Work Text:
“Eomma…” Taekwoon’s voice sounded shaky when he answered the call.
It was the middle of the day, and Hakyeon was at work. His husband was usually busy with the kids, and too considerate to disturb him even when something did go wrong. And the fact that his husband had gotten the courage to call him at all made his chest tighten with dread.
“Yes, honey? Are you okay?” he asked, keeping his voice calm and even for both of them.
He thought he heard Taekwoon sniffle. “I’m not sure…”
——————
“Ken-ah…” Taekwoon called from the kitchen as he busied over the stove.
“Deeee!” two shrill voices answered. Running footsteps echoed from the hall and two boys appeared at his side. Ken clung to his waist, reaching into the pocket of his pink apron for snacks, while Wonshik sniffed towards the pot. “Pasta?” he asked.
“Yeah,” he said, slipping each of them a cookie. “Don’t tell eomma,” he said with a two-eyed wink. He never learned how to wink properly, but the two got the message and quickly stuffed the cookies in their mouths, puffing their flushed cheeks.
He hummed as he took the baby bottle from the jar of water it had been cooling in and wiped it off with a towel. He tipped a few drops of milk onto his wrist, checking if it had cooled enough, nodding in approval as he handed it to Ken. “Can you feed your brother?” They had done this plenty of times, but he asked anyway, to teach them to always ask first.
Ken turned to Wonshik, shoving the bottle towards his mouth and bursting into laughter when Wonshik smacked his arm. “Not me!” the younger pouted.
“Then Bin-ah?” Ken’s giggles intensified at his own joke.
They heard another voice giggle and a deadpan “Of course, duh.” from the table, where Hongbin sat and fiddled with a tablet, eyes rolling before gluing themselves to the screen. Hakyeon would have shaken his head at Hongbin’s wit for sarcasm, but Taekwoon couldn’t help but smile. It showed Hongbin to be smarter than kids his age, probably even smarter than their eldest, Ken, who had a penchant for jokes and pranks.
Taekwoon lightly flicked Ken’s forehead. “Your baby brother, Kennie," he said, chuckling, and he watched the two bound off to the nursery before turning back to his cooking.
——————
“Why, what happened, baby?” Hakyeon prompted, knowing Taekwoon would try to figure it out on his own if he didn’t. Did Ken play a prank on his brothers again? Did Wonshik have another nightmare? What was Hongbin doing? Hakyeon was really worried now.
“Hyogie…” Taekwoon started to say, his voice catching in his throat. Hakyeon felt as if an invisible hand were squeezing his chest. He hadn’t even thought of their youngest son, so sure that he would be fine in his other father’s care. “I asked Ken to feed him and…“
——————
“Appa!” Wonshik called from the hall, wiping his tears with his fists, his nose dripping with snot.
Taekwoon abandoned the colander of pasta on the sink and was at the boy’s side in several long strides. “What happened, Wonshik?” he said as he knelt to Wonshik’s height, hands on his arms to soothe him.
Wonshik struggled to talk, choking on his sobs. Hongbin had stood from the table, the tablet forgotten, and gone to Wonshik’s side. “Appa, look,” their pretty son said, eyes wide as he raised a portion of Wonshik’s shirt, white and wet with what was unmistakably vomit.
Taekwoon bit back a curse and tried not to sound angry as he spoke to Wonshik. “It’s okay, Shikkie. Appa will take care of it,” he said, patting Wonshik’s head before turning to Hongbin. “Can you clean your brother up?”
But the boy was already guiding Wonshik to the bathroom by his arm. “Come on, you stink,” Taekwoon heard him say under Wonshik’s sobs. If Taekwoon hadn’t been too worried at the time, he might have laughed.
As it was, he headed straight to the nursery and found Ken cradling a crying Hyuk in his arms, his shirt soiled thoroughly with vomit. When he looked up at Taekwoon, tears welled up in his fear-filled eyes. “Appa, I swear I didn’t do anything,” he managed to say before bursting into sobs. Taekwoon held his arms out for Hyuk and Ken immediately handed him over. “I-I-I was just…just…feeding him, and t-then he just…”
He held Hyuk against his chest with one hand and reached for Ken with the other, patting his head soothingly even as his hand shook. “It’s okay, Kennie, I’ll take care of Hyogie,” he said, his voice sounding more steady than he felt. He pulled Ken in a hug, soiling his shirt and apron, but he couldn’t care less about that as he kissed his eldest’s forehead. “Go find Binnie and Shikkie in the bathroom and clean up, okay? Can you do that?”
Ken nodded, sobbing into his hands as he shuffled out of the room. Hyuk continued crying in Taekwoon’s arms, and not knowing what to do, Taekwoon reached for his phone and pressed #1 on his speed dial. Hakyeon would know what to do—and even if he didn’t, hearing the older man’s voice would soothe Taekwoon’s racing heart.
——————
“…he throws up anything I feed him,” Taekwoon said, voice trembling. When it took him awhile to speak again, Hakyeon was sure Taekwoon was stopping himself from sobbing and all Hakyeon could do was wait. “A-and he cries when I carry him. Hakyeonnie…what do I do?”
Hakyeon’s heart ached for his husband and their kids. They must be so scared. He took a deep breath, swallowing a whimper. “Wait for me, I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said with a calm he didn’t feel, his hands already busily gathering his things. “Hold on, okay, appa? Stay strong.”
When Taekwoon didn’t answer and just hung up, Hakyeon knew he had nodded in answer and went to check on their sons, while he went to his boss and asked for an emergency leave. “My son is sick,” was all Hakyeon needed to say and he was allowed to go, but they both knew he would have gone anyway even if he wasn’t.
Hakyeon was a professional in every sense of the word, but he would drop all formalities if he needed to when it came to his family.
——————
Taekwoon slipped his phone into his pocket as he wiped his tears. It wouldn’t do to let their children see him crying as they had been. “Stay strong,” Hakyeon had said, and Taekwoon knew it wasn’t only for him. It was for their kids. They needed him to be strong, even in a vomit-soiled apron as he was.
He walked back to the nursery, stopping at the door to take a deep breath, steeling himself to take what was ailing their youngest son. As he placed his hand on the knob, the sound of metal turning strangely loud in the silence of the house, he realized something had changed.
There was silence, when just a few minutes earlier Hyuk’s hoarse keening leaked out of the room and hung like mist through the rest of the house. Now there was a soft wet gurgling, followed by a small, muffled voice whispering, “Good job, Hyukkie. Have more water.”
——————
Nothing was going as Hakyeon expected.
He had expected to be home in 30 minutes after leaving work, but two as—wonderful gentlemen decided it was a great day to play bumper cars on the road. Thankfully, no one was hurt but they decided it would be decent to argue about it right there, instead of moving out of the way, until the police came. His half-hour drive had turned into more or less an hour.
He hadn’t expected their youngest child to be sick either but, from the panic during the call with Taekwoon, he had at least expected his older sons to welcome him home, ask him what was wrong with their brother, plead with him to make it all better. He had expected Taekwoon to be waiting, eyes silently asking for help, as he tried to hush Hyuk’s cries.
But there was no welcome, no pleading, no crying.
Hakyeon felt a little disappointed, and guilty that he did. He was glad that all seemed well but—he wouldn’t dare say it out loud—he loved it whenever his family showed him how much they needed him. It reassured him that all he did was appreciated.
Instead he found Ken and Wonshik sprawled on the couch, clothes fresh, hair still a little wet from the bath, and mouths hanging open as they slept. They looked peaceful, not the scared boys Taekwoon had reported, and the sight somewhat loosened the vice-like grip that had been squeezing Hakyeon’s chest since his husband called. “I’m home,” he muttered, kissing each of them on the forehead. He was tempted to just lie there and sleep with them, but he couldn’t have, not while he hasn’t checked on Hyuk and Taekwoon yet. And where was Hongbin? That pretty child got his pretty little nose into the weirdest places sometimes.
Hakyeon headed to the nursery, and nearly fainted when he found a tall man and a boy with masks looking over his baby’s crib.
——————
“I thought we were being robbed!” Hakyeon laughed, startling Wonshik in his sleep. He reached out to comb his fingers into his hair and Wonshik settled back down.
“Yeah, lots of things to steal in the baby room,” Hongbin muttered, his voice muffled by the black cloth mask covering his nose and mouth, but his father couldn’t have heard him anyway, as he and Taekwoon were in the bathroom.
Taekwoon heard him clearly though as he dried his hands on a towel, his eyes narrowing from a smile under his matching mask, and nudged him towards the sink. Hongbin giggled and went to wash his hands.
Taekwoon pulled his mask down, letting it hang around his neck, and left to join Hakyeon on the couch. He slumped next to his husband, exhausted. “We had to wear masks so we wouldn’t get sick too,” he explained, leaning against Hakyeon, who wrapped his arm around Taekwoon’s shoulders, and closing his eyes.
“Didn’t you say you don’t know what to do?” Hakyeon asked, turning his head to the side so he can nuzzle against Taekwoon’s hair. He felt his husband nod.
“Looks like everything’s under control here, though…”
Taekwoon groaned, shaking his head, and flicked his wrist toward the hall, where Hongbin emerged from the bathroom, drying his little hands. Hakyeon stared at their second youngest boy. “Hongbinnie?” he asked Taekwoon, who only nodded. The incredulity must have been obvious because Hongbin paused and stared back at them. “Uhmm…what?”
——————
Taekwoon could hardly believe what he saw in the nursery.
Hongbin was looking innocently up at him, his nose and mouth covered by a black cloth mask. He was standing on a stool by Hyuk’s crib, one hand holding a medicine dropper filled with water in Hyuk’s mouth, the baby sucking eagerly on it, while the other held his tablet aloft, a medical website on display. He tore his eyes away when Hyuk started sucking on air, and Hongbin refilled it with water from a nearby glass and gave it back to Hyuk. “You should get a mask too, appa,” Hongbin said as he looked back up at his father, holding the tablet toward him. “It’s cont…cont…” He pouted, struggling to pronounce the word he had read, before he rolled his eyes and just said, “You can get sick too.”
Taekwoon took it but he was still processing what had happened to pay attention to what the boy wanted to show him. While Taekwoon was panicking, only handling the entire situation a little bit better than the boys did, Hongbin, their second youngest, who couldn’t even pronounce “contagious”, managed to take care of all his brothers and even thought to look up what was wrong with Hyuk on the internet.
Maybe it was relief that Hyuk had calmed down now, or maybe it was shame that he was about as helpful as Wonshik or Ken had been—and he tried, he really did, they all did, but they had been clueless and scared and clumsy—or maybe it was pride that he, they had such a son as Hongbin. Quiet and often melting into the background but witty and gentle and level-headed when everyone else was freaking out.
Maybe it was all of those. Whatever it was, it made Taekwoon’s legs weak and he dropped to his knees, hugging their pretty little flower boy.
——————
“STOP. TOUCHING. IT.” Wonshik cried from the back of the car, shielding the cotton ball on his shoulder with his hand from Ken’s poking finger.
“Why? Does it hurt, Shikkie? Doooes it?” Ken had a similar cotton ball on his shoulder, and so did Hongbin who somehow managed to sleep through the commotion, or at least pretend to.
“Appa!” Wonshik called for backup, but Taekwoon in the passenger seat was busy exchanging soft baby babbles with Hyuk on his lap. The baby had a cotton ball taped to his shoulder too.
The driver’s door opened then and Hakyeon scooted in, beaming, and Wonshik tried again, “Eomma, Ken-hyung is poking meeee!”
Hakyeon turned to look at them in the backseat, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “Kennie, if you don’t behave, you’re not getting any ice cream.”
All the boys were suddenly at attention. Ken’s hands dropped to his sides. Wonshik put on his brave face. Hongbin was awake. Taekwoon was looking right at Hakyeon, who giggled. “Since we’ve all been good and got our flu shots, I thought we could have some ice cream.”
The backseat exploded. “YAAAAAAAAS!”
“Coffee crumble?” Taekwoon asked, aegyo on full throttle, putting Hyuk’s chubby hands together in a pleading gesture. Wonshik swooned in the backseat. “Coffee~”
“Rocky road?” Hongbin asked, eyes wide, eyelashes batting prettily.
Hakyeon hummed. “Why don’t we get a tub of vanilla then mix it up with whatever? Good idea, right?”
Wonshik and Taekwoon frowned at him. Hongbin thought about it, shrugged, then leaned back, while Ken gasped dramatically, eyes and mouth opened wide, hands cupping his cheeks. “Potato chip ice cream?”
Hakyeon hesitated, grimacing at the idea, but then laughed as he started the car. “Well, I did say whatever.”