Chapter 22
Sloan
Ihaven’t been able to bring myself to make a move on a man in years, always chickening out before our lips touch, our hands brush, and certainly before our dicks high-five each other while we’re inside the same woman.
Although we’re supposed to be moving slowly, this feels anything but, and I crave the feel of him. When I come back into the bedroom, I wipe Jen down and kiss her cheek, noticing Luke is no longer on the bed.
“Do you need anything?” I ask, slipping new shorts on. “I need to go talk to him before he leaves.”
“No,” she says sleepily. “Are you okay?” She tucks her elbow under her head and looks at me, searching for an honest answer.
“I think so. That was… somehow both expected and not.”
“You did great.” Her praise calms my nerves which are currently frayed, unsure of what I’ll find when I get downstairs.
I tuck her in and creep down the stairs to find Luke, fully dressed, sitting on my couch with his head in his hands.
“We gonna talk about it?” I ask, taking a seat in the chair next to the couch just so I don’t crowd him.
Luke can take a bullet better than he can handle a conversation about feelings, but in this case, I think he’s going to have to figure it out.
The analogy reminds me of the afternoon I watched him get hit, and I swear my heart would’ve stopped if his had too.
With him safely in front of me, I finally allow the whole memory to wash over me.
“Unit three-six-seven rounding the corner of Tygee Street. All quiet so far.”
“10-4 unit three-six-seven. Please proceed with caution. Insurgents noted to be close by.”
“10-4.”
It’s impossible to camouflage a Humvee enough to prevent the bad guys from seeing it. They’re big, loud, and it doesn’t matter if it matches the color of the sand and surrounding buildings perfectly, you’re going to get noticed.
And we do.
We just got here, Luke and I. Our unit arrived on base two days ago.
In fact, we’re out on our first patrol on this deployment.
Things have been escalating in the area and we’ve already lost four men in the two days we’ve been here.
This is Luke and I’s first deployment together and I already lie awake at night just to make sure he’s still there.
Falling asleep to constant gunfire rearranges your entire nervous system and I wish I could just share his cot.
I laugh at the thought. He’d fucking hate that, but maybe I’ll do it one night just to mess with him. Or I could tell him the truth.
Being around him eases my stress. Knowing he’s close would help me sleep better.
My thoughts are quickly brought back to the present when all of a sudden, our Humvee is airborne. Yes, there’s armor underneath, but once the vehicle is on fire, you can either take your chances against gunfire or burn to death trapped inside a metal oven.
We all choose gunfire.
The five of us pour out, using the billowing smoke from the bomb hit to conceal us. I immediately start firing, trying to give the other guys some cover, but it’s impossible to tell which direction we’re being attacked from if there’s no air support — and we have no air support.
Our unit leader is shouting directions but it’s chaos. We can’t hear him and we can just barely make out his hand signals through the dust and smoke.
I’ll never forget the sound of Luke’s voice as he screamed my name. “SLOAN! GET DOWN!” A bullet grazed my helmet and I knew if I didn’t find solid cover in the next five seconds, I was a dead man. Suddenly, the band didn’t matter. My family back home, didn’t matter.
All that mattered was what was here in front of me.
My comrades in the Humvee.
Luke.
Things had been strained between us ever since he correctly read my advances and turned me down. But right now, none of our drama matters. People are trying to end my life and Luke is trying to save it.
I jump over a low wall and wait for the smoke to clear.
As soon as it does, I watch a bullet hit my best friend so hard he flies backwards five feet and lands in the dirt.
Before I can jump back over the wall and get to him, I hear a voice in my helmet.
“Stand down. Do not move, Soldier, that’s an order.”
“Fuck your order, sir. That’s my best friend and if he’s dying today, then so am I.”
With that, I launch myself over the wall. I hear my unit leader let out a string of curses before he finally addresses everyone else on our comms channel.
“Fire in all directions above Staff Sergeant Alexander. Franco and Little take the building on his right. Peters and Jensen, the bombed-out car. Walters, you’re with me and following behind, covering his six. Everyone clear?”
“Sir, yes sir,” comes the reply from multiple people as I haul ass toward my best friend who’s bleeding out in the street in front of my eyes.
By the grace of God, I reach Luke and find that he’s still breathing. My rifle’s on my back and I need to act quickly, so I scoop him into my arms, using my body to shield his as I carry him back behind the low wall and immediately start applying pressure and calling for a medic.
“Luke, stay with me you salty bastard.” I start talking to give him something to focus on other than the hell we’re in.
“Someone’s gonna have to show these assholes how to conduct a mission.
They’re gonna need you to pull their heads out of their asses, man.
” His eyes start to close so I tap his cheek.
“Hey, stay with me Lucky. SOMEONE GET THE FUCKING MEDIC. Since you’re a captive audience, I thought now would be a good time to tell you, you snore.
As your bunkmate, I gotta tell you, it’s annoying as fuck.
I NEED AN ABD PAD STAT AND I BETTER HEAR SOME FUCKING CHOPPER BLADES IN THE NEXT TWO GODDAMN SECONDS.
And your dance moves, they’re getting better, but we still have a lot of work to do so hang on, okay? ”
“Sloan?” Luke’s voice is the only thing that could reach me when that memory consumes me. “Which part did you want to discuss?” he asks, bringing me back to the present and away from one of the darkest days of my life.
As bad as that day was for me, Luke’s the one who took the bullet and almost died, it’s too selfish to make him relive the memory with me so I stay quiet as he keeps talking.
“How I just fucked your girlfriend? How I got off from knowing it was you inside her with me? How I’m a fucking hypocrite? Which part are we going to talk about?”
“Look, man. I’m just as fucked up over this as you are and I’m not ready to do a deep-dive into it. All I know is that I’ve missed… I’ve missed… fuck. It’s just been a while. It’s different and I miss it. Hell, Luke. I’ve missed you.”
He turns to look at me, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Sloan, we both know you would have no trouble finding any number of men and women both to give you anything you want.”
I huff a dark, humorless laugh. “Yeah, because everything’s so easy when you’re famous.
I don’t have to worry about law suits, sexual harassment claims, the tabloids, women lying about birth control so they can have my babies, men lying about their STDs so I’ll sleep with them, people taking intimate pictures and posting them everywhere for a buck…
all because I’m famous. I can just walk into a bar, meet a nice couple and ask if they want a third for the night, right? ”
I don’t give him a chance to answer before I continue.
“Just because I’m attracted to men and women doesn’t cheapen what I experience with them. The random hookups get old. If I just want to get off, trust me, it’s much easier to just do it myself.”
“For what it’s worth, Sloan, I’ve missed you every day since you chose Grant and Hailey over our friendship.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better, Luke? Wasn’t it obvious I wanted something with you first? That night at the club, all those years ago, you made it perfectly clear there was no dick on this planet that could convince you otherwise.”
He has the decency to wince when I throw his words from that night back in his face.
“Throw me a bone, here, Sloan.”
“You turned me down and then you resented me when I found others who loved me.” I remind him not so gently, standing up and starting to pace.
He stands up too, jaw clenched, and shoves my chest with both of his hands. “I loved you!” he yells in my face.
“As a brother!” I clarify. “I needed more. I wanted more! With you! But you wouldn’t let yourself love me and when I found people who would, you ripped it all away from me!
” I push him backwards and he stumbles over the coffee table and lands hard on his ass.
Still, when he stands, he doesn’t retaliate. “Fight back!”
“I won’t,” he says calmly. “I fucked up. However you want to punish me now, I’ll take it.”
His lip is bleeding from hitting the corner of the coffee table and suddenly I can’t stand that I’m the one who caused him pain.
I stride over to him and pull his split lip into my mouth.
He hisses at the sting. I pull his shirt over his head, finding the scar from where the bullet entered his chest. I hadn’t allowed myself to look at the puckered flesh earlier, choosing — and needing — to focus on Jen and not hurting her.
But now, I see the scar, and it still makes me angry after all these years.
I drop my head, planting kisses over the puckered fleshed and feel one of Luke’s hands on the back of my head.
“I thought you were going to die that day,” I confess, trying to hold my tears back. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still smell the tang of his blood on my hands.
I was covered in it.
“So did I. But it would’ve been okay because you were there with me.”
“If those motherfuckers had taken you from me, Luke, I would have gone AWOL, gathered up as much ammo as I could carry, and blown every motherfucking building on that God-forsaken street to dust. I would’ve killed everyone just for being alive when you weren’t.
” I continue roaming his muscled flesh frantically, as if he’s an illusion that’s going to disappear any second.
“Hey,” he says, rubbing my back. “Despite everything, I’m still here. I’m alive because of you. No matter what happens, that shit binds us for life.”
“I know this is fast. I know you’re probably confused. I know my emotions oscillate just as wildly as yours. But please don’t leave.”
I’m totally out of control. His consent has snapped my last shred of coherent thought. For so long there has been a wall between my past and my present. The wall was built because of him and now I realize he’s the only one that can bring it down.
I guide him back onto the couch, stretching out along his body, my left hand splayed across his jaw, my right hand between our bodies, rubbing him through his pants even as I flex my hips into him, seeking friction.
“Sloan, you’re going to make me come in my pants like a teenager.”
“God, I hope so.” I grind into him harder, hoping to do just that, squeezing and teasing through his jeans.
“I can’t stop this. I’ve tried,” he admits as I continue using my tongue to explore the chest, shoulders, and neck of the man I once considered my best friend. The man I was prepared to die for but wanted to make a life with. Want to make a life with.
“Please, don’t,” I beg selfishly.
“Is this sustainable?” Luke asks me, tugging on my curls, to bring my mouth to his. I groan my exhale into his waiting mouth. He’s kissing me like he’s all in, but I hear the anxiety in his question.
When I finally find my breath, I smile. “If we do it right.”
“I don’t understand any of this. I’m having an existential crisis every fucking day, but I can’t watch you walk away again.”
I smile against his skin. We have a long way to go and I’m not even sure what the destination is at this point. I can’t just forgive him for the role he played in Grant’s death, but neither can I deny how good it feels to have him back. For now, we’ll just see how it unfolds.
“Ever seen a rock concert from backstage?” I ask, switching directions.
He huffs out a laugh. “Um, no. The only time I was backstage at a rock concert, some asshole knocked me unconscious.”
I wince. “Yeah, we need a re-do.”
I unbutton his pants and slip my hand inside, needing to feel him in my palm with no layers between us as I pick up the pace with my own dick, knowing I’m not getting enough friction to satisfy the need coursing through me.
“I need you,” I whisper in his ear.
“Show me.”
We sit up on the couch and I push my shorts down. Slowly, I guide his hand to my dripping cock, wetting his palm with the pre-cum pouring out of me. Once his fingers are wrapped around me, I cover his hand with my own to show him what I want.
“Why is that so fucking hot?” he asks, not blinking as he watches our hands on my cock as my other hand continues to work his.
“Because it’s us.”
I lean over and spit on his dick to lubricate his shaft and damn near come when he groans, “Oh, fuck yes.”
I grip him harder in my right hand and he mirrors the intensity under my left as we sit on the couch beating each other off. The sounds of our wet strokes will forever be etched in my mind.
“Shit…Sloan…I’m there…right there…harder.” He covers my hand with his and really squeezes tight, moving my hand at a punishing speed. My straight-laced soldier likes it hard.
Good to know.
Simultaneous volcanic eruptions leave us covered in ropes of cum.
I keep milking him softly until I’m certain I’ve gleaned everything he has to give.
With my own release dripping down my torso and forearm, I use my shorts to do a half-assed job of wiping up before I reach behind us for the blanket on the back of the couch.
Thankfully my couch is oversized with deep-set cushions, giving Luke and I plenty of room.
I pull him into me and fall asleep approximately two and a half seconds later with my hand over his scar.
It’s the deepest, dream-free sleep I’ve slept in seven years.