Fic: "Devil Wouldn't Have You" (Generation Kill)
Fic! Thing! Porn! Brad/Ray(/Nate)...it's complicated. NC-17. Some dubious consent.
Thanks to romanticalgirl for beta'ing, and to sionnain for hand-holding and reading snippets and going "I have no idea who these people are, but yay!" to soothe neurotic-writer-flail.
Title from Jason Isbell.
Ray is fucking lit.
He's buzzing, he's wired, he's acting like he's about to crawl out of his fucking skin. He's twitching and he's jittering and he won't shut the fuck up.
Brad's thinking about killing him.
Not that Brad doesn't think about that a lot, but this time they're out in the AO with enough dead bodies around that one more wouldn't be out of place. And that's going to be a problem for Ray, if he doesn't calm the hell down and stop running his mouth.
"Ray," he says, for the ninth time in fifteen minutes, "if you don't shut up, you're going to wish you had."
"Empty threats from the Iceman?" Ray's pacing back and forth across their platoon's little carved-out space of their crappy quarters in the crappy building they've commandeered from their crappy host city for the night. "I didn't think that was allowed, Brad."
Brad takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment in his chest before breathing out through his nose. Ray has ingested enough Ripped Fuel to kill a horse, and done so in the interest of being awake enough to drive Brad's Humvee and watch Brad's back. It's not really his fault that he's being annoying.
Not to mention that if Brad breaks his RTO, he will be unable to communicate quickly and effectively. And that would suck.
The other guys don't have as much of a reason for restraint, though. Espera, in particular, is looking at Ray with murder in his eyes. Brad sighs and gets to his feet, acknowledging the sullen ache of exhaustion in every muscle but pushing through it. "Come on, Person," he says.
"What? Where? Why?" In the fucked-up dim light, the shadows under Ray's eyes look like someone punched him in the face. Brad scowls at him and jerks his head toward the doorway.
"We're going for a walk."
"Where? Why? What?" Ray blinks at him, fast and jerky like a fucking retard epileptic. Brad grabs him by the arm and steers him out of the room.
"You're driving everybody crazy, Person."
"I wasn't doing anything."
"You're high as a fucking kite."
Ray stops, staring at him, and his eyes actually focus for a moment, a flash of hurt in the hollow, sleep-deprived brown. "You going to turn me in, Sergeant?"
"No, Ray," Brad says through clenched teeth, "I'm going to forgo my own chance at getting some fucking sleep in order to walk you in fucking circles like a fucking toddler until you come the fuck down and we don't have to worry about Espera strangling you with his bare hands."
Ray blinks at him and then grins. "Is this how they show love on your repressed, fucked-up planet, Brad? Hold me."
"Goddamn it, Ray."
"Okay. Okay. We're walking." Ray sets off down the hall and Brad falls in behind him, though that doesn't last for long because his legs are about twice as long as Ray's. He feels like a mastiff kenneled with a Jack Russell Terrier half the time he's around Ray. "But where are we going? We're stuck in this fucking compound like rats, homes, because the Hajis are too busy blowing each other up to be fucking grateful that we fucking liberated their asses."
"Don't talk, Ray. Please? Just...focus on not talking." He tries to think of something he could offer Ray as a bribe for keeping his mouth shut, but everything he comes up with would just get Ray bouncing around like a puppy, demanding his present right now, and then Brad's going to have to kill him, RTO or not.
They complete one circuit of the hallways and Ray's still back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Brad takes a deep breath and braces himself for another lap of the compound. They're Recon Marines. Sleep is for lesser men.
Gunny comes around the corner and stops, raising an eyebrow at them. "Sergeant Colbert. Corporal Person."
"Sir," they mutter in unison, coming to a halt. Gunny looks back and forth between them, an inscrutable little smirk on his lips.
"Sergeant," he says finally, "the LT wants to see you."
"Now, sir?"
"Unless you plan to keep him waiting, Sergeant."
"No, sir." Brad stiffens, looking down the hallway over Gunny's shoulder. "I certainly do not."
"Glad to hear it." Gunny walks off and Brad exhales slowly through clenched teeth.
"Come on, Ray."
"I get to come too?"
"Would you rather spend quality time with Gunny and clue him in to how fucked up you are?" The LT is bivouacked way the hell in the far corner of the compound with the rest of the officers. Would be a shame if they had to spend too much time with their inferiors.
"Half the guys in the battalion are fucked up." Ray hunches his shoulders and drags his heel along the floor.
"Yeah, and as long as nobody shoves it in the officers' faces, nobody cares." Brad sighs and knocks on the door. The officers get doors. What a bunch of assholes.
"What a bunch of assholes," Ray says, out loud, and Brad smacks the back of his head just as Lieutenant Fick opens the door.
Nate blinks at them, his blandly correct officer's mask slipping for a moment. "Sergeant. I wasn't expecting you to bring backup."
"He tends to tag along with me, sir. Like a diseased mongrel I can't get rid of."
Ray scowls at him. "I'm standing right here, you know."
Nate rubs his temple with the heel of his hand and steps back. "Both of you get in here, and cut the comedy act."
"Sadly, it's not an act, sir," Ray says, and Brad hits him again before Nate turns around. Jesus Christ. Even speed isn't an excuse to talk like this to an officer. "We're just naturally funny. Ow, Brad."
Nate looks over his shoulder, staring at Ray for a moment. The lights are better in here, and Brad can see that Nate's eyes are hollow, his cheeks sunken, and he missed a couple of spots shaving. He looks like shit. There's a certain spark of mean-spirited pleasure at seeing that; Lieutenant Fick is about as good an officer as a platoon can ask for, but he's still an officer and therefore an elitist son of a bitch who thinks his shit don't stink and doesn't know anything about what it's like to work for a living. Nice to see that they're suffering a little, too.
"What's wrong with him?" Nate asks flatly.
"Just a little punchy, sir," Brad says, maintaining the artfully neutral, content-devoid tone of voice that made up the unofficial corollary to the grooming standard. The lying standard. "Nobody's had much sleep lately. You might have noticed, sir."
"That's more than punchy." Nate looks at Ray for another moment, his eyes narrowing slightly, then shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. Brad can't blame him. Ray is essentially vibrating in place like a fucking hummingbird. "That is yet another thing I really don't want to know, isn't it? Just tell me it didn't involve an espresso maker."
"I assure you, sir, there are no espresso makers within...many, many miles of here, sir," Brad says, and Nate actually smiles, a sharp-edged and mildly crazy expression that Brad doesn't like in the slightest. If one more officer is going to go completely over the edge, he wants it to be Patterson or Sixta, not Fick.
"I am assured of this," Nate says dryly, and laughs, shaking his head. "Thank you, Sergeant, that's good to know."
"What can we do for you, sir?" Ray asks, looking around the room. It appears half of the officers are bunked in here, the other half in the next room over. Ray's willpower to stay still level hits zero, and he wanders over to poke at one of the bedrolls with his foot.
"I wanted to go over some logistics for the mission tomorrow with Sergeant Colbert." Nate's still looking at Ray oddly, sharp but not quite tuned in. "Our route, and how we should rotate the...Person, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Nothing, sir," Ray says, jumping back to Brad's side and falling in to something that only loosely resembles attention. Brad absolutely should have killed him an hour ago.
"Where are the other officers, sir?" Brad asks, cutting a glance from the empty racks to the closed door.
"Either patrolling the perimeter or making someone else's life miserable for once." Nate runs his hand over his hair and nods at the maps on the table in the corner. "So let's go over these quickly and then you can get some rack time."
"Yes, sir," Brad says. "You as well, sir." Nate just shakes his head, and Brad tilts his head to the side, watching the lieutenant through narrowed eyes. He's heard all the bullshit about the loneliness of command, and that's what it is, bullshit, but he can see that something is heavy on Nate's shoulders, wearing him down. Possibly that something is being the only bastion of sanity between the platoon, the devil, the deep blue sea, and driving directly into a row of unmarked desert graves led by Captain Schwetje.
Exhaustion is making him poetic. He should really get over that.
Nate talks about the maps for a few minutes, and Brad nods at the appropriate times. Everything's laid out pretty clearly. There's no way to improve it within the bounds of what they've been given, and not so much room for it to get worse that he feels the need to call it to Nate's attention, at least not anything he doesn't think Nate hasn't already seen and accounted for.
"So that's the plan," Nate says, running his fingers slowly over the map. "Step off at oh-six-hundred."
"Interrogative, sir," Brad mutters, blinking against ever-rising exhaustion and falling into the patterns of the comms from sheer burned-in habit. "You said oh-five-hundred previously, sir."
"Did I?" Nate stares down at the table, like the answer's going to be written there. "No. Six hundred hours. I apologize for that."
"Don't worry about it, LT," Ray says, looking around Brad's elbow at the map. "It's entirely possible that you were told two different times. It could just be another ingenious Marine Corps strategy, sir. Straight from General Mattis himself. If we don't even know what time we're leaving, how can the enemy figure it out? Genius."
Nate is looking at Ray oddly, his eyes narrowed but slightly unfocused, and Brad thinks that it's no fucking wonder they all keep making stupid-ass mistakes out in the field. Exhaustion grinds the edges off the whole world until there's nothing but a thick layer of dust over everything, leaving it blurry and hard to see or hold on to.
"Colbert," Nate says, his voice flat and cool, but with a slight tremor of unsteadiness beneath the surface. "Do something about him."
Brad looks at Ray, who, as far as he can tell, is just...being Ray. He isn't touching anything, or drooling, or trying to have sex with inanimate objects. "Sir?"
"Calm him the fuck down."
"I don't understand, sir."
"Use your judgment, Sergeant." Nate steps away from the table, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. He pins Brad in place with that look, sharp-eyed and intense, the one that makes Brad actually want to shut up and follow his orders a good half of the time.
"Brad?" Ray sounds confused, not nervous, because for a fucking Recon Marine, Ray can be disturbingly oblivious at times.
"Knock it off, Ray," Brad says cautiously, glancing at Nate to gauge his approval. Nate shakes his head slightly, left-right-center. Try again, Sergeant.
Brad steps toward Ray and Ray turns, keeping his body facing Brad's squarely. "Brad," he says again, and now Brad shakes his head. He's operating under orders now, his body falling into autopilot patterns just like it's supposed to, just like the Corps intended when they put that couple hundred thousand dollars worth of training into him. The Iceman, not Brad, is closing in on Ray, and Ray's eyes flicker before his expression smooths out into a blank mask.
"You're both fucking twisted," he says, and Brad moves, crossing the space between them in two strides and catching Ray's arms, his momentum carrying them down easily until he has Ray pinned to the floor.
"Fuck, Brad," Ray hisses, twisting under him and bucking up, fighting for leverage. Ray's smaller than Brad, and slighter, but he's still a Marine. He'll always give as good as or better than he gets. Brad tightens his hands on Ray's arms and presses his body down against Ray's, pinning him as solidly as he can. He tries to catch Ray's eyes, riding out his struggles. He's got to get Ray to understand before this gets ugly.
He lowers his mouth to Ray's ear. "Relax and hold still, Person. LT's just edgy."
Ray laughs, sharp and humorless, body jerking under Brad's again. "Edgy. Right. Get the fuck off me, Colbert."
"Ray," Brad says again, and then his breath catches, because on that last movement one of Ray's legs slid between Brad's own.
"He's going as crazy as the rest of them," Ray mutters, bucking up off the floor again, which makes his thigh slide against Brad's cock. Brad's so fucking tired, his reserves exhausted and his body's checks and stopguards worn down, conditioned to respond to five stolen minutes for a combat jack or distorted half-dreams, and just that little bit of friction is enough to get him halfway to hard.
Ray stills for a moment, then laughs. "Jesus Christ, Colbert." He moves again, deliberately this time. "I mean, I knew you were hot for my ass, but this is a surprise. I thought you might at least buy me a drink first."
"Brad," Nate says, and Brad jumps, his grip on Ray's arms slipping. He'd almost forgotten that Nate was there. "Shut him up."
Nate's voice is still that of an officer, even and stern, but there's an undertone of heat that gives Brad pause. Nate knows exactly what's going on. Nate's enjoying what's going on.
Brad shifts, bracing his weight on one hand and bringing the other up to cover Ray's mouth.
"Not like that," Nate says, his voice a sharp reprimand that makes Brad's muscles jerk. They must teach that voice at OCS, using the opposite techniques of how they program the grunts to respond to it. "Try again."
It takes Brad a moment to figure out what Nate means by that, even though it's actually pretty fucking obvious. Just a simple Marine, can't be expected to keep up with the way The Sir's mind might be working. He eases his hand away from Ray's mouth, and Ray bites him for his trouble, and so when he kisses Ray instead, it's more aggressive than he might have intended, rough, his teeth bruising against Ray's lips.
Neither of them is shaved enough to meet the grooming standard, Ray's stubble sharp against Brad's skin. It's easy enough to ignore, because Ray is kissing him back, just as aggressive and pissed-off, running on Ripped Fuel and exhaustion and the sheer back-country Missouri-hick too-dumb-to-quit stubbornness that carries Ray through most of his life. He's still got his thigh pressed up hard against Brad, and Brad's grinding down against him, instinctive rolls of his hips that he couldn't stop if he tried.
He can feel Nate's gaze burning into the back of his head, and more of those programmed responses kick in, the need to perform better when an officer's watching. He shifts, getting one hand in between his body and Ray's and shoving Ray's thigh down so they can press against each other solidly, the lengths of their bodies. Ray shoves up against him, seeking an advantage, and Brad moves his hand up, finding Ray's dick. There are two access points to knock Ray Person's brain out of commission: his stomach and his cock. Brad's working with what he's got.
Ray groans and bites Brad's lip hard, thrusting up into his hand. "Fuck." Ray works one arm free, bringing his hand to the back of Brad's head, fingers scrambling roughly against Brad's hair. He sounds confused, but not scared, more like there's a joke here that he doesn't quite get yet. "Fucking...what the fuck, Brad?"
"Don't ask stupid questions, Person." Nate's voice is rougher now, almost unrecognizable as their buttoned-up college-boy LT. Brad isn't sure, but he thinks that if he could look away from Ray without getting punched in the throat, he would very likely find Nate with his hand down his fatigues. Officers getting off on the shit they get their men into is not supposed to be literal. "And I thought I told you to shut him up, Sergeant."
Brad fumbles with Ray's fatigues and gets his hand inside, squeezing Ray's dick roughly enough that Ray's hips buck up. Ray curses, but there's not even confused refusal in his voice anymore, he's giving instructions in that syncopated Ripped Fuel patter, or at least making demands. Who would've guessed that jacking Ray off would be exactly like trying to give him a fucking haircut: bitching, moaning, and bossy bullshit all the way down.
"Fucking Christ, Brad, haven't you ever jacked off before? What am I talking about, I've bunked next to you, I know you do, so what the hell is your…" Brad tightens his hand and Ray's voice breaks off in a rough gasp, his fingers digging hard into the back of Brad's skull. "I know it's a lot bigger than you're used to, but it's okay, just think of fucking England, or California, or...or Israel, maybe, whatever the fuck is your homeland or--"
"Brad," Nate snaps, and Brad reacts, not as smoothly as he would if he wasn't so fucking tired, but just as promptly, a well-oiled order-taking machine owned and operated by the Corps. He lets go of Ray's arm, bringing that hand up and shoving two fingers into Ray's mouth. He doesn't want to get puked on--and Ray would--so he's careful not to jab the back of Ray's throat, but he braces himself to get bitten. If anyone was handing him half the shit he's giving Ray, that's what he would do.
But instead Ray starts sucking on his fingers, hot and tight, watching Brad with dark eyes that still have a flare of manic, not-quite-malevolent energy. Ray always gets revenge, one way or another. Ray was that short, skinny kid on the playground who tolerated getting a wedgie every day and then filled your locker with roadkill the day before Spring Break, so when you came back it was all nice and rotten.
Ray also has a mouth like a fucking vacuum, which is distracting to say the least.
"Very good, Sergeant," Nate says. Brad can hear him pulling the chair back from the table, the legs scraping against the rough cement floor. Nate's pulling up a seat for the show. Asshole. "Knew you had a tactical mind somewhere in there. Just a little performance anxiety out of the AO."
Brad shoves his fingers deeper and Ray gags, twisting under Brad like he's trying to get his knee up into Brad's crotch and remind him to take it out on Nate if he's pissed at Nate. As if that's ever an option where officers are concerned. Brad runs his thumb roughly over the head of Ray's cock, then slides his hand from base to tip good and tight, and Ray shudders all over, hips jerking, right on the edge.
"Fuck," Brad hears Nate mutter, his voice almost broken-sounding. "Yeah." That's close enough to permission to fire. Brad strokes Ray again, meeting his eyes and nodding a little, pulling his fingers back enough that Ray can get a good deep breath as he comes.
Brad eases his fingers the rest of the way out of Ray's mouth, breathing hard. He looks down at Ray and for a moment sick terror rises up in his stomach, something like the feeling of standing by those roadsides and looking at everything America has done here. The heat of the moment, because you were told to, you didn't really mean it--that doesn't make it right.
He can hear Nate breathing, too, loud and rough, the tension in the room building high enough that it feels like the air might snap.
And then Ray starts laughing.
"Holy crap, Brad, I know the Marine Corps is really fucking gay, but I thought maybe we were a little less blatantly homosexual than my high school football team in the locker room the night after Homecoming, when we fucking smoked Nassau Junction and it was all bad touching and blowing the quarterback in the showers." He shoves at Brad's chest until Brad sits back on his heels. "I thought you were supposed to have hotties in California, so you didn't have to resort to feeling up the other guys because it hurts to look at the cow-faced hags calling themselves cheerleaders." His eyes widen, and he puts one hand over his heart. "Did the Beach Boys lie to me, Brad? Is that what you're saying here?"
Brad stares at him for a minute, fumbling to put words together between the distractions of the aching hardness of his cock and trying to keep up with Ray's stream of consciousness. "You...you didn't play football in high school, Ray."
"The fuck I did. One season. Freshman year. I was a kicker. I sucked." Ray scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth, and he just looks ridiculous lying there, splayed back on his elbows, his dick still hanging out of his fatigues. "But what I'm asking is, what's the motivation to develop covert homosexual tendencies in California? Because we were counting on you guys in small-town Missouri, Brad, we were sure that in Cali it was different and the girls were hot and slutty and there was shit to do besides meth and sodomy--"
"Jesus Christ," Nate says, his voice almost a moan of despair. "And you've been in a Humvee with him for weeks."
Ray pauses for a minute, his hand still over his mouth and his eyes narrowed. "Hey, LT," he says, "you going to tell him to shut me up again? Because I can do that my own damn self. Motivation. Aggressiveness. Semper fucking fidelis, Lieutenant."
Suddenly Ray's up off the floor, on his knees and knocking Brad down onto his back, scrambling at the fly of Brad's fatigues before Brad even realizes what's going on. "C'mon, Iceman," Ray mutters, smirking like some kind of crazed demonic elf. "Give it up."
Brad isn't sure he has a choice. His muscles feel like he's fighting to move through water, exhausted and heavy and slow. No, that's not right; he knows what to do with water. He could fight his way through water. This is another fucking planet. This is bizarro world.
This is Iraq.
Ray bends his head and takes Brad in his mouth tight and hot, sucking him as fast and rough as he did Brad's fingers. Brad clenches his fists, nails biting into his palms and teeth digging into his lower lip, holding back any and all sounds because he will be damned if Ray Person is going to be able to claim that as any kind of a victory. This might be fucked-up hallucinatory bizarro-world bullshit, but he's still Brad fucking Colbert and he does not beg.
"Jesus," Nate says again, and he sounds like he might just beg, if either one of them pressed the issue. "Don't you fucking stop, Person. Jesus."
It just fucking figured, that an officer would like to watch more than he liked getting his hands dirty. Too fucking perfect. Brad wants to laugh, but Ray might take that wrong, and right now Ray's got Brad in a very vulnerable position, his mouth so tight it's just about painful. Brad's hips are up off the floor, rocking into Ray's mouth, every muscle in his body tensed and waiting for the go-ahead.
"C'mon, Brad." That doesn't sound like an officer; for a minute, he just sounds like some guy named Nate Fick, who's almost making Brad a promise. "Come on."
Ray gags and pulls away, pressing his hand over his mouth again. "Jesus, Brad, warn a guy," he mumbles, his voice thick and nauseated. Brad lays back against the floor, closing his eyes and drawing a ragged breath, his brain floating out somewhere over the AO. Fucking Ray. Nate giving the order was his warning.
Nate's chair scrapes against the floor, startlingly loud. "You men should get back to your platoon." Nate's voice is unsteady, but distinctly his own again, and Brad forces himself to sit up, hands moving to do up his fatigues on clumsy autopilot. "I'll...you have your orders. Oh-five-hundred."
"Six hundred, sir," Brad says, his voice hoarse, and gets to his feet. Nate takes a step back. Brad realizes, looking at him, that Nate's fatigues are still done up, pristine, except for the hard bulge distorting the front of them. So Nate hadn't been getting off, watching that; he'd just been tormenting himself with waiting.
Maybe Ray had hit the nail on the head and they were just all fucking twisted.
"Goodnight, gentlemen," Nate says. For some reason that's what sets Ray off giggling again, like a fucking heathen, and Brad grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him out the door. He glances back over his shoulder and meets Nate's eyes for just a split second before the door slams and they're alone in the corridor.
"What the fuck was that?" Ray says, his voice sliding up in pitch and volume, and Brad grips the back of his neck tighter, shaking him like a kitten. "Let go of me. What the actual, flying, syphilis-infested fuck was that?"
"It was nothing, Ray. It didn't happen." Brad jerks him around, spinning Ray in place and holding him still so he can look him in the eye. "You got that? Nothing happened."
Ray stares up at him, skeptical, and Brad has a hard time not turning his gaze to Ray's mouth. "That's a little too much bullshit even for me, Brad."
"We're all tired," Brad says, a little desperately as his gaze drops. Ray's mouth is dark, his lips slightly swollen, and fuck, that is going to be distracting if Brad doesn't lock this shit down and get a grip right fucking now. "That was just a fucked-up hallucination from being awake so fucking long. Not real. It didn't happen, Ray."
They stare at each other for another moment, Brad trying to will Ray to obedience using the fucking Force if necessary, and finally Ray nods a little, shrugging off Brad's grip and taking a step back. "Yeah, you're right. Nothing happened. No fucked-up weird shit around here at all."
"The LT showed us the maps. That's it."
"That is fucking it." Ray nods again, running his hand over his hair. "Okay."
"Let's go hit the fucking rack." Brad brushes past him and heads down the corridor, letting himself stride out ahead of Ray, not quite able to care if Ray keeps up or not. He just needs a couple of hours of sleep before they're back out there in the city, under fire. He needs something to convince himself of everything Ray just agreed to pretend to believe.
If he doesn't, Brad's not sure what's going to be more distracting--Ray's mouth running a mile a minute in the next seat, or the not-quite-a-memory of the look in Nate's eyes, locked on his own, just before he shut the door.
Thanks to romanticalgirl for beta'ing, and to sionnain for hand-holding and reading snippets and going "I have no idea who these people are, but yay!" to soothe neurotic-writer-flail.
Title from Jason Isbell.
Ray is fucking lit.
He's buzzing, he's wired, he's acting like he's about to crawl out of his fucking skin. He's twitching and he's jittering and he won't shut the fuck up.
Brad's thinking about killing him.
Not that Brad doesn't think about that a lot, but this time they're out in the AO with enough dead bodies around that one more wouldn't be out of place. And that's going to be a problem for Ray, if he doesn't calm the hell down and stop running his mouth.
"Ray," he says, for the ninth time in fifteen minutes, "if you don't shut up, you're going to wish you had."
"Empty threats from the Iceman?" Ray's pacing back and forth across their platoon's little carved-out space of their crappy quarters in the crappy building they've commandeered from their crappy host city for the night. "I didn't think that was allowed, Brad."
Brad takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment in his chest before breathing out through his nose. Ray has ingested enough Ripped Fuel to kill a horse, and done so in the interest of being awake enough to drive Brad's Humvee and watch Brad's back. It's not really his fault that he's being annoying.
Not to mention that if Brad breaks his RTO, he will be unable to communicate quickly and effectively. And that would suck.
The other guys don't have as much of a reason for restraint, though. Espera, in particular, is looking at Ray with murder in his eyes. Brad sighs and gets to his feet, acknowledging the sullen ache of exhaustion in every muscle but pushing through it. "Come on, Person," he says.
"What? Where? Why?" In the fucked-up dim light, the shadows under Ray's eyes look like someone punched him in the face. Brad scowls at him and jerks his head toward the doorway.
"We're going for a walk."
"Where? Why? What?" Ray blinks at him, fast and jerky like a fucking retard epileptic. Brad grabs him by the arm and steers him out of the room.
"You're driving everybody crazy, Person."
"I wasn't doing anything."
"You're high as a fucking kite."
Ray stops, staring at him, and his eyes actually focus for a moment, a flash of hurt in the hollow, sleep-deprived brown. "You going to turn me in, Sergeant?"
"No, Ray," Brad says through clenched teeth, "I'm going to forgo my own chance at getting some fucking sleep in order to walk you in fucking circles like a fucking toddler until you come the fuck down and we don't have to worry about Espera strangling you with his bare hands."
Ray blinks at him and then grins. "Is this how they show love on your repressed, fucked-up planet, Brad? Hold me."
"Goddamn it, Ray."
"Okay. Okay. We're walking." Ray sets off down the hall and Brad falls in behind him, though that doesn't last for long because his legs are about twice as long as Ray's. He feels like a mastiff kenneled with a Jack Russell Terrier half the time he's around Ray. "But where are we going? We're stuck in this fucking compound like rats, homes, because the Hajis are too busy blowing each other up to be fucking grateful that we fucking liberated their asses."
"Don't talk, Ray. Please? Just...focus on not talking." He tries to think of something he could offer Ray as a bribe for keeping his mouth shut, but everything he comes up with would just get Ray bouncing around like a puppy, demanding his present right now, and then Brad's going to have to kill him, RTO or not.
They complete one circuit of the hallways and Ray's still back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Brad takes a deep breath and braces himself for another lap of the compound. They're Recon Marines. Sleep is for lesser men.
Gunny comes around the corner and stops, raising an eyebrow at them. "Sergeant Colbert. Corporal Person."
"Sir," they mutter in unison, coming to a halt. Gunny looks back and forth between them, an inscrutable little smirk on his lips.
"Sergeant," he says finally, "the LT wants to see you."
"Now, sir?"
"Unless you plan to keep him waiting, Sergeant."
"No, sir." Brad stiffens, looking down the hallway over Gunny's shoulder. "I certainly do not."
"Glad to hear it." Gunny walks off and Brad exhales slowly through clenched teeth.
"Come on, Ray."
"I get to come too?"
"Would you rather spend quality time with Gunny and clue him in to how fucked up you are?" The LT is bivouacked way the hell in the far corner of the compound with the rest of the officers. Would be a shame if they had to spend too much time with their inferiors.
"Half the guys in the battalion are fucked up." Ray hunches his shoulders and drags his heel along the floor.
"Yeah, and as long as nobody shoves it in the officers' faces, nobody cares." Brad sighs and knocks on the door. The officers get doors. What a bunch of assholes.
"What a bunch of assholes," Ray says, out loud, and Brad smacks the back of his head just as Lieutenant Fick opens the door.
Nate blinks at them, his blandly correct officer's mask slipping for a moment. "Sergeant. I wasn't expecting you to bring backup."
"He tends to tag along with me, sir. Like a diseased mongrel I can't get rid of."
Ray scowls at him. "I'm standing right here, you know."
Nate rubs his temple with the heel of his hand and steps back. "Both of you get in here, and cut the comedy act."
"Sadly, it's not an act, sir," Ray says, and Brad hits him again before Nate turns around. Jesus Christ. Even speed isn't an excuse to talk like this to an officer. "We're just naturally funny. Ow, Brad."
Nate looks over his shoulder, staring at Ray for a moment. The lights are better in here, and Brad can see that Nate's eyes are hollow, his cheeks sunken, and he missed a couple of spots shaving. He looks like shit. There's a certain spark of mean-spirited pleasure at seeing that; Lieutenant Fick is about as good an officer as a platoon can ask for, but he's still an officer and therefore an elitist son of a bitch who thinks his shit don't stink and doesn't know anything about what it's like to work for a living. Nice to see that they're suffering a little, too.
"What's wrong with him?" Nate asks flatly.
"Just a little punchy, sir," Brad says, maintaining the artfully neutral, content-devoid tone of voice that made up the unofficial corollary to the grooming standard. The lying standard. "Nobody's had much sleep lately. You might have noticed, sir."
"That's more than punchy." Nate looks at Ray for another moment, his eyes narrowing slightly, then shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. Brad can't blame him. Ray is essentially vibrating in place like a fucking hummingbird. "That is yet another thing I really don't want to know, isn't it? Just tell me it didn't involve an espresso maker."
"I assure you, sir, there are no espresso makers within...many, many miles of here, sir," Brad says, and Nate actually smiles, a sharp-edged and mildly crazy expression that Brad doesn't like in the slightest. If one more officer is going to go completely over the edge, he wants it to be Patterson or Sixta, not Fick.
"I am assured of this," Nate says dryly, and laughs, shaking his head. "Thank you, Sergeant, that's good to know."
"What can we do for you, sir?" Ray asks, looking around the room. It appears half of the officers are bunked in here, the other half in the next room over. Ray's willpower to stay still level hits zero, and he wanders over to poke at one of the bedrolls with his foot.
"I wanted to go over some logistics for the mission tomorrow with Sergeant Colbert." Nate's still looking at Ray oddly, sharp but not quite tuned in. "Our route, and how we should rotate the...Person, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Nothing, sir," Ray says, jumping back to Brad's side and falling in to something that only loosely resembles attention. Brad absolutely should have killed him an hour ago.
"Where are the other officers, sir?" Brad asks, cutting a glance from the empty racks to the closed door.
"Either patrolling the perimeter or making someone else's life miserable for once." Nate runs his hand over his hair and nods at the maps on the table in the corner. "So let's go over these quickly and then you can get some rack time."
"Yes, sir," Brad says. "You as well, sir." Nate just shakes his head, and Brad tilts his head to the side, watching the lieutenant through narrowed eyes. He's heard all the bullshit about the loneliness of command, and that's what it is, bullshit, but he can see that something is heavy on Nate's shoulders, wearing him down. Possibly that something is being the only bastion of sanity between the platoon, the devil, the deep blue sea, and driving directly into a row of unmarked desert graves led by Captain Schwetje.
Exhaustion is making him poetic. He should really get over that.
Nate talks about the maps for a few minutes, and Brad nods at the appropriate times. Everything's laid out pretty clearly. There's no way to improve it within the bounds of what they've been given, and not so much room for it to get worse that he feels the need to call it to Nate's attention, at least not anything he doesn't think Nate hasn't already seen and accounted for.
"So that's the plan," Nate says, running his fingers slowly over the map. "Step off at oh-six-hundred."
"Interrogative, sir," Brad mutters, blinking against ever-rising exhaustion and falling into the patterns of the comms from sheer burned-in habit. "You said oh-five-hundred previously, sir."
"Did I?" Nate stares down at the table, like the answer's going to be written there. "No. Six hundred hours. I apologize for that."
"Don't worry about it, LT," Ray says, looking around Brad's elbow at the map. "It's entirely possible that you were told two different times. It could just be another ingenious Marine Corps strategy, sir. Straight from General Mattis himself. If we don't even know what time we're leaving, how can the enemy figure it out? Genius."
Nate is looking at Ray oddly, his eyes narrowed but slightly unfocused, and Brad thinks that it's no fucking wonder they all keep making stupid-ass mistakes out in the field. Exhaustion grinds the edges off the whole world until there's nothing but a thick layer of dust over everything, leaving it blurry and hard to see or hold on to.
"Colbert," Nate says, his voice flat and cool, but with a slight tremor of unsteadiness beneath the surface. "Do something about him."
Brad looks at Ray, who, as far as he can tell, is just...being Ray. He isn't touching anything, or drooling, or trying to have sex with inanimate objects. "Sir?"
"Calm him the fuck down."
"I don't understand, sir."
"Use your judgment, Sergeant." Nate steps away from the table, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. He pins Brad in place with that look, sharp-eyed and intense, the one that makes Brad actually want to shut up and follow his orders a good half of the time.
"Brad?" Ray sounds confused, not nervous, because for a fucking Recon Marine, Ray can be disturbingly oblivious at times.
"Knock it off, Ray," Brad says cautiously, glancing at Nate to gauge his approval. Nate shakes his head slightly, left-right-center. Try again, Sergeant.
Brad steps toward Ray and Ray turns, keeping his body facing Brad's squarely. "Brad," he says again, and now Brad shakes his head. He's operating under orders now, his body falling into autopilot patterns just like it's supposed to, just like the Corps intended when they put that couple hundred thousand dollars worth of training into him. The Iceman, not Brad, is closing in on Ray, and Ray's eyes flicker before his expression smooths out into a blank mask.
"You're both fucking twisted," he says, and Brad moves, crossing the space between them in two strides and catching Ray's arms, his momentum carrying them down easily until he has Ray pinned to the floor.
"Fuck, Brad," Ray hisses, twisting under him and bucking up, fighting for leverage. Ray's smaller than Brad, and slighter, but he's still a Marine. He'll always give as good as or better than he gets. Brad tightens his hands on Ray's arms and presses his body down against Ray's, pinning him as solidly as he can. He tries to catch Ray's eyes, riding out his struggles. He's got to get Ray to understand before this gets ugly.
He lowers his mouth to Ray's ear. "Relax and hold still, Person. LT's just edgy."
Ray laughs, sharp and humorless, body jerking under Brad's again. "Edgy. Right. Get the fuck off me, Colbert."
"Ray," Brad says again, and then his breath catches, because on that last movement one of Ray's legs slid between Brad's own.
"He's going as crazy as the rest of them," Ray mutters, bucking up off the floor again, which makes his thigh slide against Brad's cock. Brad's so fucking tired, his reserves exhausted and his body's checks and stopguards worn down, conditioned to respond to five stolen minutes for a combat jack or distorted half-dreams, and just that little bit of friction is enough to get him halfway to hard.
Ray stills for a moment, then laughs. "Jesus Christ, Colbert." He moves again, deliberately this time. "I mean, I knew you were hot for my ass, but this is a surprise. I thought you might at least buy me a drink first."
"Brad," Nate says, and Brad jumps, his grip on Ray's arms slipping. He'd almost forgotten that Nate was there. "Shut him up."
Nate's voice is still that of an officer, even and stern, but there's an undertone of heat that gives Brad pause. Nate knows exactly what's going on. Nate's enjoying what's going on.
Brad shifts, bracing his weight on one hand and bringing the other up to cover Ray's mouth.
"Not like that," Nate says, his voice a sharp reprimand that makes Brad's muscles jerk. They must teach that voice at OCS, using the opposite techniques of how they program the grunts to respond to it. "Try again."
It takes Brad a moment to figure out what Nate means by that, even though it's actually pretty fucking obvious. Just a simple Marine, can't be expected to keep up with the way The Sir's mind might be working. He eases his hand away from Ray's mouth, and Ray bites him for his trouble, and so when he kisses Ray instead, it's more aggressive than he might have intended, rough, his teeth bruising against Ray's lips.
Neither of them is shaved enough to meet the grooming standard, Ray's stubble sharp against Brad's skin. It's easy enough to ignore, because Ray is kissing him back, just as aggressive and pissed-off, running on Ripped Fuel and exhaustion and the sheer back-country Missouri-hick too-dumb-to-quit stubbornness that carries Ray through most of his life. He's still got his thigh pressed up hard against Brad, and Brad's grinding down against him, instinctive rolls of his hips that he couldn't stop if he tried.
He can feel Nate's gaze burning into the back of his head, and more of those programmed responses kick in, the need to perform better when an officer's watching. He shifts, getting one hand in between his body and Ray's and shoving Ray's thigh down so they can press against each other solidly, the lengths of their bodies. Ray shoves up against him, seeking an advantage, and Brad moves his hand up, finding Ray's dick. There are two access points to knock Ray Person's brain out of commission: his stomach and his cock. Brad's working with what he's got.
Ray groans and bites Brad's lip hard, thrusting up into his hand. "Fuck." Ray works one arm free, bringing his hand to the back of Brad's head, fingers scrambling roughly against Brad's hair. He sounds confused, but not scared, more like there's a joke here that he doesn't quite get yet. "Fucking...what the fuck, Brad?"
"Don't ask stupid questions, Person." Nate's voice is rougher now, almost unrecognizable as their buttoned-up college-boy LT. Brad isn't sure, but he thinks that if he could look away from Ray without getting punched in the throat, he would very likely find Nate with his hand down his fatigues. Officers getting off on the shit they get their men into is not supposed to be literal. "And I thought I told you to shut him up, Sergeant."
Brad fumbles with Ray's fatigues and gets his hand inside, squeezing Ray's dick roughly enough that Ray's hips buck up. Ray curses, but there's not even confused refusal in his voice anymore, he's giving instructions in that syncopated Ripped Fuel patter, or at least making demands. Who would've guessed that jacking Ray off would be exactly like trying to give him a fucking haircut: bitching, moaning, and bossy bullshit all the way down.
"Fucking Christ, Brad, haven't you ever jacked off before? What am I talking about, I've bunked next to you, I know you do, so what the hell is your…" Brad tightens his hand and Ray's voice breaks off in a rough gasp, his fingers digging hard into the back of Brad's skull. "I know it's a lot bigger than you're used to, but it's okay, just think of fucking England, or California, or...or Israel, maybe, whatever the fuck is your homeland or--"
"Brad," Nate snaps, and Brad reacts, not as smoothly as he would if he wasn't so fucking tired, but just as promptly, a well-oiled order-taking machine owned and operated by the Corps. He lets go of Ray's arm, bringing that hand up and shoving two fingers into Ray's mouth. He doesn't want to get puked on--and Ray would--so he's careful not to jab the back of Ray's throat, but he braces himself to get bitten. If anyone was handing him half the shit he's giving Ray, that's what he would do.
But instead Ray starts sucking on his fingers, hot and tight, watching Brad with dark eyes that still have a flare of manic, not-quite-malevolent energy. Ray always gets revenge, one way or another. Ray was that short, skinny kid on the playground who tolerated getting a wedgie every day and then filled your locker with roadkill the day before Spring Break, so when you came back it was all nice and rotten.
Ray also has a mouth like a fucking vacuum, which is distracting to say the least.
"Very good, Sergeant," Nate says. Brad can hear him pulling the chair back from the table, the legs scraping against the rough cement floor. Nate's pulling up a seat for the show. Asshole. "Knew you had a tactical mind somewhere in there. Just a little performance anxiety out of the AO."
Brad shoves his fingers deeper and Ray gags, twisting under Brad like he's trying to get his knee up into Brad's crotch and remind him to take it out on Nate if he's pissed at Nate. As if that's ever an option where officers are concerned. Brad runs his thumb roughly over the head of Ray's cock, then slides his hand from base to tip good and tight, and Ray shudders all over, hips jerking, right on the edge.
"Fuck," Brad hears Nate mutter, his voice almost broken-sounding. "Yeah." That's close enough to permission to fire. Brad strokes Ray again, meeting his eyes and nodding a little, pulling his fingers back enough that Ray can get a good deep breath as he comes.
Brad eases his fingers the rest of the way out of Ray's mouth, breathing hard. He looks down at Ray and for a moment sick terror rises up in his stomach, something like the feeling of standing by those roadsides and looking at everything America has done here. The heat of the moment, because you were told to, you didn't really mean it--that doesn't make it right.
He can hear Nate breathing, too, loud and rough, the tension in the room building high enough that it feels like the air might snap.
And then Ray starts laughing.
"Holy crap, Brad, I know the Marine Corps is really fucking gay, but I thought maybe we were a little less blatantly homosexual than my high school football team in the locker room the night after Homecoming, when we fucking smoked Nassau Junction and it was all bad touching and blowing the quarterback in the showers." He shoves at Brad's chest until Brad sits back on his heels. "I thought you were supposed to have hotties in California, so you didn't have to resort to feeling up the other guys because it hurts to look at the cow-faced hags calling themselves cheerleaders." His eyes widen, and he puts one hand over his heart. "Did the Beach Boys lie to me, Brad? Is that what you're saying here?"
Brad stares at him for a minute, fumbling to put words together between the distractions of the aching hardness of his cock and trying to keep up with Ray's stream of consciousness. "You...you didn't play football in high school, Ray."
"The fuck I did. One season. Freshman year. I was a kicker. I sucked." Ray scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth, and he just looks ridiculous lying there, splayed back on his elbows, his dick still hanging out of his fatigues. "But what I'm asking is, what's the motivation to develop covert homosexual tendencies in California? Because we were counting on you guys in small-town Missouri, Brad, we were sure that in Cali it was different and the girls were hot and slutty and there was shit to do besides meth and sodomy--"
"Jesus Christ," Nate says, his voice almost a moan of despair. "And you've been in a Humvee with him for weeks."
Ray pauses for a minute, his hand still over his mouth and his eyes narrowed. "Hey, LT," he says, "you going to tell him to shut me up again? Because I can do that my own damn self. Motivation. Aggressiveness. Semper fucking fidelis, Lieutenant."
Suddenly Ray's up off the floor, on his knees and knocking Brad down onto his back, scrambling at the fly of Brad's fatigues before Brad even realizes what's going on. "C'mon, Iceman," Ray mutters, smirking like some kind of crazed demonic elf. "Give it up."
Brad isn't sure he has a choice. His muscles feel like he's fighting to move through water, exhausted and heavy and slow. No, that's not right; he knows what to do with water. He could fight his way through water. This is another fucking planet. This is bizarro world.
This is Iraq.
Ray bends his head and takes Brad in his mouth tight and hot, sucking him as fast and rough as he did Brad's fingers. Brad clenches his fists, nails biting into his palms and teeth digging into his lower lip, holding back any and all sounds because he will be damned if Ray Person is going to be able to claim that as any kind of a victory. This might be fucked-up hallucinatory bizarro-world bullshit, but he's still Brad fucking Colbert and he does not beg.
"Jesus," Nate says again, and he sounds like he might just beg, if either one of them pressed the issue. "Don't you fucking stop, Person. Jesus."
It just fucking figured, that an officer would like to watch more than he liked getting his hands dirty. Too fucking perfect. Brad wants to laugh, but Ray might take that wrong, and right now Ray's got Brad in a very vulnerable position, his mouth so tight it's just about painful. Brad's hips are up off the floor, rocking into Ray's mouth, every muscle in his body tensed and waiting for the go-ahead.
"C'mon, Brad." That doesn't sound like an officer; for a minute, he just sounds like some guy named Nate Fick, who's almost making Brad a promise. "Come on."
Ray gags and pulls away, pressing his hand over his mouth again. "Jesus, Brad, warn a guy," he mumbles, his voice thick and nauseated. Brad lays back against the floor, closing his eyes and drawing a ragged breath, his brain floating out somewhere over the AO. Fucking Ray. Nate giving the order was his warning.
Nate's chair scrapes against the floor, startlingly loud. "You men should get back to your platoon." Nate's voice is unsteady, but distinctly his own again, and Brad forces himself to sit up, hands moving to do up his fatigues on clumsy autopilot. "I'll...you have your orders. Oh-five-hundred."
"Six hundred, sir," Brad says, his voice hoarse, and gets to his feet. Nate takes a step back. Brad realizes, looking at him, that Nate's fatigues are still done up, pristine, except for the hard bulge distorting the front of them. So Nate hadn't been getting off, watching that; he'd just been tormenting himself with waiting.
Maybe Ray had hit the nail on the head and they were just all fucking twisted.
"Goodnight, gentlemen," Nate says. For some reason that's what sets Ray off giggling again, like a fucking heathen, and Brad grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him out the door. He glances back over his shoulder and meets Nate's eyes for just a split second before the door slams and they're alone in the corridor.
"What the fuck was that?" Ray says, his voice sliding up in pitch and volume, and Brad grips the back of his neck tighter, shaking him like a kitten. "Let go of me. What the actual, flying, syphilis-infested fuck was that?"
"It was nothing, Ray. It didn't happen." Brad jerks him around, spinning Ray in place and holding him still so he can look him in the eye. "You got that? Nothing happened."
Ray stares up at him, skeptical, and Brad has a hard time not turning his gaze to Ray's mouth. "That's a little too much bullshit even for me, Brad."
"We're all tired," Brad says, a little desperately as his gaze drops. Ray's mouth is dark, his lips slightly swollen, and fuck, that is going to be distracting if Brad doesn't lock this shit down and get a grip right fucking now. "That was just a fucked-up hallucination from being awake so fucking long. Not real. It didn't happen, Ray."
They stare at each other for another moment, Brad trying to will Ray to obedience using the fucking Force if necessary, and finally Ray nods a little, shrugging off Brad's grip and taking a step back. "Yeah, you're right. Nothing happened. No fucked-up weird shit around here at all."
"The LT showed us the maps. That's it."
"That is fucking it." Ray nods again, running his hand over his hair. "Okay."
"Let's go hit the fucking rack." Brad brushes past him and heads down the corridor, letting himself stride out ahead of Ray, not quite able to care if Ray keeps up or not. He just needs a couple of hours of sleep before they're back out there in the city, under fire. He needs something to convince himself of everything Ray just agreed to pretend to believe.
If he doesn't, Brad's not sure what's going to be more distracting--Ray's mouth running a mile a minute in the next seat, or the not-quite-a-memory of the look in Nate's eyes, locked on his own, just before he shut the door.