Inside, it's not quite the way Keith imagined a rich person's vacation house. Instead of marble floors, bright hardwood shines in greeting as James flips a light switch by the door. Rather than solid gold, the furniture and decorations mostly feature the same green accents over and over. Nonsensically, he waits for a robo-butler to make its appearance, but the space is silent save for the two of them shuffling into the foyer. The only thing that matches up with his expectation is the high ceilings, and he's not prepared for how exposed the few extra feet overhead make him feel.
"Oh," James blurts. "The decorations aren't… Huh. Yeah, I guess my parents did come out here for Labor Day weekend. They must've taken them down then."
"Decorations?" Keith prompts.
"Ugh, I'm sorry. It was all supposed to be ready before we got here. Usually, it looks like Christmas exploded all over this place. My family doesn't normally come to the cabin except for the winter, so we just leave it like that all the time."
"We could put them back up?" Keith finds himself suggesting before he can think better of telling James what to do with his own place. Or his parents' place. Same thing.
"Might as well. We can at least get them up before the others show up… but first, I should give you the tour."
Aside from the sheer size of the place and the quality of everything inside, it's a normal enough house. A living room by the front entrance, a dining room off to the side, an uncomfortably large kitchen, and a bathroom to round off the ground floor. Down in the basement, there's another living room that James calls a den, a room with an ungodly amount of home gym equipment—"Guess I already know exactly where to look if I can't find you," James remarks when Keith drools over that—and another bathroom. They finish on the second floor, home to not one but two more full bathrooms—how much do these people shit?—and four spacious bedrooms.
"You can take my bed," James offers when they reach the bedroom tucked in the back left corner of the floor. "I'll sleep on the couch."
"No, I—" Keith starts, fumbling over what he's supposed to say in this entirely new situation. "You're already paying for everything. You should get the bed."
"It's no problem. You're my guest. You take it."
"It's wasted on me. The couch is probably more comfortable than what I've got at home, anyway."
James grimaces.
"You're not wrong," he confirms, reminding Keith of the couple times James has, in fact, come over and lounged across Keith's shitty pre-furnished bed during a study session. "But you're still my guest, and I'm not putting you on the couch."
"Then we'll take turns," Keith decides. "I'm not letting you completely give up your bed. Final offer."
James huffs.
"I suppose that's fair," he reluctantly agrees. "You can take it tonight, and we can trade in the middle of the week."
"Thanks."
Finally, Keith can dump his backpack in the floor to one side of the bed instead of lugging it around any longer.
"You're going to trip on that later," James warns.
"Am not."
He shrugs.
"If you want to eat shit tonight, be my guest. Come on, then. Let's get decorating."
James reveals another set of stairs hidden in what Keith had thought was a closet out in the hallway. At the top, the slope of the roof leaves so little room that the two of them have to hunch over, but it's a whole extra space on top of the insane amount they've already ventured through today.
"Oh, yeah," James amends. "I don't normally include the attic in the tour. I know it's not the most comfortable, and it's kind of a mess. We only use it to store the off-season stuff, so we're almost never up here. You can wait downstairs if you want."
"Nah. It'll be faster if I help grab some, right?"
"I'd expect so, but we're not in any rush. Everyone else can get over it if we don't finish before they show up."
Keith sticks around anyway, long enough to grab the first large box James points out. By the time he lugs it down to the main floor, James is hot on his heels with the shortest, fattest Christmas tree Keith has ever seen in a house. The one that goes up at the mall at this time of year is wider, at least, but that one's also twenty feet tall and somehow rains down fake snow every hour on the hour. (One day, he'll figure out how it evaporates into nothing before it hits the ground.)
"Still up for more?" James asks, gesturing back upstairs. "I think there's another box and six more sections for the tree."
Oh. Well, that explains why it's so short.
Sure enough, once six more of those are stacked on top of the first one, the tree is intimidating, almost brushing the ceiling now.
The two boxes remain untouched, but not for long.
"Since I know where all this stuff goes," James says, gesturing to one of the boxes, "I can handle it if you can decorate the tree with this other one."
"Sure," Keith agrees, grabbing the box and taking it over to the empty tree. "No big deal."
That's, perhaps, a lie… but he's not about to tell James he's never decorated a Christmas tree. The group homes always set one up while the boys were at school, and the timing had never been right for the foster families. Once, he'd been dropped off with a family that must've just put their decorations up, but even then, he'd shown up too late.
It can't be that hard to figure out, though. He's seen what the final product should look like.
Some of the ornaments have loops that slip right over a branch and catch on the fake pine needles, holding them in place. Others hook onto the branches with a bit of metal. Most of them are simple red, white, or gold orbs of varying sizes, but as Keith digs further into the box, he uncovers some in the shapes of animals and… fairies, maybe? At the very bottom of the box, there are handmade ones like Keith remembers making as school art projects in kindergarten.
James snorts when he steps back into the living room after finishing a round of decorating in the kitchen. Keith prepares to let whatever bullshit is about to fly from his mouth go in consideration of the fact that he's now five hundred miles from his apartment with no way to get back there if he pisses his ride to the airport off.
Hell, James has his ticket for the plane. Keith couldn't even contribute that much in appreciation for the invitation here.
"We don't usually put those ones up," he tells Keith. "I actually thought they threw those out…"
His gaze rests on one in particular, a haphazard arrangement of popsicle sticks with 'Merry Crismas From James' written across the space that isn't filled with colorful cotton balls or glitter.
"I can take them down," Keith tries to salvage the mistake.
"No, it's…" James trails off. "I'm going to hide those ones at the back, actually. But they can stay."
James starts plucking the offending decorations and Keith follows suit, collecting each handmade one and rehoming it to a new position on the side of the tree no one will see unless they walk right into the corner looking for it.
"Better?" Keith asks when they place the last one.
"Much."
James' box of decorations is still half-full, and Keith's job is quickly redirected. With the tree finished, Keith is converted to the role of box mule, lugging the swiftly diminishing box of decorations around as James directs and watching James easily place each of the items around the house like he's done it a million times.
Only a few items remain by the time they move back upstairs, each of them a large bow in a different color like the ones the cartoons always showed on the front of presents. James sticks one on each of the bedroom doors, takes the empty box from Keith, and tosses it on the stairs to the attic before closing the door to lock it away.
The pause that follows is… awkward. It's not that they haven't spent plenty of time together since reconciling, but it's just… well, it's normally on more neutral terms. Less Keith invading James' space and more the two of them hanging out on campus or occasionally inviting one another to their apartments to study when it's too late to find any university building open.
"We should watch a movie or something," James hurriedly proposes, and thank god for that. "We agreed on seven o'clock for dinner, so everyone should be here before then."
"A movie sounds good," Keith agrees, latching onto what he's most familiar with and following James back downstairs to settle onto two separate corners of the sectional.
Watching a movie is simple. At worst, James will expect him to chime in on the choice of movie or the course of the plot. Easy.
Dinner's harder. The rest of them know all the plans for this break, probably having had several months to think about it. Keith doesn't even know what they like to eat or if they're as picky as James. Even Ina is a mystery despite the fact that he must have seen her eat with them in the cafeteria a fair few times… if Ina is even the person he's thinking of.
Does James know how hopeless Keith is in the kitchen? Does he want Keith to help cook? Oh god, he's going to wreck everyone's dinner and ruin his chance to make friends with any of them. Worse, he's going to undo all the progress he and James have made in the past year. What was he thinking to come here—
"I was thinking Home Alone," James interrupts Keith's spiral. "Have you seen Home Alone?"
Keith shakes his head, too afraid James will catch the nerves in his voice if he dares to speak now.
"Oh, that's definitely our pick then. It's a classic for good reason. You'll love it."
He turns on the TV and navigates through a few screens while Keith tries desperately to stop thinking about dinner. It's only once the movie starts that he has any luck with that endeavor.
Later, the sound of the door opening and a rush of cold air suddenly pull him back out of it.
"Nice Civic," Ryan Kinkade snarks in lieu of a greeting. "Enterprise run out of everything half decent?"
It's jarring how much different the words sound from the last ones Keith heard from Ryan almost four years ago.
'Quit fucking doing this, man. Grow up already.'
The sneer he'd taken to wearing around Keith is nowhere to be seen now, seemingly erased in the time since high school graduation. In Ryan's defense, Keith had probably earned every bit of it.
And then he freezes after taking one more step into the room.
"Oh, you didn't…" Ryan trails off.
"Hey," James picks up calmly. "You're the first one besides us. Home Alone?"
The sneer of a few years back isn't there… but neither is the smirk of a few seconds ago.
"Sure," Ryan agrees calmly enough. "I'll just unpack first, in case you want to…"
He doesn't finish that sentence either, only closes the front door and disappears upstairs. Keith wants to ask what that was about, but something tells him not to. James remains silent on the other end of the couch, and Keith lets the movie pull him back in before he can overthink it or worse… act on the impulse. He tries not to notice the way James is suddenly pulled into his phone.
Ryan doesn't return before the next person arrives, knocking primly at the door. James jumps up to get it, revealing…
Well, she's bundled in too many layers to be sure, but that could be the same Ina who crashes some of their lunch breaks. Once she tugs her hat off, Keith is certain it's her. Unlike Ryan, she doesn't seem to take Keith's presence badly, but then again, she sees him often enough.
And then she opens her mouth.
"I wasn't expecting Keith to be here," she shares.
"Last minute change," James explains. "We just decided at the end of the week, and I didn't get a chance to tell anyone."
Keith is starting to suspect it was a pity invite, that he wasn't supposed to say yes. If only the Keith of one day ago had known that, maybe he would've pretended to have plans for the break when James had asked.
"Oh. Well… it's a pleasant surprise," she says. "I look forward to celebrating together."
Keith can rest a bit at that, even if it's still unsettling that James apparently didn't bother to mention him to anyone else. At least he and Ina are still as cool as they ever were.
"I'll go freshen up," she decides before James can try to invite her to watch the movie too. "Dinner's at six?"
"Seven," James corrects as she turns her back on them.
The final entry comes not even five minutes later with another burst of freezing cold outdoor air and a loud, "Jesus, it's cold out there!"
And Keith knows that voice. Admittedly, he's only ever encountered it a few beers into the night before, but that's not enough to stop him from recognizing—
"Hey, Rizavi," James greets easily. "Keith, Nadia Rizavi. Rizavi, Keith Kogane. Home Alone?"
Rizavi whoops.
"Fuck yeah! But first—I call your parents' California king!" she yells, already pounding her way up the stairs.
"I guarantee you Kinkade ditched us that fast just so he could claim my parents' room," James tells Keith in the calm that rolls in when it's back to just the two of them. "I wonder what's taking him so long up there, anyway…"
"No idea," Keith responds as though James was asking him to come up with a theory on the matter. He leaves out his relief at not having to face the guy again just yet.
James doesn't have anything to say to that, and immediately, he feels stupid for even presenting the non-answer.
"Damn Kinkade," Rizavi curses on her less thunderous way back down. "Who let him take the best room again? He got it last year!"
"I don't know what to tell you," James says, straight-faced. "Get here first next time."
"I know that freak took a red eye to beat me here. No thanks."
Neither of them are willing to mention that Ryan definitely showed up in the late afternoon. Somehow, it seems even worse that she was less than an hour behind him. Keith, at least, wouldn't want to know if he were in her place.
The credits start to roll. Keith fumbles for his phone, more for an excuse to avoid responding to the red eye accusation than out of any desire to see what messages he's missed… or lack thereof. Shiro's there, asking if he survived his first flight. Other than that, it's all spam email.
"Man, I missed the whole movie!" Rizavi complains as Keith sends a quick thumbs up emoji to Shiro and locks the phone.
James visibly bites his tongue and pauses for a second.
"Why don't you pick the next movie, then?" he invites. "You're here now. You'll get to see this one the whole way through."
"Oh hell yeah, we're doing Avatar," Rizavi announces.
James sighs.
"Blue people or live action cartoon?"
"Do you really have to ask that?"
James sighs again, thoroughly enunciating his disappointment.
"This is what I get for trying to be nice," he grumbles, but he navigates to what he clearly considers the worse of the two options anyway.
"Oh, you love it," she retorts.
"Don't make my mistake," James faux whispers to Keith. "Rizavi will take every inch you give her."
"There's no need to bring my sex life into this, Griffin. Besides, Kogane already knows I'm cool."
Suddenly, the way Rizavi always seemed to end up out back or on the balcony at parties at the same time as Keith made his way there to smoke… rubs him as more intentional than coincidence.
"You've been using me for my cigs," Keith realizes aloud as the reality of it sinks in.
"What? No, Keithy, you know I'm there for our drunk conversations," Rizavi insists too quickly.
"Wait, you two already know each other?" James asks.
"It's not a big campus, dude," she answers. "Did you think I never ran into this guy after two years of sharing the same five classroom buildings?"
Keith snorts as James stutters over his own tongue.
"You can't know everyone on campus," James argues.
"I don't. Only the ones my friends can't shut up about."
James shoots her a glare and starts the movie.
"I'm going to clear the kitchen for dinner," James mutters on his way out of the room.
"Geez," Rizavi quips in his absence. "That guy can never take a little joke, huh?"
If Keith's supposed to answer that, he lets her down there. Something doesn't feel right about talking shit about the person who invited him on this trip, even in jest.
"I'm gonna help with dinner," he excuses himself instead.
"Oh?"
James' hands are braced on the edge of the counter when Keith finds him. His head is turned down, and Keith quickly realizes his eyes are shut. Afraid to make the moment awkward, Keith intentionally lets his next footstep drag a little loudly over the tile.
James straightens up immediately.
"Hey. You need something?" he asks, and it's like there's nothing wrong at all.
Keith falls right for it.
"Just came to see if I can help," Keith volunteers. "You know, with dinner."
"Oh. Yeah, if you want to. Sure, sure. We just need to clear space for three stands here and move all the flammable stuff out of this section to be safe."
"Okay?" Keith agrees, not fully understanding the task but ready to take James' lead.
The felt elf sitting in the windowsill seems like a potential flame risk, so Keith scoops him up first and finds him a new home in the dining room, where he can look down from atop a shelf in the china cabinet.
They make quick work of it together, though Keith has to await direction more than once as the space clears up. The entire span of countertop from the stove to the sink is completely bare before James is satisfied.
"Now what?" Keith asks when he doesn't make a move for any ingredients.
"You're eager," James teases. "The caterer will handle the rest."
Keith's jaw drops and unleashes a pathetic squeak the likes of which will keep him up late for many nights to come.
"Wha—?" James starts before comprehension dawns. "Wait, no. Don't freak out on me now. I know you can't—Look, I'm buying yours, so you don't have to worry about chipping in or anything."
"You can't pay for me to spend all week eating catered meals," Keith protests. "That's way too much. I'll just go get—"
"Whoa, calm down. We're not eating catering all week. That's insane!"
Keith spares him the argument that catering even one meal is insane.
"And," James continues, "even if we were, it's honestly not that much more than going out locally, you know? We just do this once or twice while we're out here on the days we really don't feel like driving into town or cooking, and nobody wants to cook right after a travel day."
"I don't mind—"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence. I'm not letting my guest eat trash while the rest of us enjoy good food. You don't need to worry about anything on this trip, okay? If I'm doing something for myself already, it's not that much more to do it for you too."
"I—"
"We can act like you're paying if that makes it better? If it's just that you don't want everyone else to realize I'm covering you, I don't mind a white lie about it," James cuts him off. "Please just eat dinner with the rest of us. Please."
Keith can't say no to the sincerity in James' eyes.
"You don't have to lie about it," Keith tells him. "Not like anyone here thinks I have the money for any of this anyway."
James can't refute that, and somehow the topic of conversation morphs into their shared chemistry class.
"I'm just ready to get that final over with," James is complaining when the doorbell rings. "Oh, is it getting that late already?"
He beelines to the front door, leaving Keith to ask himself whether he's meant to follow or wait where he is. The valuable seconds he wastes debating the matter come back to bite him in the ass as he makes his delayed move toward the living room and nearly bowls over a stranger loaded down with large bags next to the basement door.
"Sorry," he mutters, backpedaling until he collides with solid counter space.
"No worries!" she tells him. "Where am I setting this up?"
"Uh…"
"Over here," James interrupts. "Is this enough space? There's more space over there if this isn't enough room for the drinks too."
"Oh, that's plenty! Could I go ahead and get an autograph right—" she starts as she rummages through a large bag, finally producing a piece of paper, "—here?"
James pulls open a drawer and finds a pen with little fanfare, signing and dating the document.
"Perfect," she says once he clicks the pen closed again. "Legally, I've gotta tell you to eat this or pack it up in the fridge within four hours max, and never directly touch the Sternos I'll be lighting under the trays until they're completely out cold. When you're done with them, you can use a set of tongs to drop the caps back on top and wait awhile for them to cool down after you smother 'em, or you can just wait for them to burn themselves out. All good on that?"
"Sure am," James agrees. "Don't worry. We're not first-time customers."
She chuckles along with him.
"Of course, sir. I still have to warn you either way. Alright, well, that's all I had. Give me about ten minutes, and I'll get out of your hair! Okay if I let myself out when I'm done?"
"No problem. And here," he replies, pulling out his wallet, extracting a twenty dollar bill, and passing it to her. "If you need me for anything, I'll be in that room right over there."
His hand lands between Keith's shoulders, guiding him to the dining room.
"They never like it when we hang around watching them set up," James leans in and murmurs so only Keith can hear, then adds more loudly, "Let's get the table set up."
'Let's' turns into James doing everything when they both realize Keith doesn't know where anything is. Keith slows them down more than he helps for the small amount of time he tries to chip in. He can offer a second set of hands to help arrange and smooth out the tablecloth once James digs it out, and James lets him make the perfunctory choice of which set of plates and silverware they'll use. Keith refrains from commenting on the strangeness of having multiple options to choose from in the first place, thinking of his own one and only mismatched set of kitchenware at home.
…and this is a house the Griffins only use once or twice a year.
"All set!" the caterer chirps as she passes by, lugging a Matryoshka of mostly empty bags behind herself. "Enjoy your meal!"
"Guys, dinner!" Rizavi hollers to the house at large.
James brings the stack of dinner plates to the kitchen and places it by a set of black wire stands, each holding a few covered aluminum trays with plastic utensils laid atop.
"Help me get the lids off these?" James asks, working to spread the corners of the first one until it lifts freely off the pan to reveal a heaping mound of pasta, into which he unceremoniously shoves the plastic serving tongs.
Keith starts at the ones on the other end, revealing a red sauce, a white sauce, and an orange sauce, each one releasing a puff of steam as Keith exposes it. The two of them meet in the middle to unveil massive meatballs, smaller pieces of sausage, and a vegetable mix of mushrooms and zucchini.
James reaches past Keith to reposition the ladle in the orange sauce so it points the opposite direction from the other two sauces.
"Which—?" Rizavi starts to ask from the doorway.
"Just not the one with the backwards spoon," James interrupts.
"Rad, thanks!"
Nudging her way in, she takes one of the plates and fills it with rotini, vegetables, and the white sauce.
"Do you have any dietary restrictions I don't know about?" James asks Keith.
Keith shrugs.
"Only the lactose intolerance."
"Shit, I forgot about that," James says. "Hang on, let me check their website before you put your trust in any of this."
"I can deal with—" Keith tries, but it just earns him a frustrated huff.
"I already said we're feeding you. That means safe food," he mutters mostly toward his phone screen as he taps and scrolls. "Okay, this says the marinara is fine for you. Don't touch the other sauce… and the meatballs are out too. Those have cheese."
The meatballs only become more alluring in the wake of their swift ban, but Keith resists the temptation if only to avoid starting a petty dinner table fight over the matter.
The other two don't take much longer to show up after the three of them finish making their plates and claiming their seats at the dining room table.
"You fall asleep up there, Kinkade?" James asks.
"Huh?" Ryan hums. "Oh. No. Sorry, got distracted unpacking. You know how it is."
"Well, I fell asleep," Ina chimes in. "I always forget how tiring flights are."
"Right?" Rizavi agrees between heaping bites of pasta.
"Mine got delayed," Kinkade laments. "But I caught a decent nap in the lounge while I waited."
"Oh my god, I'm never there early enough to get to any of the lounges," Rizavi shares. "They were already boarding when I got there today."
"You're going to miss a flight someday," James warns.
"Nah, they're not gonna take off without me! They always page me if I'm not there on time, and then I get over to my gate and everything's fiiiiiine."
"You're a menace," Kinkade accuses.
"Someone did that on my flight," Ina adds. "I thought I had the row to myself, but she was just the last one to get on the plane."
"Augh, I hate when that happens!" Rizavi complains. "You think you're gonna have that extra room to stretch out, and then they yank your prize away at the last minute."
The conversation continues in circles around Keith as the rest of them discuss all the aspects of flying that Keith has never once had cause to consider before today. Even today didn't prepare him for half of what they're talking about. Lounges? Paging? Neither of those were a part of his experience, and he's afraid to ask more about any of it even though they must realize he hasn't flown a hundred times like they have.
He spends the dinner steadfastly focusing on his plate and desperately searching for something he can add before it gets weird that he hasn't spoken once… but the opportunity is lost. Keith looks up to find a table full of plates scraped clean, and James is already suggesting moving back to the living room to vote on the next movie, and Keith hasn't said a word.
This is his chance, he realizes. He just needs to voice an opinion on the movie while they're choosing, and it'll be fine.
And then they start the debate over three movies Keith has never even heard of, and he knows he's well and truly fucked.
"You guys always pick Christmas movies," Rizavi complains after a short debate over the options. "You know there are other holidays, right?"
"Well, my vote is for The Nightmare Before Christmas," James announces, throwing a fourth unrecognizable option onto the table.
Seizing his chance, Keith latches onto James' opinion and says, "Nightmare Before Christmas sounds good."
Kinkade snorts, and Rizavi bursts into full-on laughter while Ina turns a surprised look Keith's way. When Keith tosses an unintentional nonverbal plea for help to James, he finds an unexpected confusion there too.
"I didn't know you were into musicals," James tells him after a horrifically obvious effort to straighten his face away from the same smirk Kinkade is still sporting.
Fuck.
"I—ah… sometimes I am?" Keith tries to salvage his entirely uninformed decision without having to admit he hates musicals with an unreasonable passion.
"Noted," James acknowledges the awkward recovery so easily that it makes Keith want to crawl behind the couch where no one can perceive him and hopefully die. "That's just… It's kind of an inside joke here."
"Well, don't leave Kogane outside the joke, Griffin!" Rizavi chides. "It's something we suggest when we don't like any of the movie options because there is no way we can get through a full viewing of it without setting off Kinkade. Fun fact: he hates the plot so much that he writes fix-it fanfiction. Can you imagine?"
"It's not fanfiction!" Kinkade immediately cuts her off. "They are fan theories, and before you start on it again, it's not weird!"
"Right," she agrees sarcastically. "Normal people spend twenty hours a week making Tumblr posts about the 'real ending' of a decades-old movie."
Kinkade looks ready to physically pounce onto her, but he crosses his arms and balls his fists instead.
"I told you that in confidence," he hisses, "and it is not twenty hours a week."
"Uh huh…"
James sighs, pushes himself up from the couch, and crosses the room to the fireplace. Crouching down, he fiddles with it for a moment before flames spring to life. Straightening back up, he faces the rest of them.
"Alright, get it out of your systems and just pick something to watch," James orders, staring down Rizavi specifically. "Look. Nice, cozy living room for a nice, friendly movie night. Now, I'm going to make hot chocolate, and when I come back, there had better be a movie playing and no fights going on. Got it?"
Rizavi rolls her eyes.
"Yes, Dad."
Nevertheless, she and Kinkade slink off downstairs together once James leaves.
"Guess the movie's our choice now," Ina comments. "We're not picking The Nightmare Before Christmas, though."
Keith holds back a groan, staring into the fire to avoid eye contact. He tries not to think about Pops as he does.
"I don't care what we watch," he tells her.
"Cool."
With no more fuss, she navigates down to the documentaries section and selects the first one about space exploration.
"I just think it's neat," she explains without prompting. "In another life, I would've been a space explorer."
"How do you get into doing that?" Keith asks, genuinely curious.
"Oh, it's a bit of a process," she answers. "I think I could've handled it, but my parents threatened not to pay for my degree if I didn't choose something 'reasonable.' Anyway, the biggest thing is…"
Kinkade and Rizavi return after a couple minutes, cutting off Ina's surprisingly informative lecture.
"I was joking earlier," Rizavi announces to the room, but she's looking directly at Keith. "I didn't actually mean Kinkade is an insane fanboy. For the record."
Kinkade huffs.
"You're pushing it again," he warns halfheartedly.
As directed, though, they aren't fighting when James returns with a tray of five hot chocolates. Although he seems confused at their choice of movie, he doesn't comment on it, just puts the tray on the coffee table in front of them and settles in next to Keith like he never left.
"That one's yours," he murmurs, pointing toward the one different-colored mug on the tray. "No milk."
"Thanks," Keith whispers back, reaching out to snag the safe glass before anyone else can.
Between the soft lull of the narrator's voice and the warmth of the fire and the hot chocolate, no one lasts especially long. One by one, they take turns excusing themselves to bed.
James and Keith are the last two standing. Or sitting, technically. Maybe not even that since both of them have taken advantage of the cleared couch space to properly lounge. It's far too comfortable, and if Keith stays any longer, he's going to pass out right here.
"You're sure you don't want your bed?" Keith asks, half to be polite and half because it would be so easy to just fall asleep where he is instead.
"Nah, I said it's yours tonight. I'll switch you on Wednesday."
"Tuesday," Keith disagrees. "You should get the longer half of the week. It's your bed."
"You're my guest. Let me treat you like one already… or at least wait until Tuesday to fight about it, yeah?"
Keith huffs, but there's no real anger in it.
"Yeah, yeah," he agrees. "Goodnight."
"You need anything before you turn in?"
"No, I'm just…" Keith groans as he pushes himself upright and uses the momentum to get himself to his feet. "…gonna fall right asleep anyway."
There's an abandoned mug next to where Rizavi was sitting, so Keith grabs that along with his own and takes them to the kitchen sink. The sound of the documentary suddenly cuts out from the next room.
"Night," James says softly when Keith passes back through.
"Night," Keith returns before heading upstairs to James' room.
The lure of sleep is his downfall, so present in his mind that—just like James predicted—Keith trips over his own bag and nearly eats shit.
Luckily, a nightstand greets one of his flailing hands and catches in his grasp, saving him from the rest of the fall. Less luckily, the nightstand slides several inches along the floor with a horrific grating noise along the way. Keith's heart is still thundering even as he corrects his balance and returns to standing.
Giving his bag a rough kick for the hassle—and immediately remembering his laptop is in there, probably not appreciating its share of that impact—he more carefully makes his way back across the room to the light switch.
The illumination doesn't do the damage any favors when Keith gets back to the scene of the crime. It highlights a groove in the wood floor that ends right where one of the nightstand's legs now rests, and there's no convincing himself that mark was already there before he intervened.
Fuck.
He has to tell James.
Fuck.
What's he going to do if James loses his shit when he sees? What if James kicks him out? How long would it take to hike to a Greyhound stop? There's at least enough money in his checking account to cover the ticket, but that doesn't help him get close enough to get the ticket.
But it'll be worse if he doesn't tell James and he finds out on his own.
Shittttt.
Maybe he should wait to say something in the morning. Early, so James finds out directly from Keith. Just… it'll be better if James is rested before this conversation, surely. It'll only be worse if Keith goes down there, potentially wakes him up if he's the type to fall asleep quickly, and immediately lays bad news on him.
There's a knock at the bedroom door.
Oh god. The lights are on. Whoever it is already knows he's awake and heard the knock. He has to answer.
Crossing the room again, Keith opens the door only a couple inches, not enough to reveal the disruption to the room.
"Yeah?" he asks.
"You good?" Rizavi asks in lieu of a greeting.
"I'm great," Keith blurts immediately. "Everything's good here. Yep, just, uh… getting ready for bed?"
She places a hand on his shoulder—nope, he's not a fan of that—and presses him to the side so she can poke her head through the doorway.
"Interesting bedtime routine," she tells him. "Can't say my own includes rearranging the furniture. Then again, I have roommates, so you can imagine the disruption that would cause. You know. If I were sharing a space with other people. And I were loudly dragging furniture around at ass o'clock. Jussssst something to consider."
"I didn't do it on purpose," Keith defends himself before realizing what he's doing.
"Then just say that next time. Alright, lemme see," she says, pushing the door open and letting herself in. "What's the dama—oof. That's bad."
"I—I can fix it!" Keith says, desperation clutching onto him before he can even think about how he could fix this.
"I know," Rizavi agrees more softly than before. "C'mon, follow me."
Unable to say no when he's already in so deep, he trails behind her, heart ratcheting right back up when she goes for the stairs down to the living room.
She's going to make him wake James and tell him now.
"Lean against the banister," she directs in a whisper, "and step as far over to this side as you can. Like this… it's the only way to avoid the creaky spots. You don't want to get James involved, right?"
"Thanks… and not if I don't have to, no."
"Say less. He sleeps pretty deeply, but hush up until we get to the basement just in case. You never know."
They continue in near silence until they reach the main floor.
"James?" Rizavi whispers hesitantly, startling Keith… but there's no other response. "…oh yeah, he's out."
They press past the living room and open the door to the basement. She gestures for Keith to lead the way down those stairs, and she carefully closes the door behind them.
"Okay," she clears him once they're in the den, still speaking softly but no longer whispering. "Keep it down, but as long as you're quiet, your voice won't carry upstairs. The soundproofing is pretty good. We've just gotta be careful getting back out of that door. There's a trick to opening it quietly, but I'll show you that after we get the stuff."
"The stuff?" Keith asks, probably more quietly than he needs to, but he is not about to get caught sneaking around James' vacation home.
She leads them to a closet and starts digging through it, peering momentarily at items and placing them aside one by one.
"Yeah, Kinkade got so trashed last year and pretty much did the same thing but worse because it was in James' parents' room, and you know they would've thrown a shitfit if they found out James lets us sleep in their room."
She muffles a giggle into her hand before she continues her story and her search.
"Oh, he freaked, but the rest of us were just, you know, a little tipsy. I honestly don't think Ina even drank at all, and she was on board with driving us all to the hardware store in the middle of the night. I had to find three different employees before one of them knew jackshit about repairing a hardwood floor, and he gave us—" As she keeps rattling off her tale, she digs more and more sloppily through the closet, until she finds… "—this!"
It's too dark to make out exactly what it is, but Rizavi has a tube of something and is looking triumphant.
"What is it?" Keith asks once he realizes there's no way he'll be able to read the label in the poor lighting.
"Oh, I have no idea. But he told us how to use it, and I still remember. I'm not even tipsy this time, so you're getting my best work tonight," she promises.
Together, the two of them rearrange the displaced items into something vaguely organized. Rizavi slips the tube into her hoodie pocket while Keith shuts the closet, overly cautious not to make a sound.
"Remember: let me get the door," she warns, pointing toward the top of the stairs. "I'll teach you for next time, though."
With that, she leads the way back up. When they reach the top, she grips the doorknob and turns it agonizingly slowly. Once it's as far as it will go, she slowly opens the door for the first couple inches before she rams it almost all of the rest of the way open. Stepping to the side, she gestures for him to go ahead of her.
Keith cringes as she closes it most of the way at top speed, but she manages to stop it before the door can touch the frame. With the door still slightly ajar, she continues on past James—now snoring softly—and up the stairs, again leaning against the banister and favoring the far side of each step.
The light still spreading from Keith's temporary room is a reminder that Keith did nothing to stop the others from stumbling across his mistake while he and Rizavi were occupied, but the room is still empty. Surely, that means they didn't notice.
"Now what?" Keith murmurs after they lock themselves inside the room.
It's discomforting to be staring down his mistake once more. Part of him had hoped it would look better when he came back, but… this is still bad.
"Now, I need a big, strong man to pick this thing up and put it literally anywhere else… think Kinkade is still up?"
Keith rolls his eyes and continues his trek across the room with the nightstand, placing it in the far corner he'll never go anywhere near so it can't betray him like this again. When he comes back, Rizavi already has a thick layer of orange goo spread over the mark.
"…are you sure that's how it works?" Keith has to ask because that can't be all there is to it, not when his world was crashing down over this fifteen minutes ago.
"Doubting me isn't a good look, Kogane. Trust."
"I wasn't doubting you."
"Uh, yeah, you were."
"Whatever," Keith huffs, redirecting. "What's up with that, anyway? Why do you call everyone by their last names?"
"Huh. Never thought about it. Just feels right, I guess. Makes people less likely to call me 'Nadia.' Eugh."
"You don't like your name?"
"Hell no. It was a gift from my mother," Rizavi answers, almost spitting on the word. "May she rest in hell."
That sends Keith's mind spinning, hurdling back to the way James had referred to her as Nadia this very afternoon.
"Does James know?" he blurts before he can think through the consequences of asking.
Her brow furrows.
"I didn't ever have to tell him. He gets it."
Well, fuck. Even in the midst of saving himself from one disaster, Keith managed to spark another one. He can only hope she won't dwell too much on it and that James won't call her by the wrong name now that she's here with them.
"Anyway," she adds after a few more seconds, "this is done. Just don't touch it. It needs to rest for eight hours, and then we'll do the last step in the morning. I'll stop by before breakfast."
"Um… thanks," Keith says, feeling stupid for not having the right words to express the very real gratitude. "For doing this, I mean. You didn't have to."
"'Course I didn't," she agrees, "but what kind of person leaves a friend hanging, right? So! Problem solved? I'm gonna crash."
The exhaustion of the day catches back up with a vengeance once he's alone in the dark, and it's only a short matter of time before Keith's crashing too.