Just Fluff and Stuff

Just a Soldier

A/N Did you think I was going to leave it like that...? 

The Funeral

"When I first met Duke, we got off on the wrong foot. I came from a family of homophobes and was sure that he was some creep that was going to spy on me in the showers or something. He put me in my place right quick. He told me to stop being a pansy-ass whiner, put my big boy pants on and think for myself, and that I was too much of a princess to be his type.

I came to learn that he had someone back home, like many of our fellows. Truth be told, I got sick of hearing how great his husband was. How he was the most understanding, and the sweetest man to walk this earth. Imagine my surprise when I heard he wasn't married to Jesus himself. He might as well have been the way he went on about him.

More importantly I came to learn that he was not just a soldier. He was a hard worker, a caring friend, and a fierce fighter. He believed that he was doing the right thing by going out there to the battlefield and defending those he loved. He fought for freedom. He fought for his family. He fought everyday so that people could go about their daily lives in peace.

He always had a smile on his face, like he knew something we all didn't. He would pray even on patrol that he would get to see his husband one more time. The day we were ambushed, he didn't hesitate once. He stepped up for all of us and we got out of there alive because of him. He refused to leave anyone behind. It wasn't until it was too late that we realised the price.

Duke was a good man, an exemplary soldier and a true hero. He gave us all a piece of himself with his friendship, so that we might bring him home to see his spouse again." I walked across the platform and, after handing over the carefully folded flag, hugged the pale man who watched the proceedings in a daze.

If someone had told me as a teenager that I would not just be friends with, but actually embrace a gay man in my lifetime, I probably would have laughed in their face. I had been a fool. A blind puppet to the society my parents brought me up in. Now I was a man, a true man who thought for himself and could decide what was right and what was wrong.

This man who laid to rest in the ground had shown me what it was to love unconditionally. He had become my brother, my true family, in a way surer than my own blood. He gave his life for ours. I already missed that stupid grin of his. The picture they had up of him was all wrong. He never was so serious as that proper picture on the stand. I liked the picture I had of him best. It was just an old polaroid that was taken off the back of a jeep. He and I had been talking about what it meant to love another person, really and truly. It was back when I thought it wasn't possible to love another of your own sex, but his words were pretty convincing.

What he had sounded more beautiful than anything I had seen in my lifetime. Better than the girls I had played with in high school. Better than the strained relationship between my own folks that always seemed to teeter on the edge of a fight. Far better than those silly romances that I was forced to watch on dates while all I wanted was a quicky in my car.

It was something to strive for. Something I didn't know if I could achieve in my life time but I sure as all hell would try. The service was coming to an end and I was grateful for it. My leg ached something terrible with all the standing I had to do. I caught the wave of one of the family and went over to see what they needed. First I was thanked for my speech, but I waved it off embarrassed.

"Won't you come back to the house with all of us? I think he needs all the support he can get right now." A glance in the pale man's direction and I nodded hesitantly. The poor boy was still staring off into space like a lost man. Not that any of us could blame him. I went over to offer an arm to him, trying to jog him out of his daze long enough to leave with his family.