The Complete Veterans Affairs Romances: Gay Military Romances

by A. E. Wasp

  “Yeah y’are,” the guy answered, sure of himself. “Marines?”

  “Army. 10th Mountain.” It felt like a confession.

  “QT Smith. Air Force. 407 AEG.” They guy waved a hand, beckoning Troy in. “Come on it. We got coffee so bad it will make you remember the DFAC with love.”

  “Cutie?” Troy must have heard wrong.

  “Cue-Tee,” the man enunciated carefully. “Short for Quintavious. That was a whole lot of fun in the force, as you can imagine.”

  “I don’t know, sounds like the perfect name for the Chair Force.”

  “Oh, so you’re a funny man. Come on in. Let’s go to my office.”

  Not sure where it would lead, but anyplace had to be better than where he was now, Troy took a step in.

  Angel took the last sip of her coffee, then shuffled around on the couch until her back was against the arm, and her feet wedged under Dmitri’s thigh - her usual position for these kinds of talks. But none of those previous late night alcohol- or caffeine-fueled discussions had ever felt so real, the repercussions of their decisions more abstract. “So, you told Troy about the job in California. You didn’t tell him if you would or wouldn’t take it. And he said you make him feel stupid.”

  “You know I do that. You and Vlad have both called me out on that. I don’t mean to. I’m just a bitch, a snob. Not a good person.”

  She poked her toes up into his thighs; one reason it was her favorite way to sit. “Shut it. I’m not done. We’ll talk about why you’re a little bitch soon enough.”

  He nodded, tearing the last bit of his bagel into small pieces as she spoke.

  “And he said he’s broken and no good to you.”

  “And that all I want him for is sex and, and house repairs.” Dmitri threw out his arms, coffee sloshing out of the top. “Like he was some kind of houseboy!”

  “He did do an awesome job on the kitchen.”

  “Angel!”

  She laughed at the expression on his face. “Relax, Tree. I know you barely tolerate people in your space, let alone some kind of sex slave.”

  Dmitri sputtered, words failing him.

  “Give him a sock, set him free. ‘Dobby is a free elf!’” She fell over sideways laughing, and Dmitri punched her hard in the thigh. She kicked him back. “Come on. Admit it. Isn’t it just a little bit nice to have someone around to help you? To take care of you?”

  Dmitri sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. “Fine. It is kind of. I love when he makes dinner. God, I’m awful.”

  “Why is so bad to enjoy and appreciate someone you care about doing something nice for you?”

  “Well, when you put it that way.” He struggled to explain how he felt. “Don’t you think it’s kind of lame not to be able to take care of yourself?”

  “Do you think it’s lame that Troy needs help? That he can’t take care of himself?”

  “No! That’s not the same thing at all. He can do things – cook, and fix cars, and camp, and defeat ISIS. All I can do is look at cells under a microscope.”

  “What is your damage?”

  He stared at her, hands out.

  “Where did you ever get it in your head that you are supposed to do this alone?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t deserve Troy taking care of me like that. And, more importantly, he doesn’t deserve to get burdened with me. So I get this strong, lovely, brave man to take care of me. And cook me chicken soup and hold me and tell me everything’s going to be all right-” And, God, didn’t that sound amazing, “- and what does he get? To take care of me? A depressed, lonely man with terrible social skills and no friends?”

  “Do you think Troy is an idiot?”

  “What? No. God, no.”

  “And you can admit he likes you? Maybe even more?”

  “He likes me. For some reason.”

  “Okay, for some reason. Is he a liar? Does he say things he doesn’t mean?”

  “Never.”

  “So, if he’s not an idiot or a liar, am I? Do I spend my time surrounded by losers? Do I just like to take care of people and pick up random strays because somehow it makes me feel better about myself?”

  “No.”

  She yanked her feet out from under him, drawing her knees up, and wrapping her arms around them. She leaned forward to get more into his space. “And yet here I am, talking to your sorry ass. Again. So, maybe, if both of us aren’t idiots, maybe there is more to you than you see. Maybe you’re not the horrible human you sometimes think you are.” Her voice had gotten softer at the end; she’d started almost yelling and landed on pleading.

  Dmitri concentrated very hard on finishing his last sip of coffee. “Maybe,” he answered, finger tracing the pattern of bumps on the lid of the cup.

  “Can’t you just try to see yourself as he sees you? At least trust him to know his own mind, and don’t dump him preemptively for his own good?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it? What, when you get down to brass tacks, is the issue? And it’s about freaking time you deal with whatever it is because I don’t know about you, but I can feel thirty breathing down my neck, and I am doing my best to figure out how to be a grown-up about things like relationships. But you, you’re just-” She shook her head, mouth a tight line. She looked at the ceiling, then back at him, her eyes soft and so full of love and pain Dmitri hated himself a little for putting it there. “You just push people away. Always. If it gets too real, just make up an excuse and leave.”

  “I know! I know. Don’t you think I know it?”

  “Well then, stop. Just stop doing it.”

  “I’m afraid!”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything. I’m scared it’s going to hurt. I’ve done everything I can to protect myself, to build this armor from the world. And now it’s a trap I can’t get out of. I don’t think I can survive with it or without. I’m weak and a coward.”

  He was on a roll now. A giant tidal wave of self-pity and loathing. “Things just hurt so much. I blame Anne Frank. I never could get over learning about the Holocaust. I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap my head around it. And it hurt so much to read about all those people dying. So I just pushed those feelings away. Just built a wall around feeling what other people feel.”

  Angel looked at him, head cocked. “So this is just another brick in the wall?”

  “Yes. No. Shut up.” He laughed despite himself.

  “Are you done with the pity party?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. Come on, Tree. You’re not the only one to do that. My God, look how common it is. But you’re the only one who can dismantle it.” She pounded a fist on the back of the couch. “Tear down the wall! I love you, but you are being kind of a little bitch.”

  “I know some of the distance you keep from people is because you’re an introvert at heart, but that’s because you feel things so strongly. Every encounter takes a lot out of you. It’s not just surface. But some of it is you just being scared. Yeah, it hurts. Life hurts. But without the lows, you can’t know the highs. You’ve closed it all off and are settling for some kind of emotional mediocrity.”

  He tilted his head, leaning it on the couch and blinking back tears. She was right. As usual. “But what if it doesn’t work? What if I do all this, I crawl to him, and he won’t take me back? Or he does, and eventually it falls apart anyway?”

  “Then you’ll call me, and we’ll cry and watch tv shows that make us feel worse, and we’ll wallow and get fat and then get over it and move on. Because that’s what life is. And that’s what’s at stake here, Dimka. Not just you and Troy, but your whole life. How are you going to live your whole life? Like an observer? Or grab it and live a juicy, messy, amazing, painful life?”

  “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Yes, you do. That’s what you have to believe. And I have my own issues. I know you’ve been all Troy-Troy-Troy, but I got stuff going on, too.”

  “Oh, God. I a
m a horrible person.”

  “Not horrible. But a little self-centered? Yeah, maybe. But boys are.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He lunged forward and grabbed her in an awkward sideways hug. She shifted them both, until she held him in a full on, both arms around him, hug.

  He cried for a little bit. Not that long. Five minutes, tops. An ugly, sobbing cry. And when he finally let her go, she reached for the crumpled napkins without a word of complaint about her soggy shoulder. “Better?”

  He nodded as blew his nose. “A little.”

  “Want some more coffee?”

  “Yes. But I have no idea where the coffeemaker is now.”

  She stood up and held out her hand. “Come on. We’ll find it.”

  chapter thirty-three

  Troy couldn’t stop talking. A switch had been flipped inside him. He hadn’t realized how completely isolated he’d become; how much it hurt to not talk at all about pretty much every single important thing that had happened to him in the last six years. He’d cut himself off from his family, from pre-enlisting friends, and then, since he’d come home, he’d been avoiding friend requests and FaceTime calls and all sorts of contact with his war buddies. He’d thought he needed to put it all behind him, to forget about it. He’d been so wrong. Talking with someone who’d been there, who understood, felt amazing.

  “It wasn’t all bad, you know? Everyone wants to talk about how awful it was, and how terrible everything was. But at the bottom of it all, at the real blood and guts base of it, I had buddies there who would kill and die for me, and I would do it for them. Hell, I did do it. And here, in the ‘real world,’ in civilization, I can’t get someone to cover my shift at the fucking bar,” Troy said.

  They’d moved into a private office, a smiling young woman taking QT’s place at the front desk.

  “It’s really hard to make them understand when they don’t even really know where you’ve been. How many people can point to Iraq on a map?” QT sat behind his desk, pointing for Troy to take the seat across from him.

  “More than could ten years ago,” Troy answered, sitting down.

  “That’s for damn sure. But I don’t think it registered. We’re talking cradle of civilization areas. I mean, I saw some amazing things.” QT pointed to a photo on the wall of an ancient-looking building, somewhere between a temple and a step-pyramid. “Do you know what that is?”

  Troy shook his head.

  “It’s the Ziggurat of Ur,” QT explained. “You could see that thing from everywhere at Tallil. The whole city is within the security base. Freaking Ziggurat of Ur right on base. Six thousand year old ruins. It was the first time I realized that all those Bible stories took place here, on Earth.” He shook his head. “I walked right up to it. Up the stairs. It was like going back in time. Amazing. They had cities there when America was nothing but wilderness.”

  “I never got there. But I know what you mean. It feels like walking through the past. Did you ever get to Afghanistan?”

  “I was at the base there once. Do they still have that Pizza Hut over at the Embassy?”

  Troy laughed. “No, man. They closed that up. Came in with a freaking helicopter and just lifted the whole thing right out! Turns out the guys who ran it were having three-way sex with that woman who worked it with them. In the box.”

  “Didn’t that thing have, like, huge glass windows?”

  Troy nodded, laughing harder. “Right? After twelve weeks at some FOB, I’d still eat the pizza, though. I didn’t care who was fucking who on what counter.”

  “Right? Hey, you guys don’t need to stop, but can you just slide that pepperoni right on over here?”

  “I remember those Kush mountains. I’m from Mississippi. I’d never seen anything like that before. Unbelievable.”

  Troy sipped the bad coffee, black and bitter. “They were amazing, breathtaking. The sunrises, you couldn’t look away. We’d have to stop and just watch them. And then I remember the feel of the hot desert air against my face as we raced down the highway and the worn wood of my .50 against my leather gloves and trigger finger. And the kids, the kids would just break your heart every day. I just wanted to…adopt them. Take them all home. They didn’t ask to be born into war. They just smiled at everything.”

  “Yeah, the kids were the best. And the worst. Give them a water bottle and some candy, and they’re happier than half the kids in this place with iPhones and daddy’s SUV.”

  Troy leaned his arms on QT’s desk. “I keep looking at these university kids and thinking, they wouldn’t survive a second in places I’ve seen five-year-olds playing. I can barely talk to them. I want to say, when I was your age, I was knee-deep in shit trying not to get my ass blown off, and you’re having a fucking fit because they’re out of pumpkin spice lattes? Give me a break.”

  Troy stood up and paced around the room. He refilled his cup, though the last thing he needed was more caffeine. The gas station coffee and the Red Bull still vibrated in his veins. A monster headache was building behind his eyes.

  “I know. Lots of people had it worse. A lot worse. I had it easy; I shouldn’t be affected so badly. But I was. People better than me died there, and I would have traded my life for theirs in a heartbeat. Still would. Why did I survive? What makes me special?”

  QT leaned back in his chair like every television doctor Troy had ever seen. Now that he took a look around, it seemed QT was some kind of a doctor, or a therapist at the minimum. “You having nightmares? Jumpy all the time? Losing time?”

  Troy looked at the carpet and nodded.

  The chair creaked as QT leaned forward. “It’s bad now, right? Are you feeling depressed? Angry all the time? Suicidal?”

  “Yes.” He was angry all the time, he realized. Anger so deep, he hadn’t recognized it for what it was until right that second. “I’m so angry.”

  “Do you want to talk about it? Like really talk about it? It could save your life, soldier.”

  And he did, more than anything. He was a fighter. He didn’t know why he had survived when other better people hadn’t, but he had. And since he hadn’t died quickly, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let the war kill him slowly. “I do. I can’t live like this, I can’t drink it away. I can’t fuck it away, and I can’t ignore it. I need help.”

  QT smiled. “Excellent! Excellent. Well, you’ve come to the right place. You don’t have to do it alone, you know.”

  “I know it now. I thought I was the only one.”

  “Far from it, I’m sorry to say. Coming here was a great first start. We’ll get some counseling all set up. And we’ll find someone to help you with school. Some cadet with stars in their eyes around a real vet.”

  Troy paced around the office, running his fingers over the edges of the books and brochures. It felt strange admitting to himself that he needed help, but also like a huge burden had been lifted. All around him, all this time, had been people wanting to help him, asking to help, reaching out even when they knew he didn’t want to hear it. And he’d pushed them away because he hadn’t been ready. Hadn’t wanted to admit what? That he’d been affected by being active duty in a war zone? That seeing people getting blown up had changed him in some way and was actually something a human being would need to process?

  Poor Dmitri. How had he put up with Troy this whole time?

  “I have this friend. This guy.” He didn’t know why he was telling QT this, but it seemed important. He couldn’t afford to hide anything now. “A boyfriend. I have a boyfriend here. He’s not military. And I want to make it work. I want to give us a chance. But I can’t until I know I won’t hurt him again.”

  “Again?”

  “I punched him. I had a nightmare, and he was there…”

  “What happened after? Did you talk about it?”

  “It was last night.” Only last night? It felt like a hundred years ago. “He tried to tell me I needed help. But I ran. I just took off.”

  “You should call him. He’s probably worried.�
��

  “Yeah. I will. He’s left a hundred texts and a few phone calls. I left the phone in my truck. Couldn’t deal with it.”

  “I get that. Okay, why don’t you go back outside to the main office, take a look at what we offer, and we’ll get you set up.”

  Troy swung his backpack up on his shoulder. “Okay.” He stuck out his hand and shook QT’s. “Thanks for everything. I mean, you don’t know. I was in a bad place this morning.”

  QT patted him roughly on the shoulder. “Oh, I do know. Believe me. I’m glad fate brought you here.”

  “Me, too.”

  Troy was halfway out the door when QT stopped him. “Hey, how do you feel about dogs?”

  chapter thirty-four

  Angel had coaxed Dmitri out into the sunshine, and they sat on the sadly underused front porch. Late-summer sun poured over their shoulders from a cloudless blue sky. Flashes of gold amidst the dark pines covering the mountains heralded fall’s arrival in the high country. Moby dropped sticks at their feet, ecstatic to have playmates.

  “I really need to get another dog for her. She needs company during the day.”

  “Hmm,” Angel rested her head on one hand that was braced on her knee as she drew patterns in the dust with one of Moby’s sticks.

  Dmitri watched a hawk circling over the field west of his house. Prairie dogs squeaked in alarm. The breeze blowing in from the west smelled of sun on dry ground and carried just the faintest hint of cooler weather. The beauty of this place hit him again as it did any time he took his head out of his ass long enough to look around.

  “Do you think it’s sad that I live in the house I grew up in? I mean, even my parents moved out of town.”

  Angel turned and poked him with the stick. “It’s a great house.”

  “Maybe it’s all for the best. Maybe I should leave town. Troy doesn’t want to see me anyway. I could get out of this debt, get some new experiences. How can I know what I really want when I’ve never done anything? I’ve never taken a risk, never really gone for anything in my life.”

  “There’s a difference between moving on to get more experience and running away.”