Title: Five Things That Happen After Finn And Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop.
Author: lannamichaels
Fandom: Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop - Joshua S. Levy
Pairing: Finn Einstein/Ezra Rosen
Rating: G
A/N: I could find names for all the parents except Finn's mom, so I named her Kathryn. There is a glossary at the end.
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: "Most of the time, when boys are friends, they're friends," Hodaya says. "But sometimes when boys are friends, ten years later we have to negotiate whose family they spend holidays with. You know what I mean?"



1.

When Kathryn had met Hodaya, she hadn't known that she and her entire family were about to be adopted by Finn's First Friend's family.

The Rosens have been very welcoming, and ever since Kathryn began treatment, they've been invited over every Friday night, and many weekday nights, too. Every time Ezra comes over, he brings food from his family or from the community.

"You've been so kind. I never expected this," Kathryn admits to Hodaya one Friday night over a post-meal tea in the kitchen. The little ones are sleeping. The boys are at a late-night teen event that Yosef had promised her contained no alcohol for the teenagers. Kathryn wouldn't mind if there were alcohol, since she thinks supervised drinking is better than unsupervised drinking, and God knows that if a teen wants unsupervised drinking, he can find a way to manage it, but it's heartwarming nonetheless that Yosef is looking out for Finn as well as for Ezra. Kathryn had thought 'it takes a village' was just a phrase until the moment she and Leo became parents.

Hodaya nods understandingly. "It's a big change for us, too, moving to a new town. Having Finn has helped Ezra immensely. And, of course, there's the ulterior motive."

Hodaya says it like it's a joke and so Kathryn smiles. They'd had that conversation the first time they came over: Leo and Kathryn are happy being Reform, and Hodaya and Yosef have never pushed at all. "What is that?"

"Most of the time, when boys are friends, they're friends," Hodaya says. "But sometimes when boys are friends, ten years later we have to negotiate whose family they spend holidays with. You know what I mean?"

Kathryn almost laughs into her tea. So it's not just her and Leo who have noticed. "I know," she says.

"Ezra's never been like this with any of his friends before," Hodaya says. "Never. And I said to myself, Finn's a nice boy. Very smart. Good in school. Jewish. What more could I want, really? And so if something happens, something happens, and if it doesn't happen, Finn's still a nice boy, and I can always use more friends myself. And I've always said, I want good relationships with my mechutanim -- you know that word?"

"Yes," Kathryn says. "And I feel the same way. My parents and Leo's parents mostly get along, but I know my parents wanted and expected a much closer relationship than they have." She hesitates. "I wish Finn had a larger family. Especially once it was clear he struggled with making friends because he's so smart and such a force of nature -- I wish he had siblings or cousins around. I settled for hoping he'd settle down with someone in a big family, since we couldn't give him that."

It's an old ache and it's one Hodaya seems to understand from the sympathetic look on her face. Kathryn reflects that five kids in seventeen years might seem like a lot, but when you're part of the community that Hodaya is, there should be two or three kids between Ezra and Eliana that just simply aren't there. It's the kind of gap that makes Kathryn wonder if Hodaya went through some of the same emotional journey she did, even if the medical journey was different.

Kathryn clears her throat and adds more honey to the tea. She mixes it carefully and, when her voice is steady, asks with what brightness she can. "I'm glad Finn is so welcome here. I expected a lot more questions, I'm happy to answer them." If Finn's going to marry into a family like this, Kathryn has vague impressions that she's going to be expected to generate a detailed family tree. Or, worse, accept that there will never be a wedding, just an understanding of a relationship.

"Only one," Hodaya says. "Does he have a Hebrew name? It's only that Ezra keeps saying he's trying to get Finn an aliyah at the teen minyan but Finn won't tell him if he has another name, but he keeps coming to the minyan to keep Ezra company." Hodaya spreads her hands. "If Finn doesn't want an aliyah, he seems the type to just say that."

Katheryn smiles. "He would say that. And he does have a Hebrew name. He. Ah. Well, when I was pregnant with him, we knew he would be our only child. We'd planned on two, maybe three, originally, but-- that wasn't going to happen. We asked our rabbi for good names to reflect our feelings about that, our hopes and dreams for him. She made us a good list and we really liked the name Menachem. But we told my friend Mira and she looked at me and asked if his middle name was going to be Mendel with such a tone that I couldn't go through with it. We wanted to name Finn in a way that if he came home from college in a dress or in a hat, he could work with it. Finn Julius could become Fiona Julia very easily. But would he thank us for making him just another Menachem among millions? No, of course not. The next name on the list was Nachum, but we weren't sure, and then when he was born, he didn't look like a Nachum. So," she takes a breath, "he's Nechemiah, and I bet that's why he doesn't want Ezra to know."

"Ezra and Nechemiah," Hodaya says, savoring each syllable. "I love it."

"And I'm Chaya and Leo is Leib," Kathryn says, "so Finn's going to have to find another excuse."

"If it's something you object to, I can tell Ezra--"

Kathryn shakes her head. "No, no. I like that Finn's doing this. They told me in all the parenting classes that you'll see in other kids what you wish you saw in yours, and that's unfortunately true. Ezra is so good at being friends and doing things with others, and when Finn is hanging out with him, Finn becomes someone like that, too. Since Ezra came into our lives, Finn's even started making friends at school. He's never done that before. Leo and I made friends effortlessly and so we've tried to help him over the years, but we never managed to do what your Ezra has done in months. I'm very grateful for that." She looks at her tea so she doesn't have to look up. "In the darkest nights, when I thought I wouldn't live to see Finn graduate high school, I took comfort in knowing that he has friends now. I can't tell you how much that means to me."

Hodaya covers Kathryn's hand with hers. "I'm very glad of Finn, too," Hodaya says. "To tell you the truth, I've never known what to do with Ezra. He doesn't try in school, okay, it's middle school, it's not the end of the world. He spends more time with his friends than with his family, okay, a lot of kids don't like spending time with their families, not all brothers get along, I shouldn't expect Ezra and Eitan to be close. But all my fears for him have been what if this goes on. What if he doesn't try in high school? We want all our kids to do a year or two of post-high school learning, but could we really justify the cost if Ezra is going to waste it all hanging out with his friends? He doesn't talk to me, he doesn't talk to Yosef, he doesn't talk to anyone but his friends, who are good kids, of course they're good kids, we love having them at our Shabbos table, but is that enough? And then he brings over this other boy, a stranger, who just happened to have a bar mitzvah down the hall from his own, and suddenly, I can see a future for Ezra that doesn't scare me."

"A gay wedding to a Reform boy," Kathryn says.

"A chavrusa," Hodaya says. "Even if he and Finn never learn together, Ezra has already learned so much from him. That son of yours is a genius. Finn told me the only bar mitzvah preparation he did was a few months of lessons, but he did his haftarah perfectly! There was this one boy in Eitan's class, a lifetime of day school, three years of dedicated bar mitzvah lessons, and he mangled his haftarah so badly, I heard his mother say afterwards to one of her friends, 'baruch hashem it's over'. Your son doesn't know how to not try. He thinks he can do anything and so he does. With a partner like that, Ezra will always fly, because he'll have someone next to him that he trusts to never let him fall. I don't care if Ezra follows Finn into Reform. My sister Ayelet intermarried and Yosef's sister Dvori is a Conservative rabbi. If Ezra feels more comfortable in your temple than my shul, then I'm glad he's found it."

Kathryn nearly doesn't ask, but, "did you attend your sister's wedding?"

Hodaya huffs. "It was a destination wedding halfway around the world in some scenic location with no kosher food and I was eight months pregnant with Avital. If she'd done in somewhere I could have driven to--" she cuts herself off. "I sent her a vase as a wedding present. She sent a thank you card. And then the next time we saw each other, we got into a screaming fight. I accused her of arranging her wedding around the idea that having scenic photos was more important than having your family in attendance. She retorted that having a destination wedding was so all of us had a good excuse not to attend an intermarriage. I said if she didn't want us at her wedding, she didn't have to tell us she was getting married in the first place. She said I could have attended her bridal shower. I asked her if she really expected me to fly to LA to go to a treif restaurant. She said Yonit had. Yonit said to keep her out of this. You can imagine the rest. She came to the bar mitzvah shabbos but her flight left before the party on Sunday."

"Ah," Kathryn says. It's all she could say to that.

"Sometimes the biggest problem between siblings isn't religious interpretation, it's personality," Hodaya says.

"I know what you mean," Kathryn says.



2.

"Welcome to the Haftarah Appreciation Society of the Yeshivas Of Greater Bergenville," Shai says. "Please go around the room and say what your favorite haftarah is and why it's Machar Chodesh."

There is a thoughtful, yet offended silence.

"I feel stereotyped," Ezra said.

"That's not fair," Dovi begins. "We can like other haftarahs."

"Yes, yes, other ones are good," Shai begins, then is interrupted with a cacophony: He holds his hand up. "Yes, certainly, kol b'ramah nishma, make me cry. Shabbos Nachamu, I hear you. But when it comes down to it, your favorite haftarah is Machar Chodesh."

"Not everyone who likes Machar Chodesh is gay," Menachem Mendel says.

"Yes, we call them allies," Shai says.

Yerucham Stein, from a new yeshiva they didn't know anyone at, but who'd responded to Shai's step-brother's text, holds his hand up. "What if we don't like Machar Chodesh at all?"

"That's okay," Dovi says pointedly, glaring at Shai. "We're accepting of all diversities here."

Ezra clears his throat. "Yes. Hello, welcome. This is inspired by a social group that my friend Finn has at his high school. We're here to support each other and learn from each other. What happens here, stays here. If you want to be the poster-boy for queer frum high schoolers and contact JQY and Eshel, go do that somewhere else and don't get us involved. We're all here because we want to graduate our current high schools without getting our names over town. My brother Eitan over there--" Eitan waves, "represents Allies, if there's something you want to bring up but want someone else to do it, he'll do it. Finn--" Finn looks up from the corner, where he has his English lit homework spread out around him and his laptop open in front of him, "--is our expert on how these groups are supposed to work. We're here for queer, questioning, and allied yeshiva bochurs. You can bring your friends. We meet in my basement because my parents think I'm dating Finn."

"We're not dating," Finn clarifies. "We spent at least two years locked together in a time loop. It's not the same."

"Yeah. That. So, to start us off. I'm Ezra. My favorite haftarah is Eliyahu on Har HaCarmel."

"No, it isn't," Shai says with authority.

"Fine, fine, it's Machar Chodesh. Next person."



3.

Avital may be the only one of her siblings to truly believe Ezra's time loop story, but she figures it's a simple case of Occam's Razor.

Scenario: her brother is suddenly very close friends with a random boy he'd never met before his bar mitzvah. Her brother and his friend both claim they were stuck in a time loop together.

Option A: time loop is literal.

Option B: time loop is hyperbolic.

Avital and Ezra have never been that close, but it seems fairly clear to her that a time loop was involved.

Oh, and evidence toward Option A: Ezra is suddenly taking all his science classes a lot more seriously and is talking about getting a PhD in a physics-field-to-be-determined-once-he-gets-to-college.

So, what to think about Finn? He seems like a teenage boy. It's good for Ezra to have friends outside yeshiva. That's about the extent of it.

She just wishes her mother would stop talking her ear off about Mrs. Einstein every time Avital gets her on whatsapp to say good shabbos. Avital is glad her mother is so open about Ezra being gay, but sometimes she thinks her mother is getting far too ahead of herself. There's choosing your son-in-law and then there's whatever her mother is doing.

Avital should be grateful; when her roommates talk to their mothers, they all get questions on if they've met anyone nice at a meal, or if they want to be introduced to so-and-so's son. Avital's mother doesn't do any of that.

"I don't need to be talked into liking Finn," Avital interrupts her mother one day when it's a winter Friday and she needs to get off the phone ASAP. "He's fine."

"And so smart," her mother says and then laughs at herself. Avital is glad her mother is back to being able to laugh at herself. There was a long time there when the money problems-- it's in the past, Abba has a much better job, Avital and Eitan are out of the house, it's easier now. Eliana and Esty are going to know their parents as much more laid-back than Avital ever has. "I'm sorry. It's only, when I talked to your father before we got married about how we'd handle it if one of our kids went OTD, I was so worried about how we'd actually handle it."

"Ezra's not OTD, is he?" Avital asks, alarmed. It's much too close to candle lighting for that kind of revelation. She needs to get off the phone.

"No, no," her mother dismisses. "But, you know, if he did, it would be okay. But I thought it would be hard, to be okay with it. I thought I would resent what pulled him away. I'm so relieved that I don't. You'll understand, if you have children. You spend so much time worrying, and I've always worried so much about Ezra."

Avital's mother is the only mother in Avital's social circle who phrases it like that: if you'll have children.

"And you never worry about me," Avital says, starting to walk through the apartment to check the clock timers.

"Oh, motek, I worry about you constantly," her mother says happily. "Since the day you were born. Have a good shabbos!"

"Gut shabbos, Imma!" Avital says and turned off her phone, relieved.

What to think about time loops? Improbable, difficult, strange. What to think about her mother being absolutely convinced Finn Einstein is her future son-in-law? That's a problem for Ezra.



4.

Ezra doesn't have time for dating. He learns at yeshiva for a year, and when he mentions doing a second year, Finn says, "college tuition is only getting higher, you know that, right?"

Finn's able to go to whatever college gives him the best scholarship, but Ezra's stuck trying to find the best affordable physics program that also has access to kosher food on campus, because Ezra and Finn had one single conversation about Ezra coming to live with Finn where Ezra said the words "I'd have to cook literally everything I eat, and I'm not a good cook" before Finn realized the severity of the situation, and Finn wasn't volunteering to cook every single meal for Ezra that wasn't cereal or ramen.

"Do you remember all the things Dr. London said to us?" Ezra asks Finn, his phone held sort of near his face as he walks across the grass between buildings. "Do you think she was just making it up?"

Finn's voice comes from two time zones away. "Sometimes."

"I think I saw Rabbi Neumann at minyan this morning, but he vanished before I could talk to him."

Finn's frustrated groan needs no video-call to interpret. "Go back tomorrow and try to find him!"

"I go every morning!" Ezra says. "This is the first time I saw him!"

"Maybe we both need to be there--" Finn starts.

"We absolutely don't, if I saw him," Ezra says. "Don't go catch a plane just because of me."

"Darling, I'd do anything for you," Finn says, and between them, it's always both a joke and not a joke.

Their parents think they're dating. Ezra's siblings know they're not. No one knows they'd decided after high school not to try:

"Even if we should try dating, we shouldn't try it now."

"Uh-huh."

"You're off to yeshiva for a year and I'm going to college. There's going to be so many time zones in the middle!"

"Eight, I think?"

"The only good solution is we don't date each other until we're in the same place. And we both try to find other boyfriends. Kiss other people."

"Yeah."

"Shake on it."

They did.

"Once I get my new routine set-up, I'll text you when's a good time to video chat. What do you think, twice a week? Is that enough?"

"Let's start with twice. We can always go up from there."

And that's what they'd kept to, and Ezra had kissed Shai at yeshiva, behind two closed and locked doors, and Finn had sort-of-dated a couple guys and had one night stands with one or two others, but, when it comes down to it--

They're both too busy to date, and they'd have to figure out how to live with each other, and sometimes Ezra thinks he doesn't even like Finn that much, it's only that he cares about him and thinks about him all the time, and they were both literally trapped in a time loop together, so if that's not basheret, then what is?

But they're not dating.

Even if they do have more detailed conversations on morals and ethics than Ezra thinks most people have with their best friends. That's kind of more a pre-marital discussion. Isn't it? He doesn't know. He doesn't really have anyone he can ask, other than Finn.

Grad school will be easier. They have more time to plan. No one better say the word post-doc within his hearing or Ezra is going to sob uncontrollably.



5.

Grad school unexpectedly takes care of itself. Finn blinks at the email, at the signature, at the attachments. Automatically, his hands go for his phone. He unlocks it without looking. Dials Ezra without looking. Gets Ezra's voicemail because, oh right, stupid timezones.

"Drink two cups of coffee before you check your email," Finn tells him. "But Dr. London found us."

He clears his throat.

"Also she says congratulations on our wedding anniversary?" His voice squeaks near the end. "Uh. Call me back. We should -- yeah, we should talk."

Three hours later, Finn gets a barrage of texts from Ezra, which ends in I FOUND A COPY OF OUR WEDDING PROGRAM AND BENCHER IN MY COAT POCKET.

It takes Finn a long time to stop the hysterical laughter.

Then he calls his parents, since Ezra's obviously still processing. "Hi, mom! Hi, dad! The time loop proposed for us!"

"How lovely," his mother says, never missing a beat. "Mazel tov."

"When's the wedding?" his father asks.

"I'll let you know," Finn promises.

---

Glossary:

Aliyah: in this usage, an honor given of being called up to the Torah when it is being publicly read in synagogue

Basheret: soulmate

Bencher: booklet with the blessings after meals in it, there are many variations on what it can contain in addition to that.

Chavrusa: learning partner

Haftarah: comes after reading the Torah on shabbos and holidays

Mechutanim: term describes the relationship between the parents of the bride and groom (also sometimes used more broadly)

Minyan: in this usage meant to indicate communal prayers at synagogue

Motek: sweetheart.

OTD: off the derech. What someone does when they leave Orthodox Judaism.

baruch hashem: usage is the same as "thank god"

bochur: in this usage, (male) yeshiva student

frum: Orthodox

treif: in this usage, not kosher


Haftarahs list:

Machar Chodesh: the haftarah read the day before the new month (Rosh Chodesh). Shmuel 1 20:18-42.

Kol b'ramah nishma: Haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashana, Yimiyahu 31:2-20 (organized as verses 1-19 in other places)

Shabbos Nachamu: The shabbos following Tisha B'av, on which is read Yishayahu 40:1-26, which begins Nachamu, nachamu ami.

Eliyahu on Har HaCarmel: Haftarah for Ki Sisa, Melachim 1 18:1-39