Page 116 of Under Cover
“Yeah, well, we need to move if we’re going to be ready for tonight. We’ve got people to meet, right?”
Garcia hid his face in Crosby’s shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
Crosby used a finger to tilt his chin up. “Remember that whole idea of us hiding? Us being undercover as a couple while we worked with really good people who wouldn’t judge us?”
Garcia grimaced. “Yeah, I remember.”
“That was a fucking dumb idea.”
Garcia laughed outright. “I had no idea how dumb it was going to be. I swear.”
Crosby laughed with him, his stomach muscles jiggling Garcia up and down on his cock, which was still wedged inside him. Contrary to all laws of physics and human biology, that thing started to wake up, and Garcia gave him an almost indignant look.
“We have toeat!” he complained.
“Yeah, we do,” Crosby told him, shifting him to the side. Crosby’s cock slid out, and a rush of come sealed the fate of the soon-to-be-laundered sheets. Crosby rolled to the side and danced his fingertips along Garcia’s sharp cheekbones. “You and me, we have to go meet our friends and be a couple and let them be together however they want to. We need to have dinner and a good time, and we need to dance and laugh and let Rogers and Hammerstein—”
“Carlyle and Chadwick,” Garcia intoned dryly, “who havestillnot admitted they’re banging.”
“Well, that’s their prerogative,” Crosby said, smiling a little. “When they finally do, we’ll tell them they’ve fooled nobody. But in the meantime, we’ve got to go be happy. Because you don’t go through what we went through and not get some of the happy.”
Garcia’s grin was practically luminous. “Youarehappy, right, Cowboy?”
Unexpectedly Crosby’s eyes burned. “Oh my God, yes. I mean, I thought SCTF was as good as my life was gonna get, but seriously—youmake mesohappy.”
Garcia’s grin never faltered, but he did squeeze his eyes shut with wry humor. “Yay! I rank right up there with work!”
Crosby grimaced, realizing how weak that had been. He kissed Calix on the mouth, and the moment turned unexpectedly tender. “More than work,” he said soberly. “I love you. I love you enough for forever. You’ve got to know that, right?”
Garcia looked up at him soberly. “I love you too, Cowboy. That same way. We’re gonna do great things. I believe it.”
His stomach gurgled, and they both groaned.
“Yeah, yeah—as soon as we get out of bed and eat!” Crosby conceded, and they finally got moving to start their day.
THAT NIGHT,the team met for dinner at a place that served steak and had a banquet room so they’d all fit. Everybody was dressed nice. Natalia had brought her wife, and the two of them looked thrilled to be out on a date in elegant dresses and heels that no SCTF agent could run in. Gail Pearson was wearing a Little Black Dress, and her thick blond hair, always so tightly braided when they were on duty, rippled down her back in a wave. She looked enchanting and beautiful, and Manny Swan—wearing the regulation male uniform of a sport coat and slacks—kept looking at her like he’d never seen her before.
Clint Harding brought hishusband—a thing nobody in the team had known but Natalia until the fallout from the Sons of the Blood trial had made it a thing the press had gone after. Harman Blodgett got all the props for putting on tactical gear and coming to be a badass when he had no reason other than following his husband into battle.
Crosby thought he loved Harman a little more for that, because that moment on the rooftop, when Marcy had been gunning for him and he’d heard Garcia swearing over comms that he was there, had been one of the sweetest in his life.
He and Garcia, they would be okay, as long as they could do their thing together.
Carlyle and Chadwick arrived looking surprisingly good together. Carlyle wore one of those super-tight suits with a little bit of sheen, which told Crosby he wasreallylooking forward to going dancing after dinner, and Chadwick wore the kind of coat and slacks that made him look like a visiting professor.
Dinner itself was delicious, and the conversation had been quick and fun and sarcastic. In fact a whole lot like their conference table talk but with the added personal moments that made this a dinner and not work. Crosby got to see Natalia’s wife, Emily, kiss Natalia on the cheek with nothing short of adoration, and he remembered that file Natalia had put together on why her family wasnotsuspected of being the bad guys, and how it had been a bright spot, a soft moment in a really dark hour.
People needed those bright spots, those soft moments, even people who walked into battle and came out bloody. And hard. And mad.
The dinner place was close to the dance place—Chartreuse’s place—and Garcia had cleared it with Chartreuse when they’d been planning. Having a big group of po-po—no matter what branch—was not always a good thing for business, and while some of the folks in the group fit in with Chartreuse’s club clientele, not all of them did, and it was important to ask.
Chartreuse had been thrilled. Since Christmas, she’d hired both Dani, the young trans woman whose father had been so very lost, and Junior, because his roommates, Kurt and Jesse, vouched for him. She’d said Garcia’s people werealwayswelcome in her club, because they didn’t just make the world safe for the straight, the white, and the rich. They made it safe for everybody.
Toby would already be there—he was DJing for the first time since his night at the Twenty Fourth precinct. Crosby had visited him as much as he could in the intervening two months, helping him with physical therapy, keeping his spirits up. Toby had been so bullied in high school and college, and Crosby was determined to help him keep the best, the bravest parts of himself as he returned to life after almost being bullied to death.
Garcia walked with the rest of the party because Doba and Henderson might need some vouching for, while Crosby stayed and quietly picked up the bill.
Or rather quibbled with Harding about picking up the bill.