[Conduct Unbecoming 01.0] Conduct Unbecoming

by LA Witt

  He’d had me wrapped around his finger from the first kiss. A lot of men didn’t like to kiss when it was something casual, but Eric loved it. In my apartment, we’d barely spoken to each other because even when we weren’t fucking, we were too busy making out.

  I shivered and flipped open one of the folders Gonzales had given me. I perused the forms, but what was left of my concentration had jumped ship, and the words on the pages didn’t make any sense. Not when my hips and back still ached from slamming my cock into Eric until I lost it. Or when the A/C’s cold air brushed the back of my neck and reminded me of Eric releasing a cool, sharp breath just before he swore in my ear and came.

  Or when I remembered, for the hundredth time, that I’d neglected to get his phone number.

  Damn it.

  Eventually, I managed to read and sign everything from Gonzales. I took all of that, along with another stack of similar paperwork from others in the department, to the captain. Then there was a meeting I attended physically but checked out of mentally. More paperwork. More signatures. More wondering what I was thinking when I didn’t make damn sure I’d have the chance to see Eric again.

  Commander Damien Mays, my closest friend on the island, leaned into my office’s open doorway. “Want to bust out of here before the skipper gets back?”

  “Already?” I looked at my watch. Quarter after five? Holy shit, really? Christ. The man had even scrambled my internal clock.

  Pushing my chair back, I said, “Sounds good to me. Who’s DD tonight?”

  “Gonzales,” he said. “She’s waiting for us.”

  “Thank God, because I need a beer.”

  He laughed. “You and me both.”

  “Yeah, you’d better enjoy your freedom while it lasts.”

  “Hey, shut up,” he said, chuckling.

  I closed up my office, and we started down the hall.

  “How’s Noriko doing?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Almost there.”

  “How long does she have left, anyway? Like a month?”

  “About three weeks, according to her OB.” His smile faded a little. “She’s getting pretty uncomfortable, though.”

  “Poor girl,” I said. “Katie was miserable the last month or two.”

  “Yeah, well, thank God Noriko’s not having twins.” He chuckled. “She’d probably have killed me by now for doing that to her.”

  I laughed. “Trust me, Katie was ready to strangle me the second they found two on the ultrasound.”

  “I can only imagine. But as tiny as Noriko is, she might as well be having two.” He grimaced. “The fact that she’s handled it this well for this long? Girl’s a better man than I am.”

  “Yeah, just wait until the day—”

  “Don’t.” He glared at me. “I don’t want to think about that any more than she does.”

  I just chuckled, and we kept walking.

  “So how was your weekend?” I asked.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Setting up baby stuff, mostly. And my mother-in-law came by to make sure I knew every way I’d screwed up.”

  I laughed. “Good thing you don’t understand a word she says, right?”

  Mays snickered. He spoke more Japanese than I did, but he and his wife very carefully kept that fact from her mother. Apparently, that kept his mother-in-law’s direct criticism to dirty looks and sharp gestures instead of lengthy tirades. When she bitched about him to Noriko, he just tuned her out. I wondered how she’d react if she ever found out we both knew exactly what she was saying whenever he and I were drinking beers on the couch while she loudly ranted about him to Noriko.

  “So what about your weekend?” Mays asked. “Do anything interesting?”

  Oh, you could say that.

  I cleared my throat. “Oh, I just relaxed a bit. Did laundry, that sort of thing.”

  “What?” He scoffed. “Since when do you stay home on the weekend?”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I’m not out and about every damned weekend.”

  Under his breath, Mays said, “So what’s his name?”

  I almost tripped over my own feet. He just laughed but didn’t press the issue as we continued into the lobby where Gonzales waited for us. Mays was the only one in the command who knew I was into men, but around coworkers, he didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.

  Gonzales folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes. “Would you two hurry up? It’s bad enough I don’t get to drink tonight, but don’t keep me waiting.”

  “Is that any way to speak to a superior officer?” Mays asked with mock offense.

  “Define superior,” she said.

  “Oh, you’re funny.”

  Laughing, I pushed open the door, and all three of us winced at the rush of hot, humid air as we stepped out of the air-conditioned building. Then we put on our covers and walked across the parking lot to Gonzales’s car. Mays and I left our cars here, and his wife would give us a ride into work in the morning. It wasn’t like any of us ever got drunk on a work night—this was just a beer or two to unwind—but we always had a designated driver. The maximum blood alcohol content in Japan was obscenely low, and it was better to have a DD after two beers than kiss a career good-bye over a DUI. Especially a DUI that counted as an international incident.

  And tonight, Gonzales had drawn the short straw, so as she pulled up to the O’Club, I could barely wait to get into the club and dive into my first cold beer. On the way in from the car, though, I swore at the sight of a familiar red sedan a few spaces over.

  “Oh, lovely,” I said. “Morris is joining us?”

  Gonzales laughed humorlessly. “And this surprises you?”

  “Surprised isn’t the word I’d use,” I grumbled on the way into the club. Morris was one of our coworkers, and where an after-hours beer was a once or twice a week thing for the rest of us, it was a nightly occurrence for him. I couldn’t stand the son of a bitch. I didn’t like him sober, I liked him even less drunk, but there was an unspoken expectation that we’d keep an eye on him. If he got in trouble because of his drinking, that meant a headache and a half for the rest of us, particularly if we all knew he had a problem and let him go boozing on his own. In the military, we are our brother’s keeper, no matter how much of a loudmouthed, alcoholic, trouble-making asshole he is.

  Morris and a few other guys from work had taken over a couple of tables near the bar, so Mays, Gonzales, and I ordered our drinks at the bar, hid our distaste for our colleague and joined them.

  I took a drink and had to suppress a groan as the flavor hit my tongue. Without even thinking about it, I’d made the mistake of ordering an Orion. It was my preferred beer, but this beer wasn’t going to help me unwind when it tasted like the other night. After all, I had just taken a drink when Eric walked into Palace Habu, and in an attempt to cool myself off, I’d taken another long swig. A long swig that tasted just like this.

  Jesus, Connelly. What is the matter with you?

  Good thing I had my dickwad of a coworker around to, just by speaking, put a bad taste in my mouth and drag me right into the irritating present.

  “I don’t like that new kid,” Morris muttered into his beer.

  “Who?” Mays cocked his head. “Ensign Lange?”

  “Lange is great,” Pickering said. “Kid should’ve gone to Annapolis, I’m telling you. I’d bet beer for a year he’ll have his star before he retires.”

  “No kidding,” Mays said. “Come promotion time, I’d bet half my paycheck he makes Lieutenant JG. He’s as good as a shoo-in.”

  “Yeah, well.” Morris wrinkled his nose. “He’s a little light in his loafers, if you ask me.”

  “Good thing no one asked you, then,” I growled.

  He glared at me. “Well, maybe he should come work in your office, because—”

  Mays slammed his palm on the table. “Okay, both of you. You see this?” He picked up his beer bottle and gestured so emphatically with it, he almost unloaded half its contents on the rest of us. �
��This is my first beer of the night. I’m not even halfway through it. Can I get through one fucking beer before the two of you start in on this DADT bullshit again?”

  Morris threw him a sidelong glance. “Sorry, man. Forgot you only have so much time before you have to route a request chit to go out for a beer.”

  “Very funny,” Mays said.

  “It’s true,” Morris said with a shrug. “All women do that. Once they crap out a kid, they keep you on a fucking choke chain. Especially Japanese women.”

  “Oh, knock it the fuck off,” Mays snarled with enough venom to persuade anyone else to shut the fuck up.

  Not Morris, though. “Hey, look, I’m just saying. I’ve been there, so—”

  “Morris. For fuck’s sake.” Gonzales set her drink down. “Can we go one evening without you ranting and raving about everyone on the damned planet? Just, you know, shut up and drink your beer.”

  Morris started to say something else, but a warning look from Mays shut him the fuck up. Maybe the idiot was smarter than I thought.

  I ground my teeth. I swore, one of these days Morris and I were getting dragged out of this place in cuffs. I wasn’t violent by nature, but Morris had a serious anger problem, especially when he was drunk. That was part of the reason he’d only just put on commander after seventeen years. Man never quite knew when to close his damned mouth, which hadn’t done good things to his career. Put a few beers in him, get him spun up over something, and everybody watch out. The only reason we even drank with him was because we could usually settle him down before he got stupid. When he drank alone, especially after his divorce six months ago, an alcohol-related incident was inevitable. Good thing the fucker had never been to the Middle East like everyone else at this table. Combat fucked us all up to a degree, and Morris was enough of a loose cannon without a little PTSD on top of it.

  True to form, it wasn’t long before he started off on another tangent about God only cared what, and I tuned him out. The less I heard, the less likely I was to mouth off myself, and the less likely we were to end up going toe to toe.

  The rest of the group carried on around me, laughing about something and bitching about work in between listening to Morris rant, but I drifted off into my thoughts. The e-mail exchange with my ex-wife still bugged me, even hours later. I hated how cold, terse and businesslike we were these days, and I deeply resented her for that. It takes two to make a marriage work but only took one to make it crash and fucking burn. Well, no, I guess it did take two to make our marriage fail. Maybe three, or four. I never did find out if he was the only one. Didn’t really want to know. I’d made my mistakes in our marriage, but the fatal blow? That was hers. Theirs. Whatever.

  Jesus, I was supposed to be having a relaxing drink after work, and what was I thinking about? My ex? Fuck this. I was here to unwind, not get more pissed off.

  I took a long swallow of beer. Oh, wasn’t that convenient? A less infuriating diversion at the ready, right there in my glass?

  With cold Orion on my tongue once again, my mind wandered back to Friday night.

  As soon as we’d left the club, I’d had a sneaking suspicion Eric and I wouldn’t make it to my bedroom. In fact, I was surprised we made it as far as we did. It had taken every bit of restraint I possessed not to pounce on him in the taxi. Getting up the stairs, knowing we were away from prying eyes, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t wait another second. Holy fuck, pinned against my door and falling apart while I sucked his cock, Eric was almost unbearably sexy. And when we finally got into bed, and he begged me to—

  Morris slammed his beer down with enough force to snap me out of my pleasant haze. “Fucking president. Motherfucker just wants to fuck us all over.”

  “All right,” Mays said. “I think you’ve had enough. You stopped making sense about fourteen fucks ago.”

  “Fuck you,” Morris said.

  “He’s right,” Gonzales said. “It’s only Monday, man. You have to work tomorrow. Quit drinking like it’s Friday.”

  Morris made a clumsy, flippant gesture. “You sound like my fucking wife.”

  “Yeah, well,” Gonzales said through clenched teeth. “At least she had the option to divorce your idiot ass. I’m cutting you off.” She shoved her chair back, stood and stomped off to the bar, undoubtedly to ask the bartender to please cut Morris off.

  About damned time, as far as I was concerned. He was up for orders in a few months, and I hoped to God the Navy sent him to some base in Bumfuck Nowhere so he could be someone else’s problem. I didn’t know how much more I could take before he wore my beer.

  Mays waved a hand in front of my face. “You all right, man?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I cleared my throat, then forced a smile as I shifted in my chair. “You know, just shit with the ex-wife.” I immediately regretted playing that card within earshot of Morris.

  Morris laughed bitterly and made a sweeping gesture with his beer bottle, nearly dropping it in Mays’s lap in the process. “That’s about all they’re good for, am I right?”

  I rolled my eyes and drained my beer. I hated having a bad divorce in common with him. My shitty relationship with my ex-wife kind of took the wind out of my sails whenever I tried to argue with him about ex-spouses and how they weren’t all the spawn of Satan. So I just didn’t argue with him this time. The mood I was in, much more of his mouth and we were going to blows.

  I just ordered another Orion and let myself get lost in the taste of Friday night.

  Chapter Five

  Eric

  Come on, Eric. Pay attention.

  Muttering a string of profanity only a Sailor could muster, I pulled down a side street so I could turn around. I could kind of say I was still getting used to navigating Okinawa’s confusing tangle of roads, not to mention driving on the left, but the fact was, I’d missed my turn because I flat-out wasn’t paying attention.

  It’s been almost two weeks. It was a one-night stand. Get over it and move on.

  Once I was back on the road, I very carefully pushed all thoughts of a certain one-night stand out of my head until I had made the turn and was on my way into Camp Shields, the Seabee base a few kilometers down the road from Kadena. I’d already been here three times today, and this was the second time I’d missed the turn. Neither time did it have anything to do with not knowing my way around.

  I pulled up to the guard shack at the gate, and the sentry—MA3 Royal—waved me through without checking my ID. I was his watch commander and I was in a government vehicle, so there was no need for him to stop me.

  Part of my job entailed doing post checks: driving to all the places where my guys were on post, making sure everyone was doing their job, shit like that. I’d already been to White Beach, Awase, and Tengan Pier, and now was checking on the boys at the gate here at Shields again. Of course, my visit had nothing to do with the fact that it was well past lunch thirty, and the Enlisted Club was about two blocks from the gate.

  I parked my vehicle in the parking lot across the street, then walked to the office that was thirty feet or so behind the guard shack.

  Inside, MA3 Diego fucked off on his iPhone, MA3 Grant typed away at the computer at one of the two desks, and MA2 Colburn was just coming back in from, I guessed, a smoke break.

  “Hey, MA1,” Colburn said.

  “Hey, guys.” I took off my cover. “Anything new and exciting over here?”

  “Besides Grant writing tickets to anyone who comes near the gate?” Diego muttered.

  Grant put up his hands and shrugged. “Not my fault they keep running the stop sign or forgetting to signal.”

  “Whatever.” Diego rolled his eyes. “I swear, you’re the only MA in this section that gets wood from writing tickets.”

  Grant flipped him the bird.

  I laughed. To Diego, I said, “You do know that’s your job, right?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s not like the tickets actually do anything. If we fined people and shit, then I’d be writin
g them left and right.”

  “Dude,” Colburn said. “It’s not like you’d get a commission if we fined people.”

  “No, but they might slow down and stop breaking the law.”

  “They do when I give them tickets,” Grant said. “I almost never write the same person two tickets.”

  “That’s because you’re an utter dick when you make a stop,” Colburn said. “I wouldn’t want to be pulled over by you either.”

  “See?” Grant beamed. “Result.”

  “He’s got a point, guys,” I said.

  Diego quirked an eyebrow. “So you’re saying we should be assholes when we stop speeders?”

  I shrugged. “Well, don’t make it a felony stop or anything, but you don’t have to act like their best friend either.”

  Colburn snorted. “Yeah, we’ve seen how you make stops.”

  “What?” I chuckled. “Oh, come on. I was totally polite to that lady.”

  “Sure you were. Would you talk to your mom like that?”

  I shrugged again. “If my mom suggested I shove my ticket book up my ass and then go fuck myself, yeah, I might.”

  Diego laughed. “That chick really said that to you?”

  “In not so many words, yes.” I looked at Grant. “You have the logbook over there?”

  “Yep.” He picked up the binder and handed it to me.

  While I perused it, making sure entries were done correctly and nothing had happened that I should have been notified about, Diego said, “You ever going to get out and party, MA1?”

  “With you guys?” I eyed him. “Yeah, sure. Let me just add ‘get strung up for fraternization’ to my to-do list for the week.”

  “What do you do, though?” Grant asked. “Just sit at home with your dick in your hand?”

  Diego snickered. “Or someone else’s?”

  “Oh, very funny,” I said in spite of the chill running down my spine. “No, I usually just spend the evenings on the webcam with your mom.”