take it how you want it (take on my love) // carmuel one-shots

feel more / with less

description: carla on a bad date and samuel as her waiter (which seems like such an inadequate description because in actuality this spiraled way beyond out of my control)

rating: explicit (sexual content)

//

"...and then a year before that, a few of my buddies and I spent Christmas on a yacht off the coast of Santorini. Huge party, you know how it is. Have you been before? You should come with me sometime, you'd love it."

Not for the first time tonight, Carla has to suppress rolling her eyes at the pompous, cliché bullshit coming out of her date's mouth. Also not for the first time tonight, she wonders if she should be insulted by what Lu thinks her taste in men is, given that it was her who set Carla up on this blind date to begin with.

He's apparently one of Valerio's friends from boarding school, which Carla sort of finds hard to believe, if only because she's pretty sure the only thing that Valerio and this guy have in common is a penchant for cocaine. Which, now that she thinks about it, is sometimes all that matters to someone who likes to get high, but whatever. Valerio, in spite of his family and wealth and preferred extracurricular activities, is surprisingly down to earth.

Her date is decidedly not, something Carla became clued into the moment they sat down in this restaurant an hour ago.

His name is Salvador; an old, pretentious name given to a son from old, pretentious money. Money that he has spent this entire time flaunting, whether it be by throwing it at the most expensive bottle of wine (that honestly isn't even that good, in Carla's credible opinion—it's too dry, too oaky, although she'd kept this to herself after taking her first sip and instead smiled tight-lipped and graciously) on the menu, or boasting about it in every conversation they've had so far, like he is right now.

As if Carla hasn't met hundreds of people like him. As if she doesn't come from his exact world. As if she's supposed to find this impressive or something.

"I've been to Greece before," she says neutrally, once again adopting that smile. Salvador doesn't notice it, or how her deliberate non-answer actually means, there's no way in hell that's going to happen.

"But you haven't been with me," he insists, winking.

Her smile gets even more forced. She hadn't planned on replying anyway, but the waiter's perfectly timed return to top off their wine is a convenient enough excuse as to why she doesn't say anything further on that particular subject.

Salvador drones on about something else, and Carla mostly tunes him out as she watches the dark red liquid slosh into her glass, because seriously, anything is more interesting than having to listen to the man sitting across from her talk about his past vacations or cars or elbow-brushes with a celebrity she hasn't heard of and/or doesn't care about. And she really does mean anything, up to and including the waiter himself.

Because he's cute, something she noted as soon as he stepped up to their table and informed them that he'd be their server for the evening. Unlike Salvador, who hasn't even so much as acknowledged any of the staff's existence since they checked in for their reservation at the hostess' booth, Carla had actually bothered to read the silver-plated name tag pinned to the waiter's shirt. Samuel, it had read in plain block letters.

When Samuel leans back from pouring their wine, she offers him a small, thankful smile, if only because she doesn't want to be roped in with Salvador's ilk. She's rich, yes. She can even be rude like him, too. But not needlessly so, and this is also one of the many points where Carla differs from him: she's extremely detail-oriented. She's always been observant, even as a little girl; taught to sit there and smile politely for her parents' business associates at parties and act like the perfect daughter from the perfect family they so desperately wanted to portray themselves as. And she's good at that, still is—but it got horribly boring by the time she turned seven, and the only way to alleviate herself of that boredom had been by watching everyone around her. She's had well over a decade's practice observing others. By now, she's an expert at it.