Page 95 of Love Thy Brother
He shrugged, accepting, but hesitated a foot away from the sofa. “Not sure I want to park my arse after what this couch has seen the last few months.”
It was my turn to be bemused, but he didn’t elaborate, and eventually, he sat down, curled his legs up beneath him and pulled out his phone.
I left him to it and went back to the kitchen. I boiled the kettle and dug around in the fridge of dreams Mateo had left for us. Still didn’t know what the fuck bocadillos were, but I found sandwiches that were heaven sent and a giant bag of Doritos in a cupboard, so I didn’t have much to worry about.
Armed with tea, I took it all back to the living room. Rubi sat half slumped over the arm of the couch, still poking at his phone, brow furrowed in concentration.
I had to ask. “What are you doing?”
“Googling if orgasms cure migraines.”
I set the tea where he could reach it. “And?”
“It depends. On what point in the migraine cycle you do it. If you peak too soon, you can make it worse or trigger a whole new one.”
“Sounds complicated.”
Rubi sighed. “Isn’t every-fucking-thing?”
“Are you upset we can’t cure you with sex?”
“I’m not upset about anything if the implication is you’d be willing to help me try.”
There was nothing I wouldn’t do to ease his pain. If I could cure him with my magic cock, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But sex... it was complicated. I’d seen him come twice now—that I remembered—and I was already a different person. I wasn’t thinking about getting lit. All I wanted was to be naked with him for the rest of my fucking life. “I wasn’t implying anything. But... yeah, I’d probably do it.”
Rubi tossed his phone aside. “That the only reason you’d fuck me?”
“You’re asking me now when I’ve just had your dick in my mouth?”
“Blowjobs aren’t fucking.”
“It’s still sex, boo.”
“I know. It’s just... different. Thinking about being inside you. You inside me. I want it so much, but I’m scared of it too.”
“Why?” I mean, I knew why. It terrified me too. That intimacy. That closeness. We’d had it once and lost it. I couldn’t live through that again. “Tell me.”
Rubi sat up, uncurling his legs. He wasn’t wearing Oscar’s sweatpants anymore and I was glad of it. It had been kind of freaky to smell my housemate with Rubi’s cock in my mouth. I loved Oscar. He mattered to me more than he knew, but damn, I didnotwant to fuck him. Or think about him while I was fucking.
No one’s fucking anyone. You’re having a complicated conversation instead.
I let myself get sucked into Rubi’s orbit, easing between his legs, gazing down at him as he gazed up at me.
He took my hands, lacing our fingers together. “I hate that something so fucking shite has forced us together, but I ain’t sorry about the time we’ve had these last few weeks. I’m just terrified of what happens when it’s over.”
“You know what happens. You live your life. I live mine. If we can’t find happiness in that for both of us, it’ll be the same as it ever was—”
“And us fucking won’t change that. No matter how brain-melting it is,” Rubi finished.
I nodded. “Exactly. Though, maybe it won’t be brain-melting. It wasn’t exactlymemorablethe first time.”
“You’re out of your damn mind if you think that. You know what? I don’t think we fucked that night. We couldn’t have. I don’t care how messed up I was or how much shit you’d put in your body, there’s no fucking way one of us was inside the other and the moon didn’t fucking explode.”
Rubi was almost shouting by the time he was done. Nose flaring, face flushed, it was fucking glorious.
And devastating, because he was wrong. “There was a condom wrapper on my bedroom floor. You must’ve missed it during your great escape.”
I swallowed the bitterness. He didn’t deserve that shit from me.
