Title : Strange Allies, Warring Hearts - 01. The Library
Author :
valmontheightsRating : NC-17
Warning : Dubious consent, mentions of alcohol abuse
Pairing : Joe Liebgott/David Kenyon Webster
Disclaimer : “Band of Brothers” is a property of HBO, and while the series itself is based on the true story of Easy Company, this story is purely a work of fiction, based on the fictionalized movieverse with no disrespect intended towards the actual people and events on which it is based.
Vellum, fabric, calfskin. They slide under your passing hands, ridges of varying sizes and textures. Each one beautiful, each one vying for your attention. Is there no end to the wonders you’ll find within their pages? You can see yourself easily spending hours if not days here, picking them up one by one, examining them, seeking out their histories, trying to find those rare editions that may turn up unexpectedly, or titles that seem incongruously strange to be found sitting here, in the seat of the Nazis’ power, Berchtesgaden.
And you thought Haguenau was impressive.
You found the library of the Berchtesgadener-Hof almost by accident, wandering about its hallways in all your curiosity to see just how the leaders of the enemy lived. The library is on the third floor, and judging from the noises wafting up from below you can conclude that the VE-Day celebrations are still in full-swing, bottles clinking and boisterous laughter, seats being dragged about the floor of the grand reception room and voices singing horribly off-key. You smile-you’ve all deserved this. No, they have deserved this, your comrades, who battled ceaselessly from Normandy to Holland to the Ardennes, to the borders of France and then Germany. You, you don’t quite know what you deserve. Your smile wanes. The twinge you feel in your leg seems insignificant now, more than ever, compared to the burden they had to bear through the winter; losing friends, losing sanity, losing hope. You’ve stopped trying to explain your absence to them. They won’t understand, and you can’t blame them for it. You were adamant about not doing anything voluntarily, not busting out of the hospital and going AWOL to rejoin your company, all for your lofty principles, so now you’re paying for it.
Joining the paratroopers, you fancied yourself an observer, one whose eyes will see all there is to see and record it in writing. It didn’t matter to you that your friends didn’t understand, and it didn’t matter to them that you had all these ideas in your ‘college boy head’ as long as you fought beside them. That all changed when you were wounded in Holland-to be precise, it changed when you failed to show up and stand alone together with them through the frozen hell of the Bulge. Others had, and they were more severely wounded than you were. How can you expect them to accept your reasons now, given all that they’ve been through? How can a man’s staunch insistence in his promises to himself even compare to the betrayal, the abandonment they’ve perceived in you?
The library answers you with silence. The books, as in Haguenau before, tempt you to escape into the worlds they can provide. Classics, poetry, heroic myths and Teutonic legends, cherished fables, dissertations on culture and economy, even propaganda material, published to support the cause of the Third Reich and bring Europe-and the world-under its spell. They seem to promise you that in them you will find respite, however brief it may be. Thumbing through their pages, under the guise of furthering your intellect, your guilt will become inconsequential. Tonight of all nights. VE-Day. The Krauts have surrendered, and the war in Europe is over. The half-empty bottle of gin sitting on one of the low tables is proof of your dutiful participation in the revelry. But what becomes of the self-appointed observer now, when he is no longer of any use even to himself, and his worth has all but diminished?
Maybe it’s just the alcohol talking, but in your ears ring the ghost whispers of past gatherings held in this very room, the luxurious leather couches, the tall windows with their thick, heavy draperies and scalloped valance, the fringed lampshades and the porcelain figurines marching across the display cases, the men in their smart uniforms and medals, epaulettes glinting in the warm yellow light, the pouring of drinks in crystal glasses. You imagine that their voices are deep, their German speech clear and precise, the harsh and throaty consonants spoken effortlessly, men of knowledge and power. What did they talk about in this room-the progress of the German army in its conquest of Europe, the agenda of Aryan supremacy and national socialism, or their vile ‘solution’ to the Jewish ‘problem’? It frightens you, how intelligent minds can turn to such horrible beliefs under the imperious power of one man’s charisma. You’re frightened for yourself, mostly, because you wonder about your own beliefs. Would you have believed in their cause, if presented with a convincing argument?
You think too much. But of course. There isn’t much else you’re good for.
“The hell you been, Web?”
Here, Joe. Always have been. “How’s the party?”
“Still going on…the major still won’t touch a drop, but Lt. Welsh’s so fucking drunk, he’s tripping all over the chairs.” Joe is standing at the doorway, bottle in hand-schnapps? Something hardy, you’ll bet. He isn’t really fond of wine or champagne. Taste be damned-all that matters to him is the kick. His form is silhouetted against the light in the hallway, because you didn’t bother to turn the lights on when you entered. Doesn’t matter that you can’t see his face-you know too well what he looks like when he talks to you. “What the hell’s this place?” his voice sounds irritated.
“The library,” you say, returning a German translation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the shelves. You’re not in the mood for star-crossed lovers. Not with Joe in here, anyway.
He strides into the room, quietly and upright even though the bottle in his hand has even less in it than yours. Joe doesn’t become woozy and uncoordinated when he’s drunk. He becomes dangerous. You’re bracing for it already.
“Library?” he looks around, seemingly put off by the splendor around him. “Jesus Christ, Web…aren’t you sick of books already? You’ve been hauling them around since Haguenau!”
“I never get sick of books…” you press one palm hard against the bookspines of a line of thick encyclopedias. Not this again, please.
“No shit,” you hear the liquid slosh inside his bottle. “But you got sick of us rather quickly, didn’t you?”
You close your eyes at the coldness of his voice. “Joe…”
“Left the party early, off to find your own fun…” he sets his bottle on the table beside yours. “We ain’t good enough for you, huh? Never was. Crawling all over Holland with your million-dollar wound, all giddy ‘bout coming off the line…”
You offer no rebuke. You know how it goes-every drop sharpens his tongue. He doesn’t care if what he’s saying isn’t true-that’s beside the point. Joe is good at this. Good at hurting people. His hands and his words take pride in it. You know you can’t blame him for it, the same way you wish he doesn’t blame you for everything in you he dislikes. He doesn’t hate you-no, he reserves his hate for the Krauts, seething and ruthless hate, where death is the only acceptable outcome. Joe doesn’t hate you-he just likes seeing you hurt. Quietly, you move your hand along the shelves again, rubbing fingers into the rich, dark wood. You still can’t see his face. You don’t need to.
“Lounging around repo depo while we were freezing our asses off in Bastogne…didn’t care that we were getting killed…”
Biographies. Philosophers and politicians, religious figures, great kings and queens of ages past. You’re thinking of Ludwig again. His was a life lived in unhappiness, born to a world that didn’t suit his ideals. His means of escape was a world of fantasy, Wagnerian epics of lavish grandeur, art and music tailored to his classical tastes, the building of his opulent castles, midnight rides in a gilded sleigh through the Bavarian forests.
“Coming back to us grinning like a fucking idiot, like you ain’t done no wrong…”
You stare at the two bottles on the table. Lesser men must make with lesser means.
“…you’re full of shit, you know that, Web?”
“If you say so.”
There are times when you two can talk almost as friends, never mind the thinly-veiled insults and the edge of enmity. There’s something between the two of you that can’t be explained. Something draws you together, even if only to confront each other. There’s not a thread of similarity between you, and the stark differences only feeds the conflict. But he keeps coming to find you, and you keep putting yourself in places where you can be found. You need him. Why else do you put up with all his abuse? At his worst, he calls you all sorts of things. Things worse than mere mockery of your education or your infatuation with books and writing. You never say anything to deny him because you know he doesn’t really mean them. Even if he does, why bother? One doesn’t argue with Joe Liebgott. One fights with him. And loses. Over time, you realize that you don’t mind losing to him. It validates something inside you that you never even knew existed. A longing, a desire you have no name for. You’ve felt it since the first time he drew your blood, a drunken strike of his hand against your face the night after Landsberg was discovered, its horrors laid bare before your eyes. You forgave him then, even though he never said he was sorry. He wasn’t.
“Hogging the good stuff, I see…” he picks up the half-spent gin. Christ, Joe, it’s only one bottle.
“You can have it, if you want.”
“I don’t need your fucking leftovers, college boy.”
Yeah, whatever. You’ve had more than your share. Drinking is just another form of escape. Ludwig did that, too. Rhine wine and champagne, mixed in a silver bowl topped with flower petals. Such was a king’s excesses. For you, a few good swigs straight from a bottle do just fine. The gin is giving you a good buzz around your head, enough to distance your mind from your body without losing your awareness. Joe is standing before you now, bottle in hand, as you press your back against the bookshelf, inhaling the musty smell of old paper and worn leather. You can see his face now, clear even in the haze of alcohol, his sharp features and his long nose, his lips fixed in the contested territory between a wicked smile and a predatory snarl, relentless darkness in his eyes. The alcohol won’t stop him from hurting you-no, it merely dulls the pain sufficiently enough so you can withstand the next round, and the one after that. What will it be this time? More insults to your face? A punch, a knee to the gut, a kick to your shins?
You’re not weak. He likes to think that you are, but you know you’re not, and that’s what matters. His mouth reeks of booze, cigarettes, and agitated tension. You feel it too, so much that you can taste the unspilt blood on your lips.
“So, what’d you find this time, Professor?” he asks coldly. “Another book full of the useless shit they teach you at Harvard?”
You’re playing his game. You want to. The pain doesn’t stop you from wanting. It makes you want it even more.
“I haven’t decided yet,” you answer truthfully.
He lifts the bottle. It glistens in the faint moonlight between your faces. He takes a swig, swallows without batting an eye. You watch the easy rise and fall of his adam’s apple when the gin goes down. Simple as water.
“No? Maybe this’ll help…” he pushes the bottlle to your mouth, butting the rim against your lips, which you allow to fall open just wide enough for him to shove it inside. You let him think that this is the power of his will over yours, even though it’s not. You chose this. You chose to miss Bastogne. You chose to leave your friends to the snow and the shelling and the dying. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s letting you choose your punishment. He angles the bottle with his hand, forcing you back against the shelves as you struggle not to choke on the sharp liquid being poured down your throat, the devil in liquid form, all the while his human manifestation is grinning at you from behind the façade of Joseph Liebgott. There’s a glint in his eyes like you’ve never seen before. You know what he wants from you this time. More than you’ve ever given him before. The look on his face promises that you’ll feel it for days to come, and he’ll probably do it all over again just to prove his point, and that point is that you need him, but he doesn’t need you. You’re just something he can easily throw aside when you’re all used up and spent.
“Atta boy, Web…take it all in.”
Maybe, if you hold on long enough, you’ll prove him wrong.
“Here, just a little bit more…”
The neck of the bottle clashes against your teeth as you try to keep him from pushing the whole of it inside your mouth. Your throat is burning now, and you can’t swallow quick enough to stop some of the gin from escaping your lips, dripping onto the sides of your chin.
“Oh hey now, you’re making a mess…” Joe tosses the bottle-now empty-aside. His right hand returns to your face, his fingers gathering the trails of liquid around your mouth, moving torturously slow. He’s not doing it to clean you up. No, what he wants is quite the opposite. You can’t deny it, your heart is beating fast inside your chest and there’s a slow, insistent heat spreading from just below your stomach, and you glimpse the beginning of a victorious smile on his face. “Can’t let this good stuff go to waste, can we?”
He slides his index finger slowly across your moist lower lip, spreading what remains of the gin along with the residual scent of Lucky Strikes. You’re trembling all over before you know it. His left hand is at your right hip, bony thumb pressing down onto your pelvic bone, rubbing circles into it. Books and wooden slats dig into your back, his body pressed tight against you from the waist down and you feel it, my God do you feel it, it’s his heat against yours and he’s smiling when he whispers, “Open up, Webster…”
You close your eyes and part your lips. Joe slips his finger inside, straight and rigid and demanding. His skin tastes of sweat and cigarettes, and you find yourself having to hold on to the bookshelf behind you for support. It’s taken long enough for the two of you to get this far, and you know he won’t back out of it now. You suck on his finger as he moves it in and out, testing to see how deep he can push it before you gag. Your eyelids are fluttering, but his gaze is fixed on you like stone. Joe wants to look in your eyes, wants the blue to tell him that he’s won. Have it your way, Joe. Every gesture, every contact, every slide of bare skin against uniform becomes more and more obscene. His left hand moves up, trailing your ribs, cradling your arm before it settles quickly on your right shoulder. Then he begins to press down with it, finger still in your mouth, still mimicking the actual violation he’s planning to soil you with. You let your knees buckle and you slide down onto the rich burgundy rugs, arms limp at your sides. All the while his eyes are still locked onto yours, his smile widening because he has you right where he wants you.
You know how you must look to him now. A beggar for his touch.
“Done this before, haven’t ya?”
It’s not really a question. You’re not required to answer.
He jerks his finger out of your mouth sharply, leaving a small trail of liquid dangling precariously from your bottom lip. You sit there on the floor, legs folded at the knee beside you, looking up at him. He’s unzipping his fly-well, what else do you expect?
“Always did figure that college boys make good cocksuckers.”
You have no choice now but to prove him right.
The next thing he puts in your mouth is also hard and fills you with an unwelcome tingle, but it isn’t a bottle.
----
The rug probably hasn’t been cleaned out for months. It smells, and it scrapes you at your elbows and along your back. Your eyes are shut tight against the tears that are slowly streaking down your face-no, not because of shame, but for it. You’re being used here, reduced to flesh and bone and harsh, grinding movements, and even with all your wanting you can’t deny that it’s killing you slowly. Hands pulling at the rug, dirty threads under your fingernails, you lie there and take it and cry and moan and hate him and love him at the same time. He’s breathing, grunting against your face, whispering into your ears with words like you know you want this and you’re such a whore, Web and the words make you ache in all the right places and some of the wrong ones. Somehow you knew beforehand there would be no clear distinction, that pain and pleasure will meld and leave you sore, bleeding, confused, and begging for more. The way he does things is without forethought, without consideration-he knows no other way. He’s trying to tell you that you don’t matter, and you’re trying to show him that you can take it. You’re not trying to shut him out, not trying to be someplace else. A part of you wants to believe that this is happening because you deserve it, and you let it have its say.
“Fuck, Web…” he grunts. “You’re tight, for a whore.”
He has your wrists in his viselike grips. It’s not a question of physical strength. It’s a question of need, and what you need right now is for him to keep doing this until you can’t take it anymore-no, until he can’t take it anymore. It’s his belief that you once left him to die, now it’s his choice if he wants to do the same to you. Your lips are bleeding from where you bit down on them at the moment when the pain was at its greatest-not that it’s much better now. You can feel that you’re hard, so hard it hurts, but everything feels secondary to what he’s doing. He’s determined to make it last as long as he can, and you wonder if deep down he fears the consequences as much as you do, if underneath all that willingness to hurt, he doubts the outcome of his actions. Blood, sweat and tears. And something else, too.
“FUCK!”
He’s still inside you when he comes, fingernails cutting into the skin of your wrists. Just another pain you’ll learn to embrace instead of ignore. Then he pulls out, leaving you hollow and hurting, staring up at the patterns painted on the ceiling. He crawls, trousers still bunched at his hips, dog tags hanging from his lean neck. Lean. It rhymes with mean. He props his himself up against the back of one of the leather couches and drags you towards him, using the strength in his deceptively wiry arms, until you’re clasped against his chest, and he reaches down between your legs and his fingers wrap around you. One, two, three, four hard jerking pulls and it’s over, the last of your strength leaving your body as your eyesight starts to fail. There’s the bookshelf towering above you, looking even more ominous than it did when you first laid eyes on it, its rich treasures achingly out of your reach. It’s not fair, you think, for the two things you need most to contradict each other this way.
Joe’s chin is dug into your shoulder, his mouth breathing lungfuls of hot air against your neck. Then he tightens his arm across your chest and hisses sharply in your ears, “Mine…”
You nod your head. It’s not a pretense. You’ve been waiting to hear him say it all this time. It lets you breathe a little easier, hold your head up a little higher despite everything you’ve just been put through.
If you’re his, that means you’re something. And there’s nothing you need more right now than to feel that.
----
The first time was in Berchtesgaden. It began with the touch of a finger.
~TBC~