Fic: Unplanned (GK, Brad/Nate)
Title: Unplanned
Fandom: Generation Kill
Characters/Pairings: Nate/Brad
Wordcount: 2811
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Based on fictionalised portrayals as seen on the HBO miniseries.
A/N: Too long for a comment at the prompt battle. Written for prompts: DADT repeal and promise. More of porn battle ficlets linked here
It’s the fucking DADT thing, everyone gets a bee in their bonnet about it, or whatever the fuck. Not that it isn’t a relief in some ways, but from the first rude e-mail card he gets from Ray (he outdoes himself with the timing, too, couldn’t be more than thirty seconds after the news, probably tripped over his shoelaces to get to his computer), Brad knows it’s going to be trouble.
“It’s all your fault,” he tells Nate, who freezes with his hand still on the doorknob and tilts his head.
“What did I do?” he wants to know. He’s pulling off the innocence, Brad will give him that, but he has the NPR on in his car, he must have heard.
“You voted for the bastard.”
Nate nods. “You know, I am fairly certain most gays in the military are less bitter about this.”
Sure. Most of them don’t know Ray Person. Or aren’t sons of Helen Colbert. And aren’t in a relation-let’s-not-put-a-label-on-it-ship with Nathaniel Fick, whose mother is bound to start hinting at possibilities of future adoptions the moment they see her next time.
Which, fuck, will be the day after tomorrow, because it’s Patrick’s birthday.
“I’m not talking to you,” he tells Nate.
Nate nods and closes the door carefully, drops his keys in the bowl in the hall and makes sure to place his shoes neatly against the wall when he takes them off. “My plans didn’t involve talking anyway,” he announces almost cheerfully and proceeds to pushing Brad against the wall, swiftly undoing his pants. His breath is warm against Brad’s neck and Brad shivers even before Nate licks at just the right spot, already rubbing himself against Brad’s thigh.
Well, fine, this plan has some merits. Brad’s still bitter about the whole thing.
*
Nate must have had a talk with his mother, because the entire Fick family is strangely quiet on the subject for weeks.
Claudia mentions it at Patrick’s birthday dinner, but it’s more of a ‘let’s get the topic out of the way before Brad has an aneurysm and also, have you heard about Aunt Monica?’ thing. Brad is pretty damn sure they’re trying to lull him into a false sense of security but he’ll enjoy the time he has.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re all doing,” he tells Nate on their way back.
“I’ll admit the paranoia is a useful quality from time to time, like, say, in the combat situations...”
“They were trying to kill me then,” Brad interjects.
“But it’s not your most attractive quality, Colbert.”
“No, that would be my dick.”
Nate snorts, but he doesn’t argue. Brad would actually like to hear the arguments he’d come up with if he tried.
It hits him later, when Nate pulls him up for a kiss and makes a low sound at the taste of himself on Brad’s lips, that there could be something to be said for being able to kiss Nate whenever and wherever he liked. He dismisses the thought quickly, mostly because Nate’s hand on his ass doesn’t necessarily help his thought processes.
*
True to form, Brad’s mother doesn’t disappoint.
They don’t actually see her for two months after the repeal, but she sends Brad all the news links in a daily e-mail. He wants to point out that he knows how to set up google alerts, she doesn’t have to take up the task herself, but she’s pretty damn proud of her internet skills since Jessica taught her what google was for, and so he doesn’t comment.
Well, once. It doesn’t go so well.
“It’s not that Nathaniel isn’t a part of the family already, Bradley, but it would be nice to see your wedding,” she says. She’s bringing out her guilt-tripping tone, the one she used on Rebecca to hint that she’d like to have grandchildren before she died.
He says hint, but he means state outright. Rebecca has two daughters now. Brad’s not sure he likes his chances.
“You know, you can’t even be sure Nate would want to marry me, so don’t go picking the color scheme and the china patters just yet,” he tells her.
“Oh, Bradley,” she sighs and he didn’t mean that, he meant that maybe Nate wouldn’t want to marry into the family of lunatics. Yesterday Rebecca send him Josie’s picture of her “Uncle Brad and Uncle Nate” and someone in the picture was wearing a wedding veil and Brad knows whom to blame, seriously.
“You do realise there’s still the UCMJ, right, mom?” he tries.
“Give it some time,” she says serenely.
Brad’s not sure he can win.
*
“I’m pretty sure she was one step away from suggesting we stick to blowjobs so we’re not in the violation of 125, like this was the only thing standing in the way of the dream Barbie wedding she’s planning.”
Nate sighs. He sounds just a little bit put upon. “Brad. Don’t mention your mother when I’m close to fucking you, okay?”
“Aren’t you a bit curious if we could get by only on blowjobs?” Brad asks, probably because his higher brain functions has shut down. And partly, maybe, because it’s sometimes interesting to fuck with Nate a little.
In more ways than one, yes.
“There’s a few more things besides blowjobs that still doesn’t fall under the definition of sodomy, that’s one,” Nate mutters, leaning back a little. He’s still stroking Brad’s dick though, so Brad doesn’t complain. In fact, he has to admit to just a fleeting interest in those few more things and a step away from asking for a demonstration of the selection. “It would be more of a dream Ken wedding, that’s two. And three, I think this little obsession of yours is starting to worry me. Would you like to talk about it?”
Fucker. “No. But all the speaking of blowjobs got me thinking,” he says and Nate rolls his eyes.
“Fine. But I’m sticking Josie’s drawing to the fridge and you’re not allowed to take it down even if Ray comes over.”
“And now you go and mention Ray Person in bed? I think you’ve just killed my mood.”
“Not really,” Nate says with a flicker of his wrist. He has, fuck, he does have a point there.
“I would rock that veil,” Brad says, the last coherent thing he’ll say for a while.
What, he would.
*
“Well, at least you won’t have to get out of the Corps to set house and make an honest woman out of the Captain,” Ray says, digging into the pizza. Brad’s close to offering to find him a bib, Claudia could have left one last time she visited with the kids. The way he tends to eat Ray’s bound to drop something on the couch and Nate will be frowning his way through the entire evening.
“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. You do realise you don’t have to pronounce every single thought that passes through your hick brain, right?”
Ray gives him a look. “Hey, Brad, remember Iraq?” he says, seemingly without any connection, but Brad knows him better and eyes him warily.
“Yes, Ray, I do have a vague recollection of what has transpired there.”
“Yeah. So don’t tell me that in-between the clusterfuck that was OIF and the way you were probably stripping your dick raw jerking off to the thoughts of our illustrious leader and his lucious mouth, and fuck, I didn’t need the image, don’t tell me you didn’t think up at least one fruitcake rainbow gay fantasy of growing old together and making him coffee in the morning and some other pussy shit.”
Brad gives him a moment to catch his breath. Here in real world the rants run slower because he’s not hopped up on ripped fuel constantly. Finally, Brad shakes his head. “Shut up, Ray.”
Ray gives him a long look and nods. “Want more beer?”
God yes. “I could use some.”
“Alright, homes. Also, I give them two years before they unfuck the UCMJ, what do you think?”
Beer and possibly some whiskey.
*
At some point the repeal becomes old news. Brad’s mother abandons her newsletter project, people stop hinting. When the UCMJ is amended it makes news but not quite with that much impact as the repeal did.
Brad takes a stint at Quantico and they move into a new apartment. Both of their names are on the lease and it seems to placate his mother and she’s less prone to mentioning the wedding she’d like to see.
The attack comes from an unexpected quarter, when Nate’s younger sister invites them over to ‘catch up’ which is just an elaborate ruse to get her half an hour time with actual grown-ups. Joe is abroad for a conference and the au pair caught some stomach flu that’s been going around the neighbourhood.
“I’m one Nickelodeon cartoon away from going absolutely nuts and murdering my way through a PTA meeting,” she tells Brad.
“Claudia Stephanie Fick-Johnson, language,” he admonishes her and she laughs.
“Thankfully, they’re not paying any attention,” she shrugs, gesturing towards the backyard, where Nate is pushing both swings with learned ease and the girls are trying to tell him something whenever they swing by. “It would be easier if you were married,” she says.
It takes Brad a moment to catch up on her words. “What would be?”
“If you wanted to adopt. Not that I don’t know that Nate adores his nieces, but I’m pretty sure he’d want his own kids at some point,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s not that the thought hadn’t occured to Brad, he just thought it was their mothers’ fantasy, and not something of a possibility. “And you really want that, Brad,” Claudia adds, her gesture wide and encompassing the backyard, the swings, and Nate.
He’s less than ready for this. He’s not...
There’s still a small part of him, a rather new part of him, that insists he might be at some point. That it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Nate says something to the girls and they both turn and wave at Brad, laughing. Brad makes a point to roll his eyes at them, but he stands up and walks there to join them anyway.
*
Brad wouldn’t remember the exact date of Hasser’s e-mail, except that it comes on Christmas Day, so it’s rather hard to really forget.
They just got home from dinner at Brad’s parents’ and Nate excused himself to check his work e-mail, trying to explain they’ve been working on an important project and that he knows it’s Christmas but yadda yadda, but Brad waves him away. It’s fine and he knows it’s important to Nate, and he points out he can occupy himself for five minutes like a good boy.
“See, and you ruined it with that last remark,” Nate tells him. “I’ll be quick.”
“That’s what she said,” Brad remarks absently, firing up his laptop. Nate flips him off good-naturedly and finds his own computer under the pile of papers. It takes much longer to boot up than Brad’s, because it’s a catastrophy of a machine and yet Nate refuses to let Brad tinker with it.
“I have it like I like it,” he always says and Brad threatens to spill coffee on it and never quite gets to it. He should have bought Nate a proper laptop for Christmas. Something to keep in mind when his birthday comes around, Nate can’t refuse a gift, that would be impolite.
Walt e-mails rarely, unlike, say, Ray, so Brad’s actually curious what prompted it and clicks through. There’s an attachment and a link, the picture too small to see well in the gmail preview before Brad clicks at it. Two men, one in dress blues and one in a suit and tie, clearly a wedding picture. Brad hadn’t quite expected that, especially from Hasser, but then again, maybe he should have.
He clicks back to the e-mail. There’s a link to the news story and a few lines from Walt. ”I’m sending this before Ray gets the chance. I don’t think you’d be in the mood for his editorial.” Nothing more, no hints or good advice. Brad supposes the picture takes care of that.
“Done,” Nate announces. “Well, at least until tomorrow, Maura’s supposed to send the corrections then. And before you say anything, no, it’s not my influence, she was a workaholic to begin with,” he says and looks at Brad quizzically. “You alright?”
Brad looks up and nods before closing the laptop. He might have a vague idea why the feeling he had while looking at the picture was familiar, it’s just a little like looking at Nate, every damn time. Except he was always sure he wanted Nate, and that other feeling, the expectancy running through his body, that’s... not quite new, but he thinks that now he might be ready for it.
*
He actually had a plan.
Not because either of them needs grand gestures, but mostly because Brad realizes he’s going to have to recount the whole thing to his mother, to Nate’s mother, to their respective sisters, and possibly to about a dozen Marines who won’t admit it but are fucking busybodies worse than Brad’s grandmother’s sewing circle.
Telling everyone that, oh, say, Brad popped the question on the couch in their living room, after Nate sucked him off, well, that probably wouldn’t do.
Not that he’s going to ever refer to it as popping the fucking question. He’s just proposing a possible course of action that seems a logical step after the apartment and all.
So, plan. And then Nate gets a call from work and goes over to deal with a crisis after someone didn’t file something that urgently needed filing, and so the dinner is off. And when he comes back, he’s in that irritable mood that Brad finds kind of hilarious; not quite angry but prone to scathing sarcasm if provoked.
It’s actually quite attractive.
So, dinner is off and they eat leftover Chinese and Nate insists on watching Fox News because yes, he is in that kind of mood.
“I’ll blow you if you stop watching this drivel,” Brad promises him after seven and a half minutes.
“You’ll blow me anyway,” Nate says dismissively. “Turn the volume up, I can’t have heard him say what I think he said, no one is that stupid.”
“I think you should marry me,” Brad says. Well, someone says, and after a few seconds Brad catches on to the fact that it was him.
It turns Nate attention away from the tv, at least.
Brad places the cartoon box on the coffee table, he’s lost the appetite for the Chinese. He immediately regrets the move, because at least he had something to busy himself with.
Nate shifts where he’s sitting on the floor, rising to his knees. “Is this in addition to the blowjob or are these offers mutually exclusive?”
“Nate.”
Nate reaches out and Brad instinctively takes his hand, expecting Nate to use the leverage to pull himself up, but instead he tugs hard and Brad lets himself stumble to the floor next to him. His fingers take hold of Brad’s chin as he just looks at Brad. There’s something in his gaze that Brad isn’t sure he could ever get enough of.
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Nate asks, his voice tinted with awe and Brad catches his wrist.
“Nate, so help me god, if you don’t answer me right now...”
Nate smiles. “I think I should,” he says formally. “You never quite asked, Brad,” he points out, and his smile is pretty breathtaking.
Glenn Beck pontificates about the end of civilisation on the screen. Brad blindly searches for the remote control, but it’s not that easy when Nate’s kissing him. “Could we move this to the bedroom?” he proposes and Nate nods.
“We’d better. You should show me the rings.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brad says, finally finding the remote and shutting the damn tv off.
“You’ve planned this,” Nate points out. It sounds almost like an accusation, except there’s still elation in Nate’s voice, and he holds on to Brad like he doesn’t want to ever let go. “There’s no way you don’t have the rings and I want to see mine. If I don’t, I’m telling your mother how exactly the proposal went, instead of the polished version I could come up with.”
“I don’t think I like this devious streak of yours,” Brad complains.
“Too bad, because you’re getting it along with everything else. Now show me my fucking ring, Colbert.”
Brad shakes his head. “You’re amazingly lucky I love you,” he says.
Nate’s fingers lace with his. “I know.”
Fandom: Generation Kill
Characters/Pairings: Nate/Brad
Wordcount: 2811
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Based on fictionalised portrayals as seen on the HBO miniseries.
A/N: Too long for a comment at the prompt battle. Written for prompts: DADT repeal and promise. More of porn battle ficlets linked here
It’s the fucking DADT thing, everyone gets a bee in their bonnet about it, or whatever the fuck. Not that it isn’t a relief in some ways, but from the first rude e-mail card he gets from Ray (he outdoes himself with the timing, too, couldn’t be more than thirty seconds after the news, probably tripped over his shoelaces to get to his computer), Brad knows it’s going to be trouble.
“It’s all your fault,” he tells Nate, who freezes with his hand still on the doorknob and tilts his head.
“What did I do?” he wants to know. He’s pulling off the innocence, Brad will give him that, but he has the NPR on in his car, he must have heard.
“You voted for the bastard.”
Nate nods. “You know, I am fairly certain most gays in the military are less bitter about this.”
Sure. Most of them don’t know Ray Person. Or aren’t sons of Helen Colbert. And aren’t in a relation-let’s-not-put-a-label-on-it-ship with Nathaniel Fick, whose mother is bound to start hinting at possibilities of future adoptions the moment they see her next time.
Which, fuck, will be the day after tomorrow, because it’s Patrick’s birthday.
“I’m not talking to you,” he tells Nate.
Nate nods and closes the door carefully, drops his keys in the bowl in the hall and makes sure to place his shoes neatly against the wall when he takes them off. “My plans didn’t involve talking anyway,” he announces almost cheerfully and proceeds to pushing Brad against the wall, swiftly undoing his pants. His breath is warm against Brad’s neck and Brad shivers even before Nate licks at just the right spot, already rubbing himself against Brad’s thigh.
Well, fine, this plan has some merits. Brad’s still bitter about the whole thing.
*
Nate must have had a talk with his mother, because the entire Fick family is strangely quiet on the subject for weeks.
Claudia mentions it at Patrick’s birthday dinner, but it’s more of a ‘let’s get the topic out of the way before Brad has an aneurysm and also, have you heard about Aunt Monica?’ thing. Brad is pretty damn sure they’re trying to lull him into a false sense of security but he’ll enjoy the time he has.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re all doing,” he tells Nate on their way back.
“I’ll admit the paranoia is a useful quality from time to time, like, say, in the combat situations...”
“They were trying to kill me then,” Brad interjects.
“But it’s not your most attractive quality, Colbert.”
“No, that would be my dick.”
Nate snorts, but he doesn’t argue. Brad would actually like to hear the arguments he’d come up with if he tried.
It hits him later, when Nate pulls him up for a kiss and makes a low sound at the taste of himself on Brad’s lips, that there could be something to be said for being able to kiss Nate whenever and wherever he liked. He dismisses the thought quickly, mostly because Nate’s hand on his ass doesn’t necessarily help his thought processes.
*
True to form, Brad’s mother doesn’t disappoint.
They don’t actually see her for two months after the repeal, but she sends Brad all the news links in a daily e-mail. He wants to point out that he knows how to set up google alerts, she doesn’t have to take up the task herself, but she’s pretty damn proud of her internet skills since Jessica taught her what google was for, and so he doesn’t comment.
Well, once. It doesn’t go so well.
“It’s not that Nathaniel isn’t a part of the family already, Bradley, but it would be nice to see your wedding,” she says. She’s bringing out her guilt-tripping tone, the one she used on Rebecca to hint that she’d like to have grandchildren before she died.
He says hint, but he means state outright. Rebecca has two daughters now. Brad’s not sure he likes his chances.
“You know, you can’t even be sure Nate would want to marry me, so don’t go picking the color scheme and the china patters just yet,” he tells her.
“Oh, Bradley,” she sighs and he didn’t mean that, he meant that maybe Nate wouldn’t want to marry into the family of lunatics. Yesterday Rebecca send him Josie’s picture of her “Uncle Brad and Uncle Nate” and someone in the picture was wearing a wedding veil and Brad knows whom to blame, seriously.
“You do realise there’s still the UCMJ, right, mom?” he tries.
“Give it some time,” she says serenely.
Brad’s not sure he can win.
*
“I’m pretty sure she was one step away from suggesting we stick to blowjobs so we’re not in the violation of 125, like this was the only thing standing in the way of the dream Barbie wedding she’s planning.”
Nate sighs. He sounds just a little bit put upon. “Brad. Don’t mention your mother when I’m close to fucking you, okay?”
“Aren’t you a bit curious if we could get by only on blowjobs?” Brad asks, probably because his higher brain functions has shut down. And partly, maybe, because it’s sometimes interesting to fuck with Nate a little.
In more ways than one, yes.
“There’s a few more things besides blowjobs that still doesn’t fall under the definition of sodomy, that’s one,” Nate mutters, leaning back a little. He’s still stroking Brad’s dick though, so Brad doesn’t complain. In fact, he has to admit to just a fleeting interest in those few more things and a step away from asking for a demonstration of the selection. “It would be more of a dream Ken wedding, that’s two. And three, I think this little obsession of yours is starting to worry me. Would you like to talk about it?”
Fucker. “No. But all the speaking of blowjobs got me thinking,” he says and Nate rolls his eyes.
“Fine. But I’m sticking Josie’s drawing to the fridge and you’re not allowed to take it down even if Ray comes over.”
“And now you go and mention Ray Person in bed? I think you’ve just killed my mood.”
“Not really,” Nate says with a flicker of his wrist. He has, fuck, he does have a point there.
“I would rock that veil,” Brad says, the last coherent thing he’ll say for a while.
What, he would.
*
“Well, at least you won’t have to get out of the Corps to set house and make an honest woman out of the Captain,” Ray says, digging into the pizza. Brad’s close to offering to find him a bib, Claudia could have left one last time she visited with the kids. The way he tends to eat Ray’s bound to drop something on the couch and Nate will be frowning his way through the entire evening.
“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. You do realise you don’t have to pronounce every single thought that passes through your hick brain, right?”
Ray gives him a look. “Hey, Brad, remember Iraq?” he says, seemingly without any connection, but Brad knows him better and eyes him warily.
“Yes, Ray, I do have a vague recollection of what has transpired there.”
“Yeah. So don’t tell me that in-between the clusterfuck that was OIF and the way you were probably stripping your dick raw jerking off to the thoughts of our illustrious leader and his lucious mouth, and fuck, I didn’t need the image, don’t tell me you didn’t think up at least one fruitcake rainbow gay fantasy of growing old together and making him coffee in the morning and some other pussy shit.”
Brad gives him a moment to catch his breath. Here in real world the rants run slower because he’s not hopped up on ripped fuel constantly. Finally, Brad shakes his head. “Shut up, Ray.”
Ray gives him a long look and nods. “Want more beer?”
God yes. “I could use some.”
“Alright, homes. Also, I give them two years before they unfuck the UCMJ, what do you think?”
Beer and possibly some whiskey.
*
At some point the repeal becomes old news. Brad’s mother abandons her newsletter project, people stop hinting. When the UCMJ is amended it makes news but not quite with that much impact as the repeal did.
Brad takes a stint at Quantico and they move into a new apartment. Both of their names are on the lease and it seems to placate his mother and she’s less prone to mentioning the wedding she’d like to see.
The attack comes from an unexpected quarter, when Nate’s younger sister invites them over to ‘catch up’ which is just an elaborate ruse to get her half an hour time with actual grown-ups. Joe is abroad for a conference and the au pair caught some stomach flu that’s been going around the neighbourhood.
“I’m one Nickelodeon cartoon away from going absolutely nuts and murdering my way through a PTA meeting,” she tells Brad.
“Claudia Stephanie Fick-Johnson, language,” he admonishes her and she laughs.
“Thankfully, they’re not paying any attention,” she shrugs, gesturing towards the backyard, where Nate is pushing both swings with learned ease and the girls are trying to tell him something whenever they swing by. “It would be easier if you were married,” she says.
It takes Brad a moment to catch up on her words. “What would be?”
“If you wanted to adopt. Not that I don’t know that Nate adores his nieces, but I’m pretty sure he’d want his own kids at some point,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s not that the thought hadn’t occured to Brad, he just thought it was their mothers’ fantasy, and not something of a possibility. “And you really want that, Brad,” Claudia adds, her gesture wide and encompassing the backyard, the swings, and Nate.
He’s less than ready for this. He’s not...
There’s still a small part of him, a rather new part of him, that insists he might be at some point. That it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Nate says something to the girls and they both turn and wave at Brad, laughing. Brad makes a point to roll his eyes at them, but he stands up and walks there to join them anyway.
*
Brad wouldn’t remember the exact date of Hasser’s e-mail, except that it comes on Christmas Day, so it’s rather hard to really forget.
They just got home from dinner at Brad’s parents’ and Nate excused himself to check his work e-mail, trying to explain they’ve been working on an important project and that he knows it’s Christmas but yadda yadda, but Brad waves him away. It’s fine and he knows it’s important to Nate, and he points out he can occupy himself for five minutes like a good boy.
“See, and you ruined it with that last remark,” Nate tells him. “I’ll be quick.”
“That’s what she said,” Brad remarks absently, firing up his laptop. Nate flips him off good-naturedly and finds his own computer under the pile of papers. It takes much longer to boot up than Brad’s, because it’s a catastrophy of a machine and yet Nate refuses to let Brad tinker with it.
“I have it like I like it,” he always says and Brad threatens to spill coffee on it and never quite gets to it. He should have bought Nate a proper laptop for Christmas. Something to keep in mind when his birthday comes around, Nate can’t refuse a gift, that would be impolite.
Walt e-mails rarely, unlike, say, Ray, so Brad’s actually curious what prompted it and clicks through. There’s an attachment and a link, the picture too small to see well in the gmail preview before Brad clicks at it. Two men, one in dress blues and one in a suit and tie, clearly a wedding picture. Brad hadn’t quite expected that, especially from Hasser, but then again, maybe he should have.
He clicks back to the e-mail. There’s a link to the news story and a few lines from Walt. ”I’m sending this before Ray gets the chance. I don’t think you’d be in the mood for his editorial.” Nothing more, no hints or good advice. Brad supposes the picture takes care of that.
“Done,” Nate announces. “Well, at least until tomorrow, Maura’s supposed to send the corrections then. And before you say anything, no, it’s not my influence, she was a workaholic to begin with,” he says and looks at Brad quizzically. “You alright?”
Brad looks up and nods before closing the laptop. He might have a vague idea why the feeling he had while looking at the picture was familiar, it’s just a little like looking at Nate, every damn time. Except he was always sure he wanted Nate, and that other feeling, the expectancy running through his body, that’s... not quite new, but he thinks that now he might be ready for it.
*
He actually had a plan.
Not because either of them needs grand gestures, but mostly because Brad realizes he’s going to have to recount the whole thing to his mother, to Nate’s mother, to their respective sisters, and possibly to about a dozen Marines who won’t admit it but are fucking busybodies worse than Brad’s grandmother’s sewing circle.
Telling everyone that, oh, say, Brad popped the question on the couch in their living room, after Nate sucked him off, well, that probably wouldn’t do.
Not that he’s going to ever refer to it as popping the fucking question. He’s just proposing a possible course of action that seems a logical step after the apartment and all.
So, plan. And then Nate gets a call from work and goes over to deal with a crisis after someone didn’t file something that urgently needed filing, and so the dinner is off. And when he comes back, he’s in that irritable mood that Brad finds kind of hilarious; not quite angry but prone to scathing sarcasm if provoked.
It’s actually quite attractive.
So, dinner is off and they eat leftover Chinese and Nate insists on watching Fox News because yes, he is in that kind of mood.
“I’ll blow you if you stop watching this drivel,” Brad promises him after seven and a half minutes.
“You’ll blow me anyway,” Nate says dismissively. “Turn the volume up, I can’t have heard him say what I think he said, no one is that stupid.”
“I think you should marry me,” Brad says. Well, someone says, and after a few seconds Brad catches on to the fact that it was him.
It turns Nate attention away from the tv, at least.
Brad places the cartoon box on the coffee table, he’s lost the appetite for the Chinese. He immediately regrets the move, because at least he had something to busy himself with.
Nate shifts where he’s sitting on the floor, rising to his knees. “Is this in addition to the blowjob or are these offers mutually exclusive?”
“Nate.”
Nate reaches out and Brad instinctively takes his hand, expecting Nate to use the leverage to pull himself up, but instead he tugs hard and Brad lets himself stumble to the floor next to him. His fingers take hold of Brad’s chin as he just looks at Brad. There’s something in his gaze that Brad isn’t sure he could ever get enough of.
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Nate asks, his voice tinted with awe and Brad catches his wrist.
“Nate, so help me god, if you don’t answer me right now...”
Nate smiles. “I think I should,” he says formally. “You never quite asked, Brad,” he points out, and his smile is pretty breathtaking.
Glenn Beck pontificates about the end of civilisation on the screen. Brad blindly searches for the remote control, but it’s not that easy when Nate’s kissing him. “Could we move this to the bedroom?” he proposes and Nate nods.
“We’d better. You should show me the rings.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brad says, finally finding the remote and shutting the damn tv off.
“You’ve planned this,” Nate points out. It sounds almost like an accusation, except there’s still elation in Nate’s voice, and he holds on to Brad like he doesn’t want to ever let go. “There’s no way you don’t have the rings and I want to see mine. If I don’t, I’m telling your mother how exactly the proposal went, instead of the polished version I could come up with.”
“I don’t think I like this devious streak of yours,” Brad complains.
“Too bad, because you’re getting it along with everything else. Now show me my fucking ring, Colbert.”
Brad shakes his head. “You’re amazingly lucky I love you,” he says.
Nate’s fingers lace with his. “I know.”