fic: Darling, You Look So Afraid (2/?)
Fandom: Band of Brothers
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Pairing(s): Babe Heffron/Eugene Roe, Joseph Liebgott/Kenyon Webster, Carwood Lipton/Ronald Speirs, Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters, Kitty Grogan/Harry Welsh, Muck/Malarkey
Characters: various other guys from Easy
Summary: "Sometimes you never meet your soulmate. Sometimes you have to settle for less. That doesn't mean you don't love each other--it just means you could love someone else more. And, to be honest with you, it also means you live your life as just a half and an empty heart."
The universe likes to play with people.
Disclaimer: this is soley based off the HBO show Band of Brothers. No relation to the real men, and no disrespect meant. Along with that, nothing belongs to me.
It’s when David Webster is 18 and ready to leave for college that his mother sits him down and tells him about it.
“You know how some people are always wearing wristbands? Those unhappy people?” She asks him. He doesn’t miss how she’s one of them, and she doesn’t miss that he doesn’t miss it, and her smile is a little more mournful for it. “Well, Davey.” She continues steadily. “‘Soulmates’ is a flowery term and most people don’t like to use it. But, well, the fact of the matter is: soulmates exist and sometimes the universe likes to mess with you.”
He remembers staring incredulously at her for a solid minute. That can’t be true, he knows he thought, because if it is-where is mine?
“Sometimes you never meet them.” She continues, doing her Mother Thing and naturally reading his mind. But now her voice is slow, and her mind is in the past. “Sometimes you have to settle for less. That doesn’t mean you don’t love each other-it just means you could love someone else more. And, to be honest with you, it also means you live your life as just a half and an empty heart.”
He remembers demanding why she’d tell him such a thing, and all she’d done was laugh and pat his hand. He remembers being angry at her for leaving him nervous and confused, worried that he’d live out his life as nothing but a just-beating heart and half a being’s soul, unhappy and in a meaningless relationship.
But then he’d left home, left his parents’ support, then-and even now it feels like the apex to his life-he’d joined the paratroopers.
---
Normandy and D-Day have already happened. Easy has trained together for years besides that, and so Webster is treated like a replacement. He was at Toccoa, they all know, but he trained with Fox and he jumped with Headquarters; and the combination of those two immediately alienates him until he manages to prove himself.
He makes friends, yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s included within the exclusive folds of Currahee! and “Damn, I think I kind of want to thank Sobel, son of a bitch that he was.”
So he makes friends, but is still shunned. He fights beside the men, but hasn’t done anything particularly exceptional. Through it all, Webster is almost positive he’s going to come out of the war positively alone, and he’s going to go home to disappointed parents and some marriage he’s going to have to settle for.
In other words, exactly the opposite of what he wants.
It is naïve of him to think that he might meet someone, but being naïve was kind of what he was known for. And being dramatic. Everyone was always telling him he’s too dramatic.
Point is, the middle of a war is a fucking wonderful place to meet your soulmate, and his mother’s words will always be at the back of his mind. Even sitting in a shallow foxholes and eating a ration of a K-Ration, there’s still a stupid, lingering hope.
He wishes he could turn it off.
(Partly to save himself from being disappointed, but mostly so he doesn’t get himself killed wondering if his soulmate is behind enemy lines or-even worse-is the enemy.)
Joseph Liebgott crashes into his life during one of these musings.
Well, it’s less “crashes” and more “worms his way into.”
It goes like this: Web is friends with replacements and Buck Compton and Bill Guarnere, because who isn’t friends with Compton and Guarnere? So he sits around and drinks and laughs with these men and things are going okay, if he does say so himself, and they’re all waiting for what he hears is going to be Holland. Eindhoven, someone tells him.
Then, for reasons that he’s not sure he’ll ever know, the local barber and backtalk guy starts sitting next to him at mealtimes-Joseph Liebgott, he knows is the guy’s name. Then it extends from mealtime to briefings to on trucks and tanks when they move out.
They start talking.
Somewhere between “so, College Boy, war treating you well?” and “don’t get your pretty ass fucking killed” they become friends. They don’t talk about the people they left at home or the meals they’ll have when everything is over, not like almost everyone else. They talk about why they joined and how they heard about it, what they were doing when that Pearl Harbor shitstorm happened, and what they wish they could have right at that moment. Liebgott doesn’t pry into things he doesn’t want to talk about, and Webster returns the favor. It’s a casual and easy friendship that leaves Web feeling happier and thinking that maybe he can go home a little less empty.
At some, unannounced point in time, they start arguing.
It’s not the vicious words he’s heard girls exchange, and it’s not genuine division over opinions, it’s just-arguing.
There are angry tones and waving hands and Webster’s pretty sure there’s a reason for it, but by the time they stomp off in different directions or (less frequently) come to an agreement, he’s even surer that they’re arguing just for the sake of arguing.
It’s a frequent source of entertainment for everyone else, he finds out later.
“What the fuck are we doing?” He asked Liebgott one time. They’re past holding a half blinded brother in the bombed out shell of building a million miles away from home and closer to Lieb and a neck wound that will have Webster fussing and angrier than he will ever remember being. “Why are we doing this?”
Lieb snorted. “It’s just how we work, Web, not much else to it.”
“You make it sound like we’re a couple.” He returned, making a vaguely annoyed face.
For that, he got a flat look and something on the border of a sneer. “We? Us? All this fresh air-it gets to you. Especially after being holed up in libraries with your fuckin’ Faulkner and shit.”
“I’ve been outside before, Joe.”
“Really?” He got a raised eyebrow that time, and Liebgott leaned a little closer, pretending to study his face carefully. “Huh.”
Web rolled his eyes and smacked the hand Liebgott was using to poke at his cheek.
They move on.
***
Nix wakes up alone and badly hungover.
He thinks to himself: Dick hates me. Even after lying painfully still for ten minutes, shuffling aimlessly through his memories of the night before, he can’t come up with a reason for thinking that.
Even when he greets Dick during the morning briefing, he can’t think of anything, and Dick gives no indication to what transpired. Of course, this only serves to make Nix nervous.
More nervous. The impending Invasion was doing fine on its own, but the bags beneath Dick’s eyes and the slight distance between them are somehow worse. Priorities, Nix thinks.
He gets the feeling he’ll never know what happened.
That is, until the day is over and he’s tired and just wants to sleep, but his wrist has been bothering him all day and then-
He sees it.
Richard D. Winters.
He’s completely positive that the name hadn’t been filled out before and now can’t help but be overwhelmed with-what is he overwhelmed with? He wants to puke, is all he can say. He wants to puke and run away.
I’ve lost him, he thinks, he doesn’t care about me anymore.
And, if not that, then what is the universe telling him now?
---
They jump and lose Meehan. They lose men he’s seen every day for the past two years, gain a few skittish kids that don’t want to be there, and Dick becomes the acting company commander.
Nix stops drinking because Dick won’t stop giving him these looks and walking stiffly around him and he thinks it might be the alcoholism. Even when that turns out to not be it (after days of observation), he still tries to stay away from the bottle. He figures he won’t survive the war if he fights it drunk.
But then they're told to "wait for more orders" and he’s left to wallow without anything to numb the butterflies in this stomach and the raging headache that’s threatening to render him (more) useless.
A part of him wants to run to Dick and demand what he knows about the extra “inters” on the inside of Nix’s wrist, but another part of him points out that having Dick know about it in the first place will just make the rejection more painful.
(Because that’s what it’s going to be: Nix will say “you’re my soulmate” and Dick will say “no thank you” and that will be the end of any possible happiness Nix might have or could have possessed.)
He keeps wallowing.
---
It’s sometime past Too Late to Be Awake and breaching on Too Early to Be Awake when Dick finds him again. This time, with two bottle of Vat-69.
“Is there a reason my footlocker has been suspiciously full lately?” He asks, and he sounds amused and it’s like whatever-happened never happened. He hopes it didn’t.
Nix raises a lazy eyebrow. “You didn’t notice that two years ago?”
“Considering how fast you go through bottles,” Dick says, “you probably could have hidden these in Sobel’s footlocker and gotten away with it.” He laughs a little at his own joke, then sets them down near Nix.
“Thanks.” He finds himself saying. “I was going to try the whole sober thing, but, well. Doesn’t really fit my worldview.” And joking about it probably isn’t the healthiest thing, but Dick is indulging him and who is Lewis Nixon to deny Dick Winters anything at all? Who is anyone to--
Too late, Nix abruptly realizes that Dick has stepped closer and now their knees are nearly touching. He freezes and stares resolutely at Dick’s stomach, at eye level. Or close to eye level. Damn.
“Do you remember what happened a few nights ago?” Dick presses, voice the one of a commanding officer.
“No.” Nix answers truthfully, without really meaning to. “Curiosity killed the drunk” and all that noise.
A beat. Then, quietly: “Lew, look at me.”
After a moment of hesitation, he stands and finds himself nearly eye-to-eye with Dick. Dick, whose gaze has never been so intent, whose eyes are these perfect color that Nix wants to study until the years have passed and wrinkles form around them, and whose mouth is saying words that are probably important.
His voice cracks when he says, “Sorry?”
“I thought I saw my name.” Dick’s voice is low and gentle and everything Nix wishes it wouldn’t be at this exact moment, because he has a sick feeling about what’s about to happen, but some higher power won’t let him move to stop it.
Then Dick’s hand shoots out and grabs his wrist, and all the hard training he suffered couldn’t have prepared him for the moment that Dick’s eyes alight on how own name. His own fucking name inscribed on his stupid best friend’s wrist, where it shouldn’t be, because Nix doesn’t deserve someone like Dick and he really hadn’t planned on losing everything so soon.
Nix gets a sudden picture of the entire world stopping-every living being pausing in their tracks, holding their breaths, all waiting just as anxiously as Nix for Dick to say something. The thought of Hitler doing so is all it takes to make Nix laugh.
The laugh comes out sharp and a little crazy sounding and all he wants to do now is yank his wrist back and jump out the window, but he knows he couldn’t do that to Dick. He knows without having to think too hard that he could never do anything against Dick’s best interests.
After too long, Dick says, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nix doesn’t answer.
Dick drops his wrist, steps back, and now he won’t even look at Nix. Dick, the man who takes life head on while remaining logical, who managed to shoulder the responsibility of commanding his friends while in the middle of battle, who knows Nix better than anyone else ever will, can’t even stand to look at him.
Christ.
They hover there in silent odds for what could be a week, until Nix finally feels a little too broken and picks up one of the bottles of VAT Dick had brought over.
It’s only after Nix has popped it open, taken a long, long pull, and gripped it a little too tight, that he realizes he’s alone again.