Mason had been warned about things like this. Nobody grew up in Vallo with an Outlander parent without experiencing plenty of weird and being warned about weird that was older than even they were. If he'd known it was going to happen today though, he wouldn't have fallen asleep at his computer desk. Since it didn't exist in this time, he woke up on the floor. With a crick in his neck.
"Ooww," he whimpered quietly. He did most things quietly. Like how he carefully stood now, rubbing at his neck, and gave the apartment a once over. It was the same place but different. The furniture and layout was more like how it was when he was a little kid. He pulled out his phone and blinked dumbly at the date on it.
"Oh god. I--Dad? Are you here?" He was halfway down the hall towards his dad's room before he realized the date meant his dad would be really young. Like Mason was a stranger in his apartment young. "Oh no. Oh god. I am...not prepared to get arrested for home invasion."
Dad?
Jake stumbled out of bed, hearing someone call out but having zero idea of who that could be, unless Hot Sauce learned to talk and he was not ready for that, thank you very much, Vallo. Instead he found a teenager he'd never met before or even seen around the building.
How had he gotten in?
Still not fully awake, but deciding the kid was unlikely to pose a threat, he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Wrong apartment? No idea how you got in here but…"
He gestured toward the door, still confused, almost ready to ask more questions. And he did. "Who are you, anyway? How did you get in?"
Mason's eyes were wide and he lifted a hand dumbly. To wave? To say please hold while I figure out what to do here? He wasn't sure. It was kind of fun seeing his dad so young, though. He had to smile a little at that.
"Um, so. I live here? Just not right now." Looking at Jake, he couldn't say for sure how old he was compared to normal. Normal for Mason, anyway. Everything looked pretty normal here. So hopefully this wasn't a dark version of Vallo. He'd heard about that one a few times. "I don't know how to say this without it being weird so I'm just going to spit it out, okay?"
Even with that said, he shuffled his feet shyly and pulled on the strings of his hoodie before finally, the words tumbled free. "I'm your son. Mason. Hi." He paused, wincing. "Sorry?"
"Aren't you a little old to be my son?" Jake questioned, not rejecting the idea that he might have a child somewhere, but the idea that the kid would be this old by now. His brain hadn't been able to comprehend the bit where Mason told him he lived there just not now, so he wasn't considering that bit.
"Coffee. I definitely need coffee. How old are you? Wait. That's it! Vallo brings us in from different points in time, like Mako came in from earlier than I did. So... you're from the future?"
Of course, he was thinking that meant he was from back home, and he looked Mason over. "Yeah, same good looks, definitely believe we could share DNA," he decided, letting what he was saying sink in for a moment because the moment felt surreal and he wasn't sure he wasn't in the middle of some elaborate dream Vallo had decided to gift him with.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. "Thirsty? Caught in the middle of an existential crisis?" Because this was weird, even for Vallo, and Jake was struggling to piece it all together.
Mason blew out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. It wasn't like he'd expected his dad to do anything bad, but he had wondered if he was going to be briskly escorted outside with a vaguely rude joke and a toothy grin.
"Um, I'm sixteen. And I mean, I have to guess I'm from the future. This is the apartment I grew up in, only things are different. And you...well you're different obviously." He moved towards the kitchen on instinct. At home, he made breakfast and got coffee started sometimes. Not because Jake didn't but because they were a team. He wondered how many other people were here from the future, in their parents' house. "I can put the existential crisis on hold for breakfast? I can probably even make the coffee if everything isn't in a crazy place." To prove it, he went for the pantry and pulled out a tin of coffee, his nervous face brightening into a soft grin.
"Okay, hold up," Jake said, watching as Mason retrieved the coffee.
"This is the apartment that you grew up in? Which means that you're from my future… here? You were born here?" And as an afterthought, "And they never made me give this place up?"
Those questions led to one more, immediate question of who Mason's mother was, but Jake didn't ask that yet. It was already an overwhelming situation for both of them and he was forcing his curiosity to not get the best of him right then.
Mason moved to the coffee maker and started brewing a pot, only pausing awkward for a few seconds when he realized the machine was different. "Uhh...yes. To all of that, except the last part. We talked about moving a few times when I was younger? But I'm not really an outdoors kid, so having a yard wasn't a big concern."
While the coffee pot started making brewing noises, Mason turned to rest his back against the counter. "You're not freaking out?" He started chewing on his thumbnail as he looked around the apartment. "I could stay with Aunt Mako if it's super weird. She's here, right? I know she came after you." God, he was rambling. He clamped his mouth shut.
This was absolutely insane and a lot to take in, and Jake's mind was reeling, but he couldn't help the grin that formed when Mason offered to go stay with Mako. For one, Mako was still around in his future. But mostly…
"Yeah, you should definitely go stay with your Aunt Mako. Except you technically are, right now. She's living here, down the hall." He hoped Mason was used to his teasing by now.
"I'm not freaking out, but I do need to know something…"
“Oh! Good.” Mason glanced towards the hall and smiled crookedly. It was a relief to know he wouldn’t be missing that part of his family while he was here. “Can’t wait to see the look on her face.” Mako would probably roll with this whole weirdness with ease, but maybe he’d get a moment of blinking surprise. Now all he really had to worry about was whether they’d like him. He pushed that thought away to quietly worry about later. His slow blinking gaze shot back to his dad.
“Okay?” He didn’t generally keep things from Jake but he knew there was one topic that might come up that he wasn’t in any rush to talk about. He turned to search the cabinets for coffee mugs. “What do you wanna know?”
There were a lot of things that Jake wanted to know, but given his relationship with his own father, one seemed the most pressing.
It surprised him to find himself nervous to ask, but then again, he was 26 years old talking to his future kid who was presently sixteen. Nothing about the situation was normal, and it was new, even by Vallo standards.
"You seem to like me well enough… Am I an alright dad?" He wanted to believe he would be, especially seeing that he had a son, and a chance to be to him what he didn't have growing up.
"Oh!" Mason lit up, all soft shyness falling away in the face of a much better question than he was expecting. "You're a great dad. We get along really well. I help you work on bikes and you're really supportive of my computer software engineering."
It likely didn't hurt that Mason wasn't much of a rebel. He liked his family and his home and wasn't a big partier. But any little rough patches they'd had over the years had been the standard growing pains of raising a son and nothing too dramatic or painful. He filled a coffee cup for Jake and prepared it just the way he knew his dad took his coffee. Then he held out the cup.
"Were you worried cause of stuff with your dad?" he asked quietly.
"Your Aunt Mako probably is supportive of you too," Jake ventured, thinking of how Mako would react, accepting his coffee with a grin, noting that Mason had fixed it exactly how he would. "So, we've talked about your grandfather?" he asked, casually, but secretly trying not to become too emotional and freak his surprise teenage son out.
In the future, he had a son, who was clearly terrific. And they obviously had an honest and good relationship. He hadn't thought much about kids, but if he had, this is exactly what he would want, the opposite of what he'd experienced growing up.
"Okay, I'm going to make breakfast, and you're going to tell me all about yourself, so I can properly brag about you later. If you don't mind, that is," Jake added.
Mason nodded, moving to make his own cup of coffee. He could only have one, because everything after that gave him the shakes, but he liked mirroring his dad holding mugs. It was dumb but it felt like one of their things. He smiled, soft and a little unsure. “We talked about a lot of stuff from your home. The people who were important to you. What you all went through. I think maybe you’ve always been worried the kaiju would end up here?”
He moved to lean against the island so Jake would have room to make breakfast, taking a small sip of his coffee and rubbing at his head with his other hand. The question of who his mother was still hung between them but he was more than willing to avoid it for as long as Jake wanted to avoid it. “If you make pancakes, I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know. Probably.”
"Pancakes it is," Jake said with an easy smile. "You're definitely my kid, aren't you?" Negotiating as he was. But he was eager to hear more, so he started pulling out ingredients, preparing himself for when Mako joined them and the two of them would have to explain.
He was looking forward to it, actually. Apparently he'd raised a kid worth bragging about, and he was going to find out as much about his son as Mason was willing to tell him. Maybe they could even work on his current bike project together, if Vallo allowed.
Because as weird as all this was, it was definitely on the better end of the seemingly endless stream of surprises that Vallo kept throwing at them.