Generation Kill wolf-verse Fic: You Drive Through the Dust, Chapter 1

oh god oh god oh god posting day has arrived. Ahem!

Many many thanks to my team of betas: templemarker, trinity_clare, riverlight, oliviacirce, thefourthvine, my assorted advance-readers and cheerleaders, and Iulia forever as always! And thanks also to anyone I forgot. It's been a long road, and I have had a lot of help along the way.

The ratings/pairings/tags cover the entire story. More detailed warnings for each chapter are in the end notes. Please let me know if I missed something that should be tagged/warned, and feel free to ask questions if there's a particular warning you're concerned about! I've had this story living in my head so long I've lost track of which parts might be upsetting. (I think that everything that happens in the story is canon-typical at worst, for one canon or the other, but that doesn't actually eliminate much.)

Title is from Dutch by Dessa:
But you can't play for keeps if you never draw blood
You just brace and you breathe, you drive through the dust

At one time I planned to write the entire arc from Nate and Bo and Brad and Frost meeting in Afghanistan through to Iraq as one story, and I intended to call the whole thing You Just Brace and You Breathe. When I realized I needed to break the story into two parts, I realized that the second half of the line was perfect for the Iraq part, so here it is.

(The working/alternate title/summary was "(Nate's got) 99 problems and a bitch is most of them.")

The story is in five parts, a loose attempt at five act structure (as described by Film Crit Hulk). I'll be posting one part per day until Friday, so if you don't like to read WIPs the whole story will be up by the weekend!

And without further ado:


You Drive Through the Dust (15260 words) by Dira Sudis
Chapters: 1/5
Fandom: Generation Kill, Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Brad Colbert/Nate Fick, Nate Fick/Original Female Character, Brad Colbert/Ray Person, Nate Fick/Mike Wynn, Pappy Patrick/Rudy Reyes, John Christeson/Evan Stafford
Characters: Nate Fick, Brad Colbert, Ray Person, Mike Wynn, Craig Schwetje, Ray "Casey Kasem" Griego, Stephen Ferrando
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Psychic Wolves, Non-Monogamy, Animal Death, Harm to Children, Dubious Consent, Minor Injuries, Pack Dynamics, Wolf Pack, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mates, Iraq, Kuwait, Hunting, The Grooming Standard, The Old Ways, Bitches Get Shit Done
Series: Part 7 of Every Marine a Wolfbrother
Summary:

August 2002-August 2003. Nate and Bo lead their platoon to war and bring them home again.

Dear YAGKYAS writer!

Dear YAGKYAS writer,

Sorry I didn't get this up before assignments went out! Thank you in advance for writing me a story! Above all please write something that makes you happy, and I'll be happy too. But now on to the optional details. :D

I asked for Nate/Brad, which is definitely my favorite pairing in this fandom. I'd love to see something kind of goofy and light-hearted for them--just a relaxed moment, or an ordinary slice of life, or porn is of course always welcome. I'd also love weird trope fic--someone getting transformed into a cat or a kid or having post-surgical amnesia (or, ooh, any kind of amnesia) or getting sex-swapped on the sexy/wacky end of the seriousness spectrum, or being destined soulmates or any other weird and mostly-fun cliche/trope/etc.

I also asked for Nate/Mike, which I don't get to see as a pairing very often but is one of my favorite relationships in the whole show. I'd love to see any exploration of their relationship--the weirdly intertwined authority relationship and the way Mike is really the only person Nate can turn to in Iraq--if you can add sex onto that as well it would be awesome! But I would be happy with gen/friendship fic looking at that too. Feel free to just silently AU Mike's wife out of existence if you want to, but don't do anything horrible to her or focus the story on the fact of cheating.

I also requested Nate and Evan as single characters! Nate is my very very favorite, and I love his competence and his protectiveness of his men and his quiet, understated badassery and his hidden woobietude and his green green eyes and basically everything about him. And Evan! I love Evan so much--I'd rather not see fic that looks at him as the butt of jokes or focuses on his comparative helplessness. I love his perspective on the Marines, and his general eagerness to learn everything about everyone and the way that he seems genuinely willing to be impressed by them and just. &Evan;

So, any of that!

I also mentioned a Chalion Saga fusion as my wild card. If you haven't read Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion, no worries, totally disregard this. But if you have--oh my God, NATE IS SUCH A DEDICAT OF THE DAUGHTER, AND BRAD OF THE SON (AND RAY IS TOTALLY THE BASTARD'S). RIGHT? RIGHT?! So, you know, do with that what you will. *g*

If you have any questions, or if I have been totally unhelpful or anti-helpful, feel free to check in with iulia (iuliamentis on twitter and tubmlr). She knows what I like better than I do and is scarily good at keeping secrets from me! :D