Wheels Up (Out of Uniform 4)

Bacon reached Shiny first, so Wes kept going toward where Dustin had landed. When he reached him, Dustin was struggling to sit up.

“Stay down,” Wes called to him. “Let the medics come check you out, Lieutenant.”

He was hyperaware that his com set was on, limiting the words wanting to escape his mouth. You okay? Fuck, you scared me so much. He tried to say all that with his eyes as he crouched next to Dustin, looking for visible signs of injury. No blood.

“Where do you hurt?”

“Just got the wind knocked out of me.” Dustin wrenched his helmet off.

“You pass out?” He carefully considered Dustin’s color—his skin was pale, but not dangerously so, and his lips were pink as ever.

Dustin’s mouth quirked and he looked away. “Maybe blacked out for a second, but I got it back. No worries.”

No worries. Ha. Wes was a ball of nerves, concern gathering up like a gluey lump of noodles in his stomach, making him even more nauseated than he usually was post-jump. Don’t ever scare me like that again, he ordered Dustin with his eyes as he completed his assessment of his physical state—not currently vomiting, moving his extremities well, and no apparent broken bones.

“Report on Buckner?” Dustin asked about Shiny.

Wes listened to the com chatter for a moment before answering. “Medics with him. He’s down but conscious.”

“I better go see.” Dustin struggled again to sit, and this time Wes let him, helping him untangle himself from his chute and gear.

“Stand slow.” Wes offered him a hand when he was free of the gear. “No need to rush it. You still could have a concussion or something going on.”

They both still had on their gloves, and even through the layers of fabric, an electric jolt went up his arm from the contact, one he had to work hard to ignore. It didn’t matter how worried he’d been for Dustin or how much he longed to pull him into a tight hug, none of that was happening.

“Thanks.” Dustin’s eyes locked with Wes’s, an unspoken acknowledgment of everything that hung between them.

“Strauss. What the hell happened?” The LT came rushing up, trailed by a medic and some other ground support people.

Wes took a step back, letting the medic do his job and check Dustin out while the LT proceeded to rip Dustin a new one. Man, that was all Dustin needed, the LT riding him like this, especially in front of others, but there was nothing Wes could do to defuse this situation.

“What happened? Were you late jumping?” The LT was even louder and more agitated than usual.

Shiny was early. The words were on Wes’s tongue, but he couldn’t intervene here, and besides, Dustin was nodding. “Maybe. Not sure. It all happened so fast.”

Fuck. He was totally taking the blame for Shiny, and Wes could tell by the set of his shoulders and jaw that he knew it too. Dustin was the type to always put his men first, and he wasn’t going to shirk the blame, even if here he maybe should.

“Not good enough.” The LT had a full head of steam now, and Wes slowly stepped farther away. Dustin didn’t need an audience for this dressing down.

“I take responsibility,” Dustin said firmly, and Wes hadn’t expected anything less from him, but the LT wasn’t mollified, and Wes could hear his continued berating of Dustin as he made his way back to where the medics were helping Shiny.

Shiny was sitting up in the middle of a crowd of SEALs and support personnel when Wes reached him. He apparently had a twisted ankle, a bum wrist, and a possible concussion, but it could have been so much worse. The medics decided that Shiny would go to a local hospital for concussion evaluation before flying back, while the rest of them would head back as planned.

Losing Shiny, however temporarily, to injury had the team in a somber mood on the flight back to base. Dustin sat alone, head in his hands, looking years older and weary as fuck. He’d passed the medics’ concussion tests in the field, so he was clear to travel, but he seemed utterly wrung out from the ordeal. And the LT’s reprimand couldn’t have helped.

Wes yearned to go to Dustin, put an arm around him, tell him that none of this was his fault. But there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t jeopardize Dustin’s position.

“You okay?” the senior chief asked Dustin, moving to sit right beside him, just as Wes longed to do.

“Yeah. Nothing a long shower and a cold one won’t cure.” Dustin managed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The senior chief shook his head as if he didn’t believe him any more than Wes.

Wait. Maybe there was something Wes could do. As he waited for the plane to make its descent and landing at base, a plan started to take shape. He couldn’t let Dustin suffer alone.