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In between barrages, it is perfectly, horrifyingly still. Nowhere he’s been before has ever felt quite this still. Even the boys who are used to the middle of nowhere, the wide spaces devoid of people, even Shifty who one imagines has spent many cumulative hours of his life in perfect watchfulness, hasn’t ever experienced anything quite as still as this godforsaken forest between barrages. It’s the snow, Tab thinks to himself. It damps the noise, and it keeps the men hunkered up, quiet and numb. It’s the sort of cold that feels like it might be the transition between living and dying, like maybe they’re all on the way out, Krauts regardless.
Doc Roe looks a bit like he might be dying, sitting staring into the middle distance as if he’s just waiting for someone to start screaming. And Compton’s got a very unsettling edge to him, though it’s serving somehow to make all the similar edge that was starting to creep across Wild Bill much, much softer. It’s almost like Guarnere has decided they can’t both break, and he’s made the choice to be the one who has his shit together. Everyone else seems mostly alright. For a bunch of men freezing to death.
It’s Doc Roe who’s worrying Tab most, when he’s huddled in his hole in the ground, tucked in tight between Pat and Chuck, even though three to a foxhole is too many. The only thing keeping everyone else going is each other, and Doc does not seem to be able to let anyone hold him together. Frankly, Tab says to Lipton a few hours into the thousandth day of this campaign, if they lose Doc, they’re all fucked. He says this to Lip because he knows Lip will tell Captain Winters, and he knows that Dick will fix it.
This is one of the few, incontrovertible truths that Floyd Talbert clings to amid the utter insanity that is his war. At any given moment, Dick will be doing anything, everything, anything he can to make sure that whatever problem Easy is facing, he can fix it. Deploying every available weapon – bayonets, grenades, Nixon – and bending whatever rules need to be bent to make sure that his company is holding together. It’s the one thing that’s been the same since Toccoa. Just nowadays, he doesn’t have Tab on his flank when he does it.
If he’s completely honest with himself, Tab thinks the worst thing about Bastogne is that Dick isn’t there enough. It’s also the best thing about Bastogne. Dick doesn’t have to go through it with them. Although, of course, he does, as much as he can get away with, dug into the frozen earth, shaving his face in ice water every morning and checking in on them, but he’s not getting shelled. He’s far enough back. Tab would follow Dick anywhere, he thinks to himself more than a few times, but he’s very glad that these days Dick isn’t going many places too dangerous. Of course, that just means that Tab’s going dangerous places without Dick to lead him. Tab and everyone else. There’s no one leading them, not really. Dike is dead in the water. Buck is sliding in and out of reality. They’re running on Sergeants. Pat Christenson, Chuck Grant, Johnny Martin, Bull Randleman, Don Malarkey, Bill Guarnere, Tab himself, and Carwood Lipton, the man holding everyone together, and the flickering presence of Lewis Nixon and Dick Winters. It’s not enough.
**
They keep losing Fox and Dog, so they keep being sent out on patrols, and every time they leave the line it feels like they might never find it again. Heffron and Spina end up on top of a bunch of confused Germans and it should be reassuring that the Krauts are just as fucked as they are, but it isn’t.
Johnny takes a patrol out the day after they lose Hoob (Hoob loses himself, it’s so fucking stupid, so fucking stupid) and it almost feels like they’re doing it for something to do, to prove to Sink and Strayer that they’re doing things. It doesn’t feel like something Dick would send them to do, but Dike is no Dick. Tab thinks he really needs to get back round to thinking of Dick as Captain Winters. It’s never really been like that for them. He’s been following the man, not the bars, since the beginning. It’s got nothing to do with rank.
Liebgott should be on the patrol, but he’s thinned out worse than all the rest of them and Lip ran up a flag and Dick pulled some strings, and Lieb is back at Battalion HQ getting warm and safe and filling in the cracks in his soul with shit food and worse coffee and whatever’s in Nixon’s flask. Tab tries not to feel the little leer of disdain when he thinks about Nixon. He’s a decent man and he shares. And Dick should be by at some point in the next few hours, his usual rhythm.
Tab takes Lieb’s place on the patrol, right at the back, watching the huddled forms stretching out ahead of him, Johnny on point because he hates to let anyone go first, Bill’s kid Babe and Babe’s kid Julian, a handful of others, Penkala and Luz, Skip is right in front of him, and it is so so still. They’re moving in almost perfect unison. Each footstep landing at the same time. It reminds him of running Currahee, the way they hit every pace in synchronicity. They’ve got no clue where they’re going. They might be out looking for Dog, but the last time Tab saw Speirs slinking through their lines for one of his bizarre rendezvous with Lip, he was coming from the other direction, he’s pretty sure, so they could be trying to hook up with Fox, or they could be out looking for Krauts. Johnny knows, he hopes.
He's concentrating on landing his feet in Skip’s prints, on conserving energy by not breaking a new trail through the snow, and it’s a little awkward because Skip’s smaller than he is, stride shorter, he’s got all the skim and bounce of the perfect mortar-man, and Tab’s all legs. Skip takes a few small steps that sound strange even in the strange sound of the snow, creaky and haunted, and Tab wonders about that as he follows in the footprints, and when the next step lands with a particularly sharp noise he suddenly knows exactly what the sound is. He lunges forward and shoves Skip as hard as he possibly can, and the ground splits open under his feet and the water rushes up.
**
He sinks like a stone. The cold is so complete that he thinks his heart might have stopped. There’s definitely a moment or two where he isn’t in his body. He doesn’t have any air in his lungs and his mouth and nose are full of water and there’s nothing under his feet, his boots are dragging him down, rifle strap throttling him while he drowns, and he can’t move his arms and then he really, really can’t breathe and his vision goes bright and spotty in the dark, and Tab has the sudden sparking realisation that he will die here unless he does something and he finds the floor and pushes and his head breaks the surface and he’s gasping in air with the sudden crashing noise of the patrol round him, yelling, and there’s one moment where he gets Johnny’s eyes on him, right on him, like a handshake, like giving orders, and then he goes back under.
This time, under the water, Tab has air in his lungs and he’s got the burn of Johnny’s expression and he knows he’s not gonna die, he’s a paratrooper and the men around him are paratroopers and he pushes back up, eyes open even though it burns, a hand up like his Pa taught him because there will be something there for him to grab. He knows they’ll have something there for him. They don’t let him down, they’ve never let him down, there’s going to be something there. It’s a branch, he hooks his fingers over it, hauls himself up and feels the burn in his shoulder at the twist of the angle. Then he’s got the other arm over too, he’s draped over it, and they’re dragging him to the edge, flat on their bellies, Babe gets a hand on him first and then Luz and they pull him from the water.
Skip gets an arm round him, soaking wet and so cold he can’t even shiver. He tries to walk and can’t. His legs won’t work, he’s so cold he feels like every muscle has seized and he can’t take a deep enough breath to fill his lungs. His uniform is sodden, every single layer, and he can feel it starting to freeze as he lurches forwards, unable to hold his weight. He’s so cold. Skip gets a better grip, yells something, and then Penk’s there too and they drag him back to the line.
**
Tab’s drifting. He thought he was cold before, he thought he was freezing to death before. In comparison, he thinks perhaps earlier he wasn’t as cold as he thought he was. He was shivering before. He’s not shivering now. There’s a lot of shouting. Skip and Penk haul him to his foxhole, and with almost comedic timing, Chuck and Pat pop up out of the dirt.
“Is he hit? Medic!”
“Not hit,” says Skip, and he’s shaking a little, wet from where Tab’s been leaning against him. “Fell through fucking ice.”
“Shit,” Pat reaches up and takes hold of him, manoeuvring him back down into the foxhole, “He’s fucking soaked. You OK in there Tab?”
Tab is not OK, and he doesn’t really feel like he’s in there, either. He feels like he’s swimming through mud, like he’s crawling through the guts and barbed wire of jump training, he knows he should be saying something, telling Pat he’s alright, but the cold is agonizing, a physical pain spreading through his bones, making each breath excruciating. He wants to stay here, still and quiet, til it stops. Everyone sounds very scared, which isn’t exactly new, and Tab is mainly just tired. He wonders dimly if Dick has made it down the line yet.
Lip is yelling, and Johnny is yelling, and the patrol is going back out, apparently, with Lip at the back instead of Tab and Doc Roe has appeared out of nowhere over the side of the foxhole.
“What made you think this was a good time to go swimming, Talbert?” Roe asks.
The calm steady calm of his voice makes Tab feel like he’s OK until he remembers the day before, and Roe’s voice in the same solid cadence, talking to Hoob – did you think it was a German leg, Hoob? – as he bled out and died. This is Doc’s you’re dying voice.
“He doesn’t look right Doc,” says Chuck, and then there’s the slide and thump of someone getting out of the hole.
Tab thinks he has his eyes closed, but isn’t sure.
“What does he need, Doc?”
“His body’s shutting down,” says Roe, “He’s too cold. We have to get him warm and dry.”
“How the fuck are we supposed to do that out here?” says Chuck, just as Pat says “What, here?!”
Tab would laugh, but he can’t make anything in his body do what he wants. There’s someone next to him, arms wrapping round him.
“Get him out of as much of that wet stuff as you can and get him as warm as you can and don’t let him sleep. Hot food, hot drink, anything. You need to keep him awake. He needs to stay awake, d’you hear, or he’ll fall into a coma and we won’t get him back.”
Distantly, there’s someone screaming for a medic. Tab opens his eyes then, because if someone needs a medic someone probably needs him too, for something, and he sees the way that Roe looks for just a second. It’s a nightmare. Roe thinks he might be gone when he gets back.
“M’alright,” he says, tries to say. “Jus’ cold.” He can’t get the words out properly.
Pat’s holding him like a baby now, cradled against his chest, hands rubbing over soaked uniform, trying desperately to warm him up. Roe is staring down at them, Chuck behind him, and the look he’s giving Pat is unmistakable.
“Warm, dry and awake, y’hear? Or he fuckin dies.”
“Yes Doc,” says Chuck. “We’re on it. Go.”
Roe gives them a last, lingering look, and then takes off at a run. Who needs the fucking Germans, the look says, when the boys are killing themselves without assistance?
**
Chuck disappears for more blankets and the possibility of dry clothes and anything hot to drink, while Pat wrestles Tab out of his soaking coat and blouse, leaving him in his pants and vest, wrapped in the only blanket in the foxhole and tucked tight against his side. He’s still soaked. He’s still freezing.
“Feel like I’m dying,” he says. “Fuckin’ stupid way to die, Pat.”
Pat tries to laugh. “Much worse than getting’ bayonetted by a kid while dressed as a Kraut.”
That does make Tab laugh, but it hurts, whole body aching. He presses in closer to Pat and closes his eyes.
“Don’t you fuckin’ sleep, Talbert.”
“So fuckin’ cold,” he says. “Everything hurts. I’m so fuckin’ tired, Pat.”
“Tough shit,” he says, and cuddles him closer. “Doc says if you sleep you die, and in case you haven’t noticed we can’t spare a man right now.”
Chuck gets back a moment later with more blankets, and a mug of something close to coffee that is something close to warm. “Patrol should be back in a moment,” he says. “Gonna get Lip to send a runner to battalion for dry clothes.”
“Make sure he knows to tell Winters,” says Pat. “Or Nixon at the very least.”
Tab is amazed to find that deep beneath the tingling of the cold he’s still able to feel the strange joint twists of warmth and resentment at the mention of their twin Captains, and the clarity of those emotions swims him up a bit.
“Don’t worry Dick,” he rasps.
Pat and Chuck ignore him. They’re his best friends, they’ve been strategically ignoring at least half of what he says, thinks, does about Dick Winters for two years now. Dimly, Tab wonders what on earth he did to deserve them.
Chuck drops down into the hole, and passes Pat the extra blankets. Between them, they strip Tab out of the rest of his clothes, rubbing every inch of skin until he feels like he’s on fire, even though he’s freezing. He’s trying to speak, but he’s not sure if it’s coming out properly, his thoughts are muddled, he wants to know about the patrol, about the call for a medic, about whether Dick has come down the line yet, but he can’t feel his lips. They bundle him back into the blankets and forcefeed him the coffee, tuck him between them and wrap their arms around him. Tab dozes, and then someone thumps him.
“Don’t fucking sleep,” says Pat, “Or I swear to god I’ll go up to Battalion myself and drag Winters out of his nice safe shed and make him sit in this hole with you.”
The patrol comes back, safe and whole, having not found any Germans, or Dog or Fox company. Tab can hear Johnny swearing as he walks past, and Lip leans over the edge of their hole.
“You doing ok boy?”
Tab tries to nod, to speak, but he can’t make his body move the way he wants. He’s doing OK, he thinks.
“He’s in a bad way, Lip,” says Chuck. “Keeps falling asleep, isn’t making any sense when he speaks. Can’t get him warm. Doc Roe says if we can’t keep him warm and awake he’ll go into a coma and die.”
“Fuckin’ stupid way to die,” mutters Tab again.
Lip gives him a look that is pure, absolute Carwood Lipton at his best, all concern and care and despair and dry, reluctant humour, and ignores him. “What do you need?” Lip asks Pat.
Pat scoffs. “Fuck, Lip, a roof and some walls and a fireplace would be a great start, but you know Tab, he’s not fussy, he’ll settle for dry clothes and hot food.”
I need to see Dick, Tab thinks, in case I do actually die, and then has the horrible, crushing realisation that he’s said it out loud when he catches the expression on Lip’s face, and its solid pity.
“He’s due down the line later today,” Lip says. “Roe’s taking Toye off the line, I’ll make him go via HQ and get supplies for Captain Winters to bring back down with him.”
There’s a barrage in the distance. Lip drops flat, Tab instinctively tries to reach for Chuck and Pat and put his body over theirs, but his arms are trapped by the blanket and they’re both already covering him. They wait it out, it doesn’t last long. From somewhere nearby they can hear Buck yelling something indistinct, it doesn’t sound like a cry for help, Bill is shouting back, and then there’s the sound of Luz impersonating General Taylor, and Skip howling with laughter.
“Everyone good?” yells Lip, and the chorus comes back round, affirmative.
**
He’s not getting any warmer. Pat and Chuck bully him into staying awake, make him recite Blood on the Risers, make him recite The Night of the Bayonet, force him to retell the stories from the early days of Toccoa – he tries not to speak about Dick – but from the look on their faces he’s not making any sense. The violent shivering from when he first got out of the water is gone, he feels very, very still now. He’s never been so cold.
“He’s not shivering,” says Pat, when Bill and Babe come round to check on him. “And he’s rambling.”
“He’s blue,” says Babe. “I’m getting Spina.”
Spina swears when he sees him, drops down into the hole and elbows Chuck out the way. He moves his hands over Tab’s throat and chest, and Tab can’t feel anything.
“His pulse is weak, and he’s too fuckin’ cold,” Spina tells them. “We have to warm him up.”
They all look and sound very scared, Tab thinks to himself, except of course Bill, who’s wearing a face of utter fury, which is his standard response to experiencing fear. Bill’s not been scared since they jumped, as far as anyone can tell, but he’s damn angry. No one likes losing men, but this is a horrible way to lose a man, to have him die in a hole because he fell in a puddle.
“Fuckin’ stupid way to die,” Tab says, and he’s confident that he makes that work out loud, because they all turn to look at him.
“You don’t have permission to die, Sergeant Talbert,” comes a very familiar voice from outside Tab’s field of vision.
“Captain Winters, sir,” says Bill. “He’s not in good shape.”
Dick crouches down by the side of the foxhole. He looks tired, thinks Tab, tired and cold.
“M’fine,” Tab manages, because he hates the way Dick’s mouth is turned down at the corners, and because behind Dick is Nixon, looking for once a little unsure of himself.
“You don’t look fine,” says Dick, and his hand twitches.
“He’s going to die if we can’t get him warm, permission or not,” says Chuck, from where he’s huddled in the bottom of the hole, Tab’s head tucked against his chest, arms cradling him like he’s a child, Pat draped over his back. “And we can’t get him fucking warm.”
There’s something in his voice that sparks something wary in Tab, Chuck’s got a little edge of panic to him, the little scratch of fear that he’s heard now and then through this war, the way he sounded when he found Tab in the woods with Smith’s bayonet in his guts. Chuck holds him a little tighter. He’s so fucking cold.
“Alright,” Nixon’s voice is its usual pragmatic bell tone, and he sits down on the edge of the foxhole. “Grant, Christenson, shift change. Get up out of the hole, go and get some chow, bring some back here for Tab, stretch your legs. We’ve got dry clothes, we’ll get him sorted and keep him warm for an hour or so.”
Pat looks lightly mutinous at this suggestion, and Tab wants to tell Nixon to fuck off with his practicality and his offers of body warmth and the way Dick is looking at him like he’s a beautiful miracle.
“M’fine,” he says instead. “It’s my turn for watch.” His words are slurred. He can’t move his hands.
“That’s a solid negative, trooper,” says Dick. “Grant, Christenson, out.”
“Give us the dry clothes first,” says Pat, because he’s a good man.
Chuck helps him get Tab into the dry uniform, which is too big and too small and scratchy and smells bad and is cold, almost as cold as the air. Tab feels detached, swimming somewhere far away from himself. Pat sits him up, and shuffles over in the foxhole to make room for Nixon to drop in, and Nix puts his arms out for Tab on autopilot, like they’re buddies, like they’re just two men sharing a foxhole. Pat settles Tab back against Nix’s side and the Captain wraps his arms around him. Dick slides in on Tab’s other side and drapes himself around the pair of them, tugging the blankets up over their legs.
Chuck lingers over the side of the foxhole. Dick gives him a face.
“Go on, Sergeant Grant. He’ll be fine.”
Chuck looks like he did when they told him about Hoobler, when they found that replacement with a hole in his head outside of Neuen, when Leibgott carried Tipper back to the medics, fucked up beyond belief.
“Don’t let him fall asleep, sir. Doc says if he falls asleep he won’t wake up.”
Don’t let him fucking die, Dick, is what Chuck’s face says.
“Fuckin’ stupid way to die,” slurs Tab, and he turns his head so that his face presses against the bare skin of someone’s neck.
The hiss tells him it’s Nixon, and honestly he can’t remember why that makes him feel like he should be angry. He’s too cold to feel anything except the tingling numbness spreading along his skin. Nixon is holding him the way Chuck was, cuddled in against his side, arms tight around him.
“Dick, he’s not shivering,” there’s a little peak of anxiety in Nixon’s tone, he tilts his head down and Tab can smell the vague whiskey drift on his breath. “Hey, hey Bunny don’t sleep, you in there?”
It’s been a long time since he spoke to Nixon, who he’d liked well enough once, and he hasn’t been Bunny in a while. He’s Tab always everywhere, he’s only ever been Bunny to Toccoa men in softer days, and there aren’t many of either of those left on the line.
“M’here,” he says, and shifts a little so that he can look up at Dick. “Shouldn’t be here, Dick, ‘s’not safe.”
Dick scoffs, and drapes himself across Tab’s back. “You’re right, Sergeant Talbot, and I did of course go to war in order to be safe.”
The weight of him is comforting, even if he isn’t any warmer.
“And what about me,” Nixon says, voice deliberately hurt, “I suppose it’s fine for me to be out here where it’s not safe?”
He’s provoking on purpose, the curve of his neck under Tab’s face and the pressure of Dick against him helping him to feel steadier, to feel like he’s in his own body.
“Rumour has it you’re unkillable sir. Got shot in the head and sat back up again.” The words are slow and sticky, but they’re there.
If he’d just been standing with them, Tab wouldn’t have been able to tell that they both go a little stiff and still with that sentence, but with them pressed up against his body he notices instantly.
He’d been there, right there, in the back of the truck Dick was checking, watching him run it all through his head, listening idly to Nixon bitching as he tried to get the post-combat adrenaline-rush under control. He’d had a front row seat to the way that Nixon dropped like his strings had been cut, had felt his own sick little lurch of shock and rage that was amplified a thousand times by the pure, sheer, horrific terror in Dick’s voice when he shouted Nixon’s name. Tab’d stayed in the truck, because that was what he was supposed to do, hand clenched in the fabric of Joe’s blouse next to him, and had watched with a sick sort of curiosity as Dick got down on the floor by Nixon, pulled his helmet off, stared at him, scared, nakedly obviously scared. Not something Tab had ever seen before.
“I’m alright,” Nixon had said. “I’m alright. Am I alright?”
And Dick had looked at him, hard, properly, and made a full assessment in a split second, before pulling him up and saying “You’re alright.”
“Yes, well,” says Nixon, back in the moment, “It’s not a theory I have much interest in testing.”
Tab tries to laugh, but can’t quite get the noise out properly, can’t get enough air into his lungs for a moment and feels like he’s drowning again. He convulses, heart shuddering in his chest, everything numb. Someone is rubbing their hand firmly over the back of his neck and he is all of a sudden back in that moment when his head broke the surface for the first time, how in the middle of the yelling and the desperate, desperate scrabble to breathe and not go back under he’d managed to get his eyes open and focused and there had been Johnny, angry, solid Johnny, right in front of him, staring at him with all the directness of a man making deliberate eye contact to telegraph the next little phase of action. He’d had maybe less than a second of it before he dropped back under the water but it had been enough, like it always was with Easy, to know exactly what Johnny was trying to tell him. We’re getting you out of this. Whoever’s got their hand on his neck, it feels like that.
He closes his eyes against Nixon’s chest and exhales. The breath goes out, like letting go, like falling asleep, drifting into the cold, free and quiet. He doesn’t take it back in. Little bright pinpricks of light dance behind his eyelids and he can feel Dick behind him and knows he’s safe, he’s always safe with Dick at his back. He feels lightheaded, a little outside his body, and for the first time in a long time he’s not cold, he’s not anything.
**
“Oh shit, shit!”
Tab’s head snaps back on his neck with the force of the blow to his chest, he’s been thrown off Nixon and back into Dick’s arms and Nixon is pounding against his ribcage with both fists.
“Floyd,” Dick’s voice is right in Tab’s ears. “Wake the fuck up right now.”
“You never swear,” Tab manages, disoriented and cold again. Dick never calls him Floyd, either.
“Fucking Pennsylvanian,” Nixon spits, and reaches down to grab Tab by the chin and tilt his face up.
The sun is starting to drop a little in the sky, and the changing light makes Nixon look younger. He’s scared, which is something Tab’s seen before, now and then, usually in the moment before Nixon sees Dick after action, which is something he deeply sympathises with, and hates at the same time. There’s the distant boom of a barrage in the background, but the trees around them don’t seem to be exploding and no one is yelling, so it can’t be too close. It’ll be their turn soon enough.
“What,” Tab asks, looking up at Nixon.
“You stopped breathing, you bastard,” says the Captain, looking from Tab’s face to the place just behind his head where Dick must be.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Behind him, Dick’s chest shakes with what could possibly be laughter. Nixon looks at them both again and there’s something lightly furious about him. He swears under his breath, he’s got his thinking face on, the one the whole company associates with some terrible engagement they’ll have a better chance of surviving if Nix can figure something out, brow furrowed and lip bitten, and Tab can feel the catch of breath from Dick’s ribcage when he sees it. Hurts a little.
“Alright,” says Nixon, and bizarrely he starts unbuttoning his shirt. “This isn’t working, he’s still freezing to death. We’re going straight back to basics. Get his shirt off, Dick, and pass him back to me.”
None of this makes any sense to Tab, thoughts still sticky and syrup-slow, heart stumbling in his chest, but he feels Dick nod, and then his hands are sliding under the blankets, long fingers deftly slipping the buttons loose on his blouse. He feels them against his skin and shudders, can’t help it, they’re no colder than his own flesh but it’s a sensation that is so unfamiliar now, it’s been months since anyone touched his bare skin.
Nixon has his shirt off now, and is pulling his vest off too so that he’s there in the mud, naked from the waist up. He puts his blouse back on but leaves it unbuttoned, and then reaches over to Dick to help him strip Tab out of his layers too, dragging the vest up over his head so he’s shirtless too, and then he tugs his back into his arms.
The press of Nixon’s bare skin against his is electric, the warmth searing, and they let out twin gasps of shock at the contact. Nixon’s dogtags are pressed against his chest, little patches of ice, and his hands are moving over Tab’s skin in firm, sure movements, rubbing briskly, forcing circulation against its own will. Tab feels dizzy, drunk, out of control and untethered and he’s not sure if it’s due to finally feeling something other than cold or the look on Dick’s face. He shudders again, and then realises he’s shivering, a little ripple of vibration across the surface of his skin. Dick presses back into them, moving them very gently so that Tab’s lying against Nixon’s chest again, with Dick pressed against his back. He’s undone his shirt as well, but left his vest on, so there are fewer layers between their skin, and the heat coming off him is still overwhelming.
Tab has the dim thought that he’d be hard if he had any energy to spare, and is momentarily deeply glad for nearly freezing to death.
“Talk, Bunny,” says Dick, against the back of his neck. “Don’t sleep.”
He can’t think of anything to say, and he mumbles this against the curve of Nixon’s throat.
“Tell us about the men,” Nixon says, “How are they holding together?”
Tab drags his mind away from the warm, safe place it had been, pressed between these two bodies, and back to Bastogne. The noise of the shells is ever-present.
“Lip’s holding us together,” he says, and he doesn’t even consider editing the narrative, because this doesn’t feel like talking to his CO, just feels like being Dick and Tab and Nixon like they were in Georgia before they were officers and killers and dead men and so he just tells them what he thinks. “We’re doing what we can. Buck’s in a way, but Bill’s watching him like a hawk.” His voice is slow, sliding over the syllables, he can feel Nixon beneath him and he’s aching. “Losing Welsh and Hoob has been hard, Roe doesn’t look good at all, I told Lip to get him off the line, did he manage?”
“Yeah,” Nixon says, and his voice is a little dry and rasping. “Tucked up safe and sound with Liebgott.”
“Good,” Tab exhales, and Nixon shivers. “Lieb’s been bad, too, but Johnny reckoned if he got out of here for a bit he’d be OK. Lip said he was getting Joe Toye off the line too, he got pinged in the arm, but I’d put money on him being back here tomorrow.”
He keeps talking, running through the men they have left, starting in Toccoa and running down everyone still with them. It doesn’t take as long as he should, and then he moves on to the replacements, talking about Babe and Julian and the rest of the kids, listing who’s been hurt and who looks like they’re at their limit, until his throat hurts. He hadn’t quite realised how much attention he’d been paying to every single man until this moment. He thinks every single Sergeant has been doing the same, holding them all constantly in mind because deep down they all know they’re all they’ve got. Tab wonders if maybe this is how Dick feels all the time.
“I’m so fuckin tired,” he says, and lets himself sink fully into the space in Nixon’s arms.
“Yeah Bunny, I know,” says Dick.
Someone’s hand is scratching through his hair. It’s the first good thing he’s felt in months, and the sensation floods through him, hot and dangerous. He shifts against the feeling, just minutely, and it’s enough that when he lets a shaky breath out his mouth presses against Nixon’s neck. The resulting noise is a little choked off moan and all of a sudden they’re all hard, tangled together, and it’s not like this never happens when you live shoulder to shoulder with a hundred men but this is… Not that.
Tab’s shivering, which is definitely a good sign, and he aches all over but it’s not just the cold. Nixon is swearing very softly under his breath, Tab would put any amount of money on the fact that he and Dick are making eye contact over his head and speaking to each other in the obvious, eloquent, silent way they’ve done the whole time he’s known them, a closed circuit. There’s a little movement behind him, like a nod or a tilt of the head, and then Dick’s even closer, hands sliding up Tab’s chest, hips moving against his.
It’s slow, so slow it’s almost not happening, but it definitely is, Tab can feel the hot hard line of Dick’s cock against the curve of his thigh, pressing him against Nixon who tilts his hips up to meet him. They move together, silent, not nearly enough to get anywhere but enough to be something. He can feel the twin exhales of their breath on his skin, Dick steady and controlled, Nixon short and punctured. Tab feels a little like he’s floating.
He’s still shivering, and now the feeling is coming back to his body everything hurts, and the noise of the shells in the distance could be closer than before. And he knows, knows in his soul and has for years now that whatever this is here is not something he gets to have, not something that is meant for him. He knows what it is that he gets, and that’s the certainty that he’s here to be on Dick’s six whenever he needs him, to follow where he leads and trust in whatever happens next, to follow him anywhere, unquestioning. He loves Dick in a way that he’s never loved anything before, in a way that is everything, like a lover, like a parent, like a god. He believes in Dick more than he believes in anything else, and because Dick believes in Nixon like he’s a cross between the Bible and the Almanac, Tab supposes he does too. And he knows them, knows who they are and what it is that is happening here. This is their gift to him, and it’s enough.
“OK,” he says eventually, stilling. “OK, I don’t think I’m dying anymore.”
**
They put their shirts back on, but stay under the blankets. The shelling is getting closer and Tab wants them both out of his foxhole and back at Battalion where he doesn’t have to worry they might be blown to bits. He’s still so cold it feels like he might die, but the slithering creep of brightness round the edges of his vision has receded and he’s shaking again, which is a good sign.
Chuck and Pat get back, each armed with a steaming mug, and they pass them down to Tab and make him drink both.
“Shift change again,” Pat says, looking at the Captains. “We’re about to get the shit knocked out of us Captain Winters sir.”
“That’s our cue,” Nixon deadpans, and he hauls himself out of the foxhole. “Sergeant Talbert died on us briefly but it didn’t stick, and he’s shivering again and he’s a lot less blue, so I think we can safely say he’ll live long enough to get shelled by the Germans.”
“Lucky me,” says Tab and he shifts to let Dick up too.
They stand at the edge of the hole and look down at him, just for a moment, in perfect synchronicity, faces solemn and still and Tab gets the feeling they’re trying to tell him something, but he has no idea what it is, or even if they’re both saying the same thing. It’s like they’re waiting for something, and all he really wants is for them to get out of there, and so he gives them his best smile, the one that always gets him what he wants. Nixon rolls his eyes.
Dick looks at him for another long moment, and then squares his shoulders infinitesimally.
“Hang tough guys,” he says, though he’s only really looking at Tab.
“You too sir,” Tab manages, and they walk away.
**