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bandomstuffsitTitle: BDSM 201: Practical Applications
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
littlemousling
Pairing(s): Brendon/Spencer, Brendon/Other Male Character
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No standard content notes apply. Contains misunderstandings; consensual BDSM; under-negotiated BDSM without negative outcomes; gossip; and minor references to teenage sexuality.
Word count: 32,000
Summary: Brendon’s packed his clothes, his laptop, his guitar, and a calendar full of kinky gay events he wants to attend. College is going to be awesome.
It takes Brendon several long minutes to turn away after his parents drive off campus. He’s still warm from their hugs, his dad’s over-hot from the sweatshirt he’d bought at the school’s bookstore. Brendon still can’t really believe that his parents are letting him go to a secular school this far from Vegas, but seeing that sweatshirt on his dad had made it real, somehow. He’s glad they stayed to have lunch after carrying everything up to Brendon’s room; he’s still getting used to the idea that they won’t be around all the time now that he’s at college.
There are people carrying heavy boxes towards him, so Brendon takes one last look at where they’d driven out and gets out of the way. He can be homesick in his awesome new dorm room, instead.
He wanders back towards his dorm room, finds a tall guy putting stuff away in one of the dressers. “Hey,” the guy says. “Brendon, right?”
“Yeah. Dallon?” Brendon sits on his bed, careful of the stuff he still has to unpack. He’s glad the guy’s name was on the door. Dallon nods, and Brendon smiles at him. He seems pretty okay, and there’s a bass guitar sitting on his desk. “Are you from around here?”
“Utah,” Dallon says. “But the trip wasn’t that bad. Good weather.”
“Hot,” Brendon agrees. “My dad was sweating like a—well, like a member of my family.” Brendon glances down at his own t-shirt. “I should probably change this.”
Dallon shrugs agreement. “For the hall meeting, maybe.” He keeps folding, unconcerned, while Brendon pulls out a Dave Matthews t-shirt and switches it for the old gym-uniform shirt he’s been rocking.
Brendon guesses this is pretty much their bonding time, and he might as well keep it going. “Are you a freshman, too?” The guy doesn’t look it, but Brendon’s pretty sure this is a freshman-only dorm.
“Yeah. But I took a couple of years for this—other thing, after high school.” Dallon looks away, down at the slacks he’s refolding.
“Mission,” Brendon says, and Dallon turns to blink at him. Brendon points at the CTR embroidered patch on Dallon’s backpack. It’s actually pretty subtle, but Brendon would know a Choose the Right reference anywhere. “My family’s LDS, too.”
“Oh,” Dallon says. “But you didn’t—”
Brendon shrugs. “Being the baby of the family helped,” he says. “They—honestly, they almost kicked me out when I said I wasn’t going, but I, you know. We worked it out eventually.”
Dallon nods. “So—you play?” He tips his chin at the guitar case next to Brendon’s leg, and Brendon grins, always happy to talk about music.
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “I’m gonna major in performance. They wouldn’t let me declare before classes start, but that’s—that’s all I want.”
“It’s a good program,” Dallon says. “I’m signed up for a bunch of music shit.” He grins at Brendon’s look of surprise. “Yeah, I swear sometimes,” he says. “I don’t really think He cares about that.”
Brendon rubs the back of his neck. Maybe it’s better to just—now, while they can transfer before anyone gets too settled.
“I’m gay,” he says, the words smushed together. “And—an atheist. And stuff.” His heart’s beating fast, and he can’t remember—he thinks Dallon might be the first person he’s ever said that out loud to. Jamie, the one guy he’d sort of dated, had just sort of assumed it from the way Brendon had been staring at his ass at the skate park.
Dallon just looks at him. “Dude, I don’t give a fuck if you’re a Satanist as long as you don’t let my shit get stolen or, like, host parties in here while I’m studying for finals.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. “Um. Awesome.” His heart rate isn’t really coming down, though, and he feels shaky, even with the relief flooding through him.
Dallon snorts. “You kind of have a low bar for awesome, dude.” He turns back to his unpacking, fills one drawer and opens the next.
“Do you want to go over now? Scope out the common room, get good seats?” Brendon’s still hyped up from coming out, and antsy from his usual brand of can’t-sit-still. He’s itching to find out who else he’ll be living with for the next year, and just to get started on the, whatever, the college experience.
Maybe there’ll even be another gay dude on the hall. Someone Brendon could talk to. After Jamie flaked out, Brendon had been kind of short on gay guys in his social circle, and it’s not like he can talk to his parents about stuff. The scholarship may be covering his tuition and housing, but Brendon still needs to be able to buy new shoes when his wear out, and strings for his guitar, and all that kind of shit is still the Bank of Dad. Brendon’s pretty sure there’d be a permanent bank strike if he told them he’s gay.
But he’s told his roommate, and nothing bad happened. So—at least that’s a start.
“Okay,” Dallon says, tossing the last pair of socks in and closing the drawer. “Yeah, let’s go over.”
There’s already a few guys in the common room by the time they find it. A couple of tall guys are flipping through a Sports Illustrated and making fun of it, and there’s a dude in one of the chairs, flipping between a clipboard and some multi-colored folders. He looks up when they come in, smiles at them, and suddenly Brendon can’t quite breathe.
“Hey! I’m Spencer, I’m your RA,” the guy says, and Brendon almost doesn’t hear him, too focused on the way Spencer’s lips are moving, on the way his shirt makes his eyes look even bluer.
“Dallon,” Dallon says, and shakes Spencer’s hand. Brendon manages to keep hold of himself long enough to give his own name, and Spencer’s hand is warm and strong when he shakes it.
There’s a bunch of bulletin boards in here covered with hall rules and store-bought cartoons of musical instruments. Dallon gestures at one of the paper guitars, tips his chin at Spencer. “So are you in the music program or—?”
“Yeah,” Spencer grins. “Drums, percussion in general. You?”
“Bass and guitar,” Dallon says.
“Dude, I—drums, too!” Brendon manages, almost cutting Dallon off. “And guitar and piano. And—stuff. I mean.” He bounces on his toes for a second. “Sorry, you were—I should—I’m gonna sit down.”
Spencer looks a little confused, and Brendon would face-palm except that no way is he going to let Spencer see that. Better to, like. Feign confidence.
Fuck, he’d been doing so well with this whole college thing so far.
***
Orientation is four long days of tours and lectures. Brendon has collected a ridiculous number of pamphlets, stickers, and folders, along with about sixteen pens printed with the school’s name. He’s pretty sure he can hit twenty by the time classes start, if he tries.
The last event this evening is an ice-cream social for his whole dorm. Pretty much everyone shows up, clumping into roommate-based cliques and scooping up nuts and sprinkles while they try to make conversation.
“You think they’ll let us go for seconds?” Dallon’s down to hot fudge and a couple of almond bits, and he’s looking at his empty spoon forlornly. “Or is it like a strict one-per-person?”
“If they didn’t say, I think you’re golden.” Brendon shrugs. “This is, like, the week of free stuff. Probably they’ll give you two and, like, a travel mug if you ask.”
“Right? I wish there were a resale value on some of this shit. Did you get a canvas bag at the safety lecture?”
Brendon had skipped that one, actually, gone back to their room and luxuriated in the privacy. The luxury had mostly taken the form of jerking off to some seriously dirty porn. It had been way better than any lecture about not waving his wallet around at night or whatever.
“Hey, there’s Spencer,” Dallon says, and before Brendon can stop him, he’s waving Spencer over. “Dude!”
“Hey,” Spencer says, smiling at both of them. “How’s orientation treating you guys?”
“Oh, um,” Brendon says. Maybe this time he won’t embarrass himself in front of the hot RA. “It’s great. Lots of, you know. Free pens.”
Spencer snorts. “You should see how many I end up with,” he says. “And still, somehow, by the time exams roll around I’m scrambling to find one.”
“I think it’s an alien plot,” Brendon says. “Like, they’re trying to drive us mad. Or they’re going to return all the lost pens all at once, and we’ll be crushed to death by the sheer volume.”
“You’d think they’d just shoot us with lasers or whatever,” Dallon muses. “Like, if they have the technology to abduct pens.”
“Nah,” Spencer says. “Species extinction by pen-crushing is probably, like, their version of people getting hit in the balls on YouTube. They probably show a holograph of it to all their alien buddies.”
“Yeah!” Brendon says. “Yeah, they, like, smoke up and watch all the pens falling out of the sky and, like, taking out old ladies walking their dogs. Maybe they’d drop them on individual people at a time, right? And then build up to, like. Complete pen coverage of the entire world.”
“Oh, man,” Spencer says. “And then it could be, like, a tourist site. All the aliens from wherever coming to walk around on the new pen surface of the Earth, all ‘ha ha puny humans.’”
“We are puny,” Brendon agrees. “We were crushed to death by pens. We deserve to be laughed at.”
Dallon’s just kind of watching them now, and Brendon turns to say something else about pens and aliens, try to draw him into the conversation, when his foot catches on a patch of spilled hot fudge.
He goes down hard, which would be okay, except that his foot skids right into Spencer’s ankle and Spencer goes down with him, his brand-new ice-cream sundae flying up into the air and coming down right onto Spencer’s t-shirt. The vanilla ice cream drips down into Spencer’s collarbone as Spencer tries to catch his breath, wind knocked out of him.
Brendon closes his eyes, and tries to pretend he isn’t here. It doesn’t really work.
***
Thanks in part to successful post-trauma avoidance of Spencer, the first week of classes is maybe the best week of Brendon’s life. All of his classes are amazing—well, the music ones are, anyway. His music-theory professor is the best so far, a young guy trying to hide some thinning hair under a cap like Brendon’s granddad wears. The professor demonstrated the initial concepts on half a dozen instruments, and Brendon ached to try some of them out.
He’s tried out for two a capella groups and a jazz band, and he’s thinking about maybe going for the musical the drama club is casting, too. Dallon thinks he’s gonna burn out, but Brendon’s better off when he’s busy.
Today, though—today’s not about classes, or even about music. Today’s about sex.
Brendon’s had this Saturday marked in his calendar for three months. It’s one of a dozen days with little red-pen scribbles across the bottom, his own shorthand. The one for today just says “Qu Ss&Ds 2pm OGdn on 2nd. St clths.”
Brendon’s been sneaking S&M porn and jerking off thinking about it for as long as he’s known about the internet, practically. But in Vegas, in Summerlin, where his parents knew everybody and his bishop had eyes in the back of his head, it couldn’t be something Brendon did in reality.
It’s not like Brendon’s never had sex. He sort of knows what he’s doing. He’d had a—not a boyfriend exactly, but a guy he went home with sometimes, an older guy with an apartment and three roommates who didn’t seem to think it was weird for Brendon to be there. The first time Jamie had held Brendon down while he blew him, Brendon had yelled so loud that one of the roommates had pounded on the wall. Jamie just pulled off and grinned at him. “Tony’s just jealous.”
Brendon had panted, unable to answer, too caught up in confusion and desire. Jamie was still holding Brendon’s hips, fingertips digging in, and Brendon wanted him to squeeze harder, dig his nails in, do all the things Brendon’s seen in the porn he watches. He wanted Jamie to refuse to let Brendon up.
When he’d been accepted here, gotten the scholarship letter, Brendon had gone straight to the computer and started googling, because—because he’s in a city now, or on the fringes of one, and cities have get-togethers for people like Brendon. Cities have groups, and people who know what they’re doing. This city has a bunch, and Brendon’s going to try all of them.
This one—queer subs and doms welcome, at the Olive Garden on Second Ave, street clothes mandatory—this one’s just lunch and chatting. But lunch and chatting are cool, Brendon can totally get on board with lunch and chatting.
He’s not, like. He’s not not nervous. He’s never been to one of these things—munches—before, and sometimes people don’t seem to really like him when they first meet him. But he’ll just try to be, like. Calm and polite. He’s read a couple of etiquette guides, mostly by accident when he was trying to figure out the meeting locations, and they all pretty much said the same thing: be nice, don’t hit on people, don’t talk about kinky shit at the top of your lungs where people who aren’t in the group can hear. Brendon’s good at all of those things, he’s pretty sure. Well, sometimes he has problems with volume control, but that’s for, like. Stuff that isn’t embarrassing as all hell.
Brendon has lots of time to plan his strategy on the long shuttlebus into the city. The meeting location is pretty central, at least, so he can walk instead of having to figure out the transit system just yet. He ends up walking around the block a few times once he gets there, just to try to cool his nerves. This is—whatever, this is his potential community, for like the next four years. He kind of wants them to think he’s cool.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” he finally mutters, and then just pushes in through the door.
“One for lunch?” The hostess is perky, and Brendon doesn’t know what to say—that he’s here for the sex meeting?
“Uh, I’m meeting—like, a group?”
“Of course!” she says, and leads him to a whole roped-off little section, with a couple of long tables and a dozen people already sitting around them. Half of them turn and look at Brendon, and, Jesus, Brendon loves attention but it’s totally fucking different to feel like an insect on a pin like this.
A guy at one end of the far table gets up and walks over to him, smiling. “Hey! I’m Todd, I’m the host.”
“Brendon.” The guy shakes his hand, and leads him to the near table.
“Hey, guys, this is Brendon. He’s—you’re new, right, Brendon?” Brendon nods, and Todd introduces the rest of the table. Brendon only catches a few of the names—Shane, Zack, Sarah—and the rest are a blur. They’re all smiling at him, though, and Brendon manages to get into a chair without falling over or injuring anyone, so he’s calling it a win.
“So, Brendon, are you new to the city? Or just to the lifestyle?” Sarah’s the closest to him, a cute brunette with bangs like Katy Perry.
“Uh,” Brendon says. “Both, I guess.” The rest of the table is dropping back into whatever conversation Todd had interrupted, something about a new Indian restaurant on the west side. It’s not exactly what Brendon thought they’d be talking about.
“Ah,” Sarah says. “Fresh meat.” She winks, and Brendon feels himself shrinking back, because—what? “Oh, hey.” Sarah puts a hand up. “Dude, I’m joking, I promise. You’re cute and all but I don’t really swing that way. Well, not much.”
Brendon’s still feeling kind of nervous, but, okay, she’s kind of funny. “Do—I mean, do new people not come much?”
She tips her head to the side. “I’d say—this one gets a few most months. But I go to some that aren’t publicized much, you know? Sort of invite-only. Those are the same group of people pretty much always.”
“And, um,” Brendon says. “Like—not like this, but like actual, uh—”
“Play parties,” Sarah says. Brendon’s not sure how she knew what he was getting at.
“Yeah. Are—do new people ever, um. At those?”
“Those are mostly invite-only,” Sarah says. “Or the good ones are, anyway. You get some publicized stuff, but it tends to be more—you know, you get people coming in ‘cause they watched Eyes Wide Shut and they think it’ll be an orgy? And it’s kind of a mood-killer to have that kind of guy staring at your ass while you’re trying to hit subspace, you know what I mean?”
“Not really?” Brendon says, and Sarah smiles at him, reassuring. “So, um. Is it, like—is it hard to get invited to the good ones, then?”
Sarah looks him up and down, grinning. “Oh, I don’t think you’re gonna be short of invites.”
“Uh. Thanks,” Brendon says, and opens his menu just to have something else to look at.
“So you’re really new, then,” Sarah says. “Wait, you’re over 18, right?”
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “You want to see my ID?”
She taps his open menu. “No, but other people will. Better safe than sorry.” She lets it drop, though, and Brendon starts listening in on the conversation going on across from him. It’s not about restaurants anymore; now it’s about safewords, safe gestures, and safe touches.
“Safe touches is the stupidest fucking phrase I’ve ever heard,” Zack says, and Brendon can’t really disagree.
“But there’s nothing wrong with the concept—” A woman whose name Brendon doesn’t know starts, and Zack waves his hand, cutting her off.
“Obviously. But Jesus, ‘safe touches’? Like we don’t have enough bad press. It sounds like some kind of molestation thing. ‘Show me on the doll where he safe-touched you!’ Fuck that shit.”
“If you don’t have a better phrase, then it’s not really worth getting all upset over,” Shane says. “I mean, whatever, all our lingo is kind of stupid. Don’t even get me started about titles.”
“Oh, please, get him started about titles.” A woman on Shane’s other side grins at him, catches Brendon’s eye and winks at him. “I never get tired of the title rants.”
“No fair doing it when there’s no one into High Protocol at the table,” another guy says. “Unless our newcomer—?” Brendon shakes his head. Whatever the fuck they’re all talking about, it wasn’t really covered in the porn he watched. “Right, so. Preaching to the choir takes a backseat to an actual debate.”
“Safe touches,” Sarah says. “What’s wrong with ‘tapping out’? It’s close enough.”
“Do you use taps? I’ve never used taps. Taps are stupid,” Zack says. “And ‘squeeze out’ sounds like some kind of—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Shane says. “Some of us are planning to order food and, like, eat it.” Brendon grins into his menu. He doesn’t think, probably, that Shane’s a—whatever, a dom, like Brendon’s pretty sure he’s looking for, but he’s definitely cute.
“You have no idea what I was going to say,” Zack says, but he doesn’t finish the sentence, anyway.
Brendon turns back to Sarah. “I feel like I should have a kink-to-English dictionary, or something.”
Sarah laughs. “You’ll pick it up fast,” she says. “But I can recommend some books and, like, blogs.”
“Thanks,” Brendon says, and Sarah taps his menu again.
“You ready to order?” Brendon nods, folds the menu away, and the waiter appears almost immediately. Brendon hopes he hadn’t been holding them up.
The conversation lulls while they’re eating, and Brendon picks up a few new names: Greta, Danny, Haley. They’re all pretty young, and Brendon glances over at the other table, finds it’s an older crowd. He wonders if Todd steered him over here for that reason.
By the time Brendon’s heading out, the tables are mostly empty and his head is swimming with all the names and terms. He’s pretty sure almost everything they were talking about went over his head, but Sarah gave him some book titles and stuff, and he’s definitely going to read up instead of just watching the porn.
A guy from the other table is heading out at the same time Brendon is, catches up to him as he’s walking back to the shuttle stop. He’s wearing a leather jacket covered with buckles, which only sort of comes under the heading of “street clothes” in Brendon’s view, but he has to admit it’s hot.
“Hey,” the guy says. “Nick.”
Brendon introduces himself, and Nick shakes his hand, doesn’t let go right away. “You’re new, huh?”
“Yeah,” Brendon says. Nick’s kind of old—well, like 30 or something—but he’s square-jawed and built, and the way he’s looking at Brendon makes Brendon feel fluttery.
“You need a good mentor,” Nick says. “Someone to show you the ropes.”
Brendon bites his lip. That does sound pretty good. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, that would be, you know. Awesome.”
“I’m going to this play party tomorrow night,” Nick says. “You should come, check out the real scene.”
Brendon grins. “Yeah, that sounds—yeah. That would be awesome, thank you.”
“Hey,” Nick says. “We gotta help out the new guys.” He gives Brendon the address and the time, and Brendon dutifully types it into his phone. “No street clothes,” Nick adds, and Brendon looks up, confused. “You don’t want anyone to think you’re a tourist, you know? It’s not polite. Dress the part.”
“I don’t really have anything,” Brendon says. He definitely doesn’t have anything that’ll look as good as Nick’s black t-shirt looks right now. Not unless he can fit three months of working out into the next twelve hours, anyway.
“Black jeans and a tight black t-shirt’ll work in a pinch,” Nick says, and then he leans in close, strokes the air next to Brendon’s neck. “Maybe you can pick up a cheap dog collar.” Brendon almost shivers, suddenly desperate for Nick to go ahead and touch him. “See you there.”
“Y-yeah,” Brendon agrees, and watches Nick walk away.
***
Brendon stops by a pet store on the way to the shuttle stop. He ends up staring at the row of collars for so long that he almost misses his shuttle and has to wait an hour, but the one he picked—smooth, rolled black leather—seems like the right kind of thing. The kind of thing Nick would approve of.
He’s got the other stuff, too, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt, and he figures maybe black socks and work boots would be better than flip-flops, maybe. Somehow, having all of that worked out doesn’t make it any easier to actually get ready on Sunday.
“Dude,” Dallon says. “Are you okay? Do you want the fan on or something?” Dallon’s lying in bed with a textbook propped on his chest, and he’s being pretty great about how much Brendon’s anxiety is probably screwing with his focus.
“Sorry,” Brendon says. “I’m going to this, like, party, and I don’t know—I don’t want to be that guy, you know?” He’s probably gonna be that guy no matter what, the guy in the corner who’s too annoying and too new and too Brendon.
“Uh, sure.” Dallon squints at him. “Is it a school thing? I could come with you if you want the—”
“No!” Brendon says, a little too loud, and then, “Sorry, not—um. Not a school thing. More of a, like. Sort of a gay thing.” Not exactly true, but close enough.
“Ahhh,” Dallon says, and now he’s grinning. “I get it. You’re trying to dress to impress.” He waggles his eyebrows, and Brendon laughs, relieved.
“Yeah,” Brendon agrees. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Dallon tents his textbook on the bed, laces his fingers over his belly. “That seems like a good outfit. I mean, it’s not really my area, but I think you look good.”
Brendon half turns, striking a pose, and grins at him. “Of course I do,” he says, and suddenly he can already feel the adrenaline, the performance high. That’s what this party is—he’s putting on a costume, putting on a show. He can do this. “I can do this,” he mutters, and Dallon snorts.
“Maybe save the Stuart Smiley routine for when I’m out of the room, dude.”
Brendon flips him off, laughing, and then he gets out the door before he can overthink this any longer.
***
Brendon doesn’t put the collar on until he’s practically inside the building. He’s thinking that’s not the sort of thing he really wants to wear on the shuttle, with all his fellow students looking on, but it’s also something that felt weird to pull out on the sidewalk of this unassuming neighborhood, with its tiny manicured lawns and semi-detached houses.
It’s cool against his neck, and Brendon wishes he had a mirror, because he bets it looks really fucking sexy, with the buckle sitting in the hollow of his throat. There’d been goth kids in his high school who wore collars, sometimes, and Brendon had never thought much of it. Now, though—now he feels hot, feels like strutting into the house with his chin raised.
He doesn’t quite strut, in the end; he has to find the right house, and then the right door, and pay the guy sitting in the hallway, and then he’s in this strange house and it’s all very sudden. Very awkward.
“Hi there!” A man comes up and stops well outside of Brendon’s personal space. “I’m Mark, your host for the evening.” He’s a tall guy, skinny and kind of nerdy, nothing like the kind of guy Brendon might have pictured hosting a kinky sex party. Brendon likes him instantly.
“Oh,” Brendon says. “I’m—Brendon. Uh, Nick invited me? Is that—okay?”
Mark frowns for a second, but then his face smooths out. “Of course,” he says. “Did he give you the house rules?”
“Uh, no street clothes?” Brendon says. “But this was kind of as good as I could do.”
Mark’s smiling now, sort of the way Brendon’s grandmother smiles at him. It’s a little annoying, actually, because Brendon’s here to get laid, not to be the kid everyone talks down to. “Okay! That’s good, but I mean more the party rules. House safeword is ‘safeword.’ No touching without permission. DMs are wearing red armbands—” He taps his own “—and you can go to them with any problems. Don’t interrupt a scene unless you think there’s a very serious safety risk, no bodily fluids on the furniture, and don’t touch without permission.”
“You said that one twice,” Brendon points out.
“It bears repeating,” Mark says. “So you think you’ve got the gist? There’s a written list in the kitchen if you need to refresh your memory.”
“Safeword is ‘safeword,’ no touching, red armbands on—uh—” Brendon bites his lip. “Dungeon masters?”
“Monitors,” Mark corrects, and squints at Brendon. “Have you not—uh, okay, I’m gonna need to see some ID. Just in case, you understand.”
Brendon flips out his wallet, cognizant of the people watching him and Mark. “Nevada, huh? Okay,” Mark says. “Why don’t I introduce you to some people?”
The room is kind of over-full, a small living room packed with people. And everyone’s dressed up enough that Brendon’s really glad he opted for the work boots over the flip-flops. There are only a few women, but they’re all wearing fancy stuff, and the guys are wearing way more leather than Brendon’s ever seen in one place before. Some of them aren’t wearing much else—just some straps and leather shorts, or even less than that.
Mostly everyone’s standing around talking, but there’s a guy in the corner kneeling with his head bowed and his wrists tied behind him. Another guy is sitting in an armchair next to him, petting his head. Brendon kind of wants to just watch them for a while, but Mark is gesturing, and Brendon should probably listen.
“—New to the city,” Mark’s saying. “I think. Brendon?”
“Uh, yeah,” Brendon says, and the man he’s being introduced to smiles at him. “Brand new.”
“Steve’s an old hand around here,” Mark says. “He hosts a lot of the time, but I pulled the short straw tonight.”
Steve snorts. “Short straw my ass. You get to fall right into bed and the rest of us have to get all the way home while we’re still spacey.”
“Hey,” Mark says, and he’s smirking. “You’re welcome to fall into my bed anytime.”
“Uh-huh,” Steve starts, and Mark waves him off.
“Yeah, yeah, break my heart later. I’m gonna go introduce Brendon around some more. Nick invited him, so.”
“Guess Nick’s found another spring chicken,” Steve says, and it’s low enough that Brendon almost doesn’t catch it.
“It’s like he’s got a proximity alarm,” Mark says back, and before Brendon can think of a way to reply to that, they’re on to the next guy.
“Hans,” Mark says, and Brendon waves hello. “Hans is giving a demonstration later.”
“Yeah?” Brendon didn’t know there’d be, like, demos. That’s cool. “What on?”
Hans grins. “Rope play. Suspensions.”
“Hans is one of our dedicated rope obsessives,” Mark says.
“What can I say?” Hans shrugs. “You’re just sad that your thing doesn’t come in pretty colors.”
“It does if you buy colored latex gloves,” Mark says. Brendon just blinks. He’s starting to give up on understanding any of this stuff.
“Blue rope is gorgeous,” Hans says. “Blue gloves look like your top is the villian from Firefly.”
“Maybe I’m into villainy.” Mark grins. “Anyway. Brendon here is new, I’m introducing him around.”
Hans smiles at Brendon. “You should—”
A hand drops onto Brendon’s shoulder. “Hey,” Nick says, and Brendon smiles back at him.
“Hey,” Brendon says. Nick’s wearing his jacket again, but this time the shirt underneath is white and worn thin enough to show the shape of all his muscles, the shaved-smooth lines of his chest. Brendon’s stomach is fluttering again.
“Nick,” Hans says, and Nick tips his chin at them.
“You guys don’t mind if I steal Brendon away, do you?” Nick steers Brendon towards the table with the bowl of M&Ms, and Brendon snags a few just to give him something to do with his hands. “Good job on the outfit,” Nick says.
“Oh, um.” Brendon looks down at himself. He’s not wearing anything like what Nick is, with the—are those leather pants? And something hanging off the back of them, on the left, some kind of, uh. Brendon’s pretty sure that’s a flogger, actually. Some of his favorite porn has flogging in it. “Thanks?”
Nick grins at him. “Did Mark show you the back-room setup?”
“Uh, no,” Brendon says. “Is that, um. Is that where—” No one’s exactly doing anything much kinky in this room; even the guys who were in the corner are gone. So that must all be somewhere else.
“Yeah,” Nick says. “You wanna see some stuff?”
“That’s—okay? Watching?”
Nick nods, serious now. “No touching, no interrupting. Try not to be too loud or distracting. But yeah, you can watch.” He smiles again. “If they didn’t want to be seen, at least a little bit, they’d do it in private.”
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and his mouth is dry, thinking about it, about being watched by these people, while he’s—while Nick is—
“Through here,” Nick says, and steers him downstairs. The basement is a little dimmer, and Brendon picks his way down the last few stairs slowly, making sure of his footing. It’s quieter, too—not so much of the buzz of conversation, but there are other sounds. Brendon’s head swings around at the first loud smacking sound, and Nick laughs quietly behind him.
“You like impact play?” he asks, and nudges Brendon in that direction. There’s a familiar-looking guy leaning against the wall, bracing himself. He’s shirtless, pants around his spread knees, and the guy behind him is rubbing his ass, fingermarks showing up white against the reddened skin there every time he lets go.
“Shit,” Brendon says, and then the one guy—the dom—steps back and hits the front guy again, one vicious strike with a little wooden paddle. The guy getting hit whimpers and rests his cheek against the wall, and now that Brendon can see him clearly, he can tell it’s Shane, from the munch. Shane looks even cuter like this, but he also looks a lot less like Brendon’s type. Maybe the guy behind him is a better bet; the way he’s slapping the paddle on his own palm just to watch Shane jump at the sound is making Brendon’s mouth dry.
“Hot, right?” Nick steps a little closer, sets his hand on Brendon’s shoulder, and Brendon nods and leans back into him, because, well—he kind of really, really wants to be where Shane is, and he’s pretty sure that’s what Nick’s offering. “Yeah,” Nick says, and moves his hand up into Brendon’s hair, tugs Brendon back firmly against his broad chest. “You’d look good like that,” Nick murmurs. “All spread out and desperate.”
Brendon’s been hard almost since he took the first step down towards the basement, but now he’s aching, wishing he’d worn different pants. He nods, and Nick’s hand tightens in his hair. Brendon’s eyes start to slip shut, and then there’s another smacking sound and he opens them in time to see Shane shivering and shaking, and the guy behind him moving in close, paddle forgotten at his feet.
“Jesus,” Nick whispers. “I think he just came. You think you could come just from that? I bet you could learn to.”
Brendon’s not sure he isn’t going to come just from this, much less anything more than just talking. “Yeah,” he manages, and Nick presses a little closer, hard-on against Brendon’s back.
“Is that, ‘yeah, take me over in another corner and hit me, sir’? You gotta ask for it if you want it.”
Brendon can’t take his eyes off the way Shane’s gone boneless in the other guy’s arms, looking blissed-out and kind of high. “Yeah—you can—I mean. I’d like that. Sir?”
“Ask me again,” Nick says, and pulls Brendon’s head back until Brendon’s mouth opens.
“Can you—” Brendon licks his lips. “Can you hit me? Sir.” Brendon’s throat is dry, and he swallows, feeling the way having his head pulled back stretches his throat against the collar.
Nick lets go of his hair abruptly and Brendon almost stumbles, but Nick’s slipped an arm around his waist to catch him. “Over here,” he says—orders, really, voice low and commanding, and Brendon scrambles to fulfill the demand. It’s not just bare wall over here; there’s padding, like the stuff around the gym in Brendon’s high school. Brendon doesn’t have the best associations with this kind of wall padding, but he’s willing to change his feelings.
“Suppose I told you to strip?” Nick murmurs. He hasn’t let go of Brendon, and Brendon isn’t exactly desperate to get loose, not with the way Nick’s stroking his t-shirt, fingertips edging down toward his zipper. “Would you?”
“Yes,” Brendon says. Every time Nick says something to him, it feels like Brendon’s brain empties out, and as soon as he stops talking, all the thoughts crowd back in, but quieter.
“Of course you would,” Nick says. “Such a good little sub.”
No one’s ever called Brendon that before. He leans back a little more, lets Nick hold him up.
“I’m not going to ask you to do that—yet.” Nick’s thumb comes up under Brendon’s t-shirt. “But you’re going to take your shirt off for me.” He pushes Brendon back onto his feet, and Brendon takes a moment to catch his balance—when did it get so hard to just stand up?—before he grasps the hem of his shirt and pulls it off.
“Kneel in front of the wall,” Nick says, and Brendon goes over to the padded section, finds that the floor is padded as well. He kneels close enough that he can easily rest his folded forearms on the wall, and his cheek, looking back at Nick to see if he’s done it right.
“Good,” Nick says. He unhooks the flogger from his belt, and Brendon watches him. The rest of the room has disappeared; there’s only Nick, and the flogger, and Brendon’s bare back. “Ask me again.”
Brendon can’t think what he means, and he’s frantic, for a second, trying to remember. “I—will you hit me?” Once he’s asked, he can’t stop, needs Nick to know how much he wants this. “Can you hit me, will you—I want you to.” He swallows again, tries to wet his mouth. “Please.”
“The magic word,” Nick says, and then, “Don’t move.” He walks in close, takes a moment to find the right footing, and then the flogger comes down on Brendon’s back. It’s not that hard, and Brendon instantly wants more, wants it to hurt the way that didn’t. “Gonna warm you up,” Nick says, and then he’s hitting Brendon again and he isn’t stopping. None of them are hard the way Brendon wants, but they add up fast, leave him stinging in a way that almost makes him want to stop, except—except that he wants to know what’s on the other side of the stinging. What happens when Nick starts hitting harder.
He gets his wish before the stinging makes him change his mind. The harder strikes actually hurt, and they’re—they feel—Brendon’s hard, but it isn’t about that, not the way he’d thought it would be. It’s about the way the blows make his whole body move, and the pride that suffuses him when Nick mutters, “God, you look good.”
It’s something else, too, some sensation Brendon doesn’t even have a word for. None of the things he’s done on his own have felt like this. He can’t push himself, but Nick can push him. This is way more than Brendon’s ever felt, and instead of being too much, it’s better, way better. It feels better in his muscles, and it feels better in his head.
Brendon has no idea how long it’s been, or how many times Nick has hit him. A minute, or an hour, when Nick finally kneels next to him and carefully pushes him away from the wall. “Hey,” he says. “Lie on your front.”
Brendon can’t do anything but obey, brain too—something, muted—to question the instruction. Nick leans over him once he’s down, runs his cool fingers over Brendon’s back. “Didn’t break the skin,” he says. “You look—fuck, Brendon. You’re gonna be bruised up. Hope you don’t have a swim meet or something this week.”
The phrase doesn’t make much sense to Brendon. A swim meet? But it doesn’t seem important, either, so he just lets it float back out of his mind, goes back to focusing on nothing more important than the way Nick’s still stroking his skin. It hurts, just those little touches, and Brendon likes it. He can’t capture the feeling more than that: it hurts, and he likes it. He’s had years of playing with those two concepts by himself and he’s never been able to define it any other way.
It’s never, ever been like this by himself, though. It’s never come anywhere close. “Good,” Brendon manages, more a grunt than a word, and Nick’s hand comes up to stroke the back of his neck.
“You don’t even know how easy you are.” Nick pets his hair. “You’re so gorgeous, the way you went under practically as soon as I touched you. None of those stupid walls people put up when they’ve been around the scene too long. I knew you’d be so—responsive. I knew you wanted to be good for me.”
Brendon can’t quite find the energy to smile, but he wants to, at the way Nick’s praising him. It’s not penetrating much, but he thinks he’s getting the gist—gorgeous, good, responsive. “So fucking under,” Nick says, and strokes his fingers over Brendon’s cheek. “Nobody goes under like a new kid. No walls at all.”
Nick starts rubbing Brendon’s shoulders, massaging the tightness out of them where Brendon had been bracing himself. He does Brendon’s lower back after that, and it’s got to be the best massage Brendon’s ever had; he feels completely loose, boneless and relaxed. Gravity has never felt this strong, pulling him down into the padded mats, and Brendon doesn’t think he ever wants to get up.
“You didn’t even see the people watching, did you? You were too blissed out to care about all those guys standing around watching you whimper and arch up into it. But I bet you like hearing about it, don’t you? Everyone—” Nick grunts, and Brendon realizes that he’s jerking off. He kind of wants to watch, but that would require moving his eyelids, and there’s no way he can manage that. “Everyone watching you getting desperate for it. Watching you—fuck—watching you take it. You would—you’d have done anything I—anything—”
Nick’s groan is long and low, and Brendon realizes after a moment that he’s surprised not to feel the come on his skin. “God,” Nick says, and then there’s rustling, and Nick’s dry hands back on Brendon’s skin. “Okay. Let’s get you back to the land of the living. I don’t want to be here all night.”
Brendon feels suddenly and sharply guilty. “Yeah,” he manages, and pushes shakily onto his forearms. It’s not quite so hard once he starts, anyway. “Sorry.”
“Oh, hey,” Nick says. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just, you know. You can be in a chair, upstairs. And so can I. I’ll get you some water and some M&Ms, okay?”
That sounds nice, actually. Brendon’s mouth is like a desert or something. He hadn’t noticed before, but now he’s feeling a little more himself, eyes blinking open in the dim light.
The first thing he sees are shoes, several feet away. Well—feet, in shoes. A bunch of them, and Brendon realizes the people Nick was telling him about are still there, or at least some of them are. He glances up, and—holy Jesus fuck.
Brendon’s hot RA just watched him get flogged at a fucking BDSM party.
***
Part Two
Author:
littlemouslingPairing(s): Brendon/Spencer, Brendon/Other Male Character
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No standard content notes apply. Contains misunderstandings; consensual BDSM; under-negotiated BDSM without negative outcomes; gossip; and minor references to teenage sexuality.
Word count: 32,000
Summary: Brendon’s packed his clothes, his laptop, his guitar, and a calendar full of kinky gay events he wants to attend. College is going to be awesome.
It takes Brendon several long minutes to turn away after his parents drive off campus. He’s still warm from their hugs, his dad’s over-hot from the sweatshirt he’d bought at the school’s bookstore. Brendon still can’t really believe that his parents are letting him go to a secular school this far from Vegas, but seeing that sweatshirt on his dad had made it real, somehow. He’s glad they stayed to have lunch after carrying everything up to Brendon’s room; he’s still getting used to the idea that they won’t be around all the time now that he’s at college.
There are people carrying heavy boxes towards him, so Brendon takes one last look at where they’d driven out and gets out of the way. He can be homesick in his awesome new dorm room, instead.
He wanders back towards his dorm room, finds a tall guy putting stuff away in one of the dressers. “Hey,” the guy says. “Brendon, right?”
“Yeah. Dallon?” Brendon sits on his bed, careful of the stuff he still has to unpack. He’s glad the guy’s name was on the door. Dallon nods, and Brendon smiles at him. He seems pretty okay, and there’s a bass guitar sitting on his desk. “Are you from around here?”
“Utah,” Dallon says. “But the trip wasn’t that bad. Good weather.”
“Hot,” Brendon agrees. “My dad was sweating like a—well, like a member of my family.” Brendon glances down at his own t-shirt. “I should probably change this.”
Dallon shrugs agreement. “For the hall meeting, maybe.” He keeps folding, unconcerned, while Brendon pulls out a Dave Matthews t-shirt and switches it for the old gym-uniform shirt he’s been rocking.
Brendon guesses this is pretty much their bonding time, and he might as well keep it going. “Are you a freshman, too?” The guy doesn’t look it, but Brendon’s pretty sure this is a freshman-only dorm.
“Yeah. But I took a couple of years for this—other thing, after high school.” Dallon looks away, down at the slacks he’s refolding.
“Mission,” Brendon says, and Dallon turns to blink at him. Brendon points at the CTR embroidered patch on Dallon’s backpack. It’s actually pretty subtle, but Brendon would know a Choose the Right reference anywhere. “My family’s LDS, too.”
“Oh,” Dallon says. “But you didn’t—”
Brendon shrugs. “Being the baby of the family helped,” he says. “They—honestly, they almost kicked me out when I said I wasn’t going, but I, you know. We worked it out eventually.”
Dallon nods. “So—you play?” He tips his chin at the guitar case next to Brendon’s leg, and Brendon grins, always happy to talk about music.
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “I’m gonna major in performance. They wouldn’t let me declare before classes start, but that’s—that’s all I want.”
“It’s a good program,” Dallon says. “I’m signed up for a bunch of music shit.” He grins at Brendon’s look of surprise. “Yeah, I swear sometimes,” he says. “I don’t really think He cares about that.”
Brendon rubs the back of his neck. Maybe it’s better to just—now, while they can transfer before anyone gets too settled.
“I’m gay,” he says, the words smushed together. “And—an atheist. And stuff.” His heart’s beating fast, and he can’t remember—he thinks Dallon might be the first person he’s ever said that out loud to. Jamie, the one guy he’d sort of dated, had just sort of assumed it from the way Brendon had been staring at his ass at the skate park.
Dallon just looks at him. “Dude, I don’t give a fuck if you’re a Satanist as long as you don’t let my shit get stolen or, like, host parties in here while I’m studying for finals.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. “Um. Awesome.” His heart rate isn’t really coming down, though, and he feels shaky, even with the relief flooding through him.
Dallon snorts. “You kind of have a low bar for awesome, dude.” He turns back to his unpacking, fills one drawer and opens the next.
“Do you want to go over now? Scope out the common room, get good seats?” Brendon’s still hyped up from coming out, and antsy from his usual brand of can’t-sit-still. He’s itching to find out who else he’ll be living with for the next year, and just to get started on the, whatever, the college experience.
Maybe there’ll even be another gay dude on the hall. Someone Brendon could talk to. After Jamie flaked out, Brendon had been kind of short on gay guys in his social circle, and it’s not like he can talk to his parents about stuff. The scholarship may be covering his tuition and housing, but Brendon still needs to be able to buy new shoes when his wear out, and strings for his guitar, and all that kind of shit is still the Bank of Dad. Brendon’s pretty sure there’d be a permanent bank strike if he told them he’s gay.
But he’s told his roommate, and nothing bad happened. So—at least that’s a start.
“Okay,” Dallon says, tossing the last pair of socks in and closing the drawer. “Yeah, let’s go over.”
There’s already a few guys in the common room by the time they find it. A couple of tall guys are flipping through a Sports Illustrated and making fun of it, and there’s a dude in one of the chairs, flipping between a clipboard and some multi-colored folders. He looks up when they come in, smiles at them, and suddenly Brendon can’t quite breathe.
“Hey! I’m Spencer, I’m your RA,” the guy says, and Brendon almost doesn’t hear him, too focused on the way Spencer’s lips are moving, on the way his shirt makes his eyes look even bluer.
“Dallon,” Dallon says, and shakes Spencer’s hand. Brendon manages to keep hold of himself long enough to give his own name, and Spencer’s hand is warm and strong when he shakes it.
There’s a bunch of bulletin boards in here covered with hall rules and store-bought cartoons of musical instruments. Dallon gestures at one of the paper guitars, tips his chin at Spencer. “So are you in the music program or—?”
“Yeah,” Spencer grins. “Drums, percussion in general. You?”
“Bass and guitar,” Dallon says.
“Dude, I—drums, too!” Brendon manages, almost cutting Dallon off. “And guitar and piano. And—stuff. I mean.” He bounces on his toes for a second. “Sorry, you were—I should—I’m gonna sit down.”
Spencer looks a little confused, and Brendon would face-palm except that no way is he going to let Spencer see that. Better to, like. Feign confidence.
Fuck, he’d been doing so well with this whole college thing so far.
***
Orientation is four long days of tours and lectures. Brendon has collected a ridiculous number of pamphlets, stickers, and folders, along with about sixteen pens printed with the school’s name. He’s pretty sure he can hit twenty by the time classes start, if he tries.
The last event this evening is an ice-cream social for his whole dorm. Pretty much everyone shows up, clumping into roommate-based cliques and scooping up nuts and sprinkles while they try to make conversation.
“You think they’ll let us go for seconds?” Dallon’s down to hot fudge and a couple of almond bits, and he’s looking at his empty spoon forlornly. “Or is it like a strict one-per-person?”
“If they didn’t say, I think you’re golden.” Brendon shrugs. “This is, like, the week of free stuff. Probably they’ll give you two and, like, a travel mug if you ask.”
“Right? I wish there were a resale value on some of this shit. Did you get a canvas bag at the safety lecture?”
Brendon had skipped that one, actually, gone back to their room and luxuriated in the privacy. The luxury had mostly taken the form of jerking off to some seriously dirty porn. It had been way better than any lecture about not waving his wallet around at night or whatever.
“Hey, there’s Spencer,” Dallon says, and before Brendon can stop him, he’s waving Spencer over. “Dude!”
“Hey,” Spencer says, smiling at both of them. “How’s orientation treating you guys?”
“Oh, um,” Brendon says. Maybe this time he won’t embarrass himself in front of the hot RA. “It’s great. Lots of, you know. Free pens.”
Spencer snorts. “You should see how many I end up with,” he says. “And still, somehow, by the time exams roll around I’m scrambling to find one.”
“I think it’s an alien plot,” Brendon says. “Like, they’re trying to drive us mad. Or they’re going to return all the lost pens all at once, and we’ll be crushed to death by the sheer volume.”
“You’d think they’d just shoot us with lasers or whatever,” Dallon muses. “Like, if they have the technology to abduct pens.”
“Nah,” Spencer says. “Species extinction by pen-crushing is probably, like, their version of people getting hit in the balls on YouTube. They probably show a holograph of it to all their alien buddies.”
“Yeah!” Brendon says. “Yeah, they, like, smoke up and watch all the pens falling out of the sky and, like, taking out old ladies walking their dogs. Maybe they’d drop them on individual people at a time, right? And then build up to, like. Complete pen coverage of the entire world.”
“Oh, man,” Spencer says. “And then it could be, like, a tourist site. All the aliens from wherever coming to walk around on the new pen surface of the Earth, all ‘ha ha puny humans.’”
“We are puny,” Brendon agrees. “We were crushed to death by pens. We deserve to be laughed at.”
Dallon’s just kind of watching them now, and Brendon turns to say something else about pens and aliens, try to draw him into the conversation, when his foot catches on a patch of spilled hot fudge.
He goes down hard, which would be okay, except that his foot skids right into Spencer’s ankle and Spencer goes down with him, his brand-new ice-cream sundae flying up into the air and coming down right onto Spencer’s t-shirt. The vanilla ice cream drips down into Spencer’s collarbone as Spencer tries to catch his breath, wind knocked out of him.
Brendon closes his eyes, and tries to pretend he isn’t here. It doesn’t really work.
***
Thanks in part to successful post-trauma avoidance of Spencer, the first week of classes is maybe the best week of Brendon’s life. All of his classes are amazing—well, the music ones are, anyway. His music-theory professor is the best so far, a young guy trying to hide some thinning hair under a cap like Brendon’s granddad wears. The professor demonstrated the initial concepts on half a dozen instruments, and Brendon ached to try some of them out.
He’s tried out for two a capella groups and a jazz band, and he’s thinking about maybe going for the musical the drama club is casting, too. Dallon thinks he’s gonna burn out, but Brendon’s better off when he’s busy.
Today, though—today’s not about classes, or even about music. Today’s about sex.
Brendon’s had this Saturday marked in his calendar for three months. It’s one of a dozen days with little red-pen scribbles across the bottom, his own shorthand. The one for today just says “Qu Ss&Ds 2pm OGdn on 2nd. St clths.”
Brendon’s been sneaking S&M porn and jerking off thinking about it for as long as he’s known about the internet, practically. But in Vegas, in Summerlin, where his parents knew everybody and his bishop had eyes in the back of his head, it couldn’t be something Brendon did in reality.
It’s not like Brendon’s never had sex. He sort of knows what he’s doing. He’d had a—not a boyfriend exactly, but a guy he went home with sometimes, an older guy with an apartment and three roommates who didn’t seem to think it was weird for Brendon to be there. The first time Jamie had held Brendon down while he blew him, Brendon had yelled so loud that one of the roommates had pounded on the wall. Jamie just pulled off and grinned at him. “Tony’s just jealous.”
Brendon had panted, unable to answer, too caught up in confusion and desire. Jamie was still holding Brendon’s hips, fingertips digging in, and Brendon wanted him to squeeze harder, dig his nails in, do all the things Brendon’s seen in the porn he watches. He wanted Jamie to refuse to let Brendon up.
When he’d been accepted here, gotten the scholarship letter, Brendon had gone straight to the computer and started googling, because—because he’s in a city now, or on the fringes of one, and cities have get-togethers for people like Brendon. Cities have groups, and people who know what they’re doing. This city has a bunch, and Brendon’s going to try all of them.
This one—queer subs and doms welcome, at the Olive Garden on Second Ave, street clothes mandatory—this one’s just lunch and chatting. But lunch and chatting are cool, Brendon can totally get on board with lunch and chatting.
He’s not, like. He’s not not nervous. He’s never been to one of these things—munches—before, and sometimes people don’t seem to really like him when they first meet him. But he’ll just try to be, like. Calm and polite. He’s read a couple of etiquette guides, mostly by accident when he was trying to figure out the meeting locations, and they all pretty much said the same thing: be nice, don’t hit on people, don’t talk about kinky shit at the top of your lungs where people who aren’t in the group can hear. Brendon’s good at all of those things, he’s pretty sure. Well, sometimes he has problems with volume control, but that’s for, like. Stuff that isn’t embarrassing as all hell.
Brendon has lots of time to plan his strategy on the long shuttlebus into the city. The meeting location is pretty central, at least, so he can walk instead of having to figure out the transit system just yet. He ends up walking around the block a few times once he gets there, just to try to cool his nerves. This is—whatever, this is his potential community, for like the next four years. He kind of wants them to think he’s cool.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” he finally mutters, and then just pushes in through the door.
“One for lunch?” The hostess is perky, and Brendon doesn’t know what to say—that he’s here for the sex meeting?
“Uh, I’m meeting—like, a group?”
“Of course!” she says, and leads him to a whole roped-off little section, with a couple of long tables and a dozen people already sitting around them. Half of them turn and look at Brendon, and, Jesus, Brendon loves attention but it’s totally fucking different to feel like an insect on a pin like this.
A guy at one end of the far table gets up and walks over to him, smiling. “Hey! I’m Todd, I’m the host.”
“Brendon.” The guy shakes his hand, and leads him to the near table.
“Hey, guys, this is Brendon. He’s—you’re new, right, Brendon?” Brendon nods, and Todd introduces the rest of the table. Brendon only catches a few of the names—Shane, Zack, Sarah—and the rest are a blur. They’re all smiling at him, though, and Brendon manages to get into a chair without falling over or injuring anyone, so he’s calling it a win.
“So, Brendon, are you new to the city? Or just to the lifestyle?” Sarah’s the closest to him, a cute brunette with bangs like Katy Perry.
“Uh,” Brendon says. “Both, I guess.” The rest of the table is dropping back into whatever conversation Todd had interrupted, something about a new Indian restaurant on the west side. It’s not exactly what Brendon thought they’d be talking about.
“Ah,” Sarah says. “Fresh meat.” She winks, and Brendon feels himself shrinking back, because—what? “Oh, hey.” Sarah puts a hand up. “Dude, I’m joking, I promise. You’re cute and all but I don’t really swing that way. Well, not much.”
Brendon’s still feeling kind of nervous, but, okay, she’s kind of funny. “Do—I mean, do new people not come much?”
She tips her head to the side. “I’d say—this one gets a few most months. But I go to some that aren’t publicized much, you know? Sort of invite-only. Those are the same group of people pretty much always.”
“And, um,” Brendon says. “Like—not like this, but like actual, uh—”
“Play parties,” Sarah says. Brendon’s not sure how she knew what he was getting at.
“Yeah. Are—do new people ever, um. At those?”
“Those are mostly invite-only,” Sarah says. “Or the good ones are, anyway. You get some publicized stuff, but it tends to be more—you know, you get people coming in ‘cause they watched Eyes Wide Shut and they think it’ll be an orgy? And it’s kind of a mood-killer to have that kind of guy staring at your ass while you’re trying to hit subspace, you know what I mean?”
“Not really?” Brendon says, and Sarah smiles at him, reassuring. “So, um. Is it, like—is it hard to get invited to the good ones, then?”
Sarah looks him up and down, grinning. “Oh, I don’t think you’re gonna be short of invites.”
“Uh. Thanks,” Brendon says, and opens his menu just to have something else to look at.
“So you’re really new, then,” Sarah says. “Wait, you’re over 18, right?”
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “You want to see my ID?”
She taps his open menu. “No, but other people will. Better safe than sorry.” She lets it drop, though, and Brendon starts listening in on the conversation going on across from him. It’s not about restaurants anymore; now it’s about safewords, safe gestures, and safe touches.
“Safe touches is the stupidest fucking phrase I’ve ever heard,” Zack says, and Brendon can’t really disagree.
“But there’s nothing wrong with the concept—” A woman whose name Brendon doesn’t know starts, and Zack waves his hand, cutting her off.
“Obviously. But Jesus, ‘safe touches’? Like we don’t have enough bad press. It sounds like some kind of molestation thing. ‘Show me on the doll where he safe-touched you!’ Fuck that shit.”
“If you don’t have a better phrase, then it’s not really worth getting all upset over,” Shane says. “I mean, whatever, all our lingo is kind of stupid. Don’t even get me started about titles.”
“Oh, please, get him started about titles.” A woman on Shane’s other side grins at him, catches Brendon’s eye and winks at him. “I never get tired of the title rants.”
“No fair doing it when there’s no one into High Protocol at the table,” another guy says. “Unless our newcomer—?” Brendon shakes his head. Whatever the fuck they’re all talking about, it wasn’t really covered in the porn he watched. “Right, so. Preaching to the choir takes a backseat to an actual debate.”
“Safe touches,” Sarah says. “What’s wrong with ‘tapping out’? It’s close enough.”
“Do you use taps? I’ve never used taps. Taps are stupid,” Zack says. “And ‘squeeze out’ sounds like some kind of—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Shane says. “Some of us are planning to order food and, like, eat it.” Brendon grins into his menu. He doesn’t think, probably, that Shane’s a—whatever, a dom, like Brendon’s pretty sure he’s looking for, but he’s definitely cute.
“You have no idea what I was going to say,” Zack says, but he doesn’t finish the sentence, anyway.
Brendon turns back to Sarah. “I feel like I should have a kink-to-English dictionary, or something.”
Sarah laughs. “You’ll pick it up fast,” she says. “But I can recommend some books and, like, blogs.”
“Thanks,” Brendon says, and Sarah taps his menu again.
“You ready to order?” Brendon nods, folds the menu away, and the waiter appears almost immediately. Brendon hopes he hadn’t been holding them up.
The conversation lulls while they’re eating, and Brendon picks up a few new names: Greta, Danny, Haley. They’re all pretty young, and Brendon glances over at the other table, finds it’s an older crowd. He wonders if Todd steered him over here for that reason.
By the time Brendon’s heading out, the tables are mostly empty and his head is swimming with all the names and terms. He’s pretty sure almost everything they were talking about went over his head, but Sarah gave him some book titles and stuff, and he’s definitely going to read up instead of just watching the porn.
A guy from the other table is heading out at the same time Brendon is, catches up to him as he’s walking back to the shuttle stop. He’s wearing a leather jacket covered with buckles, which only sort of comes under the heading of “street clothes” in Brendon’s view, but he has to admit it’s hot.
“Hey,” the guy says. “Nick.”
Brendon introduces himself, and Nick shakes his hand, doesn’t let go right away. “You’re new, huh?”
“Yeah,” Brendon says. Nick’s kind of old—well, like 30 or something—but he’s square-jawed and built, and the way he’s looking at Brendon makes Brendon feel fluttery.
“You need a good mentor,” Nick says. “Someone to show you the ropes.”
Brendon bites his lip. That does sound pretty good. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, that would be, you know. Awesome.”
“I’m going to this play party tomorrow night,” Nick says. “You should come, check out the real scene.”
Brendon grins. “Yeah, that sounds—yeah. That would be awesome, thank you.”
“Hey,” Nick says. “We gotta help out the new guys.” He gives Brendon the address and the time, and Brendon dutifully types it into his phone. “No street clothes,” Nick adds, and Brendon looks up, confused. “You don’t want anyone to think you’re a tourist, you know? It’s not polite. Dress the part.”
“I don’t really have anything,” Brendon says. He definitely doesn’t have anything that’ll look as good as Nick’s black t-shirt looks right now. Not unless he can fit three months of working out into the next twelve hours, anyway.
“Black jeans and a tight black t-shirt’ll work in a pinch,” Nick says, and then he leans in close, strokes the air next to Brendon’s neck. “Maybe you can pick up a cheap dog collar.” Brendon almost shivers, suddenly desperate for Nick to go ahead and touch him. “See you there.”
“Y-yeah,” Brendon agrees, and watches Nick walk away.
***
Brendon stops by a pet store on the way to the shuttle stop. He ends up staring at the row of collars for so long that he almost misses his shuttle and has to wait an hour, but the one he picked—smooth, rolled black leather—seems like the right kind of thing. The kind of thing Nick would approve of.
He’s got the other stuff, too, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt, and he figures maybe black socks and work boots would be better than flip-flops, maybe. Somehow, having all of that worked out doesn’t make it any easier to actually get ready on Sunday.
“Dude,” Dallon says. “Are you okay? Do you want the fan on or something?” Dallon’s lying in bed with a textbook propped on his chest, and he’s being pretty great about how much Brendon’s anxiety is probably screwing with his focus.
“Sorry,” Brendon says. “I’m going to this, like, party, and I don’t know—I don’t want to be that guy, you know?” He’s probably gonna be that guy no matter what, the guy in the corner who’s too annoying and too new and too Brendon.
“Uh, sure.” Dallon squints at him. “Is it a school thing? I could come with you if you want the—”
“No!” Brendon says, a little too loud, and then, “Sorry, not—um. Not a school thing. More of a, like. Sort of a gay thing.” Not exactly true, but close enough.
“Ahhh,” Dallon says, and now he’s grinning. “I get it. You’re trying to dress to impress.” He waggles his eyebrows, and Brendon laughs, relieved.
“Yeah,” Brendon agrees. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Dallon tents his textbook on the bed, laces his fingers over his belly. “That seems like a good outfit. I mean, it’s not really my area, but I think you look good.”
Brendon half turns, striking a pose, and grins at him. “Of course I do,” he says, and suddenly he can already feel the adrenaline, the performance high. That’s what this party is—he’s putting on a costume, putting on a show. He can do this. “I can do this,” he mutters, and Dallon snorts.
“Maybe save the Stuart Smiley routine for when I’m out of the room, dude.”
Brendon flips him off, laughing, and then he gets out the door before he can overthink this any longer.
***
Brendon doesn’t put the collar on until he’s practically inside the building. He’s thinking that’s not the sort of thing he really wants to wear on the shuttle, with all his fellow students looking on, but it’s also something that felt weird to pull out on the sidewalk of this unassuming neighborhood, with its tiny manicured lawns and semi-detached houses.
It’s cool against his neck, and Brendon wishes he had a mirror, because he bets it looks really fucking sexy, with the buckle sitting in the hollow of his throat. There’d been goth kids in his high school who wore collars, sometimes, and Brendon had never thought much of it. Now, though—now he feels hot, feels like strutting into the house with his chin raised.
He doesn’t quite strut, in the end; he has to find the right house, and then the right door, and pay the guy sitting in the hallway, and then he’s in this strange house and it’s all very sudden. Very awkward.
“Hi there!” A man comes up and stops well outside of Brendon’s personal space. “I’m Mark, your host for the evening.” He’s a tall guy, skinny and kind of nerdy, nothing like the kind of guy Brendon might have pictured hosting a kinky sex party. Brendon likes him instantly.
“Oh,” Brendon says. “I’m—Brendon. Uh, Nick invited me? Is that—okay?”
Mark frowns for a second, but then his face smooths out. “Of course,” he says. “Did he give you the house rules?”
“Uh, no street clothes?” Brendon says. “But this was kind of as good as I could do.”
Mark’s smiling now, sort of the way Brendon’s grandmother smiles at him. It’s a little annoying, actually, because Brendon’s here to get laid, not to be the kid everyone talks down to. “Okay! That’s good, but I mean more the party rules. House safeword is ‘safeword.’ No touching without permission. DMs are wearing red armbands—” He taps his own “—and you can go to them with any problems. Don’t interrupt a scene unless you think there’s a very serious safety risk, no bodily fluids on the furniture, and don’t touch without permission.”
“You said that one twice,” Brendon points out.
“It bears repeating,” Mark says. “So you think you’ve got the gist? There’s a written list in the kitchen if you need to refresh your memory.”
“Safeword is ‘safeword,’ no touching, red armbands on—uh—” Brendon bites his lip. “Dungeon masters?”
“Monitors,” Mark corrects, and squints at Brendon. “Have you not—uh, okay, I’m gonna need to see some ID. Just in case, you understand.”
Brendon flips out his wallet, cognizant of the people watching him and Mark. “Nevada, huh? Okay,” Mark says. “Why don’t I introduce you to some people?”
The room is kind of over-full, a small living room packed with people. And everyone’s dressed up enough that Brendon’s really glad he opted for the work boots over the flip-flops. There are only a few women, but they’re all wearing fancy stuff, and the guys are wearing way more leather than Brendon’s ever seen in one place before. Some of them aren’t wearing much else—just some straps and leather shorts, or even less than that.
Mostly everyone’s standing around talking, but there’s a guy in the corner kneeling with his head bowed and his wrists tied behind him. Another guy is sitting in an armchair next to him, petting his head. Brendon kind of wants to just watch them for a while, but Mark is gesturing, and Brendon should probably listen.
“—New to the city,” Mark’s saying. “I think. Brendon?”
“Uh, yeah,” Brendon says, and the man he’s being introduced to smiles at him. “Brand new.”
“Steve’s an old hand around here,” Mark says. “He hosts a lot of the time, but I pulled the short straw tonight.”
Steve snorts. “Short straw my ass. You get to fall right into bed and the rest of us have to get all the way home while we’re still spacey.”
“Hey,” Mark says, and he’s smirking. “You’re welcome to fall into my bed anytime.”
“Uh-huh,” Steve starts, and Mark waves him off.
“Yeah, yeah, break my heart later. I’m gonna go introduce Brendon around some more. Nick invited him, so.”
“Guess Nick’s found another spring chicken,” Steve says, and it’s low enough that Brendon almost doesn’t catch it.
“It’s like he’s got a proximity alarm,” Mark says back, and before Brendon can think of a way to reply to that, they’re on to the next guy.
“Hans,” Mark says, and Brendon waves hello. “Hans is giving a demonstration later.”
“Yeah?” Brendon didn’t know there’d be, like, demos. That’s cool. “What on?”
Hans grins. “Rope play. Suspensions.”
“Hans is one of our dedicated rope obsessives,” Mark says.
“What can I say?” Hans shrugs. “You’re just sad that your thing doesn’t come in pretty colors.”
“It does if you buy colored latex gloves,” Mark says. Brendon just blinks. He’s starting to give up on understanding any of this stuff.
“Blue rope is gorgeous,” Hans says. “Blue gloves look like your top is the villian from Firefly.”
“Maybe I’m into villainy.” Mark grins. “Anyway. Brendon here is new, I’m introducing him around.”
Hans smiles at Brendon. “You should—”
A hand drops onto Brendon’s shoulder. “Hey,” Nick says, and Brendon smiles back at him.
“Hey,” Brendon says. Nick’s wearing his jacket again, but this time the shirt underneath is white and worn thin enough to show the shape of all his muscles, the shaved-smooth lines of his chest. Brendon’s stomach is fluttering again.
“Nick,” Hans says, and Nick tips his chin at them.
“You guys don’t mind if I steal Brendon away, do you?” Nick steers Brendon towards the table with the bowl of M&Ms, and Brendon snags a few just to give him something to do with his hands. “Good job on the outfit,” Nick says.
“Oh, um.” Brendon looks down at himself. He’s not wearing anything like what Nick is, with the—are those leather pants? And something hanging off the back of them, on the left, some kind of, uh. Brendon’s pretty sure that’s a flogger, actually. Some of his favorite porn has flogging in it. “Thanks?”
Nick grins at him. “Did Mark show you the back-room setup?”
“Uh, no,” Brendon says. “Is that, um. Is that where—” No one’s exactly doing anything much kinky in this room; even the guys who were in the corner are gone. So that must all be somewhere else.
“Yeah,” Nick says. “You wanna see some stuff?”
“That’s—okay? Watching?”
Nick nods, serious now. “No touching, no interrupting. Try not to be too loud or distracting. But yeah, you can watch.” He smiles again. “If they didn’t want to be seen, at least a little bit, they’d do it in private.”
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and his mouth is dry, thinking about it, about being watched by these people, while he’s—while Nick is—
“Through here,” Nick says, and steers him downstairs. The basement is a little dimmer, and Brendon picks his way down the last few stairs slowly, making sure of his footing. It’s quieter, too—not so much of the buzz of conversation, but there are other sounds. Brendon’s head swings around at the first loud smacking sound, and Nick laughs quietly behind him.
“You like impact play?” he asks, and nudges Brendon in that direction. There’s a familiar-looking guy leaning against the wall, bracing himself. He’s shirtless, pants around his spread knees, and the guy behind him is rubbing his ass, fingermarks showing up white against the reddened skin there every time he lets go.
“Shit,” Brendon says, and then the one guy—the dom—steps back and hits the front guy again, one vicious strike with a little wooden paddle. The guy getting hit whimpers and rests his cheek against the wall, and now that Brendon can see him clearly, he can tell it’s Shane, from the munch. Shane looks even cuter like this, but he also looks a lot less like Brendon’s type. Maybe the guy behind him is a better bet; the way he’s slapping the paddle on his own palm just to watch Shane jump at the sound is making Brendon’s mouth dry.
“Hot, right?” Nick steps a little closer, sets his hand on Brendon’s shoulder, and Brendon nods and leans back into him, because, well—he kind of really, really wants to be where Shane is, and he’s pretty sure that’s what Nick’s offering. “Yeah,” Nick says, and moves his hand up into Brendon’s hair, tugs Brendon back firmly against his broad chest. “You’d look good like that,” Nick murmurs. “All spread out and desperate.”
Brendon’s been hard almost since he took the first step down towards the basement, but now he’s aching, wishing he’d worn different pants. He nods, and Nick’s hand tightens in his hair. Brendon’s eyes start to slip shut, and then there’s another smacking sound and he opens them in time to see Shane shivering and shaking, and the guy behind him moving in close, paddle forgotten at his feet.
“Jesus,” Nick whispers. “I think he just came. You think you could come just from that? I bet you could learn to.”
Brendon’s not sure he isn’t going to come just from this, much less anything more than just talking. “Yeah,” he manages, and Nick presses a little closer, hard-on against Brendon’s back.
“Is that, ‘yeah, take me over in another corner and hit me, sir’? You gotta ask for it if you want it.”
Brendon can’t take his eyes off the way Shane’s gone boneless in the other guy’s arms, looking blissed-out and kind of high. “Yeah—you can—I mean. I’d like that. Sir?”
“Ask me again,” Nick says, and pulls Brendon’s head back until Brendon’s mouth opens.
“Can you—” Brendon licks his lips. “Can you hit me? Sir.” Brendon’s throat is dry, and he swallows, feeling the way having his head pulled back stretches his throat against the collar.
Nick lets go of his hair abruptly and Brendon almost stumbles, but Nick’s slipped an arm around his waist to catch him. “Over here,” he says—orders, really, voice low and commanding, and Brendon scrambles to fulfill the demand. It’s not just bare wall over here; there’s padding, like the stuff around the gym in Brendon’s high school. Brendon doesn’t have the best associations with this kind of wall padding, but he’s willing to change his feelings.
“Suppose I told you to strip?” Nick murmurs. He hasn’t let go of Brendon, and Brendon isn’t exactly desperate to get loose, not with the way Nick’s stroking his t-shirt, fingertips edging down toward his zipper. “Would you?”
“Yes,” Brendon says. Every time Nick says something to him, it feels like Brendon’s brain empties out, and as soon as he stops talking, all the thoughts crowd back in, but quieter.
“Of course you would,” Nick says. “Such a good little sub.”
No one’s ever called Brendon that before. He leans back a little more, lets Nick hold him up.
“I’m not going to ask you to do that—yet.” Nick’s thumb comes up under Brendon’s t-shirt. “But you’re going to take your shirt off for me.” He pushes Brendon back onto his feet, and Brendon takes a moment to catch his balance—when did it get so hard to just stand up?—before he grasps the hem of his shirt and pulls it off.
“Kneel in front of the wall,” Nick says, and Brendon goes over to the padded section, finds that the floor is padded as well. He kneels close enough that he can easily rest his folded forearms on the wall, and his cheek, looking back at Nick to see if he’s done it right.
“Good,” Nick says. He unhooks the flogger from his belt, and Brendon watches him. The rest of the room has disappeared; there’s only Nick, and the flogger, and Brendon’s bare back. “Ask me again.”
Brendon can’t think what he means, and he’s frantic, for a second, trying to remember. “I—will you hit me?” Once he’s asked, he can’t stop, needs Nick to know how much he wants this. “Can you hit me, will you—I want you to.” He swallows again, tries to wet his mouth. “Please.”
“The magic word,” Nick says, and then, “Don’t move.” He walks in close, takes a moment to find the right footing, and then the flogger comes down on Brendon’s back. It’s not that hard, and Brendon instantly wants more, wants it to hurt the way that didn’t. “Gonna warm you up,” Nick says, and then he’s hitting Brendon again and he isn’t stopping. None of them are hard the way Brendon wants, but they add up fast, leave him stinging in a way that almost makes him want to stop, except—except that he wants to know what’s on the other side of the stinging. What happens when Nick starts hitting harder.
He gets his wish before the stinging makes him change his mind. The harder strikes actually hurt, and they’re—they feel—Brendon’s hard, but it isn’t about that, not the way he’d thought it would be. It’s about the way the blows make his whole body move, and the pride that suffuses him when Nick mutters, “God, you look good.”
It’s something else, too, some sensation Brendon doesn’t even have a word for. None of the things he’s done on his own have felt like this. He can’t push himself, but Nick can push him. This is way more than Brendon’s ever felt, and instead of being too much, it’s better, way better. It feels better in his muscles, and it feels better in his head.
Brendon has no idea how long it’s been, or how many times Nick has hit him. A minute, or an hour, when Nick finally kneels next to him and carefully pushes him away from the wall. “Hey,” he says. “Lie on your front.”
Brendon can’t do anything but obey, brain too—something, muted—to question the instruction. Nick leans over him once he’s down, runs his cool fingers over Brendon’s back. “Didn’t break the skin,” he says. “You look—fuck, Brendon. You’re gonna be bruised up. Hope you don’t have a swim meet or something this week.”
The phrase doesn’t make much sense to Brendon. A swim meet? But it doesn’t seem important, either, so he just lets it float back out of his mind, goes back to focusing on nothing more important than the way Nick’s still stroking his skin. It hurts, just those little touches, and Brendon likes it. He can’t capture the feeling more than that: it hurts, and he likes it. He’s had years of playing with those two concepts by himself and he’s never been able to define it any other way.
It’s never, ever been like this by himself, though. It’s never come anywhere close. “Good,” Brendon manages, more a grunt than a word, and Nick’s hand comes up to stroke the back of his neck.
“You don’t even know how easy you are.” Nick pets his hair. “You’re so gorgeous, the way you went under practically as soon as I touched you. None of those stupid walls people put up when they’ve been around the scene too long. I knew you’d be so—responsive. I knew you wanted to be good for me.”
Brendon can’t quite find the energy to smile, but he wants to, at the way Nick’s praising him. It’s not penetrating much, but he thinks he’s getting the gist—gorgeous, good, responsive. “So fucking under,” Nick says, and strokes his fingers over Brendon’s cheek. “Nobody goes under like a new kid. No walls at all.”
Nick starts rubbing Brendon’s shoulders, massaging the tightness out of them where Brendon had been bracing himself. He does Brendon’s lower back after that, and it’s got to be the best massage Brendon’s ever had; he feels completely loose, boneless and relaxed. Gravity has never felt this strong, pulling him down into the padded mats, and Brendon doesn’t think he ever wants to get up.
“You didn’t even see the people watching, did you? You were too blissed out to care about all those guys standing around watching you whimper and arch up into it. But I bet you like hearing about it, don’t you? Everyone—” Nick grunts, and Brendon realizes that he’s jerking off. He kind of wants to watch, but that would require moving his eyelids, and there’s no way he can manage that. “Everyone watching you getting desperate for it. Watching you—fuck—watching you take it. You would—you’d have done anything I—anything—”
Nick’s groan is long and low, and Brendon realizes after a moment that he’s surprised not to feel the come on his skin. “God,” Nick says, and then there’s rustling, and Nick’s dry hands back on Brendon’s skin. “Okay. Let’s get you back to the land of the living. I don’t want to be here all night.”
Brendon feels suddenly and sharply guilty. “Yeah,” he manages, and pushes shakily onto his forearms. It’s not quite so hard once he starts, anyway. “Sorry.”
“Oh, hey,” Nick says. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just, you know. You can be in a chair, upstairs. And so can I. I’ll get you some water and some M&Ms, okay?”
That sounds nice, actually. Brendon’s mouth is like a desert or something. He hadn’t noticed before, but now he’s feeling a little more himself, eyes blinking open in the dim light.
The first thing he sees are shoes, several feet away. Well—feet, in shoes. A bunch of them, and Brendon realizes the people Nick was telling him about are still there, or at least some of them are. He glances up, and—holy Jesus fuck.
Brendon’s hot RA just watched him get flogged at a fucking BDSM party.
***
Part Two
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