Marco blew the steam off of his coffee before taking a tender sip. The scalding liquid burned his tongue and he scowled at it. Damn interdimensional coffee is always too hot, he thought bitterly. Kelly gave him a I-told-you-so look and held up her iced coffee. Marco's scowl grew indignant.

"It's coffee, Kelly. It wasn't made to be served cold. That's like having a peanut butter and fish sandwich. The coffee's supposed to be hot, just, you know, not this hot."

Kelly's mouth curved up into a smirk. "Sure, sure. You just keep burning yourself while I get to actually enjoy my drink."

"Heathen."

Kelly giggled. After she had relented on the offer to get coffee, she and Marco had made a quick stop by Mewni to pick up Glossaryck (who had just been about to eat a tub of paste, thinking it was glue). After that, they stopped by the best known coffee within the universe: The coffee dimension. Marco had ended up using his last ten dollars to pay for the coffee, despite Kelly arguing that she should pay for it. Marco had argued back that he needed to get rid of the remains of his six hundred and fifty dollars or be cursed with bad luck till his next check came in.

"Do you really think you'll be cursed if you don't spend the rest of your cash here?"

"Yeah," he replied adamantly. "There's only been one month where I didn't use all of the money in one day, and you know what happened that month? Star left, her kingdom got destroyed, and she nearly died. No thank you."

Kelly's eyebrows quirked up. "You think your lack of blowing all your money in one place is why everything went to hell?"

Marco stared down at his coffee for a long while. "I… no. It wasn't my fault that Toffee came back and did what he did, but still," he gripped his coffee cup just a little harder, "I don't want to lose Star again. Not like that. I- It makes me feel safer, that's all."

Kelly's amused look had transformed into a surprised and then a pensive expression. She looked down at her own coffee and bit her lip in thought. "I can see where you're coming from. I used to do that with… I used to do that a lot too."

Marco looked up to find Kelly's face scrunched up and tense. He knew who she was talking about. Kelly hadn't reacted to her most recent breakup with Tad like her previous breakups. Instead of crying and drowning her loneliness and depression in goblin dogs, she now seemed quietly distressed and bitter. He knew that she wanted to talk about it with someone, or at least needed to talk to someone about it, but he wasn't sure if right now was the time. Besides, he had asked her to accompany him for coffee to talk about more pressing matters.

"Soooooo," Marco said cautiously, unsure of how to approach the subject. "Your, uh- your rent." Kelly's body tensed up and she shifted around in her chair uncomfortably. Marco silently cursed himself for his lack of tact. He'd been as subtle as a freight train crashing into a oil rig.

"I'm not sure when I can pay you back. It might take a long time, but-"

Marco blinked his eyes and then shook his head vigorously. "No, no, I'm not asking about the money, the money doesn't matter." He stared right at her, imploring her to look back. She did. "I'm asking if you're going to be able to keep up with this month's rent."

Kelly pursed her lips and took another sip of her coffee. She exhaled and pushed some of her hair out of her face before replying, "I don't know. Depends on if I can keep the second job or not."

Marco cocked his head to the side. He knew about her first job, working at a local fast food joint: "The Milkyway Sliders", but he hadn't know that she was working a second one. Hell, from what he remembered, Kelly had already been working full time at the burger joint. "What's the job?"

Kelly let out a heavy sigh. "Garbage man. It's during the night, so it won't interfere with my time at slider joint."

Marco shook his head. "Geez, Kelly, that's like, what? Sixty hours a week?"

"Seventy," she corrected sourly. Then she shrugged as though it weren't a big deal. "It's a living."

"No, it's not," Marco countered. "It's survival. Are you sure there aren't any alternatives like…" he fumbled through his thoughts for a few seconds before snapping his fingers and declaring, "Your parents!" Then he blinked and quietly added, "Uh, do you have parents?"

Kelly snorted. "Yeah, I have parents, Marco," she replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, well, I-" Marco's cheeks flushed with embarrassment and he grew defensive. "Well, I've just never seen them or heard about them."

Kelly nodded soberly. "That's because I haven't talked to them for over a year."

Marco's embarrassment was replaced with shock. A whole year? He couldn't imagine himself not talking to his parents at least once a week, if not closer to once a day. Even while he was living with Star on Mewni, he had made sure to keep in touch with his family and friends on Earth. "A whole year? You haven't talked to them for a whole year?" Kelly nodded tightly. "Why?"

Kelly brushed her hair back behind her ears, a mostly symbolic and insecure gesture with her mop of untamable locks. When she spoke, her voice sounded resolute, calm, but her eyes didn't meet Marcos. "They didn't approve of Tad. That was it for me. There were other issues I had with them, but it mostly came down to him. I'd been dating him secretly for about a year before they found out. There was a lot of fighting and words said that shouldn't have been. In the end, it came down to either me or Tad. So I moved in with him. That was the last time I saw them."

Silence followed her words. No one else, save for a barista on her phone in the back room and Glossaryck, who had stopped his chewing of the table leg to look up, was in the café. A dying neon light just outside the building zipped and zeeped in the background. The smell of old coffee and small pastries became ever more present in the dimly lit room as Marco thought patiently. Then he stated quietly, "I guess this is the part where I ask you why you haven't done the obvious."

Kelly's eyes darted up to meet Marco's, then back down again. Her face grew tight with frustration and she gripped her coffee harder. "No."

"Why not?"

"I just- I just can't, Marco."

"You need to-"

"I don't need anyone!" She half shouted at him. Her grip on her coffee cup had tightened into a fist, and the crushed coffee cup splashed onto the table, Kelly, and Marco. Marco blinked coffee out of his eyes and stared imploringly at Kelly. Kelly looked down at her cup, winced, and then got up to get paper towels. She returned a moment later, her face cleaned up, and gave Marco some of the towels. They cleaned themselves and the table in silence, neither one looking at the other. Kelly sat back down and whispered, "Sorry."

Marco stared at her, waiting for her to talk. He waited almost half a minute before Kelly, more distressed and indignant than he'd ever seen her, said, "I grew addicted to Tad. Maybe that was partially because of the goblin dogs or the parties or our moments together, but I just- every time I was away from him, I kept getting sick and depressed and feeling so," she gulped and her voice trembled, "so useless."

A tear fell down Kelly's face. Marco had trouble breathing. He knew exactly what it felt like to fell useless, meaningless, worthless. It was part of the reason he'd wanted to go back to Mewni and on adventures with Star, because they were the only times he'd felt like he had a purpose, like his actions mattered. He remembered spending sixteen years with Heckapoo for the same reason. When he had first met Star, he'd rejected her at first until they had fought off Ludo for the first time. Of course, it hadn't been the fighting that had changed his mind, it was her talk with him right before the fight that had gotten him to take her in and become her friend…

Right?

"Tad and I argued. We fought. We broke up. We got back together. And then it all started again. For two years." Kelly shuddered. "It got to the point where, after one of our most recent break ups, I couldn't remember what made me happy besides Tad. I couldn't remember what I liked to do, what my hobbies had been, who I had been. All I knew was that I was Tad's girlfriend." She spit the last sentence out with venom. "So I broke up with him. For good. And I swore that I wouldn't rely on anyone else until I found out who I was first." Her eyes met with Marco's, furiously demanding that he challenge her. Marco's own cool gaze returned hers and he said calmly,

"Just because you don't need a hero doesn't mean you don't need a friend. Someone I trust dearly told me that."

Kelly's fire rose up and she almost lashed out again, but at Marco's calm exterior it faltered and died away. "I can't go back to them. Too much has been said. What if they…" she trailed off and shook her head.

Marco gave her a smile, gentle, warm smile. "Kelly," he admonished lightly, "they're your family. Do you love them?" Kelly gave a stiff, curt nod. "Then I'm sure they still love you. And I bet they're dying for the day that you go back to them and mend the bruises of the past. You just need to make the first move." Kelly seemed hesitant, so Marco added, "I can go with you if you want."

Kelly's eyes opened up wide. She was about to tell him no, but then she stopped. "I- yeah. Maybe." Then she smiled. It was a small yet warm smile, one that Marco hadn't seen since they're trip to the beach. He liked that smile a lot. Before Marco could react, Kelly wrapped her arms around him and gave him a quick hug. "Thank you, Marco. You're a great friend." Marco blinked, but before he could properly react, she was already back in her chair, still smiling warmly at him.

"Uh, yeah, anytime."

Kelly's smile widened. "You'd think with all the times Star has hugged you, you'd be more used to it by now."

Marco shrugged awkwardly. "A surprise hug is still a surprise hug, I guess."

Kelly nodded assent. Then she looked Marco dead in the eyes. "Alright, Marco. Your turn."

Marco gave her a dumb look. "What?"

Kelly's left eyebrow slowly rose up, apparently trying to escape from her head. "How's Star?"

"Oh, uh," Marco hadn't been prepared for the ball to enter his half of the court. "She's fine, you know." Kelly kept staring at him. "Well, you know, she's been busy lately with all of her princess duties and-" Kelly kept staring. Marco sighed. "She's on the edge of going crazy with stress. Eclipsa, meteora's reveal, the damage from Toffee, the monster racism, all of it is just too much. I'm pretty sure that the next thing to go wrong is going to be the hay that break the camel's back."

Kelly pursed her lips. "So you haven't told her?"

Marco scowled. "She's dating Tom right now and is relying on me to be her right hand man in all of this. Dropping that bomb on her would be a lot more than a single straw, you know? Besides, it won't do either of us any good, it'll just divide us more. It's better if I just keep it to myself and either wait for her to be ready or let it die off."

Kelly narrowed her eyes. "Die off?"

Marco shrugged genially. "Yeah, you know. Crushes come and go. Just look at Star. She had a crush on me only a few months ago and now she's with Tom. Maybe the same will happen with me."

Kelly's face broke out in a wide grin. "Marco," she said, barely keeping back the giggles, "You know that just because someone is dating someone doesn't mean that they're in love with that person. How often has Star run away from her problems and distracted herself with other ones?"

Marco's face grew still. He didn't respond. It would have been redundant, as everyone in the room except for the barista knew the answer to the question.

"Me and some of the other girls talked with Star the night she left Earth, and let me tell first hand that she was tearing herself apart over you and Jackie. She kept saying over and over again how she didn't have a crush on you, and how we were all insane for thinking it, and so on and so on. A crush like that doesn't just 'die off'."

Marco's eyebrows knit themselves together. He hadn't known that. Sure, he'd known that Star had been acting weird around him and Jackie after they started dating, but he hadn't realized that she'd been in that much distress over him. Maybe that's why she wasn't super happy to see me when I went back to Mewni, he wondered. Maybe she was scared of me, of the pain she'd felt. His stomach turned at the idea that he'd done anything to hurt Star so badly.

"That's all the more reason not to tell her. I don't want her in that kind of pain anymore. I just want her to be happy."

Kelly's smile slowly faded away. "Lying, even lies of omission, leads to crying. How long until you start acting weird around her and get jealous of Tom? At the very least, just talk to her. I don't think you two have done that in a while."

Marco frowned. She had a point. And while he might not be able to tell Star about his crush, he could at least start talking to her more about what had happened over the last few months. "I'll… talk to her. At least about some things. I can't promise that it will come up, but I'll talk to her." He smiled. "Thanks."

Kelly returned the smile. "Anytime." Then her eyes got a little wide and she added, "Did you know that they just came out with strawberry goblin dogs?"

And they talked on and on about a number of different things, mostly trivial news and juicy gossip. They talked about the new goblin dogs, of Pony heads possible dates, the rumors of a new bounce lounge being made somewhere, and of Slime monster and spider bite princess' dating. After about an hour of chatting, Marco checked his phone and jumped in his seat.

"Crap, it's late," He said quickly getting up and untying Glossaryck from the table. "It's way past Glossaryck's bedtime, and Star's probably home by now."

Kelly nodded and rose as well. "I should probably be getting to bed myself." She brushed her hair out of her face again and gave him that warm smile again. "Thanks again for everything."

Marco smiled back. "That's what friends do, they're there for you."

Kelly's smile grew warmer still. "Yeah," she whispered beneath her breath, so quiet that Marco couldn't hear. "That's what friends do."

Marco opened the interdimensional portal back to his room, stepped through with Glossaryck, and found himself face to face with Star Butterfly. The portal closed behind him, leaving his room in silence. Star's eyes were wide, tired, and angry. Marco gulped.

"Uh, hey. How's it going?"

This was my original idea for the fic, this chapter in specific. I wanted to make a fic that used Kelly, since she's my favorite character in the show and I was afraid that she'd be underutilized. Then the Christmas episode happened. That'll get added in to the story line farther down in the chapter list. Thank you all for reading. Chapters will be updated every other week, with the off weeks being The Talk chapter updates. Thank you all, and have a merry chirstmas!