Chapter Text
***
Even a few months later the memories are all fragmentary, small pieces appearing here and there - a quick-witted line, a grin, an explosion - but without a single unifying picture. Like shards of a broken mirror.
Brad goes out to buy a carton of milk and BAM it just hits — the bridge to Al Muwaffiqiyah: the cars stuck against each other, men in the trees, LT - (Nate) - abandoning his vehicle mid-ambush to guide them out of the jam. And then jabbering about petting a burning dog, like this was just another one of his favorite epics.
Brad rides his bike through sleepy Oceanside, humming some half-forgotten lyrics to a song, and at the red light it’s no longer California but the roadblock in Al Hayy, where Walt shot someone, despite Brad’s best efforts to minimize the civilian losses.
Sleep has never been Brad’s problem, he falls asleep to the sound of late night TV (loud soundtracks and gunfire) but every now and then he dreams of driving blindly into the dark of the desert, barely working N.V.Gs with dying batteries, the heat, the dirt, the danger lurking.
Brad remembers the highlights very well.
Pieces like shards of glass stuck in Brad’s head and refuse to come out or form an entire experience.
It’s one of the earliest memories of Brad’s life. Shards of a mirror, all over the floor, and his red-stained hands scrambling for the pieces that are digging harder into his skin. It hurts but is also fascinating: can he find them all, and if he does, what will happen then? Will the mirror come back together? Will his mother return?
But he is grown now; he knows, grasping at the shards brings only pain.
***
Brad is no stranger to adrenaline but unlike the heady excitement of combat and speeding, this is borne out of pure hate. “What is this I’m hearing, you’re running around calling Lieutenant Fick a coward?” The beauty of confronting a liar is about finding out all the information beforehand. (When Julie lied, Brad already knew.)
Kasem starts the usual song and dance, seemingly torn between not wanting to admit being a fucking gossip girl, and quick righteous indignation.
If looks could kill, Brad’s M-4 would pale in comparison. Ray quickly appears at his side, obviously feeling the tension.
“Nice to know you guys find time to chit chat when me and Walt have been half of the day trying to get our Mark-19 unjammed again.”
“Shut up, Ray.”
“He is dangerous, Brad,” Casey Kasem mutters. Righteous indignation it is. “The ability of the Marine Corps to function effectively depends on following orders of your superior officer. Fick is not capable of that and he is putting this entire platoon at risk.”
“First of all, goddamnit, it’s Lieutenant Fick,” Brad spits out. Ray shakes his head vehemently behind Kasem. “Secondly, what puts this platoon at risk is the inability to gather an accurate number of supplies necessary for combat readiness. Like those batteries and LSA we’re still lacking."
“He's an idealist,” Casey Kasem blurts out, before hobbling away. “Nothing’s more dangerous than an idealist.”
The blood-red sun is soaking the horizon behind them, the last blazing rays illuminating the Humvees; Brad turns away momentarily and peers into the sunset, something visible only to him.
Ray snorts angrily behind, flipping a bird intended for Gunny’s disappearing backside. “I’m pretty sure a moron is adequate competition!”
***
Neither of them can sleep. It’s almost dawn anyway.
Brad leans back against the berm, allowing himself to bitch about the brainless command that are utilizing them like Iraqis use their donkeys. The bitching allows him to pull very very small smiles out of Nate; like Mona Lisa’s, the corners of his mouth lift up infinitesimally at Brad’s intricate 10-adjective insults. Brad feels like he’s back in junior high, chatting a cheerleader behind the bleachers. And the thought makes him fucking high.
They share this short burst of peace before it will once again undoubtedly go to shit. “You should get some rest, sir,” Brad tries not to be selfish. The night is slowly fading into the background; the platoon is Cinderella, running out of time before the clock strikes get up and kill.
The casualness of the LT’s shrug is a thing to behold. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Captain Schwetje was hesitating on the intel yesterday… I ended up watching the sunrise.” He leans back, visibly relaxing into the conversation, the typically too-deep lines temporarily smoothing out around his forehead, and he looks closer to his actual age.
Brad smirks. “How was it?”
“Average.” There are absinth-green sparks dancing in Nate’s eyes; the creeping dawn takes care of illuminating them for Brad.
Brad laughs hearty, stretching his legs out. He suppresses a yawn. “Aren’t you entirely too young for such disappointment-ridden platitudes worthy of MILFs and old farts? Sir.”
Nate snorts. “I think I’ve got enough disappointment bottled up to power a small country,” he confesses.
Suddenly there is a sound carrying across the relative quiet of the desert that is not from mortars or gunfire. They’re close enough to a small village; a male voice reciting the morning call to prayer. Nate looks down at his watch.
Brad stares into the distance, where the village should be, behind the wisps of sandy dust. “Should we be worried about unrest?”
“Prayer is a good thing. Maybe it'll keep them too preoccupied to shoot at us.” Nate’s bright eyes are entirely too close when Brad turns back, too green (like Californian oak trees), and too open.
It is strange and yet serene, the last remnants of the cozy darkness before they step into the day, bright, bloodstained, unforgiving.
The LT licks his full lips subconsciously like he does a thousand times a day, and Brad stares, unabashedly. Nate stares back instead of turning away; he is once again gorgeously defiant against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And Brad too.
He bites his lower lip before speaking calmly. “It’s funny, Romans understood worshipping as a contract between themselves and a deity. Any prayer implied a small offering to the god first, in exchange for the desired result. Too bad today most religions are entirely one-sided.”
Brad feels the thin angry orange line of the dawn digging its claws into the back of his neck. “All that smart overprivileged liberal dicksuck Dartmouth talk, sir, and we still have to skid around the issue.”
“Brad,” Nate says sternly in his low commanding voice that he uses in briefings and on the comms. Brad looks down: his hand is gripping Nate’s wrist, hard enough to bruise and he doesn’t know how it got there. He doesn’t pull away, and as he looks back up, Nate’s pupils are telltale floating saucers.
“Time to limit the number of blowjob-related jokes, Sergeant,” Nate murmurs into Brad's lips.
“Can’t do,"Brad growls. "Not with that mouth of yours.”
Tell me to stop, tell me to stop, tell me to stop.
I don't want to.
It's inevitable, a rocket launched against the designated target.
"Tell me to stop," Brad says calmly.
Before Brad knows it, they’re kissing to the sound of morning prayer, Nate’s dry chapped lips sliding against his, opening up, Nate’s strong hands first pushing at him, then grabbing his shoulders to pull their bodies closer together.