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drabbles-mc · 11 months ago

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Home for the Holidays?

Carmy Berzatto x OC Kalia Mason

For @storiesofsvu Holiday Bingo 2023!

Warnings: 18+, language, smoking, pre-canon, light angsty moments

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: i have a whole longfic planned for these two that takes place way after this, but this little piece of their backstory has been bouncing around my head for weeks so i'm glad to finally be able to finish and post it!

The Bear Taglist: @garbinge @withmyteeth @darqchilddaydreamz @hausofmamadas @ashlingnarcos @narcolini @justreblogginfics (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

“No, no, I’m not,” Carmy shook his head as he paced back and forth in the alleyway behind the restaurant, “I’m not having this fuckin’ conversation right now. Mi—no, you’re not listening. You never fuckin’ listen I can’t talk about this right now.”

He pulled an aggressive drag from his cigarette as he listened to Mikey going off on the other end of the line. He’d been so engrossed in his argument that he hadn’t even heard the back door of the restaurant open and shut, didn’t catch the dull sound of heels against the blacktop. Turning around to start pacing back in the opposite direction again, he stopped himself short, mid-headshake, when he saw that Kalia had stepped out back as well. He didn’t say anything as he stared at her, now only halfway tuned into the conversation that he was having with Mikey. His brows separated, easing apart rather than being pinched in exhaustion, but the tension in his jaw still held.

Kalia didn’t say anything to him either. She walked up to him without a word and he handed his cigarette over to her. He watched her bring it to her lips, her actions much smoother and calmer than his had been just a few moments before. She folded one arm across her chest, holding her hand out for him to take the cigarette back. He did, noticing but not commenting on the slight smudge of pale pink left on the filter from what was left of her lipstick by that point in her shift.

The whole exchange only took a handful of seconds, but with how quickly conversations moved with Mikey, or any of the Berzatto’s, it was more than enough time for Carmy to lose his footing in the exchange. He realized that as soon as he dialed back into what Mikey was saying, flinching at the whiplash of it all.

Regardless of how much or how little he’d missed, Mikey had clearly picked up on Carmy’s lack of response and made a comment about it. He was still staring at Kalia when he snapped at his brother and said, “No, I’m not fuckin’ listening because you’re not listening to me either. I, I can’t, I’m not talking about this.” He sighed. “No, I’m not. I’m not. Know what I’m doing? I’m hanging up. I am, I’m hanging up the fuckin’ phone.”

Kalia’s eyes widened at the statement, although she couldn’t pretend that she was overly surprised by it. What was a little more surprising was the fact that he actually followed through. As soon as the last syllable left his lips, Carmy pulled the phone away from his ear and ended the call.

He let out a sigh as he shoved his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just tilting his head back and looking up at the sky like it was going to give him some calm, or clarity, even though in all his years it had never done anything of the sort.

Finally, he turned back to Kalia. He took another inhale of his cigarette because saying, “Hey.”

She laughed at the stark difference in pace and tone between his phone conversation and how he was speaking to her. “Hey.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you want me to ask about that or just…?”

He couldn’t help but to let out a chuckle when he saw the look on her face as she asked. Light-hearted but not cruelly so. Shaking his head, he finished off his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. “Fuckin’ Mikey.”

She tilted her head. “What’d he say?”

He sighed, leaning back against the wall of the restaurant. “He was asking about Christmas.”

Raising her eyebrows, she just managed a soft, “Oh,” not sure what else to say.

Things had been so new with them the previous Christmas—they had still been in a bit of a limbo. There hadn’t been any expectations, or any real discussions about the holidays. Carmy hadn’t seemed like he wanted to talk about it, so Kalia didn’t waste energy trying to pry. The stakes were different this year, though. She’d been meaning to get around to asking what his plans were, so it seemed like there was no time quite like the present.

“Never calls me any other month of the year to see how I’m doing. But, but sure, yeah, of course. Because he just wants to give me a fuckin’ hard time about it.”

“Are you going home for Christmas?” she asked. It felt like the answer should be obvious but she also knew him well enough to know that acting logically wasn’t always his strong suit. It wasn’t his brother’s either, apparently.

“N—I don’t know. I don’t fuckin’ know,” he muttered, leaning his head back against the wall.

“Do you want to?” she asked. The laugh she let out was more nervous than it was humorous. “Because it doesn’t really seem like you want to.”

He chuckled, unable to stop himself. He knew that she was right, but he also didn’t have the time or the energy to get into all the intricacies of Christmas with the Berzatto’s on their ten-minute smoke break.

“It’s gonna be a fuckin’ mess if I don’t go.” He paused, letting the footage play back of years past. “It’s a fuckin’ mess when I’m there too, though, so who knows.”

She let a few seconds of silence pass before making her offer. “If you don’t want to go, you can always come spend it with my family.” She laughed. “Or if you want a break altogether and want to spend it alone, I get that too.”

He smiled as he stared at her. There was some appeal to the idea of spending Christmas by himself in his tiny apartment. He didn’t even have a tree or a string of lights up—it looked the same way it did the other eleven months of the year. But it would be quiet, calm, things that his childhood home in Chicago never were even on the best day.

He’d only met Kalia’s family once, and he didn’t count it, really, because of the circumstances. He’d just been one face in a sea of many that day. Most of her relatives probably wouldn’t remember that he’d even been there, but Kalia remembered. That was all that really mattered to Carmy anyway. The only other way some of them knew him was based on whatever stories Kalia told them about him, or if he was passing through in the background of a videocall between her and her parents. The notion of going there for the holidays was kind of nice on one hand, but on the other hand it was absolutely terrifying.

Kalia saw him locking up and shutting down in real time. “You don’t have to decide right now,” she said with a laugh. “Just something to keep in mind. An escape route, if you need it.”

His shoulders noticeably relaxed as he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, right. Okay. Thank, thank you.” He cleared his throat as he forced himself off the wall. Gesturing towards the door, he said, “I gotta get back.”

Kalia smiled, nodding. “Go ahead. I still got a couple minutes before I gotta head back in, and,” she rolled her eyes with a laugh, “I’m using every single one of them.”

Carmy smiled and gave her a nod but didn’t say anything else. He walked past her, reaching out and brushing his fingers against hers, letting them catch for half a second as he passed. There was a smile on his face about it until he was back inside the restaurant and the door swung shut behind him.

He purposely ignored the slew of texts and calls from Mikey. He ignored the texts from Nat, too, although there were far less of those. The brunt of her wrath would come when she saw him in person next, whenever that was going to be. Every Christmas he always wanted to blow them off but he hadn’t ever found it in himself to follow through on it. He’d always string together a list of reasons why he had to be there. Always. Plus, if he was honest with himself, he never felt like he had a good enough external reason to bail, something outside of himself. But now it seemed like he did. He’d have to think about it.

It was a few nights later when he let himself into Kalia’s apartment. It wasn’t often that their days off synced up, so they made do by just stopping by the other’s apartment when they had the time, and more importantly the energy, before or after their shifts. It took some doing, but they’d figured it out.

“Hey,” he called out as he toed his shoes off just inside the door. He didn’t hear her respond as he walked towards the kitchen where he could see that the light was on, but he still had the feeling that she was awake. Turning the corner, he started speaking up again. “Lia? You—” he stopped short with a laugh when he got a good look at her.

She was leaning back against the counter right beside the stove with a pot in her hand, separated from her palm by a potholder. She was holding a fork in her other hand, and was currently halfway through eating another forkful of macaroni and cheese.

“Hey,” she mumbled through her mouthful of food as she tried not to send it flying everywhere.

Walking over, Carmy peeked into the pot in her hand. He knew what it was already before he even looked, but he still asked, “What’s going on here?”

She swallowed what was in her mouth so that she could laugh. “Mac ‘n cheese.”

His eyebrows lifted just slightly as a smile stretched across his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Want some?” reaching over, she opened the drawer that housed her silverware and pulled out another fork. “I’ll share.”

He shook his head but still took it. “Sure.”

“I upgraded, you know. No more of the single-serve cups that go in the microwave.”

He laughed as he took a forkful from the pot. “Upgraded to the box?”

“So as not to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

It was a comment that, coming from someone else, he would’ve taken to heart. If it’d been Mikey, or Richie, or anyone back home really, he would’ve snapped back. It would’ve been an argument. But it was hard to jump to being on the defensive with Kalia. It wasn’t that they never argued or got after each other, but she hadn’t ever been the type to make that her default. It was foreign, but it was good.

“Yeah, because everyone knows that boxed Easy-Mac is much, much better than the cups.”

“Obviously,” she said as she gesticulated with her fork.

Carmy smiled, talking through the forkful of macaroni he’d just taken. “Obviously.”

They fell into comfortable silence after that. Part of Carmy wanted to go and shower off the day, wanted to leave his t-shirt and jeans in a heap on the floor of Kalia’s bathroom to be dealt with in the morning, but he couldn’t manage to peel himself away from her. Not even an hour before, he’d had the executive chef breathing down his neck making him want to run into oncoming traffic, but that felt so far away now. Kalia was standing there in her flannel pajama pants and an old t-shirt that had more rips and stains than any shirt or apron Carmy had worn in the kitchen over the years. Her socks were fitting for the time of year, fuzzy, warm, and decorated with snowmen. Her apartment overall was much more festive than Carmy’s was, but that was a low bar. She looked so comfortable. All the time she looked so comfortable, even when shit was hitting the fan. He wondered how she stayed like that all the time. Maybe it was a family thing, because lord knew that him and his family couldn’t stay calm if their lives depended on it.

“Your parents wouldn’t mind if I came for Christmas?” he asked as he tossed his dirty fork into the sink.

Kalia tried not to look too excited, not wanting to get her hopes up too high. “They wouldn’t mind at all. They, you know, they really wanna see you.” She laughed as she scooped the last bit of macaroni onto her fork. “At this point, they probably think I’m keeping you hidden in my basement or something.”

He chuckled, finding a spot beside her leaning back against the counter. “Did you tell them your apartment doesn’t have a basement?”

She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.” There was a pause. “But yeah, if you wanna come with me to my parents’, you can. My car seats at least two.”

“Two plus whatever is living in your back seat,” he replied with a tiny smirk, recalling all the times she simply just tossed whatever was on her passenger seat into the back on the occasions the two of them would go to or from work together.

“You can just walk, you know,” she shot back with a laugh as she moved and set the pot in the sink to soak, too tired and lazy to wash it right in that moment. “Or I can strap you to the roof like a deer.” She walked back over, gently toying with his hair for a moment. “Curls instead of antlers.”

He shook his head, eyes dropping to the floor as he tried not to look as amused as he felt. Taking a deep breath, he looked back at her. “I’ll let you know in a couple days?”

She nodded. “Let me know in a couple days.”

Neither of them brought it up again in the wake of that exchange. The rest of the night went by. Kalia told Carmy the highlights of what had gone on in the dining room during dinner service. Front of house and back of house never had the same brand of chaos and stress going on, but both ends of the house were always kept busy. That was for certain. Carmy listened as he got ready to finally turn in for the night. Kalia was already in bed, sitting with her back against the headboard and blanket pulled over her legs. She had her phone in her hand and Carmy was shuffling around the room but none of it was enough to break the flow of their conversation. Not even when Carmy slid into bed under the covers beside her, blanket draped over him while he had his elbow propped on the pillow on his side of the bed, head resting in his hand as he listened, as they talked.

It wasn’t until two days and three phone calls with his siblings later that Carmy came to a decision. He didn’t know how to start the conversation with Kalia, so instead of getting into all of the reasons why, he just asked, “What should I bring? To your parents’ house, I mean. What should I bring?”

She paused the search for her car keys in her purse when she processed what he’d said. “What should you bring?” she repeated back, smile growing wider with each word. “I don’t…you don’t have to bring anything. You’re bringing me.”

He was watching the sidewalk pass beneath their feet as they walked to her car together. “No, no. I gotta bring something.” He paused, thinking about the types of things people typically brought to gatherings like this. “Wine? There a wine your parents like?”

She shook her head. “My parents don’t drink. No one, um, no one really does when they go to their house, either.”

Carmy raised his eyebrows just slightly. It wasn’t that it was strange that her parents didn’t drink, per se. But he just couldn’t fathom a gathering of his own family with no alcohol involved. He wondered if that would make everything worse.

He realized that he’d been silent for just a few seconds too long for it to be comfortable. “Heard. Right.”

“You don’t have to bring anything,” she emphasized again, “but I’m sure if you wanted to help with prep and stuff my mom would appreciate it. She always,” Kalia rolled her eyes as she unlocked the doors to her car and slid into the driver’s seat, “she always leaves the prep up to my uncle. And he always thinks it’s gonna take way less time than it really does. Which, you know, isn’t a big deal. We just eat a little later—that’s fine. But,” she turned the key in the ignition, “I’m sure he’d love a helping hand, too.”

“What do you guys do?”

“It’s kind of like a hot-pot situation, but not quite. If you see it you’ll get it. Actually,” she laughed as she drove down the road, “we usually do it for New Years but I’m working New Years this year so I convinced them to do it for Christmas instead. It’s like my favorite holiday meal of the year.”

They let the conversation end there, the music from the radio filling the car instead of their own voices. Part of Kalia wanted to ask Carmy what had him making that decision, but she stopped herself. If he wanted to talk about it, he would. And even the things that he did want to talk about, it was rarely something as straight-forward as simply sitting across the table from her and talking about it. It was a lot of off-hand comments and half-stories, a lot of interjecting things into the middle of rants. It was just on everyone else to try and keep up and keep track of it all.

Christmas snuck up on them faster than they realized. Even when they had been discussing plans and logistics, it had felt like some far-off thing. Then, in the blink of an eye, Carmy heard the sound of Kalia letting herself into his apartment on Christmas morning.

“Just me!” she called out as she undid the zipper of her jacket.

Carmy appeared, walking out of his bedroom with a bottle in his hand. “Hey.”

Walking over to him, Kalia couldn’t stop the warm smile that spread across her face. Carmy had on one of his nice sweaters and a fresh, dark pair of jeans. His hair was a little tamer than usual, but not so much that he didn’t look like himself anymore.

Leaning in, she kissed him quickly on the lips. “You look good.”

Carmy looked at her, feeling a little less nervous when he saw how relaxed she seemed. “You too.” Even though her jacket was covering most of it, Carmy still knew what sweater she was wearing—the fuzzy white one that went off both her shoulders.

He was still busy staring at her when she gestured towards the bottle he was holding. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” he held it up so she could read the label, “I just, um, it’s sparkling cider. Is, is that okay? I can leave it if—”

“That’s good,” she stopped him short, nodding and smiling in approval. “They’ll like that.”

His body visibly relaxed at that, shoulders loosening. “Alright, good. Yeah.”

“You need a few more minutes or—”

“I’m good,” he answered her question before she even finished it. “Let me just—my shoes, and, and yeah.”

“Take your time,” she spoke after him as he took off to grab his shoes and jacket.

The drive didn’t take as long as either of them thought it would. It was still enough time for Carmy to reach the brink of driving himself crazy as he sat jittering in the passenger seat. Kalia could only look over at him so many times while she was keeping an eye on the road in front of them, but even in her peripheral she saw him, numerous times, go to reach for the pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket and then stop himself. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, that if he wanted to have one she wasn’t going to kick him out of the car. But he knew that already—she knew that he knew that. Instead, she took one hand off the steering wheel and rested it on his leg. It got the bouncing in his foot to stop but then it just shifted upwards and into his fingers that began to drum against the windowsill.

“It’s not, you know, it’s not like it’s some big to-do. It’s just,” she shrugged, “Christmas. We get together and eat food. No crazy heaps of presents of anything.” She turned and looked at him for a brief moment. “We do secret Santa.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yep. We were all broke for a while. Some of us,” she lifted her hand from his leg and pointed at herself, “still kind of are. So it’s just easier that way. Less pressure.”

“Who’d you get?”

“My mom.”

The idea of that happening in his own life was enough to make Carmy’s stomach twist into a knot and it wasn’t even really happening to him. He pushed the feeling down as well as he could. “Wh-what’d you get her?”

“You!” she replied with a laugh. She shook her head. “Kidding. Kind of. But she is so excited to meet you.”

“Shit,” he said without thinking better of it. He froze up as soon as the word came out of his mouth, afraid of what was coming next.

Rather than anger, Kalia just met him with amusement. “She’s not scary. My dad isn’t either, really. My uncle is the one you should probably be worried about.” She paused, switching lanes on the highway. “It was funny, though. The first time I tried to tell her I was dating you, I said I was seeing the chef from the restaurant. And, and I had no idea why she got so mad about it, you know? She didn’t know you.”

“She got mad?”

Kalia could hardly talk through her laughter. “Yeah. Because the last time I talked to her about a chef,” she shook her head, “the chef from the restaurant, I was telling her about your asshole boss.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Now Carmy was laughing too. “She thought you were dating—”

“Yeah,” she cut him off with a laugh and a nod. “So, you know, no matter what you’re going to be better than who she originally thought I’d be bringing home on the holidays.”

“Jesus,” Carmy said as he shook his head, running his hand back through his hair. He had to admit, though, he felt a little better.

When they pulled into the driveway at her parents’ house, Carmy couldn’t stop himself from noticing the other cars in the driveway. Not what type of car or even what color, but just the fact that their driveway was full. He could feel the panic starting to creep back up his spine and out through his limbs. Kalia hadn’t even put her car in park yet and all he was picturing was all the years at his mother’s house, a full driveway, so full that they parked their cars on the sides of the street. The house was even fuller. Every year. So many people and so much noise. So much yelling.

“You ready?” Her voice, once again, pulled him out of his thoughts.

He turned to look at her, nodding although he didn’t know how much he believed it. “Yeah. Um, yeah. I’m, I’m ready. Are you?”

“Come here.” Still buckled in, Kalia leaned over, hand resting on the center console of her car, and kissed him. “They’re going to love you, Carm.”

He let out an unsteady laugh. “Let’s hope.”

Carmy trailed right behind her as she walked up the driveway. He watched her as she knocked on the front door, but that the formality was basically pointless because she was turning the knob with her other hand and pushing it open even as she knocked. She hardly had one foot inside the house and she was calling out, “Hello,” and, “Merry Christmas!” He followed close behind but didn’t say a word, just looking around the house instead.

“Hey!” a man called out as he poked his head out form around a corner. “Look who it is!” He walked over and wrapped Kalia in a tight hug, paying no mind to the knife that he was holding in one hand.

She laughed as she hugged him back. “Careful waving that thing around.”

“Not waving,” he said as he stepped back. Diverting his attention, he looked at Carmy. “You’re the guy, huh?”

Carmy’s eyes went wide, a scared fawn in the headlights. The man’s words didn’t sound threatening or accusatory in any way but Carmy still felt like he was on trial. There was only one correct response to that question and yet he still couldn’t spit it out.

Luckily Kalia stepped in to cover for him. “Can you try that again without the knife in your hand?” she asked with a laugh. Slipping her hand into Carmy’s, she said, “This is Carmy—the guy who is going to make sure we don’t start eating dinner at ten tonight.”

“That only happened once!”

“And I will never let you forget it,” she joked. Looking over at Carmy, she said, “Carm, this is my Uncle Rich.”

“N-nice to meet you,” Carmy said, pulling his hand from Kalia’s so he could shake her uncle’s.

“What’ve we got here?” her uncle asked, breaking off the handshake so he could gesture to the bottle that Carmy was holding in his hand.

Suddenly Carmy was overcome with the urge to throw the thing right back out the front door they’d just walked through. He didn’t want to hand it over, didn’t want to show it, afraid that it was going to be met with ridicule or disdain of some kind.

He fought through it, holding the bottle out to the man in front of him. He somehow managed to keep his hand steady, too. “Just, um, just some sparkling cider. Lia mentioned that you guys don’t really—”

“Alright!” he exclaimed, taking it with the hand that wasn’t holding onto the knife. “Good man.”

Then, like he was letting everyone know that the introduction and conversation was over with, Kalia’s uncle turned on his heel and headed back to the kitchen. When the man rounded the corner back out of sight, Carmy let out a breath that he hadn’t meant to start holding.

“See?” she said as she crouched down to start taking off her shoes. “Not that bad. He’s the…most…out of everyone. You’re gonna be fine.”

Carmy didn’t know how much he believed her, but there was nothing left to do but take her word for it now. He leaned down to unlace his shoes and at that point he knew that he was in it. He was trying to figure out what to say in response to her reassurance when she grabbed his hand and started pulling him deeper into the house.

It couldn’t have felt more different than being home. It couldn’t have felt more different than being around his own family. He’d hardly been able to spit out his own name to Kalia’s parents when he was introducing himself because of all the panic lodged in his throat. There was no way that her mother and father didn’t see it, didn’t hear the strain in his voice. They didn’t say anything, though, didn’t even give him so much as a sideways look about it. They were so kind, gentle even. Carmy knew that he would get around to appreciating that at some point.

He maneuvered his way through an initial round of small talk with the rest of Kalia’s family. He wasn’t graceful about it, and he needed ample assistance from Kalia, but he got through it. It felt foreign and uncomfortable but then he felt the way that Kalia was leaning against him as they all spoke gathered in the living room. Some people were sitting, others standing or half-perched on the arm of the sofa. There were snacks on the coffee table and gift bags under the tree. Music was playing at an appropriate volume and the conversations were loud but they weren’t deafening, weren’t at a volume that would raise anyone’s cortisol levels. It was all lovely and pleasant and yet Carmy had to make a conscious effort to not hold Kalia’s arm in a vice grip.

“Alright.” Her uncle interjected himself into all of the conversations that were happening as he entered the room, a stack of cups in one hand and the bottle of sparkling cider that Carmy had brought in the other. “First round for everyone is on Carmen. Don’t worry,” he jokingly reassured everyone as he passed around cups, “I already tried it—it’s good.”

Carmy could’ve sworn he felt his knees knock together out of nerves—it didn’t matter that everyone seemed perfectly happy and perhaps even excited about it. He felt like he was on trial. He worked through it as he took the cup that Rich handed him, watching him fill it with a generous amount.

“Kali said that you’re my hired help for the night?” he asked as he watched Carmy take a sip.

Carmy nodded, forcing himself to remember not to talk with his mouth full. That was the last thing he needed. “Yeah. I, I’ll even work for free,” he joked and hoped it sounded more confident than it did in his head.

It was passable at least, because Rich laughed as he set the bottle down on the coffee table alongside the rest of everything and motioned for Carmy to follow him. “Dangerous words but come on, then.”

Even though she had been right next to Carmy the entire time and saw everything, he still turned to Kalia and gestured towards her uncle, towards the kitchen. “I’m gonna…” he trailed off, letting the hand gesture finish the sentence for him.

She laughed and nodded. “I heard.” She paused, taking a moment to search his expression. “Want reinforcements?”

He didn’t hesitate to nod. “Maybe. Maybe, yeah,” he answered, laughing despite the nerves.

“Sounds good.”

“What?” Rich said as he watched them both walk towards the kitchen. “Don’t trust me around the kid with a knife in my hand?”

Kaila shook her head as she found a seat on the opposite side of the kitchen island from where the two of them would be prepping everything. “I don’t trust you around anyone with a knife in your hand.”

Carmy was listening to them, sort of, but most of his attention was focused on everything that was laid out on the island in front of him and the other counters in the kitchen. It was chaos, but it was organized chaos. Real organized chaos—not the chaos that Donna spent year after year trying to play off as organized. Even though Carmy had just set foot into the kitchen, he could see the underlying threads of order to it.

“What do you need help with?” Carmy asked, eyes still fixed on the cutting boards in front of him as he started to push up the sleeves of his sweater.

Carmy couldn’t see it, too busy trying to think his way through the next step, but Kalia was across the island from him, smiling. And Rich was standing to the right of him and also smiling. Rich reached behind him and pulled a knife out of the block and handed it over to Carmy. “Dealer’s choice.”

He was about to answer when he took a good look at the knife that was in his hand. “Oh, shit,” he said before he could stop himself. He glanced across at Kalia. “Your parents—”

“Fuck no,” Rich cut him off with a laugh. “I keep these here for me.”

Carmy looked at Kalia for confirmation and she nodded as she sipped on her cider. “It’s true.”

For the first time all night Carmy felt at ease for a moment, as close to calm as he ever really managed to get these days. “Alright. I’ll, uh,” he gestured with his free hand to the cutting board that still had a huge piece of meat that needed to be sliced through, “yeah.”

Rich slid the cutting board so that it was in front of him. “All yours.” He grabbed a fresh cutting board to move onto the next thing. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Carmy got right to work. Instantly zeroed in. He chuckled, waiting for Kalia to look at him. “Gotta bring him every year.”

She laughed and propped her elbows on the edge of the counter. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She sat and watched the two of them work. They were doing their own thing but somehow still in tandem with each other. She had never mentioned it to Carmy, but her uncle had spent most of his twenties and some of his thirties working in a kitchen. Never at the caliber that Carmy was currently operating at, but it wasn’t nothing. She never said anything, but as the minutes ticked by she had the feeling that Carmy could tell. Neither of them spoke about it but they each knew.

There was no ever truly being relaxed for Carmy. However the way he felt in that moment almost felt like he was cooking in the kitchen of his apartment, or Kalia’s. Not the same stakes of cooking at the restaurant, not the suffocating tension of being back in Chicago in his mom’s kitchen, or Mikey’s. He was listening to the way that Kalia and her uncle were chatting, the way that they would rope him into the conversation just enough to keep him included but not so much that he had to stop what he was doing. A precarious balance.

Carmy was listening to the two of them going back and forth about something that had happened at Christmas the year before when he felt his phone buzzing in the pocket of his jeans. He quickly wiped his hands on the towel hanging off the edge of the island before pulling his phone out. The world came to a screeching halt around him for a moment as he read his brother’s name on the phone screen. It shouldn’t have been surprising. If anything, the only surprising thing was that it had taken so long for someone back home to call him. His money would’ve been on Natalie.

He must’ve been standing there for longer than he realized, because Kalia spoke up, “Hey, you okay?”

Carmy cleared his throat, nodding as he rejected the call and put the phone back in his pocket. “Yeah, yeah I’m good.”

She wasn’t convinced, brows coming together for a moment. “You sure? If you need to—”

“I’m good, Lia,” he kept his voice quiet, not forgetting where he was, but firm enough to make it clear that he didn’t want to get into it all because of where he was. “Just Mikey.”

That answer didn’t do anything to quell her concerns. She knew that there was no such thing as just Mikey. She hadn’t ever met Mikey, or anyone in Carmy’s family for that matter, and she knew that there was a reason for that. He didn’t talk much about his siblings or his mother but there were a lot of moments when he managed to say plenty about them without have to speak much at all. Like the look in his eyes when he saw who was calling.

She knew it wasn’t the time to try and talk about it, so she conceded with a nod. “Okay.”

“Wanna grab stuff for the table, Kali?” Rich inserted himself back into the conversation, diverting it to a new direction with ease.

She hopped up from where she was sitting. “Sure thing.” She slipped behind Carmy to grab the bowls from the cupboard, fingers gently trailing over his back as she passed by him.

The kitchen fell silent once more when she walked out. Both Carmy and Rich went back to finishing up the last of the prep. Carmy was holding his breath as he moved the knife, waiting for the man beside him to say something, to start an argument. He wouldn’t have blamed him. He was used to it, anyhow.

Carmy was tense and braced for a cutting remark, thinking that was why Kalia had been kindly invited to leave the room. He heard the man next to him take a breath and he pinned his lips together in a flat line as he got ready to just get through whatever was coming next.

“Grab a couple bowls out of the cabinet behind me?” Rich said, no angry inflection to his voice at all. Carmy didn’t respond right away because he was still waiting for the hammer to drop. The only thing that got him into motion was the fact that Rich turned and actually looked at him. “Just need two more so we can bring these out. Big ones,” he said, gesturing to the last of the food they’d just finished prepping.

Swallowing past the panic, Carmy nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

He turned and went to the cabinet to grab everything. He had a bowl in one hand and just as he was going to grab the other from the shelf, it slipped from his grip and landed on the floor. It wasn’t a terribly far drop but it was enough to cause it to break, fracturing into pieces scattered across the floor.

“Shit, shit,” Carmy began stammering as he set the other bowl back on the shelf before he accidentally dropped that one too. He was too busy letting out a string of fuck’s and so sorry’s to realize that he was the only one who was worked up about what had just happened.

Kalia had heard the sound and spun on her heel immediately to go and make sure that everything was okay. “Hey, all good?”

“Sorry,” Carmy repeated over again as he stood up, a few of the larger pieces of ceramic in his hands. “I, I just, I fuckin’ dropped—” He stopped short, still shaking his head as he placed the pieces in the trash. “I’m sorry.”

Kalia’s heart clenched inside her chest, knowing that his reaction to such a small, fairly common, accident had to do with much more than what had just happened. “Carmen, it’s fine.”

“Yeah,” her uncle piped in, calm as ever as he brought over the broom and dustpan. “No big deal. Hey,” he chuckled, “least we didn’t have any food in it yet.”

Carmy forced out a short chuckle, not quite accepting that he was getting off the hook that easily. “Right.” His hands were all but trembling against his sides as he looked across the kitchen at Kalia. He didn’t want to step out but he also didn’t want to combust in the middle of her parents’ kitchen. He nodded towards the door. “I’m, I think I’m gonna just, real quick.”

She nodded. “You’re good.”

Rich didn’t say anything until he was done sweeping and putting the last few pieces of the shattered bowl into the garbage. By that point Carmy had slipped his shoes back on and stepped out the front door. He looked over at Kalia, silently but with a look on his face that asked the question for him.

“Christmas is hard. F-family is hard.”

He gave a nod of acknowledgement but didn’t say anything else about it. “Seems like a good kid.”

Her face softened into a smile. “He is.”

He pointed towards the door with the handle of the broom. “Go ahead. I’ll set the rest of this up.”

She gave him a quick hug to say thank you before she followed the same path that Carmy had just taken. She was pulling her jacket on over her shoulders as she stepped outside. Carmy was sitting on the front step of her parents’ house, one hand holding a cigarette and the other pressed to his forehead like it was the only thing stopping his head from rolling clean off.

She sat down next to him. Rather than saying anything, she let her leg fall so that it was resting against the side of his. They sat there in silence at first, just staring at the house across the street with it’s countless lights and so many inflatable decorations on the front lawn, the cords for them alone must’ve been a fire hazard.

Carmy offered the cigarette over to her out of reflex, exhaling a stream of smoke as he held his hand out to her. She smiled and took it, going back to looking across the street as she said, “Do you want to call them?”

He shook his head. He watched her bring the smoke to her lips before saying, “No. No, no I don’t think—no.” He paused, clearing his throat in an attempt to dispel his own awkward feelings. “Sorry about the bowl.”

She smiled at him as she handed the cigarette back. “It’s fine. There’s usually one or two fallen soldiers every holiday.”

He nodded, heart rate still spiked. “Right.” He took another drag. “They seem nice—your family.”

“Yeah, they’re alright,” she joked.

“Your uncle calls you Kali.”

She nodded, leaning against his side. “He does.” She tilted her head so that she was looking at him. “What about it?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just, I always—just something I noticed.”

“Well, when my sister was around having Luci and Lia would’ve been, I don’t know, borderline cruel?” she laughed. “So he settled on Kali for me. Besides, my uncle called you a good kid. So we’re both doing alright.” She watched as he smiled for a moment and snubbed out the last of the cigarette. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. S-sorry. About all of that. And this.”

She placed her hand on his leg. “Wanna go eat?”

“Yeah.” He slowly stood up and offered her a hand to help do the same. “Thank you.”

She brushed off the backs of her legs. “Of course. You know—”

They both gave pause when they heard Carmy’s phone going off again. She saw him hesitate before taking it out to see who was calling even though they both already knew. Natalie’s name was lighting up the screen now. Carmy was picturing what his mom’s house was probably like at that point, certainly not as quiet and happy as what was waiting for him on the other side of the door that he was currently standing in front of.

“Do you wanna answer? Talk to them for a minute? I can, you know,” she gestured to the house.

Carmy thought on it until he missed the call. It was only then that he shook his head. “No. No it’s fine.” He shut his phone completely off. “I’ll figure that shit out later.”

There was a brief moment of hesitation but she nodded. “Okay.”

He watched her reach for the door. It took a couple seconds to for him to make his thoughts translate into motion, but once he did, he reached for her hand that wasn’t on the door. He pulled her back just enough to stop her from opening the door. When she turned around to ask him if everything was alright, he pulled her in and pressed a kiss to her lips that quickly turned into a kiss on her cheek as he wrapped his arms around her in a hug. He hooked his chin over her shoulder, squeezing her tight to him as he shut his eyes for a moment. She returned the embrace, matching his energy with one hand splayed across his back and the other resting on the back of his head.

When he pulled away, some of the tension was gone from his shoulders. Despite the gap between them, his fingers were still tangled with hers. He offered a small, almost embarrassed smile. “Thank you, you know, for, for all this.”

Her smile was wide, bright. Nodding, she leaned in and kissed him quickly on the lips. “You’re always welcome here.”

That was the last that either of them said about it before heading back into the house. As soon as they opened the door they could hear the sounds of bowls being passed around and set down on the table. Everyone was talking and laughing, all of the conversation condensed into one space now.

No one batted an eye when the two of them stepped into the dining room and found their seats at one end of the table. They got pulled right into the conversation like they had been there the entire time. Carmy’s leg bounced lightly underneath the table as he looked at all the food spread out in front of them all.

Managing to get himself out of his head for a moment, he accepted the bowl that was being passed to him. Kalia’s uncle nodded as he handed it over, following it up with a pair of chopsticks. “Know how to use those?” he asked with a laugh.

Carmy chuckled as he nodded, smile coming easier than he thought it would. “I do alright, yeah.”

“Good,” he remarked as he sat back down. Laughter was tinging his voice as he said, “Be a shame if you did all that work and you couldn’t eat any of it.”

“Yeah,” Carmy agreed, laughing along with him, “that’d be rough.”

He was so focused on the sound of everyone laughing and talking that he almost didn’t realize the way that Kalia placed her hand on his leg again. He didn’t notice it until he felt himself stop jittering. He turned to look at her, about to reassure her that he was fine, but she was already wrapped up in a conversation with her cousin. Carmy smiled, putting his hand on top of hers as it rested on his leg. She didn’t miss a beat in her conversation as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. He felt a little more of the tension drip out from his shoulders as he settled into his seat, wrapping his head around where he really was.

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