asimplechord | Strong, Strong Wind (GK fic, Nate/Brad)

Strong, strong wind
Nate Fick/Brad Colbert
This is a work of fiction based on the characters of Generation Kill, as portrayed by Stark Sands and Alexander Skarsgård in the miniseries created by Evan Wright, Ed Burns, and David Simon.
~2100 words || PG-13

*

If you ask any of his friends, fellow grunts, or casual acquaintances about Brad Colbert's most memorable feature, you're likely to get one of three answers: his unnaturally bright blue eyes, his sharp, sly smile, his calm, cool demeanor.

Nate? He noticed those things the first time they met and has heard them commented upon again and again, but if he had to choose his favorite thing about Brad, it would be his hands. No question.

Nate remembers meeting Brad at Pendleton. Brad was sweaty and dirty, happy and tired from the day's training maneuver, and when Mike Wynn introduced them, Nate automatically reached out to shake his hand. Brad's palm and fingertips were callused, his grip firm. His smile was cool. I respect action, not reputation, it said without actually voicing the words.

"Sir."

It was inappropriate for Nate, an officer, to respond to the unspoken challenge in Brad's greeting.

But Nate squeezed Brad's fingers tighter for a moment, measuring the strength there, the change in expression that flitted across Brad's face.

I'll earn it.

Recon's platoon leaders are just a voice over the radio, directing an insertion, extraction, or tracking mission. Nate spends his first weeks as the head of Bravo-Two watching and learning his men. Ray's crazy like a fox, Rudy and Pappy are married, and Poke's soliloquies on the white man's burden make even T roll his eyes, so Nate doesn't feel bad when he tunes him out. Sgt. Colbert, though. Colbert is a cipher. He smiles, he snarks, and Nate's clearest impression is of his hands, steady on the SAW, showing the new kid, Trombley, how to assemble and disassemble it.

The humvees the Corps provides for their bridge mission are pieces of shit. All of Bravo-Two spend personal time and money fixing their victors, but Two-One's gets the most intensive overhaul. Before PT most afternoons, Nate stops by the garage his men have occupied, and finds Brad and Ray, alternately cursing or crowing, depending on the day's progress. One day he arrives to find them crawling out from under their humvee, cursing up a storm, and covered in slick, dripping motor oil. Brad tries to wipe it off his face when he sees Nate slip in the door, but he only succeeds in spreading the mess onto the backs of his hands, and from there to his hair, his uniform, and later to his boots.

On maps, on the Blue Force Tracker, on his M-4. Ripping open MREs and humrats, slipping on and off his MOPP and kevlar when necessary. The rest of Brad's body is filthy, but his hands are tan and clean. Only once does Nate feel the pressure of that hand, firm on his wrist. Brad - he's not been Sgt. Colbert for some time, if Nate is honest - squeezes slightly and lets go immediately, but the skin tingles for hours. That's the first time Nate has an inkling that maybe he's not just looking at Brad as Two-One's team leader.

(When he's got a little bit of downtime, Nate tries to remember what Jess's hands feel like on his skin, against his back. He knows her skin is soft and smooth, and he thinks she had long, red-pink fingernails when they said goodbye at the hotel in Oceanside before he shipped out. It's hard to recall now, even when he's got ten minutes of solitude and relative privacy for a combat jack. Mostly he recalls the sharp scrape of nails against his scalp and the slide of soft lips on his neck, which he won't admit could belong to anyone.)

Nate has never been so aware of the distance between command and execution as he is when he hears Doc say the shepherd boy's injuries were caused by .556s. He regrets the injury in an abstract way - under other circumstances his heart might ache for the boy and his mother, but it's already numbed by the knowledge that RCT-1 schwacked an entire village on Schwetje's mistaken intel - but is not suffering the keen sorrow that Brad feels.

He wonders, when he sees Brad's face, how he earned his nickname, and shoves that thought aside to deal with the crisis. Nate knows it won't absolve Brad in his own conscience, but Brad has the ROE on his side; Trombley was 180-degrees from Brad's sector, there no way he could have known. Still, Nate acts, helping Doc, Brad, and Aubin bring the boy to Godfather's tent, because he knows if he doesn't, Brad will crumble.

Later that night, when he spies Brad's boots sticking out from under his victor, hears the steady chink, chink, thunk as Brad works away at the sabka-and-motor-oil caked undercarriage, he feels that distance again. Nate knows without seeing it that underneath the filth of oil and tar and sand, Brad hasn't washed away the blood that smeared his hands when he helped Doc.

In the past, Recon officers were merely a voice in the TL's headset when a platoon was in the field, and Nate thinks he's lucky to be serving with these men in Mattis's new form of "maneuver warfare". But when he gives Bravo-Two Godfather's half-assed orders to take the bridge in the dark, he suspects it would be easier if had not been living beside them for the last two weeks. These men are used to taking the initiative, and being denied an opportunity for reconnaissance (being the one to deny it) grates. Brad's expression is flat, his "yes, sir" compliant, but the edge of the map of the AO crinkles under his tensed fingers.

The echo of a quiet "I trust your judgment, sir," is all that gets Nate through the day sometimes. The six weeks that pass before they ship back to Pendleton feels like six years.

Brad's hand is a heavy weight on Nate's shoulder, an anchor to the present, as they say goodbye at the airstrip at Pendleton. Nate heads to the house he shares with VJ; it's mid-day, so no-one is home. Nate dumps the contents of his duffel in the washing machine, but he waits to start it. First, he takes a shower with the water so hot it scalds, and only gets out when the stream turns tepid. The washer is still chugging heavily when he stretches out on sheets that still smell like the fabric softener he used months ago. He wakes hours later, his cock hard against his belly, the memory of a warm palm on his shoulder and the scent of sweat and salt in his head.

Two weeks later, Brad's welcoming him into his back yard, waving a bottle of Corona at Nate, asking after Jess. She's been to past platoon get-togethers, and the message on Nate's voicemail had included her for this one, but Nate never extended the invitation. He already knows that whatever she wants from him, he is incapable of giving any longer. It's better to end things now.

Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not, but when Nate reaches out to accept the beer, he lets his fingertips linger, overlapping with Brad's before he says, "She's got a date tonight."

It's not that Brad's hands are the only thing Nate finds attractive or memorable. Obviously. But his brain is filled with mental snapshots marking every first they have as a couple, and most of them involve Brad's hands.

Brad cupping Nate's chin, his fingers resting on the nape of Nate's neck, the first time they kiss.

The sweet-salty taste of Brad's thumb when he sucks it into his mouth. (Brad really was just trying to swipe at a smear of BBQ sauce on Nate's lip. But everything degenerated from there. They had to leave the Wynns' place before they got obscene. Their platoon is like family, and mostly accepting - fucking Trombley - but DADT is a bitch.)

Brad's palm brushing his hair as the buzzcut grows out, not quite long enough to grip or tug.

Callused fingertips making the muscles of Nate's stomach jump when they slide under the elastic of his briefs.

Impossibly long fingers inside him, slow and steady and inexorable, the first time they fuck.

One fist knotted in the sheets, Brad's forehead resting on his forearm, the other hand stretching back, anchoring Nate's hip, urging him to speed up. Nate resists until he feels the half-moon indent of fingernails, and knows he'll be marked for days.

Brad knows before Nate that Nate's leaving the Corps. Command stupidity and incompetence and internal political wrangling (aka: ass-kissing and back-stabbing) drive him crazy. He'd say they disillusioned him, but he lost any illusions he had about his superiors (and he uses that word loosely) during OIF. Still, he's not sure what he'll do if he's not a Marine.

His promotion comes through, and Captain Patterson gives him a "hang in there" pep talk, but Nate feels like he's trying to tread water in full combat gear and someone keeps pushing him under.

It's Brad's, "You'll always be a Marine, even if you aren't in command," interrupting another bout of insomnia, his voice muted and sleepy, his eyes steady on Nate's, that makes him look seriously at the graduate school websites he's been skimming the last few weeks.

Nate's known that Brad would be seconded to the Royal Marines for a couple of weeks. The paperwork's not done yet, so the brass haven't told Brad. He hates that he knows and can't say anything to Brad, whose thrill-seeker tendencies are coming to the fore while he's in dead time. A new mission can only be a good thing.

Brad's going to the UK. There's no question in Nate's mind. This is a huge deal; on paper it's not a promotion, but in actuality? When Brad gets back, he'll be up for Staff Sergeant, and this posting will cement it. It makes Nate's decision - Stanford or Harvard - that much easier.

Brad's hands lay deceptively still and flat against the kitchen counter when he shares his news with Nate. There's a moment when Nate wonders if he's about to get a Dear John letter in person, but Brad relaxes and his fingers twitch when Nate points out that a two-year posting in Britain would fit well with the Master's program at the Kennedy School of Government, and that Cambridge will be three thousand miles closer to Brad than Palo Alto.

In Brad's absence, many of Nate's memories are marked by images of his own hands: his wrist resting on the edge of his laptop, gmail open to Brad's most recent message, telling him that the Royal Marines are being deployed in Iraq; his fingers drumming restlessly on his cell phone after Cara Wynn's call, even though he knows that Brad's not with Bravo at the moment, and can't be the Marine who was injured; his keys in hand, juggling his messenger bag and mail and take-out, when he looks toward his apartment door to find Brad and his duffel waiting for entry.

There is graduation and more graduate school, job-hunting and career juggling, multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Active duty in a time of war redefines "long distance relationship". In the end, it's sheer luck that CNAS and the Dive School have openings at the same time. Nate packs up his apartment in Georgetown and moves to Silver Spring, out of the District and into Maryland proper, and Brad rides his bike out from Oceanside. He's only home on weekends - Virginia Beach is too far away to commute - but that's better than once a month. That means that Brad's there for Fick family functions; he's not a people person, but the Ficks grow on him. (Like a fungus, he says, when he's censoring his rants for tender young ears.) Nate grins when he sees Brad pick up his niece Maggie when she falls at his feet (a family trait, apparently), patting her diapered bottom when she clings; the contrast with the memory of Brad holding an Iraqi child like a sack of potatoes, asking what he was supposed to do with it, tugs a ripple of laughter from his throat.

They've never lied about what they are. Nate's friends, family, and colleagues know what Brad means to him. Brad's friends and family can say the same. Nate has plans, goals, and the only thing he's waiting on is the ability to be out in public with Brad. Then DC recognizes same-sex unions and JCS and the Senate pull their heads out of their asses.

2010 will be a good year for them, Nate is assured of this.

In November, Brad holds the Fick family Bible as Nate is sworn into office. Nate doesn't believe in the religion that reveres the book, but he believes in Brad and it's in his hands, so that's all that matters.

fin.

A/N: This started out as a series of drabbles inspired by this photo. I had this image in my head of Brad in dress blues ten or fifteen years from now, holding that same book for Nate. *sigh* But I suck at follow-through, and suck even more at being disciplined enough to parse my ramblings to 100 word increments. Ergo, a set of not-drabbles in an arc. Unbeta'd, but encouraged by