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“-eighteen, nineteen! Nineteen!” Simmons declares, four fingers in the air as he turns towards Grif. The orange soldier is resting on a fallen log, only staying awake to keep the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
“So?” Grif shrugs. “All there!”
Their squads are spread out in the clearing around them, talking about the cool mission they just survived or about how much Feds suck or just whining about their bleeding bullet wounds.
Simmons sits down next to him on the log, giving Grif a shove in the process to make enough room so that Simmons won't have to get a stick up his ass. Or, well, a branch. “Yeah, but Bitters said twenty-two.”
“Even better – that means we didn’t just not lose a soldier – we gained four- no, three!”
“No, that means Bitters is a lazy fuck and his count is off.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that he sucks,” Grif promises him solemnly and sends a cloud of smoke towards his face.
Simmons is very grateful for his helmet. “No, you suck, because you were the one supposed to do the roll call and then you decided to not even do that and tell Bitters to go do it instead, and now I have to do it because you all failed math.”
“Actually, Bitters failed his exam because his school exploded, but be sure to nag him about that.”
There’s a lot to unpack there, so Simmons decides not to do that at all. Instead, he keeps the argument going: “You were asked to point at people and count them-“
“-After we were asked to shoot at people and not die while shooting at people and I think we’ve done a great job so far-“
“-and it’s only two platoons and you have fingers!” Simmons shouts, and it’s a good thing that they managed to kill that Fed patrol, otherwise they would surely have revealed their resting spot by now.
“I have? Really?!” Grif stares at his own hand in amazement, watching as his middle finger flips off Simmons’ face. “Oh look, you are right.”
“Shut up,” Simmons grumbles and looks away, tilting his head back to stare at the sky that can still be seen between the treetops. In the silence, Grif keeps shifting, moving closer until he can use Simmons as a backrest, neck resting against his shoulder.
“Well, at least Kimball will count it as a success,” Grif says and exhales more smoke. “Even if we didn’t bring back four extra people.”
“We’re keeping a pretty good record of avoiding casualties,” Simmons admits and can’t keep the pride from his voice. He’s been clinging on to what little praise Kimball has given them. “Unlike the Blues.”
“But to be fair, smaller teams are easier to count,” Grif says and lets the burnt cigarette fall from his fingers. “We didn’t have to do roll calls when it was just us assholes.”
“Yeah, well, we lost half of our team anyway,” Simmons says.
He inhales deeply, and Grif can feel it after having slid down the chest plate to rest his head in Simmons’ lap instead. There’s an awkward silence then, where Simmons looks at the sky, and Grif looks at the color maroon, and they both try not to think about just why they are out here killing Federal soldiers.
Finally, Simmons coughs and says, “If counting is hard for you, you’ll just prefer solo missions then.”
“Nah. Two-man teams are the way to go.” Grif opens one eye, the blue one, the one that once belonged to Simmons, and looks up at him. “I keep track of you, you keep track of me.”
Simmons swallows. “Right,” he says, and he can feel Grif move to get comfortable, cutting off Simmons’ blood flow in the process. “That’s easy because you don’t move that fast.”
“Sarge once said no one has to watch me because I don’t move. Period.” It was meant to sound funny, like a good old self-deprecating joke to lighten the mood, but the mention of Sarge just ruins it. Grif is going to hold that against him once Sarge is back. For now, he just sighs. “Man, I wish I could just not move.”
“And what the fuck are you doing right now, fatass?” Simmons asks Grif who is not even pretending not to be resting in Simmons’ lap.
“Celebrating not being a subtraction in today’s math piece, nerd.”
Simmons hums and lets the argument die there. Because Grif is annoyingly right; they should be happy that they didn’t lose any men today, and that Grif didn’t lose Simmons, and that Simmons didn’t lose Grif. That is something to celebrate.
Except, they are too tired for a proper celebration, and instead they both just close their eyes and breathe and take a moment to just let it sink in. That moment, however, is long enough for Grif to fall into a deep sleep, and Simmons isn’t even surprised when he hears snoring coming from his lap. In fact, he doesn’t even open his eyes – he can feel Grif’s slow but steady breathing, and Simmons does his best to match it. They’ve earned this rest, just for now.
But for anyone else outside their little private bubble, there’s no breathing to detect. So eventually Bitters walks over to poke Simmons with a stick. “Are you dead or not?”
“Not,” Simmons says without opening his eyes.
“Okay. Nineteen,” Bitters informs him and then whines: “Can we go home now?”
“Just a minute,” Simmons says, and Grif chimes in with a snore.
Later, Simmons will blame the delay on his legs being numb from the sheer weight of Grif. No one points out the fact that one of his legs is made out of metal.