CHAPTER TEN #2
They talked. Really talked, the way they hadn't been able to at the club, where the music was always pressing in and the dynamic was always pulling them toward the physical.
At the table, with food between them and wine warming his blood and the jazz trio playing something soft and aimless, Rodney felt himself unfold.
He told Mordechai about Arkansas. About the grocery store and the produce section and the pride he'd taken in running it well.
About his mother's Sunday calls and how they'd stopped.
About the drive to Vegas in a car that barely made it across the desert, fueled by the conviction that he was going to be something different, something more.
"I wasn't running toward Vegas," he said, pushing a noodle around his plate. "I was running away from being boring. From being the chubby panda kid who never did anything worth talking about. I wanted to be interesting. I wanted to be the kind of person things happened to."
"Things happened to you," Mordechai said.
"Bad things. That's not the same." He looked up. "Until now."
Mordechai was quiet for a moment. His thumb traced circles on the back of Rodney's hand.
"My parents were travelers," he said. "Panthers.
They couldn't stay in one place longer than a few months.
When I was four, they left me with Sarah, she wasn't my assistant yet, just a family friend who'd offered to help, and they went to Indonesia.
They meant to come back in six months. It was two years before I saw them again. "
"Mordechai..." Rodney's hand tightened around his.
"It was what it was. Sarah raised me. She was, is, the best person I know.
Patient, warm, endlessly kind in a way that I've never quite managed to replicate.
" He paused. "She had a husband. A panda, actually.
Theodore. Big, gentle, sweet man. He died before I was born, but she talked about him constantly.
She used to say he was the softest person she'd ever met, and she didn't mean his body. "
Rodney swallowed.
"She would’ve liked you," Mordechai said softly. "She's going to like you."
The wine had made everything slightly blurred at the edges, soft and golden, and the jazz was winding through the room like smoke, and Mordechai was holding his hand across a white tablecloth in the best Thai restaurant in the city, and Rodney thought: this is what it feels like to be seen by someone who is choosing to look.
"I want to see where this goes between us," Mordechai said.
The words came out like they'd been held in reserve, waiting for the right moment.
"I find myself thinking about you when you're not there.
At my desk, in court, in the car. I think about your voice and your laugh and the way you look when you're trying not to blush and failing.
I haven't felt that in..." He stopped. Started again.
"I want you around me, Rodney. Not just at the club.
Not just for scenes. I want you in my life. "
Rodney's eyes stung. "I feel that too. I've been feeling it since the first night. Amani told me not to fall in love with the first Dom I submit to, and I'm trying to listen to him, but you make it very hard."
"Amani is wise and infuriating in equal measure." The corner of Mordechai's mouth twitched. "For what it's worth, I'm not asking you to fall in love with me. I'm asking you to stay close enough that we can find out if that's where this is going. Together. At whatever pace feels right."
Rodney turned his hand over and laced his fingers through Mordechai's. The grip was tight and warm and certain. "Yes," he said. "To all of it. The job, the dinners, the whatever-this-is. Yes."
Mordechai's expression, the controlled, composed expression he wore like armor, broke open.
Just for a second. Just long enough for Rodney to see underneath it something that looked a lot like relief, and a lot like joy, and a lot like a man who'd been alone for a very long time and had just been told he didn't have to be anymore.
Then the armor was back, and Mordechai was smiling, and he raised his wine glass. "To whatever-this-is."
Rodney raised his. "To whatever-this-is."
They clinked glasses. The jazz trio played something that sounded like happiness.
***
After dinner, Mordechai drove him home. The ride was quiet and warm, Mordechai's hand on his thigh, the city sliding past the windows.
Rodney leaned his head against the cool glass and felt full, of food, of wine, of the kind of happiness that made his eyes sting and his throat tight because he wasn't used to it and his body didn't quite know what to do with it except overflow.
At Rodney's building, Mordechai pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
The street was dark and quiet. The apartment building loomed, squat and ugly, and Rodney felt a flash of shame at Mordechai seeing where he lived, the peeling paint, the flickering hallway light, the general air of a place that had given up on itself years ago.
"I know it's not—" he started.
"Stop." Mordechai's voice was gentle. "I don't care where you live, Rodney. I care that you come home safe."
He leaned across the console and kissed him.
Long and slow and thorough, with his hand cupping Rodney's jaw and his thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone.
Rodney melted into it. His hand found Mordechai's chest, pressing flat against his heartbeat, feeling the steady rhythm that anchored everything.
When Mordechai pulled back, Rodney didn't want to let go.
"I want to invite you in," Rodney said. "But my apartment is terrible and I don't have any furniture that isn't from a thrift store and my fridge hums so loud you can hear it from the street."
"Next time," Mordechai said, "you'll come to my house." The promise in his voice was warm and dark and full of things they hadn't done yet. "Go inside. Lock your door. Text me when you're in."
"Yes, Sir."
Mordechai's eyes softened. "Good boy."
Rodney got out of the car. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who'd just had the best night of his life and wasn't entirely sure he deserved it.
He turned back to wave, and Mordechai was watching him through the window with an expression that Rodney committed to memory: intent, warm, wanting.
He went inside. Locked the door. Texted: I'm in. Thank you for tonight.
The response came in seconds: Thank you for saying yes. Sleep well, Rodney.
Rodney stood in his terrible apartment with its humming fridge and its thrift store furniture and his phone glowing with a message from a man who drove a Jaguar and wore suits that cost more than Rodney's annual wardrobe budget and had just told him, over honeyed bread and pad see ew, that he wanted him in his life.
He pressed the phone to his chest and smiled so wide it hurt.