Best Man

Author's Note: this story contains non-consensual sex and elements of foot fetish.

***

That I was surprised when Ted asked me to be his best man is an understatement. This was--in part--due to my assumption that he had oceans of friends at his disposal. He was handsome, affable, and though he was too modest to admit it, I gathered from the series of emails and phone calls that had kept us tethered to each other in recent years that he was successful. Pharmaceuticals, I think. But more than that, it was that certain night that made me wonder why Ted would ask me to stand beside him in a rented tux. Maybe things had become distorted as it replayed in my head, like a needle caught in the groove of an LP and wearing it down.

Ted and I had been roommates in college. He was one of the first I came out to, second only to Evie, with whom I had become fast friends after sitting next to her in freshman psych. Dr. Landau had had a disturbing habit of licking his lips while speaking, coupled with an idiosyncratic way of connecting various terms he scrawled on the lecture hall whiteboard with a confusing--if not completely arbitrary--web of branching arrows. This had provided more than enough fodder for inside jokes and near-silent hysteria between us for the semester. Yes, Evie had been relatively easy to tell. But even so, I had put it off until junior year to do it, selecting an idyllic spring afternoon stroll by the pond next to the old library. To me, this was as momentous as a proposal, but as it turned out, I had tortured myself over the semantics of the conversation needlessly. Even though I always was fairly masculine (and I had thought somewhat straight-acting), Evie confessed she had had me pegged by the end of that first semester we met. It was the lack of girlfriend, my flourished handwriting, perfectly manicured eyebrows, and the amount of product I had used in my meticulously coiffed hair, she had said. The eyebrows were actually a happy naturally occurring phenomenon, I had corrected her. But everything else had been fair.

Ted had been harder to break it to, but I had figured that I owed to him since we were cohabitants of a cinderblock shoebox. It didn't help matters that I had spent plenty of time fantasizing about him in the two years we had lived together. To be brutally honest, I had gone a smidgen past fantasizing. Ted had made it all too easy to tip over the edge. He was lean, perpetually tan, and chiseled from years of cross-country. What's more, he would leave our dorm littered with running shorts, socks, and sneakers, keeping me in a perpetual state of aroused response to the pheromones he casually flicked into every corner of our shared space.

In the spring semester of our sophomore year, I quickly learned to look forward to Thursdays. Ted would come tearing back to the dorm from practice and only have time to kick his shoes into the corner, peel off his shorts and tank, roll a stick of deodorant under his pits, and dive into a pair of jeans and t-shirt before running to chem lab, running a hand through his damp hair as he grabbed his bag and dashed out the door. I--on the other hand--only had library studies on Thursdays that semester, free as a bird to enjoy this frenzied ritual and to luxuriate in its aftermath.

It would start where I'd go through the ruse of distractedly studying, semi-wooden from the scent of him still in the room and my glances at his shiny puddle of shorts and capsized trainers on the floor. Casual-like...like I could easily resist the temptation. Then it would devolve into a session where I buried my face into these items, deeply and frantically inhaling their ripe musky scent as if they had just dropped from the ceiling of a depressurized airplane cabin. The first few Thursdays that passed in this way, I had let the juices simmer until I got to the shower later, climaxing where everyone else did and where I had plausible deniability (even to myself) over the stimulus. Then I discovered it was much more intense to release the pressure right then, copious amounts of hot semen issuing into a wad of toilet paper with one of his sweaty socks jammed up my nostrils. But ultimately even that wasn't enough, and I found myself cumming routinely into Ted's slippery running shorts during the last hot weeks leading up to summer break that year. Thursday officially became laundry day, and I went up in Ted's estimation as the model roommate who always threw extra items in with my load.

When I finally did reveal my fabulous gayness to him, I was the one who ended up being more surprised by the conversation. It's not that Ted professed to having surmised it like Evie had. I didn't think any guy who shrugged off his roommate regularly laundering his running clothes could be credited with those powers of deduction. It was that he didn't seem fazed by it. In fact, I think Ted embraced it. Had he not, the events of that night may never have transpired.

So when I stepped into the haberdashery for my fitting, I felt driven by a sense of obligation to him that was layered over a deep bed of apprehension. And God, there he was, standing on the expanse of oyster carpet directly under a ceiling spot light, which gilded his shoulders, cheekbones, and hair in warm light. Damn, he looked good. Even better than in college. He had grown out his spiky youthful hair and it was now brushed off his forehead in soft waves. His face and chest had filled out. But it was the same tilted smile that greeted me when he turned to see me coming, hands jammed in his pockets.

"There you are, Paul!" He wrapped an arm around shoulders and pulled me in a tight embrace.

"Hey, man. Glad to be here for you," I practically murmured into his neck. He smelled faintly of sandalwood. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and linger long enough to see if I could detect a hint of that natural fragrance of his that had become an obsession of mine. I pulled back, thrumming.

Ted turned and spoke to a row of starched shirts. "Hey, babe--he's here!" A slight woman in a beige tunic dress emerged. She had bangs and a lavaliere necklace that made me think she was attempting throwback to the roaring twenties. Ted beamed. "Paul, this is my fiancé, Celia." She extended her hand to me in a tight-armed, across-the-body way that could have read as assertive but--to me--smacked of insecurity, and flashed a thin, red-lipped smile.

"Oh my god, Paul!" she trilled. "It's so nice to finally meet you." She brushed a lock of trendy bronde hair behind an ear and pretzeled herself around Ted's arm.

"Yeah," I said, flashing a look at Ted, "I guess it isn't often that a bride meets the best man right before the big day, huh?"

Celia's eyes widened in mock horror. "Oh, I know. Theodore's got so many friends." She splayed a French manicured hand across his chest. "So of course he picks the one I've only heard about! But I have heard so much--I feel like I know you. Teddy thinks a lot of you." She peered up at him and stretched her lips in that same smile approximation she had used on me. Maybe she had bad teeth?

Of course, Celia had already mapped out our tuxes down to the pocket square, which she assured me with a knowing wink and flick of her wrist would make me look "ah-MAH-zing." Ted has obviously hit on the highlights about me, but I guarantee she didn't know everything. Then again, I didn't think Ted knew everything. As I stood on the carpeted dais in front of the triptych mirror, arms extended with a measuring tape at my bust, I started to dwell on that night.

Our senior year, Ted had been struck with crippling sciatica. He'd drag his leg behind him after a meet, collapse face down on his bed, and beg me for a massage. Lord knows what he would have done a year before when he still thought of me as the straight roommate--to him, this seemed a novel perk of our living arrangement. And given how deep I had fallen down the rabbit hole of my obsession with his body, I could hardly refuse.

I'd start at his calf, kneeding it like it was a proofing baguette. Ted would be hissing at this point. As I worked my way up to his hamstring, the exhalations would be replaced short, humming grunts. My thumbs would be throbbing from digging it into his flesh by this point, and I would have to alternate hands, leaving one free to bring to my face. His salt would be on my fingers, and it would make me hard to taste it. By the time I had reached his glut, I'd be leaning into the heel of my palm and feeling it slide over the ripples of the fascia. Ted would be moaning into his pillow now, soft exclamations of "fuck, that feels so good," coming from the upturned corner of his mouth. And I would agree. My cock would be flipped up under my waistband and sliding across the elastic, saturated with my excitement.

As expert hands measured my inseam for my tux, I glanced up at Ted and caught him watching with mild interest from a Louis XV chair. He winked and grinned boyishly. I swallowed and waggled my eyebrows in an attempt at levity as fingers pressed the measuring tape at my crotch.

The fateful night really would not have been all that different from any of these other makeshift physical therapy sessions except for one significant thing: tired of shifting around uncomfortably in lecture hall seats, Ted had finally visited the infirmary for a muscle relaxant earlier that day. I guess Ted had never taken drugs like that before--if he had, he would have heeded warnings not to have his regular beer with the guys after practice. As it was, he stumbled in the room that evening and collapsed onto the bed fully clothed.

"I'm in pain," he had slurred. "Help."

I looked up from the Norton Anthology of British Literature where I had been struggling through the Faerie Queene and stared at him bemusedly. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I hurt." His simple declaration was barely intelligible.

I closed the book with a resonant thud and sat up. "Are you wasted?"

"I took pills. They didn't work. Please?" he implored with marbles in his mouth.

I had sighed, but who exactly I had I been feigning exasperation for? A studio audience? Ted had clearly been so out of it that he probably wouldn't have been able to distinguish me from a sea cow. I had crossed to his bed and sat behind him, grasping and pulling off his running shoes. They had been damp, their treads woven with blades of grass. I had lifted one to my face and breathed in the byproduct of Ted's exertions that day, heightened in richness from the wet field he must have run through. I already had had a valiant erection when I dropped them to the floor and began to pick shards of grass from his white socks. When I finally peeled them from his feet, their musk had sent me into overdrive. I began the ritual of loosening his calf muscle, my entire body vibrating with an expectation that had not yet been allowed to bloom into conscious thought.

Ted had heaved like a deflated balloon. "Damn, that's nice," he murmured into an arm.

I had stretched over him as I continued to work the tendons behind his knee. Normally Ted would have lain with his head at the foot of the bed so that I could sit alongside his mattress and easily reach the full length of his smarting limb, but tonight he had plunged onto the bed straight from the door, facing the opposite direction, and I had had to kneel over him. At some point the buzz in my head had connected with the ache in my groin and I became aware that my cock was pressing into the sole of Ted's foot.

"What did you do?" I had asked softly as I worked on his hamstring. "Take too many pills? Do I need to be worried?"

"You don't need to worry about anything, bubba," came his placid, blurred voice. "I feel super great."

I had started to feel pretty great, too, in spite of a gnawing dread that something was about to go terribly wrong. Well, that and having been called "bubba." Ted's heel had become rather insistent against my shaft. My hands had taken on more of a thrusting than my usual kneading action, and I had suddenly flushed with the dawning realization that I might possibly orgasm against him.

Ted called to me through the fitting room door. "Hey, everything okay in there? Come on, don't be shy! You gotta come out and show us how you look eventually." I could hear the playful tease through the paneled door.

I paused from fiddling with the clasp on the cummerbund, thinking for a split second that cummerbund was such a bizarre word. "Yeah, almost there. Just a second."

Almost there. Cumming in a second, Ted.

I had almost avoided the entire ordeal. I had pulled myself away from Ted's foot, which at that point had ground a wet spot through my shorts. I remember seeing the small dab I had left on his heel, like a shiny smudge of olive oil. I had clambered further up the bed and was just jamming my elbow into his buttock, humming with potential but certainly not past the point of no return, when Ted cried out, "come on, get in there hard, fucker!"

It was not him. He could hardly wrap his lips around the consonants when he uttered it. But it had ignited a searing heat in my center anyway. I remembered seeing myself yank my shorts down, feeling my throbbing cock mash against him, yet almost floating above myself. I had since tried to tell myself it wasn't me in that moment, either...like I had no choice, no power to pull back, no say in the matter. But the truth is I had been at least present enough to decide not to pull his shorts down. Present enough to think that was somehow a line I couldn't cross, arbitrary though it was.

A series of groans had started coming from Ted as I began to slide up and down in the groove of sticky nylon I had forced between his cheeks, like I was pumping old organ bellows. My hand still digging into his ass cheek, I pulled myself back and forth, pushing as far into him as the thin material of his shorts would allow. When I finally came, I remember crying out, something I had never done before. Ted was face down in his pillow and had fallen silent. My pale, shimmering ecstasy had pooled in the crevice I had pressed between his legs, one stray streak over his left cheek like a shooting star. A cosmic moment.

We never spoke of it. Ted had been in such a stupor that the following morning he completely bought my story that he had changed out of his clothes himself. And I had silently tortured myself that I had basically raped him. And had completely lost myself to the rapture of doing it.

I opened the door with a flourish and Ted turned to survey me. He smiled, and I basked in it. "Well there he is!" He used a mocking tone one might use to coax a child from behind the curtains. He walked around in a thorough inspection, brushing off my shoulders and tugging at my sleeves.

"Too short?" I asked.

He stood back and I felt his eyes travel up and down me. "No," he decided after a moment. "I think we're pretty good to show Celia." He turned my shoulders so that I faced the triptych mirrors. I must say, I did look pretty good. Polished, like onyx. And Ted hanging back over my shoulder was the perfect accessory, I mused. "Just one minor adjustment," he added as I took in the reflection. "Let's do up that fly, shall we?" He reached around and fumbled for the zipper, his hand entering the slot in the trousers. He gave me a squeeze. I could see my own eyes widening in the mirror as I watched him grin. "It's been quite a while since the last time I got mixed up with what's in those pants," he murmured. I whipped around to face him. We were close enough that I caught the scent of mint on his breath. He winked and smoothed my pocket square. "Let's get out there for approval, okay?"

***

Several weeks later, I found myself on the veranda of a little bistro that had been selected for the rehearsal dinner. Everything about it was quaint--irritatingly so, knowing it had been all been orchestrated by the bride-who-smiled-toothlessly, from the light-twined grapevine arbor overhead to the long, narrow trestle table adorned simply in white linen. I sat across from Ted and Celia and next to the maid of honor, a girl named Brenna, who was the type of person who seemed to have done it all before everyone else, knew the best way, had all the connections, and all the while clobbered everyone in her vicinity with her overwhelming ginger-peach scent.

Ted and I hadn't had a moment alone since we emerged from the fitting room that afternoon. And even if we had, I don't know what I would have said to him. I had spent the last four years trying to move past what I had thought was the unthinkable only to find that Ted had known of my lapse in self-control all along. Perhaps had allowed it. Welcomed it? I flashed an obligatory smile at a joke Brenna cracked about people from New Jersey and prodded the salmon on my plate as I stewed. Why was I here? Why did Ted pick me to be his best man?

As I glanced between the drippy tapers at the couple-to-be, I saw Celia clutching Ted's arm. She did that a lot, I had noticed. Almost as if she felt the need to stake her claim to him again and again. Ted's eyes flashed in my direction. It was brief--the slightest linger--but I felt it like a discharge of static electricity as it passed over my face.

And that's when it became clear.

I had not been alone in my infatuation, had I? Having me stand beside him tomorrow was Ted's way of admitting that. Maybe it was, in a small way, a last attempt for him to clarify the unspoken connection. To have a last hurrah.

When the only the kale garnishes were left on plates and glasses inevitably began to ring with forks and spoons, I backed my chair from the table, stood up, and faced the music. I glanced around, seeing the earrings and necklaces reflecting the candlelight, the painted lips, the expectant eyes. Celia simpered from across the table. I don't know what Ted was doing. I hadn't brought myself to look at him.

"I guess this is my part of the show." I smiled self consciously. Painted lips smiled back. "I honestly had no idea why Ted asked me to stand with him." A few titters. "We were great roommates in college. Never fought. Perfected the tuna fish and ketchup sandwich." Affected gasps of disgust swept down the table, mingled with chuckles. "But it isn't about me tonight. It's about Ted." I finally glanced at him and found him gazing at me. Fucking gazing. "I kind of messed up big once, and Ted...well, he was there. It's my turn." I locked eyes with him. "I'm glad that I have this chance to be there for him tonight. And tomorrow." I raised my glass amidst sighs and appreciative murmurs. "To Ted and Celia." My sentiment was echoed and the glasses rang against each other over the linen runway.

I took my seat, not taking my eyes off Ted. Brenna commented in my ear about my little spiel, but I didn't it didn't register. Ted had chosen not to have a bachelor party, and he was staying in Celia's parents' pool house that night. If I was going to give Ted what he was owed, it was now or never.

I slid a loafer from my foot. The chill from the veranda's flagstones seeped through my silky sock, but tonight I was suddenly grateful that I had worn sheers. I slid my foot further under the table, which was narrow at only three feet or so. My toes found the hard, smooth cap of Ted's wingtip and traced the ridged switchbacks of his waxed laces up beneath the cuff of his slacks. I rubbed my foot against his chin and studied his face, anxious to see if he would hit. He had turned and Celia, who was forking tiramisu into his mouth, but I saw a smile play at the corner of his lips as they closed around the tines. Celia thought this was for her, but I knew better. He closed his eyes as if savoring the bite, then turned to me and looked straight at me and licked his lips.

Ted had accepted my invitation.

I playfully used my toe to rake his sock down his leg before lifting my foot and nestling it between his thighs. The whites of Ted's eyes appeared all the way around his irises only for a moment before he regained his composure. He smiled at another mindless nugget that had artlessly tumbled from Brenna's constantly moving lips, dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and then dropped it on his lap, giving his chair a small scoot in under the table as he leaned his elbows on the linen and folded his hands under his chin, as if preparing to steady it for the unseen forces brewing down below.