Archive of Our Own ^beta

Carmy muttered a few swears under his breath, a few cursing Mikey for his lack of organizational skills that even years down the line they were still feeling, and a few praising Nat for her increased optimism that The Beef, which was now The Bear, still held the family significance that The Beef had – Carmy wasn’t sure that it did. Sugar had been increasingly taking time off as she and Pete prepared for the arrival of their second baby, leaving Carmy to learn how to figure out the increasingly difficult financials now that their restaurant had earned and retained one Michelin star, had successfully become The Bear, and they were only mere dollars away from fully repaying Uncle J.

Carmy’s mind spun, trying to figure out the newest mess of Mikey’s scribbles. They had found a hidden stack of notes, loan agreements, and incoherent notes in the demolition of The Beef, and only now were they focused on decoding them. Deciding that now was a better time than ever for a smoke break, Carmy retrieved his coat from across the office and stepped out to the back of the restaurant.

The cold night air immediately brushed over his face, and Carmy could feel his skin almost instantly start to dry out. He shielded the flame of his lighter from the wind and lit the end of a fresh cigarette. He made a mental note to remind himself to go get a new pack of cigarettes the next day, as he was on his last few. Carmy figured that Mikey would have benefited from mental notes, but supposed he couldn’t ever find space in his drug-addled brain for them.

“Fuck.” A woman’s voice groaned, forcing Carmy to whip around. He instantly recognized the voice as Syd’s, and her presence was confirmed once Carmy saw the wind push a few loose braids from behind the dumpster.

“Yo, Chef!” Carmy called, rounding the corner behind the dumpster. To his shock, he saw Sydney hinged over at her waist, sweaty palms pressing handprints into the thighs of her jeans. Carmy cringed as she emptied the contents of her stomach. “You good?”

After only heaving up air for a few moments, Sydney deemed herself calm enough to turn to face Carmy. “Chef.” She started, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Carmy’s eyes scanned the woman’s body, watching as her hands shook and she seemed to sway on her feet. He didn’t say anything, he simply waved his hand back towards where he had come from. They’d ventured from the cold Chicago night back into The Bear. Admittedly, Sydney was thankful, as she couldn’t stand to imagine herself throwing up again with the wind pushing on her back. The temperature difference between the frigid air and her scorching skin only made her stomach churn harder.

“Here,” Carmy spoke, extending a cold can of Sprite towards Syd. “Something to get your blood sugar off the ground.”

Sydney begrudgingly took the drink, her hands shaking from the aftermath of the sickness, but relishing in the ice coldness of the aluminum can. It was one of the tall cans you get at gas stations. The sixteen ounce ones that Carmen liked because he could hold them with a tight fist and still feel like he was holding a beer. He hadn’t drank since his terrible binge after Mikey’s death.

“So, um…” Carmy started, rubbing a hand up the back of his neck. “Does this…does this happen often?”

Syd gulped down a full swallow of Sprite. “Do you want the real answer, or the one you want to hear?”

God, even after violently throwing up, she still had her wit intact.

“The real answer, Syd. C’mon now.”

Sydney took a deep breath. “Like, every fucking day.” She could feel Carmy’s frightened stare burning into her skin. “But it’s not you, it’s not anything. I got it under control.”

Carmen slid his tongue over his teeth, trying to place these words delicately. “You very obviously don’t have it under control.”

Sydney parted her lips to retort, but quickly stood up, slamming the Sprite down as a retch splayed through her body.

“Jesus, fuck, Syd.” Carmy muttered, holding up her loose braids and rubbing small circles into her back. Her skin was on fire, even through her shirt he could tell.

“I’m fine.” Sydney spoke, clearing her throat. “It’s all good. Just, give me a sec.” She leaned her back against the cold metal table of the prep station, letting it cool her lower back. Black specs were darting in and out of her vision, and the room was spinning on a crooked, ugly axis.

“Syd-” Carmy’s voice cracked. No, it broke.

“I’m fine, Carm, you can go home.” Sydney pressed, though she honestly didn’t want to be alone right now, as she’d never gotten this sick after work before. The dizziness should have passed by now. The spots in her vision are usually gone. It never lasts this long. She doesn’t want to be alone right now, but she doesn’t want Carmy to see her like this.

Carmen’s eyes raked over Sydney’s body, watching as her muscles weakened under her skin. He barely had time to form a full thought before he was instinctively reaching out to catch her. He let out a jagged breath, gently lowering to the floor, coaxing Sydney’s limp body into his lap.

“Syd! What the fuck?” He muttered, tapping her cheek. A sheen of sickly strong sweat glimmered over her skin, collecting at the nape of her neck. “Can you hear me? God, what the fuck?”

Very eloquent, Carm, great work.

He felt every twitch of her muscles, every slow beat of her heart, every weak flutter of breath from her lips. He saw himself. He saw himself in New York. He’d been working at French Laundry and staying too late, too often. He had been violently throwing up before and after every shift, his body unable to adapt to the intensity of the environment. God, he hoped Syd hadn’t started throwing up before work too, after work was already too much. He’d fainted back in New York, alone, coming to unaware of where he was, or how the fuck he got to the pristine floors of his workplace. He slept there that night. He never told anyone that. He didn’t have the strength or the care for his own wellbeing to go get himself checked out. He wouldn’t let this happen to Sydney.

Slowly, Sydney began to stir, her eyes popping open and quickly shutting again, adjusting to the bright lights of The Bear. She tried to push herself up, but quickly met Carmy’s strong chest.

“There you are. There you are, lay back down. I got you.” Carmy adjusted his cradle on Syd’s head, letting her relax into his body. “Syd, we’ve got to get this nipped.” He wasn’t going to fucking cry. Not now.

“Carm…” Sydney cried out, her breaths still uneven. “I’m scared.”

Carmy nodded. “I know, I know, but it’s okay. I got you. You didn’t hit your head, you’re good.”

“It never lasts that long. It’s never this bad.”

Carmen’s heart broke. “How long has this been going on?”

Sydney gripped onto Carmen’s white shirt, like a small child. Her fingers trembled, she didn’t even know she was doing it. “I can’t tell you.” She whimpered.

“You can tell me anything.” Carmy spoke, calmly. God, he wanted to kiss her. Why did he want to kiss her?

“Since all the shit with the to-go orders.”

Carmy’s stomach plummeted. That was nearly a year ago, and the stress of the to-go order fiasco and the tension of his words obviously hadn’t disappeared as quickly as the online ordering system had. “Good Lord, Syd. Why haven’t you said anything?”

“It’s not a big deal.” She mumbled, though it was becoming rapidly apparent that this was, in fact, a big deal. She was collapsed into her boss’s lap, for fuck’s sake!

Carmy held her closer, unknowingly adjusting her head so that her ear was flush with his heart. His heartbeat settled Sydney’s racing mind. “We gotta take you to the doc, okay?”

Sydney gulped. What the fuck was a medical professional going to tell her that she didn’t already know? Cut back on the stress, cut back on the caffeine, start fucking eating.

“But we’ll go tomorrow.” Carmy continued. “C’mon, let’s get you home.”

He lifted Sydney up so effortlessly that it frightened him. Was she always this frail? He so easily pictured her beautiful face the day she walked in, the way her round cheeks lifted into a smile that he lived to see. Carmy glanced down to the exhausted girl in his arms. Her cheeks were significantly less full, and her eyes were shockingly sunken in. Noted.

“Carm?” Syd asked, once in his car.

“Yeah, Syd?”

“Can you stay tonight?” She was asking the question that she’d wanted to ask a million times. However, the tone was different than when she had fantasized it going down before. She was terrified, and if she was going to faint again, or god forbid, her heart stops or something just as dramatic, she didn’t want to be alone.

A chill swept down his spine. “Of course.” He swallowed thickly. He, too, had been hoping she’d ask, but never under these circumstances. “My place or yours?”

“Yours.” Sydney whispered. “My dad…he can’t see me like this.”

Carmy nodded, knowingly. He’d felt the same way about Nat and Cousin. He’d lied so many times when he was in New York, making up a million excuses for why they couldn’t come visit him. They couldn’t see how thin he had gotten, how tired he’d gotten, the lack of food in his fridge, the way his bathroom smelled consistently of Lysol as he cleaned up vomit and stomach acid every morning. He didn’t ever ponder lying to Mikey – Mikey never asked to visit him.

“I’ll tell him I’m staying with Nat or something. Girls night. You’ll back me up, right?”

Carmy snickered. “For all I know, you’re watching The Bachelorette on Nat’s couch right now.”

Sydney nodded, leaning her head onto Carmy’s shoulder, with no respect for professional boundaries. He just caught her fainted body, this couldn’t be the end of the world. Carmen didn’t mind. He let the lull of the road and the quiet hum of the radio rock Sydney to sleep.

He hated himself for his imagination. Why wasn't it ever like this with Claire? Why couldn't he ever find a relationship that made him feel as calm as Syd did. It'd be wildly inappropriate to date in the workplace – he'd seen that go wrong plenty of times. Besides, they were both the best at what they did because they didn't have that outward distraction of love. They felt enough love through the food, the good reviews, the star that's about to turn into two.

Once at his apartment, Carmy has to make the choice to wake Syd up or carry her inside. She looked so peaceful sleeping, shockingly peaceful considering the sickness that was ravaging her body only minutes ago. However, against his imagination, Carmy gently tapped Sydney's shoulder.

“Hi there.” He whispered. “Let's get ya inside, okay? Get you into bed, sleeping in the car can't be good for your back.”

Sydney gave a weak chuckle, still hazy from her slice of a nap. Carmy had found out her back had been fucked much earlier than he learned about her stomach being fucked. She gained a twinge in her lower back during long hours at the CIA, and it never truly healed up. Even in her sleepy daze, she knew that Carmy was right, and that her back couldn’t take another double over to throw up, let alone a night’s sleep in Carmy’s shitty, hand me down, on-its-fourth-owner, Toyota Camry.

Sydney nodded, unbuckling her seatbelt and stumbling her way into Carmy’s apartment on feet that had fallen asleep themselves in the car ride home.

“I figured you don’t want anything, but I can make you something light if you want to try to eat.” Carmy explained, throwing the contents of his pockets into a trinket dish that Sugar had gotten him.

Sydney’s stomach lurched at the mere mention of food. “I’d probably throw it right back up.” She laughed. “I appreciate it, though.”

Carmy nodded, running his hand through his hair that desperately needed to be washed. “I washed my sheets this morning,” He explained. “Bed’s all yours.”

Sydney snickered, “It’s like you planned on someone staying here, huh?”

Carmy didn’t have the heart to tell Syd that the nightmare he had woken up from had wound him up so tightly that it was either clean his apartment or go scrub the floors of The Bear with a toothbrush. “Somethin’ like that.”

Sydney ventured around the apartment, trying to figure out why she felt so safe, so comfortable. Shouldn’t she feel weird that she’s about to sleep in her boss’ bed? All shivery, sweaty, and panicky? Suddenly, a soft touch landed on her shoulder.

“Behind.” Carmy whispered, passing behind Syd to grab himself a blanket from the closet.

Sydney rolled her eyes. “Shut the fuck up.” She laughed.
Sydney figured that she’d shower in the morning, fearful that she wasn’t done throwing up yet and that showering now would only jinx it. She watched as Carmy made a makeshift bed for himself on the sofa, the room starting to slowly twist.

“Carm?” She called out, gripping onto the doorframe.

“Yeah?”

“Could you get me some water?”

Carmy’s eyes flicked over to Syd, who was running pale again and beelining for the bathroom. He cringed as he heard the door slam and muffled retching from behind it. “Heard, Chef!” He called back.

Carmy approached the bathroom with a glass of water and a shot of Pepto in hand, waiting until the retching stopped to open the door. “I’m starting to think this is more than stress, Syd. You think you got a bug somewhere? Eat something bad?”

Sydney reached up and grabbed the two drinks from Carmy, throwing the shot of medicine back like a twenty something on her first day at college. “Haven’t really been eating.” She spoke, not registering the admission she had just made.

Carmy froze. Again, he saw himself in New York. The empty fridge, the bare table, the never-utilized dishwasher that any normal New York resident would have died for. His mind flashed back to the time a girl, whose name he can’t remember, laid above him, both at a loss of breath from a quick fuck that was only to get Carmy’s stress levels down. He remembered how her fingers could effortlessly fit between the valleys of his ribs. The way the goosebumps rose on her skin at that realization. She was new to Noma and her naivety from culinary school made her freeze up. She threatened to tell Chef, she told Carmy she loved him, both things that were never true. She said something about anorexia, something about her sister being a ballerina. Carmy, mind still cloudy with orgasm, only asked if the sister was the best ballerina.

New York Carmy saw food as a distraction, admittedly, Mikey’s death didn’t help, but since regularly attending Al-Anon meetings, his increased mental clarity surrounding his brother’s death allowed for him to tune back into the hunger cues that a certain Chef in New York had scolded out of him.

“What do you mean, you haven’t been eating?”

Sydney shook her head. “In the morning. I can’t do this right now.”

“Syd, this is serious.” Carmy whispered.

Sydney pushed herself up, stumbling once more to the bedroom. “Please, Carm, not right now.”

Carmy sighed, accepting defeat. He knew who he was talking to. This was the woman who strutted into The Beef, owned up to the gaps in her resume when she drove trucks to put herself through school. The woman whose silver tongue ran his brother’s restaurant – no, it was his fucking restaurant. The woman who loved the staff more than he has ever seen anyone love before. She would have things her way.

Carmy nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.” He quietly shut the bedroom door and made his way to the sofa.