stayed soundly asleep, purring away even as they were lowered into their shared cot; it was almost immediate the way they reached for each other, their purrs picking up briefly before settling back into that gentle flow.
John took a moment to take a picture of the pair to send to the boys, figured they would appreciate the unspoken update, before he moves to rustle around in the duffel bag left by the cot to find the vacuum-sealed bags for each night the twins would be spending there— three in total for the long weekend.
They each contained muslins coated in Soap's and Simon's scents which John was told to place in the cot with them with the explanation that the twins had only recently started sleeping outside of their parents' nest and that their scent would continue to make the transition easier.
He finds himself just watching them as they sleep, huddled against one another while Nik similarly hovers; but his eyes aren't on the pair, John is quick to notice, instead they bore into him, almost cataloguing his movements and committing them to memory, stores them away where he assumes he stores all the other times he just seems to take in John.
"I can sleep on couch" Nikolai announces when they step into the hallway, and it takes John a moment to catch up on his unspoken reasoning.
Ah, guest room… He spares on brief glance on the aforementioned room's closed door, the twins room.
"Don't worry about it Nik, bed's big enough. We're both adults." They've done it before, out of necessity mostly, on long missions in the middle of nowhere, huddled for warmth or simply because there hadn't been enough space with the other men— John had never been able to ignore the joy he got from the proximity, the warmth of another's body against him.
Nikolai only offers a nod in acceptance.
John takes a moment to hide himself away in the en suite, tries to gather himself before he heads back into the bedroom with Nikolai; he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and doesn't recognise the softness in the reflection, has to admit that it looks good on him, as does the pudge he's gained since retirement.
He doesn't know why Nik's bare chest catches him off guard when he exits the bathroom in his sleep shirt and shorts, can't bring himself to tare his eyes away from the thick pelt of hair covering his pecks and belly and disappearing into the waistband of a too-small pair of John's pyjama bottoms, sides patchy with healing bruises that John knows not to ask about if only because he knows that he would not get a clear answer on how they came to be.
"Christ"
Nikolai looks at him with a raised eyebrow, confusion painted across his face, he must see the way his face has blushed warm because his mouth perks up into a subtle smirk and John walks past him to climb into bed with a grumbled "shut up."
It was easy to relax next to Nik.
John wasn't small, he wasn't weak, he wasn't lacking in the skill to protect himself and his charges, but next to the alpha, he could sink into the mattress, allow a thoughtlessness to overtake him as he drifted to sleep, protected from the outside world with Nikolai sleeping between him and the door.
It should startle him, the arm suddenly thrown over his side and the hand on his chest, it should startle him and yet it didn't. It never did. Instead John allows himself to turn in the alphas loose grasp, and tucks himself into Nik's chest, his nose buried into his throat, the thick smoke scent collecting in his lungs and soaking into his bloodstream, the rumbled burr of a content alpha only helps him relax further, his own answering purr starting up in a quiet symphony.
When John wakes up, the bed is empty. He looks around in groggy confusion, brows furrowing when he hears the muffled talking from across the hall and is reminded that there are others in his house than he and Nik.
He finds the man in the temporary nursery, where he expected he would be, mumbling something as he strokes a large finger gently across Tommy's cheek, his other hand caught in little Isla's grip, pudgy fingers circling one of his fingers, the position looks uncomfortable to John but Nik doesn't seem to be bothered in the slightest, just keeps mumbling a melody that John only recognises from somewhere in the back of his tired mind.
He can only watch from where he leans against the doorframe, unwilling or unable to intterupt the scene playing out in front of him, filled with a feeling that is too close to longing.
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The weekend passes quickly, with ups and downs, laughs and cries, and that niggle of longing never really leaves but is quietened by something that is too close to domesticity.
When the doorbell rings, John answers it with a sense of finality. He's happy to see his boys standing there, tired and eager.
Soap scents the air and lets out a brief instinctual growl at the scent of another alpha but it dies down just as quickly as it came when it registers who it was, storming past John with a happy series of noises.
"There's mah darlin's! Ah missed you!" Soap takes them both from Nik's arms and wastes no time in getting his stink back onto them, rubbing his cheek against theirs' and into their hair, chuffing the whole while in answer to their happy chirps.
A couple of hours sees John and Simon sat in the living room, a show thrown on to act as background noise only.
John looks over at Simon, little Tommy asleep in his arms, soaking in his mother's affection, to see him already staring at him with a too knowing look. "So…" he starts, tipping his head back briefly to indicate to where the two alphas were talking in the kitchen, Soap with Isla on his hip while Nikolai worked on making their drinks, and then tilts his head in that subtle way that causes the older omega to bristle, "Not a word."
