Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing about Carmy is, he hates throwing up. It’s always been kinda traumatic for him: his whole body spasming, the burn in his nose and his eyes and his throat, the acrid taste on his tongue. And more than that, the horrible displacement of feeling his whole body reorder itself inside-out, his eyes squeezed shut like if he opens them he might see his own organs coming out of his mouth, glittering dull and bloody on the bathroom floor or kitchen sink.

The other thing about Carmy is, he kinda likes it.

At first, it’s just a sign that he’s really fucking himself up, which is perversely satisfying. See, all he really wants is to push himself— really put himself up against something, feel for the boundaries of what he can do, see if bending his mind and body and attention to their absolute limit will be enough to make him the best at something. Can he go two days without sleep? How about three? How successful of a substitute for sleep is espresso? And can he still plate with the subsequent shaking hands? Can he chop with a sliced-open thumb? With a sprained wrist? A blistered palm that keeps breaking and leaking blood inside his rubber glove and down his sleeve? Ten minutes after being released from the ER (and it only took that long because crosstown shuttle was delayed and he had to run across midtown)? It gets to the point where he can only tell that he’s doing his best if he feels like he’s tearing himself apart. So, self-destruction becomes an indicator of success. Shit, it becomes a success in itself.

So yeah, he feels like he’s accomplishing something when he feels so much dread and anxiety and jittery fuckin he-doesn’t-know-what that he pukes black coffee and Mini Wheats into his sink every morning like clockwork.

And it’s calming. Like, the horrible thing happened already and now it’s over and all the bad feelings went down the drain with it. Why be anxious when everything’s inevitable, anyway? He will not keep down breakfast, he will not sleep enough, he will get yelled at by Chef. And he doesn’t like any of it, not really— getting called a talentless fucking pygmy or looking at the clock when he finally gets to bed and realizing the best he’s going to do is three and a half hours— but he likes that he knows they’re going to happen, and he knows he can make it through them. He’ll survive, he’ll grit his teeth, he’ll show up to work and call for hands and keep his mise organized and his station wiped down. The only thing to worry about, the only thing up in the air, is whether dinner service will be perfect. And, if he’s lucky, that part will be fun.

He’d worked in a certain kind of kitchen when he was on his way up— good kitchens, but rough-around-the-edges, Anthony Bourdain kinds of places where the Chef Executif bribes the produce vendors for first dibs on sunchokes. They were loud, and dirty, and chaotic— the C-D-C blasting whatever music they prefer, which is usually dad rock or metal or mid-tier rap, patissieres with bad credit who drink too much walking out for too many smoke breaks, everyone yelling at and over each other, the word fuck being used like a comma. The kitchens, if you squinted, might look a lot like the Original Beef. You know, if they’d had grease traps overdue for cleaning, moved maybe 60% slower, and made food with a price point about a million times lower.

But when he pushes past the doors at Noma, there’s nothing that even remotely reminds him of home. There’s a hushed, eerie calm, everyone heads down with feet and hands moving preternaturally fast. There’s a buzz in the air, and the clanging of pots and the rhythmic sound of chef’s knives meeting cutting boards, but there’s no chatter. No gossip, no “fuck you”s or idle threats or indelicate comments about other chefs’ mothers. He calls the tickets, the chefs call heard. The only person who pierces the beehive-like, quiet intensity, the only person who makes excess noise, is Chef.

“What the fuck is this?”

A swallow of bile breaches the boundary between throat and back of mouth. He chokes it back down. It’s okay. This was bound to happen.

“Grilled branzino, Chef.”

“Wrong. This is dogshit.”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Fire a new one, and this time tell your fish man not to produce complete garbage.”

He calls for a new branzino, but Chef yells over him. “And what’s this?”

Carmy loses his place with tickets, has to start the last one over.

“I said what the fuck is this, you tattooed Midwestern piece of shit?” He pulls a plate right in front of Carmy’s face, and Carmy hesitates for a second, not sure if he should be explaining what’s wrong with the dish or if he should keep calling these tickets.

“Uh—“

“You look like a fucking Doodle Bear, you know that? The ink isn’t fooling anyone. No one thinks you’re tough, you fucking oompa loompa.” He indicates the plate again, slamming it down with a clatter, fucking up the presentation in the process. “Now tell me what the fuck this is supposed to be.”

“Salmon tartare, Chef.”

“And what’s the garnish?”

“Creme fraiche and finger lime pearls, Chef.”

“Then where the fuck are your tweezers, Berzatto? Stop stuttering your way through the tickets and get the goddamn dish up on the goddamn pass.”

“Yes, Chef.”

His hands shake a bit grasping the tweezers. Prepping finger limes is a bitch because you can’t tell what color the inside is going to be before cutting it open, and Chef insists on only the green ones for garnish, and the pink and white get juiced for a gelée over in pastry. Only sometimes you fuck up and then you have to separate the mixed pearls with tweezers and grip them super gently so they don’t burst and then you’re falling behind and Chef is in your ear again, reminding you that you dress like Chris from The Sopranos, only you’re more of a fuckup, and pick up the fucking pace already—

He needs to clean up the presentation of the tartare, then plate new branzino, and there are starters that need plates wiped and olive oil poured on top with little plastic pipettes and—

Chef stalks off. He has wine pairings to test tonight, so Carmy’s not expecting him to come back, either. He clears his throat. His shoulders loosen. “Um. Hands!”

The tartare and the grilled fish go out, and he calls the next round of tickets in a voice that, mercifully, doesn’t tremble.

“Fire 14, fire 21, hold 18— we’re still dragging a branzino. Can I get an all day on risotto?”

“8 all day on risotto, Chef.”

“Thank you, Chef!”

And he’s back in the swing, he’s flying, he’s untouchable. He doesn’t feel like he’s going to puke or cry, he isn’t shaking. He plates a lamb chop so perfectly it would make Richard Blais cry. He can tell by feel that every filet is perfectly cooked. He can imagine someone out in the dining room taking a bite, and he knows they’ll fucking love it, knows it'll blow their minds.

Dinner dwindles down and it’s mostly dessert orders from then on, straggling in in ones and twos. He has one order on the rail, for his least favorite dessert in the place (there are enough fucking flourless chocolate tortes in the world, even if the blackberry foam they serve it with is a neat innovation) but he figures he can take a second to peel the lid off his quart container and get a swig of water. The metal-sour taste of adrenaline washes out of his mouth. He’s made it through most of the night, he’s served a damn good dinner, and no one who ate his food could taste how nervous and wound-tight and fucked-up he was, how close he always felt to disaster.

This is the good part. This is what makes the rest of it worth it. He breathes.

“I’m sorry, are we eighty-six tortes?”

Carmy jumps, putting down his water hastily, like he’d been caught doing something illegal.

“No, Chef.”

“Then why aren’t you moving? Start plating sauce, fire the fucking cake.” Chef snaps his fingers in Carmy’s face.

Carmy is pulling a vat of cooled sauce when he turns his head back to say “Yes, Chef,” because Chef will have his ass if he doesn’t say it. Only, someone is heading right toward him as he’s looking back and he hears “Sharp, behind!” just a moment too late. He whips around and sees a chef de partie with a handful of freshly sharpened knives. He jumps out of the way of the guaranteed multiple stab wounds and in the process, sends the whole container of sauce splashing to the ground.

He freezes for a moment, which is the worst thing he could have done. If he’d called for the intern to start cleaning, if he’d called all day on sauce because there might be enough berries to eke out one last serving and then they can eighty-six it for the night, if he’d yelled at the chef de partie for calling out too late— if he'd done anything, Chef might have appreciated it. But he’s just standing there and bile is rising in his throat and his brain is producing nothing but a busy signal.

The entire kitchen falls silent. Everyone is pretending not to watch while very intently watching.

“Give me your coat, Berzatto.” Chef is eerily, terrifyingly quiet.

“My coat, Chef?” he asks, and thank the Lord, he doesn’t stutter.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Carmy unbuttons his coat, his fingers moving fast enough that no one can tell how badly they’re fumbling, and hands it over.

“Do I have anyone in this kitchen who isn’t useless?” Chef calls.

Silence. Heads hanged.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, kids! Do I have a single living soul in this kitchen who isn’t a worthless bag of shit? I’m asking because I’ll give you Berzatto’s job right now.” He holds the coat up over his head as if to prove his point. “No? No takers?”

He drops the spotless white chef’s coat down into the spilled sauce and watches it soak up the red for a moment. Then he gets as close to Carmy as he’s ever gotten, stepping on his coat in the process. “I don’t have time to carry some pathetic, straight-from-ICE, baby hands little bitch through dinner service every night. You think you’re hot shit?”

“No, Chef.”

“You’re worthless. Get your shit together.”

Carmy focuses on not throwing up on his shoes. He blinks.

“I didn’t hear a ‘Yes, Chef.’ You wanna go back to making hoagies or whatever the fuck your people do in Chicago?“

“No, Chef.”

“So then, let’s hear a ‘Yes Chef.’”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Now tell your brigade you’re going to get your shit together or go back to making sandwiches with mommy.”

Carmy turns to them and clears his throat. “I’m going to get my shit together.”

“Next time you have to choose between getting stabbed and fucking up my kitchen, just know that you’re a lot easier to replace than a Michelin star.”

“Yes, Chef.”

Chef turns to the patissiere. “Now pull one last serving of chocolate torte out of your ass before I fire you all, yes?”

“Yes, Chef,” the whole kitchen choruses.

“And clean that shit up.” He points at Carmy, then at the floor.

Carmy hasn’t eaten since the breakfast he threw up, so all that comes up while he heaves and wretches into a mop bucket in the pantry is water, drunk from his quart container. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, Bear, you’re on speaker. I’m driving,” Mikey says, after picking up the phone on the fourth or fifth ring. This is after he stopped letting Carmy in the Beef but before Carmy gave up on making inroads between them.

“Mom’s not in the car, is she?” 

“Nah. What’s up, brother?”

“I had a morning off. Thought I’d call.”

“You comin’ to town for your birthday?”

Carmy remembers, only when Mikey says it, that his birthday is in two weeks. That’s probably why he picked up the phone.

“Oh, uh, no. I’m already taking time off for Ma’s and Sugar’s.”

“Did I tell you where Pete wanted to take us for Sugar’s birthday?”

Carmy grins, because it’s definitely some place hilariously bad. Pete’s probably not a bad guy, but none of the Berzattos know quite what to do with him. “Where?”

Another voice jumps in—loud, braying, obnoxiously Chicagoan. “The Cracker Barrel in Old Town, cousin. You fuckin’ believe that?”

Carmy hadn’t realized Richie was in the car, but he can’t even be annoyed because it’s so unsurprising. Where Mikey goes, Richie follows. When Carmy flies into O’Hare to see his Ma on her birthday, Richie will probably be there, eating their food and drinking their beers— he might even be the one picking Carmy up from the airport.

“Why’s he drivin’ you around, cousin? License suspended again?” He asks, still smiling. He's forgotten, for a second, how small Mikey's made him feel lately. How every time he talks to him, he ends up feeling like the thirteen year-old with the too-short legs running to keep up.

“Eh, fuck you.” Carmy can practically hear Richie flipping him off through the phone.

“Maybe you guys can come to New York for my birthday next year. I’ll take you out to eat some real food.”

“Yeah, foams and gels and dry ice and shit? No thanks,” Richie interjects before Mikey can say anything.

Carmy had wanted to take them to a little out-of-the-way Italian sandwich shop in the Bronx. Since he got to the city, he’d spent every day off he happened to have walking block by block through Chinatown or Little India in Jackson Heights or the Polish spots in Greenpoint that remind him of Portage Park back in Chicago, looking for the best food. He’d found a lot of spots he knew Mikey would love.

“If we could ever afford to close the Beef for a few days, sure. But I don’t see that happening in the next year,” Mikey says carefully.

“Right.”

“Why can’t you take the day off for your birthday? You’ve given too much of your time to that asshole head chef already.”

Carmy feels annoyance prickling under his collar. Not because he feels any urge to defend Chef— Chef is just a bully in a field that’s full of them. He’s got good taste, and clarity of vision. He’s got incredible knife skills and hot hands (some of the best Carmy’s ever seen, actually. Sometime he’d grab a cast iron right of the fire with bare palms, just to intimidate the chefs who are staging), but he doesn’t really matter. Noma matters. And he can’t just take a day off. If Mikey fucking cared, if he thought Carmy was any good, he would know and respect that. He hates being mad at him, he hates feeling like his brother doesn’t give a shit— and he hates how easy it is to get him to feel that way. He hates that that’s what family does to him. One offhand comment is enough to get him all jittery and pissed-off.

He forces himself to laugh it off.

“Well. Grind never stops, Mikey.”

“Alright. At least do something, though. Make them serve cake at family.”

“Sure.” Carmy can’t help smiling at that, even though something about this whole conversation has made him unspeakably sad.

“I’m gonna hold you to it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Seriously, I’m gonna call to check.”

“Okay!”

“Well, I got Fak on the other line. You take care of yourself, Bear.”

Carmy clears his throat. “Yeah. You, too.”

On his birthday, Carmy chokes down a PB&J, chokes it back up, and gets to work.

“Are you even trying?” Pour the dashi, plate the fish.

“Yes, Chef, I’m trying.” He turns to the night’s tickets. “Table thirteen, two people.”

“Really? Because if this is you trying, then you must be terrible at this.”

“Yes, Chef.” Little dots of basil oil on the crab with the squeeze bottle. Next plate.

“Say it.”

“I’m terrible at this, Chef.” Ring mold. Next plate. Put the edible flower petals on with long metal tweezers.

“That’s fucking right. Plate faster. Wipe the goddamn plate. Fuck you. Faster. Did I say you could stop count?

“Table twenty-nine, three people.”

“Are you enjoying this? Are you having fucking fun sabotaging my kitchen?”

“No, Chef. Seventeen, two people.”

“Heard.”

“Say ‘hands.’ You surround yourself with people as fucking idiotic as you are and then wonder why your service is going to shit.”

“Hands.” The crab and the beef carpaccio and the cod in dashi go out.

“You think you’d find someone competent, just by accident. But no. All sad-eyed shit sacks like you. The count, goddamn it.”

“Number eight, four people. Number eleven, two people.”

“Heard.”

“Is this too much for you, Berzatto?”

“No, Chef.”

“Truffle oil on the potatoes, dipshit.”

“Number twenty-two, three people. Yes, Chef.”

“Heard.”

“I think this is too much for you, Berzatto. Because you fucking suck at this. I mean, you have absolutely no talent.”

A sauce comes up and Carmy is about to taste it when Chef’s hand flies out and stops it.

“Didn’t set right. I can tell from here. Get it together.” With a small nod, the saucier hastily walks back to their station. “Next time you even think about serving a sauce like that in my kitchen, just save us both the time and kill yourself.”

“Yes, Chef.”

He’s lying to himself when he says the good times, the times where Chef isn’t over his shoulder and he’s off and running, at the head of the pack and speaking through the food and way more alive than he is anywhere else, that those times make the rest of it worth it. It’s really not like that at all. Because even the bad times are good, even the feeling like shit is amazing. He hasn’t thought about Mikey all day, he hasn’t thought about his mother or the friends he once had or the fact that it’s his birthday. It’s fucking quiet in his head, quiet in his life. Chop this, pour that, wipe the plate, place the protein. Say yes, say no, remember that you are nothing until someone tells you you’re something and that’s good, too, being nothing. He likes the long, hard crawl up from being fucking nobody. He's lying if he says it isn't good, even when it's really fucking far from good. 

And he's lying, too, when he says Chef doesn’t matter. Because, whatever else is wrong with him, Chef is right about Carmy. Sometimes he feels like he’s fooled everyone into thinking he’s some kind of genius, but he knows that can’t be right. He really is no fucking good. And it’s grounding to know there’s someone who sees him, sees through him.

Chapter Text

A chef once said that when you cut yourself, in that moment when you plunge the tip of a knife into your thumb, 90% of the pain comes from the knowledge that you’re a fucking idiot.

Carmy has plenty of scars from scraping, stabbing, and slicing himself on chef’s knives, paring knives, deli slicers, mandolins, even a bread knife, which you think he would have noticed before he sawed halfway through the dermal layer. So yes, he guesses that means he’s a fucking idiot.

He wouldn’t wish the scars away, though. Anyone who sees him can see he’s put himself through something, he’s given himself to something, and he’s let it take pieces of him and tear them between its teeth. Other chefs see them and they know, they know he’s one of them. They can laugh over scalding water and overheated pan handles and too-fast dicing of mirepoix, and about the colorful visual reminders of all that speed and arrogance and stupidity.

Although lately, Carmy hasn’t been doing much bonding with other chefs. Hasn’t been doing much laughing either, really. He’s nicer to the people who work under him than Chef— not a high bar to clear, but he really does make an effort not to yell or belittle or go on ego trips, if for no other reason than who the fuck is he to yell at someone else for being a fuckup?— but he still eyes everyone in the kitchen with suspicion. He sees up-and-comers, with bright ideas and steely eyes and he thinks I’m going to destroy this motherfucker, because I can work longer and harder and faster, because I don’t waste time with hobbies or family or girlfriends, because I can take the hits without blinking and keep taking them until I’m dead on my feet and my eyes are stinging and I’m about to throw up in an alley on my smoke break.

And he determinedly doesn’t think about the Original Beef, about Richie shooting the shit in the kitchen, barely earning what passes for a paycheck and just generally getting in everyone’s way, about Mikey pausing mid-assembly to laugh at a joke and Tina talking about her son and Ebra lecturing about the war or just silently stirring and looking at Richie with amused derision. Mikey has scars, too, from cuts and burns. But he also has scars— the crookedness in his nose, a finger joint that clicks when he bends it— from drunk adventures and countless fights, because there are dozens of people and things Mikey cares enough about to get hurt over.

There’s a new chef, a stagiere, on his second week. He’d made family on his first night, which is a tradition and a sort of trial by fire. Carmy hadn’t even tasted it. He knows that looked like some pretentious dick move, like he thought he was above this guy and his food, but it was really just because he can never eat on the clock, his insides twisted tight and nervous and his mouth cigarette-ashen. The guy probably thinks he hates him, which he doesn’t. Well, not any more than anyone else in that kitchen. He just doesn’t go out of his way to be nice to him. Besides, if he’d eaten it, he probably would have immediately thrown it up, which the guy probably wouldn’t have appreciated, either.

Chef yells at him even in front of newbies, especially in front of newbies, but Carmy doesn’t care. It only firms up his resolve to smoke the competition, to be the last one standing. And maybe there’s a part of him that says yes, single me out, please, prove that I warrant attention, even bad attention, more than anyone else here. And he wears it like a badge of honor, like another distinctive scar. 

“You think you’re so fucking smart, huh?”

He’s not even doing anything yet; just getting his mise ready. Separating microgreens and chopping dill and chiffonading mint. He’d done something to trip a wire somewhere, he’d been showing off or something and now Chef was on his ass sooner and more intensely than usual. But he can take it.

“No, Chef.”

“No? You don’t think you’re smart? So you know you can’t do this, and you’re wasting my time?”

“No, Chef.”

“So you must think you’re fucking clever. Say I think I’m so clever.”

“I think I’m so clever, Chef.”

“You are completely fucking useless, you know that?”

“Yes, Chef.”

“I have nothing against you, Berzatto. I’m just stating facts. You are of no use to me, you are of no use to this kitchen, and you are of no use to the larger culinary world.”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Tell me you understand that.”

“I understand, Chef.”

There’s time for a smoke break before they open for dinner. He steps out, but the new guy is already out in the alley, lighting a cigarette of his own.

“Oh. Hey,” he says, looking like he wishes anyone else had walked through that door.

“Hey. Oliver, right?”

“Oscar,” the guy corrects.

Shit. Another unintentional but unbelievable dick move.

“Shit. Sorry.” He shakes a cigarette out of his own pack, taps it absentmindedly for a minute. “I hear you can really throw down. I mean, that was what everyone said about the uh, family last week.” Which was true, but now he realizes that he probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all, because it sounds like he’s rubbing it in that he didn’t actually try it.

“Thanks.”

And Carmy, because he’s an idiot, rushes to explain himself.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t get to try it. It’s uh— it sounded really good. My stomach is fucked. So…” he trails off, feels even stupider.

“A chef who can’t eat,” Oscar says drily. “You should see a doctor about that.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He stops tapping the smoke against the box and lights it finally, taking an eager, voluminous drag.

As he brings his hand up to his face, Oscar whistles.

“That’s a beauty,” he says, indicating an ugly scar on Carmy’s hand. “How’d you get it?”

Carmy looks at it. “Oh. Uh. Shucking incident.” And because he feels so bad for being a dick to this guy so far that he pushes himself to talk more. “Okay, fair’s fair, show me one.”

Oscar rolls up his sleeve and reveals a long, pink-white mark down the side of his left forearm.

“Damn.”

“Boning knife, trying to impress someone back in culinary school.”

“Been there,” Carmy says, thinking of how relentlessly he’s wanted to impress Mikey, with every chicken he’s fabricated and onion he’s diced and garnish he’s prepped. Every class in culinary school, no matter what he told himself in his head, was really about proving that, if he didn’t belong in the Original Beef, he was going to belong somewhere better, somewhere harder, somewhere more punishing and exact and perfect. He hopes Oscar can’t tell he’s thinking about something that depressing, thinks Carmy’s talking about a cute girl or something.

“Hey, man, do you want to— do you wanna come for drinks after dinner service? A couple of us are getting shitfaced at a Venezuelan place by my house.”

“Oh. Can’t. Working, uh, brunch service in the morning.”

“Brunch? Rest in peace, dude.” Oscar shakes his head.

Carmy laughs, a short exhalation of smoke. “Yeah.”

Oscar stubs out his cigarette and heads back inside. Carmy stands in the empty alley.

He feels the sudden urge to call Mikey, feels it like a stab underneath his breastbone. It’ll pass. Always does.

Carmy doesn’t mean to cut his family out. He doesn’t do it consciously. That’s what he tells himself. Mikey cut him off first, really. That’s what started this whole quasi-self destructive revenge tour through the best kitchens on the eastern seaboard, after all. So if Carmy doesn’t answer Sugar’s FaceTimes as much, it’s because they shut the door first, it’s because he’s busy, it’s because it reminds him too much that they have a world that he doesn’t belong to anymore, and that he might be happier there than he is here but there’s no use thinking about that because that’s not a door that’s open to him anymore.

Maybe when you find yourself completely alone, 90% of the pain comes from the knowledge that you’re a fucking idiot.

He finishes his cigarette and goes back inside. Chef is yelling before he even gets his apron back on.

“There you are. Done with naptime, Berzatto?”

“What’s wrong, Chef?”

One of the commis had prepped sweet potatoes today, and Chef saw some uneven cuts and went batshit. Nothing pisses Chef off like sloppy knifework.

“You hire some fucking incompetent to work vegetables, and he brings on an even worse one to commis, and now my fucking sides are fucked. But I’m glad you got your cool little smoke break.”

The humiliated commis in question is standing against a wall, tinged a little green. Carmy can’t imagine what Chef had been saying to him before he’d walked back in.

“Heard, Chef, I’ll get the tournant on sweet potatoes, Chef.”

“Fuck the tournant! You’re gonna do it.”

“Yes, Chef.”

“And while you’re prepping, maybe you can explain to me why I shouldn’t fire all three of you.”

Carmy keeps his head down and starts peeling.

“Faster, dipshit. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

“Yes, Chef.”

“This isn’t a midterm at whatever store-brand culinary school you went to. This is the big boy table. So peel faster than you jerk off, okay?”

“Yes, Chef.”

Cut the peeled potatoes in half, rotate, start slicing into half-inch rounds.

“Faster. Why are you so fucking slow?"

He goes faster. Keeps the cuts even. Listens to the reassuring thwacks and scrapes of the knife against the cutting board.

“If these aren’t done and fucking perfect by start of service, it’s not just your little commis that I’m firing. Fucking faster!”

Carmy though the was going as fast as humanly possible, but he digs a little deeper, finds a little more speed. And it’s sort of magnificent, even though his heart feels like it’s going to beat straight out of his chest and skitter along the floor like a wind-up toy. He’s like a machine, moving so quickly and so precisely, thinking about absolutely nothing. This is really too fast to be safe, he thinks, and it’s like that thought breaks the spell, and the knife cuts clean through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger and into the meat of his hand like his skin is made of tissue paper. His blood is the brightest red he’s ever seen, and he wishes he had a moment to sit there and stare at it, really consider it. But he has work to do.