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It starts with this:
Red smearing the snow, medic armband chasing into his vision, and Doc, too, in inky blacks and so much winter white that it’s almost bright-blue-glowing. Eugene’s face is just colors until it’s not, until Babe only sees his eyes and each dead man behind them.
There’s the shape of Eugene’s bloodless lips. Terse and bitten-split. Babe wants to soothe them with his own and he’s surprised that he doesn’t even hate himself for that, not here.
But then it’s a little harder to look into Eugene’s haunted eyes again. Babe is afraid Eugene will see and know and walk around with that on his shoulders, too. Babe thinks about the rejection, maybe a low duck of Eugene’s head and his eyes clearing empty (and that is so much worse).
So he says nothing, even in the face that he is almost sure shines with love for just a moment as Bastogne bears down on them.
Because sure as he thinks he is, he can never quite be.
--
Really, though, it starts with a longing. It’s shapeless; hasn’t got a name, except for Eugene, because it’s new enough to bury underneath the pile of bodies and the blood-muddied snow.
Babe carefully keeps his thoughts superficial around Eugene. That’s until he’s in Bastogne, and there aren’t enough distractions, and Eugene is there even when he’s not. And so Babe finds himself watching the line while Bill naps restlessly beside him, but he’s not seeing, not really, only wondering where Doc is, if he’s finally settled the fuck down and is sleeping (and Babe hopes, god, does he hope with a bewildered desperation that Eugene isn’t snapping, because he’s humanity, because he’s backbone, because he’s—)
It’s tearing at him, and as soon as it’s Bill’s turn to watch, Babe crawls out of the shallow foxhole and slips somewhere into the dark. He needs to see, needs to make sure Eugene’s not wearing himself all the way thin into nothing. It feels twice as cold above the ground without a warm body near, but his mind’s twisting him inside out and he’s going crazy with this, so he needs to, needs to see.
The twilight, bless it, gives light enough to find Doc in just a few minutes. And, yes, he is asleep, but it’s surely the most miserable kind Babe’s ever seen. He’s alone, and it’s unsurprising, but it’s also very goddamned stupid in this cold. Babe doesn’t understand his need for solitude, not out here. Eugene’s eyelids look bruised purple and his brows are tensed. His breath comes too slow and shallow for Babe’s comfort.
Babe’s dropping into the foxhole and touching him without thinking. He gets almost frenzied when there’s no heat coming from Doc’s cheek at all. Only the warmth of breath ghosting on Babe’s fingers quells the panic clawing at his heart.
He presses himself to Doc and wishes he were warm so he could share it and breathe life so Eugene would wake up, flush with blood again.
“Doc,” he says, quiet and right in the shell of his ear. There’s a barely-there hitch of breath, and he tries again, louder.
“Hey,” he says, voice growing a little hysterical. He’s rubbing Eugene’s hands probably a little too roughly, hoping for heat. Life. “C’mon. Eugene, Eugene, c’mon; you gotta wake up.”
That gets him a hush of a moan. So he keeps urging, keeps touching, keeps trying to crush that panic, until finally, it’s close to alright.
“Edward?” Eugene mumbles. His name is a plume of air, until Eugene clears his throat. Says it again, a sleepy sigh this time.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me.” he says in a rushed string of words. It doesn’t even occur him to correct Eugene on his name again. He could start chastising, could start telling Eugene that if anyone should know better than to sleep alone in this temperature, it should be him, but none of it even matters right now, because he’s running his hands up Eugene’s arms and pulling him in close because he’s shivering, god, is he shivering. Babe almost feels like he’s vibrating, holding onto him.
Eugene gasps, harsh under his jaw while he tries to catch his breath. And Babe can’t help his own shivering when Eugene’s lips accidentally brush his skin. For a moment, he swears he’s warm again. He thinks in flashes of all the places he wants those lips, all the places his mind would have gone if he didn’t push it down with all he had. It’s wonderful and innervating and fucking terrifying. His heart starts pumping overtime. A big part of him wants to bolt, because, for a moment, it almost seems safer in that bleak wide open than with a thawing Doc Roe shaking against him. But then it doesn’t seem so; it really doesn’t, when Eugene’s lips brush his jaw a second time. It lingers just long enough to convince Babe that it’s not an accident. But he can’t enjoy it as much this time; those lips are so cold.
So he keeps himself wrapped around Eugene until he stops shaking so much, and he tries not to think about the quick breaths against his neck, the shifting, that mouth, because he can’t (shouldn’t). Not here.
After several minutes, Eugene breaks the silence.
“I’m okay,” he says in the space between their bodies. “I, uh. Thank you.”
He’s a little awkward with it, and Babe sort of sees why. He’s never been on the receiving end. That’s not the job they gave him as a medic.
“Yeah,” Babe says back, making no effort to move. “Yeah, it’s nothing. Don’t you be fallin’ asleep alone when it’s freezing like this again, you hear? Fuckin’ dangerous. You should know.”
There isn’t as much bite in his words as he tries for. He hates that he sounds more upset than anything.
Eugene doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at Babe like he’s some kind of creature, bewildered and a little wide-eyed.
“Well. Alright.” he finally assents. And Babe just stares, feels bone-deep relief at Eugene’s slightly flushed cheeks and nose. His eyes are tired, but there’s still something brightening in them, something thriving in spite of the fatigue. And then Babe wants so badly to press his lips to Eugene’s cheek, his mouth, his head; it doesn’t matter where, and there’s really no sense to it, but he wants it worse than he can remember wanting anything.
It’s what urges him out, back to Bill’s foxhole before things start looking strange – as if they already haven’t. Because another moment with Eugene will shatter any shred of denial and self-restraint Babe has left.
Separate now, Babe thinks he has never felt so cold.
--
He closes his eyes and it’s Julian again, arm outstretched and eyes screaming. He thinks about the feeling of blood pooling in his throat, not being able to breathe through it, not being able to say help with anything but his eyes.
And he thinks of Julian’s parents, their grief. God, he can never speak to them. Never tell them how he failed.
We left him alone. We left him alone and that’s how he died, choking on his own blood without a soul nearby.
You had to, the rational part of his brain whispers. But he only hears, you left him alone.
Suddenly, there’s a body next to his, and it’s like he’s blinking awake.
He’s been avoiding Eugene since that morning, when the big something or nothing happened, but Babe doesn’t remember to be careful now. Their sides press together, and their eyes lock, and it doesn’t take away the hurt, certainly. But it subdues it.
Without a word, Eugene is proffering him chocolate. It doesn’t look like the standard K-ration stuff they get, and it doesn’t have the gritty taste of it, either. Babe would ask him where he got it, but there’s something choking his voice.
He thinks he doesn’t need to say anything, anyway. Eugene is probably uncomfortably familiar with feeling this loss, this sense of personal failure, obsessive thoughts about he could have done, what he should have done, when it doesn’t even matter in the end, because the dead are still dead and, with the way it happens in war, there isn’t really much that could have been done to change it, even as it happened.
Babe wishes with all that he has that Eugene doesn’t feel like this when he loses men. But he knows better. He knows Eugene better than that. He knows he must feel like this, when his dark eyes go blank and out to the white horizon after he feels the life slip from solider after soldier.
Eugene just keeps looking at him, eyes serious and somber and too damned concerned. Babe almost asks, how do you have anything left, but instead he brings his hand up; runs his thumb along the sharp curve of Eugene’s jaw. He knows he should mind the angular bones, the stubble, the deep and hushed tones of his voice, the way there is no mistaking any of his masculinity, but, God help him, he wouldn’t have Eugene any other way.
Eugene leans into his hand. And he still won’t look away, not for a moment, so Babe loses himself inside this and presses forward finally, and Eugene, bless him, he presses back, parts his lips against Babe’s. Babe pulls back after just a moment, relishes the feeling of not having to think so hard anymore. And then there are several more kisses, brief and chaste, but each one is a little deeper.
They’re both shuddering with the lightly provocative touching until it’s too much; it’s just too much, and Eugene is licking along the curve of Babe’s lips. So he parts them instinctually and Eugene pushes his tongue inside, slow and gentle, like he’s not quite sure how to do it yet. Babe would tell him he’s doing just perfect if his mouth wasn’t so occupied. There’s a very faint flavor of Belgian chocolate, residue from Babe’s mouth. This will be the memory it plucks from him at the taste, from then on.
It’s soft and wet and warm, what everything else isn’t. Babe didn’t know how badly he wanted it until now, now that he has it. When Eugene hums, low and relieved, Babe doesn’t think he can go without this again.
He throws his arms around Eugene’s shoulders and pulls him closer. And with the heated press of Eugene’s mouth and the seamlessness of their bodies, Babe feels closer to warm since their bitter winter campout in Bastogne started.
The kiss slows, but it doesn’t stop. Babe doesn’t want it to ever stop. He wants to feel Eugene’s lips shifting and pursing against his own forever, wants the wet warmth of their tongues brushing, the feeling of Eugene actually relaxing for the first time since he’s known the medic.
His thoughts slow and sweeten, and he forgets to be upset. He forgets the cold biting into his fatigues. The entire war slips away in the furthest part it can, so it almost feels like some vaguely unpleasant dream he only remembers in pictures. Eugene, though. He’s hyper-real. Babe’s senses ache with him.
When they taper off, it’s lazy and unhurried. Eugene presses kisses along Babe’s cheekbones, one down on his jaw, before he pulls back just a breath of a space.
Babe sees the brightening in Eugene’s eyes that Bastogne had muted. It’s back, at least for now, and it’s stunning. He thinks, I did that, and something thrilling and lovely, something like happiness, flutters in his stomach.
The feeling races to his heart when Eugene smiles at him, a quiet and sort of sad kind of smile, but he’s pretty sure Eugene doesn’t even have a different way to smile.
This is supposed to be wrong, he thinks. But the thought clashes so badly with the feeling of Eugene settling into a doze, still pressed to his side warmly. And Babe can’t honestly say he cares about anything much more than this right now.
We’re in the middle of a fucking war, he reminds himself. Conventionalism be damned.
--
Eugene finds Babe after Landsberg.
He’s hunched over in the foliage a couple hundred yards outside of the billet, dry-heaving into the dirt. His stomach is cramped and it feels turned inside out, he feels turned inside out, and his brains hurt in perfect harmony with the sickness in his body.
When he cradled a child’s face to his chest, hand palming the patchy stubble and knobby skull, opencryinghungry mouth pleading with him—
The way their eyes sink into their heads, owlish blinking, faces full of tears—
The smell is of decay and ash and putrefying flesh—
Thinking and this is the war we’ve been fighting and I don’t understand; I don’t understand; I will never understand; I don’t want to understand—
And trying to make sense of it, anyway, when there’s no sense at all to be made, and on his hands and knees when he’s too sick inside to breathe through it anymore.
Just breathe, they always say, breathe through it. In through your nose, out through your mouth, long, slow, even breaths, level your head, they always say, but they have no fucking idea.
He can’t breathe through his gagging or the panic clouding his lungs; he can’t breathe hecan’tbreathefuckingfuck—
“Edward,” he hears, a long echo away. Like someone’s talking at him through water. It feels like his throat seizes shut for a moment and he couldn’t answer if he wanted to.
“Babe. Babe!” Gene, his mind registers, but it doesn’t sound like him. Nothing like the pastoral tones he soothes for the dead and dying, placid perseverance and hands that don’t shake ever. But they do now, when they press to Babe’s shoulders, and his voice shakes, too, when he says Babe’s name, and that’s just wrong.
Something snaps open at Eugene’s touch. It’s his throat, and he can breathe again; his chest and the inside of his limbs and blood rushes through the way it should. The panic leaves him so quick he’s dizzy with it. He coughs; wipes his mouth. Says, “Gene,” and, “Alright,” because can’t stand the cold fear in Eugene’s voice anymore.
Eugene sighs a gust. Smoothes his hand up and down the convex line of Babe’s spine and says nothing for a few minutes. He just waits. And Babe finally moves when it feels like his heart is nestled back behind his ribs like it should be, when he doesn’t feel like heaving anymore.
He gets up and that’s when they fall into each other. Eugene wraps his arms around him, so tight Babe can feel a cold-warm fever ache rush through his ears, or maybe that’s just from standing up too fast. And he’s not sure, but he thinks Eugene is mumbling French imprecations in his hair. He presses his lips to Babe’s skin, but it’s not quite a kiss.
Babe just holds him back, steadfast against Eugene’s own horror even when Godonlyknows he’s not in a position to be.
They slip back to the cluster of houses they’ve got the men billeted at. Their shoulders brush, and maybe their hands do, too, callused and ruined, but that doesn’t matter because they’re just faceless, nameless movement in the dark. Wraiths.
Babe would be lying if he said Eugene wasn’t the biggest fucking mercy of the war—
And that he wasn’t Eugene’s, either.
--
Most of them take to the bottle. Some of them take to the clubs. A little fewer than that take to streetwalkers, but most of that’s all just a shapeless concept to Babe. Alcohol just makes him maudlin, really just sick with it. And he stays away from women. Men, too. He can’t see them as bodies, can’t see the glow of sex his skin always burns with when he thinks of Eugene, never could, and anyway, it makes his skin shrink over his curdling blood when he’s touched anymore. He breathes through the welcome-back hugs from his mother and the boisterous old women in his neighborhood he’s sure he knew before the war but can’t quite remember; through the prideful pats on the shoulder he gets from his father, and he knows this isn’t normal, not normal at all, but he’s pretty sure he can fake his way through it all. He’s pretty sure, for awhile.
But then it gets harder. And the feather-light touches of the blade against his nape during a haircut send him into a fit and he thinks run, run, run as he rubs his palms against the arms of the chair roughly, tries so hard to keep his head, and the tip he leaves his probably some ungodly amount but he cannot get out quick enough—
To fresh air, a blinding sun blooming in all the careless faces, commuters with places to go, with directions (god, what he wouldn’t give—) and he sees that no one is hurt, no snow, no bodies leaking blood and life, so his mind settles, just for now, but his skin still crawls with phantom touches. There’s a whisper in his mind, a warning, never let anyone get that close ever again, but he quiets it before his face shows it, because they can’t know. Because he hates their talk.
Eugene was always his only vice. But even that’s not the appropriate word, not for Eugene. A vice is something to be ashamed of; a weakness to be shackled off, but that just doesn’t fit, not at all.
People start thinking something’s gone wrong with him after he stops showing up to church. The Heffrons have always been devout Catholics, and Babe can’t remember missing a single service as a boy. But he doesn’t bother at all anymore, because it’s never seemed so irrelevant. He can’t stand having to sit still as he remembers Eugene reciting the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. His lips were pressed to his crucifix and he looked up at the stars with shadowed eyes while Babe looked at him, while he pretended he wasn’t falling in love, right then.
He wakes one morning from nothing but dreaming and he tries to breathe while his heart fights to get through the cage of his ribs, and he thinks, enough. So he rolls out of bed, packs a rucksack, and leaves South Philly in his puttery pick-up without telling anyone.
--
Bayou Chene.
That’s the only thing Eugene gave Babe to work on. Babe didn’t think that alone would be enough, but it really is. Population’s so damn sparse that everyone must know everyone, and the first person he asks directs him exactly the place he needs to go.
Except it isn’t.
Because Eugene isn’t here.
His knees almost buckle when Eugene’s folks tell him he’s gone up to New Orleans. Working through school on the GI bill. There’s pride in his mother’s voice when she says it.
“Pursuin’ a career in medicine.” she says, looping an arm around her husband’s waist. “Ain’t that ironic?”
“Sure it is,” Babe says distractedly. His gut twists when he imagines Eugene doing this for the rest of his life. He’s good for it, god, is he good for it, but Babe isn’t sure it’s good for him, and he just wants to understand why.
“You’re a war buddy o’ his?” Eugene’s father asks, eying him a little skeptically.
He says, “Yes, sir, I am,” and suddenly dreads what questions must be brewing, wonders if they recognize his accent, if they know how far he’s come for this, so through the pounding in his head he starts thinking up excuses, but then…then Eugene’s mother is smiling gently, sadly, and Babe’s thinking, oh. That’s where he gets it.
“Well, I’m Maud. An’ this is my husband, Ed. And you’re…?”
“Edward. Edward Heffron, ma’am.” he smiles even though he’s sweating with fear in the inside because, oh god, they’re inviting him in, and she’s looking so bright and hopeful like he’ll give her the answers she needs, the ones Eugene probably never had for her.
Babe can’t, either, and he’s sorry, but he just can’t. It’s too new. Too fresh. And so he leaves after they point him in the right direction, even give him Eugene’s telephone number, and Babe thinks plenty of awful and soul-sickening things on the way there, like what would they do if they knew; where would the pride in their boy go; he must have someone; she’s probably gorgeous and smart and all kinds of lovely; what the fuck are you doing, Heffron?
He can’t keep wondering, missing, with all of the hollow in him, until he knows. But even that is not strong enough to eclipse his fear.
So he never does make it to New Orleans. Not this time, anyway. He goes back to South Philly, to his apartment, and he tells his family it was work-related, and he tells his work it was family-related, and oh, he’s so sorry he worried everyone, and all the while, he’s feeling his pocket for that scrap of paper Eugene’s parents gave him, the phone number, and he’s wondering for another couple endless weeks if it’s better this way.
--
It’s a rain-drenched Saturday morning when he decides it’s not.
--
Eugene doesn’t answer until the fifth ring.
“Hello?” he says, and Babe can’t really tell if he sounds sleepy or just subdued. He starts wondering what the time difference is, if it’s unreasonably early where Eugene is, but then Eugene says it again, more awake, and it puts a shock through Babe at how surreal and nostalgic hearing him is.
There’s a moment where the fear clawing at him is almost enough to get him to put the telephone down, hang right the fuck up and forget this, but—god, he can’t do that. He’s been harboring this inside himself too long and it’s going to destroy him if he doesn’t—
“Anyone th—”
“Gene,” he finally forces out. There’s a silence. Babe can’t really breathe through it and god, he wishes he could see Eugene right now, have some fucking idea what he’s thinking. He thinks he hears a very quiet exhale, soft static, and Eugene goes, “Oh,” in a broken rush of breath, and “Babe.”
Then Babe laughs a little, can’t help it, and it’s not the good kind. It’s nervous and he shakes with it, and he’s suddenly so glad Eugene can’t see him running shaking fingers through his hair.
This is ridiculous, it’s just a telephone call. Fucking get yourself together.
He clears his throat and speaks evenly this time.
“How’ve you been?”
“Not…bad. I just, well, I didn’t—I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.” And just like that, Eugene clears away any possibility at having some banal old-war-buddies-catching-up conversation and Babe is kind of relieved but at the same time so totally fucking not, and he’s not sure what to say at all, until Eugene follows up with an achingly sincere, “’M glad you called.”
Babe relaxes a little; tells himself not to read more into that than there is but it’s just so goddamned hard when Eugene sounds like that.
He means to ask about work, school, a girl (because he can’t tell Eugene this without knowing first). He means to not say anything that matters because that’s painless in the short-term. He means to, but he doesn’t, because all that comes out is, “I’ve missed you.” because it’s been stuck in his mouth for way too long.
There’s a nauseating bundle of mortification and relief set in his stomach and he waits for it, waits for the moment Eugene says it was the isolation and he’s set himself right now that he’s back home and he has a girl maybe, waits for him to say forget the war, like everyone else wants him to do, and that’s fucked but it’s okay because Babe’s said it, now—
“Babe, god, I—” And there’s a pause, the deafening kind, before Eugene comes back with, “I’ve missed you, too.”
And that just is. Eugene has no excuses, justifications, dismissals; has got nothing to water it down nice and comfortable. There’s that half-hysterical laughter bubbling up in Babe again and he quiets it before it reaches his throat.
Eugene gives him an address. He doesn’t ask Babe where he got the telephone number, not this time, anyway, and Babe’s kind of glad, but he’s not sure why. Maybe it’s the divide, overemphasized between state lines, because it’s almost harder to hear Eugene’s voice and not feel the breath that it comes with than not at all. Almost, though—that’s important.
In the few days that follow, Babe tries not to expect. Because expectations lead to disappointments, and, yes, he does think about this. It. Wonders if all the religious institutions are right, if there’s a different place in hell for those who do it than for those who just want it, wonders why he doesn’t even care if it’s too late because his heart is so clear, even if his head isn’t. Nothing has ever made so much sense. And the rules have never made so little.
So when Babe’s at Eugene’s door, framed with an unusual slate-grey sky and looking maybe a little terrified, he isn’t sure what to expect. Certainly not the way his heart suddenly stutters badly, or the way his head goes so light it feels like it’s going to fall right off his shoulders, or the way every part of him aches with the physical need to just touch again when it’s hurt so bad to do just that since the war ended.
“Come in,” he says, before the apartment catches the chill. It smells like cigarettes and coffee inside, but mostly coffee. Babe thought maybe Eugene would get some color back in him after a stay in Louisiana, but he hasn’t, and the tip of his nose is pink, just like his cheeks, chilled somehow just from summer storms, and he thinks, nothing’s changed. They’re back right where they left off and nothing’s really changed at all. Babe doesn’t know why that makes him feel so breathlessly relieved, but it does.
Except—Except Eugene calls him Babe this time, touches his wrist really cautiously without looking at him, until Babe says, “Gene,” real quiet, and then he does look. And Babe presses close with his mouth against Eugene’s because he’s sure he can now, with a kind of relief that makes him weak. He feels Eugene’s arms wind around his waist, then his back, in a hug, kissing slow with a contradictory edge of desperation. And they don’t let go until Babe feels something swelling in his throat, behind his eyes.
Eugene’s fingertips are cold on his hips and they shake almost imperceptibly. He can’t blame it on Bastogne’s temperatures, not this time. So Babe sets his warm hands overtop Eugene’s clammy ones and pulls his lips away for a second to say, “It’s alright, Gene, it’s alright.”
So Eugene lets out a harsh sigh at that, presses close to Babe and sets his lips at the skin underneath his ear. And all Babe can think about is how this is the first welcome touch he’s had since he’s come home. It’s probably a little fucked up that he can’t get over the novelty that he’s not on the brink of panic. That, instead, when Eugene lays his hands on him, it sends his nerves straining for more.
And so he doesn’t think as he palms the back of Eugene’s neck gently, kisses him deep and thorough right in the middle of the living room with the generator humming a few feet from them. He’s not sure how long it lasts. He’s not sure how long it takes before he works up the nerve to run his hands up Eugene’s sides, to feel at the hem of his shirt, to slip a hand inside and drag long, warm lines from Eugene’s nape to the small of his back, to press sucking kisses to the column of his neck and nuzzle at the throb of his pulse.
He’s not sure how long it takes Eugene to say it, close to his ear with his lips smoothing against skin, “Come to bed.”
It’s not supposed to sound like a question but it is, and he tenses for Babe’s answer. Eugene isn’t even touching him and already Babe’s body is already heating up, riding a high of arousal at Eugene’s voice, just his voice, god, what’ll his hands be like—and Babe’s moving before his mind tells him to, turning to face Eugene’s fear and hope, setting his hands on Eugene’s hips and kissing all the worry away.
Their mouths blunder against each other’s the moment they step through the bedroom door. Babe’s arms wind around Eugene and he pulls him close as he can, and Eugene’s walking them backwards to the bed. It’s a desperate and urgent kiss that has next to no finesse because it’s been so long and there’s still a panicked part of him that worries the end’s coming. He knows better. He ought to know better, but Eugene’s always felt just out of reach until now and he can’t help but ache so much with it that he’s practically crushing the other man to him.
And then they’re mussing pristine sheets, and it suddenly hits him: they have as long as they want. As long as they need. There’s no impending battle or patrol; there’s no need to keep quiet so that they aren’t heard; no one’s dying or freezing in his foxhole. Not now. There’s only Eugene, pressing shivery whispers of his name into his hair, kissing him everywhere he can.
So he slows down. And so does Eugene, and Babe wonders if it’ll be like this, every time, Eugene meeting him halfway without even having to think about it. And then he realizes he’s already thinking about next time, and maybe a time after that, and maybe years of this, orbiting around each other and coming together when they both want it, and not coming apart, not really, even when they do.
All of these realizations bundle knotted and warm in his chest. He’s not sure what to do with any of them. In the end, he ends up lying on his side, facing Eugene. And he kisses him, slow and soft. Sucks at the wet curve of his bottom lip and that gets him a shiver hard enough to shake through the both of them. Then Eugene presses warm against him. Wraps a leg around Babe’s hip. That’s all, for a few long moments, because there’s no sense of urgency. He’s licking at the inside of Eugene’s mouth and his tongue and there’s nothing but the wet sounds of their kissing and gasping little breaths coming from the both of them. It almost sounds obscene against the backdrop of silence.
And they don’t stop, cannot get enough of each other’s mouths, even as they start rocking against each other gently. Babe loves the damp exhales against his lips, the heat sinking right into his bones where Eugene touches him – down his sides, until he’s thumbing at the hem of Babe’s shirt and running his knuckles along his hips.
He gasps through the arousal pooling in him; at the feeling of Eugene growing hard against him, too. And then they’re undressing each other with impatient hands, greedy for skin, blood coursing hotly.
Babe looks at him then, and he is breathtaking, because his lips are flushed and bruised dark, hair’s a perfect mess, and his eyes are the softest he’s ever seen on Eugene; on anybody. And finally, they’re bare and pressed to each other and it feels like a first breath. Dizzying relief arcs through him and he lines their hips up and thrusts; feels something heavy and tight gather in him when Eugene moans, “Babe,” against his throat.
Eugene is setting his palms on Babe’s hips and moving against him like it’s the most natural thing in the world, because it is. Because nothing’s been so effortless and easy and right than being with Eugene this way, than making him feel good enough to shiver and shake and flush so beautifully.
Babe winds a hand between their bodies and presses it to Eugene’s cock, strokes him so slow and thorough that he has to hold Eugene through the trembling, until Eugene touches him too and he can’t stand to be still either and it’s blanketing him from the inside out, feels it coating his skin until it’s almost too hot to reign it in anymore.
Eugene’s breath hitches; moans quiet “oh oh oh” and he may just be falling apart. He looks at Babe, eyebrows sort of arching in a desperate peak. And when he swallows, the movement of his Adam’s apple brings Babe’s eyes to the sweat glistening at his throat; his collarbone. And Babe can’t help himself, can’t help but mouth at the skin there until Eugene is baring his throat and clutching at the sweaty mess of Babe’s hair with the hand he’s not using.
He clutches to Eugene, whisper-whines, “Gene. Gene, don’t ever stop, god,” and Eugene promises, “I won’t.” heavy and fraught into the muggy heat of the bedroom. The slow rhythm of their hips turns jerky as they start to fall apart together. Want is palpable with the smell of sex, thick and intoxicating and just too good. Eugene’s eyes flutter shut for a moment and he takes a shuddering breath in, Babe raises his head to see, and then their eyes meet while everything’s hushed for half a moment.
There’s a tenuous whipcord coil deep in his stomach, pulsing with promise and making his head swim with the edge. He looks at Eugene, right there, too, and his mind freezes that, slotted in his brain forever—dark hair curling around his temples and ears, a bloom of hibiscus pink flush set high on his cheekbones, blood warm lips parted almost prettily with his jaw gone slack, pupils blown so wide his eyes almost look black and he doesn’t shy away from Babe’s gaze, not for one moment. And Babe thinks, knows he has never seen anyone or anything more beautiful and Eugene is all the more heartbreaking for it, because he is a blindingly light blot in a sea of filth and ache. The contrast will steal the breath from Babe’s lungs later, but now all he can see is Eugene.
Eugene’s legs bracket Babe’s hips, moving caress-like and slow, and Babe shudders hard because it feels like his insides are sloughing away.
He’s moaning, sounding shivery and uneven, can’t help it, can’t believe the sounds coming from him.
Eugene just smiles a little, shaky and barely even shy anymore, and he presses a thumb to Babe’s oversensitive lips. Babe presses a kiss there without thinking and has a funny moment where he just marvels that there’s no callous anymore. It’s so incongruously chaste as Eugene angles his hips just right and they feel the length of each other, bodies arched and helpless.
And then—then they’re coming, and Eugene has his legs wrapped around Babe until his heels bump the back of his calves and there’s no room between them and that’s just close enough. Just.
His lips part and he chokes on Eugene’s name through it, through that swathe of nerve-jarring feeling. Eugene’s shaking apart against him. Through the uncontrollable movement of their hips, the gasping breaths, the satisfying tense-untense of muscles, he feels something fall into place. He didn’t know it was emptiness until it felt full.
After, they sink boneless into the sheets. Entwined as they are, they don’t move. Eugene is just loose weave of muscles and blood-warm skin against him. Babe presses kisses up his jaw, slow sated ones, and smiles at the tickle of stubble against his lips. But then Eugene is shifting tiredly, and their mouths meet again, there should be endless agains, and he’s breathing life instead of sucking on air.
Babe strokes at the damp hair at Eugene’s nape until there’s the quiet and not-so-final sound of their lips separating. It’s several long minutes before they do much of anything, really, and it’s just Eugene nudging Babe’s chin with the point of his nose and looking at him, just looking.
He thinks, Eugene is all virtue, even in this. And then: especially in this.
Eugene flinches a little after a minute, after the shadows lengthen (just barely, but Babe notices)—it’s a troubling crease between his eyebrows. And then it’s gone when he presses his face in Babe’s skin. Makes a happy little home between the juncture of his neck and shoulder.
And he cries for a stretch of moments, almost without a sound. Just one hitch of breath and a dampness smearing into Babe’s skin. Deep-burning, teeth-gnashing, righteous grief would be better than this, Babe thinks. The angry and violent kind of weeping that you have to claw your way out of. But no, Eugene is silent and subdued, even in this. Babe feels his chest hollow out to make room for everything else. And he looks down, past the mess of Eugene’s hair; sees his skin. Still so sunless and bleached.
He rests a hand between Eugene’s shoulder blades, the other thumbing from behind his ear and then down the curve of his neck. And Eugene relaxes at that, lets loose a bone-quailing sigh.
Babe just holds on tighter and is sorrier than hell that it’s taken this fucking long. He’s sorry he couldn’t be steadfast like Eugene could be, through the whole fucking war, couldn’t find a way to give until now. Until now. And he guesses maybe it’s alright. Maybe Eugene was alright for awhile because he had to be, and now he doesn’t need to be. Now he can break open and no one gets hurt because of it.
He wants to crush Eugene to him and stay like this forever. Maybe he sleeps at some point. Maybe it’s restless, with that wish on his lips, dangerous hope that it’s echoed somewhere in the strung-together man he’s wrapped around.
--
Babe wakes up with a warm weight settled against him. A stirring body. He knows the press of Eugene and he doesn’t forget. Not even through the first-thing-in-the-morning drowsiness does he forget.
Eugene blinks at him. Flexes his fingers a little where they rest at the bottom of Babe’s ribs, like he’s making sure they don’t slip through the skin and vanish. He’s checking. Tangibility. Reality.
His eyes widen and then he says, “Oh.” Shifts closer, and suddenly they’re sharing a pillow. “Missed my class.”
Babe smiles, and doesn’t that just feel all right.
“You don’t sound too sorry about it.” Babe says, just above a whisper, and Eugene parts his lips like he can feel the words on his mouth.
Instead of saying something to that, Eugene just looks at Babe like he’s some kind of wonder, like how are you even here right now and no small amount of winded relief that Babe reads so well because it’s identical to his.
He shivers, presses Eugene into the mattress and they kiss, and kiss, and they tangle their fingers together, and Eugene never makes it to any of his classes that day.
-
Eugene looks at him in the mornings with all the trust that honestly makes Babe a little afraid to be the receiving end of. There’s sometimes adoration there, too, brightening under his hooded eyes. Babe sees his lips move but he doesn’t hear the ‘good morning’, not really. He leans forward for lazy kisses, presses them along Eugene’s paper-thin eyelids, forehead, across his cheekbones to feel the rushing warmth of blood. Usually this is when one of them rolls out of bed to start the coffee, but sometimes that gets postponed for a good while if Babe’s hands start to wander and Eugene presses into his skin with an answering need, if he says, “Want you,” muffled with his mouth half-pressed in the pillow.
Then, then there’s coffee, shared over toast and eggs and a newspaper that would probably make Babe nostalgic if his family was ever the shared-mornings-over-breakfast-and-newspapers type, all nuclear and effortlessly functional, but—well, it wasn’t.
Eugene is wearing one of Babe’s sweaters this morning, something he thoughtlessly put on because he’s always kind of freezing in the morning. Babe just stares and wonders what’s got him so struck all of a sudden. Could be the way Eugene’s almost-too-sharp collarbone peaks through, the way his lips are still kiss-smeared, the lazy angle of his back as he sits relaxed and pliant, and maybe it’s—well, it’s definitely the way Eugene gives him a rare, slow smile behind his coffee cup when he notices Babe’s staring.
Babe smiles back, breathes easy through the weight of warmth in his chest and he opens his mouth, means to say something like I love you but all that comes out is, “Pass me the funnies?” and Eugene gives him the whole newspaper instead.
So he worries over it the rest of the day, mostly through work, even though he’s pretty sure Eugene wouldn’t be here with him if he didn’t—
But he does say it. Because he needs to, because it’s thrumming fuzzily under his skin and he just needs to know that Eugene knows, even though he’s pretty sure. But he needs to be sure.
He’s leaning in the bathroom’s door frame watching Eugene shave without a thought for bad timing.
He says, “All locked up.” because they’re both obsessive about it, and then, “I love you.” right to the reflection of Eugene’s foamy face, because Babe’s kind of prosaic like that.
His hands have been shaking in anticipation and he means to leave before he can actually see Eugene’s reaction, but it’s too late, because as soon as he says it Eugene gives a start and there; already dripping blood from the side of his jaw where he’s accidentally cut.
Eugene clearly doesn’t notice at first, because he’s just sort of staring at Babe indirectly through the mirror for a long second before Babe says, “Fuck, I’m sorry! Here,”
And then he’s groping for the tissue box next to the sink and dabbing at the spot. It’s already clotting, but that doesn’t make Babe feel very much better at all.
Eugene hushes him, touches his hands and says, “It’s okay. Really.” and something like “…my own fault.” which only makes it worse, for some reason.
When he rinses and towels off, the water swirling down the drain is tinged with pink and the inside of Babe’s mind is black with self-deprecation. He cannot think of worse timing, except for not saying it at all, ever.
Eugene puts his hands on either side of Babe’s face; says, “Quit it. ‘M fine.” in a way that sounds like he’s riding the edge between austerity and amusement. It’s just a Eugene Roe way of talking and Babe will never get used to it. But it helps, a tiny bit, and Babe is not quite as miserable later as they curl up to sleep.
They slot into each other because sometimes it’s just that simple, that easy, with Eugene’s knees tucked in the hollows of Babe’s. He noses up his spine and to his neck and the guilt’s still there, yes, but then—
“I love you, too.”
Babe feels the smile on his skin. He feels in the dark for Eugene’s hand, and then his mind is blessedly silent save for the words echoed back at him. He’s part of someone else now and it should be frightening, it should be the kind of thing that breaks a person, and Babe thinks maybe it will someday, but—
For now, he is whole and complete and made so much better for this that he can’t bring himself to feel even a whisper of shame.
Not for Eugene.
--
The rest is like this:
Looking at Eugene’s hands, seeing that there’s no crust of blood under the fingernails or splitting winter dryness, and thinking that they are perfect, but they were perfect before, too. The contrast makes him think too hard, and it’s too early to ruminate (it will always be), so he concentrates on other things so that Eugene won’t notice the vacancy starting to slip into his eyes.
Noticing the slow bloom of that smile edged with parentheses when Babe’s being sardonic or maybe a little too sentimental.
Cradling Eugene’s sweat-slick forehead to his bare chest after he wakes in a panic and prayingprayingpraying for even breaths and no nightmares ever again, even if he knows it’s childish and unrealistic it doesn’t make him want it any less. (And their roles are opposite, just as often.)
Standing toe-to-toe in Eugene’s parents’ attic, his mother slipped away just a week after her husband, Eugene’s face drawn and bitter about having to get rid of most everything. (“But not the gramophone,” Babe says in the crook of his neck, swaying Eugene with the hands on his hips. And maybe Eugene gives in with a sigh that breathes more relief than anything, looping his arms over Babe’s shoulders and moving with him to Glenn Miller.)
And then sitting face-to-face with his parents, the scariest of all, when he comes back to Philly for a funeral and his mother says, “Say, Edward?” (Running her fingers through his hair.) “Are you still living with that friend of yours? The one from the war?”
(It’s been almost five years of the same questions and vague answers, who is he, why haven’t we met him, practically brothers with a desperate right? hiding in her voice.)
And, “You meet a girl yet?” is probably the worst, because it’s always the saddest when she says it. She knows the answer and she asks anyway.
Babe wishes she’d stop touching him, stop raking her fingers through his hair and smiling absurdly; hopefully, and he just can’t anymore.
So he says, “No, Ma, I haven’t met a girl, ‘cause I’m not looking for one. And yeah, we’re still livin’ together. We’re—” before he can even think about it, because if he was thinking at all, there’s no way he’d get even this far, but at least he’s stopped himself, because even this is more than they can stand to hear.
“Jesus.” his father says, stands up and stalks out of the room, and Babe’s both sick to his stomach and relieved when his father can’t bring himself to look for a single moment at his only son.
“Oh,” his mother says, tremulous voice and fingers that finally fall away from his head and she steps back, looks at him with through the wet blur of her eyes, and says, “Oh,” again.
He knows he probably should, but he won’t apologize. Not for this. He will never apologize for Eugene.
So he tries to leave, and she tries to call him back, “No. No, son, if…if you’re sick, we can, we can—”
Desperate, clawing at his back.
“I’m going home.” he says, shuttering his voice into nothing, and he doesn’t come back until his sister is giving birth to the grandbabies his mother had always hoped for. (They never talk about it again.)
Finding Eugene almost asleep in the bath after long clinic hours, long-limbed and beautiful, and coaxing him to bed. He uses his mouth to prise his nerves apart until Eugene shakes for him and tugs gently at his hair. Says, “It’s okay. Sleep.” when Eugene tries to reciprocate because he’s worn ragged. (“But I want to,” rings sweetly in his head days after.) Of course Babe can’t say no.
Knowing only indecent French because that's the only time Eugene ever speaks it to him (he can't help it then). It's deep and cloying and it never fails to make him so hard it almost hurts. ("J'ai envie de toi." breathed against the corner of his mouth. And, "Juste là!" while he arches off the bed and into Babe, hips meeting each achingly slow thrust until they're both loose-limbed and sated.)
Spending years wondering why Eugene does what he does, but mostly how, and getting his answer when he turns into Doc Roe again, knelt over a little girl on the sidewalk because she went into anaphylaxis from a bee sting. And he’s making a trache tube with a goddamn pen; she’s blue in the face and bleeding from her throat, just a trickle, and then—with that first breath she takes, Eugene looks at Babe. He doesn’t look at the parents; he looks at Babe, imploring, and they wait for the ambulance to come because the little girl’s body locks up and she reaches out when he tries to leave, bless her, so they just wait, and Babe finally understands. (The city wants to give him some kind of award for it, like he should have gotten in the war, but Eugene just balks and gripes to Babe over dinner about why shit like this is stop-the-fucking-presses on the street, but business as usual in the hospital.)
Watching the dumb little beagle puppy, the one the girl with the bee allergy left with them after she moves away years later, loping around Eugene’s ankles. It’s like awkward crazy eights and Babe just laughs and laughs at the withering look Eugene shoots at him.
Kissing Eugene’s grey temple and settling next to him to watch the morning news about a war in the Middle East* with the same brand of instant coffee they’ve used for the past four and a half decades.
And kissing there again when there’s no hair there at all, when it’s gone from the chemo, in the hospital Eugene worked at until he got sick.
Pretending he doesn’t understand the irony.
Laying together in the hospital bed when Eugene is too sick to stay at home anymore, the tinny noise of the little TV and a tray of untouched food nearby.
Thinking, it’s just a little less than a lifetime, hoping that’s enough, but it isn’t, because it’s all happened so fast.
Deciding that’s just selfish and pressing words into Eugene’s skin the day he dies: “You’ve given enough.”
Rubbing at Eugene’s hands hard and fast, wishing for warmth and breath, but it’s not working like it did that night in Bastogne. (“C’mon. Eugene, Eugene, c’mon; you gotta wake up.”)
Sinking into their empty bed at home and not knowing how to breathe around the grief ravaging his heart; not caring to know. Seeing Eugene’s straight razor in the medicine cabinet that night when he goes to brush his teeth, the one that hasn’t had to be used for months now, and remembering when he accidentally made Eugene slice his skin open and deciding not to regret that anymore because he’s sure he didn’t say it enough.
Thinking he’d give anything to go back to the daily horror that was Bastogne if it meant sharing a foxhole with a half-frozen Doc Roe again. (He feels the cold burn of snow melting on the back of his neck and underneath his fingernails when he takes his glove off so Eugene can wrap it with the blue kerchief he happens to know everything about now.) God, he would do it all again.
Wondering if there’ll be different nightmares the first night he sleeps alone (not sure how anyone stands that emptiness, but maybe it’s just one of those when-you-know-what-you’re-missing things)—it’s just dreamless sleep, and he doesn’t ever wake up. Not here, anyway. Not in this empty bed where there is nothing left for him.
And standing toe-to-toe again, fresh-faced and young with a disincarnate gramophone playing, or maybe it isn’t and the sound’s just coming from inside his head. He thinks he might be crying, but he’s not sure. All he knows is that Eugene is touching his wrist like he did that first time and saying, “Dance with me,” bright-eyed and in love. And that’s when Babe knows he hears the music, too.
It’s enough. It’s finally enough.
Eugene wraps his arms around Babe’s waist, laughs (just because he can), and pulls him in.