#honestly shocked tumblr let me upload the moodboard with all the rain

[softguarnere]

Like A Girl (Like A Man)

Shifty Powers x OFC

Chapter 6: Nothing to Hide

Summary: Zenie swallows the lump in her throat and nods. “Could have been worse.”

Warnings: language

A/N: Ya girl has been in a Mood™️ today, and since I have a feeling that the storm is gonna knock out my wifi, have another early LAGLAM update, on the house 😉

Taglist: @liebgotts-lovergirl @latibvles @lieutenant-speirs

March, 1943 – Camp Mackall, NC

Liebgott is the best at cutting hair and his prices are fair. If you’re a paratrooper and you want your hair cut and you want it cut right, then he’s your man. He’ll throw around jokes, talk about camp drama if that’s your style. And if not, he’ll work quickly and quietly through the silence without complaint.

They never talk while he cuts Zenie’s hair. This is mostly on her, because ever since that day in Toccoa when he accused her of being “performance shy”, she swears that every time he looks at her he sees straight through her disguise. She wants a good haircut. What she doesn’t want is for her observant barber to hear her voice up close and realize that – despite all her practice and effort – it’s probably more feminine than it should be.

He's close to being done and Zenie is counting down the minutes. Liebgott might be a nice guy to joke around with under different circumstances, but she’d rather get back to her friends, who are less observant.

Behind her, Liebgott sucks in a breath, and she’s worried that he’s about to say something when Luz rounds the corner, fiddling with what appears to be a stack of papers.

He smiles. It’s duller than usual. “Hey ho, Tommy Boy!”

“Hiya Luz. Watchya got there?”

The radioman looks down, his mouth dropping into an O of shock. Then he smirks. “Oh, this old thing? Just some maps that I’m helping the Black Swan misplace.”

Liebgott snorts, his hands still preoccupied with Zenie’s hair. “Plain sight is the best hiding place. I’d try slipping them into Regimental HQ.”

“Or the kitchens,” Zenie suggests. “He spends a lot of time in there.”

Luz taps his nose. “Those are both good. We have that field exercise tomorrow, and I don’t want him to find them before then.”

“Put ‘em under his own mattress,” Zenie jokes, thinking about the hiding place she used back in Toccoa. No one ever looked under or in her mattress until Eugene started helping her. And who would think to look under their own mattress for missing maps?

The laugh that escapes Luz isn’t as jolly as it usually is. It’s offkey, sour. “Yeah, that’d be some sort of poetic justice.”

Liebgott’s hands pause. “How?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Obviously not.”

Luz tilts his head, motioning for them to follow him as he shoves the maps into his pocket. Zenie turns to Liebgott, whose eyebrows are drawn in a way that must mirror her own. He gives her a pat on the shoulder and says, “You’re all through, Tommy” before they follow George away.

“Holy shit,” Liebgott says when they step into the barracks.

“Holy shit,” Zenie echoes. Her stomach drops at the sight before her.

The barracks look as if a tornado has swept through them. Mattresses have been toppled off of beds, the sheets that once adorned them tangled together in heaps on the floor. Footlockers have been forced open and toppled over, their belongings spilling out. Socks and underwear are everywhere. Letters line the floors. Even their pillows haven’t escaped the massacre, Zenie notes as she watches a few paratroopers trying to seal up holes in the sides of theirs.

“Fuckin’ Sobel,” Liebgott mutters, taking a step further into the mess.

Surveying the carnage, the room suddenly feels cold, like ice water has been poured down the back of her shirt. Zenie has nothing to hide – no physical belongings to hide, anyway – yet she feels exposed. Her hands shake as she reaches her bed, pulling her mattress back onto it before she searches the floor for her few letters from Bobby.

Thank God none of them call her by her real name or mention her secret.

Thank God for Eugene helping her keep her secret.

Around her, the others are comparing the damage done to their personal belongings, but their voices seem distant. She plucks a sock off of her pillow and busies herself trying to put it into a neat ball. Everyone else is pissed off because they feel like their privacy has been violated, like their secrets have been laid bare. Ironic, that she – with the biggest secret of them all – somehow had nothing to hide and got of scot-free. A trickle of cold sweat runs down her spine as she takes it all in.

“You okay?” A gentle voice beside her pulls her from her thoughts and back into the loud, indignant atmosphere. Gene’s hand is paused halfway to her shoulders, like he was going to place one there to comfort her before thinking better of it.

Zenie swallows the lump in her throat and nods. “Could have been worse.”

They look around at the rest of the company. Someone is complaining that all of his letters are gone. Someone’s socks were stolen. A few men are packing their belongings away for good, readying themselves to be shipped home after what was found in their belongings.

Eugene nods. “Coulda been much worse.”

The deep, throaty croaking of a crow in the branches above her makes Zenie pause mid-step. Back home, the crows that hung around the farm usually only made that noise when someone entered their woods, or when they sensed some sort of perceived danger. She holds her breath and waits. Sure enough, someone – or something – rustles the greenery nearby.

On instinct she crouches and freezes, turning her attention towards the noise.

To her right, a group of paratroopers and a medic are crouched around an unconscious body, giggling and talking quickly. It becomes obvious the second that one of them lifts the body that whoever it might be is unconscious. She almost starts to worry that there has been an actual accident, but when she creeps closer she realizes two things: the paratroopers are pulling down the unconscious body's pants, and that the unconscious body in question belongs to none other than Captain Sobel.

Curiosity satisfied, she turns away and heads back in her original direction. It’s supposed to be a training exercise. No one is supposed to get hurt. Yet she has a feeling that things will be much worse for Sobel when they get into actual combat. Especially since what she just saw is definitely born out of revenge, no doubt about it.

Maybe the next time that there’s a boxing match, Sobel will try his luck and get in the ring. It’s too bad that Bill stopped boxing once he got promoted from corporal to squad sergeant. He’d have a thing or two to show their captain when the gloves were on. Then again, Liebgott’s a hell of a boxer. It probably wouldn’t take much convincing for him to get into the ring and show Sobel what’s what.  

That’s what he gets for going through our stuff and taking our weekend passes, she thinks. Remembering the barracks – turned inside out and completely trashed, people’s personal effects strewn everywhere, half of it missing – still makes her throat dry. Thank God for Eugene and his friendship. If not for him, her mattress would have been torn open to reveal rolls of bandages and packages of health sponges, and she would have been . . . Court martialed? Thrown in military prison? Or worse, maybe sent home. She makes a mental note to thank him again for keeping both her secret and any supplies she might need safe for her.

In a different part of her life, or maybe some time back at Toccoa, Zenie might have felt bad about what she just witnessed. Part of her might have felt bad watching Luz and some of the others misplace the Captain’s maps and equipment. If there’s one thing she’s learned recently, it’s that the Airborne is no place for secrets or emotions. She simply tries to numb the feelings, push them down and ignore them, as she plunges into her training.

Ahead of her, she spies more movement that she thinks she recognizes. Sure enough, Popeye turns, allowing her a glimpse of his face through the trees. And beside him moves another familiar figure – one that makes her heart speed up.

No! She swallows, trying to concentrate. These feelings will go away if she ignores them long enough. Then things can go back to normal; she can go on being friends with Shifty without worrying about ruining the whole damn thing.

(Because right now, looking at him is like looking directly into the sun; she feels like she can only do it in glances. She would never ignore him. He’s her friend, and she couldn’t do that to him. Especially when she knows how awful it feels to be the one being ignored. No, it’s just uncomfortable to talk to one of her friends while I think I’m in love with you and I really can’t afford that runs through the back of her mind the entire time. She’s got to find a way to fix this – whatever this is.)

There’s more movement to her left. She turns in time to see the smiling face of Joe Toye.

“Easy, Tommy.” He tilts his head back towards where he came. “Rest of your squad is that way.”

She shoulders her gun and starts after him. Part of her wants to go after Shifty and Popeye instead, but she needs to find the rest of her squad, not follow her heart.

Because no matter how she does or does not feel, here, on the ground, there is only one thing that matters: being prepared to jump into combat. If there’s one thing from her life before the Airborne that is useful, it’s that – as per the usual – her feelings do not matter.