Fic: Fate Is A MoFo
Author: rivlee
Title: Fate Is A MoFo
Rating: PG-13 for Ray’s mouth.
Characters/Pairing: Ray and various other Bravo boys. Ray/Walt pre-slash.
Summary: Ray knows he’s Fate’s little bitch.
Disclaimer: This is all fiction based off the characters as portrayed in the HBO mini-series. No disrespect or harm is meant or intended.
A/N: Unbeated. From a prompt requested by spirograph who wanted Ray/Walt UST. I sincerely wish this was that. It isn’t. I, and writing UST, are apparently not friends. I bring you snappy one liners in penance.
Of all the places Ray Person planned on going to get the hell of out Nevada, Missouri, Kuwait hadn’t even made the list. His future was supposed to be traveling the world in a shitty van as part of a rock band. Instead he got to travel the Middle East in a shitty Humvee from the time when R. Kelly was still a major name. Hell, he remembered the news stories about Desert Storm, but he never actually thought his ass would be here, a decade later, looking at shit leftover from the last time Marines decide to fuck up the area.
The invasion of Iraq hadn’t even started yet and already Ray really hated the desert. From the shamal storms that left him coughing a lung up to the fucking thirty degree temperature difference between day and night, there was no way to get comfortable.
If the assclowns in command didn’t get them all killed, the weather would do its best.
Ray couldn’t fucking believe the way fate was constantly a motherfucker when it came to his life. Start a band, it implodes and Limp Bizkit becomes famous. Scholarship bottoms out and he joins the Marines. Gets to Kuwait, gets told to invade a country in a Humvee a step above a Pinto. Half the time it wasn’t even worth it dragging his ass up in the morning.
Except to annoy the shit out of Colbert, but that was one of the rare highlights of this ever continuing fucked up war.
Kuwait and Camp Matilda did have a few advantages. Port-a-potties for one, not getting shot at another, a relatively normal routine. Their home at Matilda was a tent full of Bravo Company that smelled like gym socks, ball sweat, and shit. Getting to bed down next to Walt Hasser every night, was a very close fourth.
Walt was a Recon Marine like the rest of them. Well, the rest of them except maybe Trombley who had all the makings of a sociopath, but a war meant psycho Marines got a pass out of finishing a Basic Recon Course. Still, Walt just had something innocent about him. Ray decided it was the face. No self-respecting Marine should look like a kid just past puberty. Then again, look at the LT.
The war was so about NAMBLA. Fuck whatever the Strategic Plan said,
Walt was pretty in that All-American corn-fed boy way that allegedly guys from Missouri were supposed to look like. Ray never saw a farm boy like Walt though. And to just make it all the more fucked up, Walt actually seemed to appreciate Ray’s sense of humor, a rare thing in their company of wannabe gangstas, hillbilly hicks, and whateverthefuck Rudy qualified for.
Stupid, mindless, Lisa-Frank-Trapper-Keeper-Carrying-Middle-School crushes on someone as pretty as Walt normally wouldn’t even register on Ray’s radar. But the whole lack of sex in general made them all that more obsessed about the topic and Ray knew he wasn’t the only one contemplating the love that dare not speaks it name bullshit.
He’d blame Fate again, but he’d already pissed off God once this week in defense of Brad, so he was going to cut his loses while he still could.
********
Ray’s rack was right next to Walt’s, since Brad continued to deny Ray his matrimonial rights and required him to sleep on the other side of the tent. It was cool though, he got to stare at Walt while he slept, and sometimes actually got a breeze that wasn’t full of sand pass by in the night from the entrance.
And thanks to those letters Walt got from home, the smell of J. Lo. Glow occasionally beat out the stench of forty-two dirty, stank and rank Marines.
“This is damn uncivilized, dog,” Poke said as he leaned against a stack of MRE boxes.
“Marines make do, man,” Q-Tip said. He was in the middle of the tent’s unending chess game. It was currently Q-Tip vs. Baptista.
Ray looked up from his porn mag long enough to roll his eyes at Poke. “You expected them to put us up at the Kuwaiti version of the Ritz?” He threw his magazine down and moved over to Poke’s area. “Shit, homes, we can’t even get enough batteries to be operational.”
“Don’t make it right,” Poke said. “They got us in this cheap ass tents, riding open Humvees into war, with Sixta more concerned about the grooming standard than our ability to actual ride into war. Shit’s fucked up.”
“Maybe we can get Reporter to hook us up,” Gabe said.
“Please, if Rolling Stone lasts one week I’ll eat Hasser’s balls,” Ray said.
“Stay away from my balls, Ray,” Walt said.
The whole tent laughed before going back to business as usual. Which meant, wrestling matches, scuttlebutt, and story time.
“Hey, Fruity Rudy, hook me up with some of your ghetto Starbucks,” Ray said.
“Don’t disrespect the espresso,” Poke said. He held out his cup. “Hook me up too, Rudy.”
Rudy smiled. “One round, coming straight up.”
Ray never did figure out what happened next. One minute he was sitting on an MRE box, getting ready to get all Kumbayah and shit, and the next he heard the distinct whoosing sound of an explosion before half his face was on fire.
Ray couldn’t even speak he was in so much pain, but the various holy shits, fucking hells, and what the fucks around the tent pretty much covered it. He saw Walt grab a towel and a bottle of water, while Poke ordered Christenson to go find Doc.
“Shit, Ray,” Rudy said. He dosed the stove under the espresso pot.
Ray just shook his head. It wasn’t Rudy’s fault God and Fate always used Ray as its whipping boy.
“Go get Brad,” Poke ordered.
Rudy nodded and calmly walked out of the tent.
Ray could feel his body twitching. The whole tent smelled like the inside of a KFC kitchen.
“Colbert’s going to fuck us all up,” Chaffin said.
“Jesus, Ray,” Walt whispered as he looked at Ray’s face.
Ray could feel his eyes watering and tried not to wince as Walt pressed the wet towel to his face.
“He’ll fuck us up even more if he finds out after we’ve all been thrown in the brig,” Poke said.
“You’re such a stupid hick,” Walt just kept saying. “You could’ve lost an eye.”
“Iceman’s going to kill you, dog,” Poke said.
“Thanks, Poke,” Walt said. “Hey, next time Ray gets burned in the face, can you just stand there and state the obvious rather than help us.”
“I am helping, I’m being the calm voice of leadership. You can’t help some kind of stupid, you just have to sit back and watch it,” Poke said.
“Where’s Doc Bryan?” Walt asked, a valid question that Ray could’ve kissed him for.
“Probably getting actual burn cream so Person’s face doesn’t turn gangrene and fall off,” Garza said.
Poke pulled back the towel from Ray’s face. “It’s liked fried chicken.”
Ray put the towel back on while Walt gave Poke the finger.
“Iceman Cometh,” Stafford said, as Rudy and Brad entered the tent.
Ray winced, he had a feeling this was going to hurt more than his face.
********
“You’re such a jackass,” Walt said as he rubbed the burn cream on Ray’s face.
Ray was still under Doc’s strict orders of just do what I tell you so I don’t have to fucking cart your ass to triage again, and that meant a whole round of burn cream. And sunblock, which Ray no no idea where the fuck that had come from, but he had a feeling the LT must’ve given ten blowjobs to someone back in a supply unit.
Still, it wasn’t like Ray had asked for his facial disfigurement.
“Explain to me how it’s my fault Rudy’s coffee pot blew up in my face.”
“Why were you that close to it anyway?”
“I wanted some coffee.”
“Jesus, Ray, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes.”
Walt shook his head and dropped the tubes of ointment next to Ray’s gear. He moved to his own rack and curled up to go to sleep. He was out in less than fifteen minutes. It was one thing they all learned back as Boot Drops. You slept whenever you could, wherever you could.
Ray listened to the sounds of their tent at night. It still gave him a total mind fuck to think of everything here as normal, as routine, but he was used to it. To the sound of at least five guys trying to quietly jack-off. To Pappy snoring in his sleep, Baptista’s coughing wheeze. The fact that even when Brad slept he looked five seconds away from killing you. Trombley curled up like a little kid and Rudy always looked like he was in the middle of a meditative pose.
Walt usually kicked Ray at least once in the night. Something about sleeping on the ground made him go all sideways. Ray was used to pushing him back onto his rack before anyone else woke-up. It got fucking cold at night, then hotter than hell in the morning, but the freezing ass cold made it hard not to seek some warmer contact.
Ray laid down and turned his face away from the tent flaps. He was going to get sand on the facial burn, nothing could change that besides going somewhere with no desert, but it was the difference between getting stabbed with a needle versus getting gutted with a K-BAR. The shamal could stay the fuck away from his face,
Walt didn’t kick him during the night.
He didn’t have the chance since somewhere between O’Dark Hundred and Dawn, Ray curled up like a little kid next to Walt’s side. He only woke up when the shadow of the Iceman fell over them.
“I am disappointed that you’re cheating on me with some Whiskey Tango Backwoods Hick.”
“Oh, Brad, you know you’re my favorite work husband ever. Like all men of a certain position, I just need a dirty mistress.”
“Ray,” Walt said.
“Yes, honey?”
“Get the fuck off of me.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“I was desperate and vulnerable.”
“Is this your way of telling me you won’t respect me in the morning.”
“Hell, Ray, he didn’t respect you last night,” Brad said. “Grab your shower shoes and get your ass up. LT wants to talk to all the RTOs this morning.”
“Fucking awesome,” Ray said. He pushed himself up, but patted Walt on the head first. “I just want you to know, you were the best I ever had.”
Walt threw a pair of truly rancid socks at him.
********
Ray knew he was Fate’s bitch. He honestly suffered no delusions that he hadn’t pissed off the gods numerous times in his life and that at this point, everything was about karmic retribution. So when he his shower shoes decide to snap on him, sending him sliding into Walt who just finished his own shower, he really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Except no one ever told him farm boys from Virginia could have an ass like that.
It was probably only fitting that their Gunnery Sergeant found them sprawled out on the floor of the showers in a position that would’ve been fitting for the best twink porno mags.
“Can we try for this is not what it looks like?” Ray asked.
Gunny Wynn just shook his head. “Mmh-hmm,” he said while staring at them.
“Gunny-,” Ray started.
“Don’t talk Person. I don’t want to know. Let me keep my plausible deniability and I’ll let you keep up with your bullshit. Just don’t violate Hasser on that shower floor, it’s unsanitary. LT’s waiting for you when you’re done.”
Ray would’ve said something more, but Walt already looked ready to kill him, and Ray kind of wanted to survive this war with everything intact.
That didn’t mean he stopped from sneaking a peek when Walt shoved him off. He might be Fate’s bitch, but hell, he was going to get something of use out of all this bullshit.
Title: Fate Is A MoFo
Rating: PG-13 for Ray’s mouth.
Characters/Pairing: Ray and various other Bravo boys. Ray/Walt pre-slash.
Summary: Ray knows he’s Fate’s little bitch.
Disclaimer: This is all fiction based off the characters as portrayed in the HBO mini-series. No disrespect or harm is meant or intended.
A/N: Unbeated. From a prompt requested by spirograph who wanted Ray/Walt UST. I sincerely wish this was that. It isn’t. I, and writing UST, are apparently not friends. I bring you snappy one liners in penance.
Of all the places Ray Person planned on going to get the hell of out Nevada, Missouri, Kuwait hadn’t even made the list. His future was supposed to be traveling the world in a shitty van as part of a rock band. Instead he got to travel the Middle East in a shitty Humvee from the time when R. Kelly was still a major name. Hell, he remembered the news stories about Desert Storm, but he never actually thought his ass would be here, a decade later, looking at shit leftover from the last time Marines decide to fuck up the area.
The invasion of Iraq hadn’t even started yet and already Ray really hated the desert. From the shamal storms that left him coughing a lung up to the fucking thirty degree temperature difference between day and night, there was no way to get comfortable.
If the assclowns in command didn’t get them all killed, the weather would do its best.
Ray couldn’t fucking believe the way fate was constantly a motherfucker when it came to his life. Start a band, it implodes and Limp Bizkit becomes famous. Scholarship bottoms out and he joins the Marines. Gets to Kuwait, gets told to invade a country in a Humvee a step above a Pinto. Half the time it wasn’t even worth it dragging his ass up in the morning.
Except to annoy the shit out of Colbert, but that was one of the rare highlights of this ever continuing fucked up war.
Kuwait and Camp Matilda did have a few advantages. Port-a-potties for one, not getting shot at another, a relatively normal routine. Their home at Matilda was a tent full of Bravo Company that smelled like gym socks, ball sweat, and shit. Getting to bed down next to Walt Hasser every night, was a very close fourth.
Walt was a Recon Marine like the rest of them. Well, the rest of them except maybe Trombley who had all the makings of a sociopath, but a war meant psycho Marines got a pass out of finishing a Basic Recon Course. Still, Walt just had something innocent about him. Ray decided it was the face. No self-respecting Marine should look like a kid just past puberty. Then again, look at the LT.
The war was so about NAMBLA. Fuck whatever the Strategic Plan said,
Walt was pretty in that All-American corn-fed boy way that allegedly guys from Missouri were supposed to look like. Ray never saw a farm boy like Walt though. And to just make it all the more fucked up, Walt actually seemed to appreciate Ray’s sense of humor, a rare thing in their company of wannabe gangstas, hillbilly hicks, and whateverthefuck Rudy qualified for.
Stupid, mindless, Lisa-Frank-Trapper-Keeper-Carrying-Middle-School crushes on someone as pretty as Walt normally wouldn’t even register on Ray’s radar. But the whole lack of sex in general made them all that more obsessed about the topic and Ray knew he wasn’t the only one contemplating the love that dare not speaks it name bullshit.
He’d blame Fate again, but he’d already pissed off God once this week in defense of Brad, so he was going to cut his loses while he still could.
********
Ray’s rack was right next to Walt’s, since Brad continued to deny Ray his matrimonial rights and required him to sleep on the other side of the tent. It was cool though, he got to stare at Walt while he slept, and sometimes actually got a breeze that wasn’t full of sand pass by in the night from the entrance.
And thanks to those letters Walt got from home, the smell of J. Lo. Glow occasionally beat out the stench of forty-two dirty, stank and rank Marines.
“This is damn uncivilized, dog,” Poke said as he leaned against a stack of MRE boxes.
“Marines make do, man,” Q-Tip said. He was in the middle of the tent’s unending chess game. It was currently Q-Tip vs. Baptista.
Ray looked up from his porn mag long enough to roll his eyes at Poke. “You expected them to put us up at the Kuwaiti version of the Ritz?” He threw his magazine down and moved over to Poke’s area. “Shit, homes, we can’t even get enough batteries to be operational.”
“Don’t make it right,” Poke said. “They got us in this cheap ass tents, riding open Humvees into war, with Sixta more concerned about the grooming standard than our ability to actual ride into war. Shit’s fucked up.”
“Maybe we can get Reporter to hook us up,” Gabe said.
“Please, if Rolling Stone lasts one week I’ll eat Hasser’s balls,” Ray said.
“Stay away from my balls, Ray,” Walt said.
The whole tent laughed before going back to business as usual. Which meant, wrestling matches, scuttlebutt, and story time.
“Hey, Fruity Rudy, hook me up with some of your ghetto Starbucks,” Ray said.
“Don’t disrespect the espresso,” Poke said. He held out his cup. “Hook me up too, Rudy.”
Rudy smiled. “One round, coming straight up.”
Ray never did figure out what happened next. One minute he was sitting on an MRE box, getting ready to get all Kumbayah and shit, and the next he heard the distinct whoosing sound of an explosion before half his face was on fire.
Ray couldn’t even speak he was in so much pain, but the various holy shits, fucking hells, and what the fucks around the tent pretty much covered it. He saw Walt grab a towel and a bottle of water, while Poke ordered Christenson to go find Doc.
“Shit, Ray,” Rudy said. He dosed the stove under the espresso pot.
Ray just shook his head. It wasn’t Rudy’s fault God and Fate always used Ray as its whipping boy.
“Go get Brad,” Poke ordered.
Rudy nodded and calmly walked out of the tent.
Ray could feel his body twitching. The whole tent smelled like the inside of a KFC kitchen.
“Colbert’s going to fuck us all up,” Chaffin said.
“Jesus, Ray,” Walt whispered as he looked at Ray’s face.
Ray could feel his eyes watering and tried not to wince as Walt pressed the wet towel to his face.
“He’ll fuck us up even more if he finds out after we’ve all been thrown in the brig,” Poke said.
“You’re such a stupid hick,” Walt just kept saying. “You could’ve lost an eye.”
“Iceman’s going to kill you, dog,” Poke said.
“Thanks, Poke,” Walt said. “Hey, next time Ray gets burned in the face, can you just stand there and state the obvious rather than help us.”
“I am helping, I’m being the calm voice of leadership. You can’t help some kind of stupid, you just have to sit back and watch it,” Poke said.
“Where’s Doc Bryan?” Walt asked, a valid question that Ray could’ve kissed him for.
“Probably getting actual burn cream so Person’s face doesn’t turn gangrene and fall off,” Garza said.
Poke pulled back the towel from Ray’s face. “It’s liked fried chicken.”
Ray put the towel back on while Walt gave Poke the finger.
“Iceman Cometh,” Stafford said, as Rudy and Brad entered the tent.
Ray winced, he had a feeling this was going to hurt more than his face.
********
“You’re such a jackass,” Walt said as he rubbed the burn cream on Ray’s face.
Ray was still under Doc’s strict orders of just do what I tell you so I don’t have to fucking cart your ass to triage again, and that meant a whole round of burn cream. And sunblock, which Ray no no idea where the fuck that had come from, but he had a feeling the LT must’ve given ten blowjobs to someone back in a supply unit.
Still, it wasn’t like Ray had asked for his facial disfigurement.
“Explain to me how it’s my fault Rudy’s coffee pot blew up in my face.”
“Why were you that close to it anyway?”
“I wanted some coffee.”
“Jesus, Ray, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes.”
Walt shook his head and dropped the tubes of ointment next to Ray’s gear. He moved to his own rack and curled up to go to sleep. He was out in less than fifteen minutes. It was one thing they all learned back as Boot Drops. You slept whenever you could, wherever you could.
Ray listened to the sounds of their tent at night. It still gave him a total mind fuck to think of everything here as normal, as routine, but he was used to it. To the sound of at least five guys trying to quietly jack-off. To Pappy snoring in his sleep, Baptista’s coughing wheeze. The fact that even when Brad slept he looked five seconds away from killing you. Trombley curled up like a little kid and Rudy always looked like he was in the middle of a meditative pose.
Walt usually kicked Ray at least once in the night. Something about sleeping on the ground made him go all sideways. Ray was used to pushing him back onto his rack before anyone else woke-up. It got fucking cold at night, then hotter than hell in the morning, but the freezing ass cold made it hard not to seek some warmer contact.
Ray laid down and turned his face away from the tent flaps. He was going to get sand on the facial burn, nothing could change that besides going somewhere with no desert, but it was the difference between getting stabbed with a needle versus getting gutted with a K-BAR. The shamal could stay the fuck away from his face,
Walt didn’t kick him during the night.
He didn’t have the chance since somewhere between O’Dark Hundred and Dawn, Ray curled up like a little kid next to Walt’s side. He only woke up when the shadow of the Iceman fell over them.
“I am disappointed that you’re cheating on me with some Whiskey Tango Backwoods Hick.”
“Oh, Brad, you know you’re my favorite work husband ever. Like all men of a certain position, I just need a dirty mistress.”
“Ray,” Walt said.
“Yes, honey?”
“Get the fuck off of me.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“I was desperate and vulnerable.”
“Is this your way of telling me you won’t respect me in the morning.”
“Hell, Ray, he didn’t respect you last night,” Brad said. “Grab your shower shoes and get your ass up. LT wants to talk to all the RTOs this morning.”
“Fucking awesome,” Ray said. He pushed himself up, but patted Walt on the head first. “I just want you to know, you were the best I ever had.”
Walt threw a pair of truly rancid socks at him.
********
Ray knew he was Fate’s bitch. He honestly suffered no delusions that he hadn’t pissed off the gods numerous times in his life and that at this point, everything was about karmic retribution. So when he his shower shoes decide to snap on him, sending him sliding into Walt who just finished his own shower, he really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Except no one ever told him farm boys from Virginia could have an ass like that.
It was probably only fitting that their Gunnery Sergeant found them sprawled out on the floor of the showers in a position that would’ve been fitting for the best twink porno mags.
“Can we try for this is not what it looks like?” Ray asked.
Gunny Wynn just shook his head. “Mmh-hmm,” he said while staring at them.
“Gunny-,” Ray started.
“Don’t talk Person. I don’t want to know. Let me keep my plausible deniability and I’ll let you keep up with your bullshit. Just don’t violate Hasser on that shower floor, it’s unsanitary. LT’s waiting for you when you’re done.”
Ray would’ve said something more, but Walt already looked ready to kill him, and Ray kind of wanted to survive this war with everything intact.
That didn’t mean he stopped from sneaking a peek when Walt shoved him off. He might be Fate’s bitch, but hell, he was going to get something of use out of all this bullshit.