Chapter Text
Ever since he was a kid, Carmen’s had a few unconventional habits, some of which followed him into adulthood.
For example, he never had a very healthy relationship with food and, yes, he is well aware of how fucking ironic that is given his entire fucking life career revolves around it. It started as a necessity. Skipping meals and going hungry, because his mother poured any income from Mikey or donations from Cicero into red wine and cigarettes, became expected from a young age.
Carmen was forced to get used to waking up, going to school, and going to sleep with his head pounding and his stomach cramping from being empty. He struggles to recall specific memories, but vaguely remembers lying awake in his bed late at night, unable to sleep, crying from the sharp pains stabbing his stomach, and a lightheadedness that the mere act of sitting up cause his vision to go black. Every week, he would count down the hours until Michael would save him; pick him up, gently ruffling his hair and asking about how his week had been before taking him to The Beef, where Carmen could eat until he threw up.
Now, as an adult with a steady source of income and constant, reliable access to food, the hollow pain of hunger was more of a nostalgic comfort for him than a necessity. He enjoyed the feeling of an empty stomach and the way his brain got a bit foggy when he’d gone a day or two without eating. He was proud of his ability to continue to work at such a high level for such extended periods of time without any food, especially when he was in New York. He’d work up to eighteen consecutive hours some days (and simply skip going home others, usually for working reasons and other times because David wanted to 'talk'), refusing to take breaks or sit down because he knew that if he sat down he wouldn’t be able to get back up. And no one in that hellscape cared about one another so there was no one checking up on him to see whether or not he’d eaten- which was a relief because he knew if he ate anything he would throw it up.
And no, he didn’t have a fucking eating disorder. It was more efficient for him to work without break- he simply could not function as well with food in his system.
On a good day, eating just made him feel sick to his stomach, but on a bad day, eating made him vomit so violently his vision would go dark and he'd stumble around the bathroom until he either collapsed or found a wall to lean on. On those bad days he'd have to spend the rest of his limited hours off with a pounding headache and find some way to lie about why he had bloodshot, teary eyes.
Now, despite common belief, Carmen was not fucking stupid; he forced himself to eat because he couldn't just starve to death because it would fucking kill Natalie. However, on the days when the nausea was bad and he knew it was going to come up anyways, instead of waiting for his body to violently rebel against the food on its own, he often beat it to the punch by purging the food himself. He'd gotten good at it, too. He didn’t even need to stick his fingers down his throat to make the acidic bile shoot out of his stomach most of the time anymore; he was able to just lean over and heave all of the food out of his system. And he had to admit, nothing beat the rush of endorphins following him emptying his stomach and relieving the nausea that accompanied having even a bite of food inside of him… nothing but cutting himself.
Unlike his eating habits, cutting himself was never forced upon him, obviously, but it became a lifeline for Carmen when he was young, and it carried on throughout his teenage and adult life. Cutting was the only thing that got him through the beatings from his mom as a kid, then nearly failing out of high school, then Michael’s rejection, then New York (specifically motherfucking Chef Fields), then Michael’s death, and now, running The Bear.
It’s not a big deal, in his opinion at least. (It's not like he’s going to fucking kill himself, so why does it matter if he cuts himself here and there every once in a while?) Unfortunately, according to almost every person he’s ever met in his fucking life (i.e., Natalie, Richie, Sydney, Luca, and, well, the list goes on), his views on ‘big problems’ have been skewed over the years, and he can be a bit ‘delusional’ about just how self-destructive he is.
But what the fuck do they know? They don’t know the first thing about how he lives his life. They don’t even realize that five minutes of searching his apartment would result in them finding cups filled with vomit and miscellaneously scattered bloody razor blades.
Besides, he’d gotten better at not cutting (both his skin and his food out of his schedule) since coming back to Chicago— or, he’d been forced to get better. It had been so fucking easy to starve and cut himself in New York because there, either no one gave a shit, or they were doing it too. So when he lived there, he didn't have to hide it, unlike when he came back to Chicago. He was able to keep it up the first several months after moving back home, wearing long sleeves, mostly just cutting his legs in case he had to pull up his sleeves, and easily lying to the few people who bothered to ask if he’d eaten or slept well (which was a whole other clusterfuck he didn’t even have the energy to dive into). It was all part of his system to push them all away—he was poison, he was sick, and he wasn't going to get better. He didn’t want to get better. So, he refused to drag them down with him.
But they weren’t always fooled by his sloppy lies, which had gone unpracticed for a few years too long, and he’d be forced to sit down and eat at family (usually by Tina). He’d been forced to clean up his apartment so he and Syd could test some new recipes together. Marcus practically force-fed him every fucking pastry he cooked up every morning. He was cutting less, he was gaining weight, he was losing control over the one fucking constant in his life, and he fucking hated it.
Thankfully, after The Bear opened, everyone started avoiding him like the plague, and he was able to regulate his coping mechanisms once again.
Then Sydney held an intervention.
She'd threatened to quit and go work for Shapiro (fucking Shapiro of all people) if he didn't get a fucking grip.
“You don’t fucking listen to me. You don’t fucking respect me. You don’t even eat my fucking food.” Carmen stared at her as she screamed and tried to think of how he could fix this. How he could explain himself. But he couldn’t even think of what to say through the constant fog that seemed to drown every rational thought in his head. “You’re going to apologize to the crew, to Richie, to your fucking sister, and to me. Then I’ll consider staying. But only if you prove that you’re not a complete psychotic douchebag.”
Carmen couldn’t stand even the thought of losing her. He meant it when he said he wouldn’t even want to do this without her. Suddenly, he didn’t give a fuck about getting a star for the sake of the restaurant; he just cared about keeping his sous, and if she wanted a star, he'd pull one from the fucking sky.
Desperate to keep her, like the selfish piece of shit he is, he did everything she asked, starting with the apologies (all of which went over way better than he’d ever expected). Then they made a new non-negotiable list, the biggest points on it being that they would only change the menu once a month, that they would communicate any concerns or ideas before and after service, and that the entire crew would start having family together again.
So now, aside from Carmen having to take time out of his already busy schedule to vomit up any food he was forced to eat during family and having to lie about it to his friends who suddenly wanted to rekindle the relationships he’d borderline intentionally fucked up to keep them at arm's length, things were starting to smooth out.
He took a step back and gave Sydney the reins (which was harder than he’ll ever admit and caused a few incidents in which he got very close to an ER trip when he thought about giving up control while he was holding a razor blade alone in his apartment late at night), but it was worth it because they were becoming friends again.
Almost every weekend they would meet at each other’s houses to test new menu items (usually at her house because she didn’t have fucking jeans in her oven or bloody knives in her kitchen). They were talking again, not just about the restaurant but other things. Things he can only assume friends would talk about, like dreams they had the night before and weird-ass shit Sydney saw on the L on her way to work.
He and Richie were finally making up, too. He was back to ‘cousin’ status, and their screaming matches had plummeted to numbers lower than good days at The Beef. He also seemed interested in making sure Carmen had a life outside of work, trying to get him into hobbies and force him to go on jogs with him in the morning, which was fucking laughable.
The staff wasn't scared of him anymore, either, which was fucking weird but… also nice if he was being honest. He found himself respecting them more and more as he got to know them as people, rather than just chefs. He was also coming to realize that being respected was a far better than being feared. Line chefs started coming to him with amazing ideas for the menu, casual conversation sprung up throughout the restaurant which encouraged camaraderie and friendship between his fellows and led the restaurant staff to gel in a way that Carmen could only have dreamed of previously. And, best of all, people weren’t scared to come to him with concerns they had about shit anymore- people weren’t afraid of him anymore.
It made the restaurant better. It made Carmen better.
Natalie would occasionally ask him to come and babysit his niece, Sophie, on his day off. He came every time, of course, and Nat would always hug him and thank him and tell him what a good brother and uncle he was (he knew it was all bullshit, but he thanked her for it anyway). Unfortunately, Natalie was still fucking hounding him about ’self-care’ and ‘therapy’ and all that other bullshit, and now Sydney had begun to team up with her. Carmen likes to think Sydney would have kept her fucking nose out of it if it weren’t for that stupid fucking article that decided it wanted to come in and fuck up the closest thing to normalcy he’d ever had in his entire fucking life.
It was early in the morning when Sydney approached him about said article, way too early for anyone to be at the restaurant except for Carmen. He hadn't slept at all the night before because he felt there was no use in going home where he’d waste the night watching some shitty cooking show or slicing apart his newly healed legs once again, so he spent the night there, testing recipes, cleaning, trying (and failing) to do paperwork, and doing his best not to ‘accidentally’ hurt himself. He was surprised and a bit annoyed when Sydney stormed in, her face scrunched in anger. He already knew she was going to get on his case about spending the night there (again), so he wasn't surprised when she snapped,
“Carmen, get your ass over here. We need to talk.”
He wobbled over to her, suddenly feeling very guilty. She had made it very clear she wanted to be more involved in every aspect of The Bear, and he’d just spent the last twelve hours doing a whole bunch of shit without her. The guilt began biting at him, making the still tender cuts on his legs and shoulders burn and his stomach clench. When he made it to her side, she snapped. “Sit the fuck down; you already look like you’re going to pass out. Fucking dumbass.”
Which he obeyed shakily.
She was being forced to babysit him. She was going to yell at him, and then she was going to leave, and it would be all his fucking fault. Anyone would be lucky to have her, everyone would want her, and he’d never find anyone to replace her.
Instead of continuing to snap at him, Sydney pulled out her phone and held it out for him to read something. A sharp pain shot through his head as the bright light of her phone flashed in his eyes. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to focus on the words on the screen, and when the words came into view, his headache only grew more intense as he tried to process the words on the screen.
It was a news article. The headline jolted him to attention: "Celebrity Chef David Fields Arrested for Sexual and Violent Physical Misconduct with Multiple Employees."
What the fuck?
“He was your fucking boss, right? So you must have seen this happening, right?” Sydney accused, venom dripping from her words.
Carmen wanted to respond. He wanted to defend himself, but his mouth had gone dry and his head was fucking reeling. He pulled at his hair, desperate for a feeling other than Sydney’s eyes burning into his head.
These claims made no fucking sense because, in his experience, at least. He’d never seen David do anything that would insinuate any claims of sexual abuse, and he spent the most time in that kitchen during his time there, so surely, he would have noticed if something was going on, right?
Then his mind began calling some things to light… but even those memories didn’t explain the article. It said sexual abuse, and Chef never raped him. He would just grab Carmen’s ass while he was working the line, watch him from behind as he scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees, and invite him to have a drink after service sometimes, which often led to him blacking out and waking up half naked on the floor, but… nothing happened. He wasn’t a victim.
Chef didn’t rape him.
And as for physical abuse, well, an occasional slap or punch during service was nothing compared to a drunk, belt-wielding Donna Berzatto. And Chef only hit him when he really deserved it… fuck, he sounded like a domestic abuse victim downplaying the abuse received from their partner. Carmen mentally slapped himself for even making that comparison. David was just his boss. Carmen could have quit or reported him any time he wanted; he was just too much of a fucking pussy to do anything about it.
And it wasn't abuse; it was just part of the job.
But Sydney was absolutely pissed the fuck off, and hadn’t stopped screaming at him since the phone had come out. Her barrage of insults and accusations spilled out of her, accusing him of turning a blind eye as these horrible things happened to his coworkers. “I mean, holy shit, Carmen. How many of your fellow female employees were abused by this asshole? Would you have let that happen to me? To Natalie?”
Carmen remained confused, but the suggestion that he was some patriarchal douchebag, flipped his passivity into visceral anger- especially now that she had brought his sister into it. As calmly as he could possibly bring himself to be, never raising his voice to a shout, he explained, no, he had never seen these things happen to other people in the workplace, but Sydney wouldn’t let up.
In an attempt to calm her down and to make sense of these insane accusations, he explained to her that Chef Fields is gay. The anger spilling out of Sydney dissipated slightly, but it was just replaced with confusion and disbelief.
“Yeah? And how the fuck would you know that?” She demanded, crossing her arms.
“Because he came onto me a few times.” It was a half-truth, but he didn’t want to tell her anything beyond that.
Sydney’s eyes went wide and her eyebrows shot up. Her anger was back, but this time it wasn’t directed at Carmen (at least, he was pretty sure it wasn't).
“Carmen, that’s harassment. He was your boss, dude.” She said breathlessly. “Fuck. Did he ever… do anything to you?” She asked carefully, as if the mere mention of it would trigger Carmen. He couldn't blame her for being cautious, though; she’d sat through more panic attacks and manic breakdowns with him than Natalie, and Natalie dealt with him when he was a nonverbal toddler.
“He never raped me.” Sydney nodded, clearly expecting him to continue, but Carmen had nothing more to say to that so she prompted him further.
“Okay, good. But did he touch you?”
Carmen shrugged. “Sure. He touched all of us.”
Sydney did not appreciate his humor. “Carm. You know what I mean.” Her dark eyes were searching his, almost like she was trying to dissect his brain from the outside. To look into his psyche and root out all of his secrets and memories.
Carmen looked away.
“He never raped me.” Carmen lied.
Carmen doesn’t remember the rest of that conversation. He knows Sydney didn't drop it (and still hasn’t because she’s been acting so fucking weird around him ever since), but he can’t remember a single word exchanged after trying to convince her and himself that he had never been raped by Chef Fields.
For a week, Carmen avoided everyone like the plague- except Sydney, for the most part, mostly because of her non-negotiables, which forced them to interact and communicate on a daily basis, and because now she was constantly on his fucking back. He knew she got that article from The New York Times and had no doubt in his mind others at The Bear were reading it and coming to conclusions he did not want to hear about, so he avoided any and all conversations entirely.
Someone wanted to talk to him in private? “Maybe after service.”
Natalie calling him in the middle of the night? Straight to voicemail.
“Cousin, I don’t know why you’re acting so fuckin’ weird, but we need—“
“No time.”
Carmen desperately held onto the hope that no one else would find it, come to the same conclusion as her, or, God forbid, approach him about it. And, to his relief, no one did- at least, no one told him to his face of they had.
Who even reads the fucking news anyway?
After his little ‘manic episode’ he was forced to bear the consequences he’d brought down onto himself. Thanks to his inability to put together in his head, much less voice out loud, his fucked-up thoughts, feelings, and memories, his mental health has always had extreme physical effects on him. His already shot appetite had become nonexistent, constantly outweighed by sharp, burning pain in his abdomen and overwhelming nausea. Just the thought of food made him queasy, which was so fucking convenient given he was head chef of his own restaurant and it was his responsibility to constantly be working with, sampling, and making food. (Sampling was an easy fix; he just kept a rag to spit the food into on him at all times.)
The insomnia he suffered from got worse by the day, and when he did manage to sleep, he remembered things… things he thought he'd forgotten until that fucking news article came out. He remembered the nights Chef asked him to stay late. The nights Chef would scream at him about how shitty service was because he'd fucked everything up, get him drunk off of his most expensive wine, then pin him down and tell him to take it like a good little slut or he’d lose his fucking job.
Carmen wasn’t entirely convinced these nightmares were memories. They more seemed to be overdramatized figments of his imagination. His mom always said he had an overactive imagination: “I never raised a hand to you, Carmen; where the fuck did you dream that up?”
The remedy for the sleeplessness was energy drinks (which he hadn't consumed since New York) and coffee, which only worsened his appetite and made him feel more sick.
His clothes which had just started to fit him comfortably hung off of him, and to avoid the excessive, concerned comments he'd been getting from Syd recently, he'd gone to Walgreens and bought fucking concealer to hide his eye bags. Wearing makeup like the fucking faggot he is.
He was under the impression that he was hiding his suffering relatively well, all things considered. Natalie hadn't mentioned therapy, Richie had only threatened to tie him down and force him to rest once, and the rest of the team just seemed relieved that Carmen had mellowed out again. Sydney, however, could see right through him.
For some fucking reason, she's been more concerned about him lately. As in, she will not let him be alone for a single fucking moment, concerned. And his week of manic avoidance and ‘minor relapse into being a Michelin star dickhead,’ as Richie so kindly put it, only seemed to make her more concerned (which was so fucking annoying because, if anything, he was hoping that would just drive her further away).
She started asking for rides to and from work, which made it harder to just stay at the restaurant all night and made him feel like he’s falling behind even when he knew, logically, he was doing everything he could; it wasn’t enough. And, on those car rides, she could ask him more personal questions (all of which he could dodge to a certain extent thanks to years of practice with Natalie, but they wore him out nonetheless). She doesn't leave him alone in a room unless someone else is with Carmen. The only time he had to himself at work was when he was taking a piss, and there isn't an excusable amount of time for him to cut while he's in the bathroom because every motherfucking second counts.
Sydney was making it very difficult to keep up his most essential coping mechanism.
It used to be so fucking easy to get a few cuts in before anyone came into work and a few more after everyone left; that way he usually had the urges all out of his system by the time he got back to his apartment. But now, all day, every day, he’s forced to stew in his dark fucking thoughts as he chops and sautés and ignores the thoughts telling him to put the knife in his hands into his fucking stomach.
It wasn’t Sydney’s fault, of course. He would never blame her for his own fucked-up mental health, but fuck. Every day it was getting harder to not go home and just slit his fucking wrists.
This little habit of cutting himself all started when he was around seven or eight years old. He is well aware of how young that is, but if you ask him, the fact that he’d been doing it for so long without being hospitalized or caught just meant that he’d become a fucking expert. It proved that this coping mechanism was not dangerous for him.
It happened by accident at first. He was cleaning the dishes; Michael and Natalie weren’t home, Mom still had a job (supposedly), so she wasn’t home either, and he needed a stepping stool to reach into the murky waters of the sink. He’d zoned out a bit and, like an idiot, stuck his hand into the dirty water and accidentally grabbed onto a knife by the blade.
He yanked his hand away quickly and hissed in pain. He held the palm of his hand against his chest and felt the warmth of the blood trickle down his once perfectly white shirt. He closed his eyes, naively hoping it would stop on its own.
He glanced down at his chest and grimaced; he looked like a stabbing victim, like from one of the wildly inappropriate movies Richie and Michael let him watch every Saturday night. He snapped his eyes shut once again; he was already starting to feel a bit woozy. The sight of the blood reminded him of that really scary movie with the big guy with the chainsaw that gave him nightmares for weeks, and the coppery smell of the blood made him feel sick to his empty, aching stomach.
The pain in his hand throbbed with the beating of his heart. It burned. And the instinctual urge to clench his hand into a fist only made it hurt worse.
Slowly, haltingly, he pulled his hand away from his chest, which was now sticky with blood, and peeled his eyes open once again to look at it. This time, he was mesmerized by the blood pooling out of his palm. More than that, he was entranced by the pain buzzing in his palm. He couldn't think of anything else as he watched the red liquid flow down his arm like a little waterfall. He absentmindedly wondered if he'd ever seen this much blood in real life.
He’s not sure how long he stood there staring at his blood as it dripped into the dirty sink water, painting it a grayish pink, but it was long enough that he was getting so dizzy he couldn't move without his head spinning.
He tried to step off of the little step stool to sit on the ground, but his legs were so shaky that they were unable to support him when he stepped off, and he fell, hitting his head on the hard, tiled floor. His head was pounding even harder now, and he shivered as the cold of the tile beneath him seeped into his bones.
At one point he heard the door open; he recognized the smell of his mom’s perfume and her cigarettes, and he prayed that she wouldn’t come in the kitchen and see what a mess he’d made (the blood from his hand and now his head had made two little pools that were slowly inching closer towards one another). He held his breath as he listened to her footsteps slowly receding before her bedroom door clicked shut.
She didn’t see him. Carmen could breathe again.
He felt strangely at peace; the pain hadn’t receded, but it had evened out. His head was throbbing rhythmically with his hand. And his mind—his mind was quiet. All he could focus on was the pain. Specifically, the pain in his hand. It was unlike a black eye from a bully or the bruises that accompanied a beating; it was sharp, hot, and all-encompassing.
He wasn't sure how long he lay there, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes before he was pulled out of his trance by a scream. His entire body jolted, and he tried to curl in on himself for protection, certain his mom had found him and was about to scream him into oblivion. Instead, two strong arms lifted him off the ground, and two blurry figures floated into view. Faintly, he could hear his name being called.
For a moment he thought he had died and God was taking his soul to heaven. He smiled at the thought of eternal rest; no more pain, no more screaming, he’d sit on a cloud and watch Mikey and Nat forever. He blinked, hoping to get a better view, only to realize there were two figures coming into view. Finally, after squinting with all high might, Michael and Natalie's faces came into view. Michael’s strong arms which were shivering violently for some reason held him up, cradling him as Natalie cupped his face in her soft hands.
This, Carmen decided, was better than heaven.
All the pain and fear that weighed him down day in and day out drained away when he was cradled safely in his arms. Michael had never, ever held him like this.
If he got beaten up at school, he and Richie would take him into the garage and rough him up even more in an attempt to teach him how to fight back. If Mom beat him, he’d punch his shoulder and tell him not to take it personally. If he burned his hand while he was trying to help Michael cook, he’d just laugh it off and tell him to be more careful.
But now… now he was holding him.
Michael dropped to his knees, not caring about the blood soaking into his pants and shirt. “Fuck, let me look at you, Bear.” He said as he tore Carmen’s blood-drenched shirt off with the help of Natalie. They inspected his torso, his arms, and his neck before finally settling on the cut on his hand and the bump on his head.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?" Natalie asked frantically, cupping his face in her soft, gentle hands. Carmen stared at them a few seconds longer, but seeing that his silence was freaking them out even worse, he managed to shake his head 'no'.
“Fuck… thank fuck.” Michael whispered breathlessly as he pulled Carmen into a suffocating hug.
Carmen wanted time to freeze. To stay in his arms forever. To feel the warmth of his brother’s love, his concern, his care.
“What the fuck happened to you? Huh?” Michael demanded, lightly slapping Carmen on the side of the face as if he needed that little reminder to keep his attention trained on him. Carmen stared dumbly, his head still reeling. Michael pulled away, cupping his face in his hands. “Was it Ma?” He whispered.
Slowly, Carmen shook his head ‘no’, and he pointed up at the sink. “I w-w-was tr-trying t-to do th-th-he d-di-ish-shes.” He managed to stutter out.
Carmen expected Michael to wrap him in a hug once again, to kiss his forehead and hold him until all the blood had drained out of him, but, to his shock and horror, Michael chuckled and ruffled his hair. His inspection was over. Mom hadn’t stabbed him like Michael had feared; it was just a little cut on his hand and a bump on his head, a ‘little cut’ that got five stitches from Uncle Jimmy half an hour later and a ‘bump’ that was quickly renamed a concussion.
Michael handed him off to Natalie, who had stopped crying and was now more angry than anything. She lectured him about being safe with sharp objects and tied a washcloth around his hand to stop the bleeding while they waited for Uncle Jimmy.
It wasn’t a big deal anymore. It was such a small deal, in fact, that Michael called Richie to tell him about it and laughed his ass off. “I feel like such a fucking’ pussy, man. Thought I was going to pass out over nothing.”
“Clumsy little Carmy. He just loves attention.” Carmen faintly heard Richie’s response over the phone, which made his face heat up bright red with embarrassment.
Even Natalie had to laugh it off, as if the fear that their own mother had tried to kill their youngest brother had never crossed her mind. When there was a knock on the door, she gave him one last squeezy hug, let their uncle inside and walked out.
Jimmy wasn’t exactly a gentle guy, but he tried his best to be when he stitched up Carmen’s hand and pressed an ice back against the side of his face, which was already starting to swell and bruise.
“What the fuck were you doing the dishes for, kid?” He asked. Carmen didn’t have the energy to even try stuttering out a response so he just shrugged. He’d thought Jimmy of all people would understand how his mom got when the house was a mess. “Not talkative tonight, huh?” Carmen still didn’t respond. “That’s okay. Let’s get you something to eat.”
Carmen didn’t want to eat. But, thankfully, almost immediately after providing him with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with a glass of milk, Uncle Jimmy left, so he didn’t have to eat the thing. After about an hour of sitting along in the kitchen, leaving the sandwich and milk untouched, his mom found him. She was drunk, unsurprisingly, and as she looked Carmen up and down, he tensed and curled in on himself, trying to prepare to be grabbed or screamed at or hit. Her eyes lingering on his hand, then his head, and finally his shirt. She scoffed and made a slurred comment about him ruining his only nice shirt, then grabbed another bottle of wine and retreated back to her room. Carmen thinks he would have preferred a beating from her in that moment over her complete indifference.
Later that night, as Carmen lay in bed, unable to sleep, he opened and closed his injured hand slowly, despite the pain that shot through it at the slightest movement. The pain made his head fuzzy. It made it hard to hear the voice in his head, which sounded suspiciously like his mom's, telling him he was overreacting, that he was a pussy, that he was nothing but a failed abortion—not that he even knew what an abortion was when he was six.
He found himself craving something. He couldn’t piece together exactly what it was at first, but when he clenched his hand and felt the burning again, he realized what he wanted. He wanted that burning to blur everything out once again and for Michael to hold him again and promise everything would be okay.
Everyone was asleep when he went back into the kitchen and grabbed the knife again. He thought about where he would cut for a while before deciding on his lower belly—no one would ever see it there. Slowly, he lifted his shirt and made a small cut just below his belly button. A few drops of blood bubbled to the top of his skin.
The satisfaction of the pain came and went as the stinging receded. But as the last of it floated away thanks to the small shot of adrenaline, he felt the ghost of the warmth he’d felt just a few hours earlier when Michael held him. The warmth became his drug. The pain is his supplier. He wanted more. He needed more. And now he knew exactly how to get it.