A/N: Written for beren for fandom_stocking. Comments and constructive critique are always welcome.

Old and Familiar

"Rough day?" Adam asked as he padded through the main room on his way to the kitchen. He was dressed only in a pair of gray sweats that hung loosely from his long body, yet, for once, Richie wasn't enticed by what he saw there.

Richie glanced at the bowl cradled in his lap. It was filled with macaroni and cheese, the kind made with reconstituted cheese powder from a box. He'd made it with too much milk, just the way he liked, and the warmth seeped reassuringly through the fabric of his t-shirt like a comforting touch. "Is it that obvious?"

As if in answer, Adam disappeared into the kitchen and reemerged a moment later with a bottle of beer in one hand and a tall glass of ice-water in the other. He set the beer on the coffee table in front of Richie and stepped back. "Do you want to talk about?"

With a shake of his head, Richie groused, "Nothing to talk about. It was just one of those days, you know. The kind where it seems like you can't do anything right or say anything right." A shiver ran through his body, and he pulled the macaroni bowl closer to better absorb its heat. While he'd changed out of his wet clothes, he still felt cold to his bones and he could swear that the chill of puddle water squeezing up between his toes would never dissipate.

"Yeah," Adam responded. His gaze grew introspective. "I've had a few of those." He took a sip of his water and looked at Richie for a moment like he was debating between joining him on the couch or returning to the bedroom where he had been reading a book. Not wanting to say anything else that would anger someone, Richie tried to send the vibe that he just wanted to be left alone. He wasn't good company right now and he knew it. The sentiment must have gotten through because Adam nodded to himself and started back toward the bedroom. "There's a Brady Bunch marathon on TV Land," he suggested, as he swung the door shut.

Richie settled back into the leather couch and clicked on the TV. Finding the right channel took a little more effort and he accidentally found himself hitting the channel button when he wanted the volume button, swearing softly to himself each time. Finally, he got it figured out. It was such a tiny thing to get upset about, yet was so in keeping with the direction of the day. He was only surprised that the milk he'd cooked with hadn't turned out to be curdled.

The Brady Bunch was a show he shouldn't have liked. In truth, he didn't like it. The perfect blended family where everyone was loved and no one had any real problems was exactly the opposite of his own childhood. Yet, maybe that was what appealed to him. He remembered watching the show in each of his foster homes and finding the predictableness of the TV family's routines to be a relief. Now he could only laugh at its sappiness.

He closed his eyes and let the canned laughter wash over him, let a spoonful of noodles dissolve on his tongue and take him back to a time when macaroni and cheese had been his favorite meal. He didn't know why—it's not like his childhood had been the problem free candyland that people liked the claim childhood was—but it was the reminders from that time that still made him feel safe.

He turned that thought over in his head, toying with the paradoxes involved. Though he'd be hard pressed to name a foster home he'd been truly happy in, at least some of the typical joys of childhood had left a positive mark on him. He spooned his way through the rest of the bowl. When he went to wash it down with a long drink of beer, he felt an instant of surprise at the hoppy liquid that hit his tongue rather than the expected hot chocolate. And why had he been expecting hot chocolate when he'd seen the bottle and could feel the cool glass under his fingers?

The creak of mattress springs coming from the other room interrupted his musing. A moment later, he heard the bathroom door shut. His next thought was of the expression on Adam's face when he'd commiserated about bad days. There'd been a haunted quality to it that Richie had almost never seen in the older Immortal's expression. No, he immediately corrected, the oldest Immortal. Adam wasn't just older, he was so old that he didn't remember not being Immortal.

With the taste of reconstituted cheese in his mouth and the tones of Robert Reed gently reprimanding his brood in his ears, Richie found himself wondering about Adam's childhood—more specifically, which pieces he'd hung on to for comfort. With as much as the world had changed, he wondered if any of Adam's childhood could still be replicated. Of if any of it was remembered. And he wondered why Adam had known about The Brady Bunch marathon at all, and how he knew Richie so well when Richie didn't know the equivalent about him.

Richie let the questions percolate through another episode, until the food and the drink started to work and the wrongness of the day started to slough from his psyche. Eventually, he turned off the television and pulled himself to his feet. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and dealt with them, then rummaged in the fridge for another round of beer. All he could find was the strange micro-brewed stuff that Adam liked to keep around that was made without hops. He thought briefly about putting the kettle on for hot chocolate, then decided against it. Grabbing two bottles, he made his way to the bedroom.

He found Adam sprawled out on a pile of pillows with a book in his hands. It was a popular paperback, if the lurid cover was to be believed, which didn't surprise Richie; Adam seemed to read everything. He looked up when Richie entered and set the book down unprompted.

"Feeling better?" Adam asked.

"A little," Richie replied. He flashed a self-deprecating smile. "So, while I was sitting there, I did some thinking-"

"That's always dangerous."

Ignoring the bait for once, Richie continued, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that your idea of comfort food doesn't come out of a blue box." Adam made a face that confirmed Richie's not-so-wild suspicion. "It occurred to me that you pretty much always let me choose what we're going to eat. You put up with my tastes, but I don't really know what yours are. So, I thought that you could show me your food. From, you know, when you were my age?"

They didn't usually talk about the massive age difference-era different, Richie thought, if he wanted to be honest-between them except in teasing jabs and Richie felt his face warm as he brought the fact up for real.

Adam graced Richie with a long look, his fingers idly tracing the spine of the novel. "You shouldn't ask questions that you might not like the answer to."

"I'm not worried. In fact, I'm pretty sure it'll be gross. By my standards. But it's part of who you are." Richie mentally dredged up images of the most un-food-like things he could think of to prepare himself: living locusts with their wiggling legs, rats with their beady eyes, raw organ meat still dripping with blood. As long as Adam didn't make him try any of it, he'd be fine. He set one of the beer bottles he'd been holding on the nightstand next to Adam and sat down on the side of the bed.

Adam rubbed a hand over his chin, seeming to consider. He made no move to accept the offering. "That was a long time ago," he stated, as if Richie didn't know that. "There's a lot I don't remember."

Richie's brow furrowed. "I don't think you have to remember. It's just something you'd know."

"Ah, the wisdom of youth," Adam replied, in one of those oh-so-familiar teasing jabs. Then, more seriously, he added, "Though, you're not wrong." He straightened up on the bed so that he was more sitting than sprawling and contemplated some mid-distance spot.

"You're not going to make me guess, are you?" Richie asked, when the silence stretched on too long.

"I could have a lot of fun with that." Adam's mouth quirked at the corner in a way that often led to trouble. "But, no. I'm surprised that you haven't figured it out already. The answer is right in front of you."

Richie cast his eyes around the room, trying to figure out where he was supposed to be looking. The mid-distance spot held nothing but floating dust particles. And, while he wouldn't put it beyond Adam to have actually eaten dust, he doubted that was what Adam was hinting at. He shrugged. "I give up."

With a forced casualness, Adam picked up the beer bottle and held it up to the light. "For as long as there's been civilization, there's been beer-though the quality does vary."

"Beer? That's it?"

Now Adam did smile, a soft, reminiscent curving of his lips. "I think I've been drinking it my whole life."

"That's what helps you feel better after a tough day?" Richie asked. A piece of his boyfriend's behavior suddenly made a whole lot more sense, even as it opened an entirely new set of questions.

In answer, Adam took a healthy swig.

A previously forgotten bit of a long-ago history class floated up, and Richie remembered that beer had developed concurrently with another pan-cultural food. "You know that bakery down the street?" Richie shifted on the bed so that he was half-leaned against Adam. The warmth of his boyfriend's body was so much better than any bowl of macaroni and cheese. "If we get up early, we can go stand in front and smell the bread baking."

Adam scooted toward the middle of the bed to allow Richie more room. He clinked the mouth of his bottle against Richie's and replied, "I can't imagine a better way to start a good day."