Ages:
Harry- 26
Sunny- 23
Rory & Nola- 7
Amos- 2
Juniper- 13 months
"Daddy?" A whine from the side of my bed, followed by a tug on the white comforter covering my body makes me wince and screw my eyes shut tighter.
What the fuck?
"Daddy?—"
Rolling onto my stomach, I lift my arm off of Sunny's waist and flutter my eyes open.
"Daddy—" She whines out again, her voice stringy and fragile.
Standing beside my side of the bed, Rory stands with her fingers shoved in her mouth. I can just about make out her dim outline in the dark room.
"Roo, it's the middle of the night, baby, why're you awake?"
She sniffles as I prop my cheek up on my elbow.
"Daddy, my tummy is poorly,"
"Your tummy is poorly?" I repeat, sitting up a little as Sunday stirs beside me.
My eyes flick back to her lying with her hair tied back in a messy bun on the pillow. She's on her side, legs bent a little from where I was spooning her from behind. One hand is lying on her stomach, probably draped over mine when it was cuddling her and the other is lying up by her face on the pillow as soft little huffs of breath puff from between her lips.
"Daddy—" Rory cries, a little louder again to the point that Sunny grumbles and rolls onto her side more.
"Okay, okay, Peanut. I know, babe, but you're going to wake mumma up so..."
Swinging my feet off the side of the bed, I let the covers fall off me and pool around my waist.
I run my hand back through my hair, I cut it only a few days ago so I am still not used to the short length of it.
"Daddy—" She whines again, chewing on her fingertips and I can tell that from the dribble in her voice that she is crying.
I nod, trying to wake myself up and engage my brain enough to think of a solution for this.
"Okay, let's find you some pink medicine and get you back to bed, sweet girl," I say
Just as I do say that, Rory makes a small groaning noise and before I have a chance to register what's happening, her body is folding over and she is throwing up all over the carpet on my side of the bedroom.
The visceral sound of her retching and coughing to get everything up has me frozen on the spot.
The smell is putrid, making me gag as I run my hand down my face and sigh.
"Whoever said to have kids was talking out of their arse. This is—"
Sunday sits up behind me, obviously woken from the noise that Rory is creating.
"Her hair," Sunday mumbles, springing from the bed with a sudden burst of energy.
In the smallest pyjama set possible, she runs around the bottom of the bed and rushes to our daughter's aid.
"H, get a damn bucket or something!" She demands with a grit as she brushes Rory's soft hair back from her face and loops it back into a bun. "Also, I need your hair tie?"
Holding her hand out for me, I peel the one off my wrist that seems to be a permanent fixture and then pass it to my wife as I stand up and head to the bathroom for the plastic bin.
"Okay, flower... okay..." Sun soothes Rory as best as she can, rubbing her hand up and down her spine while she cries and coughs.
I run back into the bedroom, flicking on the bright light to see the damage that's been done.
Passing Sunny the bucket, I frown at the mess of vomit on the carpet.
"Momma—" Roo whimpers, crying her eyes out and holding her stomach.
"Okay," Sunny comforts her, giving her a cuddle as I head back into the bathroom and find a tube of toilet roll for her to wipe our child up with. "You're okay, you're just a little bit sicky,"
"I told d-daddy my tummy was-was poorly..." She snitches on me with a whimper.
"Yeah, well your daddy is a little bit slow in the middle of the night but lucky for you, your momma knows how to make your tummy feel better, right?"
Rory is tear riddled, sniffling and snotting all over the place.
"Did my child just snitch at me and did you just agree with her?"
"Baby, now's not the time to have your ego bruised," Sunny tells me under her breath while she rubs her hand in small circles on Rory's belly and peppers kisses to her damp cheek.
"My ego is always bruised when it comes to you. Little Miss Sunshine is the perfect mum and then there's me who—"
The potent aroma of the vomit currently sinking into our carpet makes me stop mid sentence to gag.
"Fuck me—"
Rory cries harder, her voice shaking as she blinks up at me with damp eyelashes and a wobbling bottom lip.
"I'm sorry—" She cries burying her head into Sunday's shoulder.
"Daddy's not mad," Sun reassured her. "Right, Daddy?"
I shake my head and pinch the tip of my nose to plug the smell. "No, not mad... just mildly repulsed by the fact that there is child chunder on my carpet but it's okay..."
"Daddy's not mad," Sunday adds with a glare in my direction.
"Nope, like I said, not mad just questioning why children are some sort of projectile vomit machines?"
Sunday looks up at me, flashing that expression which I know means she's getting frustrated with me. Her hands continue to soothe Rory as I stand lifelessly in front of them.
"Do you want to help clean it up or something?"
"You want me to touch the vomit?"
"Harry?"
"Mmm?" I hum, looking down at my wife on her knees in front of me and for the first time ever the sight of it doesn't turn me on because there is a fuck tonne of spew in between us.
"Remember last month when you and my stupid brother went out to a bar on your little bromance date and you both got annihilated and came back here and both of you threw up in my kitchen?"
I stare at her. "-Our kitchen-"
"My kitchen!" She growls out.
"I don't know what you're talking about. It must have slipped my mind." I grin.
"Oh, I bet it did."
I flash her another grin, tucking my hands into the pockets of the baggy basketball shorts I was sleeping in and sit back down on the end of our bed.
"Baby—" She sings my name, stroking Rory's cheek and cradling her sleepy body in her arms. "You know that little beach retreat you and I are going on?"
I nod.
"Just you and I?" She continues. "You're going to be going through a very big dry spell if you don't go and get something to clean this up,"
My eyebrows shoot up and I bite down on my bottom lip.
"You mean no sex?
Sunny sarcastically grins at me.
"You know I think you meant that as a threat but sex leads to these little vomit monsters and you know... four of them is enough for me right now. I swear if another one of them—"
A gagging noise comes from down the corridor in our quiet house followed by a cry.
"-You've got to be fucking kidding me?" I groan, tipping my head back to the ceiling. "Someone up there has out for us..."
Sunday rolls her eyes and lifts Rory up, sitting her beside me on the bed.
"Maybe my mother died and is torturing me like some sort of guardian devil. It seems like her fuckin' MO."
"Harry–" Sunday nips again, her voice teetering on stressed and yet when she looks up at me, all I see is pissed off.
"Right, yes... yes..." I sigh. "C'mon, Rory, let's get you in the shower and find you some clean pyjamas that aren't covered in sick,"
Sunday rushes off to help whichever other child was starting to blow like a damn volcano while I lift Rory up and begrudgingly hold her to my chest while carrying her to the bathroom. I help her strip down while making sure the shower was just the right temperature.
Sunday and I's en-suite only have a shower and I stand Rory up in it and start to wash not only the sick out of her hair but also off her. She whimpers the whole time, most likely still feeling poorly as she sniffles and tries to calm down.
Bundling her in a large towel that swallows her whole, I sit on the closed toilet seat and sit her on my knee where she cuddles into me.
"Feeling better yet, peanut?"
Shaking her head, she turns and cuddles closer to me.
"It's okay, babe," I say again, rocking us from side to side and wondering what all that other noise is down the hall.
When Rory is finally calm enough and dressed in a fresh set of pyjamas, I swing the door back open to our bedroom with her sitting on my hip. She's probably a bit old to do this at seven years old but I don't care.
I'm met with a sight that I didn't expect.
Nola is sitting on the edge of our bed, holding the bin under her pale chin. Mosi is sitting beside her, crying his eyes out and reaching out for sunny while he has a milky-looking substance dripping down his chin. Sunny is trying to change Juni's nappy on the end of the bed while the room stinks up with Rory's sick that neither one of us have got around to cleaning yet.
"What the hell happened?"
"Nolee's been sick, Mosi's been sick. Juni clearly has an upset stomach because her nappy is like a nuclear explosion. There's sick on the floor and the smell of it is making me want to barf too so–"
"Okay," I sigh, hearing the edge in her voice as she straps the final tab to Juniper's nappy and then lifts her fussy body up to hold her. "What do you want me to do?"
Sitting Rory down by our pillows, I tuck her under our duvet and then turn to look at my sunshine girl who is feeling a little cloudy right now.
Running the loose strands back from her face, her hips sway side to side while she tries to console Juni.
"Can you shower Mosi? I think Nola is fine, I think it all went in the bucket but–"
"Hey, Jelly Bean," I crouch down in front of her, instantly smelling the sick from the bucket and wincing. "Are you all clean?"
"My tummy–" She tells me sadly, pointing to her stomach.
"I know but did you get any sick on you?"
She shakes her head.
I nod, tucking the wild little strands of hair that have fallen out of the makeshift bun back behind her ear and feel the clamminess of her forehead.
"Do you want to get into mumma's and daddy's bed and snuggle up with Roo?"
Passing me the bucket, she nods and then crawls up the bed to take her spot beside her sister who is already falling back asleep.
Scooping Mosi up from under my arms I lift him onto my hip. "Alright little darling, let's get you cleaned up,"
Walking past Sunday, I grab her hand and she lets me take it.
"Sunny baby?" Her eyes flick up to mine slowly and she nods reluctantly. "Hey, stop stressing. We're fine, they're fine. It's just a tummy bug,"
She nods slowly, almost folding into me. I meander my hand from hers up to the back of her head when she drops her forehead to my bare shoulder.
"It's just a tummy bug, I know your OCD is going wild right now but I'll clean it all up, okay?"
"I'm not worried about the mess,"
"Kids get sick, Sun," I reason with her delicately. "One of the girls probably got it at school and now here we are. This is the downside of having a trillion children. They all get sick at once like some infection little rebellion,"
I can feel her smile against my shoulder as she cuddles closer to me. Juni is on her hip and Mosi is on mine as she holds me for just a second more.
"And to think you want another one," I whisper to her.
"Maybe I just want more of you," She tells me softly, puckering a kiss to the base of my neck as she pulls back.
"Are you trying to turn me on right now, Sunshine?" I question lowly.
My wife's face drops as she purses her lips and shakes her head in refusal. "I was trying to be romantic but your dirty mind has one mode and that's sex,"
"That's not true. I have two modes. Sex and sleep,"
She shoves my face away with a smile. She tries to hide it but I know she finds me funny, that's probably why we've always worked so well.
Sunny overthinks stuff, her brain is always working a million miles an hour and she is so uptight about a lot of stuff because that is how she always protected her peace.
Me, on the other hand, I am a clown who never takes anything seriously and lets humour muffle out noisy situations.
She makes me more serious and I make her more chilled.
It's a beautiful little system we have going.
Taking Mosi into the bathroom, I strip his footsie pyjamas off and take off his nappy for the night while I undress myself and step into the shower with him. I figure it would be easier to shower a two-year-old this way than try and do it while staying dry.
He grumbles a little when his hair gets wet but it is unavoidable.
"Dada," He mumbles, cuddling into my chest under the water. "See mama?"
"In a second," I whisper, kissing his forehead and trying my best to clean him with one hand so I can hold him with the other.
"See mama?"
"Yeah, soon, Mos–" I reply again because there has never been a bigger mumma's boy in the history of planet Earth other than Mosi.
I'm basically non-existent to this boy. I only bloody made him on a drunken night out with some random chick but nope. I am chopped liver. I am irrelevant.
It's like he's already embarrassed by me at merely two years old.
But I get it. I do, I mean, I am also stupidly obsessed with his mumma so I get it.
Like father, like son I suppose.
There could certainly be worse things I could have passed onto him other than a crippling love for the woman raising him.
Smiling at the thought of it, I finish showering both Mosi and myself, wrapping us both up in a towel and stepping out of the bathroom.
Like the super woman that she is, Sunday has nearly completely cleaned the carpet. There is barely a stain left but just as I step through the threshold she sprinkles some weirdly looking foamy dust on it.
"Hey, bud!" She grins, reaching for a naked Mosi and pulling him from my clutch so she can dry and dress him back up for bed.
I do the same, unaided because I am a grown man. I know that may be hard to believe because I am so stunted in so many ways but I was taught to dress myself.
Sticking to my usual attire of just boxers and if I'm feeling a little extra, a pair of sweat shorts, I crawl back into bed only to find that Rory is asleep in the middle of our bed and Nola is almost asleep with her head on my pillow.
Sighing, I look up at Sunny who simply shrugs and passes me a clean, fresh bucket in case either of them wakes up.
"Here, take him? I need to feed Juni bug,"
I nod, lifting Mosi into my arms and trying to cuddle him back to sleep but he just rolls around in my arms.
Sunny gets into her side of the bed, pulls her tank top down and starts to feed Juni who is lying across her body.
Nola huffs in her sleep and Mosi finally breaks free from my grip and starts to haphazardly crawl across the mattress to get to Sun.
"Ouch!" Nola grumbles, holding her stomach as Mosi's knee jams into it. "My tummy, Mosi–"
"It was an accident, petal," Sunny tells her. "He didn't do it on purpose."
"He's being mean,"
"No, he's not,"
"Yes. He is," She argues sleepily.
I curl my arm around her little body and pull her closer to me. Partly because I like cuddling with my children while they're still young and not embarrassed by me and partly because I am about to fall off the fucking bed because there is a whole football team currently laying in it.
"Go to sleep," I tell her, rolling onto my back to see that it is currently nearly half past three and she is still awake.
"But–"
"Nola," I say sternly. "Mosi doesn't feel good either. Just like you and he wants his mumma to feel better. It was an accident, he didn't hurt your tummy on purpose, okay?"
She grumbles but nods and cuddles her cat teddy closer to her chest.
Eventually, she falls asleep just like Rory.
Mosi cuddles into Sunday, his head touching her shoulder.
She strokes Juni's hair as she feeds and I just watch through the mirror on the ceiling that thankfully, none of the kids have questioned yet but inevitably, they will.
"He's hot,"
"Hmm?" My head rolls to the side, looking at Sunny who is placing her hand on the back of Mosi's head.
"He's probably got a fever but let him sleep," I tell her.
He's only in a nappy just like Juni and they're both still warm.
"What if it's more serious?"
"Sun?" I catch her attention. "He's okay. Babies get sick because they shove stupid shit in their mouths. The girls got sick, he probably caught it off them just like Juni bug. They're okay, I promise,"
"What if they're not okay,"
"Sunshine, you're going to make yourself sick if you don't stop stressing about this," I calmly tell her. "The girls have been sick before, so has Mosi,"
"But this is all of them at the same time," She tells me pointedly.
"Sunday, they're okay. Get some sleep, baby,"
"But–"
I lift my hand out, sliding it under the pillow that both Nola and Rory were sleeping on. It brushes past Mosi and just about reaches Sunny's shoulder. I run the back of my knuckle over her skin.
"Go to sleep, I'll stay up with them,"
"You need sleep,"
"My plan for tomorrow is to rot away on the couch and watch The Little Mermaid until my ears bleed." I smile softly. "I can do that on no sleep,"
"I can–"
"You have a lunch date with your mum and Ingrid tomorrow," I argue. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you if I need to, okay?"
Her eyes grow heavy but she nods and closes them.
"I really love you,"
I grin, nodding my head into the pillow. "I really love you too, Sunshine. Dream of me,"
She scoffs before falling asleep.
sorry its so short :(