Work Text:
She’s tall and gorgeous, black-haired, supple body. She always appears suddenly, like sunlight from behind a cloud. They see her once on leave in Aldbourne, dressed simply, a utilitarian jacket and skirt, hair flowing long and unadorned. She doesn't seem to believe in ornamentation.
“Jesus,” he hears Malarkey say to Skip and Penkala; he’s gaping at her openly. Smokey nudges Lip, and he asks him who’ll talk to her first. He wants to bet on it. This turns out to be moot, as she comes over and talks to them first.
“Easy Company?” she asks, and Lip says yes, and when she smiles, open and sweet, he turns red to the roots of his hair.
She sticks out a hand. “Lieutenant Diana Prince, of the SOE. It’s a pleasure to meet the heroes of Normandy.” She has a faint, untraceable accent.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Lipton says, modest to the end. “We did what we could. We weren’t the only company out there.”
“Modesty becomes you, Sergeant Lipton,” she says, eyes shining, “But it mustn’t blind you to your victories.”
She walks away, grace in every step, and he’s too busy processing what she said before he realizes that he never told her his name.
They’re in Holland, and she hangs back with Captain Nixon as an observer. The men have a brief moment of rest before they move on to Bastogne, and it’s already freezing. She’s surprisingly chatty, and listens to each of them intently, where they’re a private or an officer. It makes no difference to her.
“Where I come from, the gods are behind every action, every force of nature, every act of bravery,” she says one day, waiting for their next course of action. It looks like rain. “They see what will be, and what is past. They are the engine that makes the world run.”
“That so? Well,” Guarnere says, looking up at the sky and letting droplets fall on his face. “Your gods must be angry.”
“Maybe.”
Bastogne is, for lack of a better word, a struggle. Lip tries to keep them together, and the pain of it threatens to tear him into bits. He sits in his foxhole, ready to climb out wearily, and check in on each man. A warm body slides next to him, quicker than he can yell.
It’s Lieutenant Prince, as lovely as ever, snowflakes melting on her eyelashes. She looks like a miracle, a hidden, glowing mirage. She’s armed with a stolen musette bag full of supplies––morphine, syrettes, bandages, ammo, cigarettes and, strangest of all, some candy bars. She holds a tin cup, and he can smell the coffee. She presses it against his chest, and tells him to take a break.
She is strange and wonderful at once. Her eyes are always soft when they’re trained on him. He feels just as strange; just as wonderful.
“I’ve seen you take care of them,” she tells him in her low, hoarse whisper, “Don’t you think someone ought to take care of you for once?”
He wants to protest, but he’s so tired, so weak. He slumps against her, accepting the coffee, closing his eyes. She sings an old standard (T’aint Nobody’s Business If I Do”), and puts her arm around him, and he lets her. She’s gone the next morning.
She becomes a reliable fixture in their lives, and Lip wonders how she does it. She has a knack of appearing where she shouldn’t, where it’s impossible. She’s learned all their names, knows their hometowns and previous lives, and laughs at their jokes. Lipton hears her laugh echo in the dark woods, like falling silver. He tries not to eavesdrop, but it’s hard not to. She’s a mystery.
It’s useless to try to get anything out of her. The men ask her where she’s from, and she just smiles and says “A long, long way from here.” Lipton asks her how she got involved in the SOE, and she shrugs and says “It wasn’t easy.” On Day Five of occupying Bastogne, Malarkey (who can never let go of a challenge), asks her, “Lot of girls in the SOE?”
“Oh, plenty,” she says to him. “I’ve met some of the fiercest fighters in any war. When your country needs you, you must go.”
“Done this much before?” Penkala asks, eating his lemon-powdered snow cone.
“Absolutely. This is my second war.”
She hops out of their foxhole before any of them can ask her what she means.
Sooner than Lipton hopes, It’s time they take over Foy. Lieutenant Dike, uninterested as ever, prepares for the assault by taking a walk, eyes dead. Sergeant Lipton readies with his M1 and prays for a miracle.
Lieutenant Dike predictably freezes up; their entire line are the proverbial fish inside the barrel, and Lip squints back at the battalion Ex-O’s and sees a figure racing toward them, dodging German 88 artillery fire. What’s more, he isn’t alone.
“I’m taking over,” Speirs says breathlessly, and Diana, skirt and suit discarded, leaps at his side. She is completely transformed; a butterfly exiting its chrysalis. Wearing a regal tiara on her head and Greek armor on her body, her legs are ten miles long and perfect for running, jumping. Her hair is free and wild, and she looks ready to fight, sword and shield in hand.
Lip remembers being in school, and learning about the mythical Valkyries, the retinue of the goddess Freyja. Of Amazons, running into battle with little but a harness around their waist where their arrows are stored. She smiles at Lip, and it’s so out of place (like a bolt from the blue) that he smiles back, goofy and relieved. She asks, “What have we got?”
He points across the field. He barely has enough breath to say “The building with the caved-in roof” before she––he can’t believe it––races into enemy fire and leaps, power and fury, toward the hole in the roof and destroys the mortar men inside. Spears doesn’t need a moment to think twice, and he takes off, running toward the enemy with the lack of fear and trembling that so characterizes him. The part Lipton admires.
The battle yields two heroes: the newly-minted Captain Ronald Speirs, and honorary Easy Company soldier Lieutenant Diana Prince.
They rest in a church after Foy. The men are exhausted, half-frozen, but the moment of rest is extremely welcome. Lipton opens a confiscated bottle of wine. Speirs, usually so silent, asks for a sip. Maybe it’s the curl of Speirs’ eyelashes, and the softness in his eyes Lipton has never seen before, but he shares his prize, and they take turns swigging from the bottle, alive for now.
A body, long and sinuous, slips quietly into the pew next to them; Lip recognizes Lieutenant Prince (now upgraded to Captain) and her silent movement by now. His tongue feels loose inside his mouth; he peppers her with questions. Her smiles reaches her eyes when she speaks of her mother, proud and fierce, and her aunt, who taught her everything she knows. She tells her of an island, in the Mediterranean sea, where women rule, fight, and live without fear.
Speirs listens, silent at Lipton’s side, and asks her if she’s ever been in love. Her face crumbles with sadness.
“Yes,” she says, staring at the floor. Lipton wonders for only a moment, before he pulls his blanket off his shoulders and puts it around her. She tugs it tight, and she smiles.
Lip always calls her “ma’am”; Speirs never calls her anything but Diana. They march onto Mourmelon because the fighting never waits, and then onto Alsace. They have enough time to recoup in a bombed out house where they take refuge, and Lipton, sick as a dog, eavesdrops on Captain Speirs and Captain Prince, hidden behind the door to the master bedroom.
It’s odd. Speirs never seems to be interested in the lives of anybody, he has no time for anyone. But he speaks to her for reasons Lip can’t figure out; he hears hushed voices, and then her jewel of a laugh. He peers into the crack in the door and sees a sliver of Speirs’ face; he’s just as cold-eyed and aloof, speaking in his by-now-familiar flat affect. And she laughs.
Lip can’t imagine Speirs doing anything a regular fella would do, but in that point in time, unbelievable as it may seem, it appears Speirs might be flirting with the lieutenant; what’s more, it appears he might actually be bad at it. It’s hard to believe someone as beautiful as Speirs (and he is beautiful, but Lip would rather go to hell than admit it to anybody) would be useless at flirting. But it seems to work.
“I must say, Captain,” she says, a hint of amusement in her tone. “Your reputation precedes you, even in the SOE. They say you’re a hero.”
“I’ll tell you this, Captain,” he replies, sounding pleased as punch to call her by her title, “Notoriety is overrated.” Lipton sees him smile, and it reaches his eyes. Just like in that church, bathed in gold, telling Lip things he could never believe on his own.
Suddenly, Speirs looks over at the door, and says, “Hell, Lip, if you wanted to drop in, you could’ve just asked,” and Lipton is burning from head to toe.
Diana is sweeter. “Come in, Sergeant. We’re waiting for you.”
Feet leadened, Lipton steps in, ready to apologize for listening in, before Diana strides toward him, reaches for his hand to place on her waist, and kisses him. For lack of a better term, it shocks the absolute hell out of him.
“Lip,” Speirs intones, and his face is sweet, and the lamplight and the dusting of stubble on his jaw makes his cheekbones stand out even more. He puts his hand around the other side of Lip’s waist, and kisses him too, leading them both to the bed.
“I can’t,” Lipton sputters out; Diana and Speirs wear matching quizzical looks.
“Why not, Lip?” Speirs asks, raising an eyebrow and looking more impossibly beautiful than ever.
“Don’t you want us?” Diana continues, giving his waist a squeeze. Lip huffs out a breath.
“It’s just––I’m sick,” he says finally, sounding stupid even to himself. Diana laughs breathlessly, and pulls him along; she is much, much stronger than she looks. She pushes him down onto the bed, and clambers on top. Speirs watches, hunger in his eyes.
She grinds her hips into him, agonizingly slow; he chokes out a gasp, and it’s embarrassing how hard he is, how much he’s ready. He barely hears it when Speirs joins them on the bed and grabs his hair, fingers sending sparks of pleasure-pain through Lip’s body, turning his head over so Speirs can kiss him hard on the mouth.
It gets intense after that; Speirs and Diana are so alike in temperament, Lip really shouldn’t have been surprised. Diana, impatient with the buttons of his fly, ends up ripping his pants apart, tearing the remains off his legs and onto the floor; Speirs moves under Lipton and situates him on his lap, and attacks Lipton’s neck, sucking hard onto the sensitive flesh. Diana slips her hands into his OD’s, making him gasp, and pulls his cock free, rubbing it wantonly, fingers squeezing and releasing. It’s almost agony.
Speirs busies himself with unbuttoning Lip’s shirt, and he’s naked before he stops Speirs’ hand and says, “Wait.” They stop immediately, Diana letting go of his cock, letting it curve up toward his belly, leaking pre-come eagerly.
“What do you want?” Diana says low, looking so tender. “Tell us what you like.”
“I––” Lipton begins, and suddenly shamefaced. “I want to watch.”
Diana smiles over his shoulder at Speirs. Lipton feels Speirs nuzzle the back of his head. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”
“We’re eager to please,” Diana laughs, a twinkle in her eye.
Lipton takes a seat away from the bed, cock in hand, as Diana and Speirs feverishly take each other’s clothes off, kissing openmouthed and showy. They’re doing it for him, and damn it if Lipton isn’t pleased.
Diana turns Speirs so that Lip can see the line of his body, see him moan, breath flicking up her long dark hair where it hangs over his face. He’s hard, has been hard since he first kissed Lipton, all warm and ready. She combs her hair out of her face with her fingers and rides him backwards, a frustrated whine breaking loose as she tries to find the right angle.
Lipton watches, starving; his cock is pulsing in his hand. Diana grinds hard, lifting and dropping onto Speirs’ hips with such power that the bed creaks and moans; Lipton is scared it’s going to break through the floor. Speirs seems pleased, he’s gasping and moaning with abandon, unafraid of who would listen (just as well, no one would dare tease him for getting laid). Lip tugs his cock harder, purposely avoiding touching his tip; he doesn’t want to finish too quickly. He wants to go on, forever if he can.
Diana grinds forward, huffed breaths and soft “Ah!”s escaping her lips, a flush rising on her chest and shoulders, her face looking fierce and pleasured, hands reaching up to her breasts and rubbing her hard nipples, squeezing and circling them with her fingers.
Lip is aware that they began with the intent of making it good for Lip, but eventually their control begins to fragment, and Diana is calling out the filthiest words, and words in a language Lip doesn’t recognize; Speirs has a bruising grip on her bucking hips, and the muscles in his thighs are flexing with the effort of moving underneath her, driving into her, trying to get as deep inside her as possible––
Lipton finally rubs teasingly over his own tip, pink and glistening, just as Diana reaches between her legs to stroke herself, deliberately hitting Speirs right there, and she’s crying out and Speirs is groaning from the effort and––and––
Lipton comes first, doubling over, come splattering his thighs and onto the floor. Diana hears his dragged out moans and comes with an “Oh!” that seems to take her by surprise; Speirs grinds up into her and comes with a strangled cry, stomach muscles flexing as he lifts off the bed, pink lips wet and soft.
Lip closes his eyes, capturing this moment forever, and he feels soft hands taking his. It’s Diana, but of course it’s Diana. She pulls him to the bed, smiling sweetly, and lays him down between them. The bed is small, and he can feel their breath on his face. It’s cold outside, but it’s warm in here.