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It's part of Iceman legend that when Brad showed up at military school he was assigned the most PT of any student in his year. Grunts pass this fact around as if Brad at fifteen was already some sort of superhuman creature capable of more miles run, more pounds benched, more pull-ups pulled, and more sit-ups sat than any mere mortal.
Brad has always allowed the story to circulate. Better than letting on that he was very possibly the scrawniest adolescent to ever trip over his own elbows and ankles. Puberty sucks in general, but when you head into the summer after eighth grade topping out at five foot four and show up in September at six foot even with more on the way… well, no one claimed high schoolers were a kind bunch.
Ruth Colbert’s thoughtful, sensitive son seemed to change overnight, clamming up and shutting down. But then, there are only so many ways to respond when the whole school decides to call you Beanpole Brad and keep a public tally of who can trip you most often in the hallways. Brad mainly opted for the impassive frozen shell that led, a few years later, to his lasting moniker.
He also developed his nascent tactical talents. When Number One Hallway Tripper Billy Hershey was discovered naked and crying, hoisted to the top of the school flag pole, Brad was, in very short order, on the other side of an expulsion. It was only after his shiny new matriculation at Army and Navy Academy that he filled out to match his height with a rigid self-discipline that kept the other kids in awe and terror, afraid to get too close and risk the Iceman's displeasure.
Nate privately views piecing together this story as his finest reconnaissance work. He's asked for parts of it from Ruth and gleaned scraps of it from those of Brad's ANA classmates he’s run across in the service. He’s even wheedled some of it from Billy Hershey during one memorable bar outing while visiting Brad’s family for Thanksgiving. He’s filed it all away in the section of his brain labeled “Colbert Comma Brad: Care and Feeding Of”, part of the complex interlocking mechanisms that make Brad tick.
Tonight, Brad’s home with no deployment on the horizon. Feeding was accomplished with homemade enchiladas and Negra Modelo, and the Care portion of the evening is upon them. Last week, one of these quiet evenings progressed from watching TV in the living room to Brad laying Nate out on their bed, touching him everywhere and telling him all kinds of warm, quiet things he’s dead certain Brad would eviscerate himself with an E-tool rather than admit in public. Gentle and open is still rare terrain for them, and Brad’s tender direct assault hit Nate where he lives. He now has an indelible memory of six and a half glorious feet of Bradley Colbert pinpoint-focused on the mission of pressing Nate down, locking their eyes, and roughly whispering, "My whole life, I never imagined I’d get anyone a fraction as magical as you. Not a fucking fraction."
There was something magical that Brad created between them that night. Some ineffable, aching thing that turned Nate on from a new place inside that he hadn’t known existed, that had him wrung out and shaking and so blissed that afterwards he was incapable of anything other than passing out, let alone giving Brad the same thorough going-over.
He’s been mentally training for a return salvo ever since. Now, stripped to skin on skin in the bed they share so galvanically, it’s D-Day.
He straddles Brad’s lap and pushes him onto his back on the navy sheets, naked and golden and so very not made of ice. Brad smirks hungrily and pulls at Nate to follow him down, but Nate holds back. Not tonight. Not yet.
“Come the fuck here.” Brad’s impatience is both flattering and entirely unsurprising.
“Nope. You’re just going to have to lie back and take it for a while.” Nate pets at Brad’s chest, scratches the sparse blond hair there. “Think you can lie back and take it for me?”
Brad grins wickedly. “I can take anything you can dish out, sir,” he replies, and goddammit if Nate’s stupid predictable dick doesn’t twitch at the way Brad hits that last word. They play that way sometimes, and though it’s not his plan for tonight, Brad doesn’t know that yet. Well, there’s more than one tactician in this bed; Nate will gladly use any and all diversionary maneuvers at his disposal to get Brad where he wants him.
“Hands on the headboard and keep ‘em there, Gunnery Sergeant,” he orders. He’s not sure what’s hotter, the shiver that visibly runs through Brad at his Command voice or the long, smooth contours of Brad’s arms as they reach to grip the headboard behind him.
Nate runs his hands up and back down those stretched arms, pressing in just enough to feel the resistance of solid muscle under sleek skin. He runs his cheek in the same pattern, ending with his face buried in the downy hair at Brad’s armpit. He inhales, catalogues. Hint of deodorant. Hint of sweat. Mostly Brad: a smell he’d like to bottle and keep for all the nights when one of this bed’s tacticians is overseas getting his very fine ass shot at.
Brad snorts, ticklish and mocking at once. “You’re stranger and kinkier than even I thought if the reek of my masculine fug entices you.”
“Everything about you entices me,” Nate responds in earnest.
If he weren’t on such familiar territory, he’d never recognize the answering uncertainty in Brad’s eyebrow tic, but he is and he does. In fact, he takes substantial pride in being one of the few who can keep the Iceman guessing. He moves on, smoothing his hands in shallow arcs across Brad’s pectorals.
“This is one of my favorite places on your body, you know,” he says conversationally.
“Well good for you.”
“It is good for me.” Nate keeps his hands sweeping over Brad’s chest and his voice even and sincere. “I like resting my head here. I like feeling your voice through your skin. I like that it makes me feel like part of you.”
“Nate, what the particular fuck are you doing?”
“All anyone ever says is, If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Well, I have nice things to say. So I’m saying them.” Even. Sincere.
This time the uncertainty comes through loud and clear when Brad says, “The scales are tipping firmly toward the side of pretty fucking gay here.”
Nate lifts both brows and pointedly looks down at their naked bodies pressed together, dicks and all.
Brad concedes with a silent nod, but he doesn’t look amused.
Nate’s not giving up yet. He’s confident in the subtle, steely tenacity that got him into Dartmouth and the Corps and Brad's bed and Brad's life and Brad's seemingly impenetrable heart. May it serve to break down one more of Brad’s self-imposed barriers tonight.
He slides down the bed to knead his fingers into Brad’s strong thighs. “Sometimes I get so caught up watching your legs when we’re out for a run that it feels like my whole world is tan skin and long muscle and blond hair.”
Brad interrupts with a frustrated growl. “You know you don’t have to woo me here. I’m a sure thing.” It’s not that Nate thought Brad would give in to the soft treatment easily, but he does have an excellent track record of following Nate’s lead, and his level of skittishness here is significantly higher than Nate had envisioned when he played this out in his head.
Proceed with caution, Fick, he tells himself.
“I know you are,” he says mildly, trying to stay his course. “A certainty. A fixture. An assurance, if you will. My very own Jewish Viking badass.”
Brad rolls his eyes. “So enough with the Hallmark shit. Stop being a My Little Disney Sparkle Princess on Ice and man the fuck up and fuck me.”
“Just let me be nice to you, for chrissake.”
“Fucking me is being nice to me!”
“Jesus, Brad. You know you don’t have to be Marine hard all the damn time.”
“Unless I’m very much mistaken, this would be a perfectly opportune time to be a hard Marine.”
The words are very Brad, but his soft dick gives the lie to his mouth, and he’s white-knuckling it on the headboard. In fact, his whole body is rigid except for his cock. Shit. This was very much not the plan.
Nate frowns and sits up, says, “Look, I know how alking-tay about your eelings-fay can be anathema to you, but you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on here.”
Brad looks up at him warily. Nate can practically see the cold shield forming. “No,” he says. It’s not his Command voice. It’s not higher volume. But he intends to be obeyed all the same. “No, you do not get to clam up about this. Get your hands off the headboard and sit up and tell me what’s going on in that overcomplicated head of yours.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Brad barks with a sarcastic sneer and obeys like a good little soldier, which only frustrates Nate more. The Care and Feeding SOP isn’t helping much here.
He moves up to kneel across Brad’s lap and look him directly in the eye, keeping his voice calm. “It’s not an order from your platoon commander, you infuriating bastard. It’s an order from the man who wanted to take his time tonight showing you how much he fucking loves you. Is that such a huge ask?”
If he wasn’t invested in his balls staying attached to his body, he’d tell Brad that he looks like a sullen teenager, chin tipped down and eyes full of sulky challenge, forcing out a reluctant No between clenched teeth.
Brad’s so consummately competent most of the time that it’s odd to see him discomfited. Being the one who’s done it makes Nate feel like the scrapings off the sole of a boot that’s just kicked a kitten.
“Would you care to enlighten me as to why it’s OK for me to get the royal treatment the way I did last week, but apparently I can’t return the favor?” he asks, doggedly determined to put this right, now that he’s somehow gotten it so, so wrong.
Brad grimaces, but he answers. Nate dares to think it’s because he’s the one doing the asking. “Because you’re Mr. Wet Panties and Hard Dicks Trail in the Wake of My Killer Pair of Eyes and Perfectly Put-Together Body and Implausibly Beautiful Mouth.”
Nate likes to think he’s a good guy who’d never laugh at his partner in a delicate moment, but come on. “Right, because your attractiveness doesn’t rate, Mr. Favored Son of All Gods of Sun and Sea Who Has the Body of a No-Photoshop-Required Underwear Model.”
The tension in the air doesn’t abate. If anything it tightens. Brad’s in full-on stoic mode and responds with a terse Fine, which always always means exactly the opposite.
“This is some fucked up bullshit right here, Gunny,” Nate says, fierce and fond at once. He takes Brad’s face between his hands and leans close, eyes nearly crossing to stay locked with Brad’s. “You can’t expect me to believe you don’t know how beautiful your body is.”
Brad actually visibly flinches. “My body is combat effective.”
“True. And your combat effective body is very beautiful,” Nate says, soft and serious.
“Stop. Nate, please stop. I don’t want this.” Brad’s voice is low and unhappy, his body is rigidly still, and he cuts his eyes sideways, first one to look away, which is not how this alpha male has ever behaved anywhere Nate could see him.
So stop Nate does, abandoning his evening’s plan to the sharp, protective urge that wants to claw ferociously free from his chest. No one gets to hurt this man, not even Nate himself. Especially not Nate himself.
Contrite, he rests his nose along Brad’s temple and, very gently, says, “If I'd known a compliment was all it took to get the better of the Iceman's legendary castigating tongue, I'd have employed this tactic years ago.”
After a minute, Brad responds just as quietly. “And we both know how well officers’ tactical stratagems tend to play out.” His eyes are still turned away, but one corner of his mouth ticks up minutely.
A thought occurs, very belatedly, to Nate.
“Is this all tied up with your adolescent body dysmorphia shit?”
He steeps the harsh words in warmth and affection and when Brad slides surprised eyes back to meet his, he wants to kick himself for being so stupidly slow to connect the dots.
“Yes, I know you didn’t tell me about it. I figured that one out all on my own. Recon Marine”—Nate points to his own chest, then flips to point at Brad’s—“and his favorite AO. And you know what?” He holds Brad’s face again and smooths his thumbs over Brad’s sculptural cheekbones. “It doesn’t change anything. You’ve made yourself into the man you want to be. I love that man, Brad. That man is goddamn amazing, and yeah, he’s fucking beautiful. And so is the scrawny boy inside him.”
Brad searches Nate’s face. For a minute, it’s that scrawny boy in Nate’s arms, and Christ, are his eyes blue! Nate holds his face and holds his gaze and holds his own tongue while Brad works things through for himself. The boy fades away again into the man, strong and safe and knowing it.
Brad looks up at him, trust finally relaxing his tensed muscles. He’s quiet for another moment, and then, face perfectly neutral, he says, “Captain, that was pure one-hundred percent grade-A pillow-biting homosexual fudge-packery.”
Nate’s own tension releases in a laugh, a Peter Pan crow of relief. “Well, considering my mission for the evening involves taking some exceedingly familiar liberties with your dick, I'd say your assessment of the field is accurate as always, Gunnery Sergeant Colbert. Glad to have you on my team.”
“No other team I’d rather be on,” Brad says, quiet and sincere.
Nate hears it for what it is.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting up, still in Brad’s lap.
“I think I can find it in my selectively generous heart to forgive you.” The words drip dry sarcasm, but Brad’s eyes are nothing but earnest.
“Let me make it up to you.”
And just like that, Brad’s grin breaks across his face, feral and toothy and ready to play. “What did you have in mind?”
Nate makes a show of pondering.
“Hmm... let’s see.” He plucks loosely at his lower lip, mugging contemplation. “I could cook dinner for the rest of the week.”
Brad arches one eyebrow, eyes tracking Nate’s fingers. “Or?”
“Or I could put away the laundry you hate sorting.” He slides the tip of his index finger into his mouth and nibbles at it.
Brad’s eyes follow, darkening. “Or?”
“Or I could finally get around to re-grouting the tile in the shower.” He sinks his finger into his mouth and draws it out slowly, lips tight around it.
Brad growls. “Or?”
“Or I could slide down this bed and suck your big dick until you come groaning my name.”
“Naaate,” Brad groans, right on cue. Brad loves his mouth. Brad has always been undone by his mouth.
“Guess we’ll go with that one then.” Nate moves off Brad’s lap to follow through when inspiration hits. Maybe he can still give Brad the kind of attention he wanted to give him tonight, but in a language Brad will welcome.
He backs down off the bed, tugging behind Brad’s knees until Brad’s sitting at the foot with his feet on the floor. He meets Brad’s eyes directly and holds them as he slowly drops to his knees.
Brad says nothing, but his breathing has picked up, and his cock twitches.
Nate shoulders between Brad’s legs and clasps his hands loosely in front of himself as he takes a moment to blatantly admire this frankly magnificent specimen of masculinity who shares his life. He ducks his head forward, a willing postulant in a carefully staged pose.
“Thought you were past believing in the power of prayer,” Brad says, sardonic.
Nate looks back up at him and answers steadily. “Just because I haven’t been on my knees in a church in ten years doesn’t mean it’s not worship when I kneel for you.”
Love and desire war with dubious reservation on Brad’s face for an instant before, with that unerring gut instinct of his, he seems to catch on to Nate’s unspoken plan. They always did do some of their best communicating without words.
The uncertainty isn’t totally gone, but Brad nods once, small and decisive.
Nate cups Brad’s knees in his hands, turns his head, and lays a line of licking kisses along one thigh from knee to groin. He repeats the passage on the other leg, then burrows his nose low into the crease where Brad’s thigh and torso meet. Brad’s breath hitches when Nate inhales deep.
“After my masculine fug, again?” he asks, amusement and arousal both audible.
“The smell of you gets me hot,” Nate tells him, nosing his way through scratchy curls and then along the length of Brad’s cock, which jerks in response before Nate pulls away to tap his tongue percussively against the slit.
“The taste of you gets me hot, too,” he says, sliding his lips down over just the head and lapping at the bundle of nerves on the underside.
Brad groans abortively through clenched teeth and fists the covers beside his thighs.
Nate pulls back. “And the feel of you. Sometimes when you’re gone, I open my mouth wide and get myself off on the memory of your cock in there.”
“Fuck! Do without the memory. My cock’s right here.” Brad’s hips ripple like he can’t keep them still for anticipation. It’s obscenely enticing.
“Nuh uh. Not yet,” Nate says, his pulse and his own cock both on the rise. “Up,” he orders, pushing at the backs of Brad’s thighs until he’s leaning back on his elbows, feet planted flat at the edge of the bed, spreading himself for Nate.
“That’s it.” Nate’s got nothing but praise. “Look how much you want it. Sexy long legs open wide. So hard already, and I’ve barely touched you. So hot for me.”
He rolls Brad’s balls gently between his fingers. Brad whines.
“M’hot for you, too,” Nate purrs. “Want to slide you all the way down my throat. Love making you lose it like you do when I’m blowing you nice and deep. Only other thing I’ve seen drive you that crazy is what I’m about to do first.” He leans forward and licks once over Brad’s hole.
Brad keens at him. “Nate, oh God, please.”
Even in bed, Brad rarely begs. Nate’s got to grab hard onto his own thigh to keep from losing focus. “You want me to eat you out?”
“Fuck, yeah I do.”
“OK. I’m gonna lick you up all good. Rim the fuck out of your ass. Slick my tongue inside you til you’re sloppy and loose, because you love it. And then I’m gonna slide my fingers in and fuck you with them while I get your perfect dick in my mouth like I promised and let you fuck my face until you come.”
Brad’s back arches hard and then releases. “Go on, do it. Put your tongue– oh, motherfuck!” because Nate is well trained, and he knows how to follow an order as good as that one.
He buries his face in Brad’s ass and alternates between rapid flicks of his tongue and longer, massaging strokes that make Brad moan and curse. Nate looks up the gilded slope of Brad’s torso to his gorgeous face where his eyes are shut and his brow furrowed in that so-good-it-nearly-hurts-me look that never fails to send a surge of blood to Nate’s cock.
It really fucking turns Nate’s crank that he can so thoroughly and sybaritically debauch the infamously stoic Brad Colbert. He works his tongue into Brad’s body in a series of stabbing, writhing motions, and above him, Brad’s head falls back and he cries out over and over, grunted whines that jolt from him in time with Nate’s movement.
Nate loses himself in it for a while, pulling back when Brad’s hole is giving, soft and open around his aching tongue. His chin is sloppy wet with his own spit when he moves away to a piteous whimper from Brad, whose elbows have collapsed to leave him flat on the bed.
Brad squirms to follow, and Nate pets at his thigh with one hand, soothing the tense, shivering muscles. “Sshh, sweetheart. Not gonna leave you empty. Promised to take care of you.”
He sucks two of his fingers slick and slips them into Brad, who bows his back from the bed with feline flexibility, and exhales sharply.
“Good?” Nate asks.
“So good,” Brad pants. “You rhetorical ass.”
Nate laughs even as his cock jumps between his legs. “Four syllables is about three too many for me to be doing my job right.”
Brad lifts his head to look at Nate, and his eyes are hazy and dark in his flushed face. Sweat gleams at his temples and slips down the midline of his chest, and Nate will gladly worship at the temple of this man’s perfect body for as long as he lives, in whatever way he’s allowed. He wraps his free hand around his own dick for some relief and curls the fingers inside Brad, which gets him a gravelly moan and Brad saying fiercely, “Put that mouth to the use it was made for.”
“Oh, so you want me to–”
But his tease is cut off as Brad growls and whips a hand behind Nate’s head, shoving his mouth—open mid-word—down onto Brad’s leaking, rigid cock.
It stretches him open like always, and he’s unprepared this time, so Nate chokes a little, struggling to adjust. His eyes water, and, perversely, his belly jolts with arousal.
Brad, pleasured, sighs and holds Nate’s head where it is, slipping the thumb of his other hand around Nate’s stretched lips. “There’s my pretty little cocksucker.” He croons it roughly like it’s the filthiest, highest praise he knows how to give. Nate has to pull his balls firmly away from his body to keep from coming right then and there.
When Brad eases the pressure of his hand, Nate draws back to the tip and pulls his fingers almost out of Brad. He looks up through his lashes, bats them twice—Ready?—and then slides mouth and fingers down and in together in one slick, fast swoop.
Brad moans and tosses his head side to side feverishly, leaving his hands where they are, caressing Nate’s nape without pressure now, thumb skating over Nate’s cheek to feel his own dick inside.
The time for teasing is over, and Nate is glad—not for the first time—that he’s put in the time learning to live up to and exceed all the suggestive things people have always said about his mouth. He finds a rhythm, pressing at Brad’s prostate every few strokes, sliding down further and further onto his cock until he relaxes his throat and bumps his nose against the firm muscle of Brad’s abdomen at the bottom of every pass. Nate alternates jacking himself roughly with rubbing firmly at the base of Brad’s cock, the way he knows Brad loves it.
Brad’s beyond syllables now, breathing harshly and audibly over the slick sucking sounds of Nate on and in his body. Nate finds it unbelievably sexy, servicing Brad like this. The tiny kick of submissive abasement that still hits his belly when he’s like this only sweetens the pot. He’s losing himself in the ecstasy of making Brad feel this good and look this good and fucking smell this good. This is idolatry he does well. And Brad is going to pieces for it.
He knows Brad’s close when the sounds come back. Brad starts crying out in short gasps that rise in pitch and volume until they turn into, “Nate, Nate, oh, oh my– oh Nate, oh my Nate, my Nate.” He comes on that litany that lights Nate’s whole body up like a spark on oil-soaked kindling. He swallows and pulls away as Brad quakes with aftershocks.
“Yes,” he calls back, rasp-voiced. “Yes, Brad. Yours.” And then he shudders open, coming over his fingers, biting down on Brad’s inner thigh by his head, shivering and spasming and pouring out his love for Brad in nameless raw sounds and jets of spunk that stain the carpet beneath him.
He must zone out for a few minutes, because he has no idea what happens after that until he processes that his head’s on Brad’s chest and that Brad’s got one hand protectively wrapped around Nate’s shoulder and the other fingering the bite mark Nate left on his thigh.
“Back with me?” Brad asks gently when Nate hums in satisfaction.
“Always with you,” Nate answers, allowing himself a measure of sentimentality he knows he won’t be mocked for, not right now.
Brad nudges Nate’s head up with his nose and meets his eyes while he slowly, methodically licks the come off Nate’s hand.
“Always with me,” he murmurs back, and Nate loves him so much it threatens to cave his chest in.
They rest, breathing together in silence.
Brad breaks it. “You take exceedingly good care of me, you know.” For a generally laconic guy, Brad knows how to make his words count.
“I do try,” Nate says. “And provided you’re aware that on occasion I may fuck up royally like I did tonight, I swear to you I’ll keep on trying as long as I can.”
Brad stares trust and confidence back at him. “On the royalty scale, I would classify this evening’s fuck-up no higher than a minor baronetcy.” He gifts Nate with the secret soft smile the world at large isn’t lucky enough to see.
Until one corner of it turns mischievous. “Besides, you more than made up for any minor-gentry-level errors in judgment with that peerless, imperial-rank mouth of yours.”
He runs a thumb around Nate’s lips. Nate kisses it.
“It does work out well for both of us how much you love my mouth,” Nate laughs.
“I love all of you, Nate,” Brad says, touching their foreheads together.
Nate grins at him and answers, “I am assured of this, you secret sap.”
It’s not until they’ve switched off the light and shifted into sleeping positions—Nate on his stomach facing left, Brad curled at his right side—that Nate adds, softly and without turning his head, “I love all of you, too, you know. Even the parts you might not be so certain about.”
Brad is very still beside him, but he’s relaxed, and after a minute he leans to press a kiss to Nate’s shoulder and a Roger copy to his ear.
Nate hums contentedly and slides right the inch it takes to bring his body fully in contact with Brad’s. “Good night, you big, strong, manly Marine of mine.”
Brad huffs a laugh and drapes an arm over Nate’s waist. “Good night, you ass-kissing, placatory, civilian charmer.”
Nate falls asleep smiling.