black as black
the pacific, snafu/sledge
by lilnee
.
.
.
.
Stop.
Stop!
Eugene shouldn't be telling him outright, really. He shouldn't be telling him at all because he shouldn't have to, but he does, and he is—telling him to stop, stop, just stop it, fuck. He has a painfully strong wedge (a bicep, smooth and rain slick) around Eugene's throat. He's constricting tighter on every short breath, every word tried, as if training a dog, correcting a fault, and Eugene's eyes are turning upward, the world a little blacker around the edges, things looking more desperate, more out of his control. Eugene's hands pull and tug at him, but they get nowhere, find no purchase. This is sick and suffocating (literally), as crushing and daunting as any yelled out command before. Worse maybe, because this isn't the first time. Worse still, because it's a face he knows.
Snafu's gotten out of control before, banged in some bruises, split a lip or two, caused concussion, caused mayhem, but he's always stopped himself. As if as an after thought. Never let it get to this, his breath fire storm hot against Eugene's collar and the tone of his voice thin, stretched bare. All that pent up shit (death and toil), and the strained and careful words, the sideways glances, the reluctance to touch... He hasn't done a very good job of hiding what he likes, what he wants, and Eugene hasn't done a very good job of looking the other way.
But then he could have read him wrong.
Tighter still that wedge comes so all Eugene can do is sputter and hiss, his world flirting with complete black out. He said he likes to watch the new guys sweat, seems he likes to watch them squirm and struggle more. It's all catching up, lapsing over. Can't stop from knowing this is partially his fault, his own cause born of naivety and mostly circumstance. Just a product of messing with the wrong guy, a product of being the nicer guy.
"You don't fight like no southern boy," Snafu drones in his ear.
They're alone, gone for a mid afternoon piss a ways from the base. Walked out through a cleared passing (mowed down, busted down) and farther still until they were out of sight. It had started to rain. Couldn't hear anything but the fall of it on the leaves and rocks and the back of your head. Eugene had just been on his way back, finished, nerves not turned off but tuned down, when Snafu jumped him from behind. Didn't hear it and didn't stop it—what was warm connection, what was the bastardization of an embrace. It got hairy after Snafu wouldn't let go. Got serious when he snaked his arm around and barred him, elbow pushing into kidney, twisting blunt authority. That stomach acid burn. That cold sweat. Things flip flop like that.
Snafu's easing up his arm presently, letting air come back through Eugene's windpipe and down into his lungs. Sweet relief gone intensely bright white. Eugene almost swoons but catches himself.
"Limp as 'ah boned fish," Snafu hums (or what Eugene thinks he hears, because all he really can hear is the wind tunnel affect of his blood rushing, rushing, finding no escape).
Rain pisses down, streaming their faces, matting their hair, wetting any bare skin. This is just a game, a losers game. There isn't much from the origins of boot camp training or even pure instinct that can tell you how to correctly deal with this. They'll tell you don't panic, don't lose your head, but then there's your body telling you to fight tooth and nail, gain every inch, don't give in. Eugene sucks and coughs at the air, clawing his fingers down, trying to dig them between arm and throat, to lessen the crush. Snafu eases an iota (either over it or gone sly, who can really tell), but that elbow he keeps stiff and his breath close, not dampened by the rain.
This isn't innocent horse play. You're not going to walk away the same person from this, or this, all of it, why you're here, fighting and dying. The endless, sleepless nights of dread, the whistling bullet strokes, the hammering explosions and flecking metal shrapnel, glistening, shining, almost a relief to the eye. You're going to die or go home broken and those are pieces, chunks of you left on the beaches, in those flooded fox holes, left in the mud and dirt and blood. Up to your knees in it and it's rising still. You'll never be rid of it, you'll never be quite right. This is hell and afterlife's coming.
Call Eugene tired, call him a little checked out.
He bucks wild with all he's got, trying to throw Snafu off, swinging both his arms around. One elbow finds a mark as it flies back, could feel it, just more distressed messages from his brain, but Snafu doesn't budge. He grunts and clings, emphasizes that control by screwing his sharp elbow in as deep as it can reach. Eugene cries out and drops, oh, just drops, knees boneless. Gets half a gasp in before the bar is right back down, choking iron strong.
An epiphany finds him then, late coming, clear and evil. It's no one can hear you, no one will come. No swift rescue, or escape, or salvation, just Snafu shushing you, pushing his nose up close to your temple, chewed and pouty-thick lips a blink away. That inbred overbite hovering, that swill of old smoke, the stink of his unwashed uniform. He's pressing down from behind, nearly his full weight stressing, cloaking. They're not that different in size but Snafu has the muscle, Eugene just too damn skinny and worn out to do more than lift a gun and stay awake.
"Like ya better this way," Snafu chants. "On your knees."
Eugene's trying again to speak but comes up with less air than what he'd started with. Just swallows now, fighting even for that, saliva thick and rain cool and maybe that's the tang of blood too. Starting to fade, numb out. Just what happens when he does lose it, when he does fall limp in Snafu's grasp? He has half-thought horror stories to remember, half-thought desperations in the dark to think of (all guilt ridden). He starts to kick and jerk and claw and mouth breathless, voiceless. His last gasp. Every thrash missing its mark, losing its edge because of the lubricating rain. It speckles his tongue, freckles his face, stings at his eyes. He's aching all over. Christ, stop, stop, fuck, formed but silent. What panic does for you in these situations is a muddle of adrenaline and brain lock.
Freedom is all he's thinking.
Air is all he's thinking.
Snafu cuts him loose. Pushes him down on all fours. Eugene goes but doesn't stay there for long, he's flipping around to face him, inching back on his rear, kicking little bursts from his boneless legs in the sand and mud, not gaining much. Snafu just watches him, watches as he breathes and heaves, thin white fingers caressing reddened throat, jaw hanging, eyes wide. Snafu's face set like he's witnessing a butterfly float, a lunar eclipse, like he's enthralled.
"What in the hell's your problem?" Eugene grates, throat still restricted.
Snafu doesn't respond.
It's Eugene's turn to watch, not so much enthralled as enraged.
"Jesus Christ, you're crazy," he pants.
"Yeah," Snafu draws out, and his eyes are far off distant now, darkened, head tilted, a muted smile in the mix. He makes like he's coming back but Eugene's on to this and slides away, pushing off his boots dug in. Snafu abates, contemplating, turns to wringing his wrists here, biting his lip there. The rain spills on, a chill taking hold.
"Gonna bruise," he says, reproachful.
"No shit," Eugene snaps, swallows, adds, "Stay away."
It sounds ridiculous, said it as if it would really work, like Snafu would listen and back off. Like he wouldn't just readjust his devil may care, come what may attitude and press on, press back in, crowd his thoughts out. He crouches, coming on the level, eyes not once diverting or even blinking. That creeping smile spreads, half quirked.
He asks, "Really gotcha, didn't I?"
Eugene doesn't balk.
"I almost passed out, you shithead!"
What should have been a roar comes as a scraping croak. He swallows the burn there in his throat and coughs on the swelling ache. The curse has weight, a hint to his unbalanced progression, but as he's seeing Snafu now, really noticing him, the lines on his face, the purple-blue blots around his eyes, that reasonable reaction falters. It's not fear or hate, it's pity. This guy is really fucked up. This guy is gone. He's tired and withered and wasted. Defeated, really, socially defunct, emotionally fried. Certainly doesn't understand take it down a notch, or even tread lightly. How he plans on getting on after the war... No. Eugene sees it plain as day now. He doesn't plan on getting on.
"If I'd been one o' those dirty fuckin' Nips—"
"Well you aren't, Snafu, Jesus. Supposed to watch my neck. Not choke it."
He feels said article.
"Don't know how well you'd watch mine after that display..."
It's supposed to be a joke. Eugene doesn't feel like laughing, and can't recall the last time he did.
"I think you've been here too long." A low tone.
"Time's not up." A retort.
Eugene starts to stand, fingers flat out sinking into the silt, giving no purchase and no base to push himself off of. It's a struggle. Snafu's arm extends, more sand and mud putting a glove over his hand and working up still to swallow his wrist, his elbow. Following that arm higher and to his face again, to his hematoma ghosted eyes (hair dripping, cuts washed clean), there's a shine there, or trying to be, something smoother and easier to decode than the perpetual guarded emptiness. He has no overall expression. Eugene takes the hand but he doesn't pull himself up, he pulls Snafu down, hard, snaps his arm like a whip. Snafu lurches and falls.
Before he can recover Eugene gets him turned around, wriggles an arm across and over his naked throat, instating his own suffocating grip. It's a mimicry, a mockery. Snafu thrashes like a penned animal, but Eugene holds tight, doesn't give as those bitten down fingernails chew and claw, stressing and re-stressing, slipping. Legs kicking, rearing, twisting.
"Think I've got no fight?"
It's a rush, a different shade from the panicked, scattered one before. This goes straight to Eugene's guts, heavy and roiling. It's eating up a hole he bets, because this doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel like victory. He's ultimately lost.
He lets him go, unbelievably drained.
Given perfect conditions, because the choices with Snafu are endless, this might go one of two ways. One, Snafu could take his due (for once) and they go back to camp disheveled and soaked, or two, Snafu retaliates and they go back to camp disheveled and bloodied. Eugene's really pulling for option one but God knows, and he knows, it's got to be two. As he's seeing stars, acid jumping up his throat, pain greeting a smart hello, it's two.
Snafu's back on him, perched on his stomach, knees at his sides pinning his arms. Anchored. Trapped. Eugene's still reeling from the fist, a hand bunched in his shirt keeping him from the washed out earth beneath. Sight gone for seconds at a time. He finally regards this new thing, this cocked arm, just a threatening shadow, a concept but true possibility and blinks through the tears Snafu can't see. The arm hangs, rain drops bursting off pointed knuckles. It doesn't come. His fingers open and Eugene's on his back, flop, breath caught.
"Thas' better," Snafu says.
The true taste of blood now on his tongue. No mistakes. Eugene blinks the rain (the tears) out of his eyes, stares up at a sky still sunny, still their tropical paradise. What a joke.
Snafu stays where he's found himself, king of the hill, and starts scrounging for a cigarette. The rain having taken a pause or at least a lesser tumult. His zippo clangs, burns, Lucky catching and setting orange aglow at the business end. Dirty wet fingers to his lips and down. He inhales through parted lips and exhales from his nose, two clean grey jets furling. He offers none to Eugene, greedily huffing and puffing and causing a cramp where his weight cuts into pelvis. Eugene's caught up tonguing his busted lip and breathing gulp after gulp of sweet, sweet air to take offence.
This is probably a scene. If anyone came upon them they'd be thinking the worst, and they'd have every right to, there wasn't any good to find here. Snafu loses the cigarette when Eugene hijacks it from his fingers mid drag, aware of his sudden need for a vice. There's an exchange, eye to eye, but that's all she wrote. He takes it back after Eugene pulls in a lung full, breathing smoke, coughing again, re-firing raw tissue.
Just a reminder, a thorn in his side.
"I see you watching me, you know."
Cue more coughing, his esophagus seizing.
"Oh?"
It's a good enough time as any to call him out, better even, because he's listening. That need, human and natural, happening everywhere but here, to find easy release, reprieve. It may go unsaid, hidden in a glance, but it's not hard enough to miss that you could blame ignorance or fatigue or shock of war. Not so out of sight that you could forget or dismiss it. Call it sexual tension. Call it escapism. Snafu looks half interested, half sedate, back to his sprawling sloth-like self. Eugene's so sure he's got him pegged.
"You..." Has to swallow.
"You don't hide it well." Finished raspy.
"Hide what?"
And Snafu's trying his very best to be easy and cool, flicking what ash has collected and taking another drag. It would have worked, his smoke and mirror show, but his hands betray him, shaking just a tick, jittering just a second. His eyes are a low and terrible shade, this calamity blue, this bruised in shadow. They give him nothing, he gives him nothing. Eugene's lips draw thin, teeth married together, clenched like they've been glued. Snafu's not going to make this easy. Going to dodge this as long as he can.
"Fuck you."
He shifts, pain squirreling up Eugene's side.
"Sure got a mouth on ya now. What'd Ma' say?"
"She'd probably tell me to stay away from you."
Eugene shifts too, trying to get him in a place that doesn't cause hurt.
"Smart woman."
It's said like he says everything else, his mouth packed full of cotton, or his tongue is just too bothered to move. It's hard to get a beat on him sometimes because of that, just another added level of shit Eugene could do without. He's looking the other way, up the scorched clearing and to where the encampment would be. Over the hill and through the trees (palms, rather), where they're working like ants or bees or something drone-like and focused to a point. It might be time for rest, for a recharge, but someone's always moving out there, always ready, always fighting in their stead. The feeling is never that of safety, it's more like anticipation, heavy and dank. What's coming next? Where do I have to be? Deeper down still, as low as you can get (low enough you could call it someone else's thought) it's: Am I coming back?
Eugene's in a dark enough place to answer no.
"Get off me."
Snafu pitches the spent cigarette into the muck and says, "No."
"What," he winces, the weight above starting to be too much, "Not done pummeling me?"
It's a dry remark. Snafu pays it no mind. He's reaching out, all fingers, and smudges at the corner of Eugene's mouth, where he guesses that fist found him earlier. It's soft enough not to hurt but Eugene hisses and pulls back anyway, using every excuse, every chance to sting him like he's been stung. Snafu's fingers, thumb and index, come back red. He's rubbing the colour between those two digits, watching it smear, watching it stain. His eyes are dreamy.
"Shit, just get off. Please."
He finally does, stepping off one leg, up, and to the side. Eugene rises afterward, sand falling from his hair and down his collar, making an itching damp line. Snafu's turned away, shoulders usually straight and somewhat level, now slumped. He's entirely two people, two ideas caught up in one head. One for protection, the other lost and forgotten, trying to have a say. Could imagine him, just a boy, what would feel like forever ago back in his hometown, playing chicken with trains, stealing whatever caught his eye and giving his Ma' nothing but grief. Could imagine him still, getting out of trouble by the pound of his fists, by the sharpness of his tongue. Could see him standing alone, smoke curling, maw grinning, satirical. Strife. It's the only language he remembers, the only memory lasting.
"Snaf—"
"What, Eugene?"
His name from that mouth might as well have been a kick to the nuts. He'd much rather have that Snafu, that he knows and trusts to be cruel and blunt and stained black, black as oil slick, in this moment, because the Snafu right here, looking very torn, is truly unpredictable and vulnerable and something terrible.
"Let's go back."
"Let's not," Snafu barks.
Eugene's had it, his thinking man's patience worn out.
What was that worth in a place this demanding of action?
"What the hell is it?" he shrills, voice squeaking out.
Snafu half turns.
"What's with all your looks and your stupid insinuating body language? And then you fucking choke me? What the fuck? I'm sick of this shit. Make up your God damn mind!"
"Had tah know."
"To know what?" Eugene huffs, exhausted.
"Could knock ya 'round and ya wouldn't break."
The side of his face he can see, the side barely turned, it's guilt.
He's guilty.
No two ways about it.
Eugene twitches, surprised.
Why shouldn't it be that simple? Like a school yard crush. Like you only hurt the ones you love. Snafu doesn't know how to handle it, him, wanting him, like he's never known kindness or life without horror or bullet song. And maybe he hasn't, because he's always lashing out, all stress and desire, all or nothing. Those mile long stare downs, those awkward words and gestures, trying to be humane. His only true instinct is tear it up first before it can be torn at all.
Eugene can't find much to say. Here he is on an island so far from home, and it's up to him to be bigger than his hurt. God dammit that isn't fair. None of it. Eugene approaches him regardless, coming what feels like full circle, and waits. There's perceptible tension vibrating off Snafu, disrupting the tropic air. They stand for a moment or two, neither of them counting the seconds, caring to. All the time that they have is numbered already so why add this.
It starts to rain again, lazy at first, now a down pour. The drench warmer than the last, taking the chill from Eugene's insides, rinsing his camouflage of sand and soil clear. He realizes he wants to touch him then, to connect... but he doesn't. Can't. Like usual. He doesn't know what to expect from him. Snafu asks for so much, for fucking everything, pushes Eugene to his limits and well beyond, not giving anything back, but Eugene takes it. He'll be stuck with this fire in his throat for a week now and the bruises longer still, but that's alright. Well, no, it's not alright, but nothing here is, so take what you can get.
He hears himself say, "Just lucky I bend."
Voice splintered, rain making the words secret.
Trying to reach someone already given up for dead, you're thankful if they see or hear you at all. Snafu sees him though. For some reason he's all he can see. Been watching him all this time, Eugene's innocence and goodness and humanity fading, falling like spent shells. Snafu wanted to see if it broke him. If there was still hope for himself despite.
He collides with Eugene, full body slam, arms muddy, filthy, wet. Eugene gasps and blanches. It's a true embrace. He's squeezing him hard, pressing his face into the dip of his collarbone. Eugene relaxes, stills himself, pushes a breath out. It's warm and yielding, Snafu's body. He fits that empty space, his shoulders falling out of tire now rather than turmoil. And nothing bad happens. Nothing explodes, no one screams or dies or falls and Snafu doesn't let go. Eugene brings his arms around him. This may be forgiveness. This may be reprieve.
He has hope, just some, for this busted ugly thing, his companion. Whether that's enough to carry Snafu and himself through the war remains to be seen.