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"You've been different lately."
Nate looked up from his laptop. It was 2012, he was 35 years old and he hadn't time travelled in almost four months. He was still compulsively writing himself notes, though; he'd established the habit and was too paranoid to give it up. "Different how?" he asked.
Brad was leaning against the doorway to Nate's office; they wouldn't move in together properly for another year, when Brad took a job training recruits in Quantico, but they'd been spending more time together on one coast or the other when vacations permitted. Nate was enjoying his fourth linear visit in four months.
"I can't put my finger on it," said Brad, shrugging. "But you're not doing that space cadet thing. Tuning out suddenly like you're wondering if you left the oven on."
Nate winced, he couldn't help it.
"All I was wondering is what's changed," said Brad, who'd naturally noticed the wince.
"I found a good line for black market Adderall," Nate joked.
"Fine, don't tell me."
Nate stared at his laptop without seeing it, his mind racing. He'd been thinking about this for what had to be years. Brad was a fixture in more than half of his life, and it was getting harder and harder to keep it under wraps. But then again, he'd seen enough of his later years to wonder if he was ever going to have the guts to try, or if Brad would even believe it. Not for the first time, Nate wondered if he could change his own life or if he was on rails, just seeing stops along a trip that wouldn't deviate.
Fuck it, he thought finally. This pussy shit was not becoming of a Marine. He got out of his chair, catching Brad by the elbow on the way through the door and towing him down the hall to the living room. Brad went without a fuss, giving Nate one of his odd looks the whole way.
"Sit," Nate directed, giving Brad a light shove toward the sofa.
"What the fuck, Nate," Brad protested.
"Just... sit."
Brad sat. Nate looked at the seat beside him and then abruptly changed his mind, detouring into the kitchen. The bottle was behind three boxes of instant potatoes in the cupboard beside the fridge; Nate grabbed two short glasses to go with it and took them back into the living room.
"I was saving this for your birthday," he said, handing Brad the scotch, "but I think we need it now."
Brad had his poker face on; he was braced for something bad. Nate sat down on the sofa while he was raising an eyebrow at the bottle. "This is nice stuff," he said. It was the same stuff he'd give Nate for Nate's seventieth birthday. "Happy birthday to me," Brad added, cracking the seal. As an attempt at banter, it fell flat, and Brad poured them each a measure without another word. He let Nate have two sips, just enough to centre himself, before clearing his throat and saying, "So is this the moment where you tell me you're secretly married, or what?"
Nate almost choked on his scotch. "No," he rasped, putting the glass down on the coffee table. "I'm not sure if it's better or worse, though."
"Look, if you're breaking up with me, just spit it out."
This was not going right at all. "Brad, I'm a time traveller," Nate blurted.
The silence dragged on into awkwardness. Then it went past awkwardness, into something that seemed worse, and Brad was staring at him, and Nate reached for his drink again, knocking back the rest and thinking about pouring another one.
"Nate." Brad's voice had a low, dangerous edge.
"I'm not breaking up with you. But I'm not fucking with you either. I don't expect you to believe me but it is what it is." Nate took a deep breath. "I just, like, sometimes I blink and I'm back in the desert."
Brad frowned and took a slug of his own drink before answering. "That happens. Guys get PTSD, they have flashbacks--"
Nate held up a hand, cutting him off. "And sometimes I blink, and I'm 14 again. Or 22. Or 65."
Brad licked his lips. He looked wary, like he was trying to find the edges of a trap. "I know Person called you last week, before I showed up. If this was his fucking idea, I will kill you both."
Nate burst out laughing. It was inappropriate. He couldn't stop. This was the worst idea he'd ever had. Finally his eye caught on the bookshelf in the far corner, and he got up. Brad's glare followed him across the room; Nate took deep, calming breaths as his fingers trailed across the spines of his books. There it was, tucked in at the end of the row.
"You've seen this before, right?" he asked, holding up the day planner. Its cover was smooth, black leather, dinged and worn with age. He'd picked it up one of the times he'd found himself in the early days of his military career, scrambling around the base getting things together before they got on the Navy ship that was supposed to take them to Australia but wound up taking them to Afghanistan. He'd somehow managed to keep it around since; it was like a touchstone.
"You've had that forever," said Brad. Really, it had been maybe three years in Nate-time. He'd spent long hours with it whenever he had a chance for about six months, catching up.
"I'm guessing you've never snooped in it," said Nate, tossing it at Brad.
Brad caught it easily and stared at the cover, not opening it. "I have not."
"You're a disgrace to Recon." Nate gave into the desire for more liquor, sitting down again with a generous measure. "So open it."
Brad did, frowning at the first page and then flipping through. Inside it had binder rings, stuffed full of worn-edged lined pages, cut to fit and covered in Nate's handwriting.
"The diary of Nate Fick," said Brad eventually. He had it open to 2005. That happened to have been a year Nate had seen a lot of; the pages were crammed with notes on major events in his life and in the world at large. "Why are you showing me this?"
"Keep going," said Nate. Brad flipped to 2006. It was nearly blank. Nate had some ideas of events, but he hadn't seen things like birthdays yet. He was never sure what to fill in, in those years.
"Keep going," said Nate again.
Brad flipped through half of the binder. Now he was in 2031. Nate had made a few notes: his mother died in June of that year. The DNC started getting up Nate's ass about running for the Senate, which Nate decided against. He and Brad started talking about retirement plans, which Nate had scribbled some notes on for reference in later conversations. Obviously Nate knew what they'd ultimately decide on (Colorado, of all the places) but he'd developed a respect for continuity.
Brad stared at the page for a long time. Nate could see the details he was noting: the pen ink was the same as the entries for the early 2000s, the paper just as dirty. There was a newer section in the middle for the 2020s, where Nate had needed to add more paper. "This is elaborate," Brad said after a while.
"Remind me never to show you that again," said Nate weakly. "It has spoilers." But he'd keep it; he needed a reference.
Brad closed the binder. "So you're saying you've been in 2031 and you've been in 2005 but you haven't been in 2006?"
"Not really. But I get the sense that some interesting stuff happens. Happened."
Brad's lips twisted in a way that looked like he was fighting back a smirk. "And so how long have you been in 2012, with the rest of us?"
"Four months. It's a record, so far."
"Have you always been like this?" Brad was looking at him, searching his face for tells.
"Since I was twenty, I think."
"You just hop around your own adult life? You don't, poof, vanish or anything. You've always just been there."
"I see my childhood, sometimes," said Nate. "And I think it's all...." He tapped at his temple. "Like waking up."
"You live the same moment more than once? Like Groundhog Day?"
Nate shook his head. "Only once, like you. Even the childhood moments, they aren't things I remember. I don't know what's up with that."
Brad was still watching him carefully. "When did we meet?"
Nate sighed. "The first time I saw you, we were having a conversation in my office at Pendleton, before we shipped out."
"You repeated yourself a few times," said Brad.
"I've still never been to the first half of that discussion," said Nate, smiling to himself. "That was the first time we met, right?"
"Yes." Brad frowned. "What about the first time we--" He seemed to decide not to finish his sentence. Nate tried to guess.
"The first time I had sex with you was in 2010. I was in California for my birthday. It was the morning I had to fly back here." Brad's poker face was back on, Nate observed. "The first time you had sex with me, after you came back from England, at Ray's welcome-home clusterfuck, that was my twelfth time with you." Nate smiled at the memory. That had been a while ago.
Brad's eyes widened a little. Nate wondered if this was working or if he could, or should, pretend it was a joke and blame it on Ray after all.
They were silent again, but it felt less awkward to Nate this time. Brad grabbed the bottle of scotch and topped them both up again. He held the binder up in one hand as he drank with the other, and then he dropped it into Nate's lap.
"It's a thrilling story," said Brad. "All it needs is aliens."
"Would aliens help you believe it?" Nate settled back into the couch.
"Hard to say." Brad paused. "What did I get you for your birthday, in 2010?"
"I have no idea yet," said Nate. "I know what you're getting me next year, though." And ten more scattered birthdays after that, but maybe that knowledge was too many spoilers. Nate didn't know what he could be ruining by telling Brad about the future but he didn't really want to push it, not where Brad was concerned.
"Uh huh."
"I also know you never actually commit me to a mental institution," Nate added.
"That's what you think," said Brad. "I've seen Back to the Future. I know how this works." He held up his scotch and looked at it in the light. He seemed less pissed off, at least. Nate was starting to regret the whole conversation.
Nate lasted another two and a half months before time travelling again; he had three more visits with Brad in that time. They never talked about it again.
Nate's next time slip stuck him in 2015; Brad was on weekend manoeuvres with his trainees and the house seemed empty. Nate was apparently prepping for a conference; he went to the shoebox he'd started hiding his reference binder in after the disastrous talk with Brad, intending to fill in the blanks at work a little. One page was dog-eared, and he frowned; he never dog-eared this binder. It was a page from 2010, and the line of Brad's handwriting drew his eye like a magnet.
'Birthday 2010: Brad ignored all my previous bitching that I hate celebrating birthdays and gave me a gift: a copy of his legal will and testament wrapped in a ribbon. It said that I am now his next of kin. Apparently this did it for me, because I then fucked him through the mattress. A memorable birthday indeed.'
The page was blurring; Nate blinked. When he opened his eyes again, he was in Colorado.