Chapter 2: The Whiskey and the Wound
The mud was a different kind of enemy. It didn’t shoot, but it clung, sucking at Castiel’s boots with a wet, hungry sound as he strode through the supply depot. Dawn had not so much broken as it had seeped into the sky, a grudging grey light that did nothing to warm the air. It painted the endless rows of crates, tarpaulins, and vehicles in shades of sludge and rust.
The depot throbbed with a chaotic, pre-invasion energy. Soldiers swore as they manhandled crates marked with black stencils: AMMO, RATIONS, MEDICAL. A deuce-and-a-half truck was buried to its axles, engine screaming as it tried to free itself, throwing great gouts of brown filth over the men pushing it. The air was a solid thing—diesel fumes, damp earth, stale sweat, and under it all, the ever-present salt of the Channel.
Castiel moved with purpose, his trench coat buttoned tight, his eyes scanning. He had asked three people. The first two hadn’t known. The third, a corporal from motor pool with grease to his elbows, had jerked a thumb towards the far end, near the ammunition dump. “Sergeant Winchester? Saw him head that way. Looked like hell warmed over, sir.”
Castiel found him in a narrow alley between towering stacks of crates marked with red crosses. He was perched on a crate of plasma bottles, a clipboard in one hand, a steaming enamel mug in the other. He didn’t look up as Castiel approached, his focus on the open crate before him. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loose, and the shadow of stubble was pronounced on his jaw. In the flat light, he looked older than twenty-six, the skin around his eyes tight and pale.
“Sergeant,” Castiel said. His voice cut through the distant rumble of generators.
Winchester’s head lifted slowly. His eyes, green and bloodshot, found Castiel. There was no surprise in them. Just a weary, practiced assessment. “Lieutenant.” He took a sip from the mug. It wasn’t coffee. The sharp, sweet-sour smell of boiled vinegar and lemon juice reached Castiel—a hangover remedy.
“You’re inspecting supplies,” Castiel stated, nodding at the clipboard.
“Astute.” Winchester’s voice was gravelly. He set the mug down and tapped the crate with his boot. “Checking expiry dates. This plasma’s from ’42. Might as well be injecting them with mud.” He made a note on the clipboard.
Castiel stepped closer, the mud silencing his steps. “You were drunk last night. Again.”
This time, Winchester did look at him fully. A faint, humorless smirk touched his lips. “And the sky is grey, and the food is shit, and in a few days, a lot of us are going to be floating face-down in the surf. What’s your point, sir?”
The casual brutality of the statement, delivered in that flat, hoarse tone, hit Castiel like a physical slap. He felt his jaw tighten. “My point, Sergeant, is that you have a responsibility. This platoon, these men, will depend on you being clear-headed. They will depend on you to think.”
Winchester swung his legs down from the crate and stood. He was an inch shorter than Castiel, but he carried himself with a coiled, insolent energy that made him seem to occupy more space. He smelled of stale tobacco, sweat, and that sharp, medicinal tang.
“Think,” Winchester repeated, as if tasting the word. He gestured around them with the clipboard. “You see all this? This is for thinking. Planning. Orders. Maps in nice dry tents.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping, not out of respect, but for emphasis. “Out there? On the beach? There won’t be time to think. There’ll only be time to do. And I can do my job with a skull full of railroad spikes and one hand tied behind my back, which is a damn sight more than I can say for some of your precious men.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means while you were hunting for me, PFCs Miller and Gable were still face-down on their cots, praying for death after trying to keep up with the locals at the White Hart last night. Hendricks is green around the gills. But I’m here. Checking the goddamn expiry dates.” He thrust the clipboard toward Castiel. “Because that matters. That’s the difference between a kid living long enough to get to a surgeon or bleeding out in a puddle.”
Castiel didn’t take the clipboard. He held Winchester’s gaze. The man’s eyes were raw, but the focus in them was absolute, a diamond-hard core beneath the wreckage. It was infuriating. “Your insubordination isn’t a substitute for discipline, Sergeant. Your… competence does not excuse your conduct.”
Winchester barked a short, dry laugh. It had no warmth. “My conduct. Right.” He turned back to the crate, pulled out a bottle of plasma, held it to the grey light. “You want conduct? Here’s my conduct.” He reached into his jacket pocket, not the one with the flask-shaped bulge, but the other, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, grubby at the edges. He tossed it onto the crate beside the plasma bottle. “Made that last night. After the pub.”
Castiel picked it up. It was a list, handwritten in a surprisingly neat, compact script. It was not a standard requisition form.
Item: More shears. Heavy-duty, not the kit ones. They break.
Item: Chewing gum. Big packets. For packing wounds if the gauze runs out. Also keeps kids from screaming.
Item: Candles. Short, stout. For light in foxholes, for sterilizing needles in a pinch.
Item: Condoms. Unlubricated. To keep morphine syrettes dry.
Item: Bottles of honey. It’s antiseptic. Sugar keeps energy up.
Item: Fishing line. Strong. For sutures if thread runs out.
Item: Marking pencils. Grease-based. For writing triage status on foreheads when the tags are gone.
It went on. A brutal, pragmatic catalog of field improvisation. Every item spoke of a specific, grim reality Castiel had only read about in after-action reports. This wasn’t from a manual. This was written in the mud of Tunisia, the snow of Italy.
“The regular supply request is on the bottom,” Winchester said, not looking at him. He was counting ampoules of morphine now, his fingers moving with quick, sure efficiency despite their slight tremor. “That’s the official one. That’s the one for your files. The top bit… that’s the one that might actually save someone.”
Castiel stared at the list. The words blurred for a second. He saw not the items, but the situations that demanded them. A boy chewing gum to stifle a scream as a gut wound was packed. A medic writing ‘M’ for morphine on a sweating forehead. The bizarre, terrible logic of it was undeniable. It was the logic of chaos. Of Dean Winchester.
The anger in him didn’t dissipate; it changed form, cooling from a hot blaze into something heavier, more complex. It was the weight of the whiskey bottle in his tent, now compounded by the weight of this dirty, brilliant paper.
“You made this while drunk,” Castiel said, his voice quieter.
“I make my best lists when I’m drunk,” Winchester said. He finished counting, made a note. “Takes the edge off the thinking. Lets the knowing come through.”
He finally turned to face Castiel again. The smirk was gone, replaced by a flat, exhausted honesty. “Look, Lieutenant. You do your job. You hold the line. You make the plans. I’ll do mine. I’ll hold the flesh together. And if I need a bottle to shut out the noise so I can hear what my hands need to do, that’s my business. The only thing that matters is that when the whistle blows, I’m there with my bag. And I will be.”
He reached for his mug of vinegar, drank it down in a grimacing gulp, and set it on the crate with a definitive click. The action was a full stop.
“We’re loading onto the transports in seventy-two hours,” Castiel said, folding the list and placing it carefully in his own pocket. It felt like a secret. A treason against regulation.
“I can count,” Winchester said. He picked up his clipboard, tucked his pencil behind his ear. The moment of raw disclosure was over, sealed shut behind the wall of bravado. He was just a hungover sergeant again, doing a tedious job. “I’ll have my kits squared away by 1800 today. You can inspect them. Knock yourself out.”
He began to walk away, down the muddy alley between the supplies.
“Winchester,” Castiel called after him.
The sergeant stopped, didn’t turn.
“The men in the cots. Miller and Gable. See that they’re functional by noon. That’s an order.”
Winchester half-turned, just enough to show his profile. That faint, bitter ghost of a smile returned. “Yes, sir.” He gave a slow, two-fingered tap to his brow—not quite a salute, something older, more dismissive. Then he turned the corner and was gone, swallowed by the maze of supplies and the groan of machinery.
Castiel stood alone in the mud. The distant siren wailed again, a long, rising note of dread. He looked down at the crate of outdated plasma, at the empty mug smelling of vinegar. He thought of the list in his pocket, a physical manifestation of the anarchic, vital force that was his senior medic. He could court-martial the man for the salute alone. He could write him up for insubordination a dozen times over.
And he would be cutting off his platoon’s best chance of survival.
The weight settled deeper. It was no longer just the weight of their lives. It was the weight of a choice. Order, or results. The book, or the dirty, folded piece of paper.
A working party stumbled past, cursing as they slid in the muck. Castiel blinked. The grey world snapped back into sharp focus. He had duties. Rosters to finalize, manifests to cross-check, a hundred details to orchestrate.
He took one last look at the space where Winchester had been, then turned and began the long, slogging walk back to his tent. His hand, in his pocket, brushed against the list. It felt like a live wire. A blueprint for the chaos to come. And for the first time, a cold, reluctant certainty took root in his gut.
When the storm hit, he would need that particular brand of chaos. No matter how much it cost him.