Chapter Text
Day One: Be The Cowboy
On December 1st TK wakes to the sounds of giggling voices from the living room and the smell of coffee drifting through the loft. The familiar notes of piloncillo and cinnamon curl through the air, rich and warm. Carlos’s coffee, brewed strong and flavorful the way his abuela taught him and her abuela before her, wraps around him like a warm welcome hug.
The first time TK woke up to that smell, he was still tentative, nervous waking up in someone’s bed. Now it’s as familiar and comforting as the morning sun.
He stretches, arms reaching above his head, toes pointed to the end of the bed, and reaches for his phone. He’s surprised to see how late it is. In the months since they brought Jonah home, Carlos has made a habit of taking over mornings with Jonah on his days off, slipping quietly out of bed so that TK can sleep in. Sometimes they’ll go out to one of the nearby coffee shops and come back with breakfast to share in bed with TK. Sometimes he’ll wake to find Carlos snuggled up on the couch with Jonah in his lap, both of them immersed in whatever cartoon is on the iPad.
Last Sunday morning they were at the dining room table engaged in a very serious game of Lotería.
Carlos has been teaching Jonah in anticipation of the annual Reyes Family Nochebuena game. Andrea dug Carlos’s well-worn childhood set out of storage last month, and Carlos even found a Lotería bilingual picture book that they’ve been reading every night at bedtime, with Jonah always insisting on flipping through the same pages over and over.
It’s important to Carlos, TK knows, that he and Jonah have their own time and rhythm. They do so much together as a family, but Carlos wants his own bond. Wants Jonah to remember park trips and piggyback rides, wrestling on the living room floor, sneaking out for ice cream or to the little churro stand down on Congress.
He wants Jonah to cherish his childhood memories. And he wants to be a permanent figure in them, etched so sharply that Jonah never has to question how deeply his father loved him.
TK breathes in deep, letting the scent of cinnamon fill his chest. For a long moment he doesn’t move, just listens to the quiet hum of early-morning life in the loft. A pot clinking on the stove, Jonah’s little voice drifting through the barely cracked bedroom door between bursts of laughter. Carlos’s deep baritone as he murmurs something back that only makes Jonah laugh harder.
He grins into his pillow before finally kicking off the blankets and reaching for the hoodie Carlos left him at the foot of the bed. When he pads into the living room, he’s greeted by a sight that makes his heart swell and his eyes tear up.
On the center of the living room rug sit the two people that occupy the center of TK’s heart.
Jonah, in his dinosaur pajamas and messy mop of hair, kneels across from Carlos, still in his own sleep sweats and tank top, skin still pink from sleep. Jonah’s giggling so hard his whole body shakes, his hair bouncing across his face. Carlos crouches in a patch of morning light, the way he’s backlit making a halo around his sleep-mussed curls. Between them stands a massive cardboard tower that’s nearly as tall as Jonah himself.
“And inside each one,” Carlos is saying, “there’s a little surprise. But only one a day, okay? We start with number one.”
Jonah bounces in place, a tiny finger extending in the air.
“Number one! Number one!”
The thing is ridiculous. A toddler-sized freestanding advent calendar, brightly illustrated with the cartoon dogs that TK and Carlos have come to know intimately over the last few months.
Bluey’s Big Texas Christmas Adventure! 25 Surprises Inside!
Bluey and her family are all decked out with cowboy hats and boots in front of their twinkle-lit house. There’s a festive Alamo, longhorns with Rudolph noses. Twenty-five little doors, and behind each one is a toy or a treat along with a Bluey & Bingo prompt to help Jonah’s little imagination flourish.
“Wow,” TK says, stopping to lean against the doorway and take it all in. “Please tell me that’s not from you.”
Carlos looks up, an eyebrow arched in defiance.
“Excuse me, I have excellent taste in children’s holiday decor.”
“Look what Abuela brought!” Jonah shouts, jumping to his feet and barrelling toward TK like they haven’t seen each other in days. In reality it’s been about ten hours since TK helped tuck him in.
He scoops Jonah up with one hand.
“It’s from me, actually,” Andrea laughs from the kitchen, TK hadn’t even realized she was there. “My new grandson needs a proper countdown.”
“Thank you, Andrea,” TK says, crossing the living room so he can greet her with a one-armed hug and a kiss. “That was really thoughtful of you.”
“I saw it at H-E-B and I just had to get it. I know how much he loves Bluey, so it seemed perfect.”
“It is,” TK agrees, setting Jonah down when he starts to wiggle. “We can put it by the tree.”
He nods towards the bare tree along the back wall, standing where the exercise bike usually lives. They moved the bike into storage a few nights ago; a huge production soundtracked by lots of bickering between TK and Carlos and some delightedly unhinged heckling from Marjan who came over to “help” but just ended up getting Jonah so hyped up from auntie time and sugar that he didn’t go to sleep until almost midnight. TK has a feeling that will be a regular occurrence with all the aunties and uncles Jonah’s got in his life now.
Jonah darts back into the living room, opening the first advent door with uncoordinated little fingers. He pulls out a tiny felt cowboy hat just big enough to fit his stuffed Bluey. He shrieks with delight and plops it on her head.
“Look, TK! She’s a cowboy!”
TK crouches next to him, grinning.
“Guess we’re a couple of Texas boys for real now.”
Carlos smiles and leans in to kiss his temple.
“Mamá says when she was little, they used to have a Lotería de Navidad instead of calendars like this. Every night they’d draw a card before bed.”
“Sí,” Andrea says, smiling wistfully as she enters the living room with a mug of coffee. She’s taken the green ceramic with the beavertail cactus, Marjan’s favorite. “We’d make up stories about the cards. El Sol, El Mundo, La Estrella. That’s how your papa learned his first bedtime stories too.”
“Can we do that too?” Jonah asks, eyes going wide.
“Of course we can, osito,” Carlos ruffles his hair fondly. “We’ll start a new story tonight. Bluey’s first Texas Christmas, and ours too.”
TK takes a sip of his coffee, watching his husband and their son checking out the glittery cardboard tower.
“Another?” Jonah asks, big brown eyes trained on Carlos.
“You have to wait til tomorrow, mijo,” Carlos says gently. “Every day until Christmas, you open one door and–”
“And eat all the candy inside,” TK says with a wicked grin.
“Stop it,” Carlos chides. “Two children in this house.” He pulls Jonah into his lap and opens door one again, pulling out a piece of cardstock. “You forgot your prompt.”
“What’s dat?”
“It says ‘Pretend to be a cowboy and say howdy to three people today!’”
“Ooh! I da cowboy!”
—
“Feh-leeze Na-vee-dahd!” Jonah exclaims, voice garbled and lips coated white with cinnamon sugar from the buñuelos he’s been munching on.
“Muy bien, mi amor,” Andrea beams, wiping his cheek with her thumb to catch some stray sugar.
Carlos watches them fondly while he waits for TK to bring the last box of Christmas decorations up from the garage. He remembers making buñuelos with his mom when he was Jonah’s age. How he would burn his tongue more often than not because he would sneak them fresh out of the fryer. How she’d always pair them with Mexican hot chocolate, and they’d bring them along on their family outings to look at Christmas lights in the rich neighborhoods (those stucco mansions in neighborhoods like Westlake Hills always had the best decorations, the brightest lights and the biggest crowds clamoring to see the display).
Andrea buys her buñuelos these days, from the same panadería the Reyes family’s gone to for generations. The one that did Carlos’s sisters’ quinceañera cakes and their wedding cake. The one that catered Gabriel’s wake, and no matter how much TK and Owen insisted, refused to take any kind of payment.
Maybe this year, Carlos thinks, he’ll start the buñuelos tradition with Jonah.
“Okay, who’s ready to decorate the tree?” TK asks when he emerges through the door, holding the box up triumphantly.
There are boxes spread across the living room, pulled from storage in three houses across Austin and New York. The homes where TK and Carlos grew up. Some of the boxes are made of decades’ old cardboard, worn with soft flaps and tears at the corners, some newer with G. MORGAN scribbled on the side in Gwyn’s neat handwriting.
The plastic bins of ornaments they’ve used in the loft these past few years sit untouched in the corner with the lids still snapped shut. The collection of vintage blown-glass orbs that TK bought for Carlos the year after the townhouse burned down, delicate and perfect in their shimmering swirls of uniform blues and silvers, will stay packed away until Jonah’s a little older. This year is for something else, something a little softer, something that feels more like them as a family.
Instead, they’ve dug out the things they haven’t looked at in years.
TK sets the last box on the coffee table and sits down cross-legged on the floor, thumb resting on the edge of a box he hasn’t opened since the week his mom died. It’s strange, he thinks, how the grief has settled, how it’s changed shape inside him. It isn’t as all consuming as it once was, doesn’t grab him by the throat anymore. It’s still there, under the surface in moments like this, but there’s room for new things to blossom.
After a moment of hesitation, he lifts the lid.
Wrapped in lavender tissue paper, he finds Gwyn’s collection. Deep purple baubles. Sparkling resin doves. A tiny red corvette with purple flames. Prince’s symbol guitar, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Whimsical little ornaments inspired by Prince, her forever favorite.
For half a second, he swears he can smell her perfume. It hits him hard but sweet, like the overwhelming but fleeting scent of a freshly bloomed hydrangea on your first walk in spring.
Gwyn was a Jewish girl from the Upper East Side. She didn’t do Christmas as a kid herself. But for TK, she made it magic. When Owen was buried under his grief, too consumed by it all to enjoy holidays with his family. He said it was because of all the men he’d lost, whose families would never have another Christmas or Hanukkah with their fathers and husbands who’d gone into those buildings that Tuesday morning and never come out.
What he didn’t realize is that his own family was suffering a loss too.
Because even though Owen was alive and present in all the ways that technically counted, in so many ways he was not. A man shaped by absence, hollowed by everything he couldn’t talk about.
So Gwyn gave her son magic. And they made the holidays special all in their own way. A blend of Princemas and Hannukah, their own family traditions. A strange, bright, joyful world that belonged to just the two of them.
As he picks through the tissue paper, he can almost see her standing in their old kitchen, hair shoved up in a messy ponytail, humming along to “U Got The Look,” nudging him towards the pantry so he could pick out the perfect add ins for their kitchen sink cookies: pretzels, M&Ms, and that special secret ingredient: toffee.
She’d decorate the apartment within an inch of its life, purple lights and sparkly garlands and ornaments she’d hunted down at vintage thrift shops in the East Village and at the Grand Bazaar on the Upper West Side because she knew he’d love them. He remembers the way her face lit up when he did.
He doesn’t remember how she landed on a Prince themed decor. Maybe it was her way of stamping the holiday with something that felt like theirs. What he does remember is the noble fir that towered over the living room of her luxury SoHo apartment, mere centimeters away from brushing the mile-high ceilings, the lavender lights twinkling, purple velvet ribbons cascading down the branches, tinsel shimmering like stardust. And these ornaments.
Across the room, Carlos crouches beside his own box, laughing under his breath as he pulls out a lopsided tin star.
“Now that you have a child, you can soften up the severe aesthetic of this loft and rediscover some whimsy,” Andrea says.
Carlos rolls his eyes, but a warm smile overtakes his face as he pulls out a clay armadillo painted in bright clashing colors. Then a tin dove, dulled with age, and a popsicle-stick nativity coated in clumps of gold glitter.
“Papa,” Jonah shout-whispers, peering over the edge of the box with curiosity. His still-messy hair flops into his eyes. “Why your ornaments so silly?”
“I guess because I was silly, mijo.”
“You still silly,” Jonah giggles.
“He’s got you there,” TK snorts.
The piñata stars go up first.
“The tree needs its estrellas,” Carlos says, guiding Jonah’s little hands as they hang the navy blue one with the silver tinseled points on a low branch. Jonah’s tongue pokes out as he concentrates on hooking the ribbon over the branch.
“That one’s a part of history,” Andrea laughs softly.
“Mamá,” Carlos groans.
But Andrea, once started with the embarrassing childhood memories, is unstoppable.
“When he was four, he decided it was a rocket ship.” She does an airplane gesture with her arms. “He launched it off the top of the couch and crashed it into the bookshelf.”
“Papa broke the star?” Jonah gasps.
“Your papa broke everything at that age,” Andrea says fondly. “He was my little Texas tornado.”
“Some things never change,” TK laughs. Carlos shoots him a look that only makes him laugh harder.
Once all the piñata stars have been hung, the red foil one with the missing tassel, the green one coated in ancient glitter, the gold one with Carlos’s childhood handwriting scrawled on the back (Carloz with a z), Andrea clears her throat and reaches into her purse, handing Carlos a small, tissue-wrapped bundle.
Carlos blinks back tears as he unwraps it; a brand new piñata star in a bright rainbow papel picado pattern.
“Mamá…”
Andrea steps closer, brushing a hand to his cheek. “Your tree should represent your joy, mi amor.”
Carlos swallows against his tightening throat. His gaze instinctively moves to his family, TK on the floor straightening Jonah’s little shirt, which has gone askew in all the excitement.
“It does,” he says quietly. “It really does.”
“Can I hang the rainbow one?” Jonah asks, bouncing on his toes.
“Of course,” Carlos says, lifting him to place it in the center of the tree. TK steps close, steadying them both with a hand low on Carlos’s back.
When the star settles in its place, the whole room seems to brighten.
“Perfect,” TK murmurs.
And it is.
They spend the rest of the afternoon filling the branches. Gwyn’s purple doves and shimmering teardrops nestle beside Carlos’s abuela’s hand-painted clay ornaments: the Virgen de Guadalupe with her cloak of hand-painted roses, the alebrije armadillo that Jonah immediately declares is his favorite, the clay corazón stamped with gold milagros. It was given to Carlos by his abuela when he was ten for protection and good luck. Carlos pauses as he hangs it, his thumb brushing the raised metal, for just a moment he’s pulled back into his abuela’s kitchen.
“Let’s Go Crazy” drifts from the living room speakers while TK chases Jonah in circles around the tree, both laughing maniacally, as Jonah clutches the end of a purple garland, winding it around and around and around the low branches.
Andrea unwraps the final ornament, and Jonah’s eyes go wide.
“PAPA! IS THAT A CAR?”
Carlos laughs as Jonah reaches for it with grabby hands.
“That’s my Camaro,” he says. “It was my dream car when I was little.”
“Gabriel bought it for him when he was too small to reach the pedals of a real one,” Andrea says wistfully.
“Papa had a tiny car?”
“Yes, mijo,” Carlos crouches next to him. “I had a very tiny car.”
“Put it high,” Jonah declares.
“Of course,” Carlos says, eyes somehow going softer.
Carlos lifts him with steady hands. Jonah chooses a branch near the top, the most important ornament on the most important branch.
TK swears he’s never seen Carlos look so proud.
Like every piece of his past is finally exactly where it belongs. Right here. In his arms. In the eyes of a little boy who thinks he’s the whole world.
The tree isn’t perfect. It’s not uniform, there’s no hand-blown glass. The garland bunches. The ornaments clash.
And yet it tells a clear story. One of love, two families, two histories brought together. Childhoods that shaped them. A home built together.
Carlos slips an arm around TK’s waist, resting his chin on his shoulder.
“Best tree yet,” Carlos sighs.
TK smiles, leaning into him
“Yeah,” he says softly. “It really is.”