the gentle art of making enemies: cigarettes, 1/3
Title: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies: Cigarettes
Author: swear_jar
Rating: R
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing(s)/character(s): Brad/Ray.
Warning: Violence.
Notes: 28k. Assassin!AU. This is a continuation of the gentle art of making enemies, which is a wee short prologue that is very much need to read for some of this to make sense. There’s a quote in here lifted directly from Leon: The Professional. It’s not marked, but if you’ve seen the film you’ll recognize it. Betaed by the amazering apiphile, remaining fuck ups all mine.
Brad wakes up to the sound of his apartment's front door clicking shut. His fingertips brush the cold metal of his M9 before his brain engages properly. It's too early for this shit.
He feigns sleep and listens.
It's around when the toaster pops he loosens his grip on his gun, and slides his hand out from under his pillow. Of course.
"Ray," Brad calls out, "why are you in my apartment?"
He can smell toast and take-away coffee.
"Because you gave me a key!" Ray yells. There's a clatter of plates and the fridge door slams.
"No, I did not give you a key."
Brad would definitely remember that.
He doesn't tell people his address, let alone hand out keys.
Brad's apartment is on the third floor of an anonymous, brick-faced apartment block populated by a few ancient women who appear to have been here since time began. There are some small family units with one or two unfathomable small children who appear to think it's funny to giggle and hide if he passes them in the hall. It's not the kind of place anyone would associate with Brad. Brad likes it well enough; it's not home, but there's no drug dealers or domestics and no one bothers Brad except the old woman on his floor who bakes inedible sultana muffins he’s fairly sure could double as ammo for a Mk19.
Where he lives is need-to-know information. Need-to-know information that Ray had wheedled out of him the first week they'd met, and Brad distinctly remembers periodically wondering what the fuck he was thinking for several days after telling the skinny tweaker newbie his address.
At least he'd still never opened his mouth about his safe house.
Ray pokes his head into the bedroom then steps in. The doorway is white around him, framing a smug little picture. Ray settles himself shoulder to wrist against the doorframe, wearing yesterdays clothes and messy hair, carrying all the baggage of a small airport under his dark eyes.
Ray smiles close-mouthed at Brad and Brad's own mouth twitches back without his consent.
Ray's clearly slept through the comedown from whatever he'd ingested previous to their last little job for Nate. He's slowed down a lot.
He hasn’t got that haunted look he gets sometimes when he’s coming down; his eyes are bright above the gunpowder grey smudges, and Brad is thankful. Dealing with a crashing Ray isn’t on his list of favourite things to do. There are few things in the world that make Brad feel helpless, fewer still he’d ever admit to (small children, small animals and anything else he can’t employ any of his perfectly sound problem-solving strategies on and ignore, insult or shoot), but one is Ray on a Suicide Tuesday.
Brad smiles a little wider in satisfaction at the thought of it, three little bodyguards all in a row, in and out in ten minutes. Nate had been pleased, too, and Brad got the feeling he'd felt the fat bastard deserved whatever warning Godfather had wanted him to send.
"Come on, Brad, tell me you don't just use a single lock sans even the most basic of boobytrapping just for your Ray-Ray," Ray says, as if that's exactly the same thing as handing him a key. He tilts his head to look up from under dark lashes.
Idiot.
"Maybe," Brad shifts and stretches and screws his eyes shut for one dark, comfortable second.
His bare foot pokes out the end of the sheets, and when he opens his eyes Ray's looking at it and smiling. Brad wriggles his toes.
"Maybe," Brad repeats before Ray can make yet another joke about Brad's height relative to the size of his (perfectly adequate) bed, "in your socially retarded, whiskey-tango hometown that's like me handing you a key," Brad pauses for breath and sits up, sheets sliding off his chest.
Ray brings his hand up to his mouth and chews his thumbnail through a grin, and Brad watches his gaze slide off Brad's face, to his chest, to the floor. Brad ignores this.
"By your whisky-tango retard logic, that’s somehow like giving you a key. Tell me, Ray, if I buy your uncle-daddy-cousin a pig does that mean we're engaged?"
"Don't be ridiculous, homes," Ray says as if Brad's just suggested something truly insane, like he should close his mouth when he's chewing, "I'm worth at least three pigs."
Brad snorts and flicks the sheets off, the bed and gets up, and when he looks up from tugging on some sweats, Ray's disappeared.
Brad wanders out into his living room, yawning. Ray’s taken up residence on the ugly, floral print couch that came with the apartment, has his knees curled up and his plate balanced on top. He’s getting crumbs everywhere.
"Weren't you making toast?" Brad asks, leaning his knees against the back of the couch and looking down at Ray.
"Yeah," Ray says, "for me," he lies around a mouthful of bread, and leans his head back to smile with toast chewed to a disgusting paste between his teeth. "Yours on the bench."
"If you could refrain from spitting fragments of half-masticated breakfast food all the fuck over my couch, Ray….”
Brad wanders the few feet over to the kitchen bench and plucks the coffee off it, ignores the toast.
"I bring you breakfast and this is the thanks I get!" Ray spits toast all the fuck over Brad's couch, and his floor, to Brad's complete lack of surprise.
"You're lucky I didn't shoot you when you broke in," Brad says.
Ray rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it's got to hurt, swallows and crams more toast into his mouth.
Brad gives him a blank-faced stare of judgement and takes a sip of his coffee. The coffee is good, but it always is when Ray brings it. This is because Brad cannot bring himself to actually speak aloud some of the bullshit on the prissy coffee shop menu, while Ray actually seems to take it as a challenge to see how many levels of bullshit foamless double Italian free rainforest hazelnut cream he can fit in one order.
"Fuck 'oo, Colbert. I'm using your shower," Ray says. He stands up and dusts his hands of crumbs directly onto Brad’s living room floor, and leaves his plate on the bench.
“Why exactly are you using my shower?” Brad asks. As far as he’s aware, Ray both prefers to avoid showering until he absolutely must and also has a shower at his own apartment.
"I got laid last night,” Ray says, and wiggles his eyebrows. He looks at Brad, and Brad would like to shout what the fuck are you telling me for.
"Animal, mineral or vegetable?" Brad asks, instead. It falls a little flatter than he'd intended. Brad looks away from Ray when he first notices the faint red patch on his neck that’s most likely beard-burn. There’s not much point in looking any closer.
"Animal. Homosapien. Emphasis on the homo,” Ray says with a smirk. “But the fact I am feeling kinda crusty isn’t the only reason I need to borrow your shower. There’s a thing at Nate’s, free food, free booze. Everyone’s invited.”
Brad frowns. Definitely beard-burn then.
“Yeah,” Ray says, and nods. “Some shit going down.”
“Go fucking shower, Ray,” Brad says. He’ll feel better when Ray’s showered.
Brad isn’t exactly pleased with the idea of a thing at Nate’s, which is why he drops Ray’s dirty plate in the sink a little harder than he really needs to.
Not that he has a problem with attending a party at Nate’s apartment: the penthouse is fuck-ugly, but Brad doesn’t have to duck under doorways or break his back leaning down to wash his hands.
Brad is not overly fond of parties, but if Nate’s throwing a party at the penthouse, it’s because Godfather’s told him he’s throwing a party, and Godfather doesn’t throw parties for the fun and games. This’ll be about work as much as it is about play, which means the guest list will be interesting and likely less full of painfully retarded civilians than the usual fare.
Parties like this are bribes to get them all in the same room-all Brad’s fellow contractors on Godfather’s payroll-and it takes a bribe to get them all in the same room. Independence comes with the territory. You kill for a living, the last time you want to be is easily tracked down.
So this is something big, or Nate would have just called Brad.
By the time Ray’s out of the shower Brad has dug out some relatively dressy jeans from the back of his closet and is feeling decidedly intrigued by whatever the actual reason for the invitation is. The potential for action has always left him feeling a little more awake, a little more alive.
“Where the fuck are your towels, Brad?” Ray calls from the bathroom. “I know you’re all superhuman and shit, but even you have to dry your nuts.”
Brad glances around and realises he’s left all his washing in the same plastic basket he’d brought it up from the downstairs machines in. He plucks a white towel from the top and opens the door a crack-
“Oh Brad, are you getting fresh with me?” Ray says in a squeals in a painful, cracked girlish voice.
“Take the towel before I come in there and hang you from the shower rail with it,” Brad says, thrusting his arm into the bathroom. Ray tugs it out of his grip and Brad pulls the door shut.
Ray opens the door a second later, towel tucked around his waist, dripping on Brad’s floor.
“Why the fuck did Nate call you instead of me?” Brad asks. It occurs to him abruptly that Nate never calls Ray, Nate calls Brad. Brad is Nate’s second, and Ray is Brad’s.
“Well thanks, Brad, that’s not insulting or anything,” Ray says. “Am I staying here in your bathroom forever, or do you plan on moving your Viking warrior statue ass out of my way any time soon?”
Brad just stares at Ray’s face, his wet hair hanging in stark black lines across his forehead, his cheeks flushed from hot water, until Ray starts talking again.
“He didn’t, you left your phone in my pocket after we iced those three bodyguards for Nate,” Ray says. He shakes his head like a dog and water spatters everywhere, including Brad’s face.
“Thank you,” Brad says dryly, and steps out of Ray’s way.
Ray’s left the bathroom looking like a football team have showered in there, together, in some kind of homoerotic orgy of destruction. There’s a water hazard the size of a small duck pond and his dirty clothes are draped from the edge of the sink along the floor, with his wife-beater half in the tub and soaking wet.
Brad steps in the main puddle with a splash and a sigh and picks up Ray’s jeans with one finger, reaching into the pocket and hoping his phone isn’t dead. It turns on when he tries it, though, so he doesn’t have to murder Ray.
“I’m showering!” Brad yells.
“I’m borrowing one of your shirts!” Ray yells back. “Mine got wet!”
Brad picks up the handtowel from where it’s been blown by Hurricane Ray to the corner of the bathtub and wipes the medicine cabinet mirror. He has to bend his knees to look at himself (everything in this apartment is built for circus midgets, he is fairly sure). He wipes sleep out of the corner of his eye and stares himself down for a minute, and doesn’t respond to Ray. Brad does not think about Ray, dressing himself in Brad’s clothes.
He switches the shower on and forces himself to duck under the showerhead without flinching at the cold. Ray’s used all the hot water.
Ray’s found what has to be the only sleeveless top in Brad’s entire wardrobe, and tied the straps at the back so it only looks huge on him, instead of ridiculously huge. It’s still long enough on him he looks like some wigger wannabe like Q-Tip, sans the do-rag. From the neck up he looks like every cliché of a gangster Brad’s ever seen on film, his dark hair slicked back in wave: half-Mafioso, half-greaser.
Brad glances back at the shirt: he’s failing at focusing on things that aren’t Ray wearing his shirt.
“You know you look like a retarded five year old that’s been allowed to dress himself for the first time?”
“Side-boob is so in right now,” Ray says, lifting his arm up. Brad glances at the gaping material, Ray’s sparsely inked chest, then away. The elevator isn’t mirrored, and he stares blankly at comforting cold steel.
Beside him, Ray shifts restlessly. The elevator dings loudly as they hit the top floor.
“Smells like you,” Rays says, and the elevator doors slide open, into Nate’s hallway and a mile of clean cream coloured carpet. Ray slips past Brad out the door.
Brad jams his hand between the doors as they start to slide closed, takes a deep breath, and follows.
Nate's apartment takes up an entire top floor. It's a soulless space, full of unblemished cream carpets, clean walls and clean lines. The only colour is on the walls in the form of repulsive modern art. There is a sculpture in the living room Brad wouldn't be opposed to converting into a urinal. The only things the penthouse has that doesn't deserve firebombing are its high ceilings and its balcony, which is large enough to fit Brad's entire apartment in. The view is beautiful, for a city view.
The penthouse reflects nothing of Nate Fick.
He looks as much a stranger here as anyone else in the mixed bunch, mostly likely because this isn't Nate's place in the sense that he'd chosen it with its carpets that Brad is just waiting for Ray to tip something onto, this is Nate's place because Godfather has given it to him.
Nate isn't stupid enough to refuse a gift from Godfather, especially as he hadn't, as far as Brad knows, had anywhere to go after he'd handed in his Police badge to the wrong side.
No, Nate Fick isn't stupid, Nate is a survivor. There is no higher compliment to someone who's been outed as undercover in their business than if they’re still breathing. Not only is Nate living and breathing, but he'd gotten a promotion out of it. He likes Nate.
The place is filled with men Brad knows, everyone is smiling with a drink in hand. In one corner Brad can see Manimal with what could be Gazra in a headlock and a painting dangerously close to swinging off its hook behind them as they crash into a wall laughing at their friendly wrestle for dominance.
Brad locates Ray again by sound rather than sight.
"MEEEEESH," Ray yells across the room and ducks out of a loose circle of guys to make a beeline across the room for Meesh, who puts what is more likely to be a joint than a cigarette into his mouth and opens his arms.
Brad winces at the volume and watches a few people turn around and look then recognize Ray, and turn away with smiles or rolled eyes.
"Raymond, dude!" Meesh replies and hugs Ray, slapping him loudly on his bare shoulder.
Brad snorts. Outside eyes might see Meesh greeting Ray like an old friend, Brad sees Meesh's eyes rolling round like a slot machine and coming up dollar signs, jackpot. Meesh barely raises a half-hearted "dude," for people other than customers.
That their fondness is monetarily-motivated doesn't stop a hot flush creeping up the back of Brad's neck, and he snags a beer from the bar and opens it on the palm of his hand.
When he glances back, Ray and Meesh have their heads leaning towards each other conspiratorially, but there is distance enough between them for hands and goods to pass.
He would like to remind Ray he should probably stay sober until they see what this party is actually about, but experience tells him it's not worth trying.
Brad loses track of Ray as he notices Nate talking to Captain America. He has no choice but to rescue him from certain retardation.
Nate’s across the room, pinned into a corner by a dangerously animated looking Captain America - Dave to his face, simply because you don't insult someone spawned from the loins he was. If he hadn't had the luck to be born to one of Godfather's closest friends and allies, he would be dead.
Brad would quite happily have smile-killed the irritating sack of quivering shit himself, and that's only from hearing stories of how he is in the field from solid guys like Eric Kocher.
Nate is an interesting combination of honest and cunning. Brad would simply say intelligent, but Nate evidently has depths. He wonders, briefly, if it's something that Godfather thinks about; given Nate's beginnings, it would be ill-advised not to. Then again, evidence of Godfather's fondness for Nate is literally all around them. Friends close, enemies closer.
Brad shakes his head and sips his beer.
Captain America makes a gesture Brad recognizes as the universal kids-playing-war-with-machine-guns flail. Nate looks as if he'd welcome an accurate headshot. Or perhaps Brad is projecting, as Nate’s poker-face is pretty close to perfect-still.
Brad definitely feels a rescue coming on (let it never be said he's cold-hearted) and an opportunity to perform some reconnaissance on this party situation (let it also never be said he's not opportunistic).
He catches Nate's eye first, and Nate smiles behind a sip of his drink. Brad makes a two fingered gun gesture and squints one eye shut to sight the back of Captain America's head, and Nate's smile widens, genuine, but he shakes his head a little as if Brad was seriously offering (well, not very seriously).
Nate's blonde and pretty in a classically American way, and he looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, the same mouth that'd ordered Brad to kill for him forty-eight hours ago.
Brad sidles up to them and inserts himself in the conversation.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," he says, giving Captain America a short nod and intending that to be the last time he looks at him. "Nate." He watches Nate look politely interested and not overjoyed at the prospect of escape and thinks, oh yes, he's good. "I have something I need to discuss with you about the -" he glances sideways and clears his throat unconvincingly, "- in private, if possible, sir."
"Business at a party, Brad! Well you always have seemed very dedicated and there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Don't let him make you work too hard though, Nate," Captain America chuckles. Desperation and laughter make uncomfortable partners.
Brad says nothing, just watches Nate's face stay perfectly calm as he gives Captain America a small smile.
"Thanks, Dave," Nate says. Not a talk-to-you-later in sight.
Brad glances over his shoulder and watches Captain America makes his way towards Meesh.
"Are you sure you should be letting him buy anything from Meesh?" Brad says, not particularly concerned except that if he embarrasses himself no one is actually allowed to slap him back to reality.
"Meesh isn't holding," Nate says.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Meesh just sold something to Ray for a roll of bills and if it turns out to be sugar pills, I suspect Meesh is going to end up thrown off your delightful balcony," Brad says.
“Brad. Meesh isn't holding," Nate repeats and quirks the corners of his lips up.
Ah. A glance over his shoulder shows Meesh shrugging his shoulders apologetically and Captain America stalking away in a huff towards the bar.
"Good call, sir."
"You know you don't have to call me 'sir', Brad."
"I like calling you 'sir'," Brad says simply.
Nate waves his glass, carry on. Brad nods. He likes the distance it gives him from Nate, he likes the respect it implies. An alpha dog with everyone else in his life, he likes a solid reminder of the hierarchy here. He is fairly sure Nate understands.
"It’s nice to see you, Brad," Nate says. Brad salutes with his beer before taking a sip.
"I've always been told I have good timing," Brad says.
Nate just smiles, ignoring the opportunity to bitch about Captain America, ever the politician. Clever boy.
“Interesting guest list,” Brad says, glancing around the room and having to lift his beer three times as Kocher waves, Manimal and Chaffin hoot something unintelligible in his direction and Ray makes a face at him before he disappears into the hall, probably on his way toward the bathroom, to brief chemical oblivion, and to getting on everyone’s nerves for the next several hours.
Nate is watching him when he looks back.
“They love you,” he says.
“Like a litter of retarded puppies I just couldn’t bring myself to mercifully drown,” Brad says, feigning deep resignation and sighing for good measure. “Hope you’re prepared for when they start pissing on your rug.”
“Well-prepared,” Nate says.
Brad appreciates the fondness in his voice, something he finds in short supply from higher-ups. Brad has trained up, at a glance, fifty percent of the killers in this room, and those he hasn’t, he’s worked with. Nate looks as if he’s about to make his excuses.
Brad grabs the chance while he’s got it: “This isn’t just a chance to reunite me with the pack, though.”
Neither of them mention the disturbing thought that Captain America had been somewhat perceptive in his observations about Brad being all business. There’s nothing more frustrating than a clever idiot, but then a stopped clock is right twice a day.
“No,” Nate says and there’s a beat where Brad knows Nate’s expecting him to go on, but Brad finds, those are often the most interesting times to stay quiet. “No,” Nate repeats, “you’ll just have to be patient. Maybe even have fun.”
Touche.
“If you insist, sir.”
“I do,” Nate says, placing his watered down drink on the counter. Brad nods. Later it is. He can wait.
The place is open-plan, the kitchen and the lounge one unnecessarily huge area, with the kitchen tiled a similar colour to the cream carpet, but raised two steps higher. Brad finds himself leaning with his ass against the edge of the marble countertop and gazing out across the party. There’s a good view of everyone from here, the balcony the only thing behind them. The bathroom where Ray has most likely disappeared to isn’t visible either, but other than that, it’s an excellent position.
Nate sips his drink as if it’s pure ethanol, rather than obviously watered-down scotch, then places it on the bench with a click of glass on stone. There’s still half an inch of faintly amber liquid at the bottom and ice on top.
Nate, Brad observes, wants to stay sober, but wants to present a united front with the men. Sober means he wants to stay sharp; sober means, Brad guesses, it’s not small, whatever he has to tell them - or at least some of them, apparently definitely including Brad (not that Brad expected not to be included).
It’s got to be a major job, maybe a politician, a big contract they’ll want to talk out and maybe have to convince Nate they want. Or someone’s started a war, which would be even bigger (and, Brad supposes, worse, but the feeling in his stomach at the thought isn’t even in the same dictionary as worry or fear).
Or the option he isn’t pleased with, but it’s happened before and it will happen again (not to Brad’s guys, his record is 12 and 0): it could be one of them’s gone rogue, or departed without permission.
Brad casts a glance around from his perch at the kitchen bench assessing faces. He counts amongst the crowd every man he’s ever trained but for the dead. A lot of guys he knows are Pappy’s, too. Not a lot of unfamiliar faces, but that isn’t a surprise. Walt is there, too. Brad grins.
Walt Hasser isn’t any kind of traitor. The thought of Walt turning out to be some kind of multi-faced moustache-twirling villain actually makes him smile behind his next sip of beer.
He can’t see Encino Man, but that would just be too good to be true, being paid to end that dumbass. No Sixta, and Brad takes another sip of his beer and uncrosses and recrosses his legs at the ankle. Now he’s just getting stupid. Sixta is Godfather’s right hand. Time to stop speculating and just stay fucking frosty.
He looks at Nate’s glass, the ice melt watering down the alcohol even further, the condensation running off the cut crystal onto pale marble.
Or perhaps Nate’s been nursing one piss-weak drink all night because he isn’t stupid enough to wander around without a drink in his hand in a party Ray is at, as Ray generally takes the words 'designated driver' as a challenge, and an empty hand as an opportunity to spike a cup with piss, or make the world’s strongest, most off-recipe Long Island Ice Tea, depending on how much he likes you (Brad’s had Ray’s Long Island Ice Tea. It’s debateable which option means he likes you more).
When Brad surveys the crowd again, Rudy’s coming up the two steps into the kitchen at his ten o’clock. He’s grinning at Brad with pearly whites, looking like a commercial for cologne.
“Namaste, brother,” Rudy says. He holds out a fist and Brad bumps knuckles with him.
“Rudy,” Brad nods. Resists the urge to pick at the label of his beer despite the fact Ray (still) isn’t around to tell him he’s sexually frustrated and needs to bust a nut in some slut (Ray’s words). “Still on that bullshit pathway to enlightenment and homosexuality?”
"We’re all trying to reach our Zen, Brad, we just take different paths.” Rudy keeps on smiling.
Brad doesn’t resist rolling his eyes. His scorn won’t touch Rudy, which is about the only reason Rudy’s spiritual journey (and he can practically feel the sarcasm knocking on the back of his throat to be let out even thinking that) is tolerable. Rudy is Rudy, Fruity fucking Rudy.
And where there is a Rudy - Brad casts around and finds Pappy making his way over to them - there is a Pappy. All things in their right place. Rudy was Pappy’s first student, and the only one that’d never left the nest. Life partners - what kind, Brad would give less fucks than a nun about, except Ray speculates on the nature of their relationship at any given opportunity and has apparently infected Brad.
“Brad,” Pappy drawls and clicks the neck of his beer against Brad’s when Brad holds his out. Brad takes in Pappy’s face, which, strangely, is clean of the Ned Flanders facial hair he’d been sporting last time Brad had seen him. That was a few months ago.
Brad feels his lips quirk up in a smile.
“You shaved,” he points out.
“Weee-eeelll,” Pappy says, and shrugs like that’s an answer.
“I shaved it,” Rudy says with a smile. “He kept getting chai latte foam stuck in it.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Brad thinks, Godfather’s (second) best sniper team. He raises his eyebrows slightly at Pappy.
Pappy has the good sense to look somewhat chagrined, dipping his chin and taking a sip of beer, before he turns around and leans against the bench next to Brad, surveying the crowd. Rudy settles opposite them.
“You know Brad, I think you’d benefit from visualizing your Zen.”
“Why.” Brad cannot bring himself to make that a question.
“He thinks everyone’d benefit from finding their happy place,” Pappy says.
Brad tilts his head and looks at Pappy side on, watches him smiling at Rudy fondly.
Rudy shrugs, but doesn’t keep on with the new age hippy bullshit, which is enough to make Brad smile himself as he surveys the crowd again.
“So where’s Ray got to?” Pappy asks.
Like Brad has to know. Like Brad watching the crowd was in any way related to Ray’s presence or lack thereof.
As he glances over towards the hallway Ray had disappeared into earlier, though, he sees Ray poking his head around with a grin on his face before ducking back into the hall. Brad hides a grin in his drink.
“Found him,” he says. He nods towards the hallway.
Rudy turns around.
Ray comes back out of the hallway half dragging Jason Lilley until they nearly faceplant in the carpet, and end up holding each other up and laughing, a perpetual motion machine powered by chemicals and stupidity.
Lilley’s arm is over Ray’s shoulders and Ray’s is round Lilley’s waist.
Before Brad has a chance to take his leave of the conversation and go find Nate - who has wandered off, leaving his watered-down drink, while Brad was talking - so he doesn’t have to see Ray acting like a fool, Rudy’s calling “Ray!” across the room and waving him over with a big white grin.
Ray whoops loud enough Lilley winces beside him and they make their way up to Nate’s kitchen.
Brad doesn’t need to be close enough to see Ray’s eyes or his grin to know he’s high. Lilley, too. Lilley, whose arm is still wrapped over Ray’s shoulders. Both their faces are flushed as they bump fists with Pappy and Rudy in greeting.
Brad watches Lilley, arm over Ray’s back, thick fingers trailing into the ink on Ray’s arm, stroking black lines absently, a quick little back forth on Ray’s skin with the backs of his knuckles.
To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction, and Brad can’t help the reactions, but he can distance himself just enough he doesn’t do something stupid.
Lilley’s fingers drag across Ray’s skin.
Brad’s eyes narrow.
Ray says something to Brad, but makes no move to disentangle himself from Lilley.
Brad drags his eyes from Ray’s arm and meets Ray’s eyes for a beat, until Ray looks away with a too-wide grin.
Brad takes a sip of his drink, and doesn’t reply. He can’t speak to Ray right now, or he will undoubtedly say something he doesn’t want to.
“So what’re we talking about,” Ray asks. He slips out from under Lilley’s arm. Brad’s fingers relax on his empty beer bottle. Ray hops up on the counter opposite Brad and drums his feet against the door, likely leaving sneaker marks over its pristine surface.
Lilley shifts and leans beside him, close enough that Ray’s thigh is against this hip, brushing every time Ray swings his leg.
Brad’s jaw clenches. That’s fine.
“Meditation, my brother. Positive visualization and Zen,” Rudy says.
“Rudy, you are such a fuckin’ fag,” Ray says and cuffs at the back of Rudy’s head, only to have his wrist caught in a perfect hold and gently given back to him. Ray can fight, Brad knows, but Rudy even Brad would hesitate to get physical with empty-handed.
“Fuckin’ happy place bullshit,” Lilley snorts and digs in his pocket for his phone. Nothing much had ever stood out about Lilley when Brad has trained him, except his attachment to anything that can record video.
He’s an idiot with a camera, thinks he’ll never get nailed for some video he takes. Which is fine if you’re any punk with a camera phone who's bored and brawling on a Friday night, but Lilley is a trained killer and there’s bigger things at stake than a night in the sin bin.
Brad feels his top lip curl when Lilley holds his phone up, the little black eye of the camera up in Ray’s face. Ray opens his mouth and licks the lens.
Brad’s molars hurt from the pressure as he clenches his teeth momentarily.
Rudy seems to be attempting to explain the concept is less simple than “happy place”.
Ray interrupts with a smirk: “Happy place? My fuckin' happy place involves more jizz than a duvet at a pay by the hour motel, motherfucker!” He closes his eyes, opens his mouth and lets out an obscene moan towards Lilley’s camera phone. Lilley smirks behind the lens.
“You ever put that damn camera away, Jason?” Pappy asks.
Brad places his empty bottle on the bench beside himself.
Action, reaction, and control.
Brad closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them and watches the wall opposite them. Ignoring the flow of conversation around him is easy enough; focus has never been something he’s lacked. It’s helpful to think of keeping his eyes off Ray as a test.
Ray wearing Brad’s clothing, smelling like Brad’s antiperspirant, with Lilley’s hands on him.
His first thought is his bike, his house on the shore Brad keeps his baby, his first Ducati, the black 749, garaged at his little house on the beach (his insurance). Where he'd go if he had to go. Focusing on the blank space of wall across the room he thinks of cold grey waves and warm orange sun, sunrise and gulls, the white noise of waves and wind. It’s a pleasant thought. He thinks of the coast, taking the Ducati out on the looping roads that make it feel like you’re speeding along the edge of the world.
No one knows where it is. Ray doesn’t know where it is.
Brad tunes back into the conversation, and it’s immediately apparent that Zen, happy place, spiritual dicksuck bullshit is even less useful than Brad has originally assumed, placing it roughly on par with beat cops and dog shit.
"Where's my lighter?" Ray's got an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, bobbling dangerously. He pats his pockets.
"You're poisoning your body, Ray," Rudy says. It’s amazing he can sound genuinely concerned, having known Ray nearly as long as Brad has.
"Rudy, my man, you know there are dudes who've been bitten by snakes enough times, they build up enough poison in their system or whatever, and they end up taking bites from these killer fucking pythons -"
"Pythons aren't poisonous," Brad points out quietly.
"Details, details, killer fucking... puff adders and shit, and they don't even break out in a fucking sweat whereas any normal man would be fuckin’ dead, bam. They're immune. So am I, except you replace cobras with chemicals. I cannot be fucking killed by mere carcinogens, motherfuckers!" Ray throws his arms wide, narrowly misses smacking Lilley in the side of his head, and bangs both his heels against the cabinet at once, an audible exclamation mark. "I cannot be killed by anything! Except fucking nicotine cravings because I haven't got a goddamn lighter."
The cigarette wobbles on his bottom lip.
Lilley, miraculously, puts his phone down and finds a lighter. "Here man," he says and takes a step around Ray's swinging booted foot, and stands between Ray's open legs.
Brad stands straighter before he realises what he's doing. Pappy glances at him sidelong, Brad ignores him.
That's Ray's lighter Lilley's flicking open and lighting clumsily with his thumb, Brad knows it by sight, it's the same Zippo Ray's had the whole time Brad's known him.
Ray tilts his face upwards a little, smiling around his cigarette, poking his chin out to hold the end towards the flame in Lilley's hands and taking a brief drag before plucking it out of his mouth with two fingers.
"Thanks, Jay," Ray says.
Brad takes two steps forward and takes the lighter out of Lilley's hand without a word, meeting Lilley's wide eyes briefly and plastering a small close-mouthed smile on his face.
"I'll look after that," Brad says. Lilley takes a step back and raises his hands briefly, then smiles, runs a hand through his hair to cover the open palmed gesture that Brad reads submission into.
Ray turns and faces Brad with his cigarette in his mouth. He blows smoke out his nose, and stares at Brad for a minute, unsmiling. Ray's eyes are darker than normal. Dilated pupils, Brad seen it all before. He slips Ray's lighter into his pocket.
"I'm gonna get a drink," Lilley says and jogs down the steps from the kitchen towards the little bar.
Brad isn't at all disappointed Lilley knows his place. His fingers clench around the lighter in his pocket, briefly.
"Gee, Brad, anything else of mine you want to hold - SUNSHINE!" Ray abruptly bursts out, and Brad turns his head and watches as Walt waves, looking happy and golden as the nickname Ray bestowed on him.
Ray jumps down from the counter, brushes past Brad, and takes both steps at once before flinging himself at Walt in a half-hug, half-headlock.
Lilley keeps his distance.
Brad's pretty happy to see Walt, and feels the corners of his lips quirk up in a smile as he watches.
"Get off me, you crazy fucking hick!" Walt exclaims as he and Ray whoops something incoherent about Walt loving him, and they end up on the floor in a tangle of limbs.
He glances at the rest of the room and sees a smile on the face of anyone who's paying any attention to the little reunion of Brad's students. Except there's someone Brad's not seen before, young kid, looks younger than Ray. He’d maybe come in with Walt, because he’s standing watching Ray and Walt tussle with a curious look on his face.
"Hey, Pappy," Brad asks, "he one of yours?"
"Yep, sure was," Pappy says. "Trombley. Kid's the best shot I've ever worked with," Pappy shifts and frowns, then shakes his head. "'Cept Rudy, obviously."
"Obviously," Brad says. "What aren't you telling me, Pap?"
"Nothin'," Pappy says. "Kid's just real... intense."
Rudy frowns, which is curious. Rudy doesn't frown about anyone. He's about to ask Rudy what his assessment of Trombley is when Nate comes back up the steps.
"Brad, I need to borrow you for a minute. Bring Ray."
“Hallelujah, sir,” Brad says, and nods assent. Now they can sort out exactly what this “party” is about, apart from playing with Brad’s blood pressure.
The study reflects Nate better than anything else Brad’s seen in the house.
It’s nothing obvious. There’s only little hints Brad takes in, like the bare walls with their little picture hooks empty, because Nate’s clearly drawn the line on the bad art at the doorway. There’s the desk that isn’t quite messy, but isn’t quite the hotel room neat the rest of the apartment is. There’s dust behind his computer monitor, the cleaner doesn’t come in here. There’s five pens laid out across the desk’s surface visible behind Nate where he’s leaning against the edge.
Nate isn’t the kind to sit behind his desk to talk to them - no alpha dog moves needed, Nate commands respect without the noise and fire some men seem to need. Brad prefers the quiet reassured manner to posturing and games - only Nate isn’t so quietly reassured right now, and that’s the first thing that gets the hair on the back of Brad’s neck up.
Nate’s leaning comfortably, but his arms are crossed.
Brad’s situates himself in front of Nate. Ray throws himself into the chair at Brad’s right, pushing up someone’s ugly fucking Elvis sunglasses on his head.
Probably Lilley’s, Brad observes, indifferently.
Deliberately indifferently.
Walt grins and finger-waves hello. The new kid, Trombley, is leaning against the wall to one side. He’s is picking his teeth with a sharp-looking flick-knife. Brad is having trouble pinning a character assessment down beyond 'a little unbalanced'. Their interaction has been limited, however: they’d exchanged a nod as Nate had informed him he is being asked to help Trombley to acquire more field experience.
The kid is too quiet. In most people Brad would say that could just be a reaction to being in a room of his betters, but he looks relaxed. Brad watches him inspect his fingernail before flicking the knife shut, and thinks of how a cat will only groom itself if it feels at ease.
“Now Godfather is extremely busy, so he’s given me the privilege of asking for your assistance in this. This, gentlemen, is big,” Nate hesitates.
It’s not a deliberate pause, Brad doesn’t think. He’s thinking.
“Hey Nate, you got wireless in this building?” Ray asks, rocking on the chair he’s leaning back so it sits on two legs glancing idly at the flashing lights of Nate’s modem.
“Shut up, Ray,” Brad says.
Ray gives him the finger and a smile. Brad gives him nothing and turns his eyes back to Nate. He’s not particularly pleased with Ray.
“Godfather needs you to retrieve some goods for him.”
“What the fuck?” Ray asks, dropping his chair back down to all four legs.
Which is an excellent question.
“Sir?” Brad says.
“Godfather needs you to take a shipment of cigarettes from a warehouse where they’re being kept on pier nineteen. Godfather,” Nate pauses and corrects himself, meeting Brad’s eyes for a beat longer than anyone else’s, “I’m not asking you all to just be truck drivers and delivery boys here. I assume you are all aware that most of the docks are owned by The General.”
Godfather wants them to steal cigarettes from The General.
“Sir,” Brad starts, but is almost glad when Nate holds up his hand. He’s not entirely sure where to start unfucking the laundry list of shit that he wants to say is wrong with this.
First, first is probably that they’re assassins, not fucking smash-and-grabbers you can pick up on any street corner and pay in crack.
Second, second is The General. His business runs parallel to Godfather’s, his business is as big. This isn’t taking cigarettes from a twelve-year-old, this is a slap in the face.
“Who's the General?" Trombley asks calmly, confusion evident on his face.
Ray barks out a loud laugh and Brad watches Walt cover his mouth with a hand. Brad can’t help a little smile lighting upon his lips too, at the sheer scale of ignorance.
"The General is Ben Patton, Trombley,” Nate says, the only one of them not laughing. “He owns the docks and a business almost equal to Godfather’s, along with having a serious hand the gun trade. He’s been wanted for twenty years.” A little of the cop in Nate shows, every now and then.
“Oh,” Trombley says, “cool.”
Ray catches Brad’s eye and rolls his eyes hugely. Brad agrees silently.
"Have a guess why he's called the General, Trombley," Ray says, sarcasm thicker than melted cheese. He just can’t keep his mouth shut. Ray pulls his ugly borrowed sunglasses down and looks at Trombley over them.
It's ten o'clock at night and Ray is wearing sunglasses. Sun being a fairly important part of that word. These particular glasses appear to be some mutant love child of seventies Elvis and Rudy's gay ass J-Lo glasses.
Brad takes a moment to dismiss his more paranoid thoughts about Ray not wanting Brad to get a good look at the state of his pupils. As if Brad hasn't had enough practice reading Ray to know what and how much from the lines of perspiration that turns his hair shiny where it's buzzed short at the nape of his neck, or the timbre of his babble, or the twitches of his trigger fingers, or the tap of his toes.
“While Trombley’s ignorance is amusing, Ray, let’s get back to the point. Nate? Not to be too blunt, sir, but this makes about as much sense as a Bangkok massage without a happy ending,” Brad says. “If Godfather wanted The General dead, I can see him asking us.”
Ray says fuck yeah.
“But this seems, at best, a waste of my time and skillset and at worst,” Brad stops before he finishes. He’s unsure how Nate would take what he’d wanted to say first off: at worst, like Godfather was losing it. “We’re hard-ass killers, Nate, not thieves,” he finishes.
“Thanks, Bones,” Rays says. Brad has less than a clue what he’s talking about and stares at him until he explains. “Star Trek, Brad? You have lived a sad, pop-culturally void life my friend. Not that I don’t agree. This is some bullshit.”
"There are a number of reasons that Godfather wants you for the job. This isn’t an ordinary smash and grab, this is a warehouse that’s guarded by solid guys. This will really hit the General where it hurts, cigarettes are his easy business, they're his spending money. Without them, things are tight for him," Nate says. “And Godfather wants the goods, but Godfather also very much wants things to be tight for Patton right now.”
Brad could write a novel with what he’s not being told, but sometimes in this business you don’t know what the higher-ups believe you don’t need to know.
“Some craving Godfather’s got,” Ray says.
“Someone should tell him you can actually buy a pack at like any seven-eleven any time you want,” Walt says, grinning at Ray.
“Man, a fucking warehouse? Let’s say there’s even just one pissy truckload, which it had better not be, that’s like twenty smokes a pack, ten packs a carton, like a shitload of cartons fit in a truck, it’s like forty or fifty thousand, so say it’s somewhere in the middle of that that’s like eleven fucking million smokes. Godfather’s got him a serious fucking craving.” Ray does the math without pausing to draw breath, and Brad momentarily can’t help shooting him a smile.
Ray smiles back. Brad’s never gotten over how pleased he is every time Ray proves himself smarter than anyone in the room.
“Jesus, I can’t wait for when I don’t have to just bum a smoke anymore. I will be one happy motherfucker when the day comes I feel like a cigarette and instead of walking to the corner store I hire three badass assassins… and Trombley… to pick up my nicotine fix.”
“Thank you, Ray,” Nate says dryly. “Now gentlemen, you are my first choice team for this. You don’t have to say yes now, but I need answers by tomorrow evening at the latest. The job goes down within the next week and it will require prep,” Nate says, and stands and waits patiently.
Trombley agrees quickly.
“I’m in,” he says and the first smile Brad’s seen on his face quirks the corner of his lips. “I want my shot at killing someone up closer than a thousand meters.”
Ray raises his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses, and Brad doesn’t engage.
“I’m in,” Walt says. “I need the work.”
Brad frowns. He wasn’t aware Walt had any money issues - though when he thinks about it, Walt hadn’t worked any job Brad can think of for a long time.
Brad stands up from his chair. Ray looks up at him from behind his glasses and shrugs.
“We’re in.”
“Thank you,” Nate says, “Brad, I will speak to you tomorrow with details. Get back out there and have fun.”
They file out of the room and Brad watches Ray duck immediately towards the hallway that leads to the bathroom, again. He’s tempted to follow - Ray can handle himself, but he’s ingested enough for one night. It isn’t Brad’s problem.
More accurately, it shouldn’t be Brad’s problem.
“Brad,” Nate says and Brad pauses and turns around in the doorway. “I’m… glad you’re here. We all know you could be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a cold beer."
Brad reminds himself, through the brief flush of paranoia that rushes through him, that Nate doesn’t know of Brad’s little stretch of beach. But why Nate is bringing this up now, Brad isn’t sure.
He’s made enough to retire on comfortably, he’s trained more people than most, he doesn’t need to be here - and Nate knows it. Except Brad does need his job. He lives his job in a way some other’s don’t. Some are in it for the payday. Brad is in it because it’s in Brad. It feels a little like Nate has something else he wants to say.
“Nate. This is bullshit,” Brad tries, giving Nate an opening for anything he’s not letting go.
Nate says nothing for a beat and Brad searches him for any clue, any sign he knows more than he’s telling. There’s nothing beyond his hesitation, he’s still poker-faced and calm.
“I’m just glad to have you on board, Brad. I need men I can trust,” Nate says. “Thank you.”
“I’m in the bag sir,” Brad says. “No need to flatter me.” He’s half-joking, but he’s also faintly uncomfortable with Nate’s sincerity and playing it off as a joke is the most efficient way he knows to avoid chick flick moments.
Nate smiles, nods.
It’s true, though, that Brad may not have agreed so easily for someone else. Godfather himself he might have had to think about it from, but he respects Nate’s intelligence and trusts him not to throw Brad to the wolves (if only out of self-preservation, Nate isn’t stupid enough not to be at least wary of him).
Brad feels a healthy amount of doubt, but he can appease doubt with preparation. A lot of preparation. Like eyes on the warehouse starting tomorrow.
Ray’s coming too, despite the immanent hangover, and the thought of dragging him awake at o’dark hundred appeals to the sadist in Brad.
Whatever this is, it’s dangerous, and Brad is… curious.
There’s a headache inducing beat ruminating from somewhere within Nate’s truly impressive sound system. Brad’s torn between general appreciation for the serious sound quality, and irritation that the actual stereo is apparently hidden so as to make yet more room for the blank spaces and ugly art.
It’s also irritating that it’s hidden since that means he can’t destroy it so that he never again has to hear the nauseating white boy rap that’s spewing out of the thing. Clearly Q-Tip and Christeson have taken over DJ duties. At least it’s not country.
He also can’t go over and pry Ray off of Lilley, despite that display being in plain view since Ray had come bouncing out of the bathroom a few minutes ago.
He’s disturbed to find he doesn’t notice Poke until he’s practically standing next to him.
“Hey, Iceman. You okay? You look about ready to cut a bitch. What the fuck’d Fick want, some kamikaze bullshit? I know you like that pretty motherfucker, but you don’t own him no favours,” Poke says bluntly. Poke’s wordy sometimes, but he’s wise, too.
Brad looks away from Ray.
Lilley’s hand is on his chest, pushing him gently away and holding up his camera-phone with his other hand as Ray makes some obscene commentary, Brad can faintly make out the words come-stained crack-whore, and he sticks out his tongue, leaning too close to the lens. Lilley shoves him a few more times, laughing, and Brad’s fingers clench lightly on the beer every time.
Poke follows his eyes, then looks back at him half-smiling.
“Music’s too loud,” Brad says.
“Amen to that, I can’t stand this shit,” Poke says, and doesn’t look back towards Ray. He might have noticed Brad’s gaze, he might not have. Poke’s known him long enough to keep his mouth shut.
He punches Brad lightly in the arm and Brad sees he’s holding out a beer to him, condensation running down the neck of it.
“Looked like you needed one.”
“Thank you,” Brad says. Poke settles beside him against the wall. He wouldn’t vent to just anyone, but he’s known Poke longer than he’s known almost anyone in the business. “Nate wants us to do a smash-and-grab.”
“The fuck doesn’t he just rope in some cheap-ass expendables?” Poke says, outraged. Brad still feels faintly the same way.
“It’s a cigarette shipment. Big,” Brad says, Poke looks at him with a quirked eyebrow. “General Patton’s,” Brad says. Unease and anticipation kick up a fuss anew as he talks about it.
Poke whistles quietly, and takes a sip of his drink. Brad does the same and lets him digest that.
“I know you’re fond of Nate, man, but don’t let it slip your mind he used to be one of the bad guys,” Poke says.
As if Brad could, but he sees Poke’s point.
“Thought we were the bad guys,” Brad says.
Poke smirks and they click their beers together. Brad manages a genuine smile back.
“That explains why you were lookin’ like you wanted to cut a bitch,” Poke says. “That’s some weird shit right there. Glad Fick asked you first, man. Can’t say I’d have been interested in taking him up on that.”
Brad nods. Fair enough.
Across the room, Ray’s loud enough Brad can hear everything he’s saying. Lilley’s laughing, along with Q-Tip and Christeson.
“… And Trombley’s a fuckin’ Harold? Jesus, homes, I can see why the fuck no one calls him that, motherfucker is creepy enough without the weird ass nineteenth century man-child name. That kid is stone cold psycho, mark my damn words.”
Ray may or may not be aware that at the volume he’s speaking, at this point it could be deliberate, as Trombley, who isn’t very far away across the room, can certainly hear him. He glances in Ray’s direction, frowns faintly.
Brad is inclined to agree with Ray’s rapid-fire ranting this time. There are all types in their business, until you really peel back all the extraneous details like Rudy’s karmic journey, Ray’s high octane bullshit and ridiculous tattoos, Walt’s innocent smile, eventually you get down to it: you either kill people because you’re a little unbalanced or you kill people because you’re a lot unbalanced.
Brad’s comfortable not thinking about where on the scale he sits, so he doesn’t. He’d place Ray somewhere in the middle, if only because he swings pendulously between the two sides often and easily.
Trombley, with his dead eyed smile and inoffensive personality, Brad thinks would make a fine marker for the end of the scale marked psychopath.
This doesn’t particularly bother Brad, though clearly Ray has already taken a dislike to the kid. It’ll be interesting to work with him.
Ray still letting Lilley place hands all over him and giving back as good as he gets. Brad tells himself, this is just Ray, high. It’s not just Lilley, Brad has observed that a high Ray is a Ray who’s uncomfortably hands-on with women, men and potted plants.
Lilley’s a problem, though, because Ray’s got a loud mouth and Lilley’s got a video camera with a length of memory and a set of potential consequences Brad isn’t sure Lilley fully comprehends.
Ray could get himself in trouble because of Lilley’s persistent stupidity. He could get Brad in trouble.
At some point, Poke’s left him as a lost cause for conversation and Brad can’t say he cares too much.
Ray’s got a hand around Lilley’s wrist, the arm holding the little camera phone, and he’s tugging it over his shoulder and tilting his head upwards (leaning up on his toes a little) and kissing Lilley on the mouth. Lilley has the balls to turn his camera in his hand around so it faces them over Ray’s shoulder.
Ray says something close to Lilley’s mouth.
Brad is moving before he’s really made the decision to, which is a sensation usually reserved for combat. It’s not unsettling now, but he has the faintest feeling that it may be later.
His fingers curl around Ray’s bare arm, harder than he probably needs to. Ray doesn’t flinch so much as nearly twist his own arm out of the socket he spins around so fast.
“Jesus fuck, Brad,” Ray says, and jerks his arm a little.
Brad’s fingers tighten on instinct and Ray stops moving, then smiles.
Brad looks away from his face, but the second he’s looking at his fingers digging into the skin of Ray’s upper arm, distorting his radio wave tattoo with the shadowed dip his thumb’s fitted into he realises this is a mistake. He feels faintly sick, except that isn’t what he’s feeling at all.
Part 2.
Author: swear_jar
Rating: R
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing(s)/character(s): Brad/Ray.
Warning: Violence.
Notes: 28k. Assassin!AU. This is a continuation of the gentle art of making enemies, which is a wee short prologue that is very much need to read for some of this to make sense. There’s a quote in here lifted directly from Leon: The Professional. It’s not marked, but if you’ve seen the film you’ll recognize it. Betaed by the amazering apiphile, remaining fuck ups all mine.
Brad wakes up to the sound of his apartment's front door clicking shut. His fingertips brush the cold metal of his M9 before his brain engages properly. It's too early for this shit.
He feigns sleep and listens.
It's around when the toaster pops he loosens his grip on his gun, and slides his hand out from under his pillow. Of course.
"Ray," Brad calls out, "why are you in my apartment?"
He can smell toast and take-away coffee.
"Because you gave me a key!" Ray yells. There's a clatter of plates and the fridge door slams.
"No, I did not give you a key."
Brad would definitely remember that.
He doesn't tell people his address, let alone hand out keys.
Brad's apartment is on the third floor of an anonymous, brick-faced apartment block populated by a few ancient women who appear to have been here since time began. There are some small family units with one or two unfathomable small children who appear to think it's funny to giggle and hide if he passes them in the hall. It's not the kind of place anyone would associate with Brad. Brad likes it well enough; it's not home, but there's no drug dealers or domestics and no one bothers Brad except the old woman on his floor who bakes inedible sultana muffins he’s fairly sure could double as ammo for a Mk19.
Where he lives is need-to-know information. Need-to-know information that Ray had wheedled out of him the first week they'd met, and Brad distinctly remembers periodically wondering what the fuck he was thinking for several days after telling the skinny tweaker newbie his address.
At least he'd still never opened his mouth about his safe house.
Ray pokes his head into the bedroom then steps in. The doorway is white around him, framing a smug little picture. Ray settles himself shoulder to wrist against the doorframe, wearing yesterdays clothes and messy hair, carrying all the baggage of a small airport under his dark eyes.
Ray smiles close-mouthed at Brad and Brad's own mouth twitches back without his consent.
Ray's clearly slept through the comedown from whatever he'd ingested previous to their last little job for Nate. He's slowed down a lot.
He hasn’t got that haunted look he gets sometimes when he’s coming down; his eyes are bright above the gunpowder grey smudges, and Brad is thankful. Dealing with a crashing Ray isn’t on his list of favourite things to do. There are few things in the world that make Brad feel helpless, fewer still he’d ever admit to (small children, small animals and anything else he can’t employ any of his perfectly sound problem-solving strategies on and ignore, insult or shoot), but one is Ray on a Suicide Tuesday.
Brad smiles a little wider in satisfaction at the thought of it, three little bodyguards all in a row, in and out in ten minutes. Nate had been pleased, too, and Brad got the feeling he'd felt the fat bastard deserved whatever warning Godfather had wanted him to send.
"Come on, Brad, tell me you don't just use a single lock sans even the most basic of boobytrapping just for your Ray-Ray," Ray says, as if that's exactly the same thing as handing him a key. He tilts his head to look up from under dark lashes.
Idiot.
"Maybe," Brad shifts and stretches and screws his eyes shut for one dark, comfortable second.
His bare foot pokes out the end of the sheets, and when he opens his eyes Ray's looking at it and smiling. Brad wriggles his toes.
"Maybe," Brad repeats before Ray can make yet another joke about Brad's height relative to the size of his (perfectly adequate) bed, "in your socially retarded, whiskey-tango hometown that's like me handing you a key," Brad pauses for breath and sits up, sheets sliding off his chest.
Ray brings his hand up to his mouth and chews his thumbnail through a grin, and Brad watches his gaze slide off Brad's face, to his chest, to the floor. Brad ignores this.
"By your whisky-tango retard logic, that’s somehow like giving you a key. Tell me, Ray, if I buy your uncle-daddy-cousin a pig does that mean we're engaged?"
"Don't be ridiculous, homes," Ray says as if Brad's just suggested something truly insane, like he should close his mouth when he's chewing, "I'm worth at least three pigs."
Brad snorts and flicks the sheets off, the bed and gets up, and when he looks up from tugging on some sweats, Ray's disappeared.
Brad wanders out into his living room, yawning. Ray’s taken up residence on the ugly, floral print couch that came with the apartment, has his knees curled up and his plate balanced on top. He’s getting crumbs everywhere.
"Weren't you making toast?" Brad asks, leaning his knees against the back of the couch and looking down at Ray.
"Yeah," Ray says, "for me," he lies around a mouthful of bread, and leans his head back to smile with toast chewed to a disgusting paste between his teeth. "Yours on the bench."
"If you could refrain from spitting fragments of half-masticated breakfast food all the fuck over my couch, Ray….”
Brad wanders the few feet over to the kitchen bench and plucks the coffee off it, ignores the toast.
"I bring you breakfast and this is the thanks I get!" Ray spits toast all the fuck over Brad's couch, and his floor, to Brad's complete lack of surprise.
"You're lucky I didn't shoot you when you broke in," Brad says.
Ray rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it's got to hurt, swallows and crams more toast into his mouth.
Brad gives him a blank-faced stare of judgement and takes a sip of his coffee. The coffee is good, but it always is when Ray brings it. This is because Brad cannot bring himself to actually speak aloud some of the bullshit on the prissy coffee shop menu, while Ray actually seems to take it as a challenge to see how many levels of bullshit foamless double Italian free rainforest hazelnut cream he can fit in one order.
"Fuck 'oo, Colbert. I'm using your shower," Ray says. He stands up and dusts his hands of crumbs directly onto Brad’s living room floor, and leaves his plate on the bench.
“Why exactly are you using my shower?” Brad asks. As far as he’s aware, Ray both prefers to avoid showering until he absolutely must and also has a shower at his own apartment.
"I got laid last night,” Ray says, and wiggles his eyebrows. He looks at Brad, and Brad would like to shout what the fuck are you telling me for.
"Animal, mineral or vegetable?" Brad asks, instead. It falls a little flatter than he'd intended. Brad looks away from Ray when he first notices the faint red patch on his neck that’s most likely beard-burn. There’s not much point in looking any closer.
"Animal. Homosapien. Emphasis on the homo,” Ray says with a smirk. “But the fact I am feeling kinda crusty isn’t the only reason I need to borrow your shower. There’s a thing at Nate’s, free food, free booze. Everyone’s invited.”
Brad frowns. Definitely beard-burn then.
“Yeah,” Ray says, and nods. “Some shit going down.”
“Go fucking shower, Ray,” Brad says. He’ll feel better when Ray’s showered.
Brad isn’t exactly pleased with the idea of a thing at Nate’s, which is why he drops Ray’s dirty plate in the sink a little harder than he really needs to.
Not that he has a problem with attending a party at Nate’s apartment: the penthouse is fuck-ugly, but Brad doesn’t have to duck under doorways or break his back leaning down to wash his hands.
Brad is not overly fond of parties, but if Nate’s throwing a party at the penthouse, it’s because Godfather’s told him he’s throwing a party, and Godfather doesn’t throw parties for the fun and games. This’ll be about work as much as it is about play, which means the guest list will be interesting and likely less full of painfully retarded civilians than the usual fare.
Parties like this are bribes to get them all in the same room-all Brad’s fellow contractors on Godfather’s payroll-and it takes a bribe to get them all in the same room. Independence comes with the territory. You kill for a living, the last time you want to be is easily tracked down.
So this is something big, or Nate would have just called Brad.
By the time Ray’s out of the shower Brad has dug out some relatively dressy jeans from the back of his closet and is feeling decidedly intrigued by whatever the actual reason for the invitation is. The potential for action has always left him feeling a little more awake, a little more alive.
“Where the fuck are your towels, Brad?” Ray calls from the bathroom. “I know you’re all superhuman and shit, but even you have to dry your nuts.”
Brad glances around and realises he’s left all his washing in the same plastic basket he’d brought it up from the downstairs machines in. He plucks a white towel from the top and opens the door a crack-
“Oh Brad, are you getting fresh with me?” Ray says in a squeals in a painful, cracked girlish voice.
“Take the towel before I come in there and hang you from the shower rail with it,” Brad says, thrusting his arm into the bathroom. Ray tugs it out of his grip and Brad pulls the door shut.
Ray opens the door a second later, towel tucked around his waist, dripping on Brad’s floor.
“Why the fuck did Nate call you instead of me?” Brad asks. It occurs to him abruptly that Nate never calls Ray, Nate calls Brad. Brad is Nate’s second, and Ray is Brad’s.
“Well thanks, Brad, that’s not insulting or anything,” Ray says. “Am I staying here in your bathroom forever, or do you plan on moving your Viking warrior statue ass out of my way any time soon?”
Brad just stares at Ray’s face, his wet hair hanging in stark black lines across his forehead, his cheeks flushed from hot water, until Ray starts talking again.
“He didn’t, you left your phone in my pocket after we iced those three bodyguards for Nate,” Ray says. He shakes his head like a dog and water spatters everywhere, including Brad’s face.
“Thank you,” Brad says dryly, and steps out of Ray’s way.
Ray’s left the bathroom looking like a football team have showered in there, together, in some kind of homoerotic orgy of destruction. There’s a water hazard the size of a small duck pond and his dirty clothes are draped from the edge of the sink along the floor, with his wife-beater half in the tub and soaking wet.
Brad steps in the main puddle with a splash and a sigh and picks up Ray’s jeans with one finger, reaching into the pocket and hoping his phone isn’t dead. It turns on when he tries it, though, so he doesn’t have to murder Ray.
“I’m showering!” Brad yells.
“I’m borrowing one of your shirts!” Ray yells back. “Mine got wet!”
Brad picks up the handtowel from where it’s been blown by Hurricane Ray to the corner of the bathtub and wipes the medicine cabinet mirror. He has to bend his knees to look at himself (everything in this apartment is built for circus midgets, he is fairly sure). He wipes sleep out of the corner of his eye and stares himself down for a minute, and doesn’t respond to Ray. Brad does not think about Ray, dressing himself in Brad’s clothes.
He switches the shower on and forces himself to duck under the showerhead without flinching at the cold. Ray’s used all the hot water.
Ray’s found what has to be the only sleeveless top in Brad’s entire wardrobe, and tied the straps at the back so it only looks huge on him, instead of ridiculously huge. It’s still long enough on him he looks like some wigger wannabe like Q-Tip, sans the do-rag. From the neck up he looks like every cliché of a gangster Brad’s ever seen on film, his dark hair slicked back in wave: half-Mafioso, half-greaser.
Brad glances back at the shirt: he’s failing at focusing on things that aren’t Ray wearing his shirt.
“You know you look like a retarded five year old that’s been allowed to dress himself for the first time?”
“Side-boob is so in right now,” Ray says, lifting his arm up. Brad glances at the gaping material, Ray’s sparsely inked chest, then away. The elevator isn’t mirrored, and he stares blankly at comforting cold steel.
Beside him, Ray shifts restlessly. The elevator dings loudly as they hit the top floor.
“Smells like you,” Rays says, and the elevator doors slide open, into Nate’s hallway and a mile of clean cream coloured carpet. Ray slips past Brad out the door.
Brad jams his hand between the doors as they start to slide closed, takes a deep breath, and follows.
Nate's apartment takes up an entire top floor. It's a soulless space, full of unblemished cream carpets, clean walls and clean lines. The only colour is on the walls in the form of repulsive modern art. There is a sculpture in the living room Brad wouldn't be opposed to converting into a urinal. The only things the penthouse has that doesn't deserve firebombing are its high ceilings and its balcony, which is large enough to fit Brad's entire apartment in. The view is beautiful, for a city view.
The penthouse reflects nothing of Nate Fick.
He looks as much a stranger here as anyone else in the mixed bunch, mostly likely because this isn't Nate's place in the sense that he'd chosen it with its carpets that Brad is just waiting for Ray to tip something onto, this is Nate's place because Godfather has given it to him.
Nate isn't stupid enough to refuse a gift from Godfather, especially as he hadn't, as far as Brad knows, had anywhere to go after he'd handed in his Police badge to the wrong side.
No, Nate Fick isn't stupid, Nate is a survivor. There is no higher compliment to someone who's been outed as undercover in their business than if they’re still breathing. Not only is Nate living and breathing, but he'd gotten a promotion out of it. He likes Nate.
The place is filled with men Brad knows, everyone is smiling with a drink in hand. In one corner Brad can see Manimal with what could be Gazra in a headlock and a painting dangerously close to swinging off its hook behind them as they crash into a wall laughing at their friendly wrestle for dominance.
Brad locates Ray again by sound rather than sight.
"MEEEEESH," Ray yells across the room and ducks out of a loose circle of guys to make a beeline across the room for Meesh, who puts what is more likely to be a joint than a cigarette into his mouth and opens his arms.
Brad winces at the volume and watches a few people turn around and look then recognize Ray, and turn away with smiles or rolled eyes.
"Raymond, dude!" Meesh replies and hugs Ray, slapping him loudly on his bare shoulder.
Brad snorts. Outside eyes might see Meesh greeting Ray like an old friend, Brad sees Meesh's eyes rolling round like a slot machine and coming up dollar signs, jackpot. Meesh barely raises a half-hearted "dude," for people other than customers.
That their fondness is monetarily-motivated doesn't stop a hot flush creeping up the back of Brad's neck, and he snags a beer from the bar and opens it on the palm of his hand.
When he glances back, Ray and Meesh have their heads leaning towards each other conspiratorially, but there is distance enough between them for hands and goods to pass.
He would like to remind Ray he should probably stay sober until they see what this party is actually about, but experience tells him it's not worth trying.
Brad loses track of Ray as he notices Nate talking to Captain America. He has no choice but to rescue him from certain retardation.
Nate’s across the room, pinned into a corner by a dangerously animated looking Captain America - Dave to his face, simply because you don't insult someone spawned from the loins he was. If he hadn't had the luck to be born to one of Godfather's closest friends and allies, he would be dead.
Brad would quite happily have smile-killed the irritating sack of quivering shit himself, and that's only from hearing stories of how he is in the field from solid guys like Eric Kocher.
Nate is an interesting combination of honest and cunning. Brad would simply say intelligent, but Nate evidently has depths. He wonders, briefly, if it's something that Godfather thinks about; given Nate's beginnings, it would be ill-advised not to. Then again, evidence of Godfather's fondness for Nate is literally all around them. Friends close, enemies closer.
Brad shakes his head and sips his beer.
Captain America makes a gesture Brad recognizes as the universal kids-playing-war-with-machine-guns flail. Nate looks as if he'd welcome an accurate headshot. Or perhaps Brad is projecting, as Nate’s poker-face is pretty close to perfect-still.
Brad definitely feels a rescue coming on (let it never be said he's cold-hearted) and an opportunity to perform some reconnaissance on this party situation (let it also never be said he's not opportunistic).
He catches Nate's eye first, and Nate smiles behind a sip of his drink. Brad makes a two fingered gun gesture and squints one eye shut to sight the back of Captain America's head, and Nate's smile widens, genuine, but he shakes his head a little as if Brad was seriously offering (well, not very seriously).
Nate's blonde and pretty in a classically American way, and he looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, the same mouth that'd ordered Brad to kill for him forty-eight hours ago.
Brad sidles up to them and inserts himself in the conversation.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," he says, giving Captain America a short nod and intending that to be the last time he looks at him. "Nate." He watches Nate look politely interested and not overjoyed at the prospect of escape and thinks, oh yes, he's good. "I have something I need to discuss with you about the -" he glances sideways and clears his throat unconvincingly, "- in private, if possible, sir."
"Business at a party, Brad! Well you always have seemed very dedicated and there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Don't let him make you work too hard though, Nate," Captain America chuckles. Desperation and laughter make uncomfortable partners.
Brad says nothing, just watches Nate's face stay perfectly calm as he gives Captain America a small smile.
"Thanks, Dave," Nate says. Not a talk-to-you-later in sight.
Brad glances over his shoulder and watches Captain America makes his way towards Meesh.
"Are you sure you should be letting him buy anything from Meesh?" Brad says, not particularly concerned except that if he embarrasses himself no one is actually allowed to slap him back to reality.
"Meesh isn't holding," Nate says.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Meesh just sold something to Ray for a roll of bills and if it turns out to be sugar pills, I suspect Meesh is going to end up thrown off your delightful balcony," Brad says.
“Brad. Meesh isn't holding," Nate repeats and quirks the corners of his lips up.
Ah. A glance over his shoulder shows Meesh shrugging his shoulders apologetically and Captain America stalking away in a huff towards the bar.
"Good call, sir."
"You know you don't have to call me 'sir', Brad."
"I like calling you 'sir'," Brad says simply.
Nate waves his glass, carry on. Brad nods. He likes the distance it gives him from Nate, he likes the respect it implies. An alpha dog with everyone else in his life, he likes a solid reminder of the hierarchy here. He is fairly sure Nate understands.
"It’s nice to see you, Brad," Nate says. Brad salutes with his beer before taking a sip.
"I've always been told I have good timing," Brad says.
Nate just smiles, ignoring the opportunity to bitch about Captain America, ever the politician. Clever boy.
“Interesting guest list,” Brad says, glancing around the room and having to lift his beer three times as Kocher waves, Manimal and Chaffin hoot something unintelligible in his direction and Ray makes a face at him before he disappears into the hall, probably on his way toward the bathroom, to brief chemical oblivion, and to getting on everyone’s nerves for the next several hours.
Nate is watching him when he looks back.
“They love you,” he says.
“Like a litter of retarded puppies I just couldn’t bring myself to mercifully drown,” Brad says, feigning deep resignation and sighing for good measure. “Hope you’re prepared for when they start pissing on your rug.”
“Well-prepared,” Nate says.
Brad appreciates the fondness in his voice, something he finds in short supply from higher-ups. Brad has trained up, at a glance, fifty percent of the killers in this room, and those he hasn’t, he’s worked with. Nate looks as if he’s about to make his excuses.
Brad grabs the chance while he’s got it: “This isn’t just a chance to reunite me with the pack, though.”
Neither of them mention the disturbing thought that Captain America had been somewhat perceptive in his observations about Brad being all business. There’s nothing more frustrating than a clever idiot, but then a stopped clock is right twice a day.
“No,” Nate says and there’s a beat where Brad knows Nate’s expecting him to go on, but Brad finds, those are often the most interesting times to stay quiet. “No,” Nate repeats, “you’ll just have to be patient. Maybe even have fun.”
Touche.
“If you insist, sir.”
“I do,” Nate says, placing his watered down drink on the counter. Brad nods. Later it is. He can wait.
The place is open-plan, the kitchen and the lounge one unnecessarily huge area, with the kitchen tiled a similar colour to the cream carpet, but raised two steps higher. Brad finds himself leaning with his ass against the edge of the marble countertop and gazing out across the party. There’s a good view of everyone from here, the balcony the only thing behind them. The bathroom where Ray has most likely disappeared to isn’t visible either, but other than that, it’s an excellent position.
Nate sips his drink as if it’s pure ethanol, rather than obviously watered-down scotch, then places it on the bench with a click of glass on stone. There’s still half an inch of faintly amber liquid at the bottom and ice on top.
Nate, Brad observes, wants to stay sober, but wants to present a united front with the men. Sober means he wants to stay sharp; sober means, Brad guesses, it’s not small, whatever he has to tell them - or at least some of them, apparently definitely including Brad (not that Brad expected not to be included).
It’s got to be a major job, maybe a politician, a big contract they’ll want to talk out and maybe have to convince Nate they want. Or someone’s started a war, which would be even bigger (and, Brad supposes, worse, but the feeling in his stomach at the thought isn’t even in the same dictionary as worry or fear).
Or the option he isn’t pleased with, but it’s happened before and it will happen again (not to Brad’s guys, his record is 12 and 0): it could be one of them’s gone rogue, or departed without permission.
Brad casts a glance around from his perch at the kitchen bench assessing faces. He counts amongst the crowd every man he’s ever trained but for the dead. A lot of guys he knows are Pappy’s, too. Not a lot of unfamiliar faces, but that isn’t a surprise. Walt is there, too. Brad grins.
Walt Hasser isn’t any kind of traitor. The thought of Walt turning out to be some kind of multi-faced moustache-twirling villain actually makes him smile behind his next sip of beer.
He can’t see Encino Man, but that would just be too good to be true, being paid to end that dumbass. No Sixta, and Brad takes another sip of his beer and uncrosses and recrosses his legs at the ankle. Now he’s just getting stupid. Sixta is Godfather’s right hand. Time to stop speculating and just stay fucking frosty.
He looks at Nate’s glass, the ice melt watering down the alcohol even further, the condensation running off the cut crystal onto pale marble.
Or perhaps Nate’s been nursing one piss-weak drink all night because he isn’t stupid enough to wander around without a drink in his hand in a party Ray is at, as Ray generally takes the words 'designated driver' as a challenge, and an empty hand as an opportunity to spike a cup with piss, or make the world’s strongest, most off-recipe Long Island Ice Tea, depending on how much he likes you (Brad’s had Ray’s Long Island Ice Tea. It’s debateable which option means he likes you more).
When Brad surveys the crowd again, Rudy’s coming up the two steps into the kitchen at his ten o’clock. He’s grinning at Brad with pearly whites, looking like a commercial for cologne.
“Namaste, brother,” Rudy says. He holds out a fist and Brad bumps knuckles with him.
“Rudy,” Brad nods. Resists the urge to pick at the label of his beer despite the fact Ray (still) isn’t around to tell him he’s sexually frustrated and needs to bust a nut in some slut (Ray’s words). “Still on that bullshit pathway to enlightenment and homosexuality?”
"We’re all trying to reach our Zen, Brad, we just take different paths.” Rudy keeps on smiling.
Brad doesn’t resist rolling his eyes. His scorn won’t touch Rudy, which is about the only reason Rudy’s spiritual journey (and he can practically feel the sarcasm knocking on the back of his throat to be let out even thinking that) is tolerable. Rudy is Rudy, Fruity fucking Rudy.
And where there is a Rudy - Brad casts around and finds Pappy making his way over to them - there is a Pappy. All things in their right place. Rudy was Pappy’s first student, and the only one that’d never left the nest. Life partners - what kind, Brad would give less fucks than a nun about, except Ray speculates on the nature of their relationship at any given opportunity and has apparently infected Brad.
“Brad,” Pappy drawls and clicks the neck of his beer against Brad’s when Brad holds his out. Brad takes in Pappy’s face, which, strangely, is clean of the Ned Flanders facial hair he’d been sporting last time Brad had seen him. That was a few months ago.
Brad feels his lips quirk up in a smile.
“You shaved,” he points out.
“Weee-eeelll,” Pappy says, and shrugs like that’s an answer.
“I shaved it,” Rudy says with a smile. “He kept getting chai latte foam stuck in it.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Brad thinks, Godfather’s (second) best sniper team. He raises his eyebrows slightly at Pappy.
Pappy has the good sense to look somewhat chagrined, dipping his chin and taking a sip of beer, before he turns around and leans against the bench next to Brad, surveying the crowd. Rudy settles opposite them.
“You know Brad, I think you’d benefit from visualizing your Zen.”
“Why.” Brad cannot bring himself to make that a question.
“He thinks everyone’d benefit from finding their happy place,” Pappy says.
Brad tilts his head and looks at Pappy side on, watches him smiling at Rudy fondly.
Rudy shrugs, but doesn’t keep on with the new age hippy bullshit, which is enough to make Brad smile himself as he surveys the crowd again.
“So where’s Ray got to?” Pappy asks.
Like Brad has to know. Like Brad watching the crowd was in any way related to Ray’s presence or lack thereof.
As he glances over towards the hallway Ray had disappeared into earlier, though, he sees Ray poking his head around with a grin on his face before ducking back into the hall. Brad hides a grin in his drink.
“Found him,” he says. He nods towards the hallway.
Rudy turns around.
Ray comes back out of the hallway half dragging Jason Lilley until they nearly faceplant in the carpet, and end up holding each other up and laughing, a perpetual motion machine powered by chemicals and stupidity.
Lilley’s arm is over Ray’s shoulders and Ray’s is round Lilley’s waist.
Before Brad has a chance to take his leave of the conversation and go find Nate - who has wandered off, leaving his watered-down drink, while Brad was talking - so he doesn’t have to see Ray acting like a fool, Rudy’s calling “Ray!” across the room and waving him over with a big white grin.
Ray whoops loud enough Lilley winces beside him and they make their way up to Nate’s kitchen.
Brad doesn’t need to be close enough to see Ray’s eyes or his grin to know he’s high. Lilley, too. Lilley, whose arm is still wrapped over Ray’s shoulders. Both their faces are flushed as they bump fists with Pappy and Rudy in greeting.
Brad watches Lilley, arm over Ray’s back, thick fingers trailing into the ink on Ray’s arm, stroking black lines absently, a quick little back forth on Ray’s skin with the backs of his knuckles.
To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction, and Brad can’t help the reactions, but he can distance himself just enough he doesn’t do something stupid.
Lilley’s fingers drag across Ray’s skin.
Brad’s eyes narrow.
Ray says something to Brad, but makes no move to disentangle himself from Lilley.
Brad drags his eyes from Ray’s arm and meets Ray’s eyes for a beat, until Ray looks away with a too-wide grin.
Brad takes a sip of his drink, and doesn’t reply. He can’t speak to Ray right now, or he will undoubtedly say something he doesn’t want to.
“So what’re we talking about,” Ray asks. He slips out from under Lilley’s arm. Brad’s fingers relax on his empty beer bottle. Ray hops up on the counter opposite Brad and drums his feet against the door, likely leaving sneaker marks over its pristine surface.
Lilley shifts and leans beside him, close enough that Ray’s thigh is against this hip, brushing every time Ray swings his leg.
Brad’s jaw clenches. That’s fine.
“Meditation, my brother. Positive visualization and Zen,” Rudy says.
“Rudy, you are such a fuckin’ fag,” Ray says and cuffs at the back of Rudy’s head, only to have his wrist caught in a perfect hold and gently given back to him. Ray can fight, Brad knows, but Rudy even Brad would hesitate to get physical with empty-handed.
“Fuckin’ happy place bullshit,” Lilley snorts and digs in his pocket for his phone. Nothing much had ever stood out about Lilley when Brad has trained him, except his attachment to anything that can record video.
He’s an idiot with a camera, thinks he’ll never get nailed for some video he takes. Which is fine if you’re any punk with a camera phone who's bored and brawling on a Friday night, but Lilley is a trained killer and there’s bigger things at stake than a night in the sin bin.
Brad feels his top lip curl when Lilley holds his phone up, the little black eye of the camera up in Ray’s face. Ray opens his mouth and licks the lens.
Brad’s molars hurt from the pressure as he clenches his teeth momentarily.
Rudy seems to be attempting to explain the concept is less simple than “happy place”.
Ray interrupts with a smirk: “Happy place? My fuckin' happy place involves more jizz than a duvet at a pay by the hour motel, motherfucker!” He closes his eyes, opens his mouth and lets out an obscene moan towards Lilley’s camera phone. Lilley smirks behind the lens.
“You ever put that damn camera away, Jason?” Pappy asks.
Brad places his empty bottle on the bench beside himself.
Action, reaction, and control.
Brad closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them and watches the wall opposite them. Ignoring the flow of conversation around him is easy enough; focus has never been something he’s lacked. It’s helpful to think of keeping his eyes off Ray as a test.
Ray wearing Brad’s clothing, smelling like Brad’s antiperspirant, with Lilley’s hands on him.
His first thought is his bike, his house on the shore Brad keeps his baby, his first Ducati, the black 749, garaged at his little house on the beach (his insurance). Where he'd go if he had to go. Focusing on the blank space of wall across the room he thinks of cold grey waves and warm orange sun, sunrise and gulls, the white noise of waves and wind. It’s a pleasant thought. He thinks of the coast, taking the Ducati out on the looping roads that make it feel like you’re speeding along the edge of the world.
No one knows where it is. Ray doesn’t know where it is.
Brad tunes back into the conversation, and it’s immediately apparent that Zen, happy place, spiritual dicksuck bullshit is even less useful than Brad has originally assumed, placing it roughly on par with beat cops and dog shit.
"Where's my lighter?" Ray's got an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, bobbling dangerously. He pats his pockets.
"You're poisoning your body, Ray," Rudy says. It’s amazing he can sound genuinely concerned, having known Ray nearly as long as Brad has.
"Rudy, my man, you know there are dudes who've been bitten by snakes enough times, they build up enough poison in their system or whatever, and they end up taking bites from these killer fucking pythons -"
"Pythons aren't poisonous," Brad points out quietly.
"Details, details, killer fucking... puff adders and shit, and they don't even break out in a fucking sweat whereas any normal man would be fuckin’ dead, bam. They're immune. So am I, except you replace cobras with chemicals. I cannot be fucking killed by mere carcinogens, motherfuckers!" Ray throws his arms wide, narrowly misses smacking Lilley in the side of his head, and bangs both his heels against the cabinet at once, an audible exclamation mark. "I cannot be killed by anything! Except fucking nicotine cravings because I haven't got a goddamn lighter."
The cigarette wobbles on his bottom lip.
Lilley, miraculously, puts his phone down and finds a lighter. "Here man," he says and takes a step around Ray's swinging booted foot, and stands between Ray's open legs.
Brad stands straighter before he realises what he's doing. Pappy glances at him sidelong, Brad ignores him.
That's Ray's lighter Lilley's flicking open and lighting clumsily with his thumb, Brad knows it by sight, it's the same Zippo Ray's had the whole time Brad's known him.
Ray tilts his face upwards a little, smiling around his cigarette, poking his chin out to hold the end towards the flame in Lilley's hands and taking a brief drag before plucking it out of his mouth with two fingers.
"Thanks, Jay," Ray says.
Brad takes two steps forward and takes the lighter out of Lilley's hand without a word, meeting Lilley's wide eyes briefly and plastering a small close-mouthed smile on his face.
"I'll look after that," Brad says. Lilley takes a step back and raises his hands briefly, then smiles, runs a hand through his hair to cover the open palmed gesture that Brad reads submission into.
Ray turns and faces Brad with his cigarette in his mouth. He blows smoke out his nose, and stares at Brad for a minute, unsmiling. Ray's eyes are darker than normal. Dilated pupils, Brad seen it all before. He slips Ray's lighter into his pocket.
"I'm gonna get a drink," Lilley says and jogs down the steps from the kitchen towards the little bar.
Brad isn't at all disappointed Lilley knows his place. His fingers clench around the lighter in his pocket, briefly.
"Gee, Brad, anything else of mine you want to hold - SUNSHINE!" Ray abruptly bursts out, and Brad turns his head and watches as Walt waves, looking happy and golden as the nickname Ray bestowed on him.
Ray jumps down from the counter, brushes past Brad, and takes both steps at once before flinging himself at Walt in a half-hug, half-headlock.
Lilley keeps his distance.
Brad's pretty happy to see Walt, and feels the corners of his lips quirk up in a smile as he watches.
"Get off me, you crazy fucking hick!" Walt exclaims as he and Ray whoops something incoherent about Walt loving him, and they end up on the floor in a tangle of limbs.
He glances at the rest of the room and sees a smile on the face of anyone who's paying any attention to the little reunion of Brad's students. Except there's someone Brad's not seen before, young kid, looks younger than Ray. He’d maybe come in with Walt, because he’s standing watching Ray and Walt tussle with a curious look on his face.
"Hey, Pappy," Brad asks, "he one of yours?"
"Yep, sure was," Pappy says. "Trombley. Kid's the best shot I've ever worked with," Pappy shifts and frowns, then shakes his head. "'Cept Rudy, obviously."
"Obviously," Brad says. "What aren't you telling me, Pap?"
"Nothin'," Pappy says. "Kid's just real... intense."
Rudy frowns, which is curious. Rudy doesn't frown about anyone. He's about to ask Rudy what his assessment of Trombley is when Nate comes back up the steps.
"Brad, I need to borrow you for a minute. Bring Ray."
“Hallelujah, sir,” Brad says, and nods assent. Now they can sort out exactly what this “party” is about, apart from playing with Brad’s blood pressure.
The study reflects Nate better than anything else Brad’s seen in the house.
It’s nothing obvious. There’s only little hints Brad takes in, like the bare walls with their little picture hooks empty, because Nate’s clearly drawn the line on the bad art at the doorway. There’s the desk that isn’t quite messy, but isn’t quite the hotel room neat the rest of the apartment is. There’s dust behind his computer monitor, the cleaner doesn’t come in here. There’s five pens laid out across the desk’s surface visible behind Nate where he’s leaning against the edge.
Nate isn’t the kind to sit behind his desk to talk to them - no alpha dog moves needed, Nate commands respect without the noise and fire some men seem to need. Brad prefers the quiet reassured manner to posturing and games - only Nate isn’t so quietly reassured right now, and that’s the first thing that gets the hair on the back of Brad’s neck up.
Nate’s leaning comfortably, but his arms are crossed.
Brad’s situates himself in front of Nate. Ray throws himself into the chair at Brad’s right, pushing up someone’s ugly fucking Elvis sunglasses on his head.
Probably Lilley’s, Brad observes, indifferently.
Deliberately indifferently.
Walt grins and finger-waves hello. The new kid, Trombley, is leaning against the wall to one side. He’s is picking his teeth with a sharp-looking flick-knife. Brad is having trouble pinning a character assessment down beyond 'a little unbalanced'. Their interaction has been limited, however: they’d exchanged a nod as Nate had informed him he is being asked to help Trombley to acquire more field experience.
The kid is too quiet. In most people Brad would say that could just be a reaction to being in a room of his betters, but he looks relaxed. Brad watches him inspect his fingernail before flicking the knife shut, and thinks of how a cat will only groom itself if it feels at ease.
“Now Godfather is extremely busy, so he’s given me the privilege of asking for your assistance in this. This, gentlemen, is big,” Nate hesitates.
It’s not a deliberate pause, Brad doesn’t think. He’s thinking.
“Hey Nate, you got wireless in this building?” Ray asks, rocking on the chair he’s leaning back so it sits on two legs glancing idly at the flashing lights of Nate’s modem.
“Shut up, Ray,” Brad says.
Ray gives him the finger and a smile. Brad gives him nothing and turns his eyes back to Nate. He’s not particularly pleased with Ray.
“Godfather needs you to retrieve some goods for him.”
“What the fuck?” Ray asks, dropping his chair back down to all four legs.
Which is an excellent question.
“Sir?” Brad says.
“Godfather needs you to take a shipment of cigarettes from a warehouse where they’re being kept on pier nineteen. Godfather,” Nate pauses and corrects himself, meeting Brad’s eyes for a beat longer than anyone else’s, “I’m not asking you all to just be truck drivers and delivery boys here. I assume you are all aware that most of the docks are owned by The General.”
Godfather wants them to steal cigarettes from The General.
“Sir,” Brad starts, but is almost glad when Nate holds up his hand. He’s not entirely sure where to start unfucking the laundry list of shit that he wants to say is wrong with this.
First, first is probably that they’re assassins, not fucking smash-and-grabbers you can pick up on any street corner and pay in crack.
Second, second is The General. His business runs parallel to Godfather’s, his business is as big. This isn’t taking cigarettes from a twelve-year-old, this is a slap in the face.
“Who's the General?" Trombley asks calmly, confusion evident on his face.
Ray barks out a loud laugh and Brad watches Walt cover his mouth with a hand. Brad can’t help a little smile lighting upon his lips too, at the sheer scale of ignorance.
"The General is Ben Patton, Trombley,” Nate says, the only one of them not laughing. “He owns the docks and a business almost equal to Godfather’s, along with having a serious hand the gun trade. He’s been wanted for twenty years.” A little of the cop in Nate shows, every now and then.
“Oh,” Trombley says, “cool.”
Ray catches Brad’s eye and rolls his eyes hugely. Brad agrees silently.
"Have a guess why he's called the General, Trombley," Ray says, sarcasm thicker than melted cheese. He just can’t keep his mouth shut. Ray pulls his ugly borrowed sunglasses down and looks at Trombley over them.
It's ten o'clock at night and Ray is wearing sunglasses. Sun being a fairly important part of that word. These particular glasses appear to be some mutant love child of seventies Elvis and Rudy's gay ass J-Lo glasses.
Brad takes a moment to dismiss his more paranoid thoughts about Ray not wanting Brad to get a good look at the state of his pupils. As if Brad hasn't had enough practice reading Ray to know what and how much from the lines of perspiration that turns his hair shiny where it's buzzed short at the nape of his neck, or the timbre of his babble, or the twitches of his trigger fingers, or the tap of his toes.
“While Trombley’s ignorance is amusing, Ray, let’s get back to the point. Nate? Not to be too blunt, sir, but this makes about as much sense as a Bangkok massage without a happy ending,” Brad says. “If Godfather wanted The General dead, I can see him asking us.”
Ray says fuck yeah.
“But this seems, at best, a waste of my time and skillset and at worst,” Brad stops before he finishes. He’s unsure how Nate would take what he’d wanted to say first off: at worst, like Godfather was losing it. “We’re hard-ass killers, Nate, not thieves,” he finishes.
“Thanks, Bones,” Rays says. Brad has less than a clue what he’s talking about and stares at him until he explains. “Star Trek, Brad? You have lived a sad, pop-culturally void life my friend. Not that I don’t agree. This is some bullshit.”
"There are a number of reasons that Godfather wants you for the job. This isn’t an ordinary smash and grab, this is a warehouse that’s guarded by solid guys. This will really hit the General where it hurts, cigarettes are his easy business, they're his spending money. Without them, things are tight for him," Nate says. “And Godfather wants the goods, but Godfather also very much wants things to be tight for Patton right now.”
Brad could write a novel with what he’s not being told, but sometimes in this business you don’t know what the higher-ups believe you don’t need to know.
“Some craving Godfather’s got,” Ray says.
“Someone should tell him you can actually buy a pack at like any seven-eleven any time you want,” Walt says, grinning at Ray.
“Man, a fucking warehouse? Let’s say there’s even just one pissy truckload, which it had better not be, that’s like twenty smokes a pack, ten packs a carton, like a shitload of cartons fit in a truck, it’s like forty or fifty thousand, so say it’s somewhere in the middle of that that’s like eleven fucking million smokes. Godfather’s got him a serious fucking craving.” Ray does the math without pausing to draw breath, and Brad momentarily can’t help shooting him a smile.
Ray smiles back. Brad’s never gotten over how pleased he is every time Ray proves himself smarter than anyone in the room.
“Jesus, I can’t wait for when I don’t have to just bum a smoke anymore. I will be one happy motherfucker when the day comes I feel like a cigarette and instead of walking to the corner store I hire three badass assassins… and Trombley… to pick up my nicotine fix.”
“Thank you, Ray,” Nate says dryly. “Now gentlemen, you are my first choice team for this. You don’t have to say yes now, but I need answers by tomorrow evening at the latest. The job goes down within the next week and it will require prep,” Nate says, and stands and waits patiently.
Trombley agrees quickly.
“I’m in,” he says and the first smile Brad’s seen on his face quirks the corner of his lips. “I want my shot at killing someone up closer than a thousand meters.”
Ray raises his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses, and Brad doesn’t engage.
“I’m in,” Walt says. “I need the work.”
Brad frowns. He wasn’t aware Walt had any money issues - though when he thinks about it, Walt hadn’t worked any job Brad can think of for a long time.
Brad stands up from his chair. Ray looks up at him from behind his glasses and shrugs.
“We’re in.”
“Thank you,” Nate says, “Brad, I will speak to you tomorrow with details. Get back out there and have fun.”
They file out of the room and Brad watches Ray duck immediately towards the hallway that leads to the bathroom, again. He’s tempted to follow - Ray can handle himself, but he’s ingested enough for one night. It isn’t Brad’s problem.
More accurately, it shouldn’t be Brad’s problem.
“Brad,” Nate says and Brad pauses and turns around in the doorway. “I’m… glad you’re here. We all know you could be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a cold beer."
Brad reminds himself, through the brief flush of paranoia that rushes through him, that Nate doesn’t know of Brad’s little stretch of beach. But why Nate is bringing this up now, Brad isn’t sure.
He’s made enough to retire on comfortably, he’s trained more people than most, he doesn’t need to be here - and Nate knows it. Except Brad does need his job. He lives his job in a way some other’s don’t. Some are in it for the payday. Brad is in it because it’s in Brad. It feels a little like Nate has something else he wants to say.
“Nate. This is bullshit,” Brad tries, giving Nate an opening for anything he’s not letting go.
Nate says nothing for a beat and Brad searches him for any clue, any sign he knows more than he’s telling. There’s nothing beyond his hesitation, he’s still poker-faced and calm.
“I’m just glad to have you on board, Brad. I need men I can trust,” Nate says. “Thank you.”
“I’m in the bag sir,” Brad says. “No need to flatter me.” He’s half-joking, but he’s also faintly uncomfortable with Nate’s sincerity and playing it off as a joke is the most efficient way he knows to avoid chick flick moments.
Nate smiles, nods.
It’s true, though, that Brad may not have agreed so easily for someone else. Godfather himself he might have had to think about it from, but he respects Nate’s intelligence and trusts him not to throw Brad to the wolves (if only out of self-preservation, Nate isn’t stupid enough not to be at least wary of him).
Brad feels a healthy amount of doubt, but he can appease doubt with preparation. A lot of preparation. Like eyes on the warehouse starting tomorrow.
Ray’s coming too, despite the immanent hangover, and the thought of dragging him awake at o’dark hundred appeals to the sadist in Brad.
Whatever this is, it’s dangerous, and Brad is… curious.
There’s a headache inducing beat ruminating from somewhere within Nate’s truly impressive sound system. Brad’s torn between general appreciation for the serious sound quality, and irritation that the actual stereo is apparently hidden so as to make yet more room for the blank spaces and ugly art.
It’s also irritating that it’s hidden since that means he can’t destroy it so that he never again has to hear the nauseating white boy rap that’s spewing out of the thing. Clearly Q-Tip and Christeson have taken over DJ duties. At least it’s not country.
He also can’t go over and pry Ray off of Lilley, despite that display being in plain view since Ray had come bouncing out of the bathroom a few minutes ago.
He’s disturbed to find he doesn’t notice Poke until he’s practically standing next to him.
“Hey, Iceman. You okay? You look about ready to cut a bitch. What the fuck’d Fick want, some kamikaze bullshit? I know you like that pretty motherfucker, but you don’t own him no favours,” Poke says bluntly. Poke’s wordy sometimes, but he’s wise, too.
Brad looks away from Ray.
Lilley’s hand is on his chest, pushing him gently away and holding up his camera-phone with his other hand as Ray makes some obscene commentary, Brad can faintly make out the words come-stained crack-whore, and he sticks out his tongue, leaning too close to the lens. Lilley shoves him a few more times, laughing, and Brad’s fingers clench lightly on the beer every time.
Poke follows his eyes, then looks back at him half-smiling.
“Music’s too loud,” Brad says.
“Amen to that, I can’t stand this shit,” Poke says, and doesn’t look back towards Ray. He might have noticed Brad’s gaze, he might not have. Poke’s known him long enough to keep his mouth shut.
He punches Brad lightly in the arm and Brad sees he’s holding out a beer to him, condensation running down the neck of it.
“Looked like you needed one.”
“Thank you,” Brad says. Poke settles beside him against the wall. He wouldn’t vent to just anyone, but he’s known Poke longer than he’s known almost anyone in the business. “Nate wants us to do a smash-and-grab.”
“The fuck doesn’t he just rope in some cheap-ass expendables?” Poke says, outraged. Brad still feels faintly the same way.
“It’s a cigarette shipment. Big,” Brad says, Poke looks at him with a quirked eyebrow. “General Patton’s,” Brad says. Unease and anticipation kick up a fuss anew as he talks about it.
Poke whistles quietly, and takes a sip of his drink. Brad does the same and lets him digest that.
“I know you’re fond of Nate, man, but don’t let it slip your mind he used to be one of the bad guys,” Poke says.
As if Brad could, but he sees Poke’s point.
“Thought we were the bad guys,” Brad says.
Poke smirks and they click their beers together. Brad manages a genuine smile back.
“That explains why you were lookin’ like you wanted to cut a bitch,” Poke says. “That’s some weird shit right there. Glad Fick asked you first, man. Can’t say I’d have been interested in taking him up on that.”
Brad nods. Fair enough.
Across the room, Ray’s loud enough Brad can hear everything he’s saying. Lilley’s laughing, along with Q-Tip and Christeson.
“… And Trombley’s a fuckin’ Harold? Jesus, homes, I can see why the fuck no one calls him that, motherfucker is creepy enough without the weird ass nineteenth century man-child name. That kid is stone cold psycho, mark my damn words.”
Ray may or may not be aware that at the volume he’s speaking, at this point it could be deliberate, as Trombley, who isn’t very far away across the room, can certainly hear him. He glances in Ray’s direction, frowns faintly.
Brad is inclined to agree with Ray’s rapid-fire ranting this time. There are all types in their business, until you really peel back all the extraneous details like Rudy’s karmic journey, Ray’s high octane bullshit and ridiculous tattoos, Walt’s innocent smile, eventually you get down to it: you either kill people because you’re a little unbalanced or you kill people because you’re a lot unbalanced.
Brad’s comfortable not thinking about where on the scale he sits, so he doesn’t. He’d place Ray somewhere in the middle, if only because he swings pendulously between the two sides often and easily.
Trombley, with his dead eyed smile and inoffensive personality, Brad thinks would make a fine marker for the end of the scale marked psychopath.
This doesn’t particularly bother Brad, though clearly Ray has already taken a dislike to the kid. It’ll be interesting to work with him.
Ray still letting Lilley place hands all over him and giving back as good as he gets. Brad tells himself, this is just Ray, high. It’s not just Lilley, Brad has observed that a high Ray is a Ray who’s uncomfortably hands-on with women, men and potted plants.
Lilley’s a problem, though, because Ray’s got a loud mouth and Lilley’s got a video camera with a length of memory and a set of potential consequences Brad isn’t sure Lilley fully comprehends.
Ray could get himself in trouble because of Lilley’s persistent stupidity. He could get Brad in trouble.
At some point, Poke’s left him as a lost cause for conversation and Brad can’t say he cares too much.
Ray’s got a hand around Lilley’s wrist, the arm holding the little camera phone, and he’s tugging it over his shoulder and tilting his head upwards (leaning up on his toes a little) and kissing Lilley on the mouth. Lilley has the balls to turn his camera in his hand around so it faces them over Ray’s shoulder.
Ray says something close to Lilley’s mouth.
Brad is moving before he’s really made the decision to, which is a sensation usually reserved for combat. It’s not unsettling now, but he has the faintest feeling that it may be later.
His fingers curl around Ray’s bare arm, harder than he probably needs to. Ray doesn’t flinch so much as nearly twist his own arm out of the socket he spins around so fast.
“Jesus fuck, Brad,” Ray says, and jerks his arm a little.
Brad’s fingers tighten on instinct and Ray stops moving, then smiles.
Brad looks away from his face, but the second he’s looking at his fingers digging into the skin of Ray’s upper arm, distorting his radio wave tattoo with the shadowed dip his thumb’s fitted into he realises this is a mistake. He feels faintly sick, except that isn’t what he’s feeling at all.
Part 2.