#Nat is Carmy's mom and I will hear no arguments

[carmyberzattosjournal]

Entry 24: Property of: Darling

Screenshot credit: @neverscreens

Bearblr Promptober Day 24: Haunted House

Summary: Carmy's girlfriend's schedule has switched temporarily, and he hates the loneliness. So she joins him at the restaurant for one morning and leaves him a parting gift. Fluff.

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of trauma, mentions of The Devil, mentions of Mikey, comfort, fem reader who is a trauma surgeon, she/her pronouns Carmy takes care of Nat, feat. Nat. (1503 words)

Notes: All journal entries will be titled as such and tagged with #cb journal.

Thank you for reading. Thank you to @carmenberzattosgf for putting together this prompt list. Sideblog for commentary and yapping: @m-z-shoroi

Also, if random letters or words are black/white instead of the colors they should be, that's Tumblr being dumb, I've been fighting it for days.

12 Oct 2024

Radiator update: still fucked. Life update: Darling came to The Bear.

“Oh, this place is a little creepy,” she whispered as we entered. She swept her gaze around the front of house, the slatted ceiling, the wilting florals in the small, handmade vases on the four-tops from the night before.

“Creepy?”

“Yeah. It feels. Uh…” She gathered her coat together in the front and crossed her arms over it. “I don’t know, a little haunted?”

“Probably Mikey. He would haunt my ass to spite me.”

An uncomfortable grin slowly spread on her features. She covered her mouth with her hands. “I really shouldn’t be laughing…”

Doctors aren’t the only people who use dark humor to cope with pain.

“Come on, kitchen’s back here.” I beckoned her to follow me.

Her schedule changed for a few weeks while one of the other surgeons was on paternity leave, so she needed to be at the hospital for second shift, which meant that she’d be at home alone while I needed to be at work, I’d go home to an empty apartment all evening, and then she’d get back home when I was on my way to passing out. The first day, it didn’t bother me too much (her schedule change started on a Monday); by the time Thursday rolled around, the fucking loneliness hit me. It was so fucking quiet in the apartment. How I existed in that silence for so fucking long, with nothing more than echoes from my past, ghosts of The Devil, of Mikey, of the gardens at NOMA to keep me company, to play endless loops in my head, I have no fucking idea.

But it’s probably part of why I’m fucking psycho.

I needed, more than anything, to listen to Darling tell me about her day, about Monique, about the shitty families that annoyed her. I needed to hear her giggle and snort at my stupid jokes, and I needed her legs across my lap while I worked out those knots in her calves. Fuck me, I needed her in my lap mumbling sweet little things into my mouth while her hands danced over my skin, wove into and tugged on my hair. Morning sex was fulfilling as ever—even if she was practically shoving me out of bed to keep me on time after because somewhere in these several months, my brain must’ve latched onto sex equaling sleep—but sex is not what I’ve been starved of. Lack of sex isn’t the roiling, screaming, hollow in my being that involuted and metastasized into the monster, the animal that chewed away and retched out the good parts of me as undigested lumps; it was lack of intimacy. I can protect myself with my armor, but I can’t hug anyone while wearing it. And under that armor, I atrophied into this mess.

God’s a sadist. We’ve established this.

“Pretty boy?”

My head snapped up from the marble counter towards Darling. Warm smile on her face. She was pointing to my left, out of my view. I followed where she was gesturing and found Nat there, looking like she hadn’t slept in a fucking week, holding a stack of manilla files. Her hair was a frizzy fucking mess secured to her head in some way, she had no makeup on, her eyebrows were half-missing, she had these purple-green shadows under her eyes, her lips were chapped. Wrinkled t-shirt, fleece jacket.

My stomach sank through the floor. She hadn’t looked like that in a thousand years. I didn’t even know what was wrong yet, but I needed to fix it. I needed to fucking fix her. Her hair was such a mess, did she even brush it? Who the fuck did this to my sister? Why does she look like that?

“What-what’s wrong?” is all I managed.

She held up a hand. Spoke with her eyes closed. “Emily colicked all night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Mikey—I’m fine, I promise, I just miss him. I’m just gonna secure the schedule with Richie, and then I’m gonna go back home—"

“Home, yeah, please. For fuck’s sake, get some rest,” I said. I skittered around the counter and took the files from her. “What are these?”

“Documenting and accounting for Cicero, just put them in the filing cabinet, top drawer, left side.” She rubbed her forehead. “I need. Coffee.”

“Did you eat?”

“It’s not your job to worry about me, Carm—”

“Nat, fuck you. Did you eat?”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “No. I did not.”

I went to put the files away. Got back in the kitchen and set about making Nat her favorite omelet. She went to the office, saying something about “turning into a lump” until Richie got there. I got into the flow of dicing peppers and forgot Darling was even there until I felt her hands around my waist and her gentle warmth press into my back. Thank fuck I was used to her pulling adorable shit like this at home—I knew to put the knife down because my eyes would drift closed of their own accord, and, still without my input (this woman has my body on a switchboard, I swear to Christ), my head would loll back to rest on her shoulder. She swayed us lightly on the spot. Hummed. Pressed her lips to my neck.

“I think it’s so sweet how you two take care of each other,” she whispered.

Fuck me, that was dangerously close to fucking me up. My core tightened with a familiar heat, and this pleasurable prickly sensation buzzed along my inner thighs and low in my back, weirdly enough. At work. I’m at work right now, pretty girl, you can’t go whispering things in my ear. I need to survive another 10 or so hours without you, and if you’ve fucked me up this bad, I’m just going to cause problems for everyone else. You have to be at the hospital today, too, so it's not like I can go home and rail you senseless to get it out of my fucking system.

“Call me later, hm?”

I nodded. “Mmhm.”

Was it planned? Did she plan to make a wreck of me? Certainly seemed like a possibility based on the smirk she had on her angelic features as she waved goodbye and exited the kitchen. I nearly overcooked the eggs thinking about the way her hips swayed as she walked away. That had to be on purpose, too, right? Was I imagining things? Was Darling teasing me?

My head continued to spin 20 minutes after she’d left. Felt like I was on a boat or had just started going down in a particularly fast elevator. Sug was slumped over at the desk, head on her arm, looking more like a half-molten wax sculpture than an entire person, but she offered me an exhausted smile when I brought her breakfast over to her.

“Aw, you also made me coffee, Bear,” she cooed. Then blinked. Rubbed her eyes. She pointed at her neck. “Uh, you have, uh…”

A lipstick print?

She grabbed her fork and sliced off a bite of omelet. “You might wanna get that off before Richie gets here. Or Syd. They’re gonna have a field day.”

I popped over to the bathroom to take a look at it. It looked like a tattoo. There was a perfect lipstick print right over the tendon on the side of my neck in a color somewhere between pink, maroon, brown, and red. Blue-leaning instead of orangey. Warmth bubbled in the pit of my stomach, not that dissimilar to arousal, but this one was of a lower intensity. It was comforting. It soothed me more than it riled me up.

Fuck, it looked fucking gorgeous. It was so symmetrical, so neat, had perfect edges, no smudges. It followed the angle of the muscle as it crawled up my neck. The color wasn’t jarring or bland. Most of all, it was from Darling. It was hers. She might as well have written a “property of” notice and tied it around my neck. So, Richie and Syd and Tina and Marcus were going to see it—so what? They see my tattoos, do they not? They see the adornment I chose to put on my skin so others would see; they can see this one, too. No, you don’t understand, all of you—I belong to her. Not you. Not this restaurant. Not Cicero. Darling. I belong to Darling, and all you fucks are just gonna have to get used to it.

Sug, with her mouth full. “Carm, this is so good. Thank you.”

“Modified Syd’s recipe,” I replied automatically, heading back over to the office. “I left out the potato chips because I doubt your stomach would’ve liked them at this hour.”

“Mmhm.” She looked up at me. Her eyebrows crashed together. “You’re not gonna… take that off?”

The lipstick print?

Good question. “The color suits my eyes,” I said.