Crossposted from AO3; I am not currently taking prompts.
Prompt: one character playing with the other's hair.
Jack Moffitt had not slept in three days.
There wasn't any real reason for it. Everything was fine at home, everything was going smoothly on the front. He spent his days riding around the desert on the back of a jeep, shooting up Germans, blowing up outposts, planning, strategizing, watching, and waiting. All were enough to exhaust any man, and usually they did. But for the last few days, Moffitt had been consumed with an unshakable feeling of anxiety that drove sleep away like a cowboy driving away a hungry coyote to protect his cattle. He hadn't been able to get more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time, according to his watch, and even those snatches were few and far between.
"Again?" said Tully, low and quiet, hopping down from his lookout point on their jeep.
Moffitt nodded and then prepared to stand up. "There's no use in us both being awake; why don't I take watch early?"
Tully shook his head. "Naw," he said. "I'm good right here." He sat on the edge of the jeep, eyes scanning the horizon, and the two stayed like that in comfortable silence.
"You know," Tully drawled, his voice mingling with the soft desert sounds, "My ma had a pretty good way of getting us to sleep when we were kids."
"Oh?" Moffitt asked, an amused smile playing on his lips. "I'm afraid we don't have any warm milk out here."
Tully again shook his head. "That wouldn't have worked, anyway. We almost always drank our milk warm, straight from the cow." He shifted, trying to find a more comfortable spot on the jeep. "I could show you, if you want."
Moffitt shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"
"I'm gonna need your head."
Moffitt sat up and stared. "My head?"
"Your head," Tully repeated, unwaveringly.
Moffitt gave a sigh that very clearly said, 'What have I got to lose?' and repositioned himself so that he was sitting cross-legged in front of Tully.
"Is this good?" he asked.
"Turn around," Tully said, and Moffitt complied.
Before Moffitt had a chance to ask Tully what he was going to do, he felt a set of warm, calloused fingers running through his hair.
"What are you-" Moffitt began to protest, but he stopped. He wasn't sure if it was the unexpectedness, or his exhaustion, or some sort of primal instinct, or if he was simply distracted by how good it felt.
Tully began to hum a song that Moffitt didn't recognize, probably some American folk song that hadn't made it very far past the mountains of Kentucky. Moffitt could hear a smile in his voice, and he knew that Tully would be gloating about "shutting up the Professor" all of the next day, and probably the one after, too. Didn't even have to say anything, he'd brag, but he'd leave out the part about using his fingers to do it; one simply did not talk about such things out here, no matter how innocent. Just as nobody spoke of the long nights spent with pretty women that ended with the woman's virginity remaining intact, assuming she still had it.
Finally, Moffitt felt his eyes begin to droop, encouraged by the fingers in his hair. It was getting long, he knew. His hair. He'd have to get it cut, the next time he...the next time he was at base. Moffitt's thoughts swam around in his head, darting just out of reach. He wasn't sure whether his eyes were opened or closed; they'd stopped bothering to stay focused some time ago...minutes, maybe? Hours? And a bleary desert night was nearly indistinguishable from the inside of one's eyelids. That was a fact, wasn't it? Someone had surely proven it at some point or another. Moffitt couldn't remember who. Maybe it was him. Him, or that Lawrence fellow...or maybe his father…
The fragile soap bubble that was just barely holding his thoughts together finally popped, and the next thing he knew, it was morning.