Page 101 of Men of Fort Dale: The Complete Series

Right, he’d forgotten about that.

He looked around and stopped when he saw a white legal pad on the table. His name was on the top of the page, so he drew the note toward himself.

Hey,

I figure if you’re like the other military weirdos I know, you’ll probably be up at the crack of dawn, long before me. There’s leftovers in the fridge if you want to eat or take it with you. Grab something to drink while you’re there. Probably need to keep hydrated after the night you had.

You probably won’t take them, but there’s some meds in the bathroom if you want them. And if you do leave before I’m up, make sure to lock up before you head out. Nice neighborhood or not, I’m not a fan of leaving my door unlocked while I’m asleep.

Take care of yourself, alright?

Marco

“This guy,” Carter muttered, still trying to shake the drowsiness.

He frowned at the thought. He’d only slept a few hours, but he normally woke up and quickly shook off the fog. That should have been especially true because he was in some strange guy’s house.

Carter looked down at the letter, rereading it with a snort.

A very strange guy’s house.

Carter glanced up at the loft. It was completely dark, and he couldn’t hear any sounds.

He wondered if Marco was an underwear, pajamas, or nude sleeper.

After a moment’s debate, he decided he was probably a nude sleeper but would be wearing pajama bottoms since someone else was in the house. He seemed like that sort of person.

He wrinkled his nose, willing the thought away before he dove too deep into it and let himself wonder what Marco looked like wrapped up in the blankets, face peaceful from sleep.

It wasn’t like if he’d seen Marco on the street or at the bar, he would have turned the guy away.

The guy was cute, though he seemed completely unaware of it.

But it made Carter squirm, trying to think of Marco curled up in bed and wondering what he looked like naked.

Not because it wasn’t an attractive thought, it was just?—

“Weird,” he muttered, setting the paper back on the table before standing up. “You’re being fucking weird.”

He would give the man credit. He’d been right about whether Carter would take him up on his offer for meds. The aches in his face and limbs weren’t bad enough to need anything. Though he would admit, the man had a point about getting water inside him.

Feeling strange as he rooted through Marco’s fridge, he grabbed a couple of bottles.

As he drank the first one, he eyed the leftovers.

By the time he made it back to the Fort, the mess would probably be empty of anything decent.

If he was going to have a halfway decent breakfast without stopping on the way, he would have to take Marco up on his offer.

He stopped as he reached in and realized one of the containers still had the receipt attached. Carter read it and shoved it into his pocket. He wasn’t a complete jerk, not toward someone who was clearly too nice for their own good, so he only took half the leftovers.

Before he’d finished shoving on his boots to leave, he hesitated at the door. Sighing, he let the boot slip off his foot again and walked to the table where the note had been. He glared at the letter, wondering what the hell he was supposed to say.

Finally, he settled on ‘Thanks’ jotted in big letters beneath Marco’s signature.

It was the best he could come up with. He probably could have managed something better if he had been talking to the guy, but he wasn’t going to wait around for Marco to wake up.

He almost thought about leaving his number but decided against it at the last second.

Carter wasn’t sure it was a good idea if he and Marco crossed paths again.

Carter wasn’t exactly blind, and he knew the effect he had on other people and their lives.

He tended to bring nothing but stress and trouble.

Marco seemed a decent sort, and he didn’t deserve to have more bullshit brought down on him.

Snorting, he shoved his boots on before he could get too depressed. He hoped he could make it back to the base and his duties without catching too much flak.

“Grant!” a sharp and irritatingly familiar voice barked his last name.

Carter sighed, tilting his face up toward the sun. He closed his eyes as the heavy footfalls of the sergeant, who apparently was his designated babysitter, marched across the strip of grass in front of the barracks.

Just another few yards, a couple of minutes, and he would have been able to slip away unnoticed. Sergeant Reynolds would have found him eventually, but at least Carter wouldn’t have been busted slinking back on base.

“Morning, Sergeant,” Carter said dryly, snapping his salute when the other man was close enough and holding position.

“Have another late night, did you?” Reynolds asked, hard eyes looking him over.

“Something like that, sir,” Carter said, his voice just respectful.

“Looks like a hell of a lot more than that. What the hell were you told about being on your best behavior?” the other man barked.

Carter smiled, lying through his teeth. “No worries, sir. Just got a little too drunk and forgot how my feet worked.”

The tic in the other man’s jaw was all he needed to know the Sergeant didn’t believe a word he was saying.

Carter had no idea who the hell Reynolds had pissed off further up the chain that he was all but officially assigned to keep an eye on Carter, but he seriously hoped the crime had been worth the punishment.

“I think you’re full of shit, Grant,” Reynolds finally told him.

Carter shrugged, the only shift to his stiff posture. “If I’d got in trouble, you would’ve been the first to hear about it.”

Which was true, though the dark flash of annoyance on the Sergeant’s face told Carter that pointing it out wasn’t appreciated.

Fact of the matter was, Carter had only been at Fort Dale a month, and he’d already found himself in trouble a few times in the city.

Why he hadn’t simply been forbidden from going out, he didn’t know.

Yet it was also true that any further trouble with the law would have immediately been passed to Reynolds.

“Get your ass to the medbay, Grant. Get patched up. And you better fucking hope they don’t find any proof you were fighting or your ass is mine.”

For a moment, Carter considered making a joke, although it would have been far too easy. But if he wanted to have a chance in hell of being able to leave the fort again anytime soon, he knew he needed to keep his mouth shut.

“Get out of my face,” Reynolds barked before whirling away and marching off.

Carter’s lip twitched, but he kept the sneer from appearing.

He wasn’t looking forward to a trip to the medbay, but it was probably better than having to put up with the Sergeant so soon after pissing him off.

That it meant dealing with the perky blond twink that worked there again was the price he had to pay.

It took another ten minutes before he’d crossed the compound to the medbay.

It was quiet. Rows of curtained spaces lined each side of the hallway.

At the end was the office, and a shadow shifted before the blond man appeared, catching sight of Carter and stopping short.

He was average height, with bright eyes.

And if Carter wasn’t so annoyed by his very existence, he would admit the man had a nice face, sharp features softened by a slight fullness to the cheeks.

“Again?” he asked.

“Don’t start with me,” Carter snarled at him.

“Christ, how many grumpy people work at this place? I was seriously hoping you were like that the last couple of times because you were in trouble. Is this just your personality?”

A sigh could be heard before another man appeared from the office.

This one was not blond, his hair almost as dark as Carter’s, though his eyes were a darker brown.

Not quite as dark as Marco’s, and this man, while clearly not averse to the sun, did not have the rich brown tone to his skin that Marco had.

He stopped suddenly when he realized where his head was going.

“Troy, you’re dating a grumpy man. Why are you complaining?” the dark-haired man asked.

“Just because I’m sleeping with?—”

“And living with.”

“Just because I have one of my own and have to put up with yours doesn’t mean I want more of them!”

The dark-haired man rolled his eyes. “Go get your report done so I can have peace and quiet, please. And Sloane isn’t grumpy...as grumpy...anymore.”

“Sure, Dean, whatever you say,” Troy said with a knowing smirk.

Carter watched the blond go, shaking his head. “Does he ever stop talking?”

Dean turned toward him, amusement fading from his face. “So, what happened to your face?”

“I fell down drunk last night,” Carter said without a trace of irony.

Dean snorted. “Sure.”

Carter rolled his eyes. “Look, just do whatever your report says, maybe give me pills I’m not going to take and let me go. Sergeant Reynolds just wants me to admit to you guys that I got into a fight again so he can nail me to the wall…and he can go fuck himself.”

He knew he was growling, but that was fine with him. Carter didn’t need to be poked and prodded for ten minutes while some practically civilian medic tried to get him to come clean about what happened.

Dean cocked his head, smiling. “Aw, that’s cute. Your record did say you haven’t been off deployment for a while.”

“The fuck does that matter?” Carter asked, annoyed at his confusion.

“It means I know how to handle your ass if you irritate me,” Dean told him, smile falling away like smoke. “So get your ass in one of the exam rooms, sit down, shut up, and save your badass speech for someone who’s going to be impressed.”

“Ha!” Troy’s laughter barked from the office as Carter scowled.

“Your bedside manner sucks ass,” Carter growled, stomping into the nearest room and sitting down.

“You want good bedside manners? Then I can get Troy for you,” Dean told him. “Which is what I would have said, but apparently, you don’t want good bedside manners. You want to be treated like some hardass. Shirt off.”

Carter pulled the shirt up before he realized what he was doing. He snorted, tossing it aside. Only certain people could provoke that sort of response from a soldier, especially one as surly and difficult as him.

“You weren’t always a base med, were you?” Carter asked as Dean pulled up a seat across from him and leaned close to examine his injuries.

“Did a tour or two,” Dean said, pushing up Carter’s tank top.

“Combat medic,” Carter supplied.

“Yeah, but if you call me Doc, I’ll find a stethoscope to shove somewhere uncomfortable.”

“Not my Doc, so not gonna.”

Dean’s eyes flicked up to his face, though his expression was unreadable. He grunted a moment later.

“Lost yours recently,” Dean said, as though they were discussing the weather.

Carter gritted his teeth. “Is this part of the examination?”

“Nope, just thinking aloud, bad habit of mine.”

The phrasing caught Carter’s attention, and he squinted at the other man. “You’re?—”

Dean. Marco had talked about his friend who said how difficult soldiers could sometimes be.

“I’m?” Dean asked, watching him.

Carter shook his head. “Nothing. Can I go?”

“Right. So, we’re just going to pretend like you weren’t in a fight last night?”

“Don’t need to pretend.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Right, well, unless you fell on a bunch of people, these aren’t the wounds of a fall.”

“Stairs are a bitch,” Carter insisted.

“Oh, now it’s stairs you fell down.”

“Look,” Carter huffed. He was going to be an idiot, but something in his gut told him he could at least try to be more honest. “It’s not what it looks like, and it’s not what you think.”

“So, not denying a fight then?”

“Not saying I did either.”

Dean snorted. “Your rib is cracked.”

“Fuck,” Carter hissed.

“Fuck indeed,” Dean said with a smile. “But lucky for you, it doesn’t matter why it happened. I don’t have to know why. It’s nice you at least tried to stop lying to me, though. I appreciate that.”

“Yeah. Real fucking thrilling,” Carter said, grabbing his shirt. “Can I go?”

Dean snorted. “Here’s what’s going to happen.

You’re going to take some pills to help with the pain.

And you’re going to take some of them with you.

Then you’ll come back here in a few days so we can see how that rib is treating you.

I’ll pass your condition along to Sergeant Reynolds so he doesn’t end up having you do anything you shouldn’t do. ”

“Like that’s gonna fucking matter,” Carter said, rolling his eyes.

“It will if he doesn’t want me coming after his ass. You let me deal with him. You just take your damn pills and avoid any more stairs for the next couple of weeks, got it?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Carter said, wondering if he could.

“And I wasn’t kidding about taking some meds before you leave. You don’t have a choice,” Dean said, striding out of the room.

“Fucking pain in the ass,” Carter muttered.

“I heard that!”

Carter sighed. His weekend was really not turning out all that great.