Puppy Pimp Shades, Generation Kill, TA
Title: Puppy Pimp Shades
Subject: Generation Kill
Rating: TA (language)
Pairing: None
Word Count: 2225
Disclaimer: I don’t own Generation Kill or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals. No disrespect intended.
Author's Notes: Okay, so I wrote this in honor of Vanz's birthday, because she had a post that said something along the lines of ice cream and ray and walt and waiting for her birthday and that somehow absurdly birthed this. So, if you like it we're good, if you don't, just ignore me. It's more depressing than I expected. And totally unbeated. FYI.
Summary: In which Ray's about to turn 16, and Walt has a heavy heart. Also, there's a puppy. And I don't just mean Walt.
“Well, now that you’re thoroughly wasted,” Walt starts, through heavy lidded eyes because he himself is a little drunk. But not a lot. Because he’s the responsible one here. “What else would you like to do?”
“Fuck, Walt, can’t you just enjoy the experience? Let the night take you where it takes you and all that shit?” Ray responds, plastered, but still, he handles alcohol like no one Walt’s ever known and sometimes he wonders just where he came from exactly.
“I think someone usually has a grand idea,” Walt answers, looking down at the splay of Ray’s fingers across his chest, thinking they were awfully beautiful in a murky sort of way that he wouldn’t remember later. “And before you say it, I don’t think we should go back to that Taco Bell.”
“Oh, come on,” Ray laughs, and the sound echoes oddly around the street. It’s cold and damp, but Ray doesn’t seem to mind so Walt guesses that he doesn’t either. “How is it possible that that woman wasn’t pregnant?”
All Walt really remembers, in the morning, is how heavy is heart feels.
“Just answer me that.”
--
Walt was thirteen when he met Ray Person. And in hindsight he likes to compare it to getting hit with a truck. Hell, an eighteen wheeler. Going the speed of your typical NASCAR driver one lap away from the victory.
And then he curses, because fuck, he didn’t watch NASCAR and why the hell would that be the speed of Ray anyway?
It was true, though; he strolled into class with a pair of horribly flashy sunglasses on and told the teacher off when she asked him to take them off. Walt was a thirteen year old goody two shoes, by all accounts, but, when Ray finally did slip his shades off and set them on the desk with a clatter, they looked at one another. Ray gave an irritating grin and Walt rolled his eyes.
They’d been inseparable ever since.
--
“Seriously, though, Walt, I saw it happen,” a fourteen year old Ray’s shoving his way through bushes, squinting, in what Walt takes to be exaggeration, as he looks for the local stray’s standard hideout. They’d already been halfway across the park, and back around to the grocery store, fast food alley, and the school, which Ray had dubbed the scene of the crime.
“Why weren’t you wearing them?” Walt asks, halfheartedly moving a branch.
“Because I’m a good kid who does what he’s told,” Ray replies, suddenly disappearing behind a rather massive tree before reappearing a moment later.
“Fuck off,” Walt states. “I’m just saying, if Maggie really did take your shades, and I’m not entirely sold on the story, it’s probably your fault in the first place. She’s resourceful but she’s not a thief.”
“She’s a bitch, what’s it matter?” Ray asks, and Walt shakes his head. “Look, they were sitting on one of those benches outside C building with my book bag, right? And I, of course, am harmlessly expressing an interest in helping a few of our fellow class mates find an extracurricular activity to amuse themselves,” Walt snorts, “And Maggie, the innocent stray, the golden, literally, dog of the town, was wandering through. I thought nothing of it; of course, because it’s Maggie we’re talking about. But then I see her nosing around and she runs off before I get within a foot of her, with my shades in that gross dog snout of hers!”
Truthfully, it was entirely possibly that Ray had simply been attempting to force the shades onto the Golden’s “gross dog snout” and she’d simply grown irritated with the teenager and run off, shades and all.
“Seriously, do you know what goes in and out of that dog’s mouth?”
--
Ray Person was an asshole. It took Walt all of an hour to figure that one out. Not that he’d ever say it aloud, because he was Walt Hasser and Walt Hasser didn’t say things like that.
“You’re an asshole.” Or, at least, Walt Hasser before Ray Person didn’t say things like that.
“No shit,” Ray laughs. It’s lunch and it’s actually several months after that first hour in which Walt had first discovered this about the boy who’d come to be his best friend.
“No, really, why do I only ever find out things about my ‘best friend’ from other people who decidedly aren’t Ray Person, my asshole of a best friend?” It’s hard to look intimidatingly angry when you’re trying to unsuccessfully open a carton of milk, but somehow Walt pulls it off. Because when you’re thirteen, not knowing everything there is to know about your best friend is a harsh act of betrayal, a knife to the gut, and it’s all that much worse because, he doesn’t like to admit it, Ray’s the only real friend he has. Or he thinks, anyway, he doesn’t know anymore.
“What’d they say this time?” The problem with Ray was that he was too carefree, said what he want and did what he want and didn’t give a damn about any of it.
“Is it true that your mom was declared an unfit parent?” Walt looks down, “That you don’t even know who your dad is?”
There’s a lengthy silence in which Walt look down at the rectangular slab of pizza and can’t help but, briefly, bizarrely, wonders what kind of pizza is flat and rectangular and what kind of plastic the cheese must be made from, while Ray focuses the intensity of his eyes upon the light arcing off the top of Walt’s hair because he knows that Walt’ll take the silence to mean yes and he wouldn’t be wrong.
“Who said that?” Ray asks, quietly, and Walt sighs, looking back at him and seeing the need for that name written across his face.
So it’s no surprise that Ray gets a week’s suspension for beating the name right out of the kid.
The best part about having Walt for a best friend, Ray thinks, as he sits at home, waiting on school to be over so that he can actually talk to Walt, is that he’ll never bring it up again, and, if he does act any different, it’s not something that Ray picks up on.
--
“Homes,” Ray calls, casually sitting between a bush and a tree like it was a normal spot for people to sit in the park rather than the bench twenty feet away. “Maggie had puppies.”
“Would you look at that,” Walt laughs, having gotten a view of the tiny animals over Ray’s shoulder. Though the puppies do things to his heartstrings he’ll never admit, particularly as a fourteen, almost fifteen, year old, he laughs because he spots one slightly separate from the rest.
“No fucking way. We went all over this park. We went all over everywhere.” But there, next to the separate puppy are Ray’s shades, which he has devoted hours to lamenting into Walt’s tortured ears.
“Not bad for having been missing around a year, huh?” Walt asks, letting his fingers ghost over the puppy.
“Hell yeah,” Ray grins that Ray grin of his and slips them on. And, really, Walt thinks, it looks about the same. It was Ray, either way, whether they were caked in dirt or not. “Your ma’s crazy, Pimp Shades, but me and ole’ Walt here’ll make sure you outlive all your brothers and sisters.”
It takes Walt a moment to realize that Ray’s talking to the puppy that’d been lying near his glasses.
--
“Ice cream?” Walt asks, through his slight stupor because he can’t focus on anything except how decidedly depressed he is and he doesn’t think he heard Ray right.
“Walt, why can’t we just eat ice cream and be bros while we wait on my birthday to get here?” Walt shakes his head and realizes now that he shouldn’t have drunk anything. “I fucking love ice cream.”
“I know.” He wonders why he didn’t remember that alcohol was a depressant until after he’d had a few.
He doesn’t realizes that he’s stopped in the middle of the street until Ray whines his name, followed by a yell of screaming for ice cream.
--
“Hey, Pimp Shades, what’s your honest opinion on Walt?” Ray talks to the puppy so casually sometimes that Walt wonders whether Ray’s aware that he’s a dog, not a person, and worries, occasionally, whether Ray could use more friends if he was talking to a dog.
That he’d named Pimp Shades, nonetheless.
“I mean, I know he’s uptight most of the time, but he’s a pretty great best friend, right?” Pimp Shades yips from his spot on Ray’s chest and Ray lifts a hand to scratch his ears.
“Yeah, you’re right, pretty great,” Ray states, and it takes a minute for Walt to register that Ray’s put his lips on the golden fur in front of him, because Ray didn’t do that kind of thing ever. So he almost misses the added whisper, “So how do I tell him then?”
Walt learned early in their friendship that curiosity wasn’t worth it and Ray would tell him when he wanted to tell him. So if it wasn’t until weeks later that Ray finally caved, Walt wasn’t surprised.
Besides, Ray couldn’t have known he was standing just out of his line of sight.
--
“This is the best idea ever,” Ray gives Walt that Ray grin of his and Walt wants to cry but he swallows the lump in his throat because he’s fifteen for fuck’s sake, and fifteen year olds don’t cry.
“It’s just ice cream, Ray, it’s not like you’ll be regaling anyone with the wild story of your drunken night on the town,” Walt mutters, using the toe of his shoe to make the swing he was sitting on sway ever so slightly. Not too much, because he was still a little fuzzy, so he couldn’t imagine how Ray was swinging to and fro like it was nothing. There was no way Ray was less drunk than he was.
“It’s ice cream between us, Walt, before I turn sixteen,” Ray pumps himself higher to get a better view of the park. “We’re on a swing set. It’s fucking brilliant.”
Walt shakes his head, and thinks about threatening bodily harm if Ray manages to drop ice cream on him. But instead Walt catches Ray’s eye as their swings pass each other, and all Walt can manage is a simple question of “Why?”
--
“Come on, it’s not like I’ll be gone forever,” Ray mutters, his fist connecting with Walt’s arm, before pulling him against him because they’d long since lost their personal boundaries. “I actually kind of like this backwards state.”
“Who are you calling backwards, you sideways hick?” Walt grumbles, and Ray throws his head back with a laugh.
“Maybe you should come to Missouri, instead. See how to really live.” Walt can still hear the chuckle in his voice and knows that he’s thinking about that day he’d been compared to a puppy in their English class and Ray had casually called him Pimp Shades every now and then.
Walt didn’t know, however, that Ray sometimes called Pimp Shades Walt. Because there were still some things that Walt Hasser didn’t know about Ray Person, no matter how much he wanted to.
“I’ll keep an eye out for your arrest in the news.”
“Come on, Walt, you know me better than that,” Ray grabs at his heart in offense. “You’d be my call. And then they’d offer me some kind of deal because I’m me.”
“I’m sure that’ll astonish them. They’ll probably just tell you that you can join the Navy or something instead of going to prison.” Walt lifts a brow; as Ray slips his shades down to cover his eyes.
“Fuck the Navy, Walt, I’d be a Marine.” Ray puts a finger in his chest, and Walt takes a moment to notice how astoundingly lengthy his fingers are. “And you, Walt Hasser, will join up to spend time with your dear ole’ pal, Ray Ray.”
“Of course I will.” Walt’s tone is sarcastic, but somewhere in the back of his mind he can see them, out fighting for whatever they’d be fighting for.
Probably, Walt thinks, they’d be stuck fighting for each other.
--
“Come on, Pimp Shades,” Walt rolls his eyes as Ray calls him by the puppy’s name, grabbing at his wrist and leading him over to the sandbox.
“No,” Walt states, as Ray crosses over and sits down in the sand.
“We’re not playing,” Ray replies, “I’m tired. Just lay down, Walt.” When Walt hesitates, Ray doesn’t, “It’s almost my birthday.”
And that’s how Walt finds himself staring blearily down at Ray’s head. They’d finished their ice cream, and Ray was leaving in the morning, and Walt would be all alone again. And his heart’s heavier than the universe itself.
They’d been too busy waiting for Ray’s birthday to notice that’d it’d come already. And so Walt whispers a Happy Birthday to Ray’s head and lets himself fall asleep in the sandbox, with his best friend’s head on his chest.
And if Walt cries into Pimp Shade’s fur in the morning, when Ray’s gone back to Missouri, well, he wouldn’t be ashamed to admit that to anyone.
Subject: Generation Kill
Rating: TA (language)
Pairing: None
Word Count: 2225
Disclaimer: I don’t own Generation Kill or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals. No disrespect intended.
Author's Notes: Okay, so I wrote this in honor of Vanz's birthday, because she had a post that said something along the lines of ice cream and ray and walt and waiting for her birthday and that somehow absurdly birthed this. So, if you like it we're good, if you don't, just ignore me. It's more depressing than I expected. And totally unbeated. FYI.
Summary: In which Ray's about to turn 16, and Walt has a heavy heart. Also, there's a puppy. And I don't just mean Walt.
“Well, now that you’re thoroughly wasted,” Walt starts, through heavy lidded eyes because he himself is a little drunk. But not a lot. Because he’s the responsible one here. “What else would you like to do?”
“Fuck, Walt, can’t you just enjoy the experience? Let the night take you where it takes you and all that shit?” Ray responds, plastered, but still, he handles alcohol like no one Walt’s ever known and sometimes he wonders just where he came from exactly.
“I think someone usually has a grand idea,” Walt answers, looking down at the splay of Ray’s fingers across his chest, thinking they were awfully beautiful in a murky sort of way that he wouldn’t remember later. “And before you say it, I don’t think we should go back to that Taco Bell.”
“Oh, come on,” Ray laughs, and the sound echoes oddly around the street. It’s cold and damp, but Ray doesn’t seem to mind so Walt guesses that he doesn’t either. “How is it possible that that woman wasn’t pregnant?”
All Walt really remembers, in the morning, is how heavy is heart feels.
“Just answer me that.”
--
Walt was thirteen when he met Ray Person. And in hindsight he likes to compare it to getting hit with a truck. Hell, an eighteen wheeler. Going the speed of your typical NASCAR driver one lap away from the victory.
And then he curses, because fuck, he didn’t watch NASCAR and why the hell would that be the speed of Ray anyway?
It was true, though; he strolled into class with a pair of horribly flashy sunglasses on and told the teacher off when she asked him to take them off. Walt was a thirteen year old goody two shoes, by all accounts, but, when Ray finally did slip his shades off and set them on the desk with a clatter, they looked at one another. Ray gave an irritating grin and Walt rolled his eyes.
They’d been inseparable ever since.
--
“Seriously, though, Walt, I saw it happen,” a fourteen year old Ray’s shoving his way through bushes, squinting, in what Walt takes to be exaggeration, as he looks for the local stray’s standard hideout. They’d already been halfway across the park, and back around to the grocery store, fast food alley, and the school, which Ray had dubbed the scene of the crime.
“Why weren’t you wearing them?” Walt asks, halfheartedly moving a branch.
“Because I’m a good kid who does what he’s told,” Ray replies, suddenly disappearing behind a rather massive tree before reappearing a moment later.
“Fuck off,” Walt states. “I’m just saying, if Maggie really did take your shades, and I’m not entirely sold on the story, it’s probably your fault in the first place. She’s resourceful but she’s not a thief.”
“She’s a bitch, what’s it matter?” Ray asks, and Walt shakes his head. “Look, they were sitting on one of those benches outside C building with my book bag, right? And I, of course, am harmlessly expressing an interest in helping a few of our fellow class mates find an extracurricular activity to amuse themselves,” Walt snorts, “And Maggie, the innocent stray, the golden, literally, dog of the town, was wandering through. I thought nothing of it; of course, because it’s Maggie we’re talking about. But then I see her nosing around and she runs off before I get within a foot of her, with my shades in that gross dog snout of hers!”
Truthfully, it was entirely possibly that Ray had simply been attempting to force the shades onto the Golden’s “gross dog snout” and she’d simply grown irritated with the teenager and run off, shades and all.
“Seriously, do you know what goes in and out of that dog’s mouth?”
--
Ray Person was an asshole. It took Walt all of an hour to figure that one out. Not that he’d ever say it aloud, because he was Walt Hasser and Walt Hasser didn’t say things like that.
“You’re an asshole.” Or, at least, Walt Hasser before Ray Person didn’t say things like that.
“No shit,” Ray laughs. It’s lunch and it’s actually several months after that first hour in which Walt had first discovered this about the boy who’d come to be his best friend.
“No, really, why do I only ever find out things about my ‘best friend’ from other people who decidedly aren’t Ray Person, my asshole of a best friend?” It’s hard to look intimidatingly angry when you’re trying to unsuccessfully open a carton of milk, but somehow Walt pulls it off. Because when you’re thirteen, not knowing everything there is to know about your best friend is a harsh act of betrayal, a knife to the gut, and it’s all that much worse because, he doesn’t like to admit it, Ray’s the only real friend he has. Or he thinks, anyway, he doesn’t know anymore.
“What’d they say this time?” The problem with Ray was that he was too carefree, said what he want and did what he want and didn’t give a damn about any of it.
“Is it true that your mom was declared an unfit parent?” Walt looks down, “That you don’t even know who your dad is?”
There’s a lengthy silence in which Walt look down at the rectangular slab of pizza and can’t help but, briefly, bizarrely, wonders what kind of pizza is flat and rectangular and what kind of plastic the cheese must be made from, while Ray focuses the intensity of his eyes upon the light arcing off the top of Walt’s hair because he knows that Walt’ll take the silence to mean yes and he wouldn’t be wrong.
“Who said that?” Ray asks, quietly, and Walt sighs, looking back at him and seeing the need for that name written across his face.
So it’s no surprise that Ray gets a week’s suspension for beating the name right out of the kid.
The best part about having Walt for a best friend, Ray thinks, as he sits at home, waiting on school to be over so that he can actually talk to Walt, is that he’ll never bring it up again, and, if he does act any different, it’s not something that Ray picks up on.
--
“Homes,” Ray calls, casually sitting between a bush and a tree like it was a normal spot for people to sit in the park rather than the bench twenty feet away. “Maggie had puppies.”
“Would you look at that,” Walt laughs, having gotten a view of the tiny animals over Ray’s shoulder. Though the puppies do things to his heartstrings he’ll never admit, particularly as a fourteen, almost fifteen, year old, he laughs because he spots one slightly separate from the rest.
“No fucking way. We went all over this park. We went all over everywhere.” But there, next to the separate puppy are Ray’s shades, which he has devoted hours to lamenting into Walt’s tortured ears.
“Not bad for having been missing around a year, huh?” Walt asks, letting his fingers ghost over the puppy.
“Hell yeah,” Ray grins that Ray grin of his and slips them on. And, really, Walt thinks, it looks about the same. It was Ray, either way, whether they were caked in dirt or not. “Your ma’s crazy, Pimp Shades, but me and ole’ Walt here’ll make sure you outlive all your brothers and sisters.”
It takes Walt a moment to realize that Ray’s talking to the puppy that’d been lying near his glasses.
--
“Ice cream?” Walt asks, through his slight stupor because he can’t focus on anything except how decidedly depressed he is and he doesn’t think he heard Ray right.
“Walt, why can’t we just eat ice cream and be bros while we wait on my birthday to get here?” Walt shakes his head and realizes now that he shouldn’t have drunk anything. “I fucking love ice cream.”
“I know.” He wonders why he didn’t remember that alcohol was a depressant until after he’d had a few.
He doesn’t realizes that he’s stopped in the middle of the street until Ray whines his name, followed by a yell of screaming for ice cream.
--
“Hey, Pimp Shades, what’s your honest opinion on Walt?” Ray talks to the puppy so casually sometimes that Walt wonders whether Ray’s aware that he’s a dog, not a person, and worries, occasionally, whether Ray could use more friends if he was talking to a dog.
That he’d named Pimp Shades, nonetheless.
“I mean, I know he’s uptight most of the time, but he’s a pretty great best friend, right?” Pimp Shades yips from his spot on Ray’s chest and Ray lifts a hand to scratch his ears.
“Yeah, you’re right, pretty great,” Ray states, and it takes a minute for Walt to register that Ray’s put his lips on the golden fur in front of him, because Ray didn’t do that kind of thing ever. So he almost misses the added whisper, “So how do I tell him then?”
Walt learned early in their friendship that curiosity wasn’t worth it and Ray would tell him when he wanted to tell him. So if it wasn’t until weeks later that Ray finally caved, Walt wasn’t surprised.
Besides, Ray couldn’t have known he was standing just out of his line of sight.
--
“This is the best idea ever,” Ray gives Walt that Ray grin of his and Walt wants to cry but he swallows the lump in his throat because he’s fifteen for fuck’s sake, and fifteen year olds don’t cry.
“It’s just ice cream, Ray, it’s not like you’ll be regaling anyone with the wild story of your drunken night on the town,” Walt mutters, using the toe of his shoe to make the swing he was sitting on sway ever so slightly. Not too much, because he was still a little fuzzy, so he couldn’t imagine how Ray was swinging to and fro like it was nothing. There was no way Ray was less drunk than he was.
“It’s ice cream between us, Walt, before I turn sixteen,” Ray pumps himself higher to get a better view of the park. “We’re on a swing set. It’s fucking brilliant.”
Walt shakes his head, and thinks about threatening bodily harm if Ray manages to drop ice cream on him. But instead Walt catches Ray’s eye as their swings pass each other, and all Walt can manage is a simple question of “Why?”
--
“Come on, it’s not like I’ll be gone forever,” Ray mutters, his fist connecting with Walt’s arm, before pulling him against him because they’d long since lost their personal boundaries. “I actually kind of like this backwards state.”
“Who are you calling backwards, you sideways hick?” Walt grumbles, and Ray throws his head back with a laugh.
“Maybe you should come to Missouri, instead. See how to really live.” Walt can still hear the chuckle in his voice and knows that he’s thinking about that day he’d been compared to a puppy in their English class and Ray had casually called him Pimp Shades every now and then.
Walt didn’t know, however, that Ray sometimes called Pimp Shades Walt. Because there were still some things that Walt Hasser didn’t know about Ray Person, no matter how much he wanted to.
“I’ll keep an eye out for your arrest in the news.”
“Come on, Walt, you know me better than that,” Ray grabs at his heart in offense. “You’d be my call. And then they’d offer me some kind of deal because I’m me.”
“I’m sure that’ll astonish them. They’ll probably just tell you that you can join the Navy or something instead of going to prison.” Walt lifts a brow; as Ray slips his shades down to cover his eyes.
“Fuck the Navy, Walt, I’d be a Marine.” Ray puts a finger in his chest, and Walt takes a moment to notice how astoundingly lengthy his fingers are. “And you, Walt Hasser, will join up to spend time with your dear ole’ pal, Ray Ray.”
“Of course I will.” Walt’s tone is sarcastic, but somewhere in the back of his mind he can see them, out fighting for whatever they’d be fighting for.
Probably, Walt thinks, they’d be stuck fighting for each other.
--
“Come on, Pimp Shades,” Walt rolls his eyes as Ray calls him by the puppy’s name, grabbing at his wrist and leading him over to the sandbox.
“No,” Walt states, as Ray crosses over and sits down in the sand.
“We’re not playing,” Ray replies, “I’m tired. Just lay down, Walt.” When Walt hesitates, Ray doesn’t, “It’s almost my birthday.”
And that’s how Walt finds himself staring blearily down at Ray’s head. They’d finished their ice cream, and Ray was leaving in the morning, and Walt would be all alone again. And his heart’s heavier than the universe itself.
They’d been too busy waiting for Ray’s birthday to notice that’d it’d come already. And so Walt whispers a Happy Birthday to Ray’s head and lets himself fall asleep in the sandbox, with his best friend’s head on his chest.
And if Walt cries into Pimp Shade’s fur in the morning, when Ray’s gone back to Missouri, well, he wouldn’t be ashamed to admit that to anyone.