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Sydney's exhausted and she can't sleep. That look on Richie's face, what had it been? What the fuck did he mean by the ginger ale? The comfort? Since when is Richie Carmy's anchor? Since when is he hers?
Taking care of her, her mind supplies, and she flashes on how he is with Carmy, shifts under her sheets, her blankets. Fuck. Whatever's going on between the two of them should stay between the two of them. And out of the kitchen, where she doesn't have to walk in on the two fucking.
If she was really upset, why didn't she stop them? Say something? Bring it up to Carmy?
Carmy who's eyes are less sunken today, maybe. Carmy, giving her unreadable, maybe-warm looks, biting his lip.
Even less reason to be thinking about it when he's got some sort of fucked up thing going on with Richie. Some sort of fucked up thing that might spill over into the restaurant she has to keep running, into their partnership.
Everything seemed so hopeful and simple when they were just fixing tables. When he was just her mentor - and her guide, letting her step up, do this job.
The job she damn well can do, she reminds herself. Had done tonight. No panic attacks.
Just ginger ale and Richie being weird.
Richie taking care of her. It keeps coming back to that in her head: Richie steadying her as he took over expo. Richie leaving ginger ale for her. Richie taking care of Carmy, taking the anger and the hunt out of him.
Taking his mouth. Sydney's entire body is hot as she remembers it. I should have said something, she thinks.
But Carmy'd been out of his mind that night, too. Screaming, cursing, pounding on the inside of the walk-in. If not for Richie...
She's running her fingers over her thighs again and again, and she thinks of Carmy on his knees, his lips. Heat jolts through her, and she groans softly, gives in, touches herself in slow, careful strokes. Kicks the blanket back: all at once she's too hot in her room. Thinks of Carmy's hands, how sure they are.
It's not the first time she's wondered how he'd touch her, what those hands could do. She groans, dipping her fingers lower, gathering her slick, drawing it back up to her clit.
Then she flashes on him with Richie and her entire body tightens in want. Thinks of herself in Carmy's place. Thinks of that bared skin at his hips, his pants shoved down. A hand in her hair, maybe.
"That's it, sweetheart," she thinks of Richie saying, and just like that, she's over the edge, coming on her fingers and the thought of those jerking movements of his hips against her own.
It's not enough. "Fuck." she says out loud, to herself. "Fuck!"
"I'm gonna take care of you, cousin," sounds like a threat coming from Richie, but then again, Carmy's shook. In the days before his stage, Richie had gone away angry, raging, bitter, lost. He came back more like the man he'd been before. Before he lost his wife. Before he lost Mikey. Before he lost a future.
It's so fucking weak for Carmy to be leaning on him like he is now, but Richie's doing what Carmy can't right now: step up, be a man. Handle it. Run the kitchen on Carmy's fucking restaurant, handle the staff, deal with the family. Even Sydney's snapping to.
Carmy, however, is a mess, all bile and rage, and he wants, needs a fight. Has needed one ever since things started slipping with Claire, who won't stop pushing, won't stop stripping away all the fucking architecture of his cope.
Won't stop pulling him out of the game. The girl needs more, and Carmy just can't anymore. Carmy can't deal with all her little needs, the too-perfect veneer over yawning insecurity when he's got enough of his own.
Maybe it's good that he chased her away. He hasn't since he came out of the fridge half-frozen and mumbling apologies to Richie who, somehow, is there - despite their fight, despite it all.
It's Richie who grounds him, chases out Sugar, Ebra, everyone else - maybe even Sydney, who's suddenly scarce - must fucking hate him. Richie, who catches him spiraling, about to lose his shit again. Richie whose mouth is hot, demanding, and somehow keeping him linked to this earth, out of the fire and the shouting.
He can't fucking think when Richie's got his hands on him - and that's good. He's had too much thinking. And he needs out of his head.
Carmy has never understood his mother's drinking so much in his life, and it's terrifying.
"I can hear you overthinking, cousin." Richie is a lean, warm press behind him. "Fucking quit it."
"Shut the fuck up." His heart's not in it. Not really. Carmy doesn't have the energy to unload on Richie. He's drained as hell - and his throat still hurts.
He needs a year off. He needs a Xanax. He needs to be back in the kitchen, hyper-focused on his mise.
There's a broad hand on his shoulder, then the other, Richie turning him over onto his face, pressing him into the pillows. "Fucking make me," the other man murmurs in his ear, and Carmy shivers, eyes drifting closed as Richie presses into the knots just slightly too hard: presses him back into his body with the meat of his palm, the weight of his shoulder into it.
He drifts there, anchored by Richie's hands, him murmuring something soft: obscenities, insults, maybe even praise. Distantly, he hears himself sigh, all aching, warm sensation. Control, and awareness, slips slowly away.
He used to wake up hungover, sick, angry at how hard and pointless his life was. And he'd come up swinging, no matter how tired he got - something to be proud of. Richie Jerimovich is no man's bitch, except for this bitch of a world, and everyone is, really. There was nothing to do but wake up mad, go out into the world mad, maybe find a place to make whatever stand he could.
Now he wakes up to his alarm with something like certainty. His life is ordered. Today he will go to work and make people happy: make their night. Keep his people together.
He will keep this bitchy fucking cousin together with his own two hands, because someone has to. But he's gotta admit, this kind of service has its benefits.
Benefits like waking up hard as a goddamn rock, nestled up against Carmy's ass, where he can rut slowly, gently. Reach a hand around to give the man some assistance with his own morning wood
"Fuck." Carmy's sleepy, hips moving between Richie's hand and his cock. Squirming like the little cocktease he is. "Gotta get to work."
"Yeah." Richie twists his wrist, thrills to the sound of Carmy's groan. "In a minute." Presses an open, sucking kiss to his skinny shoulder - all that lean muscle there. He bites at it, and Carmy's swears at him, still thrusting into his hand.
"Fucking... animal..." Carmy's panting as Richie spits in his hand, picks up speed, jacks him faster.
He's gonna need lube, he thinks, if he's going to be fucking his bear more often. He's gonna need it to work that tight ass open - can't be wasting the restaurant's olive oil on Carmy's ass.
Carmy's whining now, trying to thrust into Richie's hand faster. Can't have that, now. "Hey, easy, easy," he says into one ear. "Let me take care of you. I've got you."
"Fuck!" Carmy's throbbing in his hand, reduced to single words, moans. Just how he needs to be.
Richie grinds harder against his ass, gives a particularly inspired twist of his wrist, and lets the bear have what he wants - what he needs. Cups his hand over Carmy as he jerks, shudders, comes with a groan, then gives his own cock some attention.
It's wet, it's warm, it's slick, and in no time at all he's coming in pulses across Carmy's ass. If not for the restaurant, he could be content to fall asleep against Carmy.
"Fucking - gotta shower!" The man is out of bed in no time flat, the fucker.
"Romance is fucking dead," Richie drawls, crawls his own ass out. "Hey, hold up!" he shouts after Carmy. "There's only enough hot water for one of us!"
"Then hurry the fuck up!"
It's only when they're packing it into Richie's car that he remembers: he's really gotta do something about Syd.