It's the scent that undoes Engineer, that amalgamated scentof eucalyptus, hot coffee and fresh sweat permeating his red shirt, that makes his naked back arch and his mouth fall open in a silent shout as he comes into his gloved, greasy hands.
His world is a beautiful, peaceful world, a world that's always gloriously sunny and everyone's happy and having fun and making friends and, sshh, no, no, they're laughing, they're happy and there's no such thing as fire here, no such thing at all so he'll be safe here, everyone's safe here, he's sure of it.
Heavy stopped counting the number of times he's heard the three words from Medic at least seven years ago, but even now, with their hair white as snow, their skin and bodies paler, frailer and their days slower and quieter, those words move him still, and always will.
He doesn't like these dafty bastirts in white who think he's a bampot - he's not one, they are - and take away his Scrumpy and replace it with little colorful things they force him to eat, he doesn't like them at all and he'll show them he's right about that bedeviled monster, soon as he gets out of this bloody jacket with its bloody belts!
When Sniper's fingers touched the hem of his balaclava, he cursed his traitorous body even as it stiffened and shuddered, just once, and his breath snagged in his throat as his mask was whipped off and merde, Sniper could see his face now and look at the savage bushman staring at him like that, staring and ... oh merde, smiling so damn beatifically like that.
Scout is yelling at him to get lost, to get his 'stinking helmet head' out of sight, but he's already seen the damp trails on Scout's boyish face and he sits down next to Scout on the grass anyway, saying nothing as Scout surreptitiously rubs red eyes, thinking about a young, foolish soldier who'd cried about his dead old man, too, in the heart of wintry Poland.
Medic's Sandviches were the best Sandviches to Heavy, for the special ingredient in them that Heavy reveled in most was Medic's thought of them while making said Sandviches, of the first time they shared a Sandvich in battle, the first time they shared a Sandvich in bed and now, the first time they're sharing a Sandvich on the porch of their newly purchased bungalow by the lake, home at last.