He's smiling and you know he's up to no good. He's leaning back on his palms, and for the entire world he looks like a king and he knows it. You have an urge to run, just get away because his eyes are scorching, but you're too damn proud, and you have an inkling that he probably already knows this too. He tips his head to the side, gestures you over and you can feel your bones burning, withering into ash.
You close the distance between you (milesfeetinches) and take a seat next to him. You know he's up to no good when his fingers splay out to brush against your own and you tilt your head away (faraway) because no, he will not win this time.
"Hey, Sledgehamma'."
Your name, (nickname, really) slips off his tongue and crawls over your skin like a disease (a cure, it will heal you).
"Hey." You echo, because, really, you're only ever a shadow.
He doesn't like it, though, doesn't believe it and you can read it through the flash of his teeth, the twitch of his lips. You read him like a book, but it's wrong, so you angle your face away, lava dripping through your lungs.
"Sledgehamma'." He repeats, licking his lips, shifting his body and goddammit, he's burning you. You coil like a damn rattlesnake and that slow grin is back, eating away at your cells, devouring whatever dignity you had left (justasliver, justaslight).
"What?" You snap because you don't want to be here.
You don't belong here and he knows it. His large, glassy eyes blink at you once, twice, and you know you've got it wrong.
"Just…stop it, will you?"
It's too much. The mud, the rain, the stench of death (his eyes, his smile, the feel of his skin).
"Stop what?"
His lips angle up, superior. It pisses you off and goddamn it all, you aren't close enough.
You breathe out before jumping, catching his jaw with your fist. It hurts; pain flares in your knuckles, but that's all right (his skin is still warm) that's okay. You watch as he rolls his jaw once, twice, and you momentarily forget that you are sprawled on top of him. You watch as he raises his hands (runrun) and grips your face.
"Stop what?"
Slow words, too slow, and something inside of you has melted away, evaporated into steam. A jolt runs through you when his thumb brushes over the bruise below your eye (And you know it's his, only his). You lay your hands flat on his chest and push yourself away.
"You know damn well what I mean."
You realize you are yelling, but you don't really care anymore. You realize you are treading into dangerous territory, but you are sick, you are already dying, so why the hell does it matter? His eyebrows raise and you are weak, so, so weak, and he knows it.
"Yeah?"
His words slide over chapped lips and a devious tongue, and you're not quite sure why your heart is thumping so quickly. It's dangerous, really, and you bite back the urge to wrap your hands around him.
"Shut the fuck up."
His eyes widen comically and an amused, sadistic little smirk sneaks its way onto his face. He's mocking you, drinking up your reactions with a cruel ease. He's got your blood boiling beneath your skin, and you can't shake the need to reach out just to feel the blood pumping through his veins.
"What's da mattah, Sledgehamma? Cat got yoh tongue?" A dry chuckle escapes his throat.
You realize with a sudden clarity that you need to get away. You need to get away fast, because this man will drag you beneath the ground, drag you beneath the japs that are already rotting away.
"Fuck you, Shelton." You hiss his name like a damn prayer, and your nails dig painfully into your skin because he is the farthest thing from a god.
He is the devil wrapped up in a man, and you have to see more. He is the first and last sin carved into splintered bone, and you have to repent.
"Just…just leave me the fuck alone." Your words are empty and hollow, reverberating through the air like microscopic explosions.
His glassy orbs track your movements as you slink backwards, sink into the forest full of scattered limbs and lost prayers. You inch away carefully, boots skidding over blood-spattered dirt and skin-covered rocks. You're falling into death itself, but anything is better than this. Anything is better than breathing in a false redemption.
"Eugene."
Your blood freezes in your veins as his hand wraps around your forearm, and you nearly growl. His fingers are like electricity and you're short-circuiting.
"Gene. Look at me." He is insistently tugging, dragging you towards him and goddammit all, you need this.
"What? What more do you fucking want?" You're shouting again, but it doesn't daunt him, doesn't affect him at all and your heart is thump thump thumping away.
"Shut up, Gene." It's a quiet mumble slammed against your lips and the effect is disastrous. It's tearing up your insides, drowning you in your own soul, but it doesn't matter. It never did matter.
Your hands twine into his curls, and you're not quite sure whether you should rip his head away or drag him closer (it's not enough, never enough). Before you can make your decision, he's slipping his way past your defenses and the warmth in your mouth is causing a fire to lick through your veins. You are burning and it doesn't take you too long to realize that this is not a desire, but rather a need. You need this, and damn it all if he doesn't know it.
"Shelt-mm" He bites your lip roughly because he doesn't want you to speak, to ruin this moment. Your fingertips are numb and you absently wonder if this might be the end.
"It's Merriel," His breathe wafts over your swollen lips, seeping through your mouth and slinking down your throat to your lungs.
"What?" You can barely breathe; barely mutter out a coherent word.
"Merriel. My name is Merriel." He repeats, watery eyes rippling with something unknown.
It takes you a moment to register his words in your mind, takes you another moment to form your lips around the name.
"Merriel? Merriel Shelton?"
You don't know why this name feels so strange against your tongue. He is not Merriel; he is Snafu. Snafu with his wide, staring frogeyes. Snafu with his quick, sharp tongue. Snafu with dry lips and fuck that shit, I scrub drums for no man.
S.n.a.f.u-Situation normal all fucked up.
"Yeah. Yeah, dat's right." The corner of his lips quirk up and you know he is amused.
Your muscles tense over your bones because you realize that you do not know who "Merriel" is. You only know his vessel of war; only know the animalistic glint in his eye. You can't imagine Snafu having a home, a family. You can't imagine him anywhere but in the battlefield-lips pulled down in a grim frown, finger squeezing over the trigger-each target hit.
You close your eyes against the sudden wave of nausea that washes over you.
"What is it, Eugene?"
The words are foreign and his face swims in your vision.
"It's Sledgehammer." You snap, because that's the way it's supposed to be.
Thanks Sledgehamma'-he's grinning like a madman at his own joke. You grin back because he's marked you.
"That's right. But yoh also Eugene. Eugene Sledge. Ain't ya?"
You bite a red cut into your lip, tasting the last remnants of Snafu's cigarette on your tongue.
"No. I'm not-You've got it wrong."
You're scrambling for words, eyes darting for some sort of answer. You don't understand how he's got you cornered like this, and it's a little bit suffocating. He watches you calmly, hand reaching for the zippo in his chest pocket. You are his prey, and he'd be damned if he lets you go.
"I don' think so." The thick words shroud the air around you. A flame jumps from the rectangular piece of metal in his hand, and you watch his fingers click shut the top, extinguishing the spark.
"I mean, I am, but you-"
"I what?" It's a game to him, and he licks his lips with the certainty that he will win. You swallow back the lump in your throat. You should have run away from the start. You should have shaken him off and gone back to camp.
"This is a waste of my time." You finally say, and you stand up to leave but he's in your space again, breathing your air and you are suffocating.
"You don' have anywhere tah go, Eu-gene." He says your name thick and slow, makes sure you're looking at the way his lips part around it. He says it like it'll save you, says it like redemption, but you've got no time for that.
"I've got better places to be than here." You bite back because you won't let him win. You won't let him eat you alive, even though he's already got your limbs in his belly. He shuffles closer to you, takes your chin in his hand and grips your jaw.
"Yoh lyin', Gene." He breathes and you can feel the way he's attaching strings to your bones. He's chaining you up, winding you tight.
"What the hell do you want?" You finally explode. A smile breaks out on his face, slithers over his teeth and you shudder.
"You." He hisses and you can feel the trap he's set for you close.
You can feel the metal jaws clamp over your soul, you can feel them settle into your bones. You don't say anything back and he doesn't expect you to. You don't move a muscle, but that's the way he wants it, so he pushes you up against the coral and let's you feel the way he was made for you. He lets you feel the way his blood pumps for you, lets you feel the way his bones have cracked for you. The strings in your bones pull you closer and you feel like you've become something else entirely.
"I want you, Eugene." He breathes against your ear, your neck, your jaw.
"You. I want you. I want you." He mutters against your lips, into your mouth and across your teeth. You swallow down the words and let them settle in your belly. You don't realize you've got your hands buried in his hair until he tries to move away. You don't realize you'll die without him until he's out of reach.
"Please." You whisper. He doesn't move, only watches you with those wide frogeyes. He watches you with that predatory gaze, sucks you up until your nothing but dried-out cells and muscle.
"Merriel. Merriel, please." You repeat, and his name feels like home on your lips and he knows it, he fucking knows it, but that doesn't matter, it doesn't-
"Fuck." You cry when he pulls you both to the ground, into the mud, into the rotting corpses below you.
His hands are everywhere, taking you apart and reshaping you. His nails scratch along your skin leaving his mark; you've got Merriel in bright red along the edges of your soul. You drag your hands down his back, remind him that you aren't just Eugene, but Sledgehamma' too, and when he bites the edge of your lip a little bit too hard, you know he understands. You are both covered in slop, covered in dried blood and the endless rain, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because this is death; this is the final goodbye.
You've got murder inside your veins and bullets between your teeth, but you are not afraid. The war is pulsing against you, inside you, and you've got strategies of death beneath your eyelids, but still, you do not fear. Snafu settles inside you, strings pulling you close, and you breathe. You breathe because this is life; this is death and there never really was a difference at all.