Title: Down Endless Street 1/1

Author: Meredith Bronwen Mallory

Pairing: Winters/Nixon (yes, _again_)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Aside from the slash? Maybe disturbing imagery, but not much else.

Status: Complete

Email: mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me, nor do their real life counterparts. This never happened. I'm full of shit, just ask anyone I know! ^_~

Summary: No soldier is ever truly fearless, no soldier is ever truly numb. The war and Nixon get under Dick's skin.

Notes: Someday, I swear I'm going to write something aside from WinNix. It's just so hard...to...resist. ^_^ Until that day, I have this on the offer. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at the piece-- if I could also trouble you to comment, I'd be ever in your debt. My enduring gratitude goes to Leigh (likethesun), for looking this over for me. She's just bloody brilliant, I tell you. Please enjoy!

Sleeping, waking-- it's all the same. The white of bone, the red-brown of blood drying on his hands so that even if he _knows_ it's just dirt, he still isn't sure. The smell of gunshots, thick and heavy until he can taste it choking his tongue; cigarettes, and bodies rotting in the trench despite the fact they're still alive. The shots fired in his dreams reverberate, echo up into waking reality, where the trees shudder and explode.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference-- the Krauts in his dreams all have the same face, they all look so painfully young when they die. But then, the other day, he could have sworn he'd seen that German soldier's face scant minutes before-- on a corpse. His friends die, his men die, over and over on loop, behind his closed eyelids-- he's afraid they'll freeze shut one day and he'll be trapped back there, listening to screaming and wondering if any of it is real. It could be worse, Winters supposes; waking erases some of those dreams, but there were always the ones that stick. Hall and Muck and Penkala stayed dead, Buck stayed gone, and he knows that every time Guarnere or Toye wakes, there will be that moment when they just don't remember.

"We're not crazy." Someone was chanting that-- who? where? Blithe, Martin, maybe, or Malarkey-- yes, Malarkey talking to Muck, to the room at large, saying that sometimes he wanted one of his mother's chicken pot pies so badly that he could almost taste it, sometimes he and Skip were so sure there had never been anything before this and there would never be anything after, but they weren't crazy, oh no. "War is crazy," the light was yellow and rancid and Malarkey's platoon had been drinking, "but we're not crazy. Not yet."

"Shut up!" That from Cobb, "That stuff's catching. I don' want it."

But they all had it, each and every one of them-- it was worming under their skin, implicit in every breath they took, and everything was contaminated so that the replacements seemed to catch it a lot faster than they ever had. Miller, Jackson-- gone.

Another little German town-- populated by ghosts and people who swear they didn't know. When the day is over, Winters doesn't go looking for a place to bunk-- Lewis just takes him by the elbow, leads him to someplace the other man has picked.

"Real style here," Nix waves a hand towards the wood paneling lining the entrance hall, "just like home." He reaches out, briefly, to touch the carved vines and flowers that skitter along the polished cherry. "Found a chess set in the study-- can you play?"

Winters shakes his head silently, thinking that he's never been much for games. The marbles flash once again in his mind, twists of clear glass and green pigment-- and Welsh, sunbaked and irreverent on curb of Carentan. "War's a game-- rules, you try to move forward." But it's not a game and Winters knows that; everyone is just making it up, as they go along.

"I'll teach you," Nixon pulls him towards the kitchen, "-- there's canned stuff in here, and some meat, looks like the god damned Fascists left in a hurry--" Nixon has this way of juggling two conversations at once, "anyway, let's eat. You'd be good at chess. You have that sort of brain."

"What sort of brain?" Winters asks, leaning against the counter and unscrewing a nearby jar of jam. The smell is heady, like his own mother's pantry, stocked and ready for the cold. Nix tosses him some bread, fairly fresh, and Winters can't help but dip straight out of the jar. Strawberries linger, finely aged, on his tongue until he's struggling to keep his eyes open, to avoid being drawn back to the warm kitchen where his mother would be humming 'Amazing Grace' completely off-tune.

"A Winters sort of brain," Lewis smirks, "it's all strategy-- you have to know when to move."

"Ah," says the Major, while Nix leans over and nicks some jam with a scoop of his finger.

"Damn good stuff," he licks it away, very much a little boy, "damn good."

And it is good-- very good, sometimes, and that feels wrong. His men are all quartered for the evening-- some of them are even singing rather loudly, down the street-- and Richard Winters sits in a stranger's study, nodding sagely as Nix outlines the basics of chess. He wonders if it's right that he feels these flashes and drawn out glows of happiness, of thankfulness, when mostly he and everyone else is just treading in the pain. It's like laughing at a funeral, it's like the bitter woman who shows up to her sister's wedding in black. He feels like everyone is looking, but not saying a word. This feels like some other life, enclosed by forest green wallpaper, warmed by a fire and Lewis Nixon's smile. If he doesn't look at the German titles, blazing gold on the spines of books, he might think this house is in New England. Where did they meet-- he and Nix, in this other-time illusion-- when they finish, will he shrug on his coat and wander down the all-American street to someplace that is his home? This could be home, he might climb up the stairs after the last game-- but then why, without the war, would he and Lew share a bed?

"You going to move sometime during _this_ war?" Nix's eyebrow is raised, and Winters' slow smile is his way of shaking himself.

"Yeah. Yeah," he moves his Queen to take Nix's Bishop and then sits back, only just realizing his mistake.

"You can take it back," Nix says with a flippant, somehow sincere charity, "I don't mind."

"No," he folds his arms, "don't cut me any slack, just because I'm learning."

"Only you," there's fondness in this dark eyes, and Lewis moves his Queen to take Dick's unprotected King. They reset the board, pieces smooth and cool in their hands, and play again. Mentally, Winters reviews his weaknesses, the mistakes he's made before, deciding to only make new ones during this round. Lewis smiles, their hands brush much more often than they should.

Sometimes Dick wonders if there's another him, somewhere-- a Richard Winters who didn't enlist, who never jumped from a plane to hurtle into D-Day or never made friends with a dark, handsome man swearing at a jeep. Dick wonders what this other person does-- wonders why he doesn't long more to be that man surrounded by peace. The man who probably has a wife, maybe a baby on the way... but who wakes to wonder why he recognizes unfamiliar voices, shouting far off in his dreams.

Nix, annoyed by a novice victory but smug at having been proven right, makes it only so far as the love seat in the corner before dropping off into a cocky, shameless sort of sleep. Winters tosses a coat over the prone form, settling back in the leather chair, watching the fire make shapes that last only seconds, burned behind his eyes. The streets are quiet now, the drawn curtains and clambering wallpaper designs making the room seem separate from everything else. As if, beyond the threshold, a step would be based solely on faith and not on the knowledge of anything to stand on. Winters shakes his head-- he's never considered himself fanciful, but he's always had an inner stream, a far off buzz that it seemed only he could hear. He remembers doing chores as a boy, listening, thinking while his hands did their tasks by habit alone. Here, with the warmed-fire night and Nix just a few feet away, it seems as though the stream is now a whisper-- husky, tender, brushing against his ear. There's a rush of want in his body, unfamiliar and doubly uncomfortable because he doesn't really know what the longing is for. Just... He closes his eyes, hands on the smooth leather arms, until he looses all feeling except that strange, shadowy sense of Lewis' presence near by. Careful and suspicious, he sleeps.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Middle window of the building with the balcony-thing," Heffron informs him, voice punctuated by another round. Winters eases up on his haunches a fraction of an inch, going back down before his eyes really have a chance to register what they've seen.

"We'll need to get closer," he frowns, lack of cover in the market painfully apparent.

"Maybe if..." Lipton shakes his head, changing thoughts, "Look--" But there's nothing to look at, because suddenly Dick is face down in the cobblestone, shaken there by the explosion he can smell not five feet away.

Heffron groans, "What the hell!?"

"A grenade!" Lipton shouts as they fall back towards the alley. "From the direction opposite the house." Heffron is about to speak, but his face changes and his arm reaches out, snagging Perconte as he comes barreling around the corner, breathing hard.

"They've got reinforcements!" the Private lets out, sagging against Heffron and the wall.

"But Sink said D company cut off the south road..."

Dick's hand curls into a fist, nails biting to keep him focused, "Germans must have re-secured the road. How many are there, Perconte?"

The brown eyes are wild, "Way too fucking many, sir." At the determined set of Winter's jaw, Perconte amends, "I dunno. Forty, forty-five, plus at least one tank?"

"Shit," says Heffron faithfully.

"Lip," Dick motions quickly with his hand, "find Speirs-- tell him the Germans have reinforcements we didn't count on. Fall back to Bull's squad near the second road. That's as far as you go-- we have to hold onto that, understand?"

"Yes, sir," there's a nod, and Lipton ducks down into the shadowy street just as a more distant explosion reverberates through the town. Out of the corner of his eye, Winters can see more Easy men coming down a side road. He pushes Heffron and Perconte, gratified when only a little shove gets them moving, allowing the other soldiers to pass him, shouting orders and trying desperately to think how to pull his men out of this one.

He's running, pulling someone, feeling oddly detached from the sounds of his boots and labored breathing, when the heat of fire and tumbling stone pricks along the back of his neck. He stumbles, catching his balance by sheer will, knowing without looking over his shoulder that the way he came is now blocked. There's a body lying prone just a foot or so away-- the other soldier, not so lucky, face down and helmet pierced almost neatly by a large piece of shrapnel. Dick frantically tries to think who it is, even as he reaches out and yanks off the corpse's dog tags. He can't seem to remember, doesn't even know who he grabbed a hold of.

(Who fell... it was... who fell)

He vaults into the trench without looking down-- it's much, much deeper than it should be. Falling forever, a frozen moment, and ending that will never happen, the fallen soldier's dog tags slicing into his palm. But then he hits the dirt and he's looking up at the sky framed by the tall, almost perfectly rectangular walls of the ditch. Groaning and rolling on his side, he lays there for a moment, acutely aware of the sudden silence, of the fact he is alone when all of Easy should have pulled back to hold the road. He feels sick, mouth full of bile like it hasn't been since D-Day and the German guns, when he turned a man over and found he had no face. He should get up, but he can't-- all he can do is breathe past the nausea as he peels his fingers away from the tiny slips of metal.

"Don't look, baby," she'd said, and he'd felt her voice rumbling through her chest, "Please. You just don't want to look."

He hurts, somewhere in the hollow of his chest where there's a feeling instead of an organ. The smell of his blood fades into the scent of gardenias-- spoiled, rotting, left too long on the grave.

(Why would I think that?)

(Oh, sweet baby, you don't want to look.)

(don't look)

* * * * * * * * *

(Snatch back the marbles, quick.)

"That sounded like a real bitch," Lewis shakes his head, "You'd think we'd get a fuck'n break after Foye, but no-ho--" He cups Dick's cheek with one warm hand, "We're all going crazy here."

"Yeah," Winter's can hear his own voice, and it sounds strange. "It was a doozy." They shouldn't be touching like this, he needs to turn away, but he'll never be able to unless Lewis does it first. He wouldn't cut a touch short if he could have even a second longer. He's almost panicking but he doesn't smell the gardenias-- just Vat 69, dirt and old books as Nix takes his hands and pulls him up.

"Come on," a lazy roll of shoulders as Nix leads the way up the stairs, "it's oh-two-hundred... all good little Majors should be in bed." Winters can't help but snort, the world settling just a little closer to it's axis. They take off their boots, sitting side by side on the wide master bed. Lewis rolls over to take the far side, kicking down the heavy comforter and fluffing the pillows with an almost-whistled 'niiiice'. "We're really living it up now, you see?"

"The army finally catering to your expensive tastes?" Dick settles in, trying to relax his muscles as to let the dream flow out and away.

"I'm expensive," Lewis grins, "but I'm worth it." There's a start, a mutual jolt between them as Nix draws his friend close; a movement neither of them thought about. His lips are right next to Winter's ear, lips forming words against the shell, tone releasing shivers.