T. A. Chase

Wednesday Work in Progress…

I thought I’d give you another peek at Always Ready, my Coast Guard/crab fisherman story. 🙂 I’m finally getting to the exciting part…and that’s not the sex…lol.  Hopefully it’ll be done by the weekend. Enjoy!

Always Ready copyright c. 2013 T.A. Chase

Excerpt-

“Yes, I did. I heard about the call you guys got last week. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Dean shifted, moving a little closer to Phil. “There was nothing we could do. He’d been in the water for too long. I hate jumping into the water, only to lift a body out of it.”

Phil hugged Dean tightly. “I know, love, and you haven’t slept a wink since then, have you?”

“I keep seeing his face. I hate that part of the job, yet I wouldn’t do anything else for all the money in the world.”

“I know.”

He felt the same way about crab fishing. Being out on the deck of a crab boat was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, but he loved it. The freezing temperatures, the lurking danger just waiting for a chance to bite him in the ass thrilled him almost as much as getting fucked by Dean did. Yet before he met Dean, Phil would’ve said that his job was the most exciting thing in his life.

“Why don’t you sleep for a little while?”

Dean didn’t reply, but Phil felt the way his breathing had slowed and deepened, clueing Phil in on the fact that Dean had fallen asleep. Phil wasn’t worried though. When Dean woke up in the middle of the night, reaching to take him again, Phil would spread his legs for him, and enjoy every minute of lost sleep.

They had all weekend to fuck and talk. Phil hadn’t wanted to bring up the unsuccessful rescue attempt, but he also didn’t want Dean to think Phil didn’t care or didn’t pay attention to what was going on in Dean’s life. They didn’t get to see each other every day like most couples, and Dean rarely talked about his missions: good or bad.

Phil had figured out that it was just Dean’s way. The man never bragged about his job, and how he went into harm’s way every mission to save another human’s life. Dean didn’t see himself as a hero. He was simply a man doing something he was good at, nothing more and nothing less.

Most Coasties didn’t think of themselves as heroes, but there wasn’t a crabber in Alaska who wouldn’t buy one of them a drink if they ran into a Coastie at a bar. Phil had run into his share of arrogant rescue swimmers who thought they could conquer the Bering Sea. All of them had come to learn the harsh truth about that area of water.

She could be never be tamed or broken to man’s will, not by any paltry human, no matter how smart or strong.

As Phil listened to Dean breathe, he thought about the only female he would ever love. To most, the Bering Sea was simply a body of water, separating North America from Russia. But to those who lived along her shores and made their living upon her water, she was a glorious female with all the nurturing aspects of a mother and the capriciousness of a tease.

Actually, the Bering Sea was a raging bitch, and no man could predict what she was going to do day-to-day, much less minute-by-minute. Phil had grown up on a crab boat, and had spent most of his life out on the sea. He’d seen the sun rise over water as smooth as a piece of blue glass, and that same sun would set on a hurricane with winds pushing the ice against hulls as if it was hell bent on crumbling the steel like paper.

Boats were overturned during storms like that, and the Coasties were the only people around to fly into the howling winds to find the men left floating in the freezing water. Sometimes when Dean jumped into that soul-chilling liquid, he got there in time and they would wench the survivor up to the helicopter in a harness.

Other times, they were too late to save anyone. Sometimes, the men who went into the water from their boats never climbed out of it. Their bodies never returned to their families, and those were the ones that haunted Dean while he slept. Phil knew that only because of one night they’d spent together in Juneau.

They’d fallen asleep after some mind-blowing sex, then Phil had been awakened by Dean’s mumbling and thrashing around the bed. He’d reached out to shake Dean awake, but then he’d heard Dean whisper, “I couldn’t save him.”

A cod fishing boat had sunk off the coast a few days before they’d met up in Juneau, and Dean had gone on that mission. The word had gone through the fleets of crabbers and fishermen that three men were lost. The Coasties had saved the other two, but the three men hadn’t had time to put on their immersion suits before hitting the water. And even during the summer, the Bering Sea was cold, so going into it was a death sentence if not rescued soon enough.

Dean’s comment said while he was still asleep made Phil understand that each man lost haunted Dean. His lover rarely celebrated the ones he saved. Phil asked him once how many successful rescues he had. Dean had shook his head and said he only counted the ones lost.

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013, by , Filed under: Always Ready,Excerpts,Wednesday WiPs| | 1 Comment