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Mikey is in love with Richie. Natalie knows this.
Natalie has known this for as long as she can remember. She’s probably known this since she first met her older brother’s best friend, whether subconsciously or not, because she can’t really remember a time where he wasn’t in love with Richie.
Her brother has never told her of this fact; but she knows, in spite of how carefully Mikey has guarded this secret over the years. Because to her, at least, it’s glaringly obvious.
She’s not sure when it started, exactly, but she was thirteen years old on the day that she noticed it for the very first time. She noticed it, because her eighteen year old brother had never, ever been drunk before, had never gone to a party before, until that night in June where his best friend carried him to bed.
She noticed, because twenty year old Richie had been babysitting her and Carmy in her brother’s absence, much to her annoyance.
And Richie is a fucking pain in the ass, for a lack of better terms. He always has been.
But he cared about her brother, he always did, which is why she didn’t complain to her brother as much as she wanted to, because Mikey had never gone to a college party, and Natalie wanted him to get that kind of experience.
She wanted him to, because when he wasn’t, he was doing the parenting for mom and dad combined. When he wasn’t, he was her rock, he always had been, and he stressed and worried about her and their little brother so much that she worried in return.
Maybe Richie was a pain in the ass, but she was grateful that he’d offered it, which is surprising in and of itself. Mikey almost canceled because Uncle Jimmy was out of town, and despite her telling him that she could take care of Carmy alone, she knew her brother worried too much for that to be an option.
And she worried, too. She worried, because if it had just been her and Carmy, she wouldn’t know what to do if mom came home. Or if dad came home. Or Lee.
The three of them have always known this fear well, after all, they grew up with it.
She had thought it might get easier once she grew up, once she moved out, once she could push their childhood home and their mother away.
It never really became as easy as she had dreamed it to be. She wishes it was. What changed was that Pete would bring her a comfort no one else could, and that he’d promised to be there if anything happened, or to hold her hand through it, even if nothing happened at all.
And he always was. That’s why she fell in love with him, after all.
Besides, something always happened. They’re fucking Berzattos, no family gathering ever goes quietly, uneventfully, or without someone’s feelings getting hurt. Mostly, that burden tended to fall on Mikey, because her older brother knew how to take control of every room he walked into, and because he knew how to control Donna Berzatto.
Most of the time. It was significantly harder when Lee was around, which unfortunately has become more often than not.
Natalie hates it. They all hate it.
She knows her older brother has been in love with his best friend for God knows how long, because Richie picked him up and dragged him through the door, she’d heard him run out of the door when he thought she was asleep, he probably thought they were both asleep, but she’d stayed up late reading Jane Austen and heard so much commotion that she eventually worried too much to leave it alone.
Her baby brother was also stirred awake by it; eight year old Carmy met her in the hallway while rubbing his eyes and with a frown on his tiny face, and Natalie assured him that Richie would be back in no time.
She’d assumed so, anyway, and she barely had to think her thoughts to an end, barely had time to get angry at their so-called babysitter or worry about the possibility of their mother finally announcing herself from the absence she’d been keeping up for a solid three weeks at that point, before the front door once again was heard opened and shut.
They could hear Richie’s voice loud and clear, and their brother’s slurred one, although his friend was doing most of the talking.
“Jesus, look at you,” the older man’s voice heard in a laugh as they made their way up the stairs, the sound of clumsy, unsure footsteps filling the silence of the night, “You’re a mess, Mikey.”
Her brother said something unintelligible, sounding almost like a whine, but she wouldn’t mistake Mikey’s voice anywhere or anytime.
“Fucking idiot-” Richie had started, but he stopped in his tracks as they made it to the top and stared at Sugar and Carmy, and the sight of her brother only made her worry more.
His hair was disheveled, his shirt stained with some kind of alcohol that she was unable to identify, and his jeans stained with the smell of what could only be vomit, it hit her nose from miles away and her little brother’s frown matched her own.
More importantly, her older brother was clinging to Richie, practically leaning his entire body on his best friend, who had two protective arms around him in a less than perfect grip.
It was a bit comical, given that Mikey had been captain of the football team all of high school and always been taller than Richie despite their age difference, but they made it work, slowly.
“Mikey,” Carmy said, his voice still sleepy, and despite the alcohol their older brother smiled at him instantly, almost falling over his friend, which probably wasn’t the first time that had happened that night.
“Hey, bear,” he said slowly, “Richie, you fucking- you’re… fucking horrible babysitter.”
“Fuck you,” his friend said in offense, and Mikey shook his head.
“Sug,” her brother said sadly, he looked like he was going to cry despite his drunken smile, she spotted his glazed over eyes immediately, and she smiled to him and went up to them to take the hand he reached out to her, and he squeezed it in return, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, bear,” she told him.
He shook his head again, “You shouldn’t… uh, fuck. Sorry. I look like shit.”
“You do,” Richie agreed, and Natalie glared at him, hoping that would be enough to let him know when to shut up.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, and Mikey squeezed her hand again, and he laughed as his voice grew thicker and a single tear fell down his cheek the moment Carmy ran up and hugged his leg, the smell of vomit all but forgotten.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said, letting go of her hand to ruffle their brother’s hair, “Sorry. Natty Bear?”
She hummed in response and so he carried on, while Richie adjusted his weight against his side again.
“Put Carmy to bed for me, please?” Mikey asked her, “Didn’t want you to see me like this… Uhm, I’m sorry, I- I’ll be okay in the morning. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed.
“Good,” he replied, “I love you so much. I… I don’t know what I’d do without you guys. I wouldn’t know how to live… Fuck.”
He was full on crying, then, and Richie sighed next to him, but Natalie all but ignored him and went to hug her brother, too, no matter how much the smell of beer and vodka and vomit and other disgusting things filled the air. He laughed through his tears, and Sugar stood on her tiptoes to kiss his wet cheek, before she took Carmy’s hand in hers.
“Come on, bear,” she told him, and although her little brother looked like the last thing he wanted to do was leave Mikey, he nodded solemnly and went to his bedroom, anyway, waiting for her to follow.
“I love you, Mikey Bear,” Natalie told her older brother, “Please don’t cry.”
He sniffed in frustration and wiped his eyes, almost elbowing Richie who was all but struggling to keep them both upright, and honestly, it was kind of a ridiculous sight.
“You’re the worst fucking babysitter in the whole world,” her brother said, while his best friend blinked rapidly when he realized that he was the person being addressed all of a sudden, “You’re such an asshole… I could’ve driven home, I just needed to, uhm. Uh, sit down for a second… I mean-”
“Whatever you say, big guy,” Richie said while rolling his eyes, “Let’s get you to bed, huh? Fucking drunkard.”
“Swear jar!” Carmy called from his room, and Mikey laughed again, the Mikey Bear laugh she knew and loved, and he half-heartedly elbowed his friend in the side again.
“Eight years old and he’s a fucking genius,” he said, voice tired and fond all at the same time, “Unlike you.”
“Nice insult, jackass,” Richie snarked back.
“Thank you,” Mikey said genuinely, before turning back to Natalie, “Sugar Bear, you’re so beautiful, you know that?”
She chuckled and nodded while he continued.
“Don’t ever change,” he told her, “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t… That you can’t be you. Yeah. You’re perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” she responded, because her big brother had always been corny, the alcohol didn’t really change that. She just loved him so much, it hurt her to see him cry, because, well, he didn’t cry very often. At least not in front of her.
She had often thought about how much he might be hiding from her, and from Carmy, too. How many secrets there really were. How much he had shielded them from throughout the years; sometimes, she wants to ask him, but she never gets around to it.
“Go to bed, sleepyhead,” she told her older brother, and he nodded again, and so she went to go say goodnight to Carmen again, but not before kissing her drunk brother on the cheek one more time and looking at Richie verily before she left the hallway, “Goodnight Richie.”
“Goodnight,” he said, almost sounding surprised.
It would’ve probably been something normal, another proof to her of how much her brother’s best friend cared about him and looked out for him, even though he was a fucking asshole. And it was. But what was different about it was how she could hear the two men’s conversation clearly as Richie almost carried her brother to his room.
She still felt bad, just a little, she hated the thought of eavesdropping, but the two of them had always been loud, so she supposes she couldn’t help it.
“Goodnight, Carmy Bear,” she said while kissing her younger brother’s forehead, and the boy curled up in the bed and only hesitantly let go of her arm.
“Will Mikey be okay?” he asked her quietly, and she nodded easily.
“Of course he will,” she said, because she knew he would.
Mikey would always be okay. He always handled everything and fixed everything, that was what he did best. Mikey had the strength of mountains and Natalie always felt safer when he was around. She never wanted to let him go.
“He just needs to sleep and you do, too,” she told him, “I love you, okay?”
“Okay,” Carmy responded, and so he let go of her hand and let her tuck him in and leave his door cracked open.
Those words had always been difficult for her baby brother; I love you. Carmy had stuttered for a long time, and once he stopped, sometimes, he just stopped speaking altogether. But he loved them, she knew that, he’d hug her so tightly as if to tell her that without any words needed, she thinks.
Him and Mikey had their own phrase, let it rip. It meant many things, too many things for her to count on two hands, but it was the most important thing in the world to them. It meant what they needed to say, what mattered the most, always.
I love you.
It was when Sugar made her way back to her own bed that she could hear her brother and his best friend talking, along with their footsteps and curses and bumping into God knows what as Richie most likely could barely hold up his weight anymore.
“I’m never letting you drink ever again,” she heard the older man say, although he was probably joking, “See, I carried your sorry ass all the way home and you puked all over my car, too.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of gagging, and of Richie running to the bathroom to get a bucket, most likely, and Natalie frowned sadly listening to her brother puke all over again.
She heard the older man sigh, his voice significantly lower, but the walls of that old house were paper thin, and every sound inside the walls of her childhood home seemed ten times louder than normal, somehow.
“Come on, Mikey Bear,” Richie said, his voice surprisingly soft, the first time Natalie had ever heard him like that, “Almost there, yeah? You just need to sleep it off.”
“You smell nice,” she heard her brother say. How strange.
His best friend snorted, “You smell like shit.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry, Jesus,” Richie said in only mild frustration, and she heard their footsteps again, bumping into every piece of furniture inside his bedroom most likely, until they probably found their way to his bed in the end.
Sugar could only guess, then, obviously, but in the early morning where she woke up as the first person in the entire house, she did find Mikey’s clothes from the night before in the bathroom, no longer smelling of puke and various substances, but instead hanging on the shower curtain rod to dry.
She heard Richie shuffling in and out of the hallway for a while that night, until his voice eventually ended in Mikey’s bedroom again, sounding as tired as her brother looked and as she felt.
“Drink this,” she heard him say, and a moment passed before her brother spoke up again.
“You’re really pretty,” Mikey said, she’d heard him clear as day. The silence that followed this statement was even stranger, because if there was one thing you could count on, it was that Richie would always have something to say, even when it wasn’t needed or asked for.
This time, though, he was strangely, unusually quiet.
Eventually, he did respond with another sigh, “You’re so drunk, man.”
He’d laughed it off, but her older brother seemed persistent.
“I’m not,” he said, which no one believed, “You look so pretty. You always… looked pretty in my jacket, too. And you smell nice. Didn’t mean to throw up on you. You still smell really nice.”
Natalie could hear her brother stumble over his own words, and Richie grew quiet again, and well, she supposes there was no other way for her to connect the puzzle, no way she wouldn’t keep thinking about what she overheard that day for a long time.
She heard the older man chuckle awkwardly, followed by the door shutting closed.
“Whatever you say, Mikey,” he’d said, but his voice sounded unsure, tense, impatient, hopeful, a mixture of all four, even.
“Don’t leave me,” she heard her older brother say, which was definitely a whine, and there was no awkward silence this time.
“I’m not leaving you, dumbass,” Richie said, “Go to sleep already.”
“Spoon me,” Mikey suddenly pleaded, and surprisingly enough, his best friend didn’t seem surprised at all.
“If you want,” he responded, and it surprised Natalie, how easily and quickly he answered, that is, and how softly he spoke, as if he feared he’d break her brother into a million pieces if he spoke any louder than that.
“Please,” her brother said, “You’re warm.”
“Coming, coming.”
“I’m freezing,” Mikey continued, and Richie laughed lowly once more.
“Always fucking complaining,” he’d said, which would be another typical Richie insult, if it wasn’t for the fondness that laced his tone, “Now shut up, I want to sleep, too, you know.”
Her brother had hummed in response, and that would’ve probably been the end of the conversation for the night. However, before Sugar eventually couldn’t keep herself awake anymore, she did hear one last thing to seal the deal for her, so to speak.
“I love you, Richie,” Mikey had sighed, she didn’t even have to strain her ears to hear it, “Love you so much. You always take care of me.”
His best friend’s response, the last thing she heard before she fell asleep, came as easily and quickly as in the blink of an eye, “Someone has to.”
So maybe she’s known since she was thirteen years old, or maybe she’s known her whole life. She knows that ever since that night, she’s been noticing more things like that; things that she supposes could be attributed to a friendship like any other, but Richie isn’t like Mikey’s other friends.
She supposes he could be seen like the fourth Berzatto child, almost, at this point he is, he was, but that would require Mikey to be Mikey Bear, like he’s Natalie’s rock and Carmy’s guiding light, but he was never Mikey Bear around Richie.
He dragged Richie with him to every awkward, painful family gathering, just like he dragged him to all the other things, the normal things, the things Sugar liked best, when it was just her and her brothers and… well, Richie.
Around Richie, he was Mikey, whatever that meant. This wasn’t a bad thing, quite the contrary, from her attentive observation.
Around Richie, Mikey was many things. He was as loud as he always was, as he always knew how to take control of a room and shimmer in the spotlight, but if there was a room where impressing anyone mattered the most, a room where it mattered how he looked and just how brightly he lit up everything around him, it was any room where Richie was around.
When Richie was around, maybe he tried harder, maybe he told every story he could think of, maybe they bounced their stories off each other and interrupted each other in laughter, and maybe he looked at him like there was no one else in the room. Maybe he did, and maybe Sugar caught his attention many of those times, where he chuckled awkwardly and shrugged it off like he hadn’t been staring at the older man for a little too long than what was normal for best friends, and Natalie pretended like she hadn’t noticed by now.
Her older brother even seemed shy around his best friend, at least after his drunken night back when Natalie was thirteen, and Mikey Bear doesn’t do shy.
Maybe she never asked her older brother, because what was there seemed left unspoken.
Maybe she never asked, because she remembers many moments, many times, times like those mornings where Richie had slept over at the Berzatto house in Mikey’s room and wore his clothes at the breakfast table, times like countless days where Richie stuck around the house for no apparent reason other than just to be with them.
Maybe she never asked, because her older brother’s best friend went to prom and graduated before he did, and because he asked a girl in his grade to be his date. Natalie knew this, not because she knew the girl by name, but because his smiles didn’t quite reach his eyes as his best friend told him just how hot she was, because his leg shook absentmindedly, and because he spent around three months making excuses to avoid Richie altogether.
It never lasted more than three months. Natalie knows this, because she knew Richie well enough to see that he depended on Mikey’s opinion of him, but, more importantly, she knew that her older brother was a lot happier with the older man around.
And Sugar hated Richie a lot, he made her angry out of her mind, she got fed up with him forcing his way into everything fairly quickly. Sometimes even Mikey noticed this, because there were things that were only for the three of them and no one else, and his best friend didn’t always handle this so well.
But Natalie loved Richie for this.
Richie was an asshole, but, well, he took care of her older brother. He did, and he took care of them, and she loved him for that, too. He argued with Mikey constantly, they had these months of silences, but they circulated around each other and would always come back, and she loved them.
She didn’t ask, because she was waiting for him to tell her. She didn’t ask, because she expected him to tell her, like he told her and Carmy everything on his mind, but this time was different.
This time was the second expectation to that golden rule; the rule that the three of them didn’t harbor any secrets, none. It was something they’d shook pinky promises on since Carmy turned four years old, but there had always been an exception.
Mikey Bear told them everything, but he didn’t tell them things like what happened those nights where mom kicked him out, or what happened the night dad left. He told them to cover their ears and go upstairs whenever they came home to find Donna screaming at him in the kitchen, and he didn’t tell them what Uncle Lee called him behind his back, behind their backs.
He shielded them from all of that, until Natalie was old enough to suspect things, to hear things, to look at the lines of stress in his face that just grew clearer, deeper, plentier, but she didn’t ask. Maybe she didn’t ask because she already knew those answers, because she didn’t want to hear them, because it scared her.
Mikey Bear was her rock, and he did everything in his power to remain that way. Sometimes, that isn’t a good thing. Sometimes, it’s the worst thing she knows.
Sometimes, she wished she could do something to make it easier, easier to bear, easier to stand. Natalie wondered why she never wished for something different altogether, but she knew why. Sometimes, she couldn’t imagine a life any different than theirs, and sometimes, she might have imagined it and feared it, too.
If her life was different, would she have Mikey and Carmy? If they weren’t Berzattos, who would they be? And who would she be without them?
And Richie was the second exception that came along, because he didn’t tell her, and she didn’t ask, and Natalie would wonder for the rest of her life if Carmy knew about any of it, or if she had maybe just imagined it all along. Sometimes, she couldn’t be sure.
But she knew it; she knew it from fleeting glances and late night pick ups and synchronized movements and things that were anything but casual, things like Mikey ignoring talking about Richie’s dates as if it was the plague, things like him begging Richie to work with him, things like them falling asleep on each other in the Berzatto living room and sharing food, things like Mikey cooking for him, even if he was angry with him.
They were angry at each other a lot, too. They were like magnets, bouncing and coming back together, sometimes, their magnetic field was entirely too strong for anyone else to enter it, for Natalie to even try to understand it.
She didn’t ask. The thing she loved about Richie the most, the thing that convinced her he wasn’t a complete dickhead, was the smile he put on her big brother’s face. To her, that was irreplaceable.
But something changes one Christmas Eve, one that, honestly, felt like any other.
Christmas Eve had never been Sugar’s favorite time of year, and it wasn’t Carmy’s, and it certainly wasn’t Mikey’s, either, but over the years, they’d learned how to hold each other, which roles to take, how to get through the holidays with the least troubles and least scars and least pain.
It didn’t always succeed, but they tried. Natalie brought Pete and she knew her older brother wanted to tell her to lie and stay away, but she refused, because really, there was no her without them, there was no Carmy without them, and there was no Mikey without them.
They tried, even if they failed. Even if her older brother crumbled under Lee Layne’s eyes, even if her younger brother had to flee every room they were in, even if she had to bite her tongue listening to her mother’s words, at least they were doing it together. At least she had them, because she had never known what she would be without her siblings, and frankly, she wasn’t curious to know, either.
They were doing it together, and Richie was doing it with them. He was her older brother’s right hand man, after all, he tried to handle things the way Mikey Bear always did, although he never had the same control or the same ability to make things seem easy.
They were doing it together, between Christmas lights and seven fishes and empty wine bottles littering the cabinets and concerned uncles and cousins and partners watching the disasters unfold in front of them.
What would a family be without that, what would home be without that? She still struggles to imagine, because Pete’s family is different, so different, a difference she still finds herself unaccustomed to, finds herself sticking out like a sore thumb, finds herself not knowing what to do, because she isn’t good at normal or calm or peaceful.
Whenever she feels like this, whenever her mind sticks out from the rest of the universe, she likes to think about what Mikey Bear would do. Sometimes, she wonders if he’d feel like that, too.
But this Christmas Eve is different, because Richie isn’t doing it with them anymore, this thing. Natalie notices, because from the moment he walks in, from the moment she lays eyes upon the scene, him and her big brother, they aren’t in sync anymore.
They always were. They always are.
She wonders if mom and Lee Layne and Uncle Jimmy and Carmy notices it, too; she wonders if the way her older brother slightly falters to follow along with Richie's nervous demeanor is as obvious to them as it is to her.
She wonders, because she has never understood him like she understands Mikey Bear. Richie is too unpredictable, he’s too different when Mikey isn’t there for him to fall into step with, but this Christmas, he rushes to the door of their childhood home in high expectations and Sugar has this sinking feeling when she looks at her brother’s face.
It’s an expression she doesn’t recognize; it isn’t those feelings Richie puts on his face, things like anger or jealousy or happiness or longing or annoyance. She almost asks, until she doesn’t.
She doesn’t, because her older brother’s best friend walks into the eye of the storm that is the Berzatto home with Tiffany, and well, Tiffany changes everything.
This isn’t the first time she’s met her, she’s known her for years, in fact, from Mikey’s gathering of friends and talks of babysitters and party invitations and everything else. And she knows Tiffany because since Richie asked her out on a date two years ago, her older brother has been trying harder, with the same looks and the same pretending.
Sugar loves Tiffany, and she knows Mikey loves her, too.
Tiff is her friend, who has painted her nails too many times for her to count, whom she teases her brothers with, who is family as much as the Faks and Richie are, for as long as she can remember their weird, messed up family being the way they are.
But Richie loves Tiffany, too, and that’s entirely more complicated.
Natalie has known this for two years, and she knows it tonight, when the couple walks into the kitchen between Mikey Bear’s stories and their mother’s commands and Lee’s shushing and Jimmy trying to keep everyone at arm’s length before anything turns physical, and Tiffany shows off her left hand and the shimmering ring that has found its home on her finger.
The room erupts in chaos, in excited glee and awkward hugs and Uncle Lee’s ability to find any opportunity to knock Mikey down. She’s had to see her older brother swallow his pride too many times to expect anything else.
Natalie hugs Tiffany and peruses the ring in wonder, she asks her to tell her everything and orders Richie to shut up when he tries to interrupt, and it feels normal. Carmy smiles shyly and is surprisingly fine with his elaborate story, the one that Richie’s fiancee narrates and he exaggerates and they laugh at, and it feels normal.
“Richie’s getting hitched and you’re still single, huh?” Uncle Lee laughs at the expense of her older brother, the kind of venom in his voice that no one else has ever come close to replicating, and it’s terrifyingly normal.
It’s normal how Mikey tries to keep that smile up for his best friend, but it isn’t the Richie smile Natalie knows, she hasn’t seen that in a while. She wonders if it still exists at all.
It’s normal how Donna huffs at her lack of grandchildren and squeezes Sugar’s cheek as she says, “Better hurry up before Pete gets sick of you, Natalie,” and it feels sickeningly normal.
It’s very normal. It’s normal how Natalie shifts uncomfortably, how Carmy’s mouth turns into a thin line, and how Mikey’s jaw tightens when he stands between them and reminds their mother of the fish that’s already overcooked on the stove.
It’s all pretty normal. Richie’s about to get married, though, which isn’t normal at all.
Maybe it could be normal, if it wasn’t for the fact that Sugar only turns away for what feels like a minute or two, that she only hears jumbled conversation around her for a minute or two until Tiff offers to help with the plates and that Natalie turns around and finds her older brother absent from the party altogether.
It’s as if he’d vanished. He made that look easy, too, like he does everything else.
She’s got a pretty good idea where he’s disappeared to, though, if the look on Richie’s face is any indication. She knows this side of him well, the one that scans the room immediately and where the panic sets in when he can’t find Mikey to follow the lead of.
Natalie makes her way to the front porch of that old house she knows so well; it’s easy to sneak out, even if the brink of the chaos that she knows as her home hasn’t even been reached yet.
And there she finds Mikey Bear.
She finds her big brother sitting on the steps, and he notices her presence immediately no matter how softly she shuts the door in fear of their mother noticing, because he always does. He notices, and he seems to struggle to not turn his head too far and look into her eyes, but she notices the tears in his eyes instantly, as well.
He rarely cries. Another thing he’s always shielded them from, she supposes, at least he’s never cried in front of her before.
She wonders if it’s easier with Carmy. She finds it easier with him. Natalie has tried to be as strong, as steadfast and bulletproof as Mikey is since she was thirteen years old. She’s not sure she’s ever succeeded in this attempt.
“Hey, bear,” she says lowly, “Do you mind if I sit down?”
He shakes his head so fast she almost fears he’ll give himself a headache, and he rubs a hand over his face in frustration, another attempt at hiding what she’s already noticed.
These recent years, it shines through more. The things he tries to hide from her, that is. Or maybe she’s just noticing now what’s always been there, after all, he’s still the strongest, loudest, outrageous, charming person ever born in her mind.
She wonders if he ever gets tired of it. Of being that way.
“Of course not,” Mikey says, “I never mind.”
Natalie smiles at this, his familiar big brother assurance. And so she sits down and their knees bump together and the streets are quiet, the noise from inside the house rolling on like background music.
Her brother audibly gulps before he asks her a question in return, “You mind if I smoke?”
She shakes her head. He started smoking more or less two years ago, which is mostly the truth, he’s been on and off it for ages, but she’s noticed how it’s turned into a more or less constant, now.
Two years of Richie dating Tiffany. Two years of Mikey lighting cigarettes.
It’s the comfortable, warm quiet between them that settles while he inhales the nicotine and does his best attempt at blowing it away from her in the unforgiving December cold. Natalie can hear Neil and Steve laughing at something, faintly; hear rushing footsteps up and down the stairs, hear the speakers clinging on for dear life as they blast Last Christmas, and the voice of Francie Fak, God forbid.
She can’t tell exactly how much time passes out here, time has always seemed to work entirely different back home, anyway. She does know that her older brother wraps his blanket around her shoulders as she feels the cold biting. He always does this.
Natalie decides to ask, kind of. She wonders how direct she can be without him shutting himself inside his own mind, he does this, sometimes. In some ways, like this, he and Carmy are almost the same person.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks him, and each second that she waits for his reply is agonizing.
He takes another hiss from the cigarette and furrows his brows as he speaks, “I don’t know. Christmas. How I’m fucking starving. Richie.”
She nods.
Mikey carries on, “Richie’s getting fucking married.”
She wonders if this is the right time to ask. If there’s ever a right time to ask.
“Yeah,” she says, she tries with a smile, but he wipes more tears from his eyes and she feels the need to bump their knees together again, forcing him to look at her properly this time, “You know you can tell me about your feelings, right?”
Natalie feels like it sounds vague, like it fits wrong between her lips and on her tongue, but her brother seems to understand.
He frowns, as if he’s tasting something bitter. Something sour or something poisonous, even, something unforgiving.
“My feelings don’t matter,” he says, and Sugar wishes that sometimes this all didn’t feel so normal.
“They matter to me,” she answers simply.
It’s different, how he takes in a deep breath, how he seems to almost shrink under her gaze, his head bowed and the light in his eyes fainter now. Sometimes, he was a firework, that was Mikey Bear.
This Mikey, however, she doesn't really know what he is.
She doesn’t know if this Mikey can take control of the room inside, like he always does. It seems impossible, he seems quieter now, he seems altered now. She looks at her rock and thinks he could be almost miles away, too far from shore to cling onto, to rely on.
It’s while he squishes the cigarette bud under his shoe and fumbling with his lighter to get a new one that he says it, pronouncing every syllable slowly, “I’m happy for him. I mean, of course I am.”
It doesn’t sound as confident as Mikey Bear usually does. His warmth is the same, but Richie isn’t here to voice his agreement in everything he says, and so he doesn’t lift himself up quite the same way without it.
“I should be happy for him, shouldn’t I?” he asks her uncertainty.
“I guess so,” Natalie says, “There’s a lot of things we should be.”
He chuckles to this, the bitter tone overpowering everything else, the memories shared between them left unsaid, because they know these things. They always do this.
Things he shielded them from, but she knows, anyway. Things they both experienced first hand. Things like never feeling at home, for example, things like biting their tongues and accepting things that shouldn’t be accepted.
Natalie knows this. Sometimes, she thinks she knows him better than she knows herself, sometimes, she thinks he might be the same as herself, even if this Mikey Bear isn’t exactly the same one she knew as a teenager.
Yet, it surprises her when she doesn’t ask, but his voice pierces through their silence regardless.
“He was never going to marry me, anyway.”
It doesn’t shock her as much as she thought it would, because, well, she knew. But she still sits back quietly for a while, wondering if there’s anything in the world she could possibly say to make this kind of thing hurt a little less.
Natalie doesn’t know.
Any comforting words she can conjure don’t seem to do much, and her brother has never cried in front of her before. She’s used to him being her rock, she’s used to him drying her tears and patching up her wounds, so this is a scary new territory to their relationship.
She wants to tell him that Richie loves him. Natalie knows this.
She’s not sure Mikey will believe her, now, and sitting here, she feels a small sliver of doubt where before there was none, but she knows, he must love him, he has to.
Her brother’s best friend depends on Mikey Bear. She knows this because she’s seen it, and maybe that would only be proof of friendship or even brotherhood to anyone else, but Natalie knows.
She knows from something as simple as Richie taking care of her drunk brother, or when he’s sick and his friend spends God knows how much money he doesn’t have on medicine and food, when he cooks for him even though he always burns everything, when he says no to parties when Mikey isn’t going.
He does that a lot. In fact, Richie didn’t go anywhere where Mikey wasn’t, not until these last two years.
Natalie thinks he must love him, because he’s stolen his clothes and left a toothbrush at the Berzatto home when Natalie was fifteen and never took it back, because Richie likes to do things for her older brother like bring him random gifts or drive the three of them around anywhere they wanted despite his car being a piece of shit, and because he calls him pretty boy and touches his hair without Mikey moving an inch.
He must love him. But Richie must love Tiffany, right? He has to.
She supposes she can’t claim to understand Richie, but she understands her brother, and the many years she’s observed them, how they spin around each other and attract each other and how they mimic each other, even, she doesn’t know if there could be any other conclusion to it than that.
But even if she wants to say that, she doesn’t. She wonders if Mikey thinks he doesn’t.
And she wonders if Richie stopped loving him, or if he ever loved him in the first place, and if that would be true, that might be something twisted, that might be something wrong with how life works in general, because Natalie can’t imagine how anyone couldn’t love her older brother.
Not just because he’s Mikey Bear, or because he tells people what they want to hear and can twist people around his little finger if he wanted to. Not because he seems to somehow always know what people want from him and want him to be.
Her Mikey Bear is different, she thinks. She doesn’t think anyone could not love him once they knew him, because he does everything for anyone he cares about, because he does small things and big things and doesn’t expect anything in return, in fact, he refuses it.
Maybe that’s one of his faults. Even Mikey Bear has those.
“It’s okay, you know,” she eventually decides to tell him, “It’s okay if you’re not happy for him.”
She hears her big brother sniff as he puts out his second cigarette. He nods, but he doesn’t really look like he believes her, relentlessly turning his cigarette pack in his hands but making no attempt at lighting another.
“It feels wrong,” he responds, “It feels wrong to hate him for it, too.”
“I won’t tell,” she says, and luckily, finally, she gets out his first laugh of the night, the first real one, anyway, one that isn’t for the comfort of their mother or to spite Uncle Lee, but a genuine, pained one.
“He’s so…” Mikey falters off, “He’s so, so stupid. He never notices.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“He is.”
They laugh again, but her older brother frowns, at himself or at the whole situation, she can’t quite tell.
“You shouldn’t be doing this, bear,” he then says, and Sugar is struck with confusion. She can hear Richie’s voice from inside, yelling at one of the Faks or yelling at Lee or someone entirely different, she hears him calling out Mikey’s name, too, but her brother makes no move to respond.
“I shouldn’t be doing what?” she asks.
“You shouldn’t have to carry me,” her brother answers, “You shouldn’t have to… shit, I’m your big brother. You shouldn’t have to take care of me or whatever. You shouldn’t have to be strong. I’m being pathetic. I’ve been… in love with my best friend since I was fucking thirteen or something, and he’s never fucking noticed.”
She notices how he struggles with that word, love. It’s always come easy to him, but this is different, obviously.
This is Richie, and Natalie knows Richie is a lot more complicated than family, because somehow, he is family, and yet, he isn’t, he never will be.
Natalie knows Richie sometimes makes Mikey as angry as he does her and Carmy. Sometimes, she wondered why her brother kept his best friend around, because sometimes, they seemed to hate each other.
“You’ve been carrying me all of my life,” she tells him, smiling in a way that she hopes won’t make him cry more and make her cry, but she feels pain in her cheeks and stings in her eyes, and she doesn’t know how to get inside her brother’s head right now, not really.
Mikey Bear has changed so much. Different looks in his eyes and strained smile and burns on his hands and scars on his arms, disappearances and absences and things she sees right through, pretend things, stuff that others don’t know but she does.
She wonders when he started pretending around her and Carmy, because he never used to do that. Faking smiles and leaving questions unanswered and making up excuses. That isn’t her Mikey Bear.
Sometimes, she fears he’ll change into someone completely different the longer she’s away from him. Sometimes, she wishes she could hold onto him and never let go, because the last two Christmases have been different, recognizable yet unfamiliar.
“That’s my job,” Mikey Bear says, and she knows he doesn’t mean it like a chore, he never has, “And I’d do it over and over again. I wouldn’t change that.”
“I know,” she assures him, “And I think Carmy knows. But you can’t carry everything all of the time. You shouldn’t have to do that, bear.”
Natalie almost mentions mom and dad, but it’s Christmas, so she doesn’t. It’s Christmas, and at Christmas, sometimes, they just want to believe that they can be a family that isn’t fucked up, for once. Sometimes, they just want to believe that dad didn’t leave them behind and that mom doesn’t hate them, so she doesn’t say it.
“Will you just let me carry you for once?” Sugar asks.
It seems she’s rendered her older brother speechless for a while, and Mikey Bear is never speechless, it’s a rarity that sometimes doesn’t seem realistic at all, yet, here he was.
Her brother sighs, and he smiles at her and turns and cups her cheek with his free hand, tear streaks on his face still fresh and raw.
Sometimes, Natalie wonders if they would be as close as they were and love each other as much as they do if it wasn’t for Carmy. Sometimes, she wonders if raising Carmy, if taking care of their little brother and taking care of each other has altered them for good, and if she even would be who she is if it was any different.
She doesn’t like to think about that. Sometimes, Sugar hates her family, but she’s never hated her brothers. That’s different. It’s always been different.
“You’re so perfect, you know that, right?” Mikey says, and he sounds just like he did back when she was thirteen years old, back when he couldn’t contain his tears because he loved her and Carmy too much to keep them in.
“I get that a lot,” she jokes, and her brother laughs in return.
“You’re a genius,” her brother carries on, “How did you turn out like this?”
“Like what?” Natalie asks curiously.
“How did you turn out so good?” he asks, sounding genuinely bewildered, “How are you so… good. Sometimes I don’t understand it. You’re nothing like me. That’s good.”
“Don’t say that,” she huffs, “You’re going to make me cry, too.”
“Sorry,” he sighs again, “Please don’t ever change.”
“I’ll try,” Sugar whispers, “But only if you promise me the same thing.”
He looks doubtful, he looks stubborn, he looks like he’ll refuse. This isn’t the loud Mikey Bear who’s in control of everything, but her Mikey Bear is good. He’s always been good.
“Alright,” he agrees.
“Do you want me to hug you and tell you how much of an asshole Richie is?” Natalie then asks, and he laughs, and she hopes that even if he’s changed now, that she’ll always be able to make him laugh.
She hopes he’ll never change so much that he still can’t be her rock. And that she can’t be his, too.
“I’d like that,” her big brother says, and so they hug each other on the front porch of their childhood home, and it feels normal, like it always does. It feels warm and frightening, but she wouldn’t want this part to be any different.
“You’re perfect, Mikey Bear,” she says surely, “If Richie can’t see that then he’s stupider than I thought.”
“I’m not the one he’s marrying, though,” he says, “I look like a fool.”
They find that neither of them care how selfish this may sound, how jealous or venomous it may be, because they’re family, and because Natalie knows that her brother has been in love with his best friend since she was thirteen years old.
And because she knows that Mikey isn’t going to let go of Richie because of this.
She knows he won’t ever let go of him, he wouldn’t be able to live with it. She knows her brother will take whatever he can get and that would have to be enough, because she’s seen him take every affection and argument and ride on that high for days.
“He’s the fool,” Sugar says confidently, “And I’m a genius, remember? I know these things.”
She’s never been more serious before. She knows this.
He doesn’t get the chance to answer her, because while his arms are around her the door opens behind them, and she recognizes the footsteps immediately.
“Mikey Bear,” Richie’s voice reaches them, and they both turn their heads without letting go of each other, “Is this some family stuff I need to know about?”
His question is ridiculous, stupid and awful. He’s done this before, because his timing is awful, but there’s something extra painful and extra ironic about it tonight.
Her older brother shakes his head, but Natalie speaks faster than he can.
“We’re talking about how much you suck,” she tells him, and Richie seems taken aback and yet he laughs in uncertainty, and so she shrugs off the blanket and gives it back to her brother and makes her way back to the door again.
“Bear,” Sugar addresses Mikey honestly, “I don’t know if I can do this without you.”
Her brother nods and stands up as well, handing his pack of cigarettes to his best friend wordlessly, and the older man stares at it and them like he’s trying to decipher some secret message.
“I missed you,” Richie blurts out, which sounds crazy to Natalie and maybe anyone else, because these two work together and spend every hour together, so she’s not sure they would ever have time to miss the other, “And I have my own cigarettes.”
“Mine is yours,” her brother says easily, “Haven’t I told you that before?”
The older man looks even more confused than before. In fact, he stares out at the now empty front porch and seems to regret walking out here in the first place, and like a moth to a flame, he follows them back inside.
Well, he follows Mikey back inside. He always does.
Richie loves Mikey, Natalie knows this. Even if he is a fool.
“You have,” he admits, and her brother smiles at him, his Richie smile, and he smiles at her like Mikey Bear always does and suddenly, everything doesn’t seem so different and complicated.
Maybe she can just fool herself to believe that for a while.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks her, and Natalie responds quickly.
“I never am,” is her answer, “But you need me in there.”
“I do,” her brother agrees, before he elbows his best friend’s arm and touches his hair like they always do, and he holds the older man there for a while, cupping his face with both hands, and Richie is lost there, lost somewhere with him.
Natalie knows this.
“Come on, asshole,” Mikey then tells him, “I need you in there, too.”