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The world explodes in more ways than one during Foy. There's the feeling of heat so intense compared to the weeks in the cold that Lip wonders if it might burn him up from the inside. He's running across the snowy field, and he can hear his boots hitting frozen dirt as loud as a bullet leaving the barrel with each stride. Then, in the next moment, he's crouching next to Dike. Everything is loud. The men are yelling, they're confused, some are hurting and the hairpin trigger of desperation is being pulled.
He's yelling too, and the world is exploding in dull shades around him.
It could have been minutes or hours they bide as bullets scream by before Speirs is there. Lip doesn't remember hearing anyone else running behind him, too focused on everyone around and in front of him. There Speirs is, like a bullet in his own way, finally let loose from the casing. Dike doesn't move from where he's pressed into the snow-covered straw once Speirs stands.
"First Sergeant Lipton. What have we got?" Speirs is reaching out to touch his arm-
The world focuses. If he had lived in dark shades of muted color before, everything around him snaps into a vibrantly harsh mosaic of color. If the adrenaline hardwiring his brain hadn't already been there, he might have buckled with the force of it. He's already answering because an order is an order, and lives depend on moving forward. He can hardly breathe with the force of it.
Speirs looks at him a bit like a man possessed by something that Lip doesn't have a name for. He can't remember if he always looked like that, or if the sudden shock of color that inundates both their eyes makes his gaze that much more intense. Someone off to the left yells, and they've stared at each other for a moment too long. An involuntary need to memorize his face in color, but seconds can break a battle, and they don't have that many to give.
Their lives depend on the choices that fly by in the coming minutes. He moves, crouches, runs, takes orders in one breath, and gives them in the next. He's never seen patches of sky so blue or blood so red. The green of his uniform is no longer a near-muted brown. He can see it all now. It's overwhelming and akin to having your hearing come back to you after standing too near something loud. The kind of noise that makes your ears ring uncontrollably. He forces himself to breathe slower and conserve all the energy and sanity he has left.
Speirs is there then in front of him, running. Lip is swamped with such an outpouring of incredulous joy that he can't tamp it down. It's all so fast from there he hardly has the chance to worry about himself. He wipes the blood away and keeps moving.
They're both still standing when it's run its course, and the snow can finally settle back onto the frozen earth. He thinks of all the things he suddenly wants to see. His hometown in the summer, the paintings he remembers hanging in his home, hell- he'd settle for seeing the inside of the mess hall back in Georgia if it had half as many colors as everything else around him did. Out of habit, he counts each man he sees in his head. Name and rank to go with the faces as he walks by them. Men dead on the ground faces in the snow grind him to a near halt. The colors there feel garish and awful.
~~~~~~~
The convent is its own brand of overwhelming. He had gone to church growing up, but it had been small and plain. A white exterior, and without much to notice beyond that. Seeing it with or without color as a boy left little to wonder about. Straight pews, simple cross, nothing on the walls, the pastor dressed in black hovering near the altar every Sunday. Church was the color of prayer, apples were the color of summer, and the sunset was the color of the songs his mother sang to him as a baby. They're all starkly apparent to him now.
Now, he can't stop looking around him. Everything is basked in warm yellow candlelight. He finally sees things that had only peripherally been noted. The patch on Roe's arm is a real red now, and Hefferon's hair is a distinct shade compared to brown or black. Speirs, when he stands in front of him is washed in soft light and tucked into olive-drab green.
Speirs looks smaller now with no helmet, the stubble on his face, and glittering eyes that seem to catch all the light and reflect it back. He's smiling, and Lip isn't sure how he knows that it's real. He could have died in the snow in the woods, or in the frozen streets of Foy and been standing at the gates of heaven asking to be let in. Speirs had heralded enough death that perhaps he would be the one to meet him at the gates.
He feels no small amount of relief that Speirs had sought him out. There hadn't been enough time earlier to worry about what it all meant, but sitting on the old pews of the convent had given him plenty of time to stew over it. They're soulmates, and those are waters easier navigated together. Talking to him comes easily, and he's thankful for it. He clings onto the ends of the conversation well past its natural end. Speirs also seems reluctant to leave him. His eyes seem to rove over Lip in turn, processing the color and lines of his face.
Some amount of officer's decorum feels broken when Speirs sits down with him. It's long after he has smiled and told him, "You should get the official nod in a few days. Congratulations, Lieutenant." And Lip feels like someone has come and shook the snow off of him, jammed something warm and living back into his soul.
Speirs is calculating, but not hesitant in the way he lets their shoulders brush together. The feeling from earlier swirls back to the forefront of his mind. The gentle promise of connection and light feels like opposite ends of a magnetic pole being brought together. He figures the men of Easy were used enough to the unorthodox, and anyone awake enough to question their closeness certainly had no reason to after the day's events.
"Ron," Speirs says, glancing to his left in the short space between them.
Lip blinks, fatigue fogging his thoughts, "Sir?"
"Call me Ron. Unless you prefer calling me Tercius, that is," he could spend the rest of his life trying to come up with something more appealing than the pink of his lips against the flash of white teeth and come up blank.
"Oh, right," if he hadn't already felt hot enough with the low feeling of illness rolling through him, red might have jumped to his cheeks.
"I don't think I thanked you, personally, for earlier. Keeping your head out there," Speirs presses closer until their upper arms are flush. The choir was quieting and beginning to slowly slip away. More men were sleeping around them now, some on the floor leaning against each other or the wall. The habits of foxholes died hard, and despite the four walls, there was still a chill that stayed stagnant in their bones. Others curled onto pews, legs ending in weathered boots hanging off the sides. It gave the illusion of a child falling asleep somewhere they shouldn't have.
He tries to think of the right words, the sudden pressure of knowing he was talking to his soulmate settling in the longer they sat together. There was no point in a bashful denial. He had seen well enough that when Speirs said something, he meant it.
"Thank you, sir. It's easy when you have a good man leading," his cheeks finally go red when he finishes. Suddenly unsure if he was toeing a line or not.
"I guess I should have expected that would be a hard habit to kick," Ron says as he digs in his front pocket for his box of cigarettes. He's methodical in tugging one free before lighting it and slipping the box and his lighter back into a pocket. The smell of smoke is more comforting than the smell of burning from earlier.
"May I call you by your given name?" Ron tilts his head, and the smoke curls out from his lips.
"Carwood," he answers. Somewhere nearby, someone shifts, and wood creaks before it settles again.
"I know," Ron smiles at him low and slowly around his cigarette. It's the same look he'd given him ten minutes ago like he knew something Lip didn't. Plenty of times in the past months a look like that on an officer's face would have made his skin crawl. A look of someone holding something back. Strangely, it doesn't strike him that way now.
~~~~~~~
He catches Ron with a handful of ribbons. They look like the kind that he remembers girls wearing back home, little scraps saved and kept neat in jewelry boxes and vanity drawers. He'd never seen the real colors, not anything past a muted hint of what it might be.
Now, all the colors look vivid against the muck and broken bricks. Ron stops when he sees him, hands stilling from where he'd been unbuttoning a jacket pocket to stash them. He gives the same smile that makes Lip unsure how to stand, stumbling over his feet when he lingers on it too long.
"Lieutenant Lipton," Ron says, striding over from where he had been tucked halfway between two bombed-out houses. That's where the ribbons had come from, someone's sewing box or a child's box of trinkets. All the houses stand empty of their owners now, silent shells to a world that no longer exists in the same way. Ron shoves the ribbons into his breast pocket. He crams them down until he can fasten the button back closed, and they're gone by the time he's standing near Lip.
"Just the man I was looking for," he says, curling the lingering smile around the words until Lip is sure he would fall flat on his face if someone asked him to move.
"Yes?" he's careful to leave out the formal address and is rewarded with an even more pleased look crossing Ron's face.
"Walk with me?" Ron asks once he's taken a moment to look around them. There's really no one else around, and he reminds himself he's allowed this now. No one thinks anything when Nixon and Winters wander together, quiet conversations between superiors hidden behind scarves and coats. He's an officer too now, and since he had started to feel well enough to venture off the couch in the CP, Ron had made every effort to hang around him.
He's still weak, but it gets easier each day he doesn't wake up on frozen ground.
They fall into step easily, and Lip lets himself follow without asking where they're going. By the time they've reached the end of the street, Lip stops to cough. He still sounds awful. Ragged and wheezing coughs that zap his breath away. Ron stops next to him, his hand reaching out to touch his elbow.
His brows pull together, worry all over his face, "You should still be resting." Lip coughs again into the crook of his elbow, deciding to ignore the fact that Ron was the one who was walking with him.
"M'alright," he says, voice rough and still strained. He was getting better, just the remaining vestiges of illness clinging to him. Ron looks around them again, hand still on his elbow to hold him steady.
"I need to go to the command post, and you're going to come with me and go sit down somewhere," Ron's voice takes on the kind of resolute tone it gets when he's decided something is going to go his way. Lip nods and lets Ron start to lead the way back.
There's a small gaggle of men standing near a building who all begin to melt away in separate directions when they walk past. Ron calls out to one who turns on his heel and reluctantly slinks back over to where they're standing. Lip lets Ron walk towards him alone, leaving ten paces between them.
For all of the talk that Lip knows surrounds Ron, talk that swirls between foxholes and over drinks, he's still human. He wonders if he was caught up in the myth of it too, after the snow and blood of Foy. The past weeks had softened the image around the corners, like a painting that yellows until the colors glow instead of shine. They had softened in the form of quick touches and lingering time spent at the edges of rooms.
When a shell goes off, men crumple and tear like delicate silks. They bleed, they scream, and no demigod in distant myth is immune to that. Myths are simply the paper they're put on, the people that remember to recite them. Paper and people do not stand against things like shells.
Ron was still frighteningly human in the sense that the force of a shell knocked most men on their asses if they were lucky. If they weren't lucky, it was the tearing horror of shrapnel that brought them to their knees. Those things didn't happen to the strange mythical creatures that haunt a battlefield.
The blast sends the man standing in front of Ron crumpling into the dirt like a martinet with its strings cut. Ron staggers for a moment, his boots digging into the dirt with a shuffling step backward. There's a fraction of hang time before he trips back. He looks like he's crumpling in on himself, like a piece of paper held to a flame until it curls. The blast had knocked his helmet loose, and it lay a few feet away in the dirt.
For an embarrassingly long pause, it seems like no one moves. There's an awkward surge forward that is aborted almost as soon as it begins. Someone calls out, and someone kneels near him. At first, no one reaches out to touch him. A second man goes to the other soldier sprawled frighteningly still in the rubble. There's a cry for a medic, and the spell is broken. It takes Lip two steps to realize he's the one who's still yelling for one.
He watches Ron's body jerk in the singular motion of a man coming back to consciousness. His chest arches off the ground and his mouth opens, but no sound comes. Lip is on the ground next to him, grabbing the front of his uniform and frantically pulling to see if there are holes from shrapnel in the fabric. There's a sickening second where he realizes that Ron still hasn't taken a breath.
He thinks of all the men he's seen drown in their own blood, the ones that can't pull a breath in after a shockwave and accidentally bite their tongues till muscle tears. He thinks of white bone in ugly daylight, a color he could always see before a soulmate or not. Ron's hand clamps down on his wrist when he moves his hand higher. It's a blind flail of a motion, one that is jarring compared to the calculating movements he flows with. He can't feel any blood.
Ron finally gasps, and Lip feels like his knees would have gone out from under him in relief if he wasn't already on the ground. He coughs, his head thrashing first left then right but blessedly breathing. Roe skids to his knees, hands already untangling Lip from his tight grip on the front of his uniform. His hands go to Ron's head, stopping the thrashing.
"Sir? Sir, you gonna have to tell me what's hurtin'," Roe is calm, and he pats the side of Ron's face when he doesn't get a response. No one but a medic would have the balls to start slapping a Captain's face, and it feels like hot relief getting poured over him.
"Luz," Lip yells, and points at the other man still prone on the ground. There's still a frantic floating panic that comes in the aftermath of a shelling. A building down the way folds into itself like an old dollhouse with the roof sagging. More sounds fill the air, boots hitting the ground and yelling. It reminds him of Foy and every blink of chaos before that when things rattle loose. No direction and no command to keep everyone in place.
"Can't see-," Ron says, but his voice sounds ragged and gasping.
"Hit your head? Where'd you hit," Roe's hands go back to feeling around his head. They come away stained red when he gets to the back. Lip swears, torn between waiting to see if there was anything to be done and helping with the other man. Roe is already digging for a bandage, half-hauling Ron into sitting upright to get it on.
"S'give you a second, took a nasty smack, you could just be all shook up," Roe says as he finishes tightening the bandage. He reaches up, drags Lip down by his wrist, and places his hand on Ron's shoulder.
"Alright sir, I need to go check on the other man, the Lieutenant'll watch you here," Roe wears the same face he seems to try to put on whenever things go to hell, and Lip can appreciate that he tries even if Ron can't seem to see it himself. He squeezes his shoulder, pressing deep into the coiled muscle and not letting up.
To the untrained eye, he hopes it looks like any anonymous soldier helping a wounded buddy up from the carnage. Lip winds his arm underneath Ron's, carefully rising to his feet slowly enough that he can follow. Ron's hand fists in the fabric on his shoulder, a death grip he's not sure he could shake even if he wanted to. He's still disoriented, but they need to move before anything else comes in.
He looks over at the huddle a few paces away. Roe is digging through his sling bag, hands bloody but steady, "Someone get me a litter, we gonna have to move this man." Roe twists his head back over his shoulder to look at him. His helmet dips low over his eyes, "Lieutenant, take him somewhere safe. Don't let him sleep none. Get me or another doc if he's still fightin' it in an hour. I'll come find you otherwise."
Lip nods grimly, and he can feel the way Ron goes ramrod straight at his side once he realizes he's being talked about.
"S'alright, we'll go nice and easy here," Lip murmurs, and they take their first shuffling step forward. Ron's gate evens after a few paces, quick to adapt even without being able to see. They all need to move before something worse comes down on them. The chaos of the scene behind them is beginning to quiet, and Lip waits until he sees the men running back with a litter before he leaves. They pick their way through the road for a ways, and Lip nods at a passing soldier. The bandage Roe had wrapped around Ron's head begins to bloom through with red in the center when he leans to check.
His billet is marginally closer to where they stand than Ron's was. He slows for a second, debating if the extra distance was worth getting Ron where he needed to be or somewhere it would be easier to watch him. Someone would be able to find them either way.
He squeezes his eyes shut and blinks hard when he opens them like he's got dust in them. There's still color, but it comes more dimly now than earlier. He hadn't noticed it in the scuffling panic. He looks up at the sky, expecting a brilliant blue on a rare clear day, and is met with a muted half-shade of blue. The sun is blinding. He stops moving, standing still in the middle of the road.
"What is it?" Ron's hand tightens somehow further on his shoulder. There's a command there that barely overwrites the underlying anxiety seeping into his voice. Lip starts them moving again, step after careful fumbling step.
"Trying to figure out where to go is all. Nothing's wrong," he hopes it sounds more soothing than it feels. Ron's grip doesn't lessen. Ron's foot connects with a cracked piece of brick lying in the road, and Lip can feel the way he almost stops breathing again. His billet it is. Welsh will understand when he comes back later to sleep. He tries blinking again, wishing he had his hands free to rub his face.
As soon as they get inside the drafty building, the anxiety of earlier that had radiated off Ron flips into overdrive. He stops walking for a second, and Lip almost trips over his own feet. The next step he takes is marked with a huge sweeping swath of his foot as he moves it left to right in front of him before setting it down. His free arm goes out to steady himself on the wall near him, fingers running down the length of it like he's cataloging everything.
Lip feels like he still can't catch his breath from earlier. The bitter awful taste of bile staining the back of his throat won't go away. He can't let go of Ron either, and the awkward half-clinging slows their progress to the room in the back.
"I'm billeted here, Lieutenant Welsh is too. It was closer," Lip starts, and he leaves out the part where he oversteps his bounds in telling him that fewer people would have to see him if they stopped here. Ron finally lets go of him and straightens up. He finds the wall with one hand, and Lip watches him walk the perimeter of the room, pausing only when he nearly runs into something on the floor. He knows better than to try to help or tell him to sit down. The blood on the bandage has bloomed even further. There hasn't been much to eat in the way of lunch, but his stomach twists uncomfortably.
"And is Lieutenant Welsh present?" Ron finally says. He's made it mostly back around the room to Lip's other side, gaze not quite focusing when he speaks, looking off to the left.
"No sir," Lip says before he can think it through. It's a hard-learned habit in the same way it is to scream for a medic without thinking. It's subtle, but he can see Ron tense at the title before he makes himself relax. Somehow he'd made his little patrol of the room with shoulders drawn to attention, halfway thinking there could be other people. Now he relaxes in on himself, and Lip can see everything written on his face. Tired and hurt, two things that looked alien being there. He blinks, clenching his eyes longer than strictly necessary as if he expects to open them and finally be able to see.
"Right. Well, if you're needed elsewhere, Lieutenant-," Ron's shoulders come back up, squaring off with the invisible foe that seems to haunt him when it comes to how they fit together. It makes Lip's chest hurt along with his stomach. Like something is twisting the wrong way until it's about to break.
"I have some time before anyone needs anything," he reaches out, catching a finger barely on the cuff of Ron's uniform before he touches his hand as a warning of where he is. He moves like he would around an animal that has its foot caught in a trap. He lets his hand move up Ron's arm, gentle and present in a way he hopes feels comforting. "I'm not going leave without knowing you're alright. At least not until I can get one of the medics to look you over again."
It seems to help drop his defenses back down to a level that doesn't threaten an imminent level of tension. He squeezes his arm, bringing his other hand to rest in the center of Ron's chest. For a moment, they stand there breathing. Ron's gaze is still focused somewhere off to the side, not able to know where to look to find his face.
Down the road from where he grew up, his uncle had kept cattle. There had been a big bull, all black hide and wide nose that he remembers seeing when he was a child. He had never wanted to be on the same side of the fence as it, but there was the feeling of a mutual understanding he'd come to at some point. He could reach out and touch it through the old cattle gates, sometimes even get a hand on the big flat forehead between its stubby horns.
He feels like he's over the fence now. Standing on the same grass the bull was. Torn between overly trusting and desperately needing to know if he was right. He's forgotten how bland old rooms feel without any hint of color.
"Carwood, I can't see," his voice comes even more ragged this time. The awful twisting sensation doubles down until he's sure that something in his body is going to rip before it stops. Ron sounds afraid, and the weeks spent in frozen woods hadn't prepared him for what to do with this. Bastogne had been black and white, life and death. Color had brought the in-between shades of too much.
Carefully, he pulls Ron closer. It feels awkward at first, and Ron's hands come to brace against his chest before he lets himself get moved anywhere closer. He goes eventually, with gentle coaxing until Lip can hug him, trying his best not to squeeze anything too hard. He worries he could be more beaten up than he's letting on.
Ron was not a slight man by most means, but he still felt smaller than he should when they were close. Lip hadn't known him long enough to guess what he looked like before the rations had thinned in the winter, but he could guess he'd taken the same hit most men had.
The guilt comes next. Despite every perfectly presented sign that he was allowed these intimacies, something didn't sit right in his mind. The first time he felt Ron pressing into his chest was brought to him by fear. He still holds him, listening to the shaky breathing that levels back into a measured rhythm almost as quickly as it had stuttered. He needs to find something warm for him, some food, or something to help clean the blood off.
~~~~~~
Welsh comes half-stomping into the room. He's smoking and wearing the look he gets when things have been particularly shitty. Long-suffering and tired. His hair is a little wild, and Lip can tell he's been walking faster than he normally would. The little puffs of breath turn white in the cold between the smoke, "Oh, thank Christ, he didn't go off to the woods to die alone, good."
Lip very carefully doesn't move, setting down the paperwork he's been staring at for the past twenty minutes without writing anything. Ron doesn't move from where he's finally fallen asleep on one of the ratty mattresses they had drug down the first night sleeping here. Welsh seems to settle a little, running a hand back through his hair, "Should he be sleeping with the whole head thing? Nix told me what happened." He gestures vaguely toward Ron on the mattress. By extension, it's also halfway at Lip sitting a foot away from it. If he had been paying more attention, he would have moved further away at the sound of Welsh barging through the house. It's too late now, and if the lack of distance between them seems odd, he hopes they're given a pass considering the circumstances. He hadn't remembered Nixon being around either when the shells had come in, but things traveled quickly between ears.
"Doc Roe came to look at him earlier. Said he should be alright as long as he gets woken up a couple times during the first night. He's been up too long anyways," Lip says. He fights to swallow down something more, to keep the concern from bleeding too obviously into his words. A concerned fellow officer is all. He would feel the same way and say the same thing if it was Welsh lying on the floor.
"Well, he is one tough son of a bitch. If anyone can take a crack to the head," Welsh gestures loosely again to the prone form of Ron on the floor, looking like he's trying to convince himself just as much as Lip.
"I'm hoping you're right," Lip says. The cracked wristwatch he's got lying on the floor next to his leg tells him he should be waking Ron up in twenty minutes. Welsh doesn't look like he's going anywhere in the next twenty minutes. He's dragging a rickety chair away from the makeshift desk in the corner of the room and sitting down. He hunches over himself, looking just as cold and miserable as everyone else had been feeling the past weeks.
"What about you, still on the mend? Ready to run some laps once Roe lets you out of being nursemaid?" Welsh grins at him, and all Lip can do is give the same half smile back that he gives when he has nothing better to say. Welsh leans back in the chair again, more calculating now that he's had a chance to sit down.
"Suppose so, sir," Lip answers. Ron's hand twitches in his sleep, a rare showing from a man who tended to sleep still as the dead. It pulls his gaze down to him, just for a second. There's dirt under his nails and a little blood from where he'd kept reaching to touch the back of his head. Lip wonders if he should help him clean up, go get a brush, and scrub the fear out of everything he can get his hands on.
They sit in silence for a few minutes. The only sound comes from the clang of Welsh's canteen when he opens it to drink. He sets it down by his feet, nudging it underneath the chair so he doesn't kick it, "Can I ask you a question, Lipton?"
The papers he's been shuffling back and forth go still in his hands. He looks back at Welsh with a shrug. He doesn't feel much like talking after the day he's had, but if it's going to be that kind of night, he might as well.
"Can you see color?" Welsh asks. He's looking intently, and even in the dim light, Lip knows when he's being observed. The watch marks the seconds marching resolutely forward. If he woke Ron up now, he could save himself any questioning he didn't feel like answering. Welsh was never malicious, not the way some people could be when they asked things like that. Since he'd come back to the unit, he had slotted neatly into the idea of Ron and Lip taking up space in the officer's fold. Everything about color was just too fresh to leaf through it yet. Ink drying on pages, things he wanted unsmudged.
"No, I- well," he bites the inside of his mouth. There was no point in lying, and no way Welsh could know who his soulmate was anyway, "I think I do, yes." Nothing has come back to full color since Ron had hit the ground earlier, but still enough color that he knows it's there. The green of Welsh's ODs is the brightest thing in the room. Sparing the bloody bandages lying scattered nearby, most of the room felt vaguely gray.
"You know when it happens. I remember. Gave me a headache for a week after I met Kitty," Welsh is looking at him again, a smile curling the corner of his lip. He can tell he's trying not to, but they've played poker enough that Lip has learned his tells. The look he gets before he finally shows a really good hand, pleased with himself before everyone else starts to groan. "Couple of the men found theirs in this shitshow somehow. Can't say it's been the ideal place to get a good sense of what color really is, but beggars can't be choosers."
"I suppose it's one of those things you can't see coming," Lip says, and Welsh nods slowly in agreeance. He's heard that colors could fade the further you got from your soulmate, and he wonders what it's like for Welsh. Having someone a world away and being reminded of that each time you open your eyes.
The second hand on the watch is suddenly moving too fast, ticking by the minutes before he's pinned between dealing with a suddenly over-perceptive man and a blind one.
Welsh looks wistfully at a hole in the ceiling. He always talked so loosely about soulmates, so pleased about his own that it made people forget whether or not they had met their own. Not at all like other people that Lip had met who turned bashful or gated when they spoke about it.
"I can bring you in on the officer's gossip now," Welsh quirks an eyebrow at him. There is no voice of Winters in the corner to chastise anyone for running their mouths to save Lip now. "I think that one met his. Only my humble guess, but he's gone from pocketing things that shine to anything colorful. Not sure he was really thinking about it, but," Welsh shrugs lazily, leaning back in the chair again.
Ron makes a small sound in his sleep, and Lip is betrayed for the second time by his reaction to look down at him. It's making him nervous, the inevitable prodding that is going to end with an ugly lie about a girl that doesn't exist in a town he can't remember the name of.
Welsh doesn't say anything for a minute. The hands on the watch tick forward, and Lip takes to scrutinizing that instead of anything else in the room. He hasn't minded sharing a billet with Welsh in the past few weeks, but tonight is testing that.
"Don't know if I should look to congratulate the lucky broad or tell her to run for the hills," Welsh says. He kicks his foot out and leans back in the chair, arms crossed over his chest. Lip isn't sure who he's talking about anymore. This is why he hadn't wanted Welsh to know, another lie to slip up on later when it gets mentioned again. If not him, then one for Ron to own up to if Welsh ever asks. He cocks his head to the side and eyes Welsh again as if waiting for something else. Welsh stares straight back at him, another unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. "Congratulations to whoever she may be, I think." He nods to himself and pulls the cigarette away from his lips for a moment to flip it between his fingers.
Lip settles for nodding again, safer than opening his mouth and assuming something. "I think I'll be off for the night. Maybe go bother Nixon for some hooch if he's stopped being a stingy bastard about it," Welsh seems content to not push it any further and lifts the cigarette back to his lips. Lip hums wordlessly, mouth still dry.
"I'll see you tomorrow then, sir," Lip murmurs, and Welsh shakes his head seemingly to himself as he gets up.
"Tell him I hope he's okay when he wakes up, alright? God knows we can't afford to lose him to an aid station for a few weeks," Welsh says as he walks toward the door. He waits with his hand on the knob, looking back at Lip again. His fingers drum into the knob once, then twice. He doesn't wait long enough for an answer, slipping out the door and pulling it shut behind him.
There's still almost ten minutes till the top of the hour. Lip shoves his notebook to the floor along with the crinkled stack of papers. His pencil clatters loudly on the wood flooring. Ron doesn't twitch. It's unnerving seeing him sleep so soundly. He has half a mind to wake him up sooner to check that he's okay.
He lets himself close his eyes for a moment, tipping his head back to rest on the wall behind him. His legs hurt from sitting on the cold floor, but there's really not much he can do without getting up. Welsh's slightly rattier mattress is on the other side of the room. He'll probably end up staying with Nixon if they do start drinking, and he can catch a quick nap on that if Ron decides to stay up later.
He waits the last few minutes in silence. He should have been checking in with Winters hours ago, but there's not much to do except wait when there's no move planned. Winters was probably the one who sent Welsh to go check on him to begin with. There's time until tomorrow morning that he'll let himself stay with Ron. If things still aren't better, then he can worry about what comes next.
He carefully reaches out to touch Ron's shoulder. It takes one or two good shakes before Ron jerks awake, enough time for Lip to feel something near panic bloom in his mind. He lets a breath out as Ron struggles to sit up without being able to see what's near him, nearly clipping Lip's nose with his head in the process.
"Hey, hey, you're okay, go easy. Told you I was going to have to wake you up tonight, you don't have to go anywhere," Lip soothes, and Ron stops twisting his head around once he can hear a voice.
"Carwood?" Ron asks, his voice sounding scratchy from sleep. Lip slowly reaches out to grab Ron's hand, tugging it up so they rest tangled on the mattress between them.
"Yeah, I'm still here," he says quietly. Ron doesn't let go of the grip on his hand, tightly squeezing it. The mattress is still warm from where he had been lying on it. "How's the head?" The question hangs in the air, and Lip can already tell what Ron is thinking. Thinking about what would happen if he couldn't see soon. Thinking about field hospitals and a ticket home that he had never thought of, let alone asked for. Lip rubs his thumb along the skin of Ron's hand and lets him think.
"I would say the same," Ron finally says, and his tone is measured like he's discussing a casualty report. Lip catches himself nodding wordlessly before he hums something close to an acknowledgment.
"I'm going to go grab a chair to sit on, you stay sat," when he lets go of Ron's hand, it falls to the mattress and curls into the thin blanket covering it.
Lip gets to his feet, feeling the ache in his legs. He's felt sore and stiff since the worst of the pneumonia had run him halfway into the ground. Ron shuffles as he sits up more, empty gaze darting around the room in quick jerks. Lip does his best to walk louder than normal, dragging the chair back across the wood when he would usually carry it. The scrape grates on his ears, but Ron's head immediately shoots in his direction.
Once he's situated it close to the mattress, he sits down. Ron is staring intently at where his left knee is, still silent.
"Scoot toward me and I'll take a look at your head?" Lip asks, and he sounds almost as tired as he had when he was up all night racked with a fever. Ron's gaze slips upwards when he speaks. It's still unfocused, but now landing nearer to his face once he's heard where it's coming from. It takes a moment of rearranging legs and Lip gently tugging at Ron's sleeves to get him where he wants. He sits between Lip's legs, back coming to rest against the edge of the wood chair, his shoulders bracketed with Lip's thighs. Lip tugs off his gloves and squeezes his shoulder. He waits in silence for Ron to relax before he goes poking at his head. The silence is better now that they're both awake for it.
"There are shadows now," Ron whispers like he's still unsure of who might be around them.
Lip doesn't stop kneading into his shoulder, hoping he'll finally feel the muscle relax, "Oh? Was it all only black before?" Colors still look muted to him, but there's a flare of hope that worms in with them.
"Yes," Ron answers, and he raises his arm to point toward the corner of the room nearer to the door. "You put the lantern over there." Lip glances up, and Ron's arm wavers a little. He still points in generally the same direction toward the lantern he had lit earlier to give himself some light.
"I did," a smile tugs at his mouth, and he leans down to gently press his lips to the top of Ron's head. His hair smells like everything else does, dirt and sweat and the lingering notes of smoke. Ron blows a quick breath out his nose and hums, leaning further back into Lip.
Lip straightens back up, feeling something in his back pop, "That's good. You tell me if anything else changes, I'll go get Doc again." He watches the back of Ron's head move when he nods.
Lip is careful with the bandage, tucking the edges down and straightening it on Ron's head until he's satisfied. Nothing looks to be freshly bleeding when he pulls the edge back to look. His hair is still matted with blood, but there's no use in disturbing anything that's scabbed over trying to clean it.
He runs his fingers over the top of his head where there's no bandage. He leans back to dig into his jacket pocket, searching for the small comb he keeps. Fishing it out, he runs his fingers over the smooth wood. It had been his mother's comb, small and nothing flashy, but sturdy enough to have made the journey with him.
It's difficult with the bandage wrapped around his head, but Lip begins to brush through the parts of his head he can get to. His hair is tangled from earlier and has only been made worse through an evening of rolling around on it. He does his best in the low light, quietly apologizing when he feels something tug.
Ron lets him sit there and brush long past the point of a reasonable amount of time to comb his hair out. It reminds Lip again of reaching through the fence to scratch at the bull, the unique feeling of knowing he was being allowed to do something.
He does his best to tuck the longer strands of hair back away from where they fall over the white bandages. Ron turns his face to the right and presses his forehead into the fabric of Lip's trousers. He rubs his face there for a moment. Warm breath seeps into his skin. His face is still a few inches lower than where his scar lays twisted on his inner thigh, but it feels like Ron knows exactly where it is.
He had imagined that he wouldn't like anyone touching his scars, and started to hate the idea shortly after he was cleared by the medics who had to touch them to do their jobs. It had taken weeks before he had wanted to touch his face, feel the splits in his skin near his nose that refused to pale in the meager sunlight. They had become another thing to accept and move on from. He can still feel the skin pull whenever he makes a face.
The idea of Ron touching them somehow doesn't bother him at all. He fights to keep his breathing even. Nothing sounds better than slipping off the chair and sitting wrapped up on the mattress with Ron, but he stays where he is.
Ron seems to sense him thinking and pulls his head back, "I'm not coming off the line. It'll come back." Lip can't see his face, but he imagines the determined look boring into his leg. He runs a finger down the side of Ron's neck until it meets with fabric.
"Ron, if you need to an actual hospital-," Lip begins even though it makes him feel sick again. He hadn't wanted to come off the line either, and he couldn't imagine trying to fumble forward without Ron nearby. The idea of any more color fading away from him makes him want to hunch over himself until the sick feeling stops.
"No, I'm not going," Ron's voice comes out clipped, and Lip closes his mouth. He's too tired to fight it, and it's still the middle of the night. It was all harder to deal with than any of his boys, places where his word went without too much of an argument. The fine edge to Ron's voice feels close enough to a command that it makes him want to throw his hands up in surrender. Ron shifts again, pulling in even closer between Lip's legs.
"You'd give the nurses hell," Lip murmurs, and lets himself play along with it the best he can. It seems like a good sign that he can start to see shadows, and getting to a hospital possessed its own long-winded process that would take some time until they could get better transport if it came down to it.
Ron snorts and presses his head back into Lip's thigh, "Wouldn't worry about them, I'll give you hell if you send me." Lip chalks it up to the head injury on Ron's part and the exhaustion on his own that he laughs.
~~~~~~
He lets Ron sleep for the better part of the next hour. The watch reads nearly zero-three hundred now. He's tired enough his mind drifts to thinking of his grandfather talking about the witching hour while he smoked his pipe on the porch. The small hours of the morning pass slowly.
Outside, he can hear a singular round from a rifle being fired and then silence. Mice go back to scuttling in the walls when nothing else sounds. No more shells had come in the night, and it felt all the more quiet. Another ten minutes slip by, and he can't fight the yawn that comes over him.
The sound of footsteps snaps him back into the present. His fingers inch toward his carbine propped against the wall near him. He waits another few seconds before the door creaks open, and Roe's head peaks around the corner.
Roe slips into the room quieter than Welsh had. His jacket looks wrinkled, and his hands are shoved into his armpits when he comes to a halt in the doorway. Lip smiles at him, and Roe dips his head in greeting before coming to crouch next to him. He settles on his haunches and gives Lip a once over that must be unsatisfactory because he skips any pleasantries, "Sir, you need the rest too. I can get somebody else to come do the sittin' up with him."
"I'm alright, Doc. Really I am," he speaks softly, and Roe purses his lips but doesn't push it any further. "How's the other man that was hit?"
"He's gonna be fine, nothin' vital. He is scrapped up though," Roe murmurs. He knows what the next conversation they're going to have is, and he waits for Roe to breach it.
He's saved from it by Roe moving sideways to check on Ron. He shakes him gently, and this time he wakes even quicker than he had with Lip earlier. Roe is smart enough to stay at arm's length away and avoid getting smacked by anything when he does shoot up.
"Captain Speirs, sir," Roe says and lets his hand fall off of his side. Ron blinks and then squints at him. He's looking right at his face, and Lip holds his breath while they seem to examine each other.
"Roe?" Ron's voice comes louder than Lip's had before.
"Yes, sir it is. Come to check up," Roe nods his head when he speaks, and Ron's eyes seem to track it. "You seein' anything, or is it still gone?"
Ron turns his head, and Lip can feel everything else pause along with his breathing when he meets his eyes, "It's still blurry. But yes, it's coming back to me."
Roe's face comes as close to lighting up as Lip has seen in a few weeks. A small smile makes it onto his lips, "That's good sir, real good. Look like it might'a been just a good crack to the head. Lucky go at it."
Ron nods, and Lip watches him carefully go back to cataloging the rest of the room he's been in. Roe gets to his feet, tugging down the front of his jacket, "Just to be safe, still probably best you don't sleep too long without gettin' woke up." He pauses and turns toward Lip again, "You should be tryin' to get some sleep though, sir."
"Thank you, Roe," Lip says. He seems to wait another moment to make sure everything is in order. Ron nods at him, and Roe takes it as his sign to slip back out of the room.
Ron settles again, looking wearily over at Lip. His face is still drawn, and he looks just as tired as Lip feels, but the steadily growing warmth of color returning to his face makes him look more at peace than before.
When Ron doesn't say anything, Lip moves to sit next to him on the mattress. It barely feels any better than the floor, but sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Ron feels more soothing than a feather bed. It's close to how it was after Foy, except now he lets his head drop to Ron's shoulder. His eyes flutter closed, and reaches down to grab Ron's hand and let them rest clasped together on his thigh.
"Thank you for staying with me," Ron whispers, and Lip squeezes his hand. It's only a few minutes before he lets himself drift off.
When Lip wakes up, there is barely a hint of morning sunlight coming through the dirty window. Ron is at the desk in the corner, cigarette between his fingers. He seems to know when Lip wakes up because he twists in the chair to look at him. He's looking over the same supply list Lip had last night, folding it back in half and leaving it on the table.
"Looks like it's going to be an orange sunrise," Ron says, nodding toward the window. His head hurts from only sleeping a few hours, and his body is stiff from sleeping what little there was on a thin mattress. He smiles anyway. His head falls back, and he lets the wash of relief soothe away the aching.
"That's real nice," he answers, and Ron hums in agreement. He stares up at the peeling layers of the ceiling until Ron appears, standing over him in his periphery. The bandage is gone now, and Lip wonders if he should go looking for a fresh one. His eyes look bloodshot, but he's never been happier to see the color.
~~~~~~~
He's never seen Ron drunk. There had been nights when they all drank and played cards, and that had been the closest. On the same nights when Harry had spent more time eyeing him over the rim of his glass than he'd spent looking at his cards but had stayed blessedly silent about soulmates. Nixon had been loudest about it outside of that, and Winters the quietest.
A room full of men seeing in color and pretending like they didn't know it.
They're alone now, lost in the depths of Austria and drunk on liberated booze. The thin air of the mountains somehow felt better in his lungs than anything else had. Ron is cross-legged on the floor in front of him. He leans back and lifts a bottle to his mouth, and Lip watches him swallow twice. When he sets the bottle down, his lips shine, tongue running over them and catching the last hints of his drink.
Ron's fingers brush against his collar. His cheeks are a little pink still, and his breath smells like the champagne bottle sitting next to them on the floor. He looks at Lip, fingers resting near the first button of his shirt. Lip smiles, and it comes to him in the easy way that seems to leak out around Ron.
Ron works to open the top two buttons of his shirt with a silent focus, and Lip lets him. He's not sure what he expects, but he stops after that. Ron's hands are warm when they brush against the skin uncovered by his undershirt. His hand moves until he can reach enough to tug at Lip's dog tags.
With his free hand, he digs in his pocket and produces the lengths of ribbon Lip remembered him holding months before.
The one he ends up holding is light brown, the kind of ribbon he imagines gets sewn into the hems of dresses. It's not particularly as colorful as the rest. Ron grips it like he's holding woven gold and rubs a finger over it. Lip's dog tags clink where they're free of the fabric that normally keeps them muffled as Ron pulls at them again.
Ron winds the ribbon over the chain and ties a knot into it so it stays. It hangs near the tags. A scrap of light brown near glinting metal.
"That's as close to the first color I ever saw as I can remember," Ron says. He's been quiet, and filling in the blanks is an art that takes learning. He lets the tags drop, and they make another sound when they land against his chest again. Lip brings a hand up to feel it like Ron had, and looks down at his chest.
He remembers the brown in Foy. There had been dirt and splintering wood set to a background of trees in the distance. The brown was there like anything else had to be. He remembers it more later, sitting in the convent and letting his bones ache when he was too tired to move.
"Foy?" he questions, and brings his gaze back up to meet Ron's. The room feels too big for just two people like it could swallow them up for not learning to take up enough space. Ron hums and taps his fingers against Lip's thigh.
"Yes, in Foy. Your eyes," he answers. He says it so simply that Lip stares for a moment. His chest swells with the same giddiness he had felt when watching Ron running in the snow. He leans in to kiss him like it's the most natural thing in the world to do. It stays soft for a moment, a gentle brush where he can still feel Ron's breath fanning out over his lips before it deepens.
Ron's mouth tastes like the champagne. He feels drunk off of it, the same feeling as drinking straight from the bottle. It tastes ambiguously sweet. Almost too sweet after years of bitter booze and little else. He thinks of the cracked-open stores of drinks he's never even heard of before.
His mouth is warm underneath his. The soft questioning sound from Ron before his lips part further makes Lip shiver. There's a hand on his jaw, creeping up to his cheek and framing the side of his face. He can feel the tip of Ron's thumb sweep along the scar there.
He lets Ron trace along it and lets him map out whatever his fingers reach for. His hand goes back to his jaw, dragging against the light stubble that's managed to come in since he'd shaved.
"Let me," Ron pulls back, lips parted and eyes blown. He's staring like he had in Foy, except now his hands are holding his face, and there is nothing between them. "I just want to look at you. God, your eyes, Carwood."
Lip tries to push forward again, suddenly needing to chase a kiss like a drowning man chases air. He goes like his body understands what it needs better than his brain does. Ron's hands stay, and he holds him in place, eyes flickering back and forth between his own. He can't help the smile that grows slowly the longer they stay there. It wasn't that long ago he would have shrunk from the compliment, but now he relishes it.
"I could live the rest of my days only seeing that color, and die a happy man," Ron is smiling now, and from anyone else, he wouldn't have believed them. They're close enough that he can see each eyelash on his face, the tiny lines and creases that lay smooth on his forehead when his face is relaxed. The look that he had given him in Foy had never gone away, and there's a private wave of bliss at the idea each time Lip thinks about it.
"That sounds like an awfully long time to live with one color," Lip turns his head to the side, and catches the warm palm of Ron's hand against his lips. His hands are smoothed lines of worked skin running like tiny mountain ranges across them.
"Not if it's yours," Ron's focus wavers when his eyes dart to watch the path of Lip's mouth against his hand.
"Do the men know their Tercius talks a big game?" Lip asks, letting his tongue dart out against the skin of Ron's palm. He tastes the salt on his skin, and he can feel Ron twitch ever so slightly.
"Just the ones he's keen on would know that I imagine," Ron smiles again, something soft and almost sheepish from where he blinks at Lip. He lets him close the gap between them now, the gentle pressure easing from his hands. The second kiss is slow and unhurried. Ron's hand slips to the side of his neck, thumb brushing against the pulse point and settling there like it had his scar.
"So steady," he murmurs. Lip knows his heart is going faster than it should be for having been sitting down for the past half hour, but he doesn't say anything. Neither of them chases after the low heat any quicker.
Lip presses forward until Ron leans back, reclined against the floor with his elbow holding him up. His other arm loops around Lip's neck, tugging him closer until he dips low enough for Ron to lay on his back without breaking the kiss.
Lip has seen Ron go after what he wants like a man possessed, but that seems to fade away the longer they let themselves melt together. Ron is never anything but accommodating. Lip knows that if he rolled off him right now and left, he would stay in place like a man standing at attention. He's never pushed for more than what was being given.
So, Lip gives more than what's asked.
~~~~~~
The first letter arrives on a Tuesday morning. It is as unassuming as the bills it shows up with, plain on the outside with an address written in pen. Ron's handwriting catches his eye first. It makes his hands shake, and he grips the edges of the envelope tight enough that they stop. It knocks the wind out of him to see his name printed in Ron's hand.
Work starts in half an hour, and he would be lucky to be on time if he left five minutes ago. He stands rooted to the spot near enough to the mailbox that he leans on it.
He tears it open slowly, careful not to rip the paper inside, and unwilling to go in the house for a letter opener. The paper is folded into perfect thirds, with sharp creases and black ink.
Carwood,
I hope that life is treating you well. I myself have been busy, but well enough. It is very green here. I must think that you would like that if nothing else. Other than that, I imagine you would not miss the other trappings of the army.
My time is up in June, and find myself hoping that you might have me for a visit if you are not too busy in the summer? I have heard from someone that the mountains of West Virginia are a thing every man should see in his lifetime. I hope you would have me if I did come, and I look forward to that.
Yours- Ron
He thinks of Ron sitting at a desk halfway across the world, choosing words like he would a battle plan. He thinks of the hazy green of Ron's eyes and the lines that gather at the corners of them when he smiles. He thinks of whispering how much he missed the mountains into Ron's shoulder after they had gotten drunk together. Ron's hands on him, face keen and open after they kiss.
He thinks of promising Ron that he'd show him West Virginia one day. A promise to let him roam the winding roads that wrap up the hills, and cut into the thick green of the woods. The image of Ron standing on the front porch of his house comes unbidden to his mind. His bedroom that feels empty after sharing rooms for years, his mother's comb sitting on the sink in the bathroom.
It's still the cool of mid-spring, tiny furls of leaves on the trees opening up into blooming crowns that remind him of real green. Summer will come soon, and bring vibrant green with it.