Elijah #4
Tossing on my shirt, I slipped my feet back into my flip flops and followed him out, where Milo was already dressed and waiting. I grabbed my things and nodded toward the door. “So uh, about last week?—”
He grimaced. “Really? A week later, and now you wanna bring it up?”
“Look,” I said with a laugh, unsure why my brain decided to summon that out of nowhere, considering we’d both been avoiding the subject. “Having something that weird not talked about between us is weird.”
“Not nearly as weird as seeing you butt naked, balls deep,” he muttered quietly, apparently aware that we weren’t alone as we strolled toward the front doors.
“I wasn’t…” I began to protest, feeling my face warm.
It had been mortifying for me, though I couldn’t figure out exactly why.
Sure, my stepbrother had walked in on me having sex, but hell, there were worse things he could have walked in on.
Sure, we’d done our best to keep each other away from that part of our lives, but that begged a few questions of its own. ..mainly, why?
Just about everything in our lives was shared without hesitation or fear.
I’d been the first he’d told when he’d been afraid he’d caught something sleeping around in high school.
..which turned out to be poison oak he’d brushed against on a school trip and hadn’t realized before using the bathroom.
He knew I kept a watch on the weird little mole on the back of his thigh just in case, and he had stayed with me when a nasty stomach bug had made a mess of the bathroom. ..and had cleaned it up.
I’d known just about everything there was to know about his exes, and I’d shared a lot with him about the women I’d dated.
He told me about the stupid and weird shit in his classes, and I mentioned stuff I’d read while I was doing video editing.
If he was upset or hurt, he might keep it from others, but he always shared it with me, and I did my best to comfort him.
I didn’t like to show my fear or anger, but with him, I could express it without worry because, at the end of the day, he was Milo, and I was Eli, and those kinds of things wouldn’t faze us.
So why was sex off-limits to us? Nudity I understood, being comfortable with your sibling naked was bound to be weird, even though that should have fit the bill perfectly for our relationship, and yet didn’t.
But why sex? Neither of us was bothered by the topic; we hadn’t been raised to treat the subject as taboo.
From what I’d heard, Milo discussed sex with other people, sharing personal details without batting an eye.
And sex didn’t make me squeamish. I could get TMI from others and roll with it.
But he couldn’t talk to me about those things, and I always felt uncomfortable and...restless whenever I learned more about his sex life.
It was a mystery that had popped up before, but I was nowhere near solving it.
“Do we have to talk about it?” he asked as we walked toward our shared apartment.
“It happened. Hell, like you said, it was bound to happen at some point, and it’s wild that after being up in each other’s space for years, it’s a miracle it took that long.
I’m just glad it wasn’t the other way around. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how would you feel if you walked in and found me getting dicked down?”
It was a reasonable question, and a very Milo way of asking.
Neither fact stopped me from jerking in surprise at the sudden intrusion of the idea, which had never crossed my mind, though I imagined anyone else would have made the same logical leap Milo had.
Why I hadn’t asked that same question of myself could get lumped in with all the other weirdness surrounding me when it came to Milo.
There might be an answer for that somewhere along the line, but it wasn’t coming to me now, and I wasn’t going to force it when I had the mental imagery he’d just put in my head.
“I...” Was all I could get out while we walked, suddenly switching our places in my memory.
What would it have been like if I'd walked in and found him...what, stretched out on the couch while someone, probably Raf, was topping him? What if it had been before Raf, and Milo was doing… the doing? Would one be better or worse than the other? Would it matter if it were Raf or someone else I didn’t actively despise?
I had no idea, but the mental image of Milo being bent over and fucked was officially burned into my mind, so that was...weird.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “Never really thought about it...until now. So, thanks for that.”
He snorted. “You’re welcome. But me? I think it would be a lot fucking weirder if you walked in on me having sex.”
“I don’t think I can pick which one would be weirder. To be fair, I only have one event to work off.”
“Oh, I’ll plan it so you can walk in on me next week. Can I pencil you in for Thursday?”
If he were talking to anyone other than me, I was pretty sure he’d be tempted to do exactly what he was offering. “I didn’t say I wanted to have full context. We can leave that a mystery, eh?”
“Are you saying that because you really don’t want to see me naked and dicked down, or because you don’t want to see me with Raf?”
“Both,” I admitted as he tapped at his phone. Glancing over, I realized he wasn’t talking to his boyfriend, which gave me a sneaky sense of relief that I didn’t like, and was instead ordering food.
“What is it with you two?” he asked, having worked through the meat and veggie options along with the broth choice, and was browsing the banchan offered with the meal.
I didn’t need to throw my two cents in for that; we knew each other’s dietary preferences, down to me knowing he preferred Hungarian paprika over any other kind, and he knew I was iffy about standard pickles.
“The two of you around each other are like hissing cats.”
“We are not,” I said with a shake of my head. “We just don’t like each other. It happens.”
“Yeah, okay, but you’ve never had an issue with my boyfriends before.”
“Sure, I have, Shawn.”
“Okay, that’s true, but he was a dickhead.”
“Right.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Do you think Raf is a dickhead?”
“Why do you do this?” I asked in exasperation.
“Do what?”
“Ask me about your boyfriend. Anytime I’ve offered opinions about the guy you’re dating, you either ignore me or, if it’s bad enough, you get pissy with me.
Then you sulk, deny you’re sulking, but act all pissy and quiet for days, even when you’re trying to act normal.
I really don’t want you getting into one of your fits. ”
“You’re allowed not to like my boyfriends.”
“You sure as shit don’t act like I am.”
“Well,” he grumbled, putting his phone away and sitting on a bench. Apparently, we were going to wait around the block from the restaurant while the food was being prepared. “You are, and I’m allowed not to like what you say.”
“Fine, but I’m also allowed to keep my mouth shut so you don’t punish me for honestly answering the question you asked,” I told him, crossing my arms and watching expectantly.
People who didn’t know him well could be taken off guard by how stubborn he could be, but I was used to it.
The whole family had hard heads, but Milo’s came in bursts; one minute, he could be perfectly carefree, and the next, he could be fighting to the death on a hill that seemed unimportant to anyone but him.
It could throw people off their game, but I knew when to brace for it and not be thrown off balance if he lashed out.
He scowled heavily, glaring into the distance.
I saw his bottom lip bulge as he ran his tongue along his teeth.
He was already mad, but trying to give what I’d said a chance.
I knew better than to push it, because when Milo got fired up about something, he dug his heels in and refused to back down.
That he was giving my words a chance said a lot about our relationship, and I knew to respect that enough to keep my mouth shut.
His face screwed up and then relaxed with a heavy sigh. “Just...why don’t you like him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, alright? He just...rubs me the wrong way. The closest I can get to anything concrete is that he gives off major douche energy. Like he’s only with you because you’re hot and know how to have fun.”
“Hot?” he repeated, looking at me with wide eyes.
I raised a shoulder, feeling a little uncomfortable. “I mean, c’mon. I’m not blind or stupid, Milo. I can tell you’re good-looking, and even if I didn’t see that with my own two eyes, I see how other people look at you. Plus, you are fun and know how to make other people have a good time.”
“So, what, you think he’s shallow?”
“I’m not saying yes or no; that’s just the feeling I get.”
“Wow, that’s...so concrete.”
I ignored his sarcasm, recognizing it for anger bait.
“I did say there was nothing concrete. You know damn well if he’d actually done something bad, I would have brought it up.
That’s why I’ve kept my mouth shut, because there isn’t anything definitive.
And for the record, I’m not saying he’s shallow, but I think his feelings toward you are. There’s a difference.”
“It comes to the same thing,” he said, looking away, upper lip twitching. “It means our relationship is shallow.”
I sighed, because what the hell was I going to say to that?
Milo was emotional and impulsive, but he wasn’t an idiot.
He had taken my statement, which I had meant strictly at face value, and traced it to the logical conclusion I hadn’t thought of before he’d brought it up.
Now it had been brought to that point, I couldn’t deny it, and doing so would come off as false and piss him off all over again.
“Look,” I said, dropping onto the bench and looking sidelong at him, smiling a little. “So what?”
Surprise flashed over his face, and he looked at me. “Huh?”