None of it is enough to pop Richie's bubble; he's too happy right here, even if he's starting to feel the post-nut clarity coming in with a reminder that he's sticky and sweaty and all the activity has twinged up an old ache in his back. He laughs a bit though, leans in to kiss Carmy's cheek and his temple.
"Fuck you. Maybe we should have just stuck something up your ass years ago and saved you from one or two of those mental breakdowns, cuz."
Skidding lightly around something he should probably be more serious about, but maybe the context will save him. Richie shifts a little bit, starts to pull out, wet dick dragging over Carmy's thigh as he rolls sideways and collapses with a groan into the space at the edge of the futon.
Maybe it's better, to have someone say shit like that to him instead of eggshelling around it — it still hurts. He resists the urge to turn that feeling into a big deal, to retreat into blame. What's the fucking point. Instead he rolls onto his side, following Richie like there's a string joining them.
"Oh shit, are you all worn out?" He sits himself up, sideways on one hip and the heel of his hand, cum still slipping over his flushed skin. "You fuckin' tired, old man?" Grinning, something light about him even as the oxytocin wears off. Carmy, meanwhile, hops up to his feet, to prove how completely not tired he is. Ignores the ache in his thighs and ass, goes to reach inside the bathroom door for a mostly clean handtowel and grabs his cigarettes, wiping himself off with the former as he teeths a smoke out of the pack and comes back to the bed. "Those some grey hairs I see, cuz?" he adds, though he can't really see shit in this light.
"Fuck off, dickhead. I'm a perfect fucking specimen."
He doesn't begrudge Carmy his inhuman ability to recover so quickly, mostly because he got to watch that ass walk across the room and enjoy the thought that all the cum glistening on his skin, on that flat belly and those big thighs, is from something he did. It's a vision of Biblical proportions.
When Carmy comes back, he holds up a hand for the towel or a cigarette or both, assuming like always that his cousin is going to share whatever he has.
"Come sit on my dick and see how tired I am. As if you fucking deserve it."
Carmy drops down to a knee, and he doesn't actually plan to start up another round, but he does straddle one of Richie's thighs. Lights the cigarette, passes it off to Richie. Occupies himself wiping them up like it's an end of shift clean, quick and brutal. "You're not bad," he admits, lashes lowered so Richie can't catch the sincerity there, how he's obsessed with Richie's body for no particular reason except it's Richie's. Still a hint of amused teeth. "Y'know, for an old guy."
"Fuck you. Fucking baby." Without much heat; it's just rote for them now. Richie takes a long drag on the cigarette, letting his head tip back on the pillows, enjoying the clinical swipes of Carmy's attention on his dick and belly. The dry burn of the nicotine sands down some of the raw edges inside his chest. He exhales smoke into the rippling rain-smeared light and offers it back to Carmen.
Carmy thinks of a woman at group the other day, something she'd said about grasping happiness. God, imagine knowing how to recognize happiness, knowing how to reach out your hands.
Little bob of the Adam's apple, before he takes the cigarette. "Um. I'd like to." He'd really like to. He's not sure yet, if it's good for him or not, and it's sure as fuck going to be bad for business, Richie is already constantly in the fucking way. "Do you, would you be into that?" Three for three on him just saying stuff without the thorns, getting laid really does improve his personality.
It's different enough from how Carmy was before that Richie recognises it, at least a little. Nice to see him softer, thoughtful. Maybe even -- dare he even consider it -- relaxed. Richie idles his hand up the side of Carmy's knee, stroking his fingers over him in small circles while he looks up at him.
"I'd be into it. It's crazy, but.. I'm into it." He clears his throat, thinking and trying not to think about his best friend's kid brother and how he's sitting on him naked and how much he wants to kiss him again, and the vagaries of a strange and cold universe that's lead them to this place.
"I like.." He starts. Stops. Starts again. "I love you, cuz. And as it turns out I like making you feel good."
"Yeah. Same." Carmy is nodding. That's the vibe: this is crazy, but he loves Richie and he loves how this feels between them. How he feels right now, centered and — in tune with someone else in a way that reduces loneliness and drowns out the self-hatred, a little.
Another drag of the cigarette, exhaling noisily, hunched forward a little. "I think about you. I've thought about you a lot." Not just horny, gasping thoughts, either; Richie has so much potential for elevation, it's there in his steady hands and the way he is with customers, the way he wants to fix things. The adherence to system, even if it's a shitty system. He thinks about Richie in his kitchen, collaborative instead of combatative.
He passes the cigarette back to Richie and smooths a hand over his hipbone. Sniffs a little. "I ruined six pieces of wagyu, thinking about you." (Ruined, like Richie didn't get to eat all of them.)
Reaching out, Richie takes the cigarette in one hand and puts the other over Carmen's, then turns it to lace their fingers together. Looking down his body, watching himself do it like he's just a spectator to the act and a little surprised to see it happening.
"I don't want to.. uh. I don't want to ruin anything." Keeps his gaze on their hands joined together, so he doesn't have to look up into those blue eyes. Doesn't have to think too much about what he's saying, or why he's saying it. Just lets the truth come out, because his cousin deserves the truth.
"I know I'm not. Good. Not good news. And I know we've had our differences and we fight because I'm a fucking asshole and you're a fucking asshole. But I don't want to fuck it up in a way that's not going to be.. you know, fixable."
A little hitch of breath on fucking asshole that is, despite how easy it would be to hear upset, kind of a laugh. Yeah. His hand goes tight on Richie's, and he has to take a moment to wrestle with a wash of feeling, wait for it to subside before he can speak.
"Yo," he says quietly. "What the fuck are you talking about. You're good." That's what he's got, kind of furious that Richie doesn't see it even as he completely gets it, given he needs cooking as the external metric of his value. "You're great. Don't say that shit."
Lying there and smoking, then he gets kind of indignant at being told what he's not allowed to express, because he's emotional and a little raw and he never likes being told to put a lid on his emotions.
"I can say that shit, cuz. I get to say that shit. Don't tell me what I can't say about myself, I'm emotionally aware of my own fucking shit, okay."
He glances around, ashes the cigarette into a coffee mug sitting on the floor, then offers it back to Carmy before he finishes it. Studies Carmy kind of out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid of looking at him square on and what that might make him do, then turns his hand to lift Carmy's up and brings it up to his mouth so he can kiss, reverently, the ragged scar across Carmy's palm.
"I'm just saying, cousin, maybe that's not really emotional awareness so much as—" he starts, and then stutters to a stop, words dying in his throat. His hand, the scar. Sugar on the phone, his heart stopping, the burner and the pot. Knowing they wouldn't give him the time to go back to Chicago for the funeral. The cigarette is just gonna singe his fingers a little without ever making it to his mouth; he stubs it out absently, staring at Richie.
"I've been going to meetings," he says abruptly. "Uh, this AA group, Sug hooked me up with, and mostly - mostly what I've learned is that I am not, remotely, as emotionally aware of my own fucking shit as I thought I was. So." He presses his lips together for a beat, relents. "I just meant, I hate hearing you really talk trash about yourself."
From his mouth, Richie moves Carmy's hand to his chest, putting it down somewhere in the region of his heart and laying his own hand over the top like he's saying the Pledge of Allegiance. He watches Carmy's face while he talks, tracking him with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Okay," he says, eventually. "Okay, sorry. Maybe we should compromise. Like, I stop saying that shit about myself. You stop throwing out perfectly good steak."
"Adequate steak," Carmy says. "I keep fucking it up - and it's fine, it's not inedible, it's fine if you liked it." He only doesn't eat his own stuff because his stomach can't handle it, and then when he's on his own and he's angry it's easier to just bin it. "It's just not... Syd wants the star, it's not Michelin restaurant steak. I can't get the demiglaze right." Shaking his head, aware he's kind of just talking to himself here. Looking at their hands together on Richie's chest. He feels sick. He feels like he's in freefall. He has to be a perfectionist, because otherwise they're going to fail really badly. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, people losing their jobs, badly.
If he thinks about it he's going to lose all the chill that getting railed imbued him with, so he takes a slow breath and flops down onto Richie, tucks into his neck or wherever. "Fuck," he breathes there, feels his shoulders come down from around his ears a little. "I'm trying, man," he says, because he is. It just hurts all the time, except for when there's so much pain he's numb. Why the fuck Richie would want to invest any time or attention in that is beyond him, but here he is, warm and real and normal.
When Carmy pitches forward, Richie whoofs out a breath that's not quite feigned. His cousin is hot as fuck but the price of those muscles is the fact that he weighs a fucking ton when he decides to collapse onto his chest, dense and heavy like a dwarf star. But he lifts a hand anyway, pets it down Carmy's shoulder, stroking his back.
"I know you're trying, cousin. We can all see it. You're like a fucking.. rocket. We're all just watching the burn. And it's so, so bright. But it's amazing. And beautiful."
He turns his head a bit so he can put his face against Carmy's head, not quite nuzzling a kiss into his hair, but sort of doing that. It feels a little weirder doing it that way, less about sex, more about something else. Affection. Comfort.
"Fuck, man," he says, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the rain and feeling the weight of it, the weight in Carmy's voice and in his body. It's a lot. It's so much. "I don't know how you do it."
"Me neither," says Carmy, quiet, into his neck. "But I dunno how to do like, anything else."
He feels a little raw, like Richie's kisses have abraded him, scored his skin. After a second he wiggles off to the side a little. He kind of wants to fuck again, not a real feeling of arousal but a compulsion to seek sensation that takes him out of his own head for even a few moments.
"If we set an alarm for five we can go again before work," Carmy suggests, shifting his thigh over Richie, draped on his chest, clearly not intending to let him go anywhere, snuggling the fuck in and listening to the soft steady hush of the rain. It's good. He feels, terrifyingly, very good.
"Jesus, five?" Like he's got anything better to do. Like there's anything else he'd rather do than pin Carmy down in the blue light of dawn and relearn him all over again. "Sure, just wake me up, man."
Richie keeps his arm draped over Carmy, contemplating whether he can get away with stealing another cigarette before he passes out. Probably not. He draws idle circles on Carmy's skin instead, which is almost as good when it comes to being self-soothing, another little discovery about himself on top of all the other discoveries that have taken place this evening. No wonder he feels like he could sleep for a week.
The storm growls above them, not so angry any more. After a beat or two, Richie plucks at the blankets, whatever he can pull up over the two of them. He settles back on the pillows. Then, belatedly remembers:
"Yeah," Carmy says sleepily, even though he hadn't noticed or cared. "But you brought your dick, which is better." That's all he'd been thinking about when he texted.
This, though, an embarrassment of riches. His face close enough to Richie's pit he's breathing in the smell of him, but in a way he likes, warm and familiar. They've never done this, even platonically, slept piled onto each other, but it kind of feels like they have, because it's how he used to sleep with Mikey.
Carmy doesn't get enough sleep, so the moment his body gets the green light he's gone, snoring softly in under a minute. He wakes again with the alarm, has to roll out of the sweaty cocoon of their bodies to whack at it before coming back; it's cold out there, and Richie is so warm. Last night's desire to get off again has faded into a simple, sleepy affection, and he trails his fingers over Richie's skin with his eyes closed amd mouth quirked foolishly.
Tired as he is, Richie sleeps soundly and without dreams, not stirring even when Carmy rolls away to deal with the alarm and waking up almost in the same position he went to sleep in. Awareness arrives slowly, confused at first when he blinks his eyes open for a moment and finds himself in a different bed, then he takes a breath, smells and feels Carmy, and remembers.
He murmurs softly, lifting his hand to blindly feel his way up Carmy's shoulder until he can pet his hand over his sweaty curls, vaguely stroking them back from the vicinity of his face.
"Hey, cousin," he croaks out, then has to turn his head and cough a couple times. "Fuck. Gotta stop smoking."
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"Fuck you. Maybe we should have just stuck something up your ass years ago and saved you from one or two of those mental breakdowns, cuz."
Skidding lightly around something he should probably be more serious about, but maybe the context will save him. Richie shifts a little bit, starts to pull out, wet dick dragging over Carmy's thigh as he rolls sideways and collapses with a groan into the space at the edge of the futon.
"Next time we go slower maybe."
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"Oh shit, are you all worn out?" He sits himself up, sideways on one hip and the heel of his hand, cum still slipping over his flushed skin. "You fuckin' tired, old man?" Grinning, something light about him even as the oxytocin wears off. Carmy, meanwhile, hops up to his feet, to prove how completely not tired he is. Ignores the ache in his thighs and ass, goes to reach inside the bathroom door for a mostly clean handtowel and grabs his cigarettes, wiping himself off with the former as he teeths a smoke out of the pack and comes back to the bed. "Those some grey hairs I see, cuz?" he adds, though he can't really see shit in this light.
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He doesn't begrudge Carmy his inhuman ability to recover so quickly, mostly because he got to watch that ass walk across the room and enjoy the thought that all the cum glistening on his skin, on that flat belly and those big thighs, is from something he did. It's a vision of Biblical proportions.
When Carmy comes back, he holds up a hand for the towel or a cigarette or both, assuming like always that his cousin is going to share whatever he has.
"Come sit on my dick and see how tired I am. As if you fucking deserve it."
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"So we're gonna keep doing this?"
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Little bob of the Adam's apple, before he takes the cigarette. "Um. I'd like to." He'd really like to. He's not sure yet, if it's good for him or not, and it's sure as fuck going to be bad for business, Richie is already constantly in the fucking way. "Do you, would you be into that?" Three for three on him just saying stuff without the thorns, getting laid really does improve his personality.
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"I'd be into it. It's crazy, but.. I'm into it." He clears his throat, thinking and trying not to think about his best friend's kid brother and how he's sitting on him naked and how much he wants to kiss him again, and the vagaries of a strange and cold universe that's lead them to this place.
"I like.." He starts. Stops. Starts again. "I love you, cuz. And as it turns out I like making you feel good."
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Another drag of the cigarette, exhaling noisily, hunched forward a little. "I think about you. I've thought about you a lot." Not just horny, gasping thoughts, either; Richie has so much potential for elevation, it's there in his steady hands and the way he is with customers, the way he wants to fix things. The adherence to system, even if it's a shitty system. He thinks about Richie in his kitchen, collaborative instead of combatative.
He passes the cigarette back to Richie and smooths a hand over his hipbone. Sniffs a little. "I ruined six pieces of wagyu, thinking about you." (Ruined, like Richie didn't get to eat all of them.)
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"I don't want to.. uh. I don't want to ruin anything." Keeps his gaze on their hands joined together, so he doesn't have to look up into those blue eyes. Doesn't have to think too much about what he's saying, or why he's saying it. Just lets the truth come out, because his cousin deserves the truth.
"I know I'm not. Good. Not good news. And I know we've had our differences and we fight because I'm a fucking asshole and you're a fucking asshole. But I don't want to fuck it up in a way that's not going to be.. you know, fixable."
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"Yo," he says quietly. "What the fuck are you talking about. You're good." That's what he's got, kind of furious that Richie doesn't see it even as he completely gets it, given he needs cooking as the external metric of his value. "You're great. Don't say that shit."
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"I can say that shit, cuz. I get to say that shit. Don't tell me what I can't say about myself, I'm emotionally aware of my own fucking shit, okay."
He glances around, ashes the cigarette into a coffee mug sitting on the floor, then offers it back to Carmy before he finishes it. Studies Carmy kind of out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid of looking at him square on and what that might make him do, then turns his hand to lift Carmy's up and brings it up to his mouth so he can kiss, reverently, the ragged scar across Carmy's palm.
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"I've been going to meetings," he says abruptly. "Uh, this AA group, Sug hooked me up with, and mostly - mostly what I've learned is that I am not, remotely, as emotionally aware of my own fucking shit as I thought I was. So." He presses his lips together for a beat, relents. "I just meant, I hate hearing you really talk trash about yourself."
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"Okay," he says, eventually. "Okay, sorry. Maybe we should compromise. Like, I stop saying that shit about myself. You stop throwing out perfectly good steak."
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If he thinks about it he's going to lose all the chill that getting railed imbued him with, so he takes a slow breath and flops down onto Richie, tucks into his neck or wherever. "Fuck," he breathes there, feels his shoulders come down from around his ears a little. "I'm trying, man," he says, because he is. It just hurts all the time, except for when there's so much pain he's numb. Why the fuck Richie would want to invest any time or attention in that is beyond him, but here he is, warm and real and normal.
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"I know you're trying, cousin. We can all see it. You're like a fucking.. rocket. We're all just watching the burn. And it's so, so bright. But it's amazing. And beautiful."
He turns his head a bit so he can put his face against Carmy's head, not quite nuzzling a kiss into his hair, but sort of doing that. It feels a little weirder doing it that way, less about sex, more about something else. Affection. Comfort.
"Fuck, man," he says, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the rain and feeling the weight of it, the weight in Carmy's voice and in his body. It's a lot. It's so much. "I don't know how you do it."
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He feels a little raw, like Richie's kisses have abraded him, scored his skin. After a second he wiggles off to the side a little. He kind of wants to fuck again, not a real feeling of arousal but a compulsion to seek sensation that takes him out of his own head for even a few moments.
"If we set an alarm for five we can go again before work," Carmy suggests, shifting his thigh over Richie, draped on his chest, clearly not intending to let him go anywhere, snuggling the fuck in and listening to the soft steady hush of the rain. It's good. He feels, terrifyingly, very good.
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Richie keeps his arm draped over Carmy, contemplating whether he can get away with stealing another cigarette before he passes out. Probably not. He draws idle circles on Carmy's skin instead, which is almost as good when it comes to being self-soothing, another little discovery about himself on top of all the other discoveries that have taken place this evening. No wonder he feels like he could sleep for a week.
The storm growls above them, not so angry any more. After a beat or two, Richie plucks at the blankets, whatever he can pull up over the two of them. He settles back on the pillows. Then, belatedly remembers:
"I forgot the wine. Sorry."
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This, though, an embarrassment of riches. His face close enough to Richie's pit he's breathing in the smell of him, but in a way he likes, warm and familiar. They've never done this, even platonically, slept piled onto each other, but it kind of feels like they have, because it's how he used to sleep with Mikey.
Carmy doesn't get enough sleep, so the moment his body gets the green light he's gone, snoring softly in under a minute. He wakes again with the alarm, has to roll out of the sweaty cocoon of their bodies to whack at it before coming back; it's cold out there, and Richie is so warm. Last night's desire to get off again has faded into a simple, sleepy affection, and he trails his fingers over Richie's skin with his eyes closed amd mouth quirked foolishly.
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He murmurs softly, lifting his hand to blindly feel his way up Carmy's shoulder until he can pet his hand over his sweaty curls, vaguely stroking them back from the vicinity of his face.
"Hey, cousin," he croaks out, then has to turn his head and cough a couple times. "Fuck. Gotta stop smoking."