Here We Go Again

by Romeo Alexander

  Dean looked askance at him, smirking. “I can hear you thinking.”

  “You cannot.”

  “Can too. And I can smell the smoke.”

  Troy huffed. “That’s rude.”

  “Fits with the mood I’ve been in, right?”

  Troy rolled his eyes. “So, while I oh so casually respect that you don’t want to talk about what’s going on, will you at least tell me what took the edge off? You’re obviously not ready to keep ripping limbs off.”

  Dean laughed. “Marco stopped by earlier while you were with Simmons.”

  “Oh, I see. Boyfriend talked you off the ledge then?”

  Dean narrowed his eyes. “Don’t push it. And nothing is official between us.”

  Troy held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Alright, then your not boyfriend came by and talked you off the ledge.”

  Dean picked up a pen from the desk and chucked it at Troy. “You’re the worst sort of comfort in trying times.”

  “To be fair, I never claimed to be.”

  It was enough to see the amusement light up his friend’s eyes again, so Troy was willing to accept the improvised weapon tossed at him. Maybe he couldn’t help Dean by talking it through, but hey, a smile was good too.

  Dean leaned back in his chair. “But what about you?”

  Troy blinked. “What about me what?”

  “When are you going to get yourself a not boyfriend?”

  Troy laughed. “I think I’ve had plenty of those already.”

  “I don’t think your hook-ups fall into that category unless you’re trying to say that Marco and I are just a hook-up.”

  “Ooh, is that a trap I smell?”

  “Better than the smell of lube and booze, which I’m sure you’re more than used to by now.”

  Troy’s mouth fell open, and he chucked the pen back at Dean. “I can’t believe you just called me a slut!”

  “Am I wrong?” Dean asked, his lips curling with devilish mischief.

  Troy huffed, standing up from his chair and snatching up the tablet. “That is neither here nor there, and I would ask that you mind your own business, good sir.”

  Dean gave him a dry look. “This from the man who likes to share every last detail of his latest bedroom partner, in excruciating, unnecessary detail I might add.”

  Troy laughed, giving him a shrug. “Some of us aren’t built for relationships, Dean, whereas other people, like you, are. I’m having a bit of fun, and I don’t want a boyfriend or a not boyfriend.”

  “You sure? I could always ask Marco if he’s got some single friends.”

  “Oh, no, no matchmaking, no setting me up. I can tend to my own love life, thank you very much.”

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true, but he wasn’t going to start admitting his failings to Dean in that regard, either. God knew the story of his love life, back when he’d tried to have one, was what could only be called a complete disaster. Troy had learned his lesson, or at least what he claimed as his lesson. If love could be that disastrous for him, then there was no point in trying to force it.

  He didn’t think he could take that heartbreak again.

  Dean shrugged. “It’s not like it would kill you.”

  “Says you. Imagine trying to tie down this wonderful commodity to only one person. It would be a crime.”

  Dean groaned, rubbing his face. “Please, Lord, tell me you have something else to do.”

  “I’ll point out that you started this.”

  “And boy, am I regretting it.”

  Troy gave him a wink. “That’s what I’m here for, to feed you nothing but regret.”

  “Maybe you should go make sure everything is in order for our round of check-ups coming in.”

  “What, those don’t start till 0900.”

  “And you’ve got twenty minutes.”

  Troy looked up at the clock and cursed. “Damn it. Are these more of General Winter’s new chosen people? Because after the last one got us a surprise ‘oh, just a training exercise injury’ visit, I don’t think we can take more.”

  Dean snorted, turning back to the computer. “No, we do have a new one in a couple of days, though, but these are just normal check-ups.”

  Troy sighed. So much for his quiet and boring morning. He’d completely forgotten about the morning’s check-ups, and he’d been hoping to slip in a quick nap.

  Troy set the tablet down. “You’re a slave driver.”

  “You can always take my place and do the paperwork.”

  Wrinkling his nose, Troy left the office before Dean decided that was a good idea. The last thing either of them needed was for Troy to deal with paperwork. But first things first, he thought maybe he knew just how to lift Dean’s spirits a little.

  With a knowing smirk, he opened the screen to his phone and dialed a number.

  It turned out that attempting to bribe Dean’s mood with a good bit of food wasn’t the grand plan that Troy had thought it was.

  Troy sat beside Dean, watching the man poke at his food, growing distracted from his meal as he tried to be as evasive as possible in telling Troy what was wrong. For a brief shining moment, it looked as though Dean and Sloane’s friendship had been restored, but apparently, something more significant had happened, which was exactly why Troy had cornered Dean in the office and started being the concerned friend. Troy also thought it was a little cute, how desperately Dean tried to be cryptic while wearing every emotion openly on his face.

  So Troy tried for something a little more direct.

  Troy chuckled. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered if there was more going on with you two then you let on.”

  Dean’s eyes widened with blatant shock. “What?”

  Troy held his hands out, hoping to placate Dean. “Stop, it’s just a thought. Don’t get me wrong, you two would be a cute couple, and sometimes I still wonder, but you guys are what you are. In the end, that’s all that matters, and you shouldn’t worry too much. Sloane’s a stubborn jerk, and you’re just as hardheaded, you guys aren’t going to fall apart that easily.”

  “You really thought there was something going on between us?” Dean asked.

  Troy screwed up his face in thought. He made a show of trying to give it some real evaluation, but he already knew he was going to lie. Dean was a good man and did his best by other people, but he could be a little prickly where his pride was concerned. That, and he thought Dean would be horrified if he knew Troy suspected Dean’s feelings for his best friend.

  “Weird, but not on your end. On his, though? Yeah, I have.”

  “You thought the straight guy had something going for me?” Dean asked incredulously.

  Troy shrugged. “Call it a hunch, call it idle fantasy, I don’t know.”

  Dean rolled his eyes, jabbing Troy with the plastic fork. “Now, we’re getting into your weird fantasies, time to call this meeting to an end.”

  “Hey,” Troy yelped, trying to wipe the smear off his uniform.

  A deep voice cleared their throat from behind them, and both medics turned around to face the noise. Troy’s expression froze, his throat tightening as he took in the sight of the towering man waiting for them in the doorway to the office.

  It had been six years, and time had changed both of them, but Troy would know him anywhere.

  Oscar Reyes.

  Oscar was looking at Dean. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  Troy’s heart hammered, and in a brief moment of lucidity, he was so glad he was sitting down. He supposed he knew deep down there might be a chance he would run into Oscar again, but as time had gone on, Troy had almost convinced himself it would never happen. Yet here he was, the only man Troy had ever loved in all his twenty-five years of living, looking tall, strong, and not having noticed Troy at all.

  “Oscar?” Troy asked, his voice cracking.

  Oscar’s gaze darted to Troy’s face, and for a moment, bald shock widened Oscar’s dark eyes. A moment later, the surprise was gone, replace
d by the normal, serious expression Troy knew all too well. The flash of emotion, the burial of any perceived weakness, and the stoic expression brought bittersweet pangs of nostalgia for Troy, and an ache he thought he’d left behind rose once again.

  “Yeah. Hi, Troy,” Oscar said, voice so neutral it sounded unnatural to Troy’s ears.

  “You two know each other?” Dean asked him, brow high.

  Troy had forgotten about Dean, ripping his stare away to face his friend. “Knew.”

  “General Winter told me I needed to come here for a check-up before going on duty,” Oscar explained, voice tight.

  Dean jabbed the fork in Troy’s direction. “He’ll get you all set up and checked out.”

  Troy barely managed to keep himself from spluttering. “What?”

  Dean held up his food. “I’m on lunch.”

  “That I bought you!” Troy protested.

  “And I’m so grateful that I want to finish it before it gets cold,” Dean shot back.

  That little shit.

  “You…” Troy began.

  “I know,” Dean said with a wink.

  Troy couldn’t muster the energy to hold his glare, turning to face Oscar, who still stood in the doorway, his face taut. Troy grimaced, pushing himself up out of his chair, resigned to his fate. Grabbing his tablet, he motioned to Oscar to step out into the hallway. Troy regretted that choice a moment later when he had no choice but to squeeze between Oscar and the door. Troy’s breath caught as he pushed between the wood frame and Oscar’s rock hard body, the man’s cologne filling his nostrils and flooding his memory.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what it is you wear for cologne?” Troy asked him, flopping onto his side to watch Oscar as he slid out of bed.

  Oscar snorted. “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you want to know so badly.”

  Troy frowned. “That’s a horrible reason, what the hell?”

  Oscar grinned. “Because I know it drives you nuts not to know, you nosy ass.”

  “I am not nosy!”

  Oscar turned, smirking. “You might want to try that on someone who doesn’t know you better.”

  Troy was distracted by the sudden display of Oscar’s naked body. His tanned skin caught the afternoon sunlight leaking through his bedroom window, the dark hair on his chest and stomach glistening. There was a faint sheen of sweat over his muscular arms and broad chest, the byproduct of the rather intense session of sex they’d gone through only moments before.

  “That’s what I thought,” Oscar said with a laugh.

  Troy bundled up a pillow and threw it at him. “That’s not fair. You cheated!”

  “And how did I do that?”

  “By being all...sexy, and on display.”

  Oscar bent down, holding himself up on the bed with his hands. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”

  Troy rolled onto his back, breath catching as he lost himself in Oscar’s dark eyes. “Yeah, but you love it.”

  Oscar chuckled, bending forward to kiss him. Affection, warmth, any show that Oscar was crazy about Troy, was saved only for those moments when they could be alone. Yet Troy could never bring himself to care too much, not when Oscar was kissing him so deeply he felt like he would never be able to breathe right again.

  “Sorry,” Oscar muttered once they were in the hallway, and taking a step back to give Troy room.

  “It’s fine,” Troy said softly.

  Shaking himself mentally, Troy led Oscar down the line of examination rooms until he stopped at the one nearest the entrance to the clinic. Holding his tablet out, he gestured to the exam room without looking up. His stomach twisted as Oscar walked near him to step into the room. Troy closed his eyes, waiting until Oscar was in the room and up on the table before he finally followed him in, bracing himself for what was sure to be an awkward conversation.

  “I didn’t know you were stationed here,” Oscar told him.

  Troy snorted softly, closing the curtain. “I didn’t know you were the new person coming in. Dean always tells me I need to check the appointments more often, and I guess that came back to bite me in the ass.”

  “Dean the other guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Oscar’s dark eyes searched his face, sucking in his bottom lip.

  Troy frowned. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re doing that lip thing, which you only do when you’re holding back from saying something.”

  Oscar’s lip popped back out of his mouth with such suddenness, it might have made Troy laugh under any other circumstances. “It’s nothing.”

  “Right,” Troy said, not buying it.

  “Yeah,” Oscar grunted, brow furrowing.

  Troy knew that meant Oscar was getting irritated, but he chose to ignore it. He turned his attention back to his tablet, pulling up the file attached to the appointment. At the top of the list of relevant information was a note from the last time Oscar had seen a doctor, including the words ‘full recovery.’ Troy blinked, looking up, and his breath caught as he realized what he was seeing.

  “Your arm,” Troy breathed.

  Oscar pulled his right arm closer to him, as though it would conceal the missing half of his limb. “Just now noticed?”

  “I was a little distracted by the ghost reappearing in the doorway,” Troy said, stepping forward.

  Oscar drew back. “It’s fine.”

  “Don’t do that,” Troy snapped.

  “Do what?”

  “Pull away from me, shut me out.”

  Oscar’s frown deepened. “Are you talking about us as people, or as doctor and patient?”

  Troy took a deep breath, reminding himself where he was, when he was. It had been over six years since Oscar had walked out of his life, slamming the door behind him and never looking back. Yet just being around him again had Troy acting like it was still six years ago, and they were still something.

  Troy cleared his throat, turning back to look at the tablet again. As much as he would have preferred to hear the story from Oscar, Troy browsed through the information in his file. Charts popped up, along with reports, and he flipped through them, dread and horror curling in his gut as he read. Troy knew, just as anyone who served did, that life came fast, and pain and death could come even faster.

  “God,” Troy muttered.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Troy winced at Oscar’s words, glad the man couldn’t see his face. Jesus, an IED.

  Clearing his throat, Troy spoke as evenly as he could. “Undress down to your underwear, please.”

  He used the time while Oscar did as he was asked to continue reading over the full extent of the medical report. Nothing he read managed to assuage the ache in his chest as he poured over the extended hospital stay, the frequent surgeries, and the drawn-out recovery times. Oscar was, by all accounts, back on his feet and ready for duty, but damn, he’d been through hell and back before he got there.

  “Done,” Oscar said.

  Troy braced himself, turning around to face Oscar, and suddenly he realized a few things all at once. One, there were a lot more scars on Oscar’s body than the last time Troy had seen it, and they couldn’t have all been from the IED. Two, the missing half of Oscar’s arm, while clean and healed, sent another ice pick of pain through Troy. And finally, worst of all, Troy realized that both the damage done to Oscar’s body and the time the two of them had been apart had done nothing to dull the desire Troy felt for the man.

  Oscar’s face was tight, as though he was fighting to keep control. “I know.”

  Troy shook his head. “It’s not…”

  How was he supposed to finish that thought? How could he explain that, despite the fact that the sight of the scars littering Oscar’s body, and the missing arm, pained Troy, it was the sight of Oscar’s body that still drew a tremor of need out of him? That, despite thinking he’d moved on, buried Oscar and their relationship in the past where it should have been all
along, Troy realized that the grave hadn’t been deep enough?

  Yeah right.

  Troy forced a professional smile on his face. “You wouldn’t be the first injured person I’ve had in here, and you won’t be the last. So quit looking at me like I’m about to hold your hand and tell you everything is going to be okay.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that, but good, don’t.”

  “Yes, we wouldn’t want you to have a human moment, where someone cares about you openly and honestly, now would we?” Troy asked, setting the tablet aside.

  Oscar glowered at him. “I see your bedside manner hasn’t gotten any better.”

  “And getting hit by a bomb did nothing to improve your bad attitude. We all have our challenges in life,” Troy said as he stepped forward to begin the examination.

  Oscar continued to glare at him as Troy bent over, examining the arm with the greatest amount of professionalism he could muster. Scar tissue had formed, but overall, it looked like the surgeons had done a neat job. The other scars on Oscar’s body, Troy noted at a glance, weren’t all quite as neat.

  Oscar broke the silence with a soft snort. “You always did like to give me shit.”

  Troy poked and prodded, testing for sensitivity along Oscar’s body. “Maybe if you weren’t always such a shit, I wouldn’t have to.”

  It was almost funny, how Troy liked to bitch to Dean that Sloane was so much of a grump when the first and only love of Troy’s life was no different. Oscar’s resting face seemed only a twitch away from a dour scowl, and he spoke with a deep rumble that could have been a growl half the time. He didn’t quite come off as intimidating, but he certainly had a way of driving people away from him, especially with his mistrusting attitude.

  Everyone but Troy that was.

  Troy was careful around Oscar’s sides, remembering the man’s ticklishness. “Any lightheadedness or nausea from the meds?”