Hi! Ik you get a lot of Joe requests but if you don’t mind another lol could you write a postwar x reader where you haven’t talked during the war since he kinda fell off the grid and you end up at the same party a couple years later but you both brought dates and there’s ~tension~ lol
HECK YES this is so good and ofc I had to add a happy ending to it, thank you for the request!!! this is lowkey one of my favorite things I’ve ever written so I hope you enjoy it!
warnings: language; suggestive language
Smoothing your evening dress down, you glanced at the watch on your living room wall.
“Nervous?” Your roommate, Olivia, asked from her spot on the couch as she read a copy of New York Times.
You shook your head, “No, I’m excited to see the boys again.”
“Boys.” She snorted, “They’re all grown men by now.”
“They were boys to me.” You shrugged.
“Hell, I don’t know how you didn’t jump at least one of their bones.”
“Liv!” You exclaimed and accidentally clasped your clutch on your finger, “Shit, ow.”
“Sorry.” Olivia said sheepishly, “It’s just that I’m sure one of them had to be somewhat good-looking and you came home single and have remained that way.”
Before you could smart back at her, the doorbell rang.
“That’d be Thomas.” You explained and Olivia grinned.
“Don’t start.” You warned her as you moved to open the door. She threw her hands up in surrender.
Thomas Bennett stood in the hall with his hat in his hands and a smile already waiting on his face. He looked exactly like the sort of man a girl was supposed to bring to a party after the war. Clean-shaven. Polite. Handsome in a way that never made a room feel hot all of a sudden. His suit was pressed, his shoes were shined, and he had the good sense to look only mildly nervous when Olivia’s eyes immediately swept over him like she was inspecting produce at the market.
“You look beautiful,” Thomas said.
It was kind. Sincere, even. He said it the way men were supposed to say it, with warmth and admiration and no hidden edge.
“Thank you,” you smiled, stepping aside to let him in. “You look nice, too.”
“Nice,” Olivia repeated from the couch, turning a page in her newspaper. “High praise.”
You shot her a look over your shoulder.
Thomas only laughed because he was the sort of man who laughed easily, even when he was not entirely sure if he was the joke. “I’ll take nice.”
“That’s wise,” Olivia said. “She’s stingy with compliments.”
“You once told a man his tie was ‘brave.’”
“It was brave. It had polka-dots on it.”
Thomas’s smile widened. He liked this part of you. The quickness. The dry humor. The way your mouth got you into trouble before your good sense could stop it.
And maybe that was why you had agreed to let him take you tonight.
He liked you in a way that was simple.
After the war, simple felt like something you were supposed to want.
You grabbed your coat from the hook by the door, and Thomas stepped forward to help you into it before you could do it yourself. The gesture should have made you feel cherished. It did, in a quiet way. But it also made something old and unwanted twist in your chest, because the last man who had helped you into a coat had complained the whole time that you were taking too long, then tucked the collar closer around your neck like he would rather die than admit he was being careful with you.
You pushed the thought away.
You had gotten very good at doing that.
“Be back before midnight,” Olivia called.
You paused in the doorway. “You’re not my mother.”
“No, but I’m nosy and I live here.”
Thomas glanced between you both. “I’ll have her home at a respectable hour.”
Olivia lowered the newspaper enough to look at him. “Respectable is negotiable.”
“Goodnight, Liv,” you said quickly, pulling Thomas out the door before she could make it worse.
The party was already spilling noise into the street by the time Thomas parked outside the apartment building where George Luz had insisted everyone meet. You could hear the music from the sidewalk, muffled by brick and glass, the lively pulse of it floating down into the cool evening air. Someone upstairs laughed loud enough that the sound cracked open the night.
For a second, standing beneath the glow of the streetlamp, you felt young again.
Not really. Not fully. None of you were the same people who had crossed the ocean and come back with too much behind your eyes. But there was something about the noise, about the familiar roughness of men shouting over music, about the way cigarette smoke drifted out an open window above you, that made the years fold in on themselves.
Thomas came around the car and offered you his arm. “Ready?”
You looked up at the building.
You had told Olivia you were excited, and that had been true. You wanted to see the boys again. You wanted to see George and Bull and Malarkey and Babe and anyone else who had managed to crawl back into ordinary life and pretend it fit. You wanted to laugh with people who understood why certain sounds still made your fingers go cold.
But there was a name you had not asked about.
A face you had spent years pretending not to search for in crowds.
Joe Liebgott had disappeared after the war the way some men did. No grand goodbye. No letter explaining himself. No promise to come visit. One minute he had been there, sharp-mouthed and restless, looking at you like he wanted to say something that would ruin both your lives. The next, he had been gone.
You had heard things in pieces. California. Cab driving. His family. Nothing solid enough to hold. Nothing that belonged to you.
So you had done the only thing a girl could do when a man vanished without giving her the decency of an ending.
You made one up yourself.
“Ready,” you said, and took Thomas’s arm.
Inside, the party was warm and loud, packed wall to wall with old faces that made your chest ache before you even had time to smile. George spotted you first, of course. He always did have a talent for making a scene.
“Well, look who finally decided to remember us poor bastards!” he shouted.
You barely had time to laugh before he was across the room, grabbing you up in a hug that lifted your heels off the floor.
“George!” you squealed, clutching his shoulders. “Put me down before you break something.”
When he set you down, his hands stayed on your shoulders for a moment as he looked you over. His smile softened in a way that made your throat pinch.
“Jesus,” he said quieter. “Look at you.”
“Look at me?” You reached up and straightened his crooked tie. “You look like you dressed in the dark.”
“It adds something, alright.”
George barked a laugh, then glanced over your shoulder. “And who’s this poor fella?”
Thomas stepped forward, polite as ever. “Thomas Bennett.”
George shook his hand with exaggerated seriousness. “George Luz. War hero, entertainer, occasional menace.”
“Don’t ruin my introduction.”
Thomas chuckled. “Nice to meet you.”
More of them came after that. Babe hugged you so tight he nearly squeezed the air from your lungs. Malarkey kissed your cheek and told you that you hadn’t aged a day, which was kind and entirely untrue. Even Bull gave you one of those slow, fond smiles that said more than most men could manage in a speech.
The party was fine, it was easy like you had hoped. You were greeted by Major Winters and Nixon, and even saw Eugene Roe who you had always thought fondly of. Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye, who had both been badly wounded in Bastogne. You had gotten a bear hug from Buck Compton, who was now a big time lawyer out in California.
You had finally begun to get a certain man from San Francisco out of your mind when you heard it.
“Son of bitch, is that the Joseph Liebgott?” Guarnere shouted over the music and the chatter.
Your heart nearly stopped.
Which was ridiculous. Dramatic. The sort of thing Olivia would have mocked you for if you said it out loud. But it was true all the same. The back of your neck prickled. Your fingers tightened around your glass.
Joe Liebgott stood just inside the doorway with a brunette on his arm.
Joe said, “Sure is, Gonorrhea!”
For one terrible second, you forgot how to breathe.
Of course he did. You all did. But Joe wore it differently. The war had not softened him. It had sharpened certain parts and hollowed out others. His hair was neatly combed, his suit dark and well-fitted, though he somehow still looked like he had been dragged into respectability against his will. His mouth was the same. So were his eyes.
You had spent years convincing yourself you had exaggerated them in memory. Made them darker. Warmer. More dangerous.
His gaze moved through the room with restless disinterest until it landed on you.
Everything else seemed to keep going. The music, the laughter, Thomas speaking to someone beside you, the woman on Joe’s arm leaning closer to say something in his ear.
Joe did not look away from you.
George muttered, “Aw, hell.”
Babe, beside him, took one look between you and Joe and suddenly became very interested in his drink.
Thomas leaned close. “Do you know him?”
Joe’s eyes dropped briefly to Thomas’s hand at your back.
When they lifted again, something had hardened in them.
“Yes,” you said. “I know him.”
Joe started across the room.
The brunette came with him, her hand still tucked around his arm. She was pretty in a polished, city sort of way, with red lipstick and waved hair and a dress that fit her like money. You hated yourself a little for noticing. Hated yourself more for caring.
“Well,” Joe said when he reached you, voice smooth as a knife sliding back into its sheath. “Look who it is.”
Your heart gave one hard, stupid kick.
His smile twitched. “That all I get?”
You lifted your chin. “You were expecting a parade?”
George made a quiet choking sound into his glass.
Joe’s eyes flashed. Not anger, not exactly. Recognition. Like he had missed that sharpness and resented you for still having it.
“Would’ve settled for hello,” he said.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. A little warmth, maybe.”
“You should have written ahead. I could’ve prepared some.”
George made a strangled noise into his drink. Babe suddenly became fascinated by the floorboards.
The brunette glanced at him, then at you. “Joe?”
He blinked, like he had momentarily forgotten he had brought a date. “Right. Sorry. This is Elaine.”
Elaine smiled politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too,” you said, and meant it as much as you could. It wasn’t her fault Joe Liebgott had walked into the room and tilted the floor under your feet.
Thomas’s hand shifted at your back. “Thomas Bennett.”
He blinked, as if remembering all at once that he had brought someone with him. “Right. Sorry. Elaine, this is…” His eyes moved back to you, and for one foolish second you thought he might say something impossible. Something honest. “An old friend.”
The words landed like a slap you were expected to smile through.
You held out your hand to Elaine. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too,” she said, though her eyes were already moving between you and Joe with curiosity she had not yet learned how to hide. “Were you all together overseas?”
“Something like that,” Joe said.
As if it had been casual. As if he had not once leaned against the side of a jeep in Austria, smoking with rough hands while telling you that after the war he might look you up if you were unlucky. As if he had not looked at you then like he was already afraid he would.
Thomas stepped forward, polite as ever. “Thomas Bennett.”
Joe looked at him with the full, lazy attention of a man deciding whether something was worth the effort of disliking.
“Bennett,” he repeated, taking his hand.
“Good to meet you,” Thomas said.
It should not have felt like an insult. Somehow, from Joe, even sure sounded like he had thrown a lit match onto a dry field just to watch what happened.
Thomas, to his credit, only smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about Easy Company tonight.”
Joe’s attention slid back to you. “Have you?”
His mouth curved. “You tell him all about us?”
The word us did not pass unnoticed. Not by you. Not by George, whose brows shot up so high they nearly disappeared into his hairline.
You took a careful sip of your drink. “There wasn’t much to tell.”
There he was. Mean because he was cornered. Cruel because he was jealous. A boy with his hand too close to the stove, daring someone else to admit it burned.
“No?” he said. “That’s funny. I remember plenty.”
“Joe,” George warned under his breath.
Joe ignored him completely. His eyes stayed on you, bright and reckless. “Have you told him all about our old rendezvous?”
The word dropped into the circle like a glass breaking.
Your cheeks heated so fast you hated yourself for giving him the satisfaction. Not because there was anything to be ashamed of, not really. But because Joe knew exactly what he was doing. He had reached back into the war, into the hidden corners of it, and dragged something private into the light because he could not stand the sight of you with another man’s hand at your back.
George muttered, “Jesus Christ, Liebgott.”
Babe said, “Aw, come on, Joe.”
But Joe’s gaze did not move from yours.
You set your glass down on the nearest table with more care than necessary.
“Our old rendezvous?” you repeated.
His jaw tightened slightly. Good. He had expected embarrassment. Maybe anger. Not that calm, dangerous softness.
You stepped closer, just enough that Thomas’s hand fell away from your back.
“Is that what you’re calling it now?”
Because he remembered too. That was the trouble. He remembered the stolen minutes behind buildings, yes. The sharp whispers and the near misses and the way he used to catch your wrist to tug you out of sight, grinning like he had never been afraid of anything in his life.
But he also remembered the rest.
The conversations in the dark when neither of you could sleep. His jacket around your shoulders in Austria. His hands trembling so badly after Landsberg that he had pretended to be cold. The night he had found you crying behind the billets and sat beside you without saying a word, close enough that your shoulders touched, quiet in the only way Joe Liebgott ever knew how to be gentle.
Those were rendezvous too.
Thomas cleared his throat, his voice carefully polite. “I think I’ll get us another drink.”
“You don’t have to,” you said, still looking at Joe.
“No, it’s all right.” Thomas’s smile was strained now, but kind. Too kind. “Excuse me.”
Elaine lifted her chin and slipped her hand from Joe’s arm. “I might freshen up.”
Joe barely seemed to hear her.
The moment the two of them moved away, George pointed at Joe with his cigarette. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
Joe’s eyes flicked briefly toward him. “Thanks.”
“Did you?” George asked. “Because it looks like maybe you didn’t pick up on much since 1945.”
You almost laughed. Almost.
Joe glanced back at you, and whatever smart answer had been forming on his tongue seemed to die there.
You turned on your heel and walked toward the hallway.
You heard him follow before he said your name.
Still, you did not stop until you reached the quieter stretch near the coat rack, away from the music and the heat and the eyes pretending not to look. Only then did you turn around.
Joe stopped short, too close and not close enough.
“What the hell was that?” you asked.
He dragged a hand through his hair, ruining the neatness of it. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, well, as long as it just came out, I suppose that makes humiliating me in front of your date and mine perfectly reasonable.”
His mouth tightened. “He your guy?”
Then you laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “That’s what you care about?”
“No,” he snapped, then immediately looked away like the honesty had surprised him. “No, that’s not the only thing.”
It was so truthful you nearly thought you’d imagined it.
“What?” You stared at him.
“I care about you.” Joe explained, “I brought her because I thought —“
“You thought what?” Your voice was softer now.
“I was sure as hell you’d be married by now.”
Your breath caught in your throat as your eyes widened.
Joe noticed your wide eyes, “I mean, shit, are you?”
“Married?” You scoffed, “No. It’s only been two years.”
“Don’t mean nothin’, you’re a pretty girl.” Joe shrugged, “Elaine’s been my date for all of four hours and she thinks we’re gettin’ hitched tomorrow.”
“I knew I could still do that.”
You shook your head, “What are we doing, Joe?”
“Wasting more time.” Joe offered. He was right.
“You were the one who didn’t write me like you said you would.” You frowned, “I guess I wasn’t unlucky enough.”
“I didn’t know how to.” He confessed, “I wasn’t the same when I got back home.”
“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to do right by you now.” Joe put his hand on your arm and let his hand slide down into yours.
Two years ago, you would have been jumping up and down at the open display of affection and the offer of a commitment from Joe Liebgott.
That girl was still in you somewhere because your heart fluttered. Traitor.
“Hey guys,” George’s voice cut into your thoughts as you jumped away from Joe. “Your dates are both looking for you, so I came to find you before they came looking themselves.”
“Thanks, Luz.” You tried to walk past him but he stopped you.
“Listen, whatever you two have going on, figure it the fuck out.” Your eyes snapped to his as he gave a pointed look in your direction and then in Joe’s, “Those two people out there don’t deserve to be tangled into your unresolved love-drama fest from the war.”
“I’m sorry.” You said quietly.
“Don’t say sorry to me,” George shrugged, “Besides, the rest of the company has been waiting for you two to figure out whatever the hell this for years now.”
“Seriously?” Joe finally spoke and you wanted to laugh at his annoyed expression. “Fine.”
Joe marched right past the two of you back to the party, and you and George quickly followed.
Joe reached Elaine, who was conversing with another woman you didn’t know but assumed came as a date, and Elaine suddenly burst into tears and slapped Joe.
“Holy shit.” Your hand flew to your mouth.
“Been there before.” George confessed.
“What? The one doing the slapping or the one being slapped?”
“Figures.” You caught Thomas’ gaze from where he stood with Babe and Malarkey and smiled sadly.
Thomas was a good man, sure, but he wasn’t Joe. You knew that.
“I guess I can see myself out?” Thomas joked once you reached him.
Babe and Malarkey suddenly found the contents of the punch bowl extremely fascinating as they slowly worked their way away from the two of you.
“No, stay. Enjoy yourself.” You insisted, placing a hand on his arm.
“I like you,” Thomas nodded, “I really do. But I always knew your heart and your mind were with someone else.”
“You’re a good man, Thomas.” You said and he smiled softly.
He kissed your cheek, bidding you goodnight and even stopping to say goodbye to George.
“I guess we’re both assholes, then.”
You turned to find Joe watching you, ignoring the stares of your former company’s men.
“Not me, my date didn’t slap me on the way out.” You joked.
“Good,” Joe said, “Because then I’d have to kill him.”
Your face flushed at that, and you knew he would have done exactly that, “What’d you say to her anyway?”
“That I had to take care of some unfinished business with a past lover. Take a trip down memory lane.” Joe shrugged. You slapped his arm as he laughed at the look on your face, and then said, “No, I told her she was a great girl but that it just wouldn’t work.”
“Must have been the way you said it.”
“I am known to be quite the asshole.” Joe admitted, “What do you say, wanna come back to my hotel or go back to your place?”
“A bit forward, aren’t you?” You scoffed.
“Ah,” He grinned, “I forgot you like me a lot more when you’re a couple drinks in.”
For the second time that night, you slapped his arm.
“Trust me, baby, you’ll be waking up in my arms in the morning.”
The next morning, you did in fact wake up in Joseph Liebgott’s arms.
And you received quite the earful from your roommate when a completely different man dropped you back off at your place well past your curfew.
