Title: Five Things That Never Happened to Nate Fick
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing/Characters: Brad Colbert/Nate Fick, Mike Wynn, Ray Person
Rating: R
Word Count: 3100
Content notes: Hookerfic, Hockeyfic, Priestfic, Life on Mars fusion (SPOILERS!), and Apocafic. One death. Semi-explicit sex for money. Possible whiplash.
Author notes: Many thanks to iulia, oliviacirce, riverlight and everyone else who listened while I worked out waaaaay too many AU scenarios.

To the best of my knowledge Nate has never needed a hooker's help to solve a mystery, played pro hockey, taken Holy Orders, suffered a head injury and woken up in 1973, or survived the apocalypse. But I'm sure he'd be good at all of those things if the situation arose.


Five Things That Never Happened to Nate Fick

One: Working the Street

Long before he approaches the corner he's designated 1-A, the center of his search, Nate knows which of the guys he needs to speak to: tall, blond, visibly authoritative even through Nate's long-distance lens, a lurid tattoo occasionally peeking out under the hem of his tight t-shirt. The other hustlers on this corner defer to him, as does the whole gang on the next corner down. This is the guy who will know everything that's going on with everyone who's passed through his territory. If Nate can win him over, he's golden; if he can't, he'll never have a chance in hell of completing his mission. He'll never get paid, and—more importantly, although his landlord might not agree—those distraught parents will never know what happened to their kid.

Nate knows he has to earn his way in, earn their trust, and he knows the cool, collected ringleader will be slowest to trust him. So when Nate approaches the corner after a week of cautious recon, he's not particularly surprised that the Iceman takes one look at him and then nudges the too-enthusiastic blond at his side. "Jimmy, go with this nice man."

Nate doesn't argue. He goes. He pays Jimmy twice the going rate to open his pants and let Nate give him a blow job. One of the bills he hands over has his number on it; another has a name neatly inked along the curve of the president's portrait. A week later Nate gets a different result; he's sent off with Walt, who eyes him warily but takes the money and warns Nate when he's about to come despite the condom making it mostly unnecessary. A week after that—a week in which Nate has nearly managed to speak to the Iceman a half-dozen times but still hasn't learned his name or been given an opening to get him alone—Nate is sent off with a dark-eyed hyperactive hustler named Ray, who argues with him for half an hour, spinning one conspiracy theory after another about Nate's intentions, before he accepts Nate's marked bills and pulls his hair as he fucks Nate's mouth.

After nearly a month on the job he's finally alone in a room with the Iceman, who looks him up and down—as if he hasn't had Nate figured out since before he sent him off with Jimmy—and says briskly, "Five hundred up front, right now. You don't get to fuck me, you don't get to put anything in my mouth, and we're finished when I say we're finished."

Nate shoves his hands into his pockets. "Fuck that," he says quietly. "You know who I am. You know what I want. I've taken your little tests—"

"You've failed every test," the Iceman interrupts. "What the hell kind of john are you supposed to be?"

"I'm the kind who knows you'll never trust me if I try to fool you," Nate says, still quietly. "You know that all I want is to get a couple of kids out of this alive. You know I don't want anything from you that I can buy."

The Iceman stares at him, silent, expressionless, and then closes the distance between them in two long strides, pushing Nate up against the motel room's door. Nate doesn't resist. It's a show of force; he'd be dead already if the Iceman thought he was that kind of threat.

He keeps his chin up to keep his eyes steady on the Iceman's, but it's still a surprise when he realizes he's about to be kissed, and a bigger one when the Iceman stops short and whispers, "Call me Brad."

Two: Stanley and Everything After

His arms are still sore from hoisting the Cup overhead for the better part of two hours and he's got a wicked sunburn on the back of his neck, but at least Nate's not hung over when he's woken up the morning after their victory parade to the sound of Ray Person right outside Brad's bedroom door.

"Cap, Cap, Cap—"

"What the fuck, Sparky," Brad growls, tightening his grip on Nate.

Nate elbows him a little. He doesn't need to be protected from anybody on the team, and Brad's boys all know what's going on in this room. He calls out, "Razor? Is something on fire?"

"Metaphorically it might be," Ray says, sounding weirdly serious, and Nate's stomach goes tight, echoed by Brad's body curling tighter around his. "Wynnie just called me and told me to wake you the fuck up and make you call him. So this is me not at all coming into Mommy and Daddy's room when they've got the door closed, but—seriously, Cap, call him."

Nate grabs his own phone off the bedside table—silenced last night, because just this once he'd been sure none of his guys could possibly get into the kind of trouble they'd need their captain to get them out of. Just once.

In the time it takes him to open the phone and see that Mike had already tried calling him three times, it occurs to Nate that Mike—sober, serious veteran Mike, the goalie who'd literally and in every other way backstopped Nate and the team to a Stanley Cup when no one expected them to escape the first round—it can't be Mike who's in trouble.

Nate hits the third speed dial on his phone. Mike picks up on the first ring.

"There's a courier waiting on your front porch," Mike says without preamble. He lives across the street from Nate, two houses down. "Legal-size envelope under the arm. So unless you got a secret wife who's divorcing you now to get her hands on half of your Stanley Cup ring—"

"Motherfucker," Brad says, and Nate realizes Brad's close enough to hear the other side of the conversation.

Nate hangs up without a word and hits speed dial seven. Evan doesn't pick up until the second ring.

"Reporter," Nate says, "Tell me what the fuck people are saying."

Evan sighs. "You know what they're saying, Cap. They're saying you're going to Nashville for a fucking draft pick and you're lucky anybody took you at all. You went against your coach—"

"I led my team to a fucking Stanley Cup," Nate snarls, because for this one moment he can be angry about it. He knew this was probably coming, knew at the time that he couldn't do what he did without consequences. He'd thought winning a Cup would win him some leeway, some room to negotiate, some fucking dignity.

"You went against your coach," Evan repeats. "No coach wants you, and Ferrando was ready to put you up on Craigslist, free to good home. But the good news is—"

"Good news?" Brad snaps, incredulous.

"It's just you, Nate," Evan says blithely. "Not Colbert. If they knew about the two of you they'd have gotten rid of you both. So this means they don't know."

Nate feels something break inside him; it's like a ligament snapping in the center of his chest. All of a sudden he knows.

I can't do this anymore. I won't let them punish me for this. I won't sit and wait for the other shoe to drop. I'm done.

Three: Not into Temptation

Mike escorted Nate to the park where he'd arranged to meet Brad. By silent agreement Nate and Mike are both armored in their fullest clerical dress. Brad—Nate could not, did not, resist seeking him out by eye the instant they reach the right part of the park—was wearing old jeans and a faded t-shirt. He sat on a bench with his head tilted back, his face to the sun and his arms spread out. Nate might have been tempted to imagine he was praying, if he hadn't known Brad so well.

Mike stayed at Nate's side as they walked toward Brad; they were still more than ten yards away when Brad looked up, stood and walked to meet them.

"Father," Brad said warily to Nate, and nodded a cautious greeting to Mike.

"Father Mike Wynn, Brad Colbert," Nate said, and, praise God, his voice was steady and calm. Brad offered a hand to shake with Mike. "Brad, Mike is a friend of mine, and he's my confessor. He knows what's happened, and he's helped me decide what I'm going to do next. He's going to stay nearby while we talk."

Nate watched a half-dozen responses occur to Brad before he said, fairly neutrally, "You're not a Jesuit, Father Wynn?"

"Capuchin," Mike agreed, gesturing to his brown habit. "So unlike Nate, you won't argue me into anything."

Brad looked startled; Nate felt his own face heat even as Mike squeezed his shoulder. "I'll leave you to it."

Mike walked over to the bench and sat down, taking out his rosary. Nate looked around for another bench with a line of sight, but Brad said, "I can stand, Nate, it's fine. What is this? I thought you—I thought—"

"I love you," Nate said, because that was essential; that was the foundation of everything else. He saw surprise break through Brad's wary mask, and then Brad looked away, leaving Nate to speak to the tensed muscle of his jaw, his narrowed eye.

"I yielded to temptation, I don't deny that, but the temptation wasn't just sex. It was you, Brad, loving you the way I do. A vow of celibacy isn't just about refraining from sex, it's about holding myself apart. It's about putting my vocation first. I stopped doing that long before last night."

"So that's it," Brad said flatly, without looking up.

Nate had to clasp his hands behind his back to quell the urge to reach for him. He glanced toward Mike, who nodded serenely, lips and hands moving without interruption as he prayed the rosary. Nate and Brad were sure to be finished before he was.

"That's how it is for as long as I'm a priest," Nate replied, and that startled Brad into looking again. "I can't fake it or hide it; I have to be sincere in my vows for as long as I'm bound by them."

There was a glimmer of hope in Brad's eyes, and that was enough; if Brad was willing to hope for him, Nate wouldn't ask for anything more.

"My contract with the parish ends in three months. It's been obvious for a while now that my calling has changed, that parish life isn't where I belong, or how I can best serve God. The way you came into my life has been a sign of that, and I won't turn my back on it. On you. So, on the advice of my confessor, I've already set things in motion with the Diocese and my order. In three months I leave the parish, and I leave the priesthood."

"School will be out by then," Brad said, and then he raised his eyebrows and cracked a smile. "I guess I'll get fewer questions from the kids that way."

Nate's own smile felt foolishly wide, but he said only, "We do have to think of the children."

For a moment they just stood there, smiling, knowing, and then Brad's expression turned serious.

"I can do three months," he said, and then, without another word, he turned and walked away.

Nate's own smile didn't falter. He recognized Brad's respect for his decision. He recognized Brad's promise.

Three months. We can do three months.

Nate went and sat down beside Mike, who raised his hands to show Nate that he had progressed through two decades of the rosary. Mike said aloud, "The Visitation. The second Joyful Mystery."

Nate put his face in his hands and laughed.

Four: A Leap of Faith

They tell Nate he's depressed. They tell him that's a common side effect of traumatic brain injury. They tell him that soon the world around him will seem real again, brightly-colored and meaningful. As soon as he starts taking his pills, as soon as he starts believing what they say, as soon as he accepts that this is the way things are now.

Nate knows he's depressed. He deserves to be. He abandoned his men, abandoned them before he was even born in a jungle he's never set foot in. 1973 was real, Vietnam was real, Bravo Two was real, and this world he's woken up in—for all it's filled with the conveniences and modern attitudes he remembers—this world is bloodless, colorless. The war he once longed to help fight is carrying on without him. He can watch it, sanitized as a video game, on any television he cares to turn on.

Nate compulsively turns TVs off. He's waiting for one to speak to him, so he can believe that this is the nightmare.

The TVs stay silent. The evidence is overwhelming. This is the world, the real world. His men—Wynn, Colbert, Espera, Patrick, Lovell, each man on every team, whose names he recites to himself at night like a mantra—they are not his. They are dead men in some unmarked patch of jungle. If he walked down to the Wall he'd find them there, abandoned by their platoon commander, left to die, betrayed and lost.

And for what? For this? So that Nate can sit through VA therapy and choke down their pills and maybe someday be recovered enough to take other men into another field of battle? How can he hope to lead men when he's already failed so many?

He wishes he had never woken up. He wishes the Humvee had been going a little faster, wishes his Kevlar had been a little looser.

One day, staring out the window of his therapist's office, it occurs to Nate that it's no good sitting here and cursing fate. He has to take matters into his own hands. He found his men once when he was on the brink of death; he can find them there again. It might not be too late—time has bent and stretched all around him and them. He might bend it to his purpose, just once. He might still reach them in time.

All he has to do is be willing to lay down his life for theirs.

He stands, in the middle of his session, and walks out. It's the most decisive action he's taken since he woke up, and he follows it with others: finding the fire stairs, bursting through the emergency exit at the roof. He begins to run as the alarm begins to sound. He's grinning as he reaches the edge, and he doesn't break stride. There's no time for hesitation, no room for doubt. His men need him. The air rushes by, the ground rises to meet him, and Nate once again feels dangerously, wildly alive.

The jungle comes back in full color and sound and smell; every last one of his insect bites are back, and that cough from something he's not supposed to know to call Agent Orange is once again threatening his lungs. His eyes are instantly gritty again. He can hear the waiting silence of his men, twenty yards away, and he smiles as he lowers himself to the reeking earth and begins to crawl toward them.

Five: Survivors

Nate wakes late in the night and lies still a while, listening to the others around him. They don't lack for space, but everyone stays close, huddles in this one place that they all think of as safe.

Nearly everyone goes to bed whenever it gets dark, now, so most of them wake at some point in the night. Sometimes they'll gather up and talk; it's a favorite time for meandering philosophical discussions of what to do next. There are fourteen of them now, and no one new has turned up in weeks. Fourteen, maybe all that's survived from the entire DC metro area. Nate's made solid, repeated radio contact with survivors in Baltimore and Richmond and Philly; counting the second-hand reports they've relayed, they know of maybe a hundred people alive on the eastern seaboard. They're all going to have to converge somewhere, but so far nobody talks about that on the radio. So far it's all just reassurance that there's someone else out there, while everybody clings to the little bit of security they've carved out in their own spot.

Once he's started thinking about the radio, Nate can't stay still anymore. It's late, prime time for skywaving, bouncing the signal out further and further.

He stands up and looks around—eyes open, heads raise, and he jerks his thumb toward the bell tower so they'll know where he's headed. A few hands wave in acknowledgment, and Nate turns away, walking from the sanctuary where they mostly sleep through the length of the nave to the tower's entrance. He considers frequencies and angles as he climbs, sets out his priorities. He's picked up signals from Chicago, from somewhere in Texas, and a couple of days ago he exchanged a few staticky bursts with someone he thinks is in Montana.

It's time to try further west. All the way west.

He climbs and climbs and when he reaches the top of the Cathedral's bell tower he stands still for a moment, looking out past the little radio array, across the dark, still bowl that used to be the District. He still feels a kind of vertigo, not from the height, but from the emptiness of the world. He makes himself look (and the darkness looks back, but Nate has given up on wondering what it sees, what anyone sees) until the queasy seasick feeling of it subsides into the usual background.

He switches on the transmitter and picks up the microphone, tuning the frequency and tilting the antenna for the best bounces he can get.

He takes a breath, braces himself for the silence, and then says, "All channels, all channels, this is Foxtrot at Washington Delta Charlie, how copy?"

Nate stares at the dark, listening to the silence, and then a voice comes back, so familiar he'd swear it was a dream. But he's never dreamed this. He's never dared. "Foxtrot, this is Hitman Two One Actual at Oceanside. Solid copy."

Nate's hands are shaking, and he knows the atmospheric conditions might not last more than seconds, minutes, might already be gone. "Hitman, Foxtrot. Interrogative—"

But he can't form a question. He stops transmitting and waits.

It doesn't matter where Brad is, it doesn't matter if the signal is already lost and he never gets it back. Nate knows he's out there, knows the black emptiness of the world is an illusion. Brad is out there. Nate will go west; he'll take everyone west. Nate will find him, and if Nate doesn't find Brad, Brad will most assuredly find Nate.

"Foxtrot, Hitman," Brad's voice returns. "Affirmative."