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Snafu glared a the man sitting on the bench across from him.
Eugene was sleeping, face smooth and clean like he was supposed to be. Big nose pressed against the glass of the window, arms crossed protectively over his chest. He looked sweet and young, an echo of that boy Snafu first met when he shipped out and stepped inside his tent.
'This is all your fucking fault' he thinks viciously at that crown of soft red.
He had no way of really knowing Why he had woken up every morning for the past five days on the same date, in the same place, with the exact same view of east Texas scrub land rambling past the train window, but he knew in his heart it was somehow because of Gene.
The Universe was telling him something. Some cosmic power was grabbing him by the back of the neck and saying 'Merriell, get your head out of your ass.'
Well too bad for the universe, Snafu wasn't about to take the hint.
Five times in a row he had gotten off this train as soon as it pulled up to New Orleans, just the same as he did the first time. He was planning on making it a sixth.
The train rocks along the track. He gets to watch as Gene wakes up, slowly blinking against the sunlight that fell across his long face.
Snafu's heart did a painful two step in his chest.
“Morning, Snaf,” Gene smiled at him, face sleep soft and open in a way Snafu didn't often get to see.
Well, at least he hadn't before this bullshit endless ride started. Now he had witnessed this exact moment a few times. It shouldn't still be making him feel so funny.
“Keep your 'morning' to yourself,” Snafu grumbled, looking resolutely back out the window, trying to ignore the screaming in his head that said he should stop being an ass and take advantage of the rare kindness the world was offering him. Do something different. Something he had wanted to do since the start.
No thank you. Too bad for the fucking universe he was a stubborn bastard and he wasn't gonna do a single thing different out of pure spite.
It's not like anything different would work for them, anyway.
There wasn't a future kind enough for the two of them. Snafu knew enough not to take what wasn't his. Wasn't any point in even trying.
He passes his repeated days with his head stuck in a strange place somewhere between greedy and panicked.
He rides the train with Gene, and he covets that time. He knows now, and intimately, the way his heart wrenches when he thinks it's the last time he'll ever see that sweet face and steps off the train anyway.
He takes Gene's time jealously. He has no care for the other passengers. Burgie had stepped off the day before, he's not apart of Snafu's fucked up loop. There is only Gene and what he might share with him today.
Then there is the panic. He doesn’t have a clue on what's happening to him. Or why it is. But he does know that he's powerless in this. Being tugged back each morning from whatever hotel or bar he had found in New Orleans to spend his night. He's tried staying awake, thinking if he just didn't fall close his eyes he wouldn't get pulled back. Which should be easy, he's done it enough during the war, but somehow he never makes it to sunrise before his eyes droop closed.
All it really does is remind him of the war. He hadn't had any control in that either. Had been told where to go and what to do and all he could do was his best to not die.
So he goes along for the ride. Not that he has a choice in the matter. Might be some kind of torture. An afterlife. He could be dead. Could have happened at any point.
“Sledge, what do you think of the afterlife?” He asked with purposeful laziness one morning.
Gene looks up from his cup of coffee, just passed around by the usual lady who runs up and down the train with her meal cart. Sometimes Snafu will flirt with her to see the way Gene laughs at him.
“What do I think of it?” he frowns, not understanding Snafu's question.
“Yeah,” Snafu nods, “Like, what do you think it is? What happens after you die?”
“Well, I suppose it depends on where you go,” Gene shrugs. “Whether you were a good person or not.”
“Ha, sure,” Snafu drawls. “So where do the not good people go?”
Gene's frown deepens, not too keen on where he thinks this must be going. “Hell, I suppose,” he mumbles.
“Okay,” Snafu nodded. “And what's that like?”
“Why do you want to know?” Gene asks, brown eyes boring into him.
“Well, thought it'd be nice to know about the place I'm gonna end up,” He shrugged with a wicked smirk.
“You are not,” Gene dismisses him with a severe look.
“Why wouldn't I?” he laughs. “You said it yourself, that's where not good people go. Not sure where else I'd be sent.”
“You're not a bad person,” Gene looks so earnest saying something that Snafu knows must be a lie.
Like many of their conversations, Snafu chickens out and changes the subject the moment things feel dangerous. When it feels like things might be too real.
So he clears his throat and starts making fun of that little red man with the pitchfork that Catholics enjoy so much. Gene just rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. But at least that serious look is gone from his face.
Snafu was sitting on that stiff train bench seat for the Sixth morning in a row.
He was planning on making it a seventh.
What the fuck else was he supposed to do? Not get off the train? Ride along with Sledgehammer back to his stop? Say a nice hello to his proper Catholic parents? Watch as their faces turned sour when they saw the kind of baggage their son was bringing back from the war? No thanks.
There was nothing good that could come of it and Snafu was not about to subject himself to further misery.
Snafu knew Gene was waking up in his seat before his breathing even changed. He could tell by the soft flutter behind his eyelids, the way his nose twitched a second before his hand came up to brush it.
His eyes were opening, soft brown always searching out Snafu's own before anything else. He tried not to let it go to his head. Reminded himself that he was the only familiar thing here afters years away from home and it was only normal for Gene to find him first. Nothing special about it.
Snafu is surprised by a concerned tilt to Gene's brows and a “You alright, Snaf?”
This was the first time he'd heard that.
“Shut up,” he replies too slowly. Then to cover the awkwardness, quickly stands with the lame excuse of needing the facilities.
He feels Gene's eyes on his back as he goes.
The Ninth day he's feeling pretty loose, feeling pretty unhinged. Not enough that he might consider something stupid, like staying on this train past his stop, or admitting something he's not about to admit, but enough that he feels like he can say things he'd usually try not to say. Ask questions that might otherwise be too revealing. When it felt like maybe there weren't gonna be any consequences for him past today, it felt okay to ask. Felt okay to be candid in return.
“What you have waiting at home for you, Sledgehammer?” He leans across the small table separating them sometime before lunch, cigarette held loose in one hand.
“Nothing much,” Gene huffs, looking down into his cup of coffee.
Snafu had gotten that answer before. 'No job. No girl. No plan.'
He decided to pry. Maybe he wouldn't turn chickenshit this time.
“I don't believe that for a second,” he smirks. “Bet you have a sweetheart just waiting on your sorry behind showing up and making her an honest girl.”
Gene smiles, but it's toeing the line towards a grimace. “No,” He chuckles, “I don't.”
Snafu scoffs his disbelief. For that to be true all the eligible girls in Mobile would have to be dumb and blind.
“Really,” Gene insists at the look Snafu levels him. “I was never much of a ladies man.”
And that skirts to close to something Snafu doesn’t want Gene to admit. This would usually be his cue to drop it. To say something rude enough to piss Gene off or make him reluctantly laugh.
Don't be a coward, he tells himself firmly. What does it matter, anyway? Gene won't remember tomorrow. He never does.
“And whys that?” Snafu raises a brow, plays at casual. “Mobile don't make girls pretty enough to meet your standards?”
Eugene looks uncomfortable at the question, breaks eye contact to look down at his hands, a faint blush dusting his cheeks. “No,” he mumbles, twisting that ring around his finger. “I suppose not.”
And this is why he always aborts mission before this. He breaks the tension with a joke. “Well I suppose I should show you around New Orleans sometimes, Sledgehammer. There's girls there that are pretty enough for any man.” And here he brings his hands up to the air in front of his chest and makes some gestures that have the women sitting at the next table over tittering at him.
He gives them his best devilish wink, thinking that one of them might come over and slap him. Gene always got a kick out of it when he got slapped.
But before the women make a move, Eugene reaches over and smacks him on the arms himself, sending an apologetic smile towards the other passengers.
“Ow,” Snafu makes a point of pouting dramatically while rubbing his arm. Inside of course he is delighted at the reaction.
Gene just rolls his eyes and pushes back. “And what about you, huh? What are you gonna do?” he asks. “You've been managing to avoid that question for awhile now.”
“Well, there's not much to say.” Snafu shrugs. “Got my Mama's old place waiting for me.” Empty as it was. Probably full of birds and mice by now. There hadn't been anyone to take care of the place while he was away. He should have just sold it before he enlisted.
“Shouldn't be too hard to find a place in need of a capable man, considering the recent shortage,” He grinned.
He'd find a place to work all right. Try to fill up his days with labor and his nights with drinking so he wouldn't have to think so much. Not about the war or what he did or what he felt about the man sitting across from him.
He'd try to forget about it all.
It'd be easier that way.
The eleventh day Snafu wakes up on that train he can't stand just sitting there and watching Gene wake up, no matter how sweet the boy looks when he does.
He stomps to the back of the train, where there's nothing but luggage in a windowless carriage and the quiet clatter that comes with it.
He chain smokes. His damn pack of cigarettes will be full up again tomorrow morning anyhow, there wasn't a point in saving them.
Was he supposed to just jump off the train while it was still rolling along the tracks? He wondered if that was it. Were things supposed to end for him now before he got the chance to rip out his own heart and leave Gene? Didn't he get to at least try to forget him? Try to make a life outside of war? Outside of loving a boy he could never have?
There was never really any chance of that, huh.
Damned if you do damned if you don't.
Maybe this train ride was meant to drive home that point. Make him understand that there wasn’t any reason to leave. He might as well end it here, because even if he finally stepped off and stayed in New Orleans for good, he wasn't ever leaving, not really.
He'd have this place in his head for the rest of his life. He'd never be able to leave Gene behind like he'd made the decision to do, over and over again.
Snafu hears the click of the separating door opening behind him. He turns around to see Gene there, looking clean and well pressed in his uniform, frowning at him through the fine haze of smoke hanging in the air from his habit.
“What are you doing back here?” Gene frowns.
“Clearing my head,” Snafu mumbles, turning away and taking another deep breath.
“Hand me one?” Gene asks, stepping through the dim sway of the carriage and reaching out a hand.
Snafu wordlessly holds out the half empty pack which Gene takes from with deft fingers.
He leans in close to light his off of Snafu's glowing cherry.
It's quiet for a moment, both of them taking their time exhaling and leaning against the careful stacks of crates being carted cross country. An odd sense of excitement manages to cut through Snafu's bad mood. He'd never come back here before. This was new. And the thought that Gene followed him felt significant in a way he couldn't name. Maybe in a way he refused to name.
“It's a lot to think about,” Gene speaks first. “Going home, after all that.”
“No shit,” Snafu snorts with humor. “Never thought I'd make it through.” Although, he realized unpleasantly, he really hadn't. Not yet, and maybe not ever if he kept riding this damn train every morning.
Maybe this was hell, he mused idly. He sure did deserve it.
An eternity of bad coffee, cramped quarters, a seat that made his ass numb and saying goodbye to Gene every night. Knowing he was giving up any happiness he might get in this life so the other man could have that charmed life he was meant for. A sweet little Mother approved Mrs. Sledge and enough kids to fill a barn.
Course then he catches sight of the way Gene rubs his big nose with one calloused hand and the light steaming in though the cracks in the walls hit his hair just right so it glows red fire.
Can't be hell with a view like that.
“We'll make it through,” Gene tells him, face kind with false assurance.
Snafu grins anyway, no matter how empty the gesture was. Gene had slowly been reclaiming that easy optimism he had shipped in with all that time ago. Snafu had made fun of Gene for it, for sure. Had to give all the new boots shit back then. But he'd missed it all the same when Gene had lost it. Turned into a mean bastard just to survive the worst of the fighting, the dying. Snafu didn't grudge him that, but it made him feel good that it was coming back. That Gene could still find that kindness in himself and share it with him.
“Sure about that?” he laughs darkly. “Think we can survive life after all that?” Didn't seem to be much light at the end of this tunnel. Not on this train or off of it.
Gene looks down, somber, teeth working at his bottom lip. “I think so,” he finally breaths. “What else can we do?”
Be stuck on a train forever, Snafu grins silently at his own little joke. Then mutters without much conviction, “I suppose you're right, Sledge.”
Gene doesn’t say anything, but places a firm hand on his shoulder. They stay there, silent and still. The weight of Gene's hand on him is like a hot compress against an aching head. A soothing weight that lessens the dull stubborn pain in him.
“Thanks,” Snafu breaths into the stillness. He wants Gene to know. Even if he doesn’t remember tomorrow. “I haven't always been the easiest person to put up with. And you've put up with me. So thanks.”
He feels the hand on his shoulder tighten for a moment, then carefully relax.
There's a change int the air. Something almost imperceptible, but Snafu knows Gene and his moods and he feels it.
Gene takes in a deep breath, then says in a rush, “Snaf, I want you to know that I don't want to say goodbye.”
Snafu looks up, startled. Gene's face is turning red but he's eyes have that steely determination of his going full force.
Snafu knows what he's about to say and it terrifies him.
Gene isn't supposed to say anything about them. Isn't supposed to have noticed what this thing between them really was. Isn't supposed to want it enough to put words to it.
“Don't say shit like that,” Snafu feels ugly when he says it but he can't let Gene think it's worth it. “You're going home to your Mama and you're gonna have a good life without any of the shit from the war dragging you down.” He finishes aggressively. The 'shit like me dragging you down,' is left unsaid but he hopes Gene gets it anyway.
Gene just frowns, digs his heels in. “I care about y-”
He can't let Gene finish that sentence.
“You think I haven't noticed the way you look at me?” Snafu sneers, a cold shock of panic rushing down his spine. He needs to make Gene stop. Even if what he says to do so is wrong and it hurts. Needs him to not think this was possible, because it wasn't. “Think I don't feel your eyes on me?” He snorts, “You're not as subtle as you think, Sledge.”
Gene recoils, fear and pain splashed across his face like cold water. He quickly hides his hurt behind anger “And you don't look at me?” striking back like Snafu had struck at him. “Don't pretend like you don't feel the same way.”
“And what feeling is that?” he laughs meanly, and feels sick to his stomach as he does it.
“You know what,” Gene bites out.
“Can't even say it?” Snafu mocks him.
That puts a stubborn set to Gene's jaw, makes his glare turn to steely and he clearly says “I like you, you bastard.” He says it and somehow keeps a straight face through the childishness of that statement.
Snafu feels his heart contract painfully. Feels like he's failed. This is his fault, he's ruined Gene. “That doesn’t even matter,” he dismisses. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“Say you don't feel the same,” Gene challenges him.
“It doesn’t matter ” Snafu repeats. “There is no kindness out there for that kind of thing. We are not getting anywhere together.”
“How do you know that?” Gene whispers accusingly, like Snafu is just making this up to be mean. “Why can't you just try, I think it's worth trying-” Gene sounds desperate and all broken up and Snafu can't let him continue like that, cuts him off.
“Because that's how it is!” he can't stop himself from yelling. “Because that's how it always is! Don't pretend like there's hope for people like us!”
“You're being a coward,” Gene spits out, face red and angry and cold. “What are you so afraid of?”
“I'm afraid of you!” Snafu snaps. “I'm afraid of you being hurt, of you being disowned, or you living how I live, of you never being happy like you should be!”
Silence reigns in the soft rumble of the tracks below their feet.
“Let me worry about me,” Gene chokes out. “I can handle all of that. I just let me be with you.”
“You're so goddamn stupid.” Snafu breaths, disbelieving. “It's not worth it. Nothing is worth that.”
Things escalate, and they get uglier after that. They shout terrible things at each other. Things Snafu doesn’t mean, but he says anyway. They're both stubborn, and they have a temper, and Snafu is never meaner than when his heart is on his sleeve.
It's like that night Hamm died, but this time there's no one else to be collateral damage in their screaming match. Just each other.
In the end, Gene was right. Snafu is a coward. And just like always, he leaves Gene by himself. Back in that luggage carriage, and he goes to wait for his stop.
Snafu is crying alone in the dark of the luggage carriage.
He was wrong before. This is hell.
Yesterday he broke his own heart, as usual. What was different was he broke Gene's, too. Had left him a teary, furious mess in this very room.
Then he went back to his seat, waited 'til his stop, and got off, same as always.
When he woke up to Gene sleeping soundly, he felt something inside of him snap.
He couldn't keep doing this. He wanted to keep Gene from getting hurt, that was all this had ever been about, not making him suffer by his own hand. Leaving him on the train was supposed to be the kind thing to do. The best way he could think of that helped Gene get on with his life and leave Snafu behind.
He's having a grand old time hating himself and pondering what a colossal fuck up he was and how he was most likely doomed to ride this train for eternity, when the door clicked open and he was interrupted.
Of course the man himself wandered the train and found him there, curled up on himself on the dusty floor.
Gene doesn’t say anything when he opens the door. He just walks over and sits down next to him. Sets a warm arm over his hunched shoulders, and is there. A solid presence against Snafu's side. He feels guilty for the way it's easier to breath. For how his shuddering sobs even out with Gene there. He doesn’t deserve the calm that Gene brings.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Gene says soft and close to his ear after the tears have stopped.
“No,” Snafu gives a watery chuckle. “I always seem to say something wrong.”
Gene nods against him, and respects that. Instead he moves the arm that isn't wrapped around Snafu's shoulders, and laces they're hands together. It was too familiar of a gesture to be mistaken as a man comforting a friend. Too close and intimate for that.
Snafu looked up at him, dumbfounded.
Gene wasn't looking down at him, but resolutely ahead, eyes nervous but determined. Just putting his heart out there for Snafu to decide what to do with. Reject it or not. Cradle it or not.
Snafu has to close his eyes against that kind of bravery. He was running from his feelings. Had been ever since he figured out he had them. From the path he knew it led down, knew he would drag Gene down. And here Gene was, just letting Snafu know how he felt anyway. Same as he did before they're fight. Trying to hold on tight to a good thing before it slipped through his fingers.
Snafu couldn't help but hold those fingers tight, feel the way Gene's ring dug into his flesh.
Gene was kind and strong and Snafu didn't deserve him in, only in a different way than Gene didn't deserve Snafu.
“What are you doing, Gene?” Snafu has to ask, voice dull, still somehow hoping he's wrong.
Snafu knows Gene can feel the way he leans into his side. The way Snafu if clutching onto his hand like a life line.
“I think you know,” Gene says soft. “I think you know that I've felt this way a while.”
“I wish you didn't,” Snafu laughs again, looks down. “It'd be a lot easier if you didn't.”
“I haven't really been one for easy, Snaf.” Gene mumbles. “You know that, too.”
Well. Gene sure had him there, Snafu mused. He really hadn't ever been one to shy away from a challenge. He knew that from the first day he met him, scrubbing those drums right til the end.
He looks at Gene's rough hands in his own. He had already tried turning him away. Said ugly things he couldn't take bad, even if they'd all been undone. Snafu would always remember them, and the way they had cut Gene.
He hadn't been wrong when he said that the world wasn't gonna be kind to them. It wasn't.
But… Maybe he could be the one to make the kindness this time.
He looks up. Gene's watching him now. A careful, hopeful light in that study gaze.
What harm would it do? It'd just reset in the morning, right?
Snafu pressed chapped lips to Gene's cheek.
He wanted Gene to look disgusted. Maybe hit him. Wanted that, at least to make Gene decide to leave Snafu on his own so at least once he wouldn't be the one leaving. So he could pretend that he wasn't being a coward for once.
That's not what happens.
He looks into Gene's brown eyes and sees compassion. Care. Soft affection.
Gene's thumb swipes under his eye, wiping away the wetness there. Then he leans in, hand pressed gently to Snafu's chin, and kisses him sweetly.
“This won't work,” Snafu breaths once Gene has broken contact, mind a wild turning thing, full up with the feel of Gene's lips on his, how much he wants to feel it again, and all the doubts that their situation weighing on him. “We can't be together.”
Gene sighs and leans in close, their shoulders pressed firmly together as they huddle against the walls of the train just like they had against the dirt walls of their foxholes.
“I don't want that to be true,” Gene says quietly. “And I don't think it is, not really.”
Snafu closes his eyes against that. Heart swelling heavy with the kind of hope Gene inspires. “I don't want it to be true either,” Snafu frowns. “But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“Please,” Gene is squeezing his hands tight and warm. “Please just give it a chance. We can try. I want to at least try.”
“Maybe,” Snafu sighs, then because there was a whole day left before his stop, and he wasn't truly a masochist, he kisses Gene again.
Snafu wakes up with Gene sleeping across from him as the train rumbles through that familiar dusty scrub land.
He doesn’t get up out of his seat to retreat to the back of the train as had become his habit.
Instead, he crosses his arms, contemplates the gentle up and down heave of Gene's sleeping chest, and does some thinking.
'Just give it a chance'
He had actually missed his stop last night, caught up with Gene in the back of the train. He didn't know if he was counting on being reset or planning to travel along with Gene until his stop, figuring it out as he went. Regardless, whatever it was pulling him back to this point didn't let him.
And here he was, mind full with plenty of things to chew on.
He sits there quiet all day as they move steadily east. Gene wakes up and they make some idle conversation, but Gene must notice how in his head he is and leaves him be after awhile.
He didn't know what to do. He wanted what Gene said to be true. Wanted to think that if he just gave it a chance, just let himself try, that they might survive. Might be happy.
It seemed like such a stupid fantasy when he pictured it in his head, pictured the two of them together in any capacity and being happy. But yesterday, when Gene had said it aloud, said, 'I'll visit as soon as I can, I want you to meet my parent's, I want to be with you', he had believed him.
That hadn't felt unrealistic. It sounded simple. It felt like something Gene had promised, something he would see happen.
“Hey, Snaf?” Gene's voice pulls him out of his thoughts.
“Yeah?” Snafu looked up. It had grown dark around them. Snafu could tell by the shape of the world outside the window that they were only a couple hours out from his stop now.
“Wake me up before you leave, alright?” Gene asks the same way he did every day. Confidant that Snafu would wake him up, just because Gene asked.
“Sure thing Sledgehammer,” he nods, guilty knowing every time before this that had been a lie, and likely will be again.
The train pulled up to New Orleans some time later. Gene's breath was even, face lax. He was truly dead asleep. He watched the lights turn the dark night into a velvet bed of neon jewels. The train rumbled to a stop, and Snafu stood up, stretched his legs, pulled down his sea bag and prepared to leave. It felt pointless, getting his things and stepping off the train. He'd wake up tomorrow right back here with Gene.
Huh. Wasn't so bad, he supposed. At least he'd be with Gene.
He stops at the door, just like he did all that time ago, and looked back.
Wasn't that something, he realized. He saw an eternity stretching out before him. Him, in that godawful red bench, sitting across from Gene, watching him wake up slow every morning.
Gene looks sweet while he's sleeping. Head resting against the glass, red hair a messy golden fire under the overhead lights.
He wanted that. Wanted that fierce and hot in his chest.
Gene thought they could have it.
Wake me up before you leave
He walks back. Rests a careful hand against the boys shoulder. “Eugene,” he whispers and shakes gently. “Gene, this is my stop.”
He comes awake gradually, a sharp intake of breath, eyelids fluttering until those soft brown eyes meet his own.
Gene smiles up at him, slow and gentle, and it makes Snafu's heart stutter.
“You woke me up,” Gene's voice is sleep rough and warm.
“I said I would, didn't I?” He somehow manages to say without choking on his hypocrisy and the way his chest feels overfull at that easy gratitude.
Gene pushes off the bench and stands. Snafu has to step back to give him room in the cramped confines of the aisle, but the space he yields is soon taken over. Gene steps closer until they are chest to chest, and wraps his arms over Snafu's shoulders. It takes longer than it should for him to realize they are hugging.
The hug, if Snafu can get a little dramatic, is a religious experience. He feels like the solid embrace of Gene's strong arms is pulling his soul back into his body. Feels like he's finally been pulled, firmly and safely back into reality. Like maybe the nightmare of tears and pain and him being a fucking idiot is being washed away. He feels grounded with the press of Gene's cheek against his own.
Snafu blinks his eyes rapidly against the sudden moisture, and wraps his arms around Gene's thin sides and hugs him back roughly, pushing his face against the juncture of Gene's shoulder until red hair tickles his nose.
Gene steps back after a moment and Snafu feels bereft at the lack of contact, but his warmth still lingers and it is infinitely better than he had been feeling before.
Snafu doesn’t have anything smart to say, so he says nothing at all. Just locks eyes with the boy across from him, the boy that he would die for. That he is saying goodbye for.
Properly, this time.
“I'm glad I met you,” Gene clears his throat, one hand moving to rub his nose self consciously. There's things that aren't said there, but Snafu hopes he understands anyway. He feels the same way. I'm glad I met you. Nothing could be worth the war, worth what we went through, but I met you, and I'm glad.
Now Snafu has to roughly clear he throat before he replies, “Me too, Sledge. You weren't such a horrible boot after all.”
Gene chuckles, hearing Snafu's own meaning in the words. He seems to remember something and digs in his pocket, pulling out a neatly folded square of paper.
He holds it out to Snafu with one careful hand. “I was hoping you'd write me. That we could keep in touch. Maybe visit each other, once in awhile.”
It's an echo of what Gene had said yesterday among the stacks of crates. Less overtly romantic, sure, and without the careful press of their bodies together, but it feels real, like Snafu knows where it's coming from, what it means, and above all, that he can trust it.
Snafu carefully takes the paper, rubbed smooth at the edges and unfolds it to find a mailing address in Alabama.
His mouth was dry. He presses his tongue against his teeth. Surely this was just another failed attempt. He'd go out, get drunk and wake up back on this fucking train, wondering what he'd done wrong, or more likely what could he possibly do right? He doesn’t want this to be a do over, he realizes desperately. He wants this to be the one. He wants to work for it. Wants to try. He wants to write Gene, learn about him outside of war, outside of this train and look forward to that visit. He wants this.
“I'll make sure to do that, Gene.” He promises solemnly. He means it. Means it Fiercely.
He steps off the train and looks back to the window where Gene is watching him, smiling and waving as he pulls slowly away.
Snafu waves back, stands on the platform until that red hair disappears out of sight, and then a few minutes after.
“Do not fucking put me back on that train,” He hisses at the sky. “If there was a fucking lesson to learn I goddamn learned it. I am gonna try.”
Then he turns to the city and does just that.
Epilogue:
There's a knock at the door.
“Just a minute!” Merriell calls to be heard, then lowly curses under his breath. The door to the back porch was open, letting in sunlight and the clear air of spring rolling in off the bayou. He quickly finished dragging the broom across the floor and sweeps the dust out the back door and off the porch, before turning to survey the rest of his home.
He hadn't woken up back on that fucking train in months.
He hadn't gone out drinking that night neither, instead he wandered all the way back to his Maman's old house that stood empty and waiting for him, clutching that stupid piece of paper to his chest all the way. The house wasn't in that rough of shape. Dirty for sure, so much dust he couldn't sleep that first night because he'd wake himself up sneezing. But he'd been fixing it up, between work he'd gotten at a local carpenter. Keeping it clean and making repairs as he went. It was cozy now, almost the same that she had kept it when he was a little boy.
He admits that today in particular it was looking finer than usual. He had been cleaning since he got up that morning and there wasn't a thing out of place, his work clothes that usually lay where they fell until washing day were all neatly set aside in their bin. His bed made with care and fresh flowers set in a vase at the kitchen table. The windows were open and the room was as bright and as welcoming as he could make it.
He had something to make it nice for, after wall. Someone he maybe wanted to impress. Someone who most definitely made him interested in keeping his life on track. He refused to think about the fact he might be wanting to prove that he could keep a house decently. He didn't need an ulterior motive for being a good host, he told himself firmly.
With that, he puts the broom away, and wipes his hands off on the hand towel hanging next to the sink, and answers the door.
Gene is standing there, looking nervous and out of place on his front porch with a nice jacket and tie, hands wrapped carefully around a bundle of the same types of flowers he had sent sketches of in the letters Merriell received.
Merriell feels his face stretch wide in a grin.
“Well finally,” he breaths, and welcomes Eugene into his home.