Off Base (Out of Uniform 1)

“What? It’s just us.” Pike looked up at him with big wounded eyes like Zack was about to push him to the floor.

“Nothing.” Zack stayed him with a hand on his head, sifting through Pike’s hair. He didn’t like it like this, with product in it. He liked it wild and messy better. Reaching down, he unknotted Pike’s tie, carefully tugging it loose. Yeah, nothing. Nothing, just me realizing how damn perfect this is. Whatever strange reaction he’d had to the hard run and dive fled as his whole body seemed to uncurl, tension gone simply by sharing space like this. “What made your day crappy?”

He kept up the scalp massage, and Pike purred like one of the cats, arching into his touch. “Hard to remember right now. This is pretty perfect.”

“Yeah, it is,” Zack said softly, bending to drop a kiss on Pike’s head for no other reason than he really wanted to. “But tell me what went wrong.” Please tell me. Please have something I can fix, some way that I can feel like less of a fuckup.

“My department chair wants me to go to this thing on Saturday. Gallery opening of some paintings and photos of historic ships. Some art history professor’s work. And there’s a dinner party afterward.”

“Historic ships? That doesn’t sound so bad. I was all about ships when I was younger—it was how I got into naval history and then later the history of the SEALS. Stowing away sounded pretty damn good compared to sharing a room with Danny.”

Pike gazed up at him, a calculating look that made Zack’s stomach wobble. “Really? Doesn’t sound hella boring to you? The chair said I should bring a d—friend. You’re not on duty Saturday night, right?”

“I’m not,” Zack said slowly. “But I can’t be your date for a dinner party thing. You know why.”

“I know.” Pike’s heavy sigh hit Zack like a fist. “And I’m not asking you to. She specifically said friend would be fine too. And that’s how I’ll introduce you. My roommate. And none of these professors are married to people from the base that I’ve heard—no one’s going to know your team members.”

Now that part sounded pretty damn tempting. Someplace where he could be simply Zack, Pike’s roommate, and not Zack, the SEAL. And he did like historic ships. It had been a couple of years since he’d been able to indulge that part of his brain. “Just friends?”

“Just friends.” There was a tinge of sadness to Pike’s voice that made Zack’s neck muscles cramp. “That’s what we are, right? Yeah. No flirting. No touching. I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll come,” Zack said thickly. And if there was a part of him that wanted to tell Pike not to worry about the touching and the flirting, that he liked those parts of Pike, that he’d be proud to be introduced however Pike wanted...well, that part needed to be tamped down. Instead he hauled Pike up for a blistering kiss, pouring every ounce of longing for things that could never be into the union of their lips.

Chapter Thirteen

Pike wasn’t going to win any awards for punctuality, but he totally had hottest date covered at the gallery. Correction, non-date. Pike had tried to slide back into the friend zone gradually, letting Zack shower alone, not offering to iron for him or fiddling with his collar. No touching in the car, although he’d gotten away with that a few times recently, and he’d known something was changing with Zack when he’d started doling out more of the casual little touches of his own around the house and in his truck.

That was pathetic, right? Reading each touch from Zack for hidden meaning, signs that they wouldn’t be stuck in this weird limbo forever. Signs that all their perfection inside the house wasn’t a paper castle, destined to crumple and blow away. Signs that this handsome man next to him wasn’t a mirage his starving mind had conjured up.

“You nervous?” Zack asked in a low voice as they entered the gallery. Out of uniform, he was wearing an ensemble Pike was sure had seen the inside of a church more than a few times—khaki pants, blue button-down shirt and nice shoes. On anyone else it would have been beyond bland, but on Zack, it looked like something straight out of a preppy clothing ad.

Terrified. But not of the gallery or his colleagues. More like terrified for his heart, trying to sort out what his changing feelings for Zack really meant. “Nope,” he said at last. “Just trying to work up enthusiasm.”

“Dude.” Zack gave him a censoring look as he gestured to the giant painting in front of them. It had an abstract rendition with prisms of color depicting what appeared to be an old battleship. “These are cool.”

“What do you see when you look at that?” Pike was genuinely curious as he hadn’t seen Zack this animated before—cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, hands gesturing.