Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Neighbors.

She's so far away.

She's just down the hall.

They live in the same apartment building and since she moved in, they'd been spending more time together after work, unwinding, trying to find ways to decompress.

It's so weird, because they talk less here. They put on a show or a movie and sit there in silence and just say and do nothing, because there is nothing more in them at the end of the day. He knows how tired she is because he is.

She texted him earlier she has something to tell him.

He's just been waiting for the other shoe to drop. She said yes last night when he invited her to the funeral dinner. But it wasn't a right-away kind of thing. He had to kind of push.

He texted her back and asked her how long, and he realized how far she is from his place. That was like, what, thirty minutes ago?

It can't be that she doesn't think she belongs at Ever, or that she's backing out, is it? She has more right to be there than he does.

There are too many things on his mind lately. So many, he's having a hard time keeping them sorted and straight. He knows that his side of the street is definitely not clean, but he wants it to be. And Unc had told him to stop running away from things. That's what he's going to try to do.

He thinks it started when Marcus was in his office, talking to him about legacy, about all those other chefs that he looked up to that came before them. He wanted, maybe, to see himself as a continuation of that? No, he definitely did. But that's not what he's been doing here, is it?

Then Syd kind of snuck up to the lockers past them, later than usual. And he could tell, just by the way she was dressed, her body language...

There was something going on with her. Syd wasn't just thinking about the restaurant anymore. Right around the time she'd stopped their late-night veg outs. The idea filled him with dread, and he's not sure how he arrived here; feeling like he did when he was at Empire all over again, but it's so much worse, because he's the exec now, he's not the CDC.

He's not in control. He's barely in control of himself and making it through a single service now. Fuck, he didn't want that Michelin star. If he can just try to fix this, if he can just make it whole-

No, he'd messed it all up, he'd retreated, tried to crawl back to a place where everyone else told him what to do, what to think, what to feel. That security of knowing your place, and not needing to change. Freedom as fear. Numb and stuck in a loop until he breaks and wears out. Robot.

Trapped like Mikey was.

There's a knock at his door and it startles him, he feels his body tense. He opens the door and sees her standing on the other side. He steps aside and letting her into his place as she looks around, makes note of the fact that he's not wearing any shoes and is still in his jeans.

“Are you going to get ready for the dinner?” she asks him.

“In a bit,” he says to her. She always comes here, never invites him to her place.

“Okay,” she says, pursing her lips and waiting him out.

“Syd,” he tells her. “Relax.” But he can tell she's not relaxed. That she is tense and that there is definitely something on her mind. “Are you going to tell me?” he asks her. “What you want to say?”

“Carm,” she tells him, swallowing, staring at him for a long moment. Kind of like she had the day before at the counter in the kitchen. “Someone made me an...offer.”

“An offer,” he repeats, and it's like the most haunted shit he's ever felt, like the hairs on his arms want to stand on end. “Like, an offer you can't refuse?” he tries to joke, desperate. “What are we talking about here, Syd?”

“Chef Shapiro,” she says to him, staring at him now, her teeth on edge. “He's starting a new restaurant, and he told me he would reach out to you, but...I didn't want you to find out like that-”

He feels himself react before he can control himself, frowning, shuffling his weight on his feet. “Shapiro?” he asks. It comes out harsher than he means it to.

Because she has to know she's too good for him. She has to.

The nervous energy is piling up in him, his mind racing, trying to answer all of the questions all at once and he shuts his eyes. In his mind, he sees her face, her eyes staring back at him.

She has every right to want to leave.

“Don't,” he says to her, opening his eyes again.

“You didn't even let me finish,” she says to him flatly, sounding even more annoyed. She moves and goes to sit down on his couch, as he hesitates and then follows after her, sitting down on the other end.

“I haven't made my mind up yet,” she tells him. “It's more money, benefits, I get to control the entire menu.”

“Yeah,” he says, his arms resting on his knees now.

“Yeah?” she asks him in disbelief.

“You deserve all of those things,” he tells her, meeting her eyes again, and she makes a scoffing noise at him, shaking her head, moving her body further away from him on the couch.

“You've put me in a really fucked up position,” she tells him.

“Yes,” he agrees with her again. Probably right now would maybe, actually be the worst time to tell her... “Uh, Jimmy told me that if we don't get a good review, that he's going to cut the funding.”

He watches her eyebrows go to her forehead as she turns back to stare at him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I'm telling you,” he says to her. “Because you deserve to know.”

“I never even signed the partnership agreement,” she says to him, frowning.

“That's not what matters to me,” he says to her, sighing. “Jimmy had Computer draw that up.”

“You're trying to push me away,” she says, laughing to herself humorlessly. “Instead of try to fix this, you're trying to make it easy for me to leave.”

She starts to stand up and he feels genuine panic again. “No. I don't want you to leave. At all. But if you have to, or you want to-”

“I don't know if I can do this with you. Go to this dinner and sit around and act like everything's-”

“We can talk about it more,” he promises her. “After the dinner if you want. But you should come, Syd. You belong there. Seriously.”

“Chef Shapiro is going to be there,” she tells him with a sigh. “That's why I wanted to tell you before-”

“It's fine,” he sort of lies. “Fuck that guy, though.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says to him, nodding, trying to hide the fact that she's amused.

“You gonna go get ready?” he asks her.

“I was just going to change,” she says to him, gesturing to the door. “And, uh, maybe do something with this,” she tells him, taking her baseball hat off.

“Oh, so, like something special?” he asks her, looking at her braids. Trying to think of all the ways he could make her stay. Even for a few minutes. He's out of time.

“I don't think I'm going to have time,” she says to him, looking down at her phone.

“Do you want help?” he asks her.

“Do you know how to help?” she asks him with a tilt of her head, a little suspicious sounding but she's not saying she's against it.

“We can try, or you can just do it yourself,” he says, trying to call her bluff. “So, which?”

She huffs at him a little and goes to get her bag and brings back a smaller bag from inside, with a zipper filled with hair things and maybe a lip gloss.

It makes him curious, but he gestures to his bedroom. “Mirror?” he asks her.

“Yeah,” she says to him with a quick nod as she makes her way inside and stands in front of it, looking at her image, and he sees her eyes flick down the surface when she sets her zipper pouch on top of it, staring at what there; the book he's reading, or not really at the moment, and the prayer card. And her scrunchie sitting on top of it. “Is that my-”

“You left it here the week before,” he reminds her. “When you fell asleep and drooled on my couch, okay?”

He watches the corner of her mouth curl up in a smile. “Is this, like, a shrine, or something-” she teases him in a low voice, as he stares daggers at her. He really doesn't want to talk about it.

She clears her throat, like she's about to attempt a major challenge, and then pulls her braids back. “Can you hold the rest of them?”

“Yes,” he says to her, and takes her hair in his hands and lifts it up, gathering it together while she uses a finger to draw a few out to hang loose, and arranges the braids around her face, and her eyes meet his through the mirror for the briefest of moments, and he knows she's caught him staring.

“Can you twist them?” she asks him, her voice sounding so calm, just like in the kitchen. “Slowly, but a little tight, like you're twirling some pasta.”

“I'm Italian, so I get that reference?” he teases her. “I watched Sugar put her hair up all the time when I was a kid. We had to fight over a bathroom.”

He gets it a way that he thinks looks nice and holds it while she turns and tries to look at it from the side in the mirror.

When she's satisfied, she pulls out a bunch of bobby pins and sets them on his little shrine, he will never live that down, among many things, and she hands some of them back to him and explains how to place them, as he does it gently, until there are enough of them in there that he feels confident her hair isn't going to fall.

“Good?” he asks her, as she turns to both sides to check herself in the mirror.

“It's not bad,” she says to him, smiling a little, testing it with her fingers to make sure it's not coming loose.

“Oh, shit,” he says, suddenly remembering, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “The time.”

“You still have to get ready,” she says to him, gathering her stuff up quickly. She leaves the scrunchie behind. “I'll see you soon?” she asks him, heading out.

“See you soon, Syd,” he calls after her.

Chapter Text

He hears the quiet knock on his door.

He's laid out on the couch, trying to find something to watch and finding nothing. Not able to sleep. It's been a hell of a day.

There's a party going on down the hall, but he's not in the right head space for that after reading the review and the texts from Unc and Computer. Bastard.

This better not be Cousin or Fak drunk, he thinks, as he pulls open the door and sees Syd there. She looks terrible, like something is really wrong.

“Hey,” he says to her, his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Can I come in?” she asks him, and she looks like she might cry or throw up.

“Yeah, of course,” he says to her, gesturing toward her, stepping aside as he lets her in and then closes the door with a click, and leads her over to the couch as she sits down. She takes his bed pillow and hugs it against her body.

“I don't think I can go back to the party,” she tells him, pressing her lips together, staring straight ahead.

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” he says to her.

“Is it too late to talk?” she asks him, frowning deeply, like she's holding something in.

“Nah. We're both still awake,” he says to her, running a hand through his hair. “Tomorrow is Sunday. I got the day right, didn't I?” he asks, trying to cheer her up.

She nods at him.

“Anyone going to miss you over there?” he asks her, as she glances up at him. “At the party?”

“Omigod, I left Andrea Terry alone with Faks,” she says, looking distressed for a moment, like she might get up.

He chuckles at that. “She can handle herself. I'm going to text Cousin, alright? Let him know where you are. That okay?”

“I left Luca there, too.”

“Luca, yeah. Do you want me to text him?”

“No,” she replies, after thinking about it for a moment.

She watches him send the text to Cousin, waits for him to reply back. “It's all good,” he tells her, then smirks as he gets another text. “He said to tell you that he's the hostess with the mostess.”

He watches her half-smile at that. “He kinda is,” she tells him. “We were dancing earlier.”

“You were dancing with Cousin?” he asks, as she nods at him. “Huh. I would've liked to have seen that,” he sighs, leaning into the back of the couch, feeling her eyes on him.

“What happened with you and Chef David?” she starts, after they've sat in silence for a few moments. “Did you-”

“Mostly me realizing what an asshole I've been,” he tells her, as she sucks in a deep breath. “To you, and everyone, really. But especially you, I think?”

“You're also kind of being an asshole to yourself?” she says softly to him, just throwing that one out there for good measure.

“Don't do that,” he tells her, looking her over more closely now.

“Don't do what?” she asks reflexively, sitting up a little.

“Try to make it easier on me,” he answers. “So that you don't ever have to say what you really feel.”

She looks paralyzed. Frozen. Like if she remains still enough then he might not see her and keep going.

“What's going on with you, Syd?”

“Do I have to-”

“No,” he tells her immediately. “But I am asking.”

He watches as she relaxes when he doesn't keep going and starts to slowly lose her death grip on his pillow, which is across her lap now, and she pulls her legs up under her onto the couch.

“Why didn't you take your scrunchie with you?” he asks her, tipping his head at her.

“Because I didn't want to fuck up your daily devotions,” she says back to him, mouthy, as he narrowed his eyes at her. “What? You're obviously obsessed.”

“Yeah, you got me,” he said back to her, playing it cool, because he's not so sure he actually is at her saying that. “You just wanted to haunt me.”

She takes the pillow and tosses it at him, as he catches it. “Whoa, do not bring up Fak shit,” she warns him. “This was going so well-”

“Alright,” he says, conceding, setting the pillow on the arm of the sofa. “You wanna watch a show?”

“What's even on this late?” she asks him.

“No fucking idea,” he says, going to lift the channel changer. “One time, I fell asleep watching a cooking show, and I woke up and I was doing that shit in my sleep. I almost burned the place down,” he says with a hushed laugh, glancing over at his kitchen.

“Okay, that's not scary at all,” she says to him sarcastically, as he waves the channel changer at her, and she leans, as he hands it over to her, and moves in closer, and starts flipping through the channels. “It's all infomercials,” she says to him, looking disgusted, and yawns. “I'm going to have nightmares.”

“You want to stay here?” he asks her. “You can have my bed.”

“No,” she tells him, half-yawning again. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“But,” he tells her, punching at the pillow on the couch arm behind him. “I was sleeping on the couch when you got here.” He stares at her for a moment. “You sleep with your hair like that?”

“Like what?' she asks him with a shrug.

“Up?”

“Oh, no,” she tells him, shaking her head. “You want to help with that?” she asks.

“Okay,” he agrees, and she scoots in closer to him, as he starts to try to remember where he put the bobby pins earlier, and starts pulling them out, handing them off to her as she watches the t.v. and sets them on the coffee table.

Little pieces of her scattered across his apartment, as he starts to let her hair down, and untwist it, until it spills down her back.

“That all?” he asks.

“No,” she tells him. “I need that scrunchie. Do you think you can do it?” she asks him, teasing, as he gets up off the couch and heads into his bedroom and brings it back out.

He sits next to her on the couch to lean back and watches how she twists it up high up on her head and secures it.

She leans back into the couch and tips her head back and to the side to rest it. “Thank you,” she tells him, as he moves his eyes to look down at her and sees her staring right back at him.

He leans forward to get the channel changer from where she left it on the coffee table and then leans back again and feels her curl in against him. It's not the first time it's happened, it's just been a while. He missed this.

Then he finds himself yawning, finally, as he tries to flip through and lands on some black and white show. Everyone is a monster, except the cousin, who is normal. Nice, normal Syd and she is trapped with a monster. A bear.

He thinks about that outfit she had on at the lockers that day. That giant bow and it was a whole thing, the way she was when she wasn't at the restaurant. It always made him so curious. Everything about her makes him curious.

Trapped in a prison of your own design, he hears Cousin say in his head. Except, he had trapped her with him, and Marcus and Tina and everyone else.

“I don't want to be hard to keep up with,” he hears himself say out loud, and he's not sure if he's awake or if he's dreaming at this point. He can feel Syd lying against him, breathing softly and asleep. “It can be good, like it is right now. Stress free and peaceful.”

“That would be nice,” she says to him, and he feels himself tense, but he doesn't move. “But we have to fix some things. We can't be afraid of change.”

“That mean you're not leaving me?” he asked her.

“We used to not be afraid of change,” she said, craning her head to look at him. “Of doing things different? I feel like we ran headlong into it once.”

“No more Michelin star?” he says to her. “Because I couldn't do it, Syd,” he tells her, and admitting that is a lot harder than how he'd planned it in his head. It comes out like he is saying he is sorry without saying the words.

“Not by yourself, no,” she told him.

“What about a garden?” he asks her. “Urban garden, and we grow some of our own things-”

Now she is really awake and staring at him. “Okay, Noma,” she tells him. “Who is going to do all of that work and run the restaurants, unpaid interns?”

“I actually pay for staging, if you recall,” he says to her, as she laughs at him, and he follows the movements of her fingers, as she puts them in his hair, touches it and curls a piece around her fingertip. “Maybe I'd do it?”

“Now that, I'd love to see,” she says to him. Noted.

“What would you like me to grow for you?” he asks her, as she sits up so she can inspect, him. She's obviously trying to gauge his seriousness, but yeah, he does want this. All of it.

“For my menu?” she asks him, making a dubious sound in her throat.

“Yes,” he says to her. “I don't want to do this without you. I-”

The words get stuck in his chest. They want to come out. Sorry comes out so easily, but not the other words. The kind that he was drilled into saying, that were used like a transaction.

“I wouldn't want to ever do this without you,” he finishes, watching her expression, and the way her face changes. But she doesn't leave.

“I, uh, I think I am so tired that I can't see straight,” she says, nervous laughter in her voice, and she stands up from the couch.

“Syd,” he says after her, still hung up on the words that haven't left him.

“It's fine,” she tells him. “I'll take the bed.”

Chapter Text

Her laughter fills up the space.

He's out of breath as he's finally chased her to the shed, damn, she's quick. Watching her pick one of the tomatoes up off the washing and sorting table, and then bite right into it.

It's sunny out, well past noon, and they're right in middle of harvest. They are right in the middle of this.

He watches it drip down her chin, and then takes the tomato out of her hand and sets it down on the table, and then twists his hand into the curls of her hair and kisses her, his mouth on her chin, licking the juice off, then back on her lips, getting past the fresh taste of the fruit until he can taste her.

“Even better than last year,” she says to him, out of breath.

“Me or the tomatoes?” he asks.

“Guess there's only one way to know for sure?”

“Fuck,” he says, laughing, feeling her working to try to get his pants down. “Hey, slower,” he tells her, putting his hand on her wrist. He has, like, a whole day and night planned.

“Why?” she asks him, tossing her head, making her curls shake around her shoulders. “There's no one else here but us.”

“Alright,” he says, his eyes moving all over, trying to memorize everything about her, and this moment. The sound of the birds outside, the breeze making her hair bounce, the way the light is hitting her skin.

She pushes up his t-shirt, and gets her hands on his jeans again, greedy, and opens the button fly, and he watches her bite her lip before she takes him in her hand and he feels himself slipping already, as she kisses him, and he starts to take her shorts down quickly, a bit frantic. At least get them both to an equal state of undress here, as he swipes his hand across the surface of the wood table that they use for tools to make sure it's good, and then lifts her onto it.

“I love you,” he says to her, her eyes full of anticipation, and then pushes inside her, his hands holding tightly to her thighs and her grip on his shoulders; and they literally just got here, only just got the car unpacked, and they're already fucking in the shed.

Her voice starts to hitch as she tries to find a way to brace herself, and he didn't expect to be so into doing this outdoors. Or maybe it's just because it's Sydney.

Sydney who wants him and loves him, and fights with him, and is patient with him, and who he will always wait for.

Really, the entire car ride to the farm was basically a variation on all the different ways they were planning on doing what they're doing right now.

“What do you think about Chicken Cacciatore?” he asked her while she's behind the wheel.

“For what, the menu?” she replied, thinking it over as she drove. “I think it could work family style.”

“Yeah, it's got thighs,” he mentioned. “And it's earthy, and like you cook it for long enough and it's so, so, tender that it falls off the bone.”

“Sounds good, there's like mushrooms in there and red peppers, and herbs?” she asked, trying to recall.

“Did you know cacciatore in Italian means hunter?” he asked her, pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth.

“Huh,” she said, as he watched her fingers flex, and grip the wheel. “No, I didn't know that. Interesting.”

He's holding onto her while she trembles underneath him, he can't believe she came so fast, like in record time. It must be the angle, or-

“The shed was a good idea,” he says, a little out of breath, as she grins and then presses her lips against his cheek, and then makes him chase her mouth. He wants to keep going, but he's got to give her a minute here. He got pretty close.

“I'm going to try a pie recipe out,” she had told him, matter of fact, sunglasses on, as she pumped the gas. “You up for that?”

“Oh, yeah, really?” he asked her, looking at her through the rolled down window, and also starting at her stomach beneath the cropped t-shirt. “Sweet or savory?”

“Both?” she said to him, as the pump kicked off. “Sweet potatoes, some kind of syrup. I think I want nuts.”

“Sweet potatoes...those Beauregard ones you like?”

“Exactly,” she told him, getting back inside the car, and strapping in.

They make it back into the cottage house, past the planted rows and little green house, and bang the screen door shut, managing to get to the kitchen table, all their clothes are tossed away on the floor at this point, she's still got her t-shirt on, and he finally loses patience and stops to pull it up and over her head.

The most beautiful thing, and nothing can compare to this. How she makes him feel when she looks at him, when she's not holding anything back. There is a quiet moment between them, that feels almost as delicate as the first time they did this.

It was the night she had stayed over and slept in his bed. When it was nothing but bad news piling up, and he was such a fucking mess, and she was thinking about walking away for good.

She had walked into the front room and was gathering her things to go back to her place, as he woke and saw her. Almost, maybe, so close to arriving too late again. He realized in a flash of a moment that he had missed out or messed up so many times with her already.

“Don't go, Syd,” he called out to her. Her hand was already on the doorknob. “You can't go without letting me tell you that I love you.”

She had almost seemed furious at first, the way she looked at him, and then she marched over to where he was still laid out on the couch, like she was about to scold him like they were in the kitchen.

And then she leaned down and gave him the softest, sweetest kiss. No warning, and he had sat up at attention, immediately, all in.

“Yeah?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I mean, I think so?”

“Burnt honey?”

“Bees?” he asks her, snickering a little. “I remember when you thought the greenhouse was too much.”

“That's on you, you're bad at math. But, why not?” she asks him, frowning at him slightly. “Have you ever had burnt honey with strawberries?”

“No, but I've had it on panna cotta with saffron, and that shit was fire, chef,” he says to her.

“What else have you had it on?” she wonders, glancing over at him, as he rubs his thumb against his bottom lip, thinking on it.

“I'm sure the possibilities are endless,” he tells her, and raises his eyebrows when she stares just a little bit too long at him instead of the road. “We need more flowers.”

“Hmm, you think so?” she asks him.

“For the bees,” he tells her, a teasing smile playing on his lips. “I'll look into it.”

Their fingers are intertwined on the table.

He's not sure how he's even managed to last this long, but she's still coming down from her high and he pulls out slowly and starts planting kisses along her shoulders, her back and her skin is glistening, faintly in the afternoon light from the windows. Glowing.

She pushes herself up from the table, and turns around and kisses him on his forehead, and he knows she has to taste salt, he tastes it right on her lips after, her finger catching the drip of sweat from his hair onto his clavicle, and then she takes him by the hand and leads him.

They're in the small living room now, at the couch. His old couch from his apartment. She's sitting him down, letting him get comfortable, and then settling into his lap.

He likes this part the best really; when it's slow, and it's just them seeing each other, and it's quiet and their eyes are speaking.

She lowers herself onto him and he has to shut his eyes for a moment, because it just feels too good. Like a dream, and he never wants to be woken from it. Her fingers in his hair, and it's slow and wet and warm.

“Love you,” she tells him, circling her hips and his hands are resting on them, as he tips his head against the back of the couch, and feels himself start to let go, his mind filling with images, and words, and ideas for things that feel so new.

Everything feels new with her, and he comes with her lips pressed against his, with his heart and his arms, filled with her.

He sits on the couch for a moment after, recovering and he notices she is already picking up the clothes that they tossed all over the floor. She's always moving.

Sometimes it's hard for him to keep up with her these days.

He groans from still being sensitive and sits all the way up and then heads after her to get his clothing back that she collected, and gets a little dressed, and then pulls out a chair at the table, and finds his backpack.

Taking out his pencils and his drawing pad, he starts to sketch out some ideas. Some of the things they talked about on the ride up here, or at least he starts with the individual elements and then works his way up.

He flips back and forth through the pages, and pauses, and goes further back. Images that he has drawn of her.

Every one either a memory or a dream, but she stops to lean over and kisses him on the temple. “You really nailed by nipples in that one.”

He just starts to laugh. Ugh, she always makes him laugh. He used to never feel that way. He feels a bit sad for the person who he was. He's learned to forgive him just like she has.

The sound of her feet padding away is punctuated by the screen door slamming shut. It's an unpleasant sound but also comforting at the same time, he knows it's marking her coming and going. He hears it again later, anticipating her return, curious to see what she's been up to.

There's a quiet echo of something being sat on the table in front of him, and he looks up and sees some flowers gathered in a small jar.

Some of the things growing wild, and some of them that they planted together.

He finds her eyes and tells her a silent thank you.