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The autumn breeze is hot and dry as it sweeps over them, kicks fallen leaves in spiral patterns that rain down from the ledge. They’re leant at the railing looking out from the balcony at city streets alive below. The canopy of festoon lighting and sturdy branches does little to impede the hum of the live band beneath and it’s music trails up to them, sets a subtle sway to Kat’s body.
They don’t do this often; hang out. But every so often life sneaks up on them and they find themselves in squished plastic chairs clapping at Noah’s dance recital, or drinking after a boxing match until her eye stops hurting and Fin sends them all home, or just enjoying a rare quiet evening under a clear navy sky.
Each time she’s surprised by the way Counsellor Carisi transforms into someone so genial, affable. His shoulders drop, his expressions widen, smiles stretch up to crinkle his eyes. He fits, like this - makes sense in the puzzle of their dynamics she’s still trying to piece together.
She hadn’t seen it, when she first arrived, the eager compassionate detective the rest of the squad had known. She’d got to know him in the gaps - the coffee order Rollins would instinctually recite and hurriedly retract to the barista downstairs, the reams of printer toner stored too high for anyone else to reach, the empty fridge Fin would grumble into. She’d learned everything she needed to know from the impatient flip of Rollins’ phone, the continued lack of responding buzz, from the tension that built and built and eventually snapped between them.
Carisi’s hand swats absentmindedly at the air in front of her, his voice loose, accent sloppy. “Nah, nah, Kat- Ya know Billie, Jesse- I’ve got sisters, four of ‘em, and I didn’t see it, growing up, I didn’t see how things were different for them, harda’. But I do, I get it now, and I’m just- I’m just really glad there’s people like you in the world. Makin’ it better. I’m glad the girls get someone like you-“
It’s sweet - really sweet. Both the sentiment and the way Carisi refers to the girls by which he clearly means Amanda’s girls, by which his tone conveys my girls.
She cuts him off with a sharply raised eyebrow. “Carisi, are you smashed?”
He huffs, weight shifting from one leg to another, and Kat’s shocked by the incremental lift of her smile, the way these idiosyncrasies that once made her so mad now seem kinda… endearing.
“I can hold my liquor just fine thanks, Detective.”
Kat swallows her drink around a suppressed laugh, a doubting hum in her throat. “There’s literally a ‘number of days since rookies last fight’ in Fin’s drawer, Counsellor…”
And again he bats away her statement with another vague flailing gesture. “Yeah but we’re family, that’s what we do.”
He says it so matter-of-fact, so benign. To him it’s just a simple fact, something Amanda occasionally presses into him with sharp elbows when he forgets. Kat is part of their squad, and their squad is ride or die.
A heavy pause sits between them as Carisi grins at the chairs spilling over the sidewalk, life coming back to the city they dedicate themselves to protect. Kat looks at the side of his head, her fingers flitting at the rim of her glass.
“You think I’m family?”
“Well yeah, ‘course.” His head turns at the lofty tone of her voice, a furrow between his brows and blue eyes disquieted for just a beat before a light smirk breaks across his face. “You’re like the annoying little sister I never had.”
Carisi’s elbow bumps into her, and its all instinct the way she rolls her eyes and deadpans “Ha ha.” - not so different from her siblings after-all.
For maybe the first time, quiet between them does not feel awkward, loaded. It’s something closer to amiable, companionable. Carisi is in jeans and a henley and - despite everything - his shoes scream cop. She can recognise him like this, can see him as the empathetic partner Amanda fell in love with, can imagine him pulling all-nighters in the squad room with a large pizza and gallon of coffee, diving head first into cases. They’re not so different.
“Your heart's in the right place, Carisi, but that’s true of a lot of men, doesn’t always mean much.”
He sighs, a tired haunted sound that she feels in her bones. “I know.”
The peace is fragile, tentative. Come tomorrow she’s sure there will be another case to quarrel over, another law he’s bound to follow and she’s loath to accept, another bias he’ll deny and she’ll dissemble.
But she understands it now, the reason his eyes flit to hers with quiet apologies when a trial doesn’t go their way, the small bolstering gesture that is his introducing her as ‘Detective Katriona Tamin’, the bluntness of their rapport. They’re family. And maybe - just maybe - something akin to friends.