remember when Fick said that he took the platoon on “a field trip to hike around the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon” on one of their days off from patrolling
Hey, sure thing! This might be a bit different than what you were hoping for, but I woke up early this morning to see this prompt in my messages and the idea sprang from my brain right then and there.
Thank you for sending this ask! I love Qtip, but I don’t write him very often so it was nice to get to do that. I hope I can do him justice!
Headcanon A: realistic
Qtip makes a career out of being in the USMC (he re-ups the first time around purely because he has no idea what else he would do if he wasn’t a marine. As he matures and gains some self-awareness, he sees that he benefits from the structure and takes pride in the work that he does). I headcanon him as being a good team leader eventually (with years of experience and after he ditches the do-rag) – I can see the beginnings of it in the way that he looks after Christeson and that way that he’s taken responsibility for showing him the ropes.
Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious
This headcanon contains includes all of vehicle 4 – still Qtip centric – because they’re the ones I would chose to ride along with (don’t get me wrong, I love the boys in vehicle 1, but if I had to ride with them I would definitely end up throat punching Trombley at least once).
There are moments in vehicle 4 when OIF feels more like a dysfunctional family road trip than an actual invasion. I know the usual route with this headcanon is to place Nate in a parental role, but I see him more as an exasperated older sibling. Qtip, of course, plays the role of insufferable younger sibling. Nate’s an officer, so Qtip can’t hold his finger half an inch away from Nate’s face while chanting I’m not touching you (he knows that he had to maintain at least some level of professionalism), but he does make it a goal to see if he can get Nate to lose his cool – even a little bit – at least once. Nate follows the ‘if I ignore him, he’ll stop’ school of thought – which gets harder and harder as it goes on. It’s the third mystery creature that Qtip brings into the humvee that gets him (he managed not to acknowledge the first two) and that’s only because this one escapes from the bag after they go over a particularly large pothole. The creature, naturally, tries to escape and ends up crawling onto his lap before leaping out of the window. When they have a quiet moment later, Mike pulls Qtip and Christeson aside to remind them that the shriek they heard came from their escaped lunch and not their LT.
Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful
Qtip takes it upon himself to look after Christeson. He’s the youngest in the company and needs someone to show him the ropes. It becomes more than that – Qtip starts to think that Christeson might be his best friend and that he might even love him (he tries to tell himself that it’s in a brotherly way, but he’s starting to realize that he might be lying to himself). He makes up his mind to sort through the feelings he’s trying not to have once they’re both stateside again. It should be easier there. A day later, Christeson makes a mistake. He doesn’t wait long enough before popping his head over the barrier they’re crouched behind. Qtip holds him and tells him that he might be kind of in love with him because it seems stupid to wait now. Christeson doesn’t hear him.
Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.
Qtip and Christeson don’t re-up after OIF. Neither of them have any idea what they’re going to do next, but they know they’ll keep on losing pieces of themselves if they stay. They decide to go on an actual road trip (it won’t be the same without Nate and Mike, but Qtip insists that they have to visit them both at some point along the way – Nate isn’t an officer anymore, so there’s nothing stopping Qtip from going full younger brother. Christeson quietly plans to warn Nate when they get close, should he desire to make a tactical retreat to avoid the wet willy that is most certainly coming his way). They set out to explore when the United States has to offer. Somewhere along the way, they confess their feelings for one another (it’s hella awkward, but it’s the start of something really beautiful).
Headcanon A: Brad doesn’t want to be an officer. He never has. He knows what he’s good at, and he enjoys getting to be in the work. But every dumb decision command makes rankles. He knows what he would do differently. He thinks about it. He broods about it. He knows exactly what he would do. He has elaborate staffing plans and plans for executing missions.
Headcanon B: It is so easy to offend Brad’s warrior spirit. Like, SO easy. Once you’ve offended Brad’s warrior spirit, he sulks. Not in a petulant way, just in a quietly and deeply offended way.
.
Headcanon C: Brad believes that the fact that no one understands him is his fault. He genuinely thinks that something is wrong with him, and he doesn’t know how to love people properly. His family loves him, but they don’t necessarily understand him, and he assumes that is because he is broken, so his only option is to change himself or never be loved.
Headcanon D: When they are out and Brad and Nate live together, Brad stocks up on all of Ray’s favorite junk food, so they have it when Ray stops by. Brad doesn’t like to admit that he does this, though, so he tries to sneak it into the cart and hope Nate never asks him why he bought Toaster Struedel.
I think “I had to get medieval on his ass!” might be my favorite Q-Tip moment of the whole miniseries. Throughout the whole episode, everyone’s getting more tired, more hungry and more discouraged by the mess of confusion that is their orders, and then over here we’ve got Stafford flushed, and triumphant, and holding up an unidentified Iraqi animal.
I just love how he identified a problem (one meal a day) and solved it (head into the brush and get medieval on some asses.)
Also, I *really* wish we got to see Gunny Wynn’s face when he saw that squirming sack in the back of his Humvee, asked what it was, and was told, gleefully, “Dinner!”
lookashiny 