Page 68 of Walking Wounded

Hal makes a sympathetic noise, and his hand tightens against Luke’s waist. Because, though Luke hasn’t noticed it yet, Hal isholdinghim against his side. Oh. “She’d be really proud of you, you know.”

Luke snorts. “Doubtful.”

“No, I mean it. You did what you always said you were going to. You tell stories for a living.”

“True stories.”

“Those are the most important ones,” Hal insists.

Luke sighs. Beneath the headache, and the grief that echoes through his bones, he feels an immense gratitude that Hal is giving him this moment. That they can put aside The Incident, and all their stilted conversations since it, and just be best friends right now, when Luke needs it most.

“I’ve been thinking,” he starts, hesitant. “That Will’s story might make a really good book.”

“Oh yeah?” Hal sounds excited, like a little kid. “He’s got some great old war stories, doesn’t he?”

“He’s told them to you?”

“Some of them. The funny ones.”

“Finn…” Luke almost can’t continue. “He doesn’t make it out, does he?”

Hal doesn’t answer.

This was never, Luke thinks, about some article. About a protestor getting hit with a cane. “Why is this the book you want me to write?”

“Well,” Hal starts, careful now. “Not a lot of people know anything about the Korean War. It was literally a paragraph in our high school textbooks. So you’ve got that in your favor – everybody and his brother’s written about World War II.

“But also because…I dunno. It just seemed like an opportunity.”

Luke hates opportunities; they’re always so open-ended.

He swallows. “Thanks for not letting me puke all over myself.”

Hal pats his hip. “Always.”

~*~

“…protests today on Capitol Hill in response to the rumors that Senator Maddox may intend to filibuster…”

Luke glances away from the TV and toward Hal, who’s eating Frosted Mini Wheats and watching the morning’s political news with interest. “Is Matt really the most hated senator on the Hill?”

Hal nods. “I think so, yeah.”

“Will I sound like an idiot if I ask why?”

“No.” Hal sets his bowl on the coffee table and turns toward him. “See, politics is basically high school, but with the fate of the nation in the balance,” he says with a rueful smile. “There’s a social structure to everything. Alliances, bribes, lobbyists, and more ambition than you can even imagine. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, or what sort of platform you ran on, once you get here, you have to fall in line. Shake the right hands, schmooze the right people, get on the right bandwagons. It’s expected that no one adheres to the agendas they proposed to their constituency.”

“That’s kinda what I figured.”

“Right? Well, the thing with Matt is, he doesn’t do any of that.”

Luke gives him a skeptical look.

“He really doesn’t. He had this mentor, old retired senator, who died about a year ago. But he has zero connections around here. And he isn’t willing to go back on anything he promised Virginia voters just so he can make friends. He snubbed – very politely, I’ll add – another senator who wanted him to change his vote on that reform bill because, quote, ‘his no wasn’t going to sway the rest of the senate,’ and he’d be ‘better off getting along.’”

“Huh.”

“Matt doesn’t try to get along. It’s all about his voters and his state for him. He won’t play ball with the popular kids, more or less. And so they – and the media – try to make his life miserable whenever possible.”

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