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Outside Al Gharaf, in the dark hours past midnight, Nate visits each team again and finds himself standing next to Team One Alpha’s Humvee last. The euphoria from making it out whatever the fuck that was from earlier drains away as he watches his Marines sharing jokes, and touches the bullet holes on Brad’s door, throat tightening with a burning sensation in his mouth.
Brad returns in an ugly mixture of shamal, rain and hail that is Iraqi weather several hours later, having found the junior officer who was lost taking a dump. He’s looking gaunt in the darkness, a little lackluster when he tells Person to go back to his grave, the bags under his eyes darker than usual.
Nate ignores the guilt and won’t say he’s grateful or worried or sorry; he tells Brad to get some shut-eye. It’s the Iceman, after all. They share one look, grime-covered faces illuminated by the steady green lights of the radio. Smirking, Brad easily makes some jibe about officers, or whatever, telling him to take a break himself. Nate’s heart does a half fluster since he’s too tired to be cautious. He wishes that he wouldn’t have to wake them up at early dawn as he watches Brad go back to his vehicle.
Later, he pats Mike awake to trade watch and lies awake for an unfathomable time for a sleep that he knows will take too long to come despite how weary he is. He closes his eyes in his grave, and then he’s alone with all of his anger and helplessness and the darkness and the coldness of Iraqi desert.
-
He feels lighter despite how frustrated and disappointed he is after pulling the plug off the radio as he continues to watch artillery strikes light up the town in a bleak night, all the numbed feelings filling his body with a strange power.
Next to him Brad stares into the distance with an indescribable look on his face. When Brad looks back at him, his eyes full of something Nate can’t quite place, looking as if someone has lit an icy blue fire behind, Nate wonders if he’s imagining it; his heart jumps at having that expression directed at him. He holds the gaze for a bit longer, then looks back to the men he cares about more than anything else in the world, and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
He’s fallen in love in a war zone. He doesn’t realize it.
-
In his office in Pendleton, basked in warm California sun, he discusses commendations and endorsements for Christeson and Brad’s combat meritorious promotions as well as Brad’s application for the British Royal Marines exchange program with Mike; he starts with Brad’s first, carefully emptying his mind, not thinking about their silent communication, quiet talks, shared smiles, or anything at all. He writes about his sharp mind and initiative and leadership and integrity and can’t decide if he has written too much or too little.
In his shower at home, though he loathes himself for doing so, Nate thinks about Brad with a mixture of fondness and want. He gets shampoo in his eye and has to flush the scalding water over his face.
He's never quite been attracted to guys before. Brad has lost weight like the rest of them, and Nate imagines rivulets of water streaming down Brad's tattooed back and tracing the solid form of his muscles under his fingers. In the privacy of his well-lit bathroom, it still seems like it’s too much, too exposed and too close to base; these thoughts are far too wrong to be having for a male soon-to-be ex-subordinate under his direct chain of command, so he forces them down, blinking away the pain in his left eye. It feels like another battle he’s losing.
-
At his paddle party, Mike tells him to leave it and go home after Nate nearly face-plants himself into grass bending over to pick up an empty beer bottle in his backyard, helping with clean-ups.
Most of the Marines have already said their goodbyes and left. He finds himself drunk and exhausted and not wanting to leave, feeling more protective of his men than ever. Still uncertain and restless with his life and the Corps and his decision, he feels more at peace.
“Let’s get you back, sir.“ Brad steps out of the house holding his paddle, looking at him with a seemingly all-seeing scrutinize, probably under Gunny’s order to make sure their mighty ex-platoon commander doesn’t die in a car crash in California. His face is half obscured in the shade, expression unreadable.
Getting up, Nate slurs out another half-hearted attempt to correct the “sir” and wonders if Brad understands. Why he has to leave. On the porch Brad looks at him across the yard with an unwavering gaze, paddle held out steadily. He has the same casual look with such easy conviction, and Nate is suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, something tugging at his heart.
Not averting his eyes, Nate silently walks over and takes it, his head and back as straight as he can manage, feeling light-headed again as he moves. They are alone now. It seems poignant and for some reason more distinctive to him than earlier in the room when Brad has passed it in the circle. Cool breeze sweep over them, and on this lovely Friday night Nate can’t help but feels empty inside. The most meaningful year of his life is over.
-
He rarely remembers anything significant from his dreams. They always seem to be some grotesque and generous combination of civilians dying and his Marines getting shot or blown up drifting aimlessly through a never-ending desert. In these dreams he panics, too weak to protect his men, to do the right thing. He wakes up feeling lost and strangely disconnected from the impulsive and determined hard-ass Lieutenant during the invasion; the agitation never quite goes away afterwards. It seems that there are something more important for him to go back to, yet he can’t seem to figure it out.
He starts writing. About whatever happened in Iraq, about his dreams, and probably too much about Brad. It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise; he still inexplicably freezes up when he reads it again. It feels like a confession.
After spending probably longer than healthy trying to fix it he takes his inevitable defeat, deleting the entirety of what he has written the night before, and decides that he can always write again when he’s not feeling like a teenage girl with her first diary despairing over an impossible crush. There are something bigger to do than dwelling on false possibilities and wishful fucking thinkings.
-
He gets woken up by his alarm with the fading tingle left on his lips after dreaming of Brad for the first time since Iraq: he leans over Nate in his seat in the Humvee parked outside that cigarette factory in Baghdad, calloused fingers buried in his hair, his presence warm and comforting. He smells like soap, cheap liquor, and a thin sheen of sweat. Nate breathes, reaches out unseeingly and grips -
In his tiny room in Cambridge, thousands of miles to England, arid smell of desert has faded. He exhales forcefully, eyes fixed at the ceiling in the darkness, and lets go.