Off Base (Out of Uniform 1)

“I don’t think me talking to him will help.” Zack scrubbed at his hair. He’d last talked to his mom late Saturday after they were all done with the cabinets. She’d tried to guilt him into contributing to Danny’s latest rehab stint, but Zack had held firm that he didn’t have much cash to spare. He knew eventually he’d give in and send something, but the longer he could hold off the better.

“Oh, but you guys are so close.” His mom had spent twenty-three years manufacturing that fiction. “Remember how you used to share a room and everything? You were best friends.”

“We didn’t get along,” Zack said wearily. The room sharing was one of Zack’s worst memories, years of verbal abuse and being picked on while he was too scrawny to stand up for himself. But his mother had always refused to see it his way.

“Sure you did. And a word from you now—from his brother the SEAL—would mean the world to him, I’m positive.”

Zack rubbed the bridge of his nose. He started his truck, cranking the AC. “I’ll text him,” he said at last, because he knew that was the only way he was getting off the call fast.

His mother sighed and Zack could picture her leaning back against the fridge in her kitchen, pinching her nose like he just had. “A phone call would be better, but I suppose that would help too—”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You know, while you’re sending messages, send one to Leslie, will you? She keeps asking about you at church. She said to tell you she’s praying for you.”

“That’s...nice of her.”

“It is. You know, a military man needs someone to come home to. He really does. I’ve seen research on it. And she’d make such a nice navy wife—”

“Mom. I’m twenty-three. Nowhere near ready to get married.”

“I had Danny by the time I was your age,” his mom reminded him. “And your dad to come home to. You need someone to come home to.”

Unbidden, Pike’s face jumped into Zack’s brain. Someone to come home to. Hadn’t it been nicer lately, coming home to see what Pike had done to the place while he was on duty, eating Pike’s attempts at cooking or the takeout he picked up on the way back from campus? He liked that so much more than he should.

“No, I don’t.” Zack kept his voice firm. Fuck. What a shit day. He managed to get his mom off the phone with some more mumbled promises to text Danny and Leslie and to call later.

“We’re counting on you,” had been her parting words.

He drove home, mad at Cobb, mad at his mom, mad at Danny, mainly mad at himself for putting up with all this shit. What was it about Cobb that made him feel like he was nine and powerless again? When he turned onto their street, though, some of the tension in his shoulders eased at the sight of Pike’s car. Someone to come home to.

Not that Zack wanted to talk. Fuck. He unlaced his boots. Screw talking. What he needed was a shower after this day. Pike wasn’t in the living room or kitchen, but his god-awful pop music filtered out of his room, which undoubtedly meant that he was holed up in his room again, working on his professor stuff. Good. Zack needed to get himself in a better state of mind before socializing. Stripping off his shirt as he walked down the hall, he grabbed a towel from the linen closet in the hall and turned toward the bathroom and—

Bumped into Pike. Or more precisely, bumped into Pike’s bare chest, his own bare skin dragging against damp skin.

“Whoa. Sorry.” Pike’s breath was warm against Zack’s neck. Neither of them jumped apart. They’d been close before—dancing, squeezing around each other to work on the cabinets, and that ill-advised kiss—but this was skin and it was electric, little jolts of energy zooming around all his nerve endings. He shivered, but it wasn’t from cold.

“It’s okay.” Zack still didn’t move away, instead pressing Pike back against the wall, eyes zeroed in on his mouth, like a target in his rifle scope, every bodily process including breathing supporting the singular goal of getting his own mouth on Pike’s. His lips brushed—

“Whoa, whoa.” Pike slid a hand between them, not quite pushing Zack away, but creating space. “Remember what I said about kissing?”

Zack made a frustrated noise. “Do we have to talk right now?”

“Yes. Yes, I think we do.” Pike’s slim body shuddered as Zack’s hands found the damp band of skin right above his towel. He was slimmer than Zack but not scrawny, and the tawny freckles scattered all over his arms and shoulders were more intriguing than any muscles. He had almost no chest hair, but a few more faint freckles Zack wanted to trace with his tongue.