Fic: Sleep Spent, Band of Brothers, Lipton/Speirs
Title: Sleep Spent (Or That Time There Was a Blanket and a Bench)
Author: Nakeno
Pairing: Lipton/Speirs
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing and this certainly isn't meant to disrespect anyone.
Summary: Speirs doesn’t believe in exhaustion, but he’s wearing it close-fit like those dirty fatigues.
A/N: This was originally written in comments for vulpesvortex who asked for a ficlet for her beautiful piece of artwork of Lipton and Speirs dozing on a bench. I couldn’t refuse. It really is beyond gorgeous. It can be found here. Gaze upon it and fall in love-- more in love with these two-- as I do pretty much every day.
It’s evident.
It’s evident in the subtle pitch-sway that has worked itself into that usually flawlessly stiff stride.
It’s evident in shadowed smudges beneath olive drab eyes that are flagging at half-mast, not as keen and calculating.
It’s evident in the way there’s just the slightest hesitation in the movements that are usually so precise and clean.
The man hasn’t slept in over thirty hours, and that’s just the round-about number that Lipton can guess at-he’s sure it extends.
Especially when Speirs, his fingernail underlined with a half-moon crescent of dirt, drags an indicated path over the sketched lines and ramshackle squares that they’re using to indicate the town drawn on the inside of a broken down K-Ration box.
“Here you said?”
Lipton had used his own finger to trace the line of the night patrol that had run past the edges of Rachamps itself once already. He does it again and does not comment on having already given this information.
“Yes, sir, here.”
“And nothing.”
“And nothing, sir.”
It does not matter that this patrol was taken hours ago with no contact report to speak of.
Silence. Silence as Lipton studies the silhouetted profile of his C.O. through a sleep-gritty gaze, watching that dark, helmet-less head duck forward and a thumb and forefinger squeeze at the portion of nose between the corners of the eyes.
Speirs remains like that for a long moment; eyes closed, head forward, wordless.
The man is dead on his feet, whether he’d admit it or not. From what Lipton has gathered about him? He wouldn’t. Speirs doesn’t believe in exhaustion, but he’s wearing it close-fit like those dirty fatigues.
Hell, he’d been asleep himself finally when Speirs had roused him-hours later after their queer little conversation about rumors and leadership. Lipton had marked the passage of time by the fact that half the candles had guttered out inside the convent, the other half being attended by a supernaturally quiet sister who glided soundlessly around fitfully sleeping soldiers.
One look into Speirs’ lined face when Lip had opened his own eyes had told him sleep would have to wait. For just a while. If Lipton had no other goal for the evening other than to get Ron Speirs off his feet for a spell, then that was fine by him.
Get Speirs settled then he, himself, could settle and maybe find some decent shut eye. After all, it wasn’t only the men of lower rank than he that sometimes needed to be looked after. It wasn’t just the enlisted men who were worked and weary. Nevermind that he himself felt weary. Weary and thin and worn down-all the gaunt edges starting to show from underneath, like a different color of paint that emerges when the top-coat starts to flake away- and exposed. The burden of Bastogne was telling its tale in his appearance. In all their appearances.
However, it seemed Lieutenant Speirs had no intention of being settled just yet, having motioned toward the door after Lipton had sat up from his straight-board, pew-made bed, aching all the way.
It seemed that they would take their conversation outside, in the shadows and the dark where the cloud-cover hid the moon and the snow, sporadic and listless, fell like errant shavings of ice, fluttering to the earth now and again from the great, empty blackness that yawned overhead.
And now, as not to disturb troopers getting much needed rest, here they were; standing along the outside of the convent itself, having strolled away from the doorways and to the side of the building instead. Where the shadows were steeped. Where a small bench jutted out from along the brick, the wood of it glistening in what light was afforded from the church windows with frozen condensation.
Lipton bit down on his own bottom lip, turning his head, his hair askew-matted and dirty as the rest of him-giving the bench a look before he studies the back-lit profile of his lieutenant again.
Under his arm, his blanket hangs limply, a rumpled but folded woolen mess. He’d meant to wrap his shoulders in it, to block out the small breeze that still whistled sharply through the air, letting all who felt it know that winter was not yet ready to step aside for spring.
He had tucked the folded thing beneath his head on the pew inside to lessen the severity of having nothing but straight-on wood for a pillow, but now he was toting it around like a tattered, useless banner.
Well, perhaps not so useless just yet.
“Sir?”
Alarm, bright-sharp, shoots through Lipton for a moment when he sees Ron sway. Literally sway, as if he means not to catch himself.
His hand is on the lieutenant’s arm before he can think.
“Need to sit.”
“I’m fine.” Comes the stern, if bull-headed, response.
Lipton pauses-he doesn’t want to step on any toes, but he doesn’t want this ranking officer having to be picked up off the streets, either-then falsely admits, “I meant me, sir. I… I need to sit.”
Speirs regards him then, quiet for a few stretching seconds. Lipton can feel those eyes searching him out, prodding for the truth. Carwood sticks to his lie by saying nothing at all.
Carwood sticks to his lie because it’s not quite a lie; he’s tired enough for it to count.
Both of Ron’s arms drop to his sides, that cardboard map scraping against the material of his thigh the only sound between them.
Lipton stands, close and attentive, letting his C.O. come to the decision himself without any undue prompting. And he does. Speirs nudges the back of his hand to the first sergeant’s chest and then gives a vague motion that indicated the very bench Lipton was plotting for.
Carwood releases a quiet breath of gratitude (getting the lieutenant off his feet was a start) before he steps further into the shadows of the building, easing himself down on the cold, creaking wood. Speirs takes the other end of the bench, his back straight, leaning neither right nor left.
It should be awkward, this. It isn’t, somehow. Rather, it’s almost peaceful: the quiet, the dark, the lieutenant’s warmth a hand’s length away, the cadence of their breathing and the once-in-a-while snowflake drifting by.
Lipton has one hand curled against his own thigh, the other is bunched in the blanket he has settled on his end of the bench, flexing his cold fingers into it rhythmically.
In the silence, Lipton knows that Speirs knows exactly why they’re sitting here. Lipton had stood on formality to get them here, but it’s Ron’s tolerance that’s keeping them here. Speirs is allowing. It’s enough for right this second.
“Word came down.” Ron’s voice, slightly slurred.
Carwood turns his head and can see the darker dashes of closed eyelashes on shadowed cheeks.
“Not Mourmelon, then.” Lipton’s voice doesn’t carry anger or resignation. He’s used to the bad news by now, used to being the one that has to break it to the men, too. Bad News Lipton was his own mental tag for himself when the words ‘announcement, men’ left his lips.
“Not exactly, no,” Speirs agrees, head ducking forward, boot heels shifting against gravel. “Alsace. 160 miles from here. Germans have broken through there.”
“And someone needs to help hold the line.”
“…Someone needs to help hold the line,” Ron states in a voice that Lipton isn’t quite familiar with. It’s almost sardonic, and when Lipton glances over, he can see the faint sketches of a smile at the edges of his lieutenant’s lips.
Lipton stares and doesn’t smile back. His voice is low, almost lost. Gentle.
“Should probably get some rest then, before moving out.”
Lieutenant Speirs nods as if on a loose hinge, and Lipton knows there’s not to be any resistance if he slides closer, allows shoulder-to-shoulder contact. So he does.
“You’re right, sergeant. I’ve come to expect that from you…”
Lipton says nothing.
He’s a fighter, if nothing else. Fighting sleep all the way, Ron is; riding on duty and responsibility, but Lipton knows from experience that that kind of fuel will eventually run out on you.
And run out it does.
Lipton is silent and patient as his commanding officer loses that battle next to him. A battle they can both afford him to lose.
First that chin ducks to the chest. Then that posture slips.
Carwood sidles closer, using himself as a prop when Speirs’ shoulder settles in near his collarbone, that lithe, tall frame leaning into him now.
Ron is warm against him. Their legs are lined up against each other. Their hips, their sides. That cardboard map that Speirs had been toting with him is long since on the ground somewhere.
His initial goal to get Lieutenant Speirs off his feet and settled has been met. And if that particular goal has been accomplished by allowing Ron to settle on him, then he’s okay with that.
A low curl of heat-- like a match burning down to its hilt-- flares up in his stomach and Lipton mentally sets it aside, neat as a pin. Compartmentalize. Ignore it. It’s not the time or place; probably never will be.
This doesn’t, however, keep him from quietly, without too much movement as not to jostle the other, folding out that blanket across them. He reaches across Ron to tuck the edge of it up on his lieutenant’s shoulder, and Ron’s head lolls onto his own shoulder for a moment.
It’s no more flagrantly intimate than two soldiers sharing a foxhole, this. And that’s how Lipton will regard it-it’s how he has to regard it. It’s no matter that somehow, some way, he’s gotten Lieutenant Ronald Speirs to let his guard down. It’s no matter that he’s somehow gotten the object of so many brutal war stories loose and sleeping against him. He can’t be stupid about this, no matter what signals and indications his body seems to be providing at this man’s vicinity.
Still, it’s so very tempting to put an arm around the other when Carwood leans back against the brick wall. So, after a second, hidden by the cover, he does so-- searching his cold-but-warming hand across the small of Speirs’ back and allowing it to rest against the other man’s hip.
Ron stirs. Ever so slightly. Then nudges closer.
Instinctively, Lipton tightens his arm around the other, picking his head up off the wall for a moment to get a look at Ron’s face.
Slack and peaceful. Carwood smiles.
Is still smiling, even, when he lets his head rest back against the brick and falls asleep himself.
**
When he wakes, it’s still dark, but the sky is beginning to lighten.
When he wakes, he’s under the blanket by himself but he’s not alone.
When he wakes, he rubs the sleep from his eyes and feels his muscles protest stiffly and Lieutenant Speirs is still sitting on the bench with him, knee-to-knee, smoking thoughtfully and staring into the distance as if there are words to be deciphered on the horizon.
Carwood shifts to sit upright. Ron spares him a glance finally, exhaling a wreath of grey-blue smoke.
Lipton can feel heat from his middle beginning to surface towards his face. How had he been too sleepy to recognize that not waking up before Speirs had been a possibility? How had he not realized that he might have to explain that he more or less hoodwinked his C.O. into getting some sleep?
He’s trying to find something to say that isn’t completely ill-suited for this situation, but Speirs, as he did last night, gives him a pass. Gives him tolerance. Tolerance from a man not known for it.
“Cigarette?”
Lipton slowly bundles the blanket into a messy wad and settles it aside himself on the bench, nodding.
Ron digs out his pack and Lipton settles forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing the back of his neck to work out the tension the awkward sleeping angle had born during the night.
A curlicue of wonder passes through Lipton as he watches Speirs press a second cigarette into his mouth and light it before passing it over. Here he is; sharing a smoke with Ron Speirs and fairly confident he’s not about to die for it.
If this is how his lieutenant means to respond to him, however, he’ll do nothing to dissuade it.
They don’t speak. They smoke. They watch the sky become the color of slate that marks a muted winter’s day. They watch the shift of clouds and know that the snow-fall will pick up.
All the while, they’re knee-to-knee on the little bench they spent the night on.
It seems to Lipton that all Ron’s features are clearer to him now; the full curve of his bottom lip, the round of his nose, the bristle of stubble along the line of a jaw, his eyes reflective bits of dark stone and the onyx bangs of his hair in scattered strands that throw delicate shadows against the pale of his brow.
The expression on that handsome face is all seriousness and severity.
Until Speirs crushes his third cigarette out under the toe of his boot and looks to Carwood and smiles. That changes the landscape a bit, that. Lipton is finding himself more and more approving of it each time Ron does it.
“Best get to it.” His lieutenant says, pushing himself to stand. Speirs’ hand comes up and smoothes down at his hair, clearing away any look of disarray he might have. One never would have known how ragged and sleep deprived he’d been the night before, repeating questions already answered and unsteady on his feet.
“Yes, sir.” Is all Lipton responds with, acutely aware of the cool air seeping into his clothes at the knee, where Ron’s own had just been pressing.
His spine is straight, his head held up, his stride purposeful and fluid-it really is amazing what a bit of sleep can do for a person.
Speirs is nearly around the corner before he comes to an abrupt stop, turning on a heel and marching back in Lipton’s direction.
He has his Lucky Strike pack out and is tapping one of the cool, neat cylinders from it. Tapping it out and handing it out.
“Here. For later.” A beat. “You had the blanket, after all.”
When Lipton doesn’t take the proffered smoke fast enough, Ron reaches out and simply tucks it behind his ear, fingers lingering along the shell of it before dropping away.
Lipton stares. Speirs’ lips say nothing, but his eyes do. His eyes say a whole hell of a lot, indeed, before he walks away.
Later, when Lipton is helping the men round up and instructing which platoon to which truck and what unit was to be following the other, he’s still wearing that Lucky Strike behind his ear.
When he sees to his own things when the order comes down to mount up, he checks to make sure his blanket is stowed and with him.
Twice.
It would have been a shame to lose it.
After all, the next time he sleeps with Ron Speirs there’s far less clothing and Ron asks, with some satisfaction, if he’s brought the blanket.
-End-
Author: Nakeno
Pairing: Lipton/Speirs
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing and this certainly isn't meant to disrespect anyone.
Summary: Speirs doesn’t believe in exhaustion, but he’s wearing it close-fit like those dirty fatigues.
A/N: This was originally written in comments for vulpesvortex who asked for a ficlet for her beautiful piece of artwork of Lipton and Speirs dozing on a bench. I couldn’t refuse. It really is beyond gorgeous. It can be found here. Gaze upon it and fall in love-- more in love with these two-- as I do pretty much every day.
It’s evident.
It’s evident in the subtle pitch-sway that has worked itself into that usually flawlessly stiff stride.
It’s evident in shadowed smudges beneath olive drab eyes that are flagging at half-mast, not as keen and calculating.
It’s evident in the way there’s just the slightest hesitation in the movements that are usually so precise and clean.
The man hasn’t slept in over thirty hours, and that’s just the round-about number that Lipton can guess at-he’s sure it extends.
Especially when Speirs, his fingernail underlined with a half-moon crescent of dirt, drags an indicated path over the sketched lines and ramshackle squares that they’re using to indicate the town drawn on the inside of a broken down K-Ration box.
“Here you said?”
Lipton had used his own finger to trace the line of the night patrol that had run past the edges of Rachamps itself once already. He does it again and does not comment on having already given this information.
“Yes, sir, here.”
“And nothing.”
“And nothing, sir.”
It does not matter that this patrol was taken hours ago with no contact report to speak of.
Silence. Silence as Lipton studies the silhouetted profile of his C.O. through a sleep-gritty gaze, watching that dark, helmet-less head duck forward and a thumb and forefinger squeeze at the portion of nose between the corners of the eyes.
Speirs remains like that for a long moment; eyes closed, head forward, wordless.
The man is dead on his feet, whether he’d admit it or not. From what Lipton has gathered about him? He wouldn’t. Speirs doesn’t believe in exhaustion, but he’s wearing it close-fit like those dirty fatigues.
Hell, he’d been asleep himself finally when Speirs had roused him-hours later after their queer little conversation about rumors and leadership. Lipton had marked the passage of time by the fact that half the candles had guttered out inside the convent, the other half being attended by a supernaturally quiet sister who glided soundlessly around fitfully sleeping soldiers.
One look into Speirs’ lined face when Lip had opened his own eyes had told him sleep would have to wait. For just a while. If Lipton had no other goal for the evening other than to get Ron Speirs off his feet for a spell, then that was fine by him.
Get Speirs settled then he, himself, could settle and maybe find some decent shut eye. After all, it wasn’t only the men of lower rank than he that sometimes needed to be looked after. It wasn’t just the enlisted men who were worked and weary. Nevermind that he himself felt weary. Weary and thin and worn down-all the gaunt edges starting to show from underneath, like a different color of paint that emerges when the top-coat starts to flake away- and exposed. The burden of Bastogne was telling its tale in his appearance. In all their appearances.
However, it seemed Lieutenant Speirs had no intention of being settled just yet, having motioned toward the door after Lipton had sat up from his straight-board, pew-made bed, aching all the way.
It seemed that they would take their conversation outside, in the shadows and the dark where the cloud-cover hid the moon and the snow, sporadic and listless, fell like errant shavings of ice, fluttering to the earth now and again from the great, empty blackness that yawned overhead.
And now, as not to disturb troopers getting much needed rest, here they were; standing along the outside of the convent itself, having strolled away from the doorways and to the side of the building instead. Where the shadows were steeped. Where a small bench jutted out from along the brick, the wood of it glistening in what light was afforded from the church windows with frozen condensation.
Lipton bit down on his own bottom lip, turning his head, his hair askew-matted and dirty as the rest of him-giving the bench a look before he studies the back-lit profile of his lieutenant again.
Under his arm, his blanket hangs limply, a rumpled but folded woolen mess. He’d meant to wrap his shoulders in it, to block out the small breeze that still whistled sharply through the air, letting all who felt it know that winter was not yet ready to step aside for spring.
He had tucked the folded thing beneath his head on the pew inside to lessen the severity of having nothing but straight-on wood for a pillow, but now he was toting it around like a tattered, useless banner.
Well, perhaps not so useless just yet.
“Sir?”
Alarm, bright-sharp, shoots through Lipton for a moment when he sees Ron sway. Literally sway, as if he means not to catch himself.
His hand is on the lieutenant’s arm before he can think.
“Need to sit.”
“I’m fine.” Comes the stern, if bull-headed, response.
Lipton pauses-he doesn’t want to step on any toes, but he doesn’t want this ranking officer having to be picked up off the streets, either-then falsely admits, “I meant me, sir. I… I need to sit.”
Speirs regards him then, quiet for a few stretching seconds. Lipton can feel those eyes searching him out, prodding for the truth. Carwood sticks to his lie by saying nothing at all.
Carwood sticks to his lie because it’s not quite a lie; he’s tired enough for it to count.
Both of Ron’s arms drop to his sides, that cardboard map scraping against the material of his thigh the only sound between them.
Lipton stands, close and attentive, letting his C.O. come to the decision himself without any undue prompting. And he does. Speirs nudges the back of his hand to the first sergeant’s chest and then gives a vague motion that indicated the very bench Lipton was plotting for.
Carwood releases a quiet breath of gratitude (getting the lieutenant off his feet was a start) before he steps further into the shadows of the building, easing himself down on the cold, creaking wood. Speirs takes the other end of the bench, his back straight, leaning neither right nor left.
It should be awkward, this. It isn’t, somehow. Rather, it’s almost peaceful: the quiet, the dark, the lieutenant’s warmth a hand’s length away, the cadence of their breathing and the once-in-a-while snowflake drifting by.
Lipton has one hand curled against his own thigh, the other is bunched in the blanket he has settled on his end of the bench, flexing his cold fingers into it rhythmically.
In the silence, Lipton knows that Speirs knows exactly why they’re sitting here. Lipton had stood on formality to get them here, but it’s Ron’s tolerance that’s keeping them here. Speirs is allowing. It’s enough for right this second.
“Word came down.” Ron’s voice, slightly slurred.
Carwood turns his head and can see the darker dashes of closed eyelashes on shadowed cheeks.
“Not Mourmelon, then.” Lipton’s voice doesn’t carry anger or resignation. He’s used to the bad news by now, used to being the one that has to break it to the men, too. Bad News Lipton was his own mental tag for himself when the words ‘announcement, men’ left his lips.
“Not exactly, no,” Speirs agrees, head ducking forward, boot heels shifting against gravel. “Alsace. 160 miles from here. Germans have broken through there.”
“And someone needs to help hold the line.”
“…Someone needs to help hold the line,” Ron states in a voice that Lipton isn’t quite familiar with. It’s almost sardonic, and when Lipton glances over, he can see the faint sketches of a smile at the edges of his lieutenant’s lips.
Lipton stares and doesn’t smile back. His voice is low, almost lost. Gentle.
“Should probably get some rest then, before moving out.”
Lieutenant Speirs nods as if on a loose hinge, and Lipton knows there’s not to be any resistance if he slides closer, allows shoulder-to-shoulder contact. So he does.
“You’re right, sergeant. I’ve come to expect that from you…”
Lipton says nothing.
He’s a fighter, if nothing else. Fighting sleep all the way, Ron is; riding on duty and responsibility, but Lipton knows from experience that that kind of fuel will eventually run out on you.
And run out it does.
Lipton is silent and patient as his commanding officer loses that battle next to him. A battle they can both afford him to lose.
First that chin ducks to the chest. Then that posture slips.
Carwood sidles closer, using himself as a prop when Speirs’ shoulder settles in near his collarbone, that lithe, tall frame leaning into him now.
Ron is warm against him. Their legs are lined up against each other. Their hips, their sides. That cardboard map that Speirs had been toting with him is long since on the ground somewhere.
His initial goal to get Lieutenant Speirs off his feet and settled has been met. And if that particular goal has been accomplished by allowing Ron to settle on him, then he’s okay with that.
A low curl of heat-- like a match burning down to its hilt-- flares up in his stomach and Lipton mentally sets it aside, neat as a pin. Compartmentalize. Ignore it. It’s not the time or place; probably never will be.
This doesn’t, however, keep him from quietly, without too much movement as not to jostle the other, folding out that blanket across them. He reaches across Ron to tuck the edge of it up on his lieutenant’s shoulder, and Ron’s head lolls onto his own shoulder for a moment.
It’s no more flagrantly intimate than two soldiers sharing a foxhole, this. And that’s how Lipton will regard it-it’s how he has to regard it. It’s no matter that somehow, some way, he’s gotten Lieutenant Ronald Speirs to let his guard down. It’s no matter that he’s somehow gotten the object of so many brutal war stories loose and sleeping against him. He can’t be stupid about this, no matter what signals and indications his body seems to be providing at this man’s vicinity.
Still, it’s so very tempting to put an arm around the other when Carwood leans back against the brick wall. So, after a second, hidden by the cover, he does so-- searching his cold-but-warming hand across the small of Speirs’ back and allowing it to rest against the other man’s hip.
Ron stirs. Ever so slightly. Then nudges closer.
Instinctively, Lipton tightens his arm around the other, picking his head up off the wall for a moment to get a look at Ron’s face.
Slack and peaceful. Carwood smiles.
Is still smiling, even, when he lets his head rest back against the brick and falls asleep himself.
**
When he wakes, it’s still dark, but the sky is beginning to lighten.
When he wakes, he’s under the blanket by himself but he’s not alone.
When he wakes, he rubs the sleep from his eyes and feels his muscles protest stiffly and Lieutenant Speirs is still sitting on the bench with him, knee-to-knee, smoking thoughtfully and staring into the distance as if there are words to be deciphered on the horizon.
Carwood shifts to sit upright. Ron spares him a glance finally, exhaling a wreath of grey-blue smoke.
Lipton can feel heat from his middle beginning to surface towards his face. How had he been too sleepy to recognize that not waking up before Speirs had been a possibility? How had he not realized that he might have to explain that he more or less hoodwinked his C.O. into getting some sleep?
He’s trying to find something to say that isn’t completely ill-suited for this situation, but Speirs, as he did last night, gives him a pass. Gives him tolerance. Tolerance from a man not known for it.
“Cigarette?”
Lipton slowly bundles the blanket into a messy wad and settles it aside himself on the bench, nodding.
Ron digs out his pack and Lipton settles forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing the back of his neck to work out the tension the awkward sleeping angle had born during the night.
A curlicue of wonder passes through Lipton as he watches Speirs press a second cigarette into his mouth and light it before passing it over. Here he is; sharing a smoke with Ron Speirs and fairly confident he’s not about to die for it.
If this is how his lieutenant means to respond to him, however, he’ll do nothing to dissuade it.
They don’t speak. They smoke. They watch the sky become the color of slate that marks a muted winter’s day. They watch the shift of clouds and know that the snow-fall will pick up.
All the while, they’re knee-to-knee on the little bench they spent the night on.
It seems to Lipton that all Ron’s features are clearer to him now; the full curve of his bottom lip, the round of his nose, the bristle of stubble along the line of a jaw, his eyes reflective bits of dark stone and the onyx bangs of his hair in scattered strands that throw delicate shadows against the pale of his brow.
The expression on that handsome face is all seriousness and severity.
Until Speirs crushes his third cigarette out under the toe of his boot and looks to Carwood and smiles. That changes the landscape a bit, that. Lipton is finding himself more and more approving of it each time Ron does it.
“Best get to it.” His lieutenant says, pushing himself to stand. Speirs’ hand comes up and smoothes down at his hair, clearing away any look of disarray he might have. One never would have known how ragged and sleep deprived he’d been the night before, repeating questions already answered and unsteady on his feet.
“Yes, sir.” Is all Lipton responds with, acutely aware of the cool air seeping into his clothes at the knee, where Ron’s own had just been pressing.
His spine is straight, his head held up, his stride purposeful and fluid-it really is amazing what a bit of sleep can do for a person.
Speirs is nearly around the corner before he comes to an abrupt stop, turning on a heel and marching back in Lipton’s direction.
He has his Lucky Strike pack out and is tapping one of the cool, neat cylinders from it. Tapping it out and handing it out.
“Here. For later.” A beat. “You had the blanket, after all.”
When Lipton doesn’t take the proffered smoke fast enough, Ron reaches out and simply tucks it behind his ear, fingers lingering along the shell of it before dropping away.
Lipton stares. Speirs’ lips say nothing, but his eyes do. His eyes say a whole hell of a lot, indeed, before he walks away.
Later, when Lipton is helping the men round up and instructing which platoon to which truck and what unit was to be following the other, he’s still wearing that Lucky Strike behind his ear.
When he sees to his own things when the order comes down to mount up, he checks to make sure his blanket is stowed and with him.
Twice.
It would have been a shame to lose it.
After all, the next time he sleeps with Ron Speirs there’s far less clothing and Ron asks, with some satisfaction, if he’s brought the blanket.
-End-