"Are you sure you don't want any tea, sweetheart?"

"No, Nana." Teddy grimaced as the wood he was running through the band saw shifted sideways, leaving a long gouge before he could correct it. "Fuck."

Tossing the wood onto the scrap pile, he ran a shaking hand through his hair. Ever since Carlos had left on Friday, he'd been completely unable to concentrate. He had plans for a crib spread out across the table, but he couldn't get any of the pieces cut evenly. Every time he thought about the warm, hard curve hidden under Carlos' shirt, he went to pieces.

It wasn't that he was upset. He'd never been sure he'd even be able to have children of his own. He was settled in his career, financially stable, and as emotionally capable as he was ever going to be. What surprised him was how deeply affected he was by something so small. He'd seen pregnant people before, both men and women. He'd even been there for most of Greg's pregnancy, amused by the way Brendan couldn't keep his hands off the ever-expanding swell of stomach.

But it wasn't stomach, not really. Maybe that was what he'd been missing before. It was warm and electric and full of life in the way that even the tightest set of abs could never hope to be. It had been firm under his hand, but in a comfortable way that made him want to hold Carlos close.

His baby. His son? His daughter? Neither sounded right, and he wondered how long it would take him to get used to.

Picking up another piece of wood, he took a few deep breaths to steady his hands enough to mark the length. He picked up a handsaw, avoiding the power tools just in case.

Halfway through, the board cracked down the center, and he slumped. Resting his head on the table, he picked up his pencil and clenched it in his fist.

It snapped in half.

"Fuck," he growled. Yanking his phone out from under the plans, he dialed even as he examined the useless pieces of his drafting pencil. He had another one, but it was at the Caldwells', and he was avoiding going back there.

"What are you wearing for the Halloween party?" Marcus asked as soon as the call connected.

Derailed, Teddy blinked, gears grinding in his head as he shifted topics. "I don't know yet. It's only...Fuck, it's the 15th of October."

"Exactly. Kurt's forbidden me from being a pirate again this year, so I'm stumped. I guess that's not what you called about, though. One second. Helen, if anyone calls, let them know that I'm busy." The background noise faded away. "Okay, I'm here. You sound terrible."

"Carlos is pregnant," he blurted.

"Oh." A chair creaked loudly, thumping against something else that then tumbled to the floor with a series of clangs. "Shit." He was quiet for a long time, the only sound the rustle of fabric as he set things to rights. "Are you...Is this..."

"I'm happy about it," Teddy said, chewing on his thumbnail. "I think. I mean, I'm happy about Carlos, and I'm happy about the baby, but it's a baby!"

Marcus chuckled. "You won't break it."

"You don't know that. What if I drop it? Him. Her. Them. What if I drop them?" Teddy groaned, grinding his forehead into the rough surface of his work table. "What if I scar them for life? Babies need affection and baby talk and...peek-a-boo. Baby talk gives me hives."

Laughing out loud now, Marcus gasped for breath. "Man, you are gone. Look, when Luke and Jay had Sarah—"

"Junior," Teddy corrected him, well aware of how annoying it was when people refused to call you by your nickname.

"Junior," Marcus said easily. "When Luke and Jay had Junior, Cody showed them a bunch of studies about how baby talk is actually not as good for babies as people believe. I think you're fine. Your kid's first word is going to be tetrahedron or something equally ridiculous."

"What if I forget about them?" Teddy muttered into the wood.

Marcus sighed. "Can I tell you a secret? You're going to forget about them. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you plan, you're going to forget. Maybe it's forgetting to feed them or give them their meds on time. Maybe it's heading out to the store with them sleeping in their crib. It's going to happen. Brendan forgot Nate in the grocery store checkout. Twice. I thought Greg was going to kill him."

"That's not comforting." Leaning back against the wall, Teddy scrubbed sawdust off his forehead.

"My point," Marcus said, his voice sharp, "is that Nate is fine. Everybody forgets their kid at least once in their lives, and we all live through it. It won't just be you. There will be Carlos and your Nana to help you out."

Teddy scratched a mosquito bite on the side of his wrist and felt his ears burn guiltily.

"You haven't told your Nana."

"No." He brushed wood shavings off the plans, tracing the lines of the crib.

"Are you planning on telling your Nana?"

"I don't know yet. I thought I'd tell my parents first. As a practice run." The walls were starting to press in on him, and he strode out into the yard, gulping down fresh fall air.

"Okay..." Marcus said, drawing the syllables out until Teddy was squirming. "What does Carlos think?"

Teddy ducked his head. "He doesn't want to tell anyone, I don't think."

"You don't think? Have you asked?"

Growling into the phone, he stalked down the manicured path into the heart of the garden. "It was supposed to be no-strings."

"This is a pretty big string. Is he happy about the baby?"

"Yes. He's already got names picked out," Teddy said, smiling a little as he remembered their playful argument. "I'm trying to convince him to keep it down to just first, middle, and last names, but I'm not winning. My daughter might end up with more names than Junior."

"Okay." He blew out a relieved breath. "That's good. That's very good. So the hold up is just..."

Sighing, Teddy pulled a wilted rose off the bush and breathed deeply of the vaguely fruity fragrance. "Me. It's not the baby that he doesn't want, it's me." Marcus made a sound of disagreement, but Teddy cut him off. "I don't blame him. You haven't seen him, Marcus. He's gorgeous and talented. He could do better."

"No, Teddy," Marcus said seriously. "He couldn't. Yes, you have a few quirks, and your family is weird as hell, but that's just how humans work. We're all weird, and we all have weird families to anyone looking in from the outside. This guy is never going to find a kinder, more loving person to spend his life with, and if he doesn't want that, then that's his loss."

"Thanks," Teddy said after a minute, his throat clogged with emotion.

"Anytime. So when do we get to meet Carlos?" he asked briskly, letting Teddy off the hook.

"I don't know. I haven't even managed to get him to go to dinner with me yet."

"Well, you've got a hell of an excuse to ask him out now. Give it another try."

"He'll say no."

"So keep asking," Marcus said, his voice full of affectionate exasperation. t was an expression that Teddy was uniquely familiar with from the accountant.

"You don't think that's creepy?" There was movement out of the corner of his eye, and he sighed as he watched his Nana setting up her tea set on the patio. "I should go. Nana made tea."

"He's having your kid, Teddy. likes you enough to have your kid, more importantly. I think he'll excuse you a little creepiness."

"If you say so," he muttered, nodding to Nana when she waved him over. "I really have to go."

"Tell your Nana I said hello," Marcus said cheerfully. We'll have to arrange a visit after the holidays because I know all the guys miss her stories."

"I'll tell her you said so," Teddy said, disconnecting the call. "Coming, Nana."

She watched him walk up the path, the lines between her eyebrows deep enough to reach her hairline. "You look awful," she said, handing him a cup of tea. This time it was a deep, hideous ocher with a blue saucer.

He watched the steam curl off the surface of the reddish liquid and sighed. "I have a problem I'm working on," he said.

"Here," she said, handing him her plate. It was one of the more ordinary ones, swirling white with no embellishments besides the crumbs from whatever whole wheat bars she served them today. "You look just like your granddad when he'd get all twisted up about something. He used to spend days in that shop of his, pounding out his problems with a hammer and nails. You're more like me, even if you have his coloring."

The plate was thick and cold in his fingers, smooth and satisfyingly heavy. He stared at it blankly until her hand wrapped around his wrist, so slender and delicate, but so strong.

"Throw it," she said, smiling at him when he jerked his head up to gape at her. "Oh, come now. How many times have you heard me say that Granddad bought these for breaking?"

"That's a joke," he said, staring at the delicate porcelain piled on the table.

"Oh, now it is, sure," she said, nodding sagely. "Without your granddad to drive me around the twist, that mad Irishman, I don't have any reason to throw things." She sipped her tea and smiled. "Our first few years of marriage, though...There were nights we ate off the metal camping dishes because they were the only ones left."

He could feel his mouth hanging open, the air chilling his teeth, but he couldn't seem to do anything about it.

Her laughter chimed like bells over the roses, and she reached across to press his jaw shut. "You'll catch flies, dear," she said, pressing a papery kiss to his forehead. "Is it really so shocking?"

"Yes," he said immediately. "You're so...dignified and..."

She snorted. "I was born in a pig shed in Appalachia," she said bluntly, her eyes boring into his. "I could curse before I could walk, and I ran away from there with the first man I could find that would get me out of town."

Teddy's eyes were so wide he could feel the burn as they strained to express his shock. You met Granddad in London," he said, his voice a squeak.

Humming cheerfully, she nodded. "Yes, I did. I ran into him at the park. You know the story. The part your dad always leaves off is that I was there to practice imitating the higher classed society manners. I was a laundress, cleaning the panties for half of the whores in London. Nice women. Tipped well if you could get the stains out."

The only sound that would come out of him was a high-pitched squeak like air escaping from a balloon. At some point in the last few days, he reached the limit of what he could deal with, and his brain was entirely offline.

"Breathe, sweetheart," she said, her eyes sparkling over the edge of her teacup.

He sucked in air too quickly and end up choking. "This is...I can't...I need to make a call," he said.

She frowned, patting him on the shoulder. "Maybe I should have stuck with the pretty fantasy, but Teddy, darling, nobody is as perfect as they make themselves seem on the outside. I want to make sure that at least one of my grandchildren remembers that."

"I need to...I..." he swallowed hard, pushing away the overload sparking behind his eyes. "I love you, Nana."

"I love you, too, sweetness. Go make your call." She got up and collected the tea set, leaving the plate in his hand. She didn't even comment that he hadn't even touched his drink.

Thumbing on his phone, Teddy hesitated. For the first time since he was eighteen years old, crowding into the living room of a ramshackle frat house, his first instinct wasn't to call one of his brothers to share the story.

Dialing quickly as if it would be less nerve-wracking, he listened to the ringing with his heart in his throat.

"Teddy?" Carlos said, his voice slurred. What time is it? Oh, fuck. Shit, I fell asleep. Mamá, where's Luis?"

In the background, he could hear her amused reply clearly. "He went home an hour ago. I checked his homework. He's getting better."

"Fuck. Sorry, give me a second," Carlos said, cursing under his breath in Spanish.

Even without understanding the words, Teddy could feel the frustration in them. "It's fine," he said, something unknotting in his gut. "Take your time."

"Dammit. Mamá, can you move the...Thanks." The sound of shifting fabric got louder, and then a door opened and shut. "Okay, sorry. Hi."

"Hi." He smiled, staring at the way the garden reflected in the white glaze on the plate he was holding. "I just...Do you ever find out things about your family that breaks your brain?"

"My dad is in jail for beating a guy's skull in. Very little surprises me," Carlos said dryly.

Teddy chuckled. "More like if you found out your mother was secretly a Spanish princess...From Mars," he added.

"That...would actually explain a few things. About you," Carlos teased.

"Yeah, it would." Leaning back in his chair, Teddy smiled at nothing in particular. "Do you want to go to dinner? In an actual restaurant? My treat."

"Um..." Carlos was quiet for long enough that Teddy almost rescinded the offer. "Okay, yeah," he said finally, blowing out a loud breath. "I don't have any nice clothes that fit, though."

"I'll get you something." He was already trying to remember if Jay's favorite maternity designer had a store in Houston. "Next weekend?"

"I can do that," Carlos said softly. "My mom's going to be here for a few more weeks, so...I mean, I doubt you'll want...You know what? Forget I said anything. I'll see you on Saturday, okay?"

"Yeah," Teddy said, grinning wide enough to make the sawdust on his cheeks itch. He probably should have gone to clean up before tea, but he had other things on his mind. "I'll pick you up at six?"

"I...That's fine. I'll see you then. Bye."

The call went dead, and Teddy just stared at the phone until the screen turned off and he was left alone in the garden with just a plate and a growing urge to shout happily at the sky.

He got to his feet and headed inside, chucking the plate over his shoulder. It crashed to the concrete, shattering satisfyingly into a few big pieces, easy enough to pick up.

Later, though. He had a date to plan.