Archive of Our Own

Admittedly it took the kitchen staff at Adam Jones at the Langham a few months to adjust to the idea that Adam Jones was into men, and not just any man, but their collective boss. But for those who had been there in Paris, and even those who had been there before Adam’s sudden return two years ago, it seemed so right. Helene perhaps had the hardest time adjusting, after all, there had been a time when Adam Jones was interested in her. But no one begrudged Tony the slice of happiness he had carved out here. Nor could they deny that Tony’s influence continued to change Adam for the better. And after more than a year the entire staff has just sort of adjusted to the fact that Adam and Tony are an unshakable partnership – even if they sometimes wish Tony would have a proper wall put in his office.

Today, Helene hopes Tony shows up soon. She doesn’t know what horrible thing crawled up Adam’s ass and died, but he’s yelled at her three times already and they’re barely through prepping for the lunch service. Even the yelling has changed over the two years she’s worked for him. It’s no longer personal, but it’s still extremely loud and a little vicious and utterly pointless since her work is flawless as usual. Still, she accepts the criticism with a snappy “yes chef” and does her best not to watch the door to the dining room too hopefully.

Tony walks in fifteen minutes before lunch will begin. His suit is immaculate as always and he looks like the consummate professional - until his eyes land on Adam and then Helene thinks he looks like a mooncalf. But she can’t help smiling when Adam catches sight of Tony and gives him a disgustingly gooey eyed grin, wiping his hands on his apron as he crosses the room to kiss Tony hello. Honestly, you would think they’d been together days, not well over a year, the way they can’t seem to stay outside of one another’s space.

“You’re hot.” Tony’s voice is low, but with the entire kitchen crew cowed into silence by Adam’s bad mood it reaches Helene easily.

Adam’s grin is practically a leer as he leans into Tony’s space. “Yeah I am”

“No, my love, your forehead.” Tony rests the back of his hand against Adam’s cheek and then his forehead. “You have a fever. You can’t be here.”

Helene’s head snaps up and she abandons her prep in favour of watching this exchange. She’ll never forget Adam, face bloody and breath coming with a suspicious rasp she was sure was a broken rib, refusing to let anyone else run the pass. Sure that version of Adam had mellowed, learned to trust them to do their individual jobs, and even occasionally let someone cover for him. But she didn’t imagine he would take too well to being kicked out of the kitchen.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re burning up and for all I know, horribly contagious. Upstairs. Now.”

“I have to--”

“Helene!” Tony calls over Adam’s objection. “Adam is taking the rest of the week off. You can handle the kitchen, yes?”

“Yes, Tony.”

Adam whinges the entire way as Tony half pushes him out of the kitchen, but Helene isn’t really listening anymore. She has a job to do.

. . .

“I’m fine, Tony.”

“You are demonstrably not fine.” Tony holds out a thermometer and the look on his face tells Adam that it’s going in with his help or without it. “You have been yelling at the kitchen staff like its early 2015 and you’re burning up.”

Adam opens his mouth and forces Tony to insert the thermometer himself. If Tony is going to treat him like a child he’s going to play the part. “Mm nah sick.”

Tony’s lips purse and his eyes drill into Adam as if he’s not sure if he’d rather murder or fuck him. It shouldn’t be hot. “Just...” He rolls his lips together and Adam finds his gaze straying first to Tony’s lips and then lower. “Just let me take care of you.”

It’s practically begging and while a part of Adam’s brain recognizes that Tony is actually concerned with his well-being, mostly he’s imagining other ways he can make Tony beg and if he sucks a little at the thermometer still tucked under the left side of his tongue it’s only so it won’t fall out when he nods his acquiescence.

“Thank you.” Tony runs a fond hand through Adam’s hair and stands with his fingers gently twined through the strands until the thermometer beeps.

Adam pulls it out but hands it straight to Tony, knowing instinctively his partner will want to confirm the result himself.

“39 degrees.” He looks at Adam, equal parts fond and exasperated. “How were you even upright?”

Adam lets himself be coaxed into pyjamas and tucked under the covers without complaint because he doesn’t want Tony to think too hard about why Adam can function with a high fever and barely notice it. Sometimes he thinks Tony forgets about everything that came before - the drugs and the drink and the women and the million and one things Adam did that mean he will never deserve this.

“You need rest. The restaurant will be fine. Helene is an excellent chef. It will be good for her to be able to show you what she can do.”

Adam settles back against the pillows. “Helene is a good cook, but she’s no Adam Jones.”

“We really should get you a bigger room. I am amazed there’s room for me in here with the size of your ego.”

“You love me.”

“Yes.” Tony smiles as if to himself. “Sometimes against my better judgement.” He neutralizes any sting in his words with a kiss against Adam’s forehead. “Now rest, okay?”

. . .

“How’s the patient?” Helene asks when Tony appears in the kitchen. “Did you have to tie him to the bed to keep him from running away on you?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “You would think I was torturing him.”

“Kaitlin and I have this place under control.”

“Oh I have every confidence. I am actually here to add to your workload.”

“Whatever you need.” She assures him, her hands plating an order of pork with barely a thought.

“Soup for him, I thought perhaps chicken, and the strongest coffee in the world for me.”

“Black or tipsy?”

Tony smirks. “Black. You forget, I own the mini bar.”

“Give us ten minutes?”

Tony tells her to take her time and heads to his office. If he’s going to spend the day babysitting Adam (and not let Adam drive him insane) he’s going to need some work to do. Today he has a mountain of scheduling to sort out. Kaitlin is pregnant, which is great news for her and her fiancé, but not great news for Tony. He has come to lean on Kaitlin a lot in the last two years. Her confidence and skill at diffusing almost any situation that arises are why he hired her, and why she will be damnably hard to replace even for the six weeks’ leave she swears she won’t exceed. He offered her an entire year, but she insisted she would go mad with boredom if she weren’t back doing at least half time within a month of giving birth. Tony is making contingency plans upon contingency plans just in case the realities of motherhood make her think better of her perfect work ethic, which means he has about sixty resumes to go through to find candidates worthy of an interview. Joy.

He has just dug the last resume out of the stack of papers crowding one corner of his desk when David appears with a covered tray. “Chicken soup, made with his own stock so it should be up to his standards, some fresh rolls and a carafe of hot, strong black coffee.”

“Thanks David. I’ll take it up, you can get back in there.”

David looks relieved and Tony bites back a smile. More than two years of working under Adam David still treats the Three Michelin Starred chef like Bono – with equal parts puppy-like devotion and cowering fear. It would be annoying if Tony didn’t suffer from his own case of Adam worship.

It’s been a while since Tony has had reason to balance a tray of food himself. Thankfully, it seems to be a skill you don’t really lose. He tucks the manila envelope filled with resumes under one arm and takes the covered tray firmly in two hands to weave through the busy kitchen to the back hallway that will allow him to take a service elevator up to Adam’s floor.

He wonders briefly if he’s being ridiculous. Adam is a grown man and he doesn’t actually need Tony to babysit him. But then he shakes his head, because he knows that this – the babysitting – has more to do with what Tony needs than what Adam does. No, Adam doesn’t need Tony to bring him soup and sit by his bed – or probably on the bed beside him, free hand playing with Adam’s hair or rubbing his back or shoulder while he (hopefully) sleeps – but he will allow it, and that is a bit of a miracle. Tony doesn’t like to think about Paris, at least not the last two years, but when he can’t block the thoughts he takes comfort in moments like today.

The Adam who had disappeared without a word in the middle of the night in Paris would never have let Tony force him into pajamas he’s probably only worn twice in his adult life and tuck him beneath the covers. That Adam, for all Tony loved him with a painful intensity, would have laughed Tony off and then self-medicated with whatever combination of drugs and booze he could get his hands on, showing up in one day later… or three as if nothing had happened. So no, Adam didn’t need Tony to dote on him, but that wasn’t going to stop Tony from doing it, just because he could.

Adam isn’t asleep when Tony pushes his way into the room, but he is still in bed, head back against the pillows, blanket tucked up almost to his chin, and Tony counts it a victory. The television is on the Great British Baking Show, the volume barely loud enough to make out individual words. “I brought you some soup. Do you think you can manage it?”

Adam sits up, propping himself up against the headboard. “I told you I could handle the lunch service, I’m pretty sure I can eat a bowl of soup.”

“Good.” Tony sets the tray down, lifting the cover and setting it aside. There is a bowl of soup underneath as well as two warm biscuits, the carafe of coffee and one mug. Tony removes all but one bowl of soup and a biscuit before carrying the tray to Adam. “Since you’re so well, I expect you can eat all of this.”

Rolling his eyes, Adam takes the tray. “I’m making no promises. I don’t even know if this is any good.”

“Such faith you have in your kitchen staff.” Tony says sarcastically. He takes his time settling in to the room, toeing off his shoes, hanging his jacket, all the while keeping half an eye on Adam to ensure he is eating. When he has poured himself a cup of coffee he settles beside Adam on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, his legs spread out over top of the duvet.

“Thank you. The soup is good, a little heavy on the tarragon, but good.”

Tony smiles into his coffee.

. . .

Despite Adam’s best efforts to distract him - first with a running commentary on the cooking shows he evidently hates but can’t seem to look away from, and then with suggestive touches against Tony’s arm, chest, thigh - Tony manages to make it through the stack of resumes for Kaitlin’s replacement. He monitors Adam’s temperature throughout the day but the fever stays the same. Sometime around three Adam begins to cough, a dry hack that seems to annoy more than hurt him, and he stops insisting he’s well enough to return to the kitchen.

By nine Adam is drowsy. Tony can see the exhaustion in the slight downturn of his mouth and the corners of his eyes, the slope of his shoulders, but he’s coughing often enough and with enough force Tony is worried he won’t actually get any sleep at all. “You should take something for the cough, just so you can sleep for a few hours.”

“No.” Adam shakes his head. “I can’t. I haven’t touched anything in four years. I’m not going to break that because of a stupid cough.”

Tony nods. He understands, admires Adam even, but he also wants to make the coughing stop and see Adam get the rest his body needs to recover.

“You should probably spend the night at your place, though. I don’t want to keep you up all night.”

Tony opens his mouth to protest but Adam continues speaking before he can.

“I’ll be fine. And if I need anything, I can call the front desk.”

It’s the right call. Tony knows this, in fact if whatever ails Adam is catching, his immune system will need the solid night of sleep if he doesn’t want to end up sick too. Reluctantly he slides off the side of the bed and begins to gather his things. When he’s ready to leave he walks over to the bed and presses a kiss against Adam’s forehead. “I’ll be back in the morning to check in. Try to get some sleep.”

“I will.”

Tony walks from the hotel to his apartment. It’s not a long walk and the fresh air feels good after an entire day spent indoors.

The apartment smells stale and as he flicks on the lights and takes in the immaculate interior Tony wonders if life wouldn’t just be simpler if he were to move in to the penthouse and perhaps move Adam in there with him. As nice as it to have a place that is all his own, away from the hotel, as a sort of oasis from all the chaos in his life, he can’t actually pinpoint the last night he spent more time there than it took to keep his orchids alive. His clothes have taken over the closet in Adam’s room.

When he pulls on a pair of loose grey sweat pants he realizes he will need to go early tomorrow in order to change into a suit appropriate for work. The realization that his wardrobe at least is already living with Adam Jones is startling, but when he lets it roll over in his mind, it feels right. More right than crawling into bed alone and knowing that twenty minutes away, Adam is probably tossing and turning, the cough he stubbornly refuses to medicate keeping him up until he is so exhausted it can no longer rouse him.  

Despite the cavernous feeling of his half empty bed, and the worry about Adam, Tony sleeps well. He’s always been a deep sleeper, though not a long sleeper. Most nights he gets only six hours and manages to feel well rested on four if he needs to. He doesn’t know anything about how sleep cycles work or develop, but he always thought his was carved in stone in Paris. Late nights, early mornings, and long days six days a week since he was nineteen had to have had some kind of lasting impact. But when he wakes with one arm reaching out across the empty half of the bed in an unconscious search for Adam, Tony thinks again of the penthouse suites at the Langham.

Not today, feeling better or not, Adam is not going to be in a mood for compromise today. Not after being forced to actually rest all of yesterday. But maybe soon. Preferably some time before they start getting on each other’s nerves in the limited space of Adam’s current room and Adam thinks Tony moved in without telling him on purpose.

. . .

After a long night in which Adam isn’t sure he slept more than four hours despite obediently laying in bed with the lights off, Tony standing in the doorway, two paper coffee cups in hand and warm, concerned eyes flicking over Adam as if trying to ensure he’s still in one piece, is the best thing Adam has ever seen. “Good morning,” he croaks.

Tony sets the coffees on the bedside table and leans in to kiss Adam’s cheek. “You look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”

Adam swings his feet out of bed but a rattling cough cuts off his response to Tony’s question.

Tony blocks his hand when Adam reaches for the coffee. “Temperature first.”

It’s a testament to how wretched Adam feels that he doesn’t protest when Tony places the thermometer beneath his tongue. It takes longer than it should because Adam can’t stop coughing, but once they’ve confirmed that Adam’s fever is holding strong at 39 Tony lets him have one of the coffees. The hot, milky beverage feels amazing against his raw throat.

“I want you to see a doctor.” Tony has moved across the room and is setting out clean clothes for Adam with precise movements, as if this is something he does all the time.

“It’s just a cold.”

“I would rather not take that chance.”

Adam feels those words as if Tony had screamed them instead of saying them almost to himself. He can’t remember ever having this. The relatives who fed, clothed and sheltered him throughout his troubled teenaged years hadn’t cared beyond the check each month. Probably his mother had cared once, but she’s been gone so long Adam has trouble remembering the details he took for granted before he realized that unconditional love was rare.

He rises to his feet slowly, sudden movements seem to aggravate his cough, and takes the pile of clothes Tony has set out.

“Shower if you think you’re up to it.” Tony says with a warm smile that shoots straight to Adam’s chest. “You smell as bad as you look.”

Adam laughs but it quickly turns into a coughing fit that has him leaning against the wall to remain upright.

“Adam!” Tony is beside him, one hand wrapped around Adam’s elbow, offering support, the other rubbing soothing circles against his back.

Adam leans into Tony’s touch as he sucks slow breaths into his lungs. The coughing left him dizzy and he lets Tony be his centre of gravity until the room stops trying to tip him over. “Maybe not a shower.” He rasps.

“The steam will help.” Tony kisses the top of Adam’s head. “Come. I will join you.”

“This is not how I wanted to have you in this shower.” Adam quips.

“Yes, well, you can make it up to me when you’re better, okay?”

. . .

Tony has Adam sit while he readies the shower, turning the water to full hot so the peppermint/eucalyptus mixture he found at the pharmacy near his apartment will steam up into the air. The label claims the oils will clear Adam’s congested sinuses and help him breathe easily. Tony personally thinks they’re as likely to burn out his ability to smell.

He doesn’t offer to help Adam undress, knowing instinctively that Adam would feel awkward about it no matter how many times Tony has stripped him down in other circumstances. But he stands close enough to act as an anchor if Adam needs him.

He’s never appreciated the large walk in showers in the Langham’s guest rooms so much as he does right now. Steam swirls inside the glass, so thick he can no longer see the streams of hot water coming from the dual showerheads.

Adam looks wrecked, but that doesn’t stop him from watching intently when Tony starts to undress. “Tease,” he grumbles.

“You don’t have to watch, you know.” Tony smirks but resists the temptation to take his time. Even bleary with exhaustion and fever, Adam Jones is almost unbelievably sexy, and those unreal blue eyes dilated with arousal as they follow Tony’s hands over the fastenings of his trousers send blood rushing to Tony’s groin.

One corner of Adam’s mouth raises but he doesn’t shift his eyes away until Tony opens the door to the shower, letting out a cloud of sharply scented steam, and asks blandly, “Well?”

Adam braves one hand against the counter when standing, a brace against any return of his cough or dizziness, but he walks steadily across the small room and passes one hand over Tony’s naked torso as he presses past him and steps beneath the scalding stream of water.

Tony adjusts the temperature from scalding to bearable, closes the door, and they’re encased in a cloud of thick steam. The peppermint and eucalyptus have faded somewhat but the scents are still strong and Tony sucks in slow, deep breaths, letting his lungs adjust to the thickness of the air around him.

Adam stands facing the spray, one shoulder resting against the wall as if just stating upright is a bit more than he can manage. His back rises and falls with each careful breath, but he doesn’t cough and Tony is thankful for ancient Egyptians or hippies or whoever it was who popularized the healing powers of plant odours.

Tony squirts a generous amount of the hotel’s lavender sage body wash into one hand thinking he should have grabbed a wash cloth but not wanting to leave the steamy warmth of the shower. It suds up easily between his palms, its fragrance mixing with the lingering oils in the steam. Gently, almost reverently, Tony rests his palms against the hot skin of Adam’s back, smoothing them out along his shoulders and then circling back across his shoulder blades.

Adam lets out a low sound that’s half sigh, half moan and drops his head forward allowing Tony to work his fingers up his neck and into the pressure point at the base of his skull. Tony uses the tips of his fingers, letting the blunt edge of the nail scratch ever so lightly over the soapy expanse of Adam’s back before flattening his hands again and spreading the lather down over Adam’s ass.

When he’s content that important stretch of Adam’s warm, soft skin is suitably sudsy, Tony slides his hands around to Adam’s chest, pulling him back so Adam’s body is leaning on Tony instead of the wall. Adam lets his head loll back and the look he gives Tony is filthier than any inch of his skin. It takes all of Tony’s willpower not to kiss him, but no matter how fuckable Adam looks with those hooded eyes and soft, half open mouth, Tony reminds himself that human saliva is full of germs and getting himself sick practically on purpose would be idiotic. Besides, there were other things he can do.

Making sure to cover every inch of Adam, Tony’s hands move in tight circles over his clavicle, his pecs, his abs, working slowly but steadily down.

Adam’s breaths are coming more quickly, and a shudder passes through his entire body when Tony’s wet hands part at the last moment to draw tight patterns against Adam’s upper thigh, but he’s not coughing and Tony takes that as a very good sign.

“Tease,” Adam gasps, tilting his hips so Tony’s throbbing cock slides against him.

Tony growls low in his throat but he stops drawing it out.

. . .

Adam sinks into Tony’s chest feeling boneless and sated and almost human again, but oh God so tired. “I know you’re worried about me,” he finds it easier to acknowledge Tony’s concern when his nerve endings are still singing with the sensation of Tony’s soap-slicked fingers wrapped tight and hot around his cock. “Tomorrow, if I’m still running a fever I promise you can drag me to any doctor in the city. But today, can we just sleep?”

Tony’s lips press against Adam’s shoulder. “Okay.”

Adam forces his limp muscles to function, pulling reluctantly out of Tony’s embrace and ducking his head under the stream of water to rinse off before twisting the knob to off and reaching for a towel.

He doesn’t bother to get dressed; it seems like far too much bother. Giving his body a cursory once over with the towel he watches Tony do the same. As soon as neither of them is dripping, Adam laces his fingers through Tony’s and leads him to the inviting white expanse of the bed.

“Adam...”

“Just to sleep.” There’s an almost plaintive note in his voice.

Tony grabs his phone off the dresser as they pass, but he doesn’t put up any struggle when Adam presses him back against the mattress and curls into him, resting his exhausted head against Tony’s chest.

He barely has time to register Tony typing a few quick messages before setting the phone aside and settling his hand against Adam’s back before he’s slipping into a deep sleep.

. . .

Adam sleeps for almost four hours before the cough comes back. For the first half hour Tony let himself be used as a human teddy bear, but when he was confident Adam was truly asleep, he wiggled free and placed a pair of pillows under Adam’s face. As tempting as it was to spend the whole day there, with a naked Adam clinging to him like a burr, Tony knew the first thing Adam will want when he woke was an update on his kitchen. So by the time Adam actually joins the land of the conscious, Tony has ensured everything is in perfect order, convinced Kaitlin she should really be the one to interview the five candidates he found to be her temporary replacement, and spent a frankly humiliating amount of time just watching Adam breathe.

. . .

Doctor John Locke was Alberto Belardi’s first physician when he moved to London twenty two years ago to run the first hotel of what would become a small empire, the Langham, so when Tony calls him in the morning after Adam’s temperature spikes to 40 degrees there’s an appointment made available immediately.

“He’s doing rounds at Harley Street Clinic, but just go straight to intake and they’ll get you sorted.” Elsbeth, Dr. Locke’s receptionist and guardian of his schedule, assures Tony in a warm, sympathetic tone. Tony makes a mental note to make sure she has a dinner on him at the restaurant as soon as Adam is recovered.

Getting Adam actually inside the posh clinic proves to be much harder than getting the appointment.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Adam groans as the black cab pulls to a stop in front of the clinic. “Here?” Adam glares at Tony. “I’m not too good for NHS you know.”

Tony manages to smother his thought that yes, Adam was far too good for NHS and half pulls Adam from the cab. “Stop being a bloody communist for five minutes and get your ass inside.”

From the shade of red Adam’s cheeks turn Tony is pretty sure he was about to be treated to a very strongly worded lecture on how Adam is not a Communist, thank you very much, but healthcare is a right and it’s fucking disgraceful that some people have access to a completely different hospital system just because they have money. But the sharp, indignant breath that presaged the rant was more than Adam’s lungs could handle and instead Adam began to cough so violently Tony wouldn’t have been all that surprised if Adam had vomited out a lung.

Eventually Adam regains his ability to breathe. There is a sickly sheen of sweat on his forehead and he doesn’t fight it when Tony hooks his arm around Adam’s waist and half carries him to the intake desk.

It takes forever (less than twenty minutes but each minute takes a year at least with Adam pale, sweaty and trembling beside him) but eventually a nurse in sea foam green scrubs tells them to follow her. Without asking permission, Tony wraps his arm once again around Adam, offering his body as a crutch, and tries not to worry too much when Adam clearly needs the support.

Once Adam is settled in the paper topped examination table, Tony hovers, pacing a few feet back and forth near the door. He wants to stay, by the also expects Adam to want his privacy.

“Sit down,” Adam says, exasperated. “You’re making me dizzy.”

The appointment feels like it’s over in seconds. Like Dr. Locke is a whirlwind with a stethoscope and then the nurse is back and Adam is being lowered into a wheelchair and Tony is left in the exam room to wait while an X-ray confirms the diagnosis: pneumonia.

But he isn’t alone. Dr. Locke sits on the chair next to Tony and places a warm hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t like your father.” He says softly, like he knows Tony is on the verge of breaking. “Adam is young and despite his history, he’s strong.”

Tony nods but he’s not hearing anything. It’s taking all his energy to stay in his seat and keep from screaming

It took five agonizing years for Alberto Belardi to die. But they only knew the end was inevitable for the final two. It had started, to misrepresent TS Eliot, not with a bang, but a whistle. On every inhale, the slightest whistle.

Alberto was diagnosed with pneumonia three times before they found the lump. No one thought Mesothelioma when they were looking at a 60 year old hotel tycoon who had successfully kept his years working construction in Florence a tightly held secret in a world which saw humble beginnings as weakness. By the time it was diagnosed it was already in stage IV and though they tried everything, there was nothing they could do to stop the inevitable.

Tony thought a lot about that whistle in the two years he watched his father die. He remembered Christmas dinners that ended in arguments which always started with why Tony was wasting his life as a maître d’ in someone else’s restaurant when Alberto had laboured hard his entire life so his child wouldn’t have to, and ended when the whistle became part of a sickening rhythm - whistle, cough, cough, cough, whistle, repeat.

Even though Tony believed the doctors when they told him this was a cancer almost never contracted without a history of asbestos exposure or a strong family history of this specific cancer, he blamed himself. Not for the cancer of course, but for not forcing the issue. For not dragging his father to every specialist in Europe when the cough went away but the whistle never did. For not thinking to tell any of the doctors that from ages fourteen to twenty six, Alberto had worked in construction, surrounded by exhaust and freshly poured asphalt and asbestos. It didn’t matter that Tony had no idea about Mesothelioma, let alone that early knowledge of asbestos exposure was more or less the only way doctors were ever able to make a positive diagnosis before the disease was on stage III. He hadn’t known, but he should have found out. He should have done everything to try and keep his father alive.

Asthma, bronchial spasms, gluten allergy, scar tissue from three bouts of pneumonia in six months - every doctor had an explanation. And then one day there was a spot on an x-ray that turned out to be a tumour and there were tests and more tests and second, third, seventh opinions, and then Tony’s father was dying and they were trying to slow it down but no one was talking about a cure. And every time Alberto breathed there was the whistle, until the whistle was a full bodied wheeze and then even that laboured breathing was supplanted by the “koh... kihhh” of the ventilator.

It’s the sound of the ventilator echoing out from his memories that Tony can’t get out of his head as he sits there, in a small exam room at the Harley Street Clinic, waiting.

He’s been afraid for Adam before. But somehow when it was Adam running around like he was invincible, injecting, snorting, swallowing or smoking whatever made him feel the most alive, there had been a tiny part of Tony’s brain that believed - against all evidence- that Adam was in control, that he would snap out of the downward spiral and once again be the Adam Tony had fallen in love with. Now he did not have even that shallow comfort. Adam wasn’t in control, no one was.

. . .

Adam is as fond of hospitals as the next person. He does well with needles - obviously - and the notorious smell has never really phased him. What he doesn’t like when he’s healthy is the unnatural silence in between individual noises, as if the whole building is on bated breath and the sounds of nurses and doctors going about their work or a loved one sobbing or the first cry of a newborn are intruders in a sacred space. That silence makes minutes feel like days and waiting like purgatory. When he’s healthy, that what bothers him. But he’s far from healthy and what is bothering Adam more than the waiting and the silences is the fluid feeling of his lungs and the tight pain when he draws a rattling breath. His lungs want to cough but he has to lay perfectly still so he grits his teeth and commands his brain not to fight the sensation of a rising tide in his lungs.

The x-ray probably only takes a few minutes, but the effort required to suppress his cough for even that long leaves Adam completely exhausted. He sinks gratefully into the wheelchair and then closes his eyes the entire walk back to the exam room because the world rushing by makes him unbearably dizzy. He is starting to think Tony might have been right to drag him here. He really shouldn’t doubt Tony. Tony is a nice man. He has perfect hands. They’re all soft on the outside but hot and insistent and hard when they’re pushing into him or tugging at his cock. Mmm yes. Tony.

Something touches his arm. Adam’s eyes snap open.

Tony! Adam smiles broadly at the familiar face.

Adam wants to tell Tony just how much he likes those hands and maybe they can do stuff again. Like how they did in the shower yesterday. But his lungs are like the ocean and there’re black spots on Tony’s cheeks. Did you paint your face, Tony?

There are voices. They’re very loud and Adam thinks he should tell them to be quiet, it’s getting very dark and the fish need their sleep.

. . .

Tony lunges forward and catches Adam as he crumples to the ground. Dr. Locke is beside him immediately calling for a stretcher and a nurse. Everything is disjointed after that. Tony lets them load Adam into a stretcher, his eyes staying glued to Adam’s chest as if he could make his lover’s breathing easier by sheer force of will. Then there’s a terrifying moment when Adam’s chest isn’t rising and Dr. Locke is tilting Adam’s jaw back and sticking something down his throat and while Tony knows what ventilation is he wants to yell out at them not to choke him because Adam needs to breathe. And then Adam’s chest is rising in time with the nurse’s hand rhythmically squeezing and releasing and Tony realizes there are tears running down his cheeks.

They won’t let Tony in the ICU at first. He hears someone say ‘chest tube’ and he realizes as he watches the coffee he had instead of breakfast hit the side of the trash can that they were probably doing he and Adam a favour keeping him out. Still, it is agony waiting.

Feeling helpless and lost and fucking terrified, Tony pulls out his phone and dials from memory.

“Tell Adam not to get his knickers in a twist, I haven’t changed so much as a letter on the menu.” Helene says instead of hello, her voice full of fondness.

Tony swallows. “Helene…”

“Tony? Is Adam alright? Are you alright?”

Forcing the words out is hard but somehow Tony manages to tell her what she needs to know without breaking down. She makes all the expected sympathetic noises and then promises him she can handle anything that arises.

“Your only job is to take care of him. We can’t have Adam Jones at the Langham without Adam Jones.”

Tony closes his eyes and clings to the phone like a lifetime. “I know. I will make sure they do everything possible for him.”

“I know you will. That was never in doubt. You leave everything else to us.” She sniffs audibly and Tony wonders if she’s crying. “It’s all going to be fine.” Her tone is brittle, as if she too is holding on by a thread and it helps somehow to know that he isn’t alone in his worry.

“Thank you, Helene.”

Dr. Locke appears just as Tony is stuffing his phone into his pocket. He guides Tony over to a padded bench. “Adam is stable.”

Tony sags a bit in relief, but the feeling is short lived because then Dr. Locke is telling him that Adam has pneumonia, but they won’t know which kind until the bloodwork is back from the lab which should be within the hour, but it’s bad so they’re starting him on antibiotics immediately on the hope that it’s bacterial and not viral. “The reason he passed out was one of his lungs partially collapsed from the infection. We’ve put him on a ventilator to keep him breathing normally and we used a chest tube to drain the fluid and get his lung reinflated.”

Tony understands only parts of it, but when Dr. Locke offers to let Tony see Adam he stands immediately.

“Only for a few minutes.” Dr. Locke warns. “We’ll be keeping him unconscious as long as he’s on the ventilator, and it’s likely we’ll keep him on that overnight just to be cautious.”

Tony would have said yes to nearly anything so he nods as if a few minutes is enough time and follows Dr. Locke into the intensive care unit. It’s only when he sees Adam lying there, in a hospital bed, with the ubiquitous pastel paper gown and a machine forcing air into his lungs and at least three clear bags running fluids through tubes into his body that Tony’s brain fully absorbs Dr. Locke’s words. “You’re drugging him?”

“He’s being kept comfortable.” Dr. Locke assures him.

Tony’s eyes flash and he clenches his hands into fists. “Adam is an addict. You can’t just ‘keep him comfortable.’” Tony spits, though as he says it he realizes he has no idea if it’s even true. But it feels true and maybe this is something he can actually do for Adam.

“I am aware of Adam’s history.” Dr. Locke soothes, “Once he is off the ventilator and conscious, we will talk about pain management, for now the drugs are keeping him unconscious so he won’t fight the tube we put in his throat. Keeping Adam breathing is our number one priority.” He squeezes Tony’ shoulder. “He’s going to be fine. You brought him to us in plenty of time.”

Tony attempts a smile but acknowledges it probably looks like a grimace and then moves to stand beside Adam. He takes one of Adam’s hands in both of his and clings to it like a life line until Dr. Locke tells him they need to leave and let the internist and his nurses help Adam.

The ICU had its own waiting room. Like everything else at the Harley Street Clinic, it is clean, modern, and reminds Tony of losing his father. He sinks into one of the couches and buries his head in his hands. He doesn’t know how long it will be before they let him come in and see Adam again, but he can’t imagine being anywhere else right now.

“Tony?”

Tony raised his head in surprise. “Helene? What are you doing here?”

She holds up a bag. “I brought you food. You need to keep your strength up or I’ll be visiting both of you and then who would run the Langham?”

She’s babbling a little and he realizes she’s nervous. “If you ring the bell there, they might let you go in and see him if you like.” He says instead of ‘hello’ or ‘thanks for the food.’ “They said I can come back in later, when they’ve removed the chest tube, but I’m sure they would let you go squeeze his hand.”

“Actually, I was hoping I could talk to you about the menus Adam left, for the rest of the week?”

She’s as bad as Adam. He thinks, bemused for a moment before the full weight of everything hits him all over again and this time Tony breaks.

Adam is still on the ventilator. Which means they’re pumping drugs into him to keep him unconscious and Tony can’t bear the thought that he could have prevented this. He should have insisted the moment Adam showed symptoms. Adam should be the one going over menus and ordering and preparing to cook grouse and halibut and nasturtium sauce. And then he’s crying, honest to God sobs into Helene’s shoulder and she’s rubbing his back and insisting that Adam is a fighter and he’ll be okay. And Tony wants to, needs to, believe her. But he can’t seem to stop the tears.

. . .

Not long after Helene leaves (Tony did stop crying eventually and even managed to go over Adam’s menus and approve Helene’s orders for the next two days) a short, round nurse with tight black curls and a motherly smile tells Tony he can come sit with Adam as long as he likes.

“Your husband is doing well. The antibiotics are helping and we should be able to take him off the ventilator in the morning.” She tells him.

Tony starts a bit at the word ‘husband,’ but he’s far too tired and far too grateful to finally be allowed to be with Adam to point out her error. There’s a small part of him which wants to cling to the warm, possessive, permanence of the title as if it was his to claim. He never considered getting a domestic partnership. Titles don’t matter to him, and there’s something painful about not being entitled to the same marriage as everyone else that makes Tony understand the gay men who march down streets in rainbow coloured pants proclaiming their Pride, but right now, the idea that somehow Adam actually belongs to Tony feels right.

They’ve pulled the curtain around Adam’s bed and set of a chair for Tony where he can hold Adam’s hand without being in the way. Tony thanks the nurse and settles into the chair, immediately reaching for Adam. He clasps their hands so his finger can slide up Adam’s wrist and feel the stead pulse of his heart.

“You can talk to him. Sometimes that helps.”

Tony flicks his eyes up briefly in acknowledgement but he wishes she would just leave. He just wants to be with Adam. Needs to see and feel Adam and be assured that he’s alive, that he will be okay, that the ventilator’s sinister rhythm won’t be the last sound he associates with the love of his life.

“I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”

And then she’s gone and Tony is alone with Adam, shielded from the busy nurse’s station by the curtain. He leans forward and raises Adam’s hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against Adam’s knuckles. He doesn’t talk, he wouldn’t know what to say, but he clings to Adam’s hand and constantly checks that Adam’s pulse is still steady, and watches the unnaturally rhythmic rise and fall of Adam’s chest.

The nurse brings him tea and a scone at one point, and he drinks and eats even though he feels no thirst or hunger. His thoughts are all over the place. One moment he is replaying the nurse’s assurances in his mind and convincing himself that Adam will be fine. The next, he’s filled with anger at himself for not insisting yesterday, for choosing a hand job and a half hour of cuddling over Adam’s health. Then he’s remembering the entire night they spent apart because Tony was selfish enough to want a night of uninterrupted sleep, and he’s determined that it will never happen again. At some point he starts to talk, his voice barely audible, his lips pressed against his and Adam’s joined hands. He tells Adam he’s sorry and he loves him and he really really thinks they should move in together because clearly Adam is a stubborn fuck who can’t be trusted to take care of himself but that’s okay because Tony will take care of him. Tony wants nothing more.

Dr. Locke comes once more just to make sure Tony is alright before he leaves. He makes Tony promise to call if he needs anything, and offers to call Dr. Rosshilde, “She would want to know. And I’m sure she would be happy to come sit with you.”

“Yes, let her know.” Tony says, not tearing his eyes away from Adam. “But there’s no need for her to come all this way.”

Dr. Locke squeezes Tony’s shoulder and then Tony is alone again.

At some point Tony falls asleep, his hand still clasped with his fingers pressed to Adam’s pulse point, his head awkwardly pillowed against his arm. A nurse drapes a blanket around his shoulders and dims the lights, but Tony doesn’t notice, he’s dead to the world.

. . .

Charlotte has been a critical care nurse for nine years. Over that time she’s learned to keep her distance emotionally from her patients. It’s a necessity in a job where you work one on one with a single patient in twelve hour shifts, often knowing from the outset that there’s almost nothing anyone can do but try to keep the patient comfortable until the family is able to say their goodbyes. But every once and a while, one slips through the armour.

Tony Belardi slipped through her armour nearly one year ago when his father was in the final stages of Mesothelioma. She carried the lost expression in the man’s eyes when he signed the forms to take his father off life support and then sat at his side, holding his hand for hours while Alberto slipped away, once agonizing rasp at a time for months. He looked so very alone, but he didn’t break down, not once. When Alberto breathed his last and Dr. Locke placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder and told him his father was gone, Tony nodded once, said a polite thank you to the nurses gathered nearby and left. The next day, the largest basket of fruits and chocolates Charlotte had ever seen arrived with a brief but heartfelt note from Tony, thanking all of the staff for everything they had done for Alberto.

Charlotte hadn’t expected to see him ever again, but he stuck with her, and when Terry pulled her aside at shift change and told her in an undertone, “Tony Belardi’s here,” she immediately recalled the stoic man with the haunted eyes.

“Is he..?”

“His husband is in bed three. Pneumothorax secondary to pneumonia. We took the chest tube out two hours ago, but they want to keep him vented overnight just in case.”  

Charlotte nods, taking it in, feeling a tug of sympathy in her chest. “My patient?”

“He was supposed to be, but Carmela is still finalizing assignments.”

“Ta, Terry.” Charlotte pats her friend on the shoulder and moves into the nurse’s station in the center to confirm her willingness to take bed three. She reads Adam’s chart thoroughly, heart clenching when she reads that Adam is an addict. Patients with substance abuse problems, current or in their past, are far from unusual in the ICU, but it complicates everything. She’s not particularly surprised to see that Dr. Locke has retained control over Adam’s meds. Though he is not an internal medicine specialist, he has a close relationship with the Belardi family and to minimize the risks to Adam it’s important to have one person overseeing his entire medication history. Still, she doesn’t relish the possibility of having to call Dr. Locke at three in the morning to verify meds she would otherwise give without a thought.

Tony is fast asleep when Charlotte steps beyond the curtain to check on Adam’s vitals. It can’t be comfortable, the way his head is pillowed on his elbow near Adam’s knee, but she moves quietly so as not to disturb him. Once she’s confident Adam is stable, she grabs a blanket from the warmer and spreads it over Tony. She notices the way Tony is gripping Adam’s hand and wishes he was awake so she could give him a comforting hug. It breaks her heart that once again, he seems to be all alone, except for the man lying in the hospital bed, being breathed for by a machine.

The antibiotics are doing their job. Adam’s fever is already down and when it comes time to replace the IV bag of paralytics and sedatives which are keeping Adam under so he won’t fight the ventilator, Charlotte thinks it might be time to try weaning him off. The sooner they can get him breathing on his own, and mobile, the better his prognosis.

She hates to do it, but after speaking with Dr. Gupta, the internist on duty, and Dr. Locke, Charlotte places her hand on Tony’s shoulder and speaks softly, hoping to coax him into wakefulness without giving him cause of alarm. “Mr. Belardi, Tony” she shakes gently and Tony’s head raises with a sharp intake of breath.

His fingers slide up and press into Adam’s wrist and Charlotte realizes with a start that he’s feeling for a pulse. It’s heart breaking, and simultaneously, beautiful. “Adam is doing well.” She says stepping around the bed so she can speak to Tony without asking him to turn away from Adam. “The antibiotics are working. His fever is gone and we want to try to get him off the ventilator this morning.”

“Try?” Tony’s voice is hoarse. He flicks bloodshot eyes to her face but it’s barely a second before he is back to looking at Adam.

“There are a series of tests we need to do, if they go well we can wean him off the medication that’s keeping him asleep and unhook the ventilator.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If he’s not ready, we’ll give him another course of medication and then try again when we think he is.”

Tony closes his eyes and rolls his lips together. He draws in a deep breath and then nods. “Okay.”

“It could take a couple of hours for us to complete the tests. Why don’t you go home, have a shower, maybe a sleep in a proper bed, and we will call you the moment we’re done?”

“I couldn’t… I would like to stay.”

Charlotte smiles sympathetically. “I understand. We need you to leave the unit while we do the tests, but I will come get you in the waiting room as soon as you can come back in.”

She insists he take the blanket with him and try to get some sleep, but she can tell by the way he keeps stealing glances at Adam even as he moves towards the curtain, that Tony will likely pace the waiting room until she comes and lets him know everything has gone fine.

. . .

Adam’s throat feels like someone cleaned it with a bottle brush made from barbed wire. He needs water, or tea with lemon and honey and a cinnamon stick like his mother used to make when he was sick as a child. But his eyelids are heavy and he’s just so very, very tired. He feels like he’s floating in the blackness. It’s warm and heavy and he just isn’t strong enough to push through to the surface. There’s a voice, warm and full of affection. Adam can’t quite rise close enough to awake to make out individual words, but the cadence washes over him, soothing and familiar. It draws him up, like the fractured beams of the sun filtering into the depths of the ocean. The heaviness recedes slowly and then with a sharp slice of pain in his ribs, Adam wakes.

Suddenly everything is bright white painful light. He winces against it, screwing his eyes shut and willing the blackness back, but there’s the scraped pain of his throat and the sharp stabbing at his ribs and that voice, holding him at the surface like a life jacket.

“Adam Jones open your fucking eyes.”

And then Tony’s face is filling Adam’s vision and his brain is cataloguing the dark circles under bloodshot eyes and the slight wobble at the corner of Tony’s happy grin and he draws in a breath to say “hi” or “how long was I out?” or “I love you” but the knife of pain twists and instead of any of those vital messages he lets out a rasp that should have been a moan.

“Nurse!” Tony’s voice is sharp, loud, and just a little panicked and then Tony is outside of Adam’s vision and a woman with red hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose is holding a straw to Adam’s lips and telling him to drink as she rattles on about something his brain can’t quite process. He catches a few words here and there but he can feel the darkness crowding at the edge of his brain, making it difficult to hold more than a syllable at a time.

But then Tony is back and Adam’s hand creeps along the cool surface of the bed, seeking out some kind of contact to assure him that Tony’s face isn’t just a trick of his obviously addled brain. It wouldn’t be the first time. When his hand is captured by familiar fingers it sends a dart of something purer and sharper than pain or arousal through his nerves. He closes his eyes and just holds on to those fingers for a moment before turning his head and drinking in the sight of Tony. He can’t remember ever seeing Tony quite this dishevelled. The buttons on his shirt are mismatched, causing a bubble of fabric to stick out through which Adam can see an inch of tempting skin. His hair is falling in his eyes, lank with grease. But he’s here and Adam is warm all over and the blackness is clearing by the second.

“If you do that to me again, I will hand you over to the Frenchmen who still want you dead, yeah?” Tony tells him. He’s trying valiantly to smile, but his lips tremble and a tear slips down his cheek.

Adam tugs the hand that’s grasped in his up to his lips and presses a kiss against the smooth skin of Tony’s hand in mute apology. The water the nurse made him drink helped somewhat with the pain in his throat but his voice comes out in a rasp when he asks, “How long was I out?”

“The longest sixteen hours of my life.” Tony says, bringing his other hand up to lovingly brush a stray hair away from Adam’s forehead.

Adam takes that in. Sixteen hours doesn’t sound long, but from the look in Tony’s eyes he can see it was a lifetime. He tries to listen as Tony explains what happened, but his brain is still fuzzy and what he absorbs is mostly that Tony spent a night thinking Adam was going to die and with that realization guilt, but also an overwhelming need to hold Tony and assure him that everything is fine. Adam isn’t going anywhere.

Too soon the red haired nurse is back, but her words are more coherent now as she helps Adam sit up against the pillows. “You gave your husband quite the scare, young man.” She gives Tony a sympathetic smile. “He’s been practically haunting the place.”

Adam’s brow crinkles and when she turns away to check the settings on the IV pump beside the bed he mouths at Tony, Husband? Tony flushes pink and Adam’s heart clenches tight in his chest with a fierce surge of affection. The thought has never occurred to him, but he briefly entertains the idea of what it might be like to belong to Tony in that way, and then he is flushing too.

. . .

They move Adam out of the ICU that afternoon and into a private room. He’s still on the IV antibiotics and oxygen, but at Adam’s insistence they have backed off the pain relief for the healing incision on his ribs to a combination of paracetamol and nurofen, and Adam is more alert than he’s been in days.

Once the nurse leaves the room and they’re truly alone, Tony takes Adam’s hand and presses a fierce kiss against Adam’s forehead. “I really thought…” His throat closes up and he can’t finish the words.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” Adam’s eyes crinkle with his smile and he tightens his hold on Tony’s hand almost to the point of pain.

Tony nods wordlessly. He can feel tears gathering at the back of his eyes and he draws in a sharp breath through his nose and forces them back. Adam is fine. The bloodwork confirmed bacterial pneumonia and in a few days Adam will be off the IV antibiotics and once his incision from the chest tube is healed and he’s on oral medication he will be able to go home. Tony has been reciting these facts to himself over and over since Dr. Locke came to speak with them about Adam’s treatment plan two hours ago. Each repetition helps to ease the knot of fear in Tony’s stomach.

“You look terrible.”

Tony laughs abruptly. “Well you were unconscious, I hardly thought I needed to make an effort.”

“Well I’m awake and I think you should go check on my restaurant and maybe grab a shower and a clean shirt.”

As if sensing that Tony is about to protest that he’s fine and the restaurant is fine and he doesn’t mind staying, Adam continues, “I’m going to fall asleep any minute, the whole being wheeled through a hospital bit is surprisingly exhausting.”

“I’ll be here by the time you wake up.” Tony promises. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stretch out on the narrow hospital bed and pillow his head against Adam’s chest and never let go. But Adam needs his rest and Tony knows Helene and the rest of the staff will be concerned. They’ve become Adam’s family in a strange way, and they deserve to know their chef is going to be okay.

“Go. Return clean and with menus.”

Tony can’t hold back an eye roll. Of course Adam wants menus. This is the fourth day he won’t be running the kitchen and Tony can tell Adam is envisioning the worst already. “Anything else I can bring you other than menus? Would you perhaps like me to interrogate Helene and bring you the transcript? Maybe I could steal plates from the pass so you can sample everything.”

Adam huffs a quiet laugh (it doesn’t trigger a cough). “The menus will be fine.”

It’s hard to force his feet to leave the bedside, but Tony manages and soon he is letting himself in to Adam’s suite at the Langham.

The maids have come and the room is immaculate. Adam’s clothes have been laundered and placed in a neat stack on the freshly made up bed and clean towels hang in the bathroom. It looks more like a hotel room than it has in years and the idle thoughts Tony has been having about living with Adam return with a sense of urgency. They can’t live like this, not any more. They should have moved months ago.

As he strips down and steps into the shower, Tony makes a decision. He knows Adam doesn’t care about luxury, not in his living space anyway. Ultimately for Adam its proximity to the one space he does care about - his restaurant - which matters. It’s why he’s happily lived in the hotel all this time. He just wants to be close to the kitchen, and not have to be distracted by the kinds of chores and responsibilities that come with living entirely alone - laundry, cleaning etc. But Tony likes nice things. He always has. And if he’s going to live with Adam for real, it’s going to be somewhere both of them will be happy. For Adam that means in the hotel, for Tony it means a penthouse.

The Langham has five penthouses. Tony thinks one of the medium sized ones will be perfect. Large enough to boast a small, serviceable butler’s kitchen, but single bedroom and not too showy (if there is such a thing as not too showy when one lives in a hotel).

With a few quick phone calls between getting dressed in clean clothes and shaving, Tony sets the wheels in motion. As of tonight he will be living in the Langham. The penthouses are almost never all booked at the same time and it’s only a matter of upgrading the guests booked into their least occupied medium sized penthouse and then it is all Tony’s. It’s currently unoccupied and Tony takes a half hour to pack up his belongings from Adam’s room and moving them upstairs.

It feels strange, packing up nearly all the clothes he wears regularly from Adam’s room and moving them to the walk in closet of his new Penthouse, but there’s a bit of a thrill in seeing them all hung neatly beside shelves holding perfectly organized shoes, belts and shirts, and knowing there is plenty of room on the other side of the closet for Adam’s. It occurs to him that this is all moving very fast, but somehow the speed seems right and he assuages any fear by reminding himself they don’t have to move in together immediately. It feels right not putting it off, to be doing something. He can sublet his flat on a year to year lease and stay close to Adam, but there’s no need for Adam to feel pushed or trapped. They can take all the time Adam needs.

. . .

Helene is just plating the last few dessert orders of the lunch service when Tony walks into the kitchen looking tired, but calm and collected compared to the Tony she had tried in vain to comfort the day before. Helene gives Max the pass and throws her arms around Tony without ceremony.

He pats her somewhat awkwardly and she steps back. “How is he?”

“Better. Doctors say he should be there another few days, but he is much better.”

Helene grins. “That is wonderful news.”

She turns and relays the happy news to the rest of the kitchen and then ushers Tony into his office. “I expect he is already complaining I’m ruining his restaurant?”

“He did ask for menus, but I know he believes in you. He always has.”

It’s a lie, of course, but one they both choose to accept. The first few days she knew Adam are something Helene mostly pretends never happened, or at least happened with someone else. Partly because she wanted to learn from the infamous Adam Jones, but mostly because he is a different man now than he was then and it seems unfair to hold this Adam responsible for that Adam’s many mistakes.

“I have menus for the next week for his approval. This week we have stuck to what he gave me when he first got sick. But of course, he’ll probably want to change those.” Helene digs out a pile of papers. “Here you are. Try not to let him change tonight’s menu, yeah? We’ve already packaged the sole.”

Tony tucks the menus into the inner pocket of his jacket and stands. “You are doing a wonderful job, Helene. We are very lucky to have you.”

She gives him a searching look. “None of us would have any of this without you, don’t let him forget that, yeah?”

Tony shifts his weight and clears his throat, the epitome of uncomfortable yet pleased. “Yes. Well, thank you for the menus. I won’t keep you. Adam will be very happy to have these.” It comes out all in a flustered rush and Helene hugs him again just because.

. . .

Adam didn’t sleep immediately after Tony left. For a long time he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to overcome the feeling that all of this was his fault. But his body had been through the wringer and before he was able to catalogue all of the reasons he felt like the worst boyfriend in the world, Adam was fast asleep. When he wakes the guilt is still there.

“I’m sorry.” He says, turning his head to look at Tony. Tony’s head snaps up from the newspaper he was reading. He looks genuinely confused.

“For what, getting sick? Don’t be an ass. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

Adam bites back a surly retort. Tony’s right of course. But that doesn’t help the guilt. He tries to find the words to explain that to Tony but there aren’t any. Instead, true to his most basic and more atrocious impulses, he says the worst thing possible. “Your father died in this hospital.” It comes out like an accusation. As if Tony chose this hospital deliberately to make everything hurt more.

Tony winces.

They don’t talk about his father. It’s an unspoken agreement. They haven’t mentioned Alberto since the night before the funeral. Since the night Adam accused Tony of shutting him out and they ended up yelling at one another across the width of Adam’s hotel room until the tension had been too much and Adam had thrown Tony down and shown him exactly the kind of support and trust they were supposed to give each other. Tony went to the funeral alone and Adam spent the lunch service yelling at everyone who dared to be anything short of perfect. It was the closest they had come to destroying their relationship since the day Adam thought Tony was leaving him for Yevgeny Shostakovich, and a small part of Adam thinks that this time they haven’t actually gotten past it do much as stepped into a parallel universe where Tony never had a father so there was never a need for him to refuse his boyfriend’s desire to be his comfort at the hospital or the funeral.

Until now, apparently. Because Adam has the worst instincts and zero impulse control. He really thought he had improved on that.

Tony’s jaw works and his hands fist in his lap in an obvious attempt to hold back something he doesn’t want Adam to see, and it hurts Adam to know that Tony still doesn’t trust him, not with this.

“My father loved me. But he never approved.” Tony’s voice is quiet and perfectly controlled but Adam can feel the anger simmering just below the surface. “Good Italian sons do not fuck the head chef of their family’s restaurant. Good Italian sons marry the daughter of a good Italian family and have dozens of good Italian babies.” Tony’s voice sinks lower, “No matter if their father married a German woman for love and money and then ate his heart out for thirty six years after she died giving birth to a son he could never truly be proud of.”

Adam closes his eyes against the picture Tony’s words have conjured. It’s a story as unlike his own as it could be, yet so similar it aches all the way through his chest. Adam never knew why his father married his mother, but it couldn’t have been for love. Pete Jones may not have pulled a trigger, but Elaine’s death from liver failure at the age of twenty-seven was as much his fault as if he had held open her mouth and poured in the vodka himself. After her death Adam had been the unpleasant reminder of a life Pete claimed he never wanted. So Adam had moved from relative to relative, barely finding his feet in the new family before a fight at school or an inability to cope with a child who woke up screaming most nights and wet the bed until he was nine was too much for them to take and he was on the move again. It was a hard life. A lonely life. But listening to Tony talk about his father, even those few short sentences, Adam realizes Tony’s life was hard and lonely too.

“I always hoped...But it’s too late for any of that, isn’t it?” Tony smiles, but it’s an ugly smile, joyless and self-deprecating and it makes Adam want to pull Tony into his arms or raise the dead so he can tell Alberto Belardi just what a fucking asshole he was.

“Your father was proud of you.” Adam said, knowing it to be true even if he could never have offered actual proof.

“He was.” Tony acknowledges. “In the final years. He was very proud of the success I made of the Langham. He took delight in knowing he owned the best restaurant in London, in Europe. He was proud I finally lived up to the life he worked so hard to create for me. In the end he trusted me with his legacy. But he was never proud of me, because I never let him know me. I knew he would disapprove, so I didn’t let him know.”

Adam looks at Tony without comprehending. Tony was always reserved, but Adam had known him since he was 18 years old and he had always known Tony was gay. Surely he couldn’t be saying his father had somehow missed that very obvious fact.

“He knew I was gay.” Tony says, reading the confusion on Adam’s face. “But he also believed I had chosen celibacy over ‘perversion.’“

The word is a cold stone in Adam’s gut.

“Yet another thing my father was proud of.”

Adam doesn’t know what to say and for a long time they sit in silence, Tony’s words echoing in the empty space until Adam can barely stand it. And there’s the guilt again. Not only for dragging Tony back here and bringing back all the memories of loss this hospital contains for him, but now for being the kind of man who lets it be okay that he’s never met his boyfriend’s father, and who never bothers to ask himself why Tony never wanted to talk about his dying father. In short, for being as much of a selfish prick these last two years as he ever was before. “Tony...”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“I should have--”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You didn’t know. And besides, you were a closeted idiot for so long I half expected father to talk you back into heterosexuality if I ever left you alone with him for more than two minutes.”

“I keep telling you, you would never get rid of me that easily.” Adam reaches out a hand and Tony twines through fingers together. And somehow, even though Adam knows this is a conversation that will need to continue one day, the awkwardness is gone and it’s just he and Tony. The ghosts of fathers past banished by the simple touch of Tony’s fingers threaded through his.

“I brought menus.” Tony says after a time and Adam tries not to look too eager as he reaches out for the small pile of paper Tony pulled from his jacket. Tony’s lips tighten in an attempt to hold back a smile as he holds the papers just out of Adam’s reach. “You know, Helene is an excellent chef. These menus are probably just fine.” He pulls out sheet out at random and scans his eyes over it. “Yes, I think the tex-mex lettuce wrap will be a nice change for our diners.”

Adam practically growls. “I swear I will get out of this bed and tackle you…”

Tony’s eyes sparkle as they rake over Adam’s face and flick down over his body, clearly considering the threat with more anticipation than fear, but he relents almost immediately.

“You’d pull your stitches.”

“It’d be worth it.” Adam grins when Tony relents, holding out the menus and a stubby pencil.

Tony rises to his feet. “Move over.”

It’s a little awkward, but with Tony’s help, Adam moves far enough over that Tony can sit on the end of the bed, his back against the footboard and his legs stretched out, one sock clad foot digging lightly into Adam’s hip, and one hand absently rubbing over Adam’s blanket covered shin.

They pass over an hour like that. Adam reads through Helene’s menus, making notes in the margins. Tony pretends to read the paper, but Adam feels Tony’s eyes on him more often than not. When Adam’s nurse comes back in to the room she smiles indulgently at their arrangement before shooing Tony off the bed so she can check Adam’s incision. He slips his shoes on and promises to return in ten minutes with “whatever they’re passing off as tea in this place.”

Adam doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s staring at Tony’s ass as he walks away.

“How long have you been married?” The nurse asks in a chatty tone as she circles the bed.

Adam clears his throat. “We’re um, we’re not married.”

“I’m sorry. Someone told us, well, it doesn’t matter. He clearly loves you very much.” She parts the side of his gown so she can peel back the white bandage covering the small incision.

Adam can feel his cheeks flushing. “I know.”

She smooths her fingers around the edge of the bandage, smoothing it back into place. “It’s healing very nicely. If you keep improving like this we’ll have you home to your partner in no time.”

“Thank you.”

She checked his IVs and asked about his pain, but then Tony was back with two steaming brown paper cups and the nurse discretely steps from the room.

“It is barely drinkable, but it’s warm.” Tony says, handing Adam one of the cups.

A knot of fondness forms in his chest and he can’t resist a murmured, “Snob,” as he raises it to his lips.

Tony rolls his eyes as he toes off his shoes and resumes his post at the foot of Adam’s bed. “I’m moving into one of the penthouses.” He says without preamble. “I think it’s time.”

Adam takes a deep gulp of tea to cover the fact that he doesn’t know if he can look at Tony right now. Tony was right, it’s terrible. “Got tired of walking to work at last, did you?” The words trip out amazingly smoothly given Adam’s world has just shifted off its axis.

. . .

Leaving the hospital is easier now that Adam is sitting up and teasing and generally being his insufferably perfect self, but it still feels wrong to fall asleep alone.

Tony puts it off as long as possible. There are only a few boxes of things from his apartment he wants to keep. Everything else the movers will put into storage once he finds a tenant. Tony spends his evening hanging paintings and replacing the hotel issued dishes with his own bone china. He didn’t bother to bring his own pans or knives, knowing Adam will have his own definite opinions about both.

As he moves through the rooms, personalizing each - art, a throw pillow and knit blanket, a set of monogrammed towels - Tony can’t help picturing Adam, making fun of the entire room just to make entering the apartment more intimidating, fast asleep beneath the white goose down duvet, spread naked on the sofa with that look in his eyes that promised pain if Tony didn’t get over there immediately. The ghosts of days to come follow him everywhere he goes, promising a lifetime filled with moments of perfect happiness if only Tony can be patient and brave enough to make them reality.

. . .

Tony doesn’t talk about his move much, but when he does there is a glow of irrepressible excitement in his face. It’s that unqualified excitement that haunts Adam after Tony leaves each night to sleep in his new home - at Adam’s insistence because he knows Tony would stay without complaint but can’t stand the creeping realization that Tony is staying out of obligation. Whatever they had, slow moving and improperly defined and utterly perfect thing that it was, Adam knows it’s over and he’s stuck here in a hospital bed, bored and restless now that the antibiotics are nearly done, and there’s nothing he can do to try and change Tony’s mind.

He wants Tony to be happy, but is it too much to ask that it be Adam who makes Tony happy?

Of course as soon as he thinks that, he realizes this is it again: Classic Adam Jones. Find something impossibly good and then hold on to it so tightly you can’t let go even as you watch your own hands choking the life out of it. He did it to his career, his life, when he was 29. Now he’s doing it to Tony. And even acknowledging that, he’s fighting a voice in his head telling him that if he just holds on a little tighter this time, it will be different. If he just adjusts his grip, Tony won’t want to slip away. And that’s when Adam knows he will let him. It will hurt, it will hurt every day for a long time, maybe it will hurt forever, but he has to let Tony go.

Of course realizing he has to allow things to end and actually doing it are not the same thing and Adam finds over the final two days of his hospital stay that he’s not quite equal to the task. Every morning he promises he will say something, acknowledge Tony’s choice and let Tony know he understands. Every morning he tells himself he can be friends with Tony Belardi and that can be enough. But then Tony appears all Tony and painfully polite to the nurses and kind to Adam and so sexy Adam thinks he could combust from wanting and he chickens out. Then Tony leaves to run the dinner service - also at Adam’s insistence - and Adam spends hours wrapped in self-loathing because he is a selfish prick and a coward. If Tony were anyone else maybe it would be okay to feign ignorance, to soak up as much of that finite closeness as possible before the inevitable end. But it’s not anyone else and Adam knows Tony will let the charade continue as long as he’s worried about Adam, and he also knows full well that he could easily ensure Tony is worried about him forever.

Tony has given him all the signs he’s going to give. Now it’s up to Adam to give Tony this. Even if it feels like pulling out his own heart and lighting it on fire.

. . .

Even though it feels like it never will, and the part of Adam that knows when it does that will be the end and dreads it, the day does come when Dr. Locke appears at Adam’s beside with a big smile and tells him he’s being discharged.

The words are barely out of his mouth before Adam is on his feet. He’s been wearing his own clothes for two days now, thanks to Tony and a few well-timed fruit baskets for the nurses, and he’s pulling his shoes on before Dr. Locke can finish explaining there are a few forms he needs to sign.

“Yeah, forms, great,” Adam grabs his beloved leather jacket from the hook opposite his bed where Tony hung it. “Let’s do those.”

By the time Tony arrives at the hospital with two paper cups of much better tea than anything the hospital could ever produce, Adam is officially discharged and waiting impatiently right beside the main doors, held back from just leaving only by the knowledge that Tony would be there soon. “Tony!” Adam calls, his voice bright and loud.

It takes a moment for Tony to see him and Adam’s heart twists a little in his chest as he watches Tony’s face go from mildly confused to a wide, eye crinkling grin. “Did you escape?”

“Without a single casualty.” Adam takes one of the teas from Tony. It’s not what he really wants, but that is something that will have to wait at the very least until they’re no longer standing beside a set of automatic sliding doors which lead into a hospital.

They take a cab to the Langham. Adam wanted to walk but Tony insisted he ‘take it easy.’ Which meant they spend the cab ride bickering over Adam’s fitness to return to the kitchen.

“Seven days ago you were on a ventilator.”

“And now I’m not.”

“So you’re just going to go right back to pushing yourself as hard as you can? Because that worked out so well for you before.”

Tony’s face is flushed and even though Adam’s annoyed he really wishes they were alone so he could kiss him. Since he can’t, he settles for a sarcastic “No, I thought I would give up my career and become your cabana boy.”

Tony glares at him. “Of course you are a chef and you will run the kitchen, but you were released from hospital this morning, perhaps you might consider easing back in.”

“I don’t ease.”

“But of course. Adam Jones is always right and the rest of us are just along for the ride on his coattails.”

Adam grinds his teeth, holding back his retort as the cab rolls to a stop in front of the Langham.

“I need to speak to Kaitlin about the staff for this weekend. But please, Adam, reconsider this. I know you love it and I would never try to get in your way, but you collapsed in my arms and if you do that to me again I will kill you myself.”

Adam kisses Tony, quick but firm, “I will be fine and if it’s too much Helene can take over.”

He should be in the kitchen now, prepping and making sure everything is perfect. But he needs a shower more. The antiseptic smell of the hospital is embedded in his pores and he wouldn’t be surprised if just stepping into the kitchen like this was enough to shut them down for health violations.

Tony obviously let the maids into his room while he was in the hospital. Everything is incredibly, almost uncomfortably clean. Not that Adam is dirty, but he’s comfortable with a level of clutter in his space. It gives him a sense of privacy and ownership even though living in a hotel shouldn’t really give either. He opens the closet to hang his leather jacket and freezes.

It’s empty.

The row of perfectly aligned wooden hangers gleam back at him where Tony’s suits used to hang and Adam feels as if a cold dust has closed around his stomach and twisted. Tony’s not moving. Tony has moved. Tony has moved every piece of himself out of Adam’s space.

Adam goes through the motions of scrubbing himself clean and dressing for a day in the kitchen on autopilot. His head is a mess, trying desperately to reconcile the clear worry in Tony’s face in the cab with the empty closet. When it clicks into place Adam closes both hands into fists and only just managed to keep from punching one through the bathroom mirror.

Tony is worried about Adam. He will stay as long as he’s worried. But the empty closet is a sign, a plea, for space, for freedom, for Adam to let him go. The worst part of it all is that Adam can’t fault Tony. He can’t even be properly angry, because Tony is right. Adam is toxic. Everything he is, everything he does, even when he’s trying harder than he’s tried in his entire life not to drag Tony down, makes Tony’s life impossibly difficult.

Tony loves him, Adam doesn’t doubt that, even now, but he loves him too much. Adam may have been the one sick the last week, but it was Tony who put their lives on hold to make sure Adam was okay. It was Tony who slept in a plastic chair, holding Adam’s hand in the same unit where he had watched his father breathe his last, because Adam was too selfish to take himself to a doctor when he woke up feeling like he was breathing through a narrowing straw, because Adam apparently doesn’t have the self-preservation instincts God gave a hamster.

The kitchen staff is happy to see him. Helene cries “Adam!” And pulls him into a quick, fierce hug. Max is next in line with a hug and a teasing comment about how Adam is going to have to work his way back up the line after leaving them for so long. Even David overcomes his hero-worship-fear of Adam enough to shake his hand and tell Adam how glad he is to have him back.

It doesn’t make up for the realization that Tony is gone, but being in the kitchen surrounded by the closest thing to family he has, Adam feels the pain around his heart ease to a manageable ache, one he expects he can live with which is good since he can’t imagine it ever going away completely. Not with Tony so close but so profoundly far away

. . .

Tony stays out of the kitchen for the lunch service. He knows Adam is at the pass, probably loving every second of it and not thinking about his health at all. It’s part of what he loves about Adam, how very very alive he is, how when he’s immersed in his work he radiates a sense of barely contained energy. It’s dangerous, that dependence on the constant rush, the lows that come with such an intense high, but it’s so quintessentially Adam that even when Tony worries about the consequences and almost wishes Adam were just a little less, he can’t really want anything else when he’s being pulled in by that captivating energy. So he stays out front, dealing with reservations and making sure the service hasn’t slipped in his absence, clinging to his sense of righteous annoyance over Adam’s pigheadedness and pretending no one can tell.

Kaitlin gives him updates every time she emerges from the kitchen and it makes him feel chastised for not enthusiastically supporting Adam’s return, but the memory of Adam collapsing in his arms, those moments of trying to breathe for him, are too vivid and Tony can’t shake a deep sense of dread. When the service is finally over and Tony makes his way back to the kitchen, he half expects to find that Adam collapsed halfway through or that somehow he hallucinated Adam’s release from hospital this morning and that Adam had never been there at all. When he sees Adam in the kitchen, looking completely normal, as if he hadn’t missed do much as a single service, Tony’s relief is tainted by guilt for not believing Adam, for trying to hold him back. This is where Adam belongs. He’s never quite himself without this and Tony tried to take that away. The guilt makes him feel like an intruder and so he hovers near the door, not sure if he should apologize, or brush off his own concerns with the same ease Adam had.

. . .

Adam makes it through both services without yelling at anyone. Just being back in the kitchen for one day he feels like himself, like he never left, like the time away was a bad dream. But then, just as Max and David are gathering their things to follow the rest of the crew out into the night, Tony appears at the edge of the kitchen, looking awkward and wrong footed. Adam’s chest tightens as he thinks, ‘this is it.’ The shadow of guilt in Tony’s expression can only mean one thing: Adam is better now and so Tony is free.

Suddenly Adam can’t bear it. He can’t let it end like this. Not with a petty argument over something as pointless as Adam’s need to work. Tony Belardi is the love of his life. Adam needs Tony to be happy, which means he will let him go. But not like this. If this is the last time he can pretend Tony is his, Adam is going to make it count.

He doesn’t say a word as he crosses the kitchen. Talking would be too real somehow, too much a reminder of what couldn’t be. It had no place in this.

Tony meets him, taking the final step to bring them together and fastening his hands on either side of Adam’s face as their lips collide in a frantic clash if lips and teeth and tongues that’s all passion and zero finesse.

Adam slides his hands inside Tony’s jacket and grasps the fabric of Tony’s shirt in tight fists, bracketing Tony’s slender hips and pulling him in. He feels reckless and desperate and then dizzy. He breaks away, panting, and turns Tony around, pressing him against the pass and mouldings his body against Tony’s back as he bites lightly at Tony’s neck. He knows they should stop before he’s taking Tony right here on the pass and the memory of this becomes something he can never shake no matter how much he knows it’s going to hurt. But he wants Tony so much right now. Needs this. Doesn’t know if he can stop touching Tony, rubbing his cock against the perfect curve of Tony’s ass, long enough to get anywhere more appropriate.

They don’t make it upstairs until after Adam has gotten off against Tony like a horny teenager, one hand shoved down Tony’s trousers, jacking him off as he grinds against his ass and whispers all the things he’s imagined doing to Tony in his ear as they press against the pass, but they do eventually get there.

Adam strips off Tony’s suit like it’s a race, not caring if a button pops off and his hands are mapping over Tony’s skin as if he can freeze this moment forever if only he can learn enough details, and then they are tumbling into bed and Tony is spreading his legs and there’s lube and Tony is gasping at Adam to “fuck me already” and Adam can barely hold it together long enough to make Tony come first, his hand pumping over Tony’s cock in a sloppy rhythm as he slams into him, needing more, needing to get deeper, needing to feel like he can somehow make this not the last time. But then there are stars in his eyes and he’s coming and it’s over. He collapses over Tony and just stays for a moment, not basking in the afterglow, but rather, trying to get it back.

He brings a hot washcloth and gently washes the come off Tony’s body, pressing kisses against any part of his skin he can reach as he does. Tony makes ridiculous contented noises deep in his throat and each one is a hook catching at Adam’s heart.

Adam can’t bring himself to tell Tony to leave so he crawls up beside him and pulls the duvet over them both. It’s been a long day, and even though his heart is being pulled apart by all the tiny hooks tying it to Tony, Adam falls asleep barely a minute after his head hits the pillow and he doesn’t wake until morning.

. . .

Tony traces a finger over the pink line of scar tissue where the doctor had to cut through Adam’s chest to insert the chest tube. It’s so small but it serves as a permanent reminder that Tony could have lost him. Adam is sound asleep, his breathing deep and blessedly clear, but though Tony feels boneless and sated, he’s still too wired to join him. So he traces light fingers over that scar and listens to Adam breathe and feels bit by bit the tension of the last week ebb.

It’s over. Adam is okay. Judging by his performance today - both in the kitchen where he reigned supreme over his staff as if he hadn’t been gone at all, and afterwards - he is completely back. Tony hadn’t even realized a part of him was afraid he never would be.

He thinks maybe Adam was worried too. There was a desperate quality to Adam’s kisses, the way he tried to touch all of Tony at once, the way his eyes raked over Tony’s face before closing the distance and kissing him until they were both dizzy with lust. Tony will feel it tomorrow, with every step, and somehow that is as unbearably hot as anything else, as if his body is clinging to the imprint of Adam.

He presses his lips to Adam’s shoulder and lays his head down, his hand splaying over the scar on Adam’s ribs. He drifts off to sleep like that, one hand pressed against Adam’s skin, the steady in-out of Adam’s breath like a lullaby quieting his mind, slowing his heart, dragging him into quiet dreams.

Adam is making an omelette and tomato, cheese and bacon toasties. Tony leans in the doorway of their tiny butler’s kitchen and watches. It’s really wonderful to watch Adam cook when there’s no pressure. It’s the same precise, fluid motions as in the restaurant, but with none of the haste behind it. Adam’s wrist still flicks quickly, fluffing the eggs in the metal bowl before pouring them in the pan, and then shakes expertly to stop it from sticking as it cooks, but when he’s not actively agitating the pan or working the whisk, he’s perfectly still. The toasty maker opens with a puff of steam and Adam levers the completed toasties onto plates and adds eggs.

He looks up at Tony and smiles that perfect, brilliant, eye crinkling, Adam smile and Tony knows he’s ginning like a fool right back.

And then they’re not in the kitchen any more. Tony is sitting on the terrace, pretending to read the newspaper, and Adam is lying with his head in Tony’s lap and just staring up at him. Adam’s eyes are even more impossibly blue than they are on a usual day, as if they’ve captured the summer sky above their heads. “What’s new in the world today?”

“As usual, nothing worth reading about.” Tony sets the paper aside and slips his fingers through Adam’s hair, pressing gentle, massaging circles into Adam’s scalp.

Adam closes his eyes and smiles. “Mmm... good. The rest of the world is overrated.”

And then they’re not on the terrace or in the kitchen, they’re in bed and Adam is spread out beneath him, that same smile on his face, and Tony is sucking a bruise against his neck where he knows everyone will see and he doesn’t care because Adam is talking , pouring out the deep feelings he has about Tony’s lips and canting his hips up, trying to urge Tony onwards and Tony has never wanted to possess someone so badly as he wants to possess Adam in that moment, in their bed..

Tony wakes alone and it’s a moment before he remembers where he is. He raises his head and looks around, but the room is clearly empty. The clock tells him it’s barely six am and Tony huffs out a “for fuck’s sake, Adam,” and rolls to his feet. He reaches for a clean suit in the closet before remembering that all of his clothes are upstairs, in the penthouse that is now his home. “Fuck!” His suit is scattered on the floor, and hardly fit for wearing. After locating all of his discarded clothing, Tony ends up appropriating pants and trousers of Adam’s to get him back to the penthouse to get properly dressed.

By the time he makes it downstairs to the kitchen where Adam is, of course, working on redoing all of the menus that Helene prepared while he was in hospital, Helene and Adam are deeply engrossed in work so instead of gently chiding Adam for letting him oversleep, or pulling him into a kiss and telling him how amazing the night before was, Tony pours himself a cup of coffee and retreats to the office and lets their bickering and the sounds of cooking blur into a comforting cloud of white noise.

He’s a little disappointed when Adam doesn’t even come to the door to wish him good morning before the entire kitchen staff is trickling in and the day gets insane. But he doesn’t take it personally. It’s impossible to be in love with Adam Jones without understanding that when it comes to priorities it’s always the restaurant first.

. . .

Adam can feel Tony’s eyes on him as he gives the instructions for the lunch menu just as he can feel the eight crescent shaped bruises on his back where Tony clung so hard he almost broke the skin. Both hurt, but they remind him that he’s doing this for the right reason. He can be Tony’s friend. Tony was in love with him for years and never once made it hard for Adam to be his friend, for Adam to rely on him utterly without ever worrying Tony would take advantage or interpret anything Adam did as anything but an act of friendship. Even when he had made his intentions clear, Tony waited for unmistakable signals, usually Adam’s hands somewhere that screamed more-than-just-a-friend, or Adam’s lips pressed against his, open and inviting.

Of course, Tony is twice the man Adam can hope to be, do he doesn’t think that because Tony could do it it will be easy, but he does think he owes Tony this. So he ignores the eyes filled with concern and guilt and everything that a part of Adam’s mind knows he could use to tie them together forever and focuses on surviving.

It gets easier.

Adam has practice giving up the very things that make him feel most alive. In a way giving up Tony is easier than giving up drugs or drinking, or even women, because even though it hurts and everything would be so much easier if he just stopped trying to do the right thing, he’s not doing this for himself, he’s doing it for Tony. And after the second day of pretending he doesn’t feel Tony’s eyes on him, that he’s not hyper aware of Tony’s movements even if he never quite looks at him, it gets easier still because Tony starts avoiding Adam too.

Eventually, Adam hopes they will be able to be friends again, like they had been in Paris, like they were when he first returned to London. But for the time being, his own hurt is too close to the surface and he’s grateful that Tony understands. Not seeing Tony except at a distance is horrible, but it’s better than never seeing him at all.

. . .

Kaitlin has been working with Tony Belardi for the better part of five years, and she recognizes this Tony almost immediately. “Oh sweet Jaysus in a manger, what did the bastard do now?” She asks the minute she sees Tony’s face.

He scans the restaurant quickly with his eyes as if to make sure no diners heard her swearing. At eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. When the dining room has been empty for hours. “There’s nothing wrong, everything is okay.” Tony tells her over the stack of receipts he’s holed up in the dining room flipping through when he should be in his office.

“Mmhmmm.” Kaitlin pulls out the chair across from him and sinks into it. She doesn’t say anything else. She knows she doesn’t have to. If Tony wants to talk he’ll talk. If he doesn’t, she will draw her own conclusions, and quite possibly Adam Jones will find himself very inconvenienced indeed. Kaitlin is on fantastic terms with housekeeping and the front desk. It wouldn’t take much for her to ensure Adam’s suite at the Langham is less than cosy.

Tony works for several minutes, occasionally casting exasperated, defensive looks at her, but refusing to speak. Kaitlin pushes back the cuticles on one hand with the other without taking her eyes of Tony and begins to compile a list of the ways she can make sure karma finds its way to Adam Jones.

“Fine!” Tony says suddenly, sitting back and crossing his arms across his chest. “We’re... taking some space. After his illness, Adam needs, well, he doesn’t need to be coddled by me, so we are taking time apart by mutual understanding and it’s not a big deal.”

“You haven’t been in your office in two days. The kitchen staff is living in terror because Adam is being nice and you’re here at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday looking as if your very last friend left you and may have taken your cat as well.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“Killed your dog then. The point is, you look bloody miserable.”

“I’m okay.”

She purses her lips. He’s not okay. She knows he’s not okay. How could he be when that ungrateful, egotistical, bird-faced cock gobbler was messing with his head? Again!

. . .

Something is wrong with Tony and Adam. David has always been a bit tunnel visioned, especially when it comes to the kitchen and Darth Adam Jones. But by Adam’s third day back in the kitchen after his hospitalization, David is pretty sure he’s figured it out. Not that Adam isn’t a miserable sod for no good reason half the time, but this is something else. Adam’s not yelling. Like, not yelling ever. It’s bloody unnatural, that’s what.

David is only twenty four and admittedly before Adam Jones his culinary experience was mostly in food trucks and street markets and small mom and pop restaurants where everyone treated yelling and speaking as the same thing, but he’s pretty sure chefs yell, that’s just what they do. Even Helene yelled.

The entire kitchen is on tenterhooks, as if the absence of yelling must just be Adam saving up for a single, nine on the Richter scale meltdown. And because they’re on tenterhooks, they’re making mistakes. Which should lead to yelling.

Bloody unnatural, that’s what.

He’s burned the cauliflower croquettes twice already and even if Adam isn’t yelling, David is pretty sure Max is a hairsbreadth from cutting something off someone if he has to discard another perfectly cooked lamb chop because another item for the plate was fucked up. David does not fancy his chances against a knife wielding Max.

“One tuna, one lamb, two beef.” Adam’s voice cuts easily through the kitchen.

“Yes Chef!” David calls out, head down, focused on his work. But even though he’s focusing on getting this right, David still have enough mental energy free to worry. Something is wrong with Tony and Adam and it’s trickling down through all the ranks at the Langham. Maybe none of them realized it before, but Adam Jones at the Langham is really Adam Jones and Tony Belardi at the Langham, and the minute that dynamic broke – though David can’t be sure when exactly that was - everything else began to fall apart too.

There’s a lull, as there often is, just after the last entre is plated and David slips out into the alley to grab his fifteen, and a calming cigarette. The only other person out there is Helene. She offers him a light and they stand side by side in companionable silence for a moment, leaning against the cool wall of the building, before David plucks up the courage to ask: “You’re friends with Tony, yeah?”

“I think he likes Lily better, but yes, we’re friends.” She tosses her cigarette on the ground and stamps out the ember with one toe. “But I’m not getting in the middle of it. You shouldn’t either.”

“So we just wait and see which happens first: the restaurant implodes or we lose our stars because our chef is… whatever he is?”

Helene cuffs him on the shoulder. “Nope, we wait and see if Adam will snap the fuck out of this and if he doesn’t, we start looking for other jobs.”

“That’s bloody stupid.”

“Unlike meddling in their personal lives, which is a masterful plan.”

David thinks she’s trying to be sarcastic, but it doesn’t quite come across. “Yeah. If it’s that or lose this place, I say meddle away my friend.” He butts his cigarette out against the wall. “At this point we’d all be better off if you were still running the kitchen.”

Helene taps him lightly on the temple. “Watch your mouth.”

“Yes Chef.”

“Tony and Adam may have the combined emotional maturity of my eight year old, but that does not mean I am going to…” she trails off and glares at David who is leaning his head back against the wall, laughing freely. “I am not Adam fucking Jones’ fucking therapist. This is not my job.”

“Thank you, Helene!” David calls after her as she stalks back to the kitchen. He waits a few minutes, enjoying the normal quiet of the alley and the freshness of the cool air and then follows her. There is something wrong with Adam and Tony, but it’s nothing Helene cannot fix, of that David is sure.

. . .

Adam is beyond miserable. He’s hiding it well. He’s not taking out his emotions on his staff, he has so far managed not to assault Tony in their place of work, even if every time he sees Tony even from across the room it feels every nerve ending in his body is suddenly on high alert and every movement feels artificial, like someone else is pulling the strings because all he wants to do is pin tony to the nearest flat surface, vertical or horizontal it really doesn’t matter. But he is not doing well. Behind closed doors he feels like he might be slowly losing his mind.

Not only does he miss Tony with an intensity that is a physical ache, but other things as well. Like the fact that the sheets on his bed feel scratchy, as if it was only Tony’s body pressed against him that made them soft and silky Egyptian cotton. And now his black t-shirt doesn’t fit properly.

It fits, of course, but it’s too tight in the collar and he would think it was someone else’s shirt, except he didn’t put it in the hotel laundry, he’d wanted to wear it immediately so he’d washed it in the sink and left it to hang over night. So it was impossible for it to be a different shirt, and yet... He tugged at the collar, trying to lessen the feeling that his clothes were turning against him.

His kitchen crew is off too. Adam hasn’t yelled at them since before the pneumonia, not even when David kept overcooking the medallions last night so that every accompanying item had to be made all over again. Yet, even Max is acting as if this was 2015 and Adam was on the warpath.

And to top off all of the reasons Adan has to feel on edge. This morning he was woken up by someone else’s wake-up call at 4:15 and because his sheets are scratchy and the room is always two degrees too cold without Tony’s warmth beside him he didn’t even try to go back to sleep.

The streets of London are peaceful at ten to five on a Sunday morning. A few late night stragglers, their clothes rumpled and faces streaked from sweat, walk arm in arm down the street towards him. A coffee shop flicks on its open sign. A middle aged woman is yawning into a ceramic mug of something hot and probably caffeinated while her tiny dog, wearing an even tinier pink plaid coat, sniffs dedicatedly at a bench. Adam notices them all, moments in a continuous stream that reminds him that even when he isn’t sure he wants it to, life goes on. The couple gives him a keen pang of envy. Not that he and Tony were ever the kind of couple who clubbed until kicked out and then wandered the streets of London until the sun peeked its head over the horizon. But he can feel their ease with one another in the way the blonde leans her head against the brunette’s shoulder, in the fond smiles and the clasp of fingers. He and Tony had that and he can’t quite accept that they don’t any more.

He wonders what Tony would say about the small dog. Adam thinks it looks ridiculous. He suspects Tony would say he agreed with eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter which Adam would never know for sure wasn’t at his expense. But it wouldn’t matter if Tony was laughing at him or with him because they would be together and they would be laughing.

Eventually Adam returns to the Langham but there’s no joy in that today. The hotel, the restaurant, they don’t feel like his anymore, they don’t feel like home.

. . .

David is right. There is definitely something wrong with Adam and Tony and while Helene would love to dismiss it as none of her business and hope it blows over, she can’t because once David has roped her in to his ridiculous idea that Helene can fix their bosses she starts to notice things. And she could kill the pair of them because from the outside looking in it’s obvious that they are both fucking miserable.

Still, it’s not until she walks into the kitchen at 7am on Thursday morning to find Adam sulking into a cup of cold coffee, bags under his eyes, hair in even more disarray than usual, that she decides she really can’t just let this go anymore. Obviously the idiots are never going to sort this out on their own.

She takes in the dejected slump of Adam’s shoulders and adds it to the stockpile of little things she’s been cataloguing: Tony’s sudden phobia of the kitchen, Adam’s terrifyingly passionless approach to cooking, the way Tony could barely function while Adam was in hospital, the casual touches and disgustingly gooey looks she thought she hated until they suddenly stopped and she realized that she’d just been happy for them. All of this can only add up to one thing.

“Why the fuck did you break it off with Tony?”

Adam flinches, though it could have been as much her voice cutting through the early morning silence as the question.

“Seriously. I know you can be an idiot, Adam, but this is beyond--”

“He’s better off without me.” Adam tells his coffee.

He doesn’t look at her and this tells Helene more than his ridiculous self-effacing words. “Whereas before, when you were using him to advance your career and generally being a complete asshole, you were a prize?”

Now he does look at her, but where Adam Fucking Jones should be should be one provocation shy of screaming in her face, Adam looks done. There’s no other way to describe it. He looks like he has given up, like he can’t even muster enough give a fuck to be sad or angry or even mildly annoyed, he’s just done.

Helene takes pity on him. He’s an idiot, and it’s clear she’s actually going to have to do something which, like everything else Adam Jones, is horribly inconvenient and annoying, but if she doesn’t, who will? She pulls Adam up off his stool and gives him a firm hug. “You’re not all bad, Adam Jones.”

She resists the urge to immediately seek out Tony, choosing instead to wait until after the dinner service. At the very least, it gives her a day to work out how on earth she can force Tony and Adam to stop being such twits about everything. But as soon as they’re done scrubbing the kitchen down after the last dessert is served, Helene slips out into the dining room where she finds Tony sitting at one of the round tables, that night’s receipts stacked in front of him.

“Tony, do you have a minute?”

He starts slightly at the interruption and then looks immediately sheepish, as if he is keenly aware he shouldn’t be doing the books in the dining room when he has a perfectly nice office. “Of course. Is A- everything okay?”

He looks so concerned she wants to hug him but instead she pulls out the chair opposite and sits, propping her elbows on the table. “What the fuck happened, Tony?”

He drops his eyes, the papers in front of him suddenly fascinating.

Helene rests her chin against one palm and waits. She has a precocious daughter. There’s nothing Tony can throw up in defence she hasn’t seen before.

Tony sits back, letting the pencil drop onto the table before him. He runs a hand over his face and Helene realizes she’s never seen him this discomposed. Tony has a temper and she’s seen him angry, but he’s not angry, he’s grieving, and while anger is something Tony wears like a loudly patterned tie- uncharacteristically loud and in your face, yet tied impeccably- he wears grief like it’s one of those cones vets put on cats to stop them licking out their stitches - like he isn’t even sure why it’s there and it’s foreign and awkward and painful. Tony’s grief seems to come from outside him, bowing his shoulders, putting up invisible walls which stop him from going or doing or saying what he would have before. Helene wishes she could just tear it off but she’s fairly certain only Adam can.

“Adam is...” Tony pauses, searching for the right word, “...not good at being taken care of.”

If that was supposed to tell Helene why both men were driving the restaurant into the ground with their sulking, it failed. She gestures for him to elaborate.

“I pushed him too hard, smothered him.”

Helene shakes her head. “Tony...”

He gives her a fierce look, vividly reminding her of a cornered, injured animal - angry and terrified and fully prepared to share the pain if she doesn’t let this go.

She rolls her lips together and smothers the words. “I’m sorry.” She says instead.

“As am I.” He acknowledges with a heartbreaking little smile. “But life goes on and I’m sure you didn’t come out here to talk about my little troubles.”

The ‘of course I did!’ Is on her lips but that heartrending, brave, bland smile stops her. “Actually, I have a rather tremendous favour to ask of you.” She says instead, making it up as she goes.

“Anything, Helene, you know that.” He’s chiding her and Helene wants to hug him again. If she couldn’t see clearly how improbably well suited Adam was for Tony, she would be tempted to abandon her plan here and now. As much as she loves Adam, Tony doesn’t deserve any of this. And she’s convinced this is all Adam Jones’ fault.

“It’s Lily’s birthday next week and she requested a proper adult dinner party.” Helene smiles to herself, remembering the deadly serious look on Lily’s eyes when she dictated her birthday wish.

Tony’s eyes light up. “She’s going to be a chef just like her mama.”

Helene grimaces a bit at that. She loves her life, but it’s not been easy. “I think she would like to be a critic like Simone or a sommelier like you actually.”

“She would be an excellent critic. I think she might have higher standards even than Simone.”

“She knows what she likes. Which brings me to the favour. I was hoping you and Adam would help me plan and host the party.” Helene barrels ahead, ignoring the flicker of pain on Tony’s face. “She thinks the world of you, and Adam treats her as if she’s already his most important critic. It would mean so much to her to get to play food critic for the night.”

“Of course.” Tony says. “Anything I can do to help.”

“Thank you, Tony.” Helene takes a deep breath before revealing the true crux of her makeshift plan: “Could we do dinner Monday, the three of us, just to work out the details?”

“Shall we say six o’clock? You can come to the penthouse.”

Helene is surprised, but pleased, he accepted so readily. “Great. Did you want to tell Adam or would you like me to?”

Tony blanches and Helene realizes that Tony must have misunderstood her and thought Lily would be the third person at their planning dinner. She almost reconsiders, but she’s certain Adam and Tony both want the same thing and are just too idiotic to see it. “I’ll just tell him, shall I? I wanted to clear it with you before I asked him to cook anyway.”

Tony nods mutely and before he can think better of it Helene rises to her feet and with another heartfelt “Thank you,” disappears through to the kitchen

. . .

Monday comes too quickly and not quickly enough for Tony. The part of him that hasn’t quite accepted that everything between he and Adam could end in such a silent, gradual way, is hopeful – interpreting Adam agreeing to help plan Lily’s tenth birthday over dinner at Tony’s penthouse as a sign that things between them aren’t as broken as they first appeared – but most of him is afraid – convinced that Adam will be cool and friendly as if nothing ever happened between them. When the latter voice wins out, Tony finds himself wishing that Adam had said no. At least a refusal could mean Adam feels half the pain Tony does.

But of course, Adam is the one who ended this, so of course he isn’t hurting the way Tony is. He’s being as sensitive as he can, giving Tony space to move on – as if that were a possibility – and not forcing them immediately back into friendship, but he’s not crying himself to sleep at night or burying his sorrow in work. He’s fine.

Tony has never aspired to be a chef himself, but he’s a competent cook with a refined palate. He kept things simple tonight: pasta with a light tomato-based sauce and freshly baked rolls, a Brussels sprout and baby kale salad to start. Though he never lived in his father’s homeland, Tony couldn’t quite escape the culinary influences of Italy. He’s only just pulled the rolls from the oven when there is a knock at the door. Tony closes his eyes, tells himself it’s just dinner and he’s survived worse.

Ten awkward minutes later they are all seated around Tony’s dining room table. Helene’s attempts to make small talk keep fizzling. Tony can’t focus enough to provide more than two word responses. He’s too aware of Adam sitting across from him, of Adam’s foot resting mere inches from his under the table, Adam nodding in appreciation after his first bite of pasta, Adam refusing to look at him.

“So, Tony, what’s it like living in the penthouse?” Helene asks.

Tony casts a furtive glance at Adam. “It is not quite how I imagined.”

Adam keeps his eyes on his food when he speaks, almost as if he’s too annoyed at Tony to bother with basic etiquette. “I don’t understand why you moved into the penthouse in the first place. I thought you loved having a place away from all the madness of the hotel.”

“I did.”

“So what changed? “

Adam is looking at Tony, really fixing his eyes on Tony’s face for the first time in what feels like forever and the question is heavy, weighed down by all of the things unspoken between them, and Tony can’t quite breathe. He looks down at his plate, forces himself not to meet those eyes. “I wanted to be closer to... the hotel.” A flush creeps up Tony’s cheeks. He isn’t ashamed of wanting to be closer to Adam, but he desperately wants Adam to just drop it. It’s hard enough being here, in this room, so close to Adam, and unable to tell him how much Tony misses him, to not be able to kiss those lips or tangle his fingers in that soft hair, to sit here and know that their last time together Adam was saying goodbye and Tony was too stupid, too blind, too fucking grateful that Adam was alive, to see it. Being near Adam is torture. But being away from him is worse. So Tony focuses on twirling a strand of fettuccini and hopes desperately that Adam will let it rest at that.

. . .

Adam is stuck on the slight pause, barely perceptible in Tony’s answer, the pause that tells him Tony didn’t really mean he wanted to be closer to the hotel. A flicker of warmth, of hope, fans to life in his chest. Could it..? But no. Tony made it abundantly clear that this was over when he moved his stuff out of Adam’s place without even a word. Only... that pause. The tiny hitch in Tony’s voice. And the way Tony won’t look up.

Adam has never considered himself brave. Reckless, yes, but not actually brave. Until tonight. He draws a slow breath through his nose, as if courage is something carried in the air like dust motes in a sunbeam, and asks: “the hotel, or me?”

Tony’s eyes flick up so quickly Adam shouldn’t have been able to read the lifetime’s worth of love and agony in Tony’s eyes, but Adam has been watching Tony Belardi for years. He knows that face almost as well as his own. And that one-tenth of a second of eye contact tells him everything.

He forgets Helene is even in the room, forgets that he was hurt and angry, forgets everything except that look. He doesn’t flip the table, he considers it, but this isn’t Bollywood, and there still a 10% chance he read the look wrong and Tony is going to punch him for this, but Adam couldn’t stop if he wanted to, and he definitely doesn’t want to. He rounds the table without taking his eyes off Tony’s face, waiting for the moment Tony looks at him and he knows once and for all where he stands, but Tony doesn’t look up. He continues to stare at his plate as if fettuccini holds the answers to life, the universe, and everything, until Adam forcefully grabs Tony’s face and crushes their lips together.

Tony’s lips move against his for a moment and then Tony is turning his head away and Adam’s hands drop, his heart cold in his chest. “I’m sorry. I know we’re over. It’s just... “ His voice trails until it’s barely even a whisper. “I miss you so fucking much,” He can’t bring himself to look directly at Tony, so he fixes his eyes on Tony’s barely touched plate, “but I get it. I do. You made it very clear that you didn’t want--”

But he doesn’t get a chance to finish explaining, because Tony stands up so suddenly his chair tips to the floor with a loud crash and before Adam can even register cause of the crash Tony has one hand on Adam’s waist and the other on the nape of his neck and he is kissing Adam as if there is nothing else in the world.

Adam moans against those lips. His hands move to Tony’s waist, fisting around the fabric so tightly his knuckles turn white, holding on to Tony as tightly as he can. He’s vaguely aware of a scrape of furniture, an awkward throat clearing, the fact that they aren’t alone, but Tony is sucking Adam’s bottom lip into his mouth and mapping constellations of bright white heat on Adam’s lower back with his fingers, and it just doesn’t matter.

. . .

When they finally come up for air Helene is nowhere to be seen. Tony is embarrassed to have chased her from the room, but mostly he is grateful because he doesn’t think he could sit down and finish a civilized meal right now. Not with Adam sitting across from him with that look in his eyes and those fingers putting things in that mouth. The mouth that is currently hanging just a little open, shiny and kiss-bruised, as Adam’s eyes, hungry and terrified, flick over Tony’s face, looking for something: rejection? acceptance?

Tony slides his hands around to the small of Adam’s back, pressing their bodies together and his lips against the tantalizing patch of skin revealed by Adam’s unbuttoned collar. He breathes deeply, absorbing Adam’s familiar scent and taste. He bites lightly at Adam’s skin like a promise. “I should talk to Helene. If she hasn’t run too far away. You know you could have waited until after we had finished eating.”

“You could have warned me before you moved everything you owned out of our room.”

Tony blinks, hard. “Before I…” and then he’s laughing because a knot in his chest has just come undone. “That is the reason?” He presses a kiss against Adam’s jaw. “I never took you for an idiot.”

Adam stiffens, but he doesn’t release his hold on Tony’s jacket. “You never said anything.”

“I didn’t hear the door. Helene must be in the kitchen.”

Adam releases Tony’s jacket and lets his arms fall to his sides. “We were living together, but then your stuff was just gone.”

Tony cups Adam’s face between his palms. “You do not use this head nearly often enough.” He kisses Adam softly. “You would never be happy living further away from your restaurant, but I cannot live forever without even a proper refrigerator.”

Adam looks stunned, as if the idea that Tony might want to live with him somewhere other than a hotel room with a queen bed and not even a kitchenette had never occurred to him.

“I am going to talk to Helene. Okay?”

Adam nods. He still looks a little gobsmacked, but as Tony steps past him, Adam grabs his arm and pulls him into a another deep kiss that leaves Tony breathless and in something of a hurry to get Helene out the door.

He finds Helene in the kitchen, washing dishes.

“You know we are not Penguins in a zoo, you cannot just push us together and expect it to work.”

Helene pulls the drain and turns, wiping her hands off on a tea towel. She is smiling that fond smile he’s only seen directed at Lily.

“Is there even a party?”

“Yes, there is. And Lily specifically requested one of Adam’s vanilla, cardamom cakes. She told me she thinks he’s almost mastered the peach buttercream.”

Tony leans in impulsively and presses a kiss against her cheek. “Thank you.”

They both flush a little at the uncharacteristic display of affection. Helene steps towards the door, “I should go. You’ll ask Adam for the cake?”

“He will make the cake.”

Helene reaches over and squeezes his elbow. “Go on, I can see myself out. I’ll see you tomorrow, in the kitchen, yeah?”

“Of course.”

. . .

Adam listens without really listening as Tony and Helene exchange their goodbyes and then Tony is in the doorway. Adam smiles around a mouthful of fettuccini.

“You’re... eating?”

“I was promised dinner.” Adam smirks, “Besides, we should really carb load. Energy and all that.”

Tony looks like he wants to laugh but he sets his chair back on its feet and sits across from Adam. “You know, this is the first time you have let me cook for you.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Adam tries to grumble but it doesn’t quite work with the ridiculous grin on his face. He slides his foot forward until it’s sliding against Tony’s. It’s hardly anything, but the little bit of contact spreads a warmth through Adam’s whole body.

They don’t rush. The desperation of their earlier touches has faded into a slow burning certainty. Adam chews every bite and relishes the simple, delicious flavours, because he knows when they clear away the last of the food he’ll take Tony to bed and spread him out, kissing every inch of skin until Tony is writhing under the assault and chanting his litany of “Adam... Fuck... Please....” until it’s really all too much and Tony tries to take matters into his own hands. Only then will Adam reach for the lube and lower his mouth to wrap around Tony’s length, tongue relishing the familiar musky scent, swallowing against the urge to gag as he tries to take it all. When Tony’s curses become a mess of gibberish Adam will release him, just to hear that perfect keening whine. After that Adam won’t be able to take his time but that will be alright because Tony’s tight, hot body will be crushingly perfect and even though he’ll want to hold on forever he’ll lose himself in a blinding wave of bright pleasure that will leave him boneless.

So Adam eats each bite on his plate while his foot rests warm and firm against Tony’s, exchanging all the little details they haven’t discussed in the recent silence, and he feels happier than he has any right to. But he doesn’t feel any guilt because he can tell that Tony’s happy too.

“There’s dessert.” Tony says like it’s a challenge, his eyes are sparkling with amusement, but he can’t hide the signs of arousal in the wide black pupils.

Adam considers giving in. His cock is straining the front of his jeans, throbbing for release. But he’s also learning the deep value of anticipation. He picks up his plate and walks around the table to clear Tony’s away, not missing how Tony’s eyes are trained on the bulge of his cock. He steals a quick, wet kiss but pulls away before Tony can do more than moan into his mouth.

“Tease.” Tony huffs but his voice is textured with lust and fondness.

Adam drags the tips of his fingers lightly against the nape of Tony’s neck as he walks past him, carrying their dishes out to the kitchen. He doesn’t have to turn to know Tony is watching him every step of the way.

He takes his time, filling the sink with hot sudsy water and cleaning the plates one by one, placing them on a rack to rinse and drip dry. He catches Tony’s scent a moment before hands slide around his waist, as Tony steps in close behind him. Tony’s lips press against his shoulder, “I think the dishes can wait.”

Adam leans back into Tony’s warmth. “You could speed up the process by plating dessert.”

“Fuck dessert.” Tony says with feeling, his hands sliding down to fiddle with the button at the top of Adam’s fly.

Adam captures Tony’s wrists, stilling his movements. “This fancy place have a bedroom?”

Tony kisses the nape of Adam’s neck. “Upstairs. I could show you, but you wanted dessert, non?”

Adam turns and captures Tony’s lips with his. When he needs to draw breath, Adam presses his lips against Tony’s neck, breathing sharp and harsh, “Fuck dessert,” he hisses.

There’s not much talking after that. Tony hooks a finger in Adam’s belt loop and half pulls half leads Adam through the penthouse and up the curved staircase to the bedroom. It takes longer than it should because neither of them can keep their hands or mouths to themselves, but they do make it, and amazingly they’re both still full dressed, although almost every button is undone and Tony’s tie is only on because Adam finds it a very useful thing to cling to when he pulls Tony flush against him for another kiss. Certainty and waiting have become raw need. Adam doesn’t pay any attention to their surroundings, all he sees is Tony, until the back of Tony’s knees hit the edge of the bed and then they are tumbling in an awkward tangle of limbs and Tony is flushed and laughing beneath him.

It’s not quite as graceful or sexy as Adam imagined it. But as he pushes Tony’s shirt off his shoulders, placing open mouthed kisses on whatever part of Tony he can reach, Adam can’t imagine anything better than this.

. . .

There are galaxies exploding behind Tony’s eyelids. Sex with Adam has rarely been anything short of amazing, but there is a newly desperate, needy edge to Adam’s kisses, and he moves over Tony’s skin like he’s planned this, placing each kiss, each gentle nip of teeth, in just the right place to ignite Tony’s nerve endings and reduce him to a quivering bundle of want. He cards his fingers through Adam’s hair, occasionally tugging until Adam’s lips are swallowing the helpless moans from Tony’s throat.

Tonight is different because this is different. When Adam is this close to losing control he doesn’t take the lead. When he’s so needy he can barely keep from tearing off Tony’s clothes before they’re even alone let alone in bed, he drags Tony on top of him, spreading his legs and digging his fingers into Tony’s ass, begging for more, deeper, harder, faster, as if his pleasure is a lure racing out ahead of him and they can catch it if Tony will just fuck him deeply enough, fast enough, hard enough and Tony has to squeeze his eyes shut just to hold on, because Adam, staring up at him like he’s a fucking miracle, like he’s a fucking god, with those impossibly bright blue eyes is perfect and Tony is only human. But tonight Adam is taking the lead and Tony is the one who can’t look away, can’t stop saying Adam’s name, can’t seem to get close enough fast enough.

Adam’s lips surround the tip of Tony’s cock and Tony’s can’t help bucking into hot warmth. Adam places a restraining hand on Tony’s hip but he slides his mouth down, taking more of Tony in, over his tongue, into his throat.

Every muscle in Tony’s body tenses in anticipation of sweet release but he holds on because he never wants this to end: Adam’s lips spit slick, stretched around him; Adam’s cheeks concave, his tongue pressing wet and firm along the length of Tony’s cock; his lubed fingers pressing carefully, one, two, three, stretching Tony open, preparing him; Adam’s blown blue eyes looking up through dark lashes. But it does end, in a breathless rush of sensation that leaves Tony trembling and pliant as Adam moves over him and presses inside, slowly and carefully at first, searching for the angle which pulls a helpless moan of pleasure from Tony’s lips. And then it’s neither slow nor careful.

Afterwards, when they’re cleaned off and collapsed back against the soft cotton sheets, faces pressed together, legs twined, hands resting, caressing, warm and gentle now that the desperation has passed, Tony asks: “are you moving in with me or not?” as if this is a tired conversation, worn out by make repetitions, and not a new idea.

Adam kisses him soundly and says, “In the morning. I don’t think I could move right now even if I wanted to.”

Tony chuckles against Adam’s lips. There’s no talking after that. Just gentle kisses and then sleep.

. . .

They wake tangled in each other. If Adam didn’t need a piss he may never have moved. But he does and his moving wakes Tony and only the knowledge that they will curl back into each other that night and every night after that makes it okay that fifteen minutes later they’re taking turns in the shower and arguing over who will make breakfast.

Adam lets Tony win.

They sit side by side on the terrace sipping coffee and eating bacon, tomato and cheese toasties and listening to the city wake. When he’s done eating, Adam kisses Tony and then returns to his room five floors down to retrieve his belongings. Because there’s no point putting off moving in, even if Adam can think of a few more interesting ways to spend the morning.

Tony doesn’t offer to help. Instead, he gives Adam a key and tells him he’ll be downstairs.

Adam is grateful. He loves Tony and he has no qualms about moving in, not after over a year in which Tony only went ‘home’ often enough to maintain the pretence that he didn’t actually live in his hotel, but he very much wants to reserve the right to be overwhelmed by the enormity of this.

There isn’t much to pack. More than the single duffle bag he’d had the first time he’d moved out of the Langham, but not by much. Adam has never needed much: clothes that are comfortable, a set of knives, a bed to lay his head on, and a kitchen to cook in, that was really all he ever wanted. The list has grown in the last three years. It now includes Tony, and a kitchen staff he trusts and who trust him in return, but the material things are still the same.

He packs all of his toiletries, clothes, two books, and his knifes into his ancient duffle and grabs the two suits he now owns for those occasions where he or Tony or both need to make a positive impression for the Board and takes a last look around the room that has been his home for years. He feels surprisingly fine about leaving. Despite everything amazing that has happened in this room, he feels only the slightest twinge of sentiment.

His room may not have been a real home, but letting himself into the penthouse feels like intruding and Adam is glad Tony isn’t there to see the hesitance in his movements as he moves through the penthouse. Everything looks different somehow knowing that this is home. Everything is extremely white, and plush, and expensive, but none of it reminds him of Tony. That is, until he steps into the bedroom. Here there are touches of Tony everywhere. Photographs of his mother and father in simple silver frames; the unadorned but expensive grey duvet on the bed; a familiar line of products in a single, perfect row on the bathroom counter; the line of suits, then dress shirts all slightly crowded, but perfectly ordered by shade. Adam runs his fingers along the immaculately ordered closet, smiling to himself.

Then he turns around, expecting to see another line of Tony’s clothes crowded into the other half of the closet, but it’s empty. A bare bar, a dozen hangers, Adam laughs. It probably shouldn’t be a big thing, but Tony is immaculate. His closet is like a Martha Stuart wet dream, and yet, where his suits should have spilled over, giving them room to breathe or whatever expensive clothes did, there was this empty space. Because Tony didn’t move in to the penthouse to get away from Adam, even as Adam was sulking over what he thought was the end, Tony had this: an empty bar, twelve unused coat hangers, empty space. Adam hangs his two suits and quickly folds the rest of his clothes, putting them in the two empty drawers he finds in the dresser and he’s moved in.

He doesn’t linger in the penthouse, there’s a lunch service to prep, but the empty half of the closet lingers in his mind, joining a million other moments that add up to one simple fact: Tony Belardi is the love of Adam Jones’ life.

It’s not news, not exactly. Adam has been in love with Tony so long he isn’t even sure when exactly it happened, but somehow being in love with Tony always felt a little terrifying, like a risk, but it doesn’t feel that way anymore. Being in love with Tony isn’t a risk, it isn’t even a choice. It’s more than a fact, more than knowing or wanting or feeling, it’s who he is. No matter if Tony stays with him for a lifetime – and that thought no longer holds the fear it once would have – or if this is temporary, for Adam this is it. Tony is it.

“You gave your husband quite the scare, young man.”

Adam can practically hear the nurse’s voice echoing in his head, feel the vivid sense that it was right that she thought he belonged to Tony in that way. Of course now he knows he already does belong to Tony. But when he steps into the kitchen and sees Tony chatting easily with Helene as she preps squab, Adam wonders if just knowing that is enough. A fiercely possessive part of Adam wants the world to know it too.

. . .

Tony loves to watch Adam like this, passionate, and a little annoyed. He braces his shoulder against the door of the small butler’s kitchen, arms crossed over his chest and fights the urge to laugh as Adam curses and scribbles something out in his notebook. The entire penthouse smells of cardamom and vanilla, but Adam’s still not happy – as evidenced by the cursing. It’s adorable, not that Tony would ever use that word in front of Adam, how much Adam cares about Lily’s opinion. Unqualified praise from the almost-ten-year-old has become his new third star.

“Try this.” Adam holds out a cup cake.

Tony takes it and peels away the paper without cracking his calm, professional façade. At least, he thinks, as he bites into the moist, richly flavoured cake, Adam has limited himself to a quarter batch of batter for each of his attempts. Not that money is exactly a problem, but Tony hates wasting perfectly delicious food. “Not enough cardamom. The vanilla bean is completely drowning it out.” Tony takes a second bite, letting the flavours wash over his tongue. “Did you add peach juice to the batter?”

Adam pulls apart another cupcake and pops a piece in his mouth, “Just for some added sweetness.”

“I liked the last one better.”

Adam nods and picks up the mixing bowl from where it’s resting in the drying rack, and begins adding flour, sugar, spices, his hands performing a well-choreographed dance as he adds dry and then wet ingredients and beats everything together.

“You know she is only ten years old.” Tony says, the smile he’s been supressing creeping into his voice.

“And she could give Simone lessons in unreasonable expectations.” Adam’s eyes, warm and amused, flick up to Tony’s face. He laughs and then says in a terrible impersonation of Lily’s sweet accented voice, “I’ve had better.”

Tony chuckles. “Helene is an excellent chef, she learned from the best.”

Adam glares but there’s no real anger in it. “She’s a little tyrant.” But his voice is fond and Tony wonders when Adam Jones became such a soft touch.

“You know she wants to be a sommelier.”

“She’s got the palate.” Adam says as if that is the main consideration when a ten-year-old chooses sommelier as her dream job. He sets paper cups into the cupcake tray and then begins to ladle the batter in.

When the cupcakes are in the over, Adam closes the distance between them and slips his hands around Tony’s waist. “They have to bake for ten minutes.” He says, eyes sparkling.

Tony cups Adam’s face between his palms and leans in, pressing a soft kiss against Adam’s lips. “The party is tomorrow,” he says, a teasing lilt to his tone, “do you really have ten minutes to spare?”

Adam’s hands slip lower, cupping Tony’s ass. “I think I can make the time.” He says, and then he’s leaning his full weight in, pinning Tony back against the wall. He brushes his nose against Tony’s cheek, and then their lips meet and Tony is melting against him, flicking his tongue into Adam’s mouth. Adam tastes like cardamom and vanilla, but also like himself, and it’s that taste that has Tony twining his fingers in Adam’s hair as if he could pull them closer together.

When the timer dings Tony’s lips are kiss-bruised and he’s dragging in heavy breaths as if he just ran a race. Adam looks dazed, but he somehow remembers that he’s trying to perfect the batter for Lily’s birthday cake and he steps away to pull the finished cupcakes from the oven. But as soon as they’re on the cooling rack he switches off the oven and reaches for Tony.

“These need to cool for at least an hour.” He says, a cocky grin on his handsome face.

“Maybe two.” Tony agrees. And as Adam closes the distance between them, runs his hands down Tony’s arms and laces their fingers together, pulls Tony to the living room – admittedly a much more comfortable place for what Tony has planned than the floor of the kitchen – Tony realizes that this is what it’s always going to be like. Adam will never stop trying to be the very best, and Tony will never find it anything but irresistible.