Navigating the Impossible
by Sandrine Shaw
"Tony, come here," Adam shouts from the kitchen through the doors of the restaurant where Tony's putting the finishing touches to this week's decoration.
Tony lingers, pretending for a moment that he's not going to come running just because Adam called him. It's half past ten on a Monday morning, too early for Adam's specific brand of drama.
Helene shoots him a sympathetic look when he finally makes his way over, before she disappears towards where David is decorating a cake, fiddling with an artfully crafted bird made from caramelized sugar.
Adam's fingers drum an impatient rhythm against the counter-top, but the smile he flashes Tony is relaxed and genuine.
"Try this," he says, putting a spoon right before Tony's mouth.
There's no point in protesting either the way Adam keeps ordering him around or how he's being used as a taster. He tells himself he should feel honored that even though Adam hardly makes a secret of the fact that he believes Tony never had what it took to make it as a chef, he still trusts his opinion when it comes to judging Adam's food.
Today, it's a rich, smooth, pumpkin velouté. Just the right amount of spice, the flavors precise, intense without being overpowering. It's delicious.
"It's good," Tony says, nodding in approval.
Adam gives him that exasperated look that means he's going to go off on the inadequacy of 'good' as a compliment again and take it as the insult it wasn't meant to be. Tony rolls his eyes. "Your overblown ego doesn't need any more stroking. When I say it's good, I mean it. Put it on the menu."
"Yes, boss," Adam snaps back with a grin, a parody of the usual 'yes, chef' chorus from the kitchen.
Tony levels a flat, unimpressed glare at him. He's about to leave when Adam says, "You have— Hold still."
It's the only warning he gets before Adam reaches out and brushes his thumb over his chin with gentle pressure, from the corner of his mouth downwards. It comes away stained pumpkin orange across the whole length.
Adam licks it off, smirking, and for a moment Tony gets the distinct impression that Adam's flirting with him. But no. Not even Adam is that much of an asshole.
Except, maybe Adam is exactly the kind of asshole who'd flirt with the guy he knows has been in love with him for ages and think it's funny. Or perhaps he thinks he's doing Tony a favor by throwing him a proverbial bone – that pitiful 'cook him breakfast instead of falling in love with him' business all over again.
Either way, Tony's less than impressed when Adam has him try the caramelized figs that are new on the dessert menu. There's something about the speculative, expectant expression on Adam's face when he holds out the fruit on steady, ricotta-and-caramel-soiled fingers that grates on Tony's nerves.
He tries to just steal the fig from between Adam's fingertips, but Adam makes it impossible, holding it so firmly that he gives Tony no choice but to actually take half the length of his fingers between his lips and lick them clean.
It's the most mortifying, humiliating thing Adam's made him do since... well, since that painstakingly awkward pity-kiss after Tony told him Michel hadn't fucked up their chance at a third star after all.
And yet Tony is almost instantly, painfully hard. The way Adam's pupils grow wide and dark when Tony's tongue slides over his fingertips certainly isn't helping, and really, fuck him. Tony has no idea what the hell he's playing at.
"So...?" Adam raises an eyebrow, probably expecting the verdict on the fig.
Right now, Tony doesn't give a toss about the dessert menu. "You are sleeping with Helene, non?"
If Adam's surprised by the non-sequitur, it's not showing. "I did sleep with Helene. Once. Past tense. I'm not currently sleeping with anyone."
"Right. Well, I'm sure you'll have no problem finding someone who's happy to ease your loneliness."
"What the —" Adam ducks his head and laughs; it's hard to tell if he's amused or outraged. "You really are the most infuriating person I know."
Tony presses his lips into a thin line, trying not to let his anger flare up. "The fig is too dry. Too much vinegar in the caramel. The balance is off." It's not even true, but there's some satisfaction in the way Adam frowns first at him then at the plateful of figs on the table, as if they'd personally offended him.
Tony gets up and leaves, leaving Adam behind with a bruised ego and a dessert that's inevitably going to end up in the bin.
Someone banging at the door of Tony's suite tears him from his sleep. He groans and grabs his smartphone from the bedside table. Three twenty-five in the morning. He buries his face in the pillow, wondering if they'll go away if he ignores the noise.
But the banging won't stop, and maybe it's an emergency. Maybe his hotel's on fire. Maybe there's a hostage situation. Maybe —
"Tony, I know you're in there," Adam shouts from outside the hallway, and even through the closed door, it's hard to miss that the words sound jumbled and slurred.
Maybe Adam's randomly decided to wake him up in the small hours of the morning because he's drunk or high or both.
Tony grabs a robe and pulls the door open, unsurprised when Adam all but falls into his room. It's like they're in Paris again, and much younger men, when Adam was never home before three and never sober, and taking care of him was something Tony never questioned.
Adam rolls on his back, stretched out on the eggshell colored carpet, looking up at him with that 1000-volt-smile turned on. "Tony. There you are."
He sounds happy, brimming with the kind of unburned bliss that's not made an appearance since those early, carefree days at Jean-Luc's. Tony tries to push away the fondness that tugs at his heartstrings and focus on his annoyance instead, but it's hard when Adam's like this, on the happy side of drunk and looking at Tony like he's his world.
He sighs. There will be plenty of time to be mad at Adam tomorrow; right now he can't find it in himself to muster up the energy for anger. "Come on, let's get you to bed so the both of us can catch some sleep."
Adam nods, but he doesn't seem to think it's a task that requires his active participation. Tony bodily drags him up and over the bed, dropping him on top of the covers, where Adam immediately curls into himself and falls asleep.
Tony, in contrast, is wide awake. He rubs his fingers against the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the beginnings of a headache as he stands above Adam and watches him sleep, soft snores filling the silence of the room.
He catches himself when he's about to reach out and brush his hand across Adam's face.
'You're not as pretty as you once were,' he told Adam. It was a lie. Or, not a lie, exactly, but maybe a deliberate semantic quibble. Adam may have lost that smooth, sunny prettiness of youth, but he's still every bit as attractive as he was a decade ago when they first met. Even now, drunk out of his mind, with dark shadows under his eyes and his hair an unruly mess, Adam's still heart-stoppingly beautiful. Besides, Tony isn't that shallow. It was never just about Adam's looks.
He pulls his hand back before he can touch.
In the morning, Adam is surprisingly, infuriatingly awake.
It's the sound of the shower running that wakes Tony, and it takes him a few seconds to remember why the bed next to him is still warm and smells like stale sweat and alcohol and Adam.
He forces himself not to linger, and when Adam emerges from the bathroom with dripping hair, wearing nothing but a smile and a towel wrapped around his hips, Tony is already dressed. It feels a little too much like déja-vu, in more ways than one.
"I thought you didn't do this anymore."
Tony's unconcealed disapproval seems to be enough to make Adam's sunny disposition vanish and immediately put him on the defensive, frown lines furrowing his forehead. "I don't. I had a drink or three too many, that's all. C'mon, it's not like I shot up heroin, trashed the restaurant and pissed into the frying pan."
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
The flippant response Tony expects doesn't come. Adam silently sits down in the chair across from him. He leans forward on his elbows and starts rubbing the soreness from his neck with both hands, facing the floor.
Even when he starts talking, he avoids looking at Tony. "Here's the thing, Tony. I'm a mess. You know that, I know it. Dr Rosshilde knows it. Helene knows it. Reece knows it. Everyone who's ever worked with me knows it. But I'm trying to be better, and even though I like to pretend that it's because I learned my lesson after Paris and because I've got my shit together now, it's mostly because of you. Because I can't stand the idea of disappointing you again."
Adam finally looks up, blue-eyed gaze too intense, too honest, too... something, and Tony doesn't know what to do with that kind of admission.
He swallows and looks away, trying to push down the panic clawing up his throat. "I'm late for the morning meeting. We'll talk later."
Adam's softly spoken "Sure" follows him out as he all but flees the room. It's hardly his proudest moment, but the need to put some distance between himself and Adam is overpowering.
Tony knows how to deal with Adam when he's drunk or angry, when he's throwing a fit in the kitchen, when he's sabotaging himself, when he's riding all kinds of metaphoric and not-so-metaphoric highs. He's had years of building up defenses against that Adam. An Adam who's serious and unusually self-aware, though... That Adam could get under his skin in ways against which he has no defense.
After they've closed and everyone's gone home for the night, Tony is finishing up in the office, going through the latest guest numbers and reservation stats. The quiet is soothing, but he's too distracted to focus, mind whirling faster than a whisk beating egg whites.
Tony tries to make sense of the figures on the print-out when there's a cough from the open door. Adam's leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest, tanned skin standing out against the white of his chef's jacket, face half-obscured by shadows.
"You know, if I was younger and my ego was easier bruised, I'd be worried that I was losing my touch."
Tony stands and gathers the sheets in a neat pile, aligning the paper with the edge of the desk with the same care he'd take with plating. It's both habit and a way to keep busy, to avoid Adam for as long as he can. "What are you talking about? You're making even less sense than usual."
"You really don't know, do you? You know what, fuck the whole subtlety bullshit."
Seeing as it's happened before, maybe Tony should be used by now to Adam stepping into his personal space and kissing him. But he doubts it's something he'll ever get used to. And anyway, it's nothing like the other time.
Adam's lips brush over his with breathtaking gentleness, almost tentatively, the butterfly touches coming and going until Tony's mouth falls open under his and Adam abandons all hesitance, his tongue slipping inside, warm and slick and insistent. His hand curves around the nape of Tony's neck, fingertips scraping along his scalp in a way that sets all of Tony's nerve-endings on fire, desire curling hot and tight in his gut. He can't hold back the low whine that escapes his throat, too caught up in the sensations even to feel embarrassed.
It's a terrible idea, but he wants those hands all over him, wants Adam out of the food-stained clothes and naked on his sheets, wants —
Wants all the things he can't have.
He breaks away and takes a step back, trying to catch his breath and make his treacherous heart stop racing. The last time Adam planted one on him, Tony was flustered simply because Adam had taken him by surprise. Now, he's overwhelmed by the sheer intimacy of the kiss.
"This isn't funny," he says, hating the roughness in his voice, how it almost breaks.
"Good, because it's not a joke." Adam's eyes keep darting down to Tony's mouth, gaze heated. When did Adam start looking at him like this? "Which I've been trying to tell you all week, but you weren't really listening."
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, to mentally rearrange the events of the past couple of days and Adam's behavior based on the premise that Adam wasn't teasing him or messing with him or generally being an ass.
Oh.
Tony frowns. "Your seduction technique is awful. I don't understand how all these women fall over themselves for you when your idea of romance is crashing at their place drunk at three in the morning."
He somehow manages to keep his voice steady and his tone full of dry sarcasm, making Adam snort out a brief laugh.
"Oh, shut up," he says, eyes crinkling with laughter lines, giving Tony a look that's maybe forty percent exasperated, sixty percent fond. Tony can't remember why he ever thought he was over Adam.
Except... it's Adam. Hopelessly straight, fickle Adam, who falls in lust fast and thoroughly but never for long. Just because he's looking at Tony like he's everything he wants tonight doesn't mean he won't move on to someone else tomorrow morning, or next week, and Tony isn't sure he could bear that. "What if this goes horribly wrong?"
"I guess I'll disappear for a few years before I return grovelling for your forgiveness and taking over your restaurant."
Of course Adam would make a joke of it. Tony scoffs. "Not funny."
Adam sighs. "It's not going to go horribly wrong."
"How can you know that?"
"Tony. You trusted me with your restaurant. Trust me with your heart."
It's a horrible line. It absolutely shouldn't work on anyone, much less on Tony, who didn't really trust Adam with his restaurant to begin with and knows only too well how reckless Adam has been with people's hearts. But the way Adam's looking at him makes him want to take a leap of faith. Maybe Adam really has changed. Maybe this – Adam and him – is less impossible than he thought it was.
He's never been good at saying no to Adam – not back in Paris, and not when Adam arrived in London and demanded to be given free rein over his restaurant. So why break the habit of a lifetime and start now?
"No sane person would trust you with anything beyond the culinary," Tony points out. But he's reaching for Adam again, fingers tangling in the blond curls to pull him down for another kiss, belying his words.
End.