Chapter Text
Carmen wouldn’t say that he had always known he was a guy. It wasn’t like he had always been a little boy, just growing up in a girl’s body. That was the kind of trite bullshit that people said, but it wasn’t how Carmen felt. He’d always known that he was weird, sure. Different. Different from the other girls in his class. Different from Sugar. Different from how his mom wanted him to be. He knew that other girls didn’t hope they got gum in their long ass hair so they’d have to cut it all off. He knew that other girls were excited when they started needing bras and shopping in the women’s section. Carmy was upset that
But he hadn’t known why. He hadn’t known that other people had experienced what he was experiencing. He hadn’t known that there had been another option.
Carmen had figured it out, though. Slowly. Surely. As he watched all the other girls around him figure out who they were, Carmy knew that he wasn’t like any of them. Not like that ‘I’m not like other girls’ crap, or anything. Carmy just knew that he didn’t fit in, and it wasn’t just because of his stutter. He wasn’t like them. He wasn’t a girl. He wanted short hair and no tits and as soon as he had figured it out, it made so much sense. He chopped his hair as short as his mom would let him, and then chopped it off even more. He wore baggy jeans and oversized jackets and Mikey’s hand-me-downs. And it felt right. And he felt right. He had figured it out. He was a boy. He was a guy. He was a man.
But he hadn’t known how to tell anybody. How to explain it. Or what the hell to do about it.
Carmen had decided on not telling anyone. On not explaining anything. On not doing anything. He’d seen what happened to people who were different. They got picked on. They got beat up. They got killed. And Carmen didn’t even know if his family would be the ones doing the beating or not, so he just didn’t say anything. He embraced himself, sure, but he didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t say anything. He ignored the feelings that were bubbling up inside himself and just didn’t tell anybody. Not even Sugar. Not even Mikey. Besides, Sugar and Mikey were all grown up now and had their own lives, and their mom was still their mom and- and they just didn’t have time for any of Carmy’s bullshit. Carmy didn’t have any time for his bullshit, either. So he just kept cutting his hair, kept ignoring all the jokes he got about being a dyke, and kept on going.
But then Mikey refused to let him work at The Beef, for good this time. And then Carmen got a cooking job in New York. And then Carmen moved to New York.
New York was different. Carmen had a fresh start. Nobody knew him there. Nobody cared who he was there, either. People on the subway called him sir, just because of his hair and his baggy jacket. The chefs that he worked with hadn’t even bothered to ask his name until a few months in, let alone care what his gender was. And Carmen was a gender neutral name, anyway. He had decided, a while ago, that Carmen was a good name. His name. And people still were starting to think that he was a guy anyway, even with his name, and so it was fine. It was good. Because these people didn’t see Mikey’s littlest sister, or the youngest Berzatto girl, or whatever else they saw in Chicago. They just saw Carmy. Chef. Talent. Dude.
New York was different. Carmen was actually free to be himself for once. He had space to figure out who the hell he was. He went to an actual barber shop for the first time, instead of taking kitchen scissors to his hair in the bathroom mirror every few months. He bought his first binder, and started wearing it all the time. He probably wore it for longer than he was supposed to, but it just felt so fucking right. Got a doctor who wasn’t a piece of shit and who actually had a licence, and started going on testosterone. He wasn’t gonna be able to get top surgery any time soon, with wait lists and the fact that he’d have to stop working to heal for just way too long, but Carm was okay with that.
New York was different. Carmen felt the most like him than he ever had before. And it was good. It was just so good. And, sure, his ribs were hurting from his binder. And, sure, he got called some slurs while on the subway, sometimes. And, sure, he was throwing up almost every single day before work, as some sort of fucked up stress response. And, sure, he was kinda treated like hell at the restaurant. And, sure, Carmy kind of hated himself for treating other chefs like hell, too. But life was still good. It was good. Carmen was cooking. He was getting awards and shit. He was making, not friends, really, but colleagues and he was networking and shit and nobody was weird about the fact that he was twenty and going through puberty. He was making his way up the ranks at the restaurant. A three Michelin starred restaurant, thank you very much. And he was doing it all as a man. And he was doing it all as himself.
Carmen still hadn’t told anybody back home.
Life was busy. Work was busy. Carmen was busy. And besides, Mikey had already made it clear that he wasn’t wanted at The Beef. Or anywhere near Mike, really. And Sugar had already made it clear that she was trying to move on from their shit childhood. Move on from him. And their mom was, well, their mom was a mess. A total and utter mess. And so Carmen didn’t come home from Christmas, or Easter, or any other holiday that he didn’t bother actually celebrating anymore. He wasn’t really calling anyone, either. Not Mike, and not their mom, and not even Sugar. He’d text her, sometimes, but never about anything important. Never about how New York was, not really. Never about the fact that he was throwing up all the time and shaky and had almost burnt down his place a couple of times while sleepwalking. And certainly never about who he had become in New York. Who he had always been.
Carmen thought about telling them. Wondered what it would be like. But he never did.
Life with everyone thinking he was a girl was just what Carmen was used to. It was what he had grown up with. It was what he knew. It was what was familiar, when it came to his family. So he just didn’t tell them. He just didn’t talk to them. He just didn’t even think about them. Actually, no, that was a lie. That was a total lie. He thought about them a lot. And he thought about telling them a lot. He thought about Sugar hugging him, and saying that she’s happy to have another brother. He thought about Mikey giving him an awkward clap on the back. He’s thought about both of them yelling at him, telling him that he was just confused, that people like them didn’t get to be trans. He thought about the best ways it could go, and the worst ways it could go, and every damn thing in between. And he just didn’t tell them. He just let them keep living in their ignorance.
Carmen kept on living, too.
Life moved on, even as Chicago didn’t. Time moved on, even as his family didn’t. Carmen moved on, even when he didn’t let his family do the same. He let them live in the past. Live in who he used to be. And he just kept focusing on his future, instead. He ignored The Beef. He ignored Mikey. He ignored Sugar and his mom and every other person in Chicago who thought that they knew him. He ignored anything that wasn’t his work. It was just his work and the yelling of Chef in his ears, even when he wasn’t at the restaurant. It was just his work, and waking up in the middle of the night in his kitchen or on his balcony from the fucking sleep walking. It was just his work, and the million thoughts running through his head. It was just work, and the bile caught in his throat. It was just his work, Carmy kept telling himself. It was just his work.
And then Mikey died.
It was like a reality check, or something. Like when Mikey used to grab him by the collar of his shirt and drag him around, when they were kids. Mikey hadn’t done that in a while. And he would never do that again. Mikey would never tease Carm, about his hair and his clothes and the way he did nothing but follow Mikey and Richie around like a little lost puppy, ever again. Mikey would never teach Carm a new recipe, the two of them in their mom’s kitchen for hours on end just talking and cooking and bickering and cooking some more, ever again. Mikey would never give Carm that look of ‘you hearing this shit’, whenever Richie or someone said something especially dumb, ever again. Mikey would never laugh in his stupid, obnoxious, comforting way that he did, ever again. Because he was dead.
It was hard to wrap his head around. Mike was dead. Mike was actually dead. And he wasn’t just dead, either. It wasn’t some car accident or pneumonia or some shit like that. It would have been easier if it had been a hit and run or fucking cancer or like, a freak flood or something like that. Something normal like that. Something blameless like that. But Mikey hadn’t gone out like that. He hadn’t died like that. He hadn’t died normally. He hadn’t died blamelessly. Because Mikey had shot himself in the head. He had fucking killed himself. And he had left everyone else to clean up the mess that he had made in the first place. Sugar and Carm and Richie, and whoever else even still cared about the Berzatto’s, which was probably nobody. But somebody would have to deal with the damn mess, apparently.
It was hard to figure out what the hell to do about it, either. It should have been easy, actually. Carmen had a whole life in New York. He had a good job. He had a job that most people would kill for. Like, Carmen was pretty sure people had literally tried to kill to get a job at the restaurant. He had an apartment and he had all his crap there. He had colleagues that he liked and respected, even if he never had time to do much socialising with them or any of that bullshit. He had a boss that wanted him to do better and he had awards and he had a good life. Carmen should have gone to the funeral, cried for a bit, and then went right back to working in New York again. But that wasn’t Carmen’s only option. And that wasn’t what Carmen wanted to do, either. Because, more than anything, Carmen had always wanted to work at The Beef. And-
Mike was dead, and he had left Carmen the restaurant in his will.
He had left him The Beef in his will. The restaurant. The family restaurant. The first restaurant Carmen had ever wanted to work at. The only restaurant Carmen had ever wanted to work at, really. He had always dreamed of working there, one day. Turning it into something new. Something exciting. The Bear, instead of The Beef. But that dream had always been his and Mikey’s. And whenever Carmen had ever dreamed about working there, he had always imagined Mike being there too. Right by his side. There was no The Bear without Mikey. There was no The Beef without Mikey, either. And yet-
Mike was dead, and The Beef was Carmy’s. And there was only one way he could react to that.
He quit his job at the restaurant. He ignored all the questions. All the yelling about his wasted potential. All the pitying looks people shot at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. He got out of the restaurant and never looked fucking back. He got out of his lease on his shitty New York apartment. He packed up all his shit, even though there had been barely anything in there to begin with. He hadn’t been much of a keepsake person, and the place had come furnished. He drove all his shit back to Chicago. He got a new shitty apartment there, and didn’t even bother unpacking any of his shit. He tried to get all of the paper work together for The Beef. He tried to focus on anything other than the fact that his brother had fucking killed himself.
Mike was dead, and Carmen couldn’t force himself to go to the funeral.
Apparently, it was a nice service. But Carmen couldn’t do that. He couldn’t show up and have everybody stare at him like he was a fucking zoo animal, or something. Carmen Berzatto, the tranny, or whatever. No. He wouldn’t do that. Not to his mom and not to himself and not to fucking Mikey. He sat in his apartment the whole day, instead, crying until he had no bit of moisture left in his body. Just silent tears streaming down his face until it eroded his skin and made his throat dry from the heaving sobs. He threw up, too, because of course he did. And he just sat, alone, in his brand new Chicago apartment, christening the toilet with vomit, while his family and everybody who cared about Mike were all at the fucking funeral.
Carmen was back in Chicago, and he still hadn’t told anybody.
He hadn’t told anybody anything. Not about the fact that he was in Chicago. Not about the fact that he was trans. Not about the fact that he had stubble now and a more masculine face and fat in different parts of his body. Not about the fact that he looked completely different from when they had last seen him. Not about the fact that he was different than he had been when he had moved away. Not about the fact that he had always been different, and just hadn’t told anybody. Not about the fact that this is who Carmen always was, and now he just looked the way that he felt.
He knew that he would have to tell people, obviously. Eventually. He couldn’t be in Chicago without seeing people. Which meant actually explaining the fact that he looked completely fucking different. Actually, he could probably tell most of the Faks that he had always been a dude and they wouldn’t even realise, but still. And dammit, Fak. His Fak, anyway. There were a lot of fucking Faks. He hadn’t talked to Fak in so long, even though they had been damn good friends growing up. But he hadn’t talked to Fak and now he was gonna have to tell him. And he hadn’t talked to Sugar and now he was gonna have to tell her, too. And he hadn’t talked to his mom, and he still didn’t want to talk to his mom, and he just was going to avoid that conversation for as long as possible. And he hadn’t talked to Mikey, and now Mikey was fucking dead and Carmen hadn’t even gone to the funeral and-
He wasn’t doing all that well. He was doing the opposite of well, actually. He was doing completely and utter shit. It had been a few days. Quite a few days. And he still couldn’t fucking tell anybody. Not that he was there, or that he was him, or anything. He just couldn’t. But he would have to. He would have to tell Sugar because she was technically co-owner of The Beef and he would have to tell Richie because he worked there. And he would have to tell everyone else because once one person knew he was in town, everybody else would. But he didn’t know who to tell first. He didn’t know how to tell anybody, either. So he just sat in his fucking apartment, sobbing into his fist and puking up granola bars. It didn’t matter how fucked Carmen was, though.
Carmen had to focus on The Beef. Carmen’s whole point of existence was The Beef.
And, okay, he knew just from looking at the fucking paperwork that he could find that the place wasn’t doing that great. Or, actually, from the lack of paperwork he found, because Mikey was apparently absolutely shit at organisation. Or just writing shit down. Ever. Which meant that Carmen was scrambling to do anything, and he hadn’t even actually gone to The Beef in person yet. It was- it was kind of terrifying, actually. The Beef had people that could actually know him from back in the day. When his face was rounder and his voice was higher and his hair was longer and his tits weren’t locked up behind a binder. And even if they didn;t know him like that, the building did. His brother’s memory did. Still, his brother had left him it in his will, and he was the owner. And he had always wanted to be the owner. He had to actually go to the fucking place, at least once. It couldn’t be that hard. He had practically grown up there. And yet, it was somehow fucking terrifying.
Still, Carmen had to actually step foot in The Beef, to run the place. Fuck.