Title: Oasis
Fandom: Generation Kill
Pairing Nate Fick/Mike Wynn
Rating: PG
Length: 1300 words
Author notes: Many thanks to iulia for beta above and beyond the call!
Summary: It didn't seem strange. It seemed perfectly normal.



Oasis

It didn't seem strange. It seemed perfectly normal.

Riding shotgun down the MSR, Nate looked out into the blazing afternoon and saw the sign and thought God, I wish we had time to stop. He could almost smell the deep fryers--could certainly taste the cold, icy Coke--and then he blinked and realized he was still looking out at vistas of sand and distant huts. Maybe some shape out there had mimicked what he'd thought he saw, but nothing would excuse believing he'd seen it.

He hadn't known things like that could actually happen outside of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Nate lifted one hand from his M4 to rub his eyes, which were, as always, gritty with sand and exhaustion. Alone in the cab of the command vehicle with Mike, Nate didn't have to worry about the way it would look when his eyes got wet under the pressure of his fingers. Mike would understand, and Mike kept his secrets, guarding the LT's dignity before the men. Nate's mouth felt dryer than ever, and he was still swamped with the weirdly specific homesickness of a sudden, desperate longing for fast food.

"Nate?"

Nate lowered his hand and shook his head slightly, resettling his Kevlar and looking out into the glare. He wanted to shrug off the mild concern in Mike's voice, but he knew he could trust Mike with this, as with everything. In fact, he had an obligation to report this to Mike of all people. He was the one who'd have to step in and take command if Nate's brain skipped off to a long summer road trip down I-95 for more than a second.

Nate shook his head again, enough to be an answer. "I just had a fucking Looney Tunes hallucination. I saw the Golden Arches in a mirage, and for a second I was all set to tell everybody to pull off and hit the drive-thru."

"Well, now," Mike said slowly, and Nate smiled slightly at how perfectly unimpressed Mike sounded by that confession; two syllables were enough to give Nate some perspective. It had only been a second; they were probably all seeing things out here.

"I hate to say it, LT, but that would have been a truly questionable command decision."

Nate glanced over, a quick look at Mike's slight smile and then away again out the window before Mike could see the answering smile on Nate's face. "Yeah? Good for morale, at least."

"Oh, great for morale, no question," Mike agreed. "But think about the big picture here. Think about what you're inflicting on some poor high school girl working the drive-thru window. Never mind turning Ray Person loose on the speaker, the stench from this many Marines in MOPP suits would kill her before she could hand out any food. And then you've got a fucking riot on your hands because your boys didn't get their Happy Meals before she went down."

"That is a point I failed to consider," Nate conceded, squinting at the shape of the shadows around the next cluster of huts. "Collateral damage could rise to unacceptable levels. Any advice, Gunny?"

"Well, if you're going to send the men off road through the desert chasing a mirage, don't do it for less than a Holiday Inn," Mike said, in exactly the same tone he would convey any other piece of hard-earned wisdom about surviving in recon.

"Noted," Nate said, and then, because he couldn't help picturing it, "Beds and showers, Jesus."

"Walls," Mike agreed. "Doors."

Nate started to make automatic calculations about how many rooms they'd need, who could share beds and who ought to be separated; Reporter would sleep standing up in the closet if they told him he had to, and Ray just might try it on him. Nate would want to make sure he wasn't being mistreated too badly. He could stop by during his fire watch and check.

They'd have to break up the teams a little to get everyone into a bed--six rooms, minimum. That would mean Nate and Mike in a room with Stafford and Christeson, which would be heaven on earth compared to sleeping in and around the Humvee. Unfortunately it probably wouldn't be deemed proper for an officer and it would take most of the fun out of getting to sleep in a hotel room for the men.

Nate considered the alternative--imagined shutting the door of a hotel room with only himself inside, imagined a bed and a shower just for himself to use. He could tell that it was supposed to seem like a great idea; it had all the components of a great idea, all the things he was going half-crazy from not having out here in the desert, on the road. But the actual thought of it made unease twist through his gut, and something absurdly like loneliness prickled across his skin.

"I think I've got some kind of Humvee Stockholm Syndrome," Nate said, making himself laugh a little as he did, shaking his head. "I just tried to picture having a hotel room all to myself and it seemed like a horrible idea."

Mike snorted, shaking his head in Nate's peripheral vision. "There you go again, LT. Not thinking things through. Who the hell wants to be alone in a hotel room? That's just a waste of a bed."

Nate grinned, and the image that came immediately to mind--Mike sharing the hotel bed with him, and by no means letting it go to waste--seemed as perfectly logical and reasonable as a McDonald's sign by the side of the road. He turned his head to say something about Mike having his six in any situation, his mouth already open on the words. The sight of Mike's slight smile and straight-ahead gaze, his hands steady on the wheel, jolted Nate back to earth. Of course that was a mirage, too, of course Mike wouldn't have been offering....

"Eyes on your sector, Nate," Mike said, no less amiably than he'd said anything else so far.

Nate looked away, watched sand go by under the painfully brilliant sky, and didn't look over even when he saw movement on his left side in his peripheral vision. He didn't do anything at all to discourage Mike's hand from slipping into his space between his Kevlar and his MOPP suit, fingers finding the few inches of naked skin at the back of his neck.

Nate made himself pay very close attention to every little thing in his sector: a wheeling bird, the exact shape of the faintly contoured land, the precise color of the sky at the horizon. He breathed silently in and out, perfectly controlled, and the whole time he was wondering how he could ever have wasted hunger or thirst or any kind of want on food, when he couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched bare skin to his skin.
They were both so filthy that they probably technically weren't even touching, but it was dangerously close to being a sexual experience all by itself, just Mike's fingertips pressed to the sweat-damp nape of his neck.

"Glad to know you've got my back," Nate said, his voice giving away nothing, but then there wasn't much left to give away. Mike had him figured out right down to his bones, but Mike kept all his secrets.

Mike's fingers moved slightly, back and forth, undeniably deliberate, and Nate took a long, deep breath and turned his head slightly, pressing back into the touch.

"Didn't spend all this time making it to E-7 just to get busted back to O-2 because my LT went to pieces," Mike assured him. The obligation the words might have implied was nowhere in his voice, or in the way his fingers were easing down into the collar of Nate's MOPP suit.

Nate kept his own hands firmly on his M4, and after another few seconds he said, "Both hands on the wheel, Gunny."

Mike snorted and muttered a, "Yes, sir," as he took his hand off of Nate. "You just keep your eyes out for a hotel sign."

"Will do," Nate agreed, but he didn't feel any need to go chasing mirages now. He had everything he needed here, rolling down the road with Mike.