Archive of Our Own

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-

“Separation”, W.S Merwin

i.

When he looks back on the night his brother died, the things that stick out most to him are his emotions rather than the events of the day.

He remembers feeling both numb, yet feeling so much at the same time. He remembers working the line and coordinating the kitchen on autopilot, his mind somewhere far, far away.

It isn’t until Monday, his day off that comes approximately five days after his brother had taken his own life, that Carmy starts to remember the particulars of that day: the protein bar he hurriedly ate that morning which had been the only thing he ate that day, the four-top that was celebrating their parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and finally, the paupiette of Hamachi he’d made with a blood orange reduction instead of the fennel it was usually served with.

His first impulse at remembering the Hamachi is to tell Mikey because Mikey is, was, the person Carmy told all about the dishes he made, Mikey was the person Carmy told everything.

Since their father had left for the bar and never come back when Carmy was just seven, taking his volatile temper with him and effectively abandoning their family, the aspirational older male figure in Carmy’s life had been Mikey.

Mikey is, was, the person Carmy went to in all situations as a child; he was the person he sought out whenever he fell and scraped his knee, the first person he showed his childish artwork from school, with Mikey proudly displaying it on their family’s fridge or when there was no room left, on his own bedroom walls. Mikey was the person Carmy went to when he finally beat a level on a video game, and the person he went to after he had a nightmare and the shadows in his room started to take shape and form.

Mikey was also the person who taught Carmy everything he knew about cooking, the person who had supervised him when he was barely tall enough to reach the stove and used a sharp knife for the first time. So naturally, the person he wants to tell about the Hamachi is Mikey, the one person in the world he cannot speak to.

The realization that he couldn’t text Mikey the way he’d always done, that even though he’d received no responses to his texts over the last several months at least his texts were always read and wouldn't be now, causes Carmy’s chest to constrict, an unpleasant weight settling at the pit of his stomach.

Rather than confront his feelings, or even respond to his sister and family members, and every other asshole in Chicago who knew his brother who keeps blowing up his phone, Carmy instead chooses to focus all his attention on the Hamachi. 

First he writes down and draws as much as he can remember of how he'd prepared and plated the dish. Next, he finds the server he'd handed the plate off to, finding out which table he’d served it to. 

When he finds the table, he looks through their bookings from that day, eyes scanning frantically over names and notes for staff until he finds the name he’s looking for: Sydney Adamu.

He reads the name over and over again, his fingers running over the loops of the letters of the name, committing it to memory. Sydney Adamu. Sydney Adamu. Sydney Adamu.

He imagines her eating his dish; the buttery smoothness of the Hamachi, the tartness of the blood orange. He wonders what she made of the dish, whether she felt the blood orange complemented the mild sweetness of the fish more than the fennel.

He also wonders whether she could taste the sadness imbued within it, the grief he’d unintentionally allowed to bleed into his cooking. He has to stop himself from looking her up and contacting her, the knowledge of someone out there having been an unwitting witness to his grief making him feel unpleasantly vulnerable.

The urge to talk to Mikey persists despite the temporary distraction of hamachi and Sydney Adamu, and the calls and texts, which are initially angry at his silence before shifting to concern, continue to pile up on his phone.

He figures it’s either he finally calls Nat and his mother back, and he responds to the countless insincere “sorry for your loss” texts that flood his inbox, or he talks to Mikey.

So, exactly twenty six days after his brother’s death, he opens the text thread between him and his brother. 

He ignores the hundreds of unanswered texts spanning months he sent to Mikey, ignores the tens of photos of his cooking he’d sent him, instead focusing on drafting a text to his brother’s phone number that is likely to have been deactivated by now.

He spends several minutes looking at the blinking cursor of the empty text box as he considers what to say.

He could tell Mikey how fucking angry he is with him, for completely shutting him out when he was alive then fucking offing himself without giving Carmy the decency to even say goodbye, leaving Carmy with silence and unanswered questions.

Or he could tell him how much he fucking misses him, how much having the most coveted culinary job in the country, and all the accolades and awards he’s won for his cooking, all means nothing to him when compared to his big brother’s approval, or when compared to just having Mikey still be here with him, alive and whole.

In the end, with his vision blurry from his tears and his hands shaking from his barely contained emotions, all he manages to text is this:

“I made hamachi with a blood orange reduction that will only ever be eaten by one person. I fucking miss you.”

ii.

It takes Carmy four months to realize his place is no longer in New York, that it probably never was.

Four months of going through each day on autopilot, cooking, cleaning, leading, and taking the abuse of Fields. Four months of missing Mikey so much that on some days he can barely bring himself to get out of bed, to carry on living without his big brother here, even if he would ignore him.

It’s four months of being stuck, of stasis, before he wakes up one day and decides to go back to Chicago and finally face his family, or at the very least to finally see to The Beef which he found out had been left to him from Natalie when he did eventually return her calls.

Upon his return he throws himself into work, into trying to make sense of the receipts, invoices, and the general mess his brother made of their family’s business so he can try to turn the place into a somewhat functional place of business.

He spends weeks on end fighting fires that seem to grow and spread no matter how much he tries to extinguish them, his brother’s staff not only ignoring him but disrespecting him at every turn before he decides he needs help.

He puts up a flyer and calls start flooding in and he sifts through tens of resumes of people who are either under-qualified or lacking the kind of qualities he’s looking for.

Carmy feels defeated by it all and starts to feel like maybe he can’t do this and should just cut his losses. He repeatedly speaks to Mikey, apologizing for failing him after he left the restaurant to him.

It’s when he is at this lowest point, two days after he texted his latest apology to his brother, that his help comes in the form of Sydney Adamu. 

He doesn’t know if it’s the same Sydney Adamu who ate his Hamachi and blood orange, because despite showing familiarity with his time at Empire she makes no mention of ever having been there or ever having eaten his food. She does mention coming to The Beef with her father though, and Carmy has fleeting thoughts about her potentially meeting Mikey.

What he does know is that Sydney is exactly what The Beef needs, what he needs.

She has the CIA education and culinary experience at great places– Avec, Alinea, Smoque, just to name a few– yet is still young and fresh enough that she not only has the endurance needed to work in this industry, but she also has a youthful sort of determination, a hunger like what he had before Mikey had completely shut him out.

With Sydney around, Carmy finally feels like the walls of The Beef aren’t closing in around him and he finally has some room to breathe. With Sydney there he starts to feel like maybe trying to turn The Beef into a respectable establishment isn’t completely impossible and like maybe he hasn’t completely lost his fucking mind, because she just gets it.

She understands food the way so few people do, both the chemistry behind it and the technical aspects of it, so much so that at times when they’re working side by side in the kitchen she’s able to hand him whatever he needs before he has even thought about it.

Through all his experience over the years, Carmy has gained a good understanding of cooking techniques and flavor profiles enough to make him a good cook. And in recent years he’d started to gain leadership experience as a CDC which meant he knows how to run a kitchen. But Carmy can admit to having a lack of experience when it comes to the business side of things.

Sydney on the other hand, has experience running her own catering business and when Carmy had called up her references they all attested to her acumen both in the kitchen and when it came to the business and administrative side of things. 

When Sydney presents him with a COGS plan for The Beef, Carmy has too much going on between trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and pay Cicero back, as well as keeping Richie and everyone else he’s unwittingly involved in his coke dealing at The Beef out of prison.

It’s not until several days later when he is alone in the restaurant, everyone having left to go home to their loved ones hours ago, that he finally takes a look at the folder Syd handed to him.

In the folder he’s amazed to find a detailed breakdown of all the outgoing costs of the restaurant, along with proposals for changes they could make including staff restructuring and vendor changes to save them money. The folder even has tables and graphs to illustrate everything, which is handy considering Carmy’s less than proficient grasp of math.

Part of him is taken aback by the amount of work she has done, he can’t believe the almost insubordination of it given that he hasn’t formalised her staying on with them. Mostly though, he’s so impressed by the detail of it, the meticulousness of it.

Carmy’s faith in God nowadays is a flimsy, precarious thing, but he always had faith in his big brother, whom he has this sense that had sent Sydney his way at his lowest point. So it’s only right he thanks Mikey for her.

He opens up the text thread, the one he has opened up every so often on the days when he misses Mikey so much he feels sick with it and he again ignores the texts from before, both the ones in blue that were delivered and read when Mikey was alive, and the grey undelivered ones he’s sent him regularly since his death.

He texts Mikey:

“I’ve hired this new sous chef Sydney, I think you’d like her.”

iii.

In the months following their father leaving, Carmy was plagued by nightmares in which he repeatedly saw his father walk out the door and every time he’d leave no matter how much Carmy screamed and shouted for him to stay.

This recurring nightmare had eventually reduced in frequency as the years went by and he became used to the absence of his father and gained the type of understanding of the type of man his father was that only came with age.

His brother’s silence in the time leading up to his death, then his death itself, had brought back a similar type of nightmare to the one that plagued his childhood, with Carmy having a nightmare in which he always missed his brother's before he'd take his own life. That dreadful sense of abandonment haunted him.

The Beef serves as an antidote to that feeling, as if through the restaurant he can retain some connection to his brother. And with the way things are starting to fall into place that feels like something attainable.

Things at The Beef are now going in the right direction, the chemistry of the kitchen starting to gel under his and Sydney’s guidance. They’re starting to actually turn a profit, enough that maybe one day they might be able to pay his uncle back for all the money Mikey owed him.

The best part of it all is his partnership with Sydney. They work well together in the kitchen, developing recipes and cooking together. But outside of the kitchen they mesh well together too, able to support one another and call each other out when needed, though with the latter it tends to be Sydney calling him out on his bullshit rather than the other way round.

The kind of partnership he has with Sydney is what he had craved when he was younger and sketching out ideas of his own restaurant. Working with Sydney makes him want to dig up those old sketches and revisit the idea of The Bear from all those years ago, but he ignores the impulse to instead focus on the here and now, on The Beef.

Everything is starting to mesh and The Beef is starting to become the sort of place he always thought it had the potential to become when it all suddenly comes crashing down.

Sydney had been pushing him for weeks on end to launch a to-go system for their beef sandwiches to make things run more efficiently and to generally bring their restaurant into the 21st century. Carmy hadn’t felt they were ready, acutely aware of how skittish their staff was to major change. But Sydney was so convincing and had of course done all the research and presented it to him to show how it could work and would ultimately help their business, so Carmy had no choice but to agree. Not that he ever seemed to say no to Sydney.

On the day they are meant to launch it they find that Sydney had accidentally left the system open, flooding their system with hundreds of orders they only have a couple of hours to make before opening and Carmy feels an anger unlike anything he’s ever felt before bubbling up within him.

He is of course familiar with anger. He’d been witness to his father’s anger as a child before his abandonment, the way it permeated throughout their household so that the threat of violence always simmered beneath the surface on a near constant basis, apart from the times Mikey would cut through it and ease Carmy and everyone in the house.

As an adult he’s been witness to the temper of neurotic chefs in the kitchens he’s worked. He’s worked under chefs who would shout, who would break dishes, and on one notable occasion he had witnessed a chef almost slap a busboy who’d accidentally served a dish with nuts to someone allergic. Not to mention that he spent the last couple of years before The Beef working under Fields.

So, he is familiar with anger. But when he lashes out and directs his anger at Sydney, he does not recognise himself. He distantly hears her try to explain herself and try to problem solve and find a way around the problem, the way she always does when it comes to the restaurant. But Carmy barely hears the words over the ringing in his ears.

He feels panic rising within him at the prospect of everything falling down, the restaurant crumbling, and with it his last remaining connection to his brother. His panic causes him to lash out, directing all his feelings at Sydney.

It’s like he is outside of his body, shouting and hurling hurtful words at her before he can stop himself. 

It isn’t until she quits on the spot, right then and there in the midst of the chaos, that he realizes what he has done, realizes that he could have definitely handled that better.

But it’s too late, because she’s gone.

Sydney’s departure dredges up the feelings of abandonment Carmy had buried deep down which he has not had to confront in a long time. 

His nightmares start up again, now becoming this horrific montage of the times he was abandoned by his father, by Mikey, then by her.

He can barely sleep, and he finds that he aches and longs for Sydney every single day that she does not return to The Beef and ignores all his calls and texts. He starts to see her in everything– in the way the staff now work according to the brigade system she had implemented, in the way everyone, even Tina, dresses exactly like her and conducts themselves exactly how she would.

Carmy starts to have crazy thoughts about things he could do to have her come back to the restaurant, to him. He is willing to do whatever she asks, whatever she wants.

He wishes Mikey was here so he could ask him for advice, because Mikey was a people person in the way that Carmy could only ever dream of. Mikey could make anyone feel at ease, make everyone feel like they were his best friend and Mikey always knew how to diffuse tension and resolve conflict, doing it often in their home both when their father was there and once he left, too. Mikey would know how Carmy could get Sydney back. But Carmy has to once again contend with the loss of his brother.

Mikey was also the person that Carmy always went to after a nightmare, which is what he considers Sydney leaving to be– a nightmare. 

He misses his big brother and he misses Sydney, and he doesn’t know where his aching for one ends and the other begins. 

He tries to call Sydney one more time, is relieved when the call goes through meaning she hasn’t blocked him, but swiftly swings back to disappointment when his call goes unanswered once again.

After, he then opens the text thread with his brother and he texts him: 

"Sydney left. I really fucked up.”

iv.

When Sydney walks back into The Beef and agrees to open a new place, The Bear, with him, Carmy feels the relief wash over him so that he can breathe again.

After they have opened all the tomato cans and retrieved all the cash inside them, and after they’ve cleaned everything up and eaten all the spaghetti they made, him and Sydney have a long conversation in which they both apologize to the other, then they talk about The Bear in a more formal and definitive way than the brief discussion where they were throwing around ideas when she first returned.

Immediately they get to work on designing the new restaurant, including the general layout and the branding. They also start to work on the menu together, bringing together recipe ideas and working on them in his cramped apartment kitchen.

Him and Sydney are so connected and share the same vision of what the place can be; something that takes the best of all the places they’ve collectively worked and leaves behind the worst of their industry. With Sydney by his side The Bear as they envision it feels doable and achievable.

Slowly, bit by bit, the vision for The Bear starts to come together and Carmy feels more excited about cooking and about the industry than he has in a long, long time.

But every time Sydney leaves his apartment after they’ve spent hours experimenting with ingredients and different flavor combinations, Carmy starts to feel this mounting sense of dread. Like he is forgetting something.

He has been having such a good time cooking with Sydney, building The Bear with her, that he realizes he almost forgot that his dream had always been to be doing this with Mikey.

The realization hits him like a tonne of bricks, a heady mixture of his grief intermingling with an inescapable sense of guilt, so much that his sessions with Sydney start to become less enjoyable for him.

When he digs up the sketch he had shown to his brother during the last time he was at home for Christmas, what would become the last time Carmy would ever see Mikey alive, it hits him even more.

It feels exceedingly unfair that life hadn’t stopped after the death of one of the most important people in Carmy’s life. It feels unfair that Carmy is realizing the dream of opening The Bear– a restaurant that was an amalgamation of their shared heritage and upbringing– without his big brother by his side. It feels like a betrayal that he should get to move on.

His shame and guilt threatens to overwhelm him, and he finds more and more that he is no longer able to spend time with Sydney working towards opening their restaurant. 

To try to cope with his guilt he tries to distance himself, inviting Sydney to his apartment less and less and blowing her off whenever she attempts to make plans for them to meet up to discuss business. On one shameful occasion he even stands her up after having agreed to meet up with her.

He also attempts to cope with his guilt through distraction in the form of his old high school crush Claire Dunlap. But as if the universe is punishing him, being around Claire just reminds him exceedingly of his brother and his shame. So he starts to pull away from Claire too, hurting yet another woman in his life.

It isn’t until someone at his Al anon meetings talks candidly about survivor’s guilt that Carmy can put a name to his feelings. And it is through the discussion of the topic at his meeting that he realizes it is something he will have to face directly rather than running away and isolating himself the way he tends to do.

So, he decides the best way to address it is to speak to Mikey the way he has done for several months since losing him. He texts him:

“We’re gonna open the Bear Mikey, Syd and I. I’m sorry you’re not here to do it with me but we’ll do this for you.”

It’s only a fraction of what he wants to say to him, and it doesn’t immediately take away his guilt and self-loathing. But it’s a start.

v.

Somewhere between the blood sweat and tears of opening then running The Bear, the several reviews they get both scathing and praising, all the awards and the two Michelin stars they eventually manage to nab, Carmy one day realizes that he has fallen in love with Sydney. 

If he thinks about it hard enough, he realizes that his feelings aren’t a new thing that appeared out of nowhere. If he thinks about it long enough he realizes that even in the midst of his on then off then on again relationship with Claire, and Sydney’s own brief flirtationship with Luca and her relationship with chef Naiya, it had always been her.

Through the long, gruelling hours of getting The Bear off the ground then working to pay off their debt to Cicero, Sydney had been beside him through it all. And Carmy knows there is no one he would have rather had by his side.

Sydney inspires him, inspires him both in the kitchen and out of it. She inspires him to be a better chef, just as she inspires him to be a better boss, a better friend, a better brother, and a better person in general.

Carmy finds himself drawing and cooking elaborate dishes that he quickly realizes are inspired by her– her scarves, her clothes, her essence.

He finds himself constantly thinking about her. When she is not there with him he thinks about her and what she is doing, he thinks about what she would think of new restaurants he walks past in the city, what she would think of food he eats. When she is there he thinks about what he would give to see her gummy smile first thing when he wakes and last thing before he sleeps every day, he thinks about whether she tastes as good as she smells.

Sydney makes him feel alive, rejuvenated. She appreciates his skills as a chef, gives him the affirmation and approval that all the glowing articles about him and all the industry awards he’s won over the years couldn’t give him. Yet at the same time she also challenges him, calls him out when he is being shitty.

With her the noise disappears and for the first time in his life everything is quiet; she is his peace.

Following his realization he finds it hard to be around her just as he yearns to be around her even more, and he doesn’t know what to do about his feelings.

Carmy is not someone who has much experience when it comes to women or when it comes to relationships in general.

His adolescence was spent navigating assumptions of homosexuality from his family because he displayed little to no interest in girls up until he was almost sixteen and developed his first ever crush on Claire, a  crush which went absolutely nowhere because he was scared of doing more than obsessively sketching her.

It wasn’t until he was twenty one years old working as a line cook at Fairest Creatures faraway from home in California that he lost his virginity to the older pastry, Susie, after a holiday party at which they’d all had a little too much to drink. And after her there had only been Emma who worked the station next to his at The French Laundry, then for years there had been nothing until Claire.

Out of the Berzatto boys, Mikey had been the one who was popular, the one who was good with girls. Growing up Carmy had watched his older brother go from girlfriend to girlfriend, relationship to relationship, with an enviable ease.

Carmy thinks his feelings for Syd are something less fleeting than Mikey’s short-lived relationships, yet he still finds himself yearning for his big brother’s listening ear, for his ribbing. He’d give anything to hear Mikey tease him about how he is a warm-blooded man after all, lik ehe'd done the the time when he told him about Claire, about Susie and Emma. He’d give anything to introduce Mikey to Sydney.

Instead he settles for letting Mikey in on his secret, for letting him be the first person he tells:

“I am in love with Sydney Adamu."

+1

Carmy decides he wants to marry Sydney about five months into their relationship whilst they are working side by side at The Bear as they have done for the past four years, a day like any other.

He loves the life they share together now– days spent running the Bear and cooking together, then coming home together. He loves their sex. He loves to wake up next to her. He loves how all their stuff is intermingled with her having moved into his apartment now. And between heir shared home and their restaurant they’re already married in all but titles, but Carmy finds that he wants to make it official, and he knows that marriage is something that Sydney wants too, though that had been as far as their discussion surrounding marriage, kids and the future had gotten, given both of their avoidant natures.

His desire to marry Sydney becomes all he can think about. 

First thing when they wake up in the morning, in that quiet space between when his alarm rings and they finally get out of bed, he stares longingly at Sydney and imagines just asking her then and there; will you be my wife? 

In the middle of service when Sydney is on expo, calling out orders and commanding the kitchen with an ease he now knows is feigned, something Sydney has to work at, he imagines a diamond ring sitting on her ring finger, a fantasy he knows is as ridiculous as it is unrealistic. Sydney would never do something as unhygienic as wear a ring in the kitchen.

At the end of a busy day at The Bear, when they’re hunched over a single bowl of ramen because they are too tired for anything more labour intensive or nutritious, he thinks of them in an official capacity- Mr and Mrs Adamu-Berzatto.

When he imagines them as partners in all things, at The Bear and in life, he finds that he wants it more than he has ever wanted anything in his life. He’s so overwhelmed by the desire he feels compelled to tell someone.

By this point Mikey’s disconnected number has now been transferred to someone else, something Carmy had found out the hard way the last time he texted the number about The Bear retaining their stars and had received a “wrong number man” in return.

Carmy decides to tell his sister instead, someone he has long overlooked and taken for granted but has since come to appreciate once he belatedly realized that Natalie also lost a big brother, and she was also there during their traumatic childhood.

He texts Nat then tries to call her a couple times but he gets no answer. Since he has nothing else to do with The Bear being closed today and Syd currently out with some friends, he decides he’ll go to her place and speak to her in person, and spend some time with his niece whilst he is at it.

When his sister’s front door opens the person on the other side isn’t his sister, but Pete along with his niece whom he holds in his arms the same way he did when she was a baby despite her being far too big now.

“Hey man!” Pete greets happily.

"Hi uncle Carmy," Sophie greets with a grin that matches that of her dad.

He greets the pair then asks, "Is Sugar home?"

“She’s out for lunch but she’ll be back soon, you can come in and wait for her.” Pete doesn’t even wait for Carmy to respond before he’s pushing the door open wider and stepping aside to make room for Carmy to walk through.

Carmy debates leaving and just talking to Natalie another time, but he doesn’t think he can go another day without telling someone he’s going to marry Sydney so he steps over the threshold and follows Pete into their home.

Inside, the two of them make awkward small talk for a while mainly about their respective work and about Sophie who has since gotten bored of the two of them and run off to go and play by herself.

Eventually, the topic gets to Sydney and Carmy finds that he cannot contain his excitement, and before he can help himself tells Pete: “I think I’m gonna ask Syd to marry me.”

Pete responds with the same enthusiasm he’s always had, the one he has about everything, and Carmy finds it infectious, getting equally excited about the prospect of marrying Sydney.

“That’s exciting! Have you got a ring? Have you planned the proposal?” Pete fires off questions rapid fire one after the other.

“I haven’t got a ring…yet. But I’ve looked at a couple and have shown them to her cousin Chantel and she’s gonna try and slyly find out which one Syd likes best. And, uh, I haven’t planned a proposal or anything. I admit I haven’t really thought this through, you know, the whole marriage thing.” He doesn’t say anything else for a beat, then another, before he continues on, “I haven’t really considered what it would be like for Sydney to marry into the Berzatto family, actually.”

He feels childish for this final admission, for only having fantasized about marrying Sydney without properly thinking it through. He hadn't really considered what it would be like for Sydney to be married to someone like him, to someone with a family like he does. He hadn't considered how he'd effectively be forcing her to have to deal with all his Donna-related shit. Jesus, he’s an idiot.

“You know Carmy, I didn’t mind marrying into the Berzatto family because I love Natalie very much and I knew that loving her meant loving her family, or loving those parts of it that made her into who she is. Sydney loves you very much, so I’m sure she wouldn’t mind either,” Pete says.

He says it so simply, like it’s that easy. It makes Carmy remember that no one would know better what it is like to marry a Berzatto than Pete, well adjusted and normal Pete who comes from a healthy, functional family. Pete is just like Syd in that way. But Carmy, for his part, is not like Natalie.

He tells Pete as much. “I’m not like Natalie though. Nat, she’s– she’s good.”

Pete considers him for a moment, a not entirely comfortable silence unreeling between them. Eventually Pete breaks the silence, “You’re good too, Carmy.” And there’s that assured tone again, like it’s really that simple. 

Before Carmy can disagree, tell him he’s not as good as his sister, his sister who has managed to build a family and a home out here in suburbia, his sister who still has so much love in her hate in spite of their hateful upbringing, his sister who still finds room in her heart to allow their mom to try to mend things time and time again no matter how many times she lets them all down, Pete continues talking. “There’s a lot about your upbringing that Natalie has told me, but even then I know that I can never truly understand what it was like for you guys growing up. I do know that it wasn’t easy for you or Natalie, or– or for Mikey.”

After mentioning Mikey he goes silent again, almost as if gauging Carmy’s reaction before he continues on. Carmy is taken aback slightly, but not enough to walk away from the conversation entirely; mentions of Mikey don’t cause Carmy to startle and completely shut down like they did before now.

“Look Carmy, I’ve known you for a long time and in that time I’ve seen you grow as a chef and as a person, and I’d say you’re plenty good, too.”

Carmy’s not sure he fully believes him, but it’s something he’s working on in his therapy sessions.

“And if it’s something that’s really worrying you then you should talk to Sydney about all this, see how she feels,” Pete adds.

“Thank you, Pete.” And Carmy finds that he really means it, because just as he took his sister for granted he has also taken Pete for granted. 

Pete has been there for his sister for nearly two decades, even after he himself had run away, and after they lost Mikey, and through Pete his sister has found happiness and peace. Pete has not only looked after his sister, but he’s looked after him, too. Pete has helped him more times than he can count with The Bear, but Carmy remembers how when he was in New York Pete would regularly text Carmy congratulating him each time a new article was published about him or he won an award, often being the first to acknowledge his accomplishments.

Carmy clears his throat a couple of times before telling him, “Pete, uh, sorry I never say it, but I appreciate you, man. And sorry we’re such assholes.”

Pete lets out a small laugh and shakes his head good-naturedly. “It’s fine dude, what are brothers for?"

Carmy feels tears well up in his eyes, getting choked up at Pete’s declaration, at the affection and love in his voice.

After he’s gotten a hold of himself, he smiles at the older man and he responds, “Yeah, brothers.”