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

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.

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.

When Joshua Ray joins the paratroopers, he tells his ma that the extra fifteen dollars will do them some good – what with there being another baby on the way, and the war leaving everybody cutting corners.

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.

"That had better be my own hand on my thigh right now, suddenly gone all leached of melanin and psycho-possessed so I don’t know it," Tony says evenly. He doesn't look down at the grubby fingers wrapped just above his knee, twitching slightly. It is entirely possible that would be taken as encouragement. "Else I'ma cut it off with my KA-BAR. Might do it anyway."

"Poke, you are so bad at gay chicken," Ray complains mournfully, and doesn’t move his hand. Motherfucker. “Didn’t all the other little Mexicans teach you to play right in your LA fishing village? Now it’s your go.”

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, 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.

“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.

"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?"

“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.

“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."

"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."

“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.]

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."