Work Text:
- Legs
Austria feels idyllic in a way that Nix hasn’t been used to in a long time. The tall, looming mountains, the clustered houses in town, and the view of the lake from the apartment building all lend themselves to a sort of nostalgic bent. Despite the drills and the paperwork and the stupid, pointless casualties, Nix manages to surprise himself by feeling comfortable. It helps that there’s always a drink on hand, and the unprecedented amount of downtime means that for the first time in years, Nix can count on spending part of his afternoons relaxing. Mostly, though, it’s Dick’s morning swims.
Every day Dick gets up at 0600, changes into his PT gear, and goes swimming. Nix thinks he’s insane, but there’s also something pleasant about knowing exactly where to find him. Come hell or high water, if Nix manages to drag himself out of bed before 0900, he’ll be able to find Dick down at the lake, basking in his self-assigned PT. It’s a pleasant change from how Nix has spent the rest of the war, worried about when Dick was going to catch a bullet or a mortar or something stupid, like Smith’s goddamn bayonet.
The first few days, Nix goes for the novelty. It’s not like they were ever separated for long, but the shape of Dick’s body in the water or sitting on the end of the dock calms some primal panic deep inside him that screams at him to find Dick and take cover. So Nix heads down to the water to catch Dick before breakfast and watches him swim, content in the knowledge that at least his friend is safe, if a little touched in the head.
At some point, it becomes routine. On a good day, Nix will be up by 0730 to meet Dick down at the dock, tossing him a towel or, on the odd occasion, joining him in the water. On other days, Nix wakes up from a late night with a pounding headache, and Dick’s already back from the lake.
He’s prepared to dread those days, when he groans himself awake to sunlight streaming in through his window, too bright for his tired, hungover eyes to handle, but the fact that he can always hear Dick in the apartment next door as Nix comes slowly back to himself — clanging around making his bed, writing a report, or talking with another officer —just makes him grateful.
On those days, once Nix is dressed, he appears in Dick’s doorway with a hand shielding his eyes against the light beaming in from Dick’s balcony, and they walk to breakfast together. Nix doesn’t know how to say that he can’t even begin to repay Dick for the generosity, so he doesn’t. But he thinks Dick knows.
Today Nix wakes to the sound of birds chirping outside his window and a glass of water resting on the nightstand next to him. Dick’s apartment is still and silent. Dick never knocks on Nix’s door or sticks his head in to say good morning before he leaves, but Nix knows where to find him.
He treks down to the water unhurriedly. Nix can’t see any point in jogging unless he has to, and it’s not like Dick will cut his swim short in order to entertain Nix if he gets there early, so Nix strolls. He imagines he’s back in New Jersey, walking down some city street. Maybe he has a dog, and the sun is shining on them just like it is now, gentle and sleepy. Maybe he has someone waiting for him in the big, empty house Kathy left, so he does jog, just to see their face a little sooner. Nix imagines he’s back in New Jersey, walking home to Dick.
By the time he situates himself at the end of the dock, Dick is making his way back to shore. He doesn’t acknowledge Nix as he swims, but Nix knows he’s spotted him by the way he changes course and heads straight for him. He pulls up short of the dock and stands, water running in rivulets down his sides, the sun glinting off his pale skin.
Nix tosses him his towel and Dick catches it with ease, smiling faintly.
“Morning,” Dick says.
Nix wrinkles his nose and makes a show of yawning. “I’ll say.” Dick ignores him and Nix watches as he wades through the shallow water towards shore, all legs. Oh, the odes Nix could write to Dick’s legs. The man is literally three-quarters leg, miles of muscle that Nix tracks now, all the way up to Dick’s ass, then up his back, to the way the sunlight glints off of Dick’s hair.
Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly relaxed, Dick will stretch his legs out in front of himself, crossed at the ankle like he’s posing for a picture. Nix will watch him shift his weight back onto his hands, bask in the sun, and flex his thighs through the stiff fabric of his trousers. If Nix is there, Dick might even rest his feet in Nix’s lap, the simple display of intimacy almost overwhelming.
He does this now, climbing up on the dock and settling beside Nix, graciously leaving his still-wet feet on the wood.
Nix thinks Dick has always held himself too stiffly. Sometimes Nix tries to imagine what Dick would have been like before OCS, before basic training, and even in Nix’s musings the tension in Dick’s shoulders doesn’t seem to go away altogether. As such, watching him unwind is one of Nix’s favorite pastimes, and he can always tell how Dick is feeling by keeping an eye on his legs.
Dick marches with stiff legs, as though keeping himself rigid will hold the whole company together. In Bastogne, Dick often sat with his elbows on his knees, hunched forward over calves so tightly strung that they shook, the cold entirely aside. And now, as water runs lazily from his ankles onto the dock, Dick lifts one foot to set it in Nix’s lap. If Nix didn’t know him better, he would describe the movement as languid.
Dick looks at Nix briefly and scrunches his face up. “What is it?” he asks, and Nix realizes he’s been staring.
“Just thinking,” Nix says. “You hungry? Because I’m hungry. I’ve been waiting here for forever.” He lifts Dick’s foot from his lap, letting it drop with a thunk onto the dock, then stands and pulls Dick up with him.
“Sure,” says Dick, still looking at him oddly. “Breakfast?”
“Yeah,” Nix agrees, and spares a glance down at where Dick’s damp PT shorts end and his skin begins. The seam there has left a little red imprint, the wet cloth clinging too tightly to the muscle, pocking up Dick’s thigh for just a few moments. Nix blinks once and looks away before leading the way up towards the road.
- Hair
At the house in New Jersey, Dick still gets up at 0600, but now he runs. Nix would think it was stupid, except he knows how Dick works by now, always beholden to a routine. Besides, Nix is usually up by the time he gets back and can offer him coffee and slightly burnt eggs. Dick always accepts both gratefully and then they get to eat breakfast together and talk. And Nix gets to watch Dick.
He’s always a little sweaty when he gets back in the morning, with his hair falling out of the careful style he’s combed it into. Nix loves it like this, hanging over Dick’s forehead, mussed up and fluffier for it. It’s a rare moment of disorder, one that Nix treasures daily. He can only imagine how it would feel to run his fingers through Dick’s hair now, soft and damp with sweat, warm from the lazy sun.
Nix has been home now for eight months, and of those they’ve lived together for four. Nix wasn’t sure Dick was going to take him up on the job offer at first, but when Dick called at Christmas to ask if Nix still had a spare room, Nix felt something tender bubble up in him like a well. It hasn’t died away since, and Nix still hasn’t tired of this morning routine, the warmth that spreads through his chest when he hears the latch turning in the door and he spots Dick’s hair through the crack in the door before it opens fully. He still returns the smile Dick gives him when he spots him in the kitchen, something soft and exquisite, like a thank you.
It’s not perfect by any means. He goes to dinner with Stanhope on Sundays and comes home only to drink himself to sleep, and he drinks himself to sleep on other nights just for the hell of it. He still hates the job. It depresses him so fucking much to think about it, like sometimes he’d rather imagine himself dead in Normandy than back behind that desk, trapped under everything his family expects him to be. And sometimes he and Dick argue. Dick will say that liquor is killing him and Nix will say it’s a good thing the war didn’t then and they’ll fight like hell and go to sleep upset. And the next morning Nix will offer him coffee and burnt eggs and Dick will take them with that smile of his.
No, it’s not perfect. But it’s good enough for Nix. It’s good enough that he’s happy most of the time, high off of Dick just being there. He’ll take that.
Dick’s made enough noise about starting a garden that Nix eventually just gets him new tools and tells him to go get seeds or shut the hell up. It’s nearly planting season already and Dick just laughs when Nix says so, but he does go to the store later that week, while Nix is held up at work handling some financing issue.
By the time Nix gets home that evening, Dick is knee deep in an ancient patch of dirt out back that was probably an herb garden years ago. Nix tries to imagine Kathy caring enough to plant a garden to use for cooking, and eventually decides that maybe it was a flower bed after all. The setting sun casts an orange glow on the yard as Nix settles on the porch with two glasses of water, watching Dick’s hair turn a fiery red in the light.
It’s getting messy after a day of office work and now the planting, falling into his face like it does after he runs. Nix thinks again about carding his fingers through it, nails scraping gently against Dick’s scalp, feeling the way everything comes together.
“What’ve we got?” Nix asks, once Dick finishes and approaches the porch, picking up his glass.
“Lettuce, squash. I potted some tomatoes earlier. Carrots. Rosemary. And next year I want to set up a lattice for beans.” He pauses. “We’ll see how all this goes with the rabbits.”
Nix nods slowly. He’s a little caught on the concept of next year and the idea of Dick staying here with him. He imagines a hundred more mornings greeting Dick in the kitchen, and can suddenly think of nothing else. “Anything else? I mean, about the house. Other than the lattice.”
Dick shrugs. “We’ll see. I do want to fix the fence out front.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the fence out front.”
“Couple of rotten boards,” Dick says pragmatically. Nix gets the odd feeling that he just wants something to do, but he won’t begrudge Dick the work. Nix can feel himself getting antsy sometimes too, like there’s something he should be doing or anticipating. There are some days where all he wants to do is run as far away as he can, in some effort to avoid inaction, or the results of inaction, which eventually just leads him back to the war.
Nix says only, “Alright, then.”
Dick jams his thumb fixing the fence. It’s only after he’s satisfied with it that he stops to tell Nix about his hand, and by then they both figure that icing it is a little moot. So they just go inside and Nix makes Dick sit at the table and talk to him while Nix cooks dinner. Nix would point out that he should’ve just left well enough alone, except the fence does look better now that Dick’s done with it.
The next morning Nix wakes to a knock on his door. It’s only strange for the fact that Dick still never warns him before he leaves. They both have these habits, small holdovers from the war that neither of them seem keen to let go of. Nix sleeps late and Dick doesn’t wake him. Their morning routines remain their own. On the rare occasion that Nix isn’t up in time for breakfast, Dick just heads to work without him. So, a little perturbed, Nix stands and opens the door to find Dick standing sheepishly in the hallway outside. He’s holding a comb.
“I think my hand’s shot for the day,” he says apologetically. “I can’t…” and he gestures with the comb. “And I don’t trust my left on this.”
Nix studies him for a brief moment, then steps out into the hallway. Dick’s wearing his running clothes, and they look clean. “Guess we should’ve iced it, after all,” Nix says.
“Guess so,” Dick agrees. “Can you…?”
It’s just gonna get messed up again, Nix should say. Go for your run, and then maybe I’ll consider. But he’s never been good at saying no to Dick, and besides, he’s imagining his fingers in Dick’s hair again, this time sleep-mussed and clean, soft to the touch. “Yeah, yeah,” Nix says, trying hard to sound put upon.
He takes the comb from Dick’s stiff fingers and follows him back into Dick’s room, standing over him as he settles on the bed.
Nix can’t help it. He runs his fingers through Dick’s hair before he does the comb, lingering a little where it thins out into the short hair of his neck. He curls his fingers lightly against Dick’s nape, feeling the hair scratch and pull gently. Dick stays very still, but there’s a tremor down his spine when Nix brushes his knuckles against the skin just above his shoulders, a minute shiver that sets Nix’s fingers trembling.
He sets the comb against Dick’s hairline and draws it back, listens to the way Dick’s breathing is even against his stomach. Nix follows it with a fluttering hand, fussing with the little hairs that fall out of place, then does it again, and revels in the way Dick leans unconsciously into the touch.
Minutes pass, too long to really be excusable, of Nix combing Dick’s hair and Dick breathing into it. The closeness should be suffocating, terrifying, but Nix can only find it in himself to feel settled. At peace.
Dick lets out an unsteady breath. “Lew,” he says, so quietly. The sun has risen long past when he usually starts his run.
Nix steps back and sets the comb gingerly on the bed beside Dick. “I’ll have breakfast ready when you get back.”
Dick stares at him for a moment, lips slightly parted, blue eyes contemplative. “Lew,” he repeats, dazed like he doesn’t realize he’s saying it. He stands slowly. “Thank you.”
Nix shifts back another step, leaving room for Dick to pass. “Any time,” he says.
- Eyes
When June rolls around, Dick mentions that he’s heading home for the Fourth of July. Nix doesn’t say anything at first, half because Dick hasn’t extended an invitation and half because Nix is stuck thinking about celebrating with his own family.
Every summer, thoroughly debauched by some party or another, the Nixons crowd out to New York harbor to watch the fireworks from the pier. Sometimes they take the yacht out and watch from the water, champagne and whiskey in hand. Blanche will have some poor young bachelor on her arm, and Nix, well. For the first time in years, Nix will probably be alone. As far as family holidays go, Nix doesn’t mind it. It’s better than Christmas at least, which is just an excuse for Stanhope to needle him about his future, and Thanksgiving, which is always a nightmare. Still, he’d prefer not to think about it more than he’s strictly required to.
By the second week in June the garden is coming in nicely, so Nix resolves to stop worrying about holidays and instead helps Dick harvest the carrots. Dick does most of the digging while Nix collects the vegetables in a wicker basket and checks on the lettuce. The rabbits haven’t been too bad, but they have lost a few heads to the little beasts, and Nix can tell Dick’s upset about it even if he doesn’t let on.
Dick looks up at Nix from where he’s crouched at the end of a row of carrots, squinting into the noon sun. His eyes are very blue, almost gray in the light, even as he lifts up a hand to shield his face. “Any more casualties?”
Nix smiles wryly. “Not that I can see. I think the chicken wire around the herbs was a good idea.”
Dick nods. He stands, hands pressing against his knees for leverage, and steps back from the garden bed. “How about lunch?”
Nix can see his eyes better from here, still narrowed against the bright sun, irises barely visible through his pale eyelashes. “Sure,” Nix says. “Sandwiches?”
“What about stew for dinner?” Dick asks on the way inside, nodding towards the carrots. “Or is it too hot?”
“No,” Nix says. “Sounds perfect.”
About a week before Dick leaves for Lancaster, he turns to Nix with his mouth already half open, the way he does when he’s been meaning to say something for a while. “Listen, Lew, about the Fourth —”
Nix shakes his head, having anticipated this. Damn if Dick isn’t the best man he knows, but Nix isn’t going to take advantage of that. “No, go be with your farm animals. I’m sure the cows miss you, and I can get roaring drunk all by myself, thanks.”
“No, I meant —” Dick breaks off and glances at Nix over the spine of the book he’s reading. They’re sitting in the living room, Nix sprawled on the couch and Dick curled into an armchair, reading in what’s been a mostly companionable silence. Now Dick’s sharp eyes track steadily over Nix’s face, and Nix finally realizes that he’s concerned. Immediately Nix looks away, guilty.
“I meant to ask,” Dick continues, more slowly, “if you wanted to come to Pennsylvania with me. My parents would love to meet you.”
Nix’s eyes flick back to Dick’s face for a moment, catching his gaze, dark in the dim evening light. Nix’s fingers tighten and then release on his book as he imagines meeting Dick’s parents, imagines somehow letting him down. “Um,” he says.
Dick just watches him, an eyebrow half-raised in question.
“Okay,” Nix says at last. “Yeah, I’d love to.” As if to prove it, he takes a drink of the near untouched whiskey sitting next to him on the corner table.
Dick’s lips tug downwards into a small frown and Nix sets the tumbler sheepishly back down. Then, as though correcting himself, Dick smiles, pleased like Nix just gave him a present. “Great. I’ll let them know to expect us.”
“Yeah,” Nix says again, testing the idea of us out in his mind. “Yeah, alright.”
Nix isn’t sure what to expect from the Winters household. For one thing, he imagines that they live in something of a country home, because despite Dick’s constant reminders that he never actually lived on a farm, Nix hasn’t shaken the idea that small town Pennsylvania looks something like upstate New York, cows and all. He used to piss Dick off to no end following that line of teasing until it became unbearably old, so that eventually whenever Nix brought it up he would just laugh. Even in Bastogne, Nix could count on it.
No, Nix realizes as they pull up to the two-level house, Lancaster may be smaller than Jersey City but it’s still got a downtown, and Dick’s parents don’t live too far from there. The neighborhood itself, suitably suburban, stretches out as far as Nix can see, at least until the road curves and trees and shrubs crowd in to obscure the rest of the street.
He glances at Dick once they’re out of the car only to find that Dick is already looking at him, gauging the way Nix takes in the place where Dick grew up. There’s something buried deep in his gaze, a question.
“It’s adorable,” Nix says by way of an answer, and Dick just laughs.
A woman who can only be Edith Winters emerges from the house, followed closely by a man who must be Richard Winters, Sr. It’s strange to Nix, how much Dick looks like them. He gets the hair from his father and the kindness from his mother. Seeing Dick’s parents together is strangely like seeing what Dick will be when he’s older, the same familiar face with deeper creases about the eyes.
“Welcome home!” calls Edith from the porch, dusting her hands on her apron. She surveys the two of them for another few seconds before picking her way down the front steps. “And you must be Lewis,” she says when she reaches them.
Something about the way she says it, like this isn’t the first time she’s heard about him, makes Nix smile. He holds out his hand and nods. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Winters.”
“Edith,” she says firmly, then turns back to the house. “Dinner’s almost ready. Come on and bring your bags inside. We made up the guest room.”
Dick is watching him again as Nix grabs his suitcase from the car and follows her into the house, pausing to shake Richard’s hand before going inside. Nix doesn’t look back at him, but he can tell by the way Dick herds him firmly upstairs that he knows Nix has noticed.
Dick shows him the way to the guest room, sparse but lived-in in a way that suggests the Winterses hastily cleaned out a room usually used for storage, or maybe laundry. The thought makes Nix smile, and the expression turns soft as he sets his case down beside the bed and turns to look at Dick still lingering in the doorway.
“You alright?” Nix asks, instead of his actual question.
Dick purses his lips thoughtfully and the smile slides slowly off of Nix’s face. “When I first came home, before I moved to New Jersey, I spent two months here.” Nix knows. He sometimes catches sight of the letters in his desk at home, the ones Dick wrote him from overseas and then from right here just a state away. He remembers missing Dick terribly, all the worse for the fact that they were finally so close together again. Stupidly, he kept all of their correspondence, and he doesn’t look forward to the day Dick finds it and Nix has to explain why.
“Going to war and coming back,” Dick says, looking far away. “I’ve changed, Nix. We all have, everyone who went.” Nix’s brow furrows as Dick speaks, and now he aches to reach out. He stops himself, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. Dick says, “Things have changed here too, but it’s nothing like how different I feel inside. When I came back, I hadn’t thought about how hard it would be to tell my mother that I’ve spent three years becoming unrecognizable.”
Nix can’t stop himself, then. He steps forward in short, abrupt steps, aborted movements carrying him all the way across the room. He puts his hand out, unsure where he means to touch, and then Dick reaches out too, and all Nix can do is take his hand.
Dick says, “You still manage to be so much yourself. It’s…” He swallows. “It’s better to be here with you.”
Dick’s eyes, trained for the duration of his speech on the wall over Nix’s shoulder and then at the place where their hands meet, now flicker up to look at Nix. They’re a deep blue in the light, oceans or sapphires, flitting across Nix’s face, more unsure than Nix has ever seen him. Somehow he feels like he’s being pulled down, swallowed by something he sees in there.
“I’m a better person when I’m with you,” Nix admits, with effort. He thinks about how he’s mostly sober now, how he wakes up every day knowing he’ll spend it with Dick, and how that makes it worth everything that comes with. “I wouldn’t be myself, like you said, if it weren’t for you.”
Something in Dick’s eyes, sharp and familiar, relaxes. A sort of understanding passes between them, like the quiet drone of Morse code or a coded message. Dick lets go of his hand and steps back into the hallway. Inexplicably, the separation makes Nix’s heart pound harder. “Thank you,” Dick says.
Nix is suddenly hit with the image of him stepping back from Dick’s bed, some tender, dumbstruck smile on his lips. “Any time,” he says now, his throat dry. The small quirk of Dick’s lips tells him that was the right answer, and then Dick is disappearing down the hallway into his bedroom, and Nix is left standing alone in a house that is both comforting and daunting in its closeness to Dick.
Dick’s eyes are black on the Fourth of July, irises swallowed down to almost nothing. After everything, after the festivities and dinner, standing together under a dark sky only just cleared of fireworks, smoke still masking the better part of the stars, Dick turns to him with eyes as dark as anything, and smiles.
“Better than New Jersey?” he asks.
“Miles,” Nix says. “Miles better than New Jersey.” He hasn’t touched a drop all night, and while it feels like a break in tradition, Nix isn’t that disappointed about it. Looking at Dick now, his vision clear enough to commit all of this to memory, Nix decides he isn’t disappointed at all.
Then, because he feels like Dick has been saying it a lot lately, Nix says, “Hey, thanks. For inviting me, and for…” He doesn’t finish, and he doesn’t know exactly what he’s trying to say either, but Dick seems to understand.
Dick reaches out a hand and grasps Nix’s fingers. Just for a moment, they stand looking at each other, studying each other in the half-dark. Dick lets go, and then they both watch the sky.
- Hands
Dick has always been the more diligent worker out of the two of them, even back at OCS where a vigor for busywork was beaten into Nix like wet laundry. Nix is fully aware that if it weren’t for his natural aptitude for memorization, he would have flunked out just like half of the cadets. Nix considers himself lucky that Dick didn’t really know him then, not like he does now, because Nix is sure they would have fought a lot more over Nix’s apathy if he did. In the same vein, he knows that none of that matters anymore because his job at the nitration works is mostly about being a figurehead anyway.
It’s kind of nice, doing almost nothing. He flips through the reports that Dick leaves on his desk, oversees job interviews, and spends the rest of his time in Dick’s office pestering him. Dick doesn’t seem to mind; he lets Nix do what he likes, lets him lounge on the extra chair or perch himself on Dick’s desk, close enough for Dick’s arm to brush against his leg where it rests. And he lets Nix watch him write.
Nix likes the way Dick’s hands look when they work, grasping a pen or pecking away at a typewriter, still as slow and methodical as Nix remembers. It’s become a favorite hobby of Nix’s, watching Dick’s pen scribble neat lines across clean paper or form the practiced loop of his signature, time and time again like back in Holland. As such, Nix spends inordinate amounts of time in Dick’s office, pretending to read while really he just looks. They talk sometimes, but not much, which Nix prefers.
What Nix finds he likes best of all is when eventually Dick does get fed up with him, and instead of ordering Nix off of his desk leans into him just slightly, levering him off and onto the ground. Or, if Nix has managed to be particularly vexing from his spot in Dick’s spare chair, Dick will get up and pluck the book from Nix’s hands, then pull him up to standing with a grip that is more gentle than firm. Then, no matter Nix’s apologies or protests, Dick will place his hand at the small of Nix’s back and guide him towards the door, a dry smile on his face as Nix doesn’t really try to fight back at all. Usually they linger at the doorway for just a moment, Dick’s hand grasping the fabric of Nix’s shirt and Nix itching to reach out for him, before he’s well and truly kicked out.
When Dick does it like that, Nix can’t really mind.
These new touches are something Nix treasures, a sort of easy closeness that hadn’t been there before. Nix keeps his eyes on Dick’s hands more than ever now, never sure where they might stealthily turn up, but sometimes they do sneak up on him. At home, sitting on the couch reading, Dick will lay a hand on his shoulder or thread his fingers through his hair, just briefly on his way to his own spot in the chair. Once Dick had laid his hand tenderly along Nix’s jaw, smiled when Nix looked up at him in bewilderment, and gone to sit down without a word.
Dick’s hands are learning the parts of Nix that they didn’t already know, touches and brushes just to get the shape of Nix into their memory. Nix is fascinated with it, the way Dick always seems to be reaching for him now. What’s more, there’s never been a time where Nix hasn’t reached back.
Nix is watching Dick’s hands again, this time in the relative privacy of their home. Dick is fiddling with a pen, hunched over a piece of stationery in the peculiar way he has that isn’t really a hunch at all, more just a fretful rounding of the shoulders. He hasn’t written anything for minutes. Nix imagines taking Dick’s hand over the table and pressing his mouth to the skin just inside the curve where his pointer finger and his thumb meet, imagines Dick’s surprised inhale, somewhere between frightened and pleased.
Nix does not do that. Instead, he asks plainly, “What’s wrong?”
Dick looks up at him and then back down to the unwritten letter before him. He reaches into his pocket and produces another letter, neatly folded with a return address from Lancaster, and he hands it to Nix.
Nix opens it slowly, as though waiting for Dick to tell him to stop. When he says nothing, Nix skims the lines quickly, instincts taking over as he tries to ascertain the relevant information, until his gaze catches on one phrase in particular. “Oh,” he says dumbly.
Dick doesn’t reply, but he does put the cap back on his pen and fold his hands.
Nix sets the letter carefully on the table, wishing he knew anything at all about how families are supposed to feel about each other. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Did you… just find out?”
“The letter came in yesterday,” Dick says. Nix can tell he’s doing his best to remain expressionless.
“She didn’t phone?”
Dick just shrugs, but the way his hands are clutching at each other betrays his distress. Nix does take Dick’s hand then, separating it carefully from the other, and he doesn’t lift it to his mouth but rather laces his own fingers through Dick’s. Nix stares down at their joined hands, the way they seem to fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.
“I know I only met him once,” he says, trying to gauge just how every word lands. Slowly, he strokes a thumb over Dick’s knuckles. “But he was a good man. And he seemed like a good father. I’m sorry.”
Dick makes a face like a grimace. “Don’t apologize.” He glances at the wall over Nix’s shoulder. “The funeral’s in a week. I’ll have to head up for a couple of days.”
“Yeah,” Nix says, squeezing Dick’s fingers again and feeling morose. Lightly as he can: “You’ll be home in time for the lettuce harvest.”
Dick manages what is probably the closest he’s going to get to a smile for a while. “Keep an eye on the rabbits.”
Nix lets go of his hand to salute lazily. “’Course, Major.”
Dick actually does smile, small and reluctant though it is. “Oh, shut up.”
- Mouth
Nix drives them home from work most nights, or at least the nights that Dick doesn’t stay late working. Sometimes he does, well into the night to the point that Nix gives up on pretending to read and declares that, fine, Dick can walk home if he really wants. They live close enough and Dick likes the exercise enough that it’s not inhumane, and he never complains about it.
But usually they drive together. Recently Dick’s been laying his hand in the space just behind the gear shift, leaving his fingers loose and open for Nix to take hold of whenever they’re cruising. They’ll stop at the diner for dinner occasionally, if neither of them feel like cooking or they forgot to make a grocery run earlier in the week.
When they do Dick always sits across from him, his hands clasped serenely in front of him, their feet tangled together maybe a little conspicuously below the table. Dick smiles at him, a small tug of his lips that draws out a matching expression on Nix’s face before he realizes it’s happening. Dick has been moody since he got back from his father’s funeral, which Nix can’t really fault him for, but it’s nice to see him smiling again. It’s nice to think that maybe it’s because of Nix.
“There are more tomatoes coming in,” Dick says contemplatively over his cup of coffee. “We should do something with them.”
“How do we feel about spaghetti?” says Nix. Some cynical part of him dredges up the memory of Captain Sobel shouting for order, and then poor Skip Muck sick on the way up Currahee. Sobel was needlessly cruel on the best of days and downright vindictive on the worst, but what upsets Nix the most is the possibility that pasta has been ruined for him.
Dick takes a sip of his coffee and swallows around another smile. Nix knows he’s thinking the same thing. “Not bad. We need noodles.”
“Tomorrow after work? Think you can take off early for once?”
Dick hums. “We’ll see,” he says, and Nix has learned by now that he really means yes.
It’s already well into the evening by the time they get home the next day, having been forced to extend their grocery trip after realizing they also needed meatballs and a few extra spices, but Nix doesn’t really mind. It’s the novelty of cooking with Dick that he really enjoys about their dinners, not necessarily the food itself. The whole process is rich with domesticity, the kind that makes Nix want to keep making dinner with Dick for the rest of his life.
They set the noodles boiling then split off. Dick works on the meatballs while Nix starts on the sauce, pausing here and there to add thyme or fresh rosemary. The kitchen isn’t small by any means, but Dick still stands close enough to brush against Nix and steal the oregano, sniffing the sauce every so often. It’s these small moments of childishness, this reassuring sort of immaturity, that let Nix know the war didn’t take everything from them after all.
Once Dick has put the meatballs in the oven he starts on cleaning off the knives and setting the noodles out to cool. Nix can sense his restlessness from across the room. When he’s done, he wanders back to where Nix is stirring the sauce, settling against the counter a few inches away.
On a whim, Nix shakes off the wooden spoon, then dips it back in the sauce and offers it to Dick. Dick is smiling as he fits his lips around it, and when he pulls back, making a show of tasting the sauce like some stereotypical French chef, there are spots of red left over on his upper lip. Nix watches as Dick licks his lips, tongue stupidly pink as it darts out to taste the last of Nix’s cooking.
And just like that, this thing that’s been building between them for months, for years maybe, comes to a head in Nix’s mind. He sets the spoon carefully aside, turns the gas burner off, and turns back to Dick. They’re breathing into each other’s space at this point, and Nix’s hands find their way up to Dick’s forearms as he studies the lines around Dick’s mouth, dear and familiar.
Dick is the one who does it, in the end. He’s still got an unconscious little smile dancing across his lips as he leans forward and kisses Nix. For something completely new, something Nix has never even let himself imagine before, kissing Dick feels like muscle memory. The way they shift so Dick is pressed back against the counter, so Dick’s arms are wrapped around Nix’s back like they’re halfway to hugging, so Nix can lean up and nip lightly at his lips — all of it feels sweet in a way that makes Nix think he’s finally worked out what home means to him.
Dick makes a sound low in his throat as Nix runs his hands up Dick’s arms and into the hair that he loves so much, and Nix feels his breath hitch in his lungs. He exhales sharply through his nose and for some reason it makes Dick laugh, forcing them to break apart as Dick curls into Nix, shoulders shaking.
“You good?” Nix asks, trying his damnedest to sound exasperated. He thinks he mostly sounds fond.
“Yeah,” Dick says, and places an apologetic little kiss on the skin just behind Nix’s jaw, where Dick has nestled his face. He pulls back just slightly to look up at Nix, his gaze so soft that after just a moment it becomes too much to bear and Nix leans in to kiss him again.
Dick’s mouth, Nix realizes as he tastes tomato on Dick’s tongue, has been a topic of study for him since before even Normandy. He knows the way Dick talks, how he smiles and frowns and schools his face into a carefully neutral expression. Nix is intimately familiar with the way Dick’s lips purse up when he’s frustrated, or the way his whole face scrunches up when he’s confused, his mouth pulled into an unintentional little grin. He has spent years learning Dick without even realizing it, and when they kiss it is just another thing that Nix now knows about him.
“You’re thinking,” Dick mumbles against Nix’s cheek. “Even I’m not thinking right now.”
Nix chuckles and pulls back to rest his forehead against Dick’s. “I’m thinking about you. About how long I’ve been thinking about you.”
Dick’s mouth curves happily. “How long is that?”
“Long,” Nix says, kissing him. “Since Toccoa,” with another kiss. “Since OCS.” When Nix kisses him this time, he lingers, letting his teeth graze over Dick’s lip, feeling the way Dick’s shoulders tense just a little under his hands.
“The spaghetti is going cold,” Dick says when Nix finally lets him break away.
Nix stares. “I just made probably the biggest confession of my life, and you’re thinking about spaghetti? You just said you weren’t thinking.”
“It’s right there, there’s not much else to see —” Dick is halfway to laughing already.
“Oh my god,” Nix grouses, but he pushes away from Dick anyway, freeing him from where he’s trapped against the counter. “Fine, fine.”
Nix plates the food, setting Dick’s on the table with a flourish and earning a sarcastic little smile in return. They sit across from each other and tangle their feet, like usual, except this time when Nix takes a bite all he can think of is that he knows how this tastes on Dick’s lips. He thinks about all the years he’s known Dick, and about how many more there are to go. He thinks about Dick’s mouth, and how long he has left to love it.
“Hey,” Nix says, a forkful of pasta wound up on his plate. Dick looks up at him and swallows. “This is good, right? We’re good?”
Nix notices the way Dick’s eyebrows almost furrow, notices the way he fights the smile already climbing its way onto his face. “Yeah,” Dick says. “Yeah. We’re good.”
- Nix
Dick is a little taken aback every time he looks at the house, with everything packed away into the boxes that they’ve stacked neatly in the foyer. They’ve left out a few spare plates and the mattress upstairs that they share, but the bed frame and all the actual cooking utensils have been packed away. Any furniture they aren’t bringing with them has been donated at Dick’s behest, and all the books worth keeping have been plucked from the shelves, leaving large bare patches of wall visible. The whole place feels alien in its emptiness.
After a few weeks of reluctance, he and Nix had finally dug up the garden bed and resown it with grass, leaving the lawn relatively uniform for the next owner to move in. As Dick wanders through the house on their last night there, he can’t help but notice that it looks as though he and Nix never lived there at all.
Nix catches Dick across the waist as Dick makes his way into the kitchen to ask after dinner and pulls him into a short kiss. He likes doing this, stealing moments in their home every chance he gets, using any excuse he can find to get Dick in private. Dick doesn’t mind it, and he probably only encourages Nix every time he lets himself be stolen away from whatever he’s doing, but he’s really not complaining. When Nix pulls back he’s grinning the way he does when he’s had a touch of whiskey and is feeling nostalgic, the same way he sometimes gets when he and Dick find themselves up late reminiscing about Easy.
Only a year has passed since Dick got home, but the war feels like a lifetime ago already. Sometimes, in the cover of night, it creeps up on him like a shiver, wakes him up in a cold sweat, leaving him unsure of where he is or where he’s supposed to be; in broad daylight, by contrast, Dick has trouble connecting the things he saw and did in Europe to the life he’s living now.
He supposes that’s why he has Nix.
“Hey,” Nix purrs in Dick’s ear, brushing his lips against the sensitive skin just underneath.
“Hi,” Dick says, swaying happily in Nix’s arms. “What are we doing for dinner?”
“Diner?” Nix suggests. “In honor of our last night here, and all.”
Dick hums in contented agreement and pecks Nix on the lips before ducking out of his embrace. “Let’s go, then.”
Over dinner, Dick considers Nix. When he first told Nix about the promise he made that night at Normandy, Dick didn’t expect anything to come of it. The thing is, Dick doesn’t really mind where his plot of land is, as long as Nix is there. As long as he can wake up every morning to see Nix’s face squished against his pillow, as long as he can keep coming home from his morning runs to Nix’s gradually improving eggs and coffee, he’d be content living anywhere, really. Even New Jersey, in a house in the city with barely enough land to grow lettuce.
But when Nix heard about Dick’s plan, he had glanced with a fond smile out the window to the garden plot, where the squash was finally about ready for harvest. Dick could tell he was turning the idea over in his mind, picturing all the days they would spend outside, working or talking or deciding what to make for dinner.
“Can we get a dog?” Nix had asked after a long time.
“A dog?” Dick said. “Sure, Lew. We’ll get a dog.”
So Nix had grinned and given him a satisfied nod. “It’s a good idea, Dick.”
The next week, Dick found a newspaper clipping left on his desk at work after lunch, with a handwritten note from Nix. Next time we’re in Lancaster?
The clipping was a real estate advertisement from Pennsylvania, and Dick couldn’t even begin to imagine now Nix got his hands on it. It boasted a modest house on a ten acre lot, with space already set aside for farmland. The ad also mentioned a chicken coop alongside the barn, which was a possibility that Dick hadn’t considered until then. It made him smile, the thought of Nix burning fresh eggs.
The next time they found themselves in Pennsylvania, when Edith asked them to come spend Richard’s birthday with her, they went to take a look at the house. It was about an hour and a half out of Lancaster, tucked away so as to be private, but not far enough from the nearest town to be lonely. The house itself was fine, light blue and white, a little dilapidated, but standing there in the yard of some wartime dream that had somehow become real, Dick thought that with enough dedication they could make it a home.
After that, Dick agonized for a long time over the house. Ten acres seemed like a lot, and he wasn’t really sure Nix would be happy living so far from any real civilization. Dick didn’t know what they could really do with that much space, and he wouldn’t want Nix to be living somewhere he felt he couldn’t have a life. Dick worried and worried until one day Nix just looked at him and said, “You know it goes both ways, right?”
Dick stared back. “What does?”
“Doesn’t matter where I am,” Nix said. “I told you, over the Fourth of July. I’m better with you. Anywhere I am is better with you.”
“Oh,” Dick said. He’d almost forgotten that. Possibly the sweetest thing Nix ever said to him, drowned out in the noise of the past few months, of them settling into the routine of being together.
“Stop worrying about me. We did enough worrying over in Europe, so let’s be done with it.” Nix waved his book at Dick. “Let’s move to a farm already.”
So they bought the house. It took another few months to decide what to get rid of and what to keep, how to extricate themselves from the nitration works, and what all needed doing to the new house to make it livable, but by November they had the boxes all squared away and Nix was cracking jokes about owning cows already.
Nix raises his eyebrows at Dick from across the battered diner table. “I got something on my face?”
“Sure,” Dick says. Some swell of emotion stops him from saying anything else, but Nix can probably read his expression well enough to know that anything he does say would be outrageously fond.
“Sure, he says,” Nix teases, his eyes twinkling. Dick ducks his head and sips his coffee.
The next morning, they load their trunks and any boxes they can fit into the car, and help the movers pile the rest of the boxes and any furniture into the moving truck. When everything is said and done and the truck has pulled out of the driveway, Nix stands before the house with his hands on his hips. Dick can tell by the way his head is tilted a little strangely that he’s thinking about Kathy, about the two lives he’s led inside those walls. He’s probably thinking about his dog, too.
Dick somehow stops himself from wrapping his arms around Nix’s waist and holding him there forever, trapping them in this picture perfect morning together. Instead he wanders up beside him and knocks their shoulders together.
“It’s time I left, anyway,” Nix says, more to himself than to Dick. “Don’t think the Nixons were ever gonna get anything else out of me.”
“What, not picturesque enough for you?” Dick asks. “Had to move to the country to get away from it all?”
Nix shoots him a look. “Somehow I recall this not being even remotely my idea.”
“Well,” Dick says, mock-abashed, “New Jersey’s fine and all…”
“Oh, shut up,” Nix says, turning and checking Dick with his shoulder on his way back towards the car. He tosses the keys in the air and catches them again as he goes. “I’ll drive.”
Dick allows himself a brief smile before he follows Nix and slides into the passenger seat, throwing one last glance back at the first real home he’s had since the war.
They drive mostly in silence, though Nix tunes the radio to a jazz station and lets it fill the car with white noise.
Dick considers Nix again, sitting low in the driver’s seat, gazing alternately out at the road and at the place where their hands are joined just behind the gear shift, like always. The thing about Nix, Dick realizes belatedly, is that it does go both ways. Dick still thinks frequently about Nix’s confession, everything he managed to say in so few words that day in their kitchen. Somewhere along the way the words have become etched in his mind as I’ve loved you since OCS, and Dick’s pretty sure he’s not far off from Nix’s actual meaning.
The thing about Nix, Dick is beginning to learn, is that while he may be lazy and a little drunk and completely averse to work most days, he doesn’t love in halves. Nix loves with everything in him, and sometimes that means moving to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania for Dick. Sometimes it means making spaghetti with him in the kitchen of a house he never really liked because Dick came to New Jersey and planted tomatoes, of all things. Sometimes it means telling without saying.
“I love you,” Dick says into the half-quiet, distracting Nix from the soft crooning of Ella Fitzgerald. Because the thing about Dick is that he doesn’t love in halves either. For everything he tries to abstain from, Dick’s never known how to hold back when it comes to Nix, and sometimes that means just saying your whole heart.
Nix looks at him, lips half-parted, his eyebrows knitting like he’s sure he couldn’t have heard Dick right. It’s a testament to how well he knows Dick, to how much they are to each other, that he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t protest. Instead, his lips form an o shape and he says, “Well, shit, Dick. I love you too.”
It’s so Nix, so unbearably dear that all Dick can do is lift Nix’s hand to his lips and press a kiss to his knuckles.
“I know,” Dick says eventually. When Nix glances at him, surprised, Dick says, “You told me. In the kitchen.”
Nix studies the horizon and Dick can tell he’s thinking about the houses, in New Jersey and now in Pennsylvania. He’s thinking about kitchens. He’s thinking about what houses mean to a life. “Guess I did,” he says. Nix keeps his eyes trained on the road, his fingers tangled up in Dick’s, and for a long time, they just drive.