Chapter 8
“When did you know you were gay?”
Troian was caught off guard by my question, coughing around the hotel eggs he was somehow managing to keep down. When I’d suggested that we meet up for breakfast, I hadn’t meant meeting up with him at the hotel he refused to abandon.
No matter how many times I brought up that he had millions of dollars at his disposal, Troian was much more logical than I was.
The fact that I now had my own personal millions burning interest in my bank account wasn’t lost on me, but I had zero idea what the hell I was going to do with that kind of money.
My brother claimed the same, that he still didn’t know if he was going to commit to staying in Piper long enough to entertain the idea of renting or purchasing property here.
I’d mentioned that he could have Bas’ old room until he figured things out, but he was adamant about staying in the hotel. He wanted to give our still fresh relationship room to breathe, which was probably for the best.
Lazily picking at the poor excuse of a pancake sitting on my paper plate, I looked up to await his answer, but Troian was still trying to swallow his dry as hell eggs to deliver one.
“Are you being serious?” He finally said after a gulp of his weak coffee. This hotel was expensive enough to afford the good shit and I was getting progressively angrier that this complimentary breakfast wasn’t more than it was.
“Seriously,” I shrugged my shoulders. “Was there something that made you go ‘oh I absolutely dig dudes’ or was it more subtle or—”
“Why the sudden fascination with sexuality?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words leapt off my tongue and dived into the eggs on my plate. It was kind of hard to explain where these feelings had been found buried underneath the unknown surface without talking about Qwill and explaining everything that entailed.
“Is this about that Orb that couldn’t take his eyes off of you during the hike?”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t that hard to explain.
Troian’s eyes danced with amusement, and I hated that he was reveling in this. But at least he wasn’t freaking the fuck out that I was hinting at having same-sex feelings for someone who wasn’t exactly human.
My fork fiddled with the subpar breakfast before me, unable to meet my brother’s eyes. “Maybe…”
“I fucking knew it!” His exclaim garnered the attention of nearby hotel goers, and my heart plummeted in embarrassment.
No way was I even remotely prepared to have the attention on me in regards to this exact subject.
But Troian waved them off and leaned in closer to me.
“Sorry, I’m just…well, I never thought we’d be having this conversation. ”
“Neither did I,” I sighed back, tilting my head in shock. “It’s not like I was looking for this to happen but I can’t just…I can’t deny that I feel…something when I’m around him.”
Troian cooed. “Does that mean you’ve been around him more recently?”
I nodded. “He showed up to work last night and…we made out.”
“Hell fucking yeah.” Troian laughed, clearly still very amused. “How was it?”
“Different.” I admitted, because it had been.
The weirdest part about the heated exchanged with Qwill was that it never felt weird because he was a guy.
It never felt off because he was an Orb either.
It just felt different to anything I’d experienced before.
Qwill was a far cry from the stacked blonde that I tended to go for. “But…good. Really good.”
“My little brother is into making out with male Orbs,” Troian laughed incredulously, shaking his head. “I’m just so proud.”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile on my lips couldn’t be missed. “You’re only older by, like, five minutes.”
“Yeah, well.” Troian cleared his throat. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Maybe answer my question before giving me one to answer?”
“Thayer, I’ve always been gay.” Troian stirred his eggs before letting his fork fall, giving up on the sustenance the free breakfast had to offer.
“I’ve always sort of known. I didn’t know for sure until I was in middle school, I guess.
I’ve just sort of always known.” He paused to reach out and lay his hand over mine, making me look deeply into the eyes we shared. “But that doesn’t mean you’re gay.”
“Then what the hell am I?”
“That’s for you to find out,” Troian smiled. “Maybe just…explore this thing with the Orb—”
“Qwill.”
“Right, Qwill.” Troian grinned again. “Explore whatever’s going on between you two, if that’s what you want, and don’t overthink what it does or doesn’t make you.”
“I do want to explore it because I can’t get him out of my fucking head,” I said, looking down at my hands in frustration.
“I can’t sleep without his stupid cute face popping up.
I can’t work without wishing he was in the audience, watching me.
I can’t even jerk off without his scaled skin coming into view and—”
“Okay, I get it.” My brother laughed, taking a quick swig of his water, having given up of the inadequate coffee, before giving me a knowing stare.
“Just see where it goes, Thayer. And if you end up wanting to get more serious with Qwill, then you can have the existential crisis that you seem bound and determined to have.”
“Hey, I don’t want to have my entire identity torn apart and reconstructed, for the record. But how am I supposed to know who I am when something like this is changing within me?”
“It only has to be completely life changing if you want it to.” Troian said with a softer approach than he’d been speaking beforehand. “For all you know, this could be the only guy, the only Orb, you’ll ever be attracted to. So I say just go with it and see what happens.”
I kind of hated to hear how right he was.
I’d been contemplating the same thing anyway, whether or not I was Qwill-sexual or if I truly was changing into someone I didn’t quite recognize.
But in then end, it didn’t matter. I wanted to kiss Qwill again.
Maybe even do more with him…if I could wrap my head around what all that would entail.
Maybe I didn’t need to harp on this as much as I was.
Qwill’s hot. I’m hot. We could make heat together, as simple as that.
My mind started drifting to that day back at the marsh, when the water had been glistening off Qwill’s beautiful scaled abs and pecs.
Feeling my dick stir in my pants, I brushed the memory away.
I really didn’t need to have a hard-on in front of my brother.
Least of all in front of this disappointing as fuck breakfast.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right, I’m older than you.” Troian crossed his arms with a smile, gesturing to the food on our table. “I’m sorry this breakfast sucks. Let’s hit that breakfast place down near your apartment instead.”
“Great idea, because yeah, this hotel breakfast is not hitting.” I laughed, standing up with my twin as we fractured our trash into the appropriate bins and started walking through the lobby of the hotel. “Can I ask one more gay related question?”
Troian’s eyes caught mine with squinted scrutiny, but as we exited through the automatic doors of the hotel, he sighed. “Go ahead.”
“How do you know if you want to top or if you want to bottom?”
Bursting into laughter, Troian playfully shoved me, making me laugh in tandem as we kept walking down the sidewalk, the crisp morning air chilling my skin.
“Let me have some halfway decent coffee and food, and I promise I’ll explain the intricacies of homosexual intercourse to your heart’s desire.”
Laughing with him, I shook my head, still astonished that this was what I was wanting to talk about now. Moreover that I was talking about this with my estranged brother, who was now firmly planted back in my life, just like I’d always dreamed of.
“Deal.”