Chapter Text
“Ruby?” Jonah wails, stumbling through puddles and potholes. He’s halfway down a service lane enclosed by chain link fences and graffitied wooden fences, messy with litter and overgrown weeds.
Jonah isn’t sure how he’s found himself here.
One moment, he and Ruby were playing happily in the Campbells’ yard. The next, Ruby’s ears pricked up at a strange banging sound, and Jonah pursued her when she bounded off to inspect it. The gate to the front yard was open, the wind yanking it this way and that.
Suddenly, there was a crash of thunder – and with a yelp, Ruby slipped out through the gate as it swung open.
Jonah didn’t hesitate. He followed her in a panicked daze. He was supposed to be looking after Ruby himself. He needed to prove to the papas that he could, because they keep saying, “We’ll get a dog when you’re a bit older.” But if Jonah can prove that he takes the best care of dogs already, maybe they’ll let him have one now.
So much for that.
She definitely went this way. Almost certainly. Probably.
He has to get back to the Campbells’ place with Ruby. He just has to. What will it mean if he returns without her? This is the most serious thing that has ever happened – so he doesn’t really know. But it won’t be good.
The papas will have to tell Sam and Ashlyn and Archer and Madelyn and Parker and Erin what Jonah did. That he lost their dog. They will never like him again. He’ll never be forgiven. He won’t be allowed to visit. Maybe Sam and Carlos won’t be each other’s friend anymore.
When Jonah was three, his dad had to go to prison for something called fax emulsion, and TK being Jonah’s much older big half-brother asked his dad if he and Carlos could adopt him and raise him. His dad said yes, because he loves TK like his own son and knew everything would be alright, and it’s what their mom would have wanted. (That was a Very Big Thing, as far as Jonah understands. It would make Mommy so happy to know you’re safe with TK and Carlos. That’s always what his dad says when they call him. Even now.) But the problem was, Jonah had already been sent to a boarding school in Switzerland, and the papas had to fly all the way there to come and get him. Sometimes Jonah feels a bit funny when he thinks about this. He feels queasy, like he’s spun around too fast. Sometimes he can’t sleep because his mind makes him think about different scenarios:
What if something had happened to their plane, so they never came to get him?
What if they’d arrived at the school and then decided they’d made a mistake and they should leave Jonah there?
What if they’d never had the idea to adopt him in the first place?
Jonah doesn’t remember much from the Swiss school, because he was much smaller than he is now, and he wasn’t there for very long. But he does remember being pushed into an icy puddle by a bigger boy. He remembers he was scolded for wetting the bed. Vague memories of something called muse-lee, which made him feel sick to eat, so he cried, which made him feel sicker.
Sometimes, Jonah finds himself thinking, I was sent there before. I can be sent there again. And even though he has expressed this concern to TK and Carlos, and both of them hugged him tight and assured him that would never, ever happen…he hadn’t lost a dog they were dog-sitting yet.
Jonah makes it to the end of the alley even though his legs are shaking, and pops out into another street. “Ruby?” he shouts.
The houses down this street are larger than the other houses he’s passed. They have two floors, like his house does. The trees are taller. The sky is higher, further away. The rain is sharper. The road is wider. Everything is big, bigger, biggest.
Lightning zaps through the sky, turning it blood orange and sulfur yellow before it goes back to the shade of a bad bruise. Thunder roars.
Jonah covers his ears.
TK holds onto the post of a streetlight with one hand, clutches his chest with the other. Carlos returned to the Campbells’ house briefly to switch off the oven, and now he’s jogging back to TK with a look of tearful devastation, and TK just wants to scream.
He and Carlos are soaked to the bone, and both of them feel like they’re drowning.
“We’re supposed to have a call with Enzo tomorrow,” TK says as they hurry farther along the street. “What are we supposed to say? Hey, you gave up your parental rights so we could love and care for Jonah because you’re rotting in prison, and now we’ve lost him?”
“Just calm down!” Carlos yells. He needs a second. He bows a little, rests his hands on his thighs.
When Carlos was six, he became separated from his family at the County Fair. He got distracted by the longhorn cattle, they were so magnificent. His family all wandered off to get a chili dog, hadn’t realized he wasn’t with them. Luckily, he was holding a helium balloon in the shape of a cowboy boot, so his mom spotted him quickly. Still, she was shaken. He remembers it. How she gave him a talking to while kissing him all over his face. He’d only been separated from them for three minutes, but he remembers how it felt to realize he was on his own. How the field of short, dry grass started to swallow him like quicksand. How the vintage carnival music suddenly sounded like a church organ. How all the people around him became monstrously large. It was a physical sensation, like heartburn, like his whole stomach was on fire and he couldn’t breathe.
It happened to TK too. Owen and Gwyn took him to see the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. There was a big crowd. It was 2001. All of New York seemed to come out for the event, everyone needing that cheerful boost. The crowd surged when the lights came on, and suddenly TK couldn’t see either of his parents anymore. It was the most terrifying ten minutes of his life, being shoved between all of these adults, his throat tight like it had a hand around it. He couldn’t even scream.
“TK!” Finally, his dad’s voice. TK turned around and Owen scooped him into his arms. His mother was crying.
“Mom,” TK whispers now, gripping Carlos’ arm. “Oh my God. I’ve lost her little boy–”
“We’re going to find him,” Carlos says desperately, standing up straight. “Fuck!” he slaps a hand to his brow. “What’s wrong with me?! I should have stayed at the house. One of us should go back there – he could already be there. Maybe you should go.”
“No way – I am not leaving you to search alone.”
“I’m not alone – the APD are all over it. A state-wide alert is going out any second.”
“A state–?” TK’s mouth drops open. “How’d you swing that? He’s only been gone ten minutes and we don’t even know how.”
“I called in some favors, okay?” Carlos says, “You better get back to the house.”
“I cannot abandon the fucking search!” TK snaps. “You go back!”
“No!” Carlos grabs hold of TK. “I’m the reason we’re in this mess, remember? If I’d just been the clown…”
“Would you shut up about the damn clown?” TK yells in his face – and much like Jonah when he yelled at Carlos to shut up, he bursts into tears.
“Okay, come here,” Carlos says, pulling TK in as he tries not to break into uncontrolled sobs too, and with their arms around each other, they stagger onwards through the rainy street. “We’re going to find him, baby. That’s what we do.”
Jonah takes his hands away from his ears little by little, moving them in mere centimeters down his face. Thunder and lightning hasn’t happened for a while now, but he’s kept his hands pressed over his ears as if the thunder was roaring on and on forever. His ears are hot and sore now, and the rain pours in streams down his yellow hood, down his arms. It trickles quickly off the hem of his jacket and makes his jeans wet. His jeans are only a thin cotton because it’s summertime, and his legs are cold and wet inside them.
Where is he?
Jonah looks around again, trying to focus, but everything is still as big and as far apart as it was before. Out of nowhere, he goes from feeling too cold to too hot, the heat expanding from his stomach and traveling his whole body. He pulls at his zipper. It only slides down a few inches before catching and he can’t do this – he can’t do this without his papas. He has to go home. Which way is home?
He’s still near the Campbells’ house. He’s aware of that much. But he doesn’t know this neighborhood like he knows his own. Jonah imagines retracing his steps, but all he can picture in his head is the alley, which is long and dark and full of invisible tripwires and strange symbols and dirt.
What if he can never find his way back? He doesn’t have a bed, or any sandwiches.
No. No. He can’t stand around here any longer. He’s lost but he’s not missing. He knows where he is in the sense that he knows he exists right here and now. What he doesn’t know is where Ruby is – the quest is yet to be complete.
Jonah takes a few wobbly steps forward. His legs are shaking very badly now. This seems odd. He can’t be that cold. It’s summertime.
“Ruby!” he tries calling again, “Ruby!”
A small, dark, zippy movement catches Jonah’s eye across the street at a diagonal.
“Ruby?” Jonah says with amazement.
The shape vanishes around the corner of a driveway’s brick gatepost.
“Ruby, come back!” he shouts with all the air in his lungs, launching off the sidewalk into the road.
But the curb is high and Jonah’s new rainboots are clunky. His hands and knees meet the concrete with a smack.
From behind the gatepost across the street, Ruby hears the smack. The sound contains the noise of every other time Jonah has fallen down and cried. Between each beat of her heart, she feels Jonah’s heart beating rapidly with fear, and she must go to him, even through the storm – which makes her run away, away, away from everything. She doesn’t know why, but thunder and lightning make her want to run far away from the sky itself, but the cloudy sky is like a big heavy blanket over everything, and you can never get out from under it. She can feel the atmosphere like a too-tight collar. The air smells intensely of ash. Things that have burned and gone up into the sky are coming down again in molecules that don’t taste good. Lightning is like stars exploding. Thunder is like a rockface crumbling in one single motion into the sea. Running into the rain, running to the boy, is like running towards the edge of the crumbling cliff. But she does it anyway, because what scares her more than the storm is that the empty spaces around Jonah have got bigger, and she can’t let that happen.
Jonah peels himself up from the street, turns his stinging hands over. They’re bleeding. There’s darkness in the blood. Bits of road, like he broke the road when he fell on it. There’s a tear in the knee of his jeans. Blood turns the frayed edges scarlet red.
“Ruby,” he sobs.
She dashes straight for him, the shape of her sharpening as Jonah’s tears wobble and spill.
Ruby leaps up, thrilled to see him. He smells like pancakes and warm hugs, last night’s tears and right now’s tears, which carry different types of information. She clambers into his arms, though Jonah holds her awkwardly as he struggles to stand. It’s okay. She twists to get a bit more secure, and Jonah is just about able to hold her. Snug in this position, Ruby licks the tears and rain from his face and tastes all sorts of extraordinary things.
“I don’t know where we go, Ruby,” Jonah tells her.
Ruby boofs.
What Jonah does know is that they must get out of the rain. He’s soaking, bleeding, shivering, and these are not good things on their own. Even worse combined. The nearest shelter is the front porch of the house behind him. The driveway doesn’t have a gate, so he wobbles with Ruby in his aching arms up to the porch steps.
There’s a lot going on with this house. A lot to take in. The front lawn is neat and smells like chamomile. There are flowers. Roses, Jonah thinks. Pink roses. Happy gnomes in pointy hats are gathered near a small well with a pitched roof. Hanging baskets full of white flowers swing from the porch canopy. A windchime attached to a stained glass circle with a dragonfly on it is hooked to one of them. A welcome mat has a message. It’s very faded. Jonah tries to read it and finds that he can. Home sweet home.
“We’ll stay here ’til the rain stops,” Jonah explains to Ruby, who looks up at him fondly.
She’s much too heavy in his arms now, so Jonah crouches even though it hurts his knees, and puts her down. Keeping hold of her collar with one sore hand, he strokes her wet front with the other.
“Good doggy,” he whispers, “You’re a good girl.”
Ruby pants happily and leans against him.
“Sid, there’s someone here,” a woman’s voice hollers from behind the front door.
Jonah freezes. Ruby scrambles back into his lap and yips, guarding him with her life.
The front door to the house opens slowly. Jonah turns his head at the same tentative pace, his whole body shot through with ice-cold dread.
“Oh my–” the woman says, peering down at Jonah and Ruby through small, frameless glasses. “Hello, there, honey.”
Jonah stares up at her. She’s really old, older than Abuela. Older than Mrs. Pahlke. But she’s dressed a bit like them. Floppy pants patterned with flowers, a long white blouse, bangles on her wrist like Abuela. Her long hair is silver, and hangs over her shoulder in a braid.
The woman takes a very slow step out, looks around. “Are you lost, young man?”
Jonah stares, unblinking.
“What a sweet little dog you’ve got there.” Holding onto the doorframe, she lowers herself down onto her knees with an oof, grimacing like it pains her. Jonah wonders if her knees have cuts like his do. “Can I pet the doggy?”
Jonah stares. Ruby smells a friend, so strains in Jonah’s grasp to get her pets. The lady strokes Ruby’s soaked ears gently, ruffles the curls on her head.
“We used to have rough collies.” The woman smiles. Jonah stares at her. She smells like lavender. “What’s her name?”
Jonah stares and stares – but he also manages to whimper.
“What’s that, dear?”
“Woo–” Jonah tries, but he can’t find his Rs. Sometimes, when he’s upset or very tired, he can’t find his Rs and THs anymore. It’s like he can’t pull them up. It’s like dropping a diamond in murky water and then trying to find it again. “Wooby.”
“Wooby?” The lady says, gentle delight in her voice. “What a pretty name. And what’s yours?”
“Um…” Jonah isn’t sure about this. He’s not supposed to give his name to strangers.
“My name’s Pattie,” the woman says. “Pattie Monaghan.”
Jonah still isn’t sure about this.
After no response, Pattie points at Jonah’s legs. The wound on his left knee is apparent through the tear in his jeans. The blood coming from his right knee soaks through the material in a dark sphere. “Did you fall down and hurt yourself?”
Jonah nods.
“Alright. We have Band-Aids. Did you get lost from your mommy when you were taking Wooby for a walk?”
Jonah shakes his head.
“No?” Pattie seems confused by this. “But do you know where your mommy is now? Or your daddy?”
“Hea–” Jonah starts, and gulps.
“Here?” Pattie prompts.
Jonah shakes his head again. “Heaven,” he answers softly.
This clearly startles her. After a few seconds of her kind face pulling all sorts of worried expressions, she replies, “I’m sorry. So is mine.”
“And my daddy is in jail.”
Pattie pauses midway through petting Ruby. “Oh…um…”
Jonah begins to cry again, big, heavy, embarrassing tears. He’s so hot and stuffy in his raincoat. He yanks at the zipper, anguished. “I want my papas.” He feels like a baby. But it just comes out, “Papa!” he garbles, “Papa!”
The zipper moves only another inch before sticking again, but he has enough purchase and fury to grab and tear his raincoat open like Superman ripping off his Clark Kent shirt. Except he isn’t strong enough to break the nylon, so he just claws at himself with a hopeless wail.
“Honey, everything’s going to be alright,” Pattie tells him, trying to take his hand. “We’ll get the police to–”
“Papa!” Jonah tips his head back and lets out a loud sob. “The police are gonna send me to school in Switzerland!”
Pattie nods along sagely to whatever in the name of Jesus that means.
“Pattie-Cake?” a man bellows from the hallway. “Who is it?”
The voice makes Jonah lurch so much, he nearly lets go of Ruby.
“That’s only my husband, Sid,” Pattie says, rubbing Jonah’s arm. “Shh, hush now. It’s okay, honey.” She turns to call behind her. “Sid, get out here.”
As Jonah takes deep, panicked breaths, a man who is even older than Pattie shuffles to the door. He has a bald head and a gray beard. “What on Earth?”
“This little boy and his dog are lost,” Pattie tells her husband.
“Oh my goodness!” the man’s face lights up with a kind of…horror? Jonah isn’t sure. It’s like he’s excited and terrified all in one. “Pattie-Cake, bring him inside!”
“Of course, yes, I’m sorry, dear. Come on in, and we’ll call somebody for you.”
Jonah shakes his head emphatically.
“It’s alright. We need to dry those tears and find you a Band-Aid.”
Jonah shakes his head again, wiping his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. He isn’t allowed to give his name to strangers and he isn’t allowed into the homes of strangers. Both papas have been very firm about this. Papa Carlos most of all.
“Are you Jonah, young man?” Sid asks.
Jonah snivels and stares at him with a horror of his own. Pattie looks between them both like she’s trying to figure out if Jonah is a secret grandchild that her husband is somehow aware of.
“Pat, there’s an alert out for this kid,” Sid tells her through his teeth, like he’s trying to stop Jonah from hearing. “I got it on my cell just a minute ago.”
“Oh my word!” Pattie says, emboldened now to grasp a shuddering Jonah by the arm, just to hold him steady. “Honey, we have to call the police so they can help you.”
“No–” Jonah whispers. They’ll send him to Switzerland.
“We have to let them know you’re safe.”
“My pa – my pa–”
“Your what?”
“My papas,” Jonah bursts into tears. “Call my papas.”
“What’s he saying?” Sid asks, cupping a hand to his ear.
“Sid, give me a minute here!” Pattie tells him with a soft thwack to his tweedy slacks, and turns back to Jonah. “Jonah, are you talking about your parents? Can you tell us the phone number of who we can call?”
Jonah frowns, bites his lip. He knows TK’s cell number. He knows Carlos’. They made him memorize them. They turned memorizing their numbers into a fun game – there were stickers! Right now, though, everything is so big and so noisy. Normally, Jonah can count to a hundred. That’s something he can do, and he can count backwards sometimes too. But all the numbers he’s ever known are suddenly in his brain in strange orders. Trying to think of numbers while the rain falls without rhythm is impossible. And it feels like the world is tilting forwards. All his blood is rushing to his head. Ruby licks his face lovingly and whines.
Sid is already on the phone – on the landline in the hallway – insisting that he’s not some crank. “I’m telling you the truth, lady,” he grumbles into the handset. “The kid and the dog are here!”
“You’re not going to be in any trouble, Mr. Jonah,” Pattie tells him. “Everyone just wants you to be safe.”
Within ten minutes, the home of Sid and Pattie-Cake Monaghan is swarmed with eight police units, four missing persons detectives, seven Texas Rangers, four members of the FBI who Carlos is buddies with, one firetruck and an ambulance from Station 126, three local news trucks, and two helicopters circling overhead.
“All this for you,” Pattie says, rubbing Jonah’s arm through his shock blanket as he’s picked up by the captain of the 126, Judd Ryder. Technically, Judd has no business being on the scene with his crew, apart from the fact that they all love this little boy and want to see his reunion with TK and Carlos for themselves. They are rapidly joined on the porch by Auntie Tommy, Auntie Nancy, Uncle Mateo, Uncle Paul, and Auntie Marjan, who crowd Jonah and Ruby with the love of a group hug. Marjan takes Ruby from Jonah briefly, and steps out of the way so a smiling Detective Washington can address him.
“There’s two guys I know who are about to give you an even bigger hug than that,” she says, and stretches out an arm as if to present TK and Carlos tumbling along the slippery driveway as they run to him.
Jonah reaches out as they near. Judd passes him straight into TK’s open arms.
“Jojo,” TK gasps his name like he’s desperate for air.
Carlos folds around them both, his face pushing into Jonah’s hair.
“I’m so sorry,” TK says.
“So am I! Oh, baby.” Carlos kisses Jonah’s cheeks the way his mother had kissed his after he’d been left alone at the fair.
Tommy wanders up behind Jonah, adjusts his shock blanket and rubs his back. Looking at TK with a heartbroken smile, she says, “He thinks the police are going to take him to Switzerland.”
“What?! No! Never, ever, ever! That’s never going to happen, sweet boy.” TK gives Jonah another tight squeeze and Carlos looks like he could burst into tears all over again.
When Carlos answered the call from Detective Washington to hear Jonah and Ruby had been found alive and well (if a little soggy…and bleeding…) he fell to the pavement. TK had to claw the phone from Carlos’ hand to finish taking the call. At one point, he thought he’d have to put Carlos in a fireman’s lift and carry him.
“Mijo, we can’t cope when you’re a few blocks away from us,” Carlos adds, grinning with relief even though he simultaneously feels like he’s still falling down a bottomless sinkhole. “Never mind across an ocean, okay?”
The mijo of his heart gives Carlos a little, trusting nod. Papa Carlos has never lied to him. Except for maybe about the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus. Jonah has a loose suspicion that Papa Carlos is all three of them, or at the very least does their bidding.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Carlos asks, trying to speak steadily while wiping his eyes.
Jonah looks away from him. Looks down at a puddle that vaguely reflects Carlos’ shoulders and the underside of his jaw.
“Jonah,” Carlos tries again, a little firm, but careful with his tone.
Jonah answers so quietly, TK can only hear because Jonah is so close to his ear. “Ruby ran out of the gate when there was thunder.”
“So, you went to go get her?” TK asks.
He feels Jonah nod against his shoulder.
“It wasn’t your fault that she ran, baby,” TK tells him, “And even if you had done something to make her run, you needed to come tell us. We always want you to tell us things, even if it feels scary, okay? We’re here to help you when things go wrong.”
Jonah nods again, and raises his face so he can see Carlos. They gaze at each other with the same love and exhaustion. “Did you look for me, Papa?”
“Yes, we did.” Carlos’ voice breaks, all of his grand effort to keep himself together going up in smoke when Jonah’s tearful eyes well over. “And we never would have stopped.”
After everyone has finished giving their statements, TK, Carlos, Jonah and Ruby return to the Campbells’ house with a police escort, right as Ashlyn and the kids are piling out of the car into their driveway.
The police are here.
Everyone is soaking wet.
Carlos holds Ruby, who is wrapped in a pink towel.
TK holds Jonah, who is wrapped in a shock blanket.
Ashlyn shuts her car door slowly, biting her lip.
Somehow, Madelyn manages to unscramble her brain before everyone else, and walks over to them.
“What happened to you?” she asks. Carlos braces himself for a line of questioning laced with snide and disapproval and delivered with the kind of scorn specific to thirteen-year-old girls. But she looks up at him with genuine concern, the blue eyes she inherited from Sam shining as she strokes Ruby’s sleepy head. Her next question is: “Are you okay, Uncle Carlos?”
“We are now, sweetheart,” Carlos smiles, carefully passing Ruby to her as the rest of the family approach with caution. He gives Madelyn’s shoulder a squeeze. Ruby licks his hand, a little goodbye, and nestles into the next person who needs her. Madelyn is sad. Sometimes sadness trembles in a way that is imperceptible to humans. But Ruby sniffs at her face and gets the scent of tears but also the scent of Sam. She can smell the gentle hug that his injured body was capable of giving her. The kiss he placed on her forehead. Everything is going to be alright. Ruby will make sure of it. Even with a rumble of thunder overhead right now. Or maybe, especially, because of it.
“Well,” Ashlyn sighs, addressing the soggy family before her as she puts her arms around both her sons. “Can’t wait to hear all about your afternoon.”
Everyone is bathed and ready for bed so early, the sky isn’t completely dark yet. TK looks out of the window of the master bedroom and watches his little patch of world move. Ashy blue rainclouds split by the wind race over the roof. Black shadows in the yard creep forward – the slick motion of a cat crossing over the grass.
TK closes the curtains and gets into bed with Carlos and Jonah. Jonah is sitting up between them with a Bert and Ernie mug of warm cocoa held carefully in both hands.
He takes a gulp and lowers the mug from his lips, nodding pensively. “The scariest part,” he declares, “Was when I fell down. And when I was lost. And when you were lost. And – and – and – the lady. And when I didn’t have anything to eat. And when I thought I could never come home.”
Jonah swings his mug into Carlos’ hand to take away, done now. Dutifully, Carlos rests the mug on a coaster on the bedside table.
“Mrs. Monaghan was a nice lady,” Carlos says, “But you’re right to be very cautious with strangers.”
“The best part was Ruby,” Jonah follows, sitting up and looking between both papas with mournful eyes.
TK knows what’s coming. He chances a glance at Carlos, who quickly looks back with a smile.
“Can I still have a dog?!” Jonah bursts. “Please?” he asks desperately, pulling on TK’s hand. “I’ll look after him every day and won’t let anything happen to him.”
“Mijo,” Carlos sighs, winking at TK, “When you’re a bit older.”
“You always say that!” Jonah crows, his face crumpling as he throws himself at Carlos for a cuddle, even though he’s a little bit mad at him. TK also does this when he’s a little bit mad but knows Carlos is right about something. It’s one of Carlos’ favorite things about them. His boys.
“Hug me ‘til I pop,” Carlos says.
Jonah squeals, instantly forgetting himself, and squeezes his Papa Carlos with all his might. Carlos lets out a growly yelp like Chewbacca and throws Jonah onto the mattress, opening his arms out as he yells, “Boom!” as if mimicking a firework, and falls forwards.
Jonah screams, shoving at Carlos’ silly head, but Carlos kisses Jonah’s freshly washed hair and proceeds to tickle him until the grumpy baby is cackling and swatting at him playfully. Jonah captures Carlos’ cheeks between his hands, squishes them, and falls apart laughing over how goofy Carlos looks all smushed.
“Careful of his eye,” TK says, detecting a pained wince from his wounded husband, but falls against his pillow, cracking up too. “Is Papa funny?”
“Yeah!” Jonah confirms, giggling in sweet little trills.
He lets go of Carlos, and Carlos relaxes against the headboard with TK. Jonah scrambles back to them, getting into a sideways position with his head rested on Carlos’ chest and his legs across TK. After a couple of minutes of TK reaching to stroke Jonah’s brow and nose with his thumb, Jonah drifts off.
TK and Carlos stay silent for a while, contentedly listening to Jonah breathe.
“Want me to carry him to his bed?” TK whispers.
"Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“He hasn't fallen asleep on me like this for ages," Carlos says, almost whimpers. He closes his eyes tight and really concentrates on the moment so he can soak up the feeling – the weight of Jonah's small, sleeping body, safe and protected in his arms.
TK sits up, takes his phone from the nightstand, and snaps a picture of an emotional, smiling Carlos and a Jonah who looks much younger than seven when he’s like this. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
“Can’t he just stay like this forever?”
“No. Just like he couldn’t stay a toddler.” TK snaps another picture. “But that means we get to see him grow up. Which is the best thing of all.”
Carlos gives Jonah a little squeeze. TK has managed to get a bit further than Carlos with his bittersweet acceptance of things changing – not just with Jonah, but generally.
Years ago, Carlos suggested to TK that he may never be able to tell his parents about their relationship – that it may be something about his life he can never change. TK simply told him that nothing ever stays the same.
How right he was.
But this moment, right now, here in bed with his husband and their exhausted son sleeping on him after his great adventure – it’s all Carlos wants life to be. For as long as it can be. He’ll hold on.
“Remember the first time he ever fell asleep on me?” Carlos asks. “Not when he was a baby, but after we adopted him.”
TK stifles a laugh. “Yes, because you wouldn’t give him up then, either. I had to hand-feed you lunch.”
“It’s like I’d never felt safer myself. Him sleeping on me. You right by my side.” He raises one warm hand up from Jonah’s back to stroke TK’s face. “Like now.”
TK pushes his face into Carlos’ palm in a cat-like way, closes his tearful eyes. “My heart’s still hammering, you know.”
“I know. Mine too.”
“There was a real moment there when I thought – oh my God, what if we don’t bring him home–?”
“Hey. It’s okay.”
“I just–” TK swallows and inhales deeply, suddenly queasy, and takes Carlos’ hand in his. "One of the scariest parts for me was when you went back to turn off the oven. I was holding onto the streetlight like the storm was going to blow me away. I had this moment where all my training – everything I knew – being calm in a crisis, being responsive, being a first responder – it all just went. It was so strange. I couldn't even breathe."
"I had the same thing."
"Really?” TK says a little too loud. Jonah makes a dreamy hum noise, but doesn’t stir. TK lowers his voice. “To me, it seemed like you had your shi...sugar together. More than I did."
"I yelled at Sarina to send two choppers," Carlos says with an embarrassed smile. "Total panic move."
"Persuasive panic, though."
"Which I'll have to answer for on Monday.” Carlos looks down at Jonah, then back at TK with a steely expression. "I'll tell them that I need to know where our little boy is at all times. That if I don't know he's safe, there's no oxygen in the world. And nothing else matters. So, yeah, I got them to send a chopper. Or two. I'd do it again."
TK laughs at his husband’s haughtiness, gives Jonah's back a light scratch. "You know – this’ll sound dumb.”
“I bet it won’t.”
“Bet it will.” Sassily, Carlos insists: “Bet it won’t.”
“How much?”
“Three kisses.”
“Fine.” TK pauses, troubled. “Wait, which one of us gets the kisses if you do think it’s dumb?”
“I kiss you if I don’t think it’s dumb,” Carlos says.
“Right.” TK nods, but he’s exhausted enough to still be confused. Nonetheless, he tells Carlos, “What Jojo was saying about Switzerland got to me. There's a part of me that has the same fear.”
Carlos quirks an eyebrow. “That the APD will arrest him and deport him to Switzerland?”
It’s just silly enough to make TK chuckle and feel a bit looser. “Not the exact same fear. But...Like the world is waiting for us to screw up. Like the world doesn't want us to be his parents. Anyone’s parents. The world will jump on any reason–"
"The world can kiss my ass!" Carlos whisper-shouts.
"Carlos!"
"Sorry." Carlos shifts his shoulders, adjusting Jonah's weight on him. "But it can. Nothing and nobody is taking him away. We're his parents. Even if we get things wrong sometimes. So does everyone else."
"I know. I just feel like we have to be extra perfect sometimes."
"You're an amazing dad," Carlos insists. "It's in everything you do. How much you love him shines out of you."
TK squeezes Carlos’ hand. He needs a few seconds before he can speak. "It shines out of you too.”
"And everyone can see the light a mile away," Carlos tells him firmly, "So I'm not going to let you worry about this."
TK smiles. It’s a funny thing, to have won and lost the game at the same time. “Told you that you’d think I was being dumb.”
“I do not.”
“Do too.”
“No, I don’t.”
“If we’re stalemate, nobody gets a kiss,” TK points out.
Without hesitation, Carlos grabs TK by his pajama tee and collects his prize. Or TK collects his. Who knows? It’s the same prize, the same three kisses, the same butterflies. It’s the first morning they ever had breakfast together and the little peck Carlos gave him by the fridge. It’s the moment they were pronounced husband and husband and Paul told them they could kiss. Everything is here. Their house is the most stable structure ever built, and will still be standing in millennia, like an ancient temple. Their kisses are the cement. Nobody has ever been safer.
"Speaking of worry,” TK says as he pulls out of kiss number three. “Are you ready to see Sam?"
"That's a terrible segue," Carlos grins, going in for a bonus fourth kiss and getting TK’s teeth when TK asks: “Are you though?”
"Tomorrow," Carlos answers, pressing his forehead to TK’s. “Let’s go tomorrow.”
With a weary groan, Jonah heaves up his heavy, hazy head, but can't open his eyes. "Can I come?"
Sam Campbell is fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube when Carlos walks into the hospital room, TK and Jonah by his side. Sam often completes Rubik’s Cubes like it’s no sweat. The twists and the logic help him think. He’s so focused right now that he doesn’t notice his friends. Carlos takes a second to absorb the fact that Sam is here in this space. There are white and purple flowers on the bedside table, a few get well soon cards, a little teddy bear wearing a cowboy hat. Drizzle fizzes against the window, which has a view of the Colorado River that Sam can’t see unless he heaves himself painfully out of bed and shuffles along clutching his intravenous pole. There’s a lunch tray that needs taking out – what looks like an unfinished cheese sandwich on a plate and an empty pudding cup; a cup speckled with orange juice pulp; a scrunched napkin that appears to be drenched in orange juice Sam must have mopped up.
“Well, hey there.” Sam beams when he finally clocks them. “There’s a sight for sore eyes.”
Jonah peers out from behind TK. He’s known Sam since he was three. It’s Uncle Sammy. He’s blasted Uncle Sammy directly in the face with a water pistol before, and they’ve played bear and salmon, where Sam was the bear throwing Jonah the salmon into the air. But it’s different to see him like this – propped up in a hospital bed, half-covered by a pale blue blanket and wearing one of those baggy white gowns with broken gray flowers on it. His skin is pale, his eyes dark and small and without sparkle. Sore, indeed.
But Sam is highly entertained already. “I hear you three had an adventure yesterday…”
“Yes. Yes we did,” TK confirms.
“Well, come on in and tell me all about it.”
“Go on,” TK says, giving Jonah a light nudge.
Behind his back, Jonah holds a rolled up drawing that he made for Sam this morning. The plan was that he’d waltz right in and present it to him. That’s what they’d agreed in the car.
But Jonah squeezes his drawing a little too tight in his fist and doesn’t move until TK does.
Carlos doesn’t move at all.
When TK realizes they’ve left Carlos hovering within the doorframe, he turns around. “Baby?”
Carlos looks at Sam, his mouth opening to speak, closing around silence.
“It’s okay, man,” Sam says softly.
Jonah glances between them. There’s something traveling on the air that isn’t a sound or a smell or even something you can see. But Jonah can feel the atmosphere going taut like an elastic. Luckily, he has a lot of experience with this sort of thing, and he knows what to do. Jonah tugs TK’s sleeve and hands him the drawing to look after. Then, he returns to Carlos who is figuratively stuck in the doorway, and can only be extracted with the gentlest touch. Jonah takes Carlos’ hand in his, looking up at him with a coy smile.
Carlos smiles back, gives his hand a little squeeze. Linked together, they both walk forward, all the way up to the foot of Sam’s bed.
“Forget us for now – how are you feeling?” Carlos asks.
“Fine. I’m doing fine,” Sam replies. He sounds croaky and exhausted, like he has a head cold. Smiling warmly at Jonah, he lifts the hand that is free of cannula for a fist bump. “Bring it in, little man.” Jonah giggles at the attention, and much more confidently hops along to bump fists. Smirking at TK, Sam says, “And you too.”
TK shakes his head, chuckling, and fist-bumps Sam as requested.
Sam drifts his eyes again to Carlos.
“I’m so sorry,” Carlos starts, “I should have been the clown–”
“Reyes, no,” Sam cuts in immediately. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s just–”
“You’re always the clown. I was giving you a break, is all.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Carlos chuckles.
“I guess I should have let the expert handle things.”
Carlos shakes his head at himself for expecting Sam to be anything other than his wisecracking-self. “Come on.”
“Look. The clown had the reflexes of an Olympic pommel horser,” Sam tells him, “Either one of us would have been screwed.”
TK pokes Carlos’ rib, satisfied. “That’s what I said.”
“Guy got me straight in the squirty flower,” Sam huffs, “Only reason the knife went in at a weird angle is because the water caught him in the eye.”
They all laugh at this, Jonah chuckling along too.
Sam reaches out for Carlos now. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. There’s nothing to forgive. Okay?”
Carlos takes his hand, hugs it in his own for a few quiet seconds. “Okay.”
Letting Carlos go and clearing his throat, a mischievous smile returns to Sam’s emotional face. “Well, then. Which one of y’all is going to tell me what went down yesterday? I mean, I already know because it was on the news–”
“Yeah, yeah,” TK scoffs, and strokes Jonah’s silky hair. “Jojo here has created a visual representation.”
“I made you a drawing,” Jonah corroborates, doing his very best to speak up as he takes his picture from TK.
TK and Carlos stand back, giving Jonah his moment in the spotlight. And also so he doesn’t see the amused look on their faces. TK had attempted to dissuade Jonah from drawing himself bawling, but the kid is nothing if not an honest artist.
Sam unrolls the piece of thick cartridge paper, getting an eyeful of stormy colors, green trees, a house. He covers his mouth as he puffs out a laugh, quickly pretending to cough. Ruby is a round black furball with a pink tongue flopping from her happy smile. Next to her, Jonah’s self-portrait isn’t a world away from Edvard Munch’s The Scream, only with a swirl of brown hair and pebble-sized bright blue tears pouring from his eyes.
“Wow!” Sam remarks, “Oh, Jonah, buddy, this is fantastic.”
Jonah looks back at his papas, delighted, and they school their expressions into impressed smiles.
“I love it,” Sam goes on. He really does.
“It’s me and Ruby,” Jonah tells him.
“I see that.” Sam holds the picture further away from him, taking in the piece as a whole. Jonah certainly has an eye for shadows and light and he has clearly colored in with ferocity. “One for the refrigerator,” Sam says, looking at TK and Carlos desperately because he can’t handle how cute it is.
Taking a breath as deep as his bandages allow, Sam gradually pulls himself together, and pats the space on the bed beside him. “Sit, tell me everything from start to finish.”
Carlos grins as he helps Jonah clamber onto the bed, while TK pulls up a couple of chairs for him and Carlos each.
“It started with a roar of thunder!” Jonah begins enthusiastically, and everybody settles in for story time.