Secret Service Flash Fic

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(This flash fic is brought to you by Chapter Eighteen of American King)

“Chevalier heading your way,” comes a quiet warning through my earpiece.

“Understood.”

I glance over to see my shift partner snort silently.

“Shut it,” I admonish, but there’s no heat in my voice.

Vazquez’s eyes widen in performed innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”

“He’s going to be off the elevator any moment,” I say. “Behave.”

“Why should I?” Vazquez asks, a slow, naughty smile pulling at his mouth.  It’s distracting. “Chevalier doesn’t.”

Chevalier.  Vice President Moore—former Vice President Moore.  Present presidential candidate, running against Maxen Ash Colchester (code name Captain).  

Vazquez and I have been assigned to Captain for almost four years now, and for four years, we’ve stared blandly at the White House lawn, gazed at the thin carpet on the floor of Air Force One, crept discreetly out of earshot from hotel gym doors, or otherwise made ourselves invisible and forgettable while Chevalier and Captain…held private meetings.

It doesn’t surprise me that Chevalier is coming here tonight, even though he’s just lost a debate against Captain. Even though they are both married to different women.  

There’s just something about the two of them—like magnets, like twin stars, the kind of attraction that’s threaded through quarks and leptons—they can no more stay away from each other than a river can stay away from the sea.

Not unlike Vazquez and me, although we never discuss it. Two divorced dads, two lonely veterans working the same job with the same hours, traveling to the same spots.  It was inevitable, probably.

The faint whirr and pause of the elevator car has us both straightening, and by the time Embry Moore is striding out with a loosened tie and a vacant expression, we are the picture of professional impassivity.  He doesn’t look at us as he taps a keycard to the President’s door, and we don’t look at him either, but the minute he’s inside and the door has swung shut with a definitive clunk, Vazquez is looking at me with a lifted eyebrow.

“Jordan,” he mouths.  “Did you see?”

“Shh.”

“He had his own keycard already!”

“Shh.”

I can hear voices on the other side of the door, muffled, barely there.  I try to shut them out and focus on the wall in front of me.  Not Vazquez, who’s shifting a little closer to the door and pretending not to eavesdrop.  A lock of dark hair escapes to fall over his forehead as he listens.

Secret Service agents don’t eavesdrop, we don’t hear anything we’re not supposed to, we are wallpaper with cheap sunglasses and sidearms—but Vazquez has never been able to resist listening to the two of them together (and then after the President remarried, the two of them plus the President’s wife).

And who can blame him?

“Cascade is coming up the elevator,” says the voice in our earpieces, and Vazquez flicks a wicked grin at me.  Cascade is the code name for the First Lady, for Greer Colchester, and given the tenor of the voices through the hotel door, she’s about to walk in on something rather…ardent.

“Look serious,” I tell Vazquez, and his grin only deepens.

“Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen? I mean, Chevalier left Captain to run against him, and now he’s in Captain’s hotel room with Cascade on the way?  They say make up sex is the best kind, you know.”

“With these three, it’s probably break up and make up sex at the same time,” I reply.  Not that I can judge—Vazquez and I aren’t even together and we still fuck like we’re breaking up.  

Rough, wordless…

Suits still on and earpieces bouncing on our shoulders.

I think a braver man would ask Vazquez on a date, or maybe just to stay the night, but my shift partner is like a house cat—the more you show that you want him close, the farther he’ll stay away.  He’s skittish; I’m a coward.  

No wonder we’re both divorced.

The elevator does its now-familiar whirr and pause, and we move immediately back to attention, dispassionate sentinels as the First Lady comes to the door and lets herself in.  Her own agent nods at us before returning to the elevator.

“What are my boys doing without me?” comes Cascade’s voice before the door closes behind her.

The lock has barely clicked into place before Vazquez and I are both listening, both angled toward the door, and it only takes a few moments for it to begin.

Voices, shuffling. 

Groans.

I expect Vazquez to grin again, to toss out some indelicate joke, but instead when our eyes meet, his cheeks are dusted red and his lips are parted.  I see the column of his throat move above his neatly knotted tie.

“Our shift ends in thirty minutes,” he says.  A little hoarsely.

It’s not technically a question, but I answer it like one.

“Yes.” My own voice is frayed around the edges.  We can hear Cascade’s cries over the low grunts and curses of Captain and Chevalier.

Vazquez’s teeth catch briefly on his lower lip. “My room?”

I nod, not speaking—a coward yet again. A coward who just wants the cat to sit next to him, to let him pet it, to let him hold it.  Funny to think that Chevalier has more courage than me, coming here tonight, but he’s got nothing left to lose but his pride, and I have a lot more at stake if I spook Vazquez.  Friendship and camaraderie.  Wicked grins and shifts that fly by because of the dark-eyed mischief I share them with.

Who would risk friendship and toe-curling fucks for the mere hope of more?

But maybe—maybe—I will be brave tonight after all.  And when I grab Vazquez’s jacket and yank him close for a quick, hard kiss—when he gives a soft, mournful sigh as I pull away—I think maybe my bravery could be rewarded.  Maybe we can manage what Chevalier and Captain haven’t, and find a way to fall into each other without falling apart.  Collide without crashing.

Have without taking, and love without hurting.

I have to believe it’s possible, even if it hasn’t been possible for me before, even if it hasn’t been possible for the three people just beyond the door.  

I find Vazquez’s hand and squeeze, a rough gesture meant to convey lust, and a gesture that he returns, followed by a gentle, almost tender trace of his fingertips along the inside of my wrist.

Yes, I have to believe it’s possible.

Tonight.  

Tonight, I’ll be be brave.