Page 41 of Under Cover
“I don’t care if we never do the thing again and you end up spending five years in my spare room,” Garcia snapped. “You look like hell because you don’t get any fucking sleep there. We’re doing the thing, so you might as well sleep at my place. When we’re done doing the thing, you can sleep in my spare room and I’ll help you get a decent place of my own.” He paused, and his words echoed in the SUV. “I meanyourown.”
Somehow, Crosby had lost complete control of the conversation. “I, uhm, was just wondering why the three a.m. bj—”
“Now you know. I wanted to taste your come, and I was afraid that was my last chance. I’m super thrilled it probably won’t be, but now we’re on to another subject.”
Yup. He had zero control over the narrative. “You can’t just adopt me because we had a good night—”
“Good?”
Oh hell. Now Garcia sounded hurt.
“Great,” Crosby corrected.
“Cowboy, you are such a shitty liar. You were honest this morning. Be honest with me now.”
A cab driver narrowly avoided death under Crosby’s grill, and he had a sudden wish they weren’t doing this in morning rush-hour traffic, but he couldn’t seem to escape this conversational quagmire. He couldn’t deny the things he’d said that morning, the absolute possessiveness that had come over him or the need to keep Garcia’s eyes from showing that fathomless hurt they seemed capable of. It had been a time for honesty, a time for rawness, to be real and to confess that he wanted this, thisthingbetween himself and his partner, more than common sense should have allowed. But he was trying to do damage control, trying not to obligate Garcia any more than necessary, trying to slow his fall into a relationship that experience told him would only leave him flat on the concrete and bleeding.
“It was really fucking awesome, okay?” Crosby retorted, his heart still beating fast with the near miss. “It was fucking amazing. But… you don’t get it. Every time I tried a relationship with a guy, it just… just disintegrated. A week of a guy putting up with my schedule, putting up with my job, with not knowing if I could text to break a date, with not being fucking out—and pfft! All that excitement went up in jizz. They didn’t even fuckingspeakto me or look at me or whatever. One of those guys was acop, man. He should have at least gotten a clue, right? I mean, it was worse than the girls. The girls could at least tell their girlfriends I was a cop. The guys, they couldn’t tell anybody shit about anything. So you and me had this fucking amazing moment, and I’m not lying—I wantmore.But I don’t know what’ll happen when we move all my shit into your house and in a week you don’t want a fucking thing to do with me. It’ll be hard enough working with you when you think I’m a piece of shit.”
Garcia was quiet for a moment, and Crosby glanced over at him to make sure he was still good. He’d turned his eyes back to the road—and a good thing too—when Garcia said, “But man, we’ve already done that week. We did that sixmonths. You haven’t left my six once. Not even when you were back doing overwatch and I was out in the field. Do you really think I’m going to desert you now because we had a fucking amazing night?”
Crosby let out a sigh. “But if you do, I won’t have any place to live.”
Garcia’s hand over the console to pat his knee was one of the warmest, sweetest things he’d ever felt.
“Papi, you don’t have any place to live now. At least if we move your shit into my place, you can sleep on a really comfortable guest bed, okay?”
“I’ll think about it,” Crosby muttered, coming up to the garage where the SCTF parked.
“Well, if you don’t give me an answer by tonight, Crosby, I willmeet youat your shitty apartment with the SUV and get your deadbeat roommate to help me move your shit.”
“I just got a new bed!” Crosby remembered.
“Which your deadbeat roommate needs to give him credibility,” Garcia countered as Crosby found the bank of spaces to check the SUV back in.
“And Toby isn’t a deadbeat—”
“If I was in ATF, I could have his place raided and get a commendation,” Garcia told him seriously. “I mean, I like the guy, but anybody at his flat has so much shit in their blood on any given day, you could give somebody a transfusion with it to treat them for chronic pain.”
Crosby had to laugh at that. None of his roommate’s friends had ever done drugsin frontof Crosby. Probably because Crosby had begged Toby not to let them so he didn’t have to pretend not to see anything. But Crosby was under no illusions about how much “chemical enhancement” went into his roommate’s constant parties either.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he muttered as he killed the motor. He looked at Garcia unhappily, perfectly aware this would be the last moment they had to talk about this in private before they became all about whatever was going down at op center right now.
“I am,” Garcia said, nodding vigorously. His expression softened, and for a heartbeat, it was just them and the memory of what had transpired the night before. The first moment Crosby had merged with Garcia’s tight, responsive body filled his senses like wine or chocolate, and Crosby’s heart was singing a steady song of how everything was possible.
“Have some faith, Judson.” Garcia tilted his head beseechingly, his dark eyes tender. “I can’t promise much, but I can promise that by the end of the day, I’ll still feel exactly the same about you as I did last night. That’s all two people got, really. That promise that tomorrow nothing’s going to change.”
Crosby bit his lip, remembering that one day when he’d testified against his partner and everything had changed.
Apparently Garcia remembered too. He gave a quick look around before leaning forward and taking Crosby’s mouth in a short, hard kiss. “Won’t be us,” he said. “I swear. You and me, we’ve got honor in our veins.”
Crosby nodded and backed away. “I’llthinkabout it,” he said, “and let you know at the end of the day.”
Garcia cackled as he let himself out of the vehicle. “Famous last words. Seriously. I don’t even know why you bother.”
Because he’d been burned before, and often, he wanted to retort. But looking at the joy—and the devilment—in Garcia’s black eyes, he didn’t think he could actually say that.
How often could you give anyone—friend, lover, partner—so much joy?