you're too young & eager to love

I watch Inglourious Basterds far too frequently. I blame the stellar cast and the abundance of pairing possibilities. And the fact that I have an enormous crush on Michael Fassbender, so I wanted to write his character. I don't think I quite got it … but it's a try!

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Her hair is, in fact, far warmer than he expected. A butter shade of blonde, much like the scotch candies his sister favored as a child, and not the stark platinum that the silver screen suggests. Hicox had only ever seen her in the theaters before, on an elevated screen, alongside other worshipping devotees and critiques. The camera is skilled; black and white transforms glances and gazes, all light and trickery. So, he’s rather surprised by her softness – the natural, sweeping gestures of her hand as she smokes her favored French cigarettes, the slight smudge of lipstick against the corner of her mouth, and the mark of playfulness in her eyes.
She sees him, but for a moment all she registers is another German uniform. He has to take a step forward first, pushing through the crowd of the Parisian café, and then recognition settles subtly against her jaw.
“Liebling!” Von Hammersmark calls, standing, her thighs and the soft charcoal of her dress brushing the edge of the table. She is both businesslike and charming; she touches the inside of his arm with her fingertips, a grazing, practiced gesture, and he touches his mouth to her powdered cheek in return.
She must have done this a hundred times a day, tantalizing men with her stardom, but Hicox is hit with lust regardless. She smells faintly of lilac and some undistinguishable perfume, a scent that would best be spread behind a woman’s knees or the dip of skin above her breasts.
“The beauty and pride of the Fatherland. I am at your service.” His German is rather effortless, but the slope and drawl of his British accent punctuates the words, a honey undercurrent to the steel-like language of the Nazis. “I was quite impressed by your performance in Der Verrat.”
Bridget has the grace to lower her eyes, a humbly gesture, and Hicox helps her to her seat. She crosses her legs beneath the table and he resists the urge to touch her knee, to let his fingers travel upward, beneath the hem of her dress. The snap of her lighter brings his attention back to her face, though now he focuses on the shape of her mouth as she drags on the filter slowly. “Your German is very good, Lieutenant. But the accent is peculiar.”
“A trifling.” He shrugs, his movements easy, flowing, and when he smiles it is all teeth. He remembers why he is here to begin with – Bridget von Hammersmark is their contact. Hicox was sent as a dog to her beckoning when she demanded a perfunctory meeting.
(She wanted to make sure his abilities were worth risking her traitor’s neck, and he had always respected his commander’s orders.)


He drinks whiskey and she has champagne, her red lipstick imprinting the rim of the crystal after every sip.
They speak of statistics and family and duty. Then they speak of film, his mistress, who has had to lie, neglected since king and country required him. She tells him about the recent films, the ones he has not seen under the Reich, and how her most recent film has certainly been her most splendid. He feels as though he is being interviewed – there is a slight sting inside of him, a bruise to his ego, since she is merely an actress after all. A hidden agent, but surely without the air-starved loneliness he is accustomed to, the secrecy and the solitude.
It could be the whiskey or the way she leans forward, towards him, but he places his calloused hand against her leg without a thought. His fingers tease the fabric of her dress, feeling the heat of her skin beneath it, skirting the edge deliberately. The riskiest performance of their lives is but a few days ago – he hardly thinks this is dangerous in comparison. Bridget seems to deliberate, but if only for a second, and then she touches his arm again with a youthful laugh. Beneath the table, she lets her knees slip apart, and his knuckles brush the inside of her leg.
Once upon a time, he thought he preferred a bit of shyness in a girl, but age and battle changed that.
Leaning closer under the pretenses of moving aside her hair, his mouth near her ear, Hicox tells her that he would place his hand against her back, push her down and over the perfectly polished table. Here, now, in this crowded café, rucking her dress above her thighs and skimming his fingers against her skin. When she blushes, a delightful spread of heat across her face, her breath catching in her chest, he laughs, murmuring, “I thought you enjoyed being watched.”

After watching Inglourious Basterds, I decided to try my hand at writing some of the characters. Initially, I wanted to try Landa (because, hello, Christoph Waltz, you are phenominal) but ... he was too difficult. I didn't feel up to the challenge.

I focused instead on Archie Hicox and Hugo Stiglitz. Michael Fassbender as Hicox intrigued me; he's charming and clever. He's also very skilled with accents. Stiglitz doesn't say much throughout the film but, as one of the Basterds, he's given more of a background than most of the others.

I didn't achieve much. I need to rewatch the movie. But here are my attempts!

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Hugo Stiglitz, the German. He’s a rough-hewn blonde, built of rigid lines; the man’s a brute, but he sharpens his knife with a skill and precision that suggests patience. It’s something that Hicox does not expect, and so he does not trust it either. This man, he thinks, will be the first to undo them. The least likely to remain stable. The wedge of his jaw, the coiled violence of his strong arms – there’s a simmering instability lurking beneath that silent bearing.

Hicox drapes himself against the doorframe, body slanted, with the cut of his spine suggesting an offhand authority. He is a lieutenant, after all. But Stiglitz glances up and catches him with his eyes – a look that, momentarily, has him pinned like a gasping, paralyzed moth, through the gullet.

When the Basterd draws his blade, without haste, down the strip of sharpening leather, Hicox feels flayed, pink and exposed.

-

Stiglitz smokes his crumpled cigarette down to the filter. He speaks English with an accent, but his clever tongue is naturally rough.

Hicox’s English is sweetened by being British. A touch of upperclassman to go along with his scotch and water. Teasing like the point of light at the tip of a sword.

-

Stiglitz scalps a Gestapo. Plunging the knife deep into the man’s head, he carves along the curve of his brain. Fragments of blood and bone cling to his hands; there’s blood on his jacket and shirt, on a scrape of skin by his neck.

The lieutenant feels a little sick. Not because he has not seen violence before, but because the German is calloused and quick, unflinching and seemingly uncaring about his role as a butcher. When he looks up, he salutes Hicox with a thin, mocking smile.

“You really are quite skilled with that.” The knife, he adds to himself, but his eyes motion towards the blade.

Stiglitz murmurs something that might sound like practice, but he likes how the other man sounds impressed.

Later, they slosh back a few mouthfuls of scotch together.