That would be one way, or
On Postgres, you could use arrays: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/arrays.html also has some great contrib modules as well like: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/intarray.html
Mongodb documents their multikey indexes for a similar approach: http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/index-multikey/
not to take away from rethinkdb, awesome to see a project move rapidly!