#Critical Skilled Worker

[bayetea]

I don't like the judo flip in moa as much as the next guy but in my eyes it's largely the result of rick not taking female violence half as seriously as male violence (a result of viewing women as weaker and inferior to men such that their acts of violence don't need to be taken as seriously) and not so much anything about annabeth herself. like I do genuinely feel that annabeth is a complex heroine and definitely one of the better ones in the realm of ya action-adventure fiction produced in the past 25 years but she is still a girl being written by a man and all I'm saying is that her writing clearly reflects that sometimes (more in tags)

[hneycmb]

I need people to stop thinking of robots and AI in their current states of advancement as conscious beings. It's a weird amount of anthropomorphization that really misses the mark on what the concerns surrounding these things should be. When you start talking about AI and robots as anything but tools, you begin to view robots and AI themselves as the problem instead of the people in charge of them and what they're being used for. It also makes you sound like a luddite who thinks the voice in their smartphone is Literally The Devil.

[olivergisttv]

Updates on Ireland’s Critical Skills Work Permits

Ireland’s Critical Skills Work Permit is designed to attract highly skilled individuals to the country to fill shortages in key sectors. Recent updates to the program reflect Ireland’s evolving labor market needs and make it easier for professionals in high-demand industries to secure employment and contribute to the Irish economy. Here’s an overview of the latest changes and requirements for…

[eternallymillenial]

simping for capitalistic superstar billionaires who do not care about your well-being is not the flex some of y'all seem to think it is.

[apas-95]

anti-ai people need to understand that the opposition communists have to luddism and reactionary sentiment isn't like, a moral one. the main problem with luddism is that it doesn't actually work. like when we say 'we mustn't try to fight against technology itself, we need to fight against the social system that makes it so that advancement in technology and labour-saving devices lead to layoffs' the reason we're saying it is because, if you try fighting the technology, you're going to lose, and you're still going to lose your job too. when you say 'yeah i understand your criticism but I'm still going to fight against AI' you very clearly did not understand the criticism, because the point is that it isn't even in your own self-interest, because it will not work. the fact that, even if it did work, it would only mean maintaining a privileged strata of 'skilled labour' above other workers is secondary -- because, again, flatly resisting technological advancement has never worked in history.

[friskyfreddie2024]

America: You Fucked Up

You could have chosen Hope. You chose Hate.

You could have chosen Empathy. You chose Enmity.

You could have chosen a New Beginning. You chose the Nazi.

We could have finally been rid of this cancer on American democracy. He could have been banished to obscurity, remembered only as the worst president in American history, and finally held responsible for his numerous crimes.

The ignorant, racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, pathologicial liar is now going back to the White House. He is a convicted felon, an admitted sexual predator, a total fraud, and a demented old man. He belongs in prison.

What did you do?

You ignored that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, that inflation is at its lowest level in four years, that unemployment is at its lowest level in three years. You believed the lies about how terrible the economy is. I knew better.

You forgot about his 30,000+ lies while he was in office. I remember.

You forgot about his complete mismanagement and ignorance over COVID, resulting in the deaths of over one million Americans. I remember.

You forgot about the saber rattling over military exercises in the pacific, when Kim Jong Un threatened us with nuclear missiles, causing us to fear whether we'd see another day. I remember.

You forgot about waking up every morning dreading to hear the latest abomination he tweeted. I remember.

You forgot about "very fine people on both sides." I remember.

You forgot about "only the best people" like Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, and many others who were given cabinet positions despite having zero qualifications for the job. I remember.

You forgot that 40 of his former cabinet members and dozens of former generals and officials refused to support him, saying he was "unfit to serve." I remember.

You forgot about January 6, "fight like hell". I remember.

You forgot that when he was told that his vice president was secured because the rioters wanted to kill him, he said, "So what?" I remember

You forgot about The Big Lie, "Release the Kraken" and 60+ failed attempts to overturn the election in the courts. I remember.

You forgot about "I just need you to find 11,780 votes." I remember.

You forgot about "They're eating the cats! They're eating the dogs!" I remember.

What now?

When a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy dies because she doesn't have access to medical care, that's on you.

When they take away your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend, and deport them, that's on you.

When a woman is forced to suffer the agony of carrying her rapist's baby to term, that's on you.

When a transgender kid harms themselves because they can't get the medical care they need, that's on you.

When your middle-class taxes GO UP, while billionaires get even more tax breaks, that's on you.

When schoolchildren are killed by an assault rifle in a mass shooting, that's on you.

When children grow up ignorant because you banned books and dictated how history is taught, that's on you.

When Grandma can no longer afford a comfortable life because the Social Security she paid into all her working life, and provided income on which she now depends, has been cut, that's on you.

When violence against Jews, Asians, Hispanics rises again, that's on you.

When prices on the goods you buy skyrocket due to tariffs, that's on you.

When Ukraine, deprived of our support, is overrun by Russia, that's on you.

When the U.S. is the laughing stock of the world (as we were 2016-2020), that's on you.

What should you have done?

You should have exercised critical thinking skills, recognized the thousands of lies you were being told, recalled that his administration had four years to live up to his promises and failed at all of them. You should have realized that he is a profoundly stupid individual who doesn't give a shit about you or your family or anything except himself.

You had the last nine years to see that, and you still fell for his bullshit.

[reasonsforhope]

"When Ellen Kaphamtengo felt a sharp pain in her lower abdomen, she thought she might be in labour. It was the ninth month of her first pregnancy and she wasn’t taking any chances. With the help of her mother, the 18-year-old climbed on to a motorcycle taxi and rushed to a hospital in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, a 20-minute ride away.

At the Area 25 health centre, they told her it was a false alarm and took her to the maternity ward. But things escalated quickly when a routine ultrasound revealed that her baby was much smaller than expected for her pregnancy stage, which can cause asphyxia – a condition that limits blood flow and oxygen to the baby.

In Malawi, about 19 out of 1,000 babies die during delivery or in the first month of life. Birth asphyxia is a leading cause of neonatal mortality in the country, and can mean newborns suffering brain damage, with long-term effects including developmental delays and cerebral palsy.

Doctors reclassified Kaphamtengo, who had been anticipating a normal delivery, as a high-risk patient. Using AI-enabled foetal monitoring software, further testing found that the baby’s heart rate was dropping. A stress test showed that the baby would not survive labour.

The hospital’s head of maternal care, Chikondi Chiweza, knew she had less than 30 minutes to deliver Kaphamtengo’s baby by caesarean section. Having delivered thousands of babies at some of the busiest public hospitals in the city, she was familiar with how quickly a baby’s odds of survival can change during labour.

Chiweza, who delivered Kaphamtengo’s baby in good health, says the foetal monitoring programme has been a gamechanger for deliveries at the hospital.

“[In Kaphamtengo’s case], we would have only discovered what we did either later on, or with the baby as a stillbirth,” she says.

The software, donated by the childbirth safety technology company PeriGen through a partnership with Malawi’s health ministry and Texas children’s hospital, tracks the baby’s vital signs during labour, giving clinicians early warning of any abnormalities. Since they began using it three years ago, the number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths at the centre has fallen by 82%. It is the only hospital in the country using the technology.

“The time around delivery is the most dangerous for mother and baby,” says Jeffrey Wilkinson, an obstetrician with Texas children’s hospital, who is leading the programme. “You can prevent most deaths by making sure the baby is safe during the delivery process.”

The AI monitoring system needs less time, equipment and fewer skilled staff than traditional foetal monitoring methods, which is critical in hospitals in low-income countries such as Malawi, which face severe shortages of health workers. Regular foetal observation often relies on doctors performing periodic checks, meaning that critical information can be missed during intervals, while AI-supported programs do continuous, real-time monitoring. Traditional checks also require physicians to interpret raw data from various devices, which can be time consuming and subject to error.

Area 25’s maternity ward handles about 8,000 deliveries a year with a team of around 80 midwives and doctors. While only about 10% are trained to perform traditional electronic monitoring, most can use the AI software to detect anomalies, so doctors are aware of any riskier or more complex births. Hospital staff also say that using AI has standardised important aspects of maternity care at the clinic, such as interpretations on foetal wellbeing and decisions on when to intervene.

Kaphamtengo, who is excited to be a new mother, believes the doctor’s interventions may have saved her baby’s life. “They were able to discover that my baby was distressed early enough to act,” she says, holding her son, Justice.

Doctors at the hospital hope to see the technology introduced in other hospitals in Malawi, and across Africa.

“AI technology is being used in many fields, and saving babies’ lives should not be an exception,” says Chiweza. “It can really bridge the gap in the quality of care that underserved populations can access.”"

-via The Guardian, December 6, 2024

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art on the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is as much of a violation of copyright law as straight up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thing to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition and standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[1000rh]

In the twentieth century, few would have ever defined a truck driver as a ‘cognitive worker’, an intellectual. In the early twenty-first, however, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in self-driving vehicles, among other artefacts, has changed the perception of manual skills such as driving, revealing how the most valuable component of work in general has never been just manual, but has always been cognitive and cooperative as well. Thanks to AI research – we must acknowledge it – truck drivers have reached the pantheon of intelligentsia. It is a paradox – a bitter political revelation – that the most zealous development of automation has shown how much ‘intelligence’ is expressed by activities and jobs that are usually deemed manual and unskilled, an aspect that has often been neglected by labour organisation as much as critical theory.

– Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (2023)

[monetizeme]

Organizations and Conferences

Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

Managers

In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.

Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.

To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

Employees

Work slowly

Work slowly.

Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.

Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

[minus-plus-zer0]

Fireworks Festival With Bakugou Headcanons

♡ Genre: Fluff ♡ Pairing: Bakugou x Foreign!Reader

Bakugou has agreed to go with you to the local fireworks festival!

It wasn't that hard to get him to agree. It only took tons and tons of targeted harassment.

But it's okay because you're sure he's gonna have a great time!

(He actually doesn't mind going at all, he just wanted to see exactly how excited you were)

Because you grew up in a different country, you've never been to a bona fide fireworks festival before and you're really eager to see everything you possibly can.

Bakugou says he has already seen the damn thing too many times before and it doesn't get better. But he just happened to have some free time so he allowed you to drag him along.

This is at least partially a lie. but maybe you don't know that. You say if it makes him that upset you can just go alone because you don't want to bother him. He actually appreciates the thought and he says he's not that bothered. He's grabbing your wrist and pulling you to the festival. Now he's the one dragging YOU along!

Bakugou is great at all of the games. Even when he was a kid, he was widely feared by the festival stall workers due to his skill (and attitude). The shooting stalls banned him one year.

You keep trying to beat him at these games to show you're not weak, but you can't really beat years and years of experience within one day. However, with enough hard work you manage to at least be better than him at goldfish scooping.

Bakugou just doesn't have the patience for it. The fish truly have made an enemy of him today. >:(

At least you're happy. Your little fish is going to have a good time swimming around in your bedroom, hopefully away from Bakugou's rising temper.

Bakugou offers to pay for your guys' food. He probably gets himself some weirdly spicy takoyaki and yakisoba. If you end up liking what he's eating, he might share it with you! All you have to do is ask. You find it easy to chat with him as you finish your food, even though most of the conversation involves him criticizing the meals. He likes that you listen to all his shit.

Bakugou leads you to a good secluded spot to view the fireworks. He's always gone here alone and he hasn't told anyone about it to make sure it would stay that way. That is, until you came along! Welcome to the private life of Bakugou Katsuki.

Bakugou admits to you that he's actually glad you brought him here, since if he didn't go he would've missed out on beating you at all of those games.

"Maybe next time I'll just invite someone else along. Midoriya might need a friend to tag along with."

"Oi. I was JOKING!"

Bakugou asks if you're cold since you're shivering a bit. The nighttime is looming over you two. You're also wondering if he's cold, so you put your hands to your face.

No, his face is quite warm. It's burning red, in fact. However he's now complaining that your hands feel like popsicles! He's holding your hand all the way back home thanks to that little stunt.

Mission accomplished.

[gauguinhater69]

Guys, I’ve had Thoughts.

House’s childhood isn’t really explored in a whole lot of depth during the show. The only details we get are some brief mentions of his father’s abuse and the fact that House grew up moving around a lot due to his father serving as a Marine Corps aviator.

I’m pretty sure the only countries that are directly mentioned in the show as being places that House grew up in are the States, Japan, the Philippines, and Egypt. Both of House’s parents are American, as far as I am aware? He also mentions having a Dutch grandmother in One Day, One Room, but I can’t remember if that’s ever mentioned again or if he just said that for the plot. Regardless, this makes House a Third Culture Kid (or TCK).

Third Culture Kid is a term used to describe people who grow up in a culture that's different from their parents' culture or the culture of their country of nationality. TCKs are often children of expatriate workers, including members of the military (like House), or they can also be the result of transnational marriages. TCKs often develop an identity that's based on relationships with people rather than places. 

I feel like this aspect of House’s upbringing explains a lot about his character and why he is The Way He Is. However, I think it was kind of glossed over in canon and could have been dealt with in a really interesting way, but instead they were just kind of like, “Haha, he read manga because army.”

Whether it was intentional by the writers or not, a lot of the ways House thinks, acts, and interacts with other characters is reflective of a TCK childhood. As a TCK myself, I unironically find House to be one of the best-written TCK characters I have ever come across, despite it not being explicitly discussed in the show (genuinely the only other TCK character in mainstream media that I can think of at the moment is Cady Heron from Mean Girls, who is not a good example, sorry girl).

The most compelling aspects of House’s personality, which I believe make him a well-developed representation of what it’s like to grow up as a third culture kid, include:

A complex relationship with authority and rules: TCKs often grow up in environments where they must navigate different sets of rules and authority figures, which could lead to a heightened skepticism about institutional authority. House's disregard for rules, his insubordination, and his tendency to challenge authority figures such as Cuddy, Vogler, Dr. Nolan, and even Wilson at times seem like an indication of a deeper mistrust of systems and structures. House appears to almost compulsively rebel against structure and situations where he is not completely in control, even if he knows that people are trying to help him, as seen in his time at Mayfield.

Alienation of self and others: I feel like this in particular is very central to House’s character and the show. He is constantly pushing the people who care about him away, like Stacy, Cuddy, Wilson, and the Ducklings. He avoids relationships (both romantic and platonic) and emotional connections with the people around him and believes that he is better off relying on himself alone. Many TCKs experience a sense of never truly fitting in anywhere and tend to alienate themselves (whether on purpose or not) because of it.

Detachment and critical thinking: House’s whole thing as a diagnostician is being able to see things from unconventional angles, and his sharp, often brutal, critical thinking is a reflection of this adaptive skill. However, this also contributes to his emotional detachment, as he prioritizes logic and objective analysis over subjective or cultural norms, distancing him from emotional involvement. Being exposed to a variety of different cultures, people, and cultural norms often contributes to TCKs developing the ability to view situations from multiple perspectives and come up with unusual solutions. This could also contribute to House deep desire to figure everything out, this includes the medical mysteries he solves, but also he needs to understand the actions and motivations of all the people around him. He wants to understand and know everything because this gives him a sense of control.

Deep need for control: Growing up in different places, where cultural norms and expectations may have shifted, could have made House feel like he had to assert control over his immediate surroundings to maintain some sense of stability. The trauma he experienced, particularly with his father’s abuse and emotional neglect, likely influenced this desire for control, as he may have associated control with safety and predictability. In addition to this, many TCKs create rigid systems or behavioural processes to compensate for a lack of “home”. House’s fractured sense of identity and personal trauma, which developed as a result of his experiences as a TCK, likely contributed to his need for control in all aspects of his life.

I also think these are all reasons why House is so drawn to Wilson. While Wilson is absolutely as much of a freak as House, he is the most stable and constant thing in House’s life (even more than his job as a doctor is). While medicine is extremely important to House, he works at the hospital on and off, unable to continue his practice while he is at Mayfield, and he ultimately gives up medicine entirely for Wilson. Through all the ups and downs of House’s life, Wilson is there, no matter how hard House tries to drive him away.

House values his relationship with Wilson above pretty much all other things in his life, because Wilson is one of the only constants in House’s life, which is something that House had been lacking before Wilson. House likely had developed the idea that relationships are fleeting due to his constant upheavals as a child, and this may be part of the reason why he is constantly pushing others away to try and save himself the pain of losing people.

However, Wilson keeps coming back no matter what. Despite the fact that House is rude and brash, despite the unhinged pranks, the borderline criminal acts, after House stole Wilson’s prescription pad, after House played a role in the death of Wilson’s girlfriend, again and again Wilson comes back.

I’m going insane, and I think this is very nearly incomprehensible. Does anyone else see the vision?

[mesetacadre]

Sorry if this is a bit weird question but would artistic freedom be restricted in a socialist state? If it would be, how? Wouldn't restrictions/censorships be a bad thing since it's important for people to be able to learn critical thinking skills and criticize in a constructive way a government or other aspects of society or for them to just depict with reality and imagination in a way that leads to diverse conversations?

The degree of restriction always depends on the context of the state, it's not a set answer. Like most other questions regarding the running of a state by communists, it will change depending on necessities and as it evolves. But regardless, art will always be free of the pressures imposed by salary work, and across the history of socialism, there is a good precedent for ample subsidies of the arts, even those not directly related to socialism itself.

Look at this passage about the GDR, for instance. Take into account the historical context, of a country that has just been divided and liberated from the Nazi Party, with the mass support they garnered. The FRG wasn't exactly unwelcoming to former nazis, even important members of the party, and the GDR was the frontline for the cold war, during its entire existence it faced infiltration, sabotage, and a myriad of attacks against it. [Because of indented quotes being awkward for longer texts, I'm not going to format it differently. The quote will end with the link to the book it's from]

During the forty years of its existence, a unique GDR culture developed in the country and it differed substantially from that in the West. It was characterised by a very fruitful, even if at time bruising and sometimes painful, battle between artistic freedom and creativity on the one hand and the demands the Party and state attempted to impose.

Since the early days of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks and later communist parties everywhere placed a great emphasis on culture and on the contribution cultural workers could make to the building of socialism. One of the first things the Soviet Army of occupation did at the end of the war, was attempt to resuscitate cultural activity in a war-ravaged and demoralised Germany. The one thing the Russians could never get their head around was how a country with such a high level of culture, a nation that had produced a Bach and a Beethoven, a Goethe and a Schiller could have carried out such barbaric crimes in other countries. The Soviet army had cultural officers attached to each battalion and the war had hardly ended before they began seeking out cultural workers and encouraging them to take up their batons, musical instruments, pens and paintbrushes again. Temporary cinemas were established, orchestras formed, theatres opened and publishing houses set up.

In contrast to West Germany, in the Soviet Zone and later in the GDR, there was also an early emphasis on making films about the Nazi period as a means of educating and informing a nation ignorant of or in denial about what had happened.

The first anti-Nazi and anti-war film to be made in the whole of Germany was Die Morder sind unter uns (Murderers among us - 1946) directed by the West Berlin-based Wolfgang Staudte with full Soviet support. Among later anti-Nazi films made in the GDR were: Rat der Gotter (Council of the Gods - 1950) about the production of poison gas by IG Farben for the concentration camps, Nackt unter Wolfen (Naked amongst Wolves - 1963), based on a true story about a small Jewish boy who was hidden in a concentration camp and thus saved. Werner Holt (1965) - about the life of young men in Hitler’s army, Gefrorene Blitze (Frozen Flashes -1967) about the development of the V2 rocket by the Nazis; Ich war Neunzehn (I was Nineteen - 1968) - the true story of a young German who returns to Germany in the uniform of a Red Army soldier with the victorious Russian troops. Almost two decades passed before West Germany attempted to confront the war and its Nazi past. And the film Das Boot (1981) is more about the heroics of German U-boat crews than about understanding Nazi ideology. Das schreckliche Maedchen (Nasty Girl -1990) was a rare exception, as was Downfall (2004), a film about Hitler.

The GDR had more theatres per capita than any other country in the world and in no other country were there more orchestras in relation to population size or territory. With 90 professional orchestras, GDR citizens had three times more opportunity of accessing live music, than those in the FRG, 7.5 times more than in the USA and 30 times more than in the UK. It also had one of the world’s highest book publishing figures. This small country with its very limited economic resources, even in the fifties was spending double the amount on cultural activities as the FRG.

Every town of 30,000 or more inhabitants in the GDR had its theatre and cinema as well as other cultural venues. It had roughly half as many theatres as the Federal Republic, despite having less than a third of the population (178 compared with 346 in the FRG). Subsidised tickets to the theatre and concerts were always priced so that everyone could afford to go. Many factories and institutions had regular block-bookings for their workers which were avidly taken up. School pupils from the age of 14 were also encouraged to go to the theatre once a month and schools were able to obtain subsidised tickets. All the theatres had permanent ensembles of actors who received a regular salary. Plays and operas were performed on a repertory basis, providing everyone in the ensemble with a variety of roles.

All towns and even many villages had their own ‘Houses of Culture’, owned by the local communities and open for all to use. These were places that offered performance venues, workshop space and facilities for celebratory gatherings, discos, drama groups etc. There was a lively culture of local music and folk-song groups, as well as classical musical performance.

Very different to the situation in West Germany, was the widespread establishment in the GDR of workers’ cultural groups - from literary circles, artists groups to ceramic and photography workshops. These were actively encouraged and financially supported by the state, local authorities or the workplace. Discussions of books and literature, often together with authors, were a regular occurrence, even in the remotest of villages.

The ‘Kulturbund’ (Cultural Association) was a national organisation of over one million members that organised a wide range of cultural events around the country, from concerts, lectures on a wide variety of subjects, to art appreciation classes.

To begin with it was set up in set up in 1945 as a movement to bring together interested intellectuals and artists, on the basis of an anti-fascist and humanist outlook, with the aim of promoting a ‘national re-birth’ and ‘of regaining the trust and respect of the world’. From 1949 onwards many smaller cultural groups joined the national Cultural Association. Soon, ‘commissions’ and ‘working groups’ for specific areas were established: educational, musical, architectural and craft groups, followed by photographic, press, philatelic, fine arts groups and others. The Association also had its own monthly journal and weekly newspaper.

The art form ‘Socialist Realism’ has always been decried and ridiculed in the West, caricatured in the constantly circulated images of monumental statues of muscle-bound male workers and buxom, peasant women in heroic poses. However, such a view ignores those many realist artists who were not necessarily ‘court-appointed’ or monumentalists but who chose a realist mode of expression freely.

We now know that the CIA was, at the height of the Cold War, instrumental in promoting abstract art in the West as a counterweight to ‘communist’ realism. The CIA was able to capitalise on the fact that abstract art was frowned upon by party leaderships throughout the communist-led world where realist art was seen as better able to represent socialist values. This led to an often artificial polarisation between realist and abstract art, the former characterised in the West as old fashioned and conservative, the latter as progressive and representing individual freedom. Not surprisingly, it meant a marginalisation of realist art in the West and a dominance of the abstract. The fact that much of the so-called ‘socialist realist’ art to which those in the West had access was state-commissioned and often second rate should not lead us to ignore the fact that there were excellent realist artists working in the Eastern bloc.

Many artists in the communist countries simply preferred to place human beings and social reality at the centre of their art, as did most muralists and many painters in the West. It should not condescendingly be dismissed out of hand. Many continued the strong realist tradition, taking it forward into new realms. It also connected with ordinary people who saw themselves, their lives and their questions and criticisms taken up by artists. While some conformed and became state-sponsored artists, churning out often mediocre art, many others ploughed their own furrow and their work aroused avid interest among the people. This could be seen not only in painting and sculpture but graphics, the theatre, music, literature and, though less so, also in the cinema.

A number of artists did reject the unnecessary ideological fetters as well as banal socialist realist platitudes, and in exhibitions of their work often shocked the party functionaries. Such artists often promoted a progressive and expressively advanced form of critical realism and an aesthetics of their own making. The national contemporary art exhibitions, which took place every five years in Dresden, drew huge numbers of visitors from all over the country and provoked heated discussions. The country could also boast a number of artists, writers and scientists of international renown: the physicist, Manfred von Ardenne, the social scientist, Jurgen Kuczynski; visual artists like Fritz Kuhn, John Heartfield, Willi Sitte, Werner Tiibke and Wolfgang Mattheuer; writers like Christa Wolf, Stefan Hermlin, Stefan Heym,

Christoph Hein, Erik Neutsch and Erwin Strittmatter were all much admired beyond the GDR’s borders.

In the theatre, Bertolt Brecht was, of course, the most famous. His influence on theatre practice was extensive in the GDR but also worldwide. The country, certainly in the early years, could also count on the expertise of actors and directors from the pre-Nazi period: Wolfgang Langhof, Wolf Kaiser, Wolfgang Heinz, Fritz Bennewitz and the brilliant Austrian opera director, Walther Felsenstein - people would come from all over the world to see his exciting productions at the Komische Oper in East Berlin. Among those who matured post-war, Heiner Muller was widely recognised as one of Germany’s most innovative and radical playwrights. There were rock and pop bands like Silly and the Puhdys and jazz groups who were certainly not ‘mouthpieces’ of state-sanctioned culture. There was also a whole range of individual classical musicians of world class, like the conductor Kurt Masur, tenor Peter Schreier and baritone Olaf Bar, the chanteuse Gisela May as well as outstanding orchestras.

The GDR provided facilities and funding for artistic and creative theory and practice. There were lay art circles in most communities and these received state support to carry out their work. Many writers, musicians and visual artists enjoyed a quite privileged existence if they belonged to the officially recognised artists’ or writers’ associations. They would be offered regular well-paid commissions by state and local authorities which provided them, as creative artists, with an income to live on.

A number of leading writers were seen in many ways as ‘people’s tribunes’, articulating grievances, criticisms and ideas that people felt had no proper airing in the public sphere. People engaged actively with these writers and vice versa. Public readings by, and discussions with, authors were a regular feature of GDR life.

Another myth constantly perpetuated is that because the GDR restricted the import of and access to literature from the West, its citizens were entirely cut off from it. A range of works from many contemporary writers from the West were published in the GDR; in fact more British authors were published there than authors from both Germanies combined were published in Britain. GDR readers could find books by British writers like Graham Greene and Alan Sillitoe to US writers like Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway. By 1981, the GDR was publishing 6,000 books a year, almost 17 per cent of which were translations from around 40 foreign languages. There was a wide selection of international literature available and a number of foreign films were shown in cinemas. David Childs, in his book on East Germany, exposes the myth that the GDR populace was totally ignorant and ill-informed about life in the West; most of them, after all were also able to tune in daily to West German radio and television.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?: The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It, by John Green and Bruni De La Motte (2015)

The GDR's relationship to art censorship wasn't as black and white as allowing and disallowing. Certain types of art were discouraged, but they also let regular exhibitions happen which contained "shocking" art, shocking for the party members. They were justifiably weary of any art coming from the west because they knew the CIA used it as a weapon, but "more British authors were published there than authors from both Germanies combined were published in Britain". The social conditioners of art also show themselves in socialist states. Just like liberal art in capitalist countries doesn't really need to be actively encouraged to exist, some artists in the GDR "simply preferred to place human beings and social reality at the centre of their art". It's a complex question which, like I said, almost entirely depends on the historical moment.

[ticktokrobotsnot]

Recreational

Pairing: Carmen Berzatto x fem!reader 

Summary: Two chefs, one needs a distraction and the other needs anything but. 

Word Count: ~11k

Notes: This one has been stuck in my drafts for almost 6 months, google docs was my editor so if you mention any grammar/spelling mistakes I'm gonna blame Google lol.

--

Y/n always had the idea that life never let her be too happy. And not to be unnecessarily pessimistic or ungrateful for the good things that happened in her life, but it was really only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. To be completely honest, if she was remotely better at anything else or something else paid more, she wouldn’t have been a chef. She thought her career as a chef was the universe having a good laugh at her, making her a part of a culture so deeply rooted in making connections which she couldn't reciprocate.

“They aren’t your friends.” The lesson was so deeply ingrained into y/n’s psyche that it was impossible for her to even spare a simple congratulatory smile after finding out her co-worker had won a James Beard award a few years prior or give that same co-worker a nod of approval when he retained a star. They were at best two instruments in the same tool kit, easily replaceable to the other, and y/n wasn’t going to offer an olive branch. 

The French Laundry’s kitchen had perfected the skill to make even the best chefs throw their thousand dollar knife in a huff and quit on the spot. The head chef was a maestro of pushing buttons, ensuring a constant undercurrent of tension that never reached extreme highs because, in that kitchen, there was never a low.

That was before y/n was hired. There were chefs with better referrals, more experience, were more likable but there was something in her that put her above the rest, she didn’t crack. 

She didn’t flinch when the head chef lowered himself to her level, still towering over her, and told her that she didn’t deserve to be there in the middle of a dinner rush on her first week. 

Carmen kept his head down, anticipating the impending sobs and sniffles. However, as moments of silence stretched on, he resisted the unseen force compelling him to remain bowed. Slowly lifting his gaze, he noticed her studying the head chef as if extracting more from his irises than his words. Her eyes then swept over the rest of the staff before locking onto Carmen's. There, in that shared glance, he sensed her silent inquiry, a question of whether he, the second in command with a James Beard award and a Michelin star, was a coward.

He bowed down, focusing on the plate in front of him and pretending to wipe a nonexistent splatter.

The silence echoed while the rest of the chefs continued to slice, dice, and stir not sparing a glance, this was nothing new. When the head chef figured that she wouldn’t say anything back, he sauntered over to his next victim. Carmen lifted his head one more time, there was nothing he could do to comfort her if she was a mess but he already knew which chef would have to take over for her while she sobbed in the freezer. He was met with her side profile, she was smirking.

For a brief moment it felt like Carmen finally got a good look at her since she had been hired a week ago. It took a few moments for Carmen to decipher her expression. She was unimpressed with him, the head chef, and the kitchen. It wasn’t possible to be unimpressed and here she was looking at everyone like she was a parent listening to the squabbles of an irritable child, it was different.

She was a dangerous person because her small stunt inspired him to do something he had never done in the French Laundry, roll his eyes when the head chef left after his criticism. It was a small taste of delicious, slippery, freedom that was bound to kill him later. The day ended and Carmen didn’t even notice that he was walking up to her until he was right in front of her. 

Y/n was expecting an apology and Carmen was expecting an opening to start talking, something had to give but it was too raw to do that here. After one more glance, Carmen started parting his lips but y/n slipped right past him and walked out. 

They aren’t your friends.

Y/n had many aspirations growing up: pop-star, astronaut, scientist, and ice-cream vendor. As she got older the list matured, and consequently shortened. It didn't take much for her to enroll in culinary school, a decision made almost impulsively. 

In the busy kitchen, amid clattering pots and the aromatic dance of ingredients, she watched chefs passionately invest themselves in each dish. She had heard stories from her colleagues, the heartfelt narratives that bound them to their culinary journey, and she couldn't help but feel a pang of shame that she couldn’t reciprocate. Her presence in the kitchen wasn't driven by sentimental attachments to food; she was here for a paycheck, a stark contrast to the fervor surrounding her. As she navigated the world of flavors and aromas, she grappled with the solitude of her own motivations, wondering if there was space for her in a profession driven by love, memories, and a deep connection to the culinary craft.

Unable to reciprocate the profound connections others sought, a sense of bitterness and unrest festered within her. Her internal conflict wasn't born out of disdain for those more accomplished; instead, it stemmed from a profound inability to fathom the emotional intricacies that seemed to drive others but couldn’t seem to reach her. 

Y/n didn’t allow herself to confront a nuanced flaw—projecting her perception of routine loneliness onto the world, all while unconsciously imposing a self-isolation rooted in a complex interplay of guardedness and yearning for genuine connection. She kept herself busy by watching, judging, others in the hopes that eventually she would see something that clicked. 

Y/n spent the next few years in relative ease even if every single soul in the French Laundry were a bunch of battered devotees, who regularly got verbally and emotionally beaten black and blue, but still came crawling back. It was almost humorous to watch all the chefs line up to leave and look like they just had their soul siphoned out from their puckered assholes. 

Carmen felt like a cautionary tale to her, never getting too involved. He had crafted his own prison cell, a second in command with no real power, no life outside of work, and y/n bet he told himself that this was his peak. His self created pathetic life was so intensely interesting to y/n that she resisted asking about his life so she never made the same mistakes. But the way his focus scattered across the kitchen told her that he didn’t know why he was like this either. 

He didn’t come to work on a Friday, which was a bit of a shock, and it rippled when she walked in on some janitor emptying his locker a few days later, and just like that, Carmen was gone from her life. 

Months went by and by then y/n had completely forgotten about the chef that wasn’t strong enough until she saw browsing a food blog, and she found a name that she thought she would never see again. A post about a restaurant in Chicago that had served yet another "dish to die for". She refreshed the page a few more times, wondering if this was someone with a similar name but after a bit of sleuthing, a slightly blurry google review photo, it was undeniable, Carmen was indeed in Chicago. 

They shared certain similarities—they had comparable resumes, education, and paychecks. Given the exorbitant rents in New York, it was likely that their living expenses were almost identical. They were both engulfed in the demanding world of cooking, leaving little time for anything else. Yet, despite these parallels, a puzzling question lingered: why did Carmen have the financial freedom to make a spontaneous departure, a luxury y/n had yearned for but couldn't grasp for years?

Y/n wished that she felt that pulling force, like seeing a familiar face after a long time bloomed an ache in her heart. She spent a few moments trying to will her heart string to pull but she was unsuccessful. She was looking for a reason to leave the French Laundry and she was hoping that Carmen’s scribble tattoos, wavy hair, nauseatingly blue eyes would make a path for her to escape, or at least reveal what gave him that final push. 

She liked the restaurant that she used to work at, a local hotspot that was known for its penne alla vodka and other vaguely Italian dishes. Over there she was the hotshot young chef freshly graduating from the CIA and was leagues above anyone else. No one towered over her asking if she knew what she was doing, no one ever asked her if she remembered to stir the roux, or if she was an assistant. The only reason she left was because her student debt was closing in and she was exhausted from constantly debating if she should buy a replacement for her shitty knife or groceries for the month. Being poor was so tiring that y/n caved when someone came in with a job offer. As much as she hated the French Laundry it graced her with a different type of freedom, the freedom to not worry about if she could afford to survive. 

She waited till The Beef closed to give them a call, and unsurprisingly someone picked up with a heavy sigh, “ We are closed.” and then hung up. Y/n dialed again, “I need to speak to Berzatto.”

“Yo Cousin, some chick is looking for you.” A muffled, we’re closed, was heard but y/n insisted.

“We worked together in the French L-.”

“She says she’s French or something.” And before y/n could correct, Carmen was handed the phone. 

“The fuck do you mean French?” Still arguing with the guy with a gruff voice.

“Maybe it's a "pro" you sobbed in front of in France, you virgin. I don’t know your fucking life.” 

“French Laundry.” Y/n interrupted and just like that Carmen was glued to the phone. 

“Y/n?” Y/n ignored that he was able to recognize her voice even after all this time and how that made her almost soften her voice. 

“I’m in Chicago for a few days, when can I stop by.” 

“You want to come?" Carmen hastily recovered, "You can come when you can but we are doing some renovations and it's a mess-'' 

“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.” And with that y/n  hung up and emailed HR that she would be out for the week because she was sick. 

The Chicago air was unbearably similar to New York's and y/n was glad she didn’t have to spend too many miles on the same shitty city. And Carmen understated the “renovations”, it was a gut. The door scraped open dragging the paint cans that were leaning it. The door isn’t the working issue, it's the fact that the whole restaurant looked like it was on the verge of being classified as a collection of bare load bearing pillars and plastic tarp. Y/n was glad that she settled for sneakers because heels were begging for her to eat shit. 

“Ms. New York!” The man with a gruff voice yells with laced hostility, alerting everyone.

The echoing music was promptly shot off as curious onlookers tried to decipher why an unknown woman was waddling through a battlefield of loose nails and scattered sawdust.

Y/n didn’t have to look long before Carmen came tumbling out the kitchen door, looking at her like she was glowing. Y/n wordlessly walked over to him and extended her hand and much to her shock the shake was firm, eager even, the last time they shook hands was when y/n had to take a photo with him 3 years ago for Gastronomica. Y/n was the first to slip her hand away, not remarking on his softened calluses, it seems like he hadn’t done much cooking lately. 

Carmen ushered them towards the kitchen and held the door open for her, the room was empty and oddly quiet. They were holding the work outside so they could hear what they assumed would be confessions and passionate love making. 

Carmen probably sensed it too because he took them to what looked like the skeletons of an office. 

They both stood against the wall on completely opposite ends, their words would have to fill the gap. Carmen parted his lips a few times trying to formulate what he practiced last night but all the words seemed to die in his throat. His staggered inhale was followed by a soft, “What brings you here? I mean I’m glad you're here-”

“I wanted to know what you were up to.” Y/n twirled a strand of hair, looking into his eyes trying to relearn him again. 

Carmen’s breath stalled as he fiddled with his apron to avoid eye contact. “I’m running this place now so-” Carmen’s eyebrows furrowed, “How did you know where I was?”

“I saw the restaurant in a blog and thought I would….” Y/n noticed him deflate, trying to figure out from disappointment or finally relaxing. 

“I thought I would get something to eat but it seems like…” Y/n waved her hands at the bare walls, “That's not gonna happen.” She let out a soft chuckle but was a bit peeved that Carmen wasn’t doing anything but staring at her. 

Y/n crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, Carmen sighed and thumped his head softly on the wall behind him. Being across from him, gave y/n a familiar view of Carmen at the end of shift, pitiful and enervated. Y/n didn’t fail to notice that his arms had gotten bigger.

“Manual labor suits you.” Carmen let out an embarrassed but bemused “ha” as he failed to stop his lips from curling up. 

“Yeah, I have to do a lot by myself. Don’t exactly have the funds to be hiring a million contractors to do shit.”

“How do you afford all this?” Y/n lifted her gaze and tried to not look too eager. 

"A ton of loans. We're barely holding it together," he admitted with a soft chuckle, passing some papers to y/n. As he continued, Carmen listed the financial burdens on his shoulders, payroll for the chefs, government permits, contractors, vendors, appliance suppliers,each itemized until it culminated in a big, fat, red zero that highlighted the crushing reality of y/n's shattered dreams. There was no money left; they couldn't afford to keep her. The devastating truth settled in, she couldn't afford to work here, and Carmen couldn't afford to save her. 

Carmen walked over to the desk between them before plopping on his chair and balanced his head on his right fist as he looked up to y/n.

“What are you doing right now?” Carmen asked, the new view let him see more of y/n, which she didn’t know if she liked.

“I'm still at the French Laundry, it pays the bills, Carmen.” The air stilled and all the oxygen in his lungs contracted in his lungs as his name echoed in the otherwise silent room. He wasn’t Berzatto anymore. Y/n’s small smirk was enough of a reaction for Carmen to solidify that he had no clue about the women in front of him. 

As she basked in the lull, she extended her leg to stretch them out to, noticing that it wouldn’t take much effort for her to put her foot on one of the legs of his chair and roll him closer. Y/n wasn’t without decency so she resisted messing with Carmen anymore. She was being stupid and immature, it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t help her, but a part of her still yearned to inflict some measure of discomfort on him.

“Enough about me…what have you been up to?” He was finally worth talking to, y/n thought. He would finally have something of value that she couldn’t get out of any other seasoned chef, a spark behind his eyes. Maybe there was something else that gave him the power to come here, something that could move her too. 

“I'm taking over the restaurant from my brother and we are remodeling and shit to make it…a spot.” He realized how stupid he sounded when he said it outloud. 

Y/n’s lips quivered downward, he was taking over a family obligation. He didn’t unlock any of the universe’s secrets that he could share with her, that would make the road ahead clear. He really couldn’t help her. The crushing feeling in her chest was worsened when he carelessly tossed out, “You could work here, ya know?”

A pile of bills at home dared her to throw caution to the wind and fail spectacularly. Y/n shut down any part of her that could have been swayed and diverted instead.

“What are you serving?” 

“You would be head chef, y/n.” Carmen's intense gaze made her look at him in bewilderment.

“It’s not a good fit.” Y/n pressed with a self-assured chuckle.

“Syd would be number 2 and I can focus on the business shit-” 

Y/n wasn’t going to justify his ridiculous proposition with a response, so she gave him a pointed look before asking a final time, “What are you serving?”

“Whatever I want.” His eyes focused on y/n’s, almost daring her to be enticed by the freedom.

Y/n's stomach somersaulted. The room around them seemed to close in as the weight of the unknown pressed against her. Y/n grappled with the question of what she had truly come for. The initial curiosity about his past now collided with the reality that the person standing before her was somehow a deity that had broken free from the shackles of depriving the self from freedom but also a mortal with dangerous arrogance that she couldn’t replicate. 

“You finished the menu?” 

Carmen nodded as his eyes wrinkled.

“Show me the menu.” 

“You’ll see it on opening night.” Carmen leaned back in self-assurance.

“I won’t be back.” Y/n briskly asserted as she went back to twirling her hair and crossing her arms.

Y/n heard a chuckle and a soft, “Doubtful”. Just as she lifted her head to argue, the words were gone and so was Carmen, who was at the door now, holding it open for her.

“You're the worst, you know that?” She presented him with a vicious side eye. “I came all the way to the menu, you know.” That wasn’t remotely true.

“You can see the kitchen.” His hand hovered over the small of her back before catching himself and slipping his hand back down. 

Carmen gave a run down on where the stove would go in relation with the expo, being mindful of speed but also spatial restriction. Y/n walked with him wondering if she would care enough about the minutia to organize a restaurant from the ground up like this. Her fingertips grazed the silver gas stove, teh cool metal brought back memories of working in LA. His expo covered in plastic wrap was the exact one she saw in her first internship. And most damning of all, Carmen specially picked out everything; so just like y/n, he had a story to tell with each piece. 

His eyes shimmered as he talked about not beating his time around the kitchen yet, and y/n felt her stomach roll over as a wave of… something rolled over her. 

Eventually, Carmen led her out to the front where she talked about table choices and the lighting to match, her eye’s glazed in wonderment wondering if the version of Carmen that cared about interior design was always a part of him or if it was a new development. Just as she was about to ask, Richie interrupted her.

“We’ve held it long enough, I think we would ALL love to know who you are.” He spread out his arms and nodded like a politician who was, “asking the real questions”. Y/n went from floating around the kitchen to being slammed shut in a bird cage. 

“Ms. New York didn’t give it away?” Y/n replied, doing her best to ignore the nagging whispers in her head telling her she wasn't wanted here. 

“Then why are you here?” He challenged right back, pointing an accusatory finger at her before migrating it to Carmen, “Why is she here?” The urge to run away tugged at her, to a place where it didn't matter if people liked her.

Carmen squinted his eyes before letting out an exasperated sigh, y/n could tell he was used to Richie’s machinations. Looks like the three of them didn’t know why y/n was here.

“Just ignore him, that's Tina..” pointing at an older woman who looked like she was just about to leave. 

“..Nat” was buried in a binder but her head still shot up and smiled which y/n politely reciprocated.

“.. and Syd '', who looked pissed that y/n was here, y/n looked at her hands clasping a notebook. Recipes…a menu…y/n tucked her lips to hide her laugh, they didn’t have a menu to show and she had interrupted their brainstorming session. Y/n made a mental note that Carmen wrinkled his eyes when he lied.

“I was just in the neighborhood, and I'm just about to leave.” She walked towards the exit, not failing to notice that Carmen was in hot pursuit.

It didn’t take a genius to know he was going to offer her a ride so she beat him to it, “I’ve taken enough of your time.” 

And just as Carmen was about to say something, Y/n hid her disappointment with a  smirk, “I’ll let you get back to making that menu.” Y/n caught a quick glimpse of shock before the door swung open and she walked the Chicago streets wondering if she got what she was looking for. 

This place wasn’t for her at all, and no amount of small town romance novels could convince her to leave her cushy job with a bunch of pompous clowns for a DIY restaurant. Her heart quickened as she allowed herself to be momentarily seduced by the idea, only to shatter any hopeful illusions with the harsh reality that Carmen couldn't rescue her from her financial nightmare. She needed a paycheck, a big one, and Carmen couldn't give it to her; he could barely afford the stove he wanted. It was almost cruel to give her a taste, let her acquire it, and then realize that she couldn’t have it. 

Y/n went back to her hotel and had the difficult choice between watching Pawnshop or Diners, Drivers and Dives when she got a text message from an unknown number. 

I’m off tomorrow, let me take you somewhere other than a construction site. 

Y/n let herself have one last taste of freedom and dialed the number, “Who’s this?” she asked to tease Carmen.

She could hear Carmen’s grin loud and clear as he gave her a soft, “The worst person ever.”

Y/n laid flat on her bed and made herself forget that he didn’t have a backbone, that he ran away without a word like a coward, and (most damning to her) he couldn’t save her. She pushed the part of her that screamed that she should run away before they realized they didn’t fit because right now, she wasn’t talking to Berzatto. He was Carmen. He had dreams and aspirations that were bigger than him or maybe just as big as him. He was working hard and confident; everything else he wasn't in New York.  

As she confirmed a good time for tomorrow, she sat up on her bed as she said her goodbye.

“Have a good night, Carmen.”

Y/n had trouble falling asleep that night. 

**

The week had reached its end a lot quicker than y/n thought it would. Before she knew it she had repacked her life back into her suitcase and was sitting at her gate waiting for boarding to start. 

Y/n had her legs propped up on her carry-on, balancing an egregiously priced coffee in one hand and a book in the other. It’s not like the book was any good, it was an autobiography about a famous chef who had died of cancer. She recalled her outing with Carmen a few days prior.

The pans that y/n had to use in her shitty old apartment were non-stick because she couldn’t afford the non-cancer kind till after she graduated from the CIA. She remembered joking with her classmates about it while they were learning how to take apart a chicken, and everyone gasped in disgust. Y/n gave a careless grin while hiding her warming cheeks and mentally punching herself for even saying that out loud. 

Her birthday came around and all of her classmates pitched in for a set of pans, non-stick pans. She laughed with her friends, went home and invited them for dinner made entirely from the pans and watched as they ate their dishes, nodding in pretentious considerment, not knowing it was made on Teflon and wondered if this is how that guy who served his customers human meat felt. 

Y/n told the story to Carmen during their lunch at a Korean restaurant and felt a surge run through her as he met her eyes and instead of laughing at what was meant to be a humorous story and mumbled, “That was shitty.”

Y/n’s lips parted as her eyebrows furrowed in anger and, more embarrassingly, shame. 

Before she could defend herself, Carmen added, “I wouldn’t call those friends.” 

He played with the condensation on his glass, y/n knew better to look down at him playing with the wetness with his pointer and thumb. 

“That’s how it is there. How was your first week here?” Y/n sipped her soup.

“I lost my knife, found it beat up on the floor. I would have quit if I could.” Carmen gave a soft chuckle and y/n hated that she wanted to know more about him. 

“Which knife?”

“It was the Yoshimi.” 

Y/n quirked her lips up, “I remember when you first got it.” Carmen looked up quizzically.

“It was a shit show.” The head chef was not in a good mood and Carmen pulled up, with a pep in his step and a new knife, begging to be shot down. Honestly, y/n was surprised that Carmen didn’t kill anyone that day. 

Y/n’s flight had started boarding so she threw all of her stuff in her bag while fishing for her passport. In her hustle she missed her phone vibrating till she was in her seat trying to catch her breath from shoving her overloaded carry-on in the ever shrinking compartment. 

You got on yet?

Just sat down, TSA sucks ass, might have to start working out bc im winded rn.

Have a safe flight. 

Y/n finally made it home and just as she was about to pass out, she quickly texted a picture of her exhausted face with a cringy thumbs up, she would regret that in the morning. 

Y/n fell right back into her regular rhythm, with two new additions. She had started running in the morning. The other thing was a new pen pal, of sorts. 

They tried texting more regularly for the first few weeks but their schedules were too different so they had simplified it to a photo every few days. 

The Bear  

Y/n got the photo on her train ride home after months of “talking”, a picture of a decal on the restaurant window, y/n didn’t miss Carmen’s furrowed eyebrows and grimace from having to be out in the sun to take the picture. His reflection exposed his paint stained t-shirt and y/n rubbed her eyes to check that his arms had in fact gotten bigger. 

Y/n sent out the first actual text message in months, Why The Bear?

She saw the bubbles disappear and reappear a few time before settling on,

Come and find out

Y/n snickered and the women sitting next to her gave her a side eye as she got up to leave. 

I don’t want to install appliances or check the plumbing for free. 

Carmen texted back uncharacteristically fast, maybe they had shot down texting too soon. 

“Don't want to” or “don’t know how to”?

Y/n squinted her eyes, he should believe her even if she was lying. She texted a middle finger back. You should be so lucky to see my trade skills in action, I could have been your contractor and it's sexist that you think otherwise.  

I’ll settle with you coming by as a guest.

Y/n called him, it was a split second decision that she didn’t have time to regret. He picked up just as quickly as she called. 

“I’m not coming back if you guys are still building shit.” Y/n asserted as she unlocked her front door. 

“We finished that a while ago, now it's real shit this time.” There was faint rustling in the background and what y/n could decipher as yelling. 

“Yeah?”

“We're missing some stuff, repair guys to call, and we still have some vendors to deal with but doors open in a few weeks.”

Y/n giggled, “Sounds like you're cutting it close, Carmen.” There was rustling heard on the other end, “You can probably get all that shit done with time to spare if you don’t get distracted.”

A laugh erupted from the other end, Richie’s. 

“He’s plenty distracted, got himself a girlfriend.” Y/n stomach fell to her ass as she stood in her kitchen with her work bag still slung on her shoulders.

“Really?” she croaked out. Richie must have slapped Carmen on the back because she heard him slap Richie back. 

“Ignore him. Doors open on the 1st.” The line stayed quiet for a second. 

“I’ll see if I can make it, but you know it gets.” Y/n wasn’t going to make it, she was taking it out of the calendar right now.

A door closed on his end and the line was disconnected. 

Before y/n could chuck her phone at her couch and sleep off her day, it rang again. Facetime. 

Y/n picked up and was met with a new setting. Carmen noticed her slight confusion. 

“New office, what do you think?” He propped his phone up and angled his body so she would see his fully stocked bookshelf. If y/n didn’t know any better she would have assumed that he was trying to impress her. 

“Dewey Decimal?”

“Alphabetical.” He pulled out a book and showed her the self-made label on the bottom that proved that it was in fact in alphabetical order. 

Y/n let herself be a bit difficult, “Your handwriting leaves something to be desired.”

Carmen covered his smirk with his tattooed hand before locking into her eyes,”Why don’t you come over and help me out?”

Y/n almost let herself fold before recollecting herself, “Unless you plan on working part time for our HR department, I don’t see that PTO being approved.”

“Sick days?” 

“Why don’t you come back to New York. Wanna slice oranges for our tarte á l’orange? Maggie misses you.” Y/n was referring to the kitchen’s pastry chef who didn’t miss Carmen in the slightest. 

“Are you opening a restaurant?” Y/n was a bit floored that she was getting sass from a man who put his jeans in an oven and shirts in kitchen cupboards. 

“Are you? Looks like your team thinks you're distracted? If I didn’t know any better I would say you're calling me to distract yourself from calling the repair guy.” 

“He can wait… tell me what I have to do to make this happen.”

“I took a week off, and we live in a capitalist hellscape so I already used up my PTO for the year. Don’t worry, I’ll make it to the next one.”

“You think I'm good enough to franchise.” Carmen ran his hands through his hair as he laughed and y/n cheeks warmed as his shirt slightly lifted as he leaned back.  

“No, when this one fails and you have to make it another Mcdonalds.” Carmen gave her an adoring smile that made her wonder if he heard something else. 

He put his right leg on his knee and spun in his chair, thinking. 

“It’s better if I don’t come, what if your team hates me or worse they love me, force me to be their leader, and kick you to the sidelines.”

“I can be on the sidelines for you.” Y/n ignored the fluttering in her stomach. 

“I’ll see…”She offered.

Carmen let out a sigh and y/n almost felt bad but the distance was good. They didn’t work together anymore, they texted irregularly, they barely were face to face, and it was working for them. 

She was forgetting the man who froze like a battered dog when she was being shredded in the kitchen, and she could forgive him for being selfish because now he was too far away for it to affect her. Closing the gap risked her relearning why she didn’t get close to him in the first place.  

His lips parted like he was constructing the words.

“What?” Y/n was just about ready to hang up and get ready for bed. 

“I just…I don’t know. I thought that I could…you would see something different.”

“It’s a restaurant, I've seen plenty of those.” 

“It’s different, I swear. I worked hard on shit and it's new and different. It's …better.” A chef analogizing his restaurant to represent himself was so unoriginal y/n would have laughed in their faces if it wasn’t Carmen.

“I’ll save you a table.” He offered.

“Looks like you’ve got a lot of tables to save.” Carmen quirked up his eyebrows.

“Your sister s, Sydney’s dad, Richie’s friends, me. Are there going to be any tables left for customers?”

“I need them all there, y/n.” He didn’t need to say her name but it still reverberated inside of her sending a shiver down her spine. In response, y/n felt a warm wave of relief wash over her, knowing that she couldn’t quite explain why that felt good to hear.

“I'm nobody.” Y/n squinted her eyebrows in doubt. 

There's a hint of desperation in his voice, as if he's been searching for something that y/n couldn’t figure out, “You saw me in New York and here so you're the only person who can compare the two. I don’t have anyone like that left.” Carmen rounded his eyes in closeted adoration and y/n’s throat closed up.

“I’ll see what I can do but no promises. I have to go… don’t forget to call the fridge guy.”

Y/n was a strong independent woman who built her own furniture, threw out her own trash, and even back out by putting an arm around the passage seat headrest so when she got an email the next day with tickets to Chicago, her head began to swim.

Her phone buzzed, Meet me halfway.

Y/n left him on read and gave herself the freedom that Carmen had unknowingly denied her. 

–

Birthdays were never y/n’s favorite holiday, she didn’t bother taking the day off and she stopped telling people since her CIA days, so she felt a little disgusted when grown adults would make a whole situation about this day. Celebrating birthdays in a restaurant was annoying for the kitchen but celebrating management’s family birthdays made y/n nearly quit every year. 

It came around like clock work, just as she forgot about it, her boss's friend's (or whoever) birthday would roll around and she had to remind herself that the only reason she still had a job here was because she didn’t break down in hysterics and the only reason she stayed was because the bill wouldn’t stop just because she disliked her job. 

It had already been a month since she and Carmen last spoke, they went back to curt messages. Y/n couldn’t help herself from texting back even though she knew better. The last message was a picture of Carmen in front of a finished kitchen, he puckered his lips to hide the full grin and seeing such joy, even if it was from a photo, was infecting every corner of her mind. 

The week was just as difficult as it always was, and the last thing y/n wanted to do was a large dinner like this but it was like the universe wanted to beat her numb. 

Y/n forgot to mention that the HVAC system had gone down for the afternoon and it was still over 100 degrees in the kitchen. As she chopped some chives, she ignored the expo coughing, and she walked over her collapsed body when expo inevitably passed out, to grab some more butter from the walk-in.

Y/n stole a glance from the corner of her eyes, they had no expo and a full house. Y/n puckered her lips in hidden contentment when the head chef practically roared and the unconscious women to get up and y/n swallowed a laugh when he had enough and started to manage the expo. 

Y/n’s eyes darted to her left and finally felt that Carmen wasn’t working there. He had long been replaced, twice over, and y/n went back to her foie gras terrines trying to figure out why it even mattered now. 

As orders were being barked and a rehearsed chorus of, “Chef” played back, y/n stalled her knife noticing that the pitch was off. It was missing the bass of a chef that had left just about everything to run away and was trying to convince her to do the same.

“WHERE THE HELL IS THE CONSOMME FOR 14?” 

For the first time in years, y/n flinched. It wasn’t noticeable barring the fact that her little jump made her slice her finger. Her breath picked up as the blood pooled over the chives, she grabbed her cutting board and dumped the herbs in the trash and grabbed another board. She pressed the kitchen towel deeper into her finger, trying to remember where the first aid kit was from her orientation week. 

Just as y/n was about to run to the stove to cauterize the wound herself so she could keep working, someone grabbed her arm and handed her a bandaid. She looked up to give them a silent thank you but they were gone. She hastily wrapped herself up and tried to lean inconspicuously on the counter because heat was getting to her too. 

A few minutes later when by and y/n had fallen back to her usual rhythm even as a waiter walked in, she had learned to ignore waitstaff when they entered the kitchen because they never brought good news. Y/n could feel a piercing glare on her back.

“You sent out a Coq au Vin, chef?” Y/n didn’t have to look up to know he was talking to her but she still met his searing glare.

“15 minutes ago, chef.” Y/n resisted wiping the bead of sweat that was torturously grazing down her face.

He stared her down like he was waiting for her to admit that she had actually eaten it, she kept her nose high and bit her tongue to stifle the grimace that was forming. 

“It's missing.” An ugly pause passed throughout the kitchen, she had almost convinced herself that she hadn’t actually finished it but the shift in his gaze brought her back to reality, he remembered her bringing it to him. 

In the smelting kitchen, in her cramped corner, with her chef whites sticking to her, she almost let this pathetic man think he knew more than her.

The command echoed out of her before she could contain herself, “Refiring the coq au vin.”

A familiar chorus of, “Chef” was missing its usual thoughtlessness, y/n wasn’t supposed to do anything till the head chef told her, she had given herself a command, it was sacrilege. 

Y/n was never a target, she watched as others were shot down time and time again, and moved on when she saw them break down crying in the middle of a dinner rush. The most she could give them was aloofness but as she stood in her corner, drowning in orders, and having every single one sent back from expo to redo, or having to wait longer for plates then everyone else and getting reamed for her dishes coming in late, she felt the weight of the kitchen’s gaze on her shoulders and wished someone one was there for her.

She kept her face composed as she finished up the last of her orders, her vision swaying from dehydration. Just as she was about to give into the weightlessness, the clock struck midnight and the kitchen was officially closed. 

She did her best to walk to her locker, and sat on a chair with her head in her hands wondering how she was getting out the door, let alone go home. Her phone buzzed in her lap and knew that it was Carmen. His restaurant was opening tomorrow and she didn’t want to hear about it right now. 

 The rest of the chefs filed out, each giving her a glance that told her that she had finally been properly assimilated, just five years too late. 

Carmen was giving her a taste of freedom in Chicago and that fleeting freedom was too seductive to ignore. The job offer echoed in y/n head, she wasn’t a good fit with them, she didn’t want a “work family”, but the temptation was poisoning her. 

She opened the text, it was a simple picture of Carmen in his chef whites, he was practicing the “look” the day before the restaurant opened. He had even slicked his hair back with pomade like he used to in New York, and for the first time in months she laughed.

The sips of warm gatorade had sobered her up enough to walk out, just barely missing the head chef on her way out the door. She performed a blasphemous act in the back of the uber, she opened the email that Carmen had sent a month ago and checked the tickets date and time. Tomorrow morning, and like the universe was giving back after being shitty today, the French Laundry was closed for the next few days.

Y/n got home, ate two day old Thai food, sat on her couch astounded by her sheer audacity as she checked in for her flight. She was sure that Carmen would have gotten the confirmation email by now but he did her the service of not mentioning it.

Y/n packed a carry-on early in the morning and got to the airport, each checkpoint moving much faster than usual. The TSA didn’t make her take off her shoes, her gate was super close, and they had upgraded her to first class because a couple wanted to sit together. All the stars were pointing to Chicago…to Carmen and she tried not to think about how she was running away from her problems just like he did. 

As she reached her hotel room, she hesitated to text Carmen. Nothing felt right to say, so she gave him the best thing right now, some space. She busied herself with getting ready and watching the shopping network.

As y/n approached the restaurant, she was a bit taken aback that the line was still so long. She stood next to an elderly couple who were talking about mortgage rates going down which meant that another housing bubble was bound to burst and the economy would be in shambles. Y/n tried not to think about how she couldn’t afford to lose her job right now because she had nowhere else to go.

No special treatment tonight, Carmen wouldn’t know when she got here so he could focus on his own work. She entered the restaurant and was relieved that the host and the waitstaff were new. She was led to her table and hesitated to pick up the menu. This was a long time coming and opening it felt so empty. It was like when she submitted her last assignment for highschool, alone on a Thursday night wondering why something so big wasn’t registering. 

As she digested the menu, she let her fingers trace over the faux leather and the brown stitching. She wanted to know why he chose brown stitching, or why he stuck with Seven Fishes despite the fact that he must have made it a million times in the French Laundry? Why did he choose certain wines, or why was there a donut on the menu? 

It's not like she hated the menu but a horrible thought dawned on her that all she wanted right now was for Carmen to sit across from her and talk about everything that she had missed. Every detail of this restaurant that reflected a better him, and how she had so much more to learn.

Her phone burned on her lap but she didn’t text him. Instead, she watched the people murmur about work and the food and y/n couldn’t help but hate herself for her self imposed loneliness. 

Y/n did herself a disservice by coming towards the end of the shift so the crowd was thinning and her cover was close to being blown. Her dish arrived and she didn’t need to walk into the kitchen to know that Carmen made this, after years of taste testing his food, his flavor was ingrained in her DNA. Y/n finished her bucatini and felt compelled to order another despite being stuffed, just to swirl the flavor around her tongue for a bit longer. She ordered the aforementioned donut, paid and left. 

She stood in the crisp Chicago air, a few steps from the restaurant, grappling with the audacity that led Carmen to abruptly leave the French Laundry. Immaturely, she couldn't help but wonder why he got to leave and she couldn’t. She knew why, but she let herself fester in the pain, it kept her alive. 

She was used to being alone but for the first time in her life she yearned for someone to be there for her. She had isolated herself to such an extent that she knew that right now no one knew where she was or what she was doing, even Carmen couldn’t be sure that she actually went on the flight.

She could hear the last of the customers file out and the bussers clearing tables. She felt her phone vibrate and took a few breaths before she picked it up.

How was the bucatini?

Y/n lips waivered and a pit dug itself in her chest as she tried to compose herself, but she felt her eyes watering. This wasn’t fair, he wasn’t playing fair. 

She hid her face in her hands, and tried to regain some of her dignity.

 She stood there for what felt like a few seconds and felt someone stand next to her followed by the familiar sound of a lighter. 

Y/n bit her lips shut and stared ahead, knowing that she was stronger than this.

“I didn’t take you for the donut type.” Carmen said in between puffs, he had changed into more casual clothes.

Y/n inhaled deeply through her nose and put her arms down, the night has hidden any trace of her vulnerability. “I wanted to try something different.” Y/n tried to put more power behind her voice but it came out too soft for her liking.

Carmen studied her profile and y/n knew better than to turn away, so she faced him. Her moist eyes turned his eyes into a kaleidoscope of silvers, blues and gold. 

“How did you know I was in the restaurant?” Y/n was relieved that she was able to get it all out before her voice cracked.

A silence passed through them and y/n wished they were doing this somewhere more private. 

He gave her a look, I know you.

The air hung heavy with tension as Y/n responded to Carmen's humored dismissive look. "You don't know shit,", a sardonic smile playing on her lips. She nonchalantly extended her hands toward Carmen's cigarette, a move that seemed almost too casual for the charged atmosphere. She was reaching out for the small remnants of warmth that she knew she would lose in a few hours, because right now and right here, he was there for her.

Their fingers brushed in the exchange, a subtle yet palpable connection that lingered in the air. It was a moment that could have easily been avoided, but neither of them seemed willing to retreat. 

As the smoke curled around Y/n, she maintained a facade of cool composure, seemingly unfazed by the intimacy of the shared smoke. It was as if the brief touch and the exchange of breath and saliva meant nothing more to her than the inhale and exhale of the smoke itself. The proding sense of sadness thumping in the back of her head telling her that this couldn’t last, they couldn’t last. 

“I liked the food.” Y/n returned the cigarette. “It's different…better.”

Carmen looked at her like he had a million questions that he wanted to ask and y/n wondered if she was giving him the same look. 

She leaned back, “Don’t you have an alley or something? Smoking out front is so highschool.”

“Syd threw up in the alley.” 

Y/n raised an eyebrow and wondered if this is how far they would go, she would have savored him for a moment longer if she knew it was going to end so soon.

Carmen stood straight and tilted his head so she would follow him. 

“They cleaned up fast.” Y/n marveled at the vacant restaurant, the lights were dimmed and Carmen led her to the office. 

“I think they wanted to get out of here before the last train left.” Carmen held the door open for her and the familiar heat of his hand hovering over the small of her back was a welcomed surprise.

Despite the practicality of the situation, the impending departure and the need for a clean, cold goodbye, there was a lingering question of whether she could maintain that distance. Carmen's proximity, the heat of his touch, and the shared space was going to make it challenging to stick with a clinical farewell.

The door clicked shut and y/n let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. 

“Do your worst. I can take it, y/n.” Carmen sighed, y/n’s stomach fluttered and she dug her nails into her palms to compose herself. 

“Service was good, the waiter filled up my cup when it was halfway. The silverware was clean and rolled tight. Points off because my fork was from a different manufacturer from the rest of the dinnerware.” Y/n saw Carmen clench up for a second before nodding in concentration. It felt as if each syllable was being burned into his memory and the intensity of his gaze was making her sweat.

She gave herself the satisfaction of sitting because her feet were killing her and Carmen sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. 

“The saltiness of the guanciale harmonizes with the richness of the eggs and the sharpness of the Pecorino Romano. The dish was velvety but delicate. The guanciale provides a necessary contrast in texture. Simple but precise. I think…I know that it was the best thing I’ve had in a while, chef.” 

Yn was met with a humming silence. 

“We can do this tomorrow, I know you had a long day.” Y/n offered.

“No…” He shook his head and his eyes were distant before landing on her’s, the severity behind them had made her sit back, “I want to hear what you have to say.”

She extended her legs towards Carmen, “You see these, chef?” Carmen hesitated to look forward like he was in the middle century and ankles were scandalous before gazing at her soft legs.

“They hurt like a motherfucker.” She flexed the back of her heel to show the blisters that had formed. “I gotta take care of this back in the hotel.” 

Carmen slowly shifted his gaze from her legs to her face before wordlessly getting up and walking out. Y/n rubbed her temple and allowed herself to be selfish once more by downing Carmen’s abandoned sugar free Redbull left on the desk.

As she collected her stuff to get back to the hotel, Carmen returned with ice and first aid. 

He placed everything on the floor so slowly that y/n could only assume that he was stalling. 

Carmen looked up at her with his bright, almost silver, eyes and his eyes asked, Can I help you? Can I be there for you like you were here for me today?

It was like time had stopped as y/n struggled to bring oxygen to her lungs. She mindlessly nodded yes and the first touch made her heart thump against her chest. His hands were scorching against her skin and every lingering touch imprinted its memory on to her. As he iced the swelling and followed it by placing his warm hand to ease the shock in temperature, it became hard for y/n to focus.

Carmen did her the courtesy of abandoning the ice pack. She took a hollow and staggered breath, “Ask me anything.” 

Carmen looked up from her, she hadn’t noticed that he had removed her heels, and asked her about every minor detail about her experience. He wasn’t aware that he was softly rubbing his thumb across her ankle, and y/n couldn't seem to move on from it. 

When y/n finished her summary, Carmen’s fingers seized dancing across her skin and she regretted not talking for longer. 

He didn’t let his hand leave her even as he asked, “How is work?”

Y/n grunted out in dismay and she leaned back and would have fallen backwards if Carmen hadn’t grabbed the seat between her legs. They both stared at his hand before Carmen quickly pulled back, y/n mumbled a quick thanks. 

“It’s great.” Y/n sarcastically pushed. 

Carmen quirked up his eyebrows in a sarcastic manner and y/n ignored him. 

“It was Henry’s birthday.” Carmen hummed in understanding, birthdays were always a mess.

“You wouldn’t guess who was doing the expo yesterday.” 

“I have an idea.” Y/n couldn’t deny that his smirk sent her spinning. He understood the fiber of that world so well even though he was hundreds of miles away, and she was barely hanging on to a tread. 

Carmen continued, “Feel bad for the poor bastard who was his punching bag for the night.”

Y/n swallowed the burning lump in the back of her throat and kept her gaze relaxed and gave him a soft, “Yeah.”

The silence was making y/n uncomfortable so she mustered her remaining energy to give him a relaxed smile. 

Carmen’s face didn’t give anything away, “How bad was he?”

“I'm here, aren’t I?” Y/n chuckled humorlessly. 

“I know you're strong but I was being serious, y'know…about the job.” Carmen asserted.

Y/n softened her eyes, he was making this so much harder for her. “Noted, chef. Why Chicago?” Y/n diverted.

“Inherited the restaurant from my brother and I had to deal with it. He killed himself.”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up-”

“It’s fine, I was going to have to tell you anyway.” Y/n didn’t have to know anything, she was no one and she didn’t deserve his trust. “It was a sandwich place before we renovated it.”

Y/n laughed in disbelief, “You made sandwiches? They sell truffles in Chicago?”

Carmen smirked as he went back to mindlessly rubbing her ankle again. “Regular sandwiches.”

Y/n widened her eyes and couldn’t hold her laughter in, “Pictures or it didn’t happen.” 

Carmen fished out his phone and showed her pictures of a messier restaurant.

“I get why you had to gut the place.”

“It's not that bad.” He asked humorously. 

“What you have right now is more your style, I like this version better.” Y/n heart skipped a beat when his hand shifted a bit higher up her leg. 

“I love the look though,” Y/n squinted at a picture of Carmen standing behind a counter at what looked like a bachelor party. 

“What look?”

“You know, the rugged, tired look.” Carmen rolled his eyes. “No seriously, I didn’t even know you had so much ink.” Y/n zoomed in on a tattoo of some numbers on his biceps. 

“I'll show you all of them later.” Y/n let out a laugh as she handed back the phone. She wondered if she was hiding her nerves well. 

"You spend all your time at work, when do you find the time to sit in a tattoo shop?"

"Prioritizing important shit, I guess."

"If you can prioritize getting tattoos and running a restaurant, when do you have time for your girlfriend?" Subtle, passive, non-probing was what y/n was going for. She forced herself to watch his reaction.

Carmen gave a puzzled look, his scrunched up eyebrows and distant look was accompanied with a quiet, "Don't have one."

Y/n gave a casual "Hmm…you sure? Seems like you got time to kill, always so relaxed." Carmen curled his lips up and bit his lips to stifle his smile. His lips turned pale pink before returning to rose red and y/n wanted to reach down and run her pointer finger along his lips to feel his heat.

"When I have the time. The restaurant is new and I need-"

"I thought you said you knew how to prioritize?" Y/n leaned back and rested her cheek on her fist. 

"Maybe if she's really special."

"And not distracting." Y/n added.

"Then I can prioritize." Carmen adjusted his posture before asking y/n.

"What about you?"

"I am a realistic romantic, so love is real but just not for me. I don't have it in me to text everyday or go to family dinners. But who knows, Mr. Right might make me less shitty and more sunshine and rainbows. "

"Your personality is fine right now." Carmen offered. 

Y/n jokingly scoffed before adding, "Then maybe I just need someone to distract from my own problems."

They sat in comfortable silence, but y/n’s eyes widened as she checked the clock, “It’s late.”

“It’s only one.” Y/n gave him a look of disapproval before nudging her foot against his stomach, where it had been resting for the past hour. 

“Go home, Carmen.” Carmen wordlessly picked up her heels and slipped them back on to her feet. He stood up and offered his hand. 

They walked out the restaurant and y/n pulled out her phone to call a taxi.

“I can drive you.”

Y/n looked over her shoulder at Carmen checking the locks. 

“If you drive me, you won't be getting any sleep.” A pause passed through them.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Y/n rushed out. 

Carmen cleared his throat, preserved her dignity by not saying anything else and led her to the car. 

“You know these things will kill you.” Y/n lifted a Red Bull from the cup holder and cracked it open and took a few healthy sips. 

Carmen wordlessly slipped the can out of her hands at a red light, “I need it more than you.” He looked down at the lipstick mark and took a few savored sips. At the next light, y/n could see the remnants of red lipstick on his bottom lip. 

They reached y/n’s hotel too fast for each other's liking. Y/n swiveled her head, Carmen was already looking at her. She was fighting heavy lids a few minutes ago but now she was sprung with energy. 

Y/n looked up in feinted innocence before casually offering, “You want to come up for some tea?” The kettle in her room didn’t work, she checked this morning.

Carmen blinked a few times, wondering if he heard her right, before slowly nodding his head like he wasn’t sure it was a joke. 

She unlocked her room door for the both of them and Carmen shut it behind him. With a cautious gesture, y/n extended her hand, placing it close to Carmen's body. The darkness clung to Carmen's form as y/n's fingers grazed his side, a brief but intimate contact that went unnoticed in the dimly lit corridor, to check if the door was locked.

Carmen walked over to the office chair in the corner. Y/n room was so cramped that she was still within arms distance of him as she sat on the foot of her bed. 

“The Bear?” Y/n’s inquisitive gaze and playful smile made Carmen’s heart stutter as he nearly forgot what The Bear was, or what his name was. 

He cleared his throat, “Berzatto…Bear. It was a nick-name my brother gave me.” 

Y/n leaned in a bit closer as she scoffed, “Even the name is good. I kinda hate you a bit more.” She bit her bottom lip to stifle the laugh but was pleasantly surprised that he was bouncing from her eyes to her lips.

He parted his lips to formulate a coherent sentence but y/n extended her heels to the legs of Carmen’s chair and pulled him closer. The look of his thoughts scrambling right in front of her was making it difficult for her to be restrained and poised. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

His grip on the arms of the chair was telling her that she was headed in the right direction. She kept her hold on Carmen’s chair, as she softly assured, “I have to go back soon, so I’m trying to soak it all in right now.”

“You're leaving?” Carmen mumbled, sharing his attention between her eyes, lips, and her leg. He let his legs relax, which made them meet with y/n’s legs. 

“I hate Chicago.” Y/n leaned back. “And I don’t really belong here. My whole life is in New York, and I don’t want to change everything just for-.” 

“Come work for me-” 

A swift pang of anger rippled through her, he didn’t need her. “You’ve got your plate full, you don't need a distraction.”

“But you do.” Carmen placed a warm hand on her thigh and the heat made her breath heavy, y/n knew where this was going but she wanted it to last as long as it could because she knew that once the sun rose, they were done. 

“It’s going to be messy.” 

“It won't be.”

The room held its breath as they teetered on the edge of something undefined. The impending dawn loomed, casting a shadow on the delicate illusion they had woven. “I don’t want something serious.” Y/n argued. 

“And I dont have the time for something serious.” As Carmen leaned forward, pushing his hands high up her thigh. 

As y/n searched for any other reason no to do this, Carmen’s cerulean eye’s hazed with lust seemed to have the opposite effect. Any reservations, logic, or inhibitions that could have prompted her to stop were forcefully pushed away amidst the intoxicating allure of Carmen.

Y/n didn’t know who leaned in first but it didn’t take much time for both of them to topple in the bed. In between huffs and shirts flying off each other Carmen whispered into her lips, “Just pretend it’s real tonight.”

Y/n reeled her head back a second, but Carmen's intense gaze and his trailing hand convinced her otherwise. She leaned back in, hooking her legs around his waist pulling him closer.

Carmen stalled his kisses down the column of her throat, “I thought you wouldn’t come.” 

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” Y/n twisted her hips and in a flash she was straddling him.

She sensed the subtle shiver that ran through him, his unsteady hands finding a resting place on her hips, torn between the desire to reciprocate from below and allowing her to continue her torture. Taking charge, she decided for both of them, lowering herself down to grind against his jeans.

Carmen’s mind went blank and the last thing he saw before he lost all sense of restraint and reason, was y/n’s eyes sparkling. 

--

You can read more of my stuff here

End Notes:

I love reading your comments, and that's what motivated me to finish, so share your thoughts bc I want to hear them.

I currently have like 10 half baked drafts and they all suck so this was the sole survivor. This one is kinda self indulgent because I hate my job so much but sometimes no matter how much something makes you miserable, there isn’t a way out, so you have to find something to distract yourself from the dull pain. 

I tried to keep it as realistically healthy as a relationship with Carmen can be because that man just needs some space to grow. Honestly, I'm not sure if they'll ever meet again, or maybe they might meet up more now. Im really not sure.

[yelenasdiary]

Profile: Lieutenant! Natasha Romanoff.

Everything you need to know about NYPD's finest Lieutenant!

Profile Series Masterlist

Basic Information -

Full Name: Natasha Alianovna Romanoff.

Nicknames: Nat, Romanoff (mostly at the precinct) & Red (super rare, absolutely hates it!).

Age: 38.

Birthday: December 3rd, 1985.

Place of Birth: Russia.

Height: 5'8.

Current Residence: A minimalist apartment in Brooklyn Heights, overlooking the harbor.

Rank: Lieutenant.

Precinct: 84th President (Downtown Brooklyn).

Years of Service: 12 Years. Joined the NYPD Academy directly after obtaining US Citizenship.

Education: Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice. Other education mixes from Russian to numerous certifications in specialised interrogation techniques, crisis negotiation, and tactical weapons handling.

Relationship Status: Single. (She has a very complicated history with romance).

Distinguishing Features: A small, faded scar above her eyebrow, no visible tattoos.

Languages: Fluent in Russian, English and several other languages including, German, French and Mandarin).

Psychological Information -

Personality: Natasha is known for her sharp intellect, dedication and high attention to detail She has a dry and sarcastic sense of humour and she's very observant. She has an uncanny ability to read people and situations. She's emotionally reserved, she keeps her private life at home and her work life at work. She's very protective and can sometimes come across possessive. She struggles with trust issues that stem from her difficult past.

Strengths: Besides being exceptionally intelligent, analytical and resourceful, she is very good at staying calm and collected when under pressure. She's skilled in hand-to-hand combat and weapons proficiency. She also has a photographic memory.

Weaknesses: She's reluctant to ever ask for help and is often taking on too much on herself. Can be overly critical of herself and others. Her guarded nature can sometimes make it difficult for her to form close relationships and partnerships. Suffers from PTSD.

Motivations: Her desire to use her skills for good, keeps her going and her commitment to Justice and seeing victims have their voices heard.

Fears: Exposure of her past, losing control and becoming emotionally attached to somebody. Failing to get justice for her victims.

Work & Professional Life -

Work Ethic: Natasha is a tireless worker, she's extremely dedicated to her job and will often stay overtime to break a case. She's usually the first to arrive at the precinct and always last to leave.

Leadership Style: She leads by example. Demands excellence from her team but is also very protective of them and will put her job on the line for them if needed. She trusts her detectives instincts and will often ask them how they would approach certain situations. She involves everybody, listens to everybody's inputs and worries.

Interrogation Style: Natasha is a master at good cop and bad cop. She can be super empathetic and understanding or she can be extremely intimidating and relentless when dealing with hard criminals. She's not afraid to do a little flirting if it means she'll get the information she's after. She relies heavily on observation and psychological manipulation.

Relationship with Colleagues: She's highly respected but not necessarily liked by everyone. She can sometimes be misinterpreted as arrogant. She has a close working relationship with a few trusted detectives, particularly detective Clint Barton, her life-long partner. She avoids office gossip and politics and struggles to adjust when a detective leaves for a new job or department.

Uniform: She's very professional, when she's not in uniform, she's usually in professional attire with neutral colors such as dark blue, grey and black.

Personal Life, Hobbies and Interests -

Daily Routine: Nat is 9/10 times always away by 5am. She runs 5 miles before doing anything else followed by a rigorous workout at a private gym. She's usually at work by 7am. She meditate for 30 minutes before bed each night.

Diet: she's healthy and primarily eats lean protein, vegetables and whole grains. Will avoid processed foods and sugary drinks but always allows herself a cheat meal once a week. Her favourite take out is sushi from a local, authentic Japanese restaurant.

Hobbies: enjoys martial arts, reading, chess (plays online), cooking and learning new things.

Her favourite book is The Quiet American by Graham Greene. She appreciates its exploration of espionage, moral ambiguity and complexities of political intervention.

Her favourite movie is Casablanca. Drawn in by the themes of sacrifice, lost love and moral compromise.

Her favourite music genre is classical music but also enjoys jazz and blues.

Coffee order is black coffee, no sugar or cream.

Personal Style: Minimalist but practical. She prefers functional clothing that allows for freedom of movement. Owns one too many tailored black leather jackets that she wears frequently.

Social Life: Limited. She has a small circle of trusted friends, mostly inside the NYPD and will occasionally attend social gatherings but prefers solitary activities.

Spending Habits: She will spend money on high-quality items knowing they last longer. She's donates anonymously to several charities that support victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

To relax, she enjoys yoga and meditation. She can also be found practicing her knife throwing skills at a private range.

Her greatest possession is a worn, leather-bond journal that contains a lot of personal things and reflections as well as case notes.

Quirks -

Has a habit of tapping her fingers on surfaces when she's lost in deep thought.

Can disarm anybody faster than most people can blink.

Always carries a lock-picking kit.

Never orders the same thing twice at a restaurant (besides her favourite sushi place).

Can move quickly and quietly.

Secrets and Background (Highly classified with the NYPD) -

Natasha's official biography is carefully constructed fabrication. Her true origins and training remain in mystery. There are rumours she was raised in an organisation known as 'The Red Room'.

She possesses skills and knowledge far beyond what is typically taught at the NYPD Academy.

Several International Intelligence agencies have and continue to express their interest in her but she has always declines their offers.

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[ghouljams]

This is a response to an ask I just got that I won't be posting because I'm blocking the person.

If you truly think that pornography is the reason why misogyny exists, I cannot help you.

If you truly believe that all porn is rape and that every woman who acts in a film is a victim, I cannot help you.

All I can say is this:

You're really good at spouting terf rhetoric. Congratulations on your brainwashing. I hope that you can find it in your heart to care about sex workers, and find it in your brain to get some critical thinking skills.

Also: lol bitch