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Ray has a dirty mind. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. He says everything he thinks out loud because, let’s face it, he’s one astute and funny motherfucker, and he figures he ought to share these pearls of wisdom that zip through his head at random like a 40 mike mike.
But sometimes he can keep secrets. Sometimes he has to.
After Provision 52A was passed through the Corps, anyone with Special Talents had to transfer. They weren’t, like, cordoned off to some sort of concentration camp or some crazy shit like that, but they were put in a special division that trained and made use of their abilities.
Ray kind of wishes he could sneak into that group just to see what kinds of fucked up things some of those Marines can do. Marines are all kinds of fucked up normally, but with Special Talents? He’d give his left nut to see that.
But in all honesty, he’s not sure he’d be all that surprised by what he might come across considering the fact that he’s been to war and seen things.
Just the other day he saw Chaffin take the unsterilized end of his KA-BAR to a pop a blister, and what came out was a shit-ton scarier than that scene from Alien — the one where the baby alien pops out of that guy’s stomach.
Also, the other day Brad and the LT were totally —
“Ray! Get your head outta your ass and help me with this for a second, would you?”
“What now?” Ray asks before he even looks over.
When he does, he sees Walt on the ground with the Mark-19 partially dismantled. He drops his hands from the steering wheel, and he hesitates for a hot second before swinging his legs out of the victor into the sunlight.
He walks over in the sudden wash of heat, as if the universe turned the dial on the celestial thermostat between the time he was in the shade of the humvee and out of it. As he drops his pot, he feels something like dread roil around in his gut, but he’s a goddamn Recon Marine — a death-dealing, blood-crazed warrior — so he soldiers on. He settles in the dirt beside Walt, and of course that’s when it hits him.
The visions always hit him like a blow to the back of the head.
And they always come in snippets.
This time his first image is of standing against the hot metal of their humvee, MOPP suspenders around the waist, boxer briefs pulled down just under balls, and cock stuffed into a slick mouth. Hands rubbing the scruff of military-shorn hair, tugging closer, thrusting further down a throat — down, down, down until all that’s left is a boneless feeling and satiation. Suction until there’s nothing left but that good kind of emptiness and a shit-eating grin.
The funny thing about these smutty snippets is that what Ray feels and what he tastes and what he sees don’t come from his own point of view. They come from Walt’s. Yeah, that’s right — frolics-with-bunnies-in-meadows-and-sleeps-on-haystacks-in-the-sunshine Walt fuckin’ Hasser.
Ray could possibly imagine Rudy getting off on this shit, being all Zen with someone else’s body no matter what anatomical parts were there or not, but at first it really wigged Ray out.
During these visions, it’s like Ray’s feeling through Walt’s fingertips, tasting through Walt’s tongue, looking through Walt’s eyes. And in them, it’s always hot gay sex between him and Walt.
So he watches himself tug down Walt’s boxers, sees himself take the man into his mouth, licks around the head, presses his lips tight around the crown and hollow out his cheeks from sucking so hard — and Ray would totally suck hard because he doesn’t ever do anything by halves.
But then the snippet cuts off after Ray sees himself pull back with a smug grin — and why wouldn’t he have a smug grin on his face? If he had to be honest, he’s pretty positive that he’d give the best goddamn blow jobs on the planet. If he did that sort of thing. And he’d be one to know he’s ace at giving head, since in these little snippets of hot fuckin’ gay porn he’s feeling exactly what he’s doing to somebody else. To Walt.
The next snippet is in medias res — and fuck yeah Ray knows what in medias res is; he was the fuckin’ captain of the debate team. He knows all sorts of random and useless shit. And if this isn’t in the middle of all the action, he doesn’t know what is.
Anyway, this time he’s taking it up the ass. And, OK, so he’s never taken it before in real life, but he can feel how it feels to give it, and he can hear himself moaning like a cheap-ass Phuket whore over the ‘unh unh unh’ sounds Walt makes with each thrust, so he figures it’s pretty fuckin’ good all-around.
Ray watches himself do these things, feels it, and he thinks that it might be pretty messed up. He’s not sure what to make of it either because last time he checked, he’s almost 100 percent positive that he’s only ever fucked chicks before. He’s only really checked out chicks too. Especially ones with big tatas and cock-sucker lips. And as far as he knows, that was all well and good and enough for him.
But he does have to admit that these things he sees are also hot as fuckin’ hell.
He is hot as fuckin’ hell. And also, maybe Walt in his visions is a little gorgeous too — in a children of the corn and naïve hillbilly kind of way.
It’s like Ray’s brain is forcing itself into someone else’s, latching on and not letting go until there’s some sort of release. Usually that release is the result of Ray tucking away somewhere — which is to say, not-so-fuckin’ far away because, hello, they’re in a war zone — and jacking off with the speed of someone with a mentality of: “The world might end before I blow my load so I’d better finish quick.”
So he usually waits it all out, sees himself blowing cock or taking it on all fours or front-wards and backwards and — fuckin’-A, he never really thought he was very flexible, but apparently his brain thinks otherwise.
So, yeah. Ray has a really fuckin’ dirty mind.
“Dude, what’s the matter with you? You’ve been spacing out left and right,” Walt says, cutting into his thoughts.
Ray’s glad he has the barrel he’s supposed to be cleaning spread out across his lap. He can feel his hard as fuck cock pressing into the heat of the metal as he glances up. “I’m not spacing out,” he protests, slowly pushing himself up. “You’re just boring me.” He holds the big barrel of the Mark-19 in front of himself, trying to act casual about his hard-on.
Then he turns around and drops it unceremoniously to his feet, neatly stepping over it and walking away toward a nice, private berm a couple of mikes away.
“Fuckin-A, Person! When I asked for your help, I didn’t mean for you to piss all over everything!” Walt protests. Ray flips him the bird over his shoulder.
He’s gotten pretty good at being casual in covering up his hard-ons.
*****
Sometimes Ray wonders if he’s going crazy. Crazier than normal, anyway, because it’s another day in Bumfuck, Iraq, and they’re parked on another road with the sun blasting waves of heat down on them. And Ray’s roasting in the driver’s seat. As usual. If that’s not enough to drive a guy crazy, he’s not sure what is.
Plus, he’s still getting a ton of those porny visions.
Walt’s sitting on the hood of the humvee tanning or something so he can regain his redneck farmer’s tan, and the side of his shirt is rucked up a bit on the left from his position right against the windshield. Ray can’t look ahead without seeing a bit of Hasser, and he’s reaching out to fire up the victor just for kicks when Walt says, “Don’t even think about it, Person.”
Ray drops his hand and sighs in frustration. “How the fuck do you do that?”
“I can read minds,” Walt replies easily, turning slightly to cut an amused glance at him through the grime-covered windshield. The bit of his shirt that was pushed up drops when he shifts, and Ray can’t really help it that he gets a little bit more pissed off. But then Walt’s tongue peeks out and swipes his bottom lip, and Ray figures that he’s maybe not as pissed off as he could be.
“Why don’t you go join Special Talents Sector then?” Ray says, reaching out instead for some Copenhagen.
“Because STS is for shortbus retards who can’t keep their secrets to themselves,” Brad cuts in, ducking his head into the humvee. He curls onto his seat, pulling in his long limbs until he almost fits into the passenger side. Then he glances sideways at Ray. “You, however, may be a good fit for Sector.”
Ray eyes him warily, wondering if somehow Brad knows about these visions. He hasn’t gotten one in the middle of driving, but it’s still early, and Ray’s said and done a lot of shit that karma hasn’t bitten him in the ass for yet.
“I’m not the one who went all ninja over the hajjis last night with Special Iceman Eyes of Doom,” Ray snipes back to cover up how uncomfortable he is. “‘There are men in the trees.’ Who says that shit?”
Brad looks at him in full at that, studies Ray’s face in a way that’s sharp and alert and meaner than he’s ever done. That moment lasts for so long that Ray’s gut starts to churn oddly with dread or something close to it that he hasn’t felt before. Just when he’s about to pussy out and claim that he was just kidding, Walt hops off the hood and comes around to poke his head through Ray’s window.
“You’d better watch out, Person,” Walt says, voice dragging on a warning but laced with humor. “Brad might go ninja all over your ass next. If you were even close to being someone to worry about, that is. But I think you’ll be OK.” He pats Ray’s shoulder consolingly with one hand, quickly jerking it back just before Ray can slap the fuck out of it.
“Fuck you,” he says, pointing a finger first at Walt, who just laughs on his way back to the turret, “and fuck you,” he adds, pointing at Brad, who finally turns his icy blues away. “Y’all would crash and burn without my mad driving skills.”
“We’re Oscar Mike,” Brad calls out to Trombley, who’s taking forever on his dump in the distance. Reporter comes up scribbling fiercely in his notebook from whatever tirade Espera’s been spouting at him from Two-One Bravo.
Ray turns the engine over and waits.
He listens as Reporter shifts for a few minutes until he finds a position just this side of comfortable, as Walt climbs up into the turret, as Trombley runs over and promptly falls asleep with his head half out of the window like a psychotic puppy.
And of course a vision hits him right then and there just as he depresses the gas pedal.
Fuckin’ Murphy’s Law at work. Or maybe it’s the karma catching up with him. What-the-fuck-ever.
“Pick it up, Ray,” Brad orders, and Ray presses harder on the pedal, trying to keep his eyes focused on the road past the phantom images of himself sucking cock again. His brain seems pretty into sucking cock even though he’s never done that before.
Maybe it’s because Imaginary-Ray is so fuckin’ good at it.
But then that image cuts out. Now Walt-in-his-head is in charge, and Ray is of course feeling through Walt and holding Imaginary-Ray’s hips steady and sucking him down. His own cock tastes bitter and sharp on his tongue, and his knees ache from kneeling on the ground. Though it always creeps him out when he hears his own sex noises during these visions, it still seems to turn him on like no other.
Ray bites down on his lip and tries to focus on the road past the sound of his own panting breaths and long pornographic moans in his head.
The only plus side that Ray can see about this set-up is that each Marine has to cover his own sector when they’re driving in the humvee, which means that none of them will be checking out Ray’s suddenly alert nether regions.
And then they drive over a pretty fuckin’ awful pothole, and the vision cuts out.
“Ow, motherfucker!” Walt exclaims.
“You all right, Walt?” Brad calls back.
“Fine! Just smacked my head on the gun when I spaced out for a minute. I’m OK,” Walt calls back.
Ray can barely hear them talk he’s so relieved that the vision was cut off. Now driving seems easy as pie. He’s still hard as fuck though.
“How about you watch the goddamn road, Person?” Walt shouts down after a minute.
“Shut up, you redneck chicken-fucker,” Ray yells back, but he grins.
Walt’s got a dirty mouth. That is, his mouth is as dirty as any Marine’s, but it’s pretty filthy in regard to what he puts in it in Ray’s head too. Ray finds it kind of hard to give a shit about either definition though.
He didn’t even know it was Walt at first in his visions.
When he first started getting them, Ray thought his brain was just being creepy or this was his punishment for dipping acid in high school that one time (three, no, OK — five times).
And, fine, so experiencing these visions through someone else’s point of view is still pretty fucked up, but Ray has to admit he was somewhat relieved when he realized that at least there wasn’t some sort of freaky Ray-on-Ray action going on, even if it did still turn out to be gay-action. And gay-action with Hasser.
He was so relieved that he dropped his pants on the side of the TL meeting at their humvee and started singing “Sk8r Boi” at the top of his lungs, all while pissing “USA” into the sand. It felt good to hold his dick in his hand again without feeling dirty about it. Needing a combat jack after watching yourself-and-what-you-thought-was-yourself-too get it on made even Ray feel a little dirty.
And it wasn’t always all dirty and messed up like it is now. Back then they were just snippets of kisses — yeah, goddamn closed-mouth kisses and quick pecks and soft presses of lips and, OK, it wasn’t all bad. It was kind of nice sometimes — maybe — but if he’s going to have visions of gay action, it better be some hardcore porn.
There was maybe even a moment of holding hands in there — hard, calloused, happy boy hands, which was on-level with Fruity Rudy gay, for chrissakes. Ray likes to think he didn’t actually like the feeling of happy hand-holding, but he does remember what holding his own hand felt like, what doing that made him feel like in those older visions, and it still weirds him out that it wasn’t terrible.
He doesn’t even get those prissy manicures for men or use any of that exfoliating lotion shit Rudy tries to throw in everyone’s faces, so it’s not like his hands are baby soft or anything.
Anyway, during those good ol’ days, Ray would continue to jack off like normal. Not slow — he’s not really into slow except for special occasions — but not as if he was trying to give his own dick rug burn with the calluses of his fingers. Back then, he’d sneak away behind a tall-enough sand dune or a berm or twenty-seven.
Not that he’s counting how many berms in Iraq he’s jacked off behind or anything (and that’s not counting the number of ranger graves and behind-the-humvee jacks either — and he totally does not have a running tally in his head of all the above that would make a pretty fuckin’ cool Excel chart for later).
But yeah — his dick wasn’t always hard back then, and his visions weren’t always so hardcore twink movie-esque.
It began with kisses.
If that’s the way it all started, then Ray concludes that he’s not actually going crazy. He would never start his porny little visions out with fuckin’ gay-ass kissing. If he had any control over them, that is. So the validity of the crazy theory is probably a negative.
Maybe he’s just seeing the future.
As soon as that thought crosses his mind, he immediately thinks that he might have a shit-ton of new problems aside from just having a few (hundred) dirty thoughts.
*****
When Ray thinks about it — which is pretty much all of the time that they’re not shooting at people or getting shot at — he thinks it’s not really the gay part he has a problem with. It’s not the fact that it’s Hasser. It’s not even that there are one-too-many dicks in the equation.
It’s that maybe he is actually seeing the future. Which means it’s his duty to go group up with the STS freaks. Or he might get found out and be forced to join up with them in addition to being NJP-ed for not fessing up on his own. And that shit is just not on.
He enlisted right out of high school and became one of the best goddamn recruits in his class at Pendleton, despite being one of the smallest and most spastic. And then he found out about Recon and couldn’t not be one of the elite. Their fuckin’ patches said “Swift, Silent, Deadly” for chrissakes — and maybe the “silent” part doesn’t necessarily pertain to him, but the other two are definitely spot-on.
He’s not about to give up all of the work it took to get here just because he’s having dirty visions of all the hot fucking he and Hasser are going to get up to in the future.
But then they get set up at that roadblock, and Walt’s the first and the last to open fire.
Ray is sitting in his normal spot in their victor, Walt is crouched by the front right wheel, and Brad is standing in front of the entire platoon like the fuckin’ Anal Achilles he is with his stupid smiley-faced smoke grenades.
And then the next moment Brad’s nudging Walt into the back seat, Walt looks comatose, and Brad’s yelling over the stillness that spreads across the entire platoon, “We’re Oscar Mike!” Everyone climbs into their victors, and the quiet is overwhelmed then by the sound of a dozen humvees firing up.
Ray watches out of the corner of his eye as Reporter walks around from Trombley’s side and shuts Walt’s door for him. He doesn’t know what to think about that.
So he drives on.
He always drives on, but for once his focus isn’t on the road in front of him. Brad might think that Ray’s running commentary on the general fuckery of the universe detracts from his situational awareness on the road, but Ray has this theory that he could talk out of his ass in his sleep.
This time, however, he’s not talking. No one’s talking. Brad’s staring out of his side of the humvee as usual, radiating Iceman waves of lethal professionalism, and Ray is filling up the silence by glancing back every so often. Walt’s still staring vacantly at the headrest of Brad’s seat.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” Brad snaps, and Ray doesn’t jump out of surprise — not even a little bit.
Seriously though. What the fuck. “Jesus Christ, Brad. Do you have fuckin’ eyes on the back of your head?” Ray gripes, but he turns back around in time to swerve around a huge-ass pothole.
Something stiffens in the line of Brad’s shoulders when Ray sticks his tongue out at him, but there’s no way Brad saw that. Ray faces forward again regardless.
“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Brad says.
“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Ray mimicks, putting on his bitch-face. But then he does shut the fuck up, because he maybe shot another look to the back, saw Walt’s face, and then almost hit another pothole before he deftly drove around it.
So he sits straight, and for once he shuts the fuck up, but that doesn’t mean the running commentary isn’t still going on in his head. This time, though, his thoughts are more on a past trajectory. He remembers hearing the ‘pop-thunk’ of Brad’s smiley-faced grenade, seeing the curl of blue smoke as it proliferated through the air, hearing the shots before he realized that the car was still coming.
And then he remembers the moment he realized who it was that fired and how it wasn’t any of the people he thought it might have been.
He couldn’t see Walt crouched down by that front right tire after the fact, but he did hear Brad yell at him. Ray was halfway out the door when he heard Walt say, “The car kept comin’,” and then his legs got stuck or something, and he just sat there.
He watched as Brad led Walt to the back, nudged him in, turned on his civilian voice, and that’s when Ray knew that shit’d gone stupid. He almost wishes it was Trombley again because that fucker’s psycho. Now Walt might be psycho.
And Ray’s not thinking about future fucking. Not at all. Except maybe a little bit.
But he’s also thinking about Walt’s sanity.
Walt’s the one that sings Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash songs under his breath when Brad’s not within hearing distance. Walt’s the one who licks his lips like a kid and stands all day in the turret tapping out the beat against the driver’s seat to whatever song Ray feels like singing. Walt’s the one Ray has visions of kissing and fucking and being fucked by.
Walt’s not the one who fires first.
Except this time he did.
That night, they’re parked off-road. Ray can hear Captain America crying about something again in the distance as he makes his rounds on watch.
He wonders if he should maybe go find Walt, just to make sure he’s not doing something stupid. Because if his special visions of the future are anything to go by, they’re going to be getting pretty up close and personal, and Ray doesn’t want to have to deal with damaged goods just because some idiots at the roadblock didn’t know when to stop and turn around.
He wonders if Walt just needs this explained to him.
But then he realizes that his visions have stopped.
*****
It’s actually not until that night when Ray realizes he hasn’t had an accidental hard-on all day. He builds calluses on his older calluses as he digs his ranger grave after his shift on watch, and he starts picking at them when he hunkers down into his grave.
That’s when it hits him.
Not another vision, but the fact that he’s not aching with the need to jack off again. He’s almost not sure if his calluses are from digging graves or keeping his hands constantly at ten and two or combat jacking like a horny as fuck jackrabbit.
Regardless, he checks himself, but his balls are still normal-colored, and his dick’s still chillin’ and itchy and rank in the pants of his MOPP suit.
It’s when he rolls over and tries to pretend to sleep, though, that he does get another vision.
This time it’s not a whack to the back of the head. This time it slips into his mind, trickles in like it’s filling in the crags and the wrinkles with something full and fresh.
And this time, the snippets aren’t about fucking, but about something else. He’s seeing through Walt’s eyes of course, and he sees the front right tire of the humvee just over the lip of his grave’s foot-end. It’s pitch black with twinkling stars like something out of a children’s book. He can feel the stones digging into his back from a grave dug with no thoughts of future rest, but maybe something more along the lines of punishment.
But he’s not feeling the stones so much as the weight pressing down on his chest, his shoulders — the tight grip on his throat, the pressure behind his eyes. He blinks rapidly in the dark, still sees stars though they’re blurred now, can hear staccato breaths as if he’s having trouble sucking wind. Or trying not to make a sound.
And then there is the sound footsteps. Dust falls into his face from the sides of his grave as a shadow looms over him. The next thing he knows, he’s being half rolled over with one hand pushing under his right thigh and another lifting beneath his right shoulder.
“Make some fuckin’ room,” he hears someone mutter softly, and of course it’s his own voice.
There hasn’t ever been much talking in these visions before, at least that Ray can remember. If he’s honest though, that’s probably because the fucking parts are a lot more memorable. And even when there is talking or moaning, it was hushed because these visions always take place in theater.
After he speaks in this snippet though, there isn’t much talking in this one either. And there’s no fucking.
In the vision, Ray-in-Walt shifts to the side so Imaginary-Ray can squeeze down, and it isn’t comfortable, and it isn’t easy, but they both fit there, half on top of each other in a ranger grave for one.
They just lie there.
It’s not as silent, not as dark out, not as still. It’s something more, and Ray’s head doesn’t wrap completely around that when suddenly the snippet cuts off there. When it jumps back in, Ray has a stirring feeling in his chest, and his face is maybe a little wet. He swipes at it with a hand, and then he feels a hand land on his thigh.
Here it comes, Ray thinks. More fucking.
But that hand on his thigh slips further up, past the hips — completely passing his cock — and continues up the flak vest until it’s taking hold of the hand wet from what could only be Walt’s tears.
“Not your fault,” Ray hears himself say. “The car kept comin’.”
His voice is soft, almost inaudible. The hand squeezes once, lets go, drops back to the thigh and gives it a good squeeze. And then Ray hears his own laugh in the vision. It’s quieter, easier, not meant to be a joke for once, and Ray’s kind of surprised by the sound of it.
And then he hears Walt’s soft laugh, feels it bubble in his chest, escape through slightly parted lips. Feels the surprise. Feels the warmth. And then the vision slides away.
Ray lies there in his ranger grave, watching the sight of the pitch black sky and twinkling stars come into sight from his own eyes. He feels his own grave’s stones beneath his back, feels how empty his own ranger grave is all of a sudden.
He feels the snippet bleed away, and he just lies there with the echo of it reverberating through his body, in his mind — the feel of that hand sliding up from thigh to chest until fingers are laced together again.
That’s when he gets it.
*****
The funny thing about him finally getting it is that the first thing Ray thinks about is climbing out of his ranger grave and pushing Walt over so hard in his grave that his nose smashes into the dirt.
And then he’d climb in and just lie there.
But then the next thing he thinks is, Thank fuckin’ God I’m not an STS freak of nature and seeing the future. He won’t have to fess up to the fact that he’s a dirty-minded fucker with visions of gay sex — hothot gay sex — who experiences it all through his fellow Marine’s point of view.
After that, he thinks, It’s Walt who’s an STS freak of nature, and then the relief flies out the window, and all his brain is left with is just a whole new set of problems.
For the moment though, Ray thinks maybe Mission No. 1 is to get Walt up and out of this funk he’s in. Because they can’t make a super plan to keep it all a secret and start with the fucking — Mission No. 2 — if Walt’s still like a broken toy with his sexy bits lying on the side of that old roadblock.
And Walt totally wants a relationship if his fantasies about kisses and hand-holding and eventual fucking are anything to go by. The guy fantasizes about the whole dating ritual from chaste start to sexy finish, for chrissakes. Who does that? Ray’s fantasies always go from sex to more sex, but hey — to each his own.
When Brad steals Ray’s ballerina dream and acts it out in the middle of an open field in front of a homoerotic band of his good ol’ Marine brothers, Ray thinks the universe is working on his side for once. It’s not Brad’s in-flight moment, actually, but the part afterward — the one that includes the Chef Boyardi and Juggs magazine.
If Ray can elicit a “Leave me the fuck alone” from eating a strawberry milkshake MRE and dry-humping Walt’s back, he figures his eating habits plus more substantial food could maybe get him a “Come fuck me” this time around.
Except probably not.
But if it does get him some cursing, he figures they’ll be well on their way to getting over this PTSD bullshit. Then onto the sex.
He watches Walt dig in half-heartedly into his ravioli, glances down at his own hand that’s covered in red-orange sauce, and wonders if being traumatized could ever put a damper on his own appetite. Then he thinks, not fuckin’ likely, and keeps stuffing ravioli into his face. He’s about to throw some of the goddamn stuff in Walt’s face if the guy doesn’t look up, but then fuckin’ Reporter asks what BK means and cockblocks him to the extreme.
“We call our man Whopper, Jr. because they're sold at Burger King,” Lilley says. “Burger King.”
“Right,” Reporter replies slowly, still not getting it.
Ray shoots a sideways glance at Walt, notes the downturned eyes, the deliberate focus on his Chef Boyardi can. Fuck throwing ravioli, Ray’s about to lob his still half-full can at Reporter’s liberal dicksuck face.
“B.K. Baby killer,” Lilley goes on. “Trombley's our little Whopper, Jr. ever since he shot those shepherds.”
“Damn, Brad, what else you got hidden in the Humvee? A fat chick?” Ray says suddenly, and he didn’t even think about it before it popped out of his mouth. That’s not surprising though.
What is surprising is when Espera joins in the cockblocking party and decides to go all philosophical on their asses. “Shoot some civilians, you get a reputation. Right?” he says.
Fuck it. Ray’s normal eating habits aren’t doing it, and all these fuckers are making things worse. “Walt. Walt, he didn’t mean that,” he says. When Walt just glances up at him, he repeats, “Walt — ” It’s kind of hard to talk since he’s in the middle of chewing. He should maybe think about his timing with this kind of shit sometime in the future.
But then Walt’s face breaks into a grin. It slides across his face — and Ray’s not going to compare it to sunshine because he is not that gay.
When Walt sticks his tongue out to swipe it across his lips and +says, “You messed up hick. You can’t even eat ravioli!” Ray is maybe a little insulted, but then he looks down at the can, his hand, and feels his face itch with possibly more sauce there than in his belly.
He maybe says, “I eat ravioli,” but his mouth is full, and he’s a mess, so maybe Walt has a point there.
Walt’s laughing anyway, and the other guys are laughing — at Ray, probably, but that’s not news. Walt shakes his head and says something to Reporter. Ray licks his lips and grins.
Mission No. 1 complete.
*****
Ray gets a vision that evening, and in the midst of the vision and rubbing one out for real on the other side of another berm — berm thirty-one on his mental Excel sheet — half of him thinks Walt’s a goddamn horny motherfucker.
But the other half of him thinks, man, when they get together, and if they get it on this much in the future, he won’t complain about anything ever again.
And then he thinks, fuckin’ A, why is he still suffering from these raging hard-ons when they could be taking care of the problem right now? Turns out Mission No. 2 isn’t starting on the fucking straight off the bat. It’s confronting Walt. Which sucks.
So Ray walks over — after he blows his load, of course — and jumps into Walt’s half-dug ranger grave. He almost gets clipped by the man’s shovel.
“Fuck! Watch where you put that thing!” Ray exclaims, staring at the end of the shovel sunk half into the dirt between his legs. The vision cuts out immediately, and Ray grins up at the man.
“Jesus, Person!” Walt yells back, pulling the shovel back out so hard that he flops down on his ass. “I almost sliced off your sad excuse for a dick!”
Ray laughs, spreads his legs against the walls of the grave. “Don’t front, homes. I know what you think about my dick.”
Walt looks at him strangely as he plants his shovel in the dirt beside him. “What the hell are you on about now?”
“Look. I’ve finally figured all of this out. It might’ve taken me a few weeks, but shit — it’s not like having visions of fucking yourself in someone else’s point of view is common, you know?”
When Walt stumbles back, trips over his shovel, and lands flat on his ass, Ray wonders if maybe this whole confrontation thing is starting to go south.
“I just mean — I get it, Hasser. It’s not a big deal. Last night I saw what you wanted, that you thought about me knocking you over in your hole and lying down there with you. Usually these visions are all about rabbit-fucking, but last night I actually got it. And I was actually going to go over there, but it was a lot to take in, you know? But I’ve got it now.”
And even as Ray continues to talk, he wonders why Walt just sits there on his ass with a deer-in-the-headlights look. Granted, this whole thing could actually be that Ray might actually be one crazy motherfucker, and Walt could actually not be gay, and this could actually all be one huge misunderstanding.
He’s about to cut off his diatribe about how their real-life gay sex would totally be much better than make-belief gay sex and how they should definitely try this thing out because it looks really hot, but then Brad comes up behind him.
Ray gets a hard blow to the back of his head, but this time it doesn’t come from his seeing the future or anything like that — it’s because Brad fuckin’ clocks him one to the back of the head with his sidearm.
*****
Ray only figures that part out later though. First, he’s knocked unconscious, because when the Iceman wants to take a motherfucker down, a motherfucker goes down hard.
When Ray comes to, he’s lying in a ranger grave, it’s dark out, and Brad’s sitting there with his sidearm resting on his knee. His finger’s straight on the trigger, but Ray knows Brad inside and out and knows it wouldn’t take a hot second for the man to fire before Ray could twitch his dick.
Then he spots Walt sitting against the wheel of the humvee, watching him.
“This is fucked up, homes,” he says, glancing up carefully at Brad as he pushes up to a sitting position. His head is aching, and there’s a good-sized goose egg making itself known with throbbing, pulsing pains.
“I didn’t think there was that much of a risk of further brain damage,” Brad replies.
“Ngl,” Ray says as he tentatively runs his fingers over the back of his head. He feels a little sick.
“Maybe you hit him too hard,” Walt says, voice soft and cutting through the dark.
Ray whips his head around to look in his direction at the foot of the grave, but then he sees a flash of white and has to lie back down for a second.
“I think you hit him too hard, Brad,” Walt repeats, pushing up to a stand.
Brad holds out a hand. “Sit down, Walt.”
Walt stands there, and when the white light recedes, Ray can see Walt’s shadow in front of him, standing stock still before he slowly sits down again.
“We need to have a little talk, Ray,” Brad says. He taps the tip of his gun against his knee.
“This is some straight up SERE bullshit,” Ray replies, getting a bit pissed off at the interrogation tactics. “Look. Is this an intervention because I came on too strong? Fine. I’ll back off.” He looks at Walt’s blurry shadow. “Hasser. Sorry I’m seeing your little visions of hot gay sex with yours truly. Sorry I was just trying to make all of your fantasies come true.” He turns back to Brad, considers that gun. “Happy now?” But then he pauses. “Or, OK wait. Is this about DADT? Are you a homophobe? Because that would be really unfair, Brad. I swear to God, the other day I definitely saw you and the LT — ”
“Jesus, Person. Shut the fuck up,” Brad cuts in over Walt’s sudden snort of a laugh.
“What? What the fuck then?” Ray exclaims, throwing his arms up in frustration.
“Keep your voice down,” Brad says, but Ray notices that his grip on the gun goes a little bit slack. He could try to wrestle it away. They learned how to do that shit with their million-dollar training, but he’s pretty sure Brad’s Hebrew god or his Viking ancestors gave him super genes or something. The man sees people in the dead of night and can scope the difference between pipes and RPGs better than anyone.
“What, is that a secret?” Ray goes on. “Because I’m pretty sure the entire platoon knows that you and the LT are — ”
“Ray.”
“OK. What then? Sorry if I’m a little pissed off right now, but you definitely clocked me one from behind for no fuckin’ reason. This could possibly be considered domestic abuse. Reporter might turn your ass in to Godfather me, and Trombley would be traumatized and end up more of a psycho than — ”
“Ray. Would you please shut the fuck up for one goddamn minute?” Brad cuts in. Ray trails off. Only Brad would speak more politely the more pissed off he gets. Granted, a few curse words are thrown in there, but hey, they’re Marines.
Not that Ray cares if Brad’s pissed off. Ray’s the one who just got knocked the fuck out and now has a throbbing bump on his head.
“Did you tell anyone?” Walt asks after a moment. His voice is quiet, but it carries, and Ray turns away from Brad to look at Walt’s smudged outline against the humvee. “About me? About — about the things you saw?”
Ray frowns. “Tell anyone? Like who? Trombley? Yeah, because he’d definitely want to join in and make it a threesome. It’s not like that psycho baby-killer would take his SAW and shoot up both our asses after hearing about a few hundred gay-sex visions.”
“A few hundred?” Brad asks, voice lilting up with something that might be amusement, and Ray’s about to reply when he notices that the cocked eyebrow is aimed at Walt.
“Not a few hundred!” Walt protests. “He’s exaggerating!”
Ray laughs, but he cuts it off because his head throbs angrily at him. “OK, maybe not a few hundred, but close — I’ve got a running tally in my head. I’ve got something like a mental black book of the hot sex you imagine us having, Hasser. I’ve even broken it down by category: crazy monkey positions that I’ve never even heard of, you kinky bastard, doggy style—”
“You need to stop talking about that right there,” Brad cuts in. “What you do need to talk about is whether you told anyone, Ray.”
“Are you even listening to me? Who would I tell? I was trying to discuss it with Walt before you came up all ninja on me and knocked me out! What the fuck was that!”
“We just have to be careful,” Walt says, voice falling back into that softer tone. It makes something in Ray’s gut clench uncomfortably.
“Careful about what?”
“You know what, Ray,” Brad says.
“STS? What, you don’t want to join the other super heroes?” Ray replies sarcastically. “Look, I get it. Seriously, I do. At first I thought I was seeing the future and would have to go turn myself over to the dark side, but then I realized it was coming from Hasser.”
Ray can tell Brad’s looking him over with that sharp gaze, but he’s looking at where Walt’s still sitting against the humvee.
“I get it,” he says again.
It’s silent then, and Ray leans back against Walt’s ranger grave, watches them back.
He thinks about the gun in Brad’s hand, how good Brad is at his job. And then he thinks about men in the trees, glassed pipes instead of RPGs. And then he remembers overhearing Espera’s words after the ambush at Muwaffaqiyah:
Your superhuman powers of observation saved the whole platoon. Shit, dawg, they thought they were gonna get the drop on the Iceman? Fuck no. The Iceman can see you before you even know you're there.
And then he thinks about Walt’s fantasies, wonders what other kinds of things Walt can think up and put in other people’s heads if the ones he’s been projecting at Ray were accidental. He thinks about how real they were, how he felt everything so realistically, how he saw everything with such clarity.
When Brad gets up, he tucks his sidearm back into his thigh holster and looks down at him in the grave. “You’d better have learned to keep your mouth shut, Person,” he says.
“Homes, have you been listening to a word I’ve said? Your and the LT’s secret is safe with me,” he replies.
Brad shakes his head and starts to walk away, but Ray has one last question.
“Is the LT one too?”
Brad pauses there, his back still turned. “He’s just a good commander,” he replies. And then he walks away.
Ray watches him until he’s just another shadow in the pitch black night. And then he turns back to look at Walt. “You gonna stay over there or are we gonna see if we can’t make a few of your dreams come true, Hasser?”
There’s a laugh, and then there’s movement, and then his left side is warm from another body’s heat.
“So…my visions started out with kissing,” Ray says after a moment.
He glances to his left at Walt, and even though it’s dark, he’d bet his nuts that the guy’s blushing.
“Eventually we got onto the good stuff though,” Ray goes on. “Not that the non-pornographic stuff was bad or anything — it was nice and all — but we did get onto the hot sex part pretty quickly.”
“What’s your point?” Walt’s still looking straight ahead and not meeting Ray’s eyes. Ray reaches over to run a hand back and forth over Walt’s buzzed head affectionately. Walt ducks away and slaps at his hand.
“I’m just sayin’,” Ray says. “We’re past the holding hands and kisses and shit, right? I mean, in theory, we’ve gone way past third base already. Do we have to go through all of that in real life again?”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“I know all your fantasies — I mean, I’ve seen them, right? That means we’ll have the best gay sex on the planet!”
Walt leans away in the ranger grave, and Ray reaches out to wrap his arm around the man’s neck and tug him back. Surprisingly, or not-so-surprisingly, Walt doesn’t resist. Ray pulls his arm away and digs his elbow into Walt’s gut.
“Let me be blunt here, Walt. We’re dating. We’re stupid gay-ass boyfriends. I’ll start up the first LGBTA society of our ever-accepting Marine Corps and wear rainbow-colored tights if you want me to. I just want to know one little thing — are you going to hold out on me after all of this or can we get straight to the fucking? I’m kind of curious how this all goes down when I’m not feeling things through you.”
Walt stares at him for a moment before leaning over and presses his lips against Ray’s. They’re soft, a little chapped, but they’re so warm. In the visions Walt put into his head, Ray’s only ever felt what his own lips felt like. But he also remembers the feelings those kisses stirred up — the warmth. For some reason he’s surprised that part feels exactly the same.
Walt pulls away. Grins. Teeth white in the dark. “We’ll get there,” he says.
He doesn’t say anything after that, and Ray kind of doesn’t know what to say either. But that doesn’t mean words stop pouring out of his mouth.
“So what exactly is your secret power anyway?” he asks after a minute. “Are you supposed to send these mental twink movies to all of our enemies so they don’t want to kill us or something? Like, since they can’t get any pussy, you give them images of gay sex so they’ll know how to get some anyway?”
Walt laughs again and nudges Ray’s shoulder with his own. “You’re such a messed up hick,” he says.
Ray nudges back. “You’re the one with the dirty mind. Seriously. I think you have me beat.” He pauses. “Not that I’m complaining or anything. Because I’m totally OK with kinky stuff. I’m just sayin’.”
Walt nudges him again, but he doesn’t reply, just sits there, and Ray can’t really tell what they’re supposed to do now. It’s kind of awkward, his head’s still throbbing, and he actually might be half hard right now.
Then Walt speaks up. “I was supposed to make them see what would happen if they didn’t turn around,” he says into the dark. “The drivers. I was supposed to project what we’d do if the driver kept coming closer. Brad’s smoke grenades were supposed to give me time enough to do it. I don’t — I don’t know why I pulled the trigger. I imagined it like I’m supposed to, saw it in my mind, but — ” he cuts off for a minute. He shakes his head, looks down at his hands.
“ — but the car kept comin’,” Ray finishes. Walt doesn’t look at him, even when Ray nudges his shoulder again. Ray sighs and slaps his hand down on Walt’s. Squeezes. Walt’s hands are cold. Ray leaves his own hand there to warm them up. After a minute, he mutters, “Not your fault.”
When Walt turns to look at him, Ray tilts his head back, ignores the ache as he lets it rest on the lip of the ranger grave, stares up at the stars that are so bright they’re like something out of a children’s book. And then Walt shifts so he’s half on top of Ray’s side, and Ray lifts his arm up so Walt can fit into the nook of his shoulder.
It isn’t comfortable — there are stones beneath them, and their MOPP suits have a sharp spongy interior that abrades their skin — but they both fit there, half on top of each other in a ranger grave for one. It’s not silent — the other men’s voices rising and falling nearby, artillery going off in the distance, the hiss of the comms in the humvee — but it’s still, and it’s easy, and it’s something more.
They just lie there.
No more visions. No more fantasies.
Just this.