2 Unrequited | Abigail Roux
I
Victor Bronsen tapped his pen against his temple slowly.
Tap.
The defense lawyer was speaking in a low, monotonous
drone. He was new to this district, brought in from somewhere
else by the family of the accused man, and he obviously didn’t
know how short Judge Trammell’s temper was when it came to
stalling or pontificating.
Tap.
Vic glanced up at the bailiff, Owen Montgomery, who stood
stock-still with his blue eyes narrowed, looking at the defense
lawyer like he might like to hit him soon. Owen was a big guy,
with thick blond hair, a full beard, and wide shoulders that
made him look a little like a lion. He wasn’t the type of guy you
wanted to piss off.
Tap.
Vic saw Owen glance sideways at the judge and Vic tried to
repress a smile. Owen’s patience was wearing thin, just like
everyone else’s. Vic liked to think it was because the man had
plans after the day was over, but he knew it was just because
he was hot and tired. Just like everyone else.
Tap.
The air conditioner was broken on the third floor. There
weren’t even any windows in the courtroom to open, and the
August heat was becoming oppressive as the day dragged on
well past lunch.
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Vic put his pen down on the table in front of him with a
clank that reverberated through the courtroom. He was trying
not to slump in his chair, trying not to fidget, trying not to look
like he was a wilting prosecutor in a thousand-dollar Italian
suit.
He knew he was failing miserably. His short, dark hair was
already beginning to curl at the edges as the sweat dried on his
neck and forehead. Soon it would be curly all over and he
would look ten years younger. At 37, with dark green eyes and
a thin, angular face, he was in good shape and had always
looked younger than he was. But when his damn hair curled
on him, he got carded ordering drinks.
He could feel the sweat running down his back, and he
knew soon enough he’d have to get out a handkerchief and
start wiping at his face, or the jury would see him as nervous
every time he wiped the sweat from his eyes.
But at least he wasn’t wearing the heavy black robes the
judge was. The heat might win him the case before he even had
to say a word if the defense kept rambling on. The man must
have one of those air-conditioned suits.
Vic’s eyes met Owen Montgomery’s and he rolled his eyes.
The bailiff winked at him discreetly, his lips quirking but not
forming a smile. Vic tried not to smile as he covered his mouth
and looked away, forcing himself to concentrate as the heat
bore down on the little courtroom.
Owen and everything that came with him would have to
wait.
Vic’s chin tilted upward slightly each time his body was rocked
with one of Owen’s slow thrusts, and every time Owen pushed
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into him he let out a little huff of air. Sometimes a moan from
the back of his throat would join the huff and Owen would
tighten his grip and thrust harder.
The breathy moans and the muted squeaks and groans of
the bedsprings were the only sounds in the room. They weren’t
fucking hard enough to make noise with the meeting of their
damp bodies, not yet anyway, and Owen rarely made a sound
when he topped. As a bottom he was as vocal as you could
want, and his words and begging alone would make Vic come if
he so desired, but as a top Owen was singularly focused on one
thing and one thing alone. He simply held you down, pressed
his face into the hollow of your neck, buried himself deep
inside your body, and fucked you until he came.
If Vic was lucky he would come with him, clutching his
body to his and writhing beneath him. If not, Owen would pull
out of him, flop down beside him, and languidly caress him
until he came all over himself, thrashing and crying out Owen’s
name.
“Fuck… fuck yeah,” Owen gasped into Vic’s ear. “Come on,
baby.”
That was another thing about Owen; he never said Vic’s
name when they were together. Baby. Babe. Sweetheart. Doll.
Darling. The occasional “come on, you bastard.” Just about
any endearment Owen could think of. All except for Vic’s name.
Afterward, after Owen had gone back to whatever pressing
engagement it was that made him leave Vic alone in bed once
again, Vic would think back on their encounter and think that
it had been good. Not wonderful. Not even particularly
memorable. Simply good. Average, really.
If Vic was the one doing the fucking then it was often
better in remembrance; he would still have Owen’s cries ringing
in his ears and he would often have Owen’s drying come still on
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his skin, because Vic always made sure that he was inside the
other man when Owen came. But when it was Owen topping,
Vic would never remember anything special about it.
Just that it had been Owen.
And for Vic, that was enough. That was enough to keep
him craving more. That was enough to make his heart stutter
when he saw Owen’s name on the docket for the day. That was
enough to make him drop whatever or whomever he was doing
to run to a rendezvous when Owen called. That was enough to
make him cry Owen’s name when he came, no matter whether
it was Owen he was with or not.
“Owen,” Vic gasped as Owen’s arms tightened their grip on
him. Vic came with a desperate cry.
Owen panted against his damp skin, thrusting through
the spasms Vic’s body suffered, and soon Owen was panting
and coming as well with a muffled groan.
Vic remained on his back, breathing heavily and keeping
his eyes closed as he felt Owen roll off the bed and walk into
the bathroom. Vic didn’t have to ask to know that Owen would
be gone in the next thirty minutes. That was what always
happened. Vic understood. Sort of. Owen was a sheriff’s deputy
with a lot of responsibilities and numerous perfectly good
reasons to leave.
It didn’t mean Vic had to like it.
“You all right?” Owen asked dubiously when he came back
into the room and tossed a towel at Vic. It landed across Vic’s
head and Vic simply reached up to slide it off and opened his
eyes. There was no point in cleaning off; he could just lie there
until Owen left and then hop in the shower.
“Yeah,” he answered flatly. “You leaving?” he asked, hating
himself for asking but needing to know for sure anyway.
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“Yeah,” Owen said casually as he pulled on his jeans and
lo
oked around for his shirt. He continued talking, telling Vic
why he had to leave, what needed to be done, when he’d be
leaving town to escort a prisoner somewhere to do something,
but Vic found his mind wandering.
In the early days of their more intimate acquaintance, Vic
had told himself that he wouldn’t allow it to happen again. He
wouldn’t allow Owen to run off and leave him feeling somehow
emptier than when he had started. Now, of course, five years
later, he was past that.
Empty or not, Vic needed whatever Owen would give him.
He supposed that was what happened when you loved someone
who didn’t return the feeling. You wound up empty and needy.
Owen never lied to him, never plied him with wine and
roses or told him he loved him in order to get him naked, so
why should Vic lie to himself?
He had thought a lot about why he always allowed Owen
to come back to him, and he had come to an unsettling
conclusion. There were three levels of pleasure, so far as Vic
could figure.
Physical pleasure—the first and most basic—was the
feeling of pliant lips on yours. The sensation of warm hands on
your body. A questing tongue. Burying yourself deep inside
someone who was wrapped around you. That was what had
kept Vic interested when he would have otherwise given up on
the flighty younger man he’d met all those years ago when
Owen had started taking shifts as bailiff at the courthouse.
That, and the fact that work was all he had time to do lately. If
it weren’t for Owen’s occasional flybys, Vic would never have
time to get laid. He didn’t like one-night stands and he didn’t
have time to date.
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Emotional pleasure—the second level—that was when it
got a little trickier. A hand questing silently across a mattress
for yours in the middle of the night. Whispered words of
affection. Sitting in silence and watching the sun set from the
steps of the courthouse as the jury deliberated, knowing that
words need not be spoken between you. Vic had experienced
these things with Owen. Precious few times, though. These
were the things that had kept Vic hoping through the years,
allowing Owen to continue on his merrily oblivious way, hoping
that Owen would one day realize what he could have, if he
desired it.
The third level, though, that was where Vic found himself
now. When the physical and emotional collided and the
pleasure turned to pain. The pain of knowing that the bed he
awoke in would be cold and empty and still smell of the other
man. Knowing that when Owen called up in a week or a month
or a year and asked him if he was free, that he would be there
without question, without regard for what he needed to be
doing. Knowing that whatever he felt for the younger man, the
feelings were unreturned and probably always would be.
Physical love. Emotional love. Unrequited love.
Owen leaned over him and frowned as he looked down at
him. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he whispered as Vic crossed his
eyes to focus on him.
“No,” Vic managed with a smile.
Owen’s eyes brightened and he grinned. “You free for
lunch tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Vic whispered.
“I’ll call you,” Owen told him as he bent down and kissed
Vic on the tip of his nose. Then just as quickly as they’d fallen
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into bed together, he was out the door and Vic was once again
alone with his self-recriminations and regrets.
The shrill ring of the phone sent Vic bolt upright in his bed.
The darkness swirled around him in confusing circles and he
kicked his legs, trying to get free of the bedcovers and out of
bed in order to pick the phone up and hurl it into a wall.
The phone trilled again and Vic jumped at the sound of it
even as he struggled. He cursed and flailed and rolled and
finally ended up in an ungraceful heap on the floor beside the
bed.
His hand reached out from beneath the tangle of sheets
that had followed him from the bed and groped around on the
bedside table until it landed on the vibrating cell phone. He
fumbled with it to get it under the clinging sheets and answer
it. If someone was calling in the middle of the night, then
something was either seriously wrong or one of his traveling
buddies from the law firm had gotten drunk and forgotten what
time zone they were schmoozing in.
“I’m here, I’m awake, I’m here, what’s wrong, what’s
happened?” Vic blurted into the phone as soon as he managed
to answer it and get it to his ear.
“Hey, Vic!” Owen’s cheerful yell came over the line. “You
won’t believe who I get to drive around today!”
“It’s the middle of the night, Owen,” Vic said groggily.
“Unless someone’s dead or dying, I really couldn’t care less who
you’re driving around.”
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“It’s six in the morning, actually, and you should be
getting ready for work,” Owen replied with a smile apparent in
his voice.
Vic threw the sheets off his head and peered over the edge
of the table to find the bedside alarm clock. The time blinked
on and off, signaling that at some point over the course of the
night Vic’s apartment had lost power.
“Fuck,” he hissed as he stood up and looked around. The
heavy blinds kept the light out, and the alarm clock was
usually the only thing that woke him in the morning. He had
no inner clock to speak of.
“Had a rough night, huh?” Owen asked knowingly.
“Shut up,” Vic grunted as he hurried to get a suit out and
go in search of his toothbrush.
“So you don’t want to know who I’m escorting?” Owen
asked.
“Shane Simpson,” Vic ventured flatly as he pressed his
shoulder up to hold the phone to his ear and free his hands so
he could get dressed.
“How’d you know?” Owen asked, sounding slightly deflated
over having his fun thwarted.
Vic instantly felt guilty for doing it. Owen may have been a
big tough sheriff’s deputy on the outside, but he had a lot of
little kid in him. “Just lucky, I guess,” he mumbled as he
zipped up his jeans.
Shane Simpson had started his career in the same law
firm Vic now worked for, moving onto the bench soon after Vic
had arrived and then moving up to be one of the Superior
Court judges of North Carolina. As a Superior Court judge, he
had to travel all over the state. He came into town maybe once
or twice a month. He knew Shane was in town because Shane
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was one of his very best friends. They talked at least once a
week, meeting whenever they were in the same place for a
friendly drink and often ending up passed out on someone’s
couch and drooling on each other.
Good times.
??
?Fuck you. You knew he was in town,” Owen said
petulantly. “You two always go out without me,” he accused.
“Not because we don’t offer,” Vic said defensively. “We
always lose you when the first neon light flashes.”
“Shut up,” Owen laughed. “You up for dinner tonight?”
“Yeah, if we’re not all melted into puddles by then,” Vic
said unenthusiastically.
“Rumor is they’re getting the air fixed today,” Owen said as
the dinging of a car door being opened sounded and Owen
grunted into the phone as he flopped into his cruiser. “You
mind if Shane comes too? He’s at the courthouse today. Some
big-time case. He requires a police escort everywhere he goes to
keep him safe.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Vic said distractedly as he ran his
fingers through his hair. “Wait. What?” he asked as it sank in.
“He’s under police protection for this one,” Owen said in a
worried voice. “I don’t know what it is, but they’re not messing
around.”
“Jesus Christ,” Vic muttered in surprise. He grabbed his
keys from the kitchen counter and hurried for the door, taking
one last glance around to make sure he had everything he’d
need for the day. “And you’re all they gave him?” he asked
incredulously.
“Ouch, Vic,” Owen said with a small laugh.
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Vic snorted. “I mean, they only gave him one deputy to
watch him?”
“I’m just the escort. Wow, someone’s pissy today,” Owen
murmured as his engine started.
“Yeah, well….” Vic thought about mentioning that waking
up alone had a tendency to do that to him, but he bit it off at
the last minute. “Sorry,” he said instead, as he walked out the
door. “Shane and I were planning on meeting later anyway, so
dinner works. Where are we eating? Is there a list or something
where he’s allowed to go?” he asked, only half-kidding.
“Nope. You pick it, man. Here comes Shane. Tell you what:
you call me tonight when you’re ready to eat and then we’ll go
from there.”
“All righty,” Vic agreed easily as he got into his own car.