Chapter 7 #2
Thankfully, she didn’t attempt to touch Rowan or his cheeks. His skin crawled at the mere thought of it. His hawk shook out his feathers at the memory of the many times he’d had to sit through his grandmother’s fussing.
Milo looked happy, though. Their brow was soft, and although their smile wasn’t wide enough to show off their teeth, it seemed genuine.
Rowan flipped open the menu, easily deciding on a burger and fries before closing it up again. Milo didn’t even bother looking. Instead, they gazed around the diner.
“Has it changed a lot?” Rowan asked.
Milo tipped their head to the side. “Not much.
The cracked tile, from when I dropped a tray full of dishes, is still by the bar.
That corner booth has been closed for years ‘cause the owner is too cheap to fix the broken springs in the seat.” Milo snorted and shook their head.
“I think I must have blocked out that entire last day with Andrew, but you can actually see the cherry stain on the wall over there where I threw the pie.”
Rowan craned his neck out of the booth to see where Milo was pointing. Back by the entrance, a few feet to the right of the door, was a distinct reddish stain, around chest height.
“I’m glad to hear you ruined his knock-off suit.”
Milo huffed. “Was probably more a favor to him than anything else. He truly looked abysmal in them.” Milo flashed Rowan a crooked grin. “Unlike how you always look in yours.”
Rowan shook his head, but his hawk fluffed up his tail feathers.
Over the past week, their texts had progressed from casual to increasingly familiar.
Every once in a while, like every other day or so, Milo would send something verging on flirty.
Rowan wasn’t sure how to respond, and he wasn’t any more sure now, so he turned to look at the tiny jukebox every booth seemed to have.
“Do these things actually work?”
Milo scooted across the booth, and even though they were only a foot or so farther away, that feeling from earlier returned. He longed to be closer to Milo, in a way that both his hawk and Milo would accept.
He couldn’t very well ask if they could touch knees or ankles in the middle of a diner, though, and despite his earlier musing, he really didn’t think he would be comfortable holding hands.
To add insult to injury, even if he could get past the skin-on-skin touching, his hands tended to sweat. A lot.
If they knew each other just a little bit better, maybe he would tap the toes of their shoes together.
He did that with Troy and Riley sometimes.
Raina always made an enthusiastically big deal out of things, and Ruben would just roll his eyes, but Troy and Riley never made him feel one way or another about it.
It probably went without saying that Milo would make a very big deal out of Rowan asking for touch. They would mean well, of course, but sort of like Rowan was trying not to make a big deal out of every one of Milo’s gender revelations, he didn’t want touch to be such a big thing for him.
Even if it kind of was.
“I don’t think these things have worked since the week the diner first opened,” Milo said, using the handle at the bottom of the jukebox to flip the list of songs behind the scuffed glass. “But if you see a song you like, I can play it on my phone for you.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have—”
“Of course, I don’t have to, but I want to. I really appreciate you coming here with me and standing up for me—while using my pronouns, no less.”
A child let out a shriek of displeasure across the diner, and Rowan ducked his head. “I’m sorry I haven’t asked before if you want me to do that. It sort of just came out.”
“I don’t think there’s any need to apologize,” Milo said with a soft smile. “We’re both figuring this thing out together. Anabelle…”
Milo’s fingers clenched around the jukebox handle, and someone, presumably the disgruntled child’s parent, called for the check.
“Anabelle used to do that, too. She wouldn’t make a big deal of correcting someone, but no matter who we were with, she would always use the pronouns I was trying out that week, and it made me feel…seen.”
Milo released the poor jukebox and smoothed their hand over the worn laminate tabletop.
“You are right though, we could have talked about it earlier…which is a good reminder that I should probably talk to Ray about it, too. I’m still figuring this thing out as much as you are, but the important thing is that I appreciate where you’re coming from, and I appreciate you.
So, if listening to some oldies music would make you happy, I want to do it. ”
Milo grinned across the booth at Rowan, and he thought he finally understood the phrase “heart skipped a beat.”
His parents had never used such mushy terms when describing their relationship. It was built out of mutual respect, shared interests, and a desire to build a family together. Raina was a lot more likely to wax poetic about Troy.
“The day we met, it was like getting tunnel vision,” she’d once said. “The whole world narrowed down to the size of his broad shoulders and dorky, lovestruck smile. I knew in an instant that we were both royally and utterly screwed.”
As Rowan selected a random song, and Milo turned it on, he wasn’t sure if this thing he was building with Milo was anything like that. And yet…
When Milo began swaying back and forth to the music, and his hawk bobbed his head in time, he thought he might also be royally and utterly screwed.
Rowan: Thank you for getting dinner with me, and for paying. We seem to have somehow flipped who picks and who pays, but as long as that’s okay with you it’s okay with me. I’m happy to do anything you mentioned at dinner for our next hangout.
Rowan debated hitting send on his phone all the way from the lobby up to his floor of the apartment building. As the doors opened, he decided to hell with it and pressed send. If Milo actually chose skydiving for their next hangout, they would just have to have a discussion beforehand.
It wasn’t that Rowan was opposed to skydiving.
He’d done it twice with his ma, but he had to do it with a special service that understood he would be shifting mid-jump.
It was nearly impossible for him and his family not to shift when exposed to speeding winds and the vast expanse of the sky.
Rowan had to be careful with rollercoasters and high balconies as well.
While it might not be the case for all avian shifters, the Rangecroft family had spent a lot of time in their shifted forms. Their moms always encouraged them to shift as often as they liked, regardless of inconvenience or circumstance. That had probably been the best part of his childhood.
He had often felt ostracized and distant from his siblings and parents, but when they were shifted, Riley also didn’t like being touched.
Raina, Ma, and Mom would groom each other and sleep curled up in the giant nest in their backyard tree, but Riley and Rowan had built their own nests.
Ruben also had his own nest, but that was because his bird was so active their moms had insisted he have his own space to burn off his energy.
Perhaps that was why the three of them had all ended up living in apartment buildings so close together.
They liked to be close to but not on top of each other.
He would often run into Ruben on the sidewalk when he went for morning runs and Ruben was on his way home from wherever he’d been all night.
He saw Riley much less frequently, but they actually had plans to meet for brunch the following morning.
Usually, when she was the one to extend the invitation, it meant she either had business to discuss or their moms had been bugging her to “actually see your siblings you live next door to.” Given that their omega mom had been much more active in their family group chat, nudging Rowan twice to go see Ruben in the past month, he figured it was the latter.
Speaking of, Rowan let out a large sigh as he reached his apartment door and found it unlocked. He braced himself, taking a long breath in, holding for two, and then letting it out, just like he did before walking into a board meeting or stakeholder negotiation.
“You’re out of sparkling water,” Ruben said from his spot on Rowan’s couch.
He was drinking Rowan’s last can of sparkling water with his legs thrown haphazardly up on the coffee table.
“Hm, that’s weird, because I wasn’t out this morning,” Rowan said, dropping his keys and wallet on the small table near the door.
He took his time removing his jacket and toeing off his shoes.
Ruben’s eyes tracked him around the room, but neither brother said anything until Rowan sat down on the other side of his couch, cracking open a bottle of plain water.
“Where were you?” Ruben asked, taking a large swig of his stolen drink.
“Sorry, I missed the part where I had to ask your permission to go out with my friend.”
Ruben let out a loud burp. “Sorry, I missed the part where you had friends other than us.”
Rowan sank into the back of the sofa, debating whether or not to finally tell Ruben about Milo.
Raina already knew, thanks to Troy, and he had been planning on telling Riley in the morning.
It just wasn’t the sort of thing he and Ruben usually talked about.
Most of the time, they were too busy discussing Ruben’s next concert or his latest fling.
That had always served them well since Rowan never had much to talk about anyway, but now that he finally did, he wasn’t sure where to start.
Because Ruben was right. For most of Rowan’s life, his only friends had been his siblings.
Growing up, Ruben had been his best friend, his confidant, and even sometimes his protector.
Sure, they’d gotten on each other's nerves, and Ruben had acted out in ways that often made Rowan uncomfortable, but they had loved each other fiercely.