FIC: Ergo Sum (1/1) - Generation Kill
TITLE: Ergo Sum (1/2)
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Colbert/Fick
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: A man without a mission
DISCLAIMER: Generation Kill and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks toinlovewithnight, as always. Previously known as "Brad goes to Boston".
Brad shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. It’s not colder than England, but the air feels different. He plays with his phone; well aware he shouldn’t just show up unannounced. Nate has classes and papers and real life, and Brad’s just a ghost from his past. He doesn’t believe any of the guys who tell him to drop in anytime, because the spectre of Brad Colbert, lifer, isn’t what they want in their carefully decorated houses, in their carefully decorated lives. He’s like Lady Macbeth, blood still on his hands where theirs have washed clean, and they don’t want him petting their dogs, picking up their children, shaking their wives’ hands.
He understands, which is why he limits his contact to an occasional letter or phone call. The only people he’s seen since Iraq are Poke, because he showed up in England on Brad’s doorstep, and Ray, because it was the only way he could get him to shut up. Which doesn’t do anything to explain what the hell he’s doing loitering on the outskirts of Harvard University, staring up at an old brownstone converted into student apartments.
He’s not sure how long he’s been standing there, though he’s surprised no one’s called the cops on him. His hood is pulled down almost to his eyes, and he needs to make a fucking decision. What he’d like is for someone to give him an order.
“Brad?”
He swallows hard, cursing under his breath, even though relief floods through him like heat. “Hey, LT.” He turns and stops, the heat turning to stone in his gut.
Nate’s grinning happily, hurrying toward Brad. He looks just like he did, though his hair is longer and slightly shaggy and, for the most part, he doesn’t look like he could fall asleep any minute, no matter how loud the fucking mortars are. The biggest difference though is the girl at his side, hand tight in Nate’s grip. “Jesus.” Nate reaches him and releases the girl’s hand, enveloping Brad in a hug.
“Fuck, LT. Send you off to college and now you’re some hippie, touchy-feely fucking liberal?” He ruffles his fingers through Nate’s long hair. “You’re probably jacking off Democrats on the weekend, aren’t you?”
The girl blushes and Nate rolls his eyes, pulling back to look Brad over. “You look good.”
Brad shrugs and glances at the girl. “Sorry.”
“Oh. Sorry. Brad, this is Danielle. Dani, this is Brad Colbert, one of my Marines from Iraq.”
She smiles and moves closer to Nate. “Nice to meet you, Brad.”
“You too.” He curls his hand around his phone again, surprised it hasn’t cracked from the pressure of his grip. He reaches up with his other hand to the strap of his rucksack. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. I was just in town, so I thought I’d stop by, say hello.”
“Keep us? Don’t be ridiculous.” Nate tilts his head toward the brownstone. “Come inside.”
“No. I really can’t.” Brad’s voice holds a kind of finality. Next time he’ll fucking listen to his instincts. “I’m meeting up with some friends.”
“You have friends here?”
“Nate?” Dani glances up at Brad and then at Nate. “I’m going to go inside.” Another glance at Brad and she takes a step away. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” He nods and rocks back on his heels, watching Nate squeeze her hand before she goes. “I should go too.”
“Brad.” Nate’s voice is stern, the telltale hint of command in it, and Brad straightens, too many years of service ingrained for him not to. “Let’s go get a beer.”
He wants to say yes, which is a clear indication he should say no. “Yeah. Sure.”
Nate reaches for Brad’s bag, tugging it off his shoulder before Brad can protest. “Stow this here.”
“No. I’ll keep it. Find a place to crash.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll stow your gear here and stay with us.”
“Us, huh?” Brad keeps telling himself to tell Nate no and mean it, but he’s not listening. “I don’t think the other half of your ‘us’ particularly wants a rabid devil dog messing with the good furniture.”
“It’s my good furniture, and you’re staying. That’s an order.”
“You’re a bossy little fuck.”
“Sixta was a bossy fuck. I’m good with command.”
Brad snorts a laugh. “You know, in civilian life, people don’t have to do what you say.”
“They don’t,” Nate agrees as he shoulder’s Brad’s bag and takes the steps three at a time. “But I make them want to.”
**
They’re doing shots when Nate’s phone rings. Brad downs his drink and ignores Nate’s look as he moves away from the table and outside the bar for quiet. He reaches for Nate’s shot and downs it as well, watching him through the plate glass, his profile silhouetted in neon orange. He can tell she’s not happy from the way Nate’s reacting, his posture stiff and his mouth pursed.
Brad signals for another round, ordering beers as well as shots. He turns away from the window, focusing instead on the dark brown bottle in his hands. He’s halfway through it when Nate comes back in, sliding onto his stool. Nate raises his eyebrow at the fresh drinks, picking up the beer.
Brad shrugs. “Not trying to be any trouble.”
“You’re a Marine, Brad. You thrive on being trouble.”
“To desert countries that don’t know any better. Not to commanding officers.”
“Well, I’m actually not either of those.”
“Nate, you know how people would ask you when you became a Marine and you’d tell them you’d always been one, you just didn’t know it until you got to boot camp?”
“Yeah.”
“Or how you’re not actually a civilian right now, you’re an ex-Marine?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nate shakes his head and smiles, taking a drink. “Once your CO, always your CO.”
“Sorry. Just the way of the world.”
“Regardless.” Nate holds his gaze. “You’re not any trouble, and you’re not in the way.”
“Bros before hos, sir?”
“She doesn’t mind, Brad.”
“You told me after Iraq that you wouldn’t lie to me, sir.”
Nate looks down at his shot glass then tosses it back, meeting Brad’s gaze evenly. “She doesn’t like thinking about it.”
“Why? It’s not like you’re ever going to go back to it. You did your time.”
“She says she doesn’t see that side of me.”
“That side.” Brad nods. He knows the side they mean. He doesn’t have that side. He is that side. Cold-blooded. A killer. The Iceman.
“It’s like a lot of people. They want us out there keeping them safe, protecting their way of life. They just don’t want to consider the particulars.”
“So she just pretends it didn’t happen?”
“Something like that.”
Brad drains his shot and pulls out his wallet. “All the more reason for me to get on finding a place to stay.”
Nate sighs, clearly frustrated. He takes a long swallow of beer and glares at Brad. “Why are you here in Boston?”
“Just had some leave.”
“And you came here. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You came to see me, Brad.”
Brad doesn’t answer, glaring at the dregs of his own beer to avoid Nate’s gaze. “I should have called.”
“This kind of surprise I like, Brad.” He kicks Brad’s boot. “You want another?”
“Nah. ‘m good.”
“She went back to her place.” Nate kicks his boot again until Brad looks at him. “I’ve got the bottle of Glen Fidditch you sent. Unopened.”
Brad shrugs. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Good.” Nate smiles. “And you’re staying the night.” When Brad starts to respond, he shakes his head. “No arguments, Sergeant.”
**
Nate’s sprawled on the floor in front of the couch and Brad is draped across the length of it. There’s sports on the TV with the sound turned off, and they’re three quarters of the way through the bottle, both of them at the point where they actually can talk about Iraq, but drunk enough that they don’t want to. Instead, Nate’s regaling Brad with stories of his liberal classmates, trying not to smile as Brad blasts them, offering Nate a string of insults worthy of Ray Person.
“People want things - protection, freedom, democracy.” Brad leans his head against the back of the couch, visibly relaxed. “They just don’t want to pay for it or, more precisely, they don’t want to think about the cost. You’ve got these kids who haven’t even seen the real world studying to make the policies dictating it.” He drains his glass and shrugs. “How do you put up with that shit?”
“It takes all kinds, Brad.” Nate’s smiling at him and it makes Brad uncomfortable, even more than sitting across from Poke and his wife and kid or Ray and his wife. Nate’s smile fades and he frowns slightly. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s never nothing, Brad.”
“Just thinking about this world. How I don’t fit in it.”
“Bullshit.” Nate straightens and pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the couch, looking down at Brad, propped on the armrest. “You’re more than just the façade, Brad. You can do anything you want, fit in anywhere you want.”
“Now I cry bullshit, sir.”
“Stop it.” Nate laughs and shakes his head, trying to lighten the mood with a sharp jab to Brad’s stomach. “I can’t believe you came to Boston.”
“I shouldn’t have. You have a life here. A girlfriend. A future. You’re going to change the world. Change the Marines. Change war.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.” Brad reaches out, his fingers grazing over the long fall of Nate’s eyelashes against his cheek. Heat coils in his stomach and his defenses struggle up from where he’s drowned them with booze. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Nate swallows hard, his breath catching in his throat. “Brad.”
“We’re very, very drunk.” Brad pulls his hand away slowly, curling it into a fist and forcing it down to his side. “We should get some sleep.”
“No.” Nate turns, his thigh pressed against Brad’s. “No.”
“Nate.” Brad nods toward the bedroom. “You’re going to bed and I’m going to sleep on the couch and we’re going to sleep.” To keep Nate from responding, he lightly presses his knuckle against Nate’s lips. “Goodnight, sir.”
He watches Nate go into the other room before he angles off the couch, carrying the glasses into the kitchen. There’s a faint light coming from the outside and painting the linoleum a pale yellow. Brad rinses the glasses methodically and leaves them to dry on the drain rack. It’s such a unnecessary thing that Brad can’t help staring at it, tracing the lines of it with his finger, watching water drip off the glass and down the plastic slope. This is a life he doesn’t understand. This is the kind of life that he doesn’t know how to live.
Grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, he goes back into the living room and flips through the channels, settling on something mindless and disconnected from his life. He doesn’t sleep much, even now, too far beyond tired to actually relax enough to let himself sleep more than a few hours here and there. He forces himself to stay on the couch, not moving around to pick up the artifacts of Nate’s new life. He can’t help but lean forward though and thumb through Nate’s textbook on government and international economy, raising an eyebrow as he reads one of the pages.
Nate sits down next to him and Brad sighs softly. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“Yeah. You’re supposed to be sleeping too, and you can’t tell me the couch is uncomfortable because I’ve seen you sleep in a hole in the ground with shit exploding all around you.” Nate casts a sidelong glance at Brad and reaches over and steals his beer, drinking a long pull from it. “If you need something to lull you to sleep, I could explain socio-economic theory in third world countries for you.”
Brad smiles at the book, watching Nate’s hands as the hold the bottle, fingers curved around the neck. “It’s really good to see you, Nate.”
Nate turns his head to the side, cocking a slight grin at Brad. “I really can’t believe you came to Boston. This is like land of the liberals, Brad. It doesn’t get bluer than Boston.”
“I can’t leave my commanding officer to be outnumbered, sir. I figure two of us versus hordes of them would even up the odds.” Brad leans back against the couch, slouching down. His shirt rides up his sides, exposing his skin to the cool night air coming in through the open window. He reaches out, his fingers grazing Nate’s forearm. “Nate.”
Nate turns his head even more, looking back at Brad. “She’s just…”
“She’s just the kind of life you should have.”
“I don’t care about what I should have, Brad. I care about what I want. What I need.” Nate glances down at Brad’s fingers against his arm and then back to Brad’s face. “Why’d you come to Boston, Brad?”
“I’m going back to Iraq.” Nate’s slight smile disappears and Brad shrugs. “I’m a devil dog, sir. That doesn’t change, even if you dress it up in crimson and gray.” He rubs the sleeve of Nate’s Harvard t-shirt between his fingers. “But I’m not even close to like you, sir. I can’t walk away.”
“And I had to.”
“Like you said. There are all kinds of people.” Brad leans back against the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I look at this life, and I don’t know what it means, and I don’t get it, sir. I mean, I lived before the war, right? I surfed and dove and hiked and climbed and drank and fucked and trained and went to the fucking library and hacked computers and all that shit, right? So why can’t I think about that right now? Why does all this look just as fucking foreign as Iraqi huts and fucking sniper alleyways?”
“So what changed?”
“You mean besides killing and almost getting killed in a tin-plated Humvee?” Brad smirks and rubs his hand over his hair. It’s getting long for him, and he needs to take a razor to it. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You know what I think changed?” Nate shifts and leans back against the arm of the couch, looking at Brad seriously as faint rosy slips of light sneak in through the open window. “I think you’re afraid.”
“Afraid?” Brad’s brow furrows. He understands fear. He’s well acquainted with it from every dive, from every bullet. He’s been swallowed whole by fear and fought his way out because that’s what he’s trained to do. “Afraid of what?”
“That life isn’t enough.”
“You’re going all Rene Descartes on me.”
“You’re a warrior. You’re one of the few people I can say that about without thinking it’s lip service or bullshit. You’ve had a taste of it for real now, honest battle, living by your wits despite the witless others leading you.”
“Present company excluded.”
Nate shrugs and tugs at a string dangling from the hem of his shirt. It’s incongruous for Nate, not quite perfect and Brad can’t look away as Nate winds the grey thread around his finger. “You’re a warrior, Brad. And what’s a warrior without a war?”
“You know, you sound like you’re going to start quoting Yoda, sir, and I don’t think I can let you live if you do that.” Nate laughs out loud, the sound brighter than the rising sun. Brad smiles crookedly, just one corner of his mouth going up, inordinately pleased with Nate’s reaction. “I hope you’re laughing at the Yoda thing, because if you’re laughing at my ability to kill you, well, we’re going to have to have words.”
“Please tell me you don’t look at me and see some small, shriveled green puppet with big eyes.”
“No.” Brad doesn’t stop smiling, but something changes and shifts somewhere. “That’s not what I see.”
Nate seems to feel it too, because he stops laughing, tilting his head slightly. “There’s always a place for you, Brad, even if there feels like there isn’t. As long as I’m around, there’s always a place for you.”
“That sounds awfully liberal of you, sir. Maybe this whole Harvard thing was a bad idea.” Brad sets his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers barely brushing Nate’s shoulder. “Of course, when you’re President or some such shit, you’re going to need Secret Service guys. That would not necessarily be outside the realm of what First Recon does.”
“After Iraq, nothing is outside the realm of what First Recon does or can do.” Nate reaches up with his hand and runs his fingers lightly over Brad’s wrist. “I mean it.”
“I know you do, sir.” Brad nods once. “I also know you have class in three hours, so you should get some shut eye while you can.”
“You’re not going to be gone when I wake up, are you?”
“If you’re thinking I’m some sort of dream, sir, I’m going to have to really question your subconscious.” Brad turns his hand so that Nate’s fingers are grazing his palm. “Not to mention start wondering if you’re indulging in some sort of pharmaceutical indulgences that would put Person’s Ripped Fuel obsession to shame.”
“Answer the question, Brad.”
Brad meets his gaze for a long time and then nods. “Yeah, Nate. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Part Two
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Colbert/Fick
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: A man without a mission
DISCLAIMER: Generation Kill and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks toinlovewithnight, as always. Previously known as "Brad goes to Boston".
Brad shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. It’s not colder than England, but the air feels different. He plays with his phone; well aware he shouldn’t just show up unannounced. Nate has classes and papers and real life, and Brad’s just a ghost from his past. He doesn’t believe any of the guys who tell him to drop in anytime, because the spectre of Brad Colbert, lifer, isn’t what they want in their carefully decorated houses, in their carefully decorated lives. He’s like Lady Macbeth, blood still on his hands where theirs have washed clean, and they don’t want him petting their dogs, picking up their children, shaking their wives’ hands.
He understands, which is why he limits his contact to an occasional letter or phone call. The only people he’s seen since Iraq are Poke, because he showed up in England on Brad’s doorstep, and Ray, because it was the only way he could get him to shut up. Which doesn’t do anything to explain what the hell he’s doing loitering on the outskirts of Harvard University, staring up at an old brownstone converted into student apartments.
He’s not sure how long he’s been standing there, though he’s surprised no one’s called the cops on him. His hood is pulled down almost to his eyes, and he needs to make a fucking decision. What he’d like is for someone to give him an order.
“Brad?”
He swallows hard, cursing under his breath, even though relief floods through him like heat. “Hey, LT.” He turns and stops, the heat turning to stone in his gut.
Nate’s grinning happily, hurrying toward Brad. He looks just like he did, though his hair is longer and slightly shaggy and, for the most part, he doesn’t look like he could fall asleep any minute, no matter how loud the fucking mortars are. The biggest difference though is the girl at his side, hand tight in Nate’s grip. “Jesus.” Nate reaches him and releases the girl’s hand, enveloping Brad in a hug.
“Fuck, LT. Send you off to college and now you’re some hippie, touchy-feely fucking liberal?” He ruffles his fingers through Nate’s long hair. “You’re probably jacking off Democrats on the weekend, aren’t you?”
The girl blushes and Nate rolls his eyes, pulling back to look Brad over. “You look good.”
Brad shrugs and glances at the girl. “Sorry.”
“Oh. Sorry. Brad, this is Danielle. Dani, this is Brad Colbert, one of my Marines from Iraq.”
She smiles and moves closer to Nate. “Nice to meet you, Brad.”
“You too.” He curls his hand around his phone again, surprised it hasn’t cracked from the pressure of his grip. He reaches up with his other hand to the strap of his rucksack. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. I was just in town, so I thought I’d stop by, say hello.”
“Keep us? Don’t be ridiculous.” Nate tilts his head toward the brownstone. “Come inside.”
“No. I really can’t.” Brad’s voice holds a kind of finality. Next time he’ll fucking listen to his instincts. “I’m meeting up with some friends.”
“You have friends here?”
“Nate?” Dani glances up at Brad and then at Nate. “I’m going to go inside.” Another glance at Brad and she takes a step away. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” He nods and rocks back on his heels, watching Nate squeeze her hand before she goes. “I should go too.”
“Brad.” Nate’s voice is stern, the telltale hint of command in it, and Brad straightens, too many years of service ingrained for him not to. “Let’s go get a beer.”
He wants to say yes, which is a clear indication he should say no. “Yeah. Sure.”
Nate reaches for Brad’s bag, tugging it off his shoulder before Brad can protest. “Stow this here.”
“No. I’ll keep it. Find a place to crash.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll stow your gear here and stay with us.”
“Us, huh?” Brad keeps telling himself to tell Nate no and mean it, but he’s not listening. “I don’t think the other half of your ‘us’ particularly wants a rabid devil dog messing with the good furniture.”
“It’s my good furniture, and you’re staying. That’s an order.”
“You’re a bossy little fuck.”
“Sixta was a bossy fuck. I’m good with command.”
Brad snorts a laugh. “You know, in civilian life, people don’t have to do what you say.”
“They don’t,” Nate agrees as he shoulder’s Brad’s bag and takes the steps three at a time. “But I make them want to.”
**
They’re doing shots when Nate’s phone rings. Brad downs his drink and ignores Nate’s look as he moves away from the table and outside the bar for quiet. He reaches for Nate’s shot and downs it as well, watching him through the plate glass, his profile silhouetted in neon orange. He can tell she’s not happy from the way Nate’s reacting, his posture stiff and his mouth pursed.
Brad signals for another round, ordering beers as well as shots. He turns away from the window, focusing instead on the dark brown bottle in his hands. He’s halfway through it when Nate comes back in, sliding onto his stool. Nate raises his eyebrow at the fresh drinks, picking up the beer.
Brad shrugs. “Not trying to be any trouble.”
“You’re a Marine, Brad. You thrive on being trouble.”
“To desert countries that don’t know any better. Not to commanding officers.”
“Well, I’m actually not either of those.”
“Nate, you know how people would ask you when you became a Marine and you’d tell them you’d always been one, you just didn’t know it until you got to boot camp?”
“Yeah.”
“Or how you’re not actually a civilian right now, you’re an ex-Marine?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nate shakes his head and smiles, taking a drink. “Once your CO, always your CO.”
“Sorry. Just the way of the world.”
“Regardless.” Nate holds his gaze. “You’re not any trouble, and you’re not in the way.”
“Bros before hos, sir?”
“She doesn’t mind, Brad.”
“You told me after Iraq that you wouldn’t lie to me, sir.”
Nate looks down at his shot glass then tosses it back, meeting Brad’s gaze evenly. “She doesn’t like thinking about it.”
“Why? It’s not like you’re ever going to go back to it. You did your time.”
“She says she doesn’t see that side of me.”
“That side.” Brad nods. He knows the side they mean. He doesn’t have that side. He is that side. Cold-blooded. A killer. The Iceman.
“It’s like a lot of people. They want us out there keeping them safe, protecting their way of life. They just don’t want to consider the particulars.”
“So she just pretends it didn’t happen?”
“Something like that.”
Brad drains his shot and pulls out his wallet. “All the more reason for me to get on finding a place to stay.”
Nate sighs, clearly frustrated. He takes a long swallow of beer and glares at Brad. “Why are you here in Boston?”
“Just had some leave.”
“And you came here. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You came to see me, Brad.”
Brad doesn’t answer, glaring at the dregs of his own beer to avoid Nate’s gaze. “I should have called.”
“This kind of surprise I like, Brad.” He kicks Brad’s boot. “You want another?”
“Nah. ‘m good.”
“She went back to her place.” Nate kicks his boot again until Brad looks at him. “I’ve got the bottle of Glen Fidditch you sent. Unopened.”
Brad shrugs. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Good.” Nate smiles. “And you’re staying the night.” When Brad starts to respond, he shakes his head. “No arguments, Sergeant.”
**
Nate’s sprawled on the floor in front of the couch and Brad is draped across the length of it. There’s sports on the TV with the sound turned off, and they’re three quarters of the way through the bottle, both of them at the point where they actually can talk about Iraq, but drunk enough that they don’t want to. Instead, Nate’s regaling Brad with stories of his liberal classmates, trying not to smile as Brad blasts them, offering Nate a string of insults worthy of Ray Person.
“People want things - protection, freedom, democracy.” Brad leans his head against the back of the couch, visibly relaxed. “They just don’t want to pay for it or, more precisely, they don’t want to think about the cost. You’ve got these kids who haven’t even seen the real world studying to make the policies dictating it.” He drains his glass and shrugs. “How do you put up with that shit?”
“It takes all kinds, Brad.” Nate’s smiling at him and it makes Brad uncomfortable, even more than sitting across from Poke and his wife and kid or Ray and his wife. Nate’s smile fades and he frowns slightly. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s never nothing, Brad.”
“Just thinking about this world. How I don’t fit in it.”
“Bullshit.” Nate straightens and pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the couch, looking down at Brad, propped on the armrest. “You’re more than just the façade, Brad. You can do anything you want, fit in anywhere you want.”
“Now I cry bullshit, sir.”
“Stop it.” Nate laughs and shakes his head, trying to lighten the mood with a sharp jab to Brad’s stomach. “I can’t believe you came to Boston.”
“I shouldn’t have. You have a life here. A girlfriend. A future. You’re going to change the world. Change the Marines. Change war.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.” Brad reaches out, his fingers grazing over the long fall of Nate’s eyelashes against his cheek. Heat coils in his stomach and his defenses struggle up from where he’s drowned them with booze. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Nate swallows hard, his breath catching in his throat. “Brad.”
“We’re very, very drunk.” Brad pulls his hand away slowly, curling it into a fist and forcing it down to his side. “We should get some sleep.”
“No.” Nate turns, his thigh pressed against Brad’s. “No.”
“Nate.” Brad nods toward the bedroom. “You’re going to bed and I’m going to sleep on the couch and we’re going to sleep.” To keep Nate from responding, he lightly presses his knuckle against Nate’s lips. “Goodnight, sir.”
He watches Nate go into the other room before he angles off the couch, carrying the glasses into the kitchen. There’s a faint light coming from the outside and painting the linoleum a pale yellow. Brad rinses the glasses methodically and leaves them to dry on the drain rack. It’s such a unnecessary thing that Brad can’t help staring at it, tracing the lines of it with his finger, watching water drip off the glass and down the plastic slope. This is a life he doesn’t understand. This is the kind of life that he doesn’t know how to live.
Grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, he goes back into the living room and flips through the channels, settling on something mindless and disconnected from his life. He doesn’t sleep much, even now, too far beyond tired to actually relax enough to let himself sleep more than a few hours here and there. He forces himself to stay on the couch, not moving around to pick up the artifacts of Nate’s new life. He can’t help but lean forward though and thumb through Nate’s textbook on government and international economy, raising an eyebrow as he reads one of the pages.
Nate sits down next to him and Brad sighs softly. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“Yeah. You’re supposed to be sleeping too, and you can’t tell me the couch is uncomfortable because I’ve seen you sleep in a hole in the ground with shit exploding all around you.” Nate casts a sidelong glance at Brad and reaches over and steals his beer, drinking a long pull from it. “If you need something to lull you to sleep, I could explain socio-economic theory in third world countries for you.”
Brad smiles at the book, watching Nate’s hands as the hold the bottle, fingers curved around the neck. “It’s really good to see you, Nate.”
Nate turns his head to the side, cocking a slight grin at Brad. “I really can’t believe you came to Boston. This is like land of the liberals, Brad. It doesn’t get bluer than Boston.”
“I can’t leave my commanding officer to be outnumbered, sir. I figure two of us versus hordes of them would even up the odds.” Brad leans back against the couch, slouching down. His shirt rides up his sides, exposing his skin to the cool night air coming in through the open window. He reaches out, his fingers grazing Nate’s forearm. “Nate.”
Nate turns his head even more, looking back at Brad. “She’s just…”
“She’s just the kind of life you should have.”
“I don’t care about what I should have, Brad. I care about what I want. What I need.” Nate glances down at Brad’s fingers against his arm and then back to Brad’s face. “Why’d you come to Boston, Brad?”
“I’m going back to Iraq.” Nate’s slight smile disappears and Brad shrugs. “I’m a devil dog, sir. That doesn’t change, even if you dress it up in crimson and gray.” He rubs the sleeve of Nate’s Harvard t-shirt between his fingers. “But I’m not even close to like you, sir. I can’t walk away.”
“And I had to.”
“Like you said. There are all kinds of people.” Brad leans back against the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I look at this life, and I don’t know what it means, and I don’t get it, sir. I mean, I lived before the war, right? I surfed and dove and hiked and climbed and drank and fucked and trained and went to the fucking library and hacked computers and all that shit, right? So why can’t I think about that right now? Why does all this look just as fucking foreign as Iraqi huts and fucking sniper alleyways?”
“So what changed?”
“You mean besides killing and almost getting killed in a tin-plated Humvee?” Brad smirks and rubs his hand over his hair. It’s getting long for him, and he needs to take a razor to it. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You know what I think changed?” Nate shifts and leans back against the arm of the couch, looking at Brad seriously as faint rosy slips of light sneak in through the open window. “I think you’re afraid.”
“Afraid?” Brad’s brow furrows. He understands fear. He’s well acquainted with it from every dive, from every bullet. He’s been swallowed whole by fear and fought his way out because that’s what he’s trained to do. “Afraid of what?”
“That life isn’t enough.”
“You’re going all Rene Descartes on me.”
“You’re a warrior. You’re one of the few people I can say that about without thinking it’s lip service or bullshit. You’ve had a taste of it for real now, honest battle, living by your wits despite the witless others leading you.”
“Present company excluded.”
Nate shrugs and tugs at a string dangling from the hem of his shirt. It’s incongruous for Nate, not quite perfect and Brad can’t look away as Nate winds the grey thread around his finger. “You’re a warrior, Brad. And what’s a warrior without a war?”
“You know, you sound like you’re going to start quoting Yoda, sir, and I don’t think I can let you live if you do that.” Nate laughs out loud, the sound brighter than the rising sun. Brad smiles crookedly, just one corner of his mouth going up, inordinately pleased with Nate’s reaction. “I hope you’re laughing at the Yoda thing, because if you’re laughing at my ability to kill you, well, we’re going to have to have words.”
“Please tell me you don’t look at me and see some small, shriveled green puppet with big eyes.”
“No.” Brad doesn’t stop smiling, but something changes and shifts somewhere. “That’s not what I see.”
Nate seems to feel it too, because he stops laughing, tilting his head slightly. “There’s always a place for you, Brad, even if there feels like there isn’t. As long as I’m around, there’s always a place for you.”
“That sounds awfully liberal of you, sir. Maybe this whole Harvard thing was a bad idea.” Brad sets his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers barely brushing Nate’s shoulder. “Of course, when you’re President or some such shit, you’re going to need Secret Service guys. That would not necessarily be outside the realm of what First Recon does.”
“After Iraq, nothing is outside the realm of what First Recon does or can do.” Nate reaches up with his hand and runs his fingers lightly over Brad’s wrist. “I mean it.”
“I know you do, sir.” Brad nods once. “I also know you have class in three hours, so you should get some shut eye while you can.”
“You’re not going to be gone when I wake up, are you?”
“If you’re thinking I’m some sort of dream, sir, I’m going to have to really question your subconscious.” Brad turns his hand so that Nate’s fingers are grazing his palm. “Not to mention start wondering if you’re indulging in some sort of pharmaceutical indulgences that would put Person’s Ripped Fuel obsession to shame.”
“Answer the question, Brad.”
Brad meets his gaze for a long time and then nods. “Yeah, Nate. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Part Two