Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The website was called Kindred.

It was not, despite what the name might suggest, a genealogy service or a book club. It was, in the words of the very discreet referral card that Jamila Anwar had pressed into her father's hand one Sunday afternoon over dinner, a curated matchmaking service for discerning adults with specific lifestyle needs. The card stock she pushed his way was heavy with a tasteful font. His daughter had looked him dead in the eye while handing it over and had not flinched once, which told Cirus everything he needed to know about how long she had been planning exactly that. He had turned the card over in his fingers for a long moment, rings caught the dining room light.

"Jami."

"Baba."

"This is—"

"A website." She had reached over and topped up his tea without being asked. "That is all it is." He had looked at the card again. Then at his daughter, who had her mother's eyes and her mother's absolute refusal to be embarrassed by anything. Then at his granddaughter, Moska, who was four years old and completely absorbed in dismantling a bread roll across the table and could not have cared less about the conversation happening above her head. He had pocketed the card before his head could convince him otherwise.

He was not, Cirus told himself firmly, a man given to self-pity; he had his work, which he loved; he had Jami and Moska, who came on Sundays; he even had Chad — his boy — who called when he could and whom he visited every week without exception, money always in his account, photos sent regularly, calls taken at all hours. He had a full, good life that he had built with his own two hands, in more ways than one.

He was just. Lonely…

The house was empty and lifeless nowadays, except when Jami and Moska came over to visit. It wasn't that he was trying to find a replacement — God, no. He would never fully move on from his late wife, nor would he want to. But she wouldn't have wanted him wasting the rest of his life only mourning her, either. He knew that, as he knew her. Used to know her.

He just needed someone. Someone to attend events with, someone to spend time with who didn't involve going out into an empty world alone, someone who wasn't after his money — he could smell a gold digger from a mile away, always could — and who wanted just him.

Sex wouldn't hurt either…

He made the profile one evening at the kitchen island with a glass of scotch at his elbow, and his reading glasses pushed up into the loose fall of his hair where he'd forgotten them. The house pressed quietly around him, the sounds of the city finally starting to fade away into the background of lights shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was a large man — had always been — but lately the silence just felt larger.

The site asked what he was looking for. He considered it. After a minute or so of consideration, typed: Company. Conversation. Someone who isn't after my money and can tell the difference between a good argument and a bad one. Ideally, someone who can keep up.

Before Cirus could convince himself not to do it, it was foolish, and who was he kidding at his age, he submitted it, gulped down his scotch, and went to bed. Three days later, he had a match.

The first thing that Cirus noticed when seeing the match was, quite obviously, the picture.

It was so unstudied that it caught him off guard. Most profiles on a site like this leaned into presentation: they were professionally and carefully lit, just as carefully angled, and clearly designed to show off the people from their most marketable side. This one looked like it had been taken mid-laugh, the subject slightly turned away from the camera before catching it at the last second. Brown eyes bright and a little startled. A grin barely caught at the corner of a very nice mouth. Auburn hair, a little overgrown, warm and reddish in the light, with the kind of natural wave that happened when someone didn't fuss over it. A smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks — dense, sun-earned, visible even in the photograph, the kind that didn't fade in winter. A leather jacket with something stitched along the chest and shoulders in blue that Cirus couldn't quite make out.

He looked, Cirus thought, like someone had told him something funny and he hadn't quite decided whether to believe them. The name listed was Robert. Age: twenty-six. Location: Greater Los Angeles. The bio was short. On a break. Looking for something with a little more substance than what I've been finding. Not here for games, I get enough of that at work. Older is fine, and smarter is better. Make me laugh, and we'll get along.

Cirus read it twice and then a third time for good measure. He was not, generally speaking, an impulsive man. He had been, once in a life he had since deliberately and completely set aside. These days, he prefers to consider his options. He considered this for approximately forty-five seconds, then requested a match before he'd fully decided to do so.

Robert had been on Kindred for eleven days when he matched with Cirus Anwar, and he had spent the better part of those eleven days reconsidering the decision to join in the first place.

It had seemed reasonable at the time. He was on medical leave — a hairline fracture in his left forearm and two cracked ribs courtesy of a fight that had gotten significantly out of hand — and he was bored out of his mind, rattling around his apartment with Beef and his laptop and approximately fourteen browser tabs about historical robotics that he kept meaning to read. He had money, for now at least. The Robertson inheritance was not infinite, but it was substantial, and with the suit sitting idle in the garage of his childhood home (the one he paid a maid service to clean quarterly and had not set foot in since Robbie died), it wasn't actively being destroyed, which meant he was, technically, fine.

He was also twenty-six years old and had not been on a date in fourteen months. Beef had absolutely no opinions about this, because Beef was a chihuahua, and his primary concerns were cereal and sunbeams.

The site catered to adults who knew what they wanted and could afford to be selective. It was discreet. It was vetted. And Robert's type — if he was being honest with himself, which the cracked ribs and enforced idleness were making increasingly unavoidable — was older men with authority and the confidence to use it. Men who could hold a conversation and hold a room. Men who didn't treat his sharp edges like a problem to be managed. He had written a bio that was short and moderately challenging, uploaded a photo he felt represented him accurately (mid-laugh, leather jacket, no filters, no nonsense), and waited.

Eleven days and several matches later, none of which landed right, have been starting to put Robert on a path to discouragement. One who opened with a philosophy quote. Another, who seemed perfectly lovely but was twenty-one, and Robert's brain just quietly, stubbornly refused to engage. One who sent an unprompted picture of his dick within the first four messages, and it wasn't even a nice one. Robert was starting to feel crazy. 

And then:

Robert opened the profile, not expecting to see anything different from his previous interactions, and had to put down the cup of coffee that almost made its way to his mouth.

The photograph was professional but not stiff; the man was outdoors somewhere, caught mid-laugh at something off to the left of the camera, and the light was doing something genuinely extraordinary to his hair. Long, very dark, pulled back from his face in a half-updo, the rest of it falling loose past his shoulders and shot through generously with silver at the temples and crown. He also had a beard, full and neat, the same salt-and-pepper as the rest of him. He was — there was no diplomatic way to put this — built like a brick shithouse. Broad through the chest and shoulder, with forearms that belonged on a man who actually knew how to use them and did so often and with vigor. Robert wanted him to bench press him. All of that, combined with a jaw that Robert's higher brain functions registered and then immediately began to have a quiet crisis about. And his eyes, even in a photograph, were a warm and molten gold-brown that looked like they had their own light source somewhere behind them.

He was the most attractive man Robert had ever seen in his entire life. He looked at the age listing: fifty-three. Robert accepted the match so fast he nearly dropped his phone. Beef, disturbed from his sunbeam by the sudden movement, lifted his tiny head and regarded his owner with deep suspicion. "Don't," Robert told him, and Beef put his head back down.

The first message came from Cirus, which Robert had half-expected and fully appreciated.

Robert considered his answer, then typed:

Robert stared at that for a moment, entertained despite himself.

A pause, and then:

Robert put his phone face-down on the coffee table; silently screamed into his hand, and picked it up again after six seconds. Beef watched the performance like a creature who had seen it all before from his mildly crazy owner.

They talked for four hours that first evening. Cirus was funny, genuinely funny; overflowing with the dry and dark wit of a man who had never needed to perform for anyone and knew it. He was curious without being intrusive; pushed back when Robert said something worth pushing back on, and did it so naturally that Robert found himself grinning at his phone in the dark of his apartment, Beef asleep across his feet, ribs aching pleasantly from laughing too hard. The discussion moved from preferences to favorite foods and drinks, circled slightly over weirdest past injuries and anecdotes, with Robert revealing he was taking some pain medication for an injury at that very moment.

After midnight, when he could no longer distinguish reality from a dream and dropped his phone on his face twice, Robert yawned, gave up, and typed:

Robert looked at the ceiling. Looked at his phone, which had an imprint of his nose on it. Thought about that photograph: the half-updo and the laugh lines and those eyes that looked like they had their own light source.

The restaurant was in Silver Lake, small and good, the kind of place with no sign out front and a reservation list that moved glacially slow. Cirus had booked it, which Robert discovered when he arrived and gave his name and was shown to a table that already had water poured and a very specific mocktail waiting — ginger and yuzu, exactly right in a way Robert hadn't disclosed and couldn't quite account for. It also seemed perfect for someone who had mentioned he was on pain medication.

He was still considering the logistics of that when Cirus arrived, and then logistics went out the window faster than Mecha Man could fly. 

The photographs had been accurate. That was Robert's first coherent thought, slightly dazed, as the man came through the door, and kept coming, because the photographs had not fully communicated the scale of him. He was enormous. Not in an aggressive, showboating way that some heroes that Robert saw on the job were, but more like an architectural structure given human form. He moved through the room like he was in no particular rush, and the room was welcome to adjust accordingly; his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows and open at the collar, no tie tonight it seemed, a watch on his wrist catching the low restaurant light. His hair was up in that half updo, dark and silver, swept back from his face with a few loose strands escaping around his jaw, and his beard was neatly kept. Privately, Robert thought that the expression he wore as he crossed toward their table was one of warm, unhurried satisfaction, like a man arriving somewhere he'd already decided he was going to enjoy. It was disarming.

And then he smiled that devilish, knowing grin, and Robert's entire nervous system had a brief, unscheduled meeting with his daddy issues and reached a very swift consensus. Robert stood up. He was proud of himself for doing it smoothly, given the circumstances.

Up close, the height difference was… notable. Cirus had a good seven inches on him at minimum, probably more, and the breadth of him up close was something photographs genuinely could not prepare a person for. He looked down at Robert with those warm gold-brown eyes, and there was something in them that said there you are, quiet and certain, like he'd already known exactly what he'd find.

"Robert," he said. The voice was low and warm and already faintly amused.

"Cirus," Robert said, and offered his hand.

Cirus took it. Large and warm, calloused from work, the hands of a man who built things, even now, and his grip was firm without being performative. He held it a half-second longer than a handshake strictly required. His rings were warm from his skin, and his thumb dragged across Robert's knuckles when they let go. 

"You're shorter than I expected," Cirus said pleasantly, and sat down.

Robert sat back down, blinked, and then laughed, a real one, startled clean out of him. "Wow. Right out of the gate, huh?"

"I find it's more efficient." Cirus picked up his menu with the ease of a man who had never been uncomfortable anywhere in his life. "You're also better-looking than your photograph, which I didn't think was going to be possible."

Robert opened his mouth, paused, and closed it. Felt heat climb up the back of his neck and was intensely annoyed about it; his face had never once been his friend under pressure. "You can't just say that," he said.

"Why not? It's true." Cirus glanced up over the top of his menu. The corner of his mouth was doing something criminal. "You're blushing."

"I'm not."

"You are. The freckles give you away."

"I will leave," Robert said, with absolutely no intention of doing so.

"No, you won't," Cirus said comfortably, glanced up at him with a content smile, then looked back at his menu, and was completely right.

Robert looked down at his own and told himself very firmly to get it together.