Page 3 of Men of Fort Dale: The Complete Series

Marco chuckled in his ear. “Gotta say, I was a little impressed that you beat me.”

“Not even my family can eat more curry than me,” Marco said.

“Well, in one way anyway.”

“True. For someone who hasn’t been with anyone in a while, you certainly didn’t seem to have too much difficulty.”

That wasn’t strictly true, though Dean wouldn’t correct him.

In the six months Dean had been back on American soil, he’d taken a few opportunities to have fun.

No one said that being madly in love with your best friend meant you couldn’t get laid, and in fact, Dean had found it helped.

He wasn’t going to tell Marco about his liaisons, however, any more than he would tell the man about his complicated emotional relationship with Sloane.

Dean leaned back in his seat, grinning. “I guess I made a good impression then.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Hey, you’re not alone. I found myself a little impressed too.”

“Well, that’s always good to hear. A guy likes to hear when he’s doing things right.”

Dean wasn’t going to argue. He and Marco had only been seeing one another for a few weeks, and last night had been the first time Marco had made a real move.

Sure, the man hadn’t wasted the chance to get in a good kiss on their first date, and a few instances of kissing and heavy petting reminded Dean of high school.

Yet Marco had waited until the night before to try anything further, which Dean considered a mark in his favor.

And despite the worries and doubts in the back of his mind, he’d enjoyed himself.

Marco chuckled. “I think the real question I have to ask is, when do I get to see you again? Unless you were planning on loving and leaving me.”

Dean laughed. “You’re right. The past three weeks have just been me waiting to get into your pants. I’m just using you for your body.”

“I’m going to take a leap of faith here and say you’re full of shit.”

Dean grinned. “You’re right because I’m actually using you for your knowledge of excellent food places. Seriously, that’s four dates now, and the food has never been anything short of amazing.”

Marco let out a laugh. “My mom always told me the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

“And his pants, it seems,” Dean said.

“Eh, truth be told, I’ve found that’s not the hardest part of a man to get into.”

Dean snorted. “Well, something’s hard.”

“And what fun when it is.”

Troy’s voice quipped from behind Dean. “Oy, which one of your boyfriends are you chatting with now?”

“Boyfriends?” Marco asked, sounding amused.

Dean rolled his eyes, glad he’d warned Marco about some of the people in his life ahead of time.

It was hard enough for Dean to put himself out there and date someone else.

The last thing he needed was for someone’s big mouth, say Troy’s, to come along and ruin the whole thing with some stupid comment.

Dean turned to Troy. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

“Yeah, but I figured I’d warn you that your other boyfriend is heading this way. Just spotted tall, dark and grumpy out the window.”

“I’m guessing he means Sloane,” Marco guessed.

“The one and only. He’s got an appointment today,” Dean explained, logging out of the computer and pushing up from the desk.

“Dare I ask when I get to meet him?” Marco asked.

Dean winced. “I would really prefer you and I deal with...you and me before I bring anyone else into the mix.”

“One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me the story behind you two,” Marco said.

Dean blinked. “There’s no...story. We’re friends. He’s my best friend.”

“And all friends have stories. Hey, don’t worry about it. I was trying to give you a hard time, okay? Text me when you have a free minute later, alright? Maybe we can compare schedules and try for date five. Might be my lucky number,” Marco offered.

“Yeah, I can do that. Maybe you can introduce me to something I haven’t had yet.”

“That’ll be a feat. I’m pretty sure you’ve had everything possible.”

Dean chuckled, letting the man get off the phone so he could face the rest of the day.

He knew Marco was aiming toward something more serious between them.

Something that wasn’t just casual dating.

The thing was, Dean wasn’t sure how he felt about that and kept putting off thinking about it too hard.

He knew there was no point in hanging onto the delusions about him and Sloane, so he’d forced himself to start dating again for the first time since he’d left for boot camp.

On the other hand, some part of him wasn’t willing to let go just yet.

In truth, he hadn’t expected to find someone like Marco when he’d put himself back on the market, and it was complicating things in Dean’s already cramped head.

A familiar growl echoed down the hall. “Get the hell out of the way, Troy.”

Troy sighed. “Sloane, c’mon, just...let me do this real quick.”

“You can sign me in without asking me the same stupid questions you ask me every time. The ones I answer the same way every time. Just put in the same answers.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Sure it is, or did you forget how to write?”

Troy sighed. “Dean?”

Dean chuckled, stepping out of his cubicle and into the main hallway.

Troy stood under the shadow of Sloane’s hulking form.

Troy was looking sufficiently annoyed while still managing to look unnerved.

Dean was used to people being put off by Sloane, who was as scary acting as he was scary looking.

When Dean had first spotted Sloane in his group at basic training, he’d thought the guy was the meanest son of a bitch Dean had ever seen and pitied the man who ended up partnered with him.

Only for it to be him.

Dean smirked. “Problems?”

Troy huffed. “Can you deal with this?”

Dean winked at Sloane. “Answer the nice man’s questions so we can get on with this.”

Sloane rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and kept them there. “I’ve been sleeping fine. No weird pain or thoughts. My mood is the same as it’s always been, and no, I haven’t wanted to kill myself. Happy?”

Troy perked up. “And have you had any dietary changes we should know about?”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking vegetarian now,” Sloane said.

Troy looked down at his tablet, nodding. “Right, no changes there. Alright, then I’ll leave you in Dean’s capable hands and go busy myself as far from your evil glare as I can without getting my ass in trouble.”

Dean glanced down the hall toward the front door of the clinic. “You mind sweeping?”

Troy’s steps hesitated. “Again?”

“I’ve already done it six times today. You’ve done it once,” Dean pointed out.

“You and your obsession with keeping the sand out,” Troy huffed.

Sloane closed his eyes, and Dean waited until Troy had hurried out of sight before speaking.

“You know he’s just doing his job.”

Sloane eyed him. “If something was different, I’d tell him. Don’t know why we have to do this every time I come in here.”

“Because the military likes their lists, and they like their lists to be followed, or we get our asses chewed up one side and down the other.”

“You could always fill it out for me. No one would know any different.”

“Yes, but then how would I terrorize him and annoy you?”

Sloane grunted. “Fine, mission accomplished.”

Dean chuckled, motioning to the nearest curtained cubicle. “C’mon in.”

Sloane walked to where Dean had indicated and began pulling at his clothes before Dean had drawn the curtains.

Dean didn’t bat an eye, used to service members and their complete lack of aversion to nudity.

Basic training destroyed most of the modesty a soldier might have, and deployment took care of the rest. Most men he treated or looked over were no different from Sloane, stripping down to nothing without thinking about who might be around.

The clinic's privacy curtains were as far from their minds as it got.

By the time Dean had drawn the curtain around the cubicle, Sloane’s shirt was off and he was shimmying out of his pants.

Dean realized he’d left his tablet back at the desk but shrugged it off.

Even at first glance, he could tell not much had changed about Sloane since the last exam, and Dean would have heard about anything abnormal from Sloane’s lips beforehand.

“At least you wore underwear this time,” Dean commented, waiting for Sloane to hop on the table.

Sloane smirked. “Wouldn’t want to make Troy feel bad again.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “That’s my favorite thing about you, how humble you are.”

“And you had me thinking it was my sunny personality.”

If there was anything Dean could say about Sloane, it was that his friend possessed great self-awareness.

Sloane knew he was a surly bastard, he just didn’t care.

Yet, he also knew he wasn’t lacking in the looks department, but didn’t particularly care about that either.

Despite his beautifully bronzed skin, a mixture of his time spent in the sun and his Latin blood, a musculature that was both impressive yet not too much, and features that were rugged without being blocky, Sloane was never arrogant or stuck on himself.

In truth, sometimes Dean wondered if Sloane was even aware how attractive he was.

Thankfully, in this setting, Dean was immune.

Dean snagged Sloane’s arm, turning it so he could look at his forearm. “Got more done?”

Sloane glanced down, blinking in confusion before nodding. “Oh, yeah, just some shading.”

Sloane’s entire left arm was a canvas of ink.

Dean had alternated between watching the tapestry of tattoos spread across his friend’s arm to not seeing Sloane for days or weeks at a time and being surprised by the sudden appearance of another one.

Sloane wasn’t a man for symbols, so most of his tattoos were animals, snakes twined around the barrel of a firing gun, tigers leaping from the depths of vibrant flames, and a huge hawk materializing from thick clouds of smoke.

Just about any majestic predator Dean could think of was there, starting just above Sloane’s wrist and working their way up his arm and over his shoulder.

“You’ve run out of arm,” Dean noted.

“That’s why I got another one.”

“Mmm, and yet you elected to go over your chest,” Dean pointed out.

“I mean, there’s space there, it works,” Sloane said.

Dean chuckled, shaking his head as he pressed his fingers to Sloane’s wrist and counted.

He didn’t need to track the clock's second hand over the bed, but he watched it anyway to be more precise than simply making a trained guess. Sloane remained still as Dean pressed his fingers beneath the man’s defined jaw, opened for Dean to inspect his mouth and throat, and allowed himself to be carefully manhandled while Dean checked him over.

“Is this exam part of the list they love so much?” Sloane asked.

Dean laughed softly, listening to Sloane’s breathing. “You know it.”

Sloane rolled his eyes, waiting until Dean was done before speaking again. “Doesn’t inspire confidence, though, does it?”

Dean looked up, bemused. “How so?”

“Well, if their whole thing is ensuring we eat right and do our workouts, why the constant checkups?”

Dean chuckled. “Because General Winter loves his lists more than anyone, and he wants to make sure everyone is healthy.”

Admittedly, Dean wondered about the checkups, which were required more often than Dean thought necessary. Then again, without the frequent checkups, he wouldn’t have caught the first sign of melanoma on a captain a couple of months back.

“General Winter is just cautious,” Dean continued.

“Some might call that paranoid,” Sloane said with a grin.

Dean smirked. “Some, huh? Someone like you?”

“I would never have such an unkind thought about our General.”

“Just like you wouldn’t eat the last of my ice cream I accidentally left in your freezer,” Dean snorted.

“I’m telling you, there’s a thief on this base who’s out for nothing but ice cream...and cookies.”

Dean looked up, eyes widening. “You’re the one who ate the bag of cookies off my counter? I thought I did a bit of sleepwalking or night eating and didn’t remember.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sloane said in what Dean thought was the fakest of innocent voices.

Dean scowled. “You’re a shit. I’m going to put your charts back and try to forget you’re a dirty dessert thief. Get dressed, you animal.”

Sloane’s chuckle followed him out of the room. “Yeah, but I’m your animal.”

Didn’t Dean wish that were true?

Sloane had dressed by the time he returned, and only the slightest flicker of regret entered the back of Dean’s mind when he saw. It was gone just like that, and he held out his hand again to take Sloane’s arm.

Dean looked him over. “Just come off a double?”

“Shows, huh?”

“A bit, yeah.”

Sloane didn’t bat an eye when the needle drove beneath his skin. “Yeah, stuck with a jackass all night, too.”

“You always say that. Simmons?”

“Yeah. Jackass.”

Dean chuckled. “Going back to sleep, then?”

Sloane nodded. “I’ll get a few hours in, but then I’ve got the night to myself. You?”

“If you can believe it, this will be my second day in a row with a normal, single shift.”

Sloane snorted. “A miracle. Doing anything tonight?”

“Mmm, wild orgy.”

Sloane smirked. “Get all your slots filled?”

“That’s kind of the point of an orgy.”

“Alright, smartass.”

Dean grinned, capping the injector. “No, got nothing to do, why?”

“Maybe come on over, and we can watch some shitty action movie, drink beers and chill?”

It had been a while since their last movie night.

It was almost exactly as Sloane had detailed.

The two of them found some movie, usually a bad one, and sat around, drinking beers idly and spending time together.

The ritual had begun when the two of them had been on watch together, staring up at the sky and talking about their lives.

When they’d graduated, it had become nights spent in the barracks, playing cards and talking.

Now that they had their respective places, they could spend actual alone time together, doing absolutely nothing.

And they were the highlight of Dean’s week.

Dean winked, going to dispose of the injector. “It’s a date.”