Luke sat on the edge of the bed in the second guest bedroom down the hall from the atrium; Samuels slumped in the chair by the window, both men waiting for the other to speak. Finally Luke started the conversation.
"Have we brought the wrath of the US Army down on us now, with me missing and you being AWOL?"
Samuels frowned; he hadn't really looked on this whole case as him being AWOL. Still, Luke had a point. "I can't see that they'll take it well."
"When you say 'not well'?"
"I run Black Ops, some internal investigations. That's why I was placed on this case."
"Like going undercover?" Luke asked.
"Yeah, something like that. It wouldn't be the first time I went off the radar." He sighed, worrying his lower lip with his teeth and standing to stare out of the window at the water of the Aegean below. "What I heard at the base and why I told you to keep things to yourself, I had this feeling, a gut reaction. This whole setup," he floundered, not clear enough about his suspicions to explain them easily. "It's almost as if Stewart was off his meds, and 'the voices' had him. Mythical weapons," he grumbled. "None of what he is doing there is sanctioned and that 'office' he interviewed you in? Looked like a set from a really bad 1950s espionage movie. He's as much off the grid as I am."
"Was it him that sent you to babysit me at the start?" Trust the professor to cut to the chase.
"In a nutshell." Samuels caught sight of Alex standing on the thin strip of beach. He was staring out at the ocean, his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, still bare from the waist up. Samuels turned, telling Luke good night and arranging to talk in the morning, and then slipped out of the room. He hurried next door to his own room where he resumed his vigil over Alex who stood outside the huge villa on the sands between them and the sea.
Watching was something Samuels did well and Alex provided a perfect focus. He observed as Alex first stretched then stepped through the intricacies of an advanced kata, the series of graceful movements countered by powerful, focused punches and snap kicks. There was a silent grace in the tall figure moving from one pose to another, perfection in balance and symmetry. When he completed a second iteration of the kata, Alex turned and scanned the house from his viewpoint before making his way to the nearest door. Samuels followed the sound of his footsteps through the hallways until he heard him stop at Luke's door. The two men seemed to have formed a real connection if the heated looks they'd exchanged earlier in the evening were anything to go by.
Samuels smiled sadly, startled as he did so.
He missed Griff. Missing someone was a new sensation for Christopher Samuels. It cut through him, a sudden wash of loneliness, its edges bitter-sharp in comparison to the three days of peace he had found with his new lover. He'd known the last time he'd re-enlisted that his current tour of duty was his final one. He had a decision to make; and the memory of those three days and nights in England might very well help it along. Maybe now was a good time to decide on the life he wanted for however long he had left on this earth.
Thoughts of Griff inevitably connected to the situation that surrounded himself, Luke, and Alex. This led to imagining Griff possibly being in danger. He hesitated, uncertain of what path to take. He really had no safe way of contacting him, no way of telling him to be careful, to warn him what to say and what not to say. He felt low, tired, and irritable, and he knew sleep would be a long way off.
Samuels spent most of the night just standing staring out of the window, imagining Griff close behind him, holding him.
* * * *
Luke was on somewhat of a high, spending time standing at the window, looking down on the same vision of Alex first standing and then progressing through his kata on the sand below and beyond his own perch.
What happened earlier had shaken him to his very core. This man had Luke's name cut and burnt into his inner thigh in a language over two thousand years old. That fact alone was enough to send chills skittering down his spine. While Luke itself was a name of Greek and Latin origin, it was not a familiar one, nor was it a name found in mythology. The derivation of MacKinnon was so completely divorced from the Greek and Roman tradition it would be impossible to imagine it as something a human would have cut into the boy Alex became.
Luke had never felt sensations such as he had when Alex touched him. Even now he twitched occasionally when tiny nips, little electric sparks, danced on his skin. He was swollen and hard just from watching the beautiful man who had crashed into his world move effortlessly through a kata on the sand below his window. Luke pulled open his jeans, hand firmly around himself and so damn close to release after watching Alex. He lost himself in a fiery haze created from memories of their first meeting only a little while before and the vision of Alex's body in motion on the beach. He used the fluid collecting at the tip of his cock to slick his fingers, tracing a damp trail, firm and insistent, in the quickest way he knew to get off. The memories were blinding, the intensity of Alex's touch and the whiteout as he lost it against him, the muffled scream in his head. In what seemed to be only a few seconds, Luke came again, his back arched, his head against the cool glass.
Breathing heavily, he watched as Alex turned and looked straight up at his window, his eyes focused on where Luke stood even though it was unlikely he could see him. They stood connected as Luke sagged against the glass. Then Alex broke the connection by lowering his head and walking toward the house.
Cum cooling on his hands, Luke stumbled back and crashed onto the bed. He wiped his hands on a towel and let it fall to the floor. The night breeze through the open couple of inches of the window was cool on his overly sensitized skin. Alex had looked up as Luke reached the peak of his orgasm; at the very highest point of coming so hard it took his breath, Alex had looked up at him and he had known.
Luke fell back, his head hitting the soft pillows, his jeans rough and scratchy against his bunched boxers. Irritated, he pulled off the rest of his clothes. Finally he was completely naked under the lazily moving ceiling fan, his dick still impossibly half hard and his head full of images to catalogue in a sleep that just wasn't happening.
What was Alex to him? What was the connection?
He closed his eyes, willing sleep to come. Luke was startled, but not completely surprised to hear the knock on his door. He knew who was on the other side. He could sense Alex, the connection sparking even as he called out a simple "come in".