Work Text:
I never thought about love when I thought about home
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
Eugene has always been fascinated by the pieces of things. Cars, guns, his father's medical tools—he always liked to take things apart and see how they worked, how each piece fit together to make a whole. And at first it served him well in the war—he could assemble his rifle faster than anyone in his unit during training, and at first he felt proud of his adroitness at the mortar. At first he had enjoyed the efficiency of it, the way the actions moved smoothly from one to the next to get the job done in the fastest time possible. He had learned how all the pieces worked, and so he could work with them. There was something quite satisfying about it.
At least, at first there had been. Now it just feels like a sick joke; he's seen way too much now, far more than he ever wanted to know. He's seen how even the best weapons and machines are flawed and can be destroyed all too easily; how even the best of people can be utterly broken. He's seen bodies of friends torn open and scattered about, all the pieces that once worked together so miraculously now separate and useless. It's all like an evil parody: he'd chosen this because he'd been curious, because he wanted to be a working part of something good and noble and see how it all worked and where he fit in, and now he's seen everything torn apart and can't imagine how it'll ever be put back together again.
It's something that Snafu says one morning that makes him start believing that they—that anything—could survive this. Snafu had been asleep in the foxhole next to him as Gene kept watch, and when they'd all been awakened and told to prepare for chow in ten, he'd blinked those big, haunting eyes in surprise and stretched. "Well, look at that," he said, picking up his rifle and nodding towards the sun, which was putting in a half-hearted appearance for the first time in days. "We made it to another mornin', Sledgehammer." He gave him a wry grin and hitched himself up out of the hole, and Gene followed after a moment, the words hovering around his mind like a faint haze. It seemed like an idle, meaningless comment, and yet it stayed with him, lingering in his fatigued brain without his understanding why. It took a few days for it to sink in and for him to realize that maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe the only way to survive was to take every day as it came, if it came, and expect nothing more than what was right in front of him. Trying to take it all in at once was too much. Taking every day on top of all the others, in some never-ending pile, was too much; it was too heavy and too big and it would crush him if he tried to hold it all at once. But if he took it all apart, if he just handled one piece at a time and then left it behind after, that might be the key.
So he tries. He tries to teach himself to look neither forward nor back, to focus only on each moment as it comes in front of him, throwing himself entirely into whatever he's doing so there isn't room for anything else in his head. At chow, he thinks about what he's eating, what it's made of, how it tastes. He tries to guess how many bites he has left just by looking. When he digs a trench, he focuses on the feeling of the shovel in his fingers. He counts the mounds of dirt that he moves. He doesn't think about how it looks in comparison to the soft, fragrant soil of Alabama where his mother plants her tulips. He doesn't wonder if he's about to come across another corpse in the ground. When he helps to bury Private Travers, a 20-year-old Virginian with freckles across his nose, he doesn't think about the letter the boy's mother will get in a few weeks, or about Jeannie, the green-eyed girl that he was going to marry as soon as he got home, as he'd whispered to Gene only the night before. He thinks about how fast he can dig the grave before it starts raining again, and how the boy's poncho might make a good pillow for someone. He forces himself, minute after minute, and it almost works.
But at night, it's even harder, when there's nothing to distract him and nothing to do except sit and listen and watch, waiting for a sound, a flash of fire, a sudden arrow of pain. Sometimes he almost wishes something would happen, just because the ringing silence is almost worse, especially when it rains, which is nearly every night. Sometimes when he's on watch and everyone else is huddled in their holes, the combination of the darkness and the stormy weather drowns out everything else until he feels like he's on a tiny island out to sea, isolated from everyone and everything with nothing but memories and fear, until he wants to scream out loud just to hear someone, anyone call back. Being down in the foxhole isn't a lot better—it's claustrophobic in the dark, like he's already in a grave, and when the weather is especially bad it seems like the ground is rising up around them—but at least there are other people down there, other living, breathing bodies. When he can't sleep, he listens to their gentle snores, and to Snafu grinding his teeth beside him. Sometimes he mutters in his sleep too, although he never yells out like that other marine. Just quiet, tense half-phrases under his breath, things like "at your two o'clock" and "just a few more." Gene focuses on the sound of his voice, the low, lazy drawl that is somehow comforting even then, and tries to let it ease him to sleep.
Sleep, though, is when everything he's been pushing down and pushing away comes slithering to the surface of his mind, rising like the filthy water to drown him. All the memories and images and fear he's been trying to defeat come back to him as he slips into unconsciousness, and for a moment he's back on the beach, trying to force himself to run, but unable to move. His whole body jerks with the effort, and he awakens with a gasp, his hand shooting out and grabbing the first thing within reach, which turns out to be Snafu's wrist. He too jerks awake with a "What—?!", but then when he looks down and sees Gene's dirt-streaked hand on his own, he just gives a faint smile. "Y'all right, Sledgehammer?" he asks.
"I—yes," Gene whispers back. He looks down too, and he realizes he hasn't let go. He feels oddly detached, like he's looking at someone else's hands, almost. Snafu doesn't seem to mind; he just lays back against the wall of the hole and closes his eyes again. "Best get some sleep," he advises. "Gonna be movin' out in a few hours." And after another moment, Gene removes his hand, and he manages to fall into a light, fitful doze, and by the morning he has pushed the moment with Snafu out of his mind, just like everything else.
But it happens again the next night, sort of: Snafu has just finished his watch and slid back down next to Gene when a volley of explosions go off a quarter of a mile away from they crouch in the mud. Their gunny hisses at them to stay down and stay quiet for now, and they can tell they're not in range, but the ground under them pulses with the impacts and the sound of it assaults their ears as if bombs are dropping three feet away. Most of the others curl in on themselves, wrapping their arms around their heads as if to shelter themselves, but Gene, without thinking, reaches out again and grabs for Snafu, this time grabbing on fully to his hand in a crushing grip. It seems like such a childish thing to do, almost a mocking comfort, and yet he doesn't pull away, and Gene hangs on for dear life, his forehead against his knees, forcing himself to think of nothing, nothing but the feeling of Snafu's fingers in his. And dimly he knows he should be thinking about whoever it is that's getting hit right now, or about what he might be ordered to do within the next few minutes or seconds, but somehow, his new method is working—his awareness that Snafu is squeezing his hand right back is eclipsing everything else.
And so it goes from there. Gene conditions himself to exist only in the moment, every moment, and to not leave room for anything else, and so he doesn't have room for questions. He doesn't ask himself why it is that it's Snafu's presence, be it his low, uneven breathing as he sleeps, the feeling of his hand, or even just the sight of his crooked grin, that seems to anchor him back to Earth in those moments when letting it all go is too hard. He doesn't wonder why Snafu has become so vigilant, staying close to him almost all the time, when they're on maneuvers, or while they're eating or sleeping or anything. He's like a shadow sewed to his side, keeping the ghosts away. When they're crouching behind the mortar together one day, yells and explosions pounding at their ears and dirt raining down on them, he doesn't wonder why Snafu's shoulder is pressed so tightly against his, he just lets himself be glad of it.
The whys don't matter so much anymore. He just lets it all happen; he doesn't wonder what it means or where it's going or why moments like that make his heart, his murmuring heart, seem to thud even harder than that time he sat next to Mary Huston on the Ferris wheel at the carnival, and she buried her face in his shoulder when they got too high. When they're together, they're together, and those are the times when it's easiest to pretend there's nothing else in the world. He can't tell if it's his new determination that's almost starting to save him, or if it's Snafu who's his touchstone, or if they're really all one in the same because he's the one who gave him the idea in the first place with his comment about making it, like survival was something that could be crafted by hand—but he doesn't try to tell. He would have settled for feeling simply nothing; just to stave off the terror and the death and madness would have been enough. But somehow, he's become something more, something actually good—not just merely a shadow, but a lighthouse.
It's because of this, it seems, that he's curiously unsurprised one day when they really are alone, when they have a few hours to themselves and have gone off on a walk to nowhere, when he turns and sees Snafu looking at him with an intensity that he never has before. Gene's seen that look on him before, usually when he's lapsed into one of his moody silences, staring off at something no one else can see, but never directed at anyone before, not even him. It's a longing, almost desperate look, and yet gentle. He's not surprised when Snafu reaches out, slowly, and puts one of those elegant hands onto his shoulder, and then spreads his fingers, sliding across his collarbone. It's almost as though he knew this was coming, as if he'd been waiting for it—even though he didn't allow himself to anticipate anymore.
"Eugene," is all Snafu says, his low voice almost a whisper. "I..." His eyes—green? Blue? Even this close to, it's hard to say—dart away from Eugene's and then back again, as though afraid to see his reaction.
But Gene isn't afraid. Not of this, and right at this moment, not of anything, for the first time in months. "I know," he says. There's nothing else that needs to be said, because for right then there really is just only them, there's just hands, there's just skin, there's just mouths coming together, first light and timid, then hungry. Every part is falling into place. It's like every detail becomes sharper as he gives himself over to them entirely—it seems like all he can hear is their breath, which is becoming ragged, and the insistent clinking of metal as their dog tags collide. There's the salty tang-scent of sweat, and then faintly of dust and earth as they sink to the ground; there's a hand in Snafu's dark, tangled curls, another clutching at a fistful of Gene's t-shirt. He doesn't think about what it means or what anyone else would say if they saw, because he's learned now. They've made it to another morning on this lonely island, and for the moment, that's enough.