When Colonel Sink pinned Posey's jump wings on her chest, right over her heart, she felt a warmth of pride spread across her body, blossoming out from the tiny metal badge. Once again she couldn't help but feel delirious in the knowledge that she'd done it. She'd gotten her jump wings. What had once seemed a mammoth task had been conquered. She was closer to home than she had been since being evacuated - or she felt it, at least.
"Congratulations, private," the colonel told her in his deep Southern drawl. He offered her a nod and a polite smile before moving on to the next private stood at attention in the long line of paratroopers getting their jump wings today. The energy in the room was electric, the air seeming to vibrate with the enthusiasm oozing off of its occupants.
Posey absolutely could not wait to tell Mrs. Daniels. She'd only written her a letter the previous day but this seemed like something notable enough to warrant a letter of its own.
Whilst her dress uniform was hot, scratchy, and heavy, Posey felt as light as a feather as she followed the men of her platoon to the bar on base as soon as the ceremony had finished. Men were cheering into the darkness, as night was still falling incredibly prematurely even now, patting each other firmly on backs and flinging their arms around shoulders. As they all bundled in, Posey thought they looked drunk already, but then again she thought she probably looked much the same to an outsider.
She was squashed in between Skip and Malarkey, two arms slung across her shoulders and two mouths shouting gibberish directly into her ears. She didn't altogether mind too much, though; she felt warm and accepted and welcome. She felt seen. True, they may not have known who she really was, but who was she really, anyway? Did the person she'd been before bootcamp even exist anymore? Where was the line between who she was pretending to be and who she really was?
At that moment, as the three of them turned sideways in order to get through the door without untangling themselves from each other, she found it difficult to believe they didn't know who she was deep down. They'd all seen each other at their worst. Whether they knew she was a girl or not was irrelevant. They knew her, she decided, and she knew them. And perhaps that was all that friendship was, really; knowing, seeing, accepting. She felt immensely grateful to the entirety of her new group of friends for having offered her all three of those privileges as readily as she'd offered them back.
For the entirety of Easy Company, it seemed, it was beers all around. As she followed a now-independent Malarkey and Skip to a table already full-to-bursting with Second Platoon men, she even caught sight of a few of the officers milling about. Lieutenant Winters, of course, did not have a beer - there was a rumour going around, likely started by either Luz or Guarnere, that he was a Quaker, which apparently meant he didn't drink alcohol at all ever - but Lieutenant Nixon, formerly of First Platoon and now an intelligence officer, did. He was stood right beside Winters with a beer of his own, though he was also drinking out of a flask every now and then.
Posey found herself pushed into a chair between the two who had flanked her all night, and once the three of them were seated she found out why.
"Duckie," began Malarkey with a seriousness he very rarely possessed, "we've been training you up for this for a long time now."
Skip nodded when Posey turned to look at him. "It's time for the student to become the teacher."
Posey looked between the two mischief-makers and knew just from looking at their matching grins. "I'm telling you," she began, laughing to herself, "I won't be able to beat you in a drinking competition! I'm flattered you think I would, but I won't!"
"Aw, come on, Duckie," Skip crooned, ruffling her hair. "Don't be so hard on yourself. I think you're forgetting a pretty important detail."
"Yeah?" she asked with considerable scepticism. "What's that?"
"Malarkey's terrible at drinking competitions," Skip replied enthusiastically.
"Am not!" Malarkey protested immediately.
"Yes you are, Don, and don't even try and deny it. You'll embarrass yourself."
"So, what d'ya say?" Malarkey asked Posey, ignoring Skip's comment entirely.
She felt the pressure of both eyes on her even as she gazed down into the gold of her drink, gnawing on her bottom lip as she considered the pros and cons. Eventually, she looked up and asked, "What do I get if I win?"
"That's the spirit!" Skip declared. "Malark? What does he get?"
"Loser has to buy the winner their next drink," Malarkey suggested.
Posey nodded. "Deal."
"Ready?"
"You bet."
"Alright," Skip began, leaning over the table on his forearms to get the both of them firmly in his sights. "Three, two, one. Go!"
The whole affair was over in twenty seconds at most, but it felt as though the room had fallen into dead silence as she worked to down her pint in one.
The noise of the room crashed back over her in a single, raucous wave as she slammed her glass back down on the table. Skip cheered from beside her.
"And the duck finally wins!"
"No way!" Posey exclaimed immediately, sharing in Skip's grin.
"That wasn't fair," Malarkey said as soon as he'd finished his own drink, but he was smiling too. "So the student does become the teacher."
"I will fill my new position with the upmost admiration and reverence for my predecessors. Thank you and goodnight."
"Amen to that," Skip said, punctuating his sentence by finishing off the rest of his beer in one, perhaps to put both Posey and Malarkey to shame. "Now lets get another drink!"
Hours seemed to pass like minutes as gradually the room became a hazy blur of warm light and khaki uniforms. At one point Posey knew Colonel Sink had come in to address them all, though she only remembered because of how difficult she'd found it to jump to attention in her state with such little notice. Admittedly, she couldn't recall a word of what he'd said to them even if her life had depended on it.
She didn't engage in any more drinking competitions, but she spectated on many, and even judged a few. Guarnere was infuriatingly good at them and seemed determined to show off this skill to every member of the company, Second Platoon or otherwise, even though they'd already seen it a million times before.
"It's like, we know, you can drink fast, blah, blah, blah. Am I supposed to be impressed?" Posey drunkenly rambled to Skinny after observing one just such display of a supposed exertion of dominance.
"Right," Skinny said, nodding along. "At the end of the day, it's just swallowing stuff."
"Exactly," Posey agreed, swaying slightly where she leaned against a high table pushed against one of the support beams.
"I bet I could drink milk twice as fast as he could," Skinny added, his words just as slurred as Posey's, if not more so. "What's he gonna do then?"
"I think you should challenge him," Posey said without a hint of irony or comedy in her voice. "I bet they'd sell you milk if you asked."
"You think?" Skinny asked, equally as serious.
"Totally."
"What are you two plotting over here?" Tab entered the conversation with a smirk. He had a fresh beer in his hand and seemed to not be even half as intoxicated as the two people stood before him.
"Skinny's gonna beat Guarnere in a drinking competition," Posey explained.
Tab blinked once when she'd uttered the words before they seemed to process. Perhaps it had simply taken him that long to understand what she'd said. "Really?" He asked, turning to the man in question. "You think you could?"
"Yeah. We're gonna drink milk," Skinny said with feeling.
Tab burst out laughing immediately. "No, you're not."
"What?! Why?!" Posey protested around a pout.
Tab rolled his eyes. "You stick that lip out any further, birds'll shit on it." Posey stuck her tongue out at him but stopped pouting. "You two need to be separated to different tables, surrounded by far less drunk company, and given two big glasses of water to drink. How's that sound?"
"And then I'll beat him with the milk," Skinny said, speaking slowly and nodding blearily.
"Sure, buddy," Tab replied, barely concealing his grin. "Whatever you say."
Posey allowed herself to be led away as soon as Tab had gotten Skinny situated. She sat down at what may have been the table she'd first sat at with Skip and Malarkey, though she didn't really remember. After waiting patiently whilst Tab got a glass of water for her, she sipped at it once as he disappeared again before tuning in to the conversation taking place beside her.
"I'm tellin' ya, they'll want us in Europe," Toye was saying. "We're gonna be fightin' Germans."
"Nah, they already got soldiers in Europe, Joe," Guarnere objected loudly. "We're goin' to the Pacific, guaranteed."
As was the way with a great many things, Posey hoped desperately that Guarnere was wrong.
Her attention was drawn away by Luz sliding into the seat opposite her.
"Duckie!" he exclaimed with a grin. "What you drinkin'?"
"Water," she replied, taking a sip as though to prove it. "Tab got it for me."
"That's real nice of him and all but, great party like this, you should be drinkin' beer!"
"I have been drinking beer!" she protested. "A bit too much of it, really. I feel quite sick."
Luz only laughed. "You know, I've never met anyone who goes as British as you do when they're drunk."
Fuck.
"It's 'cause of your mom, right? She's British?"
"Yeah."
"Where from?"
"London."
"Bet she's glad she moved stateside then, right?"
Posey grimaced and took a large gulp of water to steel herself. She nodded before she'd swallowed, cheeks puffed out with the large volume of liquid they were holding.
"So you're hopin' we're going to Europe as well, right?"
She swallowed her water and nodded. "I really hope we're not sent to the Pacific."
Luz's eyebrows furrowed. "What about Pearl Harbour? You don't wanna get some revenge for that?"
Posey shrugged and watched her fingers trace around the rim of her glass. "I don't know anyone in Pearl Harbour." She glanced up at Luz briefly to offer half a smile. "But I know people in London."
Luz nodded his understanding. He took a moment to look around at the pandemonium of the bar before turning back to face her all of a sudden. This time he leant over his forearms on the table to speak to her, his glass clutched tightly in one hand.
"To invading Europe," he declared, raising his glass in the air but keeping his eyes locked on hers.
Posey laughed and nodded, trying to focus her eyes as she picked up her own glass and raised it skyward. "To invading Europe," she echoed, and they clinked their glasses together before taking a gulp.
To invading Europe, indeed. Or at least, to returning to it. Posey wasn't sure she'd be doing much invading but if there was a continent on Earth that needed just that at the moment, it was the one she'd grown up in.
Posey looked around the room with new eyes then, as Luz turned to engage in a conversation with Malarkey and she was left to herself for a moment. These were the men who, hopefully, would be helping to free Europe and win the war. These were the men who were coming to help put an end to it all. More than ever before, her heart filled with warmth as she gazed at the faces of the men she now called friends. They would be making one hell of a sacrifice in going to war, but she hoped they knew it'd be a worthwhile one. She hoped they knew their cause was worthy.