[ There's a scar that curves across Carmy's palm, thick and waxy, more than a year healed but still pink and ugly, distorting all those lines that are meant to be his heart and his life. The day he got the news that Mikey died - maybe even the minute, it's a haze now - he reached out and put his hand right on the white-orange coil of the burner. He tells people it was a saucepan he didn't know was heated. But it's there, in his mind, when she gently opens him up and eases in somewhere he wouldn't want her to go. How much does Carmy want to hurt? How much has she got.
Chef David Fields leaning in behind him as he works. Telling him he has a short man's complex. Say, Chef, I'm so tough. Carmy beat off to that every night for the rest of the week. He'd be dead on his fucking feet, about to fall asleep in his day clothes, and Fields would slide into his head and his hand would slide into his briefs. Low, masculine whisper: You are not tough. You're talentless. You should be dead.
He's gonna carry that with him forever. When the people who love him, his ex-girlfriend Claire, his not-cousin Richie, tell him he's good, tell him they're proud of him, it's meaningless bullshit. He doesn't buy it.
The only thing that's real is this: a beautiful woman's hand on the front of his expensive jeans, feeling out where he's already chubbed up for her, and finding it wanting. He flushes - it's an embarrassing bullseye, he knows he isn't like, big. His blue eyes are so dark in the low light, and he's getting it, he's picking it up, it's exactly like Fields at Empire: he's expected to follow orders, give one hundred and ten percent, and then she's gonna say this shit that makes his insides curl up like a dead spider and his dick so hard he can't think straight.
Good.
Carmy doesn't half-ass it just so she has an excuse; he kisses her like he means it, one hand on the dip of her waist and the other coming up to rest a thumb at the line of her jaw. He kisses her hot and slow, the pulse of his dick translated into the needy hunger of his mouth. There's a brief thrill of being, you know, the guy, the one kissing the most beautiful woman in the club in front of everyone. The high point of the roller coaster before the next drop. ]
cw: past self harm, past verbal abuse.
[ There's a scar that curves across Carmy's palm, thick and waxy, more than a year healed but still pink and ugly, distorting all those lines that are meant to be his heart and his life. The day he got the news that Mikey died - maybe even the minute, it's a haze now - he reached out and put his hand right on the white-orange coil of the burner. He tells people it was a saucepan he didn't know was heated. But it's there, in his mind, when she gently opens him up and eases in somewhere he wouldn't want her to go. How much does Carmy want to hurt? How much has she got.
Chef David Fields leaning in behind him as he works. Telling him he has a short man's complex. Say, Chef, I'm so tough. Carmy beat off to that every night for the rest of the week. He'd be dead on his fucking feet, about to fall asleep in his day clothes, and Fields would slide into his head and his hand would slide into his briefs. Low, masculine whisper: You are not tough. You're talentless. You should be dead.
He's gonna carry that with him forever. When the people who love him, his ex-girlfriend Claire, his not-cousin Richie, tell him he's good, tell him they're proud of him, it's meaningless bullshit. He doesn't buy it.
The only thing that's real is this: a beautiful woman's hand on the front of his expensive jeans, feeling out where he's already chubbed up for her, and finding it wanting. He flushes - it's an embarrassing bullseye, he knows he isn't like, big. His blue eyes are so dark in the low light, and he's getting it, he's picking it up, it's exactly like Fields at Empire: he's expected to follow orders, give one hundred and ten percent, and then she's gonna say this shit that makes his insides curl up like a dead spider and his dick so hard he can't think straight.
Good.
Carmy doesn't half-ass it just so she has an excuse; he kisses her like he means it, one hand on the dip of her waist and the other coming up to rest a thumb at the line of her jaw. He kisses her hot and slow, the pulse of his dick translated into the needy hunger of his mouth. There's a brief thrill of being, you know, the guy, the one kissing the most beautiful woman in the club in front of everyone. The high point of the roller coaster before the next drop. ]