Work Text:
His name is Zach and he lives in her building. Sydney doesn’t think much of him at first, doesn’t play back over the casual conversations that he initiates when they run into each other in the hallways. The elevator breaks and she makes a bad joke that she’s getting such a workout from the stairs that she’s going to cancel her gym membership, and he throws his head back laughing. It wasn’t that funny and she doesn’t even go to the gym.
It's a rainy day when they’re leaving at the same time, he holds his umbrella over her head and asks if she wants to try out that new place on Randolph. She says that sounds fun, and it’s that easy.
So they’re sitting opposite each other on a Monday night, and she’s eating pasta that definitely came out of a packet, and he’s asking her the right questions and she’s laughing at his jokes. Neither of them have a car so they take the L home, still making small talk, and she’s not ready to invite him in but she does ask if he wants to do this again.
And they do. He’s so accommodating of her schedule. He used to be a nurse, he tells her, so he gets the weird hours. Which leads to a conversation about why he stopped being a nurse (bad pay and lack of career progression) and what he does now (consulting, whatever the fuck that is) which leads to them being six weeks into dating before Sydney really has time to think about it.
She’s slept at his place and he’s met her dad. By accident, her dad was leaving their apartment at the same time Zach was leaving his. She hasn’t told anyone at work. She thinks he’s nice and seems to know what he’s doing with his life. He’s got these big bright eyes and strong hands and messy hair.
She knows he looks a bit like Carm. She had it as a passing thought when she first saw him, and again when he picked up a chair with one hand. She’s resolutely not thinking about it. It is, if she’s being honest, the main reason she hasn’t told anyone at the kitchen. She can’t hear anything from Richie about it, even a joke that doesn’t mean anything.
Does it mean anything that he’s the first white boy she’s dated? No, definitely not. He’s only the third boyfriend she’s had. Does it mean anything that she’s dating now, where a year ago she would have politely declined? No, she doesn’t think so.
-
“You doing anything later?” Carm asks at the end of the night.
“Uh, no,” Syd replies. “Oh, actually, I’m probably going to read the new Food & Wine.”
He’s got his back to her and his shoulders around his ears, and he says “Yeah. Well, I got a bottle of wine I need to finish if you wanted to.”
Syd replays this in her head. A bottle of wine I need to finish if you wanted to. Does he want to drink it with her or give it to her? She’d be fine with either, but she doesn’t want to offer one if he meant the other. Before she can clarify, he’s already saying “But if you don’t want to-”
“I want to,” she cuts in. And then, before she can doubt herself too much, says “I’ll get the glasses.”
So they’re sitting in the dining area and he’s got his legs up on the chair next to him and she’s drinking some of the worst wine she’s ever tasted.
“Carmy, this is like, terrible.”
He shakes his head.
“I knew you’d think that,” he says. “Just because it’s got a bit of brightness to it, you can’t handle it?”
“No,” she says. “I can handle acidity, this just tastes like shit.”
This conversation would have scared her once. When Carm was someone she saw through rose-coloured glasses, when he was just the person who’d made the best meal she’s ever had. That was so significant to her then, and now she thinks that meal is one of the least important things about him.
“Fucking ungrateful,” he says. “I should have asked Richie.”
“You know how much I fucking wish Richie was the one drinking this horrible fucking wine? Call him right now, get him to take it off my hands.”
He reaches for her glass, mock taking it from her, and she swats his hand away.
“Okay, c’mon,” she says. “Maybe I’ll get it on the second glass.”
He pours generously, and maybe she’s feeling light-headed already but she’s suddenly struck by the something she’s been wanting to ask.
“What about Claire? She can’t handle a bright wine?”
He doesn’t look at her as he says,
“No. Uh. We broke up.”
“Oh,” she says. “Sorry, man. Let me know if you need to talk.” Which is a stupid thing to say, because she knows that he won’t.
-
The next morning, Sydney gets breakfast with Zach and contemplates the real possibility that a lot of her life has happened unintentionally. That quitting her catering business can become running a restaurant. That being nice to someone who lives on her floor can become a relationship.
Because over the meal Zach asks her to make it official. He’s eating a breakfast burrito. She knows he thinks of himself as a bit of a foodie, likes to take pictures before he tucks in. She’s drinking coffee from a pot and trying to combat her hangover, not that she told him that. Is she getting old? She swears she used to be able to handle alcohol better. Anyway.
She tells Zach she wants to make it official, and that she’s happy he asked. It doesn’t feel like lying. She doesn’t think she’s lying. There’s no reason to not want to date Zach. She pours herself some more coffee.
-
Sydney turns away from her locker and Carm is holding an unopened bottle of wine.
“What’s this?” is the first thing she thinks to ask, even though she knows what a wine bottle looks like. She hopes he knows that she knows what a wine bottle looks like.
“Thought I’d make up for last time,” he says.
They sit at the same table as before and he pours two glasses. She wants to know but doesn’t want to ask why they’re alone. She’s sure Richie or Neil would stay back for a drink. The thought almost feels ungrateful.
Up until she takes a sip and rolls it around her mouth, lets the taste really sink in. Swallows with a wince.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” she accuses. He turns on wide-eyed innocence, as if his eyes can even get any fucking bigger.
“You don’t like it?”
“Fuck off.”
He smiles then, takes a drink from his own glass. She does the same, so annoyed to be giving him the reaction he clearly expected. But at the same time-
“Chef, this was grape juice like ten minutes ago. I feel like it’s punching me in the throat.”
She’s playing up choking on it, and he’s making a show of ignoring her, and then they’re both laughing at themselves and their stupid little pantomime.
“It’d be good to expand our drinks menu,” she says, poking around for the reason he offered this to her.
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
-
Sydney realised in middle school she’s not a normal human being. She flounders, sometimes, in conversations, feels like everyone read the script except her. Never knows the best thing to say, so she figured if she became the best that could make up for it. Always work the hardest, stay the longest, study the most.
She wishes she could read up on her own relationship. It was like this with her last boyfriends as well, her instincts leading her down a path that they never seemed to like.
Zach wants to spend time with her and she knows that she should, that she’s lucky he wants to do that, but he always wants to do something. Has Sydney been to this new museum exhibition? Or maybe they could try a rooftop bar? Or when’s the last time she went to Millennium Park?
Normal people want to do things with their boyfriends. But Syd is most interested in those moments when he first wakes up and they just look at each other, or they’re standing next to each other, silently looking at their own phones. But that’s not exactly an activity she can suggest, and it’s not like she’s been to Millennium Park recently.
Sometimes she makes jokes that she can tell he doesn’t find funny, and wishes he wouldn’t laugh anyway. Once, after a handjob, without thinking about it, she scooped up his cum and offered it to him to taste. He looked at her and she laughed and wiped her hands, but she can’t forget the look.
-
Carmy is in the office. Syd wishes she could chill out for just one single second, but she has to count down from five before she knocks.
“What?” he calls, which she takes as permission to swing the door open.
“What,” he repeats, lower, once she’s inside the room.
“I have a drink,” which is the weirdest way she could possibly have phrased that she’s brought the same bottle of wine with her to work every day this week and has been trying to time it so he’s in the best mood. She doesn’t stick around for questions, gets the bottle and two glasses and takes them to the dining area.
He doesn’t keep her waiting for long. He’s got the wringed-out-cloth look he always has after dinner service, but no-one quit today so for them it was basically uneventful.
She pours him a glass and neither of them talk, other than a muttered thanks when he takes his. They sip and she wonders if she’s put a step wrong, if he’s overanalysing what this means the same way she is.
They’re most of the way through the first glass when Syd is overwhelmed by the gaping silence, making up scenario after scenario about how this goes wrong.
“What do you think?” she says.
He gives her one of his looks, and she had no fucking idea there were so many ways the same person could look at you before she met him. He looks down at the wine glass, back up to her.
“Are you fucking kidding me with this shit, Chef?” he says, and she breaks, has to look away from him she’s laughing so much.
He keeps talking, “If you paid more than $8 for this you need to go and get a refund. If you told me this shit had corked I’d believe you. It’s a disgrace.”
“It’s food-friendly,” Syd says with a smirk.
“Yeah, maybe for dog food. Jesus fucking Christ.”
And she can hear the warmth behind it, and basks in the fact they have little jokes between them now, that she can give him some shit wine and expect him to drink it, which he is in fact currently doing.
This time, they don’t finish the bottle. She tips it down the sink and as she’s doing it, feels him stop packing up to look at her. She turns to him, instinctive.
“Are you, uh, doing anything on Monday?” he asks.
“Uh, dunno,” she replies. “Are you?”
“Not sure,” he says, and when she doesn’t say anything, goes back to collecting his stuff.
-
On Monday, Syd takes Zach to Pizza Lobo. She’s usually critical of a deep dish, feels like they’re too much of a Chicago cliché, but they split one with a side of wings and it feels like home to her. He’s always so appreciative when she shows him a place, or when she cooks for him. She thinks about what Carmy said about how she likes to take care of people, and then tries to stop thinking about Carmy.
Zach suggests they go away for a weekend. He paints a pretty picture- getting out of town, trying different food, he can borrow his brother’s car. He pitches it so they leave on Sunday night and get back on Tuesday morning, so she doesn’t miss work.
Syd likes the idea of it. There’s lots of things about Zach she likes the idea of.
-
Sunday’s dinner is fucked. T has some sort of stomach thing going on, which she didn’t tell anyone about, Syd caught her throwing up forty-five minutes before service. Richie is late because of something going on with his ex-wife. Some influencer posts a picture of Marcus’ doughnuts so they have a bunch of people lined up who only want desserts. Carm slices his hand open, twice, and both times the breath catches in Sydney’s throat and she has to stop herself from going over to him.
Tina leaves early, Ebra covering her clean-up. Syd looks over at Carmy, who is hunched over his station, taking deep breaths and focused so intently on what he’s doing that she feels bad for not doing the same.
She purposefully dawdles as everyone else files out, knows that Carm won’t want to talk to her. If Sugar was around she’d leave him to her, but she’s got a whole baby she’s looking after so Syd is the one that’s here.
He’s at his locker, not facing her, and she says, quiet, “Hey, you good?”
He turns, and he’s got those stupid eyes, and he hugs her.
He smells so much like what they’ve been cooking all day, and Syd wraps her arms around him. She’s in her head too much, about where she should put her hands, how long she should hold on for, about how his face is in the crook of her neck and it fits there perfectly.
He pulls away and goes to say something, is clearly going to say something and Syd feels the panic rise up and exclaims “I have to go! Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.”
She flees and doesn’t look back at him. Outside, Zach’s brother’s fucking SUV is waiting for her. She clambers into the passenger seat and he’s looking at her so earnestly, leans in to kiss her. Her heart is racing.
He’s already pulling away before she can process, asking her how her shift was. And Syd is just looking at Carmy, standing at the backdoor of the restaurant, watching her.
-
Syd spends most of their weekend away trying to work out if she’s an asshole. Thinks that if she occasionally drank bad wine with Nat, it wouldn’t be a big deal. If it was Richie who hugged her after the service, she wouldn’t be feeling like she’s doing something wrong.
They go to this out-of-the-way Thai place that has some of the best flat noodles Syd’s ever tasted, and her instinctive first thought is that she wishes Carm was here to taste them. Wishes she could talk to him.
Zach talks about his family and Syd talks about her family and he puts his hand on her thigh as he drives. He’s good at talking, good at distracting her, and it should all just be fucking easy.
-
Carm doesn’t talk to her all week. He talks to her, obviously, shouts out orders or what needs to be done. But he slips out while she’s still at her locker, doesn’t ask how her day’s been or what she’s doing later. At first she feels like she deserves it, deserves this uneasy feeling that sits in her chest, but the more they sit in this horrible silence, the more angry she gets.
He’s never asked her out. They’ve pretty much never seen each other outside of work, and he’s the one that ditched her when they were supposed to go to restaurants together. She’s not a fucking mind reader, and he can stare at her as much as he wants but it doesn’t actually mean anything.
Because this is what Syd is really scared of- that she’s just reading into it. Like she’s willing something between them into existence when really he’s just a co-worker that looks at her a bit intensely and sometimes offers her stuff. That maybe he’s just been in a bad mood this week. Like maybe he just said that stuff under the table that one time because he knew she was feeling low.
So Syd doesn’t go out of her way to talk to him, doesn’t sign a sorry when things get heated in the kitchen. She knows they must be making idiots of themselves, knows that the others are noticing. But suddenly the idea that she and Carm could ever be anything other than this is ridiculous, the idea that she would deserve something more is ridiculous.
At one point she walks past the office where Carm and Richie are having a low conversation. She catches the tail-end of Richie’s sentence, “…really fucking this up.” And she stops herself from lingering, resists the urge to find out who’s fucking up what. Too worried the answer is her and everything, that she’s always fucking everything up.
Neither of them say anything, but later that night, Carmy puts a hand on her shoulder and signs a sorry at her, and she does it back without thinking about it. And later that night he asks if she’s doing anything on her day off, and she tells him that she’s going to cook mussels for her dad. She asks what he’s doing, and listens to his babysitting plans.
-
She goes to a barbeque. She goes to a barbeque that Zach’s friend is hosting and he’s so excited to introduce her to his friends. She always feels so guilty these days, and thinks she shouldn’t feel guilty for her own boyfriend liking her.
She’s standing in a group of people with the sudden realisation that she’s never done this before, never got far enough into a relationship that she’s expected to have a whole new social circle. She doesn’t know what to say, is stuttering out an explanation of what she does for work.
“Oh! You’re the Sydney,” a blonde woman who hasn’t even looked Syd’s way before this says. Syd makes a face which she hopes conveys who the fuck are you. The woman scrambles, “I’m friends with Nat- we were in the same pre-natal class. And I think she’s great. Don’t you love Nat?”
“I love Nat,” Sydney says automatically. For some reason, she doesn’t want to look at Zach, doesn’t want to see what he thinks about this. She wants to enjoy this warmth of being known, that Nat likes her and talks about her to other people.
“I always mean to come and visit the restaurant,” the woman continues. “I just think it’s so great what you guys are doing there. But having a baby, you know, eats up a lot of time.”
Sydney nods, as if she’d have any idea.
“But,” the woman says, her eyes darting between Syd and Zach. “I thought you were Carmy’s partner?”
She knows Zach is looking at her and she just needs to be normal for once in her fucking life, just needs to keep cool about Carmy fucking Berzatto.
“Yeah,” she replies. “Business partners. Partners in work.”
“Oh,” the woman says, her eyebrows drawing together. “I must have gotten mixed up.”
“Yeah,” Syd says, and laughs, and finally turns to Zach, who also laughs, and it’s that easy, just a silly little mix-up by a stranger.
The woman is still talking, saying “So what’s Carmy like, then? Anyone who drives Nat so nuts must be worth meeting.”
“He’s great, I love Carmy,” Syd says. Goes over it in her head. She said it because it was what she said about Nat, thought it would be normal. Has no idea if it came out normal. Has no idea how to be a person, sometimes, or what that would be like.
-
She’s sitting next to T during family. Which is not, like, abnormal, but she says “Do you ever feel like you don’t deserve stuff?”
Which is a bit of a surprise.
Sydney doesn’t think anyone else is listening in- the table is as loud as always, Richie and Fak talking over the top of one another while Marcus laughs at them, Ebra and Carm having a quiet and intense conversation about a new entrée they’re trying.
Tina holds her gaze, and Syd takes a moment to think about how their height difference means that T is always looking up at her.
“How do you mean?” she asks, and Sydney has the uncomfortable feeling of being not just looked at, but seen.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s stupid. I’m being stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, baby,” Tina says. “You’re fucking smart. And you deserve stuff. You know?”
And she bumps her knee against Sydney’s and Syd does it back. They don’t talk about it anymore, but after dinner service Tina nudges her towards Marcus’ station, saying that he’s got new dessert she should try. Syd eats a slice of cake, and feels seen.
-
A week later, Carm is outside smoking. Syd thinks he’s trying to stop, has been going out the back less. Drinking a lot more coffee. They’re the last two here for the night. Syd sticks her head out and calls, “How do you take your whiskey?”
Carm looks back at her, and who the fuck let him have eyes like that.
“With ice,” he says.
“You better get some ice then,” she says, and walks back inside.
She brings the whiskey bottle out to the dining area and he brings two glasses with ice in them. She pours them a finger each.
“You get this from your dad’s liquor cabinet?” he asks.
“Shut the fuck up,” she says, even though she did. “You know how hard it is to be a real adult when you still live with your dad?”
“I’ve never really lived with my dad,” he says, with that serious tone he has.
“Heard,” she replies. And then, because she’s been thinking about it, “I used to think you didn’t drink. Because you went to Al-Anon and stuff.”
“It’s a family-”
“Family support group,” she finishes for him. “I know that now. Does it help?”
He shrugs. She wishes she could climb inside his brain but she settles for taking another sip of whiskey. She wants to tell him something and if she doesn’t just say it she never will. It’ll never come up in conversation, she’ll never find a way to naturally drop it in.
“I broke up with Zach,” she tells him. “That’s- that was his name. The guy I was dating. But, we’re broken up now.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off her.
“Chef,” he says. “Why are you telling me this?”
She looks back at him. Shrugs one shoulder.
“Because I wanted you to know.”
She feels like the silence between them is a bridge she can’t cross, part of her not even sure she wants to cross it. What they have is already so fragile, the ecosystem they’ve crafted is always so close to disaster. Syd doesn’t know if can survive another misstep, doesn’t know how far either of them would have to go to mess them up irreparably. But at the same time, feels if neither of them do anything, that would be it’s own form of fuck-up, that neither of them can survive with things going on as they have been.
He gets up and takes both of their glasses, balancing them with the practiced ease of someone who spent their teenage years waiting tables. She sits in her own embarrassment and listens to him wash up.
“Syd?” he calls. “Can I drive you?”
-
They kiss in the car, and in the hallway of his building, and in the doorway of his apartment. Sydney’s never felt anything like this before, the way her whole body wants him so badly, how she wouldn’t want anything ever again if she could just have him.
She can’t stop thinking about how little room there is between them, how they’re the same height, how his hipbones are pressed into hers. He’s putting his mouth everywhere, the normal places like her neck, but also her chin, her ear, he takes her hands and sucks her fingers into his mouth. Syd realises she might die. Like, this might actually kill her.
“Can we,” she says, “Not that I’m not, like, having fun, but can we go to-” and she jerks her head to where she knows his bedroom is.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling away, and then pulling further. Takes a step back. “Uh. Syd. I need. I gotta tell you.”
“Yeah?” she says when he doesn’t continue. Fuck, she sounds so out of breath.
“I can’t do just once. If you’re thinking of this as a one-time thing-” and she’s already shaking her head, entwining their hands and drawing him back in.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she says, and kisses him, and loves being able to kiss him.
They get to the bedroom eventually. Syd thinks it could have been hours- as soon as one of them strips off a piece of clothing, the other takes the opportunity to explore undiscovered land. She’ll catch his mouth in a kiss and then neither of them will want to stop, she feels like they’re inventing kissing right now, surely no one has ever done it like this before. Sex has never been such a full-body experience for her, and they’ve barely gotten further than groping.
He lays her out on the bed, and puts his mouth between her legs, and Syd’s so glad they already decided they’re doing this again, couldn’t take it if this was the only time.
He looks up at her and says, “Tell me what feels good.” So she puts one hand in his hair and whispers there and like that until that’s all she can say, until there are no other thoughts in her head.
After, he pulls away and she must make some sort of noise because he says, “Fuck, Syd,” and he runs two fingers through her folds and then holds them up to her mouth. She sucks them in, and tastes herself, and can’t believe she’s here right now, and how she’ll always be able to come back to this moment, is going to keep it in her brain forever.
“Carm,” she says, and he looks at her and fucking sees her, and she sees him too.