Fic: Signs (Generation Kill)

[crime_and_ink]

Title: Signs
Rating: G
Word count: 512
Disclaimer: This is based on the depiction of the characters in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill. No offence is meant to the real men.
Characters and pairings: Ray Person, Walt Hasser, ‘Pappy’ Patrick and Rudy Reyes; Hasser/Person.
Summary: Ray and Walt do a job, but it isn’t the one they should be doing.
Note: For the prompt ‘activists’ on my au_bingo card.
4th in the Goodbye to the Sky verse.

Ray finally gets to meet Pappy and Rudy for the first time two weeks after he fixes the first radio. Walt tags along – “I don’t have anything better to do” – and unwraps one of the packages of food Pappy and Rudy produce from a fridge the size of the bedroom Ray and Walt share.

“Those are the walkie talkies we managed to repair before you arrived, everything around here—ˮ Pappy gestures to the cabinets that line one of the walls, “—is yours to use while you’re trying to fix the radios or built new ones.

Rudy strides by, carrying signs that Ray thinks he recognises from the few protects he’s seem photos off—something about free travel between cities, being allowed to travel without papers like they did before the sky disappeared.

 Privately, Ray thinks it’s a lot of bullshit, because there’s no way the government’s going to give up all the control they have over people right now, but Walt’s face kind of lights up when he sees Rudy and the signs, so he keeps quiet.

“I wish I could go with them,” Walt says morosely, settling down beside Ray in a way that suggests he’s been here a lot of times and he’s never been allowed to join them. Ray gets it: the kid of two government officials who were murdered shouldn’t be allowed to go to protests where people get dragged off to prisons if they don’t run fast enough, but it still sucks.

Ray leans against Walt’s shoulder, tapping one of the signs against the floor – FREE TRAVEL FOR ALL – and nudges him. It takes a few tries, but Walt doesn’t even snap when he sees what’s caught Ray’s attention.

Paint. Signs. Stacks of paper. Templates for the signs and posters. It’s all stacked on top of the cabinets full of the equipment Ray needs to fix up the radios, but it won’t kill them to spend some times doing something else before they start.

Ray leans across his sign – AFFORDABLE TRAVEL FOR ALL – and swipes one paint covered finger across Walt’s cheek. The blue paint stands out stark against his pale skin. Before Ray can pull away, Walt drags his fingers through red paint and leaves streaks across his arm and across his t-shirt.

In less than ten minutes, Ray’s got paint all over his t-shirt, jeans and he’s pretty sure he’s got some up his nose. Walt has streaks of

“Hold on,” Walt says when Ray picks up a bottle of water to wash the paint off his hands with. He grabs Ray’s wrist and positions it until it’s over the bottom half of one of the large rectangular signs that has otherwise escaped the paint. He presses Ray’s hand down and holds it for several seconds before he pulls Ray’s hand from the paper and does the same with his own hand.

The handprints don’t quite match, but they look good. Vivid blue and red, smudging together where the paint’s thicker, under an acronym which might stand for anything, but Ray doesn’t care.