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Nate comes through the door sweaty and out of breath from his run. His shirt sticks to almost every bit of his skin. In the living room Brad is sitting on the couch. The TV is off and Brad's laptop is closed and sitting on the coffee table. Brad looks like he hasn't moved since Nate left for his run. His hands rest on his lap-- palms flat against his blue-jean-clad thighs. It looks like he's been there a while -- thinking. Nate holds in a sigh and braces himself for whatever Brad is about to say.
"I think you should see people while I'm gone," Brad says. "If you want to. I just-- I think it would be better."
Nate pulls his shirt over his head and lets it plop on the floor in the entry way. He tries not to roll his eyes. Brad's being ridiculous, but Nate's been expecting it. Something has been eating at Brad since he got his newest orders. Brad is easily one of the smartest most competent people Nate has ever met, but sometimes Nate feels like Brad is still waiting for Nate to give him permission to speak or act.
Old habits die hard.
But Brad throwing aside his own personal interests for the good of someone else is more like a page out of Nate's book.
"Are you being self-sacrificing?" Nate asks, letting his voice drip with exaggerated shock.
Brad smirks a little. He finally looks Nate in the eye and says, "People are going to accuse you of rubbing off on me, sir."
Nate thinks about taking the opening Brad's left him. He could turn the conversation dirty. He could literally walk over to Brad and start rubbing off on him in a totally different way, but it wouldn't do either of them any good in the long run. Nate knows the stopping and starting is starting to wear both of them down. Living a life in parts with no clearly defined roles is fucking hard.
But Nate wants this.
Nate has spent a lot of time thinking about choices. He'd wanted to leave the Corps, had even made careful lists, writing out the pros and cons. Brad had always been on both lists. In or out. Staying or going. Holding on to what he had or the reaching for the possibility of something more. Nate doesn't know where they would be if he hadn’t gotten out, but he knows they wouldn't be here.
Brad's last deployment had been hell. He'd spent 13 months in Fallujah and come back to Nate a little quieter, a little different than he'd left. Nate gets it. He can hardly remember the person he was before his own stint in Iraq. So, Brad isn't the same person Nate fell in love with, but Nate's starting to realize there isn't any version of Brad he wouldn't love.
Brad's talking bullshit. His suggestion is not only stupid-- it's untenable. Nate doesn't think he could be with anyone else now, even if he wanted to be.
He doesn't.
He wants Brad. Right now he wants to fight with Brad.
"You think I should see other people?" Nate asks.
"Fuck, no," Brad says. He looks miserable and angry, like he wants to punch Nate's hypothetical dates right in their hypothetically smug faces. "But I don't want you to feel like you can't."
"You are being Ray levels of stupid right now," Nate says. "But if that's what you want, fine. I'll think about hypothetically seeing other people."
Brad's head snaps up, and he closes his eyes into slits, looking at Nate like he's already been betrayed. Brad always does this right before a deployment-- pulls away-- pulls into himself like he's already gone.
"What?" Brad snaps.
"I said, Okay," Nate says.
"Okay?" Brad says, his voice full of disbelief, like he can't quite fathom that Nate gave into his request that quickly. Like he can't quite believe Nate agreed at all.
"Yes," Nate says. He tries to keep his voice calm, because Brad looks about two seconds away from losing his mind and one of them has to be rational here. "But I want something from you in return."
Brad doesn't say anything. Nate smiles, shaking his head at Brad's stubbornness, at his flat-out refusal to agree to anything Nate says, right away, on principle, now that he has the option of saying no. Nate can't blame him, really; if being in the Corps taught them anything it’s that agreeing to something before knowing the details can be a foolish endeavor.
Brad is not a fool.
"When we're together I want you to actually be here," Nate says. "Stop waiting for it to all fall apart. Stop checking out early and be here with me while we have time."
Brad's face doesn't give anything away. It never does.
"Throw me a bone here," Nate says softly. "You're not gone yet."
Brad sighs-- a sad, lost, little sound that breaks Nate's heart. "I've never not wanted to go before," Brad says.
"You have to go."
That's the truth, and not just because there's a contract somewhere with Brad's signature on it. This is what Brad is built for. Asking him not to do it isn't even an option, with or without the contract. "I don't mind."
That's a lie of sorts. Nate actually doesn't mind the distance or the time or the separation. This is what Nate is built for-- patience and determination and making the best of whatever shitty situation the world wants to throw at him. Nate can do this, but watching Brad slowly lose himself is hard.
"I'll miss you," Brad whispers.
Vulnerability isn't a look Nate recognizes on Brad. He hates it. He sits down on the couch next to Brad and takes one of his hands. Brad rubs at the knee of his jeans with his other one.
“Miss me later," Nate says. "I'm right here. Don't miss me now."
Brad says, "What do you want?"
Nate leans in and kisses him gently. "You," he says, ghosting his lips over Brad's again and again. Brad puts his hand on the nape of Nate's neck, deepens the kiss, and Nate sinks into it.
Nate keeps a journal. It's not a diary. He doesn't write down his deepest desires and scrawl Brad's name over and over with little hearts around it. He just writes about his day-- a traffic jam; the old-lady at the grocery store who told him how to pick a good summer squash; the party he attended for an old college friend where he had too much to drink. It's all the things he would tell Brad in the letters he doesn't write.
In September, he goes to a work friend's birthday party.
A friend of a friend of his friend flirts with him shamelessly. He flirts back because it's harmless and he's lonely and she seems interesting.
"I'm Candice, by the way," she says, long after introductions should have been made.
"Nate. Allen and I work together."
She says, "I know," and they go back to talking about baseball and whether or not the Giants will break all their hearts again this year, win or lose.
The party winds down and she says, "You're single, right? Allen might have mentioned it."
Nate thinks, No, but he just smiles at her. She asks him to go for coffee later in the week and it's almost like he's hearing someone else’s voice when he says, "Yes."
Coffee turns into Candice asking him out full stop. Nate's heart tries to drown out the question by beating too loudly in his ears. Brad's in a desert in the middle of a war that was supposed to have been over a few years ago. Nate's in the middle of a Starbucks sitting with a girl he probably could have pictured himself marrying a few years ago. Neither of them are where they want to be.
Nate says, "I can't. I'm sorry."
Candice says, "Ah, I know that look. Someone broke your heart."
"No," Nate says. "Someone still has it."
Candice bites at her lip and tilts her head. They sip their coffee in silence for a few minutes until Candice sighs.
"I really am sorry," Nate says. "I shouldn't have said yes when you asked me here."
Candice says, "We could be friends. You look like you might need one."
Nate has plenty of friends. Friends really aren't what he needs right now, but he says, "Yeah, I'd like that," even though he knows he's never going to call Candice again.
At home he makes himself dinner, does a load of laundry, and leaves his journal blank. He goes to bed before it's fully dark outside.
He and Brad have never spent a Christmas together.
Nate thinks about it sometimes. He thinks about his family's traditions, wonders about Brad's, imagines what it would be like to blend the two and start some of their own.
Nate goes to Baltimore and stays in the room he grew up in. His mother turned it into a run-of-the-mill guest room almost as soon as Nate was out the door to Dartmouth. At the time, he was outraged but now it makes things easier, more like coming for a visit instead of coming home.
They have turkey and roast beef. Everything is buttery and delicious and full of enough calories to keep him going for a week. His uncle drinks too much red wine and throws up in the front yard. Nate uses the ensuing chaos to bundle up and sneak out onto the back porch for a cigarette.
His sister comes out and catches him, smiling like she did when they were kids and she had something to hold over his head.
"I won't tell Mom if you share," she says.
Nate passes her the cigarette and they sit together on the wooden swing that's been hanging there for as long as Nate can remember.
"It's cold out here," Nate says. His teeth are starting to chatter.
"It's probably shorts weather in California," Lisa says.
Nate listens for something more in the tone of her voice, but if it's there Lisa isn't being obvious enough about it. His family still can't get over the fact that he left the east coast to go live on the other side of the country. He can't really blame them for not getting it. The job he supposedly left them for isn't anything he couldn't find the equivalent of closer to home.
Nate thinks about his house in California-- the surf boards on the back porch, the motorcycle in the garage, the spare bedroom full of computer parts and old gaming systems gutted and littering every available surface. He wants to see Brad's face again more than anything in the world right now.
"Are you happy?" Lisa asks. "You seem--"
"I'm not unhappy," Nate answers honestly.
Lisa sighs and wraps one of her gloved hands around Nate's bare one. "You used to tell me things," she says. "You used to trust me."
Nate never intended not to tell. He trusts his family to love him no matter what. He trusts his family to be smarter than most people, not to be small-minded, especially about something as crazy as love. He doesn't know why he didn't. The moment just never seemed to present itself, until so much time had passed that it started being something he'd meant to do instead of something he was meaning to do.
"I do trust you," he says.
"You never talk about--" Lisa squeezes his hand. "You can tell me anything. Anytime. I've always got your back."
It seems so stupid to be having this conversation now, sitting here on a swing their father made, both of them well past thirty and old enough to know who they are. Nate doesn't know why he feels like crying.
He wants to tell her about Brad. He wants to talk about how smart he is, how hot, how much fun Nate has just talking to him. He wants to tell her about the first time he got on the back of Brad's bike, what it felt like to drive down the highway with his chest pressed to Brad's back. He wants to talk about Harvard, about Brad showing up at his shitty little apartment, surprising both of them by making the first move. He wants to tell her everything, but it seems like too much. It feels like telling someone else's secret.
"I know," he says instead. He rests his head on her shoulder and throws the cigarette out into the yard when she passes it back to him.
Nate goes to the beach to run sometimes. It's something he and Brad usually do together on their days off, and something Nate usually forgoes when Brad's overseas. Nate can get his exercise in anywhere and he doesn't care about the scenery the way Brad does. When Brad's deployed Nate saves the beach for the days he's feeling particularly melancholy.
Brad's been gone for nine months. Nate's spent more time in their house living alone than he has living with Brad.
The beach is crowded with people-- kids on Spring Break, people walking their dogs, vendors selling snow cones and ice cream. Nate runs past all of them, pushing himself hard until his lungs hurt. He's not out of shape, exactly, but he remembers a time when he could have done this without breaking a sweat.
He stops for lunch at a burger place he and Brad frequent. The girl at the hostess stand smiles at him and waves him toward the table Brad likes by the window. Nate orders a burger without opening the menu from a waiter he vaguely recognizes. The guy has an eyebrow ring, blue eyes and dark, dark hair. His name tag says Nick.
When he's through he throws a ten dollar bill on the table and goes to the counter to pay for his meal. The girl smiles at him again and asks, "How was everything today?"
Nate doubts the girl really cares.
"Great as usual."
He wonders what she does when people have a legitimate complaint.
"We haven't seen you in a while," she says as she runs Nate's credit card through the machine. "And your boyfriend? How's he?"
Nate blinks. He feels a little tremor of shock run through him. He doesn't know what it says about him that this girl -- who probably doesn't even know his name -- knows something so intimate about him, something his own family doesn't know. He wonders if he and Brad are this obvious to everyone.
"He's good," Nate says, recovering when the girl looks at him expectantly. "He's out of town right now."
The girl nods and gives him a conspiratorial look as she hands him back his card. "I know this is terrible," she says in a mock whisper. "But I think Nick was hoping you were single now."
Nate looks across the restaurant to where Nick is leaning against the wall by one of the wait stations. His eyes keep flicking up, looking over like maybe he knows exactly what the hostess is talking to Nate about, like maybe he put her up to it. It is easily the least stealthy op Nate has ever seen.
Nick is hot, and young, and Nate knows he should be flattered, but mostly he just feels tired. He wants to go home and crawl into his bed and sleep until June-- until Brad comes home.
"No," Nate says. "I'm not single."
The hostess winks, hands him his receipt, and says, "Don't worry. I'll let him down easy for you."
Nate pastes on a smile and says, "Thanks."
Nate spends the day Brad is due back cleaning the house. It's just been him for eleven months. They talked about getting a dog once upon a time, but Nate works long hours. It didn't seem fair to get a dog that would end up being as lonely as Nate is.
He vacuums and cleans the bathroom. He washes the sheets and goes to the grocery store. He can't remember what toothpaste Brad likes so he just buys another tube of the one he prefers. He gets a 12-pack of Brad's favorite beer. He watches TV until he can't keep his eyes open anymore and falls asleep telling himself he's not waiting up.
He wakes up at 2:21 AM. The red glow from the alarm clock is the only thing he can see in the room. He hears noise from the kitchen and slides out of bed. Brad's sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer. He looks thin and tired. Nate thinks there are more lines around his eyes than there were a year ago.
"Sorry I woke you," Brad says.
"I don't mind."
Brad looks at him for a long time. Nate stays where he is, half in the hallway and half in the living room and tries to breathe normally. "You look good," Brad says. He wraps his lips around his beer bottle and empties it on the next swallow.
"You look tired," Nate says.
Brad doesn’t say anything. He nods his head slowly, focusing his eyes on some spot over Nate’s shoulder. Nate remembers this, the exhaustion so deep that you can't sleep. He remembers not knowing how to talk to people that weren't giving or taking orders.
"You want me to make up the couch?" Nate asks.
"No," Brad says carefully. "Do you want me to sleep on the couch?"
Nate gives Brad a look he hopes conveys how stupid he thinks Brad is.
"No."
He takes a step toward Brad. It feels like walking into the unknown instead of stepping into his own goddamn living room.
Brad gets up from the table and meets him half-way. Nate feels strange. He doesn't know what to do -- what Brad wants him to do -- so he does what he wants and wraps his arms around Brad's waist. He rests his head on Brad's chest and hugs him tight. Brad's heart is a steady beat against Nate's ear.
There are so many things Nate wants to say. A whole year’s worth of things that fill up the pages in Nate's journal-- stupid little things, like how the store down the street quit selling the cigarettes Nate likes. Bigger things, like how Nate didn't think it was possible to miss a person as much as he's missed Brad.
He holds tight instead, sighs when Brad rubs his cheek over the top of Nate's hair. Brad lets go first. He cups Nate's face, tips his chin up and looks at him. The moment stretches out, as fragile as blown glass. Nate doesn't realize he's been unconsciously holding his breath until Brad leans in and kisses him. He exhales against Brad's mouth, granting Brad's tongue access. They kiss in the middle of the living room until they're both breathless.
Nate's mouth feels like someone punched him. "What do you want?" he whispers against Brad's cheek. His head is a mess of thoughts and questions each one stacking on top of the one before it until Nate's not sure he can hold them all inside anymore. "What do you want?"
Brad holds Nate's hand and leads them to the bedroom.
In the dark safety of their room Nate starts to pull his shirt off, but Brad stops him, hand wrapped around Nate's wrists.
"Can we just lie down?" Brad asks.
Nate lets Brad arrange him how he wants, his back against Brad's chest and his ass tucked firmly against Brad's crotch. Brad's arms feel strong and warm wrapped around him. Nate's never minded being the little spoon, but Brad's hold feels both foreign and familiar.
Nate dozes in and out of sleep. Everything feels hazy and dreamlike until Brad asks, "Did you meet anyone while I was gone?"
Nate doesn't understand at first.
He's met a lot of people. There's a new receptionist at work. There are two new baristas at the Starbucks down the street. He had lunch with Mike Wynn a few months ago and met his girlfriend for the first time. He feels like Brad just picked up someone else's conversation somewhere in the middle.
"What?" he asks.
Brad's arms tighten around him. "What we talked about before I left. About you--"
"Oh."
Nate thinks about the girl he met at Allen's party. Cameron. No, Candice. He thinks about Nick the hot waiter. The guy has probably been his server a dozen times, but if someone asked him, Nate doubts he could pick the kid out in a crowd.
"It's okay if you did," Brad says softly.
Nate pushes at Brad's arms, twisting around so he can look Brad in the eye. Brad looks right back, and it's so completely Brad to not back down, to not look away when every other person on the planet probably would.
It makes Nate smile even though he's feeling slightly murderous right now.
"No," Nate says. "I didn't. Don't be fucking stupid."
Nate isn't sure he has the patience for this. He didn't have the patience for stupidity in the Corps and he doesn't think he can pretend to have it now.
"We agreed that--"
"No," Nate says.
Brad sits up, looking down at Nate over the bridge of his nose. "I don't think I'm misremembering an entire conversation about you fucking other people. I said you should see other people and you said--"
"No," Nate says, shaking his head against the pillow.
"Are you going to let me finish a fucking sentence tonight?" Brad asks.
Nate is already tired of this entire conversation and they've only been having it maybe five minutes.
"You said if I wanted. You said see other people if I wanted. But I didn't want to and I don't want to, and to be totally honest here, I haven't wanted to for a long time. Since before we got together. So--"
Brad leans down and kisses him, cutting off whatever Nate was going to say next. The kiss is tentative. Brad's mouth is questioning, and Nate can't stand it. He can't stand the idea that Brad thinks he might not get to have this, like he doesn't know that Nate is Brad's, and has been for longer than Nate is comfortable admitting.
Realization comes to Nate slowly. He's always assumed he and Brad are the same, that Brad was closed off when he got home because he needed time to compartmentalize all the fucked-up shit he'd been doing during deployment.
It never occurred to Nate that Brad was still working, still on a recon, of sorts, and that Nate was the objective. He wonders if Brad's ex did this, if Brad always came home full of doubts or if her betrayal planted a seed that's been growing until Brad always expects the worst.
Nate doesn't want to be the thing fucking Brad up.
Nate changes the kiss, opening his mouth for Brad but pushing back too, throwing everything he has at it so that there's no doubt in Brad's mind that Nate wants this.
Brad kisses him hard enough to hurt, licks his tongue over Nate's bottom lip and chin, and bites at the corner of Nate's mouth. Nate needs more air. His lungs are burning and his mouth stings where it's been assaulted by Brad's teeth. He keeps on kissing Brad instead.
Brad's hands and mouth feel like they're everywhere. He pushes Nate's shirt up around his armpits, licks over Nate's nipple, and somehow manages to haul Nate up with one hand at the small of Nate's back while he uses the other hand to rid Nate of his shirt. Nate doesn't know why he's so impressed. Brad has always been an excellent multitasker.
Brad's voice sounds ripped up and desperate when he says Nate's name. When he says, "I want you to fuck me."
Nate feels liquid, like he's sliding over Brad's skin-- into Brad's skin.
"Okay. Okay."
He flips them over so he can see Brad's face. So he can fuck Brad the way he wants to, with Brad's ankles on Nate's shoulders and Brad writhing around Nate's cock.
Nate grabs for the lube with shaky hands. Brad doesn't do this often. Nate doesn't know if it's because he prefers to fuck Nate or if it's because Nate prefers to be fucked. The sex is always better than anything else Nate has ever experienced, so he's never stopped to question it either way.
Brad's fingers scrabble over Nate's shoulders, his nails digging in to try and find purchase on Nate's sweaty skin. He cants his hips and says, "Hurry. I want--"
Nate slides one slick finger into Brad, watches him fall silent, his head thrown back against the pillows. Nate is too keyed-up to tease Brad for long. He thinks they both are, so he fingers Brad fast and dirty. He uses too much lube and doesn't stretch Brad nearly enough. It all feels more like a means to an end than actual foreplay.
Brad says, "Now," and Nate can't think coherently enough to argue.
Brad makes Nate work for it. He's so tight that Nate feels the muscles in his shoulders starting to cramp from the effort of fucking Brad.
Nate does him slow because he can. They have time now. There are no dates circled on the calendar, no countdown to a day in the not-too-distant future when Brad has to ship out. There will be again, but for right now Nate has all the time in the world.
When Brad comes it's like a sneak attack. One second he's arching into Nate's slow thrusts and in the next Nate feels the warm wetness of Brad's come between them. Brad's muscles contract around Nate's cock, and Nate skitters to a halt. He feels trapped. His arms feel like they can't hold him up anymore. Brad melts into the sheets beneath him and Nate starts to pull out.
"No," Brad says. The dry rasp of his voice goes straight to Nate's cock, making it jump a little. "I said fuck me."
Nate's brain fizzles. Brad's spent and sleepy looking and still asking to be fucked. He can't even begin to process it, so he lets his body take over, fucking back into Brad slowly, dragging noises out of Brad that sound both pained and perfect.
When Nate finally comes, Brad has been reduced to nothing more than choked-off noises and full-body shivers. Nate doesn't think he's ever seen anything more beautiful in his life.
Nate wakes up before the sun.
He doesn't smoke in the house usually. It's a habit he swore he was going to quit once he got out of the Corps. The fact that he hasn't been able to has shamed him into making all these rules about when and where and how much, like if he can control all aspects of the habit then it's not really controlling him. But the honest truth is that he just loves it-- the way it feels in his hands and in his mouth, the way the smoke slides in and out like the world's deadliest kiss.
He doesn't want to leave Brad, though, not even for that first morning cigarette, so he throws open one of the bedroom windows and watches the sun come up while his cigarette burns between his fingers.
The day feels full of possibilities, brand new in a way that every other morning for the past year hasn't.
Brad wakes slowly, and Nate knows it's a luxury he hasn't had in a while. He watches him silently until Brad's eyes finally flutter open and focus in on Nate.
Brad smiles at him-- a rare, brilliant smile that rivals the sun currently climbing its way into the sky. Nate has to physically hold in the school girl sigh he feels pressing in on his lungs.
"Morning," Brad says, his voice rough with sleep.
"Morning."
Brad rolls out of bed, still naked and comfortable with it in a way Nate knows he'll never be. Brad takes Nate's cigarette and drags off the end, flipping the butt out into the yard as he exhales. He presses a kiss to Nate's forehead and says, "Shower?"
Nate says, "I want you to meet my parents. Maybe you could take a couple of days and we could go to Baltimore. We could-- I don't know."
Brad stops mid-step toward the bathroom. Nate is prepared for panic or maybe a fight, but Brad fixes Nate with a look worthy of man with the nickname Iceman. Nate doesn't have any idea what's going on inside Brad's head. He's the one who ends up feeling panicked. Brad just keeps looking at him like Nate's supposed to be saying something more, like Nate hasn't already laid everything he has on the table.
"I want them to know you. I want you to know them," Nate says quickly. "I want--"
"Okay," Brad says.
"-- them to know we're together," Nate finishes. "Wait. What?"
"I said okay," Brad says.
"I... expected that to be more difficult," Nate says honestly.
"I asked you," Brad says. "Before I left--"
Nate bristles, thinking about before, thinking about Brad and his idiotic attempt at self-preservation.
"Brad," Nate says.
"I asked you what you wanted and you said..."
Nate gets it now. "You," Nate says. "I want you."
"And I want you," Brad says.
Outside, the sun finally rises up over the neighbor's house, casting them both in early-morning light.