the_leaky_pen

I'm very close to being done with this fic, so here's a chunk from one of the earlier sections.

"And how was the redoubtable Lieutenant Boyd?" Allison asked, putting a match to her own cigarette.

Dan grimaced. She had some idea that Allison and Boyd had met briefly in Cambridge, where Allison had gone to the women's college, before the war. It wasn't much, but in France, friendships were often built on smaller coincidences.

When England joined the war, Allison had enlisted without even finishing out her year. Dan couldn't imagine having an opportunity like college and choosing to drive a bloody ambulance instead. But Allison, for all her haughty ways and care with her appearance, was a fierce sort. She had a sweetheart somewhere in the lines—an enlisted man, not an officer—and Dan sometimes saw her in the morning mess, clutching a scrap of letter to her heart as she ate.

"I wish he wouldn't flirt with us," Dan said, exhaling a stream of smoke into the chill air. "I never know what to say."

Allison raised a single flawless eyebrow. "He never flirts with me," she said. "Always correct, that's Matt Boyd." She eyed Dan as she took a drag of her cigarette. "What on earth did he say to you?"