i could never give you peace (would it be enough?)
sydcarmy | single dad!carmy | 3/? chapters
He turns his head and kisses the side of Liv’s head, holding her close. Through her shirt, he can feel her heart pounding, her whole body trembling as she clings to him.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” he mutters, “what happened, huh?”
“Mr. Berzatto,” a voice from behind him says, a voice he recognizes. With an arm still around Olivia’s middle, he turns his head and looks up at Sydney, who’s chewing pensively on the inside of her cheek. She looks greyer here than she did in the Beef, her expression schooled and precise, washed out by the fluorescent lighting. “Um, do you want a minute? We’re ready for you whenever.”
“No,” he says. “Let’s just– let’s just do this.”
Olivia lifts her head from his shoulder and sniffs once, then juts out her chin and nods along with him.
OR: Just before winter break, Olivia gets into some trouble, and Carmy questions his parenting chops.
i could never give you peace (would it be enough?)
sydcarmy | single dad!carmy | 1/? chapters
In all honesty, Sydney should have connected the dots from the beginning.
Olivia Berzatto has been her student for nearly a month and a half now, and she learned early on that the girl lived with her dad, and that her dad was a chef. How many chefs named Berzatto did Sydney know of?
“Carmen,” he says, his hand extended to her. “I’ve heard rave reviews.”
“Likewise,” Sydney blurts.
OR: Which is worse; falling for your daughter's first grade teacher, or falling for the father of one of your students?
howdy hi! my best friend/lovely beta (make-easter-gay-again on ao3) and i have been working on this au since i forced him to watch the bear, and with s3 coming out on thursday, we wanted to share a little something! we're still working on it, but we have a good bit written and want y'all to have a little taste.
here is 1000 or so words from the prologue, just to get you warmed up!
preview under the cut :D
Carmen Berzatto has never felt more like an Italian stereotype. Considering he’s a loud, aggressive chef with a huge, interweaving web of a family and an almost sensual relationship with fine wines and cheeses, that’s a high bar to cross, but he manages somehow when he finds himself on Nat’s doorstep, barely 26, desperately trying to keep the baby balanced on his chest asleep. It’s a sticky, cloudy summer evening in Chicago, the kind that would make any midwestern kid nostalgic, but Carmy has been shuffling between trains—the subway, the L, and the Amtrak that he’d booked with the money he meant to save for next month’s rent—since six p.m. yesterday without a wink of sleep. He wouldn’t notice a tornado ripping through downtown unless it delayed his arrival.
For the past 36 hours, every minute has been dedicated to making it through the next and getting to his sister.
And to her credit, when she opens the door, Natalie reacts to the situation about as well as he could expect.
“What the fuck?”
“Hello to you too, Sug,” he greets, attempting to adjust the baby on his chest without waking it.
“What the fuck, Carmen?” she repeats, her eyes bulging so wide she’s teetering on the edge of looking insane. And, Carmy loves his sister. More than anything. But she looks like shit, the indigo circles under her eyes deep enough to look like bruises and a stained sweatshirt thrown haphazardly over pajamas. He knew vaguely that things hadn’t been easy for Sugar since Mikey’s death—managing The Beef’s finances, having a kid, raising said kid into what appeared to be a holy terror of a toddler—but he wasn’t expecting to return home and find his sister in such a state. Granted, he’s sure he doesn’t look much better. “You don’t come home for Mikey’s funeral, don’t talk to me for months, and then show up with a fucking baby? How did you even get that baby?”
“It’s a little hard to explain,” he says. She leans into her hip, no shit written all over her face.
Despite being maybe the worst little brother in history, the only thing that made him hesitate in coming to Nat for help wasn’t any of their family’s issues. Not even his impressive stubbornness was enough to convince him that he could handle an infant in a sub-200 square foot apartment in New York City alone. But she has a life of her own, and a family of her own. He knows his baggage is truly the last thing that Nat needs right now, but he needs her—desperately. Of anyone in the world, the only person he knows he can rely on in this nightmare he can’t wake up from is his sister.
Natalie, thankfully, senses the panic and distress that lingers on her brother’s face, and ushers him inside. “We were just about to eat dinner,” she explains, attempting to push toys and piles of laundry out of the way with her feet as if welcoming the mayor of Chicago into her house, not her idiot younger brother. “If you’re hungry.”
“Uh, coffee would be good,” Carmy concludes, staring at a framed family photo in the hallway. “Maybe, uh, a place to, uh…” He shrugs his shoulders to indicate the baby, and she nods curtly, her eyes flitting around.
“I’ll have Pete get some of Gabby’s stuff from the attic,” she says, sharply turning on her heel and walking towards the kitchen. Carmy follows, watching as his sister effortlessly scoops the toddler up and carries her with them, ignoring a prolonged squeal of protest and flailing arms and legs. “Pete! Grab an extra plate, will you?”
“Yeah, sure thing, honey…who was—Carm!” Pete greets, coming around the corner with a plate and silverware in hand. He glances for a second at the baby, tries to school his obvious double take, and squeaks out, “What’re you doing here, man? What’s up?”
Carmy takes a moment to figure out the best way to answer that question. This baby is apparently mine, but I have no recollection of having sex with anyone who could be its mother, and I can’t raise it on my own, and you guys are my only family? I decided to come back and take over The Beef, and oh–by the way–I have a kid now, apparently? I’m just visiting? “I–uh…” he says instead, shifting his focus to Natalie, who seems as though she was one wrong choice on Carmy’s part from throttling him in her kitchen.
“Pete, can you go up to the attic and grab some of Gabby’s old stuff? I think we put the crib and shit up there,” she instructs, with a look that clearly reads we will talk about this later.
He catches Natalie glancing at him every so often, in between fussing over her daughter and plating up the food. Sitting quietly at the dinner table, waiting for the rest of the family, he feels like a kid, like he’s gotten himself into something way over his head.
Carmy had only eaten a few things on the train, mainly sugary snacks to keep him going when even his anxiety succumbed to his exhaustion, so the beef stew Natalie offers him tastes better than any Michelin-awarded meal he’s ever had. He devours two bowls, barely stopping to look up at the other three people (two people? Two adults and a toddler smushing mac and cheese around her high chair?) sitting around the table.
After dinner, Natalie and Pete retreat upstairs to get Gabby to bed, and Carmy feeds the baby, unpacking his CVS bag of baby essentials: the diapers, formula, and pack of three bottles he thought to buy before he skipped town. Then, the three adults settle into the living room, a cup of tea in Natalie’s hand and a second (or possibly third, he’s lost count) cup of coffee in Carmy’s.
“Yeah, so, walk me through this, Bear. You’re a father now?” Nat asks, tucking her legs underneath her. “Did you pay attention in sex ed, like, at all?”
Carmy uses his free hand to rake through his hair. He needs a shower, desperately, but between his newfound fatherhood and hauling ass to Chicago he hasn’t had time to breathe, much less consider hygiene. Maybe that’ll be added to the list to do tomorrow, nestled between find an apartment and learn how to be a better parent than his own in 24 hours–no therapy. “Yes, Sugar, I paid attention,” he replies, eliciting a scoff from his sister. “I…fuck, I don’t really know how it happened. I-I was at work, and my phone kept blowing up like when Mikey died, but no one was fucking dead, it was just some unknown number telling me to get to this hospital in Queens because my baby was there, and I kept telling them I think they have the wrong number, but they said the mother said the father’s name was Carmen Berzatto, and she left as soon as she could. I didn’t even get the name of who it was…just signed the birth certificate and left.”
“What’s their name, then? If you signed the certificate, you had to give them a name,” Natalie asks, slowly trying to piece together if he was plain stupid or genuinely a saint.
“Uh…her name’s Brie,” he mumbles, the full force of his actions over the past two days coming to a head. The name takes a moment to come to mind, both because of the exhaustion and because he hardly thought about the name since he wrote it down. He’s been calling it—or her, really—the baby or the kid in his head all this time.
She blinks. “Brie?” she repeats, before groaning. “Jesus fucking Christ, Carmen. You would legally marry cooking if you could.”
“I wasn’t thinking, Natalie! I got the call, and I needed to pick a name, and I was in the middle of making a brie appetizer, and I couldn’t fucking name her Blackberry or some bullshit like that! At least Brie sounds like a name!”
Natalie stares at him before setting down her tea. “As soon as her classmates find out her dad’s a chef and she’s named after cheese, she’s going to be bullied. Do you want that?” He doesn’t, he knows how shitty kids could be, especially about a kid with anything that was seemingly different about them. “Look…I’ll get some of the books Pete and I used for Gabs. Pick a new name.”
life is so much better when u stop hyperanalysing urself and realise u can’t hate urself into being better u just have to accept ur a lil weird n fucked up slightly but it’s not that deep just live
Love when tumblr recommends me posts “based on your likes!!!” and it’s just shit I’ve already liked (and sometimes also reblogged). It’s so funny to me
The protagonist visits their love interest's workplace and asks them to leave behind their high profile job in the big city and join the protagonist in picturesque New England to help out with a real underdog cause. The love interest reveals they're engaged to be married and they're about to make partner at the firm and they just can't give all of that up. The heartbroken protagonist leaves and goes to New England alone but they're so moved by the cause they're fighting for that they just have to go back and tell their love interest. The protagonist returns to the big city and runs through the pouring rain to reach the love interest's office and stands outside the window soaking wet and smiling, prompting the love interest to stand up in the middle of an important meeting and walk out, leaving behind everything that was important to them, and they run away to New England with the protagonist.
Yeah idk I just think it would be a really beautiful and romantic—what do you mean that was a West Wing episode
january is one of those months where you experience every feeling on the human spectrum and you just have to go about your day like that isn't happening
