Chapter 21
SKIMMER
Time was hard to tell in the basement apartment.
All the clocks had stopped, and the only windows were narrow, horizontal slits at the top of the living room wall, but they had blocked those with blankets.
Out of habit, Gabriel looked down at the watch on his wrist. It had stopped at eleven.
Whether that was AM or PM, he couldn’t be sure.
He didn’t even know what day it stopped.
Everyone else was still asleep. Victoria was in the chair, her leg propped up. Judd was sprawled out on the floor where he’d dropped after his shift at watch. Tommy and Phin were sharing the couch. And Blake was in the bedroom still, dead to the world after Gabriel had taken both of their watches.
Blake would be spitting mad if he knew Gabriel had taken his shift, but he couldn’t help it.
Gabriel sipped from his mug. The cold instant coffee was unpleasant, but drinking it was more about the infusion of caffeine and a small semblance of normalcy.
Gabriel learned a long time ago that holding onto these mundane rituals could make all the difference when you were away from home and struggling.
The coffee was bitter, but his mood was high. He was giddy. In a way a man of his age and station shouldn’t be. Especially not in this situation. He couldn’t help himself. Gabriel was basking in his post orgasm glow, and not even the distant sound of the city being destroyed by aliens could dim it.
Last night had been incredible. Blake had been incredible. If Gabriel thought that seeing Blake sponge bathing himself had been a treat, then having him under him—naked, warm, writhing in pleasure, red flush spreading over his skin—that was an addiction Gabriel couldn’t crochet away, or want to.
Even now, thinking of all the marks he littered over his skin…Gabriel didn’t think of himself as a possessive caveman type, but maybe that was because he’d never had Blake to be possessive over.
He was lovely, but it was more than his lean waist or the way his pouty lips twisted at him when he was holding back something snarky. It was him.
Gabriel had once flown over part of the Grand Canyon in a helicopter, and he remembered being awed by it.
Technically, he knew how it had been created.
But seeing it, in all its shades of color, its fathomless depths and changing landscapes…
it had felt unknowable. Like it was an aberration humans had attributed to an act of vengeful Gods, because otherwise there was no other way to absolve it in their minds.
Blake’s mind was like that.
And the more of it Gabriel was treated to, the more he wanted to see. Call him an explorer, because he was ready to put on his Pith Helmet and chart all the nooks and crannies.
Gabriel knew himself well enough to know he was falling deep.
And he knew what a bad idea it was to get entangled with someone during a mission.
His focus needed to be on getting himself and his team out alive.
But when everything was going pear-shaped, and the knowing that their life on the other side was going to be different—if they made it at all… how could he deny himself?
He’d spent so long looking to do something, one thing, to lessen the weight.
But it seemed like with every country he touched down in, every time he flicked the safety off his gun, the weight only increased.
But then he was pulled into the back of an ambulance, and he found someone who, for the first time in a long time, made him feel like a man, and not just a foundation for guilt.
So he was going to let himself have this. Because in a world where aliens were throwing each other into national monuments, he didn’t care if this was a bad idea or a fleeting thing. What was it Blake said?
Pretty damn low on my give a fuck list.
Gabriel finished off his coffee just as the others began stirring. His internal clock was pretty accurate, and he thought it had to be close to morning. Standing, he stretched his arms over his head and felt his back pop. He’d been sitting against the wall for so long his back had stiffened up.
Victoria pulled herself up from the chair and began hobbling toward the kitchen. Judd rolled over to his back, grinning up at her. “Hey, how about a good morning kiss?”
She stepped on his hand, ignoring his yelp of pain as she entered the kitchen.
The noise must have woken up the rest of the apartment. Someone from the couch began groaning.
“Why is the twink on top of me?” Phin groused, his voice gravelly from sleep.
Tommy scowled, pushing some chestnut hair from his eyes. “The twink has a name.”
Phin swung his legs to the carpet. He rubbed his thigh, carefully avoiding his busted knee. “I know,” he muttered under his breath.
Tommy watched him before speaking again. “You were having a nightmare. I didn’t want—you were getting loud.”
Phin froze, staring down at his knee. Gabriel could see the muscles in his jaw working.
The grenadier didn’t like to talk about PTSD—his or anyone else's. Not even to Gabriel. It was a few years after he was discharged that Gabriel learned just how bad it was for Phin.
They’d had a late night watching a game and eating junk food, so Phin had crashed on his couch. The big man woke Gabriel up at four am when he shattered his balcony door, screaming about insurgents. Gabriel had to put him in a chokehold to get him to stop.
Even after that, Phin still refused to talk about it. Not even to Gabriel. He was so tight-lipped about it that sometimes Gabriel wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing—but his lost security deposit and the nasty voicemails from his landlord were real enough.
Phin didn’t talk about himself much, but Gabriel suspected he grew up in the kind of household where people were seen and not heard, and problems were meant to be swept under the rug. It was all he could do to get Irving to hire him at all. A liability, he’d called him.
But that liability had saved his life more times than Gabriel could count, and whatever issues he had, there was no one Gabriel would rather have at his back. And when the day came when he couldn’t fight his demons alone anymore, Gabriel would stand by his side.
Until then, they tiptoed around the subject.
Well, everyone but Tommy, it seemed.
Gabriel was ready for Phin to lash out; he set his coffee down, ready to intervene, but Phin surprised him by just grunting something unintelligible and staggering to his feet. He limped to the bathroom, body tight with pain.
Tommy didn’t even come up to Phin’s collarbone, and he had to weigh less than most of his armament, but the little guy had some kind of power.
Gabriel watched him adjust the baggy shirt he’d borrowed from the apartment drawers and shuffle toward the kitchen, cheerfully greeting Victoria while he got something to eat.
He was saved from saying anything by Blake. Predictably, he looked grumpy. His eyes still soft from sleep, with lines from the pillow on his face. He scowled at Gabriel, storming up to him.
“You’re an ass,” he hissed, his bare feet brushing against Gabriel’s boots.
Blake’s hair was flattened on one side, and his lips were twisted up in that scowl he had. His nose was wrinkled in irritation. It was so cute—Gabriel couldn’t help but lean down and give him a quick peck.
“Morning, sleeping be—”
“Finish that sentence. Go ahead.” Blake’s cheeks were red. “I dare you.”
“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”
Narrowing his eyes, he gave Gabriel one final glare before shuffling off to find caffeine.
Gabriel watched him go, his lips curling in a grin. He couldn’t help it. Blake looked cute when he just woke up. And there was something about that thin surly coating over his soft gooey center, it was just so fun to crack.
“Really?” Phin broke through his thoughts. He looked over to see the big soldier leaning against the wall, a sour look on his face. “End of the world and you’re thinking with your dick?”
Gabriel crossed his arms. “You’ve only got one good knee left. You really want to run your mouth?”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
There was a thin veneer of snark hiding their true intentions—Phin was worried.
It was there in the fine lines around his mouth, the dark way his eyes bored into Gabriel’s.
He had put his trust in him and wanted to be sure Gabriel wasn’t distracted.
That he was still capable of leading them to safety.
At this point, Gabriel wasn’t sure. But he was the only one volunteering for the job.
Phin seemed to find what he was looking for. He grunted and pushed off the wall, stiffly walking toward the kitchen. Gabriel joined him to find the kitchen packed.
Someone had pulled everything out of the cabinets and had spread it out over the counters.
They’d even found some medical supplies, nothing fancy, but there were some bandages, over-the-counter painkillers, and an expired bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
Tommy bit into a banana as he organized perishable foods from non-perishable and what was too heavy to carry.
Everyone else was gathered around the round kitchen table. It was a rickety thing with a lot of life behind it. But it held as Judd opened a map of DC and began studying it as if this was the first time.
Gabriel joined him, leaning his hip against the table. “You find us a way out of here?”
Judd shrugged. “Since I only have a vague understanding of where ‘here’ is and I have no idea what parts of the city have been blown to bits, no. I haven’t found us a way out.”
“A way out?” Blake asked as he pulled out handfuls of cereal from a box. “We aren’t going to try and establish communications?”
“There’s no point,” Victoria answered from the other side of the table. She’d combed her hair and tried to tame it back into its previous severe bun.