Drowning in hot waves of sickness and wonder, he could briefly recall feeling how his body was reacting to the flu, how painful cold and rigid he felt each and every part of his constitution, mainly his back and chest which seemed filmy to the cold masses of air besides the part which came with the simple act of breathing - although he was never a man to complain, so he did not; besides, every man in the company was under the same circumstances and as there was no actual solution for those, while they were stuck between German forces, there was no purpose to speak up about them. He also could recall that those weren't even new sensations to his tired and frigid body worked out in that way during the several weeks on Bastogne below the dense and heavily foggy Ardennes sky with poor clothing and poor feeding. What he couldn't recall was how he ended up there, under that vastly covered and somehow warm tent, in that somewhat bed, that is, a litter in the middle of the Ardenne-Alsace campaign.
His whole body trembled in an unwittingly movement as he moved slightly to the side, his hands closing in fists, going further between his joined knees as he turned to one of his sides. The dry reddish joints seemed to hurt as he squeezed his hands closed in an attempt to keep them humanly warm but as it didn't even look near as painful as the cold whatsoever, it didn't stop the move. He could not see much, not really. He could blink thousands of times and all he could see was anything, exactly anything: colors and forms mixed, confused shapes that to him meant anything or nothing (of certain) under ginger eyelashes. What he actually could feel was the slightly harsh standard Army cotton of the pillowcase under his frozen right ear as the skin brushed the fabric; or the lack of fresh, bleak wind on his cheeks or behind his ankles, a regular presence between the still up trees of the Ardennes Forest; or even maybe the nauseous working on his brain as he seemed to have his nostrils quite blocked, the little air he inhaled in smelling like puke or any other smelly scent but he knew it was just the cold.
Suddenly a tentative hand cupped his exposed arm, one hand about the same size of his, making him wince so slowly and unregular that the person didn't seem to take note of it. A hand which ran over his arm and then back, up and then back again as in a move to heat him up, give him some kind of comfort what actually made him ease a little bit as heat came and went away again, spreading blood. At some point, the owner's hand seemed to have found his shoulders, drifting his hand upward directly to the flesh before the joint. Dick tried to look up over his shoulders; he saw a dark shape, a shadow. Was it Nix? It looked like Nix; tall, dark blurry stains as in a messy hair, wide shoulders. All in all he knew it was just his reading of a shadow, but at the same time, under a strip of hope, he thought he knew Nix enough to know. As Dick had made his mind, he began loosing his fists, slowly, as if that presence brought him the reassurance he needed, made him feel somehow safe, safe to ease up. Nix was not a medic, but he was a friend, his best friend. Of course he would be watching close to anybody's acting upon him and besides Nix was his special someone in the Company, every man had his… best friend.
The hands, then, as in some minutes after, having access to both sides of him, closed around the freckled cheeks of Dick and so the redhead trembled profusely again, like when he had just woken up in a sleepy shock, and so he purposely closed his eyes which were already pretty narrowed before. His body shivered all over but it seemed to come from a different nature. Eyes were locked on him, he felt it in his guts. Searching something; lines, expressions, for emotions, sensations, readings between a camp of freckles and almost blue pale skin which was still humanly light pink and a bit yellow. There was nothing that meant better than that that someone was watching: feeling the eyes, not seeing them, but feeling so so deeply that his cheeks could have blushed if they had blood and warmth enough concentrate into them. Dick kept his eyes closed, his slow breathe and the blood on his ears the only things he could hear, the calloused hands felt cold against his cheeks, but not as cold as he usually felt anything in the frost Ardennes forest - even his own flesh -, it actually seemed as cold as any winter at home. If it was Nix, it was home somehow, wasn't it?
The hands were rough enough to not be a regular woman's hands and big enough to not be a child's or a teenager's one. It was Nix. It should be Nix, he prayed. If there was someone he wanted at this moment, someone he could have in this place was him, if at least he was just with a cold, as Eugene supposed and so he was still in Belgian; and he trusted Eugene, he was a good and sharp medic. A pair of lips reached his feverish forehead, dry - probably kind of blue - lips which met yellowish sweat skin, suddenly getting wet as a soft kiss was planted on the nerve, covering the skin with heat as if a blanket on his hot but seemingly - to him - cold body. Therefore, he felt a wave of heat took him all over for a brief but precious moment. He sighed in some quick and quiet relief, trying to be as quiet as possible, reserved somehow feeling as if guilty to show he was aware of such an intimate contact that someone had reserved it to his unconscious moments.
Someone pulled those hands and the person away. Skin tones, confusing body part shapes mixed with low voice sounds, probably saying polite words, apologizes and remembering procedures, acting by the book, as the men said. In his gut, Dick had all the intention to call them out, to make the person to come back and stay beside him but he really couldn't do any of those things; if he could do anything at all in that state. He was even annoyed at the simple fact that he was there, laid down while he couldn't even write his damn reports and do something, anything of useful, to help the others, to keep his men alive and well. But he was weak and sick, so he fell asleep again as fast as the moment lasted, trying to decide really hard if it was him or if it was indeed Nix who had came to his mind or to his side anywhere he had came to.