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nymphlamp · 1 year

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Wow. The number of times I’ve read this over (in pure astonishment and disbelief and wow) your words are so generous and your kindness admittedly has me shellshocked, I can’t even believe what I am reading. Thank you. A million times over, thank you. What you’ve just offered is something that has made my entire fucking year and beyond. I adore you I adore you I adore you!! my love! 💕💜

Blossom Dearie

The night Carmen attempts to open up about his feelings. Loosely connected to sink in (x) Slow burn soft smut, so heavy on the 18+ (fingering, dry humping, swearing etc.etc.). This was written with a black reader in mind (of course anyone is welcome to read). 7k+ words. Gif credit (x).

Carmen has the teary-eyed stare of a wounded stray – lost, pathetic, needy. Achingly soft. Lonely, and you want to approach. Months pass and he reminds you fairly quickly that he possesses the bite of one too. The untamable, sharp-jawed snarling fostered from starvation kind of bite. Once he’s threatened, he retreats. He lunges if he has to, and it’s all just a little bit confusing, deciphering when or how or why, or which is worse.

He stops by the exit doors, shifting his weight from side to side. The kitchen casts a halo of light that carves him out from shadow. Husked from golden-hued soft edges the closer he gets, the door creaks to a close.

You’re crouched and toying with a stray thread. Heavy head stuffed, gurgling thoughts and muddied feelings shoot up like abandoned toys in murky water. You’re not sure how much time passed since leaving the kitchen. You measure the beats of awkward silence under each passing car. Not many come at this time of night. You lift your eyes to look – he’s six cars in and waiting for an open hand, outstretched. An invitation to near. You look down again.

He clears his throat. “Hey, uh…”

Carmen’s utterances sometimes sound more like questions he doesn’t know how to ask. How delighted you’d be if you had a chance, you’d punt them directly into the sewer streams, send them tumbling down with the rest of him.

“Fuckin’ shit show,” he huffs a quick laugh, a phony little thing, rusted and crumbling. He examines the way his words bounce off of your expressions, how they trickle down a sullen face – sarcasm coats the first one, annoyance consumes them all – before approaching.

Gravel crunches beneath his feet. You show your broiling discontent with a shake of your head— do not near, but even then does porcelain on your molars gleams far too pretty for that, and it fails to ward him off.

“‘t’s not an excuse for how I acted today.” Crouches next to you with a crumpled cigarette box between his palms. It resembles a plea, collapsed and gentle. A faint cry for mercy threads his fingers together. Carmy’s soft murmur is saturated in candlelight and all things sickly sweet through the lattice openings. “That wasn’t right, what I did. How I talked to you. I know. I was out of line, and I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for all of it. I just… fuck.”

He’s looking up, away, shaking his head. He’s shrouded in lilac, soft hyacinths and fragrant flowering sorrow. There are fields he’s left untended. Budding crops and places in his mind he doesn’t dare till for fear of what grows. You became one when he lost track of time, overgrown between then and now (he doesn’t know where to start or how it even got to this point, it’s all been a blur since he picked up the knife). Regret crowds his thoughts like feeble monarch wings, black-lined half-hearts fluttering. You look at him, and they disperse.

“You embarrassed me today. In front of everyone, Carmen.” Traced the lines of his face down to his lips. Separating yourself from Carmen was self-preservation. “I mean, what you did, that was fucked. Below the belt.”

Another pang of guilt strikes his heavy heart again. He nods at the ground. After a moment he opens his mouth, “You’re right.”

Arguments in the kitchen are caught as easily as the common cold. Unavoidable and sticky no matter how clean you keep your station, messy despite the distance maintained between you and the next person. Anything can ignite the most repugnant reactions; an attitude, an inflated demand, a sideways glance can travel like a nasty wet sneeze across the room and set the whole place alight.

What happened between you and Carmen – that wasn’t the first argument, but it always did feel like the last:

Chef, please. You have to move faster.

Two hands, Carmen.

Chef?

I have two hands and we’re a man down, and you just told me to handle Tina’s station.

“I embarrassed you.” Clutches to each word you hurl and places them neatly before the both of you. Carmen wanted to examine the misspellings, the details unvarnished. Rewrite where it all went wrong. “I raised my voice when I should’ve stepped away.”

If I ask you to get something done, I expect it done. Quickly. Let’s go! No excuses. (The truth behind this rested beneath his relentless barking, his high expectations took the shape of moody fits and harsh and unforeseen criticisms that bore the weight of all the things he’s left unsaid. It was brutally exhausting)

Maybe it’ll get done faster when you’re not over my fucking shoulder—

Chef. Do I make myself clear?

(Sharp metal cuts the silence that follows)

Do I make myself clear?

Yes. Chef.

Get it done.

Seconds and hours and knives and feelings all start to look the same, overcooked to charred under the pressures of the kitchen. Past billows of smoke, demands get higher, and days, unfortunately, get shorter. Temperaments roil on endlessly. You’ll slow cook until you burn in there.

What are you doing?

Getting it done.

(He says your name, you do not look, he repeats it, and the clamp of your handle snaps hard against the countertop)

“Do not underestimate me, Carmen. Do not think I will not walk out of that fucking door and not come back.”

( What happens next is the usual crew pushback but adorned wet, with glistening threads of frothing spittle flying, pearly whites snarling and snapping back and forth as they do in the kitchen. He hasn’t known a lovelier sight than the daggers piercing your eyes )

“I know. I know. You’re right. Shit.”

Carmen. I swear.

What. What?

You need to fuck off.

Oh, I need to fuck off? This is my restaurant, and I need to fuck off?

(You throw your head back, and you laugh)

Chef, you can go. Leave. Get the fuck out!

“I need you.” There’s twisted tension straining in his hands. Carmen’s a shaggy mess and belly up. He could win you over with a whimper and a lick. “I do. You know. I, uh…”

What clings to Carmen’s tongue are the ugly bits of slimy gizzards and bird guts. The chewy parts they throw away. His admittance of guilt is coppery red. His admittance of— whatever the fuck that feeling is in the pit of his stomach that’s as much of a persistent nuisance as any whetted hunger— that, he bites back when he’s sober and choked.

“You need me.” You repeat. Brows raised in disbelief, you scoff.

Maybe, he thinks, if he presented all those bloodied scraps, mold them perfectly into bite-sized delicacies plated pretty – would you readily consume them between his teeth?

“ Yes .” He swallows hard. “I do.” His eyes flutter, and when he looks at you, a teary-eyed windswept mess, pretty and plagued, you look away. “I know what you’re capable of. I’ve seen it. And, you know, I guess I kind of like seeing it?” Carmen huffs a nervous-sounding laugh.

“My actions don’t match how I feel most of the time. I know.” He continues, surveying you closely. “When I push you, it’s because I know you can handle it. It’s because I expect you to handle it. And I hold you to a high standard, chef, I do. But sometimes, you know, I’ll push, and I’ll keep pushing until everything just fucking snaps. Learned bad habits, I guess.” Another nervous chuckle. “You have this way of— of performing that’s so precise. Of just annihilating the kitchen. And it’s ambitious, and it’s exacting, and it’s focused, and you know, it’s the sort of thing I was lucky to find.” He pauses. Closes his eyes. The light extinguishes for just a moment. “We can be inspired by that. The restaurant. You can really make a big difference here, for everyone. And… I can’t even… I’m sorry. Really. You’re more than— I need you here. I do. I want you here, I want you to stay, and I’m just so fucking sorry.”

Something clutches to your throat, biting fear or anger suffocating. Both. One melts seamlessly into the other. Crystallizes beautifully into something shimmering and sweet, just for you. You could get sick off of it. You cross your arms close to your chest. Quiet wedges itself in the space in between. The wind howls as drunken laughter tumbles down the city streets. A late-night drag lights the end of his cigarette.

You take a deep, shaky breath. On exhale, the question spills carelessly from your mouth, “what do you feel?” And you lean your head back against the fence. Your foot is already halfway out the door and foolishly, foolishly, toeing the piled mess that remains on the other side. “I mean, I get it. But that, that was— what was that, Carmen?” Felt your hands mimic his. Felt antsy, felt tense. Felt wired. “Don’t say you were stressed. Don’t tell me the typical bullshit. I want to know what changed today when yesterday we were laughing and…”

Carmen’s shoulders, they lower. His head perks up, and he stiffens. It’s a threat or it’s a surrender (it’s hard to tell either way until he opens his mouth). “That’s a…” he runs a hand down his face, then tosses it in the air. His pounding heart fumbles terribly, all the way up until it’s lodged like a fist in his throat. “I don’t know.”

“No, Carmen. Don’t do that.” Carmen takes another drag and nods. There’s venom laced in your tone. His honey curls bounce under the streetlight. “One minute we’re fine. Everything is fine and good and normal and… great between us. That’s when you—” Stopped yourself for a moment when you realize, “I don’t know why it hurts. But it does, when you push me away like that. I thought…” and maybe this was a short-sighted assumption, that you and Carmen could be close, fuck it, closer friends outside of work. ”I thought we were past the bullshit we’ve both experienced in the kitchen. The micromanaging. The impossible, and I mean impossible expectations you’ll put on me, Carmen. That’s what’s unfair. When I don’t meet them, you shut down on me. You’ll explode. You’ll tell me I’m a great chef then turn around and spit on everything I’ve done, you’ll throw me away just because you can.”

He says your name. It’s stripped down and softened to sound so contrite. The truth is abrasive. Yours belies his reality, the one that has you pinned like a shrine where his thoughts sway. Hearing your words carved the serrated edges of the conversation down into something smoother, eased the tension clutching tight to his throat and replaced it all with guilt. His fingers twist and curl with uncertainty. “You, um,” he flexes his hands, the wound and the knife and the ink-black letters stamped on his fingers stretching with it. “You are an excellent chef.” He declares. “I mean that. And sometimes, you know, I- I guess I don’t know if I’m threatened by that or…”

“Or what?” Your jaw clenches. Nudging Carmen forward feels a little like nearing the edge. He’s nodding to himself, and it’s almost like you can see the turmoil rolling in overhead with only seconds before a downpour.

“I guess, you know,” Carmen decides to jump headfirst. “I guess it kinda scares me, how I feel about you sometimes.”

The door swings wide open hitting the brick with a resounding thud.

“Yo, cousin. Hey! The fuck are you two twats doing out here?”

“What the fuck, Richie. What?” Carmen gets up and dusts off his pants. “I thought you left already.”

“Yeah, uh, I did, but I’m kinda missing a key.” Richie pats his pockets. “Don’t know what I did with it, you know what I did with it?”

“Why would I— wait, you lost the fuckin’ key?”

“I didn’t say I lost the key, okay—” Richie corrects with his pointer finger.

“ Jesus .”

“—I said I’m missing a key. I don’t remember what I did with the key. There’s a huge fucking difference. I thought I left it here.”

Carmen runs a hand down his face and places one on his hip. “Yeah, yo, cousin, just— go the fuck home, alright? I’m here, I'll close. Go look for the fuckin’ key. Maybe, I don’t know, put it on a keyring next time? You know? Secure it somewhere so we don’t have fucking randos breaking in and taking our shit?”

“Yeah, okay, like they’ll know to come to the Beef of all fuckin’ places. I’ll find your fucking key, cousin. Relax.” On his way out, Richie scrambles back around, leather jacket creased and rustling when he directs a sharp bra d’honnuer over at Carmen “Here’s your fucking key. Jesus. I’ll get you your key.” Stumbles back into the kitchen and leaves you and Carmen predictably and perfectly stunned.

“Fuckin’ asshole.” Carmen sparks another cigarette between his lips.

You decide to follow Richie back into the restaurant. “Let me make sure he closes the door properly this time.”

The lock clicks. You press your back against the glass and sigh.

Carmen’s still outside, still wondering why the fuck he opened his mouth in the first place (is it a little too late now, he wonders, the damage has been irreparably done, then undone, and now it’s like a shanty thing hanging out somewhere in limbo?). Figures the length of time it takes to finish his cigarette is enough of a cushion to rest on. (You need space after that, right? After what, he doesn’t fuckin’ know).

Questions and thoughts flood beyond the cracks and over the broken dam; did he just admit to having feelings for you? Are you with Richie, did you just leave with Richie? Just now? You did. You should have. He fucked up (again, he did it again). It’s cheek-searing shame flooding in and fuck, the cigarette burns down to a nub, till his fingers singe hot and he tosses it down to the ground. He thinks to light another. Thinks to—

“Hey.”

Carmen looks up. His heart patters. You shouldn’t be here. “Hey.”

He looks even more lost and wounded than before, stranded out at sea like a young sailor shipwrecked and separated from his beloved Golden Hind. “You closing shop soon?” Tilted your head to the side and offered an open hand.

Carmen stares.

“Yeah, uh. Yeah.” Approaches you with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

The kitchen still smells fresh of sauteed onions and garlic and slow-broiled roasts. It’s quiet and empty and sterile at night. A massive chrome box, but flickering. A fluorescent in-between of soft light buzzing, and green glowing murmurs where there isn’t painted darkness blanketing the chairs and the tables outside. It’s an intimate portrait, personal in the way secrets only exist when the clock strikes midnight, otherworldly and strange, even, and aside from the two fragile beating hearts flinting about on the kitchen floor, no one else existed.

You begin counting inventory. Pans and pots and the finest stainless steel circulating the market on his shelves. Carmen maintained a lavish stock of onyx-black handles gleaming as brilliant as the knives themselves, amongst other things. The rags are old, tattered, and thinning. Dyed several shades yellower than their original pearly white, and probably the most threadbare thing sitting in his kitchen.

They should be replaced soon. Carmen steps out of his office.

“Leave it.” He says softly by the door. “I’ll get to it tomorrow.” And nods to the marker and notepad in your hand.

“Don’t we need—”

He says your name so sweetly, arms crossed, tells you to stop. “ Please. We’ll be here all night.”

“Okay. Heard.” You echo his urgency and place the marker and pad back down, hands up. The smile blooming across your face – your stupid, blaring smile growing the longer he stares. It exposes every last bit of crumbling resolve that remained (and does he know how damning that is?). Scattered pieces he could count on one hand skittering across the floor like kicked marbles. Dealt your hand around the time he started doing that— his bedroom eyes are weighed down by total exhaustion, mostly, but if you’re not wary, you’ll forget, won't you? The cards you now hold close to your chest have dwindled down to nothing. He’s caught your bluff. He’s breaking you down.

The stillness is louder than the silence. Carmen slants his weight against the doorframe. His white tee adheres to him like a slimming second skin. Shifted your attention to the tattoos marking his hands, his arms. You want to ask about the scar on his hand. Decide against it. You’re pinned under his stare, and it’s distracting – his sleepy eyes are at half-mast, all dreamlike and pretty. It’s a shame the way they rest on you.

“What?” you finally ask.

His dimples press faintly into his cheeks.

“Nothing.” You’ve got that disheveled end-of-the-day look, worn in beautifully. Carmen’s blinded, thoroughly lost, disarmed (this is how he’ll get you, this is how it starts). Nothing seems entirely real and his mind wanders in the moment of quiet that stretches on for what feels like an eternity. Tells himself – this is utterly insane. Unprofessional above everything else. But he still can’t wrap his mind around any of it, he can’t help himself, so he comes closer. Meets you halfway. Places both hands down on the cooled expo, grounds himself that way, and looks down at the scars on his knuckles.

You eye him with careful skepticism, still gnawing on the conversation from earlier. Disjointed ligaments stuff your cheeks. Between your molars are the meaty tendons tough and dry. The exchange was all too chewy, indigestible bits that fail to fit the guise of innocent restaurant folly. There was more to it. You decide when it’s safe, and slowly, you approach. Slid beside him and leaned against the kitchen expo. Crossed your arms and slide your lip between your teeth. Pondered the silence, scouring to assemble the next thing that rolls off your tongue. You ask, and it’s delicately impish, “what’s going on with you, Berzatto?” Tipped your head until you caught his eyes. He’s a climbing flame of baby blues crackling. His hair set alight, untamed.

He doesn’t know if it’s better to explain or to deflect. So he paws at the question as if it’s an idle plaything. “‘t’s a last-name basis now?”

When your eyes light up, you shake it away (it’s such a stupid, fucking joke), but your cheeks plump up, too, and your lips curl to reveal his precious glinted glory. “Just checking, you know,” he adds. And the sudden shift inside of him, the sense of unbridled contentment for making you laugh, it is utterly insane, absolutely insane, because he almost opens his stupid fucking sailor's mouth to tell you how impossibly beautiful you are – devastatingly, endlessly so, and he’d do anything to see that again.

“You’re so fucking annoying.” You say through sparked splendor.

“Yeah, I know, you like it.” He tests a jab. Doesn’t know why. After a beat, “fuck the rules, complete anarchy?” He shrugs. “Call me, what— yes, asshole. No, you piece of shit…”

“Oh, so the usual.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Berzatto until you piss me off again.” You confirm. Close enough to smell the tobacco on his skin.

“Then what?” He tests again.

“I like jeff. It’s passive-aggressive when it needs to be.”

Carmen nods. It’s not just tobacco on his skin, it’s a scent very specific, very familiar to Carmy— Carmen. He smells like the heart of a kitchen. The warmed underside of golden, sun-damp autumn leaves scattered. Of something evergreen and burning red cedar. You smile again, combing over the features of his face, determining when exactly you began to see him like this. You cast your lure to observe how he bites. “Won’t be long, will it?”

Carmen licks his lips and looks up. You wanted to run a finger down his neck. He relents through a long exhale. “I give it a few days. A week? Tops.” Then he’ll make up for it, until he can’t, until he’s battered. Carmen turns his head to ask, sincerely, “are we good?” and you can hear the desperation coating his voice, low and heated and glazed syrupy sweet.

You bite your lip. You nod, slowly, and agree to submit ( for now, his stare is simply too unyielding). Hearts fluttering as lost, little netted bugs do, the collar around Carmen’s neck tightens when his eyes fall to your lips, it’s quick, but just in time for you to answer, “Yes, chef.”

“Jesus.” He turns his head away. That thing you do— fuck. “Don’t do that.”

“What?” You ask again as if you had no clue what you were doing. You loved to see him break, loved to peel back at the Carmen you knew when no one was around. It was thrilling. It was surprising. It was hazardous, like falling straight into a pit of lashing tongues and fire. “What am I doing, Carmen?” You remind yourself to reel back for a moment. Don’t get too carried away. “We’re good, for now. Until you lunge at my throat again,” you tease with a quick toss of your shoulder.

“I don’t wanna do that anymore.” It’s hefty, the sincerity in his voice. Far too serious, far too authentic. He talks in ambiguities and half-truths most of the time so when he says things like this, sentiment pouring out from his mouth and his eyes, you never know how to take.

“It’s inevitable, Carmen.” So you tell him the truth. Clean slate for a new slaughter. “We know that by now.”

He wants to counteract that with a promise but fears his words are a measly attempt at patching the wounds he’s made.

Carmen pushes his weight into the expo. He doesn’t think he’s leaning in as close as he is, not that you mind. This closeness, this quiet is as rare as these conversations. He’s somewhere else now, anyway. His interest perched between his thumbs, and the clock ticks and ticks and bleeds into the morning. It’s something like a lucid dream, hallucinogenic, this otherness. Blue-hued and distant.

He says your name again to find some grounding. It’s softer than the last time, says it to see how it trickles down your face this time. Rolls like slow-dripping maple but sweeter.

You hum, and it's apparent; someone is expected to break the silence first. You uncross your arms. Exhaustion tore the more rigid walls down. Felt in that instant that something could snap the longer he stares, the longer you hold it out. He examines when you mimic, he examines your nuanced expressions, how you taunt and how he's drawn closer, and something inside him knows. He could sniff your need out like a bloodhound, and he just knows. “What are we doing?” he asks quietly (what am I doing? He meant to say, or better yet, what are you doing to me, but he can’t manage to put his words in working order).

It’s a question that sounds more like a cry for help. “We’re being idiots.” You look down.

Carmen nods in understanding, or maybe it’s less than that. He’s trying to understand. Trying his best to understand the urges he’s resisting, his gnawing thoughts. His lips part to say something else (wanted to ask something incurably stupid, possibly, are you even real?) You wait. Draw out the moment a bit longer, because of what happens next— the torrential rain, the downpour that comes when the lines are blurred down to nothing. The foundation that stood beneath you both is glass unsplintered, set in beautifully aged, rich cherry wood. It’s unfailing. Passed between chefs like a burning cigarette; a budding kitchen romance glossed over with the polished veneer of professionalism nearly as thin and as breakable.

When Carmen no longer resists, it shatters. Broken shards splinter where his hand graces the hem of your shirt, piercing the skin there. He pins you closer. Scrapes and gashes where his heated fingers run, where the tip of his nose trails along your jaw and up. It cuts the skin of your cheek. Lips ghosting, all teasing, terrified of sealing off this voluntary demise with a first kiss.

You press your lips to his, and it’s something like a heedless puncture through the heart.

For a moment, he forgets. For a moment, all this peril seems so small. Soft heat pushing, overwhelming, the world fades and it’s dizzying and warm and plush and perfect and so, so tender. The sounds you make, sighs soft, a whimper. Carmen tries his best to find it again. Pursues the sound like it’s already his. Found all his messy words hidden on your tongue. Found some strange semblance of understanding there, too, tacked perfectly to the roof of your mouth, and sticky, so sticky. Lapped it up, smooth and fresh like sweet churned butter on a silver, polished spoon.

Carmen’s lips are clumsy, surprisingly soft. Smoked with the cloying scent of tobacco, slick with bad habits and need. It’s addictive and it’s dangerous. Pure rich indulgence, and you find it unkind how gentle he’s being. Even after everything he’s thrown at your head, all the clashing, the rage, even after you whine and you whimper and you tug his bottom lip between your teeth – it’s a travesty, a sick joke. He kisses you and he’s holding back, like you’ll break under him and all his weight, like you haven’t been bruised by him at all. He’s chasing after your lips when you move away, noses bumping gracelessly— “what happened to the guy who told me to fuck off?”

His brown knit together. He whimpers a lacerated sound. Your murmur was cruel with measured bitterness, it slipped between you unexpectedly.

“I…” You’re still pliant beneath his hands but Carmen shrinks away like he’s just been stung. So much torment behind his eyes, an endless burning blue flame. He blinks a few times. Moves back to steady himself against the sudden whiplash. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No. That’s not—” somehow, then, and it was like looking in the mirror, his disquiet is clearer. Those ugly afflictions that drive him to be such a fucking ass.

You’ll tell me I’m a great chef then turn around and spit on everything I’ve done, you’ll throw me away just because you can. (He’ll do it again, you’re sure of it, double down and it’ll be twice as worse as before)

This was no different. This supple game of back and forth and tiresome push and pull. It was all fucked. The thing about Carmen, about you— you’re professionals driven by passion, and passion can be so hard to distinguish. His fury is an intimidating equal to his appetite, and it burns all the same. “Carmy,” the way you say his name, it begs, it lures him back in like a dear siren’s song. It’s needy, achingly soft. Starved. Take him between your tiny hands and kissed him sweetly. Felt messier than before, more confused. “ Don’t apologize,” you exhale against his mouth, and you kiss him again. Brought his shaky palms to your waist.

Kissed him until his lips wander, to the junction of your neck, grazing the column of your throat with teeth and months of longing. “I’m sorry,” he’ll say again and again until he’s blue in the face, etch it into your skin until he has you gasping. Calloused hands hold you steady by your waist and press you back down into the expo when you roll your hips into him.

Carmen wanted to take things slow. Pace himself before he explored your jaw, down your neck, down until he finds that delicate sweet spot he works until ripe. Leans in closer, hips pressed into the push of yours when he drags his tongue against your skin, over the marks he thinks to make, and you taste like all those times he couldn’t. Even better, he considers, on the off chance he drops to his knees, between your thighs— slow down. Feels you writhe with life against his body and whine a sound so lurid. Made just for him (that’s his, all his). He snatches it greedily between his teeth.

The brambled mess at the nape of his neck, his mess of curls tangle with your hands. You pull. The sound that escapes is so small, so adorable. A desperate whine, shy and filthy, muffled against your mouth. He breaks away. He tempers himself, disheveled, breathless, lips spit-slick and reddened. A beautifully flushed mess. “I’m sorry.” His cheeks are a lovely shade of rose-tinted lust.

“What…” You draw back. Bubbling laughter plays at the back of your throat like fresh bottled champagne. “ Carmen. It’s okay.” Confusion draws your brows together. Curls wrap around your finger. You’re dazed beyond recognizing what’s spinning and what’s not.

He grabs hold of the edge of the expo, arms on either side of you. He’s shaking his head. “No, no, I mean for earlier. For today.” Scrubs a hand over his face before placing his arm back down again.

Your expression flickers. “About…”

“Yes.” He answers, searching for a flare or a spark. The start of it. The measured ounce of self-betrayal that nestles in the lines of your face when you try to hide your upset, he comes up empty for the first time. “You walked out.”

“I did.” You nod.

“If you didn’t come back, that would’ve been on me.”

“Carmen.”

“I was reckless with you.”

“Carmen… ” Ran both hands up his chest and ignored his unending rambling. Warmed thumping beneath soft white cotton. His caged heart pounds painfully against his ribcage.

All quivering breath he tries so hard to steady. Strained through his teeth, “you should be angrier.”

Curved your fingers around his neck to nest them in his sandy hair. They pull. It’s instinct. His grunt is too, and when he finally stops talking,“Berzatto,” you warn. Pushed yourself up close to his ear. Felt him growing hard against your thigh, his eyes flutter closed – “shut the fuck up.”

Released your grip and watched the way his eyes gloss over, shaded lids falling heavy. Carmen’s jaw tightens, teeth-grinding restraint while he’s reeling, light-headed. He can’t tell what’s possessing him, guilt or want or a need for control. A need to be good and to be useful. He lowers gently back into the crook of your neck. Something there, he found something sensible there.

His words, maybe, “you should be angrier with me,” grumbled against your skin. That was true. That was right. He doesn’t listen. Carmen can’t help himself. “I feel like I’m…” his hand drops. His tongue flattens against your pulse. He tastes the salt on your skin and hears just how much you like that. Nibbles there, and enjoys how much you move. Pushed his hips and wanted more of how you pulled. Feels himself losing control of his own thoughts, getting faint, getting fuzzy. His fingers trace along your waistband, down your zipper. “Tell me to stop.”

Too many questions linger where his thoughts sway and none of them are about the restaurant or the menu or—

“Please,” he hears, and it’s desperation that snatches your tongue and twists your head when you feel the pressure of his fingers curl against you. Pressure building until you make another sound that he likes, that he chases, then his hand slips back, then pulls forward against you through your pants. You’re already heated to the touch. He wonders selfishly, hungrily in his delirium how wet you are, how wet he can make you.

“Please what?” he asks. No, he really can’t help himself. With how easily you’re worked like the meat he cuts, how you move against him, rocking your hips into his hand like a high tiding wave, why would he stop? (he’s really, really good at spiraling until he’s really, really good at something, and maybe this is a little like that ). He follows the slow-moving rhythm of your hips. Presses you up against the expo with just one hand, the other clutches to the edge for support. It jolts and it rattles. Something crashes to the ground, but he doesn’t care enough to look. Carmen works you steadily – throws a sly quip, hushed, purposeful, and cunning, “use your words, chef.”

“Fuck you, Carmen.” Pierces his lips. He smiles.

“Good.” Carmen looks hazed. He looks drunk. He marvels over you with adoration, lovely and as lethal as the razor-sharp edge of his favorite cutting knife. “Just like that.” Looks down and unbuttons your pants, you help. He slides his hand beneath your waistband. Interest peaks in him like a curious fawn, eager to witness what damage he’s done. Wonders what sound you’ll make – you groan against his mouth when he runs two fingers along the slick pooling your underwear, and— “ fuck,” he’s off-balanced again.

Makes a mess of your underwear, a pure, sopping wet mess, and it’s maddening decadence. He has you cradled in his hand. His fingers run circles around your clit through the twisted fabric, bunched helplessly against your combined movements. Faster, when you dissolve and cry out, his fingers are quick but precise. Searing hot pressure builds in your gut, overcoming. Your cries echoing off the walls fill the empty room. Carmen wanted to see just how loud he can get you. Get you dizzy, get you addled with need.

Then he slows down.

It’s so sudden, your faint “ no ” brushes his lips. He breaks from your mouth to observe what ecstasy comes of it. Closed around nothing, spilled light shines through your mouth and it’s light he’ll drown under. His burning hand cradles the side of your face. Singes the memory of your want and flesh and vulnerability. The toll of what comes, these scars of a fondness are incomprehensible (if he questions it he just might go insane). He kisses you tenderly. He strokes your cheek. Skin buzzing, hammering heart in your ears, primed hot and slick-wet, and it’s just for him. Your hips move with Carmen’s touch, hands in his hair, and he’s telling you just how pretty you are, like this (just like this, keep going). He’s torturously controlled, even the movements of his hands are exacting while he’s soothing you. Languid fingers play you unhurriedly until they’re soaking.

You and Carmen cling to each other, tangled limbs, lost in some hypnotic trance. A lazing tide. Drunk on lust and feeling and fevered euphoria. He moved the fabric to the side and pushed a finger inside you. You gasp. “Fuck.”

Found your earlobe between his teeth and sucked. “You like that?” he asks. You nod against him, clutching tight, lashes scrunched shut. He dips another finger inside of you, they slip in and out with unexpected ease. Massages you until primed and tender, until you’re thanking him with open-mouth bites down his neck. It’s an intense, slow-building pleasure. Heat slicks his hand, his palm pressing winding pressure on your clit, “is this what you want?”

“Carmy,” his name tastes better the more you say it. Every bad decision suddenly seems so entirely weightless. One hand tangled in his hair, the other strokes the length of him through his pants, straining, he whimpers. He thrusts into your hand. “I want you inside me.”

He can’t say anything, can’t manage to articulate against your words or the pressure of your palm, but he nods. You tug his sweaty curls just a bit harder and his thrusts get deeper, more desperate, rolls his hips again, then again, and he’s certain the feeling devouring him is the one that’ll leave him in ruin. His body is begging for it. You captured the moan in his throat between your lips as you reached for his belt. Started to pull, and unbuckle, but he curves his hand and his fingers in a way that makes you lose momentum.

A sense of pride strikes him when you fumble (and it’s not a competition by any means, but he does like the thought of winning). You grab onto him for support, burrowing yourself in the crook of his neck. “You wanna come?” It was this heated closeness, the way you unravel and whine your answers that’s unlike what he’s used to in the kitchen, this openness. Less vocal and unburdened by standards and boundless prep and orders, broken game machines, and kitchen grease making a mess of where you step. Beneath his fingertips is flesh, raw and dripping. There’s possessiveness filling in his chest. Frantically rugged desire to have you fall apart, and give you all that he can. “I wanna make you come.”

Carmen feels compelled to earn this. “I wanna see you come for me.” Removes his hand and you feel too empty. Grabs you by the waist, lips locked furiously, and the instant you turn it’s like your bodies work in unison, a harmonious rhythm that follows the raw, biting need of the other. The expo shakes. The clashing of pots and plates nearly goes unnoticed under the buzzing as you clutch onto it for balance. It’s beautiful and decorated and scarred, the hand that travels up under your shirt, ink black sou squeezing your breast while his hips push forward. You arch into him.

There’s a slick smile pressed into his lips. “Where’s the person who told me to fuck off?” trickles off his tongue like dark molasses. Carmen grinds against you and dips a hand between your thighs again. Your eyes roll back. You bite your lip, fuck he was a nuisance but he could convince you to do anything if it meant feeling the soft strum of his fingers.

You shake your head. “I can’t…”

“You can’t what?” Curls two fingers inside of you perfectly, hitting you just right and has you moaning. “What can’t you do? Remember what I said, chef, about using your words,” he says low and steady and hot by your ear. His hand, untethered from out under your shirt, finds its grounding on your throat, fingers wrapped tight enough to have you entirely unfocused, light-headed, and hazed. He pulls you flush to his chest, so weak you’re like putty in his hands. He holds you in place, heart flinting from your chest to your throat, pressure mounting, nose skimming the skin of your neck, he places a stinging kiss there. He soothes it over with sickly sweet devotion, “you’re so good. So, so good for me.”

It’s praise that goes straight to your cunt, has you pushing back against the length of him, has him pushing back into you, between his clothed erection and searing palm. Teases your clit until it becomes too much, and it’s just enough, and it’s perfect how well he works you up until you’re tense and chanting his name, repurposed like a lacy white prayer where it reaches. Legs collapsed in, consuming slow-building fires spreading through your belly and thighs, and he’s shushing you through your quiet mewls, telling you it’s okay, it’s okay. Supporting your weight with that’s it, good, keep doing that – as you ride your orgasm out on his fingers.

The seconds after, and you don’t know which came first. His hand unlatches from your throat. Your palms press down against the expo. Carmen massages you down slowly from your high, aftershocks of your orgasm still pulsing and pushing tight around his fingers. He explores the sensation and listens to the way your body moves to his fingers as he rubs you. It’s only buzzing that you hear in your ears at first before you feel the warmth of his lips littering kisses down your neck, his wet hands at your waist. Pressed his erection into you again while you whine and wiggle.

“Carmy, please.” It’s urgent, blaring want tearing through any logic. Never mind work or time, or the fact that being fucked like this in his kitchen was most definitely a health violation.

“You want more?” Carmen’s breathless and hungry. He’s already bending you over the expo, consumed raw by lust and heat. He’s unsteady, a little wobbly, a little delirious without sleep. Your mouth opens wide when his fingers reach for your throat, inviting, he hesitates. Slowly, he shoves two past your lips, slides perfectly on your tongue. “ Jesus,” he pants. It’s sinful seeing how readily you take him, sucking lasciviously around his fingers as your tongue explores, you savor the taste and hum. He’s weak under it, so he holds on tighter to your waist. Carmen lazily drives his hips deeper. “Maybe we should…” His words are slurred, crashing into each other. He licks his lips.

He feels his head heavy, his heart speeding up to something impossible. Through the dimmed haze your eyes open. You slid away from his fingers, “Carm,” braced yourself, and pushed up from the expo. Blinked away the blurry edges, then turned. Your fluttering hand rested on his cheek. “Carmen,” you said a little louder this time. He looked out of it. “Carmen. Hey,” worry curling in your stomach when his breathing becomes labored, you steady his head between your hands. “ Carmen. Look at me.”

His eyes register. He blinks a few times. He’s staring at you like he’s just woken up from a dream. “Where the fuck did you just go?” you ask, wide-eyed concern woven all over your face.

“I, um,” he swallows. He lost his balance for just a moment, for just one moment. His heart did that fucking thing again. It comes in waves. It’s less intense on some nights, more intense on others, and it’s a whole lot to explain. “I’m okay. I’m okay. I just…” he takes a deep, uneven breath. He remembers he didn’t have lunch today, either, cause he was all caught up with Lu on the phone (and he didn’t really account for the rest of this). You’re too silent. He scrubs a hand over his brows. “Look, uh, it happens. Sometimes. That.” Looks down at the ground, beet-red.

“It happens.” You nod, unconvinced. A little in shock. Waited until you saw it again, that ever-climbing crystal blue flame. “That happens? I mean, do you need water, do you need to sit?”

“No. No, I’m okay,” he nods assuredly and grips the edge of the expo with one hand.

“Carmen.” Your hands hover over him.

“Look, I’m fine.” After a moment, he pushes away. His hands squirm. He turns in a circle, then stops moving. He braces. He questions, “did I, was that weird?”

You scoff a laugh. Watching Carmen move while he’s on edge is a special kind of curdling anxiety, tight-coiled knots bundle your words together, and it’s all a bit unhinged, this. You raised both of your brows. “Weird?” You repeat, eyes like saucers searching for the punchline. “Carmen, are you kidding me? You almost passed out in front of me and you’re asking me if I found that weird.”

“Well, yeah, and…” His eyes flint everywhere yours aren’t. His hair sticks up in every which way.

“No.” You slide in. “It wasn’t, weird.” You lean your weight against the expo. Pressed a palm to your temple, and huff. “It’s weird… that you’d ask something like that after you almost…”

Carmen nods along. Backs into the stove, hands by his side, hunched over. He’s had his share of half-baked flings and fumbling quickies in the past. All were short-lived and kind of fucked from the start, and none of them really ended like this? Carmen thinks he’ll find the next best thing to say resting somewhere on the ground, between the cracks, under the tiles. “I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You always say that.” Your voice is sobering.

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s stupid.” The way you look at him will fill his heart to bursting, have him finding sanctuary whenever they do rest on him.

After a moment, “Come here,” he says softly, though he’s the one approaching you. His hands reach for the still unbuttoned button on your pants, he fastens them. Zips them back up again. His fingers trace a line around your waist.

Somewhere he’s found blossoming nightshades and lovely hanging foxgloves sprouting, laceflowers grow like all the others. Poison hemlocks look a lot like flowering queen anne’s emerging around spring, and maybe, he tells himself, maybe he can afford this pretty little death.

“Berzatto,” you say. Carmen hums. “What are we doing?”

Another dimpled smile presses into his cheeks. The flicker of unrest that ripples over his face, the one you seize to hold in your pocket, a reminder for later (do not near, fall back) he shakes that away. “Being fuckin’ idiots.”

#want to frame you on my wall for everyone to see actually #🤎

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nymphlamp · 1 year

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Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

#pocket #rainer maria rilke #self #gods and monsters

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nymphlamp · 1 year

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Carmy Berzatto in THE BEAR 1.01 “System”

#free me. release me please

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nymphlamp · 1 year

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Study for Possessed Actor (An actor being taken by an onryō while performing in an historical play), 2018

Ink and bodycolour on prepared paper, 17.9 x 27.4 cm

#denis forkas #art #gods and monsters

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nymphlamp · 1 year

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heather o’neill

#heather o’neill

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nymphlamp · 1 year

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Kissing you on the cheek and sending you all of my love because I cannot believe what I am reading!! You have been such a big support love, I appreciate you so much you absolute blessing🥹💕💕