Jay's POV.
Kade's fever is now better than before but he's still not his usual self.
Right now I'm sitting on the couch in living room and Kade is sleeping on my lap.
Keifer is in his office.
I was checking kade's temperature in every 15 minutes but thank God his fever is gone.
"Eh...ma..ma.." Kade stirred mumbling softly.
"Yes baby, mama is here. Mama is here" I immediately said rocking him gently.
"Da?"
"Dada will come soon" I said and kissed his little head. He was still warm.
"What do my baby wanna eat? Cereal? Milk? Or... Sweet potato" I asked cheerfully to lift his mood.
He sigh and leaned his head against my chest again. My smile wavered but I still maintain my smile for him.
"Lisa..." I called one of the maid who is 19 or 20 maybe.
She came immediately.
"Yes ma'am?"
"Bring mashed potatoes with a little bit of salt and black pepper" I said to her.
When Kade turned six months he refused to eat solid food and tita told me about this recipe and somehow it works. He eats it but still with efforts.
I again kissed his head rocking him on my lap.
I was caressing his hair when my phone buzzed.
I checked the caller id and I was king of ulopong.
I picked up the call.
"Hello"
[How's he?] It was his opening line.
"Better" I replied.
I heard him sighed.
"He was asking for you" I told him.
He was quite for a moment.
[What is he doing?]He asked.
"Nothing, just sitting on my lap" I replied.
[Come to video call] he said.
I switched to video call and his tired face appeared.
"Baby, say hi to dada" I said bring the phone Infront of him.
He looked at the screen. *Blink. *Blink.
"Da da" he said
Keifer's expression on the screen shifted — barely, the way it always does when he's trying not to show too much. His jaw loosened just a little. The tired lines around his eyes didn't go anywhere but something behind them did.
"Hey buddy," he said, voice quieter than usual. Softer. Like he was afraid to startle him.
Kade stared at the screen with that serious baby expression of his — the one that makes him look like a tiny old man deliberating a very important decision. Then he reached out and pressed his palm flat against the phone screen.
I felt something squeeze in my chest.
"Da," he said again, more certain this time.
"Yeah, it's dada." Keifer cleared his throat.
"You scared me, you know that?"
Kade, of course, had nothing to say to that. He just kept his hand on the screen, blinking slowly, and then leaned the side of his face against it like he was trying to press himself through the phone.
"Kade—" Keifer's voice caught.
He looked away for exactly one second. Just one. Then he was back, composure reinstated, but I saw it. I always see it.
"He's been calm all morning," I said, filling the silence because someone had to.
"Didn't fuss much. Just tired."
"Is he eating?"
"Lisa's bringing mashed potato."
"The one tita—"
"Yes. The one tita said."
He nodded slowly. There was noise in the background on his end — muffled voices, someone saying his name from a distance.
"Give me five minutes," he said, not to me. Not to Kade. Just into the air around him, a general warning to the universe.
The background noise died down.
He looked back at the screen and for a moment he just — looked. At Kade's droopy eyes and warm cheeks and the way he'd given up on the phone now and tucked himself back against my chest, my hand automatically going to his back in slow circles.
"How are you?" Keifer asked.
I blinked. "Me?"
"You've been up since what, three?"
"Two forty-something."
He gave me a look.
"I'm fine," I said. "He needed me."
"Jay."
"Keifer."
A beat. His mouth pressed flat the way it does when he wants to argue and knows it won't go anywhere.
"I'll be home by six," he said finally.
"You said that yesterday."
"I mean it today."
"You meant it yesterday too."
"Jay—" He exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I know. Okay? I know."
I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. Kade shifted against me, letting out a small, sleepy sound, and I adjusted my arm around him.
"He really was asking for you," I said again, quieter this time. Not to guilt him. Just because I wanted him to know. "First thing when he opened his eyes."
Keifer was quiet for a long moment.
"I'll be home by six," he repeated. And this time it sounded less like a promise to me and more like one he was making to himself.
Lisa appeared at the doorway holding a small bowl, steam still rising from it. She looked between me and the phone screen and took exactly one step back.
"It's okay, come," I said.
She set the bowl carefully on the side table.
"Thank you."
She nodded and slipped back out.
I looked down at Kade. "Baby, food."
He groaned the most dramatic little groan I'd ever heard from a nine-month-old and burrowed further into me.
On the screen, Keifer made a sound — half exhale, half something else entirely.
I looked up.
He was almost smiling.
Almost.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." He shook his head but the almost-smile didn't fully leave.
"No, what?"
"He's dramatic," Keifer said. "He gets that from you."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. "Excuse me, your son is sick—"
"And milking it."
"He is nine months old."
"Mm."
"Keifer Watson if you're implying that my baby is being manipulative right now I will—"
"He's fine," Keifer said simply. "Look at him."
I looked down at Kade who had, at some point in the last thirty seconds, peeked one eye open and was now watching me with an expression of mild curiosity. Alert.Calculating, almost.
I looked back at the screen.
Keifer raised an eyebrow.
"...He's still warm," I said with full dignity.
"Feed him, Jay."
"I was going to—"
"Before or after you finished defending his honor?"
I picked up the bowl.
Kade eyed it. Then eyed me. Then very slowly turned his face away like he hadn't seen anything.
"Kade." I said.
Nothing.
"Mark Kade Watson."
He blinked at the ceiling.
From the phone I heard a quiet, controlled exhale that was unmistakably Keifer suppressing a laugh. An actual laugh. The rare kind.
"Don't you dare," I said without looking at him.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're laughing."
"I'm not laughing."
"You're almost laughing which is somehow worse—"
"Just put it near his mouth, he'll eat it."
I dipped the spoon and brought it close. Kade turned his head further. A full forty-five degree rotation. A masterpiece of avoidance.
"Baby," I said, voice going soft the way it does when I'm two seconds from either begging or negotiating. "For mama. Just a little bit."
Nothing.
"It's the potato. The good one. You like this one, remember?"
One ear seemed to flicker in interest. Barely. But I've been doing this long enough to catch it.
I brought the spoon a little closer.
He turned back. Looked at it. Looked at me.
Opened his mouth approximately two millimeters.
I got the spoon in fast.
He chewed. Swallowed. Made a face like I'd personally wronged him and then immediately opened his mouth again.
"There we go," I breathed out.
"See," Keifer said quietly.
"Don't." I pointed at the screen. "Not a word."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
"I was going to say you're good with him."
I paused with the spoon halfway to Kade's mouth.
Keifer was looking at me with that expression — the one that doesn't have a name, the one he probably doesn't know he makes. Steady and unhurried, like he has all the time in the world even when he very clearly doesn't, even when there are voices somewhere behind him and a full day still sitting on his shoulders.
"Oh," I said.
Eloquent. Truly.
He looked away first. Checked something off screen. The distance came back into his posture, the professional straightening of it, and I watched him slot himself back into whatever the rest of his day needed him to be.
"I have to go," he said.
"I know."
"Six o'clock."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
He looked back at the screen one more time. Not at me — at Kade, who had forgotten about everything and was now opening and closing his fist against my knee, thoroughly occupied.
Something moved through Keifer's face that he didn't bother hiding this time.
"Tell him—" he started. Stopped.
"I will," I said quietly.
He nodded once. The call ended.
I sat there for a moment, phone in one hand, spoon in the other, Kade warm and solid against me, the apartment quiet the way it only gets mid-morning when the whole world seems to be somewhere else.
"Dada's coming home," I told him anyway.
He grabbed my finger.
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I fed him the rest of the potato.
He finished maybe two thirds of the bowl which, for Kade on a good day, is a negotiated settlement. For Kade sick and tired and out of sorts, it was practically a victory parade.
I set the bowl aside and wiped his mouth with the corner of his bib. He endured it with the patience of someone who has accepted that indignities are simply part of existing.
"Good boy," I told him.
He yawned. Wide and total, the kind that takes over his whole face, and then he slumped back against me like the effort of eating had completely finished him off.
I laughed a little, quiet, just to myself.
"That tired huh."
He didn't answer. His eyes were already going heavy again, that slow blinking that means sleep is maybe three minutes away whether he wants it or not.
I leaned back into the couch and let him settle.
The mansion was quite. Lisa had disappeared somewhere, probably the kitchen. Outside the window the city moved the way it always does — indifferent, continuous, unbothered by the small universe happening on this couch.
I rested my cheek against the top of his head.
He smelled like baby shampoo and something underneath it that was just — him. Just Kade. The smell I didn't know I would memorize without meaning to until one day I realized I already had.
My phone buzzed on the cushion beside me.
I picked it up with my free hand, careful not to disturb him.
It was a message. Keifer.
Send me a photo of him.
I looked down at Kade. Eyes closed now, lips slightly parted, one fist curled against my collarbone like even in sleep he wanted to make sure I wasn't going anywhere.
I lifted the phone. Angle, lighting, trying not to move too much. Took three attempts before I got one where the shadows weren't weird and his face was actually visible.
I sent it.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Then: Okay.
Just that. Just — okay.
I stared at it for a second.
With anyone else that would be nothing. A non-response. A conversation ender. But I've been reading Keifer Watson in between the lines for long enough now that I know what okay from him means when it comes that fast, when the dots appear and disappear twice before it, when it's one word and nothing else.
It means thank you. It means I needed that. It means something he doesn't have the architecture for yet, or maybe just not the time, not right now, not with whatever is still sitting on his desk and waiting.
I typed back: He ate. Almost the whole bowl.
The response came quicker this time.
Good.
Then, a few seconds later:
[You both rest.]
I set the phone face down on the cushion.
Outside a car horn sounded briefly and then stopped. Somewhere deeper in the apartment a faucet ran and cut off. Kade's breathing had evened out completely, slow and warm against my chest.
I closed my eyes.
Not to sleep — I wouldn't let myself fully sleep, not yet, not until I checked his temperature one more time — but just to be still for a minute. Just to sit inside the quiet.
You both rest.
I thought about his face on the screen. That one unguarded second when Kade pressed his hand to the phone. The way Keifer looked away and then looked back and thought I hadn't seen.
I had seen.
I always see.
That was the thing about loving someone who kept most of himself in locked rooms — you learned to read doorways. The ones left slightly open. The light coming through underneath.
Kade stirred faintly, resettled, sighed a breath so small it barely moved the air.
"I know," I murmured, to no one in particular.
The afternoon light came slow through the curtains and I sat there holding my son, waiting for six o'clock.
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I hope you all like the chapter.
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