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[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton was making a chair. Woodworking had always been a hobby of his, and while he was by no means an expert, he could usually turn out simple furniture with clean lines and sturdy frames. He'd learnt as much from a childhood tendency to take things apart and put them back together again as he had from any person - just as he'd learnt that once

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[nothingtomiss]

At home, it had been engines. In Iraq, it had been his Humvee. As much as anyone might, Brad understands the medetative quality of taking something apart and putting it back together. He's almost loathe to interrupt Lipton, if only because it used to piss him off so much when Rudy used to do it.

Still, things change and the world moves on apace.

"Hey, man," he says. "I think it's already dead."

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton's eyes flicked up to Brad and he gave a small nod before returning to the work at hand, but he softened his grip a little. Any other day he might respond with a half-smile and a slighly embarassed joke, but not today. He wasn't sure how he felt about being interupted - he used to be a loner, and was sure that was how he functioned best, but nowadays he wasn't sure. How could he be, when it was having a woman avoid him that had him so messed up?

"Pass me that, yeah?" He asked, gesturing at the few already-sanded pieces of wood at Brad's foot.

[nothingtomiss]

Brad bends and hefts the wood, feeling the weight of it, the pleasing shape before he brings it over and holds it out. He tilts his head.

"What're you working on?"

[niceofyoutoask]

"A chair," Lipton explained, nodding to the finished version to his right. He tried the rounded pieces that would make up the back with the base. He paused, looking up at Brad. "You don't happen to need one, do you?"

[nothingtomiss]

"Me, no," says Brad, crouching down to study the work better, head tilted on one side. "My place came fully furnished. But I bet Terry would love one, if you're just giving them away."

[niceofyoutoask]

"I don't have anywhere to put them." Lipton said with a shrug, and thought absurdly for a moment that there was something calming about Brad's presence. God knows what, but there it was.

"There's some extra wood over there if you wanted to make something yourself." It would be a fair estimate to say he'd gone to town on the wood-chopping.

[nothingtomiss]

"Engines, I know. Bikes, I know. Wood, I'm pretty shitty with, I imagine," says Brad, grinning, rubbing one thumb against the smooth line of the wood. It really is beautiful work.

"You need to do more teaching that it's worth."

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton just nodded. Any other time he might've offered anyway, because that was just the sort of guy he was, but he wasn't in the mood for it, not today.

"I've seen pictures of 20th century automobiles. Are they as different inside as they are on the out?" Cars had always fascinated him, but after the accident that had killed his father and left his mother paralyzed there hadn't exactly been a family car for him to tinker around with.

[nothingtomiss]

"Oh, yeah," says Brad, nodding "Absolutely. World of difference. The old machines, though. You just...they were art, you know? I've got a 1916 Indian Powerplus in my lockup in my lockup in San Diego. It's gorgeous."

[niceofyoutoask]

"Motorcycle man, huh?" Lipton grinned, despite everything, terribly amused that Brad could own a bike from four years before he was born. And not a bad bike to have, either. "Chain drive and side-valve V-twin engine, right?

[nothingtomiss]

"Born and bred." He says it with not a little hint of pride. It's somtehing that he got from his father, if not through blood then definitely through experience. Nurture, not nature. Something like that.

"And that's exactly right."
He can't contain the pure pleasure in his grin.

[niceofyoutoask]

"My buddies More and Malakey stole an Indian 640 from the supply depot at Utah Beach, sidecar and everything." This was safe conversation, and he jumped at a chance to talk about something so neutral.

"They snuck it back to England and had it for almost two months before the supply officer could confiscate it because we were jumping into Holland."

[nothingtomiss]

"That's...spectacular," says Brad, and he really genuinely means it. Brad Colbert is rarely impressed by anyone he's not sleeping with or serving with but that is absolutely spectacular.

"And I just had to stop my RTO from pocketing iraqi weed."

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton shook his head, smiling, by now well used to the multitude of things that Easy had gotten it's hands on. Booze, canned fruit, prophylactic kits. Not to mention the stories he'd heard about the looting they'd done once they'd reached Germany.

"They started a trend - Bill Guarnere stole a motorbike in Holland, got shot in the leg, and had to be evaced back to England with his entire leg in a cast." Lipton said with a wry smile. "Not quite so lucky, but I can understand the temptation."

[nothingtomiss]

"Jesus."

Brad's grinning all over his face by this point, and he rubs one hand throug hair that's more than regulation length by now.

"No wonder you guys are sort of legendary."

[niceofyoutoask]

"Honestly, I don't know if that's a good thing." Lipton said thoughtfully, smiling, but it was more of a relief than he could put in to words that they won, that it hadn't all been for nothing, that all those boys who hadn't made it would be remembered by someone.