Chapter Four #2
The days slipped by, eventful in the way that each one seemed very uneventful.
Each and every one of them was long. The hours were brutal, but somehow living together helped.
Even though Bastian had looked once over the reading glasses that had made their way into more than one of Kian’s nightly fantasies, and suggested it was a terrible idea to live with people you worked with, it had been the right choice.
The days didn’t seem quite so long when he could come home, flip on the TV, listen to Xander and Wyatt bitch about what shitty thing Chef had said to them tonight, and watch as Miles smiled slow and wide, distributing the pastries he’d snitched from the extras.
It was a good life, and Kian liked it. He might have loved it, if only those Moments could stop happening. They made him yearn for disasters.
Disasters like kissing in the fridges, blowjobs in Bastian’s office, Bastian pushing him against one of the stainless steel prep counters late at night and fucking him mercilessly.
Considering that he already knew they’d be disasters, it was surprising that he couldn’t push them out of his mind.
His friends teased him mercilessly, because of course they’d picked up on his crush.
They didn’t call it that, of course, because Kian knew they were secretly horrified since Bastian was their living nightmare.
And it wasn’t like he didn’t say shitty things to Kian sometimes.
It wasn’t like he didn’t make him come to Terroir earlier and stay later than anyone else.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t ever thrown a pot or a dish at some mistake Kian had made.
Those incidents happened often enough they weren’t even out of the ordinary.
But he also got to see Bastian in a light they didn’t.
On the last Sunday of every month, Bastian tested recipes, and from the very first time Kian joined him, it was something special they did together.
This wasn’t the first time, but somehow, the miracle of creation never failed to excite him.
And sometimes, if Kian was very lucky, Bastian would let down his guard a little, and Kian would catch him staring at him, as he went about his tasks.
Something that Bastian would never do when others were around, because Kian knew he was terrified of anyone finding out that the Bastard had feelings, even if they were primarily sexual feelings.
“What about the butter?” Kian asked, holding the buttery, lemon-dill reduction out towards where Chef was bent over a plate, tweezers out as he settled the garnishes onto the plate.
They were trying out a new langoustine recipe, and Chef had asked Kian to put together a butter sauce for drizzling. Except that instead of drizzling it, Bastian had moved right onto the garnishes.
“Oh, shit, yeah,” Bastian said, glancing up. “Maybe around the edge of the plate?”
When they’d first started working together on Sundays, Bastian definitely hadn’t asked Kian’s opinion. But slowly, as their time together progressed, he’d begun to ask a question here or there, until, in the last few months, the sessions had started to actually feel collaborative.
Kian looked at the plate Bastian had chosen and knew that sauce ringing the edge of the plate would be a messy proposition at best.
“Let me taste it first,” Bastian demanded, and Kian passed over the pot.
He dipped a spoon in, licked it clean, and let the flavor of the sauce linger on his palate.
Chef tasted a hundred things, every single day, but the recurring thought of, that should be me, and the automatic denial was second nature to Kian by now.
“God damn, that’s good,” Bastian said fervently. “The little spice on the end, that’s glorious.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Kian said formally, but he was smiling. Nothing ever felt better than a compliment from Bastian, mostly because compliments were so scarce, but also because you knew he meant them.
Unceremoniously he dumped the langoustine in the trash, sliding the plate down near the rest of their dirty dishes. Dishes Kian would probably end up washing, since Jorge wouldn’t be in until later, and he’d have his hands full.
“That sauce needs to be the focal. Which means, a new plate.” Bastian prowled over to the shelving unit that held his plate selections, and picked one, then another, and then a third.
They clattered as he deposited them on the counter in front of Kian. “You pick,” he said.
This was new. Sometimes Bastian asked his opinion, but he’d never been given control of a decision before.
And plate selection was huge. It determined plating and garnish and Bastian had told him a thousand times, those often determined the ultimate success of a dish.
Food was visual before it ever hit the taste buds.
Kian examined each one carefully, envisioning in his mind the langoustine, the French beans, the sauce, the garnishes. Only one stood to him as the perfect choice. He glanced up at Bastian, who was watching intently.
“Go on,” Bastian said, making a little shooing gesture with his hand, the other tucked up under his armpit. A fierce look of concentration fell over his face as he watched Kian plate the langoustine.
When Kian was finally done, and wiped the plate, Bastian spent a long time looking at it from every angle.
He’d poured the sauce into the bottom of the curved bowl, curled the langoustine in a loose spiral, positioned the beans upright, letting them fan out, and in a final touch, used the eyedropper to dot the surface of the yellowy cream sauce with basil oil.
“You’ve been paying attention,” Bastian said finally.
Kian was almost offended. Was there anyone who assumed he hadn’t been?
“All it needs,” Bastian continued, “is one final touch.” He abruptly turned on his heel and headed in the direction of the walk-in fridges.
When he came back, he was holding something in his hands.
Carefully he leaned down and nestled one of the miniature Anaheim peppers they’d just gotten into one of the langoustine folds.
“Visually, it’s right,” Bastian said, but he gave a sigh of frustration. “But if any idiot eats that, it’ll overwhelm the shellfish and the sauce. What else do we have that’s red?”
“What about a single slice of radish?” Kian suggested. “It’s a nice vibrant red, but the flavor is fairly neutral.”
“Let’s try it,” Bastian said, and Kian went back to the walk-in, grabbed a radish, then his fish deboning knife, very sharp and very flexible and carved a single, nearly paper-thin slice.
The edges were bright red, and the starkness of the white was a good contrast to the yellow and green base.
He swapped it for the pepper, and knew it was right when Bastian sighed again, but this time in satisfaction.
He reached over and clapped a hand on Kian’s shoulder.
They didn’t always touch. Touching always felt a little like Russian roulette, especially in the sacred confines of the Terroir kitchens.
But once in a while—Kian was never sure if it was because he’d done something good enough to be rewarded or if Bastian was so impressed he couldn’t help himself anymore—he’d reach out like this with a brief clasp of his shoulder.
This time, though, he lingered and Kian’s heartbeat accelerated. He couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t slow it down.
He looked up to see Bastian looking at him, intently. There were a thousand dangerous things brewing in that dark gaze, and Kian trembled.
“You are so . . .” Bastian broke off and dropped his hand, his earlier frustration magnified.
For a moment, Kian considered bringing up the conversation that they didn’t talk about. If Bastian was finding it so difficult to stay professional, maybe they could relax the rules a little.
Except that wouldn’t work either. If one or both of them ever broke down and touched with more than just friendly, professional intent, the resulting wildfire would be all-consuming. There wouldn’t just be a slight bending of the rules, the rules would be entirely incinerated.
There was nothing to say, nothing to be done, because Kian still believed Chef was right.
He was learning so much, absorbing everything, and if they hadn’t had that conversation so long ago, would these Sundays even be happening?
Sundays where he’d even begun to establish his own point of view as a chef?
“I’m sorry,” Bastian finally said. He sounded wretched—just like Kian felt. “I’d tell you to find another teacher, but I’m horribly territorial and I’d probably end up punching them in the face.”
Kian laughed, because he wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of Chef Aquino. Six months ago, he might have spent a week in wonderment, that Bastian cared enough about him to be territorial at all. But now, all he felt was a hazy sort of desperation.
How long could they continue like this? Kian’s contract with Terroir had been for two years, initially, and he’d intended to stay at least that long, if not longer.
But later that night, as he lay awake in bed, every muscle in his body exhausted but sleep somehow still elusive, he wondered if he could possibly last two years like this.
Something inside him ached, and he was afraid it was his heart.
It had been so much easier when he’d believed, like Bastian had hinted at, that their connection was just hormones.
But after six months, Kian was afraid that wasn’t all it was anymore.
He didn’t want just to protect Bastian anymore.
He wanted to teach Bastian, the way Bastian was teaching him, how to handle the stuff that overwhelmed him.
Instead of avoiding it, he wanted to be consumed by the fire between them; he wanted to pull Bastian in with him.
Bastian’s own frustration with the arrangement had shown in his face today, but how were they supposed to stop? There was nothing to be done, Kian realized, except to keep going.
Keep learning, keep growing, and keep suffering.