OOSB: that's what friends are for

Nita and Carmela aren't often on Earth at the same time these days -- Nita has spent more time off-planet than on in the last few months, and Carmela is practically always bouncing off on jaunts to resupply various contacts with chocolate and other Earth contraband. Mostly they run into each other at the Crossings.

Although saying they "run into each other" makes it sound a lot more casual than "Carmela had Sker'ret alert her the second Nita stepped off a transit pad so she could descend on Nita's sleeping quarters ASA-fucking-P." Which is what actually happened.

"I was blowing up your phone for like three days!"

"Yeah," Nita sighs, opening her door wider and stepping aside to let Carmela storm in, "I noticed."

"You can't just ignore texts like that! I mean, you do stupidly dangerous shit all the time!"

"I know, 'Mela."

"Like the last thing I heard was about an Earth wizard on Wyih-3 blowing up a fucking volcano and Kit said you were in that area and the only reason I knew you weren't dead was Kit said he'd have heard--"

"I know!"

Carmela stops, brought up short by Nita's tone, and blinks at her.

". . . Sorry," Nita says, and presses the heels of her palms to her eyes. "I know. I'm sorry you -- I'm sorry I worried you."

Carmela takes a deep breath, frowning. "It's okay. Sorry I freaked. So -- what is up."

"Nothing. I don't know. Nothing dangerous. Just stuff."

"How about you pick just one of those?"

Nita sighs. "Just drama."

"What kind of drama?"

"Matt drama."

"Uh oh. Is he in trouble?"

. . . Nita winces. "No. He's fine. I guess we're fighting."

"You're fighting? Now? You’ve been broken up for, what, a year?”

“I know!”

Carmela puts up her hands. “Whoa, whoa, okay, I’m sorry.”

Nita makes a frustrated noise and turns away, pacing over to the window. “That’s part of what we’re fighting about. I guess. I don’t know, I was just, I was like the postergirl for overattached ex and we got mad at each other and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“. . . Do you want to talk about it?” Carmela asks cautiously.

“Not really, no.”

Carmela purses her lips. “Okay, then, look, we’re at the Crossings, let’s go get some Sex On A Pan-Galactic Beaches and do some retail therapy—“

“No, thanks."

“Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“I’m really not in the mood.”

“Exactly why you should come do something distracting.”

“No.”

“Well,” Carmela says, flopping onto the bed, “those are your options. Talk to me or go shopping with me. I’d say you should at least take me up on the drinks, but if you want to talk it out sober, bueno.”

Nita turns and stares at her, half incredulous, half angry. Carmela raises her eyebrows and leans back on her hands.

“Carmela, I—“

Brightly: “Those are your options.”

“Why?”

Carmela raises her eyebrows. “Why?” She holds up a finger. “Uh, one, gossip, obvs. Two . . .” She trails off, watching Nita watch her, and sighs.

“Okay, look, Nita – the last time you stopped talking to us and, like, ran off like this, it was right after your mom died.”

Nita blinks, taken aback.

“So.” Carmela sits up and spreads her hands. “I think no matter what you say, this is kind of a big deal, and I’m worried. And I’m gonna make you feel better, one way or another, so either come get shit-faced with me or start talking.”

Nita is silent for a moment, staring, then drops her gaze to the floor and says ruefully, “You sound like an inquisitor.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Ve haff vays of makink you talk.”

“Yes ve haff. C’mon, spill. What happened?”

Nita sighs, deflating, and comes over to join Carmela on the bed. There’s a long moment of silence before she starts.

“I saw Matt kissing someone in the bar.”

. . . This is a good start, Carmela thinks.

“Uh, someone I don’t – his name’s Jordie. We don’t get along.” Nita rubs her face. “I was – I don’t know, I made a bad first impression, I asked him if he’d slept with Matt because it was right when I found out he’d been sleeping with more people than I thought, and the demon stuff was happening, and just – I apologized but I guess that wasn’t enough for him. Anyway.” She takes a deep breath. “So I saw Matt kissing him and it – hurt. It really hurt. Which is stupid. Like, we’re not together, so it shouldn’t matter who he’s with. I was okay with him being with other people when we were together.”

Carmela’s eyebrows go up. “Were you?”

Nita stops, derailed, and blinks at Carmela for a second – then sighs and looks down at her lap miserably.

“Mostly.”

“It’s okay if you weren’t,” Carmela points out with a shrug. “Like, most American humans are more monogamous than not.”

“I think I could’ve been okay with it if we’d talked about it more.” Nita shakes her head. “I don’t know. I fucked that up too.”

Carmela bites her tongue on her response to that one and rewinds the conversation in her head a little. “It’s not stupid it hurt when you saw him kissing this guy, though, you know. You dated for what, a year?”

“Two.”

“And then he dumped you, right? Feeling weird about him being with someone new is fine.”

“Is yelling at him about the someone new fine?”

Carmela winces. “Oh. Thaaat was probably not so great.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you, like, confront him?” Because while Nita has been known to do some stupidly in-the-face-of-douchebaggery stuff, that seems way stupider than normal for her.

“No, it – I went to this universe to help out a robot I met right after I saw them, and then Matt showed up there and I was – I overreacted. And then” – she makes sarcastic jazz hands – “we got to go on an adventure and teach robots about the power of love.” Dropping her hands, she pulls her knees to her chest. “And I said a bunch of, a bunch of stupid shit I shouldn’t have said, because I didn’t mean all of it and he wouldn’t listen to the stuff I did mean. So I apologized, and he wants to talk about it, like capital-T Talk, and I just . . . I don’t know if I can handle it.” She hugs her knees. “I hate it. I hate feeling like this.”

“Feeling like what?”

“Stuck.” Nita’s shoulders hunch. “Broken.”

Oh, shit. This is getting more intense than Carmela was expecting. She’s gonna need some retail therapy after this. Possibly from the home weaponry shopping channel.

“Like, he’s obviously moved on,” Nita continues. “And I’m – like, for a while I thought if I’d just tried harder or done something different, we could have worked out, you know? But now I think maybe I’m just really fucking bad at this. Maybe I’m just too screwed up. I can’t even handle being single. I did everything wrong when we were together and apparently I’m still doing things wrong when we’re apart and I don’t like being in my own skin and I just . . .”

She trails off.

Carmela lets the silence stretch as long as she can stand it, to give Nita a chance to continue if she wants. But “as long as she can stand it” ends up being about five seconds.

“Okay, so, can I say some things?”

Nita shrugs, nods. Her forehead is against her knees.

Carmela takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, first, you are not broken. Okay? I’m just gonna keep saying that. You’re a badass and you save the world every other week and you are not broken. Having a bad break up is not this – defining thing. It’s a shitty thing, but it’s not what defines you.”

Nita takes a long, slow breath, which sounds very much to Carmela like the kind of noise a person makes when they’re trying really hard not to cry.

“It is not wrong to feel bad about being broken up. It’s not wrong to feel shitty about your ex hooking up with someone else.” Carmela . . . is losing her calm a little. “What is wrong is for someone to make you feel like you’re intrinsically fucked up because you have basic human reactions to shitty awkward situations.”

Nita lifts her head. “He’s not trying to make me feel bad.” She manages a wan, wry smile. “I do that all on my own.”

“Okay. He’s not trying to. But he’s doing it anyway.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Nita protests.

Carmela takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay. But I think you need to think about the possibility that he may be a good guy, but that doesn’t mean he’s good for you.” 

 

 

In retrospect she probably should have figured that would be the line that would push Nita over into crying.

“. . . Do you want a hug?”

Nita nods, sniffling, and Carmela scoots over to wrap an arm around Nita’s shoulders.

“I hate everything,” Nita mumbles soggily.

“Yeah, me too,” Carmela murmurs. Especially, at the moment, a certain floofy-haired hipster douchebag.

The crying jag doesn’t last that long; Nita gets herself under control and wipes at her cheeks with both hands. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Relationships suck. That’s why I don’t get into them.”

That gets a weak laugh out of Nita, which is better than nothing. Carmela gives her a smile.

“You know what? Fuck the booze. Let’s get ice cream and watch something with explosions.”

“Will that help?”

“Can’t hurt.”



Nita’s quiet through a lot of Die Hard, but she eats her ice cream and laughs at the jokes and grins at the explosions. Carmela will take it for the moment.

It really sucks being friends with wizards sometimes. Nita totally wouldn’t approve of Carmela going and doing something drastic to Matt’s balls. Or kneecaps.

Really a shame.