He could only hope that when he landed in LA, a message from Miles would be waiting for him, too.
Miles lay on his front, his stomach pressed into the mattress and his face smooshed into his pillow, head tilted to the side just enough that he didn’t accidentally smother himself to death—although, truth be told, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. A little bit of suffocation was nothing compared to the fear, shame, and mortification that he was pretty damn sure was waiting for him in the bathroom.
He was, to put it simply, a complete and total idiot.
It had been roughly a month and some change since that drop-dead gorgeous alpha had graced his doorstep and proceeded to fuck him into another dimension, and with each passing day, Miles had begun to notice more and more that maybe a typed-out message and a phone number weren’t the only things Jun had left behind when he’d disappeared from his apartment without saying goodbye.
And no, okay, Miles hadn’t called him. He’d tried. He had really, truly tried. During that first week, he would regularly take out his phone and begin crafting a text message, only to quickly delete it and chastise himself for being ridiculous.
Miles:Hey, it’s Miles. We uh, had sex? Remember?
Delete!
Miles:I had a nice time too. Maybe we could meet up again? This is Miles, btw. Hope you remember me lol…
Delete!
Miles:I thought about you in the shower this morning and couldn’t help wrapping my hand around my?—
Delete, delete, delete!
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t reach out to him. This wasn’t something he did. The fact that he’d downloaded Grindr in the first place was surprising. The fact that he’d opened Grindr and actually pursued a hookup was unheard of. The fact that he’dactually hooked up with someonewas “aliens have landed on Earth and are demanding Little Debbie’s snack cakes” levels of unbelievable. And with Jun, of all people! He had been so utterly certain that Jun would turn tail and run the second he saw him in person that he didn’t even feel all that anxious replying to his DMs, because it wasn’t like anything was going to come from it.
And yet.
Miles’s stomach churned, like it had been doing increasingly often over the past few days. It was officially getting to the point where he could no longer convince himself that it was because of a bug that was going around, or the questionable burrito from the back of his freezer that he’d eaten as a pathetic dinner last Sunday because he hadn’t felt up to going grocery shopping.
This can’t be what I think it is,he told himself for the millionth time.
All the signs are there!another voice in his head countered, also for the millionth time. He’d been having this internal argument on a near constant basis during all his waking hours, and he knew that he just needed to rip the proverbial Band-Aid off and find out for sure so he could stop going around in circles, but… what if it was true?
He’d been one hundred percent honest when he’d told Jun that he was on birth control. What he’d failed to mention, however, was that he’d recently switched types, his old one having caused a lot of annoying mood swings and night sweats… but he honestly hadn’t thought it was that big of a deal! Birth control was birth control, right? What difference did it make if it was just a different type?
But then—after his heat had started to fade earlier than he expected, and the stomachaches and exhaustion had begun getting more frequent—he’d gone and dug through the drawer in his room where he tossed things he didn’t particularly want, but that felt too important to throw away, and dug out the information pamphlet the new pills had come with. He’d read it from start to finish, making sure to read the fine print this time.
May take up to two full weeks to take effect. Use alternative preventative methods in the interim period to prevent pregnancy.
Yeah, the sad part about that was it wasn’t even in the fine print. It was right there on page two, clear as day, under the subsection “Important Information About Your New Birth Control.”
But who actually read those pamphlets anyway? Shouldn’t his doctor have told him the pills might not be effective right away, just in case? Frankly, if anyone was at fault here, it was his primary care physician, and not himself for being such a complete slut in bed, begging to be fucked raw by a total stranger. He had actuallyremoved the condomfrom his cock for him.
But yeah, definitely the doctor’s fault.
His stomach churned again.
Lost in his anxiety spiral, Miles startled when he felt his phone buzz with a notification somewhere in the vicinity of his head. He patted around blindly until his hand found the device. He instinctively pressed the button on the side, illuminating the screen, and squinted at the brightness of it—he hadn’t bothered to turn on a light, and at some point during his lament, the sun had set without his knowledge.
Jun_iper is going live in fifteen minutes!the notification read, tone jaunty and excitable, totally oblivious to Miles’s internal woes.
“Hrrnggh,” Miles groaned, dropping his phone and smashing his face fully into the pillow, oxygen be damned.Perfect,he thought.Impeccable fucking timing.
Because that was the other Thing with a capital T that Miles had spent the past few weeks trying not to feel guilty about. It wasn’t as though they’d had an in-depth talk about their personal lives outside of Grindr when Jun had slid into his DMs—most of their conversation had been pretty singularly focused on what they wanted to do to each other that night—but still, Miles had felt then, and continued to feel now, that he had been lying by omission by not telling Jun that he knew who he was.
Actually, it was worse than that.
He had known who Jun was because he happened to be a diehard fan of his. Like “pay to receive exclusive content from his channel even though he could definitely be using that money for groceries” levels of diehard fan.
For the record, he had not sought Jun out, nor had he even known he was in town. The fact that he had reached out to Miles had been nothing more than a fluke. In fact, becoming a fan of Jun’s video game streaming channel had been a total fluke, too.
