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The first time they do it, is a quick, violent thing. Frank makes him bend over the seat of the jeep, pulls down his cargo pants with one hand, and his other hand is clasped too tightly around Billy’s neck, pushing his face down, and his right cheek rubs against the car upholstery at each stroke and it burns, even if not as much as Frank’s cock inside him, but Billy laughs because only one of those things is going to give him a rugburn, and he’d rather have it on his face than on his ass, and when he tells Frank the same thing - this is hours later, by the way, when they are, once again, both in their clothes and in their own right minds, sitting in front of a fire with a lukewarm beer in their hands - Frank laughs too, and says boy, I can give you rugburns on both your face and your ass if you want, and that’s when Billy realizes there’s something wrong with him, because Frank has called him boy and he’s immediately become hard as a rock, and that night he keeps thinking about it because yes, he wants it, he wants Frank to call him boy again, he wants Frank to fuck him again, he wants Frank, just Frank, and he wants him badly, right now, and tomorrow, and forever, and it scares him because Frank doesn’t belong to him - what happened between them is just something that happens between all brothers in arms (every vet says so) because they live a hard life and they only have each other, and what else a man can do, right? You help a brother out, right?
The second time is actually worse, a furious mess of blood and sweat, and they have to keep each other quiet because they’re not alone in the tent, and it’s not like anyone cares, - they’re all brothers after all - but it’s a matter of principle, so they push their hands against each other’s mouth and the dirt under their fingernails ends up on their tongues and they grind it between their teeth, trying not to make a sound. Everything here tastes the same anyway: like gunpowder and sand and whatever shit they put in their rations tonight. And Billy doesn’t really care about the food, but Frank has a girlfriend now, and he’s got a taste for fancy dinners and sunday lunches and brunches, all that stupid stuff only women care about, so he complains about the army’s snub almost every day, and every time Billy rolls his eyes and calls him princess, but he only does it so Frank can tell him I’ll show you who’s the princess, boy. But tonight Frank’s not showing him anything, he’s running, running away from his own mind and taking Billy with him because today, for the very first time, they’ve seen what a landmine does to the man next to you, and it’s like a blood baptism everyone says, and it’s true, so true, but they both had felt the need to shake off that new, unrequested holiness of those who survived purely by mistake: there was too much life left on them, so they had to do something with it, and this is what they have chosen, Frank’s fingers around Billy’s cock, and Billy’s fingers inside Frank’s ass, and it’s a mess, such a mess, and every time they close their eyes they see John’s body in pieces, and Billy’s reasonably certain that some of the filth under his nails is actually John, and he cries and wants to puke, but Frank pretends not to notice, just turns him on his stomach to fuck him, hard and good, until they’re both so exhausted there’s no more space to think, to remember, to grieve.
The first time they do it in an actual bed they’re in Billy’s apartment, and it’s the night of Frank’s bachelor party. They’re drunk, but not that drunk, and they’re tired, but not that tired. He’s seen Frank naked too many times to count, but never like this. They never had the chance to undress each other, to talk between kisses, to joke and laugh and be something more than two bodies in the dark, grabbing at their needs or at their mental sanity by using the thing closer to them. And Billy’s always been the charming one between the two of them, but Frank has his own magic when it comes down to this, and he smiles into Billy’s skin, and bites him, and tells him he’ll soon have him on his knees, begging for more, like a good little boy, he says, and Billy tries to fight him, but he knows he doesn’t stand a chance, he’s too weak, he’s too happy, and tomorrow Frank will be a married man, but tonight he’s still his brother, and when Billy takes him into his mouth Frank cups his face into his hand and there’s tenderness in the way he touches him - it’s something new, and quiet, and pleasant - and for the first time they take it slow, and they fuck looking into each other’s eyes, laughing for the ridiculous position Billy has to take for that to happen, but the sheets under them are made of nice cotton and there are no dead bodies around, no stink of death, no taste of blood, and they come with the same violence, grunting into each other shoulders, but the night doesn’t end with the orgasm, and Frank stays, for the first and last time he slips next to him into the bed, wraps an arm around Billy’s waist, leaves a kiss on his neck and buries his nose into his hair and he stays.
The second time they do it in a bed they’re in Frank’s bedroom, and everything’s soft and pink and Billy can’t stop laughing at Maria’s porcelain dolls staring down at them with disapproving glass eyes, and Frank has to put a pillow over his head to make him shut up. It’s weird to have sex here, in a bed Franks shares with someone else, in a house where Billy is always a welcomed guest, but a guest nonetheless. Billy doesn’t really care about Frank’s second life, he doesn’t even like to think about it, and he knows Frank’s going to regret the moment he’s pushed him into this room - Maria’s pregnant, he’d told him an hour ago, with a new light in his eyes, and Billy had smiled and congratulated him, and then he had asked him how long it had been since the last fuck he had, and now here they are, and Billy knows that this is wrong, that they shouldn’t be doing this here, it’s a mistake, something Frank’s never going to forgive to himself. And yet it feels so good to come into Maria’s sheets, dirtying the pink duvet of himself. It feels like payback for what was stolen from him, for this brother that he now has to share - and Billy’s an only child: he’s not good at sharing. He could stay until Maria's return, but as soon as they finish he gets up and into his clothes again, leaving it to Frank to take care of the mess they left behind, to hide the evidence, to invent lies and false explanations. After all, he’s not the one at fault here.
The last time they do it before everything goes to shit, they’re on a mission again (Frank’s last one, even if they didn’t know that at the time), the Afghanistan's sky above them is shining with stars - bright little dots made of ancient light blinking down at them - and it's the only clean, graceful thing in that hell, it’s the most beautiful sky they’ll ever see, because in New York there are no bombs and no wars, but you can’t see stars like these ones. He tells that to Frank, like a joke, but Frank doesn’t laugh, doesn’t seem to appreciate it. He misses home, Billy can tell, and he despises him for it. He still goes to his knees, still sucks his cock the way he likes, still bends over when he’s asked to, still let himself get fucked in the ass like a good little boy, but Frank keeps his eyes close now, and when he comes it’s not Billy’s name that he whispers in the dark. Something between them breaks that night, and it hurts, but not as much as Billy would’ve expected, not as much as he had feared, and maybe it’s because the blame only lies with Frank, Frank’s the one who's changed, Frank’s the one who's gotten soft, Frank’s the one who still doesn't know what mess he's gotten himself into.
The last time they do it is after Maria’s and the kids’ funerals, and, in retrospect, it feels exactly like a last time should. Frank stinks of alcohol and unwashed skin, he stutters with his words, his voice is cracked and wet and confused, and his fingers stumble on the shirt buttons, shaking too much to take a hold. Billy undresses him carefully, almost tenderly, and guides him into his bed - a new bed, bigger, much more comfortable and much more expensive than the previous one, with Egyptian-cotton sheets and silk and feather pillows, and all the creature comforts he could think about - and he kisses him first, and he’s gentle with him, and he tells him that he loves him and Frank nods, and he cries, and he can’t get it up on his own, so Billy has to help him with his mouth and his hands, and he doesn’t mind it because he doesn’t know yet that this will be the last time, and why should he? Frank’s still alive, and he belongs, once again, only to him now. It will take time to get over this, sure, but they have all the time in the world. It doesn’t matter. Billy can fix this. No problem at all.