5. Nate
Nate
The wind toyed with the loose strands of my hair as I rested one boot on the bottom rail and balanced my sketchbook against my raised knee. The page had already filled with pencil lines.
A seal lay sprawled across the top of the iceberg, not more than fifty yards from the ship, perfectly content to ignore me.
It was a Weddell seal, its species named after the sea surrounding us.
It had lifted its head once when I’d first arrived on the deck, regarded me with those dark eyes, then decided I wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy.
Sensible creature.
I softened the line beneath its jaw with the side of my pencil before refining the folds where its neck disappeared into the thick layer of blubber beneath the skin.
One foreflipper rested beneath its chest while the other had fallen lazily to the side, the short black claws almost disappearing against the ice.
I added the whiskers last.
The midnight sun hung above the horizon, bathing the entire Weddell Sea in that peculiar Antarctic light that never quite became evening. It should have been peaceful.
Instead, every few minutes, my thoughts wandered back to one man.
Landry.
I pressed the pencil harder than intended, darkening the line beneath the seal’s chin.
Of every possible man on the continent… every single one… the captain had somehow managed to land on him.
I still couldn’t believe it. Before he’d arrived, my memory had done me the kindness of softening details.
Reality came with a rude awakening of forearms corded by years of physical labor, shoulders that filled every doorway he walked through, and Landry’s habit of standing close enough for me to become aware of exactly how much larger he was than I was.
My pencil strayed, ruining the sketch. Good Lord.
I was behaving like one of my own study animals.
Every breeding season, I spent weeks documenting humpback males who abruptly lost every ounce of common sense.
Entire migration routes became secondary to the presence of an attractive female.
They competed, postured, sang until their voices carried for miles beneath the ocean, all while apparently forgetting food, danger, and every other sensible priority evolution had otherwise equipped them with.
Now look at me. One brawny guy walked onto my ship and my brain had immediately begun acting as though civilization had collapsed.
Pathetic.
Get a grip, Nate. You are a scientist. A grown man. Not a hormone-addled whale.
I glanced up at my midnight companion. He dozed on. The seal, unlike me, possessed the admirable ability to ignore things that weren’t worth its energy.
The door behind me opened. I didn’t bother turning around. Keith’s boots stopped beside me. A second later he rested both elbows on the railing and looked out toward the Weddell seal without saying anything for a while. Typical Keith.
“I know,” I said before he could start. “You don’t have to say it. Yes, I’m out here all by my lonesome self. And yes, I’m annoyed because of that… goon.”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
“To be fair,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting him either.
The captain probably should’ve asked one of us before flying him halfway across Antarctica.
” Keith shrugged. “But Birch told me there wasn’t anybody else with the same technical capability.
Or the same reputation anywhere on the continent.
” He glanced sideways at me. “Seems your cowboy really is the best at what he does.”
Crack. The sharp snap echoed louder than it should have. Half my pencil lead dropped onto the deck and bounced once before disappearing beneath the rail.
I stared at the broken pencil in my fingers. Keith wisely didn’t say anything.
“I hope,” I said with exaggerated care, “you enjoyed watching the violent death of perfectly good graphite.”
“Was it the phrase ‘your cowboy’?” He grinned.
I slid the broken pencil back into my sketching pouch and closed my sketchbook. Time to thaw my frozen fingers. I found the thick gloves in my pocket and pulled them on.
“It’s not funny anymore, Keith.” I looked back toward the seal, though I wasn’t really seeing it anymore. “I’m pissed. I am thoroughly, spectacularly pissed.”
Keith remained silent.
“I don’t want him anywhere near me.”
“Yeah, you made that obvious on the helipad.”
I let out a sigh. “And somehow my body has decided none of that matters.”
I couldn’t look at him as I finally admitted it. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“That bad?”
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.
A heavy arm came to rest on my shoulder.
He wasn’t a touchy-feely guy, so clearly I was making a spectacle of myself, but I couldn’t deny it felt good.
I missed my mum’s hugs. We remained like that, with him half-hugging me and my face hidden behind my gloves.
After a long moment, he said, “You never really told me exactly what happened.”
“I have,” I mumbled.
“You’ve told me the ending,” he reminded me. “Not the beginning. I know you two met during those continent-wide festivities last year.” He squeezed my shoulders one last time before withdrawing his arm. “How did you end up fencing each other?”
I rested my forearms on the cold railing, matching him, while trying to decide where to begin.
“There were hundreds of people there… practically the whole continent had descended on that one station for a week. Yet he caught my eye almost immediately.”
“Yeah. So you noticed.”
“I noticed. And kept noticing. But we never actually spoke.”
“You just… looked?”
I nodded.
“Meals. Lectures. Evening events.” I shrugged. “Every single time I looked at him, I found him looking back at me.”
Keith whistled. “That must have pinged your gaydar.”
“Oh brother, it pinged many things.”
Keith snorted.
“But we were never in the same groups.” I smiled ruefully.
“So you admired him from afar.”
“Yeah.”
“So what changed?”
“On the last day, the organizers had this special event. The intent was to break us out of our familiar groups and force us all to intermingle. So they had everyone fill out an icebreaker bingo sheet.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It had three or four squares and you listed your hobbies or interests. Afterwards, they went through all the sheets and grouped together people who’d written the same things.”
Keith nodded. “That’s not a bad way to get people talking.”
“Exactly. I think five people had listed chess…so they organized a mini chess tournament.”
Keith smiled. “Let me think. You wrote… The Three Musketeers.”
I nodded.
“And… Arthurian legends.”
“Naturally.”
“And whales.”
“You know me well.”
“Hmm… and the last one… fencing.”
“Okay, that’s slightly insulting. Am I that predictable?”
He grinned. “I just know you that well.”
“Fair enough.”
I looked back toward the horizon. “Obviously, I didn’t expect anyone else to have written anything remotely similar. Maybe whales. The main organizer even apologized to me. I was preparing to leave the room, but then one of the organizers came looking for me.”
I could still picture the grin on the woman’s face.
“She walked straight over and said, ‘Dr. Braddock, I think we’ve found your match.’”
“What did you say?”
“I asked how many people had matched. She laughed and said, ‘Only one other on the continent wrote The Three Musketeers on his bingo card.’” I shook my head. “I thought she was joking. But she showed me the other sheet.”
“What did it say?” Keith was riveted, his eyes on my face.
I could still remember reading it. “The Three Musketeers. Swordsmanship. Prince Valiant comic.”
“Damn. Swordsmanship too?”
I smiled. “Right? I remember thinking… who on earth is this person? She took me over to introduce us.” I looked out across the ice. “And there he was. Garrett Landry. I think the organizer felt the tension because I remember her blushing furiously as we both stood staring at each other.”
Keith exhaled a sigh. “Frankly, you both still have enough tension to blow up this ship.”
I snorted and looked down at my gloves. “Yeah. I was so excited when he accepted a fencing match.” I smiled at the memory despite myself. “As soon as I said I had my fencing kit with me, he was game.”
“He didn’t hesitate?”
“Not for a second.”
I could still picture the room where we’d changed into our fencing whites. “The first exchange was exhilarating.” I had replayed that moment so many times in my mind in the past year that it felt like a dream.
“Was he good?” Keith asked.
“He was amazing. He moved far better than I expected. His technique wasn’t polished, not in the way someone formally trained would move, but none of that mattered once the bout actually began.
He was astonishingly quick for someone of his bulk.
Every time our blades met, I could feel just how strong he was, and fuck… that was so hot, Keith.”
My friend chuckled.
“I’d attack; he’d defend. I’d change tempo; he’d adapt almost immediately.
I kept expecting him to make mistakes, but instead he forced me to earn every single touch.
I’d trained for years, and to think I had met my match in the most attractive man I had ever seen? I think I was high enough to fly.”
He let out a quiet breath. “Sorry, man.”
My smile faded. “You know the score stayed close the entire time? Right until the final exchange. We both committed at almost exactly the same moment. Our blades landed almost together, but I had established right of way. The referee awarded me the touch, and with it the match.”
I was quiet for a moment.
“I took off my mask expecting him to smile, shake my hand, maybe ask for coffee or maybe my room number. He looked even more gorgeous, all sweaty and panting.”
“Instead he accused you?”
“Yeah. He said I’d cheated. I was shocked. Absolutely shocked.”
“Did you ask him how you cheated?”
I gave a small, humorless laugh. “Of course I did. Even the referee did. He… he refused to explain.” I shook my head. “He just kept insisting I’d cheated.”
The memory still stung like a barb.
“But the worst part was when I collected my fencing gear from him, there was a moment when there was nobody else around. And that’s when he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You’re pretty… and you used it.’”
Keith almost growled. “What a coward.”
I stared out at the Antarctic horizon. “Yeah. I didn’t know what to do with that.”
Keith pushed himself off the railing abruptly. “Nothing. Just ignore him.”
“I honestly thought he would be different.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not teens anymore.” I shrugged. “He’s not some random guy I picked up from a gym or a bar. We’re professionals. We’re colleagues. This is a workplace.”
The Antarctic wind tugged gently at the pages of my sketchbook.
“And…” I laughed once again without humor. “I never expected someone like him to have so much in common with me. I suppose that gave me a false sense of security. I really liked him, Keith, and I guess I had started crushing on him.”
Keith squeezed my shoulder. “I’d underestimated… the connection between you. Will you be okay while he is here?”
“There is one thing I haven’t told you.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Remember the penguin rescue?”
“As if anyone can forget that.”
I laughed. “…I got a note from him.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You what?”
I unzipped the canvas pouch that held my pencils and sketching supplies and reached inside. I took out the note and handed it to him.
“He sent it through Dr. Park.”
Keith took it from me and unfolded it slowly while staring at me.
“Read it.” I nodded at the note.
I challenge you to a duel, Nate Braddock. Meet me at Waypoint Station. We fight until death.
He looked up. “What the hell? It isn’t even signed.”
I took the note back from him and slipped it into the pouch again.
“Yeah. He didn’t need to. I knew instantly whose it was. It’s our language… if things had been different, and someone wrote me that?” I shook my head. No point in going there.
Keith was quiet for a moment before looking at me again. “You stay away from him, Nate.”
“I intend to.”
“And if he starts anything…” His expression hardened. “You let me know.”
A real smile finally found its way onto my face. “Sometimes I’m reminded how useful it is having my best friend as an ex-Navy SEAL.”
He snorted. “Occupational perk.”
“Thank you.”
Keith bumped my shoulder. “Anytime.”
Yeah, I’d be okay. I’d just set firm boundaries with Landry. It was a work collaboration, nothing more, nothing less. After that, he would leave and I’d never see him again.
Beyond the ship, the midnight sun rested on the horizon, turning the sea ice pale gold. The Weddell seal hadn’t moved. It remained exactly where it had been, indifferent to the existential crises of passing marine biologists.
“Can I say something?” he asked.
“Of course. Since when do you need permission?”
“I know you’ve been hurt by men with his profile.
Men who work with their hands. Men who are naturally built.
Men who didn’t spend their twenties in universities earning degrees…
So you swore off men like him. When he reduced you to a pretty face, it was more, Nate.
More than just your crush turning out to be a sore loser.
I think it hurt your old wound. Especially because this time, he was different. ”
I studied him for a moment. He wasn’t wrong. In fact, he was spot on.
“You know…”
“What?”
“You surprise me sometimes.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“The things that come out of your mouth don’t always match the image.”
“What image?”
“The former Navy SEAL.”
A grin spread across his face. “Hostage negotiation training.”
I bumped him with my sketchbook. “That explains an alarming amount.”
“It doesn’t help me with my six-year-old niece, though.”
My mood perked up. “How’s she doing?”
His entire face softened. “When I spoke to her last week, she informed me she couldn’t possibly do her homework on Wednesday.”
“Oh?”
“Apparently she was having a stressful day.”
My smile widened. “And?”
“So she’d decided to take a mental health day.” Keith was grinning now too.
“My sister made the catastrophic mistake of suggesting she still had homework to finish.”
“And?”
“My niece informed her that refusing to respect her decision was a violation of her human rights.”
I burst out laughing. “No.”
“Oh, yes.”
He shook his head, still smiling.
“Then she announced she’d be discussing the matter with Uncle Keith.”
I thumped the railing in laughter. “So now you’re conducting hostage negotiations on behalf of a six-year-old.”
Keith sighed with theatrical resignation. “I appear to have acquired a very demanding client.”
The laughter lingered between us, softening the barb in my heart a little.