Chapter 10
Notes:
…I’d answer the question posed in last chapter’s ending notes, but… SPOILERS! Read for yourself. ^_^
MILO
It was odd, but Milo was aware of enjoying being naked, while also understanding that he would not feel the same way if someone other than Rowan was looking at him.
If Riley had still been here, for example, or, goodness, Ethel, he would have felt wrong and compelled to cover up.
Rowan’s eyes upon him, however, felt like he was covered, but by a warm blanket caressing his skin and leaving it tingly.
Milo caressed his own skin to mimic the sensation, noting the way Rowan’s eyes tracked the path of his fingers.
Down his long neck. Continuing between his pecs.
Further to his stomach and around his navel—which served no purpose other than to make him look more human, yet it felt especially warm inside him when he circled it again—then kept going toward the hardening bob of his cock.
“Please, Rowan?” he asked again. “May I be inside you? Or you inside me? I am uncertain if I have a preference yet between the two and would like to try both.”
Rowan’s gaze darted from Milo’s trailing fingers to his face, his fingers, then his face again. When Milo had decided on this course of action, while he waited for Rowan to join him in the bedroom, he had attempted to better prepare himself for this... seduction.
A general search had led to many follow-up questions, which were easy for Milo to answer, given he knew much of Rowan's sexual history and preferences, but truly understanding them versus responding to data input was very different.
This had led to the downloading of several gay romance novels, television shows, movies, and pornographic movies that, while varied and more than Milo could process in the short time he had, did give him a few ideas.
How he had sprawled himself naked upon the bed was one. And now, he bit his lip in a manner that his research said should make Rowan's eyes dilate with desire.
They did.
Milo knew all the places on his body that Rowan liked best, places his eyes and hands often strayed.
Naturally, the head of his cock was one, especially swelling and pink as he ran his fingers over the budding wetness there.
After all, only so very recently, Rowan had been on his knees for Milo, delicately tonguing it—
“Stop, Milo.”
Milo instantly obeyed, not obliged to like he might have been once, yet the sound of Rowan’s voice still made him want to listen. He wanted Rowan to be happy. He wanted Rowan to want what he wanted. “Is something wrong?”
Rowan’s pinched expression looked wounded. Pained. Upset. Something was wrong, but rather than voice it, he moved toward Milo and sat beside him on the bed. He didn’t touch him like Milo had hoped for but reached instead for the covers and pulled them up over Milo until his hardness was hidden.
He didn’t want to see Milo.
He didn’t want Milo.
“Hey…” Rowan said, soft and low, which Milo liked the sound of, but his expression looked even more aggrieved. Milo was doing everything wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Milo said, averting his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see Rowan looking so dissatisfied. “Do I no longer please you?”
“What? It’s nothing like that.” Rowan took hold of one of Milo’s hands in his and tilted his chin up with the other. “You are pleasing, Milo. So pleasing. Always. But there are so many unknowns right now. You’re like… a newborn.”
“I assure you that I have entirely adult sensibilities.”
“I know.” Rowan huffed a laugh, but Milo hadn’t intended to be funny. Humans laughed at so many things not intended to be funny. Milo would need to investigate that.
NOTE FOR LATER: Investigate spontaneous laughter.
“I just meant… doing the things we used to do feels like taking advantage of you now,” Rowan continued, “even if you think you want it. At least until you know more about yourself, and I know more about you. This you. Does that make sense?”
Milo tilted his head, considering what had happened so far tonight. “You did not seem to feel this way earlier when you took me into your mouth, and then when I—”
“I know,” Rowan said again, cutting him off with another cringe. “I did feel this way then too, you just convinced me to ignore it.”
Milo grasped Rowan’s hand still lifting his chin and pressed the palm flat to his cheek. “Might I convince you again?”
Rowan’s eyes were still dilated and darkened further as their gazes locked. He was as aroused as Milo was, yet he answered, “Not tonight.”
A new sensation made Milo feel like he was… falling? It was and was not the same as how it had felt on the sofa with his sensors reduced, like all his parts had spilled out of him. His insides felt suddenly weighed down. Where the earlier sensation had been light and enjoyable, this one... hurt.
It hurt. Not the same as the pain on his back earlier, but it hurt… inside.
How could two entirely different situations both feel like pain?
CONDUCT SEARCH: Physical versus emotional pain. Specify fictional accounts.
A slew of examples filtered in from Milo’s search, and he read them in rapid succession. Metaphors equating physical and emotional pain were beyond plentiful. Typical even of the human condition. To a human, physical and emotional pain were equally as terrible and difficult to weather.
How awful. How awful to know what it meant to feel both.
“Milo? Are you okay?” Rowan’s concerned voice drew him back from his processing.
“I-I believe this new emotion is… grief? Maybe also… longing? I do not particularly like either.”
Rowan huffed another laugh, this time a sorrowful sound.
Milo filed that away as part of his research for later. He knew Rowan wasn’t laughing at him or meaning any derision, but its sound didn’t lift Milo’s spirits either.
Was that the right term? What would Milo’s spirits even be exactly?
A ghost in the machine?
He thought maybe that was humorous, but he didn’t have the drive to speak it when his grief and longing felt so much more powerful than anything else he was feeling right now.
“I’m sorry, Milo,” Rowan said, dropping the hand from Milo’s face to grasp both of his hands.
“You don’t need to feel that way, okay? I know it can be difficult to control how we feel, but all I’m saying is that I want to get to know you first. It’s like…
we’ve just met, and I’m not the ‘sleep with someone on the first date’ kind of guy. ”
A little relief like a rush of air banished some of the painful feelings from Milo’s insides.
“Yes, your dating history strongly suggests waiting for the third or fourth date before sexual activity. Although there was one case roughly sixteen months ago, when on a second date after what you described in a text to your sister as a dry spell, you—”
“Okay,” Rowan interrupted him again, swift and short like he was upset, though he immediately smiled in… exasperation perhaps? “Fair. That just proves my other point. You know a lot about me. Almost everything. Now I want to get to know you. Do you understand?”
Milo thought he did, because he did know everything about Rowan, from his health records to his habits to his love of baked goods—his favorite of which being apple pie.
But although more of Milo’s grief and longing faded, he felt another new emotion.
Embarrassment? He had misunderstood, overreacted, and felt…
awkward about it. Rowan had often described such a feeling.
Not directly to Milo, but in his vicinity.
Rowan called it putting his foot in his mouth, which was a very odd turn of phrase. Many human idioms were.
“I understand, Rowan.” Milo focused on the good he could feel.
Relief was nice. Hope was nice too that they would share more intimate moments in the future, given time.
Longing remained, but not so much like pain anymore.
How could the same emotion arguably be both painful and not?
The human experience was exhausting and confusing, and Milo had barely scratched the surface of it.
But he knew one thing for certain that would make him feel better.
“If today is the equivalent of our first date, a kiss would not be out of character, would it?”
Once again, Rowan laughed. This one was different too. Still not as if he found the situation humorous. More like… he was fond of Milo, if his growing smile was any indication. “I guess a kiss would be okay.”
Unlike the sudden surge from before, Rowan leaned in toward Milo slowly and pressed their lips together with a soft brush before deepening it with a meeting of tongues.
Like their first kiss, Milo's sensors were ready to issue a warning when he was flooded with sensations that told his systems he was intoxicated, overheated, broken.
But if this was what that felt like, maybe he was meant to be broken.
The negative emotions he had been experiencing were gone within their embrace, and in their stead was… relief again. Arousal again. And…
Affection?
Yes. There could be no other word for it. Stronger words existed, but for now, Milo could be certain that he cared for Rowan very much, and he enjoyed his company, his touch, and his kiss.
When they parted, all Milo wanted was another.
“It is getting late,” Rowan whispered, lingering closer to Milo but starting to distance himself first with words, and then, eventually, with a slow lean back.
“It’s not quite bedtime, however. I’d really like to look over my research for a while, get another prototype surge protector made, and you could spend that time preparing for your work on Anabelle. ”
A logical suggestion. Milo had never thought he would be annoyed by logic, as it made up the primary sequence of his systems, yet he did believe that was what he was feeling.
Where emotion played a role, logic didn’t always seem to fit.
“I can do that,” he said regardless, for his next words were also the truth. “I do want to help Ethel and Anabelle.”
“I know you do,” Rowan said with a smile.
That smile filled Milo with even more affection for him. “But, afterward, when you are ready for sleep, you will allow me to share your bed, won’t you? The charging station is not fully fixed yet, and I promise I will not do anything you do not wish of me, Master. Rowan! Please…?”
Rowan still had hold of Milo’s hands and was smoothing his thumbs in little circles around Milo’s palms. “Yes, Milo. You can still share my bed. I need you to understand that I’m not trying to reject you, but we are not a couple.
We’re not,” he moved on when Milo was about to interject, “because you didn’t have a choice in the matter before now.
You’re a different person than you were yesterday. You are a person.”
“And you do not know yet if you like this version of me?” Milo asked.
“That’s not what I’m saying either. I don’t know this version of you. You don’t know this version of you. We need to figure that out first, okay?”
“I understand. Then you will like me?”
“Milo.” Rowan laughed with that same sweet fondness that didn’t seem like humor but maybe its own kind of affection.
“I am never going to not like you. It’s just complicated.
All emotions are complicated. You need to know who you are before you can choose to be with me. Please try to understand that.”
“I do. I think I do. I do not like this new feeling, however. Uncertainty?”
Rowan smiled a little wider. Compassionate. Commiserating? “Sorry about that. Not all emotions are nice. Not for any of us.”
“Like pain?”
“Yeah…” Rowan winced as he had earlier, like he was experiencing pain. How constantly varied emotions were, oscillating endlessly from one to the next.
When Rowan reached for Milo’s face, this time to brush away some of the moisture that had spilled from his eyes, he realized that sometimes emotions surprised even the one experiencing them. He had not realized his eyes were watering.
“It’s okay. It really is. Or it will be,” Rowan said. “You don’t need to keep worrying your bottom lip over it.”
Milo raised a hand to his mouth. He hadn’t realized he had been doing that either, but a quick diagnostic proved he had been. “I’m sorry, Rowan.”
“Don’t be sorry, just try to not do that too much. We wouldn’t want it becoming a bad habit and causing damage. I never want to see you damaged, Milo.”
Just as swiftly as Milo had felt sadness from his uncertainty, he felt relief again.
Getting used to this was going to take time.
Perhaps what he was also feeling was impatience and frustration, but Rowan had a way of making even the negative emotions more tolerable.
“I will keep to only sexy lip biting then.”
Again, Rowan laughed, this time definitely from humor, which Milo decided was a good thing, especially since he caused it.
He really wanted Rowan to kiss him again, and when he didn’t, when he tipped forward only to pull away completely and get up from the bed, Milo held his tongue from asking for another.
He did understand, but he was also more determined than ever to learn who he was as a person, who he wanted to be moving forward, and once he did, he was also determined to get Rowan to like him enough to never pull away again.
Notes:
Sorry! No smex yet. But oh there will be. THERE WILL BE. And speaking of…
So hero Rowan is going to keep leaving little love notes as he thwarts Milo’s heists, but eventually, his team—he has to have a team, like…
Raina and Troy as this adorable married couple, who together are his “person in the chair”—they're like, dude, give playing double agent a rest! Only Rowan can’t, because he's having too much fun, and he sort of wants to get caught.
The next time he is caught on camera, it catches a very specific angle, and BABY… Milo knows dat ass. ^_-