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You met your match and there ain’t no better
I know you tried hard, but there’s no better
Nobody love you like me and you know better
Not ten minutes after he’s left the girls with Avon, Stringer gets called away from the party. The caller is the guard he posted outside Avon’s door, and those two girls are trailing behind him when they meet up. The girls don’t look blissed out or blushing—they looked confused.
“What the hell happened?” Stringer asks. Them, the guard, it doesn’t matter. He just wants answers.
The blonde chick shrugs. “Everything was fine, Mr. Bell. We were all having fun and then he started yelling at us and told us to leave.”
Stringer deflates. He can’t blame this girl for Avon’s moods. “Alright baby. Thank you.” He hands the pair of them a few hundred dollar bills and sends them and the guard on their way.
Stringer returns to Avon alone and full of questions. The first comes out only once he’s locked and bolted the door behind himself.
“All night you’re begging me for some females, and you send ‘em away before you even get off? The fuck?”
Stringer folds his arms across his chest. Avon is standing in the middle of the room, smoking, his attention far away.
“Couldn’t get hard,” Avon growls, disgusted. “It’s some bullshit.”
Stringer tenses. “Did somebody at Jessup touch you, B?”
Avon curls his lip, and then the rest of his body follows suit. When he’s on defense, he’s all angles, all twisted up to protect the vulnerable spots. Posing, someone might call it, but Stringer knows better. Avon is just as dangerous as he looks.
“What the fuck? The fuck are you asking me?” Avon yells, indignant. He licks his lips.
Underneath the offense, though, he’s scared. Stringer wants to know what of.
“Take a deep breath, man,” Stringer placates. He steps closer but not too close. Doesn’t want to spook him. “I’m asking. Because if they did, heads will roll, is all I mean.” Stringer’s voice softens from soldier to confidante. “I need you to talk to me.”
Avon stubs his cigarette and relaxes his posture, but he’s still on edge. Stringer sees it in the way his hands keep moving, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Or he doesn’t like what they want to do. Either way, he snaps toward Stringer, pulling on that invisible cord which always seems to connect them. They can both tell Avon’s crossed some sort of unspoken line when Avon looks up with half-lidded eyes and color high on his cheekbones.
“Yeah, that’s all you do, Stringer, shit, all we do nowadays. Talk.”
Stringer shakes his head. His chest is too tight. “Nah. You’re still pussy high and jumpy from just getting out. Back up.”
Avon smiles.
“Motherfucker, back up.”
Then it’s hands and teeth, teeth and hands. Avon doesn’t kiss Stringer. He does worse. He grabs Stringer by the back of his neck and bites his shoulder with the force of the kickback from a gunshot. The feeling ricochets through Stringer’s goddamn spine.
Stringer grabs Avon’s arms harder than he’d ever dare out there. But in this room, here, now, he’s got hands that bruise and the blank space above Avon’s elbows is in need of some decoration. And Avon’s always looked good in black and blue.
So he digs his fingers in until Avon grunts. Stringer doesn’t know if the pressure is meant to pull Avon closer or to brace himself to shove him away. Avon doesn’t seem to know either, if the narrow, quizzical look he shoots Stringer is any indication.
Once their eyes meet, though, all bets are off. Stringer can’t tell who pushes and who pulls. All he understands is physical now. And that’s Avon’s territory, Avon’s way. They’re moving toward the bed and taking their time with it.
Avon’s legs hit the mattress. That sound knocks some sense back into Stringer. He inhales, sighs. It still smells like sex over here. Ladies and liquor—most intoxicating things Stringer will touch these days.
“There ain’t no coming back from this,” he says, because one of them has to.
Avon laughs. It’s not loud; doesn’t have to be, not when Avon’s mouth is already on Stringer’s ear. The exhale that follows the sound makes Stringer shake.
He bites Stringer’s jaw. Puts his thumb just on the corner of Stringer’s lips.
“Walk out that door if you want, baby. Nobody stoppin’ you.”
Stringer raises his eyebrows. He’s got Avon’s two hands and mouth on him that say otherwise. He’s got this heat between them that’ll just be ice on the outside of this room.
“Thing is, I saw the way you looked at me in the rearview mirror when I was changin’ outta that uniform. Like I ain’t the only one who been locked up 26 months, feel me?”
Stringer feels him. He remembers the glances, Avon watching him watch him. The way the fresh air had felt when Avon rolled down the windows and tossed his clothes. The split seconds between when he was dressed and he wasn’t.
“Who you belong to, Stringer? Hm? Me or them suits?”
Stringer doesn’t tell Avon to shut up, or hit him. He does worse. He kisses Avon. It’s been a long time—longer even than Avon’s been locked up—so Stringer licks into his mouth in an exploratory way. Stringer tastes that bitch’s perfume and a couple glasses of hours-old shots. Avon chuckles when Stringer sniffs hard and then throws him off.
Avon lands comfortably on damp, rumpled sheets. Keeping his feet flat on the floor, he bends his elbows and rests his head on his palms. His boxers are tented like a teenager’s.
“I like when you get mad, baby. Reminds me of who you used to be.”
“I’m still me.” Stringer thinks he should walk away.
“Bitch, you smell like clean money and white man.”
Stringer leans over Avon, knuckles tight as he grips a small pillow. He uses his free hand to undo his own belt. Avon swallows thickly. He hisses at the sound of scraping metal, lets his knees fall open wider. Stringer feels the heat of him like melted wax dripping onto his bare skin. Instinct tells humans to flee from things like fire.
Stringer seizes Avon’s waistband and damn near rips his boxers off. Smells like white man. Stringer wants to fucking kill him. Stringer wants him to take it back. Stringer wants him to know he’s loyal. B&B. Barksdale and Bell. Bell and Barksdale. What is there in the world besides them, besides this?
Stringer’s mouth, Avon’s cock. Avon’s fingernails scrape Stringer’s scalp when he goes down on him. Stringer watches his eyes flutter open and closed. Avon definitely won’t watch Stringer do this.
Stringer thinks that and then immediately realizes Avon’s gaze is burning into him. It makes Stringer hyper-aware of his own actions. It makes him want to impress Avon.
Stringer pulls off with spit and pre-cum dripping down his lips, with ragged breaths and sore knees from balancing on the floor. All it takes is another look. Avon moves back and readjusts against the headboard. Stringer takes off all his clothes and then joins Avon in the bed, his arms braced under Avon’s bent legs, caging him in.
“Nobody touched me,” Avon murmurs.
It’s so quiet that Stringer almost thinks he imagines it. But then he glances up and Avon’s eyes are still wide open, his hand coming to cup Stringer’s chin. “I had this crazy fucking dream, though, baby.”
Stringer licks a stripe from the base to the head of Avon’s cock, a sound like a purr coming from him when Avon’s hips jolt.
Avon continues, “I had this dream where you was in with me, and we went to the showers together, shit. I. Ah.”
Stringer trails a rough palm down Avon’s heaving chest. There’s terror and lust loose in Avon’s dark eyes like Stringer’s never seen before. It stirs something dark in Stringer that he chases like they’re at the bar.
Avon flinches when Stringer’s hand wraps around his cock. But Stringer, he expects it; he’s there to soothe him, murmuring, “What’d we do in that dream, B?”
Avon closes his eyes. “It was just me and you. I couldn’t move my arm for some reason. Musta been broken, ion know.”
With his left hand, Stringer holds down Avon’s right arm. The pressure across Avon’s body seems to calm him; he stops fighting Stringer’s touch as much.
“Then?”
Stringer feels drunk. Lightheaded, his world a blur of sensation and desire. His cock is heavy and leaking.
“Then you. You was just washing my back, man, ain’t nothing to it. Helping me out.”
“Then?”
Even though it’s the worst idea he’s had in a very long time, Stringer pulls Avon’s hips into position. He guides his cock up, pressing just the tip against Avon.
“Fuck. Fuck, man. You spread me out over those tiles and I try to stop you—”
Stringer pulls away so he can roll Avon over. He shoves Avon’s head into the mattress. He turns his face, straining to see what Stringer is doing behind him.
Dizzy with want, Stringer grinds recklessly against Avon’s lower back. Too close for both of them–not close enough to ruin them, though. He starts slow, experimenting with the pace while Avon adjusts to the feeling of a hard cock bouncing on him.
After a minute of stillness, Avon finally moves. He shifts his hips. He arches his back like a cat. Stringer ruts against him, dragging some war-torn sound between a sob and a moan from his partner.
“You fight me the entire time I’m fucking you, B?” Stringer’s own voice shocks him. It’s deep and gruff, laced with a venom he only reserves for the young hoppers.
“Yeah, ‘cause I ain’t no faggot.”
Stringer drives down, brutal. From shock or pleasure or both, Avon can’t speak for a moment, and there’s only the wet, damning noise of Stringer’s cock sliding against his skin. Avon bucks up. Stringer groans. He grabs Avon’s arm again to twist it behind his back, truly immobilizing it.
There’s a trail of sweat on Avon’s neck. Stringer follows it with his tongue, laps up salt and sweetness from the knob of his spine to between his shoulder blades. Avon gives up on pushing back to push forward, trying to get some friction on his own cock.
Stringer gets his hands on Avon’s ribs so he can speed up, catch a rhythm that makes Avon grit his teeth and gasp. Avon is breathing hot breaths through his nose and letting out a steady stream of curses while the bed creaks and dips underneath them. The muscles in Stringer’s thighs twitch and his legs tighten around Avon.
“You cum on me and I swear to God I will shoot you,” Avon threatens.
Stringer stops mid-thrust because he believes him. Pulling back, he waits for Avon to roll over again. Then they press their cocks together, Stringer’s fist wrapped as much as it can be around them both.
Stringer has never hated or loved Avon more than when Avon slips his hand on top of Stinger’s. Adds the weight of his fingers and the flick of his wrist. Changes their game. Stringer cums with Avon’s name on his lips but he doesn’t give it enough breath to say it aloud. Avon’s eyes are wide open, pupils blown. His mouth is parted and Stringer doesn’t hesitate to press their chests together and dive in.
When Avon cums, he bites down hard on Stringer’s bottom lip like he’s punishing him for getting him this far. Stringer bites back like there’s nothing dangerous about this.
The next words out of Avon’s kiss-crushed mouth are, “Get the fuck off of me.”
Stringer goes, and he dresses, but he moves with caution. He suddenly feels like he has blood on his hands. He doesn’t want to touch anything in Avon’s room because he’ll dirty it, really give the Five-O something to bring him in on.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, B. Welcome home.”
Avon doesn’t reply. Stringer didn’t expect him to.