Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Nix?”

Lew turns to face him from where he sits on the hearth, bleary-eyed and wrapped in a blanket. He has a paperback open in his lap but when he sees Dick’s face, sharp and considering, he closes it and tucks it somewhere out of sight, deep in the folds of his quilt. It was seventy-five degrees out not an hour ago and still, Lew’s cold.

Even though it meant he couldn’t sit in his usual armchair by the fireplace, even though they’re supposed to be storing the wood for winter, Dick built up a fire for him. And now Lew’s curled up like a cat, purring and content and half-asleep but valiantly attempting to read “Grapes of Wrath.” And without a drink in sight. Dick sits in his sweaty undershirt and thinks about how he’s never been happier.

Looking at Lewis– Yalie, upper-class runaway, retired intelligence officer –he wonders if Lew feels the same way. He’s wondered about it for a long time.

“Dick,” Lew says, and leans his face on his hand.

Dick purses his lips, gathering his courage. If he can jump out of an airplane, this conversation should be nothing. If he can make it through a world war. If he can kill a man. So he purses his lips, and he gathers his courage, and he says…

He says: “Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?”

Two years ago. Austria.

It wasn’t the first night they were in Zell Am See, but it was close. It couldn’t have been more than a week after they first infiltrated Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. The debauchery had not yet stopped; military protocol had more or less fallen to the wayside as men celebrated V-E Day. All the usual suspects participated in all the usual behaviors— Speirs looted, Janovec fraternized with the enemy. And Lew drank.

On this particular night, even Dick himself had been celebrating. He had made an appearance at one of the numerous parties– or maybe it was one, continuous party –taking place on the central street in Zell Am See. He watched Shifty use antique Austrian vases as target practice and witnessed Babe hit himself in the eye with the cork from a champagne bottle (Roe turning from his wine to assist Babe immediately, of course), and then Dick decided that was enough for one evening. If he stayed out much longer, he was sure to face further pressure to drink, and he might even be tempted— watching his men wander around half-dressed with their rifles slung over their bare shoulders was something he would much rather plead ignorance about.

So he picked a truck and headed back to his billet.

The night was dark and quiet and warm, the sound of revelry fading as he approached the Eagle’s Nest. There was just enough of a breeze that the humidity wasn’t overwhelming. There was just enough light from the moon overhead and the headlights of the truck that his surroundings were visible. By all metrics, it seemed to be a perfect night.

It became even more perfect when he saw who was waiting for him, strewn across the front steps of the Eagle’s Nest in a pile of limbs.

“Dick!” Lew cheered, and nearly fell over when he tried to get up. Dick quickly and haphazardly parked the truck and hurried over. Although he complained about Nix’s drinking– and rightfully so, the man was reliant, he was Dick’s best friend and he couldn’t stand the idea of Lewis being some hopeless drunk when they made it stateside –there was some small, secret part of him that enjoyed it when Nix came to him for help. He liked the mothering: helping Lew up the stairs, taking off his boots, getting him into bed. He liked it even when it meant sleeping on the floor because Lew commandeered his bed.

“Hey, Nix,” Dick said, and tugged one of Lew’s arms over his shoulders. He opened the front door– unlocked, because there was no point in locking doors anywhere anymore –and pulled Lew up the stairs.

“I can walk,” Lew protested. His head lolled on his shoulders; his dark, thick hair brushed against Dick’s temple. Dick could smell him, liquor and coffee and cigarettes. Sweat and army-regulation soap.

“And I’m President Roosevelt,” Dick said dryly. He tried not to breathe in.

Nix was quiet for a moment, then turned further, his nose poking into the junction between Dick’s jaw and neck, his stubble scraping against Dick’s clean-shaven throat. “Why aren’t you celebrating?” he asked.

Dick shivered. “I am celebrating. I made an appearance.” He maneuvered around Nix to tug the door to his billet open.

“Did you see Shifty?”

“Did I see him shooting every family heirloom within twenty miles?” Dick pushed Nix into his room and tugged the door shut behind them, not bothering to lock it, either. He grabbed at the front of Nix’s jacket and began to tug it off. “I sure did.”

Nix batted at his hands and Dick ceased, a long-suffering expression on his face. “I’m cold,” Nix whined.

Dick chuckled. “You really are just a big kid,” he muttered, and pushed Nix down onto the bed by his shoulders. “Stay here.” There were more blankets in the armoire in the second bedroom, by the water closet; he had found them earlier, trailing after Speirs and Harry while they ransacked Hitler’s belongings. A couple of quilts, probably handmade by some Nazi woman in town, and for that reason Dick didn’t feel bad about taking them for his own purposes— although it would be strange to see Nix wrapped in embroidered Nazi flags. In swastikas.

He found the quilts in the second drawer and closed the armoire, retreating to his– Nix’s? –room. On his way back, he paused by the bay window in the hallway: a gorgeous view of the valley, during the daytime; at night, it was nearly pitch-black outside, lit up in places by the streetlights and lights from the town, the torches that the soldiers below were waving around as they wandered drunkenly between alleyway and sidewalk. And the moon above, its dim white light reflecting off Lake Zell in beautiful luminous creases, like foam at the crest of waves. For a moment, Dick was stunned: to be alive in this moment, staring out at a lake in Austria after a year of fighting and two years of training, after a thousand and one near-death experiences, after losing dozens of men… to be alive, feeling the humidity of the air on his skin, feeling the dense cotton in his arms… he couldn’t think of the words to describe the joy. The relief.

Dick shook his head and smiled to himself, continuing down the hall. The door was open, and he ducked inside, preparing to find Nix still on the bed, maybe pulling from his flask some more even though he was already stupid drunk.

Instead, he found an empty room.

Dick sighed and set the quilts down on the bed, hands on his hips. “Lew?” He looked around, peered back out into the hallway. Sure enough, Nix was at the other end of the hall, where Dick had just come from, staring out the bay window that had distracted him from his usual caretaking. “How did you get over there?”

“Walked,” Lew muttered, just loud enough for Dick to hear him, and Dick rolled his eyes.

“Hold on,” said Dick, “I got your blankets.”

“Had to get a lighter,” said Nix, as though Dick had said nothing at all.

Dick picked up the quilts and retraced his steps once more. Lew perched on the windowsill, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, and when he saw Dick coming toward him he looked up, grinning, and Dick stopped for a moment. Something in that smile stopped him, just like something in the view of that lake stopped him, walking the line between beautiful and tragic. Dick stood there for a moment like an idiot and Nix looked up and grinned like the devil.

“Took you long enough.” And then Nix fell backward, out the open window.

He probably hadn’t even hit the ground before Dick came jumping out after him.

“I sure do,” says Nix. “You came jumping out right after me."

Dick didn’t even feel the impact. Perhaps because of adrenaline, perhaps because of the quilts, which were still in his arms, and somehow managed to land under him even though he had thrown himself out of the window like a baby bird learning to fly, and fell two stories just the same as Nix. He landed, less than three feet to the right, and then he rolled onto hands and knees and scrambled toward Lew, grabbing at his shoulders. “Lew!”

“Jesus Christ,” Lew wheezed, “quit shaking me, you crazy bastard. I’m fine.”

Dick ran fingers up his neck, over his head. He paused when he reached Lew’s temple, wet and sticky with blood. Lewis flinched backward. “You’re not fine,” Dick said grimly. “Your face feels like hamburger meat.”

“You should see my arm.”

Dick began pawing at him again and Lew shook him off, grumbling. “Quit that! I was kidding.”

“Kidding, sure, but it feels broken,” said Dick, and continued his investigation. Contusion on the left side of his face; possible concussion as a result— although it would be difficult to tell until Lew sobered up. Possibly broken arm. More contusions, particularly on the shoulder and the upper arm. Heavy bleeding.

Incredibly heavy bleeding. Lew was bleeding all over the place, all over his fatigues and Dick and Dick’s fatigues, his head wound gushing blood like a waterfall.

“I think I broke my ass,” said Lew.

Usually, Dick would tell him to shut it, but that was entirely possible.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

“Probably.” Lew wobbled as he got to his feet, then nearly fell on top of Dick, and probably would have fallen if Dick hadn’t pushed him back upright.

Once again Dick pulled Lew’s arm over his shoulders and began dragging him to the truck.

“Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your… ass,” Dick says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth at the memory of Nix’s drunken declaration. “And you were bleeding all over the place. And I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that?”

“Yes, I do,” says Lew, smiling right back.

Dick pauses. It’s now or never. Do or die.

“Well, there’s something I never told you about that night,” Dick tells him.

Lew pauses too, a small furrow appearing between those thick eyebrows. “What didn’t you tell me?” he asks, fidgeting with the corner of his blanket. His eyes dart up, back and forth between the quilt and Dick’s face. Coy.

Dick maneuvered Lew into the back seat and grabbed the edge of one of the quilts. “Put this against your head,” he instructed. “Push on it. Don’t let up until we find Roe, okay?”

“Okay,” said Lew, looking a little lost.

“We’re going to find Roe,” Dick repeated and climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition and began reversing fast, more reckless than he would usually drive. Then he put it in drive, and sped down the mountainside. What if it’s serious, he thought. What if he made it through the war just to die from falling out my damn window.

Dick looked in the rearview mirror. Lew leaned against one of the side doors, his hair moving slightly with the breeze, the smoke from his cigarette trailing off behind them.

“You’re smoking,” he said, and didn’t expect Lew to hear him, given that they were roaring down the mountains, but his friend began to smile, a lazy, slightly-confused thing, not as stunning as the devilish smile that had gotten them into this whole mess but nearly so.

(And was it really that smile that had gotten them into this whole mess, or was it the one Lewis Nixon gave Richard Winters on day one of OCS, way back in 1942? “Hi, I’m Lewis Nixon, but my friends call me Lew,” and that smile, like a secret, and that wink. As though he knew that one day, Richard Winters would be saying Lew over and over in his head in a prayer, eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror, watching a devil smoke a cigarette.)

“I’m always smoking,” said Lew. “That’s what got us into this whole mess.”

Dick made a sharp turn and Lew shifted from one side of the bench seat to the other, groaning weakly. “I’m sorry,” Dick said helplessly, and tried to keep his eyes on the road.

“Oh, don’t.” Lew squeezed his eyes shut and took another drag from his cigarette, letting smoke billow out between his lips as he tilted his head backward. “Let me enjoy my last cigarette without you feeling guilty all over the place.”

Dick tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “It’s not going to be your last cigarette, Nix.”

Lew laughed quietly and it hit Dick all at once, like a freight train, or like a truck, careening out of the Alps, trailing blood and liquor: he was in love with Lewis Nixon.

No. It hit Dick like a boxer, because the initial impact of the hit was harsh, and then the punch was pulled. Because of course he was in love with Lewis Nixon. For one: who wasn’t? For another: he’d been in love with Lew for years, probably since OCS, and he’d probably been denying it since Toccoa. He remembered the way Lew shook his hand that first day in OCS. That wink, and the butterflies in his stomach. The giggling he’d wanted to release when Lew had told Sobel it’s a can of peaches, sir, even though he was a grown man, an officer. The jealousy that burned hot and unrelenting in him when Dobie showed up, and when Lew had a “lady in Aldbourne” to meet. The fear he’d had: during D-Day; when Nix was shot during Market Garden; in Bastogne; when Lew jumped again, without him. And now.

He had always possessed all of the pieces of the puzzle: he had simply lacked the knowledge to put them together. He was in love with Lew, and he probably had been for a very, very long time, and he was probably never going to get over it.

Dick gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, then yellow.

“Turn here,” said Lew, the only one of the two of them with the presence of mind to navigate, never mind that Lew probably was concussed on top of being drunk.

I love you, Dick almost replied, like a previously unknown reflex, and then wanted to jump out of the window again, this time in a swan-dive. “Thank you,” said Dick.

They turned. Roe was somewhere on the street up ahead, probably with Spina or Babe, and Dick wasted no time: parked, hauled Nix up and out of the truck, rushed toward a medic, any medic. And once Nix was getting the care he needed, Roe prodding at his injuries and saying something about a dislocated shoulder, a fractured forearm, a mild concussion— Dick collapsed on a curb out front and put his face in his hands.

“While you were sitting in the backseat, smoking a cigarette you thought was going to be your last…” Dick swallows. Lew nods: go on. “I was falling deep– deeply in love with you,” he stammers, “and I never told you until just now.”

Lew stares at him. He makes a soft sound, maybe oh or aww, his lips parted in surprise. The expression on his face reminds Dick of that night, of the smoke escaping his mouth as he lounged in the backseat, a family heirloom pressed to his temple.

Dick clears his throat– maybe readying himself for a rejection, maybe about to suggest that they get some rest, as Dick needs to go house-hunting and job-hunting tomorrow –and it seems to snap Lew out of whatever haze he’s in. He rises to his feet, ever-so-slowly, and keeps the quilt wrapped around him as he crosses the distance between him and Dick.

He reaches out and cups Dick’s cheek with a fire-warmed palm. Dick’s whole body trembles, entirely against his will. “Is this okay?” he asks.

“Always,” Dick whispers, and Lew grins his devil-grin and leans in. When his mouth presses open and warm against Dick’s, there’s not a trace of liquor on him. And maybe it’s Dick’s imagination, or maybe it’s the blood-stained quilt that Lew has wrapped around him, a strange memory from Zell Am See— but he thinks he can smell the night air. See the moon on the lake.