#just picture Reggie in his Official Molina Christmas Pyjamas

[innytoes]

“You got me a stocking?” - “Of course, you’re family.” for Reggie & Rose?

Reggie is ten when he meets Julie, after being held back a year in class. All his friends move up, and sure, he still sees Luke and Alex and Bobby in the halls and after school, but their lunch period isn't at the same time anymore. It's lonely, and a lot of kids in his new class think he's dumb, and maybe he is.

Julie is the first person to talk to him, to be his friend. Then, she drags him into her little group, with Flynn, and Carrie, and it's a little weird at first (not because girls have cooties, but maybe a little something like that. Reggie learns a lot about Girls in general and these girls in particular.)

He gets invited to birthday parties and sleepovers and Mr and Mrs Molina (who are quick to tell him that just Ray and Rose is fine) don't even make him sleep in a separate room because he's a Boy. Though they do have to leave the door open. They're kind of the coolest parents ever, even cooler than the Mercers. (If only because the Mercers don't have an entire music studio in their back yard.)

Reggie is eleven when Julie starts bringing extra big lunches to school, and insisting he take some, talking about how her aunt foisted too much food onto them, or how her dad accidentally packed her two sandwiches.

He hadn't thought anyone would notice he's stopped bringing lunches to school. His mom refuses to sign the little paper that would qualify him for free lunches, saying Peters don’t take hand outs. But after a few weeks of Julie coming up with excuses, she just casually slides Reggie his half, and Reggie quietly accepts. Carrie and Flynn never say anything mean about it, and his mom doesn’t have to find out, so it’s fine.

Reggie is twelve when he has to start explaining away mysterious bruises. He starts wearing his flannel or the cool leather jacket he and Flynn found while thrifting pretty much all the time. The guys take it in stride (Alex runs cold a lot too, wearing hoodies even in summer), and the girls seem to think he's just found his signature style. Like Carrie and Pink, and Flynn and... Coolness, he guesses.

It's Rose and Ray who notice it, question it when he pushes up his sleeves to wash his hands before dinner. He jokes about how he swears that doorjamb moved at the last second. But the bruises get harder to hide, and he's pretty sure even his friends are starting to get suspicious the second time he shows up to band practice with a black eye.

Reggie is thirteen when he starts to live with the Molinas. He's also thirteen when he sees Rose nearly punch out his mom. It’s at parent-teacher night, and his mom is furious to hear he’s once again in danger of flunking a grade. (She'd already been in a bad mood because Dad had promised to take this parent-teacher night so she could go out with friends and had then just not come home.)

She pulls him away by his wrist through the corridor, into a stairwell. Her shouts had echo and bounce around the space in an awful manner, especially when he knows how good harmonies can sound when you stand at the bottom of the stairwell and sing together.

He knows what’s coming, flinching and waiting for the slap, but it never does. Instead, his mother gave an angry squawk, and then he looks up, Rose is holding her raised wrist. From the looks of it, she’s squeezing a lot harder than Mom had squeezed his wrist.

There’s a lot of furious shouting, and Reggie backs up a little. This is all his fault. If he was just smarter, Mom wouldn’t be so mad. He knows Rose means well, but as soon as he gets home Mom is going to take it out on him, and probably forbid him from going to the Molinas ever again.

It’s only because Ray puts himself between the two that prevents a total drag out fight. He pulls his wife away with one strong arm, but then wraps the other around Reggie's shoulders and pulls him away as well. He can hear his mom insist he get back here, and he knows there will be hell to pay later, but he clings to Ray instead, letting him guide him away.

It's a confusing mess after that, with a trip to the guidance counselor, a talk with a social worker, Julie and Flynn hugging him tight after he gets out of that meeting, red-eyed and cried out... and then suddenly, he's at the Molina house, sitting on Julie's bed in her favourite yellow smiley face sweater as Rose piles blankets on the air mattress.

It's called a kinship placement, the social worker explains to him later. When someone he already knows well takes him in. Usually that's a grandparent, or an aunt or uncle. But the Molinas offered, and they passed all the background checks. She does ask him if he wants to stay here, or if he'd prefer a different foster home, and he rushes to reassure her that yes, the Molinas are awesome, please don't send him back to Georgia to live with his dad's estranged sister.

He gets his own room, Rose taking him shopping to pick out paints and wallpaper and bed sheets and cool stuff to put on the walls. Ray stocks the kitchen with his favourite cereal and poptart flavours, and gets him his own designated mug. It has a picture of a dog holding a slice of pizza in its mouth. Julie teases Luke and Alex and Bobby that sorry, Reggie's vote for movie night counts twice now, since he lives here. They watch a lot of Star Wars.

It still feels a little unreal by the time December rolls around. Apparently Rose and Ray made a deal many years ago that she has to wait until December first to decorate for Christmas. Which she does, but it also means he and Julie come home on December first to find piles and piles of boxes in the living room, festive garlands already wrapped along the staircase, lights on the porch.

"Just in time to help me with the tree!" Rose says, but it comes out muffled, because she's got a nail between her lips. She takes it out, using a hammer to drive it into the wood above the fireplace. The entire mantle is covered in a tiny little Christmas village, little houses resting on soft fluffy white fabric to simulate snow. She finishes the nail, and grabs some stuff from another box.

A blue stocking with little cameras embroidered on it that reads Ray. One with a music note fabric that says Rose. A deep purple stocking with white butterflies on it that said Julie, and a baseball patterned one that said Carlos. They’re off center, Reggie thinks, and there was one nail too many. Except then Rose goes into the other room and comes back with a beautiful red and black plaid stocking that reads Reggie. The fabric looks just like his favourite flannel.

"You got me a stocking?" he asks, shocked.

"Of course," Rose says, hanging it up. "Reggie, you're family."

That Christmas, Ray insists they all smoosh together on the couch in their matching Christmas pyjamas to take some new family photographs. After all, they need to update the ones on the mantle to include their new son.