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Chapter Text

The war had been over for six months when the phone call came.

Liebgott had let it go the first time, but whoever was on the other end wasn’t willing to be ignored. They’d called again and when Liebgott ignored that too, they rang a third time. When it became pretty clear that the caller wasn’t planning on stopping, he finally picked up the phone. Liebgott had been trying to keep a low profile, not wanting to go home to a family that wouldn’t recognize him and wouldn’t want him back. He’d bunked with some of the harder-to-find guys from Easy and sometimes he slept on the street. Sometimes he paid for the motel. Tonight was one of those nights where he reached down deep into his pocket and dug out the money for a room.

“What the fuck do you want?” Liebgott slurred into the mouthpiece. It was four in the morning and he wasn’t in the mood for any crap. And at that hour of the night, it wasn’t going to be anything but.

Who it turned out to be was, of all people, Christenson.

“How’d you get this number?” Liebgott sleepily muttered. He leaned to the side of the bed to find the nearest t-shirt and pulled it on while waiting for the response from the other man. They had managed brief ‘hello’s and ‘how are you’s before silence reigned over the conversation. Ever since the war ended, silence hung on Liebgott like the heaviest of chains. It trapped him and forced him to think about everything that had come to pass. Silence made Joe Liebgott remember who he’d become and made him think about the blood he’d shed.

Silence made Joe inclined to bolt again.

“I need your help. I’m swinging by the motel.”

“How’d you get this number?” Liebgott reiterated.

“Ramirez gave it to me and we have to go to the hospital, so for once in your life, Liebgott, shut up,” Christenson insisted. Before Joe could even find so much as a retort, the line was dead.

“Son of a bitch,” Liebgott swore under his breath as he threw the mouthpiece at the night table. It hit with a severely loud crash and caused the Bible to slide further to the edge. It didn’t topple, as if some absent faith was keeping it going. Liebgott had no use for the church these days. It hadn’t stopped men from getting killed and God hadn’t swooped down on high to stop his people from being murdered.

And now what? What was so important that Christenson was rousing him at this hour of the morning to get him to a hospital? Liebgott yanked on a loose pair of jeans and grabbed his wallet, shoving it in the back pocket of his denims. With him came the key to a storage locker, a pack of smokes, his lighter, and his razorblade. He pretty much had the majority of his possessions on him. Once he tugged on his paratrooper jacket, he was ready to leave town and find a new one.

He briefly toyed with the idea of running while waiting outside in the muggy California air. Instead, he just sat in the cheap folding metal chair outside the motel room. The only light around him was the filter of his cigarette and the accompanying fireflies trying to light the way home for some poor sap. Liebgott didn’t have a way home anymore. All he had were temporary stays.

The headlights of an old Pontiac soon joined the light sources as the scrape and creak of brakes signaled Christenson’s arrival. Liebgott sighed as he lifted himself from the chair and dropped himself right down into the passenger seat, flicking the butt of the cigarette out of the window as he shot the other man a glare.

“Why the fuck did you call me?”

“Because you’re the emergency contact,” Christenson replied, barely doing anything more than mumbling. He seemed just as sleepy as Liebgott did, but a lot less pissed-off. “I was the second number they called, but I figured he wanted you there if he went so far as to put your name down and not his sister’s or anyone else’s.”

Liebgott really didn’t have any idea who the fuck they were talking about and he definitely didn’t remember watching anyone signing his name on something like papers of import. He was chalking all of this up to late-night confusion, the kind of aura that surrounded you and made things obscure when they should be clear in the light of day.

Joe rubbed at his eyes as they pulled away from the motel and headed to the outskirts of San Francisco, down the coast and tracking through smaller towns. “Who are you talking about, Chris? No one in my family woulda called you.”

“Web’s in the hospital. Apparently there was a fishing accident,” Chris said sharply. “And the first name on his papers when it came to his contacts was you.” He took a hard corner on the pavement and for the next twenty-miles of highway, Liebgott didn’t say a single word.

Web’s in the hospital.

Liebgott thought it should’ve been funny. Like it should be a joke about how Web liked hospitals so goddamn much that even though they were back Stateside, he still couldn’t keep himself away from one. He would have even said it aloud if he hadn’t been gripped by sudden panic, the kind that had come since after Haguenau anytime there was news about someone being hurt. The war was over. Easy wasn’t supposed to keep getting injured and Web was in the hospital.

Shit, thought Joe.

*

The first inclination that Joe ever got that Webster had a love waiting for him back home came in Austria on one of the most beautiful days either man had ever seen. Joe didn’t care much for the lake, but it was a sure bet that if you wanted to find Christenson, Winters, or Webster, all you had to do was find the glint of the sun off the pristine and crystal reflection of the lake-water and head in that direction.

Webster had always made bitter comments about how their girlfriends had probably already left them for other men, but no one in Easy had ever gotten a name out of him or a description and so she was left to vague auras and possibilities.

It was Liebgott who found out just who this woman was and he did it by accident one sunny Austrian day.

Webster was late -- again -- for breakfast and Liebgott was swearing his way down to the lake, combat boots making the gravel and the sand beneath his feet crunch in a more than satisfying way, as if he could take out his anger on the ground. And what was Webster doing? He was just sitting there on the dock with a fishing rod and hardly a thing on him but baseball shorts and his PT shirt.

Joe stopped about twenty feet from the dock and stuck his fingers in his mouth, letting out a piercing whistle that disturbed half the lake’s wildlife in one go. He had to take his victories where he could, and Joe couldn’t help a smug little smirk as he clopped his way down, boots making a lot more noise on the uneven boards of the dock.

“Breakfast time, Web,” Liebgott signaled. “You’re late.”

“I’ll skip it,” Webster replied. “I’ll stay here.”

So Liebgott had wound up staying there too and had started to ask questions while Webster passed him a hat to cover his head. The questions seemed useless and without point at first – ‘what are you even expecting to catch?’ and ‘what are you going to eat if you’re skipping breakfast, you idiot?’ – but when it came down to it, Liebgott asked exactly the right question.

“Why do you love this place so much?”

“I love the water,” Webster had enthused, staring out at the sun-dappled surface of the lake with a look of longing in his eyes. “When we get home, I’m going to move out West and never leave sight of the Pacific Ocean.” He turned that affectionate and longing gaze to Joe and something in Joe’s stomach fell away at the thought that Webster could hold so much love for something inanimate like the ocean.

Now, Joe had loved his fair share of women in his time. He’d also told women he loved them in order to get what he wanted. He didn’t think he’d ever felt something as pure as what Web was talking about and all for something that could never satisfy you the way a pair of tits could.

And maybe, just maybe, Joe felt a little bitter that no one had ever felt that way about him. Sure, the girls always said he was a good guy, but he’d never seen a look like that leveled his way until David Kenyon Webster.

Joe pressed his lips together and leaned over, yanking the fishing rod out of Webster’s hands and offering a mild sneer. “Gimme that,” he muttered, fingers brushing the sun-tanned warmth of Webster’s palm, belying just how long he had been out there in the sun with nothing but the fishing rod and his love for the sea. “Don’t see what’s so great about it. Can’t be better than drinking or having a night on the town.”

Webster just grinned at him and that look of affection, that look of fondness and longing, it had yet to dissipate.

For one moment, for one long moment, Liebgott pretended that it was meant for him instead of some expansive lover as fickle as the sea, who let anyone into her embrace and always eventually took from you.

He leaned forward until his toes touched the edge of the water and looked at his reflection in the mirror-like glassy liquid.

Back then he could still stand to look at himself. The war was still going in some corners of the world and Liebgott didn’t have to reconcile who he was with the man who had joined the paratroopers in the first place. At that point in time, no one was expecting him to be anything but the man who shot first and shouted later.

The fishing rod got a hard yank and Liebgott turned to Web as he let out a vocal ‘fuck!’ of delight, yanking on it to get the fish out of the water.

David Kenyon Webster loved the ocean. He loved the water and he loved the refreshing feel of it on your face and on your toes and he loved the way it washed away all your sins.

Joe Liebgott realized that day on the dock that he wanted Webster to love him the way he loved the ocean. He wanted him to love him in a way that expected him to leave, but to always come back -- to go cold at times and yet to surround him always. He wanted to be loved in a way that was as infinite and endless as the ocean.

He never did say anything about that. He just watched as Webster netted the fish and then tugged the man up the hill for a late breakfast (if the cooks would even let them touch any of the food at that point).

*

Once the twenty mile stretch of highway ended, Christenson exited off the turn for Alameda and Joe came back to his senses.

“You coming in?”

“Course I am,” Christenson noted defensively. “We couldn’t even find you until I pulled the search together. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be here.” He was talking as if Joe owed him something because of it, but Joe didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He could barely stand to look at himself in the mirror. How was he supposed to find one place to call it his home when he couldn’t even bear to look at himself? How was he supposed to hold down a job? How could he have neighbors? They were all going to see right through him. They’d look at his hands and see the weapons that killed Nazis and innocent boys both. He couldn’t afford to discriminate in the war and now his guilt refused to discriminate in his nightmares.

Sometimes it was Landsberg. Sometimes it was the mountaintop. Sometimes he dreamed about all the lives he took and all the future generations that would never be because of him. Most of the time, awake and asleep, he saw ghosts. He really wished his head would just find peace and silence for once. He really wished that it would just all stop.

“How’d he even get himself in a fishing accident?” Liebgott muttered, filling the silence with conversation so he didn’t have to delve deeper into thoughts about what he had done during the war. “Thought he was supposed to be Mister Fucking Experienced with a fishing line.”

“Yeah,” Christenson sighed as he pulled into the parking lot of the medium-sized hospital. “So did I.”

Liebgott really didn’t like the sound of that implication and resolved not to say a word about it as they got out of the car. At this hour of the night, the car doors slamming caused a sharp disturbance of the previously eerie silence, echoing in the lot. After that, the only sound that could be heard in the vicinity was the noise of their abnormally-loud footsteps. He let Christenson take the lead, lingering behind him and wondering why he had come.

Why hadn’t he just run again? He could probably have reached Berkeley if he’d picked the right car to hitch with. And instead here he was entering the halls of a hospital, which was one of the few places Liebgott didn’t think he’d ever have to see again until the circumstances of his life led him to something happier.

It felt like he was nearly bulldozed with the smell of antiseptics. He raised his forearm, covering his nose with the cloth of his jacket as he coughed out a “Jesus fucking Christ” and suddenly, out of nowhere, the scar on his neck started to ache and itch at once with a fierceness that Joe had never experienced before.

He hung back while Christenson conferred with the nurse at the desk and Joe tried hard not to associate this too-clean hospital with the ones on the line. The nurses were all young and fresh and pretty here and none of them looked like they might just kill themselves if they had to patch up another wounded man. Roe never did talk much about that girl he’d met in Bastogne, but what he did say of her, he mentioned that she’d been so weary, as weary as any of the soldiers.

“Room 106,” Christenson said under his breath, returning to Liebgott.

And then they simply stood there without moving.

“What?” Liebgott demanded, not sure what the hell Christenson was expecting of him. He lowered his arm and shot him an incredulous look. “I’m fine, it’s just the smell.” By the ensuing look of reply, that wasn’t what Christenson had meant, though, and Liebgott shook his head. “What?” he asked again, sharper than before.

“You’re his first contact,” Christenson reminded him. “Room 106.”

Room 106 was only thirty feet away. Joe turned and angled his body towards it, looking at the width and the length of the hallway and swearing that it tripled right before his eyes. He took the first step and paused, glancing over his shoulder at Christenson and wondering one more time why he hadn’t run when he had the chance.

He took the second step and he didn’t hesitate after that.

*

When Liebgott got to the hospital after Arnhem, he had expected that they’d shoot him up with morphine and just get him all patched up. He knew Dukeman was dead and some part of him was already mourning the man, but some other battle-weary and battle-ready part of him knew that he was just happy that it hadn’t been him. Out of all those S.S. troops, they had only managed to take down Dukeman in a permanent fashion.

Morbid as fuck for a thought, Liebgott noted to himself, but it was the truth. He hadn’t been given morphine though, because the medic on duty had rushed towards some new arrival.

Liebgott just hadn’t expected that to be Webster.

“Fuck,” Liebgott exhaled a laugh as he smirked at the other man. “Did you get tired of translating for the prisoners? Get shot so they’d make me do it?”

Webster shot a weary look over at him. “Can this wait?” he asked, voice strained. “I’ve been shot and I’m having an intellectual crisis that I’ve already gone stale and the war’s hardly begun.”

“Intellectual crisis,” Joe echoed, shaking his head as he glanced up at the medic getting bandages ready to press to Liebgott’s neck. “You believe this guy? He got shot in the fucking calf defending his country and fighting with Easy Company. He’s a rifleman and you know what he’s worried about? That brain of his.” He craned his neck in Webster’s direction, shaking his head dubiously. “You oughta just be glad the Germans’ haven’t splattered your brain all over the countryside.”

“You’re so uplifting, Joe,” Webster muttered. “I don’t know why more people don’t ask you to cheer them up on their deathbed.”

The morphine came soon after that and gave the whole world a new patina of bright lights and colors. Sounds became much more vivid and Liebgott could have sworn that everything swayed and moved like the branches of a willow tree in the wind.

When he looked over to his side, he could really see Webster. And when he looked right at Webster, he watched the other man open his eyes and Liebgott swore that he’d never seen a blue that incredible in his life.

The only other time he could remember thinking that was a bright and beautiful day in Oakland when the sea was calm and so serene and so blue that it hadn’t seemed real. Right then, in that moment, Webster didn’t seem real.

As he drifted off to sleep, they were trying to staunch the bleeding and he could still feel and taste the blue of Webster’s eyes on him. They hummed and crashed to shore like waves and Liebgott smiled drowsily as the drugs took hold of his thin frame and put him out of pain.

*

Step thirty wasn’t the hardest.

Step twenty-seven had been. That was when Joe had considered ducking into a nearby empty room and pretending it was Webster’s so Christenson would let up and maybe go grab a coffee or something. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy and so he took step twenty-eight and then came step twenty-nine and suddenly he was on step-thirty and opening the door to a pristine and disinfected room with only one occupant.

His eyes weren’t as brilliantly blue anymore. In fact, Webster looked a lot more broken than Liebgott really remembered seeing him. He was staring at the ceiling and his face was covered with a heavy beard that looked like it’d had at least weeks to grow. It was strange, but Liebgott suddenly felt too fucking cold, as if he was seeing some version of Webster that would have been there with them at Bastogne.

Webster looked exhausted.

What was more important was the thick bandage plastered over his arm just above the wrist that aroused Liebgott’s suspicion.

“Thought you had a fishing accident?” he announced his presence with the blunt comment, shooting him a dubious look as his eyes fell to the bandage and his mind began to do laps around other possibilities.

Webster lightened the slightest bit as he shifted in the bed. By the time he turned his gaze upwards, Liebgott could almost see a flicker of an echo of the look that had been on Webster’s face that day on the dock in Austria. Joe set it aside. He had no use for confusing looks right now when his whole brain was alight in confusion as to just what had happened to Webster.

He stepped closer and looked down at the man, giving his hair a sharp yank.

“You need a haircut and a shave like nothing else. What the hell were you doing with yourself?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Web muttered hoarsely, looking up at Joe with those accusing eyes. Joe shifted with only the slightest bit of discomfort to him. Yeah, so maybe he hadn’t grown a beard the envy of Webster’s hobo thing and maybe his hair was long, but it was under control. Joe was completely aware of two things. When he looked in the mirror, he hated the guy he saw there. He also knew that the man in the mirror was thinner than before and Joe Liebgott had been a skinny son of a bitch to begin with. “What, they don’t have food in San Francisco?”

“Haven’t been in San Francisco, and you’re the worse-looking of the two of us, so I’d bite your tongue, college boy,” Liebgott retorted, his remarks as sharp as razorblades when he was provoked. Webster always did seem to know exactly which buttons to push in order to make Joe bristle and defend himself with the only weapons he had. “You got family out here and other friends. Hell, Christenson tracked me down. Why’d you put me as your contact?”

“You’re the closest friend I’ve got,” Webster admitted, turning in the bed until he was positioned away from Liebgott and staring at the wall. “Verbal abuse notwithstanding. Did I interrupt some busy time in your life that’s been keeping you from eating?”

“Shut up,” Liebgott muttered without much malice. He took the last few steps until his thighs were pressed up against the bed and he could reach down and grab Web’s upper arm and elbow with his hands, lifting up the left arm so he could stare at the bandage with an accusatory glare, as if this body part was entirely separate from Webster.

He gripped that arm so tight that his fingers began to make white marks in Web’s pale skin, not quite bruising him just yet.

“Fishing accident,” Liebgott echoed prior words with disbelief as he started to pry and yank at the thick cotton bandage.

“Liebgott! What the fu…Joe!”

He yanked it off and stared at the horizontal cut accusingly, turning that look to Web’s face rather than his forearm for the first time. He was sure that he looked disappointed and that he was filled with rage, but all he could muster up in his expression was boyish confusion, a how could you? for the ages.

“It was a fishing accident,” Webster insisted gutturally, yanking the bandage and his arm back at once to try and patch it back up. “The hook let loose and dug into my skin and dragged me before I could dig it out.” He lay back on the hospital bed, grabbing Joe’s palm and pressing it firmly to Web’s lower belly.

Joe could feel three things at once.

The first was the severe warmth that came with touching Webster, even if there was a layer of clothing between them. It was like he hadn’t felt that kind of warmth in six months since the war ended and if Joe really thought about it, he hadn’t had proper human contact in much longer than that. His breath caught slightly and he set his jaw, trying not to act like some weak girl.

The second thing he felt was the brush of a scar under his fingertips. It felt just like the one on the forearm did, though a little narrower and not as long. With Web lying on his back, Joe could see the trajectory of the fishing hook from arm to torso and his doubts fell away, feeling like an idiot for thinking that Web would off himself.

The third thing that he felt was his stomach bottoming out on him. Webster’s hand was still wrapped around his wrist and Joe’s fingers brushed at Web’s stomach where they rested and suddenly, Joe didn’t care why he was Web’s first contact, just that he was.

It was this third thing that struck up all his impulses and got him to make a rash decision.

“I’ll get the nurses and doctors to put my name on the papers when you’re discharged.” He didn’t even know what he was saying, just that he thought it was the right thing to say. “I’m staying with you, make sure you stay okay.”

Never mind that Liebgott hadn’t actually been invited. Never mind that he was starting to grow pretty sure that Webster hadn’t done this to himself and didn’t need a watchdog. And beyond that, it seemed like Web was on his own quest to leave the war behind and wouldn’t Joe just remind him of that place? Not to mention the even bigger vice-versa of that. He still said it though.

Webster shifted and it dispelled Joe’s hand from his torso. He didn’t give any inclination as to whether he agreed to the offer or not, but as far as Liebgott was concerned, it wasn’t a question. It was an order.

He patted Web on the back of his hand and offered the flash of a brief smile before leaving the room and walking those thirty feet back to Christenson who was waiting for him.

This time, it was step twenty-four that gave him trouble.

*

They’d sprinted to the basement to avoid another barrage from the enemy, but when it had ended, Liebgott had stayed down there to enjoy a cigarette in peace. It was the Night That Never Was, the patrol that never happened. He almost believed that the Germans were enacting their revenge for killing their men and stealing prisoners so close to the end of the war by letting loose as much firepower as they could over the river. After all, wasn’t that what they would do if Easy got taken?

In that dank basement, though it was silent, Liebgott swore he could still hear the echoes of pained screams and the bitter and broken reactions of the men. Liebgott didn’t think he’d ever heard Webster sound so beaten down as when he’d announced that Jackson was dead.

Liebgott had surprised himself by not having much reaction at all. Bastogne had frozen that out of him and while he still hated those German bastards, it didn’t fluctuate or flare. It just kept on burning the same as always.

He was leaning hard and heavy against the brickwork when he heard the shuffle of footsteps and didn’t flinch or move his eyes when Webster closed the outside door behind him. He seemed out of sorts, as if he hadn’t expected to find anyone.

“What do you want?” Liebgott demanded, not about to give up his space.

Webster didn’t say anything in reply, which really did get on Liebgott’s nerves. Here he was, trying to have a moment to himself, and Webster was interrupting him? He still wasn’t ready to forgive and forget. Webster was late; everyone in the Company knew that. He was looking for an easy way back into their ranks, but Liebgott didn’t want to deal with this guy who still had all his shit together. Bastogne had broken all of them and Webster got to evade that. He had to pay for that somehow and Liebgott had assumed the role of judge, jury, and executioner.

He sucked in an inhalation of his cigarette harder than before and shot a dirty glare at Webster, who was picking through the remnants of the basement. Some of the belongings were Easy’s and some were from the previous owners, whoever they had been before they’d been run out so that the 506th could have a place to rest their heads.

“Webster,” Liebgott snapped again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Something fell out of Jackson’s pocket last night, I just came to find it,” he mumbled. He was searching half-heartedly, as if a part of him didn’t really want to find whatever it was. Liebgott was letting him search probably much longer than he needed to because he’d already found the errant object when he’d first come down to the basement.

Liebgott dug into his pocket, fingers brushing against his pack of smokes, his lighter, and dug out the small retractable knife that had Jackson’s initials carved into the side, tipping it out to Webster as an offering.

“This?” Liebgott offered, arching a brow easily. He still had yet to stop staring at Webster, still had yet to quit condemning him for his absence on the snowiest days and in the coldest chills. Webster hadn’t been there while they lost their friends and maybe Liebgott was being stubborn because he knew that if Web were out there, if he’d come back early like Toye, he probably wouldn’t be standing there in Haguenau, but he still reserved the right to be bitter.

They had been broken while Webster had healed. They suffered while he recovered. It made him different. It made him unrecognizable.

Webster leaned over and took the knife from Liebgott’s hands, fingers brushing Joe’s, but all he could feel was the scratchy material of the gloves that Webster had taken to wearing. The ones that Joe had first seen and made a biting comment about how Webster had no idea what cold was, seeing as he’d never set foot in those freezing forests. Liebgott’s eyes were on Webster’s palm as he folded the knife in there and held it tight and he never did look away from his cigarette or Webster’s hands.

“Martin says you did good on the patrol,” Liebgott eventually spoke. “Guess you didn’t forget how to be a soldier, huh?”

“No matter how hard I tried,” was Webster’s dulled response as he tucked away the knife and left the same way he came in.

Liebgott watched him go and snorted derisively at the thought that David Kenyon Webster thought he was somewhat better than this life that the rest of them had to live without reprieve. They didn’t get to while away four months in a cushy hospital bed while a pretty nurse massaged away old hurts. Part of Liebgott was always going to hate Webster for that. It was the part of him that was keeping him from forgiving him when every other part of him was itching to welcome him back.

A good Toccoa man was hard to come by these days. Web was one of them. Liebgott just wanted him to serve out the punishment he was meting out. Then he could forgive him. Then. He just didn’t know how long that was going to take.

*

He made it back to Christenson’s side and was already in the process of digging out a cigarette and his lighter while his brain tried to make the connections between what he had just seen, what he had just said, and what was going to come out of the both. Liebgott shrugged when Christenson gave him an expectant look. “You got a car I can borrow?” was Liebgott’s first comment.

Christenson shook his head, rubbing at his forehead with charcoal-stained fingertips, as if he had been interrupted from something when all this happened. “I can make some calls.”

Liebgott didn’t even know what was going to come of his demand of Webster, but he damn well wasn’t about to go back on his words. He’d stay wherever Webster had been for the last six months, ever since they had stepped off that ocean liner and made their first steps into a new life. He cracked his neck and leaned heavily against the nurse’s desk while looking Christenson up and down.

“I told him I’m staying with him.”

“Why?”

Why? Liebgott couldn’t even put into words the why of it and he didn’t want to condemn Webster to a hypothesis just because Joe wasn’t sure about that wound on his arm. It really probably was from that fishing hook and nothing more, but he still didn’t know. And because of that small sliver of not-knowing, Liebgott wasn’t about to take any chances.

Liebgott just shook his head. “What else have I got to do, huh?” He lifted his chin to the nurse to beckon her over. “Yeah, Kenyon Webster, David,” he prompted. “He’ll be going home under supervision of Joseph Liebgott. When’s he discharged?”

She walked away to find the answer for him and in the meantime, Joe had Christenson’s incredulous glare to stand up to.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Liebgott challenged. “You wanted me here and now I’ll take care of him.”

Something faltered on Christenson’s face and it made Liebgott suspicious enough that when the papers came back for him to sign, he didn’t automatically take the pen and he didn’t sign right away. There was something in that look of his that Liebgott didn’t understand, but it looked half like guilt and half like a secret was being kept from him.

“What?” Liebgott demanded bluntly.

“Part of the reason Ramirez and I thought to get you is because everyone’s worried about you.”

That made Liebgott harden, like the stubborn young boy he had been once upon a time who did things in direct contrast to what everyone else suggested. This was the same stubbornness that had led him to living in a boarding house and taking on a job as a cook. Part of him blamed that stubbornness for his eventual joining of the paratroopers, but it was only partial blame. So when Pat Christenson was talking about how worried the men were about him and how he needed some kind of intervening or saving, he debated tearing up the forms at his side and walking away.

The only thing that kept him from doing that was the mistaken belief that he could still feel the warmth of Webster’s skin on his fingertips.

“Yeah, well, fuck you,” Liebgott announced as he turned and signed his name with a jab of the pen on the ‘I’ of his last name, sneering heavily and biting back a dozen angry jabs at Christenson for thinking he could even be more broken than he’d been after Landsberg, which seemed an impossible feat.

He’d just put his name on a document that was going to give him full responsibility over another man and he wasn’t about to fuck it all up. It was a bit like a rope tying him down, anchoring him to one place. He hadn’t had any kind of anchor to any place, person, or thing in six months since he had come back from the war. Still, he didn’t need saving and he didn’t need help. He was going to help someone else and that meant he had to be at least somewhat okay to do it. It meant he was okay.

“Find us a car and you can leave the moment you do,” Liebgott promised him, stealing the pen that he had signed the forms with, his wandering fingers having learned to pocket whatever he could. “We don’t need your charity. Neither of us do.”

Christenson didn’t wilt under Liebgott’s harsh glares or his angry words and that made Liebgott hate him just a little more for coming out of the war so calm and cool and collected. He hated him and he loved him like a brother in that singular moment. He was trying to tell Liebgott that he needed fixing and implying he was broken, but he was the man that had brought him back to Webster.

And so he hated him and he loved him and that made him more like family than anyone had been to Joe in a good while.

*

There was a crush of crowd when the boat docked in New York City with a much different population than had set out. Endless scores of its original passengers would perpetually rest in foreign graves and blood-soaked soil while others would stay with new families. The remainder of that initial deportation of willing volunteers returned home to lives put on hold and to a hopeful warm welcome.

Liebgott had stuck with Easy Company best as he could on that trip home. It was a last hurrah, a way to stick close to men who would understand him far better than any of the civilians back in San Francisco would ever have a chance of. He slept in a bunk between Skinny Sisk and Doc Roe. Every night, his entertainment consisted of watching Webster write in his journal while his cot swung to and fro under the ocean’s control.

Every night, Liebgott wondered how many times his name appeared in that neat and somewhat-girlish script of Web’s. He would close his eyes and feel his bunk sway and rock on the Atlantic Ocean and imagine that somewhere in those pages, Webster was writing about him the way he wrote about the water and the way that men fondly wrote their letters home to their loved ones. In the thickness of dreams, things didn’t have to be real and Liebgott could pretend for the moments before sleep that Webster wanted Liebgott in a visceral way that could only be expressed on those worn and yellowed pages of his journal.

When he woke up the next day, land was in sight and it was the beginning of the end.

*

Liebgott didn’t get a single wink of sleep between Christenson waking him up with a phone call and Webster being discharged from the hospital. It was eight in the morning and the Californian sun was blasting down on the world with a vengeance, making Liebgott sweat and making him wish that he’d at least tried to nap in the visitor’s chair in Webster’s room. Instead he had sat awake and watched Webster shake off the wooziness of the drugs that they had given to him (the same drugs in pill-form that they had put in Joe’s hands with wariness, as if they didn’t entrust them into his care). It was a simple task by the description -- twice a day, with food -- and Liebgott might be dodgy in a lot of ways, but not with this.

Christenson had found them some old beater Cadillac and it was sitting outside the hospital, the sun dully gleaming off its sea green color. Liebgott didn’t want to know whether the color was just coincidence or some smarmy joke on Christenson’s part, but it was actually kind of perfect, so Joe wasn’t going to say anything on the subject.

He was smoking outside the entrance doors to the hospital when they wheeled Webster out with his single-bag of possessions and wearing a too-big navy-blue long-sleeved shirt and a faded pair of denims. His dogtags gleamed in the sun and Liebgott squinted to watch him. He wrapped an arm around Webster’s waist to help him onto his feet (the other man still woozy from drugs and still listening to the tail-end of a lecture about his stitches and how he shouldn’t get the dressings wet unless he wanted to suffer a possible infection).

“He’s got it, Doc,” Liebgott promised as he wrapped his other arm around Webster’s waist temporarily to get him vertical.

Christenson had taken off earlier after a goodbye to Webster and it was just the two of them now with an old car and barely enough possessions cobbled between the two of them to be able to call them travelers. Slowly, they shuffled away from the hospital and Liebgott got Web settled in the passenger seat of the car.

“I need a pair of sunglasses,” Webster muttered, sounding like he was half-drunk.

“And I need my old job back,” Liebgott added easily, slamming the door (that creaked every time he opened it). “Can’t get what we want, Webster.” This was especially true when part of what you wanted was sitting three feet to the right of you and you didn’t exactly know what that was about, anyway, except a jealousy of the ocean. And didn’t that all sound stupid when he put it like that.

He gunned the gas as soon as he got the ignition started and drove the first ten miles too fast and played the music at least two volumes too loud and not once did Webster complain about it. In fact, he seemed well-removed from the world. The only time that he actually budged was halfway through the trip when he started to dig through his satchel and brought out a journal that was all-too-familiar to Joe. Its pages were more frayed than they had been six months ago and the ink looked faded to his eye, but it damn well sure was the same journal that had been with Webster through the war.

“When you write about this,” Liebgott shouted above the music, “Talk about how I swooped in and saved you like Prince Charming!”

He glanced sidewards in time to catch Webster’s reaction – a shake of his head and a fond smile – and that made Liebgott grin like a young kid who’d just been given his favorite treat. So maybe he wasn’t going to star in Webster’s journal, but if he could keep earning smiles like that, it didn’t matter.

He only turned down the music when Webster started giving directions. He even slowed down when Webster made a big deal of grabbing the dash and biting out a comment about how he hadn’t survived the war just to die in an auto accident. Then he’d gotten really sullen and silent and Liebgott didn’t need to be a genius to piece together that he was talking about Janovec and that day on guard duty.

They went from the sun-baked highway to suburban streets and kept driving past them until they wound their way closer to the ocean. The houses refused to dot the landscape as constantly as they had in suburbia and spans of space began to appear between each house as the sand overtook the road more often than not. Liebgott didn’t turn the ignition off until Webster pointed out a little house with the paint peeling off the outside walls. It couldn’t be more than four rooms and had a porch going all the way around the front of the house. The ocean was within a stone’s throw of the front door. Somehow, that was all Liebgott needed to know to know that this was definitely Webster’s house.

“This is it,” Webster said quietly, leaning closer to Liebgott in order to look at the property. There was a boat tied down to the dock and Liebgott suddenly felt like an intruder on a personal moment, even if all of the moments in Web’s near future were going to involve him. Without another word, Liebgott grabbed the bag of prescriptions and his own stuff and made his exit, slamming the creaking door shut as soon as he was clear of the car.

“Nice digs,” he appraised. “You own the place?”

“It was the family’s. Now it’s mine,” Webster agreed as he leaned his elbows on the roof of the car, squinting in the sunlight as if to prove just how much he needed those sunglasses. “Joe, your job? You didn’t get it back?”

“What can I say? Heavy demand, not enough fucking supply,” he said, trying to brush it off, wishing Webster had been too drugged up to properly remember his off-hand comment. He hitched his bag on his shoulder and made the walk from the driveway to the front door of the house, looking up to see shells hanging with fishing line from the ceiling amidst wind chimes, bird-feeders, and other paraphernalia. It looked like a home and Liebgott had been in short supply of those since he’d left his for the war.

He hesitated by the front door and waited for Webster, taking the moment to really look at the other man. He was still too thin and in need of a shave and haircut, but here (standing in the sun), it seemed like he had been born to live in this weather. His dark hair gleamed and his skin seemed to look healthy rather than sickly in the hospital lights. He joined Liebgott on the porch, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as he dug out the key and glanced warily at Joe.

“What?”

“It’s a mess. And…I only have the bedroom. I mean, the couch is nice and all, but it’s still a couch.”

“Stop your whining and open the door, Web. Jesus,” Liebgott exhaled as he shook his head. “You act like I’m here permanently.” The moment he said those words, he regretted it. No, he wasn’t going to be there to stay, but even a week could seem permanent now that they were fixed in one place. Guilt swarmed him and he made a mental note to apologize for that later, when he had the capacity to put what he was feeling into words.

Webster opened the door and wandered in as though he were going through the motions of old routine. His bag was dropped by the door and his keys went on top of a cedar table in the hall. He checked his reflection in the mirror (and winced) before heading inside, one hand protectively hovering over the wound on his torso. Liebgott was a little slower in following him, not sure how welcome he was and wanting to make sure he didn’t piss Web off within the first sixty seconds of being inside his home.

“So, this is it,” Webster said, gesturing to the space. The kitchen, den, and most everything else shared one large space. To the side was a bathroom and a bedroom and that was it. It was cozy and quaint and small and Liebgott had the sense that by the looks of it, Webster spent more time on his boat than he did inside.

Which brought something else to the fore that Liebgott had been putting off until now.

“You ain’t goin’ sailing, by the way,” Liebgott said sharply as he dropped his things on his couch (claiming it now because he had the feeling he’d be there a while). Before Webster could whine about it, Liebgott kept bulldozing forward with his words, “You heard what the Doc said. No getting the dressings wet.” The fact that Liebgott was likely going to have to help Webster bathe had occurred to him, but he wasn’t about to confront that fact, yet. “And I know you, Webster. You get out on the water, you’re going to get them soaked and then I’ll have to cart you right back to the hospital and I don’t feel like driving all that way just so I can watch them open you up again like a fucking practice kit for sewing.”

That seemed to get through to Webster, but he didn’t say a thing. He just managed to storm off to the bedroom looking sulky as hell while Liebgott settled in and picked up books from the coffee table, reading in a recumbent and lazy position while Web got settled in.

“We’ll redress the wounds tonight,” Liebgott called over after he gave Webster about five minutes. “Then I’ll get you looking like a decent human being again.” He put the book down, expecting a reply from Webster in the bedroom and instead finding him hovering above the couch and staring down at him. “What?” he asked, voice edged with mild anxiety.

“If you’re planning to make me look good and proper, does that mean I get to make sure you put weight on so you look less like a skeleton?” Webster demanded, sitting himself down where a brush of Webster’s hand would mean he was touching Liebgott’s feet. Suddenly, they were too close, but Liebgott didn’t say a word. All he wanted to do was argue that he wasn’t too thin and that just because the Army wasn’t pumping him full of protein and iron didn’t mean he wasn’t perfectly healthy.

“You cook?” Liebgott asked dubiously.

“No. You do. I’ll happily keep you well-supplied in food,” Webster promised, patting his hand on Liebgott’s thigh as he pushed himself to his feet and picked up one of the books from the table, wandering outside as if he hadn’t been in the hospital and hadn’t picked himself up a new houseguest and didn’t look like hell warmed over.

Liebgott always knew that Web was a fucking odd one along with being strange. He also knew that if he was going to be left alone and he had a comfortable couch, he was catching up on the sleep that he’d been denied because he was suddenly babysitter to a careless buddy in arms.

When Joe roused again, the light of the sky had changed severely and there was a smell in the house of freshly-fried vegetables and eggs simmering on the stove. He shifted and cracked one eye open to find two things. The first was that sometime in the day, Webster had covered him with a thick blanket and the second was that Webster was standing by the stove in a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved shirt and was cooking omelettes and fried potatoes, sucking small tastes off his pinky every once in a while.

“Thought you didn’t cook,” Liebgott muttered sleepily, his words still groggy. He slowly shifted into a sitting position, watching Webster for a long moment. He waited until he was slightly more awake before sliding off the couch and approaching, rubbing his eyes tiredly and peering over Webster’s shoulder at the stove-top.

It didn’t even look half-bad. Not that he was about to say that aloud and give Webster any kind of praise. Web turned his head slightly and suddenly Liebgott felt like if he inched forward, their noses would be touching. He eased back just as Web pointed to the food with the spatula. “It’s an omelette, Joe, it’s not exactly fine cuisine,” he pointed out with a shrug, giving Liebgott’s hip a light nudge with the back of his palm. “Go sit down. I’ll feed you before you fix me up.”

Liebgott sat at the oval table and flicked at the dulled lightbulb hanging above them with a finger, settling only when Web slid the plate in front of him. Liebgott didn’t even make a comment about the fact that there was twice as much on his plate as was on Web’s.

“You’ve lost weight since the war,” was all Webster said when he saw the look on Liebgott’s face. “You look like skin and bones. No nice Jewish girl is going to have you looking like that.”

Joe let out a quiet scoff accompanied by a half-giddy smile. “You remember that day?”

“How could I forget?” Webster asked, gesturing with his chin into the den. “There are comics in there because of you. I was…persuaded to give them a shot.” He caught Liebgott’s near-manic grin and let out a small laugh. “Yes, you can read them any time. They’re not exactly collector’s items. They’re just under the television.” He sat down beside Liebgott after bringing the collection of food to the table.

Neither of them said grace and nothing was discussed beyond the plot arcs of the Dick Tracy series that Liebgott loved so much. Liebgott reached over to help Webster cut food when his hand seemed to weaken thanks to the wound and he dug out the pills after enough was consumed.

Webster eyed the two pills warily and then raised his glance to Liebgott. “Web, you gotta,” Liebgott insisted quietly, pushing the tall glass of water over along with it. “It’ll help the pain and the healing. Besides, the haircut and shave will breeze by if you take ‘em. Promise.”

He didn’t get an argument past that and Joe watched those pills until Webster swallowed them down, gulping back half a glass of water with them. Liebgott gave an assured nod and gestured for him to stand. “Come on. I’ll clean up while you’re resting later.” He left the room before Webster did, getting everything ready from the razor to the scissors to the dressings to turning on the light to make sure everything would shine brightly.

If he was going to drag Webster back into the real world and wound up an unwilling passenger, he was doing it in good lighting.

*

The day they disembarked the ship in New York had been brisk and sunny, a good day. Liebgott thought it ought to have been storming to match the way it was signaling an end to a life that had become routine and expected. Every time he said goodbye to someone else (to Skinny, to Popeye, to the Doc), he felt like he was never going to see them again. He’d said his goodbye to Major Winters before they even left and the same went for Captain Speirs and Lip (who’d always be just Lip, even if he’d always held the highest of respect for the man). Now, he was making his rounds around the dock and hugging his brothers one by one.

He got to Webster last. Webster’s gaze was already stuck on the water beneath the massive ship and Liebgott almost had to laugh.

“Already moving on, huh?” he asked quietly, turning to catch something like sadness lurking on Webster’s face. Of all of them, Web probably felt this keenly. He was the author, he knew that goodbyes meant the end and that books didn’t just start up again. They were finished and closed and new books were opened. New chapters were written. This was going to be hard on Webster, but Liebgott knew he had to say the words.

He had no plans. He had a ticket booked on a train West, but beyond that, Liebgott figured he would let the wind take him wherever it went. He’d try for his old job back and he would maybe go to some bars and try and woo girls with pretty words and a big smile and a charming wink.

They stood awkwardly opposite each other for many moments while the hum of men around them shouted and said goodbyes and promised to write. They stood two feet apart and neither of them said any of the words that had been thought up on the journey over. Liebgott wanted to tell Webster that he ought to come West and see if the Pacific Ocean was as beautiful as he wanted it to be and if it wasn’t, he could stay at Joe’s side anyway, for a while. Liebgott had no idea what Webster wanted to say, but he could tell it was something. His brow was pinched and his mouth kept opening only to close and avoid saying something.

In the end, they didn’t even say goodbye. Someone whistled loudly for the next train out and that was Liebgott’s ticket out of there. So all he did was press in close and hug Webster tightly, clapping him on the back.

“Don’t make me out to be too bad in that book of yours,” Liebgott mumbled into Webster’s ear and then he was gone, vanishing into the crowd like he had never even been there to begin with.

He thought that was supposed to be the last page of the book.

Except then six months later, Christenson called him and it turned out that all they had done was rounded out a chapter and the words ‘the end’ had never been involved in the first place. It was for the best, Liebgott supposed. In hindsight, he was always going to hate that he never got a proper goodbye with Web. At least this time around, he had time to prepare.

*

This time around, Liebgott was already starting to suspect, he didn’t know if he would be able to muster up the words to say goodbye when it eventually came time to go.

Webster had sank down into a wooden chair in the bathroom and was sitting with perfect posture, awaiting Liebgott’s hands in his hair to fix up the errant strands that had grown too long and unruly in their curl. His beard was thick and made him look at least ten years older and for a moment, Liebgott forgot the age difference between them and almost felt the younger of the two.

He stood behind Webster and stared at his own reflection in the mirror for five seconds, which was about three seconds longer than he could usually bear to do it. He looked gaunt and he looked like a stranger and both of those things made him turn his head down to focus on giving Web’s hair a trim. “They’d mistake you for a woman if you’d let this grow out any longer,” Liebgott ribbed lightly, strands of hair falling away to the ground until Liebgott was content with the length of it.

He was nothing if not professional when it came to cutting hair and by the time he edged around Webster with the razor, he was back in barber mode, tipping Web’s neck up with two taps of his fingers to the underside of his chin, scraping away at stubble and watching as he found the man that he’d gone to war with. Inch by inch, Webster was slowly revealed under this stranger’s guise and Liebgott couldn’t help a smile as he watched his progress. He wiped away the last of the shaving cream with a towel and stepped back to take a look at him.

“There,” Liebgott announced, “Now you look presentable. Ought to take you on the town, let the women at you.” And looking the way he did, Liebgott had no doubts that if Webster just kept his mouth shut, he could have any of them he wanted. Except maybe Liebgott was also wondering if he really wanted to do that when he was still holding back on words he should have said on a New York dock or on an Austrian shoreline and why was it that all the important moments of his life seemed to be by the water?

He meticulously cleaned his shaving wares and eyed Webster carefully as if judging his own work, as though he would never truly be content with it. Every few seconds, he found a new mistake and would lean forward to edge away a small piece of stubble or to cut a lone strand that had escaped his fingers the first time.

Standing in front of Webster now, Liebgott could see him every time he closed his eyes and his lips parted, something like a gasp of content skating past his lips every time Joe’s fingers brushed at his neck or at the shell of his ear.

When he was finally content and every tool was cleaned, he took hold of the clean dressings. He was meticulous with them as he began to wrap them around his palm, unwrapping them, and rewrapping them while nodding to Webster’s shirt.

“Take it off,” he encouraged, perching on the bathroom sink lightly. He set the dressings and bandages aside when Webster could only manage with the one hand and leaned forward, both hands tangled up in the hem of Webster’s shirt and lightly coaxing it over his head, leaving him bare-chested and bandaged.

Now, Liebgott had seen most of Easy naked in their time during the war. Webster, though…Web had always evaded that, as if he required some kind of privacy. He’d never been to the showers at Toccoa with Easy because he’d been with F Company and he had that thing where he constantly wore pajamas to bed, as if he was worried about what his naked body would tell the other men. They’d had private stalls in England and Webster hadn’t needed a shower in Haguenau when it came their turn. Even in Austria, Webster swam with full shirt and shorts and always tried to keep himself clothed.

Liebgott realized very quickly that seeing Webster like this was as much of an invitation to intimacy into the man’s life as he was going to get. He had the real distinct feeling that not many people ever got to see him like this, even if it was just his shirt off.

Liebgott was planning on saving the ‘I sleep in next to nothing’ warning for right before he went to bed that night.

Still, even if it was only his shirt, Web seemed heavily uncomfortable, as if suddenly he felt like he was on display for the world. Liebgott felt like smacking him over the head and telling him that it wasn’t a big deal. He’d seen most of the guys without a shred of clothing on them and this wasn’t any different, he would lie. He would tell Webster that it didn’t matter how hairy his chest was and that he oughta get that pink flush out of his cheeks. Except he couldn’t say that without coloring himself and Liebgott doubted he could look Web in the eye as he said it, so instead of saying any words at all, he just kept his head down and stared at Web’s torso.

The arm was easy. The arm was a two-minute job that he could have done on the battlefield. Call him Doc Liebgott if you wanted. The stomach was going to take him a little more concentration. The first part was easy. Ripping away the other bandages with his razorblade took one swift cut.

Liebgott sidled behind Webster and coaxed him to his feet. “C’mon,” he urged. “Easier this way.” Without another word, he went to work peeling away all the dressings and keeping one hand on Webster’s hip to keep him steady while the other worked at getting it gone. From there, it was easy as applying the disinfectant cream and standing behind Webster to use the mirror’s reflection to guide him.

He could feel the heat pouring off of Web and Joe’s hips nearly canted forward in a single moment’s crazy desire to get closer to that warmth. He stopped himself by making it part of his whole body’s movement forward for the bandages, gripping Web’s hip tighter than before as he made sure they fit snugly.

Webster’s breath was hitching and Joe was ignoring that completely as he circled around to quickly change the arm dressings as well, giving Web a smile of accomplishment and a pat on the shoulder. “You’re all done,” Liebgott guaranteed, putting away his things on one of the shelves in the bathroom. “You should get some sleep before the pills really kick in. You got pretty woozy and out of it this morning when you took ‘em.”

Webster seemed to sway slightly, blinking like a deer in headlights at Liebgott’s suggestion.

“Web? You still in there?”

“Yeah, I just…they’re hitting a bit hard,” Webster admitted, rubbing sleepily at his face with a broad palm, marvelling in the mirror at the fact that he didn’t bear even a lick of facial hair after Joe had gone to work on him. “Can you just make sure I get to bed?” he asked hesitantly, as if it was killing him to ask such a simple thing.

Liebgott nodded and his arm went back around Webster’s hip as the other went around his good arm to guide him into the main bedroom. The ceiling fan chopped lazily above and Liebgott helped Webster collapse on the queen-sized bed, rumpling the covers even more than before.

Joe could see blood stains on the covers and he stared at them for a long and accusing moment, but didn’t ask. He just got Webster under the sheets and offered him a sunny smile.

“You need anything, I’m just outside, okay?”

“You got it,” Webster agreed tiredly, bunching a pillow up in his hands as he adjusted and tried to settle in, staring at Liebgott with those tired blue eyes that already seemed brighter than they had in the hospital.

Liebgott switched off the lights on his way out, lingering in the doorway. “And Web?”

He got a grunt in reply.

“I sleep in next to nothing, so you better not give a shit if I’m naked in a time of emergency.”

He didn’t get any sound in reply that time. Liebgott figured that Webster was already fast asleep or just couldn’t be bothered to form words in reply to that. Liebgott shrugged and closed the door lightly behind him, stripping out of his t-shirt and jeans by the time he got to the sofa and made sure that one of his three pairs of clothes was put away neatly before he got comfortable.

It was the first night. Liebgott wished he could say how many more he’d be so he could start composing graceful verses of goodbyes, but that was a piece of knowledge as lost to him as was the man he’d lost when he became someone other than his mother’s boy.

When he woke up in the morning, the house was filled with bright sunlight and Webster had yet to wake. Liebgott sat up slowly and tried to find out what time it was, discovering it when he got up from the couch and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. It was nine in the morning according to the clock, which meant that he’d gotten nearly twelve full hours of sleep, which was twice as many as he usually did.

Without even being fully awake, he was going into his automatic mode and was digging out pans to make breakfast – food that was heavy enough for the both of them in the form of some egg-dipped bread and bacon. Liebgott pulled open drawers and cupboards and explored the fridge and freezer for what Webster had. Through his explorations, he found the necessary cutlery and only paused what he was doing when he yanked open a drawer and found a secret stash that could rival any drug-dealer’s sampling wares.

These, he put on the counter before returning to the sound of bacon splattering and prepping breakfast.

Even when he heard Webster’s footsteps, he didn’t make mention of the items on the counter, but just leveled a hearty ‘morning’ as he turned the bread and dug out the syrup, gesturing for Webster to sit at the head of the table. “How’d you sleep?”

“Weird dreams,” Webster admitted through a yawn, looking like he was about to flinch at any moment. “Joe,” he precariously spoke and Liebgott did notice the use of his first name, as if they were on first name basis even though Liebgott had never once used Web’s in his life. “Why are my things on the counter?”

“The day you got in your accident, how many of each did you take? I mean, there’s a joint in there. Found some E, prescriptions that sure as hell ain’t yours,” Liebgott noted disapprovingly. “And I mean, the vodka and the gin and the scotch? Web, Jesus…”

“It helps me write,” Webster said quietly. “It’s not like I abuse it and I don’t mix. I also hardly use it. I’ve had those for six months and I’ve barely touched them. They just…they just help me write. I’m not the first author to need chemical substances to help with the process and…”

“I don’t want to hear whatever justification you’ve been using for yourself,” Liebgott cut him off, using the spatula as a prop to help him get his point across. “Did you take anything the day you had the accident?”

“No,” Webster retorted firmly and heavily. “I didn’t. And I’m not lying, so stop looking at me like that.”

Liebgott plated the food and brought it over to Webster while they stewed in silence. Webster had his guilt and Liebgott had some answers to look for (first off was whether or not he believed Webster when he said what he did about the drugs). He sat down in the same seat that Webster had taken last night, which Liebgott was fast coming to think of as Cook’s Chair and watched Webster poke his food around and hardly take a bite.

“What?” he demanded. “My cooking not good enough for you?”

“The pills don’t exactly give me an appetite,” Webster admitted, avoiding Joe’s eye contact. “It looks good, it does, it just…mmfph…” He was silenced by Joe leaning over the table with a fork in hand and food pierced on it. That was placed firmly in Webster’s mouth, which solved the whole appetite problem as far as Liebgott was concerned. They repeated that three more times until Webster dissolved into laughter and Liebgott wasn’t far behind.

Web wiped at his mouth with a napkin, shooting Liebgott a dubious look. “What am I, a child?”

“Not my fault you act like a spoiled brat half the time,” Liebgott retorted, still grinning away. “Come on. Eat before my feelings get hurt.” And if Webster cared to notice, Liebgott had taken the lion’s share onto his plate again.

Webster grasped his own fork and pushed Liebgott’s hand away with a smirk on his face, settling to eat the food and letting out a pleased murmur. “Jesus, you’re a good cook,” he praised with slight surprise evident in his tone. The alcohol and the drugs seemed to loom over the both of them like some kind of unwanted spirit, but Liebgott wasn’t about to bring them up and he hoped Webster wouldn’t throw a fit when he dumped them all in the trash while Web was looking the other way.

If he was going to be living in this house, Webster wasn’t inhaling or snorting or taking or drinking anything to try and coax some muse down from the rafters of being too high for his own good. His next step was going out to check that boat for anything too dangerous. He had a lot to do while Web was passed out, but for now, he needed an answer to a question that had been bothering him.

“Was looking at your sheets,” Liebgott said without a flicker of shame in his voice, after he finished up his food. “They’ve got blood on ‘em.”

“Yeah,” Webster agreed with slight discomfort. “I uh, I didn’t exactly call the hospital first thing.”

“Are you telling me you were the kind of idiot who bled on his sheets enough until you decided to call someone for help?” Liebgott said sharply, giving Web a dubious look. “You could’ve bled right out.”

“I didn’t.”

“Could’ve,” Liebgott argued immediately, shaking his head.

“Didn’t!”

“Could have!”

“I didn’t!” Webster argued right back, as if they were this immature and childish that they weren’t going to reach an accord until they bickered about it for a good while. His eyes flashed with stubborn anger and for some reason, that just prodded Liebgott forward to argue some more.

He leaned forward and grabbed Webster’s empty plate to stack with his own. “Yeah, well, you could’ve! We’ve all seen your stitches and how deep that cut was. You’re an idiot, Web. Stop fighting me on this one.”

Liebgott pushed himself up from the table to clean up the dishes while he pressed the pills down in front of Webster and watched him like a hawk until Web swallowed them whole.

“I’m not a child,” Webster said heavily, bitterly, and angrily at once.

“Yeah, well,” Liebgott muttered while getting the water in the sink as hot as it could go. “You got a ways to go in proving that to me before I’ll believe you.” He scrubbed at the plates until his fingers grew waterlogged and every once in a while he would check on Webster over his shoulder (who hadn’t moved and seemed to be watching Liebgott as if that provided some kind of entertainment). “If you want to go fishing, I’ll go on the boat with you,” Liebgott offered as he put the dishes in the drying rack and turned around. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and he shook the droplets of water from his palms while leaning his hips back against the counter and watching Web for the reaction. “Could even tell me about this book of yours. About the war, right?”

“I actually shelved that project,” Webster said carefully, shrugging. “I’ve been trying to sell it around, but no publisher wants to buy it. So I’ve got the new one going.”

He looked pretty lost then and Liebgott kicked himself for bringing it up in the first place. “And what’s that one about?”

“Sharks.”

It was one word and already Liebgott hated it. He managed to plaster a polite smile on his lips so he didn’t drive Webster away from talking about it, but deep down, he hated it. After Webster had survived the war, now he wanted to write about a fucking predator of the sea that was all-too-likely to eat him whole. Joe wouldn’t get a call from the hospital that time. No, he’d be the call that the morgue made to come and identify the remnants of the body.

“You shouldn’t just give up on the other one,” Liebgott offered. Sure, jumping out of airplanes probably wasn’t the safest thing in the world either, but they had already done it and already survived the jump. It wasn’t like the danger was unknown and a blurry haze of what might be. It had all happened already and Web had survived as unscathed as any of them had managed. “I’ll help you. What do we need to do?”

“Stuff letters in envelopes, make copies, and send it out,” Webster suggested, gaping at Liebgott. “You’d help me?”

“What else am I doing with my days, huh?”

There was a long pause between the two of them. “Hey, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“What were you doing with your days before this? Christenson told me he found you in some motel and that you haven’t even been home yet. Is that true?” Webster was looking at him critically and Joe didn’t like this turn of the conversation. In fact, he had a pretty bad feeling about it.

He didn’t have a good answer. He didn’t even have a bad answer and that was the problem. Joe hadn’t been doing anything but hiding away. Sometimes he took work to line his pockets with temporary cash and sometimes he just tried to stay as far away from the public eye as he could. Now he’d found a good hiding spot and Webster was trying to pry the sore spots of the last six months out of him.

“Just working for hire. Cab company wouldn’t hire me, so I did what I could.” And sometimes he hadn’t done anything at all, living off the charity of men and women who’d never had to go to war and never had to fight for their country. Men and women who’d never seen blood on their hands.

“And is that why you barely have clothes?”

Liebgott flushed suddenly with shame and he shut his mouth in a hurry. Any of his goodwill that had gone into this conversation with him had now vanished and he had no desire to talk about any of it. He turned away from Webster and started to cobble together items in the fridge to prepare for dinner, as if it wasn’t so many hours away that he was clearly doing it just to keep busy.

“I can take you to the store. I owe you, Joe. I owe you a lot for doing this. Let me buy you a couple new things, it’s the least I can do,” he insisted.

“And what are you doing for money, huh?”

Webster flushed and glanced at the table before him.

“You think we all didn’t notice? You kept talking about Harvard this and Harvard that and you never even went back to finish the degree. Most of the other guys figured you’d been done before you even joined up, but I knew better because you told me. You trusted me enough to tell me. Now you’re out here in California fishing and writing about sharks?”

“I’m living off what’s sent to me by my mother in her weekly stipend and letters,” Webster said quietly. “Sometimes I sell what I bring in at the market and I do pieces for magazines and journals. What does it matter?”

“The same way it matters what I was doing before I got the call,” Liebgott replied, feeling successful in unnerving Webster after he had made his particularly pointed comments to Liebgott. Eye for an eye and all. “So your Pops ain’t too pleased with your decision, huh?”

“He thinks Annie’s using this house as a summer vacation,” Webster admitted. “The whole family is basically in collusion against him. They love me.”

“What, he doesn’t?”

“He’ll calm down. It’s just a matter of time.” Webster sounded pretty unsure about that and his words seemed poised to convince himself of that fact.

Liebgott watched him carefully and thought twice about saying anything that could sound like advice. It wasn’t like Liebgott’s relationship with his family was so great. He doubted he could say anything without coming off like a giant hypocrite. So instead he shut up and wandered to sit down next to Web.

“How’re those pills hitting?”

“Still pretty hard,” Webster admitted, rubbing at his eyes heavily. “Don’t think I’ll be fishing much today, not unless you want a repeat incident of what happened yesterday.”

Yesterday. Liebgott was stunned to think that within twenty-four hours, both their lives had changed so abruptly and severely that it seemed like twenty-four hours ago was another lifetime all-together. Yesterday, Joe had been counting change to see if he could afford to grab a burger instead of grabbing a can of beans with the five-finger discount at the nearest grocer. Now he was living it up in style in a nice little house.

He helped Webster to his feet. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you on the couch. You got cable in this place?”

“Three channels,” Web said proudly.

“We’ll watch that til you’re in your right mind again,” Liebgott coaxed as he settled Webster down on the couch and draped the blanket around him, joining him after he’d fiddled with the rabbit ears on the television and flicked it on. He’d sat down with only scant inches of space between them. Somehow, it didn’t really seem to matter.

“If I fall asleep,” Webster murmured just before his head had drooped onto Liebgott’s shoulder. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”

“You got it.”

*

In Austria, Joe Liebgott almost got lucky exactly once. The stars had all aligned perfectly, the boys were all up to other activities, and there he was with a brunette Austrian woman that might have made his Ma proud, seeing as Joe was going back to his heritage. It was off-limits to fraternize with the enemy, but Joe had never really been the biggest fan of rules beforehand and he wasn’t about to start now, especially when it had been since Aldbourne since he’d had anything but his hand to give him relief.

She was the daughter of some potato farmer or something. Joe hadn’t exactly been taking notes while they struck up the conversation. She’d just been relieved that he hadn’t started the conversation with ‘kommen sie here, baby’ and that once they got talking in more rapid German, that he’d been able to keep up.

Two things had stopped him. The first was the fact that as soon as they got laid down on a haystack, all Joe could see was Landsberg when he looked at her. Her face suddenly grew gaunt and Joe felt sick down to his core. Every pretty curl suddenly looked as though it was covered in defecation and destruction and her pale skin seemed caked with mud and blood.

The second thing was that Webster and Perconte happened on him, talking about searching for chickens and eggs and something about Luz striking out.

“…Jesus…” Perconte muttered, gaping at Liebgott and the girl on that stack of hay. It was like one of those scenes from an old Western. No one was giving their ground. On one side, Liebgott straddled the girl (shit, he didn’t even know her name) and on the other stood Webster and Perconte with slack-jawed shock and embarrassment. One of them was going to have to fold, but it wasn’t apparent which side that was going to be just then.

Webster turned away first, nudging at Perconte’s shoulder. “Come on, there’s other barns,” he assured him, not even looking back at Liebgott as he stormed his way out of the barn. He was in a real hurry to get gone, but Liebgott appreciated the sudden privacy.

He should have been all-clear to finish the job.

Except now when he looked back at her, all he saw in that pretty pale face of hers and those auburn curls in her hair, all he could see was Webster staring back at him and he didn’t know what that said about himself. He staggered backwards, fumbling to do his pants up again.

“I’m sorry,” he insisted desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t…”

He didn’t even know what he could say that would make up for his sudden freak behavior, so he didn’t bother searching for anything to say at all and staggered out of the barn to try and find the path. Web and Perco were about fifty feet ahead discussing something using their hands and Liebgott set to sprinting in order to catch up. He fell into step at Web’s left side and kept his head on the ground.

“…that fast?” Webster said in awe.

“Shut up,” was all Liebgott muttered in response.

They walked in silence and kicked up the dust of the road on their way back and Liebgott was tense for days after, snapping at anything, arguing about everything, and trying not to look Webster right in the eye.

*

Webster had fallen asleep nearly minutes after he had collapsed on the couch. Liebgott had been watching some old cartoon and let the man snooze away, even when his face slipped from his shoulder and he went face-down into Joe’s lap. All Joe could do was lightly shift him so that Webster’s cheek was pressed against his thigh and he was comfortable, blanket overtop him.

Joe couldn’t stop thinking about that girl in Austria all day and it made him wonder one thing: He had been home for six months and not once in all that time had he made overt advances on women. Of course, he was disgusted with himself so much of the time that, maybe, he didn’t think a single woman could see a shred of decency in him, but he thought maybe it was more than that. Maybe he’d just been waiting for Webster to come back into his life like flotsam to shore.

Took him six months, but he eventually got there.

Liebgott’s fingers got lost in Webster’s freshly-cut hair, parting it and fixing it while he slept with his mouth open and without a care in the world on his face.

Austria, thought Joe. He hadn’t had the flickerings of desire to do anything with anyone since then, since the day in the barn and the day by the lake and call it what you wanted, but Liebgott hadn’t done one single weak thing in the war. He hadn’t needed sexual satisfaction so bad that he turned to the other guys and he hadn’t folded when it came to cheating on a girlfriend back home. No one to cheat on meant a clear conscience and not sleeping with your buddy meant you didn’t have to worry about what that meant for you.

Except Webster came back into all their lives in Haguenau and after that, Liebgott started to wonder about himself. It didn’t hit a critical point until Austria, until he realized that there were things that he wanted to do to David Kenyon Webster that no one important, moral, or good was ever going to approve of and Joe wanted to do them three times over to him until he begged for more.

He’d let Webster walk out of his life and he hadn’t done a thing. It made him strong or it made him a coward or it made him both. Liebgott wasn’t too sure yet.

There was a sharp and loud sudden noise on the screen and it jostled Webster from his sleep. For five seconds, he was a lost vessel at sea, staring to the world around him with confusion, as if he didn’t know what belonged and what didn’t. He peered up at Liebgott and haltingly raised himself up until he was, once more, vertical.

“How long was I out?”

“Cartoon and a half,” Liebgott replied, leaning back against the couch and draping one arm around Webster’s shoulders. “Hey Web?”

“Mm?”

“When’s the last time you had sex?”

Liebgott was a lot surer about that question in his head. It’d sounded natural and when he was thinking about sex and Austria and need in the midst of the war, it was a question that belonged. Of course, when you removed the fact that Webster couldn’t read his mind, it just made it sound really pretty bad.

Webster was caught gaping at Liebgott and his eyes bugged wide, his cheeks went red, and he looked all the world like he was about to be caught with a guilty secret.

“I…I…”

Liebgott arched a brow as he waited calmly for the response to come trickling off Webster’s lips and if it took a slap on the back, Liebgott was more than willing to do that too.

“The hospital,” Webster finally admitted, blinking owlishly at Joe. “Why are you asking me about this? What’s going on?”

Liebgott almost wondered if he found a nurse that had kept his eye at the hospital and he tried to stamp down any unwanted jealousy that had kept Webster from Easy, where he’d belonged. It probably wasn’t like that at all, so he didn’t say a word and just stared at Webster and nodded to his calf.

Liebgott could keep all his emotions at bay. It was even easier to do when he didn’t understand half of them. “That wound of yours get in the way?”

“I pretty much just lied there,” Webster pointed out quietly, still looking as red as a a fiery sunset and as embarrassed as anyone could be. He let out a quiet scoff and groaned as he picked himself fully off of Liebgott and the couch and started to pick his way around the room, grasping his books and all the rest of his things before finding his wallet and tucking it in his back pocket. “You can drive. Let’s go to town.”

“You still drugged?” Liebgott asked with a nasty little smirk. “Because if you’re about to make passes at shop girls while I try on clothes, I want to be there for all of it.” His grin widened to the point that he was baring his teeth and clasping Web on the shoulder as he dragged him away from the tables and the house.

Liebgott grabbed his jacket, car keys and his wallet, they were set. He continued to watch Webster carefully for every minute sway and every small indication that something was wrong in the event they needed to cancel their little road trip and get Webster back inside the house before he got worse. After a war, after wounds, after everything, it was a fishing accident that, in reality, wasn’t even that bad and Liebgott was almost losing his mind with worry while he mother-henned Webster.

Jesus Christ, thought Liebgott, what the hell’s the world coming to?

He piled into the driver’s seat and ignored the way that silence seemed to dominate the conversation between them until they reached the nearest warehouse for clothes. It wasn’t anything fancy like Joe had been expecting (not some boutique or some hidden little getaway that rich people went when it came to needing new threads). It was just a one-level store with guys that looked exactly like him shopping for clothes.

They’d set Webster up in a chair and Liebgott didn’t take any longer than thirty minutes to grab three pairs of jeans and a bunch of t-shirts, finding exactly one button-down when Webster muttered that he could afford to look presentable for once.

Webster fell asleep on the drive back and Liebgott took advantage of that to stop at one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean, sitting on the hood of the car and watching the waves come in.

He wished he had a beer. He wished he had a beer and a chair and that Web was awake and wasn’t under the influence of whatever those drugs were that were meant to get him better. He wished Webster would look at him again the way he had in Austria and he wished this time that he had followed through on what his impulses and his instincts had been telling him to do. It wouldn’t have been hard to grab hold of Webster by the shirt, haul him close, and kiss him within an inch of his life, bruising his lips and biting down on tanned skin until Liebgott made marks for the whole world to see.

As with all of Liebgott’s repressed fantasies, then came all those sinful thoughts that were going to send him to hell. The truth was, after everything he’d already done, he felt as if he already had a nice and neat little place reserved. So what if he was going to add a little sodomy to the list? He was so far removed from the man he was before the war that he thought he deserved to be there. And he might as well enjoy himself on the way down, down, down.

He licked at his lips and craned his head over his shoulder to look at Webster slumped in the passenger seat of the car, limbs going every which way and managing to look graceful while he was doing it.

Liebgott inhaled deeply and got back in the car, taking a moment to debate having this talk with Webster in the car in front of the Pacific Ocean, as if that would spark some memory in Webster’s head of that day in Austria, as if it would bring them right back there.

In the end, Liebgott just started up the ignition and drove them back to Webster’s home.

He leaned over and nudged Webster lightly, waiting for him to rouse. They were as close as they ever got. Inches in places and what felt like millimeters in others. Liebgott didn’t do a thing but brush away an errant curl from Web’s forehead and lightly slap him on the cheek.

“Come on, sleeping beauty,” Liebgott announced. “You’re home and I got dinner to make. Haul your ass outta there and do some work or something. You’ve been sleeping all day.”

Later, Liebgott would realize that maybe it wasn’t so much the pills that had made Webster so sleepy in those first few days, but something else entirely. The fact that as Webster healed, his sleeping improved seemed like one of those cause-and-effect things, when really, Liebgott might have noted that Webster was just getting happier and healthier in the head as time went by. There was less to be depressed about. There were fewer problems to try and sleep away.

Liebgott tossed his brand new clothes onto the chair in the living room and made his way into the kitchen to start on dinner while Webster started to work on one of his books. Liebgott, from his place in the kitchen, couldn’t tell whether it was the memoir or whether it was the more dangerous of the two books. He hoped to God that whatever Web was writing, it wasn’t about the thrashing that happened when a person got nabbed by a shark. Honest to god, he hoped that wasn’t what Web was writing.

They began to settle into routines that night. Joe would cook a lavish meal and Webster cleared the table. They talked idly over dessert and split a cup of coffee. This would be the same routine they held for exactly nine nights until change would force it awry.

On this night, Joe got up and left the small house when Webster settled in with his book under the lamp (curled up with his blanket and looking all the world like a content cat sprawled out and not wanting to move).

He snuck out down the shore and let the moonlight guide his way. He even left a path as he went as he shed his shirt and his jeans. Then he was left in nothing but boxers and dogtags and his feet dug into the cool sand and the dark sky above him surrounded him in inky darkness as he dipped his toe into the expansive ocean.

He’d grown up by this sea and he’d never seen anything special about it. It wasn’t like the mountains where it varied and offered new crags and crooks of unimagined beauty. It didn’t change between the winter and the summer and offer new landscapes. It was always the same. Every day, it was the same. Maybe that was what Webster loved about the sea. It was his constant, his unchanging ocean.

Liebgott shivered lightly and waded deeper. The summer months made the days hot and warmed the water enough that it was tolerable, but it never was as warm as visits to the local pool had been.

Two steps more and he was suddenly knee-deep.

“That’s not fair.”

He froze in the water and turned slowly around. He was caught in the act, but a part of him was slightly feeling as if he’d meant to be. He hadn’t exactly made it a secret when he picked his way down to the water with a heavy slam of the door behind him (Webster had told him that the hinges were loose and that he would repair it tomorrow. Tomorrow became tomorrow and then tomorrow and then another tomorrow until finally, Liebgott would stop believing him).

Liebgott shrugged idly and waded another step deeper. The only difference was that he was facing Webster as he did it.

“You should’ve thought of that when you got yourself mangled with a fishing hook,” Liebgott pointed out as he went deeper than before and never took his eyes off of Webster’s face, only half-obscured by the darkness. The moon was doing a fine job of lighting him up and making him look ethereal, as if he belonged in some old Greek myth rather than in a small house on the Californian coast. He went another step deeper and watched the envy flash over Webster’s face.

“Can you even swim?”

“I grew up around the ocean, Web, what do you take me for?” Liebgott snorted as he turned and dove. He wasn’t the strongest swimmer in the world, but he didn’t intend to go that deep. He would stay shallow and just try and figure out what kind of magic lay in every endless droplet of water.

By the time he was through communing with something that wasn’t talking to him, Webster had staked out a spot in the sand and was holding a towel out for Liebgott to take. The night was warm enough that Joe didn’t feel inclined to sprint inside and find warmer clothes and so he settled next to Webster, already intent on making his own mark in the sand.

“The day it happened, I panicked,” Webster was quietly admitting as Joe toweled off his hair. He glanced to the side and watched as Webster let his palm hover over the scar on his arm, slowly and again. Every time he did, his t-shirt rode up at the sleeve and his scars from D-Day showed like some contrast between past and present. “I got hurt and I was bleeding all over and all I could think was that there was no one here to help.”

He swallowed hard and tipped his head back to look to the stars, as if the answer was there.

“I went inside and just tried to stop it. I tried and I tried and I prayed, even, and I don’t pray. When I finally realized I was completely alone and no one was going to come out of the shadows to help me, that’s when I called the hospital.” He turned a weary and tired look to Liebgott, letting out a scoff. “I had no one. Even you couldn’t be found until Christenson started pulling at strings to see what fell through and what didn’t. You were just…gone.”

“Why was I your first contact?” Liebgott demanded.

“In a time when I’m wounded and bleeding,” Webster spoke quietly, voice low as if imparting a secret. There was no one even around to eavesdrop and Webster was still acting as if he held some of the most important information in the world, “all I wanted was someone who had seen the worst before. Because you would never think it was so bad that it was hopeless. I wanted you.”

Liebgott’s breath nearly damn well caught at those last three words even though they didn’t mean what Liebgott wanted them to be. It was still something, though.

Except he had almost disappeared completely from society. He’d almost vanished through the cracks to the point that he never would have been found and Webster might not have been alone in that hospital room, but it would have been someone else.

“Yeah, well, you got me,” Liebgott managed to get out in a gruff tone, still drying himself off. “And isn’t it time you take your pills and start crashing? What are you doing out here anyway?”

“I miss the ocean,” Webster said and there it was. There was that longing and yearning in his voice that Liebgott had heard before in the way that Harry talked about Kitty or the way that men lovingly cared for their loot. “I guess watching you swimming was about the next best thing I could have.”

“Show’s over, Web. Get your ass in bed,” Liebgott ordered, on his feet without a single moment’s hesitation. He took the lead into the house and hoped to hell that Web couldn’t see the raw look on his face that came of nearly telling a secret that really was bigger than even Joe Liebgott knew how to deal with.

He put Webster to bed and got him to take his pills. Before Liebgott followed suit (without the middle step of the drugs), Joe gripped the edge of the couch and glanced to the moonlit ceiling, daring a small little prayer as if to deal with the fact that he was in way, way over his head and he wasn’t sure what to do about that.

What he didn’t expect was to be woken up with a firm shove to his shoulder in the middle of the night. His back was already starting to get wrecked from sleeping on the couch and he needed every minute of sleep he was currently getting. “Son of a…what the fuck do you want?” he asked without even opening his eyes and turning slightly, cursing under his breath.

There was another shove and that was enough to wake him up.

“What!” he snapped, finally opening his eyes to find Webster’s face hovering about four inches away from his, which got Liebgott very unnerved, very fast. He let out a weary sigh and pressed a palm over his heart, trying to ignore the way it was jackrabbiting. “Jesus, Web, you scared the crap out of me.” Which wouldn’t be the first time he said those words that night. Liebgott’s gaze drifted down Webster’s body when he didn’t say a word and watched the way he was pressing one hand protectively over his abdomen and the way…

Shit.

Liebgott nearly vaulted onto his feet, grabbing shoes and his coat and yanking Webster forcibly with him by wrapping a hand around his waist. There was blood soaking through the arm of the long-sleeved shirt which meant that the stitches had been pulled, which meant that Webster had done something to pull the stitches. They were piled into the car and Liebgott tossed his bag into the backseat, glaring at Webster. “What the hell did you do?”

“I was thrashing, I think,” Webster drowsily mumbled, lifting the arm up. “I think it just caught the edge of the table. It’s only one stitch.”

“You’re bleeding from above the wrist, Web. If I didn’t know you, I’d think you wanted to off yourself at this point,” Liebgott said amidst a long string of violent curses in regards to Webster, his attitude, and his actions. He took corners a bit too fast and he was speeding, but it was the middle of the night and he still wasn’t driving half as dangerously as Luz did and he still wasn’t as pissed off as he was the day they came down the mountain and they sat just like this – Joe in the driver’s seat, Web sullenly sulking in the passenger seat beside.

The trip to the hospital was incredibly and thankfully brief. Joe pestered the doctor for instructions and refused to leave Webster alone and asked a dozen questions that didn’t really matter. By the time he let the Doctor speak, he was told that Web had only ripped the two stitches and he would be fine. He would be fine. It was just a minor wound and Liebgott kept telling himself that, but the fact was that every time he saw blood on Webster’s body, he kept expecting it to be worse. Like a bullet wound straight to the heart.

The drive back to the house happened at five in the morning and was dead silent but for the sound of the engine and the wayward animal-like cries from the dark landscape as they drove down the deserted road.

“It was an accident,” Webster finally piped up, somewhere along mile five. “I know you don’t believe me and I know you’ve gone suddenly overprotective, but it was an accident. The war is over, I’m not going to get shot, I’m not going to step on a mine, I’m not going to die.” He sounded ethereally calm and collected and Liebgott almost snapped and demanded to know how he could sound so distant before recalling that the Doctor had shot him up before stitching him up. “You need to stop worrying.”

“Not til you get your clean bill of health,” Liebgott said stubbornly, clenching the steering wheel tighter than before and keeping his eyes on the dark road ahead.

“I keep wondering why,” Webster kept ruminating, half to himself. “Why are you acting like this? And I still don’t know.”

Webster’s ignorance of the fact was probably the one saving grace in the whole situation. It was the one thing that kept Liebgott from bolting out the door when he got a chance. It was because Webster didn’t know that Joe didn’t put on his coat and tuck away his things and find the next dank place that would welcome him in. He’d made a promise to Web to take care of him and that meant he wasn’t going to run away. Not this time.

They got back home at six in the morning and instead of Liebgott going back to the couch, he dragged a chair into Webster’s room and slept in it beside the bed until two in the afternoon.

When he woke up, his back was more than wrecked, but he’d heard Web sleep peacefully for the span of hours and that meant that there might not be any more sudden middle of the night panic attacks. So, he traded a little bit of physical pain for emotional relief and bartered that the physical pain would go away. Sure, he wasn’t eighteen anymore, but it wasn’t like he was an old man ready to go to roost either. He could shake it off.

The one thing that he couldn’t shake, though, was one of the tasks that Liebgott had to do. It was one of the things the Doctor had talked about within the first five minutes of discussing what a caretaker would have to do and while Joe had been putting it off for a while, it was going to happen sooner or later. Better the sooner, Joe figured.

The fact was that Web was going to need a bath. Since he wasn’t supposed to get his dressings wet, that left the cleaning to Liebgott.

For all that they had worked with each other for the last three days, Webster still flushed every time he had to take his shirt off as if it put him in an uncomfortable position. The task of bathing Webster meant that they were suddenly hitting an all new level of intimacy that seemed to vault them into something that they either had to be ready for or would just muddle through anyway. Joe took his time in rousing Webster and started modifying the usual routine to get the both of them fed, drugged (for Webster) and stretched (in Joe’s case).

He’d drawn the bath until it was about a third filled with water, just enough to raise up to Webster’s hips, but not high enough that he’d get the stomach stitches wet. It was better than bringing a bucket of water into the bedroom and sponge-bathing Webster, but it was worse at the same time. If they had gone with sponge-bathing, then Webster could have kept part of his dignity. The chances were that Joe wouldn’t have been able to hold onto his. It would have been reduced to nothing but shambles in the face of Webster in close proximity on a bed. This was better. Barely so, but it was better.

Webster was hesitating and lurking in the doorway, all of his clothes still on him. His arms were crossed tightly, as if the tension would somehow dissipate if it remained coiled long enough.

“I really have to do this?” he asked warily, his voice barely audible. Liebgott could still hear the nerves as plain as day.

Liebgott glanced up over his shoulder and tried to ignore how much he wasn’t sure about this either. He’d had dreams about this, but those were never so hesitant and Webster was always more than willing to strip in them. In those dreams, the room was lit only by the dimmest of lamps, but here it was the sun setting on the California coast that gave the bathroom the light that it did.

In Liebgott’s strange dreams, Web also hadn’t been nearly gutted by fishing line, which was really so ironic that all the fish that Webster had ever caught were probably having a good laugh in Fish Heaven or wherever they went when they got themselves gutted and eaten for dinner.

“Web, you already stink,” Liebgott said, admitting to himself at the same time as he did to Webster that this had to happen. “Come on. You can pretend I’m some pretty well-endowed nurse and I’ll just pretend I’m giving a dog a bath or something. Shouldn’t be hard with that mat of hair on your chest.”

Webster didn’t even retort to that, just pried his t-shirt off so that he was wearing his jeans and an undershirt. And always, always he was wearing that look of uncertainty on his face.

Liebgott sat perched on the edge of the tub and sighed heavily. He didn’t even feel like bringing up that this was as much torture for him as it was for Webster -- more so, but to say that would involve an explanation and Liebgott doubted ‘I want to screw you’ really belonged in the bathroom when half of the present parties was about to strip off the remainder of their clothes and render themselves helpless in a tub.

Liebgott lifted a palm and coaxed Webster forward with a little crook of his fingers and little else, trying to get the man to come closer. Yeah, there was a lot that Liebgott wasn’t saying to him, but this was about getting Webster clean while he couldn’t do it for himself. Liebgott might have been a lot of things, but an impatient pervert he wasn’t. He could wait until the right time to have this conversation with Webster.

Slowly, Liebgott watched as Webster snaked his fingers into the belt-loops of his jeans and tugged them down an inch or so over his hips, removing the fingers to then undo the button and then slide the zipper down. Liebgott tried to keep his eyes off of the show, but it was proving fairly impossible. The jeans were shimmied out of and Webster was yet another step closer to being fully naked.

This felt like a very intimate striptease and Joe was the paying customer, waiting for the lapdance.

He lifted his head and stared up at Webster, who was staring right back down and neither were saying any of the words that they really should have been talking about. Liebgott slowly wet his lips while Webster dragged his t-shirt over his head, followed by his dog-tags. And then there were only the boxers.

“Take ‘em off, Web,” Liebgott insisted, his voice rough and hoarse and filled with enough emotion that he was sure in that moment that Webster knew everything. There was no way that he couldn’t.

Webster splayed his palms out over his hips and slowly pushed down the boxers until there wasn’t a shred left of him and he didn’t have any decency on display. He was completely naked and Joe was staring. He forced himself to look away and to lift up from the tub, turning and adjusting his loose jeans so that nothing was about to show.

“Alright, get in there and let’s get this over with,” Liebgott said, ready to rush through it for both of their sakes (though he imagined the reasons on either end were completely opposite). He stood facing the wall and kept his eyes on his reflection in the mirror and for once, he didn’t see a man who’d let the world down and didn’t see hands that had murdered boys. Yeah, that guy was still there, but all Joe saw when he looked in the mirror was a desperate and earnest man who was rapidly running out of time before he said things he’d been keeping inside of him.

There was a longing look in his eyes and Webster might have recognized the look on Joe’s face as familiar, being that it was the very same expression that he wore when talking about the sea.

Joe was in the deep waters now and if he let himself go, the current was going to take him far past the point of return. He kept his back turned until he heard the soft splash of water and turned with cloth in hand and soap in the other. Web had his knees drawn together and was sitting with posture so perfect that it looked as if someone had rammed a rod up his ass.

Funny, but that still made Joe smirk, even if there was a joke lying in there about what he would have liked to do to Web that involved things up his ass. Of course, he didn’t think that courting the guy (even if it was just for sex) would work with those kinds of jokes. He didn’t think he’d see much success if he went down that route. He straddled the stool he’d brought in with him and leaned over to ruffle Web’s hair, gaining the other man’s attention for a brief moment.

“What?” Webster asked, unsure.

“Don’t look like I’m about to torture you,” Liebgott pointed out. “Jesus, you look like one poke and you’ll explode,” he noted with a genuine grin on his face. He leaned forward and dipped the cloth in water, fingers brushing Webster’s calf as he did and there went Liebgott’s stomach again, bottoming out on him.

Maybe Web wasn’t the one set to explode under the right circumstances.

Joe let his fingers trail up Webster’s knee and shifted so that he was scrubbing with soap and the cloth, keeping his eyes resolutely on the expanse of skin that he was presented. He refused, he refused to look Web in the eye in the event he saw something there that he couldn’t deal with, like disgust. Or worse, in the event that he saw something reciprocated there. He wasn’t sure how much of that he could take before jumping Webster in the tub and the man wasn’t supposed to get wet.

Liebgott pushed out a long and deep breath, trying to just get a grip on himself. It’s just Web. You’re just helping him. That mantra became more difficult when Liebgott’s hand pushed up Webster’s thigh and he swore to God that he heard Webster let out a shaky exhalation.

Liebgott sat there wondering if it was too late to call Web’s family or something to come and take over for him so he didn’t have to sit there and do this. He didn’t know how much longer he could take it. What the hell happened to Joe that he wasn’t doing this with some leggy brunette with a great rack? What happened to his post-war plans that he’d been so keen on telling Webster about? He definitely wasn’t marrying some nice Jewish girl as was the plan.

He wasn’t sure he cared anymore. He was so far removed from the man he thought he was going to be that one more sharp turn away from it all seemed like it was a long time coming, by now.

He resolved to finish the task and kept his mind occupied with only one thing and one thing alone and that was washing down Webster and making sure that he avoided the abdomen’s stitches and those on the arm. By the time he was at Webster’s shoulders, he tapped just lightly. “Turn,” Liebgott ordered. “On your knees, elbows leaning out.” It would keep him from getting wet, but allow Joe a better angle to work at his back. It was probably also torture in a couple countries of the world, but Liebgott steadfastly ignored it all and kept his eyes firmly on the nape of Webster’s neck as he washed him down and made sure to get him more than clean enough that they could avoid doing this for another three or four days.

He didn’t think he’d be able to last if it happened every day. He’d fold like a weak house of cards and every last ace of hearts would get ripped apart because of his impulses.

He dropped the soap and the cloth into the tub when he was finished with scrubbing Webster’s heel (one of the safest parts of him) and lifted himself to his feet, turning around again to give Webster some privacy. When he looked into the mirror, it was too dark to see his reflection, but he didn’t even dare to turn on the light for fear of what he would see if he did.

“Alright, Web, up you get and into bed,” Joe spoke and his voice was hoarse as anything as he gripped the sink with both hands to steady himself. “You can put your precious clothes back on.”

Webster had to be mired in the thickest denial that was ever known to mankind if he was somehow oblivious to every sign that Joe was giving off (intentionally and un), but the fact was that he still wasn’t saying word one about any of it and it made Liebgott grateful for that thick swath of denial because it prevented him from getting hurt. He gave Webster a little extra time than he probably needed and when he turned around, he was standing shirtless in his pajama pants and had extended the dressings and the salve to Joe so they could go through the same routine as they always did.

They lived on short routines sprinkled through the day and it actually helped Liebgott keep a handle on things. There were only so many periods of unknowns for things to go wrong. Every meal was laid out, every pill-taking moment. Each time Liebgott dressed the wounds for Webster was the same and the routine before bed hit the same notes night after night. It was only in between these safe times that Joe ever had to worry about things going off-track.

He patted Webster lightly on the small of his back when he was finished. “Done,” he announced and slid out the bathroom past Webster before they could, god forbid, talk about anything. If he could just avoid ever talking about it, he could maybe walk out of this house with his dignity intact and his head held high. He wouldn’t ever have to give anything of himself away and he could go back to…

Well, what would he go back to, was the question.

He could go back to nothing. His life held absolutely no promises and Joe hadn’t blanked on the fact that this was the high point of the last six months for him. His life had turned into just surviving when he’d gotten off that train and now that he had a purpose higher than making sure he came into every day breathing and went out the same, it felt almost good.

It made him wonder why he was in such a rush to get out of there just to preserve his dignity. His dignity could be an easy sacrifice if it meant his life had some kind of joy and determination to it. He lingered just outside the bathroom door and for that moment right there, for one absolutely crazy moment, Joe had decided to say something. He was all ready. He even had the approximate words (even though he doubted they’d come out smoothly). He was all ready to go and then Webster just passed him without a word, tugging on his long-sleeved shirt and went straight to bed without even so much as a ‘goodnight’.

So much for good timing, thought Joe.

He sighed and let his back hit the wall of the house and muttered a quiet curse of frustration before picking up and heading straight to the couch. His back was killing him completely and he was exhausted from yet another night at the hospital, but all his brain could process was the feel of Web’s skin under his fingertips and he wondered just how much of a mark he would leave if he gripped at Web’s thighs hard enough.

Yeah, it definitely wasn’t going to be an easy feat to reconcile the man he currently was with the one he thought he’d be. Of course, it was even harder to put himself together when he thought about the man he’d become living on the street more often than not.

He fell asleep with a dozen different trains of thought disembarking the station in his head and he had no idea if any of them were going to make it to completion before he lost them completely.

*

There hadn’t been a single visitor in the eight days that Joe had been staying at Webster’s place with him. So it came as a sudden shock when there was a heavy pound at the door during Liebgott’s weekly shave of Webster.

Webster exchanged a long look with Liebgott, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t tell anyone I was here.”

“It’s probably Chris,” Webster admitted, standing up and grasping the towel to dry his cheeks off as he went. Liebgott followed reluctantly and slowly, trying to keep himself out of the way in the event that it was Christenson. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms and Liebgott found he had absolutely nothing to say to the man. Webster drew the door open and stood there in abject shock.

At least, he did until a single word tripped past his lips.

“Shit.” It was said with joy and Webster absolutely lit up as he launched himself into the total stranger’s arms, hugging him as tightly as two men ever got. Liebgott stamped down the flare of jealousy as he stepped forward because while the man was a stranger, he knew exactly who it was through pictures, stories, and too many letters sent home in warning.

Liebgott tried his best to plaster a friendly smile on his face, knowing that pissing this guy off would be the first step in a line of very stupid things to do. Liebgott had to be very nice and he had to do it fast before he got himself a black mark on his head.

“John Webster, huh,” Liebgott announced as he crossed the small home to greet the man at the front door, extending a hand to be shaken. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve heard. Your brother just doesn’t shut up sometimes,” he complained with a smirk, shaking John’s hand vehemently and clapping him on the back. “Swear to god, though, you’re the spitting image of him.”

John grinned and shrugged good-naturedly, his dog-tags gleaming in the light. They were stamped the same as Joe and Web’s, as a paratrooper (despite Mrs. Webster’s best arguments otherwise, as Webster had always told while they were in Europe). He was like them, even if he hadn’t endured Currahee and wasn’t a Toccoa man. He was Web’s blood and he was Web’s family and he was a paratrooper, which meant he was a tough son of a bitch and Liebgott had to admire him for all three of those things.

“What’re you doing here, John?” Webster asked warily. “I wasn’t expecting any family visitors.”

“I was just swinging up the coast, figured I’d drop in and see if you were still alive. Ann’s worried,” John pointed out.

“You can tell Sister that I’m fine.”

“Sister?” Liebgott echoed with a derisive snort, earning himself matching Webster glares from the two men. It was downright eerie how similar they looked when they did that, so Joe shook his head and removed himself from the conversation to avoid getting any more glares leveled his way. He was still laughing quietly as he went, shaking his head and dropping himself on the couch to pick up one of the Dick Tracy books and bury his nose in there.

The friendly chatter from the porch only lasted for so long and soon it became insincere kindness before giving way to outright anger. It happened so smoothly that Liebgott was impressed that the Webters could apparently be a dysfunctional family to play with the best of them.

“What the hell are you doing, anyway?” John was saying. “Dad wants you to go back to school and I’m starting to see his side. You’re just bumming around and playing house with some skinny little …”

“Don’t you dare,” Webster interrupted and if it wasn’t for that, Liebgott might have already been on his feet to cross the distance and land one hell of a punch to John’s face. Web’s family or not, no one talked about him like that. He fought a war, goddammit, he wasn’t even a fucking replacement like John Webster and he deserved respect. Never mind the fact that he was taking care of Web instead of John and that didn’t mean he was going to get relegated to getting thought of as some kept man.

They squabbled in low voices that ran together and hushed to the point that Joe couldn’t eavesdrop on them without becoming extremely obvious that he was doing it, so he just resigned himself to reading the flashy pages of each new square of space and idly kept his nose out of the family business. He didn’t have to constantly poke his nose into crap that didn’t belong to him.

Besides, he was pretty much going to make Webster give him the play-by-play later on.

They fought like that for the better part of an hour and Joe managed to get through another three books before Webster staggered back inside looking like he’d gone five rounds with an officer of the SS. John wasn’t with him and by the sound of a car pealing off the lot, Liebgott had the feeling that something happened between the two of them that didn’t end well.

“Shit,” muttered Webster in stark contract to the joy he had shown when John had first turned up on his doorstep. Joe looked up at him with wariness in his face, not sure if he was supposed to say anything or if he ought to encourage Web to go after his brother or what. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Family Man these days and he was pretty sure that when he didn’t even know what the argument was about, he shouldn’t be encouraging they patch things up.

Liebgott just kept his gaze on Web and followed him around the room until he sank down on the couch next to Joe.

“Bad conversation, huh?”

“He’s going back to my father and might tell him everything,” Webster said with a strangled laugh. “Yeah. I’d say that wound up a pretty bad conversation.” He turned to Liebgott with something like an unsure and boyish look on his face, all his maturity falling away. That image in Liebgott’s mind of the older man from that first night in the house had all faded away and was now replaced by this kid who didn’t know what to do with his life. “Maybe I need to find an actual job soon.”

“Or work twice as hard getting that book sold,” Liebgott pointed out the obvious. He leaned over and nudged Webster using only his shoulder, managing a light smile. “Hey,” he said seriously. “Things are good. You’re not out of it half as much from those pills, you’re getting better, and before you know it, you’ll be back on that boat of yours. So the fuck what your brother sides with your Dad.”

That seemed to do the trick in getting a smile out of Webster and Liebgott leaned back with a delighted smirk at managing to do something good.

“Come on,” Liebgott encouraged. “You can come teach me how to fish with your fancy rigs. Except, I dunno…it did nearly gut you…”

“Shut up,” Webster laughed lightly as he forcibly shoved Joe off the couch. “Come on, let’s go before I change my mind and start groveling on my knees for John’s forgiveness.”

Liebgott definitely wasn’t about to let that happen. If he had to, he would knock Webster unconscious and claim it as accident to make sure that didn’t occur. Lucky for the man, he seemed to have no regrets about letting his brother storm off and possibly out of his life. As it was, he got a decent afternoon out of it and saw smiles of David Webster that hadn’t been so bright since before the war had broken him down. For a bad day, Joe Liebgott came out of it thinking it wasn’t so terrible at all.

*

On the ninth night that Liebgott stayed with Webster, the dinner routine changed in a haphazard and chaotic way. It changed so abruptly that absolutely nothing was left in its place where it was supposed to be. Things were still sore from John’s visit and Webster hadn’t exactly opened up about the incident. Then, of all things, some high school sweetheart of Web’s had to turn up and Joe just didn’t want to have to deal with it when she simpered and she swayed and she only seemed as if she wanted Webster to go out with her because she wanted a nice night on the town thanks to Webster’s money. The way she’d been talking, it almost seemed like it was a regular thing, too. Like she turned up once a month to get wined and dined with someone else’s money and then left. Webster had been deep in the house working on painting the bedroom and Liebgott had turned her away at the door, thinking he could avoid the issue.

While he was waiting for the pasta to boil, he found out that it wasn’t the case.

“I got a phone call today while you were resting,” Webster said, voice clipped as he snapped celery stalks to add to the salad. “It was Laura. She said she dropped by and some rude guy told her to fuck off.”

Liebgott kept stirring the pasta, completely ignorant of all the words that Webster was saying. Things were coming to a sharp head and Liebgott knew he was running out of time to say what he’d been meaning to for ages. After John Webster’s visit, he knew he had to say something or he’d lose Webster forever to his family back in New York and that would be it. Webster would say a proper goodbye and they would close the book on whatever-they-were.

“She just wanted to suck money out of you, Web. You oughta be thanking me for doing you a favor,” Liebgott said evenly and calmly, leaning over to add a dash more salt to the pot. He kept stirring it slowly, carefully watching the pasta spin so that he didn’t have to look up and see the ire in Web’s blue eyes. “Besides, didn’t you say you never even got to nail her every time you went out? So what, you’d try and finish the job and then turf her out?” He was getting defensive in order to avoid letting his feelings show, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of the pot lest Webster see the way he was actively hurting at having to say any of this.

He didn’t want his words to cut and bleed the way they did in the war. He didn’t want to be the same guy who destroyed things more than he helped. Once upon a time, that had been helpful to a cause, but it wasn’t any longer. The war was over and Liebgott didn’t need to bear weapons on his back every day. He didn’t need to use his words as an attack just to keep himself safe. Now, he was just trying to keep himself from getting hurt in a very different way.

He would have been more than content to keep prepping dinner, but Webster forcibly grabbed his forearm and wrenched him around until he was standing eye to eye with Web with barely any space between them.

This was the first time since Liebgott had crashed with Webster that he’d seen a hint of that angry flare that all of Easy knew Web had to him. The one that spiked and peaked every once in a while and burned white hot before dying down into embers. Here it was and it was directed at him. “What the hell is going on?” Webster demanded. “You’ve been here nine days and I have never been so confused in all my fucking life!”

“You’re confused? You’re the one who put me down as his emergency contact!” Liebgott shouted right back. “I didn’t come running. Christenson had to find me and nearly drag me.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Webster scoffed with incredulity, his expression wounded and fallen. “You just keep acting strangely, Joe! You keep acting as if you don’t want to be anywhere else and then I catch you looking at the door like you’re about to bolt. I don’t get it!” he admitted bluntly. “I don’t get it and I don’t get you. And if it’s going to keep being this confusing, maybe you should just go and I can go back to New York and apologize and go back to Harvard and…”

Webster was saying each and every one of Joe’s fears aloud and every time another word came out about the east coast, something like panic struck at Joe and plucked every single string in perfect harmony to make him say what he did next.

“Shut up,” Liebgott interrupted the litany of plans to go back to the past and try and relive a life that couldn’t be picked up again. “Dave, just shut up,” he insisted in a panic, using Webster’s first name for the first time in his whole life. Desperate times called for large measures, though. He reached forward and grabbed Webster by the shirt and hauled him in close. “You look at everything here like it’s made a life for you, that it’s going to keep you going. And I’ve been living alone and being on my own and that’s fine, but it means you have to be able to live with yourself and Jesus Christ, Web, I hate myself for what I did over there,” he said with a scoff. “But then you look at me sometimes the way you look at that goddamn boat or the ocean and I think there’s hope for me and I ought to matter more than a fucking ocean.”

“Joe…”

“If you tell me you’re still confused, I will punch you,” Liebgott promised, his voice low and hoarse. He was standing his ground and he refused to budge because after everything he had seen and done, he wasn’t going to be this weak when it had already taken him nine days to screw up the courage to get to this point. He didn’t release Webster just yet; he just had to get through this. “I got back to the States and I just vanished, Web. I lost myself and I don’t even know that I deserved being found. You looked at me this once in Austria and I’ve been chasing anything that got me close to that again and here you are. You’re right here.”

Liebgott knew he was being fairly confusing and he wouldn’t blame Webster if he didn’t understand, but he was ramping up to it.

“You can’t go. Not yet,” Joe pleaded. “Because right now, I need you to look at me that way again. I need to feel like I matter to someone in the world that’s seen my worst flaws and all.”

There was a long resounding silence between them as Liebgott finally let go of Webster and drifted back all of a foot.

“Joe.”

“What?” Joe muttered, voice barely audible.

“You remember when we talked about the last time either of us had gotten laid?” Webster was drifting in closer than before, a determined look in his eye that went along with the irritation that had yet to fade away. “The last time I had sex was with a tall lanky doctor who pressed me up against a table in the closet of the hospital and who, in the dark, could pretend I wasn’t a man.”

Liebgott’s face flickered with confusion before the sudden epiphany struck as hard as lightning did and he let loose a ‘fuck’ of panic before he met Webster’s gaze and saw that look again. Except now he didn’t know what to do. He could bolt and run away from all of this and it wouldn’t ever bother him again. He could go.

Except he was trapped in the makings of something he had created himself.

“You just wanted me to look at you like I look at the sea?” Webster asked as if that wasn’t a difficult feat. Like it was the simplest thing in the world. “I swear, you never looked at me if you didn’t see it on my face at every turn. You’re my first contact, Joe. You’re the person I trust to be there after everything I did over there, both cowardly and ugly.” He shook his head as if he wasn’t believing what he was saying and then before Joe could put forth a reprimand or an argument or anything, Webster leaned in and grabbed hold of Joe by the wrist, gripping so hard that it probably would bruise and darting in to press a needy and hungry kiss to Joe’s lips, desperate through every inch and moment of it.

They stumbled back until Liebgott’s back slammed against the wall and one of Web’s framed pictures went falling to the floor, glass shattering and earning the both of them seven more years of bad luck on top of what they were already serving.

Webster hauled off Liebgott long enough to shakily inhale a breath before he was pulled back by Liebgott, yanking him atop him while they fought for control of the kiss. There were frustrated moans and grappling from each of them with their hands, and a furious need for control. Eventually, Liebgott got it when he buried one hand in Webster’s hair and tugged hard enough to get a yelp out of Webster, hard enough to coax Webster’s hands lower.

Their clothes went rapidly and Liebgott almost made a wisecrack about how fast Webster was willing to get his clothes off when there was something pleasurable at the end of the road as opposed to every other time.

They went staggering over furniture and nearly broke limbs and tables before Liebgott’s back hit the couch with a heavy thump. He squirmed and writhed and watched as Webster slowly crawled on top of him.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Liebgott warned sharply.

“I won’t,” Webster promised with a sure nod. He clasped hard to Liebgott’s thigh and spun them until he was on the bottom and Liebgott was hovering precariously above him, not wanting to put too much pressure on delicate places that could end up hurting Web in the end. He leaned down and brushed his nose against Web’s neck, feeling the pulse there for a long moment before he started stripping them down even more, getting them ready for the next big push in this small and private campaign of theirs.

If he got lost in this, it would be somewhat worth it. He could drown and still find something in it. When Webster brought him down for another bruising kiss, Liebgott felt like he couldn’t get enough air in.

He started to drown, but he came back from it.

Webster would make sure of that.

*

The next time there was a knock at the door, Liebgott was hesitant to answer it. It had been two weeks since John’s visit and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it might be John coming back or it could be worse – it could be Mr. Webster himself. Joe glanced over at Webster (who was sketching something in that notebook of his while Liebgott idly toyed with Web’s feet in his lap, trying to unknot some muscle that he’d pulled while working on the boat in the morning).

Webster shifted his feet off of Liebgott’s lap and rose to his feet.

“You really want to get that?” Joe asked, leaning forward until he was almost hovering off the couch and anticipating whatever dreadful visitor was there to dispel the life they had started to cobble together from the remnants and ashes of the lives that had come home with them from the war. “Web, it could be your brother or…”

“So what, we’re just going to hide in the three-room house with sprawling windows and the curtains?” Webster asked dubiously and took the steps towards the door.

Liebgott was really wishing there was a back door to escape out of right about then. He shuffled back onto the couch and crossed his arms over his torso. There were blankets yet on the couch, but the pillow that Liebgott had been using was moved to the bedroom after they had gone to bed there together two nights in a row after That Night. It just made sense and it wasn’t exactly a small bed, either. Webster had admitted in retrospect that he probably should have offered to share in the first place.

It wasn’t any of Web’s blood-family at the door, but it was someone as close as that. Liebgott’s fears were suddenly allayed and he vaulted closer to the door to greet Christenson with a broad smile (a stark contrast to how they had parted in the hospital all those weeks ago). It was as if it had all washed away and they all had a clean slate.

“Come to check up on me, huh?” Liebgott was the first to speak when both Webster and Christenson seemed to be faltering for words. Sure, Chris probably cared about whether Web was healing or not, but it had been Liebgott that had apparently needed the intervention all those weeks ago. He stood just an inch closer to Webster than he might have before, some protective instinct driving him to do so. “I’m good, thanks. And Web’s still standing here alive, so I guess I did something right, huh?” He smirked at Christenson and clapped Webster on the back, leaving the two of them to talk alone about any topic they wanted. He even made sure he was out of earshot so that if he was the topic, they wouldn’t really worry about him eavesdropping.

He picked up his things and set up in the washroom to do his daily shave. Usually he would do it by feel, but today he took the chance of looking at his reflection in the mirror and attempting to look at himself. He stared at his face and his eyes and the way he didn’t seem as gaunt as before. He passed a palm over the stubble on his cheek and leaned forward over the sink to try and connect with the man he was looking at.

He looked so much older than he once had before going to war. Part of Liebgott knew he was never going to get that man back, though, and he had to take what he was going to get.

He didn’t flinch once while he shaved and he stared at his reflection the whole of the time. He even began to think one single thought and actually believed himself when it stuck in his mind:

Maybe, just maybe, I can live with myself. It might not be perfect, but fuck if it isn’t good enough.

*

Every week, Webster would go out on that boat of his and Liebgott would send him off with a packed meal and hushed words in German that meant something between the two of them, but couldn’t be interpreted by the rest of the world. He would stand on the dock and watch the sails unfurl and catch the wind, bringing Webster closer to the horizon until he was a speck in the distance. That was when Joe would pick his way up and go back inside to make sure the house was picked up, that Webster’s book was getting in good shape to send off to the publisher and he would take customers for haircuts until the sun dipped in the sky.

Joe would return to the dock at that point and set out in the chair with a beer and watch what the wind brought in.

Without doubt, without fail, every time it would bring in Webster. The sea always brought him back to Joe. Every single time, Webster would return from the sea to give his love back to Joe after the ocean had borrowed it for the day.

THE END