by Liz Crowe
Ian gaped at his brother, his heart racing with something he could only identify as anger. “A blind, gay, pissed off, computer geek, ex-Marine? Thanks, Gavin. Sounds like fun. Maybe I’ll invite my son’s drug-addled mother along, you know, to complete the dysfunctional family portrait.” He turned away, aware he was being an ass about a guy he didn’t even know.
“Sorry,” Gavin said.
“Whatever. I’ll think about it. Can Jamie come over and stay with the boys and the nanny that night?”
The thought of a man, any man, in his orbit startled him and made him a little tingly because he’d spent so much time and energy sublimating those feelings to his new responsibilities. He hardly drank anymore, didn’t touch cigarettes or pot, ran every day, and had not gotten laid in almost four years.
Ian had always thought of himself as the sort of man who required physical connection. He’d never gone without sex for any extended period of time, so he’d never questioned it. Sex for a guy like him, given his innate flexibility when came to gender, was pretty easily arranged. He was not hard to look at, knew how to flirt, and what buttons to push for men and women. He was not ashamed in the slightest of being bi-sexual. He always thought of it as a bit of a bonus.
But at that moment he’d never felt more alone, and the slight twinge of familiar horniness at the base of his spine at the thought of the faceless, wounded Nick Traynor made him want to punch something. Words to the contrary spilled out. “I’ll go,” he called to his brother’s retreating back. “I need to get out.”
“I thought you might,” Gavin waved to him. “See you in the morning?”
A shiver passed down Ian’s back. He was lucky. He had the job he wanted and family he loved. The support Gavin had given him in the last few years meant more to him than he could ever explain or repay. The Saturday morning pancake ritual with his Uncle Gavin was something Jamie talked about every Friday. It gave Ian an entire morning alone, and he was always grateful for it. Since Gavin’s boys were visiting on one of their rare trips to Michigan, Jamie was beside himself already. They were great kids and loved their cousin, or at least tolerated him admirably. Ian shook his head. The least he could do was meet this Nick and his sister Alyssa whom Gavin seemed as ga-ga over as Gavin ever got. What would it hurt?
“Daddy! I want to come with you,” Jamie did his usual round of whining before realizing he got to have a sleep over with his cousins. By the time Ian had showered, tugged on dark jeans and a somewhat non-wrinkled button down shirt the little boy was standing by the door, backpack full of army men and Legos, ready to go. Nervousness coated Ian’s brain as he kissed the boy’s face when he dropped him at Gavin’s. “Take me with you,” Jamie gripped his arm once until he saw the older boys headed toward him.
“Next time, sport,” Ian said, sensing his heart clench for the millionth time at the sight of his son. He hesitated, somehow realizing this was a strange pivotal moment, but unable to pinpoint why. He smiled at the nanny and climbed back into his car, pointing it towards Ann Arbor and the address Gavin had given him for Alyssa and Nick.
He parked in front of the bungalow and took a long breath. Gavin needed his support, so he was here, nothing more or less. His life was complete. He did not need anything, including a relationship with a total stranger. By the time Gavin pulled up, Ian felt in control and that he could handle whatever lay behind the front door he’d been staring at for ten minutes. The two men walked up the steps in silence. Gavin knocked on the door, and the smile Ian saw spread across his brother’s face when it was opened by one of the most stunning blond women Ian had ever seen, made his ears hot. He’d met Alyssa Traynor once before but all he recalled from that encounter was fury at her seeming nonchalance about their plight and his utter determination to cut Traynor loose. At that split second he remembered her brother, the stiff but model-handsome Marine who’d been in the office that day, on leave or something, visiting his sister.
Now, he watched, mesmerized as the woman pulled his brother into an embrace, saw them exchange a soft kiss. Then he was introduced, and he felt her arms around him. The whole thing passed like a surreal dream. Gavin frowned at him at one point, but Ian just grinned and acknowledged the sensation of hovering over the scene, as if observing strangers going through the socially accepted motions. He was as sober as a judge, but he sensed a wooziness in his brain while something hovered on his horizon just out of reach.
He stepped into Alyssa’s small, but tidy foyer, his eyes adjusting to the soft, subtle lamplight in the minimally decorated room. It was empty. Ian blew out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Just as he turned back to say something to his brother he heard a low growl.
“Lyssa,” someone spoke in a rough, sexy as hell voice. “The, ah, timer’s going off.”
Ian stared, gape-jawed at the man in the kitchen doorway. His eyes traveled down the terrain of broad-shouldered masculinity who stood with his Ray-Bans on and canine assistant by his side, his face set in a scowl, and back-lit from the kitchen. Nick was drop-dead heat in light jeans and a white tee. He was so pissed off Ian could sense his anger from across the room, palpable and real, but he kept staring, taking in the Marine Corps tattoo that peeked out from under his sleeve and the strong lines of muscle the shirt did nothing to disguise.
“Huh?” He stumbled when Gavin shoved him with an elbow. His entire body was on alert in a way he’d forgotten. “Oh. Sorry.” He let his gaze return to Nick. The man’s dark blond hair was growing out from its military severity and his square jaw was covered in a light beard. He oozed a simultaneous “fuck off” and “fuck me” vibe that Ian’s neglected libido picked up, absorbed, and translated to an embarrassing boner that forced him to shift behind the nearest chair.
“Ian,” the lovely woman stepped in front of him. “This is Nick, my brother. Nick,” she pulled the reluctant, handsome man out of the doorway. Ian could see Nick’s jaw clench and his shoulders shift. “This is Ian, Gavin’s brother.”
Nick held out a hand. Ian stared at it, unwilling to touch him and admit what his every nerve ending was screaming but realizing how rude he must appear. The moment stretched way out beyond anything resembling polite. Gavin cleared his throat startling Ian into action. He stuck out his hand. Nick took it without help, as if sensing what to do, how to reach Ian’s palm. Ian’s life was never the same again.
Chapter Five
Nick
The dream was back. Nick knew it. Yet he was, as always, unable to stop it. He flinched, inhabiting that in-between state of sleep and wake, of before and after, of a whole Nick and a fractured one. The dream kept coming.
Yelling…fire…sand…pain. Over and over again. He heard it a split second after he spotted the seemingly innocuous wire on the side of the road. He started to speak, to warn the driver, then…yelling…fire…sand… pain became his entire universe. He opened his eyes expecting the bright, hot, blue sky. And saw nothing. He thrashed around, tried to find his weapon, remembered Dan was in the Humvee behind him and panicked all over again. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and…shit…he couldn’t see. And his right leg was a flaming ball of agony.
His ears rang, but he kept hearing the screams of men and women all around him. With a huge effort, he finally pulled loose from the safety harness and fell over onto all fours, trying to make his eyes and ears function. His hand connected with what he believed was a man’s boot. As he felt his way up, he made contact with the bloodied flesh of the man’s leg, and he soon realized the limb was definitely not attached to anything else. He yanked his hand away, and brought it to his face. The sickening coppery smell of blood made him gag.
He sat, blinking, but his eyes burned and watered so he shut them and kept crawling, trying to find the source of all the yelling. Dan. He had to find Dan. As he called out, picturing the younger man’s handsome face he put his hand out to thin air and tumbled down to the sand. Yelling and cursing as his knee connected with something sharp sending a fresh bolt of pain
up his spine, he froze when he heard it.
“Nick!”
He rolled over onto his side, keeping his eyes clenched shut to spare the agony of trying to force them to work, and attempted to stand. The horrific stench of burning flesh suffocated him. He held out a hand again, hoping to find something to grab onto to guide him back to the truck Dan had been in. “Nick!” the voice was hoarse, weak, but he recognized it.
He and Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Anderson had been together for nearly two years. Dan was from Ohio, career military, and a computer super geek, like Nick. They were both high up on the “need to know” list and were able to manipulate more information between them than was probably healthy as they led the small, secretive counter intelligence effort in this particular corner of hell.
Nick was due to rotate back to the states in two weeks, and Dan was going to join him when he finished his tour a year later. Nick was as close to being in love as he would allow himself to admit with the tall, dark and handsome fellow Marine. The sound of Dan’s voice fading to his left in the chaos was freaking him the fuck out. That, and the fact he still could not see no matter how much he rubbed his eyes. His nasal passages and throat burned, but he ignored it all and dropped back to all fours, muscling through the agonizing pain in his knees and hips and half-crawled, half-dragged towards the sound. “Nick,” Dan coughed, just as Nick put a hand on what he hoped like hell was Dan’s arm, still connected to his torso. The yelling had mostly stopped, leaving in its wake a terrifying silence punctuated by the snap and crackle of flames and the yammering of a radio somewhere to his right.
“Nick,” Dan croaked out, “I’m…shit….” He made a terrifying noise somewhere between a sob and a moan of pain. Nick dragged him up, held him close.
“Shh, I’ve got it. Help me find the com. I can’t fucking see anything.”
Dan groaned. The metallic odor of blood filled Nick’s nose again, making him want to puke. His hand found Dan’s, and he tried to remain calm, to remember his years of training. “Your face…” Dan whispered.
“I know how good looking I am. Now help me find the com.” Nick grunted in pain when he started to stand again, his leg singing out a clear tune of torment. He shook, called on his inner reserve of Marine-instilled calm, took a breath, and let Dan grab his arm. If only he could just see.
“No, Nick, go to your left, pull Tanner out of the fire.”
Nick listened as Dan’s voice guided him to save at least a couple more of the doomed platoon of grunts that had been their escort. Although the more he tried to rub whatever the hell was in his eyes out, the more they hurt and the darker it got. He stumbled, cursed, limped, and finally dragged the last man Dan could see from where he sat out of the blaze that used to be the shit-heap houses they’d been sent to recon. His head pounded, his throat felt coated with sand.
“Dan!” he ground out, crawling now, unable to use his left leg at all and encased in a cocoon of darkness where all he knew was the smell of blood and burning flesh, and the sounds of men in pain. Nick found his target, heard Dan’s ragged breathing, and touched the man’s leg as terror slithered down his spine and his chest ached from inhaling so much smoke. “My eyes,” he said, weakly, touching his face and feeling moisture.
“Shh…Nick, it’s okay. Just…sit here with me.” Dan’s low voice set off another wave of panic in Nick’s gut. “Please. I want…I need you to put your arms around me.”
“God damn it!” Nick burst out. “I can’t fucking see you.”
“It’s okay, it will be….” Dan coughed, and groaned then put his hand back on Nick’s white-hot face. “Nicholas, sit, be calm, hold me.”
So, Nick sat, pulled Dan into his arms and held him. For how long, he had no idea, but Dan only lived a few more minutes, he was sure. By the time the blast had been reported and a fresh wave of troops arrived, Nick’s face was stiff, and he had stopped hurting. Shock had set in. They had to pry his arms away from Dan’s body. When he woke, he was in the hospital in Germany covered in bandages. His left leg was in a cast from ankle to hip. He was one of three survivors of a roadside blast that took out eight Marines including Dan Anderson, the man he loved.
He clawed at his eyes, cursed the world for being alive, yelled at the medical staff, refused to eat or drink. None of that changed the fact that Captain Nicholas R. Traynor was alone, and would never see again.
Nick sat up fast, wishing the nightmare away for the millionth time, once more to no avail. All he’d known for nearly ten years was his life as a Marine. He’d joined after having the rug yanked out from under him when his homophobic father and passive mother got the news about his sexual preferences. Now, after being someone and part of something, he was back to nothing. All his life he’d been what his parents wanted and expected, but when he finally was honest, they tossed him out as if he were a disposable son, a never existing member of their own fucking family.
He flopped back onto the pillow, recalling the epic bender he went on after stumbling out of his boyhood home that day. His sister had tried to calm him down. She’d followed him out of the house and down the street, but he’d run from her, ignoring her pleas to return. He’d decided to need nothing and no one, and the men he’d let pick him up and fuck him that entire weekend at the club merely solidified it. One of them was an ex-Marine, and as Nick poured his guts out to the guy in the wee hours, he’d made a suggestion that changed Nick’s life forever. The Corps needed smart guys, computer savvy wizards like Nick, especially since the war in Iraq was becoming one of counter intelligence, basically spying via computers.
So, the next morning, with a freshly pounding hangover he’d opened the door to the Marine recruiter’s office, marched up to the cheerful guy in the sharp uniform at the desk, and filled out the questionnaire noting the “don’t ask” portion relishing the supreme irony of his position. While he recalled a twinge of regret at that moment, realizing he was doing a completely knee-jerk, up-yours thing, he shrugged it off.
The hours spent at basic training gave him the sort of focus he’d never had. He fucking loved it, every miserable, sore, tired, bullshit moment of it. Maybe because he knew it for what it was—they were tearing him down to build him back up into the image of a man he wanted to be. He absorbed it all, made it his own and in the process became better, in his opinion. He did not regret it even though he was one of the many hiding in the closet
Lying in the pitch-black bedroom, trying to calm his breathing and pounding heart from reliving yet again the horror of his last days as a Marine, he gulped when the true horror of his new life draped across his brain. His mind would not still, kept sending him fight or flight signals although he knew that was no longer necessary. Because now he was home, in his sister’s house, with a seeing-eye dog that he didn’t want, and nothing to live for. The room seemed to pitch, like a massive ship on the ocean, making him reach out to hang on, as his stomach roiled and threatened to empty. The god damned nightmare would not let him go no matter how hard he forced himself to be awake and to own up to his current reality. He heard a growl, felt the dog’s wet nose shoving at him, but he pushed it away.
“Nick!”
He groaned and rolled over, ignoring the sound of his name.
“Nicholas, stop!” He lashed out, flailing his arms, fighting back before the asshole terrorist could lay his stupid coward’s bomb and ruin Nick’s entire life. “Please!” He gasped and sat, felt flesh under his palms then sank back, letting go of whomever he had a death grip on. The dog was bumping his leg, whining. “Honey, it’s just me,” he heard his sister’s voice, calm, without a hint of fear.
“What is that fucking noise?” He groaned and put a hand on his aching forehead. The thump-thump-thumping would not cease. His head spun pretty much nonstop with sounds. The doctors had warned that his other senses would heighten to compensate for the lack of sight, which had proven to be the understatement of the century. He honestly believed he could sense the undercurrent of rain on a sunny day acr
oss his skin, could hear people’s presence three rooms away, and would swear he could smell breakfast cooking three blocks down the street, although that was likely stretching it a little.
Regardless, it was maddening. The daily headaches from the barrage of extra input were debilitating at best, pure hell at worst. Even his lowest moment in basic training, which he could pinpoint at the end of the first week in the hot stew of Parris Island, South Carolina, when every muscle, sinew and nerve he possessed screamed in pain, he would take over this infernal pounding in his head.
His bored, VA therapist would invariably ask: “How is the pain?”
“Bad,” he’d say, rubbing his ears to keep the cacophony of sounds from the hospital that warred with the nauseating odors threatening to bowl him over.
“And how do you feel about that?”
He would clench his fists, force down the urge to punch the useless asshole in the nose. “I feel like shit, thanks. The side effects from the painkillers and anti-depressants and whatever-the-fuck-else make me dry mouthed, antsy, groggy, madder than hell, and my god damned head still hurts no matter what pills I take. Anything else?”
He never stayed for the whole session. What was the point? He would stand and let his dog pull him out of the room, to the elevator, and down to the front door where the smelly van would take him back to Alyssa’s so he could sit on the couch and hold his aching head in his hands for a few more hours. It was a lovely cycle of do-nothing and talk about it, feel sorry for yourself and then be unable to get off your ass because your skull felt like it was cracking in two, twenty-four seven.
Alyssa put her hand on his face, making him flinch. “Nick, it’s just Brutus. His tail is hitting the carpet.”
“God,” he groaned and sat, and the animal was right under his hand. Nick could smell the dog’s wet nose. The snuffling noises the damn thing made were deafening. “Beat it,” he tried to push the dog away, but, of course, he wouldn’t go. He sensed Alyssa’s sigh about a second before she actually did it.
