fic: the shooting stops
Title: The shooting stops
Author: l_s_d_me
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: R
Word Count: 2800
Disclaimer: Based on portrayals from Generation Kill and has no base in reality.
Notes: Must thank the lovely meeks00 for the beta and for forcing me to post this no matter what. Any errors you see are all mine bc I like to leave traces around that the world is imperfect… LOL/JK I was too lazy to re-read it.
Summary: When it starts Brad think it’s going to be a game. It’s not.
“Our AO is now Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Cradle of Civilization.” The LT is speaking and the team leaders are standing in dead silence around the map listening. They’re not but a few days into the invasion so the wear of the situation hasn’t begun to set in yet.
It makes Brad shake his head a little to hear Fick like this - a scholar leading men into battle - it’s rather poetic when you think about it. Not that Brad is thinking about because it. But then the briefing continues and everything about the moment is gone, replaced with direction and order. After all, there’s no time for poetry in war, Brad thinks. (Actually it was more along the lines of: “What kind of liberal dick-suck is spouting this pussy shit they teach on the East Coast.” But Brad would never tell anyone he thought of “dick-suck” and Nate in the same thought - and oh God when did he become “Nate.”)
Then as suddenly as it began, the briefing is over and the men start to disperse. Brad is picking up his gear when he glances back at the LT, who is still pouring over the map. He’s about to say something when Nate looks up at him. It’s the first time Brad fully recognizes that Nate is worrying his bottom lip through is teeth. Sure, he’s noticed it before - he’s the fucking Iceman for a reason - but this time it’s different. The sight of it hits him low in the stomach. He knows he’s fucked, and he can see the slight change in Nate’s posture, that he knows it too. But then Nate is slowly, painfully so, dragging his lip out of his mouth, his tongue chasing it to soothe the bite mark. Brad mouth opens almost imperceptibly and he can’t help but wet his lips.
Brad is still trying to work it all out in his head when Nate straightens up, grabbing the map board. The movement jolts him back to reality and he swears Nate winks at him before heading back towards his victory.
It’s then that Brad knows the game is just beginning.
_________________
1 week later
Brad hates today. It’s been slow moving, the sun’s too hot, and the water’s too dusty. Not to mention the fact that Ray and Trombley have been going back forth about marriage and children all fucking day long. He can’t take it. And then Trombley is asking him what he has against marriage, and it’s all out there: his girlfriend, his best friend, and all their goddamn pictures.
The way Ray is looking at him only happens once every millennium - it’s real and open and Brad can hardly stand to see it.
But that’s all forgotten because Nate’s suddenly there, standing with the setting sun behind his back. Brad knows he can sense the mood right now. Hell, he probably heard them speaking as he came up from the rear of the victor. Either way, Brad can see it in his eyes.
Nate’s giving them orders, and of course Brad’s listening, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that Nate rests his hand on the nape of Brad’s neck, squeezing.
“I’m glad you’re my team leader,” Nate says, still anchoring Brad there with his hand. It’s only a moment, but it doesn’t feel that way to Brad. He sees the same feeling in Nate’s face.
“Thank you, sir,” is the only thing Brad can think of to say, but he means it. He means it for so many reasons. The small nod and hint of a smile from Nate brings him fully back to the present. Focused. Peaceful.
Brad won’t forget this, and he suddenly doesn’t think this thing between them is going to be a game anymore.
________
3 days later
It’s like a scab, Brad thought as he made his way toward Nate. You can slowly pick at it, as he had been doing, or you can just rip it off and bask in the surprise, thrill, and slight gore of it.
So this night, he decided there wouldn’t be any further preamble. The picking was over.
Brad scanned the area as he walked towards Nate. Gunny Wynn was talking to Kocher, and Stafford and Christeson were trying, and failing, to get Reporter to understand the many uses of “screwby” for probably the millionth time.
As he got to the side of humvee facing away from camp, he finally saw Nate with a map in hands, his red flashlight held firmly between this teeth and lips so he could use both hands to figure out their path. Brad could feel his mouth go dry at the sight of Nate’s lips like that. If they looked that good around a light, well then Brad was going to have to seriously master his self-control for however long this Iraqi clusterfuck would take to clear up.
Nate glances up, seeing him, and pulls the light from his mouth. His tongue jets out to wet the dried corners of his mouth. Brad can see the intake of Nate’s breath in the rise of his chest as he registers the look Brad knows he must have in his eyes.
“Sir.” Brad nods like he would in any other situation before sliding up into Nate’s space.
No preamble, Brad repeats to himself as he pushes Nate up against the side of his humvee. He bites lightly at the base of Nate’s ear, lightly enough so nobody except he and Nate would ever know he had been there. While he has one hand firmly against Nate’s lower back, pressing him to him with all his might, the other has made its way down to Nate’s wrist, half holding his hand.
Nate makes a small noise that can only be heard because his mouth is pressed to Brad’s ear, doing nothing more than showing his appreciation. And fuck, Brad wishes Nate would put his mouth on him instead of just holding it there, just out of reach.
Even through weeks of dirt and grime coating him, Brad is still intoxicated by having his mouth on Nate. The taste of his neck against Brad’s lips reaches all the way down to his toes, causing them to curl in his boots.
He’s completely lost in it, which, he will tell himself later, is why it surprises him when he realizes that one of Nate’s legs has snaked its way around his own and is now being used as leverage to flip them around.
Brad hits the canvas with a slight grunt that is swallowed by Nate’s mouth covering his.
Apparently Nate doesn’t believe in preamble either.
The kiss is as hard as it can be without biting. Nate still has his maps and flashlight in one hand, yet he still manages to completely undo Brad. His tongue, his lips, Brad had no idea it could be this good. Then, as quickly as it began, it ends.
Nate pulls back, the green of his eyes almost completely obscured by his pupils, as Brad is sure his eyes look as well.
“Now, Brad,” Nate says, “two can play at that game,” running his tongue along Brad’s lower lip before sauntering off to check on the men.
Yeah, Brad is fucked.
_________________
2 weeks later
“What are you thinking about, Brad?” Nate asks from behind him, voice just above a whisper.
Brad’s first instinct is to freeze, to pretend that he wasn’t just mid-jack. But then, it’s Nate’s fault that he’s in this predicament in the first place, so he keeps going. He’s down on his knees, facing out into the blackest night they’ve had yet, as he slowly fucks into his hand.
“I asked,” Nate starts, kneeling down to straddle Brad’s legs that are on the ground behind him. “What are you thinking about?” Brad can’t help but let his breath hitch as Nate’s body comes flush against the back of his. So close.
“The usual sir: whores, tits, pussy.” Brad’s working hard to make his voice emotionless, bored, but then Nate leans into the back of him harder, his mouth brushing Brad’s ear. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Sergeant.”
Brad can feel the hot breath on his ear, the affect his title has on him coming from Nate’s mouth, and the heat pooling in his stomach as Nate angles his head a little to lick the space right behind his ear as if to casually remind Brad of their earlier encounter a couple weeks ago.
“Your mouth,” Brad says without realizing.
“Hmm, and what about my mouth?” Nate breathes out as he lightly sucks a spot below the collar of Brad’s shirt.
“I…I want it,” he stutters, picking up the speed of his hand. “Everywhere.”
And that’s when he feels Nate thrust behind him. Through two layers of MOPP suits he can still feel that Nate’s hard. Nate’s hands are down by his sides, with just his mouth and torso pressed against Brad. It feels like both a proposition and an order at the same time.
“When we have time I’m going to show you what my mouth can do.” Nate’s voice is almost silent as he speaks directly into Brad’s ear. His voice burns through Brad. “I’m going to start at the top and work my way down. Your mouth, neck, your chest. I’m going run my tongue from your belly button down to the point where there’s just a breath between my mouth and your dick. Do you know that spot, Brad?”
Fuck, Brad thinks, or says out loud. He doesn’t know anymore. What he does know is that he’s going to come harder than he has in years just from the words coming out of Nate Fick’s fucking mouth.
“Come on, Brad,” Nate urges from behind him, practically reading his thoughts. “I want you to come all over your hand for me.”
And with that he’s gone, body jerking, muscles tensing and relaxing against the feel of Nate still pressed behind him. “Nate…Nate,” Brad gasps as he leans his head back against Nate’s shoulder. He can feel the smile on Nate’s face as his cheek moves against the side of Brad’s head. His eyes close for a second only, but then Nate is taking his hand, and Brad has to see him.
Nate’s sucking two of his fingers into his mouth. Brad can feel his eyes go wide, and heat pours to his center as Nate eyes flutter close and he makes a small noise as he swirls his tongue around Brad’s fingers. He pulls them out, making an almost obscene popping sound when he does.
Brad doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, but it involves actual privacy, a bed, rope of some kind, and five straight days of fucking. But for now he knows that it’s probably best to disentangle himself from his LT before someone comes looking for either of them. He starts to move, but Nate is putting an arm around him, pinning him against his body.
“That was for before Brad,” he says, slightly breathless. “I can still feel your mouth on my neck.” And with that he’s up and gone, melting back into the night.
It’s only then that Brad relaxes back on his heels, trying to straighten his clothes with his shaking hands. ‘I’m fucked’ has been Brad’s motto for the last two weeks, and tonight just reiterated that. This is turning into more than just a look here, a touch there, and he knows there’s no turning back now; a feeling he could feel through Nate tonight too.
The game is on indeed, but it might be a much bigger game than either of them had planned on.
________________
4 days later
All hell breaks loose after Brad utters six words: “There are men in the trees.”
Some of the men had been expecting this, an ambush. But what they got was more than anyone had truly expected. The Iraqis were ready and waiting for the Marines to try and cross the bridge. It was a trap.
Ray’s yelling, Reporter is flinching every few seconds, and Hasser’s gun is blasting in his ear, but there’s nothing on his mind other than his line-of-sight and getting the job done. That is, of course, until his radio buzzes with the news that Nate is foot-mobile. Brad closes his eyes for a second, pushing that news, the sudden jolt of worry through his body down below until he’s nothing but breathing and intuition.
Waiting. Shooting. Looking. Breathing. Checking. Re-checking. He sees Nate as they turn around. He’s running and Brad has to fight the urge to get out and jump on top of him just to keep him safe. But then Ray blows past him as Gunny stops to let him in and the shooting stops.
With everything that’s going on, it’s another twenty minutes before he finds Nate leaning against the back of his humvee. Nate’s breathing is slow, measured, precise. Too precise.
“Nate…Nate…” Brad is muttering as he stands in front of him, not knowing exactly what to do.
They both look at each other, their eyes brighter than normal, electrified by what they just went through.
“I’m fine, really I am,” Nate ends up saying, just to have something out there between them.
Brad exhales and a thicker relief than he’s ever felt washes through him. He was sure Nate had been hit. People don’t have luck like that, to come out unscathed with bullets flying everywhere. Brad had thought he’d lost him, and that’s what tore at his chest. Not that the Corps had lost a great lieutenant, or that a comrade had fallen, but that he had lost Nate.
More tentatively than he’s done anything before, Brad raises his hand, lightly resting it on Nate’s chest. The touch is through layers and layers of clothing, but Brad can feel the heat coming off Nate’s body running up his arm and settling somewhere in the middle of his chest. He can feel, more than hear, the breath Nate had been holding leave his body.
“Okay,” Brad breathes out, not moving his hand just yet.
________________
20 days, 18hrs, 14minutes later
This time it was different. It wasn’t hurried, nobody needed them, and and there was nowhere to be. Their movements were just as deliberate as they had always been, but there was newness to it, a freedom that wasn’t there before, couldn’t be there before.
So they grasped onto each other, holding and releasing, never in unison but together. Brad absently thought that they themselves were like the ocean, ebbing and flowing together, moving at different times but always together. Powerful. Beautiful. Absolute.
They crashed together, flowing around each other as if in a spell. A movement here, a choked-off gasp there, panting for breath. One wave crashing into another.
And then silence.
“I’m leaving the Corps,” Nate whispers into the dark.
Brad tightens his hand that has been resting on Nate’s hip, anchoring them both. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.” It’s barely audible when Nate says it. Like the ghost of a word that’s filled with truth, relief, and shame. Brad’s hand slides up Nate’s side, circling around his back and closing the last few inches between them.
It’s the way Nate said it that tugs at his chest. It’s there in the air all around them, it’s filled with I’m scared, what if the men die and I’m not there, what if…what if you don’t want me anymore.
“What will you do?” Brad asks after he feels the initial tension leave Nate’s body. It’s quiet for what seems like an age. But then there’s another shift, and Nate is talking; they’re all half ideas strung together: school, agencies, doing nothing, staying here, going back to the East Coast, and finding something, anything that makes it feel like what they did was worth it. And Brad just lies there, holding him, letting him say everything that he had been holding back for God knows how long.
When Nate stops talking it’s like a trance was broken - everything he had been saying hits Brad in the stomach. What if he loses Nate? What if Nate wants away from him because Brad has always been the Corps? He realizes it when Nate senses the change in him because his fingers come to Brad’s face, forcing their eyes to meet in the dark.
“What do you want, Brad?” And even in the dark Brad can see the green of his eyes willing him to tell the truth, to make him realize that what he just said didn’t ruin everything.
Brad wants to tell him a million things, that he would follow Nate to the ends of earth no matter what he chose to do with his life. But it all getting stuck in his throat along with everything else he’s ever meant to say but couldn’t. Finally he breathes out, resting his forehead against Nate’s, closing his eyes against the rush he’s feeling.
“This.”
Author: l_s_d_me
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: R
Word Count: 2800
Disclaimer: Based on portrayals from Generation Kill and has no base in reality.
Notes: Must thank the lovely meeks00 for the beta and for forcing me to post this no matter what. Any errors you see are all mine bc I like to leave traces around that the world is imperfect… LOL/JK I was too lazy to re-read it.
Summary: When it starts Brad think it’s going to be a game. It’s not.
“Our AO is now Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Cradle of Civilization.” The LT is speaking and the team leaders are standing in dead silence around the map listening. They’re not but a few days into the invasion so the wear of the situation hasn’t begun to set in yet.
It makes Brad shake his head a little to hear Fick like this - a scholar leading men into battle - it’s rather poetic when you think about it. Not that Brad is thinking about because it. But then the briefing continues and everything about the moment is gone, replaced with direction and order. After all, there’s no time for poetry in war, Brad thinks. (Actually it was more along the lines of: “What kind of liberal dick-suck is spouting this pussy shit they teach on the East Coast.” But Brad would never tell anyone he thought of “dick-suck” and Nate in the same thought - and oh God when did he become “Nate.”)
Then as suddenly as it began, the briefing is over and the men start to disperse. Brad is picking up his gear when he glances back at the LT, who is still pouring over the map. He’s about to say something when Nate looks up at him. It’s the first time Brad fully recognizes that Nate is worrying his bottom lip through is teeth. Sure, he’s noticed it before - he’s the fucking Iceman for a reason - but this time it’s different. The sight of it hits him low in the stomach. He knows he’s fucked, and he can see the slight change in Nate’s posture, that he knows it too. But then Nate is slowly, painfully so, dragging his lip out of his mouth, his tongue chasing it to soothe the bite mark. Brad mouth opens almost imperceptibly and he can’t help but wet his lips.
Brad is still trying to work it all out in his head when Nate straightens up, grabbing the map board. The movement jolts him back to reality and he swears Nate winks at him before heading back towards his victory.
It’s then that Brad knows the game is just beginning.
_________________
1 week later
Brad hates today. It’s been slow moving, the sun’s too hot, and the water’s too dusty. Not to mention the fact that Ray and Trombley have been going back forth about marriage and children all fucking day long. He can’t take it. And then Trombley is asking him what he has against marriage, and it’s all out there: his girlfriend, his best friend, and all their goddamn pictures.
The way Ray is looking at him only happens once every millennium - it’s real and open and Brad can hardly stand to see it.
But that’s all forgotten because Nate’s suddenly there, standing with the setting sun behind his back. Brad knows he can sense the mood right now. Hell, he probably heard them speaking as he came up from the rear of the victor. Either way, Brad can see it in his eyes.
Nate’s giving them orders, and of course Brad’s listening, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that Nate rests his hand on the nape of Brad’s neck, squeezing.
“I’m glad you’re my team leader,” Nate says, still anchoring Brad there with his hand. It’s only a moment, but it doesn’t feel that way to Brad. He sees the same feeling in Nate’s face.
“Thank you, sir,” is the only thing Brad can think of to say, but he means it. He means it for so many reasons. The small nod and hint of a smile from Nate brings him fully back to the present. Focused. Peaceful.
Brad won’t forget this, and he suddenly doesn’t think this thing between them is going to be a game anymore.
________
3 days later
It’s like a scab, Brad thought as he made his way toward Nate. You can slowly pick at it, as he had been doing, or you can just rip it off and bask in the surprise, thrill, and slight gore of it.
So this night, he decided there wouldn’t be any further preamble. The picking was over.
Brad scanned the area as he walked towards Nate. Gunny Wynn was talking to Kocher, and Stafford and Christeson were trying, and failing, to get Reporter to understand the many uses of “screwby” for probably the millionth time.
As he got to the side of humvee facing away from camp, he finally saw Nate with a map in hands, his red flashlight held firmly between this teeth and lips so he could use both hands to figure out their path. Brad could feel his mouth go dry at the sight of Nate’s lips like that. If they looked that good around a light, well then Brad was going to have to seriously master his self-control for however long this Iraqi clusterfuck would take to clear up.
Nate glances up, seeing him, and pulls the light from his mouth. His tongue jets out to wet the dried corners of his mouth. Brad can see the intake of Nate’s breath in the rise of his chest as he registers the look Brad knows he must have in his eyes.
“Sir.” Brad nods like he would in any other situation before sliding up into Nate’s space.
No preamble, Brad repeats to himself as he pushes Nate up against the side of his humvee. He bites lightly at the base of Nate’s ear, lightly enough so nobody except he and Nate would ever know he had been there. While he has one hand firmly against Nate’s lower back, pressing him to him with all his might, the other has made its way down to Nate’s wrist, half holding his hand.
Nate makes a small noise that can only be heard because his mouth is pressed to Brad’s ear, doing nothing more than showing his appreciation. And fuck, Brad wishes Nate would put his mouth on him instead of just holding it there, just out of reach.
Even through weeks of dirt and grime coating him, Brad is still intoxicated by having his mouth on Nate. The taste of his neck against Brad’s lips reaches all the way down to his toes, causing them to curl in his boots.
He’s completely lost in it, which, he will tell himself later, is why it surprises him when he realizes that one of Nate’s legs has snaked its way around his own and is now being used as leverage to flip them around.
Brad hits the canvas with a slight grunt that is swallowed by Nate’s mouth covering his.
Apparently Nate doesn’t believe in preamble either.
The kiss is as hard as it can be without biting. Nate still has his maps and flashlight in one hand, yet he still manages to completely undo Brad. His tongue, his lips, Brad had no idea it could be this good. Then, as quickly as it began, it ends.
Nate pulls back, the green of his eyes almost completely obscured by his pupils, as Brad is sure his eyes look as well.
“Now, Brad,” Nate says, “two can play at that game,” running his tongue along Brad’s lower lip before sauntering off to check on the men.
Yeah, Brad is fucked.
_________________
2 weeks later
“What are you thinking about, Brad?” Nate asks from behind him, voice just above a whisper.
Brad’s first instinct is to freeze, to pretend that he wasn’t just mid-jack. But then, it’s Nate’s fault that he’s in this predicament in the first place, so he keeps going. He’s down on his knees, facing out into the blackest night they’ve had yet, as he slowly fucks into his hand.
“I asked,” Nate starts, kneeling down to straddle Brad’s legs that are on the ground behind him. “What are you thinking about?” Brad can’t help but let his breath hitch as Nate’s body comes flush against the back of his. So close.
“The usual sir: whores, tits, pussy.” Brad’s working hard to make his voice emotionless, bored, but then Nate leans into the back of him harder, his mouth brushing Brad’s ear. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Sergeant.”
Brad can feel the hot breath on his ear, the affect his title has on him coming from Nate’s mouth, and the heat pooling in his stomach as Nate angles his head a little to lick the space right behind his ear as if to casually remind Brad of their earlier encounter a couple weeks ago.
“Your mouth,” Brad says without realizing.
“Hmm, and what about my mouth?” Nate breathes out as he lightly sucks a spot below the collar of Brad’s shirt.
“I…I want it,” he stutters, picking up the speed of his hand. “Everywhere.”
And that’s when he feels Nate thrust behind him. Through two layers of MOPP suits he can still feel that Nate’s hard. Nate’s hands are down by his sides, with just his mouth and torso pressed against Brad. It feels like both a proposition and an order at the same time.
“When we have time I’m going to show you what my mouth can do.” Nate’s voice is almost silent as he speaks directly into Brad’s ear. His voice burns through Brad. “I’m going to start at the top and work my way down. Your mouth, neck, your chest. I’m going run my tongue from your belly button down to the point where there’s just a breath between my mouth and your dick. Do you know that spot, Brad?”
Fuck, Brad thinks, or says out loud. He doesn’t know anymore. What he does know is that he’s going to come harder than he has in years just from the words coming out of Nate Fick’s fucking mouth.
“Come on, Brad,” Nate urges from behind him, practically reading his thoughts. “I want you to come all over your hand for me.”
And with that he’s gone, body jerking, muscles tensing and relaxing against the feel of Nate still pressed behind him. “Nate…Nate,” Brad gasps as he leans his head back against Nate’s shoulder. He can feel the smile on Nate’s face as his cheek moves against the side of Brad’s head. His eyes close for a second only, but then Nate is taking his hand, and Brad has to see him.
Nate’s sucking two of his fingers into his mouth. Brad can feel his eyes go wide, and heat pours to his center as Nate eyes flutter close and he makes a small noise as he swirls his tongue around Brad’s fingers. He pulls them out, making an almost obscene popping sound when he does.
Brad doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he wants to do, but it involves actual privacy, a bed, rope of some kind, and five straight days of fucking. But for now he knows that it’s probably best to disentangle himself from his LT before someone comes looking for either of them. He starts to move, but Nate is putting an arm around him, pinning him against his body.
“That was for before Brad,” he says, slightly breathless. “I can still feel your mouth on my neck.” And with that he’s up and gone, melting back into the night.
It’s only then that Brad relaxes back on his heels, trying to straighten his clothes with his shaking hands. ‘I’m fucked’ has been Brad’s motto for the last two weeks, and tonight just reiterated that. This is turning into more than just a look here, a touch there, and he knows there’s no turning back now; a feeling he could feel through Nate tonight too.
The game is on indeed, but it might be a much bigger game than either of them had planned on.
________________
4 days later
All hell breaks loose after Brad utters six words: “There are men in the trees.”
Some of the men had been expecting this, an ambush. But what they got was more than anyone had truly expected. The Iraqis were ready and waiting for the Marines to try and cross the bridge. It was a trap.
Ray’s yelling, Reporter is flinching every few seconds, and Hasser’s gun is blasting in his ear, but there’s nothing on his mind other than his line-of-sight and getting the job done. That is, of course, until his radio buzzes with the news that Nate is foot-mobile. Brad closes his eyes for a second, pushing that news, the sudden jolt of worry through his body down below until he’s nothing but breathing and intuition.
Waiting. Shooting. Looking. Breathing. Checking. Re-checking. He sees Nate as they turn around. He’s running and Brad has to fight the urge to get out and jump on top of him just to keep him safe. But then Ray blows past him as Gunny stops to let him in and the shooting stops.
With everything that’s going on, it’s another twenty minutes before he finds Nate leaning against the back of his humvee. Nate’s breathing is slow, measured, precise. Too precise.
“Nate…Nate…” Brad is muttering as he stands in front of him, not knowing exactly what to do.
They both look at each other, their eyes brighter than normal, electrified by what they just went through.
“I’m fine, really I am,” Nate ends up saying, just to have something out there between them.
Brad exhales and a thicker relief than he’s ever felt washes through him. He was sure Nate had been hit. People don’t have luck like that, to come out unscathed with bullets flying everywhere. Brad had thought he’d lost him, and that’s what tore at his chest. Not that the Corps had lost a great lieutenant, or that a comrade had fallen, but that he had lost Nate.
More tentatively than he’s done anything before, Brad raises his hand, lightly resting it on Nate’s chest. The touch is through layers and layers of clothing, but Brad can feel the heat coming off Nate’s body running up his arm and settling somewhere in the middle of his chest. He can feel, more than hear, the breath Nate had been holding leave his body.
“Okay,” Brad breathes out, not moving his hand just yet.
________________
20 days, 18hrs, 14minutes later
This time it was different. It wasn’t hurried, nobody needed them, and and there was nowhere to be. Their movements were just as deliberate as they had always been, but there was newness to it, a freedom that wasn’t there before, couldn’t be there before.
So they grasped onto each other, holding and releasing, never in unison but together. Brad absently thought that they themselves were like the ocean, ebbing and flowing together, moving at different times but always together. Powerful. Beautiful. Absolute.
They crashed together, flowing around each other as if in a spell. A movement here, a choked-off gasp there, panting for breath. One wave crashing into another.
And then silence.
“I’m leaving the Corps,” Nate whispers into the dark.
Brad tightens his hand that has been resting on Nate’s hip, anchoring them both. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.” It’s barely audible when Nate says it. Like the ghost of a word that’s filled with truth, relief, and shame. Brad’s hand slides up Nate’s side, circling around his back and closing the last few inches between them.
It’s the way Nate said it that tugs at his chest. It’s there in the air all around them, it’s filled with I’m scared, what if the men die and I’m not there, what if…what if you don’t want me anymore.
“What will you do?” Brad asks after he feels the initial tension leave Nate’s body. It’s quiet for what seems like an age. But then there’s another shift, and Nate is talking; they’re all half ideas strung together: school, agencies, doing nothing, staying here, going back to the East Coast, and finding something, anything that makes it feel like what they did was worth it. And Brad just lies there, holding him, letting him say everything that he had been holding back for God knows how long.
When Nate stops talking it’s like a trance was broken - everything he had been saying hits Brad in the stomach. What if he loses Nate? What if Nate wants away from him because Brad has always been the Corps? He realizes it when Nate senses the change in him because his fingers come to Brad’s face, forcing their eyes to meet in the dark.
“What do you want, Brad?” And even in the dark Brad can see the green of his eyes willing him to tell the truth, to make him realize that what he just said didn’t ruin everything.
Brad wants to tell him a million things, that he would follow Nate to the ends of earth no matter what he chose to do with his life. But it all getting stuck in his throat along with everything else he’s ever meant to say but couldn’t. Finally he breathes out, resting his forehead against Nate’s, closing his eyes against the rush he’s feeling.
“This.”