Chapter Text
One
Tab wakes up slowly, warm and safe, in an unfamiliar bed, to the unfamiliar sensation of a hand stroking gently through his hair, and a mouth pressing soft, open kisses across the curve of his collarbone.
“Mmm,” he says, and leans into the touch, eyes closed.
“Morning,” says a voice, and the kisses move up the column of his neck, sliding wet over the hinge of his jaw until they reach his mouth.
“Morning,” a second voice says, and the hand in his hair slides down his back, stroking lightly over his skin, fingertips tracing patterns.
He opens the kiss, eyes still closed, and tries to work out who he thinks is kissing him and who’s moving their hand down over his hip. With time he thinks he’ll learn the difference. And they’ll have time. He lets them go on until he thinks he’s maybe seventy percent sure, and then the hand on his body starts moving with real purpose and he opens his eyes to find out that he’s right.
“Morning,” Tab says, against Lewis’ mouth, “You’re aware if you start like this I’m going to have high expectations of how mornings should be?”
“This is how mornings should be,” Dick says, and kisses the nape of his neck. “We've been missing you every morning for months.
It stings something deep inside him, some awareness of just how much he has missed them, how long it has been since he's felt peace like this, since he's felt surety like this, between the two of them, his officers. There's a calm to it, knowing they're here with him. A certainty, that he misses from the army. He'd follow them into hell, either of them, both of them, on a word,even though he knows they don't want him to. Sometimes, the extent to which these two men own every facet of his existence is a little hard to cope with. It twists somewhere in him that he doesn't want to look at, a place empty with the threat of loss that he's locked a door on since he came back from war to the miracle of Chuck Grant and decided he was done with losing.
Tab swallows the unease and leans into the kiss on offer instead, licking the morning taste out of Lewis’ mouth and not caring, pushing lush and lazy into something a little sharper, something answering the distant mortar whine in the back of his head. Dick's walking his fingertips down the pebbles of his spine, mouth following, and there is lazy intent in every single movement from the pair of them. This is a coordinated attack. They mean business. Tab considers calling them on it, but that runs the risk of them then stopping, which is far from what he wants. Instead he waits, letting the moment stretch out, luxuriating in what they're giving him until he's confident that they believe they're fully in control, and then he takes action.
He moves away from Dick swiftly, launching himself forwards at Lewis, taking him by surprise and pushing him back onto the bed, pinning him shoulders down and trailing a swift wet mouth from the hinge of his jaw, the place just below his ear that makes him shudder, all the way down to his cock. It's new territory but he's a paratrooper. That's pretty much their whole deal. Tab takes Lewis into his mouth, gloating silently at the sharp noise he makes, the way Dick moans, low and involuntary, and slides up the bed to lie next to them, watching. He closes his eyes for a moment, focusing on what he's doing, and has the fleeting thought that if he'd seen this coming he'd have done well to take Luz up on his offer, all those years ago, if only so he'd have had half an idea how to make this any good. He goes on instinct and memory and decides against trying too hard, just bobbing his head, mouth wet and loose, focusing on what he likes, on what Lewis did the night before, tongue a counterpoint to suction, and looks up through his lashes to see how he's doing.
Lewis has his head tipped back, mouth open, he's got his hands fisted in the sheets either side of his hips, Dick's lying plastered against his side, whispering in his ear, eyes fixed on Tab. Tab takes advantage of the eye contact, darts his glance sideways to the white knuckles on the bed, and just like always Dick knows exactly what he wants.
“Sure, Bunny?” He asks, voice a little ragged.
Tab nods, sliding further down, humming in the back of his throat. Lewis makes a high, desperate noise, and Dick reaches down, sliding his hands along Lewis' bare arms, untangling his fingers from the sheets and sliding them into Tab's hair.
“Oh fuck,” Lewis gasps, “Oh Bunny, baby, fuck.”
“Does that feel good, Lew?” Dick asks, still ragged, “I know you've been thinking about it, is it as good as you imagined? He looks so good like this, Bunny you look so good like this.”
“So fucking good,” Lewis says, and pulls Tab's hair, moving his hips just a little, “Shit, shit I'm close, Bunny, Bunny, baby please-”
No idea what he's asking for, Tab sucks a little harder, slides a little further down, takes a little more, pulls against the hands in his hair until it hurts. The little sting of pain makes him think suddenly of teeth in his neck and he's dizzy with it as Lewis comes, hips jerking uncontrollably even as Dick reaches to hold him down.
Still lightheaded, Tab pulls back, swallowing what he can in the second he has before Dick hauls him up the bed, presses him hard against his chest and licks the rest out of his mouth, kissing him all the way down to the mattress, and taking him in hand. He's almost not noticed quite how hard he is, almost, and as soon as Dick touches him he's right on the edge, fucking his tongue into Dick's mouth and rolling his hips up into his fist, breathless and dizzy and desperate, sprawled half on top of them both. Lewis bites gently on his shoulder, just because that's what he can reach, and Tab's startled into coming, teeth through his bottom lip because he can't work out whose name he's going to say.
Everything is very soft and hazy for a long few moments, blood pounding in his ears as he comes down, and then Dick shifts him gently over, rolling him into Lewis who reaches for him, eyes still a little glassy.
“Dick,” Tab says, about to offer something, not sure what.
Dick shakes his head and leans to kiss him, sliding his hand down to grip his cock, licking into Tab's mouth as he strokes himself off. It's quick and messy, Lewis leaning up over Tab's shoulder to watch, murmuring encouragement as he mouths lightly at Tab's clavicle, and Dick comes with his eyes closed, moaning something that could be either of their names or both. For a moment they're still and silent, luxuriating in the last little flames of it, and then Lewis speaks.
“It's a banner day,” he says. “There should be breakfast in bed. Or at the very least, coffee.”
Dick smiles, something sharp and victorious. “There should,” he says. “And as you're the only person who hasn't put any work into this banner day so far, Bunny and I thank you very much for volunteering.”
Predictably, Lewis bitches and grumbles as he gets up, shoving his arms into a luxurious-looking robe and making a great big show of how hard done by he is as Tab hides his smile in the bright softness of Dick's hair, still loose and lit up from the inside out. Lewis flounces out of the room, and then all of a sudden it's just the two of them. They've barely been alone together since that dreadful handful of minutes in the dawn after Chuck got shot, and all of a sudden Tab is right back there, shattered and holding his ruined, ruined heart in his hands for Dick to look at, if he wanted. He's cold all over in a second and he can tell right away that Dick knows exactly where he is, because he sits up a little, and reaches to pull Tab close, wraps his arms around him and holds him like he's not ever going to let him go. He never has to tell Dick what he's thinking. Never. It's actually kind of terrible, sometimes.
“I'm so sorry Bunny,” Dick says, and kisses the curve of his cheek, his temple, his hair. “I should have said it back. I should have told you that I love you. It would have been the truth. I know you needed to hear it. I'm so sorry I didn't give you that.”
The admission burns. He briefly considers saying it's alright but it's not and they both know it.
“Why didn't you?” He asks, because he wants to know.
Dick sighs. “I… It felt unfair to tell you that I love you, because it felt like I couldn't love you. I said to Lewis, after, I can't love him because I can't keep him. ”
“And you couldn't keep me because you'd never leave Nixon,” Tab says.
He realises too late that he's said Nixon not Lewis, and he knows Dick has noticed.
“I think I can be forgiven for not imagining, in the middle of that moment, that three men in one relationship could be a thing that was possible. It took Lewis a year to get me to realise that two men in a relationship was a thing that was possible. He's evidently very worldly and I know you've seen your share but all of this is completely new to me. All of this took me by surprise.”
As if falling in love with a man, and then that man's lover, wasn't a little out of the blue to me, Tab thinks, and is surprised by how uncharitable it is. As if I'd ever so much as looked at a man before I looked at you.
“But you're right,” Dick continues. “I'd never leave Lew. And now you're mine, Bunny, I'll never leave you either. I love you. I loved you then, and I love you now, I loved you before then and every minute in between and I'll love you til I die, just as I'll love him.”
Tab kisses him, because if he tries to speak he'll cry, and he doesn't ever want to cry in front of Dick again. He lets Dick set the pace, relaxed into his arms and thinks, somewhere in the back of his head, that maybe he hasn't really been honest with himself about the damage done. He's ruined, a little bit, and maybe it wasn't just the war.
I hate it when Pat is right.
Almost like Dick is reading his mind again, he strokes a hand down Tab's back and pulls away from the kiss for a moment.
“When you're ready,” he says, and there's something a little wary in his face. “When you're ready, if you want to, we can talk about it properly. Just you and me. About the things that happened. I know I hurt you. We can talk about it. If you want to. Whenever you're ready.”
Tab nods, thick feeling in his throat. “I'm alright now,” at least I thought I was , “and I love you. But yeah. Maybe at some point.”
“Whenever you're ready,” Dick says, and kisses him again.
Lewis comes upstairs with coffee and stands in the door for a moment, watching them with an expression on his face that would have been heartbreak a year ago and looks the same maybe but is something else. Tab turns to look at him and thinks that maybe if he gave him a moment, said anything, did anything, Lewis might cry now, and that's more than he can take. It's all too much in that heartbeat and he has no idea what he's supposed to do with it.
“We're not eating eggs in bed,” Lewis says, words a little clipped, maybe, but a pretty good impression of someone who's fine. “Because at least one of us is not a completely irredeemable hedonist. Jury's out on you Bunny. So there's coffee, and I'll do eggs whenever we make it out of bed.”
He slides back under the covers, settling in next to Tab, and the three of them sit together, propped up on the pillows, drinking their coffee in silence. It might have been months, but they're still years away from being able to drink a cup of coffee that tastes like coffee, hot, out of a china cup, in peace, without it feeling like a complete and utter miracle. Tab breathes out. He's here, in the life that's been waiting for him, with the men he's in love with. This is not combat, he tells himself. This is home. He does actually believe that, between the two of them, drinking coffee. Dick takes a sip of his coffee, then puts the cup on the table by the side of the bed, and dips his head to press a chaste kiss to the ball of Tab's shoulder. He's so obviously done it just because he can, because he wants to, and Tab is right there, so he does, that Tab finds himself suffused with warmth. They love him. Dick loves him. They get to have this. It's theirs.
“I don't know about you,” Tab says conversationally to Dick, “But I was collecting a list of things Lewis promised me would happen in this bed.”
“He was thrilled by the prospect of uncensored mail,” Dick tells him, very dry.
“I was thrilled by the prospect of this,” Lewis says, and takes the remaining coffee cups out of the bed. “What do you want, Bunny?”
Dick gives Tab a fond look. Told you he was going to spoil you. Tab does a decent pretence of thinking about his answer before he gives it.
“I want to fuck you,” he says. “Please.”
Lewis laughs, soft and incredulous, as if he can't quite believe it. “Oh, well, seeing as you asked nicely. Yes, god sweetheart, please fuck me.”
Tab's hard again just from the thought of it.
“Want me to prep him for you?” Dick asks, rolling over so he's got his chin hooked over Tab's shoulder, looking down at Lewis.
“Show me how,” Tab says instead, and reaches over Lewis for the little bottle of oil on the bedside.
They do it together, fingers twined inside as Lewis shouts and begs and makes desperate little noises, and the power in it makes Tab a little dizzy. He has not once ever really been in control of this thing. But he is now. Eventually Dick pulls out and then it's just Tab, fucking into Lewis with three fingers, stroking him perfectly, viciously, every time, and Lewis is begging, incoherent and disoriented, as Dick watches.
“I think I thought about this more than anything else,” he says, and it's a startling admission.
Tab draws as much of his self-control as he can up like armour, takes a breath and finds something steady in himself, so that when he says “Oh? What did you think about, exactly?” it’s a conversational tone, as if he isn’t achingly, unbearably hard just from wrecking Lewis with his fingers.
Dick hums. “Sometimes this,” he says, “I like doing this to him, making him fall apart with just my fingers until he’s begging, and I thought I’d like watching you do it too. I was right about that, this is incredible.”
Abruptly, Tab’s out of patience. He pulls back from Lewis, making him whine, still not quite capable of full sentences, and slicks himself up, bracing for something new, forcing himself not to hesitate, not to show fear. Lewis is on his back, legs bent, a hand up over his face, uncharacteristically silent. Tab takes hold of one of his thighs, lifts til Lewis’ leg is up over his shoulder, then carefully, deliberately, pushes all the way into him in one single motion.
Lewis cries out, a soft noise, and Tab drops his head, teeth light on Lewis’ ankle up on his shoulder, forces himself not to move, forces himself not to come just from the pressure and the heat and the knowledge that the body around him is Lewis Nixon. It’s been so long since the last time he fucked someone, God, years and years, that first few weeks in Aldbourne, before we ever went to war, and it’s never in his life been like this, with a man, with someone he adores, with an audience.
“What else did you think about, Dick?” he asks, and his voice has something low and dark in it that makes both his officers moan.
Dick doesn’t answer, just staring. He starts to move, fucking Lewis with slow, thorough strokes, working the angle ever so slightly so that it’s unpredictable, glorying in the way that he catches Lewis by surprise every now and then and makes him yell. It’s unbearably intense.
“You feel so good,” he says, and leans down, pressing a kiss to the edge of Lewis’ mouth, sliding deeper as the angle changes, and it’s just enough to have him lose control.
“More,” Lewis moans. “Harder, Bunny oh fuck oh god harder please, I need it, I, oh, Dick, I…”
Tab does as he’s told, and Dick leans down and licks the moans out of Lewis’ mouth, lip curled in half a smile.
“You say his name when I fuck you, and mine when he fucks you,” Dick murmurs, reaching down to wrap a hand around Lewis’ cock, stroking lightly, completely disregarding their existing rhythm, deliberately frustrating. “Can’t quite make up your mind?”
It’s a challenge uttered by accident, maybe, and Lewis rises to it, reaching up for Tab, taking him around the neck with one arm and using the leg around his hip for leverage as he flips them. Fully knocked off balance by the element of surprise, Tab goes easily, and Lewis smirks, pressing him back into the mattress and straddling his hip, bracing himself with his hands on Tab’s chest and sliding straight back down onto his cock, setting a brutal pace.
“I know exactly what I want, you aggravating fuckers,” Lewis says, voice the same dark as Tab’s. “Come here.”
He reaches out, pulling Dick up to his knees and then closer, until he’s twisted a little, gripping Dick by the hips and sliding his mouth down over his cock. Tab chokes at the sight, losing his rhythm a little as Dick bites off half a shout.
“Evidently very worldly,” he says out loud by accident and Dick looks down at him, eyes wide with laughter and shock.
Any hint of skill or seduction is over from that point onwards, they’re each of them out of control, hurtling towards the cliffs. Tab reaches for Lewis, not even trying to set a rhythm, just giving him something to fuck into as he rides him, Dick sliding slick and desperate over his tongue. Tab’s not quite sure who comes first, thinks it could have been him but thinks maybe actually what set him off was the feel of Lewis over his hand, the sound of Dick crying out. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but this.
They end up tangled together on the mattress again, this time Lewis in the middle.
“If I haven’t told you I love you yet today,” he says, “I do.”
Tab smiles, it actually hurts how much he loves them. “If you really loved us Lewis,” he says, and kisses him, “There would be eggs in bed.”
“I love you enough for eggs in bed,” Lewis says, and turns big brown eyes over Tab’s shoulder. “Take it up with Major Winters.”
Dick does not cave on the eggs, but allows sandwiches instead, and then manfully doesn’t complain about the crumbs. The sheets aren’t going to make it to the end of the day anyway. The rest of the morning drifts away from them and the afternoon follows it, lazy and luxurious, curled together, fucking slowly, trading kisses and soft sentences under the covers. There is, for the first time, nothing outside of them, no one who needs them who isn’t in this bed, and no reason to leave it.
I can’t believe how good this is , Tab thinks to himself, head pillowed on his arms as Dick fucks him deep and slow. Lewis is dozing next to them, nose pressed up against Tab’s forearm, soft and sweet in sleep.
“Love you,” he says, “Love this, love you.”
Dick kisses him on the nape of the neck. “Love you,” he says back. “Always, always.”
It goes on like that until the light starts to fade and then they’re interrupted by a brisk knocking on the door.
“Who the fuck is that,” Lewis grumbles. “It’s Saturday night, god damn it.”
Dick goes very still. “Lew,” he says, and there’s a deep sense of foreboding in his tone. “Lewis, it’s Saturday night.”
This obviously means something to the pair of them. “Fuck,” Lewis says. “Fuck. Do you think we can pretend we’re not home?”
“What’s on Saturday night?” Tab asks, a little amused, a little apprehensive.
“Blanche,” Lewis says with a groan.
“On a Saturday night,” Dick continues, “Lewis’ sister Blanche comes for dinner. He cooks something delicious, they attempt to drink each other under the table, and then eventually they convince me to drive them into the city where we go out, they continue to attempt to drink each other under the table, Blanche eventually forces one or both of us to dance with her, and then complains that we’re not very good at it.” He pauses, and smiles at Tab. “It’s actually a lot more fun than I’m making it sound. Except the dancing.”
Tab laughs. “Your exact words, Lewis, were “I don’t care what’s in the calendar” but I didn’t think you actually meant it.”
“If you’d called ahead instead of turning up on the doorstep out of the blue like a beautiful miracle, I’d have remembered to cancel.”
The knock on the door repeats, and louder. Tab laughs again, and pulls himself out of bed. He grabs a towel, cleans himself up as best as he can, and then grabs his shirt and pants. He dresses quickly, smooths his hair down with his fingers and checks his reflection in the mirror on the wall. He looks exactly like he’s spent the best part of the past twenty four hours being repeatedly fucked by two men, but it can’t be helped.
“For all she knows, I always look like this,” he tells them. “I’ll buy you five minutes to get yourselves respectable.”
They scramble off the bed, Lewis bee-lining to the shower, and Tab stands in front of Dick for a moment, looks at him naked and sweaty and filthy, a handful of little marks littering his body, half hard despite everything, and thinks we could pretend we’re not home.
“How much does she know?” he asks instead.
Dick’s looking at him like he wants to eat him alive. “About me and him, although we don’t discuss it all that much. She teases, sometimes, but we don't discuss it. We hadn’t mentioned you, weren’t sure how you wanted to play it.”
“If you keep looking at me like that, we can kiss goodbye to any hope that she won’t notice,” Tab tells him.
“I’ll look at you any way I damn well please,” Dick says, and there’s a lot of soldier in there. “You’re mine.”
Humming with the heat of those words and Dick’s gaze, Tab makes his way down the stairs, takes a deep breath, and opens the door.
“Hi,” he says, “You must be Blanche.”
She absolutely must be, because she’s the image of the man Tab just left naked in the shower upstairs. He forces himself to push the thought out of his head, and instead gives her his very best smile, the one that almost always works on almost everyone. She cocks her head, dark curls falling charmingly over her shoulder. He has the alarming thought that if he was still in the habit of looking at women, he’d definitely be looking at her. Lewis’ sister. Regardless, she’s looking at him, and it’s worryingly piercing.
“I must be,” she says, and gives him a very disarming smile. It’s Lewis’ smile, which is worse. “And I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea who you are.”
“Floyd Talbert, ma’am,” he says, and dials the smile up a little because he’s definitely on the back foot here. “I served in Europe with your brother and Major Winters.”
The look is even more piercing. “Bunny, right?”
God. “Usually just Tab, or Floyd. Come on in, anyway, they’re around here somewhere, let me get you a drink.”
Blanche follows him into the house, just in time for Tab to realise that he might have been here for most of a day, in this place that is his home now, this is his home now , but he hasn’t been anywhere except the bedroom and he has absolutely no idea how to go about getting this alarming woman a drink. She gives him a look that lets him know that she knows this, and finds it lightly funny. She has the exact same expression as Lewis when he’s watching something that gives him petty amusement, as if she’s going to enjoy watching him figure this out.
He cuts her off at the knees. “Having offered you a drink it now occurs to me that I have no idea how to make that happen - I only just got here and I don’t know if Dick,” shit, “ If Major Winters even has alcohol in the house.”
“Oh he does,” she says, with a throaty little laugh that makes him think she might be older than she looks. “Why don’t I make you a drink, Bunny, and you can tell me exactly what brings you here to the bustling metropolis of Nixon, New Jersey, while we wait for my brother and his… Pennsylvanian… to surface.”
Tab’s not really sure why he’s working so hard to cover this up. It seems completely futile, she’s probably just as smart as her brother, if not moreso, terrifying thought , and she obviously knows all about Dick and Lewis, and he’s well aware that they’re out of practice hiding what they are. Blanche hands him her coat, and he’s thankfully right next to the coat rack as she does it. Under the coat she’s wearing a dark green dress that he can instantly tell cost almost as much as the car on the driveway, slinky-looking and perfectly fitted to her body. Yes, if he was looking at women, he’d look at her. Smiling as if she knows this, Blanche leads him into the parlour and pours him a whiskey, it’s Vat 69, and the taste of it brings him all the way back to Austria, good and bad and scared and heartbroken and hopeful all at once, stolen kisses and the memory of them, something somehow sacred.
“I can’t believe he won’t spring for better whiskey,” Blanche says, a little mournful, as she pours her own glass.
“I haven’t had this since we left Europe,” Tab says, without really meaning to, because he’s massively off-balanced now.
She stares at him. “Lewis drank Vat in Europe? How?”
Magic, misconduct and Johnny Martin, Tab thinks, and then when she makes a little noise of confusion, he realises he’s said this out loud, lost in the weird swell of Europe memories. “He stashed bottles all through the battalion,” he explains. “In other people’s footlockers, mainly, and then when he ran out of what he’d bought with him, he scrounged more. Pretty well, generally. And when he couldn’t, we did it for him. Martin was the best at it, but we all kept an eye out. No one walked past a bottle of Vat 69 our whole war, and no one drank it but your brother.”
“Why?” she says, looking a little startled.
Because he was keeping us alive and we knew it. “He got very hard to live with when reduced to drinking the local,” Tab tries to keep the tone light. “And, well. Ask any man in our company. Any man in our battalion, maybe. Captain Nixon and Major Winters were two of the very best officers anyone could have asked for. They did their best for us. Seemed like the least we could do.”
And he shared, Tab thinks. When you were right down on the bones of your soul and couldn’t move forward, he’d be there and he’d hand you the flask and you’d be able to get up.
“They were well-liked, then?” Blanche asks, and she sounds genuinely curious.
“Yes,” Tab nods. “Any man in our company would tell you, he’d kill for them, die for them, follow them into hell,” he pauses, suddenly aware he’s giving too much away, and that he’s edged close to the sore spot in his soul. “Steal bottles of whiskey from local shops for them, if required.”
“If you’re expecting me to believe that Dick Winters drank whiskey in Europe you’ll have to try harder.”
Tab’s thinking of Bill Guarnere and his tiny victory over Dick’s self control - that was definitely Dick’s victory over low morale - when there are footsteps on the stairs and in the hall behind them. Thank fuck. Lewis sweeps into the room, hair a little damp and finger-combed, but looking otherwise very put together and unrumpled, not at all like a man who’s spent most of the day in bed with his lovers, apart from the barest edge of a bite peeking out from under his collar. That was me, Tab thinks, I made that mark, I did that, and struggles to fight the heat that rides his spine at the thought.
“Blanche, darling,” Lewis says, vowels very long, accent terribly over-pronounced, and reaches to take her lightly by the shoulders, kissing her loudly an inch from each cheek.
“How lovely to see you,” she responds, in the exact same cadence.
It’s a perfect caricature of every single society interaction in Gone With The Wind, and they dissolve into giggles like a pair of children as soon as it’s done. Lewis reaches for Blanche’s glass and drains it, and then fills it again and pours himself another. He then turns to Tab, and tilts the bottle at him. Tab passes his glass over. He feels like he’s going to need all the dutch courage he can get.
“I see you’ve met Sergeant Talbert,” Lewis says, topping up Tab’s glass. “Floyd, my sister, Blanche Nixon.”
Tab raises an eyebrow at the use of his rank, and of his first name, when have you ever called me Floyd, Lewis, ever? and nods. “She was kind enough to introduce me to your liquor cabinet. Finding it easier to source the Vat now you’re home?”
Lewis sighs, “Unfortunately Bunny I now have to do all my shopping myself, and I’m reduced to paying for it! But yes, it’s less of an operation these days. Small mercies.”
Back to being Bunny. Blanche is watching them both very closely, with a little crinkle in her brow. Lewis is standing very carefully away from him, and it does feel very careful. The whole situation feels like they’ve been sent to assault a position with no plan or intel or back up. Coming home from war with one man is one thing, says the little voice at the back of his mind, that’s something you could maybe get used to, if you loved your brother, and she does, obviously, but two? Could you get used to that? The idea that he might be the final straw makes him suddenly a little sick to his stomach, and when Dick comes down the stairs and into the parlour he can tell instantly that it shows on his face. Instead of going to greet Blanche, Dick crosses the room straight to Tab and takes up a polite-society version of his default position, at Tab’s twelve, between him and whatever hostile whatever it is they’re looking at. Machine gun posts, tanks, companies of SS, Nixons… All the same, really. The little frown on Blanche’s face deepens somewhat.
“Full confession,” Lewis says, taking note of the little drama playing out next to him, “We completely forgot about dinner, because Bunny dropped by without warning, so there is nothing cooking, and I have no idea what we have available. So it may well be eggs.”
“This is why I keep telling you you need a housekeeper, Lewis,” Blanche says, and makes her way out of the parlour in the direction, presumably, of the kitchen, bottle in hand.
Dick and Tab exchange matching looks of horror, and Lewis laughs at them. They make their way into the kitchen, which is a big, airy room Tab instantly knows his mother would exclaim endlessly over, and he leans up against the sideboard as Lewis rummages around in the drawers and ice box to see what he can come up with. Dick pulls out a bottle of wine and glasses with the air of a man who is used to doing just that, setting the table, while Lewis puts Tab to work peeling and chopping potatoes. Blanche sits in the breakfast nook with a large glass of wine and watches them. They make light conversation, touching on the officers’ work at Nixon Nitration, the pieces Blanche is writing for a women’s journal, Tab’s train journey across the country, and underneath it all is the way she’s looking at them, sheer shrewd analysis in every single glance. After years of being surrounded by men who were either not looking because they didn’t realise there was anything to see, or not looking because they knew what they would be looking at, the scrutiny burns.
It makes them nervous, too, unsettled and second-guessing in a way they never have been before. They’re careful with how they move around each other, wide berth and clear telegraphing, and it must look as strange as it feels. Eventually, when Lewis reaches out to touch Tab’s shoulder as he asks how the potatoes are coming, and they both pull back like he’s touching flame, Blanche seems to have had enough.
“Alright,” she says, and there’s a strange tone of Captain Nixon to it. “Stop. You,” she gestures to Tab. “Sit. Drink.” And there’s a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. “You,” she points one long, red-nailed finger at her brother. “Explain. What is going on here?” She waves her hands around the kitchen. “What is this?”
Lewis looks helplessly between the three of them in front of him, obviously at a loss for how to explain it. I don’t blame him , thinks Tab, taking a large sip of his whiskey. If he had to pick a word for what Winters is to Nixon, he’d say husband , because that’s the truth. But that’s a word for two people, not three, and even if it was, he’s not… Really, how could anyone explain this?
“Blanche,” Lewis starts, as if he’s buying time.
“We agreed at the end of the war,” Dick says, throwing himself metaphorically over the crossroads. “That when it was the right time, Bunny would come out here, to us, and we’d be together.” He says this baldly, without hesitation, without any hint of shame. “It’s the right time now. He’s living here with us now.” And here he pauses. “We’re not going to be making up a spare room.”
Well that’s one way to do it.
Blanche gives him a long, assessing look, and then turns back to Lewis, one eyebrow raised in a perfect filmstar arch. “And is that it, then? Is he the last of it, or should I be expecting to be greeted by more debauched-looking paratroopers on the doorstep in the near future?”
“You can’t prove he was debauched,” Lewis says, and it’s the instinctive provocation that he puts on as a defence. “For all you know he always looks like that.”
Tab buries his head in his hands.
“He’s the last of it,” Dick tells her, “Though there will probably be more paratroopers in this house from time to time, this is the only one who will be in any way debauched, and he is the only one who is staying.”
I’m staying. He finishes his whiskey, and looks up. Dick’s got the ghost of a smile on his face, the sort of hidden slide of it that would be a full beam on anyone else, but he’s giving nothing away unless you know what to look for. Tab knows what to look for, and so does Lewis, who’s looking at them both with a face that’s absolutely transparent, complete and utter adoration written all over it. God, he loves us, both of us.
“That’s very comprehensive Dick, thanks for that,” Lewis says, with a lot of laughter layered under it. “Any questions, Blanche?”
She laughs. “So many,” and takes a large sip of her wine, “But most importantly, Bunny, can you dance?”
Wrongfooted, Tab looks at Lewis.
“Can you, sweetheart?” he asks.
Tab forces himself to ignore the way that makes him shiver. “Well,” he says, actually thinking about it. “I’m not as good as Babe, but-”
“Who’s Babe?” asks Blanche, intrigued.
Dick and Lewis share a look. “No,” they say together. “Absolutely not,” Lewis adds.
“What?” Tab asks, looking at them both, and then all of a sudden he catches up. “Oh Christ,” he says, “Yeah, really no.”
Blanche, obviously aware she’s missed something and seemingly unconcerned as to what it might be, shrugs. “Fine, keep your Babe and your secrets. Bunny, you’ll have to do.”
They eat dinner, which does end up being fried potatoes and eggs, and drink the wine, and most of the whiskey. Blanche, now she's figured out what is going on, is less suspicious and much more genial, asking probing questions and poking fun at her brother with every passing opportunity. She's like him, or like he was at the beginning, before Normandy and all that followed. Eventually, after an hour or so, she puts her empty glass down on the table and fixes them with a firm look.
“Alright gentlemen,” she says. “You have five minutes to change, and then we're leaving.”
“Christ,” Lewis exclaims, even though they all know it's a token protest and he can't deny this young woman anything. “Do you have no compassion? Do we not get a reprieve, just for one night, for Bunny's first weekend here? If one of the loves of your life had arrived on your doorstep out of the blue, Blanche, I would not make you go out dancing.”
Dick laughs, and Tab hides his blush in his hands.
Blanche strengthens the firm look. “Five minutes, gentlemen.”
They fold instantly, and make their way upstairs. Tab is briefly grateful for the fact that he's just bought a new suit, and then he finds himself standing in the middle of the bedroom with both his officers in a state of undress and he isn't thinking about the suit anymore. Lewis has a look on his face that Tab's beginning to associate with a very specific type of mood, and right now it's directed solely at Dick. He thinks that maybe he should feel left out, but really, sometimes it's enough just to be able to watch.
“That was very Major Winters of you, telling Blanche like that,” Lewis says, heat behind the words. “Very impressive, don't you think, Bunny?”
“Very,” Tab says, stopping halfway through the buttons on his shirt to watch whatever this is unfold.
“Very,” Lewis repeats with a nod, and gets on his knees at Dick's feet, sliding his pants down where the belt is already undone.
“Five minutes,” Dick warns, little quiver in his voice.
“Sounds like a challenge.”
In the end it's more like ten, and Tab is very conscious of just how obvious it must be, but Blanche just snorts with laughter and takes a bottle from the liquor cabinet for the drive into the city. It doesn’t take long, really, and Dick drives a little faster than Tab would have imagined. He sits in the front, with the siblings Nixon bickering in the back seat, occasionally swiping the bottle of whiskey, but mainly watching Dick drive the car. He’s never seen him drive before, only ever watched him in the passenger seat of army jeeps, and he finds himself lightly transfixed by the way his hands rest on the wheel, the way he turns his head to check traffic. Dick catches him watching, and smiles, something open and just for him.
“I wonder how old I’ll be when I stop finding every single thing you do utterly incredible,” Tab says, and realises abruptly that he’s had a fair amount to drink.
Dick’s smile widens. “Probably about five years younger than me,” he says.
“Probably,” Tab says, and leans back in his seat.
The club, when they get there, is pretty much exactly what Tab had been expecting. A man in a frankly embarrassing uniform takes the car, and a second man in an outfit only a very little bit less humiliating greets Blanche by name and ushers them over to a table on the edge of the dance floor. Blanche, it seems, is on a mission, though the objective is a mystery to everyone but her. She orders a bottle of champagne from a passing waiter, disappears to the powder room and returns noticeably more made-up than before, complete with dark red lipstick.
“Mother would be rolling in her grave,” Lewis says, and passes her a glass of champagne.
“Mother is alive and well in California,” Blanche says, and makes a very unladylike noise.
“Are they always like this?” Tab asks, tipping his head closer to Dick so they can talk over the sound of the band.
“Often they’re worse,” Dick tells him, with a little smile. “Want me to step on your foot so you don’t have to dance?”
Tab thinks about it. “Do you want to dance with her instead?”
“No,” Dick says, and laughs.
Everything about this evening feels strange and unexpected, it’s like someone else’s life, except of course this is his life now, here, in New Jersey, with these two men, and apparently one of their sisters, once a week. It’s a distinctly warming feeling, though some of that might be to do with the whiskey, and if the price he pays for it is that he has to dance with an attractive woman, well, he’ll manage.
He drinks his champagne, which reminds him irresistibly of the Eagle’s Nest, and then looks up to see Lewis thinking the same thing. Blanche finishes her glass and then holds a hand out to him.
“Well, Sergeant Talbert?” she says, a caricature of a debutante.
“Indeed, Miss Nixon,” he responds, and takes her hand.
The band is playing something fast and jazzy, Blanche drags him out onto the dance floor and into the middle of the song, and it takes him a moment to get back into the swing of it, but he does get back into the swing of it. It’s been a while since he’s danced, since nights in the pub in Aldbourne, and for a moment he’s 20 again and he’s never been to war. Blanche is laughing, he spins her, lifts her off the floor an inch or so, they’re putting on a show and it reminds him of watching Babe and Skinny work a room full of girls, and there in the corner of his vision, sliding in and out of sight as he dances, are his officers. Lewis is laughing, leaning in close to Dick to whisper something in his ear, and Dick gives him a look in return that is full of unspoken things.
“Is it physically possible for you to take your eyes off them for more than a minute?” Blanche asks him, as he pulls her close out of a spin.
He laughs. “It’s possible,” Tab says, “But I don’t enjoy it.”
“How long has it been?” she asks, wrapping her arms around his neck as the music slows.
“I don’t know,” Tab says, “Since when? What counts?”
Blanche makes a face. “On second thoughts, maybe I don’t want the details.”
“Well I’m certainly not going to give you them,” Tab says. “For one thing, Lewis would kill me.”
“Well we can’t have that.”
“Since we agreed we’d be coming here,” Tab tells her, “It’s been about eight months. And I suppose it was on the cards for a month or so before that.”
“So it’s new, then?”
He laughs, spins her out and back, dips her in time to the end of the song. “No,” he says. “No, not for me, it’s been years.”
“Oh Bunny,” she laughs back at him. “Did you pine like a heroine in a romance novel?”
Tab pulls her close again, and makes a face only she can see. “No,” he tells her. “I pined like a paratrooper.”
The next song is slower. At the table, Lewis finishes his champagne and turns to Dick, trying relatively hard to keep a handle on his grin.
“You can stare daggers at her all you like,” he says, “She’s not going to catch fire and disappear in a cloud of ash.”
“What?” Dick says, turning to look at him.
“They’re just dancing.”
“I know that,” Dick says, and he’s got a twist to his mouth that tells Lewis he knows he’s being ridiculous. “I know that. I just…”
“You don’t like watching him with someone else.”
“I don’t like watching him with anyone but you,” Dick says, and slides a hand up Lewis’ thigh under the table, before bringing it back up to the table.
“Isn’t jealousy a deadly sin, Dick?”
“Envy,” Dick says, “Which is different.”
Lewis is openly laughing at him now. “You’re ridiculous,” he says. “After everything we put him through in Europe, you’re getting hurt feelings over a few dances with my sister?”
Dick grimaces. “I don’t have hurt feelings,” he says. “I just…”
For a moment, Lewis looks at him, and then he smiles. “You want to throw him down on the bed and fuck him through the mattress. Again. Because someone’s touching him who isn’t you, or me, and you really, really don’t like it.”
“I really, really don’t.”
“If I could,” Lewis says, “I’d kiss you. We’ll give Blanche one more song after this one, and then you can take us home, and you can fuck him through the mattress.”
“Again.”
“And again after that if you want to.”
“I might need to sleep eventually,” Dick says.
“Eventually.”
They sit in silence watching, then, knees pressed together under the table, as Tab and Blanche dance. There’s something enchanting about it, he looks younger than he has in years, looks as young as he did when they met him, and his face is lit up as he spins her, lifts her a little bit off the floor, spins her again. He’s laughing, it’s joyous, and when he catches her, dips her, he’s not looking down at Blanche. He’s looking across the room at them.