I walked in and sighed when I saw mud splatters all over the floor, starting from a pair of muddy boots left to the side. Colin appeared from the back room, closing it behind him, and I quietly sighed when I saw he wasn’t wearing pants…again. He was obviously comfortable being in various states of undress around here. Which wasn’t weird; all the guys were like that, sometimes right off the bat like he was, but?—
But what?
“Sorry,” he said, pants and shirt in his hand as he set them on the exam table, taking hold of his shirt and pulling it off. Great, he was going to stand there in stupidly short, skin-tight underwear that clung to an ass that bounced as he bent down to pull off wet socks. Not that I had any business noticing how much another man’s ass bounced when it was of no interest to me. Just like I had no business realizing that despite his smaller frame compared to the rest of us, his body was noticeably toned, muscles shifting gracefully as he started pulling on new clothes. “Kind of got soaked on the way over here, and I’m just glad I thought to have a few changes of clothes here.”
“Good for you, you have at least three functioning brain cells,” I muttered as he bent over to shove his leg through the pant leg. I rolled my eyes when hehoppedto get into the pants. “Jesus, do you need to do that?”
“What?” he asked, turning to face me as he stuffed his covered crotch into his pants, which I definitely didn’t notice, and zipped and buttoned them.
“All the…bouncing. Christ, it was like two mini waterbeds,” I said, glad I wasn’t the blushing type, or my face would have been red. “It’s almost as bad as when Jake starts his ‘slinging’ bullshit.”
“His…do I want to know?”
“He…makes his junk bounce.”
“Ah, that, uh…hmm, that would be something,” he said with a snort as he pulled on a shirt.
The look on his face was thoughtful, and I frowned. “Why do you sound intrigued?”
He laughed. “I’ve already seen him naked, so I know how entertaining a sight that would be. Or at least, I have a good idea.”
The amusement in his voice wasn’t a surprise and was, in fact, on brand for what I knew about him. It was the odd tone I couldn’t decipher right away that I latched onto as he finished getting dressed. It was only after a moment that it clicked. “Oh. You’re?—”
He gave me a questioning look before turning to go back into the storage room and coming out with what appeared to be a tablet. “I’m…what?”
“Uh,” I cleared my throat, not sure if I was worried about being right or wrong. “Like…Mikhail.”
“Like Mika,” he repeated, setting the tablet on the counter and gesturing toward the exam table.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a step forward.
“Ah,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m sorry, does being born in the eighties somehow make the word hard to say? Try it with me…gay. Homosexual, if you prefer, but ironically, considering the current environment, that’s too clinical for my taste. We could go for some slurs if you want, but that seems like overkill.”
“I can say gay.”
“So it seems. And yes, Xander, I am gay. Problem?”
“No,” I said quickly because I didn’t give a shit if someone was gay or not. I’d served during the Don’t Ask era of the military, but there had been plenty of guys I served with who were an open secret. Some guys didn’t like it, but they were outnumbered by those like me, not caring where you wanted tostick your dick so long as you did your job and I could trust you to have my back. All it meant was that my back was being watched for more than one reason.
It was strange to realize he was gay, and obviously had been the whole time. Not that he’d done anything that suddenly made more sense because I realized he was gay, even though my brain kept trying to make a connection between his sexuality and the memory of him…well, that didn’t make any sense. The only difference between me catching him doing it when gay instead of straight was that he was thinking about some guy rather than some random woman when I caught him.
So, no, stubborn brain, it didn’t matter; the memory and his sexuality weren’t connected.
“Perfect, then this is the time to test your assertion,” he said with a grin. “I need you to strip.”
I stopped moving. “What?”
“You know, like a dancer. I mean, the act of stripping, you can throw in a little dance if you want, but you don’t seem the type.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You said non-invasive.”
He laughed. “I can’t do anything invasive. But I meant down to your underwear.”
“Why didn’t you say that?”
“Watching your brain short-circuit as you processed a gay man asking you to take your clothes off was funny as hell.”
I growled. “It…it had nothing to do with you being gay. Aren’t you a professional?”