HBO War Daily

caps by @itstheheebiejeebies

Eugene doesn't know it yet, but it's one of the last good dreams he'll have for years. There, in the safety of his bedroom, he and Sid are little children again: young and pink-cheeked and playing cowboys with the sticks they've smuggled inside as pistols.

When Eugene asks him about the war, he shrugs his tiny shoulders and says he doesn't know anything about a war. Even sleeping, Eugene knows it isn't true. He feels somehow like he's already seen the foxholes, the way they've ripped Sid open and nestled inside. Emptiness within emptiness. But, in the easy way that dreams have about them, he accepts Sid's words for what they are and, with his makeshift pistol, knocks over that little bandit toy he hasn't seen in years. Pop. You're dead.

Through the haze, strong and rough hands work hard at the back of his neck, slowly kneading him awake, and he nearly starts until he remembers. Those are Sid's hands now. That's the new, worn down way they feel. "Eugene," he whispers.

"Hm?" Eugene groans, swatting weakly behind his back at Sid’s wrist.

"You fell asleep awful early," Sid whispers close to his ear. Eugene can hear the smile on his face.

"And I’m planning on sleeping awful late," Eugene insists, voice groggy even to his own ears.

 “Too damn bad. You want a minute to yourself out here, you better be up before reveille.”

There's not a whole lot that Eugene isn't willing to sacrifice in favor of the wooly dream that's still hovering at the edges of his consciousness, but he would have to be a moron or worse to let a peaceful moment of solitude slip through his fingers. They have been, true to every letter Sid ever wrote to him, very few and far between since bootcamp.

“All right, all right. Get off of me,” Eugene concedes, pushing that calloused hand off of him once and for all as he pulls himself upright. Sid stays crouched low next to his cot, eyeing him with a look that glitters with familiarity and sadism. Frowning, Eugene demands, “What?”

Rather than answer, Sid drives a finger under his fifth rib—a clean, killing blow that Eugene jumps back from with a yelp. 

“Shut the fuck up, Gene,” Bill mumbles face down on his own cot, but Sid only grins all the wider. As for Eugene, he can still manage to feel a twinge of embarrassment. How easy it is to forget that this isn’t the childhood bedroom of dreams.

He follows Sid down to the beach that's blue and gray and white in the slow promise of morning. They were here in this abandoned strip of it only yesterday when Sid declared solemnly that he soon wouldn't be a tender-hearted boy. It had angered him then that Sid would imply that he was such a thing to begin with, and he was angry throughout the movie and all the way to his early bedtime. 

Now, all of that seems momentarily forgotten. Sid plants his ass in the damp sand that has yet to be warmed by the sun in just such a place that the high tide only licks at his heels instead of engulfing him whole. “It ain’t all that bad if you get down here before the sun,” he tells him. “Least there ain’t as many crabs. Me and Leckie and some of the fellas used to get down here and fish from time to time. I guess that was before Leckie…”

There’s no end to that sentence, and Eugene knows that without pressing. He sits criss-crossed in the space next to Sid and watches the water reach to touch them, wishing it the very best in its endless efforts. 

That Robert Leckie fella doesn’t seem all that bad off from the little that Eugene has seen of him, but Sid won’t talk about whatever it is that happened. Whether it was the Japs or worse. Why it means they don’t fish anymore. If Sid had anything at all to do with it. If it could’ve been prevented.

It’s no good to ask Sid about anything these days which is a development that’s proved increasingly frustrating over the past week or so. Back home, he was never anything less than completely forthcoming with him, or so he likes to believe, in any case. 

Eugene picks at the tiny shells in the sand, each no bigger than the tip of his little finger, and keeps his mouth shut for lack of anything to say. He’s been wondering lately about this woman from Melbourne, too. Sometimes aloud, sometimes not. There are only two things he knows about her with any certainty, after all—the only things that Sid will tell him. The first thing is Melbourne, the second a cheap hotel in the heart of the city. In fairness, Eugene can’t be sure how much detail he truthfully wants. Even just speculation has been getting on his nerves, and it’s not like he can explain to Sid what’s got him so irritated. Hell, he couldn’t even explain it to himself. It only seems to Eugene that Sid has gotten caught up in all the pitfalls of the average fighting men that they had scorned when they dreamed of greater things.

It isn’t long before Sid is lying back in the sand, hands folded neatly over his chest, the image of a corpse in a coffin.

“What happened to Leckie?” Eugene asks even so. He may as well make an effort, if only to prove his own point to himself.

“Huh?” Sid questions, tilting his chin up in Eugene’s direction before seeming to remember himself and shutting his eyes once again. “Oh… Don't you worry your head about Leckie. He’s living. That’s what counts.”

Eugene tosses his handful of sand back to the ground in favor of thumbing the emblem that Sid had given him yesterday. It’s been pinned to his own collar ever since, though it isn’t as though he’s been exactly wanting for Sid’s company. He shouldn’t be anyway. Not with the very same Sid stretched out next to him as though nothing has changed in the slightest.

Cracking open one eye, Sid sighs. “Come on,” he says. “Tell me about something.”

“Like what?” Eugene demands.

“How about that no-account boy that Katharine liked?” he suggests. “She hasn’t written a thing about him for six months now.”

Eugene huffs. “Yeah, well, there's a damn good reason for that.”

The rest of the morning that they can claim for themselves is spent in regaling what news from home that he can remember. It must be stale by now, but Sid eats it up anyhow. He can confess that he’s grateful for the familiar drag of city gossip, grateful that it seems to carry even all the way out here. 

Thus far, he’s made a tremendous effort to learn the push and pull of this new version of Sid. He moves to a different tempo entirely, and even the lines in the corners of his eyes when he smiles have to be reread and rememorized. They seem deeper than they were before. When at last the time comes to part ways back to their own companies and take on the responsibilities of the day, Eugene can’t be sure if he’s made any progress at all.

The days in PT and weapons training are no longer like they used to be. Bill and Oswalt are less forgiving than they used to be with petty slip-ups becoming more frequent and Gunny Haney making all kinds of threats that nobody can help but respect. It’s just that he’s found himself increasingly distracted since his arrival here, that’s all. All he really needs is to get out of training and onto the field, or so he assures them. All the training they had before Pavuvu will snap back into place.

“Gene,” Oswalt sighs in response, “if they took us out onto the field right now, there’d be two mortarmen and a birdwatcher.”

To this, Eugene frowns but doesn’t protest. He’s felt himself slipping, his natural curiosity getting the better of him. Flighty things catch his attention. That much he’s got no business arguing with.

Robert Leckie isn’t terribly unlike a bird, down to the hollow-looking bones that protrude from his hips and shoulders. When he slinks around, it looks more like swooping, and he chatters like a kookaburra. Eugene has never had much cause to get close, and he had meant to keep it that way at Sid’s first mention of him. He’d made him sound like a basket case and a dangerous one to boot.

Still, there's a wealth of knowledge in the way that Leckie carries himself that compels him. Anytime he’s near, he finds himself inching closer and closer for the hope of catching a word here and there. Maybe… Just maybe… Where Sid has been all buttoned up about what happened to Leckie, Leckie might prove more open about what happened to Sid.

So it is that, at the makeshift boxing ring during a friendly tournament between the companies, Eugene finds himself right over Leckie’s shoulder, though he doesn’t suppose he realizes it yet. His gaze is trained on the other man’s back with fierce focus before he can think to stop himself, and there’s a thousand variations on “hello” and “how are you” that are turning over and over again in his mind.

Leckie doesn’t seem all that dangerous from this vantage point. It’s clear as anything that his only occupation for the time being is documenting the matches in a combination of English and shorthand across the pages of a tattered notebook. All Eugene needs to do to make his acquaintance properly is speak up.

No good. He’s caught before he can ever get the chance, and he knows it by the way Leckie’s eyes catch and hold him in the corners, brows furrowing until he closes his notebook with a snap. “Eugene Sledge, right?” Leckie demands after a moment, never fully turning towards him.

Eugene straightens his spine and sputters stupidly for a moment before getting a hold of himself. “How’d you know that?”

Now, Leckie busies himself by lighting up the smoke he had been keeping behind his ear and scanning Eugene from head to toe. “Phillips’s friend. Hard to miss.”

There’s no telling why such a thing turns him red, but he’s at least got the sun to blame it on should it make Leckie raise a brow. “Sid made mention of me, then?” he asks.

“Hell, Sledge, you only wrote to him every week. Sent him pictures and all,” he answers, and only then does it become clear to him that Leckie’s being a tease, bordering on a cruel one. “Do you make a habit of snooping over people’s shoulders?”

“I don’t,” Eugene answers far too readily. It’s practically an admission of guilt, drawn out of him with nothing more than a mocking tone.

“You do, I can tell,” Leckie insists, finally turning to face him head-on. “All you boots have got a curious streak in you.”

Eugene can’t see how that’s anything to be ashamed of. Surely, it’s natural, after all. He knows better than to say so and make an idiot of himself, however. Clearing his throat, he says, “You’re, uh… You’re How Company, aren’t you?”

Leckie scoffs. “Well, you’re a little behind on the times,” he says. “I used to be. That’s all.”

“But you were a friend of Sid’s? Of Phillips’s, I mean?”

For only the briefest of moments, a flash of unfathomable yet potent emotion goes off just behind Leckie’s eyes, and in that briefest of moments, he begins to look like the madman that Eugene was led to believe that he was. And no matter how quickly that look comes and goes, it does its work on him, purging whatever line of questioning he had been planning on from his head. “For my part,” Leckie says. “I was.”

“Well,” Eugene answers, somewhat unsure of how to continue now that he’s abandoned any plans to gather information. “That’s a fine thing. Sid’s a good friend.”

There’s no telling if it was the wrong thing to say. Leckie absently taps his pencil against the cover of his notebook as he considers him for an extended silence that feels all the longer for the wondering. Then, finally, he says, “You’ve got more right to a curious streak than the average boot, haven’t you, Sledge?”

It’s hard to shake the feeling of a bug wiggling under a microscope, though he has to confess that he crawled there himself. “Oh, I don’t know that I would say that,” he says.

“Oh, you don’t have to. I already did,” Leckie answers with a grin that does not quite reach his eyes. “You’d be surprised that I can still remember how it was, but it would take a real moron to miss that Sid isn’t the same little boy as he was when he came to the Corps, wouldn’t it? I expect it must eat you up wondering about it all.”

It’s a cutting observation, frighteningly astute, and Eugene knows that the answer lay somewhere on the battlefields behind him. He is, as Leckie would seem to suggest, certainly not a moron.

“And what about you?” Leckie questions before Eugene has had a chance to answer. “You feel like you’re well-prepared for what the Marine Corps has in store for you?”

“I…” Eugene starts, but any sort of answer (be it wise or honest or naive) dies on his tongue. “Well, I just don’t…”

Leckie must know that it isn’t a fair question. That none of this has been fair. His blue eyes (markedly much the same color as Sid’s) finally soften somewhat. He claps Eugene on the back and guides them both away from the thick of the crowd. “No, nevermind me,” he sighs.  “You know, I’ve heard your letters? In bits and pieces, I mean. You’re a smart kid.”

Eugene frowns, though he can’t pinpoint what about the compliment rubs him the wrong way. “Geez, thanks a bunch,” he grumbles, resenting the way he’s having to stumble to keep pace with Leckie now as he circles around the outside of the gathered Marines.

“Sid’s got the right idea about you, though,” he says over his shoulder, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “You’re much too smart to be out here. Consider yourself something of a reader, Sledge?”

“Yes,” he says, biting down a cringe over the first half of that statement.

“Then you’ll come by our tent to borrow a book sometime,” Leckie asserts with a sharp nod of his head. “I’ve got them by the crate-full. Quite literally dying to get them off of my hands.”

“Well, all right,” Eugene agrees cautiously. His head is spinning trying to keep track of all of Leckie’s changing moods. What else was he meant to expect? “If it won’t be any trouble.”  

And to this, Leckie hums and shakes his head. Yet, the moment that Eugene thinks that the conversation has come to its natural conclusion, he surprises him once again. “You know, I have it on good authority that Sid likes to walk the shoreline at night. To think, as I understand it,” he says, leaning into Eugene’s space conspiratorially. “Half a mile or so down past the coconut grove and the rocks. Pretty down there last I saw it.”

If Eugene had any questions for him, Leckie is apparently not interested in them, and he shows as much by fitting his cigarette back between his teeth and walking to the other side of the field to congratulate some buddy or other of his on a match well-won, leaving Eugene staring stupidly after him.

There isn’t any call to feel as he does: embarrassed, emasculated, belittled. Even so, that’s how Leckie has managed to leave him. Somehow he got the better of him with nothing but questions and words that had seemed kind enough on the surface. Well, what business of his is any of it, in the end? A man has got a right to wonder that much, hasn’t he? Besides, Eugene knows more of Sid than anybody on this side of the world could claim, and that’s a point of pride, in all honesty.

So, he does wonder. He wonders all through chow and through weapons training and through every detail he’s given thereafter. He wonders about Leckie, of course. Little moments aside, he doesn’t seem all that dangerous, not like Sid had made him out to be. What he is, Eugene has to admit, is insightful and clever.

He’s still wondering, long after he’s been left to his own devices for the evening. Bill and Oswalt try to engage him for blackjack, and some of the vets try to engage him for an argument. There isn’t any way under the sun that he could say that his heart is in any of it. His mind keeps wandering back to Leckie, back to first finding Sid out here, back to seeing Sid off to the train to Parris Island to begin with.

In the evening, his feet start to carry him down to the shoreline without him ever instructing them to. Past the coconut grove and the rocks. It must be a matter of instinct. At the very least, that’s how he means to excuse it all. Maybe he means to prove something to Leckie and in turn to himself, though just what it is, he can’t be sure.

Besides, it seems pretty empty by the time he hits the beach proper. In fact, he’s a hair’s breadth away from giving up on the whole endeavor and brushing it off as Leckie hazing him when he finally spots him, distant down the shoreline. It’s no wonder he didn’t quite see him at first, all hidden by the smoothed-over rocks that jut up from the ground. He’s got that casual posture hanging all over his shoulders as he chews at his cigarette—the one that he seems to have adopted since he left home. Equal parts careless and strung tight, like he’s gonna get hit any second but like he’s seen it coming for years.

Just when Eugene gets close enough that he thinks he might say something, Sid spares him the trouble. “They used to discipline a man who reported in late, you know,” he says, stopping Eugene in his tracks without so much as a backwards glance.

Clearing his throat, Eugene presses onward and returns, “I don't know as though that's changed.”

The way that Sid jumps to his feet and turns to him with wide eyes and a muttered, “Eugene,” confirms the worst of his suspicions. Whoever it was that he was anticipating seeing down here, it wasn’t him.

“Expecting Bette Davis?” he questions flatly.

Sid does a pretty poor job of recovery. That, at least, hasn’t changed since they were children. His smile is crooked, his shoulders hunched as he plucks the cigarette from his lips. “Oh, sure,” he says. “You never know when the USO is in town. I found a picture of her on a Jap cadaver once. Did I tell you that?”

He’s rambling. Eugene thinks that might be more words than he’s put together at once the entire time they’ve been here together. It’s just too damn bad that he’s all too familiar with Sid’s rambling. He can see through it with a marksman’s accuracy, and that might be one of the few things he’s got left that’s worth priding himself on. “What the hell are you doing down here, Sid?” he asks, opting to cut right to the chase. It’s better than going round and round forever into eternity.

He would’ve liked to avoid Sid getting angry, but it’s just that he doesn’t see how he could’ve. Nothing seems like the right thing to say anymore, if he ever knew what to say to begin with. Once Sid’s eyes flash, they’ve gone well past the point of no return. “I’ve got a right to be down here, don’t I?” he demands. “I can be where I like.”

“Well, sure you do, but you gotta know you look all cracked up sitting out here by yourself,” Eugene answers, bracing hands on his hips. “Like you’re gonna start howling at the moon or something.”

With a click of his tongue, Sid shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Eugene,” he says. “I’ll guarantee you that if you ever found a vet with energy left over from the day’s details, he’d be right down here with me. Just to get a look at the water. That’s something you wouldn’t know about, but it’ll come.”

He could let the lie (another lie) refract off of him if he wanted it to. He could turn a blind eye and let the barest hints of tremor in Sid’s voice slip right by him like the water that he seems to hold in such high regard. Yet, the facts will remain, and the fact is that there was meant to be another person down here. 

Once more, he thinks of Leckie and everything that he seemed to know. The familiarity with Sid that he had seemed to believe himself entitled to. And a more vivid image comes unbidden into his mind, a sprout from the same bitter roots he keeps the idea of a faceless woman in Melbourne. And he begins to hate Robert Leckie like anything.

Christ, if they were back in Mobile, he’d be chewing Sid out with everything he’s got in him. How could he do it? How could he be so selfish and careless and dishonest to top it all off? Ain’t it all bad enough without acting like Eugene is a total stranger to him?

They haven’t fought with each other—not really—since they were boys playing bandits and cowboys, but then again, they’ve had very little reason to. Sid has seen Eugene’s notorious temper aimed anywhere and everywhere else since, and the old saying about what goes around holds water over here as much as anywhere else.

Eugene sucks in a breath before spitting it all out, “You damn lying son of a—”

“Now, hold on, Eugene—” Sid starts, talking over him.

“You know if you wanted—” he starts before cutting himself short in favor of retaining his dignity. 

“If I wanted what?” he counters, straightening his spine.

Eugene supposes he’s entitled to an answer. It’s been nearly two decades in the making, so he supposes it has got to be said in some way or other even if the mode of delivery is sort of evading him at the moment. Then, after the silence has been too long, he tries again. “You’re making it this way, you know? All you ever had to do was say something. Anything. You know that, don’t you?”

Sid’s mouth twists up in what looks like distaste, and Eugene knows better than to hope for anything else. “Say something, huh?” he questions, voice laced in bitterness and irony. “And just what the hell is it that you think you want me to say?”

“Jesus, Sid, I don’t know,” he confesses, exasperated as he turns his eyes upwards to the stars. “The truth might be a good start.”

Sid’s features are getting harder by the minute, and this last demand of his proves to be the shattering point. “The truth? All right, here’s the truth, and don't forget that you asked for it,” he says. Then, with a breath and a wrinkle of his nose, he continues. “The truth is, Eugene, that you look like a baby when you’re asleep, and you look like a baby when you’re waking up. You look like a baby at chow, at the weapons range, walking around in dungarees that are too damn big for you like you know a thing or two about what you’ve gotten yourself into which you don’t. And here in a while I'm gonna have to go home and not think about the baby that I left over here to fend for himself, and the trouble is that that just isn’t gonna happen, no matter how you slice it.”

If it was Sid’s goal to render him silent, this outburst has certainly done the trick. The scolding that he was never accustomed to as a child has become the way of life throughout his time in the Marine Corps, but never like this. Certainly not from Sid.

It’s only at the very last moment that he determines not to prove Sid’s point and shuts his mouth with a click. The year of lived experience that Eugene has on him be damned. Sid has lived a hundred years in the three that he’s been gone, each of them spelling a dark foreboding behind his eyes. If Eugene is reading it all right, he never meant to do what he’s done. It never was meant to drive him so far, and he thinks that Eugene could never understand it. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he finally demands.

“So… What do you want me to do, Sid?” Eugene finally questions when he’s had enough of eternal silence. He could go on explaining that it didn’t even take combat to make him think of things an upstanding man doesn’t think of, but it all seems a moot point now. So, shaking his head, he repeats, “I mean… What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go home.”

“Well, it’s too late for that, all right?”

“Yeah, I fucking know, Eugene,” Sid assures him, his voice low as he casts his cigarette onto the wet sand. “Ain’t gotta tell me.”

There’s no winning this argument, not for either of them. They’re both too ajar to land a proper hit anywhere that it would really hurt. It’s just the twisted shape that they’ve become, but that does enough hurting all on its own.

“Look, I… I get it, Sid. I get it,” he assures him, reaching out his hand to take hold of Sid's wrist, thumb rubbing circles hard into the toughened skin. “I know you must’ve had it tough, but that’s no surprise, is it? I mean, hell, we came here knowing it’d be tough, didn’t we?”

Sid rips his hand back as he shakes his head. “No, we sure as hell didn’t, Eugene,” he says. “We didn’t know anything.”

This cannot be true. Eugene rejects it out of hand. Even if all of their schoolyard games didn’t drive them to sufficient research on the realities of combat, their training has got to have told them a thing or two about what to expect by now. They're far enough down the beach that no one is going to think to look for them out here. Maybe it’s that knowledge that ultimately emboldens him to lean forward and say, “I do know a thing or two, Sid. We can’t pretend at innocence forever.”

Sid, to his credit, keeps his expression as neutral as he can seem to manage, only lifting one brow as he appraises him. Somehow, the silence and the resulting sense of calm emboldens Eugene, regardless of how false the security may prove to be.

He reaches out once again, determined that he will not let himself be rebuffed a second time. Not while he can still pretend that he knows Sid better than anybody else. His hand comes to rest over the warm skin of his bicep, fingers flexing until they’re pressing in. At the very least, Sid doesn’t shake him off again, and that fuels the ideas that Eugene is coming to realize more and more are nothing more than illusion.

“You could’ve said anything,” Eugene tells him once again when he feels he’s found some solid ground to stand on. His voice is quieter than he anticipated it would be, but he doesn’t suppose the truth always has to be loud. He flexes his fingers tighter around Sid’s arm, if it’s at all possible. Still, Sid is silent.

Closing his eyes, he leans his forehead against the knob of Sid’s shoulder and sucks in a deep breath that wobbles just barely but still more than he means it to. There ain’t a whole lot more he can say besides this right here. He could’ve said anything, but he didn’t. So, it falls on Eugene to do something, and this is the closest that he can manage.

It pays off, in a way, just feeling Sid’s roughened hand reach up to the side of his neck, feeling his nose buried in the hair atop his head. “It ain’t gonna do you a lick of good, Eugene,” he says. “Just take my word for it. Not a lick of good.”

The words don’t register with him as much as the feeling of Sid’s voice vibrating at the crown of his head and through his whole body. It emboldens him all the more, reaching with desperate hands to grasp where Sid’s vest hangs at his sides. It seems so unfair suddenly. How unjust that he should’ve been hurting for him all these years, should’ve fought and clawed to get to him, and found him only in bits and pieces with the rest belonging to some foreign bird that snatched up whatever it could get.

“I’m done hearing it from you,” Eugene tells him, drawing his head up until he’s nose-to-nose with Sid. “All right?”

Maybe it’s kindness that keeps Sid from pointing out how Eugene has become nothing but a walking, talking contradiction. Demanding truth one moment and silence the next. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Neither of these things rightly explains why his rough, calloused hand comes up softly under Eugene’s chin and draws him in until their lips have brushed feather-light over each other two and three times. “Too soon for you to have lost all your sense,” he mutters against Eugene’s mouth.

Eugene pulls him in roughly with both hands on either of his hips. Too bad. Too late. The high tide crashes around their feet.

When they finally join together, it’s a hard thing. It’s an angry thing. Sid drinks him in just like the soft and desperate thing that he likes to pretend he isn’t, and Eugene lets himself preen and gloat over it like he can still believe he’s the only one. Hunger and farce are the only things with the strength left to carry them away because God knows it’s not in either of them.

The more they sacrifice of themselves, the more they bare, the more Eugene gets the feeling that there will be no walking it back and no rewards to justify it. It’s total destruction, even with Sid’s fingers combed through the back of his hair and cradling his head like he could keep it from breaking.

But God, how he has missed warmth and comfort and home. Underneath the coconuts and seaspray, he still somehow smells like Sid. He remembers thinking, even as a much younger boy, that he wished he had that scent all over his own clothes. He pulls away to press his lips to the long lines of Sid’s neck, breathe it in, and keep from saying something childish. Something like “I could pick you blindfolded out of a crowd of a hundred, just like you could me. No one else could do that, don’t you see?”

No, he won’t say any of that. Sid has gone mostly quiet apart from the heaving breaths that Eugene can feel moving his ribcage, and so he follows suit, saying nothing and reveling only in the here and now. They keep pulling at each other just like the tide until there’s nothing at all separating them—no scraps of clothing or cutting words. Heat envelops the both of them until they are one unit moving hard against each other in tandem, and it feels somehow a heightened version of how it used to be.

It’s a height never to be reached again, but Eugene doesn’t know it yet. Or, even if he knows, he refuses to believe it. Sid has kissed him. Has kissed his mouth, his brows, the top of his ear. Sid has touched him—is touching him—where he’s never let another person touch. And Eugene is holding him, greedy for him, in turn. The world under his hands and mouth and bracketed by his knees.

Sid comes against his thigh cursing a blue streak, and they’re the only words that he’s said since telling Eugene that he’s lost all reason. He clutches onto his shoulders like Eugene is the only thing keeping him standing, which only really makes sense to Eugene when he follows close behind.

For the first time since it all started, Eugene leans back to look Sid in his dark blue eyes. He still has that posture, that look. The one where he knows he’s dead at any moment. The one where he’s always known it. And, hell, ain’t he the one going home? 

Still, wordless, the agreement is made between them. There’s no going back to the racks tonight. When finally they pull their clothes back to half-respectable and crawl breathlessly back up to the place where the water can’t get them anymore, Eugene falls fast asleep in the blink of an eye, and he doesn’t dream.

The sun isn’t even up yet when rough hands grip the back of his neck, kneading until he’s awake. “Eugene,” Sid whispers. “Eugene, it’s time you were up.”

He blinks awake slowly, sucking in a breath as he does. Sid’s right, of course. The first hints of sunlight are beginning to peek over the edge of the water—the edge of the world. When reveille sounds, they’ll both need to be in their places.

Sid is seated next to him, limbs looser than they were the night before. He’s hunched over his knees, biting at a hangnail and keeping his eyes locked on the horizon in front of them. Eugene hates that he has to wonder if they’re still seeing the same thing.

His clothes are tacky against his skin, and he imagines that it’s just how it’s gonna have to be until he gets new. Not that he would trade any of this for fresh dungarees. He wouldn’t dream of it. And he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s already seen the last of his good dreams for a while.

When Sid gives him the small mercy of finally looking down at him, he doesn’t breathe a word for fear of shattering the little glass moment they’ve created for themselves here of all places. He ought to have expected that Sid would take matters into his own hands. 

“Shouldn’t have done any of this,” he says.

Eugene huffs out a breath like the wind has been punched out of him. “So, why'd ya go and do it then?" he questions, praying it comes out light and airy. As a joke rather than a condemnation.

Sid just pinches his lower lip until all of the blood has left it, and he doesn’t answer. There may well be no answer to tell, for all he knows. Already, he has pressed well beyond where he had once thought he’d be permitted to.

So, what’s a little more? He sits up to face Sid proper and pulls him by the neck into another long and languid kiss, one of dozens they've shared in the past couple of hours. Lord, he's been dreaming about this since Sid went away. Even when Sid was right there with him. As a matter of fact, dreaming seemed all he did back home.

"Ugin," Sid scolds when he pulls back for breath, but Sid won't be ordering him around today. He presses his mouth back against Sid's for a warm moment before he pulls away more insistently. "Eugene, I have to go.”

Right. As if he could forget that orders are not theirs to give. Very soon, the order to rise and march will come. It’s on Sid's heels, and he'll have to watch him as he goes. One look at Sid's expression, however, keeps him from continuing on his own spiral. It’s only too clear that he’s ill at ease.

"Sid, I'll be okay," Eugene promises him, reaching forward to squeeze the juncture of his shoulder and neck. "You said so yourself. Seemed pretty convinced, too. And that wasn’t all that long ago.”

Nothing could be plainer than the fact that Sid doesn’t agree, but he has apparently lost all the fight that was in him. How long before he understands? If he’ll ever ben able to understand? 

“And you were, weren't you?” he points out when Sid doesn’t have an answer for him. “I mean, you did okay, didn’t you?”

“You okay?”

He asks the silence but he knows the answer already. He also knows the answer he's going to be given. 

A stiff nod is all he's offered and that in itself is enough to say a lot about his friend's current mental state. It's dark, the fox hole covered with a tarp, but his eyes are adjusted enough to see his friends form.

“Well at least now I won't have to share my Vat.” 

The joke falls flat which he expected, but he doesn't get a response at all. Not even s glare. 

Dick had handled things well up until now. He always did. In the heat of the moment Dick had applied proper pressure, called for the right person, and kept Roe focused. Then he'd sent Roe to town. Told him to stay and get food. He'd taken no time to stop. No time to think. Nix's head was still spinning but Dick had already started his rounds. Checking in. Being present. And he'd remained that way, right up until the moment he'd climbed into the fox hole. 

Nix was fine with Welsh. He didn't dislike the guy or anything. He could even consider the man  a friend. And yeah, what he'd seen today had spooked him. But Dick and Harry were real close. They had been roommates. Welsh was the only other guy Dick really even talked to. He’d be lying if he said his blood didn't boil a bit every time Dick showed the man attention. Sure they were close, they’d known each other for awhile. But Lewis Nixon had laid his claim on Richard Winter’s and he was going to be damned if anyone took that away from him. 

But still. He was Dick’s friend and so he was suffering. And the idiot didn’t even have alcohol to ease the pain. 

Dick Winters doesn't break. It's one of the laws of constants in life. It doesn't matter what you throw at him, at the end of the day Dick will be fine. Because he doesn't know how not to be. 

That's why on the rare occasion that Dick is close to breaking, Nixon isn't sure just what to do. 

“Do you want a drink?” He offers, already knowing the answer. 

Dick shakes his head but he thinks he might see the crack of a smile. 

It's something. 

Silence stretches on and they should be asleep. They need to sleep. And yet he can feel Dick awake beside him and just the thought of his suffering keeps Lew awake too. 

He's not sure how much time has passed when the words slip out “Its not your fault.”

Dick's head snaps to him so quickly it seems odd it doesn't make an audible crack.

“What?” 

“What happened today. Any of this. It's not your fault.”

Dick peers at him for a second before relaxing back and staring straight ahead. “I knew better than to have a fire. Should have stopped it as soon as I saw it.”

Maybe so. But Dick hadn't been the one to light it and the offer of warmth is hard to pass up in this frozen wasteland. Especially since Captain “I’m fine” Winter’s was definitely sporting a cold at the very least. The sniffles were a constant companion. It was grating on Lew’s nerves and yet he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Verbalizing his self deprecation was cause for concern as well. If asked, Nix would blame this entire conversation on dimming spirits and freezing bodies and maybe the light touch of Dick’s fever.

He wished he could do more. That he could get the the men some proper food, that he could get the far too stubborn Dick Winters to eat first instead of last. That he could find a way to keep them warm. That Dick would accept more of the perks of his rank. 

“Harry will be fine. He won't leave Kitty for anything, even death couldn't make him unfaithful”

“They're the ones who die first.”.

“What?”

“The ones who have someone to go back to. They're the first to die. Have too much on their mind. They won't stay here because their head is everywhere else. They're afraid to die because they don't want to leave behind their wife or their kids or their girl, whoever it is.”

“You're still here."

“I don't have anyone waiting on me “

“Deetta?” 

The rustling of a shrug.

“What about me?”

“What about you “

“I have a wife.”

A snort. “Yeah and a girl.”

“Exactly, and I'm still here.”

“You're the exception.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you don't actual love her.”

Nixon blinks in the darkness. “What's that supposed to mean?” 

“There's no love between the two of you. The only reason you're still together is because you have a child.” It’s so blunt and astute that Lew truly isn’t sure what to say. 

“So I won’t die because I don’t love her?” 

“That’s how I see it.” It’s a bit grumbly, definitely feverish. 

The funny thing is that he’s not so sure he’s wrong. The difference is, it’s not the lack of love that changes things, but the placement. 

Lew can’t die because the person next to him is the most important to him in the whole entire world. If Dick Winters went down today then Lewis Nixon wouldn’t be too far behind. He didn’t have anyone back home to think on. Not really. He didn’t need to look back across the ocean to have someone to fight for, he just had to look forward at the man who was leading him. He has no reason to go back and every reason to stay. 

A sneeze snaps him out of his reverie. “You should really see of Roe has anything for that.”

“For what?” A sniffle undermines the sentiment. “I’m fine.”

“It’s just going to get worse if you let it.”

“Everyone’s sick, Nix. Doc Roe has enough on his hands as is.”

Yeah, like the blood of their friends and what seems to be pretty close to a psychotic break. 

“Here,” He tries again, handing over his flask. “It’ll be good for you.” 

“You can drink some for the both of us. ‘Sides, don’t want to get you sick."

“Oh so you admit it.”

There’s a light grumble as an answer, trapped in his own admission. There’s that pull in Lew’s heart again. The one that wants to fix this, that wants to make everything better. 

The foxhole is small, but in this moment he wishes that it were smaller. He doesn’t think Dick is fully asleep, but he’s definitely not fully lucid either. Nix takes his chance, pressing in tighter against the man. 

A light hum of content surprises him coming from Dick. Even more the way he leans back into Lew’s hold. 

Dear sweetheart (Y/N),

You ever wondered what food feels like in refrigerator?

To me now it feels like to be inside a refrigerator someone occasionally shoots holes into (literally and for no purpose), well, let alone frostbites and holes in the backsides. 

Yeah, well, not a very reasonable start for a letter to one’s sweetheart but I’m still not good at ‘em anyway, y’know.

Bastogne is… let’s say “memorable.” I’d complain louder, but I’m trying to conserve body heat, and besides, the trees might hear and make a report. We’re already creaking like old men and that’s enough impression for one Christmas.

You’d laugh if you could see us. We’re wrapped up like half-baked snowmen, trying to look like serious soldiers while most of us are just thinking about toes and... other body parts (thank you, Wild Bill, very much). And fingers. And every warm thing we ever touched in life. The air’s so cold it cracks like glass when you breathe. Sometimes I blow out a breath and pretend I’m back home in winter, just goofing in the yard, not here listening to distant thunder that isn’t thunder at all.

Good thing about being this cold—it shakes memories you didn’t know you still carried. My head keeps wandering to Christmases at home. I keep seeing lights in windows that aren’t here, hearing music that isn’t playing, smelling baking that sure isn’t in this particular Belgian wonderland. I keep remembering how you’d get that determined look in your eye when you were cooking, like you were gonna fight the holiday into being perfect even if it killed you. And it usually was perfect, because you’ve always been stubborn in just the right ways.

Remember how I’d pretend not to care about decorations? Like I was above all that? “Sure, honey, trees are trees, I’ve seen ’em before,” I’d say—and then end up fussing with one crooked ornament like it personally insulted my honor (it did i swear, damn wires). Turns out all that silly stuff sticks to you more than you think (don't even think to tease me about the glitter that ended up all over my face. I’m NOT Sparky after all). 

Now I’d sell my last pair of socks to be home, pretending I didn’t want cocoa while secretly hoping you’d hand me a mug without making a fuss about it.

I keep thinking about that Christmas market we went to, the one where everything smelled like cinnamon and roasted chestnuts (nothing’s better than homemade stuff your honor) and happiness you could almost reach out and pocket. You kept pretending you weren’t cold, chin lifted like you were fighting a personal war with winter, and I remember taking your hands anyway, rubbing them between mine like I could bully warmth back into them. You laughed and blushed (I noticed!) when I blew warm air over your knuckles, like I was doing a magic trick, and for a second, I really believed I could fix the whole season just by standing holding your hands and making you laugh. You smiled at me like the whole world wasn’t a mess and never could be. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. I think I still can feel the warmth of this moment (God knows what I’d do to do it all over again).

We’ve got our own version of Christmas cheer here. No tinsel. No carols. Just jokes and verbal punches (even they take all our energy recently) passed around between teeth chattering so hard they might shake loose, and a sort of quiet kindness in the way guys share a cigarette or half a chocolate bar like it’s some holy sacrament. You learn a lot about people when everything good is rationed. Turns out a lot of these fellas have hearts bigger than sense (it’s a shame we’ve lost so many already). Good thing too—sense isn’t worth much in the middle of a frozen forest anyway.

Don’t worry too much. (Which I know is like telling the sun not to rise, but let me pretend I’m reassuring.) We grumble, we freeze, we curse, and somehow we keep standing. There are moments I get to laugh, really laugh, and those feel like little pockets of summer I tuck inside my coat. Sometimes I even forget where I am for a second. Then something booms, and well—welcome back to reality.

But I want you to know this: even here, with the cold chewing on my bones and the world sounding like it’s trying to tear itself in half, I’m still carrying you with me. Not in some mushy poem way—more like a good steady flame that refuses to go out. When the night gets loud or long, I think about the way you’d roll your eyes when I tried to be charming, or the way you laughed too hard at bad jokes, or how your hand fit into mine like it had always known how. That helps. More than you’d believe.

So, consider this my Christmas tree—lopsided, missing half the lights, and probably leaning in the wrong direction—but still standing (either am I, whatever you read into this). Still shining in its own stubborn, crooked way. If you can spare a wish, save one for me, yeah? I’ll save mine for you. And next time I see a warm house lit up against the dark, I’m going to imagine it’s ours.

Take care of yourself. Keep the cocoa warm for me. And if you have room by the fire, leave a spot open. I’m planning on claiming it sooner than you think.

Yours

when the world stops shaking and even now in the middle of it,

Chapter 1

Joe Liebgott carried Moe Alley four miles through the Dutch swamp in the dark. Of course Joe got picked for night shift. Just his luck, a mortar dropped on them. Alley’s face and shoulder were bleeding and charred. Joe could smell the burnt flesh. Alley’s arm was around his shoulder with Joe carrying most of his weight. They sludged their way back to camp. Joe’s boots were sticking in the fall mud. Fuck, it was days like these that made Joe thankful for Toccoa. Alley was a large man and he was crushing Joe’s smaller frame. But, Joe was a paratrooper.

Joe’s sheer will got him back to camp. The infirmary shed was on the other side of the farm and he was tired. Joe burst through the barn door Easy Company was holed up in. “Alley got hit!” He yelled as soon as he touched the wood doors.

Doc and the Easy men immediately jumped to help. Joe stepped back when they took Alley from his arms. Now seeing Alley on that table, Joe could think again. Joe didn’t want to think.

“Joe,” Captain Winters shook his shoulder. Joe raised his face and met the stark blue eyes of the captain. There was no depth to his eyes. What you see is what you get. It had always unsettled Joe. Winters gently poked at his neck, “looks like you caught some of that mortar too. Go to the infirmary. Get Spina to check you out.” Winters continued to stare until Joe relented, nodding his head.

Joe crossed the farm to the shed they had been calling the infirmary for the last few nights. Just one big room, all the tools and equipment had been shoved to the back or sides of the building. There were two chairs that sat in the front by the door. There was one cot that laid against the back of the room. Everything was grimy to the touch.

Ralph Spina was in the far corner rummaging through a box of supplies. He raised his head when Joe opened the door. Spina eyes flitted to Joe’s neck, “C’mon. Sit down.” Spina’s Philly accent was just as strong as Bill and Babe’s, but he was a little softer around the edges. Joe supposed that’s why they made him a medic. Kind, but no nonsense.

Joe sat on one of the chairs next to the door. Spina didnt ask what had happened. Joe got hit in the neck, that’s all he needed to know. “You get hit anywhere else?” Spina asked as he began cleaning the wound.

Joe winced when the alcohol hit the open flesh, “nah, Ralphie. Alley took the worst of it.” Spina looked at Joe then, questioningly. “Don’t worry. He’s got Doc looking after him. You just focus on patching me up.”

Spina scoffed, shaking his head and returned to his ministrations. Joe’s leg began shaking up and down. He needed a smoke. He tapped his pockets, empty. Damn, he gave his last cigarette to Alley. The rest of the pack was in his rucksack next to his makeshift bed in the barn. Joe didn’t want to go back into that barn and see Alley laid out on the table.

In the heat of the moment, Joe doesn’t have to think. His body takes over and he is able to take care of his friends, his family. But when he has time to sit and think about it; what they’re doing in Europe, about Alley and Tab and Tipper, it makes his skin crawl. So, Joe tries not to think about.

Spina stood up from the crouched position he was in cleaning Joe’s neck. Joe turns his head to look up at Spina. The dull pain Joe had felt carrying Alley back to the farm had sharpened under Spina’s attention. Spina put about an inch of gauze of Joe’s neck, “here. Hold this in place. I’m gonna have to wrap the bandage around your neck. We need it tight, but you need to tell me if you can’t breathe.” Joe huffed a laugh at that. He sent Joe a sharp look. Joe reached up to replace Ralph’s hand on the gauze, “Joe.” He wasn’t taking his hand off the gauze.

“Jesus, yeah alright. I’ll tell you if I can’t breathe. Fuck, just wrap it up already,” Spina, satisfied with this answer grabbed strips of cloth out of the box he had been rummaging in earlier.

Spina smiled now, “that’s what all the pretty girls tell me.”

Joe raised an eyebrow at that, “oh yeah? You into that sadistic shit Ralphie?”

Spina seemed taken aback for a moment. “Idiot,” he murmured as he tightens the bandage around Joe’s neck. “Can you breathe? Take a couple deep breaths to see if it’s comfortable.”

Joe couldn’t help but laugh at that, “you’re a real stand up guy, Ralphie. Taking care of me real sweet.”

Spina rolled his eyes and shoved at Joe’s shoulder, “you’re fine. Get outta here asshole.” Joe didn’t have to be told twice. He was itching for that smoke now.

Joe wished there was a long way back to the barn. There were only three buildings on this farm. The barn, where the men were staying. The shed, which was serving as the infirmary. And the house, that’s where the officers were staying. It took Joe just a few minutes to reach the barn. Alley was still on the table, but there wasn’t a crowd anymore. Just Doc taking care of him and Babe taking care of Doc.

Babe looked up when Joe walked in, “heya, Joe. You gonna make it?” Babe’s ever present friendly grin was tight around the edges.

Joe sneered at the obtuse joke, “fuck you, Babe.” Joe looked around, but the place was empty. The piles of hay with rucksacks at one end or the other as the only evidence Easy was ever here.

Babe saw the question before Joe could ask, “Winters wants a patrol. He went to the house. Lip and the boys went to round everyone up.” Babe lifted the lantern higher when Doc made a low noise. Alley was barely awake, barely twitching while Doc pulled piece after piece of shrapnel out of the right side of his face and shoulder. Joe looked away and made a beeline for his pile of hay. Joe needed that cigarette.

Joe wasted several minutes digging through his pack trying to find that last pack of cigarettes he swore he saw this morning. He decided to give up and go find Lip when a distinct red box caught his attention a few piles of hay over. Webster. Joe thought to himself. What kind of idiot leaves a pack of cigarettes lying around? Joe scoffed aloud. Rich ones.

Joe strode over to rob the rich boy. When he bent down his eyes inadvertently peeked in Web’s rucksack. Lying on top was his journal. Every time Joe saw him, Web was writing in that thing. Joe often wondered what he could possibly have to say. He had even asked him once.

~~~~~~~

They were sitting under an apple tree in Aldbourne after D-Day. Joe was smoking lying down in the grass. Web was scribbling away, but looked over when Joe had asked, “I’m keeping a history of the war. Our war. I want it to be authentic. Not some sanitized version they come up with fifty years from now.” What an idiot. Earnest, but an idiot all the same.

Joe leaned up on one elbow. He made sure to look into Web’s deep blue eyes when he responded, “what makes you think anyone wants to read your version? Or what if they take your version and sanitize it, hmm? Ever thought of that Web?” Joe took a drag of the cigarette and laid back down awaiting Web’s answer.

Web always took his time speaking. Like every word was chosen carefully. “All we can do is try. We can’t control how others view us or receive us when we get home. I just don’t want their opinions of me, their opinions of the war, to change how I feel right now.” He looked into the horizon like he’d just said something profound. Joe scoffed, finished his cigarette, stood and left without another word.

~~~~~~~~

Joe grabbed the pack of cigarettes and the journal. He didn’t know what compelled him to do it. Curiosity he supposed. Did he want to read it? Yes. What was he going to tell Web? Nothing, Web’s an idiot. Had Web ever written anything about Joe?

Joe threw the journal in his own rucksack, put the smokes in his pocket and headed for the door to find Lip. He made eye contact with Babe. Babe had seen him take Web’s journal. Joe felt that same skin crawling feeling he had earlier in the infirmary. He sneered at Babe, daring him to say anything. Babe simply refocused his attention on the doc.

Joe left the barn and saw a gathering of the men over by the house. He walked up and stood next to Shifty and Tab. Winters was briefing the men. He gave a slight nod when he saw Joe join the group. Joe’s night was far from over.

Winters led a squad to the crossroads. Tab checked in on Joe on the trek over. Joe appreciated the thought, but the kid was a worrier. The squad of 8 men executed 8 Nazis simultaneously. They last 4 Nazis were easy targets. The objective was taken too easily. Winters wanted to stay the night to do recon.

They spent all night huddled up in the Dutch ditches. When morning came Easy was primed for attack. Winters went first. Tab nearly killed himself waiting. When the signal finally came, Joe’s head was blissfully empty. This was why Joe had enlisted. To kill Nazis. Now Winters was telling him to stop. To go back to the infirmary. To take the prisoners. With only one bullet. What the fuck?

Joe liked Winters most of the time, but the guy got a wild hair every once and while and did some wack shit. Giving Joe only one bullet. Splitting up Skip and Malark. Ignoring Tab’s puppy dog eyes. A decent officer, but a strange guy. Joe had always felt just a little off-kilter around the man. Joe did not see what had Tab so enamored.

Joe rounded up the nine prisoners to start the four mile trek for the fourth time in 24 hours. The med evac truck passed by and Webster stared down at Joe. His leg was stretched out along the bed of the truck. Joe hollered up at him, “What happened to you?” Joe told himself that the pulsing in his head was from the neck wound opening back up.

Web grinned down at him, “they got me!” He said it with way too much enthusiam and pointed at his leg. Web’s pants were torn and his leg hair was matted with blood. There was bandage around his calf. “See you later Lieb!” The truck rumbled down the road too far for Joe to reply. What the fuck?

Joe took the prisoners to the porch of the farm house. Knocked on the door until some corporal came out and took charge of the Nazi fucks. Joe’s head was throbbing now. He needed water and a nap. He headed towards the shed and Spina.

Spina and Doc were both in the infirmary this time. Doc was busy with someone on the cot, so Joe sat down in the chair by the door. Spina came over, crouched and began cleaning the wound. All without a word.

Joe had been staring at the floor, beginning to doze off. He looked up suddenly, “hey, Doc,” Joe called towards the back of the shed. Roe didn’t look up from what he was doing.

“Leave ‘im alone.” Spina smacked Joe’s leg, “waddya want anyway?”

Joe barely felt the alcohol on the wound this time around, “was just wondering what happened to Alley.” Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and took a drag before meeting Spina’s eyes.

Spina had kind light green eyes, “we put ‘im on the med evac truck. He oughta be fine in a coupla weeks. Mostly just flesh wounds.” Joe let out a breathe he didn’t realize he was holding. “They just gotta get ‘im cleaned up proper so he don’t get infected s’all.” Spina took clean gauze and held it to Joe’s neck. Joe took over without being told and Spina started wrapping cloth around Joe’s neck. “Make sure you can breathe ‘fore you go.” Joe finished his cigarette before leaving the infirmary.

Joe wandered back to the barn in a bit of daze. Between the blood loss, lack of water, and the cigarette, Joe’s head felt foggy. He walked straight to his pile of hay avoiding looking at the table Alley had laid on just a few hours ago. Joe lied down and immediately fell asleep.

Chapter 2

Joe’s mother used to say, “you can’t appreciate something until it’s gone.” Joe wished he had appreciated the Dutch fall a little more. What he wouldn’t give for a swampy ditch right about now. Easy Conpany was spending their winter in the middle of a Belgian forest Joe had never heard of before. Joe wished he still had no idea what the Bois Jacques was.

His days are booked and busy. Try not to freeze, coffee at Smokey’s, try not freeze, bum a cigarette, try not to freeze, dig a hole, try not to freeze, bitch with the guys, try not to freeze, patrol an empty fucking forest, try not to fucking freeze. Joe had never been so miserable.

The only source of heat Joe has felt since jumping out of the truck has been artillery. Krauts send up flares all night so no one can sleep. They shell the shit out of the American side of the woods. If he’s lucky, there’s some fire fight during actual daylight. Someone always gets hit, but Jesus Christ it passes the time.

They are dropping like flies. They are getting replacements hardly older than Joe’s little brother. Every new face drops a stone in Joe’s stomach. He’s glad it’s not his brother, and he wishes it were a different familiar face.

Alley joined them before they’d even left for the Bois Jacques. Web was on the same med evac truck as him. Alley was all soft pink flesh, but at least the hospital gave him winter clothes. Web looked fine on that truck. Happy even. Would Web abandon them? Or was his leg worse than Joe thought? Did Web lose it at the hospital like Buck?

Joe tried not to dwell on where Web was, but there was nothing else to do. Sitting in his foxhole, bones rattling against the cold. If he weren’t sharing a foxhole with Alley, Joe was sure he’d have frozen to death by now. When Alley rejoined Easy decked out in cold weather gear, everyone was jealous of Alley. When Joe and Alley got assigned foxhole buddies, everyone was jealous of Joe.

All the skinny guys were paired up with a bulky guy thanks to the officers wanting to spread body heat fairly. Joe got the luck of the draw being set up with Alley. Joe can’t help but wish there was a different brawny guy he could snuggle up to every night.

The first few nights were the worst. No one could sleep. Everyone still had hope it would be a short stay. Joe could still feel all his fingers and toes. Now everything was numb.

Alley was the first to bring up Webster. Alley, Joe, Luz, and Tab were hanging out at Smokey’s waiting for the sludge he called coffee to heat up even a little bit, “Christ, I wish I was as smart as Webster.” Joe perked up a little.

“Ha!” Luz let out a honking laugh, reminiscent of Bill’s. They all started to sound like each other around Toccoa. “Well we don’t call him Harvard for no reason.”

Tab looked confused, “I thought it was cause he was always reading that journal?”

“Oh, Bunny.” Luz shot him a look of pity,“it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

Tab looked more confused at that, “what’s that suppose to mean?”

“You don’t read a journal. You write in a journal. And Web went to Harvard,” Luz said disparagingly. “That’s why we call him Harvard.”

Joe couldn’t keep quiet anymore, “whaddya mean Moe? Smart as Web how?” Joe hoped he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt.

Alley looked at Joe over his mug of Smokey’s brew, “well the kid was on the same med evac as me, right?” Joe nodded, he knew that already. “Got shot in the leg. Far as I could tell, he should’ve been outta there in a week. Tops.”

Joes heart was racing now. Instinctively, he touched the side of his neck to see if the wound had reopened. Alley’s sharp brown eyes followed Joe’s hand and he quickly dropped it to his side again.

Joe nodded at Alley to continue, “He’s got the best looking nurses falling all over themselves to take care of him. He’s getting the hottest meals. Hot showers. Leisurely walks in the garden outside. He’s smart to miss all this,” Alley waved at the blank forest around them. “Great way to experience the war. Get your fighting done early so you can say you killed some Krauts. Then spend the rest of the war in a nice warm hospital away from this desolate hell hole.”

Joe can’t breathe for a second. Web abandoned them. He abandoned Joe. He’s nice and warm and Joe was miserable with only Alley as comfort. Fuck. This should not be bothering him so much. Web wasn’t even a friend, not really.

Joe could feel Alley’s eyes on him. He could hear George and Smokey rag on Web some more. He heard them switch their target to Tab. He saw Tab walk away. Joe couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. Alley grabbed Joe’s mug out of his hand and gave it to Smokey to fill. Alley then shoved the mug back in Joe’s grasp and lightly pushed him back to their foxhole.

Joe didn’t remember the walk back. It wasn’t until Alley put his coat around Joe’s shoulders that he came back to himself. They were sitting in their foxhole. Joe with Alley’s coat on, Alley somehow holding both their mugs again. Joe lifted a hand to the side of his neck, he’s feeling so light headed it must have reopened.

Alley stopped him this time, grabbing Joe’s hand in his own. Joe felt the warmth of the mug hit his hand in place of Alley’s. Fuck. Alley and Joe have gotten close in the few weeks they’ve been in Bastogne. Joe could tell Alley was about to burst this bubble, wether Joe wanted to or not.

“You and Web were friends?” Joe merely shrugged. “He is a smart kid. Not a bad way to outlast the war. Cowardly, but probably smart.” Joe took a sip of coffee. It was already starting to get cool. “The nurses were showing him a lot of attention, but he didn’t seem that interested,” Joe wrenched his head over to look at Alley. Alley had a small grin, like he was trying to hold it back, “not like a regular guy would be anyway.”

Joe let out a shaky breath, “regular guy?” He did not like the path Alley was taking them down.

Alley was nodding his head now, “yeah, regular. You know, a guy that likes girls.”

“As opposed to…” if Alley wanted to have this conversation, then Joe was not going to make it easy for him.

Alley kept that small grin on his face, not at all scared of the conversation they were having. Of the implications for Joe and even for Web if someone like Lt. Dike were to walk by right now, “A guy who like guys.”

Joe was breathing easier now, despite the topic. Alley wasn’t gonna turn him in, “you know a lot about guys who like other guys, Moe?”

Alley huffed a laugh, “can’t say as I’ve dabbled, but my cousin. He likes other guys. Far as I see, nothing wrong with it. So long as you’re not shoving it in anyone’s faces. Stay in your lane and nobody gets hurt.”

Joe thought on that for a moment. Not exactly acceptance, but definitely not disgust. Alley was trying to be kind here. He was giving Joe an opportunity to talk this out if wanted. Joe wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk about Web just yet. What was there to talk about? Nothing had happened between them. Just a few shared afternoons and cigarettes under an apple tree in Aldbourne. Joe hadn’t known him at Toccoa, he hadn’t known him before D-Day, and he didn’t really know him in Holland. Joe just felt drawn to Web. Like they were constantly orbiting one another, but only occasionally their paths crossed.

“Nothing to get hurt by with me and Web. It wasn’t anything,” Alley raised an eyebrow. “I mean, nothing happened, not really.” Joe petered off.

“At the crossroads. When you and I got hit with that mortar. I don’t remember much of that until I’m in the hospital. Doctor said it’s probably my brain intentionally forgetting the trauma. My body and my brain don’t want me to remember. But, I know you carried me the four miles back to the farm.” Joe hadn’t realized his gaze drifted down to the dirt until Alley stopped talking. Joe looked up at his face, “you’re a good man, Joe. And I owe you my life.” Joe wasn’t sure what to say. Alley continued, “Web is an idiot.”

Joe huffed a laugh, “yeah. Tell me about it. My neck was bleeding, Winters made me go back to the infirmary will these goddamn Krauts and only one bullet, right? Here comes the med evac truck down the road and Web’s in the back grinning like it Christmas Day.” Joe shakes his head, “fucking rich kids. He left a full pack of smokes on his bunk that day. Thank God I grabbed ‘em or Luz would’ve been selling ‘em for life debts out here.”

Alley had that small grin again, “he left a full pack of smokes on his bunk?”

Joe wasn’t following, “yeah, what of it?”

Alley was fully grinning now, “he left a full pack on his bunk in plain sight. When he knew the whole company would be headed towards the crossroads,” Alley paused waiting for Joe to catch up. “Everyone except you, who had shrapnel in the side of your neck. Maybe the kid is smart after all.”