Elijah #6
“Why do you think I asked him if he’d stay with his friend this weekend?
” Moira muttered, and I knew then that the shithead had known about Milo and me, expected we’d bring it up at the dinner, and thought it best to get Micah out of the blast radius in case something ridiculous happened; it involved our family, so something ridiculous was bound to happen.
“Boys,” Dad piped up, nodding his head toward Marty.
Milo squeezed my hand back and cleared his throat. “It’s about way more than just sex. If it was just sex, I would have found a way to get over how I felt?—”
“You can just say jerking off,” Mason muttered and then grunted when Jace’s body gave a hard jolt and glared at him.
“But it was and always has been more than just sex or a crush,” Milo continued, and I could feel the twitch in his hand that probably ached to smack Mason.
“It’s never been a mystery to anyone that I’ve loved Eli the whole time I’ve known him.
And deep down I knew that love wasn’t just..
.a deep friendship…shut up, Dom, but something else.
But I kept that buried and hidden, even from myself, because I knew how much it would hurt to be in love with someone who couldn’t love me back.
But I…” he glanced at me, his eyes searching my face, and when I hoped that he would find it, he took a deep breath and smiled, “I have the chance to love him like I always have, but now I get to be in love with him. I get to be with him in the way I always wanted. People can spend years and years and years trying to find the person they could spend the rest of their life with, but I’ve always had Eli for that, and he has me.
It’s just now...now we get to do it, not just as best friends, but as two people who are in love and don’t have to search anymore.
We have it. And that’s what I want, to be with Eli, and him to be with me.
I always used to joke with Eli that we were made for each other, but somewhere in the production line, someone hit the wrong switch and made him straight or made me a guy.
He’d tell me it was probably a few more switches for getting the wrong gender over the wrong sexuality, and then we’d get into this whole debate about what kind of switches it would take for either?—”
“The point,” I muttered to him with a soft laugh. “Get to the point.”
“But that is the point,” he said with a huff.
“Because only you would go along with the stupid shit I say and do and provoke me to be even more ridiculous. Because I was right, we’ve always felt made for each other.
And I had no choice but to let our sexualities get in the way of that, but I’m not going to do the same thing just because there’s a ‘stepbrother’ title attached to us.
It’s not wrong . Maybe it’s weird to some people, but it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of, and now I want to prove that I’ve been right for years, that we’re right.
I’m in love with this man and want us to be happy together. ”
It was rambling, veered off course at one point, made a weird sort of sense, and was said with complete and absolute sincerity.
In short, it was precisely the sort of thing I would expect out of Milo, but even expecting something didn’t take away the swell of warmth that came to life in my chest as I stared at him with wonder.
I had always known he was a gift waiting to be fully appreciated by the right person, but now I was the one being presented with the gift.
Now I was the one who had to see what I was being truly offered; now he had chosen me to be his partner.
I was the one he chose to bathe his attention with, the one who would always get me into some shenanigans, but would also be confident that I would always have his loyalty and devotion.
I was the one who got to wake up to him every morning if I chose to, or rather, be woken up by him, his hair sticking out in every direction, a bright light in his eyes that shouldn’t be there after only being awake a couple of minutes, and the sun making his eyes twinkle.
Then again, I suppose I’d always had that, but now it wasn’t just more but all. It was all mine if I chose to have it.
“Damn,” Mason said into the silence. “That was...alright, call me convinced, holy shit, Milo! You’ve got Jace all choked up, look at him!”
Milo frowned. “He doesn’t look any different, but he...okay, now he looks murderous.”
“Well, yeah, he doesn’t like people knowing he has big squishy feelings, but congrats!
Other than Micah and me, people don’t usually make him sentimental.
Your inspiring speech of love and loyalty managed to get through all his thorny armor and pierce his big gay heart with love! It’s a day for…AGH!”
We all watched but didn’t flinch when Mason’s chair ‘accidentally’ tipped backward and sent him crashing to the floor with a dramatic clatter of wood and a flailing of limbs.
And if we saw Jace pull his arm back and resettle himself in his chair.
.. no, we didn’t. Sometimes life was full of mysteries, and sometimes those mysteries involved the karmic retribution that some people drew upon themselves by being jackasses.
There was a point where you had to understand that some stuff was above your pay grade and just soak in the beauty of the moment.
Moments like Mason being given a mild concussion.
Marty glanced at Dad and gave a little shrug. “And you, Eli?”
Oh God. “Please do not make me try to follow his amazing speech with something of my own. I am begging you, it will never compare.”
She smiled. “I was just asking the same question of you that I asked of him. I don’t think anyone is expecting another speech.”
“You should probably avoid one,” Moira said, peering over the table toward her twin, who was trying to get free of the legs of his chair. “Mason might not be able to help saying something else, and the next person he pisses off might put him in the hospital.”
“I was just…ow! Arlo...Arlo, help me, my leg’s stuck,” Mason complained from out of sight, save for his hand reaching up desperately toward Arlo.
Arlo looked at his grasping hand for a few seconds before turning his attention back to me. “Go ahead, Eli.”
“Arlo!” Mason gasped. “Betrayal, even from you?”
Arlo reached down and patted what I assumed was Mason’s head or arm. “It’s not always about you, Mason, now shh. Eli is ready to admit he feels the same way as Milo.”
“Well, I can’t say that ,” I said, and at the sharp looks, I scrambled to clarify.
“What? I can’t. It wasn’t that long ago that I was living a perfectly heterosexual life without any idea that it could and would change.
So I can’t make statements about how I’ve always wanted him, or how I’m intent on making sure my every dream about us from the past comes true, or at least comes close to true.
All I have is what we had before, and what we have now. ”
“And what ,” Mason breathed heavily as he came back into view, shooting Jace a filthy look as he adjusted his chair and sat back into it, “do you have?”
“Everything he described,” I said simply.
“He was right that we’ve always been close, and that closeness made us sometimes wish things had been different, different in a way that would let us be together without having to share with anyone else.
Which wasn’t possible, I guess, until it was possible.
Now we’ve got that chance, and I’m not going to waste it just because it might be weird or wrong to some people, because I know it’s not.
No one has ever known me, understood me, or allowed me to be me quite like Milo, and they probably never will.
We’ve always tried to be together as much as possible without crossing a certain line, but now we’ve passed that line.
Now we get to do the same stuff as before, game together, eat together, literally sleep together, live together, laugh and cry together.
Except now we’re doing it as us, just us, without anyone else involved or feeling left out unfairly.
We were always going to share our lives, except now we get to do it not just as best friends, but.
..together. I love him as much as he loves me. ”
“Well, you’re certainly determined, I’ll give you that,” Marty said slowly. “You are aware of how difficult this is going to make it for you two, right?”
“We’ve got a good idea,” I told her with a shrug. “But we’re not going to let that get in the way. If we were, we wouldn’t be here talking to all of you about it.”
“This was our way of showing we’re not going to back down, that this is what we want, and we’re going to do it,” Milo added, and I could see a wetness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Honestly, what matters to us is that you two are happy,” Dad said with a small smile.
“All we’ve wanted for any of you kids is to be happy, whether that’s single or with someone.
The fact that you two are together is...
unorthodox, but I can’t say I have a problem with it.
The world will have a problem, and as ready as you think you are, you aren’t. ”
“You’re going to get tested a lot sooner than most people’s relationships get tested,” Marty warned.
“Yeah, about that,” Milo said with a grimace. “We kind of already had a taste of that. Didn’t go well.”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, hell,” Dom muttered, and though it was subtle, I could see how he slightly leaned away from Marty and Dad.
“We kind of, sort of, got, uh, outed to the internet, remember?” Milo said, his voice growing quiet. “Just a little...well, a lot, but a little.”
Jace grunted. “I’d stick to romantic speeches; you’re not good at inspiring confidence.”
“Fuck off, Jace, you try to deal with this shit.”
“I’m not the one sleeping with my stepbrother, so I don’t have to.”
“You’ve been around Mason too long. Asshole.”