Chapter 294. This Domestic Country

The world thought of them in grand locales: on stages in turbine halls, on wind-lashed Scottish cliffsides, in the hushed, tense backrooms of global power. The tabloids, when they dared, painted their life as a series of sleek, improbable moments—private jets, charity galas, the penthouse view.

The truth of their life was being written in the warm, herb-scented air of Anton’s—their—kitchen on a rainy Thursday evening.

It had been a day of small, grinding battles. Anton had spent hours on a video call with a recalcitrant Swiss banking consortium, arguing for the release of frozen funds that were rightfully the Institute’s. Sabatine had been deep in the digital trenches, personally firewalling a nascent DDoS attack aimed at the Aegis project’s public test servers. They were both drained, not by a single cataclysm, but by the attrition of building something new in a world resistant to change.

Anton stood at the professional-grade range, a place that had seen more takeaway containers than actual cooking. Tonight was different. A need for creation, for tangible, nurturing results, had settled on him. He wasn’t following a recipe. He was working from taste memory: the simple, perfect spaghetti aglio e olio his Italian nanny, Sofia, had made for him when he was small and the world of the house had felt too large and cold.

He had the ingredients laid out with his usual precision: a battalion of garlic cloves, a small mountain of finely chopped parsley, a bottle of good olive oil, a dish of coarse sea salt. The pasta water was coming to a furious boil.

Sabatine, having secured his servers, wandered in. He’d shed his work shirt for a soft, faded grey Henley. He leaned against the marble island, watching. This was a new ritual, this quiet observation. Anton in CEO mode was a known quantity. Anton in chef’s mode, his brow slightly furrowed in concentration, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, was a novel and quietly captivating sight.

“Can I help?” Sabatine asked, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room.

“You can open the wine,” Anton said, nodding to a bottle of Chianti on the counter. “And not judge my technique.”

Sabatine procured the corkscrew and set to work. “No judgement. Only intense scientific interest.”

Anton smiled, a small, private thing. He poured a generous stream of oil into a large skillet and turned the heat to medium. Then, he began slicing the garlic. The knife was sharp, the rhythm steady. This was meditation. The sizzle as the slivers hit the warm oil was the first note of a familiar, comforting song.

He was so focused on coaxing the garlic to a perfect, pale gold without letting it tip into brown bitterness that he misjudged the reach for the chilli flakes. His left hand, moving on autopilot, brushed the edge of the hot skillet.

He jerked back with a sharp, hissed “Ah!”

The knife clattered into the sink. He clutched his finger, a bright red line already rising across the pad.

In an instant, Sabatine was there. Not rushing, but with a swift, sure movement. He turned off the burner under the skillet, then the roaring pasta water. He took Anton’s wrist gently but firmly, pulling his hand towards the light.

“Let me see.”

“It’s nothing,” Anton muttered, embarrassment colouring his voice more than pain. “A stupid lapse.”

Sabatine ignored him. He examined the burn, his touch infinitely careful. Then, without a word, he brought Anton’s finger to his lips and kissed it. Not a peck, but a soft, lingering press of his mouth against the injured skin, his eyes closed. It was an act of such instinctive, tender care that Anton’s breath caught.

The kiss was cool. Soothing. Absurdly, magically effective against the sting.

Sabatine lowered his hand, but didn’t let go. He looked at Anton, a faint, worried crease between his brows. “You have to be more careful.”

“It’s a skillet, Sabe, not a sniper’s bullet,” Anton said, but his voice was soft, wonder seeping in.

“All threats are relative,” Sabatine replied, utterly serious. He guided Anton’s hand under the cool tap, letting the water run over it. “And my mandate is comprehensive. It includes skillet-related incidents.”

The absurdity of it—the former intelligence operative turned director of a global integrity institute treating a kitchen burn with the gravity of a field wound—finally broke through. A laugh bubbled up in Anton’s chest, shaky at first, then real. It was a sound of release, of the day’s tension dissolving in the face of this profound, silly tenderness.

Sabatine’s worried expression softened, then cracked into a grin. He shook his head, laughing softly at himself. “Okay, maybe I overreacted.”

“Just a bit,” Anton said, his laughter subsiding into a warm, glowing ache in his chest that had nothing to do with the burn. He looked at their hands under the stream of water, Sabatine’s strong, scarred fingers cradling his. “But don’t stop.”

Sabatine turned off the tap and reached for a clean kitchen towel, patting the finger dry with a delicacy one would use on a newborn. He found the small first-aid kit (which he had insisted on stocking) and applied a thin hydrogel patch with focused precision.

“There,” he said, finally releasing him. “Field dressing applied. You may return to your command post, Commander.”

Anton flexed his finger. The sting was a distant memory, replaced by the phantom warmth of Sabatine’s lips. He looked at the skillet, the paused symphony of his cooking. “The garlic…”

“Is perfect,” Sabatine announced, having peered into the pan. “And now, I’m on garlic duty. You direct. I’ll be in your hands.”

And so, they finished the meal together. Anton, nursing his bandaged finger, issued quiet instructions from his stool at the island. “A pinch more chilli. Now the parsley. Stir the pasta.” Sabatine followed them to the letter, his movements less graceful than Anton’s would have been, but earnest and exact. He was in enemy territory—the kitchen—and he was following his commander.

When he drained the pasta and tossed it into the golden, fragrant oil, the hiss-sizzle was triumphant. He plated it, a simple, glorious tangle, and grated a snowdrift of Parmesan over the top.

They ate at the island, elbows nearly touching, the rain painting rivulets down the dark glass behind them. The pasta was perfect. The garlic was sweet, the chilli a warm kiss at the back of the throat, the parsley a burst of green freshness. It was the best thing Anton had ever tasted.

“This is incredible,” Sabatine said around a mouthful, his eyes closed in appreciation. “Sofia would be proud.”

The fact that he remembered the nanny’s name, that he’d tucked that detail away, sent another wave of warmth through Anton. “She would. She’d also say I use too much oil.”

“She’d be wrong,” Sabatine stated definitively, chasing a last sliver of garlic around his plate.

The conversation meandered, free of agendas. They talked about nothing. The persistent leak in Doug’s Portakabin at the site. The absurd font a donor had suggested for the Institute’s letterhead. The fox they’d seen from the terrace last week. They bickered gently over which film to put on later—Anton leaning towards a sleek French thriller, Sabatine advocating for an irreverent, loud American comedy.

The laughter returned, easy and frequent. Sabatine told a story about Rico’s disastrous attempt to bake a “surveillance-free” cake for his daughter’s birthday, resulting in a confection that “could have been used as a doorstop.” Anton recounted a board member’s pompous, mangled attempt to quote Sun Tzu during a budget meeting.

The kitchen grew warm and close, fragrant with garlic and wine and their shared ease. The day’s battles—the frozen funds, the digital siege—felt distant, managed. They had been handled, as all things would be, by this: their united front.

Later, dishes stacked in the washer, they settled on the sofa. The American comedy won, its bright, foolish sounds filling the room. Sabatine lay lengthwise, his head in Anton’s lap. Anton’s hand, the bandaged finger resting lightly, carded through his dark hair.

On screen, chaos reigned. In the room, there was a profound, unshakeable peace. Anton looked down at Sabatine’s face, relaxed in the flickering light, his defences not just lowered but utterly absent. He was home.

This was the country they were building. Not on stages or in boardrooms, but here. In the quiet alchemy of a shared meal, in the laughter over a burnt finger, in the silent, content weight of a head in a lap. It was a country with its own laws—where a kiss was the best medicine, where vulnerability was the highest form of security, and where love was not a declaration made once, but a quiet, continuous act of creation, built night by night, meal by meal, in this domestic, perfect peace.

The credits rolled on the film. Sabatine hadn’t moved.

“Asleep?” Anton whispered.

“No,” Sabatine murmured, turning his face into Anton’s stomach. “Just… mapping.”

“Mapping what?”

“This,” he said, his voice muffled and content. “The coordinates of here. So I never get lost.”

Anton’s hand stilled in his hair, his heart too full for words. He simply bent and pressed a kiss to his temple, sealing the coordinates for them both. They had conquered boardrooms and survived betrayals. But this, this quiet evening in their kitchen, was the territory they cherished most. It was the heart of their new, and only, empire.

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