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softguarnere · 10 months

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Like A Girl (Like A Man)

Shifty Powers x OFC

Chapter 21: Datalesvi Anina

Summary: “Bill may be our smartest NCO, but he doesn’t know everything.” A/N: The moment we've all been waiting for: Bastogne (Chapter title translates to "they are sitting in holes") Warnings: improper binding, language, war Taglist: @latibvles @lady-cheeky @liebgotts-lovergirl @mrs-murder-daddy @ithinkabouttzu @mads-weasley @lieutenant-speirs

Belgium, 1944

After a few days, Zenie comes to the conclusion that if she keeps her eyes shut tight, lets her brain remain fuzzy with sleep, and leans into the warmth beside her, she can almost – almost – trick herself into thinking that she is a little girl again, back in North Carolina, curled up under her blankets on a frosty morning while she waits for the smell of Granny’s warm biscuits to draw her downstairs for breakfast. The shaking of the shattered earth, the groans and cries of men, and the heavy cold always shatter the illusion the second that she becomes a little more awake.

Holland’s water-filled foxholes felt like hell. Clearly none of them understood true hell until they walked into Bastogne. No wonder the men who were here before them were retreating so quickly.

There is no room for secrets in a place like this. Where would they put them? You can cling to them in your foxhole, but someone is there with you, and they’re bound to find out at some point, to see the real you, made up of everything you’ve tried to hide. At least in Holland they could get up and move around. Here, in Bastogne, they have to be ready to dive into a foxhole at any second.

They are only safe inside the earth. And that is where their secrets start to become known.

With the line stretched so thin, it’s hard to keep up with friends. Word travels fast, though, in the way that rumors always do. That’s how the rest of the company finds out that Shifty talks in his sleep, that Perconte has practically an entire drugstore in his bag, and that Liebgott and Toye both like to sing to pass the time.

Every day that they spend in this place makes Zenie feel like she’s holding onto her own secret for dear life. Her fingers ache from the effort. Her determination isn’t slipping, exactly, but her frustration is rising.

There is no aide station for Gene to take her back to whenever he insists she loosen or change her bandages. She tries to share a foxhole with him when she can. He’s so busy running around the line, though, that her other friends often fill his place, insisting that she shouldn’t be alone. They all learned in Holland that loneliness is no way to survive. Shifty is further up the line and gets sent on too many patrols for her to share a foxhole with him – the only other person she can trust with this secret of hers. That’s how she usually finds herself sitting beside Bill, or when he’s making his rounds, Babe and his old friend, John Julian.

Babe and Julian went through training together. Even though they go way back, she never feels excluded when she’s with them. They tell her stories of jump school shenanigans that make her feel like she’s part of the joke instead of watching two friends reminisce about the good old days.

“You know he’s a virgin?” It’s one of their first days in Bastogne. Julian hasn’t made it back from the pitiful excuse of a chow-line yet, and Babe’s question comes out of nowhere.

Zenie blinks. “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

Silence washes over them as they watch the line. As she stares ahead, Zenie can feel Babe very pointedly trying to not look at her from the corner of his eye.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Babe shrugs. “Just thought I’d let ya know that it’s okay, I guess. You ain’t the only one. Although I don’t know how you guys do it. I’d be afraid of dying without experiencing true heaven.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me, Babe.” The confession slips out before she really grasps the weight of what she’s just said. Funny, realizing how much things have changed. She bites her bottom lip to keep from giggling at it all.

Her friend balks. “What?! When?”

Well, if she’s already confessed – albeit by accident – there’s no use in lying. “Paris.”

“Out on your pass?”

“Yep.”

“Unbelievable.” Babe shakes his head. “Bill said you were a virgin.”

Why would he need to tell Babe that? Unless, she freezes at the thought, he was telling his fellow Philadelphian about her embarrassment with the pin-up of Beckie.

“Bill may be our smartest NCO, but he doesn’t know everything.”

“He doesn’t know?” When Zenie shakes her head, a small cloud of steam escapes from Babe’s mouth as he huffs a warm laugh into the cold air. “Unbelievable,” he repeats.

Without him, Zenie thinks back to the hotel room in Paris – all the ways that she and Shifty caressed each other and the way that he smiled at her the next morning, beaming, like the sun glittering over the dew-crowned trees on a fresh spring morning.

Yes, she’s inclined to agree. Unbelievable.

Back in Holland the days bled together, each as miserable and wet as the last. At least there she could find apples anywhere she looked. Here, in Bastogne, she’s once again in a hole in the ground, surrounded by trees, but there is nothing to eat, and the endless precipitation is the snow that seems to fall without fail every night.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whack! Whoosh! Bill is brushing the fresh snow from the tarp they’ve been using to cover their foxhole at night. It doesn’t do much in terms of keeping heat in, but at least it keeps the snow off of them while they sleep.

Zenie’s joints pop as she stretches. It draws Bill’s attention, and he stops cleaning off the tarp.

“Mornin’.”

Zenie grunts in response. No “good” before the word. Simply a statement of fact: this is another morning that they have reached.

Bill folds the tarp back and sits back in the foxhole with a sigh. “Why don’t you go check and see if there’s any breakfast?” He suggests.

There won’t be. There hardly ever is. It just gives Zenie something to do other than walking from foxhole to foxhole, visiting with the other men in between the shellings that the Germans send their way. At least Bill has an actual excuse to walk around. Checking the line and checking up on the men might be what got him hurt back in Holland, but he still takes his duties as an NCO seriously.

It almost makes Zenie wish that she would get promoted. Then no one could say anything if she wandered a bit too far in the woods looking for third platoon – (looking for Shifty.) On their second day here, she got lost after trying to find somewhere to loosen her bandages. She stumbled across a frozen pile of German bodies, frost thick on their winter coats. After that, she decided not to stray too far from her foxhole anymore.

With a sigh, she pulls herself out of the hole, the crunch of snow greeting her when she stands and stretches.

“You want anything?”

Bill’s lips are pressed together as he stares at the line. After a moment he breaks his focus, nodding up at her. “If they’ve got it.”

They don’t. Not even the pitiful cup of water with two beans floating in it that they served at midday the day before. (Well, it felt like midday, at least. It could have been any time of day, and only the men with watches would be the wiser.)

She stops to greet Luz and a few other men on her way back. George has a few quips about their situation. Other people have a few choice words about the cold. They all laugh, and it sounds warm and out of place in this frozen land.

“Nothing?” Bill asks when she returns.

“Not a drop.”

He sighs, starts to stand. “Well then. Looks – “

Boom! The ground shakes under Zenie’s feet as the first explosion of the morning signals the start of the day.

“Incoming!” Someone’s voice announces. It sounds like Sergeant Lipton that yells, over the successive series of booming explosions that pierce the air, “Get in your foxholes!”

“Get in!” Bill demands.

The ground still shaking, Zenie lurches forward, trying to dive into the foxhole with her friend. Her feet hit the bottom of the pit and she’s starting to crouch down when she hears a whizzing noise nearby. The air shakes as the Germans fire at them. It feels so close that she freezes, like a deer that’s been stumbled upon in the woods. She feels Bill’s hand clench around her right shoulder and drag her the rest of the way down.

She lands so roughly that for a second, the pain in her side from landing on Bill distracts from the horrible slicing pain that races through her left arm. Foxholes are supposed to keep them safe, but once inside them, it feels like the whole world trembles endlessly. This time it knocks the breath out of her, making her gasp as white-hot electricity races through her arm. Her whole body feels hot – which seems incongruous, considering where they are – and despite all her wishes, she knows the truth: she’s been hit.

Summer heat takes hold of her body. She wished for warmth, and boy, has she got it now. Late July afternoons, full of humidity and sweat, have found her in this frozen place. No ice cream and running through the fields, though. This is the worst parts of summer – the Dog Days, with their high temperatures and mosquitos eating her legs. All that’s missing is the screaming of the cicadas. To prove its presence, a sheen of sweat overtakes her as a side effect of the heat.

The only reason she knows the shelling has stopped is that no more deafening explosions thunder through the sky above them. The world still shakes – except, it’s actually just her shaking. And the echoing in her ears is from the blood pumping through them, fast as a train.

“You alright, Tommy?” Bill asks.

Slowly, she pushes herself up. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut when the movement sends new jolts of pain through her left side. Maybe it’s not actually that bad. Maybe it’s like a bee sting in that it just feels bad, but it actually very small. She just needs a minute before she looks.

It’s a minute that she doesn’t get. Bill curses under his breath beside her. Something is wrong.

Warm blood leeks from gashes in her sleeve. Most of it is coming from her arm, in a steady trickle that begins at her shoulder. But thank God, she realizes, her arm is still attached to her body, like it should be. And, as an added bonus, when she chokes back the bile burning her throat and tries to inspect the damage, she can still move it, as well as her fingers.

“Medic!” Bill hollers.

The word drags her out of her temporary solace. She’s been hit and she needs a medic, to patch her up, to send her to an aide station. Those don’t exist here, though. And they’re running low on medics as well.

“No,” Zenie hisses, despite the pain in her arm. “Don’t!”

Bill’s eyes go wide as his brow furrows. “Are you crazy? You need a – Medic!”

What if Spina is the nearest medic? What if they have to remove her jacket in front of everyone?

“Bill, I’m fine. Stop!”

The Staff Sergeant doesn’t listen. In fact, he outright ignores her as he reaches into his pockets, muttering to himself. “I got some left-over sulfa power in here somewhere. Where the fuck – ? Aha! Tommy, hold still, will ya? Medic!”

He moves towards her then. There’s nowhere for her to go. It would be hard enough to drag herself out of the foxhole with one arm, and even harder when Bill looks like he’s ready to chase her down. She presses herself against the frozen earth behind her, trying to dodge her friend as he comes closer.

“Bill, stop!”

“Tommy, you gotta let me – “ Bill takes hold of her jacket and rips it open. Cold air hits her chest, although it doesn’t stop the heat that’s still coursing through her. A new wave of it rushes over her in both embarrassment and pain as Bill fights to remove her jacket from her shoulder. When it’s free he clenches the packet of sulfa powder between his teeth, ready to tear it open . . . He pauses, his eyes taking in the full extent of the scene before him. “What the fuck?”

Maybe it’s the way that Zenie manages to push him away and tug her jacket up to cover her bandaged chest that gives it away. Or maybe it’s the way her face burns with shame, how she can’t look her best friend in the eye. Besides, Bill is smart, and he knows that she’s never been hit. It doesn’t take him very long to figure out what the bandages are for.

“Oh Christ,” he whispers, his eyes still fixed on her bandages. They’re the size of saucers when he finally manages to move them to her face. “You’re a broad!”

A broad. Huh. So that’s what someone from South Philly would call a girl. Back on the ship that brought them to Europe, she had once wondered about it. She had wondered about the reactions of her friends, too, if they were to learn her secret.

Well, now she knows.

“Sorry,” Zenie whispers, because it’s the only thing she can think to say.

“Since when?!”

“Since birth.”

“Jesus, this whole time? And I never knew!?” His face pales. “Ah, Christ . . . I’ve told ya too much. Shit! I gave you that pin-up and everything!”

The crunch of snow announces a new presence behind them, coming in fast. “Who’s been hit?”

Eugene jumps down into the foxhole, landing so that Zenie is between him and Bill. His medic brain kicks in first as he reaches out to move her jacket so that he can inspect the damage. He freezes, his hands only just grazing her jacket when he glances over at Bill.

“Tommy got hit. I think mostly in the shoulder.”

Gene looks between Zenie and their sergeant. Reluctantly, she nods. He already knows; the damage is done.

She hisses in pain when Gene peels back her jacket to inspect her. He mutters something in French that’s as smooth and slow as molasses. An apology, maybe. How many of those will this foxhole hear? Despite all that’s happened, he’s a soothing presence. Now Zenie knows why he’s Easy’s preferred medic.

“Shrapnel,” Gene announces. “Peppered your arm. Missed the arteries, though. Nothin’ deep, except one cut that’ll need to be stitched up. Maybe get some little pieces removed. I can do it back in the town.”

“Got lucky, huh?” Bill asks. His voice is full of a tone that Zenie has never heard before. He sounds lighthearted and troubled all at once. “Missed your tits, thank God.” A grimace that might be an attempt at a smile appears behind the beard he’s started growing.

“She did,” Gene agrees. Gently, he helps her adjust her jacket, and then both he and Bill help her to her feet and out of the foxhole.

“He – I mean, is she gonna be okay, Doc?”

A pause.

“Yeah,” Gene replies. “Yeah, she should be.”

He escorts her away then, talking about catching the Jeep before it heads back into the town with Skinny Sisk, who’s been hit in the leg. Zenie casts a glance back over her shoulder at Bill, who stands in the foxhole, watching her go. Maybe for the last time, now that he knows her secret. His expression is inscrutable – so unlike him.

She’s come all this way. Starting in her bedroom, ending in Belgium. And now she’s being taken away from the line. Gene will patch her up . . . And then what? Damn!

Gene helps her up into the Jeep, keeps his fingers wrapped loosely on her good shoulder as they ride so that she doesn’t topple off their precarious perch on the back of it. The medic catches her eye and offers her a nod. She can only wonder what it means.

#screaming crying yelling #idk if this one's any good but I've been sitting on it for a while omg #shifty powers x original female character #shifty powers x ofc #shifty powers #band of brothers #band of brothers fanfic #band of brothers x ofc #band of brothers x oc #oc zenie mcglamery #like a girl (like a man)#my writing #bill guarnere

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