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Babe remembers.
He remembers his voice and the words he whispered into his skin. He remembers the colour of his eyes, the way they’d settle on him before looking away, ashamed, afraid he’d been seen. He remembers the feeling of his hands cradling his jaw, caressing his collarbone, kissing his hips. He remembers the cold and the snow, and in the middle soft lips touching his, murmuring prayers between kisses, calming wounded soldiers, setting in a firm line when he tried not to cry.
Babe remembers, but he wonders if Gene does too.
*
It starts the way these things often do: with a glance and two smiles, a joke said, a cry shared.
Babe feels the loss of Julian on his shoulder, can see him in his dreams, but can no longer see him in his foxhole. He tried to reach him, but he didn’t try hard enough.
It’s Gene that he goes looking for when the night comes. He doesn’t think he can handle sleeping in his foxhole, Julian’s ghost dancing around him. It’s not Gene that he finds, but he knows Gene will be there at some point. Even though the medic does rounds to check on the men, he has to sleep too, sometimes. He stops even thinking about Gene, instead it’s the kid who died today that fills his head. He thinks he’s going to cry but he doesn’t want to, he can’t, the burns of his tears would feel wrong on his cold cheeks. He cries a bit anyway, when Gene is at his side, his shoulder bumping into Babe’s, and he talks about Julian and how he died alone, in the cold, faced with the enemy.
It’s a couple of days later that it happens. Gene is bandaging his hand, Babe is watching the line, and they sometimes glance at each other. And while Babe’s eyes are settled on Gene’s, Gene’s gaze is on his lips. His lips, that he licks, and Gene looks up and Babe, god, Babe is only a man. He leans into Gene, caresses his lips with his own, smiles at him then goes back to watching the line, more scared now than he ever was – even during the shelling.
His heart goes insane in his chest when Gene doesn’t leave the foxhole running away. Instead, Gene squeezes his hand, and from the corner of his eyes, Babe sees him smiling.
*
It happens again. And again. Whenever they’re alone, whenever they have time. Once, fiercely, when Bill and Toye are driven to the hospital, two legs missing. Otherwise it’s gentle, soft; they want to feel something different than the violence they live every day.
Then they are sent somewhere else, out of the woods, into bombed houses and they have a roof over their heads. Gene’s got a room for himself, and finally, finally Babe can touch his bare skin, can kiss those pale shoulders, can chuckle when Gene says, “You know, in the Bayou, I tan.” Gene’s words are precious, and they mean more to Babe than Gene could ever know.
They share heat, food and bed. Their uniforms lay, disregarded, on the ground, and Babe marvels at Gene’s body, the things he thought about but never truly believed he would see: the scars and the freckles, the things that make Gene his: the kisses he hides in his skin, the red marks he voluntarily makes.
Gene smiles and groans and moans, Babe’s hands on him, Gene kissing his jaw, and Babe figures there’s nowhere he’d rather be right now than in Gene’s arms.
How can loving him be wrong if it feels so good?
*
Babe never thought about how it would end, about after the war, because for a while there he’d started thinking that the war would never end, or that he’d die before.
When he comes back home, he doesn’t talk about it, about any of it, to anyone. No one would understand that it was more painful saying goodbye to Gene than any wounds he’s ever had.
“How are you today Babe?” he’s often asked, and he says “fine”, lies about it because how can he say that he feels dead inside? That the war has changed everything, has changed his surroundings and has changed him. That he isn’t sure if he would have preferred to die over there, rather than come back alone. And he hates himself for it, because it’s supposed to be over, he’s not supposed to feel this way anymore, so why does he?
And perhaps it’s that incomprehension, that stubbornness of his, that makes him stay away from Louisiana, and from a certain young man with a Cajun drawl.
*
After a year, he decides that he can no longer live like this, that this isn’t living. So he takes a train, two, and finds himself in Bayou Chêne, a suitcase in one hand, a piece of paper in the other. He knocks on a door and he stares at Gene, Gene who he hasn’t seen in a year, Gene who isn’t wearing his uniform but casual clothes, Gene who has a wide smile but cautious eyes. He lets Babe enter, doesn’t comment on the suitcase, doesn’t ask why he is there, barely startles when Babe kisses him, undresses him, makes love to him.
Turns out, Gene remembers too.