...Garrett had shed his shirt and jeans, preparing to go to bed, when muffled sounds across the hall caught his attention. Something wasn’t right. He hurried over to see what the matter was. Dan tossed and flailed around, in danger of hurting himself with the heavy cast on his arm. He mumbled and moaned, clearly caught in the throes of a bad dream.

Garrett leaned down over the bed and caught the smaller man firmly by the shoulders, leaning his weight into holding him still. “Hey, man, it’s okay. You’re all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you any more.”

Dan heaved and struggled, crying out a desperate plea. “Non, non, s’il vous plais, non! Oh, my God, no!”

Whatever scene he was embroiled in must be horrific indeed. For a tense minute, Garrett wasn’t sure he could restrain the other man’s frantic movements, but finally Dan relaxed slightly. The next moment his eyes opened. For an instant he stared around wildly. Then awareness returned as he seemed to remember where he was.

He shook his head, tears welling in his dark eyes. “Sorry, Garrett. I haven’t done that in a while. I was back in Iraq, the day my outfit walked into a roadside cluster bomb.” He shut his eyes a moment, his face drawn into a grimace of agony. “I wish to God I’d quit seeing that over and over.”

Garrett didn’t know what to say. He could feel the other man’s anguish, knew it as a relative to, yet not the same as, his own pain. How could he help? He did the only thing he could, gathered Dan into his arms and simply held him. What could he offer but the comfort of another warm body, a gentle touch. It was much the same as he’d done for Jason and Janice after their parents died, when one or the other would wake from a nightmare of loss and grief, urgently in need of consolation.

He murmured vague words of comfort, much as he might speak to Mandy when she got nervous during a thunderstorm. “It’s okay. Let it out, let it go. Nothing you can do now…nothing I can do. We have to go on living because Someone Up There decided it wasn’t our time to go. It’s not your fault, and nothing you could have done would have changed it.”

Garrett wasn’t sure that was true, but he couldn’t visualize the fierce and vital man he held doing anything cowardly or wrong that would result in others being hurt or killed in his stead. He sensed Dan was not the type to save his own ass at the expense of anyone else. Somehow Garrett would bet his last dollar on it.

After a while, Dan’s breathing slowed and evened. Garrett started to slip free and lower him back onto the pillows. At that moment, Dan’s eyes opened again.

“I wasn’t asleep, just trying to do like you said—let go of it, back off and get free. I think I’m all right now. Sorry about that, but thanks. It helped…you helped.”

For a long moment they looked at each other, black eyes and hazel, probing the depths of each other’s souls. All at once Garrett realized he was only wearing his Jockeys and Dan had on only a pair of baggy boxers and his casts. Although the casts made it an awkward embrace, an embrace it was, warm skin to warm skin, two muscled masculine bodies intimately close. This was not a kid he held, not a brother or sister, but another adult male. Shock and a surprising sizzle of desire zinged along his nerves.

Dan’s lips, only a few inches from his, drew him like a magnet. He bent, closing that small distance. Garrett’s nose grazed Dan’s and slid past. His lips brushed a stubbled cheek and found Dan’s mouth, warm and amazingly welcoming. Dan’s uninjured arm lifted until he could weave his fingers into the thick hair at the back of Garrett’s neck. Garrett rested on one elbow, but his other hand curled around Dan’s bare shoulder, kneading the solid muscle, feeling the subtle shivers of excitement beneath the hot skin, excitement mirroring his own. When he shifted closer, his cock bumped against the fiberglass covering Dan’s thigh. That jolted him back to awareness.

“Whoa. What the hell are we doing? I hadn’t planned to come on to you, Dan. If this isn’t something you want, tell me now and it won’t go any farther, tonight or ever.”

“Do I look like I’m trying to fight you off? It’s okay, Garrett. There’s something here, a need that’s pulling both of us. I’m not in any position to do this right, but whatever we can do, I’m more than willing.”

A quick glance revealed the pale blue sheet was tented over Dan’s erection. At least the cast didn’t offer a barrier there. Garrett reached down, brushed the sheet back and clasped his hand around Dan’s cock, which had already found its way up through the open fly of his shorts. For a breath or two, Garrett simply held it, savoring this new experience, while he took in the male beauty of the organ, dark with blood and throbbing with the same urgency he felt in himself.

“I’d like to taste you, suck you.” His voice came thick and hesitant.