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Gabe wakes because something is tickling his nose, and the first thing he realises is that he's lying on his ratty couch with his feet dangling over one side. There's the familiar shape of James in front of him, pressed so close that they both fit on the narrow three-seater. They've clearly passed out drunk again, not that Gabe is surprised. It's been three weeks since they last saw each other, right before they left to visit their respective families. The first night back in Oceanside they reunited with alcohol and video games. Over James' head he can spot both controllers on the coffee table, along with several beer bottles and a mostly empty bottle of tequila. It's become a bit of a tradition to shoot the shit in the privacy of Gabe's place because James lives on base in the barracks, and that severely limits what you can do for fun. Well, without potentially ending up in restriction, that is.Gabe is distracted from his train of thoughts when he becomes aware that the tickling sensation in his nose is caused by the hair at James' neck. It's grown out of his regulation cut and apparently Gabe tucked his face into it while sleeping. Instead of moving his hand to scratch away the tickling feeling, Gabe simply rubs his nose against the part of James' neck that isn't covered in the stupidly soft white-blond fuzz.When his mind clears a little from the cobwebs of alcohol-enhanced sleep, Gabe's other senses awaken enough to tell him that it's very late at night. Or rather very early in the morning, probably sometime around zero four hundred, if he had to guess. The silence coming through the wide-open window is almost absolute in the way it only is around that dead hour, and the air has cooled to the familiar chill of this time of the night. Gabe feels oddly at peace despite just waking up in the middle of the night due to something as pointless as James' hair tickling him. He allows his eyes to close again. No reason to be alert, and that's something he's still getting used to.James is a comfortable dead weight against him, his broad frame moulded against Gabe's like a fucking glove. Only now does it hit Gabe that he's fucking spooning James, almost from head to toe where their legs are too long to fit on the couch. It's at the same moment that Gabe notices that not only is his arm wrapped around James' waist like he fucking owns him, but also that his hand has somehow ended up on the bare skin where James' t-shirt has ridden up and is now exposing a sliver of his belly. Before Gabe has consciously thought about it, he's moving his fingers over the warm skin. He notices that while it's surprisingly soft, he also feels the firmness of James' muscles under his fingertips, his familiar body solid and sturdy even in sleep.He knows he should stop moving his fingertips over James' fucking naked skin because he's not some faggot, not to mention that James would fucking kill him if he woke up to this. But before Gabe can make himself stop, he senses a gentle tremble pass through the strong body pressed against his, followed by James shifting a little further into his arms without waking. And then James makes a low noise deep in his throat that Gabe can't for the life of him decide whether it's a sigh or a moan. Either way, it's a noise of contentedness and not of discomfort, and it makes something flutter in Gabe's belly that has no fucking right to flutter.To make matters even worse, it also goes straight to his dick. It's certainly helped by James' ass shifting against his groin while he's making that fucking gentle noise. Gabe feels heat rush to his cheeks because suddenly he's getting hard, and that's just wrong, because it's James who's the reason for it. What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? He's never been turned on by another guy before. He's no fucking cocksucker!Okay, so maybe he noticed already a very long time ago that James is hot - and he doesn't mean in the way Rudy is hot and that everybody agrees doesn't make you gay. It still doesn't mean anything, though. Just aesthetic appreciation of his fellow man, right? So maybe Gabe thinks it looks fucking sexy how James' broad shoulders narrow down to his slim waist and how his stupid tiger tattoos spread from his collarbones to his chest on both sides. Maybe Gabe likes that James is smaller and leaner than him but still solid and sturdy. Maybe he enjoys that James is totally able to match Gabe in a fight and pose serious competition in every aspect of their work, from PT to marksmanship.Maybe he secretly likes the way James' voice gets deeper when he's relaxed, and maybe he has fun with James' totally fucked-up sense of humour. Maybe he takes pleasure in sensing James' strong frame against him when they're sitting side by side on Gabe's old ratty couch playing video games and egging each other on to do better. Maybe he likes how James gets touchy-feely when he's drunk. Maybe he likes the way James tends to give his ass a little slap when they're working out and how he has no issues with Gabe returning the gesture.And maybe he likes that James only ever tells Gabe details about his family. Like that he can't stand his two older step brothers but that he genuinely cares about his two younger step brothers, even if he calls them 'little pests'. Maybe Gabe likes that he's the only one in the platoon who knows that James loves his Grandma's pancakes with homemade strawberry jam more than anything in the world and that he always tries to send her at least one postcard when he's deployed, even if he does it in secret because he doesn't want anybody in the Marine Corps to know. Gabe was there when James bribed one of the mess hall employees at the airport in Spain on their way to Kuwait to get him a postcard out of the technically closed news stand and send it after he quickly scribbled a message and his Grandma's address on the back. Gabe made sure to shield him from view while he wrote, and it got him a grateful shoulder bump when the deed was done.But all of those things are nothing, really, just observations. It doesn't mean anything that Gabe couldn't name any comparable things for any other of his brothers, not even Ant. James is his closest friend, after all. Gabe just happens to know him best and to spend the most time with him. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing unusual about it, either. Right?Gabe tries to calm his breathing that has sped up noticeably in the past few minutes. This is no reason to freak out, especially not to the point that James notices and it wakes him. That would be bad. Like, really bad, considering that there's Gabe's hand stroking over James' bare abs - why the fuck hasn't he stopped yet? - and his steadily growing boner is pressed to his ass. James would fucking skin him alive, and with good reason. After all, Gabe would do the same thing if he woke to James groping him and poking his fucking dick in Gabe's ass. He would, right? Because he wouldn't like it. After all, he's no fucking homo.In an attempt to calm down, Gabe inhales deeply, and only once he's done it does he realise his mistake, because it makes him breathe in James' familiar scent that he'd recognise everywhere, among thousands of guys. Instead of calming his inappropriate arousal, it increases it, and Gabe presses his eyes shut against the wave of heat that's now spreading through his entire body. He feels his own hand tighten on the beautifully soft skin of James' stomach, and before he can stop it, he has buried his nose against James' neck again and his hips have bucked forwards to rub his hardening dick against James' ass. And fucking James makes that little sigh-moan again and seeks more contact, including pressing his fucking ass into Gabe's boner. Never in his life has Gabe had to fight so fucking hard to keep from making any sound, especially because James is clearly still asleep and goes boneless against him again.It takes all of Gabe's deeply ingrained discipline to still his movements, and the heat of arousal is diluted by a wave of panic. Fuck, what is he doing here? This is James, his best friend, his very much male best friend, not some random hook-up with nice tits and a hot, tight pussy. And while it's okay to hump a girl he hooked up with, it definitely is not okay with one of his Marine brothers, never mind his best friend. Doing that violates about every bro code there is, and Gabe won't do that. James is asleep, for fuck's sake. How low can Gabe sink to hump him like a horny dog when James can't even defend himself because he's not even awake to realise what's going on? Gabe needs to fucking let go, to get up, to get as far away as he can without waking James.But he just can't. He's physically unable to move away, to let go, to bring distance between them. It feels a bit like an out-of-body experience, like maybe he's not actually awake but is still dreaming and this is some twisted setup his mind came up with to torture him. For a moment Gabe doubts that he's actually awake, because why would he act like this if he was? Seriously, it's not like he ever wondered what the bare skin of James' belly would feel like under his fingertips. But now he knows, he fucking knows. In some clandestine, remote corner of his mind he becomes aware of the fact that maybe - just maybe - he doesn't mind knowing.With great effort Gabe manages to shift his hips back, even if it's only a fraction because he's caught between James and the back of the couch, and James has scooted back so far against him that Gabe has barely any wiggle room. The last thing he wants is to wake James up now, though, so pushing him away, even just a little bit, is totally out of the question. He'd wake up, and he'd realise that Gabe is also awake and has a fucking boner that is still somewhat touching his ass, even if it's less than before because Gabe has shifted his groin as far away as he possibly can in their current arrangement.Fuck, James would hate him. He'd cut all ties with him. He'd never want to speak to Gabe again. He might even attack him. He'd call him all the worst things under the sky, and it might even result in Gabe getting dishonourably discharged. Either way, Gabe would fucking lose him, and that's not something he's even willing to contemplate. So Gabe tries to press his ass into the back of the couch some more so that his dick's not in contact with James anymore. It's not entirely successful, there's simply no room. James has scooted back against him too much in sleep. Fuck.Gabe's eyes are still tightly shut while he's concentrating on his breathing to get his body under control again. He can't help noticing - even if he never wanted to notice - that James smells so fucking good where the tip of Gabe's nose is still touching the back of his neck. Oh god, why is he noticing that? Why is he even thinking about it? Wrong, wrong, wrong! James is not supposed to smell good to him. There's the familiar note of his aftershave, a hint of sweat and the smoke of his cigarettes, and underneath it all the scent that Gabe knows as simply James - and nothing in that mixture is supposed to smell good to him. Because James is a guy, one of his brothers, not a nicely scented girl at a club. But when Gabe breathes in again, he can't deny that he likes the combination of scents that enters his nose. He knows that he shouldn't, but he does. Always has. Fuck again.Gabe shifts just a little bit behind James, trying to get more comfortable while also not jostling James to the point that he wakes up because Gabes's boner is still there, even if he's doing his best to make it wilt. It doesn't help that Gabe realises that James being an inch shorter and a little leaner than him somehow makes him fit against Gabe fucking perfectly right now, like he was made to be Gabe's little spoon. Especially with how he has moulded himself to Gabe's body behind him, boneless and utterly relaxed in sleep and clearly comfortable where he is. Well, as long as he doesn't wake, because Gabe's sure that the easy comfortable sprawl would end the moment James realised the position they're in. And Gabe... fuck, Gabe doesn't want that. He wants to go back to sleep just like they are right now and forget all about his deeply inappropriate reactions to James' closeness. He wants to enjoy the sound sleep that he was granted for the past few hours, the first real sleep he's had since leaving for home. He just wants to pretend that this nightly session of insights didn't happen, and go on with his life as before.Gabe decides that that's exactly what he's going to do. He's going to fall asleep again, with James right here in front of him, and then he'll wake up in the morning not remembering any of this. He'll leave it to James to decide how he'll deal with them spooning - no, huddling - on the couch. Not like it's the first time it happened, after all. Last time - the night before they flew out to visit their families - it was James who'd ended up squished between Gabe and the back of the couch, and they hadn't paid it any attention when they'd woken up. So this time won't be a big deal either. Because it isn't one. It's just Gabe and his sleep-dazed brain making a mountain out of a mole hill.His decision is made, yet it takes him a long time until he finally drifts off again, with his boner finally receding enough that he can relax behind James. Even when sleep claims him, Gabe is well aware that his hand is still covering the bare skin of James' abs like it belongs there, like it has every right to touch when it really doesn't. He doesn't try to move it away.