I've been sitting on this for almost a year, to be honest, because I could never decide if I wanted to post it or not, but I've finally decided what the heck, maybe someone will get something out of it. Hope you enjoy. Cheers. (PS, could you tell I had no damn idea what to title this?)
Eric and Victoria's relationship had evolved in strange, zigzagging leaps and bounds, doubling back on itself and taking the complicated road wherever it could. The whole thing consisted of surreptitious touches under the news desk, stolen kisses, brief moments of passion in dark rooms; secrets and meaningful looks and lust and words left unspoken. Every step forward would be met with two to the side and sometimes a stumble back.
It started one early morning in the studio; Laney and Charlie hadn't yet arrived, nor had Mr. Denovi. The fight had originally been about some trivial element of the show, but had long since degenerated into petty insults shouted at close range. Eric found himself staring into her furious face, and goddamn but their fights could be such a turn-on, and he wasn't paying attention to his mouth any more so perhaps he had said something a little different, based on her shocked expression, and then before he could stop himself he was kissing her, hard.
Alarms started blaring in his head – oh, you've fucked up now, Ortiz – but they were instantly silenced when she pressed herself against him and began to kiss him back. Her arms rose around his neck, and he put his hands on her hips and carefully manoeuvred her back against the news desk. When he pinned her there, with more aggression than he'd intended, he made the most wonderful discovery: dominated, she was putty in his hands.
All of his pent-up frustration and desire and years and years of attraction to her burst to the surface, and it seemed that she was feeling the same way as they pushed and pulled and petted. He sucked her tongue for a moment, committing her taste to memory, operating entirely on instinct. They had no idea how long they'd been touching and kissing and moaning when the sound of a rush of students in the hall – one of the buses must have arrived – caused them to break apart. Eric stared at her, brow deeply furrowed, eyes dark and intense, breath heavy. Victoria stared back, looking faintly surprised somehow; her swollen lips were slightly parted as she tried to catch her own breath, her hair was mussed and her shirt askew from his roaming hands.
He stepped away from her slightly, partly just to get a better look at her, when the doorknob rattled. They jumped away from one another, a knee-jerk reaction, as the studio door opened and their advisor stepped into the room.
"Morning you two," Mr. Denovi said, smiling cluelessly. "How goes it?"
Eric and Victoria exchanged a heavy glance. "Fine," Eric answered slowly.
They never did talk about that encounter. Actually, they didn't talk much at all for a while; their friends thought it strange until deciding that perhaps they were giving each other the silent treatment. It wasn't for nearly two weeks that they found themselves alone together again, in the studio after school. Laney was at a science fair, and Charlie had gone along to film her experiment for her. Mr. Denovi was around for a while, oblivious as ever, but he went home not long after school ended. His mother had hurt her leg recently and was demanding even more of him than usual.
The air between them seemed to buzz as each of them tried to focus on something else. Victoria was preparing an announcement for her latest cause, and Eric was consulting his notebook for jokes that would suit the next morning's show. The silence was deafening, and the tension that hung over their heads was palpable. Each of them could feel their bodies screaming for one another's touch.
Neither seemed willing to act until Eric broke for one tiny moment and stole a glance at her where she sat on the end of the studio's denim sofa. He swallowed heavily, breath catching in his throat. He couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from her.
Victoria, concentrating vehemently on her work, didn't notice that Eric had moved until she felt his weight on the couch next to her. Slowly she lifted her gaze and saw him looking at her, that same intensity in his expression once again, and her resolve disappeared. She let her binder fall to the floor as he leaned in to kiss her and she responded in kind. When he pushed against her, she gladly allowed herself to lean back into the cushions and let him top her. Even as she let out a soft moan, shivering in anticipation, she resented the heat that seared through her core when he touched her. She hated him, truly, every infuriating inch of him, and still she gasped and clutched at his back when he began to trail his mouth down her jaw and neck.
She wished this wasn't happening, she wished he would leave, and yet she could bring no part of herself to push him away or hiss anything besides his name. And when voices close to the door prompted him to remove himself from the sofa, she found – to her disgust – that she missed his warmth and his weight on top of her. She ran a hand through her hair, sitting up awkwardly, trying to glare at him. Once again he just stared at her with that look on his face, like he wanted to devour her and was confused by it. She felt a quiver somewhere she didn't want to, and crossed her legs tightly in an attempt to stifle the feeling.
They held each other's eyes for a long moment before Eric turned away, scooping his things off of the table and leaving the room. Victoria watched him all the way out, swallowing hard.
After that they were unable to deny their attraction to one another. Whenever they found themselves alone, they were almost instantly caught up in a brief storm of heated passion. They never outright discussed these moments, but they also didn't completely deny that they happened. Sometimes they'd find themselves sharing a meaningful look when a thought occurred to them at the same time – when Laney sat down in the chair where last night Victoria had straddled Eric's lap; when Charlie leaned on the wall exactly where only two days earlier Eric had had Victoria pinned.
Once in a while Victoria would glance at her co-host and catch him staring at her with that now-familiar intensity, and she'd feel her stomach flutter and leap. Other times Eric would look her way and notice that she was watching him with that perpetual combination of desire and spite and he'd have to push his hands deep into his pockets and turn away just to stay in control.
Eventually it got to the point where they couldn't always stand to wait for an opportunity – sometimes they had to seek them out. An argument – a shouting match, really – at lunchtime and they had to search out a closet or an empty classroom where they could steal a private moment. On another occasion they were fighting right before the show and didn't have time to run away. Eric, growing bolder by the day, spent the entire time they were on air with his hand resting on Victoria's leg, just above her knee. She scarcely kept it together, and reamed him out for it later – although the disagreement ended rather predictably.
Most of the time, if one of their encounters didn't start with an argument, it ended with one. She'd shout at him for leaving a hickey in view (she had to wear scarves for days) or for accidentally tearing the top button off of her blouse when he got a bit rough (it was lucky she carried a small sewing kit in her purse). He, on the other hand, would give her a hard time about an incident in which she'd moaned too loud and nearly gotten them caught, or a time when she'd scratched him so hard she'd broken the skin, even through the fabric of his shirt. She complained about his increasing nerve, the way he tried to kiss her in places as open as a momentarily-empty hallway or against the back wall of the school during break. But he only grinned wickedly and let his tongue dance against the spot at the base of her neck where he knew it would drive her wild.
Eric had never enjoyed his life so much, and preserved that feeling by refusing to think too hard or too deeply about what was going on between them. As their strange, secret relationship developed, new elements emerged – quick, stolen kisses between classes, only seconds long but as passionate as ever. Roaming hands beneath the news desk, growing more daring as time wore on. Veritable staring contests, opposing not only each other but the world around them: how long could they eyefuck without being caught?
The adrenaline rush of it all was going to Eric's head a bit, and he was constantly searching for ways to add yet more excitement to their circumstances. One afternoon he had Victoria perched on the table in front of him, her top half-open, one of her hands in his shirt and the other holding him close by the belt loop, and he felt particularly audacious. Grinning his dastardly, detestable grin, he slid his hands from her knees up inside her short skirt and, for the first time, placed his fingers directly between her legs. She gasped loudly.
It was another month or so after that, their grade twelve year nearing its end, when Victoria mentioned loudly to the three of them – Eric, Laney and Charlie – that her parents were going away for a weekend to celebrate their anniversary, and she'd have the house to herself from Friday until Monday morning. She never more than glanced at Eric, but the implications were clear to him – in her tone, her volume, her body language.
On Friday night, after his parents were asleep, Eric snuck out of the house and headed for Victoria's place. It was a short walk, and one he'd known by heart most of his life.
Only streets away, Victoria waited impatiently, trying to think about other things. He may not come for hours; heck, he may not even come that night at all. The bastard. She couldn't stand him. He was aggressive, dominating, passionate, and yet he also focussed largely on pleasuring her. And god, he was hot. He was absolutely everything she could ever want in a lover, and she hated him all the more for it, because he was the last person in the world she wanted to feel that way about.
Everything good about their relationship came from that concrete foundation of anger and conflict and hatred.
When she heard a quiet knock on the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Practically falling off the couch, she hurriedly turned off the TV and ran for the door. It opened to Eric and his terrible, wicked, sexy smile.
He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him, reaching back to turn the bolt even as he leaned forward to kiss her. Leaving his shoes at the door, he kissed her all the way up the stairs, sweaters being impatiently shed and dropped on the floor as they went. They tumbled into her bedroom and onto her bed, tugging and pulling impatiently at one another's clothes, fervent with desire.
Before long they found themselves under the covers, dressed only in their underwear, Eric's mouth trailing kisses in the valley between Victoria's breasts. He ground a knee against her centre and she groaned loudly, lifting her legs around his waist. Suddenly his mind was racing, aware now that they were going to go further that night than they ever had before – all the way, in fact; wondering how many times they might have already gotten to here if not for the interruptions and obstacles they always met at school. Then a lot of thoughts and feelings went rushing through him all at once, everything he'd been holding back, and he began to slow in his attentions.
And then he did the exact opposite of what his entire body was screaming for: swallowing drily, he pulled away and sat up.
Victoria let out a soft, whimpering moan of frustration at his absence, but when he didn't return she opened her eyes and looked up to see him watching her with a new expression on his face – something she almost could have taken for sadness.
"Eric," she moaned, cold and exposed now without his body heat or the sheets to cover her.
"Victoria…" he sighed quietly.
She tried to reach for him, to draw him back, but he leaned backward and pushed her hands away.
"Victoria, I can't do this. I don't want it to be this way," he said.
"What are you talking about?" she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
He looked away, eyes wandering her bedroom walls. Her bulletin board was covered with photos of the Warthogs team, pictures of the four of them that spanned all four years of high school. "I don't… I can't sleep with you, not when I…"
"Are you saying you don't want to?"
He peered at her out of the corner of his eye. "I think it's pretty clear that I want to," he said in a low voice. He cleared his throat slightly.
"Then what are you saying?" she demanded.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back down at her. "I can't sleep with you when I've been in love for years and for you it's only hatesex."
She stared at him, shocked, almost outraged, and he swallowed hard before breaking his gaze away from hers. He pulled his jeans back up from around his knees as he stumbled off of the bed, scooping up his shirt. He yanked it on as he walked out of the room, not wanting to stay there anymore. He had to be crazy – the girl of his dreams (sometimes very specific dreams) had been lying almost naked beneath him, receptive and willing, and here he was walking away.
He pounded down the stairs, zipping up his fly and grabbing his hoodie as he went, and was trying to jam his feet into his shoes when Victoria came out of her room wrapped in a sheet. She leaned against the railing near the top of the stairs, hanging out over the front entrance.
"You're stupid," she said, swallowing uncomfortably.
"I know," he answered, not looking up. He reached for the door, but she kept talking.
"I hate you," she began, pausing to take a deep breath, "because you've always been such a huge jerk to me and I always liked you way too much all the same. Wasn't fair. So hating you was a coping mechanism. Just became a habit."
Now Eric looked up and met her eyes, frowning.
"I'm afraid. Of getting hurt. By you," she continued stiltedly.
His frown deepened. "You're stupid."
There was a long pause in which neither of them did anything but stare into the other's eyes, searching for some indication of dishonesty. Finally she answered, "…I know."
He stared at her a minute longer before kicking his shoes back off and slowly climbing the stairs, holding her gaze all the while. At the top he stood in front of her and looked down into her face. She looked back up, holding her breath.
Very carefully, he leaned in and kissed her. It was unlike anything they'd shared before; it was light, sweet, innocent. Loving. She did her best to return the gesture, suddenly nervous. After a long moment they broke apart and looked into each other's faces, smiling now, a little shyly. He rested his forehead against hers.
"I love you," she murmured.
"I love you too," he said huskily. "Now… weren't we just in the middle of something?"
She bit her lip with anticipation, and they pulled each other back into her bedroom with renewed desire. This time, when Eric stole another glance at her corkboard while he pulled his shirt and trousers off, he noticed that there were more pictures of him on it than anyone else.