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[niceofyoutoask]

Carwood Lipton was unsettled.
He eyed the bookshelf, and the variety of titles displayed, and his mouth set in a thin line of irritation.

It wasn’t so much that the bookcase was eager to provide him with titles like United States Army Logistics: The Normandy Invasion, 1944 and Manufacturing Systems Engineering: A Unified Approach to Manufacturing

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[soldier_singled]

"Hey, Lip," says Joe, quietly, coming to stand beside him. Pretty much all of the guys might think that Joe's a loudmouth and nothing but, but he's got his quiet times, just like anybody else. Today's one of them, with flour clinging to his nails and the scent of fresh bread following him around.

"What's eatin' ya? Furniture not playin' fair?"

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton looked beside him, arms still crossed, as Joe appeared. He smelled like his mother's kitchen when she'd taken to baking - a hobby his wife had never favoured. It was a welcome change from the remembered smell of the blizzard and the Ardennes.

He turned he gaze back to the bookshelf, irritated by the fact the titles hadn't changed. "It's a magical bookshelf." Lipton thought he might have been attempting to go for an amused tone, but it came out surprisingly peevish. "It probably could play fair, but is choosing not to." And now he just sounded like a pouting child, which he really wasn't all that impressed with.

[soldier_singled]

"Where would be the fun in playin' fair?" says Joe, with a bit of a wan smile. He ain't quite gotten over Helen weeping in his arms like that. There's an ache that he ain't quite gotten to go away yet.

"What're you after, anyway?"

[niceofyoutoask]

"Something that isn't this." Lipton reached out and selected a book at random, flipping it open and thumbing through the pages. His gaze settled on a map of Europe, coloured lines converging and swerving away, meant to summarize the movements of hundreds of thousands of men in uniform. He snapped the book closed and shoved it back into the bookshelf.

"It wouldn't even matter what it gave me." Lipton said after a moment. "I was just looking for something not already on my mind. Naturally, it provided me with just that."

[soldier_singled]

"You ain't figured out how to play this game yet, Lip. That's all." He reaches out and touches Lip's elbow gently.

"Come on, Lip. I've got cookies on a wire-rack. I'll make ya a coffee."

[niceofyoutoask]

As comforting as it was to hear that he'd eventually get better at rustling a book out of the shelf that he actually wanted, there was something foreboding about the idea of him ever getting the hang of this place.

Admitting defeat for the time being, Lipton looked over at Joe with a smile creeping over his face. "Damn, Joe. What did we ever do before you got a kitchen?" If there was something about the island that he could get used to real quick, it was offers of coffee and cookies.

[soldier_singled]

"You let Don cook and we all damn near starved to death," shoots back Joe, amiable, ushering Lipton ahead of him towards the compound. He prefers cooking in the Homestead, he thinks of that as his kitchen, but he likes the compound well enough.

"I got chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin," he says, making a bee-line for the coffee pot.

[niceofyoutoask]

"Ah, right. What were we thinking."

Lipton winced at the memory, and almost patted his stomach in apology for past abuses. He obediantly went where Joe directed him, remembering with amusement dinners made in empty ammunition cans.

"Chocolate chip," Lipton decided, leaning against the counter. "But it's a tough choice."

[soldier_singled]

"You eat that one like a good boy and I'll even give ya another," said Joe, setting a cup of coffee down beside LIp and fetching a plate for the cookie.

"How you been, Lip?"

[niceofyoutoask]

"You're a good man, Joe." Lipton assured him, wrapping his hands around the coffee cup in a way that never got old. While he took a sip, he used the oppertunity to puzzle out how to answer Joe's question.

The truth was, he wasn't doing excellently, but at the same time, he wasn't doing terribly. He was a private man, and used to keeping how he really felt to himself. It was less necessary now than it had been, back when he'd had to support both his family and his estranged wife, and during the war. But even were he to say that he was struggling with the transition to the island, it didn't seem nearly like a big enough problem to share with the boys. They were all here as well, with the illogical insanity. He didn't want to bother them with his whining about how shook he'd been these past few months.

Lipton moved his gaze back to Joe from the coffee cup, and shrugged. "This place is still taking some getting used to," he settled on.

[soldier_singled]

"So my Ma tells me."

Joe busies himself with a load of cookie batter that's ready to go on a sheet, which keeps him from having to look Lip in the face. It's a skill that you learned; not looking a guy in the face while he's thinking too deep about something. You didn't have much privacy, so you made a little where you could.

"You're tellin' me, buddy," he says, softly.

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton picked up one of the chocolate chip cookies, and took his first bite. Alright, so, Lipton would be haunting the kitchen for forever now, because these were delicious. He chased the bite with the coffee, and wondered how they'd ever gotten by on k-rations

[soldier_singled]

It's a conversation he's had with Webster. Sometimes, guilty, Joe remembers talking about the wife he was gonna have, the nice Jewish girl with big soft titties, the kids he was gonna have. None of that seemed to matter anymore.

"I don't think about it," he admits. "I've got what I've got here, and it's enough. It's more than enough. So I don't get to have kids." He shrugs. "I've got Trisha. I've got Webster. I got everything I want. What's the point of wondering what I might've had back in San Francisco?"

[niceofyoutoask]

"But what if tomorrow you go back to 1945?" Lipton asked, cookie in one hand and coffee in the other, both for the moment forgotten. "How can you build a life knowing it's probably only temporary?" He wasn't judging, he wasn't critical, he just wanted to know.

When he'd volunteered for the war, he'd known there was a very real possibility he may not come back. He'd watched two men get shot through the head in just inches from his face. He'd been hit by tank artillery in Carentan, and shot close enough to the head to leave a mark on his cheek in Foy. He'd known that tomorrow he could die, but it would be an end, and it would be unfortunate, but it would have been simple. This, with alternate timelines and realities, was something else entirely. Somewhere, sometime, he had a wife, a family, a hometown. Here, he had boys he'd served with in a war that had happened over sixty years ago. And Lipton really had no idea where that left him, but right now it felt like somewhere in between.

[soldier_singled]

"I'd drive my cab and I'd try not to miss what I couldn't have anymore." Joe busies himself with spooning out a new sheet of cookies.

"Hell, maybe I'd go find him in Boston. We jumped into France, Lip. Anything's fuckin' possible."

[niceofyoutoask]

"Yeah," Lipton agreed mildly. He watched Joe and the progression of the cookies, remembering the one he held in his hand and taking another bite. Still just as good. "Yeah."