But it seems like Mal had his own agenda for their walk back tonight. Maybe this whole time Rowan’s only been seeing what he wants to see. Maybe he’s been interpreting Mal’s actions the past few months as intimate when they should have been classified as something else. Something more platonic.

He thought they had something, is what it boils down to. And now he feels a lot like an idiot for thinking that.

“Are you gonna do the scene with him whether I’m there or not?” Rowan asks, and he knows it’s pettiness and an unhealthy dose of spite that’s making him ask.

But, mercifully, “No.”

So Rowan’s at a crossroads again, isn’t he? Mal clearly wouldn’t have brought it up if some part of him didn’t want to do a scene with his former Dom again. But he also doesn’t want to do it without Rowan there. For… what? Exactly? To show Rowan what a real Dom is like? It’s been a while since he had doubts about his ability to dominate Mal, but now the worry rears its ugly head and comes straight to the forefront of Rowan’s mind. He doesn’t know how long Mal was with this guy before Rowan, but he must have been good enough to warrant a scene when the guy happens to be in Boston for a weekend vacation or a business trip or whatever.

A big part of him wants to say no. Now that he feels like he and Mal have gotten to the point of being nearly exclusive, he’s finding it real hard to give that up. But that’s the thing that he has to keep telling himself: No matter how much he wishes they were, they’re not exclusive. Not yet. Maybe not ever if Rowan freaks out and gets all clingy and possessive like he’s wont to do.

So maybe this is the cost of getting there. Watching someone else take his place for one night. Who knows? It could even be hot as hell. He’s gotten off on thinking of the gangbang more times than he can count—seeing Mal with all those men. Maybe this won’t be any different.

But even as he tries to rationalize it, he knows that it’s different now. They’re different now. Their dynamic at the very least, if not their actual selves. Hell, Rowan knows he’s changed in countless ways since he started his arrangement with Mal.

What exactly those ways are, though, he’s not sure he could put into words. His life feels like more now that he has Mal in it. It’s in the little things, he guesses. A pep in his step on the way into work, a penchant for humming along to the schmoopy songs on the radio, a feeling of well-restedness the morning after waking from syrupy sweet dreams. Little things that could single-handedly cure his depression in one fell swoop if only he could grind them up and wash them down one at a time with a glass of water. He hasn’t felt this good in a long time, and for once, he’s not even waiting for the other shoe to drop.