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The harsh wind nips at the skin of his nose, red and raw from the cold. He can hear Edward shivering more than he can see or feel it, and he tries to ignore it in hopes that it’ll make him forget how cold he himself is. Eugene is past the point of shivering or goosebumps, he’s the numb kind of cold, where he knows he can feel it, but his body can’t be bothered by it; exposed too much to the cold that he’s almost used to it. He simultaneously finds it hard to believe and incredibly typical for them not to have sent them warmer clothes for the sudden winter they were thrusted into, not restocking anything, leaving them to fend for themselves.
His eyes have adjusted enough that he can see Edward shift and roll around, evidently trying to get warm but ultimately failing, just like Eugene, just like everyone else in Easy. Eugene thinks they’re supposed to be on watch, but they’re both awake, and both not enough in their skin to fully adhere to the position.
Beside him, Edward’s teeth start to chatter. It’s loud in the quiet of the night, and if Eugene weren’t so cold himself, he would probably find himself annoyed by it. Instead, he feels bad.
Eventually, Eugene can’t take it anymore.
“Edward,” he says, quiet, as though not to let anyone in a nearby foxhole hear them. When Edward does nothing, he bites out, “ Heffron .”
“Gene?” Edward asks, rolling over. He’s pink in the nose and pale in the face, lips a shade of purple that’s concerning to Eugene. He just looks up at Eugene, trembling, and Eugene can’t just let him freeze to death.
“For the love of God, come here, would ya? You’re going to get hypothermia.” He lifts the blanket a bit, even though they’re already sharing.
“Are those doctor’s orders?” Edward asks, still witty despite how his teeth chatter through the statement. Eugene must give him one of his looks because almost instantaneously, Edward crawls under his arm. He tucks his head under Eugene’s chin, his icy auburn hair tickling the cold-sensitive skin. He relaxes into Eugene, his shakes slowing to trembles within a few minutes.
“Y’alright?” Edward doesn’t say anything. “Edward?”
“Babe,” he corrects.
“Babe,” Eugene repeats, with some reluctance. He’s still not used to the whole nickname thing. “Are you alright?”
“M’better than I was five minutes ago.” Edward’s nose is icy where he presses it to the dip of Eugene’s neck, kept slightly warmer than the rest of his skin due to the collar of his uniform.
It’s not that they’re never done this, because they’ve done this for the past few weeks they’ve been here; everyone’s done it, favouring the slightest semblance of comfort and body warmth over the cold snowy ground any day. Except it’s different this time, because it’s just him and Edward, not him, Edward, and any other shivering soldier that seeks warmth, and they’re not just huddled together, they’re aligned pretty much head to toe, legs tangled, arms around each other. It feels different this time.
See, everything’s been weird for them lately since that day Eugene wrapped up Edward’s hand. They’ve been closer, it seems. Maybe it’s less that they’re closer and more that Eugene can’t get rid of him. Not that he’s complaining. Edward is good company; he’s funny and caring and an absolute shit-disturber. He’s a good fighter, but he’s still got a decent amount of humanity about him, which is something the average soldier severely lacks. He supposes that he’s just not used to being around another person this much. Eugene doesn’t really get to know the others. He knows everyone in Easy, he’s patched most of them up at least once, and they all greet him with Hey, Doc , whenever they see him, but he doesn’t know them.
He knows Edward, though.
Maybe not as much as he would like, but he still knows him better than he knows anyone else in Easy.
“Jeez,” Edward huffs out, hands tightening in the back of Eugene’s uniform. “I’ll die from freezing solid before a Kraut gets me.”
“It’s virtually impossible to freeze solid,” Eugene tells him. “You can freeze to death , that only takes maybe, ten minutes or so if you’ve got hypothermia, but freezing solid, well, that’s something else. The closest thing to freezin’ solid is frostbite, and the only reason the dead bodies freeze solid is ‘cause they ain’t movin’, and--” he cuts himself off when he sees that Edward is looking up at him in distaste. “Too much?”
“Just take he fucking sentiment away from it, alright, Gene?” Edward huffs, breath coming out as a white puff before he tucks back into Eugene’s throat. “I know you’re a medic,” he says, muffled by Eugene, “but let me make medically inaccurate statements here and there. For the good of my health.”
Eugene opens up his mouth to say something, but closes it upon thinking over what he’d planned to respond with. He just nods, hopes Edward can feel it. “Try and catch some shuteye,” he says finally. No response.
“Fuck,” Edward says after a while. Eugene though he might have been sleeping, since he was so quiet and unmoving. Hell, he even thought that he could maybe fall asleep if he tried hard enough. But he didn’t. Eugene is tired, he’s been tired, having gone for a few days with nothing more than an hour in change in between, but he just can’t. Besides, they’re supposed to have someone on watch anyways, even though all the Krauts are doing is sending mortars that explode in the trees, so as long as they’re in their holes, no one is going to die. “My face is so cold. I feel like my lips are going to fall off.” Edwards burrows further into him, and Eugene can feel his lips, cold, parted, breathing warm air into the space where his neck meets his shoulder, creating moisture on the skin, but he tries to ignore it for the sake of his wellness. “How the hell are you so warm?”
“Don’t feel warm,” Eugene supplies, his arms tightening around Edward.
“Feel pretty warm to me,” he says. Before Eugene even realizes what’s happening, Edward’s cold hands are on his stomach. “You are warm.”
“Fuck!” Eugene curses, recoiling from the cold touch. “You’re freezing .”
“Well, yeah,” Edward says, like it’s obvious. “Gene, it’s negative twenty and I’m out here in my uniform without anything made for this weather, lying in the snow, shaking in my boots and trying to scout out Germans that just won’t come. Of course I’m fucking freezin’. But you’re not . Don’t feel like it, at least. Don’t really look like it, beside your nose. I feel like this is unfair--”
Eugene really isn’t thinking when he kisses Edward. It’s nothing serious, just a dry, closed-mouth kiss, just to make him shut up for once.
To be completely fair to Eugene, he’s sleep deprived beyond recognition, and he’s not really there enough to tell himself that no, this is a bad idea, because he’s in an alright rank. He doesn’t want to get court martialed. Bad ideas aside, it does, however, make Edward shut up. When he pulls away, Edward is looking at him with wide eyes. He matches that with an uninterested look.
“Did you just?” but Edward can’t finish.
“You talk too much.” Eugene tries to cover up the fact that he feels like he’s going to die by putting on the tone of voice that he does only when he tries to make things that aren’t normal seem that way. “I mean, sorry if I offended you--”
“Do it again.”
Well. This is certainly an outcome that Eugene did not expect. “Babe, what .”
“Do it again. Like I said, my mouth is freezing.” Cheeky fucking bastard. But what is Eugene going to do? Say no?
He’s not wrong about his mouth being freezing. Somewhere in the back of Eugene’s head he thinks this must be what it’s like to make out with an ice block. He pushes the thought aside in favour of kissing Edward deeper, pushing into where he is warm. Edward’s hands are still cold where they find themselves at Eugene’s neck, thumbs tracing over his jaw and cheeks, which he can hardly feel through the numb cold seeping through his bones, but the sentiment of it is nice.
“Even your mouth is warm,” Edward says when he pulls away and Eugene is sufficiently done for the night.
“Go to sleep, Heffron.”
Edward grins a shit-eating grin, lifting a hand to do a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
(And from then on out, Eugene never shares his foxhole with anyone but Edward, but only because he’s good company, and not because he likes the way that Edward peers up at him from under his eyelashes when he wants to be kissed. Not at all.)