#liebtip

Chuck watches him smooth out a section of fabric for a moment before he answers. Sometimes Joe very obviously says something in anticipation of a certain reaction, as if he is bracing himself to be challenged. “Yeah?” he asks mildly. “For a visit?”

Joe shakes his head very slightly. “He’s coming to stay.”

Chuck absorbs that. Joe has been a well of pitching, rolling anger since the war ended; the edges of it lap up against the walls of the life that he's been trying to build, painstakingly, and sometimes it spills over. Chuck would never hold it against him, but he also doesn't know how to fix it. Maybe Ed is better equipped for this sort of thing.

And maybe it just helps to be less lonely. “I think that’s good,” he decides.

Joe does look up then, eyes narrowing. He sets the iron aside with decided intent. “Yeah?”

Chuck, who had assumed that his statement was clear, makes an face that expresses that sentiment.

“He’s going to move in with me,” Joe says, almost like a challenge.

Chuck nods. “Yeah," he says. "I figured that’s what you meant.”

“You don’t seem very fuckin’ surprised.” There it is – the reason for Joe’s defensiveness. They’ve never talked about this; Chuck wonders how long Joe has been wrestling with telling him - his only friend, here, within the walls of that painstakingly built life - and then deciding not to.

“That’s because it’s not very surprising,” he admits. “I saw your face after he got hit.” That night in Carentan had been the kind of ugly, blinding dark that doesn’t feel like it’s going to end, like a bad dream after you know you’re dreaming but you can’t wake up. Joe had walked around looking like someone had reached in and rattled something loose inside of him. He hadn’t dropped back into gear, not really, until that first letter had arrived with Ed’s handwriting on the envelope.

“You never said anything,” Joe says, faintly accusingly.

“Neither did you,” Chuck replies. “I figured you didn’t want me to know.”

Joe opens his mouth, but since Chuck is right, he closes it again, blowing out a breath through his nose. After a moment, he says quietly, “Yeah, well. With this kind of thing, it’s better if you keep your mouth shut.”

Chuck thinks abruptly about how Joe might never tell his family, or any of the other guys – anyone but Chuck.

“I think,” he says slowly, “that you can probably take one nightmare out of the rotation if he’s here.” He shrugs. “Seems worth it to me.”

He has known Joe a while by now, so he knows that he has always had a temper, but this is not that. It is a very specific something that he brought home with him, that grew after Toccoa and Aldbourne and the places Ed knew him best, and it is so enormous that it seems he leans into it, in the hope of reaching the bottom, maybe, although Ed isn’t sure that there is one. Sometimes these things are bottomless, and you are meant to swim up, not down.

Not that he’s an expert. Not that either of them are.

Ed, for his part, has never been easy to rile, and he is not riled now, exactly – he is just very tired. He has been pretty good, he thinks, at not meeting anger with anger, sure that it won’t help. But he is also not an endless reserve of patience, and this wall in the apartment where he lived before Joe ever got here, his wall, might be a boundary as metaphorical as it is literal.

“Fix that,” he says, flat. “I’m going to bed.”

Joe’s resistance, already deflating after the sound – and no doubt the sensation – of fist hitting plaster had startled even him, goes entirely limp at that. He doesn’t say anything else, but Ed can hear him moving quietly around the apartment for a while after Ed has gotten into bed and turned the light off.

When Joe eventually eases the door open, Ed is laying on his good side, facing away. There is the rustle of clothing as Joe strips down in the dark, and then the mattress dips as he gets in. He doesn’t come any closer, but there is something expectant in the air, as if he knows that Ed is awake.

“I fixed the wall,” he murmurs, after a moment. “Once it’s dry, I’ll paint it.”

“Great,” Ed says. “Maybe I’ll get my deposit back.”

Joe is silent for a long few seconds. Then: “Sorry, Tip. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You – fuck.” I’ve never seen you look at me like that before. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to; they can both feel the current in this that’s different from their usual.

“You think I don’t get mad?” Ed asks. He feels, rather than sees, Joe go still behind him. “I was in Normandy a fucking week. You think I woke up in the hospital with my face all fucked up and missing an eye and the doctors telling me I wasn’t gonna walk again, and I didn’t want to put my fist through a wall?”

Joe hesitates. “You never told me about that.”

“Not really the kind of thing you put in a letter when the person you’re writing to is still fighting a war,” Ed points out, grim. During those months in the hospital, finding out how deep his grief went after the morphine haze had worn off, he’d had no context for anything this fucking awful and thereby no words to write it with – even if he’d dared to complain about his lot when Joe was still out there, when there was still something that could be wrested from him. “I burnt out on it, anyway,” he admits. “It’s exhausting, being angry all the time. Aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah,” Joe says quietly. “Been tired for a while.”

Ed lifts his hand, and without having to be asked, Joe reaches out in the dark and clasps it so that he can help Ed roll onto his back.

“We need to figure it out,” Ed says firmly. He can’t see Joe very well across the pillows when he turns his head, but neither of them have let go of each other’s hand. “You can be as angry as you need to be. I don’t want you to pretend that you’re not. But you can’t be an asshole.”

Joe doesn’t argue with him. He knows, after all, how he’s been, though knowing and doing something about it are two different things. “I don’t always – I’m not as good at finding the line as I used to be.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Ed says. “No more punching the walls is probably a good start.”

Joe lets out a breath. “Yeah, I’m real sorry about that, Tip. I’ll make it up to you.”

He means that. He always does, which is how Ed knows that this isn’t unfixable.

“Did you hurt your hand?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Joe replies. “Immediately regretted it, if that counts for anything.”

Ed releases the hand he’s holding and offers up his palm. Joe shifts so that he can gingerly place his injured hand in Ed’s. Very gently, Ed takes it and presses his lips to the heel of Joe’s palm before he lays it safely on his own chest, his fingers curled loosely around Joe’s wrist, where it doesn’t seem to hurt him.

“You forgive me?” Joe murmurs.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “But I’m going to hold the line on the don’t be an asshole thing.”

“I know you are,” Joe replies. “I – thanks.”

It’s a don’t let me fuck this up in not so many words. Ed will do his best.

-- There’s a ruddy pink sky outside, a shade in transition, but the summer evening is so warm still and the street so peaceful that it feels like sunset might last a long time. Ed is sitting on the porch with a book, but he’s not really reading it; beyond the page in front of him, past the porch steps and the front walk and the chain-link gate, Joe is standing on the sidewalk examining a half-deflated rubber ball while the two children who live next door, a girl nearing her teens and her much younger brother, look on gravely.

Joe says something to the girl, who nods and accepts the ball back, and then Joe turns and heads toward the house.

“Need to find my pump,” he tells Ed as he jogs lightly up the steps. “I’ll re-fill it, see if I can figure out where it’s leaking air.”

Ed looks past him, at where the children wait by the gate. The girl waves, and Ed raises his hand to return it. Mister Joe seems to have become the neighbourhood authority on fixing everything from deflated balls to bicycles with a wonky chain at some point. Ed has no idea what brought it on, but there’s something about watching Joe take their concerns very seriously that digs in somewhere, sweet in a way that aches a little – a wistfulness that he doesn’t feel very often.

He sets aside his book and gets up, making his way into the house with more ease than he did in the first year or two after the war, tracking down Joe in the front bedroom that they mostly use for storage. He finds Joe rummaging through a box stacked on top of a dresser, and slows to a halt in the doorway, watching him.

He blurts it out before it’s even fully formed in his mind. “Are you happy?”

In profile, he catches the puzzled dip of Joe’s expression. “With what?”

“With everything,” Ed replies. “With me.”

Joe stops rooting around in the box, then, turning his attention to Ed properly, that puzzled expression deepening. There’s something cautious in it, like he thinks he might have done something wrong and is trying to figure out what. “Do I not seem happy?”

“You seem fine,” Ed says, because he does. Nothing Joe has ever said or done has implied that he’s not satisfied with his lot in life here. And yet. “I just… I don’t know. You’re really good with kids. I know you think the world of your nieces. Is there a version of this where you got married and had kids?”

“Sure,” Joe says with a shrug, without even thinking about it. “Probably.”

Ed swallows. It’s the answer he was expecting, but not the one he wanted. “Stupid question, I guess.”

“There’s a version where I got married and had kids because there’s a version where you never wrote to me after Carentan,” Joe says, like he’s explaining something immediately obvious. “Just like there’s a version where you didn’t wait for me to come back. None of that stuff matters. It didn’t happen that way.”

Ed mulls that, for just a moment. “You don’t ever think about what it would’ve been like?”

“What are we talking about here, Tip?” Joe asks. “I don’t regret anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” He hesitates, like it has just occurred to him why Ed might be asking. That cautious look is back again, but this time, there is less of him that wants to know the answer. “Do you?”

“No,” Ed says at once. “Never. I just thought – there are downsides to every choice.”

“Not downsides,” Joe says. “Just differences. Anyway. We both know damn well no one else would have put up with what I was like when I got home.”

Ed almost smiles. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Joe agrees, repeating the phrase that had become his mantra. Asshole? He used to ask, short-hand after a while, checking in about his own behaviour. Borderline, Ed would reply sometimes. But Joe had never put his fist through the wall again.

He had learned how to garden instead. He had learned how to bake bread. He had learned how to fix bicycles. What are you doing? Ed had asked, years ago now, finding Joe manfully making his way through a book on growing your own vegetables from the library. Not being an asshole, Joe had replied.

“Anyway,” Joe says, tapping his knuckles deceivingly gently against Tip’s sternum as he passes him with the pump in hand. “Look on the bright side. When they start to yell, they’re someone else’s problem.”

“Would be nice if that were true about people across the board,” Ed says.

Joe gives him a look over his shoulder as he fills his mug, but he seems to realize that he’s being overdramatic because he sets the coffee pot down more gently than he’s done anything else since he came in here.

“A rabbit ate half my cabbage,” he mutters.

Ed could take or leave cabbage, frankly, but that’s probably not helpful to bring up. He asks the question because he’s sure there is a plan, and because it’s Joe, it might be unhinged. “What are you going to do?”

“Trap him,” Joe says. His expression darkens. “Get rid of him.”

“You’re gonna bump him off for eating some cabbage?” It’s less that Ed has a moral quandary about this and more that he likes to stir the pot a little. “That feels harsh.”

“So I should just let Peter fuckin’ Cottontail go tell all his friends where the good eats are?” Joe scoffs. “Not a chance. The bunny gets it.”

“Have you considered what you’re going to do if he’s really cute?” Ed asks, straight-faced.

Joe gives him another look. “Cute’s got nothing to do with it.”

Amusement - a plausibly deniable amount - tucks itself in very faintly at the corners of Ed’s mouth. If it almost looks like a smile, that’s because most of what Joe does makes him smile – not always intentionally. “Godspeed, I guess.”

Joe grunts an acknowledgement, already focused on his vendetta.

--

“You’re not going to believe this.”

It’s Sunday, the first one in July, and Ed is making his meandering way around the kitchen, cooking the big breakfast they always have on weekends. When Joe turns up in the kitchen doorway, his expression thunderous, Ed obligingly awards him his attention.

“It got out of the trap,” Joe announces.

Ed’s not going to laugh. He really isn’t. “Oh no.”

“What is this thing, some kind of criminal fuckin’ mastermind?” Joe stomps into the kitchen and helps himself to coffee, presumably because by any respectable measure it’s too early to start drinking.

“How do you know it was in the trap in the first place?” Ed asks.

“Because,” Joe says, taking two swallows of coffee that must be absolutely scalding with an impressive lack of reaction. “I put bait in there, and it’s gone. And it ate half the cabbage again.”

Ed returns to his cooking, giving the eggs a nudge around in the pan. “A worthy adversary.”

Joe takes another burning swallow of coffee, clearly already plotting his next move. Sure enough: “I need a better trap.”

He stalks out of the kitchen again.

 Ed makes eye contact with the cat, who is perched on top of the highest cabinet, her tail swinging lazily off the edge. “I know,” he says. “Like living with Elmer Fudd.”

“You talking to me?” Joe’s voice comes faintly from somewhere at the front of the house.

“Nope,” Ed replies. “Breakfast’ll be up in five.”

--

By mid-July, Joe’s battle with the rabbit has reached a stalemate. The rabbit doesn’t come every night, but when it does, Joe is sure to spend the next few hours constructing increasingly elaborate traps. Ed goes outside sometimes to check in, mostly so that the neighbours don’t think that Joe is losing his mind all by himself.

Pulling the front door shut behind him to prevent the cat from getting out, Ed stoops creakily down to place a full cup of coffee on the step so that Joe can rage-drink some caffeine without tracking dirt into the house, as has been his wont lately.

Joe doesn't look up from his task, and it gives Ed the opportunity to eye his latest project with open dubiousness.

“Are you rigging that with a spring-loaded..." He should maybe not call the words murder drawbridge across the yard. "...door?”

“Desperate times, Tip,” Joe says, the movements of his hands almost comically cautious as he works.

“Sure,” Ed agrees, turning to go back inside before there’s bloodshed that he has to be responsible for. “That seems completely reasonable. Let me know how it goes.”

Joe grunts.

“Watch your fingers,” he calls back over his shoulder.

Joe doesn’t reply.

--

On the last Tuesday in July, Joe shouts for him from the front garden. Ed dutifully makes his slow, limping way out to the porch, and shades his eyes to see Joe standing triumphantly over a sturdy-looking cage. Upon closer inspection, it hosts a small, brown rabbit with a patch of white on the top of its head, looking so deeply unthreatening in the middle of that weapons-grade cage that Ed nearly laughs.

“You got him,” he remarks, making his way down the steps and into the yard to join Joe next to the garden.

“Not so fuckin’ smart now,” Joe says, addressing the rabbit.

“And, uh.” Ed makes his painstaking way down onto one knee so that he can poke a finger through the mesh and give the rabbit’s soft fur a gentle scratch. The rabbit, apparently unaware at this point that there are people it should be wary of, gives him a wiggle-nosed look but lets itself be petted. “What are you going to do with him?”

When there's no immediate response, he glances up in time to see Joe run his tongue behind his lower lip and shake his head, hands still in that triumphant pose on his hips but the rest of it settled back now, into something else.

“Yeah, I…” He gazes down at the cage. “I don’t know.”

Ed knows. Everything that has come after the war has been a microcosm of it in some way, the hulking shape of it taking its place in silence at the center of everything. Sometimes it's a good thing, in the way they would never have met without it. Sometimes it's a door slammed too hard next door that has Joe halfway out of his chair with a protective arm thrown out before he remembers where they are.

And sometimes it's this.

Killing doesn’t take away from your rage the way you think it will. Ed wasn’t there, didn’t make it to Austria, but he is in the unique, specific position of having loved Joe for a long time and done some killing of his own. He doesn’t need to be told.

He lets it go.

“What are you feeding it?” he asks, peering at it. “Is that – ”

“Cabbage,” Joe says, in a tone of voice that says he knows exactly how that will be received.

“And you – ”

“See the irony, yeah.”