Work Text:
*
“I’m not completely sure why an aubergine is a vegetable and a tomato is a fruit, sweetheart.” Greta shook her head as she unlocked the door to the apartment.
“Maybe it’s because tomatoes are sweet.”
“That could be it, you’ll have to- oop.”
Greta stopped mid-stride as she stepped from the long hallway through the threshold to the living room, the eight year old lad carrying the single brown paper bag in both his arms stopping next to her. She heard him try to puff the curly brown locks out of his eyes, and without looking reached a hand out to brush it back. He’d need a haircut soon.
They both stood and took in the familiar sight of Carson stretched out along the length of the sofa, shoes off and her glasses on the crown of her head which had rolled to the side as she napped. Her fingers were laced together on her stomach, supporting the puffed bottom of the four-month old boy lying across her chest, his arms hanging over her elbows limply and his still-puckered tiny lips moving and sucking between his gums as he slept.
“Andrew, honey, can you take the bag to the kitchen and put it on the bench please?” Greta asked quietly as she patted his back and nudged him to the hall, listened to his retreating footsteps move to the back of the apartment.
She laid her handbag on the coffee table and moved between the table and sofa to pull the glasses from Carson’s head.
“You better not be asleep, Carse; you know I hate you sleeping and holding babies.”
Carson breathed deeply through her nose and let her head turn towards her wife. Well... not yet legally her wife, but they knew better.
“M’not. I’m just dozing...” The huskiness in her voice suggested otherwise.
But Greta knew Carson had opened her eyes enough to get a look at her; the smile gave it away. Carson always had a particularly soft one when she looked at Greta, even after all these years. Although it looked like she had to raise her eyebrows to physically lift her heavy eyelids open.
“You always fall asleep on the couch.”
Carson brought a hand to Danny’s back, her splayed, stubby fingers covering the entire expanse of soft bare skin. The infant wriggled, approaching the precipice of waking, only to turn his blond head until his face was smooshed squarely into her chest. It had worried Greta first time she’d seen a baby do that and she always wondered how they managed to breath through their little, flattened noses. But Danny sighed, his chest raising Carson’s caressing hand and seemingly went back to sleep.
“So do you.”
“Well you’ll get stuck if you stay there.”
“That might be too late.” Carson moved her shoulder and grimaced. No, she would need to get up.
It was not a surprise when after a few weeks of letters back and forth, a finalised divorce and ticket to New York, that Carson arrived on Greta’s doorstep ready for her next adventure. It was, however, a surprise to both of them to realise two months afterwards that Carson was pregnant. Greta never blamed Carson for feeling compelled to perform her ‘wifely duties’ when Charlie came home from war at the end of the first season. She also didn’t regret the joy she felt when Carson made it clear that she wanted to try and raise her child, and she wanted Greta by her side. It had been a tumultuous year for them and at times difficult, but Greta couldn’t picture her life any other way.
While Andrew was an unexpected surprise, albeit a welcomed one, his younger brother was not.
“Pass him here.” Greta didn’t wait for Carson to hand the boy over, carefully scooping him up from the security of Carson’s arms. He protested, but once he was pressed against Greta’s chest and being slowly rocked, settled quickly again. “I know they aren’t as soft and perky as they used to be, but they aren’t for you anyway.”
Carson tried to get up off the sofa, but her left shoulder seemed to have locked up again.
“No... they’re for me.” She groaned and fell back onto the sofa.
“You are as insatiable as the first time we met.” Greta slowly rocked her way back towards the entry and popped her head down the hall to check that Andrew wouldn’t hear their conversation. She had a pretty good idea where he was and what he was doing though.
“Can you blame me?”
“No, but I do blame you for throwing my hip out for a week last month!”
“Did I not work around that anyway?”
Greta didn’t dignify that with a response, choosing to purse her red lips with a quiet ‘hmm’.
“Andrew, you better not be in the new loaf of bread!” The silhouette of a head popped out of the doorway to the kitchen at the end of the hall. “Now come down here and help GrandCar; we need muscles!”
Trying to raise their daughter wasn’t easy. Carson skipped one season and managed to return for three more while Greta stayed in the area, raising Betty as best she could with a ring on her finger and the protection of a false story about a dead husband; Carson would sneak away to visit as often as she could. After that, they moved a lot, seeking the safest spaces they could find. Spaces that were as safe as possible for them. Often drifting between small neighbourhoods of queer people, couples trying to chase their dreams of having a family.
The world was not kind to queer people. But Carson and Greta made sure they raised their daughter to be kinder and brave enough to bear the consequence of such kindness. Their daughter did the same with her boys.
As if on cue, her grandson appeared with, as Greta had suspected, a fresh slice of bread with a round bite taken out of it.
“I don’t like stale bread.”
“It only goes stale because you open it as soon as I bring it home from the store.” Greta tried to frown, but she was also eyeing off the slice herself.
“Darling you literally do exactly the same thing...” Carson smirked from the sofa, earning her a dirty look from Greta and a loud ‘Ha!’ from Andrew, who promptly stuffed the last of it into his mouth.
“Go help GrandCar off the couch. She’s old and stuck.”
When they agreed to raise Betty together, it felt safer at the time to let Carson be ‘Mom’, and Greta just be ‘Greta’. So when their first Grandson came into the world, Carson insisted on returning the favour and letting Greta have the familial moniker. Greta, being the defiant creature that she was, did her best to teach Andrew to say ‘Grandma’ while Carson was teaching him her own name.
‘GrandCar’ was the result. And like most silly things, it stuck. Neither of them minded.
Carson gave Andrew her right arm, the good arm, so he could pull her up into a seated position. Like most children his age, his mind very quickly wandered to where it preferred to be once Carson was upright.
“Can I go out the back now?”
“Is your room packed up?” Carson asked with a cocked eyebrow. Andrew looked to the ceiling, probably trying to work out how to say no without lying. “Finish packing up and then I’ll come play catch with you out the back.”
The glee with which Andrew scurried out the room and down the hall was quietly pleasing to both of them. Carson was looking down the barrel of seventy next year, but they’d both been careful to look after themselves and neither showed any signs of slowing down. Really, for their age, they were both very active and mobile. Hell, they still managed to have sex, because the passion was definitely there, even if their bodies weren’t quite up to the tasks they had in mind.
Betty had taught Andrew to appreciate the time he had with his Grandparents, even though it was a heavy lesson to teach him at such a young age. But it meant he sought out their company, asked for stories and wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with either of his elderly grandmothers. It was heart-warming when that enthusiasm shined through.
Having Andrew over most weekends and Danny every second one was a win-win for all parties. Betty and her husband had some alone time together, and Carson and Greta were able to spend time with their boys.
Carson pressed her fists into the aged cushion beneath, but paused and looked up at Greta.
“Was there cold stuff in that bag?”
“Butter and steaks.”
“He probably left it on the table.”
“Most likely.”
Carson sighed and pushed herself to her feet with a loud groan, stretched her arms above her head until... something, Greta wasn’t sure, in her shoulder cracked. She came around the coffee table and ran her now wrinkled fingers over the soft hair on the back of Danny’s head.
“I’ll go put them away if you wanna put him down. Betty said she’d be back around four-ish.”
“Alright,” Greta twisted and leaned down to lay a kiss on Carson’s cheek.
By the time Greta had laid Danny down in his cot in the spare room, checked that Andrew had indeed packed his things up (he was almost done), she found the bag of groceries put away and Carson at the sink, the bubbling of the kettle offering the promise of tea.
Carson didn’t look when Greta approached, but as if by instinct, leaned back into Greta’s chest as she took that last step towards her. Maybe she heard the footsteps get closer, or smelled her perfume. Maybe Carson just knew.
Greta threw a glance over her shoulder before letting her chin fall to Carson’s good shoulder. Years of hiding their relationship, their love for each other, had left habits. But now, she just wanted to keep these moments between them. It wasn’t fear anymore.
“How the arm?”
“S’kay. Can you rub it for me later?”
“Of course.” Greta pressed a kiss to her shoulder, ran her fingers up the arm still moving through the water in the sink. “Not going to hurt it playing with Andy?”
“Nah, I just have to catch and he’ll go easy on me.”
“Of course, he’s a gentleman.”
“Mm...”
“And he loves his GrandCar.”
“And you too.”
“I know he does.”
But Carson and Andrew had a particularly special relationship. When he was a toddler, his favourite place was with Carson, be it on her lap, next to her at the dinner table, reclined on his tiny bed at his house reading a book... wherever. They were two peas in a pod. The relationships between their entire little family unit was quite good; Greta had her own unique connection with Betty and the boys loved her too. But Carson and Andrew...
He knew his GrandCar would always be there for him. And she was. They both were invited to his high school graduation, then his college one a few years later, because wheelchair or no, Carson wouldn’t have missed it for the world. He and his brothers made the special trip to visit them in the retirement home, to tell them he had finally proposed to his long-term girlfriend, which earned a swat to the arm from Greta because it took him damn long enough.
But no, they still had a few years left in them to watch their family grow one more time, to see it come alive after such a difficult and unlikely beginning.
Together, as Carson and Greta were destined to be.