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Nix finds Dick halfway through his breakfast in the officers’ mess and slides onto the opposite bench, folding his hands over his tray and waiting expectantly. Dick pauses with his spoon in the air and a question in his eyes, probably at the wide grin Nix can feel stretching across his face. If he’d had his coffee yet, he might be bouncing. And he doesn’t even like mornings. But he does like the story he heard in the showers this morning.
“I hear you took a trip,” he prompts, and Dick blushes right on cue, ducking his head. It doesn’t help. When he blushes, it stretches all the way down his neck and, Nix has cause to know, in blotchy patches across his chest, red as a sunburn. Nix finds it adorable, and only half bothers to conceal it.
“How is that a story?” Dick protests, but he’s smiling too, a crooked shape he reserves for his own rare moments of necessary humility.
“There’s no place like the army for gossip,” Nix tells him, completely without sympathy. “But please,” he gestures broadly, “set the record straight.”
Dick shakes his head, spooning up more of the sludge the army chooses to call oatmeal. He’s still pink. “You should have gone,” he says, rueful. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
Nix barks out a laugh. “I am the last person Sink would have trusted. In fact, you, my friend, are probably the only man in the whole battalion who could be trusted with obtaining whiskey rations for the entire officer corps. So tell me.” He leans forward again, intoning as if his words were the opening of a dramatic poem. “You scoured the country.”
“I did,” Dick admits, sipping his coffee. “I started in Philadelphia.”
“Where you met with defeat.”
“Is this a collaborative exercise?”
Nix raises his hands in surrender. “I’ll restrain myself.”
Dick’s eyebrows rise skeptically, and he doesn’t even need to say anything, because Nix is already huffing out a breath of appreciative laughter. It’s nice to be known so well. Dick, his point made, continues placidly. “Sink wanted new coats for the officers too. Those I got just fine. All I had to do was sign for them. But they didn’t have whiskey in barrels. The store owner stood there,” Dick’s voice grows a little sharp with indignation, “with me in my uniform, and asked me if I knew there was a war on. He lectured me about rationing!”
Nix trembles with laughter, covering his mouth to keep from interrupting Dick’s story. “Three other shops, same story,” Dick complains, setting down his coffee and getting into the telling. “I was out of ideas, and it was getting late. So I went home to Lancaster.”
Nix gets control of himself enough to suggest, straight faced, “Your family being whiskey connoisseurs, naturally.”
Dick’s blush, which had started to fade, comes back in force. “I called Regiment to ask for advice,” he admits. “I spent the night at home. Mother says hello.”
Nix can’t quite process the little flip his heart does to know Dick mentions him to his mother, so he leaves that point unaddressed. “And what did Regiment suggest?”
Dick cocks his head, sighing, because he’s already anticipating Nix’s response. “New York City.” And Nix does love that, laughs so hard his chest hurts at the thought of Dick Winters stepping off a train in New York City, where Nix practically grew up and where Dick had never set foot. Nix can just picture it: the city a grimy, teeming miasma of people, and Dick immaculate and alone and armed solely with a money order from the United States Army and a mission to find a barrel of fine aged whiskey, a barrel from which he will, in the end, consume not a single drop. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful.
“Are you crying?” Dick asks, and Nix can only pound himself on the thigh and try to breathe.
“What next?” Nix finally manages.
“Well, my first stop didn’t have it, but they gave me the address of a second shop, and I was finally able to place the order. But I didn’t know which station they should take it to. They had to figure it out for me. That city,” Dick shakes his head, this time in wonder. “I wish I could have seen more.”
Nix spares a moment to file that away, promises himself he’ll take Dick to Manhattan, on leave or when the war’s done, one way or another.
“So you achieved success at last,” Nix sighs, his breathing returning to normal. He reaches for his coffee, taking a sip.
“Well,” Dick rolls his neck. “I bungled the exit maneuver.” Dick is blushing so hard this time Nix thinks he might break something, and he puts his cup down again in preparation. “See, I got turned around inside the station and I wasn’t sure which train to get on.” Nix’s lips are already twitching. “And this woman saw me looking lost and she was really friendly.”
“No, Dick,” Nix murmurs, already shaking again with silent laughter.
“Well, she was! And I thought she was just making conversation, and she did answer my questions about the trains. I’d been told there were all sorts of fashions in New York.” Nix is gone, hiccupping and choking on his laughter, and when he looks up through streaming eyes, Dick is laughing too. “And I guess you know the end of that story.”
“I’m sure,” Nix gasps out between gales of laughter, “the lady was very disappointed.”
“Well, I couldn’t—“ Dick attempts, still bright red. “I would never—“
“Oh, but Dick,” and Nix can barely get it out, “What if Sink had asked you to bring back, in addition to the whiskey…”
Dick buries his face in his hands, but he’s laughing too, now. “With my money order from the US Army,” he offers, and now they’re both leaning over the table, laughing too hard to sit upright.
When Harry slides in next to Dick five minutes later, he looks at Dick’s still flushed face and the way Nix is smiling stupidly at his breakfast and asks, “What’s so funny?”
Nix takes a calm breath and manages to report, “Dick had to buy whiskey,” before he catches Dick’s eye and immediately dissolves into peals of laughter again. This sets Dick off as well, and Harry never does get his question answered.
Eighteen months later, Nix will trudge into Dick’s pitiful excuse for shelter that is his CP in Bastogne, and catch him with his head bowed down in exhaustion, elbows on his knees. Nix wraps his arms tighter around himself and wishes he had something better from Sink to offer Dick than, Hold the line.
When Dick swing s his head up at Nix’s entrance, fingers reaching for his rifle and then relaxing in one aborted movement, Nix shrugs a greeting at him. “Any news?” Dick asks, the words tired and a little blurry from his numb lips.
Nix settles down across from Dick, scooting close so they can block the wind for each other. “Actually, yeah,” he decides, and Dick glances up. “Sink said what with supplies being so low and all, he thinks you should do something about it.” Dick blinks at him, no registration, only a grim patience. “So he wants you to head into town, ask if they’ve got any whiskey for the troops. I’d go, but you’ve shown such proficiency in the past—“ and it’s a husky, breathy sound more than a laugh, but it puts a hint of color back in Dick’s face, so Nix will take it, manages a weak chuckle himself.
“They can take it from your stock,” Dick teases, though he’s still stuttering from the cold, and Nix obligingly plays his part, puts a hand on his chest in mock betrayal.
“After all we’ve been through.”
“Yeah,” Dick says quietly, and Nix bumps their knees together.