Wheels Up

by Annabeth Albert

  “That sucks. But the surgery should fix the problem?”

  His mother gulped down a breath. “If it doesn’t... Wes, they’re talking transplant again.”

  Wes squeezed his eyes shut. They’d been down this road a few times before, but each time Sammy had rebounded, narrowly escaping the need for a transplant. “She’ll pull through this,” he said, way firmer than he felt. “Do you want me to get leave for the surgery?”

  “You don’t have to...”

  “I’ll put in for it right away. Text or call as soon as you have a date.”

  “You’re such a good big brother.” His mom sounded a bit more hopeful. Wes needed to be there for her as much as for Sam. “Now tell me about your new friends. Any cute ones?”

  “Mom.” He laughed because he needed her to smile as well. He tried to focus on telling his mom about Curly and Bacon’s friends and a funny story about getting stuck in the bomb suit. But inevitably, his thoughts drifted back to Dustin. He needed to get over his fixation on what he couldn’t have.

  Chapter Nine

  Dustin hated office work. He’d rather do anything other than the paperwork awaiting him back at the team’s offices along with a meeting with the LT and senior chief. But the work wasn’t going to do itself, so he hurried down the hall, lunch in tow.

  “Whoops.” He narrowly missed running into a very pissed-off looking Wes, who was barreling down the hall in the opposite direction as Dustin.

  “Sorry.” Wes kept right on walking, eyes so narrow and smoky that Dustin was surprised there wasn’t steam rising from his head.

  “Wait. W—Lowe. What’s wrong?” Dustin tried to convince himself that he’d ask the same of any of the men. He turned to try to catch up with Wes. “Anything I can help with?”

  Wes stopped but shook his head. “Nope. Nothing for you to worry about, Lieutenant.”

  Fuck. Dustin hated this wall between them, the one that seemed to be growing brick by brick each day. Wes shutting him out made his gut ache as surely as if he’d taken a punch.

  “You sure?” Right as he asked, he saw another guy from the team, Donaldson, heading out of an office.

  Wes must have seen him coming too, because he shook his head. “Yep. And I need to get going. Thanks.”

  Wes was already down the hall when Donaldson passed Dustin with a comparatively cheery greeting. What was up with Wes? He’d seemed distinctly off ever since Dustin had run into him at the bar when he’d been out with Apollo.

  When he got to their office space, the LT and the senior chief were deep in conservation.

  “What’s up with Donaldson and Lowe?” he asked after greeting them, keeping his voice light. “Saw them in the hall.”

  “Same issue,” the senior chief answered. “They want leave, but we’re not approving anyone, not with us liable to go wheels up any day now.”

  It was standard procedure to go to emergency-only in regards to leave when approaching a deployment, so Dustin wasn’t too surprised. He nodded.

  “Lowe wanted emergency leave. Family situation, but we had to deny it. He’s too vital to what we need to do,” the LT added, in reasonable tones for once.

  “Bereavement leave?” Dustin asked, heart in his throat as he said a quick prayer that Wes’s sister was okay.

  “No, which is why I had to decline. Family emergency just isn’t reason enough in this situation.” The LT leaned back against his chair. “We’ll be back in eight to ten days, and we can reevaluate then.”

  “Are we wheels up in the morning?” Last Dustin had heard, they were still waiting to hear if their mission would be a go. Not that it would be the first time that he’d learned right along with the men of an impending deployment.

  “Within forty-eight hours, I’d say.” The LT scratched his chin. “Get everything in order.”

  Which Dustin did, spending the rest of the day on housekeeping tasks related to the mission going off without an issue. He headed home, made sure he had a full tank of gas in the truck for getting to the base fast in the night if needed, and prepared to enjoy one last night in his own bed. However, he couldn’t get Wes out of his head.

  What would it hurt if... He’d grabbed his phone from its place beside him on the couch before he could even finish the thought. Wes probably wasn’t online anyway.

  But there he was, Saucer-Man icon illuminated on Dustin’s contacts. It was a sign, right? A sign that Dustin should at least check in?

  You okay? He typed before he could second-guess himself.

  Wes’s reply was near immediate. I’m fine. LT ask you to make sure I’m not going AWOL?

  Dustin rubbed the back of his neck. Fuck, it sucked that Wes no longer trusted him. Nope. Just saw you online. Thought I’d check. As a friend.

  He swore he could hear Wes’s sigh all the way from base. Well I’m fine. And thought we can’t be friends, not anymore.

  Dustin’s heart felt like a full pack, weighing his chest down. I’m not sure I know how to stop, he admitted. I’m worried about you.

  The phone buzzed with the reply. Don’t be. I’m handling it.

  Oh fuck this noise. In for a penny, in for pound, Dustin’s grandfather always used to say. He hit the call button.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said the second Wes picked up. It took the picture a second to catch up, but there was Wes, hair all askew, bags under his eyes. He seemed to be sitting in bed again, but there was a sci-fi movie poster behind him that hadn’t been there last time they’d chatted.

  “Okay, fine. I’m lousy. That what you want to hear?” Wes’s jaw was as sharp as Dustin’s utility knife.

  “No. Of course not. But tell me what’s going on.”

  “You got some magic powers over the LT to get me leave?” Wes rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “You know I don’t.” God, Dustin wished he could make this right for him. His hand fisted around the throw pillow on the couch, squeezing tight. “But I can listen. It’s not the same thing, I’m sure. But I got denied leave to go to my grandfather’s funeral. I was down for weeks about that. Made it hard to concentrate on my deployment.”

  “I’ll concentrate.” Wes’s laugh was as bitter as the kale juice Dustin’s mother tried to get him to drink. “And I’m sorry about your grandpa. Navy fucking sucks sometimes.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Dustin agreed. His mind flashed to his friend Paul and their dinner the other week—Paul didn’t have to beg for leave anymore, and with raising a family, that had been important to him. He traveled a lot, but it was all scheduled out. God, there were days when that would be nice. As would picking his own team—not that the LT was a bad guy, but there were times... Yeah, his dinner with Paul had brought up more feelings of jealousy than he would have figured on a few months ago. “Love the job, but hate the hoops and the unpredictability.”

  “And it’s hard explaining that to civilians.” Some of the tension finally seemed to leave Wes’s strained face. “Like my mom. She said she understands. But I should be there, should be able to help her and my dad through this.”

  “Is it your sister again?” Dustin asked, trying to keep his voice neutral, hoping the news wasn’t too dire.

  “She’s scheduled for a surgery in two days. I’m not sure I fully understand what they’re doing, but it’s a new kind of pacemaker, one that should buy her time, but...” Wes trailed off, eyes glassy.

  “But?” Dustin’s chest contracted around that heaviness pushing down on him. Fuck, but he wanted to be able to hold Wes, tell him it would be okay.

  “She still might end up on the heart transplant list. And no surgery is without risks. I’m scared something will happen to her and I won’t be there.”

  “You being there wouldn’t keep her safe,” Dustin said gently. “Much as we might like to be, we’re not superheroes.
You’d be a comfort to your folks though, and I know it fucking sucks that you can’t be there.”

  “I just wish there was something I could do.” Wes thumped his head backward against the pillows.

  Dustin thought for a few moments, trying to come up with something other than platitudes. “You video chat them at all?”

  “Earlier, yeah. Sam was in great spirits, which was nice.” Wes smiled fondly whenever he talked about his sister. Dustin couldn’t imagine anything happening to his brother, couldn’t imagine all Wes’s mixed-up emotions.

  “What if you sent something to your folks and her? I mean, it’s not the same as being there, I get it. But you could send a surprise, and maybe feel like you reached out.” No order of flowers or whatever was going to make Wes feel better, but Dustin felt so freaking powerless to help that he had to suggest something.

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Wes surprised him by brightening. “There’s this bakery the three of them love. I’ll see if I can get cookies sent as a surprise. Still wish I could be there.”

  “I know.” God, Dustin would give a lot to be able to hold Wes close, breathe in his scent, tell him that he wasn’t alone in this.

  “This is helping,” Wes said softly. “Talking like this. Thank you.”

  Anytime, Dustin almost said, but stopped himself. There couldn’t be a next time, let alone an anytime. Instead, he asked, “What else would help? Think you could watch a movie, get your mind off things enough to sleep?”

  “That your way of telling me to sleep now while I can?”

  “Yeah. Don’t tell the others though—you know how the LT likes to keep these things close to his chest. But I wouldn’t be surprised by a call tomorrow morning or so.” Dustin shouldn’t be telling him that much, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out.

  “I’ll be ready.” Wes nodded firmly. “And I take it my favorite form of sleep-aid is off the table?”

  Oh fuck, Dustin wanted that too. Wanted to really take Wes out of his head. Hell, he wanted out of his own head in the worst way. Wanted Wes’s dirty commands. Wanted to give him that control. Wanted to take the phone into the bedroom, drift off after an epic orgasm. But he couldn’t. He had to keep some lines. If there was going to be any jerking off, it was going to be him in a quiet room later, and he was going to fight like hell to not think about Wes while doing it either. Which was an impossibility—Wes starred in every fantasy of his, had for months now. But he could try.

  “We can’t do that,” he forced himself to say at last. “But I could watch the same show as you for a while, talk more if that helps.” That alone he shouldn’t be doing, but as long as his pants stayed on he could tell himself he was at least exerting some minimal discipline.

  Wes took his sweet time answering. “Okay. You know it’s pretty darn tempting to try to seduce you. Tell you about what I thought about the other night... But I’ll be good.”

  “Please.” Dustin’s voice was hoarse, and he honestly wasn’t sure whether he was pleading for Wes to reveal the fantasy or to not go there.

  “No,” Wes sounded more resigned now, less teasing. “I’ll respect your limits. I...appreciate you hanging out with me tonight. Don’t want you guilt-ridden later.”

  “I won’t be.” Dustin wasn’t sure whether he was lying or not. “And I’m not telling on my fantasies either,” he added to keep things light. Just one last, little flirt. That was all.

  “Oh fuck, do not tell me that,” Wes groaned. “I keep telling myself I’m done jerking it to you, but then you creep back into my head, bastard.”

  “Same,” Dustin admitted. “And we really better pick a movie before I forget why taking my shirt off would be a bad idea.”

  “A very bad idea.” Wes laughed, and the sound washed over Dustin, made this whole call worth it to know that he lightened Wes’s load, even a little. “Okay, I’m thinking straight-up classic American cheese. Forbidden Planet? We can have sympathy for off-limits things.”

  “All the sympathy.” Dustin was a heartbeat away from asking Wes to pull off his shirt. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. “Let me see if I can queue it up on the big screen here.”

  And just like that they were back on safe, non-flirty footing, Wes moving around so that he could see his monitor, Dustin getting the movie ready on his end. And he wasn’t sure whether it was sad or wonderful or both that he enjoyed Wes’s commentary almost as much as he would have sex—simply spending time with him like this felt like a gift. Something to treasure because he couldn’t let it become habit even though his whole body was screaming for more of this connection they shared. Why did it have to be Wes who made him feel this way? Wes who inspired urges in him that he’d never had before, like the need to comfort? He tried hard not to think too much about those questions, to let Wes’s laughter at the movie be all the soothing his soul needed. This was enough for tonight. It had to be.

  * * *

  Hurry-up-and-wait was the part of every mission that Wes liked least. He separated himself from the main group as they were all at a standstill, waiting for the next phase of the mission. The guys were all clumped in groups of two and three, eating MRE food pouches and talking in low voices, but Wes just wasn’t up to much socializing and was having a hard time making himself eat. He leaned against a big boulder, trying to take a load off. They were in rugged, mountainous terrain in a country where they weren’t welcome and where super-covert was the name of the game. And making things go boom in a super-secret fashion? Well, that was why they had him along, and he was trying hard to keep his focus on the job ahead.

  But it was hard.

  “Hey.” Dustin approached him, picking his way across the rocks. Below them was a vista of more mountains, no civilization evident in the barren valley. “You eat, Lowe? Senior Chief said he was worried you’re not keeping your strength up.”

  “I ate.” It wasn’t a lie—he had eaten, just probably not enough. Wes was careful not to look too hard at Dustin. Strangely enough, things were less strained between them since their conversation the night before they’d deployed.

  “How are you doing, really?” Dustin dropped his voice, sounding a lot more like Dustin of the late-night phone calls and less like Lieutenant Strauss.

  “Trying not to be distracted,” Wes admitted, because that Dustin, the real one, was harder to lie to. “The surgery was supposed to have been yesterday.”

  “You know the Red Cross would have gotten a message through to Command if there was...a true emergency. No news is good news.” Dustin’s voice was as soothing as a hand on Wes’s neck would be.

  “I suppose. I wouldn’t put it past my mom to not want to tell me if she thinks I’m deployed.”

  “Then you’ll cross that bridge when we’re back stateside. Nothing you can do about it here,” Dustin said firmly.

  “I guess.” Wes tried to sound optimistic. Dustin was beyond nice, talking to him like this.

  “Does it help if I tell you that I’m thinking about them for you too? Rooting for a good outcome. My own mom’s a big believer in positive energy.” Dustin laughed softly. “Right now her big ‘positive energy push’ is that I won’t be deployed and miss my brother’s wedding. But anyway, she’s always saying how that helps.”

  “That’s...” Sweet of you. But Dustin wouldn’t want to be thought of as sweet, wouldn’t want the reminder that he was dangerously close to the line between them. “Good,” he finished lamely. “Appreciated.”

  “Stay strong,” Dustin said, voice rolling over Wes like a caress. God, he wanted to touch Dustin so badly. He was cold and dusty and sick with worry over Sam, and he hadn’t realized how much he needed this until Dustin came over. “And stay alert. I need you at your best for this next leg. We get it done nice and smooth and we can all be heading home before too much longer.”

  “Understood.” Wes s
hifted his weight from side to side, both to keep warm and to keep from reaching out to Dustin, who was already pulling away from him mentally, back to the lieutenant with a job to do.

  A few hours and a lot of hiking later, it was showtime—the team moving into position, just like their desert training exercise with the shipping container, only in this case it was a cave. They needed to locate contents pertinent to national security interests, then blow up everything else out of concern for those same interests. All without anyone getting whiff that the US had been on this soil. And without bringing down half the mountain.

  “Let’s rock and roll,” Dustin called over the com to his part of the team—the portion with Wes—that would be handling the destruction.

  When it was time to set the charges, Wes was mindful of the minor snafu from training, taking extra care with each placement. Everything else was blocked from his mind—Sam, this transfer, the leave denial, Dustin—none of it mattered as much as the mission at hand.

  This time when the LT gave his mark, the explosion happened with the first flick of the remote. Debris rained, but the mountain stayed put, no rock slides or avalanches on his watch. Relief flooded Wes’s senses. It had worked.

  “Time to head home,” Dustin said over the com, but his eyes found Wes’s and for a section—a breath really, no longer—the look in his eyes was everything. Joy. Pride. Happiness. Relief. All for Wes. They weren’t done, of course—they still had a treacherous hike back, then a tricky extraction. But as Wes accepted the congrats from the team on successful demo, he let that brief flash of emotion from Dustin live deep inside his chest, where he could take it out later, revel in how good Dustin’s pride felt, how damn awesome it felt having Dustin on his side, even in some small way.

  Chapter Ten

  Dustin headed right for his shower the moment he let himself into his condo. It had been days since he’d last seen hot water, and while he could have showered on base, he’d been desperate to be home where he didn’t have to worry about running out of hot water anytime soon and where he could collapse without the rest of the team seeing how exhausted he was.