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A mortar screamed overhead, the early evening barrage beginning again. Snafu barely glanced up, his chin tucked into his chest as he watched Eugene flinch, and touch the top of his helmet as though he was checking it was still there. Like it would help if a mortar landed on one of their heads. Snafu sucked his teeth, and grunted, “Probably one’a ours.”
“”S that s’posed to make me feel better?” Eugene asked, and Snafu didn’t answer, just needled him with his eyes long enough that Eugene dropped his gaze.
Eugene, of the battered little pocket bible and his careful, curious tallymarks. Of the dry wit and the frustrating, endearing naivety, of the gold cross hung around his throat like a neon sign. He’d began tucking his head down against Snafu’s arm at night, to sleep, and Snafu was still attempting to inch past it into some kind of understanding. He thumbed at the dime around his neck, and sucked his teeth again. Confusing.
“You wanna new foxhole partner?” Snafu asked, voice just loud enough to carry across the expanse of that hideous crumbly rock between them. The sun was beating down hard on the top of his bare head, but it was better than having his head sweat in a helmet so he tried to ignore it. “Burgie?” He asked, when Eugene’s head popped up.
“No.” Eugene said, and cocked his head to the side. “Why?” His stub of a pencil was hovering delicately above the dogeared pages of his bible-turned-diary, index finger just so. The nape of Snafu’s neck was hot, and he rubbed at it, agitated.
“Nothin’.” Snafu grumbled, already halfway to his feet as he dug through his dungarees for his smokes. “Nothin’, Sledge.”
The sky was just beginning to streak purple, another heavy, humid evening preparing to descend. Artillery was still whistling overhead, undoubtedly their own just by the fact they hadn’t hit anywhere near yet, though that was becoming less and less of a certainty. Snafu puffed on his cigarette, mind on Eugene’s bible and his killing hands as he tramped through their ill thought out camp. Head on his shoulder as he slept, the warm weight of his body against Snafu’s side. It was making Snafu’s head twist in the worst way, because he knew about God and he knew about boys, but never considered the two together.
“Lookin’ serious, Snaf.” Burgie had caught up with him, fallen into step in that easy manner he had. Snafu sped up a little, just to fuck with him. He wasn’t going anywhere, really. Just needed to work off some the nervous energy that had been coiling in his bones since the start of the campaign. Too much sitting and waiting, too much time with his own thoughts.
“Lot on my mind.” Snafu said, shortly, and took a drag off his cigarette as the two of them skirted a pair of men arguing over some muddy cards. “If ya must know.”
“You know I don’t give a shit, Snafu.” Burgie said affably, and knocked his arm against Snafu’s. “There’s a war goin’ on, dontcha know?”
“Coulda fooled me.” Snafu grumbled, pulling up short so sharply that Burgie kept walking a couple steps. “Hey, Burgie, you believe in God?”
Burgie looked perplexed, wandering back the few feet to Snafu’s side. “This what’s on your mind?” He asked, and Snafu just shrugged. “Sure I do, don’t you?”
Snafu shrugged again, tapping ash from the end of his cigarette as he scanned the horizon. “Dunno.” He muttered. “Not sure God would want me believin’.”
Eugene’s head tucked close to his at night, the steady sounds of his breathing in the pockets of silence between artillery rounds. The gnawing pain like toothache deep inside him, like the roil of a seasick stomach; it felt like a penance he wasn’t sure he believed in. He took a final drag off his cigarette, and spit into the ground after the pitched butt, anything to get the bad taste from his mouth.
“Think he’d do anything to wash his hands’a me.” He added, and hitched a smirk onto his face just as Burgie decided to peer up at him properly. “Right?” He drawled, turning on his heel with a rasp of loose, shattered rock.
“You shouldn’t say shit like that, Snafu.” Burgie muttered, falling back into step with Snafu, who had made up his mind to pace the camp until his mind felt a little less like a storm waiting to happen. He could practically taste the tang of metal on his tongue, but that could be blood, grit, mud.
“Ain’t it a sin to lie?” Snafu bit back, tapping his pack of cigarettes against his palm with a little more force than necessary. The cardboard bent in his hand, and he smoothed his thumb against it with a grunt.
Burgie didn’t say a thing to that, just said, “Don’t take out your fuckin’ mood on me,” before he walked away, shoulders square and set.
Snafu kept pacing, pulling up short before he reached Eugene and retracing his steps. The foxhole, the smell of Eugene’s hair, the cover of inky darkness, the flares in the sky and Eugene’s soft sleep noises. He couldn’t handle the weight of the guilt, he wanted to tear his hair out but chainsmoked instead. The call to fall into positions was a relief, and Snafu didn’t let himself linger on the way his and Eugene’s hands met clumsily over on the body of the mortar, because things were left to slide in war that couldn’t in those pockets of peace they found themselves in during the long periods of waiting.
He had felt sick and black in his soul for days. He knew something was brewing, something his tenuously held faith had summoned for leading a boy like Eugene astray, but couldn’t put his finger on it.
The sound of the mortar was deafening, and he chose to focus on that rather than the weight of sin resting heavy on his back.
------
Snafu was shot in the shoulder two weeks later, which may have been the ultimate penance from his long life of sin if he believed in any of that. Instead, it felt like closure, like an inevitable ending.
He felt nothing at first, just the slam of the bullet into the meaty part of his shoulder, just above the armpit, the sensation of a punch, pushing him off his balance. Then, pain, all consuming and sickly, churning his stomach to shreds as he instinctively clutched as his shoulder, slippery from the blood that had begun to pump from it. Pain, which dulled under the rush of adrenaline and sharp, coppery fear almost immediately as Snafu crumpled under the force of it. Pain, pain, pain, and then numb all at once. He caught a snapshot of Burgie’s expression, those wide blue eyes huge in his face, as he grabbed at an outcrop of rock that worked only to shred his fingertips before the ground rushed up to meet him.
Boots, knees, legs, hands reaching into him and over him, the faint awareness of his clothes being tugged away and of cloth being pressed to his wound, but nothing else. His hands felt like they were moving through tar, or that black treacle his mama wouldn’t let him touch as a kid, as he tried weakly, futilely, to push away whoever was murmuring unintelligible words in his ear, low and fast like a hornet. He couldn’t understand them, like it was another language, and that distressed him the most. It mattered, more than the white hot slug of iron in his shoulder, more than the blood between his fingers and the feeling of hands clutching him all over.
Eugene’s hand passed by his field of vision; he would know it in darkness, disembodied, blinded. The delicate crook of the wrist and the writing callus on his index, dirty nails and bone deep grime. It returned with gauze, back past him, and that was enough for Snafu to conjure words from some down deep part of himself where he had begun to retreat.
“Just get it out.” He managed through gritted teeth, half-delirious as the pain slammed back into him all at once. He twisted, like he could escape the burningburningburning in his flesh, something primal rising in him as his good hand scrabbled at his shoulder, through fresh, slick blood as the pain surged higher. “Jesus, God, just get it out.”
Sound dulled in the presence of the pain that followed. All Snafu knew was the fire under his skin and Eugene’s hands on either side of his face, holding him up above it all.
It was with a quiet sort of fury that Snafu decided to keep on living. His wound wasn’t fatal by far, but as he laid there with his torso laid bare, the steadily drying blood, the sharp rock against his back, he felt the inexorable tug toward letting go. Not death, something far more Godless and far more mad. A giving up, of days spent bleary and shell-shocked and silent. Sleep.
They bandaged him up as tight as they could, until the blood seeped through in a bright bloom of red. Snafu, gritted teeth, so hard his head hurt, endured it without another sound. The bullet was clenched in his clammy fist, pressed close to his gut. Would it be fitting to make another charm out of it?
He dozed, fitful, until he was woken by a tin mug pressed to his good shoulder, the smell of horrible k-ration coffee. Eugene, haloed by the low sun, something soft in his eyes that Snafu didn’t dare meet.
“Some kinda medal, huh?” He said, and Snafu just groaned as he let Eugene ease the drink into his good hand.
“Think they pinned it on a little too hard.” Snafu said, in response, voice cracking a little until he cleared his throat of his pain. He wondered if Eugene could hear the hurt. Judging by how close the seat he choose to take next to Snafu was, he could. But he was drained, and weak, too tired to be mean, so he allowed the press of Eugene’s arm to his, allowed the closeness and let his eyes droop shut with the comfort that came with it.
“Y’know they had to kinda,” Eugene made a gesture with his hands like he was squeezing a very large pimple. “Outta ya.”
Snafu’s head was cloudy with weariness, with pain, but he managed to pull himself into some semblance of a sitting position. “I believe it.” He croaked, and cleared his throat again with a grimace. “Jesus.”
“Had you prayin’ and all.”
Snafu scoffed, head lolling back against the wall they had set him against. “Doubt that.” He murmured, and slit his eyes open just enough to study Eugene’s expression. He was toying with his pipe, eyes downcast, the set of his mouth serious. Snafu felt something so heady and dangerous rise within him that he felt almost sick with it. Fondness, care, comfort, it was all as close to the surface as his nerve endings felt. His skin was prickling with it: pain and love. Guilt and want. Shame and nameless, unspeakable feeling.
“You gotta religion?” Eugene asked, finally, eyes settled on Snafu from under his shock of dirty red hair. Snafu sniffed, spat into the dirt with only a little twinge from his shoulder, too taken aback by the question to quell the memories that the word made rise up. Images of gators claws flashed in his mind’s eye, candles, fat and yellow and running with wax, the flickering shadows that they would cast on the walls of the shack, shadows he felt like he had spent his whole childhood hiding from. Our Lady, her lowered gaze, her clasped hands, the coy drapes of blue and that shining halo surrounding her. The statue of her, Blessed Mother, Madonna, the chip in her paint on her stomach, the solemn sadness surrounding it. His grandmother’s wizened, ring heavy hands tearing bundles of herbs over a sputtering fire as a crucifix loomed above them all. It was everything and it was nothing; something he had been so long gone from that only fleeting memories survived, but something that had been so close to the core of him that he carried it like a talisman he couldn’t rid himself of.
“”S complicated.” He settled on, and eased his thumb over the wound in his shoulder just to feel it. “Bayou religion.” He muttered, “Lotta everythin’.”
“Yeah?” Eugene asked, head tilted a little to the side as he watched Snafu try to look anywhere but in his eyes. A pair of boots stomped by, their eyes lingering on the two of them squashed up close, the blood on Eugene’s hands, the staining on Snafu’s bandages. “You keep any of it?”
“No.” He said, short. He ached, so bone tired and full to the brim with pain that all he could keep his head straight on was curling up in his foxhole and falling asleep. He touched his strung dime, scratched his fingernail over it until it caught up short on a ridge in the metal. “‘S all fairytales.” The words felt like ash in his mouth, wrong, and for some reason he found himself sending a silent apology to whoever was listening. Mary, with her chipped stomach, God, the roaming eye of the crucifix on their kitchen wall, his grandmother, long in her grave.
Eugene dropped his gaze to the floor between his boots, and Snafu felt like a thread had been cut within him now he was no longer under Eugene’s brown eyed, gentle scrutiny. He slumped, hands finding his dungaree pockets, his cigarettes, his lighter.
“Seems it stuck with you good enough that it got you prayin’.” He muttered, and Snafu just snorted around the cigarette he had stuck hastily in his mouth.
“Jus’ wait ‘til you get shot, Sledgehammer, you’ll be prayin’ to just about anythin’.”
Eugene didn’t say anything, just tucked his face down by his drawn up knees, pipe limp and unlit in his hand. With some difficulty, Snafu clapped him on the back, sweat-damp khaki under his palm.
“I’m alright, boo.” The pet name slipped out, a true test of just how tired Snafu was, and Eugene made a small noise, raised his head a little.
“Hated seein’ you like that.” He said, and his eyes were on Snafu’s bloodstained shoulder, his pipe clutched tighter now. “Had to keep my head on but I was so shit scared at all that blood-”
“Have a smoke.” Snafu said, cutting Eugene short. He watched as Eugene packed his pipe with trembling hands, the bite gone out of him a little, face pale. “If it weren’t me it was gonna be someone else.” He said, “Besides, fuck knows how many times we put one of ‘em in the same place.” The burn of the bullet still lingered, still registered as penance somewhere deep in his mind.
Eugene lit his pipe, inhaled and exhaled long and slow before he replied. “That’s the worst part.” He turned his head to the side, traced his thumb over his chin, thinking. “How can I be out here takin’ lives while callin’ myself religious at the same time?”
“Plenty manage.” Snafu drawled, head feeling light on his shoulders under the press of the nicotine and the blood loss, the sudden adrenaline crash.
“How can I be feelin’ so cut up about you gettin’ hit while someone else is out there right now gettin’ the same?” Eugene barrelled over, voice rising in pitch a little. His eyes were damp when he glanced back at Snafu, who abandoned his cigarette to throw his good arm over Eugene’s shoulders. It was a touch he would punish himself for later, a touch he took more from than a simple embrace of a friend, but the way Eugene sagged against his side told Snafu that he needed it more than he needed Snafu to preserve his goodness.
“You can’t think about it like that.” Snafu murmured, exhaustion slurring his words slightly. “If God made the world, God made war, so he’s got a hand in this just like the rest of us.”
“You gotta funny way’a lookin’ at things, Snaf.” Eugene muttered, and the two of them sat in their tiny pocket of silence as they watched the war move around them. Eugene’s pipe smoke was acrid, reminding Snafu of the smell of his hair since he’d taken it up, and he watched him smoke it until he was tapping out the bowl against his boot, hands a little steadier. “Holds me down.”
Snafu’s heart felt fit to burst, so heavy with affection that it felt close to tipping over into melancholy. “I’m feelin’ too woozy to make sense, Gene. Don’t listen to anythin’ I say.”
Eugene’s eyes were fond when they settled on him, his face lit gold by the lingering sun on the ridges. It almost made them beautiful, and Snafu let himself wallow in it, in the gold in Eugene’s hair, in the country around them, in the way his heart felt so full up he could cry. It was the exhaustion, it was the creeping pain, it was the guilty sickly incredible love he felt. If war was hell, this infatuation with such an untouchable boy only made it worse.
“Jus’ don’t listen to anythin’.” He murmured, arm still braced around Eugene’s shoulders, his eyelids heavy as everything seemed to avalanche on him at once. “Nothin’ that comes outta my mouth. I’m only gonna ruin ya’.”
He felt drunk on the pain, the post-pain, and smoked and watched the night darken around them as Eugene made his careful little words in his diary until it was too dark to see.
“I dunno what you mean by that.” Eugene said, at one point, and Snafu pressed his cheek to his good shoulder as he watched Eugene grapple with his words. “Ain’t nothin’ left of me to ruin. ‘S already happened.”
He saw the capacity for ruin in Snafu. He saw it and he identified it and he let it be near him anyway. The knowledge was dreadful, but Snafu wasn’t sure who it was worse for. Eugene, and his poor, ailing soul, or Snafu; always at the brink but only toeing the line. The potential ruin shone off of him like an oil slick, he’d always believed it, always been told it, and Eugene’s words only cemented it.
It was oddly centering.
“C’mon.” Eugene said, finally, and his hand at Snafu’s waist as he led him through the darkening night to their foxhole was a weight Snafu felt unready to hold.
“I’ll take first watch.” He murmured, and Eugene just pressed him back against the shallow wall of their badly dug hole, tugged his shirt straight for him as the mud made its cool embrace through the fabric to his feverish skin.
“You won’t.” He said, and as if sensing Snafu’s oncoming argument, he added, “I’ll wake you.”
The night slipped away, restless sleep broken by smatterings of artillery, the sky lighting up with star shells, as Snafu lay in and out of the half-sleep he’d learned to take during war. Eugene’s thumb pressed against his wound, torn away quickly as Snafu made a low, hurt noise at the touch.
“I’m sorry.” Eugene muttered, fast and quiet in the darkness of their foxhole. “Fuck, Snaf, I’m sorry.”
Snafu said nothing, his nerves singing with pain as he drew himself into a lopsided upright position. “Jesus.” He croaked, and then, “Eugene, Gene. C’mere.”
A shell burst over their heads, lighting them both in greyscale for a moment before it dropped. Snafu felt for the stock of his carbine, an automatic move. Nothing ever felt safe. The wound in his shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat; he could almost feel the blood still oozing from it.
“Are you okay?” Eugene’s voice, thin and anxious through the inky night. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”
“Don’t.” Snafu breathed, still half-asleep as he moved to grip at Eugene’s forearm. A million unsaid things were swarming at his lips, don’t worry, don’t apologise, don’t move away, don’t-
Eugene’s hand found his waist, his chest, his neck; settled there like a kiss. Snafu fumbled, his thumb sinking deep into the meat of Eugene’s arm before he gathered himself and pulled Eugene in, a knee-jerk reaction to his hot palm against his stubbled cheek.
“Snaf-” Eugene’s voice was low, caught in that spot between surprise and want, and Snafu took the weight of his body against his bad side with a grunt, tilted his face into Eugene’s warm, absent touch.
Another flare burst over them, and Snafu caught Eugene’s expression: wide eyed and focused, his mouth open just so, before it faded and they were plunged into a darkness so deep Snafu knew that not even God could see them.
“You really wanna do this?” Snafu murmured, the moment stretching and settling between them. Eugene’s fingertips twitched against his cheek, and Snafu eased his grip on his arm, settled his hand against Eugene’s neck instead. He could feel the jump of his pulse below his thumb, and thought about that precious blood he never wanted to see spill. That was the problem with war: the uncertainty, the danger lurking around every corner. No one was so blessed to never experience the pain and the evil that came with war, not even Eugene, as seemingly touched by something special as he was. Perhaps it was that which was making Snafu so bold, so mad. Normally he was cautious to be point of madness, but war had struck something inside him that had made him bolder, reckless.
Eugene’s hand smoothed over his cheek, down to his jaw, fingers resting in the hollow behind his ear. Snafu felt full up from anticipation, still drowsy and out of it but so sharply aware that the night barely seemed real.
“Yes.” He murmured, and Snafu held his ground, an odd fear running through him until Eugene added, “Please, Snafu, I almost lost you today.”
It was the culmination of weeks spent with Eugene’s sweet, sleeping head on his shoulder, his touches, his stares, the coffee shared, the meals. He didn’t know how it hadn’t happened sooner, but perhaps it was his own refusal to feed further into the deterioration of Eugene’s soul. But, how could anything that felt like this, like giddy drunk anticipation and heady fear, be a sin?
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” Snafu said, and caught Eugene’s full weight in his bad shoulder again as he surged forward into his space.
It was clumsy at first: the darkness leading them blind and fumbling for each other’s mouths, throats, shoulders. More of a grapple, before Snafu’s brain caught up with him and he sought out the familiar thread of Eugene’s crucifix, and guided him forward. Hand at the nape of his neck, the nudge of Eugene’s nose to his cheek, his hot, fast breath.
“Won’t leave this foxhole.” Snafu breathed, hand slipping from Eugene’s crucifix to his dog tags. He tugged him again, testing the waters, and Eugene swayed with it, his mouth barely grazing Snafu’s.
Seconds crawled by like hours; the two of them crouched in their muddy hole, the world narrowed down to a pinprick that contained them and nothing else. No war, no God, no nothing. Just Eugene’s hand on the back of his neck, Snafu’s knuckles grazing his heaving chest. The dog tags were warming in his grip, his shoulder throbbing, when Eugene’s hand slid to cup his jaw, his thumb stroking wide over Snafu’s stubbled cheek.
“What if I wanted it to?” Eugene murmured, that delicate index finger placed just so in the hollow behind Snafu’s ear. He swallowed, audible. “Leave this foxhole, I mean.”
A star shell burst above them, and Snafu caught the raw emotion on Eugene’s face that the darkness had been covering, a glimpse before the light dropped. It made his head swim, made him want to close the inch of distance between their mouths and finished what had started between them from the moment he had laid eyes on Eugene. Or begin what had been brewing since then. But Eugene had to do it, Snafu knew that, felt it like eyes boring into the back of his skull. He would not be any more responsible for Eugene’s ruination than he was already.
His fingers tightened in Eugene’s dog tags, the clink of metal on metal. “Do it, then.” He said, and Eugene’s thumb swept across his cheek to press sweetly to the corner of Snafu’s mouth. “Gene.”
Eugene leaned in, then, and closed the gap that Snafu had been aching across for longer than he even knew. Their lips met, and Snafu felt all the fight go out of him as he sagged into the touch, into Eugene’s warm hand cradling his cheek, into the press of his mouth against his. The day rushed over him all at once, and he couldn’t do anything but sit there and be kissed and kiss back. His hand dropped from Eugene’s tags to his waist, fitted his palm to the neat curve of it as he pulled Eugene closer into his body. It hurt, the weight of him, in more ways than one. He almost couldn’t bear the affection rising up in his chest at the feeling of Eugene pressed so close to him. His fingers tightened on Eugene’s waist, and he found the kiss broken abruptly as Eugene opened his mouth on a small, overwhelmed noise.
“Snaf.” Eugene muttered, voice thick with some emotion Snafu couldn’t place. His hand was braced to Snafu’s chest, hot against his bare skin. “I’m sorry-”
“Fuck.” Snafu dropped his hand from his skin like he’d been burned, brought it to his mouth as if he could take his actions back. “Gene-”
“No, no,” Eugene’s voice was hushed in the darkness, and Snafu found himself wavering in and out of staying caught in that perfect, intimate moment of touch, or of accepting the guilt beginning to creep its way up his throat. “Snafu, ’s good, just had to catch my breath.” His hand found Snafu’s, still pressed to his mouth, and drew it away gently. “Kiss me,” He murmured, “Please.”
Slowly, like coaxing a wild animal, Eugene cupped Snafu’s face in his hands as they traded kisses through the darkness. A round of artillery rattled away in some far distant universe, the two of them so far disconnected from war, at least for a second. Snafu opened his mouth under the press of Eugene’s, and rolled his tongue over Eugene’s lower lip and allowed himself to enjoy the sigh that followed. His shoulder was burning from the position they were in, almost as bad as the flame that had been lit under his sternum, burning so bright he felt like he must be glowing. The Virgin Mary’s all-over halo. Was it love that made her shine like that?
He splayed his fingers against the bare, sweaty skin of Eugene’s lower back, hand crept up under the hem of his shirt. If this was sin and war was not, Snafu wasn’t sure if he could keep any faith in a God’s opinions.
--------
“Snaf.”
He snapped awake, that instinctive, immediate move from asleep to awake that he had been honing long before his time at war. “What.” He grumbled, and then yelped as he made a move to tip his helmet over his eyes to block out the watery dawn sunlight, the dull pain in his shoulder flaring with the movement. “Fuck.” He hissed, finally focusing in on what had woken him as the events of the previous day, the previous night, came flooding back in.
Eugene, leaning over him, that halo of tousled, dirty red hair. For a moment, there was a beat of silence that was almost uncomfortable. Eugene’s small, fond smile wavered, and then Snafu sniffed, rubbed at his eyes and bit out, “We better’ve won the war, Sledgehammer, ‘cus I can’t think of any other reason why you’d be wakin’ me up.”
His shoulder protested the movement, but he levered himself into a sitting position as Eugene knocked the base of a tin mug gently against his arm. “Better,” He murmured, “Coffee.” He was smiling, something small and secretive that made Snafu want to kiss him stupid.
Snafu took a moment to stick a smoke into his mouth, eyeing up Eugene as he lit it. The grey morning light wasn’t gentle on him, picking out the rings around his eyes, the stubble and the grime and the lines there which hadn’t been there before the campaign had begun. Still, despite it all, Snafu felt his heart yearn towards him like he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Darlin’,” He mumbled, half of him still clinging to sleep, to their slow, secret kisses. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Eugene just smiled at him, something alive in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. His crucifix winked in the weak sunlight, and Snafu watched as he pulled his bible from his dungaree pocket, and set about his morning entry. The stub of a pencil, those delicate hands.
They sat together in silence, content for each other’s company as Eugene scribbled and Snafu smoked and worked his way through his coffee, gradually coming back to life. It felt like something had cosmically shifted last night. Like they had set something in motion that was impossible to stop.
He tilted his head to watch Eugene, lit up in red and gold as the sun grew higher in the sky, and thought maybe, for once, he could shoulder the burden of the sin if it meant he could have more moments like this.