Archive of Our Own

“Taylor wants to have kids,” Ryan says one day, as he sits at the kitchen counter, watching Sandy make dinner. 

It’s kind of funny, the way things have stayed the same. It’s been nineteen years. A new house, a new little sister, a college graduation and a wedding, and Ryan’s still the kid at the Cohens’ kitchen counter, nervously asking Sandy for advice.  

“Oh?” says Sandy. 

“Yeah,” replies Ryan. 

“You gotta give me more than that, kid,” Sandy says with a slight smile. 

“I don’t know,” says Ryan. 

Sandy just gives him a look. 

“I don’t—I can’t—” Ryan cuts himself off. “I don’t know—what if I mess it up?”

“That’s the secret,” Sandy says. “We all mess up.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Sandy meets his son’s gaze. 

“What if I—What if I’m just not wired for it?” he asks, not quite managing to hide the fear in his eyes. “Just, like, genetically, you know?”

“Kid,” says Sandy. “That’s bullshit.”

 Ryan furrows his brow. Sandy goes on. “I’ve seen you with Missy. And with Sophie when she was little. You’re good with kids, Ryan.”

“But—”

“You’re not your father,” Sandy tells him. 

“I know,” Ryan says, but there’s no conviction in his voice, and Sandy can see right through him. 

“My dad left me when I was eight years old,” he tells his son, “and I’ve raised three pretty awesome kids if I do say so myself.”

“You had your mom,” Ryan says. “She raised you—she raised you right. I didn’t have that until... I don’t—I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“You’d have help,” Sandy points out. Ryan shrugs. 

The topic is dropped not long afterward. 

-

“What do you think about me and Taylor being foster parents?” Ryan asks, a few months later. 

Sandy looks up. Ryan’s got a nervousness about him, and he doesn’t quite look Sandy in the eye. 

“I think that’s a great idea,” says Sandy, a slight but genuine smile on his face. 

“Do you think Taylor would want to?” asks Ryan, and Sandy finds himself at a loss for words. 

Despite all the love in Taylor’s heart, she is, first and foremost, an organizer. A creature of order, not unlike Sandy’s own wife. Sandy’s seen lots of kids funneled through the system, and part of him can’t quite imagine Taylor getting caught up in all that. 

The other part of him knows Taylor. He’s met her mother, he’s heard stories. He’s seen things. Taylor and Ryan are, in some ways, two sides of the same coin. Both children of abuse (and he’d never let either one of them hear him call them that, but it’s the inescapable truth) with a crippling fear of vulnerability. And the kids who spend their childhoods letting the system suck the life out of them? They’re like that, too. 

“What has she told you?” Sandy asks.

“I haven’t mentioned it,” Ryan says. “I don’t know. Like, adoption’s pretty much our only option unless we want to use a surrogate, and it was kind of, like, implied that she wants to adopt a baby, but I just don’t—” He cuts himself off. 

“I don’t trust myself. I don’t know how kids are supposed to grow up, and honestly, neither does she. I was fifteen before I learned what a family is supposed to be like. And she—she never even had a birthday party until she was nineteen years old.”

Sandy nods, urging Ryan to go on. 

“There’s just a lot of kids out there who need help, y’know? And they make more sense to me than little kids do. I would know what to do.”

“I know you would.”

“You saved my life,” says Ryan. “And I want to do that for some kid like me.”

Sandy smiles, squeezing Ryan’s hand.  

“Talk to Taylor,” he says. “You’ll figure it out.”

-

Taylor is easier to convince than Ryan thought she’d be. 

“I think that’s a really good idea,” she says. “I think it would be good for you.”

“For us,” Ryan corrects, taking her hand. 

She smiles. 

Ryan can’t remember the last time he felt so happy. 

-

“What if they don’t let us?” Taylor asks softly, as Ryan fills out the paperwork a few weeks later. 

He looks at her, brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t they?” he asks. “I haven’t been arrested since the Cohens took me in. Contrary to popular belief, I’ve got a pretty clean record.”

“Not you,” Taylor says. “Me.”

“Wh—”

Oh. 

“Hey...” he says, but he can’t follow it up with anything. 

There’s not really anything he can say. Yeah, they live in California, and yeah, things are lightyears better than they used to be, and, yeah, Taylor’s got all the paperwork filed, but the world is a mean place, and it wouldn’t take much digging for the state to find out that she’s trans.

“Legally, they can’t—” he starts.

“Legally, they can’t do a lot of things,” Taylor says, cutting him off. “That doesn’t stop them from doing them.”

Ryan sighs. “I know,” he says, “but they’re always looking for new foster parents, y’know? There are too many kids and not enough homes, and they’re going to take whoever they can get.”

Taylor doesn’t look convinced.

“And once they realize what a great mother you make, they’re gonna be glad they did,” he says softly, using a gentle hand to brush her hair out of her eyes.

Taylor can’t fight the smile that comes over her. Ryan leans over and gives her a soft kiss on the forehead.

“We’re gonna be fine,” he whispers, and Taylor can’t help but believe him.

-

It takes a little over a year, and the boy’s name is Jack. He’s fourteen, but looks maybe twelve in the too-big sweatshirt and ripped jeans he’s wearing when they meet him. He’s from Fresno. He’s got a history of abuse. His mom died when he was young, and his dad just up and left when he was ten. He’s been through more foster homes than he can count. 

“He might prove a challenge,” their caseworker had warned them, but Ryan didn’t hesitate.

The kid walks into their house, and for Ryan, it’s like time stops. Because the scene’s right out of ‘03, and sure, maybe they don’t have a mansion and a pool house and a teenage boy playing video games in the living room, but the look on this kid’s face, the careful way he walks through the house, the way he silently observes his surroundings, hell, even his dirty old Converse high-tops—it’s all Ryan Atwood, age fifteen, first night in Newport, first night in the pool house, first night sleeping under the roof of what would eventually become his home.

Ryan wants this kid to have the life he deserves. The life he had.

He thinks he can make it happen.

-

“You didn’t have to buy me all this stuff,” Jack says after Ryan leads him to his room. He’s opened the closet full of clothes and looks a little overwhelmed. 

“My friend sent them along. From when her son was your age,” he explains. 

He doesn’t tell the kid how happy Theresa was to drop them off, doesn’t mention the smile on her face when Ryan had told her Jack was coming to live with them. 

You’re gonna be so good at this, she’d said, when she’d stopped by. I know you weren’t ready with Daniel, but you are now. You’re gonna be really, really good at this. 

A smile flits across Ryan’s lips at the memory and only grows when the kid turns back to him and gives a soft “Oh, okay. Thanks.”

-

Dinner is a simple enough affair. Jack answers all the questions Taylor throws at him willingly enough; compliments her cooking and thanks her for the meal.

His conversation with Ryan doesn’t come as easy. While Jack’s answers to Taylor’s questions are simple and thoughtful, he trips over every other word directed at Ryan, punctuating his sentences with ums and likes. He is tense, high-strung, and Ryan tries not to take it too hard. God knows he’d have been the same. 

He wants to tell the kid that they’re the same. That he’s been there. He’s been the broken boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s been the kid whose father beat him bloody.

He figures that’s probably a little too deep to go on Jack’s first night with them. 

-

Jack gets into a fight during his first week at school. Given all of the other glaring similarities, Ryan’s not surprised.

“So, what, are you gonna kick me out?” he asks, on the car ride home from his disciplinary meeting.

“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” Ryan replies, and the kid just looks at him.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he says, in his own defense. “That other kid started it. Called me a f*g.”

Ryan flinches at the word. 

“I’m not,” says Jack, in a tone of voice all too reminiscent of Ryan’s own at that age, because shit, this kid really can’t do the Ryan Atwood experience halfway. 

“Okay,” Ryan says. “But you know it’s okay if you are, right?”

“I’m not,” Jack says, venom in his voice. 

Ryan remembers when he thought he was fooling people with that. 

-

Jack drops a glass at the beginning of his second month staying with them, and Ryan sees the terror in his eyes when it shatters. He bends down to pick up the pieces as fast as he can.

“Hey, no, it’s okay, I got it,” Ryan says, just as Jack steps on a broken piece of glass. 

“Shit!” he exclaims, and Ryan makes his way towards the kid, bending over to sweep all the glass away before standing up to face him. 

Jack flinches when he and Ryan come face to face, and Ryan’s heart hurts, because fuck, that’s him—

“It’s okay,” he says, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “We can spare a glass, I promise.”

Jack says nothing, just stands there, eyes wide and hands balled into fists by his sides, breathing shallow. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Ryan says softly. Jack doesn’t move a muscle. 

“I’m not mad,” Ryan assures him. “It’s okay, Jack, I just wanna clean up the cut on your foot, okay?”

Jack hesitates but gives a jerky nod. 

“C’mere,” Ryan says, motioning for the kid to follow him down the hall. 

He stands awkwardly in the doorway of the bathroom as Ryan grabs what he needs from the medicine cabinet. 

“Sit down, okay?” Ryan says, and Jack does. 

“I’m gonna stop the bleeding and then I’m gonna put some ointment on it so it doesn’t get infected, okay?”

Jack nods, and Ryan goes to work. 

“I can take care of myself, you know,” the kid says quietly, as Ryan applies a band-aid to the bottom of his foot. 

“I know,” says Ryan. “But you don’t have to.”

Jack seems to think about that for a second before he shrugs. 

“Okay,” he says, and his face is still full of skepticism, but it’s progress. 

-

The letting them take care of him thing doesn’t come naturally. But Ryan finds the kid heaving up his dinner into the toilet in the middle of the night four months after he comes to stay with them, and one look at his pale, miserable face lets Ryan know there’s no way he’ll be able to leave Jack’s side until he’s feeling better.

“Hey,” he says, kneeling down next to Jack. 

The kid looks up with bleary eyes. “Sorry for waking you up,” he says, in true Ryan Atwood fashion. Ryan shakes his head in dismissal. 

“Hey, none of that,” he tells Jack. “You’re sick. It’s okay.”

Jack sniffles, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and Ryan gets up, opening the medicine cabinet and retrieving a thermometer and some Tylenol before he fills a paper cup with water. 

“Here,” he says, holding out the water. Jack takes it, risking a few small sips before he sets it to the side. 

Ryan fights the instinct to put a hand to his forehead like Kirsten always did. He knows he couldn’t handle it at first, and he doesn’t want to scare the kid. So he just hands him the thermometer and watches as the numbers rise steadily. 

They stop at 101 flat, and Ryan empties one pill into his hand before he holds it out to Jack, who shakes his head, still looking a little queasy.

“That’s okay,” Ryan says softly. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“I don’t—I still might—” Jack tells him, stammering over the words. “I still don’t feel good,” he manages, and Ryan nods. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, that’s—that’s okay. Do you—” he starts. “Do you want me to stay or go?”

Jack opens his mouth to speak, but can’t quite come up with anything. “I—” he says, cutting himself off. “You don’t—you should sleep.”

“Jack,” Ryan says softly. 

“You don’t need to,” he says. 

Ryan knows what that means. 

“Can I?” he rephrases. 

“I don’t—I—” Jack puts his face into his hands. “I don’t feel well, I don’t—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Ryan says, carefully placing a hand on the kid’s back so as not to frighten him. “You’re okay,” he says gently. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t—”

“Shhh,” Ryan says, rubbing his thumb over Jack’s back in circles. “Breathe, okay?”

He does, or at least attempts to, before he finds himself hunched over the toilet again, coughing up nothing but bile. 

“You’re okay,” Ryan murmurs, running a hand through the kid’s hair. “I got you.”

When he seems to be done, Jack closes his eyes and leans back against the bathtub with a shaky breath. 

“Sorry,” he says after a while. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to wake you up, I just—”

“No apologizing, okay?” says Ryan. Jack shrugs. 

Ryan sighs. “You okay to go back to bed now?” he asks, and Jack nods. 

“Okay, come here,” Ryan says, offering the kid a hand. He takes it and pulls himself up before walking quickly into his bedroom and getting into bed. 

“I’m here if you need help, okay?” Ryan says. 

“Mm-hmm,” Jack shoots back, and Ryan knows he has no intention of asking for help, even if he needs it. 

He sighs and closes the kid’s bedroom door before going to the kitchen to make some coffee. 

He has a feeling he’s not going to get much more sleep tonight. 

-

Ryan doesn’t really know how to take care of a sick kid. 

He’s trying to think back to when he was younger, not to Chino, but to Newport, where he remembers getting sick a few months after his arrival. 

He’d denied it at first, of course, all please, Kirsten, I promise, I feel fine, but Kirsten had had none of it, confining him to the couch until his fever broke. 

He smiles at the memory, remembering her cool palm on his burning forehead. He’d never have admitted it back then, but it was nice. It was really nice. 

“Hey,” a voice says, startling Ryan out of his thoughts. Taylor sits down beside him at the kitchen counter. “What’s got you up so early?”

“Jack’s sick,” he tells her. “Threw up a few hours ago.”

Taylor makes a sympathetic face. “Poor thing,” she says. 

“And, I mean, it’s not like he’s gonna ask for help if he needs it, y’know? God knows I wouldn’t’ve.”

Taylor smiles softly. “He really is just like you were, huh?” she says, and Ryan smiles back. 

“You didn’t even know me before,” he points out. 

Taylor shrugs. “I can tell,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder. Ryan doesn’t doubt her. 

It’s then that skittering footsteps sound down the hallway before the bathroom light flickers on and they hear the kid’s knees hit the floor as he starts to retch again. 

Taylor cringes. “I got it,” Ryan tells her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before heading into the bathroom. 

“Hey,” he says, to let Jack know he’s there before he goes to sit down beside him. It’s over quickly this time; there’s nothing but bile left in his stomach. 

Jack buries his face in his knees and begins to cry. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Ryan says, hoping his panic doesn’t show through in his voice, because if he doesn’t know how to handle a sick kid, there’s no way in hell he knows how to take care of a sick, crying kid. 

In the end, he just waits it out; lets the kid cry until he’s got no tears left to shed. 

“‘M sorry,” Jack says hoarsely once he’s collected himself. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to wake you up again, I—”

“What did we say about apologies?” Ryan reminds him softly. Jack looks hesitant but shuts his mouth. He rubs at his eyes tiredly, and Ryan feels a pang of sympathy. 

He passes Jack a paper cup of water, watching as he takes a careful sip before putting it aside. 

Ryan can’t quite stop himself from putting a hand to the kid’s forehead, and Jack looks up in surprise but doesn’t react poorly. 

His skin is burning hot under Ryan’s palm, and Ryan winces in sympathy.

“Do you think you’re going to be able to get back to sleep or would you rather watch some TV or something?” Ryan asks. 

Jack shrugs. 

Ryan nods. “Let’s get you set up on the couch, okay?” 

“Okay,” Jack echoes, letting Ryan give him a hand up off the floor before following him to the couch in the living room, where he sits down and curls up into a ball, taking up as little space as humanly possible. Ryan lays a blanket over him and hands him the TV remote. 

“Feel better, okay?” he says, and Jack furrows his brow. 

“Why are you doing this?” the kid asks him, and Ryan’s heart clenches. 

“You’re sick,” he says. “And I’m taking care of you.”

“I wouldn’t, like, tell the state if you didn’t,” Jack tells him. “They wouldn’t even care if I did.”

“I signed up for this, okay?” Ryan says. “I talked to my wife and we filled out all this paperwork and got our house inspected, like, twelve times so that you could come and live with us, okay? Because we want to take care of you. And that means injuries and sick days and whatever other trouble you get yourself in.” He smiles. “You’re not a burden, Jack, and I need you to understand that.”

There’s a look of confusion on the kid’s face. Ryan wonders if anyone’s ever told him that before. 

“Feel better, okay?” Ryan tells him, starting toward the kitchen when he doesn’t get an answer. 

“Wait,” Jack says, voice hoarse. Ryan turns back around at this, looking to the kid for more. 

“You can stay,” he says. “If you really want to.”

Ryan smiles; brushes Jack’s hair out of his eyes. 

“I do,” he says, and sits down at the opposite end of the couch to watch whatever cartoon the kid has settled on. 

He falls asleep quickly, and before long, Ryan is left alone, with only the noise of the television to entertain him. 

“How’s he doing?” Taylor asks softly, bare feet padding across the living room to take a seat. 

“Good,” Ryan says with a small smile. 

“You’re so soft for him,” Taylor says. Ryan rolls his eyes and glances at the boy on the couch next to him. 

Jack is sound asleep, looking more peaceful than Ryan has ever seen him, and Ryan can’t help the smile that comes over his face. 

Taylor just grins, gives her husband a quick kiss, and goes to make breakfast. 

-

Jack turns fifteen a few months later. They take him out to dinner and then to ice cream before they go home and watch a movie of his choice. 

Blushingly, he chooses an old Disney flick. Meet the Robinsons, it’s called, and he shyly tells them that it’s his favorite movie. 

“I know it’s dorky—” he starts, but Taylor cuts him off. 

“It’s not,” she tells him, and he gives her a smile before pressing play. 

The movie is about a little orphan boy who goes on an adventure and finds himself a big mess of a family who loves him. Ryan privately thinks it may have just become his favorite movie, too. 

By the end of the movie, Jack is half-asleep, resting his head on Ryan’s shoulder. It’s the closest the kid has ever willingly gotten to either of them, and Ryan is sorry to see it come to an end.

“Let’s get you to bed, okay?” he asks, and the kid sleepily nods. 

When Jack’s brushed his teeth and gotten dressed and tucked himself into bed, Ryan knocks on the kid's bedroom door. 

“Come in,” Jack says, and Ryan creaks open the door. 

“Hey,” Ryan says, moving across the room to sit down at the end of the kid’s bed. He’s got a book open on his lap, and he sets it aside when Ryan takes a seat. 

“Hey,” Jack repeats. 

“Happy birthday,” Ryan says. “Fifteen. That’s a big one,” he says, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not, really. It’s no sixteen or eighteen or twenty-one, but Ryan was fifteen when his life changed for good, and for him, fifteen was one of the best years of his life. 

Jack smiles. “Yeah.”

He’s more comfortable with Ryan than he used to be, but their conversation is still slightly stilted, slightly awkward. They sit in silence for a second before Jack says, “Thank you.”

Ryan furrows his brow. 

“For dinner. And the ice cream, and the movie. It was nice,” he says, with a little smile, and then appears to think for a second before he adds, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“‘Course we did,” Ryan says. “It’s your birthday. It’s a special day.”

“No one else ever did things like that for me,” he admits. “My mom, maybe, but she’s been gone a long time.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says. 

Jack shrugs. “It’s not your fault.”

They sit in silence for a while, until Jack says, in almost a whisper, “I really like it here.”

And wow, maybe this kid isn’t as much like Ryan as he had thought. Because Ryan wouldn’t have been caught dead showing his vulnerable side to the Cohens in the first year or so of his life in Newport, and Jack is sitting in front of him, honest and thoughtful, telling him that he likes it here. 

“I’m glad,” Ryan says. 

“You guys are better than my other foster parents,” he says. “I don’t think any of them really liked me.”

“You know, I grew up like you,” Ryan says. “Not Fresno, but Chino, and not in foster homes so much, but my parents couldn’t take care of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ryan shrugs. “I’m just saying, I get you, kid. I know where you come from. I lived that life, too. Your old foster parents probably didn’t, and that’s why…”

“Did Taylor?” Jack asks. 

Ryan hesitates. “Not quite,” he says. She—her parents weren’t there for her, but she grew up healthy and cared for, physically. Emotionally, though…”

Jack nods.

“I’m glad you’re happy here,” Ryan tells him. Jack gives a smile.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he says.

Ryan grins. “Happy birthday, Jack,” he says, getting up and heading for the door. “Get some sleep, okay?”

“‘Kay,” the kid says, and he shuts off the light.

Ryan honestly doesn’t know why their caseworker had called him “a challenge.” The fight during his first few days here appears to have been an isolated incident. The kid is quiet and kind and obedient, and Ryan voices this to Taylor when he goes to bed that night. 

“You were a challenge, too, before, weren’t you?” she asks with a grin. 

“Yeah,” he replies, nodding. “Yeah, I was.”

“And look at you now,” she says. 

Ryan smiles.

Look at him now.

-

Jack settles in after that. He’s still quiet, still kind of cautious around them, but Ryan’s been there, and he knows things like this don’t happen overnight.

It’s in the little things that Ryan can see it. The way the kid’s started sitting out at the kitchen counter to draw or do his homework instead of going to his room and staying there all night. The way he plays his music out loud sometimes instead of through his cheap pair of old headphones that only work on one side. The way he’s started to take snacks from the kitchen cabinet when he’s hungry instead of only eating what Ryan and Taylor give him.

One night, Jack leaves a drawing on the kitchen counter (he’s got that sensitive, artsy thing going on. In that way, the kid kind of reminds Ryan of Seth) and wakes up the next morning to find it stuck to the refrigerator door. Neither Taylor nor Ryan claims responsibility (it was a joint effort), and the kid doesn’t acknowledge it, but the next time he finishes a drawing, he pins it up right next to the first one when he thinks no one’s watching. It stays there for a long time.

One night, he’s listening to music as he does the dishes (a habit Taylor hasn’t quite been able to get him to break), and he sings along softly, right there in the middle of the kitchen. He’s got a nice voice, and Ryan doesn’t want to run the risk of bothering him or frightening him or embarrassing him, so he stands just out of view and lets the music wash over him.

One night, Jack helps make dinner. One night, he sits down at the TV and chooses something he wants to watch, instead of whatever Ryan or Taylor has left on. One night, he skins his knee when he’s running up the driveway, and he lets Taylor clean him up. One night, he asks Ryan for help with his physics homework. One night, he asks if they could maybe have chicken for dinner because he likes the way Taylor makes it. 

It’s the little things like those.

-

Jack has been staying with them for seven or so months when Christmakkuh rolls around.

“How would you feel about staying at my parents’ house for a few days over the holidays?” Ryan asks him one day when he’s doing math homework at the kitchen counter.

Jack furrows his brow. “You said your parents…”

“My adopted parents,” Ryan clarifies. “Took me in when I was your age.”

“Oh,” says Jack. 

“They’d like you,” he tells him. “I think you’d like them, too.”

“Yeah,” says Jack, nodding. “Okay.”

-

The car ride to Berkeley is a little over half an hour. Ryan drives, and Taylor fiddles with the radio stations as he does, never stopping on one for more than three seconds. 

“Taylor,” he chides, and she smiles guiltily, shutting off the radio. 

“Jack, if you have any music you want to put on, you can,” she tells the kid in the backseat. 

“What kind of music do you like?” he asks, and Ryan shakes his head. “Whatever you want, kid.”

Jack looks dubious, but shrugs. “If you’re sure,” he says, and presses play on a song Ryan’s never heard before.

It’s got a nice groove, and Ryan finds himself bopping his head along to the beat. Taylor gives a giggle. “Looks like someone approves of your music taste,” she tells Jack, and the kid just smiles.

“This is good,” Ryan says. “Who sings it?”

“They’re called The Mountain Goats,” Jack tells him. “We can listen to some of their other stuff, too. I mean, if you want.”

Ryan smiles. “Sure. Sounds good,” he says, and they drive on in comfortable silence, save for the music coming from the backseat.

You think you hold the high hand

I’ve got my doubts.

I come from Chino,

Where the asphalt sprouts.

- 

They pull into the Cohens’ driveway as the California sun begins to set.

“We’re here,” Ryan announces, and Jack presses pause on the song coming through the speakers of his phone.

“You ready?” Ryan asks, and Jack nods, getting out of the car with the new suitcase Ryan and Taylor bought him for the trip. He follows Ryan to the front door, stopping to eye the three sets of handprints in the cement at his feet.

One of them is older than the others, small, with splayed fingers set into well-worn concrete. One of the other pairs is about the same size, baby hands on newer, whiter cement, and the third pair is on the same new cement, but the hands are much larger. 

Ryan smiles. “That one’s me,” he says, gesturing to the large set of hands. “The old one’s from when Seth was a baby, and the new ones are my sister Sophie’s.”

“That’s nice,” says Jack, a crooked smile coming over his features. 

Ryan just smiles back, leading Jack up the front steps. Taylor follows, and Ryan rings the doorbell.

“They’re here!” a voice from inside shouts, and even from outside, they can hear footsteps run up to open the door.

“Ryan!” says the girl in the doorway, launching herself at her brother and wrapping her arms around him as tight as she can.

“Hey, Soph,” Ryan says with a laugh, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Jack, this is Sophie,” he says. “Sophie, Jack.” Jack gives a shy little wave, and Sophie smiles.

“What, no hug for me?” Taylor asks from behind Ryan, and Sophie giggles. “Hi, Taylor,” she says. “Happy Chrismukkah.”

“Chrismukkah?” asks Jack.

“We’ve got the power of both Moses and Jesus on our side,” Seth explains, walking into the doorway in a stupid Christmas sweater. “Hey, man!” he adds, turning his attention to Ryan. “Come in, how’ve you been?”

Ryan rolls his eyes, setting down his bags in the house’s foyer.

“I can get those for you!” says Sophie with a smile. 

“Good girl,” says Ryan, smiling back, and Sophie takes his bags upstairs.

“You can just leave your suitcase here,” Ryan tells Jack. “Sophie’ll get it.”

Jack looks hesitant but nods, putting his bag down next to Taylor’s. Ryan lays a gentle hand on his shoulder to lead him into the living room.

He’s getting more comfortable with touch, Ryan notices. He doesn’t flinch anymore when someone moves too suddenly, even seems to like it when Ryan ruffles his hair or Taylor straightens his collar. Ryan thinks that’s progress.

They enter the living room to a picture-perfect scene, fireplace roaring and eight stockings hung up above it, Sandy, Kirsten, Seth, Ryan, Sophie, Summer, Taylor, Missy. The Berkeley house doesn't have quite as much room for them as the Newport house would have, but although they’re snug, Ryan thinks they fit perfectly. Sandy and Kirsten sit together on the couch, Sandy bouncing baby Missy up and down on his knee. Summer sits in an armchair by the fire, and when she notices Ryan, her eyes light up.

“Atwood!” she calls, getting up from her seat and pulling Ryan into a tight hug. 

“Hey, Summer,” Ryan smiles. “This is Jack,” he says when he pulls away, nodding at the boy standing beside him. 

“Oh, hi!” Summer exclaims, giving a little wave. “I’m Summer!”

“Hi,” Jack says shyly, and Summer gives him a big smile.

Kirsten is the next to give Ryan a hug, as Taylor walks in and Summer nearly barrels her over. Sandy follows, adding a “We missed you, kid,” before introducing himself to Jack.

Jack looks kind of... floored by the whole scene unfolding around him. Ryan gets where he’s coming from. But as the night goes on, he seems to come out of his shell a little bit, and by the time the menorah’s flickered out, he’s won quite a bounty in their game of dreidel, and he’s eaten at least ten of the latkes Sophie made in anticipation of their visit. 

He seems happy.

Ryan knows the feeling.

-

Jack’s staying in Ryan’s old room. It only takes a second after Ryan knocks for Jack to give a quick “Come in!” Ryan obliges, taking a seat on the end of the bed.

Jack raises his eyebrows expectantly, a smirk on his face. 

Ryan rolls his eyes. “How you doing, kid?” he asks, and Jack smiles.

“Good,” he says. “Your family is nice.”

“You know they’re your family, too, if you want them to be,” Ryan tells him. Jack gives another smile, slightly more reserved than the last. Ryan adds, “But if you’re not ready for that, it's okay.”

“No, I—” Jack cuts himself off. “They’re nice. You’re nice. I—”

Ryan waits as Jack tries to collect his thoughts.

“I’m not used to having good people. Or good things. I just—” He takes a deep breath. “I’m scared of wanting things, y’know? Because even if I get them, something can always take them away. And that hurts more than just not having them in the first place.”

His words are deep and thought-provoking, too dark and terrifying to have been spun up by a kid so young.

Then again, Ryan’s not sure he’s one to talk.

“I’m never gonna give up on you,” he says. “You’re stuck with me, kid, and nothing’s gonna change that if you don’t want it to.”

“I don’t want it to,” Jack confirms quietly. Ryan smiles.

“Get some sleep,” he says, ruffling the kid’s hair and earning himself a smile. Then, taking a leap of faith, he says, “I love you, kid.”

There’s a beat of silence. The atmosphere in the room has changed, sort of… condensing, and Ryan’s terrified he’s made the wrong choice, until—

“I love you, too,” Jack says, words laced with just a little bit of disbelief.

Ryan switches the light off as he leaves the room, and he feels his heart soar.

- 

“How’s the kid?” Sandy asks when Ryan comes back downstairs.

“Good,” says Ryan. “Really good.”

“You’ve really got a handle on this whole parenting thing, haven’t you?” Sandy asks, impressed.

“I learned from the best,” Ryan says, and his father gives him a smile.

“He’s a good kid,” Sandy says.

“You always could tell,” Ryan tells him, and he hopes the love he has for Jack is as apparent to the kid as the love for Ryan that practically radiates off of Sandy in this moment.

He thinks it probably is.

-

Night four of Chrismukkah is Ryan’s favorite.

There’s nothing particularly special about it, save for the fact that it’s Ryan’s night to light the menorah. He remembers the first time he did it, with shaky hands and no confidence in what he was doing. 

“I’m not Jewish,” he had said, the first time Seth had held the Shammash out to him.

Sandy had shrugged. “Neither is Kirsten,” he’d said. Kirsten had lit it the day before. 

Ryan had been hesitant but had still taken the Shammash, shakily bringing the flame to meet the wick of each of the first four candles.

He’d done it again on the eighth night, slightly more confident, but still with trembling hands.

But the years have gone by fast, and now, Ryan holds the candle with a well-practiced hand, letting the flame grow and flicker atop the fourth wick on the menorah.

Seth starts clapping when he does it, like the dumbass he is, and the rest of the family joins in, even baby Missy attempting to slap her own palms together.

Jack claps, too. The smile on his face is worth everything to Ryan.

-

Day eight comes, and with it, Christmas Eve. Eight’s not Ryan’s anymore—days five through eight have been traded away to Sophie, Summer, Taylor, and Missy (technically. Seth has insisted that since she’s his baby, he gets to light the last candle. No one fights him on it).

This year, though, Seth stops before reaching for the Shammash. “Jack, do you want to do it?” he asks, and Ryan genuinely thinks it might be the most considerate thing he’s ever seen his brother do.

Jack looks up from his hoard of gelt with wide eyes, caught like a deer in the headlights. “Me?” he asks, and Seth nods. 

“Yeah, buddy,” he says with a smile. “You’re the only one left.”

“I’m not Jewish,” Jack tells him, in a tone so incredibly reminiscent of Ryan’s own at that age. The three older Cohens all turn their heads to Ryan with smiles that indicate that they know exactly what he’s thinking.

“It’s okay, kid,” Ryan says. “Technically, only three of us are.”

Jack still looks hesitant, but Ryan gets up, removing the Shammash from its holder and placing it carefully into Jack’s hands, which shake just as much as Ryan’s did all those years ago. Jack looks up at him, wide-eyed, and Ryan simply guides his trembling hands to light each candle, starting from the left and working his way down the line until all eight candles are flickering in the moonlight.

Seth starts clapping again when they finish. The others join in. 

It’s like Jack's smile takes up his whole face, and Ryan feels an undeniable surge of joy fill his chest.

-

The next day brings them the Chris- of Chrismukkah, and Sophie wakes the entire house up early.

“Sophieeee,” Seth groans, when he trudges out to the living room. “I’m an old man, Soph, I need my beauty sleep.”

Sophie just gives him the side-eye before looking to her parents.

“Can we open them?” she asks excitedly. Sandy looks around the room, evidently taking a quick headcount before nodding. “Go for it,” he says with a smile, and Sophie does.

It takes her maybe fifteen minutes to get through her presents, but the rest of them take their time, slowly unwrapping each parcel one by one. 

The surprise on Jack’s face when Ryan hands him one of his gifts is kind of heartbreaking.

“For me?” he asks, disbelief coloring his expression, and Ryan nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Here, open it.”

Jack takes the package into his hands, carefully undoing the bow before he starts on the wrapping, and his mouth falls open when the gift becomes visible.

“Seth suggested them,” Ryan says, gesturing down at the package of drawing markers in Jack’s hands. 

“Th—These are really expensive, you didn’t have to—”

“We wanted to,” Taylor tells him, and he seems to scan their faces for any traces of dishonesty.

Evidently, he finds none, and he lets a genuine smile stretch across his face.

“Thank you,” he says, and there’s a second’s silence shared between all three of them before Jack gives Ryan a hesitant hug, and then moves on to Taylor, whispering more thank yous to each of them.

Ryan catches Sandy’s eye from across the room. Sandy gives him a knowing smile.

Ryan smiles back.

-

If Jack looks surprised when Ryan hands him the first gift, it’s nothing compared to the look on his face when Sophie hands him a gift bag labeled with his name.

“For me?” he asks in disbelief. 

Sophie smiles. “Yeah, open it,” she says.

He does, and Ryan’s breath catches in his throat.

A red stocking with four white letters sewn on. J-A-C-K, but they might as well read R-Y-A-N because Ryan has been here before— a fifteen-year-old kid, his first Chrismukkah with his new family, an overwhelming sense of disbelief, because every sign he gets is telling him that these people care about him, and why would they? A teenaged Cohen kid hands him a red stocking with four white letters sewn on. R-Y-A-N, J-A-C-K, in this moment they’re one and the same.

“Go hang it up,” Taylor says with a smile, nudging Jack with her shoulder, and the kid looks to Ryan.

“There’s no going back,” Ryan warns him, a twinkle in his eyes. “You’re a Cohen now.”

Jack smiles. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and slips it over the extra hook Sophie must have placed at the right-most side of the mantle for him.

The stockings hang even tighter than they did before. Some of the letters overlap, but they all know what the stockings say.

Sandy. Kirsten. Seth. Ryan. Sophie. Summer. Taylor. Missy.

Jack.

-

He gets lightyears more comfortable with them after Christmakkuh. It’s been almost a year since he walked through their front door for the first time, and he’s probably where Ryan was with the Cohens two or so years in. Ryan’s impressed. Jack helps Taylor cook dinner and asks Ryan for help with his homework and sometimes even throws out the first “I love you” before he goes to sleep.

According to his file, the longest Jack had ever stayed in a foster home before is six months. It’s the eve of their first anniversary with him when Ryan broaches the subject.

“I want to adopt him,” he tells Taylor as they settle into bed that night.

She smiles. “Me, too,” she tells him, and he breathes out a laugh.

“Holy shit,” Ryan says. “We’re doing this thing.”

-

They ask Jack at breakfast that morning. Taylor’s made chocolate chip pancakes, and Jack tears into them mere minutes after he wakes up.

“So,” Ryan says, once they’ve all cleaned their plates. “You’ve lived here for a year now.”

Jack seems to think that over, doing the math in his head. “Huh,” he says, a look of happy confusion on his face.

“That’s really big,” Taylor points out. “And you like it here, right?”

Jack nods. “Yeah,” he says, face breaking into a smile. “Yeah, I do.”
“So we were wondering,” Ryan starts, making eye contact with Taylor. She nods encouragingly, and he continues. “If you wanted, we were thinking we’d like to adopt you.”

“Adopt me?” Jack says, as if the words are foreign coming off his tongue.

“Yeah,” says Taylor, smiling.
“Seriously?” Jack asks. “Like absolutely, one hundred percent—”

“Kid,” says Ryan, cutting him off with a smile. “Seriously.”

“Holy shit,” Jack breathes, then claps a hand to his mouth in surprise. “Sorry, I—”

Ryan laughs. “It’s okay,” he says, reaching out to ruffle the kid’s hair. “We’ll start the paperwork as soon as we can, okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, seemingly unable to stop smiling.

He gets up, giving Taylor a hug and then turning to Ryan and giving him one, too.

“Thank you,” he whispers into Ryan’s t-shirt. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Ryan squeezes Jack’s shoulders and places a kiss on his forehead. 

“Love you,” Ryan murmurs under his breath. 

“I love you, too,” Jack whispers back.

-

The adoption takes three months, and they head up to Berkeley again after all the paperwork’s been finalized.

“They’re your family, too, now, kid,” Ryan reminds him as they walk past the three sets of cement handprints, up the front path and onto the doorstep. 

Jack furrows his brow as if he hadn’t even considered that before. “Huh,” he says with a smile. “Cool.”

Ryan grins and rings the doorbell. 

Sophie answers almost immediately, breathless and red-faced, as if she ran across the house as soon as she heard the bell. Ryan’s sure she did.

“Hi, guys!” she says, and Ryan hears Kirsten from somewhere inside, voice getting closer by the second.

“Sophie, I could’ve gotten the door,” she says, but her face breaks into a smile when she sees the little family on her doorstep. “Ryan!” she says, wrapping her son in a hug before she moves on to Taylor and then hesitantly opens her arms to Jack.

Jack obliges, and Kirsten smiles wide.

“Are you my nephew now?” Sophie asks him after Kirsten pulls away.

Jack opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t quite know what to answer. “Technically…” he starts.

“I’m too young for that,” Sophie decides, cutting him off.

“Missy’s already your niece,” Ryan points out. 

“Missy’s a baby,” Sophie points out. “Jack’s my age.”

The way Jack smiles whenever one of the Cohens mentions him by name is almost intoxicating. Ryan could watch him smile like that for hours. 

“I’m still only fifteen,” Jack says. 

Sophie shrugs. “Whatever,” she says. “C’mon, I made cupcakes.”

Jack smiles, following her to the kitchen. He glances back at Ryan and Taylor as he goes.

“Congratulations,” says Kirsten warmly, leading them to the living room. “You deserve it.”

“He deserves it,” Ryan says, and Kirsten just smiles. 

“Congratulations!” Sandy says, as soon as they enter the room. “Legal parenthood! That’s huge!”

“You would know,” says Ryan, as Sandy pulls him into a hug.

“Like father, like son,” Sandy replies, and there’s still that burst of euphoria in Ryan’s chest that comes when the words father and son are used to refer to him and Sandy. He wonders if Jack will ever feel that surge of pure joy.

He thinks he probably will.

-

Jack and Sophie have retreated upstairs by the time Ryan and Taylor decide it’s time to get going. 

“I’ll get him,” Ryan tells her, getting up and placing a kiss on her forehead before making his way upstairs. 

He stops outside Sophie’s bedroom door when he hears their voices carry out into the hallway. 

“So, is Ryan, like, your dad now?” Sophie asks. 

“I dunno,” says Jack. 

“But you want him to be.”

“I mean, yeah,” says Jack, and Ryan can’t help the smile that comes over his face. “He’s—yeah. I do.”

“He’d like that, too,” Sophie says. “You’re a lot like him, I think. At least that’s what Dad says.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah. Except Dad says that you punch people less.”

Ryan manages to stifle a laugh. 

“Cool,” Jack says, and the way he says it is so genuine that Ryan can almost see the smile on his face. 

He smiles to himself, and once the conversation has moved forward, Ryan does too, stopping in the doorframe of Sophie’s room, where his little sister hangs upside down off the end of her bed and Jack spins back and forth in a pink desk chair. 

“It’s time to go, kid,” Ryan says, and Sophie sighs dramatically. 

“Ryannnn,” she whines, but there’s a smile on her face. 

“Sorry, kiddo,” Ryan says, making his way across the room to help Sophie up from the floor. 

“Bye, Sophie,” says Jack, as she gets up and gives Ryan a hug. 

She turns around and gives Jack a hug, too. 

“I’ll see you soon,” she says when she pulls away. 

“You too,” Jack replies with a smile before he follows Ryan down the stairs. 

“So, you and Sophie have fun?” Ryan asks on the car ride home. Jack nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s cool.”

“She seems to like you, too,” Taylor observes. 

Jack smiles. “She says that since you guys adopted me, I’m basically a free friend.”

Ryan laughs. “Sounds like Sophie,” he says. 

“Yeah,” replies Jack with a giggle, and the night is silence save for the music coming from the car radio. 

The next time Ryan looks back, the kid’s out like a light. 

-

It’s kind of crazy, the amount of time it takes for Jack to learn that Ryan’s queer.

It’s not like Ryan had danced around the subject. It’s not a secret or anything, and Ryan doesn’t even realize he hasn’t brought it up until he mentions an old ex-boyfriend from college in passing and Jack’s eyes go wide.

“You had a boyfriend?” he blurts, only seeming to realize that the words have slipped out when he sees the look on Ryan’s face. “Sorry, I—”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Ryan says with a smile. “Yeah, I did.”

“Are you—?” Jack starts.

“Bi,” Ryan confirms.

Jack nods, “Oh,” he says. “Uh, cool.”

There’s something in his voice that Ryan can’t quite make out, but he shrugs it off.

If it’s important, the kid’ll tell him.

-

It’s maybe two weeks after that when Jack comes home in tears. 

“Hey,” Ryan says softly, moving across the room to meet him in the middle. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, but Jack just cries. 

“C’mere,” Ryan says, and he pulls Jack into a hug. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Jack balls up his hands in Ryan’s shirt as his body is wracked by sobs. Ryan just holds him tight; rubs the kid’s back until he’s cried himself out. 

“‘M sorry,” Jack says hoarsely, when he’s managed to collect himself. “‘M sorry, I overreacted, I—”

“Hey, you’re okay,” Ryan says. “What happened?” 

Jack shakes his head, wiping tears from his cheeks. “‘S’okay.”

“Jack,” Ryan says, and that’s all it takes for the kid to break down again. 

“I’m gay, okay?” he says, angry tears spilling down his face. “I’m gay and I’m queer and I like boys, and I don’t want to!”

The words are angry and painful and brutally honest, and Ryan doesn’t quite know what to say. 

He remembers that conversation they’d had, that car ride home from school during Jack’s first week with them. 

He should have prepared for this. 

Because things are better than they used to be, but Jack is still a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and being queer on top of that…

Ryan knows what cities like Chino do to your mind. There is one right way of thinking, and in that set of principles, queer equals weak. Queer equals stupid and girly and abnormal. Queer equals wrong. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” says Ryan. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I don’t want to be,” Jack says weakly, eyes shining with tears. “It’s not fair.”

Ryan can almost feel his heart break at that. 

“Hey,” he says again, tilting Jack’s chin up so that the kid looks him in the eye. “There’s nothing wrong with you, okay?”

“But—”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Ryan repeats. 

“I don’t—”

“Jack.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he echoes. 

His words are soft and unconvincing, but it’s a start. 

-

He seems to get more comfortable with it in the months following. He tells Taylor two weeks later, and Ryan listens from behind a doorway as she thanks him for trusting her before shyly confiding in him that she’s trans. 

Ryan invites Alex and Lindsay over for dinner one night when they’re in town, and all four of them pretend not to notice the way Jack not-so-subtly watches them all evening, the way he smiles when Alex gives Lindsay a quick peck on the cheek, the way he can’t keep his eyes off their intertwined fingers. 

Lindsay’s always been subtle, and though Ryan knows she’s insightful enough, she doesn’t say anything. Alex has never been that reserved, and halfway through the meal, she shoots Ryan a knowing look as Jack intently watches her run her fingers through Lindsay’s hair. Raised eyebrows, twinkling eyes that dart from the kid to Ryan and back. Ryan just nods; gives a crooked smile. Alex smirks back. 

-

“Congrats on the kid,” Alex says, when Jack’s gone to bed and the rest of them (save for Ryan) are drinking wine on the back patio. 

Ryan smiles. “Thanks,” he says. 

“You’re really good with him,” Lindsay points out. 

“You’ve gotten soft,” says Alex, and Ryan barks a laugh. 

“He was always soft!” Lindsay protests, earning a giggle from Taylor.

Alex shrugs. “The kid has softened him up even more,” she says, restating her original point.

Ryan looks to Taylor for backup.

Taylor shrugs. “She’s not wrong.”

Ryan rolls his eyes and turns back to Alex.

“He’s a good kid,” he says.

“It’s a good look on you,” Alex tells him. “Ryan Atwood, family man.”

“I never would’ve guessed it,” Lindsay admits.

Ryan smiles.

He doesn’t think he would’ve either.

-

In the weeks following, Anna and her fiancée join them for dinner, and Kaitlin stops by for a few hours in all her bisexual glory.

“I know what you’re doing,” Jack says, after Kaitlin pulls out of their driveway in her pickup truck. Taylor gives Ryan a look and retreats to the kitchen to let her boys talk.

So he’s figured it out. Ryan figures that Kaitlin probably comes on a bit strong, what with her button-laden denim jacket, electric-green converse high-tops, nose piercing, and undercut, but the kid seemed to like her well enough, so Ryan shoots him a crooked smile. “Is it working?” he asks.

Jack tries and fails to fight a grin. “Maybe,” he says. 

“That’s progress,” Ryan points out, and he gives Jack’s shoulder a squeeze.

-

Jack’s sixteenth birthday rolls around, and after he’s opened his gifts, Ryan presents the kid with a messily handmade friendship bracelet, woven in rainbow colors. 

“Did you make this?” Jack asks in disbelief, as Ryan ties it onto his wrist. 

“He had help,” Taylor provides. 

“Taylor,” Ryan says, but there’s no real heat behind it. “He was impressed!”

Jack smiles. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m still impressed.”

“Kaitlin helped,” Ryan admits. “She used to make a lot of them back in the day,” he says, gesturing to his and Taylor’s wrists, pink-purple-blue and black-grey-white-purple on his, blue-pink-white-pink-blue on hers. 

He dug them up a couple of weeks ago, going through boxes in their basement. After trying and failing to start Jack’s bracelet several times, he drove the twenty minutes to Kaitlin’s apartment and asked for help. 

“Why are you making a friendship bracelet?” she had asked, before realizing, “It’s for the kid. Yup. You’ve gone absolutely fucking soft and you need to make your gay-ass kid a gay-ass friendship bracelet.”

“How—”

“When you invite every queer girl you know over for dinner over the course of a month, word gets out. You’re not subtle, Atwood, and the kid’s so much like you, I’m having a pretty hard time believing he doesn’t like boys.”

(Kaitlin’s always been able to read him like a book. It’s kind of freaky, but God knows Ryan can’t always string together the words to tell her something, and it’s also kind of nice that he doesn’t have to).

“Cool,” Jack says now, smiling wide. Then, shyly, he looks up at Ryan and Taylor. “Thank you,” he says, and Ryan smiles. 

“Happy birthday, kid,” he says, ruffling Jack’s hair. “I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be a good one.”

 -

It’s been a year and a half of Jack living with them, and it kind of feels like he’s always been there. He’s always doing his homework at the kitchen counter or watching TV in the living room or listening to music in his own room. He is a constant in their lives, and Ryan can’t imagine life without him. 

So when Taylor says, “The foster care agency called us. Asked if we’d be interested in taking on another kid,” Ryan doesn’t think twice. 

-

“How would you feel about having another kid live here?” Ryan asks Jack at breakfast the next morning. 

Jack raises his eyebrows. “Like another foster kid?” he asks, and Ryan nods. 

“Would they be younger than me?”

“Probably,” Taylor says. “The agency called us about a little girl in San Luis Obispo.”

Jack seems to mull it over. 

“You can’t forget about me,” he says, and Ryan can’t quite tell if it’s a joke or not.

“That’s never been an option,” he tells Jack nevertheless.

The kid cracks a smile. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and that’s pretty much all they need.

-

Cassie walks into their house for the first time a couple of months later. Her parents died in a car wreck when she was too young to remember them, and she’s been shuttled around through the system ever since. She is ten years old, with brown skin and ratty chin-length hair, and she comes to them wearing a worn-out old dress she had been given by a girl at her previous home.

Gender identity issues were the words their caseworker had used, and Ryan could almost hear the gears in Taylor’s head whirring when she did. 

“I’m a girl,” Cassie informs Taylor, as soon as they walk through the front door. 

“Me too,” Taylor tells her, and Ryan smiles. 

-

Cassie takes an immediate liking to Jack, and she follows him around for the better part of her first day with them.

“Are you a foster kid, too?” Ryan hears her ask him, as she sits on his bedroom floor, watching him sketch on a piece of scrap paper.

“Yeah,” Jack says, and then almost immediately changes his answer. “I mean, no. I was when I got here, but Ryan and Taylor adopted me.”

“So they’re good ones,” Cassie says quietly.

“Yeah,” Jack smiles. “Yeah, they are.”

There’s a silence filled only by the music coming from Jack’s phone, and then he says—

“You’re safe here.”

“Me?” she confirms, pointing at herself, and Ryan’s heart aches, because this little girl has everything stacked against her. She has Theresa’s brown skin and Taylor’s identity, and yeah, Taylor and Theresa are doing alright for themselves now, but it took them ages to get there, and they each only had one thing that kept them on the outskirts. 

Cassie has both of those and more; she is trans and Latina, a poor young girl who has never really known a home. She has faced too much too young, and yet, there’s still that childish naïvete about her, a sense of happiness that almost surrounds her, unmarred by the death and destruction and hate she’s grown up with.

Jack just shrugs. “Yeah, you,” he confirms. “They’re cool.”
Cassie looks skeptical.

“I promise,” he says, tracing an “X” over his heart.

“Pinky promise?” she presses.

Jack holds out his pinky. 

“Pinky promise,” he confirms, and locks pinkies with the little girl in front of him.

She looks satisfied enough with that, and Ryan hopes it doesn’t take too long for them to prove it to her.

-

Cassie is hesitant to let Taylor touch her hair at first. 

“I’m not gonna cut it, okay?” she explains, when Cassie flinches back from the hairbrush for the third time. “I’m just gonna brush it. And when it gets longer, I can put braids in it or something. Whatever you want.”

Cassie looks at Taylor through narrowed eyes, appearing to size her up before she shrugs. 

“Okay,” she says, and Taylor’s face breaks into a smile. She goes to work on Cassie’s hair, and once she’s done with the hairbrush, she starts putting in little twists, secured with the butterfly clips she’d dug out of storage the second Cassie’s stay had been confirmed. 

“You like it?” Taylor asks once she’s done, handing Cassie a mirror. 

Her eyes go wide, and the smile on her face makes Ryan’s heart soar from where he watches in the kitchen doorway. 

“Pretty,” she giggles to herself, and then almost immediately, she turns around and gives Taylor a hug. 

Jack joins Ryan in the doorway. 

“Taylor did my hair!” she exclaims when she notices him standing there. 

“It looks nice,” Jack says with a smile. Cassie beams back at him before turning to Ryan. 

It’s not that Cassie has taken a liking to Jack, Ryan has realized. It’s that she’s taken a liking to all of them. She’s ten years old, and it seems like she hasn’t quite realized what a shit hand life’s dealt her. She is young and naïve, the picture of childhood innocence, and she is absolutely overflowing with love.

-

“So, is Cassie short for something?” Taylor asks the little girl as she tucks her in that night. 

“Cassandra,” Cassie tells her. “A girl at my last foster home helped me pick it.”

“That’s really pretty,” Taylor says. 

Cassie smiles, but then her smile falters, and she asks, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Taylor furrows her brow, brushing Cassie’s hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You did my hair,” she says, “and you bought me dresses.” At this, she gestures to the frilly pink nightgown she’s wearing. She shrugs. “People usually don’t do that.”

“You know, when I was born,” Taylor tells her, “people thought I was a boy, too.”

Cassie furrows her brow. “Really?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” Taylor says. “But I knew I wasn’t, just like you. And some people didn’t believe me, but the ones who mattered did.”

Cassie appears to think this over. “So you’re like me,” she says, not so much a question as a statement. 

“Yeah,” says Taylor softly. “Yeah, I am.”

“You’re really pretty,” says Cassie, and Taylor gives her a smile.

“You are, too.”

-

“She’s me,” Taylor says, as she gets into bed that night. “God, Ryan, she’s just like me.”

Ryan smiles, brushing Taylor’s hair out of her eyes as she lays on her side to face him. 

“You’re really good with her,” he says. 

“I get it now,” she says. “The way you are with Jack. It makes sense.”

“I’m glad,” Ryan tells her. 

“I wanna give her the life I didn’t have,” Taylor says. “She deserves everything, Ryan, and I want to give it to her.”

“You will,” he tells her, giving her a soft kiss on the forehead. 

“I hope so,” she says.  

“You will,” Ryan whispers again, and Taylor gives him a smile. 

-

Cassie comes to Berkeley for the first time at Chrismukkah, and Ryan is proud to say that his family welcomes her with open arms. She accepts Kirsten and Sandy’s hugs without a second thought and introduces herself to them with a confidence to rival Seth’s.

She takes a liking to Missy, and while Sophie and Jack retreat upstairs, Cassie sits on the floor and watches Missy build a tower of blocks. 

“What’s your name?” Cassie asks her. 

“Missy!” says Missy, placing another block on top of her tower.

“Her real name’s Marissa,” Summer explains from her seat on the couch, “but we call her Missy.”

“That’s pretty,” Cassie says. “My name is Cassandra, but everyone calls me Cassie.”

Summer smiles. “That’s a really pretty name,” she says. 

“Thanks,” says Cassie. “I helped pick it myself.”

“You have good taste,” Summer tells her, and she beams. 

“Thank you!” she says, earning a smile from Summer before turning back to help Missy with her tower. 

Summer catches Ryan’s eye and gives him a look, wide eyes and raised eyebrows, that practically sings Cassie’s praises. 

Ryan beams back. 

-

“You two,” Summer tells them that night. “got so fucking lucky.”

“Language!” Taylor scolds. “There are kids in the house!”

“The little ones have gone to sleep,” Summer points out. “and the older two don’t care. Anyway, they’ve got better things to do than listen to us talk.”

In her defense, she’s right. Missy and Cassie went to bed a while ago, and Jack’s given up Ryan's old bedroom for Cassie to sleep in, so he’s most likely wide awake on the air mattress Sophie’s set up for him on her bedroom floor, snacking on the pack of Oreos she'd snuck upstairs when she thought no one was looking. (Ryan was, but he’s gonna let them have this. He can think of worse things for a couple of teenagers to do).

“But God,” Summer continues. “You hit the jackpot on these kids!”

Ryan laughs. 

“I’m serious!” she exclaims. “You’ve got Atwood 2.0 up there, who’s like, the softest, most respectful kid I’ve ever met, and then you hit us with this little ray of sunshine!”

“She’s right,” Seth points out. “You know we love Jack, and Cassie’s incredible, too.”

“God, did you see her with Missy?” asks Summer. “Adorable. Fucking adorable. She’s all, like, wow, Missy’s a really pretty name, my real name is Cassandra and I helped pick it myself! It’s the cutest shit.”

Taylor’s beaming back at her, and Ryan can’t help but smile, too. 

-

“Cassie’s really lucky to have you,” Summer tells Taylor later that night, when Seth’s gone to check on Missy and Ryan’s gone outside to talk to Sandy. “I can’t think of anyone who could raise her better.”

“Thanks,” Taylor says softly. “That means a lot.”

“I remember what you were like when you were her age,” Summer says. “And, I mean, she reminds me of you, y’know? But I can tell she’s, like, way happier than you were. And I know it’s because of you. Both of you.”

“I mean, it doesn’t take much to out-parent Veronica Townsend,” Taylor remarks with a hint of bitterness. “Just take out all the if you’re gonna be a real girl, you have to do what I tell you shit and then, like, say I love you a lot.”

“I’m proud of you,” Summer tells her. 

“Thank you,” Taylor says softly.

“I’m really glad you guys did the whole foster parents thing,” Summer says, with more genuineness in her voice than Taylor can remember hearing for a long time. “It’s really nice. I know you were probably wary at first, but you’re really good with them. You’re really, really good.”

“I just…” Taylor starts. “I give them what I wish I had.”

“I know you do,” Summer says. “I know both of you do. And that’s really all they need.”

-

“So,” Ryan starts, when he steps out onto the patio to talk to Sandy.

“So,” Sandy echoes with a smirk when Ryan doesn’t elaborate.

Ryan rolls his eyes through a smile and sits down in the lawn chair next to his dad.

“I think Cassie likes us,” Sandy suggests. Ryan gives a little laugh.

“Cassie likes everyone,” he informs Sandy, who gives a smile. “She’s… God, she’s just the sweetest kid.”

“Jack seems to like her,” Sandy says. “Your whole situation seems really good, kid.”

“We got lucky,” Ryan says, echoing Summer’s words from earlier on in the night. Sandy shakes his head.

“You didn’t get lucky, ” he tells Ryan. “What you’ve done for Jack and Cassie… you could do that for any kid. I know you could.”

“We got a little lucky,” Ryan insists. “Cassie’s trans, and Jack’s… I mean, I know you see me in him, too, so we just…” he trails off. “We just think about what we needed when we were their age, and we do it. We can do it because they’re so much like us that we know what to do.”

“They’re not your carbon copies,” Sandy points out. “They’ve got certain similarities to you, but doesn’t everyone?”

Ryan furrows his brow, urging Sandy to go on.

“Yeah, Cassie and Taylor are both trans, and yeah, you and Jack are cut from that same cloth, but they’ve got their own things, and you do right by that.”

“Like what?” Ryan asks.

“Like, Cassie’s not afraid to say exactly what’s on her mind, and you let her, because you care about what she has to say. Jack likes to draw, and you buy him expensive markers, because you know he’ll like them. Cassie throws around I love yous more than you’ve ever been comfortable with, and you say them back anyway, because you know she needs them. Jack’s shyer than you’ve ever been, and you don’t pressure him, because you know exactly the situations that will make him uncomfortable. You know what they need. You’re a good parent,” Sandy says, and Ryan fights a smile.

“I learned from the best,” he says, and Sandy smiles back.

-

Chrismukkah goes by quickly, seven days gone in the blink of an eye. Sandy, Kirsten, Seth, Ryan, Sophie, Summer, Taylor. 

They’ve got two more kids and only one more day, so Ryan shouldn’t be surprised when, on the eighth night, Jack turns to Cassie and asks her if she wants to help. 

Her eyes light up, because of course they do. There's so much life inside of her, and Ryan’s so incredibly glad they got to her before life beat her down enough to make that fire inside of her go out. 

Jack’s hands are steady as he lets Cassie take the Shammash and guides her small hands from the first candle to the last, carefully lighting each wick until the flame rises up and flickers brightly against the dark night outside.

“Good job,” he tells her, putting the Shammash back into its holder. Cassie beams, lighting up the room even brighter than the menorah beside her. 

-

It only takes Cassie a few months to start calling Taylor and Ryan Mom and Dad.

The first time it happens is at breakfast one Saturday morning. Jack is sitting across from Cassie, walking her through the plot of one of the comic books Seth had bought him for his birthday as Taylor pulls Cassie’s hair into pigtails. Ryan is at the stove, flipping pancakes and listening to the bacon sizzle. 

“You’re all done,” Taylor tells Cassie after she clips her bangs back (she’s growing them out).

Cassie gives a toothy smile. “Thanks, Mom!” she says, and the rest of them all freeze. 

Cassie doesn’t seem to notice, content to keep talking to Jack about his comic book, but from behind her, Taylor looks to Ryan with a huge smile. 

Ryan smiles back. 

-

The second time it happens is when Ryan comes to tuck her in that night. 

“I love you,” he says, placing a kiss on her forehead. She isn’t like Jack in that respect; she’s always been open to touch, even actively seeks it out. 

“I love you, too,” she says, and then, hesitating, adds, “Dad.”

It’s not like it was that morning; it’s careful and calculated, because Taylor is Taylor, Taylor is safe, Taylor is Mom. Ryan isn’t quite that dear to her, and it takes conscious contemplation for her to call him Dad, but she still does it. 

Ryan smiles in disbelief, a surge of warmth filling his chest. 

“Goodnight, Cassie,” he says, and before he switches off the light, he sees her grin. 

-

Cassie spends most of her evenings on Jack’s bedroom floor, and they coexist in perfect harmony. Sometimes, she sits on the floor and doodles while he does science homework at his desk. Sometimes, she does a puzzle on his desk, and he sits beside her, wordlessly helping her piece it together. Today, he sits on his bed listening to music, and Cassie sits against the wall, listening beside him.

“Are Ryan and Taylor your parents?” she asks, cutting through the soft music coming from his phone’s speakers. 

Jack doesn’t quite know what to say to that. “I—” he starts. “I don’t—”

“You never call them Mom and Dad,” she notes. 

Jack fidgets with his sweatshirt sleeve. “I don’t know,” he says. “I already had a mom and dad.”

“Me too,” Cassie says. “But Ryan and Taylor are my new mom and dad, I think. They like it when I call them that.”

“I’m not the same as you,” he says, and Cassie furrows her brow. 

“My dad wasn’t… he wasn’t a good person,” he tells her, and hopes she can read between the lines, because she’s lived at even more foster homes than he has, and she knows what things can be like. 

Cassie just nods. Jack takes that as a sign to go on. 

“My dad was bad, y’know? And so I’ve never had a dad who’s good, and if I called Ryan Dad, that wouldn’t mean anything, because dads aren't good, and he is.”

“Maybe your dad just wasn’t really your dad,” Cassie posits. When she receives a blank stare from Jack, she goes on. 

“Like, if he didn’t want to be your dad, you shouldn’t be stuck with him. You can choose your own dad if you want.”

Jack appears to consider that.

“That’s pretty smart,” he says eventually, and Cassie beams.

-

He actually says it for the first time two weeks later. 

The kitchen buzzes with life as the sun sets outside, Taylor sitting at the dinner table and painting Cassie’s nails as Jack helps Ryan make dinner. He adds a little salt to the sauce at Ryan’s instruction, and Ryan smiles. “Perfect,” he tells Jack, and usually Jack would beam, but now he’s so lost in his own head that he can’t focus on anything but the words that are about to come out of his mouth.

“Thanks, Dad,” he says, the words unfamiliar on his tongue. It’s been a really long time since he last said them. 

After they leave his mouth, his eyes fall to the ground, and a vaguely sick feeling settles in his stomach because he’s not quite sure if that was the right move. Yeah, it’s been over two years, and yeah, Cassie’s already beat him to the punch, but he’s not Cassie, and that’s gotta be taken into account, right?

Cassie is young and sweet and not quite innocent, because she’s been through shit too, but there is a certain childlike air to her that makes the Moms and Dads coming from her mouth sound natural. Jack lost that a long time ago, so he’s not sure how this is gonna play out.

But he feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up to see Ryan smiling at him. 

Neither of them says a word, but Jack smiles back, and when Cassie manages to catch his eye with a knowing smirk, he smiles at her, too.

Dinner that night seems to taste especially good.

-

“You know you don’t—” Ryan starts, as he sits on the edge of Jack’s bed that night. “You shouldn’t feel, y’know, pressured just because Cassie—”

Jack furrows his eyebrows. “So you don’t want me to call you Dad?” he asks, and Ryan shakes his head, almost frantically.

“No, of course I do,” Ryan tells him. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

Jack says nothing, and Ryan goes on. 

“It took me a really long time to call my dad my dad,” Ryan tells him. “I still slip up sometimes. And you just...You remind me of me, kid, so…” 

“Cassie and I talked,” Jack says. “She said some smart things.”

Ryan nods. “She’s a smart kid,” he says.

Jack nods. “She said that I shouldn’t get stuck with the dad that the universe gave me if I don’t want to.”

“Wise words,” Ryan says.

“And I don’t want to,” Jack tells him.

Ryan gives a soft smile.

“I love you,” he tells the kid, the words light and breezy. Those words have become so commonplace in their house that neither one of them actively thinks about them anymore.

“You too,” Jack says. “Dad.”

It’s still strange to say. But it also feels nice, and Ryan wraps Jack in a hug.

“Get some sleep,” he tells Jack as he pulls away, still smiling.

“‘Night,” Jack says, and his dad shuts off the light switch as he leaves.

-

“He called me Dad,” Ryan recounts for the ninth time that night. “I didn’t get there until, like, age nineteen at least.”

Taylor rests her head on his shoulder. “Well, you suck at feelings,” she points out, but the words are joking, and they earn her a smile.

“I always think he’s so much like me,” Ryan says, “And then he’ll do something I’d never do, and it throws me for a loop, y’know?”

Taylor shrugs. “Cassie, too,” she admits with a smile.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, laughing.

“How did we get so lucky?” Taylor asks.

Ryan smiles. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m glad we did.”

“Me, too,” says Taylor.

And sometimes it’s hard. Broken hearts, failed tests, crying kids…

But the good things are worth it. The twinkle in Cassie’s eyes when her hair grows out long enough for Taylor to put it in braids. The hesitant smile Jack gives when they finally meet his first boyfriend. The drawings always pinned up on the fridge, some carefully sketched with a practiced hand and some scribbled in pink crayon. The way their house is never truly silent, the way that there’s always some of Jack’s music, some of Cassie’s cartoons playing in the background. The way they all throw I love yous back and forth without a second thought. 

The pure power of the love they all have for each other. For their little family.