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It was cold as fuck in Chicago.
Truthfully, it wasn’t much colder than any other day in any other January in Chicago, but the heating in Carmen’s apartment had been on the fritz since late the night before and his super was nowhere to be found. A couple of unanswered calls, a few half-hearted knocks at an office that was clearly empty, and one stressful day at the restaurant later, and still nothing. He was tired and angry first, then embarrassed. His frustrations had stretched their way from his apartment to yours through the thin (and horribly insulated) walls, inviting you to come knocking on his door to see if he was in trouble.
That was the thing with you. No matter the time of day or what you may have had going on, you always made room for Carmen. Usually that room was more emotional and metaphoric, but he was thankful all the same as you handed him a cup of hot cocoa and a soft blanket. Not his usual vice when commiserating with a friend, but he was in no place to complain.
You sat on the opposite end of the couch, facing him with a smile sweeter than glucose- just as bad for his health, too. On top of letting him come into your home, you had also offered to message the super about your heating. It was actually working better than ever, but it wouldn’t be the first time that your creep of a superintendent came running to your rescue after ignoring Carmen for hours. You joked about just letting Carmen move into your apartment so he wouldn’t have such a hard time and he tried to laugh louder than his heart sounded in his ears.
As he sat on your couch, wrapped in the warmth of your conversation, he wondered if talking to him was as easy for you as it felt for him. He had never been the most open person. Openness in the Berzatto household usually ended in a screaming match, and he had never been one for neighborly conversation when he lived in New York either. He could never figure out what compelled you to try so hard to get to know him, but eventually he let you. Other than Fak, you were the closest thing he had to a best friend.
Friend, he reminded himself as you reached out to grab his hand. Just a friend.
You clasped his hand in yours and turned them so that his palm was facing up. Your fingers ran along his until your index finger stopped at the tip of his middle finger, pointing.
“What about that one?” You asked.
Carmen blinked, bringing himself out of the spell you had cast simply by touching him. He squinted at where you were pointing, losing whatever it was in the dim light of your apartment. Seeing his confusion, you grabbed his hand again, bringing the tip of his finger closer to his face as you leaned toward him. After turning his hand this way and that, he saw what you were talking about: the faintest line wrapped halfway around the tip of his finger.
“How did you even see that?”
Your hand left his so you could take another sip of your cocoa; a weak attempt at hiding your smile behind your mug. His heart fluttered as he recalled all the times that he had offered to make you dinner in return for your kindness, and all the times you had requested to watch him cook.
“Doesn’t matter,” you said. Something in your tone made him question if his heart even had a right to flutter. “Just tell me.”
He turned his hand a few times, looking at the scar but only remembering the way your hand had felt against his. A million scars and burns, an sturdy layer of callous, and yet the softness of your hands sunk deep into his nerves.
If you asked him which one of you had moved the conversation to trading stories about scars, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. There were no walls between the two of you once you got him talking. Scars weren’t an easy topic of conversation, but they were easy with you; at least the physical ones were.
“Knife,” he said abruptly. That seemed to be his answer to a lot of them. “First week in Paris my mom called me. Started screaming at me because she opened my mail before I could get it forwarded and saw my tuition cost. Starting thinking about anything other than julienning carrots and sliced clean through my nail.”
“Ouch,” you said, wincing through a pain you had never even felt. “And they still didn’t send you to the hospital for that?”
He shrugged.
“Normal Band-Aid and it was good to go.”
“You are a freak of nature, Carmen.”
He tried to ignore the way his name sounded when you said it.
“You get used to it.”
“No, you get used to it.”
Where he would normally find an argument, he instead laughed. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, conceding to you quicker than he would any other time. When you let him into your home, the apartment that sat just across from his, it was easy to forget that the two of you lived in different worlds. Moments like this brought him back to earth. He didn’t want you to see him as different, he just wanted you to see him.
“What about that one?” He asked, taking his turn to inquire about a story. Anything to remove your attention from him.
The scar in question was not much more visible to the one on his finger. It was about an inch long and jutted out sharply from where your thumb met your palm. If about a dozen of the scars on his hand were from using his knives, he knew you well enough to know the answer before he had even asked the question.
“Mr. Whiskers,” you admitted sheepishly. Your cheeks flushed. It hadn’t been the first time his name had been mentioned. “He wasn’t too fond of his cat carrier when I first got him.”
Carmen found that hard to believe. Considering how quickly that cat seemed to hide under your bed when he was around, he assumed that Mr. Whiskers was the exact opposite of what you would call a claustrophobe.
“Why do you even like cats?” He asked, incredulously.
“Why do you like being a chef?” You retorted, pointedly.
“Touché,” he conceded once more. He made a note to not make a habit of it, but he knew it would be difficult. “He just seems like a jerk.”
Words Carmen Berzatto never thought he would say about a cat.
“He is a jerk,” you agreed. Carmen opened his mouth to claim a victory, but you stopped him short. “He’s grumpy and aloof- and sometimes he leaves dead animals at my doorstep- but I still talk to you too, don’t I?”
Carmen scoffed.
“How was I supposed to know that that butcher was a fucking idiot?” He asked, desperate to clear his name for the millionth time.
He was never quite sure you believed him any of the 999,999 times that he had tried to before.
The story he told you was that he had ordered some specialty cut of beef to test a recipe at home and that, despite ordering from the same butcher countless times before, he had accidentally entered your apartment number instead of his own. The real story was Fak. Carmen had let your name fall from his lips once in the presence of Neil Geoff Fak and it was as if he had plastered it on a stone tablet and touted it as the word of God. Any chance he could, he asked about you. When he realized that Carmen was hopeless and that he would never get any updates, he took matters into his own hands. A few days later, a bulk pack of 80/20 ground beef was at your doorstep instead of his. Carmen may have been a classically trained chef, but even he could only do so much with ground beef before it started to feel like too much ground beef.
“I’m just saying, you’re a lot more like Mr. Whiskers than you think, Carmen.”
Not enough, Carmen thought. He shook his head. Was he actually jealous of a fucking cat? And why did you keep saying his name like that?
“I’ll believe that when you start feeding me handcrafted, artisanal bullshit too.”
You laughed and he almost sighed in relief. Years of being a person had taught him that his tone was often more abrasive than he wanted it to be in situations where it wasn’t needed. Hearing you laugh when he wasn’t checking himself on that was enough to make him believe he spoke in prose.
“First of all, it’s cat food- hardly artisanal. Secondly, I made you hot chocolate. That’s the nicest thing I can offer anyone in my home.”
“It’s Swiss Miss.”
“And it’s still nice, Carmen,” you said, your laughter finding a way to reach his ears even as you spoke.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
He had said it without thinking, something he often did and something he really wished he didn’t. A Berzatto family specialty. He wanted nothing more than to crack another joke and bask in the sound of your laughter, but the thought had been nagging at the back of his mind all evening. He had tried to ignore it, to push it out. Instead, it slipped slowly from the back of his mind to the middle of his throat, threatening to choke him if he didn’t just spit it out.
You blinked in confusion.
“What am I calling you?”
From the way he had asked, you were led to believe you had somehow insulted him. It just about felt like it to him.
“Carmen,” he said.
“It’s your name.” A fact on paper, a question as it crossed your lips.
“No one calls me that.” You watched in confusion as he shut his eyes, sighing and rubbing his temple. “Bear. Carmy. One of my chefs even calls me Jeff. You never do that.”
“Don’t you and your chefs yell at each other?” You asked, setting your mug down as a sign that he had your undivided attention. You didn’t know what was bothering him, but you were determined to get to the bottom of it. “I don’t see how it’s a problem that I don’t- “
“That’s not it. I mean… They know me. You- You know me.” There was a pause, one where a question mark might stand instead of a period: an insecurity divulged in the draw of a single breath. He shook his head in an attempt to secure it. “It just sounds weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Just weird.”
If you knew any better, you’d think he was blushing.
“If it matters to you that much, I can start using something else.”
“Don’t do that.”
Your voice faltered before you could ask another question. Your eyes scanned his face, desperate for any sign that he was confusing you on purpose. When you looked into his eyes, you saw for the first time how blue they were. Cerulean. Clear as day. A shade that was never designed to keep secrets. He was as confused by what he was saying as you were. You broke eye contact for a moment as his lips parted and closed, keeping busy so you wouldn’t try to speak before he was finished.
"You never answered the question,” he said.
“What question?”
“Why do you call me Carmen and not anything else?”
Your shrug conveyed a nonchalance not found in the rapidly increasing rate of your heartbeat.
“I just like it, I guess.”
He didn’t say anything, filling the room with a silence so potent you were sure you could hear Mr. Whiskers snoring behind a closed door down the hall. He didn’t need to say anything. He was waiting for you to continue, to confirm a suspicion- possibly a hope- that ate away at him any time you saw each other.
Ring. Ring.
Ignoring his silent question- his pleas for an answer he wasn't sure he wanted- you grabbed your phone. The caller I.D. said that it was Superintendent Dan.
“I should get this,” you said, sucking in a breath in order to resuscitate the dead air. “Heating.”
You left Carmen on the couch while you talked to Dan in the kitchen.
If Carmen weren't himself, he might have used that silence before Dan called to say something that mattered. He might have told you that he liked it too. Not his name, but the way he felt when you said his name. When other people asked for Bear or Carmy or Chef, they weren't asking for him, but you were. He might have told you that you made him felt seen when you said his name. You were the one saving him from his freezing cold apartment knowing he would have never asked himself. You were the one who made him store bought hot cocoa, not caring that he was a chef who might like something a little more refined. He didn't. He never did. He might have told you that he loved the simplicity you brought to his life by being so far away from what he did on the daily. If Carmen wasn't himself, he might have told you that he liked the idea of being your Carmen, wholly and completely, just by hearing you say his name.
But, it was cold in Chicago and Carmen was himself.