Chapter Text
“No, Christ, don't—” Carmy hears himself say.
She’s already halfway to the door, but she stops and turns back toward him. She looks freaked out and he needs her not to, needs to convince her not to open that door and call for the person that Carmy most wants to avoid in this moment.
“Don’t,” he repeats. “Please.” God he sounds so fucking pathetic and her eyes are so huge, a deep dark bottomless brown, scanning his face as if she’s looking for clues.
He scrambles up, his bare feet pins and needles and fire and ice. He reaches out like he’s going to touch her wrist, but he can’t quite make himself make contact. She looks down at his outstretched arm, and he drops it like it’s made of lead. Like he’s a robot instead of a person.
His mind reaches for her name and can’t find it, fumbles around like a fool in the dark, so he just says, “Chef, please. Wait. You don’t need to get—” he breaks off, his throat closing.
She must be able to hear how desperate he is. She casts a longing glance at the door, which represents an out for the problem that he is to her, now. That he is to everyone.
“What’s— what’s wrong?” she asks.
He starts to laugh. He knows it’s creepy, but what’s wrong is so overwhelming, encompassing, gigantic. Trying to name it, to make the actual words come out of his actual mouth? Fucking hilarious.
“Nothing, Chef,” he says.
She scrubs a hand through her short black hair and tries again. “Want me to call someone for you? Like, a friend or anything?”
Talk about hilarious. He doesn't have a friend in this kitchen, in the whole city, the state, the time zone even.
He just shakes his head and laughs more, and then tries to make himself stop. “No, it's— I’m fine, all right? I was just— half-asleep, or whatever. I’m awake now. It’s—”
“You were sleeping?” she asks in disbelief, her voice rising in pitch again. It’s four in the afternoon, the watery sun still high in the sky.
“Okay, um. Hold on a sec. Stay here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” He nods, too fast and too grateful, and she looks dubious as she starts to go back inside.
“Promise me you’ll stay here,” she repeats, looking over her shoulder, like she knows his promise isn’t worth anything. He gives it anyway.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’ll wait.”
Only after she walks away does he realize his feet are on fire and freezing at the same time. He glances down; they’re utterly gross, covered in black pavement sludge, cut and crusted over where they're not wet. Disgusting. It’s already March but the city’s still losing its battle against winter, old dirty snow hanging on in alleys and street corners that never see the sun, the wind still frigid and punishing.
Time slips for a few minutes and she’s back before Carmy even registers it, holding an ugly pair of sneakers from a spare locker and a pair of thick white athletic socks, somehow in a brand new plastic package.
She hands them to him and he takes them from her, but doesn’t put them on yet.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and she answers, “yes, Chef,” automatically.
They just stand there for a minute. Her pristine whites are blinding against everything else in the dingy alley. Carmy glances down at his ratty hoodie and sweatpants. At least he's wearing clothes.
“Um, so, Chef told me to take you home, and make sure you got there,” she says awkwardly.
A fresh wave of panic crashes over Carmy. “Fuck. Fuck. How’d he know I was out here?”
She shrugs. “Who knows. How does he know anything? He’s an asshole.”
Carmy scrubs at his eyes and whispers fuck again.
“It actually was… he was sort of okay about it? I don’t know, he was weird, but don’t worry about it. He gave me the night off to help you get home, and thank fuck for that, because Nosferatu is in a mood tonight and I was supposed to be on oyster prep. You’re doing me a favor.”
He ignores the last part, the shame of her trying to make him feel better even worse than the shame of her seeing him like this. It’s all starting to build into something too big to even look at straight on. But he can’t stop himself from asking, “He wanted you to help me? Is that what he said?”
“Uh, not exactly.” She’s avoiding Carmy's eyes just as much as he’s avoiding hers. “But he did say to take you home, exactly in those words, so I’m gonna do that.”
His traitor hands are shaking. It crawls up his arms to his shoulders, clamps around his throat. He tightens his jaw so his teeth won’t start chattering.
“Hey, are you sick? Like, maybe you have a fever or something — we can go over to urgent care. There’s one on 23rd, it’s only—”
“No!” he says, too forceful, and her eyebrows shoot up. He tries again: “Sorry, no, I’m not sick like that. I’m just cold and it’s, ah, a-anxiety. I have panic attacks sometimes but no doctors, fuck.”
Carmy can’t even imagine what a doctor would find in his body, Jesus, the million things wrong with him. The bleeding ulcer he’s sure he’s working on, his stomach eating itself, his throat corroded by acid, plus whatever the pack-a-day habit is doing to his lungs. No doctors.
This woman — whose name he still can’t remember, damn it — has a lot of questions, but he can tell she’s running out of them and starting not to know what to do. She's probably also running out of the patience he doesn’t deserve in the first place.
She finds one more: “Hey, do you want to come to my place?”
Carmy knows he should say no. He can’t — he shouldn’t — show this part of himself to anyone, let alone his own fucking employee. Christ. But he can’t make himself say it.
The pathetic thing is, he does, he really really does want to go to her place. He wants to go anywhere but back to his own apartment. Who knows how he left it, if he’d been sleepwalking so deeply that he made it to fucking Midtown without realizing. Probably the door’s wide open, the tv still on. Probably half his stuff is gone already.
He can’t face it.
So, somehow, he makes himself nod.
“Thank— wow, thank you, that would be. Uh. Where— where do you live?” He hopes this doesn’t sound creepy, like he’s hitting on her, or being some pathetic creep who’d fake whatever this is to try to worm his way into someone’s bed. Jesus. She can’t think that, right?
“Hell’s Kitchen. Not that far,” she says, still looking at him with that skeptical expression. “Why don’t you put those on” — she motions to the socks and shoes still in his hands — “and we’ll get out of here?”
“Y-yeah.” The socks are thick and warm, but his feet are still so numb he can barely feel them, and it's hard to shove them into the shoes, which are three sizes too big at least. They’re like pieces of meat strapped to his feet. Hams, or Cornish hens. Bile rises in his throat.
Don’t think about meat, dumbass, Mikey's voice says in his head. Don't think about flesh and bone and blood and fat and gristle. There’s nothing in his stomach to throw up, and dry heaving out here is the last thing he needs.
“Which train?” he asks, trying to swallow the extra spit out of his mouth. Fucking gross.
She looks him up and down and says, “I think we’re gonna spring for an Uber.”
He springs on his feet a little; they’re still numb, but it’s better to have them covered.
“An Uber? Ugh, don’t be nice to me.” He tries to smile, tries to show he’s joking, that he remembers how.
She smiles back, genuine, runs a hand through her hair again and pulls out her phone like it’s not big deal. Like none of this is that big a deal.
Something in him unclenches a little, somehow, and her name comes rushing back. Gen, short for Genevieve. Her resume comes back too: She’d been in their kitchen for a year or so, maybe a little longer. She’d started out making pancit and lumpia in her family’s Filipino spot somewhere in California, then CIA, then classical training in Paris and Barcelona. Au Pied de Cochon, Cafe de Flore, Caelis, Sensato.
She’d been an easy pick in the lineup of eager hopefuls who always applied for open positions at EMP — well qualified, a quick study, fast and efficient and good at thinking on her feet. A solid hire. And now he was going to her apartment to finish having his nervous breakdown, or whatever the fuck this was.
“Seriously, Gen,” he tries again. “Don’t go out of your way—“
“Okay fine, if you’re gonna be weird about it, then you can pay me back for the Uber. And it’s rush hour, so — surge rates, fucko,” she says lightly.
Carmy huffs out a laugh, surprised he still knows how, as she taps away at the app.
“Three minutes,” she says glancing up. “And don’t worry, you’ll find out — I’m not that nice.”
—
She’s wrong, though, she is really fucking nice. She unlocks her apartment door and holds it open as though having him over is a totally normal, regular thing. He follows her inside, pretending like him going over to a coworker’s apartment is also a totally normal, regular thing — when in fact he’s never done it before, ever, not one time.
Gen flicks on the lights and toes off her shoes, and he does the same. Right in front of him, hanging above the couch, is a big framed photo of her kissing a tall woman with a long braid at a pride parade, both of them wrapped in a rainbow flag.
Noticing him looking, she says, “That’s Carina. She moved out two months ago but I still haven't managed to take that down yet. Or, like, you know. Move on with my life in any meaningful way to speak of.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” she says quietly. “She got the cat and the Subaru.”
“Huh?”
Gen gives a rueful smile. “Nothing. Bad lesbian joke. We didn’t have a cat, or a Subaru. We didn’t have shit, honestly. I’m 28 years old and I feel like I’m barely an adult.”
“Why?”
“Why what, why am I not an adult? Because we were broke, and too busy to—“
“N-no, sorry, I mean, why’d you break up?” Carmy asks, cringing as he says it. That sounds weird, he doesn’t know why, but it’s obviously wrong.
She glances at him but answers anyway, both of them still facing the photo. “All the usual bullshit — you can probably guess. She’s in publishing and has regular hours, pretty much, so she could never understand why I was literally never home, and why I’m driving myself insane in our fucking kitchen.”
Carmy nods. “Heard. That’s tough.”
“Yeah. She wanted us to do ‘normal things like normal people.’ Go to shows, and bars, and go out to eat. And I don't even know what else — I actually have no idea what normal people do.”
He smiles, just the ghost of it. He feels his lips moving, actually turning up at the corners, and it’s so unfamiliar he almost doesn’t recognize the sensation.
"Yeah, me neither," he says.
Gen nods, lost in her own thoughts, still looking at the picture. “And she— she said I wasn’t warm? Wasn’t good with people? I don’t know.”
“Really?” Carmy scratches his nose and the back of his neck. “I don’t know, you seem all right to me.”
Fuck, that sounded stupid. Real smooth, hotshot, Mikey says in his head. He forgets how to talk to people. How long has it been since he’s had a friend? And now he’s fucking this up—
But she smiles and says, “thanks,” quietly, and then shakes her head and tears herself away from the photo.
“You hungry? I want actual dinner tonight… I think I’ve even got some decent veg in here for once…” her voice trails off as she heads into the kitchen. A fluorescent light flickers on, and she pops her head back out.
“Bathroom’s down the hall, that open door on your right, if you want to wash up. Towels are in there, on that high rack in the shower.”
“Thanks.” He pads down the hall in his socks, and closes the lid on the toilet and sits down briefly, pressing his hands into his eyes. He’s not sure how long he stays there, but gradually the smell of something cooking filters in — onions frying, tomatoes, something smoky and rich. Against his will, his mouth waters; how long has it been since he's eaten real food?
He gets up, his body aching like he's run a marathon, and strips off the socks. Trying not to look directly at his disgusting feet, he starts the tap and waits for it to run as hot as he can stand — and then, wincing, starts to scrub at the grime with one of her washcloths. His soles are black and covered in tiny cuts that sting when the soap hits them. He uses some body wash and scrubs harder and harder, until finally the water runs clear.
He can't bring himself to put the socks back on, so he dries his feet carefully, balls up the socks in his pocket, and pads back out to the kitchen barefoot. It's a galley kitchen, one narrow pass-through without space for a table or a second person; Gen gives him a big bowl of salad and he follows her out to the living room. She hands him a fork as they set everything down on a coffee table in front of the low-slung couch.
He takes a bite — it's massaged kale with cucumbers and tomatoes and pickled red onions, topped with roasted crispy chickpeas and a creamy, smoky, spicy dressing. It's delicious.
“There adobo in here? And tahini?” he asks, and she nods. "Huh. Nice. That’s fire, Chef.” Even after everything that's happened tonight, she still straightens a little and gives him a side-eyed smile. She still cares about his opinion of her food. Christ.
“Thanks.” She clicks on the tv and turns it to Chopped. It’s just distracting enough that Carmy can eat, for once, and he's hungry as hell, and it feels great to have some actual fresh food. He houses most of the bowl before his body even registers what's happening, before his throat can constrict against the roiling of his stomach.
So fucking stupid.
Just as the Chopped judges are tasting their final dish — some kind of frittata with bonito flakes and Captain Crunch on top, fucking hideous — he dashes from the couch back to the bathroom, where everything comes right back up.
Fortunately, he does this so often, he’s neat about it. He’s quiet, contained. What did you learn in New York, Carmen? How to be good at stress-vomiting? What’s WRONG with you? It’s Donna now, in his head.
After a few minutes, Carmy’s not sure how long, Gen comes to the doorway of the bathroom. He'd left the door open a crack, in his haste to make sure he wasn't puking all over her hallway. She doesn't get too close, just leans against the counter, not touching him. Silently, she offers him a glass of water.
“Thanks. Fuck,” he manages to say.
He takes a sip and it tastes like nothing at all. Suddenly he’s so thirsty, and it feels so cold on his raw throat that he drinks it all down in a few gulps — stupid, stupid. He’s not so good at this after all. His stomach roils and aches. He tries to breathe deeply and covers his eyes, avoiding her gaze.
"Sorry, I-I’m—."
"Don't worry about it," she says. "I’m not going to take that as a referendum on my cooking, since you hired me."
He laughs again, weak tears springing to his eyes, and promptly throws up the water he just drank. Goddamn it.
He keeps his head down in her toilet this time, so ashamed of the retching, no matter how quiet he’s managing to be. The water comes back up clear, unaltered. His stomach's empty now.
Gen puts a hand on his back this time, right between his shoulder blades. It's warm and solid, and he has to close his eyes against it, it feels so fucking good. He can’t even think about how long it’s been since anyone touched him like this.
Tears prick at his nose and eyes, a different kind of lump in his throat, and Natalie’s voice joins the chorus again. Better out than in, Bear.
He tries to play it off as dry heaving instead of crying, giving a few weak coughs at the end, sniffing and wiping at his face. Gen takes her hand off his back and says, “Hey, listen. If this keeps happening, I do not care what the fuck you say, we are going to urgent care. All right?”
“I— it won’t, sorry,” he says, careful to angle his mouth, his breath, away from her. “Do you have any Pepto?” He feels pathetic asking her for it, asking her for anything more than what she’s already done, but it’s the only thing that even has a chance of working.
She scoffs. “Of course. What kind of cook would I be if I didn’t?”
But when she hands him the bottle and heads back to the kitchen, it’s unopened, the little plastic cup still attached to the top with the safety seal intact. And her bottle is a small one — for amateurs — and he’s glad of it, that she’s not quite in the same fucked-up place he is.
She gives him a toothbrush too, and a travel tube of toothpaste, like the kind you get for free at the dentist. When’s the last time you were at a dentist, huh? Sugar’s voice turns disapproving in his head.
When he returns to the couch, she’s already made him a piece of buttered wheat toast, cut into triangles, and set a banana next to it on the plate.
“Let’s try this again,” she says. “Something easier this time.” Carmy's shame threatens to boil up again, waiting coiled and angry in his gut, but he forces it down.
"Th-thank you," he says.
"No problem, seriously. Hey, if I wasn't here, I'd be shucking my two thousandth oyster right now, you know? This is way better."
They sit in front of the TV for a long time, quietly, losing track of how many episodes they’d seen. Carmy eats slower this time; the toast and banana stay down. Somebody wins the competition using natto in a spicy four-bean chili.
"Is that genius or fucking disgusting?" Gen asks, and Carmy huffs out a laugh.
"Little bit of both."
“Hey, why don’t you stay over here tonight,” Gen says, deliberately casual. Carmy starts to refuse automatically, but Gen interrrupts him.
“Seriously, it wouldn’t be a big deal, and you wouldn’t have to sleep on this shitty couch. We— I mean, I,” she corrects herself, with a sad little grimace. “I have a spare bedroom.”
“You do?” Carmy asks, disbelieving. He’s never met a soul in New York with a spare room; it’s impossible to imagine someone having an inch of extra space here. The claustrophobia doesn’t help his constant feeling of being suffocated, like there’s never room for everyone to get enough oxygen. Sometimes he longs for Chicago, for how easy it is to just walk east from wherever you are and get to the lake. To look out at the horizon line and see its curve against the water, and remember that the world is big and wide.
“It’s weird, I know.” Gen’s voice snaps him back to New York. “Carina had a roommate before I moved in.”
“She left her own place?” he asks, and Gen nods.
“Yup. Guess I must have been pretty impossible to live with.” She gives a little humorless laugh.
“I doubt that,” Carmy says, but then comes up short. He rubs his forehead, trying to come up with something nice or comforting. But he’s hopeless with this kind of shit.
“Well, I guess we’ll see pretty soon. I can’t afford this place on my own for more than a month or two.” She stabs and eats a stray tomato from her mostly empty bowl. “I’ll have to get another roommate if I want to stay here and not move again. But anyway” — she stand up and stretches, picks up her bowl and heads for the kitchen — “you should stay tonight. I’ll get the sheets and stuff.”
She walks away like it’s decided, and Carmy doesn’t or can’t protest, just doesn’t have the energy for one more goddamn thing today. Twenty minutes later, they've said goodnight and he's stepping out of his jeans and sliding into the cool, clean bed.
For a few minutes, he just lies there, rigid and wakeful. It’s warmer than he keeps his own place and the city noise is different, quieter and less intrusive. The light’s the same, though, that sort of orangish gray haze of a city with too many lights on, all the time.
Flat on his back, he stares into the half-darkness and wonders how thin the walls are, if Gen would hear him if he got up to puke in the middle of the night. He’s not sure, but he thinks he can hear her streaming standup, or something with a laugh track, from her own bedroom.
He gets up again and shoves the tiny desk chair in front of the door, jamming it against the knob, so that at least it would be harder to move in his sleep. When he considers locking the door from the inside, he decides against it because it’s probably a fire hazard, which is fucking laughable because he’s the fire hazard. He gets back into bed and turns on his side, away from the window.
And then, somehow, even though he’s sure he won’t — Carmy falls into a deep and dreamless sleep. He doesn’t wake up until thin sunlight is already filtering in through the dirty window.