Webster doesn't know why he stays with Liebgott.

Their relationship is psychotic, irrational; a sharp, jarring litany of fights and fucks and frustration. They argue over everything, getting up in each other's faces, pushing, yelling—and he doesn't know why Liebgott does this to him, doesn't know why he reacts so fiercely to everything Joe throws at him when he doesn't fight with any other member of Easy, not ever. Maybe it's the war, maybe it's the death and the blood and the way something inside him feels cold when he wakes up in the morning. Maybe it's Joe and the way he smirks at Webster sometimes, like he knows something Web doesn't, his harsh voice and his glinting eyes and the way he carries himself, a hundred and twenty pounds of swagger and up-in-your-face, I-don't-give-a-fuck San Francisco cabbie—and Jesus, the guy can't be any taller than 5'9 but he carries himself like he's 6'8.

"Look, Joe, would you just let me explain?"

"I don't give a fuck!" Liebgott spits, face twisted up with anger. "People died in that stupid freezing-ass forest, Web—my friends, your friends, and you waltz in after four goddamn months without a goddamn scratch—"

"Jesus, Lieb, listen to yourself! I was in the hospital, it's not like I could help it!"

"Yeah?" Liebgott is getting up in his face, jabbing fingers, eyes narrowed, a nasty sneer on his face. "Funny, cause that didn't seem to stop Popeye or Joe Toye or anybody else in this fuckin' regiment who had the balls to—"

"You little shit," Webster snarls, shoving Joe hard, with both hands, and if he wasn't so blinded by white-hot rage he would have thought about how he was picking up Joe's vocabulary, starting to talk like the boys, despite his expensive Ivy League education. "You got no right to act like—"

"To act like what? Huh? I got no right to act like what? I got no right to act like I been through the fuckin' war, is that what you're sayin', Web? Because lemme tell ya something, I'm not the one who—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, would you both just shut up?" snaps Babe, and for a second Web is genuinely surprised because this is Babe they're talking about here, Babe who hardly ever gets angry at anybody, Babe who always has a smile and a wiseass comment at the ready.

So Web backs down, goes on the patrol to prove himself to Joe and to the others, and later Joe makes it up to him in fierce kisses and hurried carresses and hot breath on Webster's skin, sweat slipping between them and coating the places Joe's hands and teeth and lips miss. He doesn't know what this…thing—whatever they have together—is with Joe, can't figure out the way Joe's shouting at him one minute and then moaning broken German in his ear the next, the way their relationship is a study in extremes.

Hell, maybe Joe is a study in extremes. He's sharp and scrawny and harsh, fierce and friendly and loving and loyal and angry, so angry, and he feels everything so much it hurts. Hurts himself, hurts Webster. Webster doesn't even know if he likes the guy anymore, except sometimes when the sun catches on his hair or his skin or the curve at the corners of his mouth and he gives Webster that look—half-smirk, half-smile—and God, Web can't seem to stay away from him.

Joe can't stay away from Web, either. They fight as though they hate being in the same room with each other, and sometimes Joe's drunk and sometimes he's not but he's always intoxicated, high off the adrenaline rushing through his veins, off the blood pounding in his brain, off the way he'll shove Webster so hard he stumbles backwards and then grab his jacket and crash their lips together in the same movement. Web spends hours laying awake at night, hyperaware of Joe's body on the cot next to him, thinking about how they shouldn't do this, about all the reasons why it's wrong and immoral and illegal—and the next morning when Joe wakes up and gives Web's shoulder a shove and says, "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," sending him that infuriatingly arrogant grin, it all falls away and he goes right back to where he started.

Joe fights with Webster over stupid shit and then acts like it's all Web's fault, starts arguments and abandons them as soon as he sees fit, drives him crazy with fumbled gropes under the night sky and inside in the dark when everyone except the two of them is asleep, and then sends him that stupid smirk that makes him forget about all of it. He nudges Web's shoulder when Web gets trapped in the mires of his own memory, when his breath is ragged in his lungs as the faces of every man he's ever seen die flash in his mind. He laughs with Web in the back of the truck and trades stories about books and families and San Francisco, takes out two smokes without Web ever having to ask and kisses a trail down his neck in secret moments in between patrols and battles and shellings. Web is tired of wondering where he stands, tired of never knowing what to expect, tired of Joe's angry words and the way he manages to risk his life every time they see action and tired of the heat that burns in Webster's veins whenever Joe licks his lips tauntingly, teasing him.

He fucking hates Joe Liebgott, but he loves him, too.