Dirigo

Nix had managed to put off fighting with his father for the first week Dick was staying with them. It hadn't been as hard as he'd expected. A strange switch had been flipped in his father's head now that his son had come home from war having served with one of the better known units in the war. Stanhope had always held a kind of pride for his son - even Lew could see that. After all, he'd done well in school, he won his sailing competitions, he'd volunteered to serve and had graduated from OCS as a 2nd Lieutenant. None of that mattered when they would get into their regular battle royales, however. Nix was a let down, on those days, a disappointment, just short of a complete failure.

That undercurrent was absent in this fight. Some hind part of his brain seemed aware of this as he dug both hands into his hair, shutting his eyes as his father shouted. Stanhope was just angry, and for once, Nix couldn't be sure that he was actually at the root of it. The words battering at him all seemed the same, but the frustrated drive wasn't behind them.

"You need to take this seriously!"

Nix tipped his head back, refusing to open his eyes. "I do-"

"I don't think you do, Lewis! I don't think you do! This is your life now, no more playing around with your army buddies-"

"What Army budies!" Nix finally forgot that Dick was sitting out on the front porch sharing what had to be an awkward glass of iced tea with his mother - who was long since adept at pretending she couldn't hear her son and husband curse at each other. "It's just Dick, Stan. Just Dick! He is the only person I've spoken to in the past week! He is the only person I know anymore. Don't you get that? Katharine is gone back to her parents and she took Daniel with her."

"Exactly! And what are you going to do about it? If you had any sense you would bring her back, Lewis, you wouldn't just let her run off with your son."

"She is divorcing me, Stan, what about that do you not understand?" Nix turned, but his father's voice stopped him from actually walking away.

"She can't divorce you if you don't let her! That's not how this works, Lewis, that's not how being a husband works-"

"And what do you know about being a husband!" Lew's voice rose in decible, finally rising above his father's volume, "what do you know about any of this, you damned old fool! You don't know anything!"

He didn't pause to see if his words showed up like a slap across his father's face, to see if they'd landed as he'd intended them. The screen door smacked shut behind him and Dick was already on his feet as Lew thumped down the front stairs. He could hear his friend, polite to the very end, apologize to his mother before Dick's footsteps echoed his on the stairs, then softer behind him on the front walk. Nix didn't slow down, turning a sharp right down the drive. He needed to be off the property, away from the house, his parents, from this nightmare of a life that seemed to be slowly sucking him down into a quagmire.

"Lew-" Nix didn't slow down as he half walked, half ran down the drive, even though he could hear Dick trying to catch up. He hit the road and didn't break stride, crossing it without looking for traffic and pushing into the trees on the otherside. There was a creek about half a mile through the woods where he'd smoked his first cigarettes, drank his first booze, kissed his first girl, basically did everything his father would have hated.

He only slowed his pace once he was certain he wouldn't be seen from the road and Dick was at his shoulder in a minute. They walked in silence, ducking under branches and pushing back brambles, trying to stay on the overgrown path. Their shows crunched softly on old leaves, spot coming mottled through the treetops. His first crashing arrival into the treeline had quieted the birds and there was only the occasional whistle or trill. Instinctively, they walked a foot or so apart although they were perfectly in line. Smaller targets, more ground covered, one round wouldn't take them both out at once. Nix only glanced at Dick once and the redhead was watching the trees, his shoulders back and his jaw set. He wondered if his fingers were itching for a gun. Nix's weren't. They never had. His rifle had been ornamental. He wondered if his father had any real notion of what it had all been like.

The sound of the creek faded in slowly as they neared it, swollen with fall rain, frothy up near the top of the hill where it came over a short fall. Dick and Nix stopped at the same moment on the edge of the slope and immediately Nix could feel Dick's gaze on him.

"You know my dad almost killed a man when he was at Yale?" Nix didn't know why he said it.

"Really." As usual, Dick sounded as though Nix were relating a story he'd heard a thousand times, even if Nix knew him well enough to tell he was surprised.

"Yup. Bashed his head in with a metal bolt. I never really knew why, but I figure that doesn't matter."

Dick nodded once, but didn't say anything. Nix watched him impassively for half a minute, trying to see if the question was there, trying to see if Dick wouldn't balk at this conversation. But Dick never balked at anything.

"Did he ever hit you, Lew?"

"Sure." Nix shrugged, as though he hadn't just been praying Dick would asked, "but never like that. Smack in the face some times. Caught my mom a good one once or twice, but she served him right back, so-" Another shrug. He felt like a seventeen year old, somehow, trying to impress a girl. The thought made him take a step forward, starting down the steep slope to reach the creek. Dick followed without urging.

"Thing is, I might have liked it better if just gave me a good belt every so often. But that isn't what it comes down to. Never does. He just likes to chase me out of the house, make me so angry I can't talk right, like that proves how much smarter he is or something." The last time Nix had spoken about his father like this, it had been with Katharine. Nix came to a stop with the toes of his shoes just barely in the water and thought of David. He brought a hand up over his eyes and tried to imagine himself ever raising a hand to his son.

"He's bitter."

Nix looked up, taken off guard. "What?"

"He's bitter, Lew. He's jealous. You did better in school, right? And you didn't have to leave because you nearly killed a man."

Nix snorted and shook his head. "No, I left to learn how to kill men."

"You left to fight a war. Did your father serve?"

"No, no, he was too young. Well-" he gave Dick a look that was attempting to be smug and only sort of succeeding. "That and he was too busy trying to club a man to death."

"The point is, you've proved yourself in ways he couldn't seem to manage." Dick sat suddenly, catching himself on a downed tree, and started to pull off his shoes. Nix watched him stupidly. Socks off, Dick rolled the bottom of his pants up and stepped into the running water, biting his bottom lip just barely in reaction to the cold. Nix felt his stomach clench.

"Have I proved myself?"

"Yes." Dick watched the water run over his feet, then looked up and his smile wiped the doubt off Lew's face. "You have."

It was hot in New York. He was waiting for the train, closing his eyes and tipping his head back and Dick was so quiet that every so often Nix drifted off, only to wake a minute later, having forgotten that his best friend was still sitting next to him. They said goodbye to Buck and Harry at the boat. Buck was heading back west, catching buses and trains and probably a cab or two and Nix is glad to see him go. Things have softened between them since the end of the war, but there's nothing that could make either one of them forget the resentment - Nix's drunken accusations of arrogance and Buck's fist across his jaw.

The jealousy lingered, no matter how hard he tried to forget it. Buck made Dick laugh - about as often as Nix made Dick laugh - but Dick never really put together why the two never got along.

The train was late. Nix straightened on the bench, shifting his duffle between his knees, and turned to look at Dick. The clatter and din of the crowd swelled around them, families heading downtown to go shopping, girls in headscarves out on the lunch whistle, the occasional pocket of drab green flashing through splits in the crowd. It wasn't just the uniforms that make the returning soldiers stick out. Nix could see the look in Dick's face, although it was quieter in his expression than it was in the faces of the men he watched. A kind of confused suspicion, with a hint of awe. Bright hazel eyes were tracking the crowd - watching the children run through the forest of legs, fascinated by the sway of a woman's hips or the hem of her skirt, the click of her shoes. Men's hats and briefcases or lunchboxes. It was like having to remember how to read, the shapes on the page alien again even though you know you had learned this all before.

What did people do if they weren't fighting a war?

"Thirsty?" Nix asked suddenly, realizing he'd been staring at the redhead for the better part of ten minutes. Dick hadn't noticed, but he looked over when Nix spoke.

"Sure." He glanced around, brow furrowing just a touch. "We won't miss the train?"

"It's already late. There's a stand just over there. You watch my stuff, I'll buy you a drink."

"Lew-"

"A soda, Dick, Jesus." Nix laughed and stood, pushing his duffle over to lean against Dick's knee. "I'm not going to buy you a beer in the middle of the afternoon. You know I keep my efforts to get you drunk relegated to the evening."

He strode off before Dick could retort, realizing belatedly that his foot had fallen asleep. The train was very late, but Nix was in no rush. He'd tried to convince Dick to take him to Pennsylvania first - no rush, he'd claimed, why go straight to New Jersey when Dick hadn't seen his family in three years. Wasn't there a girl? Etta? Was that it?

Dick hadn't really responsed. It never occured to Nix that maybe Dick was as hesitant to see his home as Nix was to see his. But they were on their way to Nixon New Jersey because Mr. Nixon had jobs for them both at Nixon Nitrates and Lewis Nixon had never felt quite so trapped in his entire life. He'd survived a war only to go home and slowly rot in a town he hated, in a job he knew he would come to hate.

Except there was one thing keeping him from draining the flask tucked away into his pocket. Nix looked back at the bench when he came to a stop at the vendor selling bottles of pop to the passing travellers. Dick had pulled out a book and had bent his head over it, sitting straight as a rail but tucking his chin into his chest like a boy who knew it was better to restrain enthusiasm for something he enjoyed, but couldn't quite keep it all in. Dick was like that for almost everything in his life, Nix thought. The corner of his lips turning up, the arch of an eyebrow, the speed of his steps - they all betrayed Dick Winters' passion for his work, his friends, his men. Nix had seen it time and time again, shocked whenever he noticed that passion being exerted on his behalf - shocked into behaving, shocked into hating himself a little less.

Sun glinted off the side of Dick's perfectly combed hair and Nix was drawn out of his own head by the shout of the vendor.

"Hey, G.I. Joe - you want anything or what? There's a line, buddy."

The glass of the bottles was cold enough to have his hands aching by the time he returned to the bench, pushing one of the sodas into Dick's face in an effort to get him to look up from the book. "So much for the returning heroes. I asked that guy if he'd give a couple of paratroopers some free soda and he laughed in my face."

Dick smiled gently and accepted the bottle, carefully folding down one corner of the page he'd been reading and closing the book. Nix watched his pale hand smooth over the paperback cover. "They don't owe us anything, Nix."

"The hell they don't."

"They don't-" They'd had this conversation before, but Dick was as patient as ever, "maybe respect, at the most, but we were doing our duty as citizens."

"Yeah, and what was he doing?"

"Someone had to stay behind. The home front was just as important-"

"Yeah, yeah. Drink the damn soda." Nix took a chug off his own before digging into his pocket for his flask. "Woulda tasted better if it were free."

He could fill Dick's eyes on him after another few seconds of drinking his now-spiked soda. Nix always found himself caught off guard when Dick looked at him like that, the very idea that Dick even remembered who he was sort of unbelievable to him. It had the effect of making him antsy so he drank half the soda down in one go, coughing at the burn of liquor down his throat. He cleared the sensation away with a few swallows.

"How much of that liquor did you actually get home?"

Nix looked up in surprise, eyesbrows arched practically to his hairline. "I...uh-" nose wrinkled, he took another drink, "well, you know, sort of figured I should stock up, going home to a divorce and all." His laugh sounded thin to his own ears and he winced. "A lot," he admitted finally, twisting the drawstring of his duffle bag around one finger before the childishness of it made him jerk his hand away. "Shipped it all in one go, actually. Spent my father's money. I'm sure he'll be damn pleased with me when we show up."

"He won't enjoy it too?"

"Oh, he'll enjoy it, but that won't make a bit of difference."

Dick nodded as though he understood this perfectly, although Nix knew he didn't, and looked down into the mostly-full bottle he still held. "Nix, he knows I'm coming, right? I mean, I won't be showing up expecting a job from a man who hasn't offered one."

Nixon sighed and leaned back, kicking his feet out and allowing his head to drop, closing his eyes against the glare of the sun. He pulled his sunglasses from his front pocket and slid them up his nose. The throbbing just behind his temples eased a bit and he began to feel the tingle of the whiskey in his fingertips, as though he'd just come in from the cold. "He knows, Dick. I'm not that much of an ass."

"I didn't mean that." Dick immediately sounded apologetic and Nix hated himself for always reacting like Dick's low expectations weren't warrented. "I know things are complicated between you two, and I just wasn't sure-"

"Five o'clock to Plainfield, five o'clock to Plainfield!" Combined, the conductor and the whistle of the incoming train cut Dick off and ended the conversation. Nix slapped a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave him a shake, not wanting Dick to spend another second feeling bad. His smile was half hearted, but that was only because in an hour and a half a car would be picking them up from the train station and taking them up the hill to the Stanhope Nixon residence.

Nix was half pulling away to stand and grab his duffle, when Dick's hand surprised him - warm and firm over his own fingers where they still clutched at the redhead's uniform. He was grateful for the sunglasses that hid the way his eyes went particularly wide, but when Dick met his gaze, Nix wondered if they didn't hide anything at all. Everything he thought he might need was in that look, in the too-brief squeeze of Dick's hand over his.

He wasn't going back alone.

Nix had spent a long while doing an inventory, it would have made him hard any other day but today it made him curious, made him restless. The focus and the obvious, pupil dilating desire were usually aimed at him not at a cellar full of booze. Lew had always had a close personal relationship with alcohol, but until he'd walked into that cellar Dick had never doubted that his own place in the man's life was ranked higher.

( Now he realized he had a rival, and one he didn't know. )