Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/894996.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Generation_Kill
  Relationship:
      Brad_Colbert/Nate_Fick
  Character:
      Brad_Colbert, Nate_Fick
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_High_School, Characters_Under_18
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-23 Words: 1989
****** young and restless ******
by eudaimon
Summary
     Matilda is the sort of small town that makes a boy feel like he's
     dying - towards the end of high school, they both want to escape in
     different ways.
Notes
     Like most stories, this is based on a request by my beloved Jen, for
     a high school AU. I've never written a High School AU. This is what I
     ended up with. I meant for it to be longer, but it will go no further
     than this, so I present this in the spirit in which it was meant. As
     a vignette. Jen is still sort of (but not quite) the Gunny Wynn to my
     Nate.
Sometimes, you can almost hear it - the way a town like this might hold its
breath. Mathilda isn't much for anyone to write home about: a dusty little bit
of nothing, hunkered in around the high school and the football field; a few
factories, cradled in fields.
Sometimes, Nate feels like he's suffocating in his own skin.
A thing he knows: that there has to be more than this.
He has this habit of underlining words in pencil, turning over the corners of
pages so that he doesn't lose his place. A month or so ago, an English teacher
set a stack of books in front of him. Read these, Mr Fick, she'd said. At least
one of them will change your life.
At this age, it's difficult to tell whether he wants to fuck her or just be her
(or someone like her) by the time he's older.
And he doesn't want to be that cliche, that one who read Kerouac and found
himself but there is something beguiling about it. Still, it's Hemingway who
really gives him pause. Hemingway and Heller and Iain M. Banks.
He likes the biggest ideas, set alongside the quieter ones.
In a book, he underlines it. I know now that there is no one thing that is true
- it is all true.
One way or another, it's what he wants to believe.
*
Brad Colbert's favourite time to run is in the early evening, when the track is
quiet and the only noise is the football team running drills in the violet
dusk. He likes to push himself, to feel that moment when his brain shuts off
and his body takes over, the pull in the long muscles of his thighs and the
ache in his lungs, the throb of his pulse, and, over and over, one thought.
Faster.
It's this town - this stupid little town and this fucking school and, yeah,
he's supposed to feel privileged and yeah, he's supposed to be getting a strong
start in life but, sometimes, he still gets sidetracked by birds overhead, the
way they wheel and dive. Still running, he watches one bird all but fall out of
the sky, catching itself at the last minute and diving back upwards into all of
that aching blue.
(A girl who though she was in love with him once told him that she couldn't
decide if his eyes were like the ocean or the sky; it had been hard work not to
laugh at her, at the time. Now, she's in love with someone else, all change,
but Brad still finds himself distracted by the birds).
He stops, a foot or two shy of the finish line, bending over his knees as he
catches his breath. He's got the presence of mind to keep moving, bouncing,
stretching. You can't just stop dead; your muscles remember when you let them
down. Your body's the last one to forgive you, in the end.
"Who are you racing, Brad? Who are you trying to beat?"
He hadn't even realised that anyone was there. It takes a moment to find him,
but there he is - perched at the top of the bleachers, all scruffy hair and
tattered running shoes. Nate Fick, with his battered paperbacks and his bitten
nails. Brad's always been peripherally aware of him: sitting four rows back in
class, always doodling on the covers of his notebooks but also ready with an
answer for any question; reading (but not actually eating) through lunch;
getting to detentions five minutes later than everyone else and sitting staring
out of the window, watching the world go by.
He finds himself grinning.
"That's a pretty heavy question, Fick," he says, shrugging his shoulders,
trying to loosen them up. They're not friends, not exactly, but they have
talked, swapping notes in the library, shoved into corners at parties. Brad
knows enough to know that he likes Nate, pretty instinctively. It doesn't hurt
that he's pretty fucking hot, too - a fact which is only highlighted when Nate
stands up and stretches his hands up over his head, flashing the thinnest strip
of pale skin between his jeans and the worn hem of his shirt. Brad's never been
particularly worried about the fact that he seems just as drawn to guys as he
is to girls. Fuck it - his body is a temple, and it wants what it wants.
"Come on, man," says Nate, bending to pick up his shitty backpack, slinging
over his shoulder. "Let's go."
Brad wonders when they became people who go anywhere together, but he doesn't
ask. He falls into step with Nate, instead. Right then, it's easier to follow.
(It doesn't even occur to him until later that Nate called him Brad. Nobody
does that but his mother).
*
Hell, as it turns out, isn't quite other people, but this party is close. He
lost sight of Nate in the crowd and hour or so ago, ended up with a lap full of
half-naked, pneumatic brunette - a cheerleader, he thinks (Molly? Becky? They
all seem to blur together, and they all look Mollys and Beckys, after a while).
He doesn't really want to be here. A year ago, he'd have been happy here,
drinking warm beer, making out on someone's father's pool table. But he's
getting closer and closer to graduation, closer to having to go to school, find
a career after it. Lately, he's started talking about joining the Marines after
college, just for the look that it puts on his dad's gentle fucking face.
But who knows what comes next? He's eighteen years old. The future is a flat
line.
Outside, he finds Nate lying on the lip of the pool's blue glow. Somewhere
along the way, he's shed his hoodie, left his bag under a chair but there he
is, wearing Ray Bans in the dark. He's got his jeans pushed up over his knees,
one foot trailing in the water. The strip of skin above his waistband is
visible again, his shirt ridden up and Brad can vividly picture getting down on
hands and knees to bend and kiss it, brush fine hairs and the edge of Nate's
navel with his lips. He feels like it like a physical ache, that desire; he
shoves his hands into his pockets and makes fists instead.
"Far be it for me to impose my traditional, conservative values on your
undoubtedly Bohemian fucking spirit, Nate," he says, a smile just twitching at
the corner of his mouth, "But the party's inside."
"Fuck the party," says Nate, not lifting his head. "I'm bored of the party." He
pulls off his shades, fixing Brad with green-eyes, so clear, disconcertingly
direct. "I'm bored of all of these people. You know that most of them are never
going to make it the fuck out of Mathilda? Because why would they, right?
There's work, there's booze, there's people to fuck and when you get bored of
those people, then you just move one to the fucking right. Nobody dreams here,
Brad. Nobody believes in anything. That's the problem. Our grandparents moved
here and got stuck and we've been stuck ever since. We're halfway into our own
graves, Brad, and we don't even see it. Because safe is relative and Mathilda
is fucking safe."
He spits it out like an insult.
Brad takes a deep, centering breath.
"How much have you had to drink?"
"A lot. Not enough."
"Mmhm."
He sits down to sit on the textured ground beside Nate. On a whim, he tugs off
his battered sneakers, rolls up his jeans and sticks his feet in the water.
After a moment, Nate sits up too, so close that they're pressed together, thigh
to thigh, and all Brad can focus on is the heat of him. None of those Mollys or
Beckys prepared him for this.
"Come on," he says, nudging Nate with his shoulder because it feels like the
safest thing to do. "I'll drive you home."
"Haven't you..." Nate pauses, frowning down at the ripples that their feet are
making in the water. "Haven't you been listening to anything I've said. I
just..."
Brad nods.
"I've been listening," he says, turning his head and Nate's so close that it's
easy (so fucking easy) to lean in and graze his lips against the corner of
Nate's mouth. They're still, like that, for a moment, and then Nate pulls away
from him, all of a sudden.
"What're you doing?" Nate asks.
"I thought you wanted to..." He fumbles for the word.
"Jump," said Nate. "I want to jump."
And the pool is right there, right there, blue and wide like a stand-in for
forever. And safety? Well, safety's relative.
It's too easy to slide down into the water, tugging Nate with him. The water's
cold, and they both go under for a moment, come up kicking. The night's warm
but the water's not and Brad's immediately pushing himself in close, his body
against Nate's, chest to chest. It's Nate that leans in, Nate that kisses Brad
first. Brad's had his fair share of kisses, between the Mollys and the Beckys,
the anonymous boys and girls and the other girl, the girl he fell in love with
when he was thirteen years old, the one that he's been learning how to not be
in love with for a year, now. A broken heart, he's learning, is like any other
scar; it thickens and loses sensitivity, in the end.
They kiss like that, both of them anchored to the side of the pool by
overlapping hands. Nate's thumb grazes along along the length of his. It's only
a little touch but it goes straight to his dick. The water makes him feel
displaced, like he's separate from his own skin. Nate kisses like he loves it,
like he's desperate for it. Brad doesn't remember ever seeing him with anyone,
not boys or girls, not at school or parties. Nate's got friends, sure - Brad's
seen him hanging around with Tim Bryan, with Mike Wynn, with Stafford and
Lilley. It's not like Nate's a loner, but Brad finds that he's just realising
that he doesn't really know anything about him at all.
He'll worry about it later.
Wet denim is impossible to figure out. In the end, he settles for pushing his
knee between Nate's thighs, pinning him against the wall of the pool so that
they can grind awkwardly, squirming together, breathing harder, kissing deeper
until Nate breaks the kiss with an abrupt yelp. It takes Brad another couple of
moments, keeping Nate there, right there, pushing into the heat of his body
until he comes, right there in his pants, in the pool, his face pushed into the
soaked curve of Nate's neck.
He doesn't want it to be awkward, but it sort of is. Inevitably, maybe - who
does this? Brad hauls himself up out of the water and then bends, holding out
his hand to help Nate out. The joy's kind of gone out of it, now that they're
just wet, a mess in his shorts, the breeze turning chill. He does lean in and
kiss Nate again, damp and off-centre.
"I'll drive you," he says, but Nate shakes his head.
"I'll call," he says, bending to pick up his shades.
It isn't until he's gone, melted into the chaos in the house, that Brad
realises that he doesn't think that Nate's got his number.
Fuck.
"What the fuck have you been doin', Homes?" Ray Person appears, skinny and tan
under his quiff, arms spangled with tattoos. He's got two beers in one hand and
he offers Brad one. It's cool and clean and he drinks half of it off in one go.
"Ray, you wouldn't believe me if I fucking told you," he says. He barely
believes it himself. He puts the beer down unfinished - his head's spinning
fast enough. "Come on, Ray. I'll drive you home."
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