Page 161 of Discordant Cultivation

He makes me nervous…I don’t get nervous…

Except he was. Nervous in ways that defied categorization and refused to fit into any framework he understood. He’d done this before—the courtship performance. Candlelit dinners with appropriate partners, the right compliments at the right moments, sex that felt like completing a task on a checklist. He eventually stopped trying. The greenhouse and the music and his careful, curated solitude had been enough. More than enough.

“Vale?”

He blinked. Kieran was watching him, but not with suspicion or wariness. With concern. His brow furrowed, teeth working at his bottom lip.

“Did I just have an absence?” Kieran’s voice was small. “You l-looked worried. I didn’t feel anything, but sometimes I d-don’t notice the small ones, and if I—”

“No.” The word came out sharper than Vale intended. He softened it, reaching across the table to brush his fingers againstKieran’s wrist. “No, sweetheart. You didn’t have a seizure. I was just... thinking.”

Kieran didn’t look convinced. “You had a f-face.”

“A face?”

“Your worried face. You only m-make it when something’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Vale said. “With you or with me. I promise.”

Kieran studied him for another moment, then nodded slowly. Not entirely believing it, but willing to let it go as the waiter circled back. “Ready to order drinks?”

Vale watched the deer-in-headlights panic flicker across Kieran’s face again.

Choose something. Anything. I want to watch you choose.

“I, um.” He looked at the drinks list. Back at Vale. At the waiter. “Can I—” A swallow. “A b-beer? Whatever you have on t-tap is fine.”

“Of course. Any preference on style? We have a nice amber ale, a pilsner, an IPA—”

“The amber,” Kieran said quickly, clearly desperate to end the interaction. “Pl-please. Thank you.”

“And for you, sir?”

“The same,” Vale said.

He didn’t particularly want beer. But when the waiter left and Kieran looked at him with a small, startled smile—you ordered what I ordered—Vale felt something loosen in his chest.

“You didn’t have to d-do that,” Kieran said. “Get the same thing.”

“Maybe I like amber ale.”

“You like w-wine. Red wine. You have very strong opinions about t-tannins. And you drink too much coffee.”

Vale’s lips twitched. “Perhaps I’m expanding my horizons.”

Kieran ducked his head, but not before Vale caught the flush spreading across his cheeks. That was real. That small, surprised pleasure—that wasreal, not performed, not coerced. Kieran was genuinely happy that Vale ordered the same drink as him.

Such a small thing. Such an absurdly small thing to build happiness on.

But Vale found himself cataloging it anyway, filing it away with all the other pieces of Kieran he’d collected:surprised by solidarity. Pleased when I choose him back. Doesn’t expect me to meet him where he is.

He would drink a thousand mediocre beers, would sit in a thousand moderately-priced restaurants with English menus, he would learn to be the kind of person who made Kieran smile like that—startled and soft and real.

The ring pressed against his thigh.

Not tonight,he told himself.But soon.

His burger arrived looking obscene.