Disclaimer: I own nothing. This story is based on the characters of the Band of Brother series and not on the real men portrayed. I apologize for any offence.

Characters: Joe Liebgott / OC, David Webster; NO SLASH

Rating: M (LS)

Comment would be nice. Please let me know if you like the writing style. This is my first try!

BUT THE MEN WENT TO WAR

Apart from Fridays and Sundays he comes over on every day of the week to screw my brains out like there's no tomorrow. Screwing is a euphemism; to fuck my brains out like there's no tomorrow. For him, in a way, there is no tomorrow. Since 1945 he's been living by another philosophy: live like every day is your last, live for the moment. Fuck for the moment. I guess it sounds crude, but it is.

We've done this for an entire year now. I'm not giving myself any hope. I've stopped being that little properly brought-up girl with the high expectations. She's dead. She swears all the time. Despite her Christian ideals and values, that in a way makes it only worse. She should know better to allow some Jewish man to use her for sex. That's all we're doing really: using each other's bodies and then forgetting about it in the morning.

But every single night I'm asking myself the same question: Is that really all we're doing? Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday…

And then when it comes to Friday I've got my answer. He's never at my house on Fridays.

Friday evening is the beginning of his 'Sabbath'. I don't know what he does on Friday evenings; if he's even that religious. I know I'm not. But there it is: unless one of us converts to a different religion there is only that. That pisses him of more than it does me, because all he's ever wanted to do is marry a Jewish girl. And I'm not.

I'm not.

And living like this – for the moment – makes things complicated. All I've ever wanted to do is have a simple life. Nothing about Joe Liebgott is simple and I have to realize that over and over again.

Especially when he comes over and I'm already waiting for him in my room, waiting for him to push me onto the bed. Or against a wall. Or sometimes – like when he arrives too early and I'm busy preparing dinner in the kitchen – he just pushes me up against anything.

His hands are already all over me and something drops from my hand, because after months and months of this I've still not stopped wanting him. He's clawing at my skirt; it drops and pools around my feet. His mouth is on mine and I'm kissing him so hard that I can't bare letting go to even catch my breath. He is a bruise. A bruise on my mouth, on my body.

Joe Liebgott is a bruise on my heart.

He's the colour of purple and red.

Joe manages to bruise me like no other man would ever be able to. And he is foremost a man. Not a soldier returned from war, but just a man. War doesn't make soldiers out of men – soldiers are legends and heroes in mythical stories. War forces guns into the hands of men and that's all there is to it.

I try not to think of that. I try not to wonder if it would have been different if he wasn't at those places in Europe where he would have come across work camps.

I try desperately to see him as the man he is now, the man that needs my body, the man that I suspect likes the sex much better when it's hot and fast and nearly violent. It doesn't bother me. In fact – I prefer it that way; having him gently making love to me is painful, for the both of us I guess.

Then I have to keep myself from crying.

*****

Slamming. Pounding.

THRUSTING.

Slamming. Pounding.

THRUSTING.

THRUSTING.

Again. Again.

Again.

Gasping, always gasping for air as he thrusts, again and again, with each time harder, more vicious than before.

But I do not mind. I never mind.

Even when he's swearing. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. Words that pound my brain hours after his gone. Blaspheming then at the height of anger / pain / pleasure / hurt: Jesus Christ. Words that cut through me, that penetrates deep where he cannot reach. Where he cannot make them undone.

But to Joe it's just words. They have no meaning, no vital importance to his everyday life: waking up, going to work, coming back to me - fucking my brains out - and then leaving again.

"STOP BLASPHEMING!" I command him. It's the one thing I cannot handle and I feel like such a hypocrite lying there underneath him.

"No, it's not. Not to me." Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus Christ to Joe? Just another historical figure that might or might not have lived and he makes sure that I never forget. "I'm a fucking Jew, Maddy, don't you ever forget." Tears flood my eyes as he repeats it over and over again.

JEW. I'M A JEW.

JEW, MADDY!

Harder and harder until he silently screams the words in my face: O... Maddy! But, words in his eyes, not on his lips.

Then he's smiling as he pulls away from me, taking the blankets with him as he yanks it from me with force. Letting them fall on the floor. GRINNING LIKE AN IDIOT. For once the smile reaches his eyes. It rarely, rarely does. Eyes with deep dark pupils, shattered in shards; an animal hurt and bruised, caged behind that intense glare.

Already he's pulled so far away from me. He's back in those woods, in that camp.

Maybe this time will be different, I hope, I pray. Not knowing if I'm even allowed to pray for this, living in sin as I am...

Maybe...

Normally he just stands up to get himself a beer from the fridge; he rarely stays in bed with me. On the very rare occasion he will kiss me softly, running those thin sharp fingers roughly down my stomach. Fingers that always burn no matter how many times he uses them on me, against me. I can never get use to them; they are knives disguised as fingers. Even worse than his fingers though: his mouth. GRINNING LIKE AN IDIOT. Fleshy, but thin lips that pull away from perfect white teeth. He's a wolf with a mouth full of venom that he snarls at me. Sharp teeth that bite, that pierce my skin: a bayonet that he uses against me.

Fuck you, Joe Liebgott! For making me your whore whereas all I want to do is love you.

"O, Maddy… I love you when you break like that. Dripping sweat like that all over the place. You're such a pretty and wet lover." Words that seem softer tonight, but you could never be sure with Joe Liebgott.

Anger and hurt choke me – I answer with as much sarcasm as I can manage, "O fuck-off Joe, of course no one can ever say no to you." Yanking the covers back over my body I turn my back on him. Shutting him out, giving him a taste of his own bitterness. What does it feel like, Joe Liebgott?

Joe Liebgott. The name is always on the verge of my thoughts, it never leaves me. On my way to work, at work, at the shops, in the kitchen cooking, at my friends' houses sipping tea, on my knees cleaning… On my knees letting him… He's a perfect piece of work: smooth, filthy, sex.

What is this, Joe, is it a relationship? I want to scream it at him.

AND THEN I ALWAYS GIVE IN. How can I not?

Hands so soft on my neck, on my shoulders, on my back moving lower – delicately heart-achingly tender – sliding over my right side, downwards towards my hipbone. Lip. Tongue. Whispers. But where his words end his body only begins. Exactly what he always does when he realizes that he's gone too far: healing the hurt.

Dear, dear Joe with all his pent-up rage and hurt. WHERE ALL I WANT IS FOR YOU TO LET ME LOVE YOU. HEAL YOU.

"Look at me." How can I not turn around, with his voice a sincere and fragile flutter in the nape of my neck. He's always finding my cracks. "Maddy, don't be mad… You know how I feel." Do I? He's pleading with me like this, I know, and I can't help myself – I turn back to him. NEED. There's only need in his eyes now, an almost child-like need. Letting him fall asleep on my chest, cradled like a baby with tears warm on my skin, is the hardest thing in the world.

It's always the same story. He loves me, breaks me, insults me, makes me his whore and then he tries to heal me again.

Slamming. Pounding.

THRUSTING.

Until there is nothing left of us but the sweat dripping from our bodies. And our soft gasping sighs. But I refuse to gasp his name and he refuses the same. Every time I have to fight it, I have to clench my teeth and keep from screaming it at him; mostly I manage it, but sometimes the slightest of whispers slip over my lips: Joe...

And then he rewards me in turn: Hildegard... Matilda... Each word is a loving caress - it leaves me weaker than the gentlest touch or the most passionate kiss. With a lump the size of a mountain in my throat. Because then I can almost believe that he loves me back and that the man he use to be before Bastogne, before Landsberg has returned from those broken woods with the shattered trees and shattered bodies.

After whispering my name like that he almost seems whole again, and love, joy, hope breezes through my body. Soft and gentle, a wind that sweeps away the stench of those places which he never mentions. After whispering my name he will then sometimes switch over to German - I don't know why - and recite a few lines from some sad, sad poem. I'll never know why. Reciting poetry wasn't really his forte; if I remembered correctly that was more of a David Webster thing to do.

I know of all his comrades. Of all the places that he's been to. I was there too. I was a Polish girl in Europe in World War II. I met Joe Liebgott, I fell in love with him and I followed him back to the States. I know what happened in Bastogne, what happened in Landsberg. I wasn't there, I didn't pull the trigger of a gun or throw a grenade, but I knew what happened. Of all people I know what you're going through.

But that's not completely true. And then I find it. The reason I suppose why he's the way that he is. Broken on the edges of anger, hurt and love.

Covered in a leather binding. A dairy amongst his stuff. It's pretty – too pretty for Joe – but it's amongst his army gear and it feels the same way beneath my fingers that Joe does after a hard day's work: smooth but sticky, sweaty, sinewy.

I'm always trying to read him.

First page is already open on my lap before I can help myself. First page, of what?! Do I expect to find him in the lines, in the fine, almost feminine print. It's not his writing.

Liebgott, I leave you this for when the day comes.

It's silly really. It's bits and pieces. Anecdotes really. Read it as a letter.

Lovely curves, soft vowels. Bold F's and B's and G's. Formal, yet emotional. Proud, yet subtle. This is the writing of a writer. A poet. A lost comrade, perhaps? I know the answer even before I continue reading.

I will never forget that outstretched hand. And riding with you on a bus trying hard not to strangle you. You're full of crap, Joe. Flash Gordon?! I hope to be remembered as your friend, your brother.

And then crudely:

I'm not a fucking faggot, Joe, but I love you. Don't take it the wrong way. I love you and I've seen you lose a part of yourself. You killed a man, Joe. You killed a man when the war was already over. And I know you've regretted it, even more than you regretted anything else.

I hope you find yourself again.

FAGGOT?!

The words seem suddenly to become alive. They start to grow and stretch. They become tall and lean and muscular. Then: blue eyes clear, and clean, and cold as ice.

David Webster is fucking with my head. David Webster I know too well. I met David when I met Joe. David was something to Joe that I could never be: a comrade, a brother, a conscience, a conversation in the darkest of nights.

I swallow back the overwhelming tears when it hits me. He will always try his hardest to make love to me, but never be able to truly love me. Because there is some things that men, that soldiers, cannot ever share with the women they come back to.