Warbigbang - to a place inside where there is joy - part 2

[eudaimon]

4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

When deployed, he misses his bike more than he misses most people. His body was trained from a young age not to miss his parents; his mom worries, but she also knows that he loves what he does, that his fellow Marines are brothers to him, that Semper Fi was ever burned into his bones.

His father was an architect before he retired which always seemed, to Brad anyway, to be a profession built mostly on faith; dreams on paper which sometimes came to fruition, but mostly ended with sketches tacked to the office wall in his parents' smooth, white house where Brad still had a bedroom, a box of trophies in the garage. When he was five years old, he sat in a rocker in the corner and watched his father taken a beautiful,c lassic Triumph, clean each piece with great care and then put it all back together again. Brad had been too young to be of any real help but it's still a treasured memory.

Two things his father taught him that have come to shape him in later life; believe utterly in what you can and love your bike. Trust yourself, son. You'll be okay.

David Colbert's passion was old bikes, classics: Harleys, Triumphs. Aesthetically, Brad had always been able to appreciate that, seen them more as art objects that anything and, yes, they made a satisfying noise, and, yes, taking one apart and putting it back together was a project that he could get behind (in the courtyard attached to his apartment there was a Triumph draped in a tarp, painstakingly put back together, every piece of it retouched or reconditioned and, sometimes, he'd take it out, not fire, idling along the ocean road up to Corona del Mar).

His primary bike, though, the one that he rode often and missed like a part of him, was European, sleeker than the American and English bikes, maybe not as beautiful, but smarter and built for speed. To ride it, he has to lean forward into the wind, grip it with his knees, trust it just a little. In the desert, he explained it as speed and solitude. His father would smile, brush away all attempts at justification and shake his head, reassure Brad that you love what you love, son. You rarely get a say in it. Years later, Brad was the guy with no photographs in his wallet, just a scrap of paper with a date, but he has long understood the wisdom in that thing that his father once said.

It's a beautiful bike and he loves it.
It's not the only thing he loves without hope of justification.

It's a good ride down to Philadelphia. He can feel the sun through the shoulders of the expensive leather that Nate bought for him last Hanukkah. Tim Bryan and his girlfriend have moved, recently, and Brad pauses, dragging his cellphone out of the pocket of his jacket to check directions.

When he gets there, he finds a narrow little house, freshly painted so it stands out white in a neighbourhood that's actually sort of grey. At the height of summer, the front yard is teeming with life. At home, his mother kept her garden regimented and neat but this garden right here was an explosion of life. It reminded him of the moment when a very drunk Doc Bryan had reminded him that Iraq had once been the Garden of fucking Eden.

It was something that he'd already known.

He kills his engine but stays on the bike for a moment, helmet in his hands, leather already stifling once the wind's dropped. She's standing in the middle of the garden watching him. Her hair is caught back with pins. There's dirt clinging to her long brown fingers. Long silver earrings. He knows that Tim met her in a grocery store in Oceanside. They moved back to Philadelphia together and now she teaches middle school to put him through med school and, the last time Brad heard, they were sickeningly happy living in sin.

“What?” she says, wiping her hands on her long skirt as she walks towards him. “Your Mom never taught you it was rude to stare?”
“My mother tried to tell me a lot of things,” he says, swinging his weight off the bike and walking towards her. The fence between them, he leans in and kisses her cheek. She cups his jaw fondly and he catches the scent of her hair, cigarette smoke, growing things. Her earrings make a musical sound when they brush against her cheek.

“Tim's buying groceries,” she says, stepping away from him long enough to open the gate, holding it against her long enough for him to step through it, backpack on his shoulder. Between her breasts, there's a Hamsa charm on a long silver chain. He'd worn one himself, hanging from his dog tags for a while, a favour to his mother. Hand of Fatima or Miriam, a horseshoe on a parachute cord...it didn't matter; you did favours for your mother from time to time, to save her from worrying.

Faith and love, in equal measure.

The guest room in the little house is tucked up in the attic space, narrow and pitched walled. On the stair case, Sharahah apologises, her hand resting in the small of his back.

“It's not much, but it's ours,” she says, smiling. “And if you manage to give yourself concussion on one of the beams, I'll send Tim up to see to you. He shouldn't be much more than an hour.”

She delivers it completely deadpan. It's not hard to see why Doc Bryan fell for her in a check-out line.

He lies down on the futon, a few inches off the floor, and closes his eyes. There's something about it that's comforting; something about it that's reminiscent of lying in a ranger grave. It's easy to fall asleep there, on often-washed sheets, before he's even buttoned the jeans that he's changed into.

He drifts into a dream that he's had before: a wide green river, tropical heat and the low hanging fronds of strange trees. A place that he's never physically been before (though the air feels like Bangkok around Monsoon time). There was a book in Nate's apartment, one of those glossy coffee table affair, so Brad knows that this is the Yamuna River, and Nate's standing there bare chested and flawless, his feet already in the water. A myth: if you bathe in the waters of the Yamuna river, you emerge free from fear of death, but Nate Fick is a Marine, 1st Recon, possessed of a true heart and a warrior spirit and there are other things to fear, much more worthwhile than merely dying. The dream ends different ways. Sometimes, he sits on the bank of the river and watches while Nate swims and sometimes he swims with him, sinks down and lets the cool, green water close over his head or, sometimes, this particular time, he stops Nate with both hands on his shoulders and he turns him and he kisses him while he's still standing with the water lapping against his shins. He pops the button on Nate's shorts. He....

The dream's going even as he wakes up from it, leaving behind only the feeling that he was dreaming something familiar. In the house downstairs, he can hear voices; Doc Bryan's is familiar, a rumble that Brad got used to in the desert, often berating and cracking jokes in exactly the same dry tone. Over the top of it, Sharahah's voice is softer, warmer, low and lovely. Listening to them downstairs reminds him of the times he woke up in Boston and, somewhere in the apartment, he could hear Nate talking on the phone, a call with his mother or his sister or someone calling for a homework assignment, and he'd take it in the kitchen so that he wouldn't wake Brad and Brad would wake up anyway to the gentle hum of his voice somewhere just distant.

He ought to get up and go downstairs, he knows but, for a moment, it's nice to lie there quietly, his head pillowed on his arm and just listen to them talking, too far away to really be heard.

*

She cooks. In California, his diet consists mostly of pizza and packets, things that are easy to call out for or throw together in minutes, but Sharahah's kitchen is a cook's kitchen, often used, and dinner is laid out in a variety of jewel-coloured dishes. Shararah twists her hair back and pins it so that it won't spill forward when she leans across the table to serve him first, some of everything, whether he asked for it or not. Tim clearly knew better than to help himself; he waited for Sharahah to lean over and serve him too, lips smirking against his beer bottle.

“Just eat it,” he advises, still grinning. “She's gets really fuckin' nasty if you complain too much.”

Sharahah sits down with a serene look on her face but Brad eats the first few mouthfuls of his dinner, chewing carefully. It's incredibly good and, for a few minutes, all he does is chew and swallow, occasionally reaching for his beer. He realises that Tim's looking at him expectantly and, slowly, he sets his beer down.

“What?” he says, finally, barely containing a grin. “I can't help it. I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with you with hair.”

Sharahah sounds like bells when she laughs.

Tim laughs too but it's a laugh that Brad can't get used to. It's hard not to think of Tim Bryan in known terms, hard not to think of him as 'Doc' in the desert; a flash bomb, a tracer and someone yells 'Corpsman!' in the dark. And there he is, stoic and foul tempered as always, but doing his job with gentle hands. Difficult not to think of him when everyone got ass to mouth and he moved among them, berating and encouraging in equal measure and tone. Brad recalls watching him crouch beside Stiney's grave, reaching out to take his temperature with the backs of his fingers; he remembers the set line of his mouth and the weary shadows of his eyes. Brad thinks (he might be wrong) but he thinks that Tim Bryan is not the kind of Marine who trades in war stories; still, there is a part of Brad that wants to tell Sharahah the story of the day that he stood with Nate and watched Tim dealing with Iraqi kids, the clinic always in danger of being overrun and the contrast between the man who had cradled a weeping boy close, touched his skull like he could know him that way and the one who'd come stalking out to meet the adult men, eyes full of fury and underlined with care. Sitting there beside a man who is relaxed and smiling, Brad wants to recount that memory to her because it seems to make sense of how Tim and Doc Bryan could somehow be one and the same, existing in the same pair of shoulders.

He doesn't tell her any of that, though. He suspects that she, of all people, would know that already.

After dinner, Brad helps Tim wash the dishes while Shararah kilts her skirt and waters her garden. Brad tries not to look at her long brown legs.

“Some days, it's like living with Superwoman,” says Tim, up to his elbows in suds, smiling ruefully, his eyes never leaving her in the twilight. “But she doesn't do dishes.”

“No?”
“Fuck no.”

Brad grins at that; sounds familiar.

At night, when Tim is at home, they work their way through seasons of T.V. on DVD, she says. It's the only way that they ever get to see anything. They sit curled together on the sofa, a medical textbook open on the arm closest to Tim's elbow. It's so domestic that Brad does not know what to make of it. He's never had that with Nate through mutual design; Brad doubts that the corps would approve of wedded bliss and it's never really suited either of them. Still, every so often, it feels possible. There's a moment in every visit when Nate stops wearing pyjama pants and sleeps nude; he makes toast and coffee in Brad's white-on-white kitchen and Brad wakes up to the smell of both; mornings when the humidity breaks and Brad stands on the back porch of Nate's place in Boston and Nate wraps his arms around him from behind.

Those moments always felt dangerous because they reminded him of how much he could want.

Tim and Sharahah aren't helping.

In the end, he leaves them to it and climbs up the slightly rickety stairs to his tucked away bed. He strips down to his skin and lies down in rumpled sheets. He listens to the sound of the T.V. downstairs, the occasional conversation. He must doze because he wakes and it's different, shifted, and what he can hear...the rhythm has changed. Sharahah murmurs something and Tim laughs in reply but it ends in something between a sigh and a moan. A part of Brad knows that it's completely unacceptable to lie there listening to them fucking so he puts in his ear buds and listens to Black Flag as he drifts off again.

He has one dream. He dreams that he's in Iraq. Nate's body above him. He shifts and draws him down for a kiss.

*

In the morning, he pauses on the landing, shouldering his backpack, mouth fresh with toothpaste and he catches a glimpse of her sleeping through the opened door, one long brown thigh, black cotton riding up and her hair tumbled over a face pillowed on her arm. Brad remembers sitting up in bed to check his email and he'd almost always end up staying awake for a while, watching Jenni sleep.

It never feels like he has time with Nate. He always ends up waking him instead.

Downstairs, Tim's sitting on the front steps, cigarette cradled between his fingers. In the field, Brad dipped, got through as much Copenhagen as the next guy, but he's never really got the hang of actual cigarettes. Tim, though...Tim smokes like a man who loves smoking, his eyes drifted close and his head tipped back.

“I keep saying I'm going to give them up,” he says. Brad should have known better than to think that he could sneak up on him.
“You don't look like a man who's ready to give them up,” he says, sitting down on the step beside Tim to pull on his boots.

Tim smiles and flicks ash from his cigarette before he takes another drag.

“I told her I'd give up when we get married.”
“When's that?”

He laughs, just a little rumble in his chest and stubs the cigarette out in the little clay ashtray that's tucked into the corner of the step. He stands, shouldering his book bag and pushing his hair back from his forehead.

“Haven't set a date yet,” he says. “Pass on my regards to the LT.”

Brad doesn't remind Tim that Nate was a Captain before discharge and he doesn't point out that Tim Bryan's got a million good reasons to set a date for that woman who's still sleeping with her face hidden, and not least the health of his lungs. He's the last one who's ever going to council buying a ring. He'd done that shit once; he never intended to do it again, and not just because he doubts Nate would be impressed.

A parting thought: he still does not know what to make of Tim Bryan with hair.

*
Interlude: Leckie (Between Rutherford, NJ and Loogootee, IN)

And the train goes on and on, ratta tatta ratta tatta, heading west, always west. Bob sits alone in a compartment with his temple resting against the window and thinks of other train rides. It's over twenty-four hours to ride from Penn station on Manhattan all the way to Loogootee, Indiana. Vera's packed food and he's got work with him, cramped notes made in cramped notebooks, a half written letter, a novel he's been meaning to read for what feels like years. In a handful of weeks, it will be 1950, which means that the war has been over for five years and they are all older than they have any right to be, those of them who saw the hills of Guadalcanal and Pelielu first hand. He's pretty sure that he bought the book that he has with him a couple of weeks before Pearl Harbour. Sometimes, it feels good to realise that he didn't leave everything behind. Some things, even things as trivial as a paperback novel, did not have to change.

They are older than they should be, but borrowed time is a miraculous thing
And some things managed to stay the same, even through all of the struggle.

Sometimes, old wounds still trouble; like a medicine woman or a Shaman, he can sense whether or not the rains will come on time. He knows that many of the guys wake screaming in the night, strangers to their wives and children, but that's never been him; he's always known who is and why he came back, why he struggled back with the memories of friends and why, months later, he watched the news reels with horror. Why, every night since, he's prayed for some kind of forgiveness.

Who could have known that they'd have figured out a way to bring death like only God should have been able to? Death on a scale that only God could forgive them for, later on.

Maybe he found a use for God after all, but only after he figured out the terms of his conditional surrender.

Sometimes, he's so miserable that all he can do is laugh at himself and move on.
He'd like to think that he was more care-free before Guadalcanal but he's pretty sure that that was never the case. In his mind's eye, he can see the exact look that Hoosier would give him right about now. Jesus Christ, Leckie - shut the fuck up and be happy that the war's over, would ya?

He does his best.

Sometimes (not always, but sometimes, and he always feels a little guilty about it), he feels like he's been doing his best ever since he got home. The truth is this: there is a man who never made it back to New Jersey after the war. Another man came in his place, and he was the one who finally took Vera on a date and he was the one who put on dress blues to marry her some time later. There was a man who Bob Leckie forgot how to be, and he forgot on purpose, to make things easier and to save himself from pain.

The truth: that he began to leave that man behind in the naval hospital on Manus Island, where the heat had been oppressive and damp outside white-blind-covered windows. There, he'd sweated and he'd figured out what to do with that man behind at Bill Smith's bedside because he'd known, sure as shit, that he could not bring him home.

He remembers standing in the doorway of the ward and just staring, for a moment. The skin of his face had still felt hot and tight, but he'd been walking again, in small, stuttering steps. The taste of peaches on his tongue, mingled with ashes. Have you heard anything about Hoosier? And no, he never had, and, suddenly, there it is: the answer to what happened to Hoosier? was there, lying on a ward, in a bed with white sheets pulled back to leave a bandaged thigh open to the air.

“Holy shit,” said Hoosier, finally, eyes only half open. “Lucky fuckin' Leckie. You look like Hell, Bob.”

He'd found himself grinning broadly, so relieved to see the son of a bitch that he almost (almost) forgot how broken hearted he'd been.

“Don't worry, Bill; it ain't shit,” he'd said and he'd hobbled to sit down beside the bed.

It took him a year or two to realise it for certain, but the process of leaving everything behind had surely started to happen then, sitting beside Hoosier's bed. Consciously, he'd started to put pieces of himself away in preparation for what he knew was coming, if not tomorrow then sometime soon. He put away the memory of meeting Bill Smith for the first time and he put away the relief of watching him crawl out of that trench with that damn dog. He stowed the joy whenever Hoosier laughed, rare as it was, and the wry creeping amusement of those dry jokes. Last of all, he put away the flicker of warmth that he felt in the pit of his stomach and behind his balls when he remembered Hoosier sinking down onto his knees and pulling open his dungarees, his mouth already damp from kissing, or when he recalled waking in the middle of the night to see Hoosier already awake and standing at the window, naked as the day he was born, with the moonlight picking out scars along his side.

It was then that he'd reached out and touched Hoosier's thigh for what must have been the hundredth time, found it bandaged, this time, and giving off more heat than the rest of him.

He'd wanted to hold onto those things most of all, deadly though they were.

Hoosier hadn't said anything, but he'd looked at Leckie for a long time, and maybe he didn't have to; in the jungle, they had learned each other by heart, like maps and, later, in stolen moments, they had read each other by touch.

He spent as much time beside Hoosier's bed as they'd let him. They played cards and backgammon; he read Hoosier the paper, whether he wanted to hear it or not. One day, they were sitting there in silence; he'd thought that Hoosier was sleeping and found himself just sitting there watching him, his chin leaned into his hand. Bill dragged in a breath, turned his face against the pillow like a man fighting to stay sleeping.

“You're so full of shit, Leckie,” he murmured. Leckie had laughed.
“I didn't even fucking say anything,” he'd protested.
“Yeah, but I can hear you thinkin' it,” Hoosier said.

And the day had come, eventually, in the way that days do, when they'd finally shipped them back to San Diego, slow but sure; it had felt like limping home across the ocean, but, then again, Hoosier wasn't the only to never again walk without a slight limp. In Oceanside, they'd looked for Runner, but he'd already gone on, gone to Buffalo, safe in the knowledge that he'd never have to buy himself another drink, standing at the bar with shrapnel tucked under his skin for safe keeping. They'd looked for Chuckler, but he'd been hard to find.

There's been the two of them.

“How long's it take to get back to...” he remembers pausing, “Where the hell are you from again?”

Hoosier had grinned and taken a long drag on his cigarette.

“Loogootee, Indiana.”
“How long'll it take to get back to...Jesus...Loogootee, Indiana?”
“Couple of days, maybe. Why?”

He'd been planning it for weeks.

Sure that nobody was watching them, he'd reached up and squeezed the back of Hoosier's neck; he'd had the impulse to take his hand, but knew that there was no way that that would be allowed.

*

It wasn't much of anything at all in the end; a little room, booked in advanced and paid for out of the wages saved while there was nothing to spend them on but debts owed to the United States Marine Corps. It might as well have been the room in Melbourne where they fucked in the shower and then again in the bed and Leckie had woken up and watched Hoosier standing at the window smoking, naked, leaning up against the frame with the strangest look in his eyes.

What? he'd said, wishing that he'd had a penny to offer. Hoosier had smirked down at him, cigarette still between his lips.

I was just thinkin' how fucked up this whole thing is, he'd said.
Well shit, he'd caught himself thinking. I love you too.

This room had a bigger bed and not much else in the way of furniture - what else did they need? He'd reached out, fingers curling around the back of Bill's neck and tugging him in for a kiss, utterly unexplained. He'd always felt like he needed permission to touch Hoosier, never really understood the terms that Bill was offering this whole thing (whatever it was) on and on what terms it might suddenly be withdrawn, and he'd been so afraid to fuck up and lose what little fragile time they might have left. This time, though, he pulled Bill to him, crushed their mouths together, crushed his whole body in tight.

“Jesus Christ, just fuck me,” he mumbled, and what he'd meant, he realised later, was i love you, only in that moment he couldn't find words that weren't rough and wrong. And maybe that was only right? Maybe that was all they had any right to expect from each other.

“What?” asked Hoosier, almost looking startled, his hands already pulling at Leckie's pants, nails brushing against the bare skin of his belly.

“Just fuck me,” said Leckie, again. The second time, he hadn't meant anything else.
He hadn't known any other way to say goodbye in that particular, war-like world.

Another too hard kiss. He could have sworn that he heard Hoosier moan.

At the last minute, backing towards the bed, he changed his mind, stopped Hoosier with his hands on his hips and went down on his knees.

“Seriously?” asked Hoosier, his thumb brushing against Leckie's bottom lip. Leckie remembers nodding.

“I've never been more certain of anything in my entire fuckin' life.”

He'd had it done to him enough times to know the mechanics and he'd spent the entire war figuring out how to do things he knew sweet fuck all about. He curled his fingers around Hoosier's dick, stroking slowly, breathing through his nose, not so much steeling himself as staying in the moment before he leans in and grazes a kiss against hot, soft skin. He didn't hesitate before sliding his mouth down over the first sweet inches. He'd heard moaning and realised that it was him, muffled, and he groaned softly, his hands sliding to grip Hoosier's ass as he tentatively started to bob his head. He was aware of Hoosier's movements only peripherally; rolled his eyes, saw the way that Hoosier's head fell back. Noticed the way that Hoosier's breathing changed. Felt Hoosier's fingers press into his hair. He'd applied himself, determined not to be bad at this. Everything had felt slow and strange; it might as well have been the last night of the world.

He'd never felt like he had less time.

Hands on Hoosier's hips, he was intensely appreciative of the tension with which Hoosier held himself, the care he took not to rock his hips and press too deep. His fingers strayed, brushing down the cleft of Hoosier's ass as he grew more confident, takes Hoosier's dick deeper. Above him, Hoosier was utterly silent except for the soft in-out of his breathing. His free hand came up, thumb nail scraping very gently against the sensitive skin behind Hoosier's balls and Leckie remembers feeling gratified at the way Hoosier's hips had jerked, the way the tip of his dick had all but hit the back of Leckie's throat, and he'd found himself trapped between choking and laughter but he'd breathed his way through it and known that there was no way that he was pulling back before this was done.

He stood his ground. The only warning that he got was Hoosier's fingers tightening in his hair enough to pull. He didn't move. He swallowed, coughed a little but stayed mostly true. When he pulled back, finally, licking his bottom lip, he looked up and found Hoosier just looking at him.

“Get your ass on that bed, Bob,” he said.

He'd ended up on all fours on the bed with three of Hoosier's fingers pressed into him, hot and slippery, fucking him smoothly and he'd never felt so in love, so out of his mind in love, and he'd spilled forward, his forehead coming to rest against the pillow, his hips rocking back, screwing himself onto Hoosier's fingers and he hadn't even moaned. Both of them had learned to be so quiet.

“Just fuck me,” he said, finally. It was the third time that night that he'd said it, but he was pretty sure that didn't lessen the impact. He reached back and grazed the length of Hoosier's thigh with his fingers. A moment later, Hoosier took his hand with sticky fingers. Then and now, Leckie hated the feeling of being left that lonely. There was a moment's fumbling and then Hoosier was pushing into him, one inch at a time and, all that time, their finger tangled together against the sheets.

They'd fucked slowly at first but gained speed, fumbled and fucked frantically; if it was the end of the world, then at least they were going to send it off properly. Leckie couldn't help but think of those nights that he lay in the dark on Guadalcanal and watched the sky light up with flares and bombs.

A little light, showing in ever increasing night.

When Hoosier pulled out of him before either of them were done, for a moment, Leckie was sure that he'd done something wrong. With his ass still in the air, he'd turned to find Hoosier kneeling behind him, fingers curled around his dick, head tipped back and his teeth against his lip.

“What?” Leckie had asked, his dick twitching, every part of him wanting, unable to keep his eyes on Hoosier's face because he was too busy looking at beautiful fingers and a beautiful dick. He'd never really been prepared to think of anybody's dick as beautiful but his own. “Bill, what the fuck'd I do?”

“Nothin',” said Hoosier, flushed, lips damp. He'd grinned breathlessly and squeezed the back of Leckie's thigh. “Just roll over for me. I want to look at you.”

It was the softest thing, the thing closest to care, that Leckie had ever heard Bill say. For a moment, he didn't know what to do with it.

He'd rolled onto his back.

It had hurt, at first, in a different way than anything had ever been painful before; not bad but also impossible to ignore. It had felt like Hoosier was going so deep that he could taste him (ashes and peaches and cigarettes and soapy skin - some things remain in memories and it doesn't matter what the reality of them is, in the end). He'd found himself clinging with one arm around Hoosier's neck, holding him close as their bodies moved together, awkwardly at first but gaining in confidence and grace. With his free hand, he'd dragged Hoosier down for a kiss.

They'd breathed together for a while.

In the morning, he'd woken up and found Hoosier already gone. It hadn't been a surprise. Dressing, he'd found a note tucked into the pocket of his pants.

Fuck goodbye. Stay lucky. - B

At the time, it had seemed a perfect way to end.
Later, he'd realised that there were no perfect endings, only endings which left one numb, and hurt less for it.

There is a difference between a thing which is kinder and a thing which is merely less cruel.
He's back to thinking about bombs again.

He leans with his chin in his hand and watches Middle America roll by. His wedding ring catches and holds the heat of the sun, and he's preparing himself for a similar ring on Bill Smith's finger, a newly married wife and a kid on the way. He's expecting it to hurt for the first hour, to be shitty for a couple of hours after that, but then it'd sink into being something more familiar and what they were to each other then would be over, just another thing that happened in winter, in war time.

He opens his notebook, thumbs through the fragile pages and finds a line written by Rainer Maria Rilke, neat capitals both underlined and circled like it had meant something at the time.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

They write letters, back and forth, occasionally speak on the phone, but tonight will be the first time since New York that they've spent more than an hour in the same room. He wonders how long it will take to feel completely healed and then he thinks about Runner with shrapnel in his arm forever or the guys who came home without certain limbs and never had the lives that they had before the war.

What Robert Leckie knows is this: that for them, and for him too, a new life came instead.

He knows that some of them wake screaming in the night, put the fear of God into wives and children. He never wakes screaming but, sometimes, he realises that he's woken in the night and reached for someone in another bed entirely, someone eight hundred miles distant.

What the war left them with: a sense of responsibility, trouble sleeping and a knowledge of all the things that they had once, and lost.

Semper Fidelis.
And the train goes on and on, ratta-tatta ratta-tatta, heading west.

5. Somerville; Boston, MA

He all but idles his way through Boston; Nate's lived in the same apartment since his first day at Harvard and Brad knows this route like the back of his hand. No pausing to check for directions; homeward bound. There's a part of him who longs to be able to come home to Nate at night, which makes it sound like he wants Nate as some kind of housewife; the idea is both ridiculous and repellent. He knows that Nate is destined for greatness, has known that since the first time he sets eyes on him and he would never do anything to prevent that. He would just like to share in the space in which those great things will surely happen. Even when he says it to himself, it sounds ridiculous and trite.

He goes slow. Nate will have gone to class already. No reason to hurry.
He takes his time. Delayed gratification. Pleasure inherent in anticipation.

There's room to pull his bike onto the driveway. It always amuses him that Nate doesn't have a car; he sees no reason to drive in Boston. Brad's never owned a car; his bike is enough but he can't imagine taking public transport every day of his life. He can't conceive of not driving.

In the pocket of his jacket, there's a ring of keys. He's got keys to his parents place on the coast, a key to his sister's condo. He's got a key that belonged to an antique wardrobe in his Mom's childhood room, doing double duty as a fob, alongside the 1st Recon insignia. He's got the keys to his apartment in San Diego, a spare for his bike and then he's got two keys for this place right here, pressed into his palm with a kiss not long after Nate moved in.

He leaves his bike tucked in against the side of the house, shoulders his backpack and climbs three flights of creaking stairs, all the way to Nate's front door. The label beside the buzzer outside simple says 'FICK'.

It's not the first time that he's been in Nate's apartment without him. Nate is conscientious about his commitments, so Brad's sometimes opened his eyes to Nate bending over the bed and taking him by the jaw to kiss him slow and sweet.

“I love you,” he says. “I'll be back soon.”

Nate's bedroom is the first door on the right and that's where Brad goes first. The bed is low, neatly made with clean sheets. There's a pile of textbooks on one side (what Brad instantly thinks of as Nate's side) and a paperback novel, the place marked with a folded take out menu. Nate's not even here, but Brad can see the shape of him in this place where he spends most of his time. In the bedroom, there's very little out of place; dirty clothes in the hamper, a loaded bookshelf opposite the bed. There's a pair of battered boots tucked at the end of the row next to the closet.

Brad unpacks what few things he's brought with him; there's an empty drawer waiting in the dresser, spare hangers on the rail. He leaves his leather hanging on the back of the chair in the corner. He leaves his boots by the door.

The second bedroom is Nate's study and Brad pauses, for a moment, trailing his fingers over surfaces, seeing how Nate fits in here. There's a desk on one side of the room and a futon on the other. The last time he was here, he sat curled on the futon with his laptop, playing World of Warcraft while Nate was working. They'd had sex on the futon more than once and, on one memorable occasion, they'd screwed on Nate's desk (all of the papers carefully put away first). Brad pauses, for a moment, stirring the pens in a mug on the desk with his fingers as he remembers Nate spread out and waiting on the warm coloured wood, lube showing on his pale skin, his lips damp and slightly swollen from being kissed.

He's not quite sure how long he ends up standing there; he loses a chunk of time.

The only sign that Nate might have been a little flustered that morning is in the kitchen. Last night's dishes and pans are stacked neatly in the rack beside the sink, but there's a mug and a crumb strewn plate sitting in the sink, like Nate was so busy doing other things that he left it too late for washing dishes. Brad turns on the faucet and rinses them. He puts away the other dishes and leaves just one on the rack, waiting for Nate to come home.

It feels weird being in the apartment without Nate but Brad makes do, leaving the bathroom door ajar as he strips and steps under the shower. He washes with Nate's soap and shampoo, enjoys the way that a smell that's definitely 'Nate' filters through the steamy air. He spends longer than he needs to in the shower, washing the road off. He stands with both hands flat against the tiles and thinks about the first shower that he took here, the morning after he ended up in bed with Nate for the first time. He stands there and remembers Nate against his back and the way the water had sluiced between them, cold long before they were done.

When he finds himself hard, almost without realising that it was happening, he curls his fingers around his dick and jerks off slowly, eyes closed, thinking about Nate stepping into the shower behind him, kissing and biting the back of his neck, one hand snaking around to cover Brad's and set the pace. The press of Nate's hard-on against his ass. The sides of Nate's fingers stained with ink. I love you, says Nate, his fingers stroking Brad quick and smooth. I'll be back soon.

Brad comes hard and washes off in cold water.
It's worth it.

Towel in hand, he pads back into Nate's room, naked. There are framed photos of Nate's family, his mom and dad, dogs, Nate at various ages. That fucking smile. Brad finds himself distracted. There are photos of him and Nate, too, not framed but thumb-tacked to a corkboard. A photo of them in a bar in Harvard, another at a party thrown by a friend of Nate's. There's one of Brad on his own, sitting in a chair on the back deck with his feet up on the rail. He's reading a book, Oakleys on, so it's difficult to read his expression. He's wearing a t-shirt with 'COLBERT' stencilled on the chest. Brad looks at it for a long moment and can't quite classify the way it makes him feel, not the photograph itself but the memory of Nate taking it; it was a day in summer when the humidity finally broke and he'd ended up out there in the very early morning and Nate had found him there, not dressed, sleep-tousled in nothing but his underwear with his camera in his hand.

Brad dresses and retrieves his keys.
He's wearing his own t-shirt when he leaves the apartment. He risks going out of his mind if he spends the next five hours home alone, just waiting for Nate to return.

*

It's a twenty minute walk, give or take, from Nate's from door to Davis Square, and Brad doesn't hurry, walking with his earbuds in and his hands in his pockets. It's warm without being too hot. He has the vaguest of plans in mind, all of them designed to kill time until dinner. He could take the T to Harvard Square, might even run into Nate there and kill the wait but, somehow, that would feel like cheating. He can wait. He was designed to wait.

He's never really felt like he fit in in a place like this one, but he can see why Nate likes it; it's leafy and quaint, a student-filled, bohemian sort of place, which is unsurprising, really. Brad always felt made to fit in Oceanside; he knew where he belonged there but here, between the neighbourhood Italian restaurant, the used book-stores, the ice cream parlour...Brad doesn't know what he's supposed to do with himself in a place like this.

He supposes that, for Nate, he'd figure out a way.
Because he's seen Nate here before, and he's decided that it would be worth it, for a place that suits Nate so.

In a crowded café, he pauses. He snags a small, round table by the floor-to-ceiling windows, orders black coffee and something sweet that he won't eat. He sits and people watches, tears it into strips with his fingers. He flicks through a paper left behind by somebody else. The afternoon moves slowly. He imagines Nate sitting in a classroom three stops on the T away, leaning his chin into his hand, diligently taking notes, never allowing his mind to wander.

When he looks up, there's a girl watching him. She's got a pile of books on the table in front of her, white blond hair ruffled on one side of her face. Suntanned and freckled across her nose, she reminds him of nobody so strongly as Jenni, who had always been tousled and lovely, who he'd been in love with for nearly ten years before she dumped him by email. Home is where your heart is, that's the saying, right? Brad had gone a long time without knowing where his heart belonged and then he'd realised that what it actually was just a long way distant.

He's sat here for long enough; he's waited long enough.
He smiles at her as he gets up, slipping between the crowded tables, observing but not admiring, leaving everything exactly as he found it.

Leaving no trace.

*

He doesn't hear the door open and close; the first time he becomes aware of Nate in the apartment is when arms wrap around him from behind. For a moment, they just stand like that, Nate's arms around his waist, chin against his shoulder. Brad keeps doing what he's doing, looking after the contents of the pans in front of him.

“Well, thank God for that,” says Nate, squeezing Brad's hip, turning his head to graze a kiss against the sharp edge of Brad's jaw. “For a horrible moment, I thought you were trying something new.”

“You fucking love this,” says Brad, smirking, reaching back with one hand to graze his fingers against Nate's ass. Nate's hips shift closer.

“Yes, but only because I know you can cook this,” he points out. “The last time you tried anything else was kind of an unmitigated disaster, Brad.”

“Point.” Brad is a very particular kind of cook; there are about three dishes, this Thai curry included, that he makes fantastically well but everything else is experimental and given to variations in quality. Most of which Nate has suffered through. Gently, he makes himself enough room to turn between Nate and the stove. Nate hasn't even bothered to shrug out of his jacket. He's still wearing his book bag slung across his chest. Brad loves that Nate's hair's grown out; he brushes it back from his forehead and bends the couple of inches that it takes to kiss him.

He feels Nate smile before he sees it.

His hands slide around Nate's waist and down, over his ass, tugging their hips tight together and both of Nate's hands are up and cradling his face. The kiss deepens, six months worth of separation and need seeping in. It's only when his ass clips the counter and a pot lid clatters down to the tiles that Brad realises what they're doing.

And he wants to keep doing it, wants that desperately, but he also knows that Nate hasn't even taken his jacket off and that dinner is nearly ready and that waiting is a thing which strengthens the heart.

Even with that said, it takes all of Brad's considerable resolve to gently disengage from Nate.

“Jacket off. Shower. Dinner'll be ready in half an hour.”

Nate's eyebrow twitches.

“Is that an order, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“Absolutely it is. And you don't even have a rank to pull on me. So get your ass in the shower.”

With another kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth, Nate pulls away. Brad watches him walk out of the kitchen and drags in a shuddering breath; ignoring his burgeoning hard-on, he goes back to cooking while Nate showers with the door open.

Between the cooking being finished and being ready to dish it up, he pads down the corridor and leans with his hip against the door-frame, watching Nate shower. The long, lean lines of his body haven't changed since Iraq. His hair's might be longer but everything else is still the same. He lingers, for a moment, in the memory of Nate washing off dust with water in a cupped hand. It was one of the only times that Brad saw Nate shirtless in the desert, stripped to the waist with water running from his short hair and down between his shoulder-blades.

“Enjoying the view, Brad?” says Nate, leaning under the full flow of the shower to rinse soap out of his hair.

“Assuredly.”

He wasn't so stupid as to think that Nate wouldn't have realised that he was there.

And dinner's on the table by the time Nate's ready for it, padding across the bare boards in jeans low slung against his hips, white cotton shirt and bare feet. Brad reaches up and brushes a damp strand of hair back from his forehead and leans in to kiss him. It's not a long kiss, but it doesn't need to be; it's comfortable and familiar. It's a kiss that's got absolutely nothing to prove.

“So how was it?” asks Nate, forkful of food paused halfway to his mouth, while Brad's opening beers and their ankles are threaded together under the table.

“Some parts felt longer than others,” says Brad, taking a long swallow of his beer before he picks up his fork. “It was good to see the guys again.” A smile catches the corner of his mouth, but he takes his time chewing. “I'd rather have been here all along.”

“Mmhmm.”

He finds himself distracted by the smallest things: the shape of Nate's hands, his profile when the light catches it, the slip-slide of the muscles in his throat when he leans back in his chair to talk a long swallow of his beer. It's six months since the last time that Nate was in San Diego, another four months before that that Brad was last here. It's not enough, has never been enough but, somehow, they make it work in the knowledge that, eventually, everything might pan out. It all has to do with balance and an awareness of where a heart is lent.

Once they're done eating, Nate stands, reaching for the plates but Brad catches him by the wrist instead.

“Leave it,” he says.

There isn't even a flicker of hesitation on Nate's face. He carries on leaning, catches his weight with one hand on the table and kisses Brad, hot and hard, hungry. It's like the kiss in the kitchen, sure, but it's turned up as loud as it'll go. Brad pushes his fingers into Nate's hair and tugs hard. He feels Nate's breath catch against his mouth. He cradles the side of Nate's face with his free hand, thumb skimming against his skin as he sucks on Nate's bottom lip.

Someone moans, the sound muffled. Brad's not quite sure if it's him or Nate.

“Bed,” says Nate, breaking the kiss, his lips damp and swollen, his eyes slightly wide. He presses another kiss to Brad's mouth and there's a sharp, sudden pain, the edges of his teeth, that Brad feels all the way to the tip of his dick.

No argument here.

They've fucked all over the apartment in the time that Nate's lived here but Brad is never going to turn down the opportunity to lie in a bed with Nate. They kiss before they're even through the door, fumbling backwards and Brad's pulling Nate's t-shirt up over his head and Nate's hands are at Brad's belt, undoing it with a snap of leather. The backs of Brad's knees hit the bed and he sits without fighting it, reaching up to take hold of Nate by the hips and pull him in, pressing a sucking kiss against the flat muscle of his bare belly. Nate pushes ten fingers through Brad's short hair and looks down at him, green eyes dark and unreadable, or unreadable if you didn't know him; it would be a mistake to think that 'careful' meant 'unsure' in Nate Fick's case.

Eyes fixed on Nate's face, Brad tugs open his jeans and finds no underwear underneath. Every so often, Nate still does something to surprise him. He leans in and presses a kiss right above Nate's dick, huffing hot breath against his skin. He curls his fingers around Nate and presses a kiss to the tip. He tips his head back, looking up at him.

Nate's watching him, lips slightly parted.

“What?” he asks.
“I want you to fuck my mouth,” says Brad, rolling his wrist to stroke Nate smoothly. His teeth touch his lip and he rides out a wave of powerful arousal. His head spins. He's glad to be sitting down.

Nate's thumb traces across Brad's mouth, dragging against his damp bottom lip. He turns his head and catches the heel of Nate's hand with a kiss.

“Please.”

Nate's smile is impossibly sweet.

“On your knees, Brad,” he says and Brad slips down onto his knees between Nate and the bed, tugging his t-shirt off over his head as he goes. Nate's right there and Brad doesn't waste any time; he curls his fingers around the shaft of Nate's dick and bends his head, sliding his lips over the first few inches. Almost immediately, Nate rocks his hips and Brad thanks God for a well suppressed gag reflex. He wants as much of Nate as he can handle; he takes his dick as deep as he can. Nate's fingers are still tight in his hair, all but dragging his mouth down onto his dick and God, it's so good, it feels so good. He groans, both of his hands on Nate's hips to steady himself and his hard-on throbs but he leaves it because right now, all he wants is for Nate to come in his mouth and, if he's coming, he's doing it by Nate's hand or nothing.

He's spent long enough imagining the details of this.

Above him, Nate moans, soft at first but getting louder and Brad's hands slip around from his hips to his ass, squeezing, pulling him in tighter. Holding his head, Nate rocks his hips, pushing past Brad's lips over and over and, Jesus, if it's possible to get enough of this, it hasn't happened yet. Brad's fingers stray, brushing down the cleft of Nate's ass, rubbing against his asshole and he feels the way that Nate's hips jerk at the touch.

Another couple of strokes and Nate's pulling back, wrapping his own fingers around his dick as soon as it's free from Brad's mouth, squeezing, dragging in a breath through his nose before he opens his eyes. Brad's always been helpless in the face of a direct look from Nate like that, from the first moment he'd met him and Nate had offered him his hand.

“What?” he asks, scrambling back up onto the bed, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, but Nate's already leaning down, his knee hitting the bed between Brad's thighs as he leans down to take a kiss, mouth hot and damp, licking his way between Brad's lips and following it with a moan.

“I really want to fuck the shit out of you,” he says, smudging kisses down from the corner of Brad's mouth and over his jaw, his hand shoved down inside Brad's underwear, fingers curled around his dick, but not stroking, not yet. It's a possessive sort of touch. Mine, for now. Mine, while you're here.

Brad doesn't quite have either the words or the presence of mind to tell Nate that that's always true. He suspects that Nate knows anyway.

He can't squirm out of his jeans and underwear quick enough. Stretched out, sprawled naked across Nate's bed, he pulls up his knees, lets them fall wide apart. He tries to remember if there's ever been a moment when he was embarrassed by this? There's something deep at the heart of him, in that part of him labelled 'Warrior Spirit' that thinks that maybe he ought to hate it, lying there this spread open and vulnerable, want written this clear on his face but Brad shoves that down because here he is with the only man he's ever loved and nothing has ever felt as right as being with Nate does.

Fuck it.
When he dreams, he dreams about being in Iraq or in this room.

He lies back and watches Nate kneeling between his thighs, lube in his hand, condom between his lips. His hips lift eagerly. Fumbling, Nate bites his lip as he rolls the condom down over his dick, bites it again as he slicks his fingers. He wastes no time, pressing the tip of one against Brad's asshole, and Brad closes his eyes and wills himself to relax because there is nothing that he wants more than Nate inside him, skin on skin, flush, heat.

“Just fuck me,” he says, as Nate pushes one finger into him. He rolls his hips, fucking himself on it and, for a moment, Nate doesn't even move his hand. Brad pulls him down for a kiss, riding down against his finger and he feels Nate's breath hot and quick against his mouth. They both know better than to rush into anything; this isn't about pain, but it's still intensely and incredibly frustrating to be forced to slow right down as Nate opens him up carefully, thoroughly, already pressing another finger in alongside the first.

They breath together and Brad rocks his hips and it's nowhere near enough.

Three fingers inside him, Nate groans softly and presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

Brad reaches up and cups his face with both hands.

“I love you and I need you to fuck me. Right now.”

Never let it be said that Nate Fick does not know what's good for him. He shifts his weight on his knees, one hand on Brad's shoulder and the other between them. He slides in slowly, four months were worth waiting through slowly, and Brad's back arches, pushing his hips down onto every inch. He's always thought that Nate had a beautiful dick.

They have no right to move together this beautifully; they haven't spent enough time together to know each other this well. They snatch time in shared beds, fuck when they can, talk on the phone. It's a relationship in pieces but both of them are Marines forever, one way or another, physically in the Corps or not, and one thing is always certain: Marines know how to make do. Brad knows that there's not much in the world that he wouldn't do not to be able to snatch moments like this with Nate. Maybe he wouldn't give up the Corps, but Nate wouldn't let him give up the Corps and, so, fumbling, they make do.

And it won't end up with a ring on anybody's finger but the sex will always be this good and Brad will always know, in his heart of hearts, that he is truly loved.

It's not going to last nearly long enough. He can feel that already. He bucks under Nate's weight and Nate has one hand on the bed-frame for leverage, pounding into him and it's all that Brad can do to press his face against Nate's shoulder and take it. His fingers dig into Nate's hip and the side of his neck. He kisses what skin he can reach with his mouth.

“Come on,” he mumbles. “Come on, come on.” He repeats it like a mantra, like the simple three or four line prayers his mother taught him when he was a child. “Come on and come for me, Nate.”

Nate's orgasm slams into him, seems to knock all of the breath out of him and Brad's only a couple of steps behind him, following over, right alongside. Spent, Nate collapses on top of him. He bites Brad's shoulder hard as the aftershocks are fading. Brad finds himself thinking fondly of scars.

They curl together with a mess of sheets between them, a patchwork quilt dragged up onto top of them and their sweaty, eager limbs. He falls asleep with Nate's head pillowed on his shoulder. The bite-mark on his shoulder aches but, in the morning, there'll barely be a bruise.

( Part 3 | Fiddler's Green )