Milo
YOU’D THINK THAT there wouldn’t be much to organizing books and putting them on shelves, but I was vibrating with anxiety.
It was like I was trying to defuse a bomb in the fucking living room, terrified that I might mistakenly crease a page or bend a spine.
Jasper was passionate about his books. I needed to take good care of them.
I crouched in front of one of the many boxes I’d surrounded myself with, opening it up and staring at the neatly packed rows. Hesitantly, I ran my fingers over the spines before gingerly taking one out.
“Machi… fuck, whatever. Some dead guy with way too many vowels in his name.” I flipped it over, squinting at the cover—The Prince. It sounded like a children’s bedtime story, which was fitting, since reading it would probably put me to sleep.
My brother’s interests were nerdy enough that I couldn’t tell which books were for coursework and which ones were for leisure, but something told me titles like this one and Plato’s Republic landed squarely in the middle.
Flipping through the pages didn’t help me understand any better.
The use of language was ancient, and after a few sentences, my vision began to blur.
I couldn’t keep my attention on the words long enough for them to make any fucking sense.
I chewed my lip, looking between two books I’d picked up and the shelf, trying to remember the way Jasper sorted them back at Mom’s. I wondered if he sorted them at all, given the way his room was always littered with stacks of books on every available surface.
I glanced at my phone lying on the floor. Sorting the books by author would have to do, because I didn’t want to inconvenience Jasper by texting him only a few hours into his shift.
I managed to fill two rows of shelves before getting distracted, opening even more boxes in hopes of finding something a little less boring. There were a few knick-knacks nestled in between some of the books, one of which was a pink dragon head sculpture carved out of some fancy rock.
I couldn’t help but smile as I found a place for it on the shelf. Every addition brought me closer to home. It was like taking back pieces of a time I’d lost, one I’d let slip through my fingers in the haze of a new relationship.
The next thing I pulled out was a picture frame.
Upon flipping it over, I discovered it was a candid shot of my brothers.
In the photo, Jasper’s head was resting on Blane’s shoulder, the two of them sharing a genuine moment of laughter.
My lips twitched, but I worked to keep the smile on my face as though someone might see me and know how I really felt.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, drawing in a deep breath and searching for solid ground in my increasingly unreasonable mind. I might as well have been trying to find it in outer space, because why the fuck was he framing photos of them together and not us?
I was here first.
The urge to destroy the photo by ripping it up, burning it, or throwing it off the damn balcony was overwhelming.
Jasper looked so much softer and at ease with Blane.
Why didn’t he look like that with me? He was always harder on me, always more judgmental with me.
I was painfully aware of what an inconvenience I’d been lately, drowning in my deteriorating mental health.
He was getting sick of me, I could feel it.
I was making his life harder just by being alive.
I wanted to make him happy.
I positioned the photo on the bookshelf, stepping back and digging my fingernails into my palms in that habitual, steady rhythm, clenching and releasing my fists to ground myself.
Tethering myself to physical pain usually helped, but the longer I looked at the photo, the angrier I became.
In my eyes, it was damning evidence that Jasper preferred Blane over me.
There was no fucking way. He moved in with me. He did the blood bond with me.
I’d lied about not having the vial of his blood still after he’d said he didn’t keep mine.
I was too embarrassed, too ashamed to be the only one who’d kept it.
Why was he so nonchalant about losing it, or about not keeping it at all?
It just illustrated how much he didn’t care about me.
Pair that with the way he saw no issue with fucking my best friend, and he might as well fucking hate me.
I was trying to move past it, but somehow, my jealousy was getting even worse.
Dropping to my knees, I began to open every single box in the living room, searching for the vial.
He didn’t remember what he did with it, which meant there was a chance he still had it.
I needed him to have it, needed that tangible evidence beyond the scars on our palms. The search grew frantic, my hands beginning to tremble as my brain worked overtime trying to convince me that every self-deprecating thought that ever crossed my mind was the truth.
After a few minutes of working myself up to the point where I was starting to sweat, I abandoned my task altogether and got up from the floor, heading toward my room. I paused by Jasper’s bedroom door, the tension in my limbs high with the memory of him fucking Oliver returning to haunt me.
Before I could think better of it, my hand was already on the knob, yanking the door wide open. I stood there for a moment, shifting back and forth on my feet anxiously. Just a peek, and then I could put it to rest.
I turned the light on, glancing around the small space. The bareness of the room alone had my shoulders slumping prematurely in defeat. The twin-sized bed, tiny nightstand, and pile of clothes next to the wall didn’t seem very promising.
There was a singular cardboard box in the corner, and it felt like my only hope. When I peeled back the flaps, I tilted my head to the side slowly, blinking a few times. Definitely not my vial of blood.
The empty sockets of a skull stared back at me, nestled atop a bed of bones.
“The fuck?” I muttered, lifting the skull up and down in my palm. It had a bit of weight to it, more than you’d expect from some cheap Halloween store prop.
Peering into the eye socket, I could see a label that I couldn’t quite read, the font too small. At the very least, that ruled out my brother being a murderer and confirmed he was an even bigger fucking nerd than I’d originally thought.
I tossed the model skull back into the box and folded the flaps back down with a heavy sigh, throwing myself onto the bed. I rolled onto my side and pulled the nightstand drawer open, only to find a couple of weed grinders, the pungent smell filling my nose and evoking a fresh wave of nostalgia.
Frustrated, I slammed the drawer shut, my eye catching on something small and black sliding to the front as it closed. Curiosity piqued, I sat upright and opened the drawer again to find a suede jewelry box that had been initially too far back to see.
My phone vibrated in the pocket of my sweats, pulling me away from my investigation. I glanced at the notification, pulling it down with a swipe of my thumb to view the message without opening it, so he wouldn’t get the notification that I’d read it.
Jasper: What, no picture of the shelves?
My brother’s fancy way of asking if I was still alive, given I went from spamming him with texts to not texting him at all. It made me smile. I knew it was cruel, but the longer I went without responding, the more he worried about me, and I liked how that felt a little bit too much.
I abandoned my phone on the bed and reached for the small box inside the nightstand drawer.
If it wasn’t in there, I was well and truly going to lose my fucking mind.
My hands were so sweaty and shaky that I could hardly get a grip on the lid, struggling for a moment to shake it off the top of the box.
My heart soared.
The little glass vial I’d been searching for was stored neatly inside on a bedding of silk fabric.
I carefully plucked it out of the box, rolling it around in my palm as I inspected it.
It was old, the blood dark and climbing up the sides, having been improperly sealed and left without any anticoagulant. It was just like the one under my bed.
I rolled onto my back, the mattress creaking as I held the vial up under the ceiling light.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I squinted to keep them from falling.
The relief was dizzying. The familiar sensation of nausea tugged at my insides and crawled up my throat, and I pressed the keepsake to my lips with a shuddering breath.
Something about being in such a vulnerable state of mind always set my nerve endings on fire. That heat spread through my body, shivers rushing in its wake. Goosebumps erupted on my arms, and I didn’t think twice about reaching down to my sweatpants and palming myself through the material.
“Fuck,” I whimpered, looking up at the ceiling with heavy lids.
I knew that Jasper helping me find release last night was just his way of trying to keep me safe, protect me from myself. Still, feelings I had no business having sank their teeth into me.
I wanted more.
The fabric started to cling as I rubbed my steadily growing erection, wetness bleeding through.
My mind wandered to the way Jasper’s mouth had felt on me that night.
Even though he’d never touched me like this before, I had a feeling he’d know just how to do it.
He’d know how to give me exactly what I needed, and it was all too easy to imagine his hand in place of my own.
I tried to tell myself it wasn’t immoral.
We all wanted to be known, to be seen, to be unconditionally loved, and maybe if someone else could make me feel that way, maybe I’d picture them instead.
But right now, Jasper was all I had. He made me feel good, and goddamn, I wanted to feel something other than the vast sea of emptiness I’d been trying to fill my whole life.
I slipped my hand under my waistband, groaning as I made contact with bare skin. There was an undercurrent of guilt, as I realized just how fucking hard and leaking my cock was from imagining Jasper’s hands and mouth on me. I ignored it, hand wrapped tightly around my aching length.
My phone buzzed against the mattress, only spurring me on. I imagined Jasper sending me a follow-up message, and the thought made me squeeze myself harder. I was sure I could make myself come just from the proof that he cared.
He’d tease me if he saw how easy I was—call me a fucking mess. And I’d take it, too, as long as it meant he kept looking at me.
I ran my fingers over my swollen tip to wet them, hips jerking from a heady jolt of pleasure. My hand moved of its own accord, spreading the sticky evidence of my sin and settling into a steady rhythm.
Despite the pleasure, something was lacking, and I gritted my teeth in frustration. This was good, so good, but nowhere near as good as rubbing off against Jasper had been. I squeezed myself even harder to try and make up for the difference, my strokes growing sloppy.
I dragged my other hand, the one holding the vial necklace, down over my mouth, past my jaw, and squeezed the sides of my throat. The chain necklace wrapped around my fingers bit into my skin with the pressure, the vial pressing hard against my windpipe.
I started to sob. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed that I was crying while jerking off, the high of finding the vial—my vial, our vial—too powerful to resist when it promised the sweet, intoxicating relief that I craved. The proof that I was loved.
The fantasy took on a life of its own, and I was helpless to stop it.
My imagination supplied all of the condescending remarks he might make as he fucked me, and the sound of his voice in my head had my balls drawing up tight, leaving me teetering on the edge of bliss.
I slowed my ministrations, trying to drag the moment out longer, unwilling to let go of the high.
Then I was pumping my shaft again, the earlier buildup immediately starting to prickle at the base of my spine all over again.
My toes curled, and I thrust my hips up into my fist harder, faster, chasing the pleasure with desperation that bordered on madness.
My shirt rode up my stomach with my frantic movements, and I was barely breathing, little puffs of air escaping my throat as I continued to choke myself to the brink.
Blotches of white exploded behind my eyelids, and my throat burned with a guttural moan. In that moment, I came apart completely, the emotions reaching a crescendo and tipping me over the finish line. I was drowning and floating all at once as thick spurts of my own release coated my bare stomach.
The low hit before I managed to catch my breath, shaky hands falling away from my cock and throat. The high had turned into something far more sour, bitter on my tongue.
It was shame.