Work Text:
The silence at the door is worse than he expected: hunched shoulders against the red hall light making a dark barricade, his whole silent family witnessing what he is, ice-footed on the slushy front step.
He can feel the snow settling in his damp hair before anyone moves, and then Mama has her arms vice-like around his neck and her hot face pressed harsh into the unfamiliar scrape of his jaw. ‘Jesus,’ he hears Connie murmur, and feels them stir and press closer even as Mama starts to shudder; ‘Hi, kid,’ Fredo says softly out of sight. They part a little for him to come into the house like the crowd at a goddamn funeral, Fredo touching his elbow, Sonny staring him hard in the face as he passes by.
He's deliberately planned this early arrival, but the lack of cars in the driveway followed by the hollow echo of the house immediately correct his mistake: the usual throng of kids haven't yet arrived to carpet the house with noise and set his mother and every female in-law howling through the kitchen into that particular clamour that'll provide him with enough cover not to feel so dismally fucking strange in his own home. Either that, or there's been some decision to make this their first Christmas with just the seven of them, a notion that makes him want to ball his hat in his fist and run. An hour, he's told Kay. At least an hour, and then there's her and the hotel already paid for with the beat-up tinsel Christmas bar.
Mama, wiping her eyes hard with the back of her hand, takes his coat and hat for him. Fredo's standing back against the stairwell with his hands uncertain in his pockets, giving him his weasel once-over. 'New suit,' he offers, and briefly flicks up to meet Michael's gaze as if for confirmation. A grin tugs at his thin lips. 'Nice.'
He smiles back: he'd gotten Fredo's own worn yellow trousers taken up more times than he could count. 'It was cheaper than all that tailoring.'
Fredo's smile fixes a little. Connie, dark-eyed and tight-lipped in her red Christmas dress, gives a sudden shake of her head from the corner and lunges for the stairs.
'Constanzia, torni-'
'Nah, Ma - no way, you hear-' She smacks the bannister and storms her way up. 'Sounds like a goddamn trucker or something, Jesus Christ-!'
Mama shoots him a sharp, pale look, her fists clenching on the front of her skirt; Michael shakes his head quick. 'It's okay, Ma. I'm-' He pauses and shrugs, and Sonny makes a noise that's either a grunt or a laugh and jerks his shoulder towards the family room.
Don't apologise, Kay'd said firmly back in the room, hands smoothing down his lapels and drawing his collar straight for the third time. Whatever you do. I don't want you apologising for a goddamn thing. It's Christmas and they should be counting their blessings to have you down. My family's old-country Catholic, was what he'd wanted to say and frankly had too much of his tongue curled scared in his mouth to be smarmy about – something about doing professional guilt over giving thanks any day of the week. His Hamptons girl can intuit plenty more than your average WASP but that, he'd sensed, was not the kind of joke she could parse even if he'd been able to make it sound clever.
Sonny pours him a glass of wine and they sit in the candlelight, Michael between his brothers and very aware of making a third for what feels like a first. Mama's eyes dart possessive and quick between each of them, Sonny with his legs crossed leaning back against the sofa armrest, Fredo with his hands folded between his knees and his stupid Christmas tie already straggling loose, her youngest in his foreign American-cut suit and slicked-back hair like the other two. Michael sips his wine and weighs up the pros and cons of getting drunk.
'Where's Pop?' he asks quietly.
'He's got business in the city. Took Tom and Peter with him.'
'Tonight? Seriously?'
'Yup.' Sonny's giving him the eye, checking the usual places. Michael sets his jaw and lets him: just an hour. 'He knows you're coming.’
'Oh, yeah?'
Fredo jerks a series of nods. 'He said he'd be here, you know – he's always home by dinner on Christmas. Don't worry about it, yeah?'
'No, no. That's good.'
'And, uh-' Fredo leans in a little like Sonny and Ma aren't sharp as foxes listening, the tick tock of the hall clock roaring in the background; Michael almost does a comical lean back to make him look stupid, like he'd do any other Christmas '-don't worry about Con, okay, M-Mike – she said she was gonna be good today, okay? She'll be down later. It's just, you know...'
'I thought you were gonna have a moustache,' Sonny cuts in abruptly. 'Big Mexican handlebar moustache. Come in here talking all smart and looking really dumb for once in your life.'
Michael finally looks at him sideways over his wine glass; his older brother's already fought his usual furious brief encounter with his tux jacket and bowtie that makes him look more flushed and pre-dinner tipsy than he is. He's got his head tipped back expectantly and there’s still a bit of patience in him. 'Who was gonna be the judge of that – you?'
Fredo snorts into his drink and Mama smiles easy, finally. Pretty soon they've got the radio turned up with Tommy Dorsey coming through strong and the window all Christmas card perfect with the snow coming down clear and brilliant against the warm outside lights, and Michael finds he can answer questions about college after all with another glass of wine warming up his insides and letting him take up more space on the sofa. Class is fine; Hanover's tiny but they go to Boston on the varsity bus most weekends; he got to dissect a person last month in his anatomy class. A man? A woman. You got a girlfriend? Sonny charges in, like these things might be related. This question feels less aggressive, this time, but he says no anyway and they move along to the girl Fredo's been seeing. Some tall north Italy broad with red hair Mama can wrinkle her nose at. They talk long enough the tension goes and then comes back in a slow climb until Mama mentions that people are coming from seven and rises determinedly for the kitchen. Michael feels one particular knot in his gut unclench.
He heads upstairs to take a leak, knocking Fredo's knee clear on his way. No sign of Connie, though there's a crack of light under her door; he runs by a few quick potential scenarios and lets it be. No point sticking his nose where he’s not wanted. Michael allows himself a long careful stare in the bathroom mirror to see what and where exactly's unsettling his sister, just for himself, and though he knows every new space and stretch in obsessive almost magic-like terms he tries to take the sum of the past year exactly from today with what he's learned from two years of a medical degree: the particular squareness that shapes his chin, the day-old stubble, the haughty rise in his cheekbones, the contradictory lingering fullness to his lips that Kay loyally insists is an Italian thing. Michael taps his reflection's mouth with two critical fingertips and straightens his tie. 'No problem,' he whispers, and leans on his own accent like he does to make Phillips Exeter boys back off so he really believes himself: ''Ey, no praaahblem.'
Headlights flash past the bathroom window. Mike checks his watch reflexively. The hour isn't up 'til Pop gets home.
Things are easier once the house fills with family and other people’s gossip and enough heat from the ovens to steam up every window. To the kids and the older people they see less, he’s one of the many blessedly anonymous cousins or soldiers who comes in and out of the house on Christmas and keeps to the corners. He knows how to play this – he defaults to Italian to make himself more of a stranger – but the old people look at him sideways and see Corleone, one way or another. Probably they think he’s died. Bastard son dragged up from somewhere and allowed across Carmela's doorstep after all these years, God love her, is what they’re assuming now.
Pop won't like that. Hell, maybe he will – Michael hasn't seen him in a full year.
Last New Year's Eve, and he was sitting in a dress with his own clothes packed away tight in a bag upstairs. Pop told him he looked beautiful and he rang in 1939 puking his guts out and punching the tile floor helpless in the bathroom. It feels so far removed now, he can't even picture someone else acting it in a play – which is definitely good, he supposes, better than the alternative, but it's left him not knowing how to behave. Mama being in the kitchen turns out to be a relief; he's desperately copying Fredo and Sonny, trying to know how often to touch her. Figuring out what Pop will think is like asking himself to do astrophysics on the fly. Michael wipes his palms on his trousers and wills himself back into the action of the living room.
The radio's blaring Christmas carols that make the house boom and rattle. Some aunt grabs him and kisses his cheek absently – how's college, baby? Bene, okay. Sonny appears at his elbow and hands him a glass of whiskey.
'Do me a favour, okay?' he says low, clinking glasses. 'Ask Pop how things went for me.'
Michael raises an eyebrow. This is ordinarily his eldest brother's prerogative. 'What's up?'
'Ahh-' Sonny's scanning the room already, lingering on every woman they're not related to. 'He's pissed at me for something. He won't get mad if you ask.'
'Not my business, remember? Ask Fredo.'
Sonny laughs, his broad face splitting incredulous as he glances over. 'Man – Mike. You don't get it, huh? You get out of the doghouse when you've been away so long. You didn't get me a present, right? Use me some of that credit.'
Michael nods half to himself at the use of his name. Sonny's been strange and impatient about it, often lapsing into the kind of talk he levelled Michael's way when they were younger – so you a fag or a dyke now? – but he's also made an internal peace quicker than most. Fredo's never quite qualified as a kid brother and Sonny seems to like having one. 'I think I really gotta play my cards right this time…’
'He won't mind.' Sonny tugs one-fingered at the chain around his neck and nods at someone across the room. 'Don't worry 'bout it, Mikey, you look great. Jesus. Just ask him.'
'What're they up to, then?'
'I don't know. Tom wouldn't tell me. Son of a bitch.' He roars a hello and breaks away suddenly across the room to drape his arms around Sandy Mancini's neck.
Michael purses his lips thoughtfully and rubs his nose. His cousin Tony’s staring at him from the other side of the room; he can feel his own shoulders hunching in response. Hastily, he turns and pirouettes around a parade of kids in their dress clothes and spare kitchen pots on their heads, down the hallway to the front door for a cigarette.
It’s blessedly silent and sharp out here, no sound but the creak of bodyguards’ boots at the end of the driveway. Snow has filled in all the tracks from just an hour ago. Perhaps nothing is going to happen after all.
Michael turns his face up to the falling wet and lets himself breathe, the cigarette pack turning damp in his palm, and finds he doesn’t mind knowing the headlights cutting up the night down the road are his father’s.
'Take me next year,' Kay suggests lazily. Her hand warm on his stomach, their feet entwined, snow still piling up on the windowsill with the radiator clicking hollow and tired.
Michael cracks his eyes half-open and yawns loud at the ceiling. It's nearly dawn, maybe. Time slowed and stopped whenever they called out for room service champagne. The nice young couple in Room 14 got a Christmas discount – Pop calling over, Michael supposes woozily, but here they really are the nice young couple in Room 14 and that can just feel nice for the evening. It is still so new. Kay rolls onto her bare side and stretches out to smile at him through her curls, nudging his hip with her knuckles to prompt a response.
'Maybe,' he allows, and blinks at her sternly. 'If you dye your hair and change your last name to – Rossi, or something. That should check out okay.'
She huffs a breath and pushes his dark hair back none too gently. 'Stop being stupid.'
He holds his hands up over his face in surrender. 'Yes, ma'am. May I remind you it's Christmas?'
'What has that got to do with it?'
'Let me live? And pass my drink?'
Kay watches him a moment longer, then bends to kiss him carefully. Michael follows her in the gloom, summoning up just enough momentum to smudge away the straying corner of her left-on lipstick with a gentle fingertip.
'It went okay with your dad, right?'
He sighs and closes his eyes. 'Yeah.’
Is this my youngest son? It was what he wanted to hear, but it felt so like a genuine question Michael cannot say, still. He turns it over again.
'So, next year?'
'We'll see, okay?’
‘If your sister invites us to her wedding.’
‘She won’t be doing the inviting.’
‘But if we are.’ She curls closer, pulling the comforter back up to their chins and shutting out the morning a little longer. ‘We’re going, right?’
‘Kay.’
‘We don’t have anything left to worry about, baby.’
Sleepy and muffled against his chest, her voice still has the kind of firm conviction she reserves for butting into the conversations he has with himself. Michael slides a hand through her hair and nods so she can feel it, enough of a reassurance that she won’t ask again.