Larry is still for a moment, his handsome face expressionless and blank. Then the corner of his mouth curls up, the smirk spreads across his lips. He slowly rises from the bed and walks toward his window, his hard greasy cock snapping against his hips, his eyes locked on Ted’s face.

Ted stares back, unable to move. For a moment, Larry stands naked in the window, slowly shaking his head, a look of utter disgust on his face. Then he reaches for the cord beside the window and snaps the blinds shut.

*

Ted wakes the next morning to the buzzing of his alarm. He reaches for the button and automatically looks out the window, into Larry’s bedroom. The blinds are open again. Larry should be getting in from his morning run, but the room is empty.

Ted lies back in his bed, groaning. He reaches down to his crotch. His cock is still hard. Hard and sore. Sore from so much abuse. Like his asshole, throbbing and swollen from the job he did on it last night with the dildo. After Larry caught him watching and shut the blinds, Ted tried to sleep but couldn’t. He beat off three more times, lying sweaty and naked in his bed, remembering the scowl on Larry’s face, remembering the sight of Larry standing naked and erect in the window. Ted had never seen him that naked, that close. Almost close enough to touch.

He wonders if Larry will start closing the blinds at night. He turns on his side and peers into the empty bedroom, wishing Larry would come in from his morning run. Dreading it if he does, flushing with embarrassment. But the room across the way is deserted and quiet.

Ted drags himself from bed. He showers and eats a quick breakfast, then pulls on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. He goes downstairs, headed for the corner store to buy a newspaper. Ted walks across the porch of the boarding house and steps onto the sidewalk. The way to the store leads him past the entrance to Larry’s condo. And there, sunning himself on the concrete steps, is Larry. Stripped to the waist, wearing a pair of skintight jeans and shiny alligator boots.

Ted freezes. Larry hasn’t seen him yet. He could turn around, head back to his room—but then Larry looks up and fixes him with a hard, cold stare.

Ted falters, takes another step. His heart pounds in his chest. He tries to turn his head, but Larry’s stare is like a grappling hook. Then Larry smiles at him, a strange half-smile without a trace of warmth.

“Hi.”

Ted continues to walk, but very slow. Hours pass between each step. He clears his throat. “Hi.”

“You headed somewhere?”

Ted stops in his tracks. “No.”

Larry leans back against the steps, propping himself on his elbows. The sunlight across his chest is dazzling, casting a deep shadow into the cleft between the plated muscles, casting smaller shadows down the scalloped muscles of his hard, lean stomach. His narrow hips and broad thighs seem to be poured into the tight jeans. The bulge at his crotch is enormous.

Larry looks him up and down in return. His smile fades to a frown. “What’s your name?”

Ted can hardly hear above the pounding of the blood in his temples. For a moment he simply gawks, confused. Then he opens his mouth to speak. His mouth is dry, his lips seem heavy. “Ted.”

“Mine’s Larry.”

I know, Ted almost says, but stops himself. How could he explain that he came over one day while Larry was out to check the name on Larry’s mailbox?

Ted steps toward him, thinking for some reason that Larry will reach up to shake his hand. But Larry keeps his arms at his sides. He cocks his head and spreads his legs a few inches further apart.

There’s a long silence. Larry keeps staring at him. Ted thinks he should say something more, but doesn’t know what. Then Larry stands up, straightening his powerful legs, raising his body to its full height. His crotch is at eye level, only inches from Ted’s face. His naked chest looms above. The sight takes Ted’s breath away.

Larry turns and opens the door to the stairway that leads up to his condo. He steps inside. Ted’s heart sinks. Then Larry turns back. “You coming, or what?”

Ted walks up the porch steps, his knees wobbling, and follows Larry inside. Up two long flights of plushly carpeted steps. Watching Larry’s ass flex inside his skintight jeans. Tracing the silky cleavage of his spine up to the broad, flaring muscles of his shoulders and back. Making small talk.

“You a student?”

“Yeah,” Ted says.

“What year?”

“Sophomore.”

What are you studying?”

“English.”

Larry snorts. “Figures.”

In the condo, Larry makes himself at home, sitting at the butcher block table in the dining area between the living room and the kitchen. Ted looks around the room, so familiar, but never seen from the inside out. From the living room window, at an angle, he can see the window of his room.

Ted feels uncomfortable, self-conscious, out of place. Then he sees the paddle on the wall, hung just above Larry’s head. Larry sees him staring, cranes his neck to look up at the paddle, looks back at Ted.

“You in a fraternity?”

“No.”

Larry scowls. “Figures. You’re not exactly the fraternity type, are you?”

Ted shrugs. It’s the best he can manage.

“Don’t just stand there.” Larry pushes a chair from the table with his foot. The legs squeal across the glazed stone tiles. “Sit down.”

Ted sits. Embarrassed to look Larry in the face, afraid of staring at his naked chest, he raises his eyes to the paddle above Larry’s head.

“Kinda fascinated by that thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Ted clears his throat.

“Are they just, I mean, are they just for decoration, or…” His voice trails off into a whisper.

“Decoration.” Larry curls his lip. “Yeah, you could say that. Use a paddle like that to decorate a pledgeboy’s naked ass.”

Ted swallows hard. “Oh. Yeah—they tell a lot of stories about the frats on campus. Hazing—stuff like that. I guess it’s mostly made up.” Ted finally lowers his eyes from the paddle to Larry’s face. Larry is smirking at him. The same smirk he wears when his girlfriend is down on her knees with her face buried in his crotch. The same smirk Ted saw last night, just before Larry closed the blinds.

“Hardly.” Larry leans forward, crossing his arms on the tabletop, tilting his head back. “Anything and everything you’ve heard is true. Especially about Omega boys.”

Ted bites his lip. “I don’t know. Some of those things—I don’t see how a guy could go through that kind of stuff.”

“Simple,” Larry says. “Pledges are there to serve the upper-classmen. Pledges do what they’re told. You’d know that, if you’d ever been through it. If you’d ever been stripped naked in a room full of older guys, put down on your knees—if you’d ever felt that paddle across your naked butt. I got a feeling a guy like you would probably do just about anything he was told to.”

Ted’s chest is suddenly tight, he has to struggle to breathe. “Any of those pledges—you know—you ever make them—give you a blowjob or something?” Ted blurts it out, then bites his lip, wishing he hadn’t said it.

Larry’s lip curls back in a sneer. “Shit, what do you think Omega boys are, a bunch of cocksuckers—like you?”

Ted feels a warm, prickling blush spread across his forehead. He bites his lower lip, then stops, realizing that Larry is staring at him from across the table, eyes narrowed, mouth twisted in contempt. Larry leans away from the table, tilting his chair back on two legs. He raises his arms and clasps his hands behind his head. The muscles flex and bulge across his shoulders and chest. The sweaty smell from his armpits wafts into Ted’s nostrils, making him dizzy.

“Nope,” Larry says. “Not a faggot in the house. Except for one. Guy named Steve. You wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong with him. Came from a good old Texas family of oilmen down in Beaumont. Daddy was one of the founders of the fraternity, all his older brothers pledged Omega. Steve played football down in Beaumont, star quarterback, made all-state his senior year in high school. Big guy. Good-looking, sandy hair and muscles, had the chicks hanging all over him. Wouldn’t have figured him for a faggot. ’Course he didn’t know he was a cocksucker himself, not until we put the screws to him during Hell Week. Kind of an interesting story.”