Page 57 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
I knew he’d been out drinking in the past couple of weeks, and I knew one of those times he’d only been a little buzzed after a mid-week night out with Raf. He had stayed with Marshall in his hotel room when they’d gone out for the night. Clearly, he was willing to drink, but it was either with overzealous moderation or when he went too far, he stayed as far from me as possible. Not really necessary, but I couldn’t blame him for being cautious. I didn’t want him to act differently around me, but I knew if the roles were reversed, I’d be awkward.
I also knew he was waiting for the follow-up conversation, both needing and dreading it in equal measure. He knew there was more to my end of things than I’d let on, and while it was killing him not to bring it up, he was giving me space to think through things. I appreciated it, even if I felt guilty for putting him on hold for what was probably one of the most impactful things he’d ever done.
But what was I supposed to say to him that wouldn’t make things worse? I did see him in a different light, but while I couldn’t put a name to it, I knew it wasn’t a bad light. I probably thought about that night almost as much as he did, but it wasn’t with disgust, annoyance, or judgment. In many ways, I didn’tknow how to approach the subject because I still wasn’t sure how I felt other than to insist that I didn’t think less of him.
If anything, I was more curious than anything else.
How the hell was I supposed to ask questions without tormenting him?
What exactly had he fantasized about when he’d given in and done that? Had he always gotten off to the fantasies, or were most of them just moments, flashes of an idea that got his engine going before he diverted it to something or someone else? How often had he looked at me walking around, completely oblivious, wearing shorts with no underwear or just my underwear, and felt something nagging at the back of his head? Was it just lust? Maybe more the taboo than he’d originally thought, or was it just for me, without other things thrown in for a bit of spice?
The kind of questions I couldn’t just throw out there without causing problems.
So I sat on those questions, along with the questions I had for myself. Because the thing was, he had been closer to the truth than I’d led him to believe. I knew I was taking the whole thing with more grace than most people in my position would. It would have been perfectly normal to be shocked and put off, even temporarily. But I wasn’t. What discomfort I could name was just confusion, a big ball of it. Confusion was not something I should feel first, but there it was, and I could only look at it with the same curiosity I felt toward everything else.
So I just...waited. I thought carefully, weighed everything, and waited. Milo and I had navigated a lot together since we were kids, and I just had to have faith that it would happen here as well. We didn’t have the answers, but I had faith in us, in our bond. I didn’t know the end result, but that was a worry for when that bridge was crossed, not before.
“So...what are we thinking?” he asked after the episode ended. “Continue or game?”
“I’m thinking game,” I said, taking another drink.
“Hmm, competitive or chill?”
“The last time we mixed competitive with drinks, you got the building manager called on us, and the time before, it was the cops.”
“Chill, it is,” he snorted, sliding out the second screen we had stored behind the TV, and began booting up our systems. “It’s been a few months since we kept going on Kingdom.”
I snorted. “Alright, Minecraft it is then.”
As far as relaxing games went, it was the best and the worst choice. Mainly because, although you could spend the whole game carefully building whatever project you had in mind, you had to consider the other players. Milo was what people called a wild card. Sometimes, he was perfectly fine setting up the things a group needed. But sometimes he was struck by the urge to strike out and find something new, build something new, or dig down and accidentally bring up things your group wasn’t quite ready for.
“Try not to accidentally summon Nether bitches to us,” I grumbled as the laid-back, happy music of the game began to play.
“I’ll be good,” he assured me, and although I believed him in the short term, I didn’t in the long term. I knew better because his interests and obsessions changed with the wind. The guy really needed to be tested for ADHD, but until he was ready to face that truth, I would let him go through life as he wanted.
There were moments of communication, but it was hit or miss as we played. We didn’t need to talk because we knew how to play around each other.
At some point, I stretched along the couch to lay my feet in his lap. Perhaps I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. Or maybe I did, who knows? Sometimes you look back and haveto accept that things happened the way they did simply because they worked out that way.
Whatever the reason, my feet and part of my legs ended up in his lap as we sat on opposite ends of the couch. That had been comfortable, and why not?
My legs on him, was that how it started? Or maybe it started a long time ago, when he broke through my childish, terrified rage. It had to start somewhere, didn’t it? Maybe it was when he’d touched me in a way I’d never dreamed he wouldwantto, but clearly did. Or maybe because that was when I started to understand so much more about myself, but even still?—
The moment my legs stretched over his lap, and not his legs over mine, that was when things really changed for us.
In that moment, though, I was ignorant of the implications and just wanted to get comfortable. I did notice how he paused when my legs slid into his lap. I chose to ignore it, though, paying attention to his doubts and hesitation would only feed them. Most people saw Milo at his most confident, but I had seen firsthand that when his confidence was shaken, he could be as skittish as a street cat kicked one too many times. The best thing was to continue as normal, either letting him pretend he was fine until he really was, or until he finally broke and shared what was churning in that head of his.
His tension didn’t last long. It was another few minutes before his arms lowered, having picked them up when he felt my feet in his lap, to rest on my shins. Once again, I didn’t let on that I noticed, focusing on the game. I probably would have paid good money to know what was going through his head for the fifteen minutes that followed, but instead, I carried on sipping my drink.
About twenty minutes into the game, I realized the tension he’d been holding was beginning to leak out. It must have been slow for me not to have noticed before, but he graduallygrew more comfortable, drinking more and losing himself in the game's rhythm. After half an hour, I was pleased to see that my ‘just act normal’ plan was working flawlessly.
By the hour mark, he was completely at ease, leaning back into the couch with his arms resting on my legs. I noticed he glanced at me a few times, and I waited to see if he would say what was on his mind. When it became apparent that he was going to sit on the fence, I glanced at him. “What’s up?”
“Hmm,” he said, bobbing his head in thought, a sign that he was not only indecisive, but the loose way he did it told me he was starting to feel the booze. “Trying to decide if more alcohol is a good idea.”
Alright, he had broken the ice first, bringing up what had happened a couple of weeks ago, which was a sign he was more receptive to the topic, even if he might not be consciously aware of it. “You know, you’re allowed to drink around me. This isn’t Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Molester just because you had a few drinks.”
He huffed and pushed my legs off his lap, setting his controller down before snatching up our glasses to stomp off toward the kitchen. “You really know how to make me feel like I’m being stupid and dramatic.”
