GK fic: Don't Lick Your Fingers When You Turn the Page
A little bit of meta and a lot of getting together (emotionally) ♥
Title: Don’t Lick Your Fingers When You Turn the Page
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Word Count: 5409
Summary: A story about writing
Notes: Written for the Get Some Porn Skirmish, prompt of: writing on the body. Read-through by snglesrvngfrend. Title from "Neon Bible" by The Arcade Fire.
Sometime after Nasiriyah Brad gets a Sharpie. Nate’s not exactly sure when, but one morning he wakes up to the sound of Ray’s bitching, particularly vicious.
He wanders over to Brad’s Humvee, where most Brad’s team is in a circle around Ray, quiet delight all over their faces. Brad looks smugger than Nate’s ever seen him.
Ray looks furious. Especially since he’s got a neat square of black between his upper lip and his nose.
“What the fuck, Brad?” he demands, spitting on his fingers and smearing the ink straight across his lip. “Did you miss your old friend Hitler so much you had to bring him to Iraq with you?”
“I’m thinking about applying to art school,” Brad says coolly. “I want to make sure I’m good enough to get in.”
Ray snorts, still angry. He spits again and scrubs over his face some more. Brad claps him on the shoulder.
“If you’re good, I’ll let you draw a dick on Trombley’s face,” he says magnanimously, nodding to the Humvee where Trombley’s still asleep.
*
After that, Brad uses the Sharpie whenever he can get away with it, which is almost always. With the exception of Ray and Reporter, he leaves faces alone, but somehow he finds ways to mark people up under their suits without them knowing.
Poke starts calling him the Ink Ninja after Pappy kindly informs him of the smiley face on the back of his head.
Brad claims not to know anything about it, proudly displaying his dirty but ink-free hands for everyone to see.
*
He never does anything to Nate, not even a swipe across the back of the hand. It’s not like he doesn’t have the marker with him at all times. Unless Brad is using it it stays clipped to the front of his flak jacket. Nate’s seen him touch it absently when he’s talking to someone, like maybe it’s good luck.
They're sitting on the far side of a berm, talking shop, not touching yet although they will be soon, and Brad’s got the Sharpie in his hands, twisting the cap around and around. Nate opens his mouth to say something about optics and instead what comes out is:
“Why haven’t you done anything to me?”
Brad looks at him. “Today? Well, we spent most of the day in separate victors and I really doubt Godfather wants us jamming up the radio with sex talk.”
“No,” Nate says, suddenly kind of embarrassed. “I meant that.” He points to the Sharpie.
Brad looks at him like a moron crawled into his skin while he wasn’t looking. “You’re an officer.”
“That doesn’t stop you from doing other things.”
There’s more of that staring and then, suddenly, Brad smiles. “Fine. Have it your way. Give me your hand.”
Nate sticks out his right arm, palm up and Brad grips his wrist gently. He pushes up the cuff of Nate’s suit and uncaps the pen with his teeth. The black of the cap contrasts against his smile brilliantly.
He rubs his thumb against the thin soft skin of Nate’s wrist, wiping over where it’s fish belly-white. Then, almost faster that Nate can track, he scrawls his name where he just touched, Brad Colbert. Just for a moment the ink is cool, but then the sensation disappears. Brad pauses, and then he underlines his name with a flourish and sticks the pen back in the cap, tucking it back into its place.
Leaning down close, Brad blows out a long breath over the ink to dry it. His mouth almost touches Nate’s wrist.
A low hot feeling pools in Nate’s stomach and he feels his face get warm. He wants to pull his wrist away, get Brad to blow air over his throat, his belly, his cock instead. He doesn’t move an inch.
Brad straightens back up and pulls the cuff down over the writing, guiding Nate’s hand back to his own lap.
“There you go, sir. Courtesy of the Ink Ninja.”
Nate knows he can’t really, but it feels like he can feel it, the long stroke of the B, the swooping C, the swift line of the crossed T at the end.
He swallows quickly and asks, “How long does it last?”
Brad shrugs, but he clearly recognizes the look on Nate’s face. “Long enough,” he says, shifting closer.
Nate nods, reaching out, hooking his fingers in the front of Brad’s jacket next to the marker. “Okay. Come here.”
*
Nate’s hands are the only thing he tries to keep clean, mostly so he doesn’t get sick. He washes them a few times a day and each time a little bit more of Brad’s signature fades away.
After three days it’s gone.
Brad notices its absence the next time Nate jerks him off. He’s avidly watching his cock bump through Nate’s fist, fingers locked around the back of Nate’s neck, and when Nate turns his wrist his face screws up. First in pleasure and then in something else.
“Already?” he asks. Their faces are close enough that Nate can taste the clean mint of his breath.
Nate speeds up a little, squeezing the head of Brad’s dick. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“Of course not,” Brad agrees, breathy around the edges, so close to coming.
After they’ve both come Brad makes Nate offer up both his wrists and he draws neat X’s on them, blowing until they’re dry and Nate’s smile is confused, tainted by lust.
Then he hooks his finger in the sweat-stiff collar of Nate’s t-shirt and draws it down into a vee. He simply looks for a long time before he draws another X in the soft hollow of Nate’s throat above his horseshoe.
“Being this pale should be illegal,” he mutters before he blows.
Nate has to grip Brad’s shoulder then. The feeling’s tickly and hot, too much and not enough.
“What are you doing?” His voice comes out odd, softer than he intends it to, trembling inside his mouth.
Brad pulls back just enough so he can see Nate’s face. His finger is still against Nate’s chest. “This is an invasion that doesn’t have time on its side,” he says quietly. “We have to mark off the places that need attention later.”
Nate makes a noise that’s almost Okay.
Brad draws one more X, an inch or so down from the last one. He blows a short burst of air over it and releases Nate’s shirt.
“If I had time and this wasn’t the middle of the fucking desert,” Brad says, fingers trailing up Nate’s throat, “these are some of the places I’d put my mouth.”
“Yeah?”
Brad smiles. “Of course, this is only a small sampling of my choices. But like I said before, so much ground to cover, so little time to cover it.”
Nate closes his eyes and shakes his head, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still grinning like a fool.
*
The wrists and throat stay popular, but Brad explores the territory as best he can. He writes here across both Nate’s nipples and bite bite bite across his left collarbone. Tongue licks down his spine and fuck rides the small of his back.
Those are the ones that last, even if he sweats. Sometimes he wonders what anyone would say if he got shot and they had to look at the mess of Shakespeare and Air Supply written across his ribs.
He hopes the men respect him enough that they wouldn’t say anything.
*
The day after the immense clusterfuck that is Muwaffaqiyah, Brad pins him to a berm and works him out of the top half of his suit and gets his vest off, suspenders down, trousers almost at his cock, t-shirt pushed up to the faded twin heres.
Brad’s hands don’t shake but he writes slower than usual, concentrating hard on the low part of Nate’s belly. Nate touches the back of his head as he works because he doesn’t get to touch enough.
As soon as Brad’s done he’s up and walking away, back to camp and Walt and their fucked-up mess, leaving Nate lying in the sand, trying not to go blind from the sun.
He finally looks. It’s a little difficult to read upside down and that far down on his body, but he gets it.
This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time
*
That one smudges fast and the side of his wrist and hand blur black. Nate’s combat jacks smell like sharp alcohol and chemical dyes. It helps him get off, as twisted as that is.
Brad’s fucked up too, but Nate doesn’t mind. They are all. Normal men don’t become Marines. Being fucked up is part of the job.
Nate finds Brad sitting on top of someone’s shit box, head lowered between his knees, cutting his own hair. He doesn’t sit up or startle when Nate takes the clippers out of his hand and resets the line, cutting his hair more evenly.
“It’s fine,” Nate tells him, sweeping up over the crown of his head. Downy blonde tufts of hair drift down to the sand, stirring in until they’re part of the landscape.
Brad just grunts.
“We’re fine,” Nate says. “Stafford’s fine, Pappy’s mostly fine, Walt will eventually be fine.”
“Fine,” Brad repeats heavily, a scoffing close to the conversation.
Nate doesn’t say anything else as he shuts the clippers off, shaking them out. But he does check to make sure no one’s around before crouching down and blowing gently on the back of Brad’s neck, little shards of hair scattering with his breath.
*
Nate refuses the order to recon the park and there’s a part of him that’s sure he’s done for. A big part of him doesn’t give a shit. The biggest part of him wants to believe what Brad says.
There’s nothing to be done though, so Nate sits up on that hill and watches Baghdad burn.
After a few tense minutes he hears Brad turn to Wright and say, “Shoo now. We have work to do. Go ask Ray what he thinks about pandas.”
“Pandas. Check.” Nate feels the look Wright’s giving him but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
The city goes quiet and dark as Wright trips down the hill. Brad shifts back closer to him.
“Let me see your arm,” he says.
“Brad.”
“You’ve avoided the Ink Ninja’s wrath so far on account of your impeccable blowjob and handjob skills, but the Ninja’s memory is short.”
“Fuck,” Nate grumbles, but he puts down his rifle and starts extracting his right arm. Brad uncaps the Sharpie and helps Nate roll up the sleeve of his t-shirt.
Whatever Brad’s doing, Nate can hardly feel it, only the slightest pressure here and there.
“What are you doing after this is all over?” Brad asks. These conversations have been taking place all over the platoon the past few days.
Nate always answers the same way. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” A touch near his elbow, another one near the inside of his bicep.
Nate relaxes a little, oddly comforted by this strange little ritual, the smell of Brad and the marker, having this one thing out of his hands.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be back, I’m sure,” Brad says. “Hopefully the food doesn’t suck so much next time.”
Nate smiles a little and there’s three more taps along the top of his shoulder, like gunfire.
“Done,” Brad says after a pause.
“Thanks.” Nate tilts his arm and tries to get a look, but it’s too dark. He has to wait until the city lights up again before he can see the scattering of black dots from his shoulder to his elbow.
It doesn’t mean anything to him. It could be Morse code or a constellation or nothing at all. But since Nate doesn’t have a way to connect the dots he’ll never know.
*
There’s so much ink and dirt to wash off that Nate’s first real shower lasts an hour. He watches the water swirl brown around his feet, then grey, and finally it’s clear and his feet are the only dirty part left. He stares at the shadows of dirt between his pale toes and across the tops of his feet for a while, and then he washes them too.
*
The paddle party is almost too much. Nate knows there are words he should be saying to his men, but he also knows they’re bigger than those words, too much for them.
He thinks they get it, since they don’t talk about it either. Instead there are ridiculous stories and a beer drinking contest that Nate participates in for about thirty seconds before he has to stop because he’s laughing too much.
It’s also the only time Brad uses the Sharpie on him in front of anyone else.
He gets up on a chair and says, “Listen up, you societal rejects.”
“I know you are, but what am I?” Ray calls.
Brad points at him. “Especially you.” He makes a show of clearing his throat and making a lot of grave eye contact with everyone. “I have something to confess. I am the man who walked among you with the marker. I am the Ink Ninja.”
There are shouts of Really?, Say it ain’t so! and one How dare you?! that has everyone laughing.
“But,” Brad says, “I have decided to retire. Before I do though, I’d like to commit one last act of graffiti.”
“Don’t get out your dick!” Ray yells.
Brad grins and shakes his head. He digs in his jeans and pulls out the Sharpie, twisting the cap off amid scattered clapping.
He turns to Nate and beckons him. “C’mon, Captain, you’re up.”
Hands propel Nate to the front of the crowd as Brad steps down off the chair. Brad turns him to face the men as he pulls Nate’s t-shirt all the way up and off.
Even though they’re in a crowded room, arousal still spins through Nate when the marker touches his back, which Brad probably anticipated. To make up for it Nate takes a deep breath and focuses on Brad’s slow lettering across his shoulder blades.
D-E-V-I-L D-O-G
Brad takes his shoulders when he’s done and spins Nate around so everyone can see. There’s more clapping and even some chanting, but just for a second Nate catches Brad’s eye. Brad’s smiling, but there’s also something faintly sad in his face.
Don’t forget, he mouths, squeezing Nate’s shoulders tight.
*
They go their separate ways after that. Brad stays in Cali and Nate goes to Boston, looking for something new. They talk sometimes, about who’s doing what and the weather. Brad says he’ll visit soon.
He doesn’t.
The phone calls and emails get shorter, clipped at the edges where Nate talks for too long. More often than not, a conversation ends with Brad saying, “I have to go,” and a dial tone.
Nate wonders about it, but tries not to.
For a while, he doesn’t call Brad or email him. He applies to grad school and tries to learn how to cook. He only succeeds at one of the two.
It’s more than a month later when Brad finally calls him. He fumbles for the phone with one hand and pokes a wooden spoon into his stir fry with the other.
“Hello?”
“Hey, LT.” Brad’s voice is quiet, maybe a little tired, worn around his old nickname. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Nate sets the spoon down and steps away from the stove. “You?”
“Not dead yet.”
“Glad to hear it. Busy?”
Brad makes a noncommittal noise and beyond that Nate hears the thin sound of someone else’s voice. He can’t tell if it’s a woman or a man.
They cycle through the usual topics and jokes quickly, but it’s tight and strange without a berm beneath them and the touch of marker to skin.
Finally, Nate takes a deep breath. “Hey, uh, are you seeing anyone?”
Brad chokes on his laugh. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“A pretty simple one.”
The other end of the line is quiet for a long moment and then Brad says, “No,” almost like it’s a question.
Swallowing down relief and other weird feelings, Nate says, “Never mind. It’s stupid. I have to go.”
He hangs up before Brad can say anything. And then he presses Talk and puts the phone down on the counter so Brad can’t interrupt his embarrassment, turning back to the stove.
His stir fry is burnt beyond repair, not that Nate really wanted it anyway.
*
He lives on the shitty food he ate at university and coffee and keeps shitty hours for the next few weeks. There’s nothing to keep him occupied so he goes to Staples and buys a desk and an office chair and sets it all up in his living room.
Next comes a stack of paper and four pens, each one a different colour. Nate puts them in an old coffee mug.
When he’s not running or letting his mother quiz him about his life he sits at the desk. Mostly he just fucks around but it feels like working, even if it’s just writing down his name.
Nathaniel Fick
Nathaniel Fick
Captain Nathaniel Fi-
The doorbell rings. It’s a FedEx guy. He hands Nate a rectangular package and a clipboard.
“Sign at the X,” he says, bored.
Nathaniel Fick, once more, and the guy salutes Nate and leaves.
The return address is a P.O. box in California. Nate rips off the paper and slits the tape with his thumbnail. Inside the box a thin tube of bubblewrap. At the centre of that is a beat-up black Sharpie.
There’s a little curl of paper tucked under the pocket clip. Nate unfurls it carefully.
I’m coming, it says in Brad’s thin writing.
Nate smiles. He can’t help it. He brings the marker to his desk and pulls out a fresh sheet of paper. The felt tip’s gone fuzzy from Iraqi sand and dirty skin, so the lines bleed a little, but it still writes just fine.
NATE
*
Nate buys food and new sheets and tries not to be gone very often. It’s not like Brad would just leave if he wasn’t home, but he doesn’t want to miss it.
While he waits he starts making notes about what happened in Iraq. Writing down the details helps him remember, although he never mentions Brad’s marker or his mouth or his hands.
It’s something to do and Nate likes telling his story, even if he’s the only one reading it. It feels good. The notes stretch out into paragraphs about Iraq and even before that. Then pages. Pages stapled together.
Of course, Brad comes the day he has papers all over his living room, grouped by month.
He’s stuck between answering the door right away and preserving his filing system and cramming as many papers as possible into the desk drawers.
He settles for grabbing all the papers off his couch and coffee table and dumping them on top of the desk, before jogging to the door.
Brad’s got what must be a lock pick in his hand. He smiles wryly at Nate and tucks it back inside his leather jacket.
“Thirty seconds is not too much time to wait for someone to open the door,” Nate tells Brad as he steps back to let him in.
“It’s at least fifteen too many,” Brad counters, dropping his duffle in front of the closet and crouching to untie his boots.
“I seem to remember patience being one of your virtues.”
Brad finishes the laces on one boot and goes for the other. “Situational patience,” he corrects as he stands, toeing off his boots.
They smile at each other, a little awkwardly, standing too close together.
Brad looks different. His hair’s the same and he hasn’t lost or gained any weight, but he’s not quite right. It’s not the jeans or jacket. Nate thought about all the ways Brad could dress or not while they were in theatre and used them alongside the marker smell to fuel his jacks. It’s something else.
He wants to look more, figure out how Brad’s changed, but by now Brad’s smile is crooked and his posture is stiff.
This is probably when Nate should push Brad against the wall, maybe confess something meaningful, kiss him until he gives in and they can wreck his sheets.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asks instead, stepping back toward the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Brad says, watching him carefully
*
Nate makes stir fry again. It still sucks, but it’s not burnt and Brad eats it anyway. He takes huge, careful bites, sometimes using his thumb to push rice and vegetables onto his fork.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Brad says as he brings his beer bottle to his mouth.
Nate shrugs. Most of his meal is still on his plate. “I get by.”
“Mmm.” Brad carefully puts his fork down on the plate and takes another drink.
“Are you done?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Nate dumps his food into the trash and takes their plates to the sink. He can feel Brad watching him, hear him drinking and shifting in his chair.
He rinses the plates and his hands, just for something to do. The clock ticks patiently. It’s almost seven-thirty.
“Why did you ask me if I was seeing someone?”
Nate closes his eyes and squeezes the edge of the counter tightly. He opens his eyes.
“To be perfectly honest,” he tells his sink, “I don’t know.”
“I’m not,” Brad says quietly.
Nate sighs, ignoring the lightness in his chest. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Behind him Brad’s chair scrapes across the linoleum and he comes close on socked feet. He leans hipshot against the counter next to Nate’s white knuckles.
“You wanted to know.”
Out of the corner of his eye Nate sees Brad move. He lifts his hand and carefully presses it to Nate’s back, right where he wrote touch once in swooping black letters. His fingers are light and warm through Nate’s shirt.
Nate looks at Brad, who’s not smiling but looks like he wants to. He remembers Brad’s words: lick, suck, X, X, X and the Fick that eventually turned into a tree sprouting from his thigh up to his armpit.
Brad wrote so much out there, and they both said so much, to themselves and others.
Nate’s fucking sick of words.
He curls his fingers around the back of Brad’s neck and draws him in. Brad’s mouth is already parted when it touches Nate’s, so easy to lick into.
That first kiss is slow and oddly sweet, a little bit tender. It lasts a long time and by the end of it Brad’s pressing Nate into the counter, pulling up his shirt in loose handfuls.
His face looks strange so close up, unfocused and soft, hardly Brad Colbert at all. They separate a little further and his face sharpens back into the polite, watchful man Nate knows.
Brad frowns a little, not at Nate, but he does. Nate can see him thinking, getting ready to speak, mouth starting in on Nate…
Nate shakes his head, petting down the grain of Brain’s hair, leaning in again.
This time the kisses are short and biting, the kind they shared a few times in Iraq, when it was dark and they were desperate. Nate’s body recognizes the hardness of Brad’s mouth and body and it feels like he’s coming alive, just like he did in the field, cock hardening, his mouth and fingers sensitive.
Brad feels the same, if the heat of his nape and the curve of his erection against Nate’s belly is anything to go by. He’s got Nate’s shirt rucked up now, high enough that both fuck and tongue would have been visible if Nate hadn’t washed them away months ago.
He touches Nate in those places too, somehow remembering, fingers dipping under Nate’s waistband, touching the top of his ass.
They part one more time, to breathe, and then Nate guides Brad to the bedroom with a strong grip on Brad’s wrist, where no one ever wrote anything at all.
*
They fuck twice. The first time is so much like Iraq Nate almost can’t believe it. It’s hard and quiet, rolling around, struggling against each other’s weight before they settle onto their sides, jerking each other off, breath mixing between their faces. The only differences are that they’re naked and on a bed this time.
Afterwards, they catch their breath side-by-side on Nate’s bed, touching at the shoulder and hip. Nate waits for Brad to go to sleep.
He doesn’t. He closes his eyes for a little while, but his breathing doesn’t slow down and he doesn’t go limp. Nate watches him take deep, centred breaths, his hands resting on his stomach just above his pubic hair.
In Iraq, he always seemed so tired, especially after they fucked around. His writing was lazy after his orgasms, curving and slow, heavy pressure that sometimes made the lines bleed.
“Are you alright?” Brad asks, eyes still closed.
Nate realizes he’s been staring at Brad’s profile. He mentally shakes himself.
“Yeah.”
Brad opens his eyes, arching one eyebrow at Nate.
Nate shakes his head. “I’m fine, Brad.”
“Fine,” Brad says. He shifts onto his side so he’s facing Nate.
“That’s what I said.” Nate tries to keep the officer out of his voice, but he doesn’t quite succeed.
Brad reacts accordingly. “Of course,” he says, all careful respect. His fingers on Nate’s jaw are careful too, turning him for Brad’s mouth, the slow sweep of his tongue.
They kiss for a while, deep and indulgent, before Brad pulls away, sucking on Nate’s lip as he goes.
“If I blow you,” Brad whispers, eyes dark and bright, “will you feel better?”
Nate’s stomach pulls tight and his cock jerks. Brad smiles at him and it happens again.
“I’m fine,” he insists, but his voice isn’t powerful and Brad’s already drifting down to his hips, encouraging him to spread his thighs with gentle hands.
*
This is the longest Brad’s mouth has ever been on him. Nate feels drunk with the excess of spit and the smooth slick of Brad’s tongue against his cock. He’s warm all over, listening to Brad suck and his own shaky breathing.
Sometime in he says, “Brad,” in a hazy, raw voice, squirming against the heavy hands on his hips and Brad pulls back until the tip of Nate’s cock is just resting against his bottom lip.
“Can I fuck you?” Brad asks, each word blowing over Nate’s skin.
Nate remembers Brad’s fingers inside him in Iraq, not because they had the time and space to fuck, but just to keep stimulation at its peak. He remembers the feeling of hot sand through the knees of his MOPP suit and how empty he’d felt when Brad had pulled his fingers out.
He swallows and says, “Yeah. Yeah, c’mon.”
*
“I wrote something here once,” Brad murmurs, kissing just under the nape of Nate’s neck, rubbing his mouth there.
Nate isn’t ready to talk. He’s still shifting underneath Brad’s weight, trying to negotiate the feel of his cock deep inside.
Brad kisses him again and runs a hand down his belly to cradle his cock.
“You fell asleep sitting on a rock. Upright, but with your chin against your chest. It was so easy to pull the hood of your suit and your shirt down and you didn’t even move.”
The ache is lifting with each breath Nate takes, so he asks, “What was it?”
Brad’s knees shift between his and there’s light grinding pressure against his ass, but Brad doesn’t say anything.
“Was it, ‘Nate Fick is a shitty fucking cocksmoker’?”
“Jesus, no,” Brad laughs.
“Well, then you can keep your secret,” Nate says, looking over his shoulder at Brad, tilting back so their mouths can touch at the same that Brad rolls his hips in.
*
He’s so tired that he barely moves after they fuck. Brad seems fine, but he doesn’t get out of bed. Instead he runs his fingernails down Nate’s back in ticklish, comforting lines while Nate starts to fall asleep.
“I meant to call,” he finally says, quietly. His finger traces a word on Nate’s back, but Nate can’t figure it out. “I was busy.”
“S’okay,” Nate replies drowsily, inching closer.
*
Nate’s barely been sleeping for a month, staying up until he can’t go anymore and then catching a bare handful of hours, so he’s not surprised that the clock has flipped from PM to AM and the sun’s risen before he wakes up.
Brad’s in the bed beside him, sheets down against his hips. He’s propped up on his elbow, eating cold rice out of a bowl with his fingers and reading a stack of papers.
“Hey,” Nate murmurs, blinking heavily and stretching.
“Morning.”
“What’re you reading?” Nate shifts over, so his knees are brushing Brad’s.
Brad turns the top page so he can see.
March 27, 2003: Trombley shot two shepherd kids on the way to Qalat Sukhar airfield…
Nate makes a pass at the page, but he’s still clumsy and sleepy, so he’s no match for Brad, who scoops up the papers and his bowl of rice and has it all on the nightstand before Nate can even think about trying again.
“Why were you reading that?” Nate asks, pitching for pissed-off officer.
Brad doesn’t take the bait this time, settling back in the mess of sheets.
“Why did you leave it out?” He counters.
“On my desk is hardly out.”
Brad shrugs quickly. “It’s not like it’s news to me.” He digs his shoulder into the mattress and reaches out to touch Nate’s chest, where the horseshoe used to rest. “Although, I can’t help but notice you’ve omitted our mutual sexual conquests.”
Nate shifts against Brad’s palm, unsure whether he’s being accused or not. “It wouldn’t make for a good story,” He says. “And you’re still in the Corps.”
Brad shakes his head ruefully at the first thing and then his hand moves, curving around Nate’s neck. “Are you planning on telling this story to people?”
Nate shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. But the stuff concerning you and I, it’s…” He wants to say for us, but he doesn’t because maybe it’s not even for that. So he shrugs again.
Brad nods anyway, thumbing over a ghost X. Then, before Nate can do anything he rolls off the bed and disappears out of the room. He’s not gone for long and when he comes back he has his Sharpie. He hands it to Nate when he climbs back into bed.
“And this is for?” Nate prompts, waving the marker.
Brad leans back on his elbows, fully on display. “More than one way to write a story.”
Nate looks over Brad’s body. He’s richly tanned, cut out in long, clean lines that Nate wants to memorize. The perfect paper.
He settles for kissing Brad as he straddles him, warm cock curving against the inside of his thigh and the fineness of Brad’s stubble under his fingers.
Finally he pulls back and pushes Brad down into the sheets. “Stay,” he murmurs.
“Can do,” Brad says. That doesn’t stop him from skimming his fingertips over Nate’s thighs.
Nate doesn’t mind. He uncaps the Sharpie and starts to lower it to Brad’s skin. But he stops just before ink hits skin.
“Scared? Can’t think of a way to improve on a masterpiece?”
“No.” Nate shifts back a little, reaching for Brad’s cock, stroking lightly. “Just considering the best approach.”
Brad’s gaze goes soft and he lifts his hips into Nate’s grip. “Whatever you want.”
Nate smirks. He jacks Brad a little more, until there are traces of stickiness across his fingertips and Brad’s breathing quickly. Then he pulls off and resettles against Brad’s cock, licking his fingertips clean and damp.
He colours the pads of his fingers shiny-black while Brad watches.
“You’re a genius, Captain Fick,” Brad says, thumbs in the creases of Nate’s hips.
Nate drops the Sharpie on the sheets near Brad’s hip, tiny dots of black trailing after it.
“I know,” Nate says, smiling. He leans in to kiss Brad hard and deep one more time, just before he lowers his fingers to Brad’s belly and goes to work.
NB: The belly-quote is from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
Title: Don’t Lick Your Fingers When You Turn the Page
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Word Count: 5409
Summary: A story about writing
Notes: Written for the Get Some Porn Skirmish, prompt of: writing on the body. Read-through by snglesrvngfrend. Title from "Neon Bible" by The Arcade Fire.
Sometime after Nasiriyah Brad gets a Sharpie. Nate’s not exactly sure when, but one morning he wakes up to the sound of Ray’s bitching, particularly vicious.
He wanders over to Brad’s Humvee, where most Brad’s team is in a circle around Ray, quiet delight all over their faces. Brad looks smugger than Nate’s ever seen him.
Ray looks furious. Especially since he’s got a neat square of black between his upper lip and his nose.
“What the fuck, Brad?” he demands, spitting on his fingers and smearing the ink straight across his lip. “Did you miss your old friend Hitler so much you had to bring him to Iraq with you?”
“I’m thinking about applying to art school,” Brad says coolly. “I want to make sure I’m good enough to get in.”
Ray snorts, still angry. He spits again and scrubs over his face some more. Brad claps him on the shoulder.
“If you’re good, I’ll let you draw a dick on Trombley’s face,” he says magnanimously, nodding to the Humvee where Trombley’s still asleep.
*
After that, Brad uses the Sharpie whenever he can get away with it, which is almost always. With the exception of Ray and Reporter, he leaves faces alone, but somehow he finds ways to mark people up under their suits without them knowing.
Poke starts calling him the Ink Ninja after Pappy kindly informs him of the smiley face on the back of his head.
Brad claims not to know anything about it, proudly displaying his dirty but ink-free hands for everyone to see.
*
He never does anything to Nate, not even a swipe across the back of the hand. It’s not like he doesn’t have the marker with him at all times. Unless Brad is using it it stays clipped to the front of his flak jacket. Nate’s seen him touch it absently when he’s talking to someone, like maybe it’s good luck.
They're sitting on the far side of a berm, talking shop, not touching yet although they will be soon, and Brad’s got the Sharpie in his hands, twisting the cap around and around. Nate opens his mouth to say something about optics and instead what comes out is:
“Why haven’t you done anything to me?”
Brad looks at him. “Today? Well, we spent most of the day in separate victors and I really doubt Godfather wants us jamming up the radio with sex talk.”
“No,” Nate says, suddenly kind of embarrassed. “I meant that.” He points to the Sharpie.
Brad looks at him like a moron crawled into his skin while he wasn’t looking. “You’re an officer.”
“That doesn’t stop you from doing other things.”
There’s more of that staring and then, suddenly, Brad smiles. “Fine. Have it your way. Give me your hand.”
Nate sticks out his right arm, palm up and Brad grips his wrist gently. He pushes up the cuff of Nate’s suit and uncaps the pen with his teeth. The black of the cap contrasts against his smile brilliantly.
He rubs his thumb against the thin soft skin of Nate’s wrist, wiping over where it’s fish belly-white. Then, almost faster that Nate can track, he scrawls his name where he just touched, Brad Colbert. Just for a moment the ink is cool, but then the sensation disappears. Brad pauses, and then he underlines his name with a flourish and sticks the pen back in the cap, tucking it back into its place.
Leaning down close, Brad blows out a long breath over the ink to dry it. His mouth almost touches Nate’s wrist.
A low hot feeling pools in Nate’s stomach and he feels his face get warm. He wants to pull his wrist away, get Brad to blow air over his throat, his belly, his cock instead. He doesn’t move an inch.
Brad straightens back up and pulls the cuff down over the writing, guiding Nate’s hand back to his own lap.
“There you go, sir. Courtesy of the Ink Ninja.”
Nate knows he can’t really, but it feels like he can feel it, the long stroke of the B, the swooping C, the swift line of the crossed T at the end.
He swallows quickly and asks, “How long does it last?”
Brad shrugs, but he clearly recognizes the look on Nate’s face. “Long enough,” he says, shifting closer.
Nate nods, reaching out, hooking his fingers in the front of Brad’s jacket next to the marker. “Okay. Come here.”
*
Nate’s hands are the only thing he tries to keep clean, mostly so he doesn’t get sick. He washes them a few times a day and each time a little bit more of Brad’s signature fades away.
After three days it’s gone.
Brad notices its absence the next time Nate jerks him off. He’s avidly watching his cock bump through Nate’s fist, fingers locked around the back of Nate’s neck, and when Nate turns his wrist his face screws up. First in pleasure and then in something else.
“Already?” he asks. Their faces are close enough that Nate can taste the clean mint of his breath.
Nate speeds up a little, squeezing the head of Brad’s dick. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“Of course not,” Brad agrees, breathy around the edges, so close to coming.
After they’ve both come Brad makes Nate offer up both his wrists and he draws neat X’s on them, blowing until they’re dry and Nate’s smile is confused, tainted by lust.
Then he hooks his finger in the sweat-stiff collar of Nate’s t-shirt and draws it down into a vee. He simply looks for a long time before he draws another X in the soft hollow of Nate’s throat above his horseshoe.
“Being this pale should be illegal,” he mutters before he blows.
Nate has to grip Brad’s shoulder then. The feeling’s tickly and hot, too much and not enough.
“What are you doing?” His voice comes out odd, softer than he intends it to, trembling inside his mouth.
Brad pulls back just enough so he can see Nate’s face. His finger is still against Nate’s chest. “This is an invasion that doesn’t have time on its side,” he says quietly. “We have to mark off the places that need attention later.”
Nate makes a noise that’s almost Okay.
Brad draws one more X, an inch or so down from the last one. He blows a short burst of air over it and releases Nate’s shirt.
“If I had time and this wasn’t the middle of the fucking desert,” Brad says, fingers trailing up Nate’s throat, “these are some of the places I’d put my mouth.”
“Yeah?”
Brad smiles. “Of course, this is only a small sampling of my choices. But like I said before, so much ground to cover, so little time to cover it.”
Nate closes his eyes and shakes his head, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still grinning like a fool.
*
The wrists and throat stay popular, but Brad explores the territory as best he can. He writes here across both Nate’s nipples and bite bite bite across his left collarbone. Tongue licks down his spine and fuck rides the small of his back.
Those are the ones that last, even if he sweats. Sometimes he wonders what anyone would say if he got shot and they had to look at the mess of Shakespeare and Air Supply written across his ribs.
He hopes the men respect him enough that they wouldn’t say anything.
*
The day after the immense clusterfuck that is Muwaffaqiyah, Brad pins him to a berm and works him out of the top half of his suit and gets his vest off, suspenders down, trousers almost at his cock, t-shirt pushed up to the faded twin heres.
Brad’s hands don’t shake but he writes slower than usual, concentrating hard on the low part of Nate’s belly. Nate touches the back of his head as he works because he doesn’t get to touch enough.
As soon as Brad’s done he’s up and walking away, back to camp and Walt and their fucked-up mess, leaving Nate lying in the sand, trying not to go blind from the sun.
He finally looks. It’s a little difficult to read upside down and that far down on his body, but he gets it.
This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time
*
That one smudges fast and the side of his wrist and hand blur black. Nate’s combat jacks smell like sharp alcohol and chemical dyes. It helps him get off, as twisted as that is.
Brad’s fucked up too, but Nate doesn’t mind. They are all. Normal men don’t become Marines. Being fucked up is part of the job.
Nate finds Brad sitting on top of someone’s shit box, head lowered between his knees, cutting his own hair. He doesn’t sit up or startle when Nate takes the clippers out of his hand and resets the line, cutting his hair more evenly.
“It’s fine,” Nate tells him, sweeping up over the crown of his head. Downy blonde tufts of hair drift down to the sand, stirring in until they’re part of the landscape.
Brad just grunts.
“We’re fine,” Nate says. “Stafford’s fine, Pappy’s mostly fine, Walt will eventually be fine.”
“Fine,” Brad repeats heavily, a scoffing close to the conversation.
Nate doesn’t say anything else as he shuts the clippers off, shaking them out. But he does check to make sure no one’s around before crouching down and blowing gently on the back of Brad’s neck, little shards of hair scattering with his breath.
*
Nate refuses the order to recon the park and there’s a part of him that’s sure he’s done for. A big part of him doesn’t give a shit. The biggest part of him wants to believe what Brad says.
There’s nothing to be done though, so Nate sits up on that hill and watches Baghdad burn.
After a few tense minutes he hears Brad turn to Wright and say, “Shoo now. We have work to do. Go ask Ray what he thinks about pandas.”
“Pandas. Check.” Nate feels the look Wright’s giving him but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
The city goes quiet and dark as Wright trips down the hill. Brad shifts back closer to him.
“Let me see your arm,” he says.
“Brad.”
“You’ve avoided the Ink Ninja’s wrath so far on account of your impeccable blowjob and handjob skills, but the Ninja’s memory is short.”
“Fuck,” Nate grumbles, but he puts down his rifle and starts extracting his right arm. Brad uncaps the Sharpie and helps Nate roll up the sleeve of his t-shirt.
Whatever Brad’s doing, Nate can hardly feel it, only the slightest pressure here and there.
“What are you doing after this is all over?” Brad asks. These conversations have been taking place all over the platoon the past few days.
Nate always answers the same way. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” A touch near his elbow, another one near the inside of his bicep.
Nate relaxes a little, oddly comforted by this strange little ritual, the smell of Brad and the marker, having this one thing out of his hands.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be back, I’m sure,” Brad says. “Hopefully the food doesn’t suck so much next time.”
Nate smiles a little and there’s three more taps along the top of his shoulder, like gunfire.
“Done,” Brad says after a pause.
“Thanks.” Nate tilts his arm and tries to get a look, but it’s too dark. He has to wait until the city lights up again before he can see the scattering of black dots from his shoulder to his elbow.
It doesn’t mean anything to him. It could be Morse code or a constellation or nothing at all. But since Nate doesn’t have a way to connect the dots he’ll never know.
*
There’s so much ink and dirt to wash off that Nate’s first real shower lasts an hour. He watches the water swirl brown around his feet, then grey, and finally it’s clear and his feet are the only dirty part left. He stares at the shadows of dirt between his pale toes and across the tops of his feet for a while, and then he washes them too.
*
The paddle party is almost too much. Nate knows there are words he should be saying to his men, but he also knows they’re bigger than those words, too much for them.
He thinks they get it, since they don’t talk about it either. Instead there are ridiculous stories and a beer drinking contest that Nate participates in for about thirty seconds before he has to stop because he’s laughing too much.
It’s also the only time Brad uses the Sharpie on him in front of anyone else.
He gets up on a chair and says, “Listen up, you societal rejects.”
“I know you are, but what am I?” Ray calls.
Brad points at him. “Especially you.” He makes a show of clearing his throat and making a lot of grave eye contact with everyone. “I have something to confess. I am the man who walked among you with the marker. I am the Ink Ninja.”
There are shouts of Really?, Say it ain’t so! and one How dare you?! that has everyone laughing.
“But,” Brad says, “I have decided to retire. Before I do though, I’d like to commit one last act of graffiti.”
“Don’t get out your dick!” Ray yells.
Brad grins and shakes his head. He digs in his jeans and pulls out the Sharpie, twisting the cap off amid scattered clapping.
He turns to Nate and beckons him. “C’mon, Captain, you’re up.”
Hands propel Nate to the front of the crowd as Brad steps down off the chair. Brad turns him to face the men as he pulls Nate’s t-shirt all the way up and off.
Even though they’re in a crowded room, arousal still spins through Nate when the marker touches his back, which Brad probably anticipated. To make up for it Nate takes a deep breath and focuses on Brad’s slow lettering across his shoulder blades.
D-E-V-I-L D-O-G
Brad takes his shoulders when he’s done and spins Nate around so everyone can see. There’s more clapping and even some chanting, but just for a second Nate catches Brad’s eye. Brad’s smiling, but there’s also something faintly sad in his face.
Don’t forget, he mouths, squeezing Nate’s shoulders tight.
*
They go their separate ways after that. Brad stays in Cali and Nate goes to Boston, looking for something new. They talk sometimes, about who’s doing what and the weather. Brad says he’ll visit soon.
He doesn’t.
The phone calls and emails get shorter, clipped at the edges where Nate talks for too long. More often than not, a conversation ends with Brad saying, “I have to go,” and a dial tone.
Nate wonders about it, but tries not to.
For a while, he doesn’t call Brad or email him. He applies to grad school and tries to learn how to cook. He only succeeds at one of the two.
It’s more than a month later when Brad finally calls him. He fumbles for the phone with one hand and pokes a wooden spoon into his stir fry with the other.
“Hello?”
“Hey, LT.” Brad’s voice is quiet, maybe a little tired, worn around his old nickname. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Nate sets the spoon down and steps away from the stove. “You?”
“Not dead yet.”
“Glad to hear it. Busy?”
Brad makes a noncommittal noise and beyond that Nate hears the thin sound of someone else’s voice. He can’t tell if it’s a woman or a man.
They cycle through the usual topics and jokes quickly, but it’s tight and strange without a berm beneath them and the touch of marker to skin.
Finally, Nate takes a deep breath. “Hey, uh, are you seeing anyone?”
Brad chokes on his laugh. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“A pretty simple one.”
The other end of the line is quiet for a long moment and then Brad says, “No,” almost like it’s a question.
Swallowing down relief and other weird feelings, Nate says, “Never mind. It’s stupid. I have to go.”
He hangs up before Brad can say anything. And then he presses Talk and puts the phone down on the counter so Brad can’t interrupt his embarrassment, turning back to the stove.
His stir fry is burnt beyond repair, not that Nate really wanted it anyway.
*
He lives on the shitty food he ate at university and coffee and keeps shitty hours for the next few weeks. There’s nothing to keep him occupied so he goes to Staples and buys a desk and an office chair and sets it all up in his living room.
Next comes a stack of paper and four pens, each one a different colour. Nate puts them in an old coffee mug.
When he’s not running or letting his mother quiz him about his life he sits at the desk. Mostly he just fucks around but it feels like working, even if it’s just writing down his name.
Nathaniel Fick
Nathaniel Fick
Captain Nathaniel Fi-
The doorbell rings. It’s a FedEx guy. He hands Nate a rectangular package and a clipboard.
“Sign at the X,” he says, bored.
Nathaniel Fick, once more, and the guy salutes Nate and leaves.
The return address is a P.O. box in California. Nate rips off the paper and slits the tape with his thumbnail. Inside the box a thin tube of bubblewrap. At the centre of that is a beat-up black Sharpie.
There’s a little curl of paper tucked under the pocket clip. Nate unfurls it carefully.
I’m coming, it says in Brad’s thin writing.
Nate smiles. He can’t help it. He brings the marker to his desk and pulls out a fresh sheet of paper. The felt tip’s gone fuzzy from Iraqi sand and dirty skin, so the lines bleed a little, but it still writes just fine.
NATE
*
Nate buys food and new sheets and tries not to be gone very often. It’s not like Brad would just leave if he wasn’t home, but he doesn’t want to miss it.
While he waits he starts making notes about what happened in Iraq. Writing down the details helps him remember, although he never mentions Brad’s marker or his mouth or his hands.
It’s something to do and Nate likes telling his story, even if he’s the only one reading it. It feels good. The notes stretch out into paragraphs about Iraq and even before that. Then pages. Pages stapled together.
Of course, Brad comes the day he has papers all over his living room, grouped by month.
He’s stuck between answering the door right away and preserving his filing system and cramming as many papers as possible into the desk drawers.
He settles for grabbing all the papers off his couch and coffee table and dumping them on top of the desk, before jogging to the door.
Brad’s got what must be a lock pick in his hand. He smiles wryly at Nate and tucks it back inside his leather jacket.
“Thirty seconds is not too much time to wait for someone to open the door,” Nate tells Brad as he steps back to let him in.
“It’s at least fifteen too many,” Brad counters, dropping his duffle in front of the closet and crouching to untie his boots.
“I seem to remember patience being one of your virtues.”
Brad finishes the laces on one boot and goes for the other. “Situational patience,” he corrects as he stands, toeing off his boots.
They smile at each other, a little awkwardly, standing too close together.
Brad looks different. His hair’s the same and he hasn’t lost or gained any weight, but he’s not quite right. It’s not the jeans or jacket. Nate thought about all the ways Brad could dress or not while they were in theatre and used them alongside the marker smell to fuel his jacks. It’s something else.
He wants to look more, figure out how Brad’s changed, but by now Brad’s smile is crooked and his posture is stiff.
This is probably when Nate should push Brad against the wall, maybe confess something meaningful, kiss him until he gives in and they can wreck his sheets.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asks instead, stepping back toward the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Brad says, watching him carefully
*
Nate makes stir fry again. It still sucks, but it’s not burnt and Brad eats it anyway. He takes huge, careful bites, sometimes using his thumb to push rice and vegetables onto his fork.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Brad says as he brings his beer bottle to his mouth.
Nate shrugs. Most of his meal is still on his plate. “I get by.”
“Mmm.” Brad carefully puts his fork down on the plate and takes another drink.
“Are you done?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Nate dumps his food into the trash and takes their plates to the sink. He can feel Brad watching him, hear him drinking and shifting in his chair.
He rinses the plates and his hands, just for something to do. The clock ticks patiently. It’s almost seven-thirty.
“Why did you ask me if I was seeing someone?”
Nate closes his eyes and squeezes the edge of the counter tightly. He opens his eyes.
“To be perfectly honest,” he tells his sink, “I don’t know.”
“I’m not,” Brad says quietly.
Nate sighs, ignoring the lightness in his chest. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Behind him Brad’s chair scrapes across the linoleum and he comes close on socked feet. He leans hipshot against the counter next to Nate’s white knuckles.
“You wanted to know.”
Out of the corner of his eye Nate sees Brad move. He lifts his hand and carefully presses it to Nate’s back, right where he wrote touch once in swooping black letters. His fingers are light and warm through Nate’s shirt.
Nate looks at Brad, who’s not smiling but looks like he wants to. He remembers Brad’s words: lick, suck, X, X, X and the Fick that eventually turned into a tree sprouting from his thigh up to his armpit.
Brad wrote so much out there, and they both said so much, to themselves and others.
Nate’s fucking sick of words.
He curls his fingers around the back of Brad’s neck and draws him in. Brad’s mouth is already parted when it touches Nate’s, so easy to lick into.
That first kiss is slow and oddly sweet, a little bit tender. It lasts a long time and by the end of it Brad’s pressing Nate into the counter, pulling up his shirt in loose handfuls.
His face looks strange so close up, unfocused and soft, hardly Brad Colbert at all. They separate a little further and his face sharpens back into the polite, watchful man Nate knows.
Brad frowns a little, not at Nate, but he does. Nate can see him thinking, getting ready to speak, mouth starting in on Nate…
Nate shakes his head, petting down the grain of Brain’s hair, leaning in again.
This time the kisses are short and biting, the kind they shared a few times in Iraq, when it was dark and they were desperate. Nate’s body recognizes the hardness of Brad’s mouth and body and it feels like he’s coming alive, just like he did in the field, cock hardening, his mouth and fingers sensitive.
Brad feels the same, if the heat of his nape and the curve of his erection against Nate’s belly is anything to go by. He’s got Nate’s shirt rucked up now, high enough that both fuck and tongue would have been visible if Nate hadn’t washed them away months ago.
He touches Nate in those places too, somehow remembering, fingers dipping under Nate’s waistband, touching the top of his ass.
They part one more time, to breathe, and then Nate guides Brad to the bedroom with a strong grip on Brad’s wrist, where no one ever wrote anything at all.
*
They fuck twice. The first time is so much like Iraq Nate almost can’t believe it. It’s hard and quiet, rolling around, struggling against each other’s weight before they settle onto their sides, jerking each other off, breath mixing between their faces. The only differences are that they’re naked and on a bed this time.
Afterwards, they catch their breath side-by-side on Nate’s bed, touching at the shoulder and hip. Nate waits for Brad to go to sleep.
He doesn’t. He closes his eyes for a little while, but his breathing doesn’t slow down and he doesn’t go limp. Nate watches him take deep, centred breaths, his hands resting on his stomach just above his pubic hair.
In Iraq, he always seemed so tired, especially after they fucked around. His writing was lazy after his orgasms, curving and slow, heavy pressure that sometimes made the lines bleed.
“Are you alright?” Brad asks, eyes still closed.
Nate realizes he’s been staring at Brad’s profile. He mentally shakes himself.
“Yeah.”
Brad opens his eyes, arching one eyebrow at Nate.
Nate shakes his head. “I’m fine, Brad.”
“Fine,” Brad says. He shifts onto his side so he’s facing Nate.
“That’s what I said.” Nate tries to keep the officer out of his voice, but he doesn’t quite succeed.
Brad reacts accordingly. “Of course,” he says, all careful respect. His fingers on Nate’s jaw are careful too, turning him for Brad’s mouth, the slow sweep of his tongue.
They kiss for a while, deep and indulgent, before Brad pulls away, sucking on Nate’s lip as he goes.
“If I blow you,” Brad whispers, eyes dark and bright, “will you feel better?”
Nate’s stomach pulls tight and his cock jerks. Brad smiles at him and it happens again.
“I’m fine,” he insists, but his voice isn’t powerful and Brad’s already drifting down to his hips, encouraging him to spread his thighs with gentle hands.
*
This is the longest Brad’s mouth has ever been on him. Nate feels drunk with the excess of spit and the smooth slick of Brad’s tongue against his cock. He’s warm all over, listening to Brad suck and his own shaky breathing.
Sometime in he says, “Brad,” in a hazy, raw voice, squirming against the heavy hands on his hips and Brad pulls back until the tip of Nate’s cock is just resting against his bottom lip.
“Can I fuck you?” Brad asks, each word blowing over Nate’s skin.
Nate remembers Brad’s fingers inside him in Iraq, not because they had the time and space to fuck, but just to keep stimulation at its peak. He remembers the feeling of hot sand through the knees of his MOPP suit and how empty he’d felt when Brad had pulled his fingers out.
He swallows and says, “Yeah. Yeah, c’mon.”
*
“I wrote something here once,” Brad murmurs, kissing just under the nape of Nate’s neck, rubbing his mouth there.
Nate isn’t ready to talk. He’s still shifting underneath Brad’s weight, trying to negotiate the feel of his cock deep inside.
Brad kisses him again and runs a hand down his belly to cradle his cock.
“You fell asleep sitting on a rock. Upright, but with your chin against your chest. It was so easy to pull the hood of your suit and your shirt down and you didn’t even move.”
The ache is lifting with each breath Nate takes, so he asks, “What was it?”
Brad’s knees shift between his and there’s light grinding pressure against his ass, but Brad doesn’t say anything.
“Was it, ‘Nate Fick is a shitty fucking cocksmoker’?”
“Jesus, no,” Brad laughs.
“Well, then you can keep your secret,” Nate says, looking over his shoulder at Brad, tilting back so their mouths can touch at the same that Brad rolls his hips in.
*
He’s so tired that he barely moves after they fuck. Brad seems fine, but he doesn’t get out of bed. Instead he runs his fingernails down Nate’s back in ticklish, comforting lines while Nate starts to fall asleep.
“I meant to call,” he finally says, quietly. His finger traces a word on Nate’s back, but Nate can’t figure it out. “I was busy.”
“S’okay,” Nate replies drowsily, inching closer.
*
Nate’s barely been sleeping for a month, staying up until he can’t go anymore and then catching a bare handful of hours, so he’s not surprised that the clock has flipped from PM to AM and the sun’s risen before he wakes up.
Brad’s in the bed beside him, sheets down against his hips. He’s propped up on his elbow, eating cold rice out of a bowl with his fingers and reading a stack of papers.
“Hey,” Nate murmurs, blinking heavily and stretching.
“Morning.”
“What’re you reading?” Nate shifts over, so his knees are brushing Brad’s.
Brad turns the top page so he can see.
March 27, 2003: Trombley shot two shepherd kids on the way to Qalat Sukhar airfield…
Nate makes a pass at the page, but he’s still clumsy and sleepy, so he’s no match for Brad, who scoops up the papers and his bowl of rice and has it all on the nightstand before Nate can even think about trying again.
“Why were you reading that?” Nate asks, pitching for pissed-off officer.
Brad doesn’t take the bait this time, settling back in the mess of sheets.
“Why did you leave it out?” He counters.
“On my desk is hardly out.”
Brad shrugs quickly. “It’s not like it’s news to me.” He digs his shoulder into the mattress and reaches out to touch Nate’s chest, where the horseshoe used to rest. “Although, I can’t help but notice you’ve omitted our mutual sexual conquests.”
Nate shifts against Brad’s palm, unsure whether he’s being accused or not. “It wouldn’t make for a good story,” He says. “And you’re still in the Corps.”
Brad shakes his head ruefully at the first thing and then his hand moves, curving around Nate’s neck. “Are you planning on telling this story to people?”
Nate shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. But the stuff concerning you and I, it’s…” He wants to say for us, but he doesn’t because maybe it’s not even for that. So he shrugs again.
Brad nods anyway, thumbing over a ghost X. Then, before Nate can do anything he rolls off the bed and disappears out of the room. He’s not gone for long and when he comes back he has his Sharpie. He hands it to Nate when he climbs back into bed.
“And this is for?” Nate prompts, waving the marker.
Brad leans back on his elbows, fully on display. “More than one way to write a story.”
Nate looks over Brad’s body. He’s richly tanned, cut out in long, clean lines that Nate wants to memorize. The perfect paper.
He settles for kissing Brad as he straddles him, warm cock curving against the inside of his thigh and the fineness of Brad’s stubble under his fingers.
Finally he pulls back and pushes Brad down into the sheets. “Stay,” he murmurs.
“Can do,” Brad says. That doesn’t stop him from skimming his fingertips over Nate’s thighs.
Nate doesn’t mind. He uncaps the Sharpie and starts to lower it to Brad’s skin. But he stops just before ink hits skin.
“Scared? Can’t think of a way to improve on a masterpiece?”
“No.” Nate shifts back a little, reaching for Brad’s cock, stroking lightly. “Just considering the best approach.”
Brad’s gaze goes soft and he lifts his hips into Nate’s grip. “Whatever you want.”
Nate smirks. He jacks Brad a little more, until there are traces of stickiness across his fingertips and Brad’s breathing quickly. Then he pulls off and resettles against Brad’s cock, licking his fingertips clean and damp.
He colours the pads of his fingers shiny-black while Brad watches.
“You’re a genius, Captain Fick,” Brad says, thumbs in the creases of Nate’s hips.
Nate drops the Sharpie on the sheets near Brad’s hip, tiny dots of black trailing after it.
“I know,” Nate says, smiling. He leans in to kiss Brad hard and deep one more time, just before he lowers his fingers to Brad’s belly and goes to work.
NB: The belly-quote is from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.