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sergeant-spoons · 1 year

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19. Maytime Mire

Sutton Flynn-Marshall

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"Agent! Agent, a-hey!"

Turning against the mild May wind as it swept pollen and tree seedlings across her socked ankles and shoed feet, Sutton searched for the voice calling to her and found it attached to a waving hand and a beaming smile. Her own lips started to turn up. Her friend recognized she'd seen him and threw his second hand up to join the first, both flailing toward the sky.

"There she is! My favorite magician!"

"Lewis!"

They hastened across the platform toward each other, dodging the sparse couplets and quintets dotting the interim. Sutton set one of her two suitcases down on either side of her and moved to shake her friend's hand, but Nix grabbed the handle of the second case, shoved it to the ground, and pulled her into a hug instead. She tensed up for a moment, then relaxed and wrapped her arms around him in return.

"This alright?" he mumbled against the collar of her blouse, and she smiled into the warm breeze.

"Yes, it's alright."

After a time, they parted, and belatedly, Sutton laughed.

"Your favorite magician?"

"I've never seen a better vanishing act than yours," he teased, and though she blushed, she knew he didn't mean it as a jibe.

"Ha-ha, very funny. Well, I'm back now, and though I'm not sure for how long-"

"Don't say that," he cut her off, smoothing down her shoulders. "You've only just come back. Don't talk about leaving again so soon."

"Alright, I won't. But I will say one thing, about something else entirely."

"Go for it."

Beaming, Sutton gestured toward the sunny sky and the green-leafed trees all around.

"It's almost Summer! Can you believe it?"

"Somehow, I can," he chuckled, picking up both of her suitcases despite her bashful protests. "Hey, I promised Dick I'd be a gentleman since he couldn't be here himself, so just let me do this, alright?"

For a moment, Sutton could only gape, then had to shake her head to awaken herself from tumbling feelings and regain her senses. She scampered down the steps after her friend, apologizing for the delay, but he only hummed and smiled, unaffected. He heaved her luggage into the backseat of the jeep—she was touched to realize he'd made a point of coming to get her from the station himself—then went around and opened the passenger-side door for Sutton. She thanked him and settled in, and it was only when he was backing out, looking over his shoulder with his face turned partially towards her, that she noticed he was smirking.

"Lewis?"

"Mmm?"

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, it's just what I said about promising Dick."

Sutton's blush deepened and she dropped her gaze to her lap.

"What about that?" she asked a bit too hurriedly, and when Nix's smirk grew, she hurriedly corrected, "I mean, it was very kind of him. I'll be sure to thank him once we're back."

"Oh, but that's the funny bit," he chuckled as he pulled out of the lot, and they both felt the jeep bump as it dipped from the gravelly pavement onto the dirt road.

"Why?"

"Because there's a plausible chance I may have made that all up just to see how you'd react."

Sutton drew in a strangled gasp, but her friend was already laughing.

"Lewis Nixon!" she exclaimed, swatting his arm, and he balked, exaggerating his astonishment.

"Excuse me, Agent, but I am trying to drive here."

"Then quit the dramatics and drive!"

He laughed and reached over to turn up the radio. They drove in peace for a few minutes, but Nix kept glancing over at Sutton in the passenger seat and doing an awful job of hiding it. Finally, she gave up on Frank Sinatra and turned her torso his way, mildly frowning.

"Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"You're in such a good mood," he said, returning his gaze to the road. "It's nice to see. Even if you... Well."

"Even if I what?"

He wavered, but when she touched his arm with a gentle hand, he sighed and relented.

"Even if you look tired."

"Ah."

"Don't get me wrong—you look good," he insisted, "but... tired."

"It's been a long month," she told him honestly. "Long and busy."

"Tell me about it."

He meant that both as a genuine request and as an expression of shared experience, and she appreciated the duality enough to agree to the former.

"I will," she promised, "once we're behind closed doors."

"Consider it a done deal. In the meantime-" He shrugged, glancing briefly into the rearview mirror and speeding up a few kilometers. "-anything you'd like me to fill you in on?"

"Anything and everything," she answered eagerly, needed to consciously still her foot from tapping where she sat. "What have I missed?"

"Well, Harry's been getting loads of letters from Kitty, as you might imagine. He gets talking about how she was the belle of the ball at some USO dance back home and then immediately goes into whining about how unfair it is that he couldn't be there to dance with her."

"The Prince Charming to her Cinderella," Sutton sighed fondly, and Nix made a face.

"Not really."

"Oh?"

"They didn't get engaged the same night they met, for one," he teased, "and he certainly didn't have to track her down by—God forbid—her shoe size."

Sutton laughed. "When you put it that way..."

"Yep. Alright, what else?" Nix tapped the steering wheel with his pointer finger, then hmmed and spoke again. "Dick got a fine during a combat exercise last week."

"He didn't!" Sutton gasped. "What for?"

"Let's see, what was it?" Nix chuckled, then put his shoulders back and assumed a slightly pompous voice. "'By order of General Taylor, you, Lieutenant Richard D. Winters, are charged a fine of $25 dollars for 'failure during a recent condition of simulated combat to require a man under my command to wear a helmet'."

Sutton laughed freely, her face and hair gleaming in the sunshine. Nix took a moment to look at her, confident in his bearing down the straight road ahead. If the agent's fair hair wasn't tied up behind her head, it would be flowing in the wind billowing around the jeep, and it would look nice, he thought. Dick would consider it better than nice if he were here, if her hair was loose like that. Maybe he'd even say so, maybe he'd brush a rogue lock off his cheek from where he'd sit in the back seat. Nix felt a little silly imagining such a thing as a third party, but he wasn't sure he could really blame himself—months and months of secretive looks and blushes and lingering touches with nothing to show for it was driving him a little crazy. His two best friends were in love and yet they remained static, even sedentary, towards one another.

"Of course, you memorized it," Sutton teased, recalling the formal statement about Dick's fine, and at the sound of her voice, Nix jolted back into the present.

"Of course," he echoed, smiling breezily. "Would you expect any less from me?" Before she could respond, he frowned and added, "Hold on, lemme pull over for a second—this jackass is right on my bumper-"

He yanked at the wheel and pulled over, and the idiot tailgating them sped on past without sparing them a glance. He was clearly heading for the base, too, which was signified not only by the direction of his travel but the jeep he drove, emblazoned with a white star, identical to Nix and Sutton's vehicle. As he pulled back onto the road, Nix shook his head and gave a low, unimpressed whistle.

"These drivers. Sonuvabitch."

"That was a driver?" Sutton asked incredulously, looking at her friend before squinting at the dust far down the road ahead of them. "You mean to say officers trust that maniac behind the wheel to take them places?"

"Oh, yeah. And he'll get away with it, you know. As soon as he gets close enough for the colonel to smell the gas fumes, he's suddenly the perfect motorist."

"Reckless moron."

"Hey, you said it, not me."

They arrived at the base before long—Swindon was only a twenty-minute drive out from Aldbourne, after all—and Nix let Sutton out at the front steps of Battalion CP, saying he'd meet her inside. The old building hadn't changed physically since she left a month prior, but there was something about the change between April and May that made it seem friendlier to her eyes today. Perhaps it was the friends waiting for her inside. Indeed, she'd only just come into the breakroom at the front of the building and set down her suitcases when Harry waltzed into the room with his usual toothy grin.

"I thought that was you Nixon was calling to outside!" he cried and promptly swept Sutton up in a hug. Laughing, she pushed at his chest and told him to put her down, and he did, but that didn't stop him from smiling at her from ear to ear.

"God, am I glad to have you back," he sighed, looking her up and down as if convincing himself she was really there before him. "Finally, some good news after this whole court-martial business."

Sutton's smile dimmed ever so slightly, then Harry winced and it wilted.

"The... Come again?"

"It's Sobel," said an apologetically grimacing Nix as he came around the corner, an empty mug in one hand and the day's newspaper in the other, the jeep's keys dangling off his ring finger. "He's got a bogus court-martial against Dick. Happened a week after you left."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He smiled ruefully and set the paper down on the coffee table as he passed it (and her) by.

"You were so cheerful on the drive over and I didn't want to spoil it..."

Trying to keep her cool, Sutton glanced aside, blinking and licking her lips as she took a moment to think.

"Why?" she asked abruptly. "Why the court-martial?"

Nix turned away to get his coffee, leaving the answer to Harry, who, to Sutton's surprise, cracked a small smile.

"A few of the boys in Easy pulled a fast one on the good captain."

"'Good' isn't exactly the word I'd choose," Nix muttered from his position by the coffee pot.

"And Sobel blamed Dick?"

"Yup. So now Dick's stuck in Battalion Mess-"

"What?" Sutton gasped, but Harry gloomily persisted.

"-Sink's put me in here full-time—s'pose it's so I'm out of Sobel's periphery—and Nix is, well..."

Nixon raised his now-steaming mug in a sort of toast. "Supposed to be here, one way or another."

"But Dick assigned to mess—what were they thinking?"

"I know," Nix grimly agreed, "it's ridiculous."

"It's a mockery!" Sutton pinched the bridge of her nose. "Good lord."

"But, hey, welcome back." Nix flashed a crooked grin, but even his snark was missing its usual dry humor. "I don't suppose you've missed us much."

Realizing she'd been staring up the staircase towards Dick's old office, Sutton pinkened.

"Of course, I have," she reassured, turning back to her friends, "but I wouldn't have wanted you there with me."

Harry gasped, exaggerating how much she'd offended him. "Why not?!"

She gave him a meaningful look.

"You know as well as I do, Harry, that the less time you spend out there, the more chance you'll come through this war alive."

"'Out there'?"

"Later—now tell me more about this court-martial gimmick."

"Not here," Nixon advised, glancing up the stairwell as it began to creak with the telltale signs of incoming parties. "How about your office, Harry?"

"Why mine?"

"Because Sobel's been looking for me, and if I'm not in my office, he can't find me there."

"Sound logic," Sutton agreed before Harry could protest, looping her arm around his. "I'll walk there with you, then go and get my things from my office and bring them over. We can work and talk in tandem."

Nix grimaced. "You've got a lot to catch up on, then?"

Sutton dipped her head and hummed a muted reply, but from her, that was as good as any admission of expected weariness from the work days ahead.

Once they were all settled in Harry's office with the door shut against the world, Sutton surrounded herself with paperwork and prepared her listening ears. As promised, her friends started to fill her in on the details of the court-martial, and the more she realized what was going on, the angrier she became. Nix was quick to notice, but he did not dissuade her, watching how tersely she dealt with report after letter after form after telegram, lashing each into its respective, brutally neat pile. Harry saw, too, and offered to go get Sutton a coffee, but as soon as he touched the door handle, he jumped back, mumbling thinly that Sobel was pacing right outside. The trio lowered their voices but still were careful to speak only of work. Harry came over to Sutton and helped her with what he could; though she was initially grateful, she was a thousand times more so when he accidentally let slip that he and Nix had 'borrowed' a substantial percentage of her work and completed it for her while she was away. The footsteps outside continued, repetitive and sharp, and it was not long before Sutton abruptly rose, snapped shut the manilla folder in her hand, and turned to stare at the door. Harry and Nix shared a look of mixed surprise, concern, and (admittedly) anticipated thrill. Angry Sutton was not a Sutton they'd ever seen before, and if they had to guess, she would no doubt prove a force to be reckoned with.

"What in the bloody hell is he doing?"

"Trying to find me, I’d bet," Nix said with a shrug that was trying to be nonchalant but came off far too stiff to be convincing. "Ever since Dick got court-martialed-"

There was that word again, and there went Sutton's blood, boiling.

"-he's been after me like a hound to a rabbit."

Harry hesitated.

"Ah, Ambry-"

But it was too late: Sutton was already flinging open the door.

"Captain?" she said, and the pair behind her knew her well enough to know she was doing everything in her power to maintain a neutral tone. "Would you mind pacing somewhere else? There are many offices on this floor, and-"

"Yes, yes, I know," they heard Sobel interrupt, and Harry imagined Sobel waving his hand flippantly while Nix pictured him squinting haughtily at Sutton. "Where's Lieutenant Nixon?"

Nix up and bolted behind Harry's desk, but Sutton hadn't missed a beat, already replying that she hadn't seen the lieutenant all day.

"And if you wouldn't mind, sir," she added, her patience audibly waning, "I've got quite a lot of work to finish today, and-"

"Your work can wait," Sobel demanded. "Find Lieutenant Nixon, Agent—that's an order."

A beat, then:

"Captain, you misunderstand—I am under no provision to follow your orders."

Harry choked on his coffee. Nix almost hit his head on the desk from how fast he stood up. They gaped at each other, then at the door, and almost comedically, they started moving at the same time.

"What?" Sobel asked, and he sounded unnaturally strangled as if he'd choked on his disbelief.

"You have no jurisdiction over my work, nor anything else I do."

"What in the hell do you think you-"

"I work jointly for Colonel Sink and the office in London and that's all-"

"That's all?!"

"-and, if you don't mind my reminding you, sir-"

She was speaking tersely now, no longer caring to filter her ill will toward the captain; Sobel, gloriously, could only splutter along.

"-only one of us works—and has a place—in this building."

Sobel's boot snapped against the floorboards and Nix tensed, imagining Sutton's flinch—how easily that could have been a hand against a cheek.

"Mind your place, woman!" barked the detested party; despite such untoward hostility, Sutton did not miss a beat.

"No, sir, I don't think I will."

Harry had already gotten as close as he could to the half-open door, and now even Nix 'the rabbit' couldn't resist. They'd never heard Sutton like this, not even remotely, not even when Lt. Snider was so vulgar towards her shortly before she left (an interaction that, Nix had a hunch, still bothered Dick on the daily). Harry made sure to keep Nix at least a little behind him and out of Sobel's view, but now they could see the scene unfolding in the hall, and what a scene it was. Sutton was standing with her folder pressed tightly to her stomach, the material bending and creasing in the center as well as the edges where Sutton's fingers gripped it. Her knuckles were white and her hands were shaking, but fortunately, Sobel didn't seem to realize this. And Sobel—my, my, the sight was priceless. He was standing there, his fists clenching and unclenching as he gaped at this woman unlike any he'd ever met before. Best of all was the visual of Sutton almost looming over the captain, despite her being only an inch or so taller, and only thanks to the raised heels of her shoes.

"Captain, I have work to do, so either you must agree to pace somewhere else or, even better, vacate the premises entirely."

"You cannot order me around!" he snarled, and Harry and Nix were both quite impressed when Sutton didn't move a muscle.

"I'm not trying to, Captain, I'm merely offering a suggestion that would benefit us both."

"Don't you dare speak to me like I'm-"

"Not my superior?”

Nix tripped over a potted plant and went sprawling, and Sobel, as luck would have it, caught sight of not him but Harry through the cracked door. There was no point in shutting him out, so Harry just froze where he was, but as soon as Sobel started toward the office, Sutton matched his step and blocked his way. He tried twice more only to be driven back each time, and then he started spewing profanities. By the time he called her an "ungrateful bitch", Harry was ready to start swinging, but Sutton didn't need his help.

"You'll lodge a formal complaint?" she asked, repeating Sobel's threat as if it were nothing instead of a serious something that could easily have her removed from the Airborne. "Really?"

"I will, I will, and you'll never-"

"Knock yourself out, Captain."

Undoubtedly, he had not expected such a response, but to be fair neither had Harry or Nix (the latter of whom had returned to the door now that he'd dusted most of the potting soil off his slacks). Sobel shook his fists, stunned into speechlessness by rage and resentment, and Sutton took the chance to continue her almost-taunt.

"Why not make it a court-martial, while you're at it? Though perhaps you should try to spell the word right, this time, sir."

Sutton had moved the folder behind her back, and Harry could see that her hands were shaking far more violently now that Sobel couldn't see them. The captain gaped and Sutton kept speaking as if her friends couldn't see now that she'd been terrified all along.

"I believe it's M-A-R-T-"

He was storming off before she could finish, but that was all for the better, surely. As soon as he was gone, she stumbled back into the office and shut the door by backing into it, her clammy palms flat against the wood. Harry and Nix were back to sitting on the couch, acting like they'd been occupied with paperwork this whole time but doing a poor job of convincing Sutton, ever observant, who could easily tell they were alternating between the same two pages without making any sort of notation or alteration. Sobel was gone, but his very real threats remained, and she sagged against the door, shaking.

"Bastard," she whispered into the silence, flexing her fingers, and turned her head aside to hide how she was tearing up. Safe to say, confrontation with figures of authority terrified her. She was so used to argumentative interactions ending in physical pain that she thought it a pleasant surprise whenever harsh words were the only attack made. Still, as she stood there against the door, she knew she was close to shutting down and isolating herself in her mind to hide from the creeping dark. She looked at Nix and he understood in a heartbeat. He clapped once, and the shock of it helped, but it wasn't enough.

"So, Sutton-" Nix rose from his awkward position on the couch, gallantly crossing to fetch his now-cold coffee and purposefully stomping his way across the room so the sound would register with her. "-what were you doing away, and why'd you stay there so long? Enlighten us."

"What?" she asked, afraid of his voice and how it sounded blurry to her ears.

"When you left us right before they kicked this whole operation up a notch," he repeated patiently and a bit loudly, trying to draw her out of her own head, "where'd you go?"

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"I..."

Sutton took a deep breath and blinked a few times; once she could see and hear again without the muffling veil of panic covering her ears and eyes, a path was cleared for her to reply.

"I can't tell you."

He shot her a skeptical (but still soft) look. "But you told me you would! When I picked you up from the train station!"

"Oh..."

"Hey, I used good gas money to come and get you," he teased, careful to keep his tone light so his jesting was clear. Still, Sutton reddened, and Nix was on the cusp of explaining he was only kidding when she sank back onto the couch beside Harry and gave a single, slow nod.

"I should tell you," she said softly. "You've been such good friends to me, it's the least I can do."

"Exactly," Harry said. "What are friends for but to share top-secret espionage missions with?"

Sutton started to laugh, and it was a relief to all, but then the door opened and the three lieutenants froze.

"Nix, Sobel's been looking for you."

"And I've been avoiding him," Nix replied matter-of-factly, waving for Dick to come in, but the ginger poking his head in the door didn't see, having gone still as a reed on a windless day as soon as he laid eyes on Sutton.

He could hardly fathom his relief to have her back.

Not that he could show it, of course, or tell her how his heart had that strange tendency to start doing flips in his chest whenever she walked in the room, or ask her if she might think he was a good man, someone she could trust—and now she was staring at him. Shit—he must have been staring first.

Sutton raised her hand in a tentative way. As Dick came fully into the room, she rose from the couch, and before he could stop himself, he asked if he could hug her.

"Well, hello to you, too," muttered Nix, but only Harry seemed to hear.

"Hug...?"

Sutton considered the offer for a moment as if it had caught her off-guard; then, blushing, she opened her arms and let Dick draw her into his embrace.

"Why?" she asked softly as they stood there for longer than they needed to, longer than they should have, both of them loathe to let go.

There wasn't much to tell her but the truth, so that's exactly what he did.

"I missed you," he whispered, his breath tickling her ear, "and I'm glad you're back."

Nix and Harry, meanwhile, muttered amongst themselves, pretending not to see despite the grins they tried to hide.

Realizing they'd spent too long together, Sutton and Dick hastily stepped apart, each tugging on a different part of their outfit, Sutton the hem of her blouse and Dick the loops of his suspenders. Sutton retreated to the couch, avoiding any and all eye contact, and Harry patted his knees conclusively.

"Well, anyhow," he proclaimed, "what were you gonna tell us about your occupation this past month, Ambry?"

That drew a small laugh out of Sutton, though the others didn't understand why until she said a bit meekly, "I know you didn't mean it that way, but 'occupation' is spot-on, Harry."

Her friends blinked at her for a beat, and she cleared her throat, refocusing.

"They've told you about Operation Overlord, haven't they?"

Nix perked up, and before Dick confirmed, "Yes, just a few days ago," he glanced over his shoulder out the doorway lest Sobel swung by again to get the last word in and overheard.

"Overlord?" Harry asked at an unconcernedly normal volume, quirking a brow. "What about it?"

Sutton opened her mouth, then shut it, watching Sergeant Harris—a man she'd only met once or twice and did not know nearly well enough to trust with something like this—pass by.

"Would you shut the door, Dick?"

He did so, then obeyed again when she beckoned him over. He and Nix pulled up chairs to face her and Harry on the couch, and they convened in a conspiratorial, compact diamond.

"Lewis, I'm sure you've heard about Operation Bodyguard?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, "but not much. Something about information gathering, right?"

"The overall purpose was deception, but yes, reconnaissance was part of it. I was called up by my superiors in the SIS to be a part of Bodyguard. I spent a month in... occupied territory."

"Alone?"

"In some ways, yes; in others, no. I've never been a part of anything like it, what we had out there—the scale of our network was unbelievable."

Her eyes began to gleam as she spoke, and her friends were intrigued—according to the nature of her work, she did not often get to speak of it, but they could see even from this small recounting that her duties mattered to her greatly, and despite its secrecy, she was proud of her service.

"I saw an old friend in France," she went on to mention, glancing toward the shuttered window into the middle distance. "I think it's fair to call him a friend. We trained together before I went to Austria and he left for Holland."

"That's nice," Nix mumbled, but she could tell he was focusing on something else she'd let slip. "You said France?"

This was notable; she hadn't mentioned the country of her deployment up until this point, and such information—not yet provided by their superiors—could prove vital in figuring out exactly what their imminent action as a company, a regiment, or even the whole infantry was to be.

Well aware of the significance of the name drop, Harry piped up, echoing Nix—

"France? It's France?"

—but Sutton hesitated and fell silent. After a few seconds, she dipped her chin, leaned in closer, and lowered her voice. The others did the same.

"You must pretend you didn't hear this from me," she insisted, "but yes. Our target for invasion is France."

"Invasion?" Harry yelped, and the others immediately looked toward the door as if expecting to see some malevolent silhouette eavesdropping there.

"Keep your voice down!" she protested, going a little pale. "What I'm about to tell you toes the line of what I can or can't say—it could be my head if any one of us says too much too soon. Promise me you won't speak a word of this outside this room—not until they tell you directly?"

She looked between her friends, smoothing her hands anxiously over her knees.

"Harry? Lewis?" A beat. "Dick?"

Though it did not go unnoticed by any of them that her gaze lingered on Dick the longest, they all swore to it without a second thought.

"Alright. Here's what I know: Operation Overlord's going to be the biggest Allied operation of the war."

"So far?"

"So far," she amended, though that hardly dented the gravitas of her initial appraisal.

"You really think so?"

"I know so," she confirmed to Dick, who'd asked. "I've never seen so many spies sent into one country all at the same time. When you lose one, that tends to be the end of that source—it's a dead end, you can't send someone else in without a high risk of getting them caught, too. This time, it was different." She glanced toward the ceiling, then the far wall, then the floor. "We lost a few—we always do—but it hardly disrupted the line of communication. That's how many of us there were."

Nix, who'd sat drumming his hand on the arm of his chair, now sat up and gestured at her, speaking the thought as it came:

"So you think Operation Bodyguard is a precursor to Overlord?"

"Was a precursor," Sutton agreed. "It's almost done. They've been pulling us out in waves. I was one of the last."

Nix and Dick shared a sober look. Harry, still processing, just blinked at Sutton, and she patted his leg. Nix was the first to speak again.

"If it's almost done, that can only mean..."

"Overlord's about to begin."

Sutton curled her fingers over her knees so no one could see them shake. The fabric of her skirt bunched and wrinkled where she gripped it, but none of her friends took notice, focused on her foreboding smile.

"It's only a matter of time."

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*All credits for screencaps of Nixon and Winters go to the lovely @tvserie-s-world. 💕

**Wow, this chapter sure got out of hand - almost 5k! - but that’s right folks, we’re almost to Normandy... War awaits.

#sutton flynn-marshall #sutton flynn-marshall ficlet #sutton flynn-marshall 19: maytime mire #band of brothers #cobblestones #dick winters #band of brothers ficlet #band of brothers oc #band of brothers oc ficlet #hbo war show #hbo war show oc #hbo war show oc ficlet #hbo war show ficlet #dick winters x ocs #dick winters x oc

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