Work Text:
I.
Your name is John Egbert and you are in a dire situation. Oh gosh, oh gosh, you’re not even sure they went over this very well in training. Oh, gosh.
“Put down your weapon!” you bark as threateningly as you can, hoping that the Confederate can’t see the subtle tremble of your hands; he stares back at you evenly. He’s not moving a muscle. He doesn’t look like he plans to.
“Only if you put down yours,” he replies stiffly, squaring his shoulders and hoisting his gun higher. Something brief flashes in his eyes, scarily human, before he’s just an enemy soldier again.
Neither of you want to kill anyone here.
You hesitate.
It’s fatal, you know, to begin thinking of your enemy as human, and yet something about this other man has you swallowing nervously before jerking your head towards the pack lying on the ground. “I have water,” you announce, because he looks like he’s already preparing himself to kill or die and you don’t want either of those things.
He offers you a long, suspicious look, not even allowing himself a glance at what you’d been motioning to. “So?”
“So…” Your tongue flicks out to wet your dry lips, nervousness seeping into your words. “If you put down your weapon, I’ll put down mine, and I can give you some…?”
It seems like forever before he forces a sharp laugh, the corner of his mouth pulling up just slightly. “That a question or a statement, Yankee?”
Oh, gosh, he’s still not backing down. You have a choice here—you can show him you’re serious by putting down your gun and backing away, putting yourself at risk, or you can stand here for however long it takes until the both of you fall asleep.
You take a deep breath and toss your gun away.
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II.
His name is David Strider, you learn later as you watch him try not to gulp down a few sips of your water too desperately. He is also very suspicious of anything Northern, or so it seems like. He wouldn’t even give his name before you told him yours. You haven’t seen any streams or rivers for a while; you guess that he hasn’t either. He grudgingly offers you some of what he has to eat, which you accept gratefully—it’s pretty much the same thing you always had back when you were actually with your own company, but it’s food and you can’t complain.
“How’d you get separated?” he inquires abruptly as the sun sets behind the trees, and you think he might have more of a Southern drawl if he didn’t talk from the corner of his mouth as if he was afraid to let the words out. He’s tucked into the dip at the base of a tree across the clearing from you, huddled into himself. You watch the fading light slant over his cheekbones and settle in his pale blonde hair and wash along his skin absentmindedly.
You realize suddenly that he asked you a question. “Oh, I suppose…one of my friends was injured and I tried to drag him far enough away from the fighting to help him somehow.”
“Yeah? What happened to him?”
Hesitating, you shift just slightly in your seated position on one of the large tree roots protruding from the ground. “I…couldn’t help him.”
The both of you are silent for a moment, pondering the weight of your words.
“I ran,” he says quickly and sits up straighter, like he needed to tell someone, and he might not realize it but he is giving you a wavering stare, as if he wants forgiveness from somebody and doesn’t expect it. “I ran away.”
“Oh,” you reply, because you don’t know what else to do. He sighs in what could be disappointment or resignation, sinks slowly back in on himself, lets his eyes go half closed. The position looks rather uncomfortable. “Um, you can sleep if you want. I’ll keep watch for anything dangerous.”
Turning his head to glare at you pointedly, the Confederate soldier offers you another of his facetious smiles. “I’ll stay up too.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” you protest indignantly, because this guy is really distrusting and you’ve just about had it and he should know that if you planned on hurting him you would have done it already, but he is already standing up to situate himself down next to you.
“Gotta keep an eye on you,” he announces.
You would have something to say to that but you realize that he’s shivering; does he really get cold that easily? He is from the South, but it’s not that cold, is it?
He clearly disagrees by sliding just a bit closer. He probably doesn’t want you to notice that he’s trying to share your body heat, and you humor him by not commenting even when he gets close enough that your sides brush. You can easily feel how tense he is.
“You’re the enemy, yes, but that doesn’t mean I hate you,” you inform him without warning and for reasons you cannot fathom.
“…mmph,” he says intelligently, and is asleep with his head rested on your shoulder within seconds.
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III.
You’ve been searching for the nearest town together for two days now: you’ve stopped thinking of him as that Confederate and you can only hope he’s stopped thinking of you as that Yankee. Food and water are running low. Still, you’re glad you’re not wandering around alone out here. Even if he’s not the most talkative person you’ve had the pleasure of meeting, he hasn’t left yet, so you know that he feels the same way.
Every night he’s been sleeping with his head on your shoulder, and it’s only on the third night that you mention that it makes you a little uncomfortable. Immediately he’s backing away—you reach out instinctively to grab his wrist, keeping him where he is.
He is so thin, you realize in wonderment.
His mouth quirks into a confused frown.
“I don’t mind it. I suppose it’s a good kind of uncomfortable, if that makes sense.” Which it doesn’t, but after two nights of sleeping with someone warm next to you you’re not really keen on giving that up. Sitting back down tentatively after a moment, He makes sure neither of you are touching the other. You happen to turn your head to look at him the same moment he turns to look at you. Your faces are so close that your noses brush. You remember the way the setting sun set his skin alight with a gently burning red-orange-yellow glow, and his expression as he pointed his weapon at you, and how even when he needs help he doesn’t ask for it, and—
Oh, gosh. You have never wanted to kiss someone this bad. Your name is John Egbert and you are in a dire, dire situation. He draws in a shaky breath and you almost give in and lean forward but then he’s speaking, slow and careful and measured words.
“You know something?”
“What?” you ask reflexively, your voice small in your throat.
“You’re not so bad for a Yankee.”
And then it’s too late for you to close the distance between the two of you; gosh, he’s done it first. You can feel his determination on this in the way he presses forward agressively, mouth claiming yours and teeth nipping in ways that make you gasp quietly, and this is all horribly wrong but there’s no one around and you can’t bring yourself to care all that much. You slide your shaking fingers into his hair and cling tight, kissing back just as forcefully.
He ran away once: he won’t do it again.
And maybe there’s a war going on, but you’re all too willing to help him out with that resolution.
David’s not so bad for a Confederate.