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He’d expected his life to be different when he finally returned home, and it is, but not in the ways he’d been expecting, in ways that would shock or catch him off guard.
For instance, he hadn’t been all that surprised when his body first froze up when his mama dropped a glass and it shattered across the kitchen floor, or when he jumps up, still, ready to fight when the old tractor’s engine backfires outside, nor is it really that confusing that he wakes up most nights in a cold sweat, reaching for a rifle that it isn’t there.
Most of these problems had already been rearing their heads when he and the rest of the men were waiting for their discharges, first in France, then England, and smart money was always on them following him home.
No, the thing that surprises him most since he’s returned home is his name.
Throughout the war, he’d been Private, then Corporal, then Sergeant Randleman. To some, he was also the Bull. To most, he was just Bull.
It’d been years since anyone had called him Denver with any meaning behind it.
Maybe that’s why, when it first happened, at the train station after he’d disembarked, it took his mama calling him three times before he realized that the Denver in question was him. He had no idea, afterwards, how to describe his feelings towards his name, and his brain fumbled for the words to explain that he’s been Bull for so long it’s like a second skin to him. He doesn’t think there’s any way to explain it to someone who wasn’t there, at least, not in a way that won’t break her heart and sound like a rejection of what she once gave him.
*
The first time Denver is called Bull is in Toccoa, when things are still new (but no longer exciting). He’s shouldering his pack, readying for their second ever night march, already knowing there’ll be many more to come, when he hears two of the other soldiers talking.
“Look at him,” one of them, a loud mouthed kid from Philadelphia, says, none too quietly. “He’s as big as a damn fuckin’ bull, of course it’s no problem for him carryin’ this shit.”
The other soldier beside him laughs, and looks openly at Denver - or Private Randleman, as he’s trying to remind himself. He looks back, taking in his hair that’s curling in the humidity despite the pomade, his blue eyes that shine in the sunlight and the way his lips move as he chews gum.
He recognizes him, though they haven’ spoken all that much, nothing more than polite conversation. The soldier already has a reputation for being a renowned goldbricker with a flippant attitude. His head barely comes up to Denver’s shoulder, but he makes most men twice his size back off with just one glare, even if he’s never heard him raise his voice once.
Martin, he thinks he’s called.
“Yeah, come on Bull, why don’t you carry some shit for me, you’ll hardly notice,” Martin says, his lips curling in a smile as he approaches.
“And let you miss out on a learning opportunity?” He shoots back automatically, because it feels like the right response to give.
For all his reputation, Martin just laughs and pulls the last of his equipment on himself with only mild grumbling. “Jesus, and here I thought you hicks were all about being polite.”
Despite his words and the tone of his voice, there’s humor still in his eyes, and he elbows Bull (it’s already Bull, now) too lightly in the side for him to think there’s any heat behind them.
“We’re also all about hard work, you know.”
Martin scoffs and rolls his eyes, telling him what he thinks of that, but soon they’re marching beside each other, talking under their breaths about whatever comes to mind - mostly, what they both think they could do better than Sobel, which turns out to be a tonne, and they’re of like mind on nearly everything.
Not long later, they’re assigned to first platoon together, with Johnny (because he insists that that’s what Bull calls him, “none of that sergeant crap from you,” he says) as his squad leader. Bull learns pretty quickly that he’s as sharp as anything and, if someone can pin him down and learn to live with his bitching, Johnny will complete any task given to him to perfection.
Johnny, on the other hand, learns that Bull likes the name Bull just fine, that he can be cajoled into sharing a cigar if they both have enough drink in them, and that he likes it when they spend time together.
*
He finds out, within a day, that being back in Trumann is strange.
Growing up, it had felt like the largest place in the world, and while that image was cracked by the time he moved up to Michigan, it’s only once he’s returned home from the war that it truly explodes into nothing more than dust.
Here, people stop and ask how he is - all of them knowing who he is, even if the name still feels strange to hear. If they’re brave enough for it, like the old man at the grocery store, they might try and coax war stories out of him. He usually throws them a bone, telling them that D-Day had been crazy, that he’d never felt a cold like Belgium’s winter, or that he’d been in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. It’s always the stories that are, if not always nice, then at least inoffensive.
He never mentions being tangled in his risers, stabbing at Krauts in the pitch black shadows as the sky was lit up by flak and burning planes. He doesn’t mention anything about Market Garden, because that haunts his dreams too much. In the eyes of the people here, the worst part of Bastogne was just the cold, rather than knowing how it seeped into the corpses of people he once knew. And to them, Austria sounds like a vacation, which it was in some regards, but the ever looming threat of the Pacific had made it its own brand of hell worthy of contention with the others.
When he’s finished divulging his stories, his audience just laughs and tells him they’re glad he’s home. If his dad’s there, he’ll pat him on the back with pride, maybe announce that he rose up the ranks to sergeant, and his mama will kiss him on the cheek and say she prayed he’d be safe. His sister, Sarah, sometimes looks at him like she knows he’s not being wholly honest, probably because the wall between their rooms is too thin, but she never says anything and he never offers anymore information.
No one ever calls him a hick or a hayseed. They also don’t question why he still stumbles over introductions, like Denver is some strange foreign language instead of the name he’s spent most of his life with.
*
It’s after the disaster of Nuenen, once he’s back with Easy after being stuck in that barn, terrifying that girl, and being ‘found’ by his squad, that he hears his name said in a way that will probably stick with him until he’s six feet deep.
Once Doc Roe has wrapped his shoulder and told him that it’s the best he can do for now, that he’ll be able to see how bad it is when they’ve stopped retreating long enough to set up a proper aid station, he leaves the ramshackled old farmstead Easy’s taken over, walking in the dark until he’s far enough away that the men still up and about are only distinguishable by their silhouettes or how they stretch their arms above their heads, rather than by their faces.
Once suitably alone, he lights a cigar and pokes at the wrappings in a lousy attempt to force the images of the girl’s face and Miller’s brains bleeding into the grass from his mind. It doesn’t work, and only serves to get him more frustrated as he chews the head of the cigar to pieces.
The unsubtle sound of approaching jump boots on gravel, then grass, at least gives him something to focus on.
“There you are. Jesus, are you trying to get lost on me again?” Johnny says (grouches), announcing his presence.
There’s a set to his lips, and a line between his brow that speaks to the tension he’s feeling. Hoobler had, as discreetly as possible for him, told him that Johnny had been pretty torn up while he’d been classified M.I.A, presumed dead. At the time, he’d joked that Bull should warn them next time, so at least they could all get as far from Johnny as possible, and he’d initially shrugged it off as nothing more than friendly teasing, but the more he looked at Johnny in the hours after, the more obvious it is that something’s still eating away at him.
“Just wanted a bit of time away from the peanut gallery,” he replies, telling a half-truth, because the way everyone keeps poking him to find out what happened is starting to get on his nerves.
Johnny snorts, then sits down next to him crossing his legs beneath him. He’s sitting close enough that their knees knock together every time they shift. “Alright, I’ll give you that and - Jesus, Bull,” he cuts himself off, reaching around to where the bandages on his shoulder are, “I thought Doc gave you orders not to touch these.”
“It itches.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it fucking does. Maybe it’ll teach you next time not to do anything that’ll leave you needing them.” His voice shakes, just barely, as he speaks.
Without waiting for a reply, or a go ahead, he starts redoing the bandages, setting them back to how they should be. His touch, where his fingers brush against his bare shoulder, is fire hot and Bull tries not to shiver at it. Despite the fact Johnny looks like he’s about to shake out of his skin with tension, his hands are steady and careful, and not once does Bull flinch from pain.
Johnny falls silent as he works, and now the line between his brow is caused by concentration, rather than any stray thoughts. He’s close enough that Bull can smell Juicy Fruit from his breath as it fans across his shoulder and neck.
“There,” Johnny says quietly, once he’s finished and satisfied that his bandages are back in place, and tight enough that they won’t fall off.
Bull means to thank him, but maybe there’s something in knowing how worried Johnny had been that makes him more impulsive, and, without thinking, he leans in and kisses him instead.
It’s a barely-there brush of the lips, more so than a kiss, but Johnny gasps a quiet “Bull” against his mouth when he pulls away, and he feels like he’s floating on air.
Feels like floating on air until he realizes that, if he’s lucky, the best case scenario is that Johnny will never speak to him again after this. If not, his entire life is ruined in one impulsive decision.
Johnny blinks at him, stunned into silence for a moment, and Bull braces himself for whatever option he’s going to pick. He doesn’t leave him waiting for long.
“Jesus Christ, Bull. Don’t ever leave me like that again,” he whispers, voice cracking, before he crashes his lips back against Bull’s in a proper kiss with enough force that he nearly pushes them both to the ground.
As Johnny gasps into his mouth, while his hands cradle his face, it’s easy to promise that he won’t, even if they can’t make that decision.
*
“Who was that, Denver?” His mama asks, once he’s clicked the phone’s receiver back in place.
He blinks, the parting words of “I miss you, Bull,” still bouncing around in his head, and he nearly startles at her sudden appearance (he’s getting better at tamping down his reactions to some things).
“Johnny Martin. I must’ve mentioned him in my letters.”
That it was Johnny also explains why he didn’t hear her enter the living room in the first place. He’d been talking, a mile a minute, about every little detail of his day and he had been happy to listen and offer advice or bitch with him when he provided the intervals for it. It was hard to focus on anything else, especially when he was trying to imagine what Johnny looked like on the other end as he spoke, how he was probably placing a hand on his hip when he said one thing, or shaking his head when he said another.
His mama nods, recognition on her face. “I remember. And here I was thinking it was a girl, the way you were smiling so much.”
He feels his cheeks, which do strain from a constant grin, heat. “Nah, just Johnny.”
She sighs, wistfully. “It’s nice that all you boys keep in so much contact. I swear, we haven’t had this many letters come through in all the years we’ve owned this house.”
He shrugs. “Guess we all got too used to being able to talk whenever we liked.”
“Don’t know why they’re never addressed to your name, though. It’s always Bull.”
This is also true. Each letter has Bull Randleman scrawled on it, no matter whose hand wrote it. The scripts of Easy Company are as varied as the men themselves, but that’s the one constant.
*
It’s only once they reach Austria, and are spending their days lounging in the sun or getting blind drunk because they haven’t been told if their war is over yet, that Johnny finally asks what he thinks of the name.
He’s lying on his stomach, while Bull traces patterns onto the bare skin of his back, when he turns, face still pressed into the pillow to ask his opinion.
It takes a moment for the question to register, because Bull’s attention is too devoted to the way his curls stick up, having, with the help of his fingers carding through them, won the war against his pomade, how his lips are still kissed-red, and how Bull’s thinking he wants to go for round three.
“Hey, hayseed,” Johnny says, louder this time and poking at his chest. “I asked a question.”
Bull shrugs. “I like it, though it'd be a bit late if I didn’t, ain’t it. Why?”
Johnny flips around, rolling onto his back, his dog-tags jingling against his sternum. “Don’t know. Just wondering.”
Bull grabs his wrist, pressing a kiss to his kind of dumb-looking tattoo, then trails them up his bicep. “I think you were the first to call me Bull,” he said as he kissed his collar bone.
He can tell, just by the way Johnny’s breathing changes, that a round three is on the table. “Yeah? That why you like it so much?”
“Maybe. You want me to start calling you John?” He presses a kiss to his jaw and rolls over, pressing his hands into the mattress on either side, so he frames Johnny with them.
“You start doing that and I’ll make you sleep with the rest of the men,” Johnny shoots back, running his hands through his hair and tugging with just the right amount of pressure. “I’m still gonna be calling you Bull when this is all over, right? Won’t have to switch to Denver or something?”
He knows, by the tone of his voice, that what he’s really asking is whether he’ll still be able to call him anything at all, when this is all said and done.
“I’d hate it if you stopped calling me Bull, Johnny,” he says, as honest as he’s ever been, before finally kissing him on the lips again.
“Good, ‘cause I ain’t gonna stop,” he said when they parted.
*
It’s nearly three months to the day of him being home (only one week off), when he hears the knock on the front door.
He’s busy fixing the wobbly chair that his mama’s been badgering him about since the week after he returned, and has set himself up on the kitchen tiles, surrounded by small screws and tools, pouring his attention into the piece of furniture in his hands, and not comparing the weight of the leg to that of a rifle. He just barely catches the knocking over the music that plays from the wireless.
“Hey, Sarah,” he shouts out, pulling the cigar from his mouth, “see who’s at the door, would you?”
Sarah grumbles some response, but her steps stomp down the stairs a second later.
After another minute or so, she pokes her head into the kitchen.
“Denver, it’s for you.”
“Who is it?” He runs through the list of people who could possibly be visiting him, and comes up painfully short.
Sarah shrugs. “Didn’t ask - why don’t you get up and see?”
He does that, pushing himself off the ground and venturing down the hall.
Standing on the front porch, arms crossed as he rocks back and forth on his heels, is Johnny, and he nearly needs to rub his eyes to make sure he’s not going crazy, that the lack of sleep hasn’t finally gotten to him. Johnny freezes when he sees him, and there’s a brief moment where he’s as still as a statue, before a small smile crawls to his face.
“There you are, Bull. Thought you’d keep me waiting,” Johnny says and he feels a tension he didn’t even know he was holding seep from his shoulders.
He crosses the distance and pulls Johnny into his arms, feeling even more at ease when his arms instantly uncross to wrap around him. “What the hell are you doing here, Johnny?”
“I was in the area and I figured I’d check up on ya, make sure you hadn’t gone all hick on me,” Johnny replies, his fingers digging into the material of his shirt as he holds him even tighter.
“In the area? What, you accidentally redirect a train from Ohio to Arkansas?”
“Something like that.” Johnny pulls away, hand lingering on his shoulder for just a second before he crosses his arms again and clears his throat. “You said I could still call you Bull and all that so…”
“Yeah, and I meant it.” He can’t stop the smile that forms on his face, even if he wanted to, especially once he catches sight of the bag on the ground by Johnny’s feet. “Though I don’t know how you’ll manage being here, what with all the hicks.”
Johnny rolls his eyes, though his smile is even brighter. “I lived with you for three years, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, yeah - so what are you waiting for? Come in.” He steps aside, letting Johnny walk by him.
Before he crosses the threshold, Johnny pauses and grabs him by the wrist. He looks up, and there's a soft smile on his face, the type he rarely sees and always treasures. "It's good to see you, Bull."
In an instant, he’s Bull again, and it feels like coming home more than anything else ever could.