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savior complex – carmy x reader . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

hi bbs!! i'm sorry in advance if anything is weird… i didn't reread it… i also realize i cherrypicked lyrics (savior complex by phoebe bridgers!!! i listened to so much of her and boygenius writing this and now im depressed) because i was getting to a point where i was like oh this is too sad i want a happy ending… pls tell me what you think! i love reading comments hehe. i really hope this doesn't suck

content: 3.1k words, angst with a kind of happy ending, no use of y/n or reference to reader's gender (i think), lots of arguing, carmen's pretty much a self-sabotaging asshole

ok enjoy!!!!

p.s. if there are any inconsistencies with plot related to the bear it's noooot my fault nor my problem ok

Emotional affair

You’ve spent the last week chewing your bottom lip into a pulp. When it’s not your lip, it’s your nails, your knuckle.

It’s not like Carmen was ever present to begin with. You know his work. You know it doesn’t typically leave him time for you. You know this. You’ve known this. Why does it still hurt? And why doesn’t it hurt him?

Yes, you’ve kept your weekly Friday date. He used to have perfect attendance, but recently, he’s been slipping through your fingers. Work, usually. When is it not? You’ve done the most in your power to make this easy for him. You pick up his chores when he’s at work so long he doesn’t come home for nights on end. You give him space when things are wrong because he’s not comfortable talking. You soothe him from the nightmares he refuses to tell you about. You let it slide when he’s snappy with you. Or when he stands you up. He deserves the chance to get better. You want to help him get better.

You stare up at the ceiling. White, only slightly popcorned, not too horribly deformed. You’re good friends with each other; you spend lots of time together. Naturally, the best and brightest sign of your sanity and stability: your very dear companionship with your ceiling.

You feel a tightness begin to compress in your chest. You don’t know why you even did any of this. Why try your hand at one of his favorite recipes? Why set the table for the two of you? Why get dressed in what you know he likes? He’s not going to show up. Something deep down in you knows this, but you’d rather continue to refuse to believe. That would come with accepting that he was stepping away from you. It’s better to believe that it’s not his fault. You feel the familiar pinpricks of shame burning behind your eyes.

You sigh and pick up your phone. You’d only checked it two seconds ago, and you know that swiping up on the screen isn’t going to show you any new notifications. None at all.

You decide you won’t text him, call him. You can hear him telling you you should’ve reminded him, but you’re just not feeling up to it anymore. It’s something extra to throw at him the next time you argue.

You leave the cutlery and the little dish you’d made out on the table. You’ll eat something frozen you’d stashed away exactly for these kinds of nights. You pop a thing of scalloped potatoes and beef into the microwave and go to turn on the TV while it heats. You normally don’t eat dinner on the couch, especially not when watching TV, because you just can never keep your eyes open. Your sleeping on the couch usually stresses Carmy out, hence your avoidance. Tonight, you do it anyway, the potatoes and beef warming your belly, reminiscent of feelings that you’d parted with long ago.

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✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹

“Baby.”

Your brow furrows; you curl into yourself. There’s a sharp ache in your back and it’s radiating all over your body. You must be lying on your side: when you sleep on your side on the couch, you mess up your body. Every single time.

“Baby,” he repeats.

“What?” You huff, bringing your hands to cover your face. You miss your bed.

“What are you doing? You slept on the couch?”

You sit up, your back crackling. You wince up at Carmen. “Yeah.”

He sits next to you, wringing his hands together. “W… why didn’t you call me last night? I could’ve made you something.” He takes the empty plastic tray with your fork still abandoned in it from the armrest and drops it on the coffee table.

You blink away the blurry edge to your vision. “You stood me up,” you deadpan.

He stares at you. “Yeah, but… but I would’ve come. If you’d reminded me.”

You make a face at him. “Really, Carmen?” You pull the throw blanket you’d slept with tighter around yourself, looking away. “This is the third time in a row. You’re probably busy, that’s fine.”

He’s silent at your side. You see him shift to sit with his back against the cushions. He’s not as stiff as he usually is when he gets home from The Bear. You don’t move to break the silence. You lie back down, the opposite direction from him.

“I forgot,” he says dumbly, after a long while.

You sigh. “You forgot the date night we have every week? For the last two years?”

“It’s been difficult lately.”

“Maybe I’d be more understanding if you’d actually tell me what’s going on with you. With the restaurant. With your family.”

The thick sound of nothing is oppressive. Usually, at this point in your doomed song-and- dance, you ask him “where were you?” Again, you’re not going to be the one to break the silence. Your back is screaming. You should get up and lie down in bed.

“I was grabbing something from the store when I ran into an old friend,” he offers instead. “We ended up talking for a while.”

“Mmm.” You keep your eyes trained on the dark, blank TV. “All night?”

He squirms slightly where he is. You think he’s about to get up and start pacing. He shifts again so that he’s facing you, or your legs, and hugs his knees to his chest. “Yeah.”

Already uncomfortable, you get to your feet and do your best to crick your back. “Mmm,” you repeat. “Mmm.”

If you were to look back at him, you would’ve seen the heads of his eyebrows twitching up, his lips pressing together. “She knew me from school. Like, elementary. We talked about Mikey.”

“She?” This time, you do look back. He gives you a tentative shrug.

“You know it’s not like that.”

“But you talk to her about Mikey. Right.”

You feel bile rising up your esophagus. The tightness from last night is returning, intensifying. You’re suddenly not in the living room, but standing in your kitchen from a couple months ago, your hand on his trembling back.

“You can talk to me,” you’d said, setting your cheek on his shoulder. “I’m going to help you.”

He’d hadn’t moved, except to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. “I can’t. I’m not ready to,”

And then a year back, when Mikey had passed. He’d spent ages in bed, and you’d taken care of him. You feel a little guilty for pinning all of your pent up anger and resentment onto him. It’s not like he’s wholly unreciprocal; he takes care of you. He meal preps your work weeks and packs you a lunch every morning, regardless of if he’d stayed the night or not. He’s never rude, or mean. You tell him everything, and he helps you through it in his own little ways. But he still has walls up. His feelings, his skeletons, are locked in a vault that you aren’t allowed the key to. This key this other girl has.

You think he doesn’t take you, your relationship seriously. What has even kept you here this long? Your desire, no, need to fix him? A fixing that you’re starting to realise he doesn’t want. Not from you, anyway.

You shake the thoughts from your head and disjointedly find your bed.

You don’t think he follows you. You crawl under the comforter (which you’d bought to move into this apartment specifically) and deflate, a cooling sensation enveloping your body. Maybe if you take a nap the throbbing in your head will dissipate alongside the calamity brewing in your chest.

════════════════════════════════════

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹

Smoking in the car, windows up

Crocodile tears, run the tap ‘till it’s clear

He leaves you to sleep for what you later find out to be is an hour and a half. You wake up to him sitting up by your side. If the divots in the mattress meant anything, then he’d been here with you for quite some time. He likely hasn’t left the apartment at all since he’d come home.

You roll towards him. He startles out of some reverie, some mystic pull coming from a dull spot on the wall.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” you ask, your voice warbling with the effort to keep it toneless. His fingers extend, then curl, then move with his hand to smooth over your forehead.

“I thought we could go for a drive. Take you out for some breakfast.”

You want to keep being mad, but you’re too tired. Instead, you’ll take this as it is: progress. In the car, you get a good look at Carmen for the first time in a while. His nails are bitten down, his undereyes sunken and dark.

You reach for him. He quickly turns his hand palm up, receiving your hand, keeping it flush with his by knitting your fingers together. He doesn’t turn to look you in the eyes; he keeps his gaze trained out of the windshield once you’re on the road.

Gray-ish clouds mottle the sky aside from a sliver of daylight illuminating a strip on the dashboard. You feel soothed by the glimmering of the sun, its simple, concentrated beauty making you forget it’s overcast in the first place. The sliver widens as time passes, bathing you and Carmy in warmth.

“Like us,” he murmurs, the car air softening his voice, making it sound rather far away.

“Hm?”

“A little cloudy, but the sun always comes back.” He pauses, turning something over in his head. “The sun’s stronger, and better, and good in spite of the clouds. If that makes sense.”

“It does. Mostly.” You manage a weak smile at him over the center console, a casserole of feelings stewing within you. “Profound of you, bear.”

He huffs out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…”

He pauses again, focusing on pulling into a secluded bit in the parking lot of one of your favorite diners. Condensation beads on the diner’s windows, and the wind sends shivers through the legions of trees surrounding the property. You shiver, yourself, but before you can truly get cold the car heater sends a pleasant flush up your spine in response.

After a shaky breath, Carmy continues: “We haven’t been good. It’s mostly my fault, and I don’t want to keep ruining this. I don’t want to ruin us.” You simply watch him, intrigued. Despite your physical contact, he can’t seem to look into your eyes for long. They search the stillness outside your car for the words that will bring him back to you. “I know I’ve been fucking up. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for apologising,” you murmur back lightly, “but we’ve had this conversation ten million times already. Every time I feel like we’re beginning to make progress, you’re off doing something else.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m serious, I’m always serious about you. I want to show you that. And, you know, be the guy, the man, that you deserve. Because you deserve a lot. A lot more than what I’ve been giving you recently,” he admits weakly, fishing a hidden compartment with a singular trembling hand; he keeps your one hand gripped in his own.

Before you can formulate any sort of response, he has a cigarette lit and is pulling from it. “Carmy,” you chide, your eyebrows knitting together. Your hand finds itself on his arm, stroking gently. “We don’t have to do this now if it’s going to make you stress to the point of a cigarette.”

He sighs, smoke unfurling from his lips. The windows stand impenetrable around you, sealing everything– his smoke, this conversation, your feelings –within the car. The sharply bitter, concentrated smell broils in the air around you, beginning to itch at your nose.

“Quit that,” he snaps. “Quit doting. It freaks me out.” He takes another drag, the resulting cloud triggering a metastasis; you clear your throat, but the gnarled gray is dragging its jagged nails over your eyes, acerbic as hell, brewing tears. He happens to look over at you just then, fleetingly, before double-taking. His face falls, and he squeezes your hand. “No, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. God, I hate making you cry.”

The smoke flushes your tear ducts out after not even five minutes. You spill your guts to him for as long as you can bear (which is not much at all) before booting him from the car to either finish the damn thing or stomp it out. Either way, far from you and the fire that has been set to your sensory system.

“I just wish you’d do what you promise,” you manage, stamping your fingers at your eyes. “Because, Carmen, I don’t feel like we’re in a relationship anymore. All your time is committed to the restaurant and I’m quite literally always an afterthought.”

“I try–”

“You don’t! You don’t try at all!”

“It’s tough, I really am trying. It’s difficult to talk about…”

“It’s not difficult to talk to some random woman you haven’t seen in ages, but it’s difficult to talk to me? Carmen, look at me.”

“Is that what this is about? Really?”

“It’s definitely part of it!”

“You’re raising your voice.”

“Well, I’m sorry. And I’m going to sit here and talk with you and make it better instead of refusing to even look you in the eyes or being an avoidant asshole.”

He doesn’t respond. You both stare at each other for some time, the silence congealing the atmosphere like a very old, expired carton of milk.

“I’ll try harder. I promise,” he murmurs, slogging through the silence. As you open your mouth to nettle on his endless promises, he quickly adds: “I know. Actions. I prom– I’ll just do it. Okay? I’m sorry.”

You swallow whatever complaints you have. “Thank you. I’m sorry for getting loud.”

“I’m sorry for being a dick.” He’s fully turned to face you, sitting lopsided in the driver’s seat.

“I never said you were,” you reply, rather more coy than you think you intend to be.

“I know you think I am,” he admits quietly. His eyes are glassy now, and a single fat droplet escapes down his cheek as he reaches over to take both of your hands in his. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I keep standing you up. I’m sorry I’m not vulnerable with you. I’m really sorry. I love you. I want to be with you because you’re the greatest person I’ve met and you make me better and… and you’re the love of my life. I’m going to fix this. I will change this. I love you so much.” He punctuates every point with tiny shakes of your joined hands. You can’t help but squeeze back.

He tells you everything about Michael, every little thought he has ever had about him after he passed, over breakfast.

All the skeletons that you hide,

Show me yours, I’ll show you mine

It’s so incredibly stilted, and perhaps twenty times more awkward, but after a very long time, your boyfriend comes back to you.

For a few days, all you do in your free time together is talk.

“I think that I have a self-sabotaging problem,” he whispers to you in bed.

“No, really?” you quip back trying not to laugh. “It’s not funny; I’m sorry.”

He gently swats at your face. “Yeah, yeah, kick me while I’m down.” He scoots closer, the rustling of the sheets a welcome sound. “I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, and… I dunno, I guess I’d rather never be in a position for something bad to happen to me. I can’t really bear being happy because I know it won’t last.”

You trace the picture inked over his forearm as you think. “So you’re a control freak,” you add for him. He almost protests, but you interrupt him. “Ah, you are. It feels better if you do it to yourself because you know it’s happening. You’ll slap a lame excuse on it, but I think you know, deep down, what you’re doing, and that you’re doing it out of fear and insecurity.”

“Damn. You think so?”

“Mhm. I’m glad you’re letting me tell you. And that you’re listening.” You press a kiss to the creamy colored skin where your fingers have just been. “You need a therapist.”

You find that it’s easier for him to be vulnerable the more you are with him. You exchange bitter memories with each other. You feel like you’ve spoken to Carmen more after your fucked up tete-a-tete in the car than you have in your entire relationship with him.

During your breaks at work, he finds the time to either come see you for a bit or chat with you on the phone. As long as he’s not in the middle of service, he’s going to try reaching out.

“That’s fine by me,” you tell him. “Service is certainly not the time. I was really happy that you called during my lunch.”

“I was thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you,” he amends, staring up at the ceiling. “Even during service.”

It’s not an entire 180 with him. He still works obnoxious hours at the restaurant. Despite your recent heart-to-hearts, some things require an obscene prying on your part that you aren’t keen on. He’s still a frump when frustrated. But you’ll take progress where you can get it.

Tonight is Friday night.

Carmen had left some brief instructions on the fridge, having prepared everything with painstaking care the night before. The last bullet point read sit and relax. I’ll be home soon, in his messy scrawl. Dilapidated little doodle-hearts litter the paper.

You adjust the plates and silverware on the table for the thirtieth time. The oven clock is unusually bright today, looming over you, relishing in your nervousness. You swear its taunting you as the minutes tick past seven– which Carmy had insisted he’d be able to make.

You feel your heart and stomach over-ripening. Your stomach is certainly scrambling for something to send up to keep you company at the table.

He hadn’t said anything about taking out what was in the oven, and you’re anxious it’s going to burn.

Your stomach disjointedly stops turning as the door clatters open at 7:06, a frazzled Carmen bustling to the oven. “Sorry, baby, that stupid fucking…” He continues talking, hissing as he briefly touches the dish by accident. You think he’s saying something else to you as you’re standing tucked into his side as he runs cold water over the beginning welt. You don’t hear any of it.

Blah, blah. He’s here. You don’t care. He’s here.

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