They're dozing on the couch to the rain rhythm when Rick first asks, voice sleep smudged and rough against Drew's temple. It's early on a Sunday, Drew is just off the night shift, and some dumb movie, muted, throws confetti across the dim interior. His limbs are heavy without the urgency to move, to be anywhere other than pressed tight to Rick's chest, the weight of an arm across his chest, a comfortable anchor against any residual desire for movement. Drew hums, noses along the column of Rick's throat, before he settles deeper into the space where neck meets shoulder on the cusp of a good sleep.

"'m serious," Rick says as he strokes his hand down Drew's torso and under the threadbare grey t-shirt only to rest once again over his heart. "Let's go somewhere. Just you and me."

Fingers ghost down his sternum, pianos over his ribs, and he wriggles away when they catch on a ticklish spot along his side. "Hmm. You want to jet off to Paris now?"

"No," he huffs, "No, I just – don't you ever just want to get away for a little while?"

"I don't know," Drew's head lulls backwards and he presses his lips to the hinge of Rick's jaw, "I'm kind of good right now."

He shifts, wraps his arms tighter around the man cradled against his body, and sighs. "Yeah, me too."

Sometime after they drifted in and out of sleep, after Drew woke alone on the couch, after Rick reappeared with a cup of coffee and carded his fingers through Drew's sleep mussed hair, he leans against the door frame to the kitchen and watches Rick dice tomatoes barefoot in an old t-shirt and low slung jeans. Drew loves watching Rick move. Loves the surety and confidence in each movement and the intimate knowledge of how this particular body feels against his. There is a kind of innate confidence, a certain ease, which comes with being comfortable in your body and that surety permeates everything Rick does so Drew watches and, when they are alone, he touches. But today, in the quiet of a rain drenched afternoon, Rick's shoulders tense under the shift and drag of his shirt. The lines around his eyes and the parentheses of his mouth pinch a little deeper. There's a weariness in Rick that he has never seen before and it knocks him off kilter. He finishes his coffee, lets it burn down his throat, in the dizzy silence before slipping across the room.

He slots his chin over Rick's shoulder and steals a bit of tomato from the cutting board. "You alright?"

"Of course," he says as Drew pulls back and props himself on the counter. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Drew watches as Rick clangs around for a skillet and mixing bowl. Watches as the furrows in his brow deepens and his jaw clenches when he cracks an egg into the bowl.

"Hey," he steps into Rick's space, curls his fingers around the back of his neck, "you know don't have to pretend with me."

"Do I, Drew?" He slams the bowl down and braces himself against the counter, head bowed. "It seems that all we do, all we have ever done, is pretend. Hell, our relationship doesn't even exist outside our apartments." His breath shudders, catches in his rib cage. "I hate that I have to make excuses when I want to see you. I hate that our lives are steeped in a culture where other people will qualify and vilify me based on who I love."

The rain continues its taptaptap against the windows, a quiet juxtaposition to the main fraying in his arms. Drew turns him, traps him against the counter and wraps a hand around the back of his skull. Fingers rub circles into his scalp. "Hey, Rick, look at me." He waits until the other man shifts, tips his head backwards, and meets his eyes. "What we have cannot be qualified or quantified by anyone else besides ourselves. The fact that I love you would not change if the whole world knew." Rick nods, inhales sharply. "But the way people view us will change and you've always told me that your life is the military."

"That was before," Rick says, voice cracks, gravelly and small, as he tips his head forward to rest against Drew's forehead. "You've got to know that things have changed, Drew." He pulls back, frames Drew's face with his hand, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. "The army isn't the most important thing in my life anymore."

He smiles, a little crooked, and presses closer. "Tell me what you need, Rick."

Drew runs a slow hand down to the base of his spine. ""I just need to breathe. It hurts sometimes, Drew, and I want to go someplace where it doesn't have to be this painful."

"OK." He presses his lips to Rick's forehead, his cheekbone, and lingers, undemanding, on his lips. "OK."

Slowly, in the quiet kitchen with only the wall clock keeping time, the tension drains from Rick's body and he is pliant, all warm edges, against Drew. Eventually, Drew pulls away and places a steadying hand on his chest, briefly, before returning to the counter where he continues studying the other man.

Rick has always been the brave one, the one who remains unapologetically himself, and, sometimes, Drew wishes he could steal his certainty and use it for himself. It was what attracted him to Rick, what drove their relationship past casual dates, what he clings to when Rick is deployed. Now, it is his anchor, something that has been a constant in his life for the past three years, and, as he sits across from his boyfriend, from his partner, eating a late brunch, he realizes how fragile it really is. He wants it too, he thinks as he takes another sip of his coffee. He wants everything with the man sitting across from him but want is not practical, never practical. He aches breathless with this want. Feels it needling between his fifth and sixth rib and he can't seem to dislodge it. He doesn't know if he wants to dislodge it despite the irritation and the constant reminder for what he cannot have. Sometimes, when the prick of want expands in his chest, when it fills his chest cavity and he can only manage gasping, staccato breaths, he imagines what it would be like if they weren't controlled by the machismo of the military or confined to the backwards state of Texas. Maybe they'd live together in a coastal town, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest or on the west coast, and they would wake up early so they could surf or walk down to that little diner just off the beach and have some breakfast before Drew would head off to the hospital and Rick would head into school to teach English or some other subject in the humanities. He wants the simplicity, the ease; instead, he gets silence and he is fucking tired of it so he reaches across the table and stills the hand beating a jitter rhythm into the tabletop, and starts to plan.

The sun is still morning soft when, a week later, he leaves his jacket and toes off his shoes by the front door and follows the faint strain of a Dylan song into the kitchen where Rick stands, sleep slow and bare chested in pajama pants, waiting for the coffee to percolate. He pads soft across the tile, wraps his arms around Rick's waist, and presses his lips to the top notch of his spine.

Rick hums. "You smell like hospital."

"Too bad," he nuzzles behind Rick's ear. "I'm comfortable."

"Is that so?" He chuckles as he decompresses the plunger on the French Press and pours himself a cup.

Sighing, Drew presses his lips to Rick's nape, to the top of his shoulder. "I like you like this."

"Half naked and cooking you breakfast?" A spoon clinks against the coffee cup and he leans body heavy into Drew.

The weight of a body and how it fits against his is what Drew likes most about this kind of familiar intimacy. The kind of intimacy that only comes after the frantic need to touch subsides into a constant simmer. He knows the geography of Rick's torso, knows where his fingers will snag on uneven scars and the stories that come with them, and knows how each muscle hopscotches under his fingertips. It still leaves him breathless and no less surprised.

"No." Rick reaches back, sinks his free hand into his hair, and Drew presses a smile into his skin. "No, I just like you here with me. You naked is just an added benefit."

Fingers dip under the waist band of his sleep pants and Rick shudders, full bodied, a sharp exhale. The coffee mug clatters down onto the counter. Rick twists in his arms and kisses him hard, all teeth and tongue and a little sloppy.

"Take a shower with me." It's not a question. Not when Rick's hands are edging under his shirt and he tongues the tendon that stretches along the length of his neck.

There is a certain type of contentment that comes after you are bone loose and sated and tucked into bed with someone half-sprawled on top of you, he thinks as he strokes down the naked expanse of Rick's back. Sleep is an easy reach as Rick shifts and settles in his arms. Eyes closed, he sighs and tightens his arms around the other man.

"Can't sleep the morning away, Drew." He says as he presses a kiss to his clavicle and tries to pull away.

He cracks an eye open. "Nope. It's Saturday, which I am pretty sure means that you are not allowed to leave this bed. Plus, I sleep better when you are here."

Rick stops trying to escape his arms and rearranges himself so he is propped up on one hand, one leg still slung over Drew's hip. Only because I am comfortable."

"Is that so?" He smirks as he turns towards Rick, head resting on his folded arm, and meets his gaze, soft with sleep and morning light.

Rick smiles, thumbs over his cheekbone, his bottom lip. "You're beautiful."

Ducking his head, he smiles crooked, a little bashful, as he captures the wandering hand and place a careful kiss to the center of the palm. It used to fluster him, this brash display of affection, when it did not apply directly to sex. He didn't, still doesn't to some extent, know how to handle someone looking at him, seeing him beyond an assortment of bone and muscle and skin. It rendered him speechless, blushing and uncomfortable, so Rick quietly, deliberately, repeated each phrase, each innocuous word, until he stopped flinching and started to believe.

He presses in closer, traps Rick's hand against his chest. "How does the 19th through the 24th sound?"

Rick's forehead scrunches in confusion and Drew watches the slight changes in his face, the way he scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip and the deep furrow that appears between his brows. Suddenly. Rick is in motion, rolling over and pinning Drew's hands over his head. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Come away with me, Rick." The words linger in the air for a moment before Rick pitches forward, laughing. A smile grows by degrees, crinkles the corners of his eyes and Rick looks younger, then, with worry lines melting off his face.

He laughs into Drew's mouth. "Where are we going?"

With practiced ease, he displaces Rick's weight and flips them over. "That's my secret for now."

Rick throws his head back and laughs, breathless, as Drew scrapes against his Adam's apple, mouths the turn of his jaw. Beautiful, he thinks, simply beautiful.

They drive the two hours between LA and Santa Barbara along the Pacific Coast Highway with the top rolled down and classic rock blaring from the radio. The highway curves along the ocean – an infinite stretch of water and light that looks a little like freedom. It's expansive. He feels it bubble under his skin, electric and itchy, until he turns his head skyward and laughs lungfuls of pent up want. And Rick is shaking with it, too, in the sun beams and noise so Drew takes his hand, holds on tight in the slightly too cold snap and roar of wind. It burns his throat when he finally breathes deep, holds it in his chest, and exhales slow and long. A cleansing breath. A coming undone and it'll be alright breath. Together, they strip bare in the glitter clang of sun on asphalt, on the sea, and move away from what they know. This is how I want to love, he thinks, bright and fast and deliberate.

Santa Barbara shoulders the ocean, wears its beaches as a necklace, and keeps a couple of islands for accessories. Spanish style bungalows, with all of their white washed walls and terra cotta roofs, cramp winding, hilly streets before they disperse into the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. It's smaller, more manageable without the layer of brown smog that hangs heavy above Las Angeles. Everything is a little sleepy, yawning in the bronze of late afternoon during off-season, when they exit off the highway and quiet down to a low hum. Their hotel, a sprawling amalgamation of white walls and Spanish moss, lounges in the late light when they pull into the parking lot, wind-ruffled and happy.

"Wanna get the bags while I go check us in?" He asks as he stretches towards the sun.

Rick catches his wrist and tugs him closer. "C'mon here." Drew flinches, eyes flicker across the mostly empty parking lot, before he allows himself to be dragged closer and relaxes slightly when Rick wraps his arms around him. "Thank you for doing this for me."

He pulls away and presses his lips to Rick's forehead. "Let's go check in."

He wakes to salt air and the ocean crash and cool sheets that mean he is alone. Late morning sun slants through the bay window and he stretches the sleep out of his limbs, rubs the grit from his eyes, and pushes himself onto his feet, swaying slightly as he stands in the quiet. The room is all open space with bright splashes of color and big picture windows that lets the idle light in. A cool breeze slinks over him, a shock to skin that's still bed warm, before he trains his eyes on the flutter of the gauzy, coral curtains and the glass door cracked open to the balcony and smiles.

"Been up long?" He nudges Rick over and curls up in the space left on the chaise. The beach is a quiet stretch with only a few lone figures disrupting its morning slowness.

Rick dog-ears the page he was reading and sets the book down in favor of picking up and handing Drew a cup of coffee. "Nah." He runs his fingers through the soft hairs at the nape of Rick's neck. "Long enough to search out some coffee for us. Sleep well?"

Stretching upwards, he slots their mouths together and kisses Rick, deep and languid, before he pulls away, grinning. "Almost didn't want to leave that bed."

He cocks an eyebrow. "And what made you decide to finally join me on this fine morning, sleepy head?"

"Coffee," Drew shrugs as he sips from the still mostly warm to go cup. "And the sheets were cold."

"Of course." Rolling over, he straddles Drew's hips, quirks an eyebrow. "I should have assumed that was the case." He steals the laughter from Drew's mouth, makes it sloppy, electric, and scraps blunt nails against his scalp.

Breathless, he breaks the kiss but doesn't pull away. "Maybe we should move this inside before strangers get a free show."

Drew hesitates, takes in his bright eyes and the way light seems to seep from him, and breathes for just a moment. "You gotta get off of me if we are going to make it inside, babe."

He allows this lightness, Rick's laughter, to float him through the door. I'll remember this, he thinks as he pulls the sliding glass door closed and falls onto the bed.

He flinches the first time Rick brushes his hand down his arm when they venture out of their hotel room later that day. The parentheses around Rick's mouth pinch, eye lines tighten, and his easy smile falters. Guilt swirls and fingerlicks his stomach until he is nauseous with it. I'm Sorry. I don't know how to do this, he thinks as Rick shoves his hands in his pockets and folds in upon himself. The sun is weak but warm and good against his face. He rolls his shoulders, tenseness already creeping across his and up his neck, takes in the pinch of Rick's eyebrows, and steps forward into his space.

"I'm not very good at this, Rick." He presses his fingers against the inside of Rick's wrists, feels his pulse flicker against the thin skin. "I'm trying, though."

"I know." Rick bumps their shoulders together before he turns towards a cluster of little cafes and shops a few blocks away. "Let's get some food."

They settle side by side with long, slow strides and arms brushing periodically. It was easier at night when shadows and low light eased fear's grip from around his throat and the risk of being caught decreased. He held Rick's hand while they were wondering the side streets looking for a bar that doesn't usually cater towards the tourists and Rick squeezed his hand, smiled a this is good kind of smile. And Drew believed him. Yet, now, on a sidewalk starting to crack with the distant hush of waves, the scant inch between their hands seems too large, too significant to overcome so he pushes his fingers through his hair and makes a decision. When he links their fingers together, grip hesitant and light, the sidewalk remains cracked and slightly uneven. The waves continue their metronome and Rick's pace doesn't falter. It is almost a letdown when nothing changes in the grin of sun. Then his stomach rumbles loud enough to be heard. Rick laughs loud and long and says that it is a good thing they are heading to lunch. It is all too much, being here and not pretending and then returning home to the confines of walls and secrets. It's going to hurt like hell when he cannot reach out and touch and be touched he thinks when they part at a table tucked against a big glass window.

It rains the third day they are there. A kind of rain that is soggy and sad and covers everything in weeping grayscale. The ocean is an angry steel color as it heaves against the sand so they weather it tangled around each other in their dim, generic room. Drew pillows his head on the top of Rick's thighs and asks what he would do without the military. Rick shrugs, traces the shell of Drew's ear, and says that he first joined because he had no clue what to do with his life and he still doesn't, in a way. The next day is a clean brightness that only comes after a hard rain. They hike to an overlook and sit amongst scrub brush and prairie grass and watch the ocean blur the horizon into a seamless half-dome.

"I think I would have become a teacher or worked for a non-profit. I would do something where I can lead people, help them be bigger than themselves. It's what drew me to the service," Rick says, suddenly but not unexpectedly, from where they were sitting on the craggy rocks. Drew wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulls him close, and presses his mouth to his temple. "When we are older we should live near the ocean."

He doesn't respond, doesn't need to respond, but he wants it, too.

The beach is dawn quiet and empty when Drew finds him watching the waves break through the onslaught of fog. It's chilly, a little damp, when he sinks to the ground besides the man who disappeared from their bed a little while ago. The sand is bone white as it hourglasses through Rick's fingers and he sits, watches the sand, watches the waves gather and leave, a slow, natural metronome. The sun is no more than a blink in the sky as it blushes morning hues across the heavy gray. It'll start to rain soon, he thinks as he zips up his jacket and stuffs his hands into the pockets and waits. There has always been something about the ocean that makes him sad and, as he stares out at the relentless motion, he can't help but feel like everything is sliding through his hands like sand that cannot be anchored. Rick is an unmoving ghost of warmth against his side and part of him wants to pull and push Rick's body until it covers him, until it becomes a weight against the vastness that is the ocean. Part of him wants to curl around the other man and protect him from whatever is invading his mind but he can't so he shifts and doesn't touch and breathes in the salt breeze and waits.

"I've always loved the ocean because it doesn't care. It continues and continues and continues and doesn't think about people or how they fall apart so easily." Rick talks and doesn't look at him and keeps sifting through the sand. Drew has to look away from the waves, steel gray and overwhelming, so he turns towards Rick and steadies himself in his familiar profile. A half smile lifts the one side of his mouth and Rick laughs, dry and a little painful. "The military is similar, I suppose."

There is something that catches, that scrapes and hurts, in Rick's voice that makes Drew reach out and touch him. He needs to feel skin and solid body so he curls his fingers around Rick's wrist and holds on, tethers both of them to the ground, to the moment. "What's going on, Rick?"

For a second, he thinks that Rick is going to sift through his hands and float away in the current. He thinks he is always being left but Rick scoots closer so he is a solid press against Drew's side and he tangles their fingers together. He wants to think that their combined mass, especially when tangled together and breathing in sync, is enough to keep them from being swept away with the rising tide. He wants, beyond anything else, for them to be an unmovable force but they are fragile in their skin and bones.

"They're sending us back, Drew." He swallows hard and all Drew can think about is how incredibly blue his eyes are when they are wet with sadness and the ocean and a little bit of fear. "Back to Afghanistan."

They quake and spill over together and Rick reels him in, tucks him under his arm. "When?"

"End of April," he says and Drew can feel his breath ghost across his skin, warm and alive, and still next to him.

People are always leaving me, he thinks, again, in the pause like an in drawn breath, shuddering in tense anticipation. He thinks they could drown in this moment with no sun and a sky that resembles the ocean; instead, he squeezes his eyes together and fights against vertigo and lets Rick rock them to a nameless rhythm. He feels Rick press a kiss to the top of his head and knows he is drowning, too.

"When you get back we should move in together." His voice wavers slightly as the want, the need burns up his esophagus. He can taste it metallic and hot at the back his mouth as the unspoken if lingers clammy between them. They never speak of this if that is a part of their contracts, their duty, but it still slips between them, pries them a part. He has seen it stall awkward and ominous on the tip of Rick's tongue – if I don't come back, if if if. Has seen Rick's mouth shape those words but he swallows them before sound can give them life. And, occasionally, when he thinks too hard about this if, it creeps behind his eyelids and burns fierce and red.

Rick whispers OK against his neck, the hinge of his jaw, his lips like a promise and Drew will keep it and this chilly, sunless morning tucked away in the back of his mind for when the if forms a golf ball in his throat and he cannot breathe around it.

"This is good, isn't it?" Drew asks, bites his lip, in the mostly dark of a winter evening. He means right now as they walk along the beach in the moon and the long shadows. He means how easy it is to tangle their fingers together or sling an arm around a waist while in public. He means the picture an older couple took of them earlier that day with their arms around each other, Rick's hand cupping the back of his head, and easy smiles on their faces. It means not having to pretend and not caring what others may think. It means choosing to love someone deliberately and being loved back.

"It couldn't be anything else." Rick smiles, full and bright, wraps an arm around his shoulders, and presses his lips to Drew's temple. "We should come back in the summer sometime."

A cold breeze mists from the ocean and he feels it seep through his clothes, ache bright in his bones. It leaves his skin pricking and shuddering, alive in the shiver and the warm weight of Rick's arm around his shoulders. He presses closer and wraps an arm around the other man's waist. He wants to keep it all – the sand grit, the licks of cold, the ocean of fear that stretches choppy and beautiful to the horizon line, the languid ease of Rick's body and the way his eyes crinkle at the corner when he laughs without restraint. As he turns his gaze away from the shoreline and watches the moonlight and shadows play across the planes of Rick's face, he thinks that sometimes he really hates the military. Sometimes, he hates himself, too.

Rick's hand sweeps across the top of his back, a warm, mindless rhythm. "You OK? Wanna head back?"

Shaking his head, Drew tightens his arm around Rick's waist. "Just a little longer."

"OK," he says. Drew leans over and steals the end of the word from his mouth. It's easy in the moonlight to forget that everything has to come to an end, that they will leave here and go back to their lives feeling much to big for their skin, that Rick will leave. He shakes apart in the messiness of lips and tongue and, fuck, he is bursting with it all. The sea laps little daggers at their toes and he has goose bumps and he revels in the uncomfortableness of being too much and not enough. Rick bites his bottom lip, let's it spark and settle, before they part.

"I love you." He quakes, hands still tucked under Rick's shirt.

"C'mon, tough guy," Rick smiles, full and sad, a little soft and lost in the mostly dark. "You're freezing."

They slow retreat back up the shoreline to the light and noise. Later that night in the artificial quiet of a hotel room, Rick whispers I love you into his hip bones, into his rib cage and Drew splits open, drowns. In the morning, they leave with salt in their lungs and sun warm on the backs of their necks.

The day Rick is deployed, Drew will not go to the airport. He will not watch as Rick clears security and disappears into the crowed. He'll not drive home alone with the radio off and his mind blank, a fuzzy white like TV snow. No, they'll say goodbye in the silence of a regular morning while surrounded by their things. He will press his wet face into Rick's fatigues and cave in on himself a little bit. Keep it, he will think. Keep all the salt, all the saline, and come back to me. Please, please come back. He will say the last part out loud. It'll become a chant that wraps around them and it'll follow Rick out the door as he shoulders his backpack and clasps his duffle bag in his fist. A cab, yellow and lonely, will steal Rick away and he'll watch it round the corner and disappear. He'll call in sick to the hospital, drown himself in Jack, and, when he wakes, he'll work a punching bag at his local gym until his knuckles are bruised, bloody and his arms are lead heavy and useless. This is how he will fall apart. This is how he will survive and when (not if, never if) Rick comes home, Drew won't tell him that it took a month before he stopped sleeping on the couch.