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i. O you who dwell in the gardens,
There were few of them that boarded the train heading west. Eventually, Joe is the only one in the train car watching the landscape roll by. He rests his head against the window and tries to forget everything awful that happened over the last three years.
David Webster had not been with them when they shipped home. Joe wondered if David was still in Austria, sitting on the dock of that lake and leaning over to stare at his reflection in the water. He thought about Webster standing in the dark on that shore, the bright orange tip of his cigarette lighting up his mouth as he turned to see who was approaching him.
Joe rubs his face, his eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to combat memories and thoughts. He bangs his head against the window and curses.
After that, after everything, Joe does not want to see anyone. He tries not to, anyway. Maybe at the end of it all, he does not feel like he deserves to see anyone from Easy. He thinks the best thing to do is to cut himself off from everyone else. They’ll be okay without him, they don't need him. Even if he misses them. Even if he wishes they were still here, to help him combat long nights that he cannot seem to face. In Europe they only ever had each other. Here, home, they are scattered to the wind.
When Joe finally arrives home, he sees his mother, and she cries and kisses him and murmurs to him in her Austrian German: my son, my love, you are safe, you are okay. Finally, he has to beg her to let him go, has to remind her she’s got five other kids. Jokingly reminds her that she would not even miss him, which makes her cry harder. His father cries too. The kind of stoic tears older men cry. Joe tries not to think of how he watched men his father’s age sob openly, weeping like children left behind. Joe had cried long and hard in Landsberg too.
He doesn't want to tell his parents about what he saw there, the horror of it all.
What was done to his tribe. His people sick and starving. His parents faces are so kind and open, so happy to see him. The contrast of it is startling to him.
After all the tears his mother prepares dinner, and while they eat she thanks God for returning him safely. Joe thinks about all the men who aren’t sitting at dinner tables; all the men at Landsberg who were starving, who cried when he told them, it’s for your own good, and he has to excuse himself.
—
Most days, Joe drives his cab all over San Francisco. He chats with people who slide into the back-seat, when they engage him, but mostly he sticks to silently driving and collecting fare. The city is alive with post war energy and Joe cannot help but take advantage of that; just like he promised Web he would.
Sometimes he cuts hair for the people that live in his mom’s apartment building. People she goes to temple with, mostly. They ask him about the war, tell him how brave he was and he smiles and laughs, “Sure, sure.”
Little boys who want Mohawk haircuts ask him if he killed a lot of men in the war. To them, he seems like a hero who saved the entire planet earth from some unspeakable horror. Like someone out of a comic book. Like Flash Gordon.
“I heard the Germans were bad guys, but my mama said you killed them all. Is that true?”
Joe wonders what else his mother has told people about his service in Europe. He knows that she gossips with the other women from her temple, braiding challah and giggling in yiddish. He loves her, but he also worries that she is making him out to be more of a hero than he really is. In his own mind, he had a job to do, and he went over and did it. The boy in his makeshift barber chair doesn’t know that he saw men with yellow shields sewn to their clothes, kissing his friends and comrades because God had finally sent someone to help them.
Why would God have given his people a shield but no sword?
Joe turns the boy’s head forward and holds him by the crown of his skull, “Hold still or I’ll cut your ear off, Isaac.”
—
One day, Joe drives to the presidio and eats his lunch, watching the ocean beyond the Golden Gate bridge. He thinks about how clear the water was in Austria, about everyone swimming in the lake. All his friends laughing and splashing. He remembers reading Webster’s letter to his mom over his shoulder, being nosey. David was asking for new swimming trunks, and Joe remembers laughing, ribbing him over it,
“Yeah, those shorts are gonna fit ya real nice, Web.”
When Joe said it, Babe and Don had laughed, squinting into sunshine as they lay about in the grass by the lake, drying their bodies off in bright summer sunshine. Joe stubbed his cigarette out in the dirt next to where they were laying.
Most of all he remembers the lake, when David's new swim trunks had arrived. He remembers David's body waist deep in water, trying to catch Luz for splashing him in his stupid, open mouth. Webster slicking his wet hair back from his face and lifting his friend up to toss him into the water, laughing. Joe remembers after that, too. The lot of them climbing out of the lake and drying off as they headed back up toward their billets. Joe had seen Webster standing on the shore, drying his hair. He hadn’t followed them back up. Then, there was the way the lake had turned from beautiful blue to ink black as the sun set. The way the orange tip of Web’s cigarette had glowed in the dark.
He remembers how much he had had to drink, how Webster had turned slightly to look at him on the bank of the lake. Joe remembers swallowing hard and saying, in German,
“Only cowards run.”
Since then, he feels drawn to bodies of water. More than he ever did as a kid. The ocean was always there, in the distance then, but now it is always under his skin. He cannot go anywhere without thinking of the ocean. When his car's engine rumbles he is reminded of the surf beating against the shore. At Passover with his family, he relishes the salt water taste on his tongue when he dips the hard boiled egg and eats it.
That night Webster had said it was like another world under the water. He had been right; that lake in Austria reflected the stars like a mirror, like a whole other galaxy right next to them. Unexplored territory stretched out before them. One of them had to take the plunge.
Joe runs a hand through his hair and throws the rest of his sandwich to the birds before he gets back into his cab. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore, but it occupies every space in his brain. He thinks about the what ifs more than he thinks about what actually happened. He sits behind the wheel and looks at the ocean, so far away, for just a moment. Then he puts the car into gear and drives away.
He drives to his parent's place for dinner and speaks to his mother softly in German while she fixes him a plate. She brushes his hair off his forehead and smiles at him.
“My son, the hero,” she says, and Joe thanks her again.
He can’t stop wondering if David Webster’s neck tastes of the salt water from the Seder.
—
At night, when he pours himself into bed — like so many drinks he had to have before he can even do that much — he dreams about the hilltop in Austria. Dreams in that crisp way where everything is stark and contrasting and hard. Most of the time he dreams that he is watching himself from far above, like a camera taking a picture. There is never any sound. No gunshots, no yelling. Web’s mouth is moving but nothing is coming out. He can, himself, see his own face. He can see the way he was staring at Web while he was screaming. Lost, wandering the desert for forty years.
When he wakes, he smokes two, sometimes three, cigarettes all the way to the filter and climbs back into bed, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the smooth scar on his neck. He drifts off that way, comforting himself.
Other times, he dreams about Noville, and Hale getting his throat slit by that German. In the dream he feels more frightened than he remembers being when it happened. Everything feels slower, like he is not reacting quickly enough. As if he is about to be next, about to get himself stabbed in a barn in Europe. He cannot say for sure if this is how it happened on that day anymore. Were his reactions dulled like they are in his dreams? He almost always wakes at the first gunshot. There is sound in that dream.
Sometimes, rarely, he dreams of the bluest water he has ever seen, colored black with night and moonlight shimmering silently over the gentle waves.
There is always a figure on the bank with coal black hair and a cigarette tipped molten orange in the dark.
—
One day, Joe’s phone rings and when he picks it up he hears a familiar voice on the other end.
“Heya, Joe.”
“Christ. Pat,” he replies, startled, and the other man laughs a little.
“You sound surprised. We’re only separated by the bay, y’know? It wasn’t hard to look you up,” Burton Christenson sounds healthy, happy. Joe always liked him. He was in Landsberg too, standing just at his elbow while he talked to one of the prisoners.
“Yeah, surprised,” Joe admits and he picks at a spot in the wood on his wall next to the phone. It splinters under his nail and he hisses.
“Is this a bad time?” Christenson asks.
Joe wants to tell him it is an awful time. That all the time is an awful time. That he is not the same person that fought with him in Europe. He wishes there was a way to convey this to him without making it sound weird. He wonders how Pat would react if he told him about the nightmares, about the feelings of emotional dread. He wishes he was talking to Web instead and that unsettles him. Instead, Joe lies.
“No, it’s fine. What’s going on with you?”
They talk for a long while, Joe managing normal conversation for the first time since he came back to the states. He is happy for it, and wishes he could talk to some of the other guys for once. He doesn’t, though. That would open a door to something else entirely. Something he isn’t ready for at all.
When he climbs into bed that night he thinks,
What if Web calls you?
He hates that he thinks about that. He wonders if he would have anything to say to Web. He wonders if he would ask him, outright: What did all that shit in Austria mean? Why did you let me do that when I was so drunk? Why did you kiss me back? Don’t you know that ‘Lieb’ means ‘love’?
He hopes that he dreams about the mountaintop tonight. He isn’t in the mood to dream of the water, the shore, the everything after, again.
—
Joe is looking through an old cigar box for his lighter on the dresser when he sees a flash of gold. Immediately, he grabs for it. He thinks of all the sparkling shit he pocketed in Germany and Austria. It was nothing like what Sparky shipped home. They all wished they could be that good at looting. Regardless, they all managed to get an eye for anything that glittered gold or silver in sunlight.
He does not expect what he retrieves from the cigar box on his dresser. When he turned thirteen his mother gifted him with a gold Star of David. An expensive gift for a family with little money. They had five other kids to feed and Joe was trying to find a job to help support them.
She had told him he was a man as she slipped the chain over his neck. They could not afford a bar mitzvah for him, and he did not expect one. Instead, he wore the necklace his mother gave him, tucked safely in his shirt at all times. Joe remembered taking it off for the first time when he joined up with the army, the day before he boarded the train to Toccoa.
Joe holds the chain gently in his hands and studies the star carefully. In Landsberg all of the Jews had been wearing those striped uniforms with those gold stars sewn to them. The Magen David. David’s shield. Joe closes his eyes when the memories of it wash over him.
He feels sick again, spinning out of control, remembering it all. Joe holds tight to the edge of his dresser, feeling like he’s going over some kind of edge.
He had grabbed the Commandant’s face tight, gun pressing into his skin, leaving an imprint, and whispered, furious,
“O Israel! A people saved by the Lord,”
he had pressed the gun harder until the man under it whimpered,
“the shield of your help, the sword of your triumph! Your enemies shall come, and you shall tread upon their backs!”
He wanted the man to know what he was dealing with. A man who would not allow someone to put him and his people behind a fence. He had pulled back, taken aim, but his hand shook when he pulled the trigger. He had missed, and his gun had jammed, and there was David Webster. Refusing to aim, to fire.
As a boy, when he went to temple, Joe had never heard a story about a cowardly David.
Joe slips the necklace over his head and tucks it into his shirt before he finds his lighter and leaves the room.
—
ii. with companions listening for your voice;
Joe is surprised the first time he sees David Webster. It’s been almost two years, but the man has not changed. Not much, anyway. He is freckled and tan, dark skin and hair standing in contrast to those blue eyes.
Somehow, David had found Joe in San Francisco. Joe is pretty sure it was through one of the guys. Specifically, through Pat. No one else really knew where Joe was, or what he was even doing. He had not really offered to try and contact them, in any case.
Regardless of who told what, David is standing outside the cab company that Joe works for, waiting with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. He is dressed nicely; Joe almost forgot how rich he is. Not that there is any room for resentment over that, now. Joe does wonder if there is a Harvard diploma with Webster’s name hanging in a room somewhere. He genuinely hopes that David finished school, managed to do something good.
“I guess you’re here to see me, huh?” Joe meanders toward the other man. He digs into his pockets for a cigarette and makes an offer. David accepts, and Joe leans forward to light it for him. How is it that he really does smell of ocean spray?
Joe lights his own cigarette and inhales deeply.
“What are ya doing here, Web?” He exhales as he speaks, smoke following every word.
“Hey, Lieb. It’s good to see you, too,” David answers, sarcastically. Joe’s skin prickles at being called Lieb by Web again for the first time in ages, and gives him a look that says he is not in the mood. A look that is supposed to convey, I’ve just finished a ten hour cab shift.
They stand in silence for a moment. David smokes his cigarette slowly, like he’s forgotten how to. Joe wonders if he quit when he got home. Maybe mommy and daddy didn’t like it. Joe smirks to himself at the thought as he picks at a hangnail with his index finger.
"Do you want to get a drink?" Web finally breaks the silence. He takes a step closer to Joe.
Joe shrugs. "Sure. There's a place down the street," he gestures away from himself, at the same time stepping back from Web a bit. He does not want to close the distance between them. He does not think it will be like last time.
—
“I have a boat,” David says when he lifts his beer to his mouth, and Joe is watching the foam on his lips.
“No shit?” Joe smiles and he takes a gulp of his own beer. Of course he does. That explains the tan, the freckles. Everything. Joe wondered what other promises made that night on the shore would be kept.
“I’ve been keeping it down in Santa Monica, but right now it’s docked here. I sailed it up the coast. You should come out with me sometime,” David’s hands are absently toying with the base of the beer bottle. He traces his fingertips in the condensation and watches the rivulets run down the glass and onto the bar table.
Joe knows what he is asking. Knows that there is a strange distance between them. He feels miles away from Web. Has felt that way, for a while now. At one point, they had been on opposites sides of the earth.
Joe has never been on a proper boat before — just a barge that had carried them away to die in Hitler’s war.
Joe thinks about closing the distance now, about all those times he had thought about being in close quarters with Webster. How things since Zell Am See would have progressed. He shifts in his seat. Web does not seem to notice.
“I, for one,” Joe says and finishes his beer, tipping the empty bottle toward the other man, “would love to see your boat, Web.”
David does not look up from where he is turning the bottle in his hands on the table-top, but he does smile.
And that is enough for Joe.
—
It’s not impossible to imagine someone like David Webster being the sort of person who can get swept up, filled up, like sails on a boat. There's that at least, Joe thinks when he watches David fix the sails, tie off the ropes, hurry around the riggings like a seasoned captain. He lets the wind catch them and he steers the tiller at the stern, guiding them into the open ocean. Joe doesn't know the first thing about boats, about water. The sunlight is reflecting off the water, a bright and blinding white light.
Joe has to shield his eyes from it when the sailboat turns and the water catches the sunlight just so. Instead he looks at David, with his Sperry top-siders on, his khaki linen shorts, and his open-to-the-navel Hawaiian shirt. Joe can see the hair on his chest and he wonders how he could have ever forgotten how handsome David is. He had considered it a lot when they were in Europe. Whatever misgivings he had about Webster as a soldier were forgiven eventually. Webster was sentimental, and Joe hated and loved that about him.
When the sun starts to set and the wind starts to die away, David draws the sails in and lets the anchor down. In the distance, Joe can make out the city only as specks of light on the horizon.
They watch as the sun dips below the skyline, turning the sky purple-pink and then lavender. Finally, when the first stars are appearing, David says, “Lets go below and have some drinks.”
Joe goes down first, down the too-small stairs and into the one person cabin. There is an oven to the left side with a sink. There are two settees, one across from the other, and a leaf table. There is also another table, one with charts neatly stacked on top of books and radio mounted on the wall above it. Joe slides onto the settee with a bookshelf behind it — stuffed, strangely enough, with books about ocean life — and waits until David is coming down the stairs too. He watches as David goes to the table against the wall and gathers up his navigation charts and books, giving Joe a sheepish smile as he lifts the top of the table. He reaches in and grabs two long necked bottles with one hand before he replaces his charts and books on the table top.
Joe thinks this boat must have cost an arm and a leg for it to have an ice-box built into it.
He watches as David pulls open a drawer and uses a bottle opener to pop the caps off their beers before he pulls up the leaf table and then slides onto the same bench as Joe, leaving the other settee completely empty.
Joe is suddenly acutely aware of their proximity. The space is cramped so they are almost touching. His eyes drop and he studies Web’s wrist, the way he holds the beer in his hand.
Joe absently brings his arm up and presses it along the side of Web’s.
“Look at how tan you are,” Joe says and laughs, like he can’t believe it. He almost can’t. Web hadn’t even freckled in Austria.
David’s laugh is deep and rumbles from somewhere in his chest. Joe takes a long pull from his beer and turns his pale arm slightly against David’s much darker one, comparing the tones of their skin and the dark hair that covers Web’s arm. He considers that arm for a long time, thinking about the last time he saw it. David was wearing his olive drab uniform shirt over a white t-shirt, the sleeves were rolled up a little. It was the most undressed Joe had ever seen him since he’d known him, up to that point.
Joe finally turns to look at David full on. He wonders how they have reached this point. Once, Joe had many choice words for David Webster. Now, he can’t find anything to say to the other man. David’s eyes are just as blue as the water in Austria. Blue like the sky in the mountains. Joe chews his lip a little, wondering what to say or do. David manages to make a decision for both of them.
David leans in and his mouth meets Joe’s, holds steady before Joe backs off. He slides back slightly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Fuck,” David curses as soon as it happens. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Joe assures him and he touches the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand again. He looks at David for a long time, wordlessly. He had tasted exactly how Joe had imagined he would: sun-warmed and ocean-salty.
“I thought you wanted me to,” David admits and Joe nods.
“Yeah, I do.”
Then, there is only a moment's pause before they are fumbling together, mouths colliding. It is so quiet and Joe notices this acutely. He can hear their frantic breathing, the sounds of their clothes being undone. David’s hand is at his belt, pulling it out of the loops.
“Let me get up,” David says breathlessly and slides off of the settee, pulling Joe out with him by his wrist. He turns Joe around and presses him against the nearest surface - the navigation table - and is immediately kissing him again. Joe leans back against the table, fingers white-knuckling on the edge and crumpling maps as David kisses down his jaw and lower. He presses wet, open-mouthed kisses to the spot where Joe’s collarbone shows above his shirt as he works his pants open.
Joe leans into David, aching for more. He wants David to leave a mark there, where he is kissing so intently. He wants to walk past a reflective surface and see a bruise left by David Webster on his neck. His cock twitches at the thought.
Slowly, David lowers himself to his knees and presses his face against Joe’s thigh and exhales.
“I’ve been thinking about this. Thinking about it since Zell Am See, the lake, that night.” Joe’s eyes flick toward a porthole above the stove, directly across from them. He can see the dark ocean water. His eyes dart down to look at David again, watches as he buries his face into the fabric of his jeans. Joe pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it away, never taking his eyes off of David.
“You think about me?” Joe murmurs as he pushes his fingers through that mop of dark hair. He means it to sound sexual, predatory. Instead, it sounds needy.
“What? You don’t think about me?” David looks up from under dark lashes, inky black like the sea outside. He is smiling, knowing. You must have thought about me, or else you wouldn’t be here, Lieb.
Joe does not want to admit that he dreams about Web often. Always dreams about that mountaintop, or of the night they had on the shore of the lake. He feels a sense of guilt rise up in him like bile and he closes his eyes to forget about it.
“Yeah, I think about you,” Joe says, finally, and looks down at David again, carding his fingers through his hair. His other hand reaches over and swipes a thumb over the bow of David’s lower lip. He wonders how long it would take him to count the new freckles on David’s nose.
David smiles at him, white teeth like the snow caps on a mountain in Austria, and pulls Joe’s pants a little lower.
—
Joe's fingers are curled tightly in David's hair as the younger man sucks him off. David’s head is bobbing up and down on him, breath coming out sharply from his nose as he does it. He’s good, Joe thinks, but does not voice it. Instead, he tries to focus on the way David’s tongue runs over his cock, the way he swallows when he takes him all the way to the back of his throat.
He has thought about this more than he cares to admit. Every time he dreamt of Webster at the lake he thought about what would have happened if he had not run back up the hill. If he had not pretended it all was not happening. If the kiss had progressed to something more. Something more needy and hungry. Something more than two men who had not been touched that way in years but still knew each other, inside and out.
He had imagined this: Webster, the sensitive college boy, falling to his knees for it. His mouth around him, the first true touch Joe had had since he left home. Imagined David whining, “Lieb, I fucking love this.”
Joe tugs his hair a little.
"Web. Close," he murmurs and David hums in reply. Joe feels that too and moans in return, thrusting forward a little, aching to finish. His fingers pull the dark curls slightly and Joe feels many things all at once. Adoration, shame. He can feel how hot his face is.
“Web, bitte,” he begs, his tongue clicking against his teeth on the word and his face flushing red in pleasure. He and David had always shared the words passed to Joe through his mother. They have that at least. David pulls back, pulls off, and Joe groans at the loss.
“Wie das, Liebchen?” He smirks. Joe laughs, shakily, at David’s ribbing but before he can even answer David is back on him, sucking and squeezing just right, just so. His throat is so tight around Joe’s cock that it makes him see stars, stars, stars.
When he comes, Joe curses and tugs at David’s hair a little harder than necessary. His vision is blurry around the edges, and he is panting a little. He watches David swallow with heavy lids and something he cannot identify about seeing it makes Joe shiver.
“Okay,” David pants, “my turn.”
—
Joe allows David to maneuver him and before he knows it he is lying on the cabin floor. His pants are shoved down around his ankles and David is behind him, trying to fight his way out of his shirt.
Joe tries to get a grip on the floor of the boat. He feels a little like he is about to drift away. He has never been this nervous, even when he was firing a machine gun on D-Day. Even when he got shot in the neck. David rests a hand on Joe’s hip, squeeze’s reassuringly. Joe rests his face against the floor of the cabin. He can see the gold of his star of David laying within his eyeline. He sighs and closes his eyes.
“You trust me right?” David asks quietly. Joe can tell he is hedging. He does not know what on; he has never done this before and does not quite understand exactly what it entails. He has to trust that Web knows what he is doing.
“C’mon, Web, just go,” he moans and David tries to shush him.
“Christ, this all so Greek,” David says from behind him. Joe tries to look at him and in his periphery he sees the other man swipe his hand over his face, a hint of embarrassment. Joe doesn’t know if either of them are prepared to go through with this.
“Shut up,” Joe says finally and rests his face against the floor of the boat cabin again. “Don’t start talking to me about your fucking college shit, Web.”
There is a hint of laughter in Joe’s voice. Reassuring. It’s okay. I trust you.
“Squeeze your thighs together,” Webster finally whispers. Joe makes a face but he does it, as best he can. His legs used to be so strong, they all were so strong, running up Currahee together, but now he’s not sure if he has the muscle strength he used to. Joe hates something about that thought.
Then, he feels David rubbing against him. At first he flinches a little, not expecting to feel hard cock rubbing against his thighs but he relaxes a bit more and suddenly it’s there. David’s dick slides dry between his thighs and he groans above him. Joe winces and shifts slightly. It’s not awful, but it’s unexpected.
“Could use a little… something to slick it up,” he grouses and immediately he hears David spit. Then, his cock is back sliding more efficiently through his thighs. It’s wet and Joe knows it’s David’s spit. He curses, “Ah. Fuck.”
David moves like that for a bit. He has to spit again to help things along, but eventually the pre-come is enough to keep Joe’s thighs slick enough for David to fuck between them. In the end, Joe decides he likes it - or he at least likes the proximity, the feeling of being treated tenderly by Web. He tries to arch back to show his enthusiasm.
David is panting as he thrusts his dick through spit and come-slicked thighs, trying for something Joe’s not sure he is going to achieve. It is easier than when they first started out, and it helps that David is uncircumcised. Something about that makes Joe shiver and blush — another taboo on top of this one. He has never done this before; never done anything like this. He doesn’t want it to stop, though. He wants David to finish on him, to actually do something meaningful to him. To mark him up. To set him as a seal upon his heart.
Joe arches back and turns to look at David, an invitation. David leans forward and catches his lips, panting praise into his open mouth and never stopping, hips snapping against him.
Joe remembers once, when he was a boy, his mother was cooking for Passover while Joe set the table for them all, and his father had said gently to her in Hebrew,
“Your mouth is sweet and you are desirable.”
Then, she had giggled, and he had kissed her.
Even then he knew the Song of Songs. Things true loves say to one another. His parents were in love and, at that time, he had wondered if he would ever love someone enough to speak Songs to them. Love them enough to make a covenant of their souls.
Instead, he had boasted about girls with big tits and laughed, searching David’s eyes for something he didn’t quite understand yet. Not until they were on the banks of the lake in Austria at least.
Now he is ready to remember it, to really remember it:
Joe had been drinking, too much drinking, with the guys in the house they were using as a billet. They were playing cards and throwing back the best liquor they had been able to find. Web wasn’t there though. Joe isn’t sure what but something came over him, made him get up and wander outside. Later, he is sure it is the memory of Webster lingering on the shore when they had all started back toward the billet. It was a hike to the lake-side. Sure enough though, he came upon David Webster standing at the water’s edge.
He approached and, when he was within earshot, said in German,
“Only cowards run.”
David turned, newly lit cigarette between his lips. He pocketed his lighter and smiled at Joe. His heart was not in it though. “Hey, Lieb,” David said around his cigarette.
Joe was trying to make something of a joke about their covert assignment to the hilltop. He doesn’t think David much liked it. He edged closer to the other man instead.
“What are ya doin’ out here?” He could hear the drunken slur of his own voice and he had tried to will it to go away mentally as he closed the space between him and David Webster.
“Looking at the water. Listening to it. I like the water out here,” David said and he had taken a step closer to Joe in the dim light of the half moon. He did not seem the same somehow. Joe wondered if he had finally robbed him of his college boy sentimentality. Finally, David had been able to man up. He had not been there through the winter with them, he did not know what they had to deal with.
Joe took him to that mountaintop to make him face the war, head-on.
David ran a hand through his hair and ashed his cigarette on the ground.
“It’s calming, isn’t it?” David asked. He swayed slightly as he spoke, like he was a boat on a wave. “I’m going to get a boat when we get back to the states.”
“Yeah? You gonna take me on it?” Joe smirked as he inched slightly closer too, like they were both vying for something.
David looked at him. They were incredibly close, and Joe had been so drunk. He thought he could feel the heat radiating off of Web’s body. He wondered if they would have shared a foxhole in Bastogne. Joe wondered if he would ever be able to sleep alone again.
“Yeah, I’ll take you,” David said quietly and nodded. He shifted his body toward Joe. "It's like a whole other world down there; you'll see."
“Jesus, Web,” Joe murmured quietly, merely inches from Webster on that lake shore, and then their mouths had collided like surf and shore.
Had there always been this pent up energy? Seeing Web again, after Bastogne, was really something. Web had shown that, despite his absence in the winter, he was still an effective soldier. Joe had known his German was better than Web’s but he was tired, they were all tired. He was resentful of the other man, while at the same time being obsessed with him. Making David work for his affection and then rewarding him with barely anything — helping him up into the back of the truck, talking to him about post-war plans, listening to him talk about Harvard. It all had to culminate somehow, he supposed.
Joe had pulled away and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before he turned and scrambled back up the hill to his billet. Web had yelled for him, “Hey, wait!”
But Joe was already gone, running back to the house where his buddies were playing poker. He had ducked in and gone right to bed, hoping no one would notice the red tint to his cheeks.
Now:
Joe doesn’t want to fumble for emotions on the bank of a lake in Europe anymore.
“C'mon, David, fuck me,” he manages to pant, begging.
—
iii. let me hear it.
"Where did you learn that Greek shit?" Joe lights a cigarette.
David had come between his thighs, panting against his neck and cursing. Something still felt profoundly right about David marking him up that way. They had cleaned up, finished their beers. Joe had hurried up to the deck to smoke. David had followed but did not close the distance again.
"Harvard,” he responds, “an older boy did it with me my first year. We studied it in Classics, too.” He does not seem to want to discuss it. Joe could hear it in his voice; he seemed embarrassed by it.
Joe decides to ask something else.
“Did you come to Santa Monica to be closer to me?” Joe asks around his cigarette. He is sitting on the bow, feet hanging over the side but not touching the water. The moon is high above them, and the water is making gentle lapping sounds against the side of Web’s boat. Joe isn’t sure he’s ever seen so many stars before.
Well, maybe once before.
David is at the stern end of the boat, near the ladder that leads below deck. He’s resting near the tiller and looking up at the sky where the jib and mainsail had carried them out to sea. Now, neatly rolled up for the evening there is only sky beyond the sailboat.
“I don’t know why I came to you,” he admits. He doesn’t turn to look at him, doesn’t seem to even be speaking to him, really.
Joe thinks maybe he's talking to the ocean.
Joe prickles a bit at that. Does he not realize what they just shared? How could he say he does not know?
“Hey! Do you even know what I’ve been going through since we got back, Professor?” Joe says the nickname with less affection than necessary. He doesn’t want it to be nice. He wants it to sound as bitter and mean as it always was. He wants it to ring true with all the unspoken words. All of the times Joe wanted to ask,
“Where were you? Where were you? Where were you?”
Joe throws the butt of his cigarette in the ocean. He doesn’t care. At least, he can pretend to.
“You said you’ve been thinking of me.” David finally looks at him. Even in the dark his eyes are the brightest blue. Joe figures he can only make them out because the moon is so full, so bright over them.
“Yeah. Sometimes.” Joe doesn’t know what David wants him to say. “I dream about the Nazis,” he admits and Webster’s eyebrows climb at that.
“Really?” He doesn’t seem to be faking; something about this surprises Joe. He had figured Web would have said he thought about it too, said that it gave him nightmares that made him wake up in a cold sweat. Joe thought Web was supposed to be the sensitive one. The one who felt everything. Joe was hoping he was the one who would feel it all, for him.
"Yeah, really," Joe answers, petulantly, and lights another cigarette.
David thumbs the corner of his mouth absently, still studying him. Joe feels microscopic, observed under glass. It makes his cheeks redden with an emotion he cannot describe.
"Do you regret the stuff you did over there?" David asks. Joe wonders if he hopes he will admit that he hates the things he did. Joe does not hate those things he did, though; he hates the everything that came after. He hates the way Web had looked at him, after. Why couldn't he just understand that?
Joe lifts himself up and goes to the stern. David is barefoot and his clothes are still crumpled from their fumbling earlier. Looking at him, Joe already feels red hot embarrassment coloring the tips of his ears. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to tame what the wind, the ocean spray, and David have done to it.
"What do you want from me?" Joe demands as he finally managed to get to the stern of the boat. He stands over David, fixing him with a hard look.
"Joe, I..." David starts but Joe cuts him off.
"No! Tell me what you want, Web? You want to fuck me? Like some Harvard boy used to do to you? You want to show up in San Fran every once and awhile and hope that I'll bend over for you?"
"Jesus, Joe, nothing like that," David says quietly.
“Then what? You always want to be the one to take the moral high-ground, the one who can get away from it all. Don’t you dream about it? About all the rotten shit we went through? Don’t you think about all the people who died? All the fucked up shit that happened? Don’t you think about Landsberg? Were you even there with us?” Joe feels breathless after the tirade and he hates himself for it. Hates how hot his cheeks have become from lecturing David. They have something, and he can't quite explain what it is, but he hates that he is probably ruining it.
David just looks at him, listening, waiting for him to be done. If he is blushing Joe cannot see it on his tan face in the dark.
“I was there,” David murmurs and Joe puts a hand behind the shell of his own ear. He can’t stop now; he has to follow it through.
“I can’t fucking hear you, Professor.”
“You know I was there, Joe! I was there and I was on the mountain. I was there with you because you needed someone else to be there.”
“Sisk was there too,” Joe waves a hand at David dismissively. He decides to search his pockets for his cigarettes, to look busy. As if David would just stop talking to him if he thought he was busy with something else.
“Jesus, Joe, don’t you understand why I went? I wanted to be there with you, for you!” David stands too, finally, and snatches the pack from Joe’s hands once he has retrieved it. “Just because I didn’t agree doesn’t mean I didn’t care.”
Joe stares at him for what seems like a long time. David sighs, exasperated. He drags a hand over his face for the second time that night and groans. Joe wonders if he will ever get tired of fighting with David. He thinks that, despite it all, he and David could make something work between them. David had taken his place in that patrol, after all. He had come with him to the mountaintop. He told him about Harvard. To Joe that all seemed like so much to give to another person during a war.
"You're my friend. You’re a lot more than that.” David holds the cigarettes back toward Joe. When he does not immediately take them back, David shoves them a little closer. An olive branch. “I asked Moone to let me go instead; he was going to go up with you but I asked him to let me go. I wanted to go with you. I didn’t want you to do it… but you did and you were probably right. Shit, Joe, you were right but it was too fucking much to end on.”
Joe finally takes the cigarettes out of David’s hand. He doesn’t light one though. Instead, he works on straightening out the wrinkles in the pack. Trying to give it shape again. He feels like he has been doing that a lot lately. His eyes dart up and meet David’s for a moment. He does not have anything else to say. Not to that.
David raises his hand slowly and places it firmly on the back of Joe’s neck. Shit, Joe thinks, he even moves like water. Joe knows he is in trouble.
David tugs him forward a little and Joe follows the pull, like a fish on a hook. David is kissing him again and Joe lets him at first, simply standing still, but then he kisses back, frantic and needy.
When David pulls back he rests his forehead against Joe’s and tries to catch his breath. Joe bumps his nose against David’s. He can feel heat radiating off David’s face. The Harvard boy blushes, after all.
“You’re always fucking disappearing and reappearing when you think it’s most convenient for you,” Joe says, genuinely irritated when he says it. He feels like it is David’s worst habit. David smiles at him.
“At least I volunteered to come find you this time.”
—
When they finally go below deck again David folds up the leaf table and pulls the settee across from the bookshelf into a pull out bed. They climb in together and they are pressed right up against one another. David smooths Joe’s hair back from his forehead in the dark. Moonlight falls in through the porthole above the oven in a little round spot on the floor of the cabin.
“I wanted to ask you,” David murmurs to him, softly.
“Hm?” Joe responds. Laying in the bed, even slightly uncomfortably, has made him realize how tired he actually feels.
“I want to know if you and I could get a place together. Here.”
“Web…” Joe starts, voice already tinged with exasperation.
“Just think about it, Joe,” David urges. “I like California and if I’m living here or Santa Monica it doesn’t matter. It’s going to piss my parents off either way.”
Joe does not know what to think. He is not sure what they are yet, exactly, what they mean to each other. But he knows that David is important to him, and that seeing him again has made Joe feel some semblance of normal. Joe does not think he is ready to consider living with David quite yet. So, instead of thinking about any of it, he throws a leg over David’s hip and climbs on top of him.
“Convince me,” Joe says in German and rolls his own hips down on on Web’s.
David’s hand immediately comes up and he palms Joe’s cock through his shorts. David purrs, rubbing gently.
“This way?” David breathes, and his accent is a little iffy in his arousal. Joe laughs as David pulls the waistband of Joe’s shorts away enough to slip his hand in and grasp him firmly. David strokes his cock once, twice, before thumbing the slit. Joe groans and presses into the touch.
“Yeah, that way,” Joe whispers in the dark.
—
Joe wakes in the too small pull out bed and finds David is pressed tightly against him. Joe tries to kick the sheets off from around his legs and ends up knocking David in the shin. It earns him a grunt and then an annoyed groan. “Geddoff,” David says and pushes Joe away.
Joe manages to stand and climb over David, to the head. He pisses for what seems like ages and then climbs back over the other man. He already hates this boat.
“You got water?” Joe demands, voice tired.
“Sink,” David sighs and covers his head with a pillow.
Joe jumps up and pads the two steps to the stink. He retrieves a glass from a dish rack between the stove and sink and fills it with water from the tap. Outside the saltwater is bright blue in the early morning sunlight. Joe drinks two more glasses of water before he is satisfied enough to climb back into bed.
Immediately, David throws an arm over Joe’s waist and presses his face into the back of his neck.
“How’d you sleep?” David asks. He has a slight beard and it scratches against Joe’s neck when he speaks.
“Amazing,” Joe admits, and realizes it is the first night in a long time that he did not dream. Joe feels, briefly, like this is the way he is supposed to do things. Sleeping alone had become such a burden that he did not realize how comforting it can be to have another person pressed right up close to you. He had not slept this well in years.
“You sound surprised.” David yawns, and tangles his legs with Joe’s much more gangly ones. David is just trying to keep him tied down and anchored to him, no doubt.
Joe turns over to look at David. “I’m surprised your snoring didn’t keep me awake. You even sleep with your damn mouth open.”
Joe pinches David’s nose shut and the other man laughs, snorting.
—
Soon -
They’re sailing back toward the shore of San Francisco, and Joe can taste the salt spray as they go. He turns to look at David holding the tiller and focusing straight ahead. Then he turns toward the city and watches as it seems to appear from the horizon. His cab waits for him there, his parents, his temple.
When he looks over toward David, he sees something like a future. It is complex, complicated. They both have a lot to lose from this, and Joe is not sure he likes that. Lately, he is not sure of anything, though.
“I’ve made a decision,” Joe yells over the sound of the water washing over the sides of the boat as the strong winds carry them back to shore. Back home.
“Oh yeah?” David smiles. His teeth are so startling bright white, like the caps of sea foam on ocean waves. His eyes dart to Joe and then back to the open ocean again. Joe smiles at him, squinting into the bright sunlight.
“Yeah!” Joe yells back. “Yeah, I think so!” He smooths his hair from his face and covers his eyes away from the bright sunlight reflecting off the never ending mirror of water. He cannot stop looking at David, who is brave enough to take this plunge with Joe. Brave enough to face odds that are not in their favor.
As a boy, when he went to temple, Joe had never heard a story about a cowardly David.
David smiles at him again, “Well, let me hear it!”