Chapter Text
“Should have shot Hinkle in the ass.” Muck commented, cackling alongside Penkala and Malarkey as Babe finished retelling the tale of his and Spina’s misadventures near the German line on their way to 3rd battalion.
“Hinkle nearly shot him.” Ralph remarked dryly, shaking his head as he smirked into his can of beans. Babe had the gift of gam— almost nobody could spin a yarn as well as the easygoing Philly redhead currently doing his best impression of the aptly-named, “Hinkle.”
Grounded to the here and now by the way that Babe’s knee pressed up against his, Spina could almost pretend that his hands had stopped shaking from the close encounter combined with the cold, grateful that his threadbare gloves stopped the tin cup in his hands from rattling, at least.
Joe Dominguez grinned at the group’s infectious good humor, earning a cheery benediction from Babe as he doled out the day’s rations, an amorphous sludge made up of whatever passed for army beans these days.
“These smell like my armpit.” Malarkey groaned, making a face at the congealed slop disguised as food that was currently taking up residence in his tin cup.
“At least your armpit's warm.” Muck jibed back, earning an elbow in the ribs for his efforts.
“Hey, you want syrup with that?” Dominguez offered dryly, interrupted their griping session with a shit-eating grin of his own.
“Be honest with me, Joe— What's in these?” Malarkey questioned with equally dry humor as he held the lukewarm cup of beans in his hands in a futile effort to leech some warmth from the already tepid mush.
Joe Dominguez took the question in good humor, smirking as he replied, “Nothing you won't eat, Malarkey.“
“I won’t eat Malarkey.” Muck shot back, earning another round of laughter and a few jabs from the pointy elbows of the surrounding men.
“Maybe Hinkle would like your share.” Julian chimed in, eager to be a part of the group.
“I should have shot him.” Babe sighed before taking a bite of his beans with gusto.
“What, running backwards, Babe?” Ralph countered, remembering how close they’d been to eating shit in their mad scramble away from the German line, panting breaths turning to wheezing laughter when they’d finally been outside of earshot.
“Anybody seen Lieutenant Dike?” Lieutenant Peacock interrupted their banter in search of their intrepid leader, and Ralph held in the instinctive scoff— in his short time as Easy’s C.O., Lieutenant Dike had proved to be nothing but an empty uniform. He’d barely given the medics 30 minutes warning to grab what they could before they were heading out into the snow and ice, and Ralph still remembered the way that Gene’s face had twisted with rage, powerless in the face of the oncoming disaster.
“Try Battalion CP, sir.” Malarkey offered helpfully.
“Try Paris.” Skip chimed in after Peacock had left, adding his two cents less-than helpfully.
“Try Hinkle!” Malarkey finished, setting them off into another fit of wheezing laughter.
“Hinkle, sweetie, I'm home!” Penkala added in a poor imitation of a German accent, nearly tripping over his boots as he made to hug Babe as the so-called Hinkle.
Wiping tears out of his eyes from the force of his laughter, Ralph’s attention was drawn to a quiet chuckle in their periphery, becoming aware of Gene crouched nearby with his own tin of beans and a smoke between his smirking lips.
The tightness in Ralph’s chest loosened as he watched the other medic take a bite of his food— for reasons unknown, his brain had been a little extra attuned to the Doc’s self-care habits lately, but he tried to ignore it as best he could. The last thing that Gene needed was an overbearing Caregiver shoving their nose into his business without asking— especially a shoddy, bumbling excuse for one like Ralph.
Still, it eased something inside him when Doc was nearby and smiling at their increasingly nonsensical attempts at humor.
“Hey Eugene, Lieutenant Dike's got a full aid kit— try him.” Babe interjected, remembering the other’s earlier attempts to scrounge for medical supplies.
“Yeah, I’m sure he's not using his.” Malarkey huffed, still grinning.
“Maybe Hinkle's got a syrette for ya.” Julian added, earning a token nod from the Doc and a small upturn of his lips.
“Eat your strudel.” Malarkey rolled his eyes, nudging the replacement with his boot before returning to his own meal.
“Hinkle Vinkle, eat ze armpit, huh?” Penkala continued, earning another round of laughter.
Ralph’s feet were frozen solid inside his too-thin jump boots. The air was so cold that breathing hurt, and after Hinkle, he knew that they were more likely to find their way into German slit trenches before they found their own foxholes, but for right now, Ralph’s mind could rest easy as he enjoyed this sliver of peace and laughter.
He should’ve known it was the calm before the storm.
The silence in Bastogne clung to Spina’s skin in a fog more stifling than comforting, especially as the long nights stretched out far past what most men would consider reasonable. With the trees creaking threateningly and the breeze whistling through the trees with a promise of frostbite, Ralph forced himself to cast his attention to the two men sharing a foxhole with him.
Babe had long-since settled into an uneasy sleep, having worn himself out after sobbing into Ralph’s shoulder about Julian and his ma. The poor guy was still recovering from the nasty cough that had been spreading through their ranks while they stagnated with nothing to do but sit here and freeze, and that likely didn’t help matters either. Glancing past Babe to find a familiar pair of dark eyes staring into nothing, Ralph cleared his throat before speaking, grateful to focus on anything besides the biting cold.
“What do you call those people again? Those Cajun healers?” He half-whispered to the other medic, voice rasping from the way his throat stung in the chill.
“Traiteurs.” Gene answered after a long moment, rubbing his cherry-red nose before continuing. “You know, my grandma was a traiteurs.”
Apparently Doc was in a talkative mood today.
“Your grandmother? No shit.” Spina encouraged with a small grin. It wasn’t every day that Gene divulged something about his life before Easy. He’d been warned not to take it personally, when he’d first joined the Company, if the Doc pulled away from anything resembling connection with the other men, but apparently Gene had decided to make an exception in Ralph’s case— a fact he was grateful for every single day.
Despite the warnings of the other’s cautious distance from the rest of the men, Gene had taken Ralph under his wing ever since, patting his back when he’d vomited after treating his first open fracture in Holland, and sharing tips and sometimes rations— even a foxhole, like they were doing now, although the red-headed interloper wedged in between them was a little less common.
Gene never got frustrated with Ralph for his moments of weakness or panic— not even when Ralph’s caregiver’s instincts got the better of him and he felt like he was going to burst from the sheer need to do something— anything useful until it was burning through him and turning him into a fumbling idiot in the meantime. Eugene never held it against him, even though he had no reference point for what Ralph could be feeling as someone without a designation, instead letting him take point on med checks or sending him to scrounge for medical supplies with the nearest battalion until the gnarled thing inside his chest loosened its hold the slightest bit— a harder and harder task the longer that Bastogne dragged on.
From what Ralph had gathered, Gene only got well and truly angry when someone got in the way of his care for the men, and Ralph knew better than to jeopardize the men’s lives by making any stupid decisions.
So when Doc spoke, he listened and he listened good.
“She was. Laid her hands on people and cured ‘em.” Gene cleared his throat. “Took away sickness, cancer, you name it.”
“Your grandma did that? You're shitting me.” Ralph asked, shocked but not disbelieving. If anyone would have the gift of divine healing, it’d be someone related to Doc Roe.
Gene nodded slowly, lost in thought as he murmured a response. “I remember she used to pray a lot.”
“Yeah, I guess she had to.” Ralph shrugged, knowing how much he’d started praying since landing in Holland— and he’d barely even considered himself religious, back in the States.
“Talked to God ‘bout the pain she pulled out.” Gene’s lips twitched in a bittersweet expression, gaze unreadable. “Asked him to carry it away... That's what she did.” He finished, letting the silence stretch between them.
“I’m still trying to figure why they picked me for a medic.” Ralph muttered into the night, casting a long look at the thin tarp covering their foxhole— nothing but a sheer piece of canvas standing between them and artillery fire. “God knows…”
“Snap of a finger, and just like that— you’re a medic.” He attempted to catch Gene’s gaze with a weak smile that came out looking more like a grimace, and he couldn’t help but worry about the blankness he found in the other’s stare, more and more these days.
Gene didn’t respond, but Ralph hadn’t really been expecting him to, so he continued with a weary exhale. “I’ve had enough playin’ doctor…”
Ralph trailed off, biting his lip and trying to avoid shaking apart from the all-consuming chill that seeped into every last crevice in Bastogne, even while sharing a two-person foxhole between three men. If he’d been warm enough to think straight, the cold probably would’ve been enough to drive him into despair— but when they were all one bad night away from hypothermia, Ralph couldn’t spend the effort to feel anything but exhausted, and from the looks of things, Gene felt the same way.
Although, after holding Babe as he cried himself to sleep, the other’s fingertips cracked and nails broken from where they’d scoured the earth in a desperate grab at his downed friend, Ralph would admit that his own emotions were a little closer to the surface— more raw than usual. Maybe that’s what spurred him to lean over and ask Gene, “Hey, how about you?”
Ralph wasn’t sure what he was expecting for an answer, but if he couldn’t ask another medic about these things, he’d probably have lost it a long time ago— and thankfully, Gene hadn’t gotten sick of him yet.
Ralph wasn’t like Gene— he wasn’t the naturally calm presence one looked for in a pinch, unflinching as he ran through mortar fire and not even hesitating to reprimand a C.O. for administering one too many morphine syrettes.
When the men called for a medic, screaming for their mothers as much as they cried out, “Doc!” they were screaming for Gene, not him. And Ralph had made his peace with that a long time ago.
“Doc was born to be a medic. Takes care of a guy physically, mentally— every way. Don’t go buggin’ him for no reason, but if things go to shit, know that you can call for ‘im, and he’ll come running.” Guarnere had told him once, back when Ralph had still been a bright-eyed replacement, fresh off the press and unprepared for anything the war could throw at him.
He’d practically worshipped the ground that Doc Roe stood on, at the time, and it had taken a long time for that starry-eyed hero worship to fade into something closer to camaraderie, although sometimes Spina still felt flashes of that awe when he watched Gene seamlessly triage wounded men, barking out orders and directing any helping hands like a captain directing a ship in a storm.
After months with Easy, Ralph still didn’t know how Gene did it.
“Never been much for getting dirty— when I was little, I used ta’ get antsy when I got mud on my hands… felt like it’d never come off.” Gene muttered finally, and Ralph let his eyes be drawn to Gene’s hands, skin cracked and red in some places and near-white in others with the early warnings of frostbite— all crusted over with dried blood, no matter how much they tried to scrub them clean with what little water they could find before it froze. Ralph’s hands weren’t much better.
“M’not sure I remember what it feels like for ‘em to be clean, nowadays… reckon it’d feel wrong.” Gene finished, picking at the cracked skin there in a habit that had become increasingly commonplace these days, and Spina had to stop himself from saying anything when the habit only further worried at torn cuticles and painfully short nails.
Ralph huffed humorlessly at Gene's musings, stomach twisting uneasily at the thought that they’d be stuck in this frozen hell for long enough that this would become their normal, rather than the other way around.
“When we get outta here, first thing I’m gonna do is take a long, hot bath. They’ll hafta pry me outta there with a crowbar when I’m lukewarm and pruny.” Ralph stretched with a groan, earning a quiet huff of amusement from Gene.
“Lemme know when you find the hot water, an’ I’ll be next in line.” Gene quirked his lips in an imitation of a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Much later, Ralph couldn’t get the dull quality of the other’s eyes out of his mind long after Gene had finally drifted back to sleep. The other medic's jaw was slack with sleep, leaning into Babe’s side and clutching their shared blanket like a lifeline, his eyebrows furrowed even while unconscious, and Ralph had to tear his eyes away from their sleeping forms.
Squeezing his eyes shut firmly, Ralph tried to shove down his overactive nerves and overwrought caregiver’s instincts, resolutely telling himself that his concern for Gene was no more than what he felt for the rest of the men.
It wasn’t very effective.