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The last thing Carmy hears before the world narrows is the sound of his old chef laughing.
The entire confrontation is a blur. Hands clenched at his sides, voice cracking as he demands an apology he knows he’ll never get. Certainly not from this man. It ends with the man shrugging and saying, “You were always too delicate for this business, Berzatto.” Then he walks away like Carmy was never worth remembering. He probably wasn’t. Suddenly, the hallway echoes are too loud. Everything sharpens, then smears. His breathing goes shallow. It's all crippling in its familiarity. He stumbles out the back exit, onto the alley, where the cold air doesn’t help.
And then before he can fully work himself into a panic attack he knows is inevitable, there’s a large hand on his shoulder.
“Carmy.”
It’s Luca. His voice is low and firm, an anchor. Carmy’s hands are on his knees now, shaking. He's lowering his head between his hands to join his knees to try and keep from heaving.
“I can’t …I can’t breathe.”
“Yes, you can,” Luca says, already kneeling beside him. “Look at me. You’re not alone, alright?”
And it’s ridiculous how instantly the space…no, the world, starts coming back into focus. Luca touches his wrist, then moves his hand to Carmy’s chest, grounding. “Just breathe with me. In. Out.” The entire routine is achingly familiar. Carmy couldn't begin to count just how many times Luca has done this, talked him down a ledge back into his own body.
A beat passes. Two. Three.
When Carmy opens his eyes, Luca is right there, steady and calm and… beautiful in the worst moment of Carmy’s day.
“Why…” Carmy’s voice is small. “Why are you the only one who knows how to make me breathe again?”
Luca doesn’t answer. He just helps him to his feet.
The world came back in tiny, disjointed fragments - a fast moving SUV turns the corner, a trashcan spilling milk cartons, the pavement beneath his feet. Luca's arm around his waist walking him in some direction. Luca takes him home. Later that night, folded in his arms, Carmy whispers, “Seriously though, why ARE you the only one who knows how to make me breathe again?”
Luca doesn't say anything, he just holds him tighter.
Two weeks later, in the heat of The Bear’s kitchen, Marcus teases Luca about carrying around a duffel bag to work like a hobo before the latter goes to stuff it in his locker.
“Seriously though Man, you good?” Marcus asks as he wipes down his station.
“Yeah,” Luca says. “Just trying to figure out where I’ll be staying this week. Airbnb’s been…”
“You could always crash on my couch,” Marcus offers, smiling, easy. “Though Neil’s there too, and he’s kind of beyond obsessed with you so I won’t be responsible for anything he says…”
Carmy’s voice cuts in from behind the pass, sharper than necessary, no preamble, “You’re staying with me.”
Both men look at him.
He really hadn't meant to be so abrupt but it couldn't be helped as he was still trying to push out the image of Neil or anyone else seeing Luca in his morning boxer shorts making french toast.
Luca raises an eyebrow. “That an order, Chef?”
“No. It’s just…my place is closer. That’s all. You’re staying with me” Carmy repeats softer this time, but he won’t look at him. “I’ve got space.”
Luca shrugs, letting it go. Marcus smirks knowing there is more to all this than just a place to crash but he'll wait and see.
Carmy’s words echo in the hours that follow, possessive, protective, borderline jealous. Luca hadn't said yes or no leaving Carmy flustered for the rest of service wondering what any of it meant. But at the end of the day, he pulls his duffel bag out of the locker and follows Carmy wordlessly out the door.
It’s not easy.
Luca leaves him feeling frazzled because he no longer looks at Carmy the way he used to and its like a planet-sized void that Carmy feels down to his toes. He remembers those looks, long, and lingering coupled with Luca's trademark soft smile and bedroom eyes following him wherever he went. It used to make him feel seen in a way noone ever had but also one that left him feeling utterly exposed, like a raw nerve that was being healed under a microscope very slowly. Luca leaves guitar picks all over the apartment and Carmy leaves the stove on too long. They bicker over how strong the coffee should be and Carmy reorganizes the fridge obsessively as Luca writes jokes on his prep lists. It’s tender but tentative and it makes Carmy ache for the way it used to be when Luca was so open his eyes lit up just because Carmy walked into a room. Now he never really makes eye contact and Carmy misses being seen by the only person who ever did see him.
But there are still quiet moments - watching old cooking documentaries on the couch. Falling asleep to the hum of the dishwasher. Luca humming something under his breath in the mornings that Carmy will never admit he waits for and plays on his phone the rest of the day. Luca strumming a guitar and singing when he doesn’t think Camry is looking. Luca laundering Carmy’s shirts and folding them in till they’re just the right side of too soft. Luca leaving him desserts in the fridge, lots and lots of peaches because he knows they’re Carmy’s favorite even though they never ever discussed it. But he's always known Carmy like that, small things that no one bothered to notice about him that Luca pocketed for the moments he could later surprise him with.
Carmy catches himself sketching recipes with Luca in mind - textures he wants to explore, but only if Luca’s there to test them. Flavors that taste like him.
One night, he watches Luca laughing in the kitchen with Marcus, their voices low and full of an easy, shared rhythm and something clenches hard and deep in his gut. An ancient hollow jealousy that has always informed him and eaten him from the inside out. He felt it with Michael too, the resentment that the people who were his never belonged to him completely, that they were able to have and want other people when Carmy was incapable of doing either. He wasn’t built like that and so it always ate at him when he saw those he loved belong to everyone. He was primitive in how possessive he was.
Luca was his. They had belonged to each other since the moment they were paired together as stages. Luca knew how insecure Carmy was about not being first. He had always understood it on a visceral level. So he could only be doing this, this intimate buddy dance with Marcus to torture him, right? Carmy clenched his jaw and tried to swallow down the bile that he knew will poison whatever good he has managed to let back into his life. He kept willing himself to try and let it go because whatever this fragile in-between-ness he had going with Luca was, he still needed it. It was more real than anything else in his life.
---------
By 2 a.m. Carmy had worked himself into a rage. Luca was coming home from a shift with Sydney and Marcus. Carmy was still awake, spiraling because he was never much good at swallowing something he didn’t like the taste of.
“You look like hell,” Luca says softly as he sets down his keys.
Carmy doesn’t answer. Just stares at him.
And then suddenly he exploded. All the unsaid and unspoken need from the past weeks gushing forth like a hot spring.
“Do I not matter to you anymore?!” Carmy yells, chest heaving. “Because I fucking show up, every day, I cook like my life depends on it, I stay sober, I breathe because of you, Luca, and you’re just here like you don’t even feel it!”
Luca freezes at first and then goes incredibly still.
“You want to know why I’m here?” he says after a long pause. “Why I came back? Why I stay?”
Carmy waits.
“Because you’re the only person I can’t walk away from. That’s not fucking nothing.”
“Then why won’t you touch me anymore?” Carmy whispers low, like he can't bear to admit how terrible his need is.
“Because you left, Carmy,” Luca clips out and its like somebody rang a gong in the room.
The silence is haunting, deafening.
The silence stretches between them like a continent, aching, and expanding the longer Carmy keeps quiet.
“You know why,” Luca says finally. “You made it clear. Claire was...she was your way out. I’m just the one who stayed. You think that doesn't hurt, Carmy? You think you're the only one who needs to armor the fuck up?!”
“I fucked up... I, I always fuck up.” Carmy whispers, devastated with guilt. “I didn’t forget you, I never forgot, not for a fucking second. I just didn’t know how to keep you because you know everything about me, you knew even before I told you and you are part of my whole journey and if we did break I would have lost everything so I figured I’d cut out while we could still be something to each other. I know it’s insane… but I...” Carmy begins to shake and his chest begins to tighten and oh, shit...he begins to stutter the words.
Luca always needed to hold him when he got so anxious that his stutter returned. Who was he kidding, he just always needed to hold him and so he rushed to his side and grabbed him as they both collapse on to the floor. “Why would we break?” he asks quietly.
Carmy chokes on a bitter laugh, face pressed against Luca's chest. “Because that’s what I do, Luca. I break things. I’m broken, so I break things. I couldn’t break us. I wouldn’t be able to live through that.” He’s weeping and trembling and Luca finds himself folding around him like a blanket.
“You forget love, I’m broken too but I fix things. And I’ll fix it... all of it. You just need to let me” Luca hums into Carmy’s mop of curls.
Carmy whispers. “I can try. But I need you to touch me. Every time you touch me, I feel like I can breathe easier, like I won’t just dissolve and don't think I don't know how pathetic that sounds.”
“Well, I hope you know that really is asking a lot. I mean it will be a complete chore but sure love, I’ll touch you” Luca mumbles with soft mirth directly into his hear and Carmy chokes on a laugh. This one is real, and he buries his nose in the clavicle of Luca’s neck as they just sit on the floor.
Luca holding him in his lap and rocking softly back and forth. Touching him, until they both fall asleep.
They rediscover each other later in the night when they wake up emotionally raw and desperate for intimacy. Clothes are tossed aside in passion without apology and limbs tangle, there are so many kisses between them they lose track of how they are trying to map each other again but it's all too rushed to linger. It’s like their first time, again. Carmy dragging Luca behind the shelves of the pantry and practically ravaging his mouth. They couldn't pause or breathe until they had to back then. This time they don’t even manage to make it to the bed. There’s biting, clawing, mouths bruising and Luca reaching for the kitchen counter to slather some olive oil on his fingers. When their bodies join it's as if an eternity has passed and also like it was yesterday. He can't think how he ever survived on just the memory of this when feeling Carmy beneath him this way, seeing his blue eyes lock in on him again and hold him in place was everything he knew he would ever want. Carmy never looked away when they had sex, he needed to read Luca's face and this moment was no different, so Luca let him. He let's him see everything he still feels even if it's harder to say now. As he thrusts into him and Carmy grabs his hair, everything unsaid is made real again. Luca’s hands tremble when Carmy pulls him closer, like he’s terrified this will ruin them again but Carmy still can’t stop looking at him. There are tears and the other's lips to drink them and held hands and a raw aching need tying it all together.
“Don’t stop,” Carmy breathes. “Please.”
"Never. God, I miss you. I missed you so much," Luca chokes into his neck, tears rolling down onto Carmy's curls.
Later, Luca lies there, watching Carmy sleep on the floor beside him.
He thinks he has to leave but every time he even considers unwrapping his arms from Carmy, he knows he can't or more accurately, he won't.
Luca is still in love with him and he'll stay for anything Carmy is willing to give.
A part of him hates himself for putting himself in this position again but that part is smaller than the one that belongs to the man softly snoring in his arms and drooling onto his shoulder.
Sometime in the night they both turn over, backs cracking on the linoleum floor and they silently pull each other up, moving towards the bedroom.
It’s not the same this time around - it lacks the same urgency, this wasn't a fight to keep each other in place. They now lie in bed mapping each others bodies in the soft lamplight, remembering old haunts - a trail of freckles; the back of Carmy's knee that always tickles; a nibble on Luca's left earlobe that drives him insane. But there are new ports, new scars and burns that require archiving. "Steak knife?" Carmy asks, as he rubs his thumb on a small but deep gnash on Luca's right elbow. "Skewer, actually," Luca mumbles licking at a relatively new burn right below Carmy's shoulder that he saw Carmy acquire three weeks ago during a particularly rushed service hour. Carmy kisses the scar on his elbow and then wraps the arm around himself burying his face into Luca's chest to sleep.
At some point in the night, Luca wakes up to find Carmy curled into his side like he’s been there all his life, it almost makes him believe that is where he will stay. Carmy clings, wrapped around Luca’s body like a sleeping sloth. Carmy's breath shallows when Luca moves a little to try and dislodge his aching arm, a sleepy hand fisting the fabric of his t-shirt like it’s a tether. His face presses close to Luca’s throat, and he mumbles something barely audible.
“Don’t go.”
Luca doesn’t move a muscle for hours.
Afterwards, Luca lay with Carmy by his side - half awake, head on his chest like a sleepy claim, clearly waiting for words that neither really know how to say yet. So, Luca inhales deeply and starts “You know, I fell in love with you 13 days after we met,” he admits.
“What?” Carmy lifts his head to look at him.
“The pea incident.”
Carmy groans. “Not the fucking peas.”
“Yes, the fucking peas,” Luca grins. “You made the sous cry because he couldn’t blanch them properly. Everyone was scared of you. But I…I just couldn’t stop staring at your hands. Your eyes. How you never looked anyone in the face, but still saw everything.”
Carmy is silent. Breath soft.
“I thought I could beat you... at first” Luca goes on. “I really did. But that day I looked at the others’ faces and I realized no. I just need to try and keep up.”
Carmy turns, eyes glassy. “You always saw me. You always looked at me and you saw me. It used to scare me so much because no one else could ever do that. My family saw my silence and thought I was slow or weird or separate but you saw it and it was like we spoke the same language."
Luca smiles, warm. “Yeah, I saw you. I still see you bear. You just never look back.”
Carmy listened to the confession softening the bruised edges. He sits up and slides onto Luca's lap, leans in deep grabbing his face with both hands and kisses him deeply, licking into his mouth ...so slow, so reverent, like an apology and a beginning all at once.
The next few days are strange. Quiet. Luca is cautious, polite yet soft. Carmy is quietly breaking not knowing how much to push or stretch this before it might break again. They’ve said so much but so soon and now they’re wading in the aftermath.
“I need you to say it,” he tells him one night.
“Say what?”
“That you love me. That this wasn’t just…whatever. That you stayed for me.”
Luca exhales, heavy. “Carmy, I told you I fell in love with you. You always knew I did. Don’t pretend you didn’t. You think I’d cross an ocean, come back to your chaos, and stay in that madhouse if I didn’t love you?” He says it like it hurts that Carmy is the one doubting him because it does. “You’re the reason I still believe I can build something.”
“I need the words. I know I don't deserve them and I have no right to ask but you are the only one I can ask and I... I need them," Carmy rushes, beet red, eyes downcast.
Luca stares at him for a long time. Then walks over and rests his forehead against Carmy’s, lifting his face up by the chin.
“I love you. Always have. Even when I didn’t want to. And I always will. And it’s true that sometimes that scares me because I loved you first and I loved you throughout. You’re the one who leaves me,” he says not meeting his eyes this time and Carmy feels something crack in his chest. He kisses him like he can’t stop.
“I left because I don’t think I deserve that. Someone who loves me just because they do, not because I tried to earn it. It used to scare me how clean it was. You just saw me and you never played games or tried to hide it. I’ve never known that love, I still have trouble believing it’s real,” Carmy rushes through, head buried in Luca’s chest.
“It is real. And when you refuse to believe it, I feel like I haven’t done enough. Can you understand that? Can you just let me? Just let me love you. Let me take care of you. It’s what I need” Luca whispers and Carmy breathes that in.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?” Luca quirks an eyebrow.
“Okay…” Carmy smiles, apple cheeks, clear sapphire eyes and dimples.
-----
At the kitchen the next day, Carmy hovers. Not in his usual frenzied, control freak way. No, this time it’s deliberate, directed.
He stands behind Luca while he tastes a new broth. Offers a spoon without speaking. Places a hand on Luca’s back while they’re plating, lingers just a beat longer than necessary. Everyone notices.
At the locker wall, Marcus raises an eyebrow. “You two good?”
“Fine, Chef,” Luca says. But he’s flushed and can't stop grinning and Marcus smiles.
That’s when Luca sees the note. Tucked into the corner of his locker door, scribbled in Carmy’s almost-illegible hand.
{You’re the reason I still get up when I think I can’t.
Don’t let me fuck this up. —C.}
This time he wears the grin proudly and folds It in with the other note in his wallet. He’ll probably need to get a Filofax or something.
After that, it keeps happening over and over again until they both begin to trust it.
Carmy starts saying I love you like it’s urgent. Like it’s an apology or a prayer.
Sometimes he wakes Luca in the middle of the night, terrified and nervous.
“Hey Luca, come on. Wake up!”
“What?! What happened. You okay?” Luca sniffles, rubbing his eyes.
“You know I mean it right? When I say I love you. Because I do. I love you more than I ever thought I could love anything. I don’t ever want to do this without you” Carmy gushes and his eyes are panicked, as if he might be left alone again if he didn’t tell Luca immediately.
All of his annoyance at being woken up fades and Luca wraps Carmy into himself. “I Love you too. And yes, I know. I believe you. Stop thinking this will go away. I won’t let it.”
Some days, it’s over pasta. "I love you" kissed into an ear.
Other day's, in the morning. “I love you” in between toothpaste foam and grinning like idiots in the mirror.
After service, whispered into apron collars “I love you"
When they’re too tired to talk and just lie there on the office couch to catch their breath during break, forehead to forehead “I love you.”
“I love you,” Carmy says, so softly, like he’s making up for every time he didn’t say it before. “I love you,” as they launder their uniforms.
Luca starts to believe him.
--------
A pilgrimage to Mike’s grave cements their bond.
“I haven’t been since the funeral.”
That’s all Carmy says.
They drive in silence. Carmy’s hand in Luca’s the whole way. It’s not even a question whether he’ll come.
They stand over the grave together. Carmy crouches, tracing the engraved letters with his fingers like they still surprise him.
“He would’ve liked you,” Carmy says. “He would’ve messed with you, a lot, but he’d have liked you.”
Luca smiles, subdued.
Carmy doesn’t cry. He just kneels there, breathing deep, and when he reaches back without looking, Luca kneels beside him, takes his hand.
“I tell him about you,” Carmy says, voice rough. “Every time I need to figure my shit out, I think about what Mikey would say. Lately… all he says is, don’t lose Luca. So I won’t.”
Carmy shows Luca all the text messages he sends Mikey and Luca just hugs him. He takes the phone from Carmy’s hands and begins typing, to Carmy’s complete surprise.
“Hi Micheal. I don’t know you well enough to call you Mikey yet but I will at some point. Because I love your brother and we belong to each other. So i'll be here. I’ll take care of him, I promise,” Luca pushes send and hands the phone back to Carmy.
Carmy reads the message and just looks at him. Then he brings their clasped hands to his mouth and kisses his fingers and leans his head against Luca's shoulder on the bus. Carmy waits for their stop to arrive, their stop home.
They settle into domestic rhythms: Sunday documentary marathons, midnight arguments over agnolotti. Little things and big things. Luca loves taking care of people. Always has, but taking care of Carmy, is sometimes how he defines himself and his purpose. It’s a habit he never could break until he realized he didn’t want to.
And now, Carmy lets him.
Let’s him rub his shoulders after brutal shifts. Let’s him cook for them when they’re off. Let’s him iron his dress shirts and alphabetize the spice rack and keep Carmy’s sketchbooks in a drawer in their room.
One day, Carmy trips on the kitchen steps, stupid and fast, and cracks his forearm against the edge of a metal cart. The cast goes up to his elbow and it’s painful, far more painful for Luca to watch as Carmy begins laughing at his face while he’s being bandaged.
“You’re lucky it’s not worse,” Luca tells him that night, gently helping him out of his hoodie. “You could’ve fractured your wrist.”
“I did fracture my wrist but you looked like you got shot,” Carmy grits out, voice low.
Luca smirks. “Right. Sorry. I can’t help it. Your arm looked twisted, I was worried. I get to worry”
And in that moment Carmy loves him something fierce. He realizes that he worries all the time and he’s never really seen that burden on Luca. Luca moves through the kitchen with a deadly, preternatural calm that Carmy always envied but seeing him now, completely scattered and jittery. Trying to count out Carmy’s pills and plan to re-align the apartment furniture for his convenience – that Luca worries about people. Not success or perfection but people. And he worries about Carmy more than anything. Carmy lets that feeling of being loved that much soften and settle throughout his entire body.
Luca bathes him, washes his hair in the shower like Carmy was made of porcelain. Carmy sits on the little stool, arms slack, head tilted back. Water streams down his face as Luca lathers the shampoo and works it through his curls, slow and careful.
Neither of them speaks.
Carmy’s eyes are closed, but Luca looks. Can’t stop looking. Carmy’s throat, the hollow of it. His jaw, tight even now so he buries his nose in it and kisses it so Carmy can unclench. The traces the slope of his nose. That heart-wrecking, slightly parted mouth waiting to be kissed and who is he not to oblige.
'I’m taking care of him. I get to do this now. He’s letting me', Luca thinks to himself and breathes a littler easier.
He leans forward, brushes a kiss against Carmy’s temple. Carmy breathes out, like a release.
Later that night, Carmy tries to write with his left hand, fails, and scribbles a note with his mouth between the pen and paper.
{U make everything feel better. Don’t stop. I love you}
Luca adds it to his already stuffed wallet.
---------
“I think I wanna open another spot someday,” Carmy says one night, in bed, tracing Luca’s ribs with two fingers. “Like, quieter. Just ten seats. Pasta-forward. You and me, back of house.”
Luca chuckles. “You romantic bastard.”
Carmy grins. “I’m serious. I want that. With you.”
Luca doesn’t say anything at first. But he turns, and kisses him slow, like a thank you.
Like a yes.
They sit on the floor of their kitchen one night, barefoot and wine-drunk, surrounded by sketches and lease forms. The Bear is thriving. Sydney is ready. Carmy watches her in the kitchen now and sees not a sous, but a chef in her own right.
“Time to let her fly,” Luca says softly.
Carmy nods.
“So?”
Luca hums. “No more tweezers. No more microscopic gels and soulless towers of foam.”
“What then?” Carmy smirks.
“I want our place to feel like an Alice in Wonderland tea party – I want whimsical, I want slightly mad. I want giant tureens and soft, gooey bread. I want to serve magic in every bite.”
Carmy grins. “God, I love you.”
Luca smirks at him, eyebrow raised and then dissolves into laughter as they bump noses trying to kiss, cross legged on the floor.
They shake on it with their pinkies like idiots.
The biggest change isn’t the notes. It isn’t the cooking.
Carmy just doesn’t hide anymore.
He reaches for Luca’s hand when they walk into work together. He lets him fix his collar in front of the crew. He loops an arm around Luca’s waist when they’re out at events and doesn’t flinch when people see them.
And maybe the biggest moment of all…
He kisses Luca in the kitchen. In full view of the team. Right after a staff meeting, flour still on his face, apron crooked.
Luca’s stands still a bit stunned.
Carmy just shrugs, leans in for another peck and says 'Hey.”
"Hey," Luca whispers back.
Someone is hooting and another person just whistled.
They can't tell one from the other as they keep staring at each other.
"Where's my $100, I told you fuckers ages ago!", well that's obviously Richie.
Luca doesn’t realize how long he’s been holding his breath until he finally exhales.
Until one day, he’s in the middle of chopping herbs and Carmy walks past him, shoulder brushing his, walks back and grabs him from the back, burying his nose in his neck and whispers, “You’re my home now,” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Until he wakes up with Carmy draped across his chest like gravity itself put him there.
Until the fear stops clawing at his throat. Until love stops feeling like something temporary.
Because this time it sticks.
And Carmy never stops showing it.
“Alright, fine. But if you spoil a single plot point…”
“I won’t,” Carmy mutters, already curled against the arm of the couch, blanket pulled halfway over him.
Luca’s smirk is audible. “You say that like you didn’t Google every episode summary before agreeing to watch.”
Carmy narrows his eyes. “I like knowing what’s coming.”
Luca glances at him over the top of the remote. “Yeah. I know.”
They’re three episodes into Game of Thrones before Carmy shifts closer. Just a thigh against a thigh, his socked foot slipping under Luca’s calf. Neither of them says anything about it.
By the end of the night, they’re halfway through season one, Carmy is riled up about food logistics in Westeros (“Where the fuck are the root cellars in the North?!”), and Luca keeps poking fun until Carmy tackles him on the couch and laughs…out loud. Unrestrained.
It’s the first time in days.
It’s not like they don’t fight and as if all the old wounds have vanished. They emerge now and then for the stupidest reasons.
At 2:17 am, in the middle of the kitchen they argue over agnolotti.
“Just let me salt it,” Carmy snaps, hand hovering over the pot like it’s life or death.
“I’ve salted it twice already, chef.” Luca’s voice is all grin, but his eyes are determined. “You’re gonna give yourself a sodium stroke.”
“I’ll give you a sodium…”
Luca throws a dish towel at his head. Carmy dodges, barely.
They end up cooking till 4 a.m., the windows fogged, their shadows moving like a dance across the tiles. Carmy rolls out pasta while Luca stirs, quiet music playing from someone’s old playlist. There’s flour in Carmy’s hair. Luca doesn’t mention it.
When the agnolotti is finally plated, perfectly browned, velvety, transcendent - they stand in the doorway and eat it off one dish with two forks.
“You taste that?” Carmy murmurs, chewing.
“Yeah,” Luca says softly. “Tastes like home.”
They fight in the walk in and it starts with something small, Luca laughing a little too loudly with Marcus in the kitchen. Inside joke, maybe. A reference to something Carmy doesn’t know.
Carmy doesn’t say anything at first. Just clenches his jaw and cleans the same counter three times. He watches Luca clap Marcus on the back, and for a second, something old and feral rises up in him. Something from London. Something from before.
Then Luca walks into the walk-in to grab fresh herbs, and Carmy follows.
“You two getting close, huh?”
Luca blinks at the tone. “Who, me and Marcus?”
“You always have something to say to him. Some private little thing I’m not a part of.”
Luca sets the herbs down slowly. “Is this jealousy? Again?”
Carmy’s voice tightens defensively. “No. I’m just…”
“Because I’m here for you, Carmy. Not Marcus. Not anyone else.”
“Then why do you need other people?” Carmy blurts. “You didn’t used to. You used to look at me like…like I meant something, everything.”
Luca stares at him, voice flat. “And you used to not let me rot alone while you played house with Claire.”
That hits its mark. Carmy stiffens, swallowing hard.
“That’s not fair,” he says quietly.
“Isn’t it?”
Carmy can’t speak. He’s breathing too fast.
Luca softens then, almost imperceptibly. “I’m here, Bear. I chose you. Again. And again. You don’t have to keep testing if I will.”
One night, Carmy doesn’t come home. It’s late. Carmy storms out after a rough night service. Burned the veal. Got reamed by a vendor. Said something curt to Tina. Everything imploding.
He doesn’t text Luca. Doesn’t pick up his phone. Just sits at a closed diner until 3 a.m., the fluorescent lights buzzing above his head.
When he finally walks in the door, Luca is waiting, arms folded.
“Where the fuck were you?”
Carmy shrugs off his coat, eyes red. “Out.”
“You disappeared, Carmy.”
“I needed space.”
“You needed space,” Luca echoes, voice rising. “You disappear on me and expect what? That I’ll sit here like a fool?”
“I didn’t ask you to wait for me!” Carmy yells. “I never asked anyone to wait for me!”
And there it is. The old wound scraped raw, open fresh and bleeding all over again.
Luca doesn’t speak. Just turns away, shaking, eyes shining.
“I can’t be the only one who always stays,” he whispers.
Carmy’s voice breaks. “I don’t know how to do this. But I’m trying.”
Luca doesn’t respond.
So Carmy crosses the room and gets down on his knees, literally. His head against Luca’s belly. Arms wrapped tight.
“Please don’t go,” he whispers. “Please.”
Luca cups the back of his head. “Then let me in and let me stay in”
Carmy proposes when it’s snowing.
Luca comes home from The Bear after a late delivery run, cheeks red, scarf damp. Carmy’s standing in the kitchen, hair a mess, something like terror on his face.
There’s no fancy setup. No flash.
Just a single note, scribbled and left next to a pot of soup on the stove.
{Will you stay? Forever? I wanna marry you. C}
He looks over at Carmy and it’s beyond obvious that he’s worked himself into a panic over the past few hours. His nails are practically chewed in and bleeding and his hair is a tousled mess. His eyes are flitting between Luca and the floor as if he just overstepped or something.
Luca walks over. Carmy is trembling.
“I mean I know I should have made it romantic, and I tried planning a meal but I’ve spent the last week trying to figure out what the perfect menu would be for the moment and I couldn’t because nothing seemed enough and it was driving me crazy and then I went and gave myself an ulcer and…”
Luca takes Carmy’s face in his hands.
“I already said yes, Bear.”
Carmy laughs. Laughs and laughs from sheer relief and then there are the tears until Luca kisses him quiet.
After he puts on the ring, a simple platinum band engraved on the inside with {Mine - C} and Luca counts out his pills and rubs his stomach to soothe the belly ache as they fall asleep.
Three weeks later. Another fight, smaller this time. About the wedding guest list. About the florist. About Carmy’s silence again.
Carmy leaves mid-conversation, walks out into the Chicago rain, no coat, no umbrella. Just breathing. Hurting. Luca follows ten minutes later, finds him on the corner bench by the lake. Soaked to the skin.
“You’re gonna catch a cold,” Luca mutters, settling beside him.
“Good,” Carmy says. “Maybe if I’m sick enough, I’ll stop thinking.”
Luca lets the silence settle. The wind is sharp, biting. But then Carmy turns toward him, soaked lashes, trembling mouth, and says,
“I don’t know how to be easy. But I love you so much it fucking burns. And I’m such a fucking mess that I’ll ruin everything and then you’ll leave and I really don’t think I can live without you ever again…”
And Luca just... exhales. The tension slides off his shoulders like the rain. Carmy’s panic is a slippery slope he’s familiar with and one he knows how to walk calmly.
“You think I want easy?” he murmurs. “I want you. However you come.”
Carmy’s breath hitches.
“Even when I fuck up?”
“Especially then,” Luca says.
They kiss in the rain. It’s not cinematic. It’s messy. Wet and Cold and as Carmy shivers, Luca wraps him up in his coat and they run towards the bus home to get dry.
The wedding itself is small. Sugar. Richie. The crew. Carmy wears navy. Luca wears charcoal. Neither of them could stomach tuxedos.
Before the ceremony, Carmy finds Luca in the dressing room, straightening his sleeves.
“You nervous?” Carmy asks.
Luca shrugs. “Not really.”
Carmy bites his lip. Then says quietly, “Do you still remember?”
Luca tilts his head.
“Thirteen days after we met,” Carmy continues. “The fucking peas.”
Luca breaks into a grin. “I do.”
“I started loving you the day you came back after that three-day break. I was useless those days, I dropped things, I burned things. I put salt in the baking tin. And then I realized, you were the thing that was missing. You drove away all the crazy voices and the buzzing in my brain. I missed you. That’s when I knew, I just didn’t know how to look at it.”
“Seriously, you salted the baking tin? My baking tin?” Luca asks bewildered.
“That’s what you’re stuck on?” Carmy asks and Luca smiles, practically glowing. “So you missed me, huh?”
“I always miss you. Even when you’re here, I miss you,” Carmy says softly as he cups his cheek. “But I know now. I see our love every day. Every time I wake up next to you and I can breathe again.”
Luca’s throat bobs. He presses their foreheads together.
“Let’s go get married, Bear.”
Donna finds Luca after the ceremony, touches his arm.
“I thought no one could handle him,” she whispers. “But then I saw how he laughed with you. How he slept. Thank you for loving my son.”
Luca just nods, eyes wet.
Richie is emotional. Denies it, of course. But cries when he gives his speech.
“You fuckers... you made me believe in love again. Don’t screw it up.”
Sugar hands Carmy a small photo. It’s Mikey, holding Carmy when he was five, both grinning, mid-laugh.
“He’d be so fucking proud of you.”
Carmy breaks. Right there at the reception table, his face crumpling.
Luca catches him before he falls and he puts the photo in his pocket to frame for their apartment.
--------
They take to the road after, wanting to move together in multiple directions. Find their love for food all over again.
They start slow. A weekend in Oregon. Then a month across Italy. Tokyo for a pop-up. Late nights in Bangkok, fingers laced as they watch street vendors torch mangoes and sticky rice. The rules are simple: no meetings, no press, and no fucking Instagram posts unless it’s for food.
The airport becomes a second home. They get good at sharing headphones. Carmy only sleeps on Luca’s shoulder, never on the right side, always the left. Luca starts carrying mints for both of them. Carmy buys matching passport holders and pretends it was a free gift from the airline.
They learn to cook in strangers’ kitchens. They eat things they can’t pronounce. They fight over directions in the Lisbon rain and make up kissing on a tram. At one point, in Mumbai, Carmy watches Luca sip masala chai and thinks, God, I could do this forever.
They visit Chef Terry in London one spring.
Her place is calm chaos: wild herbs sprouting from teapots, handwritten recipes taped to mirrors, a bowl of plums fermenting gently on a windowsill.
When she sees them, her smile is quiet and fond.
“So it happened,” she says, not as a question. “You figured it out.”
She watches them from across the kitchen, Luca chopping basil while Carmy assembles fresh pasta, their movements fluid and wordless. She doesn't interrupt.
Later, in her journal, she writes:
“They move like twin flames now. Not trying to outshine each other, just warm the same room. Carmy no longer flinches when touched. Luca has stopped waiting to be left behind. It’s love but better. It’s healing.”
Somewhere along their travels they write a book. It was never a conscious decision, but it was decades in the making. They didn’t plan to write it.
It started as notes on napkins. Then old recipes. Then trauma-food confessions—the chicken soup I made the day Mikey died, the sourdough I burnt when I left Luca in London.
They spend weeks compiling it on a giant corkboard in Luca’s studio.
When they finally send it off, the publisher calls it “raw, poetic, devastating.” The Trauma Dish becomes a cult hit. Chefs call at all hours of the night.
Marcus texts: I cried during the fig chapter. Fuck you and thank you.
Tina leaves a voicemail: You boys turned your pain into something holy. I'm proud of you.
Chef Terry sends a hand written note: I am so proud of you both. You made your pain sing and show the rest of us how to do it.
Even old-school assholes from New York start quoting it like scripture.
Carmy clutches Luca’s hand at the book launch, stunned. All he can whisper is, “We did that.”
The book’s success allows them to open their new place sooner than they planned. They have investors lined up to the T.
They sit on the floor of their kitchen one night, barefoot and wine-drunk, surrounded by sketches and lease forms. It opens with no PR. No influencers. Just a sign that says Wonder, hand-painted in Luca’s messy cursive. The napkins are mismatched. The menu changes every week.
The first night, the kitchen is candle-lit. The music is Nina Simone. The crew is half composed of ex-cons, misfits, and burnt-out pastry artists. And the food? The food makes people cry.Terry is the first guest chef. She serves “Dream Stew.” Marcus makes caramel that tastes like memory. Even Richie, in a too-tight apron, serves cocktails with flair.
Sydney visits one night with her new brigade. She hugs Carmy outside, eyes shining.
“You did it. You built joy.”
Adoption isn’t instant. It’s messy and long and full of paperwork. But the first time they hold her, a tiny girl with hair like spun sugar and fists like little stars, Carmy sobs so hard Luca has to sit him down.
“I can’t believe she’s ours,” he whispers.
They name her Isla—a name they both picked, separately, and discovered one night laughing over a list of baby names in bed. Their life shifts. Their mornings start earlier. Luca becomes the snack artist—apple bunnies and grilled cheese faces. Carmy becomes the bath wizard, mastering bubble ratios like a Michelin menu.
They argue over screen time and bedtime. Luca buys her a mini apron. Carmy reads The Very Hungry Caterpillar in three voices. One night, as Isla sleeps between them, Carmy whispers, “Did we really get this lucky?”
Luca kisses his temple. “You finally let yourself have something good.”
Outside, the lights of Wonder blink warm against the Chicago snow.
And inside, three hearts beat in soft, shared rhythm.
The morning Isla starts kindergarten, Carmy is up at 4 a.m. making pancakes shaped like letters and stars.
Luca reorganizes her backpack three times.
They dress her in a tiny navy cardigan and matching socks, and she stands in front of the mirror solemnly while Carmy fidgets with her braids, then redoes them entirely. Luca kneels to fix her shoelaces, double-knotting them with surgeon precision.
“We’re being normal,” Carmy mutters as he buttons Isla’s jacket for the second time.
“Totally,” Luca says, checking the weather app for the fifth time in seven minutes. “Perfectly chill.”
Sugar watches from the couch, sipping coffee. Her daughter is already in school. She’s been through this. She recognizes the madness.
“You both are insane,” she says, laughing. “She’s five, not leaving for war.”
Isla waves from the classroom door. “I love you!! Bye!!”
Carmy’s eyes glisten. Luca forgets how to speak. They hold each other’s hand like someone died.
“She’ll be okay,” Sugar says, and gives Carmy a one-armed hug. Then adds under her breath, “But I don’t know if you two will.”
That night, the kitchen of Wonder glows like it always does - low lights, soft jazz, someone carving quince at the pass. There’s laughter from table four, and a couple on a third date clinks spoons over pistachio semifreddo.
A man in a tan coat sits at the back table. Grizzled, mid-fifties. New York accent like rust. He used to laugh when Carmy cried during service. Once told Luca his foam was too European.
He read The Trauma Dish cover to cover in one night.
Now, he watches Carmy and Luca with sharp eyes.
He sees the way Carmy tilts his head mid-plate, the concentration. He sees Luca’s steady movements, the way he breaks into a grin when Isla, in an apron and pink Crocs, skips into the kitchen with a drawing.
He tries to guess whose dish is whose: The duck, Carmy. The lemon meringue with rosemary sugar, Luca. The broth that made him cry? Both of them.
It had to be both.
He doesn’t leave a tip. Just writes thank you on the check and disappears into the snow.
It’s late. The kitchen is closed. Dishes are done.
Carmy sits in the glow of the living room lamp with a sketchpad in his lap, scratching out the early stages of a ring design. For their anniversary. One year married next week. The ring will have fig wood in it. A silver thread of spun steel. A barely-there engraving on the inside: Still mine – C, because he takes nothing for granted.
He glances at the couch. Luca is asleep, mouth slightly open, hair falling over one eye, arms flung carelessly.
Carmy tiptoes over. Sets the sketchbook aside. Carefully lifts one of Luca’s arms, then the other. Crawls underneath like a creature seeking warmth, burying himself into the crook of Luca’s chest like he always does.
Luca stirs, wraps around him instinctively.
“I love you,” Carmy whispers.
Even in sleep, Luca mumbles back, “I know.”
And in the quiet of their home above Wonder, with pencil smudges on his fingers, finger paintings on the fridge door and a future he thought he’d never deserve, Carmen Berzatto closes his eyes.
He’s full. Finally.