Chapter Text
…
Three Days Until Christmas
“I got you,” Carisi said, sliding three crisp dollar bills and a handful of coins across the counter of the garland festooned coffee cart outside the courthouse before wrestling his wallet back in his coat pocket with gloved hands.
Rollins gave him a genuine smile in return, leaning a surprise extra step into his shoulder as they turned to walk away.
“You almost forgot this,” Carisi said as he turned back and reached for a stack of file folders and her cell phone which she’d left inadvertently lying on the counter. “I’ll carry ‘em,” he offered cheekily, noting that both of her slender, bare hands were already wrapped tightly around the warmth of her steaming cardboard cup.
“Forgot my gloves today, too,” she lamented, taking a large sip of her coffee. It felt wonderfully hot going down, warming her insides from the bitter late December cold. She’d been a bit more scatterbrained than usual in the midst of the final push to Christmas. She was thankful for the caffeine, but secretly wished it could be Carisi’s hands keeping her warm instead.
He had offered to walk her back to the office after the morning’s hurried arraignments under the guise of needing to drop off some last minute files before the court’s holiday recess. On a busier day they’d have parted ways at the coffee cart with Rollins toting his files back to Liv, and if they were lucky, with a quick but risky stolen kiss he’d manage to land somewhere between her earlobe and the corner of her smirked lips on the empty sidewalk. But the streets were bustling with holiday excitement, grinching the possibility of even the almost kisses she'd grown to look forward to.
Rollins chatted happily as they walked, her mood light despite the bitter, biting cold and the fact that she had a stack of unfinished DD5s waiting for her arrival. She recounted Billie’s toddler antics over pajama day at daycare as well as the spirited conversation she’d had with Jesse on the car ride to school before court. Billie was already in holiday overload and Jesse was giddily and impatiently awaiting Santa’s arrival.
Carisi smirked at the thought of Amanda and Billie going toe to toe over whether or not she needed a nighttime pull-up to go to school in pajamas. “You let her win,” he said with a knowing nod. “It’s ok, she won’t regress on potty training because of one day…you know she’s been dry during the day for months now, and she’ll get the hang of bedtime, eventually.”
Rollins nodded, thankful he understood her unspoken, underlying and likely unwarranted concerns.
“Jesse says she’s not getting coal because she’s been ‘so, so good aaaaall year’,” she continued, hands flailing as she mimicked Jesse’s Carisi-inspired mannerisms in her daughter’s tiny, squeaky voice.
Carisi couldn’t help but chuckle.
“I didn’t call foul on that one, even though we all know how she acted over wearing dress shoes for the Christmas pictures,” Amanda chuffed with a roll of her eyes. “She’s done great with school and adjusting to all the other changes we’ve thrown at her…”
Carisi nodded in agreement. He had absolutely no qualms about spoiling the girls for Christmas. “We got everything on their lists, right?”
“Almost,” Rollins shrugged, mentally recounting the barely legible hand-printed scrawl that they’d mailed off to the ‘North Pole’ at the mall a few weeks prior.
“Don’t worry Dominick, I explained again that even though she put it on Billie’s list too, Santa doesn’t bring kittens or baby brothers.”
“Oh she’s trying for a brother now, eh?” Carisi grinned, pursing his lips with a shy smile and a twinkle in his eyes.
“Bite your tongue, Carisi,” Rollins quipped back with a wink. “Everyone knows you can’t just wrap a baby and leave it under a Christmas tree,” she teased, adding a resounding, “duh,” in her best Jesse voice.
He looked over at Rollins in response, grinning and admiring just how light and happy she looked. He couldn't have ever imagined how much their lives had changed. Sometimes, all these months later, he still found himself in awe that he was lucky enough to be her partner again and in such a life-altering way after so many years of want.
She stepped a quick half step closer into his side, not maintaining a truly professional distance between them, but not fully closing the gap either. Carisi began to hum to the tune of “All I Want for Christmas is You” absentmindedly under his breath as they continued their cold, brisk walk.
“Really, Mariah?” she drawled in hushed tones with a side-eyed smile and a playful elbow to his ribs. “You are so not discrete, counselor.”
She looked over at him, and with a bat of her eyelashes, quietly reminded him that he already had her, and that Christmas with him and the girls was all she wanted this year, too.
“Sorry,” he responded with a small, dimpled smile. He dutifully and consciously halted his humming and sidestepped half an arm’s length further away from her, realizing they were rapidly nearing the precinct.
“But, wouldn’t it be great if we could just shout it out to the whole world already?” he asked just a tad louder than he normally would with their in-public private conversations. He placed his hand on her shoulder gently after a quick, obligatory look around for prying eyes. She greeted him with a look back that didn’t seem tense or worried, but that he couldn’t quite decipher either.
Before she could offer him a response, her cell phone buzzed in his hand with an incoming text message. He looked down, missing the sly grin that crossed her face next.
“Liv?” she asked, shaking her head with an indignant sigh as she motioned toward the phone. “Jesus, I haven’t even been gone that long.”
“Nah, it’s Amaro,” Carisi replied, a hint of surprise evident in his voice.
She looked back at him with a hesitant shrug, immediately and distinctively on the defensive. “Carisi, it’s not…”
“Relax, Rollins, I trust ya,” Carisi smiled, his voice reassuring and calm. “But isn’t it like 7am in California?” he asked, flashing the phone’s screen in her direction.
I knew it.
“Knew what?” Carisi asked, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Did you spill our Christmas plans?” he teased playfully.
“Nah,” Rollins denied, changing the subject a little quicker than reasonable to not arouse Carisi‘s suspicion that maybe she wasn’t being totally truthful. “We were just chatting about college football yesterday,” she added sheepishly.
“Betting on bowl games?” he asked, shifting on his hips, a sudden panic crossing his face as he looked at her, carefully studying her facial expressions for any sign of regret or untruth. It didn’t bother him in the slightest that her and Amaro remained in contact, but if he was leading her into dangerous territory with her history of gambling that was another issue altogether.
“Not a chance. I’m more likely to hit on Amaro than wager on sports games,” she scoffed. “And that’s never happening.”
His face softened with the resoluteness of her voice, though the concerned expression didn’t leave him despite his attempts to quell the errant thoughts. He trusted her, he just wondered why, if she had been confiding in Amaro about them, why she still wasn't ready to come clean about their relationship. Hopefully, soon, he thought.
“Seriously, nothing to worry about,” she vowed, resisting the urge to lean into him for a reassuring kiss. “Promise.”
They stopped at the entry in front of the 16th before he could ask any more questions, and went on with their day. Tossing her coffee cup in the trash, she took her phone and paperwork from Carisi with a quiet, blushed, “thanks.” She quickly reached for the door before he could pull it open for her, muttering something under her breath apologetically about having to stop down at Evidence anyway.
“I’ll see you upstairs in five, counselor,” she said softly, leaning in close to straighten his tie, surprisingly without looking around again to make sure they didn’t have an audience.
“Oh and Carisi, you’re humming again,” she said with a particular airiness in her voice.
He snorted quietly as she stepped through the door without him, and when he looked back up at her through the tempered glass, he almost could have sworn it looked like she blew him a kiss. He waited idly in the cold to give her time and space to make her way through the lobby, shaking off what was clearly his mind making him see what he wanted to see.
Taking a moment to collect his thoughts, he made a silent Christmas wish that things could be different before entering the festively decorated lobby alone. He caught a glimpse of her blond bobbing ponytail as she disappeared down the stairs, but what he couldn’t see the small smile that ghosted her lips as she went.
…
Kat Tamin stopped by her apartment building’s tiny mailroom on her way back from the corner bodega with a pint of coffee creamer and a loaf of french bread in hand. Opening her mailbox with a tiny gold key on her braided leather keyring, she immediately sorted and tossed a sizable stack of junk mail, pushing the bills and other important paperwork to the back of the pile.
Money had been tight since she’d left the NYPD, but she was still very much in the holiday spirit, looking forward to spending her first Christmas in Jersey City with Celine’s family. Ignoring the bills, two of which were depressingly marked ‘second notice,’ she instead reached for the forest green envelope with her name typeset in a loopy, festive cursive on the front, quickly tearing it open.
A soft smile crossed Kat’s face as she pulled out the thick tri-folded card stock bearing the grinning faces of her former partner and her two adorable carbon copy daughters. She opened the double door-like flaps, smiling even bigger as she looked over the collage of family photos flanking the header, “Wishing You a Season Full of Love.”
Christmas was a season of love indeed, she thought, recalling the diamond ring she herself had squirreled away in the back of her sock drawer. She exited the mailroom, bounding eagerly up the stairs that lead to her apartment two at a time.
Kat found Celine already awake and standing in their small modern kitchen. She was flipping eggs in only a long white satin nightshirt and a pair of plaid slippers, and didn’t argue when Kat approached, kissing her neck playfully.
“I got yesterday’s mail.”
Kat tossed the bills on the counter before eagerly thrusting Celine Rollins’ Christmas card. Celine flipped it over in her hands twice with a smile.
“I’ll give you a season filled with love,” she flirted after reading the text, reaching up to kiss Kat on the lips.
“Not if I give it to you, first,” Kat chuckled, wrapping her arms around Celine’s curved waist.
Celine kissed her again in earnest, but the eggs quickly popped and sizzled in demand of her attention. “Get out,” Celine demanded with a giggle, reaching for the french bread. “Unless you want to eat burnt eggs.”
Kat huffed, but stepped back from the stove. Instead she pulled a steel barstool back from the tall white counter. She flipped through the rest of the mail as she watched Celine work.
When she was done, she picked up her phone and shot off a quick text message.
Way to go, ADA Scrooge.
Carisi saw the message flash on his Apple Watch as he stepped into the elevator, but shook his head, confused.
He couldn't remember what he’d done, this time. He hadn’t even seen Kat in weeks and yet she still seemed to always be busting his balls over something.
Maybe she’d finally gotten the court excusal notices for the trials he’d thought he was still gonna need her for in the spring? He shrugged, scrunching his eyebrows in confusion; he’d been trying to pull strings there for weeks without any luck at all.
Carisi made a mental note to call Kat later to figure out what the heck she was talking about. Before he could wrack his brain any more, the elevator dinged.
“Hey, Rollins,” Velasco said, looking up at Carisi as he walked across the squadroom. Carisi looked furtively over his shoulder, surprised to see his girlfriend hadn’t caught up with him, and then looked up at the younger detective quizzically.
“Huh, what?” Carisi asked, pointing to himself with an exaggerated flex of his hand, clearly baffled by Velasco’s apparent confusion.
“What, what? Velasco questioned back with a quiet laugh and a shrug as he fiddled with the green torn open envelope he held in his hand.
“The new guy always this weird?”
Carisi looked over at Fin who shrugged without looking up from his computer, adjusting his feet propped up on his desk.
“He’s not new anymore,” Fin said gruffly. “Just weird.”
Carisi rolled his eyes and brushed quietly past Velasco on his way to the coffee pot for another cup. That dude irked the crap out of him and he didn’t know why.
“Hey Rollins,” Velasco said again.
Carisi looked up in irritation, ready to snap back. He was surprised to find a familiar blond had entered the squad room as was standing in front of Velasco’s desk.
With only the slightest of chin nods in her direction, he sheepishly gathered his coffee and slid quickly into Liv’s office without another word.
…