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After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
The Waste Land—T.S. Eliot
—//—
It starts without him meaning it to. It's not like his jokes and impressions, or memorizing morse code, or learning how to take his radio apart and put it back together. Those are skills George has dedicated countless hours to honing, the former over a lifetime. This is something older, more sacred, an instinct none of Easy company can ignore, roaring to the forefront of their minds among the wreckage of battles and retreats. It begins around D-Day, and by the time their duty is done, rotating back to Aldbourne with relief, George has no way to stop it even if he knew how.
At first it's because—in the moment—they can't find a medic or a chaplain, but as the days march on while they plod across France, soon most eyes are swiveling in his direction when they find a body. Not any type of dead man, but the corpses left behind as a warning, limbs tucked in close, often a homemade talisman clenched between their fingers. None of them soldiers but women and children, grandfathers and resistance members, strange effigies in a war George doesn't quite understand. But he can kneel beside them, lay a hand to their brow, and pray for peace. He says the prayers his grandmother used to recite whenever there was a death on the block that didn't get last rites. She would walk into the apartment with stern grace, her four foot, eleven inch frame clad entirely in black, rosary wound between the fingers of her right hand. She'd pray in Latin and Portuguese, to the Holy Father and the patron saints of Portugal: the Virgin Mary and St. Anthony of Padua. The words are rusty in George's mouth, heavy from disuse, but he adapted when the army put a radio on his back, and he'll adapt to this role too. It's such a little thing, in the face of all consuming death, but he'd do anything for Easy company, and he knows they'd return the favor in a heartbeat.
—//—
Toye's got a birthmark on his right thigh, up high, almost hidden if you didn't look for it. George does. Has since the first time he caught a glimpse of it during some basic training drill or another—the contours of it, star shaped and dark as a mole, clocking his attention more intently than any flash of a garter under a skirt ever had.
"Makes you lucky," he says over in Aldbourne, some hazy time before autumn, when everyone is on a weekend pass and nobody cares what two buddies do for an afternoon together. Risky. But then again, George never can play it safe; he volunteered to jump out of airplanes after all.
Toye huffs a little laugh, mouth pressed to George's neck, one hand up his shirt. His breath is damp, hot. George shudders.
"Yeah?" he asks idly, mostly just to humor him, George thinks.
"Yeah," he swallows, nerves tripping over themselves as Toye's hand shifts downwards. "Means the angels are watching over you. That you're blessed," he says, and repeats the word in Portuguese, the sounds stiff from neglect. Toye shakes his head, amused and a little bewildered, eyes intent on George and his hands gentle.
"I'm only lucky sometimes," he replies easily, "like right now." And he smiles, the real one he only gives out to a handful of people, and George kisses him, licking the smile into his own mouth. It tastes like sunshine, honey. He never gets tired of the taste.
—//—
No matter his modest protests, Toye's definitely born under an auspicious star, because he finds George on the other side of Operation Overlord, both of them sweaty and missing half their supplies but alive and ready to hump over to Carentan with the rest of Easy.
"Told you were lucky, Toye." Luz socks him in the arm without any ire, grinning wide. Toye shrugs it off, but there's smile hidden in the corner of his mouth.
"Fuck off, Luz," he says, which is probably the best damn welcome any guy can ask for, but maybe the adrenaline crash is making George sentimental. "How's the old girl?" he asks, nodding to the radio.
"Oh she's fine, I put a coupla charms on her and she'll outlast all of us." George waves breezily, gesturing to the words scratched in a tight, cramped hand on the outer casing, the braided string that hangs off one strap, and the lurid evil eye Pat had drawn for George after he bribed him with a couple of cigarettes.
Toye taps one of the words and says, "Maybe we should chuck her at Hitler, you think she'd survive?"
"Asshole!" George swats his hands away, fighting off a laugh and losing. "This thing's worth more to Uncle Sam than you and me combined."
"Hey, there you are you stubborn bastard," and it's Guarnere, coming up the side and cackling. "This guy," he says, jerking a thumb at Toye, who rolls his eyes, "survived two grenades, close range." George raises his brows, fighting the sudden urge to look at Toye again to confirm he's fine, which is foolish, considering that he'd seen that Toye is relatively unharmed, or as much anyone can be in this mess.
"I keep telling him he's lucky," George says to Guarnere, who nods and hacks a wad of spit onto the muddy ground. All around them, men move in small groups, their shoulders tense, their eyes wary as they try to find their units after the nightmare of their nighttime jump. Easy's gathering in a loose circle near one lopsided French home, and George feels a distant pang at the sight. All the houses around here are in a sorry state, worse for wear for having survived—so far at least. Behind them, in the village square, is a small monument to the lost boys of the last war, their names printed neatly in rows of threes. George had felt a chill walking past the bronze plaque, and is glad Easy isn't congregating near it. Bad omen, he'd say, if anyone asked.
Instead they're crowding around the former pharmacy, if he's reading the sign right; the only who was any good at French is Roe, and he hasn't turned up quite yet. Winters and a few other officers are talking to the side, their faces drawn. Meehan has been a no show. Another chill erupted whenever George thought of him. His grandmother would tell him it means he's dead, but George doesn't want to believe it, buries it down along with his fear and his apprehension. The time for baseless panic was later, when their lives aren't on the line.
"You sure you ain't holdin' out on us?" he asks Toye idly, wading out of his thoughts and back into the conversation. Guarnere moves on with a loud whoop at George's comment and Toye's objection, and is seeming to have a hell of a time bugging some kid from Able. Toye spears him with a funny look, not quite annoyed, not exactly certain.
"No," he finally says, shaking his head slowly, patting his pockets absently as he checks over his supplies, "sorry to disappoint, Luz." George shrugs, adjusting his radio and leaning back into the wall a bit to take the weight off his poor shoulders.
"The only way you could disappoint me is if you get killed," George points out, digging around for his cigarettes. He remembers packing them, but has forgotten where exactly in the jumble of supplies they'd been forced to take along.
"Well, don't jinx me, Luz," Joe replies sardonically, taking mercy and handing his own packet over. George shakes out one crumpled smoke and lights it. "You're the one always tellin' us not to bring down any bad luck."
"And you should listen to my advice," George tells him, handing the pack back. Their hands brush against each other, very briefly. "It's gotten me this far, huh?"
"Sure, George."
—//—
After they get their jump wings, Easy company gets wasted. Dozens of men cram into the too small bar and drink it dry. Giddy, unknowing of what waits for them in Normandy, the arrogance not yet beaten out of them. George has too much beer and finds himself tripping over his own feet and Toye's on the way back to the barracks, boots knocking into each other amicably, arms slung around each other. Joe's breath fans over the side of his neck, makes George shiver in delight, even though it's hot, and the night is humid besides.
"We did it," George laughs. He resists the urge to rest his forehead against Toye's temple and inhale the smell of his sweaty skin and pomade.
"We did it," Toye repeats, voice lower and raspy with his drunkenness. Typically reserved and serious as the grave, Toye's face is split with an amused grin, a light in his eyes George has only seen when they prepped for their test jumps. Pure adrenaline and that reckless joy at looking gravity, or death, in the eye and watching it flinch first. Tumbling to the ground, rolling in the grass like children, but they're men now, wings and all.
"You crazy son of a bitch." George grabs Joe's chin in one hand, shaking his head back and forth gleefully, crowing the words just to say something, to burn off the excess energy inside him, licking up his ribs like an eager dog, tail wagging. "You nearly broke your ankle on that last jump!"
Toye laughs. Wheezing, rusty from being expressed so sparingly, and George wants to press it in between the pages of a book, preserve it the way his sister, Francine, would save a flower. The faint perfume of cigarette smoke and something earthy that belongs to only Joe Toye colors the air around them. George wonders if the mark on his thigh tastes any different form the rest of him, that elusive proof of God's blessing stamped into his skin.
"Big talk, Luz," he replies easily as they meander down the late night streets of the city. "You're gonna throw your back out with that radio."
"Fucker!" George cries fowl, shoving him but refusing to let go, so they stumble into a wall.
"Stop, stop," Joe defends himself weakly, still laughing, hands clumsy and hot like the chassis of the planes they climbed into this morning, the touch dangerous even through their uniforms. "Fuck you, Luz."
"Well, don't sound so fond when you say it." They're pressed knee to hip to chest, all lined up, more neat and perfect than when they are forced to stand in line at parade rest. This is different, this is the jump, the adrenaline bit between their teeth and the certainty that the only thing that mattered in the end was gravity. The earth would kill you faster than a Nazi bullet if she wanted.
"Careful, that mouth is gonna get you in trouble," Toye rumbles, but he's not pushing George away, instead holding him fast, more certain than their risers or their 'chutes. Like this, he can see the faint scar from when Joe fell on his face as a kid, and the fading sunburn on his nose. Soon all they'll know will be European skies and European soil, the war creeping over the fence to lay among them, a coyote in the henhouse. But George doesn't want to think about the future, too lazy with drink, head heady with the warm ray of Toye's attention.
"Who, little 'ol me?" George looks at him from under his lashes, not an easy trick when you're the same height, and tries not to grin. "I'll only be in trouble once the shooting starts."
"Listen to this smart ass," Joe addresses to an invisible audience. "I'm holding you to that, you know."
"Yeah, you making me a promise, Joe Toye?" he teases, but the carefree mask slips, for just a second, both of them breathing in each other's exhales, limbs tangled together, hidden away from prying eyes in this random alleyway. It's no longer a game in that instant, in the unreadable reflection in Toye's eyes as they crash together like falling stars. Toye tastes like the beer they had both drunk, mouth surprisingly soft. Welcoming, as if he had wanted to do this for some time. George would have to ask him, later, when they were both less preoccupied.
"Only for you," he says, when they part, voice rough with arousal. The weight of it is undeniable, and later, George will think it hung as heavy on his soul as the dead did.
"Kiss me again," George whispers, and he does.
—//—
Carentan is pretty terrible. But they do live. Most of them, at least; even poor Tipper, who was blown to bits, his bleeding face cradled in Liebgott's hands. The whole thing scares the shit out of George. Death is too close, he can feel it panting behind him, putrid breath on the back of his neck. His radio spits static that sounds like children crying when it's not being useful, the eye Pat had drawn seeming to wink in the hazy, overcast light.
"Luz!" Toye waves him over from the half-ruined facade of the local tailor, if the lettering on the front window is to be believed. Toye, Smokey, and Skinny are all crowded around the front door, and he's confused as to why for a second before he gets closer and sees it.
There's a body, laid out in the threshold. Curled onto its side, face creased in determination, hair gray, one temple matted with blood. Wrists bound with a rosary, an ashen cross smeared on the back of one hand. Someone's father, someone's grandfather, abandoned in the street. No, that's not right. This is deliberate. All the hairs on the back of George's neck and his arms stand up, nerves prickling warily. Distantly, he is aware of bile in his throat. All four of them stand watching the body, mute as when the nuns had George and his schoolmates attend Mass. He looks up, hating to tear his eyes away, only to find another body just over the threshold, crumpled on the floor, limbs splayed out in unnatural angles. It’s wearing a German uniform, and there's a grisly pool of wine-dark blood near the mouth. As if the soldier had coughed it up before collapsing and presumably dying. Otherwise, there aren't any obvious visible indications as to what might have killed him.
"Jesus," George swears. All of them shift, nervous as hares before the hounds are let loose, hands holding onto their rifles like talismans.
"We didn't—" Smokey pitches his voice low, "we don't know what to do."
"And you think I do?" George asks, already pulling out his canteen. Christ, this is beyond anything he's ever imagined. This is spitting in the face of death, or maybe the living. Nothing he has ever learned could prepare him for this. He crouches over the body, uses a little water to wipe the cross away gently. The skin is cool, stiff. George hates that he's used to fresher bodies, the blood still warm, the last spark of vitality not faded yet. He swallows the urge to gag, and places his hand over the injury on the head, where the blood is old and smells like rotting copper. He prays the Lord's Prayer silently, mouthing the words. When he's done, he does the sign of the cross, just in case. Toye mirrors the movement, as does Smokey and Skinny after a beat.
"Best I can do," he says with a sigh, standing up. "Probably should let Doc or the chaplain know."
"Yeah," Skinny agrees, clapping him on the shoulder and walking off in the direction they had all last seen Doc Roe. Smokey, after eyeing up the body one last time, steps into the building, Toye and George watching his back. Nothing happens. Not this time, at least.
—//—
As the allies continue to push into the European front, they keep finding bodies. It's a strange war happening at the margins, civilian corpses enacting a revenge they never could in life, leaving the remains of Nazis behind like a perverse gift. Most of them are very old, or very young, or were sick or maybe injured. A last heaving effort to not let another death be in vain, to try and strike against the overwhelming odds piling up. The tide is turning but not quick enough, and might not make a difference until the very end. George hates how quickly he gets to used to finding them. Usually they can call over a stretcher to take the body away, or maybe the chaplain to say last rites, but sometimes…
Him and Joe find one, when Easy is plundering a farm for food, weeks into the hazy summer of 1944. It's in the barn, laid to rest by the dead heifer. Just a little thing, maybe the age of his youngest sister, Connie, as George remembers her. She was barely out of her toddling years when he enlisted. The fair hair is streaked with dirt, the small fist clutching a cross made of sticks tied carefully with twine, and the soles of the feet dark are with old dirt. The barn smells fetid, the air close with the scent of rotting meat and the sour milk spilled onto the hard-packed dirt floor by the cow, the pail upturned and dented as if someone had kicked it.
"Fuck," Toye says angrily, swiping at his brow where the lazy heat of late June had made him sweat, turning away. "Fuck." He stands in the doorway, one arm braced on the doorjamb, leaning half his body out to dry heave. George moves closer, hypnotically drawn to the child's corpse. Despite the smell, inside the barn is cool and dark compared to the unrelenting heat of the French countryside. Everything feels like a dream, the surreal, half-intelligible logic of a world were the colors don't quite match the shadows.
George crouches by the remains and tips the lip of his helmet back to peer closer. Both bodies have been lying here, decaying, for some time—the air around them is choked with flies. George does gag then, spits onto the floor even though it strikes him as disrespectful. He's not ever going to get used to the smell, no matter how long the war ends up being.
"George," Toye says, voice rough, still standing at the door. Brave Toye, who survived two grenades on D-Day and can't move an inch farther into the barn, eyes wide as he watches him. "Luz. Come on, don't be funny."
George stares back at him, one hand mid-stretch to touch the child's ankle, the skin there mostly unbruised or covered in bugs.
"I have to do it right," is what he tells him. The compulsion is a habit now, the rhythms familiar as the ceremony of Sunday Mass to George. He fears that if he doesn't do something that it will upset the cosmic balance, prove an insult to the memory of this poor child, that God will mark his inaction as a failure. That George, when he is dead, will be made to look at the list of people he refused to help and answer for it. Toye visibly fights against some emotion: disgust or fear or maybe even worry, before giving up and exhaling a long, shaky breath.
"You get two minutes," he says, and surprises Luz by not retreating completely outside. Steady, even here, in this murky space between the living and the dead. He crosses his arms and waits. George gently rests his hand on the jutting ankle bone and prays in fumbling Latin, adding a phrase he remembers from his grandmother at the end: Lord, please grant us the solace of your peace when our trials are over.
When he's done, he takes the handmade crucifix and tucks it into his breast pocket, the gnarled wood poking into his skin through the layers of his uniform. It's not a trophy, he would explain if Toye asked, it's a gift.
They don't speak the entire way back to their platoon. The sun is warm on their backs, honey-bright and serene. It's profane to witness so much death in the summertime.
—//—
The losses stack up, a house of cards liable to collapse at any moment. They lose Meehan. Winters gets promoted and then they lose Heyliger, too. Holland is full with the resistance and the dead they sacrifice, bodies stripped and covered in strange symbols that baffle them all, cramped, crawling words that hurt to read. Even Fr Mahoney balks at the treatment, rosary held tight between bloodless fingers. At night, when all is quiet, and George is tinkering with his radio, he swears he hears whispers down the line, the crackling, rasping wheeze of a dry throat trying to speak. He sleeps fitfully on those nights, dreams cobwebbed with long, grasping hands trying to hold on. Ice water in his mouth and the rattling hiss of a dying man. George thinks he will always remember that noise, for as long as he lives.
—//—
"C'mon, five minutes," he says to Toye, the two of them huddled in the shadow behind a shed in Mourmelon, on the edges of the camp, where nobody gives a fuck what they might be doing. George woke up that day still remembering the febrile after-image of that child and the dead cow from months ago, had to haul himself outside to empty his stomach in peace, and he's been burning with it ever since. He needs to remember what a living thing is like between his hands; not his radio, not his gun, not the unfeeling barrier of rigor mortis.
"George," Toye says softly, even as he lets George herd him up against the wall and run his hands all over his body, sneaking digits up under the rough fabric of his uniform. "Hey, watch it, your hands are freezing." And they are, George shivers and tucks his head into the spot where Toye's neck is laid bare by his open collar, the skin there damp in the late summer heat. He feels like he did when he was ten with the influenza; disconnected, reality just out of reach. He's trying to stay grounded, but his fingertips are slipping off the ledge slowly.
"I feel like I keep going downstairs and missing the last step," George admits quietly, voice slightly muffled by Toye's collar. That lurch in his guts, the spike of terror that never quite leaves him, not even here in Mourmelon, where it is arguably as safe as anywhere on this goddamn continent can be. Toye hums, cradling the back of George's head, idly scratching at the soft, short hairs there from his recent haircut.
"Tough break," Toye says, and while with anyone else it would be dismissive or flippant, he's being honest. His hand at George's hip is hot, burning like a flame. He wishes they were alone, so they could strip down and lay skin to skin, so he could run his fingers over that star birthmark and watch Joe try not to laugh because he's ticklish there.
"Whole war is," he shoots back, the answer ready the moment Toye spoke. A reflexive response, ingrained in his marrow. A shrug, a smile he doesn't feel—oh, it's alright, could be worse. Well, the worse is already here and banging on the door, and George isn't sure what's going to happen when the hinges break.
"George." His voice doesn't crack, but it catches at the end, an edge torn loose and fraying. George pulls back, stares at him, hands on his chest because the rhythm of his heart is as good as anything to remind him Joe's here, in a place with no defiled dead, and that George is alive, same as him.
"I don't know—" he cuts himself off, chews at the words and finds them bitter. He's unraveling like a cheap sweater. George loathes to admit it because he's the guy everyone turns to when they need reassurance, proof that it won't always be blood and guts and bone-deep terror and the smell of cordite. Toye nods, lets himself hold George's face in one hand and kiss him, briefly. Too quickly for what he wants, what he needs, but they can't risk it. George clings to the taste and smell of him: cigarette smoke, pomade, and antiseptic army soap.
"Luz, you just gotta hold on," Joe says, "keep your boots tight and radio close, okay? I'm at your six, you know that." George nods. Toye had dogged his back whenever he could during Overlord, eyes tracking the horizon line, brass knuckles on his fingers. The metal had caught the light, framing his deft fingers, prettier than any ring on a dame.
"Currahee, right?" he asks, but he already knows the answer.
"Currahee," Toye murmurs immediately, pulling him closer as if they can conjoin into one sorry being, hide in each other's ribs, safe from the war. It's a monumental task, to keep placing one foot in front of the other and to keep going, continuing to attend to the dead, but he will try for Joe Toye.
—//—
In Holland, George is shot. Technically, he's always being shot at, dodging bullets and grenades and German mortars, but this time he gets hit. Smack in the chest, to the right of his heart. The thing is, ribs are sturdy until they meet a bullet, and then it's just dust in your chest as you lay on the ground, dazed, the breath knocked out of you. George lays there, in the chilly mud of some town nobody knows the name of, and wheezes, wooden fingers clawing at his chest because he can't breathe goddammit. Where's his fucking gun? His radio is alright, digging into the knobs of his spine and lower back painfully. Stupid hunk of junk will outlive him.
"Christ almighty, Luz," Martin swears, popping into his field of vision. "Are you hit? Fucking snipers." His hand scrabbles at George's shoulder, tries to help him get up because a man on the ground is a dead one. Behind him, Hoob keeps an eye out for any daring Krauts, M1 held steady.
"I'm not bleedin'," George gasps out, stumbling to his feet. A quick pat down of his various limbs confirms this. He'll have a hell of a bruise come tomorrow though. He feels dizzy, the world composed of perpendicular angles and see-sawing views of the line as they retreat. Martin keeps one hand on his shoulder strap and just about hauls him the entire way, hollering in his ear to keep going. George, the instinct worn into him around basic, listens.
It's only after, when they're circled around to rest and lick their wounds, does he ascertain what exactly happened. There's a hole in his breast pocket, an oblong tear. With hands that are staring to shake, George digs out the cross he's kept there since June. It's a St. Brigid's cross, where someone had taken the time to wind twine around the middle to create a diamond where the wooden stakes intersect. It shouldn't have stopped the bullet. But it's broken, crumpled and bent in on itself from the force of impact. George stares at it in disbelief.
"Jesus Christ," Hoob says, looking over George's shoulder, eyes locking on the pitiful bundle of twine and wood in his trembling palm. "How close did that one get to you?"
Martin whips his head around, face troubled for an instant before it is calmly hidden by his professional mask. "Luz, you okay?"
"Yeah," George says dumbly, holding up the broken totem. Someone whistles, low and surprised, probably Muck or Penk. "I guess I got lucky," he adds in a daze.
"Lucky St. Luz," Hoob cheers, knocking into him amiably before drifting away. George rocks with the movement, his feet rooted in place, his boots as heavy as lead. There's a terrified scream lodged somewhere down his throat, near his ribs, and he clamps his teeth together so it doesn't escape. Martin eyes him for a long moment before being forced to direct this attention to Winters, who walks over to discuss something with him. George stands there, frozen in place, until a warm hand touches the nape of his neck, that small, vulnerable patch of skin that rests between the collar of his uniform and his helmet, there and gone in a second. But the body that pulls up next to him is familiar, standing just a hair closer than a normal buddy would. Toye.
"Told you I wasn't the lucky one," Joe says in an undertone, reaching out for the broken cross. He studies it for a second before tucking it away in one of his numerous pockets.
"You—that could bring you a bad break," George says, fear jolting him out of his stunned trance. "Toye, I'm serious," he adds at Joe's dismissive gesture.
"I can handle it." He rebuffs the objection mildly, as if misfortune could be so easily swept aside, an errant fly swatted away without a second thought. Toye's survived relatively unharmed so far, skipping by anything serious often by the skin of his teeth, his calm exterior unaffected nonetheless. George's dreams these days are of the dead reaching out to grab him, their freezing hands clutching at his uniform, all of them speaking in a language he does not know. He can't swallow the thought that Toye would possibly haunt him in that way if anything happened, especially if it was his fault, no matter how irrational the guilt is.
"This isn't a joke," he hisses, deadly serious. He doesn't need to remind Joe of the kid they found in that barn, or the grandfather in Caretan, or of any of the others in the endless line of bodies that the war leaves in its wake. Toye looks at him, expression severe.
"I never said it was," he replies evenly, the dart of his anger surfacing briefly, and it's never been directed at George. Joe will assume mock offense, but George could tell from day five of boot camp that it wasn't personal. But now it is. His feels his worry swell, a dam fit to burst.
"Toye, nobody would ask you to—"
"Nobody is, I'm volunteering," he says. "Can't be any worse than this shit," he adds, gesturing loosely to the ragged remains of Easy, forced to retreat from the latest nowhere of a village in Holland because of the goddamn trigger-happy Germans.
"We should bury it," George says on an impulse, "or burn it. Or I don't fuckin' know." Around them men start to gather into rough lines of rank and file, heading out of the relative safety of the patch of woods they were hiding in to once more try to take that fucking scrap of land command cared about so much.
"Luz," he says, "you're always telling me I'm blessed, why not put it to the test, huh?" He's not even paying George much attention, shuffling ammo around his webbing, gun held casually in one hand. George's knuckles go white around the body of his own rifle, bloodless and anxious. He wants to shake him and say, it's not a goddamn game, the risk isn't worth it. Don't make me a liar, don't make me survive this alone.
But he doesn't.
In a moment of sullenness—that five months ago would have felt uncharacteristic, but is more and more familiar to him—George snaps his mouth shut and lets it go. He's likely letting paranoia win over common sense, his brush with the specter of death clouding his judgment, but the point sticks between his teeth, sticky and bitter. Easy company marches on, unaware of the disaster that awaits them at Neunen.
—//—
Things are easy with Toye until they aren't. Two jumps behind them, countless dead left in the soil of France and Holland, and George is greedy for what he has left. Opens his mouth and his hands for it, cradling the heat of Joe Toye between his palms, more sacred than a rosary or a prayer card. Before Bastogne (and they don't even know what's coming for them, yet) is Mourmelon. Slightly dreary, as familiar as his boots and his radio pack, the ground muddy, the quarters carrying a perpetual chill, all the men bored and exhausted.
George spends a lot of time jerking off in the showers, and when he can, crowding Joe Toye against secluded supply sheds, lapping at his gentle mouth, running his fingers over every centimeter of exposed skin, committing it to memory, more hallowed than any prayer for the dead he's ever said.
"Luz, I need—" Toye says, on a chilly day before that fateful order to ship out in the middle of the night to the middle of the Ardennes, both of them using the excuse of their inadequate uniforms to steal body heat from each other. Both of them panting into each other's mouths as George gets a hand down Toye's pants. They're both hard, and he's desperate to have something to think about as he falls asleep later that isn't combat drills or the sound of dying men in the dirt.
"What? What do you need?" he asks breathlessly, fumbling with his belt for a second before getting a hand around him. Joe shudders, looks at him with those dark, half-lidded eyes, which is enough to drive any sane man crazy. He always caught George's attention in the worst way possible, even more so now that they do this. A monumental risk, but George finds he can't dredge up much fear to worry about it. "C'mon, Joe," he goads him, twisting his wrist on the upstroke just to watch him bite back a moan. God, what he wouldn't do to have this every day, away and safe from prying eyes and the demands of the army. The hell did the army know about either of them anyway? Just another pair of boots to point in the right direction. But Joe will never be just that to George, even if they were only friends and didn't touch each other in shadowed corners.
"I—fuck—George, keep going," Joe gasps, voice a rough burr right in his ear. His desire knots up George's insides, stringing him along, and he goes willingly, just to see him when he comes, cradling Joe's face in his free hand, thumb brushing the expanse of his plush lower lip, savoring the sight.
The impression of Joe's hands when he jerks George off is something he will use to keep himself warm across the abandoned fields and frozen forests of the European front. George comes with a gasp that Joe kisses out of his mouth. He's got one hand resting against his lower back, trapping George, but if this is a trap then he's the eager and stupid hare and refuses to learn a damn thing. Not if it means keeping Joe close like this for as long as he can.
They linger in that private space afterwards, still wrapped up in each other, wary to disturb the quiet gentleness of the moment.
"Luz?" Joe asks. George hums, the two of them resting cheek to cheek in parody of a dance, reminding him of that Fred and Ginger song; oh, I'm in Heaven. Well, the war is certainly a far cry from any type of paradise.
"Don't be so formal," he protests mildly, "like I'm your maiden auntie, Jesus Christ." He says it mainly just to get him to laugh. Dry, a rasp that is dying by the day, but George will put everything he can into keeping it alive. Hands pressing down on the ribs until they creak and the heart quits tickin'. Breath to breath until the lungs are emptied out; his or Joe's, it doesn't matter. It's all the same in the end.
"Alright, Christ," Toye grumbles, but there's no exasperation behind the words. "Forget it."
"No, what is it?" He pulls back enough to study Toye properly. His face is drawn, pensive, and looks, at the right angle, decades older than his twenty-odd years. "You can say it here," he tells him, gesturing to the empty gap they're hiding in between some forgotten supply sheds. "Who's gonna know? It's just me, Joe."
"You ever worry…that we're not gonna make it?" The words seem to take a great effort, dragged out of Joe like a nasty bit of shrapnel from an inflamed wound. Bleeding, sharp and festering. A poison. George wets his lips and decides that trying a smile to soothe Joe ain't worth it. He hasn't got many left in him anyway.
"I can't think about it," he says, which is the God's honest truth. There lurks below the surface of the war and the terror something huge and dark and heavy, and if George even so much as brushes against it, he will be devoured. Joe doesn't like that answer, frowning, staring off into the middle distance, refusing to meet George's eye as he chews on something. "Joe," he adds gently, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, trying to get him to talk, dammit.
"George," Joe says, "you can't mean that." His grip at his hip tightens reflexively. Leave a mark, George doesn't tell him, here is proof that you are real.
He scoffs, the sound escaping before his big trap has caught up with his brain. "I mean exactly what I said. I don't think about it." That causes Joe to disentangle from him, and George immediately misses the warmth of him, the expanse of his ribs under his hands, the solid breadth of Joe to lean into.
"That's not—" Joe cuts himself off, and George feels panic distantly rise up.
"Joe," he says, helpless and urgent. The silence stretches on forever, taut as a the moment before you're forced to pull the trigger.
"Forget it," he huffs, getting angry now, turning away. "I doesn't matter anyway, right?"
"That's not what I meant," he tries, reaching out, desperate. If Joe stays maybe George can explain or apologize, make it right. He can't lose Toye, not after everything.
"I know what you said, Luz." Joe's words are final, a wall he can't breach. He goes to leave. George does not follow.
—//—
He fucks it up. Of course he does, they never got any training for this. He's been relying on prayers he memorized by age seven and dumb fucking luck. And nothing lasts forever. Not the war, not the living, not the stolen minutes of Toye between his hands. Not his radio, not warm food or a decent bed. The only constant is death, and the dying.
They're ambushed in Nuenen, and George finds himself huddled behind a wall for cover, all alone, heartbeat quick and scared in his ears. He clumsily pats the pocket that once held his salvaged cross, sending up a quick prayer. There's the staccato rap of gunfire in response to the lower, booming volley of tank artillery. He hopes this isn't his final call; close the curtains, end the routine.
George is so focused on dodging enemy fire, nearly blind in his panic, that he quite literally trips over the body. He almost falls to his knees, but catches himself in time, one hand braced on the leaning wall of a random house. It's a small body, he can't tell the age, just a shock of auburn hair and a torn overcoat, lying facedown. A hand, outstretched, with something inky on the palm that sends spikes through his brain when he reads it, a crushed clump of bluebells tangled in the stiff fingers.
Danger, says a little voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his grandmother. Witch. He ignores it. George reaches out and removes a few of the blooms, mouthing the word to himself. It's Dutch, he doesn't know what it means, he's probably pronouncing it wrong anyway. Immediately, a cold, fearful sweat breaks out across his brow, and his stomach falls into his shoes. Overhead, the sun disappears. Across the way, in another home, there is one window, high up and small, the glass dirty enough that he can't see through it. Someone has hung a scrap of an old sheet from the sill, and they have painted one word on it in smeared, red paint with a crude skull underneath. George doesn't need to know what it says, he can understand the intent well enough: Leave, and don't come back.
"Luz!" Welsh hollers, "Where's the goddamn radio?" Hastily he rests a hand on the crown of the corpse's head and mumbles the end of the Lord's prayer, the words tumbling over themselves, ill-formed and lacking. A chill steals over him, lights up every nerve on the back of his neck, more vivid than a warning flare. It's only after, when they're huddled in the hills, waiting to move, waiting to see if Bull will defy fate and show up alive, does George suspect he might have done something wrong in disturbing that body and reading that word aloud. It's like there's eyes watching him from the dark expanse of the woods they're camped nearby, waiting for him to show his vulnerable belly so they can tear him open. Maybe he's cracking up. Maybe he's not.
—//—
They're in Bastogne and all they do is keep losing. Bodies in the snow, laid out like cuts of meat at the butcher to be picked up by the cadaver boys. Isaac, lead to the slaughter, but this time there is no hand of mercy to stop the knife. All men bleed the same in the end. George feels like an overstretched bowstring, ready to snap.
When he's not having to put on the Lucky St. Luz pantomime, he crawls into the nearest foxhole, usually Toye's or Lip's, even if Toye is withdrawn, nursing a hurt ego, he thinks, and his injured shoulder. Christ, Luz had thought it was over when he heard he got it, but Toye had gone AWOL from the aid station within days, and his presence is the one true comfort George has at this point.
"How's kicks?" he asks, tumbling into the dugout and curling into Joe's side, not caring what it might look like or what Toye might think.
"Same as the last time you goddamn asked," Joe bites out, arms crossed. He winces when George knocks into his wounded shoulder.
"Hey, you havin' Doc look at that?" He shuffles around so they're sitting side by side, the meager tarp that is acting as a roof only offers a modicum of adequate cover and warmth.
"Yes."
"Okay, great, nice talkin' to you too," George mutters, wishing he had a goddamn cigarette, anything to take the edge off. They're all keyed up constantly, braced for the shellacking that could come at any second, and typically does because the Germans are bunch of sneaky fucks.
"Don't start," Joe says, "I swear to God, Luz."
"I ain't starting anything," he replies, "I'm making conversation, maybe you heard of it."
"I'm watching the damn line," Joe says, gesturing loosely to the woods around them and the blank expanse of no man's land before them, the snow there bright and untainted by boot or viscera.
"Alright, alright." Luz throws his hands up in defeat. If Toye wants to keep being snippy then fine. George will just rest here until the morning and then go and find out if Winters needs a runner. He needs to get out of here, if only for a few hours. He knows that Malark or Perc would take the radio for him with the least amount of complaining. "How was the aid station?"
"Miserable," Joe grinds out after a pause, his sharp mood easing up slightly. Venting frustration was the best remedy George had found to Easy's dire circumstances out here in the Bois Jaques. That or doing impressions of Lt Dike. "Couldn't get a wink of sleep, they put us all in a church basement together." George can picture it pretty easily, rows of men crying out in pain, talking to the doctors and the chaplains through the night. A lonely little foxhole does appear more attractive in comparison.
"No Marlene making the rounds, huh?" Joe doesn't laugh at the joke, just sighs a frosty cloud of breath into the dimming light.
"Get some shut eye, Luz," he says, which is about as close to an apology as George is going to get. He is tired, so he complies with a minimal amount of grumbling, somehow managing to drop off despite the adrenaline that is constantly coursing through his body, a high tide of warning.
He wakes up alone. George barely has any time to understand what's happening before the shelling starts, relentless, thundering through the forest, a giant's wrathful hand crushing them. He doesn't realize right away that Toye is gone. Just scrambles over the lip of the foxhole because they're gonna get him if he stays, he needs to find better cover, fuck, fuck, he should have never had touched that corpse in Nuenen, he's been cursed, he's gonna die here in these woods, where's Toye, where is everyone, where—
"Luz!" It's Malark, eyes wide, face haggard, crashing into him, the blow nearly knocking George over with concussive force. "Jesus, where the hell were you?" he says inanely as they crouch low and start to search for a foxhole that isn't covered in debris. George doesn't bother to reply, just holds onto his sleeve so they won't get separated, fingers wound so tight they're turning white in the cold.
They scramble over ice and snow and the ruined splinters of trees, finally locating a foxhole they can hide in, half hidden under some clever soldier's construction of ripped tarp and pine branches. They huddle together like foxes in a den, trembling with cold and something more that they can't admit out loud, ears ringing from the flash-bang of mortar fire. The earth lets out a heaving, shuddering ripple and then goes still. Neither of them dare to move, in case it's a tactic to lure them out to get picked off by more German artillery or snipers. The sound of ruined branches falling to the ground, their meager connections giving out, is almost as loud as the shelling was. Quiet settles around them, suffocating and final.
It isn't until he hears it, that razor thin, distant cry of Guarnere hollering his head off, does George think, Wait, where's Toye? Where's fucking Joe?
Overhead the woods stare back, impassive. George shivers in that damp, cramped foxhole and prays: Please Lord, can You spare some patience for the dying?