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"Ampère-heure, c'est finalement février! Heure pour les oiseaux de commencer à sélectionner leurs robes pour le mariage," cooes a Frenchman's voice, rhythmic and musical amongst the bustle of the military camp. Dick turns toward the sound. He can see a skinny replacement standing beside the French civilian at the crossroads, his military greens hanging loosely on him. He can't be any older than the minimum enrollment age, and just that. He's watching the Frenchman's mouth intently and trying to understand.
"Qu'avez-vous obtenu à votre petit oiseau?"
"What am I getting my bird? I ain't got no bird!" He tilts his helmet up against the harmless haze of snow falling, as if a better view of the Frenchman's rapidly moving lips will enlighten him.
The Frenchman processes for a moment, and reciprocates the frustrated laugh. "Non, non," he answers, dropping his hand from his knapsack and cigarette to wave dismissively. "J'ai voulu dire la fille! Vous savez, amoureux? Mademoiselle?"
"Girl?" The replacement parrots back when his internal translation finishes. Immediately, his eyes light up, a joyous bark of laughter that echoes all the way to Dick Winter's stilled Jeep down the road, a brief swell of appreciation rising in his chest. It's been a long, brutal winter, and the war machine still inches on. It's been a long time since he's heard anything resembling from the Toccoa men—the ones still standing—and he aches a little to hear it, an emotion only expressed through the tightening of lips around his teeth and a distant expression.
"Oh, what am I getting my girl?" The Frenchman laughs, encouraging him with a hand gesture. The replacement beams and proudly readjusts his rifle on his shoulder. "Oh, she's getting something! Got a pal to pick up a box of real chocolates while he was in Paris and send 'em back home for me."
The Frenchman nods, his equally young face warping into a similar smile, inspired by a similar thought. "Ah, et un nom?"
"Nom?" He hesitates for a moment, searching a database of French from days past, and slowly smiles. "Hayley."
Dick finds himself again smiling absently, watching the exchange through the half-fogged windshield with a strange and lonely fascination.
"What, you're not in love with Hayley, are you? Bastard got your girl while you were killing Germans, eh, Dick? Paratroopers ruined your life after all."
He doesn't grant Nix the pleasure gracing him with a half-amused look—something like that would only serve to encourage the man—when he stomps out of the brush, careful not to slip in the icy mounds of snow still clogging the ditch. Instead, he simply flashes a glance over at him, assuring himself he's got a steady foothold before jumping into the passenger seat, and shakes his head. "She's better off without me," Dick mocks in his perfectly serious voice, staring ahead. "You couldn't wait 'til we got there? Indoor plumping?"
Fortunately, the chitchatting pair separates, the replacement handing back his passport and the Frenchman trodding along his own way. None of which will deter Lewis Nixon from further goading the Captain, striving in vain to induce half the brilliant color of his hair in his cheeks.
Knocking the snow from his boots against the closed door, Nix snorts and grins at him. "Nope."
Dick only nods, rolling his eyes.
"You do have a girl, don't you?" he grins, pausing to rubs his hands together like tinder about to be lit. "You wouldn't look so preoccupied if you didn't."
"We're fighting a war, Nix. Preoccupied is my natural state," Dick answers, glancing over at him again. He returns to staring out the half-obscured windshield, a vivid image of the deep dark of Nixon's eyes and the glowing red cheeks of a cold-bitten face still bright on the back of his eyelids. "Last I checked," he adds, and senses that grin shift subtly in his peripheral vision.
It goes from handsomely wicked—an expression Dick's sure New Jersey schoolteachers glimpsed in frustrated moments, pointing a finger at him—to bemused, lips pressing together, an expression often accompanied by a thoughtful hum. Dick wonders what this means while shifting gears and driving on past the replacement through the crossroads. He lifts his hand from the wheel for a moment to hail the skinny boy loved by Hayley as they pass. Nix nods briefly, his helmet nodding along but a half-second delayed.
The unusual February warmth has cleared the roads of snow, and instead the dirt soaks during the day, spinning up in great, gray-brown streaks from the Jeep wheels, and will be frozen solid again in the night into deep, icy tracks. Dick utilizes them while he can and speeds off. Nixon never acknowledges his rough driving manner—fast and tough, with a teenager's command of the wheel—sometimes worries him, except to reach up and clutch the windshield frame in a falsely casual gesture. The half-barren French landscape blurs by in the shape of black, spindly outlines of trees, until the dreary gray-blue of a farmhouse breaks the monotony and they swerve into the driveway.
Dick kills the engine and they climb out in unnoticed unison. Helmets get pulled off, hair patted down—trying to appear half-civilized these days—and they step inside the farmhouse. The house is so freshly commandeered the wandering family can still be seen on the road, trudging unhappily off to a relative's.
They pass a few soldiers smoking outside and come inside to find it thrumming busily, officers moving about, war talk drifting above while a few soldiers linger inside to warm up. Some are Toccoa men. They all stop to clap Winters on the back, or snatch his hand in a shake—as if it might imbue them with some supernatural ability. Invincibility. Tactical genius. Red hair. He can't tell. Nixon receives his fair share of attention, but it's nothing like the adoration Dick gets. There's a coil of unhappiness, tightening every time a hand seeks his back, every time a smile turns his way, but he's not going to ask himself why.
"Captain Winters, sir—got mail for you!"
It's been only a week since they've been relieved from the Ardennes, and Dick still refuses to actually rest. No—a steady stream of messages, requests, reports, and unwanted company keeps knocking, each vying for his attention and each succeeding in monopolizing another chunk of his time, his energy, his sleep.
Nixon's rest is therefore cut in direct correlation; he's always getting caught in the trajectory of Dick's workload, and never quite learning his lesson. As many times as he's slept through the firecracker snap and crack of shellings and gunshots, boots on the wooden floors still wake him, half-dreaming it's a German soldier stalking closer to Dick's sleeping lump. There's been more than one night he's startled forward out of his own bed—nightmares extra devilish with intoxication, and even more convincing—only to see Dick staring at him half-knowingly, sitting safely in his own.
In the crowd of people a familiar sweep of light hair on an approaching figure catches Nixon's eye and calls him to action.
He quickly intercepts Dick's orderly in the foyer before the captain can notice, helmet tucked under his arm, he and Sergeant Martin in somber discussion. "Hey there, Zelinsky," Nixon accosts him, smiling his most professional, assertive smile. "What's the big rush? Not another promotion for him or something?" He claps a hand on his shoulder and ever so subtly turns him from his redheaded target. "They've gotta start running out of titles soon."
"No, Lieutenant, actually just a request for a few reports. That and other things," he says, though his eyes seek out the Captain despite him. "Just be a minute, sir," he adds, attempting to slide past Nixon—a sorry little movement that gives Nixon an opportunity to pounce.
He thieves the papers out of Zelinsky's hand before he can react and taps him on the shoulder with them, simultaneously shooing him away and asserting his authority. No matter long or how obediently an orderly attends to Dick Winters, in this war, Nixon is the true confidant and assistant. Who else would wipe that look of subordinate numbness off his face when he didn't need it anymore? Not a pint of a man who couldn't match wits with him, even when blitzed drunk.
"I got it," he says to the Zelinsky's half-wary expression. "Don't worry. He'll get it sometimes before May."
And with that, he himself seeks out the coppery flash of red in the crowd, leaving Zelinsky to stare after him. Eventually, he shrugs and wanders off in search of another job to be done.
---
Nixon finds him—that furtive sneak of an officer—upstairs, carefully pawing through the room soon to act as office and quarters. His hair burns like an open flame against the pale green trims and faded white walls, an image repeated in the mirror he stands before, touching each of the items on the dresser like he's carefully archiving them. Half-used pink and crystal perfume bottles, a hairbrush with an ivory-handle, a few burnished tins of makeup lying out. Nixon glances past Dick's double image to see himself standing in the doorway, papers in hand, hanging at his side. He looks almost half-pitiable, hardly-shaven, ruffled by war in winter, and somehow forlornly expectant of something.
He walks up to the dresser, and shoves a few trinkets out of his way while Dick stands beside, watching quietly.
Nixon drops the mail in his newly cleared space. "Happy Birds' Wedding Day. Have fun with those." he slurs, fully intending on trudging back out and finding a warm corner of the house to light up a Lucky Strike. Once commenced, nothing will draw Dick away from the all-important military task of accurate report writing, and Nixon hates feeling second to the tick-clack of the typewriter. He'd rather shoot the shit aimlessly with some nameless replacement than sit around and pine for a few meaningful words with Dick. For one thing, he can smoke and drink with the replacement all he likes.
Dick touches the mail too, then pauses, and, before Nixon turns to leave, looks up at him oddly. "Bird wedding?"
"Uh, yeah," he mutters casually, pointing to what he assumes is a Valentine's Day gift for the lady of the house in a vase in front of the mirror—having been displaced before she can properly celebrate it. "The French like to think Valentine's Day is when the birds pick their marriage partners. Like people being complete saps wasn't enough fun." He half-scoffs, and turns to leave.
Dick looks at the pair of red roses in the vase, then follows them up into the reflection where Nixon's walking off. Red bears its own connotation to him—not nearly as entranced by the color of his own hair—and again he sees the cold-bitten flash of red on Nixon's face, sliding into the passenger seat, grinning at him like the wolf who'd just gobbled up Little Red Riding Hood. He's not sure whether Nixon had overheard all of the conversation at the crossroads, or understood the blur of fast-spoken French, or if he's always known about the when the birds got married in France. It's something he would know.
Dick turns around and wets his lips before asking, "What did you get your bird?" He knows he'll pick up on the metaphor, but there's been no mention, how ever subtle or shamelessly inebriated, about what would end up at Cathy's doorstep for Valentine's.
Nixon turns around, and without missing a beat, grins that fed-wolf grin, with a spark of laughter that only sounds around Dick these days. "Just some mail."
Here Dick substitutes an actual, involved response for a half-amused stock sound, a scoff of air that will suffice no matter what he meant by that—and that's what Dick doesn't understand quite yet, while Nixon waves him a goodbye, his back turned already, and reaches for his smokes.
While his wheels slowly turn, scowling at Nixon's disappearing figure, the intelligence officer is already flicking his lighter open. The sound of his boots descending eventually rattles Dick out of his thoughts, and he blurts out—in hindsight he'll laugh at it, in a half-ridiculous, half-vulnerable way—"How do they kiss?"
That stops Nixon. He looks back at Dick, only visible from the shoulders but every visible part thrumming now with energy and curiosity. "What?"
"It comes after the 'man and wife' part. You know that," Dick continues, trying to sound more casual than he suddenly feels. "How do the birds kiss?"
"For god's sake, Dick, the French don't care. They're too busy rolling the goddamn hay at that point to care what the hell a pair of birds do." He half-grimaces to himself, shaking his head. "Or how they do it."
And—a moment he'll instead later hail as bravery and wonderful stupidity—he says, "Come here."
"What?" Nixon slurs at him, shoving a cigarette in his mouth as a visible excuse to go.
"Come here."
"Christ, what? You fuckin' hate it when I smoke in your room," Nixon mutters angrily (nervously) and trudges back up the stairs into the room. He looks half-expectantly at Dick, and sees instead in the mirror he's fully expectant.
"Close the door," he says evenly.
Nixon begins to forget the scowl on his face is so important in front of Dick. He's always seen through them.
"What?"
Dick smiles a small, shy smile. "Gotta give a bird a gift," he says. In the mirror he can see there's nothing in Dick's hands.
Nixon closes the door pretty damn fast.