asimplechord: (half-faded)
asimplechord ([personal profile] asimplechord) wrote2010-11-24 04:13 pm

Fic: Faces of Luck

Faces of Luck
adult ll 2040 words ll girl!Brad/Nate
Fiction, obviously. Based on portrayals in the series, and implying nothing about any real people.

The story behind #12 of 10 Some Things About Bradley Ann Colbert. This was supposed to be an exercise in writing straight-up porn, since I've been having ~issues with that lately. That is not quite what happened. So we get porny schmoop. And I need to shift it out of the "in progress" folder to the "posted fic & ficlets" one, so you get it as is, entirely unbeta'd. No one to blame but me and my brain for this one. Title and cut text are from Audioslave's Be Yourself.




One last look in the mirror over the dresser, and, yeah, she'll do. It's just beers and billiards at Sullivan's, nothing to worry about.

It's not that she feels the need to dress up for Nate. He's seen Brad's full-spectrum, from dirty and sweaty in her utilities to her class A uniform for formal ceremonies to bleary-eyed and bed-headed, snarling when the alarm goes off before she's ready for it. Except it's the first time Brad's meeting any of Nate's grad school buddies, and she wants to look good. Not like she's trying too hard to make a good impression, but like the person Nate deserves.

She eyes her reflection. The denim hem of her skirt is deliberately ragged, and ends inches above her knees, but it'll have to do. The black leather vest matches her boots well enough. She hadn't packed anything more appropriate for a social gathering, as she hadn't planned on doing anything but unwinding from duty while Nate was in class, but Nate had returned from class yesterday with a demand couched as an invitation to meet the person who'd sent him to class looking so relaxed and thoroughly shagged.

(Brad would regret it, but she can't. She feels a sly little twinge of satisfaction every time she thinks about sending a ridiculously rumpled post-orgasm Nate on his way.)

The bedroom door opens just as she grabs her phone and wallet.

"Hey, are you--" Nate pauses mid-question, gaping at her from the doorway.

That's just uncalled for. Brad doesn't dress up that often, but it's not like he's never seen her in makeup or civvies.

"What? I own clothing other than desert camouflage." Plenty of it. And not just bathing suits and running gear.

Nate's still staring. With an eye-roll that would do Person proud, she shoves her wallet in her back pocket and shakes her hair back over her shoulders.

"Move it, Fick, or we'll be late. Your Ivy League friends await."

He's still stuck there, his hand on the doorknob. Slowly, slowly, his eyes travel down Brad's body and then up again, darkening. This, she recognizes. Her shoulders loosen, releasing tension she didn't know she was carrying, and she saunters over to where he's propped against the doorframe. With these boots on, her eyes are level with his.

"Got something to say?"

Fingertips reach out and brush the edge of the vest, following the curve of the material down to the first snap, which hovers over her cleavage.

"I haven't seen that before. Or you in a skirt that wasn't a uniform." Nate's voice isn't quite a whisper, loaded with heat.

"There's no way I'd wear this to any work-related function. I don't need those sister-fucking social rejects getting any ideas." Jeans and t-shirts are as far as she's willing to go, even for Corps-related socializing. Brad has no interest in encouraging colleagues to think of her as anything but that - a colleague. "But I do occasionally shed my utilities."

His fingertips drift across the vee of bare skin of her chest and up to curve around the nape of neck and anchor in her hair. A slight tug makes Brad's breath catch, and Nate's eyes darken further when her body sways closer to his involuntarily. This close, she can feel through the light fabric of his khakis that he's already halfway to hard.

"Dirty pool, Fick. If you start that we'll never get out of here."

He tugs again, more firmly this time, lifting her chin so that he can whisper against her neck, "There's beer and ESPN. They'll still be there when we get there."

His words are followed by the scrape of stubble, soothed by soft lips, and Brad's situational awareness narrows to Nate. Just Nate. She loves this, the feel of his skin under her hands, the smell of his cologne and fabric softener mixed with toothpaste and sweat, the faint taste of the Burt's Bees lip balm he uses religiously, his heat and weight and strength aligned with hers. She's not expecting it, but when his fingertips unbutton her skirt she doesn't object, not even when Nate steps back and lets it fall, crumpled, to the toes of her boots.

He simply looks at her again.

Now she's starting to feel to feel self-conscious. Fuck that. Brad runs a hand down the front of her vest, brings it to rests on a cocked hip.

"Just like an officer, to leave a grunt exposed."

Nate strips off clothes with a few abrupt motions, then. "I think we should dig in, Staff Sergeant."

He steers her back toward the bed, undoing the snaps on her vest.

"Multi-tasking. Good to know you haven't lost the edge now that you're living among pampered civilians."

She shrugs out of it, smirking when Nate's eyes widen at her bare skin beneath it, taking in the dog-tags and pendant dangling between her breasts.

"It's lined, and it covers all the essentials."

"Now I'm going to think of you on your bike like that. Fuck, Brad." And he's crowded back in her space, cupping her chin, angling her lips to his. Brad doesn't waste any time pushing black lace boyshorts down until she can kick them off. When she falls back on the bed she pulls Nate down after her.

His kiss is just the right side of rough, a slick, hot thrust of tongue and nip of teeth that has Brad's fist buried in his hair, grown out shaggy now, and his hands skate over her skin, leaving trails of heat and goose bumps and want in their wake. She draws up one leg, bending it at the knee to rub against his as it slides past, and Nate draws back, kneeling there between her thighs, before he drags one hand up the back of her calf to cup the back of her knee and lift it, then up, up the inside of her thigh. He pauses there. Brad can't tell if he's teasing or admiring, and she's not sure she cares, since she wants less looking and more doing. She moves restlessly, lifts her hips. When that doesn't prod him into motion, she palms her breasts, thumbs at the nipples, and shudders at the sensation.

"Don't be a cocktease, Fick, you started this."

Finally he moves, drawing his hand upward until her can rub his thumb over her clit, tantalizingly light, then down over her cunt, where she's already slick and wet. He gathers moisture, rubbing and spreading it, before he withdraws. Brad draws a breath to complain when two fingers stroke back over and push into her, and any words are lost on a moan as she digs her heels into the mattress and arches upward to meet him.

"Yeah. Nate." Her eyes close, and her head falls back against the pillows. In the four months since they've seen each other, Brad's thought about this, about him, his hands, the way he talks with them when he forgets the stillness the Corps trained into him, telling her things via her skin that they're not ready to say with words.

She smiles, tells him, "C'mere."

Nate maneuvers himself so that he's braced above her, the heat of his erection pressed to the crease of her thigh, his arm pressed to her belly as his fingers hold their rhythm steady.

That's good, it's so good, Brad could come just from that, has come from that, but she wants him closer, runs her palms up to flatten against his shoulder blades as their mouths mate, urging him closer. A sound perilously close to a whine escapes her when he moves to prop himself on both hands, but a shift of their hips has his cock lined up and pushing in a thoughtless, heady rush.

Brad bites Nate lip, hard, stifling a gratified moan. Nate rears back, and for one panicked moment Brad feels him about to freak out.

She needs to think about this; they need to talk about this. But her decision's already made: her hands anchor on Nate's ass and hold him there.

"I need to– "

She pulls him back down, plants her lips on his, fucks her tongue into his mouth, and hopes he gets the message: the only thing he needs to do right this second is fuck her.

Nate draws a gasping breath, and then his arms burrow beneath Brad, lifting and shifting her where he wants. Brad lets her grip on him, on herself, loosen, and with Nate, hot and hard inside and around her, moving steady and strong, it's a quick slide to orgasm. She's still shuddering when Nate finishes, and she clenches around him helplessly when his hips buck against her. For a long moment, he's a heavy, panting weight against her, and she scritches her fingernails against his scalp where her hands are now tangled in his hair.

Eventually he levers himself up and pulls out. Brad stays where she's sprawled, acutely aware of the wetness of both of their come, when Nate goes to the bathroom. When he returns with a washcloth, his expression is serious, intent.

"So. That was unexpected."

Brad could joke about it, but she feels raw, surprisingly so since she was the one to initiate it. "Nothing to worry about. I've been tested - SOP when you've been exposed to fellow soldiers' blood."

"I'm clean, and I'm not sleeping with anyone else, but that's not what I was talking about."

No matter how much they need to talk about this, Brad really doesn't want to right now. Whatever she thought she was doing, it's morphed into something else entirely now. Or maybe this "something else" was always here, and she just didn't realize it before. In any case, Nate's still sitting there patiently. She flounders for a second, and then tries to brazen it out.

"It's all under control, Nate. I'm going to be rotating through deployments for the foreseeable future; do you think I'd risk a pregnancy under those conditions?"

"No. No, but..."

"If it makes you feel better, we'll use a condom next time."

She sits up abruptly, swings her legs over the edge of the bed and stands. And fuck, she's such a cliché, wearing her boots and nothing else. She finds her panties and tugs them on, her back to Nate.

"It would make me feel better if we made that decision without being blinded by sex like hormonal teenagers."

His hand is on her wrist, a heavy bracelet, his thumb against her pulse. Nate tugs until she turns to face him, and Brad really doesn't want to meet his eyes, but she's disciplined enough to do things she has no desire to do, so shuttered blue meets calm green.

Another tug has Brad right back where they started, close enough that she can feel the heat of his skin without actual contact.

"Hey. I want that. I want that. I want to know that you're mine and I'm yours and we don't have to have anything between us. I want to believe that we're going to keep going, through deployments and grad school and jobs. But I don't want you to feel like you have to do something for me that you're not ready to do."

Part of Brad hates that he has these words, when her tongue is so tied on emotional issues. How can he inspire such a broad spectrum of emotions in such a short time?

He's waiting for a response, even though there wasn't a question, so Brad nods.

She thinks about it before she admits, "I want us to be ready for that. But I don't think we are."

"Okay." A slight exertion of pressure has the last breath of space between them closed. "That's okay. We'll get there."

Nate's lips against hers are gentle, oddly tentative. He searches her face when he pulls away, and Brad can't bear his earnest, open expression; she feels too exposed. She lets her gaze focus past his ear, and--

"Fuck, we are so late."

Brad tries to extract herself, to reach for the rest of her clothing, but Nate holds her steady in his arms, doesn't let her escape to re-armor.

"They'll wait."



This entry was originally posted at http://favoritemistake.dreamwidth.org/8892.html.

[identity profile] why-me-why-not.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
No one to blame but me and my brain for this one. You can blame ME for the fact it's not betad? :D?

I love all of this. The hotness of it, yes, but also the little details that tell the story of THEM. And Nate's friends wanting to meet Brad. And getting carried away and the way they still manage to talk around the issue while directly addressing it.

Best part of my day, other than the Raytown thing. *g*

[identity profile] pjvilar.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
I really enjoyed this. I love brief moments where you can see so much of what's happening in a relationship, and you definitely achieved that here. Your Nat is awesome and I'm so impressed with your girl!Brad -- it's Brad, but she's so clearly a woman. Nice stuff.

[identity profile] asimplechord.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 02:33 pm (UTC)(link)
The rest of the guys fly to Kansas City for the opening of Ray's bar, but Brad takes an extra day, rides his bike up I-15, through Vegas to St. George, and the red-brown mountains of Utah. He thinks it's strange to be rolling through desert without Ray's rambling in his ears, and speeds faster, drowning the silence with the rush of wind. It takes him four hours less than googlemaps says it should to reach Denver, and then it's a straight shot on I-70 to Kansas City.



BUT MY PORN IS STILL BROKEN.

[identity profile] asimplechord.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 02:34 pm (UTC)(link)
She hijacked my brain. But Walt's back in possession now. Well, Walt and figuring out what to make with this pile of sweet potatoes...

[identity profile] why-me-why-not.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
At least you *have* porn, even if is broken. I can't even get to that point.

Besides, you were doing just fine. And you have J today so sisterly things are more important than porn anyway!

[identity profile] alasse.livejournal.com 2010-11-25 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, WOW. This is so, so gorgeous and intense and I love the weight of every moment, every word -- how much of them and their relationship you convey. Beautiful.

[identity profile] asimplechord.livejournal.com 2010-11-26 12:51 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you! :) It's awesome to hear that something I wasn't sure about is received positively.
Edited 2010-11-26 00:51 (UTC)

[identity profile] sheveled.livejournal.com 2010-11-27 07:34 am (UTC)(link)
...I didn't even know how much I needed a moment where Nate gets to be tall and strong and easily able to move someone where he wants. Because, yes. So thank you for that, first of all.

Sort of in line with that, I love the repeated use of words that give Nate such a solid presence, and how that's alternately a good and a scary thing. That is universally Brad, while things like the tiny doubts about her clothes make her her own person. And I'll second every compliment about the details, both in her and in their relationship.

[identity profile] asimplechord.livejournal.com 2010-11-27 07:24 pm (UTC)(link)
That gets lost in a lot of Brad/Nate, given the size differential of the two actors involved, so I really really liked the idea of Nate doing the moving. Not that he feels the need to all that often, but that he *can* without too much effort.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! :)
ext_3167: Happiness is a dragon in formaldehyde  (Brad and Nate)

[identity profile] puckling.livejournal.com 2010-11-27 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"Don't be a cocktease, Fick, you started this."

Finally he moves, drawing his hand upward until her can rub his thumb over her clit, tantalizingly light, then down over her cunt, where she's already slick and wet. He gathers moisture, rubbing and spreading it, before he withdraws. Brad draws a breath to complain when two fingers stroke back over and push into her, and any words are lost on a moan as she digs her heels into the mattress and arches upward to meet him.


God. Damn. That was hot.

I also love that they actually, you know *had* a discussion about it, because hey, it is kinda a big deal.

[identity profile] asimplechord.livejournal.com 2010-11-28 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
girl!Brad/Nate is inherently hot. :) And it IS a big deal, an important conversation, but Brad wasn't thinking about how much it would mean or say about the future she tries not to think about until afterward. She had other things on her mind. (Brad's really good at planning for the immediate future. The long-term? Not so much, really. She's a tactical thinker, not a strategic one.)