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 a Talk 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 very big biggie 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… doing that.” 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 thought he’d taken advantage of Mal. 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.

Rowan doesn’t know how long he’s silent, but it’s apparently too long for Mal, who continues, “If you wanna stop meeting up, I get it.”

“No!” Rowan blurts, far too loud for Mal’s near-whispered statement. The one lone patron on the other side of the diner looks up from his coffee at the commotion before shaking his head and flicking the page of his newspaper.