Show Yourself, It's Halloween

The cold pulp sticks under his nails before he even understands why he has stopped moving. Orange, stringy, a little sweet, it slides through Leo's fingers and drops back into the hollow of the pumpkin with a soft sound. Noah is holding the knife. That is all anyone asked of him. Hold the knife. He holds it wrong, blade down, wrist too stiff, because his eyes no longer know where to land.

The bay window looks out on an empty street. Nobody, or almost nobody. A streetlamp, dead leaves, the yellow light of a porch farther down. Inside, Leo has turned on the ceiling light and the work-lamp, too much, way too much for an October night spent hollowing out a vegetable. The glass throws him back in full. Bare chest. Gray gym shorts, slung low, low enough that the line of his hips is a provocation and not an accident. He is bent over. His shoulder blades shift as he tears out the strings. His back is broad, shining with an effort that is no effort at all. Noah sees the small of his back, the start of his ass, the fabric pulling tight.

You going to set that knife down, or are you planning to stick it in my hand?

Leo's voice is low, almost amused. He doesn't turn around. He knows. Noah knows it too now, with a precision that heats the back of his neck. The light is no accident. The shorts are no accident. It is no accident that he called Noah just to hold the knife when there are three of them in the drawer.

Noah sets the blade on the wood. The handle cracks down, sharp.

You're in a shop window.

I know.

Leo straightens. Slowly. His abs draw themselves under tight skin, not a magazine stomach, the stomach of a guy who lifts, who sweats, who likes being watched while he does it. A thread of pulp cuts across his navel. He doesn't wipe it off. He drags the back of his hand over his mouth, spreads his fingers, and Noah sees his tongue, brief, tasting the orange. The gesture is dirty. Calculated. Beautiful.

Outside, a car goes by without slowing. Leo's reflection shivers on the glass, then locks still again, offered to the street the way you'd offer it to a room full of seats.

If somebody looks up, Noah says.

Let them look.

Leo hooks both thumbs in the waistband of the shorts. He doesn't push them down yet. He tugs them an inch, just enough for the dark hair to show, thick, trimmed any old way, and for the top of his cock to be guessed at, heavy, already half hard against the cotton. Noah feels his own mouth go dry. He came in a sweatshirt and jeans, looking like a guy helping a buddy. He's twenty-eight, Leo thirty-one. They've known each other from the gym, beers, jokes that run too long. None of this. Or all of this, and Noah didn't want to name it.

Look at me, Leo says. Not the pumpkin. Me.

Noah looks. That's the trap, and he walks into it without a fight. Leo turns his hips a little toward the glass, toward him, both at once. The shorts come down. Not all at once. In hitches, as if he were stripping for an audience that doesn't exist yet and for the one that exists too much. His ass appears, round, firm, a shadow of hair in the cleft. His cock swings free, thick, veined, the head already wet. It slaps his thigh. Leo doesn't take it in his hand. He wants it seen hanging, thickening, rising on its own under a stare.

Noah makes a sound in his throat he doesn't recognize.

There, Leo murmurs. Like that. Don't blink. Don't pretend you're looking for the knife. Eat me with your eyes until my skin burns from it.

He bends over the pumpkin again, naked this time, ass arched toward the room, cock hanging in the space between his thighs. Every movement of his arms rolls the muscles of his back. Sweat beads between his shoulder blades, one drop, then another, running down into the cleft. The smell rises: raw pulp, warm skin, Leo's cheap soap and, under it, sex, plain, animal. Noah takes a step closer. Then another. He stops within reach and doesn't touch. Exhibition has its rules. You show. You make them wait. You get off on being seen before you get off on being taken.

Leo spreads his feet. The shorts stay caught at his ankles, ridiculous, perfect. He reaches a hand between his legs, without turning around, and lifts his cock so Noah can see it in profile in the glass, long, hard now, the dark head shining. With the other hand he keeps carving, as if the work mattered. Seeds fall. His wrist brushes his balls. He moans, low, so it can be heard.

You're hard in your jeans, he says. I can see it in the reflection. The fly is pulling. You want the street to know too, or is it just for me?

For you. Noah's voice is rough. But if you want the street, you'll have it. I'm not covering you.

Leo laughs, a short, turned-on sound. He straightens and finally turns. Facing Noah, facing the bay window. The lamp carves his chest, heavy pecs, brown nipples, the trail of hair running from his sternum down to his cock. He is entirely there, no modesty, arms a little open, like he's on a stage. His hand closes around himself. He strokes slowly, thumb on the frenulum, eyes in Noah's, then past him, toward the black glass where his own body doubles.

Stay where you are, he orders. Watch how I touch myself when I know you can't help it. Watch my balls. Watch them draw up. I could come like this, on nothing but your eyes. You feel that?

Noah feels it. His hand is on his fly without his having decided. He opens the jeans. The briefs follow. His cock comes out, not as long as Leo's, straighter, already wet at the tip. He still doesn't come closer. He strokes himself across from him, six feet away, and Leo's gaze drops, lingers, comes back. The exhibitionist has found his spectator, and the spectator is discovering he gets harder from being the one played for than from being the one who plays.

A bike goes by on the sidewalk. The headlight sweeps the glass for a second. Leo doesn't hide. He speeds his wrist, hips forward, and the beam grazes him, chest, belly, cock, before it's gone. He shakes. Not from fear. From that precise shiver of having nearly been caught and wanting more of it.

Closer, he says. Not to touch me. So I can feel your breath on my cock. I want to see your mouth open and not give it to you right away.

Noah obeys. He kneels on the cold tile, jeans at his thighs, and lifts his face. Leo is above him, huge, the lamp in his hair, the pumpkin forgotten behind him. The smell is stronger here: groin sweat, foreskin, that salty point beading and falling, one drop, onto Noah's lip. He doesn't lick. Not yet. Leo forbids it with a finger under his chin.

Open.

Noah opens. Leo sets the head on his tongue and doesn't push. He rubs, slow, lets the spit run, watches his own cock barely disappear between the lips and come back out, shining. In the glass the scene is obscene and clear: a naked man standing, another on his knees, the street for an imaginary witness. Leo groans.

You suck good when you're looking up. Keep your eyes open. I want to see that you see me seeing me.

Noah takes more. The cock fills his mouth, heavy, hot, the taste of skin and pumpkin still on Leo's fingers as they tighten in his hair. He goes down, comes up, lets the spit run off his chin. Leo doesn't close his eyes. He watches himself in the bay window over Noah's shoulder, and every time their eyes meet in the reflection he pushes a little deeper, to the throat, to the gag Noah holds back because he wants this, this use, this display.

Enough, Leo breathes. He pulls out, cock soaked, a string of spit between the head and the lip. Up. Turn around. I want you to see what I'm going to do to you, and I want the glass to see it too.

Noah gets up, unsteady. Leo pins him to the counter, not to the glass, not yet, and yanks the sweatshirt off him. Noah's chest is leaner, the shoulders broad anyway, a pale scar under one rib. Leo licks it. He bites his neck, hard enough to mark, and Noah moans without holding back. Leo's hands go down, open the jeans to the knees, grab his ass, spread it. A finger, still sticky with pulp, finds his hole and circles, presses, goes in. Noah arches. The finger is rough, precise. A second follows, too soon and just enough. Leo crooks them, searches, finds. Noah swears.

There. You see? Even this, I want you to know it. I'm opening you up while I show you. Look at your thighs. Look how you're shaking. If somebody stops in front of the house, they'll see your ass open on my fingers and my cock against your hip. Tell me you want it.

I want it. Noah's voice is broken. Show me. Show them. But fuck me, goddamn it, fuck me for real.

Leo spits in his palm, twice, slicks himself. There is no other prep, and they both know it, and Noah pushes back to say it with his body. Leo lines up the head, rubs, spreads him. The burn comes, sharp, wide. Noah grips the edge of the counter. Leo drives in with a measured thrust, not all the way, then again, then to the hilt. Noah's breath cuts off. The cock is huge inside him, hot, alive. Leo doesn't move. He lets the body get used to it, hands flat on Noah's hips, and he turns his head toward the glass to see himself buried.

Look, he says against Noah's ear. Look at us.

Noah lifts his eyes. In the dark of the bay window, two men: one bent, the other behind him, Leo's ass clenching, the sweat, the open mouth. It's indecent. It's exactly what Leo has wanted since he turned on every lamp. Noah gets harder just from seeing himself taken.

Leo starts to move. Long, deep, every stroke a wet slap. The pumpkin trembles on the wood. Leo's balls knock against Noah's. The smell of sex covers the orange. Noah strokes himself with one hand, the other clamped to the counter, and Leo pulls his fingers open.

No. Not yet. You come when I decide, and you come watching yourself. Come here.

He pulls out, cock shining, Noah's hole barely closing. He drags him by the wrist to the glass. The tile is cold under bare feet. Leo turns him to face the street, lifts one knee, braces him against the bay window. The glass is icy on his chest, his nipples, Noah's cock crushed to it and leaving a mark. Outside, the street is still empty. Inside, they are a poster.

Leo takes him from behind again, in one stroke. Noah cries out. The sound bounces off the glass. Leo fucks him there, hard, hands under his thighs to hold him open, Noah's forehead against his own reflection. Every thrust slams Noah's cock to the glass. The head rubs, too sensitive. Leo groans into his neck, bites his shoulder, says low things to him: how good he looks opened, how his hole grips, how he wishes the neighbor across the street would turn a light on and count the strokes.

Touch yourself now, he orders. But look. If you close your eyes, I stop.

Noah strokes himself against the glass, wrist knocking the pane, eyes wide on his own wrecked face and, behind it, Leo's face, wild, happy to be seen. The rhythm breaks loose. Leo pounds him, shorter, deeper, fingers clenched on his hips hard enough to leave marks. Sweat runs between them. Noah feels Leo's balls tighten against him, the cock swell even more.

I'm going to come in you, Leo pants. And you're going to stay there, full, ass against the glass, until it runs down your thighs. You'll show that. You'll show me that.

Yes. Yes, come. I want to feel it. I want it dripping while I come.

Leo comes with a growl, hips locked to him, in long spurts Noah feels pulsing deep inside. He doesn't pull out. He stays planted, shaking, and looks over the shoulder at the come that isn't visible yet, only guessed at. His hand joins Noah's on the cock. They stroke together, fast, Leo's palm wider, rougher. Noah sees himself: mouth open, cheeks red, Leo's body welded to his, the black street behind the reflection like a dark house.

He comes against the glass. The come shoots, white, thick, in streaks on the cold pane, on his fingers, on Leo's. He makes a mess of it, knees buckling, Leo holding him up and laughing, out of breath, still half hard inside him. A drop runs down the bay window. Outside, nothing. Inside, everything.

Leo pulls out slowly. Noah feels the emptiness, then the heat running, exactly as promised, along the cleft, over his balls, down the inside of his thigh. Leo turns him, pins his back to the glass now, and kneels. He doesn't clean him. He looks. He spreads Noah's thighs with both hands and studies his own come beading at the hole, running, shining under the lamp. Noah, exposed, arms at his sides, lets him. The fantasy isn't over because the cocks have come. It lasts as long as the looking lasts.

Stay open, Leo says, his voice broken with dirty tenderness. A little. Still. I want to see what I put in you.

He drags his tongue, once, wide, from the taint up to the balls, tastes, groans. Noah jolts, too sensitive. Leo stands, Noah's come on his cheek, and kisses him. The kiss is deep, clumsy, their soft cocks brushing, sticky. They laugh into each other's mouths. The pumpkin, behind them, is half hollowed, absurd, perfect.

Leo doesn't pick up the shorts. He stays naked in front of the bay window, one hand on the back of Noah's neck, and he turns on the little lamp on the sideboard, the one that wasn't lighting anything. The room gets brighter. The reflection, sharper.

Halloween, he says. We finish the pumpkin. But you stay like this. And if a car slows down, you don't move. You let me show you.

Noah nods. The glass is cold at his back, the come warm on his thigh, and Leo's gaze is already starting to undress him again when he has nothing left on. Outside, a leaf scrapes the sidewalk. Inside, Leo picks up the knife, naked, half hard again just from knowing he's being seen, and he holds the blade out to Noah.

Hold it, he says. That's what you came for.