HARDNESS AND SOFTNESS, CURVES AND CORNERS

He’s been staring at the picture for almost twenty minutes when Adam finally decides to stop by and ask him what’s wrong.

“Dude,” he says, “Don’t tell me you’re surfing Creepypasta again. You know real creepy things comes out of nowhere with no forewarning, and there you are, searching for some ridiculous fun story about haunted house and suddenly you stumble on one of those diabolical internet legends with dogs smiling and shadows creeping up in webcam screencaps and you stop sleeping for a month.”

“No… Adam, shut up,” Leo says, reaching up with his hand randomly, trying to slam it over his mouth to make him stop talking, “I’m experiencing a miracle.”

“What?” Adam groans, slapping his hand away, “Dude, you don’t even believe in God.”

“Miracles come from Mother Nature, you idiot,” Leo insists, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and pulling him down, “Look.”

Though frowning, annoyed, Adam complies, only to feel any trace of annoyance fade away from his own face when he focuses on the picture open on Leo’s desktop, and sees it for what it is.

“Holy fuck,” he whispers, “Where did you find this?”

“You remember I told you I’d been talking with this girl for the past few weeks?”

“Who?” Adam asks, and then he realizes, “Ah, the Skype girl. The one who kept refusing to send pictures. What was her name? Cookie? Corey?”

“Connie!” Leo corrects him, outraged.

“Her name’s irrelevant,” Adam shrugs, “It’s gonna be fake anyway. She’s your own personal catfish.”

“Shut up, that’s her!” Leo says, pointing at the screen.

“No, that’s a girl too beautiful to exist in nature, Leo,” Adam sighs patiently, “Come on, be realistic. Someone so beautiful doesn’t need to resort to online fucking dating to get a boyfriend.”

Leo groans, rolling his eyes. “Don’t start with the clichés, Adam.”

“Clichés exist because they’re true!” he insists, “Come on, I’m sure if you do a simple reverse search on Google you’ll find out she used someone else’s picture.”

“I already did that,” Leo frowns, “Who do you think I am? I know about internet frauds. I found nothing. That’s a proper personal picture. Doesn’t exist online.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Adam shakes his head, “Maybe it is her picture, but she manipulated in on Photoshop. Come on, I’d personally be able to grab a picture of my granny and turn it into something like that in two hours’ time! People far less skilled than me would manage in just four! It’s something that can easily be done through one afternoon, you can’t possibly believe that picture doesn’t have any filter or hasn’t been edited in any way! Look at her damn skin, she doesn’t have pores! Either she’s a vampire, or she’s cleared herself out with Photoshop.”

Leo listens to him, his scowl getting progressively more intense with every word Adam says. “You have trust issues,” he says in the end, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, I’m a reasonable person.”

“You can’t expect me not wanting to meet her!” Leo says, “If anything, to see if she really looks like this or not!”

“Sure!” Adam yells, throwing his arms up in the air, “Let’s run into the arms of whatever psychopath’s trying to lure us into his secret dungeon with fake pictures of a pretty girl!”

“Don’t be overdramatic, now!” Leo whines, “Even if the picture turns out to be fake and she isn’t this pretty, there’s nothing to make us believe there’s a psychopath behind all this.”

“Yes, ‘cause they usually give themselves away so easily,” Adam arches an eyebrow, “That’s the whole point of it. They make it clear what their intentions are, they only wanna see if you’re stupid enough to fall for it anyway.”

“Adam, I’ve been talking to this girl for weeks!”

“An aeon, I’m sure.”

“Don’t go quoting Rhett on me, you’re blasphemous,” Leo grimaces, horrified, “If he had known internet and had ever used online dating, he’d be telling me to run into the girl’s arms right now.”

“You read a version of Gone with the Wind that wasn’t half like mine,” Adam concludes, turning away. He always gets mad when he finds himself unable to move Leo from his reckless and potentially suicidal plans – which happens more often than he’d like, and that he’s willing to admit.

Leo sighs patiently, turning on the chair to look at him. “Adam, don’t be angry at me, now,” he says, “Didn’t you say that the whole online thing was starting to get a little creepy and I should try and turn those online contacts to offline ones? Well, there’s the chance. I like her, I really do.”

“Yeah, I know you do,” Adam growls grumpily, still refusing to look at him, “You’ve been talking about her non-stop for weeks.”

“Don’t be jealous, now.”

“It’s so typical of you,” Adam sighs, “To try and make me pass like the overworried idiot who doesn’t wanna let you go meet strangers because he’s jealous. You know I’m not.”

“Not exactly,” Leo chuckles, “You are jealous. That’s just not the point now.”

“Exactly!” Adam turns to look at him, pointing a finger at him as if he had caught him with his hands right into the cookie bowl after lunch, “Exactly! So you know. Don’t pretend you don’t!”

“I was just trying to lighten up the mood of the conversation,” Leo sighs again. “Listen. I get you’re worried. I don’t share your feeling—“

“Because you don’t have a self-preservation instinct when it comes to sex.”

“Who said anything about sex?”

“You needn’t to!” Adam groans, “It is always about sex with you. How many of the people you’ve been talking with in the past few months haven’t you had online sex with?”

Leo shuts up instantly. It’s obvious he’s trying to come up with a number, a logical one. “Three,” he says, tentatively.

“Names,” Adam urges him.

Leo frowns. “Okay, none,” he bursts out, throwing his arms up in the air, “I’ve had sex with them all. You happy? What do you have against online sex, anyway? It’s the safest kind of sex there is! You don’t even need to have a self-preservation instinct to survive it, ‘cause no one but yourself’s touching you.”

“You still need a self-preservation instinct when somebody you’ve had online sex with tries and get to meet you in real life to have sex in person too, and you know nothing about them!”

“But Connie and I never had online sex! We never even vaguely sexted!”

“How is that any less suspicious?!”

“God!” Leo yells, throwing his head back, “Fine! Whatever! Just tell me what you want me to do. What would make you feel better about this?”

“Well, if she agreed to meet in a public place, for example, and if I could be there to make sure she really is who she says she is, that’d be of great help,” Adam says, shrugging.

“Good,” Leo says. He turns back to his computer and starts writing again. “Hey, Con,” he says, quoting himself, “You look gorgeous. Like, unreal. You think we can meet already? Maybe out for a coffee. My best friend would like to tag along, ‘cause he’s an idiot and he doesn’t trust humankind.”

“Hey!”

“What do you think?” Leo goes on as if he hadn’t even heard him, “Starbucks, this Saturday, four o’clock pm?”

He sends the message and, for a few moments, nothing happens. Both Adam and him stay utterly still, in perfect silence, waiting for something to happen.

Takes Connie quite a while to answer. It’s understandable she needed a few minutes to think about it, so Leo isn’t worried when the chat window starts blinking yellow, notifying him of the new message. He reads it silently, while Adam frets behind him.

“So?” his best friend asks when he can’t take the wait anymore, “What did she say?”

Leo turns to look at him, grinning widely. “She said yes.”

*
Connie’s the first person Leo feels the need to meet for a real date after months of self-imposed hermitage following the Siobhan debacle. Shiv, her stunning beauty and her fresh and entrancing personality were forcefully brought into his life when Adam was asked to shoot a few pictures with her as a model for a school project. Leo saw them, and instantly demanded he introduced them. Adam tried to warn him, of course, he’s always trying to warn him, actually he warns him so often it’s become impossible, now, to understand when he’s being unnecessarily overprotective from when he has some right to be.

This time he did, but caught up in her as Leo was, he didn’t see it, and he ran towards disaster with the dumbest smile on his face, until he hit said face against the hard brick wall of disappointment, but by then it was already too late to stop the run.

Shiv liked Leo about as much as Leo liked her, but she’s a free spirit, she’s always been and she’s very keen on staying that way, especially now that her modeling career is finally starting to take off. Leo and her had fun for a month or so, tested their amazing connection and shared every bit of free time they could possibly steal from their families and friends, but when Leo tried to push things forward and make their fleeting relationship a long-term one, she backed off. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she said, and it was so obvious she really was Leo couldn’t even hate her, “But it wouldn’t be right. I’m not in the right mindset, and I’d be fooling you and myself if I agreed to it. Let’s take some time to rethink this.”

Apparently, “taking some time” meant to book a ticket on the first flight to Los Angeles, to put as much distance between them as it was humanly possible in the shortest possible time. Leo was expecting that, he knew Siobhan didn’t cope well with feeling pressured into doing something she didn’t feel like doing (much like himself), but that didn’t help him suffer less.

Leo is the kind of person who can go on with one night stands and never having a boyfriend or a girlfriend for years, if necessary, but who’s gonna turn out with a broken heart if he only dares putting it in the hands of someone else trustingly enough.

He had done that with Shiv. He had put his heart in her hands without worrying to ask her first if she was up for taking it. And once she had noticed, she had given its shreds back to him, apologizing for having broken it but still unable to do anything to mend it.

Leo simply needed a lot of time to put the pieces back together and glue them carefully enough so that the cracks weren’t too visible anymore. That was the reason behind putting himself out of the market, and the whole online dating thing was a consequence of that, having Leo been gifted by Mother Nature with a sex drive that didn’t let him go on more than three days without a shared orgasm. He couldn’t have solved the problem by jerking off, coming per se wasn’t what he needed anyway: he needed human interaction, talking, getting to know one another, however briefly, and only then sharing a moment of intimacy. He didn’t feel alright enough to go out clubbing to achieve that as he used to do before, so resorting to an online community had seemed to be the best option.

And it worked, as long as it could work. But Leo really wants to meet Connie, so he supposes it isn’t working anymore now.

Connie was different from any other person he met online. They all seemed to expect it, that at some point he’d ask them if they were up for something sexual. They were anticipating the moment, which meant they were there for that very reason – much like, in a way, Leo himself was.

Connie, though, she didn’t give off that vibe. She only seemed interested in chatting about normal things, she sounded so pure Leo almost felt awkward, in the beginning, about even thinking to push things forward in that direction with her. She asked about him, about how he was feeling, what he did every day, what he did in college, and he felt compelled to ask back, not out of common courtesy, but out of curiosity towards that weird creature who carried on as if she didn’t even think that online sex was a thing, as if nobody in the world could ever think it possible, as if all the people wandering those chatrooms were there just to talk, like she was.

Leo wanted to get to know her better. At some point, talking with her in the private rooms of the public chatline started to seem wrong. They weren’t there for the same reason everybody else was, that Connie might not know, but Leo knew for sure. Every time he logged in he felt as if he was entering the backroom of a gay club to ask about the time to somebody while people gave heads all around them. It was just wrong, they didn’t fit, and the longer time they spent there the more Leo started feeling as if he was tarnishing Connie by keeping her there, by not taking her somewhere else.

That’s why he asked for her Skype handle. Moving to a different client had helped a great deal with that feeling, it felt more intimate, more friendly, and it had helped Leo open up about a lot of things, including Shiv. Being able to talk to a friend who wasn’t the usual Adam about it had helped taking that weight off his shoulders. He was thankful to Connie, he appreciated her like a friend, but the more intimacy grew between them the more he had found out he wanted to meet her, to hear her laugh at his jokes in person, not just read her reaction on a computer screen.

The picture had just given him the final push he needed, because she looked gorgeous.

He probably didn’t have any problem believing she could be that beautiful on the outside because, contrary to Adam, he already knew she was stunning on the inside.

“You’re nervous,” Adam tells him as he scans the place with watchful eyes, “You’re scared she’s not gonna turn out to be who she said she was, right?”

“No,” Leo answers him, looking around eagerly, “Can’t you stop talking like that? God, you’re so annoying.”

“Well, sorry for caring about you.”

“There must be a line between being worried for somebody and becoming an obnoxious mother, and you crossed it hours ago.”

Adam frowns, clearly offended. Of course Leo’s nervous. Of course he’s scared. There is a chance Connie’s not gonna be exactly what she said. He’s not stupid, he knows. But Adam’s worry only makes him scared and he doesn’t wanna feel scared now. Hasn’t he been scared to get close to somebody long enough already? Doesn’t he deserve it again? He just wishes Adam could push aside this motherly attitude of his to be supportive.

“Sorry…” he says in a deep sigh, “I just— I know you’re right, but repeating it like that is useless, it’s only making me feel stupid for ever deciding to give this a try, and—“

“Fuck me,” Adam whispers under his breath, his eyes wide as he stares right in front of him.

Leo arches an eyebrow and tilts his head, surprised. “Well,” he says, “Not that it cannot be arranged, but I wish you’d have asked me in a different moment and in a different way, since—“

“No, no, idiot, shut up!” Adam interrupts him nervously, grabbing him by his shoulders and making him turn around, “You fucking won the lottery, you stupid prick.”

Connie just entered the coffeehouse, and she’s looking around awkwardly, clearly not knowing what to do with herself in such a crowded place. She takes a look at the bar and she seems frightened to even get close to the mass of people pushing against it, waiting in line for their turn to place their order. Then she turns to the tables, and she bites her cherry red, plump bottom lip when she notices there’s not a single free chair. The frilly hem of the knee-long black skirt she’s wearing peeps out of the medium-length red coat she’s wearing, and the tiny, red velvet ribbon she’s used to keep her black hair in place on the right side of her head bounces gently every time she turns around, letting those impossibly huge baby blue eyes dart nervously all over the room.

“It is really her?” Leo says weakly, unable to look away from her in fear that she might disappear, “Little Red Riding Hood over there? I mean, I’m not hallucinating, am I?”

“Unless your Connie somehow managed to steal this girl’s picture knowing already she’d be here today, awkwardly looking around for somebody, I think it’s safe to assume it’s her,” Adam says. His voice sounds lighter, for once, he seems relieved too.

Leo swallows hard, trying to move away from his hands to stand on his own feet. “Okay,” he says, clearing his throat, “You can go home, Adam. Don’t wait up for me.”

“What?” Adam says, frowning again, “Are you even serious? I’m not leaving until we’ve spent a little time with her, to make sure she’s not crazy!”

“Adam, look at that girl!” Leo says, impolitely pointing his finger at her to underline the concept, “She’s an angel! Heaven-sent! Oh, I’m gonna fuck her so hard she’s gonna beg me please to leave her to die.”

“Wait, what?!” Adam backs off a little, outraged and, quite frankly, a little scared, “Leo!”

“Sorry,” Leo swallows, trying to regain some sort of control over his thoughts and the way they apparently chose to roll out of his mouth with common decency not even trying to filter them beforehand, “I’m just… do you have an idea when was the last time I got laid?”

“Didn’t you hook up with that Chester guy last week?” Adam tries, “I heard you lock yourself in your room, you only do that when—“

“I jerked off, Adam!” Leo protests vehemently, “I mean, of course, we jerked off together, but he lives in fucking Nebraska, now come the fuck on, I haven’t had a proper shag in months, there’s simply no way I’ll—“

“Oh, God, shut up,” Adam hastens to say, pressing a hand over his face. He doesn’t understand why until he turns around and sees Connie waiting a few feet from them, clutching at her bag and smiling shyly, her pale cheeks quickly turning red.

“Hi,” she says. She’s got the sweetest voice Leo’s ever heard in his life. “You must be Leo.”

“Yes,” he says in a whisper when Adam finally lets him free to speak. And the next thought comes rolling wildly through the hills of his overexcited brain, but he luckily keeps himself in check enough not to say it out loud.

And you must be mine.

*
In the half hour they actually get to spend together after they manage to escape the messy, confusing clutch of the coffeehouse, Leo ends up assisting to a switch in Adam’s behavior, something he had never witnessed before: Adam goes from being worried for Leo’s safety, to being worried for Connie’s. He can see the predatory look in Leo’s eyes and for the first time ever he isn’t really worried anymore that Leo’s fiery sex drive will ultimately get back to him and hurt him, like countless times happened whenever he ended up having sex with sketchy strangers after having had one drink too many just because he couldn’t take abstinence anymore. No, he’s worried Leo will push too far, that he’ll end up cornering Connie somewhere and somehow convince her to do something she doesn’t feel ready to do, just because he wants her so fucking much if looks could be enough for that she’d probably be already pregnant.

Leo can understand Adam’s attitude. Connie really does make out that perfect picture of purity Leo had already scented off her before they even met. It just has two very different effects on him and Adam, because while Adam seems naturally prone to protect that kind of purity, to shelter it from everything bad that could stain it, much like Leo wanted to do before they met, now that Connie’s not a bunch of pixel on a computer screen all that Leo wants to do is dirty her up.

He’s always had a pretty vivid imagination, quite graphic too. It’s never been uncommon for him to start fantasizing about the people he’d end up having sex with at the end of the day even right after having just met them, while they were still drinking something together, possibly even before properly introducing himself to them and vice-versa. But he has never felt so drawn to anybody else as he feels now that he’s walking alongside Connie down a road he knows by heart and can’t remember a single detail of, because everything is her, her pretty, pretty face, those big blue eyes and that kissable, biteable smile of hers. He’s talking to her, asking her questions about what she does – she draws, she’s an artist, like Adam, but not quite like Adam, she’s less certain of her abilities, she’s relying less on her talent because it’s clear she doesn’t think she has one, but Leo can picture that pretty hands of hers handle the brush so fine, oh, God, the miracles those pretty little fingers are surely able to do when they close firmly around the shaft – he listens to what she says, he even answers her questions, but all he’s thinking about is her, naked on a bed, while his hands wander all over her body, making her moan and shiver.

She’s so tiny, so thin. She doesn’t even have any boobs, but she looks so graceful, and the curve of her hips is so inviting, and those legs she’s got, Leo could only take a glimpse while they were climbing the stairs towards the entrance of the park where Adam and him brought her before, but despite her shortness those legs are endless, she’s all legs, and they seem so plump, so full, so rounded, compared to how petite she is. Leo hasn’t dove between a girl’s thighs for month, now, and suddenly it’s all he wants to do. He looks at Connie, gets lost in her smile, wants to die on her cherry lips and be buried in the deep ocean of her eyes, and then something switches inside his brain and he doesn’t feel so romantic anymore, no, all he wants is to grab her, push her onto the bed, tear her clothes off her and lick her all fucking over, dip his tongue in her navel, then inside her, tasting her, feeling her wetness, making her wetter, readier for his cock.

He has never felt this wild in all his life. And he’s been wild. He’s been wilder than anybody else he knows, actually. And still, when he looks at Connie and that sudden sense of urgency overcomes him, he almost believes he has never wanted anything else before, because the intensity with which he wants her now is so strong it wipes out any pale imitation of it he could have experienced in the past.

He feels drunk, inebriated with desire, and needy, needy to the point of physical pain.

He only realizes after a while that it’s because he’s hard, and when he realizes he asks himself how long has he been in such a condition, and he’s amazed at himself and frankly a little scared too when he understands he doesn’t have an answer for that question.

Around six, Adam starts to look at his phone’s display too often, and Leo understands he’s gotta go somewhere, possibly working out at the gym, and he doesn’t really want to leave them alone. The thought kind of unnerves him, because Adam only had to remain until he was sure Connie wasn’t a psycho, and he ended up hanging around for the entire afternoon, and that’s annoying. Especially since he’s dying to see if there’s any chance Connie will bring him home for a couple hours. He clearly can’t even suggest the idea as long as Adam keeps playing the vigil watcher with them.

“Walker,” he asks, taking the chance when he sees him check the time for the umpteenth time, “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Adam frowns, looking at him. “Well…” he starts out, and then he swallows, casting a quick glance at Connie. She’s smiling, waiting for his answer. God, she looks so pretty Leo has no idea how he managed not to snatch her up and run away with her to hide in some dark corner already, Adam or not. “It’s quite late, isn’t it? We should head back, shouldn’t we?”

Leo pretends to check the time on his phone too, but he doesn’t even register it. Could be midnight, his answer would still be the same. “I don’t know, looks pretty early to me. I’ve got time.” He turns to look at Connie. “What about you?”

She tilts her head to the right in such a graceful movement Leo only barely manages to hold a frustrated moan in. “I’m free,” she says, “I’d love to hang out with you some more.”

An entire legion of angels start singing hallelujah in Leo’s mind. He manages to cling to that tiny shred of decency still left in himself long enough to give in to a grin only, not showing how deeply satisfied of her answer he really is. He turns to Adam and smiles. “Then I’ll see you later, I guess?”

Adam doesn’t say a thing for almost a full minute. He looks at Leo and Leo knows, he can read it in his eyes, that he doesn’t wanna leave, he doesn’t wanna leave them alone, because he doesn’t trust Leo’s judgement right now. Leo can’t say he’s wrong, but what he can say is he doesn’t care. He wants this girl. He needs to kiss her, to be alone with her, to put his hands on her. He needs it now – Adam’ll have to deal with it and leave.

In the end, that’s exactly what he does. He sighs deeply, closing his eyes and shaking his head, and murmurs a vague “yeah” before saying goodbye and walk away.

Connie chuckles the moment he’s out of sight, and her laughter sounds like a million bells ringing softly, drawing Leo close. He chuckles too, just because she did, and asks her, “What?”

“He was so tense,” she answers right away, starting to walk again, “Is he always like this?”

“Not really, no,” Leo laughs a little, shaking his head, “Only when he thinks I’m a ticking bomb or something.”

“And are you, right now?” she asks, looking at him from under those impossibly thick and curved eyelashes.

Leo’s heart almost misses a beat. She’s flirting. She’s fucking flirting. This must be his lucky day.

“Depends on what you want,” he plays along, “Do you wanna try and cut the red wire?”

Connie instantly looks down, blushing vividly. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to. Leo laughs, overcome by amusement and tenderness.

“You’re not used to any of this, am I right?” he asks her.

She’s still blushing, but she looks up at him, her eyes shining lightly. She’s so beautiful. “Not really, no,” she admits, “Guys don’t usually hit on me.”

“Do you live among blind people?”

“No,” Connie laughs, amused and embarrassed, “No, I’m just… probably not as interesting as you think I am.”

“Please,” Leo snorts, “Listen to me, I’ve been on the market since I was, like, fourteen, and I can assure you, how interesting are you is irrelevant, in the dating game. And I’m not saying you aren’t, mind me,” he explains, looking at her, “But seriously. You’re stunning. I simply can’t believe you’ve never been with someone. Or that nobody ever tried to catch you.”

She looks away quickly, though she doesn’t seem upset. She’s still blushing, her cheeks pink and smooth like peaches, and she shrugs lightly, barely crouching her shoulders. “Thanks,” she says, “I’m not really good at taking compliments… but thanks.”

Leo wonders vaguely about that, about how can it ever be possible for such a cute girl to have received so few compliments in her life not to be able to take them, to even be unwilling to receive them. He doesn’t wanna live in a world that doesn’t shower a girl like Connie in compliments. He wanna be the one to fix that situation.

“Listen…” he says, and he finds himself swallowing hard, actually nervous, when he reaches out, trying to hold her hand. She lets him, and his heart beats faster when he feels her silky warm skin against his fingertips. “I know Adam kind of… ruined the mood, I guess. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I… I really like you. I actually liked you before I saw your picture, I mean, you were gorgeous and that was really the last push, but I wanted to meet you even before that, because… you know, it’s been nice to know you online, to talk to you and all, but I really wanted to get to know you better, and— and not exactly as a friend, I guess, because I really like you, as I said, I said that already, right?”

Connie chuckles, covering her lips with her free hand. “Yes, you did,” she says in the sweetest voice. Leo wants to kiss her so much he feels like crying.

“Do you think there’s a chance we could go somewhere private?” he asks in a quick whisper, following the tide of his own need, hoping it’s hard and tall enough to wash over Connie’s shores.

She stops for a moment. She purses her lips, looking intently at him, and she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t even breathe. Then, in the smallest movement ever, so small Leo’s amazed at himself for even seeing it, she nods.

*
Connie lives in a small, cute apartment near the campus. Leo’s quite surprised, because he’s pretty sure he’d remember her if he had seen her in class. A girl with a face like that makes an impression. Or at least it would’ve made it on him.

“Are you in college?” he asks as he takes off his jacket and sets it down on the back of the couch, next to Connie’s red coat. She’s wearing a thin, white satin shirt with tiny fawns embroidered in the hem, cuffs and collar. Its pearly buttons almost shine with the sunlight coming in from the huge window eating up almost an entire wall in the sitting room. They look like a shimmering path Leo desperately wants to follow to see if it gets him to heaven.

“No,” she says, shaking her head and offering him a small apologetic smile, as if she felt guilty for such an answer, “I mean, I were for… a year or so. But I dropped out.”

“Really?” Leo asks, “Before we started talking, right?”

“Way before,” Connie chuckles.

“And why?”

Her smile falters and she literally backs off. Though it’s only an inch or so, Leo notices, and his heart sinks down into his stomach.

“Have I been inappropriate?” he asks, his voice filled with concern.

Connie smiles sweetly, shaking her head. Her red velvet bow bounces in the movement, and Leo wants to hold its hem in his fingers and tug at it, see it unfold, fall off to leave her hair free to cascade down her neck. “I’m just not really used to people being that interested in me,” she says, “But it’s no big deal. It just… college wasn’t really for me. I’m a pretty slow person and to be honest I’m kind of lazy,” she chuckles, “I didn’t like to study all the subjects that weren’t my favorite, so I fell behind and ultimately I realized I was throwing money down the drain… so I dropped out.”

“Oh,” Leo nods, sitting down on the couch when she invites him to do so, “So it was a life choice or something.”

“Or something,” she chuckles, “Do you want some hot cocoa? I’m said to make the best in the whole of Lima.”

“Said by who?” Leo giggles.

“By myself,” she answers with a little smirk, “But I’m pretty demanding when it comes to chocolate, so I assure you my hot cocoa is the best you’ll ever taste.”

“Then I can’t really refuse, can I?” Leo asks with a charming smile he doesn’t even have to force, because he wants to charm her so much it all comes natural to him.

“That’s the gist of it,” she answers, and then she turns around, headed for the kitchenette, which is nothing but a corner of the room, but it’s in a light blue color, pretty doll-like and extremely clean, and all in all matches Connie so much, as does the rest of the flat, for a moment Leo clearly thinks he doesn’t wanna leave – ever, actually. He never ever ever wants to leave.

Soon enough the sitting room fills up with the sweet smell of hot cocoa, and in a few minutes Connie’s back, carrying two mugs almost filled to the brim with it. Leo takes the one she’s offering him and tastes it, letting out a muffled approving sound. “You’re good!” he says.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” she complains, chuckling lightly.

“Sorry,” he apologizes in a short laughter, “It’s just that, generally speaking, people boasting about their supernatural abilities are usually lying.”

“Well,” she answers with a tiny, kind of unwillingly seductive smile, “I wasn’t lying, tho, was I?”

That’s it for Leo. It simply is it. He shivers so deeply he needs to bite at his inner cheek not to show it, and his erection makes itself known again sending a sudden jolt of pain throughout his whole body. He puts the mug down on the floor and then reaches out, wrapping an arm around Connie’s waist and drawing her in, kissing her hungrily on her lips.

She lets out the softest whimper, surprised and maybe a little scared, and that tiny sound is able on his own to make Leo harder a thousandfold. She doesn’t back off, and he takes it as an invitation to go on, and so he flicks his tongue over her lips, silently begging her please, please, to let him in, and when she parts her own lips and welcomes his tongue in the hot wetness of her mouth Leo almost feels faint. He moves even nearer, kissing her voraciously, shivering when he feels her hands and those tiny little fingers rest on his shoulders, first, and then wander forward, over his shoulder blades and then upwards, over his nape and between his curls.

Connie’s got warm, soft fingertips. Leo feels them over his skin and wants them around his cock. He wants them in his own mouth, he wants to suck at those tiny fingers, lick them in the oversensitive spot in between them, he wants to hear Connie moan wildly at the feeling, and then he wants to guide her own hand between her thighs, he wants to make her move her wet fingers all over herself, he wants to feel her get wetter around his tongue, as he licks her while she rubs herself.

As these pictures fill his mind, his kiss turns deeper and wetter, more intimate. He moves on the couch, getting up on his knees to get closer to her, and he’s almost ready to straddle her, towering upon her to trap her under his own body and between his own arms, when Connie surprises him, and it’s her taking control of the situation. She sits him back again, whimpering between his lips, and then sits on top of him, her legs locked like the motherfucking gates of heaven but the rest of her body all pressed up against Leo’s, her sweet scent everywhere, her mouth tasting like chocolate as Leo explores it thoroughly, fucking it more than simply kissing it.

He breaks the kiss unwillingly when he feels her tiny hands press against his chest, silently asking him to back off. She wants a time out and that’s understandable, and even if it wasn’t Leo’s completely willing to give her everything he wants, right now. If she wanted the moon, he wouldn’t even ask why, he’d just run fetch a ladder.

“You were right…” he says on her lips, as he puts one hand on her hip and palms the sweet curve of her waist, “That’s the best hot cocoa I ever tasted.”

Connie chuckles, and her laughter, labored and heavy as it is because of her uneven breath, sounds even sweeter.

“Are you always this lame when you’re hitting on people?”

“I wasn’t aware of still being hitting on you,” Leo answers with a soft smile, pressing their lips together in a dozen half-wet kisses, “I already thought you pretty much hit for the time being.”

“I am…” she admits, her voice nothing but a whisper. Leo feels the need to kiss her again, and he does, as his hand travels down her thigh, reaching her knee. His fingers reach down underneath the frilly hem of her skirt. She’s wearing no tights, and Leo shivers as he touches her bare, smooth, warm skin. Once again, he’s overcome by the need to just throw her legs up in the air and dive between her thighs, covering them in bites and kisses before eating her out.

“Connie…” he whispers, his fingers traveling up her thigh, reaching for her panties, “Can I touch you? Please. Let me touch you.”

His words seem to wake her up, and as soon as Leo notices he regrets having spoken them. Maybe, he thinks, if he had simply gone on without asking any question, she’d have let him do whatever he wanted, instead of putting her hand on his over her skirt, stopping him.

Then he realizes how ugly this thought sounds, and he feels ashamed, and stopping his hand doesn’t feel hard at all, once he’s back to his senses.

“I don’t really…” Connie mutters vaguely, looking away, “On the first date…”

“It’s okay,” he hastens to say, his hand slipping out from underneath her skirt to stroke her cheek, making her look back at him, “Con. Listen to me. It’s perfectly okay. You don’t have to justify yourself, first date or fifty-seventh, if you don’t want to, you don’t want to.”

She bites at her bottom lip hard. It’s so red and plump from kissing Leo feels that familiar pain in his loins again, and vaguely wonders how ever is he going to get home alive if she doesn’t let him fuck her right now. He needs a couple minutes to calm down again, but he tries his best not to show it, because he really, really doesn’t want Connie to feel uncomfortable, and he wasn’t lying before, when he said she shouldn’t feel bad for not wanting to do shit just yet, or ever.

But God, she’s so perfect and sexy. Leo’s never been so taken with anybody else. It almost hurts, this burning desire is almost physically hurting him.

Maybe this is what Adam should have warned him about.

“Thanks,” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile.

Leo kisses that smile sweetly, trying to draw out of that last contact strength enough to get back home without losing his mind.

*
When he comes back home, Adam runs from the kitchen right to the front door and looks at him, and when he sees him he stops and tenses all over.

“You did it,” he says, “You raped her.”

“What?!” Leo yells, throwing his arms up in the air and discarding in a single moment the disappointed mood that has kept him company all the way back, “Are you fucking crazy?! Of course I did no such thing!”

“You have the look of somebody who did something awful!” Adam insists, pointing his finger at him, “Look at yourself in the mirror! A serial killer would have clearer eyes than you right now!”

“Stop this nonsense right now,” Leo sighs heavily, dropping his jacket and then his body face-first on the couch, “I didn’t touch her with a finger.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, walking towards him and standing next to the couch, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah…” Leo whines, hiding his face against the rounded cookie-shaped pillow, “She didn’t feel like it, she’s, like, one of those who don’t have sex on the first date, so she backed off and I didn’t insist. We just kissed.”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a little while, he just stares at him, amazed. “I’m impressed,” he says in the end, “You behaved like a proper good guy.”

“Well, I’ll let you know here and now that being the good guy sucks big time!” Leo protests, lifting his face from the pillow to glare at him, “I was so fucking horny! Actually, I still am,” he says, sitting up and parting his legs, to show the pretty evident bulge at his crotch, underlining it with his hands pointed palms up towards it, “See? Would you even look at this shit?!”

“Not really, no.”

“I’ve been in these wretched conditions since we fucking met her!” Leo goes on, desperation starting to leak in his voice, as if he had walked back home enveloped into a bubble that kept him from fully grasp the reality of his condition until Adam carelessly burst it with his words. “How many hours does that make? Five? Six?”

“A couple, I’d say,” Adam sighs, “Don’t be so dramatic. You worried me. By the look on your face I feared you had done something unforgivable and possibly even punishable by law, and instead here you are, clean like a baby angel’s butt.”

“Yeah, so clean I’d fuck said baby angel’s butt to shreds if he fucking appeared right now in front of me,” Leo growls.

Adam shivers visibly, horrified. “God, you’re completely out of your mind,” he says, “Calm down!”

The urgent tone in his voice makes Leo reconsider his words, and he looks down, actually ashamed at himself. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he whines, covering his face, “I have never felt like this. I want her so much.”

“But you walked out of there without doing anything to her, just because she asked you not to,” Adam considers.

“Yes!” Leo agrees, looking back at him. Then he suddenly turns pale, his eyes growing worried. “Do you think I’m gonna die? Do you think I’m ill?”

Adam groans, rolling his eyes. “Yeah,” he answers.

“Oh, God,” Leo whimpers, “Do you think it’s serious?”

Adam shakes his head, chuckling lightly. “Very,” he answers, “You’re falling for her.”

*
Leo had thought calling her back after what had happened would’ve been awkward, but he finds out it’s not, really, because his own need to see her is stronger than any of that dating crap he has kept running away from for the entirety of his life. Silly questions like “should I call her? Should I wait for her to call me? Should I simply text her? Should I just go back to chat with her online and wait for things to develop on their own, if they ever do?”, he has never had any reason to ask himself, because his entire dating life revolved around the one shot, one kill concept: he hooked up with people, talked to them a few hours, then he banged them senseless and the morning after he was gone, and they were gone too. Nobody expected him to ever call back, and he expected nobody to do the same.

Sure, there has been exceptions, like Shiv, but even with her, Leo didn’t have any bullshit to go through, no protocol to follow. They had hooked up and in a second they were hooked, and that was it. Leo had never needed asking himself questions.

When it comes to Connie, though, he’s unbelievably nervous. He second-guesses everything he thinks about, and it’s extremely stressful. To the point that he doesn’t dare calling her for days, after they met.

At some point, though, his need to see her blooms inside his heart like a proper flower, and a huge one too, and he needs to cut it out, or those overgrown petals are going to smother him. And so he picks up his phone and calls her.

“How much of an asshole are you thinking me to be?” he instantly asks her, before she can say anything.

She chuckles, and her laughter sounds sweet despite the phone making it sound a bit metallic too. That’s a keeper, he finds himself thinking, if she sounds like an angel over the phone too, I need to do my best to keep her. “Not much, really,” she answers.

“You’re a freaking saint, then, or a martyr,” Leo says, “I haven’t called you.”

“And I wanted to let it pass, since you’re calling me now,” she says, “But if you insists…”

“Yes, I do, I insist!” Leo almost yells, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve called right away. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just, I had no idea how soon I could do it, so I kept waiting and questioning myself, why the fuck are you waiting, Leo?!”

Connie starts laughing wholeheartedly. “Leo!” she calls him, and he laughs too, relieved.

“Don’t laugh!” he pretends to complain, “It was awful. I was distraught.”

“I bet you were,” she chuckles.

Leo hears a distant, soft sound, like rustling sheets, and he frowns. “Are you in bed?” he asks, confused.

She laughs again. “You didn’t check the time before calling me, did you?” she asks.

Leo quickly pulls the phone away from his ear and reads the time on the screen. “For fuck’s sake!” he bursts out, “It’s fucking midnight! Connie!”

“What are you screaming at me for?” she asks, laughing out loud, “It’s not my fault!”

“Of course it’s not!” he answers, “It’s me! I’m out of my fucking mind! Why don’t you already have a restraining order out for me? I’m clearly a maniac.”

She laughs again, more tenderly, now. God, he could live and breathe for this sound. He’s never been the clown in a relationship, he never needed to. He needed to be a charmer, a perfect one, to hit on somebody and secure them for the night in the easiest way possible. But Connie’s different. He wants to make her laugh, he wants to entertain her, he wants to become so important for her she can’t go on a single day without hearing his jokes, ‘cause nothing else will make her smile and laugh the same way. “I think I kinda like you,” she says in a dreamy voice.

Leo’s insides tie up in knots and he bites at his lips to suppress a moan. “You just made my day,” he answers, “Or, well, my night. Or whatever. I need you to tell me we can meet tomorrow ‘cause I don’t think I can go on another day without seeing you.”

“I’m free from four to six,” she says in a short chuckle, “Then I need to get to work, ‘cause I’ve got a couple drawings to deliver by eight tomorrow evening. Does that work for you?”

“I’ll make it work, don’t worry,” he answers nonchalantly. He has to, because right now his mind is so caught up with Connie he doesn’t even remember if he has other things to do tomorrow. Frankly, he doesn’t even care if he’s gonna have to move a few things around. Meeting Connie’s more important. “Listen… do you have to go right away?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer instantly. It’s clear she’s fighting between wanting to get an early sleep and wanting to keep talking over the phone with him. She’s so cute.

She gives in with a light sigh, after a while. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” she asks.

“Not really, no,” he smiles, “I just wanted to keep listening to your voice. I missed you.”

“Well, then,” she chuckles, “You should’ve called.”

“Ah, come on!” Leo whines, “Haven’t I already apologized for that?”

“Yes,” Connie chuckles again, “You did. Sorry. I guess I wanted to rub it in a little.”

“You’re cruel and an awful, awful person,” Leo answers, pretending to be way more offended than he really is, which is none at all, actually, “You don’t deserve me.”

“Actually, I don’t,” she says. She sounds more serious than Leo would like her to sound, and he frowns, concerned.

“I was joking, Con,” he says to reassure her.

“Oh, I know,” she smiles. It’s amazing how he can feel her smile in her voice. It’s like a silky caress sliding over his neck. Since when do smiles turn into such physical sensations over the phone? “But you’re right nonetheless. I… I like the way you look at me, but I’m really not… not as good as you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re anything, Connie,” he says softly, trying to soothe her because her voice sounds like she needs it, “I just like you a lot. I don’t expect anything from you and you don’t have standards to adjust to, to make me happy. Just be yourself.”

“I’m afraid myself won’t be enough to convince you to stick around longer than a few weeks,” she sighs deeply. Her words hurt Leo more than he could have ever expected them to be able to do after such a short time they’ve been knowing each other.

“Don’t… don’t speak like that,” he says, feeling actually sad, “I’m not… I really like you, Connie.”

“It’s not you, Leo,” she smiles, “It’s me. But I didn’t want this conversation to turn so depressing,” she says, whining a little, “See? I’m a mess.”

“I’ll take you messy as you are,” Leo hastens to say. He feels a little better when he hears her chuckle.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Listen,” he insists, “Let’s make a bet. You against me. I bet I’m gonna stick around longer than just a few weeks.”

“Mmmh,” her voice vibrates through the phone, making Leo shiver a little, “Okay,” she agrees, “What are we betting?”

Leo swallows, holding the phone harder between his fingers. “Our hearts,” he says in a whisper, hoping the intensity in his voice is enough to make Connie understand what his words really mean, and what he’s putting on the line right now.

She keeps quiet for a few minutes, and then Leo hears her swallow. “Our hearts, then,” she says. “Are we meeting at my place, tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” he nods, “I can’t wait.”

“Actually,” she says in a light-hearted chuckle, “Neither can I.”

*
He tries and not think about sex the very moment he sees her, but it’s stronger than him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. She smells as if she was freshly baked, it’s unreal.

“Hey,” he says, smiling on the outside, crying on the inside, “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she says, smiling too, “But you’re late.”

“I know!” he whines a little, “Adam wouldn’t leave me be. I think he truly believes I come here with murderous intentions.”

“I have no idea what I did to deserve such consideration from him,” she wonders in a short chuckle, as she lets him in. Leo finds out it wasn’t exactly her smelling like a cake, there is a cake, waiting for him on the counter top of the kitchenette. Chocolate cake, of course.

“Being stunning was enough, I fear,” Leo says, “Excuse me, did you bake a cake for me?”

Suddenly self-conscious, Connie blushes, looking up at him. “…yes?” she answers tentatively.

Leo grabs both her hands and squeezes them into his own. “Marry me,” he says.

Connie chuckles again, pulling him in. “I’ll think about it,” she says, “But you shouldn’t ask for people’s hands in marriage pushed by a cake you haven’t even tasted yet.”

Leo knows Connie meant to slip no subtext into that sentence, but it’s there, it’s undeniable, and it makes him chuckle softly, because it’s funny (and it’s funny because it’s true).

“Well, I’ll grab a bite, then,” he says, walking to the kitchenette and cutting two slices of cake for both of them. Its creamy filling leaks out of it, still hot from the oven. Leo bites at its own tongue, because everything keeps reminding him about sex, and he doesn’t know if it’s like this or if it’s just his mind playing tricks on him ‘cause he’s sex-starved, but how is he supposed to behave in such conditions?

He sighs deeply, putting the slices on two plates and walking back to the couch where Connie’s already sitting, waiting for him. She dolled herself up, despite having decided to meet inside. She’s wearing a short pale pink skirt made of multiple layers of a very thin and fluffy fabric that lets the outline of her thighs pass through, and a white frilly short-sleeved shirt that suits her perfectly, despite her chest being so flat. It’s so intriguing how girly she looks despite not having any boobs at all. She’s a walking, breathing miracle.

She’s also wearing thigh highs, the skirt short enough to show their hem around her full, pale thighs. Knowingly or not, she’s dressed for a quickie. It’s amazing. If she didn’t do it on purpose, she’s just amazing.

“You really shouldn’t have put those clothes on,” he says in another sigh, sitting next to her and handing her a plate.

She looks down, a little embarrassed, and crouches her shoulders. “I wanted to be pretty,” she says innocently.

“Oh, I wasn’t being formal,” he shakes his head, taking a bite out of the cake. God, it tastes splendid. “I meant it. You shouldn’t have put those clothes on. I can’t look away.”

“Well, then I chose right, didn’t I?” she smirks, looking up at him.

He laughs, putting down the plate and covering his face with his forearm. “Don’t flirt,” he says in half a whine, “You’re killing me. You’re too pretty. I can’t.”

“What is it that you can’t, exactly?” she mocks him, chuckling.

“I just can’t,” he laughs and whines again, “I have no idea how to deal with you. I don’t wanna do like I usually did with people when I wanted to get some, but I so wanna get some with you.”

Connie blushes again, looking down. “You’re… very frank,” she says, and Leo instantly raises his head, looking at her.

“Did I mess up?” he asks, worried, “I’m sorry. Adam says I need to learn how to back off. Thing is, it’s hard for me to back off when I’m with somebody I’m interested in. And you make my head burst with interest, so to speak, so, yeah, you see, I’ve got issues.”

“It’s okay,” Connie chuckles again. Every time she does that, Leo feels genuinely happy. He wonders if it’s normal to feel so freaking happy just because a girl is laughing. Maybe he’s going nuts. “I’m glad you like me. I like you too. But we established that, already,” she says, tilting her head as she slowly eats her cake, “Let’s move on, or you’ll get bored with me even sooner than I predicted.”

“What is with you and this boredom thing?” Leo inquires, frowning a little, “Why can’t you be cocky and full of shit like all the pretty girls out there? It’d be way easier to leave you, then, knowing you’d walk around setting fire to my things and posting Facebook statuses in which you call me ‘The Asshole’ and insist that I left because I couldn’t see you true colors shining?”

“Was that an ‘80s reference?” Connie actually laughs out loud, folding her legs under her ass, her thighs showing some more as the skirt falls upwards, pooling up in her lap, “Are you even serious?”

“Hey, I’m a learned boy,” he jokes, “I know shit.”

“Clearly,” Connie says in a soft chuckle. Then she nods to the cake slice Leo barely took a bite from. “You don’t like it?”

“On the contrary, it’s delicious,” Leo sighs, “But apparently I can only be one thing at a time. And right now, either I’m horny, or I’m hungry.”

She blushes wildly, looking down. “Stop…” she says, though she doesn’t sound like she wants him to stop at all. Leo swallows, looking at her. Should he take this as some sort of invitation? God, she confuses him so much.

“Do… do you want it?” he says in the end, “I don’t think I’m gonna finish it.”

For a moment, she seems uncertain between her options. In the end, her chocolate craving seems to win the battle, because she nods. Leo grabs the plate, but instead of giving it to her he fetches a piece of cake with the fork and offers it to her. Connie looks straight into his eyes and sits still, just blinking for almost a full minute. Come on, come on, Leo thinks, Come take your treat, baby girl.

And she does it. God fucking Almighty bless her, she does. She moves in, her eyes never leaving Leo’s, and she parts her cherry lips, showing just a bit of her tongue as she takes the cake in her mouth and swallows it.

Leo swallows too, letting out a deep moan. “I can’t do this,” he says, covering his face with a hand, “I wanna cry.”

Connie chuckles, and soon enough Leo feels the gentle weight of her hand over his head, and looks up to her. She’s stroking his hair, affectionately. “You have no idea,” she says, “What it means to me to see you like that… because of me.”

He sighs, leaning into her touch. “Don’t I?” he says, rhetorically.

She shakes her head. She sounds so serious, when she speaks. “No,” she says, smiling sweetly, “You don’t.” Then she stands up, holding her hand out for him. “Come.”

Leo follows her with his eyes and blinks, uncertain. “Where are we going?” he asks curiously.

She looks away, blushing, but her smile doesn’t fade away. “To a place where we can be more comfortable,” she answers.

Leo’s head explodes. Or maybe it doesn’t, but it feels like it. He sees white for a moment, and just when he’s about to ask himself if he’s had a stroke and should be calling for medical attention, he focuses again. Connie’s still there, she’s still holding her hand out for him, she’s still standing, waiting for him to come along. They’re gonna do it. They’re fucking going to do it and Leo’s heart is beating so fast he feels faint.

“Okay…” he says, standing up and following her. He can barely hear the sound of his own voice because of how deafening the thumping of his heartbeat is right now. It rumbles in his ears like an earthquake, making all other sounds muffled and distant. Connie leads him to her room, and he can barely believe his eyes when he sees that she’s guiding him to the bed.

“Listen…” she says. She turn around to face him, but the moment she does Leo decides that no, he doesn’t wanna listen, he wants to kiss her, and so he does, leaning in and holding her face between his hands as he presses his lips against hers, kissing her hungrily. “No…” she mutters, her arms moving up and closing tight around his neck in a hug, “Wait…”

“I don’t think I can,” Leo answers, whining a little, his hands landing on her hips and then traveling down her back, closing around her ass and squeezing it. God, it’s so freaking soft. This can’t be real. He must be dreaming. He’d be sure he was dreaming, if his cock didn’t ache so fucking much, constricted as it is inside his pants.

“No, no, wait,” she insists. They fall on the bed and she doesn’t push him away, but she does reach back for his hands, bringing them back on her hips. She speaks on his lips, alternating words and kisses, “Listen. I wanna touch you.”

“God, please, yes, do it.”

“I will,” she chuckles, short-breathed, “But I don’t want you to— I mean, I don’t feel ready for…” she stops, letting out a tiny frustrated noise, as she tries and not let their hips collide, keeping Leo at some distance, “I just don’t feel like you doing the same to me, for now, okay?”

“What?” Leo asks, looking desperately up at her, “Why? Don’t you want me to make you come?”

“Not yet,” she shakes her head and kisses him to try and soften the blow, “Really, I’m… I just wanna make you feel good today. Okay? Isn’t it enough?”

“No, it’s not enough!” he whines, pressing his whole face against hers and trying to steal another kiss, “It’s unfair. Please…” he reaches down, putting a hand on her thigh and traveling upwards, under her skirt, “Let me…”

“No, Leo, seriously,” she stops his hand, entwining their fingers, and kisses him again, slowly, soothingly, “Just me to you, today. There’ll be time for… for the rest. But for today…” she disentangles their fingers and lets her tiny, pale hand slide down his body. Soon enough, he hears the familiar sound of a zipper being pulled down, and then the soft, warm touch of Connie’s fingertips over his impossibly hot erection. “Can I…?”

There’s no way on earth he can say no now. He doesn’t even want to. He still wants to touch her and kiss her and lick her all over, but that’ll have to wait.

He closes his eyes and nods slowly, letting her work her magic. An amnesiac spell, apparently, because by the time she’s done with him, Leo can scarcely even remember his own name.

*
“Dude,” Adam says, sighing deeply as he offers him a cup of hot cocoa, “I’m worried for you.”

Lying on the couch face up, staring at the ceiling like a motionless, lifeless thing, or like some sort of seaweed eternally traveling the oceans, pushed by the tide, Leo barely turns his eyes to look at him.

“Keep that thing away from me,” he moans, turning on his side – something that takes him apparently a monstrous effort.

“What,” Adam frowns, “Chocolate?”

“Yes,” Leo whines, pushing his face against the pillow, “It reminds me of Connie.”

“Which is your girlfriend,” Adam insists, frowning even more deeply, “And therefore should be something good to be reminded of.”

“No,” Leo whines louder, shaking his head, “You don’t understand.”

“Well then, help me out,” Adam puts the cup down on the coffee table and sits on the couch. Leo folds his legs for a moment, waiting for him to sit, and then unfolds them on his lap.

“You’d mock me.”

“Most definitely, if it’s something ridiculous.”

“I’m not gonna tell you anything.”

“Leo, come on!” Adam sighs, hitting him lightly on his knee, “Spill it. I won’t insist much longer.”

Leo casts him an annoyed look, the last wall he usually puts between himself and Adam before surrendering, something that promptly happens a few seconds later, when he sighs once more and sits up, resting against the back of the couch. “Okay,” he says, “We haven’t fucked yet.”

Adam looks at him in perfect silence for almost a full minute, clearly shocked. “Are you shitting me right now?”

“No,” Leo whines, “It’s… God. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Wait a second,” Adam waves his hand in front of Leo’s face, to get him to shut up a second while he recollects, “You’re telling me you’ve been together how long exactly, three months, now?”

“Almost four.”

“And you haven’t had sex with her yet,” he asks, “Not even once.”

“Not even once.”

“Nothing whatsoever on that front.”

“Well, no…” Leo gestures vaguely, looking away, “We do shit. She jerks me off, she blows me. But she doesn’t want me to touch her, and she won’t undress, and she doesn’t want to have sex. I even proposed intercrural, like, it’s not like I wanna put it inside her at all costs, I mean, I do, but I’m not a rapist, if she doesn’t feel like going full penetration I can understand, but why doesn’t she want me to get close to her? We don’t even dry hump.”

“So… let me get this straight,” Adam insists, “You come.”

“Plenty,” Leo nods, “That’s how I’ve managed to survive up to now. At least I come.”

“Okay,” Adam nods too, “This explains it. But… well, that’s fishy.”

“That’s primarily devastating, Adam, ‘cause I want her so much I think I’m gonna die.”

“Yeah… okay,” Adam concedes with a sigh, “But you have to admit it’s suspicious too. I mean, why won’t she get close? Have you ever asked her? Talked about it or something?”

“I tried…” Leo sighs, “But she clammed up. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, I feel sick with myself when I make her feel bad, so I dropped it. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t go on like this, I’m so frustrated. If I got a straight answer, at least, I think I could put my mind at rest and, I don’t know, maybe accept this whole thing as it is and move on, but she gives me nothing to try and understand and I’m getting obsessed with it. I can’t think about anything else when we’re together, and I know on the long run it’ll damage us. It’s like this small tumor growing, and it grows slowly, but at some point it’ll fucking show, and when it does it’ll be too late, and I don’t want to get there because…”

He stops suddenly, holding his breath. Adam hasn’t disturbed his monologue, up to now, wanting to see where was it going, but now that Leo’s fallen silent he feels like pushing it. “Because…?”

Leo sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t feel like saying it,” he answers honestly, “Sorry. But yeah, you got it. Bottom line is, I need a solution for this. I won’t be able to go on much longer if nothing changes. And it’s breaking me apart ‘cause I don’t wanna lose her.”

Adam pats his knee affectionately, sighing deeply. “I’m sorry, dude,” he says, “At first I thought I needed to protect you from her. Then I was scared I’d have to protect her from you. But now it turns out I was right when it started, after all.”

Leo looks at him, biting at his tongue. Adam doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to be protected from Connie. If anything, the opposite.

*
Connie never wanted him to stay around while she was working, at first. Probably because she always made herself super pretty, when he was around, which meant wearing skirts, shirts and stockings, admittedly not the most comfortable attire for working from home, especially if said work ultimately imposed her to sit for hours in front of an inclined desk with a light pointed at a picture, surrounded with ink and colors that inevitably left their mark on her clothes and body by the end of the day.

She was good with the graphic tablet, but she preferred to work on the sketch by hand first. It gave a most genuine vibe to the drawing, she said. If any other person had told Leo something like that, he’d have called them a fucking hipster, hated them with a fire and instantly decided he would never buy a single thing they had drawn for in whole his life. Somehow, if it was Connie saying it, it rang true, it rang honest, it didn’t reek fake like it’d have reeked if it had come out from one of those posers’ mouths. He could believe it, he could believe she believed it though he didn’t agree with the general concept, so he didn’t get angry at her.

How she manages to make him so mellow, it’s beyond him. That’s all there is to her mystery. It’s not what Leo doesn’t know about her that draws him near, makes it impossible for him to go: it’s the things she does to him, how she changes him without making him feel different, a mystery there’s no answer to.

In time, she got used to him staying around while she worked. Nowadays, when it’s time for her to sit at her desk and draw incessantly for hours, she grabs more comfortable clothes, excuses herself and disappears into the bathroom for ten minutes. When she comes out of there, she’s usually dressed in her jumpsuit, or some other anonymous combination of house clothes like pajama pants and a hoodie. She looks so cute, when she lets him see her like that. She looks cute because she is cute, despite looking like some sort of androgynous thirteen years old kid, and she looks cute because she always keeps something pretty on, like a bow or a frilly headband, and that creates a nice contrast with the simple way she’s dressed, but most of all, most of all she looks cute because she looks familiar, because she looks relaxed, because she shows herself as she is in her daily life, messy and dressed in oversized, boyish clothes, and still she looks amazing, the most perfect girl Leo has ever seen in his life.

He loves to stay overtime, and he’s so glad Connie finally came around the idea of letting him stay.

And yet, of course, staying around has its perks, but it’s got also a few downsides, like for example the little embarrassment that always surrounds them when Connie finishes to jerk him off or blow him and Leo has to back off and pretend he doesn’t want to throw her on her back on the bed to fuck her senseless. Or the temptation she is, sitting at that desk with her legs folded under her ass, unwillingly drawing him close despite Leo knowing he can’t disturb her, because he earned the right to stay around while she works on the agreement that he’d let her actually work in peace. Or, well, boredom, of course. Leo never feels completely at ease in houses that aren’t his own, he never knows what he can touch, what he can read, what he can pick up from the shelves, where he can stick his nose and where he cannot, so he always ends up lying on the unmade bed with nothing to do except stare at Connie and suffer in silence, which is most times enough to turn a perfectly good and pleasant afternoon into a nightmare.

He’s been sitting there with his hands on his lap for almost an hour, already, when he decides he can’t do this anymore, and he stands up, walking aimlessly around the room in a symphony of sighs and soft whining.

Connie chuckles, lifting her head and looking at him. It’s one of the lazy days, this one. She doesn’t have any pressing deadline to meet, but she knows if she slacks she’s never gonna get her pace straight back again, so she lets herself work slowly, but she works nonetheless. She looks so cute with her pencil in her hand, her fingertips dirty with the dark shadow of graphite. “You’re bored, aren’t you?” she asks, her voice sweet as candy.

“Yeah…” he answers in a childish whining, and she chuckles again.

“See, this is why I rather you wouldn’t stay around while I work,” she says, “I know it’s boring.”

“But I wanna spend time with you,” he insists, “Can’t we do something together?”

“I have to work,” she sighs, crouching her shoulders.

Leo pouts, looking away. He knows he’s acting like an idiot, but he also knows this isn’t just about having nothing to entertain himself with at all. The problem’s deeper, it’s his dissatisfaction, his frustration, which boredom only manages to amplify.

Connie must know. She must feel it. She’s not stupid and she’s not half as slow as she puts herself out to be, Leo knows it now, because he knows her, despite not understanding her half the time, and that makes him even more annoyed.

She bends over, reaching down for the bottom drawer in her desk and opening it, to retrieve an old bloc notes. “Can I show you something?” she asks.

In a second, Leo knows she isn’t giving him something to fight boredom with. She heard him. She listened to his silence more than she listened to his words, and she got what his whining really meant. I know nothing of you, except what you let me see on the surface. I don’t get you. Please, give me a chance to get to know you better. And that’s what she’s doing now. Giving him something to distract himself with is just an excuse. The truth beneath it is far more interesting.

Leo nods, sitting back on the edge of the bed and waiting for her to come over. She sits next to him, her sweet smell surrounding him and making him dizzy as usual, and she hands him the bloc notes, offering him a tiny, pretty smile together with it. She’s got no lipstick, but her lips are still red as cherries. Such prettiness can’t be real, Leo thinks, kissing her as a vague, silent thanks.

He starts flipping through the pages, looking at the drawings hidden in there. They look more alive, more vibrant than any other work Connie ever showed him. He’s only seen her illustrations for her job, things somebody else had committed, but these, these are things she drew for herself, and they’re impressive. It’s just humanlike figures, and much like she is now it’s impossible to tell their gender. Their features are beautiful, perfect, but they’re completely sexless. They look unreal, but the detail hitting Leo the most is their expressions. They’re so intense. The glisten in their eyes make them look as if they were staring at him from the page, as if they were indeed alive, and trapped in that paper cage, desperate to come out but unable to do so.

Leo holds the bloc notes in his hands, squeezing it a little. “They’re… they’re amazing,” he says, “What are they?”

“I… kind of invented them a few years ago,” Connie explains, “They’re called Neverboys and Nevergirls.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re… people, I guess,” she says, “Some sort of fairy folk. They’re born boys or girls, but they never know what their gender really is until they reach maturity, which happens after centuries they’ve been alive. So they wander the majority of their life not knowing what they are, who they are, and when they finally understand it it’s usually too late, and they only have a few years to enjoy their newfound identity, before they die.”

“…that’s so sad,” Leo says, looking back at the figures on the page.

“It’s a metaphor, I guess?” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile, “Of, like, knowing yourself. You never really get there, right? And when you do, if ever, it’s usually when you’re old already, so you don’t get to enjoy that condition much.”

“It’s true, but…” his fingers move gently across the face of the Neverperson he’s looking at now, “I don’t know, it sounds so hopeless.”

“I guess that’s…” Connie hastens to say, and then she stops suddenly, biting at her bottom lips. She looks like she doesn’t wanna go on anymore, but her eyes are shining as if she was dying to speak. “I guess that’s how I feel, though,” she finally says, looking down.

Leo feels his heart sink into his stomach, his body aching all over. “No…” he says, putting the bloc notes aside and moving closer to Connie, “Please, don’t talk this way. It breaks me. You should be happy. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You look so beautiful, and you’re so talented. These— These Neverpeople, they’re beautiful. They’re sad, but they’re beautiful, and you could do something with that. A graphic novel, maybe, or— or something else, I’d like to help you! You’d be someone, you’d be famous, you’d do something relevant, ‘cause this is the kind of concept that helps people all over the world coming to terms with themselves, can’t you see? It’s beautiful and it’s genius and it’s yours, you made it, so why should you feel hopeless? You’ve got so much. You’ve got me. Don’t feel bad.”

“I’ve got nothing, Leo,” Connie answers, shaking her head, “I certainly don’t have you.”

“No,” Leo holds her face between his hands, drawing her close, kissing her, “Please. Don’t say that. You have me. You so have me, Con. I’m so yours. You have no idea. On the first day we met I wanted to make you mine, but you made me yours. You have me.”

“I don’t,” she insists. She’s crying, but she doesn’t back off, “I don’t have you. I don’t deserve you. You should leave.”

Leo never thought he could ever feel such an amount of pain without fainting. Isn’t that what people do? During car crashes or when they fall off a cliff or something? Their bodies endure the pain as much as they can, but at some point they shut down in self-defense. Leo wishes he could shut down now, because hearing such words coming from Connie’s killing him inside.

“But I love you,” he says desperately, “I love you so much…” his hand lands on her inner thigh, and starts traveling upwards, “If you only let me in…”

Connie stops him right away, putting her hand on his and squeezing it. She keeps her eyes closed, refusing to look at him, but she’s still crying, shaking a little, and the sight breaks Leo’s heart.

“Leo… “ she says, “There’s something you need to know.”

“Nothing you could ever tell me would make me love you any less,” he says instantly, not even giving her the time to form the thought in her own mind, “Say all you want. I love you. God, I’m crazy about you. I wanna know you. I’m not scared of you.”

Connie finally looks at him, her watery eyes reddened by tears. “You should,” she says grimly. Then she stands up, moving a few steps away from him. Terrified she’ll leave, Leo doesn’t say a thing, but he breathes again when she stops right in front of him. She swallows hard, searching for his eyes. He looks back at her, trying to make her understand that he won’t run, whatever she’s going to say. “My name isn’t Connie,” she says.

Leo frowns, clutching his fists over his knees. “What?” he asks.

Connie looks down, and grabs the zipper of her hoodie. She pulls it down slowly, the sound making Leo shiver. When it reaches the bottom, Connie lets it go and pulls her hoodie off her shoulders.

She’s not just breastless.

She’s a boy.

“…what…” Leo whispers, completely breathless. His heart’s beating so fast the rumble of his blood is making him dizzy. His head feels like it weights a ton, he’s not sure he can keep sitting straight.

“My name’s Cody,” the boy says. He remains half naked for a few seconds, then he blushes wildly and shivers, and pulls the hoodie back over his shoulders, pulling the zipper up right away. “I get it if you wanna leave.”

“If I…” Leo breathes out, standing up, “No! I want answers! I want… what?! What is… what do you even… Connie, why?!”

“Cody,” the boy insists, “My name’s Cody.”

“I don’t fucking— God,” he covers his face with both his hands, “This is… this is so fucked up,” he lowers his hands and looks back at him. He feels lost. He has no idea what’s happening. His heart’s going to explode and so is his head. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I like boys too. Is this why…” his heart shrinks as if somebody was holding it in his fist and squeezing it, “Is this why you wouldn’t let me get close? Why you… you were a boy all along, and we had sex, or, well, whatever it was what— and you never thought you should’ve told me?!”

“I knew I should’ve told you!” Cody looks up, his eyes filled with tears. He doesn’t look changed to Leo. His voice sounds the same, his eyes look the same, he’s pretty sure that, if he dared to reach out for him and stroke his cheek, his skin would feel exactly the same too. “I knew that. I was just— I was so ashamed.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m like them,” he nods towards the bloc notes, now lying abandoned on the bed, “I was born a boy but I don’t…” he stops halfway through the sentence, closing his eyes, breathing deeply. Before he even says it, Leo knows, by instinct, that this is the first time he admits it out loud. “But I don’t know. Most of the time I don’t feel like a boy at all. Sometimes I’m okay, but most of the time I’m not.”

His tears have a weirdly soothing effect on Leo. He supposes that if Cody sounds just the same as Connie, and looks just the same as Connie, then he can’t ask his heart to feel any different about him than he felt about her.

“You’re trans, then?” he asks softly.

Cody covers his face with both hands in a nervous movement, his shoulders shaking violently. “I don’t know.”

“Or maybe you’re genderfluid,” Leo tries again, “Is that it?”

“I don’t know,” Cody sobs, his voice muffled by how hard he’s pressing his hands over his mouth, “Sometimes everything seems so clear. And then some other times I’m just confused. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But you didn’t know me, and I liked you, and all I wanted to do was to try and… and feel okay,” he sniffles, “I could never get close to people. Because I never felt okay. Whenever I dressed as a boy and tried to be with someone, it just felt so wrong, and I was so uncomfortable, and I thought that maybe if I could go with the flow, put something pretty on, try and be… be okay, for once, then…” he sobs again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to tell you. I wanted to, I really did, but I was so scared and so ashamed… I know that doesn’t justify me, but I… God. I understand if you hate me. Please. Just— Just go.”

Leo walks closer to him, raising his arms to put his hands on his shoulders. When he touches him, Cody jumps back, lowering his hands to look at him. His eyes are red and flooded by tears. He looks so small. So fragile. Leo feels the urge to protect him, to envelope him into an indestructible shell and not let any harm ever come to him. It’s a painful need, shaking him deeply, overcoming everything else.

“Don’t run from me,” he says softly, getting closer again.

“You can’t want to stay,” Cody mutters, his eyes filled with disbelief and uncertainty.

“You don’t know what I want,” Leo insists, “Clearly. If you did, you’d have known I would have wanted to know about this, if I had ever suspected something so big could have come in between us. You think I’ve been okay these past few months? That just because you jerked me off and made me come I was alright? I knew there was something wrong. You knew what it was, and you left me all alone facing insecurities I couldn’t trace back to anything. You wanna feel sorry? Feel sorry about this. We made a bet. I put my heart on the line. You did not.”

“I love you,” Cody answers, putting his hands on his chest and clinging to his t-shirt.

“I believe you,” Leo says, nodding, “But you still kept your heart safe in its comfortable vault. That’s not how you make relationships work. I know, because I’ve had a working relationship, and it broke my heart. It broke it because it had the chance to do it. I could have never broken your heart. That’s why it wasn’t working.”

Cody looks down again, big tears falling from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He nods faintly, keeping his gaze locked to the floor. “I know,” he says, his voice shaky, “I’m sorry. I will always regret this.”

“You better,” Leo nods, “I’ll be reminding you every day.”

Cody slowly looks up, his eyes still confused. “What…?”

“Of course you’re gonna be mocked forever for this,” Leo shrugs, “Every time I’ll need to tell you something, I’ll be like ‘hey, Cee, remember when you dressed up as a girl and made a fool out of me for almost four months?’. We’re gonna have a ball.”

“Don’t…” Cody raises a hand and presses it against his mouth, “Don’t. Please. If you wanna leave, just—“

“I just told you I don’t wanna leave,” Leo frees himself from his hand and keeps talking, “Here, nor you.” He sighs deeply, as Cody looks back up at him with eyes so huge and shiny they’d melt a rock. “Don’t look at me like that…” he says, whining, “You’re so unfair to me. You know you have powers over my weak mind, and you take advantage of it.”

“I… I don’t,” Cody answers, confusedly.

Leo forces a smile. Surprisingly enough, after he pushes to make it come up to his lips, it ends up blooming pretty easily. “I know,” he says. He leans in, pressing his lips against Cody’s in a soft kiss that lasts but a moment. Then he pulls back an inch or so and their eyes meet, Cody’s teary ones and Leo’s darker ones, and then they kiss again, their lips parting, their tongues moving slowly in search of one another, their bodies pressed tightly into a firm hug.

“Wait…” Cody whispers on his lips, trying to pull away.

“You lost every right to ever use that word again,” Leo says, drawing him in.

“No, yes… I mean,” Cody clears his throat, “You… You still want to…?”

“Listen,” Leo says, holding his face between his hands, “I’m not okay with what happened. I’m still angry, somewhere inside. And I’m still hurt by what you did to me, by the fact that you didn’t trust me. But right now my brain is rewinding these last four months and I just realized you’ve been showing yourself to me with skirts all the time and that you had a dick underneath all those laces and satin, and you can’t ask me not to be crazy about that thought.”

Cody blushes so furiously and so suddenly his legs weaken, and Leo’s forced – not that he’s complaining – to tighten the hold of his arms around him just to keep him on his feet. “I don’t… really know how to react to what you just said,” he admits, honestly.

“Good,” Leo nods, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m even talking about. I’m just— This is very confusing, but I liked you before and I still like you. You didn’t have boobs as a girl, you don’t have boobs as a boy. Sure, you’ve got a dick I didn’t know of, but it’s not like I’m exactly disgusted by the thought. It’s like I bought a white chocolate box and I found out there was a dark one inside. It’s a surprise, but it’s okay.”

“Unless you hate dark chocolate.”

“Okay, but I’m gay for dark chocolate, so that’s not really a problem,” Leo insists, and Cody lets out a shaky laughter, and something in Leo’s brain explodes. If he ever needed proof that his feelings for him haven’t changed in the last few minutes, there, he has it: his laughter is still the only thing in the world which manages, on its own, to give him joy to the point of making his heart swell. “Listen…” he tells him, speaking softly against his lips, “I wanna see you naked.”

Cody blushes again, looking down. “Are you sure…?” he asks weakly.

“Yes, Cody, yes, I’m sure,” Leo answers impatiently, holding him tighter. Then he calms down and sighs. “I mean. If you’re decided on not ever wanting to let me touch you, or have sex with you, or do anything with you… I guess I’ll have to deal with it. But if you ever, ever wanted to let me in, if you ever wanted to feel me and never let it happen out of fear… please, don’t be scared anymore. I love you. Let me see you.”

Cody looks back up at him, his clear blue eyes shining, not just because of the tears anymore. “I’ve wanted plenty,” he says, his hands sliding back down Leo’s chest, “You have no idea. I’m not made of steel. When I said I didn’t feel like letting you touch me, it didn’t mean I wasn’t aching for it.”

Leo doesn’t need to hear a single word anymore. He leads him to the bed, helping him climb on it and then waiting for him to lie down to join him. He keeps himself up on his arms, not to weigh on him as he looks intently at him. He couldn’t have seen he was a boy if he had read it written on his ID. Those eyelashes, so long, so black, so thick, and those lips, so plump and red, and his features, the proportions of his body... there’s no wonder Cody’s confused, his body is confusing. In the best possible way, sure, but still confusing.

Leo lets his hands move upon it, following the gently curved line of his waist and hips. Cody shivers, closing his eyes. Leo’s hands move up, feeling the soft curve of his belly first, and then the flatness of his chest right after. Hardness and softness, curves and corners live together in his body in such a perfect harmony if Leo believed in God he’d probably find in Cody definitive proof of his existence.

He pulls down the zipper of Cody’s hoodie, uncovering his chest again. He’s so pale, and his nipples are so pink, so inviting. He leans in kissing his way down Cody’s neck, over his collarbone and then, finally, around his nipple. He licks it, then squeezes it between his lips as he does the same with the other between his thumb and index finger, and Cody moans loudly, arching underneath him, leaving enough space between his back and the mattress that Leo manages to slip his free arm in, to hold him tight.

His other hand lets go of Cody’s nipple soon enough, and while his mouth is still caring for the other his fingers travel lightly down to the hem of his sweatpants, hooking around the waistband to push them down his legs. Cody’s thighs emerge from the fabric like a feast set for him alone, and he can’t help but palm them slowly, feeling their softness, their smoothness, their warmth.

Then he moves up, his knuckles gently stroking his inner thigh and then rubbing against Cody’s crotch. He was expecting thick fabric, but he finds out Cody’s wearing lighter panties, and when he looks down he discovers it’s because they’re girl’s panties. Pretty simple, nothing too cutesy, nothing even too colorful, but still girly.

He lets out a deep hungry moan, biting at his lips. “Unreal…” he says, “Even if I couldn’t see them, you were still wearing them.”

“I… I told you,” Cody says as he breathes heavily, covering his eyes with his forearm, “I was trying to feel okay.”

“You look beautiful,” Leo answers, moving down along his body, stopping only at his crotch. He places a small kiss on the tip of Cody’s erection, the outline of which he can see through the panties, and then he moves away the tiny strip of fabric covering his opening. He instantly decides he’s gonna keep those panties on him, fuck him while he still wears them. If they make him feel okay, he needs to keep them on. Besides, it’s gonna be a sight to behold.

He dives in with no second-thoughts, despite the fact that he has never rimmed another boy before. It’s been done to him, countless times, actually, by a lot of boys he’s been with, but he has never felt the urge to do it he’s feeling now with Cody. As furiously as he wanted to lick him all over when he still believed he was a girl, he keeps wanting to do now, and so he pushes his tongue inside him, hard, fast, holding his hips with one hand and keeping his panties on the side with the other.

Cody arches his back once again, mewling softly. The sound of his voice makes Leo’s cock twitch with desire, but he chooses to ignore it, he chooses to go on with it for a little while longer, because he wants to taste him long enough to feel satisfied, and that takes time.

A few minutes, actually, during which Cody’s body starts to shake, and his hips start to swing, moving uncontrollably, trying to follow the fast pace of Leo’s tongue’s movements. When he starts touching himself, Leo reaches out for his hand and covers it with his own, palming his erection slowly. He looks up, and Cody’s looking down at him, his cheeks red as ripe apples, his eyes glistening, his lips plump and moist. He needs to have him. He can’t wait anymore.

He moves up his body with feline grace, looking at him with predator’s eyes. Cody shivers, and Leo finds out he loves to feel him shiver that way. He’s thinking to add that to the already very long list of things he loves about Cody, when he surprises him with another movement, the slowly parting of his legs, to let Leo fall between his thighs.

There’s something so natural about that movement that makes Leo’s entire body go numb for a moment. His ears start ringing, he sees white once again, and once again he wonders if he’s having a stroke, but when a few seconds later he calms down and he feels alright he ultimately decides it wasn’t a stroke, just a surge of love. He’s gonna die an old man between Cody’s white thighs, and they’ll all say it’ll be a stroke who killed him, but from beyond, whatever there is beyond, he’ll know. Won’t be a stroke killing him, it will be love.

He kisses Cody deeply, shivering when he feels his arms circling his neck. He reaches down with his hand, pulling his panties aside with two fingers and feeling his wet opening with two other. Cody moans and pushes his hips down on his hand, trying to suck his fingers in, but Leo resists temptation and just rubs him from the outside, teasing him. When he hears him sob and whine in frustration, only then he removes his fingers and presses the head of his cock against his opening, breaking in slowly, carefully, one inch after the other.

Cody parts his legs wider for a moment, whining loudly, and then closes them around his hips in a sudden movement, crossing them behind his back and using them to pull him in, making his hips spring forward as his erection gets buried inside his body. They both lie down motionless for a few seconds as they get used to the feeling, their breathing deep and irregular, now, and then Leo starts moving, his hips drawing back and then pushing forward, slowly at first, faster and faster as seconds go by. He adapts his pace to Cody’s moaning, and keeps stroking his cock all through it, aching for release but determined not to come until he has made him come.

It happens suddenly, with no forewarning. Leo thrusts particularly deep in and Cody tenses all over, his back arching for the last time as he yells with no control left over his voice, and comes all over his own stomach. The sight is enough to trigger Leo’s own orgasm, and he comes violently inside Cody’s body, shaking deeply and then collapsing over him, completely spent.

Cody locks his arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, hiding his face against the curve of his neck. He’s shaking a little, and Leo caresses him soothingly, placing small kisses on his temple and cheek. “You okay?” he whispers.

Cody whines softly, hugging him tighter. “Don’t be too kind with me…” he sighs, “I don’t deserve it.”

“Listen,” Leo chuckles, kissing him on his neck, “Now that your dirty little secret’s out in the open, lose the self-shame. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

Cody pulls back, looking at him with annoyed eyes, his lips pursed in the most delicious pout. Leo kisses it, laughing softly. It’s a pleasure to feel it straighten out to the touch.

*
“You look too happy,” Adam says, staring at him, eyes filled with suspect, “You must’ve done something bad.”

“Yeah?” Leo chuckles, dropping his jacket on the couch and heading straight for the kitchen to get some orange juice from the fridge, “Entertain me, what do you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” Adam follows him around, his eyes reduced to two narrow cracks on his face, casting their doubtful light over him, “Maybe you killed her. You went there to confront her, demanded that she gave up and had sex with you, and when she refused, you grabbed something heavy and hit her on her head, killing her on the spot. And then you disposed of the corpse by throwing it in the river.”

Leo laughs out loud, amused. “Nice, you should try the HBO,” he says, “But no, that’s not what happened. We had sex.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, “Oh.”

“Yup,” Leo nods, putting the juice back in the fridge and the passing him by, headed to his bedroom, “And, Adam?”

“Huh?”

“She’s a boy.”

“Oh,” he says. Then a long silence follows. “Wait, what?”

The only answer he gets is Leo’s door clicking closed, while he laughs on the other side.