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When Yor came down with a bad flu, it threw off the whole ease in which the Forger household ran. In just a couple of days, the system that their thriving family got used to was thrown so out of whack that currently, at nine in the morning, Loid had slipped some whisky into his third cup of coffee just to tide him over the ruckus that Anya and Bond were making.
He really ought to tell the two of them to keep it down, lest they wake Yor who Loid just got down from the delirium that her fever brought on. He’d given his fake wife a very chaste sponge bath, tried not to think too much of it, and then bowed out of her room to fix breakfast for their daughter. Loid, who had been awake since Yor’s fever spiked at three AM, was just not on his game and gave his six-year-old a box of sugary cereal and a bowl before going to the quietest part of the house, the kitchen, standing in front of the gas range and just closing his eyes for as long as he could get away with it. He felt like it hadn’t been long since he closed his eyes that Anya’s shrieking pierced the quiet of the morning, and when Loid was startled awake, he saw Anya with a water gun chasing Bond all over the living room. Of course, he gave his daughter a sugar rush the moment he least needed it.
Still in his sleep clothes, Loid sat in the dining room with his briefcase of files (backlogs of expense reports that he intended to pass off as patient notes) and asked Anya to keep it down, without the usual fatherly bite of his voice.
Sure enough, he was ignored. Bond playfully nipped at the hem of her dress which caused Anya to plop down on the couch, and somehow, this started a contest between the girl and hound to see who could jump the highest on the couch. Loid must have been badly tired because he didn’t even tell them to stop, only thumbed through where he left off last night and strained to line up the expenses in rows and rows of numbers and codes.
After an hour, Anya was still displaying herculean stamina as she continued to bounce around the cramped apartment, clearly feeding her sugar rush to an extended time limit by grabbing the sugar-coated cereal mixed with marshmallows by the fistful and shoving them into her mouth in a manner that her teacher would surely call inelegant.
Loid felt immune to the noise at this point. He’s had tinnitus since he was nineteen years old, and sometimes, it was so deafening his head might split, and sometimes he could barely tell it was there. Anya’s giggling and squawks were beginning to feel like tinnitus.
Loid’s mental alarm went off to check on Yor. He dragged his feet to her bedroom door and only gave a cautionary knock before letting himself in. Any other day, he’d be hesitant to enter Yor’s sacred space, but Yor was hardly in any condition to let him in herself.
His wife lay on the bed, her duvet somehow gutted– dug inside out with the filling on the floor and the inverted cover wrapped around her left foot like some cloth anaconda. Ever the professional, Loid did not even glance at the chemise and shorts that were disheveled on Yor’s body. He set down the tall glass of water on her nightstand with some medicine and gave Yor’s forehead a feel with the back of his palm. It didn’t burn hot anymore, and it wasn’t beaded with sweat, so it was a good sign that she was coming off it.
“How are you feeling, Yor? Do you think you can get up and drink some water?”
Yor shook her head. “My head still feels full, so I’ll just lie down for a while. Loid,” Yor took his hand with her clammy one. “Can you call Yuri?”
Loid was a bit unnerved by her request. He’d just watched a period drama last week, where some marquess was dying of influenza and this was exactly how she asked to see her loved ones to bid them a final farewell. “Uh, sure. What do you need him for?”
“I’m going to ask him to help out a bit around the house. I know he’s a bit too much, but he can help clean up a bit, and run some errands.” Before Loid could protest, she continued on. “I can hear everything happening outside. He can watch Anya for a bit so you can take a nap, or get some work done.” She knew he’d taken his work home just to be able to care for her, and maybe if she felt better, she’d have time to feel her usual shame at putting him out. “Please, I’d just feel awful if no one was helping you, even for just this day at least.”
Loid sighed. He gave Yor’s hand a squeeze and smiled down at her reassuringly. He was tired enough and way too high-strung to pass up on another set of hands. “Okay. Yes. I’ll call your brother.”
Yuri Briar showed up in record time. Even though it had been Loi-Loi on the phone, he’d taken his sister’s summon with urgency and was at the Forger Residence in half the time Loid expected him to arrive. When Loid answered the door, he couldn’t even muster up his charming smile, or any other expression that required his facial muscles to move. The bags under his eyes were dark like a week-old bruise, and his posture was so utterly defeated that it made Yuri swallow the reprimand on the tip of his tongue, about how Loi-Loi should have told him earlier that his precious sister was ill, and HA, you can’t even handle your household, so how the hell do you expect to be able to give my sister the life she deserves?
Clicking his tongue, Yuri just crossed the threshold and welcomed himself into the kitchen to start at the mountain of dishes Loid had been unable to get to. Loid followed him into the kitchen, intent to apologize and thank him, but Yuri only gave him an understanding look.
“Don’t run yourself too ragged, Loi-Loi.”
By the time dinner arrived, the house was spotless. Yor wasn’t kidding when she said Yuri was useful with some cleaning supplies. He even managed to get the water stains from the rug that Anya knocked her water cup onto. Yor even managed to get up for a while and stretch her legs for a bit before going back to her room to succumb to her body pain and exhaustion. When Yor disappeared, Loid’s body sagged with relief and weariness, so he joined an equally tired Yuri on the sofa. Loid was finally done with letting Anya powering up her sugar rush so he took her box of cereal and told her to drink some water.
Of course, Anya didn’t come down from her high as gracefully as any other child would. Her cheerful shrieking gave way to wails of anguish that worried Yuri enough to stand between father and daughter. Loid only gave a tired, dead-eyed stare as his child sank to the ground and cried as if she was being ripped open. Yuri was worried that the neighbors might hear and call the cops on them for child abuse, so he told his brother-in-law to step back, and let him deal with this.
Worn out, and on the brink of an emotional breakdown himself, Loid threw his hands up and fetched some wine from the kitchen.
Yuri crouched down to Anya’s level and told her to calm down. Anya only got more upset and her keening went up a decibel. Afraid that his sister might wake up and deem him an incompetent babysitter, Yuri took Anya into his arms and settled down on the couch with her. She smelled like any sweaty child would. Anya’s tantrum took dips and peaks. She would blubber about her papa was mean, and how her mama would never treat her like this, and then upset herself more by thinking if her father got angry enough, he would give her back to the orphanage, making her cry more.
At some point, Yuri decided to just let her cry it out until she tired herself out. She sat on his lap and wailed right at his bone-tired face. Loid joined him on an adjacent seat, a glass of wine filled to the brim in one hand, and the TV remote in the other. He opened the TV to some cooking show Anya watched with him and Yor on the rare occasion she got to stay up past her bedtime. The opening credits tinkled out of the TV’s tinny speakers, and then Anya’s crying slowly ebbed.
“What are they making this week?” she asked in a miserable voice.
“Lemon curd pie.” Loid answered.
Anya, Loid, and Yuri watched the contestant scramble to finish their pies before the buzzer sounded off. Anya sniffled into her Unkie’s chest, and Yuri was pretty sure his shirt was covered in snot and tears at this point.
“Sorry Anya’s being terrible,” Anya said with a snivel.
“Eh, you’re all right, kid,” Yuri said.
Loid gave him a grateful look. Yuri ignored him, despite feeling a sense of camaraderie with the man who stole his sister away, for the first time.
By the time the judges were deliberating on the pies, Anya was snoring in Yuri’s cramping arms. Loid quietly suggested they put her in bed.
Anya rolled into the pit of stuffed animals and snored even louder. Loid and Yuri breathed a sigh of relief when they were able to turn off her lights and close her door without any follow-up madness.
“I need to get going. I have to be at work really early tomorrow,” Yuri began. He threw his coat over his snot-covered shirt and began for the door.
“Yuri, I really can’t thank you enough–”
“Whatever, Loi-Loi. I meant what I said. Don’t run yourself too ragged.”
Yuri didn’t say anything else before letting himself out of his sister’s home.
Loid locked the doors and windows, then went to turn into bed, himself. Tomorrow was a new day.
When Loid woke up, he felt less like microwaved shit and went about his morning routine with an efficiency that belied his physical and mental exhaustion. In 8 minutes, he was in the kitchen pulling out a tray of eggs for breakfast.
Yor trudged out of her room sometime after him and greeted him in a voice that didn’t rasp, and an energy that had been missing since she fell ill.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better. Have a seat. You need to get some food into your system,” Loid said.
“Thank you for taking care of me, Loid,” Yor said, an embarrassed but pleased smile on her face. “You picked up all the slack while I was sleeping for days!”
“That’s just what families do, right?” Loid answered easily.
Yor nodded. Later, she could wonder how she got so lucky to have all this. “I couldn’t agree more.”