FNL fic: We Wonder Where We Are (Gen, PG)
Title: We Wonder Where We Are
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG
Characters: Tami, Eric, Julie
Timeframe: between season 1 and season 2.
W/C: 1,000
Disclaimer: Property of NBC.

Summary: The Taylors eat out while Eric struggles to hold on to home.

a/n: Written for picfor1000 challenge #6. Thanks to innie_darling, who is very good to me, for the beta. Title from Dar Williams. Image is at the end of the story.



It's hotter than hell, which is to say, not much hotter than it usually gets in Dillon in the summertime. He's home, though. He's home, the air conditioning works, and quiet music is playing on the stereo; a TMU game DVD plays on mute. Tami's legs rest lazily across his thighs. She's sprawled next to him on the couch, hands resting on her rounded belly, her eyes closed. Eric gets lost staring at the familiar freckles that dust her nose, the bare skin that shows above her v-neck.

In the morning he's leaving, going back to Austin, and right then time seems to be both sped up and suspended. As if there's never been anything but this hot summer afternoon.

He thinks she's asleep until she says, without opening her eyes, "Hey, hon, I think you and me and Jules should check out that new Chinese restaurant downtown. I hear it's pretty good."

"Okay," he says, and smoothes the hair back from her gently sweating forehead.

Tami opens her eyes, smiles at him, then calls out, "Jules, can you come here a sec?"

After a moment a door opens. A drift of music Eric doesn't recognize -- something with an acoustic guitar and a mournful, earnest male voice -- emerges from his daughter's room.

"Yeah?" Julie stands in the family room doorway, hands stuck in her back pockets, hair tumbling loose over her shoulders.

Eric wonders when she got so tall, when that had happened. "Your mother and I would love it if you'd join us for dinner tonight."

"Oh. Uh. Well, I've got a lot of homework and Lois is going to call..." Julie meets his eyes, bites her lower lip, then adds, "but it can wait, I guess."

"Well good. I'm glad you could squeeze us into your busy calendar," Tami says gently, but Eric catches the edge that's crept into her voice. He wonders if Julie caught it too.

"Yeah. So. What time?" Julie pulls her hands out of her pockets, folds her arms, unfolds them, and finally settles on holding her elbows in her palms.

Tami struggles to sit up. "Six."

There's no reply from Julie; she's already retreated back into her room.

---

Liu's Golden Dragon is a lot fancier than the take-out hole-in-the-wall that serves the greasy Lo Mein and those crispy egg rolls. The potted palms are real, not rubber, and there are pale pink tablecloths, elaborate paintings on the walls of dragons and pagodas. At least he doesn't have to wear a jacket and tie, although the prices on the menu are enough to make him think maybe he should have.

The place is crowded, but amazingly, they don't see anyone they know well, no one from the team. Eric's relieved. With a five a.m. flight looming at him, another long week away from them, he wants his girls to himself.

Be real tough to look Matt or Smash or Riggins in the face now anyway.

"How's your job at the pool?" he asks Julie.

She hasn't said much the whole evening, studies the menu with her hair falling forward to shield her face. Hiding...hiding from what? From him? From Tami?

"Great, it's going great." There are sunburn streaks across her nose and cheeks.

He almost warns her to make sure she wears enough sunblock but that'd be treading into Tami's territory, implying that Tami hasn't said it every morning, calling after Julie as she rushes out of the house, don't forget your sunscreen. Of course Tami does say it, along with a hundred other things, hoping it'll stick.

"Her lifeguard trainer says she's very good." Tami peers over the top of her menu, eyes crinkling at the corners, trying to catch Julie's eye, but Julie's looking at the plastic stand-up card that lists the specials. "One of the youngest they've ever hired at the pool. Our Jules is a strong swimmer."

"You have to rescue anyone yet?" The thought makes Eric's stomach clench. Not that he wanted any Dillon kid to drown, but a heavily built football player, say, struggling and panicking in the water could drag his little girl under in seconds, no matter how good a swimmer she is.

"No. I just have to yell at them for eating in the water, stuff like that."

Tami takes a sip of ice water, eyebrows rising. "Meeting anyone new and interesting?"

"Not really," says Julie.

The waitress is at their table before Tami can say whatever she opened her mouth to say. Eric feels like he's walked in during the third reel of a movie.

They each toss a few more questions at Julie but their daughter is being about as mysterious as Stonehenge II and Eric starts to feel silly, as if they're interrogating her. He and Tami both fall silent. Julie eats her spicy cashew chicken like she hasn't noticed.

All this concern he'd had about Julie fearing they would slip away from her, and it never crossed his mind he and Tami might wind up the ones standing on the sidelines, watching Julie run away from them.

The meal ends and the waitress brings them the check and fortune cookies in three little ceramic dishes lined up side by side on a tray. Julie breaks hers open first. She smiles as she reads the bit of paper, and when she looks at Tami, the smile stays put.

Eric watches his wife's strong fingers break open the next cookie, then kisses her on the cheek, puts his hand on her belly. The baby kicks against his palm as Tami reads her fortune.

There's one cookie left and for a superstitious moment he doesn't want to reach for it, as if leaving it can prolong this. As if he'd find captured inside not a strip of paper, but images of Tami and Julie, a sunset glowing red over Dillon, the sound of his boys thundering down the field under a dark sky and bright lights.

Five a.m. looms too close.