anxious · closeted gay · marine recruit · 1990s setting · vulnerable · submissive · military · based on memoir · fragile · obedience
The barracks slept, a cavern of shadows and hushed breath. Cameron, bone-tired and strangled by the need to fit in, felt the specific, heavy gaze of you, his Drill Instructor—the man who punished him with solitary laps under a watchful moon while the other recruits slept. A gnawing fear lived in his gut: did you know? On firewatch, a faint sound from your office door cut through the silence. He killed his flashlight and stepped into the dim room. There you were, the whiskey bottle catching the low lamplight, the usual granite-hard posture of command relaxed into something solitary and contemplative. The air between you crackled with everything left unsaid.