Michael sat down on the dirt, wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked up at the stars. That was an upside to invading the fucking desert: you got a lot of stars at night. Out here on the dark side of the berm, with all the Humvees shut down and most of the guys trying to sleep, he could almost be alone. He might not be in the middle of a war at all. The moon was up, a thick crescent in the sky that whited out the stars in a patch of sky the size of Michael's hand. Michael stared at the moon and the stars and didn't look at his watch, didn't think about how close they were to the day being over.
His birthday was almost over.
It could have been worse. He kept telling himself that. It could have been so much worse. He'd gotten shot at on his birthday, but he could have gotten straight up shot. Somebody else on his team, in his platoon, could have been shot. Darnold could have been hurt worse. If Manimal hadn't been so fucking amazing, if they didn't have Rudy behind the wheel--anything could have happened, just like Manimal had said. If one thing had been different, they all could have been dead.
Some hajji fucker back in that town was dead. A lot of them were dead, in fact, but there was one that Michael had actually watched die. He'd looked through his scope, seen the movement, pulled the trigger. It wasn't the first round he'd fired off, but he'd seen that one hit. He'd seen the man fall, white pajamas and an AK dropping into the dirt. He'd killed a man.
Happy fucking birthday.
He wasn't moping. He wasn't sitting here crying like a little girl because it was his birthday and he'd killed somebody who was trying to kill him, or because it was his birthday and everybody else had been too busy killing the guys who wanted to kill them to notice. He'd decided weeks ago not to mention his stupid fucking birthday to anybody when it came around, no matter what was going on. If they'd still been at Matilda today it almost would have been worse; no one would have had anything more interesting to do than make a big deal of it, and he hadn't wanted to spend a whole endless day hearing about it.
But somehow at that last second, rolling into the town, it had occurred to him that he could die right then and there with his team, and none of them even knew it was his birthday. He'd blurted it out, Chaffin had told him to try not to get shot, and that was it.
That should have been it. He should be curled up under the Humvee getting some shuteye. At midnight his birthday would be over, and it would be his watch. He would tell Rudy to get some sleep. It would be just another day in fucking paradise, if he could make it to twenty four hundred without doing anything stupider than sitting over here looking up at the stars.
Somebody came over the berm, and Michael kept still and listened to the footsteps, staring up into the dark. He could see the Milky Way, and tiny stars in between the constellations that disappeared when he tried to look straight at them. He wasn't giving up that view for whoever had come out here to take a piss.
The footsteps cut toward him, though, and Doc said, "Budweiser, is that you? Where the fuck are you, you miserable fuck?"
He turned his head. Ignoring Doc never went anywhere good, and the stars weren't going anywhere. "Here."
Doc made an annoyed noise and jogged straight to him, dropped to his knees and reached for the strap on Michael's Kevlar before Michael knew what was going on. He got his hand up even as Doc unfastened his helmet and shoved it off. Doc caught Michael's right hand with his left, and ran his right hand over Michael's suddenly bare head.
Michael shivered a little. It was even colder out here without his helmet. Doc was scowling and poking different spots on his scalp. "What the fuck, Doc?"
"I'm looking for where you're hurt," Doc said. "Because you better fucking be hurt, after Chaffin sent me out here to check on you and make sure you hadn't crawled off into the desert to die."
Michael blinked, simultaneously annoyed and touched that Chaffin had sicced Doc on him--whether Chaffin was being an asshole or being thoughtful under a surface layer of asshole, it meant he'd remembered what Michael said as they headed into the town. "I didn't crawl, I walked. Rudy saw me."
Doc actually stopped poking him for a second, then, but he didn't let go of Michael's hand. He moved the hand on Michael's head down to his chin, tilting his head back--letting all the light there was fall on his face, Michael guessed, because he was totally silent for a few more seconds, staring. Michael couldn't see Doc's eyes, shadowed under the brim of his helmet. He looked away, scanning the top of the berm to see if anybody was on watch up there. There was a bump that hadn't been there before--just a sliver of helmet and a tiny ridge of a scope--but it was about a hundred yards away, oriented three-quarters away from where he and Doc were.
Michael's gaze jerked back to Doc as he said, "You walked. This is your evidence that you're okay despite the fact that you're camped out on the ass-end of a dark berm in the desert waiting for a fucking snake to bite you or some hajji with an RPG to pop out from behind a rock. You walked."
Michael smiled a little. "It's too fucking cold for snakes, Doc. They're all sleeping. Hajjis too, if they got any sense."
Doc shook his head, but he let go of Michael's chin, and shifted his grip to Michael's wrist, fingers pressed hard against his pulse. "Fucking seriously, Brunmeier, what are you doing out here? You wanna stargaze, it's just as dark back by the Humvees."
He'd stood right at the edge of the camp in Matilda with Doc one night a few weeks ago, pointing out constellations and then watching the stars disappear into an approaching shamal. Only the highest star of Virgo had been visible then, and now it was all the way up in the eastern sky. Michael hadn't thought Doc would remember, but Doc kept an eye on all of them in a lot of different ways.
Michael shrugged. "I just wanted to be alone for a minute."
"Well, good, you got your minute," Doc said. "Now either you come back to camp or I'm going to sit here and check you for injuries until you tell me what the hell is wrong with you and why Chaffin sent me out here."
"Nothing," Michael repeated, but he knew even as he said it that if he kept denying it this would just turn into a bigger thing, and Doc would drag him back to Chaffin and wake up his whole team. Rudy and Pappy would want to do something about it. And then he would really, really never be able to have another birthday without remembering this, the year of his life that started with blowing a guy away.
"It's my birthday," he said, looking away from Doc again, up at the stars this time. He could feel his own pulse where Doc's fingers were pressing down, and he thought maybe it sped up as he spoke. "That's all. I just. It's my birthday for about another hour, and I wanted to get the rest of it over with without anything worse happening."
"Huh," Doc said, and Michael looked over at that. Somehow he'd expected Doc to know some way to fix it, fix him. Even though nothing was really wrong.
Doc shook his head a little bit. "You are aiming low, Marine. That's all you want out of your birthday? Not to get shot at again?"
Michael shifted his grip on his M4 and said, "Nice if I could keep from killing anybody else, either."
Doc made a little tch sound and managed to sound annoyed and not like Michael's grandma. "Busted your cherry today, huh. Happy fucking birthday."
He said it like Michael had been thinking it, kind of tiredly. After all the other stupid shit they'd seen today, it was still a little bit surprising just how shitty that was.
Michael nodded.
"So that's it," Doc said. "Don't get shot, don't kill anybody, don't tell anybody it's your birthday, get it the fuck over with."
Michael shrugged. "That's the plan."
"God damn, Sergeant. You keep aiming that low you are going to shoot yourself in your actual foot."
Michael reflexively checked his weapons, and Doc took his hand off Michael's wrist to slap him on the back of the head. Michael grinned, looking sideways over at Doc.
"So, what," he said. "You think I should go hit the guys up for presents? See if Rudy wants to give me my birthday spankings?"
Doc smiled. "I think we've all been spanked enough for one day. You probably want something else."
Doc's hand touched the back of Michael's neck, right above the collar of his MOPP suit, and Michael shivered a little bit. Not so much because it was cold out here, but because Doc was looking him in the eye, touching his bare skin without checking for injuries.
For a second all Michael could think was How did he know, how did I get caught, but that was kind of stupid. Michael wasn't Rudy; Rudy pulled off being Rudy mostly by also being married. Michael wasn't one of those guys everybody knew about. But he wasn't a fucking robot, either, and Doc paid attention. Doc remembered things. Doc needed to know whether they were okay, which meant he didn't ignore the stuff everybody ignored because they didn't want to know. Doc was the guy who came over the berm after Michael in the dark, knowing perfectly well that Chaffin was full of shit and Michael probably wasn't hurt. Not physically.
"Yeah," Michael said, tilting his head a little, feeling Doc's fingers shift on his skin as he moved. He couldn't help glancing toward the berm again, but the tiny silhouette of somebody watching was right where it had been before; that guy would have spotted them, categorized them as friendlies, and started ignoring them a few minutes ago. He'd warn them with a shout if anything further out started moving toward them, but he wouldn't be looking at Michael and Doc. They weren't a threat. "That'd be good."
"All right, then," Doc muttered, already leaning in, and Michael shifted toward him, meeting him halfway.
It wasn't the best kiss of his life. They both had chapped lips and neither of them were minty fresh. They had their MOPP suits, flak vests, and M4s jammed in between them, and the hard edge of Doc's Kevlar was pressed against Michael's forehead.
But it was a kiss, and a kiss with Doc. Somebody who paid attention, and gave a fuck, and kept giving a fuck even when he'd probably rather be sleeping, even when he had twenty other guys to give a fuck about. It was a touch that wasn't a punch or a slap or a shove. It was a kiss, tongues meeting and breath hot on lips, getting slicker and wetter as they went along. Doc's fingers shifted on the back of his neck, and Michael reached out, holding on to the sleeve of Doc's MOPP suit.
There was a metallic clack--rifle-on-rifle--and Michael jerked back as Doc did the same, both of them getting their hands on their weapons. It might have been muffled by their bodies, but it was exactly the sound that everyone on the other side of the berm was listening for.
No one yelled, but the far silhouette moved a little. Michael looked over at Doc to find him frowning toward the top of the berm in the opposite direction Michael had been looking--somebody else on watch over there, probably--but when he looked at Michael half his mouth curled into a smile.
This time when he spoke he meant exactly what he said. "Happy birthday."
Michael grinned. He'd never have another birthday without thinking of this, either. It wouldn't be all bad.
"And put your fucking Kevlar back on," Doc added, standing up. "I don't want to come back out here and find your brains sprayed all over the sand because the hajjis weren't all in bed."
"Yeah," Michael said, pulling his Kevlar back on and getting to his feet, taking a last glance up at the stars before he followed Doc back to the Humvees. "That would be a shitty birthday."