Chapter Twelve #2
“This isn’t really breakfast; it’s breakfast-adjacent,” Bastian sniffed, but he was eating the rest of his eggs, and even took a bite of bacon, letting the sharp saltiness linger on his palate.
Then he watched with horror as Kian reached for the bottle of ketchup the waitress had deposited on their table and proceeded to coat his hash browns in a thick layer of red goop.
“I don’t think I know you at all,” Bastian said, eyeing his plate dubiously.
“It’s just ketchup, it’s not poison,” Kian said with a little giggle.
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that,” Bastian said with a shudder.
But Kian’s gaze was fond as he met Bastian’s frown. “You really are the worst, sometimes.”
“I’m here and I’m actually eating this food,” Bastian protested. He took another bite of eggs and bacon, and eyed the pancakes out of the corner of his eye again. If he tried them, he was going to save them for last, because the unrelenting sugar was going to be overwhelming.
“Under duress,” Kian pointed out, waving his fork. “You’ve even managed to insult ketchup.”
“I’m not sure what else I was supposed to do with it.”
Kian shoveled a big bite of deep-fried potato into his mouth and smiled as he chewed. “Eat it,” he said, once he’d swallowed. “Try it. I thought you were an adventurous cook.”
He’d already finished his eggs. He only had a bite or two left of the bacon. He supposed that if he was going to try the hash browns he should prepare them as directed. “Fine,” he said, reaching for the ketchup bottle, squeezing a very tiny amount on the edge of the slab. “How is that?”
Kian shook his head. “You need to be diner trained,” he said with a laugh.
Bastian shot the offending bottle a withering glare. Any human would have run before this, but the bottle wasn’t smart enough to figure out that it had ended up on the Bastard’s shit list.
“I was trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris,” Bastian argued. “What else would you suggest?”
Kian rolled his eyes. “In a diner. When you order hash browns you always get them well done and you always smother them in ketchup. It’s the only way.”
“Merde,” Bastian muttered and squeezed out some more of the slop onto his plate. It was a really fucking good thing that nobody he knew would ever be caught dead in a place like this.
“There you go,” Kian said, sounding very satisfied. “Now eat up, darling.”
“I think you’re enjoying this,” Bastian grumbled.
“Oh, I am.”
“I thought you loved me,” Bastian argued. “Why would you want to torture me?”
“This was your idea,” Kian said with a laugh. “And I do love you, even more, if you’d believe it.”
“I think you’re laughing at me,” Bastian said as he continued to poke with his fork at the hash browns.
“You’re just so damn cute,” Kian pointed out. “Just eat the damn things.”
“I feel like a Michelin inspector is going to pop out of this faux woodwork and revoke my stars,” Bastian said, but he scooped up a healthy bite and finally put it in his mouth.
Initially, he was tempted to actually spit out the food in his mouth.
Overcooked potato, somehow raw yet burned around the edges, smothered in that fake margarine, so slick and oily, Bastian nearly choked.
And over the top of all of that, the bland acidity of the ketchup.
Then he chewed again, and swallowed. Took another bite. Chewed that one and swallowed again.
Kian was outright laughing now.
“Trash!” he echoed Bastian’s voice. “This is trash!”
Bastian glared but kept eating. He ate the whole slab in record time and shoved the plate away. “I think you’ve ruined me.”
Kian’s glance felt like a caress on his cheek. “Then we’re ruined together. Exactly as it should be, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I suppose I should put aside my snobbery and try these too,” Bastian finally said with a sigh, pointing at the pancakes.
Kian just nodded, looking on with unabashed interest. “I’ve been waiting. Maybe you could even give Chef René a few helpful tips.” Chef René had been trained in Paris under the masters of French pastry and even considered Christina Tosi, of Milk Bar fame, an imposter.
“If I told Chef René, he’d probably fall over dead,” Bastian said with a rumbling laugh. Despite the oddness of the cuisine, this was one of the best mornings he had in a very long time. Definitely the most fun, because fun hadn’t really been something in his vocabulary until he’d met Kian.
“He does eat a lot of butter,” Kian replied very seriously, his eyes twinkling.
Bastian cut into the stack of pancakes, making sure to get some of the melting frosting onto the wedge of pancake on his fork. He put it in his mouth and promptly spat it back out, the first thing he’d been unable to stomach since they’d arrived.
“Oh my god,” Kian said, and he was laughing so hard, he nearly fell out of the booth. “Were they that bad?”
“Worse,” Bastian said with disdain, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I feel violated.”
“Well, I think that’s our cue to leave,” Kian said with a little hiccup. “I’ll go pay the check?”
Bastian grabbed for the receipt the waitress had left but Kian was too quick. “I invited you here,” he insisted, which was maybe something he shouldn’t be bragging about right now.
“And I think this is something I can pay for,” Kian said with a quick roll of his eyes. “I’ll meet you outside at the car.”
Even days later, Kian couldn’t believe that Bastian had really taken him at his word and brought them to the one brunch restaurant he was sure they wouldn’t be recognized.
Bastian’s expression of wonder, followed by the one of ultimate disgust, had already been filed away in Kian’s vault of special memories.
They were still figuring out how a relationship worked between them, and he wasn’t na?ve enough to believe that a relationship fraught with as many difficulties as their own, was guaranteed to survive forever.
But if it ended, he’d still have all those memories to warm him later. There would be good, mixed in with the heartbreak, and that was what Kian was determined to take from this.
“Chef, that’s smelling a little . . . burned,” Mark offered, his voice for once somewhat deferential.
“It’s supposed to be,” Kian said, jiggling the sauté pan with a practiced movement.
“What are you working on?” his sous asked. They were nearly done with prep for the day, and Kian had ducked out of his official responsibilities a tiny bit early to work on a recipe he’d been toying with in his mind. Something that echoed the hash browns he and Bastian both unexpectedly loved.
“Spin on tortilla Espanola, with a little bit of a patatas bravas twist,” Kian said, referring to the Spanish potato dishes. “Might be a possibility for a new vegetarian entrée.”
“Yeah, like Aquino would ever let you put a dish on the menu,” Mark muttered under his breath.
Kian was afraid of the day he’d finally decide it was okay to say his bullshit to his face. For a second, he considered informing Mark that Kian was either directly or partly responsible for about half the Terroir menu, but ultimately he decided it wasn’t worth it.
The bare facts were unappealing to him; to Mark it didn’t matter if he was wrong, he’d already formed his opinions and it was going to take a lot more than a single sentence to change his mind.
“For a French-inspired restaurant, you guys do some weird shit,” Mark said, louder this time, so clearly Kian was meant to respond to this comment.
“Adapt or die,” Kian said succinctly, which was one of Bastian’s favorite sayings. He slid a thin metal spatula under his potato cake and lifted it slightly, checking its crispness.
“You’re literally becoming his clone,” Mark huffed. “I’d never have imagined you’d end up here, parroting him instead of developing your own point of view.”
Kian rolled his eyes. “What do you call this? You just said we were doing some weird shit. How do you know that isn’t my point of view?”
“Good point.” Mark leaned against the edge of the stove. Kian belligerently hoped his coat would catch on fire.
“I like to filter unexpected dishes through a French perspective,” was all Kian said.
None of this is going to change his mind, Kian reminded himself, but it was hard.
He didn’t enjoy being disliked—though in reality, who really did?
Maybe Bastian. Except that even that long-held belief was slowly fading away in the face of his sweeter, softer side.
Maybe Bastian didn’t enjoy being disliked after all. Maybe he just tolerated it because that was the cost of running a restaurant like Terroir.
“Maybe you just want to filter yourself through Aquino’s perspective,” Mark said, waggling his eyebrows in a grotesque re-enactment of what he thought might be going on between them.
Kian barely held back a shudder. “You are fucking crazy,” he said succinctly. “Bastian isn’t a filter.”
He only realized his mistake that would probably be his undoing when an unholy light lit up Mark’s face.
“Oh, it’s Bastian now, is it?” Mark said, his eyebrows working double time now. Kian glared. He hoped he’d get an eyebrow cramp—if that was even a thing, and Kian believed it should be.
One of the reasons why Kian had hated Mark so much at culinary academy was the way he could scent the blood in the water, and when he did, he’d pounce harder and faster. It wasn’t like Kian hadn’t learned to be tough during his two-plus-year stint at Terroir, but Mark was a different animal.
He had all the pieces. He probably wasn’t going to put them together quite right, but in the end, that wasn’t going to matter. The right way—we’ve been in love with each other forever—wasn’t nearly as interesting as the story Mark would no doubt concoct.
“You’re just jealous that we’re friendly,” Kian tried to deflect, but it was a bad excuse.
“Yeah, real friendly,” Mark said, his sly insinuation unexpectedly painful. “I wondered how you managed to convince Aquino to make you chef de cuisine at twenty-fucking-three. Now I know. You did it on your knees.”