FIC: An Economy of Words (PG)
Title: An Economy of Words
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: One
Character(s)/Pairing(s): the Snape family, implied others
Author: iulia_linnea
Rating: PG
Click to View [Warning(s)]None.
Summary: Tobias inadvertently teaches Severus a new word.
"Da, I learnt a new word!" calls Severus-from atop the garden shed.
Tobias runs towards his seven-year-old son as fast as he can and is there when Severus leaps down into his arms.
"Neurotransmitter!"
A little out of breath, Tobias hugs Severus to him. "Don't shout, boy. Yer mouth's in my ear."
"Sorry, but-"
"What does 'neurotransmitter' mean, then?" interrupts Tobias, ignoring the pounding of his heart as he places Severus on the ground and almost falls down after him.
It's been a long day, and he's had enough "excitement" from the mill foreman. Production's down.
Severus isn't and begins to lecture like the little professor Tobias imagines his son someday might be.
Smart as a tack, that one. Smart like his mam.
~*~
Eileen offers a steaming cup to him when he comes to. The ground feels impossibly soft.
"Coffee. Thank you."
"He talked himself to sleep," Eileen replies, indicating an unmoving Severus with a tilt of her head, whose own, like Tobias' recently was, is nestled into a much-patched pillow.
"This a new coverlet?" Tobias asks.
It's dark green with shiny silver edging that almost looks like letters, the coverlet under which he and Severus are resting, and it bears no patches.
"Oh, this old thing? I've had it forever. Thought I'd air it out. You both looked too comfortable to shift."
Tobias drains his cup before speaking. "Today was bad. Foreman was out for blood. Morrison was sacked. 'Poor performance', they said."
"Oh, that's too bad for Susan. She's expecting again."
And that's hard, Tobias thinks, sad. To reassure Eileen, he says, "My job's safe, will be for a while."
She leans over to kiss his cheek. "Good. Hungry?"
Looking down at his little son, Tobias smiles. "Let's let the boy nap a bit longer, but yeah, I am."
~*~
Eileen has an almost magically economical side to her that Tobias appreciates. The broth he's drinking is delicious, and the dumplings, tremendously so. He earlier watched her brew this batch of broth from an onion, half a carrot, a potato, a few mushrooms, a turnip, and a handful of herbs from their garden. The dumplings are made from almost impossibly small amounts of flour and fat with bits of bacon mixed in, and they're quite possibly the best things he's ever eaten.
Severus almost choked on such a dumpling a few weeks back. He inhales more than eats, sometimes.
"Very good, Eileen. As always."
She beams at him. "Thank you, Toby. I do love a fat dumpling."
They smile over an unheeding Severus for one charged moment, and then their boy is talking again.
"So neurotransmitters are messengers, Da! It's their jobs to-
"Job," Eileen corrects.
"Job to talk to . . . ."
Tobias leans back into his chair and allows his smart little son's voice, squeaking with authority, to wash over him. Severus' intelligence doesn't come from him, and that's fine. But it worries him.
How am I going to pay for his schooling? The mill won't stay open forever. He turns his gaze to Eileen.
As if she can feel the turn of Tobias' thoughts, Eileen fills his bowl with her nourishing soup. Tobias slurps.
Severus pauses in his lecture to laugh. Eileen laughs, too. Encouraged, Tobias slurps again in as comical a manner as he can manage.
And then, worries temporarily forgotten, there are nothing but giggles to go around until bedtime.
~*~
"What story?" asks Eileen, as Tobias enters their room.
"After all that science talk, a fairytale if you can believe it."
"The one about the hopping pot?"
"The what?" asks Tobias, having never heard any such story about any such thing.
"Oh, er-"
"My wife," he says, sliding his arms around Eileen as he pours himself under the covers with her, "you . . . must be . . . very tired, indeed."
"Indeed" is a Severus word, which means that it's an Eileen word, and she is everything to Tobias in this moment.
"Oh! Heh, yes, well . . . . Oh, Toby."
Sometime later as he's feeling as satisfied as he thinks it's possible to feel with the worries of a husband and father upon him, Tobias promises, "I will look out for us, Eileen."
"I know, Toby. I know you will. I . . . I love you."
It's a rare declaration from her; Tobias' response is heartfelt.
"Such . . . good soup."
~*~
The Morrisons leave the area; there's no other work to be had and they have to look out for their growing family.
"You miss Susan?" asks Tobias.
"I do, but not, er . . . ."
Tobias frowns as Eileen trails off. "What's wrong?"
"That Thomas Morrison," Eileen tells him, "I don't miss him. He was . . . inappropriate with me."
Tobias' spine stiffens straight. "What? When? How?"
"Last year when it looked like he might be made foreman, he came for a visit. Severus let him in."
"What happened?"
"Not much, though he ended up leaving in an awful hurry."
"What. Happened?"
"He was sitting at the kitchen table when I came in with the laundry. Severus had offered him a coffee but was having trouble filling the cup-and I didn't like him up on the chair. He was too little for that."
"Eileen," Tobias prompts.
"I got Thomas a cup and he started telling me about the 'changes' that were coming, how it was good you and he were friends, that 'friendship' was so important in such trying times."
Tobias feels his eyes narrow in anger at the intrusion, at the implied threat, visited upon Eileen. "That nasty piece of work!"
"Shh, Toby." Eileen glances out the open kitchen door to the garden. "Don't let's upset the boy."
"No, of course not, but what did Thomas actually do?"
"He put his hand on my knee," continues Eileen, "and I started up, 'inadvertently' knocking his coffee into his, er, lap."
"Why didn't you tell me before now?"
"Oh, Toby, it's just tha-"
"I would have ki-"
Eileen kisses him quiet. "That is why I didn't tell you. I didn't want you to kill him. He wasn't worth the trouble."
"That may be, Eileen, but I don't want there to be any secrets between us. There are some things a husband should know."
She nods. "You're right, Toby, you are, but . . . the burn did keep him away after that." Eileen's lips twitch.
Toby shakes his head and chuckles, but without mirth. "Good. He deserved it, the bastard."
"Ooo," says Severus, from under the lintel. "What does that word mean?"