Chapter Text
The thing about the Carmy situation, the thing was, it was starting to feel inevitable. Like she was falling into an infinite black hole and couldn’t do a thing about the way they were getting closer, and closer. She wasn’t doing a very good job at not getting utterly wrapped up in him. She wasn’t doing a very good job at escaping his gravitational pull.
She was thinking about it, one night, while he was staring at her. Or, watching, might have been more accurate. He was watching her put together a meal, work through a recipe she had in mind. Just his soft unblinking gaze on her as she slowly worked through her prep, slowly put together this food for him. It embarrassed her a little how much she wanted to impress him – how fast her heart was beating in her chest as he watched and watched and watched.
It was just the two of them, late at night, in the kitchen of the as yet unopened restaurant. She had a new recipe she’d been brainstorming, and it felt ready this time, it felt perfect, and she wanted him to try it. Wanted him to agree that it was perfect.
She wanted him to say it was tremendous, no notes. Her heart had been beating a little too hard the entire time she’d been outlining the dish and it's components to him. He had just listened, laser focus, big eyes zeroed in on her and her alone as she spoke. It was intense - the full force of his attention like that, it got heady.
Carmy was really an all or nothing kind of guy sometimes – he existed at these extremes, these moments of wild contrast. He could be shouting, intense, angry, cruel even, all of that one minute. Then the next, soft and gentle, patient and kind. He had a way of making you feel like you had all the time in the world to work things out, to get things right, to learn and grow, and become your best self. Or a way of making you feel like every second you weren’t delivering was a second wasted, and everything was blisteringly burningly urgent. And he would flip between the two states as quickly as anything, pasta water bubbling over in a saucepan, frying food going instantly from warmed to burnt.
He warmed, and he burnt, just like that. Like an open flame. Low heat one minute, all a gentle simmer, holding back but just enough to warm you, and then the next a blazing flame, hot and sucking all of the air out of the room until you were sweaty, and you couldn’t breathe, and getting some kind of burn felt inevitable. And Syd couldn’t get enough of the heat. She wanted to consume it, she felt, a little woozy with the intensity of it all – she wanted that same flame to heat her up inside and keep her going, fuel her, energise her, even though it was dangerous. Even though it could hurt.
She finished chopping the last pepper and looked at him. He was still gazing, but laser focused on her hands now. His brow was smooth, unworried - he was tranquil for a moment. He had said before, he liked watched her cook because it was one of the few moments in the day when he wasn’t a little on edge about things going imminently wrong. She didn’t really understand that, given she made mistakes, as much as anyone could, but he just shrugged when she asked what that meant. “I just uh… I know it’s you?” he said, soft, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. It was a little pink. She wondered if it was the heat, or the honesty of the moment that they were sharing. “I know you’ve… you’ve got this. I can trust that, even if things did go wrong, you’d get them back right. I’ve seen you do it. So, it’s some kind of relaxing, watching you cook. If that uh… makes any sense.”
Carmy wasn’t stingy with compliments. He never was, wasn't afriad to be honest, never seemed to hold back the truth when he thought something. But that one… it wasn’t his usual direct style. It was different than a factual acknowledgement of the fact that she was a really good chef. It was richer, and softer. A slow cooked compliment just for her. So, she nodded, said, “Heard, chef.” And continued to cook under his attentive gaze. Smile playing on her lips.
She was thinking of that still, after some moments of silence had passed, and she looked at him, and said, “Could you help me start the sauce while I finish this?”
He looked up from her hands slowly. But not all at once, not from hands to eyes, but slowly; dragging his gaze up her arms, over her shoulders, her chin, her lips, where he lingered, at her nose, until he was finally looking right into her eyes. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared, unwavering, into her eyes. The silence between them spun, drew taut, like golden thread. She felt her mouth drop open slightly. She saw it mirrored by his. His tongue peeked out to wet his lips - they were dry, always dry. That was probably why he was licking them, she thought. Almost believed.
Looking at his lips made her aware of her own, too aware. They were dry too. She licked them, and his eyes dropped down to watch. The air in the room felt suffocating all of a sudden.
And then he nodded, closing his eyes, turning his body smoothly away, and around, before saying “Yes chef.” Calm and steady as ever. He walked to a different station, started getting to work.
It took her longer to recover.
She took a rattling breath, as quietly as possible, unsure of when she has stopped breathing. After a few more moments of inaction, while he had gotten a saucepan and a cream and some herbs and gotten to work on chopping, she shook her head hard, and got back to work herself.
The thing was, they spent a lot of time together. A lot of good time together too. And, you know, a lot of hard time, exhausting time, arguably boring time – but none of it ever felt like that. Mostly when she was with him, she was happy, excited, content.
“I’m getting rocked tonight.” He said, and it wasn’t new. A lot of nights, that was someone’s go to plan – thrilling life of a chef and all, desperately coping with stress in any way that proved itself effective. But he continued, added, “It’ll be a little more, celebratory, though. Than the usual.”
On the topic of arguably boring time, they were sat together in his office, working on taxes. She couldn’t help thinking about that movie quote, about being totally, utterly happy to just… do taxes and laundry with someone, for a lifetime. Her and Carmy had spent hours doing taxes, working through paperwork, peacefully together, laughingly together, quiet and loud, speaking and not, and her treacherous mind couldn’t help thinking she would be happy to do the laundry part too.
They were sat side by side in the tiny room; he’d dragged a chair in so they could both work together, but there wasn’t that much space left. Certaintly felt like there was none between the two of them. Their arms were brushing up against each other with almost every motion. She could feel the heat of his body entirely against her side, constant, burning.
“Oh, it’s a celebration huh?” she teased.
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“Fuck your shit up, but make it festive.”
He huffed a not-quite-laugh out at that. “Exactly. Festively fucked up.”
“What are we celebrating?” she said, like his celebrations were her celebrations. She didn’t even think about it before she said it like that. In retrospect maybe she had been the one to invite herself over. That we. She was doing it a lot more lately, using ‘we’ to talk about things. It made her sound a little like one of those couples that seemingly stopped being individuals because they found their ‘other half’ and only talked about things including their partner – but things were the restaurant, and things were constant, and in that they were always entirely a ‘we’. So, it made sense.
She didn’t know who she was justifying it too though.
“You know uh… Celebrating this?” he said, starting to close notebooks and pile up papers.
“This…?” she asked.
He nodded, slowly, in her periphery. “We’re really doing this, restaurant thing. The Bear is coming, you know?” His smile was audible in the last sentence. He was happy, really happy, smiled every time he said the name. She’d say it to him throughout the day, just to see his soft little smile bloom instantly. It was one of the easier ways to earn it from him. She kind of felt like he kept his smiles under lock and key sometimes. Like earning them was an achievement, one you earnt after surviving a gauntlet.
She mirrored him, nodding as what he was saying started to make sense. “So, we’re celebrating… being a couple weeks into a journey to a new restaurant that is going to take us much, much longer to actually sort out?”
“…Yeah. Pretty much. It just, uh… We could’ve already given up, you know?”
She did know. She looked at him properly. His long, calloused fingers working through piles and piles of paper. It was late, and they were tired, and they’d been working tirelessly to do all of the stuff they needed to do, and they still had so much more lined up. His eyes were always tired, lids heavy, bags forming underneath, but they were shining with the enthusiasm, and the passion, for all of this. Even the paperwork. It made her smile, as she said, “Honestly after we got past the exciting bit and laid out the logistics and what we would need to sort out…”
“…Looking at a mountain.”
“Yeah, it was a fucking mountain chef. Is a fucking mountain.”
“It is chef. And so.”
“And so…?”
“We should celebrate… still trying. I think that deserves some celebrating. We’ve started… you know, climbing, or whatever.”
She laughed at that, though it was nothing but true. They had started climbing. “Well look at us, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Two of us little mountain goats.” She said, looking over at him with just a hint of a shit eating grin. He grinned back, one of his bigger smiles, a hit of teeth. She liked that one a lot. “A couple of mountain goats that should definitely be celebrating.”
“Exactly.”