On Point (Out of Uniform 3)

Voices in a dialect Ben wasn’t familiar with got closer. He doubted Maddox knew it either—for all his facility with languages, it was Brown—nicknamed Encyclopedia—who was the team’s language specialist for this region. Ben wanted nothing more than to see the know-it-all Encyclopedia and the cranky-ass Rogers come sprinting though the trees, take out these hostiles.

A metallic click echoed, far too close. Gun. Fuck. And Ben couldn’t even risk moving to more fully shield Maddox. His muscles tensed anyway, waiting for permission to leap into action.

Someone barked orders in the foreign language.

Please don’t have a dog. Please don’t have a dog. They might be well hidden, but all it would take would be one half-trained mongrel to flush them out.

A lot of rustling nearby, but their little hideout stayed still. The voices sounded again, mercifully farther away. Retreating.

Ben’s heart hammered against his aching ribs. Now came the truly awful part of figuring out how long to remain still and hidden—the last thing they wanted was a trap. But the longer they stayed completely hidden, the lower their chances of meeting up with their men.

Ben didn’t make the mistake of reaching for Maddox’s hand again, but part of him wanted to, wanted to hold on to the reminder that they were both alive and that was what mattered.

* * *

There wasn’t a spot on Maddox that didn’t hurt in some way. His head throbbed, his leg screamed, his armpits ached from the makeshift crutches, and one arm had gone strangely numb from how he was lying in the dirt. But he wasn’t moving. Wasn’t groaning. And he sure as heck wasn’t humming. The guys on the team loved to give him a hard time about the humming and singing, but when it counted, when the ass was in the cold, wet mud, Maddox could be still.

But it didn’t mean his brain was quiet. Far from it. Ordinarily, when hiding in position as the sniper on missions, he sang in his head without ever moving his lips, old songs mingling with new ones he was trying to learn. Or he’d go over recipes he wanted to tweak. He’d come up with the idea for toasting the coconut for his coconut-banana muffins while in a leaky warehouse in Jakarta last year.

Right now, however, his mind didn’t want to think about cooking, didn’t want to imagine navigating the tight kitchen with the crutches that were almost certainly in his future, couldn’t even stomach water let alone food, and he had no idea when his next meal would be—or if he’d even have a next meal. The hostiles had presumably moved on, but he and Ben were hardly out of danger. And it was hard to sing, even silently, with Ben pressed up against him. Their proximity was sheer necessity, and nothing he hadn’t endured hundreds of times before.

On every single one of those occasions, though, Ben had treated Maddox the same as he would Rogers or Wizard or Encyclopedia. Never once had he grabbed for his hand.

Until today.

Maddox hadn’t let himself think that they could really die out here until that moment, but hell, he must be in rough shape indeed if Ben was trying to hold his hand, if Ben thought that was what he needed. And that was totally Ben’s thought process—to figure out what Maddox needed and wanted and to try to give him that. Ben himself would argue that he needed no tenderness or cuddling. Even his affection, at least what Maddox had witnessed, seemed...purposeful.

And Maddox had recoiled from the gesture. First, because he wasn’t going to die today. Wasn’t going to wallow in fear and self-pity, even for an instant, and second... Well, second was damn complicated, wasn’t it? Because he wanted to hold Ben’s hand, more than anything really, but not only was that fucking deadly—letting his guard down like that on a mission—but it was equally perilous to his stupid heart. And the worst part was that two years ago, had they landed in this tight spot, he might have grabbed back.

Because that was before. Before them living together. Before Maddox’s weird jealousy and unwanted emotions. Before that night with Canaan. Before the second, equally colossal mistake that was entirely Maddox’s own fault, the one that had led them to this months-long tension.

Four months ago

“Another beer?” Ben grinned at Maddox, in his element at his favorite Hillcrest bar.

“Nah. I’m going to go find the head.” Maddox wasn’t much of a drinker, wasn’t a partier. But it had been several weeks of hard training with no days off, and when Ben had cajoled him into going out, Maddox hadn’t been able to say no.

Things had been weird between them ever since That Night, so if a few drinks got them back to normal, Maddox was all for it. But he’d underestimated the awfulness of watching Ben ogle the sweet young things on display—the college guys were out in force for the Thursday night cheap drink specials. They’d been out drinking countless times together, and never before had Maddox gone slightly murderous when Ben flirted and leered.