thewordofweb | [Night Two]

[Night Two]

I cannot believe he fucking heckled me.

...That's about the only thing that comes to mind as I sit there with the brush and shove it through the long hair, still figuring out how I'm going about this. This, this being whatever attachments have fused and grown firmer in our time here and through yesterday (however you explain that) and this morning (I'm not sure if we can explain that away, given our sobriety) and now I'm standing at the door we share in a strapless red number that cuts down to my ankles and my bare feet press against the wooden floor.

There is a very set plan about this and I might have even stolen some products for the night, pressing pink to lips and smudges to eyes in a simplistic way the likes that Oscar Wilde would have very much approved of (it's really almost as if this place and these events would have fit so perfectly in his novels). So there I am, with a plan, and with a single knock on Joe's door, it's not going to reverse, now.

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He's been busy. He's been busy because he's made himself busy, between baseball and a steady stream of people needing haircuts. He's been keeping his hands busy. He's sitting in the chair methodically cleaning the things that he's used when someone knocks on the door.

Someone. He thinks that like it hasn't occured to him that it can only be one person.

"Yeah?"

I lean against the door, knuckles still raised lightly against it and brushing again before opening the door and poking a frizzy-haired mess into his room. "Joe," I enquire, eyes wide and not a single emotion to be found on my face. "Can you do my hair for this date of mine?"

Oh, right. Web's got a date and Joe's got no right to be pissed off about that, but, still, he kind of is.

Yeah, he's got no idea what's fucking going on here anymore.

"Who is this guy, anyway?" he says, getting out of the chair and nodding for Web to sit. "And whaddya want?"

He's still getting used to broad's hair.

"Just some guy I know," is my avoidant answer as I slide into the room and smooth my hands out over the dress, hitching up the fabric to cover me as I sit down into Joe's chair and push out the hair for Joe to manage and play with. "Fairly average in most ways. He's a good man, though," I say, staring right at him and willing him to get it.

"And I don't know, however you think it'd look nice," I blithely respond with a twist and an uncaring flick of my wrist.

Yeah, there's a lot about this Joe doesn't like. He doesn't say that right away though. He picks up the spray bottle and a comb, moving around behind the chair and at least Web can't see his face.

"How'd you meet him? And how the fuck you'd get your hair twisted up like this?"

I stare forward at the wall and wince slightly at the first thought of a knot being untangled. "I don't know. I went swimming, then I showered, and it wound up like that," I whine slightly, considering that it's not like I received a manual of care for the hair. "And we met, you know, two people in a new and strange situation, hi's and hello's and we hit it off."

Still the truth, I think.

"I like him," I add, voice small and quiet, and maybe it'll be easier to say now, when Joe is under this veil of falsities. "A lot."

Joe does his best not to pull, carefully unsnarling Webs h air one curl after another.

"What's he like?"

He's trying desperately to sound like he doesn't care, like he's just making conversation the way he does when he's cutting. And sort of praying Web doesn't think anything of it.

"Smart," I say, fondly, wincing slightly at the pull in my hair, wondering if it's just my luck to have hair this ratty or if I did something to it. "Funny," I add, with a genuine little sound. "Really funny. He's always making me laugh. Other people, too. And he's got a good heart. He's just a good man."

With that, I exhale, settling in the chair. "I'm taking him for a walk. Dinner. Stargazing by the dock and then back to my room, maybe."

Sure doesn't sound like anybody Joe knows, so at least he's fairly certain it's not someone from Easy, so at least Web isn't going for the full set or some shit.

Gently, he teases a knot undone with the tips of his fingers.
It gives him something to do with his fingers.

"Maybe I'll go crash on someone's floor and give you some privacy..."

Because he sure as fuck doesn't want to be awake and listening to that.

"I don't think you'll have to do that," I surmise, mostly to myself and lean back against his fingers, letting out a quiet sound, some kind of pleasure at having Joe's attentions like this. "Do you think he'll like the dress?"

"He blind?"

Joe grins, his eyes flicking to Web's face in the small mirror set up on the wall.

"He'd have to be mad not to."

I grin right back at Joe, feeling like we're just having our own private moment again and when my eyes catch his, I honestly don't know how he hasn't seen it yet, but maybe, well, maybe Joe's not as smart as I'm giving him credit for. "Well, then, you'd better not disappoint. I expect full dress."

For a moment, Joe just watches Web's face in the mirror, and then he can't help the little smile that creeps onto his face, his fingers still curled in Web's long dark hair.

"Me?"

He's honestly got no fuckin' clue what's going on here anymore.

My eyes don't pry from his in that tiny mirror and I grin, full strength, a broad grin that lights up my whole face and words sit precariously in the back of my mind to remember, but I push them away and don't think of Germany right now. "Yeah, you," I agree, gesturing with my fingers to my room. "You've got clothes on the bed. But you better finish my hair," I say sternly. "I'm not walking out there with a bird's nest."

"What am I, a fuckin' kid? You're dressing me now?" He says that, but it's a pretty fuckin' great smile, and maybe he's forgetting David Kenyon Websters in there or maybe he ain't. It's hard to tell.

He arches his eyebrows.

"You want I should change now or finish your hair first, ma'am."

"I am not a girl, so fuck off, Joe," I inform him curtly. "And just remember that I might be going out with you right now, but keep being like that and I really will go stand outside in this dress and find the highest bidder." All this is said as I'm fidgeting with the dress, yanking it up over annoying breasts that will probably delight Liebgott's memory for hours to come. "Go ahead and change," I encourage. "Might as well see if what I found for you fits."

"Stop playing with your tits," Joe points out, as he walks out of the room, leaving the adjoining door open. "You're making it really hard to act like a gentleman."

He stares at the clothes laid out on the bed for a long moment. Short of his dress greens, he ain't never dressed like that. He can't shake the feeling he's utterly out of his depth here and he ain't sure he cares.

It takes a few minutes, but he pads back into the door way, shirt sleeves rolled up, sneakers on because it was that or his jump boots.

"Well?"

I really should admit on a shallow level that I know what I want from this moment forward, but admitting that leads to several problems and I'm not willing to do that, so I simply stare at Joe and nod, wordlessly. "You look," I say quietly, words hushed by the way my roam slowly over him. "Amazing."

Really, he looks about as beautiful as I always imagined, under all that grief and grime.

Joe's face colours and he makes a dismissive gesture with one hand as he moves back behind the chair.

"Shut ya mouth, Webster or I'm gonna pull your damn hair."

He's got most of the knots unworked now and he starts combing it through with his fingers.

"I'm leaving it down," he says.

I'm sure I reply. At least, I tell myself I do because I've let my eyes shut and shift back into the chair as I try and remember the last time anyone gave me attention of this sort, of stroking fingers through hair instead of yanking on it too hard and that was before the war. When I was twenty, too long ago to even remember.

"Mmhmm," at some point, is eventually eked out.

Joe works in silence for a while until he's content with how Web's hair looks, glossy curls on his shoulders.

"Okay," he says. "Last chance to go find something else."

My eyes nearly shoot open when Joe speaks again and I glance to his hands, the curls, and all of it and I know that I wouldn't have changed my mind even if there was some perfect person waiting out there for me. I simply stand and head back to my room to find the pair of red flats, sliding them on and making my way to the hall without a word to Joe, still fidgeting with the dress and cursing under my breath.

So he's supposed to follow, he guesses. He takes a moment to put his things away properly (old habits die hard) and then he follows Webster out into the hall.

"What's first?"

I lean back and wait for Joe, long enough to grab hold of his hand and to fish out the little slip of a handkerchief, easing behind him and tying it over his eyes. "This," I inform him, lips right by his ear, "is for heckling me and calling me a fag for going to Harvard." With that, I yank the knot tight and finished.

"Dinner, on the dock. Things are ready. Then whatever you want. I mean, it's not as if we need to follow what I said we'd do. I doubt you'd really want to stargaze or dance or anything like that."

With the blindfold on, Joe's skittish, but you can always trust the man next to you, long as he's a Paratrooper, even if that Paratrooper's temporarily a woman who smells really fuckin' good.

"I gotta find my own way down there?"

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