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They dreamt of being soldiers. They dreamt of being men.
In the mud, in the rain, with toy GI Joes, they imagined war the way little boys do. Their make believe was filled with honor and glory, with courage and heart. They ran campaigns that lasted all day, conquering the hills and valleys and willow tree roots until the sun dipped beneath the horizon and Ben called them in for dinner.
He wiped their grimy cheeks with wet paper towels and kissed Miles’s scraped knees while Bass watched with wanting eyes. He was his parents’ golden boy, but he’d never known a brother other than Miles, and Miles thought Ben hung the moon and the stars.
Because of that, Bass tried to fit among the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the Matheson family, unobtrusive and organic. Miles saw and loved him more for it, but Ben regarded him with wary eyes. Each evening after Bass slipped out the door he said, “That kid’s going to be trouble,” and he wasn’t wrong, but still.
“Can’t be worse than I am,” Miles would reply.
He loved his brother dear and true, but Ben would never know what it was like to dream of blood, of America in red, white, and blue. He didn’t get that sometimes family wasn’t genetic, but predestined, and the things Ben knew about Bass could fit inside a thimble.
Miles maybe didn’t understand all of that either, yet, but he was what they called headstrong as a kid.
He never outgrew it, not even once he’d enlisted. He learned to say oorah and salute the colors like a pro, to use a gun and always stay faithful, but Miles was a stubborn ass, through and through. Maybe that was his saving grace.
With Bass by his side, he saw the world. He found out that war wasn’t much like they thought it would be, back when they were kids and time was all they had to lose. It broke something inside Bass that he couldn’t fill with girls or booze, but with Miles, it was different. He had little to shatter, he had nothing to break.
He had a dark thing living inside him, and it came alive in the face of death.
Bass though, the only time he acted whole anymore was in his front yard, swinging his baby sisters in circles. They went around and around until they blurred before Miles’s eyes, vivid spots of color spinning just out of his reach.
Bass loved those girls the way Miles loved Ben, despite the age difference, despite their pigtails and pink lace. They clicked his family into place exactly the way he’d always yearned for.
Poor Bass. He had no idea that one day soon, all his well-placed adoration would ruin him. The future was ruthless, relentless. Their second tour came and went, and Bass arrived home to tombstones when he should have had a tickertape parade.
Miles sat by his side and said I’m sorry when he meant life’s a harsh bitch and I can’t protect you from this. It took two years until Bass’s smile didn’t crack with hurt, two years of liquor and girls.
Such an endless string of girls.
Bass liked women of every flavor. He sized each new target up with a connoisseur’s eye.
“Maybe you should slow down,” Miles told him, his bones splintered against his skin in a perfect show of jealousy.
“Maybe you should get laid once in a while,” Bass suggested back, like finding a place to stick his dick had ever been Miles’s problem.
At least Bass was happy, or pretending to be; that was all Miles needed to know when he was at his lowest.
…he was at his lowest a lot. Ben had a new family, a round-faced baby girl and a wife with sparking eyes. He didn’t have much time any more
to kiss bruised knees or pick his little brother up after an all-night bender at the bar. Miles loved and resented him for it in turn, but when he was down, Bass was always there.
That was how life was supposed to go, sad at times, but mostly okay. No one ever said anything about the lights going out, about revolution or war.
Suddenly, Miles and Bass were living by fireside, the crackle of logs and spark of embers a lullaby complemented by the rise and fall of their breath. They slept beneath a billion stars and woke to frost-hardened ground and the corpses of burnt out logs, Bass’s legs tangled snug between Miles’s. It all felt like a godsend.
Divine intervention, at its best, chased away Bass’s harem and gave them the land.
It gave Miles Bass, too.
A few weeks from Chicago, raiders fell upon their tents. Miles admired the tight coil of Bass’s muscles while he fought the men off. They were amateurs, and Bass was a machine, oiled and trained. He had them before they’d even lifted their weapons.
It didn’t keep him from yelling, “You going to sit around painting your nails all day or can I get a little help here?”
Miles shrugged. “I don’t know, you look like you’ve got this handled.”
“Ass,” Bass shot back, and then he executed a man where he stood.
Miles liked this new world. He wasn’t sick; the killing and the barbarism didn’t get him off, but they were familiar friends, and he could deal with them better than he’d ever been able to handle civilian life.
Bass disagreed, but he followed in Miles’s footsteps all the same. He had a solid knot of hatred in his stomach to work off. When he felt like retching, Miles knew he banked on that. Even so, that night they drank to erase the image of a dead man from Bass’s memory. They had a bottle of whiskey and a bent pack of cards, and there were dented cans of soup cooked al dente. Bon Appétit.
Their camp was in middle of Kentucky, lost in a farmer’s field outlined by the blocky, geometric shapes of a wooden fence. The night was chilly and their sleeping bags were thin. Bass found a flag hung over splintered pine and laid it across them both, the stars and stripes a second blanket for the night. It was innovative and it was sacrilege. Miles didn’t care much either way. He burrowed into his sleeping bag and was dead to the world until everything changed.
He woke to Bass in gold, blue, and white; his hair, his eyes, his skin. He wore the flag draped across his shoulders as he slipped into Miles’s sleeping bag and bit out, “It’s fucking cold.”
Miles scooted over, easy, letting Bass fold his own sleeping bag across the top of them, a third layer of warmth. They’d had sleepovers when they were kids and it wasn’t like anyone was watching other than the skeletons of long gone cows. What was the big deal? He didn’t expect much other than Bass’s snores.
A mouth on Miles’s neck certainly wasn’t part of the plan. Luckily, he was pretty adaptable.
There were hands on his hips, hot breath against his lips, both of them too drunk to really give a fuck. Bass said Miles’s name like he knew what he was doing, fitted their dicks tight between them and in a dreamy haze he carried them to the brink. They came hot and thick, painting white against the nooks and crevices of each other’s stomachs and thighs, and in the morning neither one of them said a word about it.
But it happened again. Again and again, their days played out like this. They fought and they fucked, they lived with blood on their lips and in the dead of night they told themselves this was what family did.
Miles never meant for it all to go so wrong, for them to become warlords punch-drunk off their own power. All he ever wanted, all he was ever after was for them all to be safe. He wanted a haven for Ben and Rachel, for Charlie and Danny, and especially, most of all, for Bass.
That backfired. He knows that now.
He loads his gun with more care than he’s exercised in years, because this might be the last time he gets a shot off. His best friend is out of control, off the rails, over the edge. Miles is out of options.
He walks towards the bedroom Bass sometimes lets him share, his footsteps purposeful while his heart bucks and thumps in protest. He thinks about the second time that Bass’s hands wrapped around his dick, the part after where they laid intertwined and Bass said, “I don’t want to be alone.”
Miles had told him, “You never will be.”
He meant it then, and he means it now. At the end of all things, it’s him and Bass, brothers in arms, even if one of them is now a monster. It’s not like Miles is getting canonized anytime soon, and this is good, this is right. He’ll take out Bass and then someone, maybe Jeremy, will take Miles out in turn. Their bodies will fall, and together they’ll dream of being children.
Together, they’ll dream of being pure.