Chapter Text
Max can’t believe what he’s seeing.
He can-fucking-not not believe what is right in front of his own two eyes.
“Max,” Lando says brightly, “Charles says you guys worked together in Paris when you were training! Surely that gives him the competitive edge, eh?”
Can. Not. Believe it.
“Christian,” Max greets, attempting to keep the anger from his voice. He does’t quite succeed, because it’s still tight—Lando looks at him with wide eyes. “My office. Please.”
“I’ll make coffees for us,” Lando says to Charles awkwardly, clearing trying to lighten the sudden tension in the air. “What do you have, mate?”
Max turns away quickly, avoiding looking at Charles. He thought he’d go the rest of his life without seeing him again, so this feels too soon. He doesn’t even bother to make sure Christian is following—just stalks away, stomping up the stairs.
He’s not fast enough; unfortunately he still hears Charles’ soft answer of, “Double espresso, please,” accent as thick as it always was.
Christian follows him into his office, taking a seat in front of Max’s desk.
Fuck. He needs a cigarette.
It’s been a long, long since he’s done this, but he cracks the window in his office and lights up, blowing the smoke outside.
“Bad history, then?” Christian asks sympathetically.
“What’s he even doing here?” Max says, ignoring Christian’s question. “He wasn’t on the list of candidates, and I certainly didn’t shortlist him.”
“I want him,” Christian answers simply, crossing his legs so one ankle rests on the opposite knee. “I reached out and asked if he’d consider moving, and he said he’d at least come for the interview.”
Max swallows, then takes another deep drag. “I get the say on who is hired in my kitchen.”
Christian shrugs. “Sure. If you really think you can’t be professional enough to have him, then by all means, choose somebody else. But have a look at his resume—he’s the best qualified for the position by far. And we can’t keep going though this process every two months, Max. Not if you want another star.”
Max scowls out the window, cigarette clenched tightly between his fingertips. The thing is, Max has keep tabs on Charles. He’s watched as he’s moved through the ranks, moved from one prestigious restaurant to another even more prestigious restaurant. He already knows exactly how qualified Charles is—and that he’s by far the best candidate from this pool of applications. Probably the best candidate that’s ever applied for the sous position here.
Really, he should have his own restaurant by now. He’s too good to still be a sous.
And, honestly, Max has hated the last three sous chefs he’s hired. They all seemed good on paper, experience a foot long and each more impressive than the last, but none of that has translated well. All three had either butt heads with Max, or not matched his style.
Fuck, he really misses Daniel. He’d been here when Max had arrived, had been his sous for almost two years. They’d gotten a star together, for god’s sake. But he’d left just over two years ago, and Max has cycled through Pierre, Alex, and now Checo.
He really, really needs a sous who is on the same wavelength as him, not just one who’s a good cook.
And Charles . . . for all their problems, their compatibility had never been one of them.
“We were . . . Involved,” Max admits, in the hope that it’ll make Christian remove Charles from the options. Because he’s right—Charles is the best option. Max doesn’t even need to meet the others to know it. But maybe Christian can take the choice from his hands, because if this is left to Max, he knows he’ll doom himself.
Christian hums thoughtfully. “For how long?” He asks, like it really matters.
The cigarette is burnt down almost to the filter already. Christ, maybe he needs another.
“Five years. We were engaged.”
Christian’s low whistle fills the room, his chair creaking as he leans back. “Fuck, Max,” he murmurs. He seems to finally have grasped the gravity of the situation. “What happened?”
Max swallows, then flicks the butt out the window.
“Doesn’t matter, now.”
Christian goes quiet as Max fumbles with the carton, pulling out another cigarette. Fucking Hell. He’d actually been in an alright mood, this morning. Slept in and everything, made himself a lazy breakfast, then came in to the restaurant a few hours later than he usually would. Had even tried not to stress about that fact, because he knew that Christian would give him the stink eye if he’d arrived earlier than the nine they’d agreed.
“Can you work with him?”
Max has to take two drags before he can answer, and even then all he says is, “He knew I was the head chef, didn’t he.”
Charles has to have known. Even if the news hadn’t reached him that Max had taken over as the head chef of Taureau Rouge, he would not have travelled all the way from Paris to London for an interview at a restaurant without knowing who he’d be working under.
Still, Charles was the one who broke up with him. Max has to know, for sure.
“He knows,” Christian confirms softly. “He outright laughed at me when I called and asked him to come work at one of my restaurants. It was only after I said it was Taureau Rouge, working with you, that he agreed to come.”
Fuck. Fuck.
Max could’ve gone his whole life without knowing that. He probably fucking should have, because how is he supposed to be normal about it?
“If he’s the best option,” Max says finally, like it even means anything: they’ve both already agreed that he is. He crushes the half-smoked cigarette between his calloused fingers, flicking it outside as well. “Yes, I can work with him.”
Charles starts work the following week.
By all accounts, it should’ve taken him longer than five days to move his entire life into a new country. Max had said he could have two weeks—it’s already been almost four weeks since Checo threw his apron on the floor and walked out, so what the fuck is two more?
But only five days after the interview, Max gets to the restaurant at nine, and Charles is waiting by the staff entrance. He looks fucking gorgeous; even more so than he did four years ago. He’s in his civvies, a pair of jeans and a soft beige sweater, glasses on, hair curly and fluffy, duffel bag over his shoulder.
Max stops short when he see’s him, brows raised. He hasn’t even gotten the keys out of his pocket yet, and here’s Charles, looking like a Greek God, nine days before he’s expected.
“You’re early,” Max says, slowly starting to walk forwards again.
“You’re late,” Charles replies, though he seems more mildly curious than particularly annoyed. “It’s nine. Don’t you usually get in at six?”
He would if he could, but Christian has said he’s not allowed in unless it’s within eight hours of opening. Max doesn’t often stick to that rule, no matter how much Christian whines about it, but Charles has caught him on a bad day. He’s been up half the night at the vet with Sassy, but there’s nothing else he can do for her except wait, so the vet had said he should go to work and they’ll call when they have news.
Max went home to shower, and then came straight here. He’s running on two hours of sleep—that he’d gotten between getting home and when Sassy first vomited—two cans of Red Bull, and a double espresso.
Charles doesn’t need to know any of that.
So he just shrugs, then unlocks the door.
“You’ve got your apron and knives?” Max asks over his shoulder, flicking the lights on as he goes.
Charles scoffs. “Obviously.”
All the deliveries are lined up neatly on the bench, meat and dairy conspicuously missing.
Lando will have put them in the fridge, because he’s actually rather competent, thank fuck. He’s not even a chef, he’s the maître d'hôtel, but he’s the only one with keys and who lives close enough to come in and go home again. Max had texted three hours ago, likely waking him up, but Lando had said he’d come in to receive them anyway.
It’s more than Max can say of some of the commis’ he’s had pass through—both here and elsewhere—though none of them had ever lasted long with him after instances like that.
Max checks his watch, then says, “Everybody will be here in the next ten minutes. We run a light lunch menu and the bar, then service starts at five. I assume you know the menu?”
“Obviously,” Charles repeats. “I would be too ashamed to show my face, if I did not.”
Max determinedly does not crack a smile at that. He doesn’t.
“Locker room is upstairs.”
“I will put the food away, first,” Charles says, dropping his bag by the service door and rolling the sleeves of his sweater up. Max definitely doesn’t watch as Charles’ forearms are revealed to him.
“I was going to do that,” Max says, in an attempt to distract himself. He drops his own bag down by Charles’, shucking off his jacket and putting it on top, following Charles to the sinks to wash his hands.
“Then we will be done in half the time.”
Max doesn’t even have to tell Charles where anything is. He’d toured through the kitchen last week, obviously, but he’s too familiar with the setup for just that quick walkthrough.
God. Is he as predictable as he was four years ago?
“We should talk, I think,” Charles says, pulling shut the cool room after they put in the final box of vegetables. “After service, maybe?”
Max doesn’t bother turning around. “If you think we should,” he says stiffly. “Come on, I’ll show you to the lockers.”
At lunch time, Max comes down from his office to make soup and garlic bread for everybody. Everyone is still prepping, music softly playing to keep them all focussed, and Max has barely had to give instructions to Charles.
He’s just given him a list at the beginning of the day, and Charles has steadily been making his way through it; delegating well to everyone, too.
Max has come down every thirty minutes to make sure everything is alright. But each time he comes down, he see’s that everyone has already started on the jobs he was going to give them. Charles gives him a reassuring smile each time as well, never once tipping over into frustration, even though most before him had buckled under Max’s discerning glare.
He supposes, though, that’s there’s no need to buckle when you’re as good at your job as Charles is.
“Lunch everyone,” Max announces, ladling his own bowl and taking a piece of garlic bread.
He hasn’t missed the curious glances Charles has been giving him the whole time he’s been working, but he’s steadily ignored it. He continues to do so now, even with Charles staring at him strangely, knife paused mid-air.
“Thanks, chef,” Mick, the entree chef, says. He’s already ladling his own bowl eagerly, full to the brim.
“Make sure everybody eats,” Max says to him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Especially Charles, yes? He has a nasty habit of skipping lunch.”
Max again ignores the wide eyed look Charles gives him and turns on his heel, leaving the kitchen and going back up to his office, plate in hand. He’s barely reopened the menu on his computer when there’s a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he calls, quickly skimming down the new menu to refresh his memory.
It’s Charles. Of course.
He’s got a plate in hand, with one slice of garlic bread and a half empty bowl. But it’s certainly better than nothing, and definitely more than Max remembers him ever eating during the day.
Likely more than he’s been eating in his absence too; Max has noticed the slimmer line of his waist, the more pronounced cut of his cheekbones.
“You make the staff eat lunch,” Charles says, voice unreadably neutral, putting his plate on Max’s desk and taking a seat.
Max turns back to his computer, having a spoonful of the tomato soup as he does so. He’s not quite ready to have this conversation. He’d thought he’d have another week to prepare himself; then, after Charles had shown up this morning and asked to talk, he’d thought he’d have until at least tonight.
“You know how it is,” Max says, not taking his eyes off the screen despite the fact he’s barely reading the menu he’s in the middle of designing. “They’d be hiding in the storeroom and eating day-old bread otherwise.”
Neither of them bring attention to the fact that the last time Charles worked as his sous, that’s exactly what Max had his staff doing.
Charles goes quiet for a long moment, leaning forward to have a spoon of soup. He doesn’t sing Max’s praises, but Max takes his eyes of his computer screen long enough to watch Charles’ eyes close, a smile pulling up the corners of his mouth.
By the time Charles has schooled his expression and is opening his eyes, Max is already looking away again.
Fuck.
“It’s different than I thought it would be,” Charles admits quietly. “I had heard it would be different, but . . .”
Max hears the unspoken words. That he’d heard Max was different, that he was running Taureau Rouge differently to the way he ran Fleurs à Paris. Apparently, the rumours had been enough to tempt Charles to see for himself.
And still, he evidently hadn’t really believed that Max could change as much as he has. Sometimes, Max can’t really believed he’s changed as much as he has either.
But in the last four years, he’d earned his first star and lost the love of his life, so.
Of course he’s changed.
“It’s just soup, Charles,” Max says, still staring at his screen. The words are all running together, and he can barely read what he’s listed under the rotelle gratin. “You should go downstairs and eat with the staff. I’ve got to work on this menu.”
But Charles—because he’s Charles—doesn’t listen. Instead, he politely says, “Can I see the menu?”
Max’s eye twitches. He hasn’t trusted a sous to look at a developing menu since Daniel, so he’s got two years of instincts telling him not to turn the screen. But Charles is looking at him with curious eyes and a tilted head, and he’s never given him a reason not to trust him, so Max bites the bullet and swivels the screen.
“Hm,” Charles hums, eyeing it closely. “This ravioli—you need to add caramelised chestnuts.”
Max’s eyes narrow. “You haven’t even tasted it.”
Charles shrugs. “Make it for me, if you want. But I already know.”
Then he picks up his plate, and leaves the way he came.
It’s not that Max expected Charles to do badly.
In fact, he knew he’d been good. Knew it was likely he would be great, even.
What he didn’t know, was that Charles would show up, nine days early, and fucking destroy everybody who had come before him.
It’s like no time at all has passed since they last did this. Granted, they only worked together as head and sous chef for a handful of months before they separated and Charles left, but even before that they’d worked closely together.
Charles has always been intuitive and eager, but he’s grown even more competent in their time apart. Max barely has a thought before Charles is anticipating it; he’s tried dishes, begun to plate up, and is calling for service to clear the pass while Max is still checking the docket.
His quiet arrogance would be infuriating if it weren’t so fucking hot.
But Max is a professional, one of the best in London, so he ignores it all in favour of getting through service.
At about seven, it goes to absolute shit.
“Max,” Lando calls out, leaning his elbows on the pass, the landline phone in hand. “It’s for you.”
“Are you joking?” Max asks, barely sparing him a glance as he focuses on slicing the lamb. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m in the middle of fucking service.”
Lando goes quiet for a moment, so Max glances up. He can be a bit of a muppet sometimes, but Lando isn’t an idiot, and is very, very good at his job. He wouldn’t be interrupting if it weren’t important.
“It’s about Sassy,” Lando says quietly, then holds the phone out.
Max stops immediately, heart clenching. He’d spoken to the vet right before service started, and they’d said they had no updates. Sassy had gotten worse during the day, they’d said, but they still hadn’t figured out the problem. They would call when they did.
“Take over,” Max instructs Charles brusquely, wiping his hands on his apron and snatching the phone from Lando as he steps out the kitchen.
He hears Charles immediately step up, calling out instructions to the kitchen and taking over plating the lamb without a second thought.
Max hurries up the stairs to his office, shutting the door behind him quickly.
“Hello?”
“Max, hello,” the vet, Stephanie, says. “Sassy’s bloodwork came back. I’m very sorry, but it’s not good news.”
She sounds clinically sympathetic, and Max hates it.
“What do you—what is it? What’s wrong with her?”
“Like I said earlier, nothing came up in our initial tests, so we took more blood and expanded the search. She got a bit worse after we spoke, in addition to the trouble standing the tremors in her legs, she was defecating blood. Considering she presented with blood in her vomit, I had a thought about what it could be.”
Max doesn’t like the sound of that one bit.
“It looks like—based on the blood tests, we think she’s been exposed to bromethalin.”
Max swallows deeply, hands shaking.
“What . . .?”
“It’s a type of rat poison,” Stephanie says gently. “Do you have any idea when she might have been exposed?”
“Rat poison?” Max repeats, sinking down into his chair. His hands are now shaking so badly he can barely hold the phone to his ear. “No, I—I would never put it out around the apartment. Fuck, I don’t even know—”
“It’s often not the owner who does,” Stephanie explains, voice quiet and empathetic. “She might not have even eaten it in its pure form; she could have eaten an animal that died from it.”
Max doesn’t know what any of that means. He’s not sure he cares, either. All he cares about is—
“So what do we do? What does she need?”
Stephanie goes quiet for a long moment, long enough that Max starts to feel dread curl in his stomach.
“The problem is that we don’t know when she ingested it,” she says. “Based on her symptoms, it could be anywhere between 24 hours and several days. We induced vomiting immediately, as you know, and we’ve now given her some vitamin K to try to absorb it from her stomach. But there isn’t much more we can do now. I’ve seen cats recover in cases like this, but I need you understand that she’s very, very sick. I think it would be best if you came in so you can make some decisions.”
His vision dips, going blurry for a long moment. He blinks, clearing his eyes.
“Decisions . . . Are you . . .”
“You should come in, Max.”
Max stares at the wall to his office for near on two minutes after he hangs up.
He’s never in his life left work in the middle of service before, but Stephanie has said he should get there as soon as he could. And it’s Sassy, his sweet little—
So, he has to go.
But first he has to actually pull himself together. He’s halfway through the stilted motions of changing into his civvies when there’s a knock on his door. He doesn’t even have time to wonder who the fuck is coming up during service before the door is creaking open.
“I told you to take over,” Max snaps, turning his bare back on Charles as he roughly pulls his shirt on.
“Seb is at the pass,” Charles answers. “He can handle it for five minutes. If he cocks it up that badly, you should probably find another relief chef.”
Max doesn’t answer, just yanks the shirt down over his chest. Seb can handle it—he’s been acting as Max’s sous since Checo left.
And Seb had been a head chef himself, once. Loved it, he’d said, and had been very successful. But then he’d missed the purity of cooking, hadn’t liked how administrative being head chef was, and so had taken the job as relief chef at Taureau Rouge.
Max had offered him the sous position after Daniel had left, and again after he’d had fired Pierre, but Seb had declined and said he enjoyed the spontaneity of being the relief too much.
“Is Sassy alright?”
Charles’ genuine concern has Max stopping short. He’d forgotten—or tried hard not to remember—that Charles was there, when Max got both Sassy and Jimmy. He’d lived with them for three fucking years.
“She—”
Max wonders whether Charles is going to think he’s a hypocrite. He probably is. He’d be well within his rights to think so, because to Charles he is. Nowadays, Max would never do to anybody what he did to Charles, but how is he supposed to know that?
“She’s at the vet,” Max settles on says. “I’ve got to go.”
“Is she going to be alright?”
Of course he can’t just leave well enough alone. He never fucking can. It was one of the things Max loved most about him—that he’d never back down, even when Max was being a stubborn asshole.
And he’s never been able to lie to him, either. He always knows the right questions to ask to have Max telling him everything.
“I’ve got to go decide whether to put her down,” he answers. His voice breaks on the last word, but he clears his throat and pretends it didn’t happen. “I know it’s your first night, but Seb can act as your sous. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows my kitchen.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Charles says softly. Max winces. “And I know your kitchen. Text me your address, I’ll come over after service.”
He disappears down the stairs before Max can tell him not to bother.
Max stumbles into his apartment building at ten to midnight, without Sassy and drunk off his tits.
It takes him several tries to get his key in the lock, stumbling over his own feet as he does so. His vision is blurred, from both the alcohol and how much he’s been fucking crying, which doesn’t help the situation at all.
God, fuck. He hardly even wants to go in, to see Jimmy waiting for him, alone, like it’s always going to be from now on—
His keys scrape the plaster as he tries to blindly turn the lights on, but he can’t find the switch so he stops bothering to try. Who fucking cares, he doesn’t want to see anything anyway. It’s only going to make him cry more, seeing Jimmy waiting for him on the lounge, the rest of the apartment lonely and cold.
He attempts to drop the keys in the dish, but he misses the table entirely. They clatter loudly on the ground, and Max stares at them, wondering whether he even has the motivation to bend down and get them.
But he has to go to work early tomorrow, and if he doesn’t put the keys where they belong then he’ll definitely be in a scramble in the morning.
So he bends down to get them, but as he leans forwards he loses balance and tips over. His head bangs against the wall, and then suddenly he’s sprawled on his back, staring up at the ceiling with his head spinning wildly.
“Fuck,” he groans, eyes closing.
He doesn’t have the energy to get up. The keys are digging into his back, but who the fuck cares?
He’ll just sleep here tonight. It’s not like it will make a difference to how shit everything is right now—
“Max.”
The lights are on. Why are the lights on? How are the lights on?
“Max. Are you alright?”
Max lifts his head, trying to blink the blur out of his eyes.
“You—Charles?”
He should probably be more surprised to see Charles in here than he is, but he’s always had a bad habit of showing up where he shouldn’t.
“How’d you get in here?”
“Lando gave me your address. And you still keep a key in that little fake rock.”
Max groans again, dropping his head back down to the ground. Charles is back in his soft looking civvies, which is really the opposite of what Max’s drunk brain needs right now.
A soft meow by his head startles Max, and he turns to see Jimmy staring at him patiently. His big sweet eyes immediately make Max tear up. He knows that Jimmy doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but surely he misses his sister anyway.
With shaking hands, Max reaches out to gently scratch the top of Jimmy’s head, ignoring Charles as he sits down at Max’s feet, leaning back against the wall.
“Are you okay?”
Max swallows, keeping his eyes trained on Jimmy.
“No.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
His fist clenches as he drops it away from Jimmy, falling to the ground with a loud thunk. It hurts, in a distant kind of way, but more importantly the sound sends Jimmy darting over to Charles’ lap.
That was always the way, before. Jimmy adored Charles, whereas Sassy only ever had eyes for Max.
“Some motherfucker in the building put rat bait out,” Max says bitterly. “God, if I ever fucking find out who it was . . .”
Charles exhales loudly. When Max looks over, he can see tear tracks down his cheeks, too.
“I’m so sorry,” Charles murmurs. “Christ. You did the right thing by being with her tonight.”
He knows he did. That Charles feels like he has to reassure him says a lot about how much time they’ve missed with each other.
“I’m different, now,” Max says to the floor. It feels important to say, important for Charles to hear. “What happened before—it—it—. . . I’m different, now.”
“I can see that,” Charles says softly.
Max feels his hand press into his ankle, gently rubbing up and down his leg soothingly. Fuck, Max doesn’t even know the last time somebody touched him just to be comforting. It was probably Charles, which says a lot about how bloody lonely he’s been for the last four years.
Max sniffles, feeling so ridiculously drunk and sad and overwhelmed and vulnerable.
“And I—I’m so sorry, Charlie. I was so terrible to you, I know that now. No, I knew it then, too, but you left before I could fix it, and—”
“Max,” Charles interrupts softly, hand pausing on his leg and squeezing tightly. “There was nothing you could have done to fix it. We were in trouble long before that night, and after what you did . . . There was nothing you could have said or done to fix it.”
Max’s heart breaks a little more in his chest. He’s always known that, at least a little. He and Charles had been in trouble for months before they separated, but they’d stayed, they’d stuck it out because they were too in love not to keep trying.
But he’s replayed that last night over and over, wondered what he could have done differently. If he could take it all back from the second Charles answered that fucking phone, he would. He’d take back every single thing he did and said from that moment on.
Fuck, if he could even just change those moments after Charles had stormed out of the kitchen—
But he can’t. He knows he can’t. And to hear that there’s nothing he could have done it fix it anyway . . .
“I’m so sorry,” Max repeats pitifully, sniffling again. “I don’t know what I was thinking that night. I was so stupid. And I’ve missed you, so much, I’ve never fucking gotten over you and I don’t know if I even can—”
Everything is just all too much all of a sudden. He’s been teetering on the edge ever since he walked into the restaurant last week to see Charles in the dining room, and now with Sassy, and Charles coming back early, he can’t keep it all in anymore.
He curls in on himself as he starts to sob, not even caring that Charles is here to witness his epic breakdown. He cries so much his head starts to throb, and then he cries some more.
He can’t believe he’s got everything he ever wanted in his restaurant and his star, and still his life is nothing like what he thought it would be. He’s just so sad, all the time, and he’s so lonely—
He’s barely aware of his surroundings or his body as he cries, and he can’t stop no matter how much his brain is screaming at him to stop it, to pull himself together, a voice suspiciously like his father shouting This is not the way real men behave!
It’s only after he’s laying down on his bed that a bit of awareness comes back. He has no idea how he got there, and his head is so dizzy and his nose is blocked, but Charles is standing over him, an angel draped in a soft cable knit sweater, holding out a pill and a glass of water.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Maxy,” he whispers, pushing Max’s hair back from his forehead as Max greedily gulps down the water.
As is quickly becoming a habit of his, he’s disappeared out the door before Max can even thank him.