[REC] Generation Kill (176/365)
Every once in a while, you find a story. It's a story about a couple of people you know well, having read other stories about them and having got a pretty good idea in your head, you think, about who these folks are, and what they're like, and how their lives are likely to proceed, where they're likely to go, what they're likely to do. So you find a story, a particular one. Maybe it's about the future, about what will happen after all the other stories you know. Or maybe it's about the past, about something that happened to get them to this point. That's not it though, what really matters about this story is that it just feels... real. To you. It feels not like a Story at all, but maybe something someone who really knows what happened might have whispered in your ear. And it's just, well, where you go when you want to visit these people. You go and read this story, repeatedly if you have to.
This is that story for me, for Brad and Nate.
Combination of States (Brad/Nate (GK) | NC-17 | 15,770 words)
"Colbert, you've hit your twenty," she said, pulling no punches. "There were a couple of compromises made for services rendered, and a personal, glowing recommendation from General Ferrando that always seems to come up in your file. This would have been brought up before you returned from Baghdad, but as it stands, it's come up now. And here we are."
Author:
templemarker/templemarker. Also available @LJ and @author's site.
I had to think really hard about what I should tell you about it, because what I really feel about it personally is a big ol' tangle. It isn't just about GK, even, but about me, and my love/hate relationship with the armed services of this country, and my utter adoration and respect for individual members of said armed services, and my history loving one Former Marine in particular, once upon a time, and, well. See? No way I'm going to do this one justice. On the outside, it's a story about What Brad Does when he's given the opportunity to take his twenty and retire. On the outside it's maddeningly straightforward. But in reality (and this is important, because it feels like reality) it's complicated, and messy, and there are fights, and miscommunications, but then... Its heart is also utterly beautiful, and its characters, the relationships it paints between them, the small moments of discomfort, the miscommunications and miscues, the big moments of dawning clarity, all of it, utterly real and careful and respectful and gentle and true.
I was jealous of what happens in this story, for the longest freakin' time. You want... you hope that it would be possible for coming home to be like this for every soldier, that it could be something this ordinary. It isn't always, though. (See? No way for me to properly rec this story, not when it's hitting my RL filters and not my fiction ones.)
But. But! It's still such a gorgeous story. Brad has some thinking to do, and a blindspot the size of his entire existence. There is a fundamental misunderstanding about the notion of home, Brad's home in particular (Of course. Of course, because a soldier's home is where you tell him it is.) but he gets there, slowly but surely. Nate is a messy, beautiful combination of frustrated, patient, and completely beyond all hope. Nate, what must have been Nate's decisions up to this point, what must have been Nate's outlook for the two of them... Nate is a revelation.
It's a really, truly hot story too, but even the sex strikes you as the inevitable part and parcel of just who they are.
Ugh. I'm not even being coherent, am I? You should just ignore me and go read this beautiful, insightful, utterly comforting thing instead.
---
Further bits in my 2012 one-a-day slash recs experiment can be found on my rec: 365 tag ( LJ/DW)
(cross-posted from http://mementis.dreamwidth.org/68803.html -
comments @ DW - reply@DW)
This is that story for me, for Brad and Nate.
Combination of States (Brad/Nate (GK) | NC-17 | 15,770 words)
"Colbert, you've hit your twenty," she said, pulling no punches. "There were a couple of compromises made for services rendered, and a personal, glowing recommendation from General Ferrando that always seems to come up in your file. This would have been brought up before you returned from Baghdad, but as it stands, it's come up now. And here we are."
Author:
templemarker/templemarker. Also available @LJ and @author's site.
I had to think really hard about what I should tell you about it, because what I really feel about it personally is a big ol' tangle. It isn't just about GK, even, but about me, and my love/hate relationship with the armed services of this country, and my utter adoration and respect for individual members of said armed services, and my history loving one Former Marine in particular, once upon a time, and, well. See? No way I'm going to do this one justice. On the outside, it's a story about What Brad Does when he's given the opportunity to take his twenty and retire. On the outside it's maddeningly straightforward. But in reality (and this is important, because it feels like reality) it's complicated, and messy, and there are fights, and miscommunications, but then... Its heart is also utterly beautiful, and its characters, the relationships it paints between them, the small moments of discomfort, the miscommunications and miscues, the big moments of dawning clarity, all of it, utterly real and careful and respectful and gentle and true.
I was jealous of what happens in this story, for the longest freakin' time. You want... you hope that it would be possible for coming home to be like this for every soldier, that it could be something this ordinary. It isn't always, though. (See? No way for me to properly rec this story, not when it's hitting my RL filters and not my fiction ones.)
But. But! It's still such a gorgeous story. Brad has some thinking to do, and a blindspot the size of his entire existence. There is a fundamental misunderstanding about the notion of home, Brad's home in particular (Of course. Of course, because a soldier's home is where you tell him it is.) but he gets there, slowly but surely. Nate is a messy, beautiful combination of frustrated, patient, and completely beyond all hope. Nate, what must have been Nate's decisions up to this point, what must have been Nate's outlook for the two of them... Nate is a revelation.
It's a really, truly hot story too, but even the sex strikes you as the inevitable part and parcel of just who they are.
Ugh. I'm not even being coherent, am I? You should just ignore me and go read this beautiful, insightful, utterly comforting thing instead.
---
Further bits in my 2012 one-a-day slash recs experiment can be found on my rec: 365 tag ( LJ/DW)
(cross-posted from http://mementis.dreamwidth.org/68803.html -
comments @ DW - reply@DW)