He understands, which is why he limits his contact to an occasional letter or phone call. The only people he's seen since Iraq are Poke, because he showed up in England on Brad's doorstep, and Ray, because it was the only way he could get him to shut up. Which doesn't do anything to explain what the hell he's doing loitering on the outskirts of Harvard University, staring up at an old brownstone converted into student apartments.

He's not sure how long he's been standing there, though he's surprised no one's called the cops on him. His hood is pulled down almost to his eyes, and he needs to make a fucking decision. What he'd like is for someone to give him an order.

"Brad?"

He swallows hard, cursing under his breath, even though relief floods through him like heat. "Hey, LT." He turns and stops, the heat turning to stone in his gut.

Nate's grinning happily, hurrying toward Brad. He looks just like he did, though his hair is longer and slightly shaggy and, for the most part, he doesn't look like he could fall asleep any minute, no matter how loud the fucking mortars are. The biggest difference though is the girl at his side, hand tight in Nate's grip. "Jesus." Nate reaches him and releases the girl's hand, enveloping Brad in a hug.

"Fuck, LT. Send you off to college and now you're some hippie, touchy-feely fucking liberal?" He ruffles his fingers through Nate's long hair. "You're probably jacking off Democrats on the weekend, aren't you?"

The girl blushes and Nate rolls his eyes, pulling back to look Brad over. "You look good."

Brad shrugs and glances at the girl. "Sorry."

"Oh. Sorry. Brad, this is Danielle. Dani, this is Brad Colbert, one of my Marines from Iraq."

She smiles and moves closer to Nate. "Nice to meet you, Brad."

"You too." He curls his hand around his phone again, surprised it hasn't cracked from the pressure of his grip. He reaches up with his other hand to the strap of his rucksack. "Well, I don't want to keep you. I was just in town, so I thought I'd stop by, say hello."

"Keep us? Don't be ridiculous." Nate tilts his head toward the brownstone. "Come inside."

"No. I really can't." Brad's voice holds a kind of finality. Next time he'll fucking listen to his instincts. "I'm meeting up with some friends."

"You have friends here?"

"Nate?" Dani glances up at Brad and then at Nate. "I'm going to go inside." Another glance at Brad and she takes a step away. "Nice to meet you."

"You too." He nods and rocks back on his heels, watching Nate squeeze her hand before she goes. "I should go too."

"Brad." Nate's voice is stern, the telltale hint of command in it, and Brad straightens, too many years of service ingrained for him not to. "Let's go get a beer."

He wants to say yes, which is a clear indication he should say no. "Yeah. Sure."

Nate reaches for Brad's bag, tugging it off his shoulder before Brad can protest. "Stow this here."

"No. I'll keep it. Find a place to crash."

"No, you won't. You'll stow your gear here and stay with us."

"Us, huh?" Brad keeps telling himself to tell Nate no and mean it, but he's not listening. "I don't think the other half of your 'us' particularly wants a rabid devil dog messing with the good furniture."

"It's my good furniture, and you're staying. That's an order."

"You're a bossy little fuck."

"Sixta was a bossy fuck. I'm good with command."

Brad snorts a laugh. "You know, in civilian life, people don't have to do what you say."

"They don't," Nate agrees as he shoulder's Brad's bag and takes the steps three at a time. "But I make them want to."

They're doing shots when Nate's phone rings. Brad downs his drink and ignores Nate's look as he moves away from the table and outside the bar for quiet. He reaches for Nate's shot and downs it as well, watching him through the plate glass, his profile silhouetted in neon orange. He can tell she's not happy from the way Nate's reacting, his posture stiff and his mouth pursed.

Brad signals for another round, ordering beers as well as shots. He turns away from the window, focusing instead on the dark brown bottle in his hands. He's halfway through it when Nate comes back in, sliding onto his stool. Nate raises his eyebrow at the fresh drinks, picking up the beer.

Brad shrugs. "Not trying to be any trouble."

"You're a Marine, Brad. You thrive on being trouble."

"To desert countries that don't know any better. Not to commanding officers."

"Well, I'm actually not either of those."

"Nate, you know how people would ask you when you became a Marine and you'd tell them you'd always been one, you just didn't know it until you got to boot camp?"

"Yeah."

"Or how you're not actually a civilian right now, you're an ex-Marine?"

"Yeah, yeah." Nate shakes his head and smiles, taking a drink. "Once your CO, always your CO."

"Sorry. Just the way of the world."

"Regardless." Nate holds his gaze. "You're not any trouble, and you're not in the way."

"Bros before hos, sir?"

"She doesn't mind, Brad."

"You told me after Iraq that you wouldn't lie to me, sir."

Nate looks down at his shot glass then tosses it back, meeting Brad's gaze evenly. "She doesn't like thinking about it."

"Why? It's not like you're ever going to go back to it. You did your time."

"She says she doesn't see that side of me."

"That side." Brad nods. He knows the side they mean. He doesn't have that side. He is that side. Cold-blooded. A killer. The Iceman.

"It's like a lot of people. They want us out there keeping them safe, protecting their way of life. They just don't want to consider the particulars."

"So she just pretends it didn't happen?"

"Something like that."

Brad drains his shot and pulls out his wallet. "All the more reason for me to get on finding a place to stay."

Nate sighs, clearly frustrated. He takes a long swallow of beer and glares at Brad. "Why are you here in Boston?"

"Just had some leave."

"And you came here. Why?"

"Doesn't matter."

"You came to see me, Brad."

Brad doesn't answer, glaring at the dregs of his own beer to avoid Nate's gaze. "I should have called."

"This kind of surprise I like, Brad." He kicks Brad's boot. "You want another?"

"Nah. 'm good."

"She went back to her place." Nate kicks his boot again until Brad looks at him. "I've got the bottle of Glen Fidditch you sent. Unopened."

Brad shrugs. "Yeah. Okay."

"Good." Nate smiles. "And you're staying the night." When Brad starts to respond, he shakes his head. "No arguments, Sergeant."

Nate's sprawled on the floor in front of the couch and Brad is draped across the length of it. There's sports on the TV with the sound turned off, and they're three quarters of the way through the bottle, both of them at the point where they actually can talk about Iraq, but drunk enough that they don't want to. Instead, Nate's regaling Brad with stories of his liberal classmates, trying not to smile as Brad blasts them, offering Nate a string of insults worthy of Ray Person.

"People want things - protection, freedom, democracy." Brad leans his head against the back of the couch, visibly relaxed. "They just don't want to pay for it or, more precisely, they don't want to think about the cost. You've got these kids who haven't even seen the real world studying to make the policies dictating it." He drains his glass and shrugs. "How do you put up with that shit?"

"It takes all kinds, Brad." Nate's smiling at him and it makes Brad uncomfortable, even more than sitting across from Poke and his wife and kid or Ray and his wife. Nate's smile fades and he frowns slightly. "What?"

"Nothing."

"It's never nothing, Brad."

"Just thinking about this world. How I don't fit in it."

"Bullshit." Nate straightens and pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the couch, looking down at Brad, propped on the armrest. "You're more than just the façade, Brad. You can do anything you want, fit in anywhere you want."

"Now I cry bullshit, sir."

"Stop it." Nate laughs and shakes his head, trying to lighten the mood with a sharp jab to Brad's stomach. "I can't believe you came to Boston."

"I shouldn't have. You have a life here. A girlfriend. A future. You're going to change the world. Change the Marines. Change war."

"No, I'm not."

"You are." Brad reaches out, his fingers grazing over the long fall of Nate's eyelashes against his cheek. Heat coils in his stomach and his defenses struggle up from where he's drowned them with booze. "I can see it in your eyes."

Nate swallows hard, his breath catching in his throat. "Brad."

"We're very, very drunk." Brad pulls his hand away slowly, curling it into a fist and forcing it down to his side. "We should get some sleep."

"No." Nate turns, his thigh pressed against Brad's. "No."

"Nate." Brad nods toward the bedroom. "You're going to bed and I'm going to sleep on the couch and we're going to sleep." To keep Nate from responding, he lightly presses his knuckle against Nate's lips. "Goodnight, sir."

He watches Nate go into the other room before he angles off the couch, carrying the glasses into the kitchen. There's a faint light coming from the outside and painting the linoleum a pale yellow. Brad rinses the glasses methodically and leaves them to dry on the drain rack. It's such a unnecessary thing that Brad can't help staring at it, tracing the lines of it with his finger, watching water drip off the glass and down the plastic slope. This is a life he doesn't understand. This is the kind of life that he doesn't know how to live.

Grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, he goes back into the living room and flips through the channels, settling on something mindless and disconnected from his life. He doesn't sleep much, even now, too far beyond tired to actually relax enough to let himself sleep more than a few hours here and there. He forces himself to stay on the couch, not moving around to pick up the artifacts of Nate's new life. He can't help but lean forward though and thumb through Nate's textbook on government and international economy, raising an eyebrow as he reads one of the pages.

Nate sits down next to him and Brad sighs softly. "You're supposed to be in bed."

"Yeah. You're supposed to be sleeping too, and you can't tell me the couch is uncomfortable because I've seen you sleep in a hole in the ground with shit exploding all around you." Nate casts a sidelong glance at Brad and reaches over and steals his beer, drinking a long pull from it. "If you need something to lull you to sleep, I could explain socio-economic theory in third world countries for you."

Brad smiles at the book, watching Nate's hands as the hold the bottle, fingers curved around the neck. "It's really good to see you, Nate."

Nate turns his head to the side, cocking a slight grin at Brad. "I really can't believe you came to Boston. This is like land of the liberals, Brad. It doesn't get bluer than Boston."

"I can't leave my commanding officer to be outnumbered, sir. I figure two of us versus hordes of them would even up the odds." Brad leans back against the couch, slouching down. His shirt rides up his sides, exposing his skin to the cool night air coming in through the open window. He reaches out, his fingers grazing Nate's forearm. "Nate."

Nate turns his head even more, looking back at Brad. "She's just…"

"She's just the kind of life you should have."

"I don't care about what I should have, Brad. I care about what I want. What I need." Nate glances down at Brad's fingers against his arm and then back to Brad's face. "Why'd you come to Boston, Brad?"

"I'm going back to Iraq." Nate's slight smile disappears and Brad shrugs. "I'm a devil dog, sir. That doesn't change, even if you dress it up in crimson and gray." He rubs the sleeve of Nate's Harvard t-shirt between his fingers. "But I'm not even close to like you, sir. I can't walk away."

"And I had to."

"Like you said. There are all kinds of people." Brad leans back against the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him. "I look at this life, and I don't know what it means, and I don't get it, sir. I mean, I lived before the war, right? I surfed and dove and hiked and climbed and drank and fucked and trained and went to the fucking library and hacked computers and all that shit, right? So why can't I think about that right now? Why does all this look just as fucking foreign as Iraqi huts and fucking sniper alleyways?"

"So what changed?"

"You mean besides killing and almost getting killed in a tin-plated Humvee?" Brad smirks and rubs his hand over his hair. It's getting long for him, and he needs to take a razor to it. "I don't know, sir."

"You know what I think changed?" Nate shifts and leans back against the arm of the couch, looking at Brad seriously as faint rosy slips of light sneak in through the open window. "I think you're afraid."

"Afraid?" Brad's brow furrows. He understands fear. He's well acquainted with it from every dive, from every bullet. He's been swallowed whole by fear and fought his way out because that's what he's trained to do. "Afraid of what?"

"That life isn't enough."

"You're going all Rene Descartes on me."

"You're a warrior. You're one of the few people I can say that about without thinking it's lip service or bullshit. You've had a taste of it for real now, honest battle, living by your wits despite the witless others leading you."

"Present company excluded."

Nate shrugs and tugs at a string dangling from the hem of his shirt. It's incongruous for Nate, not quite perfect and Brad can't look away as Nate winds the grey thread around his finger. "You're a warrior, Brad. And what's a warrior without a war?"

"You know, you sound like you're going to start quoting Yoda, sir, and I don't think I can let you live if you do that." Nate laughs out loud, the sound brighter than the rising sun. Brad smiles crookedly, just one corner of his mouth going up, inordinately pleased with Nate's reaction. "I hope you're laughing at the Yoda thing, because if you're laughing at my ability to kill you, well, we're going to have to have words."

"Please tell me you don't look at me and see some small, shriveled green puppet with big eyes."

"No." Brad doesn't stop smiling, but something changes and shifts somewhere. "That's not what I see."

Nate seems to feel it too, because he stops laughing, tilting his head slightly. "There's always a place for you, Brad, even if there feels like there isn't. As long as I'm around, there's always a place for you."

"That sounds awfully liberal of you, sir. Maybe this whole Harvard thing was a bad idea." Brad sets his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers barely brushing Nate's shoulder. "Of course, when you're President or some such shit, you're going to need Secret Service guys. That would not necessarily be outside the realm of what First Recon does."

"After Iraq, nothing is outside the realm of what First Recon does or can do." Nate reaches up with his hand and runs his fingers lightly over Brad's wrist. "I mean it."

"I know you do, sir." Brad nods once. "I also know you have class in three hours, so you should get some shut eye while you can."

"You're not going to be gone when I wake up, are you?"

"If you're thinking I'm some sort of dream, sir, I'm going to have to really question your subconscious." Brad turns his hand so that Nate's fingers are grazing his palm. "Not to mention start wondering if you're indulging in some sort of pharmaceutical indulgences that would put Person's Ripped Fuel obsession to shame."

"Answer the question, Brad."

Brad meets his gaze for a long time and then nods. "Yeah, Nate. I'll be here when you wake up."

Nate's sitting on the edge of the couch again when Brad opens his eyes, but he actually looks refreshed, so Brad has to assume he got some sleep. He's also freshly showered and dressed in worn jeans and a brown sweater that makes his eyes flash like fire. Brad sniffs and blinks and straightens, rubbing the back of his skull with his hand. "Morning."

"You want coffee?"

"Is that really a question?" Brad arches his back, his hands braced on his hips until he feels the pressure build and break. He stands up and stretches, fingertips brushing Nate's ceiling. "I should buy you breakfast."

"I have food."

"Yeah," Brad follows Nate into the kitchen and snags one of the stools, curving his foot around the legs. "I'm sure you do. But, when I'm not starving on one MRE a day, I eat a lot."

"I think I can handle your appetites, Colbert." He sets a cup of coffee in front of Brad and leans back against the counter, picking up his own cup and sipping from it. "Unfortunately, I have to admit I already had a bowl of Wheaties."

"Wheaties, huh?"

Nate nods toward the top of the refrigerator where the orange box is sitting, Andre Agassi on the cover. "Help yourself."

"Yeah." Brad drinks more of the coffee, the slightly bitter taste a sharp reminder that Nate hasn't left all of the Marines behind. "You still make shit coffee, sir."

"Yeah, well, I have to wake up somehow." Nate drains his and rinses out his cup. "I can skip class."

"No you can't." Brad doesn't look at Nate, reaching across the counter to snag the morning paper. He ignores the news and flips to the technology section. "You have to go and get educated so you can get us out of this fucked up Jihad nightmare."

"Somehow I doubt I'm going to be the one ending the war, Brad."

"I don't." He skims the paper, making a 'huh' noise. "There an electronics shop around here?"

"Yeah. I'll leave you directions." Nate grabs a pad off the counter, sketching out a quick map. Brad watches with a wry grin, trying to get rid of it as Nate looks up suddenly.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're grinning."

"I'm not." Brad presses his lips together, finding it harder and harder not to laugh given Nate's annoyed gaze. "Okay, I am. It's just…kittens, sir?"

"Kittens?"

Brad grabs the notepad and turns it around so he can look at it better, the precise map and directions spoiled by the big-eyed kittens on the top of the paper. "Kittens."

"It's…" Nate smiles. "It's Dani's. Sorry." He rips the map off just below the kittens and hands it to Brad. "Try to remember you have to haul everything you buy back to England with you, okay? I'd hate to come home and find that you've bought out the entire store and I'm going to be stuck with the shipping bill."

"Don't worry. Nowadays all my technological needs are met with very small gadgets." He sets the map on the paper. "You mind if I shower?"

"Make yourself at home. I'll meet you at one for lunch if you want? There's a good Greek place not too far from here."

"I won't be…" Brad stops, unsure how to continue his sentence tactfully, which surprises him that he even cares.

"No. You won't be." Nate opens one of the drawers and digs out a ring of keys, tossing it to Brad. "No pets. No parties and, if you have to bring a girl back to have sex with her, change the sheets."

"I…"

"That last part was a joke," Nate assures him before Brad can get anything more out.

"I don't have to change the sheets?" Brad swallows at the look Nate gives him, feeling the far too familiar heat rising up again.

"No." Nate smiles and shakes his head, all innocence. "Don't find a girl."

Brad levers himself off the stool as Nate heads out to classes, padding barefoot down the hall to the bathroom. The room smells like Nate's aftershave or whatever it is that seems to cling to Brad's shirt from the couch. He takes a deep breath then tugs his shirt over his head and tosses it aside, turning on the faucet and dunking his head beneath the stream of water. He rubs his hands through his hair then looks at himself in the mirror, blue eyes too bright in the fluorescent light. Still rubbing his hand through his hair, he heads back out to the living room, water dripping down his bare chest. He bends over to get his kit out of his bag, straightening at the soft sound of movement.

"Nate, your ass is supposed to be in class, not here." He straightens and looks to the left, eyes skirting up Dani's long legs. She's wearing jeans that hug her slim curves and a t-shirt that has to be Nate's from the way it fits her, and a leather jacket he knows belongs to Nate. "Oh. Hey. Nate's not here." He curses himself silently. Chances are she knows her boyfriend isn't home. Chances are she's there to see him. "But you knew that."

"No. I thought he might have cut classes to spend time with you." She shrugs and looks toward the bedroom then at the throw blanket still askew on the couch from where Brad had thrown it back earlier to follow Nate. "How long are you staying?"

"I fly out on Monday." He can feel the water trailing down his spine, pooling in the small of his back before sliding past the waistband of his jeans. "I'm heading out soon, trying to find a place to stay."

"You can stay here." She shakes her head. "If you don't, Nate will get upset and brood." Crossing her arms over her chest, she looks Brad over, her eyes appraising. He gets the feeling that she disapproves of him on more levels than just what part he played in Nate's life, especially as her eyes graze over the hint of color at his hips, the edges of his tattoo fading like sunrise at the curve of his skin. "He's got enough to deal with without that." She grabs the blanket he'd used and starts folding it, keeping her hands busy. Her full concentration is on the fold and smooth motions. "Why are you here?"

"Just stopped to see Nate before I ship out again."

Her mouth purses. "That war."

"Yeah, well, not talking about it and not thinking about it doesn't make it go away." Brad rakes his hand through his short hair again then shoves it into the pocket of his jeans, the other curling tightly in the canvas of his kit bag. "Don't worry, though. I'm not trying to drag him back with me."

"You probably don't even know what you're fighting for, what this is all about." She shakes her head, liberal rage flushing her skin pink. "I know how you people are."

"You people?" He raises an eyebrow and straightens a little more. She grabs the pillow off the couch angrily and beats it between her hands, avoiding his gaze. "Which people is that? Marines? Republicans? Americans? Men? Was there a particular label you wanted to paint me with?" His voice is as cool as he can make it without slipping into the leveled, reasoned diatribes of the Iceman, throwing all her freedoms back in her face. This is why the real world seems wrong to him, where the rule of hate the sin and love the sinner falls apart because Brad's got a gun in his hand and every bullet that kills a civilian had to come from him - his gun, his endorsement because he carries the same weapon. "And which of those groups, those people do you think Nate doesn't belong to? Do you think that because he doesn't wear the uniform any more that he's not that man anymore? Do you think that when he put down his gun, he was absolved of all the crimes you're standing here laying at my feet?"

Brad shakes his head and drops his kit into his bag, tugging a clean shirt out and pulling it on. It's easy to snag the duffel and his jacket and dismiss her with a look on his way out the door.

"If you can find it in your liberal heart to do me a favor, tell Nate I'll give him a call."

He doesn't go to the Greek place for lunch, and he finds different electronic store, just in case Nate thinks to look there. It's easy for a Recon Marine to find someone, harder when the person he's looking for is also a Recon Marine, and one who doesn't want to be found.

He knows the electronics will give him away. Nate knows him well enough to know he'll only go to the good places, the high end ones that give him what he pays for instead of whatever mega-monolithic chain store has the best sales this week. Hotels nearby are scarce enough, and he imagines he makes a good enough impression that if Nate wants to find him, he will. Even so, there's no sound outside his door and no knock as it gets later, and so he channels his anger and frustration into his soldering gun and tools, focusing hard enough that a headache builds behind his eyes long before midnight.

He keeps working, not caring that his eyes are tired and parts of him he doesn't want to catalogue hurt. This was what he expected, and he should have known better than to let his hopes lift simply because he wanted to believe things were actually going his way for once. He hasn't eaten in hours and hunger is starting to gnaw at his stomach, growling loud enough to drown out whatever inane paid programming is yammering on his TV. He ignores it, because that's what he's trained to do, but his stomach reminds him that he's not in the middle of the fucking desert, so maybe he could buy a fucking hamburger or something. He sighs and rolls his neck, listening to the joints crack and snap, feeling the muscles burn as he pulls and stretches them. Boosting himself off the floor, he grabs his jacket and opens the door, stopping at the sight of Nate, leaning against the opposite wall.

"Hey."

"I've been standing here for an hour."

"You could have knocked. I haven't taken the Marines' mind-reading course yet." His mouth twitches and he wants to smile, but Nate has that look and, denials to the contrary, Brad does know how to read Nate's mind. "I couldn't stay."

"Yes. You could." Nate doesn't move, his posture defensive enough that Brad feels defensive as well, like he's done something wrong. "But I get why you didn't."

"Did she tell you I'd call?"

"She did. I figured that meant that maybe I'd hear from you after your next tour of Iraq was through. Or maybe the tour after that. Or maybe you'd call Ray who'd call Poke who'd call Mike Wynn who'd call me and tell me that you'd settled down about six years back and now had four kids and a pet turtle."

"A turtle, sir?"

"Do I have to stand in the hallway all night?"

"Technically it's morning."

"Brad."

He watches Nate's face flush as he closes his eyes, temper boiling just below the surface. "Yeah. Sorry." He steps back and tosses his jacket back over the chair, shutting the door behind Nate once he's inside. "You hungry? I can order a pizza."

"No, I ate…" Nate glances at his watch and frowns. "Okay, I ate about eight hours ago. Yeah. Food would be good."

Brad leaves Nate to walk around the room while Brad calls the number on the card by the phone. Pizza seems safer, not quite a real meal, comforting without obligation. He doesn't really know what Nate likes or how, given that most of the meals they've had together were either slopped onto trays or squeezed out of silver foil packets, but he sticks with scrambled eggs and calls it good. Nate's looking down at the project Brad's working on and frowning, his hands in his jacket pockets and his shoulders hunched. "You left."

Brad straddles the arm of the chair, his long legs on either side for balance. He's not sure if it's a question really, if Nate expects an answer.

"I told you there was always a place for you, and you left."

Brad looks down at his feet, his toes long and thin and sickly pale from too many days in boots. No matter how much time he spends barefoot or in the sun or on his board, they stay the same color. "I'm here for five days, Nate. The rest of your life, that's going to go on without me. I don't have the right to fuck up whatever it is you have going on."

"You…" Nate shakes his head and paces the small room, refusing to look at Brad. "You are so fucking stubborn, so fucking sure you're right. Maybe I want you to fuck up my life, Brad, did you ever think about that?"

"I know you're trying to be supportive here, sir, but 'fuck up my life' isn't exactly the terminology I'd use." He watches Nate move, barely concealed frustration darkening his green eyes when he flicks them in Brad's direction. "What good does it do to fuck up your life for a week, Nate? You're going to have to deal with all of this when I'm gone. Your life is this now. School and politics and economics and girlfriends and showering every day and smelling like cologne and eating real meals and…and not fucking MREs and sleeping in graves and wearing the same stinking, sweat-crusted camouflage and bullshit leaders telling you to risk your life for a fucking diversionary tactic. This is what I'm talking about, Nate."

"So you just let some girl run you off?"

"Not some girl, Nate, your girlfriend. Your…How can you be so fucking clueless?" Brad grabs Nate's wrist. "You're fucking Ivy League, Nate. Stop playing stupid."

Nate looks down at Brad's hand on his wrist and then up Brad's arm until he's looking Brad in the eye. "I left the Corps. I didn't leave you."

"I am the fucking Corps, Nate."

"You went to England!"

"What reason was there to stay?"

"You're going back."

Brad shifts his grip on Nate's wrist, his thumb stroking against the pounding pulse. "It's my job, Nate. It's who I am." Millions of dollars of training keep them silent, no sound from either of them, even though he can see the rapid rise and fall of Nate's chest. They stay motionless for a long time, staring at each other. Nate opens his mouth to speak and Brad jerks him forward, both of them tumbling back onto the chair. Nate sprawls against Brad, half on and half off the chair, and Brad can hear him breathing now, can feel Nate's chest moving in rhythm with his.

Nate's hand presses against the chair beside Brad's head and braces himself, lifting off Brad slightly. They remain like that, neither moving, neither speaking, until Nate huffs a frustrated breath. "You're more than just that."

"Not as long as I'm enlisted." Brad's hands settle on Nate's hips, fisted in his shirt to keep them still. "You've moved on, Nate, and I'm going back. Nothing changes that."

"Why did you come to Boston then? To make sure? To…torment me?" Nate's hand fists against the chair, his nails scratching at the fabric. "You came here to see me, Brad. Why?"

Brad slides his hands up Nate's back and pulls him down, closing the distance between them, his mouth hungry for Nate, his tongue sliding past his parted lips. Nate groans in response and he settles against Brad, his hand sliding from the chair to Brad's jaw, tracing it with his thumb. Brad's hips angle upward, meeting the steady downward roll of Nate's. He slides his hands down to catch Nate's shirt and pushes it up, his palms sliding on Nate's skin. It's warm and smooth beneath his hands, and Brad can feel every hitch of Nate's breath. He splays one hand at the small of Nate's back as the other slides up his spine.

Nate pulls back enough to breathe, his lips swollen and damp from their kiss. Brad licks his own lips as he looks up at him, his breath caught in his chest. "Brad?"

"Am I out of line, sir?" His voice is barely above a whisper. "In your eyes, that is. Not in the eyes of the Corps or…am I out of line, Nate?"

Nate shakes his head, his thumb moving from Brad's chin back to the slope of his jaw leading to his ear and then back. "I've been waiting for this. For you." He leans in and kisses Brad slowly, exploring his mouth. His tongue tastes the faint trace of mint from Brad's toothpaste, the rough hint of coffee. "Last night, I wanted…"

Brad kisses him again before wrapping his arm around Nate's waist and straightening, hefting him as he stands. "You've gained weight, sir."

"I don't recall you manhandling me back in Iraq. How would you know?"

"Because, sir." Brad carries him the short distance to the bed, dropping Nate down on the mattress. "I paid very close attention."

Nate looks up at him, more in his eyes than Brad thinks he can handle. There's too much emotion, too much possession, too much pride. "I'll kick your ass if you get killed over there."

"If I get killed over there, sir, you have my permission." He kneels on the edge of the bed and braces himself over Nate on the mattress. "What about Dani?"

"Dani and I had a parting of the ways. I got tired of her insulting my friends. Insulting me. Tired of her looking at me and only seeing the things she wanted to see and pretending the rest didn't exist."

"I get the feeling you're trying to tell me something."

Nate reaches up, his fingers smoothing along Brad's jaw. "That's because you're very smart, Sergeant. Almost smart enough to be an officer."

Brad kisses him softly, almost carefully, his voice teasing over Nate's lips. "You know, there's no reason to be insulting."