Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HUDSON
Hudson knew they were expected to stay away from each other. Chen had made that pretty fucking clear. Shaw had agreed to it. Reed had given him the look—the one that said don't be an idiot—at least three times during the week. Even Novak had pulled him aside yesterday to ask if everything was okay.
Hudson didn't care about any of it.
Nine days until he got on a truck heading west and Shaw headed east and they’d never see each other again. And Hudson was supposed to spend them avoiding him?
Yeah. No. That wasn't going to happen.
It had taken no more than twenty-four hours after the equipment shed before Hudson found Shaw in the dining hall and sat down across from him. Shaw had looked up, giving nothing away, and Hudson met his eyes with a challenge: tell me to leave.
He hadn't.
They'd eaten dinner in silence while Reed sent him concerned glances from two tables over. Hudson had ignored him. When Shaw left, he’d waited exactly two minutes, then followed.
They'd ended up in a supply closet on the second floor. Quick, efficient, and probably stupid, but Hudson had stopped caring about stupid somewhere around the same time someone decided what he could and couldn't do.
That was four days ago.
Since then they'd hooked up in the equipment shed twice, the storage room once, and that weird maintenance corridor behind the administrative building that nobody ever used. They were being careful: never left together, always checked for witnesses, stayed sharp in formation.
Shaw kept trying to talk him out of it like the boy scout he was, but Hudson didn’t give a shit.
"This is so… fucking… reckless," Shaw had said one night, in between kisses. Backed against the wall in the equipment shed, Hudson's hand down his pants.
"Sure." Hudson kissed him to shut him up.
"You should worry more."
"All I worry about—" Hudson gave him a long stroke “—is getting this. Preferably before lights out.”
Shaw had opened his mouth to argue again, and Hudson had dropped to his knees. That ended the conversation.
Now they were getting ready for a forty-eight-hour field exercise that should’ve been exhausting enough to keep Hudson's mind occupied.
They weren't partnered this time—funny enough—but Hudson tracked Shaw's position anyway. Couldn't help it. He knew Shaw’s location at all times, when he finished the breach-and-clear scenario at checkpoint three, and the exact moment he crossed the final line seven minutes before Hudson. He saw him, shoulders back, not even winded, looking like he’d gone for a light jog instead of two days through rough terrain.
Annoying. Perfect.
When they returned to base, everyone was too tired to do anything except shower and sleep. Hudson lasted maybe four hours before his brain woke him up with the very helpful reminder that he had seven days left and was wasting time sleeping.
He checked Shaw’s bunk: empty.
Hudson found him in the showers at 0200, alone. Thank god, because Hudson's self-control was pretty much non-existent at this point.
"What are you doing here?" Shaw kept his voice flat, but his eyes tracked Hudson's movements as he undressed and stepped under the shower next to him.
"Showering. Obviously." Hudson let the water run cold for a second before it heated up.
"At oh-two-hundred?"
"Couldn't sleep." Hudson glanced over. Shaw's dark wet hair clung to his forehead, water running down his neck and his shoulders. Hudson's brain, unhelpfully, supplied a lot of filthy ideas for how this could go. "You?"
"Same."
Steam circled around them.
Shaw's eyes traced down Hudson’s torso, landing briefly on his dick before returning to his face. "We have formation in five hours."
“I know.”
Running a hand through his hair, Shaw turned back to the water.
Hudson studied his back, muscles contracting under his dark tattoos, all the way down to his, frankly, unreasonable ass.
That did it.
He moved in behind Shaw, close enough that the water hit them both. Hudson’s hands found his hips and he pressed him forward slowly until his palms met the tile wall. He felt Shaw's breath hitch.
"I don’t want you to risk everything, Hale." Shaw said.
"Shh." Hudson ran his hands up Shaw's sides, feeling the muscles tense under his palms. "No one is here. It’s just us."
Shaw's better judgment was clearly losing, his forehead dropping forward against the tiles.
Hudson pressed his mouth to the back of his neck. Felt him shiver despite the hot water.
"Seven days," Hudson whispered against his skin. "That's all I'm asking for."
Shaw went still. Then, slowly, the argument left his shoulders.
His hand slid around Shaw's hip and down, wrapping around his cock. Shaw's breath left him in a rush, his palms pressing harder against the tiles.
"Don't—" Shaw pleaded.
"Don't what?"
Shaw exhaled, his head dropping lower.
Hudson worked him slowly at first, then picked up the pace, committing every reaction to memory—the tension climbing through Shaw's body, the way his shoulders curved inward like he was trying to hold himself together and failing.
He was close. Hudson could feel it.
"Fuck—" Shaw's voice cracked. "Don't stop—"
The locker room door banged open.
They separated instantly, Hudson stepping back under his own shower head. He grabbed soap and kept his hands moving. Shaw still faced the wall, forehead against the tiles, back heaving.
Novak shuffled past, hair flattened on one side, barely conscious. He grunted something unintelligible and disappeared into a toilet stall.
Hudson caught Shaw's eye. He seemed completely taken apart. His jaw was tight as he desperately tried to get his breathing under control.
Hudson shot him a slow, unapologetic smirk.
Shaw closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he finished rinsing off and left without a word.
Hudson stayed under the hot water for five more minutes.
Seven days.
They ran live-fire drills in the morning—moving through the range in pairs, covering each other, calling out targets. Hudson got paired with Fernandez, who was competent but talked too much. Shaw was with Pine two lanes over, and Hudson kept glancing at them.
"Yo. Get your head out of your ass." Fernandez's voice cut through his distraction. "Target left, ten o'clock."
Hudson swung around, fired three rounds center mass. The target went down.
"Got it."
"You seem distracted, hermano."
"I'm fine. Keep moving."
When they finished thirty seconds after Shaw and Pine, Hudson caught Shaw turning back to Pine and say something that made her laugh.
Jealousy shot through him. Hudson Hale, jealous of a laugh. This was new.
She was one of three women here, tall and lean, with the kind of confidence that made her look like she owned whatever room she walked into. Beautiful too. Hudson had to remind himself that Shaw was gay, and Pine wasn’t competition. At least not in that sense.
In the afternoon they had equipment maintenance. Cleaning weapons, checking gear, all the tedious shit that came with being in the military. Hudson was halfway through disassembling his rifle when Reed dropped onto the bench beside him.
"Fernandez talk your ear off out there?" he asked, grinning.
"Every single second." Hudson set down his bolt carrier. "I thought about shooting him just to make it stop."
Reed laughed. "Novak spent the entire time explaining cryptocurrency. I still have no fucking idea what he was talking about."
“At least Novak can shoot straight while he's talking.”
Reed picked up a rag and started cleaning his already spotless rifle. “Feels like yesterday we were freezing our asses off on night watch."
"And now we’re six days away from scattering all over. Hell of a program." Hudson set down his rifle and reached for the oil.
Reed went quiet. "I'm gonna miss you, man."
It took Hudson by surprise. Reed wasn't usually the sentimental type. "Yeah. Me too," he said genuinely.
"North Carolina's not that far from Washington. You should visit sometime. Check out Fort Liberty."
"How about you come to Washington instead? Mountains, rain, rugged coastline. All the good stuff."
“No Shaw in Washington though.”
Hudson shot him a look. “Subtle."
"Come on. You two are obviously still…” His mouth curved up. “And that's fine. But six days, man. Then what?"
"Then nothing."
"Okay." His tone shifted slightly, less teasing. "But what if—"
"No." Hudson threw down his rag harder than necessary. "It ends when Selection ends. That was always the deal."
"Right." Reed nodded slowly. "Just seems like maybe the deal changed somewhere along the way."
"It didn't."
Hudson knew how this worked. You checked in, you told yourself it was casual, and then one day you realized you’d been waiting for someone who had a whole life that didn’t have room for you in it.
He’d watched his mom do that for years, making excuses for a man who’d walked out on a Tuesday morning and never looked back.
Hudson wasn’t doing that. He wasn’t waiting on anyone.
"You could keep in touch, though. That wouldn't be weird," Reed said.
"What’s the point?" Hudson pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. "He's going east. I'm going west. That's it."
Hudson could feel the weight of whatever Reed wasn't saying.
"Okay. Whatever you say." He stood and clapped Hudson on the shoulder. "But just so you know. I think you're a dumbass."
"What?"
"You heard me." Reed grinned. "Aren’t you a little old to be playing hard to get?”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m just saying. Phone sex is an actual thing. I would know.”
He walked away before Hudson could call him out for oversharing.
On the last night of Selection, the rec room was more crowded than usual.
Someone, probably Fernandez, had smuggled in several six-packs of beer, and everyone pretended not to notice while passing cans around like contraband.
Which it was, technically, but with less than twenty-four hours left, nobody seemed to care anymore.
Hudson found half their Selection class crammed around a table playing cards. Reed, Novak, Fernandez, Pine, a few others.