Generation Kill fic: Imprint
Title: Imprint
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing, characters: Brad/Nate, Ray, Victor One
Rating: R
Word count: 3,321 words
Disclaimer: Based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries, and not intended as any reflection on the real people bearing these names.
Notes: Thanks to snarkaddict for the beta. Written for trolleys - I didn't forget!
Brad jerks awake at the touch on his arm.
"Brad, my Victor, five mikes."
For a slow second of not-quite-wakefulness Brad imagines it as something other than an order to a team leaders' meeting. He smiles before he can stop himself, dirt cracking at the corners of his eyes as they crease up.
The LT's still there, bent over at the window waiting for a response, something more than an inane grin. Brad gives him a nod and the LT moves on.
Tomorrow they'll drive. They'll stop and start and stop again (ad infinitum). They'll wait for instructions, and if they're lucky, the instructions will make sense (they're rarely that lucky). They'll plan out scenarios, and then they'll get different orders and start all over again. They'll have one meal, which they'll drag out long enough to pretend it's enough (it isn't). They might sleep, an hour or even two. They won't bother to pretend that's enough.
Always, though, there is the same bright point in Brad's day. He relies on it. It's how he survives the hunger and the stench and the mounting fury that wants to spill out and consume every idiocy this war throws at him. One bright and shining reminder that the Corps gets it right sometimes and gives the right men command.
People die in wars.
Brad's killed men. A skinny little soldier boy who should still have been sucking on his mother's titties. A wizened guy who looked old enough to be a grandfather but probably wasn't, just dried up from the desert, grey and tired before his time. Probably women and children too. He doesn't know how many.
It all sounds so glib spelled out. It's his job, nothing glib or casual about it, it's years of training all coming down to the wet thump of a body by the side of the road.
Brad doesn't keep count. That's for psychopaths and amateurs. He's neither. He's a Marine.
People live and die and grow up and grow apart. And sometimes people fall in love. (Idiots mostly, who don't know how much it'll hurt when the person they fall for fucks them up the ass. Metaphorically. Brad's not an idiot, not any more. Or so he likes to believe.)
Most of those just happen. No intent. Sometimes it's bad luck, sometimes good. Sometimes it's sheer accident.
Brad's not always sure which comes into each category.
Accidents happen all the time.
"You fucking red-necked inbred idiot, Walt. That's my neck."
"Sorry, Ray."
"Whatever."
Some aren't important.
Accidents happen. Some are important.
"That was blue on blue. Fuck." Brad's cold, even though there's sweat trickling down his neck and sopping in his armpits.
"Hey, Brad, do you think we've ever shot any of our own guys? You know, accidentally, of course. Without knowing it."
"If we did it without knowing it, how would I know, Ray?"
"Well, like, someone could have told you afterwards. The LT could have taken you aside and broke the news."
"Have you ever seen that happen?"
"Well, you and the LT are always going off together. How am I supposed to know what the fuck you're talking about in your cozy little sessions."
"Is that a hint of jealousy I detect, Ray."
"God damn right it is. I don't like you eyeing up other women."
"Even if I promise I'll always come home to you?"
"Not like you've any choice," Ray grumbles.
"Yeah, well, keep up the nagging and maybe I'll just stay out all night."
Accidents happen. It's Brad's job to fix them. And when he can't, to make his men forget them.
Brad doesn't die today. Nobody dies today.
That's a lie.
Someone dies every 1.2 seconds. Starvation, stupidity, getting shot, eating themselves into a heart attack.
But not Brad. Not this time. He'll live to fight and eat crackers and peanut butter spread and piss in a hole (if he's lucky) and shit in a diaper and say yessir another day. Everybody who matters lives today.
They pass a girl wearing a blue scarf. It's the blue of the Pacific in the early morning, when the sun's too low to burn the sea bright. The scarf turns the sky gray, even though it's cloudless, leaches the color out of it, like there's only room in their world for that one patch of color.
The sky's been pale for days. A bad storm coming, Meesh says, fingering the newly stolen striped scarf around his neck, though Brad never knows how much of what he says is true and how much is just coming straight out of his ass. There's been no storm yet.
(There's a different storm brewing.
All the signs are there.
Brad doesn't know if he wants it to break or not.)
"Have you fucking hid my stash?"
"No, Ray. You poured about fifty tablets down your throat last night. Bottle empty, bottle thrown away. No hiding." Brad's tired too. Too tired to bother with full sentences.
"Fuck."
"Crazy idea here. How about not getting high to drive?"
"Yeah, sure, Brad, fucking great idea that. I'll just sleep-drive. You know, like sleep-walking, only I'll be taking the lot of you with me when I drive over a berm into a canal or a fucking swamp. The whole platoon, actually, seeing as we're on point. That'll be great fun."
Ray's cranky when he comes down from a Ripped Fuel buzz. Brad placates him. "I'm sure you have more."
"Yeah, well, look away."
"Are you serious?"
"Too right I'm serious. I don't want you knowing where my back-up stash is."
"I'm not looking away, Ray."
"Close your eyes then."
Brad's not closing his eyes. If he closes his eyes he thinks. He doesn't want to think. He chews his lip instead - there's a piece of dry skin on his lower lip that he peels off with his teeth. He spits it out the window and puts a wad of dip under his lip.
Maybe he does close his eyes; he can hear the rattle as Ray pours tablets down his throat. The sound of the camp getting ready to move. He lets Walt and Trombley sleep on, a few more minutes.
On a sliding scale of pointlessness, analyzing his thoughts about the LT in the hope that he'll be able to deal with them is roughly on a par with attempting to hide Ray's Ripped Fuel stash.
(For the record, Ray has a back-up stash, and a back-up in case that's found, which is impressive considering his potential hiding places are contained within an eleven by eight by six foot area, most of which is filled with ammo, water and five men. And if Ray's back-up stashes are ever all compromised, he has Sources. Or so he assures Brad. Brad doesn't doubt him.
"And you can't use your Sources to get us something useful? Batteries, for example? Lube?"
"I would if I could, homes, you know that."
Brad doesn't doubt that either.)
Normally, a conviction of futility is sufficient to stop Brad. In this instance, it isn't. For all the speed of their race across Iraq, there are too many hours every day with nothing more complex to do than dig his grave, clean his weapon, or tune out Captain America's spazzing on the radio.
So he thinks about the LT.
He runs scenarios like battle simulations. If he says A, then the LT will in all likelihood respond with B and C will occur. He has an entire alphabet of scenarios.
Brad particularly enjoys scenarios in which C (or any other letter for that matter) equals him fucking Nate. He also gets hard from scenarios in which C equals Nate fucking him, which is such a shock the first time it happens that Walt has to repeat himself three times before Brad's capable of registering a word he's said, let alone replying with any degree of coherence.
"You okay, Brad?" Walt asks.
"Brad, you're not fucking losing it, are you? 'Cos if you lose it, then we're all fucked. Like, even more fucked than we are already."
"No, Ray, I'm not losing it. I'm trying to tune out the god damn retards I've been saddled with, but you two just keep on like fucking fishwives."
Ray shrugs and blows him a kiss.
"So, um, what should I do about the locking mechanism?" Walt asks, with the persistence of a good Marine, and Brad unfolds himself from the front seat and climbs up to sort him out.
After Brad has run a scenario, he pulls it to pieces. He works out all the ways in which any part of it will land him in deep shit. The best scenarios are all the highest risk, but that doesn't phase Brad. He didn't become a recon Marine because he was scared of taking risks.
"What d'you think she's like underneath that robe?"
"She's probably got scrawny titties that hang down to her waist, all dried up and saggy."
"How'd you know that? She could be real perky underneath. A nice, soft little handful."
"Figures if they hide themselves that well, there's nothing worth finding."
That's not true, Brad thinks, but doesn't say. He thinks of hidden things worth finding. He imagines finding the secret places that force impossibly small sounds out of Nate. He tastes the sounds.
"Cover your fucking sector," he orders, as much to himself as his men. An imagination gets you killed out here.
Brad's mother once told him that he could have had anything he wanted in the world, become whatever he wanted to be, if he'd only knuckled down and worked for it.
He's never sure if she's proud or disappointed in him. It's impossible to tell from what she says, and almost as hard to guess from the way she says it.
The way Nate looks at him, Brad can read every little disappointment, every moment of pride. Funny, that, when his mother never particularly tries to hide how she feels, and Nate thinks he's hiding everything.
Liking pussy is easy. Women are easy, (in comparison). Either Brad pays them - no chance of confusion, dollars on the table, sex on the menu with neat little tick boxes and a matching price - or he courts them - dinner, flowers, a kiss goodnight, the works. He knows how to do it properly. Either way, there's a natural progression. He knows where he is with women. Even being dumped has a logical order to it, one that he's now (painfully) familiar with.
The problem is that there's no order to this-thing.
(He doesn't even have a name for it. It defies categorization.)
There's no assured first step, certainly not the sort that will lead to a second step and a third.
Brad refuses to imagine a first without a second and a third.
He fires his weapon today. It's easy. He doesn't think he'd be able to explain to a civilian how easy it is to take aim and fire. How little he feels in the moment between sighting an enemy and watching him fall to the ground, a bloody gap where the side of his face was a second earlier, sharp white splinters of bone flicking up into the air. How little he feels afterwards, other than satisfaction in a job well done.
Death is so meaningless.
There's a flip side to that, of course. There's a flip side to everything in his world.
The flip side is that it's only meaningless when there's no name. Faces don't count - he tries to explain that, later, to his sister, but she stares at him like he's someone she's never met before - but names do. Names are for men who stand by you.
"I can feel your eyes boring into the back of my head," Nate says. He doesn't look up from the map spread out on the hood of his Humvee.
"Sorry, sir," Brad says unapologetically. There's no point apologizing like he means it for something he isn't going to stop.
Brad continues staring at the faint red groove pressed into Nate's scalp. His Kevlar's under his arm but the indentation over the curve of his occipital bone is still visible. There's a patch behind his left ear where Nate's hair is approximately an eighth of an inch shorter, barely even stubble, and his sideburns are uneven. Whoever had the clippers did a rush job; probably yesterday evening, when the order came through a scant five minutes before they had to be Oscar Mike. Trombley had scrabbled back into the Humvee, skivvies around his ankles, just as Ray revved up the engine. There's something bewildering about the idea of the LT rushing like that, not orderly and contained and in control.
(Brad could be the one to make him lose control. Brad could make him beg, breathless and incoherent. Brad could smooth out that crease in his forehead, that perpetual frown he's developed, make him forget the shit they're all in and the bullshit orders he's been forced to pass down. Brad could shove his dick so far down Nate's throat he'd be hoarse for days and glad of it.
It's an accident, falling like this.)
If Brad closes his eyes, he won't see the map laid out in front of him. He has no idea what area it covers. If he reaches out to trace points on the map, he thinks his hand will turn traitor on him and skim over the nape of Nate's neck instead. He hasn't slept in days.
Brad moves, a step to the left and forward, shoulder to shoulder now, and memorizes every detail on the map that he needs or might need to know. He memorizes the hamlets and roads and canals and the number of turns to each possible destination, the locations and probable locations of the enemy, areas that might be mined. He considers routes they could advance along and even routes for retreat. But when he closes his eyes, all he sees is that red line around Nate's head, the soft fuzz of hair on his nape, the smooth thumb-sized indent at the base of his neck.
Pappy's gone. Rudy looks a little lost, but he'll hold it together. Brad steals moments he doesn't have in the whirlwind of movement and claps Rudy on the back. It's as good as saying I have faith in you. Rudy breaks off an order to smile. Thank you, brother, his smile says, because that's Rudy's way, straightforward and simple.
Walt is silent. He's shrunk in on himself as if he doesn't feel he can take up space in the Humvee anymore, but the silence ripples out from him and hits all of them. Rolling Stone has stopped scribbling in his notebook. Brad had gotten used to the incessant scratching noise, familiar as Ray's chatter and Trombley's snoring.
"You run out of questions, Reporter?" Brad asks. "Or just tired of the answers?"
"Uh, no?"
Brad doesn't push it. Even he feels weighed down by the silence.
Brad doesn't know what to do about it. Killing is so easy; it's afterwards that it can get difficult. If you let it. Trick is, not to let it. Walt hasn't learned that yet, and it's not something you can teach.
It's Ray - ravioli and tomato sauce spilling down his chin - who makes Walt smile and speak again. Brad could kiss Ray and his whisky tango fucked up filthy eating habits.
He kisses Nate instead. It's an accident.
Okay, it's not really an accident. You can't claim something is an accident when you've been planning it for weeks. Option A leads to B leads to C.
The scenario goes like this. If Brad finds the LT alone on watch, he'll join him, silently. That's option A in full. Always best to keep a mission simple. Less chance of fucking up. He's never had a chance to play it out before - Mike's always there at Nate's shoulder - but tonight there's a low berm, the LT sitting on a box, and no moonlight to silhouette them. There's no reason not to put option A into action.
B is the LT speaking. That's not under Brad's control, but Brad knows he will, if Brad's silent long enough. It's just a matter of waiting him out. And if Brad's the right kind of silent, no pressure, just easy silence, almost like friends, maybe Nate will say more than he means to. Maybe he'll be Nate instead of the LT.
"I'm sorry," Nate says. Quietly, facing distant fire, jaw jutting out. Even quieter, "I'm really sorry, Brad."
"Sir?"
"About the bridge mission." He doesn't say he knows how much Brad wanted that. They both know. The LT knew it wasn't going to happen - maybe not far in advance, not when they first planned it, but he must've been briefed on what the fuck their objective was before the intel filtered down to the grunts. Nate looks like he would have given anything to give Brad that mission.
B leads to C: him looking at the LT. It sounds like a pussy option, but Brad knows it isn't. Not a glance, not looking at him until Nate looks back and then dropping his eyes, not pointing to the map or talking too loud or doing anything to pretend he wasn't looking, but holding the look for as long as it takes for one of them to move. (Brad never did decide which direction of movement was likeliest. The only way to find out is in the field.)
There's a sound to Brad's six, but he doesn't turn to check it out. No need. It's just a wild goat - it'll soon take fright and run off. Or get caught by Q-Tip and roasted. Either way, it's irrelevant. Not worth taking his eyes off Nate.
The LT doesn't look at the goat either. Not even a glance. What doesn't happen is often as telling as what does happen. That tells Brad all he needs to know.
He moves.
(It doesn't even matter who 'he' is in this scenario. It's the moving part that's all important, because the moving is in the right direction. Not apart or to one side, but closer. And closer. Definitely both of them moving now. Either that, or Brad's getting seasick on dry land, and that sure as fuck would never happen.)
They touch at the lips. That's all it is. Closed mouths, a whisper of a kiss, but the look in Nate's eyes is screaming yes at full pitch. Brad answers the same way.
He touches Nate's hair. Traces the line he knows is left there from the Kevlar that's under Nate's arm again. He doesn't really feel it, not under the calluses on his fingertips, but still it fascinates him, this little flaw.
It's as far from fucking or getting fucked as it could be. And yet Brad still aches afterwards.
They never fuck in Iraq. They keep looking and not touching, and that's how it has to be. Brad knows that.
Brad's okay with it. He knows the feel of Nate's scalp under his hands now, knows the dusty taste of him, understands the promise in his look. He's a patient man.
One day, in DC, Nate wears a cap. When he takes it off, Brad runs his fingers around the crease it's left in his hair. The indentation is more pronounced now that Nate's hair is longer, but the line is in the exact same position the Kevlar crease used to be. Brad traces the line and leans in to kiss Nate. It's just a touch, nothing more, but he can do this now. In a park in the middle of a city, in broad fucking daylight, he can kiss Nate Fick.
"Home, now," he orders. Sometimes he's not a patient man, but that's okay too.
//
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing, characters: Brad/Nate, Ray, Victor One
Rating: R
Word count: 3,321 words
Disclaimer: Based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries, and not intended as any reflection on the real people bearing these names.
Notes: Thanks to snarkaddict for the beta. Written for trolleys - I didn't forget!
Brad jerks awake at the touch on his arm.
"Brad, my Victor, five mikes."
For a slow second of not-quite-wakefulness Brad imagines it as something other than an order to a team leaders' meeting. He smiles before he can stop himself, dirt cracking at the corners of his eyes as they crease up.
The LT's still there, bent over at the window waiting for a response, something more than an inane grin. Brad gives him a nod and the LT moves on.
Tomorrow they'll drive. They'll stop and start and stop again (ad infinitum). They'll wait for instructions, and if they're lucky, the instructions will make sense (they're rarely that lucky). They'll plan out scenarios, and then they'll get different orders and start all over again. They'll have one meal, which they'll drag out long enough to pretend it's enough (it isn't). They might sleep, an hour or even two. They won't bother to pretend that's enough.
Always, though, there is the same bright point in Brad's day. He relies on it. It's how he survives the hunger and the stench and the mounting fury that wants to spill out and consume every idiocy this war throws at him. One bright and shining reminder that the Corps gets it right sometimes and gives the right men command.
People die in wars.
Brad's killed men. A skinny little soldier boy who should still have been sucking on his mother's titties. A wizened guy who looked old enough to be a grandfather but probably wasn't, just dried up from the desert, grey and tired before his time. Probably women and children too. He doesn't know how many.
It all sounds so glib spelled out. It's his job, nothing glib or casual about it, it's years of training all coming down to the wet thump of a body by the side of the road.
Brad doesn't keep count. That's for psychopaths and amateurs. He's neither. He's a Marine.
People live and die and grow up and grow apart. And sometimes people fall in love. (Idiots mostly, who don't know how much it'll hurt when the person they fall for fucks them up the ass. Metaphorically. Brad's not an idiot, not any more. Or so he likes to believe.)
Most of those just happen. No intent. Sometimes it's bad luck, sometimes good. Sometimes it's sheer accident.
Brad's not always sure which comes into each category.
Accidents happen all the time.
"You fucking red-necked inbred idiot, Walt. That's my neck."
"Sorry, Ray."
"Whatever."
Some aren't important.
Accidents happen. Some are important.
"That was blue on blue. Fuck." Brad's cold, even though there's sweat trickling down his neck and sopping in his armpits.
"Hey, Brad, do you think we've ever shot any of our own guys? You know, accidentally, of course. Without knowing it."
"If we did it without knowing it, how would I know, Ray?"
"Well, like, someone could have told you afterwards. The LT could have taken you aside and broke the news."
"Have you ever seen that happen?"
"Well, you and the LT are always going off together. How am I supposed to know what the fuck you're talking about in your cozy little sessions."
"Is that a hint of jealousy I detect, Ray."
"God damn right it is. I don't like you eyeing up other women."
"Even if I promise I'll always come home to you?"
"Not like you've any choice," Ray grumbles.
"Yeah, well, keep up the nagging and maybe I'll just stay out all night."
Accidents happen. It's Brad's job to fix them. And when he can't, to make his men forget them.
Brad doesn't die today. Nobody dies today.
That's a lie.
Someone dies every 1.2 seconds. Starvation, stupidity, getting shot, eating themselves into a heart attack.
But not Brad. Not this time. He'll live to fight and eat crackers and peanut butter spread and piss in a hole (if he's lucky) and shit in a diaper and say yessir another day. Everybody who matters lives today.
They pass a girl wearing a blue scarf. It's the blue of the Pacific in the early morning, when the sun's too low to burn the sea bright. The scarf turns the sky gray, even though it's cloudless, leaches the color out of it, like there's only room in their world for that one patch of color.
The sky's been pale for days. A bad storm coming, Meesh says, fingering the newly stolen striped scarf around his neck, though Brad never knows how much of what he says is true and how much is just coming straight out of his ass. There's been no storm yet.
(There's a different storm brewing.
All the signs are there.
Brad doesn't know if he wants it to break or not.)
"Have you fucking hid my stash?"
"No, Ray. You poured about fifty tablets down your throat last night. Bottle empty, bottle thrown away. No hiding." Brad's tired too. Too tired to bother with full sentences.
"Fuck."
"Crazy idea here. How about not getting high to drive?"
"Yeah, sure, Brad, fucking great idea that. I'll just sleep-drive. You know, like sleep-walking, only I'll be taking the lot of you with me when I drive over a berm into a canal or a fucking swamp. The whole platoon, actually, seeing as we're on point. That'll be great fun."
Ray's cranky when he comes down from a Ripped Fuel buzz. Brad placates him. "I'm sure you have more."
"Yeah, well, look away."
"Are you serious?"
"Too right I'm serious. I don't want you knowing where my back-up stash is."
"I'm not looking away, Ray."
"Close your eyes then."
Brad's not closing his eyes. If he closes his eyes he thinks. He doesn't want to think. He chews his lip instead - there's a piece of dry skin on his lower lip that he peels off with his teeth. He spits it out the window and puts a wad of dip under his lip.
Maybe he does close his eyes; he can hear the rattle as Ray pours tablets down his throat. The sound of the camp getting ready to move. He lets Walt and Trombley sleep on, a few more minutes.
On a sliding scale of pointlessness, analyzing his thoughts about the LT in the hope that he'll be able to deal with them is roughly on a par with attempting to hide Ray's Ripped Fuel stash.
(For the record, Ray has a back-up stash, and a back-up in case that's found, which is impressive considering his potential hiding places are contained within an eleven by eight by six foot area, most of which is filled with ammo, water and five men. And if Ray's back-up stashes are ever all compromised, he has Sources. Or so he assures Brad. Brad doesn't doubt him.
"And you can't use your Sources to get us something useful? Batteries, for example? Lube?"
"I would if I could, homes, you know that."
Brad doesn't doubt that either.)
Normally, a conviction of futility is sufficient to stop Brad. In this instance, it isn't. For all the speed of their race across Iraq, there are too many hours every day with nothing more complex to do than dig his grave, clean his weapon, or tune out Captain America's spazzing on the radio.
So he thinks about the LT.
He runs scenarios like battle simulations. If he says A, then the LT will in all likelihood respond with B and C will occur. He has an entire alphabet of scenarios.
Brad particularly enjoys scenarios in which C (or any other letter for that matter) equals him fucking Nate. He also gets hard from scenarios in which C equals Nate fucking him, which is such a shock the first time it happens that Walt has to repeat himself three times before Brad's capable of registering a word he's said, let alone replying with any degree of coherence.
"You okay, Brad?" Walt asks.
"Brad, you're not fucking losing it, are you? 'Cos if you lose it, then we're all fucked. Like, even more fucked than we are already."
"No, Ray, I'm not losing it. I'm trying to tune out the god damn retards I've been saddled with, but you two just keep on like fucking fishwives."
Ray shrugs and blows him a kiss.
"So, um, what should I do about the locking mechanism?" Walt asks, with the persistence of a good Marine, and Brad unfolds himself from the front seat and climbs up to sort him out.
After Brad has run a scenario, he pulls it to pieces. He works out all the ways in which any part of it will land him in deep shit. The best scenarios are all the highest risk, but that doesn't phase Brad. He didn't become a recon Marine because he was scared of taking risks.
"What d'you think she's like underneath that robe?"
"She's probably got scrawny titties that hang down to her waist, all dried up and saggy."
"How'd you know that? She could be real perky underneath. A nice, soft little handful."
"Figures if they hide themselves that well, there's nothing worth finding."
That's not true, Brad thinks, but doesn't say. He thinks of hidden things worth finding. He imagines finding the secret places that force impossibly small sounds out of Nate. He tastes the sounds.
"Cover your fucking sector," he orders, as much to himself as his men. An imagination gets you killed out here.
Brad's mother once told him that he could have had anything he wanted in the world, become whatever he wanted to be, if he'd only knuckled down and worked for it.
He's never sure if she's proud or disappointed in him. It's impossible to tell from what she says, and almost as hard to guess from the way she says it.
The way Nate looks at him, Brad can read every little disappointment, every moment of pride. Funny, that, when his mother never particularly tries to hide how she feels, and Nate thinks he's hiding everything.
Liking pussy is easy. Women are easy, (in comparison). Either Brad pays them - no chance of confusion, dollars on the table, sex on the menu with neat little tick boxes and a matching price - or he courts them - dinner, flowers, a kiss goodnight, the works. He knows how to do it properly. Either way, there's a natural progression. He knows where he is with women. Even being dumped has a logical order to it, one that he's now (painfully) familiar with.
The problem is that there's no order to this-thing.
(He doesn't even have a name for it. It defies categorization.)
There's no assured first step, certainly not the sort that will lead to a second step and a third.
Brad refuses to imagine a first without a second and a third.
He fires his weapon today. It's easy. He doesn't think he'd be able to explain to a civilian how easy it is to take aim and fire. How little he feels in the moment between sighting an enemy and watching him fall to the ground, a bloody gap where the side of his face was a second earlier, sharp white splinters of bone flicking up into the air. How little he feels afterwards, other than satisfaction in a job well done.
Death is so meaningless.
There's a flip side to that, of course. There's a flip side to everything in his world.
The flip side is that it's only meaningless when there's no name. Faces don't count - he tries to explain that, later, to his sister, but she stares at him like he's someone she's never met before - but names do. Names are for men who stand by you.
"I can feel your eyes boring into the back of my head," Nate says. He doesn't look up from the map spread out on the hood of his Humvee.
"Sorry, sir," Brad says unapologetically. There's no point apologizing like he means it for something he isn't going to stop.
Brad continues staring at the faint red groove pressed into Nate's scalp. His Kevlar's under his arm but the indentation over the curve of his occipital bone is still visible. There's a patch behind his left ear where Nate's hair is approximately an eighth of an inch shorter, barely even stubble, and his sideburns are uneven. Whoever had the clippers did a rush job; probably yesterday evening, when the order came through a scant five minutes before they had to be Oscar Mike. Trombley had scrabbled back into the Humvee, skivvies around his ankles, just as Ray revved up the engine. There's something bewildering about the idea of the LT rushing like that, not orderly and contained and in control.
(Brad could be the one to make him lose control. Brad could make him beg, breathless and incoherent. Brad could smooth out that crease in his forehead, that perpetual frown he's developed, make him forget the shit they're all in and the bullshit orders he's been forced to pass down. Brad could shove his dick so far down Nate's throat he'd be hoarse for days and glad of it.
It's an accident, falling like this.)
If Brad closes his eyes, he won't see the map laid out in front of him. He has no idea what area it covers. If he reaches out to trace points on the map, he thinks his hand will turn traitor on him and skim over the nape of Nate's neck instead. He hasn't slept in days.
Brad moves, a step to the left and forward, shoulder to shoulder now, and memorizes every detail on the map that he needs or might need to know. He memorizes the hamlets and roads and canals and the number of turns to each possible destination, the locations and probable locations of the enemy, areas that might be mined. He considers routes they could advance along and even routes for retreat. But when he closes his eyes, all he sees is that red line around Nate's head, the soft fuzz of hair on his nape, the smooth thumb-sized indent at the base of his neck.
Pappy's gone. Rudy looks a little lost, but he'll hold it together. Brad steals moments he doesn't have in the whirlwind of movement and claps Rudy on the back. It's as good as saying I have faith in you. Rudy breaks off an order to smile. Thank you, brother, his smile says, because that's Rudy's way, straightforward and simple.
Walt is silent. He's shrunk in on himself as if he doesn't feel he can take up space in the Humvee anymore, but the silence ripples out from him and hits all of them. Rolling Stone has stopped scribbling in his notebook. Brad had gotten used to the incessant scratching noise, familiar as Ray's chatter and Trombley's snoring.
"You run out of questions, Reporter?" Brad asks. "Or just tired of the answers?"
"Uh, no?"
Brad doesn't push it. Even he feels weighed down by the silence.
Brad doesn't know what to do about it. Killing is so easy; it's afterwards that it can get difficult. If you let it. Trick is, not to let it. Walt hasn't learned that yet, and it's not something you can teach.
It's Ray - ravioli and tomato sauce spilling down his chin - who makes Walt smile and speak again. Brad could kiss Ray and his whisky tango fucked up filthy eating habits.
He kisses Nate instead. It's an accident.
Okay, it's not really an accident. You can't claim something is an accident when you've been planning it for weeks. Option A leads to B leads to C.
The scenario goes like this. If Brad finds the LT alone on watch, he'll join him, silently. That's option A in full. Always best to keep a mission simple. Less chance of fucking up. He's never had a chance to play it out before - Mike's always there at Nate's shoulder - but tonight there's a low berm, the LT sitting on a box, and no moonlight to silhouette them. There's no reason not to put option A into action.
B is the LT speaking. That's not under Brad's control, but Brad knows he will, if Brad's silent long enough. It's just a matter of waiting him out. And if Brad's the right kind of silent, no pressure, just easy silence, almost like friends, maybe Nate will say more than he means to. Maybe he'll be Nate instead of the LT.
"I'm sorry," Nate says. Quietly, facing distant fire, jaw jutting out. Even quieter, "I'm really sorry, Brad."
"Sir?"
"About the bridge mission." He doesn't say he knows how much Brad wanted that. They both know. The LT knew it wasn't going to happen - maybe not far in advance, not when they first planned it, but he must've been briefed on what the fuck their objective was before the intel filtered down to the grunts. Nate looks like he would have given anything to give Brad that mission.
B leads to C: him looking at the LT. It sounds like a pussy option, but Brad knows it isn't. Not a glance, not looking at him until Nate looks back and then dropping his eyes, not pointing to the map or talking too loud or doing anything to pretend he wasn't looking, but holding the look for as long as it takes for one of them to move. (Brad never did decide which direction of movement was likeliest. The only way to find out is in the field.)
There's a sound to Brad's six, but he doesn't turn to check it out. No need. It's just a wild goat - it'll soon take fright and run off. Or get caught by Q-Tip and roasted. Either way, it's irrelevant. Not worth taking his eyes off Nate.
The LT doesn't look at the goat either. Not even a glance. What doesn't happen is often as telling as what does happen. That tells Brad all he needs to know.
He moves.
(It doesn't even matter who 'he' is in this scenario. It's the moving part that's all important, because the moving is in the right direction. Not apart or to one side, but closer. And closer. Definitely both of them moving now. Either that, or Brad's getting seasick on dry land, and that sure as fuck would never happen.)
They touch at the lips. That's all it is. Closed mouths, a whisper of a kiss, but the look in Nate's eyes is screaming yes at full pitch. Brad answers the same way.
He touches Nate's hair. Traces the line he knows is left there from the Kevlar that's under Nate's arm again. He doesn't really feel it, not under the calluses on his fingertips, but still it fascinates him, this little flaw.
It's as far from fucking or getting fucked as it could be. And yet Brad still aches afterwards.
They never fuck in Iraq. They keep looking and not touching, and that's how it has to be. Brad knows that.
Brad's okay with it. He knows the feel of Nate's scalp under his hands now, knows the dusty taste of him, understands the promise in his look. He's a patient man.
One day, in DC, Nate wears a cap. When he takes it off, Brad runs his fingers around the crease it's left in his hair. The indentation is more pronounced now that Nate's hair is longer, but the line is in the exact same position the Kevlar crease used to be. Brad traces the line and leans in to kiss Nate. It's just a touch, nothing more, but he can do this now. In a park in the middle of a city, in broad fucking daylight, he can kiss Nate Fick.
"Home, now," he orders. Sometimes he's not a patient man, but that's okay too.
//