Chapter Text
Gene always knew it was a possibility that he’d be a Little.
Growing up, toddling after his grand-mère and all the other school children, he remembered the looks he used to get when he held onto his childhood comfort items and blankets a little longer than his peers, before he learned to keep such things behind closed doors.
In school, they’d learned that nearly one-in-ten of the population was like him, although current screening tools weren’t truly valid until their 18th birthday, but most people liked to think they’d know a Little when they saw them.
It was this unfounded self-assuredness that served Gene well when he’d taken the bus to Lafayette and enlisted in the paratroopers early at 17, before he could be positively identified as a Little. After spending his elementary school days ridiculed for his quiet nature and tendency towards tears, he’d learned how to compartmentalize like the best of them, until even his own family reconsidered his suspected classification and didn’t think to question his stubborn streak and the careful distance he kept from others.
He remembered the way his mother had looked when he’d told her that he was joining the army. Caught between pride and alarm, but trusting in his capabilities as an independent young man— a trust that would disappear in a moment if she’d still suspected what he knew about himself.
Bayou Chene, like most of rural Louisiana, was pretty old-fashioned in its view of Littles– no smoking, no drinking, no adult life or job to speak of— any self-determination depending entirely on the whims of a designated caregiver, if he stayed. Gene had always known that he’d have to leave if he wanted any semblance of independence in his adult life, and joining the paratroopers had been his first step towards that life.
So yes, he’d always planned on leaving— the war just gave him a direction to go.
Like many of his peers, he’d answered the call after Pearl Harbor. Nearly every able-bodied man in his town wanted to enlist, and he wasn’t going to miss out on any of it. He joined up with the paratroopers because he wanted to be with the best— and he knew he’d fight like hell to get there.
Designation or not, Gene was going to war.
Gene wasn’t an idiot. He knew that war wasn’t a game, despite what some of the men seemed to think. There were very real stakes at play here— not just his life, but also his status as a Little. That’s why it was so important that he kept to his system.
Eugene had worked out a set of guiding principles long ago to manage his Little needs while still maintaining his larger priorities. Namely, what to do when being fully Little was not an option.
1. Children should be seen and not heard.
He’d been raised with this rule in mind, so it was relatively easy, all things considered, to keep his trap shut while Little. If he didn’t speak, nobody could clock the way he stuttered, or how he’d sometimes forget which language was which when forming a reply. His grand-mère had spoken almost entirely in Cajun French, and he still found himself thinking in French more often than not when he was feeling little.
2. Mind the gap.
Dipping his toe into his little space was fine and even necessary for his continued sanity, but there was no need to go wandering into the deep end. He still had no idea how deep he’d truly go, if he leaned into that ever-present feeling of soft-warm-alright, and he preferred to keep it that way, thank you. Even if it ached to only ever go halfway, he could stave off a true drop indefinitely with this method.
3. Avoid Caregivers like the plague.
Just like a tenth of the population was a Little, roughly one in ten individuals was a Caregiver— some were more competent than others, but they were all attuned to the needs of those around them— Littles especially. The urge was still there for everyone else, and some of them were overbearing idiots about it, but the instinctual need to care for others was especially strong with any Littles they were close to, so that’s what Gene had to avoid.
Obviously, it would be suspicious if Gene was friendly around everyone else and then only avoided the Caregivers in his Company. For this reason, Gene held back from joining the group unless it would be unreasonably rude to avoid an interaction, and they grew to accept his quiet nature and tendency to hang out in the periphery of any group conversation.
“That’s just Doc,” They’d explain to any well-meaning newcomers who tried to make polite conversation while he stitched them up, only to get a cursory response before he made his exit with an excuse of checking in on someone’s trenchfoot or a shrapnel injury. He wasn’t rude about it, but when connections could be strengthened to the point of suspicion, connections could be dangerous.
No need to get himself a Dishonorable Discharge on top of everything else he had waiting for him after the war.
Joining the army had been simultaneously easier than Gene thought it would be, and the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. With his experience helping his Grand-mère growing up, Gene had been fast-tracked for a medic assignment and put through three weeks of first aid training before basic training even began.
Medic training also had the unexpected boon of separate sleeping quarters from the rest of the battalion every few nights, as each medic took turns manning the company aid tent in Toccoa. Between patching up sprained ankles and black eyes, Gene relied on this time to regain his equilibrium and indulge his headspace, just a little bit.
Between taking inventory, he’d poke his head out of the tent and count the stars, or read the one adventure novel he’d snuck into his gearkit for downtime. He’d taken to carrying his medic bag around like an emotional support blanket even when inside the medical tent, and the weight of it felt even more reassuring when the world around him felt so much bigger.
(He avoided the juvenile urge to really fiddle with anything that couldn’t be explained by a fit of boredom, and he was always careful not to go too deep).
Of course, if someone came in with an actual emergency, Gene had to age back up pretty quickly, but he’d always been pretty good at finding the mental on/off switch for his headspace, although it did leave him with a killer headache more often than not.
But he’d take the headache any day if it meant keeping his men in one piece while also protecting his secret. Accidental slips were bound to happen if he didn’t keep a lid on things, so Gene allowed himself these little slivers of peace even as Easy Company prepared for war.
The first time Easy Company jumped, Gene was just a little smaller than he should’ve been. The anticipation of getting his jump wings combined with the knowledge that they were one step closer to escaping Lieutenant Sobel’s iron reign— altogether led to Gene bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited in line to step into the aircraft.
“Nervous?” Lieutenant Winters asked, sliding next to the medic as he took stock of their stick, only to find the medic nearly bursting with energy. Caregiver and true leader of Easy Company, the Lieutenant could always be counted on to keep tabs on his men’s wellbeing.
“No sir.” Eugene straightened at the question, but his stance quickly relaxed as he took note of the Lieutenant’s good humor, offering the other a sheepish near-smile. Gene wasn’t the only one ready to be done with jump training.
“Jumping from 1000 feet AGL, in sticks of 12 jumpers per aircraft. You just have to remember what you were taught. I guarantee gravity will take care of the rest.”
Easy made three jumps that day, and Gene was hooting and hollering for all three of them. Even later, with a drink in his hand and jump wings on his chest, he still couldn’t fully wipe the grin off his face.
First was Operation Overlord, then Market Garden— Gene liked to claim that he was adjusting well to the realities of war. He’d seen far too much death, even in these last few months, and he wouldn’t lie that he was feeling the strain just like everyone else.
But Gene wasn’t paralyzed by it— not like Blythe, or cowering in foxholes like certain commanding officers— instead, it sizzled inside him like a livewire, quickening his steps and bringing a sharp sense of urgency hell-bent on saving every man he could.
There were many he couldn’t save— too many— and sometimes that weighed on him more than he could bear, but there was nothing to do about it but keep marching, surrounded by a battalion but still alone.
Curahee, indeed.
As the war continued to ramp up in its intensity, it wasn’t long before Gene was Easy Company’s most experienced medic after Mampre got reassigned to Battalion, and that came with even more responsibility. One of which was keeping an eye on their new replacement medic, Ralph Spina. The poor man had to be one of the more reluctantly-assigned medics in the Airborne, for all that he was good at the job, having been picked as a medic due to being one of the few Caregivers in his batch of recruits, for all the good it did him.
Don’t get him wrong, Spina was a good medic and a great man, but he was probably the least instinctual Caregiver that Gene had ever met. He’d once made a kid cry in the span of five seconds, the one time they’d interacted with civilians in months, and it had taken Gene nearly ten minutes to talk Spina back down from his anxious spiral.
Maybe this made it easier to let his guard down around the other medic, but Gene found himself spending more and more time with Spina as the war continued, especially as their supplies started to dwindle and his brief moments of peace became even more of a rarity. Gene couldn't deny how the others' presence in his foxhole felt like a balm on overtaxed nerves, the few times he'd been too tired to make his way back to his own solitary foxhole at night.
Still, Gene could’ve managed. He could have pushed through to the end of the war, if it hadn’t been for Bastogne.
“I’m in heaven, Doc,” Skinny Sisk murmured, his previously pained expression relaxing into a look of quiet awe as he gazed into the eyes of a beautiful nurse and felt the first soft touch he’d experienced since a brief fling in Eindhoven.
Doc’s eyebrows creased in amusement even as his lips thinned with worry as his eyes scanned the dreary and overcrowded chapel. This was it— no real doctors, only crates and stretchers for beds— no morphine or pain meds to speak of, save the alcohol in Sisk’s hand that likely doubled as disinfectant when needed.
Gene rubbed harshly at his temples in an attempt to stave off the ever-persistent headache that had been plaguing him since they first arrived in this frozen piece of hell. There was no evacuation point—Nothing, not even a real field hospital— none outside this overfilled church, with its arched ceilings only further accentuating the disparity above with the bloodstained stonework and mud-crusted boots below.
“Nurse,” Gene asked again once Sisk had been made as comfortable as could be under the circumstances. He’d be back to check in on him later, if he could, but he already felt antsy to get back to the front with Spina— one medic was never enough when it truly mattered.
Finally, the nurse acknowledged him, moving without further preamble. “This way.”
Falling into step behind her, he had to move quickly to keep up with her fast pace. “I need morphine. I need bandages. Whateva you got. We got nothing.” He didn’t gloss over the details— they were too far into the war for that.
“Okay, I can give you a little, but not a lot.” She replied, voice carrying a light French accent. Reaching for supplies, she shuffled around a small storage space with confidence that spoke of familiarity. “You can have this today.” She offered him a small crate of supplies— smaller than he would like, but leagues better than what he’d had in his depressingly depleted medic bag.
“You got plasma?” He asked, not finding it in the box she’d handed him.
“A little. Are you a surgeon?”
“No. We have no surgeon.” Battalion had figured that they’d be relying on the 326th Medical to provide any of their most complex medical needs, and that Companies wouldn’t need their own designated surgeon— but with the 326th taken captive by the Germans, they were all thinking twice about that bit of poor planning.
Shuffling through the box to see what he’d been given, Eugene paused in confusion at the sight of several rolled-up wads of fabric. “What's this?”
“From the bed.” She clarified, already moving.
Eugene did a double-take. “What– sheets?”
“Yes, for bandages.”
Part of Gene wanted to despair that they’d been relegated to using sheets as bandages, but he was mostly just grateful to have anything at all, with how low his supplies were getting. Falling into step behind the nurse as she led him out of the maze of dimly-lit corridors filled with wounded men, he startled slightly when she introduced herself.
“My name is Renee.”
“I’m Gene. Eugene Roe.” He responded, accepting this small olive branch of friendship. And it was just friendship; he could tell from the way her sparkling gaze turned knowing, like they were both in on a secret— and Gene had so few secrets to spare.
“And where are you from?” She asked as she led the way back into corridors crammed with wounded men.
“Louisiana, half-Cajun.” He paused before continuing. “Et toi, tu viens d'où?” Something in him eased the slightest bit to speak to someone else in French, even if the vowels lilted strangely when she responded.
“Bastogne.” She replied, offering him a look that spoke volumes before they went their separate ways. Stepping out into the cold, the frigid air felt like sharp blades down his throat after a moment of near-warmth. Gene took a second to swipe a pair of boots for Toye, and he was about to flag down the driver when he heard her voice behind him.
“Eugene, chocolat.” Renee called after him, shooting him an almost cheeky smile as she tossed him the sweet treat. “Pour vous!”
Gene barely had a moment to return the smile, just a small crinkle of his eyes and an upturning of his lips, before turning to follow his ride back out of Bastogne.
It was only as he rattled back to the front that he thought to be concerned about the reason for her gift and her knowing looks.
There’s no way she could know— none. But between that and the low likelihood that she was flirting with him while he actively stank of stale sweat and bodily fluids, and he hadn’t had a real shower in months, Gene had to wonder if she knew that he was a Little, and how she’d figured it out.
But for now, he’d treasure her gift and share it with whoever needed it most. After all, everyone knew that Littles had a sweet tooth, and Gene was no exception.