Work Text:
Her circulation’s been fucked since she can remember.
When she was fifteen, Sydney went through a brief period of paranoia, during which she worried that she’d inherited her mother’s illness and demanded, printed sheets of paper containing the WebMD page for lupus in hand, that her father get her tested. He’d wearily reminded her that lupus wasn’t something that could be easily diagnosed with a simple test, inadvertently triggering an anxiety attack so severe he actually did end up having to drive her to the hospital. She’d spent that whole year having panic attacks on and off, and though no doctor could definitively tell her she wasn’t sick, there were no indications that she was either.
Except for her poor circulation, of course.
It’s mostly a mild annoyance now, and she hasn’t shown any glaring symptoms, so the possibility of being sick is on the very bottom of her list of ever-growing anxieties, way below financial ruin and failed restaurant and Carmen Berzatto.
She carefully crawls out from under number 27 on her list and reaches out for whatever item of clothing she can find in the dark of her bedroom. She ends up in one of her t-shirts and in the sweatpants Richie had changed into before they’d crawled into bed together–he must have kicked them off in the middle of the night. That’s the nice thing about Richie–he’s a human furnace when he sleeps, and he’s a cuddler. Sydney never needs an extra pair of socks when he sleeps beside her.
She can’t be bothered to find socks, so she keeps her feet tucked into the fabric of the sweatpants, which are comically long on her though not as crusty as she’d expected them to be. The fleeting thought makes her feel a little guilty, though. Richie’s personal hygiene has been straight up impressive ever since they opened the restaurant and he started wearing those crazy suits. He smells good even when he’s not suited up, and she wants to remember to look at the kind of cologne he wears next time she goes to his place.
She knows how to find her way through the dark, and she only turns on the light above the stove before she starts boiling water for tea. The sun is just starting to peek out through the night when she hears Richie stumble his way toward the bathroom, and she doesn’t turn when she hears him enter the kitchen. When he wraps himself around her torso from behind, Sydney wills herself not to melt into his warmth. At least not completely.
“I’m gonna start stealing your clothes,” he mumbles against her ear. “See how that makes you feel.”
She snorts. “Go ahead, Richie,” she says into her mug. “Tell me how comfortable you are in my work pants.”
“Shortstack.” He presses a series of kisses against the crown of her head, and it feels funny–not in a good or bad way–to feel his lips against her unbraided hair. Her hair is washed, dried, and in two neat plaits on the sides of her head. Her aunts will re-braid her hair when she joins her dad in Boston later. “What time is your train?”
“Seven-fifteen,” she says, closing her eyes. Her dad’s sisters are difficult sometimes, not because they’re bad but because they’re intense. The quiet life Sydney shares with her father doesn’t make her very adept at dealing with a houseful of loud family members. It’s a different kind of chaos than the one she deals with at work, because she’s never, ever felt in control with her family.
“Wanna go pick up breakfast or something?” Richie asks. “I got a Dunkin’ gift card that’s still got, like, seven bucks on it.”
Sydney snorts. “Charming,” she says, letting Richie turn her around so he can finally press a kiss against her lips. She lets him kiss her for a while, sighs happily as his mouth trails down her neck and further south, his hands starting to pull his sweatpants down her legs.
“Richie,” she groans, flicking his ear but also spreading her legs inches wider. “My dad makes his coffee in here.”
“Why’d you have to go and bring Emmanuel into this?” he grumbles against the skin of her inner thigh. “I’m working down here.”
“Oh, so it’s work now?”
“Babe, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life–”
“Richie!” She bites down the laugh that’s threatening to fall out of her lips. Her words die in her mouth as Richie’s mouth closes around her clit, making her hips buck up instantly. “You asshole,” she gasps.
“We’re short on time, Syd,” he reminds her, his fingers starting to tease at her entrance. “Gotta get right to business, sweetheart, come on, I know you like it quick and dirty anyway.”
“Richie, seriously!” The edge of the counter digs painfully against her lower back until Richie nudges her up, wrapping her legs around his head. “You’re–so–disgusting–”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles before his tongue starts messily licking her up and down, without rhyme or reason, to tease her. “I’m gonna miss this pussy so bad, baby, Jesus, it tastes like fuckin’ heaven–”
“Shut up–” Her hips buck up when Richie sucks at her clit, hard, and an embarrassing moan fills the silence of the morning. She hates how much Richie’s dirty talk turns her on. “Richie, shut up, shut up, shut up–”
“That’s it, baby, come on,” Richie mumbles against her, the movement of his fingers going sloppy along with his tongue. “Come on, sweetheart, I wanna hear you–it’s just us, baby, come on–”
She comes with a yelp. A fucking yelp, like she’s surprised by her orgasm. It would be humiliating if it didn’t feel so good, if Richie wasn’t babbling nonsense against her thighs as he helps her come down from it.
“I’ll only be gone for three days,” Sydney reminds Richie as she’s tying her sneakers on the entryway.
Richie keeps twirling his keys in his hand when he answers. “What, it’s illegal to miss you or something?”
“You mean my pussy,” she says, straightening up.
“You are your pussy,” Richie says, pulling her toward him so he can press a chaste kiss against her cheek, her nose, her mouth. “I’m gonna miss you, Syd. That’s just what happens when you love people–you miss ‘em when they’re gone.”
“Yeah, right,” she snorts, the word love rattling around her skull like it’s a pinball machine. She pulls away from Richie’s arms and moves to pick up her duffel, but he beats her to it. “You’re gonna miss the extra pair of hands in the kitchen.”
“You’re freaking out about what I said, aren’t you?” Richie opens the door for her, and Sydney avoids his eyes when she walks past him into the hallway. “Sydney, I love you. I’m too old to not say the shit I mean, especially after–” He sighs, rubs at his temple with his free hand. “I’d love you even if we weren’t doing–whatever this is, because I love everyone at The Bear, but I love you different, that’s all. It doesn’t have to be scary, Syd, come on.”
“I’m not scared, Richie,” she tells him, marching down the stairs. She feels her heart beat a thousand times a minute as she steps outside into the dawn. “God, you’re so dramatic.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, following her to where his car is parked in Emmanuel’s usual spot. He dumps her duffel in the trunk as she settles on the passenger seat. When he climbs inside, he just sits there for a few moments, and she gets the urge to say something hurtful, which he curbs by turning on the engine and squeezing her thigh once before placing his hand on the gearshift. “I don’t need to hear it, you know. You don’t even need to feel it. I love you either way.”
“You say that now, and…” she says, voice soft as she looks out her window. “I don’t want to be an asshole, Richie.”
“Syd, baby.” Sydney hears the smile in Richie’s voice even as she keeps her eyes trained outside. “I wouldn’t like you nearly as much if you weren’t an asshole.”
She rolls her eyes, then finally turns to look at Richie, because it’s easier to speak to his profile. “This isn’t how this–us–was supposed to go. Richie, it’s getting really fucking messy. What happens if–”
“If you end things?” Richie interrupts. “Because out of the two of us, I’m definitely not the one who’d want to stop, trust me.” Sydney opens her mouth to protest, but Richie barrels on. “But I’ll indulge you–what happens if we break up? I dunno, kid, we’ll deal with it like fuckin’ grown ups, all right? We’ll talk it out, and move the fuck on, because we both love The Bear and we both fuckin’ love Carm, and I can’t think of a scenario in which I wouldn’t want you in my life, Syd, even if I fucked it up with you.”
Sydney stays silent for the rest of the drive to Grand Central, her fists clenching and unclenching on her lap. When Richie turns on his hazards and moves to open his door, to get her bag like the fucking gentleman he is, Sydney stops him.
“I don’t–” She nervously fiddles with her hands–her cold, cold hands–as she speaks. “It’s not easy for me to be…to feel–to let myself feel this…stuff.”
“Easier to stab me than to talk about your feelings, princess?” he teases, and that threatens to bring a smile to her face.
“I’m trying, here, Rich, and you need to let me–”
“No, I think we’re finished,” Richie tells her, bringing his hands up to cradle her face. He presses a gentle kiss against her lips again, and the crinkles in his eyes when he smiles down at her make her stomach flutter. “You go visit your crazy aunts and tell Emmanuel we say ‘hello’ and eat whatever passes for good food in fuckin’ Boston–”
“Sudbury, technically–”
“And when you come back, you’ll keep working on that appetizer that you fucking talk in your sleep about, Sydney, Jesus, and I’ll go down on you for so long I’ll grow a fucking beard.”
“Ugh, Richie,” she says before kissing him once more. She buries her face in his neck and tries to be surreptitious about inhaling his scent. “Gross.”
“And I’ll still love you,” Richie finishes, smile goofy and weird and so nice it makes her want to be the kind of girl who cries about stuff like this. “How’s that sound, sweetheart?”
“Whatever.” Sydney shrugs, trying and failing at nonchalant. “I’ll miss you too, I guess, maybe, I dunno.”
Richie pinches her nose before jumping out of the car. She follows, and they kiss on the street until someone honks at them to get out of the way.