Semper Fidelis (5 page)

When Galen came, it was because Zach was already there, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck taut. Galen licked up those lines and thrust into Zach’s hand, into the slick wetness of Zach’s cum, adding exponentially to the mess and not giving one flying fuck.

He dropped his forehead against Zach’s shoulder and smiled. He kissed that concave spot at the bottom of Zach’s throat and hummed contentedly.

“That—” He sucked in a breath. “—was unexpected.”

Zach laughed then, a bright, rich sound of true joy that surrounded Galen. Filled him and made him wonder if there was any way his luck would hold out for longer than one night.

Chapter Four

Zach’s driver door was barely open before he was yanked out of his car by Linc, who tossed the keys to the valet and propelled them toward the restaurant’s patio.

“I know you’re not happy with me, Linc,” Zach began, hoping to undo some of the damage of avoiding his friend’s calls for the last five days and only texting him the minimum amount of information Zach was willing to give out.

“Whatever do you mean?” his best friend said with a serene, sweet smile, even as he manhandled Zach.

Zach glanced at Linc, then did a double take and burst out laughing. “Are you wearing a fedora?”

Linc sniffed. “I’m trying a thing.”

“Untry it. So not your thing. Friends don’t let friends fedora.”

Linc pushed him into a wire chair and obliged, taking the fedora off and setting it on the table. When the waiter approached, he held up two fingers. “Two Long Island ice teas. And throw this away,” he said as he handed the hat over.

“I’m not drinking,” Zach interrupted.

“They’re both for me. Now tell me what happened!”

Zach sat back in his chair and sighed. “He’s got this young Paul Newman thing going on—”

“With those piercing blue eyes?”

“No, puppy dog brown eyes. Makes it all worse than that Newman blue, though. Galen should be ordinary, but he’s just
not
. There was this clarity in the way he looked at me, like he saw everything. And this humor and playfulness… He was innocence with charisma and mischievousness backed by keen observation. It’s a dangerous combination.”

Linc laughed and downed the drink the waiter set in front of him. “Says the man who works with rocket fuel.”

Zach ran his fingers through his hair. “I have the worst luck with men. This is going to turn out awful. We haven’t talked or texted since that night and I just don’t know… Why am I so confident at work and so fucking awful at this?”

Linc burst out laughing. “Oh my God, you remember the squirrel guy?”

“It was chipmunks, not squirrels, and are you serious? How could I possibly forget a grown man chasing chipmunks in a city park on a first date?”

“Oh shit! Or what about the guy with the puppets?”

“I never should have told you about that one.”

“To be fair, you really shouldn’t tell me about any of them if you want to keep your pride.”

Zach cocked an eyebrow. “Hence why I didn’t call you back this week.”

Linc set aside empty glass number one and started on drink number two. “Does he know how smart you are?”

“Why does that matter?”

Linc stared over the top of his glass at Zach. “Because it’s been an issue.”

“That’s not fair.
Saved by the Bell
shouldn’t be anyone’s favorite show, regardless of their intelligence level. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of a potential boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend, huh?”

Zach’s phone started to ring and he flipped it over. “Why the hell is my boss calling me on a Saturday?”

* * * *

Galen had been back on base for three days, but Casey’s time was dominated by intense live-fire exercises during the day and he was wrecked by nighttime, so it was Saturday afternoon before they had a chance to talk. Galen was in his room at the Sleepy Tortoise Lodge, Xbox controller in hand, when Casey finally showed up at his door. He paused the game and went to the door.

Casey had dark half-moon circles under each eye and he was listing to his left, but he grinned and lifted up the cardboard case in his hand. “I brought the beer. You provide the story.”

Galen welcomed him in, shut off the TV and kicked back on the couch as Casey threw him a cold one. “He’s way out of my league, like Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel level out of my league.”

“That good-looking, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“So you’re the Billy Joel.”

Galen nodded. “But taller.”

“And not as musically inclined. How was the sex?”

Galen blew out a long breath. “Fucking unbelievable.”

“But you haven’t talked to him since he left that next morning. What’s the problem?”

Galen bounced his foot where it rested on his knee, unable to sit still. He’d been able to shut out how he’d fucked up when he could focus on other things, but now that he was verbalizing it all for Casey, he realized just how right he was that a guy like Zach would never be into someone like him for more than just one night. Yes, he hadn’t called Zach, but Zach hadn’t tried to text or call him either. “I don’t know why I can’t get this guy out of my head. The sex was amazing, yeah, and it wasn’t like we talked about anything more. It’s just…”

“What?” Casey prompted.

“After… I couldn’t help but wonder if there could be something more.” Galen thought about how they’d laid in bed talking about the upcoming Marvel movies, Zach’s drone-building hobby, and the Synthfad IED project for hours, until Zach had fallen asleep in his arms. He’d known then he was fucked. “I’d like to get to know him better, you know?”

“Actually talking helps that process, man.”

“I know!” Galen sat forward and leaned his elbows on his knees, looking over at Casey, who was smirking at him like the idiot he was. “Why the hell would anyone so together want me, though? I’m constantly on the move, have a ridiculously dangerous job and then there’s the whole fucking geekdom thing. I have an Iron Man costume that I don’t just wear for Halloween.”

“Don’t forget it has actual armor.”

“Exactly. Actual armor, for fuck’s sake. Who’s going to put up with that?”

“I do.”

Galen smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, but you don’t touch my willy.”

A knock came on the door, startling Galen. He set his beer bottle down and opened the door to find a private in full uniform. “Staff Sergeant Welc?”

“Yes.”

“CO needs to see you in his office.”

Galen peered over his shoulder at Casey. His best friend shrugged.

The private looked over both his shoulders to make sure the hallway was clear, then leaned in to whisper, “I hear Synthfad’s got a new IED drone to be tested in the village. If anyone can beat it, it’ll be you, Magneto.”

He nodded. “Tell him I’ll be there in five minutes.”

* * * *

“You got your test.” Zach’s boss hesitated for a moment on the other end of the line. “But we’re talking nontraditional R&D.”

“How nontraditional?” Zach asked.

“An unofficial dogfight at Twentynine Palms tomorrow. You versus one of the Marines who’s been working on the IED study.”

“Dogfights are an Air Force thing,” Zach clarified.

His boss huffed in frustration. “Does it matter?”

To a Marine it would.
“Can you tell me who my drone will be going up against?”

“That Marine they call Magneto. Don’t think you’ve met him.”

Zach slouched in his chair, sliding down the back and covering his eyes. Flashes of Galen’s X-Men tattoo crowded his vision. There was no fucking way.

“Tall, midtwenties, blond hair—”

Galen?
Linc mouthed, scooted closer and tried to grab for Zach’s phone so he could listen in. Zach yanked it back and glared at Linc.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy. You met him?”

“In the parking lot at work,” he replied. His statement was close enough to a half-truth for Zach not to consider it a lie.

“I’ll email you the details. You’ll be running your drone from a control room on the base. Turns out that you not tying this project to Synthfad was a smart idea. Legal wouldn’t have cleared it otherwise.”

“Now you have plausible deniability.”

Linc crooked an eyebrow and Zach just shook his head in reply. He’d explain the other half of the conversation when he got off the phone.

“Exactly. I’ll see you tomorrow at the control room.”

Zach ended the call and looked up at Linc. “My drone test is going to happen tomorrow at the Marine base at Twentynine Palms.”

“How does your hottie fit into this?” Linc questioned.

“My drone is going against him.”

Linc slung his arm over the back of the chair. “So your baby is being pitted against your boyfriend.”

“This is so not happening.” It was hard enough for Zach to get laid as it was. Any chance of a repeat performance of that bakery-inspired one-night stand would probably be shot down when his invention beat out Galen. He couldn’t see any other outcome with the test or his chances with Galen.

“Think he knows it’s you?”

Zach’s cell pinged with an incoming message.

Does Waze have a way to report IEDs?

Zach chuckled and felt his anxiousness about Galen easing. “Oh yeah. He knows.” He showed the text to Linc, then replied.

Only amateurs need it.

He followed that with a winking smiley face to make sure Galen knew he was playing along. He wasn’t pissed at Galen—far from it. There hadn’t been any promises of more than one night. He hoped there could be maybe possibly something more because…well, he liked the guy. And while he’d been gnawing at his fingernails all night while he tried to think of something to send to Galen to break the five days of no contact, of course it had been charismatic and honest-to-a-fault Galen that had come up with the perfect opening.

Ouch
, came the reply, and seconds later another one.

I would wish you good luck, but I’ve seen your hands work. Think I’m the one who needs the luck.

He grinned. Galen was way too charming and Zach was so falling for it.

Goodnight JG. See you in the morning.

Night.

* * * *

Galen was used to patrolling cities that were populated. Buildings that were alive with residents and business people. Tracks of civilians marking the streets, digging grooves into dirt paths. The sand that surrounded him was US soil for once, and the buildings were nothing more than discarded shipping containers. The residents that wandered the streets were actors hired to portray a war-wrought public that could be hiding a terrorist in their midst at any point. This training exercise was practice, but it was also damn close to his reality while deployed.

He was trained to spot the anomaly in the chaos of urban life, and today he would be testing his natural abilities against a mechanical device that purported to do his job better than he ever could. It was the similar routine to what he went through as part of the research study at Synthfad, but this base was as close as he came to home territory. Galen wouldn’t fail here. His CO had said this drone was developed all for the mission of saving human life and not putting him or his men at risk. But there were sensations a simulation couldn’t simulate. Reactions and gut feelings that couldn’t be experienced while sitting behind a computer screen. Zach’s drone was controlled from afar and that would be its greatest weakness.

Galen adjusted his gear and took a swig of his water as he waited for the sun to rise. It wasn’t as if he wanted Zach’s drone to fail, but he wasn’t planning on failing either. He hoped that no matter how today ended up, Zach would want to see him again. He was geared up and keyed up. Ready to move. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could see Zach. Unfortunately, Zach wouldn’t be anywhere on the course—that was the point of an unmanned drone.

The CO’s voice came over his comm. “So here’s how this is going to go. We have three dummy IEDs planted on the course. While they won’t explode if triggered, they have been rigged to pop. This isn’t a contest to see which can spot the IED first—man or drone. But—” Galen could hear the smile in his CO’s pause. “—there are three of them out there, and not an even number, so take that as you will. Good luck, gentlemen.”

He settled into the passenger seat of the Humvee and nodded to the driver. “Let’s do this.”

The sun began to crest over the mountains as they drove through the grid set up for this training exercise. Twentynine Palms was a gigantic base—the largest of all the Corps bases—and he had a lot of ground to cover. That would be his greatest weakness. A drone could cover much more ground in a shorter amount of time. But twenty minutes into his search, something caught Galen’s attention, and he lifted his binoculars to get a clearer view.

Galen squinted, made sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. There was fascine ahead, the bundle of plastic pipes used to bridge a drop in the desert landscape, visible only inches above the gap. The rays of the morning sun hit the black pipes at such an angle that they were lit in rosy half-light, and the shape… Galen’s internal warning system pinged. “Hold up,” he instructed the driver and got out of vehicle when it came to a stop.

In combat, there was strict protocol of how to approach a suspected IED. But his CO had let him know yesterday that the point of this exercise wasn’t to test his ability to follow orders. He was tasked with locating IEDs, and accuracy and expediency outweighed regulation for this one morning.

He came around the side of the ditch and peered into the tube that had a slight bowing at the center. Sure enough, there was some kind of device stuffed into the one in the middle—placed directly in the path of a vehicle trying to cross it.

He radioed in. “IED sighted at the Cross Culvert.”

So fucking easy.

“IED location confirmed,” a voice came over his comm.