Generation Kill - It May Be Heart and Fist and Human Voice (PG-13, Brad/Nate)
I'm finding it progressively harder to write, but it was my dearest wish that I write this for romanticalgirl before the end of the year, and after a few false alarms here we are. I hope you like it, L.
Generation Kill
Brad Colbert/Nate Fick
Rated PG-13
It May Be Heart and Fist and Human Voice
There are 73 unread emails in Brad Colbert's inbox.
At least 30 of those are forwards from Person. Another 20 are from various members of his family that he's avoiding - not including his mother, because if there's an unofficial first female Recon Marine, it's Brad's mom.
There are two emails from Poke and one from Poke's wife, which means that Brad is going to have to fly across the country for dinner in the very immediate future. Probably this weekend, in fact.
One email is from Rudy and six are from Hasser, probably complaining about Ray.
Of the 73 emails, Brad can identify the contents of 72 without opening the message.
There's one, however, that stops Brad cold.
To: Brad Colbert
From: Tom Ricks
Subject: COIN Symposium
The email subject is so far out of left field that Brad almost tosses it into his spam folder, but he stops with his mouse over the delete button because he knows that name. It pings loudly in the back of his mind and he can't quite say why. He's compelled to open it by sheer dint of curiosity.
From: Tom Ricks
To: Brad Colbert
Date: Sun, March 13, 2006 at 5:34 PM (-600 GMT)
Subject: COIN Symposium
Brad,
I know there are proper channels for me to contact you, but I'm hoping you'll forgive my impudence anyway. I'm responsible for putting together the speaking list for the spring COIN Symposium the first week in April and I was hoping you'd be willing to come and speak to the back assward civilians I work with as well as a few military types about your experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have it on very good authority that you're an expert in your field and could offer a certain insight that most groups simply don't have at their disposal.
The symposium is for three days, but if you only wanted to come for one day or even stay for all three and you'd be willing to travel up from Quantico, we could take care of the arrangements.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Regards,
Tom Ricks
Brad reads the email once. Twice.
And then all the pennies drop at the same time. It's a mental racket on par with Chaffin's racist, homophobic rants trying to disguise the fact that his first girlfriend was black and dumped him for being too white.
Tom Ricks is the man who convinced Nate to join the USMC.
Tom Ricks was Nate's advisor at the Kennedy School of Government and Social Policy.
Tom Ricks works with Nate now.
Jesus Christ shooting heroin between his toes.
If Brad jumps when his cell phone rings, he'll take it with him to his grave. "What?" he says, flipping the mobile open automatically.
"Homes, why are you ignoring your Ray-Ray like this? I've been emailing you all morning, Brad. You gotta take a break from jerking off at some time. C'mon and give Little Colbert break."
Brad's scowl is wasted on his phone, except he's not sure if the scowl is for Ray or for this fucking email. Where the fuck did this come from? Why now?
"And then I got chlamydia and Walt's got me sleeping on the sofa again. You fuck a goat a few times and you never hear the end of it," Ray babbles.
"I'm sure you fucked that goat more than a few times," Brad says placidly.
It's been - god, it's been so long.
And why Ricks, why not Nate?
"And then I knocked up your sister. Except all our babies are wetbacks like Gabe; I think she's been cheating on me - Brad, are you fucking listening to me?" Ray bitches.
"I never listen to you, Ray, that's why you're still alive."
"I'm not feeling the love here, I'm just saying."
"Go apologize to Walt for whatever you did wrong, suck his cock, make him a sandwich and leave me the fuck alone."
"Why do you think this is my fault? It's not my fault!"
"Ray, it's always your fault," Brad says with much more patience than he feels. "Now go suck Hasser's cock and leave me the fuck alone."
"You think I should use the butt plug? You know that shit against your prostate is like double-dicking. I'm gonna get you one with a woodland camo theme for your birthday, you need more ass fucking in your life, Brad -"
Brad hangs up.
Some things he doesn’t need to talk about. Ever.
They started off okay. When Brad left Oceanside for East Devon and Nate went to Cambridge, their communication started off okay. They exchanged emails. Not very often, but every couple of weeks at least. Nothing earth-shattering of course. No torrid confessions. No desperate pleas or stilted admissions, just polite conversation about the weather and scurrilous insults about everything else.
Even when Brad called on Nate's birthday it was to bemoan the fact that Nate existed at all. After all, Nate Fick was Brad's commanding officer. To the end, Nate is Brad's commanding officer. Brad respects Nate, admires him, will always want to please him, follow what he wants. Deliver the undeliverable.
Brad's a Marine; some things are ingrained. But he tried to fight against that.
He tried to keep their... whatever going.
The 'whatever' was never physical. God, never that.
Not that Brad never thought about it, but it just -- some things aren't meant to be. And, apparently, they weren't meant to be, despite the silent stares and the looks that seemed to be completely inappropriate even when they were fully-clothed.
The first time Nate mentioned Sarah, Brad knew for certain that they weren't meant to be. That Nate was letting him down as tactfully as possible. It wasn't what Nate said about her: Jewish and Puerto Rican of all things. Dark curling hair. Potential legacy at the fucking Pentagon of all places.
It truly wasn't about Sarah, because Sarah could've been Mary or Olivia or Emma.
It was just that she was there.
That she was with Nate and Brad wasn't. And so the emails tapered off. Or possibly Brad just stopped replying. And the phone calls. Well, Brad was with the Royal Marines. It wasn't as though he could spend all day gossiping about the fact that men could fancy - date - men in the UK and that this was accepted just as openly as Trombley's psychosis and Rudy's questionable moisturizer selections.
The fact of the matter is that a relationship of any kind: platonic, business, romantic, takes joint effort. You can only pull the ox-cart on your own for so long. So Brad stopped pulling… but he never stopped wondering.
And then the Google Alerts started popping up all over the place. Nate at the think-tank in DC. Nate's book which barely fucking mentioned Brad at all. Nate being promoted at the think-tank. Nate speaking at the traitorous bastards' socialist convention for the new messiah.
Every day Google Alerts alerted Brad to Nate's new life. To his activities and his locations and his cohorts. Every now and then there was even a photograph.
Brad won't talk about what he does with the photos.
That's between him and his printer and the nonexistent mapped drive on his computer that is encrypted with three passwords and fifteen folders.
But Google didn't tell him what he wanted to know.
It never announced the marriage of Nate and Miss Sarah Jewrican.
It never said if Nate forwent marrying into the fine faction of Moses and David and went elsewhere. If he was procreating. It never said if Nate thought about him at all.
Brad would sooner castrate himself with a grapefruit spoon than ask the knitting circle he served with for information. He knows they'd practically kill themselves to provide an entire dossier and be completely conspicuous doing so.
Even Ray doesn't mention Nate anymore. At least not when he's sober.
This all leads to the conclusion that Brad does not want to drive up 95 to D.C. to speak at the COIN symposium. Brad doesn't specialize in counterinsurgency; Brad has no idea what the hell he'll talk about to these people.
It's someone else entirely who tells Tom Ricks to just let them know when and where.
"So, when was the last time you heard from the LT?"
Brad glares over a small head of black hair pulled into pigtails. "Why would I hear from the LT?" he asks Poke Espera, his tone utterly belying his facial expression.
Poke's grin has far too many teeth. He's only asking Brad this because Brad's currently at a tactical disadvantage: he's sitting on the floor of Poke's living room, patiently letting Poke's eight year-old daughter Lily paint his toenails a rather horrifying shade of hooker red.
"No reason, dog," Poke says breezily. "I was just askin'."
Brad narrows his eyes. "Is that what this is about?" he says, waving around the otherwise empty living room. Both Poke's wife and eldest daughter are conveniently absent from this current tableau. "You're trying to ambush me?"
It's the weekend before the COIN Symposium and Brad's flown out to California to see his parents and to have dinner with Poke and Gina, because one phone call from Gina Espera is one too many. And between Gina and his mother's blatantly unsubtle complaints about not seeing him since last Hanukkah, Brad knows when he's been beat.
Poke's mouth twitches at the corners. "I dunno what you're talkin' about; Gina just ran to the store to get some stuff for dinner. You white boys are hella suspicious; always thinkin' the brown people are out to get you."
"I know my ATL wouldn't stoop to something as low as using a civilian as a distraction if there was something on his illegal border crossing --"
"Stop moving, Uncle Brad!" Lily admonishes in a shrill voice and Brad immediate holds still.
"You were saying?" Poke goads.
Brad narrows his eyes. "I'm going to remember this later."
Poke smiles broadly, slumps back in his chair and takes a long pull of his Sierra Nevada. "You're the Iceman, of course you're going to remember this later."
One week later Brad heads up I-95 North on his bike. When he leaves Quantico at 6:13 a.m. there's dew on the grass and a faint chill in the air. He gets off of the I-95/I-395 exchange a little before 7:15 a.m. This drive is supposed to take 90-odd minutes, but that's civilian time.
The sun is just rising over the 14th Street Bridge and crew boats and sculls are on the water, leaving ripples in their wake. Brad pulls up in front of the Omni Shoreham a few moments after turning onto Calvert Street. The hotel is opulent, plush and comfortable in ways that Brad's not used to at all.
This is exactly how he knows this is all funded by the private sector: the military would rack them eight to room at the local Holiday Inn.
Brad eyeballs the valet who takes his motorcycle keys menacingly. If anything happens to his baby, lives will be lost.
Just as Ricks promised there's a room under Brad's name at the concierge. Despite the insistence of the receptionist, Brad doesn’t need assistance with his bags, he only has the one. He takes the ride up to Room 513 on his own, motorcycle helmet tucked under his left arm.
Room 513 is an egregious display of money. Brad's overcome by the floor to ceiling windows and the fleur de lis draperies. It's like the Sound of Music threw up on the décor, but he's not here to discuss interior design.
After hanging his motorcycle jacket in the closet, Brad unfolds the garment bag that's been strapped to his back like a papoose and unzips the contents.
In for a penny, in for a pound as they say in the Royal Marines.
It's a little after 9:30 a.m. when Brad makes his way in his dress blues to the Prefunction Room. He's met almost immediately by a man who's hovering around the entrance with several badges around his neck. Brad smirks as Ricks introduces himself and shakes Brad's hand.
Tom Ricks looks like fucking Santa Claus: beard, belly and all.
Despite his appearance, Ricks has a good handshake for a civilian, firm and dry. Brad hates it when people give him limp handshakes or try to show their toughness by squeezing too hard.
Brad adjusts the hold on his cover underneath his left arm and listens politely as Ricks prattles off the sitrep: Today is the second day of the conference. Brad is going to be the third speaker of the morning. Nobody ever listens to the first person, and Ricks wants Brad to be heard. He's listed in the program as a Special Guest Speaker from Quantico.
Brad thinks it might be more special if he had more than a nebulous idea of what the fuck he's going to talk about, but Marines make do. He can make do. So he nods in the right places and follows the line of Ricks' finger when he points at the buffet that's been set out for the speakers and various guests.
Dealing with food in dress blues is always a dicey prospect, so Brad heads directly for the coffee station. Ahead of him in line are two colonels in Army fatigues, one balding man in a very ill-fitting suit and a woman with remarkably blonde hair. Brad picks at the invisible lint on his arm by his chevrons and bides his time.
Eventually he manages to get a cup of coffee. It's not as good as Rudy's, but it's better than anything he'd get at Sludgebucks.
He goes back for another cup, but freezes with his hand on the spigot when an unforgettable voice drifts across the room.
"…ideally what we'd like to see happen is that the President acknowledge that it's not just a matter of dumping more troops in Afghanistan. If sheer force of will ever truly solved a problem I think a lot of people in this room would be out of business."
Brad instinctively looks up and to the left, and not twenty feet away, there's Nate, surrounded by men in uniforms and expensive suits.
Perhaps Nate's wrong about sheer force of will, because Brad blinks just the once, and when he opens his eyes Nate's staring at him as though Brad's materialized out of the ether.
Nate looks good, but thin. Not as thin as post-Iraq but thinner than when he left for Cambridge.
Five years is a long time to keep any image sharp.
Nate's mouth opens and closes, his lips making a little 'o'. He looks good in green and gray. Nate's always looked good in anything as far as Brad can tell.
Something sharp twinges in Brad's chest and his fingers tingle. He looks downward; the steaming hot coffee has run over the sides of his cup, over the tips of his fingers and is now pooling on the silver service tray underneath the coffee pot.
Brad sets the cup down and turns away. Tom Ricks is right behind him. "I was just coming to get you," Ricks says, his good natured smile reminding Brad even more of Santa Claus than before. "It's your turn now."
Brad nods. It's his turn now.
Whatever that means.
Brad steps up to the microphone after a brief introduction by Ricks, sets his cover on the podium and surveys his AO carefully. Out the corner of his eye, he watches Nate slot a chair in at the very end of the first row. Brad waits a minute; he's been teaching Special Ops classes at Quantico for eleven months now and he's gotten used to operating with undivided attention. It's not where he thought his career would take him, Virginia is cold as fuck, but it's where he is now.
This is where he is now.
It's not where he planned to be, where he thought he'd be at this age -- but that's what life is about: adapting. Not making assumptions. Not getting your heart set on something, because things change. People change.
There are people Brad knows who make plans: Nate, for example, is a planner. His mom is a planner. Brad is not a planner. Brad spent the better part of sixteen years letting other people make the plans.
Brad just makes decisions - there is a difference.
There are more than 200 people in this room and right now Brad's only speaking to one of them.
"I'm not really sure why I'm here today," Brad says thoughtfully. "I'm not just a Marine, I'm an enlisted man. And while I'm well aware that the decisions you're discussing today will affect me and my fellow grunts, none of you are thinking of us when you make these policies. I don't have any illusions about that."
A pause. A brief glance to the left.
"I'm not a share-too-much let-me-confess-my-sins-liberal," Brad announces sharply. "I don't give a shit about what you think of me or what I've done on my deployments. I'm good at what I do, I'm among the best, and I won't apologize for that. I'm not a poster child either. I may look like some Aryan warrior, but I'm adopted and my parents are Jewish. I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I wanted to be a Marine even before my parents sent me to military school and I have served this country with pride for the last seventeen years of my life. I'm not interested in equality and rights for everyone, but I will fight to ensure that every last one of you has them.
"I have served with good men, great men, who have done the same thing, because this is the life we've chosen. It's hard. People don't understand it, but you make your choices in this life and this is mine…"
And on Brad goes, "speaking to what he knows" as Reporter calls it. He spends his days training Marines in special ops. He loves what he does. He loves the Corps. He wouldn't change anything he's done.
And if he would, that's nobody's business but his own.
The fact that something thick and cloying is creeping into his chest is also nobody's business.
People say falling in love is scariest thing ever. That it's like jumping into an abyss without knowing where the bottom is.
That's clearly fat-lazy-bastard-sitting-on-the-sofa-watching-too-many-soap-operas bullshit, because anybody who knows anything will tell you that the scariest thing possible is falling in love after you've already been broken.
The scariest thing ever is falling in love again with the same motherfucking, green-eyed bandit that stole your heart the first time around.
People applaud after Brad finishes speaking, whether it's genuine or polite Brad doesn't bother to stick around and find out. Instead he collects his cover and walks right off stage and out the double doors of the Blue Room. He pauses in the hallway to get his bearings.
The hotel is nice; his room is paid for and he could go back to his room, stretch out on that king-sized bed and watch porn and eat room service until tomorrow morning. Or he could collect his things, get back into his jeans and jacket and go home.
"Leaving so soon?"
Brad doesn't flinch, but he does pause before looking over his shoulder at Nate. "That's generally what happens when you're finished," he says, keeping his face as blank as possible, "you leave."
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
Brad turns sharply on his toes. "Excuse me?"
Nate rubs his palm over his mouth. "Let's try this again - hi."
Brad blinks. There are more freckles on Nate's nose than there were before. His mouth is just as pink and lush as Brad remembers. His lips look soft. Not dry and cracked like a Marine's at all. "Hi," he says rather belatedly.
The smile on Nate's face is tentative, fragile. "You're really here," he says, his voice full of something that might be wonder.
"Is this an existentialist question, sir?" Brad's smirk has too many sharp edges.
"I'm not 'sir', Brad," Nate says, rocking forward on his toes. He's too close.
Brad takes a step back, clutching at his cover as though it's the last 203 round he has. "It's good to see you again, sir," he repeats brusquely before turning away.
He has to get the fuck out of here. He has to change out of this uniform and get back into his street clothes. He's exposed here. He'd be less exposed if he was naked.
A hand grabs his wrist. "Brad."
Nate's grip is sure, firm.
Brad turns back, mouth tight. "Is there a problem, sir?"
Nate's mouth is a taut line of unhappiness. Good. Except Nate doesn't even look around before he yanks Brad to him. They're nose-to-nose and Brad can see the flush starting to form on Nate's cheeks.
Brad sets his jaw tightly. His face hurts and his chest is caving in under the weight of 32 medals and pins and Nate fucking Fick.
"You don't get to walk out on me again," Nate says in a low tone.
Brad's bark of laughter rips through him like a bullet from a .50 cal. "I didn't realize I'd walked out the first time."
Nate's mouth turns down at the corners. "Why'd you stop calling? Answering my emails? What did I do to drive you away?"
Brad tugs his wrist free sharply. Maybe Nate's new career is okay with this sort of drama, but his isn't. "How's Sarah?" he asks dryly.
Nate blinks. "Sarah? Sarah who?"
"Your Pentagon legacy with the curly hair and the mile long legs," Brad reminds Nate in a tone he only tends to hear from his mother when she's pissed at his dad.
Nate opens his mouth but his words are drowned out by the door to the Blue Room opening. "Nate, we need you to introduce the next speaker!" a voice calls.
Brad smiles sharply. "Work calls. You should go."
Nate narrows his eyes and Brad feels it the air when Nate exhales. "Room 1206 at 8 p.m. Not 8:01; not 8:10. If you are not there at 8 p.m., I will hunt you down, Brad. I let you do this once; you're not doing it again."
And with that Nate turns on his heel and stalks off.
Brad stares after him. The hell? This isn't his fucking fault. He isn't the one who ran off with the first Susie Rottencrotch to spread her legs.
Fuck Nate.
He's not in charge of Brad anymore.
Fuck Nate and his fucking commands.
Even at their most downtrodden, horse-shit-for-orders nadir, Brad did what Nate wanted, and now, he doesn't even have the war as an excuse. This is obviously why he's standing outside Room 1206 of the Omni Shoreham in his civies. Jeans and a black sweater aren't dress blues, but this is what he's got to offer.
The door opens before he finishes one full knock.
"Eight o'clock and seventeen - eighteen seconds," Nate says, holding the door open with one hand while glancing at his watch.
"I wouldn't want to get NJP'd for tardiness," Brad says brazenly.
Nate just raises an eyebrow and steps back. "Come in," he says, gesturing behind him.
Brad stops just inside the door and studies his surroundings. "The officers always get the best shit," Brad says, looking around at a suite twice the size of his room.
"I always made sure my men were taken care of first," Nate says, leaning against the now-closed front door.
Brad glances over. "Yeah, you did."
Something startled crosses Nate's face, like he didn't think Brad would even give him that. Brad's not that much of asshole, despite whatever Ray says.
"It's supposed to be for wining and dining important people," Nate provides. "You have to look like you have money to make money apparently."
Brad looks at Nate's rolled up sleeves and loosened tie. "So you invited me here just to kick me out?" he asks.
Nate eyes Brad from toes to nose boldly. "No," he says after several uncomfortable moments, "I don't think there's anybody more important than you in a fifty mile radius."
"Just fifty miles?"
"My parents are in Baltimore."
Brad nods before wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. "So," he offers.
Nate's sucking on his bottom lip and he just looks at Brad for a long moment before gesturing at the living room set in the middle of the room. The sofa is sage green and covered with overstuffed pillows. On the coffee table is a bottle of Glenfiddich 30 and two glasses.
Brad raises an eyebrow. "Which Four-Star General are you supposed to give this to?" he asks, crossing over to the coffee table and picking up the bottle of thirty year-old whisky.
"Actually, it was a gift from a Boeing lobbyist," Nate says, his voice coming from right over Brad's shoulder. Brad stiffens slightly. "I'd thought about throwing it out, but it seemed a shame to waste a three-hundred dollar bottle of alcohol."
Brad drops down on the sofa, maneuvering away from Nate's body heat. "Sounds like a reasonable course of action," he says, cracking open the bottle and taking a deep inhalation.
The sofa shifts as Nate sits down next to him. Not close enough to be worrisome, but not so far as to seem distant. Brad holds out the bottle and offers Nate an inhale.
Nate sniffs once and smiles. Brad hasn't seen this smile in so long he'd almost forgotten how devastating it can be. He clears his throat and leans forward to fill their glasses. Afterwards he sets the bottle back on the coffee table and offers Nate a glass.
Nate scoots to the edge of the sofa, the sprawl of his legs pressing his knee against Brad's thigh. Brad twitches. "What are we drinking to?" Nate asks, holding up his glass.
"What else?" Brad answers, clanging their glasses together once.
Nate nods. "Semper fi," they parrot in tandem.
Brad takes a sip of the whisky and holds it briefly in his mouth, letting the flavors sit on his tongue before swallowing. He licks his lips before realizing that Nate's staring at him.
Nate downs his whisky in two swallows and then sets his glass back on the table.
"Trying to make me look bad?" Brad teases before knocking back what's left of his portion and placing it on the table.
"I don't think it's possible for you to look bad," Nate says bluntly. Brad just stares as Nate fills their glasses again. "What are we toasting to?" Nate offers, pushing Brad's glass toward him.
Brad watches Nate pick up his glass, watches it hover between them and then he picks up his own. "To you and your family. And to all the little Ficks out there in the world."
Nate's hand freezes and then he sets his glass back down on the table. "You want to toast to my niece and nephew?"
Brad shrugs and takes a long sip. "Whatever little Ficks there are." He's fishing and he's doing a poor job of it, but he just - he wants this part over with. Once he knows where he stands, he can readjust and they can move on.
Once he knows for sure, he can get past it.
Nate shifts fractionally closer to Brad. Brad takes another swallow of his whisky. It's a crime to treat liquor like this in such a cavalier way, but fuck it.
Except it's rather hard to be casual when Nate's fingers are on his wrist, tugging the glass away from his mouth. "Brad, the only little Ficks are Rosie and Henry."
"Your kids," Brad supplies helpfully.
Nate stares. "My sister's kids. I don't have kids."
"You don't have kids," Brad repeats. Nate's fingers are warm against his skin, and the vibrations from his chuckles travel straight down to Brad's knees.
"Brad, I'm not a dad. I'm not married. I'm not even seeing anyone right now."
"Oh."
Nate's thumb rubs along the side of Brad's hand. "There was somebody a while ago, but that didn't work out the way I'd hoped."
"Oh," is the only thing Brad can think to say again.
He used to be much more eloquent.
Fucking Google Alerts could've told him this one at least.
Nate releases Brad, leaving Brad's wrist cold as he busies himself with topping off his own drink. "So, we'll drink to the little Colberts of the world, instead?" Nate offers, holding up his glass.
Brad shakes his head. "None to speak of at the moment, but Rachel's in the middle of adopting twins from Chile. It's been almost eighteen months, but we think it's close to being a done deal."
Nate's eyes crease at the corner when he smiles. "Well, then we'll drink to them."
Brad raises his glass only to find it empty. Whoops. He fills his glass again. "How did Tom Ricks know about me?" he asks, glancing over at Nate.
Brad's missed the way Nate's cheeks flush. He's missed his smile and the way things are easy with him, even when they're not. Nate looks just over the top of Brad's head when he answers. "You're the Iceman, everybody knows about the Iceman," he says mockingly.
"Cute," Brad says dryly.
"Yes, that's what my mom says, too," Nate quips.
Brad has to laugh at that, has to deflect from the warmth spreading to his extremities, a heat that has nothing to do with the whisky they're rapidly working through.
"You didn't know I was coming today, did you?" Brad asks.
Nate snorts. "What gave you that idea? The fact that I ignored a room full of people to follow you?"
Brad sets his glass down. "So, if you didn't know about me, why am I here?"
"I don't know," Nate says honestly.
"Tom Ricks just chose my name out of the phone book?" he presses.
The flush in Nate's cheeks deepens. "I don't - I may have talked about you once or twice."
"Once or twice," Brad mocks.
Nate purses his lips. "Why did you just stop talking to me?" he asks boldly, setting his glass on the table. "No emails, no phone calls. I sent birthday cards to you at your parents' house."
Brad ducks his head. Those cards are still at his parents' house. Opened and displayed on his dresser, the colors long faded from the sun streaming into his boyhood bedroom.
He looks down at his knees. At the scuffed toes of his black shoes and the freshly shampooed carpet of the hotel room. "You'd moved on," he says flatly. "It wasn't my place to hold you back."
Nate's fingers are back, and now they're digging into Brad's forearm. Someone wants attention.
"Hold. Me. Back." Nate enunciates precisely, his voice sharp with disbelief. "Hold me back from what?"
Brad's laugh is mirthless. "From this," he says, gesturing to the room around him.
"This?" Nate parrots. "This what?"
"This," Brad reiterates. "This is the life you're meant to have, Nate. Harvard, D.C., high-class hotels, speeches at the communists' political conventions, four-star generals and lobbyists hanging on your every word. One day it'll be Congress and then the White House."
"And you think that's the life I'm supposed to have? That this is one that I've earned?"
"I think it's a life that has nothing to do with me," Brad says honestly after a too long pause. "Or Person. Or Poke or Rudy or any of us."
Nate's eyes are huge and for the second time this evening he stops touching Brad. "Do you think I'd rather have this than have you?"
Brad's smirk is a little too twisted. "Are you telling me you wouldn't?"
Nate whistles low. "This isn't about Rudy or Poke or Ray. This is about you and me. Us. Let's just say it now. I'm sorry I couldn't - didn't -- say it before, but I'm saying it now."
"There isn't an 'us'," Brad says flatly. "There's a Sarah."
Nate rubs his jaw. "I can't believe you remember Sarah, Brad. I forgot about Sarah until you mentioned her earlier. We were friends. Nothing more. Despite conventional wisdom according to Ray, you can be friends with girls. I wasn't shoving her in your face; I was trying to tell you that I wasn't sitting at home fucking pining over you every night. That you didn't have to worry. I thought -"
"That it would drive me fucking crazy?" Brad supplies bitterly.
Nate's mouth thins out. "It's sure as hell not like you were pining over me. You think I haven't heard about Maggie and Erica and Nicole and every other girl you've fucked in the last five years?"
Brad's too flustered to pretend otherwise. "They were just - they never counted. And how'd you - Poke."
"That doesn't matter," Nate says, refilling his glass and taking a very liberal swallow. Brad watches Nate's throat work for entirely too long. It's hard not to fixate on all that skin and the way Nate's shirt is open at the collar. At that pale V of skin. "And it was Hasser. He hates listening to Ray whining about how sad and lonely you are."
"I'm not sad!" Brad protests a bit loudly.
Nate raises an eyebrow. "But you're lonely?"
Brad shakes his head. "That's not relevant at all."
Nate sucks on his lower lip for a minute and then he nods. "If you say so," he agrees, picking up his glass again and finishing off the dregs.
He sets the glass down on the floor by his foot, slumps back against the sofa and closes his eyes.
Thanks to the spectacular hotel lighting that's lured in more powerful men than Brad, Nate's eyelashes are casting shadows on his face. Brad watches him openly. The rise and fall of his chest. The bottom lip he worries with his teeth. The flush in his cheeks that disappears under the collar of his shirt and the verdant tie that illuminates the green in his now-closed eyes.
Brad finds himself copying Nate's motions, sprawling out on the sofa parallel to Nate's body. Thigh pressing to thigh and knee to knee. The warmth bleeds out of Nate's body and seeps into Brad's skin. Waking up not-so suppressed urges and needs.
Nate's right hand is on his own thigh and Brad itches to touch him. Instead he slumps further down and rolls his head to the left. "How's your family?" he asks.
Nate's eyes flutter open. "Do you really care?" he asks, eyes half-lidded.
Yes.
"Yes." Nate blinks at him. Brad smirks back. "Yeah, I know, that surprised me, too."
Nate licks his lips, turning them slick and red, and then he begins to speak. His voice is soothing and deep; it lulls Brad into a calm trance like the best whisky and the best sex and the best relationship possible.
Brad listens to the rise and fall of Nate's tone. He pays attention because this is clearly important to Nate and what's important to Nate has always been important to Brad, even when he's thought otherwise. He watches the smiles that grace Nate's lips when he talks about his family, small and fond and wide and proud.
As Nate talks Brad's eyes keep drifting away, towards Nate's mouth, his eyes, his ears, the strawberry blond brown indescribable hair that's grown longer. The silky strands that Brad wants to wrap his fingers in. Anything to keep Nate close.
Nate's tie is shiny. It slips between Brad's fingers like water.
It takes Brad a moment to realize Nate's stopped talking. He looks up from his fingers tangled in Nate's tie. "And then what happened when Rosie hit that boy for stealing Henry's bike?" he prompts.
Nate's close. Closer than Brad remembers. "You're listening to me," Nate says softly, his mouth practically brushing against Brad's forehead.
Brad's shifts just that millimeter nearer. "I always listen to you. Why else do you think I'm here?"
Nate's mouth is against Brad's skin now, warm and soft and slightly damp. "So why didn't you listen five years ago?"
"Because you never told me what you wanted," Brad says to the open V of Nate's shirt.
"I did everything but get it tattooed on my forehead." Nate's protestation is just soft puffs of air.
Brad tugs on Nate's tie. "Maybe you should've."
Nate shifts and presses his lips to Brad's temple. "You do everything I say?"
"Yeah," Brad huffs out, "pretty much."
"I order you to kiss me," Nate says softly.
"Okay." Brad tugs on Nate's tie, moving upward at the same time that Nate slides down and then Nate pauses, his mouth hovering just out of reach.
Their eyes meet and for the first time in a very long time, Brad's not sorry about the years that have passed, because they brought them here. They couldn't have this without going through that first, he understands that now -- and then he surges up and presses their lips together.
Their first kiss could be soft and sweet or hard and vicious, worthy of two Marines denied, but it's neither of these things. Or it's all of them combined. There are tongues and teeth, Brad's fingers in Nate's tie and Nate's hands curled around the nape of Brad's neck.
Nate's tongue sweeps through Brad's mouth, setting off all kinds of noises and moans that Brad doesn't remember himself ever making. Brad holds onto Nate's tie for dear life, tugging him back every time Nate tries to pull away for air, every time Nate says his name against Brad's jaw, his neck, his cheek, Brad has to follow and swallow it down.
Brad can feel Nate's nails digging into the skin under the collar of his sweater, drawing him closer, trying to get as much as possible. Their kisses are wet and slick and filthy and gorgeous and never-ending.
Nate pulls away just to order Brad to kiss him. "Again," he says breathily.
Brad smiles. "Yes, sir," he says, only to have Nate duck away.
"Not sir, Brad, just Nate."
Brad holds Nate's jaw firmly, kissing him in rapid succession until Nate's laughing into his mouth and squirming to breathe. "Yes, Nate," Brad says, repeating his name over and over again.
Nate finally dodges away and presses his hand to Brad's chest to keep him at bay. "So, how long are you in town for?"
Brad's got 48 hours leave from Quantico, but he can get more. "How long do you want me here?" There's a long silence, which makes Brad nervous. Or it would if he couldn't see Nate thinking on this very hard. "What do you want, Nate? Tell me."
Nate's fingers curl into Brad's sweater and Brad leans in enough to nuzzle Nate's jaw. "Just say it."
There's an exhale. "I want you to stay long enough to see my condo in Silver Spring," Nate says eventually. "I want you to stay long enough for me to give you a set of keys and a drawer for your clothes. I want you to stay long enough that you'll think it's worth coming up here to visit me every week or at least every couple of weeks. I want… I want you to think this is worth it."
This is what's always burrowed its way into Brad's heart: Nate's earnestness. His honesty. His fervent belief that good things actually do happen to good people, even when the rest of the world falls apart.
Maybe Nate is Brad's proof that this can be true.
Brad looks at the tie still tangled in his fingers and nods once, and then he looks back up at Nate and nods again. "I could do that for you," he agrees, "but there's a problem."
Nate's face tightens and Brad releases his tie to touch his face. He brushes his thumb over the bridge of Nate's nose, rubs at the swollen mouth. "The problem," he explains, "is that you've always been worth it for me - you can't make me accept something that I've already known all along."
Nate exhales a quiet, "oh."
"Yeah," Brad says. "This is clearly a failing on the part of The Man."
"The Man?" Nate's laugh is rickety, half-amusement, half-incredulity. "Brad, you know in some places you are The Man?"
"Don't cloud the issue with Poke-approved oppressed minority factoids," Brad says dismissively.
Nate just shakes his head. "Right."
"Besides, I'm Jewish, I can't be the man," Brad says solemnly, "But you, though, look at you. You are clearly made to be The Man; you're dangerous," Brad adds with a disarming grin.
"Dangerous?" Nate parrots. His eyes are bright and sparkling; Brad's breath gets caught in his throat. Nate really is dangerous.
"Yeah," Brad swallows. "Clearly we need some sort of policy to regulate this. You're good with policies, aren't you? Maybe I'll call it The Fick Clause."
"The Fick Clause, it's catchy. What does it say?"
"It says that whatever you want, you should have."
"So, if I just want you…" Nate presses.
Brad swallows. "Then you'll have me."
Nate nods sharply. "Okay, where do I sign up?"
"Oh, I'm afraid you've already signed this contract. And it's binding."
"Well, if I'm already signed up then I guess I should start getting what I want."
"Absolutely."
Nate nods. "Fine, then kiss me again."
Brad gives Nate his best pseudo-shocked look. "No wish for world peace? No cure for cancer or AIDS? No dropping the debt or ending third world hunger and those annoying- ass PETA ads? No automatic ticket to the White House?"
"No," Nate says definitively. "Today I just want you. We can take care of the rest tomorrow."
-end-
For romanticalgirl, who originally conceived this idea, but said I could play with it anyway. Beta by the always brilliant alethialia. Title paraphrased from 'We Will Still Need a Song' by Hawksley Workman.
Generation Kill
Brad Colbert/Nate Fick
Rated PG-13
It May Be Heart and Fist and Human Voice
There are 73 unread emails in Brad Colbert's inbox.
At least 30 of those are forwards from Person. Another 20 are from various members of his family that he's avoiding - not including his mother, because if there's an unofficial first female Recon Marine, it's Brad's mom.
There are two emails from Poke and one from Poke's wife, which means that Brad is going to have to fly across the country for dinner in the very immediate future. Probably this weekend, in fact.
One email is from Rudy and six are from Hasser, probably complaining about Ray.
Of the 73 emails, Brad can identify the contents of 72 without opening the message.
There's one, however, that stops Brad cold.
To: Brad Colbert
From: Tom Ricks
Subject: COIN Symposium
The email subject is so far out of left field that Brad almost tosses it into his spam folder, but he stops with his mouse over the delete button because he knows that name. It pings loudly in the back of his mind and he can't quite say why. He's compelled to open it by sheer dint of curiosity.
From: Tom Ricks
To: Brad Colbert
Date: Sun, March 13, 2006 at 5:34 PM (-600 GMT)
Subject: COIN Symposium
Brad,
I know there are proper channels for me to contact you, but I'm hoping you'll forgive my impudence anyway. I'm responsible for putting together the speaking list for the spring COIN Symposium the first week in April and I was hoping you'd be willing to come and speak to the back assward civilians I work with as well as a few military types about your experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have it on very good authority that you're an expert in your field and could offer a certain insight that most groups simply don't have at their disposal.
The symposium is for three days, but if you only wanted to come for one day or even stay for all three and you'd be willing to travel up from Quantico, we could take care of the arrangements.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Regards,
Tom Ricks
Brad reads the email once. Twice.
And then all the pennies drop at the same time. It's a mental racket on par with Chaffin's racist, homophobic rants trying to disguise the fact that his first girlfriend was black and dumped him for being too white.
Tom Ricks is the man who convinced Nate to join the USMC.
Tom Ricks was Nate's advisor at the Kennedy School of Government and Social Policy.
Tom Ricks works with Nate now.
Jesus Christ shooting heroin between his toes.
If Brad jumps when his cell phone rings, he'll take it with him to his grave. "What?" he says, flipping the mobile open automatically.
"Homes, why are you ignoring your Ray-Ray like this? I've been emailing you all morning, Brad. You gotta take a break from jerking off at some time. C'mon and give Little Colbert break."
Brad's scowl is wasted on his phone, except he's not sure if the scowl is for Ray or for this fucking email. Where the fuck did this come from? Why now?
"And then I got chlamydia and Walt's got me sleeping on the sofa again. You fuck a goat a few times and you never hear the end of it," Ray babbles.
"I'm sure you fucked that goat more than a few times," Brad says placidly.
It's been - god, it's been so long.
And why Ricks, why not Nate?
"And then I knocked up your sister. Except all our babies are wetbacks like Gabe; I think she's been cheating on me - Brad, are you fucking listening to me?" Ray bitches.
"I never listen to you, Ray, that's why you're still alive."
"I'm not feeling the love here, I'm just saying."
"Go apologize to Walt for whatever you did wrong, suck his cock, make him a sandwich and leave me the fuck alone."
"Why do you think this is my fault? It's not my fault!"
"Ray, it's always your fault," Brad says with much more patience than he feels. "Now go suck Hasser's cock and leave me the fuck alone."
"You think I should use the butt plug? You know that shit against your prostate is like double-dicking. I'm gonna get you one with a woodland camo theme for your birthday, you need more ass fucking in your life, Brad -"
Brad hangs up.
Some things he doesn’t need to talk about. Ever.
They started off okay. When Brad left Oceanside for East Devon and Nate went to Cambridge, their communication started off okay. They exchanged emails. Not very often, but every couple of weeks at least. Nothing earth-shattering of course. No torrid confessions. No desperate pleas or stilted admissions, just polite conversation about the weather and scurrilous insults about everything else.
Even when Brad called on Nate's birthday it was to bemoan the fact that Nate existed at all. After all, Nate Fick was Brad's commanding officer. To the end, Nate is Brad's commanding officer. Brad respects Nate, admires him, will always want to please him, follow what he wants. Deliver the undeliverable.
Brad's a Marine; some things are ingrained. But he tried to fight against that.
He tried to keep their... whatever going.
The 'whatever' was never physical. God, never that.
Not that Brad never thought about it, but it just -- some things aren't meant to be. And, apparently, they weren't meant to be, despite the silent stares and the looks that seemed to be completely inappropriate even when they were fully-clothed.
The first time Nate mentioned Sarah, Brad knew for certain that they weren't meant to be. That Nate was letting him down as tactfully as possible. It wasn't what Nate said about her: Jewish and Puerto Rican of all things. Dark curling hair. Potential legacy at the fucking Pentagon of all places.
It truly wasn't about Sarah, because Sarah could've been Mary or Olivia or Emma.
It was just that she was there.
That she was with Nate and Brad wasn't. And so the emails tapered off. Or possibly Brad just stopped replying. And the phone calls. Well, Brad was with the Royal Marines. It wasn't as though he could spend all day gossiping about the fact that men could fancy - date - men in the UK and that this was accepted just as openly as Trombley's psychosis and Rudy's questionable moisturizer selections.
The fact of the matter is that a relationship of any kind: platonic, business, romantic, takes joint effort. You can only pull the ox-cart on your own for so long. So Brad stopped pulling… but he never stopped wondering.
And then the Google Alerts started popping up all over the place. Nate at the think-tank in DC. Nate's book which barely fucking mentioned Brad at all. Nate being promoted at the think-tank. Nate speaking at the traitorous bastards' socialist convention for the new messiah.
Every day Google Alerts alerted Brad to Nate's new life. To his activities and his locations and his cohorts. Every now and then there was even a photograph.
Brad won't talk about what he does with the photos.
That's between him and his printer and the nonexistent mapped drive on his computer that is encrypted with three passwords and fifteen folders.
But Google didn't tell him what he wanted to know.
It never announced the marriage of Nate and Miss Sarah Jewrican.
It never said if Nate forwent marrying into the fine faction of Moses and David and went elsewhere. If he was procreating. It never said if Nate thought about him at all.
Brad would sooner castrate himself with a grapefruit spoon than ask the knitting circle he served with for information. He knows they'd practically kill themselves to provide an entire dossier and be completely conspicuous doing so.
Even Ray doesn't mention Nate anymore. At least not when he's sober.
This all leads to the conclusion that Brad does not want to drive up 95 to D.C. to speak at the COIN symposium. Brad doesn't specialize in counterinsurgency; Brad has no idea what the hell he'll talk about to these people.
It's someone else entirely who tells Tom Ricks to just let them know when and where.
"So, when was the last time you heard from the LT?"
Brad glares over a small head of black hair pulled into pigtails. "Why would I hear from the LT?" he asks Poke Espera, his tone utterly belying his facial expression.
Poke's grin has far too many teeth. He's only asking Brad this because Brad's currently at a tactical disadvantage: he's sitting on the floor of Poke's living room, patiently letting Poke's eight year-old daughter Lily paint his toenails a rather horrifying shade of hooker red.
"No reason, dog," Poke says breezily. "I was just askin'."
Brad narrows his eyes. "Is that what this is about?" he says, waving around the otherwise empty living room. Both Poke's wife and eldest daughter are conveniently absent from this current tableau. "You're trying to ambush me?"
It's the weekend before the COIN Symposium and Brad's flown out to California to see his parents and to have dinner with Poke and Gina, because one phone call from Gina Espera is one too many. And between Gina and his mother's blatantly unsubtle complaints about not seeing him since last Hanukkah, Brad knows when he's been beat.
Poke's mouth twitches at the corners. "I dunno what you're talkin' about; Gina just ran to the store to get some stuff for dinner. You white boys are hella suspicious; always thinkin' the brown people are out to get you."
"I know my ATL wouldn't stoop to something as low as using a civilian as a distraction if there was something on his illegal border crossing --"
"Stop moving, Uncle Brad!" Lily admonishes in a shrill voice and Brad immediate holds still.
"You were saying?" Poke goads.
Brad narrows his eyes. "I'm going to remember this later."
Poke smiles broadly, slumps back in his chair and takes a long pull of his Sierra Nevada. "You're the Iceman, of course you're going to remember this later."
One week later Brad heads up I-95 North on his bike. When he leaves Quantico at 6:13 a.m. there's dew on the grass and a faint chill in the air. He gets off of the I-95/I-395 exchange a little before 7:15 a.m. This drive is supposed to take 90-odd minutes, but that's civilian time.
The sun is just rising over the 14th Street Bridge and crew boats and sculls are on the water, leaving ripples in their wake. Brad pulls up in front of the Omni Shoreham a few moments after turning onto Calvert Street. The hotel is opulent, plush and comfortable in ways that Brad's not used to at all.
This is exactly how he knows this is all funded by the private sector: the military would rack them eight to room at the local Holiday Inn.
Brad eyeballs the valet who takes his motorcycle keys menacingly. If anything happens to his baby, lives will be lost.
Just as Ricks promised there's a room under Brad's name at the concierge. Despite the insistence of the receptionist, Brad doesn’t need assistance with his bags, he only has the one. He takes the ride up to Room 513 on his own, motorcycle helmet tucked under his left arm.
Room 513 is an egregious display of money. Brad's overcome by the floor to ceiling windows and the fleur de lis draperies. It's like the Sound of Music threw up on the décor, but he's not here to discuss interior design.
After hanging his motorcycle jacket in the closet, Brad unfolds the garment bag that's been strapped to his back like a papoose and unzips the contents.
In for a penny, in for a pound as they say in the Royal Marines.
It's a little after 9:30 a.m. when Brad makes his way in his dress blues to the Prefunction Room. He's met almost immediately by a man who's hovering around the entrance with several badges around his neck. Brad smirks as Ricks introduces himself and shakes Brad's hand.
Tom Ricks looks like fucking Santa Claus: beard, belly and all.
Despite his appearance, Ricks has a good handshake for a civilian, firm and dry. Brad hates it when people give him limp handshakes or try to show their toughness by squeezing too hard.
Brad adjusts the hold on his cover underneath his left arm and listens politely as Ricks prattles off the sitrep: Today is the second day of the conference. Brad is going to be the third speaker of the morning. Nobody ever listens to the first person, and Ricks wants Brad to be heard. He's listed in the program as a Special Guest Speaker from Quantico.
Brad thinks it might be more special if he had more than a nebulous idea of what the fuck he's going to talk about, but Marines make do. He can make do. So he nods in the right places and follows the line of Ricks' finger when he points at the buffet that's been set out for the speakers and various guests.
Dealing with food in dress blues is always a dicey prospect, so Brad heads directly for the coffee station. Ahead of him in line are two colonels in Army fatigues, one balding man in a very ill-fitting suit and a woman with remarkably blonde hair. Brad picks at the invisible lint on his arm by his chevrons and bides his time.
Eventually he manages to get a cup of coffee. It's not as good as Rudy's, but it's better than anything he'd get at Sludgebucks.
He goes back for another cup, but freezes with his hand on the spigot when an unforgettable voice drifts across the room.
"…ideally what we'd like to see happen is that the President acknowledge that it's not just a matter of dumping more troops in Afghanistan. If sheer force of will ever truly solved a problem I think a lot of people in this room would be out of business."
Brad instinctively looks up and to the left, and not twenty feet away, there's Nate, surrounded by men in uniforms and expensive suits.
Perhaps Nate's wrong about sheer force of will, because Brad blinks just the once, and when he opens his eyes Nate's staring at him as though Brad's materialized out of the ether.
Nate looks good, but thin. Not as thin as post-Iraq but thinner than when he left for Cambridge.
Five years is a long time to keep any image sharp.
Nate's mouth opens and closes, his lips making a little 'o'. He looks good in green and gray. Nate's always looked good in anything as far as Brad can tell.
Something sharp twinges in Brad's chest and his fingers tingle. He looks downward; the steaming hot coffee has run over the sides of his cup, over the tips of his fingers and is now pooling on the silver service tray underneath the coffee pot.
Brad sets the cup down and turns away. Tom Ricks is right behind him. "I was just coming to get you," Ricks says, his good natured smile reminding Brad even more of Santa Claus than before. "It's your turn now."
Brad nods. It's his turn now.
Whatever that means.
Brad steps up to the microphone after a brief introduction by Ricks, sets his cover on the podium and surveys his AO carefully. Out the corner of his eye, he watches Nate slot a chair in at the very end of the first row. Brad waits a minute; he's been teaching Special Ops classes at Quantico for eleven months now and he's gotten used to operating with undivided attention. It's not where he thought his career would take him, Virginia is cold as fuck, but it's where he is now.
This is where he is now.
It's not where he planned to be, where he thought he'd be at this age -- but that's what life is about: adapting. Not making assumptions. Not getting your heart set on something, because things change. People change.
There are people Brad knows who make plans: Nate, for example, is a planner. His mom is a planner. Brad is not a planner. Brad spent the better part of sixteen years letting other people make the plans.
Brad just makes decisions - there is a difference.
There are more than 200 people in this room and right now Brad's only speaking to one of them.
"I'm not really sure why I'm here today," Brad says thoughtfully. "I'm not just a Marine, I'm an enlisted man. And while I'm well aware that the decisions you're discussing today will affect me and my fellow grunts, none of you are thinking of us when you make these policies. I don't have any illusions about that."
A pause. A brief glance to the left.
"I'm not a share-too-much let-me-confess-my-sins-liberal," Brad announces sharply. "I don't give a shit about what you think of me or what I've done on my deployments. I'm good at what I do, I'm among the best, and I won't apologize for that. I'm not a poster child either. I may look like some Aryan warrior, but I'm adopted and my parents are Jewish. I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I wanted to be a Marine even before my parents sent me to military school and I have served this country with pride for the last seventeen years of my life. I'm not interested in equality and rights for everyone, but I will fight to ensure that every last one of you has them.
"I have served with good men, great men, who have done the same thing, because this is the life we've chosen. It's hard. People don't understand it, but you make your choices in this life and this is mine…"
And on Brad goes, "speaking to what he knows" as Reporter calls it. He spends his days training Marines in special ops. He loves what he does. He loves the Corps. He wouldn't change anything he's done.
And if he would, that's nobody's business but his own.
The fact that something thick and cloying is creeping into his chest is also nobody's business.
People say falling in love is scariest thing ever. That it's like jumping into an abyss without knowing where the bottom is.
That's clearly fat-lazy-bastard-sitting-on-the-sofa-watching-too-many-soap-operas bullshit, because anybody who knows anything will tell you that the scariest thing possible is falling in love after you've already been broken.
The scariest thing ever is falling in love again with the same motherfucking, green-eyed bandit that stole your heart the first time around.
People applaud after Brad finishes speaking, whether it's genuine or polite Brad doesn't bother to stick around and find out. Instead he collects his cover and walks right off stage and out the double doors of the Blue Room. He pauses in the hallway to get his bearings.
The hotel is nice; his room is paid for and he could go back to his room, stretch out on that king-sized bed and watch porn and eat room service until tomorrow morning. Or he could collect his things, get back into his jeans and jacket and go home.
"Leaving so soon?"
Brad doesn't flinch, but he does pause before looking over his shoulder at Nate. "That's generally what happens when you're finished," he says, keeping his face as blank as possible, "you leave."
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
Brad turns sharply on his toes. "Excuse me?"
Nate rubs his palm over his mouth. "Let's try this again - hi."
Brad blinks. There are more freckles on Nate's nose than there were before. His mouth is just as pink and lush as Brad remembers. His lips look soft. Not dry and cracked like a Marine's at all. "Hi," he says rather belatedly.
The smile on Nate's face is tentative, fragile. "You're really here," he says, his voice full of something that might be wonder.
"Is this an existentialist question, sir?" Brad's smirk has too many sharp edges.
"I'm not 'sir', Brad," Nate says, rocking forward on his toes. He's too close.
Brad takes a step back, clutching at his cover as though it's the last 203 round he has. "It's good to see you again, sir," he repeats brusquely before turning away.
He has to get the fuck out of here. He has to change out of this uniform and get back into his street clothes. He's exposed here. He'd be less exposed if he was naked.
A hand grabs his wrist. "Brad."
Nate's grip is sure, firm.
Brad turns back, mouth tight. "Is there a problem, sir?"
Nate's mouth is a taut line of unhappiness. Good. Except Nate doesn't even look around before he yanks Brad to him. They're nose-to-nose and Brad can see the flush starting to form on Nate's cheeks.
Brad sets his jaw tightly. His face hurts and his chest is caving in under the weight of 32 medals and pins and Nate fucking Fick.
"You don't get to walk out on me again," Nate says in a low tone.
Brad's bark of laughter rips through him like a bullet from a .50 cal. "I didn't realize I'd walked out the first time."
Nate's mouth turns down at the corners. "Why'd you stop calling? Answering my emails? What did I do to drive you away?"
Brad tugs his wrist free sharply. Maybe Nate's new career is okay with this sort of drama, but his isn't. "How's Sarah?" he asks dryly.
Nate blinks. "Sarah? Sarah who?"
"Your Pentagon legacy with the curly hair and the mile long legs," Brad reminds Nate in a tone he only tends to hear from his mother when she's pissed at his dad.
Nate opens his mouth but his words are drowned out by the door to the Blue Room opening. "Nate, we need you to introduce the next speaker!" a voice calls.
Brad smiles sharply. "Work calls. You should go."
Nate narrows his eyes and Brad feels it the air when Nate exhales. "Room 1206 at 8 p.m. Not 8:01; not 8:10. If you are not there at 8 p.m., I will hunt you down, Brad. I let you do this once; you're not doing it again."
And with that Nate turns on his heel and stalks off.
Brad stares after him. The hell? This isn't his fucking fault. He isn't the one who ran off with the first Susie Rottencrotch to spread her legs.
Fuck Nate.
He's not in charge of Brad anymore.
Fuck Nate and his fucking commands.
Even at their most downtrodden, horse-shit-for-orders nadir, Brad did what Nate wanted, and now, he doesn't even have the war as an excuse. This is obviously why he's standing outside Room 1206 of the Omni Shoreham in his civies. Jeans and a black sweater aren't dress blues, but this is what he's got to offer.
The door opens before he finishes one full knock.
"Eight o'clock and seventeen - eighteen seconds," Nate says, holding the door open with one hand while glancing at his watch.
"I wouldn't want to get NJP'd for tardiness," Brad says brazenly.
Nate just raises an eyebrow and steps back. "Come in," he says, gesturing behind him.
Brad stops just inside the door and studies his surroundings. "The officers always get the best shit," Brad says, looking around at a suite twice the size of his room.
"I always made sure my men were taken care of first," Nate says, leaning against the now-closed front door.
Brad glances over. "Yeah, you did."
Something startled crosses Nate's face, like he didn't think Brad would even give him that. Brad's not that much of asshole, despite whatever Ray says.
"It's supposed to be for wining and dining important people," Nate provides. "You have to look like you have money to make money apparently."
Brad looks at Nate's rolled up sleeves and loosened tie. "So you invited me here just to kick me out?" he asks.
Nate eyes Brad from toes to nose boldly. "No," he says after several uncomfortable moments, "I don't think there's anybody more important than you in a fifty mile radius."
"Just fifty miles?"
"My parents are in Baltimore."
Brad nods before wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. "So," he offers.
Nate's sucking on his bottom lip and he just looks at Brad for a long moment before gesturing at the living room set in the middle of the room. The sofa is sage green and covered with overstuffed pillows. On the coffee table is a bottle of Glenfiddich 30 and two glasses.
Brad raises an eyebrow. "Which Four-Star General are you supposed to give this to?" he asks, crossing over to the coffee table and picking up the bottle of thirty year-old whisky.
"Actually, it was a gift from a Boeing lobbyist," Nate says, his voice coming from right over Brad's shoulder. Brad stiffens slightly. "I'd thought about throwing it out, but it seemed a shame to waste a three-hundred dollar bottle of alcohol."
Brad drops down on the sofa, maneuvering away from Nate's body heat. "Sounds like a reasonable course of action," he says, cracking open the bottle and taking a deep inhalation.
The sofa shifts as Nate sits down next to him. Not close enough to be worrisome, but not so far as to seem distant. Brad holds out the bottle and offers Nate an inhale.
Nate sniffs once and smiles. Brad hasn't seen this smile in so long he'd almost forgotten how devastating it can be. He clears his throat and leans forward to fill their glasses. Afterwards he sets the bottle back on the coffee table and offers Nate a glass.
Nate scoots to the edge of the sofa, the sprawl of his legs pressing his knee against Brad's thigh. Brad twitches. "What are we drinking to?" Nate asks, holding up his glass.
"What else?" Brad answers, clanging their glasses together once.
Nate nods. "Semper fi," they parrot in tandem.
Brad takes a sip of the whisky and holds it briefly in his mouth, letting the flavors sit on his tongue before swallowing. He licks his lips before realizing that Nate's staring at him.
Nate downs his whisky in two swallows and then sets his glass back on the table.
"Trying to make me look bad?" Brad teases before knocking back what's left of his portion and placing it on the table.
"I don't think it's possible for you to look bad," Nate says bluntly. Brad just stares as Nate fills their glasses again. "What are we toasting to?" Nate offers, pushing Brad's glass toward him.
Brad watches Nate pick up his glass, watches it hover between them and then he picks up his own. "To you and your family. And to all the little Ficks out there in the world."
Nate's hand freezes and then he sets his glass back down on the table. "You want to toast to my niece and nephew?"
Brad shrugs and takes a long sip. "Whatever little Ficks there are." He's fishing and he's doing a poor job of it, but he just - he wants this part over with. Once he knows where he stands, he can readjust and they can move on.
Once he knows for sure, he can get past it.
Nate shifts fractionally closer to Brad. Brad takes another swallow of his whisky. It's a crime to treat liquor like this in such a cavalier way, but fuck it.
Except it's rather hard to be casual when Nate's fingers are on his wrist, tugging the glass away from his mouth. "Brad, the only little Ficks are Rosie and Henry."
"Your kids," Brad supplies helpfully.
Nate stares. "My sister's kids. I don't have kids."
"You don't have kids," Brad repeats. Nate's fingers are warm against his skin, and the vibrations from his chuckles travel straight down to Brad's knees.
"Brad, I'm not a dad. I'm not married. I'm not even seeing anyone right now."
"Oh."
Nate's thumb rubs along the side of Brad's hand. "There was somebody a while ago, but that didn't work out the way I'd hoped."
"Oh," is the only thing Brad can think to say again.
He used to be much more eloquent.
Fucking Google Alerts could've told him this one at least.
Nate releases Brad, leaving Brad's wrist cold as he busies himself with topping off his own drink. "So, we'll drink to the little Colberts of the world, instead?" Nate offers, holding up his glass.
Brad shakes his head. "None to speak of at the moment, but Rachel's in the middle of adopting twins from Chile. It's been almost eighteen months, but we think it's close to being a done deal."
Nate's eyes crease at the corner when he smiles. "Well, then we'll drink to them."
Brad raises his glass only to find it empty. Whoops. He fills his glass again. "How did Tom Ricks know about me?" he asks, glancing over at Nate.
Brad's missed the way Nate's cheeks flush. He's missed his smile and the way things are easy with him, even when they're not. Nate looks just over the top of Brad's head when he answers. "You're the Iceman, everybody knows about the Iceman," he says mockingly.
"Cute," Brad says dryly.
"Yes, that's what my mom says, too," Nate quips.
Brad has to laugh at that, has to deflect from the warmth spreading to his extremities, a heat that has nothing to do with the whisky they're rapidly working through.
"You didn't know I was coming today, did you?" Brad asks.
Nate snorts. "What gave you that idea? The fact that I ignored a room full of people to follow you?"
Brad sets his glass down. "So, if you didn't know about me, why am I here?"
"I don't know," Nate says honestly.
"Tom Ricks just chose my name out of the phone book?" he presses.
The flush in Nate's cheeks deepens. "I don't - I may have talked about you once or twice."
"Once or twice," Brad mocks.
Nate purses his lips. "Why did you just stop talking to me?" he asks boldly, setting his glass on the table. "No emails, no phone calls. I sent birthday cards to you at your parents' house."
Brad ducks his head. Those cards are still at his parents' house. Opened and displayed on his dresser, the colors long faded from the sun streaming into his boyhood bedroom.
He looks down at his knees. At the scuffed toes of his black shoes and the freshly shampooed carpet of the hotel room. "You'd moved on," he says flatly. "It wasn't my place to hold you back."
Nate's fingers are back, and now they're digging into Brad's forearm. Someone wants attention.
"Hold. Me. Back." Nate enunciates precisely, his voice sharp with disbelief. "Hold me back from what?"
Brad's laugh is mirthless. "From this," he says, gesturing to the room around him.
"This?" Nate parrots. "This what?"
"This," Brad reiterates. "This is the life you're meant to have, Nate. Harvard, D.C., high-class hotels, speeches at the communists' political conventions, four-star generals and lobbyists hanging on your every word. One day it'll be Congress and then the White House."
"And you think that's the life I'm supposed to have? That this is one that I've earned?"
"I think it's a life that has nothing to do with me," Brad says honestly after a too long pause. "Or Person. Or Poke or Rudy or any of us."
Nate's eyes are huge and for the second time this evening he stops touching Brad. "Do you think I'd rather have this than have you?"
Brad's smirk is a little too twisted. "Are you telling me you wouldn't?"
Nate whistles low. "This isn't about Rudy or Poke or Ray. This is about you and me. Us. Let's just say it now. I'm sorry I couldn't - didn't -- say it before, but I'm saying it now."
"There isn't an 'us'," Brad says flatly. "There's a Sarah."
Nate rubs his jaw. "I can't believe you remember Sarah, Brad. I forgot about Sarah until you mentioned her earlier. We were friends. Nothing more. Despite conventional wisdom according to Ray, you can be friends with girls. I wasn't shoving her in your face; I was trying to tell you that I wasn't sitting at home fucking pining over you every night. That you didn't have to worry. I thought -"
"That it would drive me fucking crazy?" Brad supplies bitterly.
Nate's mouth thins out. "It's sure as hell not like you were pining over me. You think I haven't heard about Maggie and Erica and Nicole and every other girl you've fucked in the last five years?"
Brad's too flustered to pretend otherwise. "They were just - they never counted. And how'd you - Poke."
"That doesn't matter," Nate says, refilling his glass and taking a very liberal swallow. Brad watches Nate's throat work for entirely too long. It's hard not to fixate on all that skin and the way Nate's shirt is open at the collar. At that pale V of skin. "And it was Hasser. He hates listening to Ray whining about how sad and lonely you are."
"I'm not sad!" Brad protests a bit loudly.
Nate raises an eyebrow. "But you're lonely?"
Brad shakes his head. "That's not relevant at all."
Nate sucks on his lower lip for a minute and then he nods. "If you say so," he agrees, picking up his glass again and finishing off the dregs.
He sets the glass down on the floor by his foot, slumps back against the sofa and closes his eyes.
Thanks to the spectacular hotel lighting that's lured in more powerful men than Brad, Nate's eyelashes are casting shadows on his face. Brad watches him openly. The rise and fall of his chest. The bottom lip he worries with his teeth. The flush in his cheeks that disappears under the collar of his shirt and the verdant tie that illuminates the green in his now-closed eyes.
Brad finds himself copying Nate's motions, sprawling out on the sofa parallel to Nate's body. Thigh pressing to thigh and knee to knee. The warmth bleeds out of Nate's body and seeps into Brad's skin. Waking up not-so suppressed urges and needs.
Nate's right hand is on his own thigh and Brad itches to touch him. Instead he slumps further down and rolls his head to the left. "How's your family?" he asks.
Nate's eyes flutter open. "Do you really care?" he asks, eyes half-lidded.
Yes.
"Yes." Nate blinks at him. Brad smirks back. "Yeah, I know, that surprised me, too."
Nate licks his lips, turning them slick and red, and then he begins to speak. His voice is soothing and deep; it lulls Brad into a calm trance like the best whisky and the best sex and the best relationship possible.
Brad listens to the rise and fall of Nate's tone. He pays attention because this is clearly important to Nate and what's important to Nate has always been important to Brad, even when he's thought otherwise. He watches the smiles that grace Nate's lips when he talks about his family, small and fond and wide and proud.
As Nate talks Brad's eyes keep drifting away, towards Nate's mouth, his eyes, his ears, the strawberry blond brown indescribable hair that's grown longer. The silky strands that Brad wants to wrap his fingers in. Anything to keep Nate close.
Nate's tie is shiny. It slips between Brad's fingers like water.
It takes Brad a moment to realize Nate's stopped talking. He looks up from his fingers tangled in Nate's tie. "And then what happened when Rosie hit that boy for stealing Henry's bike?" he prompts.
Nate's close. Closer than Brad remembers. "You're listening to me," Nate says softly, his mouth practically brushing against Brad's forehead.
Brad's shifts just that millimeter nearer. "I always listen to you. Why else do you think I'm here?"
Nate's mouth is against Brad's skin now, warm and soft and slightly damp. "So why didn't you listen five years ago?"
"Because you never told me what you wanted," Brad says to the open V of Nate's shirt.
"I did everything but get it tattooed on my forehead." Nate's protestation is just soft puffs of air.
Brad tugs on Nate's tie. "Maybe you should've."
Nate shifts and presses his lips to Brad's temple. "You do everything I say?"
"Yeah," Brad huffs out, "pretty much."
"I order you to kiss me," Nate says softly.
"Okay." Brad tugs on Nate's tie, moving upward at the same time that Nate slides down and then Nate pauses, his mouth hovering just out of reach.
Their eyes meet and for the first time in a very long time, Brad's not sorry about the years that have passed, because they brought them here. They couldn't have this without going through that first, he understands that now -- and then he surges up and presses their lips together.
Their first kiss could be soft and sweet or hard and vicious, worthy of two Marines denied, but it's neither of these things. Or it's all of them combined. There are tongues and teeth, Brad's fingers in Nate's tie and Nate's hands curled around the nape of Brad's neck.
Nate's tongue sweeps through Brad's mouth, setting off all kinds of noises and moans that Brad doesn't remember himself ever making. Brad holds onto Nate's tie for dear life, tugging him back every time Nate tries to pull away for air, every time Nate says his name against Brad's jaw, his neck, his cheek, Brad has to follow and swallow it down.
Brad can feel Nate's nails digging into the skin under the collar of his sweater, drawing him closer, trying to get as much as possible. Their kisses are wet and slick and filthy and gorgeous and never-ending.
Nate pulls away just to order Brad to kiss him. "Again," he says breathily.
Brad smiles. "Yes, sir," he says, only to have Nate duck away.
"Not sir, Brad, just Nate."
Brad holds Nate's jaw firmly, kissing him in rapid succession until Nate's laughing into his mouth and squirming to breathe. "Yes, Nate," Brad says, repeating his name over and over again.
Nate finally dodges away and presses his hand to Brad's chest to keep him at bay. "So, how long are you in town for?"
Brad's got 48 hours leave from Quantico, but he can get more. "How long do you want me here?" There's a long silence, which makes Brad nervous. Or it would if he couldn't see Nate thinking on this very hard. "What do you want, Nate? Tell me."
Nate's fingers curl into Brad's sweater and Brad leans in enough to nuzzle Nate's jaw. "Just say it."
There's an exhale. "I want you to stay long enough to see my condo in Silver Spring," Nate says eventually. "I want you to stay long enough for me to give you a set of keys and a drawer for your clothes. I want you to stay long enough that you'll think it's worth coming up here to visit me every week or at least every couple of weeks. I want… I want you to think this is worth it."
This is what's always burrowed its way into Brad's heart: Nate's earnestness. His honesty. His fervent belief that good things actually do happen to good people, even when the rest of the world falls apart.
Maybe Nate is Brad's proof that this can be true.
Brad looks at the tie still tangled in his fingers and nods once, and then he looks back up at Nate and nods again. "I could do that for you," he agrees, "but there's a problem."
Nate's face tightens and Brad releases his tie to touch his face. He brushes his thumb over the bridge of Nate's nose, rubs at the swollen mouth. "The problem," he explains, "is that you've always been worth it for me - you can't make me accept something that I've already known all along."
Nate exhales a quiet, "oh."
"Yeah," Brad says. "This is clearly a failing on the part of The Man."
"The Man?" Nate's laugh is rickety, half-amusement, half-incredulity. "Brad, you know in some places you are The Man?"
"Don't cloud the issue with Poke-approved oppressed minority factoids," Brad says dismissively.
Nate just shakes his head. "Right."
"Besides, I'm Jewish, I can't be the man," Brad says solemnly, "But you, though, look at you. You are clearly made to be The Man; you're dangerous," Brad adds with a disarming grin.
"Dangerous?" Nate parrots. His eyes are bright and sparkling; Brad's breath gets caught in his throat. Nate really is dangerous.
"Yeah," Brad swallows. "Clearly we need some sort of policy to regulate this. You're good with policies, aren't you? Maybe I'll call it The Fick Clause."
"The Fick Clause, it's catchy. What does it say?"
"It says that whatever you want, you should have."
"So, if I just want you…" Nate presses.
Brad swallows. "Then you'll have me."
Nate nods sharply. "Okay, where do I sign up?"
"Oh, I'm afraid you've already signed this contract. And it's binding."
"Well, if I'm already signed up then I guess I should start getting what I want."
"Absolutely."
Nate nods. "Fine, then kiss me again."
Brad gives Nate his best pseudo-shocked look. "No wish for world peace? No cure for cancer or AIDS? No dropping the debt or ending third world hunger and those annoying- ass PETA ads? No automatic ticket to the White House?"
"No," Nate says definitively. "Today I just want you. We can take care of the rest tomorrow."
-end-
For romanticalgirl, who originally conceived this idea, but said I could play with it anyway. Beta by the always brilliant alethialia. Title paraphrased from 'We Will Still Need a Song' by Hawksley Workman.