Archive of Our Own

i. full house

“For fuck’s sake, where’s the fucking paprika?” Donna looks around. “Who moved the fucking paprika?”

A cabinet door slams behind him to his left. The oven timer chirps again like it has been every few minutes for the past hour because Ma keeps forgetting to reset it. There’s a specific interest in the way the light bends off the steel as he draws the knife she’d put down earlier, and he can barely register the noise of anything anymore. Any other household and he thinks the silence would sooner burst his eardrums.

“Stop moving the paprika, people,” she says to herself, then gets distracted by tasting the paste that’s cooking. “Jesus Christ, why is it sweet?”

“Ma.”

“No.” She points the wooden spoon at him. “I don’t need your help.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You had a face.”

Carmy sighs. That was his cue. “And I’ve always got a face, had I not learned to close my eyes.”

“Exactly.”

“I think the potatoes are burning.”

“What? I only just put them in.” Donna opens the oven. Smoke comes out. “What the fuck, Carmen?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me they were burning earlier?” She scrambles to put oven mitts on.

Carmy blinks. “Are you joking?”

Donna slams the hot tray of potato wedges on the dining table and Carmy flinches, protectively pulling his sketchbook close to his chest.

“Jesus, Ma.”

“Move,” Donna says.

“What?”

“Move, sweetheart, I need the table.” She peels the oven mitts off, then looks at Carmy still sitting. “Move, Carmen! Go! Move, move, move—”

She grabs his bicep and yanks him to his feet. Carmy yelps, already shrugging her off, then picks up his stuff and moves to the living room begrudgingly.

The front door opens, and in walks Nat, hair tied back into a low bun and her waitress uniform stained with some type of sauce. She waits tables for a restaurant next to the train station. Carmy visited only once with Ma as a surprise, and Nat had screamed at them to both get out and then cried in the staff toilets afterwards. It was a humiliating affair and everyone who actually had bookings stared at them as they left. Then Ma said some awful things about Nat during the car ride home.

Nat slams the door and slings her apron over her shoulder. “Hi.”

“Oh, nice of you to stop by.”

“What are you doing?”

“Making dinner for you. A ‘thank you’ would be nice,” Donna snips.

“Are those potatoes again? I thought you were done with potatoes after last week.”

“Well, you can’t really be done with potatoes, they’re in everything.”

“Is that tray burning through the table’s finish?”

“Natalie!” Donna spins around from the stove. “Then fucking pick it up! What the fuck do you want from me? Coming in here with your attitude, slinging hot ones at me—”

“Oh, shut up, Mom.” Nat snatches the oven mitts off the floor. They had fallen.

“Shut up? Oh, you want me to shut up? Okay. Me, the idiot, cooking dinner for everybody—but I should really be watching my mouth, shouldn’t I?”

“Nobody said you were a—”

“No, it’s fine! I know my place! After tearing my vagina open to bring you three shits into this world, I deserve a bit of ridiculing. It’s the least you could do.”

Nat drops the tray on a hot mat on the kitchen counter. “Mom, I just got home. Can we not?” She rubs her eyes

“That’s up to you, honey,” Donna says.

“For fuck’s sake,” Nat mutters, already heading for her room. “Hi, Carm!” she shouts from halfway up the stairs.

“Hi,” Carmy mumbles around his pencil.

Donna shakes her head violently. So violent Carmen thinks it may go flying. “Everybody’s got a fuckin’ attitude. Everybody, Carmen. Nobody fuckin’ appreciates—”

“Hello?” Richie calls out, front door slamming. “Anybody home?”

He rounds a corner and exclaims once he finds Donna in the kitchen, throwing his arms in the air. Mikey is close behind him, chuckling.

Then, “Ma, what’s burning?” Mikey asks.

“Nothing’s burning!”

Mikey wafts smoke away from his face and coughs. “Then why is there smoke?”

“Because ovens make smoke, darling.”

Richie leans over the sink to open the window. “Not that much,” he remarks.

Mikey then grins and leans down to kiss Donna on the cheek, says smells great, ma and lets her swat him away and push him towards the bathroom. Yeah, yeah, go wash your hands. Richie follows suit and places a kiss on Donna’s other cheek. She receives him gladly. 

Then, he spots Carmy.

“There he is!” Richie points.

Carmy immediately deposits his sketchbook on the arm of the couch. Richie crosses the room with the breathless string of my favorite little weirdo audible on his lips. When he reaches him, he runs a hand through Carmy’s curls until they’re all sticking up out of place.

Carmy ducks to no avail. “Quit it.”

“Look at this kid.” Richie pinches the back of his neck. “Got old man greys already.”

“No,” Carmy says.

“Oh, yeah. You didn’t know?”

“Rich.” Mikey returns, flicking tap water at his best friend, jutting a thumb in the direction of the hall. “Go fuckin’ clean up.”

Richie rolls his eyes at Carmy and mimes giving a handjob to an imaginary air-penis, but he goes nonetheless.

Mikey nods at Carmy’s sketchbook. “Can I see?”

“No.”

Mikey just nods. He sits down beside Carmy, an arm slung over the back of the couch, and tells him, “You ain’t got greys. Not like Uncle Lee.”

ii. a chat

Carmy hears a faint come in shortly after he knocks.

He peeks around the door. “Nat?”

Nat looks up from her mirror. She’s wiping makeup off. “Hey, Bear, what’s up?”

Carmy shuffles further in. “Um, Ma’s workin’ a double tomorrow.”

Nat sighs. “Shit, really? I can’t stay home; I told Martha I’d cover her.”

Carmy just shrugs. Nat sighs again, going back to the mirror. There’s a red blotch on her cheek from how hard she’s rubbing but she doesn’t slow down.

Carmy looks down at his feet, shifting idly. By his big toe, there’s a black stain on the carpet from when Mikey had spilled hair dye trying to dye Nat’s hair. It was years ago, and she was going through her emo phase. She’d asked Mikey to do it only because she knew what Ma would’ve said—although Carmy doesn’t quite remember. Something about the both of them being blonde, even though Nat wasn’t a natural blonde. About the both of them being the only girls in the family. Something about connection. Carmy only remembers the way they screamed at each other when she finally found out.

“Bear?”

Carmy looks up, and with her cautionary expression, he gathers that she’s been staring.

“What’s the matter?”

Only for a moment does Carmy look down again, this time to fidget with his hands. To gather his thoughts. “Where do you go when you die?” he asks, lifting his head.

Nat’s eyes widen, then shrink, like she’s keeping her composure. She turns in her seat to face Carmy and puts her hands in her lap. “Why are you asking me that?” she questions, quiet.

Carmy shrugs, going back to avoiding eye contact. The posters on her wall gain his attention—as do her fairy lights, hanging on by a thin piece of tape rather than a thread. There’s a dent in the ceiling from the old mini-chandelier the previous owners of the house had installed.

“Carmen,” Nat says.

“Doesn’t matter.” He goes to walk out, but Nat reaches out and grabs his wrist. Carmy sighs, his head hanging. “Relax.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I just—” He gently pulls his wrist back. “I was just wondering. Honest. Don’t you ever wonder?”

Nat looks unconvinced. “Sure,” she says anyway. “I wonder what happens to assholes like Dad after they finally cark it.”

Carmy feels like throwing up. “Yeah.”

“I would hope there’s a special fiery pit in hell just for them.”

“Yep,” Carmy agrees. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um.”

Nat smiles, then turns back to her mirror, grabbing another wipe. What a contrast. She gets to work again while Carmy stands there and watches. “Try not to think about that stuff too much. You’ll get in your head, and then one of us will have to crawl in and rescue you.” She shakes her own head fondly. “Not worth it. You’ll find out one day, anyway.”

Carmy nods even though she isn’t looking. He waits a few more moments for her to say anything else but all he gets is her binning a dirty wipe and plucking out a fresh one.

He nods again—this time to himself—and turns on his heel, leaving.

iii. the news

Carmen reaches into his pocket and pulls out his vibrating phone. Sugar <3.

“Excuse me,” he tells the fancy men in suits. The men David had invited to dinner at Empire just so he could test his culinary progress, or embarrass him. Either one sounded probable. He offers them a warm smile and steps away from the circle of conversation.

He picks up once he reaches a hallway. “Nat?”

There is static, and then, “Bear.” Sugar sounds a wreck. Her voice cracks and wobbles through the line. Carmen swears he can feel it in his palm just from holding the phone. He hears sniffling and then a deep breath before she speaks again. “It’s time to come home.”

iv. safety in numbers

He’s accustomed himself to the sound of silence among a house full of people. Most days, there is chaos and noise filling every square inch of the place they call home, and he’s somehow made it his secret magic trick to be able to find tranquillity where it matters most.

Most of the time, it’s in his bedroom.

Curled up against his pillows, shoulders pressed against the adjacent wall, his hand moves. The angling of his wrist and the methodical dance in which his fingers have rehearsed time and time again with the pencil as their prop, learned to work around it, between it, revives him With it begs a certain phoniness, which is the exact opposite of what he wants. He and the lead are separate. He and the lead have mutualism. There is no middle ground of the venn diagram; there are only the two graphs, and the thin little line connecting them.

There are footsteps—and then there is a gush of wind from an open door. “Yo, cuz, your mom says dinner in twenty,” Richie announces, already halfway in the room, pointing at Carmy. He’s always pointing at Carmy. His eyes drop to the book in his lap, and then he breaks out into a smile. “What’s that you’re drawin’?”

“Nothing,” Carmy is quick to answer.

“Aw, I’m sure it’s not ‘nothing.’ Come on.” Richie makes a beckoning gesture with his already extended arm.

“No.”

“Cousin? Man—have a little pride, Carm. Hiding away forever is no way to live.”

“That’s okay.”

Richie frowns. Carmy’s grip on his sketchbook tightens. The pencil wedged between his index finger and his thumb aches with how hard it’s indenting his skin, and he wants to close the book entirely, slam it shut, but he knows Richie Jerimovich and he knows that any sudden movement will turn this into a game. A game that could be made fair, and fair game meant whatever it meant to Richie, however anticipatingly terrified that made Carmy feel. The slimy fucker.

Carmy bites the bullet anyway, flipping the cover of the book over the pages and shoving it into his pillowcase behind him. Richie is on him in a second, his fully grown man weight squeezing all the air out the lungs of his teenage boy body, making him squeak.

He wraps his arms around Carmy’s stomach and pulls him backwards off the bed, and while Carmy tries to swing and scratch and bite at Richie’s biceps, Richie reaches forward and plucks the sketchbook from its pathetic hiding spot.

Then he drops Carmy. “Let’s see—”

“Stop! Give it back—”

Richie dodges Carmy’s attempt at a tackle. “Hey, whoa now, Bear! Cool it! I just wanna take a looksie.”

“Stop it! No looksies!”

“Wha—just a peek, Bear! Gotta see what’s keeping you from us. These days, you’re never found with your nose not in his book.”

As Richie flips the first page, Carmy starts to jump. It’s humiliating, is what it is. Completely and entirely little brother of him, reaching for the stars where his sketchbook is not much further. Richie only holds his arms up higher, pretending, on occasion, to let Carmy have it before yanking it perilously out of reach again and laughing.

Carmy feels his face heat up and he can’t help the way his limbs go uncoordinated with desperation.

“Aw, look at you. Bambino. Look at your fuckin’ face.”

“Richie, I swear to God.”

“Well, don’t do that; he probably won’t appreciate.”

“Just give me back the fucking—”

“Oh,” Richie says suddenly, body stilling. The book is held up to the light, and the rough outline of a beef wellington adorns the scratchy page. It’s colored in and shaded with the corresponding hues, but any precision it took to draw was not apparent in the way the jagged lines spoke to him. “Holy shit.”

Carmy tries one more jump—but Richie, dumbfounded, only lifts the book higher, squinting at the page.

“Holy shit,” he repeats. He runs a delicate finger over the sketch, then finally turns to Carmy. “You drew this?”

Carmy kicks him in the shin.

“Ow—” Richie winces. “Little prick—answer me, did you draw this?”

Carmy narrows his eyes at Richie, all threat. He prepares himself for insult or mockery. Instead, Richie only stares back with a distinct swirl of astonishment in his eyes. It’s then that Carmy realizes he’s being genuine, and so he lets his face fall.

Suddenly nervous, Carmy looks at his feet, shuffling on them. He shrugs in response and hopes that Richie will lose interest—an improbable wish, but still one worth being made.

“This is fuckin’—this is fuckin’ gourmet, cousin. This is the shit,” Richie says. “God damn, this is beautiful. Jesus Christ. Look at that shadow…”

Carmy’s chest squeezes at the praise, but he doesn’t look up just yet. He knows better than to give a reaction. He’d always have a face had he not learned to close his eyes.

Richie grabs hold of his chin and forces them to lock eyes, and Carmy’s not expecting it so he flinches violently at the touch, hands immediately coming up to pry Richie off as if he burns.

“Are you hearing me? Are you listening to what I’m saying? This is art, Carmen. What the fuck, this is museum shit. Where the fuck have you been hiding this?”

It feels like more of an interrogation than a compliment. Luckily, Mikey picks the best times to interrupt, and so as soon as he hears that familiar whistle tone, Richie retracts his hand and turns around.

“Hey. What’s going on?” Mikey asks when he reaches the doorframe. He leans his hands on the top and does small, vertical push-ups.

“Why didn’t you tell me your little brother was Picasso reincarnated?”

“Huh?”

“Look!” Richie holds the sketchbook up to Mikey’s face and flips a few more pages forward, each turn of paper getting progressively more and more fervent, and each turn carving out pieces of Carmy’s soul. “That’s one hell of a fucking hand, Bear.”

Mikey blinks—because, really, the book is too close to be able to see anything—then snatches it out of Richie’s hands and looks at Carmy. Carmy gives him the best puppy dog eyes he can, silently pleading. Please, don’t. Mikey sighs, closing it one-handed. He swiftly tosses it back in Carmy’s direction without giving even one of the drawings a glance.

Carmy almost doesn’t catch it. He gives Mikey the most grateful smile and holds the book to his heart.

“Hey…” Richie says sadly.

“Ma said dinner in twenty,” Mikey reminds.

v. returning

Nat meets him at the airport when he lands. She’s standing waiting at the pedestrian crossing with a taxi behind her, and she can’t hold back the tears when she sees him enter her field of vision.

She doesn’t run up or meet him halfway. She just waits for him to wheel his three bags to the curb before she engulfs him in an embrace. He hates to admit it, but his sister smells bad. He knows the reason for it. Between Mikey dying, Ma, the restaurant, and probably just everything else that was going wrong in life, she hadn’t yet found the time to take care of herself. He knew what that felt like, and so he hugged her back without complaint or comment. And then there they were, down a brother.

“Mom’s with Unc,” Nat says when they’re finally home. Carmy’s just finished wheeling his bags into the living room and staring wide-eyed at this childhood home he hasn’t seen in years. “She’ll probably be there for a week and a bit. I tried calling her after the funeral but she didn’t pick up. It was Jimmy telling me to come spend the weekend with them. He said he’d cook, but—”

“It’s okay,” Carmy says. His brain still hasn’t played catch-up. He missed the funeral. “It’s okay.”

Nat shakes her head. “It’s not.”

Her bottom lip starts to tremble, and Carmy just steps forward again, this orchestrated motion. It’s going to get old. Carmy can tell. There are only so many times you can wrap your arms around someone before you begin to feel like you’re making up for lost solidity—and he’s always hated the obligation of hugs in a time like this.

But before he can close the distance, the front door opens behind them. “Sugar?” Richie calls out, sounding uncharacteristically lost. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Carmy already thinks.

“In here,” Nat calls back.

Carmy swallows a big gob of spit and watches Richie enter the room.

“Yo, what…” Richie stops halfway. “What—what’s he doing here?”

“Richie,” Nat tried tiredly.

“No, what the fuck? What is he doing here, Nat? Seriously? Hey, you.” Richie steps up to him, way too close and way too angrily piffing his shoulder. “You. You think you can just skip out on all the hard parts, huh? You think you can stay in New York and play Master Chef all day long? Have Gordon Ramsay whisper sweet nothin’s in your ear? Where the fuck were you, bitch?”

“I—I wasn’t—” Carmy’s throat dries out, somehow. “I couldn’t—”

Richie shoves him backwards. “What? Couldn’t take it? Well, that’s okay, we all just fucking took it for you! Straight to the fucking heart!” He rubs over his chest as if to sign sorry, but Carmy knows that’s the furthest thing from what he means. He grabs a fistful of Carmy’s shirt and shakes. “Your sister and ma needed you. And now you wanna come back? It’s done, Carmen! You wanna help pick up the pieces? Well, fuck you! That’s what you can pick up!”

A string of spit hits Carmy’s face. Nat wedges herself between the two and he can hear her sobbing hysterically.

“Stop it! Stop it!” He feels a hand on his chest. “Stop!”

Richie lets off easy because it’s Nat, but he keeps his eyes trained on Carmy, even though there are tears bubbling in his own. Nat gives Richie a hearty shove for good measure. She coughs and hiccups and cries.

“Sug—”

“No.” She covers her mouth and stumbles into a seat. A seat on Carmy’s side. A moment passes before she speaks again, saying, “Don’t you fucking do that. Not to him.”

vi. the exception

“You want a sandwich?”

Carmy looks up from his sketchbook to find Mikey peering around the doorframe of the office. Carmy nods eagerly, dropping his pencil for the moment.

“Alright.” Mikey looks back to check no one’s watching. “What do you want?”

“Bell peppers—green. And not too much gravy.”

Mikey smirks. “You want my giardiniera?”

“You’d be wise to leave that out.”

“I’d be wise, would I? Alright, wise guy. It’s coming right up.”

Carmy smiles as Mikey leaves. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Carmy sits in Mikey’s office at The Beef after school and draws. It’s the days Ma isn’t working, and God knows there’s never any peace and quiet when Ma is home. Nat usually swings by around five to pick him up after her shift but sometimes she runs late and he ends up hanging back and helping Mikey and Richie clean before just going home with them instead. But this time is Nat time. He knows it.

“What… What is… Oh, come on, is this fucking Carmy again with the no giardiniera?” Richie exclaims from the kitchen. Must’ve found Carmy’s order. “For fuck’s sake, I’m gonna punt that fucking kid. Mike! Stop givin’ your brother free food! He’ll get fat and sue us and then we’ll be broke! Waste of a fuckin’ sandwich, anyway. No goddamn giardiniera.”

A song of laughter ripples through the space, and even though the office is tucked away in a nice, cozy corner, Carmy can hear their voices clearly enough to place names. Ebraheim to the left. Marcus to the right. Sweeps and Chuckie somewhere down the hall, and Neil on the other side of the office. There is serendipity to their mayhem. Bliss in their lunacy. Sometimes, he wishes he could have something as chaotically smooth as that. A team to carry the load.

Sometimes, it feels as though everybody already had that except him.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Cc: the michael

[Attached: 1 File.JPEG]

***

From: [email protected]

Re: the michael

holy shit bear! u made dis? top sh1t brotha. capolavoro. honored

when can i expect u home?

vii. tongue wrestling

“Jeff, I’m sorry, but no,” Tina says, turning back to the stove.

Nat groans. “You’re not listening to me—he left Carmy the restaurant!”

“If you think anyone in this kitchen is going to take orders from that niño pequeño then I don’t know what to tell you. Because we’re not.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. This is what’s going to happen.” Nat waves the paper in front of Tina’s face. “Your new boss.”

“Chef Carmen?” Ebra walks past. “What does Baby Bear know about Italian beef sandwiches?”

“He is Italian.”

“I don’t think so,” Tina says.

“No, no.” Ebra puts a hand up, thinking. “I remember. He lost his accent when he left for New York.”

“I never had an accent,” Carmy mumbles.

Ebra and Tina both laugh. Carmy doesn’t know what to think of Tina. She wasn’t one of Mikey’s workers that he’d met and been familiarized with as a kid. She’d started while he was away in New York, and Mikey had taken her under his wing. There was something sharp and potent about her. He also didn’t know why she was laughing when she’d never even spoken to him before.

Nat looks at him something defeated. “You did, Bear,” she confirms sadly.

“What? No.”

“You kinda did. Don’t worry, it was cute.”

“Michael used to show us those videos of you speaking English for the first time. You was wrestling with your own tongue,” Ebra chimes in.

Carmy turns to Nat. “Natalie,” he all but whines.

“Excuse me? I didn’t show them anything!”

Richie suddenly walks past, shoulder-checking Carmy. “Point is you’re not running this restaurant.”

Carmy glares at him. “That’s not up to you,” he huffs, his blood beginning to boil. Richie’s been doing that to him a lot lately.

“Uh, I think it is, ‘cause it’s my fuckin’ restaurant.”

“Why didn’t he leave you ‘your fucking restaurant’ then?”

“Richie, there is no argument here. It’s what was in the will. We’re doing it,” Nat says.

“Um, show of hands? Could we get a show of hands real quick?” Richie looks around, points at Ebra, Tina, Marcus. “Who wants to be working under Mr. Cashgrab here?”

No one raises their hands.

Richie then faces Carmy and Nat, putting his hands on his hips. “Well, I think that settles it.” He gives Carmy a cruel smile. “Nobody fuckin’ wants you here.”

viii. couches

There’s a dim light emitting from the living room which causes Carmy to make his move and go investigate

He shouldn’t be surprised when he finds Donna sprawled across the sofa, arm hanging off the side, and her face smushed into a pillow. There’s an empty wine bottle by her hand and the pathetic rerun of Move Over, Darling on the television, reflecting off the glass. And Mikey’s also there, sat in the chair beside the sofa with his head in his hands.

Carmy clears his throat as he enters the space.

Mikey looks up instantly. “Oh. Hello, you.”

“Hi.” Carmy sits down in another chair across from him.

Mikey rubs his eyes, mumbles, “What’re you doin’ up?”

“I could ask the same thing,” Carmy chuckles.

Mikey just shakes his head. A small smile creeps onto his face, like Carmy’s presence was already shaving the stress off him in layers.

Carmy nods at Ma. “She okay?”

“Her? Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. Bit too much red, thas’all.”

“Right.”

A silence stretches over them, so much so that Carmy can feel it pressing on his throat. Nights like these, Carmy thinks, are the most telling. He doesn’t usually resent his mother’s poor habits—to each their own, and all that—but there’s something about the sleeping city and the broken heater and the static from the television speakers and the combination of all those things that makes him a little anguished inside. Mom passing out from drinking doesn’t help.

“So what’s with the shower head again?”

“What?”

“Sug told me there was something wrong with it. Do I need to call a plumber?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t showered.”

Mikey frowns. “She told me this a week ago, Carm.”

Carmy feels his cheeks heat up, but then Mikey starts laughing quietly, covering his mouth.

Carmy deflates. He throws a pillow at his older brother. “Dude.”

“Fucking adorable,” Mikey says, letting it hit him. “I thought you fucking outgrew that.”

“Outgrew what?”

“Fucking blushing, man.”

“Fuck you,” Carmy says heatlessly. “How’d you even see that? It’s pitch black in here.”

“I don’t know. It goes to your ears.”

“Whatever,” Carmy grumbles.

“Okay, but do we need a plumber? I can call one tomorrow morning.”

Carmy dismisses the fact that it’s 2 A.M. and shrugs. “Just make her call Francine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think they’re fighting right now.”

“Again? Dude, they’re always fighting. Call a Fak.”

“Is that their slogan?”

“No, I’m telling you. Call a Fak.”

“Alright, alright, fine. You take the fall if it backfires?”

“Fuck, no.”

Mikey laughs—loud. Too loud, this time, and Ma stirs from her disgruntled position on the sofa. He quickly covers his mouth again and looks to Carmy, who is also wide-eyed and half-faced. It makes Mikey laugh even more, although now the sound only comes out in muffled spurts of huffing and snorts.

Carmy does the same, chest expanding with silky warmth and heart palpitations—except, now, he notices the bags under Mikey’s eyes, too.

ix. a regime change

After the first of many hectic days of The Beef being reopened, Carmy sits in Mikey’s his office and runs numbers. A page of his sketchbook is open on a drawing of a calamari dish, pencils scattered across the desk, and the calculator is withering under his touch. There are a lot of bills missing—and even more repayments. Fucking hell, Mike.

Sydney—the new hire—peeks her head around the corner. Just like Mikey used to. “Hey. I’m just about to clock out,” she announces timidly. He’d not made the best first impression on her, shouting and throwing things at his coworkers.

He meets her eyes and tries to smile as best he can. Nods encouragingly at her. Sydney nods back and goes to leave, but then he watches her gaze drift, land on the desk.

“Oh,” she starts. “That’s cool. I didn’t know you, um, draw.”

Carmy closes the sketchbook without looking. “Thank you.”

“Wh—was that calamari? It looked good. Are you—do you just do that for fun, or…” she asks, “is it, like, a diagram? Do you cook it afterwards?”

Carmy blinks. “The Beef sells sandwiches.”

“No, I know! I was just—well, I know you had that whole fine dining thing in New York before you came here, so. And I—you probably don’t know this, but I also dabble in that. As in—fine dining.”

Carmy straightens. “You do?”

Sydney goes a faint crimson shade. “Well, yeah! I mean, it’s nothing crazy, you know—but—yeah. Yeah, I do.”

He stands abruptly. “Don’t clock out yet,” he says. “Fire the stove.”

x. start the clock

“Mikey?” Carmy calls.

Mikey hasn’t been home in two days. Two days without Mikey. At first, Carmy thought he was on a road trip with Richie, but then Nat had walked through the door with Richie tailing behind her and effectively ruled out that possibility. Nat had told Carmy that Mikey was grown, and that he’d be back when he was back—which Carmy thought was a load of bullshit. He thought she knew something he didn’t and was keeping it from him on purpose. It wouldn’t be the first time with them two. Being the youngest meant being the unaware. And that was a problem for Carmy because, well, he always had this insatiable need to see what happened inside the room.

When he’d asked Richie about it, all Richie had done was skittishly avoid eye contact and then pat Carmy on the shoulder, ruffled his hair as he escaped the conversation by walking away. Carmy promised himself he’d get to the bottom of whatever this was, no matter the obstacles or repercussions.

Now—the house was empty, nothing but Carmy’s own shaky breaths echoing back to him. The corner lamp was illuminating most of the hallway. The array of family photos crooked on the wall. “Mike? You there?” Carmy runs a hand over the wood as he walks.

He reaches Mikey’s room, tentatively switching the light on. Mikey had figurines atop his dresser and a standing coatrack he used to hang belts rather than coats. He had posters of old rock bands and metal artists across his ceiling. A jumbo-sized, clay-made blunt resting on his bed frame like royalty. Nothing was irredeemably dirty or suspiciously out of place. Taking one, two, three sweeps of the room, Carmy steps back. His eyes filter over anything that could be useful, and—bingo. Nightstand.

He was on his knees in a second, and had his hands trembling as they reached out to pull the handle. For a quick moment, a wave of shame washes over him, because this wasn’t what you did to good big brothers. You didn’t go snooping through their stuff whenever they didn’t come home. You didn’t assume the worst. You trusted them and had faith in them.

Unfortunately, that wave went as quickly as it came, and Carmy’s fingers locked around the metal and yanked.

Inside were the usuals. Spare change, copy of his ID, old jewellery he hadn’t worn in a few years. There was a roll of toilet paper and a pocket knife. A beanie and a photograph of him and Dad. Carmy frowns, only slightly disappointed. There went his great master plan. Now, he’d been nosy for nothing. He rustles around in the drawer until his knuckle brushes up against something plastic, and then he pulls that out instead.

A small bag of pills is held up to the light. Carmy feels a sting in his retinas. They’re blue and red and yellow, and some have little pictures carved into them, like smiley faces. Some are powder-like and some are capsules. Carmy takes a minute to study them, squinting, before their appearance becomes all too clear and the realization hits him hard. Punch to the gut like Richie used to do to him as a kid.

Carmy drops them back into the drawer and slams it shut. Shit. He stands back and turns the light off, running out. Shit, shit, shit. He finds safety in his room—where safety always is—and he does what he always does when situations like this arise. Shit.

He draws.

xi. vindication

Sugar tells him to get his head in the game with The Bear. (“Get your head in the game, Bear.”) And it’s ‘The Bear’ now after what Syd showed him. After she proved herself. Her skill had potential, but she was selling herself short. And he knew this rebranding was a risk, but if it all worked out, the harvest could be beautiful. Not everyone was on board but that didn’t matter. It was his restaurant now. His to save.

All it took was one lunch rush in particular.

“Hey—whoa, Carmy, what are you doing?” Syd stops in her tracks.

Carmy’s tongue sticks out when he handles tweezers. “Making…” He places one leaf over another. “Food.”

Syd stares in bewilderment. “That’s not—we have orders.”

“I know. You’ve got that covered.”

“Well—do I? I feel like we’re supposed to be a team. I feel like you’re maybe supposed to be helping, not…” She then takes a closer look, leaning in. “What is that?”

Carmy can’t help but smile. “Beef Wellington. We’ve got plenty, so I thought—”

“It’s gorgeous.”

Carmy looks at her. He gets to watch her study the dish for a few seconds—the way her eyes twinkle—before she meets his gaze, smiling back.

“What’s this, Jeffs?” Tina asks with her hands full.

“Art,” is what Syd says.

“Art? Come on, no art. We got sandwiches to make.”

“Carmen,” Marcus begins, walking up to the pass. “Wow.”

“Seriously? No, Marcus, don’t be entranced. We need you on the—oh, wow.” Tina lets her arms sag, the plastic tubs she’d been holding knocking the counter on the way down. “Jeff.”

“Does this have to do with the rebranding?” Syd asks.

Carmy just smirks.

xii. salted caramel

Three half-melted ice creams, one in Carmy’s hand, two in Mikey’s. One of their napkins goes blowing down the path, and across the grass, Richie sprints after an innocent flock of pigeons.

Mikey checks his watch. “Ten minutes he’s been doin’ that now.”

Carmy hums. He feels Mikey start to stare at him but he doesn’t give him the satisfaction of staring back. It’s one of those worried stares of his that Carmy doesn’t have the time nor the energy for. Ice cream he was reluctant to say yes to, but a heart-to-heart was most definitely not on the table. He thinks they only invited him out because they had an ulterior motive anyway.

Finally, after a minute of no speaking, Mikey speaks. “The Beef’s fine, by the way.”

Carmy looks over, unimpressed. Mikey smirks. Gotcha. Carmy rolls his eyes and okay, fine—got me.

“Uncle Jimmy… Fak…” Mikey continues, trailing off. He chuckles. “I don’t know, man, just wanted you to look at me.”

That gets a laugh out of Carmy. “Smooth operator.”

“Yeah, not so much,” Mikey smiles. Then, “You been kinda somewhere else lately.”

There it is. Carmy shuts his eyes—then opens them and shrugs. “I’m okay,” he lies.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either one’s fine.” Mikey takes a long lick from his elbow to his wrist to watch the ice cream dripping from Richie’s cone, making an annoyed grunt when he realizes how good it tastes, how he should’ve listened when Richie told them get the salted caramel. “But—you know you can tell me stuff, right?”

“Right,” Carmy replies too fast.

“Or Nat. I won’t be offended.”

“Right.”

Mikey glares, pinching Carmy’s side, grinning when he yelps. “And when you leave—‘cause you will—just… call every once in a while, yeah? Doesn’t hurt.”

“There’s too much obligation in calling,” Carmy sighs. “A phone call can last five minutes or five hours. If I leave, I’ll be too busy for that.”

“Okay,” Mikey says, reconsidering. “Email me.”

“What? Email?”

“Yeah. Email me.” He starts just eating Richie’s ice cream. “Tell me about the crazy chefs. The city’s best bread. What dishes you managed to burn to a crisp that week. Tell me anything—and don’t make me find out from Nat, Carmen, I swear to God—”

“I won’t,” Carmy agrees. “I won’t. Alright. Emails.”

“Would ya? Wherever you end up going. Wanna see all the cool shit you get up to.”

xiii. did you know?

“Fire two steaks, one lamb and one wagyu!”

“Yes, chef!”

“Tables four, seven and eight need walking! Now, please!”

“Yes, chef!”

Syd comes up behind him. “Yo, we’re on our last supply of wagyu…”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Are we gonna have enough for the night?”

Carmy looks at all the orders piled out across the counter. “Fuck. No. Can you stretch it?”

“I can try.”

“Thank youuu,” Carmy happily hums as she walks away. “Alright, chefs, we’re rationing wagyu!”

“Yo, chef, what the fuck is this?” Richie asks, suddenly appearing from behind a wall.

Carmy looks up to see him holding his sketchbook, spine open on a page of various kinds of pills. Blue, red, yellow. Some powdery, some capsule. Carmy’s stomach sinks. Fuck.

“Wh—” he stammers. “Where did you… Why do you have that?”

“It was in the office.”

“No, it was… It was in my bag, Richie.”

“Your bag’s in the office.”

“Yeah, it was in my bag in the office—Richie, why the fuck are you going through my things?”

“I was looking for smokes!”

“Fuck’s sake—we’re in service, Rich!”

Richie stops, turns away and takes a deep breath—and Carmy doesn’t have time for this, needs Richie out there with the tables—but Richie just drags a hand down his face and then turns back around. “Did you know Mikey was using?” he asks.

Carmy’s hands still. “What?” he whispers, only slightly doubtful of what he heard.

Richie walks closer until there are only a handful of inches between them. He gives Carmy that long sort of look and something hot settles in his chest. Something achy. Not good. It presses on his ribcage and it wants to get out; he wants to scream. “Did you know Michael was using?” Richie asks, low, and for a second time.

Carmy’s head starts to shake. “No,” is his answer. But Richie doesn’t look convinced. So, “No. I swear. I—”

“Just happen to have a page full of the pills we found in his bedroom after the funeral? Oh, right. That’s my bad. You weren’t at the funeral. You didn’t go. How were you supposed to know?”

“It’s not—that’s from years ago.”

“Yeah, his addiction wasn’t exactly a new thing, Carmen!” Richie’s now yelling.

“I didn’t fucking know! I didn’t know, okay?” Carmy has always been susceptible to retaliation. His volume raises as well. It’s like there are ants under his skin. He chokes out, “I sent him an email. I—I emailed him, and he emailed back. But I—I didn’t see that one. I didn’t see it. I didn’t…”

Carmy drops the marker and it hits one of the orders, a big black blob in the centre of the ticket. He steps back from the counter. His arms come up to wrap around himself, erratic. Tunnel vision is an old friend greeting him again. He’d almost missed it. Missed being attuned to blocking out the things around him for so long. He feels Tina place a hand on his shoulder and he feels himself violently shake her off.

Richie stands, watching, a crease between his eyebrows and a tear ready to slip. He grips Carmy’s book tighter.

xiv. penance 

The ice is dead cold on his cheekbone. Sugar holds a pack of peas to his face, and she occasionally tutts, empathetic, when he moves, wincing. He can hear someone (Tina, probably) scolding Richie nearby. Something about how Syd should really be stabbing his ass a second time. It would make him laugh if he weren’t so dazed, so out of it. Surprising that Tina would even come to his defence in the first place. 

He thinks he makes a comment about the bruise he’s going to have now, and Sugar tells him that she doesn’t blame him. She knows he has a hard time. Bad days. She says it’s all Richie’s fault, and he has nothing to be sorry for.

Carmy feels guilt like he never has before.

xv. saying but not saying ‘i love you’

Richie finds the smokes.

They were in Carmy’s front pocket, which is definitely not where he was looking. After closing, Carmy hides out back and sinks to a squat in a puddle of water, relishing the way the moisture seeps through his battered footwear, all for him to suffer. Richie finds him (Where else would he be?) and holds the packet out, open for Carmy to take.

He does take. The whole thing. It is his, after all. Richie hums understandingly and leans on the bricks beside him. The fire from the lighter provides little solace amidst all the rain and tension, but he keeps it lit anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Richie is first to say, and reaches up to swipe his thumb gently over Carmy’s irritated cheekbone.

Carmy lets him, because the touch is kind of nice, and because he knows Richie is more professionally trained in physical reparation than verbal apologies; this was a step for them both. Carmy doesn’t say anything in return, letting the smoke sit in his mouth and exit through his nose. He wishes Nat would’ve stayed longer. Maybe then Richie would be bothering her instead.

He tries not to but in the end he resorts back to looking at his feet, scuffing the fronts of his shoes and kicking the pebbles he thinks deserve it most. Richie sways from side to side (He’s never been good at subtlety) then finally nudges Carmy’s elbow and asks.

“What did he say?”

Carmy closes his eyes. “What, Richie?”

“In the emails. What did you two email about?”

He opens his eyes again, looking at his not-cousin. Richie has this misery-laden expression on, and that was hard to refuse if you knew why it was there. “We… talked about food. And Mom,” Carmy caves. “And there was this dish I made—called it The Michael. It was this beef thing covered in relish. Kinda like giardiniera but better.”

“Nothing’s better than giardiniera.”

Carmy huffs, smiling. He looks down. “And I sent it to him and he… liked it. He was honored. And he asked when I would come home.” He swallows, pausing. “That was before, though. That was at the start, and I never replied to that one and then… well, yeah.” Richie knows the rest, Carmy decides.

When Carmy looks up again, Richie has respectful tears running down his face, no noise whatsoever, nothing to interrupt Carmy. He’s staring at the streetlights and biting his lip. Carmy very seldom sees Richie cry. It’s about as rare as a four-leaved clover, if you knew where to look. It was like seeing a chicken cross a body of asphalt. These things just didn’t happen—until they did.

Regrettably, Carmy’s own vision blurs, and he brings his sleeve up to wipe the shame away.

Richie sees this and decides slinging an arm around Carmy is the best course of action. He hooks his hand around his shoulders and pulls him in close, close enough for Carmy to lean on his chest and for Richie to use his head as a chinrest. Richie buries himself in Carmy’s curls. Maybe presses a kiss into them. The rain stops, and with it the soft pitter-patter of droplets on the patio above them. In all of it, Carmy still doesn’t hug back.

xvi. always a face

It’s the middle of service, and Syd holds up the page of his sketchbook to him that holds The Michael, says, “You should make this a dish.”

Carmy’s eyes widen and he snatches the book from her. “Why do you have that?

“I’m serious,” Syd continues. Carmy guesses she must’ve gotten inspiration from Richie and looked through his bag in the office. She didn’t have the excuse of searching for cigarettes, so she just came out with it. “The stuff in here is really good, Carmy. This could change the game.”

“Since when was it normal for people to snoop?” he remarks, though his voice wobbles.

Syd squints at him. “What’s that face for?”

Shit. “What face? There’s no face,” Carmy lies. Close your eyes. Close your eyes.

“Uh, the face you just did with your face,” Syd says. “Why don’t you want your dishes out there? They’re amazing, Carm!”

“Sydney.” Carmy holds the book up for her to see—then walks over to the bin and tosses it right in. A show of intent. Of severity. A stand, the way the trash crumples under its weight. For Carmen, that’s familiar. “Get back to work.”

xvii. long lost capolavoro

Carmy bends down and reaches into the bin. He scrounges around in it before his hand hits something solid, and then pathetically, he pulls out the sketchbook, staring at its now sauce-stained front cover.

He wipes his fingers over it—and cries.