✥glazed✥

Every inch

1.4k / m!ghostface x f!reader / from blurb.

SEQUEL: EVERY INCH 2 🔪 THREEQUEL: 3

Slasher master list

Warnings/notes: I8+ noncon (ghostface unconscious) somnophilia. Based on the car scene from Scream II, but it's modern day (cell phones exist).  You can HC this as anyone but he's night walks coded if you read my other stuff.

Your skirt grazes his robe as you carefully stretch your right leg over the driver’s seat, trying not to touch him, trying not to wake him up.  It’s tricky crawling over Ghostface to get out of the car.  He smells faintly of weed and sweat.  You’ve never been close enough to smell him before. You’ve never been close to him at all for more than a few seconds, always with his knife in hand.  You hear him breathing behind the mask and assume he’s knocked out from the impact of the crash, but can't know for sure.  He could be pretending for his own amusement, planning to taunt you then stab you at any moment. You’re going to have to open that car door sooner or later - it’s the only one left you haven’t tried.  It'll definitely make a noise. You hover there straddling him, delaying the inevitable. Straddling Ghostface, you think to yourself. Is this a nightmare? 

Okay here’s my thing with syd x carmy discourse. there is such a thing as platonic soulmates. I am ace and 1 million percent agree that it needs to be shown more and explored. But when people say “stop trying to make everything about romance” I think there is a major point being missed.

This is another one of my favorite scenes between Carmen and Sydney. It’s in S2E2, and they are at his apartment, working on the new menu.

Sydney asks Carmy about the moment he got the 3 Michelin stars call when was the CDC at the restaurant in New York, the highest honor for any restaurant in the world.

What struck me about this scene, apart from the playful banter into this moment, was how Carmy immediately gushes out his answer after Sydney asks him this question. She’s genuinely interested and, literally, a little star struck, and he in turn seems like he’s so unburdened to finally be able to talk to someone about this major moment in his life.

We know that when Carmy was the CDC at Eleven Madison Park, he was horribly abused on a daily basis by his boss, the Executive Chef. Carmy had the completely arduous task of leading the kitchen while under extreme duress, and to such a degree that he was able to retain the highest honor in his industry. The stress of it all we know, made him physically sick, everyday. We also know at this time, Michael wasn’t speaking to him, and it’s unlikely his family understood what he was going through in this moment. He was going through monumental highs and lows, without any support, and completely alone.

He probably has never had the chance to process it or think about it, let alone talk about it.

When Carmy comes home for Christmas in the flashback of S2E6, we see almost everyone, and especially his mom, give him guff and make fun of him for being a “big time chef….too fancy for us.” Carmy was in Copenhagen at the time and not in New York yet, but he’s going through exciting, transformative, life changing moments which no one in his family bothers to ask about or talk to him about. It must have been incredibly painful to not only not be able to share and talk about it, but to be made fun of for it, instead of being told, “good job”, which, as he shares in S1E8, was one thing he wanted to hear from his brother, so badly.

Sydney asks him about his experience because she genuinely wants to listen to him speak about this moment. She doesn’t just ask what it was like, she asks him, “how did it feel?” He immediately pours out his answer in such a way that made me think, my gosh, probably no one has ever asked him about it before. It’s terribly sad that until now no one has cared enough to show interest, and it must have made him feel so lonely to not be able to express himself or what this moment meant to him.

Now Sydney is here though, and she allows him the space in this moment to be vulnerable and heard. His answer perhaps isn’t what she thought it would be, but it’s honest.

Sydney understands the high level of the restaurants where Carmy has worked and what he has achieved professionally, and she admires him for it. She also understands on a much deeper level because he unknowingly fed her while he was the CDC in New York and she was his guest. Sydney’s eaten Carmy’s 3 Michelin star award winning food, and it was the best meal she’s ever had. He just doesn’t know it yet.

In S1E2, when the staff is cleaning the kitchen and Carmy mentions Noma, Marcus says “Noma’s the shit, huh?” Both Carmy and Sydney say “the best”, at the exact same time.

In terms of being understood, this contrasts starkly with Carmy’s conversation with Claire in another kitchen—the kitchen of the party house in S2E5. She mentions he was in France, he gently corrects her and says Copenhagen. She says, “go to Noma?”, he says, “worked at Noma.” Claire says, “I heard it’s alright” and he responds with “it’s pretty good”. This exchange stuck out to me when I first heard it. Is she sarcastically joking about Noma being just “alright”, or does she not know about its exceptional reputation? Either way she doesn’t ask Carmy any questions about it and then changes the subject.

After Carmy tells Sydney about his Michelin star call and the moment that immediately followed when he had to prepare to serve the U.N. Security Council, his face holds onto the memory of the moment and you can see it felt so good for him to express himself and talk about it. He probably hasn’t thought about it in a long time. He looks reflective and dare I say, proud. He then looks at Sydney, and they smile at each other. It’s quick, but he looks so grateful to her for allowing him to talk about this moment and also that she really, truly listened.

It’s these sweet little moments between the two of them that really make an impact because in these moments, they allow each other to share experiences that only a few people in the world would actually understand. Just like their sign language, the way they understand each other creates a form of communication and expression that is just between them.

I don’t think she realizes it, but Sydney asking Carmy this question, and by genuinely listening to and caring about his answer, she fed and nourished a part of him that had been starved for so long, just like he fed her.

This whole thing came about from that well-worn Freud quote that "friendship is the art of distance while love is the art of intimacy" that I recalled from a crude psychology class.

From the most shallow, birds-eye POV, Carmy achieved intimacy with Claire (while maintaining distance/friendship with Syd) by disclosing details of his family situation, his panic attacks, expressing romantic affection, and establishing physical intimacy with someone.

He even seemed more eager to relay and express these experiences to his friends (see the cannoli conversation with Syd and Marcus) as he went deeper into the relationship. From this perspective, I empathize with people when they say they see his relationship with Claire as real personal growth, followed by a steep regression.

Claire seems to pantomime someone who is secure, but is actually pretty anxious in matters of the heart - the idealized projections she places on Carmy based on her proximity to him a decade ago, her unwillingness to walk away from the red flag of the 'wrong number' fiasco, and her unrelenting insistence to know why he tried to dodge her in the first place. I'll say nothing of the constant placating.

Claire is a sort of a faux 'sword of destiny' for Carmy - he yearned for her attention in his youth, it was loudly proclaimed to be "the good thing" by his abusive family, and so it's the only logical choice in Carmy's mind once he's beaten over the head with it for the umpteenth time - it's the love chosen for him by his family and his past self before he pieced together ways to partially escape, it's fatalism, it's the end of the weary search for "fun" and happiness.

He's never truly happy or having "fun" (as he doesn't know how to define that in his mind - that's why we're tortured with 5 grueling minutes of Logan), but he feels cared for and is going through the motions of being "that guy who is fun and in love".

Love even had to be defined for him by his inherited family friend/handyman who he didn't even know was his "best friend" until Claire relayed it to him - he blindingly accepted both assertions from Fak, falling back into his family's narrative that he can't survive or be normal without their collective help.

By contrast, Sydney is probably the first thing Carmy has ever chosen for himself without outside influence from family or employers. She was his first hired employee, his first true friend who wasn't a blood relative, and probably the first person he feels mirrors his passions without a need to compete with her over them.

Sydney is a choice - she is happiness (in whatever shape or form that you choose to define it, it can be aromantic if you'd like) that Carmy found all by himself, without the narrative being driven by outside influences. They have fun together on their own frequency, but Carmy's black-and-white thinking can't recognize it for what it is - he's still reaching for a sense of "fun" that was repeatedly sold to him as his family tried to push him along the path of normalcy (an impossible feat for a Berzatto).

Syd and Carmy share a brand of maternal grief/strife and a profound love of service that breeds a slow intimacy. By saying "you deserve my full focus" Carmen is saying that Sydney's happiness is more important than his own, which can sound abysmal in type, but is also a natural pre-req for love when given willingly - which I think he is giving willingly for her, just not willingly for the anxiety and minutiae that comes with actually running a fine dining restaurant. He needs someone he can have absolute trust in to hold his hand through that part.

That's why he could only create The Bear with her, and why he says he wouldn't want to do it without her.

They're both fearful and avoidant, which is a fatally-wounding powder keg if they were to connect this instant, but with ever-growing intimacy and self-work (which Claire - however insufferable her dialogue - probably planted seedlings in with Carmy, and his openness and absolute trust in Sydney could drive her towards, too) their coming together could heal many of their longstanding wounds.