Could you write a Joe liebgott imagine where he’s realizing he likes you but is in denial and trying not to focus on it bc of the war but it gets to the point where he can’t ignore it anymore!
hey guys you ever write a whole fic and tumblr deletes it? :’)
warnings: mentions of war, violence
If there was one thing Joe Liebgott was good at, it was pretending.
He could pretend he wasn’t frozen to the bone sitting in the icey foxhole, he could pretend that he wasn’t scared shitless over the prospect that he might never make it out of said icey foxhole, Joe could even pretend that he didn’t miss his ma and pa terribly.
One thing he was struggling with, though?
Pretending that he didn’t absolutely want you.
Sure, the two of you were quite the opposite. Joe had a potty mouth, you’d blush every shade of red and pink at his profanity sometimes. But the war had begun to harden you, and Joe found himself wanting nothing more than to shield you from it.
He found himself changing for you.
He didn’t hate you, no, he could never hate you.
But Joe hated the way his insides twisted up when Luz made you laugh until you cried, or how you had begun to form a little two-man book club with Webster before he had gotten injured. (Joe also knew you wrote Webster quite often and got immediate replies, that bastard snug as a bug in his hospital bed.)
The truth was that Joe wanted you all to himself.
But this was the war, and war never allowed a man to keep something. Especially something as beautiful as you.
“Penny for your thoughts?” George Luz’s voice nearly made him jump.
Joe’s head snapped to the side, his cigarette almost slipping from his fingers. “Jesus Christ, Luz.”
George lowered himself beside him with a grunt, tucking his chin down into his collar. “You’re wound up tonight.”
“You almost jumped outta your skin.”
Joe rolled his eyes and looked back across the line. “Sneak up on a man in the middle of a war, see what happens.”
George followed his gaze.
You were sitting by yourself a little ways off, knees drawn up, helmet tilted low on your head. You had one of Webster’s books open in your lap, though Joe doubted you were reading much of anything. Your eyes hadn’t moved from the same line in nearly five minutes.
George looked from you to Joe.
George lifted his brows. “I didn’t say anything.”
George huffed out a quiet laugh and rubbed his hands together. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t wanna be obvious, you’re real bad at not being obvious.”
Joe’s jaw tightened. “I’m looking around.”
“That’s what you call her now?”
Joe cut him a look. “You got a point, or are you just here to annoy me?”
Joe took a drag from his cigarette, mostly to keep from answering.
The truth was, he knew he had been staring.
He knew it before George sat down. He knew it before the cigarette had burned low between his fingers. He knew it every time his eyes found you without him telling them to.
You had been quiet since that morning.
Not quiet in the way you got when you were tired, or annoyed, or trying not to laugh at something Luz said. This was different. You looked like the cold had finally gotten beneath your skin and settled somewhere deeper.
Joe wanted to go over there.
He wanted to say something.
He wanted to sit down beside you and take that stupid book from your hands and tell you to stop pretending you were reading when you were clearly somewhere else entirely.
Instead, he sat where he was and smoked.
George let the silence sit for a second. Then he said, “She alright?”
Joe’s eyes flicked back to you before he could stop them.
Joe laughed under his breath, but there was no humor in it. “The hell I would.”
There was something in George’s voice that made him look over.
“She don’t talk to me about that kind of stuff.”
“She might if you didn’t look like you were about to bite her head off every time she gets too close.”
Joe’s mouth twisted. “That’s just my face.”
“Yeah, I know. Ugly thing.”
Across the way, you shifted and closed the book, keeping one finger tucked between the pages. You stared down at the cover for a moment, thumb rubbing over the worn edge like you were trying to steady yourself with it.
Joe watched the movement.
George watched him watching.
“You care about her,” George said.
He should have snapped back right away. That was what he was good at. A smart mouth, a hard look, something sharp enough to cut the subject open and leave it bleeding somewhere else.
So he sat there, cigarette burning uselessly between his fingers.
That was the problem. If George had joked, Joe could have fought him. If he had grinned, Joe could have cursed him out and been done with it.
Finally, Joe said, “Ain’t gonna do her any good.”
George’s expression shifted.
Joe looked at you again. “Caring.”
The word felt strange in his mouth. Too soft. Too honest.
George followed his gaze. “Might do her more good than you think.”
Joe scoffed. “What, out here?”
Joe shook his head. “Out here gets people killed.”
“No,” George said quietly. “Out here people get killed anyway.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything. The woods were too still. The kind of stillness that made every man’s shoulders sit a little higher, like the trees themselves were holding their breath.
George pushed himself to his feet.
Joe glanced up. “Where you goin’?”
“To pretend I don’t know things.”
George gave him a small grin, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You too.”
Then he walked off, boots crunching softly through the snow.
Joe watched him go, annoyed that he had left him with something he couldn’t argue with.
He took one last drag from his cigarette and dropped it into the snow, grinding it out with his boot.
You were still sitting alone.
Joe told himself to stay put.
He told himself you didn’t need him hovering. He told himself George didn’t know what he was talking about. He told himself a lot of things, all of them useless.
Then the first shell hit.
The ground jumped beneath him.
Joe dropped hard into the foxhole, shoulder slamming against frozen dirt as snow and splinters came raining down. The second shell landed closer, tearing through the trees with a sound so loud it seemed to split open his skull.
Everything became movement.
Dirt spitting into the air.
The awful, familiar scream of incoming artillery.
Joe pressed himself low, heart hammering against his ribs.
Then he looked across the snow.
He pushed up before he had time to think.
“Liebgott!” someone yelled.
The air filled with smoke and snow. He could barely see more than a few feet ahead, but he knew where you had been. He knew the exact tree you had been sitting near because he had spent the last half hour pretending not to stare at it.
Another shell hit. The blast threw him sideways, and he caught himself on one hand, pain shooting up his wrist.
It was lying open in the snow, pages bent back, already wet.
You were on the ground a few yards beyond it, one arm over your head, curled in on yourself like that could make you small enough for the war to miss.
For one second, Joe couldn’t move.
The fear was so sharp it froze him in place.
Then you lifted your head.
You looked toward him, eyes wide under the rim of your helmet. “Joe, get down!”
He reached you as another shell came screaming in. He threw himself down beside you, grabbed the back of your jacket, and pulled you hard against him.
The blast hit somewhere behind him.
For a second, there was nothing but white.
Snow. Dirt. Smoke. The ringing in his ears.
Then you were coughing against his chest, and Joe was moving before he understood how.
“Come on,” he snapped, dragging you up with him.
Another shell hit close enough to knock you both sideways. Joe caught your arm before you went down again and shoved you ahead of him toward the nearest foxhole.
You were saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear anything except his own pulse and the shells tearing the woods apart.
He half-pushed, half-carried you the last few feet.
Then he dropped into the foxhole and pulled you down on top of him just as the ground shook again.
You landed hard against his chest.
Joe wrapped one arm over your back and kept you there, his other hand braced over your helmet as dirt rained down over both of you.
For a moment, neither of you moved.
Fast, uneven breaths against his collar.
Joe’s hand tightened in the back of your jacket.
He had never been more aware of another person in his life.
Then you shoved at his chest.
Joe blinked through the dirt in his lashes. “What?”
“Are you stupid?” you shouted again, voice shaking with anger. “You ran out there in the middle of shelling!”
“You were on the ground!”
“I was trying not to get hit!”
“You were out in the open!”
“So you thought you’d join me?”
Your face was streaked with snow and dirt, eyes bright with fear. Not soft fear either. Angry fear. The kind that had nowhere else to go, so it came out sharp.
His own anger rose to meet it because it was easier than admitting he was still scared.
You sucked in a breath, looking away as another shell hit somewhere beyond the trees. Your hands were still fisted in the front of his jacket.
“I couldn’t move,” you said again, quieter this time.
The ringing in his ears faded enough for the world to come back in pieces. Men shouting. Wood cracking. Snow sliding down into the foxhole. Your breathing. His breathing.
You were pressed close enough that he could feel you trembling.
“You could’ve died,” you said.
Joe let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well. So could you.”
“It’s exactly the point.”
“No, it isn’t.” You shoved at him again, but there was no strength behind it now. “You don’t get to do that.”
“Act like your life doesn’t matter just because mine was in danger.”
The words hit harder than the shelling.
Like that was something he had been thinking about. Like there had been room for it. The second he saw you on the ground, there had been no Joe, no war, no fear for himself. There had only been you and the unbearable thought that if he waited even one more second, he might watch the world take you from him.
Another shell landed close enough to shake loose a clump of dirt above them.
Joe pulled you down again without thinking, his body curling over yours.
This time, you didn’t argue.
For a few seconds, the two of you stayed like that. Your forehead was pressed to his shoulder. His cheek was against the top of your helmet. His hand was still tangled in the back of your jacket like he was afraid you would disappear if he let go.
That somehow made everything worse.
The quiet after was always where the fear caught up.
You lifted your head first.
Joe looked down at you, and the thing he had spent weeks trying to bury rose up so fast he couldn’t stop it.
You were looking at him like he had scared you half to death.
And all Joe could think was that both of you could have been dead in the snow before he ever got the nerve to do anything about it.
His hand moved before his mouth could ruin it.
He caught your face between his dirty fingers and kissed you.
It was scared and sudden and clumsy, his helmet knocking against yours, his fingers cold against your jaw. It was too much and not enough, all the words he couldn’t say pressed into one desperate second.
Joe felt it and pulled back just enough to breathe.
His eyes searched yours, wide and dark and almost panicked.
He looked like he expected you to slap him.
But your hands were still gripping his jacket.
Then your fingers tightened.
The second kiss was slower.
Still not soft, not exactly. Nothing in that foxhole was soft. There was dirt on his mouth and snow melting down the back of your neck, and somewhere nearby a man was yelling for a medic.
But this time, Joe let himself feel it.
The shake in your breath.
The fact that you were kissing him back.
He angled his head carefully, one hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck. His thumb rested just below your ear, feeling your pulse race beneath his skin.
When you finally broke apart, Joe didn’t move far.
His forehead rested against yours. His eyes stayed closed.
You were both breathing too hard.
For once, Joe had nothing smart to say.
“You’re an idiot,” you whispered.
A laugh broke out of him before he could stop it. Small. Shaky. Almost not a laugh at all.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“You could have gotten yourself killed.”
His thumb brushed once against your cheek.
You pulled back enough to look at him.
Joe’s face had gone serious again. Not angry. Not guarded. Just bare in a way you had never really seen before.
“I saw you out there,” he said, voice low. “And I didn’t think.”
Your expression softened.
He swallowed, like the next words had to fight their way out.
“I can’t think when it’s you.”
The confession sat there between you, simple and devastating.
And Joe Liebgott knew he couldn’t pretend with you anymore.
