Archive of Our Own

“I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself.”

Make love to me
like you know I am better
than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I’m new to this.
But I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop
without jumping.

(Buddy Wakefield)

Richie Jerimovich knows a thing or two about pain. 

There is the physical kind, that cuts through your body like a hot blade and knocks your breath out of your chest; his deadbeat father punching him in the head when he was twelve, his ears ringing, blood warm and thick on his lips. Breaking his arm while being coked out at nineteen – he only felt it the morning after, but would never forget it. Scraping his knees on the concrete while trying skating tricks. He has plenty of memories to fish from. 

The emotional sort is the real bitch, though. Realizing his mother did not care enough to put down the bottle. The failing of each one of his volatile business enterprises. Tiff knocking on his scraped door, pale and stern like he’d never seen her, and handing him divorce papers like they were a fucking Walgreens receipt. No lack of experience in this field, either. 

Given all that, what he went through when he got the call about Mikey managed to surprise him, because at first it fell solidly in the first category. Sugar’s voice was piercing his brain, high-pitched and hysterical, and he felt a pang of physical pain so acute he was sure his heart was gonna burst. Happened to most of his uncles and even his old man; knocked out cold by sudden cardiac arrest. Not much of a fucking surprise, they were chain-smoking, heavy drinking motherfuckers. Richie was, as well. It must have been like that – a hot flash of deliriously strong pain, and you were out of it. Worse ways to go. 

Hunched in half over the side of his bed, Richie welcomed it. Come on, he snarled to a God he almost didn’t believe in anymore, take me now. I deserve it. Because I am a shit human being, and because shit human beings are allowed a fucking break too. 

After a couple of minutes, it passed as suddenly as it had come, leaving him to heave and spit bile in the paper bin.  

Richie understood there was no rest for the wicked, after all. 

He dragged himself out of the apartment and behind the wheel without even bothering to lock the door. He was wearing grey sweats and a t-shirt with holes around the collar, and it was fucking Chicago-freezing. He didn’t care. Maybe a heart attack was off the cards, but pneumonia could be lethal as well, he’d heard.  

He didn’t catch pneumonia, because no shit. Only a cold that made him sick as a dog for days, so he was forced to face the whole, nightmarish death related bureaucracy while feeling like a whole dance class was stomping little feet inside his cranium.  

Richie was sad, of course. Actually, sad didn’t even begin to cover it; it was a despair so intense it was like some invisible beast was gnawing at his stomach during the sleepless nights he spent on the couch, watching the same wet stain on the wall for hours on end. No use in seeking comfort in his favorite movies, because  they happened to be Mikey’s as well. That was part of the issue, after all; how did that old Springsteen song go? We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes. He knew, with the devastating clarity that only comes from endings – unhappy ones, that went without saying -, that Mickey had been his soulmate. When his friend was alive and cursing and fucking and smoking and breathing, so much breathing, one breathes approximately eight million times a year, so forty years make for something like three-hundred million breaths, or so Google said, Richie would never even have dreamt to think something like that, let alone say it out loud. The idea of Mickey reacting to soulmate talk almost managed to coax a laugh outta him, the first in months.  

“What kind of frocio shit are you blabbering about?” 

And yet, Richie knew it had been true. Of all the things he’d came across in his forty-something years of life, Mikey Berzatto had been the only consistent one – his folks weren’t anything to count on, chicks had came and gone, even friends had been fleeting characters, little more than faces merging into each other at the periphery of most of his memories. Not Mickey, though. Ever since they were primary school kids with missing teeth and striped t-shirts, Mikey had been there, shining at the center of the stage like a fucking supernova. Somewhere deep within him, in one of those dark places where he seldom allowed himself to loiter, Richie knew Mikey’d always been the star while he was little more than the moon, a satellite soaking up the light that oozed off his best friend. He’d been fine with it, mostly. What he’d never thought about was a world were that light had stopped shining upon him, the same way in which one doesn’t usually wonder what would happen if the sun didn’t rise one morning. 

Richie was sad, but grief wasn’t the primary emotion, as one of Eva’s kindergarten books would have put it. There was anger, a rage so intense sometimes he felt like it was physically choking him, forcing the air out of his lungs with the vicious strength of a donkey kick. Because Mikey hadn’t succumbed to disease, a drunk driver, hadn’t even ODed like one too many of their old schoolmates; he’d been the one to pull the trigger. 

Once again, Richie hadn’t been enough of a reason for someone that was supposed to love him to stick around. “Fuck, man”, he’d say out loud while alone in his apartment at night, and to hell with the neighbors, “We were supposed to be in this shit together.” Who the fuck Mikey thought he was, finding a gun and using it to put himself out of it, while everyone else had to stay behind, stuck with his mess? 

He thought he was Mikey fucking Berzatto, of course. Stars don’t concern themselves with the opinions or needs of satellites. 

After the reading of that motherfucking will, rage became wrath, a wave of hot-white resentment simmering inside Richie’s body like a Tsunami, his ribcage too small to contain such a destructive, primal force.  

That day’d been proper freezing and Richie had shivered in the tux he’d bummed from a remote Fak’s cousin, one, Neil had deemed useful to tell him, that had doubled up on the buy and worn it both at his wedding and when he’d been summoned to court for a DUI. When they’d called Richie in, he’d appeared in an old pair of jeans and a The Beef t-shirt. Maybe a tux would have robbed the judge the right way, but he highly doubted that. 

The lawyer’s room had felt clammed and overheated, Donna’s heavy perfume going straight to his head and triggering a showstopping migraine. And then, the skinny guy behind the desk had read Mickey’s last wishes, and everything had gone downhill so fast it had given him fucking whiplash. 

It’s been three months since Carmy has returned to Chicago, dead set on taking over The Beef – Richie's fucking spot, the only place besides the Berzatto’s family residence he ever got to call home. The Beef, which Mickey used the last of his brainpower to pass down to his little brother, the one who’d gotten away, Food&Wine’s fucking best upcoming chef, Napa Valley material.  

Everyone else has reacted with shock at the news, but Richie sees it for what it is: a wonderful sob story for some ass-kissing glossy magazine’s 2023 cover. Hell, he can even picture the title, in bold Italics: Genius young chef picks up deceased brother’s legacy and earns the first ever Michelin star for a former sandwich shop. Ok, maybe that’s a tad too long but he’s never been the writing type; he’s the...what? Which type is Richie, exactly? High school dropout? Divorced middle aged dad? Forty-five years old, with a DUI, a daughter he loves more than he understands, a lousy ass apartment in a shitty condo and a dead best friend? Oh, and a sandwich spot he thought was the only thing he could call his. That is, before a haute cuisine dipshit with tattoos had waltzed back inside a life he’d left behind, a neighborhood he’d long since decided he was too good for and had robbed him of every shed of dignity he had left. Hell, Carmy had even brought in somebody like Sydney, somebody that wasn’t even pushing thirty and already had such drive and ambition one could see she’d make it far, even starting from the bottom – the bottom being the very place Richie had worked at for the majority of the past ten years, the one Mikey had built and then left to his brother. So much for blood not being what makes a family.   

One night, after Sydney has literally stabbed his ass, Richie is lying on his couch, an ice pack under his right buttock – he'd never tell her, because what’s the point anyway, but it does hurt like a motherfucker -, and his hand somehow makes way towards his phone. It’s like he’s looking at himself from the outside, a lanky, oldish dude in sweatpants and a white tee, as he launches a Google search and calls the first number that pops up on the cracked screen. 

It’s a suicide helpline. The on-call operator says her name is Yvonne; her voice is almost suspiciously young. “Can I call you by your first name, Sir? If it’s fine with you.” 

Richie says yes. “It’s Mikey”, he lies, and doesn’t know why. 

“First of all, Mikey, I’d like to walk you through some assessment steps, to evaluate how high are the chances that you will self-harm in the near future.” 

“It’s not like I wanna off myself”, Richie hears himself say. Yvonne clearly thinks he does want to off himself – he assumes she has to prepare for the worst possible outcome. And she is right, isn’t she? Richie’s not gonna blow his brains out, because he can’t, he fucking can’t, but it doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to bask in the soothing thought when nobody’s around to see him. 

He answers the questions on autopilot. Yes, he’s got a family – well, he’s got an ex-wife and a daughter, and that has to account for something, right? Yes, he sees his kid whenever he can, and enjoys spending time with her – more than he does with most adults, anyway. Yes, he’s got a job, even if it’s a fucking big part of the problem. Nope, no benzos, painkillers or street drugs; yes to beer and the occasional wine glass. Yes, he was raised a Catholic and still fancies himself a believer, even if he’s not delusional enough to think God actually gives a damn. Yes, somebody in his family has committed suicide. 

“My cousin”, he croaks, throat suddenly dry. “He was also, like, my best friend.” He doesn’t say soulmate, because what the fuck? Still, Yvonne sounds taken aback. 

“I’m so sorry, Mikey. What was his name?” 

“Richie”, he deadpans.  

After that, she seems mostly satisfied with his answers. When she asks whether he has ever made concrete plans to end his own life, he earnestly says no. He can’t: the way Richie sees it, the moment you put another life on this fucking planet is the one where you have to forget easy ways out. He hasn’t been enough of a reason for his parents to stop drinking, for Tiff to work for it, for Mikey not to pull that damn trigger, and as much as he tries to bury it deep down where nobody can see, it hurts like a bitch. Richie never wants Eva to think she hasn’t been enough to convince her own father to stick around. So, killing himself is off limits, and he tells Yvonne as much. 

“It’s a sweet thing that you have your daughter”, she says softly, and it’s true. If it only was enough. 

When he hangs up, he doesn’t know whether he feels better or worse. Yvonne has evaluated him to be at low risk of immediate self-harm, has soothed him with  nonsensical advice and shared the contacts of nearby psychiatric help centers which work with most low-income health insurances. He hasn’t dared ask how old she is. 

——————————— 

It’s the usual, fucking shitshow, the way they all yell at each other and stand in each other’s way and talk over each other and send plates back and forth between service and the kitchen, and Richie’s migraine is so bad he sees splotches of bright colors at the edges of his visual fields. Voices are remote, like his head’s under water. Rush hour is chewing them up and spitting them out in little, pathetic bites. Sydney hasn’t been back since stabbing his ass, and while he would rather die than admit it out loud, without her they’re going downwards with the speed of a broken elevator.  

Richie doesn’t even excuse himself; he merely drops his sweatshirt on the till chair and stammers out back, the cool brick wall supporting most of his weight as he pants and coughs like he’s not breathing right. He probably isn’t, so a cigarette isn’t going to make that much of a difference, is it? 

He’s barely had the first drag when someone leans close to him, a bare arm brushing against his shirt-clad shoulder. He doesn’t have to open his eyes to check who it is. 

“Fuck off”, he barks, and something raw and sharp beats against his temples. “We’ve already fucked up, anyway.”  

Surprisingly, there’s no heat in Carmen’s voice when he says “Here, take it.” Richie beats his lids and his boss more or less shifts into focus, as does the small container in his hand.  

Advil. For a short, helpless second, he’s so touched and relieved he could cry. 

He almost snatches the pills out of Carmy’s grip and pops three into his mouth before swallowing them dry. 

“Whoa, easy there, now”, whistles Carmy, a cigarette pursed between his lips. Always says he’s gonna quit like someone’s still listening.  

“I got it bad”, Richie exhales through gritted teeth. “With fucking light flashes.” Is it self-suggestion, or is it already slightly better?  

“Bummer”, Carmy volunteers softly. 

“How the fuck did you know?” 

“Your face does this thing when you’re having a migraine”, and it’s not like Richie was expecting an actual answer, but whatever, “Your eyes get all, I dunno, droopy. Noticed it earlier.” 

He is suddenly struck by the thought that he’s known Carmy for the other’s whole fucking life. He remembers all too well the day he was born; he was what, fourteen? Yeah, and Mikey must have been thirteen, then. An unexpected blessing, Donna had called the belly she’d sported at the family Christmas dinner. Mikey and Mr. Berzatto hadn’t looked like they agreed.  

It makes sense that Carmy would be able to read his expressions to a T, since Richie’s been around for most of his childhood and teenage years. He really can’t stand the fucker these days, but their bond is still one of the most intimate he’s ever had – they're still family, for better or for worse. 

In the meantime, the pressure is starting to fade from his skull. “Thank you”, he mutters, and he means it. But when he turns his gaze to his right,  he realizes there’s a half-smoked cig on the pavement and Carmy’s already gone. 

——————————— 

So, the cocaine thing.  

There’s really not much to say when your boss finds out (from fucking Neil Fak of all people) you’ve been pushing stuff in his family’s spot back alley, is there?  

Except, if said boss asks you to wear your dealer’s shoes one more time to spare both of your asses from drowning and carrying the place down with them. That kinda makes for a different situation.  

Sure, in the end it was Syd who’d saved the day. Syd, who’d resigned after slicing Richie’s ass open  by accident, while he had fantasized about stabbing her on  purpose for most of her time working at The Beef. Syd, who not even Carm’s haut cuisine fame had been enough to convince to stick around.  He can’t blame her, not really. She is dead set on success, and they are hitting rock bottom again and again, which gives Richie all sorts of contradictory feelings. 

Seeing the European-trained golden boy struggling to keep a fucking sandwich joint open and running? Abso-fucking-lutely wonderful. 

The idea that the only existing legacy of Mikey’s life could be wiped out off the face of Earth less than a year after he’d shot that gun? Heart wrenching, that. Richie feels so powerless sometimes the only thing that keeps him from going insane is grinding his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. 

If she ever found out about the cocaine, Sug’d kill them both and fatally injure anyone that she’d deem was involved, starting from Fak. So, it’s a non negotiable that no one tells her – maybe the only one Carmy’s ever agreed to respect.  

“What the fuck are we doing?”, Richie asks one Friday, as the night rush hour has just subsided. They’ve scraped through, but barely. Carmy’s smoking the third cig in a row – another thing they won’t disclose to Natalie, that.  

Richie expects Carmy to bite back, to tell him he certainly knows what he’s doing, and there’s no they. Instead, all he gets is a huff of smoke and an earnest “No fucking clue.” 

Richie looks at Carmy then – he doesn’t merely see him, but looks at him, in a way he hasn’t allowed himself to since he’s come back. His mind’s eye keeps picturing the old Carmen, the skinny, neurotic teenager glued to Mikey’s, and subsequently his, heels; and it’s only obvious that he’s changed so much, since in the past ten years he’s grown up and Richie’s grown old. Not much going on for him in the height department, Richie’s always gonna win that category, but he’s put on an amount of muscle that seems unnecessary for busting one’s ass off in a steamy kitchen. His pecs are visible under the stretchy white tee, his biceps obvious when he stirs one of those things Richie calls “sauces” and he refers to with stupid-fancy names.  

“Makes two of us.”  

Carmy turns towards him and smiles – a soft, actual smile, that makes Richie realize he really hasn’t seen many like that in the past months.  

“’Bout the coke -” 

“Ok, we don’t have to do this”, Richie interrupts, not daring to look at Mikey’s baby brother – his baby brother, in a way, or at least his baby cousin. “I just did -” 

“What you had to do”, the completed clue falls out of Carmy’s lips easily, despite how much must have cost him to admit it. “I do not condone it, but I do understand.” 

“The fuck you do”, Richie can’t avoid sounding bitter, and just like it came, the moment between them is gone. “You weren’t there. I bet that fancy-ass place in New York -” 

“-let’s not, like, talk about New York, ok?” It’s so quick and alarmed that Richie stares, wondering whether he touched an exposed nerve ending. “It wasn’t fucking rainbows and sunshine back there, either.” 

Oh, he definitely did, and it gives him a flash of sick pleasure. 

“Whatever”, he lets it drop, and puts out his cig against the brick wall. 

——————————— 

Manslaughter. 

The word tumbles around Richie’s brain like a fucking metal sphere in a pinball machine, hitting against the hard edges and resonating each time with the strength of an explosion. For some reason, the voice that repeats it is Tiff’s, and the blood-curling letter ensemble is followed by her exasperated What the fuck, Richard? 

He’s tried to make it better, God knows he has. To defuse a situation that was already rapidly slipping out of their hands – to be what he’s supposed to be, The Beef’s fucking patron, the boss. Look how it played out, now.  

Maybe, Mikey’s been right all along. Richie can’t even be trusted with keeping himself alive and out of trouble; running a lame sandwich joint seems like an enterprise far out of reach.  

Damn, he’s not like he’s never considered the chance of being six feet under before Eva’s tenth birthday – men in his family rarely make it to old age,  be it destiny, tobacco or the bottle. He’s never pictured himself in jail of all places, though.  

Everything is a bit of a blur – guy was a real dickhead, and an extremely intoxicated one, and punches were being thrown, and Richie was on high school’s wrestling  team – that was before everything, before joints and coke hits, before he decided to be a flunk and his father died. He vaguely remembers Carmy’s voice  rasping close to his ear, “Fuck, Richie, no, for fuck’s sake -” and the fleeting thought that Cicero would go ballistic. And the noise dude’s cheekbone made when it collided with his knuckles, a nauseatingly wet pop that will haunt his dreams for years to come. 

It was the cops who told him fucker hadn’t woken up yet and was being admitted in the ICU. The only thing Richie manages to do is wish with his whole, crooked heart that everything that’s happened since last February has been nothing but a very weird dream. 

It’s never a dream, though, except in movies. 

He’s sitting on a hard-ass bench in his custody cell when a pretty girl cop walks in and lets him know the guy’s regained consciousness, so manslaughter is off the cards – aggravated assault still stands, but hey, one will make do with only one miracle. He’s prayed for the dickhead more than he’s ever done for his own mother. 

The second good piece of news is that somebody’s come to bail him out. 

He’s not surprised when he spots Carmy sitting behind the wheel of his lousy old car. Who else would have come for him? His kid’s mother, with that shadow under her eyes that gives out just as much as a deadbeat she thinks he is? Sug, self-righteous and angry, ready to chastise him once she’s made sure he’s all in one piece?  Fak or one of his folks, laughing at the fix he’s gotten himself into? 

Richie knows what the only answer would be, if only time could turn back ten months and that fucking gun could lay disarmed. Mikey would’ve had his back – he always did. Apparently, Carmy is what he gets now – a substitute for the real thing. He can’t help but wonder how often Carmy must have felt exactly that way when it came to fill Mikey’s shoes. 

“Hey”, he greets him feebly, eyes locked on the windshield.  

Carmy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t start the engine, either. His jaw is set in such a harsh line it looks like it might break from the sheer tension. 

Well, now is about as good a time as ever to acknowledge that Carmy’s become handsome while he was gone. He’s got that tattoos-and muscles thing going on, while still wearing vintage denim and keeping his hair carelessly long and wavy, and -  

And Richie must’ve gone fucking insane. He should Google something like “am I too old to experience the first symptoms of Schizophrenia?” 

“Thanks, Carm.” 

Still no reply. The other’s blue gaze is stubbornly fixed on the road ahead and, with nothing short of horror, Richie feels something dig at the sides of his eyes something that could very well be tears. 

He hasn’t cried since Sug’s call on February 22nd, and God be his witness, he’s tried. It’s like something inside him has shifted and changed and uncoiled, turning his insides into a material that’s hard but breakable, like crystal. And yet, wet stripes are making their way down his cheeks, and he perceives more than sees Carmy turn around and look at him – for real, as his bottom lip quivers.  

“You - you’re all I got, cuz.” 

Did he seriously call Carmy cuz? That was him and Mikey’s thing – a way to remind everyone it was like they were blood. He hasn’t used the monicker since Mikey’s passing, with anyone – not with Marcus, Fak, not even with Sugar. Certainly not with Food&Wine’s best upcoming fuckhead. 

Yet, as soon as he’s said it, he realizes how right it feels.  

One can’t choose his family, not really. 

Carmen’s face is ashen, his features frozen in a worried pinch. “Come on, Richie”, he stutters, rubbing it with his big hands and pressing his palms against his lids. “That’s simply not true. You have Eva, for one.” 

Richie snorts, but it’s humorless. There was a song that went you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness, and fuck if it ain’t true. “Eva is five, Carm. Don’t get me wrong, she’s the only reason I have to stick around,” he admits out of gritted teeth, “But it’s more like she has me than the other way ‘round. And I managed to fuck up with Tiff all the same.” 

Silence is thicker than one of Carmy fancy-ass roux. At some point he must have started the car, ‘cause they got going. Richie notices they’re not bound towards his condo but doesn’t say anything; what more is there to be told? 

They’ve almost reached the parking lot of Carmy’s apartment complex when he speaks, and it’s so low and slurred Richie struggles to catch it. “Do you ever get, like, pissed at Mikey? Like, proper boiling at a dead man?” 

An incongruous chuckle escapes Richie’s lips, because really, Carm has no idea. “Bet on it. I am so fucking riled.”  

Carm kills the engine. Neither of them acknowledges that they’re at his place or makes a move to get out of the fucking car.  

“When Sug called me, the first thing I felt was...” Carmy looks at the T top like it holds the answers to the mysteries of the universe. "...robbed. I thought Christ, he’s done it before I could, and now I don’t even get to off myself.” 

Richie turns around so quickly it almost gives him whiplash. “What?” He spits, taking in Carmy’s trembling profile in the setting twilight. “Fuck, cuz, that’s heavy.” 

“Told you New York hadn’t been a fucking stroll in the park.” 

“No shit. But -” something inside Richie is softening, and it’s the something that corrodes his insides when they fight and makes him spit out all of that venom, it makes him aim at the places where it really hurts. Tiff used to tell him he was so good at playing asshole that she sometimes got the fleeting suspicion he was an asshole. Talk about having a point. “- I had no idea it got so bad.” 

After what Carm’s done for him, Richie wants to be the one who does something, anything to make him feel better – to remind him that he’s not alone, that they’re in this shit together no matter what. He could pat his shoulder, maybe – it will be awkward, because they don’t do this stuff, but he can’t think of any other gesture until the other man suddenly lunges to his left and buries his head in Richie’s chest. 

And holy shit, Carmy is crying. His tears are hot and wet, and they seep through the cheap fabric of Richie’s t-shirt, almost burning his skin. He is crying and holding him like he’s a lifeline, and Richie finds himself reciprocating the hug, rubbing Carmy’s broad shoulders with his palms and almost rocking him back and forth as he does with Eva when she gets overwhelmed.  

It hadn’t occurred to Richie until now simply how desperate he’s been for human touch. Sure, Fak fist bumps him every time he sees him, and Sugar is always brushing his arm, trying to convey her usual I’m here if you need me. He’d rather cut his own dick off than tell her, but none of them has ever deserved her.  But it’s been weeks – no, fuck, it’s been months since somebody’s held him like Carmen is doing now, with purpose and abandonment, like Richie’s lanky body holds  the answers to his pleas.  

Sobs tear through Carmy, small waves on the lake when it’s raining, and Richie hears himself try to soothe his almost-baby-brother, whispering “hush, hush” as he  sinks his chin in Carmen’s hair. It smells like drugstore shampoo and sweat, slightly sour.  

“It hurts like a motherfucker, cuz”, Carmy murmurs against his chest, tickling him as he breathes. He’s switched back to the old nickname as well. 

“I know, Bear.” 

“I know you know.” 

Richie is aware they’re both more sincere than they’ve been to each other in a very long time. 

———————————— 

When he hears the knock to his door at 2.42 AM, Richie feels like he should be scared – he's a father, after all, not to mention the fucker he’s knocked out is still at  the hospital. But somehow a part of him is sure of who’s gonna be.  

Carmen is in his kitchen robes in the dead of Sunday night, but Richie knows better than to ask. 

“I really didn’t wanna be alone”, Carmen says, and Richie moves to the side to let him in. 

They end up on the couch, with a Bud Light each. Carm looks at him with a question mark in his eyes, and Richie points his chin at the ashtray on the kitchen  counter. They smoke in silence.  

When Carm leans his head on Richie’s shoulder, he lets him and surreptitiously smells his hair again.  

“Are you sniffing me?” It’s meant to be mocking but comes out gruff and strangely charged. 

“Yeah. Could use a shower.” 

“Fuck off.” 

For a while, nothing happens – just two dudes having a drink, albeit a little too close for comfort, at least if one thinks about the standards they grew up with. When Richie tried to hug Mikey, he’d shove him and tell him to stick that up his gay ass; they’d both laugh, then, but Richie has always been hungrier for physical  affection than he let on. Maybe it was a subproduct of having been raised in a home where people only touched each other to inflict pain. Say what you will about  Donna, but she’s hugged Richie at least three times more than his own mother ever did. 

Richie surrounds Carmy’s shoulder with his arm and the younger man scoots just a little bit, nestling himself closer to his side. His body seems to slightly uncoil,  breathing more even and deep. 

“About the other day”, Carmen says, and he thankfully does not refer to it as that time, when I bailed you out of jail.  

“Mmh.” 

“You said Eva is your only reason to stick around.” He isn’t looking at him, because it’s already hard enough while staring at the wall. Richie understands. “But - I  mean, cuz, as much as I’d like to throttle you myself sometimes, I’d be a bummer to see ya go.” 

Richie half laughs, half scoffs, but what’s more important, he tightens his grip on Carm and feels the other man’s teeth unclench and his back slouch. “That’s...sweet? I guess?”  

“It is, you dimwit.” 

“I called a suicide helpline.” 

Silence again, the heavy, uncomfortable kind. 

When Carmen speaks, it’s almost a whisper. “You did?” 

“Yeah. The night Syd stabbed me.” 

Memories of that lousy day fill the air between the two of them, lingering like the ever-present cigarette smoke. 

“I’ve been an ass to her. Should call her to apologize.” 

“Yeah, me too, but I think a sliced butt kinda makes it even.” 

Carmy snorts and he wiggles a bit, getting even more comfortable with his back fully pressed against Richie’s side. He runs hot, like furnace-hot, but Richie is so starved for intimacy he wouldn’t complain even if his body was made of burning coal. 

“Anyway, I told the girl on the phone that I’d never take that specific way out, because it’s true – Eva deserves to know that she was enough for me to stay.” 

The super New York chef’s voice is so small and broken one would be tempted to consider him nothing more than Carmen Anthony Berzatto from Chicago suburbs. “Are you mad about it, too? Like, that maybe we weren’t a reason for Mikey to -” 

“Fuck, yes, cuz. I think about it all the time.”  

“At least”, Carmy says, and it’s raw and vulnerable “You had him when he was alive.” 

“What do you mean, Bear? You – you had him too, but then you left and -” 

Carmy jumps to his feet so quickly Richie almost loses balance and falls to the side. What shakes Richie, however, is how much he misses the other’s sturdy body against his already, like there was a band-aid stretched over a gaping wound he hadn’t even noticed he had before, and now it’s gone. “Yeah, I did, but I left because Mikey didn’t want anything to do with me!” He’s half-screaming, face red, an ugly vein protruding from his neck.  

Richie is taken aback by everything, and for the first time in years he asks himself if he could have misinterpreted everything so spectacularly. “Carm, Mikey wanted everything to do with you -” 

“He fucking didn’t! He didn’t even let me work at The Beef once, sent me to slave away at Cicero’s damn parties -” 

“You self-centered idiot”, Richie growls and he’s standing as well now, thankful that he still has almost half a head over Carmy. They’re so close he’s sure some drops of spit have reached the other’s face, and to hell with that. “Mikey never wanted you around in that fucking shithole because he thought you deserved so much more! What was he supposed to do? Let you rot away in a sandwich joint when he knew you could go ahead and train in the Netherlands?” 

“Noma’s in Denmark, you dick-” 

“I don’t give a single fuck where Noma is! Mikey wanted you to, like, spread your fucking wings and conquer everything we couldn’t -” 

“And why didn’t he fucking tell me?” Carm still looks angry, all red and bothered, but his voice has tipped over the cracking point a long time ago. Tears and snot are streaming down his face now, and Richie has never been so torn before – he wants to punch his jaw with all his strength, of course, but also to hug him and soothe him like he did in the car. “Why did he let me feel like he was pushing me away for all those years? Why did I always have to be a stranger in my own home? Christ, Richie, Sugar was the only one who didn’t love you more than me -” 

Richie is shocked, and shock makes him brutal – how can Carmy not understand what all of this is about? “Oh, yeah, cry me a river – he clearly didn’t love you, and that’s why he left you every damn thing I helped him build! Like I was some fucking kind of stranger!” 

“I don’t know why I had to get that goddamn place!” Carm buries his face in his hands and takes a ragged breath, that apparently does next to nothing. “For a fucking decade it was everything I ever wanted, but that was just because I wanted to work with my brother! To stand at his side, help him run the family business! And I never got to do that, while you did, Richie, and -” 

“And you weren’t there! When he started using for real, when your mother went bonkers for the hundredth time, when we owed all that money -” 

“I was away because the lot of you pushed me away!” 

“Mikey only wanted you to amount to more than we did!” Richie growls, and it’s so loud he knows that old hag from 227B will make a complaint with the building manager tomorrow, but who cares. “But that didn’t mean you had to like, go and never look behind! We needed you here, Carm – Donna needed you, and so did Sugar, and I needed you, for fuck’s sake!” 

“Oh, yeah? And for what?” 

“To pick your fucking brother up from the pavement so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit!” He’s distantly aware that he’s crying as well, now, and a part of him, strange as it seems, is relieved that he can still do it. Like fighting with Carm is healthier than bottling everything up, which, no shit. “To give him a fucking reason not to pull that motherfucking trigger! Because I was not enough, and apparently your mother and sister weren’t either -” 

“And why should I, of all people, have been enough?” Carmen’s laughter is joyless, an ugly thing.  

“Because he fucking loved you like he didn’t love anybody else! Because he was proud of you, and he’d always, always tried to protect you -” 

“Oh, yeah? Then why did he never fucking tell me -” 

“You think you were the only one who was fucked up by Donna and your father, Carm? Oh, please, get in line. Mikey had a headstart of thirteen years on your sorry ass.” 

“And you, Richie? Who fucked you up? What made you wander around like a stray dog and then make your way in a family that isn’t yours, like a damn leach-” 

Richie knows it the way one knows that blood is flowing through their veins, that their tongue is resting in their mouth caressing the back of their upper teeth row, that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, whether one wants it to or not. He knows it with a part of his brain that’s at the same time primordial and hidden, locked away from consciousness.  

Carm thinks Richie’s gonna hit him. As soon as the other makes a move, he scoots back, raises his arms and slightly bends his knees, an MMA fighter before the gong. He thinks Richie’s gonna hit him because it’s all he’s ever known, all they have ever known: men don’t really talk to one another, they yell and curse and let their knuckles do most of the deed. Mikey has been Richie’s best friend since middle school, and he can recall more times when they’ve shoved each other than times when they hugged.  

Right now, though, in Richie’s mind something has become alight with devastating clarity. Tiff endlessly yapped about breaking the cycle – we come from trauma, she would say, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same way we should be going now. He would laugh at her psycho-bullshit. God, what a dick he’s been. 

And it’s not like Richie can’t shove Carm – he would probably manage to knock him to the ground, not necessarily keep him there, not anymore, but humiliate him all the same. It’s that he doesn’t want to, because the gnawing, wailing beast that’s been living inside his chest for months only seems to go to sleep when he lets go of this whole machismo crap and swaps violence for something different but not quite unlike it. So, Richie wraps his arms around the young man, his long-ass arms that can envelope the whole of Carmy’s muscular frame, and he drags him towards his chest in a vicious, unyielding grip. It feels so much like fighting, he almost can smell the chalk, sweat and linoleum of his high school’s gymnasium.  

Carm’s heavy breathing halts abruptly when his nose ends up pressed in the crook of Richie’s neck, his clenched jaw just under the other’s collarbone. He’s sweaty, and panting, and Richie feels something stir inside him, something violent, of course, but also weirdly dark.  

“I maybe was a fucking Berzatto leach”, Richie grunts. At this point he has slightly relaxed his hold and a little squirming would probably get Carmen free, but it doesn’t look like he is gonna try anything anytime soon. It’s like the war has been forcibly torn from him, and he’s left with little more than a trembling sack of meat, blood and bones. “But ya’ll need me, Carm. Donna does, and Mikey did. Sug pretends she doesn’t, but who did she call first on February 22?” It’s low. Mean. Richie half expects that Carmen will do something as a retort, maybe even headbutt him. Instead, he feels the overheated skin of his neck becoming wet with the other’s tears. 

“I’m so tired, cuz”, and he’s sobbing now, ugly, high-pitched noises, even uglier than on the get-out-of-jail day. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t have the fight in me.” 
“Then stop”, Richie says, and his voice sounds charged to his own years. He’s cradling Carmy’s head against his torso, a hand holding him softly at the nape, where the blond curls are soaked in sweat. “Stop for one night. It ain’t gonna kill you.” He takes a step back and it’s enough to look Carmy in the eye, almost falling in the vortex of desperation, exhaustion and confusion they hold. “But carrying on like this might.” 

Food&Wine new upcoming lost soul doesn’t answer. He just relinquishes the majority of his weight against Richie’s lanky frame, and Richie realizes it’s over. He doesn’t even know how to describe what just happened – a screaming match, a quarrel, tension exploding, a fight – but whatever it was, Carmen ain’t got a bone of that in him anymore. The only thing left in him is despair, and need – the need for Richie’s body to be a harbor that shelters him for some hours, at least. 

Richie turns the both of them around until Carmy is in front of the couch again, and he leans him down, making sure he doesn’t fall back to harshly and nesting him against the back cushions. He would do it all the time with Tiff when she had downed one too many, and she would laugh you’re such a fucking gentleman, and then, more often than not, spread her sweaty thighs and let him take her there, kneeling on the plush carpet he hated and sinking over and over in the blessed heath of her body. Of course, that was a different couch – a way better one, no shit. 

And then, distracted as he is by the memory, he glances at Carmy’s slouched frame, looking where he would have if he’d been his drunken not-yet-ex-wife – and freezes. 

Carmy’s hard. 

Like, not half-hard, not even getting to the point; he’s fully there, his kitchen scrubs are tented in a way that’s downright obscene, the blue fabric already darkening at the tip, where, Richie guesses, some precum is probably leaking, drawing a small wet spot. When he raises his gaze again and meets Carm’s there’s a second of Mexican standoff: the younger man must have been aware of this for at least some time, but it only now dawns on him that Richie knows.  

For once in his whole life, the life of a yapper, Richie doesn’t know what to say. 

“Uh”, he manages in the end, when it’s clear that Carmy isn’t the one that will put them out of their misery. He’s buried his face in his hands again and his neck is so flushed it almost glows in the crude light of Richie’s chandelier – which, of course, is a bare lamp hanging by a thread.  

His erection is wavering now, but barely. Richie’s brain cannot for the life of him conjure what the fuck is wrong with him, and why he’s still watching intently.  

Something has started stirring below his belt as well, which is so fucking out of question he just has to deflect any way he can.  

That’s why he, while horrified, finds himself asking “Wanna, uh, talk about it?” 

Carmy’s out of it, has been for the past hour or so, and Richie knows; but even in that headspace he sometimes gets into, where only rage and self deprecation and anguish seem to reach him, the present situation must be so appalling that there’s no way for it to go above his head. And he actually snort-laughs, still not taking his hands away from his eyes. 

Carmy’s eyes are almost unfairly blue. Like, why would someone need that exact shade for? To pair with his dickhead vintage denim? 

“About what, fucker?” Carmy barks, which is ok. It’s about as normal a reaction as he could be having right now. “Me being so fucking repressed and wind up I get hard from you touching me? Congratulations, Jerimovich. Have a field day with this, go tell Fak, Cicero and the whole circus.” 

Richie lets himself fall back on the couch, in a spot where he doesn’t have to touch Carmy. It’s like with a wild animal, or somebody on crystal meth. Not to anybody’s fucking surprise, Richie has much more expertise in the second field.  

“You really think I am that much of an asshole?” Richie slurs slowly, dragging his own fingers through his hair.  

“Could have fooled me”, the other bites back. He’s got a point, and Richie knows. He’s not been making life any fucking easier for Carm – it’s mutual, sure, but isn’t he supposed to be the adult in this situation? The older adult, that’s it. 

A better adult than he currently is. 

“I’ll keep my trap shut”, Richie scoffs, and if he was being honest there would be much more to it – he will, proven that Carmen doesn’t blabber about how Richie himself feels an increasing stiffness under his sweatpants.  

And then, just like they’re both fucking mind-readers, and maybe knowing each other since one was born and the other was starting to surreptitiously jack off at night makes them such, Carm’s stupid light blue eyes are scanning Richie’s body, and they find what they’re looking for. 

Richie never wears briefs in bed, so the only thing shielding his increasingly straining dick from view is the flimsy grey fabric of his sweats. It does look pretty good, if he says so himself – sometimes, when he’s basking in too much Bud Lite and self loathe, Richie wonders if Tiff stuck around longer than she would have intended to because of how good a fuck he is. She’s not the first to have told him such; it’s always been like this, women, even the hot ones, ashamed to be seen with him in public because he’s a high-strung, broke loser, but eager for him to get his hands on them as soon as they’ve sampled the product.  

He’s hung, and knows how to make a lady feel wanted. Mikey always told him that, for all that Polish crap he’d inherited from his folks, like how good he tolerates vodka, there’s some bona-fide Italian stallion in him. 

Sure, it was just shitting crap back and forth with friends – Richie’s about as straight as a ramrod. He loves women; everything about having sex with women is so intoxicating, their smooth, buttery skin, the softness of their hips when one grabs them firmly to sink into the piece of Heaven that’s hidden between their thighs, their hair brushing one’s chest when they top. He’s not Mikey, not the macho-at-all-costs kind, and usually can admit if another man is somehow attractive, but that’s it. 

And yet, here he is. His best friend’s dead, he’s hurting, confused and alone, so fucking alone, and the only thing he’s ever owned has been awarded to somebody he’s mashed carrots for when he was weaning and Donna was too out of it to feed him. Now, that specific someone is spread out on his couch, indubitably in need of some human touch, probably horny, and Richie, despite himself, is starting to feel the same. 

It doesn’t help that, when he dares to look up and meet Carmy’s gaze, he finds out the other’s almost drooling.  

The Noma-trained next fucking star is looking at Richie’s crotch like it’s a dish prepared by a Michelin star chef. Carmy actually licks his lips, and Richie just about loses it on the spot. 

“Fuck, man” he whispers, and Richie’s blood is travelling fast towards a very specific place, which leaves his brain mostly unguarded.  

“Like what you see?”, he taunts, voice dropping to what Tiff called his bed tone. He must have fallen asleep on the couch, and this must be some sort of wild dream provided by exhaustion, caffeine and sexual frustration. 

The impression is only reinforced when Carm kneels on the cushion, right in front of him, and, without asking for permission, without as much as acknowledging  that Richie’s is still in the room, he yanks his pants down and leaves him naked below the navel, his cock an angry red, resting to the crease of his groin. He’s not  fully hard yet, but he’s getting there, plumpness increasing by the second. He’s more of a grower than a shower; when he was completely erect, many of his past  sex partners have stared at him with saucepan-huge eyes, worried it wouldn’t fit. Carmy, he realizes with a tingle from the bottom of his spine, doesn’t look like  he’s anxious about letting it inside of him. He merely looks hungry.  

The part of Richie that’s not completely gone, lost in a thick haze of hate, desire and fear, has him blinking and staring at the man in front of him,  like he’s only now taking in how much of a weird situation they’re in. He’s leaning against the couch’s armrest, half-sitting up, with his old white tee on and sweatpants rolled  down almost to his knees, crotch exposed, cock stiffening up by the second. In front of him, Carm is sitting on his heels, still in that fucking kitchen uniform, chest heaving, the obvious outline of his hard shaft pointing forward.  

“Uh, Carm -” Richie stutters. He feels so heated up his neck is probably beet red. “What is – I mean, are we -”  

Carmen’s expression is something Richie is not sure has ever seen from him, jaw almost slacked, lids heavy. There’s a bead of sweat rolling down his temple, and Richie is hit by a load of bricks by the intensity with which he wants to lick it. He distantly wonders if that deathly ailment he has wished for so many times has finally exploded, and he’s got some kind of sudden, early-onset dementia. 

“I want that.” Carmy replies, his voice gravelly but steady and frankly sexier than it has any right to be. It takes Richie a bewildering second to realize that he is pointing at Richie’s erection, like it’s a fucking blueberry muffin he’s buying from Costco. “Inside me. Now.” 

“Whoa, cuz, I -” 

“No cuz right now”, grumbles Carmy, and he’s got a fairly good point. Then he darts forward and dives into Richie’s mouth, pulling him in for a sloppy, uncoordinated kiss.  

The increasingly small part of Richie’s brain that’s not in shambles registers how different it is from kissing a woman. Women are soft, all over: hairless skin, bouncy tongue, moist, luscious lips. Carmy’s jaw has been shaved raw the way he always does it, for mere practical purposes – cheap razor, little to no foam, razor burns littered below his sideburns. His lips are chapped, his tongue darts inside Richie’s mouth like it’s a fucking competitive sport, strong and unrelenting, it swipes against his soft palate, his teeth.  

Richie’s not entirely sure he’s reciprocating until he realizes his arms have moved by their own volition, and he’s grabbed Carmen by the hips,  so fiercely he’s surely going to leave bruises. Suits the fucker well, he supposes.  

Carmy’s big, warm hand has gripped Richie by the nape, almost too hard, and when they separate to draw in shaky, stuttering breaths their foreheads sort  of lean against each other in sync, without much thought on either part. 

“So you’ve, hum – done this?” Richie is aware he sounds like he’s totally out of his depth, because goddamn, he is.  

Carmy scoffs. “What, you think I am a thirty-two-year-old virgin?” 

In any other circumstance, Richie would spew venom in the shape of a witty retort, something like he wouldn’t put it past Carmy to be the kind of freak that only gets off by reading French cooking books, but right now there’s more pressing matters ahead.  

“Oh, ok, big boy. I meant, with men.” 

Carmy hasn’t stopped touching him, not since their mouths collided: his warm tongue is sliding down Richie’s jaw towards his ear, and then he’s sucking his lobe so wantonly it feels like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to taste. Richie is not half hard anymore. His cock is almost aching.  

When he hears the not-quite-question, though, Carmen huffs out a laugh, and it’s not a pretty thing. Not as much as it’s stark and vicious. “I’m gay, fucktard.” He pants, dipping his mouth towards Richie’s pulse point and biting into it, hard enough to hurt. Richie curses and slaps the other’s thigh, which backfires, because, as soon as he touches the firm muscles, a heatwave sweeps him off his feet.  

It’s not enough to deter him completely, though, and the information wrecks its way through whatever little morsel of him is still processing concepts. Carmy is gay? And as soon as the idiotic question forms in his mind, he realizes how actually it all makes much more sense, now.  

He remembers the casually cruel way in which Mikey would hurl frocio and sissy and faggot as insults, and everyone would just laugh because that was the way it went. Cicero’s creepy old guy jokes, all his talk about babes and getting that pussy, and Carmen blending in the background, which Richie had always pinned on his pathological shyness (not that the young Bear is being very shy right now). Donna’s screeches at how cute the occasional gay character was on tv, like she was talking about a guinea pig in a bow.  

Carmy’s need to run away from all of that – away from them. 

“Shit, Carm, I didn’t -” 

“Of course you didn’t fucking know. Why would you?” There’s virtually no heath in Carmy’s words now, as he scrambles and twitches to pull his top off, peeling the cheap polyester from sweaty skin. Richie, like, really looks at him, because where’s the point in hiding now, and takes in his chiseled muscles, the taut expanse of his chest, sprinkled with sandy hair and a few tattoos that definitely weren’t there ten years ago, when they would hang out together in the Berzattos’ backyard in their swimming trunks. Richie’s scattered brain takes him back to the July languor, to the obsessive, never ending rhythm Donna’s acrylics would tap on the side of her wine glass. To Mikey screaming at anyone who’d try and help him with the grill, while complaining that he had to do everything by himself, while they sat on their lazy asses. 

“Dunno, just...I mean, I’ve known you for your entire life -” 

“Have you, Richard?” Carmy retorts, but it doesn’t sound mean. Just vaguely hurt, and also...horny?  

Richie’s eyes have wandered to the other’s hips, to the neat V sign his muscles draw where the waist of his scrubs lays. Carmy’s got a little bit of a happy trail, and Richie realizes he wants to follow it with his tongue. If somebody asked him (not that they would, he’s snubbed Yvonne’s suggestion that he should see a psychiatrist), he would probably pin this moment as the one where he’s gone completely insane.  

“Carm, I -” 

But Bear has other plans. He claims Richie’s mouth again, hungry, almost desperate, his big-ass hands slithering under Richie’s t-shirt and finding their way up his ribs. His tongue is so unforgiving the only thing the older man can do is yield, like he’s never done before Carmy in all those months of fighting and screaming and butting heads.  

“You said I could ask you for help”, Carmy pants against his lips, his hot, stale breath tickling Richie’s face. This is how Rome fell, he can’t help but think, and then Mikey’s voice is in his head: how are you supposed to know shit, cuz, my folks were stabbing Ceasar while yours were still swinging on lianas.  

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. What would he -  

“I’ll tell you what you can do to help me”, Carmen is unrelenting, pupils so blown that the stupid, dreamy blue of his eyes is drowning in black. A bead of sweat is trembling over his pulse point, and Richie is many things, but not good at resisting temptation.  

He bends forward and licks it off, the salty taste invading his mouth, the coarse texture of the other’s skin uneasy at first – he would never tell anyone or even admit that he thought of it, he has a daughter, Chrissake, but it’s like women are made for it, all soft and pliant and palatable. With men, it seems, there’s a weird  fight about this as well.  

Or maybe it’s just Carmy’s emotionally constipated ass – Carmy, who’s now straight up moaning, and the message travels to Richie’s dick quicker than he imagined sound could be.  

“You can give it to me, man. Hard, and fast, and be an asshole about it”, Carmy grabs Richie’s cock all of a sudden, tight, a vicious grip that should be painful – and it is, but it’s also something else. “Which I would expect you’d be a natural at.” 

Richie’s soul has never been so torn before. A part of him – the ugly, animalistic side, the one that’s still rock-hard even after all the banter – has never wanted anything more than to grab Carmy’s stupidly pretty hair, yank his head back and bite his Adam’s apple. He knows how to do it, knows how to be rough in bed – with women, that is, but why would it be any different? Food&Wine’s new upcoming slut is literally asking for it, red lips parted, cheeks pink, a face and a body that are begging to be ravaged.  

But there’s the other side. The one that’s so terrified about this whole deal that he wouldn’t put past himself to throw up for the sheer nerves. The one that cannot, for the life of him, stop picturing Mikey’s expression, his betrayal.  

“You - you sure, man?” It’s an idiotic question, and he hasn’t even acknowledged the other’s jab.  

Carmy sighs and he closes his eyes, like it’s easier for him this way. For Richie, it certainly is. “It’s one of the very few things that make me stop thinking”, he hisses, a sound of frustration and lust and raw sincerity.

“Sex?” Richie asks, voice gravelly. 

“I was gonna say, a big, fat cock pounding into me.” 

Richie almost chokes on his own spit. Carmy’s hand hasn’t stopped for a second; he’s still fondling him, not really jerking him off, not yet, but feeling him up with  his callous fingers. Slowly, with an uncertainty he hasn't really felt past his disgraceful teenage years (a time Carm can’t remember, because he was a literal toddler), Richie jerks his hips forward and leans into the touch.  

It’s like the elastic band has snapped, the dam has broken, the barrier has fell and every other cheap analogy under the motherfucking sun. Carmy growls, literally bares his teeth and dives forward, colliding with Richie’s neck and sucking on his pulse point in a way that’s both vicious and so erotic the older man has his knees buckling and tumbles backwards on the couch.  

“Jesus fuck, Bear”, Richie hisses. The armrest’s stabbing his lower back and he’s so gonna feel it later, but right now he couldn’t care less if he tried. All of his blood has travelled south and is pumping in his strained erection, skin chafing as Carm strokes him dry, on his knees between Richie’s now spread legs. 

“Ouch, fuck!” Richie grunts, and the other man grins – for a second, they’re back, before that fucking gunshot, before Carmy even left, before Tiff and Eva and all that’s happened in the past ten years, when they were just kids killing time in the garage, passing a joint and laughing. Richie’s a weird mix of nostalgic and so horny he fears his skin might bust.  

Then Carmy spits on his palm, a thread of saliva connecting his red, wanton mouth with his fist, and is back to jacking Richie off with a brutal pace. The obscene sound of skin slapping on skin reverberates in the tiny, overheated room.  

And it’s not like Richie has much of a choice, maybe he never truly had one; it’s this way between them, always trying to one-up each other, always unrelenting. Never confrontations, always screaming matches. Losing one’s foothold to the other never an option.  

So, he struggles to regain his balance and as soon as he is in a semi-comfortable position again, his hand is at Carmy’s waist, tugging down his scrubs and pants  with an awkward but charged motion. Carm holds his breath, like he’s snapping out of it, like even if they’ve been at this for roughly half an hour now, Richie’s cock out and leaking, he didn’t think the other would actually give all the way in. But retreating is not on the table anymore.  

And there it is, Carmy’s dick, red and angry, hanging between thighs that frankly have no business being this thick, this strong. It’s the first time Richie’s ever seen another man’s erection in real life and not in porn. He’s maybe delusional at this point, but he can almost smell Carmy’s arousal, a raw, manly scent that should be off-putting, but somehow makes him even more feral.  

The Bear’s eyes lock into his, brash and meek at the same time, like he’s challenging Richie to shit the bed and run away, while trying to communicate something deeper, something that hovers unspoken between the two of them. Tentatively, slowly, the way one would do if he was trying not to scare a wild animal, Richie licks his palm as well and takes Carm in his fist.  

Not to brag, obviously, but Richie fancies himself as an expert in spanking his monkey; after all, he’s done it maybe once a day since he was what, eleven? Now it’s much less frequent, maybe a couple of times a week, because even if one doesn’t grow up, he can’t really avoid getting old. However, his train of thought is derailing again, likely in self-defense, so he doesn’t have to concentrate on his not-quite-little-brother's cock in his hand.  

He starts with quick, unforgiving strokes, bending his wrist like he does when he touches himself. Carmy’s skin is taut and velvety, his body radiating heat. It’s weird, but kinda...doesn’t feel half bad? Especially considering how the other’s grip is unrelenting on his shaft, sparks of pleasure tingling at Richie’s spine. 

“Not this teenage bullshit”, Carmy spits between clenched teeth. 

“Why, you wanna tell me you’re not enjoying yourself?”  

Always, always giving each other a hard time. No other way to communicate; Richie has broken the scheme some days earlier. You’re all I got, cuz. Would they be here right now if he hadn’t said it?  

“Man, fuck me. Please. Please.”  

And maybe it’s Carmy’s voice, the sheer, unapologetic need that seeps out of it; maybe it’s his words. He doesn’t think he’s heard a “please” from Carmen in the past ten years, maybe even twenty, not since he was an awkward teenager that begged Mikey and his best friend to let him tag along one of their escapades. The recollection is almost unbearable, and Richie is inches away from bolting through the door and never coming back. Carmy probably gets some kind of weird-ass perception, or maybe it’s just that mind-reading shit again.

Or better, they used to. Richie is aware that Carmy only spat out that “do you, Richard?” to hurt him earlier, but he can’t help dwelling on it, ruminating that maybe he was right. Who is this man who just stopped touching his junk, and whose sloppy strokes he’s already missing like they were oxygen? 

“Bedroom”, he manages to croak, because he’s out of it, but not as far gone as not to feel the sharp pain starting to settle in his back. His doctor has offered him oxy once, and turning it down has been one of the hardest things he’s ever done, but he doesn’t regret it. Kinda. 

Carmy gets up with the infuriating ease of youth and stares at him, expectantly; Richie only then realizes that Carmy obviously knows where he lives but has never been inside his house, not this one, since he’s not really been around in the aftermath of Tiff and Richie’s divorce. Mikey has seen this flat, maybe three or four times; Richie had just moved in when he’d blown his brains out. 

Stop thinking about Mikey.  

He springs to his feet as well, struggling not to show any distress, not to grimace, and pulls up his trackies not to trip over his own feet like an idiot. His rock-hard dick complains loudly when he covers it up. 

Richie’s apartment is fucking small, just above the line of what he can afford, which is little more than a garage. It can’t be more than ten steps towards the bedroom, but it feels like a three-mile hike, every stomp of his bare feet to the floor thundering in his brain like the last turning back point. 

Which, he isn’t gonna turn back, and a part of him knows. It’s his ugly side, the self-serving one. 

Carmen merely follows him, silent and tense. He’s kicked his trainers, scrubs and briefs on the floor, and he’s just parading around like Winnie the fucking Pooh.  

There it is, that odd mixture of depravation and innocence that has Richie so goddamn weak.  

Richie’s bed is unmade, which he shouldn’t be embarrassed about, because it’s stupid o’clock in the morning and what was he supposed to be doing before Carmy barged in, if not sleeping? His sheets are also kinda gross; he doesn’t change them as often as he should, but then, who does? 

Except Sugar and Tiff and yeah, grown ass, well-adjusted women, apparently. 

Carmen doesn’t seem perturbed by any means. Richie has no idea what his house looks like, how he lives these days. His scrubs kinda smell like Donna’s fabric softener, though, which, pathetic as it is, to Richie is the scent of home.  

They barely make it to the bed before Carm is kissing him again, hot and deep, his big-ass hands tugging at the hem of Richie’s tee and trying to get it off him in a feverish way, like they’re running out of time. And maybe is Schizophrenia, by this time he’s grown to accept it, but there’s something deeply intoxicating in being so wanted. 

“Off, off, off”, Carmy grumbles against his lips, while, sloppy and uncoordinated, he yanks at the ancient, worn thing.  

“Damn, Bear, I ain’t gonna run away, chillax”, Richie sputters, and he takes off the tee himself, tossing it fuck-knows-where on the floor.  

Their state of undress is complementary now, which in another situation would be funny: Richie’s shirtless, Carmy still has his scrub top but he’s naked from the waist down, cock leaking against his stomach.  

Any humor is knocked flat out of Richie when the other pushes him backwards, so he falls on the old, crappy mattress; Carm starts going to town on his chest, sucking and licking and biting his left nipple so hard it forces strangled cry out of a remote part of Richie’s insides. 

“Shit, Carmen, oh shit.”  

Richie doesn’t know if one can die from blue balls, but he feels like if somebody doesn’t touch his cock soon, he’s gonna pass out. He reaches down himself, eager for at least some friction between his thighs, but Carmy actually has the fucking audacity to slap his hand away. 

“What the fuck?” 

“Can’t have you cum before you put it in. Your old ass is not gonna last two rounds.” It’s supposed to come out mean, but it’s so desperate Richie can hear himself moan, like it’s somebody else.  

“D’ya have lube?”  

Right, yes. Lube. This kind of sex, this thing he’s never, ever tried, except once with Tiff, and it’s ended in a vortex of apologies and reassurances, is not gonna work without. But how was he supposed to know that Food&Wine’s new upcoming weirdo was gonna pop by his house at two in the morning and ask for it in such a way that made denying him as impossible as strolling through the ocean?  

“No, you pervert.” 

“Ah, yeah”, Carmy cackles, low and dangerous. He’s bona fide straddling Richie now, his bare dick rubbing against the other’s still clothed one. “That whole alpha male I’m not gay shit.” 

Richie could bite back; he knows how, because that’s the downside of basically being family, being able to always hit where it hurts. But he doesn’t find it within him to try and be mean, not with his brainpower shut off by sheer horniness.  

He shoves Carmy, but it’s almost languid, infused with a sweetness he didn’t even think he had in him, and fumbles through the bedside drawer until he retrieves a foil-wrapped condom and an old ass jar of Vaseline. 

“That for cracks in your hands?” Carmen asks, snarky, but he has to know it is, at least to a degree: they both work in a fucking restaurant, always elbow-deep in soapy water, always under the scalding hot faucet, never toweling properly dry, skin still damp in the freezing Chicago wind. Richie’s hands get so fucking dry and flaky that sometimes they bleed.  

He merely looks at Carmy, heavy-lidded and stern, and somehow the other gets the memo. 

If only it was always so easy.  

Carmy tears the jar out of Richie’s grip and uncorks it with steady fingers, which is a marvel in itself, since Richie is shaking so throughtly he feels like goddamn California. Maybe, he wonders, it’s something that comes with being a top-notch chef, like, you have to keep your cool and chop fucking carrots paper thin even if you’re dying inside, or if you are so hard you could crack nutshells with your dick.  

He almost laughs, like he’s fucking mental. Which, by the way. 

Again, though, he stops right on tracks as Carmy scoops a decent-sized dollop of Vaseline out of the container and greases his pointer with it, getting up on his knees right between Richie’s spread-out legs. He reaches back with the same expression of lost, unwavering concentration he has when he’s testing out some new weird-ass recipe from one of his pretentious cookbooks, and Richie just about dies on the spot when he understands what’s going on, when he sees the other’s brow furrow in discomfort as his finger sinks between his ass cheeks. 

Richie can’t kick off his trackies fast enough, almost combusting with the need to be fully naked, to press his skin to Carmen’s now, now, like there will be no other chance, and it likely won’t, this is too twisted even for them, and they’re nothing if they ain’t a pair of sick fucks. He scrambles to get up as well, sitting on his heels, facing Carmy as he slicks his middle finger as well and starts fucking himself in earnest, raw, little yelps escaping his chest while he rocks back and forth. His eyes are closed, mouth agape; his curly hair is plastered to his forehead and he looks so ruined, so gone, that any residual restraint Richie had is pushed to the back of his mind and he lounges forward, desperate to taste Carmy’s sweat again like a fucking pervert. 

He licks a long stripe from the other’s temple to his shoulder, and Carmy moans, such a dirty sound Richie’s surely going to Hell for enjoying it so much.  

“Fuck, yeah, Bear, lemme hear you.” Richie talks a lot in bed, which, no shit, he’s always been a yapper and will probably go to his (early) grave ranting and rambling no-stop. It comes easy to him, and it has seemed to do the trick in the past: everyone he’s ever fucked more than a couple of times has begged him to shut up sooner or later, but never as they were doing the deed. He knows he’s good at this, his voice gets low and raspy and he isn’t ashamed of nearly anything, so he, like, puts himself out there. Right on clock, Carmy moans louder, a high-pitched thing.  

Richie dives further south and licks Carmen’s nipple, hard as a pebble on the broad expanse of his pec. Another half-cry makes its way out of Food&Wine’s best upcoming noise machine. 

“You think you’re ready for me?” Carmy has added a third finger and is speeding his movements up, producing a quenching sound that has Richie weak. His cock is leaking so much he’s afraid he’ll, like, put it in and come, like a thirteen-year-old. 

He was actually fourteen when Carmy was born. The fleeting thought gives him a hot flash of nausea and self-deprecation which immediately drowns in the thick haze of lust. 

“Didn’t you want, and I quote, a big, fat cock?” 

Carmen merely whines in response, like he’s at loss for words, like he always gets towards the end of their most brutal fights: until some months ago he didn’t stand a chance of overpowering Richie physically, and yet, it was always him who did the shoving or the grabbing first. Verbal banter has never been easy for Carm, he’s good at observing his surroundings and finding the weak points, not so much at dragging them out under the sun. Richie’s always done most of the talking, and he’s discovering yet again that he doesn’t mind.  

Carmen’s three fingers sink knuckle-deep inside him by now, and just when Richie’s about to tease him once more, to be a piece of shit about the Bear being afraid to take his dick, he turns around and props himself on all fours, ass on full display as he arches his back like a fucking camgirl.  

Richie can’t help but grab a handful of Carmy’s firm, hot flesh, digging his nails in his muscle and tearing yet another beautiful moan out of him. His hole is slightly puffy from the stimulation and it clenches around nothing, and forgive him, Lord, but Richie’s never seen anything so obscenely hot outside his computer screen. 

He tears the condom open with his teeth, which is a little juvenile, but who the fuck cares anyway, and the mere act of rolling it on his long-neglected erection is enough to make him scream.  

“Lube it up, sucker”, Carmy barks, all mean and bossy, but he just can’t hide how gone he is.  

“You with me, Bear?”, asks Richie, and it’s rare that he even addresses Carmen without any hint of cruelty or sarcasm. Right now, though, he needs to hear it, he needs him to be fully on board; not to accept him, but to want him. And it doesn’t matter if Carm’s shown up at his door at two in the morning, has kissed him, fondled his balls and explicitly ask him this; it takes two to tango, not one and a half. 

“Yeah, yeah, Richie, just do it, come on”, Carmy whines, his ass wiggling in the air – an invitation, if there ever was one.  

But no one said Richie couldn’t have a little bit of fun. 

“Gotta be more specific, kid. What do you want?”  

Carm scoffs in exasperation, but it’s mostly for show. “You, ok, nerd? I want you. Fuck me, Richie – or do you need, like, a written invitation?” 

As far as consent goes, Richie fancies himself as a gentleman; now, Carmen’s response is what he’d classify as eager consent. So, without further ado, he lets the blunt head of his cock slide along Carmy’s crack – another moan, this one low and breathless, an unholy thing – and then he presses it into his entrance. 

No matter the prep, it does get him a while to slither in, as it’s so different from pussy – he meets a lot of resistance, and almost gets scared, because in spite of everything, in spite of himself, he would hate to hurt Carmy, somebody he’s been protecting ever since he first laid his eyes on him, almost thirty years ago. When he’s sure the strangled sounds that reach his ears are from pleasure and not pain, he gains a little confidence and pushes forward, inch by inch, and Jesus fuck, he feels like he’s about to die and cum and cry all at once, because Carmen’s so tight, so hot, he sucks in Richie’s cock like it’s water in the desert, like a capital vice he cannot live without.  

“Christ, Bear”, Richie blabbers, praying to a God he doesn’t know if he believes in anymore, but names frequently despite the First Commandment, that he’s gonna manage to distract himself so he doesn’t nut in three seconds like a moron, “It’s unbelievable. You feel so good, so incredible, you’re amazing.” He is bottoming out now, he got there, slow and steady, and his pelvic bone rests against Carmy’s perfect ass. Maybe mental illness isn’t the explanation, after all; Maybe Richie actually did die in his sleep from some freakish-ass aneurysm or something, and this is Heaven. 

Or Hell, it’s not like he’s decided yet. 

“Fuck, Richie, just move already”, Carmy cries, sweat running down his neck and glistening on his broad shoulders like a translucent shroud.  

Richie moves. He’s only human, after all. 

He immediately sets an unrelenting pace, snapping his hips back and forth with a force that’s partly vicious and partly a consequence of being so riled up he thought he was gonna explode. His thrusts echo in the small room, the noise of his hips hitting Carmy’s ass loud and obscene.  

Tiff was a big fan of fucking to music, but sometimes, Richie thinks, the dirty side of sex – noises and grunts and pants and bodily fluids, smells and flavors – is beautiful in all of its rawness. Right now, Carmy is squirming in his grip, broken wails punctuating the night (early morning, by now; how did they get there, again?), the scent of kitchen and cigarettes and body odor almost offensive if it wasn’t so addictive, so grossly arousing.  

Maybe Richie is a pervert. 

He certainly’s talking like one. Not that it matters, when he rasps “Yeah, Bear, yes, you wanted it and I’m giving it to you, I’m being fucking nice, ain’t I?” in Carmy’s ear and he cries, beautiful and ruined, non-verbally asking for more.  

“So nice that I’m gonna let you touch your cock. Be good for me, Bear, c’mon, jerk off until you come while I fuck you.” 

Carmy’s moans are erratic by now, some unintelligible over the creaks of the old-ass bed, the rhythmic slapping of Richie almost pulling out and then pushing all the way in, and every time it’s like a Cubs’ third base, like when a line of coke hits, like coming home. Carm grabs his purple erection sloppily, starts stroking it hard and fast; there’s no need for lube, not even for spit, as precome is leaking off the tip, a fucking fountain. Richie’s close, dangerously so, but there’s no way in the world he’s finishing before Carm. No, he wants – he needs Food&Wine’s best upcoming miracle to tip over the edge first, to come on his dick like he, Richie, is actually good at something, like there’s finally a game where he has a fat chance of winning. 

And he does win, the taste of it bittersweet as Carmen screams fucking murder and explodes, long streaks of semen painting his belly, his hand, staining the worn, already crusty sheets. 

Richie fucks him through it, tears almost swelling at the corner of his eyes because it’s that good, Carmen’s hole tightening around him so hard he panics for a  second and then comes, comes abruptly and hard, his brain going offline for a full minute as he collapses over Carmy’s sweaty back and nests his forehead against the curve of his neck, breathing in deep to store away all of that scent that’s grease and cheap 3-in-1 shampoo and drugstore body spray, that’s Carmy, the only person he’d probably ever be able to throttle with his bare hands, the only person he’s got.  

A chick from Quebec who had great boobs once rode Richie while she told him that the French call the orgasm “la petit mòrt”, the little death, and he definitely can see why right now.  

Richie pulls out reluctantly, taking off the condom and tying it before he tosses it on the floor, a problem for his future self. 

“We should get cleaned up”, Carmy slurs, clearly still basking in the post-nut bliss, eyes closed, shoulders littered with red splotches where Richie’s been rough or where he’s given him beard burn. He’s so beautiful like this, defenseless and real, without that fucking facade he’s worn since he got back, carefully constructed with fancy-ass words and Noma shit and everything Richie and Mikey didn’t get to experience, because what did the Boss say? This town rips the bones from your back, it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap. Fuck, Richie’s so tired and hollow he can only think in daddy rock lyrics.  

“Yeah. You’re kinda disgusting.” 

“Says who”, and it comes out not quite flat, but teasing. Somewhere deep inside Richie, in the place where he stores all the things he cannot let on the surface, littered with the words of prayers he no longer says and the faces of people he no longer sees, shines a tiny, idiotic glimmer of hope. 

Like something good can come outta this, after all.  

“Bear, we – I mean, what -” 

“What are we? You serious, right now?” 

Richie sits up with considerable effort and shoves Carmen, who’s still lying on his side, cum drying up on his hand and belly. It should be much more off-putting than it is.  

“That’s not what I was fucking gonna say. You think I’m what, some high school girl with the guy who popped her cherry her after prom?”  

“Damn, chillax. By the way, it’s like, peak old people slang.” 

“Get fucked”, Richie retorts, but without much heat. “I just wanted to ask what the fuck we’re doing. Not now”, he adds hastily as Carmen’s brows travel up his forehead. “I mean, in life. With The Beef, and everything. Where are we going? Christ, do we even have like, an excuse for a plan?” 

Carmy rolls on his back with a sigh, one of his muscular arms lying over his face. Richie realizes with a pang of acute desperation that he already misses seeing his eyes. “Again your million-dollar question, man. Did Tiff fall for your smooth pillow talk?” 

Richie should be pissed that he’s teasing him about Tiff – hell, that he’s even saying her name in the first place. It’s low and it’s cruel, but then again, it’s not the worst any of them have done tonight. “Did they teach you to deflect at that pansy ass school?” 

Carmy snorts. Not quite laughter, but not a hurt sound, either. “Nah, learned it here. Y’know charity begins at home, right?” 

“Mmmh.” 

“Being assholes does, as well.”  

Richie has located a battered pack of cigarettes somewhere around his nightstand, and he always keeps a lighter in his pocket, even when he’s sleeping, like it’s just an extension of his arm. He rummages through his trackies until he finds it. “Want one?” 

Carmy takes it. “I’m quitting, cuz.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

They smoke in silence, the smell mixing with the already heavy scent of sweat, sex and stale air. Richie should be ashamed for not having opened the windows in, like, a month; he would, if he was with a chick. Doesn’t matter with Carmy, though.  

“I guess we’re just, like, freestyling it”, the Bear says in the end, the cigarette butt limp in his hand. “Taking it day by day, I mean. Tryina stay afloat. Envying a dead man because we didn’t pull the trigger first.” 

Richie’s stomach does something weird – a small somersault that he disguises as a hiccup. Fuck, what did he just do? Mikey would tear him a new one.  

But Mikey’s gone.  

“That freestyle thing”, he ventures to ask, low, like he doesn’t wanna hear himself – which, he doesn’t. “We’re doing it together, right?” 

Carmy laughs this time, an ugly, sincere sound, all up his nose – the laughter they would tease him for all those years ago. He’s been so conscious about it for ages that Richie has barely heard it since making fun of him for it, and when it deflagrates, it’s like a glimmer of gold in the muddy bed of a river. “You ever gave any of us a fucking choice?” 

Richie scoffs and puts out his cig in the mug he uses as a makeshift ashtray. It has world’s best boss printed on the side; a mock gift from Fak, of course. “I think we’re past choices.” 

“Woah, deep.” 

“Go jump in a lake.”  

They will have to get up eventually, and to change the linens – Richie's gonna take full advantage of the fact that somebody else is in his apartment, maybe even have Carm scrap together something for breakfast. They will have to wash up and put clothes on and go back to whatever they were doing ‘till yesterday – freestyling, that is. They will probably even have to talk, to discuss what happened, to go over some stuff again (Carmy’s gay? Since when?).  

Right now, though, it’s half past four and there’s still time for a little self-deception – time to rest and regroup and to straighten their shoulders to face whatever’s being thrown at them.  

Time to think in Springsteen lyrics: and we made a promise we swore we’d always remember. No retreat, baby, no surrender. 

Richie considers sharing, then realizes that he’d rather chop his own balls off than make Carmy think that he’s referred to him as “baby”.  

Even if the little snoring sounds that he started making are stirring up a place deep inside Richie, one that’s dark and buried, where the wild things are.