FIC: A Love Like The Sea 3/4
Title: A Love Like The Sea 3/4 high tide
Pairing: Liebgott/Webster
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They are very, very, very much not mine.
Word Count: 6,173
Summary: Joe Liebgott is roused in the middle of the night by a phone call (an intervention in disguise) and ends up anchored down to one place while he tries to reconcile the man he's become with the man who went to war.
Notes: Thanks plenty to thejazzter for the beta. This goes AU after Points, but not in any dire way besides the events of the story being clearly not how history played out.
PART ONE: He wanted to be loved in a way that was as infinite and endless as the ocean.
PART TWO: Liebgott wished he could say how many more he’d be there 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.
tbc
Pairing: Liebgott/Webster
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They are very, very, very much not mine.
Word Count: 6,173
Summary: Joe Liebgott is roused in the middle of the night by a phone call (an intervention in disguise) and ends up anchored down to one place while he tries to reconcile the man he's become with the man who went to war.
Notes: Thanks plenty to thejazzter for the beta. This goes AU after Points, but not in any dire way besides the events of the story being clearly not how history played out.
PART ONE: He wanted to be loved in a way that was as infinite and endless as the ocean.
PART TWO: Liebgott wished he could say how many more he’d be there 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.
tbc