wasn't one for compromise (parts 1-7); Aldo/Utivich.
Title: Wasn't One For Compromise (parts 1-7 out of 12)
Pairing(s): Aldo/Utivich, OMC/Utivich, implied Aldo/Donny.
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 11,390 (too long for one post, apparently.)
Notes: Knifekink, gunkink, rankkink, baseball, baths, scalps, that sorta thing.
Summary: After alla' them schnapps, Utivich gets a big fucking mouth and backed in a corner.
x-posted to 100_scalps.
WASN'T ONE FOR COMPROMISE
CHAPTER ONE; STRUGGLE & FILTH
That April was a bad time to be a Basterd. The sun shone, showed signs of spring, but the weather had been biting. When it would rain, the ragtag posse would slog through the thick muck of the countryside. The decaying undergrowth was mashed and wet and offered little help for their boots, sometimes held fast in the ground like the Devil dragging them down.
The heat of their trudge was no solace, the sweat grew cold where it stood, chilling them deeper and stinging their eyes. Aldo spent his nights on damp logs and topography maps, opting for a course change on higher, drier ground. The Basterds on watch spent their shifts sinking and stepping and sinking again, eyes keen on the black forest and nostrils filled with the stench of rot. They were all hungry and haggard.
"Fuck that," said Donny, "fuck that," said Donny again.
"Donowitz," sighed Aldo, "it's either we double-back or we're mired in this shit another thirty miles easy. You seen Omar's foot? That skin's slidin' off like a spitfire game hen's, and I ain't about to be riskin' any more a'my mens' health in this stew."
Omar had unwrapped his foot and was picking at it in the moonlight. Fires were futile.
"It's pretty fuckin' gross, Donny," he confirmed, peering at something under his fingernails.
"Wastin' time, wastin' miles, wastin' away," Donny grumbled, rising and slogging back to his blanket, heavy wool heavier from the thick air.
"Chin up, Sergeant," Aldo said with a grin, folding the map and easing it back into his jacket, "Gotta good feelin' our bad luck's runnin' dry."
"Least somethin' is," he heard Donny mutter, saw the words in his steaming breath.
They'd woke the next day before dawn and marched forward and upward through the giving ground. Aldo kept his eyes up and expectant, staying somehow above the mud with deft rabbit steps. After three hours passed the same way the past three days had, full of struggle and filth, he halted the company and raised his foot to scrape his soles on a stone.
"Private," he said, and all four were at attention, but he knew the one he wanted. "Utivich," he clarified and Smitty pried his feet up and loped along to Aldo's side, the Lieutenant's boot still on the stone, poised in conquest, silhouetted bronze and statuesque in the sun.
"Yessir?" he asked.
"Can I be gettin' one a'them smokes offa' yeh?" he asked, his eyes still fixed on the grassy rise before them. Utivich handed him his packet of army-issue Red Apples and forgot to get them back when he saw the crumbling cottage on the hill. Smitty snapped back in the moment and his agape jaw shut when Aldo tucked the Apples back into the private's jacket with a pat of gratitude. "I owe ya' one, son," he said, his half-grin disappearing in the spring afternoon as he headed up the hill.
CHAPTER TWO; SHIRTS & SCALPS
Aldo said he'd been scouting, strategizing, setting up office in the main floor of the cottage. What he'd really been doing was more akin to sleeping; there was a three-legged half-burnt chaise longue in the makeshift drawing room only separated with a muslin curtain hammered in the stone, and laying on it felt a sin. He was started from his shallow dreams by a bang on the wood door, tipping the chaise on its bad leg and near pitching himself to the floor. Still in his dirty jacket, boots muddying up the once-rich red upholstery, he raked down his mussed hair and straightened his rumpled coat. On his way through the curtain and to the door, he spread some papers on the knife-nicked dining table.
When Aldo opened the door, Utivich had a scalp on his head. Well, two scalps, counting his own that ain't been sliced off.
"Well, well," Aldo appraised, eyes squinted with sleep, "if it ain't the king'a the wild frun-tier himself."
"Sir," Utivich countered and snapped off a salute, Kraut blood on his hands, forehead now. "Donny's getting a ballgame together, and we're needing somebody on the mound."
"Izzit shirts 'n scalps, then?" Aldo asked mildly, watching a fly circle, land on detached fair red-blonde hair that didn't suit anything about the kid save for the quiet craziness in his oceanic eyeballs.
"What?" asked Utivich. Aldo pushed a prompting hand through his own hair, sweeping it back into place where trudging and sweat had set it astray. Utivich looked right mortified, like a kid caught playing make-believe.
"What's what, yeh ask, is so far's I can tell, we've already got one Sergeant Donowitz in this company, and that's all the company we'll be needin', you dig that dirt?" Aldo implored, pacing slow along the millstone entry. He ground to a pivot on his bootheel and faced Utivich, who obviously wasn't digging much of anything.
"What I mean's," Aldo breathed an air of impatience, "we already got one fuck-shit un-sane sumbitch, and we don't be needin' 'nother."
"I dig," said Utivich, his eyes fixed and grim on the lieutenant, who drew a short, bent smoke from his breast pocket and clamped it in his jaws.
"Wellthen, it's dug. Now get that skullrag offa yer head 'fore I lose my breakfast," he muttered around the cigarette, his face tipped and glowing in the zippo flame.
"There was breakfast?" Utivich asked.
Aldo belched bacon. " 's a turn a'phrase, Private," he mumbled distractedly, snapping shut the lighter. "Now nothin' more a' these questions and--," Aldo paused, grimaced, "--and so help me Utivich, next time I look 'round that thing better be hangin' out to cure or you'll be wantin' for a pitcher and I can guaran-damn-tee that Stiglitz ain't warmin' up to the idea."
Utivich cursed himself, snatched the dead hairs in his fist and dragged it down. He set the stinking scalp in Aldo's hands.
"What number?" Aldo asked. Utivich shook his head.
"Don't have numbers, sir. Not enough players."
Aldo let it go. The cold snap was giving him a headache. He stared down at that sick toupee; it had to be near fifty for Utivich, a right pristine fifty. Aldo turned it and studied the underside's smooth scalpel cuts of a well-sharp blade. Utivich was ruthless under order, but that boy weren't cut out for crazy.
"Nice doing, son," Aldo set the scalp on the window ledge, wiped his hands on his brown wool coat, and clenched his leather gloves back on. His palm slapped on Utivich's shoulder, giving a brief squeeze as he swaggered down the stone stoop. "Now, what'zis I hear 'boutta ballgame?"
CHAPTER THREE; TRIPWIRES & SAWDUST
The ballpark was a swath of raised land behind the cottage, surrounded by murk and covered in gold dead grasses. Aldo set his hands on his hips and squinted at the scene; Omar was patting the last of the dirt down on the pitcher's mound with a shovel flat, Wicki was dragging a rusted hoe carelessly around the basepaths, and Donny was on-deck, choking the bat handle and check-swinging. Once he'd rounded what would be Third, Wicki tossed the tool and made his way to Aldo.
"Donny wants to be his own team," Wicki said. Aldo spat.
"How many we got playin'?" he asked.
"Just us, seems," he raised a hand toward Stiglitz, who sat smoking on a stump. "Werden Sie spielen?" he called. Stiglitz dragged on the cigarette stub, pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
"Nein," he said. Wicki turned back to Aldo.
"He won't play."
"Yeh, and us neither if Utivich don't round us up any bases," Aldo said, and when he glanced sidelong, Utivich was already turned around and halfway to the leaning storage shack.
"A good Private," said Wicki.
"Ain't bad," Aldo granted, then flicked his eyes to the approaching Sergeant Donowitz. He had his bat on his shoulder and looked in a huff. When he was close enough, Aldo noticed the swaths of blood smeared in a morbid mockery of greasepaint under Donny's eyes, and got a pretty decent idea who Utivich had gone on the hunt with that early evening.
"I wanna be my own team," said Donny, the bat tip sliding from his shoulder to the damp ground where he leaned against it like he did his rifle.
"You see?" said Wicki.
"And why'zat, Donowitz?" asked Aldo.
"Because Omar's a damn idiot," he said loud, loud enough to warrant an unsavory hand gesture from the Basterd in question.
"Fuck off, Donny!" Omar yelled from the mound, slamming the shovel into the earth. He caught the hubcap Utivich slung to him and made for home plate.
"But he dug that nice little knoll there," Aldo offered. Donny spluttered, disdain drawn tight in his face.
"Yeah, dug it outta fuckin' center field," he sneered. Aldo waved him off and over at once, tromping toward the infield, Donny and Wicki trailing behind.
"Ain't like this's league ball, Donny," said Aldo, stepping onto and sinking into the dark dirt of the pitcher's mound, "yer a long way off from yer precious Fenway. Now let's play ball, we're losin' light. Utivich!"
"Sir!" Utivich yelped back, dropping third base into place, an old metal sign with red letters saying fraiche boucherie.
"You got infield, Wicki, you got outfield," Aldo slipped off his jacket and bit the leather fingertip of his glove, pulling it off his right hand while his left fished in his pocket. He thumbed open the snuffbox he'd pulled and took a pinch, huffing it into his nostrils. "Donny, you're up, Omar, you're on-deck--and Donny, I ain't hearin' no word about it." He snapped the case shut, dropped it back into the coat's inside-pocket. "Now who's got a damn ball?"
Wicki had a damn ball. He tossed it to Aldo, and it landed in his palm with a soft slap. Aldo turned the it in his hands. It was a grotesque bulging thing, uneven innards all stitched up in some kind of hide.
"Where the hell'd you find this thing, Wicki?" Aldo asked, peering at the lump contemptuously.
"Hugo made it," Utivich said, "outta tripwires and sawdust and that Nazi's uniform." Aldo took a glance back at Stiglitz, who'd lit another cigarette and was running his blade along the sharpening strap.
"Ain't that nice," murmured Aldo with a tinge of wonder in his words. Donny scoffed.
"Are you jokin'? I'm gonna beat the cover right off that fuckin' thing, slug its guts clean out. Ain't no way we're gettin' past the top of the first," he called from the plate, which wasn't too far, on account of little solid ground to work with. Aldo leant, retrieved his coat from the ground and searched a couple pockets, drawing out a soft paper sachet of tobacco. He dipped a quid and stuck it in his lip.
"Lissen, Don'witz," Aldo drawled, "we came out here to play, not to sweat around and hear yeh grandstand." Donny took a couple practice swings then took a stance, bloodstained bat barrel swaying in the air, hands wringing on the handle.
"Well then pitch it, ya bobby-sox bitch," Donny called back. Aldo spat brown, raised a knee, and ripped a strike that Omar had to chase down through the spring swamp.
The rest of the game was a bust. Donny fell into Omar's hole in the third inning and near broke his ankle, then was so sore about it that he wouldn't let anyone use the bat anymore and the branch Utivich pulled from the brush just wasn't the same.
CHAPTER FOUR; UNDONE & SLICK
Omar swung the shovel, and it made another shallow divot in the cellar door. He set his feet, set to swing again, but there was a hand on the handle.
"Lemme do it," Donny protested, tossing to the dirt the hoe he'd been trying to use. Omar yanked the other end of the shovel.
"Says the guy who couldn't get a damn hit," Omar grumbled, twisting the shovel, wrenching it from Donny's hands.
"That's my fuckin' mark!" Donny shouted, pointing to one of the the splintered gashes in the oak with a boot stomp. It was the one closest to the rusted chain that shackled the cellar's handles. "I'm the only one who got anywheah fuckin' close."
"That one was mine," said Omar plainly, eyes hooded and lips curling.
"Like fuck," Donny growled and seized the lapel of Omar's jacket, making to either push him or pull him but it hadn't been decided because the barrel of a Schmeisser submachine gun was thrust between them and near crowed them apart.
"Stand away," muttered Stiglitz around his cigarette, burnt down to the filter, huffing the smoke from the blazing tip direct down his nose. Omar and Donny backed up while Utivich stood dumbly by, mind elsewhere while Stiglitz emptied the clip of the German rifle til it jammed. One of the rounds ricocheted from the chain and Utivich heard the BATANGG blow by, a breath away from his right ear. Stiglitz spat his butt on the ground and stomped right through the weakened chain and cheese-holed doors, one caving in entirely onto the descending stone stairs.
"Kinder," growled Stiglitz, pushing the rifle into Utivich's chest and stalking back to the pit of coals Wicki was coaxing alight. Utivich detangled himself from the Schmeisser's shoulder strap and slung it around his back. The three of them scrambled down the steps, throwing open the reamed wood doors on the descent.
That night, the Basterds all sat too close to the hot fire and ate nearly half the cellar's provisions in one supper sitting. Aldo had half a mind to tell his men to slow the fuck down, but the other half of his mind was all stomach too and he mawed down a jar of pickles to himself and the vinegar stung the cold-chapped skin on his lips. Utivich sat alongside Aldo, eating deep red lumps of fruit preserves even after the cinnamon oil bread was long gone. There were spots of mold on one heel, but they all had figured bad bread would be no match after what they'd done and what's to come.
After a certain amount of clinking and smacking, Aldo slid his eyes to fall on Utivich in the firelight, dipping his scalping knife into the jar, swirling, then bathing the blade with his tongue. Aldo gingerly pulled a dead speck of skin from his lips with his teeth, absently tonguing the coppery patch it'd left beneath. It hardly took time for Utivich's wide eyes to find the Lieutenant's slotted gaze, the weight and while of it heavy enough to tear him away from his meal.
"Utivich," Aldo said sharp, not once wavering his eyes, talking as if to get the private's attention even knowing it was already got. Utivich realized his tongue was still out, slicked against the steel.
"Ah," Utivich started uncertainly, "yessir?"
"Head on inside'n look to the left where there's a cabinet under'at old sink. Inside that cabinet you'll find a copper kettle, a big sonovabitch. Fill it halfway with water'n set it out here'ta heat," Aldo instructed, the last word grunted out with his rise from the dirt and the strain from his stiffened knees. Utivich raised the lip of the jar to his own, tipped his head back and dumped another clot of jam into his mouth before getting along to Aldo's errand.
Inside, Utivich knelt bent at the waist and yanked at the kettle, one of its feet jammed tight against the bottom of the cupboard. Skillets rattled and strained around it while Utivich swore and struggled. Aldo had come inside and upon the Private, and took to settling himself against his shoulder in the doorframe. He let all that banging go on another moment before piping up.
"Yeh gettin' it?" he asked, amusement in his eyes mirrored in his voice. Utivich swung his head up, around, and into the wood overhang just above. More curses, but this time through grit teeth and tears that'd sprang unbidden to the corners of his eyes. He blinked them back with the same insistence he pushed Aldo's hands away when they reached past his shoulder to help in the dislodging.
"I've got it," Utivich reiterated with more venom than Aldo could remember hearing from that mouth in his direction. He showed his amicable palms though Utivich hadn't turned around.
"Alright, son, alright," he conceded and offered a smile when Utivich dragged himself and the kettle up from the floor. "Yer head alright? You concussed or d'yer eyes always look two ways?"
"I'm fine, it's fine," Utivich muttered, shifting the kettle to hang by the handle in the crook of his arm while his other hand probed searchingly at the forming lump. He withdrew his fingers, checked for blood, stood still and with patience while Aldo stepped into him and did the same damn inspection. His hands were tender while they smoothed and sorted through Smitty's dark hair, one sliding down to the back of his neck, tightening then dropping away.
"Pump's out front," Aldo prompted and turned back to the dining table where his bolt-rifle was all undone and slick with gungrease. Utivich set his jaw and pulled the cumbersome kettle outside behind him, thinking on how he hadn't really noticed the cold except in the absence of Aldo's palms.
CHAPTER FIVE; KNIT & BEMUSED
By the time the water had gotten up to a boil, most of the Basterds had bed down, save for Hirschberg and Kagan who'd took first watch. After burning an angry red stripe through his palms on the hot handle, Utivich pulled on his leather gloves and lifted the pot from the fire, sidling laboredly around the still bodies under the still blankets. When he'd finally gotten across the yard and inside the cottage, Aldo wasn't to be seen. The gun was still on the table.
"Lieutenant?" Utivich called.
"Bring'er up here, Private," he heard Aldo through the ceiling and stared dismayed at the set of stairs in the far corner of the room. He heaved his way up each at a time, careful not to slosh the scalding water. When he'd got to the top, he looked into the right one of the two rooms, and found Aldo leaning up against the stand of the washbasin, wrapped in a musty moth-ate robe he'd dug from somewhere, looking so foreign from the cold and filth that Utivich was given a start like he'd seen a ghost. Aldo nodded toward the bathtub, a rust-pocked hulking thing that sat squat on four clawed feet.
Utivich strained, hauled the kettle up to the bevel of the tub's edge and tilted the water from it. When he set it back down with a clang, he pulled off his gloves to fussily itch the lash of burn across his hands. He was panting, heart still hammering, and it didn't seem to help when Aldo took his hands and rubbed the rough pads of his thumbs across the swelling stripes.
"Got the curse, son, bumps 'n burns," Aldo murmured, brows knit and bemused. Utivich swallowed, tried to steady his lungs.
"Yeah," he puffed, the regulation of his breath just making him heave heavier, "wasn't thinking."
"That right?" Aldo inquired rhetorically, "see, I'm thinkin' it's jest the opp'site. I'm thinkin' I've seen you all rolled up in them college-boy brains, eyes glassy as a goddamn windscreen. Thinkin' I've seen you not seein' what's comin' out there in them trees till it's damn near too late." And Utivich wanted to protest, but he could just sit there gape-jawed waiting for a retort that wouldn't surface because he knew it was true; Hell, he'd almost got his ear shot off by Stiglitz' friendly fire but four hours prior. Fuckin' windscreen eyes, mind gone to wander, bullets flying by.
"Son, you get outta' that head and let yer body do some thinkin'. A man can go stark bat-shit nuts out 'ere, and so far's I'm concerned that don't get root in the trench but in the head," Aldo paused to slide his fingers in the cool water of the washbasin, bringing them back to trace the drops along Utivich's sore hands, who had stopped even entertaining the idea of an edgewise word, and had stopped thinking altogether when Aldo's drawl in his ears and his wet skin slick against his flaring wounds reached a sensory unity.
"B'sides," Aldo said, voice low, hands dipping again in the basin, then back to his tentative touching, "only thing college-boy brains are good for in a den a' Natzis is gettin' blown out." Aldo patted the kid's cheek with his wet palm. Utivich still had his hands out and open.
"Yessir," he said, and brushed the back of his hand on the wet finger trails. Aldo looked about to untie the silk sash of the robe, then peered into the bathtub. Utivich peered too. They stared at the four inches of water.
"Think we're gonna be needin' more," Aldo said. Utivich bit his tongue, pulled his gloves back on, and hauled the kettle back to the hallway.
CHAPTER SIX; SILENCE & STEAM
Utivich busied himself with a fire in the wood stove that nearly smoked him out 'til whatever it was that'd been up the stovepipe fell out or burned away. He bunched his hand in his sleeve and swung the metal grate shut, his eyes full of smoke and ears full of splashing and choruses of Over There from the floor above. Normally he'd have taken his leave to bed down beside Omar; he was warmest and didn't mind the closeness. Donny was a near-second, but in a mood, he'd be all elbows, growling and pushing when Utivich slid too close and wanted to whisper about home. Donny'd been in a mood all week.
Normally, he'd have taken his leave, small shelters tacitly agreed upon being the Lieutenant's quarters, but after all that lugging to draw that goddamn bath he figured his sore shoulders were worth the price of admission. He sat with his back to the fire, rolled his sore sockets that loosened with the warmth, and heard Jonneh git-yer-gun git-yer-gun git yer-gun for the ten-thousandth time until it was suddenly broken by his name.
"Yessir!" Utivich called.
"You got any o'that talc on yeh?"
Utivich hauled himself to his haunches then back to his feet, rummaging in his pack he'd hung on an old oak chair. He found a dirty lump of soap, stained permanent pink, and trudged back up the stairs.
"I'll toss it," he offered at the doorway of the dark room, lit just by the flicker of a half-candle. Aldo motioned him in with the old newspaper both his hands were full with.
"Actually figured you wouldn't mind givin' a little a' the Donowitz treatment," Aldo said through a grin, "Ah'd do it massel, but I ain't blessed with more arms."
Beauty school. It still made Utivich grin to think about it; beautician Bear Jew, oh if those dead Krauts had just known.
"Is this all some kinda test?" Utivich asked as he sidled between the sink and the tub, standing behind Aldo and dunking what was left of the soap corner.
"Private, when it comes to a mission like this, nothin' ain't a test," Utivich thought about that, pulled it apart, and decided not to say anything on double-negatives. He shoved his hands into Aldo's wet hair, lye in the suds searing his burns. The sound that came from Aldo was low from the throat, and he dropped his hands enough to wet the bottom of the paper. "C'mon, son, no mercy," Aldo prompted, and Utivich stiffened up his fingers, scratching into the scalp.
"Where'd that paper come from?" Utivich asked, the silence and steam giving him a little something like vertigo. He glanced over Aldo's shoulder to glimpse a column, but couldn't read it. "You read French?" he asked, incredulous. Aldo snapped the paper, folded it aside.
"Notta' whit," he said, settling back into Utivich's hands while he just sighed, his deft fingers still working Aldo over.
"Figured," said Utivich and tugged Aldo's head back like he was about to slice his hairline. "That enough? Any longer and I'm charging."
"At ease," Aldo grinned, scooping up a rinse and pouring it down his head, one hand rubbing over the lynchmark on his neck. "You see that still out back?"
"What?" asked Utivich.
"You see them barrels and pipes out back, edge a' the wood?" Aldo rephrased.
"Yeah," he said.
"That's a still, not the shinin' sort, but I'm sure-as-shit these Grapestompers got some sorta' spirits squirrel'd away, why doncha sniff 'round and see if we can get a little lit?"
"On it," Utivich said, gingerly wiping his wet hands and disappearing downstairs.
CHAPTER SEVEN; SALT & SOAP
When Aldo strolled down the stairs, brand-clean in dirty clothes, Utivich was settled by the stove. He had two fingers hooked in a clay-colored jug handle, the heel on his other hand drawing it back as he drank deep.
"How's it?" Aldo asked. Utivich wiped his mouth with his scratchy sleeve.
"Tastes like shit," he gasped, then tipped it back again. Aldo piled up beside him on the creaking floor, plucking the jug from the private's hand. He rested it on the crook of his arm, lifting his elbow and swigging single-handed.
"You ain't kiddin'. That's some fuckin' fermentin', ain't even sure that's wine anymore." Aldo screwed up his lip, one eye squinting. He took another long pull, then Utivich had his eager hands all over it. They drank awhile in the dark and in the quiet, listening to the knots pop in the flame.
Aldo pulled the jug back over.
"You leave a good woman back'n New York?" Aldo asked, more for lack of anything worth asking.
"No," said Utivich, licking the wine off his lip, "she's a real bitch."
Aldo laughed, full haw, pure Tennessee.
"Ain't they just."
"I don't know," shrugged Utivich, trying to drink from the handle like the lieutenant, but he couldn't get his hand and arm working in at once. He abandoned the clumsy endeavor and levered the jug to his lips on his bent knee, "my mom's alright," he said and he meant it to be funny, but so far away, it wasn't. It made him think of his fifth-floor apartment down the block from her, transistor radio on the kitchen windowsill. He'd had to put up a year's rent for it when he'd decided to enlist and considered it now, dark and still, like it may as well not exist at all.
"Most mommas are," said Aldo, and watched Utivich slug down swallow after swallow.
"I don't have a woman," Utivich clarified while his head swam and he pushed the jug back to Aldo, "bitch or otherwise. How do you drink like that? I mean, holding it," Utivich flapped an arm and crooked his fingers in time with Aldo.
" 's easy," Aldo said after that last gulp burned down his throat and sank to his stomach. He threaded Utivich's fingers through the handle, feeling the rough callus on the balls of his palm. The kid had hands suited for typekeys more than triggers, and sometimes Aldo had to stare at him; in the rain, suckin' down smokes, smilin' small while Hirschberg and Donny spat and swore, and just plain wonder what in the fuck he was doin' out here. Aldo bent Utivich's wrist back and laid the jug on the crux of his arm and watched him drink, tipping too far, the wine dripping down his chin from the seal of his lips.
Aldo reached over, thumb dragging upward to gather the red trail, hesitating right at the edge of his lower lip. Utivich let his body do some thinkin'; he sopped the wine from the lieutenant's thumbtip with his lips, letting his tongue slide out to get the rest. Aldo withdrew his hand slow, slipped two fingers into the neck of the jug. He tipped the wine down it, and his hand soaked in red wasn't exactly an unfamiliar sight.
"Well, fer fuck's sake," Aldo murmured, eyes slit and smoldering as Utivich leaned over and started lapping his fingers and palm, tasting salt and soap and acrid wine, and when he pushed his lips on Aldo's, he did too. Aldo jut his jaw further forward against Utivich's persistent mouth, finally catching the kid by the shoulders.
"Lissen, prettyboy, hate ta' damper the date, but I ain't so much the kissin' kind," so Utivich bit the lieutenant's lip instead, felt him shudder in his jaws. He pulled back with a clack, Aldo's flesh red and raw.
"What kind are you, then?"
Aldo tongued the sore skin, smiled sideways. "The gettin'-my-cock-sucked kind."
Utivich flushed.
"This's all happening a little quick," he recanted, burnt palms up. "And I gotta' get goin' on watch in not too long, last thing I want is for fuckin' Omar to wander in looking for me and see--"
"You ain't on watch t'nite, private. Donowitz is doin' double, on my order." Oh, and wouldn't Utivich catch all kinds of hell for that tomorrow.
"Still," said Utivich, but couldn't think of anything else, cornered. Aldo shoved his bath-hot hands into Utivich's open shirt, getting under the thin white cotton and rounding his waist.
"Ain't figured on you to be the teasin' type, playin' all possum after alla that filth out that pretty mouth 'while back," he murmured and hooked his thumb back onto Utivich's jaw, voice low, guttering in his ear, "last time I'd heard somethin' like that, she was gettin' paid fer it."
Utivich lolled his tongue against Aldo's hand and tried to talk awhile before Aldo released him.
"What?"
"That word ain't so becomin' on yeh, Private, that brain so stuffed with smarts 'n all."
"I said what I meant."
"Yeah," and that growl was back, rich and full of gravel, "y'mean when y'were goin' on about alla that Mick cock yeh usedta suck in college?"
Utivich's face fell. He couldn't believe it, but there it was; he'd divulged his favorite secret, that private paradox he reveled in during that life of privilege and prestige. It had been something his entirely, and now he'd given it up to the fuckin' commanding officer; after his accounting night classes, he'd taken to moonlighting, slumming around New York's immigrant neighborhoods. He'd spend nights kicking around Hell's Kitchen--Five Points when he was feeling rough--in his beat bomber jacket and jeans, black wingtips, white v-neck.
He'd sit slumped over bartops, watching out blue eyes, rolling smokes and sipping scotch--which he normally hated, but these nights, they were a point to slip into something else--eyeing for signals; too-long glances, certain lapel pins. Of course when he was approached, that pokerface fell, and he'd be nervous as a hen in a foxhouse. To his advantage, they liked that more; boyish uncertainty, charming twitchy smiles, big earnest eyes. In an Irish neighborhood, he felt exotic, sought-for, not just another brainy big-eared Jewish kid at a ledger.
It'd never taken long for it to end up in the alley, eyes closed, dizzy with drink, sucking hard with hands in his hair. Sometimes they'd try to give him money, but he just did it for kicks, for that thrill of control behind a mask of vulnerability. He'd head back to his apartment, hands in his pockets, knees dirty, feeling electric.
At one point, he'd been on the fast track to being a mob man's boy, but he'd chickened the fuck out. Clammed up and vanished, in too deep with dinners and movies and cufflinks. Guy's name was Cormac Cadden, but the guys called him Marathon Mac because he had a shin a little twisted with old Polio and a limp that made him formidable and made Utivich hot-blooded. He'd called himself Charlie Hale those nights, and decided the whole thing'd gone too far when he'd started forgetting to answer to Smithson elsewhere.
It was his private facet, his hidden life. His big fucking mouth.
"I told you that?"
Aldo sat back, took up the wine. "More like whispered," he said, swigged, "all lurid-like."
"Like, uh, in your ear?" asked Utivich dumbly.
"Stuck yer tongue in there, too, memory servin'," Aldo grinned wolfishly. Utivich's face was a strange shade.
"God," he groaned, the heel of his hand pressing to his eyesocket, "I don't remember that. At all. When the hell was this?"
Aldo drank again, then scraped the bottle along the floor toward Utivich, "after yeh drove alla them schnapps' into yeh."
"More specific," Utivich eyed the jug like an enemy, pushed it back to Aldo.
"When Donny'd got yeh all prettied-up 'n yeh headed into town fer supplies."
Utivich had at least remembered that part.
TO BE CONCLUDED: PARTS 8-12
Pairing(s): Aldo/Utivich, OMC/Utivich, implied Aldo/Donny.
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 11,390 (too long for one post, apparently.)
Notes: Knifekink, gunkink, rankkink, baseball, baths, scalps, that sorta thing.
Summary: After alla' them schnapps, Utivich gets a big fucking mouth and backed in a corner.
x-posted to 100_scalps.
WASN'T ONE FOR COMPROMISE
CHAPTER ONE; STRUGGLE & FILTH
That April was a bad time to be a Basterd. The sun shone, showed signs of spring, but the weather had been biting. When it would rain, the ragtag posse would slog through the thick muck of the countryside. The decaying undergrowth was mashed and wet and offered little help for their boots, sometimes held fast in the ground like the Devil dragging them down.
The heat of their trudge was no solace, the sweat grew cold where it stood, chilling them deeper and stinging their eyes. Aldo spent his nights on damp logs and topography maps, opting for a course change on higher, drier ground. The Basterds on watch spent their shifts sinking and stepping and sinking again, eyes keen on the black forest and nostrils filled with the stench of rot. They were all hungry and haggard.
"Fuck that," said Donny, "fuck that," said Donny again.
"Donowitz," sighed Aldo, "it's either we double-back or we're mired in this shit another thirty miles easy. You seen Omar's foot? That skin's slidin' off like a spitfire game hen's, and I ain't about to be riskin' any more a'my mens' health in this stew."
Omar had unwrapped his foot and was picking at it in the moonlight. Fires were futile.
"It's pretty fuckin' gross, Donny," he confirmed, peering at something under his fingernails.
"Wastin' time, wastin' miles, wastin' away," Donny grumbled, rising and slogging back to his blanket, heavy wool heavier from the thick air.
"Chin up, Sergeant," Aldo said with a grin, folding the map and easing it back into his jacket, "Gotta good feelin' our bad luck's runnin' dry."
"Least somethin' is," he heard Donny mutter, saw the words in his steaming breath.
They'd woke the next day before dawn and marched forward and upward through the giving ground. Aldo kept his eyes up and expectant, staying somehow above the mud with deft rabbit steps. After three hours passed the same way the past three days had, full of struggle and filth, he halted the company and raised his foot to scrape his soles on a stone.
"Private," he said, and all four were at attention, but he knew the one he wanted. "Utivich," he clarified and Smitty pried his feet up and loped along to Aldo's side, the Lieutenant's boot still on the stone, poised in conquest, silhouetted bronze and statuesque in the sun.
"Yessir?" he asked.
"Can I be gettin' one a'them smokes offa' yeh?" he asked, his eyes still fixed on the grassy rise before them. Utivich handed him his packet of army-issue Red Apples and forgot to get them back when he saw the crumbling cottage on the hill. Smitty snapped back in the moment and his agape jaw shut when Aldo tucked the Apples back into the private's jacket with a pat of gratitude. "I owe ya' one, son," he said, his half-grin disappearing in the spring afternoon as he headed up the hill.
CHAPTER TWO; SHIRTS & SCALPS
Aldo said he'd been scouting, strategizing, setting up office in the main floor of the cottage. What he'd really been doing was more akin to sleeping; there was a three-legged half-burnt chaise longue in the makeshift drawing room only separated with a muslin curtain hammered in the stone, and laying on it felt a sin. He was started from his shallow dreams by a bang on the wood door, tipping the chaise on its bad leg and near pitching himself to the floor. Still in his dirty jacket, boots muddying up the once-rich red upholstery, he raked down his mussed hair and straightened his rumpled coat. On his way through the curtain and to the door, he spread some papers on the knife-nicked dining table.
When Aldo opened the door, Utivich had a scalp on his head. Well, two scalps, counting his own that ain't been sliced off.
"Well, well," Aldo appraised, eyes squinted with sleep, "if it ain't the king'a the wild frun-tier himself."
"Sir," Utivich countered and snapped off a salute, Kraut blood on his hands, forehead now. "Donny's getting a ballgame together, and we're needing somebody on the mound."
"Izzit shirts 'n scalps, then?" Aldo asked mildly, watching a fly circle, land on detached fair red-blonde hair that didn't suit anything about the kid save for the quiet craziness in his oceanic eyeballs.
"What?" asked Utivich. Aldo pushed a prompting hand through his own hair, sweeping it back into place where trudging and sweat had set it astray. Utivich looked right mortified, like a kid caught playing make-believe.
"What's what, yeh ask, is so far's I can tell, we've already got one Sergeant Donowitz in this company, and that's all the company we'll be needin', you dig that dirt?" Aldo implored, pacing slow along the millstone entry. He ground to a pivot on his bootheel and faced Utivich, who obviously wasn't digging much of anything.
"What I mean's," Aldo breathed an air of impatience, "we already got one fuck-shit un-sane sumbitch, and we don't be needin' 'nother."
"I dig," said Utivich, his eyes fixed and grim on the lieutenant, who drew a short, bent smoke from his breast pocket and clamped it in his jaws.
"Wellthen, it's dug. Now get that skullrag offa yer head 'fore I lose my breakfast," he muttered around the cigarette, his face tipped and glowing in the zippo flame.
"There was breakfast?" Utivich asked.
Aldo belched bacon. " 's a turn a'phrase, Private," he mumbled distractedly, snapping shut the lighter. "Now nothin' more a' these questions and--," Aldo paused, grimaced, "--and so help me Utivich, next time I look 'round that thing better be hangin' out to cure or you'll be wantin' for a pitcher and I can guaran-damn-tee that Stiglitz ain't warmin' up to the idea."
Utivich cursed himself, snatched the dead hairs in his fist and dragged it down. He set the stinking scalp in Aldo's hands.
"What number?" Aldo asked. Utivich shook his head.
"Don't have numbers, sir. Not enough players."
Aldo let it go. The cold snap was giving him a headache. He stared down at that sick toupee; it had to be near fifty for Utivich, a right pristine fifty. Aldo turned it and studied the underside's smooth scalpel cuts of a well-sharp blade. Utivich was ruthless under order, but that boy weren't cut out for crazy.
"Nice doing, son," Aldo set the scalp on the window ledge, wiped his hands on his brown wool coat, and clenched his leather gloves back on. His palm slapped on Utivich's shoulder, giving a brief squeeze as he swaggered down the stone stoop. "Now, what'zis I hear 'boutta ballgame?"
CHAPTER THREE; TRIPWIRES & SAWDUST
The ballpark was a swath of raised land behind the cottage, surrounded by murk and covered in gold dead grasses. Aldo set his hands on his hips and squinted at the scene; Omar was patting the last of the dirt down on the pitcher's mound with a shovel flat, Wicki was dragging a rusted hoe carelessly around the basepaths, and Donny was on-deck, choking the bat handle and check-swinging. Once he'd rounded what would be Third, Wicki tossed the tool and made his way to Aldo.
"Donny wants to be his own team," Wicki said. Aldo spat.
"How many we got playin'?" he asked.
"Just us, seems," he raised a hand toward Stiglitz, who sat smoking on a stump. "Werden Sie spielen?" he called. Stiglitz dragged on the cigarette stub, pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
"Nein," he said. Wicki turned back to Aldo.
"He won't play."
"Yeh, and us neither if Utivich don't round us up any bases," Aldo said, and when he glanced sidelong, Utivich was already turned around and halfway to the leaning storage shack.
"A good Private," said Wicki.
"Ain't bad," Aldo granted, then flicked his eyes to the approaching Sergeant Donowitz. He had his bat on his shoulder and looked in a huff. When he was close enough, Aldo noticed the swaths of blood smeared in a morbid mockery of greasepaint under Donny's eyes, and got a pretty decent idea who Utivich had gone on the hunt with that early evening.
"I wanna be my own team," said Donny, the bat tip sliding from his shoulder to the damp ground where he leaned against it like he did his rifle.
"You see?" said Wicki.
"And why'zat, Donowitz?" asked Aldo.
"Because Omar's a damn idiot," he said loud, loud enough to warrant an unsavory hand gesture from the Basterd in question.
"Fuck off, Donny!" Omar yelled from the mound, slamming the shovel into the earth. He caught the hubcap Utivich slung to him and made for home plate.
"But he dug that nice little knoll there," Aldo offered. Donny spluttered, disdain drawn tight in his face.
"Yeah, dug it outta fuckin' center field," he sneered. Aldo waved him off and over at once, tromping toward the infield, Donny and Wicki trailing behind.
"Ain't like this's league ball, Donny," said Aldo, stepping onto and sinking into the dark dirt of the pitcher's mound, "yer a long way off from yer precious Fenway. Now let's play ball, we're losin' light. Utivich!"
"Sir!" Utivich yelped back, dropping third base into place, an old metal sign with red letters saying fraiche boucherie.
"You got infield, Wicki, you got outfield," Aldo slipped off his jacket and bit the leather fingertip of his glove, pulling it off his right hand while his left fished in his pocket. He thumbed open the snuffbox he'd pulled and took a pinch, huffing it into his nostrils. "Donny, you're up, Omar, you're on-deck--and Donny, I ain't hearin' no word about it." He snapped the case shut, dropped it back into the coat's inside-pocket. "Now who's got a damn ball?"
Wicki had a damn ball. He tossed it to Aldo, and it landed in his palm with a soft slap. Aldo turned the it in his hands. It was a grotesque bulging thing, uneven innards all stitched up in some kind of hide.
"Where the hell'd you find this thing, Wicki?" Aldo asked, peering at the lump contemptuously.
"Hugo made it," Utivich said, "outta tripwires and sawdust and that Nazi's uniform." Aldo took a glance back at Stiglitz, who'd lit another cigarette and was running his blade along the sharpening strap.
"Ain't that nice," murmured Aldo with a tinge of wonder in his words. Donny scoffed.
"Are you jokin'? I'm gonna beat the cover right off that fuckin' thing, slug its guts clean out. Ain't no way we're gettin' past the top of the first," he called from the plate, which wasn't too far, on account of little solid ground to work with. Aldo leant, retrieved his coat from the ground and searched a couple pockets, drawing out a soft paper sachet of tobacco. He dipped a quid and stuck it in his lip.
"Lissen, Don'witz," Aldo drawled, "we came out here to play, not to sweat around and hear yeh grandstand." Donny took a couple practice swings then took a stance, bloodstained bat barrel swaying in the air, hands wringing on the handle.
"Well then pitch it, ya bobby-sox bitch," Donny called back. Aldo spat brown, raised a knee, and ripped a strike that Omar had to chase down through the spring swamp.
The rest of the game was a bust. Donny fell into Omar's hole in the third inning and near broke his ankle, then was so sore about it that he wouldn't let anyone use the bat anymore and the branch Utivich pulled from the brush just wasn't the same.
CHAPTER FOUR; UNDONE & SLICK
Omar swung the shovel, and it made another shallow divot in the cellar door. He set his feet, set to swing again, but there was a hand on the handle.
"Lemme do it," Donny protested, tossing to the dirt the hoe he'd been trying to use. Omar yanked the other end of the shovel.
"Says the guy who couldn't get a damn hit," Omar grumbled, twisting the shovel, wrenching it from Donny's hands.
"That's my fuckin' mark!" Donny shouted, pointing to one of the the splintered gashes in the oak with a boot stomp. It was the one closest to the rusted chain that shackled the cellar's handles. "I'm the only one who got anywheah fuckin' close."
"That one was mine," said Omar plainly, eyes hooded and lips curling.
"Like fuck," Donny growled and seized the lapel of Omar's jacket, making to either push him or pull him but it hadn't been decided because the barrel of a Schmeisser submachine gun was thrust between them and near crowed them apart.
"Stand away," muttered Stiglitz around his cigarette, burnt down to the filter, huffing the smoke from the blazing tip direct down his nose. Omar and Donny backed up while Utivich stood dumbly by, mind elsewhere while Stiglitz emptied the clip of the German rifle til it jammed. One of the rounds ricocheted from the chain and Utivich heard the BATANGG blow by, a breath away from his right ear. Stiglitz spat his butt on the ground and stomped right through the weakened chain and cheese-holed doors, one caving in entirely onto the descending stone stairs.
"Kinder," growled Stiglitz, pushing the rifle into Utivich's chest and stalking back to the pit of coals Wicki was coaxing alight. Utivich detangled himself from the Schmeisser's shoulder strap and slung it around his back. The three of them scrambled down the steps, throwing open the reamed wood doors on the descent.
That night, the Basterds all sat too close to the hot fire and ate nearly half the cellar's provisions in one supper sitting. Aldo had half a mind to tell his men to slow the fuck down, but the other half of his mind was all stomach too and he mawed down a jar of pickles to himself and the vinegar stung the cold-chapped skin on his lips. Utivich sat alongside Aldo, eating deep red lumps of fruit preserves even after the cinnamon oil bread was long gone. There were spots of mold on one heel, but they all had figured bad bread would be no match after what they'd done and what's to come.
After a certain amount of clinking and smacking, Aldo slid his eyes to fall on Utivich in the firelight, dipping his scalping knife into the jar, swirling, then bathing the blade with his tongue. Aldo gingerly pulled a dead speck of skin from his lips with his teeth, absently tonguing the coppery patch it'd left beneath. It hardly took time for Utivich's wide eyes to find the Lieutenant's slotted gaze, the weight and while of it heavy enough to tear him away from his meal.
"Utivich," Aldo said sharp, not once wavering his eyes, talking as if to get the private's attention even knowing it was already got. Utivich realized his tongue was still out, slicked against the steel.
"Ah," Utivich started uncertainly, "yessir?"
"Head on inside'n look to the left where there's a cabinet under'at old sink. Inside that cabinet you'll find a copper kettle, a big sonovabitch. Fill it halfway with water'n set it out here'ta heat," Aldo instructed, the last word grunted out with his rise from the dirt and the strain from his stiffened knees. Utivich raised the lip of the jar to his own, tipped his head back and dumped another clot of jam into his mouth before getting along to Aldo's errand.
Inside, Utivich knelt bent at the waist and yanked at the kettle, one of its feet jammed tight against the bottom of the cupboard. Skillets rattled and strained around it while Utivich swore and struggled. Aldo had come inside and upon the Private, and took to settling himself against his shoulder in the doorframe. He let all that banging go on another moment before piping up.
"Yeh gettin' it?" he asked, amusement in his eyes mirrored in his voice. Utivich swung his head up, around, and into the wood overhang just above. More curses, but this time through grit teeth and tears that'd sprang unbidden to the corners of his eyes. He blinked them back with the same insistence he pushed Aldo's hands away when they reached past his shoulder to help in the dislodging.
"I've got it," Utivich reiterated with more venom than Aldo could remember hearing from that mouth in his direction. He showed his amicable palms though Utivich hadn't turned around.
"Alright, son, alright," he conceded and offered a smile when Utivich dragged himself and the kettle up from the floor. "Yer head alright? You concussed or d'yer eyes always look two ways?"
"I'm fine, it's fine," Utivich muttered, shifting the kettle to hang by the handle in the crook of his arm while his other hand probed searchingly at the forming lump. He withdrew his fingers, checked for blood, stood still and with patience while Aldo stepped into him and did the same damn inspection. His hands were tender while they smoothed and sorted through Smitty's dark hair, one sliding down to the back of his neck, tightening then dropping away.
"Pump's out front," Aldo prompted and turned back to the dining table where his bolt-rifle was all undone and slick with gungrease. Utivich set his jaw and pulled the cumbersome kettle outside behind him, thinking on how he hadn't really noticed the cold except in the absence of Aldo's palms.
CHAPTER FIVE; KNIT & BEMUSED
By the time the water had gotten up to a boil, most of the Basterds had bed down, save for Hirschberg and Kagan who'd took first watch. After burning an angry red stripe through his palms on the hot handle, Utivich pulled on his leather gloves and lifted the pot from the fire, sidling laboredly around the still bodies under the still blankets. When he'd finally gotten across the yard and inside the cottage, Aldo wasn't to be seen. The gun was still on the table.
"Lieutenant?" Utivich called.
"Bring'er up here, Private," he heard Aldo through the ceiling and stared dismayed at the set of stairs in the far corner of the room. He heaved his way up each at a time, careful not to slosh the scalding water. When he'd got to the top, he looked into the right one of the two rooms, and found Aldo leaning up against the stand of the washbasin, wrapped in a musty moth-ate robe he'd dug from somewhere, looking so foreign from the cold and filth that Utivich was given a start like he'd seen a ghost. Aldo nodded toward the bathtub, a rust-pocked hulking thing that sat squat on four clawed feet.
Utivich strained, hauled the kettle up to the bevel of the tub's edge and tilted the water from it. When he set it back down with a clang, he pulled off his gloves to fussily itch the lash of burn across his hands. He was panting, heart still hammering, and it didn't seem to help when Aldo took his hands and rubbed the rough pads of his thumbs across the swelling stripes.
"Got the curse, son, bumps 'n burns," Aldo murmured, brows knit and bemused. Utivich swallowed, tried to steady his lungs.
"Yeah," he puffed, the regulation of his breath just making him heave heavier, "wasn't thinking."
"That right?" Aldo inquired rhetorically, "see, I'm thinkin' it's jest the opp'site. I'm thinkin' I've seen you all rolled up in them college-boy brains, eyes glassy as a goddamn windscreen. Thinkin' I've seen you not seein' what's comin' out there in them trees till it's damn near too late." And Utivich wanted to protest, but he could just sit there gape-jawed waiting for a retort that wouldn't surface because he knew it was true; Hell, he'd almost got his ear shot off by Stiglitz' friendly fire but four hours prior. Fuckin' windscreen eyes, mind gone to wander, bullets flying by.
"Son, you get outta' that head and let yer body do some thinkin'. A man can go stark bat-shit nuts out 'ere, and so far's I'm concerned that don't get root in the trench but in the head," Aldo paused to slide his fingers in the cool water of the washbasin, bringing them back to trace the drops along Utivich's sore hands, who had stopped even entertaining the idea of an edgewise word, and had stopped thinking altogether when Aldo's drawl in his ears and his wet skin slick against his flaring wounds reached a sensory unity.
"B'sides," Aldo said, voice low, hands dipping again in the basin, then back to his tentative touching, "only thing college-boy brains are good for in a den a' Natzis is gettin' blown out." Aldo patted the kid's cheek with his wet palm. Utivich still had his hands out and open.
"Yessir," he said, and brushed the back of his hand on the wet finger trails. Aldo looked about to untie the silk sash of the robe, then peered into the bathtub. Utivich peered too. They stared at the four inches of water.
"Think we're gonna be needin' more," Aldo said. Utivich bit his tongue, pulled his gloves back on, and hauled the kettle back to the hallway.
CHAPTER SIX; SILENCE & STEAM
Utivich busied himself with a fire in the wood stove that nearly smoked him out 'til whatever it was that'd been up the stovepipe fell out or burned away. He bunched his hand in his sleeve and swung the metal grate shut, his eyes full of smoke and ears full of splashing and choruses of Over There from the floor above. Normally he'd have taken his leave to bed down beside Omar; he was warmest and didn't mind the closeness. Donny was a near-second, but in a mood, he'd be all elbows, growling and pushing when Utivich slid too close and wanted to whisper about home. Donny'd been in a mood all week.
Normally, he'd have taken his leave, small shelters tacitly agreed upon being the Lieutenant's quarters, but after all that lugging to draw that goddamn bath he figured his sore shoulders were worth the price of admission. He sat with his back to the fire, rolled his sore sockets that loosened with the warmth, and heard Jonneh git-yer-gun git-yer-gun git yer-gun for the ten-thousandth time until it was suddenly broken by his name.
"Yessir!" Utivich called.
"You got any o'that talc on yeh?"
Utivich hauled himself to his haunches then back to his feet, rummaging in his pack he'd hung on an old oak chair. He found a dirty lump of soap, stained permanent pink, and trudged back up the stairs.
"I'll toss it," he offered at the doorway of the dark room, lit just by the flicker of a half-candle. Aldo motioned him in with the old newspaper both his hands were full with.
"Actually figured you wouldn't mind givin' a little a' the Donowitz treatment," Aldo said through a grin, "Ah'd do it massel, but I ain't blessed with more arms."
Beauty school. It still made Utivich grin to think about it; beautician Bear Jew, oh if those dead Krauts had just known.
"Is this all some kinda test?" Utivich asked as he sidled between the sink and the tub, standing behind Aldo and dunking what was left of the soap corner.
"Private, when it comes to a mission like this, nothin' ain't a test," Utivich thought about that, pulled it apart, and decided not to say anything on double-negatives. He shoved his hands into Aldo's wet hair, lye in the suds searing his burns. The sound that came from Aldo was low from the throat, and he dropped his hands enough to wet the bottom of the paper. "C'mon, son, no mercy," Aldo prompted, and Utivich stiffened up his fingers, scratching into the scalp.
"Where'd that paper come from?" Utivich asked, the silence and steam giving him a little something like vertigo. He glanced over Aldo's shoulder to glimpse a column, but couldn't read it. "You read French?" he asked, incredulous. Aldo snapped the paper, folded it aside.
"Notta' whit," he said, settling back into Utivich's hands while he just sighed, his deft fingers still working Aldo over.
"Figured," said Utivich and tugged Aldo's head back like he was about to slice his hairline. "That enough? Any longer and I'm charging."
"At ease," Aldo grinned, scooping up a rinse and pouring it down his head, one hand rubbing over the lynchmark on his neck. "You see that still out back?"
"What?" asked Utivich.
"You see them barrels and pipes out back, edge a' the wood?" Aldo rephrased.
"Yeah," he said.
"That's a still, not the shinin' sort, but I'm sure-as-shit these Grapestompers got some sorta' spirits squirrel'd away, why doncha sniff 'round and see if we can get a little lit?"
"On it," Utivich said, gingerly wiping his wet hands and disappearing downstairs.
CHAPTER SEVEN; SALT & SOAP
When Aldo strolled down the stairs, brand-clean in dirty clothes, Utivich was settled by the stove. He had two fingers hooked in a clay-colored jug handle, the heel on his other hand drawing it back as he drank deep.
"How's it?" Aldo asked. Utivich wiped his mouth with his scratchy sleeve.
"Tastes like shit," he gasped, then tipped it back again. Aldo piled up beside him on the creaking floor, plucking the jug from the private's hand. He rested it on the crook of his arm, lifting his elbow and swigging single-handed.
"You ain't kiddin'. That's some fuckin' fermentin', ain't even sure that's wine anymore." Aldo screwed up his lip, one eye squinting. He took another long pull, then Utivich had his eager hands all over it. They drank awhile in the dark and in the quiet, listening to the knots pop in the flame.
Aldo pulled the jug back over.
"You leave a good woman back'n New York?" Aldo asked, more for lack of anything worth asking.
"No," said Utivich, licking the wine off his lip, "she's a real bitch."
Aldo laughed, full haw, pure Tennessee.
"Ain't they just."
"I don't know," shrugged Utivich, trying to drink from the handle like the lieutenant, but he couldn't get his hand and arm working in at once. He abandoned the clumsy endeavor and levered the jug to his lips on his bent knee, "my mom's alright," he said and he meant it to be funny, but so far away, it wasn't. It made him think of his fifth-floor apartment down the block from her, transistor radio on the kitchen windowsill. He'd had to put up a year's rent for it when he'd decided to enlist and considered it now, dark and still, like it may as well not exist at all.
"Most mommas are," said Aldo, and watched Utivich slug down swallow after swallow.
"I don't have a woman," Utivich clarified while his head swam and he pushed the jug back to Aldo, "bitch or otherwise. How do you drink like that? I mean, holding it," Utivich flapped an arm and crooked his fingers in time with Aldo.
" 's easy," Aldo said after that last gulp burned down his throat and sank to his stomach. He threaded Utivich's fingers through the handle, feeling the rough callus on the balls of his palm. The kid had hands suited for typekeys more than triggers, and sometimes Aldo had to stare at him; in the rain, suckin' down smokes, smilin' small while Hirschberg and Donny spat and swore, and just plain wonder what in the fuck he was doin' out here. Aldo bent Utivich's wrist back and laid the jug on the crux of his arm and watched him drink, tipping too far, the wine dripping down his chin from the seal of his lips.
Aldo reached over, thumb dragging upward to gather the red trail, hesitating right at the edge of his lower lip. Utivich let his body do some thinkin'; he sopped the wine from the lieutenant's thumbtip with his lips, letting his tongue slide out to get the rest. Aldo withdrew his hand slow, slipped two fingers into the neck of the jug. He tipped the wine down it, and his hand soaked in red wasn't exactly an unfamiliar sight.
"Well, fer fuck's sake," Aldo murmured, eyes slit and smoldering as Utivich leaned over and started lapping his fingers and palm, tasting salt and soap and acrid wine, and when he pushed his lips on Aldo's, he did too. Aldo jut his jaw further forward against Utivich's persistent mouth, finally catching the kid by the shoulders.
"Lissen, prettyboy, hate ta' damper the date, but I ain't so much the kissin' kind," so Utivich bit the lieutenant's lip instead, felt him shudder in his jaws. He pulled back with a clack, Aldo's flesh red and raw.
"What kind are you, then?"
Aldo tongued the sore skin, smiled sideways. "The gettin'-my-cock-sucked kind."
Utivich flushed.
"This's all happening a little quick," he recanted, burnt palms up. "And I gotta' get goin' on watch in not too long, last thing I want is for fuckin' Omar to wander in looking for me and see--"
"You ain't on watch t'nite, private. Donowitz is doin' double, on my order." Oh, and wouldn't Utivich catch all kinds of hell for that tomorrow.
"Still," said Utivich, but couldn't think of anything else, cornered. Aldo shoved his bath-hot hands into Utivich's open shirt, getting under the thin white cotton and rounding his waist.
"Ain't figured on you to be the teasin' type, playin' all possum after alla that filth out that pretty mouth 'while back," he murmured and hooked his thumb back onto Utivich's jaw, voice low, guttering in his ear, "last time I'd heard somethin' like that, she was gettin' paid fer it."
Utivich lolled his tongue against Aldo's hand and tried to talk awhile before Aldo released him.
"What?"
"That word ain't so becomin' on yeh, Private, that brain so stuffed with smarts 'n all."
"I said what I meant."
"Yeah," and that growl was back, rich and full of gravel, "y'mean when y'were goin' on about alla that Mick cock yeh usedta suck in college?"
Utivich's face fell. He couldn't believe it, but there it was; he'd divulged his favorite secret, that private paradox he reveled in during that life of privilege and prestige. It had been something his entirely, and now he'd given it up to the fuckin' commanding officer; after his accounting night classes, he'd taken to moonlighting, slumming around New York's immigrant neighborhoods. He'd spend nights kicking around Hell's Kitchen--Five Points when he was feeling rough--in his beat bomber jacket and jeans, black wingtips, white v-neck.
He'd sit slumped over bartops, watching out blue eyes, rolling smokes and sipping scotch--which he normally hated, but these nights, they were a point to slip into something else--eyeing for signals; too-long glances, certain lapel pins. Of course when he was approached, that pokerface fell, and he'd be nervous as a hen in a foxhouse. To his advantage, they liked that more; boyish uncertainty, charming twitchy smiles, big earnest eyes. In an Irish neighborhood, he felt exotic, sought-for, not just another brainy big-eared Jewish kid at a ledger.
It'd never taken long for it to end up in the alley, eyes closed, dizzy with drink, sucking hard with hands in his hair. Sometimes they'd try to give him money, but he just did it for kicks, for that thrill of control behind a mask of vulnerability. He'd head back to his apartment, hands in his pockets, knees dirty, feeling electric.
At one point, he'd been on the fast track to being a mob man's boy, but he'd chickened the fuck out. Clammed up and vanished, in too deep with dinners and movies and cufflinks. Guy's name was Cormac Cadden, but the guys called him Marathon Mac because he had a shin a little twisted with old Polio and a limp that made him formidable and made Utivich hot-blooded. He'd called himself Charlie Hale those nights, and decided the whole thing'd gone too far when he'd started forgetting to answer to Smithson elsewhere.
It was his private facet, his hidden life. His big fucking mouth.
"I told you that?"
Aldo sat back, took up the wine. "More like whispered," he said, swigged, "all lurid-like."
"Like, uh, in your ear?" asked Utivich dumbly.
"Stuck yer tongue in there, too, memory servin'," Aldo grinned wolfishly. Utivich's face was a strange shade.
"God," he groaned, the heel of his hand pressing to his eyesocket, "I don't remember that. At all. When the hell was this?"
Aldo drank again, then scraped the bottle along the floor toward Utivich, "after yeh drove alla them schnapps' into yeh."
"More specific," Utivich eyed the jug like an enemy, pushed it back to Aldo.
"When Donny'd got yeh all prettied-up 'n yeh headed into town fer supplies."
Utivich had at least remembered that part.
TO BE CONCLUDED: PARTS 8-12