Good Cookies: Prompt and Fill Post, Round Two
Good Cookie, definition: 1. Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal; 2. Generation Kill fanworks created for YAGKYAS. Can include short (under 1000 words) ficlets, drabbles, drawables, mixtapes, fanart, whatever!
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They put on their dress blues in the bedroom, checking each other over before they even go as far as the bedroom doorway. Pappy’s always liked Rudy in his dress blues, even before what they have now, when they were just two men who understood each other. Rudy looks like the Marine pretty girls sighed over in old movies, and Pappy’s always appreciated that.
“You ready?” Rudy asks as he finishes straightening Pappy’s buttons.
“Born ready,” Pappy replies. He reaches for Rudy’s hand and pauses when he realizes it’s shaking.
Rudy’s hand. Shaking.
Pappy’s not sure what to do with that. They’re neither of them nervy men, not even a little, but Pappy generally feels that Rudy is the steadier of the two of them. He can hold himself together just fine, but there’s a well of strength in Rudy that lives at the forefront because it has to, because it’s what made him the man he is today.
And then, Pappy knows what to do. He curls his fingers around Rudy’s trembling hand, and he raises that hand to his mouth, and he kisses Rudy right on his middle knuckle. “Come on,” he says. “Can’t be any worse than any other shindig we’ve been to.”
The thing about Rudy most people don’t know, the thing about Rudy that Pappy saw right away, is that Rudy, while honest and kind and helpful and hopeful, sometimes can’t handle direct questions. They throw off his groove in the wrong situation. Sometimes you have to coax his concern out of him from an angle he’s not looking for, and he’s always looking for an angle, sweet as he is, because that’s the skill that’s kept him alive his whole, knotted up life.
Pappy hates to think about it, what Rudy went through to become Rudy, what he lost. Pappy’s family is the damn Appalachian mountains, a little worn around the edges and definitely a bit rough to the touch, but they’re good and true and unwavering, always at your back even when you’re far away from them. Rudy’s family…well, Rudy’s family is Pappy and the Corps, and Pappy knows he’s not going anywhere, and he knows the Corps’ not going anywhere, but this is the first time they’re going to the Ball together, the first time they can, the first time it’s been allowed.
And Rudy, the biggest big brother in all of the goddamn Marine Corps (and they’re all big brothers to the world, really, even the weasely little shits), the one who allows his fabulousity be teased to soothe his brothers’ weary souls, the one who brews the espresso to give everyone an excuse to gather and talk, the one who walks around camp to double-check everyone’s cammie net stakes, makes sure his brothers are tucked in under their nets and watching for sunburn, he’s standing here, his hand is fucking shaking, and Pappy knows his fear without even asking.
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Rudy fears they’ll walk in together as who they are-who they are down to the bone--and his brothers won’t know him anymore, won’t talk to him anymore, won’t recognize him anymore. Rudy’s afraid (in that tiny, darkened part of himself he hates having), that they won’t be his brothers any more.
“Don’t stand behind a sleeping mule,” Pappy says.
Rudy tilts his head and thinks about that. “Let it be, let it be?” he replies.
“They knock you down, they will not be getting back up,” Pappy says, and it’s a promise, a reminder that no matter what happens tonight, no matter who says what, they’re playing the same rules they always have. The two of them first for each other, Rudy’s hand steady on Pappy’s shoulder, Pappy’s hand barely a whisper at the small of Rudy’s back as they walk in the big doors.
And those boys-those foul-mouthed sons of bitches Pappy loves more than his own damn eyes somedays-not giving a good goddamn that Rudy and Pappy are in each other’s pockets in an entirely different way, only seeing them as they are, as their brothers, and teasing them as they always have about the fact that they’re so goddamn married it hurts.
It does hurt, Pappy thinks when Rudy flashes him a brilliant smile, one tinged with a little self-deprecation at his ridiculous, silly worry that his brothers-his brothers--would ever forsake him. It hurts in the best way; it hurts like there’s not enough room in his heart but his heart’s going to keep finding more room.
It’s the best night of Pappy’s whole life, this Ball, and it only gets better when Rudy runs a thumb along his jaw and says, “You missed a spot.”
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This is epic and wonderful and everything I could ever want in life. Or at least GK fandom.
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