Archive of Our Own ^beta

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct
a life that made sense

 

(All this happened, more or less).

In Costa Rica, it makes sense to stop for a few days. They've been on the road for close to a week, in the car for a lot of it, but Manuel Antonio is lush and green and the ocean is calm and wide. Nate comes back to the car and leans down to Brad's open window. Brad opens his eyes and pushes his Oakleys up onto the top of his head.

"What the fuck do you look so pleased about?"
"This hotel right here?" says Nate, elbows on the door. "This fine establishment where I've just paid a fairy reasonable amount to secure us a dwelling for the next four days? Is actually called the Hotel California."

Brad can feel himself starting to grin.

"Are you shitting me, Nate Fick?"
"Brad, I would never, ever shit you."

Brad doesn't know how far he believes that, but he does know that he can absolutely trust Nate. Nate pulls the door open and Brad swings his feet out of the car. He takes a moment to stretch out his leg. Nate shoulders both backpacks. Brad doesn't even offer to help.

He imagines that Nate gets it.
Neither of them brought a lot to carry, anyway.

*

The tiles are cool under his bare feet. Nate reaches out with one hand and curls his fingers around the back of Brad's neck, tugs him in for a slow kiss. They just stand there like that for a moment, lazily making out like teenagers. He slips his fingers underneath the hem of Nate's t-shirt. In the small of his back, Nate's skin is soft and damp.

When he pulls back, Nate has this dazed, sleepy look in his eyes.

"I am going to find somewhere to buy groceries," he says, leaning back into Brad's touch a little. "And you are going to lie down under the fan for a while. Understood, Gunny?"
"Solid copy," says Brad, trying not to smile.

Nate steps away from him, tugging his t-shirt over his head and crouching down in fornt of one of the backpacks.

"You need anything before I go?"
Brad's so distracted by Nate's spine and the dip of his waistband that it's a long moment before he realised that he hasn't said anything.

"I'm fine," he says, peeling off his t-shirt and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
One reason that he loves Nate: he fumbles with his shoe-laces for a moment and Nate puts his wallet back into the back pocket of his khakis and he doesn't offer to help.

*

He wakes to the smell of food, the sounds of Nate moving around the small kitchen beyond the bedroom. Since they left San Diego, they've been eating take-out in the car or in motel rooms. It makes sense to Brad that Nate would know how to cook; one more little thing that he took in stride. Brad lies there for a moment, twisted comfortably in the sheets, stripped to his underwear, the fan vibrating overhead. Distant, he can hear Nate singing to himself. Everything about his life is FUBAR...no, more than that - he will never be whole again but, lying here, cool for the first time in twenty-four hours, it's easy to think that they could live like this.

Maybe not forever, but if anybody could make it happen, it's Nate Fick.
Brad believes utterly in that.

He must sleep again because Nate wakes him with a kiss to the temple and a hand on the back of his neck. He pulls on a t-shirt and clean jeans that sit low on his hips. He pads after Nate on bare feet and they eat on the patio, fairylights wound around the rail. They sit close enough that, under the table, their knees are touching and there's no sound but their voices backed by ocean and crickets.

"Nobody ever told me that paradise was in Costa Rica," says Nate, reaching to pour more wine and Brad ends up thinking about something that Tim Bryan one said about the Garden of Eden. He drinks more wine, eats the food that Nate's made. By the end of dinner, they're holdings hands. Nate massages the lingering stiffness out of his finger-bones.

"Come on," says Nate. "The bath tub in this place is incredible."

*

He sinks into the deep, warm water, his back against Nate's chest, head against his shoulder. Steam rises. He doesn't even know how long they've been in here. Nate keeps turning on the facuet with his toe, topping up more hot-water. Brad can feel all of the tension leaking out of him. Behind him, Nate is still and boneless. Every so often, the soft sound of him fumbling a page in his book. Brad lets his hand sink through the water, brushing his fingers along the bare skin of Nate's thigh, stirring up tiny bubbles from fine hairs.

"What are you reading?" he asks.
"Vonnegut," says Nate, and then he clears his throat, shifting, for a moment, to find the page that he wants. "We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."

And Brad's read "Slaughterhouse 5" before.
And he could live his life like this forever.