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Del (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} big_bad_wolf) wrote,@ 2007-05-31 18:11:00 |
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Band of Brothers (6)
Title: Small Claims
Fandom: Band of Brothers (TV Series)
Rating: Er, PG-13?
Word Count: 1,229
Pairing: Webgott.
Disclaimer: Not intended to represent the actual people or even the HBO presentations of them in any way. Am not making money off this and should in fact probably be kicked in the head for writing this.
Warning: CONTAINS GROSSNESS.
They are standing at the side of the road, mud climbing the sides of their boots – a couple of hundred men relieving their bladders and stretching cramped muscles, joking and shoving because the way was on the turn and they knew it. David Webster jiggles impatiently as what feels like the entire Nile River flows out of him.
"You been drinking some private stash there, Web?" Liebgott jokes from beside him, giving him a too-hard friendly elbow in the ribs. Then – and Webster cannot quite credit that it has happened at first, the act is so uncalled-for – the guy turns and pisses on Webster's boots.
What the fuck do you think you're doing?, he doesn't say. Even having his boots spuriously pissed on will not lead him into the kind of language his fellow soldiers – Webster hesitates his self-narration and thinks with an underline – his friends use. Instead he says, "Hey!" but Liebgott has already vaulted back onto the truck and is enthusiastically telling Luz something that involves a lot of gesturing.
Luz makes a variety of choice faces and pulls a cigarette out from behind his ear.
Catching Webster's eyes on him, Liebgott winks extravagantly and makes a gun-click sound with his tongue and his cheek. Webster has absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean, so he ignores it as gibberish and climbs up beside Perconte.
A lot has happened to make "why the hell was Joe Liebgott pissing on my boots?" an insignificant question. There are other, bigger "why"s hidden in the forest outside the town, angry, tearful ones. Like everyone else, he feels helpless as a newborn child, as much from watching a friend crumple and lose his voice as man's inhumanity to man and knowing there are no words to haul him back to normality, as for the pajama-clad skeletons he cannot stand to look in the eye.
Everyone else is drinking with a hard determination to strip their minds as clean as parade-ground rifles.
Joe Liebgott has his head in his hands, his fingers clasping the back of his skull as though he is trying to keep his brains from exploding out. Jude, Jude.
David Webster finds himself tongue-tied with rage; he wants to tear something down with his hands, because his oft-ignored gut tells him that this will unstarve the hungry and unfreeze the half-naked stick figures that have imprinted themselves on his mind. He wants to pick up every resident of the town and shake them until their bones snap and rattle against each other, shouting, "WHY? HOW? What is wrong with you?" in every language he knows.
He wonders if he even feels a tenth as bad as Joe Liebgott must feel.
By the time they come rolling towards Berchtsgarden things are as normal as they've ever been out here. Men in trucks, like laughing cattle, singing and telling jokes. Everything has changed now; a kind of lightness runs through them all and as Webster will later observe, 'it is as though the weights upon us have drained away in a flood of good will'. Cigarettes change hands, and Webster is still musing on the changed mood when Liebgott punches him impatiently in the upper arm.
He realizes that Joe has been talking – Jewish girls with soft titties, white picket fences, dozens of children – and gives a guilty start.
"Not boring you, are we, Harvard?" Liebgott doesn't wait for an answer, just grins almost emptily. "Watchagonnado?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Liebgott gives an incredulous snort. "You got all that college learning and no long-term plans. Me, I got long-term plans."
"If you can call 'em that," Luz interrupts. "Maybe we'll be overrun with little Joe Liebgotts and they'll eat everything in America and we'll all have to move to Mexico."
"PISS BREAK!"
The truck judders to a halt and men begin pouring out off the tailgate. Joe slaps Webster on the back as he passes. "Quit day-dreaming," he suggests, apparently oblivious, with his future-wife and future-kids, to the inherent irony of his instruction.
Webster is still trying to work out how best to phrase the perceptible and near-total change in tempo and mood that has come over Easy when the splatter of liquid on his bootcaps catches his attention. He looks down as a stream of urine perpendicular to his own peters out over his feet. He looks up at Joe Liebgott's unfathomable, lop-sided smile.
Joe winks, gun-clicks his tongue, slaps Webster on the arm in a sort of 'bye' gesture and hauls himself back onto the truck.
What the hell? Webster thinks, tucking himself back in.
In Berchtsgarden things are different. There are flush toilets, for one (a luxury Webster is shocked to find himself thinking of as almost excessive), which means there are limited opportunities for certain San Franciscans to piss on his boots and unsettle his equilibrium. There are also limited opportunities, at first, for asking what the hell he had been playing at.
As it happens the explanation comes from a different conversation entirely. Joe is a little drunk; they are all a little drunk, all the time, at the moment. Joe is doing better than most despite some legendary hangovers, while Webster has found that while there is good liquor to be had in the town, it has already mostly been had by the officers. Between Captain Speirs (who can find anything that can be sold like a bloodhound finds a criminal), Harry Welsh (who seems more like a grin with a man attached these days) and the bloodshot, bristling specter of Nix, the good stuff is accounted for.
Joe is a little drunk, and waxing lyrical about his post-war plans. Webster will not be drawn into this discussion; he feels it is tempting fate, but he does not say so. He does not mention accidental discharges of weapons and the possibility of the Pacific, but when Joe has finished outlining how his twelfth kid will be a lawyer and George Luz has passed out, he does say: "What about plans for now?"
"Eh?"
"You're full of long-term plans, but there's a lot that could change right now."
Joe gives him an incomprehensibly sly (and slightly unsteady) look and says, "I got plans."
"Good," Webster says, "we're in a beautiful country we'll probably never see again. We should all make the most of it."
"Not that sort of plan," Joe smirks. "I mean, I'm planning to keep pissing on your boots."
Webster frowns. "Why?" It's hard to keep the exasperation and confusion out of his voice, and he's not sure he manages it.
Joe grins and affects wounded innocence. "I heard Harry Welsh saying when a dog pisses on a hydrant it's saying 'that's my hydrant'," he says, as though this explained everything and Webster is being offensively stupid.
Other than concluding that by this reckoning Harry Welsh owned large areas of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany and also other people's pants legs, the first thought that enters Webster's head is also the first one out of his mouth. "You want my boots?"
Joe sighs. "I said I planned to keep pissing on your boots …" he leans across the intervening space – which Webster does not recall being so very narrow – and finishes his sentence in a wine-scented whisper, "… and for you to keep on liking it, David."
NB: This is TOTALLY unbetad and probably enormously inaccurate in many places. If anything is particularly jarring/outright factually insane could you please tell me so I can fix it?
Title: Small Claims
Fandom: Band of Brothers (TV Series)
Rating: Er, PG-13?
Word Count: 1,229
Pairing: Webgott.
Disclaimer: Not intended to represent the actual people or even the HBO presentations of them in any way. Am not making money off this and should in fact probably be kicked in the head for writing this.
Warning: CONTAINS GROSSNESS.
They are standing at the side of the road, mud climbing the sides of their boots – a couple of hundred men relieving their bladders and stretching cramped muscles, joking and shoving because the way was on the turn and they knew it. David Webster jiggles impatiently as what feels like the entire Nile River flows out of him.
"You been drinking some private stash there, Web?" Liebgott jokes from beside him, giving him a too-hard friendly elbow in the ribs. Then – and Webster cannot quite credit that it has happened at first, the act is so uncalled-for – the guy turns and pisses on Webster's boots.
What the fuck do you think you're doing?, he doesn't say. Even having his boots spuriously pissed on will not lead him into the kind of language his fellow soldiers – Webster hesitates his self-narration and thinks with an underline – his friends use. Instead he says, "Hey!" but Liebgott has already vaulted back onto the truck and is enthusiastically telling Luz something that involves a lot of gesturing.
Luz makes a variety of choice faces and pulls a cigarette out from behind his ear.
Catching Webster's eyes on him, Liebgott winks extravagantly and makes a gun-click sound with his tongue and his cheek. Webster has absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean, so he ignores it as gibberish and climbs up beside Perconte.
A lot has happened to make "why the hell was Joe Liebgott pissing on my boots?" an insignificant question. There are other, bigger "why"s hidden in the forest outside the town, angry, tearful ones. Like everyone else, he feels helpless as a newborn child, as much from watching a friend crumple and lose his voice as man's inhumanity to man and knowing there are no words to haul him back to normality, as for the pajama-clad skeletons he cannot stand to look in the eye.
Everyone else is drinking with a hard determination to strip their minds as clean as parade-ground rifles.
Joe Liebgott has his head in his hands, his fingers clasping the back of his skull as though he is trying to keep his brains from exploding out. Jude, Jude.
David Webster finds himself tongue-tied with rage; he wants to tear something down with his hands, because his oft-ignored gut tells him that this will unstarve the hungry and unfreeze the half-naked stick figures that have imprinted themselves on his mind. He wants to pick up every resident of the town and shake them until their bones snap and rattle against each other, shouting, "WHY? HOW? What is wrong with you?" in every language he knows.
He wonders if he even feels a tenth as bad as Joe Liebgott must feel.
By the time they come rolling towards Berchtsgarden things are as normal as they've ever been out here. Men in trucks, like laughing cattle, singing and telling jokes. Everything has changed now; a kind of lightness runs through them all and as Webster will later observe, 'it is as though the weights upon us have drained away in a flood of good will'. Cigarettes change hands, and Webster is still musing on the changed mood when Liebgott punches him impatiently in the upper arm.
He realizes that Joe has been talking – Jewish girls with soft titties, white picket fences, dozens of children – and gives a guilty start.
"Not boring you, are we, Harvard?" Liebgott doesn't wait for an answer, just grins almost emptily. "Watchagonnado?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Liebgott gives an incredulous snort. "You got all that college learning and no long-term plans. Me, I got long-term plans."
"If you can call 'em that," Luz interrupts. "Maybe we'll be overrun with little Joe Liebgotts and they'll eat everything in America and we'll all have to move to Mexico."
"PISS BREAK!"
The truck judders to a halt and men begin pouring out off the tailgate. Joe slaps Webster on the back as he passes. "Quit day-dreaming," he suggests, apparently oblivious, with his future-wife and future-kids, to the inherent irony of his instruction.
Webster is still trying to work out how best to phrase the perceptible and near-total change in tempo and mood that has come over Easy when the splatter of liquid on his bootcaps catches his attention. He looks down as a stream of urine perpendicular to his own peters out over his feet. He looks up at Joe Liebgott's unfathomable, lop-sided smile.
Joe winks, gun-clicks his tongue, slaps Webster on the arm in a sort of 'bye' gesture and hauls himself back onto the truck.
What the hell? Webster thinks, tucking himself back in.
In Berchtsgarden things are different. There are flush toilets, for one (a luxury Webster is shocked to find himself thinking of as almost excessive), which means there are limited opportunities for certain San Franciscans to piss on his boots and unsettle his equilibrium. There are also limited opportunities, at first, for asking what the hell he had been playing at.
As it happens the explanation comes from a different conversation entirely. Joe is a little drunk; they are all a little drunk, all the time, at the moment. Joe is doing better than most despite some legendary hangovers, while Webster has found that while there is good liquor to be had in the town, it has already mostly been had by the officers. Between Captain Speirs (who can find anything that can be sold like a bloodhound finds a criminal), Harry Welsh (who seems more like a grin with a man attached these days) and the bloodshot, bristling specter of Nix, the good stuff is accounted for.
Joe is a little drunk, and waxing lyrical about his post-war plans. Webster will not be drawn into this discussion; he feels it is tempting fate, but he does not say so. He does not mention accidental discharges of weapons and the possibility of the Pacific, but when Joe has finished outlining how his twelfth kid will be a lawyer and George Luz has passed out, he does say: "What about plans for now?"
"Eh?"
"You're full of long-term plans, but there's a lot that could change right now."
Joe gives him an incomprehensibly sly (and slightly unsteady) look and says, "I got plans."
"Good," Webster says, "we're in a beautiful country we'll probably never see again. We should all make the most of it."
"Not that sort of plan," Joe smirks. "I mean, I'm planning to keep pissing on your boots."
Webster frowns. "Why?" It's hard to keep the exasperation and confusion out of his voice, and he's not sure he manages it.
Joe grins and affects wounded innocence. "I heard Harry Welsh saying when a dog pisses on a hydrant it's saying 'that's my hydrant'," he says, as though this explained everything and Webster is being offensively stupid.
Other than concluding that by this reckoning Harry Welsh owned large areas of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany and also other people's pants legs, the first thought that enters Webster's head is also the first one out of his mouth. "You want my boots?"
Joe sighs. "I said I planned to keep pissing on your boots …" he leans across the intervening space – which Webster does not recall being so very narrow – and finishes his sentence in a wine-scented whisper, "… and for you to keep on liking it, David."
NB: This is TOTALLY unbetad and probably enormously inaccurate in many places. If anything is particularly jarring/outright factually insane could you please tell me so I can fix it?
