“You’re fine like that, but jeans and a T-shirt would be okay too.”
“No club wear?” Pike guessed, mainly to watch Zack blush.
“Whatever you want, but uh...”
“It’s okay.” Pike gave him a fast kiss before standing. “Not going to torture you. You going to tell me where this place is?” Pike stripped off his dress shirt on his way to his room, Zack following behind him. Lately, all his room was good for was the closet and as a place to do his grading. Zack’s bed had the better mattress. And Zack. Pike could sleep on gravel if it meant Zack was next to him. “God, I hope they give me tenure here eventually so I can start teaching in jeans like half the permanent faculty.”
“You applied for the permanent faculty job?” Zack’s tone was wary.
“Yeah.” Pike found a plain black T-shirt in his drawer. He still hadn’t talked to Zack about the job offer, hadn’t wanted to disturb their little pod of happiness, hadn’t wanted to dump one more thing in Zack’s lap as he worked with the officer on the harassment case. He’d planned to just quietly call Hector on Monday—
“You weren’t going to tell me, were you?” Zack’s voice had gone from teasing about the mystery outing to deadly serious.
“About the faculty job? These things take months to resolve. I’ll be lucky to hear by January.” Pike could play dumb with the best of them.
“No.” Zack swiveled Pike to face him. Uh-oh. Somebody had his strength back and was inexplicably pissed. “About Palo Alto and the War Elf job. Ryan told me you went for an interview.”
“I did. I’ve decided not to take it—”
“Without talking to me?” Zack’s tone was a stone wall masking a deeper hurt that Pike could almost feel. “What the hell, Pike? I thought we were a couple now.”
“We are.” Pike pulled him close, not wanting to risk Zack walking away.
“So you just go giving up your dream job, the job that you spent all those years getting that PhD for, and you don’t tell me?”
“Sometimes dreams change,” Pike said. Zack’s eyes flickered as if he didn’t believe him, so Pike spoke faster. “Yeah, I wanted War Elf when I was in school. But my priorities have shifted. I want a home. A life. With you. And I want to teach. Not just as a stopgap or a way to make a buck, but because I’m damn good at it, and my students need me.” Over the past few days, he’d finally let himself believe that he could be good at teaching. Professor Reynolds didn’t sound quite as incredulous as it had the first few weeks. Turned out, Pike kinda liked who his professor self was turning out to be.
“I’m still due to get deployed next year sometime. You’re going to regret this when you’re alone for months—”
“No, I won’t. I’ll have my research—there are other games I’d like to study too—and I’ll have my classes and my friends. I want this life, Zack. The one I have with you. And I’m sorry I made you doubt that.”
“I want a life with you too, and I want you happy. Whether that’s teaching or War Elf or whatever. We could make the distance work.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to try.” Pike tried to kiss the frown off Zack’s face, resulting in them both laughing and falling onto Pike’s bed. Pike pulled Zack closer for a deeper kiss, tongue reacquainting itself with Zack’s. Zack groaned and took over, holding Pike’s face between his hands, body hard against Pike’s. Hard. Oh yeah. They hadn’t done anything sexual all week, Pike wanting to give Zack space to recover, but Zack certainly was seeming fully functional right then.
“Hey...whoa.” Zack pulled away as Pike tried to go for his zipper. “None of that.”
“Your body says otherwise,” Pike rocked up against the ridge of Zack’s cock. “Didn’t the doctor say it was okay if you let pain be your guide—”
“It’s not that.” Zack’s ears went pink. “We need to go out.”
“Still not going to tell me where we’re going?” Pike reluctantly left the bed and finished switching clothes.
“Nope.” Zack’s smile looked a bit pasted on, but Pike didn’t call him on it, instead following him to the truck.
“Guess I shouldn’t ask if you feel up to driving?”
“I feel up to nailing you to the mattress as soon as we get back,” Zack retorted.
Pike was pretty sure that whatever actually transpired would be far less athletic than that, so he merely snorted. “Bring it on.” To his surprise, they headed in the direction of the base, not toward downtown. “Are we going to a sports bar or something?”
“Sort of.”
“Neither of us watches sports,” Pike pointed out. And I’m a bit too gay for any of the bars along this road. They’re probably all filled with people from the base and—
Whoa.
Wait.
“Zack. Are you taking me to a SEAL bar?”
Zack pulled into a place called Big Ted’s, parked the truck near a Dumpster that had seen better centuries. “Kind of.”
“As in the bar your team usually hangs out at?” Pike’s stomach jumped like it was full of crickets.
“Yeah.” Zack’s face was a mottled pink in the parking lot lights.
“And you’re sure about this?” Pike pulled Zack closer so he could look into his eyes. “You do not have to do this for me.”
“No, I have to do it for me. Come on.” And with that, Zack hopped from the truck, leaving Pike to collect his jaw from the floorboard.
* * *
Zack had been in Big Ted’s before—not often, but when he’d first joined the team, he’d tried to fit in and had followed Harper here a time or two. It was a generic sports bar—long U-shaped bar in the center of the space, lots of tables around the edges and TV screens all over. It smelled heavily of beer and fries and shouldn’t have been intimidating in the least, but as Zack walked in, his breath came in huffs like he was climbing Everest.
Typical Friday night, the place was crowded with clumps of SEALs playing pool on the tables behind the bar and groups of young women in tight clothing vying for their attention. The tables were mainly taken up by mixed groups of men and women, some clearly couples, others doing that first-date dance of awkwardness.
“We should get drinks,” he said to Pike, trying to convey a decisiveness he didn’t quite feel.
“You can barely tolerate more than soup. I’d stick to soda if I were you.” Pike leaned in to be heard, not as much as he would have at home, but enough that Zack felt as if an invisible spotlight was heading their way.
“I might need a shot,” he muttered.
“Remember what happened last time,” Pike warned, but there was a softness to his voice. Yeah, that night hadn’t turned out so bad after all, starting them on the road that led straight to here. And here was a pretty darn fabulous place, no matter what happened tonight.
And he didn’t care what Pike said, passing on what he’d thought of as his dream job was a big deal, one Zack wasn’t going to ignore. If he could do that for them, then Zack could do this. He headed toward the bar, Pike following closely behind him.
“Nelson!” someone called out behind him, and he swiveled to find Morrison next to him. “Hey, man, great to see you among the living. And Pike, right?” He gave Zack a back-pounding hug and extended a hand to Pike.
“Yeah. I hear I owe you a thank-you for saving Zack’s life.”
“Oh it wasn’t me.” Morrison waved off the praise. “He’s a stubborn bastard. He wasn’t going down without a fight. But, man, don’t ever do that to us again.”
“Word,” Pike said.
“So what are you guys drinking? First round’s on me.” Morrison led them to the bar, where Zack got a soda, deciding that maybe Pike was right about his stomach, and Pike got a beer. “Come on. Shelia and the gang’s over here.”
Moment of truth. Zack followed behind as Morrison wov
e his way to a cluster of tables in the corner.
“Hey, guys, look who’s back!” Morrison announced to the group, causing heads to swivel his way. There were several guys from the team along with assorted women. No Harper or Cobb, these were mainly the older SEALs Zack didn’t know as well, but that didn’t make his stomach settle down any.
“You remember Shelia, right?” Morrison indicated his girlfriend, the same woman he’d been with at the vet’s office. “Let me introduce you to her friends.” Morrison rattled off a bunch of names that no way in heck was Zack remembering. “And this is Petty Officer Zack Nelson, and—” Morrison shot Zack a questioning look, clearly tossing the ball into his court with a nice soft lob.
“Pike. My boyfriend. He’s a professor here in town.” Wow. He managed to get all that out without his voice shaking. Go me.
The whole table went silent for a long moment, during which Zack’s stomach staged an all-out revolt.
“Hey, Pike.” Reyes, a chief who specialized in explosives, extended a hand across the table. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Emmett lifted his beer in their direction. “Thanks for not dying on us, Nelson.”
And that was that. Reyes and Morrison were enough of talkers that anyone not at the table would know soon enough. But really, it was kind of anticlimatic. He’d built it up into this huge milestone, and in the end, the guys at the table simply followed Morrison and Reyes’s lead, ribbing Zack about almost dying on them, then letting their girlfriends pepper Pike with questions about what he taught and going back to watching the game on the TV closest to them.
He didn’t delude himself into thinking that it would all be this easy—there would probably be some rumors and whispers over the next few weeks and not everyone was going to be thrilled, but right then, Zack finally felt like one of the team. They knew. No one had stalked off or called him names. He’d count that as a victory. He slugged back his soda, letting it cool him down.
They ended up with seats between Morrison and Shelia and Reyes and his wife, a diminutive woman with very red lips and very pink hair. Shelia and Reyes’s wife apparently knew some people who worked at Pike’s college and kept up a running conversation with him. Reyes kept a proprietary arm around his wife while they chatted. Someday. Someday soon that was going to be Zack here, casually touching his guy. He could see that future now, and he wanted it, no matter the cost.
“Hey, Nelson,” Reyes, said pitching his voice low. “I...uh...didn’t know.”
“No one did,” Zack said carefully.
“I...that is, I may have said some things...jokes, you know. And I...well, I can do better.”
“Thanks,” Zack said, warmth spreading out from his chest. “I appreciate that.”
“Anyone gives you shit, you point them at me or Morrison, okay?”
A waitress brought huge orders of fries, wings and onion rings right then, setting them in the center of the table. Morrison pushed some fries Pike’s direction, and Zack’s heart grew painfully tight.
Eventually he had to use the restroom, but he felt okay leaving Pike with Reyes and Morrison. This was all going to work—
“Nelson.” Harper stepped in front of his path as Zack made his way past the pool tables toward the restrooms at the back of the bar.
“You need something?” Zack might be feeling better about the rest of the team, but he wasn’t going to forget how Harper sneered at him in the jungle.
“Yeah.” Harper’s handsome face was unreadable as he fiddled with his pool cue. “Heard you’re here with your boyfriend.”
“I am.” Zack met him stare for stare. “Got a problem with that?”
“Listen...” Harper chewed the corner of his mouth. “I know you probably think I was going to let you die out there.”
“You sure as hell seemed like it.” Anger Zack hadn’t realized he’d had bubbled over. He’d been helpless, dependent on whether Harper overcame homophobia in time to call for help or not.
“I... I wasn’t at my best, okay? I heard you and Cobb and I kinda freaked. But...” Harper looked away. “You’ve always had my back. Right from the first day of BUD/S. Always. And I wasn’t going to let you die. Not on my watch.”
“Thanks.” Zack rubbed his neck, like that could ease the scratchiness of his throat.
“I might not understand...that.” Harper made a vague gesture in the directon of the table with Pike. “But I’m going to have your back when we’re out there, okay?”
“Okay.” Zack had to force the word out. They probably weren’t ever going to be as close as they once were, but this was a start. A good start.
He and Pike stayed a little longer, but the heavy, greasy food wasn’t what Zack needed. He’d made his point.
“Want to get some real food?” he asked Pike.
“Absolutely.” Pike grinned at him, enjoyment radiating from him. He fit in far better than Zack had hoped. Hell, he probably fit in better than Zack.
That thought carried him through the goodbyes and well-wishes for seeing him back on duty and out into the parking lot. He did what he’d wanted to do the past two hours and grabbed Pike’s hand. “Thank you for coming with me. It meant a lot.”
Pike turned toward him. “You don’t have to thank me. You were really damn brave there and—”
“Nelson!” A drunken voice roared and Cobb stepped from behind a large souped-up truck.
“What do you want, Cobb?”
“I want to know why in the hell I’ve got transfer orders to Little Creek and some chick breathing down my neck about a fucking inquiry.”
“Not my business to educate you.” Zack’s hand tightened around Pike’s. He wasn’t dropping it. Not this time.
“Suppose this is your fucking boyfriend.” Cobb’s lips curled upward like a pit bull.
“It is, and you can show some goddamned respect.”
“Whoa. You finally did it, huh? Outed your pansy ass?”
Without thinking, Zack’s free hand fisted, drew back, finally ready to give Cobb what he’d had coming—
And met an immovable wall of granite. “Don’t do it,” Apollo ordered, coming seemingly out of nowhere, capturing Zack’s fist. “Do not get into a fight here.”
“Who the hell are you?” Cobb demanded. “Let him at me. I can take his queer ass.”
“Lieutenant Apollo Floros. And you, Petty Officer Cobb, are way out of line. Are you supposed to be talking to Nelson right now? At all?”
Cobb rubbed his head. “No, sir.”
“You want me to haul you in to answer to Lieutenant Hernandez?”
“No, sir. But Nelson started it—”
“The fuck I did.”
“He came on to me.” Cobb played the one trump card he had, the one Zack had been expecting him to plunk down all along.
Apollo’s laugh echoed through the parking lot. “In front of his boyfriend? Right here?”
“Not exactly...”
“You can tell whatever story you want to Lieutenant Hernandez, but right now, you are going to roll your drunk ass into a cab and head home.”
“I can drive—”
“That’s an order, not an option.”
“You just wait,” Cobb spat at Zack. “No one’s going to want anything to do with you. Not when I’m through—”
“You don’t have any power over me anymore.” Zack said the words, surprised how much he meant them. This was done. Cobb would face the disciplinary process and whatever would come of that would come, out of Zack’s control. But this? This he could control. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You can be afraid of me.” Apollo got right in Cobb’s face. “You come around Nelson again, your CO and Lieutenant Hernandez are going on my speed dial, understand?”
Cobb gulped. “Got it.”
“Got it, sir.” Apollo corrected him.
“Yes, sir.” Cobb teetered off, in the direction of the sidewalk where some cabs idled.
“What are you doing here?” Zack asked Apollo as soon as Cobb was gone.
“Having a beer. Same as you.” Apollo winked at him. He’d been looking out for Zack. Morrison and Reyes said they’d do the same. Hell, even Harper said he wouldn’t let him die. He’d been afraid of no one having his back, but now he felt bolstered by the promises he’d gotten that night. He wasn’t alone anymore. “But I better get home to the kids now.”
“Kids?” This badass warrior had kids?
“Yup. Two. And a sitter waiting to be paid.” Apollo turned toward Pike. “I’d been intending to meet you under better circumstances. You and Zack want to come to breakfast on Sunday? Bunch of us will be there, and I think Ryan might even be coming down.”
“We’ll be there,” Pike promised.
“Thank God you didn’t throw that punch.” Pike waited to speak until Apollo had headed off to a very sedate-looking SUV. A family vehicle. Zack shook his head, still trying to piece together who in the heck that guy was.
“I wanted to,” Zack admitted. “I really did.”
“I know.” Pike pulled him closer. “But you’ve got to let the disciplinary process play out.”
“It’s hard when he’s being a dipshit right in my face,” Zack grumbled.
“I’m proud of you,” Pike said, beaming up at Zack. “You did a lot tonight.”
“It was worth it.” Zack closed the last few inches between them. “You’re worth it.”
“No, you’re worth it,” Pike corrected him
“We both are.” And then, there in the parking lot of Big Ted’s, where anyone from the teams could see, Zack kissed his boyfriend, long and hard, heart full of hope.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Six Months Later
“I’m home.” Zack’s voice rang out, and Pike launched himself off the sofa, sending papers flying everywhere. God, he’d missed that voice.
Off Base Page 23
