GK fic: Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea
Good morning, beautiful people! Here is a fic what I wrote.
I wanted to start my year with a challenge, so I signed up at 1sentence, to see if I could tell a story in fifty sentences, no more, no less. I think I did it.
Title: Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: R
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Word Count: 1629
Summary: They go looking for what they’ve been missing
Notes: Written for 1sentence. Thanks to snglesrvngfrend for the speedy read-through. Title is from "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e cummings.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
vi: hurricane
It all happened so quickly: broken glass in a lab, one dead person, four dead people, panic, pandemonium, more death than you could imagine.
xli: wait
The last thing Nate can remember seeing on TV was a newscaster screaming, “How long until we’re all fucking dead?”
xxi: silence
They didn’t get sick because they didn’t and then all of a sudden there was almost-nothing, no more television or radio or traffic, just him and Brad in a city full of the silent dead and the quietly dying.
xxxiii: world
They live in Cambridge for a while, since that’s where they are when almost everyone dies, but after a year or so it gets tiring and they start looking at the maps in empty convenience stores, Brad drawing dust-free lines across a country full of places that used to be and still sort of are.
xxii: journey
Over ramen cooked on a camp stove Brad says, “We should go there,” pointing his splintering chopsticks at the faded neon yellow of California on the map they’re using as a tablecloth.
xiii: view
“It’s three thousand miles,” Nate says while they watch the sun set from the roof, “let’s not hurry, okay?”
xlviii: unknown
They leave their little house in Cambridge with almost nothing on them, since it’s more interesting that way, more like a test of their worth, more like an adventure.
xlix: lock
Nate has the key to his parents’ house, and they stop in for a day, to see if everything is as Nate left it the last time he came down to Baltimore, feeling like Brad feels now.
xx: talent
Barely inside the North Carolina border they ditch the bike; Brad hotwires a pick-up truck and sticks a piece of grass in his mouth because there’s no one around to see it, drawling, “Get in, Fick, we’re going West.”
xii: temptation
They take turns spitting off the top of a tall building in West Virginia, leaning so far falling seems inevitable, but always pulling back at the last moment, dizzy and shiny-mouthed.
xxviii: forgotten
Most of the roads are at least half-blocked by cars and other detritus, like people just forgot their stuff -themselves-in the middle of nowhere, so a straight line is impossible and a jagged adventure necessary.
xxix: dance
Brad goes down on Nate when it’s his turn to drive, his head bobbing in a steady rhythm while Nate holds onto the wheel and the choppy hair at the back of Brad’s head, trying not to drive off the empty road.
xxiv: strength
It’s amazing; people always wondered what would happen should the world end, but it didn’t even when all the wonderers died, and driving through Georgia while Brad hums where the devil went, Nate thinks that it might never.
v: run
If they drive for too long it gets hard to not kill each other, so sometimes they get out and fuck around in the long grass on the side of the road, their arms raised in parody of airplanes.
xliii: search
“You are here,” Brad reads off the faded rest-stop sign, cocking his head to the side, “but where the fuck is here?”
xix: candle
While looking for supplies and a place to sleep they walk past a house lit with candles, shadows dancing inside; Nate hopes a happy family lives there.
xxx: body
They spend a night in the hayloft of a barn in the middle of the country, sleeping close and warm while below them a few lazy flies buzz around the mostly-dry body of a farmhand, zzz, zzz, zzz.
vii: wings
Using his finger Nate draws on Brad’s back, swooping, furling shapes from his shoulder blades down to his thighs, laying his cheek in the empty space to listen to the sound of the ocean in Brad’s body.
xxxvi: laugh
In a half-decayed grocery store they gorge themselves on dry goods and canned drinks, breaking bottles of non-alcoholic beer when they’re full, foaming white spray coming back at their laughing faces.
i: ring
Nate sees the glitter of the ring strung around the scrawny little girl’s neck before he sees her on the side of the road, the ring that used to fit on a woman’s finger, “Before she got sick and went to Jesus.”
xxxiv: formal
She sits on Nate’s lap while Brad drives, staring out the window, always careful to call them each Sir with the kind of militant devotion you find in Texas.
viii: cold
By the second night, Nate knows she’s sick, can feel the shivering clamminess on her face when she goes to sleep on the seat between them, her head on Brad’s thigh and her feet tucked under Nate’s hands.
xxxvii: lies
“No,” Brad says two days later when the little girl struggles with her breath to ask if she’s gonna die, “you’re gonna be just fine.”
ii: hero
Nate wakes up and the grave in the soft soil beside the highway is already half-dug, Brad working so hard to make it perfect because someone so young deserves better than they’ve got.
xlii: talk
“No thanks,” Brad says coolly before Nate even thinks of saying anything, revving the truck up to seventy-five, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
xxiii: fire
The truck breaks down just inside San Miguel County and Brad flicks a match at it when they walk away, although no flames lick up behind them.
xvi: cover
Standing under a tattered awning, tasting the metallic rain, Nate asks, “Why the fuck are we even doing this?”
x: drink
They fight later, properly, rough with whiskey, yelling because they’re lost in New Mexico and being alone in the world like this hurts.
xxxix: overwhelmed
It rains again, but they’re not going anywhere, so Nate turns on his side and tries to sleep through the sound and his feelings.
xl: whisper
Brad pins him to a cheap hotel bedspread and sucks hard on his earlobe while his fingers stroke Nate’s belly; his way of saying Sorry with his body.
xlvi: gravity
When the rain stops Nate says something against Brad’s neck and he means it, although he doesn’t think Brad hears until Brad’s hand falls onto the back of his neck, heavy like Nate shot him.
xv: silk
Brad wants the Suburban, but gives in easily enough when Nate says, “I want that one,” pointing across the used car lot to a dusty 1975 Grand Marquis, the one with a creamy paint job and leather seats like butter.
xxv: mask
“We’ll be there soon,” Brad mutters, turning back onto Route 50, a hard look on his face like he’s not sure if he’ll find anything he’ll like once they get there.
xviii: dream
They drive through Utah in one night and Nate stares up at the stars as they pass by and he says, “Brad, you know we could go anywhere.”
xlv: eclipse
Nevada: The No Gas in the Car, Walking Until Your Feet Hurt and You’re Half-Blind by the Blazing Hot Sun State.
xxvi: ice
What a miracle looks like: Brad bringing a bucket of ice back to room #17 of a Super 8, rattling the bucket and saying, “It tastes like dirt, but it’ll help the sunburn, so take your shirt off.”
xlvii: highway
They walk past a Welcome to California sign and wave at it from the centre line, laughing, tired, tanned and thirsty.
ix: red
At an In-N-Out they stop to pick up a new car and Brad squints at the cracked sign, sighing, “Yeah, home,” like Nate asked him a question.
xi: midnight
They break into Brad’s parents’ house late at night, but aren’t quiet about it since no one’s coming home, not there or anywhere else on the street.
xvii: promise
California had safe zones, where everyone went because they were told they would be safe, but instead they died in sealed warehouses, trapped with the sickness so people like Brad and Nate could eventually pick through their homes looking for their next full meal.
iii: memory
Brad wanders the house in silence while Nate sits in the spare bedroom, waiting for Brad to finish turning all the pictures to face the walls.
xxxv: fever
The dark space between Brad’s thighs is so hot Nate thinks maybe he’s sick, but he’s really just sick with something better, waiting for Nate to press his face into the warm place.
xliv: hope
“Shit,” Brad laughs at the ceiling, his hand on the sheets next to Nate’s, “we went cross-country and didn’t even almost die.”
xiv: music
At Pendleton they stand in the parking lot and listen to the wind rush over the pavement, thinking about old voices.
xxvii: fall
How long until we’re all dead? echoes through Nate’s mind, not that he has an answer.
xxxi: sacred
In a shopping mall that’s been looted already Nate lights a little white candle, then two more, then all the ones he can find, until the light shines off the pennies at the bottom of the fountain, glittering like tears.
iv: box
Brad starts putting his parents’ things in cardboard boxes in the basement, sealing them up with duct tape but not labeling them.
xxxii: farewells
The wood in the garage is dry enough for a fire so they have one in the backyard, standing so their elbows brush, watching the smoke and ash rising up to the moon.
xxxviii: forever
“Let’s do something different,” Nate says gently, reaching for Brad so he can pull him out the back door.
l: breathe
The ocean is the second thing Nate knows that feels like forever, and when he cannonballs in after Brad he has to hold his breath as the water rushes past his face, cold and bubbling like champagne.
I wanted to start my year with a challenge, so I signed up at 1sentence, to see if I could tell a story in fifty sentences, no more, no less. I think I did it.
Title: Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: R
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Word Count: 1629
Summary: They go looking for what they’ve been missing
Notes: Written for 1sentence. Thanks to snglesrvngfrend for the speedy read-through. Title is from "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e cummings.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
vi: hurricane
It all happened so quickly: broken glass in a lab, one dead person, four dead people, panic, pandemonium, more death than you could imagine.
xli: wait
The last thing Nate can remember seeing on TV was a newscaster screaming, “How long until we’re all fucking dead?”
xxi: silence
They didn’t get sick because they didn’t and then all of a sudden there was almost-nothing, no more television or radio or traffic, just him and Brad in a city full of the silent dead and the quietly dying.
xxxiii: world
They live in Cambridge for a while, since that’s where they are when almost everyone dies, but after a year or so it gets tiring and they start looking at the maps in empty convenience stores, Brad drawing dust-free lines across a country full of places that used to be and still sort of are.
xxii: journey
Over ramen cooked on a camp stove Brad says, “We should go there,” pointing his splintering chopsticks at the faded neon yellow of California on the map they’re using as a tablecloth.
xiii: view
“It’s three thousand miles,” Nate says while they watch the sun set from the roof, “let’s not hurry, okay?”
xlviii: unknown
They leave their little house in Cambridge with almost nothing on them, since it’s more interesting that way, more like a test of their worth, more like an adventure.
xlix: lock
Nate has the key to his parents’ house, and they stop in for a day, to see if everything is as Nate left it the last time he came down to Baltimore, feeling like Brad feels now.
xx: talent
Barely inside the North Carolina border they ditch the bike; Brad hotwires a pick-up truck and sticks a piece of grass in his mouth because there’s no one around to see it, drawling, “Get in, Fick, we’re going West.”
xii: temptation
They take turns spitting off the top of a tall building in West Virginia, leaning so far falling seems inevitable, but always pulling back at the last moment, dizzy and shiny-mouthed.
xxviii: forgotten
Most of the roads are at least half-blocked by cars and other detritus, like people just forgot their stuff -themselves-in the middle of nowhere, so a straight line is impossible and a jagged adventure necessary.
xxix: dance
Brad goes down on Nate when it’s his turn to drive, his head bobbing in a steady rhythm while Nate holds onto the wheel and the choppy hair at the back of Brad’s head, trying not to drive off the empty road.
xxiv: strength
It’s amazing; people always wondered what would happen should the world end, but it didn’t even when all the wonderers died, and driving through Georgia while Brad hums where the devil went, Nate thinks that it might never.
v: run
If they drive for too long it gets hard to not kill each other, so sometimes they get out and fuck around in the long grass on the side of the road, their arms raised in parody of airplanes.
xliii: search
“You are here,” Brad reads off the faded rest-stop sign, cocking his head to the side, “but where the fuck is here?”
xix: candle
While looking for supplies and a place to sleep they walk past a house lit with candles, shadows dancing inside; Nate hopes a happy family lives there.
xxx: body
They spend a night in the hayloft of a barn in the middle of the country, sleeping close and warm while below them a few lazy flies buzz around the mostly-dry body of a farmhand, zzz, zzz, zzz.
vii: wings
Using his finger Nate draws on Brad’s back, swooping, furling shapes from his shoulder blades down to his thighs, laying his cheek in the empty space to listen to the sound of the ocean in Brad’s body.
xxxvi: laugh
In a half-decayed grocery store they gorge themselves on dry goods and canned drinks, breaking bottles of non-alcoholic beer when they’re full, foaming white spray coming back at their laughing faces.
i: ring
Nate sees the glitter of the ring strung around the scrawny little girl’s neck before he sees her on the side of the road, the ring that used to fit on a woman’s finger, “Before she got sick and went to Jesus.”
xxxiv: formal
She sits on Nate’s lap while Brad drives, staring out the window, always careful to call them each Sir with the kind of militant devotion you find in Texas.
viii: cold
By the second night, Nate knows she’s sick, can feel the shivering clamminess on her face when she goes to sleep on the seat between them, her head on Brad’s thigh and her feet tucked under Nate’s hands.
xxxvii: lies
“No,” Brad says two days later when the little girl struggles with her breath to ask if she’s gonna die, “you’re gonna be just fine.”
ii: hero
Nate wakes up and the grave in the soft soil beside the highway is already half-dug, Brad working so hard to make it perfect because someone so young deserves better than they’ve got.
xlii: talk
“No thanks,” Brad says coolly before Nate even thinks of saying anything, revving the truck up to seventy-five, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
xxiii: fire
The truck breaks down just inside San Miguel County and Brad flicks a match at it when they walk away, although no flames lick up behind them.
xvi: cover
Standing under a tattered awning, tasting the metallic rain, Nate asks, “Why the fuck are we even doing this?”
x: drink
They fight later, properly, rough with whiskey, yelling because they’re lost in New Mexico and being alone in the world like this hurts.
xxxix: overwhelmed
It rains again, but they’re not going anywhere, so Nate turns on his side and tries to sleep through the sound and his feelings.
xl: whisper
Brad pins him to a cheap hotel bedspread and sucks hard on his earlobe while his fingers stroke Nate’s belly; his way of saying Sorry with his body.
xlvi: gravity
When the rain stops Nate says something against Brad’s neck and he means it, although he doesn’t think Brad hears until Brad’s hand falls onto the back of his neck, heavy like Nate shot him.
xv: silk
Brad wants the Suburban, but gives in easily enough when Nate says, “I want that one,” pointing across the used car lot to a dusty 1975 Grand Marquis, the one with a creamy paint job and leather seats like butter.
xxv: mask
“We’ll be there soon,” Brad mutters, turning back onto Route 50, a hard look on his face like he’s not sure if he’ll find anything he’ll like once they get there.
xviii: dream
They drive through Utah in one night and Nate stares up at the stars as they pass by and he says, “Brad, you know we could go anywhere.”
xlv: eclipse
Nevada: The No Gas in the Car, Walking Until Your Feet Hurt and You’re Half-Blind by the Blazing Hot Sun State.
xxvi: ice
What a miracle looks like: Brad bringing a bucket of ice back to room #17 of a Super 8, rattling the bucket and saying, “It tastes like dirt, but it’ll help the sunburn, so take your shirt off.”
xlvii: highway
They walk past a Welcome to California sign and wave at it from the centre line, laughing, tired, tanned and thirsty.
ix: red
At an In-N-Out they stop to pick up a new car and Brad squints at the cracked sign, sighing, “Yeah, home,” like Nate asked him a question.
xi: midnight
They break into Brad’s parents’ house late at night, but aren’t quiet about it since no one’s coming home, not there or anywhere else on the street.
xvii: promise
California had safe zones, where everyone went because they were told they would be safe, but instead they died in sealed warehouses, trapped with the sickness so people like Brad and Nate could eventually pick through their homes looking for their next full meal.
iii: memory
Brad wanders the house in silence while Nate sits in the spare bedroom, waiting for Brad to finish turning all the pictures to face the walls.
xxxv: fever
The dark space between Brad’s thighs is so hot Nate thinks maybe he’s sick, but he’s really just sick with something better, waiting for Nate to press his face into the warm place.
xliv: hope
“Shit,” Brad laughs at the ceiling, his hand on the sheets next to Nate’s, “we went cross-country and didn’t even almost die.”
xiv: music
At Pendleton they stand in the parking lot and listen to the wind rush over the pavement, thinking about old voices.
xxvii: fall
How long until we’re all dead? echoes through Nate’s mind, not that he has an answer.
xxxi: sacred
In a shopping mall that’s been looted already Nate lights a little white candle, then two more, then all the ones he can find, until the light shines off the pennies at the bottom of the fountain, glittering like tears.
iv: box
Brad starts putting his parents’ things in cardboard boxes in the basement, sealing them up with duct tape but not labeling them.
xxxii: farewells
The wood in the garage is dry enough for a fire so they have one in the backyard, standing so their elbows brush, watching the smoke and ash rising up to the moon.
xxxviii: forever
“Let’s do something different,” Nate says gently, reaching for Brad so he can pull him out the back door.
l: breathe
The ocean is the second thing Nate knows that feels like forever, and when he cannonballs in after Brad he has to hold his breath as the water rushes past his face, cold and bubbling like champagne.