Chapter Text
Carmy feels like he’s circling the drain. Panic keeps pulling him forward, its pulse always thudding on his wrists. Even when his joints still ache from the day before, even when his alarm goes off again and he thinks ‘I can’t fucking do this,’ he slowly picks himself up before falling into the kitchen’s avalanche.
He never knows what to do. Sometimes he thinks he could let this ecosystem live by itself, but if it never gets a star, if it falls under like more and more restaurants have done, he needs it to be his fault. If it does, if it lives forever, he needs Mike to know that he’s the one who dragged it there.
So he’s been doing what it takes to get a star. It takes all of him.
There’s nothing that makes him think of success like Empire does. It also makes him think of bile and his hands shaking and his shoulder barely brushing the middle of Chef’s chest, cloth on cloth, but he stayed there for a reason. Maybe that reason was pride or determination or just that some part of him got used to it, but it made him better. It made him successful.
He’s trying to be successful again, so he’s carving off the fat. Outside of this place, there’s nothing left of him to give. Talking to anyone would take too much from him, apologizing is near impossible.
So he pushes on, sometimes manic, sometimes war-weary. He does his best to keep his head down and voice steady. The kitchen has always been this perfect flow to him, a smooth path from start to finish. You do the steps again and again, a silent rhythm washing over you. In the walls of The Bear, there are a million misplaced steps, a million points where they start from the beginning. It breaks the rhythm.
They have to be perfect. They can’t let anything that’s almost there, almost right slip past. So every time they refire, it feels like skipping a step down the stairs. Any small fuck up in his slow descent toward the end of the night makes him forget where he is, who’s relying on him.
It’s fucking impossible to him that it’s only been a week or two. He thinks he’s already losing weight again, and he’s been less and less able to stay asleep.
-
When he wakes up one morning, he doesn’t feel any different from the others. His throat is dry, his stomach is unsteady, and he can’t fucking do this. And then, he pulls himself out of bed, throws himself in the shower.
It only hits him when he’s brushing his teeth after. Normally, his panic attacks don’t come out of nowhere. An anniversary of something that happened to him rolls around or a nightmare throws some fucked up part of himself out into the open. They never start from nowhere, but this one does. He spits out foam, tries not to gag on it, and feels the room spin.
There’s something wrong, and it’s getting worse. His chest heaves, trying to choke down air and choking on mint instead. There’s a low growl rumbling out from the walls behind him. He stares himself down in the mirror, trying to glean what shoe is about to drop. His head is spinning, and everything feels slightly out of place, and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse .
And then the tension breaks.
Everything drains out of him. Time becomes unnatural and languid, spilling into nothing. He knows he’s somewhere. He doesn’t know if he’s alive. Everything feels less clear, like vaseline smeared on a camera lens. The world just foams around him, nothing getting through to Carmy. It’s strange. He doesn’t feel anything about it, just feels whatever this is.
And then, it falls away, and the room is still out of place. When he stares himself in the face again, his lip is bleeding slightly, even more stark against the sickly pallor of his skin. His fingers rise from the sink to the rip, red-orange dabbing onto them. He turns the tap on, letting it slip off before he washes his mouth out, getting the mint and the reddish stain off his teeth.
He brings in a deep breath then another to steady himself. It feels like one more step toward feeling like he’s going completely fucking insane. By the time he gets to work, whatever the fuck just happened to him will get neatly butchered off and set aside.
-
Another few days slip past him. How is it Saturday again? Moments drag out for hours, and weeks get condensed down to nothing.
In the time it takes him to reach for the body wash, that nameless, inexplicable panic lurches through his chest. He grips the shower bar, fighting to keep the walls from moving, the floor trying to slip out from under him. Again, he feels the sky above him getting ready to fall. The growl rolls into him. Some small logical part of him tries to talk himself down, but he feels like he’s at the edge of something massive and yawning, and then, he breathes.
Everything steps away. He’s only there to the degree that he’s not quite unconscious. When it passes, he’ll remember the time ticking by, but he won’t know anything more than that.
And again, he comes back. And again, he tastes blood.
-
After he can comfortably place himself in his surroundings again, he doesn’t feel any different. It doesn’t cause nearly enough problems as the panic attacks or the urge to beat the shit out of Richie. This shit is barely a problem at all. They’re fine.
Until Tuesday morning, he thought he had them neatly tied down in his apartment.
He already has the menu mostly figured out before Syd walks in.
She mumbles, “Morning,” before heading for the locker room.
He hums back with a nod, barely registering her as he tweezes micro basil on a dish. Everything but the plate in front of him is just a little quieter, a couple steps further away.
“Menu good?” Syd asks.
“Almost,” he mumbles absentmindedly.
“What do we need?”
“Uh… he looks at the previous dishes he has already set, trying to sort through them, “Just… juice mandarins to start.”
“Save what’s left to zest?”
“Um… sure. I’m-I’m sure something could use that,” he says softly.
He takes a bite of the raviolo before stepping back and looking at it.
“Good?”
“Almost…” he shakes his head slowly, “plating’s not right.”
He dumps the plate and starts again.
Richie steps in from the back, already in that sleek suit, and asks, “Chef Sydney, do you know when we’re getting napkins back? We’re straight up out.”
“Wait, out out?” She remarks.
“Not out out, not enough for every table.”
Carmy steadies his hands on the counter in front of him, trying to force air down his throat.
“Should be back from the cleaners before service.”
He goes to rush outside before it strikes him, but he can barely keep himself from swaying with both hands against the counter. The room shifts around him, Syd and Richie get caught in motions he can’t understand.
“Should be?”
“Wait, oh,” Sydney stops when her eyes shift back to Carmy.
Richie asks, following her gaze, “What?”
“Carmy? You good?” She draws closer.
And he’s gone.
“Carm?” Richie joins.
“What’s going on? Is this- is it like a thing he does?”
“The fuck do you mean? He’s zoning out. Everybody zones out.”
Richie places a steady, grounding hand on the back of neck, but he just continues chewing at the back of his lip, eyes distantly set on the plate in front of him and skin gone pale.
“ Yo ,” he urges and pats his cheek. “Earth to Carm, c’mon.”
“I think something’s happening, like I don’t think this is normal.”
“It’s like he’s sleepwalking.”
Richie replaces the hand to the back of Carmy’s neck.
“Is-is his lip bleeding? Do we- should we do something?”
“Just chill for a second. I say we just wait him out.”
Syd nods slowly and begrudgingly, “Sure, fine, just he’s never done this?”
“Well kinda, but I can normally wake him up. Yknow, there was this one time after you quit where-”
Carmy stumbles back, brushing Richie’s arm off. His eyes dart between the two of them and the kitchen.
“What’s…” he whispers.
“Hey, you good?” Syd asks and stays stiff, trying to give him space.
“Uh,” he nods quickly, “I’m good, fuck, I’m good, yeah.”
“So mind telling us what the fuck that was?”
“Uh nothing-”
“Nah, fuck that. You went full space cadet. Try again.”
“Umm…” Carmy sets one hand on his hip and the other smoothes back his hair before he explains, “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to call them, but I haven’t been worried about them.”
“So this has happened before,” Syd confirms.
“Only twice. It-it just started like a week ago I think.”
“So what the fuck makes you think you shouldn’t be worried?” Richie questions.
“It’s… they’re-they’re short, and it’s um it’s just that. I feel completely fine after a second.”
“So you’ll just get like completely unreachable for a second, and then come back fine?” Syd confirms.
“That’s-that’s pretty much it, yeah. Just- this doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t have to get everyone worried for nothing.”
“So this is just kinda like the disassociation shit with the grease fire?”
“What? Shit uh… yeah, I guess.”
“What shit with a grease fire?” Syd comments with her arms crossed.
They both answer:
“The thing I was-”
“I uh I accidentally-”
“Shut the fuck up,” they both spout at each other.
“Yeah, agreed. Carmy, you go.”
He explains slowly, wanting to go silent with every word, “I… The day after you quit, I-I accidentally started a grease fire, and I um… I can get kind of separate f-from things sometimes, and someone else had to put it out.”
“Okay,” she nods.
“Okay?”
She says slowly, “That is news to me.”
It’s at that point that Sugar followed by Neil and Ted Fak pass through the kitchen. She takes in their serious expressions.
“Morning,” she says, looking around to all of them.
“Morning,” they respond awkwardly.
Carmy grabs anxiously at the towels at his waist. Sydney goes to the walk-in and starts juicing mandarin oranges.
“More 4 PM stuff?” She asks him.
“No uh we are… good,” he decides, “I thought you were bringing in the napkins?”
“Pete’s bringing in the napkins later. Slipped my mind a little last night.”
“How later?” Richie asks.
“Like less than two hours later. You’ll be fine.”
“You alright?” He wonders, moving the next raviolo onto the plate.
“Yeah, just got reminded that morning sickness is a stupid fucking name, and that for normal people, it’s only supposed to happen during the first 3 months,” she explains, fake cheer sitting on the surface of thinly veiled aggression, “But what, are things not allowed to slip my mind?”
“No, no, just they don’t very often. You actually write shit down you say you’re going to.”
“Yeah, well writing shit down doesn’t mean I’ll look at it.”
“Heard, yeah.”
-
“Hey, Bear, could you come in here?” Sugar calls as Carmy passes by her office.
Service is over, but he still has a menu to start on, a whole kitchen to scrub down, but trying to hide from Sugar is more trouble than it’s worth.
“What’s going on?”
“Just come in here. She’s kicking.”
He was in the process of closing the door behind him when he freezes, “What?”
“C’mon, it’s cool,” she murmurs, like it’s as simple as that.
“You know that shit weirds me out.”
He anxiously glances between her and her stomach.
“Alright, fine, well, now that I have you here, it is past 4 PM.”
“What was at 4 PM?”
“What were you all talking about before I got here?”
“Uh it was nothing, Sugar. I just zoned out for a second.”
“Oh,” she half-laughs, half-breaths through a kick, “yeah, just zoned out, that really explains why Sydney went completely silent.”
“Okay… Richie must have said that it looked like I was sleepwalking because he fucking told her about that time I told you, where I almost set my apartment on fire.”
“ Didn’t just zone out,” she corrects.
“No just very, very zoned out.”
“You seriously don’t want to feel it?”
“It’s really fucking cool for you that you’re having a kid, but right now, that’s fucking unreal.”
“Okay, you got me there. She’s a little freaky to think about right now,” she breathes out. “…Sure you weren’t dissociating?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s kinda like zoning out really hard, but it’s like your brain protects you from something that’s making you anxious. You get just farther away from everything.”
He blinks, “I don’t know. You alright if I go back out? Send someone who would appreciate the kicking more?”
“How’d you get out of it?”
“Out of the zone out?”
“Yeah.”
“It just went away after a minute or two. I was good after though.”
“And they couldn’t get to you?”
He hums out a sigh before deciding on, “Not really.”
“I’m gonna send you something. It’s just instructions for this coping thing that might help. It’s short, I promise.”
“Sure.”
“Alright, send Richie in here. He won’t be a little bitch about forming a bond with my daughter.”
“Fuck off,” he breathes out a laugh.
“Love you too, Bear.”