Archive of Our Own

Pete McVries was born the year before World War II ended, while his dad was on the other side of the world. His dad came home, decorated with honors, to a happy baby in his wife’s arms. More than anything, love brought Danny McVries home. This story was told to Pete by every relative of his parents he ever met. His daddy dodged bullets and skipped over seas to meet his son. Special.

His parents died in a car accident a couple of years later. Pete was in the car, too. They said his survival was a miracle. Well, his uncle didn’t say that. His uncle inherited the medical debt, and said that Pete’s survival was damn expensive.

Pete kept surviving. He kept ducking trouble and getting kindness from strangers when it mattered. He paid them back when he could, and if they asked for something he couldn’t give, he tucked tail and ran. That, more than anything, is how he’s survived this long.

When he volunteered to serve, Pete made peace with the fact that he probably wouldn’t make it back. Maybe it’s because he didn’t have a home that he imagined going back to, then. He’d felt so unmoored from the world then, rootless, that he assumed he could fall off the edge of the earth at any moment. Living was expensive, and Pete was not a rich man.

So he joined. So he accepted the fact that it just might kill him, and let it just become a part of him. He let the army change him, just little pieces of him. His vocabulary, his triggers for anxiety. He was still Pete, don’t let anyone get it wrong, but he was never this Pete. He was never here, on the other side of the world, no wife to run back to. This isn’t anything like what his father had experienced, even though when it all began, he had this quiet hope that it would help him be closer to his father’s spirit. He doesn’t feel any more or less close to his parents, because he’s too busy with everything else. He’s too busy surviving.

Even in bootcamp, Pete felt like he had what it took to survive, everything except for luck. He figured he had more experience with hostile environments than anyone else in the room, and experience bore that out. One by one, the people around him dropped. Of exhaustion, of despair, of the sharp dart that’s bad fucking luck. As much as Pete has faith in his own survival instinct, the reaper lingers. It took his parents, who were doing everything right. Bad luck can find anyone. It can always happen to you.

The LSD trip, kaleidoscoping yet clear, gives him the liberating fact of the date, and it makes him feel strangely invincible. Knowing when you’ll die means knowing for sure that you won’t die on any of those other days, and it gives Pete a new lens through which to view the world.

It turns the lush greens of the foliage surround him into something ecstatic. It turns gunfire into percussion. It turns Ray into his tragic lover.

A close friendship with an undercurrent of unrealized sexual chemistry magnifies, and Pete finds that focusing on it makes his impending death feel better. Easier. More meaningful. He doesn’t focus on the logic, because all he hears is the tickticktick of the clock or the bomb or the dribble of rain on a roof.

Then the day happens. He lives. What happened between him and Ray doesn’t end, it flourishes. The picnic, their moment in the rain that leaves Pete wanting to dance and splash about like he’s Gene Kelly. His wish comes true. As the sun ducks behind the clouds for a rest, and rain falls down on them, Pete discovers that he’s anything but hopeless. He’s hopeful, positively bursting with the stuff.

Even when Collie goes, he’s hopeful. One day, Parker walks into the wilderness and never comes back. Pete can’t find it in him to believe that Collie actually died. He’s classified missing in action, and even when people theorize that Collie’d been shot or bit by something, Pete simply can’t believe it. He imagines that Collie lived, that he’s free now.

He remembers Collie talking about how he died when they made him shave his head. He thinks of Parker muttering “Stupid fascist fucking draft fucking-” while Pete pointedly decided not to mention that he’d volunteered. They’d bonded at first, on that long scouting walk they were assigned on together, over a different kind of war story. Stories of poverty, retold with bravado and a survivor’s glee that always made the better-off people around them get all queasy and apologetic. Better, the pair realized, to talk about it when it was just them, to wait until they were alone to ask what was the grossest thing you ever ate because it was free? Their stories had their differences, enough to make the exchange thrilling. It made Pete wonder who he’d be now if he had siblings like Collie, if he’d stayed in one city instead of skipping all around.

Pete even saw Collie go. He saw his back as he walked into the schima trees, saw as Collie didn’t look behind him. Pete imagines that he knew where he was going.

When Stebbins scoffs to him that “Desertion might as well be a death sentence, if the wild doesn’t kill you, we will when we catch you,” it turns something sour in Pete’s stomach, because try as he might, he can’t even imagine Parker dying.

He’s imagined his own death before, has thought about it with most people in the squad (including some nightmares about Ray, a while ago), but he simply can’t imagine Collie going. He can imagine Collie kneeling down to rest and closing his eyes. He can imagine Collie walking up a long stairway to the sky. He can imagine Collie skipping around the world to get to his family. He can’t imagine a bullet and blood, refuses to. Maybe it’s because he saw a part of himself in Collie. Why can’t it be the part of him that refuses to die?

In the past few weeks of endless rain and dreamless sleep, Pete has become convinced of one thing that tethers him to the world: he and Ray are going to live. They are going to go home. It’s what was meant to happen.

Rain never especially bothered Pete, not anywhere that he lived before. The monsoons should bother him much more, considering their time-bending relentless ways, but because of Ray, rain is romantic to him now. He knows that it weighs on Ray, can see what the deprivation from light has done to him. Pete decided on what he’d say if Ray ever came crying to him about it: don’t worry, baby, it won’t rain much at all in California. We just got to get there. Ray doesn’t come crying to him, because when they’re alone together, he seeks a different kind of comfort.

Like when they get sent on patrol together, and when they are well and truly alone, Ray is pushing Pete up against a tree and kissing him deeply, deliciously. It’s heaven, and maybe it’s hope. Pete tries to assuage Ray’s pain with his smiles and stolen moments. They can talk later.

Pete feels like it’s 10pm all the time now (he’ll never get used to 22 o’clock, it sounds like a gun to him), like right before he’s supposed to sleep he’s been zapped with energy. He’s restless with how much he wants, but that’s a good thing. Wanting means he’s still alive. He can still bite into the meat of Ray’s shoulder, he can still run his thumb against a tree’s thick leaf. The sun is hardly in the sky anymore, but the pounding of fat drops of water tells him that he’s alive. Everything around him is too, teeming with motion and soul. The trees hold memories, the clouds in the sky heave with emotion.

He chalks it up to being in love. The world has never been up against the blazing force that is a Peter McVries in love. He’s in love in a way that requires orchestral accompaniment. He’s in love in the way that moves mountains.

It doesn’t mean he can protect Ray from everything that seeks to hurt them. Ray does, indeed, get sick. He’s in the infirmary, no contact at all, for two terrifying days. He comes back with a sickly red tinge on the tip of his nose that clings to his face long after.

Pete knows they’ll make it, but he does still have enough sense to get a little scared. To wonder how much of them will be left to haul to the West Coast. Enough, he prays. When Ray comes back, he’s still Ray, and Pete has another shred of proof for his already-deep belief. He still has what matters, can still write and speak and love.

The closer he clings to Ray, the harder it gets for everyone else to ignore. Stebbins even has the gall to say something, to curl his lip after seeing Pete bid goodbye to Ray by squeezing his shoulder.

Once Ray leaves earshot, Stebbins sneers his “It’s kinda faggy how attached at the hip you two are, gross how you’re so up on him all the time.” Pete feels his body go cold, his head twisting to look at Stebbins. A part of him almost wants to say it, to admit to it, to let them get discharged and sent home already.

He has enough sense to know that there would be some nasty consequences to that, ones he tries not to consider much. He swallows down his own discomfort over that, and instead lets himself just hate Stebbins for poking at it. Deep down, there’s a part of Pete that suspects that Stebbins actually is a bit jealous of what he and Ray have. When he’s not staring down the barrel of his rifle, of its never-closing eye, he’s looking at them. At Ray.

“Gotta have a friend to get through this, Billy,” Pete says, dismissing. Then mutters “You sure have a lot to say lately.”

Stebbins lets out a noise that sounds like a snort or a hack, like a sore throat clearing. He’s been getting sick too, Pete’s noticed, but he doesn’t care like he does about Ray. “With friends like these…” he says with a private little smile to himself. Pete doesn’t get the joke, figures that the rest of it is lost to the rain’s noise-cancelling powers. He rebuffs Stebbins accordingly.

Even so, it puts a little itch in him. Makes him feel like a greaser boyfriend in a 50s movie, bold and protective. He holds on tight and waits for a sign from the universe that it’s right.

He gets it. He wins a poker tournament that the boys throw while all holed up under a tent, and he wins a couple dollars and one of Barkovitch’s joints. He wins it on pure, unadulterated luck, right from the gods into his lap. Then, as if it weren’t obvious, a second sign. Their next assignment, announced the next morning, takes them back to Da Nang. The second the Major announces it, Pete and Ray look right at each other. Our first time. Pete looks forward again, and begins cooking up a celebration for them, in the same place where it began.

Two weeks later, when they’ve finally swept into the city and gotten a night, Pete pulls Ray by the wrist back into that very same brothel where they first slept together. He knows that he’ll be sentimental like this for the rest of their future. Once they have a place to live, Pete suspects that he’ll want to create traditions out of everything. Meatloaf Mondays, or Christmas rituals. The act of returning to Da Nang, coming back here, feels like a good chance to sample that cozy feeling. This time, the two are much more convincing in their act of renting a room to do drugs in it, so much so that when Ray leans over to whisper “Think they bought it?” in Pete’s ear, it’s enough to make Pete throw his head back laughing.

They enter the room together. “The honeymoon suite,” Pete quips, and warmth emanates from his center at the thought. He gazes up Ray’s glowing smile. Forever, he thinks, the word flowing and silky in his thoughts. An easy thing.

“And you still got it, right?” Ray inquires after the weed, “Imagine we did all this and left it back at barracks.” He has the jitters of someone who doesn’t dabble in this much, and Pete finds it charming. Pete fishes it out of his back pocket, earning a sigh of relief from Ray. “No worries,” Ray concludes, voice entering into an enticing lower register.

“With you here? Of course. My lucky charm,” Pete announces, eagerly watching as a blush matching Ray’s pinkened nose fissures out into his cheeks, too.

Pete knows this bed, and he’s drawn to sit on it by magnetic force. “Got a light?” He has one of his own in his front pocket, but now that he’s sitting, he’s not going to wrestle his own pants pocket for it. No, he has more important things to do, watching Ray as he stands, shedding a jacket on the floor by the wall.

Ray answers by nodding, reaching back behind to pull out a box of matches, tossing it over to Pete, all one fluid motion. Pete catches it in hand, and takes a moment to hold both instruments in his hand. Joint in the left, box in the right. “We can start right away,” Pete offers. He spent a good portion of his winnings on more hours; they have more bought for tonight in the room than the last time. Ray makes an unsure face. Pete lifts an entertained eyebrow, laying the joint down by his side while he retrieves a match from the box. “Or do you want to work me up a little more first?”

Regardless of his words, Pete’s hands continue their work. He plucks up the joint, filter sidled between his ringer finger and his pinky. The other three fingers of his left hand focus on keeping the matchbox in position, while his right hand gets to work on lighting that first match.

“Just don’t do this often,” Ray says, going to sit beside Pete, his head tilting to rest on Pete’s shoulder as he watches his hands in motion, dropping the matchbox once a fire is lit and bringing it to the tip.

“Neither did I,” Pete agrees, “But I figure I’ve seen enough people do it, can figure out how it goes.” He lets some of the paper burn, flicking the match’s fire out and sucking on the joint in his hand, finding that not much of the flame has caught on.

“Let me help.” Ray takes the matchbox, pulling out a second one.

He knows about Ray’s experience with smoking, sparse but not altogether negative. Much like Pete, Ray had been around people who were into it, less so than being into it himself. Neither of them are experts, but they’ve had secondhand smoke contact highs and the occasional bummed hit that make them feel like they’re ready for this. This is a case where their experience comes up even. When Ray lights a match and brings it to the joint between Pete’s lips, he’s trusted.

Pete closes his lips around the filter and puffs searing hot fuzz into his mouth. He closes his eyes, fighting his spasming lungs against the coughs that threaten to wreck them. By the time he’s opening his eyes again, his mouth opens and the smoke comes tumbling out of it with a cough that he just couldn’t fight. The smell of weed and a burnt out match fill his nostrils, and Ray’s hand rests assuring on his thigh.

He couldn’t be happier if he tried. It hits him like a rush of sudden, euphoric awareness. Pete’s startled with it, and the joint hangs in his limp hand, inches away from his face now as he feels the excitement wash through him. He doesn’t even think the weed is what’s hitting him, it’s just his skittering heart catching a beat. Just Ray.

Ray, who takes the joint and takes his own hit of it, more curious than confident. Pete watches his face, watches as Ray watches him right back. He can’t not smile in a moment like this, even as a leftover cough flickers up from his lungs.

Ray’s mouth looks like a lowercase o as smoke pushes out through the tight pucker of his lips. “Relax, s’just me,” Pete says, watching with a nervous thrill in his chest as Ray’s lips spread into a smile, and Ray silently offers him the joint again. Pete takes it, and this time it comes easier to him. Pete relaxes, lets his head dip forward and lets the smoke fall out onto his lap. Ray’s hand is still there, Pete notes, and he watches it with lovelorn care. He sees the tendons shift, the knuckles flex.

Pete almost passes it back, but then an idea strikes him, and he’s taking his next hit while looking Ray right in the eyes. He tries to silently ask for permission, before taking the risk of blowing the smoke on Ray’s face. He tries to keep his lips pursed but soft, like they’re kissing, and watches Ray with nerves climbing up his shoulder blades.

Ray leans in, not enough to close the distance between them, and tries to suck in whatever smoke doesn’t fan out against the skin of his cheeks. It’s only a sip, barely any comes out on Ray’s exhale, but it’s enough for Pete to feel a heady rush of excitement. He passes the joint back to Ray, who offers an eyebrow raise. Pete nods. Please, he thinks.

He inhales, watching Pete carefully, like he’s waiting for any hesitation. Then, there’s something disarmingly innocent about the way that Ray closes his eyes and leans in halfway, expectant with his lips still closed, holding in the smoke. Pete steals a moment just to look, then presses towards him, hand coming up to Ray’s jaw to steady them.

It’s a novel way to kiss, and once Pete’s taken his secondhand hit, blowing it out by simply exhaling back into Ray’s mouth, they indulge a few seconds of breathing heavily on each other before remembering to kiss again, then remembering that there’s a lit object in Ray’s hand.

They separate for Ray to take another sheepish hit, and the sight of that alone is enough to send Pete laughing.

“What?” Ray asks.

“You just looked so-“ Pete’s fingers wiggle in place by his side like he’s barely repressing jazz hands, “-just the way you curved your back and looked to the side and- I don’t know, I think I-“ by now, Pete’s laughter has faded, leaving behind a beaming smile, “-feel like the sun and the world and the stars are all in some big plan to-“ this is usually easier for him, and this is the point where he realizes that the weed has definitely set in by now, “-I don’t know what else to say but- but that-“ but that I love you, he’s thinking.

Ray interrupts him by straddling him, joint firmly in his mouth while he gets on Pete’s lap, which completely knocks the breath out of him. Pete gapes at him for a moment, eyes wide as Ray takes the joint and offers it again to Pete.

But this time, the game is totally different. Pete’s able to get hold of it, but he’s also a little overwhelmed by how much he’s suddenly able to feel Ray. He wishes he could have two hands free, but while Pete takes his hit, his other hand clutches at Ray’s hip.

“I have my wish,” Ray announces, and immediately Pete is ready to say yes. With Ray in his lap and all that kissing before, he’s gotten half-hard.

“What is it?”

“I want you to be the girl this time,” Ray answers. Blurts, really. Pete wonders how much he’s been thinking about this. He doesn’t hate the idea of it all. Daunting, sure, but Ray made it look like it felt good. Pete nods, but there must be some pause still on his face, because Ray gets this serious look on his face and adds, “I wanna fuck you.”

They don’t talk about it this honestly often, if ever. The words, bold and sure and vulgar, make him dizzy. “Okay, yeah. We can.”

Like he’s trying to emphasize his acceptance of this new plan, Pete takes his next hit, holds it, and then leans in for another kiss. The smoke passes between them easily, all flush and suction and the wet, hot tip of Ray’s tongue. It’s enough to make a man’s skin buzz, like he’s pressed right up to a speaker. Pete hums his smoke into Ray’s mouth until it all melds together sweetly. When Ray pulls back, faint smoke still clouding around his lips, there’s a lazy smile on his face.

Half-lidded, dark eyes stick on Pete’s pout. Ray starts to move, and Pete expects to be kissed, but instead, the joint leaves his hand. He flutters his eyes open to attention, and feels the shift of Ray’s thighs above him. He wishes they could touch like this every day, not just have it as a rare treat. Ray distracts him by holding the joint up to Pete’s lips for him, the filter nestled between his middle and index fingers while his thumb juts out in a right angle.

Momentarily fascinated by the sight, Pete’s teeth go to bite loosely at Ray’s thumb, the pad of his fingertip slipped just past Pete’s lip. He releases when Ray laughs, schooling his smiling lips into the position Ray wanted from him. The weight of Ray on him makes his lungs feel tighter than he expected, and halfway through his inhale, Pete coughs up a storm again, spluttering white fog between them, little dots of spit flying and making him tense in embarrassment. Ray withdraws his hand, protecting the weed frrom the stress of Pete’s coughing movements while his other hand rubs soothing circles onto his arm. It helps.

Pete hasn’t trusted someone enough to be this intoxicated around them since he was younger, dumber, and much more naive. This is different, though, Ray is different. Pete finds his eyes closing, and feels like a guitar strums its first chord, deep in his body. Ray isn’t going to kick you out at midnight when his parents get home early from vacation, he won’t hit, Pete thinks, and he finds himself believing it.

He presses a loving, appreciative kiss to the side of Ray’s neck. My man.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, Pete leans back, propping himself up on his elbows and gaining enough air to look properly at Ray, to appreciate him. His face must soften or something, because Ray gives him this look that’s somehow shy and eager at once, and Pete has to literally look away to contain the gasping, needing feelings that burst in his chest. He turns his head to the wall, then back to Ray, who has a joint that’s half-smoked and burnt out. They’d need another match to relight it, Pete notes, and in his head, it sounds like a radio broadcast, crackle and all.

“Doing okay?” Ray asks, his voice notably rougher than it was before. There’s a rasp to it that stirs Pete, and when he looks down, he’s gratified to see the outline of Ray’s own beneath his pants.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Pete answers, looking back up at Ray. “Happy.” Happier than he’s ever been, maybe? “You good?”

Ray nods, slow as his blinks follow an inconsistent rhythm. Pete realizes he’s high, and feels a rush of fondness for it. Ray looks soft like this, inviting. Pete gets the sudden urge to pepper Ray’s cheek with kisses, pecks dotted in between smiles until Ray is letting out a laugh, hand gripping Pete’s shoulder and pressing him back down.

Wrestling. Pete remembers the early days of them, before they knew that they could kiss and hug and fuck. Wrestling became its own erotic act the month they discovered it, all about holds and presses. Pete grins when Ray manhandles him lay back again, if only for the flash of memories it gives him.

“I have a question,” Pete says, watching as Ray fiddles with the joint still in his hand.

“Shoot,” Ray says, all while looking for and finding the matchbook.

“When we wrestled, back then, did you ever…?” he asks, prompting with hopes that a suggestive look was enough to get the point across.

“Ever what?” Ray asks, head tipping to one side as he makes glacial progress on getting and lighting a match.

Watching with utter bemusement, Pete answers “Jack off about it?” The flame catches, and Ray pointedly decides not to answer by way of taking a hit and avoiding eye contact. Pete knows exactly what this means. “I did.” He finds himself jealous of the orange shine that dissipates at the tip of Ray’s joint. There’s heady longing in his eyes as he adds a “Sometimes.”

Ray risks looking at Pete again, so Pete makes it worth it, wiggling a little under where Ray’s weight keeps him pinned to the mattress. It gives them both a little sensation, a relief and an anticipation at the same time. It all melded together, with Ray. “Sometimes,” Ray repeats. Pete guesses that that’s his answer, and the image of it is sexy enough to bury in his head for future examination: Ray alone in the showers, rubbing one out and fighting the clock, thinking of Pete pinning him down. That’s something Pete is going to want to keep for a while.

When Ray brings the joint back to his lips, Pete finds himself speaking without expecting to. “Give me some.” He wants it from Ray’s mouth again, wants it to taste like Ray.

He understands exactly what Pete means. He pulls the smoke diligently into his mouth, then leans down. Pete pushes himself up to meet Ray halfway, to let Ray lean on him. Ray’s open mouth finds Pete’s open mouth, and Pete tries to absorb as much of Ray as possible. He breathes Ray in, and breathes Pete out- only now, they’re so close that Pete suspects that he’s exhaling a little bit of Ray too. The thought cuts right to his core, bypasses all his walls and defenses to the very heart of Peter McVries. He kisses back fiercely, half-forgetting the smoke in their mouths until he’s all clouded up with it.

When Ray pulls himself back up, he’s so dazed that even Pete can tell. Pete’s sure that he’s not faring much better, but he has much more important things to focus on, like how he can rest his palm on Ray’s thigh.

“Stay where you are,” is Ray’s only warning before he holds the joint in front of Pete’s lips, only bringing it properly to him when Pete lets his lips part. Then, he’s following the cue, pulling the smoke in with focus, trying to do it right. When he breathes out the hit without coughing, he feels warm and competent all over, and then the thought of feeling competence in his body makes him feel funny, which makes him laugh through the rest of his exhale. Since Ray is still on top of him, the laughs send Ray’s body into a subtle, addictively repetitive up-down motion. “What?” Ray asks.

Pete only knows how to smile. He thinks he might have actually forgotten how to cry or hurt, now that he thinks about it. The next time it happens, maybe it’ll feel like it happens for the first time to him. To them. He likes the sound of it, but doesn’t know if he should.

“Guess I just like you,” Pete says to answer Ray’s question. “I smile ‘round you. That’s old news, compadre, isn’t it?” As if to prove his own point, Pete’s smile stays steady.

“I can tell you like me,” Ray says, sparking exactly one second of confusion before he answers Pete’s question by rocking back, shifting himself down and back against Pete’s (still-clothed, he realizes they need to do something about that at some point) lap. Pete gasps against the tingling pleasure that flows through him, tilting his chin back.

“Fuck,” Pete grumbles, and his smile falters, the beginnings of a moan sneaking into his expression before he catches himself. “Yeah, I do.” He thinks about that thing he had said the last time, after Ray had used his mouth on him. Sometimes, I like you more than I like living. It had crossed his mind more than once before he dared to say it out loud.

“Can I- should I- do you want me to start getting you ready?” Ray asks. Pete remembers that he’s about to have Ray inside him, and it manages to surprise him.

He nods, but asks “What about the rest of the joint?”

“Can finish it now or after,” Ray says.

Pete remembers, and then he smiles. “We have five hours.” It feels like an immense extravagance.

“Probably four and a half, now,” Ray corrects, but he’s smiling too. He leans over to the side, where an ashtray sits on the bedside table. He drops the joint haphazardly into it, quick to return to his position, squarely above Pete.

Pete, with his ragged lungs and his heart on his sleeve, stares up at Ray with adoration he forgets to mask. My man, he thinks again. I love him. The thought comes through clearly, but with it comes all these blurry emotions. He’s sad for people who don’t get to know Ray, he’s scared of the people who wouldn’t want them together. His loudest thought, however, is that he needs Ray now. He’s not even thinking of it as him being the girl, because he just wants to live these next hours as completely as possible. “What should I do?” He wants to do it right. “Get on my hands and knees?”

Ray nods, and shifts his weight to the side. Instead of sitting on Pete, it’s more like he sits at Pete’s side with one leg still slung over Pete’s legs. Wanting to contribute, Pete starts on the buttons of his shirt, working them open one by one as Ray decides his next move. As he pulls his leg off of Pete, Ray says “Yeah, and pants off, I think.”

I think. Pete has this oh-so-specific image of Ray’s handwriting scratching out those exact words before writing an opinion essay. It’s convincing enough, because once Pete’s shirt is chucked to the side, he’s working on his pants next. “You too.”

This spurs Ray to climb off the bed, and once he’s standing on the floor, his arms come out from his sides, as if to help him balance. The sight of it makes Pete giggle, and it also makes him say “Come back!”

“First…” Ray shoves down his pants, spurring Pete to start on his own. Pete’s hands move slowly, distracted by the shadow of Ray’s bulge in his boxers. There’s a small patch in the fabric where Ray’s pre-come darkens the cloth that Pete can’t look away from. Even when Ray talks more, Pete can’t rip his eyes away from the proof of Ray’s excitement. “Where’s your lip balm?”

Pete realizes how high he is, feels it in his fingertips and the wobbly depth perception of the world around him, and his eyes are stubbornly sticking to that dot of moisture at the end of Ray’s length, separated from him by a flimsy layer of underwear. He wants to taste it. Does it taste like Ray’s sweat? Just by thinking of it hard enough, sense memory flooding him, he can practically taste it right now, sticky on his tongue. He completely forgets to answer Ray’s question.

Ray’s hands go on his hips like he’s attempting to look bossy. It happens in the periphery of Pete’s vision, but the sight is enough to make him smile. The thought swirls again in his head, my man, clear and liquid. Like the water in an oasis. My man. It’s like a hundred little miracles, happening every day. Pete can’t imagine loving anyone else.

“Pete.”

Pete has entirely forgotten the question, but he likes the way his name sounds on Ray’s lips. His erection hasn’t flagged at all under the attention, only stiffened, and Pete makes a valiant effort to look Ray in the eye. It lasts about three seconds before he gets curious enough to peek back down again, and it makes Ray laugh. Pete’s shoulder goes up, his smile stays, and he looks off to the side, trying to remember. What did Ray want, again? Him to get on his hands and knees?

“Did you change your mind?” Ray asks.

“About what?”

“Um-” Ray chokes on the sound, and Pete tries to ground himself, tries to focus. What was the question, again? Why did Ray think Pete would change his mind? It seems like a concerning line of thought. “About being the girl?”

Pete pauses. He remembers that this is their code for who’s inside who, but in the moment, it sounds absurd. “I didn’t change my mind about you fucking me, I just-” it’s not like the world is going to end if he just calls it what it is for a second, “-forgot the question you asked, earlier. You were-”

“I was asking about your lip balm.” Ray pauses, then with a look like he’s testing Pete, “I’m going to fuck you with your lip balm.”

Pete’s laughing now, he can’t help it. “My Vaseline, it’s- it’s probably in my knapsack.”

Ray gets right to work, walking over to where Pete’s bag was haphazardly discarded. Whatever Ray grumbles, Pete misses it, because he’s pulling off his underwear, belatedly remembering that it’s still on.

His dick practically springs out of his underwear once it’s off, and all of the sensations that are dancing on Pete’s skin at the moment stand on end. “Wait,” he says, letting it burst out of him, “Kiss me.” He needs it, can’t go one more second without it. Pete lays back on the bed, his body stretching, naked and soft and ready. He lets out a close-mouthed whine, shifting to lay on his side so he can watch Ray. Ray is bent over the bag, but his attention is obviously captured by Pete. His hand is thrust in the middle of Pete’s stuff, but it looks completely still, almost relaxed. Pete blinks, widening his eyes on purpose. He just wants Ray to kiss him, and only half-remembers why they aren’t touching right now. We have time, he wants to say. Pete would be fine if it takes multiple attempts to fetch the Vaseline. Ray, however, seems intent on doing this right the first time.

He rises with a jar in his fist and a hypnotized look in his eyes. He puts the jar on the nightstand (haphazard enough that it tips and falls onto its side while Ray isn’t looking) and climbs over Pete, thankfully filling the cold void with warmth and touch. It’s a welcome reprieve, and Pete hooks his fingers into Ray’s waistband to pull him in, smiling into the kiss.

They kiss like crackling fire, like each exhale comes as a thick gush of smoke between them, only to be sucked in by the other. Pete, lying beneath Ray and feeling every wriggling inch of the (still alive, miracle of miracles!) man on top of him. He feels conviction, heady and loud, spring up in his thoughts. Suddenly, he knows it like it’s his own name: the only way through to the other side of this is together. Pete gasps against the thought.

His face warming with excitement, Pete twists them to the side, rolling them around like he’s on top. The motion comes with a giddy laugh, right into Ray’s mouth. One of Pete’s legs is in between Ray’s, and Pete’s dick is in the slip of space between his own thigh and Ray’s. It’s enough to make him grumble out a moan.

Ray starts kissing his cheek, the scarred one, and the memory of getting it flashes in Pete’s mind. The knife, the flashlight on the man’s belt, an eye swollen shut. How old had he been? Pete can’t remember. Does he want to?

He must slow down, or go limp, because Ray flips them again, trying to get on top. He miscalculates the amount of space left, because Pete lands right at the very edge of the bed, and Ray’s body is still going sideways. The pair of them, entwined, almost fall off thew bed together, only stopping when Ray brings a hard, loud foot down on the floor to stop their fall.

By the time Pete is catching up to what’s happened, his body is half-hanging off the bed. He starts laughing, making it even harder to keep their pinned positions on the bed. Pete twists them back the other way, and Ray helps with as much counterclockwise motion his high ass is capable of. They land in the center of the bed, both on their sides, all tangled up together and giggling.

He looks Ray in the eyes, and his heart starts pounding. Pete feels lightheaded, like blood is gushing from behind his front teeth. He swallows thickly, goes quiet.

Ray brushes his nose against Pete’s, half-hugging him in. “You’re sure somethin’.”

Pete smiles, eyes closed. He steals a short, dry kiss. He has so much to say, and no idea where to start. He just knows what love is, knows that it’s this.

After a slightly awkward pat, high on Pete’s thigh, the memory of what’s next filters in slow. Something inside him, Ray inside him, and Pete nods. “Yeah,” he breathes out. He can handle this, he assures himself. It looked like it felt so good. He opens his eyes and nods for good measure. “So do I…?”

“We’ll do what we did with me, right?”

Pete nods again, and tries not to give himself enough time to second guess. He pulls away even though it makes his skin ache with cold, and he turns his focus out, looking at the wall while he gets on his hands and knees. Ray is moving too, just behind Pete, where he can’t see. Pete devotes that momentary displeasure to the wall.

Ray settles behind him. Pete can tell by the shifts and motion behind him, but he also thinks that he can sense Ray’s presence like that. They’re close enough that he can tell if he’s in Ray’s proximity, even if you took away his sight and hearing and smell.

Both of Ray’s hands rest on the outsides of Pete’s thighs, so Pete tries to get comfortable in place, spreading his legs a bit more and feeling a rush of excitement when the action makes Ray take in a sharp breath. Pete likes having this kind of power.

“Okay so…” Ray starts, then forgets to finish. His hands aren’t on Pete anymore, instead occupied with the jar, if the sounds Pete hears are anything to go by. He looks back over his shoulder, craning his neck to capture Ray’s expression of focus as he tries to gauge how much jelly to scoop onto his fingers.

“Just do what I did,” Pete advises before turning his face back forward. It felt pretty intuitive in the moment, but it also came after many, many rehearsals via jerk-off fantasies. Sure, real life was different, but Pete was the learn-by-experience type anyway.

Then, Pete has a cool, wet fingertip pressing his rim, tentative but clear. Pete’s eyes spring open, his blinks quicken. “Oh,” he blurts. Then, realizing that he doesn’t want to feed any of Ray’s hesitation, “Keep going.”

Pete doesn’t see, but he imagines that Ray nods, and gets a real serious look on his face. Pete feels Ray’s finger, testing and searching with little twitches of attention around the rim. He feels lightheaded, like blood is gushing from behind his front teeth. He swallows thickly. Ray isn’t inside him yet, and the anticipate squeezes him tight.

“Relax,” Ray says, but his voice is shaky and it most certainly does not relax Pete. Pete’s clenching against the strange press of Ray’s fingertip. Pete’s done this to himself before, why does this time feel so different?

Because you love him, he thinks in a voice that’s much like his own, just older. He nods, and then relaxes around the reminder. This is Ray.

It’s not that Ray can’t hurt him. No, Pete has seen Ray hurt people, kill people even, and has forgiven him. Pete’s shot at people, especially likes to shoot around them to get them to realize that they need to run. He aims for arms and legs and plausible deniability. On the other hand, he’s seen Ray shoot someone in the head, has seen the blooming orchid of blood on their face and the hardening on Ray’s. He doesn’t love that part of Ray, because he doesn’t see that as a part of Ray that’s his own. That’s the army’s, that what they took from you. Pete wonders if Ray loves the army parts of him, or swallows them down the same way Pete does.

He feels safe with Ray anyway, because he knows that even though Ray can hurt him, he won’t. He tries to forget the tragedies of the life he’s found himself in, and relaxes. Ray is strong enough to lift me, and good enough to not drop me. Ray pushes an index finger into him, and Pete lets out a long sigh.

Ray keeps his finger still for a frustrating stretch of time. It’s probably just half a minute, but feels like a lecture that just refuses to end. When Pete has had his fill of waiting, he pushes back, hoping that a knuckle more of stimulation will feel like something. It does, even if the feeling is a whisper in comparison to what his dick is shouting for.

Pete bites his lip, and weighs whether or not he’s going to touch himself during this. Would it be too soon? Would it be hotter for Ray? He looks over his shoulder again, and sees Ray slack-jacked and hungry-eyed. “Oh,” Pete says out loud, at the same time as he thinks it. He likes that face on Ray. Trying to fuel the fire, he pushes his ass up, and watches as Ray’s eyes scan his whole body, not knowing where to look.

It’s starting to feel kind of nice, the attention and the intrusion. Pete’s bottom lip, bitten and freshly-kissed, pushes out into an unintended pout. Ray seems to gather a message from this, namely that “Fine, I’ll do another.” He pulls out the finger, maybe to lather two of them up, and then Pete is staring forward again, preparing himself for entry.

It shouldn’t feel like the first time, but he has those nerves again, like he’s not sure what to expect. What if this changes him, somehow? What then?

Ray starts pressing two fingers into him, and Pete relaxes his neck totally, head dropping down as he adjusts around it. Ray’s fingers in him bring with them a new feeling, a whole new angle to getting fingered that Pete hasn’t experienced before this. It’s an overwhelming way to have him, Ray’s fingers sinking into his flesh like a hungry bullet. Pete lets out a sharp hiss between closed teeth, reminding himself to just relax. “Fuck,” he whispers, trying to get the tension out of him.

It comes up as a belated cough, one that must strangle Ray’s fingers, because Ray lets out a low “Oh,”, his fingers crook, and it becomes a hot flash of want, all through Pete’s body. When he’s finally stomachs a full breath, he loosens around Ray’s fingers, letting them slip deeper, towards something that sends swoops of feeling up through his body. The only thing Pete’s dazed mind can summon is that it feels like the letter S, stretched out into something soft and slow. He twists his chest into the feeling, one hand pushing heavy into the mattress as his shoulder lifts. He can imagine that the pleasure is free, then, to flick up the skin of his chest as he lets out a soft noise of exertion.

“Gah,” Pete nonsensically mutters, lowering his chest so his face can rest on the bed, only his ass up now. It feels good, so Pete follows it blindly, pulses of something oh-so-gratifying flooding his senses when he just lets it. “Maybe you should- should fuck me,” he says, even though this very much feels like getting fucked. His distant awareness of the erection Ray must be keeping behind his back is the only thing that keeps him from sinking totally into the mode of just letting himself receive.

There’s a shift in weight behind Pete again, and now he can feel Ray’s thighs at the backs of Pete’s, and the length of his dick presses against his ass. Woah, okay, Pete thinks, realizing how real this has just become.

“Just- just-” while Pete stutters, Ray positions himself, now with the head at Pete’s entrance, making everything dizzier. Then, Ray pushes inside.

Pete’s eyes widen, and he bites the inside of his cheek. He lets out a noise that’s pained, but shows little other resistance to the overwhelming feeling of a dick inside him. He didn’t think much in advance about how different it would be compared to his own fingers.

“You okay?” Ray asks.

Pete considers saying no. Instead, he nods his head, gulps, and presses himself back a little. That proves to be a mistake, it makes him feel like he’s getting cleaved in two, so he backs off. Pulling in that direction at least feels a little like relief, enough for him to go “Don’t stop, don’t, just let me…”

“You can ride me, if you wa-”

“Yeah, sure,” Pete agrees breathlessly and thoughtlessly, and soon doubts his decision. Ray’s hands come to his hips, and he brings Pete back with him. Ray goes from kneeling to laying back, letting his own legs come out in the space between Pete’s splayed legs. From there, it’s all gravity, Pete dropping as far down on Ray’s cock as is humanly possible, still turned away from him.

He had committed to memory that Ray’s dick was shorter and thicker than his, but now that Ray is inside, Pete can’t imagine it being any longer. Like this, Ray is deep in him, deeper than Pete knew he could go. He has a lurid image in his mind, where Ray is so deep that if Pete opened up his mouth wide, you’d see the tip of Ray’s dick blooming up from his throat. Now that he’s actually here, in position, Ray’s cock feels fucking huge in him. Is it because Ray’s thick? Is it because Pete’s high? Pete’s not often overwhelmed, but right now? “Fuck,” he cries out, twin tears leaking from both eyes as it rips through him.

“Fuck,” Ray says, only it’s a deep moan.

Pete wipes away his tears with the back of his forearm, then relies on his shaking knees to bring himself up an inch or so. He eases his way back down, feeling like his whole body is strung tight like guitar string about to burst. He’s shaking, a little, and Ray’s hands stay on both of his hips, holding onto him like he’s scared Pete could fly away.

“That good?” Pete asks, eyes sticking on the fuzz of Ray’s calf-hair. That, paired with his descent, manages to make him feel something twisting and delicious from deep in his chest.

“You’re just incredible,” Ray answers. Pete doesn’t feel like he’s just anything, feels like he’s overflowing on every part of living, but he doesn’t feel the need to correct Ray. Instead, he wants to feel the scratch of an itch, chasing a high of pleasure that he sees on the horizon.

Doing little bounces of motion proves addictive, especially when Ray’s hands encourage, warming and soothing in their station, firm on Pete’s hips. There’s a moment where his hips twitch up, and Pete lets out a startled gasp. It feels good. Sharp, but good. He drops down on that feeling again, angles it to the part of him that needs it most, and his next gasp comes on purpose. He wants to rile Ray up, wants him reacting.

Ray gives him what he wants in a way that Pete didn’t expect. He sits up, with Pete still on his lap. It’s a pleasant surprise, all of Ray’s chest lining up against Pete’s back, his lips going to nibble the back of Pete’s shoulder. It’s nice, it lets Pete lean back against his man, makes everything feel wetter and closer and lovelier. “Yeah, yeah,” Pete huffs out his approval, “That’s- mmm,” he squirms in place, and feels like a key has turned his ignition on. “Yeah,” he says as he reaches his hand back, curling it around Ray’s arm. He doesn’t have much leverage, but it’s enough for him to rub his fingertips on the back of his shoulder. They get to be just a little closer like that, more tangled up, and that’s how Pete likes it. He gets to chase his own pleasure like that, all in the constant pursuit of closer.

Meanwhile, Ray moans right against his skin. “Fucking Christ, Pete, this feels…” Pete tips his head back, rests it on Ray’s shoulder as he cranes his neck. He gets the distinct feeling like he and Ray have similarly nonsensical trains of thought barreling ahead at the moment, all in the same direction.

“Say it,” Pete huffs out.

Ray makes a broken noise against Pete’s skin, and answers with a strangled, “Heaven.”

Pete grins, then he moans. It’s an open-mouthed announcement to the ceiling. He’s so in love in this bubble of time that he’d shout it from the rooftops if anyone else could understand. Instead, he just tells the only other person who’ll get it. “Love you so much.”

Without much leverage, Ray bucks up in place with a loud, eager noise. Pete wants to egg it on, so he does a body roll, not realizing that he’s igniting something animal in both of them until they’re panting out and grinding against each other in an uneven rhythm.

“Wanna look at you,” Ray says. Pete immediately agrees, looks over his shoulder with a questioning glance as he slowly, slowly pulls off. He’s kneeiling on the bed, body facing out while his head is turned back to Ray, who’s shuffling in position, moving back to sit upright at the head of the bed. Pete turns slowly, and crawls into Ray’s open lap.

At first, Pete just sits on him, kissing Ray and not yet bringing him inside. They kiss like that for a little while, until Ray makes a very unsubtle prompting noise against Pete’s mouth that sends him into a fit of giggles.

“What?” Ray asks, his hands palming Pete’s thighs while he protests Pete’s laughter.

“Just funny,” Pete says. Ray’s pout melts when Pete lifts himself up, positioning Ray at his entrance with a confidence that he didn’t have when he wasn’t facing Ray. “You ready?” he asks, knowing the answer.

He probably looks smug, because Ray rolls his eyes into his “Yes” before he promptly loses his attitude once Pete starts sinking down on him.

The more of Ray that Pete has inside him, all while looking each other in the eyes, clears all the haze in the room. It melds them, makes them silent even with all the satisfaction that’s thrumming low in their combined systems.

Ray breaks the silence. “I love you too.”

It’s like something clicks. He’d mistake it for the ticking of time moving forward if not for the fact that it feels like the whole world shifts and bends around this realization. He loves me too. It’s something that happens outside of time, not because of it.

Pete kisses him, latching their lips together and holding onto him. Pete’s dick is trapped between their stomachs, and gets spare fissures of pleasure as they connect. Their mouths are open against each other, messy and spit-soaked as they try to get even closer together. Pete isn’t lifting and dropping on Ray’s dick, but instead he’s making uneven presses downwards, which does the trick while never not having Ray deep. He can’t tell which noises are his and which are Ray’s, they all blend together in a melody of pants and grunts and gasps. Ray’s arms are low on Pete’s back, hugging him in, while Pete’s embrace around Ray’s neck and shoulders.

Pete’s mind goes haywire, starts skipping on a loop like a broken record player. Let me, let me, let me, his mind says. If his tongue weren’t in Ray’s mouth, maybe he’d say it, but instead he just thinks it with each pulse of pleasure from deep in his core. Let me, let me, let me, letme letme, letmeletmeletmeletme, until it loses all coherence. It’s not even let me in or let me down. Just let me. Union, permission, something so real you could cut it with a knife or pierce it with a bullet.

“I gotta tell you something,” Ray gasps out, and Pete pulls back exactly enough to stare deep into Ray’s eyes, into their dark night. He can see the stars in them, can see a clear sky that they could fly through together, like two birds migrating side-by-side to a location that they know without knowing, an ancient memory that was thought long before them, will be thought of long after them. Pete imagines them flying together, through the air in a helix pattern, together forever.

Then, Pete remembers to listen. “What?” he prompts, before bouncing in Ray’s lap getting a broken whine from Ray’s kiss-bitten lips.

Ray looks dead serious. “When- or if, if we die here-”

“We won’t die here, we’re going home,” Pete interrupts, his voice rough.

Ray looks empty for a second, and then he grasps tight on Pete’s hips, “If we die here, I need you to know that I love you.”

Pete gasps, half because of the words, half because Ray pulls him down on his own cock, and it feels incredible. He wants to return in kind, wants to give Ray some of his faith. “I love you too,” he says, then says it again with unrelenting eye contact, refusing to blink. “I love you so fucking much, Ray.” Ray’s nodding, trembling lip opening like he’s going to say it again, but Pete has more. The fire of satisfaction in him loosens his lips, lets the poetry fall out in dribbling streams. “Love you in every language, everything. Whatever happens, we’re together. We’ll go together, we’ll go home, we’ll be home. It’s you and me, forever and ever, okay? I’m not letting go of you, you’re not letting go of me. We-” Pete’s own unexpected moan interrupts him, and he feels a little spurt of pre-come that gets rubbed onto Ray’s chest with a squirm, “-we’re together even if we’re sick or missing a limb or at fucking war, Ray, come on, we’re… we’ve got love holding us together, we’re special.” For all the shit they’ve seen, Pete feels like they’re the lucky ones.

“Fuck, Pete, you’ve got me,” Ray says with a messy groan and a hurried kiss. “I’m yours, I’m your man, you can’t get rid of me no matter what. Love you here, love you later, won’t ever let you alone, okay?” My man, my man, my man. “You’re part of me, now. Won’t let anyone hurt you, promise.”

Pete nods vigorously, and tries to circle his hips around Ray’s cock. A long, low moan fills the few inches between their lips, and then they’re kissing again. Pete murmurs an affirmative “Promise,” into Ray’s mouth. Then, when the pleasure is bending and breaking inside Pete in a way that feels like he’s coming to the edge, he adds “Love you, I do,” in a keening whine that immediately becomes a sloppy, desperate kiss.

“I do, too,” Ray answers.

Another line in Pete’s mind and body crosses, everything going warm, his vision turning emerald green at the edges. He feels a slim line of spit down his chin, and the sensation of being turned inside out. He bursts, warm and wet between his and Ray’s hearts with a long cry tilted up tot he ceiling. His orgasm is a wild, shivering thing that clenches hard around Ray’s cock, and when Pete opens his eyes, he sees a tear slipping out of Ray’s.

Mouth open and still shuddering, Pete’s hands find either side of Ray’s cheeks, sensitive on the downstroke as he wipes away Ray’s tear with a shaky smile and a nod. Ray nods, which is his only real warning before he’s gasping and Pete feels a sudden gush of warmth inside him, which stiffens his spine upwards in involuntary response. “Fuck,” Pete mutters, blinking unevenly as his body catches up to him. It takes a few breaths before the world starts to slow around them again, and he’s anchored in space by Ray’s eyes, looking into his his. “Fuck,” he repeats again, this time a whisper.

Ray closes his eyes for a second, opens them, and speaks with a grave, low tone. “I…” Then, he laughs, and Pete joins him in a smile, before he continues, his voice not losing its gravity. “Fuck, I love you so much,” and then the tear comes back, just on the other eye. Pete brushes that one away too with a glowing smile.

“And I love you too,” Pete says, surprised by how wet his own voice sounds. He doesn’t need to cry, but can still feel the heavy emotion all throughout his body. “And we’re- you and I… we’re one thing now, okay?”

Ray’s nod is a small, shaking thing. Then, Ray presses his forehead against Pete’s, blurring all else aside from his eyes. “We are,” he murmurs, before giving Pete a soft, chaste kiss.

Pete pulls off of him then, making a face of discomfort at the squelching feeling of come filling him, before he remembers that it’s Ray’s. It doesn’t remove the discomfort, but it makes it more thrilling, and Pete is able to smile as he resettles in his comfortable position on Ray’s lap.

He takes a moment to look at Ray and thinks, honestly and dangerously, that he’d rather die than go home without Ray. He thinks that he should be scared at that. How does he go from the Pete that he knew to suicidally infatuated in less than a year? How could someone’s life change this month, and they still be the same?

Ray’s smile is sunny, like the rain isn’t falling in thick blankets right outside. “What are you thinkin’bout?” he asks, arms slung lazily around Pete’s waist.

Pete tilts his head to the side, sits in the moment before answering. “Just that I’m not gonna let go of you.” This only brightens Ray’s glow.

Wherever he goes, I go. If he goes, I go, Pete thinks, and finds that it doesn’t scare him, because he knows they’re going home one day.