fic | Paint the ocean blue, and marigold too.
Dear everyone who guessed on my combat_jack fic, thanks for trying but you were all wrong. WHAT WOULD BRAD COLBERT SAY?? ;)
I'm reposting my actual story here. I had the prompt "out of bounds" and of course out of bounds + day + me = whales in the Arctic. Now you know! :D
This story was betaed by the lovely oxoniensis and hypertwink, without whom I would still be a horrible, typo-ridden mess. ♥
Paint the ocean blue,
and marigold too.
brad/nate, r
*
When Brad lands in Anchorage, the weather surprises him by being a fucking balmy 71°. It's not even particularly unseasonably warm, the pilot tells him. Brad shoves his parka further into his carry-on bag and tries to look less like an idiot.
Brad's been all over the world but mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, but even more than that, he's stayed along the 200 miles of Southern California coast. All he knows about Alaska is "big" and "cold".
It's a quiet twenty-minute ride from the airport to the harbor. His cabby doesn't say anything after he takes Brad's bags with a perfunctory "Where to?" Brad likes it better this way anyway. He cranks down the window and watches the city go by, feels the passing breeze tug on the stray hairs of his bangs. Not for the first time, he wishes he kept them short.
At the harbor, the Alexandria's not hard to spot, easily dwarfing a few pleasure yachts nearby. She doesn't get impressive though until Brad's made it almost all the way down the long stretch of jetty, jagged metal silhouette sharpening into the wires and antennas of a fine piece of technology.
There's a group of people waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. Brad aims for the one with the clipboard and introduces himself.
"Oh right, Colbert, gray whales, gotcha," the guy says. He shifts his clipboard under his armpit and holds out his hand. "I'm Nate by the way."
Brad's been baking underneath his sweater since he got here. His hand is clammy with sweat against Nate's firm, dry palm. If Nate notices, he doesn't say anything.
The other guys are Ray (narwhals), Mike (phytoplankton), some environmentalists, a doctor. None of them are much reminiscent of scientists. Ray's got a tattoos peeking out of the edges of his v-neck and Mike's got bulging muscles coming out of his.
It's Nate who looks the part, big ears under his floppy hat and eager grins. Up close, his cheeks already look pink from sunburn.
"Are you interning here?" Brad asks to be polite.
"He's leading this thing," Antonio aka Poke laughs. Poke's a Sociologist who came up studying discrimination in low-density populations and stayed. Brad's not sure what he's looking to find on an Arctic research expedition, but he knows the local waters well.
"He's the wiz kid," Poke explains, "tenure track and everything."
Brad had pegged Nate for a fresh grad at best, maybe even still an undergrad with ambition. Nate looks at him and smiles conspiratorially. "I'm older than I look," he whispers.
"More importantly, is that wool?" Ray jumps in.
For a minute there, Brad's forgotten about his sweater. Now, he's acutely aware of it, sticking to the skin that his undershirt didn't cover. The tag itches at the base of his neck.
"Should have checked the weather report son," Mike adds. His accent is softly southern. It makes him come off genteel, fatherly instead of dickish.
Despite the sea salt air, Brad feels far from home. He says, "I'll remember that next time."
*
The Alexandria is big enough to let them all have personal cabins, but not big enough for those cabins to be comfortable.
Brad hasn't been in quarters this cramped for a while now. He's struck with a moment of claustrophobia when his fingertips brush two parallel walls, but he wills it away.
After a few minutes, there's a knock on his door. It's Nate. Without his hat, he looks even younger. Brad wants to ask him his age but doesn't.
"Just wanted to see how you were settling," Nate says. He doesn't try to come in any further than the doorjamb. His eyes focus on Brad instead of dancing around the rest of the room. "I hope the rocking doesn't bother you too much."
"Nah, I'm used to it," Brad says.
"Oh yeah? Been on a lot of boats?" Nate sounds more friendly than curious. It's been a long day though; Brad's too tired to have this conversation. Too old.
"A bit," Brad says back.
Nate doesn't pry. He smiles and says, "We'll be sailing off soon if you want to come and watch."
Brad doesn't particular want to, but he follows Nate up anyway. At the stern, the rest of the expedition shout and wave to the strangers that are watching from shore. The foghorn sounds twice.
Brad watches the last vestiges of land slip away. It's a familiar sight, exciting and frightening.
*
Once upon a time, Brad used to be a Marine Corps man.
After he left, Brad wasn't so much lost as unmotivated.
When his discharge finally came through, he spent a lot of time surfing and running on the beach and getting sunburned. After a few weeks, his shoulders finally got with the program and started to freckle and tan instead of shedding off strips of days-old skin.
His parents fussed over him and started a lot of conversations with "But what do you want to do?" He told them "I don't know" and waited for the strain of disappointment to mar their features. They didn't ask for the guest room back though.
In the end, it's his cousin who brings up the idea of college "because I mean, what are else are you going to do?" She's applying herself this year.
Brad remembers babysitting her as teen, watching her chubby legs floundering in the waddle pool in his aunt and uncle's backyard. It seems like a lifetime ago.
The next day, Brad gets an application from UC San Diego because she's right; he's given up the right to ask for boyish adventures and ready heroism. He feels the future closing in on him, grey and unavoidable. He thinks, Semper gumby, and wonders when it became so fitting.
It only takes him twenty minutes to finish the whole thing. He gets a recommendation letter from his old Sergeant Major who he's not even sure knows how to spell "university" much less understand why anyone would want to waste their money going. It seems fitting. He goes to the interview in board shorts with leftover sea salt still clinging to his skin. The interviewer's barely older than him and spends the whole time asking about his favorite places to surf. Brad doesn't say "Thailand" though he wants to.
He finds out that he's accepted in January. It's his cousin who sees the letter first, already jumping and screaming before she's even opened it. "It's thick!" she says, and, "That means you got in!" when he doesn't respond.
"Oh," he says and wishes it were for her instead.
College ends up being mild and predictable. After the Marines, most things were.
Three months in, he starts dating a girl from ecology. She's pretty and smart, good family, bright future, the works. She was the kind of girl you didn't get to date if you were in the Corps.
It takes six dinners before she invite Brad back up to her place. Afterwards, he spends the whole night in her cramped dorm room bed and wakes up with the taste of her perfume on his tongue. Brad hasn't done anything like this since high school. He's not sure that he's actually missed it.
He doesn't expect her to change his life.
In December, over an earmarked copy of the Course Catalogue, she says, "Let's take Marine Biology together. I think that would be fun."
Brad tries not to laugh. It's the softest science he can imagine. Brad's been circling around a Comp Sci major for the last semester, but he's not entirely committed. He's been auditing a course in Astrophysics on the side, thinking about taking it on full-time; he thinks that would be fun.
She turns back to look at him from her lounge chair across the pool. It's chilly for SoCal's usual temperateness; Brad can just make out the bumps of her nipples against the stretched cotton of her tank top.
"Yeah, let's do it," he tells her. It's probably one of the dumbest things he's ever said.
The good news is the class only meets for one two-hour session on Tuesday afternoons. The bad news is Brad spots three separate tie-dyed t-shirts on the first day.
The Professor is willowy and tall, engulfed in layers of flowing silk and strands of beaded jewelry. She reminds Brad of what a gypsy fortuneteller might look like.
"The ocean," she begins and repeats it again, louder, for effect. She sounds like she's about to start some sort of epic poetry recitation the way she pulls out the syllables from deep within her lungs.
She lectures with a lot of gestures and no notes. It's not rhythmic enough to fall asleep to, but it's not exactly conducive to paying attention either.
Brad is doodling Feynman diagrams when the Prof pauses and points to him. "You. Young man, what do you know about Takifugu rubripes, the tiger pufferfish?"
"It's very delicious," Brad answers.
No one laughs. The Prof smiles at him, strained and patronizing, and moves on. Next to him, his girlfriend squeezes his hand once, hard.
Despite the inauspicious start, he learns more than he expects. The class isn't boring, not like he thought it would be. He watches slides of deep sea blue and feels an echo of yearning.
He's not in love, he's not entirely convinced it matters, but he's listening.
By the end of the semester, only half the class still looks at him like he spends his free time charting out whaling expeditions. He breaks up with his girlfriend but makes some new friends. They talk a lot continuing with the sequence, working for the IUCN or getting a University grant when they graduate. They sound genuine, concerned. Brad is not, but he respects the passion of their words.
Four years later though, he's the only one who's made it through the major. He's the only one signing his life away to study freaking fish.
*
After a week, they expedition is already nearing the Bering Sea.
Aside from a few Jet Ski runs along the coast, Brad hasn't been out in the real ocean in years now. He's not been a field work type of guy even though he suspects, instinctively, that he probably would have preferred it to chemical-fake lab rooms and musty student-dense offices.
He spends a lot of time outside above deck when he can. The scenery is gorgeous, all deep blue water and sheer cliffs when they're close to the coast. They look like they're traveling through a Discovery Channel special.
He gets a mild case of insomnia that slowly worsens. He gets up at midnight and runs laps around the deck in the jacket that he finally needs. He stays and watches the sun hover and hover over the horizon. He likes to see it finally set before he goes down for the night. Just to make sure it actually does.
It's probably fucking up his circadian cycle even more, but it's no use otherwise. Sometimes, he'd lie awake in his cabin thinking about it, feeling phantom rays of sunlight burning through his closed eyelids. It's a mild irritation he can't shake, this constant presence of day, like an itch underneath layers of skin and muscle, at the heart of bone itself.
He's not used to a place so strange. He's not used to this life at all.
*
The expedition organizes itself pretty quickly by specialization. Brad's in marine mammals with Ray and Walt, who use to train Beluga whales at Marineland before he figured out what he really wanted to do was study them in the wild.
There's a whole group devoted to jellyfish, four men and two women. Between them, they take up a whole corner table. With the way Ray and Walt like to sit uncomfortably close, marine mammals fit on a love seat. It makes Brad a little sad.
Aside from the usual, they've got a good range of interests onboard. Besides Poke, there's Evangeline the photographer and Doc the doctor, MD not veterinary. Not people Brad was expecting.
Ruby Reyes joins them at Anchor Point, the last stop before they hit real wilderness. She's suppose to be a psychologist, help them work out their issues and make sure they don't kill each other when they're 500 miles from civilization, but she seems to moonlight as a survivalist junkie on the side. She tells Brad a lot of stories about camping with grizzly bears and swimming fjords. Most of the guys like Ruby's stories, but it's probably less for the vicarious thrill and more because she's got the cheekbones of a supermodel and the tits of a porn star. Ray probably spends more time looking at her than his research material.
Of everyone, it's Nate that Brad can't exactly figure out. Officially, Nate is working on a government report on the fluctuations in biodiversity due to increased climate change. He can probably do it more easily from his cushy Harvard office, getting data streaming off the internet, instead of drifting out here in the middle of nowhere with the castoffs and the crazies.
Unofficially, Nate is a walking Encyclopedia. He points out passing landmarks, identifies sea birds by their Latin names, hands out advice on everything from saline levels in the Arctic over the last ten years to Mike's crazy photosynthesis theories.
Brad doesn't talk to him much. Nate's friendly without encouraging chatter, smiling and listening and never telling much about himself. After the first day, he lets the rest of expedition figure out their social inclinations for themselves.
Brad can appreciate that.
Mostly, Nate sits by himself, commandeering a table in the forward lounge, and reads everything. Reports, academic journals and student papers, Inuit poetry once in paperback. Brad gets in the habit of checking just to see what Nate will come up with next.
Two weeks in, Brad loses his copy of the travel schedule to Ray's propensity for "borrowing". He heads to Nate's cabin for another one.
Nate's door is always unlocked. Facilitates availability, Nate says, though Brad's rarely seen anyone go in. He wonders if Nate's just lonely or if he's really kidding himself.
Brad knocks once and goes in without hesitation.
Inside, Walt is on his knees, head bobbing in front of Nate's crouch. It's a motion that's universally unmistakable.
"Sorry," Brad says quickly and shuts the door. He doesn't know what to think. His mind flashes on Nate's cock, wet and saliva slick, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut. The image doesn't fade though.
An hour later, Walt's running after him in the mess hall. He looks more distressed than embarrassed. It's not something that happens often, he says. He's not that type of guy - he doesn't want Brad to think so. He's just homesick. It doesn't mean anything.
Brad nods alone, tries not to interject with anything harsh.
"Please don't say anything to Ray," Walt begs.
Brad's wondered about them. Not conspicuously or purposefully but a low-grade curiosity about whether there's actually anything there. He watches Ray's determined flirtation with anyone female alongside his casual presence in Walt's personal space and wonders which one is the ruse. Or if they are both somehow a mutually enforcing picture of a Lothario-Ray that Brad's never entirely doubted.
"I won't," he tells Walt. He doesn't know them, any of them, well enough; it's none of his business anyway.
Nate doesn't mention it at all.
*
The work actually isn't much different than at the University. Brad's yet to find the migratory gray whales that he's been promised so he's back skimming through known data.
Most of the time, there's not much to see at all besides spotted clumps of refuse and some stray seabirds here and there. After a while, even they get fewer and fewer.
"That's just the way it is homes," Ray tells him. "Good things come to those who wait."
Ray's been on two of these expeditions already and it's only his third dissertation year. He still runs after every would-be blow spray. Brad's not sure how he still has the energy.
As far as Brad knows, it's only the jellyfish people who've gotten anything usable. They've organized two dives already. They spend hours waving around tubes of water samples, talking to each other in excited Russian that sound like arguing.
Brad doesn't get the appeal.
Still, it's hard not to be impressed when they're heading out to the Arctic. There's a real sharpness to the chill now, a sting in the wind like needles that instantly brings goose bumps to any exposed flesh. They pass a small floating island of ice, and Brad thinks, End of the world. He wonders if there's some way to fall off after all, some precipice waiting for the mortal intruders to stray too far.
He wonders what comes after the edge.
It's not enough to keep him below deck, not the temperature nor the vertigo-inducing landscapes. He piles on sweaters and jacket and stays after the cold has penetrated through layers of down and wool, feels the magnetic draw of the ocean around them.
Brad's daydreaming of hot cocoa when he sees it.
A tail fluke.
He waits and waits for another flash of black, but there's nothing but choppy, icy blue waters. He calls Ray up anyway.
Ray spends a good five minutes starring at the spot Brad indicted without comment. Brad's ready to concede that he's mistaken after all, caught the shadow of some stray sea weed or something when Ray says, "Fuck homes, I see them," and runs for Nate.
Everyone comes up to watch. It's the first sign of marine life that match the other-worldliness of their surroundings. The excitement spreads beyond Brad's little group of whale aficionados. One of the Brazilian environmentalists slaps his back and says, "Bom, Colbert, bom."
Brad only knows him from a couple of Xbox tournaments, hasn't exchanged more than ten words with him total, but he still grins back like an old friend and says, "Sim, sim."
When the ship's closer, it's hard to imagine they could have missed these whales. There's a whole pod here, easily twenty individuals, the silhouettes of their breeches vivid against the horizon.
Everyone crowds around the banisters, pointing and laughing like tourists. Over the noise, Nate tells them, "Look at the jawlines. They're bowheads, gotta be."
Brad's only ever heard of bowheads in passing. They're common enough in Arctic waters, but the alienness of their physiology - the wide curved mouth, the grills of baleen - makes them seem extra exciting.
"This is amazing," Nate says.
"Fuck yeah!" Ray shouts. Next to him, Nate laughs. It's a good sound.
It's one of those ridiculously clear days. Not a cloud in sight. When Nate turns to him, Brad is struck by the brilliant gold of Nate's hair.
Wow, Nate mouths.
Brad nods back and breathes and tries to take in everything around him. Wow, he thinks.
*
Things settle.
Brad finally finds a family of gray whales traveling along the eastern coast of the Bering. He goes through a whole memory stick of pictures before he finds out that Nate's been shooting them for him with his HD video camera. Nate grins back at him and says, "Amateur," as he passes.
They get close enough to tag a few. After so long looking at old reports, Brad's suddenly swamped with incoming data. GPS locations, swim speed, dive depths. In the days after, he gets more work done than he has in months.
He's still not sleeping properly, but it doesn't bother him as much as before. He stays up late watching satellite blips and for once, is glad that the sun is there to keep him company.
The good cheer is contagious. Walt's still high over seeing the bowheads. Brad catches him giggling with Ray over some of the earlier footage, letting Ray point out penises and boobs in the identifying scars of the bowheads' tails.
Even Nate is more engaged, more there with them. He starts telling jokes at lunches and joining them for movie nights. Brad catches him humming snatches of The Killers, surprisingly in tune. He winks when Brad joins in.
Nate's cabin is three doors down and across the corridor from Brad's. Sometimes, Brad thinks about visiting him when the light is on particularly deep in the night.
Once, as Brad's heading back to his bunk for the day, he sees a man come out. Some guy from environmental team whose name he still doesn't know.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The next day, Brad sits down at Nate's table and gets him to teach him about whalebone density. As always, Nate is knowledgeable and happy to help. They talk for two hours straight.
Brad looks down at glacier-clear green eyes, long artist fingers and tries not to want.
*
In mid-July, they finally round the corner of the Bering Straight, coming into the Chukchi Sea. It's almost proper Arctic Ocean now.
There's a small inlet of calm water that they head to. The jellyfish people want to do another dive. Unique blooming opportunity, they say. Nate okays it, and they stop.
It's a nice day out, too good to waste. Brad should be drawing up spreadsheets for the new data, but he throws on a pair of dark shades instead and dozes in the sun.
"What's that?"
It's Nate, Mike beside him. Brad shakes himself off and scans the ocean for anything conspicuous, but Mike nods towards land instead.
They're two miles off the coast; it's hard to make out anything. Brad squints, sees a dark shadow and looks to Nate.
"We'll have to check it out," Nate says. His mouth is curved and unhappy. It could be anything, Brad thinks. It could be nothing.
They take a motorboat to shore. Just a small group: Brad, Nate, Walt, and Mike.
It doesn't take long to figure it out.
Of course, it's a beached whale. When they're closer, Brad sees the mouth: a bowhead. He wonders if she's one of the breechers they saw earlier.
Nate docks the boat a good hundred meters away and warns them to approach slowly. It's empty caution though; from the depth that her skin has dried, she must have been out of the water for days now.
"We'll fix this, right?" Walt says. He sounds convinced.
"There's not enough time," Nate tells him. They all know it. Even if they had the capacity to get her back into ocean, she'd die anyway.
"We have to," Walt says and takes off running.
Brad watches him go. It's the first time he has a clear perspective of dimension of the whale. Next to her, it's Walt who seems unreal, too dwarfed to feel significant. It makes it sadder somehow.
They stop some ten feet away. The whale's giant eye is still open though she is barely moving now. Brad wonders what she sees.
There are footsteps behind them. They turn and see Nate jogging to catching up. Brad was not aware that he was not following.
When he gets closer, they see that he is carrying a rifle, the emergency one that everyone understood wasn't ever really going to be used. For a second, Brad is angry that Nate remembered to bring it at all.
Walt waits until Nate is almost on them and says, "You can't." He sounds final. Brad is glad someone said it out loud.
Nate looks at Walt straight in the eye. "It would be crueler otherwise," he says back. He is not wrong.
Walk shakes his head, turns once to look at the whale, and walks back towards the boat. His long, angry strong strides cover distance as fast as Nate's jog.
Mike shrugs and starts after him.
In Nate's shoes, Brad would do the same. He wants to take Walt's side anyway.
Against the lingering silence, Nate says, "You used to be a Marine right?" He holds the rifle out to Brad. "I saw your tattoo."
Brad's only had his shirt off twice, maybe three times in front Nate. He had the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor added when he made Recon, a little dab of color on his shoulder. Nothing Nate should have noticed.
Brad looks at the rifle and feels his fingers begin to tense. He stills them into fists. "I've been out for a while now," he says. It's not no.
"Ok," Nate says. He doesn't sound mad. He takes the rifle back, loads it with practiced ease.
Brad thinks about stopping him. If it has to be anyone, it should be him. It's on the tip of his tongue to say so.
He hesitates.
"Look away," Nate says.
Brad doesn't.
Nate's gun handling is surprisingly good. He holds the stock tight against his shoulder bone like he's supposed to and pulls the trigger, once, twice.
Bang, bang.
She bleeds more than Brad expects.
There's a stretch of silence afterwards, like the world's holding its collective breath. It's just an illusion though. When they're back on the ship again, surrounded by crewmates and questions, the moment is broken and the crash of waves and the grind of engine motors come rushing in.
It's dizzying. Brad's never been seasick in his life but he pukes for a solid half-hour afterwards.
*
Most days, Brad doesn't like to think about the Corps much.
He goes through long days where he forgets to remember that there was another him, the one who grew up dreaming in Marine camouflage, the one who memorized machine gun parts and alpha bravo charlie instead of names in Latin.
It's better to forget, he thinks.
When he does remember, when he thinks about it, he thinks about leaving - how unforeseeable it was, how cowardly. How absolutely necessary.
It started simply. They were playing a pickup game of basketball on an off day in Afghanistan. Or maybe they were already back in Oceanside then. Some days, he forgets even that.
What does he remember comes back to him in bits: the pebbled skin of the ball against his palm, jumping, the crash of a sharp elbow - he doesn't even know whose - coming down hard on his eye, falling, the rough heat of the pavement against his face.
Blinking up and seeing a red tinted world and just for second, wondering if the hell that he never believed in had come to take him after all.
He's not sure why he played that day. He isn't even any good. He's tall enough and fast enough, but his shots were often a little too hard or a little too wide.
But they all asked him to. They were down a man - Huntington can't play with that leg, come on Brad, use that freakish height for something productive. Ok, ok, he said, I guess someone needs to teach you whiskey tango fucks how to play.
He was in the infirmary for a day before they cleared him for duty. He had a residual headache, a little bit of blurriness in his peripheral vision, nothing serious. Nothing worth mentioning.
Two weeks later, he shot the hell out of a new Private's leg during a routine search and seizure mission. He was at least a meter off.
They said it wasn't really because of the eye, he just needed time to adjust a little, he could stay, he should, they need men like him out there.
He nodded and tried to believe them, but he just didn't feel right with a gun afterwards.
*
There are about ten thousand statutes dealing with the proper handling and disposal of a whale carcass.
Nate seems to know them all by heart. He radios the EPA and IUNC and gets Ruby to call up her friends at the Alaskan Parks and Recreation Department. It's ok, he says. It's taken care of.
They can't stay. There's a careful balance between the amount of fuel they have and the narrow window of Arctic ice recession. Brad can see the body for a solid ten minutes after they've start sailing away.
The ship settles down to an unnatural hushed quiet. It's probably suppose to be respectful, like the whispered reception after a funeral, but to Brad, it just feels ominous. Like they're waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for it to get worse.
Brad moves to the forward lounge. For once, it's empty. Brad gets a table by the starboard windows and takes out his laptop. He's suppose to be tracking the GPS signal on his pod - they've moved further ahead than he anticipated - but he keeps flashing back to the smell. The sharp ocean brine of the air. Nothing unusual out here, but it sticks out in his mind even though he's been use to it for weeks now.
After a while, Nate wonders in. He sits at Brad's table without asking. "I know it's hard sometimes," he says, "but I promise you it's worth it. At the end of the day, it's worth it."
They're surrounded by tree-huggers. Brad's not dead inside, but he's not the one Nate needs to talk to.
"You got me wrong," he says. "I don't really care about any of this. I just got stuck in this field."
"Of course you care." Nate says it like a fact, like a regular comment - Oh, the weather is nice outside - instead of a declarative sentence. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't."
Brad doesn't bother pointing out that they've only known each for a month.
After a while, Nate adds, "It's not a bad thing you know."
"I'm sorry, you're wrong," Brad says again.
Nate nods. Brad's never known Nate to argue with anyone. He pushes by implication and confidence, no direct attack. It's a hard tactic to plan a defense against. It's something Brad admires him for.
"You'll have tell me your story some time," Nate says, getting up.
Brad looks up at him. He still seems too young to be here. "You'll have to tell me yours," Brad offers.
Nate's mouth freezes into little boy sad though he keeps his smile. Brad wonders if his story ends with heartbreak or death. Or both.
"Rain check?" Nate says.
Brad nods and lets him go.
*
It stays with Brad.
He thinks about Nate's words - "Of course you care" - and wonders if it's that simple. A month ago, a day ago, he would have been sure. He didn't fit in at his department in San Diego, he barely fits in here. He took marine biology, kept with it because it was something to do, because the siren song of the seas beckoned and he was helpless to resist.
It doesn't mean he likes it though.
Or does it? He thinks about the dead whale, the way the image, the sound, penetrates, straight to the memory lobe of his brain. He thinks about how he's stayed, how the new data coming in excites him, grabs his attention like the way A-O maps once did. How actions more often than not belie any words.
It's not doing him any good to dwell on it. He's been pacing the nine feet of open floor of his room for half an hour now.
He gets out and walks the three doors down to Nate's cabin, straight to the source. He knocks softly in case Nate is asleep, but Nate calls out "It's open" quickly enough.
Brad opens the door and stops. There's a bottle of scotch uncapped on the dresser. The smell suffocates the room. It's unexpected.
Nate's stretched out on his bunk, his shirt off, sweatpants low on his hips. Miles of clear, pristine skin for Brad see. It strikes him: no scars or tats. Almost everyone Brad knows here has a tattoo. Even Walt has a blue and green Earth on his ankle. Brad wonders if it's another façade.
"Sit," Nate orders. Brad goes.
The scotch is more than half empty. There's a residual ring of amber in the tumbler resting on Nate's abdomen. It's swirls with Nate's breaths.
When Nate speaks though, his speech is smooth and purposeful, unslurred. "I used to be in the Corps too," he says.
Brad thinks about the faint pink of sunburn on Nate's cheeks that first day. "I can't really see it," he says back.
Nate laughs. "Oh yeah, made it to Captain."
It's still hard to picture, but maybe it makes sense after all. There's a core of steel to Nate that's common in the Core. With Nate though, it wouldn't be something that the Marines taught him.
"Why'd you leave?" Brad asks.
"Policy disagreements." Nate's lips tug up into a smirk.
"You mean the lack of assfucking?" Brad says back.
Nate isn't smiling anymore. His eyebrows furrow, revealing groves of wrinkles in his forehead. "More like a war that wasn't going anywhere. Or the needless endangerment of my men. A lot of bad fucking decisions in general." It's a confession. Brad didn't know he was looking for. Nate pauses, adds, "Oh yeah, and the lack of assfucking."
The way Nate's lips say "fucking" looks filthy. Brad feels it straight to his cock.
Nate seems to sense it. His smirk is back. He sits up, leans over, Eskimo kiss close. Brad gets lost in miles of eyelashes. It's dizzying; Brad wishes he could see the shape of Nate's mouth.
"What about you, Brad?" Nate says. "Is that why you left? Because of the lack of assfucking?"
He's somehow even closer now, close enough that Brad can taste the alcohol on his breath. It would be easy to cover the last bit of distance, to take Nate's mouth, his cock maybe, but it wouldn't be what Brad wants.
This isn't the Nate that Brad wants.
"I don't really do that," Brad says. It isn't really a lie. He hasn't since high school.
Nate let's him get away with it. "Too bad," Nate says, pulling back, lying down again.
It's as an effective dismissal as any. Brad gets up to go.
At the door, Nate calls out, "Stay with me?" His voice is raw. Brad's glad he said no to the sex.
He comes back, kneels so they are eye level. He takes the tumbler from Nate's loose fingers, pulls up the comforter crumpled at the foot of the bed. Nate lets him.
Brad smiles. "I shouldn't," he says softly. He wants Nate to understand. "You need to rest."
"Ok," Nate says.
Brad watches him for a moment. He gets up again. "Ask me again tomorrow," Brad says.
Nate's eyes are closed. Brad thinks he's heard anyway.
*
Since the first days, Brad's learned the best place to think is outside. Something about the sharpness of the air, the immensity of their environment; it gives him perspective. He likes to stake out a bench near the bow when most everyone else is asleep and feel alone for a while.
This far north, the sun won't quite reach the horizon for months yet. Miles out, it paints the ocean in shimmering strips of gold, brilliant and surreal like a mirage.
There's a slight breeze. It's cool without being cold, more reminiscent of the crisp chill of Oceanside in November than any Arctic nights.
He's getting use to it here, he thinks.
It's 1 am when Brad finally goes back down again. Against the quiet of the rest of the ship, the steady splash of waves against the hull is soothing like a lullaby.
When they leave, he will miss this place.
*
I'm reposting my actual story here. I had the prompt "out of bounds" and of course out of bounds + day + me = whales in the Arctic. Now you know! :D
This story was betaed by the lovely oxoniensis and hypertwink, without whom I would still be a horrible, typo-ridden mess. ♥
Paint the ocean blue,
and marigold too.
brad/nate, r
*
When Brad lands in Anchorage, the weather surprises him by being a fucking balmy 71°. It's not even particularly unseasonably warm, the pilot tells him. Brad shoves his parka further into his carry-on bag and tries to look less like an idiot.
Brad's been all over the world but mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, but even more than that, he's stayed along the 200 miles of Southern California coast. All he knows about Alaska is "big" and "cold".
It's a quiet twenty-minute ride from the airport to the harbor. His cabby doesn't say anything after he takes Brad's bags with a perfunctory "Where to?" Brad likes it better this way anyway. He cranks down the window and watches the city go by, feels the passing breeze tug on the stray hairs of his bangs. Not for the first time, he wishes he kept them short.
At the harbor, the Alexandria's not hard to spot, easily dwarfing a few pleasure yachts nearby. She doesn't get impressive though until Brad's made it almost all the way down the long stretch of jetty, jagged metal silhouette sharpening into the wires and antennas of a fine piece of technology.
There's a group of people waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. Brad aims for the one with the clipboard and introduces himself.
"Oh right, Colbert, gray whales, gotcha," the guy says. He shifts his clipboard under his armpit and holds out his hand. "I'm Nate by the way."
Brad's been baking underneath his sweater since he got here. His hand is clammy with sweat against Nate's firm, dry palm. If Nate notices, he doesn't say anything.
The other guys are Ray (narwhals), Mike (phytoplankton), some environmentalists, a doctor. None of them are much reminiscent of scientists. Ray's got a tattoos peeking out of the edges of his v-neck and Mike's got bulging muscles coming out of his.
It's Nate who looks the part, big ears under his floppy hat and eager grins. Up close, his cheeks already look pink from sunburn.
"Are you interning here?" Brad asks to be polite.
"He's leading this thing," Antonio aka Poke laughs. Poke's a Sociologist who came up studying discrimination in low-density populations and stayed. Brad's not sure what he's looking to find on an Arctic research expedition, but he knows the local waters well.
"He's the wiz kid," Poke explains, "tenure track and everything."
Brad had pegged Nate for a fresh grad at best, maybe even still an undergrad with ambition. Nate looks at him and smiles conspiratorially. "I'm older than I look," he whispers.
"More importantly, is that wool?" Ray jumps in.
For a minute there, Brad's forgotten about his sweater. Now, he's acutely aware of it, sticking to the skin that his undershirt didn't cover. The tag itches at the base of his neck.
"Should have checked the weather report son," Mike adds. His accent is softly southern. It makes him come off genteel, fatherly instead of dickish.
Despite the sea salt air, Brad feels far from home. He says, "I'll remember that next time."
*
The Alexandria is big enough to let them all have personal cabins, but not big enough for those cabins to be comfortable.
Brad hasn't been in quarters this cramped for a while now. He's struck with a moment of claustrophobia when his fingertips brush two parallel walls, but he wills it away.
After a few minutes, there's a knock on his door. It's Nate. Without his hat, he looks even younger. Brad wants to ask him his age but doesn't.
"Just wanted to see how you were settling," Nate says. He doesn't try to come in any further than the doorjamb. His eyes focus on Brad instead of dancing around the rest of the room. "I hope the rocking doesn't bother you too much."
"Nah, I'm used to it," Brad says.
"Oh yeah? Been on a lot of boats?" Nate sounds more friendly than curious. It's been a long day though; Brad's too tired to have this conversation. Too old.
"A bit," Brad says back.
Nate doesn't pry. He smiles and says, "We'll be sailing off soon if you want to come and watch."
Brad doesn't particular want to, but he follows Nate up anyway. At the stern, the rest of the expedition shout and wave to the strangers that are watching from shore. The foghorn sounds twice.
Brad watches the last vestiges of land slip away. It's a familiar sight, exciting and frightening.
*
Once upon a time, Brad used to be a Marine Corps man.
After he left, Brad wasn't so much lost as unmotivated.
When his discharge finally came through, he spent a lot of time surfing and running on the beach and getting sunburned. After a few weeks, his shoulders finally got with the program and started to freckle and tan instead of shedding off strips of days-old skin.
His parents fussed over him and started a lot of conversations with "But what do you want to do?" He told them "I don't know" and waited for the strain of disappointment to mar their features. They didn't ask for the guest room back though.
In the end, it's his cousin who brings up the idea of college "because I mean, what are else are you going to do?" She's applying herself this year.
Brad remembers babysitting her as teen, watching her chubby legs floundering in the waddle pool in his aunt and uncle's backyard. It seems like a lifetime ago.
The next day, Brad gets an application from UC San Diego because she's right; he's given up the right to ask for boyish adventures and ready heroism. He feels the future closing in on him, grey and unavoidable. He thinks, Semper gumby, and wonders when it became so fitting.
It only takes him twenty minutes to finish the whole thing. He gets a recommendation letter from his old Sergeant Major who he's not even sure knows how to spell "university" much less understand why anyone would want to waste their money going. It seems fitting. He goes to the interview in board shorts with leftover sea salt still clinging to his skin. The interviewer's barely older than him and spends the whole time asking about his favorite places to surf. Brad doesn't say "Thailand" though he wants to.
He finds out that he's accepted in January. It's his cousin who sees the letter first, already jumping and screaming before she's even opened it. "It's thick!" she says, and, "That means you got in!" when he doesn't respond.
"Oh," he says and wishes it were for her instead.
College ends up being mild and predictable. After the Marines, most things were.
Three months in, he starts dating a girl from ecology. She's pretty and smart, good family, bright future, the works. She was the kind of girl you didn't get to date if you were in the Corps.
It takes six dinners before she invite Brad back up to her place. Afterwards, he spends the whole night in her cramped dorm room bed and wakes up with the taste of her perfume on his tongue. Brad hasn't done anything like this since high school. He's not sure that he's actually missed it.
He doesn't expect her to change his life.
In December, over an earmarked copy of the Course Catalogue, she says, "Let's take Marine Biology together. I think that would be fun."
Brad tries not to laugh. It's the softest science he can imagine. Brad's been circling around a Comp Sci major for the last semester, but he's not entirely committed. He's been auditing a course in Astrophysics on the side, thinking about taking it on full-time; he thinks that would be fun.
She turns back to look at him from her lounge chair across the pool. It's chilly for SoCal's usual temperateness; Brad can just make out the bumps of her nipples against the stretched cotton of her tank top.
"Yeah, let's do it," he tells her. It's probably one of the dumbest things he's ever said.
The good news is the class only meets for one two-hour session on Tuesday afternoons. The bad news is Brad spots three separate tie-dyed t-shirts on the first day.
The Professor is willowy and tall, engulfed in layers of flowing silk and strands of beaded jewelry. She reminds Brad of what a gypsy fortuneteller might look like.
"The ocean," she begins and repeats it again, louder, for effect. She sounds like she's about to start some sort of epic poetry recitation the way she pulls out the syllables from deep within her lungs.
She lectures with a lot of gestures and no notes. It's not rhythmic enough to fall asleep to, but it's not exactly conducive to paying attention either.
Brad is doodling Feynman diagrams when the Prof pauses and points to him. "You. Young man, what do you know about Takifugu rubripes, the tiger pufferfish?"
"It's very delicious," Brad answers.
No one laughs. The Prof smiles at him, strained and patronizing, and moves on. Next to him, his girlfriend squeezes his hand once, hard.
Despite the inauspicious start, he learns more than he expects. The class isn't boring, not like he thought it would be. He watches slides of deep sea blue and feels an echo of yearning.
He's not in love, he's not entirely convinced it matters, but he's listening.
By the end of the semester, only half the class still looks at him like he spends his free time charting out whaling expeditions. He breaks up with his girlfriend but makes some new friends. They talk a lot continuing with the sequence, working for the IUCN or getting a University grant when they graduate. They sound genuine, concerned. Brad is not, but he respects the passion of their words.
Four years later though, he's the only one who's made it through the major. He's the only one signing his life away to study freaking fish.
*
After a week, they expedition is already nearing the Bering Sea.
Aside from a few Jet Ski runs along the coast, Brad hasn't been out in the real ocean in years now. He's not been a field work type of guy even though he suspects, instinctively, that he probably would have preferred it to chemical-fake lab rooms and musty student-dense offices.
He spends a lot of time outside above deck when he can. The scenery is gorgeous, all deep blue water and sheer cliffs when they're close to the coast. They look like they're traveling through a Discovery Channel special.
He gets a mild case of insomnia that slowly worsens. He gets up at midnight and runs laps around the deck in the jacket that he finally needs. He stays and watches the sun hover and hover over the horizon. He likes to see it finally set before he goes down for the night. Just to make sure it actually does.
It's probably fucking up his circadian cycle even more, but it's no use otherwise. Sometimes, he'd lie awake in his cabin thinking about it, feeling phantom rays of sunlight burning through his closed eyelids. It's a mild irritation he can't shake, this constant presence of day, like an itch underneath layers of skin and muscle, at the heart of bone itself.
He's not used to a place so strange. He's not used to this life at all.
*
The expedition organizes itself pretty quickly by specialization. Brad's in marine mammals with Ray and Walt, who use to train Beluga whales at Marineland before he figured out what he really wanted to do was study them in the wild.
There's a whole group devoted to jellyfish, four men and two women. Between them, they take up a whole corner table. With the way Ray and Walt like to sit uncomfortably close, marine mammals fit on a love seat. It makes Brad a little sad.
Aside from the usual, they've got a good range of interests onboard. Besides Poke, there's Evangeline the photographer and Doc the doctor, MD not veterinary. Not people Brad was expecting.
Ruby Reyes joins them at Anchor Point, the last stop before they hit real wilderness. She's suppose to be a psychologist, help them work out their issues and make sure they don't kill each other when they're 500 miles from civilization, but she seems to moonlight as a survivalist junkie on the side. She tells Brad a lot of stories about camping with grizzly bears and swimming fjords. Most of the guys like Ruby's stories, but it's probably less for the vicarious thrill and more because she's got the cheekbones of a supermodel and the tits of a porn star. Ray probably spends more time looking at her than his research material.
Of everyone, it's Nate that Brad can't exactly figure out. Officially, Nate is working on a government report on the fluctuations in biodiversity due to increased climate change. He can probably do it more easily from his cushy Harvard office, getting data streaming off the internet, instead of drifting out here in the middle of nowhere with the castoffs and the crazies.
Unofficially, Nate is a walking Encyclopedia. He points out passing landmarks, identifies sea birds by their Latin names, hands out advice on everything from saline levels in the Arctic over the last ten years to Mike's crazy photosynthesis theories.
Brad doesn't talk to him much. Nate's friendly without encouraging chatter, smiling and listening and never telling much about himself. After the first day, he lets the rest of expedition figure out their social inclinations for themselves.
Brad can appreciate that.
Mostly, Nate sits by himself, commandeering a table in the forward lounge, and reads everything. Reports, academic journals and student papers, Inuit poetry once in paperback. Brad gets in the habit of checking just to see what Nate will come up with next.
Two weeks in, Brad loses his copy of the travel schedule to Ray's propensity for "borrowing". He heads to Nate's cabin for another one.
Nate's door is always unlocked. Facilitates availability, Nate says, though Brad's rarely seen anyone go in. He wonders if Nate's just lonely or if he's really kidding himself.
Brad knocks once and goes in without hesitation.
Inside, Walt is on his knees, head bobbing in front of Nate's crouch. It's a motion that's universally unmistakable.
"Sorry," Brad says quickly and shuts the door. He doesn't know what to think. His mind flashes on Nate's cock, wet and saliva slick, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut. The image doesn't fade though.
An hour later, Walt's running after him in the mess hall. He looks more distressed than embarrassed. It's not something that happens often, he says. He's not that type of guy - he doesn't want Brad to think so. He's just homesick. It doesn't mean anything.
Brad nods alone, tries not to interject with anything harsh.
"Please don't say anything to Ray," Walt begs.
Brad's wondered about them. Not conspicuously or purposefully but a low-grade curiosity about whether there's actually anything there. He watches Ray's determined flirtation with anyone female alongside his casual presence in Walt's personal space and wonders which one is the ruse. Or if they are both somehow a mutually enforcing picture of a Lothario-Ray that Brad's never entirely doubted.
"I won't," he tells Walt. He doesn't know them, any of them, well enough; it's none of his business anyway.
Nate doesn't mention it at all.
*
The work actually isn't much different than at the University. Brad's yet to find the migratory gray whales that he's been promised so he's back skimming through known data.
Most of the time, there's not much to see at all besides spotted clumps of refuse and some stray seabirds here and there. After a while, even they get fewer and fewer.
"That's just the way it is homes," Ray tells him. "Good things come to those who wait."
Ray's been on two of these expeditions already and it's only his third dissertation year. He still runs after every would-be blow spray. Brad's not sure how he still has the energy.
As far as Brad knows, it's only the jellyfish people who've gotten anything usable. They've organized two dives already. They spend hours waving around tubes of water samples, talking to each other in excited Russian that sound like arguing.
Brad doesn't get the appeal.
Still, it's hard not to be impressed when they're heading out to the Arctic. There's a real sharpness to the chill now, a sting in the wind like needles that instantly brings goose bumps to any exposed flesh. They pass a small floating island of ice, and Brad thinks, End of the world. He wonders if there's some way to fall off after all, some precipice waiting for the mortal intruders to stray too far.
He wonders what comes after the edge.
It's not enough to keep him below deck, not the temperature nor the vertigo-inducing landscapes. He piles on sweaters and jacket and stays after the cold has penetrated through layers of down and wool, feels the magnetic draw of the ocean around them.
Brad's daydreaming of hot cocoa when he sees it.
A tail fluke.
He waits and waits for another flash of black, but there's nothing but choppy, icy blue waters. He calls Ray up anyway.
Ray spends a good five minutes starring at the spot Brad indicted without comment. Brad's ready to concede that he's mistaken after all, caught the shadow of some stray sea weed or something when Ray says, "Fuck homes, I see them," and runs for Nate.
Everyone comes up to watch. It's the first sign of marine life that match the other-worldliness of their surroundings. The excitement spreads beyond Brad's little group of whale aficionados. One of the Brazilian environmentalists slaps his back and says, "Bom, Colbert, bom."
Brad only knows him from a couple of Xbox tournaments, hasn't exchanged more than ten words with him total, but he still grins back like an old friend and says, "Sim, sim."
When the ship's closer, it's hard to imagine they could have missed these whales. There's a whole pod here, easily twenty individuals, the silhouettes of their breeches vivid against the horizon.
Everyone crowds around the banisters, pointing and laughing like tourists. Over the noise, Nate tells them, "Look at the jawlines. They're bowheads, gotta be."
Brad's only ever heard of bowheads in passing. They're common enough in Arctic waters, but the alienness of their physiology - the wide curved mouth, the grills of baleen - makes them seem extra exciting.
"This is amazing," Nate says.
"Fuck yeah!" Ray shouts. Next to him, Nate laughs. It's a good sound.
It's one of those ridiculously clear days. Not a cloud in sight. When Nate turns to him, Brad is struck by the brilliant gold of Nate's hair.
Wow, Nate mouths.
Brad nods back and breathes and tries to take in everything around him. Wow, he thinks.
*
Things settle.
Brad finally finds a family of gray whales traveling along the eastern coast of the Bering. He goes through a whole memory stick of pictures before he finds out that Nate's been shooting them for him with his HD video camera. Nate grins back at him and says, "Amateur," as he passes.
They get close enough to tag a few. After so long looking at old reports, Brad's suddenly swamped with incoming data. GPS locations, swim speed, dive depths. In the days after, he gets more work done than he has in months.
He's still not sleeping properly, but it doesn't bother him as much as before. He stays up late watching satellite blips and for once, is glad that the sun is there to keep him company.
The good cheer is contagious. Walt's still high over seeing the bowheads. Brad catches him giggling with Ray over some of the earlier footage, letting Ray point out penises and boobs in the identifying scars of the bowheads' tails.
Even Nate is more engaged, more there with them. He starts telling jokes at lunches and joining them for movie nights. Brad catches him humming snatches of The Killers, surprisingly in tune. He winks when Brad joins in.
Nate's cabin is three doors down and across the corridor from Brad's. Sometimes, Brad thinks about visiting him when the light is on particularly deep in the night.
Once, as Brad's heading back to his bunk for the day, he sees a man come out. Some guy from environmental team whose name he still doesn't know.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The next day, Brad sits down at Nate's table and gets him to teach him about whalebone density. As always, Nate is knowledgeable and happy to help. They talk for two hours straight.
Brad looks down at glacier-clear green eyes, long artist fingers and tries not to want.
*
In mid-July, they finally round the corner of the Bering Straight, coming into the Chukchi Sea. It's almost proper Arctic Ocean now.
There's a small inlet of calm water that they head to. The jellyfish people want to do another dive. Unique blooming opportunity, they say. Nate okays it, and they stop.
It's a nice day out, too good to waste. Brad should be drawing up spreadsheets for the new data, but he throws on a pair of dark shades instead and dozes in the sun.
"What's that?"
It's Nate, Mike beside him. Brad shakes himself off and scans the ocean for anything conspicuous, but Mike nods towards land instead.
They're two miles off the coast; it's hard to make out anything. Brad squints, sees a dark shadow and looks to Nate.
"We'll have to check it out," Nate says. His mouth is curved and unhappy. It could be anything, Brad thinks. It could be nothing.
They take a motorboat to shore. Just a small group: Brad, Nate, Walt, and Mike.
It doesn't take long to figure it out.
Of course, it's a beached whale. When they're closer, Brad sees the mouth: a bowhead. He wonders if she's one of the breechers they saw earlier.
Nate docks the boat a good hundred meters away and warns them to approach slowly. It's empty caution though; from the depth that her skin has dried, she must have been out of the water for days now.
"We'll fix this, right?" Walt says. He sounds convinced.
"There's not enough time," Nate tells him. They all know it. Even if they had the capacity to get her back into ocean, she'd die anyway.
"We have to," Walt says and takes off running.
Brad watches him go. It's the first time he has a clear perspective of dimension of the whale. Next to her, it's Walt who seems unreal, too dwarfed to feel significant. It makes it sadder somehow.
They stop some ten feet away. The whale's giant eye is still open though she is barely moving now. Brad wonders what she sees.
There are footsteps behind them. They turn and see Nate jogging to catching up. Brad was not aware that he was not following.
When he gets closer, they see that he is carrying a rifle, the emergency one that everyone understood wasn't ever really going to be used. For a second, Brad is angry that Nate remembered to bring it at all.
Walt waits until Nate is almost on them and says, "You can't." He sounds final. Brad is glad someone said it out loud.
Nate looks at Walt straight in the eye. "It would be crueler otherwise," he says back. He is not wrong.
Walk shakes his head, turns once to look at the whale, and walks back towards the boat. His long, angry strong strides cover distance as fast as Nate's jog.
Mike shrugs and starts after him.
In Nate's shoes, Brad would do the same. He wants to take Walt's side anyway.
Against the lingering silence, Nate says, "You used to be a Marine right?" He holds the rifle out to Brad. "I saw your tattoo."
Brad's only had his shirt off twice, maybe three times in front Nate. He had the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor added when he made Recon, a little dab of color on his shoulder. Nothing Nate should have noticed.
Brad looks at the rifle and feels his fingers begin to tense. He stills them into fists. "I've been out for a while now," he says. It's not no.
"Ok," Nate says. He doesn't sound mad. He takes the rifle back, loads it with practiced ease.
Brad thinks about stopping him. If it has to be anyone, it should be him. It's on the tip of his tongue to say so.
He hesitates.
"Look away," Nate says.
Brad doesn't.
Nate's gun handling is surprisingly good. He holds the stock tight against his shoulder bone like he's supposed to and pulls the trigger, once, twice.
Bang, bang.
She bleeds more than Brad expects.
There's a stretch of silence afterwards, like the world's holding its collective breath. It's just an illusion though. When they're back on the ship again, surrounded by crewmates and questions, the moment is broken and the crash of waves and the grind of engine motors come rushing in.
It's dizzying. Brad's never been seasick in his life but he pukes for a solid half-hour afterwards.
*
Most days, Brad doesn't like to think about the Corps much.
He goes through long days where he forgets to remember that there was another him, the one who grew up dreaming in Marine camouflage, the one who memorized machine gun parts and alpha bravo charlie instead of names in Latin.
It's better to forget, he thinks.
When he does remember, when he thinks about it, he thinks about leaving - how unforeseeable it was, how cowardly. How absolutely necessary.
It started simply. They were playing a pickup game of basketball on an off day in Afghanistan. Or maybe they were already back in Oceanside then. Some days, he forgets even that.
What does he remember comes back to him in bits: the pebbled skin of the ball against his palm, jumping, the crash of a sharp elbow - he doesn't even know whose - coming down hard on his eye, falling, the rough heat of the pavement against his face.
Blinking up and seeing a red tinted world and just for second, wondering if the hell that he never believed in had come to take him after all.
He's not sure why he played that day. He isn't even any good. He's tall enough and fast enough, but his shots were often a little too hard or a little too wide.
But they all asked him to. They were down a man - Huntington can't play with that leg, come on Brad, use that freakish height for something productive. Ok, ok, he said, I guess someone needs to teach you whiskey tango fucks how to play.
He was in the infirmary for a day before they cleared him for duty. He had a residual headache, a little bit of blurriness in his peripheral vision, nothing serious. Nothing worth mentioning.
Two weeks later, he shot the hell out of a new Private's leg during a routine search and seizure mission. He was at least a meter off.
They said it wasn't really because of the eye, he just needed time to adjust a little, he could stay, he should, they need men like him out there.
He nodded and tried to believe them, but he just didn't feel right with a gun afterwards.
*
There are about ten thousand statutes dealing with the proper handling and disposal of a whale carcass.
Nate seems to know them all by heart. He radios the EPA and IUNC and gets Ruby to call up her friends at the Alaskan Parks and Recreation Department. It's ok, he says. It's taken care of.
They can't stay. There's a careful balance between the amount of fuel they have and the narrow window of Arctic ice recession. Brad can see the body for a solid ten minutes after they've start sailing away.
The ship settles down to an unnatural hushed quiet. It's probably suppose to be respectful, like the whispered reception after a funeral, but to Brad, it just feels ominous. Like they're waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for it to get worse.
Brad moves to the forward lounge. For once, it's empty. Brad gets a table by the starboard windows and takes out his laptop. He's suppose to be tracking the GPS signal on his pod - they've moved further ahead than he anticipated - but he keeps flashing back to the smell. The sharp ocean brine of the air. Nothing unusual out here, but it sticks out in his mind even though he's been use to it for weeks now.
After a while, Nate wonders in. He sits at Brad's table without asking. "I know it's hard sometimes," he says, "but I promise you it's worth it. At the end of the day, it's worth it."
They're surrounded by tree-huggers. Brad's not dead inside, but he's not the one Nate needs to talk to.
"You got me wrong," he says. "I don't really care about any of this. I just got stuck in this field."
"Of course you care." Nate says it like a fact, like a regular comment - Oh, the weather is nice outside - instead of a declarative sentence. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't."
Brad doesn't bother pointing out that they've only known each for a month.
After a while, Nate adds, "It's not a bad thing you know."
"I'm sorry, you're wrong," Brad says again.
Nate nods. Brad's never known Nate to argue with anyone. He pushes by implication and confidence, no direct attack. It's a hard tactic to plan a defense against. It's something Brad admires him for.
"You'll have tell me your story some time," Nate says, getting up.
Brad looks up at him. He still seems too young to be here. "You'll have to tell me yours," Brad offers.
Nate's mouth freezes into little boy sad though he keeps his smile. Brad wonders if his story ends with heartbreak or death. Or both.
"Rain check?" Nate says.
Brad nods and lets him go.
*
It stays with Brad.
He thinks about Nate's words - "Of course you care" - and wonders if it's that simple. A month ago, a day ago, he would have been sure. He didn't fit in at his department in San Diego, he barely fits in here. He took marine biology, kept with it because it was something to do, because the siren song of the seas beckoned and he was helpless to resist.
It doesn't mean he likes it though.
Or does it? He thinks about the dead whale, the way the image, the sound, penetrates, straight to the memory lobe of his brain. He thinks about how he's stayed, how the new data coming in excites him, grabs his attention like the way A-O maps once did. How actions more often than not belie any words.
It's not doing him any good to dwell on it. He's been pacing the nine feet of open floor of his room for half an hour now.
He gets out and walks the three doors down to Nate's cabin, straight to the source. He knocks softly in case Nate is asleep, but Nate calls out "It's open" quickly enough.
Brad opens the door and stops. There's a bottle of scotch uncapped on the dresser. The smell suffocates the room. It's unexpected.
Nate's stretched out on his bunk, his shirt off, sweatpants low on his hips. Miles of clear, pristine skin for Brad see. It strikes him: no scars or tats. Almost everyone Brad knows here has a tattoo. Even Walt has a blue and green Earth on his ankle. Brad wonders if it's another façade.
"Sit," Nate orders. Brad goes.
The scotch is more than half empty. There's a residual ring of amber in the tumbler resting on Nate's abdomen. It's swirls with Nate's breaths.
When Nate speaks though, his speech is smooth and purposeful, unslurred. "I used to be in the Corps too," he says.
Brad thinks about the faint pink of sunburn on Nate's cheeks that first day. "I can't really see it," he says back.
Nate laughs. "Oh yeah, made it to Captain."
It's still hard to picture, but maybe it makes sense after all. There's a core of steel to Nate that's common in the Core. With Nate though, it wouldn't be something that the Marines taught him.
"Why'd you leave?" Brad asks.
"Policy disagreements." Nate's lips tug up into a smirk.
"You mean the lack of assfucking?" Brad says back.
Nate isn't smiling anymore. His eyebrows furrow, revealing groves of wrinkles in his forehead. "More like a war that wasn't going anywhere. Or the needless endangerment of my men. A lot of bad fucking decisions in general." It's a confession. Brad didn't know he was looking for. Nate pauses, adds, "Oh yeah, and the lack of assfucking."
The way Nate's lips say "fucking" looks filthy. Brad feels it straight to his cock.
Nate seems to sense it. His smirk is back. He sits up, leans over, Eskimo kiss close. Brad gets lost in miles of eyelashes. It's dizzying; Brad wishes he could see the shape of Nate's mouth.
"What about you, Brad?" Nate says. "Is that why you left? Because of the lack of assfucking?"
He's somehow even closer now, close enough that Brad can taste the alcohol on his breath. It would be easy to cover the last bit of distance, to take Nate's mouth, his cock maybe, but it wouldn't be what Brad wants.
This isn't the Nate that Brad wants.
"I don't really do that," Brad says. It isn't really a lie. He hasn't since high school.
Nate let's him get away with it. "Too bad," Nate says, pulling back, lying down again.
It's as an effective dismissal as any. Brad gets up to go.
At the door, Nate calls out, "Stay with me?" His voice is raw. Brad's glad he said no to the sex.
He comes back, kneels so they are eye level. He takes the tumbler from Nate's loose fingers, pulls up the comforter crumpled at the foot of the bed. Nate lets him.
Brad smiles. "I shouldn't," he says softly. He wants Nate to understand. "You need to rest."
"Ok," Nate says.
Brad watches him for a moment. He gets up again. "Ask me again tomorrow," Brad says.
Nate's eyes are closed. Brad thinks he's heard anyway.
*
Since the first days, Brad's learned the best place to think is outside. Something about the sharpness of the air, the immensity of their environment; it gives him perspective. He likes to stake out a bench near the bow when most everyone else is asleep and feel alone for a while.
This far north, the sun won't quite reach the horizon for months yet. Miles out, it paints the ocean in shimmering strips of gold, brilliant and surreal like a mirage.
There's a slight breeze. It's cool without being cold, more reminiscent of the crisp chill of Oceanside in November than any Arctic nights.
He's getting use to it here, he thinks.
It's 1 am when Brad finally goes back down again. Against the quiet of the rest of the ship, the steady splash of waves against the hull is soothing like a lullaby.
When they leave, he will miss this place.
*