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The bar was small and dim and dirty, but still bustling. David had visited a few times on previous trips to London, with some success. The crowd usually played well for him—though he was striking out tonight—and the proprietors were careful to keep the atmosphere relaxed, so there was never enough of a ruckus to alert the MPs, which David appreciated. Catching a discharge from the service would be shameful enough without the added humiliation of being exposed as queer in the process.
He was finishing off the last of a beer and idly debating whether he might be better off trying his luck at the park when a low, rich voice inquired, “Can I get you another?”
David nearly jumped at the sudden burst of warm breath curling against his cheek. He twisted on his stool to discover a man standing at his shoulder, smirk tugging one corner of his mouth up into a dimple. He looked to be a few years older than David, handsome and fair, with a thin mustache and wavy hair he wore parted crisply to one side and combed neatly back. His pale gaze danced in the moody amber light.
David licked his lips. “Sure,” he agreed, nodding to his glass. “Lager?”
The man smiled and tucked himself gracefully onto the stool next to David, flagging the barman down with two fingers. He ordered another beer for David and a cognac for himself and then turned and said, “Nicholas.”
“Kenny,” David supplied, as was his habit.
“Kenny?” Nicholas repeated, and David nodded. The barman set two glasses down—one a standard pint and the other bell-shaped with a stem like a wine glass. Nicholas slid the beer over. “Tell me Kenny: what is it you do?”
“I’m in the Paratroops.”
“You’re an American,” Nicholas observed delightedly, eyebrows jumping. “And rather a mad one, I should think, willfully leaping out of planes all the time.”
“I prefer to think of it - ” David started, but Nicholas cut him off.
“Not that I’m unfamiliar with the concept, myself. I’m uncountably blessed to serve as a pilot in Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force, you see.” David had already guessed as much, from the unit patch sewn onto Nicholas’s shoulder and the winged brevet at his breast. “It’s a core part of our curriculum, ejecting ourselves from an aircraft for all manner of reasons. Tell me,” Nicholas leaned in, close and conspiratorial, “what’s the highest you’ve jumped from?”
“Oh,” David blinked, caught slightly off-guard by the question. It wasn’t often that fellows in places like these wanted to talk shop in any great detail. “Normandy was supposed to be 1500 feet, but - ”
Nicholas snorted and flashed David a condescending smirk. It was the kind of face you might make to see a dog at the dinner table, struggling with the cutlery—cute but pitiable.
“My mates and I have jumped five, six times that,” Nicholas said, giving his glass a lazy swirl. “Usually while our planes are on fire, or in a nosedive. Not for the faint of heart, tangling with the Luftwaffe.” He took a quick slug of cognac and then licked his teeth, pinning David with a narrow, assessing gaze.
David arched an eyebrow.
“I don’t usually go in for brunettes,” Nicholas offered, apropos of nothing, “but something about it suits you.”
David’s other eyebrow jumped up to join the first for a split second before they both dove down into a confused furrow. “I...thanks?”
“Not much to be done about the uniform, though, is there?” Nicholas continued thoughtfully, eyes meandering down David’s class-A’s. He leaned over, craning his neck to get a look at David’s ass, and David flushed with uncomfortable heat. Nicholas, completely oblivious to this, pressed his mouth into a flat line and then sighed through his nose. “Shame, that. Lucky for us both, I’d rather see you out of it.” He took another sip of cognac and straightened back up again. “Have you got a room in town?”
“I - ”
“And not one of those utterly dismal Red Cross shoeboxes.” Nicholas cut a hand through the air and rolled his eyes. David, who was indeed lodging at a nearby Red Cross billet, helped himself to a generous swallow of beer.
“It takes a special kind of foolishness to fall for that ruse,” Nicholas continued. He was grinning with the easy confidence of a man secure that his own cleverness would spare him the mistake upon which he was currently expounding. “The beds ought to be sacrificed for kindling, which is to say nothing of the service staff.”
David had found most Red Cross volunteers to be gregarious and welcoming people, so he took another pointed sip of his drink. His face was still hot and the warm beer wasn’t helping, sitting sour in his stomach, but it was better than reaching over to slug Nicholas. Probably.
Nicholas, incorrectly reading whatever he found in David’s expression, grinned and dropped his hand to David’s thigh. He nodded over his shoulder and offered, “Toilets here aren’t bad, if you’d rather not wait.”
“Ah, no, I - ” David started, leaning back a bit out of Nicholas’s space. He tried for a grin and landed somewhat nearer a grimace, though that didn’t seem to bother Nicholas any from the way he leaned in further.
“Don’t tell me you’re too good for a go in the loo,” Nicholas said, clicking his teeth with that same sad-dog curl to his smirk and one eyebrow arched high. “I can’t be the first fellow that’s offered, with a mouth on you like that.”
David’s voice caught in his throat, sticky and sharp. There was something tight and unpleasant coiling in his chest. Nicholas moved his hand higher and David sucked a sharp breath and closed his eyes and -
“Hey, sweetheart,” a familiar voice interrupted, low and sly. “Sorry I’m late.”
David blinked and turned his head. He barely had time to make out the impossibly smug face of one Joseph Liebgott before he was sealing their mouths together in a kiss. David made a soft, startled noise in the back of his throat and Liebgott brought his hand up to curl, proprietary and affectionate, over David’s cheek. His mouth was soft and warm and a little yeasty, by this point in the night, though David didn’t much mind. He skimmed David’s lower lip with his teeth as he pulled away and David nearly shivered.
“I got caught up with the guys,” Liebgott explained, from a few inches off. “Didn’t mean to make you wait.” He still had his hand on David’s face, and he swept his thumb in a soft stroke over David’s skin. His eyes were dark and sparking with mischief. David licked his lips and Liebgott winked, darting in for another quick, chaste kiss before David could gather his wits. He murmured, “Mach mit,” in a ragged whisper against David’s mouth and David blinked stupidly.
Go with it? Go with what? This charade, presumably, though David had no idea what, precisely, Liebgott thought it was going to accomplish. David nodded anyway and brought his hand up to Liebgott’s waist, sliding it up under his jacket to rest at his hip.
“S’alright,” he said hoarsely. “It wasn’t long.”
“Still,” Liebgott insisted. He turned then, as though he was only just noticing the man directly behind him.
Nicholas had retreated back into his own space, thank God, and did not look best pleased at having his ham-fisted flirtations interrupted.
“Thanks for keeping my boy here company,” Liebgott said with a grin. He was looking particularly dapper this evening, with his hair slicked back and his cap at an angle that was one wrong move from toppling off his head entirely. He slung an arm around David’s shoulders as he spoke and David retaliated by drawing him in at the waist so he was half-sat on David’s lap. Liebgott dug a punishing knuckle into David’s shoulder where Nicholas couldn’t see. David bit his lip against a yelp and pinched him under his jacket. Liebgott twitched very slightly but didn’t otherwise react.
“Your boy?” Nicholas echoed skeptically.
“Yeah,” Liebgott confirmed. He reached over and plucked David’s beer off the bartop, helping himself to a healthy sip. “You got a problem with that?”
Nicholas looked from David to Liebgott and back again, gaze narrow and suspicious. David smiled up at Liebgott and did his best to look appropriately besotted. It wasn’t especially difficult—he had been nursing this stupid, hair-pulling infatuation since Toccoa, not that anything had or would ever come of it.
“And if I do?” Nicholas asked imperiously, tilting his chin up.
The smile Liebgott flashed him was the glint off the edge of a freshly sharpened blade. “Well,” he drawled, leaning in and lowering his voice. “In that case, I’d have to take you outside and show you why they call me the Barber.”
David managed at the last second to turn his bitten-off laughter into a look of wide-eyed horror. Nicholas went promptly green under his aristocratic complexion. He fumbled his way through something that might have been an apology, dropped a few crumpled notes on the bar, and withdrew to a dark, distant corner of the room.
Liebgott tugged Nicholas’s stool nearly out from underneath him as he fled, settling himself next to David so that their legs tangled together.
“Jesus Christ, Web,” Liebgott said, shaking his head, as soon as Nicholas was out of earshot. He finished off David’s beer without comment or acknowledgement. “I’ve seen crashing and burning before but that was downright painful.” He sounded unabashedly gleeful about this.
“Could’ve stayed out of it, if you were enjoying the show so much,” David shot back. He was flushing again, but the prickle under his skin this time was like a slow, steamy submersion into a warm bath.
Liebgott made a little gusting sound of amused dissatisfaction through his teeth. “And let that schmuck bulldog you into snapping your cap and getting us all tossed out on our ear? Yeah, sure.”
He put his hand on David’s knee and moved in close enough to bump their noses together, grinning and bright-eyed. David tensed up for a second, but Liebgott murmured, “Relax. He’s still watching.”
David nodded and melted into another slow, heated kiss. He could feel his heartbeat in his belly. Liebgott was clean-shaven, skin smooth and soft and pinking slightly from David’s two-day stubble when he pulled away.
David took a careful breath. “How long do you think we’ll have to keep this up?”
“Why?” Liebgott asked, wagging David’s empty glass in the air to catch the barman’s attention. “Afraid you ain’t got it in you?”
David huffed and rolled his eyes. “Please. Five bucks says you’ll break character before I do.”
Liebgott’s grin was wide and vicious. “You’re on,” he agreed, tugging David in by the lapel. “Now get over here and prove it, sweetheart.”