Moments: 1978-1986
((OOC: Present for Devon. She is the best son ever.))
The first cigarette of the day was not always as it had become. There was a time when Edric felt that Laura still needed wooing, which did fantastically disturbing things to his morning routine. It meant sneaking off when the sky was still dark to step outside with his smoke. It meant letting her tug the sheets away and shock his bare skin with the cold. It meant letting his arm go numb and his stomach grumble so she could dream a little longer. He might have felt somewhere that she still deserved wooing, but went out of his way to ignore those feelings for the sake of his precious cigarette.
As it had become: slow, languid, scorching, filling.
The cigarette was similar.
It was very nearly the first thing Edric did in the morning. The sun would just begin to touch the hills, kissing away the stars and making the sky blush. Edric would slowly push himself up to greet it. His eyes barely open, he would lean over and touch his lips to Laura’s face, just below her temple, and so he would stay until his back ached. She was slow to react, which gave Edric the time to pay the same slow, appreciative attention to his second love.
With each deep breath, the embers would burn like the furnace of the sunrise- intense and blinding by then, turned from a blush to a blaze. And each inhale filled him like no pancake or rasher of bacon ever could. The exhale was something even greater; a release of the bad dreams and bad aches and bad needs, all in a beautiful blue wisp that wandered toward the ceiling and disappeared, forgotten.
All the while it burned in his throat and his chest and his heart-a sensation dulled by familiarity, until the burn touched his thigh and his belly and murmured, muffled by sleep and rumpled, white linens, “Morning.”
She touched the dark, sensitive blotches below her eyes, brow furrowed, mouth hanging open, forgotten. She leaned closer to the mirror, nose almost touching the glass, marble counter cutting into her skin.
“I told you,” he said, and she froze, staring at him in the mirror. Refusing the meet his eyes, focusing somewhere between his collarbone and jutting ribcage.
“You shouldn’t sleep in your make-up.” He was focused on his nails, rubbing one that stubbornly refused to be shaped. It was an excruciatingly long ten seconds later that his eyes finally met hers to notice her appalled glare. His only response was a smile-cheeky, daring-and he turned to face her, leaning with his hip against the counter. It was an invitation to argue, only offered because he knew she couldn’t.
He didn’t expect her to snap, “You’ve got gray eyebrows.”
It was indeed a most underhanded route, and one of few available. But it was a battle not easily won. “You have dry patches on your elbows,” he shot back.
“You have no ass.”
“You have no hips.”
“You have hairy knuckles.”
“Your tits sagged after you got pregnant.”
Their sparring hitched and stumbled as she could only gasp and tug her rope tightly closed, palm pressed flat against her chest. Finally, she managed “You got me pregnant.” But he was already laughing and had inched forward enough to grab her around the waist and pull her tightly against himself. “Oh, don’t,” she was saying, but he kissed her neck and stroked her hair and she didn’t feel all that ashamed.
On the table, Theo’s cereal had gone soggy and the milk had turned warm, but he wouldn’t notice for a few more minutes. He had slid off his chair long ago to follow his mother, floating out of the dining room toward the music.
He stood now, slowly shifting his weight from foot to foot like a metronome, fingers twisting restlessly in the hem of his shirt, watching them dance from the doorway.
His father barely noticed, but every once in a while his mother would shoot him a wink over Edric’s shoulder. This dance was open and fumbling and carefree-a good mood for the morning, enticing laughter and ease amongst the family. It was a different dance from the one they did at night, when they thought Theo was asleep.
The day could not dictate how it ended, but most night’s Theo was not surprised to be awoken by one of two sounds: music or shouting. It was never his father that was shouting. There was a certain wildness in Laura that drove her to it, though Edric would only scowl and hiss when they fought. When it was shouting, Theo would try to ignore it, burrowing down in his blankets and closing his eyes tightly. But when it was music, he would tiptoe to the door and down the hall and down the stairs to peek around corners until he spotted them. This dance was tight and close and though it was far more subtle than the bouncing, inviting dance of the morning, it entranced Theo like the other couldn’t. So he would stay, holding his breath and watching his father hold his mother possessively, whispering against her neck. Her eyes would stay closed and she would keep a hand at the back of his head-not so possessive, but comforting and grounding. When Theo finally had to breathe he would tiptoe away again, to the front hall where he found the great grey dogs sleeping on their sides, kicking and growling at rabbits in their dreams. It took a hand on their massive ribcages to end their chase, and Theo would curl up next to them. In the morning he would be in his bed, the dogs and their dreams forgotten until the next night he heard his parents’ music.
Found amongst Edric Anthony Nott’s personal belongings at the Ministry of Magic, subsequent to his incarceration:
Ed,
Do you remember the day I tried to make cupcakes with Theo to take to his friend’s party and we forgot them in the oven? You weren’t at work that day, and you ate one anyway when Theo started to cry. You must remember. You said they were so good that his friends couldn’t have any because you were going to eat them all. I think you were sick later. Theo went to the party without the cupcakes and we spent the afternoon laughing about it. Well, I was laughing about it.
I remember it so clearly right now. We were in the stables, and you were brushing Owl but you suddenly stopped, looking pale, so I asked what was wrong. You glared at me and said, “If you were crying, I would eat a whole live dragon.” I thought the issue was long over and you sounded so angry that I only laughed, which made you angrier and Owl almost bit you.
I just burnt the cake I wanted to take to Mum’s tonight, and that whole day came back to me. It was a perfect day.
I love everything about you.
Now get back to work.
Endless adoration,
Laura
The air was heavy with the smell of the multitudes of rich, tropical flowers and fruits the covered every corner of the room, but the breeze brought in the smell of the sands and the ash. The curtains swayed gently with it-a chilly breeze, but not quite cold enough to cool their sweat. Outside, the waves crashed and the sun burned confidently in the cloudless blue sky, enticing tourists and locals alike out to the beach to cool off and wind down. But it seemed as if it would take the volcanoes erupting to encourage the couple out of the deep, wingback chair. His fingers skimmed up her stomach, between her breasts, to the hollow of her neck then back down again, circling her belly button before their return. So they stayed for an eternity, her back to his chest, skin to skin. Even a knock at the door was ignored until he found the energy to lift his head and kiss her shoulder, snapping her out of her reverie. Gracelessly she stood and found a dressing own amongst the sheets on the bed, but had to pause with her hand on the door handle and stare at him as he maintained his casual recline.
The bellhop was not bashful, and when he pushed his cart into the room he spoke directly to the man in the chair with only a pillow and a cigarette with him. Edric said nothing and waved him away, and Laura thanked him as he closed the door. “More flowers. From my cousin and his wife,” she said, reading the card on the bouquet. “Did you want to go to the beach for lunch?”
“No,” he replied, tossing the pillow away.
“He’s going to be just like his dad,” Laura said, turning with one hand on her hip, the other shading her eyes so she could look up the hill to the two sitting in the grass.
“Who’s that? The milkman?” Rudy replied. He wasn’t looking at her; his kite was whipping around and threatening to pitch to the ground as the wind picked up. She swatted his arm, surprising him enough to let the kite swoop dangerously low. “Well, he’s not like Ed. I figured you must have been confessing something there.”
“What do you mean, ‘he’s not like Ed’?” Laura asked, baffled. Up the hill, Theo was trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered or chilled by the wind, though he shivered and swayed. He tried to square his shoulders and cock his head like his dad did then, waiting for the child to break down and ask for his sweater.
“He’s not. He doesn’t swear or smoke or anything,” Rudy said.
“Of course he doesn’t. He’s four years old.”
“Ed isn’t four years old.” Finally he turned to her, twisting the fingers that had been holding the twine into his t-shirt, trying to dull the burn. “I don’t understand where you’re getting the similarity here.”
Laura groaned and knocked the spool out of his hands defiantly, sending him stumbling after it as the kite made its escape.
Theo climbed into his father’s lap, pressing against his warm chest.
It didn’t rain when they lowered her into the ground, but the sky rumbled and the flowers turned their faces up in anticipation.
At the manor, the tables had to be brought in from the lawn, and bodies pressed together and elbows knocked in the hurriedly prepared sunroom and dining room. By then, most had turned from tears to stories, but only a few pockets of laughter could be heard. Rudy found himself hosting, though he wept the whole time, for all the better suited faces had either never showed or quickly disappeared.
On the patio, Edric didn’t mind that his black velvet suit slowly became damp and heavy. He stared out into the rain, drowning the new blackberries and irises, silencing the birds and enticing the worms. Theodore leaned against his leg and buried his face in his jacket, but neither of them cried. Theo was out of tears and Edric would not find his for many years yet.
The rain lasted barely half an hour, and the humidity forced the tables back onto the lawn and the guests out of their modest jackets. For days the house would smell of all those bodies, stiff and sweating, and their cigars and spilt wine. But for now a rainbow peaked out over the lake, and Edric carefully dropped to his knees to hug his son. Theo would forget that moment soon, lost amongst the pages of grief that would dictate those first few weeks. He would remember it clearly ten years later, and his heart would ache for it.
Feta cheese does not go well with cereals. Or chicken gravy. Or chocolate. But it had become a staple in every meal, snack, feast, nibble and taste. Breakfast was harder to handle in light of this new development, but Edric was rarely one for breakfast anyway. At dinner, he tried to plan meals around her cravings, but some days it didn’t quite work out. So they would sit, and he would stare at her as she chewed her feta and glazed salmon or mole verde or split pea soup until she lay down her fork and cried or yelled or (on the better days) laughed. Every time he would try to ease the tension by telling her that she was turning their son to cheese, but the chances of this working was a crapshoot. Until one day she just said wearily, “Stop saying that.”
He was sympathetic to very little during her pregnancy, so she didn’t expect much better and it wasn’t that she was bothered or frustrated with him. But something in her voice discouraged his flippant reply, and the meal was finished in silence.
Later, he held her heavy belly and didn’t quite apologize for being a total ass all the time, but she had forgiven him long ago. She might have another three months of feta-on-french-toast to go, but he had years of craving her hard-won attention ahead of him.
Laura wore Grecian draped silk. It curved where she curved and jutted where she jutted and swept the floor, making her look impossibly taller and leaner.
It didn’t matter what Edric wore.
All night he couldn’t help but touch her-fingers just barely grazing the inviting fabric. Every time, she would give him the same sidelong look and glide away, grabbing someone else’s arm or greeting another old friend.
When they left the party, she dragged him away from the streetlamps and kissed him deeply. But then she was gone. He leaned against the wall, still smelling her perfume and feeling the silk in his hands.
Later still he stood with Dolly in the fountain of the darkened library courtyard, their pantlegs rolled and socks and shoes lost over the fence (victims of this daring game, never to be recovered). When they managed to get their laughter under control, pressing their hands over each other’s mouths with warning hushes, Dolly asked, “So, who is she?”
For a long time Edric didn’t answer. Under his toe, he thought he felt a slimy knut. “She’s magnificent,” he finally said. The swish and glitter of the water, disturbed by their searching feet, cut the silence and the darkness. Dolly wished he could see Edric’s face.
“Oy, whatchoo doin’ in here then?” The unfamiliar voice and piercing beam of light interrupted before Dolly could coax a better answer out of his friend. Their laughter was cut short as they both apparated, two different destinations, leaving the light to sweep across the bare, silent courtyard. The next day, Dolly would tell Edric that he’d found six knuts and a sickle that night, and Edric would tell him that he had found heaven.
1.
Theodore never called Edric ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. He had perhaps, for his first few years of life, but had grown out of it with astonishing quickness, with no real prompting that they could think of. He was always simply ‘Father’, which to others sounded strange coming out of a five year old, but to Ed and Laura now seemed common place.
It was only when with others, referring to his father that the phrase ‘dad’ would be used, most often with his mother (mum) or with Dolly. The only time the word was ever issued towards Edric was when the child was sick or scared.
It was for this reason, when in the dead of night a small voice issued ‘…Dad?’ from the doorway that Edric had arisen in a moment, silently beckoning the boy into their bed, enfolding him in the sheets and in his strong safe arms. The child was feverish, and simply lay his head against Edric’s chest and he smiled softly, a smile few people saw, and pet the boy's hair until he slowly drifted back to sleep.
In the morning his fever had broken and the child was soon chasing the dogs about the yard, and Laura smiled softly, coming up behind Ed as he watched Theo from their window, kissing his neck.
2.
Theodore sighed dramatically, laying his head in Edric’s lap as Laura tried on another outfit. “Mum haaas enough clothes,” he moaned, and he was rewarded with a coy smirk from his father, with vanished the second Laura emerged, replaced with a forced interested look.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning out and trying to view herself from all angles in the looking glass.
“You look fat in that,” he said pleasantly. Laura’s eyes met his in the mirror flashing with a dangerous yet amused look. “What was that love?” she asked, turning round, and Theo giggled, eyes skirting up briefly to his father’s and hiding his face.
Edric calmly maintained eye contact, giving a half shrug. “You heard me.” A shoe flew at his head, narrowly missing him and she retreated back behind the curtain. Theodore peered out from behind his fingers, and Edric nudged him off, winking and disappearing behind the curtain as well. A short while later the distinct sound of laughter was heard, and it was several minutes before they reemerged, all forgiven.
The first cigarette of the day was not always as it had become. There was a time when Edric felt that Laura still needed wooing, which did fantastically disturbing things to his morning routine. It meant sneaking off when the sky was still dark to step outside with his smoke. It meant letting her tug the sheets away and shock his bare skin with the cold. It meant letting his arm go numb and his stomach grumble so she could dream a little longer. He might have felt somewhere that she still deserved wooing, but went out of his way to ignore those feelings for the sake of his precious cigarette.
As it had become: slow, languid, scorching, filling.
The cigarette was similar.
It was very nearly the first thing Edric did in the morning. The sun would just begin to touch the hills, kissing away the stars and making the sky blush. Edric would slowly push himself up to greet it. His eyes barely open, he would lean over and touch his lips to Laura’s face, just below her temple, and so he would stay until his back ached. She was slow to react, which gave Edric the time to pay the same slow, appreciative attention to his second love.
With each deep breath, the embers would burn like the furnace of the sunrise- intense and blinding by then, turned from a blush to a blaze. And each inhale filled him like no pancake or rasher of bacon ever could. The exhale was something even greater; a release of the bad dreams and bad aches and bad needs, all in a beautiful blue wisp that wandered toward the ceiling and disappeared, forgotten.
All the while it burned in his throat and his chest and his heart-a sensation dulled by familiarity, until the burn touched his thigh and his belly and murmured, muffled by sleep and rumpled, white linens, “Morning.”
She touched the dark, sensitive blotches below her eyes, brow furrowed, mouth hanging open, forgotten. She leaned closer to the mirror, nose almost touching the glass, marble counter cutting into her skin.
“I told you,” he said, and she froze, staring at him in the mirror. Refusing the meet his eyes, focusing somewhere between his collarbone and jutting ribcage.
“You shouldn’t sleep in your make-up.” He was focused on his nails, rubbing one that stubbornly refused to be shaped. It was an excruciatingly long ten seconds later that his eyes finally met hers to notice her appalled glare. His only response was a smile-cheeky, daring-and he turned to face her, leaning with his hip against the counter. It was an invitation to argue, only offered because he knew she couldn’t.
He didn’t expect her to snap, “You’ve got gray eyebrows.”
It was indeed a most underhanded route, and one of few available. But it was a battle not easily won. “You have dry patches on your elbows,” he shot back.
“You have no ass.”
“You have no hips.”
“You have hairy knuckles.”
“Your tits sagged after you got pregnant.”
Their sparring hitched and stumbled as she could only gasp and tug her rope tightly closed, palm pressed flat against her chest. Finally, she managed “You got me pregnant.” But he was already laughing and had inched forward enough to grab her around the waist and pull her tightly against himself. “Oh, don’t,” she was saying, but he kissed her neck and stroked her hair and she didn’t feel all that ashamed.
On the table, Theo’s cereal had gone soggy and the milk had turned warm, but he wouldn’t notice for a few more minutes. He had slid off his chair long ago to follow his mother, floating out of the dining room toward the music.
He stood now, slowly shifting his weight from foot to foot like a metronome, fingers twisting restlessly in the hem of his shirt, watching them dance from the doorway.
His father barely noticed, but every once in a while his mother would shoot him a wink over Edric’s shoulder. This dance was open and fumbling and carefree-a good mood for the morning, enticing laughter and ease amongst the family. It was a different dance from the one they did at night, when they thought Theo was asleep.
The day could not dictate how it ended, but most night’s Theo was not surprised to be awoken by one of two sounds: music or shouting. It was never his father that was shouting. There was a certain wildness in Laura that drove her to it, though Edric would only scowl and hiss when they fought. When it was shouting, Theo would try to ignore it, burrowing down in his blankets and closing his eyes tightly. But when it was music, he would tiptoe to the door and down the hall and down the stairs to peek around corners until he spotted them. This dance was tight and close and though it was far more subtle than the bouncing, inviting dance of the morning, it entranced Theo like the other couldn’t. So he would stay, holding his breath and watching his father hold his mother possessively, whispering against her neck. Her eyes would stay closed and she would keep a hand at the back of his head-not so possessive, but comforting and grounding. When Theo finally had to breathe he would tiptoe away again, to the front hall where he found the great grey dogs sleeping on their sides, kicking and growling at rabbits in their dreams. It took a hand on their massive ribcages to end their chase, and Theo would curl up next to them. In the morning he would be in his bed, the dogs and their dreams forgotten until the next night he heard his parents’ music.
Found amongst Edric Anthony Nott’s personal belongings at the Ministry of Magic, subsequent to his incarceration:
Ed,
Do you remember the day I tried to make cupcakes with Theo to take to his friend’s party and we forgot them in the oven? You weren’t at work that day, and you ate one anyway when Theo started to cry. You must remember. You said they were so good that his friends couldn’t have any because you were going to eat them all. I think you were sick later. Theo went to the party without the cupcakes and we spent the afternoon laughing about it. Well, I was laughing about it.
I remember it so clearly right now. We were in the stables, and you were brushing Owl but you suddenly stopped, looking pale, so I asked what was wrong. You glared at me and said, “If you were crying, I would eat a whole live dragon.” I thought the issue was long over and you sounded so angry that I only laughed, which made you angrier and Owl almost bit you.
I just burnt the cake I wanted to take to Mum’s tonight, and that whole day came back to me. It was a perfect day.
I love everything about you.
Now get back to work.
Endless adoration,
Laura
The air was heavy with the smell of the multitudes of rich, tropical flowers and fruits the covered every corner of the room, but the breeze brought in the smell of the sands and the ash. The curtains swayed gently with it-a chilly breeze, but not quite cold enough to cool their sweat. Outside, the waves crashed and the sun burned confidently in the cloudless blue sky, enticing tourists and locals alike out to the beach to cool off and wind down. But it seemed as if it would take the volcanoes erupting to encourage the couple out of the deep, wingback chair. His fingers skimmed up her stomach, between her breasts, to the hollow of her neck then back down again, circling her belly button before their return. So they stayed for an eternity, her back to his chest, skin to skin. Even a knock at the door was ignored until he found the energy to lift his head and kiss her shoulder, snapping her out of her reverie. Gracelessly she stood and found a dressing own amongst the sheets on the bed, but had to pause with her hand on the door handle and stare at him as he maintained his casual recline.
The bellhop was not bashful, and when he pushed his cart into the room he spoke directly to the man in the chair with only a pillow and a cigarette with him. Edric said nothing and waved him away, and Laura thanked him as he closed the door. “More flowers. From my cousin and his wife,” she said, reading the card on the bouquet. “Did you want to go to the beach for lunch?”
“No,” he replied, tossing the pillow away.
“He’s going to be just like his dad,” Laura said, turning with one hand on her hip, the other shading her eyes so she could look up the hill to the two sitting in the grass.
“Who’s that? The milkman?” Rudy replied. He wasn’t looking at her; his kite was whipping around and threatening to pitch to the ground as the wind picked up. She swatted his arm, surprising him enough to let the kite swoop dangerously low. “Well, he’s not like Ed. I figured you must have been confessing something there.”
“What do you mean, ‘he’s not like Ed’?” Laura asked, baffled. Up the hill, Theo was trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered or chilled by the wind, though he shivered and swayed. He tried to square his shoulders and cock his head like his dad did then, waiting for the child to break down and ask for his sweater.
“He’s not. He doesn’t swear or smoke or anything,” Rudy said.
“Of course he doesn’t. He’s four years old.”
“Ed isn’t four years old.” Finally he turned to her, twisting the fingers that had been holding the twine into his t-shirt, trying to dull the burn. “I don’t understand where you’re getting the similarity here.”
Laura groaned and knocked the spool out of his hands defiantly, sending him stumbling after it as the kite made its escape.
Theo climbed into his father’s lap, pressing against his warm chest.
It didn’t rain when they lowered her into the ground, but the sky rumbled and the flowers turned their faces up in anticipation.
At the manor, the tables had to be brought in from the lawn, and bodies pressed together and elbows knocked in the hurriedly prepared sunroom and dining room. By then, most had turned from tears to stories, but only a few pockets of laughter could be heard. Rudy found himself hosting, though he wept the whole time, for all the better suited faces had either never showed or quickly disappeared.
On the patio, Edric didn’t mind that his black velvet suit slowly became damp and heavy. He stared out into the rain, drowning the new blackberries and irises, silencing the birds and enticing the worms. Theodore leaned against his leg and buried his face in his jacket, but neither of them cried. Theo was out of tears and Edric would not find his for many years yet.
The rain lasted barely half an hour, and the humidity forced the tables back onto the lawn and the guests out of their modest jackets. For days the house would smell of all those bodies, stiff and sweating, and their cigars and spilt wine. But for now a rainbow peaked out over the lake, and Edric carefully dropped to his knees to hug his son. Theo would forget that moment soon, lost amongst the pages of grief that would dictate those first few weeks. He would remember it clearly ten years later, and his heart would ache for it.
Feta cheese does not go well with cereals. Or chicken gravy. Or chocolate. But it had become a staple in every meal, snack, feast, nibble and taste. Breakfast was harder to handle in light of this new development, but Edric was rarely one for breakfast anyway. At dinner, he tried to plan meals around her cravings, but some days it didn’t quite work out. So they would sit, and he would stare at her as she chewed her feta and glazed salmon or mole verde or split pea soup until she lay down her fork and cried or yelled or (on the better days) laughed. Every time he would try to ease the tension by telling her that she was turning their son to cheese, but the chances of this working was a crapshoot. Until one day she just said wearily, “Stop saying that.”
He was sympathetic to very little during her pregnancy, so she didn’t expect much better and it wasn’t that she was bothered or frustrated with him. But something in her voice discouraged his flippant reply, and the meal was finished in silence.
Later, he held her heavy belly and didn’t quite apologize for being a total ass all the time, but she had forgiven him long ago. She might have another three months of feta-on-french-toast to go, but he had years of craving her hard-won attention ahead of him.
Laura wore Grecian draped silk. It curved where she curved and jutted where she jutted and swept the floor, making her look impossibly taller and leaner.
It didn’t matter what Edric wore.
All night he couldn’t help but touch her-fingers just barely grazing the inviting fabric. Every time, she would give him the same sidelong look and glide away, grabbing someone else’s arm or greeting another old friend.
When they left the party, she dragged him away from the streetlamps and kissed him deeply. But then she was gone. He leaned against the wall, still smelling her perfume and feeling the silk in his hands.
Later still he stood with Dolly in the fountain of the darkened library courtyard, their pantlegs rolled and socks and shoes lost over the fence (victims of this daring game, never to be recovered). When they managed to get their laughter under control, pressing their hands over each other’s mouths with warning hushes, Dolly asked, “So, who is she?”
For a long time Edric didn’t answer. Under his toe, he thought he felt a slimy knut. “She’s magnificent,” he finally said. The swish and glitter of the water, disturbed by their searching feet, cut the silence and the darkness. Dolly wished he could see Edric’s face.
“Oy, whatchoo doin’ in here then?” The unfamiliar voice and piercing beam of light interrupted before Dolly could coax a better answer out of his friend. Their laughter was cut short as they both apparated, two different destinations, leaving the light to sweep across the bare, silent courtyard. The next day, Dolly would tell Edric that he’d found six knuts and a sickle that night, and Edric would tell him that he had found heaven.
1.
Theodore never called Edric ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. He had perhaps, for his first few years of life, but had grown out of it with astonishing quickness, with no real prompting that they could think of. He was always simply ‘Father’, which to others sounded strange coming out of a five year old, but to Ed and Laura now seemed common place.
It was only when with others, referring to his father that the phrase ‘dad’ would be used, most often with his mother (mum) or with Dolly. The only time the word was ever issued towards Edric was when the child was sick or scared.
It was for this reason, when in the dead of night a small voice issued ‘…Dad?’ from the doorway that Edric had arisen in a moment, silently beckoning the boy into their bed, enfolding him in the sheets and in his strong safe arms. The child was feverish, and simply lay his head against Edric’s chest and he smiled softly, a smile few people saw, and pet the boy's hair until he slowly drifted back to sleep.
In the morning his fever had broken and the child was soon chasing the dogs about the yard, and Laura smiled softly, coming up behind Ed as he watched Theo from their window, kissing his neck.
2.
Theodore sighed dramatically, laying his head in Edric’s lap as Laura tried on another outfit. “Mum haaas enough clothes,” he moaned, and he was rewarded with a coy smirk from his father, with vanished the second Laura emerged, replaced with a forced interested look.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning out and trying to view herself from all angles in the looking glass.
“You look fat in that,” he said pleasantly. Laura’s eyes met his in the mirror flashing with a dangerous yet amused look. “What was that love?” she asked, turning round, and Theo giggled, eyes skirting up briefly to his father’s and hiding his face.
Edric calmly maintained eye contact, giving a half shrug. “You heard me.” A shoe flew at his head, narrowly missing him and she retreated back behind the curtain. Theodore peered out from behind his fingers, and Edric nudged him off, winking and disappearing behind the curtain as well. A short while later the distinct sound of laughter was heard, and it was several minutes before they reemerged, all forgiven.