#30: fic: Ansible, ansible, R
Title: Ansible, ansible
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: R
Disclaimer: The characters here are based on those portrayed in HBO's fictionalised mini-series.
Word count: 6,500
Summary: Space travel/time dilation AU. He is a warrior, but this is not a war. It's a voyage with no visible end; the eight of them envoys from a home that no longer remembers them.
Notes: As always, a giant thank you to forochel for being an amazing beta and enabler. ♥
It is a historic moment in astronavigation when the Bravo II exits the solar system on the fifth of August, 2049. On Earth, images of the darkness beyond the last planet and within the unexplored expanse of the local interstellar cloud are splashed across the front pages of every publication. NASA Administrator James Mattis gives a long and triumphant speech, as does the President of the United States, but it is a recording of an offhand remark by one of the crew members that truly captures the public's imagination.
Sergeant Brad Colbert's half awed, half ironic murmur of, "Yes, we are the conquering heroes," as they race past mankind's last space buoy (0983 ZHENG HE) is replayed over five billion times that day. It will go on to be immortalised in history books and novelty t-shirts alike.
It is, writes the New York Times, this cocky yet reverent attitude that calls to mind the hotshot space cowboys that have, until now, mostly existed in our imaginations. These men are fearless, is what it means - these men are not afraid of space, or time.
What the people back on Earth do not know, however, is that five minutes later, Sergeant Colbert glances around at the rest of Bravo II's crew and says, "I'm taking a shit."
1.
Everything they bring to space is designed to hold them down. The biosuits they wear press their bodies in shape, enfolding limbs and torso in a compact armour of spandex and kevlar. Out of the cabins they sleep in well padded sarcophagi, strapped snug and standing up. And at the heart of the vessel, the main pressure hull sits ensconced within a centrifuge, creating an artificial gravity that keeps them in place.
Amidst all this, Brad unravels.
They are hundreds of light years away from Earth, with hundreds more to go before they reach their destination. This is the in-between state, the continuous blackness of deep space observed at high speed. Brad has opened his eyes to the dark unknown and felt not fear but rootlessness.
He is a warrior, but this is not a war. It's a voyage with no visible end; the eight of them envoys from a home that no longer remembers them.
"This isn't just some trip to Neptune," says the Chief of the Astronaut Office. "This is beyond anything mankind has ever attempted, and Ferrando needs to know that he's sending the nation's finest."
Brad has made it to the stage where he's getting guided tours of the Space Centre in Houston from Godfather himself, but he's still thinking about going back to Mexico for a second tour. This is probably the only shortlist that he's gotten onto without even trying, but he doesn't actually want the blue flightsuit.
Godfather is not the sort of man who can easily be turned down, however. He had been the only Marine in the first crew to land on Mars, years back, and, most recently, commanded the exploration to Saturn. It goes without saying that he is very powerful. He also refuses to take Brad's no for an answer.
"The starfaring age will be ushered in by Marines, there's no doubt about it," he rasps, as they step out the elevator.
"Yes, sir," Brad replies, following closely behind as Godfather takes them down a long and doorless corridor. On every occasion that they have met, Godfather has always been standing or pacing, hands gesticulating slowly with calculated firmness as he talks. There is an economy in his gait, a measuredness to his steps that speaks of someone who relishes being sure of the ground on which he's treading. It's not obvious, but Brad pays attention to these things.
"Exploration Systems," says Godfather, when they reach a large glass door at the end of the passageway. He pauses to glare into the iris recognition unit. "Ferrando has heard good things about you, Sergeant. Very good things. You're the sort of man who knows what duty to his country is."
"Yes, sir," says Brad, keeping his face impassive.
A man in a flightsuit is waiting for them when the door slides open.
"Bryan Patterson," Godfather says briskly, both a greeting and an introduction. He turns to Brad. "This is the man who's commanding the mission - get acquainted. I will leave you in his capable hands while my people deal with the finer points of your employment here."
"Sir-"
"Your file says that you're six foot four," Godfather interrupts. "Is that true?"
"Yes, sir."
Godfather smiles. It is rather terrifying. "One inch taller and you'd miss the flight."
2.
On time:
Time has always been a relative concept to Brad. In Mexico and Korea, sunrise and sunset were only the loosest of indicators; time was measured in terms of whether they would be Oscar Mike in five minutes or five hours.
Out in space, there is no night and day; they keep time based on that sunny afternoon in Houston. Ray wanders through the hull wearing his non-regulation pyjamas in a parody of morning, and Wynn indulges this every now and then by breaking out his stash of Cap'n Crunch.
They get the news daily but nobody wants to know how much the world has changed in three months, or six.
"Man, we got ourselves a new President," Walt says, when he checks the headlines one week into the voyage.
"Let's hope he doesn't cut our funding," Rudy quips.
They all exchange glances, knowing full well that this is entirely possible, that a politician's decision to scale down, or to divert funds from here to there might leave them cut off entirely.
"Dude," says Walt, finally, "I think he's a she."
"That's it," Ray replies, "we're fucked."
A week later, the others arrive.
They're all Recon Marines, Brad realises - he met Poke Espera while on libo in Australia some years back, though he's never heard of the kid, Trombley. Behind them is a third guy, who emerges from the van only to do a double take when he sets eyes on Brad.
"Holy fuck, it's you," says Ray Person, managing to look shocked, dismayed and delighted all at the same time.
"You know each other?" asks Patterson, glancing between the two of them.
"Reluctant as I am to admit this," Brad says, "Person and I were in the same battalion in PTKS."
"Haeju to Pyongyang in a fucking Humvee," Ray adds. "Worst three months of my life."
"Well," Patterson tells him, with a wry smile, "welcome to the next six."
3.
Nate keeps track. That's what Brad has discovered.
A week before the launch, there was a farewell dinner up in Washington. Brad remembers seeing Nate's niece, little Clara in her lovely white dress, beaming as her Uncle Nate picked her up in his arms and didn't put her down for the rest of the night.
It has been eleven days since they've left, and Clara's already celebrating another birthday. Nate writes letters, constantly, aware that a few hours can be weeks; a day, months. He doesn't catch up. He, of all people, knows the implication behind those endless equations he was working on.
Brad wants to ask, why did you come, if there's so much to leave behind, but he doesn't. He stands in the ansible room with his arms folded across his chest and watches Nate take in five weeks' worth of letters and love from a family moving much too quickly for their brightest son. If Nate feels Brad's eyes on him he says nothing about it.
Two days into training, Brad understands why they had to pick Recon Marines.
There's no endless sand, or digging holes and getting shot at, but it's punishing all the same; they start their days in simulators and end them struggling through the water in tennis shoes and weighted flight suits. In between all of that are a ridiculous number of classes and motion cue training sessions. It both excites and consumes Brad. Every night he falls asleep thinking of propulsion checklists and dreams about diving again, of opening his eyes in the vast darkness of the ocean and being both calmed and frightened by its forbidding, colossal weight.
The astronauts they meet look like they would have been brilliant Marines if they hadn't joined NASA - Missions Specialist Rudy Reyes, for example, can often be seen sprinting across the compound in nothing but a pair of tiny shorts and a heavily weighted flak jacket. Mike Wynn, the Pilot who brings them on a tour of the actual ship that he'll be flying, has a compact bulk that wouldn't look out of place in a utility uniform. Walt Hasser, Bravo II's Flight Engineer, seemed at first like he wouldn't survive a firefight, but Brad finds himself having to revise his opinion of Hasser after they watch him fly a T-38X over Ellington Field, all defiant loops and cruelly precise turns.
He meets Nate Fick in his second month there, after they've finished the swimming tests and altitude chamber drills.
"They're still coming up with an official title for this training programme - actually, I wouldn't call it a training programme; it's more of a crash course," says Fick, and Brad can't get over how fucking young he looks, standing there in a threadbare grey t-shirt with the words 'IT'S ONLY ROCKET SCIENCE' printed beneath the NASA logo.
"For now, though," Reyes adds, "we'll just refer to it as Don't Fuck Up."
Fick will be the ship's Payload Commander, meaning that he will be in charge "of a shitload of experiments and lead the expedition when we reach the planet," as Hasser puts it.
Hasser is the sort who earned his Astronaut Pin through flying with the Marines; Fick was plucked straight from Dartmouth and completed his PhD while in NASA's employ. Every alternate afternoon he stands at the front of a freezing lecture theatre and shows them slide after slide of statistics picked up by probes that have gone before them, his face cast in an eerie glow from the light of the projection pad.
"So we're heading here?" asks Trombley, pointing at one of several pixellated blobs scattered in a haphazard formation on one slide.
"No, this one," Fick replies, circling its neighbour with a finger and enlarging the image on the screen. "We believe that this is the most viable planet in the system. There is a high possibility it also contains sentient life-forms."
"What's its name?" asks Poke.
"It's currently pending for approval, but NASA has proposed calling it Euphrates," says Fick.
It makes sense, Brad thinks. Cradle of civilisation and all.
"Fuck that," Ray declares. "I'm calling it Fred."
4.
The voyage will take slightly more than a year of their lives, roughly the same duration as an exchange attachment or a tour of duty.
"I don't miss anything from home," Brad says one evening, when they're huddled around warm meals in the main pressure hull. "The only exception is my bike."
The others don't make much of it; Ray asks Wynn if he thinks Houston can send them the latest edition of Juggs via ansible.
From across the table, Nate glances at Brad, an unspoken question in his gaze. It feels like he's calling Brad's bluff.
In the third month Fick sits all the candidates down in a meeting room and explains the theory of relativity to them in terms of neat lines on a white board and a series of truncated equations.
"What does that mean?" asks Trombley, after an hour of explanation.
"It means that we're going so fucking fast," Ray replies, "that what seems like a week to us will be almost a year on Earth."
"Give or take a couple of months," Fick adds. "But you've got the gist of it."
Poke passed all the tests but he drops out after this. Nobody blames him; he's got a wife and two beautiful daughters. Trombley stays because "he's a crazy motherfucker," according to Ray, who mumbles something about seeing how far he can take it when Reyes asks him about his own reasons.
"Duty to our country - duty to science, maybe even to our species," Fick says, when Brad asks. They're in class, learning about the atmosphere on Euphrates, and Fick looks so earnest that Brad can't even bring himself to laugh.
"It's your entire fucking life," Brad says.
Fick nods. "And yours, too," he replies, voice short but eyes amiable.
5.
At 1500 hours every day the crew splits up to carry out an inspection of the ship. In between that, those not on duty sit around for endless bull sessions that involve everything from the deaths of pop stars to outrageous tales of friends of guys they know.
"You know, sometimes I think this entire project is a conspiracy," says Brad, "to get Corporal Person's dick as far away from any living pussy on the face of the planet."
"Oh, fuck, you know that's true," Rudy exclaims, hitting the table with visible glee.
Brad's grinning; he's in great form. "Back on Earth, they're probably referring to this as Operation-"
"Protect The Pussy," Nate interrupts with a completely straight face. Brad can't take his eyes off the way Nate's lips form around the consonants. "And I would commend the United State government for its rare display of wisdom and foresight, if not for the fact that they sent me along for the ride as well."
"Fuck you," Ray spits, without venom.
Not if I get there first, thinks Brad.
When the ship is near completion, Patterson brings them up to see the crop modules that are currently being installed. There are five on the ship, each with an aeroponics system put in place for food production in preparation for any possible rations shortage. It is all very fascinating until Patterson puts Brad and Ray in charge of making sure that the system is in order.
"This is an affront to my warrior spirit," says Brad, observing the crop critically.
"Do you think we could grow shrooms on these things?" asks Ray.
Fick gives them a very serious talk about taking precautions not to introduce foreign species of plantlife to the planet.
"It's like going to fucking Australia - I get it," says Ray.
"This is more serious than 'fucking Australia', Corporal Person," says Fick. "This is an entire planet's eco system we could throw off."
"This planet better be worth all this shit," Ray replies. "Because I've seen Planet of the Apes and all those monkeys really fucking creeped me out."
6.
Day twenty: Walt's grandmother passes away.
They have been taught how to deal with this. A Doctor Bodley had come in during their training at the Johnson Space Centre to give a lecture entitled Dealing With Separation.
"It is inevitable," he had told them. "You must be prepared."
Walt isn't prepared; none of them are. Gunny takes on his duties for the night, but gives them back to Walt upon realising that letting him sit silently in the main hull is doing him more harm than good.
Ray is probably the worst choice when it comes to dealing with such things, but Brad leaves him and Walt in the ansible room anyway. He goes to look for Nate and finds him in one of the crop modules, staring fixedly at a row of butter cabbage.
He slips in and sits with him, and for a long moment neither of them speaks. At regular intervals a row of funnels mist water over the exposed plant roots with a sound like an exhale.
"I know it's supposed to fuck with our minds. I'm supposed to be able to deal with it," Nate finally says.
Brad looks at Nate's face and sees none of that calm intensity he has come to admire. Something else has settled in Nate's expression - a vulnerable openness that makes him seem twice as young.
He knows that there are other ways to respond to this. He could say, it's okay, or, I understand, simple words to lift the spell of loneliness that they all feel as acutely as space sickness and pressure fever.
But Nate has his eyes closed and is breathing so painfully slowly, as if he's afraid that anything louder will come out a sob, and Brad finds himself reaching out to grip Nate's shoulders with his two hands in an anchoring gesture. He expects the contained shivering of someone experiencing intense sorrow or stress, not Nate's sharp, alert gaze as his eyes snap open to meet Brad's. And, quite suddenly, the answers are all there on Nate's face, lines and planes of grief mingled with wretched want.
Nate's mouth falls open in a silent syllable that could be yes, that must be yes, because Brad can feel the warmth of Nate's skin beneath his t-shirt as he slides his palms inwards and over Nate's collarbones, curling his fingers around his neck, his thumbs coming to rest on the hollow of Nate's throat. For an eternity neither of them moves, crouched on the brink of a mistake that Brad doesn't think he can retract.
Nate takes a shuddered breath; swallows and closes his eyes again like he cannot quite believe it.
They do not kiss. They cannot, not when Brad is dragging his fingers down the column of Nate's neck and Nate is lurching forward to slide his hands over Brad's back, rucking up his shirt in a desperate search for skin. Nate has his face pressed almost painfully into Brad's shoulder, their burning, bruising touches saying an expanse of things Brad would never dream of repeating out loud. He clutches and takes and holds himself to Nate, clinging tighter when he hears a gasp like dry grief, a sound to break the both of them if they let it.
He doesn't; he doesn't let go.
Fick's handwriting is perfect, an unhurried, precise printing of rounded curves and stems that slant just fractionally to the right. Even in a hurry his equations look elegant, covering miles of grid on that special sort of paper he likes to use. It's somehow comforting just to watch the way Fick draws a diagram, his lines almost uncomfortably straight even without a ruler, circles full even when he means for it to be a rough sketch. His precision, his attention to detail, makes Brad think, somewhat irrationally, that this is a man who wouldn't lead them astray.
He also has a seemingly endless supply of lame astronaut t-shirts. When Brad finds him in the systems room on a Friday evening he's hunched over his projection pad with his glasses shoved up his nose, wearing a shirt that says 'I need my space'.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Fick asks, when he notices Brad, and he really should not be blinking up at Brad and smiling like that, Brad thinks.
They've been going through trajectories and navigational paths, because Brad's the sort who has to know, has to be figuring out their routes on his own instead of leaving it to someone else. It's almost an obsession, as Ray often reminds him loudly and obnoxiously, but Fick doesn't seem to mind.
7.
Walt is mostly fine, after that first day. He's not the sort to neglect his duties for long, and is back flipping switches in the engine room almost immediately. He is a lot quieter, however, which seems to have the effect of making Ray a lot noisier, in a curious inverse relationship that Brad has only cursorarily noted before.
They're at breakfast when Ray wanders over to Walt and begins dry-humping his shoulder.
"How you doing, Walt?"
"Don't do that."
"What if I did this?" asks Ray, and dives in to give Walt a hug of great manliness that Brad knows from past experience is also painful and suffocating.
"Get out of here," Walt replies. Ray responds by tackling him to the ground.
"Tell me," says Brad, "about gimbaled centrifuges."
It is very early in the morning and they're still in Fick's office, having spent the past five hours poring over satellite pictures of Euphrates and planning routes and equipment.
"You're not serious, are you?" asks Fick.
"Tell me," Brad repeats. "I want to know."
"It's four in the morning," Fick groans, rubbing a hand over his face. "I don't want to talk about gimbaled centrifuges. You should ask Pappy - his did his second PhD on them."
"Right," says Brad. "I realise you must be tired."
"Aren't you?" asks Fick. In the light of the office lamp, his eyes are very green.
"I'll survive," Brad replies, thinking back to the times when he'd gone without proper sleep for whole weeks; constant adrenaline dulling fear and other senses.
"We have simulators in two hours," Fick says finally, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Want to go for a run?"
Their route begins at the entrance of the human spaceflight offices; Fick is already changed and waiting by the time Brad makes it there.
"Ray's going to love that shirt," says Brad, indicating the two cartoon rockets and the large 'NASACAR' emblazoned below them.
Fick glances down at his chest. "My sister buys them, I swear."
Brad grins and cocks his head. "Shall we, Dr. Fick?"
"Try and keep up," Fick replies. "And I'd rather you call me Nate."
"Try and keep up, Nate," says Brad, smirking, and together they set off at a brisk pace.
There is something to be said about running with a friend at four in the morning, although Brad's not entirely sure at this point if Fick - Nate - quite counts as one yet. He's a good runner, though (captain of the cycling club at Dartmouth, Brad's heard, and NASA's training programme isn't exactly a walk in the park), and Brad finds that he doesn't need to hold back as much as he had expected to.
The Johnson Space Centre is comprised of more than a hundred buildings. Nate takes them on one of the best routes through the complex, cutting across beautiful lawns and jogging past a couple of the newer buildings that Brad has never set foot inside. They're headed towards the lake, he realises, which is a rather ridiculous distance away, but Nate seems fine and Brad can easily handle it. In the stillness of early morning there is no sound but their steady breathing and the occasional car creeping by, and Brad finds himself enjoying the rhythm of their run - comfortable; footfalls matching.
Their timing is perfect - they reach the lake just as the sun begins to rise. It's not a particularly beautiful sunrise, just the sky turning lighter until the smudged grey gives way to daylight, but Brad adds it to his impromptu list of things that he will miss about Earth.
Nate isn't paying very much attention to the sunrise. He's bending over to clutch at his knees, winded from the run despite all his talk at the beginning.
"Simulators in forty-five minutes," Brad reminds him.
"Tell me again," Nate groans, "why I thought this was a good idea."
"I was wondering, actually," says Brad. "Were you planning for us to head back the same way we came?"
"Fuck," says Nate, dripping sweat and extremely frustrated. Brad has to resist the urge to grin. "Fuck. I think I'm seeing spots."
They end up walking back. It takes them slightly more than two hours. Every time Brad glances over at Nate's sheepish expression he cannot help but laugh.
8.
In Nate's cabin, they fuck.
These exchanges are silent ones, furtive jostling in the cramped living space. Brad grows to love the way Nate mouths his name in barely a whisper, lips parting around it in exquisite repitition. There is an aggression in they way they clash together now, an almost explosive desperation that has Brad unable to do anything but press against Nate, touching and tasting in a fevered curl of limbs and wordless desire.
During the days that follow, they establish some sort of rhythm to their meetings that can only take place between their respective duties. They appear to have entered a constant, tangible orbit around each other, all heat and distance and undivided focus.
Nate is pulling Brad apart with each slow thrust, with the breathless heat in his eyes and the eager way in which he reaches between them to jerk Brad off, when suddenly Nate stops, stops.
"Fuck," Brad exhales; full, filled, full of want, even though he has - he has and he wants and he - "Nate."
Nate mouths something against Brad's collarbone and fists his cock once, twice - leans up to bite him and Brad's gone, falling, coming with Nate still hard inside him.
They don't talk about it. Even Ray is curiously silent on the issue, and Brad knows he knows.
When this first begins Brad tells himself that it is for survival, like combat jacks to stay awake after days of sleeplessness. This is a lie. Now he catches himself wondering how Nate has somehow become his harbour in this void of madness, wondering at this mutual gravity of two bodies that pulls them into each other day after day after day.
There's an event in Washington to celebrate the impending launch; Brad arrives in his dress blues and spends the evening curtly reminding members of the press that he is "a Marine, not an astronaut" whenever they approach him for his views on the voyage. That is, until Patterson steers him over to the edge of the crowd and tells him to be nice.
"I am very fucking nice," Brad retorts, but doesn't disobey.
He's speaking (nicely) to his third reporter by the time Nate catches up with him.
"Duty to your country?" Nate repeats amusedly, appearing at Brad's shoulder. "I see you're stealing all my lines."
Nate is wearing a charcoal-coloured suit in a cut favoured mostly by well-heeled octogenarians, but somehow he still manages to pull it off, all clean lines and dapper silhouette. He quickly commandeers Brad's reporter, fielding questions with a charming ease that Brad has never bothered to learn. As he speaks, however, Nate gives no indication of wanting Brad to leave, his eyes darting towards Brad every now and then to draw him back into the conversation.
"Sergeant Colbert has proven and will continue to prove invaluable to this mission," Nate is saying. "I am assured of this."
"Just one of the many grunts at Dr. Fick's disposal," Brad clarifies.
"Exactly," Nate says gravely. "If the engines fail his job is to get out and push."
The reporter laughs. "That's very funny, Dr. Fick."
"Please," Brad tells her, "don't encourage him."
The next day's Washington Post features three entire pages about The Future Of Spaceflight. Almost all of it focuses on the President's speech the previous evening and how the mission might alter America's relationship with China, but somewhere down the bottom of page three is a smallish photograph of two crew members looking very dashing as they laugh together over something the reader is not privy to. The caption beneath it reads: Genuine Friendship - NASA scientist Dr. Nathaniel Fick and Marine Sgt. Brad Colbert talk of exploring new frontiers together.
"You see," says Ray, "captions like this don't happen unless you spend the evening flirting with the good doctor. I mean, shit like 'easy camaraderie' is one thing, but 'genuine friendship'? That's just gay, homes. Very fucking gay."
"Ray, shut up."
Ray, however, is not one to be easily silenced, especially with something as good as this. "And what the fuck do you mean by 'exploring new frontiers together'?" he asks. "Is it some sort of obscure astronaut-speak for the big gay wedding the two of you are planning? Where's my fucking invitation? How long were you gonna keep this from your dearest pal Ray-Ray?"
"Ray."
Two astronauts are playing golf on Nate's t-shirt when Brad finds him in his office.
"So it's 'genuine friendship', then?" asks Nate with a slightly embarrassed grin.
"I'm still wondering how that journalist failed to pick up on my obvious and intense hatred of you, actually," Brad replies.
"That's a pity," says Nate. "I was almost hopeful."
Brad pretends to consider this for a while. "'Genuine' is entirely out of the question," he tells Nate eventually, "but I suppose there could be some room for an extra friend, in between making history and serving my country."
"I appreciate that," says Nate. Then he laughs, and Brad thinks it might be better for him to just walk right out of the office because this will undo him and he knows it.
9.
Weeks pass. They're still on track, Patterson confirms, poring over their coordinates with Wynn and Nate.
"It's incredible that we've made it this far," Nate murmurs as the data from the third Triton satellite helps to triangulate their current position.
"That's us," says Ray, "to boldly go where no man has gone before."
"Ray, just shut the fuck up," Brad tells him.
"No, seriously, we're like the fucking Enterprise up here," says Ray. "Fick over there's like Mr Spock - got to work on those ears, though - and Commander Patterson is Kirk, and we have our doctor-"
"Ray," Brad says warningly.
"And Wynn's totally that Russian dude, and Rudy's Sulu, and Brad..." he pauses to regard Brad thougtfully. "It's kind of a toss-up between Uhura and the guy they put in charge of warpspeed."
"Scotty," supplies Walt.
"Yes, Scotty," says Ray, beaming round at him.
From the corner of his eye, Brad can see Nate trying to hide his laughter behind the back of his hand.
"Definitely Uhura," Ray is still saying, "because Walt totally needs to be in the engine room. What do you think, Brad?"
"I think it's time for you to shut the fuck up," Brad replies.
It doesn't sink in, for Brad. Not in the way it does for Ray, or any of the others.
By the time they're five weeks to launch it's only Brad and Ray left as Payload Specialists. Trombley's forced to drop out when he develops a niggling eye infection that Doc Bryan insists will compromise the mission.
"You're going to be travelling out into deep space," Doc Bryan tells them, at the astronautical hygiene briefing. "Not to the moon, not to Mars. We can't have any of you starting out with infections that can fuck up the rest of the crew."
It's almost twenty minutes later, when they've moved on to looking at microbial hazards, that Brad notices Ray's irregular breathing. He's clutching at his chest and mouthing fuck, fuck, staring unseeingly ahead as he struggles to contain himself.
They've trained for space sickness, but nobody mentioned anything about panic attacks. Ray doesn't talk about it to Brad, and it doesn't happen again.
"All this is just fucking crazy," is what he says instead. "And you know I'm very into things that are fucking crazy."
"Yes," says Brad.
"What's out there?" asks Ray. "Do you think about that?"
Brad doesn't know what to say because Ray has never been the sort to stop and examine his fear. Ray Person is the guy who kept on driving even with the most fucked up NVGs in the world, with mortar fire raining down around them and Captain America screeching over the radio about how it was the end of the world.
He nods; mumbles, "sometimes," and hopes it will suffice.
"That's why you're the Iceman," says Ray. He looks wretched.
10.
Four months into the voyage, Earth celebrates Bravo II's tenth anniversary.
The President (still a woman) sends them a message saying that she is very proud; Ferrando swears that "Godfather will not forget, and neither will the United States". Dozens of letters from schoolchildren are forwarded to them.
Clara's discovered boys, and French poetry. She copies lines from books in the libraries and includes them in her letters to Nate. She sends photographs too, without the boys in them - just her, seventeen and beautiful, sitting in some park and beaming up at the camera. She has Nate's eyes.
Here are the first four lines of a poem by Robert Desnois, she writes. I have been told you have no patience for French so I'm only attaching the translation.
The rest of them get messages, too. Commander Patterson and Doc Bryan take their projection pads off to their cabins to read them in private, as do Wynn and Rudy. Ray sits in the main hull and gets frustratedly teary over a digital postcard from his family that says, simply and honestly, NASCAR IS NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU, JOSH RAY. Walt leans against Ray and sniffs at his pad, as though the flowery fragrance that his mother always carries around with her will come through the screen.
Brad's mother writes for the rest of the family. She tells him that his bike is in okay condition but nobody knows what to do with it; she tells him about the new cat, about how the other day his second nephew decided that he was going to be an astronaut like his Uncle Brad. She is not sentimental. Come home safe, son, is how she ends the letter, as if Brad's just off to stay over at a friend's for a night, not journeying towards a distant planet no human has ever set foot on.
He's thankful that she doesn't write I love you. That's his mother. She knows not to tell him something he already knows.
The letter he sends back is much more concise. Don't touch the bike. Name the cat Fred. Tell the boy that outer space is boring and he should become a Marine. I will.
Never Anyone but You
Never anyone but you in spite of stars and solitudes
In spite of mutilated trees at nightfall
Never anyone but you will take a path which is mine also
The farther you go away the greater your shadow grows
- Robert Desnois
They get a week's leave a fortnight before Bravo II is launched. Brad spends all his time riding his Yamaha R1; drunk on speed and solitude from morning to evening.
It's about control, he wants to say, when his sister calls to ask him to explain (again) why his favourite past-time appears to be hurtling down highways at ridiculous speeds. About being able to fuck up his own life without having to wait for orders to do so.
Instead, he tells her, "Can't ride a bike in space."
"If you say so," she replies absently, over the terrifying noise that Brad suspects is the sound of his nephews frolicking in the background. "Mom says to come over for dinner, by the way."
"I'm in Houston."
"You have a motorcycle," says his sister, clearly unimpressed. "Do some hurtling."
Brad goes home.
He sits in the living room with the television on while his mother attempts to feed him everything she's got in the refrigerator. She's used to this, used to her son leaving her for unknown places, but this is entirely different and neither of them is willing to recognise the magnitude of it.
"Sit down," he says, after she sets four slices of fruitcake down in front of him. He catches her narrow wrist gently. "Can't see anything with you standing in front of the screen."
"Brad," is all his mother says in reply, but she sits down next to him and picks at her own slice of fruitcake.
Brad looks at his mother in the warm afternoon sunshine and realises, suddenly, how much she's aged. He can see her as an old woman, now; can imagine returning and finding a smaller, stooped version of her, frailer than she already is.
That evening he eats his dinner like it's his last; he asks for seconds, thirds. She stands over him with the pot of stew and never lets his plate go empty.
"You will come home and I will see that nothing has changed," she tells him almost sternly when it's time for him to leave, in a voice that will brook no disobedience. "The little boy I took home, all fury and strength, who grew up swearing to protect his mama."
It's almost a blessing. Brad takes it as one; if he believes nothing else he believes his mother's words.
11.
They reach Euphrates six months after they leave Houston; on Earth, almost twenty years have passed.
Brad has memorised the planet from thirteen months of studying hundreds of thousands of satellite photographs. Its still faces have loomed perpetually in his mind; Nate's green jewel now theirs to claim.
Or not; as they draw nearer to it Brad has to come to terms with its vastness - this is not a country, this is not a single continent to traverse. It is Earth's twin, almost, and the statistics come to Brad as easily as breathing: land to water ratio, composition of gases in the atmosphere, heat source, general path of orbit.
In three hours they will begin preparations to penetrate the atmosphere. Brad looks at the planet through the viewing hatch, this Earth-that-is-not-Earth, and feels, for the first time, that he misses home.
They change into their Biosuits in silence, tension weighing so heavily now after months of anticipation and uncertainty that none of them are able to speak. Nobody has said it but they can't afford to fail, can't afford to have torn through time only to turn back or burn out.
Brad has got equipment to sort through, maps to verify and positioning systems to power up, but he lingers in the utility cabin with his helmet in hand, watching the way Nate seals the hard torso shell and life support system with practiced efficiency. Before Nate can reach for his boots Brad's handing them to him, and when Nate looks up to thank him silently, Brad leans in and kisses him.
It's familiar but no less needy, a close and curious fit of lips and teeth and tongues. Nate gasps into Brad's mouth, tries to say his name against his lips, and even as they are pulling apart Brad already knows that he will miss nothing but this.
In the main hull Wynn is already reading the landing protocol. When he finishes he looks up, expectant.
"We're here, Gents," says Patterson, "we're finally fucking here."
End
Note: The word ansible was coined by Ursula Le Guin.
I've mentioned this earlier but I'll say it again - forochel has been amazing from start to finish. Thank you for pointing out rampant comma splices and other crimes towards the English language, and for being thoroughly wonderful. ♥ I know you've practically helped to write it (cameo line and all!), but this fic is still for you.
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: R
Disclaimer: The characters here are based on those portrayed in HBO's fictionalised mini-series.
Word count: 6,500
Summary: Space travel/time dilation AU. He is a warrior, but this is not a war. It's a voyage with no visible end; the eight of them envoys from a home that no longer remembers them.
Notes: As always, a giant thank you to forochel for being an amazing beta and enabler. ♥
It is a historic moment in astronavigation when the Bravo II exits the solar system on the fifth of August, 2049. On Earth, images of the darkness beyond the last planet and within the unexplored expanse of the local interstellar cloud are splashed across the front pages of every publication. NASA Administrator James Mattis gives a long and triumphant speech, as does the President of the United States, but it is a recording of an offhand remark by one of the crew members that truly captures the public's imagination.
Sergeant Brad Colbert's half awed, half ironic murmur of, "Yes, we are the conquering heroes," as they race past mankind's last space buoy (0983 ZHENG HE) is replayed over five billion times that day. It will go on to be immortalised in history books and novelty t-shirts alike.
It is, writes the New York Times, this cocky yet reverent attitude that calls to mind the hotshot space cowboys that have, until now, mostly existed in our imaginations. These men are fearless, is what it means - these men are not afraid of space, or time.
What the people back on Earth do not know, however, is that five minutes later, Sergeant Colbert glances around at the rest of Bravo II's crew and says, "I'm taking a shit."
1.
Everything they bring to space is designed to hold them down. The biosuits they wear press their bodies in shape, enfolding limbs and torso in a compact armour of spandex and kevlar. Out of the cabins they sleep in well padded sarcophagi, strapped snug and standing up. And at the heart of the vessel, the main pressure hull sits ensconced within a centrifuge, creating an artificial gravity that keeps them in place.
Amidst all this, Brad unravels.
They are hundreds of light years away from Earth, with hundreds more to go before they reach their destination. This is the in-between state, the continuous blackness of deep space observed at high speed. Brad has opened his eyes to the dark unknown and felt not fear but rootlessness.
He is a warrior, but this is not a war. It's a voyage with no visible end; the eight of them envoys from a home that no longer remembers them.
"This isn't just some trip to Neptune," says the Chief of the Astronaut Office. "This is beyond anything mankind has ever attempted, and Ferrando needs to know that he's sending the nation's finest."
Brad has made it to the stage where he's getting guided tours of the Space Centre in Houston from Godfather himself, but he's still thinking about going back to Mexico for a second tour. This is probably the only shortlist that he's gotten onto without even trying, but he doesn't actually want the blue flightsuit.
Godfather is not the sort of man who can easily be turned down, however. He had been the only Marine in the first crew to land on Mars, years back, and, most recently, commanded the exploration to Saturn. It goes without saying that he is very powerful. He also refuses to take Brad's no for an answer.
"The starfaring age will be ushered in by Marines, there's no doubt about it," he rasps, as they step out the elevator.
"Yes, sir," Brad replies, following closely behind as Godfather takes them down a long and doorless corridor. On every occasion that they have met, Godfather has always been standing or pacing, hands gesticulating slowly with calculated firmness as he talks. There is an economy in his gait, a measuredness to his steps that speaks of someone who relishes being sure of the ground on which he's treading. It's not obvious, but Brad pays attention to these things.
"Exploration Systems," says Godfather, when they reach a large glass door at the end of the passageway. He pauses to glare into the iris recognition unit. "Ferrando has heard good things about you, Sergeant. Very good things. You're the sort of man who knows what duty to his country is."
"Yes, sir," says Brad, keeping his face impassive.
A man in a flightsuit is waiting for them when the door slides open.
"Bryan Patterson," Godfather says briskly, both a greeting and an introduction. He turns to Brad. "This is the man who's commanding the mission - get acquainted. I will leave you in his capable hands while my people deal with the finer points of your employment here."
"Sir-"
"Your file says that you're six foot four," Godfather interrupts. "Is that true?"
"Yes, sir."
Godfather smiles. It is rather terrifying. "One inch taller and you'd miss the flight."
2.
On time:
Time has always been a relative concept to Brad. In Mexico and Korea, sunrise and sunset were only the loosest of indicators; time was measured in terms of whether they would be Oscar Mike in five minutes or five hours.
Out in space, there is no night and day; they keep time based on that sunny afternoon in Houston. Ray wanders through the hull wearing his non-regulation pyjamas in a parody of morning, and Wynn indulges this every now and then by breaking out his stash of Cap'n Crunch.
They get the news daily but nobody wants to know how much the world has changed in three months, or six.
"Man, we got ourselves a new President," Walt says, when he checks the headlines one week into the voyage.
"Let's hope he doesn't cut our funding," Rudy quips.
They all exchange glances, knowing full well that this is entirely possible, that a politician's decision to scale down, or to divert funds from here to there might leave them cut off entirely.
"Dude," says Walt, finally, "I think he's a she."
"That's it," Ray replies, "we're fucked."
A week later, the others arrive.
They're all Recon Marines, Brad realises - he met Poke Espera while on libo in Australia some years back, though he's never heard of the kid, Trombley. Behind them is a third guy, who emerges from the van only to do a double take when he sets eyes on Brad.
"Holy fuck, it's you," says Ray Person, managing to look shocked, dismayed and delighted all at the same time.
"You know each other?" asks Patterson, glancing between the two of them.
"Reluctant as I am to admit this," Brad says, "Person and I were in the same battalion in PTKS."
"Haeju to Pyongyang in a fucking Humvee," Ray adds. "Worst three months of my life."
"Well," Patterson tells him, with a wry smile, "welcome to the next six."
3.
Nate keeps track. That's what Brad has discovered.
A week before the launch, there was a farewell dinner up in Washington. Brad remembers seeing Nate's niece, little Clara in her lovely white dress, beaming as her Uncle Nate picked her up in his arms and didn't put her down for the rest of the night.
It has been eleven days since they've left, and Clara's already celebrating another birthday. Nate writes letters, constantly, aware that a few hours can be weeks; a day, months. He doesn't catch up. He, of all people, knows the implication behind those endless equations he was working on.
Brad wants to ask, why did you come, if there's so much to leave behind, but he doesn't. He stands in the ansible room with his arms folded across his chest and watches Nate take in five weeks' worth of letters and love from a family moving much too quickly for their brightest son. If Nate feels Brad's eyes on him he says nothing about it.
Two days into training, Brad understands why they had to pick Recon Marines.
There's no endless sand, or digging holes and getting shot at, but it's punishing all the same; they start their days in simulators and end them struggling through the water in tennis shoes and weighted flight suits. In between all of that are a ridiculous number of classes and motion cue training sessions. It both excites and consumes Brad. Every night he falls asleep thinking of propulsion checklists and dreams about diving again, of opening his eyes in the vast darkness of the ocean and being both calmed and frightened by its forbidding, colossal weight.
The astronauts they meet look like they would have been brilliant Marines if they hadn't joined NASA - Missions Specialist Rudy Reyes, for example, can often be seen sprinting across the compound in nothing but a pair of tiny shorts and a heavily weighted flak jacket. Mike Wynn, the Pilot who brings them on a tour of the actual ship that he'll be flying, has a compact bulk that wouldn't look out of place in a utility uniform. Walt Hasser, Bravo II's Flight Engineer, seemed at first like he wouldn't survive a firefight, but Brad finds himself having to revise his opinion of Hasser after they watch him fly a T-38X over Ellington Field, all defiant loops and cruelly precise turns.
He meets Nate Fick in his second month there, after they've finished the swimming tests and altitude chamber drills.
"They're still coming up with an official title for this training programme - actually, I wouldn't call it a training programme; it's more of a crash course," says Fick, and Brad can't get over how fucking young he looks, standing there in a threadbare grey t-shirt with the words 'IT'S ONLY ROCKET SCIENCE' printed beneath the NASA logo.
"For now, though," Reyes adds, "we'll just refer to it as Don't Fuck Up."
Fick will be the ship's Payload Commander, meaning that he will be in charge "of a shitload of experiments and lead the expedition when we reach the planet," as Hasser puts it.
Hasser is the sort who earned his Astronaut Pin through flying with the Marines; Fick was plucked straight from Dartmouth and completed his PhD while in NASA's employ. Every alternate afternoon he stands at the front of a freezing lecture theatre and shows them slide after slide of statistics picked up by probes that have gone before them, his face cast in an eerie glow from the light of the projection pad.
"So we're heading here?" asks Trombley, pointing at one of several pixellated blobs scattered in a haphazard formation on one slide.
"No, this one," Fick replies, circling its neighbour with a finger and enlarging the image on the screen. "We believe that this is the most viable planet in the system. There is a high possibility it also contains sentient life-forms."
"What's its name?" asks Poke.
"It's currently pending for approval, but NASA has proposed calling it Euphrates," says Fick.
It makes sense, Brad thinks. Cradle of civilisation and all.
"Fuck that," Ray declares. "I'm calling it Fred."
4.
The voyage will take slightly more than a year of their lives, roughly the same duration as an exchange attachment or a tour of duty.
"I don't miss anything from home," Brad says one evening, when they're huddled around warm meals in the main pressure hull. "The only exception is my bike."
The others don't make much of it; Ray asks Wynn if he thinks Houston can send them the latest edition of Juggs via ansible.
From across the table, Nate glances at Brad, an unspoken question in his gaze. It feels like he's calling Brad's bluff.
In the third month Fick sits all the candidates down in a meeting room and explains the theory of relativity to them in terms of neat lines on a white board and a series of truncated equations.
"What does that mean?" asks Trombley, after an hour of explanation.
"It means that we're going so fucking fast," Ray replies, "that what seems like a week to us will be almost a year on Earth."
"Give or take a couple of months," Fick adds. "But you've got the gist of it."
Poke passed all the tests but he drops out after this. Nobody blames him; he's got a wife and two beautiful daughters. Trombley stays because "he's a crazy motherfucker," according to Ray, who mumbles something about seeing how far he can take it when Reyes asks him about his own reasons.
"Duty to our country - duty to science, maybe even to our species," Fick says, when Brad asks. They're in class, learning about the atmosphere on Euphrates, and Fick looks so earnest that Brad can't even bring himself to laugh.
"It's your entire fucking life," Brad says.
Fick nods. "And yours, too," he replies, voice short but eyes amiable.
5.
At 1500 hours every day the crew splits up to carry out an inspection of the ship. In between that, those not on duty sit around for endless bull sessions that involve everything from the deaths of pop stars to outrageous tales of friends of guys they know.
"You know, sometimes I think this entire project is a conspiracy," says Brad, "to get Corporal Person's dick as far away from any living pussy on the face of the planet."
"Oh, fuck, you know that's true," Rudy exclaims, hitting the table with visible glee.
Brad's grinning; he's in great form. "Back on Earth, they're probably referring to this as Operation-"
"Protect The Pussy," Nate interrupts with a completely straight face. Brad can't take his eyes off the way Nate's lips form around the consonants. "And I would commend the United State government for its rare display of wisdom and foresight, if not for the fact that they sent me along for the ride as well."
"Fuck you," Ray spits, without venom.
Not if I get there first, thinks Brad.
When the ship is near completion, Patterson brings them up to see the crop modules that are currently being installed. There are five on the ship, each with an aeroponics system put in place for food production in preparation for any possible rations shortage. It is all very fascinating until Patterson puts Brad and Ray in charge of making sure that the system is in order.
"This is an affront to my warrior spirit," says Brad, observing the crop critically.
"Do you think we could grow shrooms on these things?" asks Ray.
Fick gives them a very serious talk about taking precautions not to introduce foreign species of plantlife to the planet.
"It's like going to fucking Australia - I get it," says Ray.
"This is more serious than 'fucking Australia', Corporal Person," says Fick. "This is an entire planet's eco system we could throw off."
"This planet better be worth all this shit," Ray replies. "Because I've seen Planet of the Apes and all those monkeys really fucking creeped me out."
6.
Day twenty: Walt's grandmother passes away.
They have been taught how to deal with this. A Doctor Bodley had come in during their training at the Johnson Space Centre to give a lecture entitled Dealing With Separation.
"It is inevitable," he had told them. "You must be prepared."
Walt isn't prepared; none of them are. Gunny takes on his duties for the night, but gives them back to Walt upon realising that letting him sit silently in the main hull is doing him more harm than good.
Ray is probably the worst choice when it comes to dealing with such things, but Brad leaves him and Walt in the ansible room anyway. He goes to look for Nate and finds him in one of the crop modules, staring fixedly at a row of butter cabbage.
He slips in and sits with him, and for a long moment neither of them speaks. At regular intervals a row of funnels mist water over the exposed plant roots with a sound like an exhale.
"I know it's supposed to fuck with our minds. I'm supposed to be able to deal with it," Nate finally says.
Brad looks at Nate's face and sees none of that calm intensity he has come to admire. Something else has settled in Nate's expression - a vulnerable openness that makes him seem twice as young.
He knows that there are other ways to respond to this. He could say, it's okay, or, I understand, simple words to lift the spell of loneliness that they all feel as acutely as space sickness and pressure fever.
But Nate has his eyes closed and is breathing so painfully slowly, as if he's afraid that anything louder will come out a sob, and Brad finds himself reaching out to grip Nate's shoulders with his two hands in an anchoring gesture. He expects the contained shivering of someone experiencing intense sorrow or stress, not Nate's sharp, alert gaze as his eyes snap open to meet Brad's. And, quite suddenly, the answers are all there on Nate's face, lines and planes of grief mingled with wretched want.
Nate's mouth falls open in a silent syllable that could be yes, that must be yes, because Brad can feel the warmth of Nate's skin beneath his t-shirt as he slides his palms inwards and over Nate's collarbones, curling his fingers around his neck, his thumbs coming to rest on the hollow of Nate's throat. For an eternity neither of them moves, crouched on the brink of a mistake that Brad doesn't think he can retract.
Nate takes a shuddered breath; swallows and closes his eyes again like he cannot quite believe it.
They do not kiss. They cannot, not when Brad is dragging his fingers down the column of Nate's neck and Nate is lurching forward to slide his hands over Brad's back, rucking up his shirt in a desperate search for skin. Nate has his face pressed almost painfully into Brad's shoulder, their burning, bruising touches saying an expanse of things Brad would never dream of repeating out loud. He clutches and takes and holds himself to Nate, clinging tighter when he hears a gasp like dry grief, a sound to break the both of them if they let it.
He doesn't; he doesn't let go.
Fick's handwriting is perfect, an unhurried, precise printing of rounded curves and stems that slant just fractionally to the right. Even in a hurry his equations look elegant, covering miles of grid on that special sort of paper he likes to use. It's somehow comforting just to watch the way Fick draws a diagram, his lines almost uncomfortably straight even without a ruler, circles full even when he means for it to be a rough sketch. His precision, his attention to detail, makes Brad think, somewhat irrationally, that this is a man who wouldn't lead them astray.
He also has a seemingly endless supply of lame astronaut t-shirts. When Brad finds him in the systems room on a Friday evening he's hunched over his projection pad with his glasses shoved up his nose, wearing a shirt that says 'I need my space'.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Fick asks, when he notices Brad, and he really should not be blinking up at Brad and smiling like that, Brad thinks.
They've been going through trajectories and navigational paths, because Brad's the sort who has to know, has to be figuring out their routes on his own instead of leaving it to someone else. It's almost an obsession, as Ray often reminds him loudly and obnoxiously, but Fick doesn't seem to mind.
7.
Walt is mostly fine, after that first day. He's not the sort to neglect his duties for long, and is back flipping switches in the engine room almost immediately. He is a lot quieter, however, which seems to have the effect of making Ray a lot noisier, in a curious inverse relationship that Brad has only cursorarily noted before.
They're at breakfast when Ray wanders over to Walt and begins dry-humping his shoulder.
"How you doing, Walt?"
"Don't do that."
"What if I did this?" asks Ray, and dives in to give Walt a hug of great manliness that Brad knows from past experience is also painful and suffocating.
"Get out of here," Walt replies. Ray responds by tackling him to the ground.
"Tell me," says Brad, "about gimbaled centrifuges."
It is very early in the morning and they're still in Fick's office, having spent the past five hours poring over satellite pictures of Euphrates and planning routes and equipment.
"You're not serious, are you?" asks Fick.
"Tell me," Brad repeats. "I want to know."
"It's four in the morning," Fick groans, rubbing a hand over his face. "I don't want to talk about gimbaled centrifuges. You should ask Pappy - his did his second PhD on them."
"Right," says Brad. "I realise you must be tired."
"Aren't you?" asks Fick. In the light of the office lamp, his eyes are very green.
"I'll survive," Brad replies, thinking back to the times when he'd gone without proper sleep for whole weeks; constant adrenaline dulling fear and other senses.
"We have simulators in two hours," Fick says finally, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Want to go for a run?"
Their route begins at the entrance of the human spaceflight offices; Fick is already changed and waiting by the time Brad makes it there.
"Ray's going to love that shirt," says Brad, indicating the two cartoon rockets and the large 'NASACAR' emblazoned below them.
Fick glances down at his chest. "My sister buys them, I swear."
Brad grins and cocks his head. "Shall we, Dr. Fick?"
"Try and keep up," Fick replies. "And I'd rather you call me Nate."
"Try and keep up, Nate," says Brad, smirking, and together they set off at a brisk pace.
There is something to be said about running with a friend at four in the morning, although Brad's not entirely sure at this point if Fick - Nate - quite counts as one yet. He's a good runner, though (captain of the cycling club at Dartmouth, Brad's heard, and NASA's training programme isn't exactly a walk in the park), and Brad finds that he doesn't need to hold back as much as he had expected to.
The Johnson Space Centre is comprised of more than a hundred buildings. Nate takes them on one of the best routes through the complex, cutting across beautiful lawns and jogging past a couple of the newer buildings that Brad has never set foot inside. They're headed towards the lake, he realises, which is a rather ridiculous distance away, but Nate seems fine and Brad can easily handle it. In the stillness of early morning there is no sound but their steady breathing and the occasional car creeping by, and Brad finds himself enjoying the rhythm of their run - comfortable; footfalls matching.
Their timing is perfect - they reach the lake just as the sun begins to rise. It's not a particularly beautiful sunrise, just the sky turning lighter until the smudged grey gives way to daylight, but Brad adds it to his impromptu list of things that he will miss about Earth.
Nate isn't paying very much attention to the sunrise. He's bending over to clutch at his knees, winded from the run despite all his talk at the beginning.
"Simulators in forty-five minutes," Brad reminds him.
"Tell me again," Nate groans, "why I thought this was a good idea."
"I was wondering, actually," says Brad. "Were you planning for us to head back the same way we came?"
"Fuck," says Nate, dripping sweat and extremely frustrated. Brad has to resist the urge to grin. "Fuck. I think I'm seeing spots."
They end up walking back. It takes them slightly more than two hours. Every time Brad glances over at Nate's sheepish expression he cannot help but laugh.
8.
In Nate's cabin, they fuck.
These exchanges are silent ones, furtive jostling in the cramped living space. Brad grows to love the way Nate mouths his name in barely a whisper, lips parting around it in exquisite repitition. There is an aggression in they way they clash together now, an almost explosive desperation that has Brad unable to do anything but press against Nate, touching and tasting in a fevered curl of limbs and wordless desire.
During the days that follow, they establish some sort of rhythm to their meetings that can only take place between their respective duties. They appear to have entered a constant, tangible orbit around each other, all heat and distance and undivided focus.
Nate is pulling Brad apart with each slow thrust, with the breathless heat in his eyes and the eager way in which he reaches between them to jerk Brad off, when suddenly Nate stops, stops.
"Fuck," Brad exhales; full, filled, full of want, even though he has - he has and he wants and he - "Nate."
Nate mouths something against Brad's collarbone and fists his cock once, twice - leans up to bite him and Brad's gone, falling, coming with Nate still hard inside him.
They don't talk about it. Even Ray is curiously silent on the issue, and Brad knows he knows.
When this first begins Brad tells himself that it is for survival, like combat jacks to stay awake after days of sleeplessness. This is a lie. Now he catches himself wondering how Nate has somehow become his harbour in this void of madness, wondering at this mutual gravity of two bodies that pulls them into each other day after day after day.
There's an event in Washington to celebrate the impending launch; Brad arrives in his dress blues and spends the evening curtly reminding members of the press that he is "a Marine, not an astronaut" whenever they approach him for his views on the voyage. That is, until Patterson steers him over to the edge of the crowd and tells him to be nice.
"I am very fucking nice," Brad retorts, but doesn't disobey.
He's speaking (nicely) to his third reporter by the time Nate catches up with him.
"Duty to your country?" Nate repeats amusedly, appearing at Brad's shoulder. "I see you're stealing all my lines."
Nate is wearing a charcoal-coloured suit in a cut favoured mostly by well-heeled octogenarians, but somehow he still manages to pull it off, all clean lines and dapper silhouette. He quickly commandeers Brad's reporter, fielding questions with a charming ease that Brad has never bothered to learn. As he speaks, however, Nate gives no indication of wanting Brad to leave, his eyes darting towards Brad every now and then to draw him back into the conversation.
"Sergeant Colbert has proven and will continue to prove invaluable to this mission," Nate is saying. "I am assured of this."
"Just one of the many grunts at Dr. Fick's disposal," Brad clarifies.
"Exactly," Nate says gravely. "If the engines fail his job is to get out and push."
The reporter laughs. "That's very funny, Dr. Fick."
"Please," Brad tells her, "don't encourage him."
The next day's Washington Post features three entire pages about The Future Of Spaceflight. Almost all of it focuses on the President's speech the previous evening and how the mission might alter America's relationship with China, but somewhere down the bottom of page three is a smallish photograph of two crew members looking very dashing as they laugh together over something the reader is not privy to. The caption beneath it reads: Genuine Friendship - NASA scientist Dr. Nathaniel Fick and Marine Sgt. Brad Colbert talk of exploring new frontiers together.
"You see," says Ray, "captions like this don't happen unless you spend the evening flirting with the good doctor. I mean, shit like 'easy camaraderie' is one thing, but 'genuine friendship'? That's just gay, homes. Very fucking gay."
"Ray, shut up."
Ray, however, is not one to be easily silenced, especially with something as good as this. "And what the fuck do you mean by 'exploring new frontiers together'?" he asks. "Is it some sort of obscure astronaut-speak for the big gay wedding the two of you are planning? Where's my fucking invitation? How long were you gonna keep this from your dearest pal Ray-Ray?"
"Ray."
Two astronauts are playing golf on Nate's t-shirt when Brad finds him in his office.
"So it's 'genuine friendship', then?" asks Nate with a slightly embarrassed grin.
"I'm still wondering how that journalist failed to pick up on my obvious and intense hatred of you, actually," Brad replies.
"That's a pity," says Nate. "I was almost hopeful."
Brad pretends to consider this for a while. "'Genuine' is entirely out of the question," he tells Nate eventually, "but I suppose there could be some room for an extra friend, in between making history and serving my country."
"I appreciate that," says Nate. Then he laughs, and Brad thinks it might be better for him to just walk right out of the office because this will undo him and he knows it.
9.
Weeks pass. They're still on track, Patterson confirms, poring over their coordinates with Wynn and Nate.
"It's incredible that we've made it this far," Nate murmurs as the data from the third Triton satellite helps to triangulate their current position.
"That's us," says Ray, "to boldly go where no man has gone before."
"Ray, just shut the fuck up," Brad tells him.
"No, seriously, we're like the fucking Enterprise up here," says Ray. "Fick over there's like Mr Spock - got to work on those ears, though - and Commander Patterson is Kirk, and we have our doctor-"
"Ray," Brad says warningly.
"And Wynn's totally that Russian dude, and Rudy's Sulu, and Brad..." he pauses to regard Brad thougtfully. "It's kind of a toss-up between Uhura and the guy they put in charge of warpspeed."
"Scotty," supplies Walt.
"Yes, Scotty," says Ray, beaming round at him.
From the corner of his eye, Brad can see Nate trying to hide his laughter behind the back of his hand.
"Definitely Uhura," Ray is still saying, "because Walt totally needs to be in the engine room. What do you think, Brad?"
"I think it's time for you to shut the fuck up," Brad replies.
It doesn't sink in, for Brad. Not in the way it does for Ray, or any of the others.
By the time they're five weeks to launch it's only Brad and Ray left as Payload Specialists. Trombley's forced to drop out when he develops a niggling eye infection that Doc Bryan insists will compromise the mission.
"You're going to be travelling out into deep space," Doc Bryan tells them, at the astronautical hygiene briefing. "Not to the moon, not to Mars. We can't have any of you starting out with infections that can fuck up the rest of the crew."
It's almost twenty minutes later, when they've moved on to looking at microbial hazards, that Brad notices Ray's irregular breathing. He's clutching at his chest and mouthing fuck, fuck, staring unseeingly ahead as he struggles to contain himself.
They've trained for space sickness, but nobody mentioned anything about panic attacks. Ray doesn't talk about it to Brad, and it doesn't happen again.
"All this is just fucking crazy," is what he says instead. "And you know I'm very into things that are fucking crazy."
"Yes," says Brad.
"What's out there?" asks Ray. "Do you think about that?"
Brad doesn't know what to say because Ray has never been the sort to stop and examine his fear. Ray Person is the guy who kept on driving even with the most fucked up NVGs in the world, with mortar fire raining down around them and Captain America screeching over the radio about how it was the end of the world.
He nods; mumbles, "sometimes," and hopes it will suffice.
"That's why you're the Iceman," says Ray. He looks wretched.
10.
Four months into the voyage, Earth celebrates Bravo II's tenth anniversary.
The President (still a woman) sends them a message saying that she is very proud; Ferrando swears that "Godfather will not forget, and neither will the United States". Dozens of letters from schoolchildren are forwarded to them.
Clara's discovered boys, and French poetry. She copies lines from books in the libraries and includes them in her letters to Nate. She sends photographs too, without the boys in them - just her, seventeen and beautiful, sitting in some park and beaming up at the camera. She has Nate's eyes.
Here are the first four lines of a poem by Robert Desnois, she writes. I have been told you have no patience for French so I'm only attaching the translation.
The rest of them get messages, too. Commander Patterson and Doc Bryan take their projection pads off to their cabins to read them in private, as do Wynn and Rudy. Ray sits in the main hull and gets frustratedly teary over a digital postcard from his family that says, simply and honestly, NASCAR IS NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU, JOSH RAY. Walt leans against Ray and sniffs at his pad, as though the flowery fragrance that his mother always carries around with her will come through the screen.
Brad's mother writes for the rest of the family. She tells him that his bike is in okay condition but nobody knows what to do with it; she tells him about the new cat, about how the other day his second nephew decided that he was going to be an astronaut like his Uncle Brad. She is not sentimental. Come home safe, son, is how she ends the letter, as if Brad's just off to stay over at a friend's for a night, not journeying towards a distant planet no human has ever set foot on.
He's thankful that she doesn't write I love you. That's his mother. She knows not to tell him something he already knows.
The letter he sends back is much more concise. Don't touch the bike. Name the cat Fred. Tell the boy that outer space is boring and he should become a Marine. I will.
Never Anyone but You
Never anyone but you in spite of stars and solitudes
In spite of mutilated trees at nightfall
Never anyone but you will take a path which is mine also
The farther you go away the greater your shadow grows
- Robert Desnois
They get a week's leave a fortnight before Bravo II is launched. Brad spends all his time riding his Yamaha R1; drunk on speed and solitude from morning to evening.
It's about control, he wants to say, when his sister calls to ask him to explain (again) why his favourite past-time appears to be hurtling down highways at ridiculous speeds. About being able to fuck up his own life without having to wait for orders to do so.
Instead, he tells her, "Can't ride a bike in space."
"If you say so," she replies absently, over the terrifying noise that Brad suspects is the sound of his nephews frolicking in the background. "Mom says to come over for dinner, by the way."
"I'm in Houston."
"You have a motorcycle," says his sister, clearly unimpressed. "Do some hurtling."
Brad goes home.
He sits in the living room with the television on while his mother attempts to feed him everything she's got in the refrigerator. She's used to this, used to her son leaving her for unknown places, but this is entirely different and neither of them is willing to recognise the magnitude of it.
"Sit down," he says, after she sets four slices of fruitcake down in front of him. He catches her narrow wrist gently. "Can't see anything with you standing in front of the screen."
"Brad," is all his mother says in reply, but she sits down next to him and picks at her own slice of fruitcake.
Brad looks at his mother in the warm afternoon sunshine and realises, suddenly, how much she's aged. He can see her as an old woman, now; can imagine returning and finding a smaller, stooped version of her, frailer than she already is.
That evening he eats his dinner like it's his last; he asks for seconds, thirds. She stands over him with the pot of stew and never lets his plate go empty.
"You will come home and I will see that nothing has changed," she tells him almost sternly when it's time for him to leave, in a voice that will brook no disobedience. "The little boy I took home, all fury and strength, who grew up swearing to protect his mama."
It's almost a blessing. Brad takes it as one; if he believes nothing else he believes his mother's words.
11.
They reach Euphrates six months after they leave Houston; on Earth, almost twenty years have passed.
Brad has memorised the planet from thirteen months of studying hundreds of thousands of satellite photographs. Its still faces have loomed perpetually in his mind; Nate's green jewel now theirs to claim.
Or not; as they draw nearer to it Brad has to come to terms with its vastness - this is not a country, this is not a single continent to traverse. It is Earth's twin, almost, and the statistics come to Brad as easily as breathing: land to water ratio, composition of gases in the atmosphere, heat source, general path of orbit.
In three hours they will begin preparations to penetrate the atmosphere. Brad looks at the planet through the viewing hatch, this Earth-that-is-not-Earth, and feels, for the first time, that he misses home.
They change into their Biosuits in silence, tension weighing so heavily now after months of anticipation and uncertainty that none of them are able to speak. Nobody has said it but they can't afford to fail, can't afford to have torn through time only to turn back or burn out.
Brad has got equipment to sort through, maps to verify and positioning systems to power up, but he lingers in the utility cabin with his helmet in hand, watching the way Nate seals the hard torso shell and life support system with practiced efficiency. Before Nate can reach for his boots Brad's handing them to him, and when Nate looks up to thank him silently, Brad leans in and kisses him.
It's familiar but no less needy, a close and curious fit of lips and teeth and tongues. Nate gasps into Brad's mouth, tries to say his name against his lips, and even as they are pulling apart Brad already knows that he will miss nothing but this.
In the main hull Wynn is already reading the landing protocol. When he finishes he looks up, expectant.
"We're here, Gents," says Patterson, "we're finally fucking here."
End
Note: The word ansible was coined by Ursula Le Guin.
I've mentioned this earlier but I'll say it again - forochel has been amazing from start to finish. Thank you for pointing out rampant comma splices and other crimes towards the English language, and for being thoroughly wonderful. ♥ I know you've practically helped to write it (cameo line and all!), but this fic is still for you.