mf

Right, so I’m just going to acknowledge, at this stage, that I’m using this meme as an ad-hoc WIP amnesty.

Ok! Now that that caveat’s out there, here is a hypothetical Generation Kill story called The One True and Certain Thing.

This is the one where Brad Colbert has a gigantic competency crush… on someone he only knows from radio communication. I figure it’s set in Kuweit, before the events of the show. It hinges on the fact that Brad would totally be ok with letting himself have a crush on a voice on the radio. It’s just so convenient. He would never follow through because - obviously - it's unseemly and against regs. But on top of that, it’s a disembodied voice so he couldn’t follow through.

He’d realize it was a mistake once it’s too late, obviously. Once he’s already having dreams about the voice on the radio.

They’ve had to communicate for various reasons several times before, but things change when, late one night, Brad says something - god, he can’t remember what it was, now - and the voice (it’s better if he doesn’t use the name; then it won’t be real) thinks it’s so interesting that he exclaims, “oh!” But it sounds more like “ohhhhhh!” and he says with a dreamy tone, like he's talking to himself. Except he's saying it into Brad’s ear so it sounds like he's confiding, like they're sharing a secret. Brad feels something happen to his stomach, to his - to his heart. And after that it’s different. He catches himself, during the day, wondering what the voice is doing. One day the voice on the radio sounds particularly exhausted and Brad only just stops himself asking if everything is ok.

Side note, in this fic Brad had a crush on Rudy when he first met him. Something about how pretty he was, obviously, but also the way he looked at Brad like he knew. But what he knew wasn’t that Brad wanted him - it was that Brad was starved, starved for touch and validation and support. That he’d been hoping someone would see how hard he worked, and how much he cared, for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to not feel like that. And he’d fallen, hard, for Rudy’s lack of shame and emotional availability. (Not for long, fortunately.)

Brad and the voice spend hours talking around the fact that they’ve landed themselves in Kuweit because they’re seeking something. About the fact that they enjoy testing themselves because nothing else makes them feel like their lives have meaning. About the reassurance of discipline. About strength. About death.

Anyway then meet - Brad recognizes him from his voice before he registers the name - and it’s a whole Oh No He’s Hot scenario.