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Dick never signals his intent, he always just moves into Lewis’s space. The first time, in Mourmelon, Dick had walked up behind Lewis, pushed him up against a wall, and just - held him there. After a minute, he’d dropped his forehead to the nape of Lewis’s neck. His breath had whooshed against Lewis’s neck. Lewis hadn’t known the meaning of it, so he’d just waited. Waited for Dick to say something. Waited for some kind of indication.
Dick’s breaths had only become shorter and shorter, and he’d started to sound like he was panicking. Lewis had leaned back into Dick out of a reflexive need to soothe him as much as anything else. He’d leaned back and reached, blindly, for Dick’s fingers, squeezing them.
And maybe things would be different now if he’d just kept squeezing them, and waited until Dick’s breathing evened out and he regained his composure. But Lewis didn’t do that - instead he squeezed Dick’s fingers, and, closing his eyes, had pulled Dick’s hands forward, and threaded their fingers together. He hadn’t known why he was doing it; he’d just done it. And before either of them knew what had happened or how, they were fumbling and groping - like teenagers, Lewis’s brain had whispered - and Lewis was letting his head loll back onto Dick’s shoulder.
And then it had all happened very fast. Lewis had pulled both of Dick’s hands down and shoved them in the direction of his crotch. Dick had fondled him, clumsily, until Lewis had reached back to pull at his hips, lewdly arching his back against Dick’s erection.
Something had shifted in the air. Gripping Lewis’s hips, Dick had started grinding against him. Very determined grinding. Dick’s movements became - they were purposeful. Like Dick had decided, ‘this is what I’m going to do now: I’m going to rub myself against Lewis’s clothed body’ in a no-going-back way like a mid-battle decision. Like a plan he’d designed on the spot and was now executing, which of course he was very good at because Dick Winters is good at everything. The man had enough competence for three people and on a normal day he didn’t use half of it.
His hands had been warm. And steady. And when he’d started efficiently undoing and shoving aside Lewis’s belt, pants, briefs, it was the most erotic thing Lewis had ever experienced. And then, before Lewis had gathered his startled, breathless thoughts, Dick had lined his cock up against his opening.
But then he’d stopped moving, just completely stopped moving, like he was waiting for something.
Lewis couldn’t have explained - still can’t explain - it, but he knew Dick wasn’t second-guessing himself. He knew that Dick was asking permission. He was silently asking is this okay.
So Lewis had nodded, feverishly shaking his head up and down, telling Dick yes, yes, this is okay. And then he’d felt some kind of jelly on his backside. And then Dick had been in. All the way.
*
If you could know anything, what would you want to know?
Richard Winters is not impulsive, and for the rest of his life, he’ll never really know what came over him or how he knew it would be okay. How he knew Lewis would let him.
He’d been handed a comic book the week before, by a GI in Paris. Which figures, since he was only in Paris because Lewis made him go. That doesn’t explain all of it, but explains some.
He’d stepped off the train, glanced across the platform, and seen a guy in an American uniform looking at him. Heaven knows what that GI had seen when he’d caught Dick’s eye, but whatever it was, it had ended with the man giving Dick a wallet-sized book and walking away before Dick could so much as nod in acknowledgment.
Dick had flipped it open, right there on the platform, and it wasn’t a comic book, at least, not a regular one. It was pornographic. It featured more nudity than a swimming hole in August, and no women at all. He’d been mortified.
But he hadn’t thrown the book away. He’d thought about it. He’d… Well. He had questions. He has questions.
Dick feels comfortable with his knowledge about a lot of things. He is confident in his abilities, in the purpose of his position, his rank, the greater purpose of the operations he’s been sent on (though maybe not about every detail of how they’re being run or by whom). He hasn’t liked many of the things he’s done in the war but he trusts that they were the right things to do. About his job, about his value as a citizen, Dick has no questions.
But.
The night they earned their jump wings, back in Toccoa, Dick had gone for a walk. It had been really late - after Lewis had had his fill of whiskey and been carried back to his quarters - almost early morning. Dick had, as he recalls, looked up at the moon and wondered about the phrase mooning about. Was mooning about, in the sense of acting dreamily, aimless and infatuated, somehow related to mooning in the sense of baring one’s buttocks? He wondered.
When he’d walked back, he’d turned a corner and he’d seen them. They hadn’t seen him, but he’d seen them. Luz and Toye, oblivious, walking and holding hands.
As Dick watched, Toye had lifted Luz’s hand and, clumsily, threaded their fingers together. In the stillness and the moonlight, Luz had looked up through his eyelashes at Toye. And then they’s smiled moonily (appropriate) at each other.
If Dick could know anything, this is what he would want to know: why is it that pretending that he never saw them was - and is still - the best best thing he could do for Luz and Toye? Why is it that they had to go into the shadows to hold hands?
Dick can’t even wrap his mind around the subject. It’s like what Luz and Toye have, their feelings for one another, they’re in the waiting room of Dick’s brain, trying to get in, but there’s something wrong with the door. He wants to come to grips with the very notion of them, but he wouldn’t even know where to start.
After the first time he… After the first time he fucked Lew - he makes himself think the word - Dick had watched Lewis pull his trousers back up, and he’d felt immediately uncertain. Unlike Lewis, who had done this before (he imagined.) Lewis knew his own mind. He didn’t need Dick to do his thinking for him. He’d done this with Dick and he seemed unconcerned. Calm.
But Dick felt… If something makes you doubt what you know, Dick thinks, that’s usually a good sign that you shouldn’t do it again. However much you want it.
But of course, he did do it again. He did it again, and again.
Is this how Lew feels about whiskey, Dick wonders? A thing so many people wouldn’t approve of, a thing against which there are rules, but somehow, a thing for which you find a reason to ignore the rules. That somehow makes you think, every time, this time, just this once, it’s okay.
Dick wanted, he wanted… Lew didn’t mind, he kept telling himself. Lew didn’t stop him and he seemed so unconcerned, and no one else knew. So before he knew it Dick was pushing Lew into an empty room, again, pawing at his clothes, again, and grinding up against Lew’s backside. It might be against the rules but it doesn’t feel like it is, doesn’t feel like it should be. So when he melts into his arms, Dick thinks okay, it’s okay, Lew, I’ll take care of you.
*
It’s the situation they’re in, Lewis knows. All of it. Daily reminders of the fleeting nature of life and alarming quantities of adrenaline, and one day Dick walked up behind is and pushed him up against the wall, thrust his cock up against Lewis’s ass and waited for Lewis’s okay. An abrupt and unforeseen reaction to the war, maybe, but a reaction to it nonetheless.
They’ve repeated the experience nearly a dozen times, and now they’re in an empty barn, sheltered from the wind, Lewis bracing himself against the ladder to the hayloft, his pants around his ankles. His eyes are screwed shut. Dick’s hands are on his ass.
Lewis nods, bobbing his head up and down in huge exaggerated movements, and when Dick pushes into him (oh god) he tightly bear-hugs him and presses his forehead onto Lewis’s shoulder. Lewis braces himself against the wall, and Dick fucks him without pause or hesitation. Lewis feels his breaths become shorter and shorter, until they become frantic, and then it’s over. They break apart. Dick reaches out and smoothes Lewis’s hair.
When he was still in school, Lewis once wrote a paper about prisons - a Yale psychology professor’s idea for scaring undergrads into becoming committed, law-abiding citizens - and his reading list had included a book called Sex In Prison. This bluntly-titled tome did indeed scare Lewis, and it taught him the phrase “situational homosexuality.” After reading it, part of him had wanted to have a chat with the author about prep schools, but for the most part, Lewis had felt privileged to read a clear-headed account of something completely taboo.
Information is so much less scary than secrecy, Lewis thinks. Maybe that’s why he’s a good SO.
The book had included this passage in chapter two:
“…Although there are instances where actual love, or something very much akin to it exists between two men who may be involved in an affair.
Some of the world’s leading psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, physicians, and sociologists content that it is possible for love between two men or two women to be just as pure and on just as lofty a plane as it sometimes is between a man and a woman.”
Lewis had read it twice. Actual love, it said. Just as lofty.
Beyond the implications of its content, the tone of the book was what stayed with Lewis, even now. It approached a subject that must have been repulsive to most people, but in a descriptive way. As though the author would never even dream of condemning it wholesale, without studying it properly first. Lewis didn’t know anyone like the author. Well. Maybe he did, now.
In any case, though the passages about lofty feelings had struck a chord with Lewis, according to the book, the vast majority of homosexual behaviour has “physical satisfaction as [its] primary object.” Lewis thinks about that a lot. He thinks about it when he sees Luz nod at Toye and leave the room, and then hears Toye say “gotta hit the head” exactly ten minutes later. And he thinks about it when he sees Dick watch Toye leave.
One day in Toccoa, years ago, when Lewis’s friendship with Dick was so new that they still called each other “Nixon” and “Winters,” they’d been assigned laundry duty together. Just when they’d finished folding the last of the towels, Lewis had leaned over and… pushed one of Winters’s perfectly folded piles off the table. He hadn’t known what had come over him, and after doing it he’d just stared ahead, deadpan, like nothing had happened.
Dick had turned, stared at Lewis for a full three seconds. Then he’d turned back, and, as Lewis watched and in silence, he’d picked up the pile and folded it again. He did it like - Lewis could have sworn Winters was taunting him with his utter lack of reaction.
So out of what his Yale roommate had once called a ‘sick impulse to drive everybody away’ Lewis had waited until Winters was done, leaned over, and pushed towels off the table again. Just pushed the entire pile of clean, folded towels on the floor. But when he’d looked at Winters, fully expecting to be punched in the face, he’d caught Winters smiling. Smiling.
He’s never figured out what makes Richard Winters tick, really. It’s what makes him interesting, he supposes. Winters is brave, compassionate and genuine. He’s a natural leader who doesn’t command attention. He’s a man who does things well without expecting to be rewarded. And he’s a man who, seemingly, needs no outlet. Well, until now.
It makes sense that Dick would finally be hitting the point where he needs to let off some steam. In fact, Lewis thinks, he might have been stockpiling steam because he sure is letting off a lot of it. They fuck in billets and abandoned barns and in billets again, and then they fuck up against trees and in foxholes. Mostly they do it standing up, with Lewis’s pants pulled down just enough for access. Dick magically never getting vaseline on their uniforms even when they’re on their hands and knees and doing it really messily. Once, they do it crouching under a desk, for no reason that Lewis can surmise other than the fact that Dick pushed him under there and Lewis let him.
Lewis would worry about getting caught - which would be capital “b” bad - but Dick was probably taught how to make himself unnoticeable from birth (the only possible explanation for his gift of stealth) and Lewis mostly knows where everybody is at any given time.
So they keep doing it. They keep doing it over, and over, and over. Their fucking would almost be routine, except that routines are boring and this is the opposite.
Sometimes, when they’re safe, and warm, and they’ve had enough to eat and they’re sleepy, Dick looks up at Lewis, just looks at him, like they’re the only two people in the room, no, the whole world, and something about him makes Lewis want to hold him in his arms and be as close as two people can be. But he thinks, situational homosexuality. And he thinks, Dick has fucked him a dozen times and this is what he knows: Dick is expedient about clothes. He likes vaseline in generous quantities. He needs for Lewis to explicitly tell him he wants it. And he makes sure they are never face to face.
*
Then one day, Lewis moans.
When it happens, he’s on all fours, his face is on the floor, his eyes are screwed shut, and he’s taking everything that Dick is giving. Dick is going at it so hard that he’s pushing Lewis forward with each thrust, so eventually he puts his hands on Lewis’s hips and grips him, holding him in place, which is so good, and that’s when Lewis moans.
“Oh, god.”
The words break through the silence, and suddenly Dick is pitching forward, slumping over Lewis. For a moment Lewis thinks Dick is going to put a hand over his mouth to quiet him, but he doesn’t, instead he starts running his hands up and down Lewis’s thighs - he’s never done that before - and moving like he’s so turned on he can barely… it’s like he’s having trouble controlling himself. Lewis feels him shudder and tense, and then Dick is letting his head drop onto the back of Lewis’s neck, panting wetly into Lewis’s shoulder.
And Lewis has always had the ability to be lucid in moments when other men would be impaired. So despite the (violent) orgasm that’s rushing through him, his brain immediately records this information. Dick has fucked him a dozen times and this is what he knows: Dick is expedient with clothes, generous with vaseline, only acting with consent, never with eye contact. And he likes it when Lewis moans. This is new.
The next time they fuck they’re in a closet in Dick’s billet, there are other people on Dick’s floor, and they really can’t be making any noise. But Dick has fit himself to Lew’s back and he’s let his head fall forward; his ear is hardly an inch from Lewis’s mouth. And so he’s close enough to hear when, in between two thrusts, Lewis sighs. It’s only a small sound. A whimper, at most.
“Dick.”
Lewis suddenly feels Dick wrapping his arms around him and - and hugging him, there’s no other word for it - so Lewis makes an experimental second sound.
“Oh, god, Dick.”
And then Dick turns his head towards Lew’s neck and kisses the space behind Lew’s ear. The kiss makes the surface of his skin tingle. It’s intense, impassioned, and as Dick’s movements become increasingly erratic, Lewis arches his back and comes his brains out.
*
“Contrary to what is often assumed, love is not an emotion.”
“What the fuck?”
Dick is in one of those horrible convoys on their way to - well they don’t even know where, yet. The higher ups probably won’t tell them until they get there. But Luz canvassed for reading material before they left and he’s been reading to them whenever they get bored. At first it was funny papers, which was great, with the voices and everything, but now they’re down to some genuinely unexpected - which is a nice way of putting it - niche interest publications .
“I’ve read everything else, Malarkey, what do you want me to do?”
“Read it if you want, Luz. But do you gotta read it out loud?”
“He’s been reading everything out loud to us,” Dick says.
Luz, who apparently considers that Dick’s statement settles it, coughs theatrically and starts over.
“Contrary to what is often assumed, love is not an emotion. Depending on circumstances - depending on where you are, in just what love story - love might be manifested in sorrow, fear, guilt, regret, bitterness, gloom, contempt, humiliation, elation, dejection, anxiety, jealousy, disgust, or murderous rage.”
“Murderous rage is right, Luz.”
“Shut it, Malarkey! You got not appreciation of the finer feelings.”
Dick thinks: when he hears the word ‘love,’ he… He thinks about Lewis. He thinks about the way Lewis shows emotion and affection without reserve, the way he makes promises with his eyes, the way he laughed so hard one time he spit out an entire mouthful of spaghetti.
“Love is a condition that shapes and governs thoughts, desires, emotions, and behaviours around the focal person who is the 'beloved.' Like a kind of prism, it affects all sorts of experiences - even ones that don't directly involve the beloved.”
Dick squeezes his eyes shut. Yesterday, he’d put his head down on Lewis’s shoulder and he’d felt so safe, he’d felt at peace, but he doesn’t feel at peace now. He feels - he feels like every minute he spends with Lewis is a minute in which he has more to lose.
“Luz,” Malarkey cuts the reading off. “I will give you five dollars to stop reading that goddamn thing.”
Later, still on the road, they tell ghost stories. Dick drifts in and out, letting the others do the telling. He naps and then wakes up, his eyes unfocused. Was ever anyone sitting here, like this, mooning over dark eyes and soft sighs like I am now, he wonders? How many people have been jostled and thrown around on this road, on their way to who knows what destination?
“When you tell stories everybody in ‘em dies real violent, Toye”
“What would you have ‘em die of?”
“A little variety would be good, ’s’all I’m saying.”
Malarkey says, “my aunt Ginevra used to tell us ghost stories, when I was a kid.”
“Yeah? What did people die of in her stories?”
He thinks, and frowns. “Broken hearts, mostly.”
“Figures.”
That first time - Dick can remember it, almost relive it, so clearly - he’d walked up to Lewis like he’d forgotten how not to do it and put his head down in between Lewis’s shoulder blades. Just rested it there, quiet and safe, in the knowledge that Lewis’s body would support the weight of him. The weight of his confusion, of his exhaustion. And then he’d crowded Lewis - Lewis hadn’t stopped him, Lewis hadn’t said anything - pushed him up against the wall and let himself be overcome with how precious Lewis was. How meaningful his friendship was. Every scrap of poetry he’d ever learned had floated up to the surface of his mind (thus mellowed to that tender light; let me not to the marriage of true minds; take me to you, imprison me) and in that moment no words seemed too strong, too impassioned, he wanted, he wanted… And he realized he didn’t know, and he’d started panicking.
But Lewis had known… Well he hadn’t know what was in Dick’s mind, but he’d known something, and he’d pulled on Dick’s hands, guided them, and Dick had wanted that. He’d wanted that kind of release. And Lewis hadn’t minded.
*
Lewis likes Dick because Dick never tried to change him. No, that can’t be it; other people haven’t tried to change him but he didn’t like them. No it’s - Dick is so reliable. No that’s not it either - if reliability made him want to spend time with people he would’ve wanted to spend his weekends with the lunch lady at school. He - he doesn’t know. Dick is there for him. But there’s more to it than that.
Lewis was brought up by people who said they cared about him but really, Lewis knows, they cared about the idea of him. They cared about the Lewis in their heads, and when he didn’t act like that Lewis, they told him he was selfish. Irritating. Troublesome.
He liked the military at first, because the rules and organisation at least gave him a reliable point of reference. Do as we tell you, the army said, and you’ll be taken care of according to these specific parameters. What could be more reassuring than that? But of course Lewis ended up just as betrayed as by anybody else, with the military’s stupid decisions that only end up hurting the people on the ground, who never had any say.
Lewis still isn’t sure what it means when Dick kisses his neck and then grabs his hands during climax but the thing is, he’s not entirely sure that he can be bothered to figure it out, either. He just feels too good, too fulfilled, too complete. If he thinks about it too much he’s liable to embarrass himself - he gets hard just at the thought of Dick exhaling on the back of his neck, for pete’s sake. Lewis Nixon has had more than his share of sexual partners, so he thought he knew what good sex was, but boy, was he wrong. He wasn’t even in the near vicinity of good sex. This is - he’s never felt anything like this, and he doesn’t want to stop and figure out what it means, he just doesn’t want it to end.
In Austria, they have no opportunities for - Lewis isn’t sure how many days. It feels like weeks - and when they do find themselves alone Lewis gets hard with anticipation, so hard, and so fast, but Dick just stays on his side of the room. Lewis sees him standing there, and at first he thinks Dick is just standing by the window to check the sight lines, but then he just keeps on standing there. Something about him, about his posture, is off, but Lewis can’t put his finger on it.
It’s confusing. They’re alone, secluded, and unmonitored, and for the past year every time that’s happened Lewis has found himself being undressed and screwed by Dick in a manner that could only be described as “single-minded.” And lately Dick’s interest had, if anything, escalated, to something heated - no - fervid. Something different is happening now, but Lewis has no idea how to ask what.
“You, um.” His voice breaks. “Good?”
Dick waits a second too long to answer, and he doesn’t look towards Lewis. “Yeah.”
Dick has set up his office in one of the cavernous spaces in his billet, a dark-panelled room on the upper floor with a lot of natural light, though on a cloudy day that isn’t saying much. The rest of the company has been sent off on patrols.
It’s early and Lewis hasn’t had a drink yet today. “If you want me to go -“
“I don’t want you to go.”
It’s unsettling, is what this is. Everything about this conversation is wrong. The words are wrong, the tone is wrong, the room and the clouds are wrong.
“Look, if I did something wrong,” Lewis shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “You should tell me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Lew.” Dick’s voice rumbles softly, gentle and calm, so reasonable, and suddenly Lewis is really ticked off.
He’s ticked off… No, it’s more than that, he’s angry. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
That gets Dick’s attention. He whirls around and says, “like what?”
“Like you’re sayin’ something level-headed,” he spits out, taking a step forward. “Don’t talk to me like this is a normal conversation!”
If anything, Dick becomes more calm. He breathes in and out. “What do you mean, Lew?”
“Don’t -“ Lewis starts to say don’t play dumb but then he changes his mind, and grabs Dick’s arm, pulls him to the far corner of the room. Away from the angle of the window. Dick doesn’t stop him. “Don’t - just don’t!”
He shoves on Dick’s shoulders, pins him to the wall, and still, Dick’s face is composed. So Lewis, still hard, grabs Dick’s hand, plants it on top of his erection, and stares up at him, defiant. He grinds against it.
Dick looks away to the side. “Lew…”
“Dick!” Lewis shucks off his jacket and starts undoing his own trousers.
“Lew, I think -“
“Dick!” Lewis’s voice breaks, again, as he starts pulling at Dick’s clothes. “You’re not supposed to be thinking. You’re not even supposed to -“
Something about the words seem to jostle Dick, because he’s suddenly grabbing Lewis’s wrists. “Then what am I SUPPOSED to be doing, huh?”
Lewis looks down at the hands gripping his wrists. Lack of control is so rare coming from Dick, so rare, and Lewis feels a shiver go through him. When he looks up, Dick is looking at him, eyes wild. It’s exhilarating.
“Lew!” Dick shouts. “Hear what I said?”
All the air leaves Lewis’s body, he swoons, and then Dick does turn him over and push him up against a wall. He tugs at Lewis’s hair and holds his head in place as he puts his mouth next to Lewis’s ear. “What am I supposed to be doing?” he asks again. And then he’s roughly pulling Lewis’s pants down. His cock is bigger, harder, than Lewis remembers it being before.
When he reaches into Lewis’s pants to jerk him off, Dick’s arm brushes over a spot on Lew’s side, and Lew’s stomach flips. No one has touched that spot since he was a kid, he thinks, that’s the only explanation for the way he reacts. When Dick simultaneously thrusts into him and jerks him off Lewis feels - he feels, that’s just it - overwhelmed, like he’s experiencing every possible emotion all at once. He’s shaking, he feels his eyes prickling, he feels his entire face being rushed with blood.
“Please, please, please.”
Their movements become frenzied, and when they climax, Lewis hears something, something low-pitched - a little helpless sound that’s like the noises the guys make when they fall to the ground after one too many pushups - “oh” - and it takes him a moment for him to realize it came from Dick.
*
It’s a bright, sunny, day in Zell am See when it happens. Dick’s hands are full - coffee in one hand and three apples in the other - when Lewis asks him for a light, so he just says “inside pocket.”
Lewis reaches for it, opening Dick’s coat, putting his hand inside and patting at his torso, and before Dick can say “inside pocket OF MY COAT you loon” Lewis’s movements tickle him and he’s twitching away. Just an involuntary little movement, but Lewis can’t have missed it.
“Dick?” Lewis’s voice is some kind of mix of incredulousness and amusement.
Dick forces himself not to move away. He looks Lewis - who still has his hands inside Dick’s shirt - straight in the eye. “What?”
“Are you… ticklish?”
“That doesn’t strike me as relevant information, Captain Nixon.”
“How the hell have we gotten this far in the war without ever knowing you were ticklish?”
Dick’s hands are still full so he can’t even defend himself when Lewis moves his hands again, he just giggles helplessly instead of answering.
“Oh sorry, Dick, is this tickling you?” Lewis looks so happy. “How about this?”
“Hey!” Dick shouts, breathless.
Lewis tackles him and they fall, Dick’s coffee spilling on the floor and apples tumbling away. It doesn’t even occur to them to feel guarded or to worry about how this might look, if anyone came in. They’re just horsing around. Lewis’s totally carefree grin is a sight to behold - like even if this is just for a moment, all their worries have completely flown away.
When they stop to breathe, Dick can feel tears of laughter in his eyes, Lewis’s cheeks are bright red, and they look at each other, taking in great big lungfuls of air. And neither one of them will ever know which one leaned in first, but then they’re kissing.
It’s clumsy and intimate and Lewis is groaning, shoving his tongue into Dick’s mouth. Dick puts both arms around Lewis and it feels so new but he can’t remember why. Why haven’t they done this before?
They hear voices on the floor below, and within seconds they’ve scrambled away from each other. Dick watches as Lewis all but races out the door. Mechanically, he picks up his apples, one by one.
The truth is, Dick thinks, that he always knew that Lewis wasn’t just letting Dick fuck him. That he wasn’t just putting up with Dick’s crush out of some kind of friendly but indifferent promiscuousness. The truth is that, as long as Dick was telling himself that, it allowed him to avoid thinking about what this behaviour, this homosexual behaviour - he made himself think the word - meant.
The truth is that maybe it’s about time Dick acknowledged to himself that sometimes, society doesn’t sanction what you do. Sometimes, people around you, even people you respect, they don’t give you their blessing. But maybe, just maybe, that doesn’t mean that what you’re doing isn’t the right thing to do. Maybe it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.
*
The thing, Lewis thinks, in the days following his abrupt exit from Dick’s office, with finding out that the person you treasure above all others might, perhaps, treasure you in return, is that you want to tell them. You want - you want to tell everyone. You don’t want to talk about anything else. Richard Winters says he’s from Pennsylvania but really he's been hurtled out of a plane and dropped, all six feet of him, red hair and blue eyes, into Toccoa, and Lewis's life. He’s someone who cares about Lewis as much as Lewis cares about him, and that’s more than Lewis ever thought he’d be allowed to have.
But how do you say that? What words can you possibly use to explain it? Furthermore, at what time would this conversation take place? Any time he would be likely to tell Dick anything like that, he would never have time to say a damn thing.
Besides, there wouldn’t be much purpose to such a conversation, Lewis thinks, as Dick pushes him down onto a desk. They’re on one of the upper floors of the hotel, and earlier Lewis got his hands on some olive oil, which he thinks will suit their purpose better than vaseline. Dick is busying himself with their belts, and Lewis reaches awkwardly, from his bent down position, into one of his pockets to retrieve the oil.
He hadn’t been able to face the thought of giving the oil to Dick beforehand, since it implied that he’d given this some thought. So he’s waited until now, until his rear is pointed at Dick, in an obscene pose, to hold the oil out for him. It’s much more embarrassing than he thought it would be, and he suddenly wishes he hadn’t done it.
Dick takes the little bottle of oil, and stops moving.
“Did I hurt you?” Dick asks, in the flattest tone possible.
“No!” It never occurred to him that Dick might take it as a sign that the vaseline they’d used until now was inadequate, and Lewis turns to look at him before he realizes what he’s doing.
They’ve never really had any eye contact while they were having sex before. Even when they were kissing, their eyes were closed. Looking at Dick is - it’s shocking. “You can tell me.” Dick says. “You should tell me.”
“No,” Lewis says again, shaking his head. “No. I just thought you’d like this.”
Lewis sees Dick blink once, twice. Then he’s being pushed down until his cheek is on the desk, and he feels Dick runs his hands over his backside. And then the oil.
When Dick pushes into him, Lewis lets out a throaty moan. He knew this would be good but he - but this is better than how he thought it would be. He reaches back - he wants to touch, he wants to hold - and Dick, reading his mind, threads their fingers together.
Lewis feels his heart beating out of his chest. This is so good. “I love you.”
There’s a pause in Dick’s rhythm, and then he’s pounding frantically. “Lew,” he says.
“Oh, God,” Lewis says, coming so hard he sees stars. “I love you.”
Later, when they get dressed and clean up the desk, Dick looks at him intently.
“We need to talk,” he says. “But not now.”
It takes a full three days for Dick to bring it up again. He takes Lewis outside, far out on a hillside, clear sight lines in every direction. They stand facing each other.
Lewis has no idea what’s about to happen. Dick’s look is something between blank and determined, and anything is believable. Lewis wouldn’t be that shocked if Dick suggested they turn themselves in to be court-martialled. He thinks: he always knew this thing was temporary, so whatever happens now, it’s only about how much the end hurts.
When he speaks, Dick enunciates his words like he wants to eliminate every possible chance of being misunderstood. “Lew, I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”
Lewis unaccountably feels his eyes prickling with tears.
Dick screws his eyes shut, like he’s steeling himself, and then opens them. He takes a deep breath. “I love you.”