Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You'd think that with the number of times Carmy'd imagined seeing Chef David Fields sitting in his dining room, that he'd he'd have come up with some kind of a plan for in case it actually happened. Instead, he'd consoled himself with the reminder of the miles between them, coupled with the low likelihood that Chef would voluntary leave Manhattan.

Unfortunately, it kind of turns out to be the opposite. When the man, the monster, turns up sitting at the romantic two top in the window, Carmy's first reaction is just to blink at him, to try to clear his vision and the man resolve into a stranger with heavy glasses.

Only, this time, it's apparently Fields. The shock of the realization actually takes his knees out for a second, buckles him against the counter, makes Syd lurch towards him in surprise, makes two more voices raise in a question. Shit. Shit shit shit.

Chef isn't looking back, mercifully. Is instead looking across the table at his companion- a younger man, with thick black curls and a suit that costs probably three times what Carmy pays himself in a year.

He turns away, fast, putting his back to the dining room and breathing in deep.

"Jeffrey?" Tina is saying- when did she get in this close? She should be at the grill, not at his elbow, not putting a hand on his arm. How long has he been standing here?

"Chefs," he says, loud and clear, and repeats the last call, driving Tina at least back to her station.

Syd stays, because she's Syd, and because she apparently remembers;

"That's that asshole, right?"

She's been a little cold with him since he told her he was planning to leave, but she hasn't actually been unkind, and she's the kind of friend who rallies in a crisis.

"Yeah," says Carmy, short and choked, as he rakes his eyes over the tickets on the table in front of him, trying desperately to regroup.

"You weren't this scared of him before."

Yeah well, Chef wasn't about to eat his food, before. It's one thing to tell a man to go fuck himself in the hall to a restaurant bathroom; it's quite another to serve him a scallop, apparently. Into his silence, Syd presses, more quietly;

"Do you want me to take over?"

Does he? He could slip out back for a cigarette, resettle his nerves. Go hide in his office, get caught up on purchasing- it's Saturday night, and sure enough, 8:15 pm when he checks the clock.

The printer spits out the next round of tickets. Syd lays them out for him, and murmurs;

"Do you want to spit in his mirepoix?" Carmy chokes on almost a laugh at the silliness of the suggestion, and looks sideways at her. "Cover his plate in black pepper?"

Carmy breathes, for the first time, since it sunk in, and makes eye contact;

"I don't want to think a single fucking thing about him, Syd."

When Chef Fields had been let go (fired!!!? per the internet) from his last position, thirteen different people had texted Carmy to celebrate the news. The headlines had been salacious to say the least. Cousin Michelle's jubilant reaction had needed to be broken into three separate messages. Luca had just sent a series of exceptionally crude celebratory gifs. Carmy had been briefly, breathlessly relieved. Maybe some part of him had thought that if the man stopped cooking, he would somehow automatically wither up and die.

The possibility that unemployment would free him to roam, that he might then turn up in Chicago, turn up in Carmy's restaurant, had not occurred to him. Major downside to all that not thinking about him, it turns out.

"Fine," says Syd, taking a step back, then another, not taking her eyes off him but expression going a tiny bit more playful as she lets him off the hook; "business as usual."

"Perfect, as usual," says Carmy, who isn't going to think about him, but also isn't going to let standards drop here and now.

"Heard, chef."

His team rises to the challenge. The next few plates are already in front of him, for Carmy to finish and send out. He pays careful attention to not paying attention to which plate will go to Chef and his friend. Only, the minute it's out the door he can't help but look again. Carmy cranes a not-so-casual glance over his shoulder, and feels his stomach fall out at the sight of Chef laughing. At him? No, at his dinner companion, whose apparently engaging story is interrupted by the arrival of their plates.

Carmy has a brief, vivid fantasy about picking up a carving knife, walking out into the dining room with it, and heading for their table. Not to kill him, or anything, but maybe just to make him wonder? He shouldn't be allowed to be laughing. He shouldn't be allowed to be happy.

He stops, as the plate hits the table. Carmy swallows, watching Chef's face as he takes in the ravioli. It's so painfully familiar: the first, technical assessment, leading into the careful cut with the fork. The second of hesitation as he considers the single bite, then the first bite...

Chef's eyes close, and Carmy's heart just about bursts out of his chest as he watches the obvious surprise, pleasure, relaxation- turning, oh god, into interest. Chef finally looks up, and across the dining room, finds the window and squints through it to see who runs this place.

They lock gazes. Chef's eyes narrow in instant, ruthless consideration, and Carmy tries his very best to look cool and unconcerned as he turns away. So much for not even appearing to recognize him.

He manages not to look again when he sends their mains, or again at all, for that matter, right up until Richie sticks his head into the kitchen to deliver the news;

"Yo, cuz, guy at table sixteen says he knows you? Want to-"

"Fuck off," says Carmy, loud enough that it carries through the open door to the dining room, by the way the chattering voices outside hush over so slightly. He looks- sees the expression on the face of the handsome young man with the curls crumple in disappointment. Sees Chef's lip curl in amusement, or something like it; sees him say, clear as day, lips shaping the familiar words;

I told you so.

Carmy turns back to his team, turns back to his table, and bends back over his work.

---

It's a bad date right from the get go. Ali arrives six minutes late and doesn't seem to notice, and talks about himself incessantly, and insists on picking the restaurant. A dour, out-of-the-way little place that David doesn't have high hopes for when he steps inside. Uneven tables, subtle mismatches in the flatware and cutlery, and a server who makes three jokes and calls them colleagues before they're even sat at their table. It's looking like another dreary night having to be polite to an idiot who thinks that just because a place serves squid ink it's automatically impressive.

He'd known he was wrong by the first bite of the ravioli. Perfect cook, fresh made and by people who know pasta. David shuts his eyes as he tastes. The filling is gorgeous spinach and creamy ricotta, with fragrant brown butter. He would never have let it on his own menu in a million years, but he honestly hates that there are only three in the bowl. Who have they managed to get working here?

Blue eyes. Brown curls. Incandescent, barely contained rage.

David stifles a groan. Of all the gin joints in all the world...

No, of course Ali brought him here.

"That's Carmen Berzago," the young man is saying, "he's like this young, sexy maverick chef. Local guy, but back from New York. That's where your restaurant was, right?"

"Berzatto," David corrects; he'd looked it up in his files after their brief confrontation last year. He takes a second bite of the dish, wonders briefly if it's too much sage, then decides it probably is on a technical level but that the imperfection is what makes it interesting. "He used to work for me."

"Oh my god," says Ali, evidently a little star struck, looking from David over to Berzatto's hunched shoulders. He still leans over his work station like he's trying to climb it, David can't help but notice. "I didn't know you were that good!"

"Mm," says David, pitching it to sound like non-committal gratitude, since he's quite sure Ali thinks that's a compliment.

These days he tries very hard not to bite people's heads off for being uneducated or insipid, or even outright insulting as the case may be. Most people don't understand food, as his therapist has put it to him, the multiple times they've had this conversation. Most people don't give a shit about fine dining, is what his sponsor says, but he's a little more blunt than Doctor Milliken.

"Well if you cook anything like this, I hope you aren't going to ask me to do 24/7."

"Absolutely not," replies David, recalling that most people also do not understand BDSM. As though those two ideas would be at all connected. Ali laughs, like this is a joke about their preferred play styles and not an outright rejection. David is a little relieved that it goes over his head. That hadn't exactly been living up to his kindest and most considerate self.

"Was he this good when he worked for you?"

Good question. Berzatto's file had been hand-written and scanned, because every piece of paper David produced during his career has been coded and logged into a database. In amongst the images of stained and warped recipe cards, another the purchasing order discrepancy tally (useful for the blacklisting and/or blackmailing of suppliers, as the case may be) there had been a few crumpled pages of foolscap.

There are no real words to describe the way it feels to look back into your records and recognize the ragged penmanship of the worst time in your life. Jagged black letters, recording every reprimand and reproach, every castigation and composure test. Symbols, indicating something or other that David had decided was too sensitive to risk someone seeing, with no ledger anywhere to be found. Reading between the lines though, the picture had been clear; massive potential, total lack of discipline. Underlined, twice, the solution had been fire hot.

"Was he?"

Ali, interrupting his thoughts.

"That's complicated."

"Try me."

Ah, okay, he may be skating onto thin ice here by drollness in that tone. David tears his gaze back off the kitchen, reminds himself that he can come across as condescending, and offers;

"He had tremendous potential."

"Did he have those tattoos back then?"

Did he? David glances over, and yes, remembers the ink, remembers the arms. Berzatto's collection has expanded. He's a little surprised to realize he can see them. Berzatto is working in a t-shirt and apron. The rest of his team, who David is only just noticing really, are wearing a mismatched combination of jackets and aprons.

"We wore full uniform. The coat was to the wrist."

"Oh, okay. So you were one of those fancy fancy places. Like with the hat and everything?"

Save him. David nods, and puts down his fork, realizing he's demolished the food a little faster than it truly deserved. He puts his fork down with a reluctant sigh.

"So he was young and green and rebellious, and you were there to give him all this technique and discipline," guesses Ali, with a knowing smile and a perspicacity that makes David reevaluate him- maybe a little too obviously, by the way he grins. "Mark didn't tell you what I do?"

"Cook?"

"Ballet dancer."

Ah. That makes perfect sense to David, in a way it might not to anyone who isn't either a chef, a ballet dancer, or some other specialist in a discipline honed by the French. The server clears the table, not invisibly but quietly and well. David waits until she's gone, then reaches out a foot under the table. He slides until he finds the toe of Ali's polished, black dress shoe, then lifts his foot and sets it lightly on top of the younger man's foot. David probably knows less about ballet then Ali does about cooking, but he certainly knows that where chefs have bloody and burnt hands, dancers carry their pain in their feet.

No pressure, just threat enough to make Ali's eyes flutter shut and his bottom lip drop open a bare inch. David can suddenly absolutely see why Mark thought to set them up as potential play partners.

While his eyes are closed, David takes another quick look at the kitchen.

"How far outside of Chicago did you say you were?" Ali asks, innocently, as Berzatto calls for hands. David guesses they're their plates, and eases his foot back off, straightening up in anticipation of what turns out to be wagyu cooked to absolute perfection. One of his shaky scrawls had contained an accusation of brain-damage to do with meat temperature, which Berzatto has obviously resolved.

Or, David had overreacted, in a fit of jealousy and paranoia. He swallows, and the meat goes down heavy.

"I'm in Muskegon." Ali's face falls; that's three hours away, in Michigan. "But I'm in the city once or twice a month right now, a few days at a time. Tonight I'm at the Waldorf Astoria."

"Really?" asks Ali, with a naked hunger that further sours David's stomach, "If I can be good will you let me see your room?"

Clumsy, and more vulgar than a place like this deserves. David clears his throat quickly, and probably ruins his chances by not returning the flirtation, but that doesn't bother him too much.

"Tell me about ballet?"

Ali's provocative smile falters, and turns into something a little resigned. He does- and David listens with interest, begins enjoying his night, in fact. The technical conversation takes his mind most of the way off Berzatto, and his ulcers, and his nightmares, and his smokers' palate, and his attitude. Dessert is a cinnamon bun wrapped in cellophane, and David wants to call it cheap looking except that it's also just quietly immaculate. He wipes his fingers on his napkin, and envies Ali licking his own clean of the small piece he'd consented to share.

Torn off and passed casually across the table. He'll report that moment to his Doctor Milliken, next time she accuses him of having no capacity for compromise.

"I think we should go say hi," says Ali, with their server standing over them, as David is getting out his wallet to pay. "Woud it bother the chef if we came in quickly to say hi? They used to work together, back in New York!"

"Oh yeah?" says the server, professionalism slipping far below what David would have tolerated at Empire, even for a conversation with friends and family, "no kidding! Things are winding down for tonight, but he might not mind just a-"

"No," says David, overtop of him, drawing the tall man up short in surprise and making Ali frown. Since they seem to want some kind of explanation; "I wouldn't want to interrupt when he's working."

"He never minds, I promise," says the waiter, with a glint in his eye now that to David reads as sabotage. Before he can put his foot down, harder, (possibly on Ali a second time and now no longer for fun) the man is already walking, and Ali is already rising to follow, overbrimming with excitement.

David can't actually hear the answer across the dining room, though by the way the sound in the space changes he suspects other guests have. Fuck off, shapes his mouth, clear as crystal. David recalls four 'profanity audible to clientele' notes from his own file, and surrenders to the desire to say say, out loud, both to Ali but also kind of to the universe at large;

"I told you so."

Chapter Text

"...whereupon he told us to fuck off, and I told them, 'I told you so.'" David finishes, with a snort, as Ryan nods along to the sips his coffee.

"Wow," he says, once he's swallowed, "that sounds- how do you feel about it?"

Fuck Ryan, and his judgemental fucking questions. David folds his arms tighter over his chest, and narrows his eyes.

"Oh, peachy, obviously."

"David."

They've talked, before, about using aggression and sarcasm to deflect. David breathes in to a four count, licks his bottom lip, and tries again;

"I had no idea he was even mad at me, is the thing."

"Until he told you to fuck off? One thing to keep in mind- he might just be from Chicago. And none of you guys are notoriously chill. If you were interrupting him..."

"No." Shaking his head. "No, I mean, when he quit. I looked at his exit interview notes, it was all gratitude for the opportunity, blah blah. I knew he had an attitude problem, but I didn't know he specifically hated me until last year."

"What happened last year?" Ryan wants to know, understandably, so David summarizes pretty much all of what he can remember, to an increasingly furrowed brow, especially when he gets to the part where he admits he kind of blew Berzatto off in favour of heading to the bathroom for a bump.

"Okay, so, would you say he's pretty firmly in the category of people you hurt while you were using?"

Would he? Again, David thinks about the Empire employee file. Six interactions testing composure and control in the month of May alone. Insinuations of treachery in the margins. Berzatto's face at the Ever funeral. Ulcers, nightmares.

Panic attacks.

Ryan, correctly interpreting David's silence as a yes, wonders;

"What do you think you need to do?"

Fuck him, honestly, and fuck his stupid fucking amateur program. Leading when it pretends only to beckon. What do you think like it's his choice, need to do because it actually isn't.

"Aren't you only supposed to make amends where it wouldn't do harm to the other person to do so?"

"Do you know that you would be harming him if you tried?"

"He did tell me to fuck off, Ry."

"Had you apologized?"

No. Not then, and not at Ever, either, not even after he'd known he probably should. David draws in a breath, and bites down hard on his tongue to cut off an explanation he knows will come across as an excuse. Knows, before Ryan even opens his mouth will be;

"It works if you work it, man, I'm telling you, it won't if you don't."

"Kitchens are like that, you know." David doesn't know why he's telling him this. Ryan is a lawyer, specializing in prosecuting (or defending?) corporate tax fraud cases or some such. He gets pressure, but he doesn't get art. "They aren't just a place or a business- they're a living, breathing system. Organism, even. The good ones. You work don't just work there, you work them, themselves."

"Oh yeah?" Bland, in the way Ryan always is when he wants David to shut up about cooking. "So what does that mean for you and this guy?"

Good question.

"It means I need to get going," David decides, and to forestall the scolding, "if I'm going to catch him before his workday starts. If I'm going to apologize properly."

"Good work man," says Ryan, as they get up off their park bench and orient themselves to head back towards the train station. Shoes crunching on the gravel path, searching for a garbage can for his coffee cup, David half listens while Ryan reminds him to listen to what his former prodigy says about the entire situation.

David isn't personally convinced it'll get that far, but he makes his way down to the shitty neighbourhood where Berzatto has for some reason chosen to set up his shingle.

It's a little before noon, and the door is locked, but David is well aware that the team will already be inside working. Sure enough, a shadow makes its' way up to the glass, and he hears the sound of the door mechanism unlocking. A young blonde woman opens the door, with a harried look on her face and then fine sweat of the kitchen beading her forehead.

"You the art guy?"

Good, they're replacing the art, it's terrible. David shakes his head, and corrects her;

"I'm here to see Berzatto."

"You're looking at her."

It takes a beat for him to take that in, and to shake his head.

"The other Berzatto?"

"You mean Carmy?" she asks, suspiciously- just how many of them are there, anyways? And, more importantly;

"Carmy?"

"Carmy! Suit here to see you!"

David is, in fact, not wearing a suit at all, just nice slacks and a button down, but that's close enough for Chicago apparently. In fairness, the dining room is full of people in various coveralls and cargo pants, while Ms Berzatto herself is wearing a t-shirt from a bachelorette party and a pair of stretch yoga pants.

She lets him in, but leaves him standing in the entryway, heading off with a clipboard in hand and purpose in her step that makes him think she might not be a total waste in her position, even if family restaurants personally strike him as a fucking nightmare.

It isn't any Berzatto who comes out of the kitchen; instead, a frustrating five minutes later, David finds himself being greeted by a woman he assumes must be Sydney Adamu, the sous chef. David had only meant to read a few of the restaurant's reviews last night, but virtually all of them had mentioned her. A powerhouse force of creativity, they'd said, CIA trained and a bold compliment to Berzatto's robust, traditional technique.

"Chef," David says, politely, and doesn't let himself flinch as she returns;

"Chef. Chef Berzatto is working, and isn't able to entertain visitors right now."

Pressed smile, no offer to take a message or to come back later. David puts on his own best mask of frosty professionalism, and tries, a little more tentatively.

"Carmen and I worked together in New York."

"At Empire, right?" she asks, all innocence, as she crosses behind him to come get the door and open it back up for him, an unspoken invitation to turn right around and get the fuck back out, "I can tell him you stopped by."

"Can I leave a phone number?" David tries, though he's sure by now she'll lose it, if 'Carmy' doesn't. He just mostly at this point wants to be able to say to Ryan that he tried. "It's important."

"No," Chef Adamu answers, cheerfully, "you know how he is about answering his phone. But you can try back later, when it's quieter, if you like."

"Quieter than closed?"

"Sure. After service, say, when we're not prepping? He tends to be less busy then, he might have time for you."

The sunlight outside is blinding, compared to the dark interior of the dining room, and David is squinting against it when he turns around to double check;

"So your proposal is that instead of leaving a phone number, I wait around for the next, oh, twelve hours or so, on the hopes that he might have time to speak to me at some point after midnight?"

"Kitchens aren't polite places, Chef Fields," she says, and shuts the door on him, and locks it.

---

"Holy fuck," says Carmy, as Syd comes back in out of the dining room. He's sitting on the floor in front of his pass, down behind the cutoff between the spaces, not exactly sure why he feels the need to literally hide after last night.

Again, maybe it's just that he has no idea what Chef Fields is doing here. Shouldn't he be off somewhere picking apart yesterday's menu, ingredient by ingredient, probably masturbating to the inadequacy of the sear on the scallop?

"What did he say?"

"That he wanted to talk to you."

Carmy gives his hair a tug, then looks up at where Syd is standing, hands on hips.

"Why?"

"Dunno. 'It's important.'"

Another tug at his hair, and he taps the back of his head against the wall to a slow rhythm, as he thinks that through.

"That means nothing. Everything he does is important."

"Dude. This guy is living rent free in your head, for real, man."

"Tipped great," says Richie from the doorway. "How much of a prick can he be?"

"He once said I should kill myself," provides Carmy, "over a split sauce."

Richie stops grinning. Syd blinks, and looks back over her shoulder at the door.

"That does seem like a slight overreaction."

"It wasn't even my sauce. I just hired the chef who split it." Carmy doesn't know if that makes it better or worse, more or less fair, but he's sure it's one of the above, based on the weird and pitying looks they're all giving him at this point. He closes his eyes again, and taps against the wall again, then again, like the rhythm will jostle his racing thoughts into something like order.

"If he shows back up here I'll break his fucking neck for him," growls Richie. Adding, as he leaves, "don't worry, cuz. Fuck that guy."

"Fuck that guy," agrees Syd, though after Richie has gone, she does add; "I kind of regret telling him to turn back up after close, now."

Carmy opens his eyes back up (when had he closed them?) and looks up at her in abject horror.

"Fucking, again?! What? Jesus, why?" Is this revenge?

"Thought it'd be funny to keep him waiting. I don't think he's gonna come back, man. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who's willing to wait around on his lessers."

Even knowing what she means, that her sneering immitation is how Chef David Fields sees them, being called lesser still makes something in his throat seize.

"Okay," says Syd, and drops into a crouch. She waits, and lets Carmy know to open his eyes, to look across at her, where she's giving him her trademark Syd 'I'm going to be mostly gentle, but very real with you' face. "Carmy. I love you, man, but I'm gonna need you to tap into that part of you that wants to fight everyone and everything. That part is like, a solid 65% of you, so I feel like it shouldn't be too hard to get mad, right now, and get back up and show this motherfucker."

She's right. Tucking a smile into the palm of his hand, he drags a quick hand over his face, and recalls her advice last night;

"Spit in his mirepoix, cover his pasta in black pepper?"

"Tell him get back in the kitchen and make you a sandwich."

"That man is physically incapable of making a sandwich. He'd make you the most perfect chicken in the universe, with lettuce confit and sous vide tomato slices then dress it with artisinal mayo, lay it next to a teaspoon of raw dough, hand you a candle to cook the bread on, call it 'deconstructed,' and it'd still be the best sandwich you ever ate in your life."

"Should we do that?" asks Syd, very seriously, forcing Carmy to look up at her scornfully, then grinning at him when he falls for it. "Carmy. If he comes back, tell him to go fuck himself."

"Yes, chef."

At which point, there's a telltale gurgling sound from under the floor, then a thud-thud-thud of air bubbles working their way up piping, then Syd's eyes getting wide as she realizes what's coming, and a cry of horror from the bathroom as the current occupant realizes too. Finally, the telltale crash of the old Beef toilet problem making itself known yet again. Carmy wonders whether he's glad that Chef wasn't here to see it, or sorry Chef wasn't here to get caught in it, and then after that he's genuinely too busy to think about Chef any more at all that shift.

By the time the shift wraps up, he has mostly managed to forget the monster that may or may not be lurking in the dark outside. Service is good, the place is fully booked, the team is singing along like a finely oiled machine, and when the last ticket goes out the clean up is actually already most of the way done.

It's been a long week and a good week, and his staff are ready to go the fuck home and pass out and/or drink for their upcoming Monday/Tuesday. Take-down is way quicker now that he allows the simplified version, not the full white-glove treatment, and the team are still laughing and shooting the shit with one another as he holds the back door to let them out for the night.

"You staying late, Jeff?" Tina asks, the last one out before Carmy, who doesn't move to follow her, "You're not gonna have an all new menu waiting for us Wednesday, are you?"

Carmy crosses his heart, and lets her give him a hug goodnight before he shuts the door behind her.

His actual plan is to go spend some time in the office figuring out this thing with the fish supplier, so he doesn't have to come back in on his day off. He's dreaming of halibut cheeks when the knock comes at the back door, he assumes one of the guys forgetting this or that phone or charger or earbud.

You'd think, you really, really would think, that he wouldn't be taken by surprise a third time in a row. Nevertheless, when he opens the back door back up to all six foot fucking four feet of David fucking Fields, Carmy is, yet again, surprised to see him.

"I really thought I'd be able to catch you during a smoke break."

Later, he will not be able to tell Syd whether he was explicitly taking her advice, or if she was right and this is just 65% (conservatively) of his personality. Maybe it's just the perceived criticism. Chef always hated his smoke breaks. Anyways, this time instead of freeze or flight he finally hits fight.

Carmy balls up his fists, stands up straight, tilts his chin up, and says, with fervour;

"Will you actually fuck off."

He means it, and the half step of surprise Chef takes backwards feels better than a smoke break. Carmy is aware of his blood rising up into his face and ears, of sound distorting and going murky and vacant. He almost, almost misses the first words of of Chef's mouth over the rushing in his head.

"I'm sorry."

That's worse, somehow. Somehow, this is going even worse than last time?

"For what?"

Chef Fields has no right to look this surprised, this uncertain. Carmy thinks it's the first time he's ever seen him look uncertain, at all, ever. Even in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, his expression had been more tired resignation than surprise or fear.

"Plenty, but specifically right now? Intruding."

Jesus. Carmy rakes his hands through his hair, aware that it's greasy with sweat and kitchen. That his skin is the same, and his nailbeds have crud under them and are bleeding, and shirt and apron are stained, and his sneakers are being held together with duct tape. He would rather punch him than ask again for an explanation, so luckily Chef continues;

"Listen- I didn't mean this to be this thing, your sous just said-"

"Yeah!" He barks it, cutting Chef off, actually probably for the first time in his life. Carmy remembers now what Syd said, that she'd told him to come back after service. "The fuck could you have to say to me that you could possibly consider important, chef?"

"Right," says Chef Fields again, grimly, and then hesitates for a long second in which Carmy very nearly just shuts the door on his face. He's starting to move to, when Chef says, quickly; "I know I'm not a person you want to have a conversation with. I didn't realize- look, Berzatto-"

"Why?"

Cold, and cruel, and a pitch perfect imitation of Chef David's favourite interrogation method with a flustered cook. Chef recognizes it, too, face transforming from something uncertain to something much more familiar; cold, calm, indifferent.

"I came to apologize."

Carmy would have given a kidney to hear those words less than a year ago. Back in the hallway, they would have meant everything. Before he took that last kick in the gut as punishment for hanging his self-worth on this gaping asshole of a human being. Again, he snaps;

"Why?"

Chef doesn't so much as blink. Returns, flatter, even quieter;

"Because I was rude to you last year, when you deserved an apology." Really, Carmy should say it again, but he finds his voice has dried up, and anyways, Chef David is continuing; "Because you knew me at a time in my life where I was inflicting my damage on other people instead of dealing with it, and I think I hurt you."

"'Think,' motherfucker?"

Another habit learned from the man standing in front of him, though Chef wouldn't have included the profanity.

"See," corrects Chef David, which does significant additional damage to what is left of Carmy's serenity. How fucking dare he pretend he can suddenly see? "And again, I'm sorry that the last time we saw each other I wasn't ready to take accountability. If there's anything I can do now to make amends, please let me know."

Amends. One thing Carmy doesn't love about the Berzatto temper is the tendency to taste blood in the water and go in for the kill, but right now he's a little bit beyond the point of self-regulation.

"Don't drag me into whatever pathetic twelve step bullshit you're on."

There it is. Blood. Chef's eyes narrow, and with a colder voice that Carmy recognizes a lot better, he returns;

"Okay."

"And stay the fuck out of my restaurant, you fucking psychopath."

He shuts the door in Chef's face before he can get the last word in, though by the tight press of his lips he isn't exactly hurrying to try. Carmy turns the lock, then crumples, hitting the ground and clapping a hand over his mouth to bite back the sound that wants to burst out of him. Chef would absolutely be able to hear a scream through the door, if Carmy can hear the crunch of his dress shoes on the dirty asphalt. He will not let him have the satisfaction.

Carmy waits until he's sure the man is gone before he gives in, and punches the door behind him.

Chapter Text

Carmy isn't planning to take Chef Fields up on the offer to make amends, first and foremost because he doesn't want to give him the god damn satisfaction.

"Like if I were to let him," he says, to the church basement where his Al-Anon group of choice meets, "it'd somehow let him off the hook. Like, why does he get to move forward when I don't get to move forward?"

Cross-talk is specifically forbidden in group, so no one answers this question for him. Bitten lips, downturned gazes. He hates feeling like the only one in the room that doesn't have the answer.

Carmy still goes to Al Anon every Sunday morning, even those days where Saturday service runs late and he drags himself in like the walking dead. It keeps Sug happy (happier?) which feels like the least he can do. Being honest with himself though, even though he never leaves the room thinking 'today was particularly useful in terms of making me feel like shit,' there has been a kind of over-all... somethingness, about it, that has helped. Some.

Maybe just because it let him know what an amend is. Calling him out on it had been validating; it's rare that Carmy is a step ahead of what was going on socially. Though, double edged sword, now that he does he's also kind of obsessing over it. When did Chef start drinking? When did he stop? No, he drank at dinner the other night. Carmy had pulled their bill, and they'd both had the wine pairings. A ninth stepper isn't likely to be actively relapsing. Drugs then?

"You know," says Elizabeth, who shares after him, "they don't give out chips at Al Anon the way they do at AA. The joke is that an alcoholic can stop drinking, but in Al Anon we're here to learn to stop obsessing about the addict in our lives, and we never goes a day without a slip."

Chuckle of recognition from the room, which Carmy only half hears, because he's busy taking that as a personal criticism. It's also not technically true; he could definitely get at least a five day chip, he thinks, if it weren't for the weekend. Thinking about work even tangentially makes him stop listening entirely. Elizabeth is telling a story about trying to fight the car keys out of her adult daughter's hand, while Carmy is running prep lists, errand lists in his head.

It's a Monday, which Carmy generally tries to spend not at the Bear, if he can help it. A variety of promises have been made to various people who love and care about him. Originally that commitment had been to taking Mondays for resting, but pretty quickly that had succumbed to the gradual creep of responsibility. A little bit of menu development at home, a few errands here and there, or the odd supplier meeting where schedules otherwise don't line up. Which, Carmy's never does, because he spends six other days of the week in the restaurant. But he does try to stay out of the Bear on Mondays, barring life or death emergencies, if only to forestall the nagging from his friends and family.

Later at work that day (Syd being out four days with Covid is beginning to snowball into an emergency) Carmy tries the same 'why does he get to move on?' question on Richie. Richie, who has been kind of a wild-card since he started reading books, surprises Carmy by asking the question that everyone in group had, in retrospect, been sitting there thinking.

"Well, do you think there's any chance receiving his amends are what would let you move forward?"

"No," says Carmy, "no, obviously not, because..."

...because Richie's raised eyebrows make him want to go kick in all the beautiful stained glass they just got done installing behind the bar this week. Carmy chops the head off his onion with a little too much force, and deflects;

"Why do I never know anyone is an addict?"

"Because you have bad social skills, because you're not very observant when it comes to people. Also because it was normal in your home, so it's kind of your baseline?" Richie has always been honest, but that's gotten worse since the reading started too, because now he tends to be more right about things than he was before. "But don't get me wrong. I'm still gonna fuck him up if he turns back up here. You don't fucking joke about that shit, not if you feel attached to having two working knee caps."

Carmy wants to point out that Chef was absolutely not joking, but also doesn't actually want Richie going for the golf club in the office should the man turn back up.

"Who else is one?"

"Well, your mom. Uncle Len, uncle Vic, cousin Stevie V, cousin Lisa, cousin Len, Lonny, little Henry, other Henry, not big Henry, but his big Henry's brother Ray-"

Jesus. Carmy rakes his hair back, then cuts Richie off with a wince.

"All right, all right, point taken."

"No 'point,' cuz. Just people trying to figure it out."

"That's what you think Chef's doing? Figuring it out?"

"Maybe. Dunno. Think you'd probably need to ask him. From the side of his hospital bed, where he'll be recovering from knee surgery." Miming a golf swing, two handed, blammo.

His movement is interrupted by Sug, pushing into the kitchen, with a look on her face that makes Richie suddenly remember something he desperately needs to attend to with the silverware. Polishing forks probably. Carmy isn't worried; Carmy is used to Sug's 'why are you here, it's Monday' lecture.

"Marcy quit," she says, without preamble, and Carmy's stomach bottoms out. Marcy was on the line three weeks, and had had a lot of promise, he'd thought, especially compared to Freddie, who she'd replaced, or Fouad, who he'd replaced, or... "She said she wanted to look for opportunities where the environment was, quote, 'less screamy.'"

Fuck. Carmy presses his thumbs into his temples, then gives Sug an apologetic little smile. Apparently that isn't going to cut it in terms of mea culpas today, because her frown only deepens.

"You've got to stop doing this."

"I know, I know, I just-"

"You said that last time. You know, it's absolutely admirable that you want to help us out of the debt and everything, but Carmy, if you're miserable here, you need to think hard about whether or not-

Because he's a fuck up and can't do anything right and everything he touch turns to shit. Carmy feels a stab of frustration behind his temple. Should he? Give up now, and go? The trajectory they're on is good. The reviews have all been spectacular lately. The kitchen is working smooth-ish-ly, most nights. The parachute they were so scared of running out last year has not only lasted, but replenished and turned into a modest (dare he even think it?) return on investment. But Carmy is still working as hard as he can, and it still feels like he's only barely fucking bailing out the boat. Is it any wonder his temper is short?

"I know. People are just so fucking thin skinned, lately. You know, last I checked, this was a kitchen, not a kindergarten?"

He knows it's a mistake as soon as he says it. Is half expecting the low blow that immediately follows;

"Do you think that's good enough excuse for treating your employees like shit?"

No. Obviously. Carmy has never for a single moment in his life thought anything he was doing was good enough. But Sugar, who knows him, is already turning tail to head back out through the swinging doors so that he can sit and think about what he's done. Between this and Syd's covid (hitting her harder than it would otherwise because she's already exhausted, the guilty voice in the back of his head reminds him) they're now problematically short staffed.

It isn't the first time, not even the first time this month, and Carmy knows from hard experience that since this is his fault, Sug is now also making it his problem to solve. Over her shoulder, on her way back out, she calls;

"And don't even try to pretend you didn't forget about Sophie, because I know you did. You better pull something out tonight, Carmy."

With that lovely cherry on top, Carmy cuts himself. Not to the bone, but with a too-exasperated plunge of his knife down into the meat of his thumb instead of the end of the onion, he swears and grabs the wound to stop the blood, then heads for the sink at the first aid kit with his back molars grinding. It's a fucking Monday. Wasn't there at some point this fantasy that he actually got to rest on Mondays?

The cut is nothing new, and not worth getting upset about. But the bloodsplatter means the prep will need to be redone, and he doesn't have fucking time. Instead of that, he needs to be solving the Macy thing, which means calling around to friends in the industry to see if anyone knows anyone who might be looking.

Anyone who hasn't yet got the message that the chef at the Bear is too volatile to work for, that is.

It's a short list. Holding his phone weirdly to not bleed on it, Carmy scrolls left handed down his contact list, grimacing as he looks for someone, anyone, he hasn't called it.

Greg helped last time and after how it worked out with Manny, politely but firmly let Carmy know not to call for that specific favour again. Heather, he tries, but all she can say is she'll keep him in mind if he hears anyone looking. Luca, he texts- but knows already the answer will be the same as last time; if Carmy isn't staying, Luca isn't either. Remy doesn't pick up, he's probably already in the kitchen for the day, and down towards the bottom of the alphabet where all that's left is a contact entry for WORST PERSON EVER.

Because he's a masochist, Carmy clicks into the conversation, and reads the last message;

Well, now that you've gone and quit like the little bitch you obviously are, there's no point you going to the mycology thing Thursday. Send the event details to Luca so he can pick up your slack.

And just like that, Carmy realizes how he's going to kill several birds with one stone.

Possibly additional casualties include one to two chefs.

---

If your offer is still on the table, be at the Bear tonight at 6 pm.

The text comes at noon am on a Monday. David doesn't have Berzatto's contact number saved in his new phone. Their text message history is archived and saved to his files, as were all messages before he changed over; he does not particularly recall what any of them say. But really, there's no mistaking who this could be from.

The bigger question is whether David is going to let this little shit drag him out of his house on a grey September day, and whether or not he's invested enough in this 'making amends' plan to drive all the way back to Chicago when he doesn't have an appointment in the city until Thursday.

Pride wins out. He made the offer, he'd meant it, and so he puts the marinade back in the fridge to keep for dinner tomorrow, and leaves early to be there in time. Even though the imperiousness of the summons makes him want to remind the little fucker that-

Not the right attitude to bring to this. David calls Ryan while he's driving, to try desperately to distract himself from plotting violence, and as soon as the voicemail connects comes in hot with;

"I hope you're happy with yourself, you overpaid jackoff. I'm driving to Chicago in the rain to make amends to a fucking child because of you. I could be in my bed listening to the rain on the garden, but instead..."

He vents his spleen in about three more messages worth of invective, crosses state lines, parks in a service station, then sends a text to please delete all voicemails and would Ryan like to get coffee tomorrow, he's going to be in town unexpectedly. This is their system now. Ryan never listens to David's voicemails. It's genuinely for the best; Ryan is David's seventh sponsor.

He parks outside the Bear for 5:55 pm, and is planning on sitting here and breathing until eight on the dot, when the door to the place opens and a familiar, tattood arm sticks out to wave him inside through the rain. The rule back at Empire had been that if you're not five minutes early, you're late, so Berzatto has evidently made an educated guess about whose car this is.

David sighs, opens the door, swings his legs out, and then jogs through the pissing rain to the Bear's doorstep, then hurries inside the darkened dining room. Curses, as his glasses immediately fog themselves white. He drags them off, and takes a handkerchief out of his pocket to dry them, while Berzatto locks the door behind him and then moves to head towards the glowing yellow warmth of the kitchen.

It's very tempting to say something along the lines of 'I thought I was supposed to stay the fuck out of your restaurant.' That or, 'I see the art guy came;' and fortunately replaced the extremely tacky graffiti picture of a shark. David decides when he gets his glasses back on and gets a look at the other man that he probably ought to hold his tongue.

Berzatto was never possessed of an overabundance of stability, but tonight he looks rough. Tired, in a way David recognizes intimately. Not strung out- David doesn't think dear Carmy has found the obvious chemical solution- but exhausted. Executive Chef after Service from Hell, by Norman Rockwell.

"Amends," Berzatto says, as he reaches his station. David notices he's oriented to face the line, not the dining room, as opposed to how he had it back at Empire. That doesn't totally surprise him. Kids this generation always forget they're working in a fucking kitchen, not some kind of-

"Amends," Berzatto says, again, interrupting that thought before he can think of the comparison. He moves to takes his station, like he's enjoying forcing David to walk out ahead of him if he wants to make eyecontact."I had a chef quit this morning. Now I'm two down."

David breathes in, carefully, and bites hard on the inside of his cheek, once again resisting the urge to clean Berzatto's clock for him. This is the kind of problem that could have dealt with this from back in Muskegon, but he supposes there was some kind of fun, some kind of power trip in dragging him all the way out here in the rain.

He does. Vaguely, he recalls the time he forced Berzatto to bin four perfect risottos during rush, just to test how he snapped back from it. He'd looked a little like this then, all despairing and dead behind the eyes.

"Okay," says David, very levelly, and gets his phone out, "I can call in a favour. Do you have a place where you house your stages if they need to come from New York, or should I-?"

"No," says Berzatto, now hitching a leg up to rest on the joiner bar and placing a palm on the stainless steel, a deliberately casual lean that is absolutely a provocation. Posture matters. The posture chef is a part of the presentation, and presentation matters, affects taste, even when it shouldn't. A sloppy looking chef makes good food taste worse. David keeps his face carefully neutral.

"You can do it."

At first, David thinks he's misheard, but by the time he spits out a flat, hostile, excuse me, he knows he hasn't. Berzatto's face is a mask of destructive spite- and yeah, David had been right. He's being fucked with.

"No."

"No?" Incredulous, with a smile that sets David's hackles up just a bit further. Like he knew it, like David has failed exactly as expected.

David has never had a precisely sane reaction to the feeling of failure. Part of him, immediately, wants to say yes, to say give me everything you got. He'll shine every fork in the fucking place. He'll run this child's mickey mouse fucking service and every station solo if he has to. He'll-

He'd forgotten he was holding his phone until it lights up in his hand. Ryan, texting, with the screen display preview beginning, Good job, man. I'm proud of you. This part is hard, but it's worth-

"My doctor," David says, and then realizes he has no idea how he plans to finish that sentence. Shit. This isn't going any better than their last conversation, and he's been replaying that in his head non-stop since Berzatto slammed the door in his face. He clears his throat, like it's an ordinary frog, and says, into Berzatto's disbelieving expression, "I'm not cleared to work in kitchens right now."

"Sure," sneers Berzatto, as though this is pretty much what he expected, as though David has failed to return the first serve in the tennis match. Fuck him, honestly.

"Why the fuck else would I be unemployed in living in Muskegon?" Technically at his age and his tax bracket, he could just say 'retired' instead of 'unemployed,' but David has never seen the value in lying to himself. Just to his cardiologist, and now Berzatto;

"I can do a few hours tonight," he is absolutely not supposed to do this, "but someone else will be here to take over in the morning. I'll make sure they're good."

Silence, long and measuring, while Berzatto fucking chews a nailbed and David tries to resist the urge to throw something at him for having his fingers in his mouth in the kitchen.

"You sure?" wonders Berzatto, which again, sends white hot pang of rage through him. He might be unemployed, but he does not appreciate being questioned on what he presumes is the state of his contacts in the industry. But actually, there's slightly less hostility in Berzatto's face than there was a moment before, and he continues, "I want to yell at you a bunch and make you scrub tile with a toothbrush. I don't want to like. Kill you. Not by accident."

'Not by accident' is such a charmingly hostile modifier that David can't help but smirk.

"I do remember liking your honesty."

The tiny sliver of a crack that had been opening up in the younger man's expression slams shut, back into the scowl. Berzatto bares his teeth, and David sighs, and turns to look around the space.

"What do you want me on?"

"Onions," says Berzatto, and nods towards a bin in the back. That actually shouldn't even fluster Doctor Berhouzi any, so long as he doesn't keep at it for hours and hours. "Aprons on the hook in the back, spare knives on the shelf next to the dishwasher."

"Yes chef," says David, as sarcastically as humanly possible.

Time to cook.

Chapter Text

For all that Berzatto threatened to have him scrub tile with a toothbrush, for the first hour in the kitchen they work together he actually just has David on pretty standards prep tasks. He chops onions, carrots, celery, herbs. Guts and cleans fish. Preps tubs of marinade.

Blanches, then skins, cores, and seeds tomatoes and separates the flesh.

Funny thing, it's actually kind of nice. Now that Berzatto has shut the fuck up and they're just working, David takes the time to sink into the tasks and enjoy himself. He still cooks, obviously, but the largest group he's prepared anything for was just six. You never work with any ingredient long enough to really hit flow state. Standing here, taking down twenty kilos of red peppers, lets him into a deeper place inside of himself that he hadn't completely realized he'd been missing.

He's bargaining with Doctor Berhouzi in his head about how soon he can go back, when Berzatto rudely interrupts with a bucket full of beef trimmings.

"Fine chop, please, chef."

"Yes chef."

Getting Berzatto to stop saying 'please,' before 'chef' was one of the battles David had briefly won, back at Empire. Every syllable matters, during the rush. You don't waste time or breath on needless pleasantries, and clutter in your calls increases the likelihood they'll be misheard. Of course he's backslid.

"So part of why I wanted you here was that I'm going to ask you questions."

Oh joy. He'd have preferred the tile and the toothbrush. David glances up and doesn't say a single rude thing, just looks Berzatto in his hollowed eyes and waits. Something about the look on his face makes it seem like he's waiting for permission. More graciously than he's actually feeling, David reminds him;

"They're your amends, Berzatto."

"Your amends, chef."

Oh, fuck off. The knife hits hard on the next chop down, and David regrets the brief flit of satisfaction across Berzatto's face. Reminds himself, again, this is about power.

"Why unclutch my pearls?"

That draws a complete and utter blank, unfortunately. David wracks his brain, but can't come up with anything- which, to be fair, it's been years since all this happened and his memory had been a little janky, at the time. Berzatto clarifies;

"That was the last advice you ever gave me. At Ever. You don't remember?"

"I remember we talked, and I remember you were angry. I don't remember the specifics of the conversation." Ulcers, nightmares, panic attacks. "I had a couple of those conversations that night."

At a certain point they start to blend.

"Wow. Must be hard, living in a world so full of people you've fucked over."

David finishes the last pepper, exactly in time for Berzatto to slam a bucket of chicken hearts down at his station. Lovely.

He sighs, and picks up the knife and cutting board to go wash before he starts.

"It is what it is." He can hear Berzatto winding up for a barb, and cuts him off. "At the time, my take was it was a generational thing. Like probably there was some kind of hashtag. Work life balance. You know. Before you start swearing again, I obviously don't think that now."

"Why?"

An honest question, not a jibe. David finishes drying his board and knife, gives his hands another wash, then comes to reset.

"Because people's feelings are important and everyone deserves a safe and respectful work environment free from bullying, harassment, or other forms of occupational violence." He doesn't actually mean for it to come out sounding as insincere as it does. Berzatto looks like he thinks he's being made fun of, which David hadn't intended, so he tries a more honest answer; "Because someone I respect let me know I was being a dinosaur."

"So you heard it from him and snapped out of it?"

"I heard it from her, ignored it, continued doing what I was doing and drove myself into a complete physical collapse that cost me my career." Silence, in response, which is better than the jibe he was expecting. "Fine chop on these, chef?"

"Rough, thank you."

Appropriate- the chop, not the pleasantry, which once again rankles. David takes his knife to the first heart, and asks the question he's been avoiding.

"What else did I do?"

Berzatto makes a choked sound that makes David look up from his chicken hearts, to find that yet again, Berzatto's jaw is clenched and his hands into fists at his side.

"Well, you called me Bergatzo."

Oh God. David keeps his eyes on his work, and listens, with increasing regret, as Berzatto continues;

"I asked you why you were an asshole, you told me 'you're welcome.' That I was a mediocre chef when you found me, and an excellent chef when you were done with me. You said you gave me confidence, and leadership, and ability, and that everything you did to me worked."
Berzatto isn't yelling now, isn't swearing. He sounds horribly, darkly amused. "At which point I started to cry, which felt great, actually- I'm not even being facetious, I spent so long feeling fucking dead inside because of you, this at least was like. Something?"

David bisects a heart with a hard, quick, chop, and then forces himself to actually look up and face this. Berzatto isn't crying now, but he has stopped working. Hands on the table in front of him, covered in dough and flour, gaze somewhere off towards the dining room.

"You said that was good too. Not the crying- I honestly don't think you noticed." He hadn't. "But that my life had stopped. You said it was supposed to."

"Yeah," says David. "I... remember believing that."

Berzatto looks over at him in surprise, presumably at the past tense. But David meant what he said, before, about being called a dinosaur, about getting it. He looks down at the cutting board again, and traces a ventricle with the tip of his knife. Imagines a surgeon's scalpel doing the same.

"Okay." Well, he's already apologized, but here's something he can maybe put right; "The bit about your being mediocre was absolutely me deflecting, and it was a low blow. I reviewed my notes on you before I tried to come see you last time. I hired you because you were good."

"Fuck off."

Not the reaction he'd been expecting, and it startles him into starting back into chopping hearts. The safest thing to do in a kitchen when conflict breaks out unexpectedly is to be doing your work and doing it well.

Berzatto stalks off, and David doesn't try to stop him.

---

Sixty seconds, is how long Carmy gives himself. Sixty seconds hiding in his office, with both hands pressed over his mouth, resisting the urge to scream in frustration, to kick over the office chair, smash the plate of forgotten lunch apparently still sitting out on his desk.

It should feel good, right? Getting the admission out of Chef that he'd been unfair, that what he'd said had been untrue. That should be it; an end to the little Chef David Fields voice in the back of his head telling him he's fucking nothing.

Why does it still feel true?

Sixty seconds (to the fucking second- 7:31 pm) he heads back out, hopefully at least vaguely casually.

"So one thing I'm confused about," says Carmy, as he brings the next bin of produce out to set next to Chef Fields's table, "is what you were doing here the other night?"

Peaches. Carmy's very least favourite fruit to handle. It's slippery work that turns your fingertips to prune.

"Okay," says Chef, and picks up a peach, takes a paring knife to it, halves it, then peels one side of the split skin back in one elegant sweep. Second half, two peels with the knife, and a quick flick to pop the pit, then a brusque scrape to clear the hard lingering bits of the hull of the stone off the flesh.

Carmy swallows. Reframes his train of thought.

"You acted like you didn't know this was my place?"

"I didn't. My friend picked the restaurant."

"You have friends?"

Two more peaches down, while Carmy is still busy bringing him back a bowl to toss the flesh into. It hits the table, chef flips the fruit off the cutting board, then deigns to actually look up at him.

Which, actually, is worse. Considerably worse, than watching him pit fruit. Carmy nods back at the crate, impatiently, and Chef lowers his gaze back to the task.

"I've read the reviews since. Congratulations."

"Thank you," says Carmy, even though the words feel like poison in his mouth. He's decided he's losing this battle by resorting to immaturity. That the way to fight Chef's spooky calm fire is with his own version as same. He is not out of control. But, something stands out about that; "You don't follow the news any more?"

By news, he means food news, obviously. Chef doesn't answer, but on reflection, Carmy doesn't actually need him to. It's starting to sink in, what he said earlier, that he'd had some kind of health event that is keeping him out of the industry. Keeping him out of kitchens.

Carmy looks over at Chef now, working away quietly, looking calmer than he's ever seen him. Looking like he belongs, like a magnet snapped back into place.

For the first time, it occurs to Carmy that asking him to be here might be punishing for a few different reasons.

They work in silence, broken only by the brisk slash of the knife, the patter of skin and pit and flesh against steel. The soft rock of the bowl turning into a soft thrum, when a peach pit sets it vibrating.

Eventually, Carmy realizes the knife has paused, that Chef is looking up at him.

"What are we doing here, exactly?"

Carmy frowns at him. Gestures back at the bowl in annoyance, explaining;

"You do remember that part of the amends is shutting the fuck up and listening to me, chef?"

"Yes, chef."

Carmy had always liked watching Chef at prep. Everyone does. He's never made his technique or control a gimmick or a show piece, but it's virtually every reporter, writer, food critic or chef's table guest who has seen him work has commented on it nonetheless. It's one of those things that gets reduced inherently by being on the page, alongside 'meticulous perfectionist,' and 'infamous temper.' Renowned chef has strikingly good knife skills; quel surprise.

No. Chef Fields has strikingly good knife skills for a chef, which is a different animal entirely.

Not to imply that Chef Fields participated at prep back at Empire. Far from it. The entirety of Carmy's exposure to the art had been in the context of punishing, humiliating demonstrations that left the skin on his ears and the back of his neck burning. Chef Fields correcting one technique or another in passing. Chef Fields doing someone's job for them while they stand at his shoulder in tears, devastated by the bloodcurdling elegance of his knifework.

These peaches aren't going to last long. What else do they need done? Carmy turns away, to check an inventory list, and decides they're low enough on stock that it's a good time to do a batch. He leaves Chef peeling, while he gets out a tray for carrots, celery, and a ham hock. That all should hold him for the time being.

Carmy, meanwhile, heads back to the head of his table, in search of pen and paper, and honestly, a little bit of space. He leans casually against the table, hitching a foot up onto the forbidden cross-beam, deliberately needling maybe, but it's hard to resist in the moment.

It occurs to him kind of belatedly that they are locked in here together, and he has handed his mortal nemesis a weapon with which he is an expert? But that's also a good reminder not to let things escalate to physical violence.

Carmy shakes his head, and looks back down at the most important event that he's going to be designing a menu for this year;

Sophie's first birthday party. Jimmie is paying for it as a gift, but that just means it comes out of the balance of their loan. Guest list of sixty people. No time to actually go shop, so he's using what he has in the fridges here. Go.

He scratches out a hasty menu, with one mental eye on the backlog of produce they've been getting behind on already, filtered through the lens of family favourites. That's one silver lining; he can do these recipes on muscle memory alone, without even having to think about it. The rhythmic sound of chopping in the background helps him think. In just a couple of minutes, Carmy is ready to start getting the long and slow stuff onto the heat, still working through the last details on the finger food in his head while he gets started on the sauce.

"Chef?"

The voice startles him almost into losing a tomato can into the sauce. He turns around, and sees the cutting board clear and clean, the stock pot full with pristine cubes of pink and green and orange.

"Stock, please, chef." Which should hold him all of fifteen seconds. Carmy momentarily abandons his sauce for a moment, and jogs towards the back door to go get the key to the sandwich shop, to go grab the bag of leftover buns.

He grabs a bag, then jogs back in to tip them onto yet another sheet pan, leaving it there and pointing, letting Chef know;

"Croutons, please, chef."

"Heard."

Carmy restations himself in time to watch Chef heave the stock pot full of water out of the sink, and the sight gives him a brief pang. The worry for his health is assuaged by the easy with which the man lifts the full pot out of the sink. Chef is maybe not in as good shape as Carmy is but he's a man in his fifties. It's at that exact moment that Carmy realizes that Chef has taken off his jacket at some point (obviously) and is now in a t-shirt under his borrowed apron.

He also see the moment he's fully caught staring. Chef sets the stock pot down on the stove that is both close enough to the sink to seem reasonable, but also as far away from Carmy and his sauce pot as possible. He cranks the knob by feel, as he spares look over his shoulder and return Carmy's stare with a challenging little hitch of his eyebrows.

"Teacher at a shopping mall." is all Carmy can think to say, for whatever reason. Familiar object, unfamiliar context. Chef's eyebrows lift higher.

"I was in the kitchen with you at Empire."

"You periodically disrupted my kitchen with your presence, at Empire"

That makes Chef close his mouth, and dust his hands off on his apron. He reapproaches the prep table with the buns, and stoops to find another kind of knife. Carmy is pretending to be focused on his sauce, as chef picks up a sandwich bun.

"You're right."

"Okay."

Carmy leaves that there, for a second, looking down at the page with his half-sketched menu. It has been a long fucking week, being a body down, and things were only barely getting good right before that, he just hasn't had two seconds to think beyond Sug's favourite, the spring stew. Now that the backlog of work for the Bear has been whittled down from screaming blaring red warning sirens back down into their usual strobing amber he can actually think this all the way through. Although that said, the minute he looks back up and sees something he needs to correct;

"Oh- not like that, chef."

Chef Fields pauses, looking deeply, utterly suspicious, as though he's completely sure any possible correction is just him being fucked with. Carmy bites down on a smile at the expression, and points at the bread in his hands.

Chef has trimmed off all possible imperfections, precisely as one would be expected to in a fine dining establishment doing some sort of elevated crouton. It'll make beautiful, uniform cubes, and it'll waste about half the actual bread on the table.

"Raw cut. This is a picnic."

"A picnic of people you hate?"

Carmy could take that as criticism, and nearly does. Only, Chef is already binning the mistake, and using the spine of his knife to scrape the trimmings in after it, then starting again properly.

"People recognize the style as from our sandwich shop, and like that it's us."

"Who's the client?" asks Chef Fields, and when Carmy hesitates, "we've literally just demonstrated why I need to know."

"Child's birthday party."

Chef's knife falters, as if some part of his brain has shorted out. Possibly at the sheer indignity? They're the most satisfying three seconds of Carmy's life, but they're all it takes for Chef to process. He nods decisively, and sets to work.

As far as amends go, it actually really helps. It maybe doesn't make up for a year of torture, but the way the tasks fall off his to-do list kind of makes Carmy want to escape into the office to let himself brief emotional collapse from pure relief. Although that does make him realize, they've already burned close to two hours. Carmy doubts Chef will agree to stay here all night, so he's got to actually figure out what he's doing here.

"Okay," says Carmy, as he closes an oven door, "break for water, I've formulated a question."

Chef nods, and accepts the plastic 1L that Carmy fills at the sink with a vague sound that might even be a thanks. He's listening. Vaguely late, Carmy realizes this is probably not a pleasant conversation for him either, if he actually is in recovery.

"It felt to me that you were more of an asshole to me specifically than you were to other people. Would you say that is true?"

Chef's eyebrows lift, and he does something Carmy has never seen him do before. He leans back against the stove.

"Yes and no. You were my CDC at pretty much the peak of my problem, so you probably got it harder than anyone else in the world, but I'm not sure that anyone else would have fared any better."

"That's horseshit," accuses Carmy, itching for a cigarette a little bit and focusing on drinking instead. He swallows, and looks over into Chef's expectant stare. Expanding, then; "That's just a denial of responsibility. This was personal. You made it personal. You're saying now I wasn't actually bullshit. So what was your fucking problem with me?"

Chef draws in a long breath, and shakes his head, lightly.

"I don't think it was one thing, not the way you're thinking. The fight your first week was obviously the biggest part of it..."

And just like that, Carmy is poleaxed. He'd completely forgotten the incident, a brief shoving match between him and Luca in the locker room that had got them both the most boring, tedious, and painful duties imaginable for weeks. They'd bonded over it pretty quickly, and Carmy hadn't worried about it too much after the fact. But that isn't all, apparently; "Followed by repeated instances of insubordination and showings of temper under pressure."

"Because you were fucking with me?" Carmy recalls, keeping his voice (he thinks) remarkably even.

"Occasionally. But sometimes you scream at your line when you feel the pressure of the clock. When your temper goes, the communication goes too. Kitchens bring out the worst in a person."

Chef Fields would be easier to deal with if he weren't so right, so much of the time. Not particularly kindly, Carmy asks;

"So what were you on?"

He wants the question to land harder than it does. Instead, Chef just shrugs, and sets his water down.

"At work? Adderall or modafinil, usually."

All right, that actually was a little obvious, in retrospect. Richie's 'I told you so' face swims to top of mind.

"I still kind of think you're full of shit."

This time, Carmy is watching close enough to actually clock the reaction. The way Chef's chin tucks down, his breath draws in. They were just talking before, where now the man is back on defending. He even straightens up out of his lean against the stove, back to that effortlessly perfect posture.

"Okay."

Nothing more. Not exactly defending, then, just guarded. This is the spot where it hurts, so this is where he starts to play possum.

"I think," Carmy says, really looking him in the eyes this time, even though it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, "I think you're probably right. That kitchens bring out the worst a person. And I think you're using your program to deflect from the fact that you're controlling, and you're a sadist."

Chef doesn't actually lose control of his expression, but he definitely visibly greys as the blood leaves his face. Carmy has him.

Carmy also has the advantage of being much better with long silences than the average person. He waits, barely breathing, until- yes.

"You're probably right," says Chef, like he wants to say more, but Carmy cuts in, uncompromisingly;

"I am right."

"You are right."

"You are right, chef."

And just like that, Carmy has found the line. The flinch-point, where Chef Fields knows that the right thing to do is okay okay okay his way through this, but he kind of can't any more. Carmy knows the feeling, and isn't surprised when Chef beats the urge to break;

"Chef, you're right."

But beating it once is never good enough.

"Right about what, chef?"

Instead of answering, Chef takes a step towards him. Just one, just to the distance he uses to loom. To intimidate. The kind that made the lesser cooks step backwards and bump into furniture.

Carmy holds. Looks up, because he knows from experience that it is worse to not look at Chef than it is to crane and look up at him.

"You're right, chef," says Chef, quietly, and with infinite self-control that once again, makes Carmy swallow, "I'm a controlling sadist. What else did you have for me to do?"

Right. Carmy looks away when Chef does, and squints around the space, running a mental to-do list. They're out of things to just chop, but there's still plenty to do for Sophie's party, and it isn't as though Chef needs babysitting...

"Peach tarts. Dough is chilling in the-"

But Chef is already heading for the pastry alcove, and the saran wrapped ball that Marcus did up for him earlier. Carmy sighs (carefully silently) at his back, and goes back work.

Chapter Text

"And," says Carmy, apropos of nothing except his own thoughts, "I was never insubordinate."

They've been working in silence for the last hour, with the exception of clipped directions from Carmy about this antipasto, that pan of garlic knots, the dressing for the salad.

Chef pauses with the mortar and pestle, looking up from his anchovies with an expression of furious indignation that Carmy recognizes far too well. It's comforting, honestly; familiar, in a way the reasonableness and apologies haven't been. It feels real.

Almost, Chef succeeds in ignoring him, in getting back to work. Almost. Instead, he asks, deceptively casually;

"Am I supposed to agree with that, chef?"

"And speaking of the pots and kettles- why the fuck did you used to give me so much shit for having scars? You're-"

Carmy gestures at Chef's arms, which rival his own. Most of the marks are on the inside of his forearms, the kinds of latitudinal burns you get from drawing something out of an oven too fast, but there are others.

"Yeah," Chef says, "but I know to hide them."

Not entirely sure what to make of that, Carmy leaves it, lets Chef get back to the salad dressing and goes to take stock of what they have left to do. They're in the final push now. He could probably have banged this out and been gone by two am at the latest, which wouldn't be that big a deal, he's used to worse. Still there's something very nice about nearing the end of the day's work and seeing the clock has yet to strike midnight.

"Chef?"

Carmy looks up to tell Chef to continue with the dressing, but sees it's already been spatula'd through a funnel into a squeeze bottle, that Chef is at the sink doing another quick set of dishes. The man works so clean that there isn't even a shitstorm around them to have to pick up.

Before Carmy is finished looking around searching for something for the man to do, he's already done those too, and back at Carmy's station, bringing with him a plastic 1L full of water, for some reason?

Water. That's why it's getting hard to think, hear, and see, presumably. Carmy accepts it from him gratefully, drains about a third in several long gulps, then comes to the reluctant conclusion that there's nothing else to do but wait for the oven.

"We made it. If you want to get going, you can."

Chef Fields pauses, looking confused and almost affronted. Not saying no, but not moving either, which it takes Carmy a second to remember is brigade code for deference.

"Chef?"

"My tarts are still in the oven, chef."

Of course they are. Chef had used his sojourn into the pasty alcove to quietly remake Marcus's pie dough before Carmy could catch him. Carmy had kind of wanted to be mad about that, but had to admit it looked on the dry side; Marcus had been burning the candle at both ends recently too, helping Carmy cover, and he's starting to fray. Carmy still thinks it could have passed as good enough for his niece's birthday party, but he's aware that he has zero pastry to Chef's seven. Three of them in Paris. Best not to embarass himself.

"I may not have been to France, but I think I can be trusted to take a pan out of the oven, chef."

The look of confusion turns into a look of sour, familiar, contempt.

"Responsibility, chef."

Carmy feels the bear. So hard, so fast, so close to turning into a lunge. He wants to rip this man apart with his teeth.

The only thing that stops him is Chef Fields holding up both hands in a 'stop,' motion, lowering his head, closing his eyes.

"I mean, they're my responsibility. I'm not leaving until you tell me to. Jesus fucking Christ, though, I need to eat something."

Carmy actually laughs, suddenly lightheaded at the relief, the release. He shakes his head, and rests a hand on his station to steady himself, noticing that yes, he is in fact suddenly light headed from hunger.

"Want some of the vignarola?" which has the advantage of being a stew sitting aside, open and cooling, but warm enough that Carmy reaches for two of the 1/2Ls sitting in drying rack.

"Isn't that portioned?"

"Technically, but this event is for my niece Sophie we're talking about, and she's turning one, so her counting isn't so hot."

Chef Fields does something Carmy has never seen him do before. He falters, in the process of accepting his stew. Not to the degree where anything drops, or even comes close to it, obviously. Just, having handed and been handed a thousand dishes by this man, Carmy catches it.

"Thank you, chef."

"We can stop. Just-" Carmy swallows. He hadn't actually been planning on saying that, and now doesn't know how to explain himself.

Well, maybe he doesn't owe an explanation. He just leads the way towards the back of, hair on the back of his neck prickling at the feeling when Chef falls in behind him. There's something about the angle, the looming presence over his shoulder, that makes Carmy immediately regret ceding the power.

"Do you know the story of the execution of Socrates?" Chef asks, at about the half way point through their stew. Carmy pauses, mid-bite, then chews and swallows, glad he's had time to think, because from memory he can come up with;

"Uh- arrested for disturbing the social fabric of Athens? Refused ostracism, accepted execution?"

Carmy is still struggling to see how that applies when he realizes that Chef Fields has just smiled. It's also the moment that Carmy realizes that something substantial has changed here. He's not sure what, or in what way, but this actually doesn't feel like bullshit.

"Exactly. But the part I'm thinking about is during the trial, where he talks himself into getting killed. Do you know this part?"

Carmy shakes his head, and resumes eating, leaning back in his seat to try to stretch out a stiff muscle. The sandwich shop has cheap fold-out chairs, so that's where they've settled.

"Socrates gets convicted. Then there's this weird, mysterious window, where he's moving around Athens, maneuvering to have to pay a fine, or get house arrest, or all this other intrigue. At the end of it somehow Socrates ends up sentenced to death by a greater margin than convicted him. Which I now feel I understand."

It takes Carmy a second to get it, but then it's his turn to laugh- choke, really. He's still feeling wound tight and breathless, and the little space of the shop is too small to speak loudly in anyways. Does snapping 'why, why, why?' at people actually count as the Socratic method, anyways? Chef holds up a peaceable hand at the flicker in Carmy's expression;

"I mean that as a joke at my own expense. All I can say is that it was normal when I was being trained."

The bitterness in his tone makes it obvious that he knows it isn't an excuse. Carmy reaches for his water, and doesn't think about Macy.

"Can I keep asking you questions?"

Chef Fields' fork hesitates, and for a second he wears an expression Carmy actually recognizes from memory. It's the same look he wore in the hallway at Ever.

"Okay. Let's have it."

Verbatim. Right, he had a career long enough and with enough people flaming out of his kitchen that this is a practiced move.

"Where is Muskongene?"

Chef's relief is not quite palpable, but Carmy thinks he feels it. And anyways, it's kind of nice to get something like a normal conversation out of him, for once. They never really just talked, beyond barked orders and scathing lectures.

"Muskegon? North East, up the other side of the lake, in Michigan."

Of all the possible answers, that hadn't been what Carmy was expecting.

"Jesus! What's that drive?"

"Three and a half hours."

Carmy doesn't actually want to apologize, and therefore doesn't, but does kind of feel the need to admit;

"I'd've given you more notice."

Chef, looking surprisingly calm about it, just shrugs. Like, all right, well, spilt milk.

"I already had a trip up planned later this week. I just extended it."

It's the first time he's ever been anything other than horribly rude about even the slightest inconvenience. Carmy is trying to figure out exactly what to say to that when Chef surprises him, once more.

"Anyways, I was glad that you called." Which is such a strange thing to hear that Carmy again has a weird moment of teacher in grocery store headrush. "I know you're under zero obligation to take this seriously, but I actually do, so."

Which is unfair, honestly. Carmy shakes his head.

"I'm taking this seriously." When Chef doesn't look immediately convinced; "I spend too much time thinking about this."

"Right," says Chef, like this has jogged a memory, maybe the one Carmy kind of deliberately didn't bring up, because it's still humiliating to think about. I think about you too much. But maybe the guilt works to Carmy's advantage, because it gets him to say; "And I think I've put my finger on the last piece of this we really need to go over."

Suddenly, Carmy can't feel his body. He can feel his head floating midair above it, and he can hear his own voice saying okay, but he is a passenger on this experience like a balloon is on a string.

"Were you following any of the rumours, at the time, about my replacement?"

What? Carmy shakes his head, no, and straightens up in his seat out of his slouch. It's kind of sickening to realize that he's upset at the thought. Empire had been Empire because of Chef. Prickishness and all, he wasn't replaceable.

"It all was all framed as 'contingency plans in the event of my failing health.' Which meant, 'my after hours coke habit.'"

It's funny, it strikes Carmy, the little lines people draw for themselves. Like, he's sure it was and still is important to Chef that he wasn't doing party drugs in the kitchen.

"Anyways," says Chef, with a dismissive shake of his head, "you were number two in line, after somebody from the tv celebrity circuit. I could never figure out who."

That can't possibly be true. Carmy shakes his head with a scoff, but instead of taking up the offer to the argue Chef only shrugs, then moves to get up, exactly as Carmy's own hackles rise that it's time to get those tarts. Chef puts his hands in the small of his back and bends over them, stretching out with a wince at the ceiling. Another thing Carmy has never seen him do.mGradually, uncertainly, even reluctantly, Carmy is coming to the conclusion that Chef Fields might not just be telling the truth, but also might actually be a flesh and blood human, rather than a terminator sent here from the future to destroy him.

Carmy stays. Curls his toes in his sneakers and digs his fingernails into the sensitive places around his scar until he can think again. He follows Chef out to the kitchen, and finds the tarts cooling in the proofer. Three, Chef has binned, for having filling that has bubbled up and over the edge of the pie shell in places, leaving the crust imperfectly laced with crisp sugar. Carmy kind of wishes he'd noticed in time to stop him; they look very much good enough to eat, and now they're down in the bottom of the black bag Carmy is pulling out of the bin, tying off.

The night is almost over. Their time is running out. There's just one last thing he needs to make him understand, and then maybe, finally, Carmy can stop thinking about him. Stop feeling this way.

"I wasn't insubordinate." Chef stiffens, but doesn't argue, which Carmy knows full well is an attempt at politeness, not a change in belief, so; "Spit it out, Chef."

He means 'Chef' as a name, not an order, not aggression, but Chef doesn't take it that way, and his answer comes out all quick and defensive;

"You started fights, swore like a sailor within earshot of customers, rolled your sleeves up-"

"Fuck off. Once."

"-interrupted, talked back, and you would not stop climbing on furniture. When you started you weren't just insubordinate, you were barely even domesticated."

There's nothing like feeling yourself lose an important argument, again, even as you're having it. Carmy shakes his head.

"I stopped when you told me to."

"Not the climbing. You're doing it right now!"

Yes, okay, true, his foot is hitched up, resting on the cross-beam under his table. But that's also just so pathetic and petty and small that Carmy just shuts his eyes, and bursts out;

"I'm not your fucking subordinate right now, David." Gratifyingly, this gets another genuine flash of temper, which at least feels more like normal. Also, though, somehow kind of sickening?

"I would have eaten glass for you, you know that? If you told me to. I would have given you my bones for bread. I would have done anything you asked, and instead you just fucking hated me."

---

David's heart gives a frightening skip in his chest, and his first thought, quite reasonably, is medical event. But it kicks back into rhythm even as everything else crashes to a halt. What a thing to hear, and in what a voice; Berzatto sounds heartbroken.

He never in a million years could have imagined that his approval meant anything more to the young man than that the work day went a little late. He got nothing but aggression off Berzatto right from the get go, and never picked up a hint that his jibes had made even a scratch, not beyond the obvious immediate frustration. There's no explanation for this other than that he's missing something. And now he's standing here, too stunned to speak. This forces an extremely rapid rewriting of his current mental schema of his old chef de cuisine, under basically live fire.

David actually starts paying attention. To the way Berzatto shoves his shaking hands into his pockets. To the shut eyes, the affectless voice, the closed off expression.

This new admission, after his earlier repeated insistences. The way he's still standing there in silence, drawing in short, ragged breaths of self-preservation.

"I missed that," says David, stupidly. But that's the truth; he had. "I read you wrong, and I'm sorry."

"You read me wrong?"

Berzatto still won't open his eyes, and David wonders briefly what's going on there; overstimulation thing? Anxiety? Something else? But that question deserves an answer, though, so David files that away for later.

"Yes. You present with a lot of machismo, Berzatto."

"Should I stop?"

Almost, David would say he sounds imploring. Desperate, for someone to just please tell him how. Okay, so David is going to have to be careful- should have been fucking careful from the beginning however many fucking years ago now. Better late than never?

"No," says David, and Berzatto's eyes reopen, checking his face, like making sure he's sure. The man is exhausted, David sees again. But it's also deeper than that. He's not just exhausted, he's also burnt out, and actually also maybe very fucking afraid? "Don't change yourself because I'm a piece of shit, okay?"

"You're the best there is," Berzatto interrupts, utterly without realizing he's doing it, David notes, it's pure reflex. It's also an incredibly touching correction. It also gives him a good opportunity to tell him something, while he's maybe going to hear it.

"You're better than I was at your age."

Yeah, that's... terror, actually, on top disorientation and misery. No, Berzatto is not actually insubordinate, he's just somehow still capable of functioning while basically fully blown. Functioning, just not to perfection.

"Don't suck my dick, just tell me. Tell me what was so wrong with me? Tell me what I'm supposed to fucking do!"

Berzatto's voice raises as he speaks, and speeds up, not into questioning-chef cadence, but rather into a kind of haranguing. Like he wants David to go up too, to make himself feel better by venting whatever he's feeling into a verbal shoving match.

No. David is done with that. He says, and means it;

"Quiet, chef."

Obligingly, Berzatto's mouth snaps shut. Control is a funny thing. You can lend and borrow it, and David sees his snap around Berzatto almost like the moment in the Wizard of Oz where the world turns to colour. "Shut your eyes, and breathe in to a four count."

Berzatto does as he's told without thinking, with fight or flight response visibly abating as his chest expands and his shoulders drop.

"Hold at the top two, three, four," David adds, still watching him closely, since Berzatto isn't going to catch him looking, "breathe out, two, three, four, and hold two three four. Breathe in, and keep going, chef. I need to think this through."

Mercifully, the young man takes to it like a duck to water. Unsteadily at first, but with endearing determination. Okay. So, what the fuck else here has David misjudged?

Berzatto stays where David has put him, mostly stood up straight, except where he's clinging with one hand to the steel of the table behind him. That's likely a balance thing, so David allows it.

Yeah, he's... yeah. This is going to take longer than the next twenty or so seconds to think through, so David switches gears to trying to think through how to get this situation to a safe landing.

"You're good, chef." He makes his voice decisive; Chef David Fields, the culinary authority, and doesn't miss the way the last of the tension leaves Berzatto's expression at the test balloon use of the word good. Okay, so praise then. "You did well. Your work is done for the day. What are you going to do tonight, once you're home?"

"Fall asleep on the bathroom floor while the shower is still warming up, then get up tomorrow to do it again, probably."

David smiles. That sounds about right, for running your first place.

"No you aren't. It's still early. You're going to head home, drink more water, eat something, shower, and sleep in your own bed."

"Fuck off. Fine," says Berzatto, scrubbing his hands over his face, then opening his eyes shaking his head lightly like he's trying to snap out of it. David suspects Berzatto doesn't actually even know what or why, by the vaguely dazed look to him. "Uh- thanks. For everything tonight, I mean."

"You're good," David says again, deceptively casually. It detonates in Berzatto's bright blue eyes like a bomb. Was he always this transparent? How the fuck did he miss this? "Like I said, I was glad you called."

"This was insane," says Berzatto, now kind of visibly trying to even out his keel. David almost doesn't want to let him, thinks he could keep shoving him back off balance until he goes to his knees on instinct alone, but that would not be helpful right now. While he might not exactly remember the whole ninth step verbatim but he's pretty sure wrestling for psychological dominance on the person you're trying to make amends to is not in the spirit of the thing. "But you were decent about it. I think if I'd talked to you like that back at Empire, you'd probably have slapped me."

No, David thinks he wouldn't have- he did a lot of shit in his career, but he never once hit. But he doesn't correct the statement, just stays quiet as he files it away under noteworthy imagery.

"Amends. I guess." Like it's a sports match he's calling; game over. "How does this work on your side, do I have to sign something?"

"No," says David, unable to help a quick smile, despite the seriousness of what they're discussing, "but this isn't a one time trade off, Berzatto. It's an open door for questions, whenever you have them."

"Oh." Like it was way more generosity than Berzatto was expecting, which rankles a little but is only David's fault. "Thank you, chef. And good luck with your program."

"You too, chef."

They shake hands, and David realizes he doesn't think they've ever done so before. He knows he'd have remembered the feeling of that scar.

Chapter Text

Waking up the next day is a disorienting experience, for David.

First and foremost, he's sore. It's been close to nine months since he was in a real kitchen, and close to nine years since he did anything like a shift on the line. Yes, dish development takes work, but it doesn't give you the same throb in your feet, tightness in your back, tenderness in your knuckles.

More worrying is that his chest hurts. He thinks of Dr Berhouzi, and makes tea instead of coffee to drink in bed while he desperately tries to sort out his life choices.

His phone has four text messages waiting for him, but none of them are from Berzatto. Ryan, telling him where and when to be for lunch. Gemma, getting back to him about the resume he'd asked for. The hospital, with an appointment reminder for Friday. Scam caller.

Well, one of those messages at least gives him his own excuse. David just sends the CV directly across as an attachment, with the message;

If you don't think he's worth calling, let me know. I can find another.

Nothing in reply in the first thirty seconds- though, it's a text message, so that's pretty normal. Hopefully Berzatto is still sleeping. He'd looked like he needed it. David remembers all of a sudden giving him orders to go home, take care of himself, and get to bed. Fuck, that had been inappropriate.

Did he listen?

Ryan has picked a dive for breakfast, with streaky cutlery and bottomless coffee that David can't drink. He does this on purpose, since David always makes him pick the place. If David ends up trying to choose it always comes across as weird or ends up controlling- they're
known for their fish here and you're ordering the hamburger? Abstaining is easier than figuring out how to engage, even if it means that when the eggs come greasy, burnt on the bottoms but simultaneously raw on top.

Now, David is pretty honest with Ryan about most things, but he finds himself editorializing that last ten minutes rather more than he usually would. There's more than enough to cover with the first three yelling matches,

"What are you going to do now?"

"Nothing," says David, with a shake of his head. "Wait and see if he calls, answer his questions if he asks them."

Ryan's eyebrows raise, and David shrugs, then shuts his eyes as his phone chimes. Reluctantly, he turns it over, and finds...

Another medical appointment reminder. Triumphantly, he shows Ryan the phone, and then mutes and pockets it before it can get him into more trouble.

"So, is this guy straight?" is the next question, making David think he hasn't done as good a job as he thought of editorializing out the overtones.

"No idea," says David, with a casualness he in no way remotely feels, "none of my business. I honestly doubt I'll ever hear from him again."

He does, in fact, have a text message waiting for him when they finish their shitty meal. This one is, in fact, from Berzatto;

thank you

Nothing more. David's chest aches, again, still, and he wonders if that's going to be something he actually he has to deal with, or if he's just having some kind of fucking feeling.

Three dots, nothing. Three dots, nothing. Three dots-

-and then Carmen Berzatto is gone.

---

The ghosting happens honestly by accident. It basically always does for Carmy, who sees the text that morning, but replies late because he's setting up for the party. He'd honestly quite forgotten that Chef offered to find him someone in a hurry, what with everything else that happened after. He flips the message to Syd, who knows where he is today and immediately promises to handle it. Later, during a moment pinned under baby Sophie, he remembers to send Chef a reply.

He considers saying more than just 'thank you.' Wondering if he'd come do it again sometime-

-which actually kind of makes him wonder what it was exactly Chef came and did.

Which makes Carmy decide that he can't handle thinking about this right now. He deletes his reply, puts down his phone, and promises himself that he'll answer later. As soon as things are calm.

And then it's not just somehow already October, but somehow also immediately December? They've knocked another few grand off their debt, but the end is far from in sight. Carmy is expecting an exceptionally grim week sales wise, and isn't looking forward to it in the slightest, when the universe cuts him some slack and the grey Chicago skies dump four feet of snow on them over Christmas and Boxing day, with ice storm and blizzard warnings as the cherry on top to activate every single provision of the insurance policy he's glad Computer insisted they not cheap out on.

The rest of the team is overjoyed, sharing memes in the group chat, and photos of what all of them are cooking- or what junk food they're eating out of what boxes, in some cases. Texts are only coming through intermittently, thanks to a low, dense, warm blanket of wet air.

Carmy is mostly just sleeping, for sixteen hours the Wednesday, twelve Thursday. He feels like he's getting sick, but with no symptoms other than an inability to open his eyes all the way or move his body at anything faster than a drag. The white blanket of snow muffling the world outside is making him feel weirdly hysterical with relief. He just lies there, breathing and looking at the ceiling, listening to the pleasant hum of electricity in the walls and not thinking of anything.

His phone chimes, and makes his skin crawl. Carmy is actually moving to silence it on pure reflex when he sees it's a picture of Sophie. It'd taken him a little time to meet his baby niece, and he still feels a little worried he'll drop her or let her down some day. Carmy loves her with all his fucking heart, though, and grins at the picture of her all buttoned up in a snowsuit and a hat with a chin strap, and jacket with hood. Her full cheeks are bright red, and she seems to be sucking snow off her woolly mitten.

Carmy loves her so fucking much. He says so, immediately, via emoji anyway, distracted from saying more by the photo half on display on the screen. Carmy scrolls up, and clicks on the picture form the birthday picnic, of the birthday girl herself sitting in her high chair, covered in peach pie and absolutely beaming.

He closes his phone, mutes it, and lies back down to resume counting the cracks in the plaster above him.

Time is starting to worry him. Being off right now is a nice feeling, given the numbers of cancellations they'd already had from out of towners who'd given up festive plans to venture into the city and eat in one nice Chicago restaurant.

"One nice way to look at it is we are this famous," says Richie, wiltingly, in the echoeing dining room. "People are flocking to us from across the land, cousin."

It makes Carmy realize just how much he's relying on reputation to fill a dining room. If his client base is choosing to come from that far, it's not because they know and like the place, it's because they're hearing about it on the internet somewhere. The scallop engagement thing or whatever it is they keep trying to explain to him.

They've both come in on the 29th, thanks to an alarm Computer insisted on. Carmy's phone let him know at six am that there was a problem. By seven thirty, he and Richie were watching the emergency mechanic troubleshoot the generator with grim worry.

"There's a smell," says Carmy, as the man works, watching his breath plume in the air.

"No there isn't, cuz. The heat went out at the same time the power went out, everything will be chill and chill."

But he's wrong, and Carmy knows it. Underneath the burning smell of blood in his nostrils from the season, he can detect the nightmare tinge of something rancid. Carmy heads back inside, and goes fridge by fridge, until he finds his way back to the sandwich shop.

"Oh fuck."

The text that should have warned him that this had gone out first, a couple of days before the generator did. He'd come in to check everything after the notification that the generator was kicking in, and it had been working then, but they've been taking turns coming in to check the place. Carmy isn't totally surprised that the Bear employees forgetting to stick their head in on the Beef in back.

It makes for one vile day of scrubbing, given the sheer amount of rancid beef involved. Richie helps out, bless him, insiting as he does that the roads are too shit for anyone else to come in but them.

"Saw that guy you swore at at the ballet last night," says Richie, voice a little choppy as he gives it the elbow grease.

Carmy has never been to the ballet, but gets there after a second, that the guy was at the ballet Richie took his kid to. The Nutcracker, he remembers, because he'd started thinking about pistachio cream.

"Yeah. Dude your Chef Fuckface was here on a date with? He was the main guy! Man, he could have like, cleared this dining room if it didn't have the tables, it was crazy."

"Date?" asks Carmy, in disbelief. He hadn't even believed Chef had friends. "Yeah, right."

"No, cuz, for real. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But like. There's a host note."

Huh. Sex is one of those things Carmy would have never pictured Chef doing, along with eating, sleeping and feeling. If he's dating, period, then Carmy supposes it does makes a little more sense that he dates men. Carmy also doesn't want to stereotype, but Chef has very nice glasses, and very nice shoulders, and obviously pays attention to taking care of himself in a way that most of the men in his family do not. Honestly, Carmy had thought he was gay at first, and then had to learn how to apply hair gel and all that garbage to be allowed to work at Empire, and decided Chef was probably just from New York. Or he came from a family where guys get to do that kind of thing without getting the shit kicked out of them.

"But hey," he says, as they pitch the last of the now-trashed rags into the dumpster out back, to freeze, "they're saying they should have the roads clear by New Years!"

This is technically very good news for business, but it's starting to make Carmy acutely aware of the to-do-list as long as his arm stretching out in front of him. The plan they'd agreed on before they broke was a complete kitchen clean-down, with everyone taking home any and all perishables that wouldn't keep until New Years. Carm would come in solo on the 30th to accept a spate of deliveries, then everyone else would come in nice and early, fresh on the 31st to go live.

Carmy washes the last of the mess off his hands, and opens his phone back up to ruin both their days. Syd in particular deserves better. She's coming home early from her dad's place for this. Lately it feels like all Carmy does is drag her from crisis to crisis... whereupon an idea strikes him. He does not text Syd.

Instead, he flips Sug and Ibrahim a quick heads up each, since they'll both have to care for different reasons, then starts calling suppliers. His focus breaks, when Ibrahim asks what he should do, and Carmen talks him through an updated prep schedule for redoing basically everything from scratch, and yes, it will be absolutely no problem for Carmy to replace that amount of beef in this amount of time. In Chicago. In a weather event that what was until literally two hours ago, declared a national emergency. Does he start it with 'Chef,' or 'Chef Fields?' Should he just ask outright or should he ask for permission first?

Actually, fuck all that. If he's going to be able to do what he intends to do here, then he needs to be able to let Chef have it. He can at the very least talk to the man like an equal when they're not in the kitchen.

Any chance at all I'm in luck and you're trapped in Chicago right now & bored?

Nothing, for a few seconds, and then three dots, and then while Carmy's heart is still lurching from that, a picture. A window view of the city, with the reflection of a man's hand pulling back a curtain. It's even pointed this direction.

All right then. Carmy thinks for several seconds, then goes with simplicity;

I've lost a fridge & thought of more questions.

Chef doesn't make him ask twice.

9 am, chef?

Carmy breathes out a sigh of release, if not precisely relief. His anxiety is actually going up, instead of down, but at least he knows he's doing this. It's happening. Though he does correct;

Carmen.

Fuck, no, wait;

Or Berzatto is fine, I just mean no games this time.

Chef sends a thumbs up to the second text, so Carmen sends a thumbs up to 9 am, and sets his alarm right away. This is one of those habits he picked up from Chef's kitchen that was actually life-changing, to never assume for one second that his memory was one whit better than it actually is. There are clocks for that. Carmy can time a dish down to the second but he can't retain a number until tomorrow any more than he can add or subtract.

Chef's words have a habit of rattling around in his head, and it isn't easy to know where the noise ends and the echo begins. You're an irresponsible idiot, chef. Say it. I'm an irresponsible idiot, chef.

That had been one of those mistakes he hadn't made twice.

Not for the first time, Carmen thinks back to the last ten or so minutes of the last time they did this. Turrning the memory over and over in his head has almost become compulsive. He can't tell how to feel about it; a substantial part of him is sure that he's made an absolute idiot of himself under the eye of the most unforgiving man on the planet. Another, maybe even greater part, hates that he let Chef back in and then instead of standing up to him, immediately.

And yet, Carmy is inviting the man to come back here. No games to hide behind, this time.

He actually had beeter come up with some questions, hadn't he?

---

The moment their plans are settled, David puts his phone down, and stares up at his hotel ceiling in shock.

I think about you too often.

It's been David's turn. He'd started as soon as he got back to the house, holing up in office with his old laptop, peeling through jotted notes on encounters back at Empire. One or two jog his memory, stir up flashes of Berzatto's hands starting ever so slightly to shake, his face a flat mask. David's own voice, saying inexplicably, You'll never be anything, to anyone.

"Why is it?" he'd asked Ryan, later, "that I actually feel guiltier now than I did when I did the amending?"

"Because you've connected to him on a human level for probably the first time," is Ryan's placid response, over the phone, in deference to the weather, "and it's making you face the damage you caused in a way you didn't have to before. It's normal. It sucks- but it's a feeling you use to make sure you don't ever fucking do it again."

"How do I make sure I don't hurt him?"

"I don't know. The usual ways? Don't take anything he doesn't want to give you. Don't say anything that'll make him feel worse about himself, and if you have to, say it gently. Ask him about him, and listen to what he says?"

It isn't bad advice, all told.

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing here."

"I don't know either. But do you think walking away now would be better?"

No, and that isn't what David is really talking about... but again, the central question here isn't really one that's overtly on the table. Part of him suspects Ryan knows, and is choosing to give him his privacy. Part of him thinks if he knew, he'd be horrified. Trying to kick David out of NA. Trying to have him fucking arrested.

"He's asking for your help," says Ryan, when David doesn't look convinced, "asking for help is hard. I don't think you have any reason to believe it being you is inherently going to break him somehow, David. Not if he trusts you enough to do the asking."

Another thing he's had time to actually go over have been the Bear's reviews. He hadn't been lying before when he'd said he'd looked at them, but that had been a brief glance at the headlines and auto-generated summaries. Since, David has sat down and read each in chronological order. Saved all photos of all dishes to one folder, all other promo to another. Recorded the menus the critics each at, and on which date, and noted the impressive initial attempts at a daily alteration, then the gradual stabilization, simplification, maturation. But having worked a day in the space, David can also see where they're still chafing, where there will be more growing pains ahead. He doesn't think that kind of insight is what Berzatto wants from him. Nor is he at all convinced that this call is all about chopping vegetables. It probably isn't even about amends, either, at this point.

David knows hunger when he sees it. It scares him, honestly, but ultimately Ryan is right. If Berzatto- if Carmen is asking, David will answer.

"Talk to you in the new year, Ryan."

"Talk to you in the new year, David- and good luck."

He doesn't doubt he'll need it.

Chapter Text

Carmy gets to the Bear early, trudging through the deep snow in boots that aren't really doing the job for it. He kicks the clumps of snow off his feet on the landing, and gets straight to shoveling. The sidewalk clearer has left inconvenient runnels blocking their entrance from opening, and Carmy makes a hole so that Chef doesn't have to mountaineer his way into the restaurant.

On the way inside, he pauses at the host stand. On a whim, he taps on the small tablet Richie's team uses to monitor service. He can't remember the exact night that happened, but on a whim last night he'd looked up the principal dancer in the Nutcracker this year. Sure enough, Richie isn't full of shit, there's Ali Hussein for two, with the box checked for a romantic dinner.

Server note; footsie under table.

Ali Hussein is Chef's height, with dark, thick curls and striking cheekbones, per the furtive googling Carmy did in bed last night in three in the morning; too wired to sleep, too tired to think, or to resist the urge to crawl down an internet rabbit hole of production reviews, artist bios, and fan accounts. Hussein's publicly out- Chef isn't, Carmy checks again. In fact, there is no publically available information on any of Chef Fields' romantic relationship, nor any comments made by him on any LGBTQ+ issues whatsoever. "David Fields" + Sadist had popped a lot of hits, but all of them are PG complaints about kitchen culture. Nothing to suggest...

Carmy doesn't even know what it is he's suggesting here. Footsie under table?

He'd started googling at about 3:30 am. It's 4:15 now and he's kicking the snow off his shoes and locking the door behind him. If he's inviting Chef David Fields over to participate in a reset and prep, he'll be god damned if he lets the man see or do any of the actual sanitation work.

The first step of the day is to get every fridge, lowboy, drawer, and walk-in gets emptied, wiped, sanitized, and temp-checked. That means emptying fucking everything, checking all of it for spoilage along the way, and keeping notes as he goes, relabeling wherever necessary. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple more of the proteins than they should have, which feels like it's going to mean a few expensive repair jobs ahead of them.

Carmy fires the lamb onto the 'free to take' shelf, because frankly he'll eat it himself. He sketches out a quick inventory, then translates that into a set of lists under NEED / WANT / WISH. Wishes are good to note down to get out of his brain. Wants are virtually everything else. Need is one thing, and one thing only; BEEF.

There are an awful lot of needs in that first column, and a worrying number of them are there due to weather related cancellations.

On the to-do list for later is to reconcile the team's prep lists. He can write that down between live moments while he and chef get to work on everything that has a long shelf life or improves overnight. That's very doable for the two of them with a full day in peace and quiet.

Carmy likes working alone in his kitchen. In the blissful, serene silence, with the uncomplicated white floor stretched out in front of his vision, he can actually think for once. The rhythmic motion of the rag on the fridge is soothing. He sprays, puts elbow grease into it, sprays again. He inspects, and corrects. Restores perfect serenity to the universe.

While he works, he finds he can actually think, for once. Something about the rhythmic slide of cloth over steel reminds him that he has this entire however many hours ahead of him. He can actually contemplate it without wanting to have a panic attack, which he takes as a good sign. In fact, he's kind of looking forward to it. He does have questions.

He just has to have the courage to fucking ask them.

The kitchen is immaculate, and it's still a little before Chef is supposed to arrive. And, it's at the hour where it's become civilized to start calling suppliers a second time around to check if they're in yet. Carmen heads out to the dining room to sit in the window, to get a little of the pale sunlight while he calls everything in a hundred mile radius of this location that looks like it might have any amount of meat whatsoever.

He's just struck out with yet another butcher when a knock on the window next to him just about makes him jump out of his skin. He hangs up the phone mid ring, and hurries to go let the man in.

Chef Fields is wearing a nice black peacoat with a hat, gloves, and a scarf, and proper winter boots. He's carrying a to-go tray with two coffees, which he hands over to Carm without a word. Taking it, Carm sees one lid is marked decaf.

Chef pulls off his gloves, and Carm looks his own windburnt knuckles where he's clutching the tray. Probably Chef has the right idea. Chef is also wearing his glasses, which like last time, blind him the instant he walks through the door, interrupting his getting with muttered cursing and hasty wiping.

"Carmen," he says, when he can see again and has extricated himself from at least some of those layers. He reaches out, takes the tray back, and then offers across the regular coffee. Carm accepts it with a sound for gratitude, and takes a deep drink.

It's hot, and good, and restorative, and leaves him feeling better about the world than he did twenty seconds ago. When he looks back up, Chef is changing out of a pair of rugged winter boots and into a solid pair of kitchen shoes. Looking up expectantly, he asks;

"What's the crisis?"

Crisis?

Oh right-

"Weather closures, road closures, freezer blew, alarm didn't ring, network's being shit, power outage, generator failed, maybe the storm, maybe we didn't set it up right- either way, we're fucked for tomorrow unless we put our shoulder into it today. And let me be clear, we are fucked for tomorrow either way-"

"New Years Eve is always fucked."

"Exactly. Plus, catering order for the sandwich side- they're going to be on most of that by themselves tomorrow, but they lost their marinades and their sauces, and their fucking bread supplier, to the weather, so we're keeping buns going pretty much all day today to set them up for tomorrow, while also finding time to deal with finding them their beef. Which I have not found yet. Do you know anyone who has an extra - well - cow?"

"Yes," says Chef, no hesitation, and starts texting.

---

David listens to the breakdown of everything Carmen has pending, and privately revises his certainty that this is not really about the restaurant down by a few notches. That is a lot to have going on.

"Meat should be here at two pm," he says, the minute he gets confirmation, then looks up to find Carmen already back in the kitchen, working in the pastry alcove turning a ball of dough into a tray of buns, with brusque, well-practiced movements.

"Thank you, chef."

Carmen looks up from his bread, and David realizes why. Offers;

"David's fine."

"Thanks chef, but I think I'll drive myself crazy trying to remember, if it doesn't bother you."

"Far from it."

The opposite, in fact, though he doesn't say so now that Carmen has turned back down to the bread. The last one hits the tray with a pleasing thwap, and he moves to set them aside to let them rise. Even David's old pastry chef would have to agree they look perfect.

What had been Ryan's suggestion? Ask questions?

"The article I read mentioned this place had been in your family for awhile?"

"Our dad bought it," agrees Carmen, on his way to wash his hands in the sink. He says nothing more, not even when David waits a few seconds to see if he'll follow that up with anything.

"Could you work from recipes today?"

The logic of that suggestion is obvious. It'll be a lo easier than Carmen micromanaging both their work flows. David agrees, with a nod, and goes to wash his hand as Carmen heads off to go find the binder with the cards they need. House recipes and ratios, with photos for reference at each step. It's a well-crafted document that would let any trained chef start cold with fairly minimal guidance. David rifles through the pages he's been handed, and notes in disappointment that the ravioli isn't in among them.

It's also a much less direct interaction between them this way, which again, which is more evidence that this actually just is about the restaurant. David decides to take any disappointment he might be feeling out on the onions, beheading the first one then taking it to pieces at speeds, spleen venting into brisk clicks of the knife against the board. He's just getting into that pleasant, mellow rhythm with it when his phone starts buzzing.

That'll be the beef. David looks up at Carmen, who's already stopped what he's doing and is watching, expression twisted like from chewing the inside of his cheek. He stays quiet, so David answers.

"Jer."

"Dave," Jeremy answers, gruffly, but with real affection, "how you doing, man? The fuck are you doing in Chicago, and why does it require hundreds of pounds of raw meat?"

"Long story, tight deadline," says David, shaking his head back to adjust his glasses without having to touch and get onion juice on them. Speaking of, he moves to pin his phone between his shoulder and ear, and to head for the sink, even as he asks; "What have you got for me?"

"Heard. Let's triage. QGC P2?"

"Quick and good," are the two David picks of the possible three, obviously, which Jeremy likely suspected he would;

"Now how quick are we talking here, and how thawed does it need to be? Because-"

Jeremy starts running down options, and David listens for a moment, then realizes, he actuall has no idea. At the third or so variation, he opts for;

"Jer, wait one second, let me put me on with the chef whose kitchen it is. No C, okay?"

C being for cost, in their personal shortand. Jeremy has been David's wholesaler for seventeen years at this point, and he has connections in pretty much every city in the world. He's the best in the business.

"She hot, bro?"

David hates working with Jeremy. Maybe the current extinction event is a good thing.

"You tell me, Jer-Bear. Berzatto, here, just-"

David hands a surprised Carmen the phone- easy, since the young man's anxiety has drawn him in so close he's now actively hovering at David's elbow, vibrating and standing up on the tip of his toes. He snatches the line, shoves it to his ear, and immediately hares off with it, barking specifications and requirements in the clipped-yet-polite panic of a master of their craft fighting a clock to the fucking death.

There are things David misses about his job, and there are things he doesn't. He heads back to chopping onions, listening with half an ear for the call to end while he gets into the flow of the prep work.

He starts out with the lows and slows, the stock pots. The Bear uses fond de veau, fumet de poisson, and chicken stock. Two of the three recipes are David's own, he's more than a little touched to find. It helps that the fumet de poisson is Thomas Keller's. There's also a browned butter recipe that David has never seen before, and that makes him knit his brows with interest. This is the difference in that ravioli.

"Thank you chef," says Carmen, materializing quietly at David's elbow a moment later, offering him his phone back. "I really do appreciate it."

"Least I can do."

"That's kind of my question, actually."

David hesitates, because he doesn't understand, and it would be a tremendous mistake to assume. Given the space to compose his thoughts, Carmen continues;

"I know I've used up my amends already, but since you said it was an open door, and since you turned up here today... Can I ask you things about the business side?"

What a complicated idea. David looks up from his browning butter in shock, and then back down again, and requests;

"Check this for me, chef?"

Carmen crosses the kitchen at the near trot David could never quite scare out of him back at Empire, either. He'd smashed into a few fellow cooks in that state, too. Never if you called corner or behind, mind, but every god damned time you didn't, like clockwork. David had called it clumsiness or selfishness, but trible situational awareness fits better picture David has been developing.

"We need it darker than conventional wisdom would have it, chef. We're chasing the pain of the burn."

David reflects on that for a beat, as he continues to whisk.

"This was spectacular. You should know I'm stealing it before you let me prep it."

Carmen laughs in outright disbelief, and David wants to invent a time machine to go back and kick himself in the ass. He winces, and is trying to muster another apology when Carmen cuts in;

"Sorry, no- we don't need to retread old ground, I'm just still very much getting used to it. It's there, chef."

David turns off the heat with alacrity, and doesn't know what to say to stop Carmen trudging back off to his station.

"Have you eaten today?" he asks, on a whim, and gets a surprised over the shoulder glance that's as good as a 'no,' "I need to. Can I make a quick family?"

"Sure," says Carmen, looking flabbergasted. David heads into the walk-in to pick up a little of that pancetta they lost, and a rind of parmesan, plus a couple of the slightly wiltier vegetables.

Out front comes a grinding sound, and David looks over his shoulder to see Carmen at the bar out in the dining room, firing up a small espresso machine. Well, a cup won't kill him.

David splits his omelet in two, fetches their (trimmed, thank you) toast from the oven, butters it, and then approaches the dining room. Carmen is arriving at the table with two cups of coffee in one hand.

"I don't drink decaf, so I don't want to hear it if that shit's no good. You can leave a note for Richie, he'll love it."

The sarcasm deflects somewhat from the sweetness of the gesture, but David chooses to ignore it, and just says a simple thank you as he sinks down into his chair. Carmen's shoulders drop down from around his ears, and he settles in opposite David and reaches for his plate.

That's the expression of a man who didn't realize he was starving until he smelled the food.

David sets in on his own portion with considerable satisfaction. It's the first second he's seen the young man stop running this morning.

"Oh shit," says Carmen, after swallowing his very first bite. "I forgot to ask your friend if I could borrow a bone saw."

"Jesus Christ, Berzatto," says David, who of all things, had not been expecting that.

"For the forequarter, obviously. Don't look at me like that, this is why we have the hook in the walk-in."

"Okay, well. That's crazy, but it's your restaurant."

"I can do this," says Carmen, stubbornly, plainly working very hard not to talk with food in his mouth, despite how fast he's eating. He has work to get back to. David misses the feeling.

"So you didn't answer before."

"About what?" He's genuinely forgotten, but Carmen apparently hasn't.

"If I can ask you questions about the business side of things? There's just- shit I don't understand, and Andrea is who I would have asked before, and she-"

"She'd take your call," says David, with a shake of his head. He doesn't feel any particular need to get involved in this.

"She can't see it. And I'm in a position where I need to turn things around, quickly. You're a professional. What would you do to force all the profit you could out of a place like this?"

"Jesus Christ, Berzatto," says David, with a lot more vigor this time, "I can't possibly be the person to have this conversation with, can I?"

"I think you're the only person I know who won't lie to spare my feelings."

"I can't do anything but lie to spare your feelings. I'm your abusive asshole addict ex boss, in what universe am I going to be capable of giving you meaningful constructive criticism?" Which kind of knocks the wind out of David's chest to have to say, and seems to draw Carmen up short, by the way his mouth snaps shut. David pushes on; "Anyways, I don't understand your business nearly well enough to give you that kind of advice."

"Fine," says Carmen, disappointed to the point of actual breathlessness, looking back down at his omelet and not asking again. All at once, David realizes that this attempt at propriety is just leaving the young man alone, with no one to talk to.

"I'm terrified of what I did to you," says David, all at once, "it makes me kind of not know how to talk to you. I don't know how to be tactful in that way that you deserve. Given our history."

"I don't give a shit about tactful, chef. I just want someone to tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to do so that I can stop constantly disappointing and hurting every single god damn living soul in my vicinity. I asked you because you seem like you're actively trying not to be evil right now! I thought you might know?"

"Breathe," says David, and Carmen does, to the count of four, and in a perfect square, like David taught him last time.

David takes a contemplative sip of his coffee, and extends another olive branch;

"You're right. And if I had been a normal mentor, I'm who you would be able to call for business advice in this stage in your career. But I'm going to wait for you to ask. And I'm going to warn you, that I'm going to answer honestly. You can react however you want to that honesty, just don't-"

David stops himself, before he can say 'come crying to me later.' Berzatto never had, and David doubts he ever would. Ferociously self-sufficient, even though right now he's looking stunned and more than a little scared. Like he's been handed a sudden responsibility he hadn't quite expected to receive so suddenly. Like he's inherited a restaurant out of nowhere.

"Okay," says Carmen, almost breathlessly. Like he hadn't expected David to give in, and like now that he has, he's still working up the nerve. "Okay. What am I doing wrong?"

"You're running yourself into the ground. You're trying to do more than you can with the tools that you have, and you're managing to do it because you're spectacular, but you're going to start seeing your team burning out because they can't keep up. You need to assess the talent you have, the talent you plan to keep, and the talent you need to run the restaurant sustainably in the long term." Saying it feels like falling off a cliff, but Carmen doesn't lash out, doesn't interrupt. Just nods.

"You have the restaurant you have," adds David, into the silence, "but all over the place are these signs that you're fighting it? I have no idea how to describe it succinctly. I barely understand it myself. It's a great place, but I get why you're so fucking frustrated. It's real."

"Thank God," says Carmen, and "what do I do to fix it?"

"Well, work backwards. What exactly is going wrong?"

The first words out of Carmen's mouth weren't make the place better, they were make the place make money. The ingredients he's been working with have been incredibly high quality, but they're used well and priced for their value. He hadn't looked like he was overstaffed, the night David was in. Some of the crew were a little scruffy, but the Ever team more than made up for it... the place doesn't exactly sing in tune the way a good restaurant should, but it surprises David to learn they're that hard up for cash flow.

"We're doing okay but we're hitting this ceiling, and I can't figure out what it is or why or what to do about it, because I'm too exhausted to think."

Score one for Socrates.

"And to do that, you need to-?"

"Get five fucking minutes of breathing room between motherfucking shattering, debilitating, complicated, expensive crises?"

David snorts, and swallows the last of his eggs;

"That might just be the restaurant industry. I would schedule a afternoon out of here with your sous. Take her to dinner somewhere nice, and get her perspective."

"I might do that, actually," says Carmen, as he collects David's fork and plate, and hurries away with them to the kitchen, leaving David to consider his retreating back as he goes. He lingers on the last of his coffee, trying not to give into the impulse to feel smug about the aura of thoughtful calmness the young chef is carrying around with him. It's not just a nice feeling to be listened to though- it's also a good feeling to have helped.

"Fuck," mutters David, sotto voce. He continues to think about Carmen Berzatto too much, and predicts he will continue to think about him quite a bit in the near future. Probably while Carmen thinks all and only about his restaurant.

He is well aware that he deserves it.

Chapter Text

After their late breakfast, Carmen sets David up in pastry. There are panna cotta bases to be made, and tart shells waiting for him after that. Carmen, meanwhile, is setting up to receive the shipment of what turns out to yes, indeed, be most of a cow that he's decided to purchase. There's a fridge to be cleared, tools to be laid out, knives to be sharpened, people to be texted.

Jeremy's kid Richard arrives, and helps them out in getting the meat inside and up on the hook with practiced ease. He leaves, and David is still reading the instruction manual from the bandsaw (bone-saw for their purposes, but not what it's called; why on earth would it be?) when he hears the first whack from inside the little space.

Unable to resist his curiosity, he opens the door and finds Carmen Berzatto starting in on the seams between the muscle groups. David can take absolutely no credit for this particular set of skills; like most high end kitchens, his meat arrived processed down to vac-pacs. Vaguely, he recalls a note in his files wherein Berzatto asked about using more primal cuts in the restaurant. The answer had been an obvious 'fuck no,' and David had marked him down as a show-off. Watching him now, he wonders if that was one judgement that might have been right?

Carmen has every right to show off, though. A beef forequarter is the front part of the cow, basically, with the hooves and head and skin off but not too much else. This one is one weighs pound for pound pretty much exactly what Carmen himself does- or it did a second ago. Bits of it appear to already be coming off, under cleaver and meat hook and the sheer physical force of Carmen Berzatto.

David watches as long as he can get away with, in the process of checking temperature, recording receipt. He snaps a couple of photos, for Carmen to send to his team, and then a video for good measure, just ten or so seconds but inclusive the moment of impact of the cleaver, the way the young chef puts his frame into it, like an athlete on a heavy bag.

It's impossible not to be extremely aware that they're trapped in a tiny, closed space together, and that David is staring. More than is justified, even, by his helpfully hanging around to finish setting up that band-saw the Bear now owns. Jeremy hadn't been prepared to lend, but Richard had been very prepared to stop at a hardware store and add it to their bill.

Carmen doesn't notice David watching; probably wouldn't if the building caught fire right now, honestly. All there is to do is leave him to it, and remember to come get him in here if anything actually erupts into flames.

"How did you get so practiced at that?" David asks, when Carmen emerges an hour later with a tray full of the first slabs of meat. His work is in no way done; breaking down a cut like this will take even the best at least a few more hours. Carmen is only out taking the first part of what he's got off the beast to another fridge space, probably just to get out of his way, given the tight confines.

"Highschool job."

"Here?"

"Christ no."

That's all he gets, before the fridge door shuts him out again. David sighs, and goes back to pastry.

Among the articles he'd read during his research phase had been the short profile of Marcus Brooks from the Food & Wine award. The blurb had been short and sparse- 'new chef' features often are, given everyone's lack of work history is the point. David wonders where Carmen found him, and what the hell he did to him to get him so good so fast. Probably something very generationally appropriate, like addressed all negative behaviours immediately and without judgement, then talked about their feelings.

It's nice that things are improving, David reminds himself sourly, and goes to settle in with the scallops. He's just hitting the shuck-trim-dry rhythm when Carmen staggers, dazed and blood-stained, out of the fridge.

"Holy fuck," says Carmen, appreciatively, setting the last tray down on the first available station with shaking arms. It thuds pleasantly, overflowing with meet- breaking one of these things down is a little like unpacking a sleeping bag. Something about the efficiency of the animal's natural frame. What he's done so far isn't even close to all of it, but they can work on the rest tomorrow when the whole team is in.

Speaking of which;

"Carmen, I'm glad you called me- but don't you have a team working for you who should be here doing all this?"

"It's fine, I didn't need to." He absolutely did, but David isn't going to argue with him. Apparently, his silence isn't good enough, because Carmen insists; "I can do it."

"Obviously," answers David, tartly. "So could I. Not the butchery- I have no idea how you accomplished that, you're a freak of nature- but getting it all done. You can do it right up until the point you can't any more, Berzatto."

"You know you really don't have to call me Carmen," says the young man, not looking up from sectioning off portions of rib for a chef's special, at work on a quick and dirty wet-age with the help of the Bear's vac-sealer. David hears the sound the machine makes as the air pulls, and recalls a thousand times missing the sound, snapping at some subordinate to redo it.

"Okay," despairs David, and "understood, chef."

He can get the fuck back to work on the scallops.

---

It isn't until the last of the blood is washed off the fridge walls that Carmy realizes he has no idea what time it is, or honestly what day. There are a few disorienting seconds where he isn't even entirely sure what fridge he's in, it looks so different in here. He'll have to come in early and finish extracting the last few cuts, just so they can return their storage to normalcy, but that can be a problem for tomorrow.

For now, he heads back out to find Chef still at the scallops. There's a smell in the air Carmy doesn't recognize, until he sees a plate at his station- stir fry? Carmy less eats and more attacks the plate, actually just dropping down to sit cross legged next to his station, with the dish in one hand and the fork in the other. A 1L of water materializes next to him at some point, and he drinks, and looks up to find Chef standing over him, frowning. Carmy washes down his mouthful of rice (and his panic) with a deep swallow, and tries to remember what it is a human being would say in this context;

"Thank you, chef."

"You're welcome."

But Chef is still frowning. Carmy tries, for a second, to figure out what he's done, and then reminds himself he doesn't care and just goes back to eating.

"Are you all right?"

He is sitting cross legged on the floor, so he supposes it's a reasonable question.

"Not really," says Carmy, because he tries not to lie about this, though the deepening frown on Chef's face kind of makes him wish he had. He tries; "I will be?"

No dice. Maybe it's just the height of him, but Carmy is starting to feel a little uneasy with Chef's looming. He starts unfurling, to try to get up to deal with this attention, but is interrupted with a brisk;

"Stay."

Carmy stays. Chef, on the other hand, turns to go, vanishing off to some other part of the kitchen out of view of where Carmy has crumpled. Good, he can go back to eating his stir fry at a speed best not attempted in front of polite company.

It's kind of interesting that Chef is capable of cooking so simply. Carmy doesn't know why the idea surprises him, but he'd have thought the man would be a little closure to the menu at Empire in his personal preferences. Both the meals he's made so far have been kind of the opposite; healthy, hearty, flavourful and fucking good. A pea escapes his fork, and Carmy eats it quickly off the tile without thinking, then looks around guiltily to see if he's been caught.

No. Chef is nowhere in sight. Carmy uses the table leg to drag himself up to his feet, and staggers his dishes over to the pit. He refills his 1L, drinks, then turns around to take stock of his kitchen.

It's pristine. Chef works so clean, the only signs of him are his simmering stock pots and the current scallop set-up. Even the man himself has stepped out of the room for a moment. Carmen pads over to check his station, and discovers the cards Carmy left him organized into two piles; done and doing, with the scallop card face up on top of the to-dos.

Carmy picks the top card up with a fingertip, peeks underneath it, and finds left just the purees and the ravioli. More progress than he'd expected, and more than far enough along for Carmy to finally get back to writing his team's mise lists.

He hurries back to his own station in time for Chef to come back in out of the alley. Does he smoke? Carmy doesn't think so, but also knows the older man to sometimes have rules for thee but not for me.

"So do you prefer Carmen or Berzatto?" The question startles him into looking up. "Aside from the anxiety of having accidentally asked me to call you Carmen. Your wife called you Carmy, right?"

If Carmy was startled before, that's nothing compared to the way that absolutely fails to resolve itself into a sentence in the English language. Chef calling him Carmy. Chef- wait-

"My wife?"

Chef looks up from his scallops in surprise.

"Oh- I met a blonde Berzatto in the front of house?"

"Sugar!" That's funny as fuck. "Big sister, chef."

"I'm sorry." He actually sounds embarrassed. Carmy waves it off, with a flick of his fingers.

"Her name is actually Natalie, don't call her Sugar if you see her. Which is actually the answer to your question- you kind of don't get a name."

"Howso?"

This is a little like trying to explain to an octopus how feet work, but Carmen gives it a try;

"Okay, like. I'm Berzatto until there's an older Berzatto on the scene, then I'm Carmen, until there's an older Carmen on the scene then I'm Carm or Carmy, depending on if you're a guy or a girl, if you're warm or cold. And there's like- six more layers, at least, and never mind people with their own systems entirely. Like I'm Carmen to my mother, until I'm in trouble."

Chef smiles faintly as his scallop slips neatly into his hand, and guesses;

"Carmen Middlename Berzatto?"

"'Fucking asshole,' more often." Carmy's breathes out a huff of a laugh. "Carmen Anthony comes out when she needs to lay on the guilt. But yeah- sorry, I'm not actually trying to be weird about it. You can call me whatever you want."

"I'm happy to call you whatever you're most comfortable with. I like Carmen, but I understand if you prefer to be Berzatto."

Oh. That hadn't been anything like what Carmy was thinking Chef would be thinking- and it makes him realize, suddenly, that he's still very much treating the man like a bomb that's about to go off.

"I'm sorry."

Chef looks up, expression asking why. Carmy explains;

"I don't know why I keep expecting you to be an asshole."

"I do," says Chef, with a tiredness in his voice that triggers a guilt spike in Carmy to rival the use of the Anthony. "Please don't keep apologizing. I'd actually call it fair if you were still why why why ing me."

"Yeah, well. That's too annoying to keep up with, even from the other side of it. I don't know how you sustained the energy, honestly."

"Well, the pharmaceutical grade speed helped."

Is that what that stuff is? Carmy needs to learn more about drug stuff. And speaking of which, he has a sudden, worrying realization;

"Shit- you aren't supposed to be doing full shifts, are you. It's-" a glance at the clock, "-fuck!"

"Carmen, it's fine."

"No, it's not, your heart's weird and I've got you doing my entire prep list while I'm fucking around with trim for tallow, oh my fucking god, I'm the asshole, Chef, I'm so sorry-"

"Chef."

The word has the weight and strength of an iron band. On reflex alone, Carmy shuts up and breathes in to a count of four, holds, and then feels the breath rush out of him in a shudder at the look of overt approval on Chef's face.

"Listen to me, chef." A long pause, while Carmy just breathes, and listens. "You don't need to handle me. If I needed to stop, I'd tell you I was going to stop. You have enough on your plate, you aren't invited to start tracking my needs right now any more than you'd start cooking yourself dinner in the middle of the rush. I am under control. I will tell you exactly what I need from you, and when."

Right now, it feels the nicest thing anyone has ever told him. Carmy closes his eyes and sighs all the way out, letting himself just enjoy a few seconds basking in all that calm certainty.

This is why he needs this asshole's advice. This ex-asshole's advice.

"If you could tell me to do one thing here," he says, with his eyes shut, "and you knew I had to listen to you, what would it be?"

Chef scoffs, then falls silent for a moment, which Carmy recognizes as him actually giving the question a beat of thought.

"Two hours with an RMT."

Carmy hazards a weak guess;

"Restaurant management training?"

"Registered massage therapist."

Which, what? Carmy is at least confused enough to stop panicking, for a moment.

"I meant for the Bear."

Silence, while Chef considers that. Carmy waits a few seconds, and then opens his eyes to find Chef not looking around the place for things to fix, but rather looking at Carmy. Chef used to use silence to torture people, which never did to much to Carmy. Now he's picking up pretty clearly that this is just Chef thinking it over thoroughly. He'll actually be able to consider it from every angle, and come up with an answer.

"Stop trying for a star," says Chef, and just about knocks Carmy off his feet and back down into a crumple on the floor. Somehow he manages to hang on to his station and not hit the floor. He hadn't even told Chef he was, he doesn't think?

"Fuck you. What- why?"

"Because the perfect has become the enemy of the good. Unless you decide it's your business model to be perfect; then do it and do it properly. You're more than capable of it. But right now, you're trying to do too many things at once, and at least two of them are incompatible. It's like being a little bit hungry after work and deciding you'll solve it by following half the directions to get home and half the directions to get to the grocery store, then being surprised when you end up in Bushwick."

Well fuck him. It's so much worse that he's right.

"The star would change everything. We'd be overbooked every single night."

Chef nods, but with a shrug, like that wouldn't matter. Maybe it doesn't to him, any more. Can Carmy honestly say it matters to him?

It's a lot to think about. And instead of thinking about it, he bends back down to his prep list drafting, leaving Chef to shuck scallops in silence.

Chapter Text

At five o'clock, Carmy again tries to tell chef he can go, and once again gets a short sharp look and no departure.

"I've been waiting for this part," says Chef, inexplicably, as Carmy starts rolling out the ravioli dough. Rather than assuming this is a jibe or a bad joke, and ending up apologizing again for not giving him the benefit of the doubt, Carmy tentatively tries believing that Chef might actually be interested.

"It's a family recipe," he'll grant, and admit to himself at least that it is uncommonly good, is one of his favourite things on the menu. He's made this dough so many times his hands know the way without his brain actually needing to kick in at all. He takes a little pleasure in rolling the pasta out thin, much thinner than Chef ordered it done in his kitchen, though back then they stuffed theirs with meat, which necessitates the thicker wrapper. This, though, can be showy with its' delicacy.

Chef watches openly, despite ostensibly being distracted by mixing together the filling. Ricotta, spinach, pistachio, lemon zest, salt and funnily enough, white pepper. Maybe Chef actually does like it? Maybe that's why?

Carmy feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle as Chef approaches while he's still leaned over, cutting their work into squares. Normally here would come a comment about his lines, or the spring of the dough, but this time Chef just sets the filling down on the tabletop next to him. It looks perfect, naturally, but Carmy still grabs an extra spoon to steal a quick taste.

Perfect, naturally, so he scoops out the first dollop and pops it on one of the squares of down, then shows Chef quickly how the Bear finishes theirs. Not that he doesn't know; Carmy had watched him eat the stuff with enjoyment just a few months ago. Still, Chef watches politely, and waits for the permission Carmy hums to come stand next to him to start from the other end of the sheet.

"How did you get your team able to handle these without breaking them?"

"It took some work," admits Carmy, thinking of Tina and her many hours snarling over pasta pots, "but the chef is passionate, and she's talented."

"This is Adamu?"

It takes Carmy a second to remember, that's Syd.

"No, she's on grill. Syd started after I did. Tina's been here- shit, seven years now?"

Silence from Chef; Carmy glances up and finds him adapting his hyper-precise style to match Carmy's, without needing to be asked. Flattening corners to be a bit more blunt, using his fingertips instead of the metal tools they'd used for the dish back at Empire.

"Who else did you keep?"

"Everyone, basically," Trying to think whether this is true, but yes, it is; at Chef's look of disbelief, Carmy explains; "some work on the sandwich shop side."

One works on the sandwich shop side. Two made the jump to cooking fine dining, which as he stops to think about it in the context of Chef David Fields standing in front of him, is actually kind of unbelievable.

"I saw Brooks in Food and Wine." Br-? oh, yes, Marcus, obviously. Carmy actually grins. "You must be proud?"

"Beyond. He's a good guy."

"His pie dough needs work," says Chef, absently, then looks up from his dumpling with a guilty little start that actually makes Carmy snort. Maybe he'd be more offended if it weren't obvious how hard Chef is working not to be critical- and anyways, it's true.

"No pies on the menu, you'll notice." Relief, from Chef, so Carmy grants him the topic change; "Speaking of which, your tarts were a huge hit with the birthday girl, so thank you again for that."

"How much of a preference does a child that age have?"

Carmy isn't exactly surprised Chef doesn't spend a lot of time hanging out with babies.

"You'd be surprised. They're, uh. Vocal. Even compared to customers."

Chef's turn to snort. He'd never permitted shit-talking the patrons back at Empire, but everyone who cooks secretly kind of likes to, is Carmy's theory.

They continue working, quietly, while Carmy tries to think up ways to ask about Ali. The tray is done before he comes up with anything, and Chef straightens up with a reluctant sigh.

"I do need to stop for today."

No! They'd just been- Carmy had just- but Chef is already asking;

"Do you want me back tomorrow?"

He does, but then remembers two things. First, that the whole crew will be in, so they won't be working together quietly over a pan of ravioli. Everyone will be here, everyone will be screaming, and everyone will have questions.

Second;

"Its New Years Eve."

He must have plans. Only, no, by the unconcerned little shrug. Carmy had marveled at him, once, at the idea that he had friends, but now he kind of wonders. Would he be spending it up in Muskegon, if he could, surrounded by people there? Shouldn't he be spending it with Ali? Carmy realizes Chef is heading for the dining rom and follows, wondering, out loud; "Is there a ballet on New Years?"

"No idea," says Chef, absently, as he changes shoes, "why? You'll be here, right?"

"Right," agrees Carmy, not looking at the host stand and any details it may or may not contain. This is where he should come up with something else to say. Unfortunately it's also the point at which his voice dries up.

Chef gets back up to his feet, now all assumbled with his bag and hat and great big coat that somehow makes him look even broader and taller. If he hadn't been a perfect chef, Carmy kind of thinks he could have been a movie star.

"Safe drive," Carmy wishes him, as he gets the door and lets him out into the silent, snowy street, and the shadow of the early winter night.

By the time he's figured out what else he'd liked to have said, Chef is gone in the dark.

---

David trudges back to his hotel, cursing himself for not calling a cab from the warmth of the restaurant. He tries, as he goes, not to let himself feel at all disappointed about the day. First of all, amends aren't about you, they're about the other person. Second, this little fixation had been ludicrously inappropriate. He should be fucking grateful that Carmen- that Berzatto is neither reciprocating nor entertaining it.

He would probably have been fine to leave it there, except when he gets to his hotel there's a text waiting for him;

I should have said thank you properly, before you left.

Carmen had, in fact, thanked him over a dozen times throughout their day, but David doesn't remind him of that. Instead, he lets out a long, drained sigh, and reminds himself that his job right now is to help. For that reason and that reason alone, he composes a reply right away rather than leave him to wait.

You didn't need to.

Why the ballet?

David had, in fact, been trapped in town when Carmen had called. He'd already checked in by the time Dr Berhouzi's office called him to admit they were having to close. David had taken a look at the road condition warnings and hunkered obediently into his hotel.

Technically, he'd been on call to be seen for a backup appointment when he spent his day in the Bear. Dr Berhouzi's office had called, and David had stepped out to take it, to reluctantly agree to be seen at seven pm that night. He'd still half planned to skip it, if he'd felt the need to, but by then the day had turned unhappy enough that he was half glad to slink out into the night.

Restaurant advice. It's a perfectly normal thing to want. And what a better way to build trust an intimacy with a person than by attacking their artistic expression? Especially when the entire past context that you're working to overcome is one of of hyper-criticism. What very specific hell is he in?

He thinks briefly, of Carmen sitting on the floor in a daze, looking up at him and accepting water with a look of gratitude.

These two pictures do not feel like they can coexist in the same universe. Unfortunately, the one he prefers is in his own best interest, and not in Carmen's. Which means, willingly doing the responsible thing, and smothering this crush to death in the crib. He is twenty years older than his old chef, at least, and more importantly, he is just not entitled to entertain the fantasy.

This decision sustains him all the way through to the waiting room of the outpatient clinic, and submits to being surveyed, then asked the same question by the nurse a mere thirty five minutes later in the intake room. David is weighed (up four pounds, to his irritation,) and subjected to the blood pressure cuff (numbers not as good as last time, but better than when he started) and finally told to strip and get on the table. He's getting grimly used to echocardiograms these days.

Usually the sonographer doesn't frown.

"Mr Fields," says Dr Berhouzi, once David is dressed again and up and waiting for him. They'd had a brief dust-up early in treatment, where Dr B had called him David.

"Do you prefer Farhad?" David had asked, which had earned a confused look and a polite no; "Then I'll be Mr Fields, Doctor."

He'd expected to change cardiologists, again, but Dr Berhouzi had grinned at him, slapped his own knuckles, and pushed on without a word of complaint. Years of stress and abuse have weakened the muscle tissue of the heart, enlarging this and that ventricle, thinning walls that should be thick. The goal, he'd explained, had been to create a lifestyle that would support the heart to remodel. Low caffeine, low sodium and generally healthy diet, no drugs, no alcohol, good sleep, moderate exercise.

"Oh, so, no life," David had quipped, earning the pressed-lipped smile you give a joke you've heard a hundred times before.

"I have a patient who tells me it helps her to think of it in terms of paying back all the extra life she took out on loan, when she was contributing to her condition, if that helps?"

It had and it hadn't. It certainly doesn't now, looking across the table into Dr Berhouzi's guarded expression.

"I've been really careful," David insists, as though that will change the results. "Do you know how little salt I let myself use when I cook? It's infuriating and disgusting."

"I know," says his doctor, "but your left ventricle is still more dilated than we'd like to see at this stage. It's time to talk about increasing your medication."

Christ. The pills are already an unwelcome daily presence, and it seems like every time he comes back here there are just more, and more, and more of them.

"Look, Mr Fields- it's not the worst news I could be giving you," that would be that it's time to start talking to a cardiac surgeon, "but it isn't easy. Do you have someone you can talk to?"

"I do." He just doesn't intend to talk to them. "Thank you doctor."

Doctor Berhouzi shakes his hand on the way out, and wishes him a happy New Year, before turning down his hall to go see the next patient. Is his heart going to get weird, David wonders? Does the irony occur to him?

After the appointment he makes himself send Carmen the video of the processing of the forequarter. It feels a little silly, having taken it, but David knows how the publicity game works and knows what that kind of material can do for social media. It's one aspect of the trade he absolutely does not miss.

No reply. Which, as he's established, is genuinely for the best.

David does something he hasn't in a while, and takes himself to a meeting. There are two dozen tonight, being it the season. The one he picks is twenty minutes from now and a ten minute walk away. Again, David immediately regrets taking it in the snow. Fuck this city. Fuck this country. He shouldn't have run away to Muskegon, he should have run away to Greece, or at least somewhere where they sky doesn't try to periodically to kill you three months of the year. If only they had this caliber of cardiologist.

There's an AA group in the community centre ahead of them, so David settles down in the lobby to wait, and to figure out what the fuck he's going to do. First things first, he texts Ryan the big news- composing and deleting until the alcoholics start to pile out. Some chat, some are recovering from tears, some are double-hitters, who stay in the room to wait for their next meeting to start.

"I get back home," says one man, despairingly, "I've got my six month chip, and I've told them that, right, and they're all so fucking proud of me- but then mom has that shit right on the table. And I know it's my responsibility, not hers, but it still feels in this weird way like she doesn't even care?"

"I've been home for three days, right? And after dinner today, I get a headache. I go to the medicine cupboard to do something about it, and I find out, they hid the advil," another woman complains, "like, 'Liquigels, what a score!'"

The room laughs. The fineness of the line is not lost on David. It really is easier to just not have people around who have to deal with this.

"I'm so fucking angry at myself," he says, when it's his turn, and then just... stops there. That's really all there is to it, isn't it? "Thank you."

Usually there's more to it than that, but David gives himself a little grace and just sits through the rest of the meeting with his eyes closed. His phone, at some point, vibrates in his pocket, but David knows it'll be Ryan, and that Ryan will just be telling him to get to a meeting.

They end with the same prayer, as always;

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The group says 'amen,' and David skips it- he has not become religious, despite his weekly or biweekly meeting attendance.

The Godliness of it all is a little much some days, but he follows Ryan's advice and mentally substitutes 'experts' and / or 'program,' as required. He has accepted he is powerless to control his drug usage alone, and so has turned himself over to the higher power that is the collective human wisdom. A whole group of people banding together to try their god damn fucking hardest to stay clean; humans are a collaborative species, and accomplish more together than they can apart. David can learn from the experience of being in this group, and the faith for him is the faith that he wouldn't be better off just doing it alone.

Honestly, his faith in even that much is feeling a little bit shaken tonight. All he wants in the world right now is to slink off alone.

David's phone buzzes a second time. He stays in his seat a second or two after the others get up, checking it quickly, and finding the most recent message is from Ryan, who has an uncanny knack for texting exactly when David needs him. He'd been supposed to check in after he left the Bear, and now it's 9 pm and he hasn't.

But that's just the most recent text. Underneath it;

FOH tells me we just had a two-top cancel for tomorrow. If you're still in town, could I thank you with dinner?

David pauses, and bites the inside of his cheek. Texts;

Thank you for the thought, but I'm already halfway back to Muskegon.

He hits send, and then gets to his feet, to hurry out after the others, since it looks like the next program is already rolling in. It's an Al Anon family group, by the sign papered to the door, and the good news of the night is he's just solved the mystery of what fellowship Carmen might be a part of.

"That's embarrassing," is the bad news, from Carmen himself, shoving his phone back in his pocket and stopping cold, in front of him. He's come straight from the kitchen, from the looks of him, which means at least three more hours of probably very hard work, on top of whatever he'd done in the morning before David got there. "Do you just not like our cooking, or-?"

It's finally the thing that makes him realize that although his energy levels are better, they're nowhere near where the used to be. Things being better does not mean things are back to normal. He still coughs at night when he lies down. Still adjusts his shoe and boot laces constantly to adjust for his aching feet. Still feels breathless right now- though that may just be getting caught lying. He tries to think of something to say, and finds that he actually, really, genuinely cannot breathe.

"Hey..." says Carmen, eyes widening in alarm, and David grunts to cut him off and forces himself to really, actually, breathe. His voice comes out a little flat, but clear enough.

"I'm sorry. I'm just tired."

"No," says Carmen, which irritates David enough that it must show on his face, because Carmen immediately apologizes, "sorry, no, I mean, I know you're tired. I just. I do this too, and with me it's pretty much always anxiety."

Right. David swallows, hard, and nods. But this is not a relationship where he gets to indulge in anxiousness, so;

"What do you need from me?"

"Nothing," says Carmen, "or, approval, or just maybe periodic reminders to keep breathing. Or to feed you some of the pasta I feel like I almost killed you with by having you make. I'll be on the line, so you won't have to deal with me or my questions."

David takes another step towards the door, and Carmen's expression twists, as he moves forward to stop him, raising a forestalling hand as he does.

"Hey, are you guys okay-?"

"Fuck off," David tells the good Samaritan who's trying to rescue him from Carmen's apparent haranguing. She gasps, and hurries away, into the Al Anon meeting that Carmen had been about to attend, which just makes David wince harder. "I really am tired. You've got a meeting to get to, chef."

"Yeah," agrees Carmen, a little wide eyed, "well. Um. I do hope you change your mind."

David gives him a tight smile, and goes before he can make this worse.

He just about crawls into his hotel bed, when he finally makes it there, fully dressed and with barely the energy to shock his coat and toe off his shoes. Face down in the pillows, he congratulates himself on disconnecting reasonably gracefully. He can still answer questions, but he doesn't need to blur lines any further in terms of what this actually is. If he wants a bright, pretty young thing to order around and cook for and occasionally whip into a puddle of endorphins and then fuck through the floor, he can call Ali back.

Maybe he should. Maybe Ali would be free. He starts to wonder, it's New Years Eve tomorrow, would the ballet be perfor...

David sits bolt upright in bed and snatches for his phone.

---

Carmy doesn't know, exactly, what possessed him to make the offer. Maybe it was getting that video and realizing Chef had taken the time to take it. Maybe it was sending the video to Syd and realizing how good it was that he did; she's already got it already up on Instagram. He'd just wanted to warn her that service tomorrow was going to be an adventure, but she has a better idea.

Caption: When your lamb delivery gets cancelled during the worst snowstorm of the year, it's time to improvise with whatever you can get your hands on locally. Chef Berzatto brings it back to the Beef. Hashtag something something, hashtag beef, hashtag Carmy fucking hates hashtags.

They're getting a little pushback from the PETA people, but the culinary nerds are apparently interested, and Syd thinks making it into a feel-good story of winter resilience will soften the dining room up to how many changes they've had to make to the set menu.

The cancellations are still coming in, unfortunately; out of towners who couldn't make it to the city after all, and a couple more cases of covid... they've refilled a few with their waitlist, but most of those people have already made plans elsewhere, and anyways, Carmy wants to hang onto this two-top.

Partly, he thinks it'd be good for Chef to get the full experience again. Eat everything with an eye to feedback, be able to tell them what's good and what's great, what's great and what's perfect. But if he's being honest with himself, that isn't actually all of it. Maybe not even most of it?<

"I went out on a limb tonight," he shares, not looking over at Linda, who will not make eyecontact with him after her brush with Chef's temper, "and I got rejected, and I'm working not to let myself think that it's because he can see the truth about me? You know, like- it makes sense, obviously it's a no, because I am everything I feel like I am?"

A few pressed smiles around the room. They know this dance.

Carmy leaves it there, and half-listens the rest of the meeting. Chef had looked... tired, he'd said, yes, and yes- that, but also he'd looked- tired and sorry, sad and ashamed?

His phone chirps. He's forgotten to silence it, and gets dirty looks from the others during the last few moments of prayer, which Carmy always finds comforting, even as a rather lapsed Catholic. Afterwards, when he looks, and sees it's from Chef, he takes the time to head outside to privacy to get it open- and good thing he does, because what he reads actually makes him jump off the ground and into the air.

I'm an idiot. Of course I'd love to, if you still have room for me?

Carmy replies;

9 pm.

Chef likes the reply, and Carmy's knees just about buckle, before he throws his head back and whoops in some emotion, he doesn't know what, just that it's bright and loud and makes him feel like he stands a chance. Of what, he couldn't tell you, but after months in the dark he'll take whatever he can get.

Chapter Text

David initially makes the conscious decision that he's not going to tell Ryan what he's doing. It's too weird, too complicated, and too personal. Obviously Ryan will tell him not to do it, and then David will decide to do it anyways, and then he will feel like a piece of shit. The easy and obvious way to circumvent that is to say nothing. The minute that's decided, David realizes that if he's at that point then it's too unethical to proceed with what he's doing. Part of recovery for him has been learning to recognize that feeling of starting to hustle, to handle, to control. So, David just rips the bandaid and calls.

"Berzatto asked me to dinner," says David, without preamble, "and if he propositions me, I think I'm going to sleep with him."

"Ten points from Slytherin," says Ryan, "for Slytherin? Could go either way."

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm exhausted, and I forgot you have no culture."

"Am I going to hell or not, Ry?"

"That's between you and the big guy, babe. You didn't sign a paper swearing yourself to celibacy when you decided to get your life together. You aren't the only person in program who'd be sleeping with someone they hurt when they used. I'd be lying if I said it didn't sound risky, David, but you're both grown ups."

That is... not what David had expected him to say, honestly. He'd been expecting judgement, derision, denial, and instead here Ryan is being thoughtful, measured, and encouraging. Which is funny, because this is actually almost always how these conversations go; you'd think by now David would have learned that the standards he imagines Ryan holding him to as often as not come from within.

"Do you think you might be doing the thing again where you martyr yourself to some impossible standard to feel better about being horrible, miserly, and lonely? Thereby keeping yourself feeling that way, and feeling like you deserve to feel that way?"

David hangs up on him. He has standing permission to do so whenever he feels the need.

Okay, so, he's going. He lets go of the last tiny bit of hope that Ryan would talk him out of it, and he could spend another night in the safety and dark of another anonymous suite, and drags himself up out of his bed to get dressed.

David still owns a few good suits from New York, and he's glad he always brings one with him to the city. It's rarer these days that he needs to spontaneously appear in formal dress, but it isn't unheard of for something like this to come up. Mark likes to go to dinner in good restaurants, and David never misses an excuse to go to Alinea, Smyth or even Oriole.

He wears that suit now, for the Bear, and turns up at 8:55 exactly, to find he barely recognizes the place now that it isn't temple-quiet. With the lights low, the dining room full, the music playing and the kitchen humming, the place feels more like a nightclub than the temple it does in the daytime.

It also occurs to David belatedly that he will have to talk to people other than Carmen while he's here. Also, the warmth and personability of the maitre d' seems to have diminished considerably? Enough so that one of the imports from Ever overtly steps in front of him, and rushes to greet him;

"Chef, glad to see you again. Won't you follow me to your table?"

It's a quiet little seat tucked away in a corner of the dining room, and luckily for David it has a perfect view into the kitchen. Carmen, casual and poised, with his foot hitched up on the cross-beam of his station, reading his calls with clarity and confidence. Yes chef, the team answers back.

Tina, the other survivor of the Beef, is at her station, and she is the one he thought he remembered seeing. Older, shorter, and sweating to keep up with her team. She's doing it, but David disguises a wince on her behalf as he sits down. He thinks she's probably close to his age, and he wouldn't want to be working this shift. Not even last year, before the symptoms really started to hit.

Carmen looks at the clock, then looks out at the dining room, at the door then over at David's table, where he apparently sees what he's looking for, by the very visible jolt that goes through him. David raises his fingertips in greeting, and twists him a wry smile, even as he watches about four separate people in this room decide they're going to be asking one or both of them questions.

Is there any chance he's currently having a heart attack in some other timeline, and this is all a Jacob's Ladder scenario of some kind?

Garrett explains the substitutions, with a very well-branded retelling of Carmen and David's snowstorm butchery adventure that conspicuously leaves out David himself. Garrett doesn't even seem to know about the judicious editing, going by the guileless look on his face. David makes all the appropriate noises in return, and settles in to enjoy the experience of watching the restaurant go by.

The sense of split personality in the place deepens, the more he watches it work. It's like at one point in the design, the goal was to be a fantastic local restaurant, and then later on someone else (Carmen?) decided that they had to be an international fine dining destination. This is after simplification, too; the changing menu he'd read about, the dishes with five, sometimes six components. How they use a lot of special import ingredients, like mangosteen and bluefin tuna; ostentation for ostentation's sake.

The food that makes it to his table is doing an exceptional job at straddling the line between both versions of the restaurant; they're all the kinds of dishes you could and should serve in good local restaurant, but elevated and executed to technical perfection. David has tasted a lot of these plates recently, and sampled more of it while he cooked yesterday. Even so, everything he recognizes is an absolute pleasure to eat again. Everything he doesn't, he enjoys all the more for being able to imagine how it was improvised by the team this morning. Beef for lamb, now on risotto with a bright acidic tomato confit. The slightly wilted peas repurposed into a puree. Mint and feta, butter and honey, mushroom and garlic.

The ravioli is better than the first time he had it, probably because Carmen took on all the prep, and he executes at a level even higher than what he's managed to whip his team up to. Again, David's eyes close, quite unbidden. Again, when he opens them and looks, he finds Carmen Berzatto watching.

David meets his eyes, and watches him go warm and easy in delight at David's evident enjoyment. Carmen turns back around as a new ticket arrives to steal his attention, and David turns his attention back down to his dish.

"How is everything?" asks a voice, as a frame suddenly looms into view.

This is someone he doesn't recognize. The man is older than he is, heavy set with greying hair and thick glasses. He's wearing a very good suit and a rather sharp smile, and intuitively David knows there's some kind of trap here. This is not friendliness.

"Jimmy Cicero. I'm the money in this place."

Oh. David actually gets to his feet, in surprise, and extends a hand to shake.

"David Fields."

"Carmy's old boss, back in New York?" Oh God, here it comes; "Wife and I came up there once or twice. Loved the restaurant. There was a foie gras craquelin that I haven't stopped thinking about since."

And, oh God, that hadn't been what he'd been expecting at all. He'd loved that dish too. David permits his hand to be pumped, enthusiastically.

"Thank you," he says when he's recovered from his shock, "and congratulations on this place. It must have been an exciting couple of years?" Restaurants are a notoriously fickle business, and he remembers Carmen's question about making the place make money. A present investor, can be a real source of pressure. Cicero is beaming affably now, waving off an hint of stress with a dismissive gesture, but there's some firmness in that handshake and a steeliness in that stare that makes David wonder where exactly that money came from.

"Well, you're in good hands with Berzatto."

"Bear-zatto, not burr. Like," gesturing around them, "the Bear."

...oh God, what the fuck, okay, of course, obviously, but also why the fuck hadn't Carmen said? What had been a pleasant conversation goes the rest of the way off the rails right about here, and David honestly feels his universe return to normal again as the baseline feelings of humiliation and regret swim back up to top of mind, where they like to live these days.

"How did you connect to the opportunity?" David tries, composed and casual; Carmen Berzatto is one of the best in the world, and had been barely scratching the surface of his potential, executing other people's visions. There would have been a bidding war to invest in his first place, David guesses.

"I'd leant Mikey some money when the place was still the Beef." It takes David a second to connect the dots; right, the old family joint; "They were working on was supposed to just be a facelift, but then they found mold, and about six more versions of that kind of crisis, until someone decided 'call uncle Jimmy.' It was an easy yes; Bear's a good kid, and he's been through a lot."

Okay, so he does know about Empire? As used as David is to recrimination and threat, the thing that throws him most about is the obvious affection and teddy bearish way he says the nickname. 'Bear' was left out of the etymology of Carmen Anthony Berzatto he was treated to yesterday, he can't help but notice.

"He's tough, and determined. I have a lot of respect for him," is the most honest thing David can come up with to say, "and I'm trying not to be an asshole."

"Oh, that's not what this is. He's an adult," says Cicero, shaking his head, "he can eyefuck anyone through the pass he wants, please carry on."

Oh God. David lets that sink in a second. He considers denying it, but swearing no homo genuinely feels below his dignity- and probably wouldn't work, anyways, if Cicero is confident enough in what he's caught to call it out directly. He takes a quick, worried look in at Carmen, who David would have thought was closeted. Whether he is or isn't, he has absolutely clocked the current interaction and put his back to it. David absolutely knows the line of his spine when he's studiously ignoring what's going on outside in face of focusing desperately on his food. David sees the redness on the back of his neck from here, and doesn't need to wonder if Uncle Jimmy asked his nephew for permission before coming over.

"I actually do suggest you be nice to him, or you'll learn in a hurry how he's gentlest Berzatto in the family."

It takes work to not admit his surprise. Another glance at the window, at those furled shoulders, like Carmen is trying to collapse in on himself and vanish.

"I don't pretend to understand him yet."

Cicero hears the yet, and gives David a very polite smile that makes David wonder again where exactly where that money came from and what the consequences would be if the Berzatto clan deem he has wronged their prodigal.

Mercifully, their table appears to be in the process leaving. A lot of them are, clearing out to go watch the ball drop in some bar with some television, probably. Service starts to slow, despite somehow having been handled so elegantly that no one actually gave the impression of rushing even at the height of the rush.

The meal finishes with a black current pavlova that makes him forget where he is, for a couple of heartbeats. It's still melting on his tongue when the lanky, scrappy maitre d' stands up in the diningroom and taps a fork against a glass, calling;

"Ladies and gentlemen, friends and family, one and all. It is 11:59 pm on the last day of the year, and I'd like to take this moment to thank you all for choosing to be here to end it with us, there should by now be a glass of champagne on each of your tables to raise to toast in ten, nine, eight-"

The flute is indeed there, appeared almost as if by magic while their attention was drawn to the speech. David picks his up, though he doesn't join the countdown with the rest of the restaurant. He looks into the kitchen, at the beaming, yelling faces of the triumphant cooks, who know they've finished out the new year with aplomb. To Carmen, who isn't joining in, but rather standing, seemingly lost in space, staring out at nothing until they get to three, then snapping his gaze into focus and staring hard at David for two, one, and-

"Happy New Year!"

David arches a delicate eyebrow at Carmen, and gives him a quick smile that he knows is somehow both suggestive and intimidating.

The satisfaction of earning that hard of a blush makes every part of getting to this moment completely worth it.

David looks down first, to strategically let Carmen look away and compose himself, before anyone (else?) notices them staring each other down. He stays put as the last of the guests at the other tables begin to pack up and go.

"Chef?" asks Garrett, helpfully, cueing David to ask;

"The bill, please, and could you let Chef Berzatto know I don't mind waiting for him here, or nearby if he prefers the dining room cleared while he closes?"

He will be waiting, is the implication of two structured choices. Garrett slips away and whispers something to Tall Lanky, who naturally casts David a poisonous look before stalking into the kitchen.

---

"Yo cuz, fuckstick wants to talk to you after service. Can I put him out on his ass yet?"

"Water under the bridge," Carmy defends, shaking his head, "Just leave it, thanks Richie. I'll deal with him after."

"That's who's been cooking in our kitchen," says Syd, in triumphant outrage. She's been bothering Carmy to know how he accomplished yesterday, and 'by himself' hadn't answered the question of who was holding the camera on him working on the forequarter. "Holy, Carm, you could have said something!"

"Is that who reorganized my station?" Marcus asks, sticking his head out of his alcove for a look, "Can you tell him thank you?"

Carmy hadn't known that, but isn't at all surprised. He pretends to focus on reading over the last couple of tickets, which doesn't fool Syd;

"So, there any reason you're keeping this secret when this guy is a huge deal generally and also to you specifically?"

A quick glance at the window shows him Chef, pretending politely not to watch. It makes Carmy realize that he'd 100% been imagining the stare-down at Ever. When Chef David Fields actually looks at you, you don't wonder, you know. His focus is so intense it's like a physical weight, even as he reads the labels on the bottles on the shelf above the bar.

"I didn't know what to think, so I didn't know what to say."

"You could say- 'I've made peace with my arch-nemesis, guys, and now we're enmeshed in this weird game of weirdly charged psychological brinksmanship?'"

Is that what's happening here? Carmy kind of doesn't think so. Richie sucks his teeth, and gives Carmy a hard look.

"He can't wait in the dining room. My guys want to rock out and clean up."

After long, good nights sometimes they take the house sound system and attach it to a staff phone, play good music to make the clean-up go faster. It's no doubt a little hard to dance and vacuum under Chef's watchful stare, presumably especially for Jess, who Carmy knows worked up at Empire the year before he did. He looks at Syd, who shakes her head no- don't let him in here. And yeah, that won't work either. There's nothing an exhausted line needs less than scrutiny.

"My office," he tells Richie.

"Where the golf clubs are, nice."

"No, Richie!"

Rich is already going, with an easy wave over his shoulder. Carmy can't watch the conversation he has with Chef, but it doesn't become audible, which it would if Richie were getting worked up.

"So this is who got us our friend in the fridge?" Syd asks, referring to the now completely disassembled cow whose bones are currently boiling on the back of the stovetop.

Speaking of which, Carmy takes advantage of the beat of quiet to ask her;

"D'you got any New Years resolutions?"

"The usual, I guess," she says, not looking up at him from where she's scrubbing. "Eat better, sleep better, exercise or something. Figure out the fuck we're going to do here."

Syd has never really forgiven him for deciding he's leaving, and still takes every opportunity she can to register that she's stressed about the fact that he still intends to. Carmy wishes desperately he could figure out a way to get her to see how much better it'll be for her. For all of them, obviously. He digs his nails into the sensitive spot at the edge of his scar, and tries prompting her;

"Do you remember what I said to you when you walked in on us finding Mikey's money?"

It's been... holy shit, two years, can that possibly be true? But Syd does, apparently, and finally looks up from what she's doing to make eyecontact with him.

"Family style, two tops, booths."

Carmy nods, and recites her reply back to her;

"Danish design, tasting menu at the bar."

"Do you think people can change, Syd?"

"I know they can." Surprised at her certainty, Carmy looks over and in so doing, walks right into it; "You did."

He should have expected that. Carmy turns back to his work, thinking about the various things they'd promised one another: good food, no pretensions; chaos menu; a kitchen with no psychopaths screaming at you; fuck the shitty fucking bullshit star system.

Jess is the one who guides Chef away from his table and into the back office, and Carmy isn't surprised when she follows him in a few minutes later with a tray of tea to wait with. The dulcet tones of Blue Moon Marquee cut off abruptly, the front door lock clicks, and the intro to Sabotage by the Beastie Boys drifts in overhead, immediately spiking Carmy's blood pressure and making the rest of the team cheer in delight and start to crash through clean-down with a vengeance. Carmy throws himself at the dish pit, and decides that at least, at least they'll get the fuck out of here faster, and stop looking at him and whispering to each other about New York, about Empire, about suicide.

"You're sure about this, Jeff?" Tina asks, last out the door, and the only one to say it to his face. Delegated, maybe; they do have her handle him.

Carmy flushes in shame, looks at his shoes, and answers with a decisive;

"Happy New Year, chef," which she takes as the dismissal it is, and leaves him. Alone, except for the monster waiting in his office. What the fuck is he doing here? What the fuck was he fucking thinking?"

Well, too late now. Carmy locks the door behind his crew, and turns back to face the heat.

Chapter Text

It's his office, but Carmy still knocks before opening the door to go see Chef. The man is waiting, sat in Sugar's chair, cradling a cup of tea in both hands. Peppermint, Carmy smells. Sensible, uncaffeinated.

Chef is looking at the frames above the desk. Sug took the time to go and frame the first five dollars their dad ever made, Mikey's note, a handful of the best family photos from when the place was the Beef. Sophie, with her peach-smeared shriek.

"So this is a family place, basically?" says Chef, without looking in his direction. "Fine dining, made clannish."

He knows less than half of it, but Carmy doesn't know how to explain about all the family around and underfoot that isn't actually family. Instead of trying to explain about the Berzatto tendency to collect lost souls like dryer lint, he just nods, and goes to sit on the edge of his desk. Carmy occupies himself chewing the inside of his cheek, watching Chef studying all his things. He wishes all of a sudden he cleaned in here they way he does out in the kitchen and dining room. Why is there so much shit, everywhere? How did it get this god damn dusty?

"When does your parachute run out?" Chef wonders, finally looking back over at him.

"Last year," says Carmy, and smiles at the startled jolt; not what he'd been expecting, huh? "We're holding on. I just need it to be better."

A long, thoughtful silence from Chef, with that faint hint of dread Carmy had seen his face when he'd caught him coming out of the meeting. There's something he's not saying.

"Syd isn't my sous," Carmy says, since they should start with that misconception. He has no idea why he didn't correct it the first time. "She's CDC. I'm just-"

Just still leading the kitchen more days than not despite that. Which, as he says it, he realizes is kind of a problem.

"Okay," says Chef, flatly, like this doesn't change anything and he isn't sure why he's being told it. Carmy waits for him to start chastising him for not delegating, because it's so fucking obvious he needs to...

...but not. Nothing. Silence.

"I get that you're trying really hard to be nice," says Carmy, the wrong thing to say apparently, by the way Chef winces, "but like. If I ask you to criticize me that's really different from you coming up behind me and letting me know I'm worthless, right?"

"Okay. Yes. But, is it going to feel that way?" Chef asks, and when Carmy gives him a quizzical look; "What if I told you you needed to fire Tina?"

"Fuck off," says Carmy, colour immediately draining out of his face, "no."

Chef shrugs his shoulders, like that's the entire point, and Carmy resists the urge to pick up a stapler and throw it at his head.

"Why?" he checks, rather than caving, eyes narrowing. Chef is rarely a dick for no reason, and if there's something here, Carmy needs to know.

"Retire her, would probably be the better word for it- get her off the line before she has a coronary. Trust me, I know." Chef flicks a finger at his own chest, like he's trying to swat his own heart troubles away, and Carmy again feels a pang of guilt. How old is Tina? "Lighter duties, humane hours. Make it a promotion, if you can get away with it, or place her with friends on some nice brunch line somewhere. Let her, you know. See her family."

"Fuck brunch," says Carmy, less because he needs to and more as a talisman. "Her family gets it. Her son's in culinary school."

"Then hire him," says Chef, with a shrug. "At least tell your CDC to talk to her about it, figure out what her transition plan is going to be over the next few years. No one's on this kind of line at sixty, Berzatto."

Someone has taught him how to actually say it, Carmy catches. Hopefully not Richie, who would have been a prick about it. Carmy breathes in to a four count, holds, and lets it out again. Okay.

"Okay."

"Fuck- no, don't listen to me. It's not okay. Jesus Christ, this is- this is my actual problem with this, okay? It's the look on the face. It's that you're listening to me about this, of all people!" Chef does something Carmy's never seen him do before; he takes his glasses off, scrubs his hands over his face, and then forces his expression back into a mask of something approaching calm and puts them back on. "I know how to do this, but I honestly don't think you should be doing this."

Silence, long and miserable; Carmy realizes his breathing has stopped.

"I- I-" Stammer returning, when he least wants it to, as usual; he thinks he's going to throw up. He'd misunderstood, then. "-I thought I was-?"

Better. Good enough. Anything. Apparently, Carmy isn't getting what Chef means, because he snaps;

"You're the best chef I ever trained. You could do this and succeed at it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you or is a fucking moron." That shuts off the absolute tailspin of feelings of inadequacy he'd about to spiral down, and makes him even more confused. Chef tries, almost desperately, to explain; "I've left. Obviously. I left for medical reasons, but I still left. When people asks me how to become a chef I say-"

"Don't," interrupts Carmy, then blushes hard, because Chef hates being interrupted, but; "Yeah, no, me too."

"So don't let me come in here and tell you you've got to fire this person you obviously care about because she doesn't have the stamina for fine dining! Don't ask me to give you instructions for how to take your family and move them into base camp on Everest. You can do it- and they're doing it for you, but you're taking this whole team and you're dragging them up where the air is thin, and asking what the fuck you should do about the ice. I can't help. I don't want to help."

Everest. The metaphor clicks for Carmy immediately, and not just because the white of the snow and the white of the kitchen tile. Inhospitable territory, where family and friends can't come, where sentimentality is weakness, where nothing good can grow.

"If I can make this place profitable enough, I can repay my uncle and I can quit, David."

That takes the wind out of Chef's sails. He rocks back in his seat, and Carmy sees him visibly digest that, then begin to reassess. One small nod, then another- it's interesting watching the systematic approach he takes to thought. Eventually, he asks;

"Quit to do what?"

Since Carmy has no idea, he just ignores the question.

"You know what I miss most about Empire?"

No, by the soft shake of his head. Carmy scoffs softly at himself, and looks down.

"The structure. The clarity. I think it was the only time in my life where I knew exactly where I was and what was going on pretty much all the time. It was... you know. Relaxing." Chef snorts, and Carmy feels himself colour, because; "Obviously that's the wrong word for it. I mean..."

"I know what you mean," says Chef, in the tone he sometimes uses that makes Carmy's legs feel a little unsteady. He leans back against the table edge, and drags his gaze up to find Chef watching him. "You know, though, that was a necessity of the situation. A framework to help us attain the level of work we needed to. Base camp protocols."

"I know," says Carmy, then, actually; "But I guess I kind of don't get why this couldn't be a place that let me feel that way without the, you know-"

"Overt abuse?" David shrugs, still watching Carmy far too intently for the casual tone his voice takes. "You do realize that weren't the source of the order, in my kitchen."

"I know," insists Carmy, again, feeling his blush just getting worse by the heartbeat. He doesn't know why. "But I learned what an orderly kitchen looked like. I should be able to implement that."

Chef gives him an uncertain look, and Carmy glares, and rolls his fingers in the air in an 'out with it' gesture.

"Liking surrendering the mental load to a leader isn't really a strong predictor of liking shouldering it for a team."

Which isn't a thing that had occurred to him before. Into Carmy's idiotic blinking, Chef adds;

"Plus, you're back to the inherent contradiction. You want to instill absolute control, in a family restaurant, with a staff you love and you're unwilling to fire to make an example of? That's not exactly a recipe for discipline, Carmen."

"Carmy," he finally gives in and corrects. He'd resisted for a long time, on the grounds that the 'y' makes it feel diminutive, and he doesn't want Chef having that level of intimacy or familiarity with him. But it's too weird; "No one exept my mother calls me Carmen."

"Carmy." Strange, hearing it coming from him. "Well, my favourite by far is Bear, honestly."

If he thought 'Carmy' sounded out there, this by comparison gives him actual vertigo.

"Breathe," advises Chef, softly and almost, vaguely, kindly.

"Shut up," says Carmy, and then reflexively, "sorry," to Chef's raised eyebrow. He feels himself wanting desperately to get back in line. Back under his thumb. What the actual fuck is wrong with him? Carmy asks, out loud, in case the universe somehow answers; "What the fuck is happening?"

"Ah," says Chef, clearing his throat and sitting back, "I'm flirting with you. I'm sorry."

Flirting?! No, wait, what? Fucking- how? Is this flirting? Only now that he's said it, it's obvious to Carmy that yes, he is.

"Okay, well," deep breath in, hold, and out, hold. In, and; "Do you flirt with every CDC you push around?"

He means it to be flirting back, kind of, but Chef David's face crumples in immediate guilt, remorse, shame, and Carmy hears why when he runs the words back in his head, leaving Carmy to stammer, urgently; "N-not in a bad way."

"Right," says Chef, fighting past the defensiveness, "no, you're right, that's fair- and the answer is, I don't. In fact, I think I owe you a very specific apology for that part, too."

"You keep-" Carmy wants to complain, but Chef cuts him off;

"The first time we did this. When you said I was a controlling sadist?" Carmy blinks, remembering that, not sure what exactly it has to do with- "I'm horrified that came through in a professional context. I don't like to think of myself as someone who does that kind of thing to people without their consent."

Oh. Okay, he has to come up with something better to say than that;

"Oh," genius, trenchant, five stars. "Oh, okay, no- I- I think I get you. I, uh-"

"Breathe," says Chef again, and Carmy obeys him, and thinks (novel!);

Oh.

---

"I think I'm going to go have a panic attack in the walk-in," says Carmen- Carmy- Berzatto, and then gets to his feet, "Give me ten minutes."

He turns on his heel, and goes, leaving David feeling like the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. He shuts the door behind him, leaving David blinking around the little room. Nothing for company but his thoughts and the photo of a baby covered from ear to ear in what he thinks is his peach tart. He'd dressed them with raspberries as a nod to the perfection of Escoffier's Peach Melba, and Carmy had obviously picked it up and served them with vanilla icecream, which evidently continues to be a crowd-pleasing combination.

David lasts six minutes, then peeks out of the office to go try to do something useful. What, he has no fucking clue. Should he call someone? Start searching for a bottle of ativan? Chase Carmy into the fridge and tell him to keep breathing, that everything is going to be all right?

No. You can't exactly offer comfort when you're the source of the fear. Probably, the best thing to do would be to go, and David is half panning to, but Carmy is there at the expo, leaning on his station and breathing deep, very even breaths of self-preservation.

"Hey," says David, quietly, not sure whether he should back away and into the office,

"I know," Carmy wheezes, pushing up on an elbow, telling him, "I know, fuck I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm overreacting, I'm just-"

"No," cuts in David, who's hovering a hand in the air behind Carmy's back, trying to figure out whether he should pat his shoulder or whether that would make things worse. He decides probably worse. "Don't apologize, Jesus. This my fault."

"No- and see, like- don't fucking go anywhere you dick, you're running away, stay still, just let me get my breath, because believe you me, I have fucking questions-"

Damn it, there goes that plan. David groans internally, and goes to go fill up one of the 1L's with water, on the grounds that this is at least something useful for him. Carmy accepts it, and gulps a good portion of it down, which probably means he's through at least some of his panic. By the tremor in his hand holding the tub, David guesses he hasn't eaten.

He has a brief, vivid fantasy of cooking him something comforting- toast, maybe, and eggs, with a little fresh fruit? Then reminds himself that he is the hugest asshole on the planet and does not get to cook his way out of this.

"Don't," says Carmy again, lifting up a hand and struggling to convey, "I can see you doing it. Don't."

Turning his hand, like he's pointing something back in at himself, in a gesture David kind of doesn't want to get but does, on a bone deep level, as code for 'internalizing unduly.'

Carmy tries to insist, gamely;

"This is 100% about me, not about you."

David lifts his eyebrows, and challenges him on that, though maybe it's unkind of him;

"Ulcers. Nightmares. Panic attacks."

"80%, then," allows Carmy. But he's up now, and seems to be breathing. He's looking at David with clear blue eyes, and pushing himself hard to speak through the tremors; "Don't walk out now just 'cause I'm slow to grasp context."

"You're not slow, Berzatto." Bear, obviously; Carmy actually smiles, and David wonders how the fuck it took him this long to just get to a basic level of respect and understanding? "It's out of context because it's inappropriate."

"Oh bullshit, please." Please comes out sounding like 'fuck you,' honestly. 'Please spare me.' "Don't you fucking dare pussy out now just cause I'm a fucking basket case."

Which is so completely the opposite of what David thought was going on here that he actually stops for a heartbeat, and stares, while Carmy hangs onto the edge of the table and glowers at him. David doesn't know if he's actually over his panic or just in the 'fight' response instead of flight.

"This is embarrassing," says Carmy, voice tight with something that is almost anger, almost amusement but isn't quite either, "but half of this is just because I kind of thought- you know."

"No," says David, because so many of his assumptions have been wrong, "I truly, genuinely don't."

"That that stuff wasn't real." David still honestly doesn't know what that means. "You know. Like. Control, sadism, Anne Rice bullshit. I thought it was like how in porn everyone is twelve inches long, cut, and constantly holding everyone's legs open for the camera."

He didn't think BDSM actually existed?

"Which Anne Rice?" asks David, innocently, and knows it's the Sleeping Beauty series by the return of that scorching blush.

"So, like. You do this?"

Carmy says it, like he's testing it, like he's inching his way through a room in the dark trying not to knock over a thousand glass vases that may or may not be surrounding him.

"I do," says David, now with calm and confidence.

"With men."

Not exclusively, but;

"Yes."

Long seconds, while Carmy stands there, staring yes, but also working on his nerve, if David is finally beginning to read him right.

"And you think that I-?"

Almost, David wants to make him say it, but he thinks he should be kinder than that;

"-might enjoy it if you tried it."

That hadn't been the answer Carmy was looking for, by the way his eyes narrow, and the challenging shift in his posture. David breathes out a long sigh, and tries something a little more honest;

"I think you'd respond very well to being told what to do."

Carmy actually visibly shudders. Then snaps;

"Well, I think we knew that."

Which makes David flinch. He keeps his mouth shut, and lets Carmy keep the upper hand while he thinks, until he finally settles on another question. Quieter than David has ever heard him, he asks the floor tiles;

"You'd be the one to tell me?"

If David wants to run from this, it would be easy. 'No, of course not, but let me put you in touch with my friend Mark, he'll be happy to show you the ropes. Fun thing about Mark, he's never betrayed you, violated your trust, abused your dignity or personhood!' Justified; rational; responsible!

Carmy is looking up at him now, at him with an outright pleading expression. David wonders at what it must have taken him to ask that question.

He nods, bust once, and Carmy bursts out an exhalation that verges on exclamation. He's still clinging to the edge of his station with both hands, but now he leans forward, putting his weight into his arms. David doesn't think he knows he's doing it.

"When did that start, for you?"

Good question. With relief, David shuts his eyes, and tells him truthfully;

"'Grind my bones for bread.'" Silence, long and intense enough that David's chest aches, just a little. He opens his eyes back up, already explaining; "Not that I'd..."

...literally take out his bones, he'd been about to say, but then he hears movement and looks up and Carmy's grip on the table has given out, which has translated into him crossing the space between them in two urgent strides. He reaches up, and steps in tight, catching David by his dress shirt and sort of crashing into him inexpertly, going up on his toes and trying for a kiss.

David lets him. Catches him. Kisses him back, and also picks him up and pushes him, deftly scooping him up out of a startled flail and just taking control of him. He tastes like coffee, and he's still shaking like a fucking leaf, and he's fighting tooth and nail, biting and trying to get closer, to fucking climb him, frantic and messy and already crying out a plea that David interprets as a request he take control.

"Chef," snarls David, and then moves him. He's bigger and taller, maybe not pound for pound stronger but still strong enough to spin Carmy around and manhandle him back over to his station. Surprise works in his favour, or else Carmy just isn't of a mind to fight that hard, because he goes easy and yowls outright when he's bent over and shoved cheekbone first into the stainless steel. David keeps one arm twisted up behind his back, and puts the other palm on Carmy's temple, applying just enough wait to hold him still.

"Oh fuck," says Carmy, and squirms, writhing first to try to get away and then to try to get closer to David, who obliges him by draping down over his back and using a little more of his weight to keep him trapped, "fuck! Fuck!"

"Settle," growls David, into his ear, which he does right away, "good. Good, chef. Breathe for me."

Carmy does that too, albeit in shuddering little gasps, not his box breathing. David bends down, and bites the shell of his ear, pinching hard enough to elicit an actual yelp. He lets go, and presses a kiss into Carmy's curls in comfort, then stays in close for the pleasure of feeling him settle. Twitching turns to stillness; sobbing gasps turn into low, serene breaths. A quick glance shows wide eyes, softly opened lips, and a steadiness that just doesn't seem to come easy to him when he's under his own authority.

"We need to talk properly," says David, softly, easing a little bit of the weight off him and instead bracing both his elbows on the table on either side of him, so Carmy doesn't get any ideas and try to go anywhere.

"Okay," he says, into the table, in a tone that David thinks means he would probably agree to just about anything right now. Non-negotiated as this is, it's time to use his powers for good.

"How many hours of sleep have you had in the last forty eight hours?"

Briefly, Carmy's hands make a convulsive motion, that David only recognizes as quick counting on his fingers by the matching hesitation in his tone.

"Twelve ish?"

"Ish?"

"Four last night plus three the night before, plus two afternoon naps of like, an hour each-"

Okay, so even counting on his fingers, he can't do the math. David grins against his curls, and gives him a little shove into the metal, just for the pleasure of it. Carmy makes a soft sound as he's bullied, but then settles down even more still.

"You're closed tomorrow?"

"Yes chef."

Fuck. David feels his cock twitch in his pants, and lets out a ragged little sound of his own. Carmy turns his head to peek back at him, like he's checking that this is really happening.

"We're going to get you home. You're going to shower, eat something, then go to sleep. Do you have anything urgent on tomorrow?"

"I'm supposed to come here and do the last of the-" pause, as the sentence gets away from him, "-uh. Not urgent, chef."

"Will it fuck the rest of your week up irreparably if you skip it?"

A second or two while he thinks that through, then a little shake of his head.

"Good. You'll text your CDC that you've caught a cold and are taking the day to yourself. You're going to breathe, you're going to think, you're going to read, and you're going to ."

"Heard, chef."

"Good, chef. I'll let you up now- carefully."

David eases off him, and helps him up to his feet, holding him by that badly scarred hand and rubbing his thumb lightly across the scar. Carmy looks like he barely notices.

"Do you have any food at home?"

"No, chef."

"We'll pack you some. How are you getting back?"

"Uh- train?"

"Do you prefer to call a taxi, or may I drive you?"

He frames the question very carefully, and still sees Carmy try to find ways to insist that he doesn't want to be a bother. David leaves him to think about it, when he goes to start gathering him a few small containers of food. Ravioli of course, and a couple of apples. Sharp cheese, pistachios, and a few other sundry, familiar from many nights scrounging in his own kitchen.

"Boots and coat," he tells Carmy, noticing he's still standing there spinning on the taxi question. The instructions send him trotting off, and David finishes assembling what amounts to barely more than a picnic... but it'll have to do for now.

"Taxi's coming," Carmy says, to David's slight disappointment. It's probably for the best, he tells himself, as he brings out then little sac of food and hands it to him, in exchange for his own black peacoat, which Carmy has had the good sense to liberate from the now-empty coat check.

"Than you chef," says Carmy, very suddenly, voice shaking, "for everything, through all of this, and for explaining. And for pushing past my reaction earlier, it's- I know it's not how you trained me, I-"

"It's fine, chef. You're good." Carmy listens, lets out a soft sigh of relief and lets his shoulders drop. Like he's actually hearing, like he actually believes it. Striking while the iron is hot, David looks him in the eyes, and tells him; "There is no problem with anything you're feeling, or dealing with, except that you don't deserve to have to deal with it alone. I'll call you tomorrow and ask you some questions about how you want me to handle that when it happens. But just know for tonight that you're at the finish line, and it's time for some well earned rest. All right?"

He's careful to drop in that he'll call; let there be zero anxiety around it. Carmy lets out a single, heartfelt;

"Yes, chef."