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  Cam's thoughts veered back to the idea of the injury. If someone had told him Mason was hurt like that, he thought he would have been hard-pressed to hold himself together. The longer they were involved, the tighter the bond between them grew, and Cam was slowly discovering how fierce his attachment was to his lover. If the government ever got their collective heads out their asses and killed off DADT for good, he would be so ungodly relieved. Otherwise he might have to make a choice he didn't want to face. The U.S. Navy would lose.

  ***

  "We're going to meet in the middle," said Danny from the doorway of the ICU cubicle.

  Mason looked up from the stretcher where he was arranging blankets and supplies as he readied it to transport Jonas. "Middle?" he asked. He was reaching the end of coherence in a way that ranked up there with the long ago marathon shifts of his residency.

  "Cam's bringing Jonas' girlfriend down from Frederick. We're flying up to Norfolk and we'll meet at the complex in about six hours or so. You know once we get in the air, it'll just be the two pilots, plus you and me with Jonas."

  Mason blinked and nodded. Getting Jonas transferred to the stretcher required multiple people. In another few minutes, three other members of the hospital staff showed up. Mason knew it wasn't really their fault, but these people seemed to think touching Jonas in any uninjured area was just fine. There had been an atrial flutter and drop in oxygen sats when Jonas' breathing became erratic. Mason had managed to soothe Jonas' body to relative calmness afterward.

  "Peter's going to meet us at the airport," Danny continued. The staff people had departed, and Mason and Danny had another few minutes to wait for the ambulance to arrive.

  "Oh, that's a good idea."

  Danny pushed Mason down onto the stool, and dropped to one knee in front of him. "If you put yourself in danger, I'm going to be pissed."

  "This is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm okay. I've eaten every few hours. I'm not going to pass out or anything. I'm just really tired," Mason assured him.

  ***

  In the air, Danny kept watch on Jonas while Mason sprawled in a seat a few feet away. Anybody else probably would have been asleep, but Mason was too nervous about the whole flying thing. Even though his eyes were closed, Mason fidgeted, hands clenching on the arms of the seat frequently.

  What was it with healers? Danny had seen both his partner, Peter, and Mason push themselves dangerously past exhaustion in their care for the injured and dying. They did things very few could comprehend much less match, but damn, at what cost? At least Danny was familiar enough with a healer's need for calories to burn to keep an eye on Mason. Fingers crossed, he could let Mason relax, as much as he was likely to, for the entire rest of the flight.

  All the portable monitors attached to Jonas showed a nice steady pulse and good oxygen sats, so Danny took the opportunity to call Peter on his satellite phone.

  "Tell me things are going well," Peter said, when he picked up.

  "It could be a lot worse. Jonas is still in and out of a light coma according to Mason, but his vitals are stable, especially now that we're all tucked away thirty-five thousand feet above well meaning but clueless Navy medical people," replied Danny.

  "I'm really hoping we've made an end run around the problem that killed Isabelle."

  "I think so. It would probably have been a whole hell of a lot worse without a healer."

  "Speaking of healers, how's my mule headed apprentice doing?"

  "Pot meet kettle," Danny teased.

  "That bad?"

  "He's wiped out, but I don't think it's anything that twenty hours of sleep and a couple good meals won't solve. He didn't get all hot and sweaty or pale and shaky or show any of the warning signs of a serious crash."

  "Good. Any idea how long until you land?"

  Danny glanced at his watch. "About ninety minutes I think."

  "Trevor and I will be there when you land. We borrowed an ambulance from one of the local rescue squads. Would you believe I floated a request for buying one of our own across Bottman's desk and he didn't blow a gasket?"

  "Cool. I'm willing to bet he rubber stamps it. The whole nightmare of Isabelle's death is actually having some beneficial repercussions."

  ***

  The entrance procedure was more involved than what Sarah Quilleran was used to on a base. Cameron Bradshaw had driven her from Frederick, Maryland to the southern part of Virginia, specifically to a high security complex located on the fringes of a town called Suffolk.

  Cam showed his ID, had his thumbprint scanned and even still radio communication was needed to confirm that he was allowed to bring Sarah in with him.

  There were a number of buildings scattered along a T-shaped path. Cam parked beside the one on the far left.

  "This is the medical wing. Peter Vithoulkas is the head of Division P's medical team. He and one of the other staff members went to the Norfolk airport to meet the jet that's bringing Jonas up from Florida," Cam explained, leading her inside.

  He led her to the corner of a huge room that looked half ER and half medical office. "Do you want something to drink? A soda? Coffee?"

  "A bottle of water would be good." She was loathe to admit anything else would probably contribute to the hard tangled knot it felt like her stomach was tied in.

  ***

  Trailing behind the gurney that was being pushed by Danny and Peter, Mason trudged up the hallway to the infirmary. Inside, he saw Cam with a tall, brown haired woman dressed in BDUs. She had a tight, closed off expression on her face, but Mason saw the flicker of anguish as she watched Jonas being wheeled in.

  Across the room, Peter crooked a finger at the woman, and she slowly crossed the room.

  Mason headed toward Cam, who immediately enfolded him in strong arms. "You look pretty wiped out." His hand cupped against the side of Mason's neck as he drew Mason into a long, soft kiss.

  "I'm okay. Danny's been watch-dogging me and making sure I eat," Mason replied, sensing the worry from his partner.

  "Still… You've been at this for something like thirty-six straight hours; at least I caught a little sleep on the plane, each direction.

  "There wasn't really a whole lot I could do about it. The risk was too high to leave him unattended, and it's not like I was going to crawl in bed with him," Mason teased a little. He was still feeling like he'd run a marathon.

  "You damn well better not," Cam replied with a wry smile.

  "I did manage a little rest on the flight up here tho…" Mason stopped in mid-word. After a day and a half of healing and monitoring Jonas, there was a fairly strong psychic connection between him and his patient even when he wasn't touching Jonas. He felt the flutter of some kind of a conscious response from Jonas from across the room.

  A dozen feet away, Sarah had been talking very softly to Jonas, holding his hand, touching his face, doing all the things that Peter must have suggested, trying to draw Jonas back into reality. Something must have worked.

  Mason inclined his head in the direction of his patient. "I think we hit pay dirt." Cam followed Mason's gaze.

  Jonas's eyes were droopily open and he seemed to be looking at Sarah. She kissed the fingers of the hand she held, and Jonas mumbled something Mason couldn't discern.

  Peter and Danny were watching, too. Peter crooked a pair of fingers at Mason and Cam. They went to talk with him.

  "I think she was the connection he needed," said Peter.

  "Yeah, it looks like it. I got him up to the surface of consciousness a couple of times, but he was so disoriented he couldn't keep at it. I wasn't about to press the issue. I'll arrange for his shoulder repair in another day or two," said Mason.

  "I talked to Sarah some on the drive down. I think she's got some really decent raw psi talent but no training. I got the impression that Jonas is the one who got her to face up to what she has at all. She's a tough cookie. Any other person I know would have caved into tears at some point ," commented Cam.

  "Which probably means when
she breaks, it could be epic. I'll keep an eye on her, too," said Peter. "In the meantime, drag your partner out of here and disconnect him before he's the one having a meltdown."

  Mason rolled his eyes at Peter, and flipped him the finger.

  Peter grinned a little. "Huh-uh, that's Danny's privilege."

  ***

  It was weirdly comforting that Mason and Cam had spent enough time at the Division P complex to have a set of quarters assigned to them. There was always the possibility that it could be used by other employees if the complex was excessively busy, but that rarely happened. A locker in the corner of the small suite held a few changes of clothes and some toiletries.

  "Which is more important? A shower or sleep?" Cam asked. Mason was sitting on the bed, staring vacantly at the wall. For a moment Cam almost panicked. He'd seen Mason go catatonic, not unlike Jonas, a couple of times when traumatic and stressful events had impacted him.

  "Uh… sleep," Mason said slowly.

  Cam let out a small breath of relief at getting a reply and sat down on the bed beside his partner. "Do you want some company?"

  "Yes."

  Mason let Cam strip him, and they both crawled under the blankets. Cam noted that Mason was asleep almost as soon as he was horizontal. That was okay, Cam understood. He was satisfied just to be holding Mason in his arms and he wondered if Sarah felt something similar regarding Jonas.

  ***

  In the infirmary, Jonas had been transferred to a standard hospital bed. He was still tethered to IVs and monitors but he was groggily awake. He could tell that he was doped with pain killers because his shielding was nonexistent. It didn't matter. Sarah sat at his bedside, holding his hand. Jonas felt profound relief that the person he wanted most was beside him. It took him a minute to notice a tear sliding down Sarah's cheek.

  "Sarah? Babe?" he said. "If I'm at the complex, I'm safe."

  She was silent for awhile, and he realized she was mentally stomping her emotions back under control.

  "If you cry, I promise I won't tell anyone," he whispered.

  "Soldiers don't cry."

  "Yeah, they do. If you had died when you got shot, there would have been a hell of a lot of tears on my part," he confessed.

  "Are you going to be okay? Really? Bradshaw, the man who brought me down here said you were in bad shape. And truthfully Jonas, you still feel really wrecked to me. Not to mention you're burned and bandaged and all."

  "I swear, I'll be all right, eventually." Jonas murmured. The few moments of feeling coherent and awake were slipping away.

  "Jonas?" Sarah voice cracked a little.

  Jonas' eyelids were leaden, but he saw Peter cross the room. The healer touched Jonas' throat very lightly.

  "He's okay. He's just exhausted," Peter reassured Sarah. "Just let him sleep. Later I'll even make arrangements for you to sleep here with him."

  Jonas felt Sarah stroking his face as he slid into sleep.

  Chapter Two

  I left the boxes in the den, was what Cam had said. Mason's opinion was "left them smack in the middle of the doorway so you can fall over them." He had to take a wide step over top of the boxes just to get into the room.

  "You could have pushed them out of the way," Mason commented.

  "I'd just brought them inside when Danny called."

  "So what's in them? About half your clothes are already here."

  "Game stuff, some books, some DVDs and some odds and ends. I thought about the whole dishes and kitchen stuff, but I'll probably put that in storage since you already have the usual things."

  "Okay, why don't we clear off a couple of shelves and I'll figured out where to shift some of my books. We'll probably have to get the couple of bookshelves you have over here fairly soon." Mason knelt down and opened one of the boxes. It was packed full of Xbox games and the gear for attaching it to the TV. "Damn, how much of this stuff do you own?"

  "I dunno, maybe forty games. What exactly do you think I do with the nights I don't spend with you? I've never been real big on the bar scene, and so much TV just sucks."

  "I… I guess I didn't think too hard about it. I read, or surf the net or build furniture when you're not around," Mason said. Cam gave him a funny look, with his lips pressed together.

  "Are we going to drive each other bat-shit if we actually live together full time?" Cam asked slowly.

  Mason stood up. "I don't think we're going to know unless we try." He curled a hand against the side of Cam's neck and rubbed a thumb along his jaw. "I do know that I love you and want to be able to see you every day. And I already know you have this freaking weird habit of turning off the water when you brush your teeth." He looked into Cam's blue-gray eyes and leaned in for a kiss.

  Cam met him halfway and they stood there in a liplock for a least a minute before Mason finally broke for air.

  "I have another question for you," Mason said. "Since you'll be declaring to the base that you're changing housing, are we clearing out my office and turning it into a bedroom, ostensibly for you?" It wasn't something he wanted, but there was a limit to how far he wanted to endanger Cam's career.

  "No."

  "Are you sure about this?"

  "Things are changing, but even with DADT still technically on the books, they can't ask me if I'm sharing a bed with my roommate. If, and it's still an if at this point, I invite somebody over who's from the squadron, I'll worry about what they think later," Cam replied.

  "Okay. You pull stuff off the top two shelves over there and I'll go rearrange some stuff in the office to make room.”

  ***

  When Cam lifted a row of books off the shelf, several photos fluttered out. He set the books in a stack on the floor and picked up the pictures. One was of a dark hair girl who Cam didn't recognize but thought she bore a resemblance to Mason; another was Kyle Marrin, Steve Viletti, and Mason in front of an obviously new sign in front of their orthopedic practice. The last photo was the one that puzzled Cam. It showed Nathan Carter, who was an old college buddy of Mason's and a tall man with dark wavy shoulder length hair and a neatly trimmed full beard. Holy shit, on second glance Cam realized the man with the long hair was Mason.

  "I piled some stuff from my desk over in front of the closet. Some of it's really old. I didn't realize I still had a whole bunch of zip disks from about a decade ago. I don't even have a zip drive anymore, so I'm going to have to take them to work to use one of the older computers there to even see what's on them," said Mason, coming back into the den.

  "I guess that's one of the benefits of moving frequently, I purge and throw away stuff pretty regularly."

  "What are you looking at?" Mason came over and peered over Cam's shoulder.

  "A picture of you. When did you ever wear your hair that long? Or do the beard thing? You shave damn near every morning."

  Mason gave him a grin. "My senior year in college. I was in full out rebel mode, waiting to hear which med schools might accept me."

  "God, that's such a hot look on you."

  "Meaning I look like chopped liver these days?" Mason dead panned.

  "Hell no." Cam laid the photo on the books and pushed Mason back against the wall. "You are still the hottest guy I've ever known." He nipped at Mason's lower lip. "Now I'm going to have fantasies of running my fingers through your long, thick hair while I fuck you into the mattress."

  "Hmm, new kinks of yours I didn't know about? Is this hair fetish a by-product of past girlfriends?"

  "Maybe, I don't know. Your hair's so amazingly thick to start with, the idea of tangling my hand in it while I kiss you…"

  Mason smirked, spread his legs and pulled Cam tight against him. He tilted his head and kissed Cam long and slow. Their hips lined up enough to press their cocks together. It was a pleasant grind, enough pressure to give some friction but too many layers of clothing to get any real satisfaction out of it. That was okay; Cam wasn't in any hurry.

  ***

  The digi-cam fabric of the BDUs was heavy ag
ainst Mason's fingers as he held Cam in his arms. It brought back the memory of a day and half ago when the two of them had furtively comforted each other behind a closed door in the hospital in Pensacola. If they had been a hetero couple they could have at least shared a kiss in public.

  Mason squashed the frustration into the back of his mind and focused on the moment they were sharing now. The soft brush of Cam's mouth, the hint of razor stubble, the bumping of noses on cheekbones as they kissed was both familiar and arousing. Mason cupped his hands against Cam's butt, pulling him tighter, letting his fingers knead at the muscles there.

  Cam's hands slid up Mason's arms, wound behind his neck, and stroked his hair. His lover's psychic shielding was thinning and Mason could feel the level of Cam's want jumping another notch.

  "We have a bed, you know…" Mason murmured, nipping at the edge of Cam's jaw.

  "Yuh-huh, but I'm busy," Cam complained.

  "Mmm, okay." Mason pulled Cam's T-shirt loose and slid a hand up the warm skin of Cam's side. Cam groaned a little. Tracing around to Cam's spine, Mason ran his middle finger down the vertebrae slowly, pausing for a moment at the waist to slip his hand inside Cam's pants. Glutes flexed and then relaxed allowing Mason to reach all the way to the base of Cam's spine. He skimmed the crinkled surface of Cam's entrance, and that drew a low guttural sound from Cam.

  "Unh Jesus…" Cam mumbled.

  Mason slid his opposite hand between their bodies and palmed the hard length of Cam's cock before popping the buttons at the top of the BDU pants. It only took another moment to push the fly down. He could feel the dampness of the fabric of Cam's boxer briefs against the backs of his fingers. Slipping a hand down into the underwear, Mason stroked Cam's cock as he teased Cam's ass. Cam rutted and ground against him, leaning into the pressure of Mason's hand.