Work Text:
Namjoon hummed softly to himself, hips swaying to BLACKPINK’s Savage while he fixed Jungkook's lunch. He did a little twirl with the knife to use it as a microphone that probably would have had his husband fainting with how close the blade came to nicking his throat, then spread some mayo over a piece of bread for Kookie's sandwich with a flourish. Namjoon smiled as he slapped a slice of cheese onto the bread, and he was just nearly finished putting his son’s lunch together when an ear-piercing shriek had him jerking, flailing, and spinning on his heel. The knife still in his hand dropped to the floor and came precariously close to stabbing him in the foot, and the glass jar of mayonnaise went crashing to the ground after being hit by his arm during his panic, breaking into a million little pieces and sending mayo splattering everywhere.
He froze momentarily and stared at the mess with a grimace, knowing full well his husband will probably laugh at him for being clumsy, then possibly scold him, then laugh again; but he was drawn out of his wallowing after another strangled wail floated through the air that had Namjoon slipping on the mayo, then stumbling and falling flat on his face after attempting to vault over the couch in effort to find the source of the noise faster.
"Oh my gods!" he heard Seokjin scream.
"What?" Namjoon asked out of breath, running into Jungkook’s bedroom. "What's wrong?"
"Lice!" Seokjin shouted at him in horror, looking slightly hysterical as he clutched two-year old Jungkook to his chest.
"What?"
"Lice," Seokjin screeched. "Jungkook has lice!"
Namjoon stared a moment then shot his husband a lopsided grin. "Oh. Well, that's alright, honey, calm down. We'll take care of it."
“No, it is not alright! I was combing Kookie’s hair and I swear to all things holy and Brad Pitt that I saw one the size of a cat!”
Jungkook giggled and clapped in Seokjin’s arms. “Yes, Papa, a kitty!”
“They’re crawling all over his scalp,” Seokjin continued. “burrowing into his hair and biting at his head, sucking all his sweet blood from his precious little body. My poor baby!”
Namjoon chuckled at his husband’s antics. "It's not a big deal, sweetheart, lots of kids get lice one time or another. Yoongi, Hoseok and I had lice loads of times when we were kids."
"What?!"
“Yeah, it’s very common and super treatable, so there’s no need to worry.”
Seokjin narrowed his eyes. “That sounds like the rehearsed, robotic lines of a stressed-out primary school nurse.”
“It’s probably because I heard it myself so many times,” Namjoon chuckled again as he began to make his way across the room to father and son. “But really, honey—"
"No!" Seokjin exclaimed, shifting Jungkook to one arm as he used to other to point at Namjoon, making the tall man stop in his tracks. "Stay over there, I don’t you to get contaminated!"
"Jin—"
"I need a jar of mayonnaise!"
Namjoon blinked owlishly. "What?"
"Mayo! I need it! A lot of it!"
"Why?”
“To kill the lice,” Seokjin told him like it was obvious.
Namjoon could only gape at his husband. “Mayo kills them?”
“Yes, it suffocates the little scalp invaders and that way we don’t have to ruin Kookie’s perfect hair with all those nasty chemicals in lice shampoos.”
“Oh,” Namjoon sucked in his lips and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Right. That’s good. Uh-huh. But—well, um, about the mayo…”
"Bun Bun, baby, my sweet little angel,” Seokjin said to still giggling Jungkook, apparently not having heard his husband. “I have to spread some yummy mayo over your head, okay?"
“Mayo?” Their baby asked cutely with his wide, innocent eyes.
“Yes, yummy, yummy mayo. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Jungkook clapped and nodded. “Yay! We eat!”
“Uh, honey?” Namjoon tried again while Seokjin peppered kisses over their son’s face. “About the mayo…”
"Yes! The mayo, Joon, the mayo,” Seokjin chirped. “Please, for Kook's sake, bring me the mayo."
"We… we don't have any," Namjoon mumbled, his cheeks burning in embarrassment.
"What? I just bought some a couple of days ago. I thought you were using some to make Kookie’s sandwich?"
"Yeah, well, there was an accident in the kitchen."
When he didn't elaborate, Seokjin stormed off towards the kitchen with Jungkook in hand, Namjoon trailing behind them nervously.
"Oh my gods!" Seokjin hollered when he spotted the mess on the floor. "Namjoon!"
"It was an accident," Namjoon tried to reason with him over Jungkook’s laughter at their banter. "I heard you yell, and I accidentally knocked it over."
“And why is there a butter knife sticking out of the ground?!”
“Because I dropped it?”
“Oh my gods! Kookie is being eaten to death by tiny head rats, you spilled all the mayo and then nearly stabbed yourself in the foot, and now my head itches and I’m pretty sure I have lice, too!” Seokjin moaned dramatically. “Can this day get any worse?”
“I didn’t almost stab myself in the foot,” Namjoon pouted, even though, yes, he had.
Seokjin gave him what has been dubbed by Jimin and Taehyung as The Look. His shoulders squared to full capacity as his plush lips pursed up and out, nostrils flaring, cheeks sinking in and his eyes turned cat like and sinister. Sometimes, arms get crossed and a hip cocks out while a foot taps angrily on the floor and there’s honestly something unnerving about how a person as good-looking as his husband can look so handsome and downright terrifying at the same time. “Really?”
Namjoon squirmed under the unwavering gaze. “Well, you know, I mean— I can go to the store and get some mayo,” he finally offered, effectively changing the subject.
“Yes, please, do that,” Seokjin sighed, setting Jungkook on the counter while he got a broom and dustpan out. “But don’t go near any knives.”
Namjoon, being the very mature, grown adult, father that he is, stuck his tongue out at the back of his husband’s head. He nearly slipped on some mayo again in his hasty retreat to the relative safety of the front foyer after Jungkook’s resulting giggle from his actions caused Seokjin to spin back around and fix him with a close cousin of The Look. Sometimes, Namjoon swears his husband has eyes in the back of his head.
“Only the organic kind,” Seokjin called to him. “And make sure it’s non-GMO!”
“Does it really matter?” Namjoon asked, struggling with his shoes having put them on the wrong feet in his hurry.
And boy was that the wrong thing to ask because even though it was light outside, it got dark inside real fast as a tense silence ticked by for a few seconds causing Namjoon to wince, because a quiet Kim Seokjin never means anything good, and he could practically picture his husband’s face: slitted eyes with a murderous expression. “Yes, “came Seokjin’s voice a few terse moments later. “It matters.”
Namjoon gulped. “Oh. Okay. Got it. Organic and non-GMO.”
“Get some trash bags, too!”
“Okay.”
“And, please, be careful driving. If you crash into one more mailbox, our insurance is going to be through the roof.”
Namjoon huffed. “Be careful driving,” he mimicked in a nasally voice.
“I heard that!”
Namjoon was out the door, in the car, and down the street so fast he almost forgot where he was going.
--
Namjoon and Seokjin stared at the array of mayonnaise in front of them on the kitchen counter. “I wasn’t sure which kind to get,” Namjoon admitted. “so I got all of them.”
Seokjin smiled brightly at him. “Wonderful! We can mix them all together and we’ll sucker punch those little maggots and kill them before they even know what hit them. Think they can cause an infestation on my son’s head, do they? Well, we’ll show them who’s in charge!”
Namjoon bit his lip in effort not to laugh at his husband. “Right. So, what are the trash bags for?”
“We’re going to shove all of ours and Kookie’s pillows and stuffed animals in them, so we can suffocate the evil little bloodsuckers.”
“Oh. What are you doing now?”
“I’m working towards victory,” Seokjin said, drowning their sheets and duvet in Lysol before stuffing them in the washer with way too much detergent and then dropped their hairbrushes in boiling pots of water before opening every jar of mayo, dumping all of it into a large salad bowl, and mixed it together.
“Jin, honey, don’t you think this is a little much?”
“This is war, Joonie. It is us against the lice, and only one will prevail.”
Namjoon blinked at him. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Seokjin froze and gave him a hard stare. “Is it?” he asked darkly.
“No,” Namjoon murmured with wide eyes. “Not at all, darling.”
His husband huffed, scooped up his lice killing concoction and marched like a man on mission to Jungkook’s room.
Namjoon tried not to laugh, honestly he did, but it was so immensely amusing to watch his husband use a hot pink spatula to plop globs of mayo on their toddlers head. It was even funnier but also disgusting when Jungkook patted his head and then licked some of the mayo off his fingers.
"No!” Seokjin wailed. “Kookie, don't eat the mayo off your head!"
“It’s yummy, Daddy.”
“But you can’t eat it, baby. Here, why don’t you help Daddy put mayo on his head?”
Jungkook squealed in delight, instantly shoving his arms into the giant bowl of mayonnaise all the way up to his elbows, playing with it and smearing it all over his father’s face rather than actually getting any on his head, and it was when Jungkook accidentally shoved some of the white condiment up Seokjin’s nose that Namjoon could no longer hold in his chuckles.
Seokjin turned to face him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you laughing at us, Kim Namjoon?”
“No, no, no!” Namjoon said quickly, reaching up to scratch an itch on his scalp. “I mean, Jungkook just looks so cute. His head is like a little, soft serve ice cream. Kind of like me back when we first met, and it was a miracle that you thought I was attractive.”
That brought a brief smile to Seokjin’s face. “Yeah, that was a miracle. Jungkook does look cute, though, doesn’t—did you just scratch your head?”
Namjoon’s arm froze in mid-air. He gulped and smiled sheepishly, slowly bringing his arm to hide behind his back. “No…”
--
Twenty minutes later, Namjoon sat on the couch, watching The Brave Little Toaster with Jungkook cuddled in his lap and Seokjin sat next to them, arms crossed, his handsome face poised in a scowl, all three of their heads caked in so much mayo that their home now smells like sandwich shop.
“Hey,” Namjoon whispered, throwing an arm around the couch to tug his husband closer. “I love you.”
Seokjin let out a long sigh, melting into Namjoon’s embrace. “I love you too, darling, and thank you for all your help. I’m sorry for snapping at you so much.”
“It’s alright, honey, I know you’re stressed.”
Seokjin stole a chaste kiss. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you, though. Forgive me?”
“Of course, my love,” Namjoon smiled. “So, where do you think Kookie could have gotten lice from?”
“I don’t know,” his handsome husband grumbled. “It’s not like he’s not in Pre-K yet where head lice are the herpes of toddlers.”
Namjoon snorted. “Maybe he got it from—” he was cut off by his phone “dinging” with a text. “Oh, well, never mind, mystery solved,” he mumbled blandly after reading the message. “It’s from Taehyung. Apparently, he and Jimin have lice and they might have given it to Jungkook when they babysat for us.”
Seokjin’s shrill, banshee like scream echoed throughout the house and there’s a good possibility some stray dogs may show up on their front porch after thinking the extremely high-pitched sound emitted from his husband’s lips had been a dog whistle.
“Those hooligans! Those scallywags!” Seokjin roared, vaulting from the couch to pace the length of the living room. “Criminal delinquents, I tell you! When I get my hands on those scoundrels, I’m going to shave every follicle of hair off their little troublemaking heads!”
Namjoon watched his husband stalk about in a combination of horror, awe, and amusement until chubby, little, mayo-covered fingers were poking insistently at his mouth.
“Papa!” Jungkook babbled happily. “Eat, eat!”
Namjoon sighed and kissed his baby’s fingers.
And, oh, what a day.