Fic: In This White Wave I Am Sinking - Part Three
Part Three - Silence
It's a love affair
On a quiet Sunday afternoon
And your speedy pills
You should know I'm into you
Secret, Howie Day
The day after Ray left, Brad spent a straight four hours in the ocean.
He had a week left of leave, a week left before he had to square everything away and rejoin the real world, a week of gazing at all the empty holes that Ray should still have been filling. All he wanted was to be surrounded by something bigger than him, something more powerful, something that could overtake his stupid, petty problems and wash them away.
Something to make him forget.
So he surfed, and swam, and ran for hours along the beach until all he could do was collapse at home and ignore the messages on his phone, lie on his couch and watch TV and pretend everything was normal, pretend that when he went back to base -when he came face-to-face with Ray - everything was going to be the exact same as it always had been. He wouldn’t remember the press of his mouth, the taste of him, the feel of his hard, slight body pressed up against his own, the way his arms had bracketed his head and held him together when he’d felt like he was about to fly apart. He was going to forget about all of that, and everything was going to be normal.
He wasn’t doing a great job of convincing himself.
Four days after Ray left, he was making himself a cup of coffee when he was interrupted by a pounding at the door. He was considering ignoring it, just hiding in the kitchen until whoever it was went away, but then Tony’s voice boomed through his house, loud and pissed off.
“Brad, I know you’re in there you giant freak of nature. Give up the damn hermit act and let me the fuck in before I break down your motherfucking door. You think I don’t know how to get into wealthy white people’s houses? I’m Mexican, bro!”
Brad sighed and rested his forehead against a cupboard door. “If I ignore you, will you go away like that rash you gave me?” he shouted back, and Tony laughed.
“I’m way nastier than any rash you ever had, dawg!” Brad opened the door and glared at Tony, who just pushed his way past him. “Oh, shit, you’re alive. I was half expecting to find your dead body lying in a corner getting eaten by cats or something.”
“Cats?”
“Whatever, dude. You been off the radar. What the fuck is up with you?”
Brad sighed and led Tony out onto the back porch, where he immediately began inspecting his plants, poking his finger at the cactuses. “I’ve just been enjoying having my quiet back now that Person’s fucked back off to Hicksville. You all worry like a bunch of mother hens.”
“Yeah, well, when you don’t answer your phone for four days, what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Tony looked at him properly for the first time. “Honestly, Brad, is everything ok?”
“I’m fine,” Brad said, and sank down onto the swing. “I seriously just needed some time alone, needed a while to get my head clear before I get back in the shit on Monday.”
“Uh huh.” Tony didn’t sound convinced, but he let it drop.
“You hear about Hasser?” Brad asked, for something to fill the silence.
“Yeah, the grapevine in this bitch is rocket-fuelled. It’s all over the platoon.” Tony shrugged. “When’s he getting married now? Couple months?”
Brad stared out into his backyard. “I guess. With his girl knocked up, I suppose they wanna rush it through.”
“Nice white girl can’t be showing in her nice white dress,” Tony agreed. “So say goodbye to Walt. I don’t think he’s got it in him to be a career boy, especially not with a kid. Same with Ray, really. I’d be surprised if he re-ups.”
Brad looked up, startled. “He say anything about that to you? When’d you speak to him?”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Settle, dawg. I just get the impression that our pal Ray isn’t really a career Marine either. He’s the kinda guy that proves he can do something then moves onto the next thing.”
“Uh huh.” Brad tried to envision a life without Ray in it, couldn’t do it. “I guess we’ll see.”
Tony sighed at him. “Ok, Brad, seriously?”
“Seriously, Poke?” Brad met his stare, they didn’t call him the Iceman for fucking nothing, but Tony just shook his head.
“When was the last time you got laid?”
Brad had to admit, that threw him. He flashed back to his night with Ray, the long, slow kisses, the touches, and blushed. A long fucking time, was the sorry answer. “Fuck off.”
“Yeah, I thought so. Do me and the rest of the platoon a favour, dude, and get some pussy before you come back to work. You’re acting like a little bitch with PMS, and it’s not good for team morale.”
Brad rolled his eyes and snatched up his watering can for something to do, for an excuse to avoid Tony’s gaze. “You sound like my mother. Like some sick, twisted, mentally disturbing version of my mother.”
Tony laughed and clapped him on the back. “Just get some, Brad. And what the fuck are you doing, you crazy white motherfucker. You don’t need to water cactuses.”
Brad stared at the little puddle of mud that had formed in the flowerpot, then up at Tony. “Oh. Good to know.”
~
One week.
Two weeks.
He got through work. It was fine. He could almost imagine that nothing had happened at all. Ray was the exact same as always - loud and obnoxious, with no concept of personal space or any sense of propriety whatsoever. Brad knew he was being awkward and weird around him at times, but he thought he covered it well enough, covered up the thing inside him that was screaming to be acknowledged.
Yeah, Brad caught himself staring, and yeah, he thought Ray caught him a few times too, but it was fine. If Brad got home at night and had to jerk off to the thought of Ray in his PT gear, or Ray doing laps in the pool, or Ray just breathing in general, that was fine too. He wasn’t a kid. He wasn’t some teenage girl with a crush. He knew how to deal with it.
Three weeks.
He saw his folks a few times, his sister bought him a hydrangea in a pot. He went out to dinner with Nate and his girlfriend and smiled in the right places, he spoke to Tony on the weekend, emailed an old friend from school. He lived. And Ray lived right there, next to him, apart from him like he’d never been before, and Brad didn’t know how to change it.
At base, Walt was putting the finishing touches on his wedding, spending half his time freaking out at Ray and the other half talking about ultrasounds and baby names. Brad listened in with a smile, everything tamped down so tight it wasn’t even an issue.
“Harrison. McClane. Sigourney.”
“Enough with the eighties action heroes, homes. Felicity had never even seen Die Hard until two weeks ago. You’re just going to have to make your peace with that.”
Walt bit his lip. “I really like McClane, though. Maybe a middle name?”
Ray looked hurt. “Fliss said you’d decided on Ray for a middle name!” he protested. “Walt, if you don’t name your child after me I’m taking back every nice thing I ever said about country music.”
“You’re naming your baby after Person?” Brad interrupted. “Walt, why would you subject an innocent child to that kind of torment?”
Walt grinned and shrugged. “For some reason my fiancée likes him. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s pretty set.”
“That’s why I’m the best man,” Ray explained. “Best man. Walt is second best.”
Brad shook his head. “You’re a pair of inbred hicks with co-dependency issues,” he announced. “Walt, I feel sorry for your future wife.”
“Yeah, she puts up with a lot,” Walt agreed happily. “Come on, Ray. You hitchin’ a ride with me?”
Ray looked at Brad, like he did sometimes, like he was waiting for something - who the hell knew what. Brad concentrated on the sunlight coming in through the windows, on the dust motes floating in the air, on anything but Ray’s eyes.
“You coming tonight?” Ray asked, cocking his hip against Brad’s desk. Brad looked up at him.
“Of course.” His gaze skated over Ray’s face, down his neck and away. It was Walt’s bachelor party; they were taking over one of the local bars with one clear mission statement - get shitfaced.
“Brad.” Ray’s voice was quiet, and Brad turned his head to watch Walt leave the room. “Brad.”
“What?” Brad finally turned back, looked Ray in the eye.
Ray gave him a small, crooked smile. “You all good?”
“I’m fine, Ray.”
“Well good. Because I don’t want you being a mopey little bitch tonight and spoiling Walt’s party.”
“I’ll show you who’s a little bitch,” Brad said, and pushed up, shoving Ray towards the door. “You fuckin’ sister humping country bumpkin, get the fuck outta here.”
“Ahh,” Ray said. “There’s the Iceman I know and love.”
Brad stared at the back of his head, both hated and loved that he knew exactly what it felt like cradled in the palm of his hand. He wanted to shove him up against the wall and hold him there, kiss the fuck out of him until he looked bleary and stupid with lust. Instead he bit his lip, concentrating on the pain until the thoughts of Ray - on his knees, on his back, bent over the fucking desk - were edged out, pushed to the back of his mind and hidden away, where they belonged.
He thought maybe Tony was right. Maybe he just needed to get laid, needed to get it out of his system. He hadn’t even been thinking about it, but now he figured maybe he’d look, just see what was on offer, see if there was something out there that could distract him from thoughts of his RTO.
Let it work, he thought to himself, following Ray out the door. Jesus. Let it fucking work.
~
She was a redhead, maybe a foot shorter than Brad, and she was full of curves in her denim skirt and beat-up AC/DC tee-shirt. Brad listened to her talk, smiled at her, brushed his thumb over her wrist when he handed her a drink, watched her lick her lips. Her name was Lena, and he had spent a good five minutes staring at the way her black leather boot pressed into her calf before Tony had pushed him over, woken him up.
It was still early, he hadn’t been drinking, just watching his boys get more and more wasted, Ray and Walt throwing back shots like it was the last night of their lives. Brad thought for half a second that he really was jealous of the easy way they had with each other, the uncomplicated friendship, but he didn’t have it in him. Walt looked like he was lit up from the inside, and he checked for messages from his girl every five minutes, making Ray laugh at him and steal his phone. Brad wasn’t jealous. But he thought he’d start looking elsewhere anyway, and that’s where Lena came in.
She was beautiful, warm and funny, laughed a lot. It was easy to whisper in her ear and ask if she wanted to get out of there, easy to nuzzle against her in the cab, smelling her hair, her perfume, the sweet scent of her sweat.
Easy enough to pretend he wasn’t thinking about Ray when he pressed her against the front door of her apartment and kissed her. She moaned and wrapped her arms around him, lightly scratched her nails down his neck and up over the back of his head. Easy, easy to scoop her up and carry her down the hall as she giggled and gave him directions to her bedroom. Easy to lay her out on her bed and push up her skirt, get a hand on her, make her whimper and spread her legs and ask nicely for more.
He took her with her little body spooned into his, his face buried in her hair and her hands clutching at his arms. He rubbed her clit with his fingers until she came apart around him, hot little pulses on his cock, and then he rolled her onto her stomach, watched his sweat drip down onto her back as he fucked her until she came again, biting at the pillow to muffle her cries. That set him off, and for the first time since Ray had gone his mind went blank with bliss, his orgasm finally wiping away the sense-memory of Ray’s skin.
“Oh, God, Brad,” she sighed as he pulled out, tying off the condom and tossing it on the floor to deal with later. “Jesus. That was…”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and pulled her close, getting the covers over them. “You’re amazing.”
She grinned up at him. “You gonna be here in the morning?” He paused, and she nodded, settled down into his arms. “It’s cool. Just don’t leave right now, ok?”
He dropped kisses all over her face, saw a spray of freckles peeking out from under her makeup. “I’m not going anywhere yet, honey,” he assured her. “I got you.”
But as he watched her fall asleep he realised he wanted to leave, wanted to get out of there and have a shower, go back home and stand in the room Ray had slept in, see if he could capture the scent of him, the feel of him. It wasn’t fair, he knew. If he’d met Lena before he went to Iraq… but he hadn’t, and it wasn’t what he wanted anymore.
He wasn’t an asshole. He knew what it took for a woman to take a guy home, to invite him into her house and open herself up for him, leave herself vulnerable, knew how brave that was. But he slipped out anyway, leaving a note promising that she was beautiful and perfect and amazing. It wasn’t enough, and he remembered her sweet, trusting face with total self-loathing, but he thought maybe it was worse to stay and pretend, worse still to stay and try and explain that he was in love with someone else, that she’d basically been a way for him to forget.
He got home and took his shower and stood in the doorway of Ray’s room and felt like absolute shit. There wasn’t any use trying to hide it from himself - no point. He was fucking in love with Ray. He had to square this shit away now, but he said it out loud anyway, just once. “I’m in love with Ray.” The words disappeared into the empty room, vanished like they’d never been, and Brad stared at the darkness blankly for a moment, before thinking fuck it, and pulling out his cell.
He’d square it away in the morning. Right now he needed Ray’s voice in his ear, just to torture himself a little more, just because he wanted to get the sound of Lena moaning out of his head, just because he was getting more pathetic by the minute and the silence was starting to press in around him again, and he couldn’t seem to put an end to it. He knew he was a moron. But he settled down on the spare bed and dialed the number anyway.
“Why the fuck are you calling me, motherfucker? I saw you leave with that total hottie - please don’t tell me you need me to talk you through it, Brad. Say it hasn’t gone that far.”
Ray wasn’t at the bar anymore, Brad could tell by the lack of background noise. He stretched out and closed his eyes, smelling orange blossoms and salt and the faintest traces of cigarette smoke.
“Ray.”
“I’ll give you a hint, insert tab A into slot B - not slot C, unless she’s really freaky like that.”
“Yeah, I managed to figure it out just fine, fucknuts,” Brad said dryly. Ray’s voice was hoarse from too much shouting and smoking. It was kind of how Brad imagined it’d sound after he’d gotten through deep-throating him.
His dick twitched at the thought, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t be thinking about that shit. He knew better. But now he’d started on this slippery slope, he apparently couldn’t stop.
“Oh, so you did get laid. Congratulations,” Ray said. Brad thought he sounded a little pissed off, but he was probably just projecting, wishful thinking. “So I repeat: why the fuck are you calling me instead of angling for round two?”
“I left. I’m at home already,” Brad said quickly. “No round two with this one.”
“What? Why’d you leave?”
Brad sighed and tried to stop the images racing through his head, tried to stem the rush of words. “I don’t know,” he said, voice tight. “It wasn’t…what I really wanted, I guess.”
“Why?” Ray’s voice was sharp and to the point.
Because she wasn’t you, Brad said in his head, almost tasting the words in his mouth before thinking better of it. “Because she wasn’t your mom.”
Ray laughed, his wrecked voice scraping over Brad’s nerves until he was fully hard, lying there turned on and lonely with his best friend in his ear. It was fucking miserable, and all he wanted to do was get off the phone so he could jerk off with Ray’s voice still fresh in his mind.
He shook his head at himself, pressing the palm of his hand against his dick, and tried to concentrate on what Ray was actually saying.
“You’re telling me Jessica Rabbit didn’t do it for you, Brad? What the fuck kind of sexual crisis are you going through? This, that thing with me the other week-”
“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” Brad interrupted, his heart jumping. “Jesus, Ray, where’s your head?”
“Settle down, Iceman. One, don’t even stress. I’m at Walt’s, and he’s in a vodka coma. No one’s fucking listening. And two, you decided we weren’t talking about it, and I just now decided: fuck you.”
“Fuck you,” Brad said lamely. “Really, Ray?”
“Oh, we’re gonna talk about it eventually,” Ray assured him. “You’re gonna stop being such an emotionally stunted Neanderthal, and we’re gonna talk the fuck out of it. In fact, we’re gonna talk about it so long and hard that neither of us will be able to sit down for a week. What do you think of that, Brad?”
Brad had to laugh. “How drunk are you, Ray?”
“Pretty fuckin’ drunk, homes!” Ray crowed. “But don’t you think I’m gonna forget about this. Oh, no. I may be too wasted to have this conversation now, but look-” Brad heard him clattering around, knocking shit over. “I’m writing a fucking reminder note on Walt’s message board - jeez, Brad, who the fuck has a message board?”
“Walt?”
“Doesn’t matter. Lookit - it’s all in code and shit. R, talk to B about SC.”
“What does SC stand for?” Brad asked against his better judgement.
“Sexual crisis, you dunce. Where have you been for the last five minutes? Man, this is gonna blow Walt’s mind when he sees it. He’s gonna think its some secret ninja shit all up in his apartment. Fuckin’ A.”
I love you, Brad thought helplessly as he let Ray drunkenly ramble on. I love you, you psychotic little whiskey-tango ball of hyperactive nonsense. I love you, and that’s fine, but I also wanna fuck you until you scream my name in that messed up hick voice, and I know you like men and you’re so close and it’s not fucking fair.
And I’ve goddamned ruined everything.
Fuck.
“Ray,” he said, and Ray must have heard something in his voice, because he shut up straight away for a change and listened. “Ray, just tell me one thing, will you?”
“Yeah, Brad, what do you need?”
Brad took a deep breath, caught the ghost of Ray’s scent again. “Just. Just tell me I didn’t fuck everything up.”
There was a minute of silence on the other end. Brad stared out the window, at the stars peeking through a palm tree, at the whole night in between him and Ray.
“Nah, Brad,” Ray finally said quietly, his whiskey-smoke voice almost down to a whisper. “You ain’t fucked up a single thing with me.”
Brad nodded to himself, wanted so hard to believe it.
“I’m gonna go to bed,” he said. “I’ll see you at base.”
“Night, homes,” Ray replied. “Sleep tight.”
Brad smiled. “Don’t puke on yourself,” he warned, and he hung up to the sound of Ray’s laughter.
The spare bed wasn’t as big as his own, and he wanted his pillow, but he just let himself close his eyes anyway, pulled the sheets up over his body. He hadn’t changed them since Ray had gone, and he drew them up to his face, breathing in deep. They didn’t bring Ray any closer.
But he kept breathing them in and pretended they did.
~
The Friday before Walt’s wedding, Nate announced that he was retiring from the Marine Corps.
Even though he knew it was coming, Brad was hit hard. Seeing Nate up there addressing the platoon, pressed and stiff like the starch in his uniform was the only thing holding him up, Brad felt like it was just one more part of his life that was falling apart, changing, morphing into something he wasn’t sure how to deal with.
Looking around at the other members of the platoon, it was obvious he wasn’t alone. They were used to being fucked by officers, but not Nate. And when Brad thought ahead to a chain of command without Nate in it to soften the blows of incompetence and stupidity, it definitely felt like a fucking.
He waited as everyone filed out, hoping to catch him alone, but Ray got there first, looking up at Nate with serious eyes and saying something that Brad couldn’t catch. Nate nodded at him, and they headed out together. Brad watched them go, hanging back until he was alone in the room, alone with himself and the memory of Ray’s sad eyes.
He remembered what Ray had said weeks ago, about not fitting in, about the Marines making him something that didn’t mesh with his idea of himself, about walking down the street in his hometown and feeling like a stranger, a fake. Brad had been so caught up in his own issues - in being in love, in being alone - that he hadn’t stopped to give thought to Ray’s. Ray had been fine when he was staying at Brad’s, happy, carefree, showing his best side. But maybe now he was back in it, back in the uniform, he was starting to doubt shit again. Brad realised that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to know for sure.
He stood for a second, frowning at nothing, at himself. He’d been sticking his head in the sand, wallowing in his own misery like a disaffected fourteen year old, and he’d let Ray down. He shook his head, angry at himself, frustrated at his life. The silence had been ebbing and flowing, but right now it came crashing in on him like something tangible, and this time he knew it was his own fault. He thought of Ray’s drunken promise on the phone from the other night, him swearing that they were going to talk - he’d avoided being alone with Ray since then, avoided letting him even open his mouth, which was so fucking stupid because Ray and his words were the only things keeping him afloat.
He couldn’t believe he’d let things come to this, let it come to Ray walking off with Nate because he couldn’t rely on his best friend.
Something had to change.
He was walking towards the parking lot later when Nate came up on his nine and fell into step with him, shooting him a quick smile.
“Hey, LT.”
Nate laughed. “I’m never going to get a chance to get used to being called Captain, am I?”
“Sorry.” Brad raised an eyebrow. “Captain LT.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what Ray said.”
Brad smiled wryly, shook his head. “He has his flashes of brilliance, sir.”
“More than flashes.” Nate paused, an expression on his face like he was forming something in his head and didn’t know how to spit it out. “Brad, I want you to tell me if this isn’t my place,” he started, and Brad’s stomach dropped a little.
“Sir?”
“I’ve noticed you haven’t been yourself lately. Ray either.”
Brad stared at the ground as they walked, watched the strands of grass bending in the wind, crushed under their boots.
“I’m all squared away,” he said, aware of how stilted he sounded, how fake. Nate nodded.
“I hope so, Brad,” he said. “I know how close you are, and I don’t want this to sound too forward, but-”
“Nate.”
“But I want you to look out for him,” Nate continued relentlessly. “The Marine Corps is a great institution, and I’m proud to have served, but the more I get to know Ray the more I realise that this place will fuck him up completely if he lets it.” He looked Brad in the eye. “This isn’t a career for him - it’s a statement. I need you to remind him of that.”
Brad didn’t know what to say. It was an echo of his conversation with Tony, but coming from Nate… He didn’t know which idea was worse, the Marines without Nate and Ray, or a Ray sucked dry by the Corps - Ray, who spoke ancient languages and read works by authors who Brad had never even heard of: Ray with his brilliance ground into the dust.
Nate was still looking at him, watching him process. “Sort out your issues, Brad,” he said. “Make it right with him. I don’t need - I don’t want the details of what happened. It’s as clear as day that something did.” He held up his hands. “Just do what you have to do. Because it isn’t just him that needs you.”
Brad swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean by that, sir.”
Nate gave him a look, the one that made Brad feel like Nate could see his insides, like Nate was saying a lot more with his eyes than he was with his words.
“The two of you hold each other up, Brad. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever underestimate how fortunate you are to have that kind of friendship.”
Brad thought he detected a slight pause in front of the word ‘friendship’, like Nate had been searching for the right term, had settled on something that didn’t quite work. He had to be imagining that, though, hyper-sensitive, paranoid, so hung up on the craziness that was his life that he was projecting. Except…
He stared hard at Nate, silently begging him to drop it. “I get it, Nate,” he said, struggling to keep his voice light. “Ray’s mine. I’ll take care of him.”
Nate clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I know you will.”
Brad shook his head as Nate headed off without him, watching him go with something like awe, something like terror. He wished to God he could feel as confident about anything in his life as Nate was about everything.
“Nate!” he called suddenly, stepping forward. Nate turned and looked at him, shielding his eyes against the setting sun.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” Brad said haltingly. “For everything. I appreciate it.”
Nate nodded. “You’re welcome, Brad.”
“See you at the wedding?”
“Yeah.” Nate smiled. “I’ll see you and Ray there.”
Brad tried not to analyse that one as he got into his car. But he liked the sound of it, him and Ray, on someone else’s tongue. It was still crazy, and it was still pathetic, but.
He was smiling a little, to himself, as he drove home.
~
Walt’s fiancé was from his hometown, but she was moving out to California, and the wedding was being held in a little chapel on base. They weren’t getting a honeymoon: Walt’s leave was all used up, and he could theoretically be redeployed at any time, but the Marines were at least giving him this, the chance to get married among his brothers, take his new bride home to his little flat and set her up to be a Marine wife. “She’ll just be waiting for me in Cali instead of Virginia,” Walt had said. “I’m worried for her, you know, but at least we’re not on opposite sides of the country, or the world.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ray had assured him, and Brad expected Walt to look dubious, but he’d looked relieved instead, trusting. Layers of things between them that Brad would never understand, layers of Ray that weren’t his. He had to make his peace with that, though, think of all the layers that were.
A few days before the wedding, Walt had asked Brad to be a groomsman, almost shyly explaining that he didn’t have any brothers or cousins, that the guys in his platoon had been closer than family anyway. Brad had agreed, of course, and then the day was finally upon them and he was milling around, uncomfortable in his dress blues with a bridesmaid giving him suggestive smiles from across the church.
He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Ray, but Ray was right there, smiling big and loving being centre of attention, even though it wasn’t even his freaking wedding. Brad hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him all day, trying to notice all the stuff he’d been missing. All he knew was that, once again, something was changing.
But there was more going on than his inner turmoil.
The wedding was beautiful, even Brad could admit that. Walt looked about twelve in his dress blues, grinning like a kid on his birthday as his bride walked up the aisle of the chapel. She was lovely, exactly the kind of girl Brad had imagined for Walt, big hair and a big, gorgeous smile. She looked like a doll in her slightly old-fashioned dress, tiny and fragile up there next to Walt and his groomsmen. Brad immediately felt protective of her, knew what Walt meant about family, this felt closer to home than when Brad had been with his own parents, this was what he’d been searching for, his brothers - his Marines, all together… and Ray.
He glanced over at him a few times while Walt and Felicity were saying their vows, saw him scrub roughly at his eyes and kind of melted.
Any lingering, petty jealously he’d been feeling towards Walt and Ray’s friendship finally vanished, shriveling up in the face of their happiness. He realised that Walt and Ray were best friends in a way that he - the eternal loner - had never really experienced. They’d be friends all their lives, have happy summer BBQs, bitch about the kids, take vacations together, watch football on each other’s TVs…
But Brad didn’t want that from Ray. Brad wanted something…not more, just different. Standing there, watching Ray crying as his best friend got married, Brad finally faced up to what a coward he’d been. Finally made the choice - and it came so easy, after all - that he was gonna go for it. No drink to ease the way, no excuses, just him and Ray and whatever it was between them finally out in the open. He was going to man up and be the one who took care of Ray, and let Ray take care of him. He was going to tell Ray the truth, and it might all fall to pieces, but at least he’d know, at least he’d have tried. The last couple of months had been like living in a cave, seeing everything in tunnel vision. And now he was ready to step outside his self-imposed exile.
Ray turned and looked at him then, eyes a little red, and Brad gave him what might have been his first real, open smile since the night of the BBQ. Ray looked surprised and pleased, and he smiled back, dimples popping up and making Brad almost desperate to touch, press his fingers into them. He restrained himself, and nodded at Ray, who nodded back, and then it was time for him to step forward and hand over the rings.
Ray stepped up to Walt and pulled him into a hug. Brad felt his chest go tight as they clung to each other, had to struggle not to tear up himself. Then Walt and Felicity were husband and wife, and everyone was crying, and rose petals were falling down around them, and it was almost more than he could handle.
“You ok, Iceman?” Ray asked as they headed to the door of the chapel, getting ready to draw their swords and form the honour guard.
“Just mourning the loss of Walt’s innocence,” he said. “And his combat pay.”
“Don’t even front, dude. I totally saw you choking back tears. The Iceman can melt.”
“Yeah, I can,” Brad said, as they stepped out into the sunshine. “You know that. You’ve seen it.”
Ray didn’t say anything to that, just looked at him silently for a minute before they had to line up for the guard.
Brad was opposite Nate, who was grinning at all the ceremony, since obviously that was the kind of shit officers got off on. They tapped their blades together, held them high, and when Walt and Felicity ducked through them, Brad realised that he was truly fucking happy.
It was actually kind of a novelty.
~
Ray’s best man speech made every single person at the reception cry, up to and including Walt and Felicity.
Brad stared at his table, watched a couple of spots appear and expand outwards, his tears soaking into his napkin, and listened to Ray talk about loyalty, and what it meant to be a Marine, about family and about how they’d all, every one of them, die for Walt, and now they’d die for Felicity, too.
“We drove through a war in a humvee together,” he said. “And that kind of bond can never be erased. I’ve seen Walt fire his weapon in defense of me, and I’ve stood in front of bullets in the defense of him. It means so much to me that now he’s got someone else at his side, someone I can count on to take care of him, someone who can be all the things that the Marine Corps can’t. Felicity, Walt is yours now, we all are. We trust that you’ll be worthy of that, and you know that for as long as you both live, we’ll never, ever let you down.”
Brad looked around the room, saw men casually rubbing at their eyes like, hey, bit of dust must have floated in there, saw women gazing up at Ray like they were planning on jumping his bones as soon as they could get him alone. Tony was sitting next to him, shaking his head and sniffling and kind of laughing at himself, and Rudy was crying unashamed, a big smile on his face. It was somewhat pathetic, Brad had to admit, but again he felt that kinship, the sense of family and togetherness. The silence washing away again.
Ray sat down, and Brad caught his eye. He knew what he was going to do, tried to let it show on his face, watching Ray carefully to see if he was picking up the signal. Ray just smiled, shook his head fondly, and kind of rolled his eyes. Brad smiled back.
“Dude, will you stop making eyes at Person? It’s kind of making me uncomfortable,” Tony hissed, elbowing him in the side. Brad just laughed.
The reception was at a nice hotel off base. Walt and Felicity’s parents had rented out a function room and a floor for all of the wedding party to stay in, probably not wanting to be responsible for setting an entire platoon of drunk Marines free on the streets of California. Brad didn’t drink, though. He hung around for the dinner, danced a few dances with assorted bridesmaids and Nate’s girlfriend - who’d been looking at Nate dreamily and was obviously starting to get ideas of her own - talked shit with the boys.
He hadn’t spoken to Ray much, but he kept his eye on him, watched him monitor Walt’s alcohol consumption, probably on strict instructions from Walt’s new wife, and when Walt and Felicity said their goodbyes and disappeared upstairs, Ray went with them, waving at the guests and hovering behind the new couple in case one of them, Brad didn’t know what, spontaneously combusted or something. Ray was obviously taking his duties seriously.
He didn’t come back down after that. Brad waited a while, then said goodbye to the boys, most of whom were too drunk to notice or care that he was going anyway, and headed up to their floor, heart pounding in his chest.
His and Ray’s rooms were next to each other, and he hesitated at Ray’s door for a minute before moving on to his own room, sitting down on the bed and staring at the wall between them.
He couldn’t let himself think about this. He’d thought too much already, gotten lost inside his own head. And the only time he’d been honest, true to himself, was when he’d kissed Ray - and he’d been blind drunk. He figured maybe he could do a better job of it this time.
The thing was, the thing that was giving him the courage he needed now, was that he thought he’d been wrong the morning after. He thought that - maybe - if he’d said the right words, Ray would have crawled back into bed with him, would have kissed him goodbye instead of gone with an awkward half-wave, would have come back his, instead of this weird sometimes-stranger he now was.
If only he’d had the right fucking words.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Ray’s number.
“Will you stop fucking drunk dialing me, Brad? This shit is getting old.”
“I’m not drunk,” Brad said, keeping his tone light. “I’m bored. Get over here and entertain me.”
“Dude, seriously? I’m fucking wrecked. I was just about to go to bed.”
Brad chewed his nail, thought his gaze might actually drill a hole into the wall between them. “Ray, get your whiny little bitch ass over here before I have to go over there and get you.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Ray sighed and hung up. Brad let his phone drop to the bed and held his breath, a second later there was a knock at the door, and he let it out in a long gust and got up to let Ray in.
“I thought I was the one who needed to be babysat and given constant stimulation,” Ray bitched as he pushed past Brad into the room. “I swear, Iceman, you’re like a three-year-old. Ray, I’m bored, Ray, I’m hungry, Ray I need to go potty.” He stood in front of the bed with his hands on his hips - he’d changed out of his dress blues and into a pair of sweatpants and a wifebeater, his feet were bare. Brad kind of wanted to stare at them.
“Ray,” he said again, and took a step forward. He wasn’t good with words. They weren’t his strong suit. But he was going to have to find the right ones, fast. “Your speech was…”
“Yeah, my speech rocked,” Ray interrupted. “My speech is currently making all other speeches cry with envy. Right now Walt is off having the best sex he’s ever going to have in his life, and it’s all because of my speech.”
“Probably,” Brad agreed, and took another step closer. Ray lifted his eyes and licked his lips, Brad mimicked the motion. “I’ve got something I need to say.”
“Don’t say it,” Ray said quickly. “Shush. Be quiet.”
“That’s my line,” Brad murmured. He held up his hand as Ray opened his mouth. “No, you shut up. I should have said this forever ago.” He took a deep breath. “You’re my Patrokles. Not Nate. I always thought it was you.”
Ray blinked. “I’m your Patrokles?”
Ok, on second thought, it was a pretty fucking cheesy line. Brad felt his cheeks redden, but he nodded stubbornly. “Yep.”
“Fuck, Brad.” Ray eyed him wearily and sat on the edge of the bed. “What are you trying to say?”
Brad leaned against the bedside table. He’d given up on not looking at Ray’s feet, at the way his toes were curling into the carpet. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Man,” Ray looked pained. “Don’t say this. You’re my best friend.”
Brad shook his head. “No, Walt is your best friend,” he said, without rancour. “You and Walt are gonna grow old together as next door neighbours and spend the rest of your lives drinking beer on each others front porches.” He paused, built up every single ounce of courage he had in his body and forced the words out of his mouth. “And I think I’m in love with you.”
Ray dug his toes further into the carpet. He looked really small, and really lethal, like at any moment he could stand up and punch his fist through Brad’s throat. He looked tired and a little drunk; he looked healthy and tanned and well fed; he looked like the kind of person who read The Iliad in ancient Greek; he looked like the kind of person Brad would never have looked at twice, until he did.
“Ok, let me put it this way,” Ray said, his voice shaky. “Don’t say this because I’ve been in love with you for years, and if you fuck with me? It will fucking kill me. Can’t do it, Brad.”
Brad went very still, closed his eyes against what he’d just heard, closed his eyes against his own hope. “You’ve been in love with me for years?”
“Yeah, don’t get excited,” Ray replied ruefully. “I’ve been in love with Lara Croft for years, too.”
Brad opened his eyes, took in Ray’s red face. “I’m less pixelated,” he pointed out, and dropped to his knees in front of the bed, trying to catch Ray’s eye.
“You’re also a lot less stacked,” Ray said. “And you don’t look as good in short shorts.”
Words, just more words. This time Brad recognised them for what they were, Ray building a wall around himself. He set about knocking it down.
“You wanted to talk about this,” he reminded him. “My sexual crisis? You’re it, Ray. I mean, I can’t be any clearer than this. I love you too.”
Ray winced, turned his face away. “Brad…Brad, I can’t…”
Brad took his chin in his hand, gently turned his face back. They were inches apart, every barrier that had ever been built between them had gone, until it was just Brad leaning up and Ray leaning down until they met in the middle.
It was so much better than Brad had ever hoped it could be. Ray kissed him like he meant it, like he’d been waiting for it for as long as Brad. His hand came up to press against Brad’s cheek, slid around to his hair and gripped it, holding onto Brad like he was afraid to let him go. Brad understood, wrapped his arms around Ray and held him tight, pressed up against his hard muscle and bone, felt him real and hot against his body.
“I don’t know how to be Brad anymore without you at my side being Ray,” he whispered into Ray’s mouth, the words, the confession, coming from somewhere deep inside himself he’d barely even acknowledged.
Ray nodded, let out a breathless laugh. “I’ve known you since I was a teenager,” he said, pulling back a little so he could look at Brad’s face. “I learned how to be Ray with you at my six. I can’t lose that, Brad.”
“You won’t,” Brad promised. “I swear. I’m not,” he broke off, distracted by Ray’s lips, his neck, the flush in his cheeks. He brushed his fingers over Ray’s jaw line. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Aren’t you worried about shit? There’s all sorts of shit to be worried about.” Ray didn’t seem too worried, though, tilting his head to kiss Brad’s fingers, letting his eyes fall closed as Brad pushed them into his mouth.
“No,” said Brad. “Like what?”
“Uh.” Ray twisted away, tried to gather himself. “Well like DADT. They kick guys like us out of the Marines. We’re only allowed to be fucked by command, not each other.”
Brad frowned. He hadn’t even… he thought back over the weeks, tried to remember, and he realised that not once had he even considered DADT and what ramifications it might have on him and Ray. Never thought about the consequences of a sergeant and a corporal. Jesus. Either Ray made him stupid, or…
“But it’s you,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not some random grunt I wanna blow. I trust you. I mean, this isn’t anyone’s fucking business but yours and mine, and I trust you with my life.”
Ray gave a reluctant smile. “You’ve got an answer for fucking everything, don’t you Iceman?”
Brad shrugged. Most of the time these days he felt like he didn’t have any answers at all. “I just want this. You.”
“You want me?” Ray was hard all over, spiky, but when he said that Brad wanted to pick him up and wrap around him, shove him down and cover him like a bomb shelter. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long, so fucking long to wake up to himself. He might not have all the answers, but the only one that mattered was sitting in front of him.
“Yes, you dumb fuckin’ hick,” he said. “You want me to fucking spell it out for you?”
In reply, Ray kissed him again, harder this time, pressing both his hands against the sides of Brad’s face and holding him still, attacking his lips, his mouth, like he was driving into a war zone. Brad took hold of his hips and let him, just knelt there and let himself give in to it.
“Ok, so now we’ve spoken about our feelings and gotten the pansy-ass sharing circle out of the way,” Ray said, between biting and sucking on Brad’s bottom lip. “Can we move on to the hardcore gay sex?”
Brad laughed, pressing his forehead against Ray’s. “You see, that’s why I love you, Ray,” he said dryly. “You and your mouth.”
“Yeah, yeah, get up here.” Ray scooted back onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard. “Oh, look at you still in your blues. It’s like you just stepped off a recruitment poster. Aren’t you uncomfortable in those, Bradley?”
Brad knelt on the edge of the bed and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Is that a line?”
Ray rolled his eyes. “A line? A line like you’re my Patrokles was a line, Brad? What the fuck was that? You into some sort of kinky role-playing business, you’re on your own.” He sat forward and peeled off his wifebeater, dropping it to the floor, and Brad caught his breath, almost forgetting he was being insulted.
“Wait, wait. I pour my goddamn heart out to you and you kick sand in my face. Nice, Ray.”
Ray waved his hand. “Less talking, more stripping. Honestly, why are you still wearing clothes? What the fuck kind of big homo romance is this?” He was grinning as he spoke, looking happier than Brad had seen him for weeks. And something clicked inside Brad, then, something made sense.
It didn’t matter what they did. Didn’t matter if this lasted for years, or petered out in weeks or never even got off the ground. They were always going to be them, always going to have that. Nothing was ever going to change between them, because they were who they were because of each other. It didn’t matter if they were best friends or…whatever this could be. It didn’t matter if they were talking shit at a bar or undressing each other in a hotel room.
It was so fucking obvious Brad almost had to laugh.
“I’m sorry, Ray,” he said, grinning back and starting on his buttons. “You’ll probably have to be the one who schools me in the homo stuff. Aren’t you proud that you’ve finally got one up on me? You’re the expert at being gay. Congratulations.”
Ray covered his heart with his hand, looked wounded. “Now who’s being mean? And here I was getting all ready to put out.” He tugged at Brad’s belt, pushed his coat over his shoulders, hands hot and insistent.
“Oh, you’re gonna put out, huh,” Brad whispered, and kissed him again, couldn’t seem to stop kissing him. “At fucking last.”
Ray lay back on the bed, grabbing Brad by his shirt and pulling him with him. “You been thinking about this?” he asked, as Brad braced himself over Ray, settling his knees on either side of Ray’s thighs and lowering himself down. “Tell me how much you been thinking about this, Brad.” He licked up Brad’s neck, bit at the sensitive skin under his ear.
“Oh, fuck,” Brad whispered. Yeah, he’d been thinking about it, but thinking about it, and having Ray actually here, hot and solid beneath him, were miles apart. He caught Ray’s mouth again, kissed him long and slow, until Ray’s hips pressing up against him got too distracting, and he had to break away again, resting his head against Ray’s shoulder.
“I thought you were just drunk,” Ray said in a soft voice, scratching his nails up Brad’s back and making him shiver. “That night? I thought you were just drunk and, I don’t even fucking know what, drunk and horny. Turns out you were just stupid.”
Brad lifted his head. “Who the fuck are you calling stupid,” he murmured, and pressed his lips against Ray’s dimple, almost overwhelmed by the impossibility of it.
“You, obviously. God, I’ve known you were a lost cause for years.” He hooked his ankle around Brad’s calf, writhed up into him, and Brad groaned against his face. “You’ve got no idea how often I’ve jerked off thinking about this, about you, about us together. It’s fucking obscene.”
Brad knelt up, stripped out of his shirt and dropped back down, needing the feel of his skin against Ray’s, needing the knowledge that there was nothing left between them. “Tell me,” he insisted. “Talk to me, Ray.”
“Oh, now you want me to talk. Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking demanding.”
“You want me to be demanding?” Brad bit at Ray’s collar bone, worked his way across to his shoulder.
“Kinda,” Ray admitted, a little breathlessly. “So I can check that one off the list.”
“You have a list?” Brad’s mind was spinning. “Fuck, I didn’t even get past wanting you. After that, I’ve got no idea.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve wanted this for years,” Ray said. “I came up with a few things.”
Brad shook his head. The feel of Ray’s body under his was short circuiting his brain, causing all his nerve endings to fire off random sparks, like every part of them was electrified. He still couldn’t believe that Ray actually wanted it, this, him.
“Years,” he breathed against Ray’s chest. “Jesus, Ray. Why didn’t you say something?”
Ray pushed his hand through Brad’s hair, looked him in the eye. “Don’t ask me that. Don’t be a moron. I know you’re blond, but try to rub a few brain cells together, Sergeant, and answer that one for yourself.”
That hit Brad in his stomach, like someone winding him. It must have shown on his face, because Ray smiled, touched his cheek. “Don’t even - I’m not blaming you. I think you’re insane for this, I honestly do, and I’m so fucking happy I think someone musta fucking spiked my drink. But seriously, Brad. You’re my Sergeant, you’re my team leader. You’re so straight I could use you to hang a picture. You got more pussy than Walt before Fliss made an honest woman out of him. You’re, like, six years older than me. Do you want me to go on?”
Brad dropped his chin to Ray’s sternum, looked up at his face. “So what you’re saying here is that I’m your dream man?”
Ray flicked his ear. “What I’m saying is that loving you is like having a crush on the hot cheerleader. No one expects that dream to come true.”
“You sell yourself short all the time,” Brad said softly, wonderingly. “You don’t know how brilliant you are, Ray. And I’m only saying this because I’m trying to get in your pants,” he grinned, “but I’m fucking ecstatic you’re even looking twice at me. I was so sure I fucked things up that night.”
Ray rolled his eyes, pressed his hips up against Brad. “You’re about to fuck things up now, Brad, if you don’t get things moving. Jesus. Is this what gay sex is all about? Braiding each other’s hair and talking about our emotions? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was pretty sure there’d be more sucking cock involved.”
“Well now that you’ve gotten me in the mood with all your sweet-talking,” Brad said dryly, and covered Ray’s left nipple with his mouth, flicking his tongue. Ray moaned under him, pushed up with his hips again, rubbing up on Brad’s cock.
“Are you serious? Because if that’s you not in the mood, I think I’m gonna have to call this off, for my own safety.”
Brad moved back up Ray’s body, reached down between them. “Don’t even say that,” he said softly. “In fact, don’t say anything at all for a little while, unless it’s to tell me about all the things you imagined us doing together. You think you can do that for me, Corporal Person?”
“Yeah, ok, I do like it when you’re bossy,” Ray said, a little breathlessly. “The Marines have fucked me up so bad for you, Brad.”
“Mmm, go on,” Brad said, and got his hand around Ray’s cock, spent a moment having a mild freak out about holding one in his hand that wasn’t his own. But then Ray let out a soft, broken moan and Brad forgot just about everything that wasn’t the feel of him, the taste of him on his lips, the throb of him against his skin.
“Brad, I want to do everything you can possibly think of, and then some more stuff on top of that,” Ray said, thrusting his hips up into Brad’s grip. “I’ve thought about everything, about shit that probably isn’t even possible in three dimensions. Oh god, Brad, I just wanna get my hands on you.”
“Here.” Brad grabbed Ray’s hand, pressed it over his own cock, wrapped his fingers around it through his pants. “Come on, Ray, you can-”
Ray let out another moan, fumbled desperately at Brad’s fly, pushed his pants down just far enough. “Wanted this,” he said, eyes closed, breathing hard. “Wanted this so bad. It killed me, thinkin’ of you off with that girl after we - after I had my chance at you.”
“I’m yours now,” Brad said, and rolled them to the side, looked down between them at where their hands were hot and grasping. “You can take advantage of me, if you want.”
Ray huffed out a laugh, turned it into a kiss pressed against Brad’s lips, his cheek. “Yessir, I’ll take that under consideration,” he breathed, and started jerking Brad’s cock properly, his hand slipping through the sweat and precome. Brad’s breath caught in his throat, rushed out in a gasp as Ray’s thumb rubbed along the sensitive skin under the head. “Oh, you like that?” Ray did it again, and then again, and Brad dug the fingers of his free hand into the bed as streaks and flashes of pleasure flew through him.
“Please,” he said weakly, his grip on Ray faltering as he came closer and closer to the edge. “Ray, fuck.”
“Yeah, Brad.” Ray’s arm was tensing, working Brad hard while Brad vaguely thought that he should be reciprocating, Ray’s cock still held in his loose grip. But then Ray’s thumb hit that fucking spot again, and Brad’s world flashed white.
“I’m gonna,” he warned. “Ray, Ray, I’m gonna come…”
“Yeah, come for me, Brad,” Ray said, licked at Brad’s lips, bit his chin. “Come on, I’ve wanted this so long, Brad. Come for me now, just for me now, please.”
The weeks of loneliness, the weeks of wanting, the weeks and weeks of silence, were all washed away under the force of Ray’s voice in his ear, at last, and Ray’s hard, callused grip on him. Brad came with Ray utterly surrounding him, tearing him apart and holding him together, his words guiding him through it like a beacon of light. He distantly heard himself moaning Ray’s name, opened his eyes and saw Ray’s right there, staring back at him, wide and dark and full of something Brad didn’t even have a name for. And still it ripped through him, pulsed out onto Ray’s skin, slicking the way between them.
“Oh my god, Brad,” Ray gasped. “I can’t….”
Brad blinked at him, pulled him in closer, pumped at his dick. “Yeah,” he panted, “Give it up for me, Ray.”
He watched with something approaching awe as Ray threw his head back against the pillow and exploded, body tense and shaking and beautiful as he spilled in Brad’s hand. It was the most amazing thing, the most vital thing, the most real thing he’d seen, or felt, in longer than he could remember. He wanted to hold onto the moment, store it inside himself, remember it until he died. Ray called his name, came with Brad’s name on his lips, and Brad thought that maybe a little part of him had died, or maybe. Maybe just become Ray’s, forever.
He got through the aftermath in a daze.
It was like there was a rush of sound in his ears, crowding out rational thought. All he wanted to do was hold onto Ray, feel his body pressed in close, and fuck everything else, fuck the rest of the world. Ray made noises about getting up, getting tissues, but Brad just shook his head, wiped them off on his dress shirt and tossed it over the side of the bed before hauling Ray in under the covers, clutching at him tightly.
“Oh, wow, I never pegged you for a cuddler, Brad,” Ray said, but he sounded content, happy to go with it.
“I think it’s time for you to be quiet now, Ray,” Brad replied through a smile, expecting to be ignored.
Ray, as usual, didn’t disappoint.
“No, I’m serious. This speaks of some hardcore insecurity bullshit,” Ray started, sleepily, snuggling back into Brad’s arms. “What, did your parents not let you have a teddy bear as a child, Bradley? Was it just you and your carpet rake for years on end? I mean, I’m cool with this. If you need me to help you work through your issues, I’ve dealt with California for years now, I may still have my balls, but I know all about psycho-analysis and all that bullshit. You need me to be your little pet therapist, you know I’ve got your back…”
It took Brad maybe two minutes to fall asleep to the sound of Ray talking, the soft vibrations rumbling through his chest, the noise washing over him and drowning him and pulling him under. Two minutes to get used to the sound of Ray’s words, two minutes to let himself go with them, two minutes to drift away.
He dreamed they were on the beach, the waves crashing in.
And they were happy.
It's a love affair
On a quiet Sunday afternoon
And your speedy pills
You should know I'm into you
Secret, Howie Day
The day after Ray left, Brad spent a straight four hours in the ocean.
He had a week left of leave, a week left before he had to square everything away and rejoin the real world, a week of gazing at all the empty holes that Ray should still have been filling. All he wanted was to be surrounded by something bigger than him, something more powerful, something that could overtake his stupid, petty problems and wash them away.
Something to make him forget.
So he surfed, and swam, and ran for hours along the beach until all he could do was collapse at home and ignore the messages on his phone, lie on his couch and watch TV and pretend everything was normal, pretend that when he went back to base -when he came face-to-face with Ray - everything was going to be the exact same as it always had been. He wouldn’t remember the press of his mouth, the taste of him, the feel of his hard, slight body pressed up against his own, the way his arms had bracketed his head and held him together when he’d felt like he was about to fly apart. He was going to forget about all of that, and everything was going to be normal.
He wasn’t doing a great job of convincing himself.
Four days after Ray left, he was making himself a cup of coffee when he was interrupted by a pounding at the door. He was considering ignoring it, just hiding in the kitchen until whoever it was went away, but then Tony’s voice boomed through his house, loud and pissed off.
“Brad, I know you’re in there you giant freak of nature. Give up the damn hermit act and let me the fuck in before I break down your motherfucking door. You think I don’t know how to get into wealthy white people’s houses? I’m Mexican, bro!”
Brad sighed and rested his forehead against a cupboard door. “If I ignore you, will you go away like that rash you gave me?” he shouted back, and Tony laughed.
“I’m way nastier than any rash you ever had, dawg!” Brad opened the door and glared at Tony, who just pushed his way past him. “Oh, shit, you’re alive. I was half expecting to find your dead body lying in a corner getting eaten by cats or something.”
“Cats?”
“Whatever, dude. You been off the radar. What the fuck is up with you?”
Brad sighed and led Tony out onto the back porch, where he immediately began inspecting his plants, poking his finger at the cactuses. “I’ve just been enjoying having my quiet back now that Person’s fucked back off to Hicksville. You all worry like a bunch of mother hens.”
“Yeah, well, when you don’t answer your phone for four days, what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Tony looked at him properly for the first time. “Honestly, Brad, is everything ok?”
“I’m fine,” Brad said, and sank down onto the swing. “I seriously just needed some time alone, needed a while to get my head clear before I get back in the shit on Monday.”
“Uh huh.” Tony didn’t sound convinced, but he let it drop.
“You hear about Hasser?” Brad asked, for something to fill the silence.
“Yeah, the grapevine in this bitch is rocket-fuelled. It’s all over the platoon.” Tony shrugged. “When’s he getting married now? Couple months?”
Brad stared out into his backyard. “I guess. With his girl knocked up, I suppose they wanna rush it through.”
“Nice white girl can’t be showing in her nice white dress,” Tony agreed. “So say goodbye to Walt. I don’t think he’s got it in him to be a career boy, especially not with a kid. Same with Ray, really. I’d be surprised if he re-ups.”
Brad looked up, startled. “He say anything about that to you? When’d you speak to him?”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Settle, dawg. I just get the impression that our pal Ray isn’t really a career Marine either. He’s the kinda guy that proves he can do something then moves onto the next thing.”
“Uh huh.” Brad tried to envision a life without Ray in it, couldn’t do it. “I guess we’ll see.”
Tony sighed at him. “Ok, Brad, seriously?”
“Seriously, Poke?” Brad met his stare, they didn’t call him the Iceman for fucking nothing, but Tony just shook his head.
“When was the last time you got laid?”
Brad had to admit, that threw him. He flashed back to his night with Ray, the long, slow kisses, the touches, and blushed. A long fucking time, was the sorry answer. “Fuck off.”
“Yeah, I thought so. Do me and the rest of the platoon a favour, dude, and get some pussy before you come back to work. You’re acting like a little bitch with PMS, and it’s not good for team morale.”
Brad rolled his eyes and snatched up his watering can for something to do, for an excuse to avoid Tony’s gaze. “You sound like my mother. Like some sick, twisted, mentally disturbing version of my mother.”
Tony laughed and clapped him on the back. “Just get some, Brad. And what the fuck are you doing, you crazy white motherfucker. You don’t need to water cactuses.”
Brad stared at the little puddle of mud that had formed in the flowerpot, then up at Tony. “Oh. Good to know.”
~
One week.
Two weeks.
He got through work. It was fine. He could almost imagine that nothing had happened at all. Ray was the exact same as always - loud and obnoxious, with no concept of personal space or any sense of propriety whatsoever. Brad knew he was being awkward and weird around him at times, but he thought he covered it well enough, covered up the thing inside him that was screaming to be acknowledged.
Yeah, Brad caught himself staring, and yeah, he thought Ray caught him a few times too, but it was fine. If Brad got home at night and had to jerk off to the thought of Ray in his PT gear, or Ray doing laps in the pool, or Ray just breathing in general, that was fine too. He wasn’t a kid. He wasn’t some teenage girl with a crush. He knew how to deal with it.
Three weeks.
He saw his folks a few times, his sister bought him a hydrangea in a pot. He went out to dinner with Nate and his girlfriend and smiled in the right places, he spoke to Tony on the weekend, emailed an old friend from school. He lived. And Ray lived right there, next to him, apart from him like he’d never been before, and Brad didn’t know how to change it.
At base, Walt was putting the finishing touches on his wedding, spending half his time freaking out at Ray and the other half talking about ultrasounds and baby names. Brad listened in with a smile, everything tamped down so tight it wasn’t even an issue.
“Harrison. McClane. Sigourney.”
“Enough with the eighties action heroes, homes. Felicity had never even seen Die Hard until two weeks ago. You’re just going to have to make your peace with that.”
Walt bit his lip. “I really like McClane, though. Maybe a middle name?”
Ray looked hurt. “Fliss said you’d decided on Ray for a middle name!” he protested. “Walt, if you don’t name your child after me I’m taking back every nice thing I ever said about country music.”
“You’re naming your baby after Person?” Brad interrupted. “Walt, why would you subject an innocent child to that kind of torment?”
Walt grinned and shrugged. “For some reason my fiancée likes him. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s pretty set.”
“That’s why I’m the best man,” Ray explained. “Best man. Walt is second best.”
Brad shook his head. “You’re a pair of inbred hicks with co-dependency issues,” he announced. “Walt, I feel sorry for your future wife.”
“Yeah, she puts up with a lot,” Walt agreed happily. “Come on, Ray. You hitchin’ a ride with me?”
Ray looked at Brad, like he did sometimes, like he was waiting for something - who the hell knew what. Brad concentrated on the sunlight coming in through the windows, on the dust motes floating in the air, on anything but Ray’s eyes.
“You coming tonight?” Ray asked, cocking his hip against Brad’s desk. Brad looked up at him.
“Of course.” His gaze skated over Ray’s face, down his neck and away. It was Walt’s bachelor party; they were taking over one of the local bars with one clear mission statement - get shitfaced.
“Brad.” Ray’s voice was quiet, and Brad turned his head to watch Walt leave the room. “Brad.”
“What?” Brad finally turned back, looked Ray in the eye.
Ray gave him a small, crooked smile. “You all good?”
“I’m fine, Ray.”
“Well good. Because I don’t want you being a mopey little bitch tonight and spoiling Walt’s party.”
“I’ll show you who’s a little bitch,” Brad said, and pushed up, shoving Ray towards the door. “You fuckin’ sister humping country bumpkin, get the fuck outta here.”
“Ahh,” Ray said. “There’s the Iceman I know and love.”
Brad stared at the back of his head, both hated and loved that he knew exactly what it felt like cradled in the palm of his hand. He wanted to shove him up against the wall and hold him there, kiss the fuck out of him until he looked bleary and stupid with lust. Instead he bit his lip, concentrating on the pain until the thoughts of Ray - on his knees, on his back, bent over the fucking desk - were edged out, pushed to the back of his mind and hidden away, where they belonged.
He thought maybe Tony was right. Maybe he just needed to get laid, needed to get it out of his system. He hadn’t even been thinking about it, but now he figured maybe he’d look, just see what was on offer, see if there was something out there that could distract him from thoughts of his RTO.
Let it work, he thought to himself, following Ray out the door. Jesus. Let it fucking work.
~
She was a redhead, maybe a foot shorter than Brad, and she was full of curves in her denim skirt and beat-up AC/DC tee-shirt. Brad listened to her talk, smiled at her, brushed his thumb over her wrist when he handed her a drink, watched her lick her lips. Her name was Lena, and he had spent a good five minutes staring at the way her black leather boot pressed into her calf before Tony had pushed him over, woken him up.
It was still early, he hadn’t been drinking, just watching his boys get more and more wasted, Ray and Walt throwing back shots like it was the last night of their lives. Brad thought for half a second that he really was jealous of the easy way they had with each other, the uncomplicated friendship, but he didn’t have it in him. Walt looked like he was lit up from the inside, and he checked for messages from his girl every five minutes, making Ray laugh at him and steal his phone. Brad wasn’t jealous. But he thought he’d start looking elsewhere anyway, and that’s where Lena came in.
She was beautiful, warm and funny, laughed a lot. It was easy to whisper in her ear and ask if she wanted to get out of there, easy to nuzzle against her in the cab, smelling her hair, her perfume, the sweet scent of her sweat.
Easy enough to pretend he wasn’t thinking about Ray when he pressed her against the front door of her apartment and kissed her. She moaned and wrapped her arms around him, lightly scratched her nails down his neck and up over the back of his head. Easy, easy to scoop her up and carry her down the hall as she giggled and gave him directions to her bedroom. Easy to lay her out on her bed and push up her skirt, get a hand on her, make her whimper and spread her legs and ask nicely for more.
He took her with her little body spooned into his, his face buried in her hair and her hands clutching at his arms. He rubbed her clit with his fingers until she came apart around him, hot little pulses on his cock, and then he rolled her onto her stomach, watched his sweat drip down onto her back as he fucked her until she came again, biting at the pillow to muffle her cries. That set him off, and for the first time since Ray had gone his mind went blank with bliss, his orgasm finally wiping away the sense-memory of Ray’s skin.
“Oh, God, Brad,” she sighed as he pulled out, tying off the condom and tossing it on the floor to deal with later. “Jesus. That was…”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and pulled her close, getting the covers over them. “You’re amazing.”
She grinned up at him. “You gonna be here in the morning?” He paused, and she nodded, settled down into his arms. “It’s cool. Just don’t leave right now, ok?”
He dropped kisses all over her face, saw a spray of freckles peeking out from under her makeup. “I’m not going anywhere yet, honey,” he assured her. “I got you.”
But as he watched her fall asleep he realised he wanted to leave, wanted to get out of there and have a shower, go back home and stand in the room Ray had slept in, see if he could capture the scent of him, the feel of him. It wasn’t fair, he knew. If he’d met Lena before he went to Iraq… but he hadn’t, and it wasn’t what he wanted anymore.
He wasn’t an asshole. He knew what it took for a woman to take a guy home, to invite him into her house and open herself up for him, leave herself vulnerable, knew how brave that was. But he slipped out anyway, leaving a note promising that she was beautiful and perfect and amazing. It wasn’t enough, and he remembered her sweet, trusting face with total self-loathing, but he thought maybe it was worse to stay and pretend, worse still to stay and try and explain that he was in love with someone else, that she’d basically been a way for him to forget.
He got home and took his shower and stood in the doorway of Ray’s room and felt like absolute shit. There wasn’t any use trying to hide it from himself - no point. He was fucking in love with Ray. He had to square this shit away now, but he said it out loud anyway, just once. “I’m in love with Ray.” The words disappeared into the empty room, vanished like they’d never been, and Brad stared at the darkness blankly for a moment, before thinking fuck it, and pulling out his cell.
He’d square it away in the morning. Right now he needed Ray’s voice in his ear, just to torture himself a little more, just because he wanted to get the sound of Lena moaning out of his head, just because he was getting more pathetic by the minute and the silence was starting to press in around him again, and he couldn’t seem to put an end to it. He knew he was a moron. But he settled down on the spare bed and dialed the number anyway.
“Why the fuck are you calling me, motherfucker? I saw you leave with that total hottie - please don’t tell me you need me to talk you through it, Brad. Say it hasn’t gone that far.”
Ray wasn’t at the bar anymore, Brad could tell by the lack of background noise. He stretched out and closed his eyes, smelling orange blossoms and salt and the faintest traces of cigarette smoke.
“Ray.”
“I’ll give you a hint, insert tab A into slot B - not slot C, unless she’s really freaky like that.”
“Yeah, I managed to figure it out just fine, fucknuts,” Brad said dryly. Ray’s voice was hoarse from too much shouting and smoking. It was kind of how Brad imagined it’d sound after he’d gotten through deep-throating him.
His dick twitched at the thought, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t be thinking about that shit. He knew better. But now he’d started on this slippery slope, he apparently couldn’t stop.
“Oh, so you did get laid. Congratulations,” Ray said. Brad thought he sounded a little pissed off, but he was probably just projecting, wishful thinking. “So I repeat: why the fuck are you calling me instead of angling for round two?”
“I left. I’m at home already,” Brad said quickly. “No round two with this one.”
“What? Why’d you leave?”
Brad sighed and tried to stop the images racing through his head, tried to stem the rush of words. “I don’t know,” he said, voice tight. “It wasn’t…what I really wanted, I guess.”
“Why?” Ray’s voice was sharp and to the point.
Because she wasn’t you, Brad said in his head, almost tasting the words in his mouth before thinking better of it. “Because she wasn’t your mom.”
Ray laughed, his wrecked voice scraping over Brad’s nerves until he was fully hard, lying there turned on and lonely with his best friend in his ear. It was fucking miserable, and all he wanted to do was get off the phone so he could jerk off with Ray’s voice still fresh in his mind.
He shook his head at himself, pressing the palm of his hand against his dick, and tried to concentrate on what Ray was actually saying.
“You’re telling me Jessica Rabbit didn’t do it for you, Brad? What the fuck kind of sexual crisis are you going through? This, that thing with me the other week-”
“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” Brad interrupted, his heart jumping. “Jesus, Ray, where’s your head?”
“Settle down, Iceman. One, don’t even stress. I’m at Walt’s, and he’s in a vodka coma. No one’s fucking listening. And two, you decided we weren’t talking about it, and I just now decided: fuck you.”
“Fuck you,” Brad said lamely. “Really, Ray?”
“Oh, we’re gonna talk about it eventually,” Ray assured him. “You’re gonna stop being such an emotionally stunted Neanderthal, and we’re gonna talk the fuck out of it. In fact, we’re gonna talk about it so long and hard that neither of us will be able to sit down for a week. What do you think of that, Brad?”
Brad had to laugh. “How drunk are you, Ray?”
“Pretty fuckin’ drunk, homes!” Ray crowed. “But don’t you think I’m gonna forget about this. Oh, no. I may be too wasted to have this conversation now, but look-” Brad heard him clattering around, knocking shit over. “I’m writing a fucking reminder note on Walt’s message board - jeez, Brad, who the fuck has a message board?”
“Walt?”
“Doesn’t matter. Lookit - it’s all in code and shit. R, talk to B about SC.”
“What does SC stand for?” Brad asked against his better judgement.
“Sexual crisis, you dunce. Where have you been for the last five minutes? Man, this is gonna blow Walt’s mind when he sees it. He’s gonna think its some secret ninja shit all up in his apartment. Fuckin’ A.”
I love you, Brad thought helplessly as he let Ray drunkenly ramble on. I love you, you psychotic little whiskey-tango ball of hyperactive nonsense. I love you, and that’s fine, but I also wanna fuck you until you scream my name in that messed up hick voice, and I know you like men and you’re so close and it’s not fucking fair.
And I’ve goddamned ruined everything.
Fuck.
“Ray,” he said, and Ray must have heard something in his voice, because he shut up straight away for a change and listened. “Ray, just tell me one thing, will you?”
“Yeah, Brad, what do you need?”
Brad took a deep breath, caught the ghost of Ray’s scent again. “Just. Just tell me I didn’t fuck everything up.”
There was a minute of silence on the other end. Brad stared out the window, at the stars peeking through a palm tree, at the whole night in between him and Ray.
“Nah, Brad,” Ray finally said quietly, his whiskey-smoke voice almost down to a whisper. “You ain’t fucked up a single thing with me.”
Brad nodded to himself, wanted so hard to believe it.
“I’m gonna go to bed,” he said. “I’ll see you at base.”
“Night, homes,” Ray replied. “Sleep tight.”
Brad smiled. “Don’t puke on yourself,” he warned, and he hung up to the sound of Ray’s laughter.
The spare bed wasn’t as big as his own, and he wanted his pillow, but he just let himself close his eyes anyway, pulled the sheets up over his body. He hadn’t changed them since Ray had gone, and he drew them up to his face, breathing in deep. They didn’t bring Ray any closer.
But he kept breathing them in and pretended they did.
~
The Friday before Walt’s wedding, Nate announced that he was retiring from the Marine Corps.
Even though he knew it was coming, Brad was hit hard. Seeing Nate up there addressing the platoon, pressed and stiff like the starch in his uniform was the only thing holding him up, Brad felt like it was just one more part of his life that was falling apart, changing, morphing into something he wasn’t sure how to deal with.
Looking around at the other members of the platoon, it was obvious he wasn’t alone. They were used to being fucked by officers, but not Nate. And when Brad thought ahead to a chain of command without Nate in it to soften the blows of incompetence and stupidity, it definitely felt like a fucking.
He waited as everyone filed out, hoping to catch him alone, but Ray got there first, looking up at Nate with serious eyes and saying something that Brad couldn’t catch. Nate nodded at him, and they headed out together. Brad watched them go, hanging back until he was alone in the room, alone with himself and the memory of Ray’s sad eyes.
He remembered what Ray had said weeks ago, about not fitting in, about the Marines making him something that didn’t mesh with his idea of himself, about walking down the street in his hometown and feeling like a stranger, a fake. Brad had been so caught up in his own issues - in being in love, in being alone - that he hadn’t stopped to give thought to Ray’s. Ray had been fine when he was staying at Brad’s, happy, carefree, showing his best side. But maybe now he was back in it, back in the uniform, he was starting to doubt shit again. Brad realised that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to know for sure.
He stood for a second, frowning at nothing, at himself. He’d been sticking his head in the sand, wallowing in his own misery like a disaffected fourteen year old, and he’d let Ray down. He shook his head, angry at himself, frustrated at his life. The silence had been ebbing and flowing, but right now it came crashing in on him like something tangible, and this time he knew it was his own fault. He thought of Ray’s drunken promise on the phone from the other night, him swearing that they were going to talk - he’d avoided being alone with Ray since then, avoided letting him even open his mouth, which was so fucking stupid because Ray and his words were the only things keeping him afloat.
He couldn’t believe he’d let things come to this, let it come to Ray walking off with Nate because he couldn’t rely on his best friend.
Something had to change.
He was walking towards the parking lot later when Nate came up on his nine and fell into step with him, shooting him a quick smile.
“Hey, LT.”
Nate laughed. “I’m never going to get a chance to get used to being called Captain, am I?”
“Sorry.” Brad raised an eyebrow. “Captain LT.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what Ray said.”
Brad smiled wryly, shook his head. “He has his flashes of brilliance, sir.”
“More than flashes.” Nate paused, an expression on his face like he was forming something in his head and didn’t know how to spit it out. “Brad, I want you to tell me if this isn’t my place,” he started, and Brad’s stomach dropped a little.
“Sir?”
“I’ve noticed you haven’t been yourself lately. Ray either.”
Brad stared at the ground as they walked, watched the strands of grass bending in the wind, crushed under their boots.
“I’m all squared away,” he said, aware of how stilted he sounded, how fake. Nate nodded.
“I hope so, Brad,” he said. “I know how close you are, and I don’t want this to sound too forward, but-”
“Nate.”
“But I want you to look out for him,” Nate continued relentlessly. “The Marine Corps is a great institution, and I’m proud to have served, but the more I get to know Ray the more I realise that this place will fuck him up completely if he lets it.” He looked Brad in the eye. “This isn’t a career for him - it’s a statement. I need you to remind him of that.”
Brad didn’t know what to say. It was an echo of his conversation with Tony, but coming from Nate… He didn’t know which idea was worse, the Marines without Nate and Ray, or a Ray sucked dry by the Corps - Ray, who spoke ancient languages and read works by authors who Brad had never even heard of: Ray with his brilliance ground into the dust.
Nate was still looking at him, watching him process. “Sort out your issues, Brad,” he said. “Make it right with him. I don’t need - I don’t want the details of what happened. It’s as clear as day that something did.” He held up his hands. “Just do what you have to do. Because it isn’t just him that needs you.”
Brad swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean by that, sir.”
Nate gave him a look, the one that made Brad feel like Nate could see his insides, like Nate was saying a lot more with his eyes than he was with his words.
“The two of you hold each other up, Brad. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever underestimate how fortunate you are to have that kind of friendship.”
Brad thought he detected a slight pause in front of the word ‘friendship’, like Nate had been searching for the right term, had settled on something that didn’t quite work. He had to be imagining that, though, hyper-sensitive, paranoid, so hung up on the craziness that was his life that he was projecting. Except…
He stared hard at Nate, silently begging him to drop it. “I get it, Nate,” he said, struggling to keep his voice light. “Ray’s mine. I’ll take care of him.”
Nate clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I know you will.”
Brad shook his head as Nate headed off without him, watching him go with something like awe, something like terror. He wished to God he could feel as confident about anything in his life as Nate was about everything.
“Nate!” he called suddenly, stepping forward. Nate turned and looked at him, shielding his eyes against the setting sun.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” Brad said haltingly. “For everything. I appreciate it.”
Nate nodded. “You’re welcome, Brad.”
“See you at the wedding?”
“Yeah.” Nate smiled. “I’ll see you and Ray there.”
Brad tried not to analyse that one as he got into his car. But he liked the sound of it, him and Ray, on someone else’s tongue. It was still crazy, and it was still pathetic, but.
He was smiling a little, to himself, as he drove home.
~
Walt’s fiancé was from his hometown, but she was moving out to California, and the wedding was being held in a little chapel on base. They weren’t getting a honeymoon: Walt’s leave was all used up, and he could theoretically be redeployed at any time, but the Marines were at least giving him this, the chance to get married among his brothers, take his new bride home to his little flat and set her up to be a Marine wife. “She’ll just be waiting for me in Cali instead of Virginia,” Walt had said. “I’m worried for her, you know, but at least we’re not on opposite sides of the country, or the world.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ray had assured him, and Brad expected Walt to look dubious, but he’d looked relieved instead, trusting. Layers of things between them that Brad would never understand, layers of Ray that weren’t his. He had to make his peace with that, though, think of all the layers that were.
A few days before the wedding, Walt had asked Brad to be a groomsman, almost shyly explaining that he didn’t have any brothers or cousins, that the guys in his platoon had been closer than family anyway. Brad had agreed, of course, and then the day was finally upon them and he was milling around, uncomfortable in his dress blues with a bridesmaid giving him suggestive smiles from across the church.
He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Ray, but Ray was right there, smiling big and loving being centre of attention, even though it wasn’t even his freaking wedding. Brad hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him all day, trying to notice all the stuff he’d been missing. All he knew was that, once again, something was changing.
But there was more going on than his inner turmoil.
The wedding was beautiful, even Brad could admit that. Walt looked about twelve in his dress blues, grinning like a kid on his birthday as his bride walked up the aisle of the chapel. She was lovely, exactly the kind of girl Brad had imagined for Walt, big hair and a big, gorgeous smile. She looked like a doll in her slightly old-fashioned dress, tiny and fragile up there next to Walt and his groomsmen. Brad immediately felt protective of her, knew what Walt meant about family, this felt closer to home than when Brad had been with his own parents, this was what he’d been searching for, his brothers - his Marines, all together… and Ray.
He glanced over at him a few times while Walt and Felicity were saying their vows, saw him scrub roughly at his eyes and kind of melted.
Any lingering, petty jealously he’d been feeling towards Walt and Ray’s friendship finally vanished, shriveling up in the face of their happiness. He realised that Walt and Ray were best friends in a way that he - the eternal loner - had never really experienced. They’d be friends all their lives, have happy summer BBQs, bitch about the kids, take vacations together, watch football on each other’s TVs…
But Brad didn’t want that from Ray. Brad wanted something…not more, just different. Standing there, watching Ray crying as his best friend got married, Brad finally faced up to what a coward he’d been. Finally made the choice - and it came so easy, after all - that he was gonna go for it. No drink to ease the way, no excuses, just him and Ray and whatever it was between them finally out in the open. He was going to man up and be the one who took care of Ray, and let Ray take care of him. He was going to tell Ray the truth, and it might all fall to pieces, but at least he’d know, at least he’d have tried. The last couple of months had been like living in a cave, seeing everything in tunnel vision. And now he was ready to step outside his self-imposed exile.
Ray turned and looked at him then, eyes a little red, and Brad gave him what might have been his first real, open smile since the night of the BBQ. Ray looked surprised and pleased, and he smiled back, dimples popping up and making Brad almost desperate to touch, press his fingers into them. He restrained himself, and nodded at Ray, who nodded back, and then it was time for him to step forward and hand over the rings.
Ray stepped up to Walt and pulled him into a hug. Brad felt his chest go tight as they clung to each other, had to struggle not to tear up himself. Then Walt and Felicity were husband and wife, and everyone was crying, and rose petals were falling down around them, and it was almost more than he could handle.
“You ok, Iceman?” Ray asked as they headed to the door of the chapel, getting ready to draw their swords and form the honour guard.
“Just mourning the loss of Walt’s innocence,” he said. “And his combat pay.”
“Don’t even front, dude. I totally saw you choking back tears. The Iceman can melt.”
“Yeah, I can,” Brad said, as they stepped out into the sunshine. “You know that. You’ve seen it.”
Ray didn’t say anything to that, just looked at him silently for a minute before they had to line up for the guard.
Brad was opposite Nate, who was grinning at all the ceremony, since obviously that was the kind of shit officers got off on. They tapped their blades together, held them high, and when Walt and Felicity ducked through them, Brad realised that he was truly fucking happy.
It was actually kind of a novelty.
~
Ray’s best man speech made every single person at the reception cry, up to and including Walt and Felicity.
Brad stared at his table, watched a couple of spots appear and expand outwards, his tears soaking into his napkin, and listened to Ray talk about loyalty, and what it meant to be a Marine, about family and about how they’d all, every one of them, die for Walt, and now they’d die for Felicity, too.
“We drove through a war in a humvee together,” he said. “And that kind of bond can never be erased. I’ve seen Walt fire his weapon in defense of me, and I’ve stood in front of bullets in the defense of him. It means so much to me that now he’s got someone else at his side, someone I can count on to take care of him, someone who can be all the things that the Marine Corps can’t. Felicity, Walt is yours now, we all are. We trust that you’ll be worthy of that, and you know that for as long as you both live, we’ll never, ever let you down.”
Brad looked around the room, saw men casually rubbing at their eyes like, hey, bit of dust must have floated in there, saw women gazing up at Ray like they were planning on jumping his bones as soon as they could get him alone. Tony was sitting next to him, shaking his head and sniffling and kind of laughing at himself, and Rudy was crying unashamed, a big smile on his face. It was somewhat pathetic, Brad had to admit, but again he felt that kinship, the sense of family and togetherness. The silence washing away again.
Ray sat down, and Brad caught his eye. He knew what he was going to do, tried to let it show on his face, watching Ray carefully to see if he was picking up the signal. Ray just smiled, shook his head fondly, and kind of rolled his eyes. Brad smiled back.
“Dude, will you stop making eyes at Person? It’s kind of making me uncomfortable,” Tony hissed, elbowing him in the side. Brad just laughed.
The reception was at a nice hotel off base. Walt and Felicity’s parents had rented out a function room and a floor for all of the wedding party to stay in, probably not wanting to be responsible for setting an entire platoon of drunk Marines free on the streets of California. Brad didn’t drink, though. He hung around for the dinner, danced a few dances with assorted bridesmaids and Nate’s girlfriend - who’d been looking at Nate dreamily and was obviously starting to get ideas of her own - talked shit with the boys.
He hadn’t spoken to Ray much, but he kept his eye on him, watched him monitor Walt’s alcohol consumption, probably on strict instructions from Walt’s new wife, and when Walt and Felicity said their goodbyes and disappeared upstairs, Ray went with them, waving at the guests and hovering behind the new couple in case one of them, Brad didn’t know what, spontaneously combusted or something. Ray was obviously taking his duties seriously.
He didn’t come back down after that. Brad waited a while, then said goodbye to the boys, most of whom were too drunk to notice or care that he was going anyway, and headed up to their floor, heart pounding in his chest.
His and Ray’s rooms were next to each other, and he hesitated at Ray’s door for a minute before moving on to his own room, sitting down on the bed and staring at the wall between them.
He couldn’t let himself think about this. He’d thought too much already, gotten lost inside his own head. And the only time he’d been honest, true to himself, was when he’d kissed Ray - and he’d been blind drunk. He figured maybe he could do a better job of it this time.
The thing was, the thing that was giving him the courage he needed now, was that he thought he’d been wrong the morning after. He thought that - maybe - if he’d said the right words, Ray would have crawled back into bed with him, would have kissed him goodbye instead of gone with an awkward half-wave, would have come back his, instead of this weird sometimes-stranger he now was.
If only he’d had the right fucking words.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Ray’s number.
“Will you stop fucking drunk dialing me, Brad? This shit is getting old.”
“I’m not drunk,” Brad said, keeping his tone light. “I’m bored. Get over here and entertain me.”
“Dude, seriously? I’m fucking wrecked. I was just about to go to bed.”
Brad chewed his nail, thought his gaze might actually drill a hole into the wall between them. “Ray, get your whiny little bitch ass over here before I have to go over there and get you.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Ray sighed and hung up. Brad let his phone drop to the bed and held his breath, a second later there was a knock at the door, and he let it out in a long gust and got up to let Ray in.
“I thought I was the one who needed to be babysat and given constant stimulation,” Ray bitched as he pushed past Brad into the room. “I swear, Iceman, you’re like a three-year-old. Ray, I’m bored, Ray, I’m hungry, Ray I need to go potty.” He stood in front of the bed with his hands on his hips - he’d changed out of his dress blues and into a pair of sweatpants and a wifebeater, his feet were bare. Brad kind of wanted to stare at them.
“Ray,” he said again, and took a step forward. He wasn’t good with words. They weren’t his strong suit. But he was going to have to find the right ones, fast. “Your speech was…”
“Yeah, my speech rocked,” Ray interrupted. “My speech is currently making all other speeches cry with envy. Right now Walt is off having the best sex he’s ever going to have in his life, and it’s all because of my speech.”
“Probably,” Brad agreed, and took another step closer. Ray lifted his eyes and licked his lips, Brad mimicked the motion. “I’ve got something I need to say.”
“Don’t say it,” Ray said quickly. “Shush. Be quiet.”
“That’s my line,” Brad murmured. He held up his hand as Ray opened his mouth. “No, you shut up. I should have said this forever ago.” He took a deep breath. “You’re my Patrokles. Not Nate. I always thought it was you.”
Ray blinked. “I’m your Patrokles?”
Ok, on second thought, it was a pretty fucking cheesy line. Brad felt his cheeks redden, but he nodded stubbornly. “Yep.”
“Fuck, Brad.” Ray eyed him wearily and sat on the edge of the bed. “What are you trying to say?”
Brad leaned against the bedside table. He’d given up on not looking at Ray’s feet, at the way his toes were curling into the carpet. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Man,” Ray looked pained. “Don’t say this. You’re my best friend.”
Brad shook his head. “No, Walt is your best friend,” he said, without rancour. “You and Walt are gonna grow old together as next door neighbours and spend the rest of your lives drinking beer on each others front porches.” He paused, built up every single ounce of courage he had in his body and forced the words out of his mouth. “And I think I’m in love with you.”
Ray dug his toes further into the carpet. He looked really small, and really lethal, like at any moment he could stand up and punch his fist through Brad’s throat. He looked tired and a little drunk; he looked healthy and tanned and well fed; he looked like the kind of person who read The Iliad in ancient Greek; he looked like the kind of person Brad would never have looked at twice, until he did.
“Ok, let me put it this way,” Ray said, his voice shaky. “Don’t say this because I’ve been in love with you for years, and if you fuck with me? It will fucking kill me. Can’t do it, Brad.”
Brad went very still, closed his eyes against what he’d just heard, closed his eyes against his own hope. “You’ve been in love with me for years?”
“Yeah, don’t get excited,” Ray replied ruefully. “I’ve been in love with Lara Croft for years, too.”
Brad opened his eyes, took in Ray’s red face. “I’m less pixelated,” he pointed out, and dropped to his knees in front of the bed, trying to catch Ray’s eye.
“You’re also a lot less stacked,” Ray said. “And you don’t look as good in short shorts.”
Words, just more words. This time Brad recognised them for what they were, Ray building a wall around himself. He set about knocking it down.
“You wanted to talk about this,” he reminded him. “My sexual crisis? You’re it, Ray. I mean, I can’t be any clearer than this. I love you too.”
Ray winced, turned his face away. “Brad…Brad, I can’t…”
Brad took his chin in his hand, gently turned his face back. They were inches apart, every barrier that had ever been built between them had gone, until it was just Brad leaning up and Ray leaning down until they met in the middle.
It was so much better than Brad had ever hoped it could be. Ray kissed him like he meant it, like he’d been waiting for it for as long as Brad. His hand came up to press against Brad’s cheek, slid around to his hair and gripped it, holding onto Brad like he was afraid to let him go. Brad understood, wrapped his arms around Ray and held him tight, pressed up against his hard muscle and bone, felt him real and hot against his body.
“I don’t know how to be Brad anymore without you at my side being Ray,” he whispered into Ray’s mouth, the words, the confession, coming from somewhere deep inside himself he’d barely even acknowledged.
Ray nodded, let out a breathless laugh. “I’ve known you since I was a teenager,” he said, pulling back a little so he could look at Brad’s face. “I learned how to be Ray with you at my six. I can’t lose that, Brad.”
“You won’t,” Brad promised. “I swear. I’m not,” he broke off, distracted by Ray’s lips, his neck, the flush in his cheeks. He brushed his fingers over Ray’s jaw line. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Aren’t you worried about shit? There’s all sorts of shit to be worried about.” Ray didn’t seem too worried, though, tilting his head to kiss Brad’s fingers, letting his eyes fall closed as Brad pushed them into his mouth.
“No,” said Brad. “Like what?”
“Uh.” Ray twisted away, tried to gather himself. “Well like DADT. They kick guys like us out of the Marines. We’re only allowed to be fucked by command, not each other.”
Brad frowned. He hadn’t even… he thought back over the weeks, tried to remember, and he realised that not once had he even considered DADT and what ramifications it might have on him and Ray. Never thought about the consequences of a sergeant and a corporal. Jesus. Either Ray made him stupid, or…
“But it’s you,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not some random grunt I wanna blow. I trust you. I mean, this isn’t anyone’s fucking business but yours and mine, and I trust you with my life.”
Ray gave a reluctant smile. “You’ve got an answer for fucking everything, don’t you Iceman?”
Brad shrugged. Most of the time these days he felt like he didn’t have any answers at all. “I just want this. You.”
“You want me?” Ray was hard all over, spiky, but when he said that Brad wanted to pick him up and wrap around him, shove him down and cover him like a bomb shelter. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long, so fucking long to wake up to himself. He might not have all the answers, but the only one that mattered was sitting in front of him.
“Yes, you dumb fuckin’ hick,” he said. “You want me to fucking spell it out for you?”
In reply, Ray kissed him again, harder this time, pressing both his hands against the sides of Brad’s face and holding him still, attacking his lips, his mouth, like he was driving into a war zone. Brad took hold of his hips and let him, just knelt there and let himself give in to it.
“Ok, so now we’ve spoken about our feelings and gotten the pansy-ass sharing circle out of the way,” Ray said, between biting and sucking on Brad’s bottom lip. “Can we move on to the hardcore gay sex?”
Brad laughed, pressing his forehead against Ray’s. “You see, that’s why I love you, Ray,” he said dryly. “You and your mouth.”
“Yeah, yeah, get up here.” Ray scooted back onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard. “Oh, look at you still in your blues. It’s like you just stepped off a recruitment poster. Aren’t you uncomfortable in those, Bradley?”
Brad knelt on the edge of the bed and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Is that a line?”
Ray rolled his eyes. “A line? A line like you’re my Patrokles was a line, Brad? What the fuck was that? You into some sort of kinky role-playing business, you’re on your own.” He sat forward and peeled off his wifebeater, dropping it to the floor, and Brad caught his breath, almost forgetting he was being insulted.
“Wait, wait. I pour my goddamn heart out to you and you kick sand in my face. Nice, Ray.”
Ray waved his hand. “Less talking, more stripping. Honestly, why are you still wearing clothes? What the fuck kind of big homo romance is this?” He was grinning as he spoke, looking happier than Brad had seen him for weeks. And something clicked inside Brad, then, something made sense.
It didn’t matter what they did. Didn’t matter if this lasted for years, or petered out in weeks or never even got off the ground. They were always going to be them, always going to have that. Nothing was ever going to change between them, because they were who they were because of each other. It didn’t matter if they were best friends or…whatever this could be. It didn’t matter if they were talking shit at a bar or undressing each other in a hotel room.
It was so fucking obvious Brad almost had to laugh.
“I’m sorry, Ray,” he said, grinning back and starting on his buttons. “You’ll probably have to be the one who schools me in the homo stuff. Aren’t you proud that you’ve finally got one up on me? You’re the expert at being gay. Congratulations.”
Ray covered his heart with his hand, looked wounded. “Now who’s being mean? And here I was getting all ready to put out.” He tugged at Brad’s belt, pushed his coat over his shoulders, hands hot and insistent.
“Oh, you’re gonna put out, huh,” Brad whispered, and kissed him again, couldn’t seem to stop kissing him. “At fucking last.”
Ray lay back on the bed, grabbing Brad by his shirt and pulling him with him. “You been thinking about this?” he asked, as Brad braced himself over Ray, settling his knees on either side of Ray’s thighs and lowering himself down. “Tell me how much you been thinking about this, Brad.” He licked up Brad’s neck, bit at the sensitive skin under his ear.
“Oh, fuck,” Brad whispered. Yeah, he’d been thinking about it, but thinking about it, and having Ray actually here, hot and solid beneath him, were miles apart. He caught Ray’s mouth again, kissed him long and slow, until Ray’s hips pressing up against him got too distracting, and he had to break away again, resting his head against Ray’s shoulder.
“I thought you were just drunk,” Ray said in a soft voice, scratching his nails up Brad’s back and making him shiver. “That night? I thought you were just drunk and, I don’t even fucking know what, drunk and horny. Turns out you were just stupid.”
Brad lifted his head. “Who the fuck are you calling stupid,” he murmured, and pressed his lips against Ray’s dimple, almost overwhelmed by the impossibility of it.
“You, obviously. God, I’ve known you were a lost cause for years.” He hooked his ankle around Brad’s calf, writhed up into him, and Brad groaned against his face. “You’ve got no idea how often I’ve jerked off thinking about this, about you, about us together. It’s fucking obscene.”
Brad knelt up, stripped out of his shirt and dropped back down, needing the feel of his skin against Ray’s, needing the knowledge that there was nothing left between them. “Tell me,” he insisted. “Talk to me, Ray.”
“Oh, now you want me to talk. Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking demanding.”
“You want me to be demanding?” Brad bit at Ray’s collar bone, worked his way across to his shoulder.
“Kinda,” Ray admitted, a little breathlessly. “So I can check that one off the list.”
“You have a list?” Brad’s mind was spinning. “Fuck, I didn’t even get past wanting you. After that, I’ve got no idea.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve wanted this for years,” Ray said. “I came up with a few things.”
Brad shook his head. The feel of Ray’s body under his was short circuiting his brain, causing all his nerve endings to fire off random sparks, like every part of them was electrified. He still couldn’t believe that Ray actually wanted it, this, him.
“Years,” he breathed against Ray’s chest. “Jesus, Ray. Why didn’t you say something?”
Ray pushed his hand through Brad’s hair, looked him in the eye. “Don’t ask me that. Don’t be a moron. I know you’re blond, but try to rub a few brain cells together, Sergeant, and answer that one for yourself.”
That hit Brad in his stomach, like someone winding him. It must have shown on his face, because Ray smiled, touched his cheek. “Don’t even - I’m not blaming you. I think you’re insane for this, I honestly do, and I’m so fucking happy I think someone musta fucking spiked my drink. But seriously, Brad. You’re my Sergeant, you’re my team leader. You’re so straight I could use you to hang a picture. You got more pussy than Walt before Fliss made an honest woman out of him. You’re, like, six years older than me. Do you want me to go on?”
Brad dropped his chin to Ray’s sternum, looked up at his face. “So what you’re saying here is that I’m your dream man?”
Ray flicked his ear. “What I’m saying is that loving you is like having a crush on the hot cheerleader. No one expects that dream to come true.”
“You sell yourself short all the time,” Brad said softly, wonderingly. “You don’t know how brilliant you are, Ray. And I’m only saying this because I’m trying to get in your pants,” he grinned, “but I’m fucking ecstatic you’re even looking twice at me. I was so sure I fucked things up that night.”
Ray rolled his eyes, pressed his hips up against Brad. “You’re about to fuck things up now, Brad, if you don’t get things moving. Jesus. Is this what gay sex is all about? Braiding each other’s hair and talking about our emotions? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was pretty sure there’d be more sucking cock involved.”
“Well now that you’ve gotten me in the mood with all your sweet-talking,” Brad said dryly, and covered Ray’s left nipple with his mouth, flicking his tongue. Ray moaned under him, pushed up with his hips again, rubbing up on Brad’s cock.
“Are you serious? Because if that’s you not in the mood, I think I’m gonna have to call this off, for my own safety.”
Brad moved back up Ray’s body, reached down between them. “Don’t even say that,” he said softly. “In fact, don’t say anything at all for a little while, unless it’s to tell me about all the things you imagined us doing together. You think you can do that for me, Corporal Person?”
“Yeah, ok, I do like it when you’re bossy,” Ray said, a little breathlessly. “The Marines have fucked me up so bad for you, Brad.”
“Mmm, go on,” Brad said, and got his hand around Ray’s cock, spent a moment having a mild freak out about holding one in his hand that wasn’t his own. But then Ray let out a soft, broken moan and Brad forgot just about everything that wasn’t the feel of him, the taste of him on his lips, the throb of him against his skin.
“Brad, I want to do everything you can possibly think of, and then some more stuff on top of that,” Ray said, thrusting his hips up into Brad’s grip. “I’ve thought about everything, about shit that probably isn’t even possible in three dimensions. Oh god, Brad, I just wanna get my hands on you.”
“Here.” Brad grabbed Ray’s hand, pressed it over his own cock, wrapped his fingers around it through his pants. “Come on, Ray, you can-”
Ray let out another moan, fumbled desperately at Brad’s fly, pushed his pants down just far enough. “Wanted this,” he said, eyes closed, breathing hard. “Wanted this so bad. It killed me, thinkin’ of you off with that girl after we - after I had my chance at you.”
“I’m yours now,” Brad said, and rolled them to the side, looked down between them at where their hands were hot and grasping. “You can take advantage of me, if you want.”
Ray huffed out a laugh, turned it into a kiss pressed against Brad’s lips, his cheek. “Yessir, I’ll take that under consideration,” he breathed, and started jerking Brad’s cock properly, his hand slipping through the sweat and precome. Brad’s breath caught in his throat, rushed out in a gasp as Ray’s thumb rubbed along the sensitive skin under the head. “Oh, you like that?” Ray did it again, and then again, and Brad dug the fingers of his free hand into the bed as streaks and flashes of pleasure flew through him.
“Please,” he said weakly, his grip on Ray faltering as he came closer and closer to the edge. “Ray, fuck.”
“Yeah, Brad.” Ray’s arm was tensing, working Brad hard while Brad vaguely thought that he should be reciprocating, Ray’s cock still held in his loose grip. But then Ray’s thumb hit that fucking spot again, and Brad’s world flashed white.
“I’m gonna,” he warned. “Ray, Ray, I’m gonna come…”
“Yeah, come for me, Brad,” Ray said, licked at Brad’s lips, bit his chin. “Come on, I’ve wanted this so long, Brad. Come for me now, just for me now, please.”
The weeks of loneliness, the weeks of wanting, the weeks and weeks of silence, were all washed away under the force of Ray’s voice in his ear, at last, and Ray’s hard, callused grip on him. Brad came with Ray utterly surrounding him, tearing him apart and holding him together, his words guiding him through it like a beacon of light. He distantly heard himself moaning Ray’s name, opened his eyes and saw Ray’s right there, staring back at him, wide and dark and full of something Brad didn’t even have a name for. And still it ripped through him, pulsed out onto Ray’s skin, slicking the way between them.
“Oh my god, Brad,” Ray gasped. “I can’t….”
Brad blinked at him, pulled him in closer, pumped at his dick. “Yeah,” he panted, “Give it up for me, Ray.”
He watched with something approaching awe as Ray threw his head back against the pillow and exploded, body tense and shaking and beautiful as he spilled in Brad’s hand. It was the most amazing thing, the most vital thing, the most real thing he’d seen, or felt, in longer than he could remember. He wanted to hold onto the moment, store it inside himself, remember it until he died. Ray called his name, came with Brad’s name on his lips, and Brad thought that maybe a little part of him had died, or maybe. Maybe just become Ray’s, forever.
He got through the aftermath in a daze.
It was like there was a rush of sound in his ears, crowding out rational thought. All he wanted to do was hold onto Ray, feel his body pressed in close, and fuck everything else, fuck the rest of the world. Ray made noises about getting up, getting tissues, but Brad just shook his head, wiped them off on his dress shirt and tossed it over the side of the bed before hauling Ray in under the covers, clutching at him tightly.
“Oh, wow, I never pegged you for a cuddler, Brad,” Ray said, but he sounded content, happy to go with it.
“I think it’s time for you to be quiet now, Ray,” Brad replied through a smile, expecting to be ignored.
Ray, as usual, didn’t disappoint.
“No, I’m serious. This speaks of some hardcore insecurity bullshit,” Ray started, sleepily, snuggling back into Brad’s arms. “What, did your parents not let you have a teddy bear as a child, Bradley? Was it just you and your carpet rake for years on end? I mean, I’m cool with this. If you need me to help you work through your issues, I’ve dealt with California for years now, I may still have my balls, but I know all about psycho-analysis and all that bullshit. You need me to be your little pet therapist, you know I’ve got your back…”
It took Brad maybe two minutes to fall asleep to the sound of Ray talking, the soft vibrations rumbling through his chest, the noise washing over him and drowning him and pulling him under. Two minutes to get used to the sound of Ray’s words, two minutes to let himself go with them, two minutes to drift away.
He dreamed they were on the beach, the waves crashing in.
And they were happy.