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He hadn’t meant to admit as much. Oh god, kill him now, please. Someone? Anyone? He blinked away the absurd memory of Adrian taking a break from filming, scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other absently working his cock so his erection wouldn’t flag.
“You watched the behind-the-scenes stuff?” Adrian asked.
“Some. I was curious.” Casual, casual.Nope, I did not seek you out specifically, no way, no how.“Also nineteen, and I’d only just admitted to myself I liked guys, too.”
Adrian grinned. “So you turned to the internet for answers?”
“Didn’t you?” Eric countered.
“‘Course I did. It was very educational and occasionally gross.”
“That about sums it up, yeah.” A complete sentence—Eric counted it as progress and chanced a look at Adrian. “We should probably get started, right? But just so I know—not that I’d, like, blab or anything, and if we never mention this again, that’s perfectly finewith me.” Okay, he’d had a point somewhere in there. “Just wanted to check, though. It’s not a huge secret, is it?”
“No.” The warm swirl of lamplight caught Adrian’s grin. “My parents areveryprogressive—my mum even lived in one of those free-love hippie communities for a couple of years. I got cast in a gay club in Berlin, and when I called to tell them, they were all ‘oh, honey, what aninterestingopportunity’.”
Eric’s parents would have reacted with embarrassed silence before awkwardly changing the topic.
“They sound cool,” he offered.
“They have their moments.” Adrian rocked back on his heels and clapped his hands. “All right, now that we’ve got that out of the way… Let’s get started on how we run things around here. You can only do part-time, right? No more than three, four hours a day?”
“Yeah. I can’t stop writing songs all winter, so…”
“Especially when you’re still getting your foot in the door, huh?”
Eric almost clarified that his career was in pretty decent shape, as a matter of fact. It might have sounded like bragging, though—or, worse, like he was trying to impress Adrian.
He wasn’t. His crush back then had lacked substance, just a confused teenager latching onto a hot guy with a great smile because it was safe to imagine something that would never happen. He wasn’t that teenager anymore, and while he still had a tendency to latch onto emotionally unavailable people, at least according to Kojo… Well, anyway. Impressing Adrian wasnoton Eric’s to-do list.
“Yeah,” he said instead. “I’ve got some ongoing collaborations, and a few record labels I’m in touch with on a regular basis. So I need to make sure I honour that.”
“Of course, yeah.” Adrian nodded. “I’m glad to have any help at all, really. Not everyone loves how remote we are up here.”
“It’s a gorgeous place,” Eric offered. “But I’ve always loved the mountains, so I’m probably biased.”
“Well, I grew up here, so I’m definitely biased.”
It still took a little effort to reconcile Kevin Pine—the perfect,perfectguy—with Adrian, just as gorgeous but real, who’d once beena child running through these rooms, who had a hint of tiredness lurking around his eyes and a spot on his jaw where he must have nicked himself while shaving. Yeah, that would take some getting used to.
“Right.” Eric nodded and looked away, at the tables already set for dinner—tall candles and wine glasses, white tablecloth. “Show me what needs to be done?”
“Great, yes. Let’s start with the basics.”
Basics, yes. Basics were good. They didn’t activate Eric’s tomato gene, so he was a fan.
“Let’s do it,” he said—and because his brain hated him, it immediately dipped into the gutter again. “The basics,” he added quickly, almost tripping over the syllables. “Let’s go over the basics.”
“Yeah,” Adrian said, “let’s.”
If he was laughing at Eric, he was kind enough to do it on the inside.
The basics,as it turned out, were how the standard daily menu was set up, the wine list, and Eric’s main responsibility of the evening, namely dealing with the dirty dishes. They ducked into the kitchen for a crash course on the dishwasher and found Kojo and Monika, the sous-chef, chatting cheerfully as they diced up tomatoes, cucumbers, and baguette for a bread salad that served as today’s starter.
With each minute that Eric followed Adrian around, focused on the task at hand, it got easier. Adrian was brisk and efficient, organised in how he walked Eric through everything, with hardly a hint of the playfulness Eric had expected. It made sense, though—this wasn’t a bunch of young guys on a work-sponsored sexcapade to some sunny island, but a business that doubled as a home for Adrian.
It was obvious how much he cared.
Adrian was in the middle of walking Eric through recording orders not included in the half-board package when a bright voice interrupted them. “Honey, I’m home!”
