Disclaimer: I don't own any of this and mean no disrespect to the veterans the miniseries was based on. I was merely inspired by the era and the story as told by HBO.
Author's Note: Challenging myself with 500 word one shots between writing my longer fics, just to keep the creative juices humming.
England
Summer 1944
Blood dribbled, pearling red then trailing down his strong jawline. David Webster dropped onto the bench.
The fight was over as soon as it had begun. Clutching a lukewarm glass of beer, she held her breath as the hulking, belligerent replacement leveled him with a swift left hook. David was a good sized man but was better with books than boxing.
"Tough night?" She managed, not knowing what else to say as she approached.
David wiped his chin with the back of his hand and gave a breathy, half laugh.
"That's putting it lightly."
She sat down beside him, the sun having set below the high hedge lining the road before them.
"Randleman finished the bastard off nicely, didn't he?" David smeared the crimson stain on his knuckles with his thumb.
"Bull is a good man."
"Yes he is."
Silently, she fetched an embroidered handkerchief from her knitted clutch. She tentatively angled his face towards her with her fingertips. Neither of them sought the other's eyes as she dabbed the corner of his mouth.
"Louise, you know-"
"Yes, I know." She whispered with a faint grin, attempting lightheartedness, "I know. You told me."
"I can't do that to you. What if something happened-" He took a deep breath, "Louise, there is no knowing-"
"Stop trying to explain it to me, David." Louise breathed, "I'm not stupid."
"I never said you were."
She dared glance up at him. He was so handsome, it was almost off setting. However, the intellectual in him bucked at the fact to the point of isolation in social settings. She couldn't put together an exact timeline of how they had crossed paths. It was as though David wasn't and then suddenly was in her life; blaringly bright and unavoidable.
Impulsively, she ran her thumb along the edge of his full lower lip.
Though he never meant to, David left her feeling as obscure and forgettable as a bird passing over in the grey above them. She was a fleeting yet lovely diversion for a man-child lonely in his thoughts. Like a coin catching the sunlight as it was tossed into the chaos of a churning fountain, she was drowning in the balletic violence of his writer's soul.
He met her eyes, closing his lips.
"Shit." He mumbled before crushing his mouth to hers.
She didn't protest. She never did. She wouldn't fight it until one of two inevitable outcomes came to pass.
David would be killed in combat and she would hear about it in passing at the hospital as one of the other nurses read aloud casualty lists.
Or he would survive the war to forget about her.
David would return to his books and his literary ambitions back at Harvard.
She'd go home to Maine, waiting to marry one of the boys she had grown up with and have children that looked nothing like the man she had loved in England.
It was all very simple, despite what David seemed to think.