“Nick!” Kelly gasped.

“That’s right. What’s the only thing you’re thinking?” Nick growled.

“You inside me,” Kelly recited breathlessly. “Your big fucking dick in there.”

Nick used the tip of his finger to press at those muscles but didn’t go deeper, fighting his orgasm. The idea of being inside Kelly when either of them came was almost too much.

Kelly clutched at him, squirming under him, writhing against his cock, pushing at Nick’s finger and forcing the muscles to fight back. “Fuck, Nick!”

“Come for me,” Nick whispered. “Scream my fucking name.”

He bent and kissed him, a brutal clash of tongues and teeth as Kelly bucked under him, crying out against his lips. It wasn’t Nick’s name, but it was close enough. The first jolt of his orgasm hit and he pulled his finger away, holding Kelly down by both arms as he rutted against him, adding hot spurts of cum to the sweat already mingling between them.

He pushed up to his knees to take his cock in hand and stroke himself through the rest of the orgasm. They both watched greedily as he came all over Kelly’s lower abs.

Kelly’s cock was pulsing, cum dripping down its side. He reached to finish himself off, but Nick batted his hand away and scooted down until he could lick that cum off and suck the head into his mouth. Kelly’s hand landed in his hair again, and he shoved up into Nick’s mouth as he shot the rest of his load down Nick’s throat.

When Kelly’s fingers finally loosened their grip, Nick collapsed beside him in the bed, gasping in time with Kelly’s gulps for air.

“Jesus fucking Christ, O’Flaherty,” Kelly finally stuttered.

“You hurt?”

“My fucking . . . mind. My mind is blown.”

Nick laughed weakly and sat up. “You want water?”

Kelly grabbed his arm, stopping him and pulling him off balance so he toppled back to his side. He gazed up into Kelly’s eyes in the harsh lamplight. Nick had always loved Kelly’s oddly colored eyes, but he’d never imagined he’d be looking into them like this.

“‘You don’t say his name, you say mine’?” Kelly repeated incredulously. “I almost came right then, where the fuck have you been hiding that?”

Nick grinned and rested on his elbow. “Oh God, Kels, what have we done here?”

“I don’t care. We’re exploring this further.” Kelly waved a finger in Nick’s face.

“Okay,” Nick agreed. He reached across Kelly’s body, bending to kiss him as he grabbed the bottle of painkillers off the bedside table. They continued the kiss as Nick popped the lid off the bottle, and Kelly moaned plaintively when Nick pulled away.

“Fucker,” Kelly muttered.

Nick broke one of the pills in half and offered one half to Kelly with a cheeky grin. “In place of a cigarette?”

Kelly took the pill, watching with narrowed eyes as Nick popped the other half in his mouth. They shared a bottle of water, laughing as they used one of the spare pillows to clean off.

As they were settling down to sleep, Nick began to build the pillow barrier between them again. Kelly reached out and stopped him.

“I think if I can handle what we just did, I can take it if you accidentally roll over in the middle of the night.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Kelly nodded and grinned. “Are you too butch to cuddle?”

Nick rolled his eyes and laid himself out, scooting closer to Kelly and resting his head in the crook of his arm. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow,” he muttered, closing his eyes and letting the exhaustion take over.

Kelly laughed, running his fingers through Nick’s hair. “Oh yeah, we will.”

Kelly woke when the warmth of the sun touched his face. He turned away from it, reaching out across the bed. His hand hit empty space, though, and he finally opened his eyes and raised his head.

“Irish?” he said, voice hoarse from sleep.

Nick was gone, though, and his side of the bed was cold under Kelly’s fingers. Kelly struggled to sit, using the covers and the mattress to pull himself up.

“Loved me and left me. Typical O’Flaherty,” Kelly muttered. He probably should have been a nervous wreck waking up alone after last night, especially since Nick was a proven flight risk when it came to relationships. But then he glanced at the clock on the table out of habit and saw a note there instructing him to call for help if he needed it. He smiled at Nick’s blunt, no-frills handwriting. His pills were lined up for him, and a glass of water sat within arm’s reach.

He managed to drag himself out of bed and make it to the bathroom without too much trouble. Wiping his stomach clean with a damp rag and brushing his teeth was all the effort he put into his appearance, though.

He was wiping some other guy’s spunk off his stomach. Jesus. It wasn’t just some other guy, either. It was Nick. It was his best friend. It was his best friend he’d always thought was straight until a year ago. What did that even fucking mean for him? Could Kelly still call himself straight? Was he gay now? God, he hoped Nick had some answers for him because Nick was the only person he could think of to even ask these things.

He turned to examine himself in the mirror. “Really?” he whispered to his reflection. He nodded and began to grin without meaning to. “Okay then. You stupid asshole.”

He pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a ragged T-shirt, but he had to sit on the end of the bed and rest after he was dressed. He was hard-pressed not to laugh at himself. Too weak to dress himself without a breather, but not too fucking weak to beg his best friend to fuck him.

He caught sight of the pajama bottoms he’d been wearing last night, crumpled at the foot of the bed where he’d kicked them. His stomach fluttered, and again he was surprised by the reaction. Nick had been good. Very good. Jizz-in-your-pants good. Everything about it had been good, and Kelly was shockingly okay with that. What made him kind of want to throw up was wondering how Nick was taking it.

He winced as he stood, fighting past the pull as he shuffled toward the stairs. The painkillers hadn’t kicked in yet, and mornings were always the worst. He stood at the top of the steps, looking down. It seemed like a long way without someone there to catch him if he fell.

Nick appeared at the bottom of the staircase, peering up at him. “You need help?”

“I thought I didn’t,” Kelly said with a grin. “I might have been wrong.”

Nick took the stairs two at a time, coming to the step below him and letting him lean on his shoulders. Nick’s arm slipped around his waist, and Kelly’s entire body shivered. Nick’s scent, the way he gripped Kelly’s shirt, the warmth of his body, all brought back memories of last night with a confusing rush of sensations.

“You too stubborn to call for help now?” Nick muttered.

“I guess.”

Nick glanced up at him, frowning. Kelly was silent as they fumbled their way down the stairs. He couldn’t quite catch his breath, and he wasn’t used to the way his chest kept filling with butterflies.

When he’d asked Nick to kiss him last night, he’d never anticipated this lingering result.

He didn’t get a chance to study Nick’s face again until he was easing into his recliner. He looked up as Nick bent over him. Nick didn’t seem flustered. He didn’t seem nervous or scared or confused or any of the other myriad of emotions Kelly had felt in the last two minutes. But then, when had Nick ever looked nervous?

“Doc?” Nick said pointedly.

“Huh?”

“I asked you if you wanted food,” Nick said with a smile. “Are you okay?”

Kelly nodded, closing his eyes and grimacing as he tried to get comfortable. He jumped when Nick patted his cheek.

“You hurting?” Nick asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

Nick nodded, his frown deepening. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, voice going softer.

Kelly grinned slowly. That intimate tone of voice, talking about what they’d done last night, was something he found surprisingly sexy.

“Kels?”

Kelly ran a gentle finger over his bullet wound and shrugged. “It bled a little. Maybe a stitch pulled loose or something.”

Nick’s gaze dropped to Kelly’s wound, and his face paled. “Shit.”

Kelly reached out and ran a hand over Nick’s palm, making sure Nick was looking into his eyes again before he spoke. “I wasn’t feeling anything last night but good.”

Nick looked both relieved and amused.

“What are you fixing?” Kelly asked to get Nick’s mind off how delicate Kelly still was. Nick was an exceptional cook. They’d discovered that when they’d been stationed at Lejeune and had all gone in to rent a house together. Nick’s job had always been to cook.

“What do you want?”

Kelly shrugged, shaking his head. He wasn’t really in the mood for food.

Nick sighed and sat on the edge of the coffee table, his hands clasped between his knees. “This is last night catching up to you, isn’t it?” he asked, voice grim.

Kelly’s breath caught. He made the mistake of meeting Nick’s eyes, and he was caught by them, transfixed by their color, by the earnest concern in them.

Nick inhaled deeply. “There’s nothing I can say right now that won’t be awkward.”

Kelly began to laugh. “I know it. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I kind of think we do,” Nick said. “Eventually we’ll have to. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the feeling of having something hanging between us.”

“Neither do I,” Kelly whispered.

“And right now there’s a wicked big thing hanging there.”

Kelly snorted.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Kelly blurted.

Nick shrugged, looking around the room with a little smile. “I feel like I took advantage of you being drugged.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I feel like I did,” Nick insisted.

“Yeah but, if you hadn’t, you’d be feeling guilty for telling me no,” Kelly argued.

“No I wouldn’t,” Nick said. A smile pulled at his lips. “I’d be regretting telling you no and probably very frustrated, but . . .”

The admission warmed Kelly all the way to his toes. “So that’s how you do it,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I just learned the secret to the O’Flaherty charm,” Kelly said, beginning to grin. “You just . . . stun the other person with honesty.”

Nick chuckled, his cheeks beginning to flush. But he didn’t look away. They stared at each other, getting lost in the familiarity for long seconds before Nick leaned closer. “Are you okay, Kels? And I don’t mean the hole in your chest.”

Kelly nodded. Then he frowned. “No, actually.”

Nick’s face clouded over, his brow furrowing and his eyes apprehensive.

“See, every time I think about you now, I get these butterflies,” Kelly explained, fluttering his fingers at his chest. “And it’s weird because it’s you, and you’re you. But I like it too. And . . . I like that it’s you. So I’m not sure what to do with that.”

Nick licked his lips, leaving his tongue at the corner of his mouth like he always did when he was thinking. Kelly’s eyes were drawn to it briefly before he tore his attention away and focused back on Nick’s eyes.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Nick finally said.

“How about telling me it’ll pass? Or that it’s just the drugs. Or almost dying. Come on, O’Flaherty, I know you have half a dozen excuses at the ready to use for things like this.”

Nick was silent, chewing on his lip.

Kelly’s smile fell. “Don’t you?”

“I’ve never run into a thing like this,” Nick admitted.

Kelly cocked his head. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

Nick laughed. “Butterflies whenever I think about myself?”

“Don’t play word games with me, smart-ass. The meds haven’t kicked in yet.”

Nick sighed and contemplated his hands. He dragged his thumb over the scar on the back of his hand. “I think it’s unproductive to talk about it until you’ve recovered a little more.” He looked up, forcing a smile to cover the hint of fear Kelly could see in his eyes.

Kelly wanted to push, to get past that smile and see just what Nick was thinking, what he was afraid of. Because the prospects last night had opened up were all parading past Kelly’s mind, and he liked what he saw. He needed Nick to be on the same page with him, though, and Nick obviously wasn’t yet. Kelly knew one thing for certain, and that was that Nick wouldn’t be pushed, he wouldn’t be bullied, and he sure as hell wouldn’t turn that page faster if Kelly tried to do it for him.

So Kelly just nodded. “How about pancakes?”

“With M&M’s?”

“You have some?” Kelly asked, his eyes going wider and his mouth beginning to water.

Nick gave him a sly grin and stood. He patted Kelly’s head as he walked by him, heading for the kitchen.

“Wait a minute,” Kelly grunted, reaching out to grasp Nick’s arm. “That’s all I get the morning after?”

Nick stutter-stepped and backtracked to look down at Kelly. “What? I gave you drugs and I’m fixing your breakfast on a tray, what more do you want?”

Kelly grinned and gave Nick’s arm a little tug. He could see Nick biting his tongue when he smiled, and something about it kicked Kelly’s sex drive into gear. “You’re really going to make me ask for it?”