Travel hopefully in life.

“Holy shit,” was the first thing Joe said after he’d wrenched the damn thing open, which was clearly not the greeting Webster had been hoping for, from the way his smile stiffened into a proper grimace. Joe blinked at him for a long, bewildered second and then offered by way of recovery, “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Webster agreed. He swallowed, throat clenching and tongue darting out over the chapped pad of his bottom lip, and then added like he was afraid Joe might’ve forgotten, “You invited me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe replied, flapping a hand at him and stepping back to swing an inviting arm into the hallway behind him. “I know I did, I just - ” he cut off sharply as the words abandoned him—there were shockingly few polite ways to phrase the sentiment ‘I was only half-serious when I said it and the part of me that was serious didn’t really believe you would come’ without offending Webster’s timekeeping abilities at the very least.

“You understand what I mean when I say ‘cozy up,’ don’t you, Peril?”

Ilya canted his head and waved a hand lazily back and forth in the air between them. “Of the two of us, which is fluent in the other’s mother tongue?”

“технически говоря - ” Napoleon started, protest splintering into an affronted laugh when Ilya fished a decorative seed pod out of the potpourri bowl on the table at his back without looking and flung it hard at Napoleon’s face.

“I’m trying to look out for you!” Napoleon chided, sucking his teeth and brushing the pod to the floor. “After Burma, we all know that you’re perfectly capable of fighting your way out of damn near any impossible situation you may find yourself in, but I think we can both agree that it is overall best to simply avoid the necessity, yes?”

muccamukk

“You don’t look so good,” Bill agreed. He gave Joe’s shoulder an absent, experimental squeeze, bare thumb brushing feather light against the warm column of Joe’s neck.

Joe choked back a low whimper and screwed his eyes shut.

“Fuck,” he snarled, shrugging Bill’s hand off and pressing his mouth into a flat, miserable line. He mopped his brow with the back of his glove and cracked his eyes open just enough to shoot a worried glare in Bill’s direction. “Somethin’ funny in those Kraut shells, Bill.”

easycotroopers

arwen88

kore

It was a stark and troubling contrast to the Buck Compton that Dick had met back in Aldbourne, and had been so relieved to see in Ste.-Marie-du-Mont, with his expansive gestures and easy, tactile nature.

That Buck Compton had slung an arm around Dick’s shoulders with little concern for propriety when he’d caught him on the way back to his billet and towed him off to the privacy of a nearby storage shed where they might steal a moment together, keeping up a loud and affable dialogue the whole while. This Buck Compton looked like he might shatter like so much toppled porcelain if Dick made a similar overture now, and not least because Dick’s capability as an engaging conversationalist only extended so far.

First and foremost, my sincerest gratitude to both C’s, who assured me this wasn’t garbage despite knowing nothing about the fandom, and the delightful muccamukk who corrected my punctuation, my grammar, and my timelines, and overall helped make the whole thing a helluva lot better.

Any remaining errors are totally my own. There are probably quite a few of them, but I wanted to move on to the next fill so I'm posting now anyway. Forgive me.

This was written as a fill for the hc_bingo prompt “first transformation.”

Title is from the song of the same name by The Huntress and Holder of Hands. If you'd rather, you can also read this story on AO3.

• Almost immediately described as flamboyant
• Is apparently strictly anti-jock (enemies-to-lovers college AU, anybody?)
• Once got so shitty off a bottle of schnapps (Of all things! What, was there no Arbor Mist around?) that it was worth mentioning in a historical record of wartime shenanigans