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It happens slowly over time, the turning of their relationship. Like lacto-fermentation or aged cheese or something equally unromantic. There’s a beginning certainly- there’s her in the kitchen of The Original Beef of Chicagoland, standing in front of Carmen Berzatto for the first time, blue blue eyes on her and the jolt of excitement she felt knowing that everything was about to change. Everything since has been a steady stream of changes, seen and unseen.
Sydney would’ve liked for there to have been a moment- one she could point to and say that was it, that was when I knew. But the truth is that the moments and the knowing are so entwined that she can’t say which came first.
And it’s not as if she and Carmen became something else over time, they just became more. As if they couldn’t be satiated; coworkers then partners then friends then lovers. One on top of the other like they’re collecting all the things they could possibly be to each other.
In terms of beginnings, middles, and ends, Sydney figures this must be the middle- where they are right now, tangled up together on his couch, lazily watching Lakefront Bargain Hunt. She’s reclined against the back of the couch, feet on the coffee table next to their half-eaten takeout. Carmy lays with his head in her lap as she plays with his curls and complains about which lake house Deb and Mark from Michigan bought. Her other hand is held in both of his, placed atop his chest so he can trace patterns against it, circle his thumbs across her calloused fingers.
It’s a Thursday, which means Sydney is in charge of dinner. Tonight, after an ass-busting service, that meant Thai food from the spot down the street from his place (which is also her place).
It’s the same apartment he’s been in since he moved back to Chicago what feels like ages ago. Sydney’s tried repeatedly to convince him to find a better place (he can certainly afford it at this point). But Carmy insists that the rent and location can’t be beat- nevermind the shitty kitchen, water stains, and three story walk up.
To his credit, the place looks nothing like it did back when she first saw it. His jeans are in a dresser, his mattress in a frame. There are curtains on windows and a couch Sydney picked out, a rug in the living room and a shoe rack by the door.
Sometimes, on nights like this when they’re eating dinner together and she’s wearing his tees and using the toothbrush he bought for her, she imagines what it would be like to live together. And not just here, like properly living together. In a place they chose, where she has half the closet and there are pictures on the walls and they pick out china together like real fucking adults. She appreciates the monotony of the fantasy, the image of them folding laundry together, or her throwing her keys down and yelling that she’s home.
Coming home to him. It’s a nice thought.
Sometimes, on other nights when she’s alone in the bedroom at her dad’s place, it’s a house they share. A real house, not far from the city. There’s a front yard and a car in the driveway. Sometimes, there’s Carmy cooking a big kitchen, stirring a pot and balancing a baby on his hip. Sometimes, there’s a dog too. But mostly it’s just that damn baby.
“You’re quiet,” Carmy says suddenly, pulling her back to the now. He’s still staring at her hand, rubbing his thumb over the tops of her knuckles softly, rhythmically.
Early on in their relationship, Sydney was hyper aware of how much she talked when she was alone with him. She really can’t help it most of the time, like her mind just knows to reveal itself in his presence. But she soon figured out that Carmy loves listening to her, will sit through her monologuing, quiet as a mouse, just looking at her.
She sighs deeply, turns domestic thoughts over in her head. “Would you ever want a dog?”
Carmy huffs a laugh, the rumble of his chest shaking her hand. “I don’t know, I’ve never had one.” His eyes gaze up at her as she looks down at him. “Maybe I would- I mean, I’d feel bad never being home.”
She nods, bites the side of her cheek. The hand that was once in his hair is now stroking his jaw, feeling the three-day-old stubble that lies there, a reminder of how goddamn busy they’ve been. “I had a dog growing up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah- Margot, this weird little mutt my dad probably scooped off the street,” she grins, watching Carmy do the same. “God, he was obsessed with that dog. He would call her my sister- like, go put out some food for your sister. Fucking ridiculous. I think there’s a picture somewhere of Margot dressed up in my Cabbage Patch clothes.”
“That’s kinda nice though,” Carmy says quietly. He’s turned her hand over, palm up in one of his so he can trace the lines that run across it. She wonders what all those lines mean, even if it’s bullshit, even if it brings her even more questions about the future. “Y’know, without siblings, having someone around to play with.”
“Did you play with your siblings growing up?” The question feels loaded even if it shouldn’t be. But she and Carmy can handle loaded, they’ve had years to work on the hard shit.
He scrunches his face a little and quirks his head as if to say ‘it’s complicated.’ “I mean.. Not really. Mikey was out of the house by the time I was in first grade, and Sugar was always older and cooler.”
“Yeah, what’s up with the age gaps?” Sydney questions.
Carmy chuckles at that. “Mikey always said Ma and my dad had a kid every time they were thinking about getting divorced.”
“Well that’s…”
“Fucked?”
“Yeah pretty much.”
Sydney understands enough about the Berzatto family at this point that she has some idea of what Carmy’s life looked like growing up. It’s not a great picture most of the time, and probably the main reason he meets with a therapist every week.
Her picture was a smaller one. She and her dad, against the world for eighteen odd years. In some ways, her childhood was so opposite to Carmy’s. It was quiet and routine. Humble and loving in a way she was always going to be figuring out how to repay. Where Carmy’s childhood was crowded and chaotic, hers was intrinsically, irrevocably lacking. Something her poor dad could never make up for. So it was up to Sydney to prove that he didn’t have to, that she could be perfect anyway, that he’d done a good job with her.
Onscreen, an elderly couple tour a stunning A-frame in North Carolina.
Carmy sits up, kicking his socked feet up next to hers, pushing a takeout box away with his heel. He keeps a hold of Sydney’s hand, uses it to tug her towards him. He reaches behind her, carefully unwinds the scrunchie that had been holding her braids in a bun for the past eight hours. The scrunchie snaps onto his wrist and he deftly works his fingers across her scalp. She almost groans, a grin spreading across her face, musing at the fact that she’s letting a white man do this. She pulls her legs up onto the couch and lays them against Carmy’s lap, head lolling against his shoulder.
“Do you want kids?”
The question slips out without her permission, spoken with the same candor she’d used to ask him if he wanted a dog. Her stomach swoops a little with anxiety.
She can’t see his face (which is probably fueling her courage), but his head inclines down towards her and she knows he’s surprised. “Uhh-I,” he starts nervously. “I think- in theory, yes. But, I-I dont know, I’d probably fuck ‘em up.”
Sydney takes the hand that’s not in her hair and twines it in her own. She’s looking at that tattoo of a knife through a hand that sits right under his knuckles. She hates that one, prefers the stupid snail tattoo just a few inches away. Live fast, it reads.
“You’re great with Rosie.” Rosie, Natalie and Pete’s little girl, almost a year and a half now (seventeen months, if you asked Natalie). Carmy is great with her, endearingly, gut-wrenchingly so. It’s obvious that he’s a little bit obsessed with her and Sydney has to tamp down the instinctual yearning she feels deep in her gut every time he holds the little girl in his arms.
He chooses not to respond to that, just shrugs and asks, “Do you want kids?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she responds, a false casualness to her tone. This conversation feels anything but casual. “With the right person.”
His hand stills against her scalp and she lifts her head to really look at him. There’s a low rumble of anxiety about him, not the pressing, earth-shattering kind that leaves him keeling over in the alley of The Bear. Just a clear and present fear.
“Syd, is this some fucked up, roundabout way of telling me you’re pregnant?”
She barks her laughter, falls forward onto his chest with the force of it. It takes her a whole minute to recover, watching Carmy’s pale, wide-eyed face as he slowly comes down from that terror. Finally she answers, “No- fuck, no, Carm. I’m sorry I was just… thinking about it. We can drop it if it’s freaking you out-”
“No, Jesus fuck, it’s fine- I just…” He shakes his head with closed eyes and leans his forehead to hers. “Sorry, I started planning out the next eighteen years of my life just then.”
“Didn’t mean to traumatize you.”
“You’re good,” he reiterates, lifting his head and pressing a kiss to her temple. “We’d figure it out though. If you were,” he tells her seriously, eyebrows drawn. “Whatever you wanted to do, it wouldn’t be, I would- I-I just mean that I’d be there.”
She furrows her brow. “I know you would, Carmy. You’re a good person.” Before he can object, she adds, “You’d be a really good dad.”
He gives a sort of half smile, as if half believing.
“You’d be a really good mom.”
She’s thinking about families and the irony that would be the two of them as parents; trying to be the things they never had. Maybe she’s keyed in on some fundamental lack she’s felt since childhood. Maybe she’s chasing some imagined picture of the perfect family. Maybe she’s pathologizing this shit way too much- maybe it’s just that Carmy’s been babysitting Rosie too often. Maybe she won’t want any of this shit tomorrow. Whatever the case, Sydney is thinking about folded laundry and a baby on Carmy’s hip and the weird little family they’ve been building at The Bear for so long now.
She lays her head back on his shoulder and turns towards the TV. The couple from North Carolina didn’t pick the A-frame. Fucking idiots.
“We’d need a better place,” he mumbles, almost to himself.
Sydney barely holds back a grin. “Dude, I’ve been saying that for years-”
“You have not been saying that for years-”
“It has been literal years, Carmen.”
He harrumphs, reaches an arm under her thighs to pull her further onto his lap. “We’ll start looking tomorrow.”
There’s a promise in his words, encrypted there for her to decode. The slow turning of their relationship, the hunger for more, always. Marriage and babies and family dinner and a dog in the yard- it’s all somewhere floating in the distance, waiting. Because they have the time, they’ve already promised that to each other.
In terms of beginnings, middles, and ends, Sydney knows that this is the middle, no end in sight.
Right now, that means Thai takeout and HGTV and Carmy’s three story walk up. And yet, Sydney’s not sure she’s ever felt so complete.