± *leaves this here and fuckiNG RUNS FOR IT*
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Roger wasn’t blind to what was going on between Jed and John - it wasn’t that Jed didn’t play favorites, he always did, but with John it was special. And even if he had been blind to it, Jed’s frequent - occasionally panicked - questions about all things Kid would have clued him in. It wasn’t even that odd that Jed tended to drag John around or leave the boy to sack out at his apartment - Jed had a point about John being smaller and younger than the other kids and Jed was sincere in his worry the boy might be picked on. But it wasn’t until after that birthday party, when he saw John with that pocket knife that he really understood it, something that had been in the family for several generations and Jed had given it to John. Roger understood the meaning even if others hadn’t figured it out yet.
So he really started to take an interest in the boy, joining Jed in dragging John around with him, from everything to grocery stores and dry cleaners to just around the city. Jed could cook enough to keep himself and John fed, of course, but Roger tended to cook when he was there, and he almost always needed to hit the store. But generally it was just a small trip, food for a few days.
However, John’s first November after that birthday video was taken, Roger’s first Thanksgiving away from Marla and the boys, he decided to make dinner for the three of them and that meant taking John, simply because there were going to be more bags than he could carry at once. He got a duck, not a turkey, since there were only the three of them, cranberries, oranges to juice and zest, chestnuts for dressing, a bottle of wine to cook with and sparkling water and fruit juice for them to drink, everything. Roger didn’t even blink when the register blinked over three hundred dollars, just for one meal and a couple leftover lunches. It wasn’t like he spent that much money on food normally, this was special. But John did blink. Turned and looked at Roger at little shocked. Sure there was a lot of food on the belt but not that much food.
Roger reached over and rubbed John’s back, encouraged him to pick up his share of the bags, and took them, in Roger’s words, “home”. Back to Jed’s apartment, and started organizing the kitchen, calmly telling John where to put things and so forth, and started cooking. John was quiet for a while, finally asked Roger this was normal. It took some probing for Roger to get what John meant - the big expensive meal - and Roger explained that it both was and wasn’t normal. He and Jed had had a bit of a tradition of making a large expensive meal for each other, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Finals, Jed’s acceptance at Princeton, Roger’s graduation from NYU, so on, but they’d let it drop after Roger and Marla had lived so far away - even if Jed had flown out and cooked a large breakfast for them to celebrate them bring Stephen home, but it was something they’d always planned to do with their families.
“Your families.” John had repeated.
“Yeah. Our kids.” Roger left it there, nudging John to stir a pot on the stove while he finished peeling chestnuts. Roger left it there - that he was with Jed and John, picking up a tradition they meant to teach their children, that the last time they had, they had been marking a new child being brought into the family.
