2. Alex
CHAPTER 2
ALEX
G od, these apps were trash.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely fair. They were great when I lived someplace where I was fluent in the common language, and where the people who spoke the same language as me weren’t all military or military-adjacent.
Rota… did not qualify as either of those things.
There were fewer than 10,000 Americans here, and a pretty good portion of those were dependents. Of the actual service members and civilian contractors, a whole lot less than 10,000 were both single and gay or bi men. Of those vanishingly rare unicorns who were , an irritating number were off limits because the Navy was a goddamned buzzkill sometimes.
Take, for example, the commanding officer of one of the airwings. He was jaw-droppingly hot—all the swagger and sexiness of a fighter pilot, and well into his silver fox era. Like me, he wasn’t out. The only reason I knew he was queer at all was because I’d run into him in, of all places, a club in Barcelona. That had been one of the hottest nights of my life, after which we’d sworn each other to secrecy, gone our separate ways, and never even let ourselves make eye contact in the produce aisle at the commissary. If anyone ever found out about that, our careers would be done .
Fuck’s sake. Maybe I should’ve been an officer after all. At least then I could hook up with another officer.
Not that I made a habit of hooking up with anyone who wore a uniform. Though Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a distant memory, it had been firmly in place when I’d first enlisted, and I was still spooked by the experiences of some friends who’d had bad experiences coming out in the post-DADT military. Most had been fine—I knew several who were quite openly married to same-sex partners without any fuss, including the CO of the hospital where I worked—but it had only taken a few to commit me to staying in the closet until I retired.
That commitment to keeping my sexuality and my personal life private had been galvanized last year. I’d had an ill-advised fuck-buddy-turned-boyfriend-I-guess arrangement with a civilian contractor for a little over a year before it had gone tits up. The less said about that shitshow, the better, but it had definitely spooked me away from getting involved with guys on-base. Americans, anyway; the Spaniards all seemed happy to keep things discreet, and the American and Spanish forces—for all we shared a base—didn’t interact as much as people thought. So I could fuck my way through the Spanish Marines and no one in my chain of command would ever know.
Fine by me. Those guys were hot .
I glanced up from my phone to make sure no one had slipped into the waiting area while I’d had my nose buried in the app. Nope. Slow day in Radiology, which was never a bad thing. I’d spent enough time in combat zones to eagerly embrace the boredom of a lull, considering I knew all too well what the alternative was. Sitting here with my boots on my desk and a hookup app on my screen was not the worst way I could spend my day.
I could’ve done without the sexual frustration, though. At least when I was busy, I wasn’t thinking (much) about how empty my bed was these days. Some of that was my own fault; lately I hadn’t been putting a lot of effort into fishing in my very, very limited puddle. Some of it was… Well, that very limited puddle.
Eighteen more months, I reminded myself as I pointlessly scrolled the stupid app. Eighteen more months, and then I’d be retired. I’d be a civilian, and I’d be stateside, and I’d be?—
Whoa, wait, what the fuck?
I sat up so fast my phone almost tumbled out of my hands. I steadied it, and for a panicked second, I was terrified I’d accidentally swiped the profile. The last thing I needed was to alert the guy that I’d found him on the app.
Because that photo…
No, that’s not…
Is it?
Something about him was familiar, though. That wasn’t uncommon here, of course—I’d found a lot of guys on the app who I also recognized from the base. It was almost a game sometimes to find an American and see if I knew who he was.
But this photo pinged me differently than “oh, hey, that’s the redhead at the post office” or “ah, I had a feeling that one cop was into dudes.”
I pulled my phone closer, peering intently at the image. It was the typical shirtless bathroom selfie, and he had a sexy body, that was for sure. A few tattoos. Smooth abs. Narrow waist. This wasn’t someone who’d have any trouble passing the Physical Readiness Test, that was for sure.
Nothing about his physique tipped me off about who he was, though.
No, it was the hint of his jaw. Most of his face and head were cut off, but he’d left enough to show his sharp jawline, and that tickled something in my brain. Hit some synapse that recognized him as more than a generic rando who I’d seen around base.
I tapped the profile and, very carefully avoiding an accidental swipe, thumbed through the photos. Still nothing of his face, which—no shit. Most guys were discreet on this app until they’d at least made a connection. There were a couple more angles of his jaw, though, and the familiarity held fast.
One shot of his arm showed a tattoo that tripped another synapse. I covered part of the screen with my hand so that only the bottom of the design showed—sort of like how his cropping of his face only showed his jaw—and my heart jumped into my throat.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I whispered. I knew that ink. I fucking knew it because I’d seen it peeking out from beneath a short sleeve.
A short camouflage sleeve.
But…
No. No , that wasn’t him. No way.
I moved away from the photos and read the profile.
Connor. Age: 40.
Distance: Less than 1 km away.
My heart was absolutely slamming into my ribs now.
No. Fucking. Way.
Recently divorced, the intro read, and recently arrived in Rota. Never been with a man before but I’d like to give it a try. Casual and discreet for now. Open to more later with the right guy.
I put my phone down and covered my face with both hands, almost muffling my groaned, “Are you serious?”
Because between the jaw, the tattoo, the location, and the description, if that wasn’t Lieutenant Commander Marks…
Oh my God . Just passing him in the hallway almost made me trip over my own feet. Like that airwing CO, he was unreasonably sexy. Built like someone who actually enjoyed going to the gym. A charming smile that made any male-attracted person in the vicinity lose their train of thought. Brown eyes so dark they were almost black. Hair that was nearly as dark except for the dusting of gray around the edges. There was a rumor that his female patients—including the married ones—always put a little extra effort into their appearance when they were going to be seeing him. He’d only been here about three months, and I was pretty sure half the base was buzzing with, “Have you seen the hot new doc at the hospital?”
So, yeah. Dude was fucking gorgeous.
And he was queer , too? Queer, and looking to hook up with a guy?
I usually preferred men who had experience, but if Marks wanted someone to guide him through the motions of sex with a man—holy fuck yeah, I volunteered as tribute. Especially since, being divorced, it was highly unlikely that he was a blushing virgin. He probably knew his way around having sex. This would just be sex with a few adaptations.
Sex with the gorgeous doctor with gray-sprinkled dark hair and tattoos and that smile that turned me completely stupid.
The gorgeous doctor… who was an officer.
“Fucking hell,” I grumbled.
Why couldn’t I find an enlisted guy who was this attractive? I mean, okay, there were plenty, but they were always straight, married, in my chain of command, or became deeply un attractive the instant they opened their mouths (looking at you, MA1 Weyland).
“I’m so stupid,” I told myself, and I shoved my phone into my pocket before raking my hand through my short hair. “So fucking stupid.”
Maybe I needed to ping Isidoro again. He was a Spanish Marine who I’d hooked up with quite a few times; his English was about as good as my Spanish, but we managed well enough for some scorching hot nights together. He was still stationed here, wasn’t he?
I didn’t know for sure. Mostly because we hadn’t texted or fucked in…
In three months.
Since I’d zeroed in on that hot ass doctor who’d made me forget that other men even existed.
Yeah. I was stupid.
And I wasn’t going to get any less stupid any time soon because Lieutenant Commander Marks wanted to find out what it was like to bang a dude.
Fuck. My life.
It was bad enough being a grown-ass man on the cusp of forty and having a crush like teenager. Seeing him on that app, seeing him as everything I would ordinarily swipe right on so fast I’d break my damn phone—that was just mean.
Ugh. I’d already known I needed to distract myself from him, but now I needed to step that up. Text Isidoro again. Maybe hop a train to Sevilla and hit up the clubs there. Or take a trip to Madrid or Barcelona. Could my liver handle another weekend on Ibiza? Kinda seemed like it was worth a try.
Yeah. That was what I’d do. Book a ticket to?—
The waiting area door opened, and a Marine who looked about fourteen stepped in.
Well, it wasn’t the distraction I wanted, but it was a distraction.
I’d take it.
* * *
“Guess I should watch where I’m going next time,” the Marine said with a laugh as he gingerly pulled his blouse back on. “How long do you think I’ll be on light duty?”
“That’s up to your primary care manager,” I said blandly. “All I do is take the pictures.”
He held my gaze, then chuckled, and a moment later, he was on his way back downstairs to his PCM. I hadn’t told him that he had slightly-worse-than-hairline fractures to his radius and ulna—that kind of diagnosis was above my paygrade, even if the fractures were clear as day on the X-rays I’d just taken.
The kid didn’t seem all that surprised when I’d pulled the images up on the screen to make sure they’d come out all right. He’d come to medical because his wrist was sore and swollen after a fall yesterday, and both he and his PCM had been concerned he’d fractured it. Now he was on his way back to her with confirmation that, yep, he’d fractured it.
I didn’t think he’d need surgery, but he would be in a cast for the next six to twelve weeks. Been there, done that.
I shuddered at the memory. At least he’d just taken a fall at work. It probably hadn’t been the best day of his life, but he’d been joking about it and didn’t seem overly bothered apart from the pain. If I had to guess, the injury was less a result of tripping over a toolbox and more that he and some of his buddies had been bored and horsing around. Marines—what can you do?
Sailors did shit like that, too, which was how I’d wound up on light duty a few enlistments ago after a sprained ankle. The two times I’d broken bones? Well, those had been years ago, but I relived the incidents in my nightmares more often than I cared to think about.
I absently flexed my long-healed left hand and tried not to think about the past. I rolled my shoulders beneath my utilities, which were suddenly a little too hot in this office that had suddenly become way too stuffy.
Fuck.
I sat down at my desk again and fanned my face with a file folder. I still had like five hours left before I could bust out of here; time to pull my focus away from bad memories.
It wasn’t even that broken bones triggered me. I wouldn’t have lasted as a radiologic technologist—or even a corpsman at all—if I couldn’t cope with broken bones. That memory was just tender today thanks to a rough night.
Stupid nightmares.
I tossed the folder aside and wiped a hand over my face. Maybe it was time to see a therapist about this. They had civilian therapists who could do televisits now, right? I could probably find one back in the States who’d help me sort all this shit out. I’d pay for it out of pocket, too; even after the Brandon Act, I wasn’t taking the chance of my insurance telling my chain of command about it.
What can I say? After eighteen-plus years on active duty, I had trust issues.
That was something to look into after work, though. Today, I had to get my head together enough to concentrate.
But of course, the universe wasn’t done fucking with me today.
When I’d stumbled across Lieutenant Commander Marks’s profile earlier, I’d been too off-balance to think of much beyond “goddammit, that hot guy I can’t have is queer and available.”
The problem with a pool of men this small, though, was that if I saw him on the app, that meant other guys would too. Which, in and of itself, was fine. The issue was that I personally knew of at least one other man who really, really didn’t need to know that Marks was queer and available. I should’ve known it wouldn’t take him long to find out.
And I definitely should’ve known he’d be sauntering into Radiology to rub it in my face.
Sure enough, about the time I was finally calming down from my brief mental short-circuit, Tobias Miller walked in. As he always did, because fuck him, he didn’t bother knocking and swung my office door open hard enough for it to bang against the wall, startling me out of my damn skin. He knew I was jumpy about shit like that, which was exactly why he did it.
As I peeled myself off the ceiling, he dropped into the empty chair across from my desk, phone in hand and a familiar shit-eating grin on his face. God. Just what I needed. He was in jeans and a black golf shirt, and I hated that he looked good in them. I hated that his longish and neatly arranged salt-and-pepper hair was still sexy, and that his graying beard accentuated his sharp jaw and high cheekbones. I hated that when he eventually turned around and walked out, his jeans would be clinging to that ass the way they always did, because he was clearly still going to the gym as religiously as he always had.
He was such a gorgeous man. Shame it was only skin-deep.
Still grinning like the asshole he was, he jiggled his phone at me. “You been on the app today?”
I gritted my teeth, irritated with the intrusion, and I played casually stupid. “No, I haven’t. Why?”
He smirked, because of course he did, and tapped his screen. When he showed it to me, I wasn’t at all surprised to see Marks’s profile. About the only thing Tobias did at work these days besides bother me was prowl around online for his next piece of ass.
I sat back, trying to affect nonchalance. “Okay?”
Tobias snickered. Then he very pointedly swiped right, winked at me, and pocketed his phone. “Seems like your type. I’m surprised you haven’t— ooh , right. You can’t , can you?”
It took so damn much work not to roll my eyes. That would only egg him on. “No, I can’t. He’s all yours.” I half-shrugged, then nodded toward my computer screen. “And I’ve got work to do, so…”
He huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Looks like you’re really busy here today.” But, mercifully, he got up. “You know, our paygrades are still allowed to hook up.”
“Yep. They sure are.” I stood and gestured toward the door. “Goodbye, Tobias.”
He scowled, shoulders dropping as he apparently realized his attempt to make me jealous hadn’t worked, and neither had the thinly veiled suggestion that we fuck again. I knew him. Whether he was interested in Marks or not, he knew Marks was my type. In his mind, him connecting with Marks would get under my skin, either because I’d be jealous that Tobias could have him and I couldn’t, or because I’d be jealous that Tobias was sleeping with someone else. It had been almost a year, and he was still deluding himself into thinking I’d eventually get desperate and want him back.
Not a fucking chance, slimeball.
At least he left after that, which meant he was probably on his way to a meeting or something. As soon as I was alone, I shuddered at the memories of our “relationship.” The sex with him had always been consensual, but it had also left me feeling… uncomfortable in ways that were hard to describe. I’d had some incredibly casual and even anonymous hookups over the years, but only Tobias had ever left me feeling like I was just a hole to put his dick in. And that was before we’d started kind-of-dating, and he’d started fucking with my head as much as he’d fucked my body.
I chafed my arms. God, I couldn’t believe I’d wasted so much time and energy on that asshole. Never again. Not with him, and not with anyone else attached to the base, because the worst part about Tobias was that we worked in the same building. I couldn’t get away from him any more than I could get away from?—
Alarm straightened my spine in the same moment cold dread started wrapping around it.
Lieutenant Commander Marks.
I was frustrated as all hell because I couldn’t get away from him. I couldn’t touch him, but I also couldn’t avoid seeing him around the hospital.
The same hospital where Tobias worked.
Tobias, who’d swiped right on Marks.
“Oh, fuck ,” I murmured into my empty office.
The thing was, Tobias wasn’t a bad-looking guy at all, and he could be charming as hell when he wanted to be. Hell, he’d gotten me to date him even when I’d sworn off relationships until I was out of the military. The love-bombing was easy to see in hindsight, but at the time, not so much.
And I was experienced with men. Marks wasn’t a clueless virgin, but he was new to the queer scene, and even older guys could get bamboozled by someone who said the right things and played the right games.
Tobias knew how to say the right things and play the right games.
I rubbed the back of my neck and exhaled as that cold dread wound tighter around my spine. I knew it wasn’t just me. Isidoro had experienced Tobias’s bullshit. My buddy Crawford had been with the asshole a couple of months ago; he hadn’t realized until afterward that Tobias was the guy who’d fucked with me, and he’d been with him one time and one time only. We’d both had the same experience with him—namely, that Tobias knew how to toe that line before being gently pushy turned into coercion. He would take no for an answer, but he was just manipulative enough that he wasn’t easy to say no to . I’d gotten the impression he saw limits and boundaries as goals. I’d found it annoying, as had Crawford and Isidoro, but none of us had left the experiences feeling like any boundaries had been violated, per se—just brushed up against and pushed.
There wasn’t much we could do in terms of getting his chain of command involved. He hadn’t technically done anything wrong, and anyway, he was a civilian contractor, so he’d have to step a lot farther out of line than that to even get a talking to. All we could do was pass his name around to anyone we knew and, whenever we saw new guys pop up on the apps, extend that information to them.
And now I knew for a fact that Tobias had right-swiped on Marks. That didn’t mean Marks had reciprocated, but he might. Hell, most guys would.
So what the fuck was I supposed to do?
I could reach out to Crawford and have him private message Marks. That felt like outing Marks, though. Even though he had a public profile, he didn’t have his full name or face on it. Would he appreciate me letting someone else on base know he was queer?
“Shit,” I whispered into the silent office. I couldn’t just… not give Marks a heads up about Tobias. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was easily manipulated, but he was new to being with men. An unscrupulous guy telling him, “No, no, this is totally what gay men do” could easily persuade him to do things he normally wouldn’t.
Shame I couldn’t get to Marks first and help him figure out his boundaries before someone like Tobias got his hands on him.
Which… it occurred to me how ironic it was that if Marks and I hooked up, we could both be severely disciplined just because of our ranks. Meanwhile Tobias could operate like a predator who knew exactly where all the lines were, and no one could touch him.
Fuck it. One way or another, I needed to talk to Marks. I’d probably die of embarrassment, and he probably would too, but at least he’d know about who Tobias really was. What he did with that information was up to him.
My chance came about an hour later when I was on my way back from doing an ultrasound in the emergency department. I was halfway from the ER to the elevators when Lieutenant Commander Marks came around the corner, brow furrowed as he read something on a chart.
I stopped so suddenly my boot squeaked on the floor. “Uh, Lieutenant Commander—do you have a minute, sir?”
He halted, his head snapping up, and he blinked. “Um…” He glanced down at the chart in his hand. “I’ve got a patient.” Furrowing his brow, he asked, “Is it urgent?”
“No. No, sir, it’s—” I cleared my throat. “It can wait.”
He eyed me uncertainly. “Uh…”
“I just need to—” Why was it so damn hard to access the thoughts I’d neatly arranged for this conversation? Probably because I hadn’t expected it to be happening right fucking now. And because while the overhead fluorescents weren’t flattering for anyone, they picked out his high cheekbones and the sparkle of silver throughout his short, dark hair. And I?—
“HM1?” he prodded, sounding curious and maybe a little nervous himself.
Fuck. What was I—oh, right.
I shook myself. “It’s not urgent, sir. Just—I’ll be in Radiology for the rest of the day unless I get called back to…” I gestured over my shoulder at the ER. “If you have a minute…”
He still seemed off balance and even a little suspicious, but then he glanced at his watch. “Like I said, I’ve got a patient. I’ll, uh, I’ll come by Radiology afterward.”
I nodded sharply. “Thank you, sir.”
Then we continued in opposite directions, and I just hoped we could do this without both of us dying of embarrassment.