Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  Tank unfastened his pants and lowered the edge enough to show his left hip. A colorful map of bruising had started to form, and Tank could swear he saw the impression of the edging stripe running sideways across his hip. Major Sadler had really slammed him down on that thing.

  Lev whistled and tugged on the pants to see the rest of the leg, which was equally colorful, but not nearly as nasty looking. John had gotten in a couple of good hits right above the knee.

  “You should have a doctor look at that,” Lev suggested.

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?” Lev kept tugging on Tank’s pants, either in the most awkward sexual advance ever or in a search for more bruises. Tank wasn’t exactly Mr. Smooth himself, so he wasn’t sure. He chose to ignore the fact that Lev’s hands were in potentially naughty places, and he refocused on the conversation.

  “Why would I go to a doctor for a bruise? I mean, sure, I did that at fifteen, but at the time someone had dared me to flash a girl, and my doctor was a girl, so I waited until I could hear her coming into the exam room, then pulled down my pants and acted like I just had an itchy spot on my ass. She was oddly unimpressed.”

  Lev laughed. “Okay. Well, I find your ass very impressive, although I should warn you that our doctor has no sense of humor. Flashing him could lead to fatal unpleasantness, and since he’s Deborah’s husband, the unhappy would pretty much follow you everywhere if you’re working with us.”

  “I feel pretty safe that no one will murder me, because body disposal is a bitch. In case you never watch those true-crime things on television, dragging other people into the murder plot never ends well. It’s always best to kill and dispose of your own bodies. Although having help with the bodies is helpful.” And Tank really wished he were joking, but he had been on the frontlines of the body-disposal end of demon fighting. Having a partner was nice, but trusting someone enough to let them help you with a body… not easy.

  Lev finally gave up on his search for more bruises and shook his head fondly. “You make me laugh.”

  “As long as you’re laughing with me and not at me, that’s good. Wait.” Tank made a show of looking around. “I’m not laughing.” The joke would have worked better if Tank had kept a straight face, but he couldn’t. Lev’s grin was like a bad cold—infecting everything it touched.

  “Before you, I thought Clyde was a meshugener. I think he just lost his crown. However, I still think you should check in with medical.”

  Tank looked down and poked the edges of the bruise. Oddly, Lev was the one to cringe. “It’s just a bruise. I’ve had worse.”

  “It’s black.”

  “Bruises are supposed to be black.”

  “No. No, they aren’t. I’ve seen blue bruises and purple bruises and green bruises, but black bruises mean serious damage.”

  Tank rolled his eyes. “Bruises are just bruises. I worry more when I don’t see the bruise. The kind of bruise that leaves the skin looking okay, but then it makes your whole leg swell up like a watermelon and any sort of pressure leaves you throwing punches at your best friend just to try to stop the pain…. Yeah, that’s the bruise I worry about.” The very memory was enough to make Tank ill.

  Lev turned serious. “Tank, that’s the sort of internal damage that can kill you.”

  “It was a bruise. And hey, that bruise was way worse than this bruise, and it healed fine.”

  Lev blinked at him owlishly for a moment, and Tank had the impression that Lev was searching for words. “I will be warning Dr. Anderson that you don’t spend a lot of time taking care of yourself. I may also warn him that, from the sounds of it, you’re either clumsier than me, which is saying a lot, or you regularly throw yourself off cliffs.”

  “What?”

  Lev’s frown deepened. “Tank, you’re describing life-threatening bruising. When you have that sort of injury, the swelling can block blood flow and cause gangrene. Someone should have taken you to the hospital if you had that kind of injury, and you’re acting like it happened all the time.”

  Tank looked down at his own leg. “It’s bruising. Bruising, by definition, is not serious.” He said it, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

  “I hope you still love me after I rat you out to medical.” Whoa. That was an odd way for the “love” word to fall into the conversation. The second the words were out of his mouth, Lev froze. Tank waited for the denial and the verbal flailing, but Lev left the words flapping out in the wind.

  “I hope you still love me after I put Nair in your shampoo for ratting me out,” Tank finally warned him.

  Lev’s smile returned, even if it was a little shaky. “Don’t worry. I deal with Clyde. I can take care of myself when it comes to sophomoric, puerile jokes.”

  Tank made a mental note to buy a dictionary.

  “Just how bruised are you?”

  Tank stepped back and considered Lev suspiciously. “Are you trying to invent reasons to get me out of my clothes?”

  “Maybe. Maybe I just want to make sure you aren’t about to drop dead.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” Tank promised. “If I prove that, do you think we might find something else to do for the night?”

  Lev blushed all the way to the tips of his ears. Clearing his throat, he offered a quick, “I think so.” Then he flashed Tank a smile that had Tank scrambling to get out of his shirt.

  Chapter Seven

  TANK LAY on his stomach on Lev’s couch in nothing but his underwear, but Lev seemed more interested in poking bruises than in actually doing anything sexy. “You’d better be hard back there, or this will do horrible things to my manly ego,” Tank warned. His own cock was more than a little unhappy about being stuffed under him and then ignored, especially when Lev’s warm hands brushed across Tank’s over-warmed skin.

  “Oh, trust me, your manly ego is perfectly intact,” Lev assured him dryly. “I should be more concerned about your health, though. Did you think to tell John to take it easy?”

  “Um. No. I need to know what I’m really facing. In my experience, bad guys don’t usually pull punches, and if they do, it’s because something bigger and badder is about to stomp all over you.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Lev sounded weary. “However, the way you keep coming up with this John-level battle wisdom, I’m starting to believe in reincarnation.”

  “Huh?” Tank looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Lev’s crotch and impressive bulge before the man shifted to hide his erection. Tank sighed. Sex was so much more fun than awkward conversations. However, Lev was a talker.

  Lev gave him an odd look. “How do you know so much about preparing for battle?”

  Tank’s brain went blank. Clearly his mouth had been running ahead of his good sense at some point, and sadly, Tank hadn’t even realized it. “I don’t,” he finally lied. Shit, shit, and more shit. “I mean, yeah, I battled with bullies in high school. Do you know how hard it is to get through high school with the name George? I’ve been called Georgie Porgie and Curious George, which seems unfair because I’m not all that curious. I’ve had monkey noises made behind my back, and at one point this guy called Xerxes held me over a toilet to inform me that my name was pathetic. The irony was so great that my head almost imploded. I could have died in that bathroom, stroked out from an overload of irony. And when I told the principal about the toilet incident, he suggested that I not be so annoying, like annoyingness is a defense for bullies. I don’t think my principal actually knew what he was doing, so, you know, I guess I have suffered some battle damage.” Tank stopped when he realized that Lev had an alarmed expression on his face. “Too much?”

  “Maybe a little,” Lev agreed. “It’s just that you threw a lot of facts out there. It’s a little… hard to sort all at once.”

  Tank nodded. That was him—hard to sort.

  “So, you had a lot of trouble with bullying too, huh?” Lev’s hands stopped poking Tank’s bruises and rested against his back, two warm islands that sent shivers through Tank’s fr
ame.

  “Oh yeah. It didn’t help that the toughest person in my friend group was a girl.”

  “Yeah, me too. I was really young in high school, and I had the bad sense to tell people I loved math. It made me a target. The girls would stick up for me, and then it would get even worse. There’s a cultural expectation that the male will be the aggressor, and when you don’t live up to expectations, high school can be rough.”

  Tank folded his arms under his head and sighed. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think I gave Marie that same speech, only it came out more like ‘Seriously, stop helping me before you get me killed.’”

  “That’s a fair translation.” Lev gave him a sad grin. Tank was scoring points on ruining the mood tonight, that was for sure. Between the dead parents, the bruises, and the discussion of bullying, Lev was going to need antidepressants by morning.

  “I guess I’m surprised,” Lev mused. “You look like you would have been a jock.”

  “Me?” Tank snorted. “Yeah, not so much. Two weeks on the football team my freshman year, and the coach was ready to kill me. It took most of basic training to get me to put one foot in front of the other without falling down.” Tank shook his head at his own inability to run an obstacle course. In his defense, he rarely found lines of tires in the middle of a battlefield. It just didn’t happen. Now, if they’d made an obstacle course with lines of trash cans, commercial dumpsters, and various minions of hell, he would have aced that sucker. He was an expert at navigating an alley while avoiding demons.

  Lev’s hand stroked up to Tank’s shoulders and rested there against the muscle. Tank might have been flexing just a little bit. It was weird to think that he was with someone who thought he looked tough. The only person aside from Lev who Tank had ever been with had definitely acted like Tank should be the girl in the relationship, although to be fair, they’d both been young and didn’t really understand how to be gay. They’d tried living out the sorts of relationships they’d seen on television. Roger had been the tough guy, and he’d pushed Tank to be girlish. Of course, he’d also wanted Tank to be invisible, and look how well that had turned out. Tank had managed the impossible—he’d turned someone straight.

  Lev’s hands distracted Tank—how they followed the line of his shoulders and down onto his arms before pulling back to trace the muscle shaping his back.

  “Everyone knew I was bisexual in high school,” Lev mused, his voice husky. “Honestly, though, I avoid dating most of the time. If you saw the kind of dominant and aggressive people who are drawn to me because I’m not dominant…. Clyde’s always telling me I can’t be trusted to pick my own dates, and he has a point. He’s had to rescue me from one or two aggressive relationships, including holding my hand as I filled out a protective order. Now that’s emasculating.”

  “Men can be assholes.”

  “Actually, some were women. When I took the job on this project, I decided the cultural rules of the military are even stricter than those of high school. I didn’t want to repeat the worst two years of my life, so I decided to avoid crushing on guys and play it straight, as they say.”

  “Wait. Two years?” Tank looked at Lev. “You made it through in two years? Seriously? I barely made it through at all.”

  “Schooling is not the only form of intelligence.”

  Tank snorted. “Yeah, but it’s the one people care about. So, if you were so far in the closet, why come out now?” Tank had to really concentrate on his words, because Lev’s hands were roaming over his body, stopping only at the waist of his boxers.

  “I think most of the base is at least bisexual at this point. After all, there aren’t that many women on base, and apparently several of them paired up with each other. I think the base can handle a little more homosexuality.”

  “That’s true. Although sometimes when people are really insecure, they get worse,” Tank pointed out.

  Lev sighed. “You have an uncanny ability to stick a needle in the soft spot of things. However, if someone decides to pick on me, they have to get through Clyde, John, and Deborah, so I figure I’m safe. And if someone says anything to you….” A shadow of doubt flickered across Lev’s face.

  “Hey, I’ve been dealing with bullies my whole life. I’m not exactly helpless.” Tank didn’t need Colonel Clyde Aldrich or anyone else to hold his hand. As far as he was concerned, aliens were still way less scary than demons and hell dimensions. Yeah. Very less scary. And homophobic soldiers didn’t even hit his scary radar. “Besides, I would have to care about their opinions or be scared for my life before I worried about them and their special type of stupid.”

  Shaking his head, Lev shifted backward so he could sit on the coffee table. Now Tank could definitely tell that Lev was interested. Oh, so very large and interested. Tank realized that Lev had said something that he totally missed.

  “Huh?”

  The look Lev gave him was almost indulgent. “I said that when you say things like that, you don’t sound twenty.”

  Tank rolled onto one side, ignoring all his sore muscles. “Really? How old do I sound?”

  “About ninety. Most people aren’t that sure of themselves until late in life.”

  “You are,” Tank pointed out.

  Lev took a deep breath. “No, no I’m not, Tank. I spend more time than I should looking for Clyde to tell me he respects my opinion, and when he doesn’t, I….” Lev sighed. “Don’t assume I’m not neurotic.”

  “That goes both ways. I signed up for the military because I couldn’t deal with disappointing my friends. When I thought my friends didn’t want me around, trust me, I was pretty much an idiot.”

  Lev leaned forward and ran a finger over the worst bruise, the black mark where Major Sadler’s takedown crossed over one of the worst of John’s hits. “I can think of another reason for calling you an idiot.”

  Tank laughed. “Funny enough, most of my friends think I am an idiot. But none of them ever looked at me the way you are.” Lev’s pupils had widened until the blue of his eyes were rings around the black center. He looked hungry.

  “I would think a lot of people would look at you like this,” Lev said with a slow smile.

  “Not that many, actually. Well, to be honest, one. But there was a lot less talking involved, so I’m just hoping that this is going where I think it’s going.”

  “You’ve got some pretty major bruising. We could just cuddle on the couch.”

  If Lev had offered a night of cuddling up front, Tank would have been all for it, but this felt too much like being pushed to the side because he wasn’t strong enough. But he wasn’t used to honesty in relationships, and he didn’t quite know how to explain any of that.

  “Tank?” Lev asked after a minute or so, his voice soft.

  Tank braced for serious relationship damage resulting from unwanted honesty in three… two… one. “If you don’t want sex, I’m totally okay with that. However, I did want to touch you without the alien hormones making me. I know this is fast, and I’m in favor of cuddling. Love it. It’s my favorite Saturday morning hobby. But if you’re avoiding sex because you think I can’t handle it, that’s sort of shitty.”

  “Excuse me?” Lev drew back.

  “I know my own body, so saying no for me is….” Tank didn’t know how to finish that.

  “I’m not saying no for you. I’m concerned about your bruises and hurting you.”

  “And I’m asking you to trust me when I say I know my own body.” Tank stared into Lev’s eyes.

  Lev drew a slow breath and nodded. “I take it that you’ve had too many people try to tell you what you could handle and what you couldn’t.”

  “One would be too many, but I can count way, way more than one who’ve done exactly that.” Tank rested his hand on Lev’s cheek. “I know it looks bad, and I wouldn’t enjoy anything particularly athletic, but I want to have sex.” Tank held his breath and avoided thinking about all the ways Lev could take offense at Tank’s attitude.

  “
I did want to sleep with you, assuming you don’t plan to lecture me if I have to shove a pile of books or clothes off the bed first.”

  “I don’t care if we have sex on top of them.”

  “If you got a corner of a book in a bruise, you sure would. Do you always top?”

  “Um….” Tank frowned. He was a little freaked by the thought of anything as big as a cock going up his butt. When he had “bottomed” with Roger, it had involved fingers and being physically on the bottom while they did a lot of rubbing. Tank suspected Lev used the term a completely different way.

  “Hey, it’s okay if you are. Everyone’s entitled to their own preference, and trust me, I do not mind bottoming every time,” Lev hurried to reassure him.

  “I’m more clueless than preferencing,” Tank admitted.

  “Oh.” Lev’s eyes got large.

  “But trust me, I’m interested. In fact, my thigh muscles kind of hurt, so I’m thinking if I tried to top, I wouldn’t be very good.”

  “I don’t mind doing something less energetic.” Lev was starting to blush now. Tank wasn’t used to blushing sexual partners. Hell, he was barely familiar with sex partners at all.

  “I really want to be physical, I just can’t do the….” Now Tank felt himself blushing. “I usually do less talking and more jumping in with both feet without knowing what I’m doing,” Tank admitted.

  “And I talk too much,” Lev mused. “It sounds like we both have some flaws to work on, but I don’t really want to work on them right now.” Lev started unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you coming?”

  “Oh yeah.” Tank pushed himself up and moaned as his muscles complained.

  “If you keep making that noise before we’ve started, I’m either going to be complimented or I’m going to call medical.”

  “Lev.” Tank pulled out the tone adults would use to warn him away from a subject he had no business talking about. It felt weird to be doing the warning, but Lev nodded.

  “Okay, that’s fair. I trust you to make your own choices.”