Chapter Text
Alex sat in the back of the limo, legs spread and balls throbbing with a dull ache. He was straining to get a read on Barry, the handsome junior staffer who had recently joined the team.
He’d been showing Barry the ropes since he signed on a couple weeks ago. It was more than the usual mentoring, though; one look at his high cheekbones, chiseled jaw and gymnasts’ frame and Alex was infatuated.
He immediately tried to get a line on which way the new man swung. First some hearty slap on the back type of bro-y contact, then this afternoon a quick, brotherly shoulder rub. “Do you like playing racquetball?” he’d asked awkwardly, immediately berating himself for his lack of smoothness.
Racquet ball, my god. Has anyone under thirty even heard of it? Isn’t pickle ball the hip new sport?
Barry rescued him. “I haven’t played in ages, but I’ve got an old racquet buried somewhere in the bottom of my closet. I’m always up for a game.” Was he telling the truth? Or did he need to hustle to the sporting goods store in the 45 minutes between when they left the office and met at the capitol gym? Was he trying to ingratiate himself to a new boss or responding to what Alex hoped he’d understood to be a light flirtation?
They’d played three games, with Barry clearly letting Alex win all of them. It was particularly obvious because Alex was so distracted. In a T-shirt and shorts he could get an even better look at the young man’s body, and it was magnificent. Towards the end of the second game as Alex prepared to serve, all he could do was look at Barry’s glistening body hunched over, ready to receive. He fantasized about walking over, ripping his pants down and savagely mounting him.
The subsequent double fault was inevitable.
Back in the gym they stripped down and walked to the showers, Alex keeping his towel strategically over his cock to hide his burgeoning erection. As they showered in adjacent stalls he once again fantasized, this time about moving over to Barry’s stall, dropping to his knees, and slowly running his mouth up and down on Barry’s throbbing cock.
The water in Barry’s stall shut off, snapping Alex out of his reverie. He put the water all the way cold to dampen his erection, and after a minute he was presentable again.
As they toweled off by their lockers, Alex took every opportunity to discreetly ogle Barry. How on earth did he end up here? he wondered. He was stunningly good looking: movie-star looks, broad shouldered, tapered waist, muscles bulging but not too pronounced. It was the kind of perfection that seems to come easy to some men along with the full flowering of their adulthood in their mid-20s.
He felt his dick starting to get hard again and quickly snapped on his underwear, straining to continue the small talk they’d been engaged in as they dressed. An hour later he remembered none of it.
Now as they were driven back to their respective apartments, he looked at Barry’s legs. A little apart but not a full manspread like his. Shifting slightly towards him, Alex let his knee rest ever so slightly against Barry’s. The young man did not move away from the contact.
Frozen with awkwardness? Uncertainty? An invitation to continue? Alex’s mind rifled through possibilities as they arrived at Barry’s place.
“Are you busy for dinner in a few hours? I’ve got to go back to the office tonight, I’d like to grab a bite on the way there.” Much better flirting this time, Alex thought. Quick and direct, low stakes. As he was congratulating himself he realized with horror that his hand was now on Barry’s knee, fingers curling ever so slightly towards the inner thigh and digging in with a light rub.
“Sure, that sounds great!” he answered enthusiastically, opening the door and sliding towards it as he smoothly slipped his leg free of Alex’s hand. “I just need to call my parents and my girlfriend back home, no other plans. What time?”
“Seven?” Alex answered a bit more glumly than he intended. “See you then. I’ll pick you up.”
“Sounds good!” Slam.
As the limo zoomed off, he idly rubbed his wedding band. I’ll have to see what Alicia thinks, he mused. She’s had more experience with closet cases.
Alex and Alicia had been married for ten years now, a union that had never been consummated - to the entire satisfaction of both. They were small town kids repressed in the way gay kids from small towns often are and had met at state college. Two young strivers displacing their frustrated sexual urges into the student government. He, the student body president, she the treasurer, both of them the very model of clean-cut upstanding conservative youth.
They connected immediately, and intuitively understood they both were channeling their energies as they were for a reason. One night alone in the student center, they were chit chatting over empty boxes of Chinese takeout. Alex, making one of his occasional stabs at appearing straight, remarked how one of the girls in the student council was especially pretty.
“Yeah, I’d totally hit that,” Alicia responded, and they both had a hearty laugh over what a ridiculous thing she had just said. Still, some kind of ice had been broken. In the coming months they exchanged more faux-gay banter, and by the end of the school year had confided to each other their queerness.
It had been a relief finding a kindred spirit, but they also realized circumstances constrained them. Both lived in worlds where friends, family and their larger social environment regarded gayness as, at best, a disorder and, at worst, the very workings of Satan himself.
Neither was willing to ostracize themselves by coming out, but neither of them wanted to live a lie either. After graduation, they had several long talks and arrived at a plan. Six months of performative dating followed by a Potemkin marriage. Both were free to pursue their genuine desires on the sole condition that neither did anything to jeopardize the other's career.
Alex once again threw himself into politics. This time, instead of sublimation there was a fully understood and urgent goal: Get elected to Congress and get to Washington ASAP. Away from the small town, over to a big distant city with lots of people and all the cosmopolitan opportunities that implied.
Within five years he’d accomplished just that, and he and Alicia settled in to a new life. Alicia worked at a nonprofit and within six months had met Lisa. She was a hard core liberal and so, of course, the two of them had a whole series of meet cute fights about politics before realizing they were enormously horny for each other.
They maneuvered to their own friends with benefits arrangement. Lisa was not apprehensive about coming out as gay (she already had) as much as coming out as someone who would fuck a conservative. She was pretty sure there would be no opprobrium attached to that in her social circle, but it wasn’t worth risking one’s career over.
This was the home Alex walked into that evening. Kitchen light on, bedroom door shut. Door shut meant company was over, but Alex needed to change for dinner. He walked up the stairs and rapped gently on the door.
“Are you decent?”
“Yes, come in.”
Alicia and Lisa were in bed, sheets halfway down. Lisa turned towards Alicia with her elbow on the pillow and fist resting against the side of her head as she looked down at her lover.
“How’s tricks?” asked Alicia.
“Met a guy today, a new staffer. Extremely hot, unknown orientation.”
“A staffer? Robbing the cradle now?”
“Oh he’s very much a full grown man, thank you.”
“Well, at least you aren’t assuming he’s gay like you always have with any man who catches your eye. Maybe you’re starting to mature!” she teased.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Anyway, he’s a Greek god and I want to get into his pants in the worst way. We’re on for dinner tonight.”
“What recon have you done?” asked Lisa.
Alex gave a quick rundown of the day’s events, and both girls agreed there was not enough information to go on. Take it slow, they counseled, and be very aware of the power differential involved. Even if it turned out Barry was both gay and completely over the moon for Alex, any relationship between them would be inappropriate by definition. Hard and fast rule, no exceptions.
“I know, I know. Right now it’s just a masturbation fantasy, OK? If it looks like there’s anything promising, I’ll figure something out. Get him assigned to a different office or something.”
“I know how you can be led around by your dick, Alex,” Alicia replied pointedly. “All those years keeping it on ice, then you come here and you turn into a kid in a candy store.”
“Right,” he answered curtly as he walked to the closet for his evening wear. I know how this works, he thought. I’m a grown adult. I can handle it.