Chapter Text
So you feel
Anything and everything could be
All that you wanted
Stay with me
I’m in no condition to be
Alone
And I’m on, and I’m on again
Brace yourself
With all that you have
And oh, I’m in love again
Brace yourself now
-Howie Day, Brace Yourself
One
“Doc? It’s Ray Person.”
Tim sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, glaring at his clock. It was nine in the morning on his first day of leave, he’d been planning on sleeping in until midday and eating left over pizza in his boxer shorts in front of the TV. Instead, he apparently had Ray fucking Person on the phone. How exciting for him.
“Ray,” he said, dropping back against his pillows. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ray was silent for a second, which should have been Tim’s first clue that something was wrong – that and the fact that he hadn’t heard from Ray in months, not since the last Bravo reunion. Now that Tim had some time off in Cali he’d been planning on catching up with everyone, but it wasn’t like he and Ray were best buddies or anything. So yeah. He should have known.
“I need some help,” Ray finally said, his voice subdued. “I’m sorry to call out of the blue, dude, but…”
“What’s the problem?” Tim interrupted. He’d been told a few times to work on his bedside manner. It had never stuck.
Ray sighed. Tim heard a noise in the background, a baby crying.
“Well,” Ray started, and the crying got louder, a steady wailing right into the phone. “Well, I’ve got this kid.”
~
Ray’s girlfriend found out she was pregnant the day before she’d been planning on breaking up with him.
She told him this without malice, sitting on the side of his bed with the pregnancy test clasped loosely in her hands. She’d been going to break up with him, she’d said, “not because you’re not amazing, but because I need my space, I need to be alone.”
“Ok,” Ray had replied, staring at her hands, at her red nails tapping away at the test. “Ok.”
“So this doesn’t change anything,” she’d continued, and only then Ray realised that she was on the verge of tears. He wanted to comfort her, but wasn’t sure if that was allowed anymore.
“Ok.”
She nodded, and impatiently wiped her eyes. “I don’t want this baby.” She said it so definitely, so confidently, that Ray knew she’d never change her mind. She didn’t want this baby, Ray’s baby. She might, hypothetically, want some future baby, but this particular one? No.
“Ok,” Ray said, for the fourth time in a row, then shook his head. “No, right, we can – we can take care of…it.” He didn’t want to say the word ‘abortion,’ it sounded ugly and wrong in his head. But he had no doubt that that was where they were heading.
He watched a couple of tears slide down her cheeks. An hour ago if he’d seen her crying he would have taken her in his arms, kissed her and told her stupid jokes to make her laugh and punch him. But that already seemed distant, her words had put an ocean between them, a galaxy, and she was suddenly alien to him.
“I’m not getting an abortion,” she said, reading his meaning, and his eyes slipped down to the little silver cross she wore around her neck. She didn’t go to church, not even for Christmas or Easter, but he guessed she was just Catholic enough.
“What’ll we do?” he asked, although if she didn’t want it and she didn’t want to abort it, there was only one real option. Ray knew enough not to assume anything, though. The kid was growing in her stomach, not his. It was her choice.
Although he still felt like he was about to throw up.
“Someone will want it,” she said, and again there was that certainty, the assurance in her voice that told him she’d made this decision and that was it. He guessed she’d made a few life choices over the last little while – painting her nails red, eating a salad for lunch, leaving her boyfriend, having her baby adopted.
Ray suddenly needed her to go away, needed her to leave his apartment and let him be alone. He wanted to call Brad or Walt or his mom. He wanted to talk about it with somebody who didn’t have that steely certainty in their voice.
He knew he wasn’t being fair. He knew that this was peripheral to him. The impact on her – what this was going to do to her body, her life, was massive. He didn’t have any rights. All he could do was be supportive, try to ignore the fact that she didn’t love him, didn’t want his child.
“Honey,” he started, then stopped himself, blinking. That wasn’t right. “Jessie, whatever you want, whatever you need me to do – I guess we’re not together anymore, but this is my problem too, right?”
She looked at him blankly for a second, then gave him a tiny, bitter smile.
“Not really.”
~
Tim looked at the baby in Ray’s arms, its angry red face, and its little hands flailing around in outrage. It was about a week old, too young to tell its gender, but Ray had put it in a little pink onesie so Tim took a guess.
“What’s her name?”
“Eloise Beth,” Ray said, then seeing the look on Tim’s face went on defensively, “After my grandma. I know its kind of old fashioned, but.” He shrugged. “I’ve kind of been calling her Ellie for short.”
“Ellie,” Tim said, and touched her little face, placed his palm over her tiny head. “Ellie, huh? It’s not a bad name.”
The smile Ray gave him proved more than anything that this was real, that he was in this. He looked like any father proud to be showing off his daughter. Tim shook his head.
“Jesus, Ray. How did this happen?”
“The usual way,” Ray said dryly, rolling his eyes. “Look, Doc, I’ll give you my life story if you want it, I swear, I just – she won’t stop crying. Can you please take a look at her?”
“Alright, alright,” Tim said gently, “Hand her over.” He made himself click on his doctor face, sinking into the role like it was a costume. He was going to get the whole fucking story out of Ray before the day was through, but for the moment he had a patient to look at, and as always, that took precedence over anything else.
Ray passed her over, and Ray took her warm, squirming body over to the couch, laying her on her back. “Is she sleeping?”
“Occasionally,” Ray said, kneeling next to Tim and waving his hands in front of the couch like he thought Tim was gonna let her roll straight off. Tim noticed the dark circles under his eyes, then, the slightly stare-y look all new parents got. He looked like he was doing it tough.
“Uh huh. Eating? Shitting?”
Ray made a face. “Homes, the stuff that comes out of this child is like a classified fucking substance. It is green. I coulda sold that mess to fucking Saddam.” Tim raised an eyebrow, and Ray hastened to add. “I feed her formula. I offer it to her whenever she cries, she seems to like it just fine. What comes out the other end is kinda disproportionate, to be honest.”
“That’s normal,” Tim assured him, and started poking at Ellie, pressing careful fingers into her belly.
“Is she ok?” Ray asked anxiously, and Tim made himself smile, felt it turn read when he saw the look of relief on Ray’s face.
“You know what colic is?”
Ray bit his lip. “Is it something that makes babies cry for eight hours straight and give their daddy a nervous breakdown?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Tim pressed his palm to her forehead, checking for fever, but she was fine. “Look, she’s got a sore tummy That’s it. She’s pretty pissed off about it, but she’s not dying.”
The look Ray gave him was both hopeful and dubious. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. There’s no cure, sorry to say, but there are a few things you can try. You realise I’m not a paediatrician, though-”
“What things?” Ray interrupted, sounding a little desperate. “I’ll try fuckin’ anything, homes.”
Tim picked Ellie back up and held her close to his chest, rubbing his hand soothingly over her back. “I’m not promising anything. Some colicky babies just cry no matter what. They grow out of it, but it can be pretty tough to deal with.” He paused, he had to ask. “Ray, where’s her mom?”
It was like Ray shut down, his face going completely blank. “She doesn’t have one,” he said shortly. “Just me. She’s mine.”
Tim looked down at her face, her nose and mouth, the half-formed line of her eyebrows. “Yeah, she looks like she’s yours,” he said, and saw Ray come back to life, his mouth twitching like he was trying to hold back a smile. “Poor baby,” Tim added. “Oh, shh, you’re ok. Even with Person for a daddy, you’ll do fine, sweetheart.” He glanced back up at Ray. “If I help you out, you’re spilling your guts, ok?”
“That sounds like blackmail,” Ray said sourly. “What happened to your oath?”
“Fuck my oath.” Tim frowned. "I wanna know everything.”
~
Jessie hadn’t even wanted to hold her baby after it was born. She’d turned her wet face into the pillow, and the nurses had taken Ellie away without Jessie looking at her, taken the little girl off to be bathed and measured without ever meeting her mother. Ray’s heart had broken when he heard that, when the nurse told him, but by then he was holding Ellie close in his trembling hands and he didn’t have room for anything other than the warmth of her.
“She’s so small,” he’d whispered in awe, and the nurse smiled at him sympathetically, led him to a chair.
“Sweetheart, are you going to be alright?” she asked him, touching his shoulder gently. “Are you sure you’re ok?”
He’d looked up at her, at her well meaning face, and nodded. “Ma’am, as long as I got my little girl I’m gonna be fine,” he said, and realised he meant it with all his heart. He smiled, feeling like his whole world was being turned upside down and twisted around the anchor of the tiny weight in his arms.
He was terrified. But happier than he’d ever been in his life.
~
Tim told Ray everything he remembered about colicky babies, about putting them on the dryer and tilting them around in weird angles until they magically stopped crying, but the only thing that stuck was the one about skin on skin contact, laying there with the baby pressed close to your chest, recreating the sense of being safe in the womb.
Ray was stripping off his tee-shirt in a second, undressing Ellie and lying down on the couch, holding her to his chest. “This had better work,” he said, “Now I know why everyone in Hitman two-one was always so fucking pissed off when I wouldn’t shut up.”
“You’re only just now figuring this out?” Tim asked, but it lacked heat on account of the fact that Ray Person was lying in front of him without his shirt on, and there was apparently a lot more to Ray Person than Tim had realised. Like a smear of dark tattoos and a set of rock hard abs. Good to know.
He coughed and settled down in an armchair. “So start talking, Person. How in the name of fuck did you end up with a week old baby?”
Ray kissed Ellie on the top of her head, avoiding Tim’s gaze. “Well,” he started. “I had this girlfriend.”
~
By the time Ray finished talking, Ellie had calmed down, her sleeping face pressed against the tattoos on Ray’s chest. Ray had asked Tim to get her bottle ready, terrified that as soon as he moved she’d start up all over again. Tim was only too happy to oblige, relieved at the chance to get up and move away from Ray, just getting his thoughts in order. It was obvious Ray was in trouble, even more obvious that he was too stubborn to really ask for help. Typical fucking Marine. Tim was already looking at his plans for the next few weeks, figuring out the spaces where he could fit Ray in.
He came back with the bottle and saw Ellie had woken up, just looking around with her bleary grey eyes. Ray took it from him and looked at him anxiously. “She not gonna turn out retarded because she’s not being breastfed, is she?” he asked. “I’ve heard all kinds of crazy shit about that.”
“No, of course not.” Tim rolled his eyes. “Tonnes of kids aren’t breastfed, they all turn out fine.” He looked around the apartment. It wasn’t a pigsty, he’d never met a Marine who hadn’t had a certain paranoid orderliness drilled into him, but it was clear that Ray had had other things on his mind than picking up after himself. And in a tiny apartment like that, a little mess went a long way. Tim sighed and started cleaning up the dishes in the sink, waving off Ray’s protests.
“Ray, do you have anyone that can help out? Family?”
“Nah, homes, it’s just me and my mom since grandma died. We ain’t real close. And she’s a receptionist at a free clinic in Cape Giraudoux. She can’t afford to take time off and get a ticket to come out. I wanted to pay her way, but...” He shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t exactly have a lot in my savings account and all of it’s going to Ellie.” Tim nodded, wiping down the benches. Ray went on. “I’ve had a few people come round, though. Walt and his girl brought that,” he gestured to a giant teddy bear sitting in the corner in a USMC tee-shirt. “They know even less about raising a kid than I do, but it was good to see ‘em. I woulda called Poke, but he’s back in Iraq. I don’t know his wife well enough to call out the blue.” Ellie started wiggling and Ray set the bottle on the table before holding her up, kissing her on the cheek before transferring her to his shoulder. Tim couldn’t help but notice the unconscious affection in Ray’s every gesture, every look, the way he couldn’t hold his baby without showing how much he loved her with every fibre of his body. He’d always been expressive, almost cartoonishly so. It made everything so much more obvious.
“Uh, what else?” Ray was saying, “Oh, Nate Fick dropped in yesterday. Fuck, that boy has the Golden Touch; I didn’t want to let him leave. As soon as he picked her up she stopped crying, he spent the entire visit talking about what a good baby she is. Then she started up again as soon as he was out the door. I almost ran after him.” He grinned, shaking his head. “And Mike Wynn and his wife came by with a bunch of diapers and old baby clothes. Cathy fussed at me a lot, but it was all good.”
Tim finished tidying up the sink and started tying up the trash. “You ever think about moving back to Missouri? Being with your mom?”
Ray nodded. “Yeah, I thought about it, but I got my job here, and another one lined up when my enlistment runs out in a bit. Besides, Brad will be back soon.”
“Colbert?”
Ray gave him a ‘who else?’ look. “Yeah, and we got this shit perfectly timed. Check it. I’m on leave, then I’ve got my two whole weeks paternity that the Marine Corps so generously gave me.” He made a face. “By the time that runs out Brad’ll be back from England, at which point he’s taking long service leave. I’ll have three months left of my enlistment, Brad’ll take care of her for most of that. When he goes back to work he’ll have a cushy detail training baby Marines at Pendleton, then I’ll have her for a bit before I have to start my new job. It’s gonna be tight as shit, but between us we should be able to mostly keep her out of day-care for a while. After that...” he ticked Ellie, smiling at the way her fists waved through the air. “I guess well see what happens, huh, baby?”
Tim was surprised. “I didn’t realise you and Brad were so close,” he said, feeling kind of stupid. Ray didn’t pay him any mind.
“He’s my best friend,” he said simply. “He’s the one who convinced me to take Ellie in the first place. Everyone else thought I was being a fucking moron.”
“Brad’s adopted, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, it’s not even that though, it’s...” Ray trailed off, gazing down at his baby’s face. “If I didn’t have her here with me, I’d spend all my time wondering where she was, whether she was ok. Jessie fuckin’ disassociated herself, convinced herself she wasn’t the kid’s mother. I’m not sure if she even knows her name.” He glanced up. “Brad knows me, though, he knew there was no way in hell I could let go like that. So when I said I wanted to fight for her, he promised he’d have my back.” He shrugged. “I just need to get through the next few weeks.”
Tim didn’t know what to say, didn’t have any frame of reference for this. But Ray was his Marine, one of the men he’d sworn to protect. Just because they were out of the AO, didn’t mean that promise was any less real.
“Well, I’ve got your back too,” he finally said. “If you need me.”
The smile Ray gave him lit up the entire room.
“Homes, I need all the help I can get.”
~
Being gay in the military had never really been a problem for Tim. He didn’t fuck Marines, which helped, and when he absolutely had to look, when Colbert went around without his shirt on, for instance, he’d gotten so good at hiding, keeping on his angry-doctor face, that it was never an issue. But most of the time there wasn’t even that. Being at war did make him angry, being exposed to the rank stupidity of everyone from the highest officers to the lowest dumbfuck grunts made him angry, and he didn’t have any energy left to bother checking out the men he was deployed with. No matter how good looking they were - and he wasn’t blind, he noticed guys like Nate and Walt and Jason - he was more likely to want to hit them upside the head than actually...hit them.
He couldn’t even really remember noticing Ray at all. He’s been on pretty tight lockdown during OIF, though maybe if he’d been letting himself look... But Ray didn’t have the Calvin Klein model face of some of the other fuckers, and he was loud and obnoxious and it seemed like he probably hid as much as Tim did. Tim had seen him as Brad’s RTO, as the clown of the unit, as another mouthy grunt. But he hadn’t really seen him.
He saw him now, though, away from theatre, away from all the things that he’d used to camouflage himself - no Ripped Fuel, not MOPP suit, no Avril, no Colbert. He started to realise that there was a lot to Ray that was worth noticing.
And those fucking abs were only the start.
They were on full display when Tim showed up the next day with two bags of groceries. Ray opened the door in nothing but a pair of old jeans and a surprised expression, and Tim had to push past him gruffly to stop his eyes from lingering. Out in the AO it was easy, sure, stateside on the other hand was another fucking story.
“How’s Ellie?” Tim asked, noting the absence of hysterical wailing in the apartment.
“Asleep,” said Ray. “Hi, Doc, how are you, good to see you, how’s your day-”
“Yeah yeah.” Tim waved his hand impatiently. “You get any sleep last night Ray?” Ray shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. Tim couldn’t stop his eyes from tracing down the line of his body, from his bicep to the hard cut of muscle that disappeared into his jeans. He swallowed and looked away, busying himself with unpacking the groceries.
“Couple of hours,” Ray said, yawning. “Hey, you don’t have to - you didn’t need to get this stuff.”
“I know,” Tim said shortly. “Go to bed. You’re no good to anyone if you fall down from fatigue, and you’re not downing Ripped Fuel anymore. Get some sleep, I’ve got Ellie’s six if she wakes up.”
Ray stared at him. “Doc, thanks. Thank you.”
Tim hated being thanked. He was just doing his job, doing what was in his DNA, but the expression on Ray’s face was kind of hard to resist. “Don’t worry about it,” he sighed. “Go on and put your head down.”
“Hang on.” Ray went into his room and came back with a big old fashioned wicker bassinet, which he set on the coffee table. “Cathy gave me this,” he explained, “It’s good, I can cart her around in it without waking her up.”
Tim gazed inside, Ellie was sleeping on her back with a stuffed dog by her head to keep her company. It had horns.
“Ray, is that a devil dog?”
Ray grinned proudly. “Yup. Brad sent it. It’s her favourite.”
Ellie was too young to have a favourite anything, but Tim just rolled his eyes and shoved Ray towards the bedroom.
“Alright, I got this. Formula in the fridge?”
Ray nodded through another yawn. “Fuck. Thanks again, I’m almost out.” He shut the bedroom door behind him, and Tim stared at it for a second, letting himself indulge in a moment of appreciation for Ray’s body, his tattoos painted liberally over his lean muscles.
“Damn,” he sighed, and turned towards the kitchen. “Who the hell knew, Ellie?” he whispered. “Your daddy’s a fucking hottie.”
He had a chicken casserole on the stove and simmering before Ellie woke up and started whimpering. He picked her up, winced, and put her straight back down - she needed her diaper changed. “Hey, baby, where does daddy keep your diapers?” he asked, looking around the apartment. They were nowhere to be seen and he sighed, cracking open the bedroom door. “Ray?”
Ray was sound asleep on top of his covers. He’d kicked off his jeans and was lying there in just his boxers, one arm thrown over his eyes. Tim very deliberately looked away, went straight to the changing table and gathered up what he needed, didn’t let himself look back before he left the room.
Well, fuck.
He was attracted to Ray. That was pretty fucking obvious. But he wasn’t going to be an idiot about it. He was attracted to a lot of guys, most of them straight, he was used to not acting on it, used to looking and not touching. This was no different. He could deal with it just fine.
He spread a towel out on the floor and changed Ellie, then heated up a bottle and settled on the couch with her cradled in his arm. Ray had been asleep for two hours, he hoped he could give him another couple before Ellie started fussing for her daddy. He flicked the TV on with the volume down, and prepared to get heavily invested in some daytime soaps, Ellie a soft, warm weight in his arms.
He woke up with Ellie’s fingers up his nose and Ray standing in front of the couch with two bottles of beer.
“Shit,” Tim yawned, sitting up and putting Ellie in her basket. “Sorry.”
Ray handed him a beer. “You come into my house, you make me dinner, you take care of my kid. Honestly, homes, you can tell me - are you my fairy godmother? Can I keep you?”
Tim shook his head. “I’m visiting with my folks for two days up in San Francisco. I’ll check up on you when I get back, though.”
“Why?” Ray sat down next to him and tapped their bottles together. “Not that I don’t appreciate the shit out f this, but you know you don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tim said, and took a long swallow of his beer. “Last year a Marine I was in Afghanistan with got back stateside and broke his leg. I lived with him for two weeks until his girlfriend finished her semester at UCLA and took over.” He shrugged. “It’s my job to take care of you stupid fucking jarheads as much as I can. I take it seriously.”
Ray snorted. “Shit, Doc, is that you being nice? It’s never happened before, so excuse me for being a little confused.”
“Fuck you,” Tim said comfortably. Ray laughed.
“Seriously, though, when we were at war together? If I’d gotten shot I’d have expected you to fuckin’ kill yourself making me better. Outta the AO... I was hoping you’d tell me Ellie wasn’t dying, that’s as far as it went.”
“Yeah, well, if you think I’m gonna leave an innocent baby with nothing but a dumb devil dog to look after her, you obviously don’t know me very well.”
“Yeah, I guess I don’t.” Ray reached into the basket and picked up Ellie, started tickling the soles of her feet to make her kick her legs in the air. “So who am I taking you away from? You got an angry girlfriend at home that’s getting all pissy without you there to play doctors and nurses with?”
Tim smiled quietly. “No, no girlfriend.”
Ray squeezed Ellie’s toes. “You hear that, darlin’? Doc’s a free man. You’re gonna have two grown men running around attending to your every whim, three when Uncle Brad gets home.”
“Get used to it,” Tim added. “She’s gonna have you wrapped around her finger for the rest of your life, you know that?”
Ray looked as if the thought delighted him. “Looking forward to it, Doc,” he said, rolling his eyes at himself a little. “I’m just glad to have her at all.”
~
It didn’t take Tim long to realise that whenever he wasn’t around Ray, he was thinking about him.
He dropped in every other day or so, would have made it daily if he thought he could get away with it without looking like a freak. On the days he skipped, he saw his friends, sat around watching TV, did his groceries, and wished he was with Ray.
Tim was too smart to fall in love with a straight guy. He told himself that a lot. He was a smart, mostly emotionally stable guy, he wasn’t in the market for love and even if he was, he certainly wasn’t going to go recruiting in the Marine Corps. When he was ready for something more than one night stands he’d go looking, but for now? Falling in love with Ray Person and his baby girl was not on his agenda.
So he kept telling himself.
And sometimes he believed it.
~
When Ray took Ellie home the first time, he put her in her cot, sat on the couch, and cried for an hour straight. He probably would have kept on longer, but Ellie had woken up and joined in, desperate shrieks that freaked him out and made him forget anything he had to be miserable for. He’d jumped up, holding onto her and pacing around his apartment, holding her awkwardly and patting her like a puppy. “Shh, baby,” he kept saying, desperately, “Shh, now, shh, baby, it’s OK, we’re gonna be OK.” She’d looked up at him accusingly, blaming him for the whole world, blaming him for the fact that she wasn’t all snug and safe in the womb anymore, but stuck out here in this shitty apartment with nothing but a deadbeat Marine for a daddy. He’d looked at her face, studying it intently, committing every millimetre of it to memory, and promised her that he was gonna make it right, that he was gonna be the best father in the world, that he’d be there for her for the rest of their lives, that they were gonna get through it all together.
His tears dried on his face, and he fed his little girl in their apartment for the first time with a look of wonder, curled up on the couch with her fiercely sucking at her bottle. He loved her more than he’d ever thought possible, he hadn’t even known that kind of feeling existed in the world.
“Eloise,” he’d whispered. “Eloise Beth Person. Ellie Beth.” She looked at him sleepily, pulling away from the bottle and yawning at him, and he smiled, delighted. “You bored with me already Ellie Beth? We got a long way to go, yet.” She ignored him, turning her face into his chest and going to sleep, and he just sat there, frozen, gazing down at her, until the phone rang with Brad on the other end.
“You got her home alright?”
“Yeah, dude,” Ray said. “Yeah, she’s home.”