Chapter Text
There's a new family at the service.
Not unusual by itself. There's always someone new coming through town. What's a bit odd, though, is how they linger in the pews while everyone else is filing out.
Elias takes up his usual spot at the door, shaking hands and checking in with people one-by-one as they leave. The new family talks quietly among themselves. Until everyone else (even Señora Estrada, who just got a new walker, but still couldn't outrun a turtle) has shuffled all the way out.
At last they get up, the adults both scanning the room as they approach.
For the first time, Elias gets a good look at their faces. The man and woman, a generation younger than him, look like most of the Latine Jews in the area, with tan skin and dark curly hair. The two boys, eleven or twelve years old at Elias's best guess, are a lot paler. Adopted? Stepchildren?
He makes a point of not staring until they get close, then holds out a hand. "Welcome to our synagogue. I'm Rabbi Elias Spector. Are you new in town?"
The woman leans forward with a brilliant smile -- vaguely familiar, but Elias can't place it -- and a soft handshake. "Lovely to finally meet you, Rabbi Spector."
She turns to her...partner? (No rings. But that could mean anything these days.) Both boys look expectantly up at him too. (They're all wearing matching suits. It's very sweet.)
He's gone still, eyes fixed on Elias, mouth half-open but nothing coming out.
In an undertone, the woman says, "Time to take it off, habibi."
"Right," says the man, throat dry. He turns to one of the boys. "You're sure we're--"
The kid gives him a suspicious look. "We're clear. Are you stalling?"
The man sighs.
He feels under his buttoned collar with both hands, catches hold of something Elias can't quite see, and starts pulling it up.
...It's one of those perfect nanotech-mesh masks. The kind you see in James Bond movies. The kind the US government won't admit SHIELD has for real.
And the face underneath is--
"Hi, Dad," says Marc, while Elias does his own round of open-mouthed staring. "Can we go somewhere and talk?"
☽︎
They gather in Elias's office: the boys wandering around looking at the cluttered shelves, Marc shutting the door and double-checking that it latches.
"Baruch Ata Adonai, elohenu melech Ha’olam, mechayeh ha'metim," says Elias hoarsely. When Marc doesn't look at him, he restrains himself from adding more. But how could he skip the blessing for a beloved reunion, after all this time without a word? "It's so good to see you, mijo. And are you his wife? Layla?"
That's where he's seen her smile before, in the wedding photos. (Elias made sure to intercept the envelope before Wendy saw it, and kept them at the office so they wouldn't upset her. They're still in here...somewhere.)
"That's right," says Layla, a lot warmer than Marc is. "You don't have grandkids, though. Sorry."
"Then who are--"
Layla cuts him off: "Before we start talking, you should probably hug."
Marc takes a step toward Elias. "If you want."
"Of course!" Elias's arms are around him in an instant, chin tucked over his shoulder. "Of course I want a -- Marc, I've missed you so much."
Marc's return squeeze isn't as desperately tight, but it's not nothing, either. "Missed you too, Dad."
"Why did you come back? Why now? How long are you staying? How--"
"Long story. It all goes together. You should probably sit down."
Elias rolls his own chair out from behind his desk, the way he does when he's taking a personable-counselor kind of meeting, not a synagogue-business meeting.
Before he can offer to clear some of the piles off the windowsill, Marc is already doing it, stacking the books on the end of the desktop. The boys cluster on the freed-up ledge, one kicking his heels, the other holding still.
Layla sits on one of the normal chairs. Elias sits too.
Marc stays by the boys a moment longer. "This is Billy," he says, resting a hand on the shoulder of the less-fidgety brother. "And this is Tommy."
He gently pushes the more-restless brother to lean forward. Tommy goes with it, still swinging his legs, but holding steady enough for Marc to re-pin the yarmulke that's come loose in his shoulder-length brown hair.
"Like Layla said, they're not our kids. Their mom is...a dear friend of ours. And she's in trouble. The kind where she needs someone to watch her children for a while."
He doesn't give details in front of the boys. Fair enough. Elias hums in sympathy, while Marc finally settles into the last chair.
"Listen, there's a bunch of conditions with this, but I'm just going to throw the main thing on the table. Can we hide out with you?"
"...what?" Elias is staring again. "All of you -- at the house?"
"Yeah."
"It doesn't have to be the whole time," puts in Layla. "Even a day or two would help. Give us a chance to catch our breaths and plan our next steps."
"Mom could be back in two days, anyway," says Tommy casually.
Elias throws a dubious look at Marc, who presses his mouth into a thin line. "She could, yeah. We're planning for a longer haul -- could be weeks -- but if we get really lucky, she could be through this tomorrow. We really don't know."
"Marc, if you're going to visit, I would be happy for it to be weeks," says Elias faintly. "It's just -- are you sure? Last time you were in town...you wouldn't even come through the door."
"That's what makes it the perfect hideout," deadpans Marc. "Even if someone figures out the kids are with us, the last place they'll look for me is here."
Elias swallows a nervous laugh. "You make it sound like you're on the run from the mob."
Dead silence.
"Marc. Is the mob after these boys?"
"We wouldn't hide from the mob," scoffs Tommy. He grins at Billy, nudging his brother in the ribs. "Imagine what Mom would do to the mob."
Billy looks somber. "Imagine what Grandpa would do to the--"
"Boys," warns Layla. "Op-sec."
Both kids clamp their mouths shut.
"We can't give you details, Dad," says Marc firmly. "Just, look, it's pretty serious. Which is where the conditions come in. You'd have to promise not to tell anyone about the boys. Don't bring anyone to the house while they're here. Don't let on that anything changed."
"At least one of us will always be there," adds Layla. "If anyone does show up and try to make trouble...we'll handle it."
This is...wow. This is a lot.
And if Elias says he's not up for it...who knows how many more years will pass before he sees Marc again?
"Stay a few days," he says at last. "Maybe it goes well, maybe it doesn't, who can say? Maybe you stay longer. We'll find out. At least start with a few days."
"Okay. Great." Marc takes a deep breath. "One more thing..."
Elias waits.
"The boys are both mutants. Is that going to be a problem?"
"Wh--no! No problem," says Elias quickly. "No problem at all. What kind of mutants?"
"Does it matter?"
"I just mean -- the kind of mutants where I need to fireproof the house, or...?"
Marc turns to the kids, all business. "You want to give him a demo?"
With a whoosh of air that rustles everyone's curls, Tommy disappears from the window seat. Elias startles, looks around -- and finds him on the opposite side of the office. "Ah! A speedster! That's very impressive..."
He does a double-take.
It wasn't just a run. In that split second, all the books and binders that were on the shelves behind Tommy's head got rearranged. No more awkward, heaping piles. No more individual volumes shoved too far back against the wall, or sticking precariously out over the edge. They're all in a row, all standing up straight...and rearranged by height. Of course a lot of the S'farim are in sets of a matched size anyway -- the bottom two shelves are still the complete Talmud, that hasn't moved -- but the topmost shelf now has a distinct pyramid, shortest items at the outer edges, peaking with an extra-tall binder in the center.
"Oh," says Elias faintly. "I, uh. I had a system."
"Sounds like someone else we know," says Layla, politely amused. "Billy?"
Another whoosh has Tommy back at Billy's side -- no wonder he fidgets, he's a world-class talent at not holding still -- while Billy holds out a hand and furrows his brow.
The nearest stack of post-it notes on Elias's desk glows a soft blue, and lifts into the air.
His telekinesis might not be as advanced as Tommy's speeding. The post-its only hover for a few seconds before thwopping back onto the polished wood. Billy turns anxiously to Marc and Layla. "Was that good?"
"That was great, buddy," says Marc. "It was just right."
☽︎
When Elias gets back to the house that evening, the windows are all dark.
Marc said he and the others had to pick some things up. But if they haven't made it home, even now? Elias had assumed the errands wouldn't take longer than his office hours.
Did something go wrong? Or -- did Marc change his mind?
He lets himself in...
And there's light in the kitchen, and friendly chatter. Elias touches the mezuzah without taking his eyes off the light, hangs his coat in the closet next to a row of new ones, and walks past a huddle of four mismatched suitcases to see what's cooking.
Layla's voice comes into focus as he gets to the kitchen/dining-room door: "...exactly what all my aunties used to say to me." She puts on an exaggerated Middle Eastern accent: "Ooh, Layla sweetie, if this is the best you can cook, how will you ever land a husband?" Back in her normal register: "Little did they know, a few years later I met Marc, who thinks anything less processed than an MRE is fine cuisine."
Tommy chimes in: "And then you met--"
Billy stomps on Tommy's foot -- or tries to, Tommy yanks it out of his way just in time. "Dude! Op-sec!"
"Hi, Rabbi," adds Layla.
She's at the sink, washing her way through a garden's worth of fresh fruits and vegetables. The boys are putting away cereal boxes from the half-unpacked grocery bags on the table. Marc looks up briefly from the stove, then turns back to the pan he's tending, filling the room with scents of spices Elias doesn't even recognize.
"Just call me Elias, please," says Elias. "I didn't know -- the windows were dark -- you bought groceries? You didn't need to, you know, for the first few days, I could've covered the groceries for a few days..."
"We're asking you to host two athletic adults and two growing boys. At least one of which has the metabolism of a fighter jet." Layla stacks some oranges neatly in a bowl. "We won't make you pay to feed us. We'll cook, too. If you have any special requests...mm, let's say, put it on a post-it."
"Whatever you're making now smells just perfect." Elias circles around the table -- they unfolded and propped up the extra leaves on either end, so it can comfortably seat up to six, instead of topping out at four -- and has a look at the stove. "What is it?"
Marc throws a wide-eyed grimace at Layla and gestures for...something.
"Vegan stir-fry. Personal recipe," fills in Layla. "Actually, Elias, while he's finishing up -- would you mind helping me figure out where everyone's going to sleep?"
It's an obvious distraction, but all right, Elias lets himself be distracted.
He takes her upstairs, shows her the rooms they have. His own room on the second floor, along with the restrooms and his study ("anything of mine that's private, I'll keep in here"). Marc's old room on the top floor, though there's almost nothing of Marc's left in it ("we redid it as a guest room a few years after he moved out"). The room across from Marc's, which is almost empty, except for a stack of boxes piled against the wall.
"This one...it used to be his brother's," explains Elias. "I packed everything up just last year. Would've put in a new bed, but, well, it's been so long since I even had one room's worth of guests..."
Layla gives him a shrewd look. "Was this ever a guest room? Or do you mean you packed his brother's things up last year?"
Elias looks away. "Seeing them was...a comfort to his mother."
One of the few things that seemed to comfort Wendy, even when little else did. She used to spend hours in there. Elias made sure he went in every once in a while, mostly to dust.
(one time he found that some creature had been chewing fluff out of the stuffed animals, he threw the ruined ones in the synagogue dumpster so Wendy wouldn't get upset seeing them in the trash, then instead Wendy accused Marc of stealing Randall's things, there was a lot of screaming and--)
(one time Wendy found Marc in the room, there was a fight, Elias only found out about that one afterward, he stayed up late into the night putting everything back in place so she wouldn't come in the next day and accuse Marc of knocking it all over--)
"Rabbi? Elias."
He shakes himself. "Sorry -- say again? Senior moment, you know how it is."
"Right, yeah, of course," says Layla. "I was saying, you should keep your room. We'll figure out who gets the guest room."
"Oh, no -- you and Marc should take one of the big beds, and the boys can take the other, if they're all right with doubling up -- the TV room has a very lovely couch, or--"
Layla interrupts him. "Marc was a Marine, I'm an archaeologist. We can sleep on rocks if it comes to that. We're not going to make our host spend his nights on a couch. Especially not our senior host."
All right, Elias had that coming.
☽︎
Marc and Layla have a hushed conversation in the living room while Elias and the boys are dishing up stir-fry. When they come back in, Marc says, "Dad, do you still have that old futon in the basement?"
With another whoosh!, Tommy vanishes, then reappears. "Yeah, he does!"
So it all works out: Marc and his wife will sleep on the big bed in his old room, Elias will keep his own, Billy and Tommy will double up on the futon in Randall's.
But first, dinner. Accompanied by a rousing discussion of op-sec. (Turns out it's short for "operational security," which is military for "secrets.")
"A cleaning service comes every other Wednesday," remembers Elias, between chunks of what he assumes is fried tofu. "They mop, vacuum, change the sheets...they're the reason your room isn't a mess of dust right now."
"Cancel it." Marc switches his fork for a pen, and scribbles something on a little notepad next to his plate. "Or...they probably have some kind of vacation hold, right? Put it on hold."
"We'll keep the place clean in the meantime," adds Layla. "The twins will be inside anyway, might as well make them do chores."
Elias hadn't realized they were twins! Not the identical kind, just the same age. Although their chorus of "Awwww" is in perfect harmony.
"Inside how much?" adds Tommy, while Billy uses his knife to skeptically remove the tip of a hot pepper. "Because we can go outside without being seen. I'm fast enough."
"For the next couple days: all the time. Show us you can keep that up when you have to. Then we'll talk about trips," says Marc. To Elias, he adds, "We put modified photostatic veils on the windows. Camouflages what's going on inside. That way they can still get sunlight and blue skies, without having to worry about who's looking in."
"Turning the house into a regular fortress," says Elias, trying to keep it light. "Maybe next we should put in bulletproof glass, you think?"
"Too much work to install," says Marc, perfectly serious. "Couldn't do it without drawing attention."
Even more soberly, Billy says, "We're not worried about bullets."
"Anyone else who might drop by?" asks Layla, a little too brightly. "Do you get a lot of door-to-door salespeople around here? Ever host a book club?"
"No to the salespeople," says Elias. "And book club meets at Rosita's house."
He used to have guests more often -- at least, when Wendy felt up to entertaining. The last time Elias had any serious group of people in the house was her shiva. Since then, he's most likely to get invited to his congregants' homes instead...he was at the Berensons' for Shabbat dinner just last night...
Tommy puts on a saucy smirk. "Ever bring home a girlfriend?"
Elias winces. "No."
"A boyfriend?"
"No!" yelps Elias. Then, because it's the 2020s and he's not that behind the times, he remembers to add, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
In a normal voice, not his brother's mischievous singsong, Billy says, "Any students?"
"Uh. Yes, actually." That's the one group Elias still hosts at the house. It's not the most regular thing, but..."Sometimes I have a few over for dinner."
Layla hums. "When are you doing that next?"
"There aren't any scheduled. It wouldn't be for a few weeks at least."
Marc jots that down on his notepad too. "So we might be long gone by that point. On the off chance we're not...how much advance notice would you need to cancel?"
"Maybe we shouldn't ask him to cancel everything," says Layla. "Eventually people would notice."
"I could..." Elias swallows. "Without saying anything about the boys...if I tell people Marc is visiting, and I'm focusing on spending time with him? Everyone will understand."
"There's an idea," mutters Marc. "Tell everyone your crazy estranged son is in town, and you have to be extra-careful not to make him flip out and run off again."
Elias winces. "Of course that's not how I would say it, mijo."
"I wasn't thinking we should tell anything," adds Layla uncomfortably. "I was mostly thinking, we could probably manage 'hiding upstairs and keeping quiet' for the length of one dinner."
With perfect ironic timing, Tommy fumbles his drink. The water glass hits the tile with a shattering CRASH that makes everyone jump.
(one time Elias got in here with a dustpan and broom not a moment too soon, Wendy was yelling at Marc to clean up the mess of ceramic shards on the floor, and what was the boy supposed to do, sweep them up with his bare hands? Elias helped Marc clean up, assuring him there was nothing wrong with dropping a dish or two, everyone gets clumsy sometimes...)
(...that was what happened, right, little Marc just dropped the plate...?)
Elias shakes himself again.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem like anyone was trying to get his attention in the middle of that senior moment. They're all fascinated with the blue-glowing chunks of glass swirling slowly through the air, a matching glow in Billy's eyes as he focuses on puzzle-piecing them neatly back into place.
☽︎
Marc and Layla effortlessly carry the futon's wooden frame up three flights of stairs to Randall's room. They don't even seem to need an assist from Billy's powers. Elias can't remember if he was ever that young and strong.
The boys follow with their suitcases, and fish out their pajamas while the adults arrange their bed. Elias, watching from the doorway, notices they didn't bring much. Just clothes.
When Marc and Layla come out of the room, Elias meets them on the landing at the top of the stairs. "I don't know if this would be appropriate, but -- if you think it's all right," he stammers. "I donated RoRo's things when I could, but, you know, there's not much of a demand for secondhand thirty-year-old toys...these two are probably too old for a lot of them anyway, but..."
Marc cuts him off: "You've got kid stuff the twins can keep busy with?"
He's using more of a Spanish accent, which makes Elias wince -- Marc always used to lean into that when he was in a mood. "It was just an idea."
(Yes, this means "being more visibly Latino" was part of what Marc did when he was trying to antagonize people, and yes, Elias feels pretty awful about that. But what can he do?)
"Yeah, it's a good idea," says Marc impatiently. "Where is it?"
Elias nods to the room. "In the boxes -- some of them -- I don't remember what's in which."
"Ah, we'll let 'em figure it out." Marc knocks on the doorframe, and leans back into the room with an almost-manic grin. "Ay, chaparritos, you want some authentic Nineties Kid junk to play with?"
To Elias's absolute bafflement, both twins jump to their feet like they just got offered a gold mine. "Authentic like how?" demands Tommy. "Are there Beanie Babies?"
"Are there Furbies?" chimes in Billy.
"Who wants a dumb Furby?" scoffs Tommy. "Are there Tamagotchis?"
"Like you'd remember to feed a Tamagotchi..." Billy's eyes widen. "Wait, are there Pokemon cards?"
Tommy bounces on the balls of his feet. "Is there Gak?"
"It's all in there." Marc points to the boxes. "Open 'em up, see the haul for yourselves. Don't break anything I wouldn't break."
While the twins pounce, Elias adds under his breath. "If there was anything you wanted -- as a memento -- you're welcome to..."
The light that was briefly in Marc's eyes snaps off. "I didn't come here to steal any of RoRo's goddamn stuff."
"Of course not, mijo! I didn't mean--"
Layla, not even trying to be subtle, cuts Elias off by stepping right in front of him. To Marc, she says, "Maybe you should take the first shower, querido."
Marc turns on his heel and heads for the stairs, taking them two at a time. "Nah. I'm great."
He bounds all the way down to the first floor. (Elias was only planning to go down as far as his room, and then be done with steps for the night.)
"It has been decades since I've seen a kid get that excited about Gak," Elias confesses. To Layla, since she's the one who didn't just practically bolt away from him. "Where did the boys even pick all that up?"
"They watch a lot of classic sitcoms," says Layla with a shrug. "I grew up in Egypt, I don't even know what a gak is. Is it good?"
☽︎
He showers, he brushes his teeth, he takes his blood-pressure medication. Drawing all of it out as long as he can.
(He can still hear Marc and the others moving around, and he can't shake the fear that once he goes to sleep, they'll be gone in the morning. Or, worse, that it'll turn out it was all a dream, and he was never there at all.)
With all the other things to attend to, he completely missed reciting havdalah to close out Shabbat -- but the items for that are down in the kitchen. Elias goes back and forth with himself about whether to get them. (Of course you can do it the next day, under the law...but he's never put it off before...but his knees will riot if he goes all the way down and back up the stairs just for one brief ritual...but he does have that cane now, doctor's orders...but he's had such a lovely track record of not needing the cane, why break that now...)
He goes to sit on the bed. Not to lie down yet, just to sit.
If he can't make himself get up again, well, he'll take that as a sign from above that he's supposed to leave havdalah for tomorrow.
...And there's a neat stack of things in the middle of the mattress. Perfectly arranged by size to form a little pyramid, bigger items at the base.
The smallest one, which Elias plucks off the top for a closer look, is a faded photo of him, Wendy, and the boys. Taken at a theme park that went out of business ten years ago. Until this morning, it was on his fridge.
He flips briskly through the rest of the pile, unsurprised to find that it has every family photo he kept around the house. Framed and not. From the fridge, the mantel, the walls.
Elias didn't even notice they were moved -- but then, why should he? If Tommy was the one who gathered them all up, of course the little speedster had time to rearrange everything else to fill in the gaps.
He ends up setting the whole pile on top of his dresser. If it's still there in the morning, at least he'll have the physical proof Marc came to visit, however briefly.
His habit is to put on the radio and set the sleep timer for half an hour, listening to whatever news happens to be on until he drifts off. Tonight it's about some kind of cape business in New York (it's always New York, isn't it). Attack on the Baxter Building, either by a sorcerer or a mutant, official reports aren't clear.
The building itself was evacuated, but there are casualties. The whole Richards family hasn't been seen since the battle. Even little Franklin is unaccounted for.
(He should really put on something else, if he doesn't want nightmares of little Marc and Randall in that building...but he's already drifting off...)
☽︎
He wakes up in the middle of the night.
No idea when. Late enough that the radio has switched off. Early enough that the sky outside is still pitch dark.
Someone just came in the front door.
Adrenaline rushes through Elias as he worries he's going to get robbed -- then remembers last night, and worries someone is here to grab the children --
He picks up the closest thing he has to a weapon (the cane, which mostly sits unused by the bed), and creeps over to his bedroom door...
Hushed voices in the living room, feet on the stairs, and oh thank goodness, it's Layla's voice that comes into focus. "...any hostiles come within five miles, she'll let us know. Day or night, I might add."
"All right, let's not knock the pigeon, he's working with what he's got," murmurs Marc. In...a fake British accent? The one he used to play-act with as a kid. "But thank goodness for the hippo. And for you! You're wonderful."
A pause. A soft noise from below...oh, they're kissing, aren't they.
Elias would pull his door all the way shut, but then they'll know he's awake. Awkward.
He holds still, trying not to breathe...
"...right, better dial this back," says Marc sheepishly. "I don't know if I could cope with us getting it on in our childhood bedroom."
"Of course, chéri."
Movement up the stairs again. They pass by Elias's door without comment.
A floor above, they pause at the threshold of Marc's room...and Marc murmurs, in the Spanish accent, "I'll fuck in our childhood bedroom."
Layla muffles a snicker. "With a charming come-on like that, how can I resist?"
"Hey, I'm totally charming," protests Marc. "Secret is, you can say literally anything and make it sound sexy if it's in Spanish." He switches languages, and leans into an exaggerated sultry Latin-lover croon: "[Come on down to Uncle Sudsy's car wash, special deal for today only, get a free oil change when you order--]"
He interrupts himself in English: "--oh my days you are ridiculous."
Layla giggles. "What was he even saying?"
They finally go inside, pushing the door shut behind them. Last thing Elias hears is Marc muttering, "Think it was a bloody car commercial."
...Huh.
Elias has no idea what that was, and his adrenaline must be crashing, because suddenly he's too tired to even think about finding out.
He shuffles back to bed. (On his own two feet, not with the cane! He truly doesn't need the cane.) If it's still a problem in the morning...he can deal with it in the morning.