Page 26 of Shifter Omegaverse AU

His hawk puffed up his chest, decidedly proud to have stood up for their friend.

“You want your usual milkshake, hon?” Courtney asked, pulling her pen out from behind her ear.

“Do you have apple pie filling this time of year? If not, vanilla is fine.”

“For you,” she said, reaching out to squeeze Milo’s cheek the way Rowan’s grandma used to do to him. “I’m sure I can find a can in the back. I’ll be right out with those, while you figure out what you want to eat.”

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.