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The smell was strong and overwhelming. It reached his nose, crept down into his lungs, and wrapped around him, nauseating. He closed his eyes, focusing on the task at hand. It had to be done, there was no way around it. He swallowed hard, tried not to be sick himself when grabbing the bedsheets and pulling them off the bed, carefully trying not to let the vomit drip on the clean parts of the bed. He would gladly swap this for any ichor-duty back at the institute.
He placed the dirty sheets on the floor next to the bed, grabbed the pillow that he had forgotten, only to find a little hand splashing in the little puddle of vomit on the floor, next to the bed, that he had not been aware of. A cheerful toddler looked at him, vomit dripping off his hands. “Help Daddy”.
Alec was wondering how such a small human being had been able to produce such an amount of vomit, whining, and screaming while doing it. Now, hardly 10 minutes after having created this battlefield, he was trying to clean up at the moment, Max was sitting next to the bed, happy as can be as if nothing ever had happened. Playing with the vomit.
splash
He cursed his decision to offer Magnus a night off. He could really use his husband’s help right now.
Sighing, he grabbed the child, Holding it in front of him like the vomit coated little thing that it was, and placed it in the bathing tub.
“There you go,…” He washed him clean, happy that the smell vanished.
Max enjoyed his little midnight shower very much, and after he was dressed and put back into a second set of pajamas, he proclaimed: “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Hungy. Nana. Nana.” So the little fellow wanted to have a banana. Oh very well. Since his stomach surely was empty by now, there would be room for a banana.
He sat Max into his highchair, handing him a banana, walked back to the battlefield of vomit and bedlinen, overwhelmed by the smell and the pressing urge to throw up right into the middle of everything, and grabbed the linen, placed everything in the washing machine and hit the “start” button. He put new, clean sheets on the bed, opened the windows to let some air in the room, and started to calm down while being proud of himself for handling this situation so very confidently.
Then he heard small footsteps in the hallway. His four-year-old daughter stood there, in her pajamas, wild bed hair around her head, clinging tightly to her pink pony. “Daddy… I have a tummy-scare…” Alec’s eyes widened for a slight moment. “Come here, darling. I’ll fix you a hot water bottle and the tummy-ache will be gone in no time.”
“Where is Papa?” Annie asked, her eyes starting to fill with tears. “Honey, Papa is meeting his friend Catarina tonight, he is not home yet.”
Tears started running down Annie's face. “But… but I want my Papa!!” Alec felt powerless. Of course, she needs her Papa now, he thought. Magnus always had been the one who took care of the kids when they didn’t feel well. It had just been something natural to him, nothing they had decided on. But now he was on his own, he had to manage, get through this without any backup.
“Come here now! I’ll take care of you. And Papa will be home in no time!”
“Daddy! Daddy!” a small and very obtrusive voice sounded through the kitchen. “Daddy! More Nana. More Nana!”
Alec rolled his eyes and before tending towards his daughter he walked to the counter to grab another banana. The last one, he noted.
“Daddy, my tummy – scare is really bad!” Annie cut in. Alec stood in the middle of the kitchen, banana in one hand, facing Max, turning around to look at Annie, but there really had not been any need to do so, when he heard the choking sound, followed by a splash on the kitchen floor. And the smell was back, a mixture only bile, stomach acid and hot chocolate, which he had let the kids have with their dinner, could provide. It was everywhere. How could there have been so much force behind this? Annie looked in shock at the kitchen floor and started crying.
Alec froze.
A lifelong training as a Shadowhunter had him prepared for so many things, hunting demons, fighting werewolves, being in command of an entire Insitute, for the Angel’s sake – even facing the Queen of Edom. But at this moment, he didn’t know what to do first. Evacuate his daughter from the sea of vomit that had placed itself on their kitchen floor, start to clean up said sea first, or hand the banana to the still demanding toddler in the highchair.
He took a breath and was about to put a quickly crafted battle plan into action. He was going to grab a towel, create a safe passage through the vomit, then grab his daughter, put her into the bathing tub as well, get her cleaned up first and then clean up the kitchen later. Alas, the flaw of the plan was, that he had put the banana down on the counter, instead of giving it to Max before making his way through the sea. Combined with the mistake of not having strapped Max into the highchair earlier– the little boy could now climb out of his highchair and pursue his object of desire: the banana.
In the corner of his eye, Alec saw Max stand on top of the highchair, dangerously swaying. Thanks to his quick reflexes he was able to grab him, before Max fell off the chair, when, not very gracefully, the Shadowhunter slipped and landed, right in the middle of the contents of his daughter's stomach.
Annie was still crying in shock and for her Papa, Max kept demanding his “Nana”, and Alec felt himself on the verge of tears.
Get a grip on yourself, Lightwood, he thought to himself. He got up from the floor, placed Max in the highchair again, strapping him in this time, and handed him the banana. Then he made his way to Annie, not caring about the vomit on the floor anymore since it was all over him anyway. He took her up on his arms and hugged her firmly, calming her down. Max was happily – and more important quietly - eating away on his banana, while Annie started to calm down on his arms – and Alec was so glad about the small moment of silence, this little sanctum.
Annie looked at him. “Daddy, you stink!”
And she was right. So he took her to the bathroom with him, and they both took a quick shower, washing all the nasty smell off them.
“Are you feeling better?” Alec asked Annie. “Tummy scare all gone?”
Annie nodded tiredly.
“How about I put you back to bed then?”
Annie shook her head. “I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight. Can I sleep in your bed? Please?” How could he say no to these puppy eyes?
So he brought her to his and Magnus bed. There was plenty of space in there anyway, since Magnus would stay the night at Catarina’s.
“I’ll clean up the kitchen, and get Max real quick, just wait here for me!” he told Annie.
So he went to the kitchen, tried to clean up the floor as thoroughly as possible. Max was firmly asking for yet another banana, but alas, there was none left. Max cried and shouted, but could only be calmed down by the prospect of sleeping in “the big bed” with his Daddy and Annie. So, at 1:30 in the morning, Alec and his two kids were lying together in bed. Alec’s eyes were heavy and he was grateful to have managed this whole puking - situation. He had been drifting off to sleep when that very distinctive smell found its way into his nose again…
“I am sorry, Daddy”, Annie cried silently. Annie had thrown up again. This time, into her parents’ bed. Alec was tired, so very tired. But there was nothing he could do about it, except for getting up, taking the sheets off the bed, silently, trying not to wake up Max. Of course, Max woke up and was loudly complaining about it.
Alec could not be bothered to put new sheets on the bed. Instead, he grabbed some towels from the bathroom, coating the bed with them, snatching a bucket from the utility room and then falling into bed again. It was a game of survival at this point. Annie in one, Max in the other arm, Alec found himself able to draw energy from thin air and read his kids another story, turned off the lights and sang them to sleep.
When Magnus arrived the next morning at their apartment, he didn’t know what hit him. There were towels and paper napkins everywhere, the floor in the kitchen was sticky, there were banana peels on the counter, the linen of their bed lay on the floor outside their bedroom and the smell of vomit was lingering all over the place. He peeked into the bedroom, where he found his husband lying on about 10 inches of the mattress on one side, and their two kids, stretching out in all directions on the rest of the bed. Alec sensed Magnus at the door, opened his eyes.
“Hey there.”
“Hey there yourself!”
“I am never letting you have a night off. Ever. Again.”
Magnus smiled. “That bad, huh?”
“Yeah… even worse. You have no idea…”
Alec sat up quietly and swung his legs out of the bed, only to quickly grab the bucket from the nightstand and throw up.
“And the fun isn’t quite over yet, I guess?” Magnus asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No..”, Alec said, while breathing heavily… “And I hear it goes around in circles… so you better watch out.”