𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐆𝐌 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐅𝐓 〚 𝐉.𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐁𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐓 〛
𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓 ➛ Hiii! Could I request #10 from your happy prompt list with Liebgott?; prompt - “ i have no idea what this is about” , “ bullshit, you know what you did” , “ i’ve done a lot of things — i need to know which one you found out about .”
“BY THE TIME OUR ASSES actually reach Europe, we’re all gonna have bum ass feet from these boots,” the twenty-something, latest blister griper, groused as she prepped the bandages for the raw skin.
If not for the sake of maintaining appearances — a request of the Head Nurse — she would have dropped the vague, pleasant smile on her face five complaints ago, and perhaps he would stop talking.
But, that may have been a naive assumption on her part; she was the only female in the Airborne — a medic, sure — but a woman nonetheless, and that made her a commodity to these men (as much as it soured her stomach and curled her lip).
“Just keep checking in with your company’s medic to get fresh bandages each day on the blisters, and they’ll not be as bad,” the emphasis on ‘your’ was teetering on an implicit plea; she had her own company’s needs to tend to, not the inconveniences and whines of a soldier who had a perfectly equipped medic assigned to his respective company.
“And here I was thinking we’d do this little tango everyday,” he tilted his head in effort to tempt her gaze towards his direction, yet the endeavor wilted before it could even bloom as she deliberately disregarded it, finishing the dressings.
“Wrap this around your heel and ankle, and have your company’s medic provide you with clean dressings each day until they go away,” she stated, monotone and purposeful in conveying that her interest in him and this conversation was nonexistent.
Before she had to endure a word more of his griping or vague flirtatious allusions, she curtly walked away from the sectioned off treatment area, remnants of unused gauze and antiseptic in her grasp and a flushed facade to her dimly miserable portrait.
Traipsing a handful of steps and she’s at the tent’s pitiful excuse for inventory, hands absentmindedly flitting along the unorganized labyrinth of wooden crates until reaching the ones reserved for the roll of gauze and antiseptic bottle. Settling away the supplies, Y/N briefly reflected on how the Georgia warmth hadn’t struck with all its fury that day, and it slightly loosened the taut square of her shoulders.
However, the sought after peace was fleeting, as a shadow crossed over her path as she attempted to take on the task of arranging the supplies into some semblance of a system. The conflicting smell of sweat, military-grade soap, and cigarette smoke accompanied the shadow on the other side of the table, along with a peek of brown hair. Brown hair, swept up in a loose mold of gel, with stubborn wisps sporadically poking up...a silhouette she had become acquainted with against her will.
“Liebgott,” she greeted amidst a sigh, fingers flexing over the bottles of antiseptic as she tidied them from the aftermath of other medics hurriedly retrieving one.
Joseph Liebgott, Easy Company’s Bay-Area hotspur, was a frequent flyer to the company’s medical tent, and she couldn’t as effortlessly shoo him on his way — he was a soldier from her company.
“Have a hangnail?” she mused, easing her forearms onto the edges of the crate, finally leveling her gaze with his doe eyes.
“Sunburn, actually,” he dismissed the tease that bounded his way.
“You poor baby,” she feigned a frown, emphasizing the tease with a soft tilt of her head.
“The sun here ain’t the same as it is in California,” he lightly huffed, readjusting his white tee in discomfort of the material fluttering against his raw skin, “It’s a beacon straight from Hell. Which, I guess, is fitting for all this bullshit.”
The molten gold sun ranked prominently on the list of disgruntlements that soldiers trudged in with on a daily basis — so it wasn’t a new grievance for her to bear in her patient load. But, there was something in Joseph Liebgott being the newest victim of its blaze. She fleetingly pondered how hours spent beneath the brilliant, relentless arcs of sun would be preferred to enduring another bout of his teasing pokes at her.
“How tragic for you,” she lightly rolled her eyes, drawing her stature straight from where it was slouched on the crate’s bolster, tidying the remainder of the bottles with the awareness that he wasn’t budging despite her implicit indications of annoyance at his presence.
"Your bedside manner is improving," he sarcastically remarked, toying with a few frays of wood on the side of one of the crates before leaning an elbow onto that same crate, a stance that still made him a decent extent taller than her.
"I try just for you, Joseph,” she hummed teasingly, shifting over to the crate of folded towels to fashion a cold compress for him, fleetingly hoping that the provision of it would send him on his way and she could do inventory with the absence of male perpetuated bothers.
Some semblance of a scoff rose from him at the bait-charged use of his first name. Dampening the white cloth in the adjacent water basin, she anticipated a snide remark to accompany the noise, well aware of his distaste with the utterance of his full name.
Truly, their banter was harmless bickering. It had been since the day he ambled into the aid center for his physical on the first day of basic training, a cocksure air billowing around him that met its match with her poised temperament.
He never derided her on the basis of her gender or shamed her presence amidst the droves of men in the Airborne. Evidently, the young man was raised right.
Nevertheless, Y/N kept him at arms length, tongue laden with sour remarks and a snide to distance herself for the sake of her position in the Airborne, and to not provoke the impishness of the other soldiers.
Alongside that, there were the handful of irks that danced along with their nearly daily encounters, ones that churned roughly within their interactions that seem more like instances of forced proximity.
"For your sensitive skin," she tightly smiled, propping the dampened mound of cloth towards him, which he accepted begrudgingly with an eye roll. Stepping towards the crate of haphazardly placed scissors, she clocked his lingering presence, how he remained in his stance with the dripping compress in his hand, his internal deliberation evident in his furrow brow — deliberation that would prolong his presence there.
"Did the heat get to your head, too, Liebgott?" she didn't bury her exasperation as she turned away from the crate.
"Eh, just gracing ‘ya with my presence — seems lonesome in here," he shrugged, eyes briefly scanning the tent to confirm his observation.
“Maybe for the likes of you,” the exasperation coiled further around her words, the tight smile on her lips drawing taut as a rope, “I quite prefer the silence.”
"Ouch," he feigned a wince, a vague crinkle from the feigned gesture folding around his eyes. He subsequently leaned the cold cloth onto his inflamed skin on the rear of his neck, genuinely cringing now from the stark contrast of temperatures radiating over his skin. To distract himself from the unpleasant sensation, he proceeded, "Poor Doc Roe."
Y/N's taut, unamused smile wavered with a flare of genuineness at the mention of her fellow medic and dweller in solitude.
"He's just as fond," she mused promptly, turning back towards her previous task of organization, a cue to the hotspur to depart, "Have a good evening, Liebgott."
Dubiously, he heeded the verbal and physical cues that were ushering him out of the tent, backpedaling as to briefly observe her traipse further into the tent. Now at the bedside of a homesick-burdened Private, her lips bear the semblance of a smile, face aglow with the dwindling sun.
The drift of his eyes on her was snuffed out with the ferocity of a bucket of water on an angry flurry of flames. No, don’t do that. Don’t go there, the scorn-edged words settled with the fortitude of iron in his mind.
With a hushed scoff at the dispel of a sigh and a flick of the wrist to cast the rag in a trash bin, he left the tent.
Inventory is rather endless, she had tiredly determined the evening after their jump into France, as Eugene, Spina, and her clocked a handful of hours securing and arranging their necessary supplies, supplementing them to the hefty landing gear they adorned.
And the task of counting supplies was even more painstaking when they were simultaneously caring for numerous men with a variety of wounds, that were of a range of severity and demand for supplies.
Distant artillery from the beach landings, ricocheted the cobblestone paths beneath her bloodied boots as she knelt alongside an eighteen-year-old Private with shrapnel in his bicep, securing a dense shroud of gauze around the wound.
"Just rest here before we get moving again — one of us will be around to check on everyone before we do," she remarked softly to the wide-eyed soldier, palm wandering on his forearm in a fleeting second of comfort for the internal grief that was churning through him.
Gradually, she fluidly rose to her feet, an anchor of ache settling quick into them from the early morning's long trek with Roe and Spina, from their erroneous landing site to the company's meeting place within Normandy's green countryside. Such exhaustion would have to be tucked away into her conscious, which was already churning with disconcert from what she had already witnessed that morning.
And she knew that such feelings would only progress as their time in Europe endured.
She sighed, almost imperceptible amidst the chatter and din of the makeshift aid station, walking with the company of the ache over to where they had established a makeshift inventory area. She plucked the clipboard adorned with a sole sheet of paper, starting to scan over the hastened notes of Roe and Spina.
Her gaze almost instantaneously discerned the haphazard penmanship of Eugene at the bottom of the paper: Y/N, get some sleep before ‘ya keel over on us - Gene.
The Cajun medic, forever abuzz with a sense of compassion that had him flitting around like a spright hummingbird, had a particular tendency to cavort around her. The breadcrumbs of his watchful disposition lingered within the brick confines of the battle-scarred cottage they had fixed into an aid station. A few ration packs adorned with her name scrawled across the surface, beckoning her to eat. A pair of scissors he had plucked from a groveling Frank Perconte. A new pouch for her medical kit after her's got lost after they jumped into Normandy. And two Hershey bars.
Eugene, pursuant in being a man of few words, hadn't ever budged in disclosing the tales behind the obtainment of any of them. More often then not, the endowments would indiscriminately appear amidst the chaos inflicted by their embattled surroundings.
Y/N exhaled, an ache of fatigue rising and flowing in her fingertips as she placed down the clipboard, gaze milling on Eugene's note. Sleep...rest. They were words she'd murmured a myriad of times to soldiers whose bodies were weakened by mosaics of bullets and shrapnel. Morphine would oftentimes be the serenity that would carry them into slumber.
For her, she'd only rest when the screams for a medic and the copper aroma of blood didn't greet her every time she fluttered her eyes shut.
She doesn't linger on the disconsolate nature of her ability to sleep for more than a beat, a variance of annoyance crawling beneath her skin at the semblance of self-sorrow that had briefly blossomed.
"Y/L/N," the spindly, furrowed-brow from Dog Company beckoned abruptly mid-rummage of the eye dressing crate.
She flicked her gaze up to him, Eugene's note receding like a wave into a neglected recess of her conscious.
"When was the last time you applied boric acid ointment to Rogers over there?" a loose gesture was pardoned towards the sergeant they had received earlier that morning, the young man’s face primarily occupied in a shroud of cottony gauze.
Propelled by habit, her hand sought around the table for the measly, leather-clad notebook that housed her proclivity to scrawl down patient notes and inventory needs. Her personal paper-trail outside of the dogmatic (and quite annoying) record system enforced by the Airborne.
Her hand found purchase on the threadbare wood of the table, the anticipated and familiar heap of leather vacant from the place she had settled it amidst her resupply of tourniquets that morning. Her fingers lamely stalled in the void of its absence, mind bounding akin to the fervid twirl of a record. Had she brought it with her when she rushed off to aid the Private down the street? No, her only material companions had been her medical kit. Had she left it at the bedside of one of the cots? Her eyes flitted about the ten beds. No.
“Y/L/N?” the medic asked, impatience spilling like oil amidst the weariness on his unshaven face.
She blinked, the frenetic trounce around the room ceasing with the delicate beat of her lashes. Her bowed hand strayed over to Eugene’s own notes nestled beneath his canteen, sidling it out from the light weight imposed by the drinking apparatus. “Sorry,” she muttered, fingertips brittled by antiseptic roving down the length of the paper consumed by scrawls of time stamps and patient notes about dosages and bandage changes. The dance across the papery surface halted at the slapdash scrawl of the sergeant’s surname — 9:30 AM, boric acid treatment, 1 ounce.
“Nine-thirty this morning,” Y/N offered back to the medic, his gratitude conveyed in a curt nod as he reached to retrieve a container of the ointment.
Fingers drumming an aimless melody across the pencilled swoops of Eugene’s handwriting, she tilted her head wholly towards the medic’s direction, “Has anyone else been in here at all?”
Her voice struck the air in a hum that scarcely concealed a huff of annoyance. The medic fixed her with a glance that subtly spoke of his disinterest in discussion beyond the task of what he had brought him over.
He then thrummed a finger against the ointment’s container in thought, casting a pairing of a sidelong glance and shrug to her after a few moments, “I did see one of Easy’s soldiers wander in ‘bout an hour ago when you left to treat that Private down the road — had tousled brown hair, clenched jaw, seemed sorta pissy.”
The syncopate against the paper halted with a lull as the descriptors pooled with recognition into her mind. Joseph Liebgott.
A blossom of irritation festered in her chest, a twitch of a frustrated clench in her jaw. Thievery was truly a new low.
“I’ll be back,” she forced composure through a lump of anger in her throat, the Dog Company medic acknowledging her with another spared, disinterested nod.
Departing hastily then through the ramshackle doorway of the cottage, her tired brown boots crunched against the stone in a frustrated tune towards their CP.
Outside the row of cottages and businesses that were deemed as Easy’s makeshift CP, soldiers took advantage of the current composure of the war zone — picking at their rations, chain-smoking, thumbing through threadbare books, and enthusiastically exchanging stories of their lives outside of the discharge of bullets and explosions of artillery.
“Hey, Doc,” George Luz acknowledged from where he was nestled against the bullet-painted brick of what appeared to be a bakery. Somehow, enthusiasm never failed to swarm in his tone, an unrelenting presence that formed as a perk of a simper on his lips as he peered up at her.
“Luz,” though her response was threaded with curtness and a rustle of annoyance, she yielded a smile for his sake.
George hummed a little to himself. “I’m gonna reckon that you didn’t seek us out for a chat.”
Skip Muck, kindred in George’s seriocomic tendencies, poked his spoon towards her amidst a bite of beans from where he sat alongside the aforementioned man, “Yeah, you’re lookin’ pretty pissed off.”
A derisive noise sputtered out of George, the scoff akin to the cooling down of a Jeep’s engine. His hand, varnished by bandings of dirt and oil, plucked a carton of rumpled Lucky Strikes from his jacket flap as he stuck Skip with: “Way to lay it on, Muck.”
The tawny-haired soldier relinquished his spoon back to its job of scraping sporadically at the metal can of food with an exaggerated huff, indicating to her that he was keen to retort back.
With the fluidity she’d spare to cauterize a wound, Y/N interjected on the simmering spat, “I’m looking for Liebgott.”
The duo, already departed with their momentary tiff, simultaneously turned their heads toward her. If she were frank, their expressions bore an absence of surprise that Joseph Liebgott was her objective.
Skip, ever the short comer in masquerading his true feelings on any matter, smirked impishly while pausing his spoon mid-scrape, “Before we give anything away about his whereabouts, I think you owe an explanation as to why you’re after our dear Joseph.”
A similar simper emerged behind the honeyed glow of George’s cigarette, fingers mindlessly twiddling with his lighter in a metallic melody. The perch of his mouth was indication enough that he was assuming the same angle as Skip.
Y/N wasn’t entirely certain why she continued to entertain their charade — perhaps out of recognition that this moment had stood witness to levity that seemed aloof these days.
She settled her hands at the curve of her hips, framing the stance with a feign of composure rather than impatience.
“It’s truly not as galvanizing as your imaginations have chalked it up to be, boys,” she insisted as to shoo off their pokes and prods at a matter that didn’t revolve around ammunition, artillery, or the Germans.
“Then we’re tight lipped,” Skip pinned her with a long sideways glance, willing himself to swallow a mouthful of cold beans.
“Tight-lipped ‘bout what?” the root of their vacuous, tit-for-tat conversation emerged with the prickling one may feel at the arrival of a pestering itch.
Joseph Liebgott, footfalls coiled with nonchalance, traipsed towards them. It was clear that his imperturbability wasn’t frayed by the threat of Death that was tucked behind every corner.
“Hey, Doc,” he clocked her presence rather than Skip and George. A dry chuckle ricocheted around the rumpled cigarette crooked in his lips, “Ya lookin’ a little more peeved than usual.”
She inhaled subtly, but evident enough for exasperation, “I know you took it.”
Joe’s mouth ticked down into a frown of contemplation, though it reeked of being a gesture of formality more than genuineness.
“I don’t have any idea what this is about, Doc,” he stuffed his hands into his pockets with a feeble shrug.
Y/N briefly pursed her lips, halting as if to mend her temper but decided civility wasn’t enough.
“Bullshit, you know what you did, Liebgott,” his surname was a punctuation mark laced with the sharpness and cruelty of the artillery that rattled off in the distance.
A blink flashed against his eyes, perhaps a manifestation of his brain staggering at the presence of the cuss word now in the air. He often was certain such words didn’t even exist in her vocabulary.
Bless George and Skip, they had both attempted to remain resigned to silence, yet the pinnacle in tension was a boil-over for their compulsion to react. George lightly chuckled, and Skip lowly whistled. In odd yet fitting synchronicity, Y/N and Joe tossed subdued glances of admonishment at the pair.
The moment of rhymed movements was fleeting, as Joe flashed back to her. He attempted not to gauge the likeness of her expression and the rather stormy clouds overhead. That was Y/N - unassuming but could snap and bite when needed.
Joe subtly clicked his tongue, curt taps of his fingers against his rifle’s barrel as he smirked offhandedly, “I've done a lot of things — I need to know which one you found out about.”
Her eyes fashioned with churns of frustration at the leering brunette across from her, “My notebook. I know you were in the aid station earlier and the timing-”
Lithe fingers still bounding a rhythm against the surface of his rifle, Joe interjected upon her simmering war path, “I’m gonna spare myself from the lecture and say that, yeah, I took it. Gene told me to.”
She inhaled subtly, but evident enough for an awareness to be made for her stall in raging thoughts — Gene?
Clocking the collective perplex of George, Skip, and Y/N with ease, Joe nodded, “He told me you were wearing yourself thin down at the aid station — said you needed a little push towards easing up so he gave me it.”
Looking down at a haphazard crack in the cobblestone beneath her right boot, she couldn’t bring herself to damn Eugene Roe.
“Well, that sounds like you care about dear Y/N here, Joseph,” George’s voice bled through the static that swathed her thoughts.
“Yeah, there’s something underneath all that haughtiness and hair after all,” Skip mused with a vague, accompanying gesture towards the hotspur at the stem of his words.
Joe’s head turned impossibly fast towards George and Skip, a vague, vague pink on his cheeks, “Ain’t the two of you got somewhere else to be?”
Skip placed aside his can of beans, the attempt at nourishing himself rather fruitless as demonstrated by the heap of beans remaining in the tin encasement.
“Can’t fault us for tryin’ to find some entertainment around here,” George dealt out in retort, unfazed by Joe’s piqued side-eyed gaze that would have properly shut-up anyone else.
“Pretty sure Nazi fucking Germany isn’t meant to be entertaining,” said Joe, breeze fluttering around strands of mud-ridden hair, a rumpled image that nestled in companionship with the frenzied portrayal he was depicting currently.
Skip’s laugh doesn’t carry farther than their immediate presence, tilting his head almost mockingly up at Joe, “We strike a nerve?” Without a moment spared, his gaze was then tipped towards her, an implication that she was at the very nucleus of whatever uncharted territory they had come across.
Y/N wondered if the young man from Tonawanda had no shame, particularly with the glint in his eye that spoke of just how much he was relishing this.
Slighting the vexation that swept against her already frayed nerves, she flicked her eyes to Joe. Tired and frustrated, she then stepped towards him, “Can I just have it back?”
The ticking bomb of exasperation that was Joseph Liebgott diffused in a subtleness only recognized by their abrupt proximity.
His hand was prompt to produce the forsaken heap of leather from a rear pocket, placing it upon her awaiting hand. She pretended that her skin didn’t spatter with goosebumps at the fleeting skim of their fingers. The crimson that burgeoned within her cheeks dwelled too near for comfort of her resolve to utterly despise him — she had to, she always had.
Joe was aware when her pupils dilated after the touch, the entire moment atypical for a pairing with mockeries always running off their tongues at one another. He pursed his lips fleetingly, an action to separate himself from the inexplicableness of the moment -- distance himself from whatever it was they had been avidly eluding since basic training.
The smell of cigarettes and military grade soap swirled around her wits as he bumped her shoulder, shifting to saunter off, “Get some rest, will you?”
She squinted against the slivers of sunlight that traced the clouds now, “If it keeps you off my ass and outta my aid station, then, sure.”
Joe scoffed, though the noise carried a teasing lilt, “I don’t know…I think you like me hanging round ‘ya — keeps you on your toes.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Come on! You’d be less entertained -“
“Whatever soothes your ego,” she tutted.
She rolled her eyes with a quirk of an amused smile, “I’ll see you around, Liebgott.”
The mischief-spun gaze cast over his shoulder as he gradually stepped away confirmed that he’d continue to linger in her life beyond being a fellow soldier. And, in the wake of his influence, she wasn’t quite as determined to pin his tarrying presence as a nuisance.
Tucking the notebook against the wrinkled, olive-toned landscape of her shirt, Y/N glanced at George and Skip. A ghost of a sincere smile betrayed the facade she’d poised at Joe not even a heartbeat before, “Hope that served the two of you with whatever shits and giggles the day owed you.”
George simpered up at her, “Eh. You’re keepin’ him in check - it’s a favor to us all.”
Mending the flyaways on the fringe of her hairline, she vacuously nodded at him, “Someone’s gotta keep you boys in line.”
She then meandered towards the brick pathway back to the aid station, drawing her posture adamantly tall, a silent preparation for a return to the duty of her position. Before entirely departing, she beckoned over her shoulder, “You two saw nothing.”
Skip treated her appeal with a partial turn and a wry smile, “Mouths zipped and eyes closed.”
He turned to George once she was at a distance that settled her out of earshot,
“Bet your ass a carton of Lucky Strikes that they either kill each other or realize their dumbass likes the other.”
His hand accordingly is propositioned towards George, the chestnut-haired soldier promptly clasping it to secure their deal.
gracieabrams
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
vaporwave
