Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nix had never before had cause to write a death-notice telegram for one man, much less two dozen.

It should have been easy. He didn’t know any of these boys individually, and they had standardized language for these telegrams. After he got back, he’d been given 72 hours to get this done, which felt like a test from his higher-ups.

It should have been enough to just demote him, but it never worked out that way. The military couldn’t just punish you and then leave it at that. His demotion had been a stern warning that he was not acting normal, and needed to get himself together. Unfortunately, Nix did not give a fuck about acting normal, and he was getting to the end of his stash of whiskey.

He spent the evening drinking and pacing, staring at the typewriter on his billeted desk and the stack of telegram paper next to it. For reference, Harry had provided him with a copy of a condolence telegram that Dick had written recently, and it lay beside the stack. It wasn’t long — a telegram couldn’t be. Nix had written condolence letters before, earlier in the war, but now telegrams were standard. He had never put this into so few words.

His pacing was interrupted by a messenger coming to the front door with a death-notice telegram of his own: Roosevelt’s. Nix said, “Christ,” then stood there in the foyer of this mansion staring at the paper in his hand while the messenger waited on the front step, panting in the warm spring air. He had clearly run all the way here. He shouldn’t have bothered.

“Thanks,” Nix finally said to him. “Dismissed.”

When he went downstairs to tell the officers, no one seemed all that surprised — the entire army had spent months gossiping about how deathly ill Roosevelt had seemed post-Yalta. Speirs looked like he wasn’t sure what the president’s death had to do with him, if anything, and Harry said, “Damn, he’s not going to see Hitler surrender.” Dick made a stalwart face of impersonal grief, then looked more carefully at Nix.

Nix was aware he looked like shit, and he slunk out of the room before Dick could size him up thoroughly. As he walked away, though, he felt Dick’s eyes land on his back, and he knew Dick was going to come up and check on him within a matter of hours. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did.

With that deadline in mind, Nix went upstairs, drank more, and wrote two drafts of a telegram for one of the boys. The first one was too wordy, and he had to discard it, because his fucking signature wouldn’t even fit. The second one was ludicrously, offensively brief, and he left it sitting there in the typewriter as a monument to his own stupidity while he went back to pacing.

It was during this pacing that Dick knocked on his door and said, “Nix?”

At the sound, Nix ducked his head and shoulders like a cat resisting someone’s touch. “Yeah,” he called, setting the bottle in his hand down on the desk.

Dick opened the door without asking if he could come in, and peeked inside. “Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s not,” Nix said, retreating deeper into the smoke-filled room and putting out his cigarette.

Dick came in and sat on the edge of the bureau, the same way he had done yesterday.

“Are you guys done for the night?” Nix said.

“Yeah, I think so,” Dick said, looking over at the typewriter on the desk. “You still working on those letters?”

“Correct.”

“You should take your own advice,” Dick said, meeting his eyes. “Don’t overthink this.”

As he had been yesterday, Nix was too drunk to drop his gaze in contrition. They just stared at each other in silence for a long moment, neither moving. Nix didn’t breathe. A frisson passed between them, and a chill ran up his spine that he had to shrug off, but he still didn’t look away.

Dick looked away first, flicking his eyes back to the typewriter. “I can help you,” he said.

“I already have your help,” Nix said, gesturing at the letter Harry had given him.

Dick got up and walked over to the desk, his boots making the floor creak. He picked up the yellow action copy of his own telegram and examined it, then clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. “I’m not exactly verbose, am I?” he muttered.

“No one would accuse you of that, no,” Nix said. “It’s serviceable, though. Good enough for government work.”

“Exactly… that’s what I’m saying. It’s not supposed to be a work of art.”

“That’s not the issue here. First, they’re not my men — I don’t know them from Adam.”

“I do get that,” Dick said, turning to him. “What have you written so far?”

Nix went over to sit on the edge of the bed, picking up his mostly-empty glass from the table and draining the rest of it. The alcohol wasn’t really helping, at this point. “‘To whom it may concern: your son died for nothing.’”

Dick looked at him, then turned back to the typewriter and pulled the sheet out of it.

“Don’t check,” Nix said. “It doesn’t say that, I’m not that drunk, don’t check it.”

“I’m not checking,” Dick intoned, turning again and leaning against the desk. “I’m just looking.”

“It’s lousy.”

Dick said nothing.

“It is, right?” Nix said.

“You need to think about it in terms of what the family most urgently wants to know,” Dick said, glancing at him over the top of the telegram sheet. “There are boxes you need to check, and once you’ve checked them all, you’ll realize you’ve written the entire thing.”

Anger throbbed somewhere in Nix’s abdomen, in an organ lower than his heart. “They didn’t need to die. This war is all but won. There’s no box for that.”

“Lew, take a cold shower and get some sleep. You can finish these tomorrow with a clear head.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep.”

“According to who?”

“I can just tell.”

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Nix said. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

Dick gave him a flicker of a smile.

“Are you going to bed?”

“At some point,” Dick said.

Nix spread his legs and leaned his elbows against his thighs. “Are you going to be able to sleep?”

“I assume so.”

“What’s your secret?”

“I have to,” Dick said simply.

Nix looked at him, blinking past the burning pain of eyestrain. Dick had been well-kempt ever since they had arrived in Germany. He was holding himself together with a vengeance in this near-victory twilight that they were now in. Nix, conversely, felt himself unraveling from close proximity to both the Germans and the end of the war.

The closer the end got, the further away it seemed, and the pall of absurd unfairness grew stronger every day. It was ludicrous for their men to still be dying with victory so close. It was ludicrous to be surrounded by everyday people who had been complicit in so much senseless evil, and to be squatting in their fine homes. Nix had grown up in fine homes just like these, and found them claustrophobic; it was even worse when they stank of war. There was more dignity in a foxhole.

Their foxhole in Bastogne was on Nix’s mind when he said, “If you could just sit with me for a while, I could probably bang out five of these.”

Dick inclined his head. “Okay. You want my input?”

“No, just keep me company,” Nix said, and got up to sit down behind the typewriter.

He was always more at ease when Dick was around — he felt capable of doing things he otherwise couldn’t. Even now, when he felt like he had spiders crawling around inside of his head and turpentine instead of blood, this was the case. Nix sat there and carefully typed out eight of the telegrams, occasionally calling out to Dick for input. Dick laid behind him on the bed, completely silent in between these calls to action.

At one point, Nix looked back and saw that Dick had closed his eyes.

Dick sensed his gaze and said, “I’m not asleep.”

“Did I accuse you of anything?”

“No, I just want you to know I’m not asleep.”

“You can sleep in my bed,” Nix said. “I’ll just go not-sleep in your bed.”

Dick opened his eyes. “Your bed is more comfortable,” he muttered.

“That’s not saying much.”

“I don’t think the Germans prize comfort.”

“Yeah, that’s why they’re like that.”

Dick laughed. “We sound so spoiled, now.”

“People get accustomed to luxury in a hurry,” Nix said. “I don’t think I can write any more of these.”

“How many did you get done?”

“Eight.”

“Are they serviceable?”

Nix looked at the last letter he had pulled free from the typewriter. Your son was killed in combat… I extend to you my sincerest sympathy on your great loss… He died in service to his country…

“I checked the boxes,” Nix said.

Dick sat up, rubbing his eyes. “That’s good.”

Nix got up and wobbled on his feet from a head rush. He looked at Dick, who looked back at him. There was tension lingering in Dick’s face; tension that had been there since he told Nix about his demotion. It wasn’t that Dick seemed upset with him, because he didn’t get upset with him, as a rule — it was more a look of loneliness, like he was afraid Nix might disappear under the waters of himself.

Nix didn’t know how to assuage that fear. He was treading those waters, at present. He needed to grab onto someone or something, and he longed to grab onto Dick. But Dick Winters belonged more and more to the Army these days, and that belonging was in service of the triumph of good over evil. There was nothing else to it. Nix just had to suck it up.

He went over and sat beside Dick on his bed. Their thighs were touching, which wasn’t unusual for them, but felt weighty at the moment.

“About yesterday,” Nix began.

“No need,” Dick said. “You had a scare. I understand.”

This was not an act of mercy but one of avoidance, which annoyed Nix. He responded by nudging his thigh against Dick’s, just to see what he would do. Dick’s quadriceps tightened up, but he didn’t move away.

Nix smiled to himself. He was drunk enough to think this shit was funny, instead of seeing it for the reckless behavior that it was.

He knew there was something between them, he had known since they first met, but it had always been a matter of how far Dick would allow them to take it. Tonight, he wanted to take it all the way; tonight, he needed Dick’s hands to hold him fast to the spinning earth. He just wasn’t sure how Dick felt, himself.

He had gotten hints. There had been plenty of inappropriate moments between them that went unremarked upon by either of them. They had slept in the same bed, and sat too close, and Dick had once stroked his hair for a long time after he thought Nix had fallen asleep. During Bastogne, in the dark depths of the Ardennes, they had huddled for warmth obscenely, wrapped carelessly around each other like lovers under blankets in their foxhole. One night, Nix had shoved his hands under Dick’s uniform and up against his bare torso for warmth, and Dick had not only allowed this, but had wrapped his arms around Nix’s waist in reply. They could both feel each other’s respondent erections, but they let this go without comment. Strange things happened in wartime.

Each time they misstepped like that, Nix expected Winters to pull away from him, but he never did. He was always a little awkward the next day, but nothing more. Nix thought, perhaps delusionally, that these moments only served to bring them closer — and the closer they became, the better they both were for it. So many actions and engagements had hung on their ability to read each other’s minds, and the shame about being a queer that had grown up around Nix over the years, like ivy eating brick, paled when held up beside the fact that these stolen moments with Dick made him better at his job. Pressing his palm to a hot bare stretch of Winters’ chest in that foxhole, feeling a beating heart and dog tags under his palm — that feeling had helped see him through the misery of their circumstances. He was missing it right now.

“No, let’s talk about it,” Nix said, following a gut instinct like he so often did. He laid back on the bed, letting his jacket ride up and expose his stomach.

Dick looked down at him with a half-lidded, no-nonsense look. “Do you plan to stop drinking?”

“No.”

“Then there’s nothing to talk about.”

“What if you ordered me to stop drinking?” Nix said.

“I’m not in the habit of giving you orders, am I?” Dick said, studying him. “Would you follow it, if I did?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you? Because you don’t want to put me in the position of disobeying you?”

“Because it’s too big an ask, and I’m not going to set you up to fail.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. Nix’s breathing had slowed. He tipped his head back, filling with want.

“Fail you,” he said.

Dick shook his head.

“Fail myself,” Nix said, “because I’d be doing it for you?”

Dick said nothing. He just continued to look at him, his eyes soft.

“Why did you come up here?” Nix said.

“To check on you,” Dick said. “See how you’re feeling.”

“I feel about as good as I look,” Nix said.

Dick smiled. “You must feel fantastic.”

“Yeah, incredible. I could take out a Panzer with my bare hands. Don’t laugh at me, I’m serious.”

Dick glanced away, still grinning.

“Why don’t you bunk with me tonight?” Nix said. “This bed is big enough. This is a married-people bed.”

“Not a good idea,” Dick murmured.

“Why not?”

Dick was silent.

“There’s also a shitty little couch,” Nix said. “Don’t tell me you’re too good for my shitty little couch.”

“You’re drunk, Nix, you need to get some sleep.”

“We’ve covered this, I’m not gonna. Hey.”

Dick met his eyes again, his mouth flat.

“You shouldn’t hold me to a different standard,” Nix said. “Or a lower standard.”

Dick’s voice was husky when he replied, “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“You said as much.”

Dick shook his head, smiling at him again, and reached over to pat Nix on the stomach. Nix, sensing an opportunity, reached up to take his hand. Dick did not react to this; he let his hand go limp in Nix’s, and Nix clung to his calloused fingers, his heart pounding.

The low, harsh light in the room was contributing to the burning in Nix’s eyes, so he closed them, wanting relief as well as plausible deniability for what he was about to do next. Then he moved their joined hands south, toward his crotch.

Dick said and did nothing until their hands reached Nix’s belt, and then he clucked his tongue.

“What,” Nix said, holding his breath.

“What are you doing?”

“I believe it’s called fraternization?”

“That’s not funny,” Dick said.

“No, it certainly isn’t,” Nix agreed.

Dick withdrew his hand and stood up, the bed creaking. Under the suffocating blanket of alcohol, Nix’s brain sluggishly threw up some shame and anxiety. Dick crossed the room and put his hand on the doorknob, then froze for a long moment. Nix watched him. The room felt airless.

Dick took his hand off of the doorknob and flipped the lock, instead. Nix let his head fall back against the bed in grateful relief. He closed his eyes again.

He heard Dick’s boots cross the floor again, then felt Dick displacing the air in front of him, then felt a warm knee press against the bed between his thighs and a palm close around his left wrist.

Nix opened his eyes. Dick was looming over him, staring at him, his face stern.

“Is this something you need?” Dick said.

“What?”

Dick didn’t repeat himself, just cocked his head like he knew Nix had heard the first time.

So Nix said, “You tell me.”

They looked at each other in wordless defiance, both breathing hard despite a lack of actual exertion. Then Nix pulled his wrist free from Dick’s grasp and sat up, kissing him. Their lips came together with force, and intense arousal coursed through Nix’s sluggish, drunken body, awakening it. He felt fever-hot. Dick’s warm mouth was opening up and welcoming him in, and he pressed his tongue inside while Dick’s hand came to the side of his face, his thumb digging into the hollow of Nix’s cheekbone.

Nix rubbed his stubbly jaw against Dick’s and said, “You wish I had shaved?”

“No,” Dick muttered, and he undid Nix’s belt, pulling it free and then reaching his hand down into his underwear.

Nix’s eyes rolled back in pleasure as Dick spat in his hand and started to stroke his semi-hard cock. He distantly registered that Dick was doing this with a cool ease that was either a testament to his nerve or an indication that he had done this before. It seemed like the second one. He lacked even a drop of the feigned hesitation of a man who had finally given into touching another man’s dick.

Nix groaned and squirmed underneath him, breathing hard, and Dick said, “Quiet,” in a soft voice as he worked.

“Fuck,” Nix moaned, heedless, and he felt Dick’s cock pulse where it was pressed to Nix’s thigh.

This was the first indication that Dick wanted this just as badly as he did, and Nix was elated by it. “Do you want to fuck me?” he panted as Dick’s strong hand moved up and down his shaft.

Dick’s blazing eyes met his.

“I know you,” Nix said, breathing hard. “You haven’t — I know you haven’t had any in years, you fucking nun... You can have me. It would be good for you. Good for morale.”

Dick said nothing. His cock spoke for him, twitching again.

“You want it,” Nix said, staring up at him, elated as he always was when Dick Winters acted like a regular human male. “Take it. Take me.”

Dick bent over him, still stroking him, and brushed his lips against Nix’s ear in a way that made lightning shoot up Nix’s spine. “Stop being so loud,” he whispered, his hot breath tickling Nix. “There are four guys in rooms along this hallway.”

“If you fuck me I’ll shut up.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Dick said, and Nix almost fell apart in the bed.

When Dick let him up, he went scrambling for the bottle of mineral oil that he used for leather conditioning, then tossed it onto the bedsheets and started tearing his clothes off. Dick was also doing the latter, though he looked less crazed about it — maybe because he wasn’t drunk. Nix’s fumbling hands kept glancing off of buttonholes and overshooting their destinations, and then he tripped on his pants when they were around his ankles.

“Come here,” he said when Dick had stripped stark naked and straightened up, unfolding like a pale, lissome jack-knife.

Dick looked at him, his face inscrutable, and Nix kicked his pants away and went over to sit on the bed. “Come here,” he said again, and it came out as a growl.

“Nix,” Dick said. “We can still stop.”

It took a real fucking lunatic, someone nuttier than a shithouse mouse, to be standing there fully erect and looking at a willing body on a bed and still be trying to do the honorable thing. This was made crazier still by the fact that Dick had been celibate for so long. Nix would have gone AWOL and jumped in the ocean by now if he hadn’t been drinking and at least occasionally getting his rocks off, and Dick had been doing neither.

“Come here,” Nix repeated one last time.

Dick did not fight the moment; he came over immediately. It occurred to Nix that he’d been desperate for someone to give him permission to do this. Their naked bodies made impact, and they started grinding their hips together, letting out breathy exhales into each other’s ears in between kisses so forceful that Nix could feel Dick’s teeth bruising his lips.

After a minute or so of this, Dick started thrusting against his thigh, the sound of his breathing growing lower and more guttural. His light eyes had the vacant look of someone in a bad state of need. Nix fumbled for the mineral oil and opened it, accidentally dumping it all over the bed, then used a sloppy palmful to lube up Dick, giving him half a handjob as he did so.

Dick groaned and leaned into him, shoving his hands into Nix’s hair and digging his elbows down into Nix’s armpits, which hurt in a delicious way. Nix spread his legs and wrapped them around Dick’s waist. He was still sore from making the jump, but he was drunk and sex-crazed enough not to register the rough sting in his hamstrings.

“Do it,” Nix murmured, and kissed him.

Dick responded by bringing Nix’s top lip into his mouth and sucking it. Nix let out a low groan.

“Shh, shh-shh,” Dick whispered, nudging the tip of his dick against Nix.

Nix, who had been on both sides of this interaction often enough to know, said: “If you want me quiet, give me something to bite down on.”

Dick reached behind himself on the bed and retrieved his belt, offering it to Nix, who grinned and accepted it between his teeth like a horse taking a bit. Then he clenched down on it with violent force as Dick split him open. He started to tremble — more from elation than discomfort — and Dick pressed his nose to Nix’s temple, whispering apologies to him.

“Stop that,” Nix hissed through a mouthful of belt. “Just get on with it.”

Dick started to fuck him, and Nix wrapped his arms around him, using those and his legs to pull Dick in as close as he could possibly get him. Dick was excellent at this, and it was unclear if this was from experience, or if sex was just one of many things that he took to naturally. Nix was willing to bet it was the latter. He would certainly bet that Dick had never fucked a man like this before, even if he’d had queer experiences. He fumbled to touch Nix’s cock like its presence was a surprise, then began to stroke it in tandem with his own thrusts. Nix’s wild moans died in his throat, strangled by his clenched jaw. He stared up at the ceiling, delirious with pleasure, throbbing with need.

Dick kept kissing him on the neck and cheek, and then finally removed the belt so he could kiss him on the mouth and smother his cries that way. Nix wrapped an arm around him, his head swimming, and dug his nails into Dick’s shoulder. Dick’s cock twitched inside him, and Dick let out a soft breath of effort, the heat of which made the hair on Nix’s neck stand on end.

With the arm that was around him, Nix tangled his fingers in Dick’s hair and then grabbed a handful of it, tipping his ear to his mouth so he could whisper, “This has gotta be better than your hand, right, Major?”

Dick’s cock twitched again, and he laughed. Anyone else would have started swearing, but Dick just whispered, “You…”

Nix was taken aback by a particularly hard thrust and let out a groan. Dick lifted a hand and put it over Nix’s mouth, pressing down like he was smothering him. Nix grinned behind his fingers, breathing hard through his nostrils. Dick dropped the hand and started kissing him again, sliding his hands back into Nix’s hair and swirling his thumbs against his sweat-damp scalp as he worked his hips.

“Please,” Nix moaned against Dick’s mouth.

Dick kissed him with more vigor and then, without warning, slid out of him and patted him on the hip. “Roll over.”

“What?”

“Roll over, you’re tired.”

Nix rolled over onto his stomach, his face against the bedspread, and felt blissful relief in his thigh muscles. Okay, yeah, he was tired. He hadn’t even noticed. Dick could have easily flipped him over if he wanted to, but it was probably more gentlemanly to say something.

Dick slid back into him and lay down over top of him, hooking his arms underneath Nix’s and pressing kisses to the sweaty nape of his neck and the side of his face as he fucked him. Nix closed his eyes in bliss. He was no longer in this room, no longer in this house, no longer in Germany. He was somewhere else entirely.

“Don’t stop,” Nix mumbled into the bedspread.

“Can’t go forever,” Dick rasped. “Sorry.”

Nix started to work his own hips, rubbing his weeping dick against the bed, needing relief. He was already feeling lonely at the idea of Dick pulling out, leaving him, and going back to his own room. He wanted to have an orgasm to cut the bitter sting of that knowledge. Then, once Dick left, he could try to drink himself to sleep. It was better than nothing.

Nix got no warning that Dick was about to come. He just heard, “Oh,” and then he felt Dick stop and pull out.

He rolled over and made eye contact with Dick, who was breathing heavily.

“What?” Nix said, because Dick was also looking at him funny.

Dick grabbed him by the hips and dragged him down the bed, then bent over him and took Nix’s dick in his mouth.

You could have knocked Nix over with a feather. His eyes rolled back, and he let out a wheezy groan, squeezing the bedspread in his fists. “Fuck...”

Dick reached up and tapped him on the stomach as if to silence him. Nix shut his mouth and writhed under him. Dick wasn’t giving him the best blowjob he had ever had, or anything, but the fact that it was Dick’s hot mouth around him was driving him absolutely crazy. He had dreamed about this. He had gotten himself off thinking about this.

The air was ripe with the smell of cigarette smoke, old linens, sweat and semen, and Nix dragged in lungfuls of it as Dick licked his cock, his eyes shut tight. He whimpered as quietly as he could and squeezed the bedspread even harder. He was trying not to thrust up into Dick’s mouth, but he felt himself doing it anyway, and Dick didn’t seem to mind. Nix’s cock nudged at the clutch of Dick’s throat, momentarily choking him, and Dick just responded by squeezing a handful of his ass. Nix wondered for a moment if a German spy had drugged him into a hallucinogenic fantasy.

When he came, it felt so good that it knocked the air out of him. Nix bit his tongue to muffle the sounds he wanted to make, gripping Dick hard by his hair and squeezing his thighs against his jaw. Dick backed off of him, coughing, and fumbled around in the pockets of Nix’s jacket where it lay on the bed until he found a handkerchief, which he spat into.

Nix lay there panting, agonized by pleasure. “Dick,” he said, reaching for him. All he wanted was to touch him.

Dick lunged up over him and kissed him with a mouth that tasted like spunk. Nix opened his own mouth wide, welcoming Dick’s tongue, and wrapped his arms around him. Dick brought his hands to Nix’s face and kept them there, stroking his scratchy cheeks.

“Dick,” Nix said again, and it was even more of a plea this time. “Stay the night.”

“I can’t.”

“No one’ll know.”

“I can’t, I’ve already been in here too long anyway.”

“No one’ll know. We’ve slept in the same bed before.”

Dick pulled back, still holding his face. His eyes were stony like jewels. “Not like this,” he said.

Nix felt a stabbing pain in his chest. He had for so long feared doing irreparable damage to their relationship, and now he might have done it. “Dick,” he said again.

Dick ran a thumb over Nix’s lips. “I’m asking you not to make this hard on me,” he said without breaking eye contact.

Nix just looked back at him, aching with frustration. “It’s up to you if it’s hard or not.”

Dick sat up and slid off the bed, starting to collect his clothes. He dressed while facing the desk, quiet the entire time, and then he said in a low voice, “You think I don’t want to stay? I can’t.”

“Dick,” Nix said, “I don’t actually know what the fuck you want.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Refresh my memory,” Nix said, sitting up and slinging his legs over the edge of the bed, watching Dick try to fix his hair in the small mirror on the bureau. “Say it out loud, instead of counting on me knowing.”

Dick spent another thirty seconds working on his hair in silence, then came over to Nix and took him by the face again, leaning down so that their foreheads touched. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing each other’s air. Nix reached up and grabbed his left hand, holding it in place.

“I’m going,” Dick whispered. “Get some rest. You need to sleep.”

“I don’t,” Nix said, brushing his lips against Dick’s, nudging their noses together.

“Get some sleep, wake up at a reasonable time, shower, and be downstairs around 0800 hours, please.”

“Is the showering necessary?”

“As a personal favor to me, yeah. Hey...”

Nix drew back from him and looked up at him, bleary-eyed. Dick stroked his hair off his forehead and said, “You did well with those letters. Or at least the one that’s in the typewriter.”

“When’d you have time to read that?”

“Just now, while I was getting dressed. It was good, Nix, even though you didn’t know him.”

Nix blinked, the lights in the room pinwheeling at the edges of his vision before he closed his eyes. “Okay.”

Dick petted Nix’s hair some more, and then his hand was gone, and he was walking away. Nix kept his eyes closed as he listened to his footsteps retreat, then the thick sound of the bolt unlocking, then a pause before the creak of the door and the sound of boots in the hall. Then he wrapped his arms around himself and fell back into bed.

/

Nix woke up feeling like the world should have ended overnight, but it hadn’t. The sun was shining through the window. German birds were chirping outside of it, and he could hear the clamor of men in the street down below.

It was 0800 on the dot. He rose with a headache and went into the bathroom to give himself a quick bath with the cold-to-lukewarm water. It was a whore’s bath, like the baths Dick had taken during Bastogne. Nix had gotten a lot of delight out of daily asking Dick if he had enjoyed his “whore bath,” and hearing Dick faithfully reply, with a note of amusement: “Yes, I enjoyed my French bath.”

Nix put on his uniform, shivering, and made an attempt at slicking his hair back, which was rare these days. He used to be so good about that.

Downstairs in the dining room, the officers were clustered around the ornate, claw-footed wooden table for breakfast. An array of small, square windows on the dark walls were pouring harsh morning light onto Dick, Lipton, Harry and Speirs, who were sitting perfectly equidistant at each edge of the table, like points on a compass.

Dick was poring over papers to his left while he picked at a plate of bacon. Nix’s heart sped up when he spotted him, so he tried to keep him in his peripheral vision. The rest of his vision was blurry from how hungover he was, but as he strode over to the table, he saw orange liquid in glasses.

“Is that orange juice?” he said to Lipton, who was closest to him.

Lipton nodded.

“Actual?” Nix said. “Not from powder?”

Harry looked up and said, “Speirs liberated some fresh oranges from a house nearby. I think they’d had them shipped in.”

Speirs looked up from the week-old newspaper he was reading and smiled at Nix.

“Oranges,” Nix said in amazement. “Orange juice.” He hadn’t had fresh-squeezed orange juice in years.

“Yeah, did you know you can drink it without vodka?” Harry said. “It’s not bad.”

Nix laughed. Dick looked up, then, and made eye contact with him.

The earth shifted under Nix’s feet, and his gut lurched. They stared at each other across the table for a moment, before Dick lifted his hand and pushed his glass of orange juice across the table toward Nix, who caught it before it skidded off the edge.

“Have mine,” Dick said. “There’s more oranges, but nobody feels like squeezing them.”

“Isn’t that what orderlies are for?” Nix said, continuing to stare at Dick even after he dropped his gaze back to his papers. His face was queasily hot; he felt desperate for Dick to look at him again. “Squeezing oranges?”

No one laughed at this, despite his humorous intent.

“Are you doing your morning briefing?” Harry said, rubbing his eyes.

“The men are already mustered for breakfast, if you want to head over,” Speirs said.

“Uh,” Nix said, breaking his gaze from Dick. “Sure. I should probably tell them their commander in chief is dead.”

“I’m sure they already know,” Harry said. “Even if they’ve been under a rock, they can see all the flags are at half staff.”

“Hey, that could be for anyone,” Nix said, and took a sip of the orange juice. It was acidic in a way he had grown unused to, and he made a face. “Speirs?”

“Yeah?”

“That house you liberated the oranges from, did it have a liquor cabinet?”

“I was kidding about the screwdrivers, Nix,” Harry said.

Nix laughed, but kept his eyes on Speirs.

“I don’t think it did,” Speirs said. “I only saw a wine rack. You want me to show you where it is, though?”

“Yeah,” Nix said. He had to start reckoning with the fact that he was completely out of VAT 69, and wasn’t likely to find any in this part of Germany. Emergency substitutions were necessary. “Did you, uh, scatter the inhabitants?”

“Oh, they’re scattered,” Speirs said with another smile.

Dick looked up from his papers, and Nix again felt a tremendous jolt as their eyes met. “Why don’t you sit, Nix? There’s chairs.”

Nix was finding it hard to think or breathe. He wanted so badly to talk to Dick in private, but he was afraid to ask for that. He was afraid of ‘no.’ Even the littlest no, not now, was beyond his tolerance. At the moment, he wanted Dick to throw down his papers, jump to his feet, and shout, “Everything is fine between us!” in front of God and Lipton and everybody.

In lieu of this, Nix sat down and continued drinking his orange juice. He listened to Speirs and Dick discussing fraternization between the men and German women, and his ears pricked up at Dick saying, “Should I remind them that we have a policy against it?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Speirs said, shrugging. “It’ll scare a few, at least. We need to get the VD back under control, we’re running low on prophylactic kits.”

“Cheers,” Nix said, draining the rest of the juice from his glass. “To Dick’s triumphant anti-fraternization policy.”

No one seemed to know how to react to this, especially since he sounded a little maudlin as he said it, like someone’s drunk mother slumped over a piano.

Dick continued to avoid looking at him. “It’s not my policy,” he said. “It’s Ike’s.”

“Alright,” Nix said, slapping his hands down on the table and getting up. “I’m going to stop by battalion and get the wire, then do my briefing… you want me to include that? ‘SHAEF told you, no hanky-panky’?”

Harry laughed, bless him.

Dick met his eyes again, but this time Nix was better able to steel himself. “No, I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Thanks.”

Nix started wondering if they had never actually had sex, and instead he was just going insane, but then he caught a spark of disquiet in Dick’s eyes. That was the look Winters got after he had made what he felt was a mistake. Great.

“You don’t want some breakfast?” Dick said.

“No,” Nix said. He let go of the table and walked away.

/

With Varsity over, Nix was left with a dearth of things to do. It was waiting time, which meant it was drinking time. He did his morning briefing, then checked in with the men who were babysitting their many, many German POWs, and collected all the intel they had gathered overnight from said Germans. As was always the case with a deluge of information, much of it was worthless bullshit or outright lies, but Nix had a well-honed talent for identifying the few useful scraps. He picked out the leads he would follow up on personally with one-on-one questioning, passed the rest on up to regiment, then went back to scrounging for alcohol and ignoring the pounding in his head.

He saw Dick a few times that day. Nix was avoiding him, but Dick seemed to come looking for him, popping into rooms and scanning for Nix like he just wanted to lay eyes on him. When they physically crossed paths or had to talk, Dick was attentive, standing close and touching him on the shoulder the way he usually did. The way they spoke to each other was falsely mannered and professional, but they were in front of people, so that wasn’t too unusual. They had never been able to quite be themselves around everyone else.

For his part, Nix wished Dick wouldn’t be so normal with him. If he wasn’t going to sit him down and explain exactly what last night had meant, Nix didn’t want the false hope of normalcy. Of course, now Nix was actually supposed to be at battalion headquarters instead of having just snuck off there to be by Dick’s side, so he had no choice but to suffer this. Hoist by his own petard.

When Dick was in the same room as him but otherwise occupied, Nix couldn’t help watching him. He was looking for signs of lost sleep or worry, but any visible strain on Dick’s face had already been there for months. He looked exhausted and older than his years. He listened to people with the unerring attention of a hunting dog, his eyes fierce, his mouth a thin line. Dick was like the human manifestation of an entire army holding its breath as it approached the finish line.

In a fit of defiance that began around 4 p.m., Nix finished the remaining twelve death notice telegrams and sent them all off well before his deadline. With that taken care of, he knocked off work for the day and went looking for liquor. He would have settled for any kind of blended whiskey at this point, but he was losing hope daily of finding any here in Germany, which was like a fucking beer prison.

A decent wine would do in a pinch, and when Speirs led him to the house that he’d looted earlier, Nix found a fully stocked wine rack. They had come here directly from the mail outpost after running into each other there, so Nix thanked Speirs by handing him a package containing a pair of driving shoes that his mother had sent him.

Speirs tore open the package as they stood together in the basement of this ransacked house, then squinted at the shoes and said, “What am I doing with these?”

“Pawning them,” Nix said, sliding the blade of his pocket knife into the cork of a wine bottle that he was gripping between his thighs. “That’s Italian leather.”

“And you don’t want them?”

“Christ, no. Take them, send them to your wife. Otherwise I’ll just throw them out.” Nix popped the cork out, and a piece of it fell inside the wine bottle. He ignored this and brought it to his mouth to take a long swig.

Speirs shrugged. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Can you help me carry some bottles out?”

“Yeah, sure.”

/

The wine Nix scrounged was mostly sweet German reds, and they got him a queasy, horny, flushed sort of drunk that he didn’t like at all. It only made him crave the fortifying taste of whiskey more than he already was.

He drank two bottles anyway, then played poker with the other officers until he couldn’t stand it anymore, until he was filled head to toe with the urge to go somewhere and do something. Poker was a futile exercise when you had never given a shit about money and no longer cared about winning things. Winning meant nothing, apparently. Winning a war just meant you had to idle endlessly, tallying up deaths that no longer meant anything, looking your conquered enemy in the face all day long.

Nix sometimes wondered if he had died at some point and reached purgatory without realizing. The continued presence of Winters was a strong negative indicator: nothing as good as Winters would be allowed in purgatory, except maybe a Winters that went suddenly cold on him and shut him out. Nix comforted himself with the memory of Dick’s hand on his shoulder earlier that day. He didn’t even know where Dick was, right now — probably asleep.

Nix barely registered the rain that was soaking him as he wandered the benighted streets, craving the familiarity of VAT 69. He was already drunk, so it wasn’t about getting drunk. It was about what he loved. He wanted to have what he loved, he wanted it in his hand. He yearned for the shape of the bottle, he wanted the taste on his tongue, and yet it was nowhere to be found. No amount of money could make it appear.

He ransacked his way into a liquor store, finding it empty of the one thing he wanted, then heard distant shouting in German as he walked away, glass crunching under his feet. He did his best to ignore it, but German yelling made him tense up, even now. Where is your Scotch? he wanted to holler back. These fucking people.

Nix made his way back to his billet, trying to pretend not to be drunk in front of the enlisted men who saluted him as he walked by. He was going to barf up that wine, and soon. It had been too sweet, and he wasn’t used to sweetness anymore. His gut was gurgling like he’d been poisoned. He ducked into an alley and emptied his stomach, then inhaled deeply, letting the spring breeze cool the sweat on his face. He could tell more vomit was in him, but he couldn’t get it up at present.

Once inside, he made a valiant effort to get to his room without incident, but ended up grabbing a vase off of a bureau in the upstairs hallway and throwing up into it. Nix clung to the vase in relief, swaying on his feet, then slid down until he was sitting on the floor. He was done puking, he could tell, but he needed to rest before he went on.

After a minute or so, he heard footsteps. He looked up, squinting through darkness and blurred vision, and saw a familiar silhouette that said: “Nix?”

“Yeah,” Nix said.

Dick bent over him and touched his shoulder. “You throw up in that vase?”

Nix let out a soft laugh, trying to focus his gaze on Dick. “Yeah.”

“It looks expensive.”

“It’s not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it’s a knockoff of a famous one,” Nix slurred, rubbing his eyes. “And it isn’t even a very good copy. Why are you up? Isn’t it late?”

“It’s zero hour.”

“That’s late for you.”

Dick offered him his hand. “I went to sleep around nine, slept for a few hours, then woke back up.”

Nix took the hand and let Dick help him to his feet. He accidentally stumbled into him in the process, and Dick held onto him, steadying him. He was dressed in pajamas that smelled like fresh air, and his body was warm. Nix couldn’t help leaning into him.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked.

“No,” Dick said in a whisper. “No, I’ve been up for a few minutes now. I just thought I heard you out in the hall.”

“How could you tell it was me?”

“Your footsteps.”

Nix pulled back so he could meet his eyes. “And me throwing up?”

Dick smiled. “I might have recognized that, too.”

“Hey, hey… I’ve only thrown up in front of you once before.”

“I know, Lew.”

“And I was sick, not drunk. I don’t usually throw up when I drink. It’s this fucking Kraut wine.”

“I know.”

“It’s probably poisoned,” Nix said. “They poisoned their own wine and left it for us to find.”

In the low light, he could see a flicker of a smile on Dick’s face. “Didn’t know you were a wine drinker.”

“I’m not. I’m not drinking the sewage that passes for alcohol around here, anymore. I’d rather be sober,” he added theatrically.

“Sure. Let’s get you to bed.”

Nix was more than happy to lean on Dick as Dick led him down the hall to his bedroom and through the little anteroom outside it. Dick took him all the way to his bed, an arm around his waist, despite the fact that Nix didn’t really need this much help. He was playing up how tired and stumbly he was, and maybe Dick knew that, but he held him fast until he had delivered him to the edge of his bed.

“Do you have a time you want me up tomorrow?” he said, closing his eyes and enjoying the spinning room and the flush in his face as Dick knelt to unlace his boots.

“Nope,” Dick said, tugging his left boot off of his foot. “Don’t really need you tomorrow morning. Sleep in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah — barring any developments.”

“Well, there’s always a few of those,” Nix said. “Or there used to be, anyway.” He paused. “I know I didn’t quite make this morning’s deadline.”

“You were close enough.” Dick tugged the right boot off, set them both aside and stood up. “Let’s say 0900.”

“I make no promises,” Nix said, starting to shrug out of his fatigues. “But I’ll try.”

Dick turned away politely while he undressed, which was downright funny, because they had seen each other in various states of undress dozens of times and had — more saliently — had sex the previous night. “Did Sink say something to you about that?”

“A few times, why?”

Dick shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I was just wondering. You seem more motivated on that front, since your demotion.”

“Well, I don’t want to burden you,” Nix said, and added brattily: “Since I’ve been such a problem up at regiment.”

“I didn’t say you were a problem,” Dick said. “I said your drinking was a problem. And I actually didn’t even say that.”

“Semantics,” Nix said.

“No, it’s not just semantics.”

Nix stripped down to his undershirt and boxers, then fell back into bed, rubbing his temples. The pounding in his head had temporarily gone away when he had given in and drank the wine, but now it was returning with a vengeance. He swallowed and let out a soft noise of pain without meaning to.

Dick turned around. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just my head.”

“Headache?”

“Yeah, just a headache.”

“‘Just,’” Dick repeated. “I need your head.”

“It’s still right here,” Nix said, knocking his knuckles on his temple. “Hurts, is all.”

Dick got up and walked away, out of the bedroom and into the anteroom. Nix squinted his blurry vision, nervous that Dick had left, but he came back a minute later with a washcloth in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

“Here,” he said, laying the former across Nix’s forehead.

The washcloth was wet and cool; he must have dunked it in the sink. Nix tugged it down over his eyes, then made a face of surprise at how much relief it brought him.

He heard chair legs scraping on the ground, and then the sound of Dick sitting down at his bedside.

“Are you staying?” Nix said.

“Yeah,” Dick said. Nix heard a pen click. “I have some work to finish up, I figured I’d do it here. You can hold me accountable.”

Nix chuckled, blinking against the cool wet fabric. “Uh, sure. What’s with the washcloth?”

He could hear the sound of pen on paper, now. Dick distractedly said, “My mother used to do that for me when I was sick.”

“Did she?”

“Uh-huh. Did yours not use that trick?”

Nix chuckled again, for even longer this time. “My mother? No.”

“I should have figured.”

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re being awfully gentle with me, any reason why?”

Dick was quiet for a while. Nix waited, his heart pounding, staring up through the translucent washcloth.

“You had a scare,” Dick said.

“Right,” Nix said. “The jump.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any other reason?”

Dick was quiet again. “I’d like to talk about last night,” he said. “When you’re sober… and when we actually have some time.”

“We have time now.”

“When you’re sober.”

“I’m sober enough,” Nix challenged.

“God love you, Nix, you’re really not.” Dick cleared his throat. “Get some rest.”

Nix felt emotional, suddenly, for reasons he wasn’t sure of. His chest was tight as a drum, and his already-burning eyes were even hotter. He reached his right hand out, laying it across Dick’s thigh with the palm up, praying that Dick would accept this. His heart seized with relief when Dick responded by taking Nix’s hand in his own and squeezing it.

He heard footsteps in the distance, coming steadily closer. Dick dropped Nix’s hand lightning fast, and then came a perfunctory knock on the open door.

“Hey, Harry,” Dick said.

Nix left his right hand on Dick’s lap and used the left to lift the washcloth enough to expose one eye. Harry was walking in, smiling, looking a little tipsy.

“Hey,” he said. “Lew, I have your money.”

“What money?” Nix said, squinting at him.

Harry held up a wad of cash. “From when we cashed you out of the poker game. You did alright, you doubled your buy-in.”

“Is that still going on?”

“No, it just ended.”

“What, you went on without me?”

Harry rolled his eyes, still smiling. “You feeling alright? Hey, take your money.”

“No, I am not, and I don’t want the money,” Nix said, dropping the washcloth back down over his eyes.

“It’s your money,” Harry said, sounding confused.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want any money.”

“Any? What do you want me to do with this?”

“Feed it to the birds,” Nix said, feeling petulant and hysterical.

Dick cleared his throat. “Put it in his bag,” he said to Harry in an undertone.

“Aye-aye,” Harry said, and Nix heard creaking footsteps as he crossed the room to do so.

If Harry noticed his hand lying across Dick’s thigh, he didn’t mention it. There had been a lot of things that Harry presumably saw and chose not to mention.

“Are you actually alright, though?” Harry said, coming over and sitting on the edge of his bed. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“Not sick, just drunk,” Dick said.

“Is it that wine you were drinking out of desperation?” Harry said. “Wasn’t that some German dessert wine? How much did you drink?”

Nix held up two fingers.

“Two bottles?” Harry said. “No wonder you’re sick.”

“I’m paying for it,” Nix muttered.

“Alright.” Harry patted him on the leg. “Feel better. Did you throw up?”

“Yeah, twice.”

“Good, get it out of you.”

Harry said goodnight to them and went to bed, closing the bedroom door behind him. The click of the latch bolt was as loud as a gunshot in the silence.

Nix lifted the washcloth off his eyes, patted Dick on the thigh, and said, “Maybe you should go lock that,” in a playful tone. He was kidding, though if Dick had given any indication that he wasn’t taking it as a joke, it would stop being a joke in a hurry.

“You’re not in shape for anything that requires a locked door,” Dick said, but he was fighting a smile.

“I could go two rounds, try me.”

Dick gazed at him for a moment, his eyes twinkling. He picked up Nix’s hand where it lay on his thigh, brought it to his mouth, and kissed him on the inside of his wrist.

Nix’s heart pulsed, and he let out a soft noise as a wildfire of prickly heat swept across his body.

Dick gave Nix his hand back, laying it back down on the bed beside him, separating them once more. Loneliness bit down on Nix.

“No more of that tonight, please,” Dick said.

Nix looked miserably up at the ceiling. “Because you can’t resist me,” he said.

Dick let out the softest laugh in human history and didn’t reply.

“What are you working on?” Nix said.

“A munitions report that’s due in the morning,” Dick murmured. “I should have finished it earlier. My days just keep getting away from me.”

“Well, people are grabbing you to talk to you every five seconds.”

“It’s not that. It’s just we keep confiscating so much from the Germans, I was getting new numbers every hour.” Dick held up a crumpled scrap of paper on which about forty figures were written, half of them crossed out.

“Can you use my help?”

Dick drummed the end of the pen against the clipboard. “Yeah, you can help me by talking.”

“Talking? Sure. About what?”

“Anything. Tell me a story. One I haven’t heard.”

“Tell you a story just so you can tune me out and work while I’m telling it?”

“Exactly,” Dick said, grinning at him. “You learn anything from the POWs, today?”

Nix knew this was a request for a joke, and not an actual briefing. All of the important intel had already passed through Winters as it went on up the chain of command.

“Oh, yeah,” Nix said, rolling over onto his side to face him, nestling his head against the cool part of the pillow. “One of them said Hitler fled to the United States — said he’s in Miami right now. So we should probably put our best guys on that.”

Dick nodded and made a faux-serious noise.

“I have a question, actually,” Nix said.

Dick met his eyes warily.

“Not about that,” he added. “It’s a religious question.”

“A religious question,” Dick repeated. “Sure.”

“Do you ever wonder if we died a while ago, and now we’re in purgatory here in Germany?”

Dick’s brow creased. “No, I don’t.”

“No?”

“No. This isn’t what purgatory would be like.”

“What d’you think it would be like?”

Dick was quiet for a moment. “You know, Protestants don’t really have purgatory.”

“You don’t? You’re missing out on a good metaphor.”

“Well, I do have an idea of it… what I think it would be like. I’ve been thinking about it too, lately.”

Nix watched him some more. His eyes were so tired, but he wanted to keep looking at Dick. “And? Let’s hear it.”

“It’d be a big open field, I think,” Dick said.

Nix thought about that.

“Empty,” Duck said. “Nothing but tall grass. Goes on forever.”

“You’d be alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both,” Dick said. “It’s purgatory.”

“So, I’m not there,” Nix said.

“No,” Dick said, twirling his pen in his fingers and looking down at it as he did so. “You’re not in my purgatory.”

“So we can’t possibly be there right now.”

“No,” Dick agreed.

Nix rolled over onto his back, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “What kind of story do you want to hear?”

“Tell me a college story.”

Nix grinned. “He wants a Yale story? Something racy and debauched?”

“Debauched, yes, racy, no.”

Nix lolled his head over so he could meet Dick’s eyes again, then licked his lips. Dick smiled at him in annoyance.

“Be a gentleman, Nix,” he said.

“A gentleman? For you? Always.” Nix thought about it. “Okay, I have a funny one. It’s debauched, only a little racy.”

“Sure.”

“So, my first year there, my friend Peter was being ‘mentored’ by one of our history professors.”

“‘Mentored’?”

“Sleeping with him.”

Dick shook his head at this, but said nothing.

“And,” Nix continued, “that meant we had access to said professor’s office when he wasn’t in it, thanks to Peter — who had a key.”

“And?”

“So, we used to go in there when he wasn’t there, and drink, and read his correspondence. We’d also read our classmates’ essays and make fun of them.”

Dick laughed.

“One day,” Nix continued, “we’re in there doing that — me, Peter, and Lawrence — and another professor, Professor Burton, walks in. I hid the alcohol, but we’re all sauced, and we’re all holding essays that don’t belong to us. Burton looks around and says, ‘What are you three doing in here?’ And Lawrence is sitting at the professor’s desk, and he puts his fingers together and looks up at him with this long-suffering expression. Burton’s first name was Clyde, and without missing a beat, Lawrence goes, ‘Clyde, for Christ’s sake, we’re his teaching assistants. We’re grading papers.’”

Nix waited until he had cleared an acceptable amount of laughter from Dick, then went on.

“We were all drunk, like I said,” Nix said. “So I was having the damnedest time not laughing. I was holding onto a table so I didn’t fall over, and Peter had to turn around and hide his face completely, he was laughing so hard. He’s standing there with his hands on his hips, his face an inch away from the bookcase, shaking. And Burton just looks at us and goes, ‘Well, carry on then!’ And then he left.”

“He believed you?”

“Either that, or he didn’t care enough to bust us,” Nix said. “Who knows?”

Dick smiled. He had gone back to writing while Nix was talking, and Nix said, “You making any headway?”

“Yeah, actually. Keep talking.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Okay,” Nix said, and settled down in the bed, committing himself by getting comfortable. “Well, I haven’t told you all my prep school stories.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Oh, no. I’ve got hundreds. We haven’t even scratched the surface of my hooliganism.”

Dick laughed again. “Go on, then,” he said.

/

The talk they were supposed to have got postponed again and again over the next week or so. There was the exhausting and awful work of war, there was the fucking Dear Lewis letter from Kathy, there was endless movement. It felt like every day they surged into a new town and displaced the Germans only to immediately be told they were leaving the next day for a location deeper in the bowels of Nazi territory, closer to the Austrian border. Nix was still agitated about Dick, and resentment grew in him every day they went without addressing this, but his head was so crammed with other shit that the thought didn’t press on him much unless he was looking right at him.

When he did look at Dick, he felt bittersweet melancholy. Nix was warmed and comforted by Dick’s presence no matter what, and he suspected he always would be, but now there was an accompanying ache like a bruise. Talking to Dick both hurt and helped him. Wanting neither hurt nor help, he tried to talk to him as little as possible. He wanted to lean into the knife’s edge of his bad feelings, and he wanted them neither soothed nor exacerbated by his best friend.

The more time Nix had to think about it, the more he convinced himself how idiotic it was to think that night had been anything more than a fluke. Dick had probably done it just to calm him down after he had so narrowly avoided blowing up over Germany — Dick had essentially said as much. Nix had blown that night out of proportion. Dick Winters might be queer, but he was not a queer, and the difference was titanic. Nix couldn’t see their conversation going in a way that made him feel better about the whole thing. Probably best to forget it.

For his part, Dick didn’t even seem to have time to think about anything, least of all Nix. He was a battalion commander clamping down on the eleventh hour of a war. Most days he looked like he wouldn’t be able to recall his own name, if you asked him. He did get a certain look on his face when he met eyes with Nix, though. It was a hangdog enough look that Nix knew he was feeling melancholy too. It’s just he was pretty sure that Dick was melancholy from guilt and regret, nothing more.

When they stopped in Thalham, Nix told Dick, “Don’t let anyone get comfortable, we’re probably moving out for Berchtesgaden in the next twenty-four hours.” Dick had evidently taken that to heart. As Nix left battalion headquarters a few hours later, he saw that the dining room that had been turned into the main office was full of boxes that had been opened but not unpacked. Guys were just skimming pens and papers off the top as needed.

Outside, Nix lit a cigarette and took in Thalham from atop the hill. The town was a teeny-tiny picturesque hamlet with no major assets or landmarks, surrounded by bucolic springtime countryside, and strewn with rubble from having the shit bombed out of it. 

Nix went for a walk down the hill as he smoked, and he almost immediately ran into some Easy Company men who were in a state of commotion. It looked like they had been unloading a truck with the help of a German POW, who was now clutching a bleeding and badly bruised left hand while hollering at them.

“What’s going on?” Nix said as he walked up, directing the question at Webster, who was standing somewhat apart from the men with his hands on his hips. Behind him, Sisk was leaning against the bed of the truck, looking unbothered. Everyone snapped to attention when he said this, and he added, “At ease.”

“Sir, Christenson ran this prisoner’s hand over by accident,” Webster said. “He put the truck in neutral for a second, he didn’t realize the guy was crouched behind it tying his shoe.”

“Christ,” Nix said. “Swell. He alright?”

“I guess. It’s not like a broken hand can kill you, right?”

“Well, no,” Nix said. “And it’s not like we can get him in a cast out here, but a medic should look at it, at least.”

The German must have noticed Nix’s rank, because he kept trying to get his attention as he shouted a blue streak, but Nix wasn’t picking up anything besides ‘asshole’ and ‘coward.’

Nix looked over Liebgott, who was standing amidst spilled boxes of rations with his hands on his hips, looking down at the German dubiously. “Did you or the corporal apologize to him?” he said to Webster.

“I just got here, but Liebgott said he apologized,” Webster said. “I don’t think whatever he said helped very much.”

Liebgott glanced at Webster and made a smoochy noise at him, as if to communicate the concept of ass-kissing.

“Hey,” Nix said mildly.

“Sorry, sir,” Liebgott said.

“What’s he been saying, Joe?”

“He’s telling us to go fuck ourselves, mostly,” Liebgott said.

Nix nodded. “Alright.” He looked at the cigarette in his fingers, which had gone out. “Where’s Speirs?”

“Billeting,” Webster said.

The billeting was all but over with, so Nix assumed this was a euphemism for looting. “Right. Webster, you speak enough German to calm this guy down?”

Webster shrugged. “I understand a lot more than I speak… plus I already heard him say he doesn’t like the look of me.”

Nix laughed at this without meaning to. “Alright. Wait here a minute, I’ll be back.”

Christenson hopped out of the truck and came around the side of it, looking alarmed. “You’re not going to get Major Winters, are you, Captain?”

Liebgott and Webster shared a wide-eyed look of realization.

“Again, hey,” Nix said, starting back up the hill. “Just stay put.”

He was going to go tell Dick, of course. He knew how to solve this himself — go find an affable guy who spoke German, and have him apologize to the German — but he knew Dick would welcome the distraction of some low-stakes chaos caused by Toccoa men.

Dick had taken over the master bedroom of the house they had designated as headquarters and made it his office. When Nix walked in the open door, he was standing behind a desk in the center of the room, bent over a stack of papers he was examining with a pen clutched between his teeth.

Nix cleared his throat, and Dick looked up, then took the pen out of his mouth. “Hey, good,” he said, in seeming relief. “I have a minute, I was wondering if we could talk.”

Nix’s heart fluttered and began to race with anxiety. “Me first,” he said. “We have a German with a smashed hand. Four Easy guys accidentally ran him over, and he’s throwing a hissy in the middle of the street.”

Dick squinted at him. “Accidentally ran him over? How’s that work?”

“Put a truck in neutral, didn’t see him behind the truck, ran over his hand.”

“Ah, jeez. Do we have a translator around?”

Nix opened his mouth to explain and then heard thundering footsteps on the stairs behind him. He moved to the right just in time for Webster, Christenson and Liebgott to barrel into the room beside him.

“I believe I had asked you boys to stay put,” Nix said, specifically directing this at Webster. Webster looked aggrieved. “You left someone with the prisoner, I’m assuming?”

“Yes sir, Sisk is with him,” Christenson said. To Dick, he said, “Major, I swear it was an accident. I didn’t know he was back there.”

“It’s alright,” Dick said, rubbing his temples. Warm spring sunlight was flooding in the window behind him, backlighting him and making his hair glow. “I see two men who speak German — what’s the problem here?”

“He won’t listen to us, sir,” Liebgott said.

“Did you explain to him that it was an accident?”

“I did,” Liebgott said.

“And?”

“He said he didn’t believe me,” Liebgott said.

Dick turned his gaze to Webster, who shrugged helplessly, then offered: “His tone maybe wasn’t that sincere.”

Liebgott rounded on him and demanded, “You weren’t there, Web, how do you know?”

“I’ve heard you talk to other prisoners, that’s all.”

Liebgott scoffed.

“Enough,” Dick interrupted. “Is Speirs around?”

“No, he’s billeting,” Nix said.

Dick shot Nix a knowing look, but didn’t comment. “Is it just the hand that’s injured?”

“Yeah, just his hand,” Liebgott said.

“Okay,” Dick said, looking nonplussed. “So… is he a colonel, or something?”

Nix didn’t even bother stifling his laughter at this.

“No sir,” Webster said.

“Then why did four people just bolt in here to explain the situation?”

“Well, he’s useless as far as us putting him to work anymore,” Nix said.

Dick nodded.

“He’s very agitated,” Webster said. “We can’t do anything with him. He’s been screaming at us for a few minutes now.”

“Because we’ve been letting him,” Liebgott said under his breath.

Dick fixed Liebgott with a look. “You want to hurt him to punish him for getting hurt, Joe?”

“I just don’t see why he was hanging around behind the rear wheels of a truck that was parked on a downhill slope. That’s what I don’t get.”

“That could have been anyone back there, though,” Webster said.

“Yeah, any idiot,” Liebgott said.

Christenson jumped in with, “I’m not in the habit of running people over, sir.”

“I know,” Dick said, sounding amused. “I’m not looking to court-martial you.”

In the commotion, Nix started slipping away toward the door. He was scared of what Dick might say in a straightforward conversation about their night together, and he was pretty sober today, which wasn’t ideal. He wanted a rain check.

“Ask Sisk or Pat how you sounded,” Webster was saying to Liebgott. “They heard it, they’d know.”

Dick put a hand up, and the men immediately fell quiet. “Captain Nixon,” he called, as Nix laid his hand on the doorknob.

Nix, startled, turned to face Dick while the others aimed confused looks at him.

“Please stay,” Dick said, looking right into his eyes. “I need to talk to you.”

Nix didn’t take his hand off the doorknob. He stared Dick down as he turned it, then opened the door. Dick’s mouth became a razor-thin line. The room was dead silent. No one seemed to be breathing.

When Nix had had enough fun, he stepped to the side and beckoned to the men, holding the door for them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “why don’t you go downstairs and grab Captain Nelson. Blond guy working out of the breakfast nook, can’t miss him. He’s very friendly, and he speaks excellent German.”

The men nodded, then looked to Dick for final confirmation.

“Yeah, do that, and then find a medic to take a look at the hand,” Dick said. “Dismissed.”

The three of them mumbled their apologetic “Yes, Major”s, and filed out past Nix. Once they were gone, Dick said, “Close that?”

Nix turned to him and raised an eyebrow, then took an exaggerated step back like he was going to leave and pull the door shut behind himself.

“With you in the room, Lew,” Dick said.

Nix could tell from his tone that he was going to get legitimately annoyed if he were subjected to just one more joke. He came back in and closed the door behind him, then flipped the lock.

“That was some fine snitching from Webster,” he said. “You can tell he’s a Harvard man.”

Dick didn’t laugh, nor did he close the distance between them. He remained behind the elderly wooden desk he had strewn his papers all over. “Are you delegating up, now?”

Nix smiled. “Yeah, I thought I’d see if I could get away with it.”

“You want to sit?” Dick said, pointing to a chair across the desk from him.

“Nah, I’m alright,” Nix said, approaching the desk and resting his fingers atop it, staring down at them.

“Okay,” Dick said, his voice soft. “Is now a good time to talk?”

Nix looked up and met his eyes. Dick suddenly had a boyish, unsure look to him. It was a crazy thing to see. There wasn’t that much distance between them — maybe two feet. They could lean across that space and kiss each other, if they wanted.

“Yeah,” Nix said, his mouth dry. “Now’s a good time.”

“Okay.”

“What do you want to say?” Nix said, thinking that they might as well get it over with, but feeling a little bit ill as he said it.

“I wanted to apologize, first,” Dick said.

Nix’s armpits and the back of his neck prickled with queasy heat. “For?”

“For what happened the other night.”

The vague and faltering way Dick said ‘the other night’ indicated that he lately had just as poor a grip on the passage of time as Nix did. Nix could not have told you exactly how many nights ago they’d had sex if you paid him.

“And what was it that happened?” he pressed him.

Dick looked destabilized, but sallied forth. “You know what I’m talking about.”

Nix swallowed past the dryness that was spreading down his throat. “When we fucked?”

“When we… made love,” Dick said, his face stalwart.

Nix had to laugh at that, and once he started he couldn’t stop. In the middle of this, he thought he saw Dick smile, and his heart lifted.

“Yeah,” he coughed when he was done. “Our lovemaking. Sure.”

Dick nodded. “First, I wanted you to know that I meant what I said that night.”

“What did you say?” Nix said, confused.

“That I had… that I’d wanted that for a long time.”

“You didn’t say that. I’d remember if you had.”

“Oh,” Dick said, looking tired. “Sorry. I meant to.”

“It’s alright,” Nix said, finding that his defiance was being quickly eroded by concern. “I’m the one who’s sorry, anyway.”

“You’re sorry?” Dick said.

“Yeah, I… should we sit?”

“Sure,” Dick agreed, looking relieved.

Nix took a seat in the chair he had rejected earlier, and Dick sat down behind his desk. “I let you down,” he said.

Dick pointed to himself in obvious confusion.

“Yeah, you,” Nix said. “You’re trying to take care of everybody, and I took advantage of that. You wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t feel obligated.”

“No,” Dick said, shaking his head. “Nix, I let you down.”

“Elaborate?”

Dick worried at his lip with his teeth and said in a husky voice, “I don’t want to be crass.”

“It’s not kissing and telling if I’m the one you were kissing.”

Dick laughed. “Look — you were drunk.”

“I’m often drunk. And I wasn’t even very drunk that night.”

“Still. I don’t think you needed… that. I think you needed to talk, and I let you think you needed sex, because I wanted it. And you were right when you said I’ve been without it for a long time. We’re all human, here. I — it was a temptation. I succumbed to temptation.”

“Yeah, that’s how the Devil gets in,” Nix said, feeling hurt.

Dick pursed his lips.

“Do you think I didn’t want that as much as you did?” Nix said. “More than you did? Hell, I’d love it if you fucked me on this desk right here and now.”

Dick’s posture stiffened in the chair, and he tipped his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t. I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Say no to you,” Dick said, his eyes still closed.

Nix’s heart started to pound even faster, its beating sounding like thoroughbred footfalls in his ears. He was breathless, and his dick was stirring.

“Don’t say no, then,” he said, examining the desk for structural weaknesses.

“Let me talk,” Dick said, opening his eyes and rubbing them. The dark circles under his eyes, which had faded after Haguenau, had returned in recent days. “I should have done things differently that night. What I did was dishonorable. Honestly, Nix, I’m exhausted, and it was easier to do what we did than actually talk to you.”

“Well, it’s good to hear that I’m so exhausting to talk to that it’s easier to just have ill-advised sex with me to shut me up.”

“Stop,” Dick said. “Stop doing that.”

“What? Talking?”

“Talking nonsense, yeah. Misinterpreting me.”

“Speaking of that, I want to back up a minute. You didn’t let me think I needed sex when I really just needed to talk. That sex did for me what talking couldn’t. The only thing wrong with it was that you didn’t bother to stick around after, and then spent the last week acting like it didn’t happen.”

Dick brought his knuckles to his mouth and stared down at the desk, avoiding Nix’s gaze.

“Oh, you want to just go all quiet and let me talk myself out?” Nix said. “No, come on. Talk to me.”

Dick looked like he was on the verge of saying something, then stopped himself.

“Why’d you leave?” Nix pleaded. “That’s all I want to know. What was done was done, right? You had me making a fool of myself, begging you to stay.”

Dick finally flicked his gaze up to meet Nix’s. Nix stared him down, feeling sweaty.

“You made me feel like an idiot,” he added. “That’s all I’m going to say. Now I’m going to shut up until you say something.”

To his relief, Dick laughed at that. He took his knuckles away from his mouth, folded his arms across his chest and said, “To be clear, I wanted to stay.”

“So you said. But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t.”

“No one would have noticed, Dick.”

“It’s not even that,” Dick said. “It’s that I couldn’t let myself get caught up.”

“Caught up,” Nix repeated.

“We’re fighting a war, here.”

“I know,” Nix said. “And I promise if you somehow forgot about that, I would remind you.”

“Again, it isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Are you interrogating me, Nix?”

“Oh, get out of here with that crap. That’s not fair.”

Dick was quiet for a moment, then said, “You know how vital you are to my ability to do this job.”

Nix fixed him with another look. “Do I?”

“Come on, Lew.”

“No, I’m serious, I don’t know if that’s something you’ve communicated to me.”

Nix was being a shithead. He did know this — it was half of the reason that he had spent months running away from regiment so he could be at Dick’s side. Plenty of people had said ‘He needs you around,’ and meant it. But he wanted to hear it from Dick’s lips, and he liked having the power to compel that information. 

“Okay, fine,” Dick said. “Fine. I’m telling you now, I need you. And I need…” He gestured between them. “I need things to be okay between us.”

“They are,” Nix said.

“No, they’re not,” Dick said. “I broke something here.”

“You didn’t break anything.”

“You just said I made you feel like an idiot.”

“Ah, I’ll get over it,” Nix said, forcing a smile.

“No,” Dick said. “No, I want you to know…” He inhaled, sounding desperate about it, like there wasn’t enough air in the room for him. “I wanted to be with you. I liked being with you. I’d really like to be with you again, to be perfectly honest.” (Nix’s heart fluttered at this.) “And I wanted to stay with you that night. It’s just that we can’t do this, not right now.”

“I get it.”

“I don’t think you do,” Dick said. “I’m doing my best, but this work is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I need you. I’m…” He bit off what he was saying, then appeared to force it out of himself. “I’m spent. I can’t think about anything else. I have to give this everything I’ve got left, because it isn’t over yet.”

“I know,” Nix said. “Me too.”

“I know. And, um…” Dick cut himself off. “I can’t talk about it being over, you know we can’t think like that.”

Nix knew what he meant. There were unsurrendered Germans up in the mountains. There were Germans taking potshots at them with rifle fire. Men were still dying. Either of them could die — die for nothing, die for a war already won, but die all the same. Complacency was a silent killer.

“So we can’t do this right now,” Nix said, “but all we have is right now. Tomorrow might never come.”

“Correct.”

“And you still think this isn’t purgatory?”

“I’m coming around to that theory.”

“Oh, good.” Nix rubbed his forehead. “God… you really had to pick a day I was sober to make me have this conversation?”

Dick looked at him like he was slow. “I did that on purpose.”

Nix took a second to process this, then scoffed in annoyance. “You…” He shook his head. “Asshole.”

Dick let out a soft laugh. “You know, Sink asked me if I wanted you back, when he told me he was demoting you.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. I said no, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He gave you to me anyway. Just to spite me, I think.”

Nix started laughing, and Dick smiled.

“Apparently, he asked Harry what he thought, too,” he said. “And Harry said, ‘Sure, send him back down. Lew will do anything for Dick, except stop drinking.’”

Nix’s laughter faded. He stared at a sunbeam that was falling across Dick’s desk, lighting a strip of wood up and illuminating motes of dust in the air. “Aw, Harry.”

“I don’t need you to quit drinking, for the record,” Dick added. “I just need you not to quit fighting.”

Nix looked back up at him. Dick looked vulnerable and young again, the way he had earlier.

“I’m with you,” he said. “You know that.”

“I do,” Dick said, though he looked relieved.

“‘Til the bitter end, whenever that is,” Nix said. Feeling quite vulnerable and young himself, he added, “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Had you ever had sex with a man before?”

Dick laughed. “How did I know this was coming?”

“Because you know me. Have you?”

“No.”

“No?”

Dick put a hand up, as if asking him to quiet down.

“That’s insane,” Nix scoffed. “That’s like never having played baseball and coming up and hitting a walk-off home run. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Was it that good?”

“Oh, shut up, you know it was.”

Dick was grinning. “I wasn’t sure.”

Nix stretched his legs out alongside the desk. “I’m not the first man that caught your eye, though, right? I know I’m a handsome devil, but I don’t know if I’d believe that.”

“You weren’t the first.”

“When did you figure it out?”

Dick shrugged. “I was pretty young. When I was maybe twelve, there was an older boy who worked with my father… My father was a sort of mentor to him, and he’d bring him by sometimes. I used to follow him around like a puppy. I don’t think he even knew my name.”

“You felt about him like you felt about girls?”

“Right.” Dick glanced down, suddenly awkward. “I thought I would grow out of it, but I never did.”

“So you lied when you enlisted.”

“Yeah. I saw it as a worthy lie… a white lie. They didn’t look at me very hard.”

“No, me neither,” Nix said. “But did you ever actually, you know… had you fooled around with another guy before? Besides me?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

Dick nodded. He looked oddly unburdened by shame, like he was talking about a neutral matter of fact.

“When?” Nix said.

“College,” Dick said.

Nix grinned at him. “Guy on the wrestling team?”

Dick’s cheeks got a little pink. “I don’t kiss and tell,” he said.

“But you didn’t fuck him,” Nix said. “You didn’t do what we did.”

Dick nodded again. So Nix had been right on both counts. He tallied up another win for his intuition.

“Does it not bother you?” he said. “This homosexual business?”

“Bother me in what way?”

“You’re not ashamed?”

“I don’t find shame all that productive,” Dick said. “Do you?”

“Uh… I don’t think I feel things according to how productive they are.”

This conversation was eye-opening. Part of the reason Nix disliked being a homosexual was because it reeked to him of his upbringing. The society circles his parents ran in, his prep schools and time at Yale, all of these places had a unspoken undercurrent of homosexuality. Nix had grown up thinking it was the laissez-faire indulgence of bored men and women who had so much time on their hands that they started doing odd shit that went against nature, like hosting séances and having gay affairs, and that he was no different. But here was Dick, the noble and virtuous farm boy who had never been a stranger to hard work, admitting that he too was a member of that club. It threw Nix for a loop.

“I believe God made me who I am,” Dick said. “That’s simple enough. It’s not for me to question endlessly.”

“Well, that’s like me saying it isn’t for me to question that God made me a drunk — oh, Christ,” Nix said, realizing something. “Are you such a paragon of virtue in every other way that you don’t even have to worry about this too much, because if it’s part of you then surely it’s not wrong?”

Dick laughed and seemed to think about this for a moment. “I just prefer not to think that tender feelings are sinful.”

“There’s no way you don’t worry about what other people think about this shit, though.”

“Sure, I’m aware what people think about this,” Dick said. “I know how much they don’t like it. But I know right from wrong, and I know affection isn’t wrong.” Then he got that wry smirk, the one Nix loved, and added: “And I know for a fact we’re not the only pair of, ah, close guys in the Army.”

Nix cracked a smile.

“I’m not really thinking about judgment when I’m with you, either,” Dick said.

“Sure. Judging’s not for sinners.”

“That’s not what I mean, Nix.”

“Well,” Nix said, and spread his hands. “Again, feel free to elaborate.”

“I meant what I said,” Dick said. “I just don’t think about it. I can set things down when I’m with you.”

Nix’s heart was warmed by this. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, neither saying anything.

“Do you want to know how long I’ve had these feelings for you?” Dick said.

Nix’s stomach somersaulted. He nodded.

“Since Toccoa.”

Now Nix’s face was hot, all the way up to the roots of his hair. “Huh.”

“I went to find you in your tent one morning, and you weren’t in uniform yet,” Dick said, his voice appealingly low. “Hadn’t shaved, hadn’t fixed your hair… you stretched, and I saw your stomach. You had my attention from then on.”

“Oh, alright,” Nix said. “You like that, huh? You like it when I don’t shave?”

“Don’t take that as a request not to shave, Blackbeard.”

“Too late, I already decided to stop. You know, for me, it was the first time I saw you at OCS.”

“That’s flattering,” Dick said, looking sheepish.

“Yeah, I’m full of flattery for you today, apparently. Roll it up and tuck it in your socks for safekeeping.”

“I will.”

They looked at each other again. The sun had slid higher in the sky, and was turning Dick’s ginger hair into a fiery halo around his head. Nix felt stupid for how at ease he felt. It was the most at ease he’d been in the past week. He wasn’t thinking about the war, or the endless lines of surrendered Germans marching north and away from the danger they were heading into, or the fact that he was being divorced and cleaved from a child he had never met in the first place.

Nix forced himself to look down at his watch and say, “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

“Alright,” Dick said. “I should get back to it. Before you go…”

Nix glanced up at Dick, who beckoned him. He got up and walked around the desk to Dick, then leaned on the edge of it, looking at him expectantly. Dick beckoned him again, and Nix came closer, leaning down and gripping the lapels of Dick’s uniform in his hands. Dick reached up and smoothed Nix’s hair back out of his face, then pressed their foreheads together.

They remained there in silence for about a minute, breathing each other’s air. Nix’s legs felt unsteady under him, his stomach quaky. He wanted to fall into Dick’s arms, but he didn’t.

“Look,” he said, “once this is all over with —”

“Don’t,” Dick whispered. “Don’t say it.”

“I know. We’re just so close.”

“We don’t know that.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I just need you to hang in there for me. I know it’s been tough on you lately.”

“I’m hanging in.”

“Okay.”

Dick stroked his hair some more. They nuzzled each other, their noses brushing, and then Dick broke away and pulled back.

“I do have to get back to work,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“I know you do,” Nix said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Dick stared into space, looking even more tired than he had earlier. His pale eyes being floodlit by the strong sunlight only made the dark circles under them more obvious. His mouth was flat again. On impulse, Nix leaned in and pressed a kiss to it. Dick’s lips were warm, and unexpectedly soft today.

“Sorry,” he said again, drawing back. “Just wanted one for the road.”

To his surprise, Dick threw an arm around his shoulders and stopped his retreat, pulling him back in close. It was something akin to a hug, but it felt more animal and desperate. Dick kept him there for a few moments, his hand fisted in Nix’s sleeve; finally he inhaled deeply, then let him go with a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a grunt.

“Dismissed,” he said.

“Roger,” Nix said, and went on his way. He paused in the doorway for a moment and watched as Dick went back to hunting and pecking on his typewriter, then left, pulling the door shut behind him.

/

Nix left Dick alone for the rest of the day, returning only once around sundown, after he got word that they were being ordered to move out the following morning.

Dick hadn’t moved from behind his desk, but now he was surrounded by a throng of officers. He looked up as soon as the bedroom door opened, and he and Nix locked eyes across the room. The back of Nix’s neck tickled. Everyone else looked over at him and fell quiet.

“Nix,” Dick said, with a note of warmth in his voice.

Nix cleared his throat and said, “It’s looking like we’ll be moving out tomorrow morning to take Berchtesgaden. The men need to draw ammo and rations, and they should make sure they have cold-weather gear, in case we have reason to go up into the Alps.”

Dick nodded without breaking eye contact. “How’s the weather?”

“In the Alps? Cold.”

Dick smiled. “Everywhere else.”

“Weather’s beautiful,” Nix said. “And expected to stay beautiful.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Nix nodded back. The conversation among the officers resumed, louder than before, and Dick immediately turned to an orderly who Nix didn’t even recognize and started giving him instructions. Nix turned away and headed back out the door.

Over the next few days, the two of them kept close, not even out of desire but out of necessity. The closer they got to the Eagle’s Nest, the more snarled the logistics of war became — it felt like every bridge in Bavaria had been blown up to halt their advance. Meanwhile, the Germans listlessly exchanged fire with them and the French, from distances too great to hurt anyone. Hitler was dead, the 506th were the almost-victors relentlessly closing in on the few remainders of their enemy, and even though Nix was certain that the end was no more than a few days away, those intervening days felt endless. He found himself tensing up at the sound of gunfire in a way that he hadn’t for the entire war.

As the convoy rolled south, he and Dick spent a lot of time sitting around in jeeps together, shoulder to shoulder, trying to act normal. Nix was finding that last part hard. He felt stirrings in himself every time he touched Dick or caught his eye: a full-body shiver, a fluttering in his stomach like he was a duck shaking off water. If Dick was feeling similar stirrings, he didn’t show it much, other than by occasionally zoning out and staring a hole in Nix.

After they had talked, the wound in their friendship had seemed to mend immediately. The awkwardness had spilled out of them, leaving behind only the exposed bone of longing. They needed the end, they needed these crazy fucking Krauts to give up already. Nix could taste victory like salt in his mouth. He felt like he could have reached out and touched the end of the war.

It was for this reason that Nix floated New Jersey to Dick. (He had been mulling the idea for some time, and he wished he had brought it up before they’d had sex, but he hadn’t, so there it was. The fact that Dick responded with something other than a resounding “no” was fine news, and promising.) The closer they got to the end, the more real life on the other side became, and Nix was in disbelief that anyone expected him to go on without Winters. The idea didn’t make any sense; it made him sullen to even consider it. Surely they hadn’t taken this unspoken but solemn vow to remain at each other’s sides for years on end, and survived all that they had survived, only to be suddenly split apart and forced to go do mind-numbing office work in different cities. Nix didn’t accept this as inevitable and wasn’t letting it happen, if he could help it.

It was time that the family business did something for him besides keep him penned and get him into nightclubs. He hoped, too, that the job itself would turn out to be a useful opportunity that wouldn’t be available to Dick were it not for Nix. He and Dick were fated to help each other in life, that much felt obvious.

At night they billeted in whatever roadside houses they could find, and sometimes bunked several guys to a room if they were particularly short on lodging. Nix, Dick and Harry spent a night in the same room together, Nix and Harry on cots and Dick in the bed — the privileges of rank, he said, although he did offer them the bed if either of them wanted it. They turned him down out of respect.

It was hot in Bavaria in May, even hotter in this attic room, and Nix spent a few hours tossing and turning before rolling over onto his left side and coming face to face with Dick, who was also awake.

They locked eyes, and Nix mouthed, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Dick mouthed back.

Once again, there were less than two feet between them. Nix reached out for him unthinkingly, and Dick moved closer to the edge of the bed, offering his upturned hand. Nix grabbed it, and Dick clasped him, pressing their calloused palms together.

“Harry?” Nix said experimentally.

They stared at each other as they waited for Harry to respond, but all Nix heard was shifting in the cot behind him, then a soft snore.

“He’s out,” Dick murmured. “You should be too.”

“Yeah, and so should you, Major.”

Dick gave him a little twitch of his lips, then brought Nix’s hand to his mouth and kissed him on the knuckles. Nix’s heart throbbed.

“Stop that,” he whispered.

“Sorry,” Dick whispered back, but he kept Nix’s knuckles where they were, pressed to his lips.

Nix was half-crazed by a desire to get up and go climb in bed with Winters. He didn’t even need to have sex with him, he just wanted to curl up with him, to feel the warmth of his body and breathe his air. If he were a little less tired, he might have sneakily relocated poor Harry to the hallway, locked the bedroom door, and done just that.

“You were the one who told me we couldn’t do this,” Nix whispered.

Dick pressed another light kiss to his hand. “I also said I’m only human.”

Nix let out a sigh. He agonized for a moment, then pulled his hand free of Dick’s and rolled onto his back, his arms folded over his chest like he was a body in a coffin. He glanced over at Dick, who looked at him with longing, but nodded and said, “Thanks.”

“Someone’s got to have some self-control around here,” Nix said, and Dick let out a soft laugh.

/

For Nix, V-E Day was a dizzying blur. He’d barely had time to react to the news of victory itself before Winters turned Goering’s wine cellar over to him, and then he had wanted very badly to pounce on Dick and give him an orgasm right then and there, but Dick had absconded for other business and left him behind to loot to his heart’s content.

Nix took about sixty or so bottles of the most top-shelf liquor in the joint for himself, and had five guys from the battalion help him carry that off to his room. Then he went about the very serious business of distributing the remainder to each company, making sure the best stuff went to his favorite men. He was so serious about this endeavor that the troops helping him would spring frantically to attention each time he called out to them across the wine cellar. To them, this was probably the most impassioned he had sounded for the entire war.

By the time Nix wrapped this up and lifted the guards on the officer’s club, the sun was starting to set. He came up out of the cellar a final time, blinking in the glare of dying sunlight, sweat drying on his neck, and headed for the nearest empty jeep with a bottle of Moët in his hand.

It was only a seven-minute drive back to the Hof, but he could not get there fast enough. When he got back into town, he saw that everyone was out in the street celebrating: drinking the alcohol he had furnished them with, laughing, singing, driving the Nazis’ luxury cars around and firing their guns into the air. The closer he got, the more aggravated Nix became by the stop-and-go flow of traffic, until he abandoned the jeep and started up the hill on foot.

If Dick wasn’t in his room, he was going to scream. He was going to bang on every door in the hotel looking for him and then, if that didn’t work, go back out in the street and yell “DICK!” until Dick either materialized in front of him or he got court-martialed for insanity.

Luckily, none of that was necessary. Dick was in his room, sitting at the luxurious desk, seemingly in the middle of writing a letter. Nix burst in without knocking, and then they stared at each other for a moment while Nix caught his breath.

“Hi,” Dick said. He looked picturesque, silhouetted against the gorgeous view of green valleys and snow-capped Alps visible through his open window.

“Hi,” Nix said, grinning at him without meaning to. He pulled the door shut behind him and moved deeper into the room, sitting down on a pouf chair.

“Is the cellar taken care of?” Dick said. “I saw some of the men bringing a crate of liquor up to your room, earlier.”

“Yeah, the spoils have been distributed,” Nix said, taking the half-smoked cigarette out of his mouth, dropping it on the floor and grinding it under his bootheel. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I was glad I could make it happen.”

Nix’s face and chest warmed. “What are you working on, there?”

“Letter to my parents,” Dick said.

“Yeah? What’s it say?”

Dick picked the paper up off of the desk and read aloud: “‘Dear Mom and Dad. The war is over in Europe.’” He glanced at Nix. “That’s all I have.”

“Oh, alright,” Nix said. “That’s good, you didn’t burden them with any unnecessary reading.”

Dick chuckled as he rubbed his forehead. “I’ve been working on this for an hour.”

“Maybe stop trying to work, and do some celebrating,” Nix suggested, his body humming with nervous energy.

Dick nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. No, you’re right.” Dick set the letter down, along with his pen. “What kind of celebrating did you have in mind, though? I wasn’t planning on getting drunk and walking around shooting my gun in the air.”

Nix’s heart sped up. He didn’t answer, and instead just walked over to Dick and set the bottle of champagne on his desk, then grabbed Dick’s chair by the arm and yanked on it, hard, turning Dick to face him.

Dick looked at him with mute interest. Nix knelt on the cool floor in front of him, laying his hands on Dick’s thighs, rubbing his thumbs against the firm muscles underneath the wool of his uniform. Then he looked up at Dick, because he knew Dick wouldn’t be able to resist that.

“Nix,” Dick said in a soft voice.

Nix lay his head down across Dick’s lap and mouthed at his thighs through his pants. Dick petted his hair with rough strokes, his hands clumsy, then got up so abruptly that he knocked Nix back on his heels. He crossed the room in two strides, going to the door and locking it, then turned to Nix with blazing eyes.

“Go get in the bed,” Dick said.

Nix was half-drunk, but he scrambled to his feet in an instant and started undressing as he made his way over to the gorgeous bed in the center of the room. Dick strode back over to him, undressing too, and they kissed frantically as they fell into bed together. Nix accidentally bit Dick’s bottom lip, hard, and Dick sighed through his nose and butted their foreheads together equally as hard, like they were a pair of rutting elk. This made electricity shoot up Nix’s spine, and he grabbed Dick by the lapels and whispered, “Get out of those pants and let me suck you off.”

Dick winced as if injured, then increased the speed with which he was undoing his belt. “You know what I never liked about you, Nix?” he muttered as he did so. “How timid you are.”

Nix beamed at him. Dick nosed at his temple, then blew in his ear, making him moan softly.

“How loud do you think we can get?” Nix said, watching Dick slide half off the bed so he could finish stripping bare, discarding his clothes into a relatively neat pile.

“Not loud,” Dick muttered. “You wanna get loud, we’ll go camping together.”

Dick had spent the entire war avoiding making post-war plans, or using the future tense much at all; the sound of him doing both thrilled Nix to the point of giddiness. He was made further giddy by the sight of Dick’s briefs sliding down off his pale thighs, exposing his hard-on.

“Like hell I’m going camping,” Nix said, grinning like an idiot. “What, here in the Alps? You want to stick me in a tent in the freezing cold, then wake me up at some ungodly hour and make me hike with you twenty miles uphill to look at a bird? I want to go have sex in a hotel room in Paris.”

Dick stepped out of his underwear, then approached him, looking a little shy about being naked in the clear light of day. He bent across the bed, his dog tags dangling, and said, “Sure.”

Sure? Nix couldn’t believe his ears. He wished every day could be V-E Day.

He got ahold of Dick and rolled him over onto his back, climbed between his legs, then dove on his manhood like it was a grenade. Remembering how Dick had deepthroated him and not wanting to be outdone, Nix immediately took nearly all of him in his mouth, making Dick hiss and squirm.

Nix loved this. He loved everything about this. He loved that Dick’s penis tasted the way Dick smelled and was wonderfully alive in his mouth, full of blood, salty from sweat. He bent over him and sucked like he was sucking poison from a snakebite. He was so eager that he kept making obscene noises by accident, noises that made the Dick groan while the muscles in his thighs twitched.

Nix used every trick he had ever picked up over the years on Dick, wanting so badly to make him feel good. He rubbed his knuckles against his taint, pressing his sweaty forehead into Dick’s stomach as he gagged on him, and Dick grabbed his hair hard enough to tug a few loose from his scalp. Nix backed off of him for a moment, dragging his bottom lip up the back of Dick’s cock, and raising his head to look Dick in the eye.

Dick looked back at him, his eyes half-lidded and glazed, his lips parted. Nix closed his mouth again around the tip of him and sucked, and Dick clenched bodily, his eyes closing.

Nix knuckled harder into his taint, bobbing on his cock, desperate to make him come. His own dick was hard now too, and he was almost painfully aware of it, craving relief from Winters’ hands.

“I want you to come,” he begged Dick, who tightened his grip on Nix’s hair and nodded, his eyelashes fluttering, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

Nix coaxed orgasm from him, using his hands and mouth to worship Dick and gazing at him as he did so. Dick was wonderfully well-formed, a strapping guy with alabaster skin that made him resemble a Greek statue in the sunlight. His shoulders and thighs were finely sprayed with freckles that you could only see if you were right up close to him. Nix was certainly up close.

He licked a long stripe up Dick’s cock before taking the whole thing in his mouth once more, and Dick came, then, with a reedy exhale that gave Nix the impression he had been holding back before finally relenting. He shot bitter spunk into Nix’s mouth and down his throat, and Nix coughed before swallowing. A little dribbled down his lip, and he wiped it away, then realized Dick was staring at him.

Nix stared back. Dick’s chest rose and fell. His eyes were alight. He lay there for a moment longer, then scrambled into a sitting position, grabbed Nix and pinned him to the bed. Nix put up zero fight. He lay there staring up at Dick, his entire body tingling while Dick closed his hands around Nix’s wrists like manacles.

“What are you gonna do to me?” Nix said with interest, right before Dick lunged forward and kissed him.

They kissed with the fevered passion of teenagers, rolling around on the bed and clutching each other, rubbing together and moaning. Nix still had an undershirt and boxers on, and Dick ripped them off of him, leaving a three-inch tear in the undershirt that neither of them gave a shit about.

“Touch me,” Nix breathed in Dick’s ear, near hysteria from how badly he needed this. “Please, please.”

Dick rolled them onto their sides, then reached down and started to stroke Nix’s cock, bringing his thigh up between Nix’s legs and using it to ballast his hand. Nix leaned into his chest, grabbing at his flexed biceps and letting out a groan of relief. Dick’s hand moved with wonderful speed and power. It was like he was made to jerk Nix off. He knew exactly how to do it, the same way he had known exactly how to fuck him.

“God,” Nix whispered into the heat of Dick’s chest.

Dick kissed him on the crown of his head, tangling his free hand in Nix’s hair again. This was almost too much to bear. Nix felt an otherworldly pulse of pleasure in his pelvis and almost came right then and there. He gripped Dick’s biceps more tightly and thrusted up into his hand, moaning softly.

“Good, good,” Dick encouraged him, and then a second pulse of pleasure took Nix away, and he came. He gasped, clutching Dick harder, shuddering from how good it felt. His brain stopped working for a few glorious seconds, and then he came back into his body feeling as weak as a kitten.

Dick kissed him on the head again, and Nix said in a wild tone, “Knock that off, I like it too much.”

Dick laughed and stroked his hair back from his forehead. Nix realized he was still trembling, made an effort to stop, then sat up in the bed and looked down at Dick.

They smiled at each other. Nix noticed that Dick looked exhausted. The circles under his eyes were more like hollows.

Dick seemed to be examining him, too — finally he squinted and said, “Tilt your head to the left, let me see your neck?”

Nix complied.

“Good,” Dick said, with a look of relief.

“What?”

“I was worried I gave you a love bite earlier, but I didn’t.”

Nix, who would have been pleased to get a love bite from Dick, shrugged.

Dick kept looking at him. “Are your pupils that big?” he said. “Or are your eyes just that dark?”

Nix’s heart fluttered. He couldn’t say for sure without a mirror, though there was a good chance it was the former. Nix beckoned to him, then fell back against the pillows at the head of the bed. Dick joined him, lying down beside him and gazing at him.

“You should get some sleep,” Nix said.

Dick glanced at his watch and murmured, “It’s only eight o’clock,” but Nix could tell from the look on his face that he was going to fall asleep in a matter of minutes.

Nix brought Dick into his arms and touched their foreheads together, stroking Dick’s back, running his hand up and down between his shoulder blades. Dick let out a soft sigh and melted into him, drooping like a flower.

Nix continued to pet Dick for a long time, petting him to sleep and then petting him as he slept. When he got bored of this, he rolled over so that Dick would settle onto his back and Nix could get a better look at his sleeping form. Dick’s eyes moved under his eyelids, and his lips remained infinitesimally parted. His breathing was light and even. Nix pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

After a while, he started to grow sleepy too, and intertwined himself again with Dick, who awoke briefly to wrap his arms around Nix. The sun had gone completely down by then, and the room had darkened. In the street outside, they could hear shouts, and whoops, and the sound of guns being fired into the air. Nix lay there, his lips pressed to Dick’s collarbone, Dick’s fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck. Their hearts were beating at similar tempos.

Another gun went off, followed by raucous laughter.

Dick murmured in Nix’s ear, “They know when you shoot up, the bullets come back down, right?”

Nix let out a long, lazy laugh. “You should go out there and tell them.”

“Someone should.”

“You’re too tired?”

Dick let out a sigh and didn’t respond. On impulse, Nix gave him a very light bite on the shoulder, then said, “I brought that champagne up for us to open, by the way.”

“Us?”

“You can’t have one glass on V-E Day?”

“I don’t have a desire to.”

Nix dragged his lips across Dick’s shoulder, then nuzzled into his neck. “For me… for me. One little glass. It’s a really good bottle.”

“If it’s a really good bottle, you shouldn’t have brought it up here. Save it, open it with Harry. What do you think I gave you that cellar for?”

“But I’d like to celebrate with you,” Nix wheedled.

Dick let out yet another sigh, but this time the sigh meant that Nix had him. “I’ll take a sip.”

Nix all but leapt out of bed, hustling over to the drinks cabinet at the far end of the room and opening the door in search of champagne glasses. He found two inside of an ice bucket, and closed it, then went to listen at the bedroom door. The party was raging downstairs in the hotel, too. The sound was faint from up here, but unmistakable.

He grabbed the Moët off the desk, then bent over the pile of his clothes that were discarded on the luxurious wood floor and dug in his pocket for a knife. Nix found the seam on the champagne bottle, deftly sabered it open, then sopped up the ensuing gush of fizz with his pants. He poured two glasses, one pour less generous than the other, and returned to Dick in bed. Dick looked blearily up at him and took the glass he was offering.

“Did you just use your combat knife to open that bottle?” he said.

“That particular knife has seen zero combat,” Nix said. “And you can’t distract me from the matter at hand.” He clinked his glass against Dick’s. “A toast to victory. Now you have to drink, or it’s bad luck.”

He took a sip of his own and waited. Dick drank a tiny amount, then made an unhappy face.

“Really?” Nix said.

“I don’t like the taste,” Dick said.

“Even champagne? Champagne’s so light, I thought you’d like it. I don’t even like it, it’s too sweet for me.”

Dick took another sip, smaller this time, then wrinkled his nose. “It’s fizzy,” he said. “It stings my sinuses.”

Nix started laughing and took the glass from him, adding Dick’s share to his own and tossing the entire thing back. “You’re funny, you know that?”

A distant cheer came from downstairs. Nix glanced over his shoulder, then turned back around.

Dick watched him as he refilled his glass, then said, “You should go down there and join the party.”

“Nah, no, I’m here with you.”

“Nix… go, if you want to go. I’m just going to go back to sleep.”

Nix downed the second glass of champagne, set his glass and the bottle on the bedside table, then leaned in toward Dick. “You could come down with me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not my bag. It’s okay. You all should celebrate, you earned it.”

“You earned it too,” Nix murmured, playing with Dick’s dog tags.

“But it’s not fun for me,” Dick said. “I’m no good at a party, I don’t drink. Everyone’s just drinking themselves into oblivion, there’s no point in me being there.”

“Then I wanna be here with you.”

“No, you want to be downstairs, and you should be.”

Nix sat up, studying Dick, who rolled onto his back and rubbed his eye with the heel of one hand. “If I go, I’ll come back,” he said.

“I know,” Dick said, sounding amused and unconcerned.

Nix grabbed the bottle of champagne off of the table and chugged the rest of it. Dick watched him, the back of his hand now resting against his forehead.

“I thought you didn’t like champagne,” he murmured.

“I don’t,” Nix said, tossing the empty bottle on the floor and wiping his mouth. “Alright. I’ll go downstairs, put in an appearance, and then I’m gonna come back up.”

“Okay. But you don’t have to come back up.”

“I want to come back up! Jesus, Dick.” Nix leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth to shut him up, then climbed off the bed and started haphazardly getting dressed. “You’re a lot of trouble.”

“I’m a lot of trouble?” Dick repeated, in clear amusement.

“Yeah!” Nix did up his champagne-damp pants, then pulled on his shirt. “You want me to bring you anything?”

“Like what?”

“Food, or anything?”

“No, I’m alright,” Dick said, rolling over onto his side and facing Nix.

“We’ll celebrate somehow, you and me,” Nix said. “We’ll take some leave, and we’re going to go celebrate.”

“That sounds like a threat,” Dick said, but he was smiling.

“It is a threat. I’m going to make you enjoy yourself, under pain of death.”

Dick was quiet for a moment, then said, “I enjoyed myself tonight, Lew.”

Nix felt flustered by this for some reason. He finished doing up his jacket buttons and said, “Yeah, well, you’re sheltered. You’ve never had a great night out on the town.”

“I’ve been out on the town plenty. I went to college.”

“You’ve never been out on the town with me. You were out with those deathly boring Lancaster bastards, and whatever son of a bitch from the wrestling team you had half a night with. I’m going to give you the entire society experience, keep you out until three in the morning for once in your damn life.”

“You’re more handsome than he is, you know,” Dick said.

“Who?”

“The fellow from the wrestling team.”

Nix became even more flustered, and spluttered, “I’m going, alright?”

Dick smiled wider. “Okay.”

/

The biggest party of the night was still the ongoing, multi-day extravaganza over at the Eagle’s Nest, but Nix felt he had seen quite enough of the place and was fine with just going downstairs to the lobby of the Hof. Since the higher-ups were quartered here, it had been kept to its original purpose as an officer’s club, though Nix spotted a few enlisted men in the drunken crowd as he came down the stairs.

A few guys spotted him and cheered, lifting their drinks in a toast. Bottles that Nix recognized as loot from Goering’s cellar were all over the place — in men’s hands, sitting on tables, lying empty on the floor.

The cheers spread as he walked into the lobby, with several shouts of his name comingling. Guys slapped Nix on the back as he walked past them, and someone put a mixed drink in his hand, which made him laugh. A cocktail! He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a cocktail.

He took a sip. It tasted like it was probably meant to be a dark ‘n’ stormy, a drink that reminded him of interminable afternoons spent watching sailboat races. Either way, it contained a generous pour of rum. Nix kept walking deeper into the lobby, squeezing past throngs of sloppy-drunk officers who were laughing their asses off about nothing. At the back of the dining room, he saw a familiar figure sitting at the bar, and approached him.

“Hey there,” Nix said, tousling Harry’s hair roughly and then sitting down beside him.

“There you are,” Harry said. He sounded absolutely sauced, and was smiling.

“I wanted to make an entrance.”

“You didn’t need to, you’re the man of the hour for putting us all in booze.”

“That was Dick, not me,” Nix said. “I was just in charge of distribution, it’s thanks to him that the French aren’t drinking up all your champagne.”

An officer who he vaguely recognized was hanging out on the other side of the bar, and came over to Nix to say, “Can I make you a drink, Captain?”

“Uh — sure. Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Don McQuaite,” said McQuaite.

“What are you doing back there, lieutenant?” Nix said, leaning over the bar and looking at the selection of bottles that were arranged on a cart behind it. “Playing bartender?”

“Oh, I tended bar all through college, sir,” McQuaite said. “I always enjoyed it. And this one’s fully stocked, it’s great. It’s like the rapture took the Krauts right out of their seats… we even have orange peels and cherries.”

Nix did not care for orange peels or cherries. No one seemed to understand that he drank alcohol like a man in the desert drank water. He needed no accoutrements. He threw back most of the putative dark ‘n’ stormy, swallowed, then pointed at the cart. “Hand me that bottle of Lagavulin?”

McQuaite did so without question, then went over to talk to a lieutenant colonel from the 3rd who had sidled up at the other end of the bar. Nix opened the bottle of Scotch, and Harry said, “So, how is Dick? Not joining us, I’m guessing?”

“No,” Nix said, taking Harry’s drink from him. “What is this?”

“Sidecar.”

“Perfect,” Nix said, topping him off with a generous slosh of whiskey. “No, Dick’s asleep.” He spilled some whiskey on his knuckles, and licked it off. The mention of Winters had made him nervous, even though he was the one who brought him up.

“What were you two up to?” Harry said. “Talking?”

Nix nodded, then dipped his fingers into his own glass, fished out the ice, and tossed it on the floor behind the bar to make more room before pouring in some whiskey. “I think he’s shook up,” he said.

Harry nodded. “He never expected the war to end.”

“Well, that he’d see it end, anyway.”

“Did you?”

“God, no,” Nix said. “No, I was sure we’d all die over here. But I’m not as, uh, purpose-driven as Dick. And the war’s not over with yet, as our dear president saw fit to remind us in the middle of a victory speech.”

“‘We are only half through,’” Harry quoted, doing a mediocre impression of Truman that Nix nonetheless laughed at. “It’s his birthday, you know. Truman’s.”

“Aw, he can shove his birthday up his ass.”

Harry sipped his drink and made a face. “Can I get some more liqueur?” he said to McQuaite, who nodded and then squatted behind the bar to rifle through the cabinets.

“Weakling,” Nix said, drinking his whiskey straight.

“And proud of it,” Harry said. “You’d drink motor oil if it had the desired effect.”

“You’re slandering me, Welsh. The opposite. This is fine whiskey, not drug store shit, and you’re supposed to actually savor it instead of slopping orange liqueur over it to mask the taste. You might as well drink perfume.”

“Savor it, my ass,” Harry said mildly. “I’ve never once seen you savor alcohol.”

“I’m a highly experienced connoisseur, I don’t need to approach my craft as mincingly as the rest of you.”

“I am far too drunk to be arguing with the likes of you. Did you study arguing at Yale?”

“Yes, I was a dual major, I studied arguing and absinthe.”

Harry laughed. “You want to circulate?”

“Sure,” Nix said, turning in his seat and surveying the room. “What’s the temperature of this crowd?”

“Well, I think everyone wishes there were some women around,” Harry said. “But other than that, spirits are high.”

Nix slid out of his seat, beckoning Harry to join him. “Any interest in going back up to the Eagle’s Nest?” he said to him as he led the way through the crowd. “Wanna party with the enlisted men?”

“Let’s see where the night takes us,” Harry said.

/

Nix woke up in bed the next day with little recollection of where the night had taken them.

He quickly realized that he had a hangover, though it wasn’t a brutal one. He was in his room, not Dick’s, but Dick was sitting at the foot of his bed fully dressed and setting his watch. It was a sunny day outside, but the curtains were pulled shut tight, so the light coming in wasn’t too painful.

Nix noticed a cup of water on his bedside table and drank from it, his head swimming. He swallowed and said, “So… I didn’t come back to your room last night?”

“Morning!” Dick said, glancing up. Nix winced at the volume and timbre of his voice. “No, you did. You and Harry came to get me at around two-thirty. You were laughing hysterically.”

“Were we?”

“Yeah, you wanted to tell me some dirty joke that Luz had told you, but you kept stumbling over the punchline.”

Nix blinked at him. “When did I talk to Luz?”

“At the Eagle’s Nest, apparently,” Dick said, grinning.

“So we did go up there?” Vague memories of this resurfaced in his mind. “Don’t tell me I drove us.”

“Nah, you caught a ride, Harry said. Though I gathered that whoever drove you wasn’t exactly sober himself.”

Nix blinked, then winced as his temples throbbed in reply. “Did you put me to bed?”

“I did,” Dick said. “I tried to put Harry to bed, too, but he ran back downstairs, and I didn’t feel like chasing him. He’s so quick when he’s drunk.”

“Am I not?”

“No, you tend to slow down,” Dick said. “It’s like getting ahold of a tranquilized black bear. Not too hard, except when you corpse up on me and I have to drag you.”

“Uh-huh.” Nix glanced around the room, which was full of pilfered alcohol. His vision was streaky in a way that indicated to him that he was still a little bit drunk, in addition to being hungover. “Did you stay with me, after that?”

“I did.”

Nix glanced to his left and saw that the pillow on the other side of the bed was dented like someone had slept on it, though Winters had evidently already made up his side of the fucking bed and pulled the sheets tight with hospital corners. “Did I say anything embarrassing?”

Dick met his eyes, gave him a fond but arch look, and said nothing.

Nix’s gut lurched. “Oh.”

“You were drunk,” Dick said, shrugging.

“And you’re not gonna tell me what it was I said?” Nix said, his heart quickening.

“You just said some nice things to me,” Dick said. “I don’t want you to hear them sober and overthink them. I didn’t take them seriously.”

Nix started to panic further, and sat up a little. “Christ, Dick, you can’t do that. You’re terrible at this. You either tell a person he didn’t say anything, or you tell him exactly what he said.”

Dick reached out and patted him on the leg. “Lew, it’s fine.”

“Tell me one thing, at least.”

Dick looked at him for a moment, then said, “You said you wanted to take me everywhere you’ve ever been. You said you weren’t going to stop taking me places until we had seen all the same places.”

“Oh,” Nix said, falling back against the pillows. “That isn’t so bad. I was that coherent?”

Dick hesitated, then said, “That was the most coherent comment.”

“Okay.” In an effort to change the subject, Nix said, “What time is it?”

“Eleven,” Dick said.

“So you’ve been up and at ‘em, I’m guessing?”

“Not really,” Dick said. “I went for a run and got breakfast… that’s it so far.” He fiddled with his watch strap. “There’s not much to do that isn’t administrative. We’re heading out at 1500 hours today, so it’s just a matter of getting the men and the supplies in order.”

“What terrible news,” Nix said, squinting at him and smiling. “I can think of a few things for you to do, if you’re bored.”

Dick laughed and didn’t respond. “Once we’re settled in Austria, I was thinking I’d like to hike up the mountain and find some edelweiss,” he said. “Any interest in joining me?”

“Hike,” Nix repeated. “Ugh. I guess, sure.” Having some mountaintop privacy with Dick sounded nice, even if he was going to have to suffer hiking and altitude sickness to get it. “You lock that door?”

Dick nodded.

“C’mere.”

Dick slid off of the bed and walked over to Nix, his boots thumping on the floor. When he reached him, he bent over him, cupped his hands to Nix’s face and kissed him on the forehead.

Nix’s heart throbbed in his chest. He reached up and grabbed Dick by his wrists, clinging to him as the room spun.

“I’d really like you to take that hike with me,” Dick murmured in his ear, nuzzling his temple.

“I already said yes,” Nix said, his morning wood stirring.

“Actually, you said, ‘Ugh.’”

“I meant yes. Hey, what else did I say to you last night?”

Dick exhaled and drew back from him. “Well, you also wanted me to have sex with you.”

Nix cringed and dropped Dick’s wrists.

“I said ‘no, you’re too drunk,’ and you didn’t take that very well.”

“Jesus. Sorry. I don’t remember any of this.”

“No harm done,” Dick said in a clipped tone. “You gave me a lot of grumbling and growling, but after I got you to bed, you passed out.”

Nix sat up, smoothing his hair back off his forehead. Dick stood again, putting his hands on his hips, and said, “You want to go downstairs and get some breakfast?”

“Is it still breakfast time?” Nix muttered, looking around the room for his pants. Dick looked very dapper and handsome today, a fact which Nix was trying to ignore.

Dick nodded. “You’re in good company, I think half the guys in Berchtesgaden slept in today. When I went for my run, I saw all of six men out and about, and I don’t think any of them had been to bed yet. I saw a lieutenant passed out in someone’s yard… a stray goat was nibbling his hair.”

Nix laughed. “So I’m not in the worst shape of anybody.”

“You’re doing great, comparatively. I mean, you slept in a bed.”

“Thanks for facilitating that.”

“I do my part for the war effort.”

Nix snorted and reached a hand up to Dick, who helped him out of bed. “I’m gonna go shave,” he said, stumbling around as he got his legs back under him. “And then, yes, breakfast. But coffee first.”

“I could go get you some coffee and bring it up,” Dick said.

“That’d be great, but don’t feel obligated.”

“I don’t mind,” Dick said, heading for the door while Nix collected up his clothes from various points of the room. “And I’d like some more coffee, myself.”

“Then yeah, thanks.”

Dick nodded, unlocked the door, and left through it. Nix waited until he was out of earshot before kicking a chair over in frustration.

“Idiot,” he said, kicking the chair again. “Stupid fucking bastard.” He was referring to his blackout drunk self, who he felt unaccountably betrayed by.

The chair lay there in silence where he had kicked it. Nix let out a sigh and headed for the en suite bathroom.

/

After their convoy had settled in Austria and the officers had made their home in a ritzy chalet, a problem emerged: the 506th did not have enough food. This was a matter which Dick started to bring up constantly and which Nix quickly exhausted all hope of resolving. Normally when Dick’s guys needed something, Nix could almost always help get ahold of it somehow, but in this case he was shit out of luck. There was no amount of yelling or cajoling or threats or money or schmoozing that could fix the fact that they were at the very end of the distribution line and, in essence, scrounging in the back of an almost-empty pantry.

To distract Dick, Nix suggested they take their hike that Saturday. He brought it up late Friday evening, when they were lounging downstairs by the chalet’s main fireplace with Harry and Speirs.

“In the morning?” Dick said, glancing over at him.

“Depends what you mean by morning,” Nix said, picking a piece of lint off of his uniform and tossing it into the fire.

“I mean 0700.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Dick grinned at him. “Nine?”

“Now, what do you mean by nine,” Nix said. “You mean out the door by nine, or I wake up at nine?”

“Out the door by nine.”

“No dice. Try again.”

“Out the door by nine-thirty,” Dick said. “Final offer.”

“Fine, but I’m not shaving.”

Dick nodded, pleased. “Do either of you two want to come with us?”

Nix hoped to God they both would say no, and somewhat resented Dick for asking them.

“No, I’m alright,” said Harry, who was reclined on the couch beside Nix and half-asleep.

Speirs looked up from the letter he was writing and said, “Uh, I’m already going to be up on Kaprun tomorrow, Major — you told me to take a few men and go check out the ski lodge, remember?”

“That’s right,” Dick said with a gleam in his eye. “Yeah, do that. Let’s see about this skiing situation.”

“We can’t feed the men, but let’s teach them to ski,” Nix muttered, looking around for other objects that he could toss into the roaring fire. “What are you… ‘Let them eat skis’?”

Dick laughed. “I don’t want to just send men up to ski, I want to send them up to hunt, too.”

“Oh, right.” The two of them had been discussing hunting as a solution to their food supply problems just that morning. “For the record, I’m not doing any hunting or skiing. I’ve done enough hunting and skiing in my life.”

“Yeah, you’re exempted, Nix. It’s for the guys who would enjoy themselves. This is an opt-in program.”

Harry sniffed and said, “I’ve never been skiing.”

“You want to learn to ski, Harry?” Dick said, glancing over at him.

“Oh, no thank you,” Harry said, and Nix laughed.

Harry caught Nix’s eye, and they exchanged a knowing ‘Dick is already going stir crazy’ look.

“Then you don’t have to,” Dick said magnanimously.

Nix glanced at Dick, who was in an easy chair next to the couch that he and Harry were sitting on. His long legs were stretched out in front of him so he could warm his sock feet by the fire, and he looked content.

The two of them hadn’t done anything in a few days besides kiss and pet each other whenever they happened upon a stolen moment. There was, implausibly, still a lot of work to do, and now the business of interminable occupation was stretching out ahead of them.

Nix knew Dick was constitutionally unlikely to initiate sex between them, but he was still steeping in shame about whatever had happened on the night of V-E Day, so he didn’t want it to be him, either. What he really wanted was for Dick to get him in a room, lock the door, then descend on him, tear his clothes off and ravish him. But that was like wanting your pet springer spaniel to eat you alive.

They had some talking to do, Nix knew this. The war in Europe had ended, the thing they were waiting for had come, and yet things were still as muddled as ever. Nix did not know where he stood in Dick’s life. There was the possibility of the Pacific theater. There were day-to-day problems like food. There were concerns about stray revanchist Nazis. There was the question of New Jersey. Nix wanted Dick to come up with a grand unifying plan, but Dick seemed to be at sixes and sevens, himself — hence the perseveration on weird shit like skiing.

Nix was probably teasing him more than he should be, but he was frustrated. He wanted answers. He hoped that the hike would force a conversation, at the very least.

/

Winters was not fucking around about the 9:30 thing. He burst into Nix’s room the next morning at 9:12, barking, “Good morning!”

Nix, who had been successfully sleeping through the trilling of the alarm clock he had set the night before, rolled onto his stomach and groaned in agony. “Dick, please,” he begged. He was somehow more hungover today than he had been on the morning after V-E Day. A week of celebrating had caught up with him.

Dick grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him onto his back with total ease, like he was as light as a plank of wood. Nix squinted up at him in misery, and Dick pushed a cup of black coffee into his hands.

“Clemency,” Nix rasped.

“No clemency, Nix. You said you’d be out the door with me at nine-thirty. It’s ten hours up and back if we take it slow, and I’d like to be back here by no later than sundown.”

“We don’t have to take it slow,” Nix said, sitting up and taking a sip of the coffee.

“With how much you’ve been smoking lately, and how hungover you are? The air’s thin up there. We’ll take it slow.”

This comment reminded Nix that cigarettes existed, and he scrounged around on his bedside table for a pack and lighter, took a cigarette out, and put it in his mouth. His vision was so bleary that he tried and failed a few times to light it, cradling his coffee between his armpit and chest as he did so, until Dick took the lighter away and lit it for him.

They stared into each other’s eyes as he did this. Nix took in a deep lungful of smoke, then exhaled it without taking the cigarette from his lips.

“If you want to be back here by eight,” he muttered, “then we could leave at ten.”

“I built in that extra half-hour for lunch,” Dick said.

Nix glanced at the little alarm clock on his bedside table, forcing his vision to focus enough that he could read it. It was now 9:15.

“Give me five minutes to finish this,” he said, taking the cigarette from his mouth and downing another sip of the coffee. “And ten minutes to get ready. And I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Fantastic.”

Nix squinted at Dick, who was fully dressed for a hike and had smoothed his hair back into a perfect coiff. “You wanna incentivize this hike for me?” he said.

“Hmm,” Dick said. “And how might I do that?”

“You know, playing dumb is the kind of thing that people only find cute when a woman does it,” Nix said, smiling at him.

Dick glanced down, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then drew his gaze back up to meet Nix’s. “Sex and altitude sickness don’t really go hand-in-hand.”

“Sex actually wasn’t what I was driving at.”

“Then it turns out I’m not playing dumb after all.”

Nix snorted in appreciation. “A real conversation is what I meant.”

“Alright,” Dick said, looking down again. “About what?”

“I’m looking for the kind of conversation we had in Thalham.”

A moment of silence elapsed. Nix glanced at the alarm clock again. 9:16.

“Yeah,” Dick muttered. “Yeah, I know that’s overdue.”

“Well, then let’s have it today, while we’ve got plenty of privacy and time to ourselves.”

Dick nodded, still not looking at him.

“We don’t have to,” Nix added. “I just thought we might as well. I’m not exactly the president of difficult conversations, myself, but they come around once in a while.”

“No, I owe it to you,” Dick said.

“Christ,” Nix said, smoking. “Dick, you incurable romantic. I don’t want you to owe me it — I only want to talk if you want to talk. If not, don’t worry about it.”

Dick nodded again and glanced up at him with an earnest, pained expression. “I want to.”

“Okay, good,” Nix said in relief, then took another sip of his coffee, finishing it. “Alright, get out of here. I need to shit, shave, et cetera, and now you’re the one making me blow your deadline.”

“You told me you weren’t going to bother shaving.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

Dick laughed. “See you in fifteen,” he said, and headed for the door.

/

Despite the fact that they were able to see the snowy caps of the Alps from the valley below, Nix was stunned to see actual snow on the ground as they advanced in their climb. May in Austria was so gorgeous and warm that you could have slept outside without a blanket, yet the higher they climbed, the colder and thinner the air got. Eventually it felt like they had walked back in time, all the way to February. Nix had been hiking before, but never this high up, and he had been skiing plenty of times, but only in the dead of winter and at resorts that ferried you everywhere you needed to go.

They sweated heavily with exertion and then shivered and piled on layers when that sweat dried cool on their skin. Nix was mostly just following Dick in a haze while ethanol worked its way out of his pores. He had a headache, but it was a dull one that only throbbed when he turned his head too quickly or tripped over a loose rock.

Halfway up, he put on sunglasses, because the absolutely cloudless sky was creating a blinding glare off of the snow. Dick didn’t seem bothered by that, himself. He was trekking up the mountain singlemindedly like a goat, scanning for edelweiss as he went.

“How high up does this stuff grow?” Nix yelled to him, a few hours in.

“High,” Dick yelled back.

“Helpful.”

Dick laughed. “About six thousand feet up. We’re looking for limestone.”

“Limestone,” Nix repeated. “How high up are we now?”

Dick stopped and turned to him, checking his watch and then bringing his hand up to shield his eyes so he could look down at the sprawling vista that was now below them. “No more than five thousand feet.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Come on, Nix, get into the spirit of it. You can keep this flower for the rest of your life.”

Nix smiled at him. “Look, if we find one, you’re taking it, okay?”

“We’ll find two,” Dick said with confidence.

“In case we don’t. So what’s the plan? We hike about a half-hour longer, find a flower, then sit and have lunch and talk?”

Dick nodded. “That sounds fine to me.”

“Okay,” Nix said, shrugging his bag more securely over his shoulders. “Keep going, then, I’m right behind you.”

The thinness of the air started to get noticeable, then, and Nix found himself short of breath and nauseous. He dry heaved a few times, which actually helped, then resumed wheezing. They had gone another mile or so when Nix spotted a giant alpine hare sitting beside a stream a few feet off the trail, its nose twitching.

Nix froze on the spot and stared at it. It stared back at him. He glanced up the trail at Dick, who had gone another twenty feet or so, and hissed, “Dick.”

Dick swiveled on his feet like he had heard the report of a gun. “What?”

“Shh. You see that hare?”

Dick followed his gaze, but shook his head. It was far more bare up here, and trees no longer occluded their view, but the grass and brush were still tall enough to.

“Toss me your rifle,” whispered Nix. He had come up armed with only a knife and pistol, in the hopes of lightening his load.

Dick took his rifle from his shoulder and tossed it underhand to Nix, who caught it and held it close to him so as not to spook the hare. The hare kept sitting there, complacent as could be, eating a piece of grass. It acted like an animal that rarely saw people and wasn’t as afraid of them as it should be.

Nix pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, slowly lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fixed the hare’s head in his sights. He lined the shot up as carefully as possible, closing his non-dominant eye. He really didn’t want to shoot it in the body and ruin the meat.

When he was satisfied, he pulled the trigger, then stumbled back from the recoil — he wasn’t used to shooting while standing at a 45 degree angle and breathing barely oxygenated air. Nix shook the ringing from his ears and then lowered the gun to see the dead hare slumped over where it had been sitting. He had delivered a perfect shot through the head.

Dick, who was coming back down to meet him, took a look and nodded approvingly. “Nice work,” he said.

“Thanks,” Nix said. “You’re carrying it back down, I hope you know that.”

Dick looked aggrieved, but nodded. “I brought a few canvas bags,” he said. “I’ll pack it in snow.”

Nix leaned on Dick’s rifle while Dick went about packing up the hare.

“This is at least eight pounds of rabbit, Nix,” Dick called approvingly as its limp body swung from his hand.

“Right, so five pounds of meat?” Nix said. “Great, that’ll feed, what… three guys for one meal?”

“No, don’t be a cynic, we’ll make rabbit soup,” Dick said, moving on to scooping snow into one of the canvas bags with his gloved hands.

“I think we need to shoot some goats, Dick,” Nix said.

“I don’t disagree with you there.”

Nix grinned. “Lapin a la cocotte. Do you know what my father would say if he knew that I was shooting rabbits and eating rabbit soup out of desperation?”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t even know. He’d probably cause a flap down at the local USO, and try to have some Renoirs airdropped to us, or something. Then he’d forget about it.”

Dick laughed, then gave him a knowing look. “Let them eat Renoirs, huh?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“I promise I won’t make you ski, Nix.”

“Not so fast,” Nix said. “I’m tired of walking, I’d be willing to ski back down if we stumble across that lodge you’ve got Speirs looking for.”

“You a good skier?”

“I’m decent.”

Dick finished packing the larger bag full of snow, and started stuffing the hare into the smaller one. “I’ve never skied,” he said.

“You’d take to it,” Nix said.

It only took fifteen more minutes of hiking before Dick found edelweiss. He stopped in the middle of the trail like he had sensed its presence, then wandered off the trail about fifty feet, following a vein of limestone behind a rocky outcropping. Nix took advantage of his absence and pulled his flask out so he could have a fortifying sip of whiskey.

Dick returned a minute later with edelweiss in his fingers, beaming. There was something particularly handsome and endearing about this smile: his eyes were alight, his cheeks and the tips of his ears flushed with cold. He twirled the edelweiss in his fingers, then leaned down to smell it, and Nix felt a warm surge of affection for him.

“Smell like anything?” he said.

“Yeah, like moss.” Dick closed the distance between them, then handed the flower to Nix, who sniffed it too.

“Moss is right,” Nix agreed.

Dick tucked the edelweiss into his pocket and said, “I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared behind the rocky outcropping again. Nix walked over to a pristine blue pond that was butting up against a tall sheet of rock, found a nice, flat stretch of grass alongside it, then dropped his bag there. Then he got his canteen and refilled it in the pond.

As he spun the cap back onto the canteen, he was overcome by a lurch of nausea. Nix swiveled away and threw up in a pile of snow to his left. At that same moment, Dick reappeared, walking back over to him.

Nix wiped his mouth, then drank some water to rinse out the taste of bile, annoyed with both himself and the high altitude. His cheeks were burning from embarrassment and the cold, thin air. As Dick sidled up to him, he held up three fingers.

It took Nix a second to realize what this meant, and then he scoffed.

Dick was grinning. “I don’t mean to be keeping track.”

“One day I’ll see you throw up, and it’s going to be the highlight of my year.”

“I actually haven’t thrown up since I was a teenager, so I’m long overdue,” Dick said, patting him on the back. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Dick squatted beside Nix and held something up to him — another edelweiss. “Here. Here’s yours.”

Nix stared at it, blinking. They were beautiful flowers, and unlike any he was used to seeing. Their fine white fuzz made them look permanently dusted with snow. He gingerly took it in his fingers.

“Thanks,” he said, meeting Dick’s eyes, which looked electric blue in the alpine light.

Dick smiled at him, undoing him a little. “Lunch?”

“Yeah, please.”

They sat together and ate in ravenous silence, turning away from the pond and gazing out over the gorgeous view of the mountainside that they had earned with all of their climbing. When they were both done eating, Nix lit a cigarette, and they sat in silence for a moment, just resting.

“I have to talk to you about something,” Dick said.

He said this in such a serious tone that the back of Nix’s neck prickled. “Yeah?” he said, glancing over at him.

Dick didn’t glance back — he kept looking out over the mountains. “I don’t know if you’ll be all that pleased to hear it.”

“Try me.”

“I might not go home after all. I’m thinking I’ll try to get a transfer to the Pacific.”

“Is that all?” Nix said in relief. “That’s nothing. I was thinking about it myself, but if you apply, then I absolutely will.”

Dick looked over at him in obvious surprise. “You will?”

“Yeah!” Nix said. “What, you’re just going to waltz into Japan alone? We’ve been together through this entire thing, Christ, we can’t split up now.”

Dick’s lips twitched in a smile. “So you don’t want to go home?”

“You think I’m going to go home and sit around while you have all the fun?”

“I don’t know if fun is the word,” Dick said.

Nix knew it wasn’t any kind of fun. He had heard all about the endless Operation Iceberg, the crazy tropical diseases and parasites, the suicidality of the enemy. But he wasn’t thinking about that right now.

“I meant at least we’d be together,” he said, ashing his cigarette.

“I can’t ask you to do that for me,” Dick said.

“Good thing you didn’t ask me, then. I volunteered. End of story.”

Dick looked deeply pleased. He kept studying Nix like he wasn’t sure what to make of him. “You’d really come with me?”

Nix rolled his eyes hugely.

Dick laughed. “I’m just making sure.”

“Well, I can’t think of any other ways to say it.”

“There’s not going to be any VAT 69 in Japan,” Dick said.

“Yeah, I’ll manage,” Nix said. “I’ve been managing.”

“I know you have.”

“Do you not want me to come, or something?”

“No,” Dick said, with vehement urgency. “No, no. I want — I’d like you to come. I just don’t want to put any pressure on you.”

“Then consider this me insisting,” Nix said.

Dick eyed him again, fidgeting a little. “I think we could do some good over there, you and me,” he said.

“I agree,” Nix said. “Let’s put a final end to this damn war.”

They were quiet for a while, then. Nix smoked while Dick looked lost in thought.

“I was going to tell you that’s why I can’t take your job offer,” Dick said. “Because I’m heading for the Pacific.”

“Alright,” Nix said.

“But I guess if we both went…”

Nix watched Dick as he worried at his lip with his teeth, lost in a struggle to locate whatever words he was looking for. In the distance, a little band of goats crossed a narrow ledge of rock that stood out from the side of the mountain, then disappeared from view.

“I don’t know,” Dick finally said. He blinked, looking tired. “I don’t know, Nix. I don’t know what to say about all this.”

“What, New Jersey?” Nix said. “Well, I think either we blow up in Japan, or we go home and I have a job for you.” He paused. “If it’s just me that blows up in Japan, though, you’re out of luck on the job front.”

Dick laughed, but said, “Don’t.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t mean New Jersey.”

“No, I don’t,” Dick said. “Well, I did, sort of. I meant… what are we gonna do?”

Nix’s gut lurched. He blew out a sigh, then put out his cigarette on a rock beside him. “About us being — what was that word you used? Close?”

“Yeah,” Dick said. “Yeah, what are we gonna do about that?”

“I have no idea.”

They were quiet again. Nix felt uncomfortable — lightheaded and itchy and antsy, hot under the collar. He wanted to kiss Dick and go to bed with him, but they were on the side of a fucking mountain. He drank some more water and stood up, trying to get his blood flowing.

“If we did go back to the States together,” Dick said, “what’s going to happen? Are we just going to keep doing this?”

Nix looked over at him. “You want to stop?”

“No, I don’t,” Dick muttered. “That’s the problem.”

“I don’t think it’s a problem.”

“We’d have to stop again if we transferred. It’d be like it was before V-E Day.”

“That’s alright,” Nix said, even though the thought of going back to not touching Dick made him want to pull his hair out.

“But then what?” Dick said, looking up at him finally. “What, we just do this until — when are you supposed to do that until? What if we never want to stop?”

Nix was at a loss for words. “I don’t know,” he said.

Dick stood too. “But you know better than I do,” he said. “You’ve done this before.”

“I haven’t really done this before, Dick.”

“You said you had.”

Nix wet his lips and swallowed. “I wasn’t close with those guys,” he said, looking Dick in the eye. “Not like we are. It was just sex.”

“Oh,” Dick said.

“Yeah, I don’t know how this is supposed to go when it’s anything more than sex.”

Dick looked at first relieved, and then dismayed, as if Nix had come up to him during battle and admitted that he had no idea where the enemy line was. “You don’t know anyone who’s done this indefinitely?”

“No, I know plenty of those types,” Nix said. “All my life I’ve known them, men and women both. They’re, you know… roommates. They pretend they’re just friends. Everyone knows and plays along, and talks about it behind their backs.”

“Roommates,” Dick repeated.

Nix shrugged. The sun was beating down on them like a drum, and he suddenly felt crazy for having agreed to this hike. It was another ten miles back down, and his entire body was already sore.

“I mean, that’s no kind of option,” Dick said. “We go back to New Jersey together and pretend we’re ‘roommates’? We live some bridled life of secrecy and denial? Is that something you can actually see yourself doing?”

Nix stared at him, his quick temper aroused. “We’d be together, Dick. Don’t make it sound like a prison sentence.”

“I’m not. I just can’t get my head around it.”

“Why not?”

Dick struggled for words again, then shrugged.

Nix felt an unpleasant lurch of intuition. “Do you have doubts about me as a roommate? You think I’d be a shitty one, since I was a shitty husband?”

Dick shot him a look. “I never said that.”

“You thought it.”

“Like hell I did,” Dick snapped, surprising Nix. “Look, don’t you have other prospects, Lew? Other irons in the fire? I’m supposed to believe this is a serious offer?”

“It is a serious offer,” Nix said, his temper rising. “Are you calling me a liar? Have I ever once lied to you?”

“I’m asking you not to make promises you can’t keep.”

“Who says I wouldn’t keep them?”

Dick raised his hands and laced them against the back of his head, looking out over the valley again. “I don’t even know how we got ourselves in this position.”

“I do,” Nix said. “I came onto you. I fucked up, I get it. You want to undo it? Say the word.”

“No, I don’t want to undo it,” Dick muttered, staring at the horizon.

“Sounds like it might be easier, at this point.”

Dick was quiet for a moment. “We can’t undo it,” he said.

Nix watched him, his head spinning, his heart pounding.

“And I don’t want to,” Dick said. He worried at his lip again. “That night was… No, I don’t want to undo it.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t know what I want, Nix. We weren’t ever supposed to be here. I thought I was going to die.”

“I know. I thought the same.”

“Then you know how I feel right now.”

“What do you want me to do?” Nix said. “What do you want us to do? Give me some kind of order or direction, and I’ll take it, Dick. Just take me out of this fucking limbo.”

Dick let out a weak little laugh. “I can’t tell you what to do, here. I have no idea.”

“Just come back with me,” Nix begged. He was making an idiot of himself again, but he didn’t care. “Just come home with me, whenever we get out of this. Let me get you a job, and a place to live, and we can take it one day at a time.”

That phrase seemed to relieve Dick some. He straightened up and exhaled, then looked back over at Nix.

“There were things I was going to do, if I ever made it out,” he said.

“You can still have your farm. I’ll buy you a farm.”

“That wasn’t how I… it isn’t supposed to work like that.”

“Fine, buy the damn farm yourself,” Nix said. “I just want to be with you. I can’t just…” His voice wavered, and Dick flinched at the sound of that.

“There’s certain things we can’t do, Nix,” he said. “There are things we can never do. It’s not our fault, we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just not how things work.”

“What, what is it that we can’t do?”

“Well, to start with, I’m supposed to get married.”

This stung Nix badly. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he snapped. “And I don’t know what you mean by supposed to.”

“It’s what you do. It’s part of life.”

“You talk like it’s mandatory.”

Dick opened his mouth, said nothing, and shut it.

“Like it’s conscription,” Nix continued. “‘I have to do this, so I have to make the best of it, I’ll be the best. I’ll be a paratrooper.’ Right?”

Dick squinted at him. “You don’t have me nailed down as well as you think you do.”

“Please,” Nix scoffed. “I know you better than you know you.”

With a defiant look, Dick said, “I’d like to be married.”

“Oh yeah? To who?”

Dick shrugged.

“Right,” Nix said. His hand twitched in the direction of the flask on his hip, but he didn’t reach for it. “Some woman, any woman. You want to give it a try, see how good you are at it… prove to yourself how normal you can be.”

“Nix.”

“I couldn’t make it work, but you’re not me, right? You’re better.”

“Nix,” Dick repeated, more loudly.

“If you think this,” Nix said, gesturing between them, “is a dime a dozen —”

“I never said it was,” Dick said, his face getting red. “You’re putting all kinds of words in my mouth, knock it off. I never said that.”

“Well, you think it, because you’re inexperienced and you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Dick’s face darkened further. “Exactly how miserable are you trying to make the rest of this hike?”

“Oh, absolutely miserable. I want you to be sour and pissed off the whole way down. I want us to not say a word to each other the rest of the day.”

“You’re getting us there in a hurry, Nix.”

“Good!” Nix kicked a rock for emphasis. “Does it count for nothing that I know what’s out there, that I know what a sorry fucking wasteland it is?”

“Look, I’m sorry about you and Kathy,” Dick said evenly. “But that doesn’t reflect on me whatsoever.”

“Oh, you sanctimonious bastard, I didn’t say it did. I’m saying it reflects on the human condition. I made her miserable, and she made me miserable. Do you know how common that is?”

Dick was quiet.

“You make me happy,” Nix spat, and kicked another rock clear off the side of the mountain. It sailed through the air, then disappeared from view.

“Including at present?” Dick said.

Nix spluttered out a laugh, then scoffed. “God damn you, don’t make me laugh right now.”

Dick hesitated, then came over to him, stepping into his personal space. He got close enough that Nix had to look up at him — which Nix resented at this particular moment — then ducked his head to kiss him on the mouth.

Nix let him do this, leaning into him and throwing his arms around his neck. This was a profoundly stupid thing to do for many reasons, not least because they couldn’t be sure they were alone, but neither of them seemed to care.

The lack of oxygen in the air made kissing harder; Nix got breathless in a hurry and had to break away to inhale. Dick kissed his neck, nuzzling his unshaven cheeks before pressing his lips to the hollow below his ear. Nix’s dick twitched, and he gripped Dick’s jacket hard.

“I never said I thought anyone else could make me as happy as you do,” Dick whispered in his ear.

Nix let out a sigh of relief. God help him, he adored this man. “So you just want to make yourself unhappy on purpose?”

“Life isn’t about being happy.”

They kissed some more. Their lips were cold from the air, but the insides of each other’s mouths were warm and wet and inviting.

“I want you so bad,” Nix breathed, rubbing up against him. “It’s all I can think about when I look at you lately.”

Dick made a soft sound and pressed more kisses to his mouth — hard ones that lingered, like he was trying to drink the air from Nix’s lungs.

They kissed until they were dizzy, and then they took a step back from each other, swaying on their feet. Dick brought a hand to his lip, which was bleeding, then looked in surprise at the blood it transferred to his finger.

“Sorry,” Nix panted.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Dick said. “It’s this cold air.”

They were quiet for a moment as they caught their breath. Dick met Nix’s eyes, which made his gut pulse with heat, and said, “We should head back.”

“Yeah,” Nix said.

Dick paused, then added wryly, “It’s been forty-five minutes since we stopped for lunch.”

Nix snorted.

“I only allotted thirty.”

“Don’t push your luck with me right now.”

Dick smiled at him. “We can put in for a transfer first thing Monday,” he said. “I’ll try to pull some strings for us. Maybe we could get Harry to come too.”

Nix nodded, momentarily mollified. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“And then…” Dick shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Nix repeated.

There was a feeling of uneasy camaraderie between them, like they had reached an armistice that would hold for as long as it could. They started packing up, then set off back down the mountain with their dead hare and their matching pair of edelweiss.

/

As promised, Dick went to Sink first thing Monday morning and asked him for his help arranging a transfer for himself and Nix. Sink said he would see what he could do, so Nix and Dick were left sitting around, tending to the nuisances of occupational duty and trying to bully Harry into coming to Japan with them. He so reliably used Kitty as an excuse that Nix ended up barking at him, “Just bring Kitty to Japan and enlist her!”

Harry didn’t find this as funny as Dick and Nix did. Then Dick pointed out that Kitty wasn’t battle-hardened and would be tantamount to another replacement, even if they dressed her up as a man and taught her how to drive a tank. To this, Harry said, “Don’t call my girl a replacement.”

Nix thought he saw wheels turning in Dick’s head when Harry talked about Kitty. When Harry talked about how excited he was to move in with Kitty and get to be around her all the time, Nix would shoot a significant look across the table at Dick, and Dick would look back at him with an unreadable expression.

Dick also stealthily arranged for them to bunk together at night by moving some men around. Nix had lucked out and gotten a large suite with two beds in it, while Lipton had quartered himself in a house down the street with some Easy NCOs. Dick offered Lipton his own bedroom and said, “I can just bunk with Nix.” They had been inseparable enough for the entire war that no one found this weird — or they did, but were too afraid to say anything about it. Either way, it worked out.

Most nights, they discussed Japan. It was the same conversation over and over: what they knew about the state of things over there, how it seemed to differ from their own experiences, what the paratrooping would be like. They had that conversation in lieu of the other conversation they needed to be having. They also had sex in lieu of the other conversation they needed to be having.

The problem was that Dick was grasping for some kind of larger meaning. Japan was just a gap-filler, a piece of flotsam to which Dick now clung. He needed something secure to swear himself to, and though he loved Nix, he didn’t seem convinced that a life with him would fit the bill. This hurt Nix deeply and made him prone to nighttime drinking and lashing out, which only worsened the situation. One night, Dick asked if he would be perpetually drunk as a roommate, to which Nix snapped that he was perpetually drunk because he had been left perpetually hanging. Then he pointedly went to sleep in his own bed instead of going over and getting in bed with Dick, like he usually did.

On the morning that Dick had his meeting with General Chapman about his transfer request, Nix woke up after he had already left for it. He wandered downstairs, checked in on the general state of things, then made himself some coffee and took it out to the front porch so he could drink it while looking out over the valley.

Around 11:30, he saw Winters walking up the road toward the chalet, his red hair peeking over a row of hedges. When he turned the corner, Nix saw that he was in full uniform, and as Dick got closer, he could see that his face was also red and he was scowling.

“No joy?” Nix called to him, and lit a cigarette in preparation.

Dick didn’t say anything until he had clambered up onto the porch and came to sit beside Nix on the lounge. He stared out over the Austrian countryside, brooding, then said, “Apparently I’ve ‘done enough.’”

“Have you,” Nix said, smoking.

“Yeah. Transfer request denied.” Dick was quiet for a moment. “He said he only took the meeting out of respect for me, he doesn’t actually want to take me on.”

“What else did he say?”

“That I need to wait my turn, and if I go to the Pacific, I’ll do well there, but in the meantime I’m not needed. I need to wait to get called up, and stay here with my men.”

“Right. You want some coffee?”

“No.”

Nix sniffed and took a sip of his own. “So, if I’m reading the tea leaves right, we’re sitting around in Austria all summer until the war ends over there of its own accord, then shipping back home?”

“You could go home now,” Dick muttered. “You have enough points, and Sink wouldn’t keep you the way he’s keeping me.”

Nix looked over at him, and Dick looked back. His face was still a little pink with frustration.

“What?” Dick said.

“I’m not in any hurry.”

“To go home?”

Nix nodded.

“Okay,” Dick said, looking relieved.

“I assume my transfer request is also denied,” Nix said.

Dick laughed and admitted, “I forgot to ask. I just assumed they were treating us as a matched set.”

“Right.”

“Everyone seems to pick up on that,” Dick said, looking down and fiddling with his wristwatch.

“Yeah, everybody except you,” Nix said, smoking.

Dick had a good laugh at that. When his laughter faded, he got a sort of clenched, agonized look, and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“God, Dick, I don’t think anyone asked you to figure out what you’re going to do about absolutely everything.”

Dick didn’t even seem to process this. “I don’t want a career in the military. But I don’t know what I do want a career in. I’m decent at this, and I love the men, and there’s nothing else like this. I said something like that to Sink, and he said, ‘Why do you think I made a career out of it?’”

“Well, that’s Sink,” Nix said. “Dick, not to beat a dead horse, but I did offer you a job.”

“I know, Lew, and it’s a very kind offer. But it’s a handout, not a career.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Nix said. “You’re a good hire. Yeah, I want you around, but you talk about this like you’re my brain-dead mistress that I’m setting up with a secretary job she didn’t earn.”

Dick laughed some more.

“You’re smart, you’re a hard worker,” Nix said. “You’ll do well, and it’s something to do. God knows you need something to do.”

Dick eyed him. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Collect art and go to horse shows.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Someone has to go to these horse shows.”

“Nix…”

Nix finished his coffee and set it on the table, ashing his cigarette into the empty cup. “Nothing is going to mean as much as this,” he said, fixing Dick with a hard look. “For the rest of our lives, nothing is going to be as big as this. The time for glory’s over. That peaceful life you were dreaming about when we were getting shelled? It’s time to go have that. You survived, Dick. All the future plans you kept muttering about when we were in Bastogne? You can have those, now.”

Dick nodded a slow, weary nod. “I don’t get why it’s me who gets to have it,” he said.

“It’s just pure dumb luck. We got lucky.”

“So many good men are dead or hurt, and they want me to just walk on out of here and go home.”

“Of course they do. Why did we fight this war, if no one was going to get to go home?”

“I know.”

Nix knew what was bothering Dick — he wasn’t just a soldier, he was a leader. He was a shepherd to his men. He was leaving this war unhurt and alive while many of his men were hurt or dead, and that didn’t sit right with him, and likely never would.

“Look, just come work in New Jersey for a while, no big commitments,” Nix said. “Put together a down payment, look around for a good farm, take a breather and think about what you want to do. We can talk about it. We’ll talk it out.”

“Right,” Dick muttered, then glanced around as if making sure that they were alone. “And what about us?”

“We’ll talk about that too. You don’t have to decide anything yet.”

“What about you, though?” Dick said. “You’re telling me to go live a small, peaceful life, but I’ve never known you to want a small, peaceful life.”

Nix said, gently, “Dick, you don’t know what I want.”

“I just keep, um… I keep thinking…”

Dick trailed off, and Nix sat there smoking, letting him gather his thoughts.

“When I picture being back in the States, I can’t picture us together,” Dick said. “I don’t know what that would look like. But I can’t imagine any kind of life without you, either.”

Nix’s heart lifted in hope. “What can’t you picture?”

Dick shrugged and shook his head, looking wan in the luminous morning light of Austria.

“Did you really never know anyone who was like us?” Nix said. “There weren’t any homosexuals in Pennsylvania?”

“Not that I knew of. It was all families, out in Mennonite and Amish country. And it was the Depression. We didn’t talk to our neighbors about their social lives, we talked about more practical things.”

“Your parents didn’t gossip about people?”

“Oh, no,” Dick said, in a charmingly earnest way. “No, if they knew about something like that, they wouldn’t have talked about it.”

“Maybe it isn’t so bad when you’re surrounded by honest working types, people who mind their own business.”

“And maybe it was just a matter of us having less time on our hands than your people did,” Dick said.

Nix laughed. “Yeah.”

Dick gave him a tight smile. “Speaking of that, Nix, I was serious when I asked what you’re planning to do once you’re back home. I’d like to know.”

“I told you,” Nix said. “I’m going to do what I was always supposed to do, what I was doing long before I met you.”

“Which is?”

“Being Mr. Lewis Nixon,” Nix said, finishing his cigarette and then holding up three fingers. “The third.”

Dick let out a listless snort. “And where do I fit into that?”

“We can talk that out too,” Nix said lightly. “Figure out which horse shows we want to attend together.”

“Right.”

They were quiet, then, sitting there in the peaceful air, letting the sound of birdsong fill the silence.

“Nix,” Dick said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t like hiding. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to be some difficult secret of yours.”

Nix swallowed with some difficulty. “I get it.”

“I’d marry you if I could,” Dick said in a soft voice.

Nix wasn’t expecting that, and it hit him like a brick to the head. He closed his eyes, absolutely beset by grief, his heart burning in his chest. “Don’t say that.”

“You already said that to me,” Dick said.

Nix opened his eyes and looked over at him. Dick was giving him a searching look, his eyebrows arched. “What?”

“When you were drunk, you said that.”

“I said I wanted to marry you?”

“Yeah,” Dick said.

“Fuck,” Nix said, flushing with prickly heat. He felt absolutely destabilized. “You could have told me that before. Jesus.”

“I told you, I didn’t want you to beat yourself up about it.”

“Well, I’m sorry I said that.”

“Don’t apologize. I just said it back, and I’m dead sober.”

Nix took a second to process this. “So then what was all that shit about marrying a woman?”

Dick shrugged. “I can’t actually marry you, Nix.”

“I know,” Nix said. “I know that. But you’d rather go find a woman to marry instead of being with the person you actually want to be with?”

“I didn’t say that I’d rather. I said two things — I was supposed to get married someday, and I can’t marry you. Those are the facts at hand.”

Nix started laughing. “You know what? I don’t even think you want to get married. I think you want to check off a bunch of boxes.”

Dick did that twisty-mouth thing that he did when he was annoyed.

“I don’t think you know what you actually want,” Nix said, feeling emboldened. “I don’t think you have the first fucking idea.”

“I already told you I don’t,” Dick snapped.

“Well, good. Finally we’re getting somewhere.”

Dick sucked his teeth and shook his head at him.

Nix was quiet for a moment as he tattooed in his mind the golden memory of Dick saying I’d marry you if I could. “You really feel that way about me, in spite of everything?” he said. “My drinking, and how I am, and the whole Nixon ball of wax?”

“Why do you think I’m having a hard time? I don’t approach anything lightly, you know that.”

“Well, now’s a fine time to start,” Nix said. “I’m not sentencing you to ten years of hard labor in New Jersey.”

Dick laughed.

“I’m serious,” Nix said. “I’m not asking you for the moon. I’m just asking you to come home with me and give it a try.”

“I know,” Dick said. “I’m the one who’ll want the moon, Lew.”

Nix’s heart twisted. “I can get you the moon,” he said.

Dick’s eyes crinkled, and then he flashed him such a warm, loving smile that Nix momentarily forgot where and who he was.

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” Dick said.

/

Dick spent the rest of the week visibly brooding and fretting about his inability to go to Japan, his distaste for occupation duty, and, presumably, his indecision on whether or not he wanted to go to New Jersey. While Nix worked on the logistical nightmare of funneling legions of German prisoners the hell out of Zell am See, Dick worked on instituting the training program and daily close-order drills he had earlier threatened. Every day at 2 p.m. you could find him along the esplanade of this little Austrian town, watching with his brow furrowed as his officers oversaw a massive group of soldiers in formation.

That was where Nix went looking for him as soon as he had secured two days of leave for them both. He knew Dick needed a little bit of rest and pampering, and even though he wasn’t going to accept it without a fight, Nix was up for that fight.

He found Dick in his usual spot atop a small hill, watching the men take marching orders down below. Behind the troops sprawled the gorgeous blue of lake Zell, rimmed by the mountains that surrounded them. It was a clear, calm day, and the surface of the lake was as still as glass.

“Hey,” Nix said as he walked up to Dick.

Dick shifted his weight and glanced over at him. “Hi. How’s relocation going?”

“Oh, you know the Germans,” Nix said. “They’re basically running it themselves, at this point. How’s this going?”

“Good,” Dick said. “Well, they’re a little rusty on the ceremonial moves... I just saw Perconte drop his gun.”

“With Sobel back lurking around? That’s bold of him. Here, I’ve got something for you,” Nix said, and handed Dick two Sink-approved weekend passes made out in their names.

Dick took them, glanced them over, and said, “This again?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I didn’t enjoy Paris, Nix.”

“You didn’t enjoy it because I had you go alone,” Nix said. “My mistake, but I was otherwise occupied.”

Dick raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, I’m assuming you’ve shelved that?”

“Shelved what? My Aldbourne girl?” Nix started laughing, then glanced around and lowered his voice. He really didn’t need to — the drill was loud enough to cover the sound of their conversation. “This is illuminating. I never took you for the jealous type.”

“Very funny. I just don’t think she’d appreciate knowing what you’ve been getting up to lately.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate it,” Nix said. “No, don’t worry, that’s over with. What, has that been bothering you? You think I’m trying to two-time you?”

Dick gently slapped the passes against Nix’s chest, and Nix took them back. “Just checking on loose ends,” he said.

“Alright. Are we going to Paris or not?”

“Sure,” Dick said, squinting into the sun as he looked back out over the men. “What do you want to do there?”

“Go see a show, go out to dinner, stay in a nice hotel. Hell, I don’t know. Go to a museum. What did you do while you were there?”

Dick shook his head and shrugged.

“Nothing?”

“No, I did a few things,” Dick said. “But I was distracted. And like you said, I was alone.”

Nix bumped shoulders with him. “I’ll show you around, okay?”

Dick nodded. “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, that sounds nice.”

“It does sound nice,” Nix said.

Dick nodded again, then was quiet for a while. “Sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?”

“For being prickly.”

“Apologize by going to Paris with me and letting me take you out to dinner.”

Dick turned to him and gave him a crooked smile. “This weekend?”

“Yeah, this weekend,” Nix said, pocketing the passes.

“Short notice, Nix.”

“Well, you’ve created a well-oiled machine here. The guys might miss you when they’re looking around for a quarterback during Saturday’s football game, but other than that, I think we’re alright.”

“Yeah,” Dick muttered. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Am I?”

“You are. We’ll go. I need to clear my head.”

Nix whistled in response to this unexpected triumph. “Alright,” he said. “I already arranged the flight — we’re catching a ride on a transport plane that’s leaving Friday night. Be packed and ready by 1700.”

Dick smiled at him again. “Yes, Captain.”

/

Nix wanted to take Dick to the Louvre, so he had booked them a double room at the Hôtel de Vendôme, which was only a short walk up the Rue de Rivoli from the museum. Despite the fact that they didn’t get off their flight until 8 p.m., Dick still wanted to check out the repatriation efforts underway at the Hôtel Lutetia, so Nix told their taxi to stop there and then gave him some money to idle by the hotel entrance while they went inside.

Nix had stayed at the Lutetia before, a decade or so ago. It was strange to see it again now, looking largely the same but full of refugees instead of the haute monde. He and Dick went around handing out the chocolate they had on hand to any kids they saw, then Dick found an American major who was helping to oversee the operation and spoke to him for a while.

When they stepped back out into the warm night air, Dick said, “Want to walk to our hotel? It’s not far.”

“Sure,” Nix said. Their taxi driver was still idling, so he walked up to his open passenger side window.

“Hello,” the driver said. “Ready to go?”

Nix ignored his use of English and asked him in French if he could drive their luggage over to the hotel without them, then drop it off with a porter so it could be sent up to their room.

“This is an unusual request,” the driver said.

Nix got his wallet out and handed him some more money.

“And one I am happy to honor,” the driver added.

“Merci monsieur,” Nix said, and patted the top of the taxi before heading back over to Dick.

As they walked, Dick said, “This is more chaotic than I imagined it would be.”

“What? Repatriation?”

“Well, all of it. It felt like the war was just…” Dick beat the back of one hand against the palm of the other as if to communicate a ridiculous tempo. “Now everything’s snarled up and grinding to a halt.”

“Not in the Pacific,” Nix said. “Of course, it’ll happen there too.”

“Of course. I mean, you fight wars to end them.”

“Right.” Nix glanced at Dick, whose brow was furrowed. “Are you still hung up on ‘you’ve done enough’?”

Dick let out a half-laugh, half-scoff. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. What does that mean? How have I done enough? I’m not dead yet.”

Nix bumped shoulders with him, laughing. “Dick…”

“What?”

“Have you never told any of your guys that they’d done enough?”

“Of course I have, but they never listened to me, and I didn’t expect them to.”

They walked in silence for a while as Dick mulled this over.

“So you think I should take what Chapman said at face value,” Dick said. “You don’t think he was blowing me off?”

“No, I think people legitimately feel you’ve done enough.”

“Do you think that?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter. Ike himself could give you permission to lay it all down, and it wouldn’t matter to you. And for the record, I’m feeling the same way.”

They stopped to wait at the edge of an intersection. Cars sped by, shining in the glow of the streetlights. The sidewalks were emptier than they usually were in the heart of Paris in May, and people looked drawn and preoccupied as they walked by. The city was missing the feeling of joyous nightlife that Nix remembered it having.

“You’ve done enough, Nix,” Dick said.

“Uh-huh,” Nix said. “But that wouldn’t stop me from jumping on Japan if I got the chance. Right?”

“Yeah,” Dick muttered. “No, I get it.”

“Tell me what you think I should do,” Nix said — not because he wanted to know, but because he knew whatever Dick said would reflect on Dick’s own desires.

They started to cross the street, and Nix glanced over at Dick, who looked lost in thought.

“You really want to know?” Dick said.

“Yeah.”

“I think we should go into business together.”

Nix laughed.

“I’m serious,” Dick said. “I want to start a business, and I want you as my right-hand man, my operations officer.”

“Okay,” Nix said, and exhaled. “That’s flattering. Uh… I have essentially been doing that for you for the last three years.”

“Yeah, and you’re great at it,” Dick said. “We’re great at this. Why wouldn’t we keep doing it?”

“Well, one problem is, I have a family business that I have to be involved in. And I’m set to inherit it.”

“I know.”

Nix smiled at him. “You want to start something fresh with me, and I’m all kinds of bogged down.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That seems to be a pattern.”

Dick shot him back a half-smile. “I did pick up on the metaphor there.”

“Hell, I’m game, regardless,” Nix said. “I’m always game, you know that. We’ll figure something out.”

“Yeah, we will,” Dick said.

Nix felt a pleasant flush of surprise, and snuck another look at him. “We will?”

Dick nodded. He was lit warmly by the soft lights of Paris, and he looked younger, less exhausted. “We’re going to have to, aren’t we? I’ve only got the one job offer.”

Nix laughed. “Right. You feeling good, right now?”

Dick seemed to consider the question. “Yeah,” he said, nodding some more. “I am.”

“Good. See, you needed a change of scenery. That Austrian altitude was getting to you.”

“You’re the one who wanted to have a serious conversation halfway up a mountain,” Dick said, fixing him with a wry look.

“Yeah, that was a stupid idea and you should have overruled me on it. You want dinner?”

“I’d like dinner,” Dick said. “Is it too late to go anywhere?”

“Late? No, the night is young. Where do you want to go?”

“You pick,” Dick said.

“I don’t even know what’s open these days,” Nix said. “The Germans probably shut down half the places I’m thinking of. We’re staying on the Place Vendôme, there’s plenty of places to eat within a half-mile of us. We could go have dinner at the Ritz.”

Dick stopped in his tracks on the sidewalk and visibly balked at this. “The Ritz?”

“Yeah,” Nix said, turning to face him.

“Nix, how much is this weekend costing you?”

“Oh, shut up,” Nix said. “I actually only got Sink to agree to this leave because I told him none of it would be on the Army’s dime. So, if you think about it, you’re saving your government money.”

“Yeah, by taking yours.”

“You’re not taking my money, I’m spending my money on you.”

Dick gave him a dubious look.

“I know it feels weird,” Nix said, “but you’re actually doing me a favor by letting me foot the bill.”

“I wasn’t raised that way,” Dick said.

“You were raised to look a gift horse in the mouth and hurt my feelings?”

Dick started laughing. “I’m hurting your feelings by not wanting you to pay for me to eat at the Ritz?”

“We don’t have to go to the Ritz, I just said the first place that came to mind. We’ll go anywhere. We’ll eat street food. I’ll dig some rations out of my bag.”

Dick sighed. “We’ll go,” he said, “and I’ll order something reasonable.”

“You’re getting the lobster,” Nix said, and started walking again, this time at a brisk pace.

Dick hurried after him. “Lew, I don’t even like lobster.”

“Tough shit.”

/

They checked into their hotel and went upstairs to their suite, which was nice but not excessively luxurious, especially in comparison to their recent accommodations. The only facets that seemed to give Winters culture shock were the modern art deco design scheme and the fact that the suite had its own sitting room — complete with a desk, a phone, and two typewriters. There was only one bedroom, and in it two double beds; Nix threw his luggage onto the redundant bed and started digging around for one of the bottles of wine he had brought while Winters did some actual unpacking.

They did end up going to the Ritz’s dining room for dinner. It was busy despite the late hour, and at first the hostess didn’t want to seat them because they didn’t have a room at the hotel and didn’t appear to measure up to the established standard of snootiness.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, seeming genuinely apologetic after taking in their uniforms. “We have to prioritize our guests.”

Nix looked over her shoulder, noted the substantial number of empty tables, then shot Winters an I-am-about-to-do-something-vulgar glance. Dick gave him a brisk nod, then walked away with his hands behind his pack and went to examine a newspaper stand.

“My parents were pretty frequent guests at this hotel before the war,” Nix said in a low tone. “I’d appreciate it if you could find us a table.”

“Oh,” the hostess said. “And what’s your name, monsieur?”

“Lewis Nixon.”

She nodded and walked over to a uniformed man who was standing by the bar and had an officious floor manager vibe to him. She leaned in and whispered in his ear. He listened, staring straight ahead, then whispered urgently back.

The hostess returned to Nix with a bright smile on her face and said, “If you and your companion could please follow me, we’ll seat you right away.”

“Merci.”

Dick returned from the newspaper stand and followed Nix through the restaurant. They were seated on the far side of the restaurant, at a table near tall windows that overlooked the courtyard.

“I’ll fetch you some menus,” the hostess said. “Can I bring you any beverages, as well?”

“Can I ask you to open this bottle?” Nix said, holding up the wine he’d been carrying, which was a 1937 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux he had taken from Goering’s cellar. “And bring us two wine glasses?”

“Oh, my apologies, sir, we don’t do corkage here.”

Nix kept looking at her, his smile unwavering, and she hesitated before visibly relenting.

“But we can make an exception, in order to thank you for your service,” she said, smiling back at him and taking the wine bottle before walking away.

Nix turned back to Dick in amusement. “Our service, my ass. She was ready to turn us away when she thought we were just a pair of G.I. Joes.”

“Two wine glasses?” Dick said.

“It’s a courtesy, you don’t have to drink any. Although you should have a sip, if you’re at all interested. ‘37 was the only good year for wine in the whole last decade.”

“Why’s that?” Dick said.

“Well, I take that back, ‘36 was okay,” Nix said. “But on top of the Depression, the weather was lousy all across Europe for years and years. So it was just a perfect storm of bad conditions. You know, this place was actually his headquarters for a while.”

“Whose?” Dick said, then caught up. “Oh, Goering.”

“Yeah, the Luftwaffe was running out of the Ritz in 1940, and that’s one of his bottles I just handed her.”

Dick had a good chuckle at that. “He’s turning in his grave right now.”

“As intended,” Nix said, smiling.

“To the victor go the spoils.”

“Exactly. You know who first said that?”

“No, who?”

“I don’t, I was hoping you did.”

Dick nodded. “It sounds Latin, doesn’t it?”

“It does, but I feel like it’s more recent than that,” Nix said.

“Deceptively Latin-sounding,” Dick said. “Wonder who we could ask.”

“One of our old professors would probably know.”

Dick smiled, then checked his watch. “It’s early afternoon on the East Coast. How much would a direct call cost, do you think?”

“Oh, no more than a few hundred dollars.”

“Well worth it.”

A waiter came over, holding the now-open bottle of Bordeaux in one hand, and two long-stemmed glasses in the other. “Would you like your wine decanted, or straight from the bottle?” he said.

“Straight from the bottle,” Nix said, then added in French: “Please give me a generous glass, and pour him no more than a sip.” He held up two fingers close together.

“Un peu,” the waiter said with an agreeable smile.

“Un peu, pas plus.”

The waiter did as asked, filling one glass nearly to the brim and pouring no more than a swallow’s worth into the other. Nix tipped him for his trouble. Dick watched all of this with curiosity, and possibly a little amusement.

“Can we get a pitcher of water, please?” Dick said to the waiter.

“Of course, sir,” the waiter said, setting the wine down on the table along with two menus. Then he gave them a small bow and walked away.

“You want to try it?” Nix said. “You don’t have to. I’m doing to you what my parents used to do to me. ‘Just try a sip.’”

“They did that?”

“Only with wine… or a digestif. Yours didn’t?”

“No, but they never drank wine,” Dick said. “My dad liked the occasional beer.”

“He didn’t share?”

“I think he offered me a sip once or twice, but I don’t remember taking him up on it.”

Nix nudged Dick’s wine glass toward him. Dick shook his head, smiling, then picked it up and downed the little that was in it.

“Any good?” Nix said. “You’re my tester.”

With a deadpan expression, Dick mimed clutching at his throat like he’d been poisoned. Nix laughed.

“No, it’s interesting,” Dick said, setting the glass down. “Just not for me. But now I can say I participated in making Goering turn in his grave.”

“There you go.” Nix took a sip of the wine and found that it was delightfully full-bodied and extremely smooth. No strange flavors jumped out at him. It was a perfect dinner wine, and one that would have paired best with a steak, but Nix wanted seafood. He picked up the menu and started looking it over. “You like oysters?”

“Never had them.”

“Want to try one?”

“Sure,” Dick said. “Out of curiosity.”

“Good. I’ll get oysters.”

Dick took the other menu and started squinting at it. “A ten dollar steak?”

Nix reached across the table and used his hand to cover the side of the menu that listed the prices. “What do you want?”

“You’re killing me, Nix.”

“What do you want? Don’t be a pain.”

“Let me go Dutch with you tonight, at least.”

“No,” Nix said. “Save your money. What do you want to eat?”

Dick sighed. “The chicken with morel sauce sounds good.”

“Alright, get that, then. I’m getting the oysters, and I’m getting sablefish, even though I’m not drinking a white.”

“You’re ungovernable,” Dick said with a smile.

“So I’ve been told,” Nix said, sipping his wine. “And yet, you want to poach me from my family business and make me your second-in-command.”

Dick’s smile got bigger. “And yet. You know, your French is pretty good.”

“It’s serviceable,” Nix said.

“It sounds good.”

“It would have been useful to us if I’d had more German than French.”

“I don’t think I’d enjoy hearing you speak German as much as I do French,” Dick said in a low voice, staring him down.

Nix’s stomach fluttered. “Is that one sip of wine going to your head?” he said in an undertone, glancing around.

“No, it’s all this oxygen,” Dick joked.

They had relative privacy where they were tucked away, although a middle-aged couple was dining a few tables to their right. The man had a tremendous mustache and a pocket watch, and the woman had bouffanted hair and a high collar. They weren’t paying Winters and Nix any mind. No one really had since they got to Paris, although occasionally someone they passed would notice their uniforms and give them a grateful nod.

The waiter came by with their water, then, and the fun, sexy mood dissipated. Nix wished he could have played footsie with Dick under the table. The wine was making him horny, and he was craving his touch. He didn’t even need to have sex with Dick, he just wanted them to both take their clothes off and curl up in bed together, skin to skin, sharing body heat. He thought of their foxhole, which felt centuries removed from this current moment. Nix wondered if anyone else dining at the Paris Ritz tonight had ever slept in a foxhole.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter said.

Nix met eyes with Dick, who nodded, and then ordered for both of them in French. Dick sat there, gazing at him with a knowing smile on his face.

/

They had eaten dinner, left the Ritz, taken a long walk around the sprawling square of the Place Vendôme and appreciated the sight of it glowing golden under a light misty rain and a troubled bruise-dark sky, and then gone back to their hotel suite and started getting ready for bed before Dick called from the bathroom, “Is it just me, or…”

Nix, who was finally unpacking, looked up and said, “Huh?”

“One second,” Dick called back. Nix heard him running the sink, and then he came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his neck. “It’s about oysters.”

“Yeah?”

“Is it just me, or…” Dick made a vague gesture.

“What, you didn’t like them?” Nix said.

“No, they were good, but you know what I’m getting at, right?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“They have a certain quality,” Dick said, looking him in the eye.

Nix stared back at him blankly, then realized and cracked up. “Ohh! Oh.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You think oysters taste like come?”

“I think there’s a general similarity.”

“People think they’re an aphrodisiac,” Nix said, grinning.

Dick leaned against the doorjamb, rubbing his hands together. “Interesting.”

“You feeling any of that?”

“I don’t think the oysters have anything to do with it,” Dick said. “I was going to take a shower, you want to join me?”

Nix scrambled off the bed and was at his side in an instant. “Yeah.”

Dick gave him a crinkly-eyed smile and leaned in to kiss him, slipping an arm around his waist. Nix collapsed into him, pressing their chests together. He was still tipsy from having finished the entire bottle of wine by himself at dinner.

(The wine had made him giggly and loose-limbed while they walked the Place Vendôme. Nix had stopped at one point to light a cigarette, ducking under an awning so he could protect the small flame of his lighter from the misty air, and Dick had stepped in front of him as a windbreak. He was close, so close that Nix could smell the soap he shaved with and see the tiny engravings that made up the surface of the gold oak leaves pinned to his collar.

Nix had reached up to touch a finger to one of the oak leaves, struck by one of those stabs of pride in Dick that hit him sometimes. “Major,” he had murmured to him, and Dick had turned his head to look out across the plaza, fighting a smile.)

They stumbled into the bathroom together, across the checkered marble floor and past the double sink, which had gold faucets in the shape of swans. Nix was already half-undressed and Dick mostly so, and they finished the job in a hurry before Dick opened the door to the shower and started running it.

Nix hadn’t been in a shower this good in years, and it was possible that Dick never had. The two of them leaned against the rose-pink tile wall and kissed eagerly under the hot, high-pressure water, which felt like it was stripping them clean of months worth of grease and dirt. Dick wrapped his other arm around Nix and pulled him in even more tightly. He didn’t need to; Nix wanted to be nowhere but in his arms. He held Dick’s face as he kissed him, stroking his thumbs up his clean-shaven cheeks. Dick dug his fingers into Nix’s skin, and Nix shivered with delight.

Neither of them seemed to want to stop kissing and nuzzling, so instead of anyone sinking to his knees for a blowjob, they just jerked each other off. Nix was feeling total euphoria for the first time in God knows how long. He was lost in the heat of the shower booth, fucking Dick’s clutched palm, letting out whatever passionate noises he wanted to. They kept doing silly, clumsy things like knocking the soap out of the soap dish or taking in a mouthful of water, and laughing about it in wholly relaxed joy.

Dick came first, clutching at Nix and moaning, his hand slowing on Nix’s cock. Nix kissed him in response, taking drags from his lips, nudging Dick’s nose with his own.

“Oh,” Dick sighed.

“You tired?”

“No, no.”

Nix stuck his hand under the water to rinse the come off of it, and Dick turned his attention fully on Nix. He started jerking him more eagerly, then kissed him with force.

“I think I have a little bit of whiskey dick,” Nix whispered in apology.

“From the wine?”

“Yeah, wine gives me whiskey dick. It’s funny, whiskey doesn’t.”

“Misnomer.” Dick was quiet for a moment. “So you were full of it, that night you had all that wine but said you could go two rounds.”

“Can’t put anything past you, huh?” Nix breathed as Dick’s hand quickened. “It’s okay if you can’t get me off, it’s my own fault.”

“No, I’m getting you off,” murmured Dick, who clearly felt this was a vital matter of recompense.

They kept at it for a while, then Dick lowered himself to his knees and took Nix in his mouth, holding him by his hips and pushing him back against the slippery tile wall. Nix played with Dick’s hair, which when soaked like this was wine-dark — a color called liver chestnut in horses — and swept dramatically back from his temples in a way that Nix loved.

After a few minutes, Dick pulled back from him and rubbed his jaw like it was sore. “I can’t do this in the shower,” he said, then stood up.

“Okay,” Nix said, and then Dick took him by the hand and led him out of the shower booth. He laughed as Dick pulled him through the bathroom and into the bedroom, grabbing a towel as he passed the towel rack.

When they reached the foot of their bed, Dick dropped his hand and tossed the towel onto the duvet. Nix went over and sat down on it, staring up at him.

Dick sank to his knees in front of Nix and bent over his lap, taking his cock in his mouth again. He stared up at Nix as he did so, with such a serious look in his eyes that Nix let out a moan in response to it.

Dick grabbed him by the thigh, digging his thumbnail into Nix’s flesh. He was still sopping, his hair dripping onto Nix’s wet legs, droplets running down his temples to his jaw. Nix leaned forward, gripping Dick by his shoulders, working his hips while Dick created as much suction as he could with his mouth, sucking the life out of him. Nix moaned and curled forward even more, gripping the edge of the bed, and then came with a wonderful wrenching feeling.

He bent over Dick, spent, still clinging to him. Dick took Nix from his mouth and swallowed, coughing a little as he did.

The wine, hot shower and orgasm were hitting Nix hard. He felt bone-tired in a way he usually didn’t at this time of night. It was funny to him how it had been easier to keep his energy up in combat, when he was full of adrenaline and had all manner of discomforts to distract him, than it was now when he was so content. It was like a year’s worth of exhaustion was catching up with him now that it was safe for him to feel it. His eyes fell shut as he sat there, waiting while Dick puttered around.

A warm breeze hit his bare back, and Nix realized that Dick had opened their window. Then another towel landed on his head.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Dick muttered, and started towel-drying his hair. “I still have to get you to bed.”

“Mmm,” Nix said, shivering in a pleasant way. “Just pull the sheet up and toss me in.”

“You don’t want to brush your teeth?”

“No, I wanna sleep.”

“I’m gonna brush my teeth.”

“Very admirable,” Nix muttered as Dick toweled him harder. “I won’t be joining you.”

Once he was dry enough, Dick pulled up the sheet, and Nix crawled gratefully into bed and laid his head on the pillow. He felt himself drifting off as he lay there listening to Dick in the bathroom. His breathing slowed, and the world fuzzed at the edges.

A few minutes later, Dick shut the light, then got into bed beside him and cuddled up to him, spooning him.

“Hi,” Nix said. He’d been getting a little chilly, but Dick’s body warmed him.

Dick kissed him on the shoulder. “I’m tired of us being two different people,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I wish we could be one person… merge together.”

“Me too,” Nix said fervently. He thought of how he had spent the entire war looking for Dick, hunting him down wherever he went, fighting red tape to remain at his side. “No, me too.”

Dick dropped his face into the nape of Nix’s neck and mouthed at the knot of his topmost vertebrae. “It’s like God put a piece of me in someone else’s body.”

Nix’s heart clenched. “Come to New Jersey,” he said.

“I will,” Dick said.

A jolt of surprise stirred Nix. He opened his eyes in the darkness. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, didn’t I say so earlier?”

“Not formally, no,” Nix said.

“Alright, well, if the offer still stands…”

“Jesus, of course the offer still stands.”

“Then yeah. I formally accept.”

Nix reached up and grabbed Dick by the bicep of the arm that was wrapped around him, then fell asleep holding onto him like that.

/

Dick patted him awake the next morning. Nix opened his eyes to find that the bedroom was flooded with sunlight. Through the open window, he could hear birds chirping and the hum of city traffic.

“You don’t have to get up,” Dick said. “I’m just letting you know I’m going for a run.”

“What time is it,” Nix mumbled.

“0700.”

“Mmm.”

Dick stroked his hair. “Go back to sleep, Nix.”

Nix rolled over onto his back and watched Dick as he finished getting ready. “The Seine is southwest of here,” he rasped. “If you want to run along it.”

Dick flashed him a smile. “That was my plan.”

“If you get lost, try to find an old woman or a homosexual, they’ll be happy to help you.”

Dick laughed.

Once he had gone on his way, Nix didn’t go back to sleep. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom, went about his morning routine, then took a quick shower and optimistically prepared himself for the possibility of being fucked. He didn’t shave — both because Winters apparently found it attractive when he didn’t, and because he didn’t feel like it.

Nix called room service and ordered up coffee and the newspaper (there were too many French papers to choose from, so he just asked for the New York Times) plus a stack of waffles for later. He threw on a bathrobe to meet the hotel attendant, then shut the door behind him, put some Ella Fitzgerald on the record player, and took a cup of coffee and the Times into bed with him.

He passed a pleasant hour like this, though he was internally aflame from the anticipation of waiting for Dick to come back and glanced up at the door each time he finished reading an article. He made it through four sections this way, setting the Sports section aside for Dick.

When Dick finally did return, Nix had a premonition that he was about to, and then his heart leapt when he heard a key in the lock. He set the newspaper down on the room service cart beside the uneaten waffles, then shrugged out of the bathrobe and threw it on the floor. Dick walked in to find him sitting on the bed naked, fresh-smelling and with his hair artfully mussed.

“Hey there,” Nix said with a smile.

“Uh, hey,” Dick said. He was pink, panting and sweating. He looked excited, but confused. “You having breakfast?”

“Not yet,” Nix said. “I was thinking we could do something else first.”

“Oh?”

Nix crossed his legs and let himself fall back against the bed, leaning on his elbows and giving Dick a specific look. Dick gave him an equally specific look right back, getting even more pink in the ears as he did so.

“Let me freshen up,” Dick said.

“You don’t have to,” Nix said. “I like you sweaty.”

Dick let out a soft groan and came over to him with a sense of urgency, grabbing him and kissing him. Nix kissed him back hard, pleasure pulsing in his stomach. He grabbed at his neck, trying to pull him closer, and Dick took a moment to sit up so he could pull his shirt off over his head and shimmy out of his shorts and boxers.

“I want you inside of me,” Nix told him.

“Please,” Dick exhaled, fumbling to pull his socks off.

“Hurry,” Nix said breathily, enjoying himself.

Dick finished getting his socks off and then dove at him. He took Nix in his arms and dragged him up the bed, rearranging them so they were squarely in the middle of it.

“Did you close the window?” Dick said.

“Yeah.”

Dick kissed him all over his face, making him laugh, then kissed down his neck as he lay down on top of him. Nix loved feeling how hot and sweaty he was, loved being under him.

Besides their first night together, they had only done this one other time — a week ago in Austria. Nix enjoyed it, but he had been stupid from whiskey and Dick had been tired and distracted. He wanted it now, like this, when they were both happy and present and couldn’t get enough of each other.

He had found a container of Vaseline in the bathroom earlier, and now he reached for it on the bedside table and twisted the cap off, taking a glob of it to use as he stroked Dick. Dick was already almost fully hard, which flattered Nix and turned him on even more.

As they kissed, he bit Dick’s bottom lip and said, “You can put it in now, if you want. I got ready for you.”

“What does that mean?” Dick murmured, pressing a kiss to the bow of his lips.

“I fingered myself.”

Dick went silent, and Nix thought he was embarrassed by the dirty talk, but then Dick surprised him by sliding two fingers up into him.

“Oh,” he gasped.

Dick kissed him again. “Is that okay?”

“Oh, fuck, yes. Do anything to me. Fuck.”

Nix had stayed semi-hard the entire time he was reading the paper, and was now extremely hard as he lay there being fingered, his cock trapped between them. Finally, Dick shifted his weight forward, and Nix raised his legs to wrap them around Dick’s waist, grabbing him by his hair. He could feel where he had sweated, where it was damp and soft like goose down near his scalp.

Dick pulled his fingers out of Nix and slid his cock in, and Nix let out a moan that made Dick tense up all over. He kissed Nix’s neck with wild abandon, and then started to fuck him with more force than he had ever used before.

Nix was in heaven. He could be as loud as he wanted, which was very, and Dick seemed possessed by some animal fervor, though he was still courteous enough to do stuff like put his arm between Nix’s head and the headboard as they moved up the bed and ran afoul of it. But he was fucking Nix like he would never get to fuck him again. Paradoxically, Nix hoped that Dick would fuck him like this every day for the rest of his life.

There was some long-stifled ache deep inside his body that Dick was rubbing out of him. No one had ever wanted him so desperately, no one had ever needed him this much. The hot core of desire at the center of Nix’s body was spilling its banks, leaving him incoherent and gasping. He raked his nails up Dick’s back and bit at his ear, frenzied, unable to express what he was feeling in any other way. The heat of Dick inside him and around him was making him crazy — he missed Dick even though he was so close, he resented that they could not always and forever be exactly this close.

The deeper they got into it, the more the seams between them blurred. Nix couldn’t differentiate between Dick’s arms and his arms, and when they kissed he could have sworn he knew what Dick was feeling, could feel his own mouth as if it was not his.

When he came, he thought insanely that Dick had come at the exact same second, but he hadn’t. He continued to fuck Nix with bed-breaking intensity as Nix lay boneless, afloat in throbbing pleasure, moaning. Nix could not have answered a single question about anything. He didn’t know his own name. He only knew the beautiful feeling of being fucked on a sunny day in Paris, and Dick kissing him on the mouth like he could never get enough of him if he lived for fifty lifetimes. Nix clung to him, arms wrapped around him as Dick thrust up into him.

Dick came a few minutes later and collapsed on Nix with a wearied finality that Nix hardly ever saw from him. They lay there for a while, breathing together, now both slick with sweat and come. Nix became aware again of the music coming from the record player. Dick reached up and began to stroke Nix’s hair, pushing it back off of his damp forehead, sweeping his thumb over Nix’s temples.

“God,” Nix said once he was able to form speech again.

Dick kissed him on the jaw and didn’t otherwise respond.

“You tired?” Nix teased him.

Dick was quiet for a moment. “I could use some coffee.”

“There’s a pot of it,” Nix said, pointing to the cart. “And waffles.”

Dick let out a little groan, sat up and pulled out of him. Nix winced at this, then got up, stumbling dizzily before grabbing the bathrobe he had earlier abandoned and pulling it on.

He turned to Dick, who had slid off the bed and was pulling his boxers back on.

“You okay?” Dick said.

“I’m great,” Nix said, finding a stray towel and using it to mop come off of his stomach and legs. “Just settling back into reality.”

Dick nodded and went over to pour himself a cup of coffee. Then he took the dome lid off of the silver tray containing the waffles, picked up a waffle with his bare hand, and started eating it.

Nix laughed at him as he stopped and looked at his syrupy hand in dismay.

“I didn’t know they had syrup on them,” Dick said, laughing too. He half-heartedly wiped his hand on a napkin and continued to eat the waffle.

“I asked for them American style.” Nix joined him beside the room service cart, stuck his finger in the fresh whipped cream alongside the waffles, and put it in his mouth. “I thought we’d need more than crepes.”

Dick leaned in toward Nix and gave him a quick kiss that tasted like sugar.

Nix took a waffle, put it on a plate, poured himself more coffee and got back into bed. “What do you want to do today?”

“I didn’t think you’d be up at this ungodly hour,” Dick said. “I thought I’d have to amuse myself this morning. So what did you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking we go to the Louvre, then see some notable churches, get some lunch, go back to the hotel, then go back out for dinner and a show, go for a walk, get back in time for you to go to bed early.”

Dick nodded and continued eating his waffle. “Sounds good. Are you going out after I go to bed?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I’m not,” Nix said.

Dick studied him, then nodded again. “Okay.”

/

Once they had pulled themselves together, they headed out for the Louvre. Dick hadn’t bothered going when he was here before, because the museum had sent nearly all of its pieces into storage for safekeeping during German occupation. But Nix had it on good authority from his mother that the Louvre was now mostly back up and running, and he wanted to make sure Dick at least went inside.

“Any interest in seeing the Mona Lisa?” Nix said to him as they headed down the sidewalk, dodging the Saturday morning hustle and bustle.

“Sure,” Dick said. “Is that the high point?”

“No, it’s really nothing special. I’m asking in case you wanted to, and if you don’t, I’ll leave it off the list.”

Dick considered this. “Leave it off.”

“Great. I have some other shit in mind that I think you’d enjoy more.”

Dick laughed and stepped closer to him to avoid a cross-looking man in a bowler hat who was striding past. “Okay.”

The bright sun and the sooty roar of Paris traffic were aggravating the feeling Nix got most mornings — a deadly combination of hangover and alcohol withdrawal. His head was starting to pound. As they walked, he pulled a flask free from his pocket and drank enough to right himself. He could feel Dick’s gaze on him, but Dick said nothing.

/

The Louvre was emptier than usual, and still partially under construction. Nix found himself a little discombobulated as they walked around, and Dick at first seemed more interested in the spectacular skylights and filigreed ceilings of the museum than the art in it — his gaze was continually pulled heavenward.

Dick liked the winged Samothrace, so Nix took him around to see other Greek and Roman works, like the bust of Agrippa. As they walked from piece to piece, they got to talking about Greek and Roman military history, as they often did.

These conversations always grew philosophical in nature, but there was a different, more wistful tone to them now that they both knew they were unlikely to ever face combat again. Nix watched Dick study the marble face of long-dead Agrippa and knew that he was thinking about his place in the world. Their lives had for so long been circumscribed by war and service; being set free from that was like being stuffed in a barrel and rolled downhill.

They moved on. Nix took Dick to see sweeping, massive landscapes that took up entire walls, then would walk a few steps away and observe Dick instead of looking at the painting. He liked to watch Dick look at things. He liked the sight of him in parade rest with a furrowed brow. Nix showed him some Matisses, and they had a spirited conversation about modern art and whether or not it was any good, with neither of them landing on any particular side of the issue.

After an hour and a half of thoughtful wandering, Dick leaned over to him and said in his ear, “Did you say something about churches, earlier?”

“Yeah,” Nix said. “Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle are close.”

“How close?”

“They’re both on the Île de la Cité, and I think it’s about a fifteen minute walk. There are some other things there, too — a flower market that Napoleon mandated. The Romans loved it, Caesar had meetings there.”

“Say the name again?”

Nix repeated Île de la Cité, more slowly this time. Dick watched his mouth as he said it.

“Île de la Cité,” Dick said in the French pronunciation.

Nix smiled, charmed by his attempt. “That was pretty good.”

Dick smiled back. “Let’s go.”

Nix gave him a crisp nod and turned on his heel, leading them back down the hallway in the general direction of the exit.

/

While they were inside, the sky — which had been hazily sunny and thick with leftover cloud cover from yesterday’s rain — had resolved itself into a perfect blue with billowing clouds stacked across it. It was turning into quite a warm day, but the breeze off the Seine made it cool enough that they didn’t sweat to death as they walked to the Sainte-Chapelle. Nix drank a little more out of his flask as they walked, still looking to course-correct his hangover.

When they reached the Sainte-Chapelle, they went in and walked around for a while in silence. There was a hush inside of the chapel itself that it felt unholy to break. Dick stared up at the towering panels of stained glass, his face pale in the violet light that reflected from them, his expression hard to read. Only after they had stepped back out into the street did he say, “It’s beautiful, but a little excessive.”

Nix coughed out a laugh and turned to him, shielding his eyes with his hand. He had forgotten his sunglasses in his luggage. “What?”

“It’s like idolatry, almost,” Dick said. “You’d come here for the church, not for God.”

“Isn’t the point of building a splendid church to pay tribute to God?”

“Sure, but God is everywhere. You don’t need to call him down with stained glass.”

“This is very Protestant of you,” Nix said. “Catholicism is all about baroque fetish objects. Jesus’s alleged crown of thorns is right down the street.”

“At the Notre Dame?”

Nix nodded.

Dick appeared to think about this. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Oh, now who’s the idolatrous fetishist?”

Dick laughed and said defensively, “I like history.”

Nix started walking down the street, east toward Notre Dame, and Dick followed. “Actually, the Sainte-Chapelle was originally built because Saint Louis wanted a church to store his Jesus paraphernalia in, one of which was the crown of thorns. I’m not sure why it got moved to Notre Dame.”

“You have an incredible memory for this stuff,” Dick said.

Nix smiled. “It’s that prep school education.”

“No it’s not, Nix, you’re just intelligent. You’re like that about everything.”

Nix looked over at him, and Dick smiled back in such a tender way that Nix had to light a cigarette about it.

“How are you feeling?” Dick added in an undertone.

“Feeling?”

“After this morning.”

It took Nix a second to realize what he was even talking about. “Oh,” he said, embarrassed and charmed all at once. “I’m good. You?”

“I’m great,” Dick said.

Nix winked at him, and Dick looked down, smiling.

There was a line to get into Notre Dame that day, so Dick and Nix picked up their earlier discussion of the history of Île de la Cité as they stood around. Nix did his best to recall what he knew, but after a few minutes of this, an elderly man behind them cleared his throat and introduced himself in accented English. He was a professor named Vincent who taught history at the Sorbonne, he said, and Nix had a few details wrong. He then proceeded to give them a mini-lecture on the topic while they stood in line, inching forward every few minutes. Dick and Nix listened with rapt attention the entire time.

“Thank you, sir,” Dick said when he was finished.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you, no?” he said. “For your service?”

They both smiled and gave him that awkward, humble incline of the head that this particular interaction called for.

“Vincent,” Nix said, “do you know who first said ‘to the victor go the spoils’?”

Vincent gave him a quizzical look. “No, sorry.”

“Worth a shot,” Dick said.

When they finally made it inside, Dick looked far more rapt and absorbed than he had at the Sainte-Chapelle. He moved slowly, gazing up at the hallowed, criss-crossed arches of the ceiling and the archways that peered into the second-floor tribune.

After they had spent a good twenty minutes taking in the architecture, Nix paid ten cents to get them into the room of treasures at the back of the cathedral. There, they found out from an apologetic member of the cathedral staff that the putative crown of thorns was housed in a reliquary that was only available to look at on Good Friday, but they were free to look at the other holy objects on display, like vials of saintly blood.

Dick looked with interest at some of the more ornate crucifixes and chalices, the same way he had looked at a carved wooden choir screen that depicted the life of Jesus. He was clearly unimpressed by the massive gilted Bibles, though.

“Excessive?” Nix said to him.

Dick softly shushed him, glancing around, then nodded.

Once they left Notre Dame, they realized they were both hungry, and started looking for the nearest restaurant. They quickly found a cafe that sold books as well as delicious-looking little sandwiches, and each bought a book, a sandwich, and a cup of coffee before taking them outside to sit on the terrace.

Dick immediately opened his book, which was an English translation of a biography about Charlemagne. Nix turned his attention first to his sandwich, which turned out to be exactly as delicious as it looked. He devoured it, then lit a cigarette and sat there basking in the sun and people-watching as he smoked.

“We are about halfway through my idea of a perfect day,” he said.

Dick glanced up at him, then put his book down. “What book did you get?”

“A history of Parisian cuisine.”

Dick nodded, then reached out and picked Nix’s book up, taking a look at it.

“It is, unfortunately, in French,” Nix added.

“En français?”

“Ah oui oui.”

Dick laughed and started to eat his sandwich. After the first bite, he said, “Wow,” and did a double take.

“Yeah, they’re not screwing around at this place, are they?”

Dick finished half of the sandwich in short order, then took a long sip of his coffee. Nix watched him, his lit cigarette burning between his fingers. He had a feeling Dick was about to ask him a question.

Sure enough, Dick said, “So, as far as New Jersey… what’s the application process going to be like?”

“Once you make it into town, I’ll make the introduction to my parents, and they’ll suss you out. I mean, more importantly my father, but you’ll meet them both. We’ll probably have dinner or something.” He smoked. “They’ll like you. They’ll see you’re this virtuous, viceless war hero with a college degree and a full work history, and they’ll offer you a job.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What makes you think they’ll like me?” Dick said.

“Well, you’re the opposite of me,” Nix said. “Don’t look at me like that, it was a joke.” (Dick continued to give him the pursed-mouth look.) “No, I just know. You think I don’t know my own parents?”

“I don’t doubt that at all, I just want to cover my bases,” Dick said.

“No need.”

“Have you mentioned it to them?”

“I did, in a letter to my mother. She said you sound like a prize and she’s happy to meet you whenever we make it back to the States. She’s abroad, herself.”

“Where is she?”

“Can’t remember,” Nix said. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s all set.”

“Is there a specific position they’re even hiring for over there?”

“No,” Nix said.

“No?”

Nix shrugged. “We’ll find a role you can fill, and create a position accordingly. That’s how it works.”

“That’s not how it works in my world,” Dick said.

“Well, welcome to my world,” Nix said.

Dick snorted, then sipped his coffee. “Nix?” he said, squinting as the sun moved out from behind a cloud.

“Yeah?”

“What is nitration?”

Nix started laughing. “You want a briefing?”

“I’d love one,” Dick said.

/

When they returned to the hotel, Nix got a list of local cabaret restaurants from the concierge and then went over it while lying on the bed, reading off shows to Dick while he freshened up in the bathroom.

Nix eventually decided on Bal Tabarin and called back down to the concierge to have him make a reservation for them, then put the list away and glanced over at Dick. From this angle, all he could see were Dick’s legs and part of his torso. “Are you shaving again?” he said, after recognizing the sound of a razor clinking on the edge of a sink.

“Yes,” Dick said.

“You’re funny,” Nix said. “Your beard’s practically blond, and you’re the one shaving twice a day. What word am I thinking of? It’s got something to do with cats.”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll think of it, don’t say anything.” Nix lay there, staring at the ceiling, then snapped his fingers. “Fastidious.”

Dick poked his head out of the bathroom and said drily, “I’m shaving twice a day for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I don’t want to scrape you up when we kiss.”

Nix grinned at him. “What if I don’t mind you scraping me up?”

“Regardless of how you feel, Nix, we have to go back to Austria tomorrow night. You can explain to Sink why you’re covered in beard burns, if you want.”

“Oh, I’ll tell him all about it. And then I’ll show him that love bite you put on my collarbone.”

“Great idea.”

“Sink loves you, he’d probably just be relieved to hear that you’re getting laid.”

Dick frowned at him.

“Hey, maybe we could miss our flight and take the train,” Nix said. “Get back a little later.”

Dick had unbuttoned the sleeves of his jacket and rolled them up to shave; he readjusted the makeshift cuffs as he said, “Go AWOL?”

“Yeah, what are they going to do, court-martial us?”

“Probably,” Dick said, laughing, then ducked back into the bathroom.

Nix cleared his throat and said, “Hey, what are you like with women?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, how do you act when you’re with a girl? Do you shave three times a day?”

There was silence from Dick for a few moments, and then he came out of the bathroom and leaned in the doorway, drying his hands on a hand towel. Nix sat up, looking at him with curiosity.

“What is it?” he said.

“I feel like I should tell you something,” Dick said.

“Sure. What?”

“I haven’t been with a woman the way you have.”

Nix looked at him in confusion. Dick stared back, impassive.

“What do you mean?” he said. “You’ve had steadies.”

“I have,” Dick said. “But I wasn’t that serious about any of them, and I haven’t, uh… I’ve never gone to bed with a woman.”

Nix was stunned. His head had started buzzing. Dick was blushing, now, though he didn’t drop his gaze.

“Never?” Nix repeated. “Not even with your steadies?”

“We kissed and petted,” Dick said. “A few other things. But I’ve been saving sex for marriage.”

“Oh,” Nix said. “So when we… so that first night we had, that was the furthest you’d gone with anybody.”

“Yeah.”

“Dick, that’s crazy. If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have instigated.”

Dick blushed more darkly. “Why not?”

“Because if you hadn’t done anything like that before, there’s a reason for it.”

“The reason is I’d never felt strongly enough about anyone,” Dick said. “It’s okay, Lew. I’m glad we did that. I had wanted to. But I know that night meant more to me than it did to you, and I just wanted to be clear about that.”

“Hang on, who said it meant more to you?”

“You said it yourself. You’re experienced, I’m not.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Nix said, frustrated by his cool tone. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”

Dick twisted the towel in his hands, staring down at it. “You haven’t?”

“You think I would follow Kathy to the Pacific theater?”

Dick glanced up with a wry smile. “You already wanted to go, you said so.”

“I wanted to go with you. Why do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Act like I don’t care about you as much as I do! Am I missing something? Am I stupid? I thought I’d made it plenty clear by now how I feel about you.” Nix felt a horrible, hot lurch inside of him, like he was about to throw up, and then he added without even meaning to: “I think I might be in love with you, for Christ’s sake.”

Dick didn’t look up. He continued staring down at his hands. The tips of his ears were aflame.

“Say something,” Nix begged him, breathless.

“I can’t,” Dick said in a low voice.

“Can’t do what?”

“Talk, right now.”

“Oh,” Nix said. He leaned over his lap, trying to drag in air, feeling like he had just jumped off a cliff into ice-cold water. “Well, when you can, let me know.”

Dick heaved out a laugh, then came over and sat beside him on the bed. Nix stared down at the distance between their hands until his vision unfocused.

“Forget I said that,” he finally burst out, when he couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“No,” Dick said like he was crazy. “No, I don’t want to, first off. And even if I did want to, I couldn’t.”

“Okay,” Nix said. “Then can you do me a favor and shoot me in the head?”

“Nix, stop it.”

Nix fell back against the bed, squirming and digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, wanting to crawl out of his skin. After a moment, Dick lay down next to him, and reached over to stroke his hair.

“If you’re about to break my heart, don’t touch me,” Nix muttered.

“I’m not about to break your heart.”

Nix took his hands from his eyes and looked over at Dick, who looked back at him with a sad but loving expression.

“I prayed for someone like you when I left for basic,” Dick said. “I prayed for somebody I’d be able to talk to. But if I’d had a hundred years, I never could have dreamed you up.”

Nix’s breath caught in his throat and became almost painful. Dick continued to pet his hair.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ve never felt any of this before, I’ve never felt like this. I don’t like how vulnerable I am to you.”

“I won’t hurt you,” Nix said.

“I know you’d never try.”

Nix hiccuped without meaning to. “You want me to quit drinking.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dick said.

“You didn’t have to, I know you.”

Dick studied him for a moment. “What if you tried to do it for me, and doing it for me wasn’t enough motivation?” he said. “Where would we go from there?”

Nix sat up, hiccuping more. Dick got up and went into the bathroom, getting him a glass of water. “It’s got nothing to do with you,” he said between hiccups. “It’s — I don’t know what it is.”

Dick came back to him and handed him the water in silence. He drank for five seconds straight, which was his family’s prescribed hiccup cure, then set the glass next to the beaded lamp on the bedside table. Dick stood over him, his arms folded.

“I could cut back,” Nix said, looking up at him. “I’d do that for you. And then it’s not as much pressure on either of us. If I slip up, it won’t be as bad.”

“Nix,” Dick said in a gentle tone.

“What?”

“I don’t want to ask that of you,” Dick said. “I’ve asked enough of you, these last few years.”

“Don’t ask it of me, I’ll just do it, alright? You think I’m not all-in on this, so let me prove that I am.”

Dick remained silent. Nix’s hiccups came back, and Dick reached out to touch his shoulder, but Nix batted his hand away.

“We have a dinner reservation in forty-five minutes,” he said in between hiccups.

Dick nodded. “Where?”

“Huh?”

“Where, Nix?”

“Cabaret,” Nix said.

Dick put his hands on his hips, then looked down at him impassively.

“It’ll be fun,” Nix said. “Beautiful women, good food. We don’t have to stay long.”

Dick remained quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

Nix hiccuped some more. “Just ask me,” he said, his throat burning. “Just ask me to quit drinking.”

“I can’t ask you. You have to want to.”

“I do want to.”

“Then you don’t need me.”

Nix scoffed and shook his head. Dick walked away from him, going into the bathroom to get ready.

/

In the taxi on the way over to Bal Tabarin and all through the cabaret, Nix wanted desperately to drink, but he knew how ill-advised that was, and refrained. He chain-smoked the whole time instead, and smiled at the showgirls when they got close to the edge of the stage. (They all smiled back, bless them.) There was a burning discomfort in his stomach that cried out to be smothered with alcohol, and every front-row table but theirs had a champagne bucket on it, but he was trying.

At one point, Dick muttered while poking at his salmon, “You should have a drink if you want to, Lew.”

“No,” Nix said, blowing smoke up at the ceiling.

“I told you I’m not asking you to quit.”

“I’m volunteering.”

“I think you’re being defiant,” Dick said, glancing up at him and continuing to ignore the scantily clad showgirls, as he had been doing since they had arrived.

Nix laughed in disbelief. “I cannot fucking win.”

The well-heeled couple at the table to their right had gone silent, clearly listening to them while pretending like they weren’t.

“I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Dick said, his voice barely audible. “You clearly need a drink. Don’t stop yourself on my account.”

“Don’t stop myself on your account? What the hell were we talking about an hour ago, then?”

Dick looked around. “We can’t do this here,” he said, giving Nix a sharp look.

Nix dug in his pocket for his wallet, pulled several bills out without looking at them and tossed them onto the table, getting up. “Then let’s go.”

Dick stood up, too, then glanced at whatever he threw down. His eyes grew huge, and he grabbed two of the bills off the pile and pushed them into Nix’s chest. “What are you doing?” he mouthed at him.

“I don’t know!” Nix exclaimed, almost knocking a chair over on his way out. People were openly staring at them now, including one of the showgirls who had earlier smiled at him. He blew her a sarcastic kiss over his shoulder.

Once he was outside in the cool night air, he lit another cigarette. There was a full moon, and between that and the streetlights casting a bright glow over everything, Nix got a full view of the baffled look on Dick’s face when he turned to him.

“What?” Nix said.

“‘What’?” Dick repeated. “What’s going on with you? What is this about?”

Nix walked away from him and went over to the curb, leaning into the street so he could hail a taxi. “You don’t trust me.”

“That’s insulting. I trust you with my life.”

A bicyclist sped by, and then a taxi that had been driving behind him slowed to a halt in front of Nix. He got in, then held the door open for Dick, who climbed in next to him resentfully.

“Jardin des Tuileries,” Nix said to the taxi driver, who nodded and pulled back out into traffic.

Dick exhaled as he sat there looking out the window. “Where are you taking me?” he said under his breath.

“The park we cut through this morning,” Nix said. “More privacy than a cabaret or a street corner.”

“We could go back to the hotel.”

“Too claustrophobic.”

“Fine.” Dick went quiet for a moment. “I don’t know why we were at a cabaret to begin with.”

“Christ, I don’t know. It’s a show, what other dinner shows are there? I’m trying to show you Paris.”

“That wasn’t my scene, and you know it.”

“You should have said something before we went in,” Nix muttered, refusing to look at him.

“You were upset,” Dick whispered back.

“So?”

Dick shot him a look.

“I always want the truth,” Nix said. “I don’t care how upset I am.”

Dick didn’t respond. The taxi driver cleared his throat in a discomfited way, like he was picking up the energy of a lovers’ quarrel, but didn’t say anything for the rest of the drive.

The park was strangely empty considering what a lovely, moonlit night it was, and it seemed that everyone else that was there was a couple. Without even thinking about it, Nix started cutting through the center of the park toward the Seine, marching through lovely tree-lined promenades without stopping to take in the view. Dick followed fast on his heels, still silent. Finally, when they were close enough to the road to hear the sound of traffic and appeared to be alone, he grabbed Nix by the arm and spun him around.

“What?” Nix demanded.

“I trust you,” Dick said, his eyes intense. “Where are you even getting this stuff from?”

“You don’t trust me to stop drinking just because you asked.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy, is all!”

Nix glanced around to make sure they were alone before he said, “I think you’re looking for an excuse to put distance between us, and that’s the last one you have.”

“You think that?”

“I think that.”

Dick nodded. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Any number of fucking reasons,” Nix said. “You don’t want to live a homosexual life. You don’t want to be involved with my nutty fucking family. You don’t want to hitch yourself to me, knowing your standards are sky-high and I’ll let you down eventually.”

“Right,” Dick said, studying him. “Sure, Nix — except I took you up on your offer to go to New Jersey. So if any of those things are deal breakers for me, then I’ve made a pretty huge tactical error, here.”

Nix coughed out a laugh. “I guess you’re just cuntstruck.”

Dick winced at the word. “Don’t say things like that,” he said. “Don’t belittle either of us that way.”

A lump formed in Nix’s throat. He swallowed past it and said, “Why can’t you just ask me to stop drinking so much?”

“Because I shouldn’t have to,” Dick said.

A stiff silence fell between them. They looked at each other, catching their breaths.

“I want you to trust me,” Nix said.

“What?”

“I want you to trust me enough to ask. I want you to put that in my hands and know I’ll follow through.”

“Stop saying I don’t trust you! It’s not a matter of trust. I won’t do something that makes you resent me.”

“I wouldn’t resent you. I’d never resent you.”

“I’ve felt you resent me before,” Dick said, stone-faced as he said it.

“Dick, I can barely stay angry at you through the end of a sentence, and you’re the only person I’ve ever felt that way about. If you think I’d hate you because you asked me to do something tough, then you’ve been asleep for the past three years. I’ve crawled through fucking barbed wire and bodies to get to you. I told you how I feel about you. You have some nerve.”

Another silence fell. Dick was still studying him, his expression softer now.

Nix inhaled and said, “Can we go sit by the river? I need fresh air.”

“This air isn’t fresh enough?”

“Fresher air.”

Dick nodded and followed him the rest of the way to the Seine. Once they reached it, they descended a set of stairs down onto the stone-paved riverside walkway. Nix went over to the edge and sat down, taking a deep breath. The dark river spread out in front of him, its waves rippling in the moonlight and city light. He felt fractionally better. They were alone, with no one else around besides the city of Paris.

Dick sat down beside him. He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I think I’m in love with you, too.”

Nix turned to him so fast he almost snapped his neck. His heart took off at a gallop. “Huh?”

Dick looked back at him, smiling. He didn’t respond, but the smile said enough.

“Oh, God,” Nix said. “Dick, this is terrible. What the hell did we do?”

Dick laughed. He had a look of sheepish innocence to him. “I don’t know,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. You had a plan, I thought.”

Nix’s brain felt blown to smithereens. He was full of joy and relief, but joy and relief did not a coherent path forward make. He kept trying and failing to take a bird’s-eye view of the situation.

“What do you want to do?” Dick said.

Nix lit a cigarette and took a long drag to steady himself. “Honestly,” he said, “I want to run away with you. I want to go to the ends of the earth with you and just hole up somewhere and not be bothered.”

Dick nodded, looking out over the Seine.

“But I can’t do that,” he said, “so, second best thing is I take you home with me, and we figure out a way to live without all this outside shit pressing in on us… We figure out a way to not have anybody breathing down our fucking necks. We make our own life.”

“That’s what I want, too,” Dick said. “I’m just afraid it isn’t possible.”

“We can try anyway, can’t we?” Nix said. “We thought making it out was impossible. We thought we were going to die together in that foxhole.”

Dick shot him a smile. “Maybe we did.”

Nix laughed. “No, I’m past the purgatory theory. They wouldn’t have sandwiches and sex this good in purgatory.”

Dick laughed, too. “We’ll try,” he said.

Nix glanced over at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to be roommates?”

Dick shook his head. “I want to be partners, in business and the rest of it. I don’t want to be a euphemism.”

“Okay,” Nix said. “I won’t make you be a euphemism.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll just tell everyone at the plant that you’re my homosexual lover from the war.”

“Very funny.”

“I’ll tell my parents when we have dinner with them. I’ll tell them you made violent love to me in Paris.”

“Uh-huh,” Dick deadpanned.

Nix was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to try to get my act together,” he said.

Dick studied him, remaining quiet.

“You can stop pretending you don’t desperately want me to quit drinking entirely,” he added. “It’s fine that you do. I get it.”

“Honestly, Nix? I just miss you when you’re drunk. I don’t like the guy who takes your place.”

The lump in Nix’s throat returned, and he took another drag off his cigarette.  “Yeah. I don’t, either.”

Dick glanced at him.

“I’ll cut back,” he said. “I’ll cut back. I’m gonna try.”

Dick came closer to Nix, sitting beside him so their thighs were touching. It was the most they could do in public like this. The feeling of Dick’s body against his filled Nix with electric heat.

“For tonight,” Dick said, “let’s not worry about it.”

Nix nodded in numb relief. “Okay.”

“Tomorrow, too,” Dick said. “Until we head back, let’s just leave it all.”

Nix’s eyes got a little hot at this. He stared out over the sparkling view, feeling misty. His chest was full of a strange but pleasant pressure that smoking couldn’t seem to burst.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the moon in the sky. “Told you I’d get you the moon.”

Dick let out a soft laugh. “How do you plan to get it down, though?”

“I think I might have to blow it out of the sky, but I’m taking suggestions on an alternate approach.”

Dick laughed some more. He turned to Nix, briefly pressed his forehead to his shoulder, then straightened back up. They fell into a comfortable silence, listening to the river lap at its banks.