The Award (M, cold + pink eye)
Aka Greyson and the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day lol. This is SOOO whumpy, and very focused on the pink eye, though there is plenty of sneezing! It takes place fairly early in the timeline; in it, Greyson gets an award and his horrible boyfriend (pre Reed) refuses to go with him. Elijah tries to make him feel better.
I hope you guys enjoy this one, I had such a fun time writing Greyson so miserable and writing pink eye, which is something I've wanted to incorporate in a story forever. It feels a little choppy to me, could maybe use a lil something idk but we're posting it anyway!! Wooo!!! It is what it is!!
CW: male snz, illness, contagion mentioned, pink eye, emotional whumpy. 4.7k words under the cut!
EDIT: there is some dacryphilia in here as well forgot to mention lmao
The Award
“You cannot do this to me.”
From the couch across the room, Collin shrugged, scrolling his phone absently. “I don’t want to go, Greyson. I won’t know anyone there.”
“You’ll know me, Collin. Is that not enough? I mean, I’m getting a fucking award and my own boyfriend won’t even be there? Seriously?” Greyson snatched his chef’s coat from the back of the kitchen chair next to him and pressed a palm deep into his eye socket, flinching at the itchy, burning pain that had not abated since woke up an hour earlier. The pain was distracting, and he wanted to be present for the anger he felt, wanted to relish in how fucking pissed he was. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before regarding his boyfriend again.
“I can’t believe you aren’t going to come.”
Collin clicked his phone screen off, finally making eye contact with Greyson. “You missed my promotion dinner last month, did you not?” he asked, voice filled with venom. Greyson’s face flamed, and Collin turned back to his phone. “How quickly we forget things that have nothing to do with us.”
Biting the inside of his cheek, Greyson suppressed a scream. “I work in a restaurant,” he said, voice wavering. “It was a Saturday night, and you didn’t give me any notice. I can’t abandon the restaurant on a Saturday night.”
“But you can abandon me,” Collin said over his shoulder.
Greyson pressed his lips together, unwilling to sink to his boyfriend's level of petty. He was better than screaming the house down. If Collin wanted to do this, it was on him, not on Greyson. Fuck him.
Greyson stayed silent. Collin scoffed.
“Good luck with the award dinner,” he said, shooing Greyson with a flick of his wrist. Greyson took this bait, grabbed his things and ripped the door open with force. As he slammed the door shut, he heard Collin get the last word: “I hope it’s everything you dreamed of.”
***
Elijah knew from the moment Greyson blew through the back door of the restaurant that today was going to be a day.
“What the hell do you mean he isn’t coming?” he asked as Greyson bent forward in his chair to place his head in his hands. “The whole fucking dinner is practically for you, for Christ’s sake.”
“He’s punishing me,” Greyson mumbled into his lap. “For missing his promotion dinner last month.”
Elijah blanched. “You mean the one he literally told you about day of? Like, an hour before service?”
Greyson looked up from his hands with a pained smile. “That very one,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut again. Elijah flinched as Greyson pressed his fingers into his right eyeball, the third time since he’d sat in the office ten minutes ago that he insisted on fucking with the thing.
“Stop touching your eye,” he said, gently pulling Greyson’s hand away from his face. “The fuck is wrong with it, anyway?”
Squeezing his hand into a fist to keep from pressing at his face again, Greyson shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, miserably. “Allergies, or something. It fucking burns.”
“I think we have eyedrops in the cabinet, if you want to look,” Elijah offered, before opening the drawer between them and rummaging around himself. Within moments, he produced a tiny bottle that he placed in front of the chef, who nodded his thanks. “I’m sorry about Collin being an asshole,” he said, a consolation prize at best.
“Yeah,” Greyson said, snatching up the bottle and squeezing a few drops into his eye. “Me too.” He put the bottle down and regarded his boss again. “Guess it’s just me and you toniihh – hh! – hhITZCCH-uh!” Again, Greyson hung his head in his lap, an attempt to keep from sneezing in Elijah’s face.
“Bless,” Elijah said, opening the drawer again to look for some Claritin. “What are you so fuckin’ allergic to in the middle of October?” he asked as he snatched up the small blue bottle. Again, Greyson shrugged, defeated.
“Collin’s bullshit?” he said, pawing at his nose. “I don’t know, man.” Elijah shook a pill out of the bottle, handed it to Greyson who swallowed it dry. “Fuck, this was supposed to be such a fun night.”
In his chest, Elijah felt his heart rip in half. “Hey,” he said, placing a hand on Greyson’s bouncing leg. “Grey. It’s still going to be fun. Okay? You’re getting Best New Chef in the city. That’s huge. Fuck Collin, if he doesn’t care about that then he’s a dick. Alright?”
A small smile flitted over Greyson’s lips. “Okay,” he said. “Alright, yeah. Sure.”
Elijah patted Greyson’s leg again, before turning back to his computer. “Good man,” he said. “I have our suits hanging in the host closet. We leave at four. You’re sure Matt will be good tonight by himself?”
“Does he have a choice?” Greyson asked, once again messing with his eyeball. Elijah huffed out a laugh.
“Good point,” he said, making room for Greyson to move past him. “Go, make sure they’re prepped. It’ll be fun tonight, I promise. Okay?”
Still rubbing his eye, Greyson stood and nodded. “Sure, Lij,” he said, pulling his chef’s coat on and heading into the kitchen. “Whatever you say.”
***
It was around one p.m. when Greyson decided he wasn’t going to tell Elijah.
His boss was just trying so hard. Between trying to make Greyson forget about Collin and his petty bullshit and trying to hype Greyson up for the award itself, Elijah was nearly falling over himself trying, trying, trying. He didn’t need anything else added to his plate, Greyson reasoned to himself. Certainly not –
“HFFSHH-uhh! Hh-HRRSHHH-uee!” Greyson sneezed into a handful of paper towels, a vain attempt to dampen the sound that he was sure wasn’t working. Earlier this morning, when he was still mostly focused on being angry with Collin, Greyson assumed his claim of allergies had been correct – after all, his sinuses had been prickling since he woke up, and his throat had a weird catch in it that could have been written off, at least for a little bit, as allergic scratchiness. And his eye, his eye, his fucking eye -
That was what had given it away; the burning, painful itch that wouldn’t leave him be for longer than a second at a time. Rarely had Greyson ever had allergies that made his eyes itch and burn, but he had had something else before, something that happened to him occasionally, when stress and a headcold held him hostage as a team.
Pink eye. God, fucking pink eye.
As a kid, he got it often; he was the middle child of five boys, all of whom played sports and rolled around in the dirt for fun, so illnesses – even the more bizarre ones – trampled their house pretty much every week. Now, as an adult, it was much more rare but on occasion he did still succumb. Like, he was fairly certain, he had now.
Collin, of course, was the one who passed on the cold – a cold he picked up at work that Greyson assumed he’d been able to avoid, since his boyfriend got over it almost a week before. Of course he would come down with it now, he found himself thinking as he blew his nose and tossed the paper towels he had pressed against his face. Of course.
The pink eye usually didn’t show up until he was a couple of days into his symptoms, but with the stress of the awards dinner Greyson assumed he just… hadn’t realized he was getting sick until right now. He tried to think back on the past few days – had he been a little out of it? Maybe. A little stuffed up? Sure, it was possible.
Fortunately for Greyson, he was busy enough prepping up for the evening to keep from having too many interactions with Elijah. There were a couple of close calls; Elijah had definitely heard him sneezing more than a few times, but it wasn’t anything that he couldn’t write off as the already-established allergy story they had both agreed upon earlier. The eye was the only thing he was afraid was going to give him away.
“Jesus christ,” Elijah said around two when he came to the prep kitchen to check on Greyson, “your eye looks fucking awful.”
As if he didn’t know, as if he wasn’t absolutely consumed by the need to touch and fuck with it every moment. “It’s okay,” Greyson said, attempting to keep his voice level as he butchered a chicken. “Just really red.”
“I don’t know, man,” Elijah said, taking a step closer to more thoroughly examine Greyson’s face. “Are you sure? It looks really painful.”
It is, Greyson thought, his hand twitching with the want to press into the stupid thing. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he muttered, managing, just barely, to keep the congestion out of his voice. Elijah sighed through his nose.
“Alright,” he said, not convinced. “Let me know if it gets worse, yeah?”
Yeah. Sure. That would definitely happen.
“HRTSZCHH-uee!” A sudden sneeze, aimed into the sleeve of his chef’s coat, ripped Greyson back to the present. “Huhh - ! NGTSZZCHH-uhh!”
The sneezing had picked up in earnest around three, and with it went any energy Greyson had started the day with. Every moment, he got closer to just telling Elijah he was sick and wanted to skip the stupid goddamn dinner – but in the end, he just couldn’t. Because Elijah was trying so hard for him, and because he couldn’t let Collin win by slinking home before five and going to bed instead of going to the dinner that he had basically begged his boyfriend to join. He was not about to let stupid Collin and the stupid fucking cold he’d passed on win.
For what felt like the millionth time that day, Greyson washed his hands as thoroughly as he could, promising himself that now was the time he was going to stop fucking with his infected eyeball. He attempted a slow, deep breath – you are in charge of your body, you don’t have to touch your eye, you don’t have to sneeze – which was abruptly ended by a hoarse, barking cough. Christ, he couldn’t catch a fucking break here.
Right on cue, in the midst of a coughing fit, Greyson heard Elijah call to him from the front kitchen. “Grey?” Elijah’s voice bounced off the walls of the prep kitchen. “You good back there?”
No, Greyson thought, finally getting his lungs under control enough to call back to his boss. “All good,” he said, his voice slightly clipped. “Sorry.”
There was a beat of silence, before Elijah called back. “We leave in thirty minutes, okay? As soon as the boys get here.”
“Okay,” Greyson called back before, unthinkingly, pressing his fingers once again into the socket of his eye. He flinched, then cursed, then turned the sink on again.
It was going to be a long night.
***
The suits fit perfectly, the ballroom at the Four Seasons was immaculate, and the food looked beautiful. Sure, Greyson’s stupid boyfriend had abandoned him, but other than that, it should have been an absolutely perfect night for the chef. His first big award, one of many, Elijah was sure of it. Greyson had talent in spades, and worked harder than anyone else Elijah knew. This should have been everything, a night to remember whenever he got his first Michelin star, or James Beard award. This, right here.
That, of course, was never how these things went.
“Hh-NTSXCHH-uhh! HTSZCH-ue! NGTSHHH-uee!” Greyson, for what seemed to be the thousandth time since they got to the hotel twenty minutes before, placed his whiskey on the small table he and Elijah stood at and pressed the sleeve of his suit jacket over his nose and mouth. Elijah sighed.
“Bless you,” he said, placing a soft hand on Greyson’s shoulder. “Nobody’s looking at us right now, you don’t have to… try to hold them in like that. It sounds like your head is going to explode.”
A laugh – or maybe a cough, Elijah couldn’t be sure – escaped Greyson’s throat, and he sucked through his nose before lowering the sleeve. “Thangks,” Greyson said, voice teetering between ‘rough’ and ‘ruined’. “Just tryigg ndot to gross everyone out,” he muttered.
Elijah gave his friend a quick once-over; even behind the thick-framed, fake pair of glasses they’d picked him up at the drug store, he could tell that Greyson’s eye was incredibly fucked-up. Not to mention the fact that he was pale as his own undershirt, and breathing solely through his mouth. Anyone with a lukewarm IQ would’ve been able to tell that Greyson Abbott, recipient of Best New Chef Manhattan, was sick as fuck.
“I don’t think anyone’s grossed out,” Elijah promised, handing Greyson his drink back. “I think maybe people are… concerned? But definitely not grossed out.”
Greyson shrugged, before downing his glass of whiskey. “M’okay,” he said.
This had been the chef’s line since they left the restaurant. Once he was dressed in his suit and Elijah finally got a good look at him, it took him barely a moment to piece the day together. The eye saga. The sneezing. The refusal to sit in the office for five minutes once he’d begun working; all of it only pointed to one thing.
“You’re sick,” Elijah said as they both closed their car doors. “Aren’t you?”
“M’okay,” Greyson had mumbled, not looking in Elijah’s direction. Elijah pressed his lips together, sat back at the wheel.
“Dude,” he said, “we’re not going anywhere until you’re honest with me. It’s fine if you’re sick, I just want to know so we can get you some meds before this thing. Because this is about to be the longest fucking night of your life if you feel like shit for it.”
For a moment, Elijah could tell that Greyson was going to try and deny it again. If the chef was anything, it was tenacious, and that tenacity applied to everything, including denial of illness. But when he turned to look at Elijah and saw the look of concern on the GM’s face, he did something Elijah had not yet, in the year and a half they had worked together, been witness to: he burst into tears.
“I have fucking pink eye,” Greyson half-sobbed, the admission cracking his voice like a teenager. “Collin gave mbe some horrible fuck-ass cold, and now I have mother-fucking pink eye for mby first ever award dinner.”
Elijah wasn’t exactly sure what to do; he had been described by former girlfriends as prickly at best, devoid of emotion at worst. It wasn’t that he had no empathy – in fact, he felt the emotions of others quite deeply, if he was being honest, almost too much, to the point of paralysis in situations like these. A crying man in a suit in the front seat of his car wasn’t exactly something he was prepared for. Gently, he reached across the car and placed a hand on Greyson’s forehead.
“Woof,” Elijah said when Greyson shook his hand off. “Quite the fever there.”
“Add it to the pile,” Greyson said, closing his eyes and sitting back in his seat. “Fuck. Sorry, Lij, sorry, I don’t kndow what the fuck is wrong with mbe, just – the Collin thing this mborning, and the award, and mby eye hurts so fuckigg bad, I just – sorry.” With effort, he opened his eyes and looked at Elijah, attempting a smile. “I’mb okay. Sorry.”
“Yeeeah,” Elijah said, raising an eyebrow, “I mean, you’re definitely not okay, but like… it’s all good, man. You’re sick, and your boyfriend is being a dick. That shit sucks. You don’t have to apologize for being upset when upsetting shit happens. You know?”
Greyson bit his lip, shrugged, and pressed his fingers into his infected eye. “Sure,” he said, defeated. “Yeah. If you say so.”
Unsure how to make any of this better, Elijah just squirmed in his seat for a minute. What the hell was he supposed to say? The situation was objectively fucked up. “Do you… still want to go to the dinner?” he asked, the only question he could think of with them sitting in the car outside the restaurant. Greyson bleated out a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. It’s stupid, but… yeah, I want to.”
“It’s not stupid,” Elijah promised. “Let’s go get you some meds first, okay? If we’re a few minutes late no one will care.”
And so, in full suits and ties, the two of them had trekked over to the pharmacy and loaded Greyson up on cold medicine – dayquil, cough drops, the heaviest-duty eyedrops they sold over the counter, basically anything they saw that promised Greyson would look and sound even a little less awful was tossed into the basket. The glasses, Elijah thought, were a nice touch.
“They make you look… serious,” he said, as he handed them over to Greyson.
“Do they really,” Greyson deadpanned, donning the plastic frames. “Or do they just distract fromb mby stupid eyeball?”
Elijah tipped his head from one side to the other, considering his answer. “Six of one, half-dozen of the other,” he finally landed on, prompting the first real smile he’d seen from Greyson all day.
They doped him up as well as they could, placed the eyedrops in the inner pocket of Greyson’s suit, and hoped for the best. Thus far, things had gone about as well as Elijah expected.
“Sorryexcuseme – HTSSCCHH-uee! Fuckin – HRRTSZCCHH! HRRSTZZCHH!” Greyson stopped one of the servers passing out champagne in his tracks to hastily pull a handful of cocktail napkins off the tray he was holding, sneezing violently into the handful and – thankfully – away from the server. Somehow managing not to tip the tray entirely, the server took a step back and steadied the glasses, looking only slightly perturbed.
“Bless you, Chef,” the server said, placing two glasses of champagne on the table in front of Elijah and Greyson, as well as the rest of the cocktail napkins on the tray, and turning on his heels to leave. From behind the makeshift tissues, Elijah could see Greyson’s face flame.
“Thangks,” he muttered, though the server was already gone. The biggest issue about being sick at this event, they quickly figured out, was that Greyson’s photo was blasted, massive and looming, on the screen at the front of the ballroom – literally everyone and their mother knew who he was here. Hiding, in any sense of the word, was out of the question.
“This is such a fuckigg ndightmare,” Greyson muttered, balling up the cocktail napkins and shoving them in his suitjacket pocket. “What the fuck was I thingking combing here.”
Again, Elijah felt his heart shatter for his friend. He was right; this whole thing was a fucking nightmare. But they were here, and people wanted to congratulate Greyson, and fuck, Greyson deserved the congratulations. Since Elijah had hired him, the chef had worked more than a hundred hours a week, every week. He changed the menu daily – daily, something Elijah didn’t even know was possible with the tight margins the restaurant had to work within, though Greyson made it look easy, balancing the food cost every Sunday night to make sure they weren’t going over budget. He was hungry, something that Elijah so rarely saw in anyone other than himself. Hungry, and gave a fuck about Elijah’s dream, his vision.
None of that was even to mention the fact that Greyson was very obviously the heart of that restaurant. The servers loved him, weren’t afraid to ask questions about the food, and the cooks would have just about taken a bullet for him. They’d retained nine out of the ten cooks they opened Elliot’s with, a number that felt near-impossible in this industry.
So they could make the best of this. They would. “It sucks that you’re so sick,” Elijah said, placing a hand on Greyson’s sagging shoulder. “But… Grey, you should really try to enjoy this. You work hard as fuck, dude. This is your night.”
Greyson shrugged, picked up another cocktail napkin, and wrenched to the side away from Elijah. “HRRFFSH-uee! Snf. If it’s mby ndight,” he said, wiping his nose and turning to face Elijah once again, “thend where the fugck is mby boyfriend?”
A beat of silence went by. Elijah wasn’t sure what to say; it was a fair question. Collin seemed… difficult, to say the least, but Greyson, for all his bitching about the man, never took well to anyone calling out Collin’s neglectful, or even abusive, behavior.
“I don’t know, man,” Elijah said, shrugging. “Maybe give him a call? See if he’s changed his mind.”
Greyson took the glass of champagne before him and swallowed it in one glug. “Ndo, thangks,” he said, pushing the fake glasses to the top of his head and pressing the flat of his palm into his red, weeping eye. “I’ve had endough humiliation for one day.”
Before Elijah could say anything else, the banquet captain – a woman he knew well, who was a host at EMP when he was a manager, way back in the day – approached the two of them with a clipboard in her hand.
“Hey, Elijah,” she said, smiling at her former manager before turning to Greyson. “Chef,” she said, looking Greyson up and down, concerned. “Are you still going to be going up on stage to make a speech when you receive the award?”
Greyson’s mouth hung open then, like a fish attempting to breathe air. Still with a hand placed over his eye, Greyson turned to Elijah, stunned. Elijah mirrored the look. Oh, fuck.
“Oh, fuck,” Greyson said, before turning away to once again sneeze into his sleeve.
***
“Greyson, you have to at least go up there and receive the award, c’mon man,” Elijah’s face was one of pure anxiety as he begged Greyson. He was wringing his hands – literally wringing his hands, what the fuck – but Greyson couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than shake his head.
“Lij,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “I really cand’t.”
“Please,” Elijah said, kneeling next to the chair Greyson was sat on, in the middle of the Four Season’s kitchen.
When the banquet captain asked them if Greyson would be receiving the award, making a speech, his first instinct was to say of course, to accommodate no matter how horrible he looked and felt, no matter if he thought he was moments away from passing away. But something about what Elija had said to him – it’s your night, you should try to enjoy it – made him feel… bold.
“I wond’t be receiving the award,” Greyson said when he got control of his nose and lungs, sniffling into another handful of cocktail napkins. “I’mb sigck as fuck, I’mb so sorry. But Elijah would be happy to go up and speak.”
The banquet captain had accepted this, scribbling something down on her clipboard and thanking the two of them for letting her know, bounding off to go put out some other fire, all while Elijah had stood next to Greyson in stunned silence.
“You’re kidding me,” Elijah said when he finally regained the power of speech. “Greyson, I am not giving a speech, it isn’t even my award! It’s not even the restaurant’s award, it’s yours.”
“Lij,” Greyson said, motioning to himself – his nearly-closed, crusty eye, his red nose, his feverish pallor. “Do you thingk I would be able to go up there and say anything? I cand barely get through five words without snee – sneezingHFFSSCCHH-uhh!” He hadn’t meant it to be, but the timing on that one couldn’t have been more perfect.
Elijah groaned. “You cannot make me do this, Grey,” he said. Greyson just shrugged.
“Ndo, I cand’t.” he said, blowing his nose as gently as he could into the tiny napkins. “But… I mbean, it’s been a pretty shitty day for mbe. It would mbean a lot, Lij. Mbore than you know.”
So now, not an hour later, the two of them were holed up together in the makeshift backstage, which was just the prep area of the Four Season’s kitchen. Fitting, Greyson thought.
“I can’t, Elijah, I’mb sorry,” Greyson said now, shaking his head. “I ndeed you to do it. Please.”
“Elijah, are you ready?” the banquet captain asked, peeking her head into the back kitchen. “Everyone is seated.”
The GM looked ready to vomit, but Greyson gave him a light little push from his seat anyway. “You’ve got this,” Greyson said, smiling as well as he could. “Knock ’em dead.”
Elijah pressed his lips together, swallowed, and nodded. “This is a one-time-thing, by the way,” he said before turning to go on stage. “Next award, you’re on your own.”
Greyson smiled in earnest at that. “Heard, boss,” he said. “Thangk you.”
Taking a deep breath, Elijah fixed his suit coat and nodded at the banquet captain. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”
The crowd quieted as Elijah stepped onto the small stage and received the plaque, Greyson’s photo behind him large and looming. Despite his illness, Greyson felt suddenly invigorated, sat in the banquet chair in this unfamiliar back kitchen, barely able to see Elijah. He couldn’t really believe that his boss was doing this for him. I must look pretty fucking shitty, he thought, laughing to himself.
“Good evening,” Elijah said into the microphone. “I, uh… I’m not Greyson,” he motioned to the photo behind him. “If it isn’t obvious.”
The crowd laughed. A showman, despite it all, Greyson thought.
“Um, I’m Elijah Morrison, I’m the owner of Elliot’s. Greyson couldn’t come up to receive the award tonight, but he sends his deepest thanks to everyone on the board who chose him to receive it.” Elijah took a deep breath then, holding Greyson’s plaque in both hands like a vice.
“I wanted to take a minute and just say a few things about Greyson,” he said. “He… I hired Greyson just a few days after opening the restaurant, after my first chef quit on me with no notice. He was – he is – so young, I didn’t want to hire him. I wanted someone seasoned, some old-head, someone well known.” He looked into the back kitchen then, caught Greyson’s eye. “Thank fucking god I didn’t get what I wanted.
“Greyson is the hardest working man on the planet,” Elijah said. “He not only rises to the occasion, he exceeds expectations at every juncture. Greyson Abbott is the type of man that only comes around once in a generation; not only does he work harder than anyone I’ve ever met, he does it with a smile. A joke. He would give you the shirt off his back, even if it left him with nothing left to wear. Greyson gives everyone a thousand more chances than they deserve. He sees the good in people who no one else sees anything good in. Not only that, but he’s talented, too – what an asshole.” The crowd laughed at that, and Greyson pressed his lips together.
“No one is as deserving of this award as Greyson Abbott,” Elijah said. “And I know he doesn’t believe that, which makes it all the more true. So, here’s to Greyson: the best chef I know, and the best friend I’ve ever had.” He raised the plaque as the crowd began clapping. “Cheers.”
The crowd went wild. In the kitchen, for the second time that day, Greyson felt hot tears course down his cheeks, burning his infected eye and further stuffing him up, not that he gave a fuck at the moment. As Elijah stepped off the stage and back into the kitchen, Greyson couldn’t get the tears to stop.
“Too much?” Elijah asked as he handed Greyson his award. The chef just shook his head, allowed himself a small, crazed laugh.
“You’re an asshole,” he said through the tears, pulling his friend in for a hug. “Thangk you, Elijah.”
Elijah hugged back. “Congratulations, Grey,” he said. “You’re a goddamn star, kid.”
