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blood-mocha-latte · 1 month

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a belated birthday present for the lovely and incredible @gorgeousundertow <33 || i Struggled infinitely with this and have no idea what’s going on, lol. because of this, this au is actually about seven thousand words longer, but i figured i’d post this as a drabble before i do anything drastic. enjoy!

Brad hates this.

To be fair, Brad hates a large number of things, but this is pretty fucking high on the list.

It’s always weird, doing it alone, mainly because he’s gotten so used to doing everything with a partner in at least some semblance to the word that having his ass hanging completely uncovered in the wind sets him on edge.

The fact that his greatest contender is his own subconscious only makes it worse.

Brad’s never been to Stonehenge, but the wind is crisp and clean against his face as he walks past a craggy rock, keeping his eyes on the horizon, on the rolling hills and trees and far off mountains.

He runs a palm over the closest stone. It’s rough, textured, against his touch, and the feel of it catches against the blisters that pepper his palm. It feels real, warm beneath his skin, and he focuses on the feel of it, on nothing else, before moving on.

The grass is tall, willowy and airy, but clearly there, present and as quiet as a whisper where it brushes against the denim of Brad’s jeans, sometimes catches against the fabric.

He still hates it. Hates the whole thing. Hates that he has to focus this much, hates that he’s lost the ease that comes with being a veteran of the trade. Feels new all over again, and it’s an unwelcome feeling.

He forces the thought from his mind when the ground seems to warp beneath his feet. Stay on target.

The ground steadies out again, and Brad moves past the rock he’d been standing at to reach out to the next one. He’s tired, maybe perpetually annoyed, and it’s a frustrating thing to feel in a dream about nothing.

He runs his palm over this stone, too. Same texture. Same feeling.

They used to talk about coming here.

As soon as he thinks it, he knows he fucked up. For as long as it took him to get here, to the roughness of the stones and the wispiness of the grass, it takes barely a heartbeat for Brad to lose his grip on it.

He slips sideways into distraction, into memories of the real world and memories of the dream one, and in the brief millisecond that he loses his grip, Stonehenge disappears.

When Brad comes to, a headache beginning to throb from the base of his skull, all that’s left is the grass.

The sky begins to fold in on itself, the horizon stacking up on top of each other like a book closing as Brad’s focus is shattered, as he loses his grip on both his dream and his subconscious.

The last thing he notices before he wakes up is that the whispering of grass sounds like a voice he hasn’t heard in over a month.

- - -

When he comes to, Ray is hovering over him, chewing with his mouth open. When he realizes that Brad’s eyes are open, he grins a crooked, gaping smile, and a chunk of mushy Dorito falls on Brad's face.

“Morning sunshine.” He says, muffled, and Brad groans, shoving him away with an open palm to his forehead.

He sits up in the lawn chair he’d been reclined in, getting his feet back under him and scrubbing an open palm over his mouth.

“Fuck.” He mutters into his palm.

He shouldn’t have thought of Nate. He knows he shouldn’t have thought of Nate, but he did anyways, and he reaped the goddamn consequences of it.

From the way he can feel Ray’s gaze burning into the side of his face, Brad knows that he knows it as well.

“Wanna try again?”

“No.” Brad tells him, hoarse and too quickly.

“…you went to Stonehenge, didn’t you?”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray.”

“God, you’re such a goddamn nerd, when’s Walt gonna come back and relieve me of this angsty geek world—”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray—”

Ray raises his hands in surrender as soon as Brad looks up, angry sparking dully through his chest as his head throbs with a parallel beat. He doesn’t say anything else, and Brad is grudgingly grateful for it.

They both know he shouldn’t have chosen Stonehenge. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a memory. The thought of it is as good as one.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Brad says, hoarse, and pushes up from the lawn chair. Ray doesn’t move from his own, the hideous floral cover over it coated in a hideous assortment of Dorito dust and chocolate.

He tilts his head, watching Brad with his mouth still full. “What, we have somewhere to be?”

They don’t, not really. Brads been so focused on getting his edge back that everything else had fallen wayside, and Ray was between jobs.

Though he hasn’t said anything about it, Brad's near certain the career choice was voluntary. Ray was one of the best damn architects in the country, never mind the coast.

“Gonna contact Poke.” Brad told him, still coarse. “Ask about a job.” When he next looks up, Ray’s eyebrows are raised to his hairline.

“What, you’re gonna be point man?” Brad doesn’t look up again, just shoves up and off of the lawnchair and rubs gingerly at the sore spot where his IV had been. Ray must have removed it before he was fully conscious.

“Don’t see why not.” He mutters, a clear-cut lie. He can’t even keep his grip on a fucking landscape, couldn’t dream with anyone else. Last time he’d tried, his subconscious had torn Ray to shreds.

But he needed to get out: out of his skin, out of this room, maybe even out of California. He was going to go crazy if he stayed here: trying to dream of an easy landscape while Ray stared at him and put his hand in warm water or drew on his face.

Speaking of Ray. He was gathering up his own shit, cramming sunglasses onto his face with negligible grace and swinging his pack over his shoulder. He was saying something, Brad wasn’t listening.

When he picked up his own pack, it was suspiciously heavy. He didn’t bother to check inside of it.

Ray jiggled the door to their shitty, rented hotel room door open and wandered out into the hall, semi-aimless.

Brad followed him out, but hesitated before closing the door.

He ran his palm over the smooth wood once before backing away, followed after Ray, albeit in a straighter path.

The stone, in an odd way, had felt more real.

- - -

As soon as he gets back to his apartment, he showers. Half to get the layer of grime that always seemed to settle over him after taking a train anywhere, and half because he could still feel the phantom touch of stone and grass against his skin.

The cold water did nothing to make him feel purer, or even necessarily cleaner, but the shock it aided to his system was enough to drag Brad through the rest of his routine: eating, working out again, and stripping before collapsing into the springy, worn-out mattress, home to a single sheet and two pillows.

He stared at the second pillow for half of a second before tossing it into the corner of his room.

As soon as he laid back, grimacing at the way the mattress seemed to dig into his back but not bothering to do anything about it, he pulled out his phone, squinting at the white-blue light of it as the rest of the room settled into darkness.

He needed to stop doing this, he knew. He may not be the pinnacle of goddamn mental health, but he knew his ins and outs of letting go to know well enough that he should step back.

Well. Brad wasn’t fucking perfect.

Even though Nate’s old phone number had been deactivated when he’d left, he’d given Brad his new personal one with an awkward smile and an awkwarder invitation to keep in touch.

Still, Brad hadn’t reached out, and neither had Nate, and he knew that neither of them would. It was the way of the world, he guessed. Ray would say something about homo sapiens, probably.

Still. He stared at the phone number, and thought in awkward, stilted lines of what he would say.

It didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

It was, of course, dreamless.

- - -

When the whole fucking mess that had been Brad’s dating and friend life and the subsequent betrayal of it had happened, the dreaming and the job it was a part of was his lifeline.

It was a way of getting out of the real world: of throwing himself fully into another task and being able to settle into someone else’s head, not his own. It had been a way of coping, as fucked up as it had been.

Nate had been a big part of that, Brad thinks.

Nate, who’d always seemed so tired, so sick of it all, but had seemed to glow against the darkness of a manipulated consciousness anyways.

That should have been Brad’s first hint. His first of many.

Settling into the swing of it, working jobs together (not all of them, just some. Just enough for Brad to know that it was better than working with anyone else), spending waking hours together, as well, it had gotten him out of his head.

It had felt like a distraction, until Brad had realized that his feelings of being better — more at peace than he’d been since everything that had happened — were real. Were content.

Nate leaving — leaving the job, leaving dreaming, leaving the world constructed out of glass and thought that Brad had tenuously set up around his career — had shot right through that and right back into the cold hunk of ice that Brad was beginning to think would always be a part of him.

It was for the best. It wasn’t goodbye. It wasn’t a betrayal, and Brad would do a whole lot fucking better to remember that. There was college, for Nate. There was a life without stupid fucking superiors, without the threat of a dream or a job gone wrong.

It didn’t feel like that, though.

The difference, though, was the fact that being cheated on and betrayed was soothed by his job. By the dreams. Nate leaving had wrecked Brad’s ability to do either.

Ray almost certainly had a theory that he wasn’t telling Brad about why. Brad didn’t bother to ask, though, because he knew why: knew that Nate looking at him, eyes bright and warm, smile slightly curved up like a painting in a way that it hadn’t in forever, had thrown a wrench in everything.

I don’t want to spend my whole life asleep, I guess.

And with that, he’d had the haunting, ice cold thought that had spread across his skin and refused to leave.

Maybe Brad doesn’t, either.

He wakes up.

- - -

Poke gets them a job and doesn’t ask questions.

He talks a lot of shit, and flips it, too, but keeps away from touchier topics when it becomes clear that Brad’s not in the mood.

Ray’s with them as architect, and the two keep each other entertained like two crows that had found a shiny rock. Brad, off to the side and trying to prepare in any way he can, keeps his elbows on his knees, chin digging into his hand as he stares at the floor.

He jumped the gun with this, he knows. Ray and Poke know it too, probably, but Brad’s point man. If something happens, it’s on him.

Bryan, working as chemist, sits off to the side in a similar, lonely fashion, clearly uninterested in participation of any kind as he keeps his head bent over his work, hiding it from prying eyes.

With Poke as forger, all they’re missing is an extractor. Brad doesn’t necessarily care about who it is; not anymore.

The best one’s out of the business now, anyways.

Brad closes his eyes, inhales and exhales in two heaving gusts of breaths.

When he opens them again, it’s just in time to catch Poke’s backhand, grimacing as his knuckles rap against his forehead.

“Stop meditating, communist hippie motherfucker.” Ray tells him, behind Poke. He’s wearing a neon orange neck pillow. “You ready to go, or do you want the time to go find a keto-friendly snack first?”

Contrary to his words, Ray’s eyes are dark. Brad can tell he’s worried, and he doesn’t have to look at Poke to know that he looks exactly the same.

“Where’s the final guy?” Brad asks Poke, instead of addressing Ray, and the blank, cagey look that Espera shoots at him isn’t promising.

“On his way.” He says vaguely, kicking at one of Brad’s boots as he walks around him. “Gonna get into it, then he’ll join up later. Practice run, all that.”

Bryan glances up from his case, and Brad can’t tell what he’s thinking. He’s worked a handful of jobs with Bryan, who’s always competent but more than unhappy with the larger logistics of any plan, and it sets him somewhat at ease. There are worse goddamn chemists to work with, that’s for damn sure.

Overall, it’s a solid enough team. eam. Of course, Brad can’t accurately decide that until he learns who the extractor is.

And he’s not stupid. He knows that there’s something going on: that Poke or Ray or Poke and Ray together (and maybe Bryan, for good measure) have something up their combined goddamn sleeves and it’ll make Brad suffer in some way, shape, or form.

And yet, he realizes with a blaring, painful glare of cold truth that he couldn’t care less. He thinks about recklessness for half of a second before deciding it’s too much of a goddamn racket.

“Ready to go?” Ray asks cheerfully, kicking off his shoes and adjusting his neck pillow as he lays back. As soon as he does so, he pulls an eye mask out of his back pocket. It has hyper realistic Joker eyes on it, and Espera grimaces as he drops into his own lawn chair.

Brad is fucking sick of lawnchairs.

“Jesus Christ, homes, what the fuck is that?”

“I’m worried about my eyes drying out.” Ray tells him primly, settling back again with the eyemask. It conflicts hideously with the neon orange of his neck pillow. “And they didn’t have one on Amazon that had 3D dicks sticking out of it like those glasses. The ones with the springs and the eyeballs and shit.”

Brad turned back to the ceiling. He’d been there when Ray had been on the warpath for an eye mask like that, had told Nate about it in a dream and had watched as the other’s eyes had shined, mouth turning in a Mona Lisa smile.

I don’t want to spend my whole life asleep, I guess.

He has to focus.

It’s dangerous to hold onto the past. Onto memory.

“Ready to go?” Bryan asks, as cold cut as always, and Ray just sighs.

“Tim, if you see a cock and balls eye mask, you’ll tell me, right?”

Brad didn’t see Bryan’s face, kept his eyes on the ceiling, but could hear how the other sighed, something between disappointment and a laugh. “Arm out, Ray.” He said, sounding rather tired. Fitting, Brad supposed.

As everything leveled out, both an artificial silence and one constructed out of Brad’s dedicated focus drifted over him, and he closed his eyes, tried to focus.

The last thing he felt before the prick of somnacin was the door to the warehouse they’d met at beginning to rattle open.

He was out before he could do anything about it.

- - -

Brad realizes as soon as he settles into the dream, real and vivid, why Poke and Ray were being so weird.

Nate Fick blinks at him steadily, once, twice, eyes bright and warm, and Brad realizes that he can’t tell if he’s real or not.

Before he can decide, Ray pops up at his elbow. He has his dick eye mask propped on his forehead, now. The pros of a dream, Brad guesses. “He’s real.” He tells Brad, and keeps talking before Brad can say anything. “Figured it would be better to trick your ass into getting in here. You know, like a big dumb dog.”

Brad doesn’t look at him, but he kind of wants to elbow Ray in the face.

Nate’s mouth is curved up, just slightly, but he looks tired; his undereyes a purple-black, hair slightly messy. It was rather a feat, Brad guessed. To look exhausted in a dream.

“Can we talk?” He asks, quiet, and Brad stares at him for another half of a second before turning half a pace, looking for Poke.

“Please tell me there’s a job.” He says, and can almost feel his heartbeat. Poke just shrugs.

“There’s a job.” He says. “And Fick’s working extractor. So. You know.” He gestured vaguely at nothing. Nate is still watching him. When he turns, Ray is, too, but between the eye mask and his gleeful, hick expression, Brad dismisses him immediately.

“Brad.” Nate tells him, voice careful, quiet.

Brad hesitates, for half of a second, but in the end walks towards him.

- - -

“It’s not all about me.” Nate tells him, walking alongside Brad easily, neither of them really sure where they’re going.

It’s kind of embarrassing that Brad’s able to find his foothold, now. It’s a combination, he thinks: not being in charge of the architecture of the dream and Nate.

Nate walks slightly in front of him. Brad knows, somehow, deep under his skin, that it’s so they don’t have to look at each other.

“How do you know that?” Brad asks, rather repugnant. Nate just huffs, glancing back at him. He looks forward again just as quickly.

“You don’t do anything in halves.” He says. “Something else happened.”

Brad snorts, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t feel like there’s a lot that he can say. There’s no point in denying that Nate leaving the job impacted him. There’s no point in pushing on why he came back.

“How’ve you been?” He asks, dry, instead. They come up to a house. The door opens, and Brad knows that Ray put it there for him. The weirdo.

Nate just hums, walks inside. “It’s been difficult.” He says, even kilter, voice not dipping into any sort of emotion. Brad’s used to it, in a way. Almost nostalgic to it. “But. It’s good, I think. I’m going back to school.”

Brad hums. It feels rather tasteless. He follows Nate into the house, there’s a drawing of the Lorax on the wall for some reason. “That must be good.” He says, can feel the way that the hoarseness in his voice scrapes up his throat. “You’ve got. Uh. A leg up, for sure.”

He feels awkward. Nate turns, enough to catch Brad’s gaze again, and his eyes are bright. Seems to catch him, the same way they always do. Always did.

Nate doesn’t say anything.

Brad wonders if that’s why they work: that they don’t need to say anything. That there’s something there regardless.

“I’ve been doing this for almost ten years.” Brad says, and it feels like an admission. Nate just watches him, eyes piercing and warm, cold, bright.

I don’t want to spend my whole life asleep, I guess.

Brad watches him back, for half of a second. Catches himself wondering if this is real. “I felt it, too.” Nate tells him, face somewhere between torn ragged and utterly blank. A fight between expressing and being guarded, in a dream. “This… this feeling. Like when you sleep until noon when you’re a kid.”

Brad looks away from him and clears his throat. He stares at the Lorax instead. It has a bra on, he hadn’t realized that before. He makes a mental note to make fun of Ray for that later.

Two fingertips press carefully into his forearm, a gentle touch. It reminds Brad of, absurdly, pressing his palm to the stone in his dream. When he looks back at Nate, the other is watching him, obviously thinking of something. He runs the tip of his tongue across his top lip before speaking again.

“I’d go with you,” He said, almost hoarse. “If you left.”

His fingers leave Brad’s arm. Brad can’t look away from him. “You already left.”

Nate just huffed. He smiled, a brief flash of teeth that didn’t seem exactly happy. “And now I’m back. For — for you, if you want. I guess.”

Brad has to think on that, for a moment.

They’d never been anything. Nothing concrete, anyways, and nothing in real life. But if Brad was held back by real life, he supposes, he would have quit a long time ago.

And, besides. It doesn’t hurt to entertain hypotheticals.

“Where would we go?” He asks, following this train of thought, and Nate smiles again, more genuine, less forced.

“I don’t know.” He says, and something in his eyes sparks. “Stonehenge, maybe.”

Brad doesn’t know what he is without this. Without dreaming. But, he thinks, watching Nate’s eyes and the haggard set of his face, the way that knowing he’s asleep settles across Brad’s shoulders in a tight line that didn’t used to be there, he knows that he’d thought that after he’d been left behind. Both when Nate left and before that.

“Yeah.” He agreed, and it wasn’t a deal, but he was thinking about it. “Stonehenge, maybe.”

#rie writes #hope you enjoy nikki <33 #generation kill #bradnate #brad colbert #nate fuck #hbo war

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