Jasper
I DIDN’T GET more than three hours of sleep lying next to Milo in his bed.
His breathing was too loud, his body too warm.
The tossing and turning annoyed me like nothing else, but it was easy enough to swallow when every time I ran my fingers through his hair, his lips twitched into a sleepy smile, and his head nuzzled into my touch.
I trailed my knuckles over his hip for the hundredth time, dragging his shirt higher on the path back up to his ribs.
He squirmed, half-conscious and pliant. I spent a long time staring at the streaks of blood that had dried on his skin like a macabre painting, and I felt a strange satisfaction not knowing where mine ended and his began.
This was how it was meant to be.
When he was asleep, there was no fight. No sharp tongue, no walls to scale—only raw vulnerability.
It was the soft, exposed version of him that trusted me not to do anything cruel with it.
The notion that other people had been given this freely and still chose to hurt him made something dark and ugly coil in my chest. They hadn’t deserved it.
Last night I’d crossed a line. The label of brothers had been my shelter, sturdy enough to hide behind, a place I could stay forever, never risking losing him.
There was no way to go back to it now. Being brothers had been safe, but what I wanted from him was anything but.
It was selfish, and I would, with absolute certainty, make him worse.
I wanted to be the object of his obsession. I wanted him to get jealous when I talked to other people, and I wanted him to crave me the same unhealthy, desperate way he did his lovers. Every red flag, every toxic behaviour, I would covet them the way no one else could.
As long as he didn’t leave me behind again.
I shifted and leaned down until my face was buried in the crook of his neck.
The compulsion overtook me, and I placed an open-mouthed kiss over the fluttering of his pulse.
There was an audible hitch in his breath, and I liked the softness of it a little too much, because I dragged my lips higher, kissing all the way up to his earlobe.
“Jas…” Milo sighed.
I watched the way his heavy lids opened a fraction, my heart rate picking up as he looked at me in a daze before closing them again.
I could get away with more if I wanted to.
Instead, I pulled away, resting the side of my head on my bandaged fist, elbow propped up on the pillow beneath me. Even though I’d cleaned it up at the end of the night, the deep cut still ached with every movement.
What I really needed to do was get up. I peeled the blanket off, determined to do the things I was good at.
I could run Milo a bath, make a pot of coffee, and cook breakfast. Those were all safe ways to express how much I cared about him, and they were easy enough to frame in a nonchalant light.
But as I moved to get out of bed, a pair of scrawny arms encircled my waist and squeezed.
I covered Milo’s bandaged hand with my own over my stomach, going completely still.
I had to be careful because I didn’t know where his head was after last night.
“Where are you going?” he asked groggily.
I shot for normalcy while I ruptured from the inside. “Coffee.”
“Don’t leave.” He buried his face into my back with a groan and tightened his grip.
“The kitchen doesn’t even count as leaving.” I rolled my eyes.
“It does. I can’t see you out there,” he argued childishly.
“You’re right,” I said sarcastically. “It’ll be like when the dad goes out to grab milk and never comes back. I’ll disappear forever.”
A throbbing pain caught me by surprise, and my back arched in reflex. I peeled Milo’s arms away and turned to face him, grabbing his jaw. “Did you just bite me?”
“No?” He pursed his lips, fighting off a roguish smile while he batted his lashes innocently. I wanted to kiss that bratty little face so badly that it pained me, but the waters were so muddy, I didn’t know where it was safe to swim.
“I guess you’re making your own coffee then,” I threatened playfully.
Milo didn’t respond, his eyes dropping to my lips. Butterflies swarmed the cage of my stomach, the vivid memory of claiming him filling my mouth with the phantom taste of his. Now that I’d had him, my previously well-contained yearning was nothing more than a sinking ship.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he murmured, sounding a little sad.
“Like what?” I scoffed.
“It makes me want to kiss you.”
My mind short-circuited, caught off guard by the easy admission.
When I asked if he was hungry, he’d say no just to be defiant, even while his stomach growled.
Any time I wanted him to admit he needed something, I had to gaslight and manipulate him into doing it on his own, using calculated teasing and condescending remarks.
It was a skill I’d perfected over the years.
“So then kiss me.” I pulled him closer by his chin.
He looked up at me, so goddamn vulnerable. “You won’t hate it?”
He had no idea how impossible it was for me to hate anything he gave me.
“Why would I hate being kissed by you?” I asked achingly.
“You kissed me last night. If I ask too often, you’ll start to hate it. You’ll start to hate me,” Milo answered with a certainty that spoke of a lived experience, one that he was replaying in his mind.
I felt like a failure for not being able to protect him from lovers who would never understand. Lovers who would never be able to give him the patience and reassurance he deserved, all things that I knew I could provide.
I hated that I’d spent half of my life pretending my love was strictly fraternal when I knew what we really were. We weren’t long-lost brothers born to different parents. Milo was a black hole, and I was the light, pulled past the event horizon until I didn’t exist without him.
“Don’t speak for me.” I released his chin to pinch his cheek.
“I’m sorry.” Milo let out a half-laugh, half-sob.
“Now you’re apologizing?” I said in disgust. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Milo?”
He laughed some more, and I wished I could bottle the sound.
I swallowed it instead, kissing him, the rumbles of laughter vibrating against my lips.
It was an impulsive move, risky with the uncertainty of last night.
I couldn’t help it. He didn’t know how badly I wanted to be the source of everything he felt.
Every emotion, positive or negative, I’d take it if only he’d give it to me.
“You are being so fucking gross right now,” he squealed.
“Oh, so you prefer it when I’m insulting you?” I snorted, grinning against his skin.
“No, it’s just… weird.”
“Oh yeah. Genuine affection? Weird as hell,” I agreed jokingly.
Milo slid his arms around my neck, and I went down willingly as he dragged me closer. I peppered his face with kisses, paying particular attention to the freckles on his rosy cheeks. He wiggled and protested beneath me between breathless bouts of laughter, and I chased the high it gave me.
The tightrope we walked frayed with every playful kiss, the sound of giggles and the soft rustle of sheets simultaneously healing something in me and tearing me apart.
I rolled onto my side and took him with me, our breathing laboured, the moment verging cinematic.
In a movie, the couple would confess their love to each other right here, and their happily ever after would unfold.
For us, nothing was that simple.
Several minutes passed in silence, save for a few disgruntled noises while I ran my fingers through his hair again. When I pulled my hand back, he glared up at me like I’d done something offensive.
An awful lot of attitude for someone who was pretending they didn’t want their hair pet in the first place.
“I’m sorry I ruined your photo.” He sniffled, and I was sure the waterworks were about to start. The events of yesterday were hitting him all at once now that the dust had settled.
The photo hadn’t even crossed my mind. When I’d seen him, the only thing I thought about was the way I’d nearly lost him to a bottle of pills, and the overwhelming certainty that there was no way in hell I was about to lose him for good.
“It’s just a photo.” I shrugged it off. “It had it coming anyway. The audacity of it, just sitting on that shelf, minding its own business. Criminal.”
“Stop it, I’m trying to be serious.” He choked on more laughter, a stray tear escaping the corner of his eye.
“Fine. Tell me why you did it, and I’ll think of a fitting punishment for your crime,” I suggested.
“It should’ve been me.”
“In the photo?” I clarified.
“Making you happy.”
It broke me.
“You do make me happy,” I whispered.
“I make you worried and angry.”
“You’re my brother, it’s my job to worry about you.”
He shoved at my chest, leaning back to look at me.
“I don’t want to be your brother.”
Ouch.
“Then tell me what you want.”
“I can’t.”
My own words thrown back at me felt like being doused with a bucket of ice water. My first instinct was to take it as rejection, the urge to get up and leave flooding my body. But I knew that wasn’t what this was.
I’d avoided being honest about my feelings twice last night, and like always, I defaulted to expressing love as caretaking. Somehow, I’d even managed to turn sex into damage control. It made sense that he was hurt and confused.
I hated myself for being such a coward.
It was still early enough after his breakup that I was half-convinced he was only burying himself in me because I’d been close by. But my heart had been home to these feelings for nearly a decade. Was he hurting and lonely, or did he really want me too?
I opened my mouth, but he was already slipping out of my arms and scooting to the edge of the bed. I watched him sit up, all the words I wanted to say lodged in my throat.
“I’m gonna shower,” Milo said flatly.
I should have stopped him from leaving, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t want to die without ever having taken the risk. Whether this feeling was fleeting for him or not, I wanted to claim it.
I wanted him to be mine.