Milo #3
I stood there for a moment after the beep in my ear told me the call had ended.
I stared at the wood, wondering what I was going to do, and glad no one was in the hallway to see me staring at the door like it had all the answers to my problems. I had to wait to let the heaviness ease before realizing what it was.
It wasn’t guilt, or at least it wasn’t just guilt I was experiencing.
It was loss, grief. A strange feeling for me, considering there wasn’t a whole lot in my life that required grieving.
I had never lost a parent, like literally every one of my other siblings had, because I had never known Marshall in the first place to mourn him, and I’d had my mom and then Marcus when I’d been older.
I’d never known any real loss, just setbacks.
..and the occasional breakup, of course, but nothing quite like this.
I had to face it, I was looking down the barrel of the very real possibility that the choices I’d been making lately could cost me everything.
It would obviously cost me my relationship with Raf, which was already over, though he didn’t know it yet.
And what a shitty feeling it was, knowing I was going to end things with him, to leave him for Eli, but knowing also that he was completely unaware and that it was going to get sprung on him.
It was a shitty, nasty feeling that left me feeling like dirt because Raf was a good man, and he didn’t deserve to be dumped for the sake of another person.
I could be looking at the possibility that my livelihood was also facing complete extinction.
The loss of a steady source of income doing the sort of work that, sure, I had stumbled into without intention, but I enjoyed it, damn it.
Call it attention seeking, but I loved seeing people’s reactions to the content Eli and I put out, and I adored the way it seemed to affect other people, even if that was purely entertainment most of the time.
Now I could have to watch all that work go up in flames because I was what.
..with the man I loved and had loved in so many different ways it was impossible to explain?
And then my family. Our family. They mattered most, and I was sure Eli felt like I did.
He had already learned what it was like to lose someone so dear to you that the loss tore your life apart and left you gasping and terrified.
Now...we were going to risk the same thing all over again, on a larger scale, and to both of us?
“Ah hell,” I groaned, turning the knob and letting myself into the apartment.
I was met with dim light as I stepped through the doorway, and the sound of the TV playing some video Eli had apparently drawn up.
The apartment was dark save for the light from the TV, and I walked in, quietly closing the door behind me and kicking off my shoes before stepping into the living room.
It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, and I stopped, feeling the heaviness in my chest swell into something painful.
..almost wonderful in the way it hurt, but painful all the same.
Honestly, I should have realized that the peace and quiet I’d known while I’d been gone was because Eli had decided to take a nap.
Sometimes I swore up and down that the man was part cat from how often he found a comfortable spot, flopped down, and drifted off to sleep within minutes.
It wasn’t even like he didn’t get sleep; his sleep problems from childhood had faded after he’d come to live with us at the hotel, he just..
.liked napping. I had never understood it; most of the time, I had to be exhausted even to sleep at night, whereas that jerk could lie down on a reasonably comfy surface and boom, out like a light.
Yet the sight of him created an ache in my chest, and somehow soothed it.
How often had I caught myself staring at him, watching him at a vulnerable moment like this?
Feeling that same ache in my chest, but absent the soothing warmth?
All those times I had watched him, I had hurt to reach out and touch him, to feel his skin, and know he was mine, that I was his.
To know him in a way I had known others, but had always wanted to know him.
I had tried to push those thoughts away, but they would find a way to come up from the grave I thought I’d dug deep enough, to haunt me all over again.
Now I was able to stare at him openly without fear that if he were to wake up, he would question why I was being a creep.
And with the knowledge that everything I had ever dreamed of having from him was.
..right there for the taking. Not just for the taking either, but offered freely, and returned in kind.
God, what kind of life was it that you could get the exact thing you wanted, the thing you had spent years dreaming of, ripping yourself apart at the loss of something you couldn’t have...and then when you finally have it, find yourself wondering if the cost of getting it was going to be too much.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, telling myself that spiraling into the dark thoughts that haunted the edges of my mind right now was exactly what I was supposed to be avoiding.
I was, at heart, a creature of the moment, living my best life in the present.
That allowed me to slip by life’s little snags and traps, both big and small.
My ability to go with the flow and obsess about the details that could catch others, like Eli, was because I just..
.let things happen. Although our current predicament was a prime example of how that could backfire, considering not thinking about the long term was how I found myself falling into the biggest consequences, but that was who I was.
..and that’s who I needed to be for at least one more day.
Opening my eyes, I looked at him, and the warmth inside me blossomed even further.
He had clearly showered after I left because he’d changed from the clothes I’d last seen him in.
He was sprawled on his back, wearing only a pair of loose shorts, one arm thrown over his face and the other dangling off the couch.
The light from the TV told me his growing ‘nudist’ tendencies with me hadn’t slacked off in the slightest because I could see the faintest stubble of dark hair from his groin peeking out from the top of his shorts.
Turned out, Eli did not bother shaving when it came to manscaping, just clippers and trimming it into a manageable patch.
I wouldn’t have cared if he preferred completely bald or let it grow loose and wild like a jungle.
At the end of the day, it was about Eli, and he had always been that to me.
That hadn’t changed except for the part that I was now allowed to ogle him, and if he was going to put himself on display, then I was going to look.
I felt a lot more like my normal self as I did indeed stare him up and down like the sexiest thing I had ever laid eyes on.
The TV cast him in an odd light, and maybe it was just because I was horny for him at all times, but it made him look good.
He had always cared about strength, stamina, and consistency over looks in his workout, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get plenty of looks from it.
His stomach was flat, and stretched out as it was, I could see the shadows of the lines from the light, the definition in his chest, and the arm thrown haphazardly over his face.
Approaching him, I felt the ache in my chest return, but I let it be, knowing that to focus on it would give it strength and let it overtake me again.
Instead, I ran my hand down his leg, feeling the warmth of his skin and watching his face.
I could only see his lips and the bottom of his nose, but there wasn’t the slightest twitch as I ran my hand from his thigh down to his calf.
Not that that was a surprise to anyone who knew him, the man could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and sleep through just about anything.
The me I needed to be slid into place as I smirked, a delightfully evil and mischievous idea flashing to life inside my head.
If he wanted to go to sleep on his back, making a display of himself to tempt me and then sleep when I rolled into the apartment and didn’t wake at my touch. ..why not see how far it could go?
Sex hadn’t been on my mind all day, and maybe it was just the desperation to escape my inner turmoil and stress, but sex was certainly interesting right then.
I stepped closer, kneeling in front of the couch, resting my hand on his stomach, and stroking in gentle circles.
His stomach twitched slightly under my touch, as did one of his fingers, but nothing else, not even a shift in his steady, deep breathing.
I brought my fingers down, stroking along the line of his hip, and watched him intently, feeling excitement flush through my body.
Deciding to take things further, I slid one hand up the leg of his shorts.
His dick was soft and gently lying against his thigh.
I took hold of it, feeling its warmth from being nestled so close to him, and gave it a few testing strokes.
His lips thinned, and his breathing paused momentarily before it resumed its deep, sleepy pace that told me he hadn’t noticed.
Well, his conscious mind didn’t notice, but I could feel the shifting of his cock in my hand, that told me his body was aware and it was already shifting the blood flow where it thought it needed to be.
That was exactly where I was also interested in, but I pulled my hands back to hook my fingers into the waistband of his shorts and begin pulling them down.
There was even less reaction than to my groping, but I stopped when they were down to his thighs to look him over.