Work Text:
...
The house wakes in pieces.
A floorboard sighs. A bird sings to him from outside. The faint clatter of branches against the kitchen window.
Heathrow sits in the kitchen with the radio turned low—Sinatra crooning through static, his voice honeyed in a way that makes Heathrow’s bitter coffee taste just a shade sweeter. Butter softens on the counter and the smell of it drifts up, mingling with the dark roast he brewed earlier.
The light from the window begins its climb—gold on the wall, gold on the ring at his finger, gold flickering over his lashes. He remains seated in the golden warmth of morning’s first light, and thinks if love had a sound, had a feeling, it would be in this.
Heathrow loves this hour—the soft ache of it as he waits for the sound of small voices and mismatched socks padding across the floor.
Then it comes—the small sound he’s been waiting for.
Feet on the hallway runner. A thump. An urgent whisper followed by what sounds suspiciously like a kick and a startled yelp. A door that doesn’t quite close all the way.
They arrive together, as they usually do.
Mathias leads, one hand clutching his sister’s. His hair sticks up like he’s been tossing and turning all night. The buttons on his pajama shirt are off by one, and his expression is already serious—eight years old and running a small military operation.
Sophronia trails beside him, dragging her rabbit by the ear. The poor thing bumps against the back of her leg thup, thup, thup, but she doesn’t seem to care.
“Papa,” Mathias whispers, because whispering is protocol before sunrise.
“Commander,” Heathrow answers, because that’s their game and he’s not the sort to break a tradition that works.
Sophronia copies her brother’s tone, whispering too loud. “Papa, we have a secret.”
“It’s a mission, Soph,” Mathias says with great seriousness. “We’re helping make Mama’s breakfast this year.”
“You are?” Heathrow says, feigning surprise. “I thought you two were usually too sleepy to help.”
Sophronia shakes her head so hard her hair bounces. “We’re not! We stayed up all night to make sure we’d be awake!”
Mathias shoots her a panicked look. “What Soph meant,” he says quickly, “is that we woke up early. We definitely didn’t stay up past bedtime or anything like that, and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
He gives her the look again—the brotherly one that means please stop talking forever.
Sophronia blinks, nods gravely, and repeats, “Yeah. I don’t know anything.”
Heathrow presses his lips together to hide a smile.
“Good,” he says mildly. “I’m glad that you are respecting the sanctity of having a bedtime.”
Heathrow gestures toward the counter, where everything’s already waiting—eggs sweating faintly on the marble, butter softening beside them, milk warming to room temperature in a chipped measuring cup. A little bowl of sugar waits near the coffee tin.
He crosses to the pantry and pulls out both step stools—one old and paint-spattered from when they’d used it to paint Sophronia’s nursery. The other is newer, purple, its legs sticker-bombed within an inch of their lives from the afternoon Mathias, Sophronia and Madeline had spent covering everything in sight with the sticker book Heathrow had bought for her birthday. Dinosaurs, stars, crooked hearts, a single lopsided teacup grinning up at him from the edge.
“To your stations, chefs,” he says.
Mathias climbs his immediately, posture already military. Sophronia follows, dragging her rabbit by the ear until it bumps the leg of her stool. She frowns at the indignity of it, then scoops him up and cuddles him close to her chest.
“Ready?” Heathrow asks.
“Ready,” Mathias says solemnly.
Sophronia echoes the word, grinning.
Heathrow pulls the mixing bowl and the three eggs toward the space between them. The marble hums softly under his hands as he slides everything into neutral territory—equal reach, equal temptation.
Mathias plants his feet on his stool, serious as a surgeon. “I’ll crack them,” he says.
Sophronia’s mouth drops open. “No fair! I wanted to do it!”
“You can’t,” Mathias says, scandalized, “you’re holding Thumper.”
She hugs the rabbit tighter. “So? He’s helping.”
“He’s dirty,” Mathias says, voice rising with righteous authority. “You’re gonna get the food dirty. He’s been on the floor!”
“He’s clean on the inside,” she snaps, indignant.
“He’s disgusting on the outside.”
“He’s beautiful,” Sophronia says, clutching the rabbit like a damsel defending a knight.
“He’s floppy,” Mathias mutters, glancing at her with the sharp pleasure of an older brother finding his target, “like his brain fell out.”
Sophronia gasps, truly appalled, and smacks his arm with the rabbit’s limp paw. “Take it back!”
“No! You’re the one making everything gross!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
Heathrow reaches between them, one steady hand pinning the bowl before disaster can strike. “Now,” he says evenly, “I would hate to tell your mother her anniversary breakfast was lost to an act of war.”
Both children freeze mid-glare. Sophronia’s lower lip trembles just a little, and Mathias crosses his arms like a soldier awaiting discipline.
“On that note,” Heathrow continues, calm as ever, “you both need to wash your hands.”
Two pairs of eyes swing toward him at once.
“I was waiting to see which one of you remembered,” he adds.
Sophronia straightens immediately. “I remembered,” she says.
“No, she didn’t,” Mathias says flatly. “If she did, she would’ve done it.”
Sophronia narrows her eyes and, in her quietest possible voice, says, “I will bite you.”
Mathias lets out a scandalized squawk.
“No, you will not,” Heathrow says before the argument can grow teeth.
Sophronia blinks up at him, wide-eyed and suddenly angelic. “I was just playing, Papa. Promise.”
Heathrow arches an eyebrow. “We don’t play about washing our hands or about biting our brothers,” he says, but his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smile. “Soap. Both of you. Go.”
They push Sophronia’s purple step stool across the tile together—Mathias steering, Sophronia mostly providing the “helpful” commentary only a four year old could think up. The scrape of it fills the quiet.
At the sink, they crowd shoulder to shoulder. Sophronia turns on the water too fast and Mathias yelps when it splashes him. She laughs, delighted.
“Stop hogging the soap!” he says, snatching the pump.
“You used too much! You’re wasting it!” she counters, trying to grab it back.
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
Heathrow turns from the counter, one eyebrow raised. “Peace, please. Your hands are supposed to be clean, not armed.”
That earns him twin huffs, but they finish without further casualties—Mathias drying his hands with unnecessary force, Sophronia examining hers for missed bubbles. Together, they drag the step stool back across the floor, shove it into place, and climb back into position at the counter like two small, slightly damp professionals.
Heathrow drags the bowl and eggs between them again. “All right, chefs,” he says mildly. “Now that you’re both certified in hygiene, who’s cracking first?”
Both hands shoot up at once.
Heathrow looks between the two raised hands—one steady, one wiggling like it’s trying to wave at heaven—and hums thoughtfully.
“Hmm,” he says. “Tough choice. Which of you has the cleanest room?”
Both hands drop at once.
“That’s not fair,” Sophronia says, frowning hard.
“Yeah, because mine’s cleaner,” Mathias says immediately.
“It is not! You have socks under your bed!”
“They’re not dirty, they’re just waiting to go in the basket!”
“That means dirty!”
“Does not!”
“Does too!”
Heathrow raises a hand before they can hit volume ten. “Well, sounds like no one here wins that contest,” he says lightly. “So we’ll make a new rule. Mathias cracks first, and then it’s Sophronia’s turn.”
Sophronia’s face scrunches up, her little jaw tightening—the kind of pre–storm warning a parent learns to read instantly. Her grip on Thumper’s ear tightens, too.
“But I wanted to go first,” she says, voice wobbling.
“And you will,” Heathrow says smoothly, cutting the tantrum off at the knees. “Right after your brother. Because you’re my second-in-command, and second-in-commands make sure everything goes right.”
She pauses, thinking it through. “Like the boss?”
“Exactly like the boss.”
That works. She nods solemnly and sets the rabbit back on the counter to watch.
Mathias cracks the first egg. Too soft, then too hard. Yolk runs down his fingers. He groans. “Ugh, it’s gross!”
Heathrow hands him a towel. “Happens to the best of us. Next time, less hammer, more hello.”
Sophronia giggles. “He said hello and the egg didn’t like it!”
Mathias scowls, wipes his hand, and shoves the bowl toward her. “Your turn, boss.”
Sophronia grins, climbs higher on her stool, and holds the egg like it’s something alive. Her tongue pokes out the corner of her mouth as she taps—one, two—and the shell splits neatly. The yolk drops into the bowl, perfect.
“I did it!” she says, eyes wide.
“Lucky,” Mathias mutters, but there’s no real bite in it.
“Thumper helped,” she says proudly pointing towards the rabbit that sits politely on the counter.
Mathias squints at it. “He didn’t help. He can’t even use his hands.”
“He doesn’t need hands,” she says, already defensive. “He has ideas.”
“He’s a stuffed animal,” Mathias says, in the flat tone of someone breaking bad news. “He doesn’t even move.”
“He moves when you’re not looking,” Sophronia says, her voice starting to go sharp at the edges.
Mathias snorts. “Then maybe he can make his own breakfast.”
Sophronia looks about two seconds from bursting into tears or throwing something—or maybe both.
Before she can, Heathrow steps in, calm as rain. “All right, all right,” he says, sliding the last bit of shell into the compost bowl. “Egg duty’s done. No casualties. Excellent work, both of you.”
Sophronia still looks suspiciously close to pouting, lower lip jutting out like a sail in a small storm. Heathrow takes pity. He wipes his hands on a towel and nods toward the bread waiting on the counter.
“Now,” he says, “which of my fine assistants knows what comes next?”
“Toast,” Mathias says immediately.
“Bread,” Sophronia corrects, crossing her arms. “It’s bread first before it can be toast, dummy.”
“It’s toast when we eat it,” Mathias argues. “Nobody says, ‘Pass the bread-that-used-to-be-bread.’”
Sophronia glares. “You’re just a big toast eater with crumbs for brains!”
Mathias frowns. “That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“It does!” she insists, stamping her little socked foot for emphasis. “It means I’m right!”
“You don’t even know how bread works!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do—”
Heathrow exhales, patient but firm, like a man breaking up his hundredth debate of the morning. “Peace, generals,” he says. “Focus up. The mission requires discipline.”
Mathias huffs but obeys. Sophronia glares at her older brother.
Heathrow lays the bread in front of them both. “You,” he says to Mathias, “guard the butter. You,” to Sophronia, “supervise the toasting. No more fighting, please.”
They nod solemnly—an eight-year-old soldier and a four-year-old queen, united under truce for the moment.
A glob of butter hits the pan and sighs, curling through the air, warm and rich. Heathrow tilts the pan, watching it melt into gold.
Sophronia leans on her elbows, chin in her hands, watching the toaster like it might do something interesting if she looks hard enough.
When it dings, she jumps.
Heathrow steps over, plucks the two slices free before they burn, and sets them on a plate between the two stools. He hands each of them their own butterknife before going back to the eggs.
Mathias spreads his butter carefully to the edges on his slice—slow, exact, no crumbs left behind. Sophronia takes hers and immediately carves a smiley face into the surface.
“There,” she says proudly. “Now it’s happy toast.”
Heathrow hides a grin, finishing the eggs in slow, practiced circles. When he turns back around, Mathias’s toast gleams smooth and golden, and Sophronia’s grins up at him in butter.
“Perfect,” he says. “Now fruit.”
Heathrow cuts the apple into thin half-moon slices. He passes them to Mathias, who immediately starts arranging the slices into a flower—petals radiating out from a careful center.
“There,” Mathias says, satisfied, tilting his head to inspect his work.
Sophronia leans in for one long, thoughtful look. Then she grabs a handful of raspberries and drops them right in the middle.
“They’re the color!” she declares. “It’s prettier now.”
Mathias groans. “You ruined it! You can’t just throw them like that—it’s supposed to look like a real flower!”
“It does!” she says, already reaching for another handful. “Now it’s a raspberry flower.”
Mathias huffs, deeply wronged, and starts salvaging what he can—placing the raspberries one by one into the center of the fruit pile, muttering under his breath. Sophronia watches him, then quietly claims a handful of blueberries for herself, lining them up in a crooked “S” across the edge of the plate.
“For Sophronia,” she says proudly. It’s the only letter she always knows, and she traces it with her finger, smiling like it’s art.
Heathrow hides a grin, setting down the knife.
He starts to make Madeline’s coffee the way she likes it—milk and two sugars. Sophronia gets to carry the mug, holding it steady with both hands while walking as if balancing treasure. Mathias carries the little vase with a single rose from the garden, proud and solemn in equal measure. Heathrow takes the tray—toast, eggs, fruit, and all.
Up the stairs they go. Carpet soft under small feet, morning light pooling on each step. Sophronia knocks with her socked toe.
“Mama?”
Madeline stirs, blinking the shapes of them into focus—child, child, husband, tray. Her smile arrives before she’s fully awake.
Sophronia crawls up first, knees and curls and sleepy determination. “Wake up, Mama. We made a present breakfast.”
Madeline’s hand finds her daughter without looking. “You did?” she murmurs, voice soft with sleep. “Look at you two.”
“Three,” Sophronia corrects. “Papa helped too.”
Madeline smiles, half-lidded. “Well, thank goodness. I was starting to wonder where he’d gone.”
“Happy—uh…” Mathias starts, glancing toward Heathrow.
“Wedding anniversary,” Heathrow supplies quietly. “It’s like a birthday, but for love.”
“I already knew that,” Sophronia says quickly.
“No, you didn’t,” Mathias says.
“Yes, I did!”
“Both of you did,” Madeline cuts in gently, saving them both from the argument. She sits up, robe slipping at the shoulder, and surveys the tray. Toast golden, butter smiling, fruit in improbable shapes, one rose nodding beside the cup.
“Oh, you made me coffee,” she says fondly, reaching for it.
She takes a sip, then looks at Heathrow over the rim, eyes still heavy with sleep but full of something warmer. She tips the cup toward him in a tiny salute that means I see you in the details.
He nods once in return—I see you.
That’s their language.
Madeline tastes the eggs. “Perfect,” she says.
Sophronia opens her mouth wide like a bird.
Madeline laughs, feeds her a forkful, and their daughter chews with great ceremony. “Yum,” she says. “I helped! I broke an egg!”
“She broke one egg,” Mathias confirms. “And made the toast all weird.”
“It’s happy,” Sophronia insists.
“Thank you, Fronia,” Madeline says, smiling. “I love it when my food is happy to see me.”
Sophronia puffs up, small chest full of pride, eyes bright as she leans against her mother’s arm like she’s singlehandedly fed the world.
Then her face changes—sudden realization sparking like a match. “Oh!” she gasps. “The present!”
Before anyone can stop her, she scrambles off the bed and darts for the door, hair flying. The sound of socked feet patters down the hall, a quick thump-thump-thump and the sound of a door slamming open.
Heathrow watches his wife smile into her coffee.
A few seconds later, there’s a rustle and a muffled oof from Mathias’s room. Then Sophronia reappears, triumphant, clutching a lumpy brown-paper parcel tied with far too much string. She hauls it up in both arms, staggering a little under the weight of her own excitement.
“We made it!” she announces breathlessly. “Me and Mathias—and Papa helped too, but only a little!”
She carries it to the bed like treasure and plunks it into Madeline’s lap. “Open it!” she says, practically vibrating.
Madeline laughs softly, brushing her daughter’s hair back from her face. “All right, all right. Let’s see what my conspirators have done this time.”
The paper gives after a little struggle. Inside is a purple frame, slightly uneven at the corners, covered in dried flowers—petals and stems in every shade from cream to deep violet. Beneath the glass, a drawing waits: two stick-figure parents holding hands with a pair of smaller ones—also holding hands—and all smiling beneath a bright yellow sun.
Mama + Papa + Soph + Thias is scrawled in Mathias’s crooked handwriting across the top.
Heathrow remembers the florist trip—the two of them taking turns choosing flowers, Sophronia demanding purple ones “because purple,” Mathias insisting on white roses “because they look neat.” He remembers helping his children press them flat between heavy books, then supervising the glue later when “a little bit” became a full-scale adhesive campaign.
Madeline stares down at it, her fingers tracing the edge of the frame where a few petals still cling stubbornly. Her breath catches, soft and full. “Oh,” she says quietly. “Oh, my heart.”
Sophronia leans close. “Do you like it?”
Madeline looks up at both of them—at Mathias trying to look nonchalant and at Sophronia beaming with pride—and then at Heathrow. The look she gives him is all memory: the rose garden, their first dance, the way their first kiss settled in his chest and never left.
“I love it,” she says. “It’s perfect.”
Mathias shifts, trying to disguise his smile. “We worked on it for months,” he says importantly.
“Papa made sure we didn’t glue ourselves together,” Sophronia adds.
“That was my main contribution,” Heathrow says mildly.
Madeline laughs, low and bright. “Well,” she says, “I’m glad you all survived the process.”
Sophronia giggles, curls bouncing. “Now you have flowers that never die.”
Madeline’s eyes go soft again. “Yes,” she says. “I do.”
She reaches out, pulling both children in close. Mathias ducks but doesn’t escape in time, getting a kiss pressed to the top of his head. Sophronia giggles when hers lands square on the cheek, loud and smacking.
“There,” Madeline says, smiling. “Proper thank-yous for my little artists.”
Sophronia wriggles free, frizzy waves bouncing as she points toward her father. “Papa helped too,” she says matter-of-factly. “He should get a Mama kiss too. For helping.”
Madeline’s eyes crinkle, amused, and she leans across the tray to kiss him—quick, soft, coffee-sweet. Sophronia watches closely, satisfied, like she’s just officiated a ceremony.
Then she pats Heathrow’s knee, solemn and sure. “You did okay today,” she tells him.
“That’s what I’m known for,” he says dryly. “Staggering adequacy.”