Entry tags:

fic: fnl

Yuletide fic: Benched (Friday Night Lights, PG)
Title: Benched
Author: dotfic
Rating: PG, Tami/Eric. Season 3 spoilers.
W/C: 1,600
Disclaimer: Owned by NBC

Written for musesfool for Yuletide 2008. Thank you to amilyn for the beta.

Summary: Tami gets the flu. Julie and Eric take charge.



FRIDAY

Tami's head ached and she felt queasy, something that had been going on since yesterday. Sweat dried on her skin in the school's air conditioning. No one else seemed to be too hot--it was a balmy seventy-two degrees outside.

She muddled through the remains of Friday, and then finally, finally, the week was over and she could put her forehead down on the cool, cool surface of her desk, listening to the silence.

A moment later she jerked upright and saw that the clock had jumped ten minutes. She'd only meant to close her eyes for a moment.

---

On the drive home, she kept telling herself not to faint for crying out loud. This was ridiculous. What she needed was a good meal and some sleep.

---

It was a bye week. Eric came up behind her as she started to get dinner together. "And how was your day?" he murmured, his nose nuzzling into her hair.

She managed an incoherent noise as he started to massage her shoulders.

"Wow, hon?" Eric's hands paused. "You okay?"

"Why?" she said, opening the freezer to get to the frozen peas and resisting the urge to put the package against her face.

"You're uh..." he shrugged. "You're a little, don't take this the wrong way, it's sexy as hell, but you're a little sweaty."

"I'm fine."

In her bassinet, Gracie started to fuss.

"...and it's not that hot out today," Eric said.

She went over to check Gracie's diaper, then realized the problem was that Gracie wanted her bottle.

She really was fine, only tired, and she had a really long to-do list.

It was only when she reached up to get down the bowl she needed that she got into trouble. Her stomach went to ice and the room spun as she felt Eric's hands gripping her.

"That's it," Eric said, guiding her to the couch and making her lie down. He picked up the throw and draped it over her legs. "I'm benching you."

---

"Okay, here's the sitch." Eric folded his arms, looking down at her while Julia sat in the armchair holding Gracie. "Doc says there's a nasty flu going around, nothing too serious, but you need bed rest." He walked the length of the couch to Julie's chair and then back again. "Bed rest, fluids, no strenuous activity--it is especially important that we keep your electrolite levels up."

He sounded exactly how he did when he was coaching. As if she were a running back with a bad knee. Eric in crisis mode.

"Honey." Tami struggled to sit up, told herself the room had not just tilted. "I'm feeling better now, really, and I have a lot of things I have to get done. Four cakes and a few dozen cookies for the booster club bake sale. The grocery shopping needs to get done. Gracie Belle needs another set of little pajamas. I told Jules I'd take her shopping for new shoes--"

"Mom. We can get the shoes next week?" Julie rolled her eyes, as if she despaired of Tami ever being able to grasp the obvious.

---

SATURDAY

She didn't remember going to bed, but she woke up there instead of on the couch. When Eric came in, bringing her orange juice and toast, she insisted on moving back out to the couch.

---

Tami wrote them a list. It had instructions and details like where to find the recipes for the cakes, what brands to buy.

She thought that Eric folded the list and tucked it onto the pocket of his shirt with far too much nonchalance.

---

She insisted on staying on the couch to supervise things, although Julie and Eric were insistent that she sleep. They kept their voices down to whisper-shouting. When Gracie started to cry, Eric picked her up and walked out the room, whispered soothing words.

Tami closed her eyes, curling up against the shivering and the aches in her legs and neck and shoulders.

A moment later, she felt a quilt settling over her, on top of the throw blanket, smelled Eric's aftershave and felt the press of his hand against her forehead. She drifted off to sleep.

---

It was a hallucination. Had to be.

Julie was waltzing about the kitchen with baby Gracie, singing--very softly--a song Tami used to sing to Julie when she was a baby.

It wasn't that Julie wasn't a wonderful kid. Responsible, smart, kind. But she was headstrong, getting more headstrong lately. She did her duty--more and more with a resentful jut to her chin that telegraphed how much it was a duty.

There was nothing dutiful in how Julie was dancing around the kitchen with her baby sister. Julie shifted her grip on Gracie, got the baby food open and into a bowl, put Gracie into her bassinet and began to feed her.

Then she touched Gracie on the nose and the way both of her daughters wrinkled up their faces in laughter the same way made her forget the muscle aches.

---

When she woke up again, the kitchen seemed to be coated with flour and clumps of dough. There was flour on Gracie's onesies. The air smelled of sugar and something else.

"I smell burning," Tami said, pushing herself up. "I smell things burning."

"Got it, hon," Eric called out. He popped open the oven door and wove an oven mitt around to clear the trace of smoke, while Julie grabbed another pair of mitts and removed the cookies.

"They're not burned too badly," said Julie, poking at one. "Just a little crisp."

"We'll keep the burned ones for ourselves," Eric said, nodding in a way that showed he was very pleased with himself. "I think we can make that sacrifice for the sake of the boosters."

"Yeah!" Julie said brightly, and popped a burnt cookie into her mouth.

Tami sighed.

---

Tami stayed awake and sitting up during the rest of the baking. Julie and Eric moved together easily, coordinating tasks and ducking out of each other's way without having to ask the other one to move.

She started feeling achey again so she took more Tylenol, curled up on her side where she could only see the TV, not the kitchen, and feel asleep again with the smell of baking making her stomach growl, only all she could eat just then was toast.

---

"Did anyone get the groceries?" she called, the next time she woke.

Gracie was asleep in her bassinet, which was on the dining room table amid a mess of magazines and bills.

"Shh, mom, you'll wake Gracie," Julie whispered, uncurling her legs where she was sitting in an armchair reading Middlemarch.

"Where's your father?"

"Grocery shopping. You know, like on your list." That note was in Julie's voice again, that said she felt she was pointing out the painfully obvious. She started to gather up the dirty glasses.

"Did your father remember about the soda?"

"Yes."

"But I didn't tell him to bring the--"

"Circular with the sale in it? On it already."

"Oh."

Tami leaned back against the cushions.

---

SUNDAY

It was growing painfully clear that she wouldn't be making it into work for the next few days.

Tami arched her head back and put her hands over her face and breathed deeply as she tried to stop thinking about her schedule.

"I also have to go over the budget numbers again before Monday and then I have to --"

"Nope." Eric handed her the TV remote. "You aren't going to work on Monday."

"I'm the school principal! I can't call in sick."

"Or Tuesday," Eric added, as Julie shrugged and said, "Sure you can."

"No, sweetheart, I can't."

"There's a vice principal for a reason. Relax!" Julie tickled Gracie's stomach, making her giggle and kick her feet.

---

There were clumps of flour on the counter and stuck to the outside of the oven.

She fell asleep while Eric and Julie were still making banging and mixing noises in the kitchen, doing double duty of breakfast for themselves and the last of the booster baking. Gracie was gurgling and babbling to herself. When she woke up, the house was eerily quiet.

"Eric? Jules?" Tami sat up.

The magazines had been taken off the dining room table. The rug bore vacuum marks--how she'd slept through that Tami couldn't understand. She turned to peer at the kitchen, which didn't have a single bowl or pan left out, the counters clean.

"Oh my god," she said.

"Hey." Eric wandered in with the newspaper. "How're you feeling?"

"Like crap." She scrubbed her fingers through her hair, longing for a shower. "Where are Jules and Gracie Belle?"

"Jules took Gracie out into the back yard. It's a beautiful sunny day."

Tami looked through the sliding doors and saw them. Julie had spread a blanket out on the grass and was kneeling next to Gracie, shaking a rattle while Gracie kicked and tried to grab at the fall of Julie's hair.

"Here, scoot over." Eric gave her a gentle nudge, then settled between her body and the end of the couch. She leaned back against his chest.

"I'm probably contagious."

"Don't care," he said, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

They sat for a while, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator and the rustle as Eric read the paper.

Tami thought about not being at work Monday, Tuesday, and probably Wednesday, about all the things that were going to slip from her control.

But her head still hurt, and she had Eric and Julie, who actually listened and got it done.

"Eric," she said, turning to look up into his face.

"Yeah?"

"I can't afford to be sick."

"Uh-huh." He smiled a little, keeping his eyes on the paper.

"I think I'm going to have to anyway."

"You do what you have to do, babe." Eric shifted, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders. "Julie and me, we've got it covered."