Rowan #4
Milo popped back out of the t-shirt like one of the colorful jack-in-the-box toys of Rowan’s youth.
His alpha ma had hated the things, which had only made his omega mom buy more of them.
They’d come in all colors and sizes, with creatures ranging from dinosaurs to monkeys and kangaroos.
Rowan’s least favorite had been a demonic-looking clown that Ruben had loved to wind up and leave at the foot of Rowan’s bed.
“You think us being fated mates is…a good surprise?” Milo asked, tilting forward several inches.
“I do, and I want to talk about it over breakfast, but I was going to ask if you wanted to shower first?”
Milo’s eyes skated down Rowan’s chest. “With you?”
“Uhm, maybe not…today?” Rowan said, even though Milo had already seen him naked.
He hadn’t seen Milo naked, though, and whenever the time came for that, Rowan wanted to be able to fully appreciate them.
“Why don’t you take the first shower, and I can finish cleaning up here and grab you a fresh shirt? ”
Milo looked like they wanted to argue, but Rowan stood up and headed towards the closet to retrieve the broom. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Milo had put up more of a fight, but by the time he returned to the kitchen, Milo was gone.
He was relieved to find that the mug really had only chipped off a corner, so it was unlikely Milo had hurt themself cleaning it up.
It took a bit of searching, but Rowan was able to find not one but two of Ruben’s old shirts he’d left at Rowan’s over the years.
They would still probably be a size or two too big, but they were better than Rowan’s…
even if the idea of Milo wearing his clothes all day made him and his hawk stand a little taller.
“I tried to leave you some hot water,” Milo said as they emerged from the bathroom. They were shirtless, with their jean shorts back on and a towel covering most of their head and face as they scrubbed their hair dry.
Rowan would have averted his eyes, but his hawk insisted all was fair in love and accidentally shirtless fated mates.
He allowed himself a small glimpse of the soft swell of Milo’s belly and the dusting of pale hair on the only slightly tanner skin of their sternum.
He didn’t know how Milo liked to refer to their body parts, so lest he get it wrong, even in his head, Rowan laid down the two shirts on his bed and hurried into the bathroom for his own shower.
While Milo had been silent in the shower, now Rowan could hear them singing as they got dressed. Through the pounding water and closed bathroom door, it sounded nice, but as Rowan exited the bathroom, it became fairly apparent that Milo couldn’t carry a tune to save their life.
To answer Milo’s earlier question, although Rowan’s hawk had been dancing the past several weeks, it wasn’t to any specific song or type of music. His hawk had definitely never danced to Ruben’s cello music, although Ruben would get a kick out of the notion.
As Rowan was badly serenaded through getting dressed and throwing his hair into a messy bun, his hawk experimentally bobbed his head and shoulders in time with the beat. Every time he got a rhythm going, Milo would switch up the song until suddenly, it cut off entirely.
That tug in his chest was back, jerking Rowan’s heart against his breastbone until he followed it out of the bedroom. He found Milo curled up on the couch, staring down at their phone, a frown marring their pretty face.
“What’s wrong?” Rowan asked, sitting down several inches closer than he usually would. That still put them over a foot apart, but Milo leaned towards him until less than six inches separated them.
“Nothing is wrong but Ray sent a ‘home safe’ text last night, and then there’s been nothing since.”
That sounded pretty standard to Rowan. In fact, most of the time, he couldn’t even expect that much from Ruben, but Milo and Ray’s relationship was obviously different.
“Did you text him?”
“Yeah, once last night when I couldn’t sleep and then again this morning to check in, and he hasn’t said anything back. He usually has his phone glued to him unless he’s talking to a guy, with a guy, or upset about a guy.”
Rowan’s heart sank. He desperately wanted to believe what Milo had said earlier, that Ray and Ruben’s relationship wouldn’t affect theirs, but the deep frown lines around Milo’s mouth worried him.
“Do you need to go check on him?” Rowan asked, the smell of spilled apple tea and missed opportunity fresh in the air.
“No,” Milo murmured, darkening their phone screen and looking up at Rowan. Their eyes were like steel, showing no emotion and reflecting Rowan’s own fear back on him. “Let’s talk. Even before all our, uh, surprises, I had actually wanted to talk to you today.”
Rowan swallowed hard. Even though it felt like a lifetime ago, it had only been last night that Rowan had wondered if he should tell Milo about his not-so-platonic thoughts and feelings towards them. Given their newly discovered fated mate status, that seemed necessary now.
“I actually also wanted to talk. Do you want to do that before eating? Or after?”
“Food first,” Milo said, tilting towards Rowan before jerking back and launching themself off the couch. “Anabelle always said it isn’t good to do hard things on an empty stomach, so let’s fuel up and then we can dive in.”