Page 54 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

Micah

“What do you fancy?” Lennox says, already reaching for his mobile. “There’s a place near here that does everything. Curry, noodles, that sort of thing.”

“I don’t mind, whatever’s easiest.”

He looks at me like I’ve said something mildly concerning. “That’s not how this works. What do you actually want?”

I think about it properly this time, because he’s clearly not going to let me off with a shrug. “Something spicy. Not too spicy. And rice, not naan.”

“Noted.” He scrolls to a contact and taps it before I’ve fully processed being asked a question and having the answer actually matter.

“You’re calling them?” I say.

“That’s generally how ordering food works.”

“I mean you’re not going to use an app? And you’ve even got them saved. Like a person?”

“They’re the only place around here that does a decent lamb bhuna.” He says it like that’s a full sentence and not the start of one, and then someone picks up on the other end and his voice doesn’t change, it stays warm and easy. “Hiya, it’s Lennox. Can I get the usual, and something with a bit of heat to it but not too much, rice not naan, for my friend.” A pause. “Yeah, whatever you’d recommend.” Another pause, and something that might be a laugh. “Twenty minutes, brilliant, thanks.”

He hangs up and looks at me as if nothing remarkable just happened.

I don’t have the first idea how to explain what just happened to me. Every order I have ever placed in my life has gone through a screen, a menu with photos, a little icon of a scooter tracking its slow progress across a map while I wait and wonder if the food will be warm.

It’s never been personal. I’ve never talked to a person. Definitely never been able to say my name and ask for my usual. I don’t make those kinds of connections with people, and sitting here witnessing someone who does, is utterly charming.

Nevermind that nobody has ever asked me what I actually wanted and then repeated it back to a stranger like it mattered, like getting it right for me specifically was the whole point of the phone call.

“What?” he says, catching my face.

“Nothing.” I shake my head, still a little stuck on it. “You asked what I wanted. And then you actually told them.”

“That’s generally how ordering food works, Micah.”

“You know what I mean.”

He looks briefly unsure what to do with that, the way he does with most things that get too close to the soft center of him, and then goes to find forks instead of answering it directly, which is its own kind of answer.

The food arrives twenty minutes later exactly like he said it would, and we eat on the sofa with the containers balanced on our knees, his shoulder against mine, the reading lamp doing its warm thing to the room again. Mine is exactly right, warm and just spicy enough, rice instead of naan, and I catch myself smiling at a takeaway container for entirely too long before I notice him watching me do it.

Nobody says very much after that. We don’t need to. There’s something in the quiet that feels earned rather than empty, and I sit there eating food that somebody chose for me on purpose and feel like I’ve been handed something rare.

When we’re done, he gathers the containers before I’ve even set my fork down properly.

“I’ll help,”

“You won’t.” He’s already up, already stacking things with the brisk efficiency of a man who does not enjoy being assisted with domestic tasks. “Sit.”

I sit.

He comes back a few minutes later and settles back into his spot on the sofa, close enough that our knees are touching. We look at each other and don’t say anything for a while, and the quiet stops being comfortable in the old way and starts being something else entirely, something with weight to it, his eyes dropping to my mouth once and then very deliberately not doing that again.

I feel it building in my chest, low and warm, the exact same feeling I get standing at the top of somewhere very high with the wind doing something to my hair.

It’s a new feeling. Giddy and intense, and I’m not sure what to do with it.

“Can I use your shower?” I say, before I do something else instead.

Something flickers across his face, quick, gone before I can name it. “Of course.”