heavily inspired by my steve headcanons here, I wanna try my hand at writing more of james. he is the epitome of devotion, he falls first and falls hard.
this kind of takes part in an alternative au (think avengers are still together but its post the falcon and the winter soldier)
he is canonically good at cunnilingus
you think I’m joking? This man divulges into a rabid animal the second he gets close to your thighs. He is on his knees whilst your pressed up against the counter rubbing his face against your clothed crotch moaning and grinding in the air
he says if he could have gotten a taste of you while he was the winter soldier it would've required his brain and reversed the brainwashing
’to be alone with you’ - hozier is bucky’s song
like steve, he feels the isolation and ghost-like feeling of being lost in time. Brooklyn doesn't feel like home anymore, he constantly reaches for you, even in sleep because you are the thing he now belongs to.
you can never get used to how intense bucky just..stares at you. Every single moment of the day you'll just catch him watching you silently not saying a word. It wasn't creepy, no it had this protective almost darkness to it that was all consuming. At one of Tony’s parties, he’s watching you across the room with a glass in his hand or mysterious and shit. (probably thinking about when is a polite time to leave)
which is never because bucky just drags you both out of every gathering. Every goodbye is an Irish one
man bun bucky. That’s it.
lets you cut his hair when it gets to the point of covering his eyes. Sometimes his stubble too, thumb circling and grazes your thigh as you lean over him with a scalpel.
most of the team are still gobsmacked at how bucky justs..trusts you. Whether it be with a shaving, or jumping out of a corner. If any of the team tried to pull a knife on bucky he would probably (not) accidentally break their jaw
after missions all the Avengers know he’ll be offline for at least a couple days to be with you. What they don’t discuss is half of those days are fucking you bruised. He gets all pent up and irritated when he isn’t around you, it’s like you recalibrate his mood back to baseline regular bucky when he can finally sink into you.
doll, darlin’, honey
if you think steve is possessive…just exponentiate that to the power of 10 and you have husband bucky. Are we forgetting this man used to be the winter soldier? he's cute and adorable but also can be fucking horrifying. I’m talking blank face breaking a mans jaw cause he looked at you funny
very casual in his superhuman abilities to protect you.
silky dulcet notes of etta james, the album sam had gifted you both playing as you cut up some root vegetables. It’s summer and the night is long and warm, and you and bucky are humming as you prepare dinner. You're twirling your hips, Bucky is leaning against the countertop, half trussing the chicken and the other watching you when he suddenly stops. You don't notice it at first, until he cocks his head to the side, kind of blinks and moves to turn the saucepan on low. You turn to him, and he grabs for one of the kitchen knives on the bench before reaching for you.
"there's someone in the backyard"
all nonchalant, like it had been a burrowing animal stuck under the floorboards. he motions for you to continue, turns up the record player a bit and walks into the backyard without a sound.
this man is touch starved, of course he is cock warming after. each and every time.
one of the things bucky loved about you is at ease he felt, he could talk to you and spill everything out in a way he never could with dr raynor or even steve.
there was a bit of distance from him when he first met you, he was awestruck, even more silent than he usually was. Just stared at you longingly, standing off to the side. he didn’t think he could be anything but feared, it genuinely got to the point where you thought he didn't like you or that you had done something wrong. when steve had told him this, he nearly died. no, i'd like to think he's heart stopped for a couple seconds seriously. than got up from fainting, took you aside, and kissed you against the back of sarah's backyard door on the fourth of july.
stations a few target practice posts in your backyard. teaches you how to shoot, chest pressed up against your back as he helps move your body in the right position. always make sure you know where the weapons are in the house
singing to records whilst he's cleaning said weapons at the table
takes you to all the places still standing he remembers in Brooklyn, you hold his hand and let him rest against your shoulder when the past gets caught in his throat.
Steve finds a place in the city with actual good music, where people actually dance, and it becomes your spot every Friday.
yeah, one thing bucky remembers would be his muscle memory of the dance floor, he’s goooood. Teaches you everything he knows in your kitchen of course, always ends up with you making out on top of each other though
dry humping like teenagers, bucky with his low hanging jeans, not wearing boxes and making a mess just from the taste of your mouth
actually, sometimes breaks down in tears when he realises you’re his wife. Like forever.
always thinking about you, what you're doing, if you've eaten. even if hes in the middle of recon you will be in the back of his mind.
leans over and loops his dog tags around your neck whenever he leaves for missions. kisses your eyelids when your sleeping and the fight calls him
the second time you and bucky visited Wakanda he had Shuri craft the ring to be fused into his vibranium finger..yeah I know.
bucky isn’t the extroverted talking type, but with you he is constantly just yapping..about anything and everything. Following you around the house like a puppy, coming to you for the answers about the new world and questions he always harboured even before the ice
bucky is hilarious, he's already an adonis, but he could laugh you of your pants
can’t bear fighting with you, he never yells. He just kind of goes quiet and takes a walk
you guys live in a house with a huge backyard and a wraparound porch
loves cooking, lets him turn his mind off sometimes and make you something hearty and warm. he has a frilly gingham patterned apron he wears and his curls are wrapped into a bun with your scrunchie. floor always ends up on his cheek, and you always end up on the kitchen bench with his mouth on you
night terrors had him sleeping in a sleeping bag next to the bed, he refused despite your attempts. Sometimes he'd wait till you fell asleep against him and make the heartbreaking quiet separation and sleep on the floor
sometimes likes to take of his arm around the house, especially sleeping. Keeps it near in case though, for you.
he’s thick everywhere…took an hour of foreplay minimum to get you ready for him. You both will never get used to each other, needing to take a moment of hushed gasps and groans when he first sinks in
the wedding was in Sams backyard in Delacroix, just Sam, Sarah, the kids and Yoshi and the team
fairylights wrapped around the spanish moss of hanging trees, soft jazz and hard liquor. Sarah’s seafood boil and a dance floor where bucky spends half the night with you there
dad!bucky on the other hand..now that is a different ballpark. wait no actually, just him when you're both expecting. let's not forgot when he stormed into the tower and broke through the office doors to ask why on earth tony had scheduled him a mission so close to the birth of your baby, tossing him his phone which was now crumbled heap of metal in the shape of his fists....(you were two weeks along)
okay wait cause the jk rider x rider reader…oooo I’m thinking thoughts…
like he’s on a ride to calm his mind, a route he takes at night cause it’s quiet and there’s no cars for miles. And she just zooms past him and they have a little race that she BEATS him at. like atp he doesn’t know if they’re a man or a women but he’s sick all night wanting to figure out who it is
So I currently have food poisoning and I can’t help but it think how mad Carmy would be if a restaurant gave his gf/wife food poisoning
Also Carmy come take care of me and make me soup plz 🙇♀️😫
Plus he would give the best snuggles 😭
firstly, sending lots of love and recovery, i've never actually had fp lmao so a lot of time on webmd will be spent. get ur fluids in! secondly, carmen might have to go underground for setting the restaurant on fire. we love him for it
summary: You were hungry and had just finished work and you didn't think about inspecting the goddamn Michelin star restaurant, maybe you should have.
warnings; cursing, food poisoning, richie (he's a warning), hipsters, talks of future arsony, possessive carmen, cracked fic ngl,
divider by @firefly-graphics
i'm slipping back into the unsafe territory of wanting fictional characters. (and i don't care)
You could roll your eyes in annoyance if you weren't hunched over the ceramic bowl of the toilet heaving out the contents of your stomach while Carmen held you hair back.
The one time, the one goddamn time you decide to try a new place without Carmen's input, without his meticulous standards and in depth research behind every night out.
It wasn't like you hadn't tried to vet the new braised beef spot that opened up on west Avenue. In fact, you had heard all but stellar reviews from friends and family, meeting you with suprise hearing that Carmen hadn't taken you. You decided to bring home a small plate, their signature braised meat with plums, red onions and atrichocke hearts.
You had meant to share it with Carmen, and you were going to, but a botched catering order had him staying back another hour than what had been planned. And well..you say you tried to save some for Carmen, but despite its bacteria laced beef and vomit inducing sides it was pretty fuckin' good.
Was this God's wrath coming down upon you? Punishing you for your gluttony? Food poisoning did feel awfully close to perpetual hellfire.
The TV was blaring some indescriptive show, the kind with dramatic introductions and soap opera worthy screams. It helped fill the space of absence when Carmen worked long nights, and you felt quite comfortable wrapped up in a blanket with a full stomach and a warm sofa.
Your phone had pinged with the sound of Carmen's text, letting you know he was on the way when it started. At first you had written it off as mere indigestion, probably from shoveling the cursed meal into your mouth too quickly.
Then, around the time the show's main character had found out her boyfriend got her mother pregnant, the nausea set in. Swirling aches that felt like a whirlpool in your stomach had taken over, sloshing and swirling and never leaving. You couldn't mistake it, as you tried to swallow past a dry throat and the creeping sweats of a headache inducing fever began to ravage your body.
You hated sitting in discomfort, it wasn't as though you were afraid of vomiting no, you just could not bare to feel the way your stomach skipped and jumped with every wave of nausea that took over.
You thought of making yourself sick, but shook your head when the alarming disapproval of Carmen's voice loomed over.
"It's just gonna make it worse, you gotta sit with it till it passes"
Fuck him and his medical knowledge. What did he know?
You had ripped off the blanket that had once felt comforting, peeling of layers of clothing that stuck to your body like a second skin. You just felt hot, so hot, is anyone else feeling this heat? You try to move from the couch to reach your phone, but the sudden movement has nausea bubbling up your throat.
You fall to the ground in a heap, hand clasped around your mouth to stop the possibility of projectile vomiting on the rug you had just bought and shoot your hand up to reach for your phone.
You press Carmen's number, begging him to answer you in genuine crisis rather than when you were drunk with friends and missed him. You feel the urge to heave and crawl quickly to the bathroom, phone clasped in hand and suddenly desperately needed his medical knowledge.
Carmen phone rings from the behind the stack of documents in the office, and he hastily wipes his hands across his apron before trying to reach it before it rings out.
Guilt fills his stomach at the thought of you, he was meant to be home hours ago. The catering order needed a few extra hands to help, and once Carmen began he got lost in it, and now you had spent nearly the entire night alone.
"Fuck- Hey baby, I know I said I was comin' but I had to finish a couple things-" Carmen quickly responds as he swipes the call button.
The groan of pain that responds has Carmen freezing in the middle of the kitchen.
"Baby? What-, are you okay?" Carmen replies quickly, his voice going short as his mind turns every possible scenario that had you whining in pain over the receiver.
"Please come quickly, Carmen I think I might-" You gulp and make a retching sound "I think I got sick from that place I was telling you about" You plead out, breathing heavily into the speaker.
The guilt that had filled Carmen seems to morph into an anger that rushes up his chest as he shakes his head.
"The new place? The one with the fuckin' smoke meat? They did this?"
"Mhm" You mumble "I should've just listened to you" You groan out in sadness.
"Fucking idiots. How the fuck did they even? Okay, okay honey just gimme a second yeah?"
How did he let this happen? Carmen has half the mind to stop at the restaurant that more of a Instagram attraction that a respected place of business. You were so eager and excited t try it, Carmen had his own thoughts but would glue his mouth shut if it meant making you happy.
He'll make sure they get shut down, or at least black listed from Chicago as long as he's concerned. His hands shake with the eager want for the fight, to smash someones jaw for resorting you to a heap of tears and sick. He would, he knows he will, but at this moment he needed to take care of your first.
He mumbles out a rushed reply, phone between his shoulder and ear as he slips out of his work shoes and into his sneakers. He thinks for a moment to grab his things but immediately shut that thought out when he hears you groaning into the phone.
"Just stay on the phone okay? I'm coming now, I need to get you some things alright?"
You let out what you hope is a reply, hunched over the toilet.
Carmen rushes to the store fridge, grabbing containers of soup Tina had prepared for family as the Chicago winter was getting close.
"You alright kid?" Richie mumbles, walking into the kitchen entry way, scratching his stomach as he watched Carmen's erratic movements around the store.
"Fuckin-, she's sick. And I'm here chopping up tomatoes for fucking Guy while she was in pain for god knows how long-"
"Woah, Bugs sick? We talking COVID or.."
"I'm such a fucking idiot. No it's not COVID Rich, Jesus Christ. Some rookie new spot trying something outside of their abilities gave her food poisoning. Fuckin' hipsters"
"Oh that's bad. You know when I got food poisoning the one time I took Tiff to this romantic getaway. Had me projectile vomiting in the AirBnb bathroom. Couldn't even get a deposit back, had to pay some dumb ass cleaning fee-"
Carmen wipes a hand across his face shaking his head. He was already pent up, he might throw a pan at Richie if he doesn't stop talking.
"Richie, I don't have time for this, I need to get her some Sprite or"
Richie shuffles across to the cupboard near the back of the house, grabbing bottles of Gatorade and a pack of saltine crackers.
"How do you even have this stuff lying around"
"You're the one with the inhuman alcohol tolerance Carmy, someone of us actually have hangovers you freak" Richie retorts
"Yeah yeah, thanks. Fuck- I gotta" Carmen replies, to which Richie nods.
"Go. I'll wrap up anything here" Richie replies, understanding in his voice. You took precedence over pretty much everything in Carmen's life.
"And Carm?"
"Yeah?" Carmen calls out, slipping on his jacket as he turns to Richie
"Tell me when we're going to sort out those bearded wearing flannel ass wipes"
Carmen shakes his head with a smile, before nodding and pushing past the kitchen doors. The traffic lights better be green green fuckin' green tonight.
You were stripped to a singlet and sleeping shorts as you knelt over the toilet, blinking back exhausted tears at the state of you.
You suppose you have no one else to blame but yourself, but the indignation righteousness burns almost as bright as the acid reflux crawling up your throat.
You hear the faint opening and loud clang of the apartment door opening and closing and you sigh in relief as you hear the familiar footfalls of Carmen down the hall.
It had felt damn near torturous suffering without him, and as he calls out to you following the trail of loose clothing he spots your figure in the bathroom sprawled.
"Oh honey, I'm sorry" Carmen says
And it was as if your body needed to finally feel safe in Carmen's presence before you felt the nausea spill out of you and splash offensively into the toilet.
You feel Carmen crouch above you, dragging your hair that had gone loose from it's wrapped up do away from your face. Gently rubbing your back, his large hands softly dipping up and down your spine.
"That's it, 'atta girl. Let it all out" Carmen coo's softly
You purged the insides of your stomach into the toilet bowl, retching loudly with every heave as Carmen comforted you. After what seemed like hours, and the nausea had subsided Carmen carefully wrapped his arms up under your armpits picking you up of the floor.
"Slowly, yeah? You damn near emptied out you're entire water content" Carmen murmurs, flushing the toilet and helping you walk to the basin and wash out the taste of bile from your mouth.
"I probably look insane" You cry out, blinking back exhaustion from your eyes as Carmen shakes his head furiously.
"Never, my pretty girl. Need you to go easy okay? Gonna take you to bed and let you sleep through it. Can't have you collapsing on me" Carmen murmurs, wiping at the edge of your mouth, patting the sweat that stuck to your forehead.
You let Carmen carefully maneuver your body, one arm under your legs and the other supporting your back walking to the bedroom. Your wring dry and can barely keep your eyes open as Carmen placed you on the cool sheets you immediately moan at.
You hear the faint rustle of movement as Carmen brings in a paper bag. The clunk of bottles placed on the bedside table as you sing praise for the very short bit of relief you have before the next bout of nausea rolls in.
Carmen pads to the adjacent bathroom, the door opened so you can see the stream of light that illuminates him. Hes running a cloth under water, squeezing the excess and looking up to check on you every so often.
He looked so...domestic, like he hadn't come back from working at one of the most decorated restaurants in Chicago. Stripped of his shirt so he stood bare chested, golden curls pushed behind his ears, sweatpants hung low on his hips and the furrow of his eyebrows in concentration and worry.
Your eyes flutter shut as you thank the midnight sky for bringing him to you, for keeping him for you, this one good thing that was yours.
The skies answer by the sound of his voice listing off all the things you will not be doing in this stage of recovery. Sitting on the edge of the bed as he places the cool rag against your forehead, lips between teeth as he feels your temperature under his skin.
"Just bone broth, Gatorade and bread sticks for you, doll. And no, before you even think it, its not the garlic ones." Carmen tsks.
You were thinking it. He knew you too well, but when he kisses your eyelids and measures out careful tips of the Gatorade bottle, you don't mind it.
after the fight at the bear, you find yourself ready to run. carmen doesn't let you.
w/c: 2.4k
a/n: she's short. she's gone through many deletions and rewrites and i'm still not completely happy with it but I'm posting it anyways lmao. it's very wordy but how else am I going to untangle the clusterfuck that is this relationship? this is CARMEN.
At first, you don't know where to go. You walk twenty blocks until your feet ache and the cold bites at your cheeks, you walk until you get to the second last stop on the L, you walk until you forget Carmen, the soup and everything you had left wanting in the bear hallway.
You find that you don’t like how your own blood tastes, and you can’t help the laugh that escapes as juttered cold air when you realise Carmen still had domain over your tastebuds.
You don’t forget him, you can’t forget him.
The feeling is quick as it morphs back into the nauseous anger, like the press of your imprints into the snow before it falls back into the sheet of white that covers the city. You don’t want to think about the bear but it comes in flashes, in waves muddled with the pieces of the past that had felt like stomach acid burning your throat.
You had thought you made peace with the memories of Carmen and you from so long ago, in the silence after he had left for Chicago and for Mickey that filled your apartment. So why did it feel like you were back there again? Like he had left you? Like you were left to swallow the embarrassment and betrayal- your vision blurs when you try to make sense of it. A couple yells as you push past them on the sidewalk, hand over your mouth when you try to blink them away.
Carmen had looked at you, in the moments before you left the Bear. His eyes were glassy and red, his mouth was open and he looked at you like he had broken something. You hated it, god you did. You wanted to scream, to break something but all you did was laugh. And then cry. And then laugh again.
You didn't know what you wanted really, an apology? What could Carmen say to fix what had happened? You can’t find reason and that scares you more than anything, that you would be stuck with this sick, this plague of a feeling that you could not fix.
It would be the end of you both, and you didn’t know if Carmen would change. If he could be who you wanted him to, and suddenly you feel embarrassed. Like maybe you were trying to fit yourself into his life where it could not be, squeeze yourself into a space that was too small, and that they all could tell. That they saw how your limbs jutted and you were crouched in the crawl space. Could someone love him better? Someone that would make sense rather than your misshapen, haunted past ever could. Did he believe that?
Did he know that? Now? After you had made a fool of you both?
You wanted to run away, to escape before he could leave you. You can’t go back home, you can't go back to an apartment he will leave you in.
You feel the buzz of your phone in your coat pocket, and it’s not till you slump your tired body onto a park bench do you remember you hadn’t left it in the Bear. You see the bundle of missed calls, nearly bulging off the fogged up screen of your cracked phone. You see Sydney, and Richie, and Sugars name and you find that you still have tears to give when you can’t find Carmen's.
Everything is a blur in the moments after, like your vision was now clouded by a haze, by the grief of finally losing him. He hadn't said it, and you didn't dare speak it aloud but it was true wasn’t it? You felt it, like a part of you was missing, left on that table or hallway or wherever else the Bear keeps parts of you.
You grip the rusted fence of the harbour, watch as the night waves crash violently against each other, loop and swirl in the undertow, pull itself down and under and up again.
You would let him go. Retract the canines and the pressed finger nails that you had sunk into him when you found him again.
The gasped cries that leave your mouth are uncontrollable, and you thank the waves for concealing them from the foot traffic behind. Your hands shake as you stuff them into your jacket, throat raw and eyes burning as you stagger into the backseat of a taxi.
The driver pauses when he turns his shoulder, bushy eyebrows and eyes that looked like they would be kind if it wasn’t near midnight. He begins to open his mouth but you beat him to it and spit out your apartment address. When the soft melody of “That's Life” sputters out of the radio you close your eyes and press your cheek to the window, murmuring the lyrics into the fogged glass.
-- -
You're stuffing whatever clothes you would need into a bag when your phone rings. You ignore it, try to think of the earliest way to get back to New York that didn't cost an arm, or at least only half.
But your phone doesn't stop, the blaring piano notes shouting at you from where you had thrown it. In truth, you were scared. Scared to flip the screen and see his name, scared to see that it wasn't him. But it rings again and falls off your couch, flips so that the screen blares out anyways.
It's a number you don't recognise, and when you swipe the reciever you hear Tina's voice, or more so the sigh of relief she whispers into the phone.
"Finally. God, baby we were getting worried"
"Tina?"
"You okay baby?" Tina replies softly
You hear rustling in the background, and catch pieces of Richie and Sugars voice calling out before Tina shushes them.
"Yes" You squeeze out from the space between the lodged brick in your throat.
"Oh honey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Carmen was being a fucking idiot yeah? And I don't know what he was thinking, I don't know what happened before we met you. But what I know, what all of us know is that Carmen would be the so foolish to let you go."
"It's over Tina. He- I can't force something he doesn't want" You whimper
"Force? Baby do you know Carmen when he didn't have you? Do you see the way that man watches your every move? Just silently, he has this wonder and concentration when hes cooking. Like his mind is finally blank and he can breath and it's the same, it's the same look he has with you."
"You have him. Completely. Even more so than I think anything ever will. You know that right?"
Your mouth is open, blinking when Tina calls your name
"But, I thought..he let me leave Tina. It isn't like he's been trying to call or reach me-"
"That's probably because he left damn near everything but his shoes runnin' after you"
"What?"
"You think he would just let you leave?" Tina replies, voice high, like she found it the most impossible thing to believe.
“He just stood there in the hallway. Didn’t say a word, left running and we let him. We damn near pushed him out the door. Didn’t even have a jacket on, the mans running around in negative degrees with a white shirt on”
"He is?" You whisper
And you don't have time to hear Tina's reply, because you hear Carmen instead. Outside your door, his voice straining as he begs for you.
You drop your phone to the ground with a shake, and in flashes your at the door, opening it wide until the cold rush of snow hits your nose and you see him beneath you.
He came to you, he came back to you. He’s gripping the door frame on his knees in the snow, chest heaving, cheeks pink and eyes only on you.
You can't speak, eyebrows furrowed as you blink and blink and see his face straining up to you every time.
“Forgive me, forgive me forgive me. I could never leave you, no.” Carmen continues to beg, eyes red and twitching, unblinking when a tear escapes.
“I can never take back what I did to you, what I did to us. That was me, that was me running back to Chicago, running back to Mikey, to try and fix a dead brother”
“I left you there like you weren’t everything”. Carmen lets out an exhaled gasp, like he was just now realising it.
“I was scared, you know? You knew me, you knew me. So when Mikey-when I found out” Carmen shakes his head
“I was something I didn’t know I could be. You were the first- the first person to ever sit in my mind. And then I had to turn dirt over Mikey's casket and suddenly everything I did, everything I saw was him. How could I come back to you, how could I beg you when I wasn’t the same man I was when I left? When I couldn't even breathe, when I was too busy weeping in bathroom stalls to smoke. And I couldn't, I couldn't do it, i just fucking couldn’t.”
You don’t speak, the cold wind as you stare down at him. The feelings, New York, the Bear swirl in front of you, in Carmen's cerulean blues, in his golden hair darkened by the snow, in the slope of his neck as he looks at you.
You can’t run from it anym-
“But I know better now. I lost you once and I won’t let it happen again. I’ll stay out here all night until you have to step over my corpse in the snow I swear it. I’ll die out here waiting for you”.
“I was getting bad, and you knew it. And I fought you on it because I have a problem with people pointing out the truth. I didn't want to accept I needed to slow down, it was just I finally had this thing, this piece of me I made you know? And every night, every time I would enter the door I’d walk into the bathroom and puke. I-I was so sure, so sure it would end up ruined.”
“That aint an excuse, fuck it isn’t. What I did, I can't take back” Carmen shakes his head
“I hurt you, I hurt you. Left you all alone in that apartment, made you think I didn’t love you, a fucking coward. I never stopped, even when I promised myself I wouldn't come back to look for you. I would let you go after Mikey, after what I did.”
“But at night I would dream of you, I would keep pieces of you, like it was strapped to my fucking chest. The guilt wasn’t enough, it didn't stop me needing any part of you I could remember. Didn’t stop me standing in the middle of a fucking grocery isle smelling the soap you used to use”
“Then I blinked and I could kneel and press my face into your skin instead. And I didn’t say anything because I had you again- how fucked up is that? I should have told you to run away, to leave, I should have begged you too. But I didn't, I can’t. It’s selfish and cruel but I have to have you, in whatever way you can give me.
He's breathing heavily now, palm pressed against his chest as he grinds his jaw and lets the tear spill a trail down his neck.
“Now every night I dream of you. I hope I'm haunted by you leaving me. So I know what I need when I wake up.”
And you don't know how, you don't know how that part of you slips out from its stitched imprint on your heart and melts away. Melts away like the snow under your feet when you step out onto your porch. And you don’t say anything, you don't have to really, Carmen watches you. Watches the way your face twists and changes and crawls up your body to hold you into him.
-- -
“Are you sure about this Carm?” You turn your head.
Carmen simply wraps the scarf tighter around your neck as he nods, killing the engine and leans against the driver's seat.
“You should've been there, at the funeral you know?”
“He was your brother Carmen”
“Exactly” Carmen exhales sharply, grinding his jaw as his eyes shift to the cemetery car park outside. Out into the field of snow, with their stone heads poking through, the few stragglers walking across the path.
It’s silent, just your cold breaths leaving smoked exhales in the space of the car.
“Haven't visited him since the funeral.”
“Could hardly even stand up straight then, when I first heard about it- felt so heavy. Like I was sinking into the ground”.
“And I had this headache.” Carmen swallows
“No no it wasn't a headache really, it was- it was just the weight of him in my mind. The memory of him you know? An anchor, just dragging me down, trying not to crumble and fall and just stay there. Always there, always reminding me, he'd cover my eyelids when I tried to fall asleep. Just flashes of him, his hair, his shoulders.”
“One time I chased after a man, while I was at the farmers market for one of our new menus, I chased after him through the crowd thinking it was Mikey. I chased after the nape of his neck and in that short moment, where the fear and anxious and hopeful delusion drove me to that? I had him.”
“And then I remembered, and so I can’t come here. I couldn’t. How could I when he would refuse to leave my mind? My fucking temple.”
“Carm” You whisper
“But I'm here now. Because you are also. And I think that headache has started to make room for it. For you. Only you. And maybe I'll start to remember him differently, in the back, warm and sad all the same. But I’d have you to remember, you to have as well”.
And so you did. You and Carmen stepped out into the gravelled road, leading to the polished footpath. Until you stop at the stone engraving of Mikey, and you hold Carmen when he crumbles slowly to the floor. And you sit with him until the snow melts and his cracked cries slow. Until the leaves turn and the stone ages and your children recognise Mikey as the man their dad talks to every Friday.
This is an idea that’s been on my mind lately because Carmy would be so protective and would 100% treat his gf like a princess, so I thought I’d send it in ifs it’s okay!!🤧
Can I please request Carmy x fem!reader where it’s based off the song “Treat You Better”, where she’s one of his chefs, and Carmy has a biiiig soft spot for her, like soft smiles, hand on the small of her back. Y/n is veryyyy soft spoken and quiet, a very stark contrast to the rest of The Beef/The Bear staff. The staff absolutely love her and are super protective of her: She’s best friends with Sydney (also she’s around the same age as Syd, early 20s), Tina sees her as a daughter, Marcus is always trying to make her laugh and asks her to try his pastries, Richie is more gentle with her than he is with everyone else, Ebra has a calmness around Y/n, Sugar (when she stops by) loves treating Y/n like the little sister she never had, and Carmy… Carmy is head over heels for Y/n. He’s so soft and gentle with her, never raising his voice at her in the kitchen, and he always has the cutest nicknames for her🤧. However… Y/n has a boyfriend, they all know it, and they all share an extreme dislike for him. He’s not very nice, and it all goes to a boiling point when they spot bruises, Y/n letting her hair fall over her face.🥺 Tina and Sydney probably noticing right as she walks in one morning, then the rest of the staff noticing too, the whole kitchen getting eerily quiet, Carmy pulling her aside to his office to talk to her, holding Y/n in his arms while she cries🥺 Carmy 100% taking his bat and beating the crap out of her bf… Now ex, and he offers for Y/n to stay with him because she has nowhere to go? Their relationship growing after that? Y/n kissing him one day, shook at herself, but he kisses her back?
July in November
carmen berzatto x fem! reader
warnings: heavy domestic abuse, controlling fiance, swearing, violence, carmen goes gives absolute no regard for felonies, (assumed) unrequited love, self deprecation, victim blaming
a/n: this entire fic is just time skips l swear, I've written something similar here as well if you liked this which i hope you did! dv is a heavy subject, and not something to trivialise. if you or someone you know is going through dv, please reach out x
banner from @firefly-graphics
The streaks of concealer do little to hide the bloom of dark purples and blues.
They stretch out, clawing up your side and past your ribs, shades of overlapping blotched bruises that were not yet healed.
You were a chef trained in Oslo for god sake, you had friends and family who loved you- and you let out a laugh when the words come out pathetic and dull.
You were right where he left you.
You suppose from the continuous uphill of your career, the exhaustion had made it easier to just sit still, let it happen. He had proposed and you had said yes unblinking. It was what he told the countless people at dinner parties he dragged you to in attendance,
“I had finally beat her down enough to finally fall in love with me” He smiled, his eyes shining and his grip on your waist bruising as the people smiled and laughed and you swallowed back his irony.
The cycles of abuse had started before you could truly remember, bouts of angry yelling before the hot dull beat of pain. And he was so kind after, so thoughtful and apologetic, his eyebrows furrowed and his touch gentle as he leaned over you.
Were you still a victim, if you wanted to stay just for the after?
You shake your head, slowly blinking at the reflection of your bloated torso. Peeling away your shirt gently before buttoning up one of your work shirts instead.
Your heart settled when you thought of the Bear. It was your haven, Richie’s rambled drivel, Sugar hovering every so near, Carmen with his eyes and his inked hands and his sweet mouth. It wrapped around you more tightly than those bruises ever could.
You look over to watch your fiancé, fast asleep content with a full stomach and tired fists. He was so vulnerable like that, and the feeling of anger unfurls in your gut. For once, just one time you wanted him to feel it, that gut wrenching frightened feeling.
You look over to the stone doorstep near his desk, the stupid thing that he had revered at one of his art conventions that was left keeping the door open. You wonder, just for a second, what it would feel like to lean over him with it between your hands, waiting for the slight blink of his eyes that clear away the sleep.
Watch the fear melt into them, and smashing his fucking face with it.
You breathe deeply, arranging your hair so it is out of your face, flattening out the creases in your shit and avoiding your stomach as you stood up and grabbed your bag.
“Where are you going”
You blink, hands gripping your work bag as his voice bellows “Work”
“Huh. We need to sort that out soon”
You stopped, closing your eyes as you fiddled with the loose threads from the shoulder strap. You knew this conversation, where he would bring up another thing in your life he wanted to talk about, as if your relationship was built on a solid base of understanding and conversation. You would wait until his voice would ripen with jealousy and rage, where thinly veiled inquisition would fall away and reveal what he truly wanted.
You had given him enough of your life, let him change and control it. But you would soon let yourself be buried then let him take this too from you. No fucking way.
“Sure”
You pass by the door, pushing the stone to the side. It wasn’t heavy at all.
It’s when you enter the back door of the Bear do you realise you’ve spent your whole commute over holding your breath.
The smells of sauces and expensive meats lulls your anxiety into a mummering tremble, and you sigh softly to yourself as you sling your bag into your locker.
You can already hear Richie arguing, and the tired voice of Carmen biting back and you want to slap yourself for all the times you had grown annoyed at them. What you would give to hear them always, to feel this level of safety and comfort without the overhanging timer of when you would eventually have to leave.
You nod towards Sydney, carrying a large tray of roasted pecans over to Sam, her braids intricately wrapped around her head.
The walkway is framed with pictures of the family, from Mickey to the recent Polaroids of Sugar's newborn. You notice a framed picture of the team from years ago, when you had first started working at the Bear. You’re squished between Carmen and Fak, the backdrop of a renovating Bear behind you all.
The timidiness of being new had not left then, and despite the family enveloping you as their own you had wondered why Carmen had chosen you out of all the decorated chefs that had surely applied. You had asked him this once, after an exhausting dinner rush and he had simply looked up at you from his plate of stolen steak and eggs.
“You’ve got something, Kid. Maybe it’s because you hadn’t yet gotten the light beaten out from the culinary world but I need that. Need someone who pushes against the boundaries you know?”
You had stayed quiet as he talked
“And you’re a local. Boston isn’t for the faint of heart, you know your diners better than they know themselves. Call it prejudice, I call it a safety cushion.“
You wondered what she would think of you now, her wide eyed dream so close you could see her tight grip on her chef coat in the grainy photograph.
You follow the noise of the crew into the kitchen, when Carmen is hunched over a chopping board and Richie is pointing out problems in the seating arrangement for tonight.
He exhales, ready to start another contingent when he spots your figure walking through the entryway.
“Finally. Someone fucking competent in this place”
“Hey Richie” You smile, tightening your apron before biting back a wince. The darkness of your life outside of the Bear had a way of seeping in at times, you had grown too comfortable.
“Hey baby, you good? yeah?” Richie replies
“Richie-“ Carmen interrupts, turning his head to face you for the first time in an hour (which you did not realise but Riche surely did)
“Fuck off. Fuck you. You sure baby? Need me to get you somethin? I got a pack of Marlboros if you need a break”
“Leave her alone, dammit Richie, and a cigarette this early?”
“Oh! Oh! The addict wants to act holier than thou all of a sudden. Just because you slapped on a couple Nic patches-“
“It’s gum and it’s fucking working asshole”
“The L hold you up?” Richie says, throwing the finger at Carmen
“No, no, um, just got in a little fight with David” You reply, cutting your eyes away from him.
Richie rolls his eyes with a groan, a sour expression filters over his face in flash at the mention of your fiance’s name.
“That fuckin’ guy, I swear that boyfriend of yours” Richie groans
“It was my fault really.”
You notice Carmen’s movements stop abruptly, the chopping growing silent with his back turned to you.
“I highly doubt that” Carmen grumbles, before Tina and Sydney come through the door
“Hey, why were you late you missed out on that guy who tried fighting Fak-”
“Her stupid fucking boyfriend”
“Easy” Carmen replies, turning to face you again
“Hey, c’mon Carmen you of all people know that man does not deserve her one fucking bit”
“Darling you need to get rid of that man I’m telling you, he ain't treating you the way you deserve. There's no good keeping an angry man” Tina chides, eyebrows raised as she wipes her fingers on the cloth draped over her shoulder.
“Yeah, he's a dick. And he’s always just…hovering when he comes.” Sydney replies
“And always talk in this condescending tone, adding random words to sound smarter than he is” Marcus’s voice interjects, peeking from around the pastry corner
“Like pseudo-intellectual goddamn-” Tina grumbles, in lightning speed
“Yuppie” Fak continues, and Tina nods
“All I’m saying doll, is that if you end up dumpin’ him we’d be right behind ya’. Might throw a little party here, a small one…how much does it cost to hire some fireworks?”
“Ease up guys, her love life ain’t got nothing to do with us alright. Let the girl be” Carmen voice bellows “And we got work to do”
He turns to the rest of them, shaking his head feigning annoyance at the team gathering together to gossip. And yet, his hands grip his towel tight enough to leave them white, and his teeth grind against his molars when he thinks of your boyfriend.
You don’t know how they'd react when they find out he proposed, you can’t exactly hide a ring.
“Hey” You smile towards Carmen, who’s twisted features blink into resolve when he hears you
“Hey” He nods, wincing as he pressed his fingers to his temple gingerly.
“Still got that headache?”
“I’ll be fine, just wish it would save the eye stabbing until after dinner service”
“Here”
“I’m alright-“
“Take it” you repeat, pressing some pain killers in his hand.
Carmen nods gratefully, hands clasped around yours for a second longer. Before they part.
He eyes the pills, and for a second you see this puzzled look gleam across his eyes.
He pops them in his mouth, you let out a breath from your chest quietly.
You kept your work and home life separate, Carmen didn’t need nor should carry the burden of this ugly secret that paints you from the inside out.
You had a lid on it. You were sure.
You let yourself get lost in the ingrained memory of moving around the kitchen, letting the slice of your knife against the flesh of meat and fruit melt away everything you had been shouldering the past year.
It gets busy, really busy, Richie and Carmen fail to cohabitate in the hours of the dinner service, multiple plates are dropped, you almost can’t keep up with the never ending orders coming in but its also fucking amazing. The rush of delivering every component of a plate in time, making sure the meat is cooked until just right, making sure the sauce isn't runny, it feels like dancing.
Your legs and arms ache, you have a headache and your apron is stained and you can’t tell the difference between the end of the dinner service and hitting the last step of a choreographed dance.
The high that buzzes through your body is mirrored by everyone around you, and you take a second to sink in that feeling of euphoria as the last tables are cleared.
“That was..” You start, un-hunching your shoulders as the rest of the team look up in a daze, surrounding the kitchen
“Fuckin’ amazing, might be our best night yet” Richie grins, bobbing his chin as it rests on his hands
“That was good..we could've been a bit better at turning the tables-” Carmen murmurs
“Oh c’mon Carmy, we can talk about the finalities later but even you can admit that was pretty good” Sydney calls out, leaning her head against the door frame, as exhausted pulls at her every feature
“Yeah…yeah it was good”
“No one go anywhere, I’ve got left over schnitzel and potatoes and I know none of you have taken a break”
“How long has it been since we’ve sat down for family?” Tina mumbles, wiping her stained apron tiredly
“Too long, I don’t mind fixin’ it up” You stretch out your arms, unbuttoning your chef's coat and folding it neatly, despite Sugar throwing them into the sink to soak for the night later.
“I’ll help” Carmen nods to you, doing the same with his apron. His dark crew neck that sticks to him reveals with every button, outlining the indentations of his chest and biceps.
Family usually consists of throwing whatever leftovers from the night's dinner service onto a large plate and proceeding to throw some forks near it. There had been a long trail of food combinations that either delighted the crew or had you throwing your towel in and going to the taco truck nearby.
Today however, the night had gone so well and had distracted you even better. You could at least make up some plates, make ‘em look pretty or whatever else your hands had been trained to do.
The rest of the team move the tables to form one large spanning diner in the middle of the Bear, the scrape of wood against flooring is all that fills the air as you and Carmen work silently. You’re good together, that sort of chemistry that only comes with understanding a person so well you can anticipate their next move. And the night feels like a dance again, moving left and right, handing him pieces of chicken and spoonfuls of sauce, wiping plates clean and centering them right.
It’s only when Richie comes tumbling through the double doors does it cause Carmen to jump, spilling the ladle of hot gravy across your shirt. You wince, Carmen lets out a garbled grunt and Richie cringes.
Carmen is quick, reaching for a nearby cloth as he begins to lift up your shirt gingerly. The sauce isn't boiling, but there is a slight stinging heat that radiates across your midsection and you're too distracted and uncomfortable that you forget yourself, and let Carmen reveal you.
It takes Carmen a second, he's pulling your shirt up just below your underbra, and his fingers pause against the fabric.
You’re confused just for a moment, but it stretches out, and you let yourself sit in the fantasy of unknowing, you let yourself imagine a life where what was sprawled across your skin was just the remnants of a soggy shirt and irritated skin.
The truth of it hits you when you watch Carmen's face change in front of you.
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t-”
“What?” Richie calls, coming closer before throwing his head back
“Jesus fuckin' christ kid”
“I-I we got into a fight-“
“A fight? He beat you!”
“You don’t understand-”
“Maybe I don’t but this-“ Carmen gestures to the welts and colours that paint your stomach “Is one of the worst things I’ve seen in a long time”
Carmen’s hands are still gripping your shirt, the rag dropped to the floor between you now as you lower your head and let your hair cover your eyes.
“I’m sorry-“ You croak out, tongue heavy and eyes blurring with tears.
“Sorry-?” Carmen circuses down to meet your eyes incredulously “You’re sorry? Why are you fucking sorry, look what he fucking did to you!- what has he done to you?”
“Hey hey, honey you need to tell us what happened. This isn’t right, no fight can justify this” Richie whispers, crouching near you as he watches Carmen carefully.
“It was an accident”
“Do you truly believe that?” Richie murmurs softly, and you look up with a furrow of your brow.
You turn to Carmen whose face is twisted in anger, his eyes on your midsection, his hands around your sides and around you.
“I don’t know anymore..I’m just so tired” You whimper, your throat growing tight as Carmen’s brows furrow, blinking and grinding his jaw
“I’m going to fucking kill him-“
“Hey, Carmen wait just- wait” Richie is quick to reach Carmen as he rears back
“Look at her- he can’t-FUCK”
“I know, and we will. I want to break his goddamn legs but we got to think of her. We need to get her out of this, we need to think about her first”
Carmen closes his eyes as you watch their interaction, and he turns to you as you blink the tears that drop down your cheek. He frowns and waits for your approval and you nod, and Richie lets go of him and he gathers you in his arms and lets you cry the last of your resolve on his shoulder.
You don’t tell him anything, and he doesn’t ask. He lets you wet his shoulder as the silence that sits in the kitchen is consumed by your muffled cries instead.
The commotion causes the rest of the team to flood in, putting the pieces together when they see your shoulders shaking with grief and your unbuttoned top. The bear hung with the sick reality of a beat woman, and the once hungry crew now felt the nauseous image in front of them fill their stomach.
Sydney is the one that eases you out of Carmen’s arms, and pulls your hair back as she whispers apologies into your ear. She takes you to the emergency room to make sure nothing is broken. When the nurses greet you by name she waits until you're in the examination room before sobbing into Tina’s arms.
“How did I not notice, I see her every goddamn day, how did I not notice he was hurting her?”
“Don’t do that, don’t blame yourself. There is only one person to blame”
The rest of the team follows, and they all sprawl across the waiting room, heads between their hands.
After one of the junior doctors gives you the all clear, and Carmen and Richie follow up on the police report you make your way down the linoleum hallway in the crumbled stained shirt that had started this all.
You blink as you watch the faces of everyone you love look up in worry, exhaustion is written into their bones and still they sit in the too small waiting chairs for you. You had never felt a love like that before, so profound and overwhelming clear and you breathe it in deeply like it's the last thing you’ll taste.
“I’m so sorry-”
“Don’t you fuckin dare-”
“I know, I know, just please hear me.”
They relent, and you wait until they all nod towards you before continuing
“You guys have taken me as your own, made me feel a part of something greater than myself. I don’t want you to think I was unloved” Your voice heightens with the wet tears that fill your throat
“Every single time I came through those doors I felt it okay? I never understood the power of it, of love, but I feel it now and I felt it then. It just got muddled in the middle of all of this, of all the things I keep hidden. And that is my fault, but you guys, the Bear? You guys kept me alive” You whisper the last part, your voice caught in your throat as you try to still the shake your hands.
“You did nothing wrong baby, nothing. It’s hard to leave isn’t it? It’s hard to even say it” Ebra is the first one to whisper, holding your hands gently and carefully. You look at him, as his eyes gleam with the heaviness of his past and you don’t quite understand how, but you believe he knows that well.
“We’re your family, whatever it is that you're dealing with we shoulder it to, we carry that burden. That is what we're here for, and you can take all the time that you need. Let us help you, but you know what happens now, yes?” Richie murmurs
“I need to get out”
“Damn fucking right you do. And fast, I know it's going to be hard but you need to act like everything is normal. Get in, pack a bag and get out.”
You breathe in deeply, remembering all the half packed duffle bags that had been left near the door. This time you wouldn't be able to back out, this time Carmen would make sure of it.
“Where’s Carmen?” You suddenly say, and Richie shifts his gaze to the exit sign.
“Maybe give him a few moments Kid” Richie murmurs, but you ignore him, moving quickly towards and out of the doors into the smoking area in the alleyway.
You spot him hunched over, back against the stone wall, trails of grey smoke filters from his mouth as you tsk loudly when you near him.
He raises his head up, widening his eyes before looking down at the cigarette.
“You were doing so good” You smile softly
“Yeah? Felt like pulling teeth, not grabbing for one every couple hours.”
“But those chewing gums”
Carmen shakes his head “Don’t tell Rich, but they were fucking disgusting”
You let out a hearty laugh, leaning back on the wall beside him.
Carmen takes one last deep drag, before pressing the butt of the stick into the wall that isn't near you.
It’s silent, and you feel him watching you for a long time before his voice replies in a croaky tear filled tone you had never heard come out of his mouth before.
“Goddamn it kid”
“I know” You reply instantly, the tears that you thought had left you were big fat liars.
“I want to blame myself, I will for a long time but this isn’t about me is it”
You shake your head furiously, it was so far apart from him.
“What can I do? What can I do to make it better?” Carmen whispers, turning to face you fully now, eyes red and blonde curls messy across his brows.
“It’s not something you can fix Carm, you just got to let me do it. Let me walk away completely”
Carmen grits his teeth, “I should’ve made more attention-”
“How? Between renovating the Bear, organising the menu, fucking opening and maintaining the dinner service every night?”
Carmen shakes his head and you tug at his arm gently
“I didn’t let you notice Carm, I hid it well sometimes I even forgot about it. The bear, you? You let me forget, you let me feel so safe I forgot what he was doing to me”
Carmen reaches for your hand, holding onto it gently
You shake your head, shaking the tears along with it. You hadn’t so much as let yourself hear the truth of what had been happening, but it flowed out of your mouth like a river into Carmen.
“He got drunk one night” You whisper, biting your cheek as you bristle at the memory of it
“He got drunk one night, and started accusing me of these horrible things. Things I would never do. And when I tried talking to him he just turned to me with this look in his eyes, and it was so unlike him Carm. It was like someone else had come and taken his body, and his voice and his mouth”
“And when I reached for him he reached back. And then I suppose I got used to being afraid of him”
“I don’t know what changed that night, but it did. Or maybe he had always been that way and I had been to blind by the feeling of being wanted that I ignored it. But it got worse, he hit me, but he started controlling what I was doing. Always flinging my phone in my face so that he could look for something that wasn’t there, eyes always scrutinising me when I came home fucking exhausted from the Bear.”
“That was how it started, and I guess it never quite ended” You murmur, and when Carmen drags his thumb across your cheek, you understand the rage that he had kept covered for you.
“I’m going to hurt him. And that's more for me than it is for you, I know it and I don’t care. He doesn't get to walk away.” Carmen replies after a beat, and his voice is even. You can see his anger from before slipping into the darkness of his pupils, but his voice is clear and devoid.
“I know” You murmur
“And you’re going to stay with me till we get you a place. Tina and Syd offered and well the whole team, but I can’t-”
“I know, you can’t put them in danger”
“No. I can’t let it happen, you being alone, him somehow getting to you. You being hurt again-” Carmen shakes his head, grinding his jaw as he cuts his eyes away.
“Okay” You mumble, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of your secret that had weighed you down every day fall away.
The month after had passed quicker than any other time in your life. And for that you were grateful. You had packed a bag and moved into Carmen's apartment that night, and he and Richie had made good on their promise. They watched, as well as the rest of the Bear with a sneer as your fiance was carried into the police station, and you watched the mirror of your injuries multiplied across his face.
The police had been slow in taking action, even you know this, so you suppose their tight lipped expressions at the beaten man they found in your trashed apartment made up for that.
Carmen slept near the door for the first two weeks, a bat in his hand and his notebook of recipes filled with scribbled annotations. Tossing and turning enough times, made you wrap your blanket around yourself and join him by the door. You would wake up some nights, in a sweat from the terror of your nightmare imagining him somehow finding you, and you would join him those times as well.
The truth of all that had happened still had not yet been told, and you doubt that it ever will. But you were okay with that, and Carmen was too. And so when your fiance had been tried and sentenced, and the promise of broken bones hung over him even years after, Carmen had made no mention of finding you a place.
And so you stayed, and made a home for yourself. Let your shoes get muddled and clutter the hallway, have your toothbrush besides his own. Move in the last pieces of yourself that had been left in that prison to a place that could maybe change them.
You spent Thursdays with Richie, he’d wait at the foyer for you and he'd take you out for lunch like clockwork. Divulging in your week as he did his, he let you steal some of his cigarettes and you let him ramble to you. Richie had surprised you, when all was said and done. He had known what to do, knew how to talk to you, and you think you credit him to a lot of where you were now. You suppose he blames himself a little as well, so you don’t mind that Thursdays were his way of checking up on you.
You let the team act the same way, Tina bringing you plates of food and tupper wares of lasagna till Carmen's fridge was hard to open, Sydney calling every day, Ebra and Marcus making sure you had someone who could walk you home if Carmen had to stay back. And when you had finally had enough, they nodded and backed away and let you out of their grip.
You're crouched in the fire escape of Carmen's building, passing a bottle of wine that you had snuck from service.
“I visited him today”
“What?” Carmen replies, knowing immediately who you were talking about.
You shrug your shoulders, “I was too much of a mess to confront him, and the court proceedings left me too numb to even face him. But I went today, and I told him. What he had done, how he had changed.”
“But then he laughed and I punched him in his goddamn mouth”
“Atta girl” Carmen grins, his smile filling up the entire bottom of his face.
“So I can’t ever come back to the Boston Corrections facility, and boy am I glad. You know what this means though right?”
“Hm?” Carmen mumbles with a mouthful of street tacos
“You can’t ever get yourself thrown in prison” You chide, and you smile when he throws his head back in laughter
“Seriously Carm?” You bemoan, resting against the living room entryway
“Yes, the bed is strictly meant for you. What do you take me for? Letting a woman sleep on the couch” Carmen gruffs, carefully placing the duvet over the couch cushions.
“It’s been nearly a year since I’ve moved in, Carmen. I don’t think it's ridiculous to assume we can share a bed together”
Carmen grinds his jaw, swallowing back grunt at the thought of sharing a bed with you. As if it was no big thing, as if Carmen would be able to sleep with you next to him.
“It’s called being a host”
“I signed the lease 2 months ago, we’re technically de-facto” You raise your eyebrows, folding your hands across your chest
“The only time I’ll let the government decide what we are is when-if I put a ring on that finger” Carmen replies, the little slip causing him to cut his eyes from you and back to the duvet that was already folded.
You shake your head with a laugh “This you’re way of proposing Carm? Take a girl out for dinner first”
Carmen mumbles under his breath, flattening the duvet with his inked hands before his phone buzzes
“Goddamnit, that’s Richie.
“Leave that sofa and let's go down to meet our friends and have a nice time. God knows we’ve earned more than a few drinks at Nick’s” You reply, swiping Carmen’s phone
“Hey!”
“You weren’t even going to answer him” You roll your eyes.
You send Richie a text that was all apologetic and none grammatically correct as you shuffle out of your work pants into some jeans.
The team was already at the bear, halfway through the first round of drinks and you’d be damned if you let Carmen make the both of you late.
Carmen is in jeans as well, and the white shirt he always dons fits around his chest tightly. You can lie to yourself most days, but in times like this, where you both live in this domestic bubble your mind wanders.
You don’t let it too much.
But when you're visiting family, and you pass by the Louisiana welcome sign planted in the roadway, and the weather gets warm and the nights stretch out you let yourself think of him. You let yourself imagine a life where he was entwined, in you, your life, your days while you drink on the porch of your family home.
The thought of being in anything new scares you to no end, your past finds you in moments you least expect and dredges you down to the same feeling you felt when you were with him.
But Carmen was your past too wasn’t he? He was muddled and interlinked with all the memories that make your chest ache and your hands shake. Carmen didn’t feel new..you had already been living with each other for a year now, and you suppose the way you both flow into each other's lives was no different.
You’d be together, in the way you had always been but different also. You’d get to grow familiar of the taste of him, you’d get to feel him under your skin, beneath your fingers, and he’d sleep in that fucking bed for the first time in a year.
Then the sun would dip below the horizon, the sounds of the insects and birds would come back to you, and the creeping shadow of guilt and insecurity would remind you of who you were again.
You’d taste the bitter embarrassment of forcing Carmen to be that way with you, throwing your head back as you gulp down the beer in your hand as you try to stave away the taste. The dream disappears each time from you, like the oranges and reds that paint the Louisiana sky every evening.
“Hey, we going or what?” Carmen says, his eyes narrowing at, you noticing the way your eyes glaze over.
“Yeah, yes” You nod, swallowing the thoughts of him quickly as you finish tying your boots and let Carmen lock the door behind you.
The bar is surprisingly crowded on a Tuesday night, and you have to squeeze past crowds of leather wearing bikers before finally seeing the team seated in a long booth at the back.
“Finally!” Richie yells, hands in the air and his beer swishing out of the neck.
“We were about to send a search party” Tina smiles, looking toward you with a glint in her eyes when she notices Carmen’s arm at your back.
“Aren’t you guys like, a 2 minute walk from this place? Fak got here before you” Marcus replied, his old fashioned nursed in your arms.
“I had no involvement in our tardiness, he was too busy fixing his makeshift couch bed”
“Oh don’t tell me your still sleeping on that” Richie’s eyes widen
“You know that ain’t even a good couch right? We found it on the side of the road-“
“It’s not good for your back Carmen, all those cushions” Ebra shakes his head disapprovingly.
“It’s perfectly fine Ebra, and who would I be if I let a woman sleep on the couch?” Carmen grumbles, as both slide into the booth next to Sydney.
“I mean, there is an easy straightforward solution” Sydney murmurs, and everyone turns to her quickly.
“You could both just sleep in the same bed together” She replies, after looking at everyone dumbfounded.
“Only married people share a bed, that’s Sicilian tradition”
“Yeah, mixing work and personal life isn’t-“
“Mixing? They already live together!” Sydney replies, defensively.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already” Four murmured, before snapping his mouth closed when Carmen narrows his eyes to him.
“It’s not about fucking tradition, or whatever. I’m not gonna put her-you in that situation and make you uncomfortable”
“Why would you make me uncomfortable?” You murmur without thinking, and the booth goes quiet.
Carmen shakes his head, blinking as you remain quiet.
You wince at the silence, maneuvering your body quickly out of the booth as you almost fall out.
“Uh-I’m going to get a drink” You reply quickly
Carmen's body isn’t fast enough for his legs and he stands up from his position on the booth quickly, almost tumbling over.
“I’ll come with you”
You shake your head, forcing a tight smile as you wave him off.
“It’s okay, I know your order” You reply quickly, turning around without seeing the look on Carmen’s face.
You slide into one of the vacant barstools, signalling to the bartender as they make the rounds across the counter.
The rows of silver bracelets that hang around the bartender's wrists cling as they mix and shake drinks, and you let yourself get lost in the glittering light show of them reflecting off the bar lights. They distract you enough to not notice the man that now leers over you.
You flinch when you feel his hand touch your shoulder, and when you turn expecting one of the guys from the Bear you're taken back when you're met with a five o clock shadow and a stink of vodka.
“What's a girl like you doin’ all alone?”
“I’m good” You grit out from between your teeth
“Oh c’mon, you girls love to play hard but what you really need-”
“I said leave me alone asswhole” You spit, roughly moving his latched fingers from your shoulder.
The man sneers, his voice growing louder and sloppy as he begins to swear at you. His hands find their way to your waist, and the shiver of disgust turns into a familiar sharp pain as you shout out.
“You fucking bitch” The man starts, before you see the flash of dirty blonde curls cover your vision and the feeling of his fingers around you is wrenched off.
Carmen’s hands are around his neck, and he slams him into the wooden floors of the Bar with ease. He holds him there before turning to look up at you, his eyes blown out and his eyebrows furrowed behind his curls. Your chest heaves as you meet his gaze, and you watch as his eyes trail down your body, almost surveying the extent of your injuries and filing it into his mind so that it is all he thinks about when he breaks the skin across his knuckles.
You watch Carmen work, watch the way his shoulders and back contorts under every movement that lands a punch into the man's face. The buzzing chatter of the bar increases, as people begin to take notice of the shouts of frazzled swears and slobby slurs that leave the man's mouth. Someone screams there is a fight, and the bartender mutters obscenities as they try to push through the crowd.
Carmen lands punch after punch into his face, with no real sense of stopping as his movements grow more and more crazed with every crack of skin and dribble of blood that paints his hands. Carmen's eyes look determined, like he had a goal to all of this, and when Richie and the rest of the team pushes past the crowd and shouts out to him to stop, he looks up at you do you know.
You didn’t get to see what he had done to your husband, or how. But now, he takes his time with the man under him who kicks and fails, blubbering out blood and drool. He continues to stare at you, and the rest of the patrons look on in horror as the man under Carmen becomes disguised by the brutality of Carmens fists across his body. You hear the crack of bone, and when the man screams out a loose and garbled apology from the swollen tongue of his mouth, does Carmen flick his eyes down to him.
“You’re sorry? Yeah?” Carmen murmurs, softly
The man nods eagerly, his mouth filling with blood and his eyes swollen
“I’m not sure I believe that” Carmen replies, sending his foot into the mans stomach as he keels over
“Okay, Carmen that's enough” Richie calls out
“All I did was ask her a question!” The man screams out, his words jagged and unclear
“Hey, you shut the fuck up” Richie replies, before clocking his head to try and meet Carmens gaze who is back on you
“Look man, I get it. That one time wasn’t enough, but you can’t keep doing this”
Carmen grinds his teeth, as you look on in awe as his knuckles bleed violently, throwing his arm up and swinging down onto the man.
You got what you needed from this, and so when you step closer to Carmen and turn your head to the side you can only think of one thing
“I’m banned for at least 12 months”
You watch his fingers loosen around the man's bloody shirt, and Carmen wipes his hands across the man's chest before slowly straightening up from his crouched position.
“Get the fuck out, the both of you before the cops get here” The bartender grits out, shaking his head.
Carmen nods, “I’m not fucking sorry”
“Yeah yeah I know” The bartender rolls his eyes, before you grab Carmen's arm and push through the gawking faces of onlookers
You find a door leading out to a side alleyway, and you both fall out from the door into a combined heap.
“I had to do it okay? The way he was looking at you and that fucking hand around your side I couldn’t just let him-“ Carmen starts, chest heaving up and down and the splatter of spit and blood across his jaw
You don’t let him finish the rushed words that fall out of his mouth before you cover it with your own. Gripping onto the loose collar of his shirt, you drink down the anger and violence that had been festering on the both of you.
Carmen tastes sweet, like the cranberry jus he had been preparing, and rough too, like his worn workmen jacket and the pepper taste of his nicotine gum.
You realise then that you would never taste something as great as that, and that you would be chasing the feeling of how Carmen’s lips against your own vibrates through you from head to foot.
You pull away with quickness, chest heaving and eyes wide as you feel Carmen’s mouth warm your chest.
Carmen doesn’t blink, he stares at you, the brittle Chicago winter blowing his hair across his forehead and the distant sound of sirens and he stares at you.
“I’m not sorry” You whisper, pressing your lips together
“Good” Carmen replies before you’ve even uttered the last word.
And when you blink the cold smoke of his breath is over you again, his inked fingers cradle your head and he takes your mouth again.
You don’t stop the crash of your open mouths and dipping tongues until the warmth of Carmen covers you entirely, until November in Chicago feels like July.
I have a sort of angsty hurt to comfort idea for Carmy 😈 Okay but Claire coming back into his life and obviously you’re both dating, but maybe sort of feeling a little bit left out and feeling guilty for feeling a little insecure because you know Carmen’s loyal and Claire seems like a lovely person. Not saying anything because you obviously want him to be happy and you know there’s a part of you that’s being irrational. But THEN, maybe for whatever you also personally know Luca! Perhaps from something work related or had mutual friends and then maybe getting back into contact with him through Marcus and really hitting it off with him and having a respectable normal healthy friendship with him, but Carmy’s on the side going “What the cinnamon toast FUCK is this”. And it culminates in an argument which ultimately leads the both of you to opening up and discussing boundaries and airing out insecurities, and just being super vulnerable and communicating with one another
Love and War (I)
warnings; claire, arguing, threats of violence, anxiety, my writing
i had like 4 different versions of how this story was supposed to go, hope you enjoy the one i finally let see the sun
a/n: yeah...so shit hit the fan and kind of derailed my life for 6 months. I hope you will forgive me, i feel like an absentee father. (part two will be posting right after i swear!)
divider by @firefly-graphics
You aren't jealous.
You have never experienced the slimy green devil in any of your past relationships, so you shouldn't feel it now.
Your mind isn't fond of what it should feel however, and instead, you feel a burning ache begin to burst through your chest as you watch Carmen nod excitedly at Claire in the Beef’s front dining space. It disgusts you, how this feeling wraps around your heart like sludge. You've been trying to focus on prepping for the new menu, gathering different ensembles of compotes and sauces, but your eyes always finds it’s way back to them.
And her.
Claire had burst into Carmen’s life seemingly out of nowhere, and it took one exchange between you both to know it was different. Claire had something you didn't with Carmen, a past, and the discomforting feeling of being on the outside looking in was all that blared in your mind the past few weeks since her appearance.
It wasn’t like Claire was rude, no that would have made this feeling easier to bear. She was nice, for god sake. The only person in Chicago who it seemed had not yet gotten all their goodness sucked out, and she had to have been Carmen's old friend. And a friend was all she was, so why did you- why are you jealous?
She knows him better than you do.
You shake the thought out of your mind so furiously the container in your hand spills onto the cutting board. You weren't going to go there, not when Carmen hadn't done anything wrong.
You wanted him to have friends, to broaden his circle from beyond just the Beef and Sugar, who you made sure to point out didn't exactly count. So you should be happy, ecstatic even, that he was able to reconnect with someone that had known him for so long.
But she had known him for so long.
And you know you're being irrational and hypocritical and you know you can’t own someone else, but maybe there was a part of you that liked that you had him all to yourself.
Carmen was different. To your other relationships, your other friendships, everything. You and Carmen danced around your feelings for so long that when it exploded into heated kisses and confessions of love one night after a dazzling dinner service, it had already felt like you had been with him for years.
And Carmen was devoted to you, he sang it into your skin every chance he got. It was just that those chances had begun to dwindle day after day the more Claire came around, until you had begun to detest the sound of her name leaving his mouth.
Steeping your fingers in cold water, you wipe them hastily no your aprosn before making your way over to them both. Fixing your face from quivering lips into a tight smile.
You wipe your messy hands in your apron, steeping your fingers before making your way over to them both. Fixing your face, you pull your quivering lips into a tight smile.
“Hey, Claire. How are you doing?”
“Oh hey! Good good, Carmen was just telling me about this cool hole in the wall down 85th.”
“Ruth’s Bar?”
“Yes! That’s the one. They really do saffron popcorn there?” Claire replies, eyes bulging.
“Yep, mix it in with a little alcohol and then pour it into the butter. Entertainment is almost too good that you forgot about how amazing it smells though”
“We should go out some time!”
“Definitely. Carmen, were you alright with Thai tonight?”
“Oh” Carmen replies, scratching the back of his head
He forgot.
“Yeah, sorry hun I promised to take Claire to-”
“This new fusion place! I saw it online and Carmen offered to take me.
You voice pitter and curls as you gulp down the innate urge to reply with a deadpan ‘What?”.
“Oh. Ah- okay. What’s the place?” You reply, your voice on the verge of shaky as you blink through Claire, watching to see if there was any semblance of guilt in Carmen.
There wasn't, he was taking her out on a night reserved for you to. As if they hadn't spent nearly everyday together, as if Claire hadn’t imprinted her ass on the bar chair’s sharing pieces of things you never could with him.
“It’s called Route Creale?” Claire replies, excitedly, obviously to the sour expression on your face as she butchers the name of the restaurant.
“La Route Créole” You correct, almost unconsciously.
Practiced from the amount of times you had excitedly to Carmen about the Trinidan-French fusion place, looking through the menu together, huddled over your cracked phone screen in the early morning in your bed. Listing of dishes and dishes that made you squeal in delight.
You had told Carmen how bad you wanted to go, how bad you wanted both of you to try it together, and instead, instead he takes her.
He takes her.
“Easy, not everyone has spent months as the head Poissonnier in Port Of Spain” Carmen jokes, head tilting as you stammer, eyes focused on the floor.
“What the hell is a Poissonnier” Claire replies giggling
And as Carmen clarified to her, gripping her arm as he rambles on the importance of the distribution of fucking cooking stations your mind kind of skips.
It falls over itself like a misshapen piece of the sidewalk. Your eyebrows are screwed and you're looking at Carmen looking at Claire. For a second you are confused, wholeheartedly and entirely confused to the very marrow of your being. Who was this person in front of you? It couldn’t have been your Carmen.
Your Carmen who wrote you letters left on food packages and stuffed in your locker. Your Carmen who would follow you around like a lost puppy, enthralled by your every move. Your Carmen who sung you to sleep in horrible drunken renditions of “Livin on a prayer”.
Jesus he knew every part of you, every inch of yourself like a road map, forks and branched roots across your skin. You hug your mid section tightly, fingers digging through the cotton of your button chef shirt.
No, no. Someone must have come in and taken his face, his clothes, his mouth.
But he smells like him, the same deep scent of cocoa and burnt cigarettes. You could press your lips to his, but you don’t know if he’d like that anymore.
You know when someone is slipping away, you’re not one to guard your food like a stray dog. And no matter how hard you want to sink your teeth into him and not let go, you don’t have a choice.
The squealed sound of Claire rips you from your reverie, and your eyes shoot up to catch her grip Carmen's shoulder, her head tilted back and eyes squirmed shut in laughter. The ripple of jealous rage that bursts through every limb in your body causes you to subtly turn on your heel, rushing out of the suffocating stench of betrayal.
Fingers digging to unlace your apron that feels as if like a vice around your chest, unheard to the inquisitive shouts of Richie and Syd, until you hear the slam of the backdoor behind you.
Your leg jitters as you walk around in circles, grinding your jaw as visions of Claire and Carmen flash in your mind. Fisting the washcloth in your hand till your knuckles turn white, you stuff your face into it, masking the scream of festered anger that rips from your throat.
You’re pathetic, you don't get to feel jealous. Carmen would never even think of it, of betraying you. But he also wouldn't have taken the very restaurant you had been gawking at for the past month and taken someone else to it. Right in your face.
You don’t know if he even noticed your abrupt disappearance, your eyes shift to the door, waiting, hoping. Ears perked up at any sound of rushing footsteps to come find you.
Angry tears gather at the waterline when all you hear is the rumbling traffic behind you and the flutter of shrikes above.
You’re not jealous, you’re fuming
You hate it, no, you hate him. You seethe as you're forced to sit in it pushing the adoration and love you have for him to make room for it in your mind. It takes over, overcrowding your brain till you can't hear anything else, where even the buzzing of your phone is unregistered till your thigh begins to itch.
Oh god you told him about those times before, you told him. And he had wiped your tears and kissed your eyelids, damning your past boyfriend who had left you forsaken.
Wiping a hand across your face, you reach down to grasp the metallic slick edges. And the image of Luca flashing across the screen stumps you frozen till it rings out. You hadn't seen him since Denmark, in fact it had been years.
The ping of a text shakes you from the memories of spending months on boats and pastry kitchens in Copenhagen, the gray bubbles appearing on your screen.
“Gonna be in Chicago for a bit, wanna test out if your Mille-Feuille is still up to standard?”
You want to say that you answered Lucas' text in that brief moment out of genuine curiosity. That you would have wanted to see him whether Clair had uprooted your life with Carmen either way.
But you’d be lying to yourself.
The slight drizzle drips down your screen phone, muddying and blurring the Lucas texts till you have to wipe your shirt across it. You hesitate though, you think the blurred messages between you both absolves you of guilt. That it was as if you were lookin through pane fogged glass. But you slide your hand across the screen and it brightens to your eyes, defying every word between you both. You want to see Luca, Carmen had no hesitation when it came to Claire, oh no, he wouldn't think twice before spending the day with her.
Days like today, where you would usually be posted up in Carmens old beaten leather couch, the cushions weaning under your weight as you ate rice steeped in coconut milk and kung pao on plates.
It’s tradition, or it once was. So much of what you held close to your heart had been left to ruins, maimed and disfigured. Pulled from under you when you had thought it sacred, you should have expected this, it was too good. You’ve stewed in your deprecation look enough till it turned bitter, outpouring harsh streaks of anger from your heart instead.
You helped Sydney finish up the last of the next evening's desserts, waving her off with a smile when she had asked about your sudden departure earlier. She ignored the way your hands shook, and you reached for your things and rushed home before she could prod further.
You felt dirty.
Like Carmen was replacing you slowly, out from under you. Did he think you were too stupid to realise? You don’t want to imagine the things shared between them, and yet you do. Scrubbing your skin raw in the shower does little to scratch the memory of them out of your mind.
You’re resting on the edge of your bed, clutching your towel as you look towards your closet. Phone in hand at Lucas' text inviting you to dinner at his place, you turn Carmen’s picture on the dresser face down before reaching into your closet, and pulling out a dress you had forgotten existed.
When you slide the silk fabric onto your body, it feels anew. Like you were a different skin. It flutters at the edges of your calf, long and rich in colour in elegance.
Your hair is left in its natural state, running some products through with your fingers till the sticky crème is gone from between your knuckles. Carmen always loved your hair this way.
So did Luca.
Your time spent in Copenhagen didn't necessarily involve Luca, not at the start anyways. You were reviewing foods around Denmark, a long awaited food tour you had begun saving for before culinary school, and had made a pit stop at a weathered bakery.
It wasn't on your repertoire for your trip, in fact you had thought nothing of it, a transitional spot to grab an espresso and maybe a danish. It had seen better days. The wooden doors stained and creaking as you passed through, inside though, inside was as if you had entered the warmth of someone's heart and soul. Delicate paintings and familial photographs hang on the walls, low lamp lighting, a built-in fireplace that defrosts your fingers wedged in your coat pocket.
The most strange and endearing thing, however, was the bar attached on the same counter as the paned glass display of baked goods. In all your time in food, you had never seen a bakery that doubled as a..brewery? Distilled barrels hitched atop the caramel coloured walls, jugs and glasses perched atop the counter. You weren't necessarily a drinker per se, but the thought of filling your stomach with liquid heat pushed you to shut the door behind you and set your things on the bar counter.
“Now what makes someone as sunny as you walk into the most haggard bakery in all of Copenhagen?” A Brooklyn lilt voice calls from the small entryway into the back kitchen, a tall blonde man wipes his hand on a dishcloth, the tired features of cooking for hours you know to well etched on his face.
You stand right in surprise, you half heartedly expect the embodiment of Hagrid to walk out, and instead New York came bustling through.
“You sure you aren't lost sweetheart? Lookin’ for Noma?”
“I’m told I can get a pint of something hard and dry with my croissant” You murmur, cockling your head to the side “Or does this fine establishment not know how to laminate dough?”
From that moment on, you had spent almost every day in Denmark being guided to the “actually” good food spot in the city. You wanted to deny it, holding your list of restaurants and bakeries you had died to try since your trip to your chest like a rare jewel.
But God did those alleyway Frikadeller’s taste like religion. You wanted to fall to your knees and pledge your devotion.
Still, after you had draine the last of your savings on cider and meatballs your craft was calling to you from the States. Luca had told you things you had not even read in the mountain of textbooks and ‘Pastry 2’ tutorials you were assigned as a student, marveling at the intricacy of pastry and the world of dough.
He had mentioned a Chef he admired, one he wanted you to meet yourself. You wondered all those months who could have bested Luca.
And then you met Carmen.
Time and distance had feathered the brief but all consuming intimacy you and Luca shared. It wasn't like you had shared a bed together, no, it was far more deeper than that. You both shared the unraveling layers of your joint obsession;
Food.
It tethered you to each other so finely that even now, after years of no contact, you knew you would fall back into the same rhythmic dance you once had those years before.
It shakes the nerves from your body when you finally rack your knuckles against Luca’s restaurant door.
“Comin, comin, don’t break down the door” Luca’s silky voice laments from deep within the restaurant, before the iron door opens and you’re met with golden streaked hair and a wine stained apron.
“Why is it that every time I see you, you've got something stained on your face” You smile
“It’s the Lucas charm, what can I say” or “Oh please, you eat whatever caused those stains.”
“You say this now, but you’ll be praying to these stains when you taste you’re menu tonight” Lucas smirks
You chuckle shaking your head, before Lucas pulls you into a hug
“4 years and you still smell the same”
“You know I'm a women of routine, like the same bottle of perfume and my eggs-”
“Over easy, yeah yeah.”
“You know me so well!”
“No I just can’t get the smell of sunflowers from out my nose even years later”
“I paid a pretty penny for it, it should be fucking ever lasting”
Lucas shakes his head in a smile, and flashes of stomach pained laughter in pebbled alleyways and chef’s kitchens lights up your mind.
“What are you doing over here Luca?”
“A friend who works in restaurant business asked me to help get one of his locations up and runnin’ in Chicago” Luca replies
You follow him through drywall and scaffolding poles, catching the beginnings of the seating area as you observe the paint swatches on walls . The menu does always comes first.
“And this is you up and running? Conducting mini-master classes for old friends” You joke
“Mhm, don’t think we can classify ourselves as old friends just yet. It was just yesterday the last I saw you.” Luca replies in ponder
“Right, that must be all the gas fumes from looming over sauce pans for eons going to your brain. You do know nobody forced you to make that 36 hour long creme brulee right?” You tease
Lucas fights a giggle as he remembers the dish he had slaved over two nights, “And that sauce earned me a damn near Michelin Star.”
“Yeah, you probably should've been awarded a Nobel Prize for that” You admit, leaning against the stainless steel table counter of the central kitchen.
“Heard you started working with Carmen, he's good isn't he?”
The brick that had begun to dislodge from your throat slips back in, gulping down an uneasy breath as you give him a tight smile.
“It’s wonderful, he's really something” You murmur, thanking the gods that Lucas was too busy rummaging around the fridge to notice your features melting into malice.
“I wanted to keep this a secret, but who am I kidding. Come, I wanna show you something”
Lucas comes over, rolling your eyes as he makes you take off your coat. Hes eyes skim down your figure fast enough for you not to notice, but you feel him linger gently grasping the cotton of you fleece before hooking it onto a door handle.
To your surprise he pulls out a crisp chef apron, nodding with wide eyes as you stare at him baffled.
“Do you think my text was a joke? C’mon I know you, you would've been sitting there working yourself up not being able to get your hands dirty”
You chuckle sheepishly as you agree, cooking was your life. Even if you had gotten out of a 24 hour day you’d still sore your bones over a good meal. Especially with Luca.
You walk over to him, noting the papers scattered on the table counter and a laptop opened, the light streaming in. It’s opened to a leasing site, a run down appliance store who’s store wide sale had begun peeling off the windows.
“What's this?” You murmur, confusion in your voice as your eyes jump over the listing description quickly
“This is a home furniture store”
"Yes I gathered that from the block letters Luca, what does it mean?” You look over Luca whos grinning widely at you
“You know this used to be an old mill factory? The ones they'd make 7 year old work 20 hour shifts on?” Luca continues
“Have you turned into an anthropologist? Is this what this is? You takin’ a career change this late in the game old man?” You tease.
Luca doesn't laugh, he doesn't even roll his eyes, he just continues grinning ear to ear. You’re suddenly afraid he’s body has been tossed in a dumpster in Frederiksberg and this is his body double.
“It was practically a bakery, sweets. Who better than me to bring it back to its roots?” Luca replies finally as you were considering the best option to escape through the fire exit
You’re stumped before it dawns on you, Luca is gonna open his own bakery? Restaurant? You weren't clear as to what it was going to be exactly but you knew by the look of excitement on his face that it was his.
“You and goddamn rundown buildings” You shake your head, as Luca looks at you with a stupid smile, you can't help but let out a laugh.
“Tis only right I tell the person who saw me sweating in that furnace heated bakery in Denmark daring. It’s fate, and you know it” Luca replies
You chuckle, before bursting in excited laughter, oh you were so happy. You were, it had been his dream, to bring back some of heart that had been left in that flour room when he had come back to the States
You grab his hands, holding them tightly, reaching for his face and jaw and bringing him to your chest with adoration.
“Oh Luca, really? You did it?” You grin and he gazes down at you in sheepish resignation.
“Already put down the payment. Drained half my bank account so I’m going to have to DIY the architecture, and just engineer structure of the place but I dont care.” He chuckles
“Who cares about structural support when they taste that 36 hour creme bulee huh?” You chime, teasing.
You let go of his face but he grabs your wrist tightly,
“I want you to join me.”
You heart stills for a second, and you don't know if its the rush of nostalgia or the anger over Carmen that fights over your tongue to say
“Yes”
“I know you've got a good thing going with Carmen, and it won't interfere with that-”
Luca stammers before stopping abruptly, raising his eyebrows in confusion at your reply. He cocks his head to the side
“It’s fine, I can leave the Beef and help open it up with you”
“Woah woah wait a second, I didn't say leave Carmen-”
“That DIY job isn't going to be a one man job, besides I’m not that valuable there really, just help around here and there. Carmen could do without me to be honest, one less person to pay ya know? It's fine really” It your turn to ramble incessantly, slipping the resentment against Carmen and Calire through your jumbled reply
“Yeah? Is that why you're balling your fists?”
You look to Luca, whose eyes zero in on your shaking hands. You put them behind you quickly, self conscious as you bite your lip.
“You and I both know when you’re runnin’ from something. You really think you can hide things from me of all people?
“You don't want me working for you Luca? I just said I’d leave what I'm doing to do this with you”
“And I want you too, but I also know it's been a dream to work with someone as talented as Carmen”
“Yeah real fucking talented”
Luca looks at you, squinting his eyes
“I’ve talked to him you know” He murmurs softly, eyes still strained on you
“What?” You scoff, shaking your head
“And the way he gushes about you tells me enough. He damn near sounded like he was going to jump through the phone and ring my neck after I had told him I knew you before. The way he says your name? Tell me you're not just an employee, and the menu I’m hearing all around the city? Lavender and hazelnut? Lime and pistachios? That's all you. Even if you don't know it, you've imprinted yourself into that place and every dish Chicago is raving about” Luca replies, and his voice is low and his eyes are wide as he looks at you can’t not ignore him.
“I know you don't give up easily, and I’m not trying to play mediator, but just- think on it okay? You're going to be a part of this, that is certain. But you're a part of a lot okay? Being the head sous chef is nothing to what they’d make us do back in New York and you know it.”
You're about to bite back a reply before Luca raises his eyebrows, as if he's already as an onslaught of resorts to everything you have to say. You resign yourself to the fact; Luca knows you damn near better than yourself.
“Okay, I’ll think on it. Having you suffer a little without me is a nice image anyways” You reply, rolling your eyes as you tighten your apron.
Luca chuckles as he shakes his head, motioning you to help start making your dinner.
The sounds of sizzling pans and braised meat left your stomach full and your heart heavy hours later. The heated argument you had with Luca seemed hours ago when you both had let the food bring you back into synchronization.
You both sat criss cross on the unfurnished dining room floor, a plastic tarp underneath you both as you gorged yourself on duck, potatoes and cheap wine. You regret ever hesitating meeting with Luca, and you suppose you should thank Carmen for that.
Luca knows it's weighing heavy on your mind as he eyes you across the kitchen, wrapping up some leftovers for you. You shake your head as you gaze at him, giving him a reassuring smile that you know he doesn't believe.
“If it all goes wrong you know you can come to me, anytime anywhere” Luca whispers into your ear as you fall into a tight embrace.
“Getting pretty tired of running my whole life Luca, god I just want to rest.”
“Then let yourself”
The uber comes and you kiss Luca goodbye as he bundles you into the backseat, the shower earlier has now filtered into a slight drizzle and you watch the slow rain drops glide down the window languidly.
You didn’t want Carmen to be home when you arrived, but the thought of him being out with her this late had you gritting your teeth. You didn't know what you wanted.
I just KNOW Carmen would be such a soft and amazing dad. 100% would make sure in between the restaurant to be there for you, and be there for his little cubs (doesn’t want things to go in the same vain it did with his lack of relationship with his dad) Even if working at the restaurant is one of his biggest priorities, you know he is absolutely taking time off in the last few months before your little girl or boy arrives (A strong supporter of Carmy being a girl dad). You’d have to physically and gently pry your baby from his arms because he can’t stop kissing them and pressing his nose against their little cheek 😭
oh my god, all the discourse about girl dad/boy dad on tiktok and i'm just like in the dictionary in MY universe carmen's photos is right under girl dad. carmen would be an amazing father regardless, but when he finds out hes getting a little girl???
He's buying her every single toy that could possible exist. It's just all pressed up against his chest at the checkout line no trolley nothing. Just straight cave man energy must..get..babygirl..things...
He's inconsolable when she comes, just straight up hiccuping and crying as the nurses try to get her out of his goddamn death grip. It's like your baby needs a bath and Carmen is like holding up against his pale ass bare chest like get out of my fucking face with that.
he's probably tricking Richie to come over under the guise of your god tier baked goods that never make it past the first minute of family - JUST to build his in utero baby girl a tree house. for you know, the 6 years that will come up.
"Alright, alright" Richie grins, rubbing his hands together as Carmen pulls into the drive way. He's damn near halfway out the car door before Carmen can kill the engine and if it was anyone but Cousin, Carmen would've attempted to hide his grin.
"Blessed thee, you absolute angel" Richie calls out as he opens the door. You poke your head out from under the load of laundry you've been trying to sort - the aching dullness at your hips preventing you so.
"Rich? What are you doing here?" You say, eyebrows quirking up at his sudden arrival.
"Funny too! You really got yourself a catch" Richie laughs, playfully jabbing at Carmen.
You look towards him, clocking your head at the grin that's begun to take up half of Carmen's face. You knew that look, what did he do?
"You know I didn't even get a piece at family last week? Fuckin' gremlins matter of fact I have to get back to the Bear soon, got a couple catering orders to organise. Least it isn't for Cicero's daughters best friend's dog or some shit" Richie mutters, and you can't help but hie the giggle before you straighten out.
Someone had to be the adult here, right?
"Is it in like a tupperware or..?" Richie replies when the puzzled look on your face remains
"What is?"
"Those cinnamon pastry thingies you always make" Richie replies, slowly turning to Carmen, than back to you
"Carm told me you made a little extra"
"Oh Richie" You sigh
"Don't..no. Cousin." Richie hands raise up to his temples, pinching the line that formed from believing a word out of Carmen's mouth.
"Don't tell me you lied" Richie quickly twists his body to point at Carmen
"I knew it was too good, I should have known.."
"Relax, it's for the greater good"
"What greater good? Do you know you deliberately contributed to a mans starvation?"
"You can't lie to a man that's going through those stages Cousin! No, no you don't get it!"
"Aye relax"
"You..you're a fucking mirage. That's what this is" Richie chuckles, shaking his head.
A silence falls over the three of you, and as your eyes meet Carmen you can't help the smile that creeps onto your face.
"So are you going to tell me why I'm here??" Richie yells suddenly.
"Yeah, I wanna build something for my future child that my wife is going to bring into this world. You know, something that's more important than fucking cinnamon buns
"Cinnamon twists" Richie murmurs softly, eyes glazed over, and if you squint it looks like a tear has actually squeezed out.
"Let him mourn Carm" You reply, gently rubbing Richie crouched figure.
Carmen shakes his head, rolling his eyes as he waits all of 5 seconds before his patience wears into an annoyed grunt.
"Alright what does my future niece need" Richie sighs
"Carmen we've already got the changing table and bassinet ready" You continue, running through the list of baby things that had begun to take up all the 'open space layout' you're house had. How much more things could you need?.
"Was doing some work out the back, and doesn't that tree we have close to the fence have a real good foundation" Carmen murmurs
"What are you saying?" Richie yoans
"My babygirl would want a tree house
"Carm-
"Just listen, I know her, half of her at least. And I wanted one the moment I could climb a tree. So naturally she would want one alright? And, and so it's like I'm just having it ready for when she needs it.
"Oh my god"
"What?"
"She isn't even here yet!"
"Don't remind me" Carmen grunts, genuinely grunts out.
"Carm, she'll be crawling for like so long" Richie interjects
"You don't know her" Carmen replies quickly, throwing accusatory eyes at Richie
"You think my baby girl won't be able to crawl in a tree house? I'm feeling a lot of negative energy I don't like"
"Besides, I already bought the wood. And everything else" Carmen murmurs
"I'm doing this for her Cousin, her!" Richie replies
"What about the catering order Rich?" You quirk, he had just stop rambling about it.
"Ah don't worry about it hun. Anything for my god daughter" Richie grins. Throwing his hand behind him for full effect.
"You can't be her god father and her uncle Cousin" Carmen replies
"Why the hell not-"
Richie is interrupted by the slight wince that leaves your mouth and has you ripping the counter and holding your sides.
Carmen moves towards you in a flash, gripping your sides softly as his eyes furrow in concern.
"You okay baby?"
You breathe out through your nose forcefully
"Just feelin sore, I'm alright"
"You don't want me doing the tree house? Done. It's over. Richie get the fuck out my house" Carmen yells out the last part
"Hey!"
"No, no do it. You're probably right"
"Bout what?"
"Every kid wants a fucking tree house"
Carmen carries you to the bathroom, with direct orders to soak in the tub for at least an hour while your child's metaphorical tree house is built.
You can hear the consistent argue of Richie and Carmen filter through the bathroom window even over the grating sound of sawing wood. You love it every bit, and as you kiss Richie goodbye, you slide a container of your cinnamon twists into his hand.
He turns around, the biggest smile you think you had ever scene on his face as he throws the finger at Carm, and takes off running out the door before he can react.
Okay hear me out, how would carmen react to someone he's dating being a "picky eater" that has a VERY limited diet due to sensory issues👀
This is totally not self-indulgent /s
Eeeee
carmen berzatto x reader
enjoy some bear fam ribbing and carmen carmen carmen
honestly I think he’d be interested if anything! His mind is constantly on overdrive thinking of recipes and foods and the combinations of flavours, and how to change this and tweak that. He could run on fumes, just a jar of tums and his notebook and spend the night brainstorming dishes. We’ve all seen it, it might be a way for him to distract from the hellish that is his social life outside the Bear, by bringing it home too. So when he meets his girl, who’s got a palate that is entirely different to anything he’s seen before he takes it as almost a challenge to push himself to produce something amazing, creative and yours.
You’re his girl, he has this carnal need to take care of you, and can you imagine if you were nervous or worried about what he might think??? No he’d run his thumb along your thigh, while you're on either side of him wrapped in the covers that were warm from the morning sun and just raise his eyebrows and snicker in that way he does. And it hit him that your exes were dipshits and never listened to you and he’d gather you in his arms and murmur how you could watch him cook for you every day if you wanted to.
And he held true to that, he’d sit you down on the counter after hours in the Bear later that night. You’d sneak in, when you’re craving for something that the places around you can’t offer and Carmen is just fucking itching to serve you food and show off his fucking Michelin talent.
It would be a ritual, you watching and him making. He’d serve it to you all pretty and clean, leaving his serving to be eaten from the pan. And he watches every expression on your face, every quirk and flick of your eyebrow and he’d know, god he’d know what you were thinking in that moment. If you liked it or not, if it triggered one of your senses into overdrive and had you trying to hide the way your teeth scraping against a certain component left you shivering in disgust.
He’d know and he’d rush to give you water and make you spit it out despite your protests. And you shake your head in anger at the things you can’t control and Carmen will sit with you on the floor of the Bear and he’d smile in that way he does, as he’d ask about every part and force it out of you until he’d be changing the meal entirely.
Showing you the things you can control which was making your boyfriend who cooked for a living, cook.
He’d be protective over you I feel like, after you tell him bad experiences that had ruined your relationship with food. Making sure no one gave you shit about it, always on guard, eyes in slits and voice gravelly when waiters double check your order or look anywhere but their fucking notepad.
The team is a whole other situation… I imagine it to be a whole team involved in a sit down investigation, an entire intervention by them because they are just so confused and scared (which is actually hilarious) that you were barred from eating certain foods or something.
-- -
“Okay, okay, how about pasta alla vodka” Tina muses, a grin pulling at her jaw as she leans back against the cheap plastic chairs that were reserved for the house.
“Nop, don’t like those bits of tomato they leave in the sauce” You shrug, chewing on your straw as you watch the way the rest of the team rears back in dismay.
Tina’s face drops, stubbornly pulling out a dollar bill and slapping it into Richie's grinning face.
“I thought I had it dammit” Tina groans, muttering about losing to a fake Italian divorcee who skimped her out of a chocolate bar.
You're all scattered in the back of the Bear, popcorn and peanuts are littered amongst half emptied bottles of beers on the large metal table that spans across the room. The Bear had been closed today, some sort of team building attempt at brainstorming new ideas for the menu and the Bear itself.
Much to the annoyance of the rest of the crew, who had to make the commute in a freezing Chicago winter on a day that was supposed to be a break, somewhere along the fights that erupted at every suggestion and the stubbornness that remained in each of the team it did feel a little like family bonding.
At least it felt like it now, as they all collectively came together to study you.
That's where you found yourself, being pulled into the never calm-always-catastrophic environment of the Bear thanks to Carmen. You had protested at first, thinking you would be out of place in the sea of decorated chefs but as your phone dinged with messages from Syd and Richie, the latter earring on a very thinly veiled threat to ‘be there or i'll come and get you’ you found yourself throwing on a too thin jacket and knocking against on the Bear’s ‘closed’ sign after your shift.
You were greeted with the warmth of the Bear, breathing it in deeply before you realised that the smoky heat of the restaurant was as much fueled by the temperamental crew screaming out obscenities in the back as much as the radiator Fak had somehow fixed for the 15th time.
You didn't quite understand how you got here, you in the middle, and the team surrounding you firing out questions about your less than conventional palate.
Carmen's disgruntled protest against the team channeling some sort of crud rip off of True Detective did little as the team went around listing dishes from escargot to cheese on bread to get your opinion.
It was downright ironic, you know this. You are someone who couldn't stand the texture and smell of certain foods to the point of having them struck from your diet with a man whose entire life was surrounded by, and birthed from the complexities of texture and taste.
“It’s one of the stables of Italy!’ Richie barks, stuffing the dollar bill into his pocket hile shaking his head.
The beer he had opened had gone cold in his hand since the beginning of the conversation. He couldn't stop his mouth from remaining hung open after every shake of your head and shrug of your shoulders towards the meals they loved.
You wondered if chefs have the same value systems as other..tightly knit organisations. One where disrespect leads to your swift removal…off the face of the earth. You don’t let yourself forget that they are skilled in the goddamn wielding of knives no matter their friendly chiding, you might be one shake of your head away from being prepared in all the ways you hate your food to be.
Carmen looked at you, his eyes straining across your body to check if you felt uncomfortable. He knew your tells almost as well as you know, and he'd be quick to shut it down and take you back home if need be. But as your eyes meet his, and the squint of a smile reaches them he shakes his head, mouths a “goddamn idiots”, and rolls his eyes at his families curiosity.
“Listen, I get that, I don't like bits of bone in my meat. But surely, for a dish that you know I know you know tastes like the fucking gates of heaven, you can make an exception” Syd blinks, her face filled with expectation, like she thought it was obvious.
You’re giggling at Sydney words, “Is this reassurance for me or for you”
“Me. It’s for me” Syd gulps, blinking as she registers the truth
“I just can’t eat food, no matter how good you guys tell me it is, that fucks up my sensory issues-”
“Alright, yeah, sensory issues, darling I bet if i could bring you to ONE dinner, one of our dinners at Carmen's Ma's we could easily persuade you-”
“Jesus fucking Christ-”
“No, no look Carmen. This is your woman ain't she? How can you let her walk around without letting her taste the delicate crossroads that produce Chicago- Italian cuisine? I mean you're seriously failing-”
“Fuck you”
“Goddamn fake”
The irony of it all was, you and Carmen had both met at a farmers market. Surrounded by food you wouldn't eat, at a place you didn't frequent, all for one particular food you did eat. And somehow, despite passing by 95% of vendors without even a swipe of your eye against their delicate colors and shapes, Carmen had bumped into you.
And he had apologies and you had crouched down to collect the runaway potatoes and fruits that tried to escape through his pouch, and your fingers had collided when you looked up to see the man who had interrupted your 15 minute venture.
Through the blurted out line of apologies, Carmen had stopped and looked at you and tried to reopen his hanging mouth. And you sat there half amused and half worried he was having a stroke.
“I know this is forward and you can tell me to go to hell, but could I take you out sometime?”
You had caught the last of the disobedient root vegetables when you raised your eyebrows in surprise, and let yourself be shocked again as you said yes.
Carmen had nodded and smiled when you told him you weren't exactly experimental with your diet, wanting to get it out of the way when you found out he was a chef and your sensory issues had been a problem for people who didn't make food for a living.
You expected the same ritual, the same dance of having to explain your diet to people and wait for them to actually understand that your pickiness wasn't just the usual ‘dislike’, but a very real thing that impacted how you eat everyday. You had no choice in it, that's what you told them every time and they had rolled their eyes and thrown your words in your face as they compared you to a petulant child that didn't want to eat their vegetables. You sighed and they did too, as they watched you flip every menu to the page for children and you cringed as the waiter looked around for your child and realised it was you.
Carmen was different though, of course he was. He didn't let his surprise go hidden, as he asked about every food you disliked and everyone you did. Noone before asked, they simply resolved to assume your diet was constricted in the small section of the kids meal. But Carmen asked, he did all night when you had brought it up after he asked to cook for you. Sitting on your couch, talking about you, and your diet, and your sensory issues for hours until he knew everything about them.
Until he simply nodded, and wrote something in his notebook and asked if you were still free on Thursday.
Of course the family was teasing, and of course they’d all tweak any dishes you were craving so that they weren't overloading your senses in any way. You’ve got a reserved seat at the Bear, and all your favourite dishes on standby if you ever wanted to come in to find something that didn't set you off and leave you anxious and sensitive.
It gets to an alarming rate of you coming in nearly every other day, in which Richie, Carm Syd and every other person in the Bear constructed some under the table deals with dea by restaurants to accommodate your sensitivities. They all like to feign ignorance when you walk in the next day all smiles, showing off your little takeaway box from the Portuguese spot you had so desperately to try before the stark textures and flavours of the menu you perused dashed the thought away.
Carmen hated seeing that excitement turn into defeated acknowledgement of the barriers you had around food. But also, in the same breath, Carmen knows how certain textures and tastes can trigger you into getting over-stimulated, leading to becoming frazzled and irritated. Which is exactly why he would never let you push yourself too far, supporting you if you ever wanted to try it out but immediately taking the dish away from you when he realised your heart was racing too quick and you were getting stiff..
“Baby, easy. Need you to go slow, yeah?”
“Alright, that’s enough. You did good sweetheart, I’m proud of you. Lemme make you something for tonight though yeah? Something you like?”
The truth was there were going to be some days where both Carmen's creativity, and your sensory issues outdo him. You were okay with that though, you were still catching up to reality that someone loved you enough to fit their life around yours.
And then Carmen copied your meals for a week when you told him this, until the Bear was relying on his memory of taste and you finally agreed that yes, there was no fitting needed.
