Chapter Text
It’s the day after friends and family, and Carmy is a fucking wreck.
He'd called everyone together in the dining room at lunchtime, so they could fill him in on the details he'd missed during service last night. Syd is sitting across the table, watching him scribble notes as each dishwasher and line cook speaks in turn. He’s serious and quiet, wound tight like always, but this level of tension is new even for him. Carmy never looks okay, exactly, he never looks rested — but today, his eyes are hooded, the crease between his eyebrows never goes away, and he keeps rubbing his chest like it hurts. He’s weary beyond anything Syd’s seen before.
Syd is tired of this debrief. She’s tired of talking instead of cooking, tired of being on this side of the kitchen, tired of thinking about everyone’s stupid feelings, including her own. She just wants to start in on the real work she has to do today, and forget about all the clutter and noise around everything else. But they're barely halfway through this methodical march through the whole staff.
Deep breaths. That’ll help. She makes herself take two, and then two more, while Nat’s explaining about the toilet. She makes herself take a sip of tea and eat a bite of her yogurt. It tastes like paste, like Elmer’s, and she hopes her palate isn’t fucked.
Everyone’s eating and drinking at this table except Carmy — he’s just writing furiously as people talk at him, unloading all their thoughts and problems. She looks at his hands while he writes; for a minute, she can’t figure out why his knuckles are cut and swollen, actually they’re alarmingly messed up, until she remembers the way he’d been punching the door of the walk-in last night.
She doesn’t even know exactly what happened while he was trapped. She was too overwhelmed to deal with him losing his shit in there — starting to get underwater, panic building from the noise of the ticket machine and the crush of their first service starting to bear down on her. Plus, she was still jangling from that insane bullshit with Marcus that she absolutely does not have time to think about right now, and then from Carmy yelling at her over table 50, whatever that had been about. She doesn't even want to know.
And, if she’s being honest with herself, she had been pissed last night. Pissed that all these men got to decompensate, that they just broke down whenever and however they wanted. Pissed that Carmy had left her alone to manage so much in the first place, when they were supposed to be a team. He’d gone out to see Claire right in the middle of service, just as Syd was starting to feel like she was drowning at expo. It was like a perfect microcosm of the way he'd been leaving her for weeks, just when she thought she could trust him. She had been dumb enough to think that the conversation under the table was a turning point, that it was okay to admit she was scared, that he'd really been listening and it meant things would be different. Maybe not.
Right after he'd gotten stuck in the walk-in, after she realized there was nothing she could do, she was still pissed enough that she’d walked away while he was shouting her name. She'd had to rely on someone else — unbelievably, somehow, Richie — to get back in the game, to find the flow. And it was fucking beautiful, and in that moment, it was Richie’s asshole voice that everyone tuned into.
It should have been Carmy’s voice. But instead, his voice was the one they had to tune out while he lost his shit. It was a relief when Syd was too caught up in that flow to even hear it anymore, or pay attention to the parade of people talking to him outside the walk-in door.
She'd heard some whispers about Claire in the kitchen. Something had happened that wasn’t great, but it must have been when Syd was outside puking her guts out, because she hadn’t even seen Claire. Something also must have happened with Tina, who’s subdued and too solicitous today, and Marcus, who is completely MIA.
Richie seems to be giving everyone the silent treatment — which frankly is a relief in some ways, and Syd would have straight-up killed for it nearly every other day of her life at this place — but it kind of sucks now, when she just wants to move past everything the way you always move past it the day after service. She’s not pissed anymore, not at Carmy, or Marcus or Claire or anyone. You don’t get to be pissed, when you aren't the one who’s allowed to be a wreck.
Hours later, as they’re all finally leaving the table, Carmy stumbles out of his chair.
Tina catches him by the arm. “Whoa, Jeff, you all right, there?”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Natalie chimes in, hurrying over, a frown creasing her forehead, huge eyes worried.
“Nothing is wrong. Thank you. I’m fine,” Carmy snaps, jerking his arm away. His hands clench and unclench over and over, as he shoves his shoulder into the door and storms through to the kitchen.
Nat purses her lips and shakes her head. “Of course. Of course he won’t talk to me about whatever new thing is fucking falling apart now.” She looks exhausted too, absently rubbing her hands over her belly like it hurts.
“I got him,” Syd says, with more confidence than she feels. “You go — sit down or something, Nat. Please.”
“Good idea, Chef,” Tina says, taking Nat’s arm and steering her toward one of the comfortable booths. “You hungry, Sugar? Let me make you something quick.”
Natalie allows herself to be led away, and Syd goes looking for Carmy. It's quiet in the kitchen, and he's not in front of the stoves or in his cramped office. Fak is patching the jagged cuts to the walk-in door and fiddling with the new handle. Everyone else is quietly cleaning and prepping their stations. She even checks the alley, taking a couple breaths of cold outside air, before she finally finds Carmy talking to Richie in the back.
Syd stops at the lockers, where she can hear them, and sits down on the bench — not eavesdropping or anything, just waiting her turn to talk to Carmy. He and Richie are speaking in uncharacteristically quiet voices. She can just make out Carmy mumbling something about family, and then, “I’m sorry, Cousin.”
“Eh, forget it. I been called worse in my life,” Richie says, but he sounds like a kicked puppy.
“No. No. I— I shouldn’t have said any of that bullshit last night. It was stupid and it wasn’t true. I was just trying to, like, hurt you, I guess? Because I—“ Carmy cuts off, his voice hoarse and strained. He sounds like he’s about to scream, or burst into tears, and Syd can’t help but look around the corner.
Richie’s jerking his head up to look at Carmy. He’d clocked the tone too. It’s impossible not to see how broken and banged-up Carmy is right now, how defeated.
“Hey. Cousin, hey.” Richie plonks a hand on Carmy’s shoulder and ducks his head to catch his eye. “Enough with this bullshit. Don’t worry about it, all right? Last night was good. You and me, we’re good. Bygones be bygones and all that shit.”
Syd shakes her head and smiles just a little to herself. Say what you will about Richie, he doesn’t hold a grudge. Carmy still won’t meet his eye, though, until Richie grips the back of his neck and pulls their foreheads together.
“Seriously, Carmen, stop beating yourself up. Don’t fall into this self-hatred bullshit like— just, don’t. You can say whatever you fucking want to me, 'cause I fucking love you. Nothing’s gonna change that.”
“Thank you, Cousin.” It’s almost too quiet for Syd to hear. Ashamed and sad and small.
Richie lets go of Carmy’s neck with a little laugh. “And maybe I won’t ever call you Donna again.”
A look flashes across Carmy’s face — “you better not, you piece of—" and then he catches sight of Riche’s grin and rolls his eyes.
“Too soon?” Richie asks.
“Way too soon, Twenty years from now will still be too fucking soon.”
“Heard, Chef.” Richie’s voice is fond, gentler than Syd is used to. “And hey, go home and get some sleep or something, yeah? You look like shit.”
Carmy sticks his middle finger up in response and heads back toward his office.
Syd pretends to fiddle with her shoe as he goes past. Sydney hadn’t made it out to front of house at all last night, not even for her own dad, and she had no idea whether Donna had shown up. But now, she feels like she's paid her dues to Tina and Nat — she checked on whether Carmy was okay, and he was, kind of? Close enough. Maybe she is still just a little bit pissed.