#pardon a cheesy ending and the fact that I got lost in the exposition sauce

[carmybears]

Assembly Required

or - The Inherent Eroticism of Swedish Furniture

This started as a joke and quickly spiraled out of hand

pairing: carmy berzatto X female!reader

summary: What's a new apartment without a trip to Ikea? Building Ikea furniture with Carmy and christening a new apartment

word count: 3.8K

warnings: explicit content, 18+; oral sex (f receiving), unprotected p in v sex (wrap it before you tap it), praise kink, hair pulling, dirty talk, mentions of carmy's gold chain, established relationship

There’s nothing quite as humbling as assembling Ikea furniture.

For such a young man, Carmy had already accomplished a lot more in his life than he ever really expected he would – not just graduating culinary school but excelling in it, working in some of the finest dining establishments in the world, winning a James Beard award, and reopening the family restaurant essentially from the ground up. But god help him if the assembly instructions for this Ingolf dining chair weren’t just going to get the best of him.

Over the course of the past several months, you and Carmy had been in the whirlwind process of moving in together. Deciding to get a place together was one of the easiest decisions he had made since returning to Chicago – he already essentially lived in your apartment, so it only made sense to find a place for the both of you when his lease was up. Apartment hunting had been something of a chore, and he shuddered to think of some of the places you’d seen in listings before stumbling across a shockingly spacious 1 bedroom with a decently renovated kitchen, a surprising amount of natural light, and a relatively easy commute to both the restaurant and your office.

House Hunters, eat your heart out.

As your move-in date came ever closer, every spare moment of your time together had become dedicated to preparing for the move. Many nights, the two of you had shared stories about your own respective days at work over piles of clothes to donate or cardboard boxes lined with packing paper and bubble wrap. Not exactly the sexiest of dates, but he knew that he’d have you all to himself before long.

The day of the actual move went surprisingly well, despite the long hours you’d spent moving boxes from one apartment to the other. Carmy already had very little stuff to actually move, and you’d talked him into hiring professional movers to take the furniture and heavier items to the new place. It left the two of you with plenty of time to methodically move from room to room, unpacking as many boxes as you could before absolutely running out of energy at the end of the day, collapsing on a hastily made bed. It was only at sunrise, when the light began to stream directly into Carmy’s eyes, that you realized you needed to buy curtains.

Well, you needed more than just curtains. In fact, you needed several pieces of furniture and had planned to use Carmy’s second consecutive day off as an opportunity to drive out to the Ikea in Shaumburg and check several items off of your shopping list.

You arrived shortly after opening, and Carmy sipped a gas station coffee lazily from a paper mug as the two of you wandered side by side through the store, occasionally sidetracked by a display featuring items you most certainly did not need. If he hadn’t been with you, he wouldn’t have necessarily enjoyed the shopping process – He had always chosen his furnishings based more on function than form, which he supposed was how he had ended up with a tattered, striped couch that you deemed “fit for a frat basement” and insisted was not allowed in your shared apartment. Still, seeing your eyes light up as you strayed away from his side to pinch the fabric of a throw blanket between your fingers or inspect a set of glassware was surprisingly endearing to him as you leisurely meandered your way through the labyrinthine showroom.

You returned home that afternoon with a bounty of flat packed treasures – four ingolf dining chairs, a Fjallbo coffee table, Hemnes dresser, plus whatever other odds and ends you had thrown into the bright blue and yellow canvas bag. The rest of the day had been spent assembling furniture, a growing mountain of cardboard and Styrofoam amassing along the outskirts of the living room with each item you constructed. The coffee table and dresser had come together with little difficulty, although now Carmy was suspecting that he had met his match as he struggled to comprehend just where exactly he was supposed to be placing a screw in the first of four dining chairs that remained to be assembled.

“You look stumped. Lemme take a look,” you offer, crawling across the new area rug to him.

“Take it,” he relinquishes the instruction sheet to you readily. “I think it’s scrambling my brain just lookin’ at this too long.”

You study the instructions for a moment before pulling the miscellaneous pieces closer to you, brow furrowed in concentration as you pick up the allen wrench and begin the assembly process

He watches in admiration as you work, the chair starting to take form before his very eyes as you hum along to the song playing on the Bluetooth speaker you had set on your newly assembled coffee table. You’re dressed in an Original Beef of Chicagoland t-shirt that you’d stolen from the back office at the restaurant shortly after the grand opening of The Bear, and your crossed legs were bare, save for a black pair of athletic shorts that left very little to the imagination. For a moment, he’s entranced by your thighs, the thought flitting across his mind how he wouldn’t mind being in between them right about now, when he notices a garish mark near your inner thigh.

“Hey, what’s this?” he asks, fingers automatically reaching out to brush across your skin where an angry looking bruise has formed.

“Hmm?” you glance away from your work, down to your lap. “Must just be from moving around all these boxes. It’s no big deal.”

“Sure it doesn’t hurt?” His hand rests on your bare thigh a moment longer and it’s practically Pavlovian the way his mind starts to wander, thinking of all the ways you still have yet to christen the new apartment.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” You’re hardly paying attention to him, your eyes glued once more to the page. “Do you see a screw laying around somewhere?”

His mind is lost in thoughts of you – your skin against his, your breathy moans in his ear – when he sees you looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“A screw, Carm. Do you see one laying around here somewhere?”

Without waiting for an answer, you rock forward onto your knees, crawling all around the half assembled chair. He starts to look halfheartedly, idly picking up random pages and pieces of cardboard in search of the missing screw, but mostly he’s just eyeing your ass as you crawl around.

A part of him thinks that maybe he should feel just a little bad that he’s not being more helpful in your search – it had been a long weekend after all, and you still had a long way to go before you were fully unpacked and settled in. But on the other hand, he could easily count on one hand how many times the two of you had been intimate in the past two months – busy work schedules, packing lists, and the occasional bickering about what furniture to keep or sell always seemed to get in the way whenever you two had time alone. Or plain exhaustion – can’t forget about that.

Eventually, you give up, sitting back up with your palms pressed to your knees as you let out a groan of frustration. “I can’t believe we’re missing a fucking screw.”

“I think I know where you can get a fucking screw,” Carmy mumbles, not quite sure what devil on his shoulder has clouded his better judgement.

You look at him incredulously, immediately clocking the innuendo. It’s not like you two don’t talk dirty when the occasion calls for it, but damn Carmy can’t help the blush that creeps up his neck as he realizes how crude his thoughts sound when spoken aloud.

 “Sorry, I’m as surprised by that as you are,” he apologizes quickly. With fidgeting hands, he starts to rifle through the debris on the floor again, struggling to meet your eye.

When he hears you start to laugh, he steals a look back over at you, noticing that the tension has left your shoulders as you melt into his side, squeezing his bicep reassuringly. He looks down at you and allows an uncertain smile to cross his face as he admires the way your eyes crinkle in laughter as you try to catch your breath.

“That has got to be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said me,” you wheeze. “Please say more.”

You don’t give him the opportunity to say another word because you place your hands on his cheeks and pull him into a kiss, still giggling when your lips first make contact. As he wraps an arm around your waist to draw you closer, you melt against him, kissing him in earnest now. Something stirs in the pit of his stomach and he wants more – especially when he feels your fingers twist and tangle into the curls at the nape of his neck. He pulls you flush against him and you groan into his mouth, planting your knees on either side of his hips. You’re all warmth and softness in his lap, and he swears the very blood in his veins turns molten as he realizes how badly he wants you underneath him.

With a swift arc of his arm, he clears the miscellaneous debris from the rug before easing your back down to the floor. His lips are working their way along the line of your jaw when you hear the clatter of something small and metallic skittering across the hardwoods. And just like that, the spell is broken.

“Do you think that was the missing screw?”

“Hmm could be,” he mumbles into your skin, pressing his lips into that spot at the base of your neck that usually makes you squirm. Instead, you’re craning your head to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of the screw among the small mountain of trash, saying something under your breath about how you should check it out.

He inches away from you as you begin to prop yourself up on your elbows underneath him.

“The chair’s really that important right now?” he asks, just barely leveling the twinge of annoyance in his voice.

“We need someplace to sit, Carmy,” you counter.

He snorts just a little at your reasoning. “I can think of someplace better for you to sit right now.”

His remark earns him an eye roll from you, but you pause for a moment in hesitation. He takes that moment as leverage, gripping your hips tight in his hands and drawing them up to meet his, groaning in the back of his throat as your bodies make contact.

“You feel what you do to me right?” he asks, shamelessly incapable of stopping himself from rocking his hips against yours in a desperate search for friction. A small whine escapes the back of your throat and his gaze softens as he looks down on you. “I’ve been missing you like crazy.”

He strokes your cheek, fingers grazing down your cheekbone and along your neck, where he can feel your pulse fluttering rapidly. He knows you well enough that he swears he can see your thoughts happening in real time as realization washes over your features.

“We’ve just been so busy,” you offer weakly. “It’s been hard to make the time.”

“I know, I know,” he presses his lips to yours briefly. “Just be here with me right now, baby. I’ll build you all the chairs you want after.”

You nod furiously, balling his shirt up into your first as you pull him back down to you in a searing kiss. He slips an arm underneath you, pressing you ever closer as his fingers slip underneath your shirt, gliding against soft skin until you’re breathless underneath him. He feels you clawing at his t-shirt and together you both move in a flurry to discard your clothing onto the ground beside you. He’s planting open mouthed kisses onto every accessible inch of feverish skin until he has you bare underneath him.

Your fingers are fiddling impatiently with the zipper on his jeans, pushing them lower down his hips until he kneels back on his heels to finish the job for you. You sit up too, pulling his shirt over his head in a hurried motion before grabbing his arm and coaxing him over to the couch with you.

“Floor not good enough for you?” he asks, leaving a trail of kisses over your collar bones as he presses you down into the cushions.

“I’m just already sore,” you protest, your fingers tracing idly across his shoulder blades.

“But I haven’t even done anything yet,” he croons into your ear, bringing a hand up to knead at your breast.

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

And he does know – the subtle aches in the back of his legs and in between his shoulders have been present all day after the grueling hours of moving in the day beforehand. That’s not going to stop him now though, not as your legs fall open under his hands. His dick twitches at the sight of your pussy, evidence of your arousal glistening at the apex of your thighs and he’s like a man enchanted.

“This all for me, baby?” he asks you softly, reaching out to stroke your folds, wetness gathering on his calloused fingers as you squirm into his touch.

“Yes,” you gasp, pleading with him as you grasp his wrist in a feeble attempt to guide his fingers where you so desperately want him. “Carmy, please.”

You don’t have to ask him twice as he sinks two fingers into your snug walls. He studies your face as he touches you – the way you bite back a groan as his fingers stretch you out, admiring the way you tilt your head back, baring your neck to him as the pad of his thumb brushes roughly against your clit.

“Fuck,” you groan. “Carmy.”

“You look so fuckin’ pretty like this for me, baby.” It’s true, you do. He thinks you’ve never looked prettier than you do in this apartment, with your proudly thrifted couch, half-built Ikea furniture and granite countertops that he could fuck you on every night if you wanted. With his free hand, he palms heavily over the front of his Calvin Kleins and makes a mental note that the kitchen is next in line for christening. But he has something he wants to do first.

You whine when he removes his hand from between your legs, but before you can protest, he’s maneuvering your thighs closer to the edge of the couch and angling your hips toward himself as he sinks to his knees in front of you.

He can feel your thighs trembling already in anticipation around him and you’re swearing under your breath before he’s even had his first taste of you. He starts with a few furtive licks, allowing the smell and taste of you to invade his senses before delving in deeper, lapping at your drenched pussy with languid strokes of his tongue. Wrapping one arm around your thigh, he pulls your leg over his shoulder, causing a shift of your hips that has the tip of his nose nudging against your clit. He steals a look back up at you just in time for you to cry out in pleasure, hands reaching down to tangle in his hair. Increasingly frantic, you tug at the roots, guiding his mouth where you want him, hips grinding senselessly into his nose and wanting mouth.

“Oh my fucking god,” you groan above him as his lips close around your clit, humming softly. He glides two fingers back into you, thrusting them in and out of you in time with the tight circles he’s making around your clit with his tongue.

“Carmen,” you sob his full first name – not Carmy, not baby, not Chef – Carmen. “Don’t fucking stop. JesusfuckingChrist don’t stop.”

He doesn’t stop – wouldn’t dream of it. Even as your thighs clamp together around his head, he’s dizzy with the taste of you, groaning into your pussy as he pushes his tongue into you, big nose pressed into your clit in just the precise way that has you falling apart for him. You’re babbling incoherently as you cum on his face, and he doesn’t hesitate to lap up every wave of pleasure that rolls over you until you’re squirming, oversensitive under his lips.

“Too much, Carm,” you beg. “Please.”

 He nuzzles a kiss into your inner thigh, lips pressed right above the bruise he noticed earlier, before crawling back up to you. Your chest is heaving against his as you limply wrap your arms around the back of his neck and he drags his lips along your throat.

“Absolutely insane that we haven’t done this in so long,” you pant, curling your fingers tightly in his hair to angle his mouth back toward yours. He swallows the groan you make when you taste yourself on his tongue and his dick twitches in his underwear at the sensation of your fingernails scratching at his scalp, raking down his back.

“C’mere,” you mumble against his lips, and in an awkward tumble of limbs, you both maneuver so that he’s laying prone on the coach with you sitting at his hips. He can feel the heat of your core so easily through his briefs that he thinks he may go insane. You drive a merciful hand under the waistband of his underwear and grab his aching cock so firmly in your hand that it makes his head spin just a bit as your thumb grazes over the tip. You pump the shaft expertly once, twice and he’s not even quite sure that he’s speaking English anymore.

“Wanna be inside you so bad, baby.”

“Sure you don’t want me to return the favor?” You’re easing his underwear down his thighs, all the while looking him directly in the eyes, your gaze heated. He knows right then and there that he wouldn’t last 5 seconds in your mouth.

“Another time,” he rasps, reaching toward you in a desperate attempt to feel your delicate fingers or the soft curve of your hips – he’ll take any little bit you have to give him. “Just want you now.”

You rock your hips against him, coating the length of him in your wet heat; a low groan in the shape of your name escapes his throat. He wants to chastise you for teasing him, but before he can find the words, you sink down onto him with a soft “Oh.”

There’s a moment of stillness and he drinks in the sight of you, eyes fluttering shut and lips thoroughly kissed and swollen. He can’t help the way the words tumble out of his mouth – “I love you.”

“But I haven’t even done anything yet,” you grin cheekily.

And that’s when you move.

You’re hot and wet around him and he’s absolutely mesmerized by the sight of his cock disappearing into you repeatedly as you move above him.

 “Fuck, you ride my dick so well, baby,” he praises, cupping one breast in his hand, kneading the soft flesh there in time to the rhythm of your hips rocking against his.

There’s a slight tug at the base of his neck as the hand you’ve leveraged against his chest catches on his golden chain, your fingers curling around the glistening metal as if to tether yourself to him. Something flips like a switch then and he needs more of you.

He grabs your hips roughly on the next thrust, pulling you back down onto him so that he’s buried to the hilt. You cry out and grasp at the back of the couch for balance but let him continue to guide your hips, doing everything you can to keep up with the rougher pace he’s setting for you.

“You good?” He checks in, praying the answer is yes.

“Fuck, Carm,” you groan, digging your fingers into his arm and he can feel the stinging sensation of little crescent moons pressing into the skin. “s’good.”

He can feel how badly your legs are shaking as you match his every move. Heat pools in the bottom of his stomach and he knows he won’t be long now. Maintaining the pace as best as he can, he slides a hand between your bodies, swirling his fingertips around the swollen bud of your clit in a way that makes you swear out loud.

Your thighs clench hard on either side of him and it’s all he can do not to fall apart immediately. You’ve all but collapsed onto his chest and your breath is hot on his neck as you whine to him that you’re close.

“I gotchu,” he promises, fingertips still working in time with his hips. “Come for me.”

And you do.

The sensation of your pulsing walls around him is all at once too much and not enough as he digs his heels into the couch, thrusting erratically into you several more times, chasing his high. With a throaty groan, he screws his eyes shut as a wave of euphoria washes over him. For just a few brief seconds, it’s as if there’s nothing in his world but you.

Limbs heavy and bodies absolutely spent, you lay facing each other, just barely able to fit laying side by side on the couch. If he had the foggiest idea which box a throw blanket had been packed into, he would have pulled one up and around your shoulders. Instead, he settles for curling himself around you, skin still flushed and heated from moments before as you tangle your fingers idly in his hair, gazing at him through heavily lidded eyes. He kisses the tip of your nose and runs the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone as your eyes flutter shut.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he jostles your shoulder lightly.

“Mmmh,” you harrumph. “I know, I know. We should get cleaned up.”

“No, I was gonna say we have some chairs to build.”

The smack he receives to the chest is well deserved. Nevertheless, you allow him to coax you from the couch to a warm shower. Afterward, as you finish dressing and preparing for bed, he pads back out to the living room, sifting once again through the pile of cardboard until the glimmer of something silver catches his eye.

You step into the room just in time to see him setting the lost screw atop the coffee table.

“A project for tomorrow,” you promise.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees, pressing his lips to your forehead.

He thinks of all the tomorrows you have ahead of you – together in your shared apartment, in your shared lives. And he can’t help but be excited for every single one.