Fic: On Hard Ground
(This is my very, very belated charity fic for jmc_bks , who requested Ray/anyone and left it at that. I am sure this wasn't what she was expecting, but it's what came out so - darling, I do so hope you enjoy! Also, I couldn't write a decent 1000 word fic if there was a gun to my head, so this is 3000. Don't make another donation! The extra 2000 are free <3)
Title: On Hard Ground
Pairing: Brad/Ray
Word count: 3131
Rating: R
Summery: Ray fights, Brad watches, and the world falls apart around them.
Disclaimer:I don't own the characters nor have any connection with the real people the characters are based on. This is pure non-profit fiction.
A/N: Thanks a billion to my two super-quick and ever helpful betas, schlicky and meeks00 . Ladies, I couldn't have done it without you!
“Fucking quit it, you asshole.”
Walt’s voice rang through the gym, loud and pissed off, and Brad looked up with interest as Ray’s joined it.
“Walt baby, you know I can’t quit you. You’re way too fucking pretty. C’mere -”
“I mean it, Ray. Fuck off.”
Brad raised an eyebrow. On the one hand, Walt was clearly about to punch Ray in the face, but on the other, Ray was clearly asking for it, begging for a fight.
It was his new thing.
“Just one kiss, sweetheart,” the little whiskey-tango piece of shit continued, and Brad winced as, yeah, Walt’s fist swung out and connected with Ray’s left cheekbone. A few of the boys in the gym started catcalling and closed in to watch, and Brad’s wince turned into a sigh.
“You fucking retard,” he muttered to himself, as Ray’s face lit with a feral grin and he smacked Walt back. Walt lunged, and then they were grappling on the floor, each of them struggling for purchase, for a clean hit.
They were pretty evenly matched for size, but it was obvious to Brad, looking over the heads of the group of cheering Marines, which way the fight was going. He let them keep at it for a while, watching closely and only stepping in right before it was clear Walt was well and truly getting his ass kicked. Not just to save Hasser’s face - literally - but because, to be honest, he just felt like pissing Ray off.
Little motherfucker really was acting like an asshole.
“All right, ladies. Break it up,” he finally yelled, stepping through the bystanders and poking his foot at the RayWalt tangle on the floor. “Find a fucking room next time you wanna pop each other’s cherries. Jesus Christ.”
There was general bitching and moaning from the peanut gallery, but under Brad’s glare the audience started wandering away. Ray climbed off of Walt, spitting a stream of blood onto the gym mats.
“How you gonna take a sweet victory like that away from me, Brad?” he whined, looking wounded.
Walt got to his feet, hard blue eyes shooting daggers at the both of them. “In your fucking dreams, Person,” he said, his tight drawl marred and softened by a quickly swelling fat lip. “Let me back at him, Brad, I’ll -”
“Showers, Walt,” Brad interrupted, pointing at the door. “Now.”
Walt glowered, but wisely chose not to argue, turning on his heel and storming out. Not a happy camper.
Ray opened his mouth, no doubt to say something even more retarded than usual, but Brad shook his head, reaching out to grab him by the scruff of his neck.
“Say a fucking word, I dare you,” he growled, and there must have been something in the expression on his face, because Ray’s mouth snapped shut with an almost audible ‘pop’ and he went very still under Brad’s hand.
Good.
Brad leaned in, put his lips close to Ray’s ear. “If you’re gonna fight,” he hissed, “Fight someone bigger than you. Got it?”
Ray shivered and met Brad’s eyes, looking very young, and very dangerous. He kept his mouth shut, his lips a tight line slashed across his face.
“Got it?” Brad repeated, giving him a little shake. He was not in the mood for this shit. This - their particular brand of shit.
Ray’s body went limp then, pliant under Brad’s touch, and yeah, that did it. Brad felt a shot of…something rush through him, turning his blood and sizzling on his skin. The way Ray let it go for him…
“Aye, aye, sergeant,” Ray finally said, like he’d gotten whatever reaction he’d been after. He ducked out of Brad’s grip. “Solid copy.”
“Good boy,” Brad murmured, mostly to himself, and watched as Ray walked off without looking back, following Walt into the showers. “That’s good, Ray.”
~
“You know I love Walt.”
They were sitting on Brad’s back porch, hours later, Ray pulling another beer out of the cooler and Brad waiting for a clear shot with the iodine and Band-Aid for the cut on Ray’s cheek.
He wasn’t having much luck.
“Yeah, okay. Stay the fuck still, will you?”
“No, fuck off, I mean it. I love that twinky little farm boy. He’s custom designed for gay porn, and I’m not sure if he even made it through elementary school, but I love him.”
Brad paused, waited. Sometimes Ray just ran himself down if you stopped responding. Although, to be honest, he was just as likely to bounce off himself, talking like a forgotten CD on repeat, cycling through his own bullshit track list.
Apparently, this was one of those times.
“In fact, I love him even though he once said that he likes Bruce Springsteen because the music speaks to him.”
Brad frowned. “What’s wrong with that? It probably does speak to him. Have you ever been to Virginia?”
Ray made a face, and finally let Brad get close enough to dab at his cut. “Why the fuck would I go to Virginia?”
“Well it’s a fuckin’ step up from Missouri, you little redneck psychopath,” Brad said soothingly, his voice low.
Ray looked up at him with big eyes. “That hurts,” he said, and Brad wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was referring to.
“You’re a pussy,” Brad replied anyway, because it seemed safest, and smeared on more iodine than he needed, pressing the Band-Aid on with soft fingers. Ray’s skin was hot to the touch.
He sat back down and got a beer, tossing the tissue with its red-brown spots on the table between them. Ray ignored him, going back instead to the theme of the evening.
“So anyway, you don’t need to worry about me and Walt. We’re tight.”
Brad didn’t look at him, but he saw him anyway out of the corner of his eye. “You are seriously overestimating my interest in your love life, Ray,” he said dryly. Ray’s grin was just this side of mean, and Brad felt something tight in his gut. That something again, that nameless fucking something. This time it was angry. This time it twitched and stung at the sound of Walt’s name.
“So you don’t want to hear about the time in Afghanistan when we both got a little lonely and -”
“Ray.”
Ray shut up. Drank his beer. Probed curiously at his cheek.
He got up and set his bottle carefully on the table next to the used tissue.
“Can I use your shower, dude?” he asked, not looking at Brad, although Brad knew that he was being seen all the same.
“Go ahead,” Brad replied. There was barely enough spit in his mouth to form the words, and three minutes to the second after he watched Ray walk through the door, he was up on his feet and after him.
~
“One day you’re going to lose it. One day you’re going to lose control with the wrong person, and you’re going to get your stupid face smashed into the concrete.”
Ray stretched out under the cool white sheets, small, hard body moving against Brad’s.
“Nope. Nuh uh. Because I never fight angry, Brad. It’s not about that.”
Brad stared at the ceiling. “Why do you do it?” he asked, and they both knew what he meant. They all fought. It was expected of them as men, as Marines. But what Ray was doing, had been doing since the something had begun to surface in Brad, was way beyond the usual scuffles and struggles. Brad didn’t get it, didn’t understand what was driving Ray to…fuck, to make himself bleed at every damn opportunity.
Ray didn’t reply with words. Instead Brad could feel every muscle in his body, the strength wound tight in him, felt it moving against Brad’s skin, and pressing into him, urging him up and easing under him.
And he could feel the moment when, under Brad’s mouth, he let it all go.
~
Thing was, Ray didn’t give up. He didn’t always win - though he won enough to surprise the people who couldn’t see it in him - but he never gave up.
Brad would always remember the time, right after the something started, when Lilley dislocated Ray’s shoulder. All because Ray wouldn’t fucking cry uncle even with Lilley on his back literally twisting his arm out of its socket. He remembered the way Lilley’s face had gone ghost white, remembered his desperate brah, brahs, remembered the feel of Ray trembling as Brad braced against him and popped the joint back into place.
He remembered being in bed with him that night. Remembered the way Ray fell apart as soon as Brad slid his fingertips feather-light over the bruises.
~
“Brad, you got a minute?”
Brad looked up from the pile of paperwork on his desk and into Nate’s concerned eyes. He stretched, feeling his neck crack and the bruises on his back twinge comfortably.
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
Nate sat down across from him, and he had his ‘I’m an officer’ face on, as opposed to Brad’s preferred ‘I’m just a regular guy, no, really’ face. Bad news, then. Brad braced himself.
Nate started with a small, official-sounding cough. “Did you, in your capacity as a superior officer, order Corporal Person to, quote, ‘fight someone bigger than him’?”
Brad dropped his head to his desk. He could smell copier toner and old wood, dust from under the computer monitor.
“What the fuck happened?” he muttered without raising his head. He tasted paper and ink. His heart stopped beating. And then it started again, but different, beating on Ray-time.
Nate let out a sigh. “Jacks broke his nose and knocked out a tooth. They’re putting the tooth back in now. The nose will take a while, but it’ll heal cleanly.”
“Fuck.” Brad closed his eyes and stayed exactly where he was. He could hear Nate shifting around on the other side of the desk, picking things up and putting them down.
“He’s fine. He was fine enough to serenade the medical staff with Aqua’s greatest hits for two hours, even through the broken nose.”
Brad lifted his head, wondering if he had any backwards writing on his cheek, wondering what it would even say. “Aqua doesn’t have any greatest hits,” he said, then frowned. He his words carefully, designing them to keep everyone out of trouble. “I may have, in an unofficial capacity, given Ray some advice on how to challenge himself and his training routine. It’s possible that I floated the idea that sparring against bigger opponents might be beneficial to his progress in hand to-hand-combat.”
“Uh huh.” Nate looked down at the report in his hands, eyes twinkling. The officer mask was slipping. Brad liked it.
Then he had a thought.
“So how’s Manimal?”
Nate looked surprised. “Jacks is…well…” He ran his eyes back over the report, flipped a page. “Jacks has two black eyes, a split lip and bruised ribs.” He looked a little impressed, and Brad grinned, despite himself.
“Nice.”
Nate just shook his head. “You know I have to write this up,” he said, getting out of the chair. Brad leaned back and shrugged as Nate went on. “There’s sparring and there’s bickering, and then there’re broken noses and missing teeth. You get that, Brad?”
Brad nodded. “Yessir.”
Nate leaned down, one fist on the desk. “Talk to him. Try not to encourage him.”
Brad nodded again, eyes forward. “Yessir.” His fucking heart was still doing its Ray-time thing, still beating a little faster than it should, a little harder. Ray was singing Aqua, so it was fine. Manimal was probably with him, holding his hand as they reset his nose.
Nate left, leaving Brad staring out a window at a bright green parade ground set under a bright blue sky. It looked like a cartoon, the kind where Ray’s broken nose would get really big and start throbbing comically while little birds twittered around his head.
And in the next frame he’d be back to normal.
~
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
Ray stretched out on his stomach, his head to the side. Manimal wasn’t the only one with two black eyes. Ray’s nose was healing, but slowly, and the swelling was still up days later. It made him look like a thug from a movie, his big eyes set even deeper, even darker than usual.
“Who says I need to prove anything?” Ray asked, voice slightly muffled by the pillow. Brad was sitting cross-legged next to him, looking at the muscles in his back and shoulders, watching the way they tensed and coiled.
“Everything you’re doing is saying it,” he said mildly, running a finger from the top of Ray’s neck to the base of his spine and back up. Ray shivered.
“Dude, when you have your psychology degree, then you can talk to me about my hidden subconscious desires or my daddy issues or what the fuck ever. Okay? Until that day, give it a fucking rest.”
Brad played dot-to-dot with a series of moles to the left of Ray’s spine. “Daddy issues?”
Ray twisted to the side a little, raising his eyebrows. “What you’re choosing to focus on right now is really telling, Bradley.”
Brad grinned and let his mind wander for half a second before snapping to. “Beside the point. You know what I’m talking about, Josh Ray.”
Ray shrugged, setting off a chain reaction of muscles twisting that, weirdly, Brad wanted to taste.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Ray’s voice was as tight as his back, and Brad wished he could stroke that too, like it was a physical thing that needed soothing. He settled for ducking his head and licking across the sweep of moles. Ray moaned, soft and hidden.
“This,” he paused. “This -” Brad didn’t know what he wanted to say. Ray was naked in his bed, and he was bruised and angry and tense and Brad wanted to skip the whole thing. “This doesn’t make us weak.”
That was close enough.
Ray collapsed. He hardly moved, but Brad could see the way the tension snapped out of him, like Brad had just cut all his strings. The meanness faded from his face, his mouth went slack, even the bruises seemed diminished.
That was what Ray gave to him.
“You’re not weak,” Brad insisted, and straddled Ray’s hips, pressing his chest against Ray’s back. “That’s not what this is about.”
“Brad…” There was a warning in Ray’s voice, but his body stayed limp, yielding, and Brad just had to lift up a little, tug at Ray’s hip, and Ray was moving onto his back, soft hands coming to Brad’s waist.
“Stop it,” Brad said. “Just stop.”
“I can’t,” Ray whispered, and shook his head, a quick snap left-right, like he was shaking the conversation away. “You stop it. Come here.”
Brad did. Kissed Ray like he thought maybe his mouth could do better without words, like he could get what he wanted to say into Ray’s body directly, without the imperfect medium of his voice getting in the way.
“Tell me about my daddy issues,” Ray mumbled into Brad’s lips, and Brad just cradled his head, thumbs dancing lightly over the palette of bruises around his eyes and nose.
“If I tell you I love you,” he said, eyes closed, still probing for spots of weakness on Ray’s skin, “will you punch me in the face?”
Ray-time.
“Yes,” Ray replied, voice strong and sure. “If I say it back, will you cut the psycho-analysis touchy-feely bullshit so we can get down to the part where I call you daddy while you fuck my ass?”
Brad laughed, muffling it against Ray’s chin. “Asshole. I’m trying to have a fucking moment here.”
Ray tugged at Brad’s hair, looked into his eyes. “Oh please, Brad. Our whole relationship is one giant moment. You’re a self-important control freak, and I’m a self-destructive masochist. We’re going to implode in about point three seconds, and this honestly isn’t healthy for either of us. It’s like we’re living a goddamn daytime soap.”
The something in Brad’s blood roared. Sparked out between them. Left Ray open and limp.
“We’re not gonna implode,” Brad said, and he wasn’t gentle as he kissed Ray again, taking what was offered. “We’re gonna explode and take everything down with us.”
“I’ll keep fighting,” Ray said, and his lip was bleeding, an old cut broken open on Brad’s kiss.
“Yeah, and you’ll keep winning against everyone but me,” Brad replied, and it was a lie, but there was truth in it, too.
“Shut up, Brad.”
Brad’s fingers pressed into Ray, found a myriad places to make him whimper and shudder, found a myriad ways to make him give in.
“Don’t do this with anyone else,” Brad said out of nowhere, the words falling out of him and sitting in the air between them.
Ray…Ray looked at him like he was an idiot.
“I don’t. This is…”
And that was where they were men, Marines, inept with words and feelings, lost in a sea of emotion that seemed way too big to navigate. But Ray had a knack for it, sometimes, and left Brad in awe.
“I don’t give this to anyone else. This is yours.” I’m yours. “Everyone else just gets fists. You? For some reason I can break apart for you. For some reason you do that to me.”
“Jesus.”
And that was it for Brad, the words escaping entirely, and the only thought running through his head as he took and took and took from Ray, took in the most violent, intimate, intrusive way he could… The only thought left was this is all I have. I’m running completely on Ray-time now and it’s fucking me up, and everything I take, I’m giving back ten-fold.
And as Ray cried out under him, he wasn’t sure that the message was getting through.
~
“Step off, Ray. You’re ‘bout to get your stupid ass kicked.”
Ray grinned, mouth sharp, and glanced quickly at Brad before cocking his head at Poke.
“Come on then, dude. Show me what you got.”
And Brad could just watch as Poke feinted left before driving a hard fist into Ray’s stomach.
The something flared.
He waited a while to break it up, waited until it was obvious Ray was losing, obvious he was about to let himself get beaten into the ground.
And then he waited a minute longer.
~
“If I tell you I love you, will you stop doing this?”
“No.”
“If I tell you I love you, will it make any difference at all?”
“No.”
“If I…”
“If I say it back will you let it drop?”
“Not a fucking chance.”
Title: On Hard Ground
Pairing: Brad/Ray
Word count: 3131
Rating: R
Summery: Ray fights, Brad watches, and the world falls apart around them.
Disclaimer:I don't own the characters nor have any connection with the real people the characters are based on. This is pure non-profit fiction.
A/N: Thanks a billion to my two super-quick and ever helpful betas, schlicky and meeks00 . Ladies, I couldn't have done it without you!
“Fucking quit it, you asshole.”
Walt’s voice rang through the gym, loud and pissed off, and Brad looked up with interest as Ray’s joined it.
“Walt baby, you know I can’t quit you. You’re way too fucking pretty. C’mere -”
“I mean it, Ray. Fuck off.”
Brad raised an eyebrow. On the one hand, Walt was clearly about to punch Ray in the face, but on the other, Ray was clearly asking for it, begging for a fight.
It was his new thing.
“Just one kiss, sweetheart,” the little whiskey-tango piece of shit continued, and Brad winced as, yeah, Walt’s fist swung out and connected with Ray’s left cheekbone. A few of the boys in the gym started catcalling and closed in to watch, and Brad’s wince turned into a sigh.
“You fucking retard,” he muttered to himself, as Ray’s face lit with a feral grin and he smacked Walt back. Walt lunged, and then they were grappling on the floor, each of them struggling for purchase, for a clean hit.
They were pretty evenly matched for size, but it was obvious to Brad, looking over the heads of the group of cheering Marines, which way the fight was going. He let them keep at it for a while, watching closely and only stepping in right before it was clear Walt was well and truly getting his ass kicked. Not just to save Hasser’s face - literally - but because, to be honest, he just felt like pissing Ray off.
Little motherfucker really was acting like an asshole.
“All right, ladies. Break it up,” he finally yelled, stepping through the bystanders and poking his foot at the RayWalt tangle on the floor. “Find a fucking room next time you wanna pop each other’s cherries. Jesus Christ.”
There was general bitching and moaning from the peanut gallery, but under Brad’s glare the audience started wandering away. Ray climbed off of Walt, spitting a stream of blood onto the gym mats.
“How you gonna take a sweet victory like that away from me, Brad?” he whined, looking wounded.
Walt got to his feet, hard blue eyes shooting daggers at the both of them. “In your fucking dreams, Person,” he said, his tight drawl marred and softened by a quickly swelling fat lip. “Let me back at him, Brad, I’ll -”
“Showers, Walt,” Brad interrupted, pointing at the door. “Now.”
Walt glowered, but wisely chose not to argue, turning on his heel and storming out. Not a happy camper.
Ray opened his mouth, no doubt to say something even more retarded than usual, but Brad shook his head, reaching out to grab him by the scruff of his neck.
“Say a fucking word, I dare you,” he growled, and there must have been something in the expression on his face, because Ray’s mouth snapped shut with an almost audible ‘pop’ and he went very still under Brad’s hand.
Good.
Brad leaned in, put his lips close to Ray’s ear. “If you’re gonna fight,” he hissed, “Fight someone bigger than you. Got it?”
Ray shivered and met Brad’s eyes, looking very young, and very dangerous. He kept his mouth shut, his lips a tight line slashed across his face.
“Got it?” Brad repeated, giving him a little shake. He was not in the mood for this shit. This - their particular brand of shit.
Ray’s body went limp then, pliant under Brad’s touch, and yeah, that did it. Brad felt a shot of…something rush through him, turning his blood and sizzling on his skin. The way Ray let it go for him…
“Aye, aye, sergeant,” Ray finally said, like he’d gotten whatever reaction he’d been after. He ducked out of Brad’s grip. “Solid copy.”
“Good boy,” Brad murmured, mostly to himself, and watched as Ray walked off without looking back, following Walt into the showers. “That’s good, Ray.”
~
“You know I love Walt.”
They were sitting on Brad’s back porch, hours later, Ray pulling another beer out of the cooler and Brad waiting for a clear shot with the iodine and Band-Aid for the cut on Ray’s cheek.
He wasn’t having much luck.
“Yeah, okay. Stay the fuck still, will you?”
“No, fuck off, I mean it. I love that twinky little farm boy. He’s custom designed for gay porn, and I’m not sure if he even made it through elementary school, but I love him.”
Brad paused, waited. Sometimes Ray just ran himself down if you stopped responding. Although, to be honest, he was just as likely to bounce off himself, talking like a forgotten CD on repeat, cycling through his own bullshit track list.
Apparently, this was one of those times.
“In fact, I love him even though he once said that he likes Bruce Springsteen because the music speaks to him.”
Brad frowned. “What’s wrong with that? It probably does speak to him. Have you ever been to Virginia?”
Ray made a face, and finally let Brad get close enough to dab at his cut. “Why the fuck would I go to Virginia?”
“Well it’s a fuckin’ step up from Missouri, you little redneck psychopath,” Brad said soothingly, his voice low.
Ray looked up at him with big eyes. “That hurts,” he said, and Brad wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was referring to.
“You’re a pussy,” Brad replied anyway, because it seemed safest, and smeared on more iodine than he needed, pressing the Band-Aid on with soft fingers. Ray’s skin was hot to the touch.
He sat back down and got a beer, tossing the tissue with its red-brown spots on the table between them. Ray ignored him, going back instead to the theme of the evening.
“So anyway, you don’t need to worry about me and Walt. We’re tight.”
Brad didn’t look at him, but he saw him anyway out of the corner of his eye. “You are seriously overestimating my interest in your love life, Ray,” he said dryly. Ray’s grin was just this side of mean, and Brad felt something tight in his gut. That something again, that nameless fucking something. This time it was angry. This time it twitched and stung at the sound of Walt’s name.
“So you don’t want to hear about the time in Afghanistan when we both got a little lonely and -”
“Ray.”
Ray shut up. Drank his beer. Probed curiously at his cheek.
He got up and set his bottle carefully on the table next to the used tissue.
“Can I use your shower, dude?” he asked, not looking at Brad, although Brad knew that he was being seen all the same.
“Go ahead,” Brad replied. There was barely enough spit in his mouth to form the words, and three minutes to the second after he watched Ray walk through the door, he was up on his feet and after him.
~
“One day you’re going to lose it. One day you’re going to lose control with the wrong person, and you’re going to get your stupid face smashed into the concrete.”
Ray stretched out under the cool white sheets, small, hard body moving against Brad’s.
“Nope. Nuh uh. Because I never fight angry, Brad. It’s not about that.”
Brad stared at the ceiling. “Why do you do it?” he asked, and they both knew what he meant. They all fought. It was expected of them as men, as Marines. But what Ray was doing, had been doing since the something had begun to surface in Brad, was way beyond the usual scuffles and struggles. Brad didn’t get it, didn’t understand what was driving Ray to…fuck, to make himself bleed at every damn opportunity.
Ray didn’t reply with words. Instead Brad could feel every muscle in his body, the strength wound tight in him, felt it moving against Brad’s skin, and pressing into him, urging him up and easing under him.
And he could feel the moment when, under Brad’s mouth, he let it all go.
~
Thing was, Ray didn’t give up. He didn’t always win - though he won enough to surprise the people who couldn’t see it in him - but he never gave up.
Brad would always remember the time, right after the something started, when Lilley dislocated Ray’s shoulder. All because Ray wouldn’t fucking cry uncle even with Lilley on his back literally twisting his arm out of its socket. He remembered the way Lilley’s face had gone ghost white, remembered his desperate brah, brahs, remembered the feel of Ray trembling as Brad braced against him and popped the joint back into place.
He remembered being in bed with him that night. Remembered the way Ray fell apart as soon as Brad slid his fingertips feather-light over the bruises.
~
“Brad, you got a minute?”
Brad looked up from the pile of paperwork on his desk and into Nate’s concerned eyes. He stretched, feeling his neck crack and the bruises on his back twinge comfortably.
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
Nate sat down across from him, and he had his ‘I’m an officer’ face on, as opposed to Brad’s preferred ‘I’m just a regular guy, no, really’ face. Bad news, then. Brad braced himself.
Nate started with a small, official-sounding cough. “Did you, in your capacity as a superior officer, order Corporal Person to, quote, ‘fight someone bigger than him’?”
Brad dropped his head to his desk. He could smell copier toner and old wood, dust from under the computer monitor.
“What the fuck happened?” he muttered without raising his head. He tasted paper and ink. His heart stopped beating. And then it started again, but different, beating on Ray-time.
Nate let out a sigh. “Jacks broke his nose and knocked out a tooth. They’re putting the tooth back in now. The nose will take a while, but it’ll heal cleanly.”
“Fuck.” Brad closed his eyes and stayed exactly where he was. He could hear Nate shifting around on the other side of the desk, picking things up and putting them down.
“He’s fine. He was fine enough to serenade the medical staff with Aqua’s greatest hits for two hours, even through the broken nose.”
Brad lifted his head, wondering if he had any backwards writing on his cheek, wondering what it would even say. “Aqua doesn’t have any greatest hits,” he said, then frowned. He his words carefully, designing them to keep everyone out of trouble. “I may have, in an unofficial capacity, given Ray some advice on how to challenge himself and his training routine. It’s possible that I floated the idea that sparring against bigger opponents might be beneficial to his progress in hand to-hand-combat.”
“Uh huh.” Nate looked down at the report in his hands, eyes twinkling. The officer mask was slipping. Brad liked it.
Then he had a thought.
“So how’s Manimal?”
Nate looked surprised. “Jacks is…well…” He ran his eyes back over the report, flipped a page. “Jacks has two black eyes, a split lip and bruised ribs.” He looked a little impressed, and Brad grinned, despite himself.
“Nice.”
Nate just shook his head. “You know I have to write this up,” he said, getting out of the chair. Brad leaned back and shrugged as Nate went on. “There’s sparring and there’s bickering, and then there’re broken noses and missing teeth. You get that, Brad?”
Brad nodded. “Yessir.”
Nate leaned down, one fist on the desk. “Talk to him. Try not to encourage him.”
Brad nodded again, eyes forward. “Yessir.” His fucking heart was still doing its Ray-time thing, still beating a little faster than it should, a little harder. Ray was singing Aqua, so it was fine. Manimal was probably with him, holding his hand as they reset his nose.
Nate left, leaving Brad staring out a window at a bright green parade ground set under a bright blue sky. It looked like a cartoon, the kind where Ray’s broken nose would get really big and start throbbing comically while little birds twittered around his head.
And in the next frame he’d be back to normal.
~
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
Ray stretched out on his stomach, his head to the side. Manimal wasn’t the only one with two black eyes. Ray’s nose was healing, but slowly, and the swelling was still up days later. It made him look like a thug from a movie, his big eyes set even deeper, even darker than usual.
“Who says I need to prove anything?” Ray asked, voice slightly muffled by the pillow. Brad was sitting cross-legged next to him, looking at the muscles in his back and shoulders, watching the way they tensed and coiled.
“Everything you’re doing is saying it,” he said mildly, running a finger from the top of Ray’s neck to the base of his spine and back up. Ray shivered.
“Dude, when you have your psychology degree, then you can talk to me about my hidden subconscious desires or my daddy issues or what the fuck ever. Okay? Until that day, give it a fucking rest.”
Brad played dot-to-dot with a series of moles to the left of Ray’s spine. “Daddy issues?”
Ray twisted to the side a little, raising his eyebrows. “What you’re choosing to focus on right now is really telling, Bradley.”
Brad grinned and let his mind wander for half a second before snapping to. “Beside the point. You know what I’m talking about, Josh Ray.”
Ray shrugged, setting off a chain reaction of muscles twisting that, weirdly, Brad wanted to taste.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Ray’s voice was as tight as his back, and Brad wished he could stroke that too, like it was a physical thing that needed soothing. He settled for ducking his head and licking across the sweep of moles. Ray moaned, soft and hidden.
“This,” he paused. “This -” Brad didn’t know what he wanted to say. Ray was naked in his bed, and he was bruised and angry and tense and Brad wanted to skip the whole thing. “This doesn’t make us weak.”
That was close enough.
Ray collapsed. He hardly moved, but Brad could see the way the tension snapped out of him, like Brad had just cut all his strings. The meanness faded from his face, his mouth went slack, even the bruises seemed diminished.
That was what Ray gave to him.
“You’re not weak,” Brad insisted, and straddled Ray’s hips, pressing his chest against Ray’s back. “That’s not what this is about.”
“Brad…” There was a warning in Ray’s voice, but his body stayed limp, yielding, and Brad just had to lift up a little, tug at Ray’s hip, and Ray was moving onto his back, soft hands coming to Brad’s waist.
“Stop it,” Brad said. “Just stop.”
“I can’t,” Ray whispered, and shook his head, a quick snap left-right, like he was shaking the conversation away. “You stop it. Come here.”
Brad did. Kissed Ray like he thought maybe his mouth could do better without words, like he could get what he wanted to say into Ray’s body directly, without the imperfect medium of his voice getting in the way.
“Tell me about my daddy issues,” Ray mumbled into Brad’s lips, and Brad just cradled his head, thumbs dancing lightly over the palette of bruises around his eyes and nose.
“If I tell you I love you,” he said, eyes closed, still probing for spots of weakness on Ray’s skin, “will you punch me in the face?”
Ray-time.
“Yes,” Ray replied, voice strong and sure. “If I say it back, will you cut the psycho-analysis touchy-feely bullshit so we can get down to the part where I call you daddy while you fuck my ass?”
Brad laughed, muffling it against Ray’s chin. “Asshole. I’m trying to have a fucking moment here.”
Ray tugged at Brad’s hair, looked into his eyes. “Oh please, Brad. Our whole relationship is one giant moment. You’re a self-important control freak, and I’m a self-destructive masochist. We’re going to implode in about point three seconds, and this honestly isn’t healthy for either of us. It’s like we’re living a goddamn daytime soap.”
The something in Brad’s blood roared. Sparked out between them. Left Ray open and limp.
“We’re not gonna implode,” Brad said, and he wasn’t gentle as he kissed Ray again, taking what was offered. “We’re gonna explode and take everything down with us.”
“I’ll keep fighting,” Ray said, and his lip was bleeding, an old cut broken open on Brad’s kiss.
“Yeah, and you’ll keep winning against everyone but me,” Brad replied, and it was a lie, but there was truth in it, too.
“Shut up, Brad.”
Brad’s fingers pressed into Ray, found a myriad places to make him whimper and shudder, found a myriad ways to make him give in.
“Don’t do this with anyone else,” Brad said out of nowhere, the words falling out of him and sitting in the air between them.
Ray…Ray looked at him like he was an idiot.
“I don’t. This is…”
And that was where they were men, Marines, inept with words and feelings, lost in a sea of emotion that seemed way too big to navigate. But Ray had a knack for it, sometimes, and left Brad in awe.
“I don’t give this to anyone else. This is yours.” I’m yours. “Everyone else just gets fists. You? For some reason I can break apart for you. For some reason you do that to me.”
“Jesus.”
And that was it for Brad, the words escaping entirely, and the only thought running through his head as he took and took and took from Ray, took in the most violent, intimate, intrusive way he could… The only thought left was this is all I have. I’m running completely on Ray-time now and it’s fucking me up, and everything I take, I’m giving back ten-fold.
And as Ray cried out under him, he wasn’t sure that the message was getting through.
~
“Step off, Ray. You’re ‘bout to get your stupid ass kicked.”
Ray grinned, mouth sharp, and glanced quickly at Brad before cocking his head at Poke.
“Come on then, dude. Show me what you got.”
And Brad could just watch as Poke feinted left before driving a hard fist into Ray’s stomach.
The something flared.
He waited a while to break it up, waited until it was obvious Ray was losing, obvious he was about to let himself get beaten into the ground.
And then he waited a minute longer.
~
“If I tell you I love you, will you stop doing this?”
“No.”
“If I tell you I love you, will it make any difference at all?”
“No.”
“If I…”
“If I say it back will you let it drop?”
“Not a fucking chance.”