“I was kidding,” she countered, still laughing. “Dave isn’t into showtunes either. But he knows them—years of indulging Jon, I’m afraid.” She sobered. “Really, though, I apologize for crossing the teasing line. We still don’t know each other very well.”
“Yeah, well, I was... well, it was more like kidding on the square,” he said. “Stereotypes piss me off.”
“As a woman with super-short hair, I have no idea what you mean.”
Luc laughed—his real, normal-sounding laugh. “Yeah, I bet.”
Her phone swooshed from where she’d plugged it in on the tiny bedside table. “Oh, shit!” She sat up, grabbing it, heart pounding, because she’d set it so it wouldn’t make noise unless it was Jon.
Or her mother.
“Oh, thank god,” she breathed. The screen was impossibly bright after the total darkness and she had to squint to read it. “It’s just my mom. Standard update. Everything’s fine.”
“The Air Biscuit’s safely tucked into bed for the night?”
She glanced over to find Luc watching her, dark eyes somber, one hand under his head, elbow up, bicep prominently featured against the white pillow, and holy crap, the dim light from her cell phone made shadows dance temptingly across his face and that arm. So she shut it off, plunging them back into the safety of the darkness.
Except now she knew what he looked like, lying there next to her in that big bed. Dave was so, so, so freaking lucky. A guy that sweet and funny and smart, who looked like that...
“Why do you call Jon that?” Casey asked him. “The Air Biscuit.”
“It means fart.” Luc’s voice was as velvet as the blackness surrounding them.
She snorted. “Yeah, I know what it means. I live in the world. What I don’t know is why that instead of, oh, I don’t know, assbag? Douche-nozzle? Shit-for-Brains?”
He laughed again. “All accurate and appropriate, but... I dunno. It just came out of my mouth. Air Biscuit Jon. Dave was just so sad. Heartbroken, really, and I was... I dunno, I guess I was just trying to make him laugh a little.”
“When did you know you were in love with him?” Casey asked softly. “I mean, you’ve been friends for a few years, right?”
Luc was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, he exhaled his words on a sigh. “Okay, well, me and Dave, we were teammates first. Which is... It’s different from friendship. You’re not always friends with the other guys in the team, but you trust ’em with your life. Some of the guys you’re tight with from the start, but others... it takes a while. With Dave, it took a while. I mean, some guys you just abso-freaking-lutely hate, which can be strange. I don’t really get it, either. I mean, you hate me, and I hate your ass-face, but I’ll die for you and I know you’d do the same for me. It’s strange,” he said again. “But it works. Anyway, so me and Dave, we’re solid teammates. He’s an FNG—fucking new guy—but we all start noticing that he’s just so damn reliable. And genuinely nice. A good guy. But it really wasn’t until last year, when we made that cross country drive, that we, you know, became friends.”
“Are there a lot of gay SEALs?” she wondered.
“You know, I think it’s about the same as the general population, but I don’t really know, so maybe instead of guessing, how about I show you a good falling-asleep trick?”
“Is it deep breathing?” Casey asked. “Because just kill me now.”
He laughed again. More velvet in the darkness. “No, I mean, well, yeah, breathing is sort of essential, and I know a lot of deep breathing techniques, sure, but... Okay. Here’s one that’s not breathing. Well, you have to keep breathing so you don’t die, that’s a given, but... It’s a vagal nerve release. Lie on your back, hands beneath your neck, fingers locked. You there?”
“Not quite... Okay.” Now she was.
“Now look over toward three o’clock.”
“Toward...?” She didn’t quite understand.
“Okay, shit, I’m bad at this, let me try that again,” Luc said. “Don’t move your head. Keep your nose pointed at the ceiling, but move your eyes over as far as you can to the right, to where the three would be on the face of a clock. Does that make sense?”
“Mostly,” she said. “I mean, I’m doing it. It feels really weird, like my eyes don’t like this very much. It’s not comfortable.”
“Yeah, you’ll get used it,” he said. “It gets faster, too.” He yawned. “So now just stay there, and yeah, it’s gonna feel weird. Keep breathing—but just like, you know, like you normally breathe—and wait.”
“For what exactly?”
He yawned again and laughed. “For that. See, it triggers a yawn, which resets your vagal nerve. That allows you to relax more completely.”
“Seriously.”
“I’m dead serious. You know the way that two dogs can sometimes look like they’re going to throw down, but then one of them shakes, and the other one yawns, and suddenly everything’s fine? Everyone’s back to being calm and relaxed? That’s a vagal nerve reset. Humans can learn to do that, too. So say you have a crazy day, or maybe a just plain shitty day, and you crawl into bed, but your brain is still going a hundred miles an hour and you can’t fall asleep. If you can do this, lie on your back, eyes to three o’clock, yawn a few times, it really helps you move on from the stress of the day and into rest, relax, and repair.” He yawned again.
