#outttake

Carlos has no baseline for what to expect from either New York, or from a Passover seder.  He's seen New York in movies and TV shows obviously, and he's learned it more intimately from the stories that Owen and TK tell.  They're not staying for that long on this trip, and they're going to a seder on Saturday and Easter lunch with Enzo's family on Sunday, but TK promises that he's taking him into real New York before they leave. 

Enzo makes a face at TK.  "Queens is real New York."

TK snags a piece of grape from Jonah's plate.  "Debatable."

Enzo rolls his eyes, but he's smiling.  "Snob." 

TK shrugs and doesn't disagree, just leans in to whisper to Jonah.  'We'll take you with us, you're never too young for dim sum."

Carlos has even less idea what to expect from a seder.  He's read about it, but that's abstract.  They're going to a seder at friends of Gwyn and Enzo's, a family TK has known since childhood.  He'd made a complicated face when Enzo had told them a few weeks ago, and said with trepidation.  "Is Miriam going to be there?"

Enzo had laughed so hard down the phone that he'd dropped it.  "She hasn't had a crush on you since she was 15, TK.  I think you're safe."

"You're not the one she tried to hit on every holiday," TK says sourly.

Carlos does his best to keep a straight face.  "How old were you?"

"A year older than her."  TK grins suddenly.  "To be fair, I'm pretty sure I spent a lot of time at holiday dinners trying to awkwardly hit on her older brother, so you know."

"You did," Enzo says dryly.  "Every adult in the room suffered from schadenfreude watching the three of you."

The seder is lovely, long, although not as long as he'd been vaguely worried it would be from some of the blogs he'd read online, and as far as he can tell MIriam doesn’t try and hit on anyone except her wife.  He doesn't understand half of what's happening, but he nods at the right times, and takes the things that are handed to him, and piles his plate when they finally eat.  Mostly he watches TK and Jonah, and soaks in how alike they look, and how natural TK looks holding Jonah in his lap when he falls asleep halfway through the seder.  He has the same double vision he’d had at Hanukkah, of TK now with Jonah, and TK in the future sitting at a table with their children leading them through these same traditions.

Everyone tells stories about Gwen, and some about TK when he was younger, which make TK's cheeks burn red and bury his face in his hands.  "You are not allowed to tell anyone at home any of this," he hisses at Carlos when the conversation ebbs at one point.

He grins and crosses his fingers and nods. "Absolutely."

TK narrows his eyes at him.  "Just remember I talk to your sisters."

He nods seriously and then turns to Mrs. Fereira, “What was that you were saying about the play TK was in?” and dodges the pinch to his leg from TK.

Enzo vetoes making Jonah sit through two long religious events in two days, and they skip Easter mass on Sunday, but they do go out to Long Island for Easter lunch.  He thinks Enzo might have preferred to skip that too, let Jonah nap rather than get overtired and overstimulated two days in a row, but apparently his mother was willing to let them skip mass, but lunch was non-negotiable.

Enzo looks at Carlos as they pull up to the house and says, "I apologize in advance for literally everything."

TK snorts and reaches for Carlos's hand.  "I'm calling this payback for that first lunch at Tia Lucy's."  Carlos considers that, and decides that's probably fair.

He gives up trying to remember anyone’s names or relationships about three people in.  At some point he gets handed a plate piled with so much food that he thinks he’s not going to need to eat for a week after they leave. The woman sitting next to him snorts at the look on his face and volunteers her name, if not her place in the extended family, although he thinks she’s one of Enzo’s nieces.  “I’m Emma.  Sorry about the family.”

He smiles and takes a bite of the lamb and wonders who made it and if he can get the recipe.  “Don’t worry.  My family is a lot like this too.”  It explains a lot about how easily TK had weathered that first lunch at Tia Lucy’s if he’s got this kind of experience under his belt.

She gives him an evaluating look, decides he’s telling the truth and says, “Well, in that case I guess apologies for taking you away from your family on Easter.” 

He eyes the way TK has been suborned into a game of snakes and ladders by a group of kids, and the way Enzo’s alternately watching TK lose to a bunch of seven year olds, and keeping an eye on where Jonah’s trying to pet an elderly long suffering cat.  “You’re not.”

She gives him a sharp look and then nods with satisfaction and offers.  “Nonna practically adopted TK, you should probably expect an interrogation at some point.”

He tips his fork to her.  “Thanks for the warning.”

She shrugs. “He looks happier than I think I’ve ever seen him, and Enzo likes you, so you’ll probably do just fine.”

He doesn’t get interrogated by Nonna Luisa exactly, but she does ask for a rundown of his family, and job, and prospects and then starts telling him stories about a younger TK, and Enzo, and Gwen, and he thinks that means he passed.  TK seems to soak up the stories, even as Carlos can see how they weigh on him.  He nudges his thigh next to TK, letting him borrow whatever strength he needs.  TK reaches for his hand, thumb against his pulse point and draws him into the story that Enzo's sister is telling about the time Gwen tried to make lasagna.

"Wait," he says, "I didn't think your mother cooked."

Enzo's sister snorts at the same time TK does.  "She really really didn't," TK confirms.

Enzo's sister's laughs so hard as she repeats the sequence of phone calls from Gwen that half the story gets lost, and Enzo comes over to investigate what's going on.

His mouth twists in a rueful grin when he hears.  "She wouldn't even let me see what she'd made when I got home, took the trash out before I got there, and ordered Ethiopian from a place down the street.  She said she loved me, but she was never doing that again and if that was a deal breaker I should pack my bags and leave now, like she somehow thought that I had missed that the two of you lived on take out, and whatever your babysitter made you in the afternoons."

TK grins, and it's only a little melancholy.  "You spoiled us both when you moved in."

Enzo reaches out to ruffle his hair.  "Well, I had to bribe you with something to let me stay."

Enzo has classes on Monday, but they're not leaving until Tuesday morning, and they take the time to go out to Gwen's grave.  They take Jonah with them, and Carlos keeps an eye on him as he toddles around the cemetery while TK folds himself down next to the temporary marker.  The unveiling will be in late July, and Carlos has already put in for vacation time to come up for it.

He takes a few steps away to give TK privacy to talk to Gwyn, and crouches to take the stick that Jonah solemnly hands him.  He turns at TK's voice, raised just loud enough to carry.

"Hey, Jonah, come say hi to Mom."

He takes Jonah's hand to help guide him over to the grave, and then lets TK settle Jonah on his lap.  Jonah squirms a little, and doesn't really understand what they're doing here, but he catches enough of TK's mood to settle for long enough to obediently say hello to Gwyn and Carlos feels his heart clench when Jonah offers TK a small rock he has clenched in his fist.  He can see the tears on TK's lashes, but his voice is somehow steady when he tells Jonah, "That's perfect, honey.  Do you want to put it on her grave?"

Jonah looks a little dubious, but puts it on the marker and then looks at TK for approval.  TK kisses the top of his head.  "It's a way for us to remember her," he explains to Jonah.  He scrubs surreptitiously at his eyes and pushes himself up.  He looks at Carlos.  "You want to talk to her?"

He nods, and squeezes TK's hand as TK stoops to pick Jonah up and walks a little bit away for them to look at the buds on the fruit tree nearby.  He sits on the ground in front of the grave, in the same place TK had.  He's never really done this before, never really had anyone that close to him who's died.  He feels a little awkward, but, "Hi Gwyn.  Your son asked me to marry him, and it was the best day of my life.  I know I screwed it up a little after that, but he's got more patience than most people give him credit for, and he's got so much patience with me even when I don't think I deserve it."  He puts a hand on the ground.  "I promise you, I am going to love him for the rest of my life, and I am going to try every single day to make him happy."  His voice catches in his throat.  "I wish you could be there, to dance at our wedding, and tell me you told me so, and make him laugh.  But, even if you aren't there in person, I know that you will be there in TK, and in Jonah, and in the memory of every person you met and loved, and through me for him.  And, I am so grateful for that.  I don't think I have words for how grateful I am for him, and that you trusted me with him.  I won't let you down, I promise.."

When he looks up, TK's watching him with a small tired smile.  They go to lunch afterwards at the tiny dim sum shop on Spring Street, and they cut up a dumpling into little pieces and let Jonah gum at them.  The owner remembers TK, and looks sincerely upset when he tells her that Gwyn passed, and brings them out a plate of bao they hadn't ordered, and when TK says thank you Carlos can hear the tears in his voice.  "They were her favorite," TK says when they're alone.  "I can't believe she remembered that."

When Carlos suggests they just go home after lunch TK only makes a token objection.  "I was going to show you Manhattan." 

He nudges TK towards the subway, and hopes he's remembered the right one.  "We'll be up here a lot more times, you have years to show me New York.  Right now I think we all need naps, and he nods at Jonah who's already conked out in his stroller.

TK's mouth twists with amusement.  "I think I envy him a little."

They're playing blocks with Jonah when Enzo gets home that afternoon, and he makes a face as he sits down on the carpet with them.  "I am too old for this."  He points a finger at them, "Let this be a lesson, have your children when you're young.  Or," he reaches out to cup the back of TK's neck, "acquire them when they're past the age of crawling on the carpet."  TK grins and ducks his head, and offers Enzo a hand to lever him up off the carpet. 

TK gets quieter the later in the evening it is, but it isn't until after they've put Jonah to bed that he says, "I really miss Mom."

Carlos curves a hand across his knee, anchoring him, and Enzo reaches out a hand to TK and holds it firm when TK takes it.  "I know, kid.  Me too.  Every day."

When he comes back from brushing his teeth he finds TK standing in the bedroom, staring at the framed pictures on the dresser.  It’s a timeline of TK as a kid, with Gwen, with Owen, with Enzo, in the middle of a pack of kids he thinks he recognizes as younger version of the people he met yesterday, a prom picture of TK with another boy in a tux, both of them looking gangly and awkward.  He comes up behind TK, looping an arm around his waist and peering over his shoulder.  “You were a cute kid.”

TK twists his neck to smile at him.  “I think Enzo’s cherry picking the pictures.  I know Mom and Dad showed you all the embarrassing ones, don’t lie.”

He grins.  “Yeah, possibly.”  He drops a kiss to the back of TK’s shoulder.  “What are you thinking?”

TK sighs and traces a finger along the edge of a picture of him and Gwen at a restaurant somewhere, both of them grinning and laughing.  “I keep thinking it’ll get easier, that some day it’ll feel like less of a shock to remember that she’s gone.  But then Dad’ll say something and I’ll think I have to tell Mom that, or there’ll be something I want to ask her about, or something I want her to tell me how to do, and I’ll remember that I can’t and it’s like hearing Enzo say it for the first time all over again.”

He steps up closer behind TK, tucking his body closer.  “It hasn’t even been a year yet, sweetheart.  Give yourself time.”

“There was so long when I never imagined that I’d get married, not really.  But Mom always thought I would.”  He turns in Carlos’s arms to look at him.  “She said she knew you were the one, even if we never got married that you were the one.  She would have loved helping us plan the wedding.”

Carlos raises an eyebrow and says dryly, “Because what this wedding needs is more opinions.”

TK grins.  “Yeah, but she would have fought with Dad, and it would have been epic and we could have done whatever and neither one of them would have noticed until it was too late.”  He stops abruptly, swallowing hard, and Carlos can hear tears thick in his throat.  “She’s never going to see me get married.  She’s never going to meet her grandchildren.”

And Carlos aches for him, and folds him closer and lets him cry, and curls up with him in bed when TK will let him coax him under the covers.

TK hugs Jonah for a long time the next morning, until Jonah wriggles away, but comes back with a handful of acorns that he holds out to TK.  TK looks at them bemused, and Enzo stifles a laugh.  “He collects them.  It’s an honor if he’s giving you one.”  TK nods and takes his time picking one out and says thank you.

Enzo hugs him too, whispering something in his ear that makes TK hold on for a moment longer.  And then Enzo hugs Carlos too.  “Thank you for coming up.”  He looks at where TK is squatting next to Jonah.  “I always forget how much I miss him until I see him again.

“We’ll be back in July,” Carlos promises, “and then we’ll see you for the wedding.”

Enzo nods.  “Gwyn really loved you.  She was so sure that the two of you would end up married.  I like to think that somewhere she’s gloating, and annoyed that she can’t make bank collecting on all the pots she had a finger in.”