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It’s a Monday when Nate decides he’s going to ask Brad Colbert to go steady; he’s nine years old and he’s not really sure what ‘going steady’ is but it’s what all the big kids are doing. Watching Brad’s face fall when Jenny Anderson pushes him away as he tries to put his arm around her makes something inside Nate hurt. He’d much rather have Brad smile because Nate thinks Brad Colbert has the best smile in the world.
It’s a Tuesday when Brad finds out about Jen and Matt and he doesn’t really know what to do about that other than to get on his bike and ride as fast as he can for as long as he can – or until he finds himself at Nate’s house, exhausted and red faced. Nate takes one look at him and steps back to let him inside the house, silently leading him upstairs to his room where they play COD until Brad falls asleep on Nate’s bed.
It’s a Wednesday when Nate packed his stuff for college – Brad sitting on his bed absently throwing a tennis ball against the wall. He’s trying to ignore that white pain in his chest and listen to Nate’s excited chatter about Dartmouth’s excellent library, but all he can think is Nate is leaving and how it hurts way more than when Jen dumped him. It takes him a few seconds to realise that Nate has stopped talking and is staring intently at him. He watches those green eyes widen slightly and then Nate’s suddenly moving towards him, throwing his arms around Brad’s neck and holding Brad close. He can’t see Nate’s face but the slight trembling of Nate’s frame tell Brad he’s not alone in his thoughts.
It’s a Thursday when Brad calls Nate and asks him to look after his bike while he’s deployed and Nate swallows the lump in his throat and tells him that he’ll be in Oceanside next week and that he’ll pick up his bike, water his plants and collect his mail. He listens to Brad’s eloquent response to the thought of him having plants like some fucking retarded liberal dick suck and tries to get his pulse under control. He knew Brad was being deployed, the date circled neatly in red on his calendar, but knowing and knowing are two very different things. He wants to tell Brad what he’s decided to do now that the academic year is drawing to a close – but he can hear the excitement in Brad’s voice as he tells Nate about the training the platoons’ been doing the last three months and he can’t really bring himself to ruin the mood.
It’s a Friday when Nate realises he’s about to be transferred to Recon – specifically 1st Recon with Brad – and he just knows he’s going to be assigned to Brad’s platoon. While one part of him is relived to be going there’s a significantly bigger part of him that is dreading having to tell Brad – the verbal dressing down Brad delivered upon hearing that Nate had already passed OCS is forever burnt into Nate’s memory. But, if there was one thing SERE had taught him, it was that nothing could be as bad as SERE – so he reached for his phone, manned the fuck up and punched in the numbers he knew off by heart. Taking a deep breath he waited for the call to connect.
It’s a Saturday when Brad drinks eighteen beers too many and drunk dials Nate. He knows, fuck the whole platoon knows, Nate’s leaving and he just wants, well, he just wants. Nate answers the phone on the second ring and Brad finds himself unable to say what he talked himself into wanting to say. So, Nate listens to about twenty minutes of Brad’s well reasoned argument that country music should be banned, how fucking retarded Ray is, what’s wrong with LeBron, that he wishes he’d kissed Nate before he left for college, that Command is so fucked up that he’s accepted the transfer to England, that the beer here is excellent but he’s going to move onto bourbon now – before he asks Brad what bar he’s in and tells him he’ll be there in fifteen.
It’s a Sunday when Nate wakes up naked in Brad’s massive bed, fucked out and sore in all the good places, with a long strong arm across his chest and Brad’s lips ghosting across his shoulder. He smiles as he presses back into the solid chest and thinks about nothing more than just this – the two of them here finally.