Page 43 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Kinda dumb. They don’t say that to me about pussy.”
“Well, there were a couple.”
“Ugh, those were just horny girls hoping I was drunk enough to forget they were women and that I am strictly dickly. Craving the cock. Priority on the penis.”
“How many alliterations for being gay do you have?”
“I don’t know, kinda making them up as I go.”
I shook my head. “Go to sleep, drunky.”
“I’m being serious,” he protested, which meant I would not get back asleep anytime soon. Usually, having food while drunk meant he fell asleep quickly, but there was the odd occasion when that didn’t happen. Sometimes, eating and lazing around gave him a second wind. There was no predicting it, but if you knew the signs, you could see it was happening, and it was happening now. “It kinda sucks that you’re not into guys.”
“Uh,” I glanced at him, confused and...something jerking to attention inside me, something I didn’t have a name for. “So you could date me?”
“Ha, we’d be pretty good boyfriends,” he said, eyes still closed and either beyond caring what he was saying or too incoherent to understand what was falling out of his mouth. “But also because, like, you might have better luck with men. You don’t have very good luck with women.”
“This is a fantastic time to point out that you haven’t exactly had stellar luck with men.”
“Yeah, but that’s me.”
“Fine, you go straight for a while, and I’ll go gay, and we can see if we were just assigned the wrong sexual orientation at birth.”
“Ha, that would be funny.”
“It would definitely make people think we’re weirder than they already do.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, then cracked an eye to stare at me. “If you could, would you?”
“Would I what? Go gay?”
“Yeah, like if sexual orientation was a choice, what would you choose?”
“Hmm, probably bi. Seems like it offers the best chance of getting laid. But from what Moira and Mason tell me, it’s not so great for the dating scene. They’ve both been passed on for something serious because people know they’re into both.”
“That’s ’cause people are stupid and insecure. They’re good choices.”
“Jace and Kayden definitely agree.”
“Well, it’s kinda cheating with Jace because he likes both too, so Mason doesn’t have to worry about him giving him shit over liking both.”
“Kayden is straight, doesn’t mind that Moira is bi.”
“True, true. But doesn’t mean they haven’t dealt with bullshit from people for being bi.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got pretty thick skin. I could handle it.”
“I bet,” he snorted, rolling onto his side and throwing an arm around my middle. I would have to wait to see if that was just him being his usual affectionate self or if he was preparing to fall asleep. I was sure that if Milo had his way, he would never go to sleep without someone in his bed, even if that meant hunting me down and sleeping with me. I wouldn’t have complained, but for whatever reason, he went for the second best of having a body pillow to wrap around instead, with only the occasional moment of ‘indulging’ in sleeping with me.
It stood out simply because I couldn’t explain why Milo did that when I could explain a vast majority of Milo’s behavior. There were still parts of him hidden from me, and while Ifirmly believed that everyone should be allowed their secrets, I still tried occasionally to see. Whatever it was, though, Milo had hidden it well. It didn’t help that, for whatever reason, I was wary of bringing it up. It should be incredibly easy to tell him that if the lonely goof wanted to sleep with me, he could. Yet, just like something inside him I didn’t recognize or understand held him back from doing it, something equally unknowable and elusive inside me kept me from saying it.
His arm slid down to my waist and wrapped around there as he scooted closer, a soft sigh coming from him that made me smile. It was stupid that we were so...well, stupid about things when so many other things came to us so easily. Comfort and ease were the two that came to mind whenever we had moments like this. Sure, it had taken Milo to drown most of his inhibitions, but I didn’t care. At least not that he was drunk, I was as fond of him drunk as I was of him sober, but I just wish it didn’t take particular circumstances for it to happen anymore.
Used to be that he wouldn’t hesitate to crawl into bed with me. Admittedly, that had been when we were kids, at an age when things just were...well, not easier because kids can still go through shit, but there was a simplicity to it all that I missed—our teenage years had introduced a complexity and haziness to things that had once been simple and clear. It was probably because that was around the same time that people started wondering if he and I were more than just...what we are. That hadn’t bothered me, but it had eaten at the usually ‘who cares’ Milo for whatever reason.
“Stupid,” I muttered into the quiet dark of my room. The whole thing was completely stupid. Stupid that people felt the need to keep pushing their beliefs and attitudes on shit that shouldn’t have included them in the first place. Stupid that Milo had ever let it get to him when he usually didn’t care about whatother people thought about him, about us. Just...stupid that the world always found a way to interfere in perfectly good things.
After all, why shouldn’t we enjoy something as simple as...touching each other? We’d been doing it forever before the outside world had gotten in the way. I could easily and confidently say I had never been as comfortable with another person as I was with Milo. If that was gay, so what? I knew that with him, I had someone who knew me better than I knew myself, who would have my back with everything, who I could rely on even when I didn’t think I needed to rely on anyone, and who had been there through most of my life, and fully intended to be there through the rest as well.
