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Despite being told that you all were leaving Foy and Bastogne behind, you couldn’t find any sort of comfort in that fact.
You’d lost so much more than your sense of safety in those woods.
You’d lost your best friends. You’d lost your brothers.
Skip and Penkala and Donald Malarkey and you had been thick as thieves since Toccoa, with you being the closest thing to a voice of reason for the trio of dunces. For most of your life, you’d been surrounded by people who took themselves too seriously- both of your parents having been intellectuals and the rest of your brothers and sisters following similarly academic routes.
Needless to say, it was nice to find yourself surrounded by ‘childish underachievers’ such as yourself.
But that was no longer the case. Now, you were more alone than you’d ever been.
Losing Skip and Penk in one fell swoop felt like losing two limbs, like losing your arms and being expected to pick up a rifle and fight another day.
Of course, if Skip and Alex had been your arms, Don was your heart.
And he’d cut himself from your chest before you’d had a chance to stop it.
It had been him in the end, to tell you about what had happened. His voice had been hollow and dry, his eyes refusing to meet your as you staggered backward as if you’d been struck. When you’d whispered his name and gone to embrace him, he'd just shaken his head and stormed past you.
He hadn’t spoken to you since.
You’d had a horrible suspicion that you’d fallen in love with him, but it wasn’t until that moment you’d come to the stomach-churning realization that you, indeed, had. Not that that changed the fact that he clearly wanted nothing to do with you now.
You’d lost him, too.
So, when he’d come by the room you’d claimed in a semi-structurally sound home, you were thrown for a loop.
For his part, Don looked exhausted, his face long and gaunt and his eyes holding a haunted look that you’d grown used to seeing in the eyes of everyone else in Easy Company. The way he lingered by the door gave him a look of trepidation, and you could instantly see the child he had once been.
In this moment, Don was just a small freckle-faced kid again- being called into his teacher’s office to be held accountable for some mischief he and his friends had gotten into.
When did I go from co-conspirator to teacher, I wonder?
“Sergeant,” you said slowly, watching as he lowered his fist from where it had rapped on your door just a few moments before. “Is there something I can do for you?”
The way he was hovering in the doorway was making you uncomfortable, like he was some awkward ghost haunting a threshold in an old fairytale. The way his face paled at your question only lent itself further to your observation.
“Donald,” you said a bit more sternly, moving your head until you caught his gaze with your own. “Are you okay?”
After starting and stopping a reply a few more than five times, Don gives you a tight nod.
“Yeah, Y/L/N, I’m fine.”
You don’t bother to hide the incredulous look you feel twisting your face. “Really? Because you look like shit.”
When he doesn’t even crack a smile, you take a deep breath and frown.
“Don, you’re starting to—”
“I lied.”
Your breath catches in your throat as he interrupts you, folding your arms across your chest as you watch Don cautiously step into the room. The door barely creaks as he carefully closes it behind him, and you feel your cheeks heat up despite your determination to remain in control of yourself.
Donald looks at you shyly, working his jaw a few times before speaking again.
“I don’t feel okay at all, really,” he admits as he walks closer to you. “I, uh, owe you an apology—”
The scoff escapes your mouth before you can stop it. “No shit, you don’t say.”
He has the grace to look ashamed, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck as he stares at a spot on the floor between you two.
Since he’d walked away from you, you’d had to deal with the losses of Skip and Penkala all alone, and it isn’t until right now that you realize just how angry you are with Don for that. Your heart beat painfully in your chest, tears springing to your eyes as you finally allow your hurt to come to the surface.
Don, clearly feeling the waves of frustration rolling from you, nods slightly and clears his throat.
“You have every right to be pissed, I get it,” he bravely moves forward until he’s standing before you, hesitantly bringing his eyes up to meet yours again. “I know that I hurt your feelings—”
“‘Hurt my feelings’?” you repeat incredulously, shaking your head in disbelief. “Don...you fucking broke my heart.”
That seems to surprise him, eyes widening as he fully takes in the emotion behind your anger.
Impassioned, you continue.
“You cut me off- you totally shut me out for what? Not being there?” You realize how shrill your voice is becoming and bite the insides of your cheeks before leveling him with a glare and continuing. “I don’t know if you forgot, but Skip and Penk were my friends, too—!”
He nods, dropping his voice to the harsh whisper you’ve adopted. “You’re right—”
“I know I’m right! ” you snap, huffing as you lean heavily against one of the desks you’d pushed aside to create a bed space. “Turns out, being right doesn’t mean shit when the only remaining person you give more than two fucks about won’t so much as look at you! I know you don’t like conflict but Jesus, Don- I thought you’d at least talk to me….”
“Hey,” he says, stepping into your space and cupping one of his hands around the back of your neck to pull you into an embrace that you didn’t reciprocate. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I really am….”
You let yourself lean into the security of his strong chest, the next sigh escaping your lips morphing into a choked sob before you can stop it. It just felt so good to be touched, held by someone again. Don was warm and familiar and someone you had wanted so badly this past week that you found yourself almost trembling in his arm with relief.
When you unfolded your arms from over your chest and wrap them around his waist, you feel him sigh deeply. At the sound of your name, you take your face from his collarbones and let him see how much of a mess you are.
“Don’t cry, Honey, ” Don’s voice was soft, so soft that it almost made you want to cry harder. “I don’t...I can’t bear to see you cry—”
“I just want it to stop,” you hiccup, sniffling as he presses his forehead to yours while continuing to cup the back of your neck with both hands. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore- I don’t know what I’m supposed to do —”
The press of his lips against yours cuts off your teary babbling, the unexpected action immediately making you inhale sharply through your nose. It’s sweet, it’s such a sweet kiss that you don’t hesitate to part your mouth enough to slip his bottom lip between your trembling ones and lean into him.
As your own hands come up to hold his face, Don sighs across your mouth.
“I’m sorry, ” he says, each word causing his lips to brush against yours. “I wish... If I could take it away I would—”
Gently scratching at the coarse hair dusting his cheeks and chin, you nod.
“I know, Don. Please,” you purse your lips in order to pluck another kiss from his mouth. “Please don’t leave, not now. Not when—”
This time, it’s Donald who is nodding. “I won’t, I can’t. I wouldn’t.”
You both are greedier with this kiss, one of his hands abandoning your neck to clutch at your back while you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him as close as you possibly can.
There’s a frenzied undertone to the dance of your mouths, as if both of you fear that the other will be carried away by some cruel wind. Your heart races with a nervous urgency, an anxiety that is only partially calmed by ensuring that each part of your body is pressed as tightly to him as it possibly can be.
Don’t leave me alone again, I’m so tired of being alone.
Whenever either of you twists your head away enough to gasp for air, the other resorts to kissing at cheeks, noses, chins. It’s as if these whispers of apology and devotion have become the only words your desperate minds remember well enough to express. It isn’t sexual, not really- it almost feels like you’re trying to reassure each other that this is real, this is happening.
And no one’s going to leave the other behind any time soon.
Of course, you’d be lying to yourself if you said that you weren’t aching to feel the warmth of his bare skin on yours. That the idea of him inside of you didn’t make heady sugar sparkle in your veins.
The ridge of his cock straining through his pants gives you the feeling that he’s feeling somewhat similarly.
“Y/N,” he gasps your name like a prayer and a reassurance. “ Y/N, Y/N, Y/N…. ”
You don’t hesitate to bring your fingers to the buttons on his jacket, fingers shaking from adrenaline and making you clumsy. Don doesn’t seem to notice what you’re doing until you finish the row of buttons and smooth your hands up the planes of his chest.
“
You don’t have to,” Don murmur, despite the fact that his hands have already made their way under your sweater and established a massaging rhythm up and down your spine. “Don’t worry about me, you don’t have to do anything—”
“Shut up, Malarkey- you’re talking too much. ”
You can’t help but sigh a laugh as you feel him smile into the next kiss he bestows upon your lips, your light mirth melting into a soft whimper as his tongue brushes against yours.
“Wanna touch you- I’ve wanted to touch you for so long,” he admits when your head falls back to grant him access to your neck, biting your lip in a vain attempt to stay quiet enough to hear him. “ Fuck, you’re perfect….”
This time you do laugh in truth. “Who would’ve thought your type was war-fatigued, dirty, and angry at the world?”
When he incorporates his teeth into the kiss he bites into the skin at the base of your neck, you hiss in harsh pleasure.
“Nah,” he says quietly before soothing the raw skin with a lave of his tongue. “I’m starting to think that my type is just you— jeez, Y/N….”
You smile to yourself at the cursing way he says your name at the feeling of your hand slipping down the front of his pants to find the hot stiffness of his cock.
As if playing catchup, Don yanks one of his hands from your back to wet his fingers in his mouth before working his own hand into your underpants, moaning into your mouth when he feels just how warm and slick you are for him.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” he says with a wavering timbre, almost as if he can’t actually believe it. “Are you always like this? Or is this just—?”
“Didn’t I say something about talking too much? ”
Before he can reply, you run your thumb purposefully over the leaking head of his cock before using your knuckle to tease the sensitive underside of the slit. When he recovers from the surprise of the action, he slips a finger between your lower lips to rub at your clit.
“Okay,” he pants, pressing his forehead to yours so he can look down at the sight of you both working each other into a carnal heat. “ Okay .”
Neither of you talk much after that, too lost in the hot arousal of giving and feeling to do anything other than sigh and gasp and kiss.
Afterward, as you play with Don’s hair as his head rests on your chest, you allow yourself to bask in the endorphins of the earth rocking orgasms he’s wrung from your body using nothing more than his masterful hands.
Laying on the pile of blankets and lackluster pillows, tangled with Don Malarkey and warmer than you’ve felt in months, you cannot help but let a few tears stream down your temples as you stare at the ceiling.
The tears are for your friends- both the ones you've lost and the ones who, like you, are still trudging forward with the weight of the world on your malnourished shoulders. You cry in relief for Don, whose breathing has become so slow and heavy that you know that he’s fallen asleep in your arms, probably sleeping more soundly than he had in a very long time.
And lastly, you cry for yourself. Because, despite having lost so much and become so hollow, you swear you have never felt more at peace.
Loved, sated, and sleepy- you allow yourself to follow Don into a mercifully dreamless sleep.