016. send more candy??

05-21-2122

Sejan:

Heard you got your transfer—congratulations! How’s training treating you? Have they told you what MOS they’re assigning you? Look, I don’t know what the supply situation is like out on those really isolated training sites, but I might be able to send you some cigarettes if you really need them. MPs might pull a few for themselves… something’s better than nothing though. Right?

After all that fuss after Biko, the COL recommended me for officer’s school. It’s a lot of book shit. Flat maps and tactics. Every building has AC, however.

Say ‘hey’ to Toriet for me.

Hope you’re well.

—Brint

05-25-2122

Brint:

Fuck your AC. 

How’s your leg doing? I know you’d do anything to get back in the combat zone. I guess officer school means you might get to command that ODA after all, huh? Do you think you’ll get to come back to active duty? It would be good to serve with you again. Until that time comes, maybe describing this shit in letters’ll hold you over until you can get back out here.

I’m 18B. Toriet got 18C. He says “hi.”

They’ve got us shipping further north at the end of next month, to an FOB in Weyon some 60, 70 miles out from the foothills surrounding the Heyet mountains. I find some comfort in the landscape, in the open space. At night when we’re not running drills, it’s actually quiet. It’s still. Nothing moves. The desert holds its breath out here and I’m not sure why this stretch of red sand is different than any other I’ve watched before. Sometimes, it seems like everyone else forgets what we’re up here training to do—but I guess that’s a coping mechanism, isn’t it? To deny thinking about the trigger until it’s time to pull it? I walk my perimeter watch every night wondering if the stillness would feel different if I couldn’t just barely see a hint of Lasandet on the horizon or light pollution from Tareija peeking out past the mountain’s teeth. Would it feel more calm if there wasn’t a single soul alive past where my footprints ceased?

I have decided it would feel no different. 

I know why you sent me up for this. Everyday I understand more that it is not common to repeatedly feel nothing when a person ends and still somehow feel something for the people that surround you. In the quiet, I’ve come to realize that I am always thinking about the trigger until I have to pull it.

Then, it is just like breathing. 

Please send cigarettes and calorie bombs. I’ve been scavenging half packs from overturned trucks left abandoned in old conflict zones. Do you understand me? Brint, I have been smoking dead men’s stale cigarettes for three weeks. I think the last pack I smoked was manufactured in 2115. Short filter lucky reds are ideal, but I will smoke anything resembling a cigarette at this point.

Study hard, schoolboy—

K. Sejan

06-18-2122

Sejan:

Weapons sergeant seems fitting. Sounds like you’re already exceeding expectations.

The isolation of the desert provides a lot of room to think freely; gives plenty of space to let your mind roam. Process what you need to process, but try to not get hung up in the darkness. Don’t let the bleaker edges of existence start to encroach on the lighter side of life. Find something that brings you joy and think about that too, ok?

People put things together differently—what’s normal for them will not be normal for you. No one out there is like you, I guarantee it, but still, you can never really know a man to the latent night of his humanity, can you? Not unless he lets you in, and sometimes not then either. People put faces forward because of the expectations placed on them by society. The society that surfaces in war is a grisly thing, mangled and different than the law and order back in the streets of Port Haven. I bet the people around you think about how easy it is to kill a man just as much as you do, even if they don’t let on. It’s unavoidable. Killing is not a mutually exclusive thing no matter how good or bad at it any one of us is.

It probably helps that you’re used to being a scavenger, though. I didn’t know that about you until you told me as much back at that picnic table. Maybe recommending you to be sent out to be an expertly honed killing machine was more of a curse to you than a blessing.

Anyway.

Leg sucks. It’s still attached, but doesn’t behave like it used to. Shit just hasn’t grown back right. Hindsight sure is something. We’ll see what happens when it comes down to assignments. Might be able to sway them into sending me your way.

Have they pushed you out of an airplane yet? Nothing beats feeling your body plummeting toward your death, knowing that a sheet is pretty much the only thing preventing all your bones and blood from being power slammed into the ground.

Enclosed is a carton of your cigarettes, some hard candies, and a box of energy bars. Tried to get you some flavors other than ‘Fresh Pressed Cardboard’ because if you’re going to keep eating these, then you at least need to get some standards about taste.

Keep breathing. Smile every now and then, even if it’s forced—don’t want those face muscles to atrophy.

—Brint

07.10.2122

Brint:

When I see you next, I’ll tell you what the latent night of a man’s humanity looks like when he doesn’t think anyone’s watching, how law and order in Port Haven looks exactly like the politics of war when you’re invisible. You and Toriet always remind me to step out of my shadows but I want you to know I’m not unhappy. The desert gave me people who believe in me, the confidence to defend myself. I don’t think that’s bleak. It’s beautiful.

I would never have looked a man like you in the eye back home. I never would have been given the chance to talk to someone like Eoran, like any of the men and women I serve alongside here. I’ve been given every opportunity to succeed and I’m taking every shot, consuming every moment. 

I’ll tell you all about being homeless later. There’s a lot of quiet to fill out here.

Sorry your leg still sucks. Can you jump out of planes if your leg isn’t one hundred? Because that was fun as fuck and it’d suck if you didn’t get to do it again.

Thanks again for the cigarettes and the energy bars. I didn’t know cardboard came in so many flavors. My epicurean horizon yawns wide with the sheer enormity of all my cardboard possibilities. 

Toriet ate most of the candy you sent me.

Don’t call me a scavenger: I prefer survivor. Also, this is my smile. I’m gonna get a complex.

We’re getting final assignments next month. Hope we get to talk in person soon. Do good on your exams so you can command my ODA, nerd.

— Kasse

Please please please please
please please please
send more candy??

—Toriet

07-25-2122

Sejan:

On the move so this will be brief. Glad I misunderstood you enough to get that last letter. I wasn’t really looking for reassurance, but I’m relieved. Glad you’re the type that likes parachuting—probably no jumping in my future in an official capacity, but a civilian can do what he wants, right? Elderly people bucket list that shit all the time, my bones are much less frail.

Haven’t been able to get over to the PX so no treats this time. Sorry! (Sorry, Toriet!) Maybe soon.

Also keep in mind that my leg may be busted, but it can still kick the ass of anyone who calls me a nerd.

See you when I see you.

—Brint

+++

After all the paperwork and formality of official promotions, their training group was split up and shipped out according to need. Kasse Sejan and Eoran Toriet—and a handful of familiar faces from the rest of their company—were sent to the FOB in Daiet, hundreds of miles south of Lasandet. The area to the north became problematic. Large swathes of mountains easily facilitated the activities of guerrilla fighters hiding among the crags waiting to pounce; the terrain was difficult to maneuver in large convoys. It was a no man’s land, a lawless hot bed of hostility that command was intent on snuffing.

For the two boys wrapped up in their own, personal covert operations, the corners of bases were usually the most vulnerable. Daiet was gifted with its own yard of humvees and transport trucks, clotted and dense and impenetrable to a straight sight line.

The sun intensified the afternoon. Eoran’s cheeks were flushed with color, uniform a mess that he was trying to put back together. He glanced down at his watch.

“We gotta go get our orders. Ugh, these fucking truck windows are too high,” the engineering sergeant grumbled, stretching to stand on his toes before resigning himself to reality. Eo turned to Kasse, eyebrows knit. “Can you fix my collar?”

Complying with a languid grace, distracted in tilted admiration of his best friend’s lines, his quick-fix lover’s heat-ruddy cheeks, Kasse’s hands came to his 18C’s collar. He took great care along Eoran’s throat, flipping his neckband down and pressing the folds of his collar into crisp form. 

“Sorry I pulled it off,” the weapon sergeant smirked. He wasn’t sorry. Leaning in, he placed a smug peck on the other soldier’s barely parted lips. Even when they rushed through, Kasse remained undermined by his euphoria, all soft looks and indulgence for the bloodwright he felt in pangs and aches all throughout his emotionally compromised system. “Couldn’t help it.”

“Mmhm,” Eoran hummed in his special way, in a melody of disbelieving notes and tones that promised he didn’t mind, a sidelong look of mischief that tried its best to stifle his intractable adoration for that boy at his neck. “It’s okay.”

He took Kasse’s hand and pulled him along through the maze of vehicles, only letting his companion go when they reached open air. The FOB was always bustling; its transient nature seemed to enforce this. Units were constantly passing through on their way to front lines near and far.

At the far end of the base loomed a handful of buildings huddled together, initially temporary but later reinforced given how long the war was dragging on. The perimeter was marked in chainlink and razor wire and beyond stretched Daiet’s lone air strip. Its clay was long ago packed by the hands of grunts who first seized this land, then by the large tires of trundling transport planes, massive metal beasts that seemed too large and too slow to be capable of flight, each departure like an imperfection staining the brilliant cyan of a clear sky for too long. A gust of wind swept up a cloud of dust that quickly grazed all obstacles on the base. In its leaving, a single engine observation craft was sitting at the end of the makeshift runway, propeller barely spinning.

Eoran walked with Kasse to the administration building, weight of that title obvious in how much care was given to its outer appearance, the hint of luxury lurking just inside. An air compressor’s fan hummed around the corner, diligently chugging the heated exhaust from the chilled air inside. The engineering sergeant yanked the door open and let his friend step inside first so he could turn his head into his bicep and cough up some of the particulate from that previously passing breeze. Before the weapons sergeant could get a second shoe past the threshold, a soft pack of cigarettes was coming straight for his face.

“You ready for that ass kicking?” A familiar voice asked. Lieutenant Brint leaned against the drab wall of that waiting room full of empty chairs, single silver bar insignia glistening even in the artificiality of the building’s fluorescent light strips.

“This fucking nerd—” 

That phantom boy had his boundless energy tied up in wisp blues and hearsay, rarely betraying an emotion that would leave him exposed, but once he caught that soft pack on a fumble, Kasse couldn’t hide his elation. He rushed the sergeant—no, lieutenant—and threw his arms around the officer, not really caring if he knocked the other man down with the force of impact. Fortunately for Brint, the sergeant kept them both steady and standing.

Something about Brint’s letters had left Kasse Sejan vulnerable. It wasn’t the content, the jokes, the mounting evidence of a guardian’s care betrayed in their correspondence. It wasn’t the care package, the cigarettes, not even the cardboard food he’d shipped over. 

It was the simple fact they existed at all.

Besides Lia’s infrequent letters (usually brief, typed things reminding him of his status as a punk bitch and demanding he quit sucking military dick so they could get back to more important things, like scamming convenience stores), Brint’s correspondence was the first he’d ever received. He’d be loathe to admit it out loud, but Kasse had become partial to one Emrys Brint—even if he did have a lame first name. 

“What are you doing here?” Kasse asked as he pulled away, hands on the older man’s shoulders. He looked back at Eoran, face betraying a kinetic sort of disbelief—dude, is this motherfucker here right now or did I just assault a stranger for throwing cigarettes at my head?

“Making sure you shitheads are ready to ship out. We’ve got a long way to go and we’re on the road in an hour.” Brint spun Kasse around, pointing him back toward the boy he was looking at. Eoran was frozen at attention, stiff and still, posture pristine, limbs snapped to his side. “As you were, Toriet.”

The engineering sergeant relaxed and caught the door as Brint kept pushing forward, ushering both boys back out into the marigold day. The older man dug out a small bag of rainbow pastilles from his pocket and pressed it into Eoran’s chest in passing.

“Oh, thanks!” Eo fell into step alongside the pair, turning the bag over in his hands. “Does this mean you’re our CO again?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the lieutenant replied. “You’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.” His steps were uneven, but not unsteady, movement nearly hinting that one of his legs may have been shorter than the other as a result of his previous injury. Brint had clearly settled into his limp since the catastrophe at Biko—if walking weird bothered him, it didn’t come across the sculpted angles of his hewn features. He lifted an arm, gesturing to where a convoy was growing. “That’s us over there. You two are in the third vehicle with me and the med sergeant from your class, Anton Locke. Command has us taking the scenic route around the bottom of the mountains to the fire base up near Yetava. They want us to clean up the landscape and start scumbling supply routes, but I’ll explain more in briefing before we set off.”

A few steps and he was looking back to Kasse. “By the way, we’re going to be saddled with another company’s charlie platoon for part of the way and their captain is a stickler for formality. You shouldn’t have to deal with him much, but mind your manners, understand?” The look turned pointed.

Kasse couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably at the end of his CO’s piercing look. He, ever graceful under scrutiny, lifted his chin, spine straightening from the casual character of his slouch-turned-camouflage, unfurling his posture to reveal his predator frame. He canted his head imperceptibly.

“Sir,” 18B said as he fell in line, long stride matching Eoran’s step like it was second nature. “Yes, sir.”