#second-hand

[littlepunxsie]

second-hand book fair finds

[rickssecondhandfinds]

Clocks 🥰 🕰️

23/Mar/24

[liminalmemories21]

Lim! It’s me! I request 8 please 🥺

So, umm, I got a little carried away?

There'd been a shelf of cookbooks in the condo, before it burned down.  Cookbooks that Carlos had bought when he was in college and experimenting with learning how to make Indian food and Thai food and pasta from scratch, books he'd bought at school fundraisers and church Christmas markets, books he'd been given as housewarming presents when he moved into the condo.  

When he moved into the loft he realized that Carlos had never replaced them, and even though Carlos hadn't left a space for them in the kitchen, he felt like he could see it anyway, where they would have sat.

He goes on a quest after that.  Some of them are easy to replace from alibris or bookfinder: the 1964 edition of the Joy of Cooking - because apparently the new edition had fucked around with all the recipes, Carlos's words, not his, and he'd stared at Carlos shocked when he'd said it because Carlos doesn't swear all that often unless he's in bed; a soup cookbook from some celebrity chef from the 90s that he's seen Carlos make exactly two recipes out of; a copy of the Silver Palate cookbook that someone at work had given him at a holiday gift exchange.

The church cookbooks and Junior League cookbooks are harder to find, and he takes to scouring second hand bookstores and antique stores and thrift shops on his days off when Carlos is at work.  Sometimes he drags Nancy or Marjan or Paul with him.  

"Why are we doing this?" Nancy grouses once.  "I've never seen Carlos use a recipe for anything."

"That's not the point," he snaps, and Nancy backs off with sympathetic eyes.

And, it isn't.  The point is that this is something Carlos had lost that he could maybe give back.  He's never going to be able to replace the pie bird that Carlos bought at the farmer's market when he was 12, or the old wooden rolling pin that had been his abuela's, worn smooth with time and use, or the butter molds his cousin Anna had brought him back from a trip to France.  But this, is something he can do.

It takes longer than he expects, and he ends up with more books than had been in Carlos's collection originally.  But he hadn't been able to resist them, the ones with cheery titles like "Nightingales in the Kitchen" and "Charlottesville: Cooking for Compliments", or the ones filled with someone else's handwritten edits that say things like 'never make this again' or 'add orange juice' or 'your husband will thank you'.

He meant to wait for Carlos's birthday, but he gets impatient, and packs them all in a banker's box and sticks a huge red bow on it, and makes brisket for dinner.  Carlos sniffs appreciatively when he comes home, and doesn't even notice the box on the table until he's coming back from hanging up his coat.

Carlos looks at him, clearly trying to remember if he's forgotten something, and he shakes his head.  "No reason, baby, just because."

"It's not a lizard is it?"

He snorts.  "I wouldn't do that to you, I promise.  You'll like this."

Carlos lifts the books out slowly, turning them over in his hand, stacking them up on the table.  He finally looks at TK.  'I had these at the condo."  He nods. "You bought them for me?"  He nods again, worrying his lip a little, suddenly nervous.  "Why?"

"You kept them, they meant something to you, they had memories for you.  I hate that you lost everything."  He waves a hand when Carlos starts to deny it, or point out that TK did too.  "I know, I was there too, I lost things too.  But, I'd only just moved in, I still had stuff at Dad's.  That was a home you built, and you lost it, and we don't talk about it."  He shifts on his feet, fidgeting with the couch cushion.  "We don't have to talk about it now, just, I wanted you to have something back."  He gestures around the loft. "You give me so much.  You deserve to have everything too."

Carlos kneels up on the couch, wrapping arms around him, kissing him breathless.  He smiles into the kiss.  "You like them then?"

"I love them."  Carlos kisses him again.  "I love you."  And then he pulls back to look speculatively at the kitchen.  "We'll have to rearrange some of the cups to make space for them."

[inthearmsof]

[li-ulu]

i found this sweater in a second-hand shop and for a long time i couldn't understand why Eeyore was standing next to a huge hairy leg...

[schibborasso]

vorzugsbehandlung (second-hand)

[thatsbelievable]