riptide_asylum: (ootd)
riptide_asylum ([personal profile] riptide_asylum) wrote2010-11-21 12:30 am

"Chimera" (Out of the Dark,1985)

Title: Chimera
Rating: PG
Summary: There are things that have always been known...

When he tries, Cody sometimes imagines he can remember what it was like to live without Nick. He remembers Janet and college, and the long, warm evenings on his grandfather's boat.

He thinks of his first girl, his first car, the first time he sailed on the ocean alone. Back then he'd never seen Nick, never known what it was like to be a part of someone's heart.

Cody tells himself that, back then, he'd never missed what he'd never known. But somehow he can't rid himself of the idea, the suspicion, that he'd known all along.

The first time they met, something inside Cody fell into place. He remembers that, clearly. Alone in the middle of a group of brand-new grunts, he'd jumped from the chopper, afraid right down to his soul. Sure that everyone around him could hear his heart beating. Hear the scream inside his heart.

And then he'd seen Nick. Lounging against a chopper, cigarette in his fingers, watching. Nick had stared for a minute, then raised his hand slightly. A greeting or perhaps a gesture of recognition, welcoming Cody in.

Just like that, the fear went away. Cody felt the slick oppressive heat, smelled the fear and death, and squared his shoulders. He'd come to fight.

Nick beside him felt right, felt comfortable. Felt like something he'd always known. They spoke the same language, read each others' eyes. Read each others' hearts.

He knew Nick and Nick knew him, and it wasn't until years later that Cody ever thought to question that at all.