Work Text:
I
So tell me when it’s time to say ‘I love you’
There’s a routine Nate follows every day—the alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m., by 6:10 he’s already out, running; back at 7:15, then a quick shower and a cup of coffee, two slices of toast, buttered, no jam. He leaves the apartment at 7:40 to catch the 7:55 train. He reads the morning paper on the subway and by the time he gets to his office, he’s almost finished with the crossword. He buys an Americano on his way there, a blueberry scone if he feels like it.
Routines are easy. He can do that.
He’s still somewhere in between, floating aimlessly, trying to decide where to go from here—it was the same after leaving the Corps, when he didn’t quite know what to do with his life. He knew he wanted to go back to school, but the whats and hows and whens were all pending, while he was trapped in between two worlds and feeling like he belonged in neither.
It’s the same now.
There are people from the Department of State, though, who have been sniffing around him cautiously since his last semester at Harvard, trying to ascertain whether he’d be interested in accepting a well-paid position there, as an international policy advisor to the Secretary of State, with the Middle-East as his point of focus. Nate may not be too fond of the current administration, but if his voice is heard and his concerns taken into account, he thinks he can achieve something good nonetheless, so he seriously contemplates taking the job. For now, he has some smaller projects that he’s working on, and he’s doing well, making a name for himself outside the Corps.
This is what he wanted, after all.
And then there’s Brad, separated from Nate by miles and miles of dark, cold water and too-long hours stretching between their lives. Sometimes he wakes Nate up in the middle of the night with a phone call from the other side of the world, like he didn’t account for the time difference. Or maybe he did and disregarded it all the same, because the need to hear Nate’s voice proved stronger.
Nate knows those particular calls, because Brad usually can think of nothing specific to say and they just stay on the phone for a while talking about completely random things. It’s mostly Nate who does the talking, while Brad remains silent, because that’s what this is about, deep down, just hearing that person on the other end of the line for a while, until everything gets back to normal and you can go on living.
The phone calls aren’t frequent, nothing that would raise suspicion were someone curious enough to look. There are emails, too, from time to time, carefully worded, seemingly about nothing of great importance, full of random comments and old anecdotes, just two men who shared a lot more than stale MREs and disillusionment with the world, keeping in touch.
Nate knows that Brad is still in touch with a lot of guys from the platoon, with Poke and Ray, since it’s supposedly impossible to get rid of Person once he attaches to your leg like a particularly annoying Chihuahua (Brad’s words), and with Mike, although between the two of them, it’s Nate who gets more regular updates on Mike’s life.
The fact that they still write to each other should be nothing out of the ordinary, then, even considering that Nate was an officer and therefore belonged to a whole different world altogether.
As far as that goes, nothing really has changed. Nate and Brad are still worlds apart, in more than one sense, but they’re Marines. They make do.
: : :
“I’m terribly sorry, but you are Nate Fick, aren’t you?” she asks, a little out of breath, and she laughs quietly. “I thought I recognized you. You were Brad Colbert’s commanding officer in Iraq, right? Anyway, I’m Brad’s sister, Hannah.”
Nate almost says, I know. He almost says, I know about the time you broke your leg when you were fifteen and you and Brad were alone. It’s an odd thought, a half-forgotten memory of a story from a distant past, but that’s the first thing that comes to his mind.
Brad doesn’t visit his family very often, but they’re pretty close nonetheless, and Nate has seen the pictures Brad’s parents or sisters email him from time to time. He could recognize them anywhere.
“Oh, right, I don’t think we’ve met,” he says, holding his hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”
Hannah’s handshake is firm and she smiles at him, a nice, pleasant smile that looks completely genuine. He can’t help but wonder what Brad told his family about Nate to guarantee him such a warm welcome.
“So, Hannah, what are you doing in D.C.? I thought the bordering on unhealthy love for the West Coast and all things California runs in the family.”
“Ah, so you have met my brother.” She laughs and Nate can’t help but smile, too.
They’re having this conversation in the middle of the produce section, right there between artichokes and eggplants. It feels kind of surreal.
“Actually, we moved here recently, I got a great job offer, so we changed coasts and came to Washington. Small world, huh?”
“It sure seems like it.” He thinks briefly of asking her if she would like to get a cup of coffee but decides against it. It’s not the best idea, considering.
Hannah hesitates for a moment, like she maybe wants to ask him something, but then she closes her mouth and shakes her head almost imperceptibly, as if she’s trying to talk herself out of this. Nate is not sure if she’s even aware of what she’s doing.
“Something on your mind?” he asks.
“No, just…” She looks him straight in the eyes. “Thank you for bringing him home.”
Nate has no idea at which point exactly this mostly lighthearted conversation became so serious all of a sudden.
“You don’t have to thank me, I just did my job, that’s all,” he says and swallows around the lump in his throat. He doesn’t see Hannah or the goddamn eggplants anymore—he sees the darkness of Iraqi night and bullets flying right past them, mortar fire in the distance and bombs in gardens.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Brad always says that you’re the best commanding officer he’s ever had.”
Because that’s exactly what Nate is to Brad’s family—the officer who brought their son and brother back home from this hell on Earth unscathed. He doesn’t correct that assumption.
They’ve talked about this, but Brad said no and Nate would never go against his wishes. He knows Brad’s reasons for this, he knows them and respects them, yet sometimes he can’t help but wonder if this is just temporary for Brad, if he thinks it’s not going to last anyway, so there’s no need to risk destroying his family and professional life over it. Maybe it’s all only in Nate’s head, but he still can’t stop thinking about it sometimes.
It didn’t bother Brad when Nate told him he wanted to come out to his family. (His father was surprised. His mother wasn’t.) But for Brad’s family Nate still remains just a vaguely familiar face in the pictures from Iraq.
This lie they’re living—Nate knows it’s necessary, that this is simply a fact of their reality, and neither of them can do anything about it. It doesn’t make him hate it any less, though. But the fact that he can go back to Baltimore for Christmas or talk to his family on the phone, or just visit them from time to time and be able to talk about Brad instead of pretending that he has a nonexistent girlfriend or that he doesn’t have time for relationships makes moments like this, when he has to lie to people’s faces, more bearable. He just wishes he didn’t have to lie to Brad’s own sister.
Hannah looks at silent Nate, who’s just standing there, clutching his basket with white-knuckled fists, because suddenly it hits too close to home, and he just doesn’t know what to say anymore.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I need to go now,” he tells her and smiles faintly, shaking her hand. “It was nice meeting you. Say hi to Brad for me when you see him next time, would you?”
He leaves without the red peppers he came for.
: : :
So Brad always takes a cab at Dulles and forty minutes to an hour and a half later, depending on the traffic, he arrives at Nate’s place in downtown D.C. (earlier, before Nate had finished his degree, it was Logan and a small apartment in Cambridge). He never uses the key Nate gave him, not when he first gets back; he knocks, like he expects to arrive and find that Nate got tired of waiting and moved on.
This time it’s Saturday when he comes back, and Nate finds himself restless since the early morning. It’s something that even a longer than usual run is unable to get out of his system, so instead of catching up on paperwork, he turns on the TV, turns the volume down until the voices become mere whispers and tries to focus on the book he started reading some time ago and never got around to finishing.
He hears the doorbell when he’s on page 387, three paragraphs in, and he lets the book fall onto the coffee table as he quickly makes his way to the door. Brad is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, alive and solid and here.
Nate smiles and takes a step aside to let him in. As soon as the door closes behind Brad, his lips are on Nate’s mouth, the duffel bag slung across his shoulder falling to the floor with a dull thud.
Nate runs his hands along the lines of Brad’s cheekbones, his temples, his fingers linger on his lips when they part for air, like he can’t stop touching him.
“Missed you,” Nate breathes against Brad’s collarbone and then presses a kiss to the hard bone hidden underneath the paler than usual skin.
His fingers are impatient, trying to get to the naked skin, feel Brad’s muscles ripple and shift under his palms when he moves to bring Nate closer and kisses him deeply, holding nothing back, his tongue in Nate’s mouth, his hands cradling Nate’s head, then sliding down to rest on the nape of his neck, his grip gentle yet firm at the same time, as if he’s trying to make sure that Nate doesn’t pull back.
Nate has no intention of doing that.
“Come on,” he whispers against Brad’s mouth and darts out his tongue to lick at his lower lip, teasing. “There’s a comfortable bed in the bedroom.”
Brad shakes his head and flips them over, so that Nate is pressed against the door. He closes his eyes for a moment when he feels Brad’s hands under his t-shirt, exploring the familiar territory anew, like he’s making sure he still remembers Nate’s body, all of it. It’s frantic and desperate; Nate groans when Brad bites him in the spot where his jaw meets his neck.
“Fuck, Brad…”
He opens his eyes just in time to see Brad falling to his knees in front of Nate; he undoes his jeans and slides them down Nate’s thighs, his briefs follow suit just a moment later, and then Nate can’t think anymore, because it’s been so long since he saw Brad the last time, so long since he was this close to another human being. He’s missed being able to touch somebody (Brad, only Brad) and being touched in return, and the sensation is almost too intense, but the second he lets go and comes apart under Brad’s touch, his world shifts back into place.
“Missed you too,” Brad says then, kissing the curve of Nate’s hipbone, his voice raw.
When Brad rises from his knees, Nate hooks a finger in the belt loop of his pants and pulls him in, but when Nate tries to unbutton Brad’s jeans, he bats his hand away. “No, wait. I just wanted to do this for so long…”
“Brad.” Nate doesn’t know if he’s reprimanding or pleading.
“I’ve just lived through an eight-hour flight in a seat made for a fucking ten-year-old midget, because there’s no way an average adult human being could fit into that thing.”
Oh, so apparently he prefers to turn it into a joke.
“You’ve lived through worse, Brad,” Nate reminds him. “And yet here you are, still in one piece. Luckily for me.” He nuzzles Brad’s jaw and neck, steadily works his way down until he can nip at his collarbone. “But by all means, I can join you in the shower if you feel like it.”
Brad grins at him, a huge, genuine smile, the one that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Nate exhales with relief. “You’ve always been the master of strategic planning, sir. I’m glad to see that the civilian life hasn’t caused you to lose your edge.”
“After you.” Nate gestures towards his bathroom. Fortunately, the shower stall is big enough for both of them to fit in. They tested it once at some point when Brad came to Nate’s D.C. apartment for the first time, while he was on leave three months ago, the last time they saw each other. Nate had been living there for only two weeks at the time, still not entirely moved in, and there were boxes he nearly tripped over while he and Brad were rather preoccupied, leaving a trail of clothes all the way from the door to the bedroom.
Nate is not a great fan of bathroom sex in general, because it’s tricky and often uncomfortable, and he can’t look up at Brad when he’s on his knees, sucking and licking, because the water gets in his eyes making them sting and the world starts to blur around the edges. But he missed this so much, having Brad this close to him, just within an arm’s reach, and he just can’t stop touching him now.
That’s why he follows Brad inside without a second thought.
: : :
Nate shrugs. “Maybe I just want to fit in with all those pretentious politicians you don’t like so much?” he teases with a smile. “It would come in handy after I start working at the Department of State. We could share the latest political gossip over coffee and the morning edition of Washington Post.”
“So you’ve accepted the offer?” Brad asks from his place by the couch. His hands are gripping the brown leather when Nate looks at him.
“It’s a good offer, Brad, and I think I’m going to accept it,” he says in a soft voice. “If nothing else, I can try to reason with these people, try to do some good where it’s going to matter in the long run. I’m not only doing this for myself, but it’s still very personal for me and you know that.”
Brad is silent for a moment.
“Wow, you sound like you’re going to launch your Fick for Senator campaign any day now,” he says, smiling, but Nate knows it’s just for show. “You should think about it, by the way. You could become a Senator, maybe even a fucking President of the United States one day, change the world the way you want to.”
“And you?”
“Well, I would vote for you, of course. That’s self-explanatory, since I proposed it in the first place, don’t you think?”
“Brad, I’m serious. This changes nothing between us, okay? Nothing. And you know I wouldn’t do anything that would endanger your position in the Corps.” He reaches out, curls his palm around Brad’s wrist.
“I know. I know you, Nate.”
Nate kisses him, inhales the scent of his own soap on Brad’s skin, smells his aftershave, and Brad kisses him back, deep and desperate.
Later, when they’re half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa, tangled in each other, Brad cups Nate’s cheek, tilts his head up until Nate is looking at him and says, “There’s something I need to tell you. I got the news just before I signed off on the base on Friday. We’re deploying in a month.”
Nate’s throat feels raw. “Where?”
“Afghanistan.”
Nate nods. He doesn’t need to tell Brad to stay safe, and he’s sure Brad wouldn’t want him to say that in the first place. They know it’s not his place to choose, it’s up to the enemy standing on the other end of the barrel and the other members of Brad’s platoon, and his immediate superiors, and really, there are so many variables that sometimes being the best at what you do is not enough to keep you safe and alive.
They both realize that. It does nothing to make the dread nestled firmly in Nate’s chest go away. He knew that day would come and he wanted to think he would be prepared—they went through hell together after all, and he knows how it works. But now Nate isn’t going to be there to make sure Brad is as safe as he can possibly be. For that, he’s not prepared at all.
: : :
They never have much time together for this life they’ve carved out. It’s as far from perfect as it can be sometimes, but they learn how to live with it over and over again, because there’s no other way. It’s a work in progress.
The days after Brad leaves are always the worst. This time it’s even worse, knowing that there are not only drills and training missions planned in Brad’s future.
Nate always finds remnants of Brad all over the apartment after his departure—a disposable razor, the toothbrush Nate knows he has to throw out, because Brad is not going to be here for at least a few months, the t-shirt he’d thrown in the hamper and forgot about afterwards, a sock that got lost in the washing machine.
So he throws away and puts together the pieces of their shared life, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but that’s everything Nate has left for now, while Brad is living on the other side of the globe.
There’s little else he can do.
: : :
He didn't have too many illusions about his position (there weren't many of them left after Iraq), and he understands the mechanics of politics. State isn't that much different than the Corps, so it's not that hard to get the hang of things. It’s still unlike the Corps was in many respects, though—here at least some people appreciate Nate’s first-hand experience and don’t dismiss his words only because he’s a junior officer who should just pass on his orders and keep his mouth shut otherwise.
He looks in the fridge for something to eat, but there’s not much inside; he checks the freezer and finds a pack of deep-frozen stir fry. It will do.
He heats it up in a pan, waits for the vegetables to defrost and soften under the lid, seasons it and tastes, burning his lips and the tip of his tongue a little.
Back in the living room, he flicks on the TV just in time for the news.
He never eats any of that stir fry—he realizes that he forgot the fork, starts to stand up to get it from the kitchen, and that’s when he hears it.
The images flickering on the screen barely register in his mind, all he can focus on are the reporter’s words. Afghanistan. An ambush. A unit of the Royal Marines has been hit. One casualty has been reported. Status of the casualty: unknown.
It takes him a while to process all the information, but when he does, he feels like he’s going to be sick. It was Brad’s unit that has been hit.
He almost doesn’t make it to the bathroom.
There’s a sense of dread uncoiling in his stomach, something he has no power over, and all he can do is go through the motions and hope that he emerges on the other side sane and relatively intact. For someone who’s used to taking action, to feel helpless like that is worse than anything else he can imagine, knowing that it’s all in someone else’s hands.
In this moment Nate understands more clearly than ever before that if it turns out to be Brad, and if—just if—he doesn't make it, no one will notify him, no one will be obligated to do so. After all, Nate is just his ex-commanding officer. They served together in Iraq, and that's all there is.
He bites his lips so hard they bleed, just like he used to do back there, in the middle of the Iraqi desert, when it was all just too much. He thought he was over that.
His mother calls him half an hour after he hears the news. Nate gets up from the cold bathroom floor to pick up, his bare feet almost noiseless as he makes his way to the living room. The TV is still on. They’re talking about some fraud uncovered in one of the chain stores. Who the fuck cares.
“Nate? I saw the evening news. Was that—”
“Yes.” His voice sounds surprisingly steady. “I… I don’t know anything else. That might not have been him, it’s— We need to wait.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Nate closes his eyes and shakes his head before he realizes that his mother can’t see him on the other end of the line. “No, mom, I’ll be okay.”
He’s not.
There’s nothing even remotely okay about the way he sleepwalks through the hours he spends at work and the way he sits glued to the TV screen and his laptop at home, waiting for the news, any news. But it’s still chaos over there and everything is just so fucked up, a clusterfuck even worse than the entire OIF. He doesn’t know how his mother made it through when he was out there, getting shot at, how all those wives and mothers and girlfriends made it through—suddenly his respect for them is even greater than it had been before.
He says that to his mother when she calls the next day.
“There’s no fixed solution,” she tells him. “You have to figure it out for yourself.”
The part where he was never reported possibly injured or dead remains unspoken.
: : :
Forty-eight hours. It didn’t feel like that for Nate at all.
He feels sorry for Lance Corporal Martin’s family, he really does, but he’s still selfish enough to admit he’s happy that it’s not someone else’s name on the obituary.
Later, he finds a short email in his inbox, which reads, i’m safe.
Nate opens a bottle of whisky, sits on the floor with his back against the couch and drinks until he can’t feel anything, waiting for the violent trembling to subside.
: : :
And Brad is safe, he’s alive and well. This is nothing more than remnants of a bad dream.
When he looks at the digital clock standing on the night table, it turns out it’s already past noon. He doesn’t remember when was the last time he slept that long. High school, maybe. And maybe that one time after Iraq, when the adrenaline high finally came down and he barely made it to his bed before collapsing onto the mattress and succumbing to a deep sleep without nightmares. (Those came later.)
He grabs a t-shirt from the chair and tries to chase away the persistent sleep residues as he makes his way to the front door. He’s taken to going around the apartment barefoot at all times—it’s something that started after his return from Iraq, when he couldn’t stand the thought of shoes.
“Hi, LT. I mean, Captain,” Walt says, shifting nervously, as if he’s still not sure it was a good idea to come visit Nate in the first place. “I was nearby, visiting my sister in Virginia, so I thought I’d come by, say hello. Gunny Wynn told me where you live. Is that—”
“Come on in.” Nate doesn’t let Walt finish the sentence. He suspects he might know what this visit is all about.
When he goes into the kitchen to get coffee, and toast for himself, he expects Walt to wait for him in the living room, but instead he finds him trailing behind; he takes a seat at the kitchen table and just sits there for a moment without saying a word.
“I don’t have milk for the coffee,” Nate informs him and it sounds trivial in his own ears, too mundane and entirely not what he wants to tell Walt—anyone—at the moment, but he can’t think of anything else that would not have Brad and too many words that should never stand next to that name in one sentence.
“No worries, LT, I drink my coffee black.” Walt smiles. “Shit, I meant Captain.”
“How about Nate?”
Walt shakes his head. “That would be weird. You’re the LT.”
“Not anymore.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Nate knows it a little too well.
Walt is staring at him and Nate realizes what he must see—Colbert stenciled in black letters on green cotton across his chest—and Walt is not stupid, he’s Recon, too, his observation skills far superior to those of other people, but he doesn’t ask and Nate doesn’t tell.
He knows that Walt knows, because there’s just no way he can not know. It would probably make him more worried if Walt didn’t give him a sad, understanding smile as his only response.
He wonders how many of them have suspected something and still kept their mouth shut about it.
“Hey, LT, I know you must’ve heard about Brad’s unit,” Walt says after a moment in a quiet, subdued voice. “I just… Are you okay? I still can’t believe that happened. It just feels unreal, you know, because Brad’s… Brad, and you always think he’s indestructible and shit, and then something like that happens and you don’t know what to think anymore. It’s so bizarre.”
“No one’s indestructible, not even Brad.”
Nate knows that these guys—Walt, Ray, Poke, Garza, hell, probably most of them—might not have believed in the command, which was beyond fucked up in their opinion (it really was, Nate should know), but they believed in Brad. They still do. But it doesn’t change the fact that Brad is mortal just like the rest of them. They were this close to getting the proof of that.
“Yeah, I know,” Walt says, playing with a teaspoon.
They drink their coffee and Nate offers Walt the last piece of his favorite cheesecake. He was saving it for dessert.
“Hey, LT, do you need to go to work or something?” Walt asks all of a sudden when the cheesecake is nothing but a memory and a few crumbs left on the plate. “I didn’t even think to ask, and you could be busy, and I was keeping you here…”
“Do you really think that I’d be walking around my apartment dressed like that at this hour if I had to work? Even I get a free weekend from time to time.” Nate laughs under his breath. “Don’t worry, Walt, you’re not imposing on me.”
Actually, it’s a relief to have him here, because he can at least to some extent relate to the way Nate felt during those forty-eight hours that stretched like days in his mind.
When Walt finally tells Nate that he should probably go, there’s something inside of Nate that doesn’t want to let go of him just yet, because he finds it so easy to talk to him despite the line that separates officers and grunts even when neither of them is in the Corps anymore. Walt gets so much of what Nate tells him (more than he probably should tell him, even if he tries to make it sound as vaguely as he can, and Brad’s name doesn’t come up even once in that conversation) and, from what Nate observes, he doesn’t look like someone who is surrounded by people who understand some of his baggage, either. They may try, but they never succeed. That sounds familiar.
: : :
But in this photo—Ray Person emailed it to Nate at some point with only one emoticon winking at him from the body of the mail—he and Brad are sitting next to each other, a little closer than would be appropriate, their upper arms touching, and they look straight at Walt (Nate still remembers it was he who took that particular picture, because he caught them completely off guard). Nate doesn’t print it out, but he saves it to his hard drive and leaves it open for the next few hours, just to look at it every now and then when he takes a break from work, to remind himself of that Nate, who was gaunt and tired and completely at a loss with his own feelings.
He remembers that one kiss in the abandoned cigarette factory, when Nate was just about to be done with all of this, crushed by the mistakes made by the command and his own powerlessness, and the weight of all those ideals that he lost between the gates of Camp Mathilda and this place. It was just a touch of lips somewhere in a dark corner where nobody would bother them, quick and chaste, nothing more, and Nate wanted this, but he still pushed Brad away with a steady hand on his chest.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, Brad, I can’t. Why—” he couldn’t even figure out how to finish the sentence. Why did you do that? Why did you do this now? Why didn’t you wait till it was over?
“I just didn’t know what else to do.” Brad avoided his gaze and his voice sounded so earnest that Nate wanted to brush his fingers across his cheek, lean in and kiss the doubt away from his lips.
“I’m your immediate superior, Brad. I can’t,” he said instead. “Not as long as we’re both in the Corps. I’m sorry.”
He walked away then, but he wasn’t falling apart at the seams anymore.
Brad sought him out after they were back stateside, at Nate’s own paddle party—he found him in Mike’s dark kitchen, pressed Nate against the counter and kissed him until they were both out of breath and flushed, looking at each other, faces only inches apart. Nate could feel Brad’s breath on his cheek and neck; he tasted like beer and tequila, and they both had a lot to drink that night, but they were hyperaware of their every move. There was nothing accidental about any of this.
They broke apart when they heard the approaching steps, but not before Nate pressed his cheek against Brad’s jaw and whispered, “Come find me later.”
“Oh, sorry, LT. Captain,” Q-Tip corrected himself, slurring a little. “I didn’t know you were hiding here all alone.”
When Nate turned his head, he found out that Brad wasn’t standing next to him anymore. He must’ve slipped out through the back door and into Mike’s backyard.
Brad did come to find Nate later, after he’d said goodbye to everyone and made his way out the door, his throat painfully clenched, feeling as if he were leaving all of them behind. Brad was waiting for him just outside Mike’s front porch, leaning against the rail.
“You’re not my CO anymore,” he said when he saw Nate.
“No, I’m not.” He looked at Brad with an open expression, took a step closer, maybe one too close, but he needed him to understand.
“Sir, it wasn’t… It doesn’t need to mean anything. In theater, people do a lot of things they regret later, and earlier I just assumed—”
“Nate.”
“What?”
“Nate. That’s who I am now.” It felt weird—completely unfamiliar and a little too tight, like new skin. “And I want you to come with me.”
He could see Brad swallow. “Yeah, I want that, too.”
: : :
Now that Brad is back from Afghanistan (Nate is honest enough to be able to admit to himself what a huge relief it was to hear his voice on the other end of the crackling line), finishing up on the stacks and stacks of tedious paperwork, figuring out the last details of his exchange with the Royal Marines, preparing to come back home, Nate finds himself impatient. He knows it’s a small price to pay for having Brad in his life, but it’s been hard on him, harder than he expected it to be. Now it’s bound to get easier. It must.
There’s nothing certain yet—from his last brief email Nate can gather that Brad still has no idea how long it’s going to take him to take care of all the paperwork, pack up the last two years of his life in England and return to the States. He disguises it mainly in the form of his ordinary spiels about the sheer incompetency of the people who surround him and the goddamn bureaucracy that seems to be universally ridiculous no matter which part of the world you currently happen to work in.
Nate knows that Brad doesn’t have to be back in Pendleton for another three weeks following his return stateside. He tries not to make plans, because he promised himself he wouldn’t do that—he’s done ordering Brad around, not taking his opinion into account even when he really knows he should. He had enough of that in Iraq, when he had his orders and sometimes there was nothing Brad could say or do to make the command stop and reconsider.
Still, there’s a part of him that wants to make plans, just because he can now. Because, as difficult as it will be to match their demanding schedules, they know that they can do that. They got through two years when they were barely seeing each other and were separated by more than the Atlantic Ocean. They’re not going to fuck all this up now.
He gets the email on April 29th. It’s misplaced, Nate can see that much—Ray must have been using his computer while drunk on the Friday night again, because the time stamp says 02:17 a.m.—but he notices Brad’s name and his eyes skim over the body of the text.
Nate stares at the screen of his laptop for a while, then reads it again, just to make sure he understood it the first time round. But there it is, plain and simple in front of his eyes. Ray may be a lot of things, but he’s rarely misinformed. Which means that Brad is back in the States. In California.From: Joshua “Ray” Person (But Only My Mom Calls Me Josh) [[email protected]]
To: The LT [[email protected]]
Date: Sat, April 29, 2005 at 02:17 AM
Subject: you wound me
what the fuck, brad? you come back from that god forsaken country of limey tea-sipping aristocratic dicksucks and dont even call your bestest pal ray-ray? that’s just not fucking on. i havent seen your ugly mug in two fucking years homes. and don’t try to dodge my calls again i’m onto you like a motherfucker and you know i won’t hesitate before unleashing gina espera on you. you fucking owe me at least a shitload of beer and i’ll be in cali sometime next month or maybe later don’t know yet for sure just saying. call me you asshole.
yours forever
ray-ray
He feels like he’s been punched.
II
And all I've said was just instead of coming back to you
It’s surprisingly easy to pack the last two years of one’s life—in Brad’s case, it fits into three large suitcases and a messenger bag. The rest is disposable. Everything he really cares about is on the other side of the ocean, it has always been there. This—this was just a temporary change of pace, another challenge Brad wanted to rise to, just to see if he could do that. He almost succeeded.
Deep down, Brad knows that Martin was not his fault, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling as responsible as the ones who made and detonated that bomb. Nate would tell him that sometimes it’s out of their hands, and they can only do so much and try not to carry other people’s guilt. But Nate isn’t here and that’s a load of bullshit anyway, because Brad knew that Nate used to carry a lot more guilt than he was able to bear back in Iraq, so it’s just this—a platitude neither of them really believes.
When he goes to grab the ticket from the counter and his eyes skim over it, he’s almost surprised not to find Washington, D.C., IAD on the form.
It doesn’t feel quite right, the way he goes about it, but he’s just doing Nate a favor in the long run, and if he learns about this—that Brad has returned to the States without so much as a word—and gets mad, well, it will be that much easier for him to let go. It’ll be even better if Nate thinks Brad’s a fucking ungrateful asshole.
He almost believes that himself for a moment.
He’s always known, though, that whatever they had together was just another temporary thing in Brad’s life. He knows Nate doesn’t think so, but he’s wrong, just this once.
His fellow British Marines suspect that he has a nice piece of tail back home, because he used to come back from his leave he spent in the States, as they put it, thoroughly shagged.
“Come on, Colbert, don’t be such a wanker.” Tyler flicks a peanut at him over a pint of lager they share before Brad has to drive to London to catch his flight early in the morning. The guy clearly lacks any self-preservation instinct. “At least tell us if she’s pretty, that mistress of yours.”
“There’s no mistress,” he says.
At least he’s telling the truth. There is no mistress. There’s just Nate, waiting for him to come home. But Nate is starting to gain recognition in the world of politics and one day he will want to run for Senator and then, who knows, maybe even for President, because it’s Nate, and if anyone can do this, it’s him. Brad might’ve joked about this when he was stateside the last time, but he knows it’s a likely possibility, and Nate doesn’t need an illicit relationship with one of the NCOs he used to serve with, and a man to boot, a fucking United States Marine Corps Sergeant. He needs a goddamn white picket fence and a pretty wife and a kid or two. Nate would be good with kids.
There’s no place for Brad in this picture, not with DADT still in place and the goddamn bigots preaching that people like Brad or Nate should burn in hell. Unfortunately, the majority of those goddamn bigots vote, too. Brad could just imagine the shitstorm if someone dug up some dirt on Nate at one point when he was already someone important in the world of politics. He’s not going to do that to him.
In London, in a hotel room he booked for the night, Brad deletes all emails from Nate that aren’t almost clinically impersonal and painfully official—the ones where he addresses him as Colbert or even Sergeant (those are the early ones, before they developed another code)—as well as his emails sent to Nate at some point. He’s kept all of them until now.
Everything’s set and ready, and Brad starts to feel restless, there’s an itch he can’t scratch, and he knows he won’t fall asleep like this, all wired and tense like a taut string and, he discovers with surprise, half-hard in his pants.
He lies down against his pillows and wraps a hand around himself, trying to get the edge off, but all he can see when he closes his eyes is Nate. This clearly isn’t working and he desperately needs a distraction.
He hasn’t fucked a whore in a long, long time. Maybe it’s time to do go back to old habits. This is over anyway.
When she arrives an hour later, Brad opens the door and stares at her. She’s petite, blonde and beautiful, dressed like a chic businesswoman, not a whore, but that’s just a trick each respectable high-class escort knows, Brad has come to learn over the years.
“Hello, I’m Belle,” she says in a low voice. Her lips are plump, the lipstick a deep shade of red. “Shall we?”
He lets her in, almost automatically, and once they’re both inside, he looks at her for a long moment without a word, then reaches to the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a stack of crisp banknotes.
He thought he could do this, but he can’t.
“Just… take this,” he says in a strangled voice and hands her the money. “Take this and go.”
“What’s wrong?” She reaches for Brad’s cheek with her hand, but he takes a step back.
“I can’t. Go. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
When the door closes behind her, Brad goes to take the hottest shower his body can take and tries not to think of Nate as he jerks off frantically under the scorching hot spray. He fails miserably.
: : :
There’s an email from Jess in his inbox when he finally boots up his laptop. She says that he should visit them once he’s back stateside. Well, maybe he will. It would be only fitting—revisiting his old mistakes, all at once, reminiscing about what was never meant to be. The timing is just fucking perfect.
Oh, and she’s pregnant.
Brad’s going to congratulate them and he’s going to be fucking smiling when he does that.
He goes surfing first thing in the morning, even though the jetlag is a bitch, but the waves are a thing of beauty and he missed surfing too much. This and his bike. (And Nate, but he doesn’t add that. That’s a thing of the past.)
There’s a routine he follows for the next few days—surfing in the morning, followed by a six-mile run, then shower and breakfast. He works on his bikes after that, his hands covered in grease up to his elbows, and eats take-out when he doesn’t feel like cooking (he doesn’t, most of the time).
He calls his mother on the fifth day, after he nearly convinces himself that he’s all right, and that he doesn’t expect to wake up next to Nate every morning, that the cold sheets on the other side of his king-sized bed don’t leave him with a sense of piercing disappointment.
“I’m back,” he says. It’s always been like that—simple and short, and his mother has always understood.
“I’d like you to come over and stay for a little while, Brad,” his mother admits, straightforward. She’s not one to beat around the bush. “We haven’t seen you in ages. And Hannah is flying in from D.C. on Friday. I’m sure she’ll want to see you as well.”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea?” he starts to protest. “I have my own place, I can just—”
“Okay, clearly, it’s time for me to perpetuate the demanding mother stereotype, so I’m just going to tell you that I expect you today no later than five p.m., and you better not kill yourself on your way here, or I’m going to be angry, understood? Oh, and I’m making enchiladas.”
That seals the deal. His mother’s enchiladas are to die for.
He doesn’t pack a lot, just a small overnight bag, some clothes, his laptop. He’s not going to stay there longer than a few days, a week, maybe. Long enough to satisfy his parents, short enough that they don’t start to get on each other’s nerves. Brad loves his parents, he really does, but there are times when he loves silence and solitude more. This is one of those times.
He still can’t talk with his parents about most of the things he’s been through, not like he used to do with Nate. They wouldn’t understand, so when they’re finally sitting at the table in his family house, he tells the funny stories (there were a few) and doesn’t say a word about the ones that still make him wake up in the middle of the night with a silent scream on the tip of his tongue that never makes it past his lips. (He trained himself out of making noises in his sleep a long time ago so that Nate didn’t have to listen to his demons. He has enough of his own to deal with.)
“Brad, is everything all right?” his mother asks him after the dinner is over and he helps her clean up. It surprises him, because she never asks about things like that. The first time he came home after a deployment, she said she wasn’t going to demand to know if he was okay when it was so clear that sometimes it was just impossible to be okay after some of the things Brad had been through.
“I’m not asking about Afghanistan, we’ve had an agreement about that,” she clarifies, seeing his perplexed expression. “But did something happen, other than that? You seem uneasy.”
Brad’s jaw hurts, he’s clenching his teeth so hard. “No, mom, I’m all squared away.”
He gets a call on the seventh day after his return, after midnight. Brad picks up automatically and doesn’t even take a look at the caller’s ID, that’s why he’s almost surprised to hear Nate’s voice in his ear. He’s not sure why. He knew Nate wouldn’t let go without a fight.
“What the fuck, Brad?” Nate’s angry. Good. “You came back, just like that, and you didn’t even think to inform me that you were back in the States. Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?”
Brad has a masochistic urge to twist the knife in the wound some more.
“Listen, I’m just doing you a favor. This wouldn’t work out anyway, not with everything the way it is now. I’m just cutting straight to the part where it all blows up in our faces and we split. It’s easier if we do this now.”
There’s a pause after that, and Brad can guess that Nate is rubbing his neck with his eyes closed, his teeth worrying his lower lip; he always does that when he’s exasperated.
“And I guess I don’t have a say in this, because you know better what I want and what I am going to do? I didn’t take you for such a fucking hypocrite, Brad,” he says in a cold, clipped voice. He sounds like Lieutenant Fick in that moment, not Nate. “And just for future reference? Don’t do me any more favors.”
He disconnects after that, leaving Brad with a dead phone in his hand.
Fuck. This was supposed to be easier, letting go.
: : :
He comes back every day and pretends he doesn’t see the way his mother looks at him.
One day he races with a hot chick on an equally hot bike along I-5 and thinks of not coming back. He could hook up with her, maybe stay the night at some motel just off the interstate. If the signals she’s giving him are anything to go by, she probably wouldn’t mind a one-night stand followed by nothing at all. No strings attached.
He takes the first turn back to Oceanside and leaves her behind in his rearview mirror.
“You’re back early,” his mother comments.
“It didn’t feel that good today.”
Brad picks up an apple from the platter lying on the kitchen table, but before he has a chance to bite into it, Hannah snatches it from his hand and gives him a smug smile. She leans against the counter, takes a bite and chews for a moment, looking at Brad thoughtfully.
“You know what, Brad? The world is a fucking small place,” she says then. “I forgot to tell you, but get this. I’m out one day, grocery shopping, and who do I run into, of all the people in the world? Your ex-CO, Nate Fick. Weird, huh? I actually recognized him from those grainy photos, and I think I’ve seen him once or twice in person, I guess, but never up-close? Anyway, I think he was more shocked than me.”
Brad freezes for a moment. He could say that he wants to know if he seemed okay or what he looked like, but the truth is, Brad remembers each and every detail, down to those five freckles on his left shoulder. He thought he would be better at forgetting.
“And when was that?”
“I don’t know, back in May? I forgot about it completely. Why?”
“No reason, just curious.” He could say that he didn’t know Nate moved to Washington, but there are lies he can do without, especially if there’s no reason for him to lie in the first place.
“He’s drop dead gorgeous, by the way.” Hannah grins and Brad feels something twist in his stomach painfully. Their mother raises an eyebrow. “What? The fact that I’m married doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly lost my sight along with a functioning brain.”
Brad wonders how long it’s going to be until Nate meets someone else. He has this almost masochistic need to know how long it will take for Nate to get over him, like it’s a way of measuring how much he actually cared about Brad.
He doesn’t have too many illusions. People move on, that’s life. It’s not particularly original, but it’s also the truth. Case in point: Jess. Fortunately, this time he let Nate go before history had a chance to repeat itself.
It doesn’t feel like a victory, for some reason.
: : :
The house is empty—his mother had an emergency at work and needed to go in on her day off, his father is in a meeting with a client, Hannah has gone to visit a friend.
Brad doesn’t mind being alone; it’s a nice change of pace after being surrounded by people almost all the time, except when he’s on his bike, just him and the road ahead. He feels the urge to escape more and more often these days. It might be time to pack up his things and go back to his place—he’s been here for a week already, and he needs his space, room to breathe. Here, under the almost constant scrutiny, he sometimes feels like he’s suffocating.
Brad cuts off the lawn mower and doesn’t even bother putting on a shirt before he goes out front to check on the visitor.
Then he stands there in a stunned silence for a moment. His throat isn’t quite working.
Nate is leaning against his rental car. He looks like hell. Like he did right after Iraq. Like he didn’t get nearly enough sleep and food. Like he was so tired of fighting that he was just about to give up, because no one is indestructible.
Brad knows that this time he’s the reason. It almost makes him sick.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, even though he realizes it’s a dumb question.
“I didn’t think this was something we should discuss over the phone, so I came here, since you couldn’t apparently be a man enough to look me in the eye and tell me it’s over.”
It feels almost surreal—he’s standing not five feet away from Nate in his parents’ driveway, half naked, and he can feel a trickle of sweat running down his spine. The sun is so bright it hurts his eyes and everything looks like an oversaturated photograph.
“It is over, Nate.” It’s not only him Brad’s assuring.
“And who gets to decide that? You?” Nate laughs bitterly.
“Look, can we not— Can we go inside?”
Across the road, Mr. Christakos is sitting on his front porch, watching his neighbors under the pretense of reading the paper. Brad has no way of predicting how this thing with Nate will play out, and he doesn’t want a scene, not here, in the suburbs, under the watchful gaze of the local busy-body.
Nate walks in without a word of protest. It’s the first time he’s been inside Brad’s childhood home or anywhere near this side of his personal life, but he doesn’t look for the little pieces of Brad’s past—pictures on the walls, keepsakes, school sports trophies— his eyes trained upon Brad the whole time instead.
“What kind of a game are you playing, Brad?” he asks, coming up to him, nearly pinning him to the wall, but Brad stands his ground, unrelenting, just this once.
“I’m not playing any games.”
Nate takes another step and they’re so close that their bodies are almost touching. Brad can feel Nate’s warmth and he knows Nate must feel the heat radiating off Brad’s skin warmed up by the sun.
“Are you going to tell me that it’s for my own good?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “That I’ll be better off without you? Go ahead, Brad, try. But I call bullshit.”
“We both know it wouldn’t work out anyway, so why the fuck should I stay?”
“What did I do wrong, Brad? What did I do to convince you that one day, I’m just going to leave you with no fucking explanation?”
They aren’t even shouting. It would be easier if they were just shouting.
“You don’t think like that right now, but what happens when you decide that you want to be a Senator after all, Nate? Where the fuck do I fit in then? What if something happens? What if people start digging?” He can’t quite look Nate in the eyes, but he does nonetheless. He won’t be a fucking pussy about this. It’s done. “Don’t fool yourself, people start to watch you, and they will be watching you with a lot of scrutiny. You’re already a regular guest on the fucking CNN and your precious C-SPAN, Nate, this doesn’t come with no repercussions. And you don’t need this… relationship to fuck up your future, so it’s just as well that I leave now. It would happen eventually anyway, and you can’t afford potentially destroying your career over something like that. And neither can I, because DADT is not fucking going anywhere.”
Nate shakes his head in disbelief. “Are you even listening to yourself?” he asks incredulously.
“What? Do you really think this is some spur of the moment bullshit? I thought about it, Nate, for a long time. And I’ve made my decision.”
“This is so fucking selfish of you,” Nate spits out. His jaw is set and his lips form a thin line. “How’s the pity party going on, by the way? Enjoying yourself? Don’t think you’re some fucking martyr in all of this, because what you are is a fucking idiot. You didn’t have to do any of this, but you preferred to wallow in your self-sacrificing bullshit instead, thinking that this is some fucking noble gesture I should appreciate. You know what, Brad? I don’t.”
Brad wants to run. He wants to pin Nate to the nearest wall and kiss him until he forgets how it feels to be so torn inside between what he thinks is the right (smart) thing to do and what he wants.
“I really don’t know what I was expecting when I decided to come here. But obviously not this. Do you really think you don’t mean anything to me? Frankly, Brad, I’m offended that you would think so little of me. And don’t patronize me, don’t treat me like I don’t know what real life looks like, because this is just fucking insulting. Also, I didn’t get through two years when you were living on another fucking continent just to give it up so easily right now. I thought you felt like that, too. Clearly, I was mistaken.”
Brad needs him to stop talking. He needs him to stop talking now.
“I can’t do this right now, my parents are going to be back any minute.”
Nate looks like he’s been slapped.
“So what the fuck am I?” he asks in a perfectly calm voice. “Your dirty little secret?”
He’s never been on the receiving end of Nate’s cold fury and if he’s ever wanted to know how that felt, well, he got his fucking wish.
“Now, if you excuse me, I need to go before anyone has a chance to see us together, because that would be so damaging to my career, wouldn’t it?”
Brad tries not to cringe when he hears the front door slam behind Nate.
Fuck. This is really over.
: : :
It’s dark already, but Brad gets on his bike and violates all speed limits on the way to the interstate and then he just rides ahead with no particular objective in mind. The destination is not what’s important right now, just the road. It helps him clear his head.
He buys a pack of Skittles at a gas station by the interstate somewhere around San Juan Capistrano and eats them, leaning against his bike. He thinks of all those nights in Iraq where he would share his Skittles with the rest of his little dysfunctional family that was 2-1 if he was in a particularly good mood at the time. He almost misses Ray’s yapping at his side.
It’s more difficult than he thought—to figure out a world for himself in which there is no Nate. It feels unexpected and empty and final. They were in a relationship for nearly three years—which is still a pretty short time when compared to the ten years he spent with Jess—and they were apart more than they were together, but Nate found his way under Brad’s skin from the day they met at Pendleton and refused to let go.
Brad doesn’t go home that night; instead, he gets a room at a motel just off the main road and lies in his bed that is too short and too lumpy to be comfortable, listening to the muffled sounds coming from outside as well as the adjoining rooms. He sleeps for exactly ninety-seven minutes that night, but it’s better than lying in his own bed and not sleeping at all.
He’s almost relieved when his leave is over—in between drills and training missions and all the paperwork he still has to fill, he doesn’t have much time for thinking left. This goes on for weeks and nothing gets better. He’s not particularly surprised—it’s taken him years to get over Jess, and now it’s Nate.
Brad comes home one night when it’s already well past o’dark hundred, and the only thing he wants to do is fall onto his mattress face-first and stay that way until morning. His muscles ache and he’s more exhausted than he’s been in ages—he’s pushed himself far beyond his limits that day, until his CO told him to take it easy, and when this man tells someone to take it easy, it means there’s something seriously fucked up with that person. Harper usually rides their asses hard in PT, until they’re sweaty and heaving, and just about ready to fall over with the next step. But that morning Brad woke up hard, dreaming about Nate, and exertion to the point of exhaustion was the only way he could get those thoughts out of his system, so he pushed and pushed until he couldn’t think anymore. At least it was effective.
Brad tries to relax his muscles under the hot spray, but when he walks out of the shower stall, he still feels exhausted and impossibly wired, his whole body tingling, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to sleep right now. So he flicks on his huge TV and keeps changing channels, looking for a decent movie, or a decent anything, for that matter, when some sort of debate catches his attention.
They’re talking about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, putting a positive spin on things, saying that if a Democrat wins the next election, he may put an end to this policy. Brad’s not fucking celebrating yet, they’ll have to forgive him.
It’s mostly talking heads in the studio and some so-called experts on the matter, who talk about it like they fucking know anything. Like they know how it feels to be with someone and have to hide it, because it may seem like all people are created equal, but this notion suddenly doesn’t apply when the government says otherwise.
It’s mostly bullshit, anyway—Brad knows that some day they will repeal DADT, because even the military will have to change eventually (or not, because they managed to ignore the fact that the world went forward just fine up till now, but Brad chooses to be an optimist when it comes to this one). It probably won’t be until after Brad leaves the Corps, though. Which means he did the right thing with Nate, career-wise.
He intends to turn it off before he gets the urge to throw something at his rather expensive TV set, but then, after a commercial break, they introduce another speaker, a retired Captain of the US Marine Corps. When Brad looks at the screen, there’s Nate sitting in the studio, impeccable as always in his steel-gray suit. But apart from that, he looks even worse than when Brad saw him the last time. Fuck, he almost looks as bad as when he came back from Iraq, and the only thing Brad can think when he sees the dark circles under his eyes, deepened lines around his mouth and hollowed-out cheeks is, I did this. He doesn’t let himself look away. This is his punishment.
“What the government should understand,” Nate says in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, answering some question Brad didn’t even hear, “is that this isn’t really an issue for a lot of military personnel who actually see combat. And these are the people to whom endangering the high standards of morale, good order and discipline could prove to be the most detrimental. What really matters to most of those people is whether a person can cover a sector and protect their six if need be, not who he or she goes back home to. This attitude seems to become more and more common these days, but I don’t think this voice is being heard and taken into account by the people in charge of policy-making.”
“So, back in your days as a United States Marine Corps Captain,” the host asks, “it wouldn’t have mattered to you if one of the men under your command turned out to be homosexual or bisexual?”
“I was a Lieutenant at that time,” he corrects with a polite smile, but Brad can see the tightness around his mouth. “And no, it wouldn’t have mattered to me at all. If a person can do his or her job, and do it well, there’s nothing else I could wish for.”
Nate can be an excellent liar when he wants to. There’s nothing in the way he looks and speaks that would give away that it’s a lot more personal to him than he makes it look on the outside—at least nothing that anyone besides maybe a few people could catch. But Brad knows how Nate really feels about this little charade they’re living. Were. Were living.
God, there are days when Brad hates the Corps so much.
He knew what he’d signed up for when he enlisted, he knew there would be things he’d have to give up, and he was willing to make those sacrifices if it meant becoming the person he wanted to be, finally finding a place where he belonged.
He thought he did, at one point, in an entirely different place altogether, and he still isn’t sure he was wrong about it, even though he desperately tries to convince himself that he was.
It’s done anyway. He’s made sure of it.
: : :
When they reach the objective, complete their mission and make it back well under the time allotted, the rest of his team just shake their heads, and Brad can hear them say, “Fuck, dawg, that’s the Iceman for you. Best of the best, brah.”
He wonders briefly if they would be as generous with their praise if they knew he likes to take it up the ass. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t care.
The phone call from Ray catches him in the middle of all this, while Brad is still fighting with himself and with what he thought he knew, what he thought was the right thing to do.
“You’re a fucking lousy friend, Colbert, you know that?” he starts without any preamble. “You didn’t even write me back, you motherfucker, and it hurts my feelings to be ignored like that.”
“Have you been sniffing glue lately, Person? What the fuck are you talking about, you zit-popping, buck-toothed, whiskey tango troglodyte?”
“It’s nice to know some things don’t change. But seriously, Brad. That email I sent you a few weeks back? Ringing any bells?”
“I didn’t get any emails from you, I’d remember. Your total disregard for the rules of punctuation always makes me want to jab myself in the eyes with a fountain pen, and I haven’t felt that particular urge for quite some time.”
A pause. “Oops,” Ray says finally. “I might’ve sent that particular email to the LT instead. Fuck, I must’ve been so fucking loaded that night…”
Oh. That at least explains how Nate had learned that Brad was back in the States in the first place.
“Seriously, though, homes,” Ray continues, unfazed, “what’s with the silent treatment all of a sudden? Don’t you miss your dearest pal Ray-Ray? I know you’re secretly crying into your pillow every day I’m not by your side to provide wisdom and entertainment, but that’s okay, I’m going to be in California soon, so you can wipe your manly tears and chill the fuck out.”
“It’s really not the best moment, Ray.”
Person is silent for a moment.
“Shit, Brad, you won’t even tell me to shut the fuck up? What the hell happened?”
And he tells Ray—as much as he can tell him without saying too much anyway—because, fuck, maybe he’s arrived at a point where he needs someone to hear it.
“I think I fucked up this… thing that I had. With someone.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line, then Ray asks in an incredulous tone, “Brad, are you crying over some pussy?”
“First, I’m not crying. Second, not a pussy. Quite the opposite, I’d say.”
He can hear Ray take a deep breath. “Oh. Oh. Brad, what the fuck? How long have you been moping like this and haven’t said a word to anyone about it? And don’t try to deny it, I know you, and you’re an idiot when it comes to shit like that, so that’s how I know.”
“This is it? Did you manage to miss the part where I told you that I like dick?”
“Not only an idiot, then,” Ray says with an exaggerated sigh. “A fucking Encino-Man-level-of-retardation, fully developed moron. Why the fuck would you even think I’d care if you prefer pussy or dick? As long as it’s not my dick you’re interested in, because my dick is already otherwise occupied, thank you very much, and that would be very awkward for both of us, I really don’t give a fuck what you do in your own fucking bed. Or on your table. Or wherever, you kinky little shit.”
He laughs despite himself. “Thanks, Ray. And, please—“
“Keep it to yourself? What do you think I am, some army retard? I know. Shit, Brad, why are you such a dumb motherfucker sometimes? Go, fix this thing.”
“I don’t think it can be fixed,” Brad admits.
“Oh, please—“
“No, Ray, I’m serious. I don’t think there’s anything left to fix.”
He firmly believes that. If he were Nate, he wouldn’t want to see or talk to himself, because there’s just no way to make what he did right.
: : :
It’s been ages since they saw each other, right after Brad got back from Iraq, but Tyler hasn’t changed much.
“Man, I didn’t even know you were back,” he says to Brad, patting him on the back.
“Yeah, I came back a while ago.”
Brad likes Tyler—he’s intelligent, competent and constitutes one of the few people in Brad’s family that he actually socializes with willingly.
“Wanna grab breakfast? It’s on me,” Tyler suggests and Brad nods, then tells him to hop in. Knowing Tyler, he probably walked all the way from his apartment—it’s not that far from Brad’s favorite beach. “There’s this place, just—“
“Yeah, yeah, just off the road, by the old brewery,” Brad finishes with a grin. They look at each other and laugh.
The small diner is just as Brad remembered it. The waitress he went home with one night, Tracy, still works there and she comes to get their order.
“I haven’t seen you around in a while,” she says, smiling.
“I just got back.” Brad smiles at her, too, but keeps it short. He likes Tracy, though if she hopes that they hook up again, she’s shit out of luck. He’s still not over Nate (an understatement of the century).
When Tracy goes back to get their order, Brad finds himself deep in conversation with Tyler all of a sudden—he can’t remember the last time he talked so much.
“I thought about it at one point,” Tyler tells him. “You know, the military. I thought I’d do good there. But then, well, a lot has changed and I wasn’t so sure anymore. I don’t think I’d fit in anymore.”
Brad wants to laugh bitterly. “You’d adapt eventually. You’d learn how to make do. But if you have doubts, it’s better that you stay away. Not everyone’s cut out for this. Not everyone should be even able to do this.”
Brad can’t help but wonder what his life would be like if Nate had never joined the Corps, if he had gone to finish his degree and change the world somewhere else. He’s happy Nate didn’t, regardless of everything that happened later—they would’ve been so fucked during OIF if he hadn’t been there. And Brad can’t bring himself to regret all that time he and Nate were together, not even now.
He parts ways with Tyler after breakfast, with a promise of getting together sometime soon for a beer or two, and goes back home. There’s a message from Jess on his answering machine, but he barely even listens to it as he walks into the kitchen, looking for the last bottle of Gatorade he remembers he still should have stashed somewhere. He feels like going for a run.
On Nate’s birthday, two weeks later, he leaves his cell phone at home and goes over to his parents’ place. He doesn’t want to risk yielding to the temptation and calling Nate to wish him happy birthday (as if he didn’t know Nate’s cell number and work number by heart anyway). Brad can only hope it’s happy—it’s been over three months now, more than enough time to move on—but he knows he’d lost the right to wish Nate anything that day when he arrived at LAX instead of Dulles.
“What happened? Is the world ending?” his mother says instead of a greeting, moving away to let him in.
“Thank you, mother, that you think so high of me,” he says, pretending to be offended, and bends to kiss her on the cheek.
“Hilarious, Bradley,” she retorts, her face and tone of voice deadpan. “It would be funnier if I didn’t know you so well.”
“You’d guilt-trip me into coming over sooner or later, so you can think of this as a preemptive strike.” Brad grins, feeling the muscles in his face stretch in a half-forgotten grimace.
“Well, since you’re here, could you do me a favor, honey? Could you drop those books lying on the coffee table at Tyler’s place on your way back? He needs them as soon as possible, he has an exam on Architectural History and Theory in a week and he couldn’t get them anywhere.”
“And you happen to have everything that’s been written on that topic in the history of humankind. Of course.” Brad polishes an apple on his t-shirt and bites into the fruit, looking at his mother with a vaguely amused expression.
“Well, you wouldn’t be too far off that mark. Anyway, he was supposed to pick them up himself, but he’s down with stomach flu and I promised him someone would bring him the books. You do remember where he lives, right?”
“Yeah, I do. Actually, I ran into him a couple of weeks back, we got breakfast together.”
“Was his boyfriend with him?”
Brad can feel his eyebrows go up. “His boyfriend?”
“Oh, right. That’s fairly recent news, you could not know. I met him twice, I think. Darren’s such a nice guy. They met at the university.”
“And that’s all? He’s a nice guy?”
“If this is your thinly-veiled way of asking if I’m okay with that, then the answer is yes. Why wouldn’t I be? We live in the twenty-first century, for God’s sake. Now, my brother may not be aware of the fact that the Victorian age is over, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
“So I think I can safely assume that uncle Christopher didn’t take it well,” Brad says, a little out of breath all of a sudden. It’s not what he expected from his parents—this sort of easy acceptance, just like that. Another thing that goes in the wrong about it column.
“An understatement.” His mother nods at him to pass her an apple. “They don’t speak to each other. Your father tried to reason with Chris, but my brother can be dumber than a sack of bricks.”
“And Aunt Joan?”
“She’s sort of quietly supportive, because she doesn’t want to risk arguing with Chris all the time, but I’m afraid that might not be enough.”
“So they’ll be taking sides now? Jesus fucking Christ…”
“It’s absolutely unreasonable and awful, but what can I do? Hit him over the head repeatedly until he understands that there’s nothing wrong with being gay? We’re not five anymore.”
Brad shakes his head.
Later in the afternoon he takes the books and drives to Tyler’s apartment, where he declines an invitation for a cup of coffee. On his way out, he runs into the boyfriend—or at least so he supposes. He does look like a nice guy.
: : :
He falls asleep on his couch halfway through an episode of Battlestar Galactica, too tired to follow the plot. It doesn’t happen often—he’s trained to be constantly alert, so dozing off in front of the TV is not really his thing.
He wakes up with a start a couple of hours later, rubs his eyes and looks at the huge flat screen—they’re showing reruns of early SG-1. Brad knows he’s dreamt of something, but the remnants of the dream escape him; the only thing he can still make out is the curve of Nate’s neck, bent over a book, revealing a few pale freckles marking his skin. Brad used to map them with his mouth, committing each and every inch of Nate’s body to his memory.
He still misses this, he’s honest enough with himself to admit that. This may be better in the long run— Nate will go on living his own life without Brad, successful and free of entanglements—though right now it doesn’t feel right in any respect. Brad’s used to not getting what he wants, but this time the sense of acute loss doesn’t lessen over time and he thinks (knows) that the only thing he’s achieved is making them both miserable. But even if—just if—they were to get past everything Brad has put between them to separate himself from Nate while he was trying to fend him off, it’s not a simple matter of forgive and forget. In retrospect, Brad knows what he did was beyond the pale, but at the time he thought what he did was right.
There’s a sound of water dripping from the tap. Brad stands up and stretches, trying to work out a kink in his neck—all the joints pop and crack as he does (his body may not look like it, but it feels a lot older than Brad himself), then goes to the kitchen to turn the tap off all the way. The noise makes his skin itch.
In the kitchen, he drinks a glass of icy-cold water, rinses it out and is about to go back to the living room when he sees his cell phone blinking in the darkness. He must have left it here after coming home and didn’t hear the vibrations all the way from the living room.
There’s a message left on his voicemail and he freezes when he hears the voice.
“This probably isn’t the best idea, but… I just didn’t know what else to do,” Nate says, sounding tired or slightly drunk, or tired and drunk. But more than that, he sounds desperate. Something in Brad’s stomach clenches. “I just got the news. One of my friends in the Corps got seriously injured in Afghanistan, they don’t know if he’s going to make it, and I… I guess I just needed to hear your voice. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have called.” There’s a pause after that; Brad thinks that’s the end of the message, but then he hears Nate’s hitched breath as he continues, stumbling over the words, “I called five times before I decided to leave this message and I hung up every time just before the signal.” He laughs quietly, and yes, he’s definitely fucked up on something. Brad hopes he didn’t mix painkillers with alcohol by mistake. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I just had to make sure you were okay.”
Brad feels short of breath, like the air has been pushed out of his lungs. He listens to the Nate’s voice a couple more times, because he can’t not.
The message feels like a punch to the gut—he should be there, with Nate, helping him get through this, but instead he’s here, because he decided to fuck up the only thing he’s really wanted in a long, long time. On the long list of mistakes in Brad’s life, this must be the biggest one. And it’s all his fault.
: : :
His plane leaves in a few hours and he still has to go back to Pendleton. He needs at least two days of leave. Fortunately, that can be arranged.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes for a moment. “You might want to sit down. Is dad back yet?”
“No, he’s coming back on Monday. Why? Brad? What’s going on?”
They’re in the kitchen, his mother sitting at the table, Brad leaning against the counter. “I was in a relationship for over two years. With a man. You remember my ex-CO, Nate Fick, right?”
He sees the surprise on her face.
“And I walked out on him, because I thought it would be better for him. For both of us. But mostly for him. Guess what, it isn’t.”
“Brad…” His mother takes a deep breath and looks at him.
The relief washes over him and he lets out the air he was holding in his lungs the whole time, waiting for her to answer. She doesn’t look angry or disappointed, she just seems concerned.
“What can I do?” she asks.
“Can you give me a ride to the airport?”
: : :
So he was wrong about a lot of things.
It’s not that all the reasons for walking away have suddenly disappeared, it’s just a matter of what he wants more in the end.
He thought he was going to be able to live without Nate.
He was wrong about that, too.
He doesn’t know what he will do if Nate tells Brad that he can live without him. He’s not prepared for this possibility.
Brad doesn’t use the key he still has—it didn’t occur to him to send it back to Nate at the time, and he can feel it now in the pocket of his leather jacket. He closes his hand around it, feels the little grooves dig into his palm.
It’s after 10 p.m. already on the East Coast, and Brad has no guarantee that Nate is going to be at his apartment—he could be out for dinner, or on a date, or just getting beers with his friends. Or he could be at home, sitting in his reading glasses over a stack of reports, his lips bitten as always when he’s worried.
A neighbor who probably recognizes him, if her smile is anything to go by, lets him into the building on her way out, and Brad waits another fifteen minutes just outside Nate’s door before ringing the doorbell. For a moment, there’s nothing, no sound on the other side of the door, but then it opens and he sees Nate for the first time in months, standing just a few feet away. Nate seems to be doing better now, but his eyes are still tired and he’s just this side of too thin to look healthy.
Brad’s heart is pounding like he’s just run ten miles. His throat feels dry.
“Brad.” Nate looks half-shocked and half-relieved, but he’s still standing in the doorway, not letting Brad in just yet. Maybe he won’t let him in at all.
“I got your message.”
Nate opens his mouth, which forms a little o, but then realization dawns on him. He closes his eyes and Brad can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows.
“Come in,” Nate says and steps aside.
“And I told my mother. About us.” Brad leans against the door.
“What? But you said—“
“I know. I don’t care.”
He reaches out to touch Nate, but he freezes mid-way and pulls back, suddenly self-conscious, aware of his every move. Maybe Nate doesn’t want Brad touching him. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“I’m tired of games, Brad,” Nate tells him and Brad’s heart sinks, something in his stomach twisting painfully as he clenches his fists. “I’m fucking tired of waiting for you to understand that I love you more than my goddamn career. I’m fucking tired of waiting for you to understand that I love you and I’m not going to use you and throw you away like some spoiled kid that got bored with his newest toy. So if you don’t or can’t or won’t understand that, just leave now, because I can’t do this again. Just go, Brad.”
Brad doesn’t move from his place by the door.
“I know that I’m sorry doesn’t fix anything, and I understand if you want me to go, but I needed to see you, to check if you were okay. You didn’t sound okay and I just couldn’t… I had to make sure.”
Nate makes a strange sound, like he’s trying to catch a breath and choking on it.
“I’m fine,” he says.
“Good.” Brad takes a deep breath. There’s silence after that, and he feels like he should say something, only he can’t find the right words. “How is your friend doing?”
“We’re still waiting for the news, but he’ll probably be all right.”
Nate rubs his eyes with his knuckles. He looks like he could use some sleep, and Brad can’t help but wonder if that’s what he looked like when Brad’s unit was attacked. Apparently there was no sit-rep as to their status for what felt like fucking forever—at least that’s what his mother told him when he talked to her on the phone the first chance he got after that clusterfuck.
“We’re going to talk about this, Brad,” he says then and looks at Brad with resolve. “I know words aren’t your forte in situations like this one, but I deserve a fucking explanation. And not that pile of crap you tried to feed me back in California.”
Nate makes an inviting gesture with his hand, and Brad trails after him into the living room, observing as he pours a tumbler of whiskey and holds it out in his direction. Brad shakes his head, then reconsiders and takes the glass from Nate. He might need it later.
“So?” Nate prompts, sitting in the armchair, his own shot of whiskey in hand. He plays with the glass, but he doesn’t drink. “Do you have anything to say?”
“Just for the record, I really thought I was doing you a favor.”
“I know. And I was serious, Brad. Don’t do me any more favors. That one was enough. Now, I would really like to know what the fuck that was all about.”
There’s hardness in Nate, a thin layer of steel just beneath the skin that’s always there, but sometimes it becomes more visible, more pronounced. This is one of those times. Brad knew Nate wouldn’t let it go just like that, not after everything that happened, but at least he didn’t tell him to go to hell the moment he opened the door. That has to count for something.
“I thought you’d be better off that way.”
“In case you forgot, I’m not a two-year-old. I can decide for myself.”
“I know.”
“So you know that now, but you didn’t back then?” Nate’s jaw is set and his fingers are wrapped tightly around the glass.
“What the fuck do you want me to say? I knew you wanted to do something that would matter, and then you took that job at the Department of State, and all I could think of was that I was standing in the way. So I decided to do something about it.”
“See? That’s the problem.” Nate lets out an exasperated sigh. “You thought you should do something about it and didn’t even bother to ask me my opinion. You thought it was a done deal, because you said so, but that’s not how relationships work, Brad, for God’s sake.”
Brad shakes his head and looks straight at Nate.
“I know that now, too.”
“Good.” Nate knocks back the whiskey in his glass and rubs his eyes. “Look, Brad, I’m tired, I didn’t get a lot of sleep this last night and I may be a pussy civilian, but I’d really like to go to bed right now.”
Brad takes this as his cue. “Sure. I’m going to find a room for the night,” he says. “Is there a hotel somewhere nearby?”
Nate stares at him. “When I said that I’d like to go to bed, I meant both of us. You look tired, and if you think that you’re going to be sleeping at some hotel tonight, think again.”
“But—” Brad hesitates for a moment. “Well, I guess I could take the couch.”
“Brad, don’t be ridiculous. This conversation is far from being over, but the couch is really not where I want you tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the day after that, for that matter.”
Once they slip under the covers, Brad doesn’t dare take a look at Nate, he just stares at the ceiling for a while, aware of how close they are to each other. He’s about to flip to his side, his back to Nate, when he feels Nate’s fingers graze his palm. It’s just a brush of hands, a gesture even more innocent than that first kiss they shared back in Iraq, in a dark corner of the abandoned cigarette factory, but somehow this, here, feels like a beginning, too.