“Pirates is nowt but pilferers and ark ruffians,” the Bosun likes to say, with his special kind of homely wisdom (though Walt can’t rightly say where he hails from). “We aboard the Bravo, m’boy, are more rightly termed private men of war. Privateers for King and Country. To harry slaving corsairs is our dearest deed.”

Walt’s still a mite confused by the details, but being the sixth of seven on the farm left him few options to better himself until the day the Bravo’s white Lady Athena figurehead nosed into the harbor. Walt ain’t planning to question too hard about words.

Anyway, all’s to say that Cabin Boy to Captain Nathaniel Fick, Scourge of the Barbary Coast, sounds a damn sight better than Assistant Pig Keeper, a title Walt found cause to give himself in his head back home to feel like he was in some wise important.

Digital painting.

Reccing all three, but particularly Taste (great AU) and For letting me love you (beautiful and moving).

Title: The second chance
Music: Gavin DeGraw - Stay
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: PG
Summary: post-war AU

Title: Taste
Music: Lorna Vallings - Taste
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: R
Summary: AU

Title: For letting me love you
Music: Tom McRae - My Vampire Heart
Pairing: Brad/Nate
Rating: PG

Streaming links on youtube. Also available here: http://generation-kill.livejournal.com/689934.html (a locked post, but membership is open).

Some days he wasn't sure if things were better left unsaid, if the looks and minor touches that they'd had before they'd been honest with one another could have been enough. But he knew it for the lie it was. Even on the hardest days, he'd rather have been in this than not have it at all.

He is as alone and as safe as he can be in a combat zone.

The moon is orange over the Parthenon.

He takes a late afternoon dive a few miles off the coast, comes up to find a text from Nate's Google voice number. Orioles playing two in Atlanta starting Thursday, it reads. Bet for or against?

After Iraq, after Nate leaves, he doesn’t hear from Brad for a long time.

It starts like this. The day after Nate's paddle party Brad meets him for drinks in a bar down the street from Nate's apartment. Brad has one beer, a Red Stripe that's so cold the bottle is sweating before their waitress gets it on the table. Nate has two shots of Patron-- no lime, no salt.

Brad says, "You wanna get out of here?"

Nate licks his bottom lip and stands up.

The clock ticks out the backbeat; the leaking roof drips a counterpoint into pots and pans and an old plastic dish tub. Ting on the copper bottom of a saucepan, tock on the blue enamel of a roasting dish. Tunk on the rubber tub. Under Nate's palm, Brad's heart is too fast, double-time, each thump with a little shiver at the end.

Brad has had a date written on a scrap of paper in his wallet for over a year and it's a date that he intends to keep. A journey myth of sorts – Brad sets out across America, pausing at various points across the way. What he can never really know is this: that he is not the first man who came home from the war to make this kind of journey. His path criss-crosses with those of three other men; Joe Liebgott who doesn't know where he's going, Tunny Clarke who doesn't really know who he is and Robert Leckie, who's struggling with what he needs to leave behind. It's a much a story about America as anything – a story about distance and how you live with it...a story about what it's like to come home and find a country that big waiting to be crossed. And nothing ever really changes.

The characters of Bravo 2 are brought together as young street kids in the broken-down, class-divided New York of the 1990s.

Brad doesn't ask any questions, even though there are just about a thousand of them balancing on the razor's edge of his tongue. He keeps them behind his teeth, about why now, why when they hadn't talked in years. He wasn't confused as to why Nate wanted out, that much was easy to see: Nate gravitated toward a spotlight that he didn't much enjoy, there's your bullshit moth metaphor, right there. Some things get to be clichés because they're so fucking true.

Seeing that he has years of empirical evidence as proof of Ray's tendency for hyperboles and subjective truth, when the first words Brad hears are the slightly slurred, "What the fucking fuck, Brad, I'm in love," to say he doesn't take it seriously is very much an understatement.

1888, Reno, NV. Sheriff Brad Colbert used to get along just fine...that is, until a morning shootout broke out in his town leaving three men dead. A babyfaced stranger by the name of Fick rolls in around the same time, and Brad ain't convinced the two events aren't related.

Gorgeous artwork. NSFW.

Gorgeous pen and ink drawing, Brad and Nate as 18th century Royal Navy.

Brad and his emotions have an understanding: he doesn't talk about, or think about, anything that might affect his combat effectiveness, and his emotions do whatever the fuck he tells them to.

Brad watches the last vestiges of land slip away. It's a familiar sight, exciting and frightening.

Nate's not a street-walker, he just happens to fuck people for money. And he doesn't proposition guys outside of the local 7-Eleven. Except when he does.

The third time they’re drunk and sloppy, and it barely warrants mentioning.

Space travel/time dilation AU. He is a warrior, but this is not a war. It's a voyage with no visible end; the eight of them envoys from a home that no longer remembers them.

It takes him three entire days to scrub the place clean, and another one to get the windows to look like windows again. During this time, Poke's friend comes by to fix all the doors and lights for a reasonable fee.

He introduces himself as Ray. He doesn't actually stop talking.

Brad has this dream sometimes.

Brad looks up. It’s that senior on the track team, Nate Fick, speaking. Brad finds him a little less vomitous then the rest. If he’s being fair, he actually thinks he’s kind of genius.

“Brad,” the professor says, “you seem intrigued by what Nate has said.”

Brad sighs inwardly.

Brad looks up, and he stares. It’s Nate. Or it would be if Nate went back in time a few years, taught himself to give off pussy vibes and then joined the Army.

Six comic strips - The Fruits of Civilization is my favourite.

Brad was eighteen the first time he met Nate Fick. He'd taken one look at the preppy clothes, the hair grown slightly long, and the gym bag slung over a shoulder and surmised: transfer student, rich kid from the east coast. One of those scholar-athletes, the kind of overachiever who always knew with certainty where he was headed in life—Brad had disliked him immediately on principle alone.

“You gonna keep staring like that all night, soldier, or are you gonna come over here and do something about it?” She’s grinning as she stares right back at Brad, bright and sharp like a slice of sunlight in the room; arrogant and cocky and a little bit crazy, not to mention gorgeous as hell. Fuck it, Brad has been staring, and he’ll be fucked if he’s gonna back down now.

“It happens, Brad.”

“Thank you for your insight, sir.” Brad’s the only one who can get away with being a complete smart-ass to the LT, and that’s not even all the time, but apparently Fick’s feeling generous tonight.

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.

“Jesusfuck,” Brad moans, shifting. He manages to get his hands on Nate’s tits, Nate’s perky little nipples rubbing against his palms. The feeling of that and Nate’s warm pussy through the panties clashes with the thought of Nate’s dirty face in Iraq, the cock under his cammies, thick and red at the tip, fucking beautiful.

Some people say the shooting’s the hard part, some people say it’s coming home. No-one ever mentions the routine and drudgery in the middle, how hard it is to keep going forward when it doesn’t feel any different to standing still.

"Don't fuck with me," Brad says quietly. He's trying to move back but Nate's not letting him. "I have no idea what I'm doing," Nate admits, feeling stupid and sort of shaky. His lips brush against Brad's neck as he speaks. "But I'm not fucking with you, okay?"

"This is not a typical recon Marine operation," Nate says, serenely, refusing to take Ray's bait.

"Now as you all know, a certain basketball captain and another good friend of ours have been suspended for two weeks. You know what they were doing?"

"No!" the school shouts back, giggling, as Mattis bursts into the hall.

"Why, exactly the same thing as you, dearest Pendleton High students! Due to the homophobic attitude of wonderful leaders such as Principle Mattis, Brad Colbert and Nate Fick have been suspended, for doing exactly the same thing as the rest of you straight couples do - for sharing a chaste kiss outside the boys locker room after practice. They were suspended for kissing, simply because they both have dicks! What say you to that, homies?"

The Marine Corps taught Nate how to release his breath with the bullet, how to climb up a wall of sheer rock with a rope and two hand spikes, how to land mortars within a foot of his target. It also taught him that the only real way to resist interrogation was to offer nothing at all. Mark Reynolds is clearly hoping to disarm Nate with innuendo and implications, but it doesn't matter what cards he plays. Nate won't lose this game.

Obviously all the Guinness had pickled his brain. Fucking Royal Marines.

On Monday, there's a shamal and Ray complains about his shit coming out grainy.

On Tuesday, they get shot at.

On Wednesday, Lilley almost backs over Garza and there's a brief scuffle between the two of them.

On Thursday, Brad hears some ludicrous story about the LT rapping with Q-Tip.

Somehow, that last one is the most surprising thing to happen all week.

Brad as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Nate as Janet!

He thinks: reality is quietly blowing his mind.

He's cracking open his life like a self-storage unit that hasn't seen the light of day in years.

When Peace Corps assigns Nate to East Timor, a tiny half-island in eastern Indonesia, he figures he'll have a lot of time to catch up on his reading. But the year is 1999, and the shock fall of military dictator Suharto is still reverberating throughout the country, triggering changes nobody ever thought possible. As East Timor moves inexorably towards freedom – or war – Nate is drawn into events that will define the future of the province forever.

“What’s the point of playing a game you can’t win?” Brad asks. They all stare at him.

“You failed Kindergarten, didn’t you?” Person asks.

“Twenty-five,” Brad says.

Pappy glances quickly at Rudy, Rudy gives a slight shrug. Pappy nods. “Fair move.”

“How did you fucking know that?” Person asks.

Brad ignores him and stares at Pappy. Pappy stares back. He’s been around too long to be intimidated by the Iceman.

Fick smiled, that tiny twitch of his mouth that Brad had worked his ass of for in his better days out in the Arab desert, and Brad let his weights clink to the rubber flooring.

"I hear you're having trouble with single-opponent combat, Sergeant," Fick said, arms crossed loosely over his chest.

"If by trouble you mean the men like to relive their playground experience on my tall, manly, frame, then yes sir I am."

Fick's smile got incrementally wider, and Brad's hands twitched involuntarily at his sides. There were some days when what he wanted got the better of him; it looked like this was going to be one of those days.

"Schwetje offered to take you on," Fick said, like that wasn't the fucking worst idea in the history of stupid USMC bullshit ever, "but instead I thought you'd prefer...friendlier competition."

“Dude, we’ve been riding in this same piece of crap Humvee together for how long now? We annoy the shit out of each other, share dip, trade MRE’s, and rag on each other for every fucking thing we can think of just to pass the mother fucking time. We’re like married, dude. You think I don’t know when my man’s cheatin’ on me?”

"Battle School is hell, because it's for retards. Think about it. They're weeding us out so that they can cultivate the real geniuses on Earth. Why else would two-thousand people voluntarily sign up to fart around in space every year? We're retards, that's the only explanation. They give you this dumb fucking test and ask you to rearrange some goddamn blocks, and boom. You're spacebound, my man, supposedly in the top zero-point-two percent in terms of brainpower. That's how they get your ass to sign up for this shit! They get you all hard with flattery and next thing you know, you're getting ass-fucked in deep space."

"You're looking at me like Ray does, sir," Brad comments.

The LT squinches his face into what could pass for a distorted smile. His helmet chin-straps are hanging uselessly by his ears. "What kind of look is that?"

"The one that says, 'Oops, I just pissed all over the living room carpet'."

“We need Colbert.”

Nate almost laughs at the blunt statement, because needing Colbert is something that Nate tries very hard not to think about. Something he’s been failing at immeasurably for the past almost four months they’ve spent together. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s some information on the sonar. We need someone with his experience to go down.”

One of these days, the homoerotic layers of the Marine Corps are going to kill Nate. “The carrier’s at full speed, sir.”

They spend a week in Rome and then make their way to Naples. They observe and admire. When they get to Pompeii, the weather is perfect. Warm, but not hot. Clouds float above Vesuvius like smoke.

"Yo, Iceman!" Espera called, striding across the tent to stand at Brad's feet. "Me and the rest of Team One are going to show Rolling Stone the lay of the land, check out what kind of entertainment might be on tap for tonight. I got your permission to take your boys on a little field trip?"

Brad looked up from his laptop. Such a handy decoy; he looked like he was studying maps and everyone left him the fuck alone. "I trust you, Poke, to ensure they get a nice treat if they mind their manners" he said mockingly. "Oh, and Person stays here. We've got half a call book to go over tonight."

Brad Colbert is bored.

Nate knows this because he can feel Brad staring at him from his desk one aisle and two chairs back. On the other side of the classroom, Ray Person's making obscene hand signals in Nate's general direction, ostensibly to get Brad's attention.

“Summer lovin’, had me a blast. Summer lovin’, happened so fast—Come on, Brad, you sing the boy part.”

“No, Ray. I will not sing ‘Summer Nights’.”

“I’ll sing it.”

“No, Walt. No one is singing ‘Grease’ in this humvee.”

“Brad, you’re an uptight, musical hating asshole. I thought middle class people loved musicals. You are all kinds of fucked up.”

"Scuttlebutt is that someone might've stumbled across some suspect behavior last night."

"Oh, is that what the knitting circle has come up with?" Brad asked.

Four wonderful AU sketches - Brad as an assassin who operates out of an icecream truck, Brad & Nate as daddies/uncles/babysitters, Brad and Ray as vigilantes and Nate as the guy who hires them to kill zombies, and Encino Man as a zombie.

Brad is hiding under the Humvee again.

Brad once described these little episodes as a tactical retreat in order to preserve his sanity. Ray is completely in favor of Brad preserving what remains of his fragile grasp on sanity, but he's not feeling all that charitable right now. This is no tactical retreat. That fucker is hiding.

Ray hates it when Brad does this shit. Everyone freaks the fuck out. It's like being stuck in some 1950s melodrama where mommy has retreated to the bedroom with a valium and a bottle of vodka, and Ray is stuck reassuring all the little brats that it's okay. Mommy is just resting. She'll be fine tomorrow. Fuck this shit.

“That was some serious Matrix shit the LT was pulling.” Walt, still frozen to his fifty cal, shouts down. “He’s all good, right?” The less certain query follows a short pause, and that’s it, time for Iceman to do some recon in this fucking war.



“He was dancing on those bullets.” Rolling Stone cuts in. Brad flicks a glance in the back as he stows the com. Scribe’s eyes are mental asylum wide and he’s quivering like some purity pledge virgin on prom night. Fucking fantastic.

[Non-American spelling, but otherwise pitch perfect.]

Nate doesn't think of himself as a civilian; not yet. Maybe he never will. When he's asked what he did before Harvard, he says things like: "I'm- I was in the Marines". The past tense feels awkward. But in the mirror, the outline of his body is softening.

Ray snorted, winding himself up. "You do realize you're basing your theory on the idea that Marines are well-adjusted? Because clearly we're not surrounded by a bunch of psycho jarhead mama-fuckers and baby-killers. I mean, only well-adjusted people would choose to stew in their own filth all day while their dicksuck command plays a game of 'look at the shiny object!' with a third-world army - a strategy of such sophistication it makes South Park's 'It's headin' right for us!' look like Einstein himself rose from the grave to offer up a sensible ROE. Gosh, no well-adjusted person would want to do anything unseemly like sleep in a bed or play Xbox all day. That's just crazy talk."

They are going to do this one time, and one time only.

Nate tells Brad as much, but Brad just quirks one side of his mouth and keeps on fiddling with the camera. It’s an instant Polaroid camera, clearly old, bulky and clunky against Brad’s long hands. Brad’s very gentle with it as he checks the settings.