Page 19 of Uncharted

That was interesting, but I kept my thoughts to myself. It wasn’t like Mav had issues with drinking as far as I knew; I’d seen him drink a few times. Hell, I was pretty sure I’d witnessed him drunk. And it wasn’t like he and Carter shared a bedroom for Carter to stink the room up. Sure, the outer building they shared was pretty small, but they had separate bedrooms.

Didn’t they?

Then the game restarted, and questions I might have had disappeared as I had to focus. One would think with Jake as my best friend and Mika as my brother, I would have been better at poker. It didn’t help that as time went on; the drinks were catching up with me and it was growing harder to focus around my fuzzy thoughts.

The others seemed to be feeling their drinks from the way the behavior at the table changed. Colin was growing less interested in the game than he was in swapping stories with Jake about their times in the military. Aidan and Mika were being less and less subtle about the fact that they were practically eye-fucking one another, and I was wondering when they were going to ‘disappear’ for a while. Jake was getting louder, which was pretty hard to do considering his volume was naturally loud, and I…was lost in thought.

Everyone was having a great time, and there was warmth in my chest as I looked at everyone. I wasn’t thrilled that Aidan and Mika were potentially reigniting their spark, considering I knew enough about their last relationship to know it had wounded them enough for both to be bitter and awkward years later. Still, it was hard to hold onto that unhappiness when I was enjoying myself, and it looked like they were certainly enjoying themselves. Maybe if they were getting back together, things would work out better for them.

Which left Carter, Jake, and me as the only ones who didn’t have someone to spend their nights with, or in my brother’s case, possibly spend the night with. I didn’t know if they were fucking yet, but considering Mika and I slept in the loft above the science building at the outpost, I knew they weren’t literally sleeping together yet.

Then again, I guess I slept with Jake in that we ended up in the same bunk room most nights. Occasionally we shared a bed, usually by accident because we’d be lying together, talking or sharing shit on our phones and fall asleep. Not that I minded, Jake was a pretty cozy bed companion because of his bulk and the sheer warmth he put off. It was also strangely nice to lie there and listen to the sound of his breathing, matching my own unconsciously until I fell asleep.

“What’s got you thinkin’ so hard over there?” I heard Jake’s voice rumble in my ear, and I jumped when I felt his breath on my neck. Not that he had surprised me, but I wasn’t expecting the weird tingle where his breath had touched me.

“That I’m probably going to be used as your personal teddy bear tonight,” I said with a snort, realizing Colin had been distracted by Carter, who was showing something to him on his phone.

“You love it,” Jake said, and I could see the glassiness in his eyes giving away that he was, in fact, feeling his drinks.

“I mean, I probably should, because it’s not like you give me much choice in the matter,” I teased. If he was sober and fell asleep near me, he was unmoving and calm. But drunk? That was a completely different ball game. He was…handsy when he was asleep. It was mostly holding me in place while he wrapped himself around me, which was fine. Hell, Mika had cuddled me in his sleep more than once growing up, so I was used to it. There had been a couple of times Jake had cupped my ass in his sleep too, but that wasn’t intentional, so I didn’t let it get to me.

“Hey, you’re the one who grabbed my dick last time,” Jake chuckled.

I leaned back in surprise. “Wait, I did what?”

“Ya didn’t know?” Jake asked, staring at me.

I stared back. “Did you seriously think I was like…sexually molesting you on purpose and just pretending it didn’t happen?”

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug.

“I’m going to go bum a smoke,” Aidan announced, interrupting us briefly as he got to his feet.

“You smoke?” I asked, tilting my head. “Since when?”

“Oh, I kicked the habit ages ago,” he explained, shifting awkwardly, as if he had a muscle ache. “Now I just do it for fun occasionally…when drinking.”

“Fair enough,” Jake answered, and I glanced at him as Aidan walked off, passing a group of guys who had been getting almost as rowdy as us. They glanced at him as he passed, but he barely noticed. Jake looked back at me. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘What?’” I asked him in disbelief. “Are you telling me I’ve grabbed your whole ass dick in my sleep?”

“I mean, I guess so.”

“You guess so.”

Jake frowned. “It’s not a big deal.”

I sighed, glancing around to see my brother getting up and heading toward the bathroom. Colin and Carter were still at the other end of the table, talking about something on the phone, and weren’t paying us the slightest bit of attention. Not that I trusted Colin for a minute; the man was too good at being sneaky, but…well, I suppose if he overheard; he was also the sort to mind his own business.

“It kind of is,” I told Jake softly. “Or at least it feels like it should be.”

Jake chuckled, green eyes flashing with amusement. “I mean, you’re not the first guy to grope me while I was asleep and sharing a bed.”

“That shouldn’t surprise me, and yet I’m a little surprised,” I said, and I realized I was a little…irritated too. “You’re kind of a terrible straight guy if you keep getting groped by guys and say nothing to make it stop. Just so you know.”

Jake shrugged again, his leg rubbing against mine and distracting me. “I mean, it only happened one other time. And the guy was definitely trying to grope me, unlike you.”

“You just acted as if you didn’t know it was an accident!”