Work Text:
“When you’re home
Summer nights are cooler
When you’re home
And that song you are
Hearing is the
Neighborhood just
Cheering you along--”
- Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
Even as Derek hits the call button, he hears Dex’s voice in his head, telling him how privileged he is to be able to do this.
And full disclosure: like, he gets it. For all the baggage that’s written on his skin, that he carries on his body, he knows what his family’s money gives him. He’s never once not been grateful for it, especially not on days like this, when the quiet of Samwell gets under his nails, when he thinks he might literally kill for a burrito that wasn’t made by a white kid in the dining hall, when somehow even the fresh air coming off the lake feels so stifling he feels like he might choke on it.
He calls his mom, and when she picks up on the second ring, concern in her voice (because he hates phone calls, prefers either texting or FaceTime--would rather have simple typed letters or full contact, not voices without faces, where he has to read too much into tone without expression), he blurts out, “Can I come home for the weekend?”
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and Derek holds his breath. “Sweetheart,” his mother says. And then, “Are you okay?”
Derek hears what she isn’t asking. “I’m okay,” he says. “I just.” He swallows. “I don’t have a game this weekend, and I only have one class on Fridays and I can get out of that, and I just need--”
I miss you, he doesn’t say, but he knows she can hear it in his voice. She always does.
Sure enough, she says, “Oh, hayiti,” softly, in the same voice she’s used since he was small. “Of course, love. Of course you can.”
Less than five minutes later, he has an email from his mama, confirmation of a train ticket leaving South Station on Thursday night.
Derek closes his eyes, and feels something loosen in his chest.
…
The express Acela from South Station to Penn takes three and a half hours. Derek leans back in his seat and leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the scenery flash by, fast enough that it makes him dizzy, a little. He closes his eyes and dozes for part of the time, writes for a little more of it--small, half-formed lines of poetry that don’t really go anywhere, that tumble between languages even as they scrawl across the page of his notebook.
Around eight, just as he can start to see the lights of Manhattan in the distance, his phone buzzes. He shakes himself out of his reverie a little, and opens the message.
Mamaiiiiiiiii
will meet u in pennsy! :)
text when ur train gets in <3
Derek laughs despite himself. Mama has a PhD from NYU. He’s read her dissertation; it’s a work of art. And yet, given an iPhone, she texts like a twelve-year-old.
Mamaiiiiiiiii
will do. Love you mama
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 !!!
He smiles, slipping his phone back into his pocket, and leans head back against the window again.
The skyline draws closer, bright and glittering. It’s a clear night, and this far out, it looks like a photograph.
Hello, beautiful, he thinks, and smiles.
To his surprise, the train gets in on time, and he shoulders his backpack--he packed light; it’s just a weekend, and he’s got clothes at home--and heads off the platform. He slides through the crowds with an ease born of long years of practice, moving half on autopilot, headphones in and music on.
The Pennsy is about as full as it usually is on a given weeknight, that weird mix of commuters, travelers, and late-night office workers. He takes advantage of his height, scanning the food court for--there.
It only takes a glance for him to realize that she must have come from the gallery tonight, not her studio. She’s head to toe in black, heels-tights-dress-coat, stopped by the pop of violet of the scarf around her neck and the turquoise of her earrings. Her curls are swept into a loose knot at the back of her head, her eyes fixed on her phone, lips pursed in the way she does when she’s composing an email to someone she doesn’t want to be dealing with.
Derek grins, adjusts the strap of his backpack, and creeps closer.
“Don’t even think it, quapito,” she says, not looking up from her phone, when he’s about a foot away.
He falters, caught. “How did you--”
She slips her phone into her handbag. “Tienes dos metros de altura, mijito,” she says, but she’s smiling. “Come here, baby.”
He has to bend down to hug her--and fair, she’s right, he is too tall to sneak, though he’s not quite two meters tall, Jesus--and he takes a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scent of her jasmine perfume. “Hi,” he mumbles.
“Hi, honey.” Mama squeezes him tight, firm, deceptively strong. She pulls back after a moment, studying him with dark, calculating eyes. “You look tired. Are you sleeping?” He shrugs, and she flicks his ear. “Mijo.”
“Mama,” he whines. “I’m in college. I’m not supposed to sleep.”
She snorts. “You don’t get that line of bullshit from your mother,” she says. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here.” She reaches behind her to the table she’s leaning against, and hands him a warm bag. He raises his eyes and peers into it, and is immediately hit with the hot, sweet smells of coffee, chocolate and salt.
“Fuuuuuuck, yes, Mama,” he says, reaching in. “Sea salt espresso cookie?”
“Like I’d forget your favorite,” she says fondly, reaching up to pat his cheek with a manicured hand. “Come. Eat and walk, Ammi’s making dinner. Do you want to get a cab, or--oh, Derek, honestly.”
Shameless, he swallows around the mouthful of cookie in his mouth--Mario by Mary gets him, okay, they get him in his soul--and shrugs. “We can take the train if you don’t mind swiping me, my card’s super expired.”
Mama hums. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her wallet, flipping through the card pockets and pulling out a Metro card. “Here,” she says. “Should have about forty on it, I got it when I left mine in my other purse last week. That should last you the weekend.”
He slips it into his back pocket and leans down to kiss her cheek, careful of the cookie crumbs. “Gracias, Mama.”
She takes half of his remaining cookie, eyes sparkling, and says, “Alright, let’s go.”
…
They take the 1 uptown because the C looks like a crowded mess, and have a brief staring contest over which of them should sit down in the open seat on the train. Derek wins because Mama’s wearing three-inch heels, and then has to deal with her gloating from 59th to 66th when he stumbles exactly once when the train hits a bump.
“This is homophobic,” he tells her.
“Try me, my baby,” she says dryly, blowing him a kiss. A teenager a few seats away who has Upper West Side baby queer written all over him giggles, and Derek winks at him. The kid blushes. Mama rolls her eyes at Derek, and he sticks his tongue out at her. She beckons him down for a kiss, and flicks his ear again. Business as usual.
They get off at 86th and walk from there, Mama’s arm looped through his. He keeps his steps even to match hers, but what she lacks in height she makes up for in working in Midtown, so their paces end up pretty similar.
Compared to the rush of downtown outside of Penn, their neighborhood feels almost like the suburbs, quiet and relaxed. They pass a few neighbors Derek’s known since he was little and stop for passing greetings. Mrs. Gomez’s aging pitt mix, Lupe, remembers him, and slobbers happily all over his face. Derek finds himself on his ass on the sidewalk with sixty pounds of dog in his lap while Mama snickers above him, and hears the click of her phone camera. He’s sure this will be on her Facebook later.
Finally, with a last scratch to Lupe’s ears, they say their goodbyes and walk the last half-block to the brownstone. Mama fishes the key out of her purse and unlocks the door while Derek bounces slightly on his heels, suddenly full of a slightly nervous energy.
He hasn’t been home in weeks--in months, not since the summer. What if everything’s different; Ammi’s been saying for years that she’s going to redo the kitchen, what if all his favorite things are gone, what if they painted, what if they turned his room into a yoga studio or something like Mama used to tease him about, what if--
“Mijito?”
Mama’s hands are firm on his arm, and he realizes with a jolt that his breathing is coming faster. He forces himself to take a long, slow inhale, and meets her sharp, worried eyes. She takes one hand off his arm and puts it against his cheek instead, gentle. “¿Estás bien, baby?”
Derek swallows. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Si, Mama, estoy bien.”
She studies his face for a long moment, and then smiles softly, inclining her head toward the door. “Come see your mother, love. She’s missed you.”
Her cool fingertips pat his cheekbone, once, and then she gives him a firm push into the house.
And it’s home.
It smells the same, looks the same, feels the same. The walls of the entryway are still the same soft sage that Mama’s been threatening to repaint since Derek was twelve; the pair of Vans he left by the door in July are still sitting on the shoe rack; Ammi’s familiar pocketbook is carelessly tossed onto the entry table.
“Hang up your jacket,” Mama calls to him, but Derek’s moving on autopilot, towards the sound of singing in the kitchen.
Ammi’s sweet, easy alto is lifted along with an LP of jazz standards, drifting in from the old record player in the living room. Her back is to him as she stands at the stove, moving something in a pan. Derek inhales deeply, smells saffron and garlic and ginger, and grins.
His mother turns absently to open the spice cabinet, and when she closes it again, she catches sight of him leaning against the wall and yelps, nearly dropping the bottle of what he thinks might be paprika before turning the heat down on the stove. “Derek,” she exclaims, face lighting up. “Marhabaan bik fi albayt, baby, hi!”
She pulls him into a close hug, and he grins, letting her fold him into her arms. He’s been bigger than her since he was fourteen, but her hugs never fail to feel like safety to him. In her arms, the world isn’t terrifying; he doesn’t have to be afraid of anything, not even his own head.
It feels like a long time before she pulls away, and her eyes are bright and glistening at the corners. Derek clears his throat and brushes at her eyelashes carefully, more for his own benefit than for hers, really. “’ant aldhdhahab alatakhat alttarkib alkhass bik,” he says, a little hoarsely.
She clicks her tongue dismissively. “Nahyk ean ’ann,” she says. She switches abruptly to English. “How was your trip?”
“It was good. Fine.” He glances over his shoulder at Mama, who’s come in behind him, rolling her eyes when she sees he’s still wearing his jacket. “Thanks for sending the ticket so fast.”
“Of course, hayiti.” She tiptoes up to kiss his cheek--she’s five-three without heels, and unlike Mama, who doesn’t mind keeping hers on for the extra height for a little while, kicks hers off the millisecond she can--and then turns the pan on the stove back on. “You’re always welcome to come, baby. This is your home, too.”
“I know, I just…” He shrugs, and goes for false lightness, draping himself into one of the stools at the breakfast bar and drawling, “that anxiety, doooe.”
Ammi glances over her shoulder at him, frowning slightly. “Are you taking your medicine?”
He rolls his eyes. “Nem, Ammi.”
Mama takes his hat off his head, ruffles his hair a little firmly, and smushes his beanie back on. “Don’t use that voice,” she says. “She’s allowed to worry.” She leans over and kisses Ammi’s cheek. “Did you tell him about his surprise, cariña?”
Derek perks up, because he’s got a depressive, insecure streak a mile wide, but he’s still a youngest kid. “Surprise?”
Ammi chuckles. “In your room, habibi,” she says.
Derek shoulders his backpack, and barely catches her yell of “dinner in ten minutes!” before he’s halfway up the stairs.
The door to his room is closed, and he opens it without thinking, figuring that Filipa, the housekeeper, probably just shut it after the last time she dusted. He flicks the light on and tosses his backpack onto the bed, just as something solid and human flings itself into him from his closet.
“¡Qué demonios mierda!” Derek yelps, staying on his feet because he regularly takes hits from people way bigger than whoever just jumped out at him, but then the person starts cackling in his ear in the way a burglar or axe murderer definitely Would Not, and it clicks. “I--Farah?”
“Sup, baby brother?” She climbs off his back and he turns around to face her, reeling slightly. Farah grins up at him, her hair falling loose around her face in its short, curly bob, their shared green eyes sharper and a little more mischievous in her narrower face.
“What the fuck,” he says, and then pulls her into a proper hug. Farah laughs, hugging him back. “What the fuck, what are you doing here?”
“Ammi texted and said you were coming home for the weekend, of course I came home, tonto!” She pulls his beanie down over his eyes, and he pulls her hair in retaliation.
They grapple for a few minutes--he pulls his punches, because he’s 6’2” and an NCAA athlete; she does not, because she never has, and he’s pretty sure she’s learned a few dirty tricks since they last did this. They end up on the floor, him on his stomach, her perched cross-legged on the small of his back. “She also said you were having a rough time,” she adds, conversationally, like they never stopped talking. “What’s up, papi, is everything okay?”
Derek rolls his eyes. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “I was just, like--” He squirms. “Will you get off?”
“No,” she says.
“Ammi,” he yells.
“Farah,” Ammi yells back. “Get off your brother!”
“Baby,” Farah says, but climbs off and plops down on the floor. “You’re telling me later.”
He sits up. “You totally only came home for the free laundry,” he says.
She smiles, showing very white teeth. “Tal vez,” she purrs, and gets to her feet. “C’mon, Ammi’s making saffron chicken and couscous and I’m literally gonna die if I don’t get some, I’ve been inhaling the fumes for like an hour.”
Derek snorts. “Until you were hiding in my closet.”
“Yeah, where I was inhaling the fumes of your old hockey gear, which, gross.”
He adores her.
...
Dinner tastes like all the best parts of his childhood, sweet and spicy and savory, hot in the ways that build soft and subtle and warm, not in the ways that burn at the back of his eyes and throat. Ammi gives him firsts and seconds and hovers like she’s worried he won’t want thirds, and Mama finally pushes her into her seat and says “he’s a grown boy, Amali, he can serve himself.” The conversation flows in a mix of English and French, since those are the only languages all four of them speak, and there’s always been a house rule about speaking languages that anyone isn’t fluent in at the dinner table. Farah tells them about her thesis research--she’s in her last year at NYU, getting her degree in Media, Culture, and Communication, writing her research in depictions of psychotropic medications in mass market media.
Derek’s pretty sure he could write that for her, but he’ll read her version. Hers will probably be more nuanced.
They’re halfway through clearing the dishes when someone’s phone starts buzzing. Ammi and Mami both check theirs, and Farah, blinking, looks at hers and shrugs.
Then everyone looks at Derek.
He blinks. “Oh, shit, me?” he says, confused, because pretty much the only people who ever call him are in this room. His phone is on the breakfast bar, and he picks it up, flipping it over and startling when he sees Dex’s name on the display. “Uh,” he says, and gestures to the hallway. “I’m just gonna. Uh.”
Farah smiles like a shark. “Oh, don’t let us stop you,” she says, picking up Derek’s plate.
He beats a hasty retreat to the stairs, picking up the call right before it would go to voicemail. “Dex?”
“Nursey?” Dex’s voice comes through tinny and confused. “Dude, where the fuck are you?”
“I’m at home?” Derek sits down on the stairs. He has no idea what’s going on. Dex sounds worried, which makes exactly zero sense.
“What? I went by your room, you weren’t--”
“No, like--Like, I’m home home. In the city. New York.” It feels weird having to clarify that.
There’s a beat of silence. “You’re...what? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
Why does everyone keep asking him that? Derek rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says. “I just--We didn’t have a game, I just, I needed to get off campus for a little bit, you know?”
A thought occurs to him, and his anxiety spikes. “Is everything okay there? Are you okay?”
“What? Yeah, man, we’re all fine, just, like--no one knew where you were.”
Derek feels a guilty twinge. He’d emailed the coaches to let them know he’d be gone over the weekend, but yeah, he hadn’t told anyone on the team. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I...I didn’t think you’d miss me.”
“I didn’t say I missed you,” Dex says, but he doesn’t sound pissed. More...fond. Exasperated. “When’re you coming back?”
“Sunday,” Derek says. “Seriously, dude, I’m sorry. I’ll let you know next time.”
“Yeah, yeah. Have fun in the city, Nurse.”
He says it dryly, but with a laugh curling around the edges of the words, and Derek’s smiling despite himself as he hangs up.
Both his mothers and Farah are lingering in the doorway to the stairwell when he comes back, clearly eavesdropping. “Wow,” he says. “Subtle.”
“Who was that?” Farah asks, linking her arm through his as he squeezes past them to get to the living room.
Derek flushes. “No one,” he says.
“It sounded like a boy,” she chirps.
“It was a guy from the team,” he corrects. “So like, you know, technically.” Farah arches her eyebrows. “Like,” Derek backpedals. “Like, he’s a boy, but he’s not a boy, he’s--oh, fuck you, Farah.”
“Ammi,” Farah says, “Derek’s swearing.”
“You hear worse on the subway,” Ammi says dryly, flicking both of them on the back of the head as she motions them towards the couch. “Come. You can come help me beat Mama at scrabble.”
Farah sticks her tongue out at him. Derek considers pulling her hair again.
Instead, he plays JUKEBOX on a triple-word score and dominates the game, which he figures is just as good.
…
His moms have an early morning, like always, so they say goodnight after the game, pressing kisses to his head and Farah’s. “I’m glad you’re home, baby,” Ammi murmurs to him, holding him close enough that he can smell her shampoo through the folds of her hijab, and he closes his eyes and hugs her back.
“Me too,” he says, his throat suddenly thick. “Thanks, Ammi. I love you.”
“I love you too, habibi.” She kisses his forehead again, and then takes Mama’s hand, and the two of them head upstairs together, leaving him and Farah in the living room alone.
“So,” Farah says, after a moment. “Roof?”
“Roof,” he agrees. “Meet you in ten?”
She nods. They high-five, and head up the stairs.
In his room, he pulls a pair of Andover sweatpants a worn henley out of his dresser. The shirt’s a little tight across the shoulders now--he’s put on more muscle in his arms since starting Samwell--but he’d packed his SMH hoodie, so he tugs that on to compensate. He grabs the strawberry-patterned pencil case from his backpack and then, as an afterthought, the comforter from his bed, and meets Farah in the hallway, and they head up to the roof garden together.
It’s a cold night for October, but clear, or as clear as it gets, for Manhattan. Not that they can see stars, really, but the dark sky is inky and smooth. Farah has the blanket from her bed as well, and they both wrap themselves up and sit down in the adirondack chairs by the roof garden, stretching out the long legs they’d both inherited from their dad, along with the strength of their facial features and a tendency to bottle up their emotions and drink too much.
“Alright,” Derek says after a minute. “I’ve got weed, what do you have?”
Farah laughs, a soft, startled sound. “Liquor,” she says, producing a flask from inside her pajamas, which he’s pretty sure are actually a onesie. “Wasn’t sure if I should actually offer you any. What are you taking now?”
He makes a face at her. “Zoloft,” he says. “And it’s fine.” He elects not to tell her that he regularly throws caution to the wind and gets bitch-ass shitfaced, mostly because he’s not in the mood for a lecture. “I’m literally a giant, and there’s not enough in there split between the two of us to cause a problem.”
She shrugs. “I trust you.” She nods to his pencil case. “Packing us a vape, then?”
“Bowl, if your delicate lungs can handle it.”
“Querido,” she drawls. “I was smoking weed before your innocent ass even arrived at dear Phillips Academy.”
“It’s adorable that you think I never did drugs before I got my ass dragged out to Andover,” he says, but unzips the case. He starts picking apart buds with practiced hands, setting them into the grinder, and then packs the bowl easily.
As a courtesy, he offers her the first hit. She laughs, and extends the flask to him. They spend a few minutes exchanging substances in easy, companionable silence.
“So,” Farah says finally, soft and calm, comfortable. “Why are you really home, papi? Out of nowhere?”
Derek exhales smoke, tilting his head back. Samwell’s silence makes him crazy, but damn, the stars are fucking pretty. “Do you ever,” he says, and then pauses, trying to think of the right words. Farah’s been back in the city for for four years, so she may have forgotten. “When you were at Andover, like. Did you ever feel this--just this itch, under your skin? Like the quiet was too much, like there was too much open space? That the smells were wrong?”
“Mm.” Farah closes her eyes. She looks soft, her features visible in the city lights. It’s never dark here, Derek thinks. He’d missed that. He’d never had to learn to sleep in the dark until he was fourteen, in his dorm room at Andover. It’s still strange to him, sleeping in darkness, in silence.
“All the time,” she says finally. “You might have been too young to remember, but I used to call home. Like, I’d--I’d beg, and beg, and ask to come back. But Dad got sway in schooling, remember?” Derek makes a disgruntled noise, the one that means yeah, and she huffs. “Yeah, of course you do.”
He trades her the bowl for the flask, and takes a sip of the whiskey. “Have you talked to him lately?”
It’s false lightness in the question. Her shoulders move in a shrug. “No,” she says. “You?”
“No.”
That’ll be the last they talk of it, he’s sure, until Father’s Day rolls around and Ammi makes them call. Farah hits the bowl and then says, “So, your boy.”
Shit. “He’s not,” he says, and then, “I don’t have a boy, Farah.”
“You were blushing when you hung up the phone.”
“I’m black, I don’t blush.”
“Bullshit,” she sing-songs at him, sweetly intoxicated, and then she laughs. “You sounded like you like him.
“He’s on my team,” he whines, and she laughs again.
“Okay,” she says. “Does your heart know that?”
“Yes,” he insists.
“Does your dick know that?”
Derek chokes on whiskey. “Farah!”
She cackles. “I’m just saying,” she says.
“You’re the worst,” he grumbles.
“Me amas,” she teases, sugar sweet, reaching out to slip one hand under his beanie and scritch at his curls.
He sighs. “I do,” he says. “I really do.” He leans his head back again, looking up.
Something feels loose in his chest, being here. He’ll have to go inside soon, he knows, but for now, he’s happy just being here, listening to the sounds around him. He can hear a siren--there are always sirens--a train, farther off, a dog barking. Someone laughing, down on the street. Someone singing. Music playing.
“Hey,” Farah murmurs. Her hand, cool and slim, slips into his. “Are you okay?”
Derek takes a deep breath. “I am,” he says. He smiles, a soft, easy thing that comes to his lips gently and without force. “I really, really am.”
She squeezes her fingers around his. “Good,” she says.
They finish the bowl and the flask, and then, long after both are gone, sit together in silence, watching the starless sky, and listening to the city breathe.