Page 101 of The Menagerie

It seems like a lifetime until the familiar neon sign comes into view and they’re finally entering Sheila’s.

“You go sit,” Rowan tells Mal. “I’ll get some food. You want your usual?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Rowan goes to the counter and waits for Sheila to come to him from the kitchen, her customary easy smile etched on her face.

“Hi, honey. What can I get for you?”

“Hey, Sheila. Can I have Mal’s usual and a grilled chicken sandwich on wheat? And some waters, please.”

“Of course.”

She scribbles their orders on a slip—by now thankfully having given up on attempting to give them free meals—and glances over Rowan’s shoulder to where Mal’s sitting.

“Everything okay over there?” she asks, as if her perception is so strong that she can tell something is off by the slope of Mal’s shoulders.

Rowan glances back to see that Mal’s head is in his hands, shoulders visibly tense even from the short distance away. “Yeah, it will be.”

At least he hopes to God it will be.

Sheila accepts the admittedly cryptic answer, hands him two red cups of ice water, and retreats back into the kitchen. Mal still hasn’t told Sheila anything about their relationship, so he’s not willing to divulge anything more to her without Mal’s knowledge.

He returns to the table, slides into the booth across from Mal and nudges the cup of water toward him.

“Thanks,” Mal mumbles, immediately burying his face in the cup.

Rowan studies him. Tries to analyze every move he makes in the hope that it will shed some light into what Mal’s thinking. What he’s feeling. There has to besomething, right? Some reason for Mal falling into him like he had and for whimpering when Rowan had pulled away and put a stop to it. But he doesn’t know if that something is going to be something he wants to hear.

When their food comes, Rowan lets his sit until Mal starts eating. He’ll let him get some food into his system before he brings anything up.

They eat in silence save for the mellow song playing on the jukebox and the scraping of Mal’s fork against his plate. Rowan watches as he tears off chunks of banana pancake with the side of his fork, spearing each little wedge and swirling it around the extra syrup on the plate before actually eating it. There’s none of his usual eagerness in his movements, everything slow and cautious. Like he’s been fucking sedated or something.

Rowan’s own food is surely delicious, but he barely tastes it, only eating half his sandwich and a handful of the fries it came with.

It isn’t until Mal’s completely finished with his banana pancakes, little else on his plate touched, that Rowan speaks.

“Can we talk about it, Mal?”

Mal sighs before leaning back and fixing Rowan with an emotionless look. He works his mouth like he’s testing out how to form the words before he actually says anything.

For a moment, Rowan’s worried Mal’s going to pull aTalk about what?but what he actually says is worse.

“It was a mistake, Red. Just deep in it, y’know?”

Rowan feels himself nodding despite the hollow that’s growing in his chest, making him want to collapse in on himself like a black hole. “Yeah. No biggie.”

It is a biggie. A verybigbiggie that Rowan’s gonna daydream about for the rest of however long he gets to be with Mal—in whatever capacity—like a goddamn loser.

But really, what had Rowan been hoping for? Some grand confession or declaration from the guy he’s only been fucking for a few weeks?

“I’m sorry,” Mal says abruptly, so softly that it makes Rowan pause his distracted sip of water mid-gulp.

“For…?”

“For…doingthat.” He looks down, shaking his head a little before continuing. “Consent’s obviously a big fuckin’ deal in general, but especially for shit like this. I shouldn’t’a let myself do that, no matter how out of it I was. We didn’t talk about it beforehand.”

Rowan feels his stomach twist, his dinner threatening to come right back up at Mal’s words. He opens and closes his mouth, willing his reply to come to make everything okay. Because fuck, he thoughthe’dtaken advantage ofMal. By being too shocked to push him away immediately. By coming the second he’d felt his lips for the first, and probably only, time.

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