Chapter Text
Ryan walked in the door, still texting Bess as he kicked it behind himself, and rocked up to the breakfast bar. “Carson, my man!”
Carson looked up from the cutting board. Ryan spotted onions, garlic, and mushrooms lined up next to it like a very raggedy little…something that got chopped, he didn’t care. “Hey, Ryan,” Carson said.
Come to think of it, Carson looked a little raggedy himself. Ryan squinted. He put aside worries about historically inclined hatchet owners for a bit. “Are your eyes red?”
“Onions,” Carson said briefly, and turned back to the chopping board.
That would be a reasonable explanation if the onions weren’t still sitting there unchopped. “For real, no, what happened?” Ryan jerked up out of the chair he’d almost just taken. “Is it Nancy?”
“No, no, I would have told you right away, I promise.”
Ryan eased back down. “Cool, cool.”
“Yes, everything is just cool,” Carson said, smashing a clove of garlic with what Ryan guessed was unnecessary force.
Ohhh. “Ohhh,” Ryan said. “It’s Jean, then.”
Carson grunted and smashed another clove.
“C’mon, taking your feelings out on helpless root vegetables isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“Won’t it though?”
“Talk to me. It’ll help me practice for when Nancy needs me, yeah?” Ryan put his chin on his hand and tried to look approachable as fuck.
It took a minute, but then Carson sighed, and his shoulders drooped a little. “It’s not fixable,” he said, “so don’t start making lists of solutions because I don’t want them, okay?”
“Huh,” Ryan said. Carson glared over his shoulder. “I mean, yes! Absolutely. No solutions here, just good old fashioned listening.”
Carson grabbed the cutting board and one of the onions and brought them over to the countertop closest to Ryan. This close, his eyes were definitely on the red side, not that Ryan would comment.
Carson started on the onion. “One of Nancy’s ghosts got into the courthouse today.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t get all the details, but Nancy and the crew were apparently chasing it around, in and out of rooms, weird smells floating everywhere. You know the drill.”
Ryan nodded.
“Jean tried to get a straight answer from Nancy, and, well...” Carson stopped chopping long enough to make an eloquent face. Ryan bit back a smile. “Nancy was Nancy. So then Jean thought I could give her answers.”
“I thought you and Nancy were working on your conscious unentwining, or whatever you called it.”
“That’s what I told Jean! More or less. But she insisted. Absolutely insisted.”
“You could’ve told her,” Ryan said, trying to make his voice as non-judgy as possible.
Carson finished beating the crap out of one onion and fetched another. Ryan watched him look down at the onion in his hand, turning it over and over. “The thing is. The thing is, I feel like the supernatural is...not my secret to tell?”
You were haunted by Lucy’s ghost, too, Ryan managed not to say. “Yeah?”
Carson’s eyes were definitely getting redder. Might be the onions; Ryan liked onions, but this close his eyes squinched up on him a bit too. Might not be. “Nancy had plenty of time while she was dodging courthouse security and waving weird incense around the judge’s chambers - don’t ask me, I didn’t want to know - she had all day to tell Jean and she didn’t. She’s had how long now to tell Jean, and she hasn’t. Maybe it’s not, uh, unentwining to keep Nancy’s secrets, but I didn’t know what else to do. Scratch that - this felt like the right thing to do.”
Ryan watched Carson continue to massacre the onion. “Listen, I promised not to try and fix things.”
Carson pointed at Ryan, fortunately with the hand not wielding the knife. “You did promise.”
“I do wonder though,” Ryan said over Carson’s groan, “if Nancy would maybe, I don’t know, sign off on telling Jean if you asked her.”
Carson continued to make careful moves with the knife, mouth set in a flat line. “I thought of that,” he said.
“And?”
“And I thought of it after Jean had already given me her opinion of liars and people who keep dangerous secrets.”
Ryan winced. “No crawling back, really?”
“Really,” Carson said.
Ryan waited until Carson had set the knife down, both onions completely demolished, before he reached out and tugged on Carson’s shirt. “Hey, I’m sorry. That sucks big-time.”
“Yeah,” Carson said, almost under his breath. “Thanks. It honestly helps to hear that from another adult.”
“I’m honestly glad you called me that,” Ryan said, and made Carson laugh.
“Okay, let’s not take on airs, Ryan. You want to really impress me as an adult, you’ll make something that’s not a sandwich to eat some night.”
“Why should I when someone’s making me stuff like this every night? Whatever this is?”
“‘This’ is beef stroganoff, but with ground beef instead of steak.”
“I have no idea how I feel about that,” Ryan said.
“You’re going to love it, I swear,” Carson said.
“Swear what?” Nancy asked from behind Ryan. Carson looked briefly panicked before awkwardly moving to the stove with his sad-looking onions.
“That déclassé stroganoff is the new wave of food genius,” Ryan said. “And that I should learn to make it. I think I’m a better table-setter than a chef, though.” He nudged Nancy towards the table.
Nancy muttered something about being a better dishwasher, but followed his lead.
***
“I hear there was some excitement at the courthouse today, Nance,” Carson said much later, as Ryan was chowing down on the last of his two and a half servings of ground beef stroganoff.
Ryan almost bobbled his last forkful into Carson’s lap. He looked up from his plate as Nancy shifted in her seat across from him. “You heard about that? Was Jean really mad?”
“D.A. Rosario was naturally upset by the whole thing, but I don’t think she’ll be following up with you about it.”
Nancy’s eyes went wide at the title. “Oh, no, Dad.”
Carson shrugged and leaned back, making an effort to look unaffected. “Don’t worry about it, hon.”
Ryan bumped Carson’s knee with his own under the table. Nancy’s eyes flickered briefly over to Ryan and then back to Carson. “I’ll talk to her,” she said.
“Nancy, look at me. No.” Carson stood up and took Nancy’s plate in an almost steady hand. “Dessert, you two? We have ice cream.”
“My stomach would probably explode,” Ryan said. Nancy just shook her head.
Nancy waited for Carson to go out of earshot before leaning towards Ryan. “I can fix this.”
“Nance, I love that you want to, but this is one of those times where pushing makes it worse. Leave the man alone.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like such a grownup.”
“Carson thinks so, too,” Ryan said, delighted. He stood and grabbed his plate and silverware. “Come on, let’s see if he wants ice cream and bad movies. Or ice cream and good movies, that’s good too.”
“I think he wants the dishes washed,” Nancy said, but she did stop bugging Carson, and for that Ryan would even wash a few dishes before stuffing Carson full of sugar and action movies.