fic: Beautiful Complications
recipient: schlicky
author: meeks00
title: Beautiful Complications
pairing: Colbert/Person
rating: R
word count: ~5,700
summary/warnings: When Brad reached out, the wingtips ruffled, barely grazing his hand before moving out of reach.
author notes: Disjointed fic is disjointed. Procrastination is not key. schlicky, baby, I owe you a new one. ♥ Prompts: 1. This picture; 2. “Manhattan” by Say Anything (title is from this song). The quote at the end is attributed to an old Spanish proverb. Also, below is a grungy Photoshop manipulation that I posted for J a bit ago, which prematurely gave up my game. At least it worked as another prompt to get this sucker finished. Feel free to take the picture as my submission as opposed to the smattering of words below it. ;)
__
Beautiful Complications
I.
No flashing lights yet, just darkness and the smell of gasoline on wet pavement. Brad knelt in the grass nearby, padded leather-clad knees sinking into the soil as he surveyed the wreck. His bike was there, but it wasn’t the only thing broken.
One wing lay slightly askew, bent at an angle Brad knew was wrong even without express knowledge of avian anatomy. The feathers closest to the torso were so black they looked blue, but even still the blood showed there in the dark, streaming thickly from where the left wing looked like it had almost broken off completely from the root bone.
He tugged his gloves off, the need to touch making his fingers itch.
Along the edges of each wing, the feathers were thick and long, a pristine white made brighter still against the darker root feathers. When he reached out, the wingtips ruffled, feathers barely grazing his hand before moving out of reach. They felt like humid air against the pads of his fingers.
That they felt real didn’t help to dispel the notion that Brad had perhaps sustained a concussion during the crash.
“They don’t like it when you stare at them.” Ray’s voice was slurred, as if he was drunk or exhausted, making Brad’s mind reel with a sense of urgency he wasn’t accustomed to feeling in the civilian world. “Didn’t your momma teach you any manners?” Ray glanced over his shoulder, the right wing drooping lower as he did so, providing Brad with visual access to Ray’s scraped face.
Brad withdrew his hand. “You’re not telling me they’re sentient,” he said, raising a brow, hoping that as long as Ray kept talking, Brad might have time to figure out how to proceed.
“Bitch, please,” Ray scoffed, eying him for a moment longer before sinking bonelessly back down to the ground. He drew his arm around and buried his face in the crook of the elbow.
“Don’t fall asleep, Ray,” Brad warned.
Ray just hummed noncommittally and went on. “Think of ‘em as heavenly, gigantic knockers. Gorgeous, sure, but don’t stare like a fuckwit or I will cut you.”
“You could try.”
Ray just shook his head, and the good wing ruffled slightly, shedding a few feathers. “There is no try,” he muttered. “Just - ” he trailed off.
Brad shot a glance at his bike behind him where it lay in a mangled heap leaking life liquids across the wet, gravelly pavement of the shoulder.
If not for Ray, Brad might’ve been in a similar state. Instead, it was Ray lying there, broken in a way Brad wasn’t sure he, or anyone else for that matter, could fix.
When he turned back, Ray remained face-down in the dirt, already soaking wet in the light drizzle. The R1 wasn’t going anywhere soon. Worse still was that whatever was left of Brad’s small first aid kit in the seat compartment was too damaged for the impromptu field dressing he might’ve been able to put together.
He stood and unzipped his jacket, placing it lightly over Ray’s wings and doing his best to ignore the pained sounds drawn by the added weight.
“Wassat? ’re you buryin’ me alive?” Ray asked, reaching sluggishly around to push the jacket off. His wings twitched slightly beneath the insufficient cover, and his voice was fainter than before. “Fucker. Ouch.”
Brad steadfastly pulled the jacket over the wings again and didn’t respond. Over time, he’d learned that compartmentalizing during moments of extreme duress was vital to completing an objective. “Don’t move, Ray, and don’t fuckin’ let anyone see you until I get back. You copy?”
“No copy. Where you goin’?”
“To haul you home in Hasser’s hick-mobile, unless you want me to call a medic, with you in the state you’re currently in.”
Ray lifted his head to look at him with an uncharacteristically worried look. “No. No. No,” he repeated, and Brad held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture to calm him down again. “You take your time,” Ray said quickly, dropping his head again. “‘ll be fine in the mornin’. Really.”
Brad hesitated for only a moment longer before turning and setting off at an enduring sprint.
__
II.
There were more tattoos over Ray’s arms than Brad remembered. Then again, there were two more appendages adorning Ray’s back as well.
Brad had cut Ray’s shirt so he could more effectively examine the injury and bandage the wing, and he saw that splashes of ink adorned Ray’s chest, the colors seeping over his sides to his back and onto his arms.
Brad reached out to touch the streaks of red that crossed parallel to the ribs on Ray’s side. He could have sworn they moved beneath his fingers.
“If you were anyone else, I’d tell you to quite bad touching me while I’m sleepin’,” Ray said, his voice muffled by the pillow he pressed his face into.
Brad slowly withdrew his hand.
Ray seemed to ignore him in favor of rolling lazily onto his side and rubbing his eyes, the motions reminiscent of a child. For some reason, Brad felt and odd stirring heat of irritation pool in his gut until Ray blinked at him, a closed-mouthed smile spreading across his face.
It was a warm grin, as if nothing strange had occurred last night. Seeing it made Brad think of crooked teeth and familiar laughter and secrets withheld, all locked behind the dimpled parentheses of that tight-lipped smile.
After OIF, even just before it, Brad had thought he knew all there was to know about his RTO, though the man did appear to easily offer up his entire life story, embellished with too many details. Perhaps, in retrospect, that should have been suspect enough.
Attempting to remain impassive, Brad said, “So much for fine in the morning.” He jerked his chin at the bandage he’d wrapped around the injured wing.
Ray's smile disappeared as sharply as Brad’s tone had come across. Brad pretended that he didn’t feel an inch of regret at its loss.
Then the things began twitching back and forth behind Ray in waves of rippling white and gray feathers, as if restless. When Brad pushed off the side of the bed to get away from them, they spread outward, lifting Ray from where he had pushed himself up into a sitting position so he was on his feet as well. The injured wing drooped, and Ray winced.
Brad eyed the wings as they ruffled down to the tips, yet more feathers falling.
“You're - uh - seeing somethin' strange, here, aren't you,” Ray said, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets.
Brad was careful to keep his expression clear. “I think we can firmly establish for the record that I am not fucking blind, Ray.”
“But you shouldn't be able to - ”
“Look around,” Brad cut in. “What do you see?”
Ray visibly forced himself to relax his shoulders, his wings sagging, but Brad could still tell that his body was wrought with tension. “Your shit,” Ray said nonchalantly. “It’s everywhere. Your shirts are the size of country flags, dude.”
“What I see here are the products of your shedding,” Brad corrected, nodding his head at the white and gray feather clumps on the floor and on the bed.
Ray was silent for a moment. Then he cracked another grin that was too wide, making his face seem stretched, a kind of smile that on anyone else's face would look like fear. “I think the correct term here would be ‘molting.’ You just got grammer-ed, you over-educated gigantor,” he replied, taking a step back. When Brad refused to comment, Ray went on, “Look, I was supposed to be fine in the morning, and then I was just gonna pretend you had a concussion or something, but it seems to me that shit ain’t gonna fly, huh.”
“No.”
“Right.”
Brad eyed him carefully, feeling as if they were at a stalemate here, feeling outnumbered with Ray’s wings twitching behind him. “I don’t know what ill-advised plan you had in mind last night when you knocked me off my bike,” he said, “but you are obviously not indestructible, despite the existence of those - ” He cut himself off, then asked, “What the hell were you trying to accomplish?”
Looking surprised, Ray said, “Colbert, are you actually worried about me? I was kind of expecting you to be armed to the teeth, waving around your KA-BAR.” He paused, then he frowned. “And I saved your life, motherfucker. You were going to crash and burn. You should be kissing my ass and writing odes to my wings, not giving me your prettiest little bitch face.”
Brad thought about the moment on the road, the slip of his wheels on rain-slick pavement, the distinct feeling of losing control, the moment he was knocked off his bike before he ran off the road.
It had been warm, he remembered, just before they crash-landed.
“How did you know to be there?” he asked.
Ray’s face went blank, and if by rote he responded, “Right place, right ti- ”
“Don’t give me that bullshit command response,” Brad snapped. “You hit me right before I crashed. You have motherfucking wings sprouting from your back!”
“It's complicated!” Ray exclaimed. He turned on his heel and headed toward the hallway door. “So, I'm starving. You starving?” His wings curled inward toward his spine so he could fit through the doorway, and Brad was forced to follow him out to the kitchen.
“Ray,” Brad said, trying to bring his tone down. “Explain.”
“So demanding. Jeez.” Ray glanced over his shoulder and wings, and something on Brad's face must have shown because he stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “Look, I just know when shit's about to go down around you, OK? I'm - I've been watching over you. Kind of.”
“Are you human?”
“Um. Define human?”
Brad glared. “That'd be a negative. What are you then? Don't you fuckin' tell me you're some kind of angel.”
Ray forced a laugh, but it sounded cracked, too high-pitched and rough. “You disillusioned Hebrew motherfucker. I just said I watch over you, all right? That's it. Don't try to put labels on this shit. You'll just give yourself some sort of existential crisis.” At Brad's expression, Ray laughed again, this time with a little more ease. “OK, maybe not you.”
“And the wings?”
As if independently conscious of being referred to, the wings twitched. Ray turned and leaned lightly against the countertop, folding his arms over the colorful tattoos across his chest. “Last night I crashed into you, using these fluffy bastards like airbags because your two-wheeled death machine obviously doesn't come with anything so fail-safe. What do you think?”
Brad just looked at him, waiting, and Ray uncrossed his arms to rub his palms over his temples in agitation.
“Quit lookin' at me like that! What, you think I know everything? Well, I don't. I don't know shit all about anything. I saved your life, man. That's all there is to it, really. It's what I'm supposed - I just knew to be there, like I have an internal Bradley wiretap or something, and - please,” Ray said, shrugging as he looked up at Brad. “That's all, OK?”
Brad didn't know how to respond to that, to the thought of Ray being there for that sole reason - perhaps here at all for that reason alone. He wanted to know more, but one glance told him that Ray was reaching the end of some sort of tether. His wings were hanging low, his face was pale, and he was biting down on his bottom lip.
When the silence grew too long, Ray made a show of planting his hands on his hips in defiance. “You know, you should apply to be a SERE instructor. Have a concentration in interrogation tactics.” He held up a hand. “No. Scratch that. Intimidation tactics, you great looming fucker.”
Brad though back to last night again, the rain, the speed, the loss of control, the warmth before the crash - and for a moment, yes, he felt he could let it go for just a while. He made himself walk over to the cabinet with the dishware, ignoring Ray's slight movement backwards. “You’re in the way,” he said, forcing a light tone. Nudging the wing in front of the cabinet hesitantly to the side with the back of his hand, he felt again the sensation of something too soft to describe, like tangible, warm air.
“Sorry,” Ray quickly replied, sounding anything but. He tilted his head slightly, a light grin spreading across his face as if in thanks for dropping the conversation, though his wing remained obstructing the cabinet.
More firmly this time, Brad used the broad flat of his hand to move the wing, felt frail bones past the feathers, felt their warmth spread through his arm and found that he didn’t want to pull his hand away at the sensation.
“Since we’ve apparently reached second base, with you touching my naughty bits and all, does this mean you are makin' me some breakfast?”
Brad released the wing, feeling his stomach drop low, skin going hot and cold as he watched the wings beat twice and then settle.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” Ray said, batting his eyelashes up at him.
“Christ,” Brad swore, but the corners of his lips began to tug upward.
Ray laughed, his normally motionless wings spreading outward behind him, fan-like and regal. He was partially lifted off the floor as they twitched just once more. “Kidding,” he said. “Not about breakfast though. I’m starving.”
“Are you even required to eat to live?”
Ray appeared to consider this as he drew his wings closer to his body so Brad could finally get past. “I know that I like to eat. Does that count?”
Brad reached into the cabinet, and though he said, “No,” he surfaced with two plates.
Ray’s eyes lit on them, and he raised his eyebrows up and down. “You like me,” he sang tauntingly.
The edge of the wing closest brushed against Brad’s cheek as he turned toward the stove. It felt so foreign, yet filled with warmth. He couldn’t bring himself to disagree.
__
III.
Ray ate a big stack of pancakes, dribbling syrup down his chin and a bit on his chest, grinning all the while. He said that this sort of shit gave him faith in humanity, made it worth it to stick around. Brad replied that he should’ve known Ray wasn’t strictly human based on the eating habits alone, and Ray said to fuck off.
Afterward, Brad ordered Ray back into the bedroom so he could change the dressing on Ray's injured wing.
“I”m supposed to look after you, OK? I'll be fine,” Ray protested.
“You said that last night,” Brad replied. He nudged Ray's chest until he sat on the bed. “But it looks worse now than it did then, so forgive me if I don't believe you.”
Ray craned his neck to look at the injury, face contorting exaggeratedly as Brad slowly peeled away the bandage. The bleeding had stopped, but the feathers surrounding the root bone had begun to fall, more of the white and gray feathers turning darker.
Brad searched Ray's face for a hint of what that might mean. “Time to call Doc?” he suggested, and Ray shook his head. “A vet?” he asked drily.
That, at least, got a soft laugh, but it didn't dispel the worry lines that creased Ray's forehead. The sight of even a hint of concern now made Brad want to distract Ray from the issue. When days without sleep and knowledge of being in a kill zone never did much to dispel Ray's particular brand of calm, Brad feared what the symptoms might mean.
He finished re-wrapping the wing, running a hand carefully over the wingtip, then lightly over the ink-covered skin just above the bandage.
If Ray minded, he for once didn’t open his mouth to protest.
So Brad took his time, smoothing his fingertips over symbols and swirls, over the lines of the new tattoos and the old ones he was familiar with.
He knew his hands were cold, but as with most situations, casual and dire alike, they were steady. Ray’s skin, on the other hand, was warm, almost hot, soft like it was all new and untouched.
The thought sent a rush through Brad’s chest that he did his best to keep from showing on his face.
The thing was, when in the field, they didn’t touch.
The U.S. Marine Corps may have been made up of the most homoerotic sons of bitches on the planet, markedly so among Recon Marines, but contact mostly came in the form of hand-to-hand exercises and rough-housing.
If Brad had thought about it before, of doing this before - to Ray - outside of that context, well.
Ray just watched, face blank as Brad traced over the changing splashes of ink. Brad hadn’t imagined it earlier. The tattoos moved beneath his fingers, reacting, interacting.
Color began to spread over Ray’s neck, over his collar, a light shade of pink that had nothing to do with the strange, moving tattoos. They seemed more associated with other symptoms, like Ray’s irregular breathing, the intermittent bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed nervously, the shuffle of his lower wingtips against the bed sheets.
“You freaked out enough yet?” Ray asked suddenly. His voice sounded scraped raw, as if he hadn’t meant to actually speak. That didn’t stop him from continuing. “This about the time you decide you’re gonna deal with me in a good thanks-for-saving-my-life way, or in a bad up-in-arms-against-the-winged-thing way? Also, dude, your hands are cold.”
Brad was well-versed in Ray’s particular brand of word vomit. He knew how Ray’s chatter turned into speeches when he had a captivated audience, how it became a continuous spool of drivel when he was talking just to stay awake.
He might’ve said a lot of shit, but his words rarely came without significant meaning, dropping clues more about about his state of mind than whatever subject he happened to latch onto at a given moment.
So this time, as Ray said, “You could’ve rubbed those baseball mitts together a bit, gotten some lotion or something too, you know, to keep my skin all fresh and baby soft,” Brad knew Ray was filling in the silence with something lighter to cover up his uncertainty.
“How have I never noticed these?” Brad asked, attempting to find a topic to calm Ray down.
Ray shivered as Brad slid his palm up over a larger blue and yellow swirl across his shoulder. It twisted, colors inverting once he passed over it, sliding across the skin as if chasing his hand. “They're hidden. Well, usually. They don't - don't normally move like that.” Brad felt his heart drumming in his chest in response to the hitch in Ray's breathing.
“Like your wings?”
“Yeah. They're hidden too. Not tangible, but they're there all the same. I can feel them.”
Brad was quiet a moment, could tell Ray was still tense below his hands, but there was nothing for it. “Before me,” Brad asked, “who did you watch over?”
“What?” Ray asked with a choked laugh, dropping his eyes to where he twisted the bed sheet between his fingers. “You make it sound like - I’m not some kind of pervert! Well, OK, so I’m maybe a pervert just a little, but don’t try and tell me that’s not normal. And frankly, Brad, I’m insulted that you’d accuse me of - ”
“Ray.”
“- that you’d think I’d - that you - ” His wings lifted, feathers ruffling downward as if in a wave, the injured wing visibly stretching the bandage meant to keep it still.
“Ray.” Brad wrapped his hand around the red and blue illustrations on Ray’s forearm, watched as they began to writhe beneath his grip. He might’ve sworn his own skin became tinged with color if he hadn’t looked into Ray’s wide eyes. “Who did you watch over before me?”
Ray didn’t speak for a moment, and then he huffed out a long, exasperated sigh. “Nobody,” he replied, voice turning petulant.
“There had to have been somebody, before me,” Brad insisted, squeezing Ray’s arm a bit tighter. For some reason, the thought made him hot, made him angry, like someone had taken something that was his.
Ray tugged at his arm half-heartedly, as if not actually interested in freeing himself, but his voice when he spoke was low and defensive. “You callin’ me a liar, motherfucker? I said nobody.”
“You weren’t there before I went to Afghanistan, where I met you,” Brad said evenly.
Ray frowned. “I was too around.”
Brad shook his head. “You weren’t there while I was growing up or in military school. I know. I would remember you.”
At that, Ray ducked his head down, but Brad still saw how the flush on his chest spread over his face, over the rise of his cheekbones. “Yeah. I’ll admit I’m pretty unforgettable.” When he looked up again, his dimples were showing.
This time, instead of locking secrets down behind the veritable safe of a closed-mouth smile, Brad saw the line of Ray’s teeth as he allowed a small grin to surface.
“Look, there was nobody else - ever - OK? You just didn't know I was there,” he insisted. Then more quietly, “And there won’t be anyone else after you either.”
“Nobody?”
Ray blew his breath through his teeth, then huffed out a resigned-sounding laugh as he scooted closer, pressing more of his skin against Brad’s hand, his arm. The tattoos seemed to swarm and come alive again beneath Brad’s fingers, tendrils of blue and black and red and yellow ink seeping across and into Brad’s own skin momentarily as if to mimic the movement of the warmth he felt spread from the touch.
“No,” Ray said simply, glancing up at him from beneath dark eyelashes. “It's just you.”
__
IV.
“I need a cigarette,” Ray called out.
Brad headed into the bedroom where Ray was sprawled, taking up almost every inch of the extra-long king bed, his wiry frame in a line diagonally across, his wings spread almost to their fullest over the duvet.
“I have my zippo,” Ray proclaimed, holding it up in one outstretched fist, “but here, see, my other hand is empty. Fetch, minion.”
“It is my to understanding,” Brad said, “that you are the one who’s to serve me.”
“That pack over there, on the side table, Bradley.”
With a bland expression, Brad walked to the table a meter from the bed, picked up the pack of cigarettes, and pegged them at Ray's sternum. Ray just coughed out a laugh as he drew out one stick and lit it while remaining comfortably prone.
Glancing around, Brad said, “Ray, I think you’re balding.”
“Excuse me?” Ray lifted his head from the pillows he’d arranged around himself. “I have a full head of luscious hair.”
“Pardon my word choice. I meant to say I think you’re molting even more now, you feather-brained cretin. If you keep this up, soon I’ll have enough feathers to make a down blanket.”
“Gross.” Ray used his wings to push up into a sitting position and then glanced over his shoulder at the wings and the space they'd just facated. Feathers were spread like a shadow where he'd been lying just a moment before. “Yeah, that doesn't look good.”
“Are you sick or something?”
When Ray didn't answer, Brad sat at the end of the bed, watching as Ray began toying with a handful of his molted feathers. Where they'd all once been white, now they were dark - black closest to the root bone, dark gray fanning outward. He reached out, more familiar with the wings now after so many sequestered days. He brushed his fingers among the thinning layers, a few feathers coming free in his hands.
Ray reached over and snatched them away. “Quit stealing those. They’re fallin’ out enough on their own already.”
“Might be all the smoking,” Brad suggested, half in jest, but he did eye the smoking cigarette drooping from between Ray’s lips.
Ray began flicking it down his denim-clad thigh, seemingly restless. “Doubtful.”
“Could be all the swearing.”
“Fuck you.”
“The inbreeding.”
“No. You know that's not even - just no.”
“Then what is it?”
Ray threw the lighter at the wall and leapt up, his wings swishing outward and lifting him only a few inches before dropping him back onto his feet - seemingly less on purpose than due to weakness. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be losing my wings, would I?” he yelled.
“Losing them?” Brad asked, feeling his spine stiffen in alarm.
Ray cut his eyes at him, his wings jerking back once like he was preparing for flight, but they just settled again, the movement resonating with defeat. His lips were pressed together, and Brad thought Ray hadn't meant to say anything. He felt cold wind in his chest at the thought that Ray would keep more from him, that he felt he had to keep this all a secret, even after the truth about his wings, about why he was here, had already surfaced.
“Ray,” Brad said quietly. “What is it?”
Shaking his head, Ray scooted back against the headboard. After a moment, he said, his voice cracking, “You think I’m supposed to lose all my feathers? You think they’re supposed to turn black like this?” He reached back toward his wings as if for reassurance, and they curled forward, effectively hiding him from sight as they wrapped around him. “I can feel it, Brad.”
“Feel what?”
Brad had known something was wrong when the wing didn't heal as Ray insisted it would. He'd known that something was wrong when more feathers continued to fall and Ray began gathering up each one, as if somehow he might be able to reaffix them.
“Ray?” Brad sat on the side of the bed.
Ray had watched over him, intervening in protection, and here Brad could only watch, unsure what to do to help in return.
Ray's wings parted only slightly when the bed sunk beneath Brad's weight.
“It's like they're being hidden again,” Ray said quietly. “But I feel them less. I don't know how to explain it.”
“Why would they disappear?”
Ray frowned down at his hands, his wings curling more tightly around him until Brad smoothed a hand over the flat plane of the one closest to him. It expanded outward, allowing him in, so he took it as an invitation and moved closer. The tattoos on Ray's arm moved slightly as he drew nearer, as if sensing him now even without his touch.
“Ray?”
“Seems like time might be up,” he muttered. “Or something.”
“What does that mean?”
Ray threw his hands up. “How the fuck should I know? It just feels like that. Like - like after last night, I'm past my fuckin' shelf life. The ticker's up. Battery's about to expire.”
“So, what, you'll be leave, just like that?”
Ray scrubbed his hands over his hair, and Brad reached out to grasp his wrists, pulling them down so he could watch Ray's face. “Not leave, exactly. Just gone.” Brad's throat seemed to tighten, and Ray quickly said, “Not - not gone gone. But gone, like before.”
“Before,” Brad repeated hollowly. “As in before my last tour?”
“Maybe. Yeah,” Ray mumbled, tugging at his wrists.
Brad tightened his grip. “Bullshit.”
Ray's eyebrows rose in apparent indignation. “Your face is bullshit!” His wings fluttered behind him, softly, as if, despite Ray's defensive posture, they couldn't quite muster up the energy to express the same force of feeling. “You’re not dead, are you? No. Because you’ve got your ol’ pal here makin’ sure you're eating your Jalepeno MREs and not getting fucked by poor-ass command decisions.”
“I can take care of myself,” Brad said, voice low.
Ray scoffed. “Please. You're a liability to yourself. You and your stupid motorcycle and your stupid career choice and your stupid everything. You'd die without me watching over you!”
“Then why would you leave?”
Ray scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I'm only here in the first place because I felt I had to be. I just felt it, Brad. That might've been because last night might've been it, for you, for me by extension. Or it might be that the whole clusterfuck of OIF is over and done, or it could be somethin' stupid like the pancakes this morning killing your arteries or some shit but - it's over. I can just feel it ending.”
Brad didn't say it, but he thought he could feel it too.
Ray looked up then. “I didn't say I wanted to leave, Brad.”
“Then what do you want, Ray?” Brad asked.
For that one, Ray didn't seem to have an answer. He dropped his eyes and stared at the grip Brad had on his wrists, but for the life of him Brad couldn't - wouldn't - let go. He couldn’t help but hold on, suddenly and undeniably afraid, for the first time in a long time, that this was it. That this was one of those moments in life that summarily changed everything about someone or led to the loss of everything by morning, and the answer to it all was in his hands, here, now.
And again, as Ray's wings began to beat a slow rhythm behind him, the feathers making soft whispering sounds like a language of their own, Brad thought back to the moment on the road when he discovered Ray in the dark and in the rain - slipping and feeling his insides twist with the loss of control; the knowledge that he would make it or he wouldn't once he crashed; the warmth of being wrapped up entirely by those wings just before the fall.
He found himself letting go of Ray's wrists, fingers forcibly pried away by will alone, warmth leeching from his skin as cold rushed in its place. The white marks from the pressure of his grip were once again flooded with red, colored ink spreading outward from where they'd converged beneath his touch.
He'd let go expecting Ray to move away, but instead Ray moved closer, turning on the bed so his wings were fanned out behind him, his knees pressing into Brad's thigh.
Ray reached out to placed his hands on either side of Brad's face, leaning in close to press their foreheads together, his eyes slipping closed.
“I want this. For as long as I can have it,” he said fiercely.
Brad brought his hands up and drew him nearer, burying himself in the warmth of Ray's skin, dark, soft, wilting wings slowly enfolding them both in a closure of warmth.
__
V.
“Take what you want and pay for it, says God.”
Brad turned toward Ray, the pillow cold against his cheek, but he saw that Ray’s eyes were still closed.
He waited for something, anything else, but Ray had either fallen back asleep or had never fully woken in the first place.
Looking at the ceiling, Brad felt as if he was waiting - for an attack, for a loss, for answers, for the night to steal away what he felt he'd found, but the night went by without another sound, without movement, the bedside clock's numbers continuing to climb and fall in neon lights.
He rolled over fully and watched Ray's chest move, the tattoos too dark to make out in the night, but he imagined they still moved for him as he reached out to lightly run the pads of his fingers over Ray's arm.
“Stay,” Brad said quietly. He tried to think of a way to explain what he meant, feeling as if the words could be lost in the darkness, released like hefting a burden from his shoulders if he could only say anything. But all he could do was repeat, “Stay, just stay,” again, and again, as if it could be that simple.
He reached out, felt the tightness in his chest ease just a little when Ray rested more heavily against him. Brad traced his fingers over tattooed skin, though he couldn't see each one, trying to ingrain their strangeness and their newly gained familiarity into memory.
He could wait, he thought. He could take what was given and lock the moments away, if that's all he'd ever be left with.
His reached across the bed, and maybe Ray hadn't gone to sleep after all, hadn't wanted to lose time or miss anything in the night just like Brad. But all Brad knew was that Ray moved slightly away only to slide fully on top of him, warm hands leaving trails of heat across Brad's skin.
Ray's mouth was wet, tongue slick as he tasted every inch down Brad's chest until Brad drew him up, letting their legs twist together.
Brad opened his mouth to speak, to ask again, however many times he needed to, but Ray didn't give him the chance, pressing their mouths together and trapping them together in the dark and in the silence.
__
VI.
Hours later, when sunlight began to slant through the blinds, sending yellow-white lines across the sheets, Brad could still feel that unearthly warmth of hot skin against skin, a hint of humid air, and he finally felt himself drift off to sleep.
fin
author: meeks00
title: Beautiful Complications
pairing: Colbert/Person
rating: R
word count: ~5,700
summary/warnings: When Brad reached out, the wingtips ruffled, barely grazing his hand before moving out of reach.
author notes: Disjointed fic is disjointed. Procrastination is not key. schlicky, baby, I owe you a new one. ♥ Prompts: 1. This picture; 2. “Manhattan” by Say Anything (title is from this song). The quote at the end is attributed to an old Spanish proverb. Also, below is a grungy Photoshop manipulation that I posted for J a bit ago, which prematurely gave up my game. At least it worked as another prompt to get this sucker finished. Feel free to take the picture as my submission as opposed to the smattering of words below it. ;)
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Beautiful Complications
I.
No flashing lights yet, just darkness and the smell of gasoline on wet pavement. Brad knelt in the grass nearby, padded leather-clad knees sinking into the soil as he surveyed the wreck. His bike was there, but it wasn’t the only thing broken.
One wing lay slightly askew, bent at an angle Brad knew was wrong even without express knowledge of avian anatomy. The feathers closest to the torso were so black they looked blue, but even still the blood showed there in the dark, streaming thickly from where the left wing looked like it had almost broken off completely from the root bone.
He tugged his gloves off, the need to touch making his fingers itch.
Along the edges of each wing, the feathers were thick and long, a pristine white made brighter still against the darker root feathers. When he reached out, the wingtips ruffled, feathers barely grazing his hand before moving out of reach. They felt like humid air against the pads of his fingers.
That they felt real didn’t help to dispel the notion that Brad had perhaps sustained a concussion during the crash.
“They don’t like it when you stare at them.” Ray’s voice was slurred, as if he was drunk or exhausted, making Brad’s mind reel with a sense of urgency he wasn’t accustomed to feeling in the civilian world. “Didn’t your momma teach you any manners?” Ray glanced over his shoulder, the right wing drooping lower as he did so, providing Brad with visual access to Ray’s scraped face.
Brad withdrew his hand. “You’re not telling me they’re sentient,” he said, raising a brow, hoping that as long as Ray kept talking, Brad might have time to figure out how to proceed.
“Bitch, please,” Ray scoffed, eying him for a moment longer before sinking bonelessly back down to the ground. He drew his arm around and buried his face in the crook of the elbow.
“Don’t fall asleep, Ray,” Brad warned.
Ray just hummed noncommittally and went on. “Think of ‘em as heavenly, gigantic knockers. Gorgeous, sure, but don’t stare like a fuckwit or I will cut you.”
“You could try.”
Ray just shook his head, and the good wing ruffled slightly, shedding a few feathers. “There is no try,” he muttered. “Just - ” he trailed off.
Brad shot a glance at his bike behind him where it lay in a mangled heap leaking life liquids across the wet, gravelly pavement of the shoulder.
If not for Ray, Brad might’ve been in a similar state. Instead, it was Ray lying there, broken in a way Brad wasn’t sure he, or anyone else for that matter, could fix.
When he turned back, Ray remained face-down in the dirt, already soaking wet in the light drizzle. The R1 wasn’t going anywhere soon. Worse still was that whatever was left of Brad’s small first aid kit in the seat compartment was too damaged for the impromptu field dressing he might’ve been able to put together.
He stood and unzipped his jacket, placing it lightly over Ray’s wings and doing his best to ignore the pained sounds drawn by the added weight.
“Wassat? ’re you buryin’ me alive?” Ray asked, reaching sluggishly around to push the jacket off. His wings twitched slightly beneath the insufficient cover, and his voice was fainter than before. “Fucker. Ouch.”
Brad steadfastly pulled the jacket over the wings again and didn’t respond. Over time, he’d learned that compartmentalizing during moments of extreme duress was vital to completing an objective. “Don’t move, Ray, and don’t fuckin’ let anyone see you until I get back. You copy?”
“No copy. Where you goin’?”
“To haul you home in Hasser’s hick-mobile, unless you want me to call a medic, with you in the state you’re currently in.”
Ray lifted his head to look at him with an uncharacteristically worried look. “No. No. No,” he repeated, and Brad held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture to calm him down again. “You take your time,” Ray said quickly, dropping his head again. “‘ll be fine in the mornin’. Really.”
Brad hesitated for only a moment longer before turning and setting off at an enduring sprint.
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II.
There were more tattoos over Ray’s arms than Brad remembered. Then again, there were two more appendages adorning Ray’s back as well.
Brad had cut Ray’s shirt so he could more effectively examine the injury and bandage the wing, and he saw that splashes of ink adorned Ray’s chest, the colors seeping over his sides to his back and onto his arms.
Brad reached out to touch the streaks of red that crossed parallel to the ribs on Ray’s side. He could have sworn they moved beneath his fingers.
“If you were anyone else, I’d tell you to quite bad touching me while I’m sleepin’,” Ray said, his voice muffled by the pillow he pressed his face into.
Brad slowly withdrew his hand.
Ray seemed to ignore him in favor of rolling lazily onto his side and rubbing his eyes, the motions reminiscent of a child. For some reason, Brad felt and odd stirring heat of irritation pool in his gut until Ray blinked at him, a closed-mouthed smile spreading across his face.
It was a warm grin, as if nothing strange had occurred last night. Seeing it made Brad think of crooked teeth and familiar laughter and secrets withheld, all locked behind the dimpled parentheses of that tight-lipped smile.
After OIF, even just before it, Brad had thought he knew all there was to know about his RTO, though the man did appear to easily offer up his entire life story, embellished with too many details. Perhaps, in retrospect, that should have been suspect enough.
Attempting to remain impassive, Brad said, “So much for fine in the morning.” He jerked his chin at the bandage he’d wrapped around the injured wing.
Ray's smile disappeared as sharply as Brad’s tone had come across. Brad pretended that he didn’t feel an inch of regret at its loss.
Then the things began twitching back and forth behind Ray in waves of rippling white and gray feathers, as if restless. When Brad pushed off the side of the bed to get away from them, they spread outward, lifting Ray from where he had pushed himself up into a sitting position so he was on his feet as well. The injured wing drooped, and Ray winced.
Brad eyed the wings as they ruffled down to the tips, yet more feathers falling.
“You're - uh - seeing somethin' strange, here, aren't you,” Ray said, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets.
Brad was careful to keep his expression clear. “I think we can firmly establish for the record that I am not fucking blind, Ray.”
“But you shouldn't be able to - ”
“Look around,” Brad cut in. “What do you see?”
Ray visibly forced himself to relax his shoulders, his wings sagging, but Brad could still tell that his body was wrought with tension. “Your shit,” Ray said nonchalantly. “It’s everywhere. Your shirts are the size of country flags, dude.”
“What I see here are the products of your shedding,” Brad corrected, nodding his head at the white and gray feather clumps on the floor and on the bed.
Ray was silent for a moment. Then he cracked another grin that was too wide, making his face seem stretched, a kind of smile that on anyone else's face would look like fear. “I think the correct term here would be ‘molting.’ You just got grammer-ed, you over-educated gigantor,” he replied, taking a step back. When Brad refused to comment, Ray went on, “Look, I was supposed to be fine in the morning, and then I was just gonna pretend you had a concussion or something, but it seems to me that shit ain’t gonna fly, huh.”
“No.”
“Right.”
Brad eyed him carefully, feeling as if they were at a stalemate here, feeling outnumbered with Ray’s wings twitching behind him. “I don’t know what ill-advised plan you had in mind last night when you knocked me off my bike,” he said, “but you are obviously not indestructible, despite the existence of those - ” He cut himself off, then asked, “What the hell were you trying to accomplish?”
Looking surprised, Ray said, “Colbert, are you actually worried about me? I was kind of expecting you to be armed to the teeth, waving around your KA-BAR.” He paused, then he frowned. “And I saved your life, motherfucker. You were going to crash and burn. You should be kissing my ass and writing odes to my wings, not giving me your prettiest little bitch face.”
Brad thought about the moment on the road, the slip of his wheels on rain-slick pavement, the distinct feeling of losing control, the moment he was knocked off his bike before he ran off the road.
It had been warm, he remembered, just before they crash-landed.
“How did you know to be there?” he asked.
Ray’s face went blank, and if by rote he responded, “Right place, right ti- ”
“Don’t give me that bullshit command response,” Brad snapped. “You hit me right before I crashed. You have motherfucking wings sprouting from your back!”
“It's complicated!” Ray exclaimed. He turned on his heel and headed toward the hallway door. “So, I'm starving. You starving?” His wings curled inward toward his spine so he could fit through the doorway, and Brad was forced to follow him out to the kitchen.
“Ray,” Brad said, trying to bring his tone down. “Explain.”
“So demanding. Jeez.” Ray glanced over his shoulder and wings, and something on Brad's face must have shown because he stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “Look, I just know when shit's about to go down around you, OK? I'm - I've been watching over you. Kind of.”
“Are you human?”
“Um. Define human?”
Brad glared. “That'd be a negative. What are you then? Don't you fuckin' tell me you're some kind of angel.”
Ray forced a laugh, but it sounded cracked, too high-pitched and rough. “You disillusioned Hebrew motherfucker. I just said I watch over you, all right? That's it. Don't try to put labels on this shit. You'll just give yourself some sort of existential crisis.” At Brad's expression, Ray laughed again, this time with a little more ease. “OK, maybe not you.”
“And the wings?”
As if independently conscious of being referred to, the wings twitched. Ray turned and leaned lightly against the countertop, folding his arms over the colorful tattoos across his chest. “Last night I crashed into you, using these fluffy bastards like airbags because your two-wheeled death machine obviously doesn't come with anything so fail-safe. What do you think?”
Brad just looked at him, waiting, and Ray uncrossed his arms to rub his palms over his temples in agitation.
“Quit lookin' at me like that! What, you think I know everything? Well, I don't. I don't know shit all about anything. I saved your life, man. That's all there is to it, really. It's what I'm supposed - I just knew to be there, like I have an internal Bradley wiretap or something, and - please,” Ray said, shrugging as he looked up at Brad. “That's all, OK?”
Brad didn't know how to respond to that, to the thought of Ray being there for that sole reason - perhaps here at all for that reason alone. He wanted to know more, but one glance told him that Ray was reaching the end of some sort of tether. His wings were hanging low, his face was pale, and he was biting down on his bottom lip.
When the silence grew too long, Ray made a show of planting his hands on his hips in defiance. “You know, you should apply to be a SERE instructor. Have a concentration in interrogation tactics.” He held up a hand. “No. Scratch that. Intimidation tactics, you great looming fucker.”
Brad though back to last night again, the rain, the speed, the loss of control, the warmth before the crash - and for a moment, yes, he felt he could let it go for just a while. He made himself walk over to the cabinet with the dishware, ignoring Ray's slight movement backwards. “You’re in the way,” he said, forcing a light tone. Nudging the wing in front of the cabinet hesitantly to the side with the back of his hand, he felt again the sensation of something too soft to describe, like tangible, warm air.
“Sorry,” Ray quickly replied, sounding anything but. He tilted his head slightly, a light grin spreading across his face as if in thanks for dropping the conversation, though his wing remained obstructing the cabinet.
More firmly this time, Brad used the broad flat of his hand to move the wing, felt frail bones past the feathers, felt their warmth spread through his arm and found that he didn’t want to pull his hand away at the sensation.
“Since we’ve apparently reached second base, with you touching my naughty bits and all, does this mean you are makin' me some breakfast?”
Brad released the wing, feeling his stomach drop low, skin going hot and cold as he watched the wings beat twice and then settle.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” Ray said, batting his eyelashes up at him.
“Christ,” Brad swore, but the corners of his lips began to tug upward.
Ray laughed, his normally motionless wings spreading outward behind him, fan-like and regal. He was partially lifted off the floor as they twitched just once more. “Kidding,” he said. “Not about breakfast though. I’m starving.”
“Are you even required to eat to live?”
Ray appeared to consider this as he drew his wings closer to his body so Brad could finally get past. “I know that I like to eat. Does that count?”
Brad reached into the cabinet, and though he said, “No,” he surfaced with two plates.
Ray’s eyes lit on them, and he raised his eyebrows up and down. “You like me,” he sang tauntingly.
The edge of the wing closest brushed against Brad’s cheek as he turned toward the stove. It felt so foreign, yet filled with warmth. He couldn’t bring himself to disagree.
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III.
Ray ate a big stack of pancakes, dribbling syrup down his chin and a bit on his chest, grinning all the while. He said that this sort of shit gave him faith in humanity, made it worth it to stick around. Brad replied that he should’ve known Ray wasn’t strictly human based on the eating habits alone, and Ray said to fuck off.
Afterward, Brad ordered Ray back into the bedroom so he could change the dressing on Ray's injured wing.
“I”m supposed to look after you, OK? I'll be fine,” Ray protested.
“You said that last night,” Brad replied. He nudged Ray's chest until he sat on the bed. “But it looks worse now than it did then, so forgive me if I don't believe you.”
Ray craned his neck to look at the injury, face contorting exaggeratedly as Brad slowly peeled away the bandage. The bleeding had stopped, but the feathers surrounding the root bone had begun to fall, more of the white and gray feathers turning darker.
Brad searched Ray's face for a hint of what that might mean. “Time to call Doc?” he suggested, and Ray shook his head. “A vet?” he asked drily.
That, at least, got a soft laugh, but it didn't dispel the worry lines that creased Ray's forehead. The sight of even a hint of concern now made Brad want to distract Ray from the issue. When days without sleep and knowledge of being in a kill zone never did much to dispel Ray's particular brand of calm, Brad feared what the symptoms might mean.
He finished re-wrapping the wing, running a hand carefully over the wingtip, then lightly over the ink-covered skin just above the bandage.
If Ray minded, he for once didn’t open his mouth to protest.
So Brad took his time, smoothing his fingertips over symbols and swirls, over the lines of the new tattoos and the old ones he was familiar with.
He knew his hands were cold, but as with most situations, casual and dire alike, they were steady. Ray’s skin, on the other hand, was warm, almost hot, soft like it was all new and untouched.
The thought sent a rush through Brad’s chest that he did his best to keep from showing on his face.
The thing was, when in the field, they didn’t touch.
The U.S. Marine Corps may have been made up of the most homoerotic sons of bitches on the planet, markedly so among Recon Marines, but contact mostly came in the form of hand-to-hand exercises and rough-housing.
If Brad had thought about it before, of doing this before - to Ray - outside of that context, well.
Ray just watched, face blank as Brad traced over the changing splashes of ink. Brad hadn’t imagined it earlier. The tattoos moved beneath his fingers, reacting, interacting.
Color began to spread over Ray’s neck, over his collar, a light shade of pink that had nothing to do with the strange, moving tattoos. They seemed more associated with other symptoms, like Ray’s irregular breathing, the intermittent bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed nervously, the shuffle of his lower wingtips against the bed sheets.
“You freaked out enough yet?” Ray asked suddenly. His voice sounded scraped raw, as if he hadn’t meant to actually speak. That didn’t stop him from continuing. “This about the time you decide you’re gonna deal with me in a good thanks-for-saving-my-life way, or in a bad up-in-arms-against-the-winged-thing way? Also, dude, your hands are cold.”
Brad was well-versed in Ray’s particular brand of word vomit. He knew how Ray’s chatter turned into speeches when he had a captivated audience, how it became a continuous spool of drivel when he was talking just to stay awake.
He might’ve said a lot of shit, but his words rarely came without significant meaning, dropping clues more about about his state of mind than whatever subject he happened to latch onto at a given moment.
So this time, as Ray said, “You could’ve rubbed those baseball mitts together a bit, gotten some lotion or something too, you know, to keep my skin all fresh and baby soft,” Brad knew Ray was filling in the silence with something lighter to cover up his uncertainty.
“How have I never noticed these?” Brad asked, attempting to find a topic to calm Ray down.
Ray shivered as Brad slid his palm up over a larger blue and yellow swirl across his shoulder. It twisted, colors inverting once he passed over it, sliding across the skin as if chasing his hand. “They're hidden. Well, usually. They don't - don't normally move like that.” Brad felt his heart drumming in his chest in response to the hitch in Ray's breathing.
“Like your wings?”
“Yeah. They're hidden too. Not tangible, but they're there all the same. I can feel them.”
Brad was quiet a moment, could tell Ray was still tense below his hands, but there was nothing for it. “Before me,” Brad asked, “who did you watch over?”
“What?” Ray asked with a choked laugh, dropping his eyes to where he twisted the bed sheet between his fingers. “You make it sound like - I’m not some kind of pervert! Well, OK, so I’m maybe a pervert just a little, but don’t try and tell me that’s not normal. And frankly, Brad, I’m insulted that you’d accuse me of - ”
“Ray.”
“- that you’d think I’d - that you - ” His wings lifted, feathers ruffling downward as if in a wave, the injured wing visibly stretching the bandage meant to keep it still.
“Ray.” Brad wrapped his hand around the red and blue illustrations on Ray’s forearm, watched as they began to writhe beneath his grip. He might’ve sworn his own skin became tinged with color if he hadn’t looked into Ray’s wide eyes. “Who did you watch over before me?”
Ray didn’t speak for a moment, and then he huffed out a long, exasperated sigh. “Nobody,” he replied, voice turning petulant.
“There had to have been somebody, before me,” Brad insisted, squeezing Ray’s arm a bit tighter. For some reason, the thought made him hot, made him angry, like someone had taken something that was his.
Ray tugged at his arm half-heartedly, as if not actually interested in freeing himself, but his voice when he spoke was low and defensive. “You callin’ me a liar, motherfucker? I said nobody.”
“You weren’t there before I went to Afghanistan, where I met you,” Brad said evenly.
Ray frowned. “I was too around.”
Brad shook his head. “You weren’t there while I was growing up or in military school. I know. I would remember you.”
At that, Ray ducked his head down, but Brad still saw how the flush on his chest spread over his face, over the rise of his cheekbones. “Yeah. I’ll admit I’m pretty unforgettable.” When he looked up again, his dimples were showing.
This time, instead of locking secrets down behind the veritable safe of a closed-mouth smile, Brad saw the line of Ray’s teeth as he allowed a small grin to surface.
“Look, there was nobody else - ever - OK? You just didn't know I was there,” he insisted. Then more quietly, “And there won’t be anyone else after you either.”
“Nobody?”
Ray blew his breath through his teeth, then huffed out a resigned-sounding laugh as he scooted closer, pressing more of his skin against Brad’s hand, his arm. The tattoos seemed to swarm and come alive again beneath Brad’s fingers, tendrils of blue and black and red and yellow ink seeping across and into Brad’s own skin momentarily as if to mimic the movement of the warmth he felt spread from the touch.
“No,” Ray said simply, glancing up at him from beneath dark eyelashes. “It's just you.”
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IV.
“I need a cigarette,” Ray called out.
Brad headed into the bedroom where Ray was sprawled, taking up almost every inch of the extra-long king bed, his wiry frame in a line diagonally across, his wings spread almost to their fullest over the duvet.
“I have my zippo,” Ray proclaimed, holding it up in one outstretched fist, “but here, see, my other hand is empty. Fetch, minion.”
“It is my to understanding,” Brad said, “that you are the one who’s to serve me.”
“That pack over there, on the side table, Bradley.”
With a bland expression, Brad walked to the table a meter from the bed, picked up the pack of cigarettes, and pegged them at Ray's sternum. Ray just coughed out a laugh as he drew out one stick and lit it while remaining comfortably prone.
Glancing around, Brad said, “Ray, I think you’re balding.”
“Excuse me?” Ray lifted his head from the pillows he’d arranged around himself. “I have a full head of luscious hair.”
“Pardon my word choice. I meant to say I think you’re molting even more now, you feather-brained cretin. If you keep this up, soon I’ll have enough feathers to make a down blanket.”
“Gross.” Ray used his wings to push up into a sitting position and then glanced over his shoulder at the wings and the space they'd just facated. Feathers were spread like a shadow where he'd been lying just a moment before. “Yeah, that doesn't look good.”
“Are you sick or something?”
When Ray didn't answer, Brad sat at the end of the bed, watching as Ray began toying with a handful of his molted feathers. Where they'd all once been white, now they were dark - black closest to the root bone, dark gray fanning outward. He reached out, more familiar with the wings now after so many sequestered days. He brushed his fingers among the thinning layers, a few feathers coming free in his hands.
Ray reached over and snatched them away. “Quit stealing those. They’re fallin’ out enough on their own already.”
“Might be all the smoking,” Brad suggested, half in jest, but he did eye the smoking cigarette drooping from between Ray’s lips.
Ray began flicking it down his denim-clad thigh, seemingly restless. “Doubtful.”
“Could be all the swearing.”
“Fuck you.”
“The inbreeding.”
“No. You know that's not even - just no.”
“Then what is it?”
Ray threw the lighter at the wall and leapt up, his wings swishing outward and lifting him only a few inches before dropping him back onto his feet - seemingly less on purpose than due to weakness. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be losing my wings, would I?” he yelled.
“Losing them?” Brad asked, feeling his spine stiffen in alarm.
Ray cut his eyes at him, his wings jerking back once like he was preparing for flight, but they just settled again, the movement resonating with defeat. His lips were pressed together, and Brad thought Ray hadn't meant to say anything. He felt cold wind in his chest at the thought that Ray would keep more from him, that he felt he had to keep this all a secret, even after the truth about his wings, about why he was here, had already surfaced.
“Ray,” Brad said quietly. “What is it?”
Shaking his head, Ray scooted back against the headboard. After a moment, he said, his voice cracking, “You think I’m supposed to lose all my feathers? You think they’re supposed to turn black like this?” He reached back toward his wings as if for reassurance, and they curled forward, effectively hiding him from sight as they wrapped around him. “I can feel it, Brad.”
“Feel what?”
Brad had known something was wrong when the wing didn't heal as Ray insisted it would. He'd known that something was wrong when more feathers continued to fall and Ray began gathering up each one, as if somehow he might be able to reaffix them.
“Ray?” Brad sat on the side of the bed.
Ray had watched over him, intervening in protection, and here Brad could only watch, unsure what to do to help in return.
Ray's wings parted only slightly when the bed sunk beneath Brad's weight.
“It's like they're being hidden again,” Ray said quietly. “But I feel them less. I don't know how to explain it.”
“Why would they disappear?”
Ray frowned down at his hands, his wings curling more tightly around him until Brad smoothed a hand over the flat plane of the one closest to him. It expanded outward, allowing him in, so he took it as an invitation and moved closer. The tattoos on Ray's arm moved slightly as he drew nearer, as if sensing him now even without his touch.
“Ray?”
“Seems like time might be up,” he muttered. “Or something.”
“What does that mean?”
Ray threw his hands up. “How the fuck should I know? It just feels like that. Like - like after last night, I'm past my fuckin' shelf life. The ticker's up. Battery's about to expire.”
“So, what, you'll be leave, just like that?”
Ray scrubbed his hands over his hair, and Brad reached out to grasp his wrists, pulling them down so he could watch Ray's face. “Not leave, exactly. Just gone.” Brad's throat seemed to tighten, and Ray quickly said, “Not - not gone gone. But gone, like before.”
“Before,” Brad repeated hollowly. “As in before my last tour?”
“Maybe. Yeah,” Ray mumbled, tugging at his wrists.
Brad tightened his grip. “Bullshit.”
Ray's eyebrows rose in apparent indignation. “Your face is bullshit!” His wings fluttered behind him, softly, as if, despite Ray's defensive posture, they couldn't quite muster up the energy to express the same force of feeling. “You’re not dead, are you? No. Because you’ve got your ol’ pal here makin’ sure you're eating your Jalepeno MREs and not getting fucked by poor-ass command decisions.”
“I can take care of myself,” Brad said, voice low.
Ray scoffed. “Please. You're a liability to yourself. You and your stupid motorcycle and your stupid career choice and your stupid everything. You'd die without me watching over you!”
“Then why would you leave?”
Ray scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I'm only here in the first place because I felt I had to be. I just felt it, Brad. That might've been because last night might've been it, for you, for me by extension. Or it might be that the whole clusterfuck of OIF is over and done, or it could be somethin' stupid like the pancakes this morning killing your arteries or some shit but - it's over. I can just feel it ending.”
Brad didn't say it, but he thought he could feel it too.
Ray looked up then. “I didn't say I wanted to leave, Brad.”
“Then what do you want, Ray?” Brad asked.
For that one, Ray didn't seem to have an answer. He dropped his eyes and stared at the grip Brad had on his wrists, but for the life of him Brad couldn't - wouldn't - let go. He couldn’t help but hold on, suddenly and undeniably afraid, for the first time in a long time, that this was it. That this was one of those moments in life that summarily changed everything about someone or led to the loss of everything by morning, and the answer to it all was in his hands, here, now.
And again, as Ray's wings began to beat a slow rhythm behind him, the feathers making soft whispering sounds like a language of their own, Brad thought back to the moment on the road when he discovered Ray in the dark and in the rain - slipping and feeling his insides twist with the loss of control; the knowledge that he would make it or he wouldn't once he crashed; the warmth of being wrapped up entirely by those wings just before the fall.
He found himself letting go of Ray's wrists, fingers forcibly pried away by will alone, warmth leeching from his skin as cold rushed in its place. The white marks from the pressure of his grip were once again flooded with red, colored ink spreading outward from where they'd converged beneath his touch.
He'd let go expecting Ray to move away, but instead Ray moved closer, turning on the bed so his wings were fanned out behind him, his knees pressing into Brad's thigh.
Ray reached out to placed his hands on either side of Brad's face, leaning in close to press their foreheads together, his eyes slipping closed.
“I want this. For as long as I can have it,” he said fiercely.
Brad brought his hands up and drew him nearer, burying himself in the warmth of Ray's skin, dark, soft, wilting wings slowly enfolding them both in a closure of warmth.
__
V.
“Take what you want and pay for it, says God.”
Brad turned toward Ray, the pillow cold against his cheek, but he saw that Ray’s eyes were still closed.
He waited for something, anything else, but Ray had either fallen back asleep or had never fully woken in the first place.
Looking at the ceiling, Brad felt as if he was waiting - for an attack, for a loss, for answers, for the night to steal away what he felt he'd found, but the night went by without another sound, without movement, the bedside clock's numbers continuing to climb and fall in neon lights.
He rolled over fully and watched Ray's chest move, the tattoos too dark to make out in the night, but he imagined they still moved for him as he reached out to lightly run the pads of his fingers over Ray's arm.
“Stay,” Brad said quietly. He tried to think of a way to explain what he meant, feeling as if the words could be lost in the darkness, released like hefting a burden from his shoulders if he could only say anything. But all he could do was repeat, “Stay, just stay,” again, and again, as if it could be that simple.
He reached out, felt the tightness in his chest ease just a little when Ray rested more heavily against him. Brad traced his fingers over tattooed skin, though he couldn't see each one, trying to ingrain their strangeness and their newly gained familiarity into memory.
He could wait, he thought. He could take what was given and lock the moments away, if that's all he'd ever be left with.
His reached across the bed, and maybe Ray hadn't gone to sleep after all, hadn't wanted to lose time or miss anything in the night just like Brad. But all Brad knew was that Ray moved slightly away only to slide fully on top of him, warm hands leaving trails of heat across Brad's skin.
Ray's mouth was wet, tongue slick as he tasted every inch down Brad's chest until Brad drew him up, letting their legs twist together.
Brad opened his mouth to speak, to ask again, however many times he needed to, but Ray didn't give him the chance, pressing their mouths together and trapping them together in the dark and in the silence.
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VI.
Hours later, when sunlight began to slant through the blinds, sending yellow-white lines across the sheets, Brad could still feel that unearthly warmth of hot skin against skin, a hint of humid air, and he finally felt himself drift off to sleep.
fin