#leobeej

He squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath. But he may as well be resisting a hurricane. His nose brushes against Peg's as he turns his head slightly and looks. And sure enough, there's Leo Bardonaro. BJ's gaze snaps straight to his like a puzzle piece clicking into place.

Leo's slouched in one of the chairs, his long and lanky legs spread wide and sprawled. His shirt, unbuttoned just a touch too far, letting the light from the crackling fire shine on his smooth skin. His tousled hair is messy, ruined by someone's fingers. Perhaps his own rather than a partner's. BJ posits this because a girl has stopped by his chair to talk to him, but Leo merely glances up at her with a grin, says a few words, and she goes on her way.

Then Leo's eyes find him once more. He smirks, amused, then brings his glass to his lips and takes two sips. BJ watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows, his face heating.

"BJ?" Peggy asks, barely audible.

BJ sucks in a sharp breath as his focus shoots back to her. "Sorry. I don't mean to…" He forces a smile and tucks her blonde, wavy hair behind one ear, then leaves a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose. "Have I told you how lovely you are tonight?"

"Only about half a dozen times," she murmurs with a faint drawl, that hint of dryness that he's always loved. She bites her bottom lip, then glances over her shoulder.

A spark of panic rushes through him. "Peggy, could we—"

"Oh!" She turns back, sparkling with triumph. "Oh, I think I see what has you so distracted."

His grip tightens on her hip. He can feel the sweat breaking on his forehead. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, he replies, "I'm not distracted."

"BJ."

"I'm not." He articulates both words slowly, patiently.

Peggy huffs, then leans to cup her hand around his ear, shielding her lips from view. "It's him, isn't it? The man sitting by the fire."

His heart slams to a stop. And then it takes off faster than a stallion's. "We shouldn't talk about that right now."

"I'm not asking for a discussion," she whispers. "I'm curious. All you have to say is yes or no."

The gravitational pull between BJ and Leo draws him right back in. When their gazes meet, Leo cocks his head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. After another drink, a droplet lingers on his lips, and he swipes it away with his tongue. The memories hit him like a truck—Leo pinning him to a wall just out of sight of the Inner Quad while the full moon shone above, his mouth slamming against BJ's, his tongue slipping inside to rub over his own, how only a week had passed from that moment before Leo had his hand inside of BJ's pants while he whispered the filthiest words that BJ had ever heard right against his lips.

He could lie to Peggy. But what would be the point? She had been the one to bring up the idea in the first place, that while they were long distance during college, they could quash their loneliness in the arms of someone of the same sex. They never discuss their experiences, not in letters, not in the rare phone calls that they're able to make—and BJ isn't sure if he'd be able to verbalize what Leo does to him without the skin melting off his face, not to his precious Peggy—but he has acknowledged in the past that he'd found someone. It had felt like the right thing to do.

He doesn't want to become a man who lies to Peggy, who betrays her trust when she's given it with such innocence. BJ shivers under the weight of Leo's gaze and Peggy's body alike. "…yes."

Peggy hums. She thumbs over his boiling red cheek, making his lids flutter shut with a gasp as tingles follow her touch. "Why do you think he's looking?" she whispers.

Why indeed? BJ gulps. "I-I don't know."

"Mm."

For a long moment, they hover there together, BJ so restless in his skin, his body wanting nothing more than to scoop her up and rush away so that he can worship her exactly like he wishes, but his legs chained to the chair. Then Peggy takes his face in both hands and holds him there as she kisses him fiercely. He tightens his arms around her with a shocked moan. Her lips work against his with a hunger that she's never allowed herself to show when they aren't alone. And God help him, but he answers in turn, grabbing a fistful of her skirt in a trembling grip as he surges up to meet her.

Peggy breaks the kiss with a giggle. She leans back just enough for him to see the wicked gleam in her eyes. "All right. So let him watch."

"Peggy," BJ whispers frantically, barely able to contain himself.

"I want him to see," she replies. Her warm breath brushes over his lips with every word. "I want him to know who claimed you first."

original 1988 pulp novel

"C'mon, I'm not a kid," BJ blurts, then immediately regrets it. It doesn't matter that Leo's only a year or two older than BJ. Somehow he can still make him feel like he's twelve instead of a freshly minted eighteen. Leo chuckles, shaking his head, and it drags BJ until he toes the edge of humiliation. He rolls his eyes as he shoves at Leo's chest.

Leo seizes him by the jaw and slams him against the wall.

"Says the guy who can barely grow a fucking beard. Look at that baby face." As Leo turns him this way and that by the chin, BJ falls straight back into the ocean of desperation. The undertow's too strong. He tightens his grip on Leo's hem, seeking some kind of stability so he won't drown. But when Leo pats him firmly on the cheek—hard enough to sting—BJ's knees almost buckle all the same. "So sweet. So naive."

It's not the first time that BJ's felt the entire galaxy hold its breath for a moment, this suffocating ache in his chest. It's not quite anger. It's a prelude to it. An appetizer. As the air crackles inside his ribs, he waits to see if this is the day the frustration finally grabs hold of him and uses his body to put Leo Bardonaro back in his place. He's starting to think neither of them would mind. But just as he's flirting with the idea, Leo thumbs over BJ's bottom lip and leaves the sensitive skin branded by his touch.

"Then again," Leo purrs, "you are the little slut who got hard during your hazing."

God, what comes next? If BJ pushes for more, will Leo deny him? Leo never seems to need BJ as much as BJ needs him. He can shrug off so much of his own desire if it means that he has BJ miserably hard and wanting. "Leo..." His hand scales his slim waist higher and higher until he palms his ribs. "Please."

Leo tilts his head. "Please what?"

He doesn't fucking know. A creature lives in that crackling chasm right beside his heart, something fitful and hungry, and he's not yet learned the language to describe what it needs to be satisfied. He has to pivot instead. "Listen, if you're so sure I can't handle whatever you've got to give me, why don't you prove it?"

"Oh, I never said you couldn't handle it." Like a spider dangling from a silk thread right above its prey, Leo holds himself still, fingers bruising his jaw, thumb resting gently on his lips, a contradiction in terms. But when BJ catches Leo's thumb between his teeth, something breaks through. Sparks burst from Leo's eyes and shower BJ in heat. "Y'know what they say, Beej, college is all about new experiences."

When Leo yanks him by the jaw, his fingers could slip off BJ's skin and leave him free. They could, at least, if BJ didn't immediately yield to the command, if he didn't let himself be pulled in. Too many things happen in rapid succession—he's twisted around, his arm's pinned behind him, he's shoved, his cheek scrapes the wall—and when Leo exhales hotly against his scalp, BJ throws his head back with a weak groan.

"This isn't rough," Leo murmurs raggedly as he wraps his arm around BJ's shoulders. "Not really. But you're gonna scream for me anyway."

BJ's never been physically restrained, never experienced so much as a facsimile of it, but he finds himself grabbing another fistful of Leo's shirt so he remembers not to escape. He wants it, he wants it, wants to know what it's like to be completely under somebody else's control. Shocky breaths pulse out of BJ arrhythmically while Leo gropes him through his trousers. "Fuck... Y-You're not..." There's no response besides how Leo's other fingers pop open two of BJ's shirt buttons, then slither beneath the fabric and along his undershirt until they find the bare skin stretched taut over his collarbone. "You're not gonna hold back forever, are you?"

An almost soundless chuckle tickles his hair. "Oh, pretty boy, I'm gonna ruin you."

As BJ arches into his touch, he wonders not for the first time how Leo became so confident in handling a man like this. It's more than just a fella who learned how to suck somebody off in a fraternity house. He doesn't fumble as he works at BJ's belt, at his button fly, and when BJ instinctively spasms at the smooth slide of those digits easing inside of his briefs, Leo simply tightens the arm around his shoulders and keeps him right where he wants him. They both know BJ is physically stronger but Leo doesn't seem to be the least bit bothered by it. And sure, maybe he's bluffing about ruining BJ one day—maybe he's figuring it out as they go along too—but with each passing second, BJ doubts it more and more. Someone taught Leo everything that he knows, and for whatever reason, Leo's just as happy to pass it along.

Leo grabs BJ's cock none too gently and gives it such a sharp tug that the drag of skin on skin singes him. "H-Hey, c'mon," BJ mumbles, wincing, his body seizing up as Leo yanks again, again. "At least lemme spit in your—" A white-hot light explodes inside him as Leo sinks his teeth into BJ's throat. "Fuck!" He's shocked he's not spewing blood from his carotid.

The growl rattles straight through his veins, snatching away his capacity for intelligent thought. There's nothing but Leo, just him and the terrifying rush of pleasure-pain that BJ's fighting somehow to make sense of. It's like... Jesus, it's like a savage muscle strain that tears through the fibers in his thigh with jagged fangs when he's got the finish line in his sights, when he has a rival so hot on his heels that he could spit on BJ. When he thrashes like a mouse caught in a cat's jaws, Leo digs his nails into BJ's shoulder, and as he forms the three stabbing points of the most demented scalene triangle, the first endorphins overtake BJ.

Shit, shit, he can't stop now, can't keep himself from trying to fuck into Leo's fist while he whines. BJ gets his free arm flat against the wall, just something to rest on, but the moment he finds it, he's driven to bite it too, muffling the sounds he never planned to make—barely thought he was capable of producing. Something about Leo's instant sweet hum is like praise to him. Satisfaction. It creates a feedback loop where BJ's cock finally dribbles enough slickness that the handjob melts into a glide, smooth as a dream, this fanfare that's supported by the nails scraping welts over his chest and the line of bruises being drawn down his neck and the copper-flavored warning from the thin skin under BJ's tongue, growing and growing, building and building, never fucking ending, how the fuck do people not know this kind of thing is possible? This cocktail of sugar and spice that's turning his Stanford premed brain into nothing but exclamation points?

When Leo lifts his head and sucks in a deep breath, like he's been holding it, he curves his hand around BJ's throat to hold him still, and the press of his thumb against that first raw hickey loops itself around the weight that just barely restricts his ability to inhale, and it's this— It's more than— It's everything. An asteroid slamming into him. Shockwaves straight into his pelvis.

He doesn't realize he's shouting until Leo muffles him with his palm.

He's so overwhelmed by it all that his orgasm is practically an afterthought. It's like it's not even the ultimate endpoint. And that's terrifying in and of itself, really, because what the hell is supposed to come after the wave of pleasure breaks? BJ's still quivering in the wake of it but unable to move. To speak. Is there more pain? Did he do it right? God, he didn't do anything at all, merely stood here and took it. What if that wasn't the correct response?

He's already on the verge of hyperventilating—zero to sixty in half a second flat—when Leo turns him around, pushes him flat against the wall, and...kisses him.

They don't kiss. Leo kisses whoever his flavor of the month is when she's visiting campus. BJ kisses Peggy, of course, because he can't imagine a world in existence where he would ever want to stop kissing Peg, and especially in these treacherously extended stretches of time where they're long-distance while in college. Kisses are for their potential futures, not the temporary cure for loneliness.

And yet Leo's soft lips are brushing over BJ's all the same, tiny movements that ratchet his tension back down inch by inch until he can barely keep himself on his feet. And he never wants it to end.

"C'mere, c'mere," Leo whispers between smooches, trying to coax BJ toward the lumpy bed.

Even through the fog, BJ can feel his hardness digging into his thigh. He knows what that means. Knows what Leo needs too. But when his barely responsive fingers goof up the effort to undo Leo's belt, the amused click of Leo's tongue between his teeth makes BJ scowl. "Lemme do it."

"That's for later, stupid." A harder yank makes BJ give up his mission, instead trailing after Leo like a puppy. "I gotta check you out first."

"When later?" BJ demands through a slurring tongue.

"When I say so. Christ." Leo drags BJ onto the bed with him. "You're so precious when you're stubborn." He bullies the pillow so he can sit against the wall, then lets BJ collapse bonelessly on his chest.

As much as BJ wants to get his hands on Leo—see this through to the end—he has to admit that his whole body is shimmering anywhere that they're touching. He seems to have full license to nuzzle the soft, fine material of Leo's shirt and paw at it all he wants as long as he lets Leo forcibly tip his head to the side so he can examine BJ's throat, then pull back his neckline and thumb near the welts he left there.

Either seconds or hours later, Leo finally sighs. "All right, you'll live. Didn't break the skin anywhere."

BJ absently puzzles through whether that's a good thing or not. "You could've."

"Oh, I will, Beej. Trust me." Long fingers slide through BJ's hair and fill his head with cotton. "I know you can take it."

He doesn't know yet how to reconcile their fondly antagonistic friendship with the handful of times that they've messed around together—or perhaps it's more accurate to say when Leo has messed around with him. It always happens out of nowhere. They'll be studying together and Leo will flop on BJ's bed, put his chin on his shoulder, and read from BJ's textbook rather than his own. And before he has the time to parse through how humid the air has suddenly become, Leo's dragging the tip of his nose over the sensitive skin of his throat and sliding his clever, long-fingered hand out of sight under the book to cup BJ through his trousers.

That's the memory that floods him now, that has blood filling his cock until he's painfully throbbing in his grip. "No, no, keep going," Leo had whispered against his ear with a chuckle that dragged goosebumps all down his body. "If you fail that test tomorrow, how're you gonna explain that to the scholarship board, huh?" 

A strangled whimper vibrates through BJ from head to toe as he pushes his trousers and shorts all the way down, hears the clattering of his belt buckle when it hits the floor. God, Bardonaro's such a fucking piece of work, all gleaming eyes and sharp smirks, an easygoing drawl that sometimes makes BJ feel like a moron for how stressed he'll get about his own marks. Tempting propositions, addictive invitations for prank after game after lark, all these verbal jabs and banter that pull at BJ's loneliest threads until he's practically on a leash in Leo's grip, one that's twisted around his fist so many times that the only way to escape would be cutting through it.

But every time BJ gets spooked enough to try, there's Leo again, boxing BJ into a corner and palming him so lazily, cocking his head as he examines him like BJ's a scientific experiment. Getting him caught in the whirlpool. And though BJ knows that Leo's height doesn't equate to physical power—that it would take barely any effort at all for BJ to shove him away—he'd be the most egregious liar if he tried to tell himself that he didn't want every second of his attention.

BJ all but strips his cock with his rapid pace, beginning to tremble as he moans. C'mon, c'mon, he goads himself. You want him to see you hard all through lunch? It's meant to be embarrassing enough to dissuade him but all it brings to the surface is an image of Leo shoving BJ flat on the table in the middle of their fraternity house's dining hall and yanking his pants down and making BJ touch himself right there in front of everybody. Making all of their brothers see that BJ Hunnicutt, the golden boy, is so desperate for Leo that he'll follow anything he says. And fuck, if that doesn't have him dribbling a thick bead of arousal.

Leo's a bastard is what he is. He'll make BJ wait outside his room a good ten minutes after they're supposed to meet up for a walk to the quad because Leo's snuck a girl in again, is making her gasp and beg and scream in his bed for more, more, more. He'll scribble obscene doodles in the margins of BJ's notes.

But the thing is he's also the guy who'll sit back to back with BJ until sunrise, quizzing him on his notes without a word of complaint. He'll drop a mug of coffee off for him almost every morning so BJ can save the time, can grab an extra five minutes of sleep. When the guilt creeps in with the night—the knowledge of how sharply BJ cut off his parents the moment he arrived here, the way he has to hold his own baby sister at bay until he can get his degree and come back and get her out—Leo is always the one with an arm around his shoulders, sometimes filling the silence with jokes, sometimes just existing with him.

He's a bastard and he's also the strongest human connection that BJ has here, and it all wraps up to make him impossible to stay away from, even if BJ ever wanted to.

He's close. God, he's close, just needs a little more. BJ rips through his mental filing cabinet to try and find something, anything shocking enough that'll throw him over the edge. Leo jerking him off in the quiet corner of the library where anyone could walk in on them, maybe. Leo hiding under BJ's desk when one of their fraternity brothers drops in. Leo...Leo pinning BJ down in his bed, pressing the head of his own cock against—

The door flies open just in time to remind BJ that he never locked it.

"Fuck," BJ mutters as he throws open his armoire and ducks behind the panel, bending forward to try and grab hold of his trousers. "What the hell do I have to do to get you to knock?"

"Now, why would your best buddy ever have to knock, huh, Beej?" Leo drawls.

When the lock clicks shut, it's like a gun going off. BJ's cock twitches, drips onto the floor as he makes another attempt to snag his belt while his head is spinning. "Because it's goddamn polite?"

"We don't do polite in Philly." Step, step, step, one heavy footfall right after the other. Just as BJ straightens up with his clothes in hand, Leo's arm snaps around the armoire door and grabs BJ by the wrist. "What're we up to?"

"We're not up to anything." But BJ's voice is already breathless, and though he does his best to be modest, it's not like there's an easy way to hide his dick when it's fully erect and hanging out like this. "I-I just figured I'd—"

"—get up to all the fun without me?"

BJ whips his head around. The words disintegrate in his throat the moment he locks eyes with Leo and sees that slowly but steadily rising heat mirrored back at him. With a crooked smile in place, Leo looks every inch a leopard, toothy fangs and triumphant in how he's stalked his prey until there's nowhere to go to escape his whims.

Leo moistens his dry lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. "Where'd this come from?" He flicks his gaze down, then back up again.

God, God, this is really not helping the situation at all. It's the return of that thought loop, knowing he's strong enough to rip himself away, somehow getting twice as aroused at the thought of putting all the control in Leo's hands anyway. BJ sucks in a shaky breath. "Well, Bardonaro, you see," he begins, "when the muscles of the corpora cavernosa begin to relax, blood rushes into the penis, which makes it expand." Before his very eyes, Leo's smirk is widening, but BJ can't make himself stop talking. "And when the membrane of the tunica albuginea locks the blood inside the corpora cavernosa, an erection is sustained."

A few heavy seconds pass before Leo inclines his head, brow lifting. "Bravo. You'll excuse me if I don't clap." He rotates around so BJ's trapped against his open armoire door. His fingers open and send the trousers crashing back to the floor. "Well, well, well, Mr. Anatomy, it sounds like you've been retaining something from the lectures after all. I bet you've got a whole host of naughty essays you've been turning in, huh?"

"What better way to get extra credit?" BJ snarks back as though he's not melting against the wood, giving Leo another inch of height superiority.

"Mm." Leo pins BJ's wrist against the door. "Why don't you give your writing hand a rest, then?" And he wraps his fingers around BJ's cock.

BJ's eyelashes flutter but he fights against the temptation to let his lids droop shut. No, he wants to watch—not Leo's hand but his face. He needs to memorize all of these nuances of his expression so that when BJ turns his lamp off tonight and finds himself unable to sleep, he can start to parse through the details. If Leo's just playing with him like a cat toys with a mouse. If Leo ever glances at BJ's mouth.

Right now, Leo's simply grinning, barely blinking, looking right into BJ's eyes. "So who were you thinking of while playing with yourself, Hunnicutt? Barbara Stanwyck?" He drapes his other forearm over BJ's head so he can loom over him while working him over.

I thought about you fucking me. The crudeness, the perversion of the thought makes him flush redder than a tomato. Sweat beads on his brow. "Th-That's your type, not mine."

"Oh yeah? What's your type, then, pretty boy?" It's not the first time that mildly condescending term has slipped off Leo's tongue but it's absolutely its first occurrence when they're...when they're doing this, whatever this is. "Here I thought you were into brunettes. Stupid me. It's blondes, isn't it?"

BJ bites the inside of his cheek. He's not gonna say a goddamn word about that either. Not when he's straddling his peak again, right there, toes peeking over the edge. A shivery whimper escapes his closed mouth anyway.

"Yeah, that's what it is, huh?" Leo's lilting, playful tone suddenly dips into huskiness. "Petite little blondes, cute as buttons. Not tall, willowy brunettes. That'd be silly. Wouldn't it, Beej?" He leans an inch closer. "Wouldn't it be silly for you to come all over yourself thinking about a thing like that?"

"Fuck..." The word's more whimper than language, really. His eyes are beginning to burn but he can't. Look. Away. Can't miss this. He wants to be drowning in Leo when he breaks, when, when he...

And then Leo pulls back.

With a chuckle, Leo shoves his hands in his pockets and begins to saunter away. "Eh, y'know what, I'm gonna be late for class if we don't get our butts down to lunch right now. C'mon, put your pants on, you big lug."

Is he... He's not gonna... BJ shakes, knees knocking, his entire body burning and tipping into pained. He's really just gonna walk away right now? Leave BJ like this?

No. No, no, no, absolutely fucking not.

In hindsight, it's a foolish idea to go after Leo this quickly when BJ's ankles are trapped in his trousers, but he darts toward him nonetheless and loses his footing immediately. He grabs Leo's arm for stability, yanks, and suddenly the two of them are stumbling, reeling all the way to BJ's bed. Leo lands in an awkward sit, but BJ catches himself on two lithe, delicate shoulders and digs his fingers in until he thinks he might be leaving a bruise. Marking him.

A fresh rush of hunger cascades through him in a deluge. "You bastard," he growls. "Get me off right now. Now, Bardonaro."

There's a pause, longer than a century, but right as BJ begins to regret his sharpness, Leo grabs his cock and picks up a blistering pace. "Okay, okay. Geez. Didn't know it was that important to you."

"Dick..." But he can't sustain as much malice when he's touching Leo this time, squeezing his...acromion, his brain provides at the last moment. And Leo's resting his other palm gently on the small of BJ's back.

And he's moving. Descending. Squeezing a handful of BJ's ass.

"Oh, fuck." BJ's jaw drops. Despite all his internal insisting, he squeezes his eyes shut. The images rush in again, Leo holding BJ down, dragging his hardness slowly into the cleft between his cheeks, further, further...

Two incredibly interesting things happen simultaneously. One, Leo rubs a fingertip over BJ's hole. Two, Leo wraps his lips around the tip of BJ's cock.

"Fuck! Oh, fuck, God, Leo—" BJ explodes in Leo's mouth like a firework of white-hot ecstasy. It's never been like this, never, never, the overwhelming rush of sparks through his veins that has him curling in on himself as his shocked moans bleed into shuddering, broken whines. Humiliatingly, as he surfaces, he becomes aware of the tears trapped behind his lids, how if he even chances opening them right now, they'll come spilling down his cheeks.

What's about to happen? If he cries, is Leo going to knock him around for it? He could get the whole fraternity in here, set them loose on their resident pervert.

All at once, he's convinced he's about to take a punch to the jaw, and he can't let that happen when he won't see it. So with a deep breath, BJ eases his eyes open and sends the tears rushing forth as though from a broken dam.

Leo's watching him. He's not smiling. Not laughing. But he's not angry either. No, the longer BJ stares, the more Leo looks...concerned? Furrowed brow and slightly narrowed eyes. And for some reason, that makes BJ let out a choked sob.