(no subject)
TITLE: the bones inside you singing out again
AUTHOR: eudaimon
RATING: NC17
WORDCOUNT: 3800
PAIRING(S): Nate/Brad, Doc Bryan/OFC
DISCLAIMER: I own none of this.
SUMMARY: He drove here from D.C, figured he'll head up to Boston tomorrow, keep a date that he's had written on a scrap of paper in his wallet for nearly a year.
A/N: Written for orlanstamos and bzzinglikeneon, who wanted 'Doc Bryan" and "phonesex" respectively. This fic also includes at appearence by the girlfriend that I gave Doc Bryan, Sharahah, who first appeared in my story, A Single Spark. Title from "Cans" by Tunng.
And in the evening we'll turn off t.v.
And watch the stars
And crack open a can or two
And it's all fine if we are by our side
When he arrives she gives him a moment to drop his duffle bag before she cups his face with both hands and kisses him soundly on both cheeks. Her long black hair smells of sandalwood and cooking spices. Tim Bryan stands back from it all, arms folded across his chest, looking slightly bemused. It's a look that Brad's never seen on the Doc's face before. It suits him.
"C'mon," he says, holding out a hand to bring him inside and hustle him down the hallway. "We'll have a beer while she's finishing up."
"What the fuck did you do to yourself?" asks Brad, leaning back against the counter in the dense, humid heat. The screen door is thrown open to try and catch any breath of breeze. August in Philadelphia. Brad misses the ocean like a limb.
Tim hobbles to the refrigerator and bends down to snag two bottles dripping condensation.
"Training exercise," says Tim, holding Brad's beer out to him. "Special Forces medics ain't fuckin' Corpsmen, Brad."
Brad snorts out a laugh and raises his beer to that, hoo-fuckin'rah.
The kitchen has white and black checkered tiles on the floor, warped cupboard doors, mis-matched coffee cups and painted tea-glasses. It's about a million miles away from Brad's white on white kitchen in San Diego, but that doesn't mean it's not pleasing, somehow. It's a place that he could see feeling at home. It's a lived in kitchen, which is more than he can say for his own. Standing there, Brad realises that how fucking disgusting he is from the road. He drove here from D.C, figured he'll head up to Boston tomorrow, keep a date that he's had written on a scrap of paper in his wallet for nearly a year.
"Sit," says Tim's girlfriend, Sharahah, though she's asked him to call her 'Shah'. He tries, every time he's here. She nudges Tim in direction of a chair with her hip and then hooks her dark hair behind her ear and reaches up, skimming an ice-cube against the back of Brad's neck. He barely stifles something embarrassingly close to a moan.
"Where the hell did you find this woman?" he asks, even though it's a story that he's heard before. He makes a cup out of his fingers and reaches up to cover her hand with his, catching the ice-chip, cold water trickling down the knobbled line of his spine under his shirt.
She laughed and moved away from, slipping into the cradle of Tim's lap. He wraps both arms around her waist and Brad feels a brief ache for that kind of easy intimacy, something that he snatches for himself in hotel rooms, carves along with his name on Nate's apartment door.
"What brings you to Philadelphia, Brad?" she asks him, combing her fingers through her hair. The curve of her neck and shoulder remind Brad of an ink-drawn nude hanging in the hallway of his parents' house. Brad isn't a blusher but, if he was, he might've, for her. Tim leans forward and kisses her neck. Her long silver earring, incongruous worn with a Marine Corps t-shirt and cut off denim, makes a soft, musical sound. Before Jenni married Matt, Brad always used to notice the things that she wore. Him and Nate dress so similarly, they might as well just have one closet.
"He's going to see Nate," says Tim.
Both of Sharahah's neat dark eyebrows raise. It's like she's discovering something brand new.
"Nate?"
"Nate."
Brad clears his throat and takes a long swallow of his beer.
"Do you fucking mind? I'm going to see my LT, not making a fucking bootycall."
Her laugh is the best reason that Brad's had recently for missing Jenni. When Nate laughs, it's something completely different altogether.
"You're at least going to stay the night?" she asks him.
"Damn fuckin' right he is," answers Tim before Brad even has a chance to nod his head. "And he's going to eat a balanced fuckin' meal, too."
Brad can see why Special Forces wanted Tim Bryan: asshole's fucking relentless. In the end, Brad just raises his beer bottle in a toast to both of them, Doc Bryan and his beautiful desert girl, dark eyed, dark haired, smooth skinned and out-lined in black ink.
*
He eats dinner and then him and Tim end up sprawled in chairs on the deck watching through the propped open door as Sharahah does dishes and dances, singing to herself. Brad finds himself unable not to watch; she's his buddy's girlfriend and he's promised other places but he's still male, still Recon, and his dick's in fine working order, thank you very fucking much. Shah lifts one arm over her head, silver bangles gathering against her tan forearm and Brad stares at the lift of her breast under her t-shirt, worn soft during PT classes. He watches the way the silver hand-shaped pendant that she wears slips against green cotton.
"It's supposed to protect her," says Tim, holding up his own hand, palm out, fingers together, in illustration.
"Yeah, I know. It's a Jewish thing, too. My sister gave me one, once."
"And you don't wear it?"
"Nope."
He doesn't (never has and never will) need a piece of silver to tell him when he was safe. It does look beautiful on her, though. He watches the sway of it against her chest. He knows that Tim's watching him watching her and he knows that he ought to be embarrassed but he isn't. The humid night is only partially responsible for the slow heat under Brad's skin.
"And you guys met in a grocery store."
Tim grins and drains his beer.
"The one just outside Pendleton."
Brad swills a mouthful of beer around his teeth meditatively.
"I need to drive up there more often. Fuck supporting my neighborhood businesses."
"Hoo-rah."
Brad snorts because he knows that Tim Bryan is even less down with that Moto bullshit than he is.
On the breeze, Brad catches a breath of himself, the way he fucking stinks. His nose wrinkles. In the desert, you get used to it, but this was fucking Philadelphia, and there wasn't any excuse.
"I need a shower."
"This is Philadelphia, not the back of fucking beyond," says Tim, easing Shah back into his lap and curling one arm comfortably around her waist. Brad tries to reconcile it with the man he knew from the desert, bad-tempered, disappointed, so fucking weary. Here he is, smiling. Here he is, slipping his hand between Shah's t-shirt and her pants, pressing his palm flat against her nut-brown belly. She cups his face and kisses his cheek.
It's really fucking beautiful.
"Go," she tells him, stroking her long, clever fingers through Tim's dark hair. "Shower. I'm taking him to bed, anyway. You're welcome in our house."
Brad puts up both his hands, surrendering for the first time in his life, and only for her.
*
In the shower, Brad thinks about jerking off but, in the end, he doesn't. He stands under the flow, hands pressed flat against the glass mosaic tiles and breathes through his nose.
He should've followed his gut and driven all the way to fucking Boston. Over the shower, he can hear the soft sound of Tim and Sharahah talking. Laughing. Like some kind of epic pussy, Brad closes his eyes and imagines Nate stepping into the shower behind him. It's a memory rather than a fantasy, the way one of Nate's hands skims up over his ribs, the other wrapping around his dick. Nate's shower in Somerville with the one cracked tile high on the wall. Never careful there. No time to waste. Nate's muscles always seemed to line up against his own, stretched long by Rudy's exercise regimes and snatched sleep in ranger graves. Once or twice, Nate had gone down on his knees while they were both still in the shower, dipped his head smoothly, both hands on Brad's ass and pressing him forward and Brad had let his head fall back against the tile. It never ceases to amaze Brad how quickly Nate Fick took to all manner of things.
The shower runs cold a long time before Brad does.
With a white towel wrapped around his waist, Brad pads into the guest room and quietly shuts the door. The room's got touches of Sharahah all over it; a patchworked bed-spread, paintings on the wall. Brad stands and looks at them for a long moment. Somehow, they don't look anything like the desert that he remembers.
Like most of the technology that Brad Colbert buys, his cellphone is sleek and silver and almost frighteningly efficient. He lies down on the bed, still in his towel, one hand resting comfortably on his lower belly. It's late, nearly one a.m on this side of the country.
Nate picks up on the third ring.
"It's late, Brad."
In the dark, Brad finds himself grinning.
"It's late. What're you wearing?"
On the other end of the line, Brad imagines Nate raising an eyebrow. There's a palpable pause.
"Are you fucking serious, Brad?"
"Absolutely deadly fucking serious."
He aches to put his hand on his dick but he doesn't, not yet.
"You'll be here tomorrow."
He might be imagining it but he thinks that Nate's starting to sound amused.
"I'll be there tomorrow, but I want you now, Nate. I've spent all night trying not to look at Doc Bryan's girlfriend's tits and thinking about your dick so I figure that the least you can do is help me out a little."
Another pregnant pause and what sounds really like a long suffering sigh and Nate shifting his weight in the bed. They don't have the time to be long suffering. They have to take every chance that they can get.
"A Harvard shirt..."
"What colour?"
"...Purple. And plaid pajama pants."
"Plaid."
"Do you want to play or not, Brad?"
Brad's heard that tone of voice before...Get out of the hole, Brad. We're done here...Ass in the air, Brad. Hands up over your head. If he wasn't already hard from the moment Nate answers the phone, he'd be hard by now. That voice would have done it. His fingers push under the edge of the towel, brushing hair but moving without real purpose.
"What?" he murmurs, conscious of the need to keep his voice down. "You don't want to know what I'm wearing?"
There's a rustling on the other end of the line and Brad imagines that it's him pullign Nate's shirt up over his head.
"If you're not naked already, you fucking should be."
It's easy enough to shrug all the way out of the towel. He stretches out long bare limbs against the quilt and almost feels a flicker of guilt for using their guest room like this.
Almost, and then he hears Nate breathing.
"There. What about you?"
"Still in my pants, Brad."
"Take them off."
"What's the magic word, Brad?"
"Now."
Listening to Nate fumble out of his pajamas, Brad curls his fingers around his own dick and pretends that it's Nate that's touching him. Pretends that it's Nate's long fingers curled around him, jerking rhythmically now. He listens to the way that Nate's breathing changes.
"Got your hand on your dick, LT?"
"You can be assured of that, Brad."
"Tell me you wish it was me," he says, thumbing the head of his own cock. "Come on, Nate. I want to hear you say you say that you wish it was me stroking your dick right now."
"Brad..."
"Come on, Nate."
He hears Nate's breath catch in a shaky sigh.
"Of course I wish it was you."
Just hearing Nate say that, even though Brad's heard him say things far dirtier and more luridly realised in the past, makes Brad's dick jump in his hand. He swallows hard and squeezes gently, determined not to spurt over his own belly and chest this fucking quickly like some kind of sex starved teenager jerking off to internet porn. Not when the real thing, Nate Fick, six foot two in bare feet in Brad's kitchen in San Diego, crouching down to get in the bottom shelf of the fridge, not a mark on him except for the neat scar that's all that's left of his appendix. He remember stepping in behind and ruffling his hand through Nate's non-regulation length hair, and Nate had slowly straightened and braced himself against the to of the fridge.
The sound that Brad hears suddenly is himself moaning.
"You'd better drop your pants the minute you walk the door tomorrow," says Nate, his voice gone rough in a way that Brad's rarely heard it before.
Brad laughs, the sound caught in his throat, rocking his hips to fuck himself through the circle of his fingers.
"Yessir. I'll stay naked the whole weekend if that's what you fucking want."
Now it's Nate's turn to laugh.
"You can get dressed if we go out to eat."
"That's very generous of you, Nate." He groans. "Jesus Christ. I wish I was there."
"Right now," says Nate, his voice hoarse, "I want nothing more than to be sucking your dick, Brad."
For a long moment, Brad can't say anything at all.
"Have you got lube there?" he asks, finally.
He hears fumbling and then Nate clears his throat.
"Yeah."
"Use it. I want to hear you fucking yourself and thinking about me."
"Demanding today, aren't we, Brad?"
"Yes," he says, utterly unapologetic.
There's a pause when there's no sound except both of their breathing and Brad jerking his own dick. When Nate asks him how many fingers in a breathy whisper, Brad very nearly loses it there and then.
"Two," he says. "And then three and pretend that it's my dick. Pretend that it's me fucking you as hard as you want me to, Nate. Pretend it's tomorrow night."
After that, there isn't a lot of talking. Brad lies there, rolling his his to fuck his fist, listening to Nate do the same, listening to breathy moans that come as Nate works two and then three fingers deeper into himself. Twenty four hours out of Boston and Brad didn't know that it was possible to be this lonely, though he did know that it was possible to want this much. So much.
"You're fucking beautiful," he tells Nate, even though he can't see him, which might render that statement ridiculous if it wasn't so utterly fucking true. Nate was utterly fucking beautiful, which was something that Brad had first noticed at Pendleton, drinking beer and shooting pool, something that he'd committed to memory in the desert, watching Nate crouch down with a canteen in one hand, splashing water onto his face with the other and, later, fucking in his white on white kitchen in San Diego with Nate pushed back onto the counter, his long legs wrapped up around Brad's waist.
When he comes, he forgets how to breathe for a moment. It shudders out of him, so hard that it leaves him boneless and trembling and finding it difficult to move. Nate hasn't come yet; Brad can hear it in the way he's breathing, moaning, cursing softly under his breath. Brad cradles the phone between ear and shoulder and listened. If he hadn't just come, it'd be enough to get him hard again.
"Come on, Nate," he murmurs, voice hoarse. "Harder. Harder. I want to hear you fucking come for me, Nate."
Nate mumbles something that Brad doesn't catch and then he makes this sound that Brad's only ever heard him make in this situation, this little almost broken sound that's so uncharacteristic of him and Brad squeezes his eyes closed and he imagines Nate convulsing as he comes, head tipped back against the pillow, pulse throbbing in his throat. He imagines the tight muscles of Nate's belly, suddenly slick. He pictures the trembling in Nate's wrists.
"Fuck, I love you," whispers Nate, when they've both remembered how to speak.
"I fucking love you too," says Brad, wiping himself with a towel, back in his own head enough to realise that he shouldn't leave a mess. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"What time are you getting here?"
In Brad's minds eye, Nate stretches one arm up over his head, completely naked on top of the sheets. Feeling blood flood into his cheeks, Brad idly entertains the idea of taking hold of Nate's wrist and getting him to suck come off his fingers. Sometimes Nate'll do things like that, sometimes he won't, which doesn't mean Brad doesn't like to think about it.
"By dinner time," he promises. "I'll be there by dinnertime."
With Nate gone, Brad lies there with his eyes closed trying to think past an aching thirst. He gets up off the bed, stretches both arms up until his fingers graze the ceiling. Vaguely, he thinks about taking another shower but the idea of just putting on his leathers in the morning and riding all the way up to Boston with the scent of sex still on his skin. He bends, pulling his boxers back on.
The apartment's silent and he is silent too, padding on bare feet into the kitchen. He doesn't expect to find her sitting there in front of the open screen-door, wearing nothing but panties and that PT t-shirt skimming the tops of her long, brown thighs. Her hair is sleep-tousled, falling on one side of her face. She looks even more like something from a painting than she ever did before. He turns to go before he disturbs her, but she clears her throat and looks up before he can.
"There's juice in the fridge or tea in the pot, Sergent," she says, with a little smile that tugs at the corner of her mouth. The silver in her nose catches the light. "And then you can come and keep me company for a few minutes. Four a.m is the loneliest time in the world."
He ends up sitting with his back against the door, legs stretched out against the black and white tiles. They don't talk, not really. Down the hall, Brad can hear Doc Bryan snoring softly. It's amazing how relaxed he is here. It's amazing how they all go home and slip into different skins. Sharahah lifts her tea and blows across the surface and Brad thinks about how women who look like her having been doing that for centuries, and about how you can walk out of the desert and yet part of you will remember it.
"So Nate is in Boston?" she asks him, finally. Brad feels something between his shoulders tighten. He never talks about him and Nate because it's nobody's business, because the guys wouldn't understand and because he's still Recon, and there's only one thing in the world that he loves more than the Corps. Even Ray doesn't know. And Brad likes it that way. Nate's a friend. That's all.
"Yeah. Just checking in with the LT before I head over to the U.K."
Sharahah nods, finally sipping that tea, her hair slipping forward against her cheek.
"The night hides the world but reveals the universe," she says, sliding out of the chair, and setting her glass down and Brad watches the flash of black silk across her ass and the way her hair tumbles down to the small of her back. He thinks about Nate sitting at the kitchen counter reading the paper, barefoot, sleep-tousled. Sharahah bends from the waist and kisses Brad's short hair and he blushes and she leaves him sitting on the kitchen floor and she goes back to bed, and her Corpsman, and her desert dreams.
Brad sits there for a while, slowly sipping his tea and watching the sun come up over the glimse of the city that he can see across the terrace.
Four a.m is the loneliest time in the world. It's never occured to him to think about it like that, but Brad remembers sitting on the hood of the humvee in the middle of the night with everything around him gone silent and he remembers how it felt like being the last person alive at the ragged edge of the world.
In the end, he gets up and dresses and goes, gone and on the road to Boston before it's all the way light. The Doc's already up and making coffee and Sharahah stands on the stoop to watch him go. Just before he pulls his helmet on, she blows him a kiss and Brad holds up one hand, smiling broadly, surrendering to her for the second time.
Time to go.
AUTHOR: eudaimon
RATING: NC17
WORDCOUNT: 3800
PAIRING(S): Nate/Brad, Doc Bryan/OFC
DISCLAIMER: I own none of this.
SUMMARY: He drove here from D.C, figured he'll head up to Boston tomorrow, keep a date that he's had written on a scrap of paper in his wallet for nearly a year.
A/N: Written for orlanstamos and bzzinglikeneon, who wanted 'Doc Bryan" and "phonesex" respectively. This fic also includes at appearence by the girlfriend that I gave Doc Bryan, Sharahah, who first appeared in my story, A Single Spark. Title from "Cans" by Tunng.
And in the evening we'll turn off t.v.
And watch the stars
And crack open a can or two
And it's all fine if we are by our side
When he arrives she gives him a moment to drop his duffle bag before she cups his face with both hands and kisses him soundly on both cheeks. Her long black hair smells of sandalwood and cooking spices. Tim Bryan stands back from it all, arms folded across his chest, looking slightly bemused. It's a look that Brad's never seen on the Doc's face before. It suits him.
"C'mon," he says, holding out a hand to bring him inside and hustle him down the hallway. "We'll have a beer while she's finishing up."
"What the fuck did you do to yourself?" asks Brad, leaning back against the counter in the dense, humid heat. The screen door is thrown open to try and catch any breath of breeze. August in Philadelphia. Brad misses the ocean like a limb.
Tim hobbles to the refrigerator and bends down to snag two bottles dripping condensation.
"Training exercise," says Tim, holding Brad's beer out to him. "Special Forces medics ain't fuckin' Corpsmen, Brad."
Brad snorts out a laugh and raises his beer to that, hoo-fuckin'rah.
The kitchen has white and black checkered tiles on the floor, warped cupboard doors, mis-matched coffee cups and painted tea-glasses. It's about a million miles away from Brad's white on white kitchen in San Diego, but that doesn't mean it's not pleasing, somehow. It's a place that he could see feeling at home. It's a lived in kitchen, which is more than he can say for his own. Standing there, Brad realises that how fucking disgusting he is from the road. He drove here from D.C, figured he'll head up to Boston tomorrow, keep a date that he's had written on a scrap of paper in his wallet for nearly a year.
"Sit," says Tim's girlfriend, Sharahah, though she's asked him to call her 'Shah'. He tries, every time he's here. She nudges Tim in direction of a chair with her hip and then hooks her dark hair behind her ear and reaches up, skimming an ice-cube against the back of Brad's neck. He barely stifles something embarrassingly close to a moan.
"Where the hell did you find this woman?" he asks, even though it's a story that he's heard before. He makes a cup out of his fingers and reaches up to cover her hand with his, catching the ice-chip, cold water trickling down the knobbled line of his spine under his shirt.
She laughed and moved away from, slipping into the cradle of Tim's lap. He wraps both arms around her waist and Brad feels a brief ache for that kind of easy intimacy, something that he snatches for himself in hotel rooms, carves along with his name on Nate's apartment door.
"What brings you to Philadelphia, Brad?" she asks him, combing her fingers through her hair. The curve of her neck and shoulder remind Brad of an ink-drawn nude hanging in the hallway of his parents' house. Brad isn't a blusher but, if he was, he might've, for her. Tim leans forward and kisses her neck. Her long silver earring, incongruous worn with a Marine Corps t-shirt and cut off denim, makes a soft, musical sound. Before Jenni married Matt, Brad always used to notice the things that she wore. Him and Nate dress so similarly, they might as well just have one closet.
"He's going to see Nate," says Tim.
Both of Sharahah's neat dark eyebrows raise. It's like she's discovering something brand new.
"Nate?"
"Nate."
Brad clears his throat and takes a long swallow of his beer.
"Do you fucking mind? I'm going to see my LT, not making a fucking bootycall."
Her laugh is the best reason that Brad's had recently for missing Jenni. When Nate laughs, it's something completely different altogether.
"You're at least going to stay the night?" she asks him.
"Damn fuckin' right he is," answers Tim before Brad even has a chance to nod his head. "And he's going to eat a balanced fuckin' meal, too."
Brad can see why Special Forces wanted Tim Bryan: asshole's fucking relentless. In the end, Brad just raises his beer bottle in a toast to both of them, Doc Bryan and his beautiful desert girl, dark eyed, dark haired, smooth skinned and out-lined in black ink.
*
He eats dinner and then him and Tim end up sprawled in chairs on the deck watching through the propped open door as Sharahah does dishes and dances, singing to herself. Brad finds himself unable not to watch; she's his buddy's girlfriend and he's promised other places but he's still male, still Recon, and his dick's in fine working order, thank you very fucking much. Shah lifts one arm over her head, silver bangles gathering against her tan forearm and Brad stares at the lift of her breast under her t-shirt, worn soft during PT classes. He watches the way the silver hand-shaped pendant that she wears slips against green cotton.
"It's supposed to protect her," says Tim, holding up his own hand, palm out, fingers together, in illustration.
"Yeah, I know. It's a Jewish thing, too. My sister gave me one, once."
"And you don't wear it?"
"Nope."
He doesn't (never has and never will) need a piece of silver to tell him when he was safe. It does look beautiful on her, though. He watches the sway of it against her chest. He knows that Tim's watching him watching her and he knows that he ought to be embarrassed but he isn't. The humid night is only partially responsible for the slow heat under Brad's skin.
"And you guys met in a grocery store."
Tim grins and drains his beer.
"The one just outside Pendleton."
Brad swills a mouthful of beer around his teeth meditatively.
"I need to drive up there more often. Fuck supporting my neighborhood businesses."
"Hoo-rah."
Brad snorts because he knows that Tim Bryan is even less down with that Moto bullshit than he is.
On the breeze, Brad catches a breath of himself, the way he fucking stinks. His nose wrinkles. In the desert, you get used to it, but this was fucking Philadelphia, and there wasn't any excuse.
"I need a shower."
"This is Philadelphia, not the back of fucking beyond," says Tim, easing Shah back into his lap and curling one arm comfortably around her waist. Brad tries to reconcile it with the man he knew from the desert, bad-tempered, disappointed, so fucking weary. Here he is, smiling. Here he is, slipping his hand between Shah's t-shirt and her pants, pressing his palm flat against her nut-brown belly. She cups his face and kisses his cheek.
It's really fucking beautiful.
"Go," she tells him, stroking her long, clever fingers through Tim's dark hair. "Shower. I'm taking him to bed, anyway. You're welcome in our house."
Brad puts up both his hands, surrendering for the first time in his life, and only for her.
*
In the shower, Brad thinks about jerking off but, in the end, he doesn't. He stands under the flow, hands pressed flat against the glass mosaic tiles and breathes through his nose.
He should've followed his gut and driven all the way to fucking Boston. Over the shower, he can hear the soft sound of Tim and Sharahah talking. Laughing. Like some kind of epic pussy, Brad closes his eyes and imagines Nate stepping into the shower behind him. It's a memory rather than a fantasy, the way one of Nate's hands skims up over his ribs, the other wrapping around his dick. Nate's shower in Somerville with the one cracked tile high on the wall. Never careful there. No time to waste. Nate's muscles always seemed to line up against his own, stretched long by Rudy's exercise regimes and snatched sleep in ranger graves. Once or twice, Nate had gone down on his knees while they were both still in the shower, dipped his head smoothly, both hands on Brad's ass and pressing him forward and Brad had let his head fall back against the tile. It never ceases to amaze Brad how quickly Nate Fick took to all manner of things.
The shower runs cold a long time before Brad does.
With a white towel wrapped around his waist, Brad pads into the guest room and quietly shuts the door. The room's got touches of Sharahah all over it; a patchworked bed-spread, paintings on the wall. Brad stands and looks at them for a long moment. Somehow, they don't look anything like the desert that he remembers.
Like most of the technology that Brad Colbert buys, his cellphone is sleek and silver and almost frighteningly efficient. He lies down on the bed, still in his towel, one hand resting comfortably on his lower belly. It's late, nearly one a.m on this side of the country.
Nate picks up on the third ring.
"It's late, Brad."
In the dark, Brad finds himself grinning.
"It's late. What're you wearing?"
On the other end of the line, Brad imagines Nate raising an eyebrow. There's a palpable pause.
"Are you fucking serious, Brad?"
"Absolutely deadly fucking serious."
He aches to put his hand on his dick but he doesn't, not yet.
"You'll be here tomorrow."
He might be imagining it but he thinks that Nate's starting to sound amused.
"I'll be there tomorrow, but I want you now, Nate. I've spent all night trying not to look at Doc Bryan's girlfriend's tits and thinking about your dick so I figure that the least you can do is help me out a little."
Another pregnant pause and what sounds really like a long suffering sigh and Nate shifting his weight in the bed. They don't have the time to be long suffering. They have to take every chance that they can get.
"A Harvard shirt..."
"What colour?"
"...Purple. And plaid pajama pants."
"Plaid."
"Do you want to play or not, Brad?"
Brad's heard that tone of voice before...Get out of the hole, Brad. We're done here...Ass in the air, Brad. Hands up over your head. If he wasn't already hard from the moment Nate answers the phone, he'd be hard by now. That voice would have done it. His fingers push under the edge of the towel, brushing hair but moving without real purpose.
"What?" he murmurs, conscious of the need to keep his voice down. "You don't want to know what I'm wearing?"
There's a rustling on the other end of the line and Brad imagines that it's him pullign Nate's shirt up over his head.
"If you're not naked already, you fucking should be."
It's easy enough to shrug all the way out of the towel. He stretches out long bare limbs against the quilt and almost feels a flicker of guilt for using their guest room like this.
Almost, and then he hears Nate breathing.
"There. What about you?"
"Still in my pants, Brad."
"Take them off."
"What's the magic word, Brad?"
"Now."
Listening to Nate fumble out of his pajamas, Brad curls his fingers around his own dick and pretends that it's Nate that's touching him. Pretends that it's Nate's long fingers curled around him, jerking rhythmically now. He listens to the way that Nate's breathing changes.
"Got your hand on your dick, LT?"
"You can be assured of that, Brad."
"Tell me you wish it was me," he says, thumbing the head of his own cock. "Come on, Nate. I want to hear you say you say that you wish it was me stroking your dick right now."
"Brad..."
"Come on, Nate."
He hears Nate's breath catch in a shaky sigh.
"Of course I wish it was you."
Just hearing Nate say that, even though Brad's heard him say things far dirtier and more luridly realised in the past, makes Brad's dick jump in his hand. He swallows hard and squeezes gently, determined not to spurt over his own belly and chest this fucking quickly like some kind of sex starved teenager jerking off to internet porn. Not when the real thing, Nate Fick, six foot two in bare feet in Brad's kitchen in San Diego, crouching down to get in the bottom shelf of the fridge, not a mark on him except for the neat scar that's all that's left of his appendix. He remember stepping in behind and ruffling his hand through Nate's non-regulation length hair, and Nate had slowly straightened and braced himself against the to of the fridge.
The sound that Brad hears suddenly is himself moaning.
"You'd better drop your pants the minute you walk the door tomorrow," says Nate, his voice gone rough in a way that Brad's rarely heard it before.
Brad laughs, the sound caught in his throat, rocking his hips to fuck himself through the circle of his fingers.
"Yessir. I'll stay naked the whole weekend if that's what you fucking want."
Now it's Nate's turn to laugh.
"You can get dressed if we go out to eat."
"That's very generous of you, Nate." He groans. "Jesus Christ. I wish I was there."
"Right now," says Nate, his voice hoarse, "I want nothing more than to be sucking your dick, Brad."
For a long moment, Brad can't say anything at all.
"Have you got lube there?" he asks, finally.
He hears fumbling and then Nate clears his throat.
"Yeah."
"Use it. I want to hear you fucking yourself and thinking about me."
"Demanding today, aren't we, Brad?"
"Yes," he says, utterly unapologetic.
There's a pause when there's no sound except both of their breathing and Brad jerking his own dick. When Nate asks him how many fingers in a breathy whisper, Brad very nearly loses it there and then.
"Two," he says. "And then three and pretend that it's my dick. Pretend that it's me fucking you as hard as you want me to, Nate. Pretend it's tomorrow night."
After that, there isn't a lot of talking. Brad lies there, rolling his his to fuck his fist, listening to Nate do the same, listening to breathy moans that come as Nate works two and then three fingers deeper into himself. Twenty four hours out of Boston and Brad didn't know that it was possible to be this lonely, though he did know that it was possible to want this much. So much.
"You're fucking beautiful," he tells Nate, even though he can't see him, which might render that statement ridiculous if it wasn't so utterly fucking true. Nate was utterly fucking beautiful, which was something that Brad had first noticed at Pendleton, drinking beer and shooting pool, something that he'd committed to memory in the desert, watching Nate crouch down with a canteen in one hand, splashing water onto his face with the other and, later, fucking in his white on white kitchen in San Diego with Nate pushed back onto the counter, his long legs wrapped up around Brad's waist.
When he comes, he forgets how to breathe for a moment. It shudders out of him, so hard that it leaves him boneless and trembling and finding it difficult to move. Nate hasn't come yet; Brad can hear it in the way he's breathing, moaning, cursing softly under his breath. Brad cradles the phone between ear and shoulder and listened. If he hadn't just come, it'd be enough to get him hard again.
"Come on, Nate," he murmurs, voice hoarse. "Harder. Harder. I want to hear you fucking come for me, Nate."
Nate mumbles something that Brad doesn't catch and then he makes this sound that Brad's only ever heard him make in this situation, this little almost broken sound that's so uncharacteristic of him and Brad squeezes his eyes closed and he imagines Nate convulsing as he comes, head tipped back against the pillow, pulse throbbing in his throat. He imagines the tight muscles of Nate's belly, suddenly slick. He pictures the trembling in Nate's wrists.
"Fuck, I love you," whispers Nate, when they've both remembered how to speak.
"I fucking love you too," says Brad, wiping himself with a towel, back in his own head enough to realise that he shouldn't leave a mess. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"What time are you getting here?"
In Brad's minds eye, Nate stretches one arm up over his head, completely naked on top of the sheets. Feeling blood flood into his cheeks, Brad idly entertains the idea of taking hold of Nate's wrist and getting him to suck come off his fingers. Sometimes Nate'll do things like that, sometimes he won't, which doesn't mean Brad doesn't like to think about it.
"By dinner time," he promises. "I'll be there by dinnertime."
With Nate gone, Brad lies there with his eyes closed trying to think past an aching thirst. He gets up off the bed, stretches both arms up until his fingers graze the ceiling. Vaguely, he thinks about taking another shower but the idea of just putting on his leathers in the morning and riding all the way up to Boston with the scent of sex still on his skin. He bends, pulling his boxers back on.
The apartment's silent and he is silent too, padding on bare feet into the kitchen. He doesn't expect to find her sitting there in front of the open screen-door, wearing nothing but panties and that PT t-shirt skimming the tops of her long, brown thighs. Her hair is sleep-tousled, falling on one side of her face. She looks even more like something from a painting than she ever did before. He turns to go before he disturbs her, but she clears her throat and looks up before he can.
"There's juice in the fridge or tea in the pot, Sergent," she says, with a little smile that tugs at the corner of her mouth. The silver in her nose catches the light. "And then you can come and keep me company for a few minutes. Four a.m is the loneliest time in the world."
He ends up sitting with his back against the door, legs stretched out against the black and white tiles. They don't talk, not really. Down the hall, Brad can hear Doc Bryan snoring softly. It's amazing how relaxed he is here. It's amazing how they all go home and slip into different skins. Sharahah lifts her tea and blows across the surface and Brad thinks about how women who look like her having been doing that for centuries, and about how you can walk out of the desert and yet part of you will remember it.
"So Nate is in Boston?" she asks him, finally. Brad feels something between his shoulders tighten. He never talks about him and Nate because it's nobody's business, because the guys wouldn't understand and because he's still Recon, and there's only one thing in the world that he loves more than the Corps. Even Ray doesn't know. And Brad likes it that way. Nate's a friend. That's all.
"Yeah. Just checking in with the LT before I head over to the U.K."
Sharahah nods, finally sipping that tea, her hair slipping forward against her cheek.
"The night hides the world but reveals the universe," she says, sliding out of the chair, and setting her glass down and Brad watches the flash of black silk across her ass and the way her hair tumbles down to the small of her back. He thinks about Nate sitting at the kitchen counter reading the paper, barefoot, sleep-tousled. Sharahah bends from the waist and kisses Brad's short hair and he blushes and she leaves him sitting on the kitchen floor and she goes back to bed, and her Corpsman, and her desert dreams.
Brad sits there for a while, slowly sipping his tea and watching the sun come up over the glimse of the city that he can see across the terrace.
Four a.m is the loneliest time in the world. It's never occured to him to think about it like that, but Brad remembers sitting on the hood of the humvee in the middle of the night with everything around him gone silent and he remembers how it felt like being the last person alive at the ragged edge of the world.
In the end, he gets up and dresses and goes, gone and on the road to Boston before it's all the way light. The Doc's already up and making coffee and Sharahah stands on the stoop to watch him go. Just before he pulls his helmet on, she blows him a kiss and Brad holds up one hand, smiling broadly, surrendering to her for the second time.
Time to go.