A/N: I'm not a native speaker so you'll have to excuse the grammatical errors. Also, I don't usually write much and especially not fanfiction but this miniseries can't seem to leave my mind and I just had to give this a shot.
The first chapter is about Hoosier and Leckie. It's kind of short but there'll be more in later chapters along with some SnafuxSledge, ChucklerxRunner, EddiexAndy. Hope you enjoy!
Don't like slash don't read!
Disclaimer: I don't mean any disrespect to the real men that fought during the war nor do I own the series. This is based on the actors ant their portrayal of the characters.
When Robert Leckie dreams he dreams of a pair of blue eyes and brown silky hair that he can comb his fingers through.
Even on the other side of the world where they are constantly surrounded by death he hasn't lost that part of his imagination, hasn't lost the image of a once gloriously happy smile turning into a sad one as he says his farewell. He writes letters to her every day, this girl that he never really had the courage to talk to properly. He doesn't know whether he regrets that or not. He probably does but doesn't spend time dwelling on it.
His friends makes sure of that, offering him drinks and pulling him away to tell him stories or make fun of his interest in literature, poems and famous authors. He's not offended by it, instead answers with a line or two from one of his favourites and basks in the bliss that is their confusion. It only keeps up until their next mission.
Cape Gloucester is an island born out of Mother Nature's unquenchable anger towards the humankind. It almost were a kind of a bless in the beginning with the rain keeping the mosquitoes away but they soon learned that it was just another trick, one to drive them away and keep them away. It takes its toll on them, even on Chuckler who's the ever optimist while Leckie himself is the realist.
Chuckler quiets down and frowns more often than he smiles.
It takes to see Gibson strangle a dying Jap for Leckie himself to lose his shit. It takes to see Lebec kill himself in the dead of night, rain thumping heavily against the few tents, for Leckie to accept that he probably won't survive this war.
He cries in his sleep sometimes when he's sure no one will hear him. His feet are cold and rotten, numb lumps on the end of his legs. He suddenly understands Lebec's train of thought. Almost thinks of doing the same only they are being shipped back to a place called Pavuvu to get some rest the next day and he forgets everything he was thinking about.
"At least there'll be no rain there." Chuckler jokes half-heartedly.
"But it's still no Melbourne." There's no argument to that.
Gloucester has taken its toll in more ways than mentally. Leckie is stricken with enuresis, one of the more embarrassing sicknesses that make him piss his pants at night when he sleeps. It starts with a pain in his abdomen at day and at night he usually wakes up with a gasp only to find that the moistness of his bed is not caused by the humid air around him.
He tries to stay awake. He spends the nights with Hoosier on the beach, passing a cigarette back and forth and Hoosier actually makes an effort to understand what it is that Leckie finds so interesting in books.
"There's a quote in one of them fancy poems you think suits me?" Hoosier mumbles one night, sharp eyes focused on one of the thousands of stars illuminating the night sky like diamonds spread over black silk. Leckie doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's spent some time trying to find something to describe Hoosier and his slouching shoulders to mask the hidden fierceness. He does not try to hide the fact that he hasn't come up with anything either.
"It would have been easier if you weren't such a nutcase." He snatches the cigarette from between Hoosier's lips and tries to ignore the slight pulling at his lips when Hoosier turns to glare at him, eyes blazing in the dark.
"My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view that it breaks out, in spite of me every now and then." It's a whisper, a silent caress that takes him by surprise more than anything.
"You know Lord Byron?" Hoosier uses this momentum to snatch his cigarette back, fiddling with it for a while and smiles lazily down at it.
"I can read you know." Leckie snorts.
"I guess there's much more to you than meets the eye."
"If you'd paid enough of attention you would have noticed."
After that he does start to notice, does pay more of attention. He notices torn out pages Hoosier keeps with him in his pocket all the time that he sometimes takes out to read.
He notices the way Hoosier perks up a little bit every time Leckie is about to read something he has written and how he stares intently at the side of his neck.
It's all such small things, things that really shouldn't matter, things that make his feelings change into something forbidden but yet something so many others feel, and it leads to him forgetting something. He no longer dreams of silky brown hair and gentle blue eyes. He dreams of mud, of blue eyes as sharp as the owner's wit, of short dirty blonde hair and of calloused fingers that are strong but yet so gentle when they run through the fur of a scared dog when they're buried underground and bombs are falling down all around them, silently whispering into the darkness that it's going to be okay. That it's okay.
That he's okay.