Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/363821.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      The_Pacific_-_Fandom, The_War_at_Home
  Relationship:
      Merriell_"Snafu"_Shelton/Eugene_Sledge, Gene/Kenny
  Character:
      Merriell_"Snafu"_Shelton, Eugene_Sledge, Kenny
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe, Alternate_Universe_-_Fusion
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-06-20 Words: 3360
****** Slowly, Comes the Light ******
by spirograph
Summary
     It happens progressively, like a box being slowly unfolded, unpacked
     piece by frustrating piece.
Notes
     Based in the Past Lives 'Verse created by Nat in her fic This_is_the
     Thing, an AU fusion of The Pacific and The War at Home.
See the end of the work for more notes
It happens progressively, like a box being slowly unfolded, unpacked piece by
frustrating piece. It's a jigsaw puzzle, rattling around in the oversized space
of his brain while he tries to figure out the jumbled mess of it. Sometimes, he
wakes from a dream and there's a sliver of sense hovering just on the edge of
his subconscious but he can't quite decipher it, concentrating too hard a
little too late and then losing it altogether. Brows knitted together he stares
at his school work until the blue-ruled lines of his paper get fuzzy,
desperately trying to grasp hold of the faint impression of something that
seems important, some intricate portion of Snafu's life that he feels like he
should understand.
On the outside he's Kenny, gangly and awkward and very much a sixteen year old
boy doing the best he can in a situation which doesn't have a manual he can
work from. Inside, he's both Kenny and sometimes Snafu, who has seen in
excruciating detail the many different ways a human body can be destroyed, who
has experienced the loneliness and poverty of work camps, of a childhood void
of everything Kenny has always taken for granted. It's all mixed up and diluted
inside Kenny's head and sometimes he's not sure where he ends and Snafu begins.
At first it's impossible to reconcile the two, scrubbing hands over his face as
Larry verbally pokes and prods him for a decent explanation as to why he's
suddenly so tired all the time, so distant and distracted. Larry's his best
friend, but reliving experiences from a past life is right up there with seeing
ghosts and believing in fairies, and it's not as if he needs more reasons to be
stared at. He bumbles through excuses, they pour out of his mouth one after the
other and Larry nods like he believes it, only scrutinises him for a moment
before going back to his book.
It's easier when Gene is with him, as if the mechanics of his mind run more
smoothly, more productively, and the puzzle slots together a little easier.
They sit side by side on the living room floor and Gene helps him bluff his way
through assignments, through essays and subject matter that he doesn't really
care about, smiling the entire time like he just can't believe it. And maybe he
can't, this isn't exactly normal. And Kenny recognises differences in him, the
subtle highlights in his hair and the tiny dark freckle in his eye that Eugene
never had. He doesn't know if he's ready to explore what it means yet, the way
his mouth gets dry when the tip of Gene's knee presses against his own, when
their shoulders nudge. Snafu's emotions are like heavy, complicated weights he
doesn't know how to juggle, sending jolts of unexpected want through his body
like lightening and he doesn't have any clue how to get himself grounded.
It doesn't matter if he's Kenny or if he's Snafu, remembering gore-stained
battle fields and the gut-wrenching reality of nearly losing your life is
difficult to handle and when he wakes close to morning, covered in sweat and
gasping for breath, he fights with his sheets to try and untangle himself and
wishes he didn't feel so much like crying. His stomach grumbles with
exhaustion, his eyes feel impossibly heavy and there's something lingering just
behind his lids each time he blinks, a shadow of memory he can't quite grasp.
He stumbles into the kitchen and his mother smiles, pets him gently on the
shoulder then stares in shocked silence as he proceeds to make himself a
coffee, gulping it down mouthful after mouthful. It's bitter, and doesn't taste
nearly as wonderful as he – no, as Snafu - remembers it, but he swallows it
down anyway.
Climbing onto his bike his head swims, coloured confetti of Snafu's experiences
raining down over his own. Squeezing his eyes shut he shakes his head to try
and clear them, gripping the handlebars to keep himself steady. And every weird
thought he had as a kid, every strange little nagging feeling like something
wasn't quite right, it all makes sense to him now. But that doesn't make it
easier, and it doesn't stop the part of his mind that is so obviously Snafu
from stubbornly remaining just beyond his reach.
Banging on the Sledge's front door half an hour later he feels wired, trembling
like a crazy person, caffeine surging through his veins, heart rate bouncing as
he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. It's Gene who answers the
door, pyjama shirt askew and hair mussed from sleep. “Hi,” he says, and Kenny
smiles weakly, stutters out a greeting, an apology which is greeted with a wave
of Gene's hand.
“You okay?” Gene asks, rattling around in the kitchen cupboards, pouring them
both a glass of juice, and Kenny nods, wondering if Eugene's in there, too,
looking out at him and wondering the same about Snafu. Gene stretches, shirt
riding up to expose a smooth patch of stomach, a hipbone jutting out where his
shorts ride low. Kenny forces himself to look away, tries to slow the pace of
his breathing, tries to make it less obvious that he's slowly falling apart. He
wants things, he wants unspeakable things that keep him awake at night and half
asleep during school; lingering touches, the soft ghost of fingertips and hot
breath close to his ear. He can't tell if his thoughts are real or something
fabricated, a haphazard jumble of Snafu's memories stitched together with his
own desires. Kenny's head pounds, an ache creeping in and settling just behind
his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, sipping his juice and Gene smiles, raising his
own glass.
Sunlight pours in through the kitchen window, warmth spreading across Kenny's
back. The house is quiet but for the gentle whirr of the washing machine down
the hallway. Calm down, he thinks, taking a deep breath and trying to talk
himself out of shaking, out of losing his shit completely and totally
embarrassing himself. “I...” he begins, faltering, words evaporating off of his
tongue before he can say them. Vision wavering, Kenny puts down his glass,
manages to ease himself into a chair. Gene speaks, walks right up to him and
leans against the table but Kenny can't hear a word he's saying, can't focus on
anything but the way his mind screams at him to say something, to open up and
relieve the pressure. And it's like the snap of elastic against skin, the
sudden shock of clarity when Gene's knee bumps into his, as he realises what it
is he's struggling with. Pressing knuckles to his temples he's Kenny who has
been in love with his best friend and neighbour since forever; Kenny who does
well at school but is a total social failure; Kenny who has enough trouble
handling his own emotional breakdowns as it is without adding Snafu's sexuality
crisis into the mix. And it is a crisis, it's a well repressed flurry of
shoulds and should nots all knotted together in an overwhelmingly large bundle
of conflict that has been tearing Kenny's brain apart for the better part of a
lifetime.
“I don't know how to do this,” he croaks, and Gene kneels down, reaches out and
pulls him into a hug. The crook of his neck smells like sleep and faintly of
soap and it's less comforting than Kenny imagines it should be, twisting
handfuls of Gene's shirt between his fingers and unsuccessfully ignoring the
way his whole body hums, prickling with heat. “I'm so tired,” he adds and
somewhere in the back of his mind he recalls darkness and gunfire and screaming
at Eugene about exhaustion, about everything except the fact that he wanted him
so goddamn badly it made him crazy.
On top of everything he feels guilty, only the blame doesn't belong to him
entirely, and his heart aches at the remembered screech of breaks and the
rattle of a carriage, the soft lines around Eugene's eyes and the heavy weight
of his pack, the cold walk home to nothing but the realisation that this was
it, this was how it would be from now on. Punched out of shadow, memories
clutter up Kenny's mind, always accompanied by feelings of loneliness, of an
empty self-loathing that was eventually overtaken by a hollowed out sense of
acceptance. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I'm so sorry” and like a floodgate it pours
out from every corner, fragmented memories of fear and of knowing that for the
rest of his life he would have to settle, would have to make do. But that
wasn't Kenny's life – it isn't – but it was a life, nonetheless.
“It's okay,” Gene hushes, smoothing the curls at his nape, and it's an accident
when Kenny presses his lips to Gene's neck, but he doesn't apologise, not even
when Gene's entire body goes rigid and he inhales so deep that it shakes them
both. It's easy then, for Kenny to pull back, to press an open mouthed kiss
against Gene's jaw. And he can't help it, he thinks about mud-flecked skin and
the itch of trigger-happy fingers that were always so desperate to reach out,
to touch and hold and make their presence known; of Eugene's long fingers,
fiddling with letters from home, folding and unfolding them over and over until
the crisp cursive lines began to fade and the rain crept in and dissolved the
rest; the soft sound of Eugene's breathing at night, the gentle god-fearing
sureness of him that Snafu could never admit to admiring; of the kiss he'd
stolen somewhere in the mess of Okinawa, pressed to the covered curve of
Eugene's shoulder while he slept.
“Eugene,” he hears himself say, voice cracked and far too loud. The washing
machine has stopped, and his voice cuts through the silence, ricocheting off of
kitchen surfaces like stray ammunition. He thinks it's uncanny how Snafu can
relate almost everything to war, can drag Kenny down to a place where
everything is about staying alive – and it's impossible to ignore the way
Snafu's memories piece together to form the portrait of a man who spent his
whole life thinking of himself as a soldier in battle, barely surviving, making
the best out of a bad situation.
When Gene kisses him it's hungry and warm, a swipe of tongue across his lips
and a steady hand clutching at his shoulder. And maybe Kenny is bad at being
gay, but Snafu never had the opportunity to try, and all of his want and all of
that yearning - which had eventually, in the muggy heat of New Orleans, petered
away into a dull, simmering burn - it bubbles to the surface until Kenny's
kissing back, opening his mouth and moaning at the way Gene grazes teeth
against his bottom lip. There's no reason to stop, no point in pretending that
going slow would make a difference – Kenny feels as if he's been waiting for
Gene to touch him forever, and every single brush of skin against skin feels
desvistating; it feels real.
“Don't stop,” Kenny says, heaving mouthfuls of air in between kisses, and Gene
drags him down ungracefully to the floor, spreads him out on the tiles and
looks at him with eyes so dark they're almost black, cheeks flared with heat,
before leaning down to bite at the soft flesh of Kenny's thigh through his
jeans, hot damp pressure that ascends until his dick's being mouthed at and he
can't stop himself from arching up toward it.
“'Gene,” he breathes “Gene,” scratching blunt fingernails over Gene's shoulder
blades, through his shirt, bucking up to try and get more friction, more heat.
And there's a part of his mind that relents, that lets go and accepts that it's
happening, that tiny part of Snafu that is weaved into everything Kenny has
ever been, what he will become, the proverbial voice in his head who used to
caution him against wanting things too much.
The slam of a car door makes him start, makes Gene pause and pull back, craning
his head toward the sound. “Shit,” he says, “my parents.” Kenny barely has time
to register any kind of shock, to mourn the sudden loss of contact, he's too
busy being dragged upstairs, being shoved roughly through Gene's bedroom door
then hard up against it. Body flush against body and panting, trying to catch
his breath.
“I used to dream about you as a kid,” Gene says quietly into his ear, and Kenny
shifts uncomfortably, “I thought I would die from missing you.” Gene is so much
more honest than Eugene ever was, almost brutal in his confessions, tugging
urgently at Kenny's shirt buttons and peeling the cloth from his body, throwing
it down onto the floor. “The last few weeks,” he continues, unfastening Kenny's
belt, struggling with the belt loops, “have been torture.” And when he looks
up, his eyes are like blotches of ink pressed against red-tinged pages, as if
he's been crying, like he feels as wretched inside as Kenny does.
“I want you,” Kenny blurts, like it wasn't already obvious, and Gene kisses the
corner of his mouth, tugs at his jeans until they come loose, palms guiding
them down Kenny's thighs. Kenny wonders if they should worry, about parents or
consequences or tomorrow or something – Snafu was always worrying about things,
but he never said anything, never let on that every day was an inch closer to
the end of the war and that was what terrified him the most. More than the
enemy, more than stray bullets. Through darkness he could squint and make out
Eugene's profile, could already feel what it would be like to say goodbye. That
stung more than anything, more than all those tiny pieces of shrapnel that flew
around after an explosion and got buried in his skin, as if one of them had
found its way inside, deeper than the rest, caught a ride on his bloodstream
and gone straight to his heart. Kenny lets his head fall back against the door,
tangles his hands in Gene's hair and lets him press kisses to his throat, the
most ridiculously gentle kisses he could ever have imagined, one by one by one.
It feels like he's unraveling, coming apart at the seams, ragged and worn out.
It hurts, and he doesn't know why – why it can't just be enough that it's
happening now, that they're together here.
Face nuzzled against Kenny's neck, Gene says, “I don't remember what he smelled
like.” And Kenny isn't sure what that means, isn't convinced that it works that
way; doesn't want to say he never knew because he wasn't really there, that all
his sensory information is all fucked up, corrupted by the impossible distance
of a lifetime. But he presses his nose to Gene's hair, just to see, inhales the
scent of it, the barely-there perfume of shampoo and something stronger, musky
and familiar; the blur of drunkenness and weightlessness and a night sky that
stretched out forever, dotted with stars that blinded him when he opened his
eyes too wide; a sprawling field with so much grass and too many trees, arm
pressed against Eugene's as they drank together in the quiet dark; Eugene's
head lolling sideways against the pointed curve of Snafu's shoulder, so close
that it had been easy to turn, breathe in and catalogue the scent of him,
unmistakably sharp, the smell of red hair, of crap whiskey and military-issue
soap. Gene smells different, feels different – but Kenny can't be certain. Not
of that, and not of anything else.
Fingertips dragging over his hips, thumbs pressing against bone, Kenny doesn't
know if he can hold it together well enough to do any of this, but he lets Gene
kiss him again, roughly this time, edged with desperation. Gene's shirt comes
off – pale expanse of skin, dotted with freckles that Kenny reaches out to
trace; Eugene was always so covered in mud, buried beneath layers of regulation
uniform – always so goddamn appropriate, he never took his shirt off. But once,
once Snafu had seen his arms in the daytime, sun bright and almost blinding as
it reflected off his skin, dot to dot of brown-orange spots like tiny
footprints, walking up over his arms and beneath his singlet. Snafu had
wondered, distractedly, and more than once, how long it would take to count
them all, map the pattern they made on Eugene's body.
Kenny puts his lips to a cluster of Gene's freckles: they taste like sweat-
dried skin and Gene cups the back of his head, holds him there. Forehead to
shoulder, Kenny can suddenly feel how close they are, feels the dull thud of
Gene's heart as it pounds against his ribs. The door creeks, hinges
complaining, and when Gene eases his fingers beneath the waistband of Kenny's
briefs, pulls them down and fists his cock, there's no parallel, no sudden
feeling like he's been here before, it's just Kenny and Gene and the stillness
of the bedroom. Gene captures the shock as it shows on Kenny's face, kissing
him, licking into his mouth to try and keep the keening sounds from escaping.
Gene falls to his knees, then, and looks up at Kenny, looks right at him with
inky-black eyes and a concerned expression – he knows that one, a look that
sounds like Eugene's voice whispering to him in the dark, saying Snafu. hey,
are you okay? And he wasn't, but he is now, he thinks, tangling fingers in
Gene's hair and urging him forward, tumbling into the hot oblivion of Gene's
mouth and thinking yes, Eugene. yeah, we're okay now with a rabbit-quick pulse
and his brain running a million miles an hour. And Gene's tongue swirls over
him, around him, cheeks hollowed just-so until the room is full of nothing but
soft, wet sounds and the harsh quaver of Kenny's breathing.
Kenny looks down at pink lips and pink cheeks and the pink crown of his dick
sliding in and out of Gene's mouth, swallows hard and realises too late that he
shouldn't have looked at all. He means to say something, but instead he
produces a hitched breath that trips over a startled moan and he's coming,
spilling into an unprepared mouth that takes it anyway, tiny cream rivulets
sliding down Gene's chin. All jelly-limbs the floor rushes up to meet him and
Gene is right there, not even bothering to wipe his face before leaning in and
his kiss tastes salty, bitter and Kenny thinks of sea water, of distant oceans
that had surrounded another version of them, oceans that had never protected
but instead imprisoned them; he remembers tears, being humiliated by the way he
broke down, huddled beside Eugene in a shitty hole on a shitty island,
somewhere between midnight and first light and Eugene saying softly, It'll be
over soon but that – that made everything so much worse, and Snafu – Jesus
Christ, he hated himself and he could hardly bear it, couldn't stand the feel
of warm fingers clutching at his own in the dark, offering up comfort and
sympathy when he wanted so much more.
But this is something different, Kenny thinks. This isn't like that at all, not
really – this is the man he has loved his whole life - in another life -
contained within a man he barely knows, stroking the side of his face and
whispering, “It's gonna be okay, I swear.” And maybe Kenny has his doubts, but
Snafu falls into the promise head first, always so willing to trust Eugene, and
he wraps himself up inside it, safely cocooned inside the thought that things
might finally be alright. So Kenny nods – because, whether he likes it or not,
Snafu's a part of him now – and little by little he relaxes, lets Gene pull him
forward into a hug, up off the floor and toward the bed and maybe--
maybe he imagines it but somewhere, between midnight and first light, Kenny
swears he feels Snafu sigh with relief.
End Notes
     For more of this Verse, read it_comes_with_a_price & the amazing_(and
     porny)_vignettes written by Megan.
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