All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

72: Warmth

A second twig snapped underfoot and Posey whipped around, her rifle aimed exactly where the noise had come from and her finger hovering over the trigger. At the last second she opened her eyes, just in case, and let out a gasp so loud the perpetrator's eyes found her immediately.

She could have killed him. She would have killed him if she hadn't opened her eyes right at the last moment. When Bill was beside her she grabbed onto his arm and buried her face into the fabric of his ODs, unsure of whether she wanted to kiss him or smack him.

"Fucking idiot," she was saying into his arm, clutching him tighter with every breath. "I almost shot you! I thought you were - were -"

He apologised profusely, over and over again, until she returned to herself. When her heart rate slowed and her breathing steadied she lifted her head from his arm and looked up at him. "I could've killed you," she said, searching his face for some sort of reaction.

"I'm sorry," he said again, gazing right back down at her. He opened his mouth to say something else before a sharp voice behind them had Posey turning right back around and aiming her gun.

The grey of a German Wehrmacht uniform was standing ahead of her, and he shot first.

He must have missed by the width of a hair. Bill had his arms around Posey's waist in an instant, all but throwing her behind the cover of a tree. She ducked out of his arms to shoot and got the German in one, watching closely as he fell to make sure he was dead.

Posey looked back at Bill when she was sure and gave a nod, and wordlessly he led them back to where the rest of the patrol was waiting. "Time's up," he told them, and they all headed back to Easy's section of the line. Posey didn't know whether their allocated time slot for the patrol actually was up but she didn't object. She didn't want to be out on this patrol a second longer, not after almost killing Bill and then almost getting killed herself within the space of five minutes.

When they were back in their foxhole, Bill made sure Posey was settled before heading off to recount the events of the patrol to whichever officer he could find in the event of Dike's inevitable absence. Once he was gone, she let out a silent sigh. He's going to get me killed, she thought, gnawing on her bottom lip and pulling at the fabric of her ODs where she had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Loving him is going to get me killed.

She froze, eyes wide and startled. Loving him? Loving him. Did she love him?

I love him, she thought with certainty, and it'll get me killed. Because I love him and I can't show it in any other way than risking my life so that he may get to keep his. That is the only currency of love in wartime when you cannot risk loving in earnest, when you cannot kiss or hug. It is not as romantic as I might once have imagined.

When Bill came back she was still half infuriated with him for following after her out on the patrol when she'd told him to stay back, and perhaps even more infuriated with herself for her feelings for him. Why couldn't she revert back to her earlier attitude towards him during boot camp - hell, during D-Day, even - when she'd despised him just as much as he'd despised her? Why did he have to go and find out her secret and ruin everything by being so kind? Yes, as far as she was concerned this was all his fault, so then she was infuriated with him doubly for leading her to this.

"You alright?" he asked warily as he hopped into the foxhole and got himself comfortable beside her. She could feel his eyes scanning her face, likely taking in the hard set of her jaw and the steely defiance in her eyes as she stared straight ahead, unseeing. "Wells?"

She was glad, just this once, that he hadn't used her first name. She needed distance from him, not intimacy.

"Yes," she replied, not daring to look at him. She kept her arms crossed and her gaze steady, watching the dirt wall of the foxhole ahead of her as though she expected it to steal her gun and shoot her with it.