Work Text:
It’s the kind of humid that sinks into your chest and makes moving a chore. As soon as he gets home, Nate strips off his suit, glaring at Brad where he languishes in nothing but a faded pair of shorts. At first, Brad didn’t mind the heat, sitting out in the backyard on a rickety deckchair so he could regain a bit of the tan he lost in England. But now his skin feels stretched tight over his bones, rough and dry, flaking on his nose and the tops of his shoulders.
“D’you want the rest of the takeout?” Nate calls from the kitchen. When Brad cranes his head over the back of the couch, he can see Nate standing in the doorway, sleeves rolled up and tie loose around his neck. He’s poking at a carton of leftover pad thai, separating the chicken so he can save it for last.
“Nah, I’ve had something to eat.” Brad turns up the volume on the TV. Someone’s confessing to murdering her best friend’s husband. Or fucking her best friend’s husband, whatever. She’s crying, but her mascara doesn’t run.
Nate goes to bed early, muttering goodnight when he passes Brad on the couch. Brad makes an affirmative noise, but Nate’s already climbing the stairs. Nate’s feet make no sound on the carpet, not even on the second-to-last stair, which creaks noisily if you step right in the middle. Goddamn Recon Marines.
Brad waits half an hour before turning off the television, interrupting some nameless Hollywood-approved farce where the male and female leads snark at each other in a PG-acceptable but nonetheless sexually suggestive manner. He wanders the house, turning off all the lights Nate leaves blazing. For such a liberal-minded asshole, Nate doesn’t seem to be absorbing the advice of end-of-the-world global warming alarmists. Brad’s glad for the little things.
When he reaches the bedroom, the only light comes from the moon. It clings to the light sheen of sweat on Nate’s skin, shining dully in the dips of his collarbone, the lines of his abs. He’s tossed and turned and finally fallen asleep spread-eagled on his back, blankets pushed down to the foot of the bed. He’s wearing low-slung striped boxer shorts; one inch lower and they wouldn’t cover much at all. Even though he’s living the civilian life now, Nate’s still fucking built. He’s got those muscles that sharply define his hips, tapering down to the pubic bone. Brad’s heard his teenage niece call them “sex muscles”, which just makes him want to lock her in the basement with tape over her mouth for the next ten, twenty, maybe eighty years.
The inguinal ligament: a band of tissue that runs from the hip to the pubic bone, preventing the protrusion of the intestine into the muscles of the groin. If injured, it hinders a full range of motion in the hip and reduces combat effectiveness.
None of this explains why Bradley Colbert would like to get down on his knees and bite at Nathaniel Fick’s hipbone, slide his tongue down the groove and suck his cock until there’s spit running down his chin, until his jaw aches and he can’t taste anything but the bitter, sour tang of Nate’s come.
He would only say it if threatened with torture by Vietnamese secret intelligence, and never within the thousand-mile wide AO that is Ray Person’s hearing distance, but Brad finds Nate horrifyingly, brain fryingly attractive.
***
In the morning, Nate drags his feet into the kitchen, pants on but shirt unbuttoned. His hair sticks up in spikes where he’s dried it with a towel.
“Are you cooking?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.
“Yeah I’m cooking,” Brad’s mouth says, but lifts an eyebrow to say, go on, say something about it, I dare you.
Nate holds his hands up in surrender. “Alright.”
He sits at the ugly-ass vinyl-covered kitsch nightmare that passes as a table. It features a print of a cow jumping over the moon. Brad picked it up at a garage sale their third week living together, and smirked when Nate very carefully didn’t mention how it clashed with the mahogany decor of the kitchen. It’s been four months, since the last time Brad came back from England, and Nate still hasn’t said anything; now it’s a battle of wills to see who will cave first and get rid of it.
He sets a plate in front of Nate. It’s an omelet with bacon, tomato and mushroom – heavy on the bacon – with at least three types of cheese.
“Do you wish me slow death by heart attack?” Nate says, looking up.
“You’re too fucking skinny,” Brad replies. “And I’m sick of the way your over-priced California health-retreat celery sticks reflect on me. It’s just not natural for a man to willingly eat such things.”
***
Human beings are animals. Don’t believe it? Drop them in a war zone and you’ll see.
When you’re being shot at, your first instinct is to freeze. Every muscles locks. Your eyes widen; an evolutionary response to stimuli, your body tries to process more information in order to make sense of the situation. Artillery fades to the background – your heartbeat is all you hear, it’s like mortar dropping right next to your ear. Epinephrine is released from your adrenal glands and suddenly you’re swimming in your MOPP suit, sweating under your Kevlar. It drips from the end of your nose, down the back of your neck.
They spend a million dollars in training to overcome your instincts.
They used to say humans mated for life. But look at the divorce rates.
***
“I love you, I love you,” Nate says, thighs shaking like a newborn colt, but he gathers his legs under him and lifts himself off Brad’s cock until Brad almost slips out, almost. He slides back down slow, sighing into it, until he’s fully seated in Brad’s lap, until there’s no more of Brad he can fit inside.
Brad’s mouth smears across Nate’s collarbone, hands fisting around Nate’s hips, lifting him off and rocking back into him, again, again, again.
“God,” Brad chokes, “God.”
***
The heat doesn’t break. Without so much as a breeze, it becomes unbearable, rising off the pavement in shimmering trails.
Brad’s standing at the kitchen window, washing dishes. He can see straight into their neighbor’s backyard; a woman in an old t-shirt and boardshorts is trying to water her garden while two young children run around her, tugging on her clothes so she’ll spray them with the hose. All three of them are laughing, the children screaming when the water hits them with full force. The grass squelches under them, Brad can hear the wet splat of little feet sinking into mud.
“Hey, be careful now, I might get used –”
Brad startles. The glass tumbles from his hands, bouncing from the lip of the sink, off the tips of his fingers, and shatters against the tile.
“Shit, I –” Nate says. He’s drawn his fingers back from Brad’s shoulder, and they hover hesitantly in the dead air between them.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Brad says.
***
Their first kiss:
Brad’s duffle is next to the door, although it’s another two days before he’s supposed to ship out.
“Why can’t you just stay still?” Nate asks, frustrated. The worry lines around his mouth have become more prominent.
“There’s nothing new for me here,” Brad says.
Nate takes the one giant step he needs to stand right in front of Brad and looks him right in the eye. Raising himself slightly on his toes, he brushes his mouth across Brad’s. Just once.
“There’s that,” Nate says softly.
***
Brad doesn’t want to call Nate his boyfriend. That’s Elton John, sparkling vampires, hipster jeans and hair gel levels of gay. But calling him his partner seems worse, like he’s got something to hide. Which Brad supposes he does, even if the British don’t have DADT. He’s still an American.
Brad would rather shoot himself in the face than call Nate his lover.
It’s best not to call him anything at all.
***
When Nate gets home, he shuts the front door so softly it sounds like a gunshot; it echoes around the empty room, incongruous in the silence. When he walks into the living room, he blinks when he sees Brad on the couch, reading by the light of a single lamp. The rest of the house is dark.
“Hey, I’m so sorry I’m late, I got caught up –”
“I don’t care, you don’t have to explain.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“I don’t worry about you, Nate.”
Nate’s eyes flash. Brad can see the muscles bunching in his shoulders, tensing for a fight. “No, because then you might have to admit you care.”
“I don’t need this,” Brad mutters, thumping his book down on the coffee table.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Nate continues. “We go days without talking to each other, with no more than a ‘pass me the paper’ or ‘don’t answer the phone, it’s Ray’.”
“Well, if you want to hear how he’s bought a Pekinese and is teaching it to fight, then –”
“That’s not the point, Brad! You’re severely damaged, you know that? Can’t you just say how you feel?”
“Christ, if I wanted this I would never have stopped sleeping with women.” Even as he’s saying it, Brad wishes he could take it back. He wishes he could rewind the last couple of months; he wishes he could start over.
Nate’s mouth snaps shut like it’s a wired trap. “You need to leave,” he says, voice dangerously level.
Brad leaves without even grabbing his jacket. It’s approximately five hundred degrees, even though the sun set an hour ago; he won’t need it.
He shuts the door just as quietly on his way out.
***
Nate is sleeping when Brad gets back home. He slides under the sheet as smoothly and as soundlessly as possible.
During a deep sleep, neurons shut down and repair any damage done during the day. It strengthens the immune system, regenerates tissue, relieves stress. Is essential to productivity. Critically underestimated in times of war.
Nate’s face is slack, mouth slightly open. His bottom lip is rounded, full. The little lines that have started to form around his eyes have relaxed; he looks ten years younger, which is something he does not need.
“I’m fucking this up, aren’t I,” Brad asks. It’s no more than a whisper, but it seems like a supreme effort to push it up his throat and past his lips.
Nate’s eyes open. For a few interminable seconds they stare at each other in the dark, unblinking. Then Nate shifts onto his side so he can press his lips against the curve of Brad’s shoulder; they fall asleep like that, Nate’s head pillowed on Brad’s arm, tucked into his side so they’re pressed together head to thigh.
***
There’s a date circled several times in a thick black marker on the calendar. As it approaches, the temperature spirals ever higher.
“I thought a MOPP suit was a secret torture device by the USMC to keep Marines in a constant state of hyper-aware discomfort,” Nate moans. “Clearly, they need to take lessons from whoever manufactures polyblend suits.” His jacket is abandoned on the couch with no heed for potential wrinkling. His tie is God knows where, and he’s in the process of pushing his sleeves up his arms.
“I’m just gonna –” he says, sinking down to the floor and laying crucifixion-style on the cool kitchen tiles. He sighs, eyes closed in bliss.
“Comfortable?”
Nate cracks open one eye, glancing over at Brad leaning against the sink, arms crossed. “No. Not while hell has overrun Earth.”
Nate closes his eyes again. He opens them a few seconds later when he hears the clink next to his head. Brad steps away, watching the rapture that spreads across Nate’s face when he sees Brad’s left a sweating bottle of beer. It can’t have been out of the fridge for more than a few seconds, but already condensation is starting to form on the glass.
“You’re a god among men,” Nate breathes.
“So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.” Brad means to have a lewd smile, but he’s sure it turns out fond as he watches Nate struggle upright to take a sip, before setting it on the floor and flopping inelegantly back down.
Brad doesn’t really cook, beyond frying steak and whipping up a simple (but tasty!) potato salad. He can also nuke the shit out of ramen noodles, but he doesn’t feel like doing either tonight. One look at Nate tells him he’s not going to shift anytime soon to feed Brad.
“I’m thinking pizza. With everything,” he says.
“Even anchovies?” Nate asks, mouth twisting downward in displeasure, because he was dropped on his head as a baby and can’t appreciate the delicious salty goodness.
Brad heaves a sigh.
“And no olives. And if you try to sneak jalapenos on there again, you’re sleeping on the couch.”
“Fine. Only if we can get extra cheese.” Because compromise is the foundation of every good relationship. It must be true; Brad saw it on TV. And Brad’s really trying.
Even though Nate’s on the ground with his eyes still closed, Brad just knows they’re rolling behind their lids. “Fine. But you’re going to have to call my mother and tell her when I die because of clogged arteries.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Once Brad orders, silence descends. Brad nudges Nate with his toe, but Nate just kicks back; it’s a lazy swipe, missing Brad by a mile. The silence is only broken when Brad snorts because Nate couldn’t be bothered to sit upright to take a sip of his beer, and it dribbles all over his face.
When the bell rings thirty minutes later, Brad presses a couple of bills into the pizza boy’s sweaty fist. He looks harried; it’s a Friday night, and there are probably a dozen homes in the area who thought it was too hot to bother cooking as well.
Back in the kitchen, Nate is still on the floor, but he’s propped his back against a cupboard. Wordlessly, he gestures to Brad to get him another beer from the fridge, his empty making gentle chiming sounds as it rolls around next to him. Brad gets himself a beer as well, and slides down next to Nate, bumping their shoulders. Nate snatches the pizza box off him, giving Brad an innocent grin as he tears off the first slice; the extra cheese stretches too far and Nate has to use his fingers to separate it before all the topping slides off. Nate makes obscene little happy sounds as he chews on the strings hanging over the side of his slice.
“What?” he says to Brad’s look.
“I don’t know why you protest my culinary choices. You love it.”
“I don’t want you to get complacent.” Brad opens his mouth, but Nate beats him to it. “You are a hardened warrior, I know; you don’t get complacent, yadda yadda moto bullshit.”
Brad snatches the box back. “Are you mocking my skills as a ninja?”
Nate takes a huge bite of his pizza and grins at Brad with grease and bits of ground beef over his lips. Brad grins back, helpless.
For a while, there’s nothing but the thick, juicy sounds of them chewing with too much food in their mouths. Beyond Nate’s exclamation of, “These mushrooms, Brad, these mushrooms oh my god,” they don’t talk until there’s nothing but a circle of grease left in the box.
When Nate wipes his hands on his suit pants, careless, Brad reaches over to do the same. Nate lets him, which is a surprise.
“You know, I have some vacation time coming to me,” Nate says, in that forcibly casual tone he has. Brad should be offended Nate thinks he can’t recognize it. “And you’re heading back to England in a week, so.”
Brad waits.
“So I was thinking we could both use the time to, you know, get away. Even though it won’t be much of a vacation for you, there’s still weekends and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Brad says. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
***
When the men ask where Brad goes when he takes advantage of every weekend pass, he shrugs and says a friend came back with him to England. They all laugh and clap him on the back, call him a sly dog, and generally use vulgar British sexual euphemisms that would make Ray Person blush once he figured out what they meant.
“I bet it’s a girl a few years older than him,” says Bryce, one of the sergeants of a sister platoon. “With legs up to here – you’re a legs man, Brad, I can tell.”
“Blonde,” comes a voice from the back.
“And a tan,” says another.
“A tan,” Bryce says, looking off into the distance. “What a mystical, wonderful thing.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Brad says, but when they press him for details he just shakes his head. “A gentleman never kisses and tells. You British should be familiar with this sort of thing,” and then they scoff at him, calling him an uneducated American, and it’s forgotten.
Truth is, Brad doesn’t feel like sharing how Nate’s thigh trembles under his palm when he hitches Nate’s legs higher around his waist, the clench of the muscle when Nate meets Brad thrust for thrust. Or the way Nate’s hair does look blonde until the sun hits it, turning it a burnished red-gold. And how Nate’s skin is milky white, pinkish in the rare places he lets it be touched by the sun. He grins when he remembers Nate rubbing sunscreen over his face, turning him ghost-white, thick gobs of it sticking to his hairline.
Bryce raises an eyebrow at him when he sees Brad’s expression. “Boy,” he says, even though he can’t be more than three years older, “you got it bad.”
Brad shrugs.
***
One day over breakfast, after Nate has finished professing his surprise that the English don’t actually force-feed you tea and crumpets every morning, Brad says, “I’m really trying, you know, I just don’t know how to…”
And Nate says, “Yeah, I know.”
When Brad leaves for the base, Nate kisses him full on the mouth in the middle of the hotel hallway.
“See you at home,” he says, leaning in to give Brad another peck.
“Yeah,” Brad says, and fists Nate’s collar, drawing him up to kiss him again, just because he can.
***
When Brad gets back to California, summer has passed and the stiff cold of winter is thawing, ready for fall. When Brad goes out to fetch the paper, stupidly in bare feet, the blades of grass feel like frozen pins under his soles.
When he hears a sound behind him, he turns in time to see his neighbor’s eyes snap up to his face. It was probably his tattoo; Brad gets that a lot.
“Hi Brad,” she says, crossing her yard to pick up her own paper, crouching awkwardly to keep her balance while holding onto a small red-eyed toddler. He doesn’t remember her name, and stands there awkwardly for a second before she saves him. “I’m Mary,” she says. “And this is Susan.” She hitches the little girl higher on her hip, but she just sniffles and hides her face in her mother’s shirt. One eye watches Brad warily.
“I remember,” Brad says, and Mary grins at him, sharp-eyed.
“Yeah, well, we’re having a barbeque tonight and we’ve got way too much food for just the four of us. Would you like to come over for dinner? You can bring, um.” She trails off.
“Nate. My boyfriend,” Brad says, even though it’s obvious and probably doesn’t need to be said at all because he’s sure Mary has eyes.
Mary gives him the same smile, too knowing by half. He likes her, even with her strange Stepford family and swept driveway.
“Alright. See you at six. Can I trust you with a salad?”
“Trust me. I can whip up a potato salad that will change your life,” Brad assures her, and heads inside to tell Nate he’s just secured their first gay double date with the neighbors. If they’re expected to return the favor, they have to get rid of that godforsaken excuse for a dining table.