#also thinking about it like. shit bill and snaf would do | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lilliputianmerriell · 6 years ago

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For @rayofimpendingalcoholism who requested nicknames!Sledgefu.

The pet names had started out innocently enough. Or innocent as far as borderline harassment goes anyway, Eugene supposes.

Snafu has always had this tendency to belittle the new recruits with all sorts of embarrassing nicknames according to Burgie. It was his way to test them, to see if they could stand the heat by naming them all sorts of embarrassing thing, so Eugene doesn’t think he is anything special when Snafu starts calling him ‘boo’ and ‘sweetheart’ and shit like that. Eugene always just attributes it to Snafu being Snafu, who is a bit of a dick and needs to compensate for his small, scrawny stature by asserting himself in some kind of way.

It is the natural assumption to make when another guy starts calling you all sorts of endearments, right?

Eugene begins to suspect that he might have been wrong though as time progresses and the name-calling doesn’t stop. Not when Eugene hauls Snafu off that airfield. Not when they lost Ack-Ack and Hillbilly on Bloody nose ridge. Not even when Snafu nicknames him ‘Sledgehammer’ in front of everyone which Eugene really thought was Snafu accepting him into the group and would be the end of it. It’s a constant influx of degrading, imaginative pet names that Snafu purrs at him mockingly while wearing that infuriating smirk on his face.

“Alright there, sugar?” Snafu asks when Eugene is knocked on his ass during a grappling session at Pavuvu. He is standing above him, hands on his narrow waist and a smug look on his face, and looking like he shouldn’t possess the strength to beat Eugene with those weedy arms of his.

Eugene can feel his face going an angry red. “Don’t call me that. I ain’t your sugar,” he bites back, glaring hard at Snafu. He knows it’s pointless to fight with him, but Eugene’s getting tired of the name-calling. They should be too old to resort to that kind of shit behaviour.

Snafu seems to chew on Eugene’s words for a second. “Maybe you’re right. Ain’t much sugar with that hair colour, Sledgehammer.” He pauses dramatically and leans forward to breathe a hot breath into Eugene’s ear. “Thankfully, there's plenty of other stuff that's equally as sweet, honey.”

“That ain’t funny, Snaf’. That’s the kind of shit you’d call your wife.”

Snafu only laughs as he walks off, leaving behind a flustered and angry Eugene who is already plotting how he is going to get back at the arrogant Cajun.

While not aware of it at the time, an opportunity presents itself when Eugene is startled awake to a wet gasp about a week later.

He pushes himself up in his bed, wild eyes trying to orient themselves in the darkness and locate the source of the noise in the darkness. The other guys are asleep in their bunks, except for one, and Eugene just manages to catch the sight of Snafu’s back as he storms outside their small tent before the tent flap shuts behind him. It doesn’t take much contemplation before Eugene is quietly climbing out of his own bunk to follow after him into the night.

“Snafu?” he calls softly when he is outside, afraid to alert anyone else who isn’t Snafu of his presence. No one else needed to see Snafu in the kind of state of mind Eugene suspects he is in judging from that cry he’d heard. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to search for long as he finds Snafu leaning against the tarp on the other side of their small shelter. Snafu is in the process of light a cigarette when Eugene approaches him.

“Fuck,” Snafu curses as he struggles to ignite his cheap lighter with unsteady fingers. His hands holding the small container doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with him as there’s a visible tremor there making it difficult for Snafu to hold them steady.

“Here, let me,” Eugene says, his quiet voice making Snafu jump as if he hadn’t noticed he was there. Eugene pretends he doesn’t notice though as he extract the lighter from Snafu’s hands and lights it, holding the small flame up to Snafu’s cigarette.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Handing the lighter back to Snafu, Eugene leans against the tarp as well, looking up at the stars above. They were so clear here compared to back home.

“I don’t have nightmares often,” Snafu admits after a long moment of shared silence. His voice is steady, but his hands are still trembling with unspent adrenaline from whatever images haunt his dreams at night. “But when I do, it just feels so real, y’know? Like I can actually see and feel the life of everyone around me get sucked out of them.”

“And what does that feel like?” Eugene asks carefully, his gaze still glued to the black canvas above, shimmering with small glimmers of light.

“Cold.”

Eugene nods in understanding. He knows the feeling of waking up in a panic, heart racing, while your mind is telling you all sorts of terrible lies. More than once have Eugene woken up in a cold sweat, the dead bodies of his loved ones littered over a ruined battlefield while he is the only survivor. He wouldn’t wish those kinds of nightmares on anyone.

He wonders what sorts of horrors Snafu sees when he’s asleep.

There’s the sound of someone exhaling a shaky breath next to him and Eugene finally chances a glance at Snafu who is sitting with his head in his palms. Eugene’s heart clenches painfully at the sight, something about the image of a distraught Snafu not seeming right. An idea present itself to him then; an opportunity to cheer Snafu up and also get back at him for all those silly pet names.

Carefully, he shuffles closer to Snafu. “Hey,” he says and nudges him with his elbow. “Cheer up, buttercup. We ain’t dead yet, we might still make it home.”

It earns him a quizzical eyebrow before a soft smile forms around the smoke perched between his lips. “Ain’t nobody goin’ home, honey. Y’know that.”

Suddenly, Eugene has some ammunition of his own as he starts mocking Snafu with his newly baptised pet name for him. Every time Snafu coos honey at him in a teasing tone, Eugene fires right back with calling him his little buttercup, so small and delicate.

Alone, Snafu smiles to himself when Eugene calls him that, seeming almost pleased with the childish pet name, but he doesn’t seem to take to the name quite so well when Eugene uses it front of the other guys, Bill’s roaring laugh turning Snafu’s face an angry, embarrassed red.

It continues like this for months, but the name-calling tapers off as the campaign stretches on in Okinawa. Eugene is so emotionless and distant then. When all is painted is black and red, it’s difficult to find joy in anything as silly as teasing your friend with silly nicknames. Besides, his head is so filled with horror and terrible images that he doesn’t even notice Snafu’s stopped calling him honey. It isn’t before he is sitting emotionally exhausted and broken on a bench outside a destroyed house with a shell-shaped hole in the roof and a dead family inside that he realises it is something that he has even been missing.

A warm figure presses up close to his side. “How’re you holdin’ up, boo?”

“Thought I was your honey,” Eugene remarks coldly.

Snafu considers him evenly through tired, sad eyes. “Gott’a be sweet for me to call ya that. And not gonn’a lie Sledge, you’re more reminiscent of a ghost these days.”

For some reason, Eugene feels his heart sink at this. He swallows hard around the lump suddenly forming in his throat. “Well, ain’t going to stop callin’ ya buttercup if that’s your ploy here.” Eugene chuckles weakly despite himself. “They’re considered weeds, y’know? Persistent little things, can wiggle their way in everywhere. Incredibly difficult to get rid of too once they’ve taken root.”

An intent gaze is burning into the side of Eugene’s face, he can feel it, but his own eyes are trained on the wet mud underneath his feet where no flowers or plants would want to grow in a long time. “I never understood why they were considered weeds though. I used to love picking them from mother’s garden as a kid, thought they were so pretty and delicate in the way they almost seemed to glow in the sunlight.” Eugene chuckles weakly again before his breath hitches and he dissolves into tears. He ducks his head in embarrassment. He hadn’t thought about home in such a long time and oh god he misses it, would give anything to be back there.

An arm drapes over his shoulder then. “Your mama’s garden sounds nice,” is all that Snafu says. But it’s all that he needs to say as he sits with Eugene until the lieutenant orders them to pack up their things and join the others who are digging foxholes for the night. Despite orders, Snafu stays close, not quite letting go of Eugene as he sleeps curled up close in their foxholes during Eugene’s watch, and Eugene feels lighter and more clearheaded than he has in a long while.

Snafu doesn’t leave him alone after that and the name-calling seem to pick up exactly where they’d left off as they return to throwing them back and forth between themselves. Then, and at some point, it starts to shift from being mocking to being affectionate and loving, a secret shared between them. Eugene starts to think that maybe he is a bit special after all, at least to Snafu who kisses him at V-day, surprisingly shy, and then again later when they are alone under the stars.

Those long, secret nights that they share in each other’s’ beds in Peking after that should be more than confirmation enough that there might be something more between them, but Eugene cannot help but feel that this is all just temporary. Something this good is bound to end sometime, either that they get caught or Snafu leaves, and Eugene doesn’t dare to think otherwise. It would make the disappointment easier to swallow when he wakes up one day and Snafu isn’t there anymore.

The thought of Snafu not being there haunts him from the moment it appears as a possibility in his mind. It makes him cling onto Snafu even more than before, staying close by his side all hours of the day and in his bed all night as he presses soft kisses to his chest, his stomach while he whispers about his little flower, his buttercup. In return, Snafu will thread his fingers through his ginger hair, muttering encouraging words to his honey until he is twisting underneath Eugene’s clever hands and mouth.

It is loving and peaceful, but not bound to last, and it is with a heavy heart Eugene steps onto the train that will take them all back to their old lives on the south coast. He is adamant to spend these last few hours with Snafu and not waste a single moment. And then, when he would get home, he would find one of the flowers in his mother’s garden and press it between the pages of his bible, preserving the memory of his little buttercup amongst the written words about him.

The anxiety and stress must have caught up to him though, as he peels his eyes open after having fallen asleep in his seat. The bright sun outside must have woken him up as it hits his face and casts his surroundings in a beautiful light, including Snafu who is sitting opposite him.

Snafu’s eyes are trained on a newspaper resting in his lap with a concentrated frown pinching his brows together while he reads makes Eugene heart warm before he feels a spike of panic. He’s wasted so much time, he should have stayed awake. Oh god, how much time did they have left together?

“How far are we from your stop?” Eugene asks, trying to hide his anxiety by acting nonchalant and stretching out his long limb in his small seat, his legs gracing Snafu’s ankles underneath the table. He hates to think about parting from Snafu soon when the man has become such a constant in his life. A reliable comrade, a loyal friend, the person he trusts the most and cares about the most. Snafu’s wound his way into Eugene’s heart, and Eugene thinks he himself might waste away if Snafu was uprooted from his newfound home.

“We passed it a while ago,” Snafu says absently as his attention trails along the printed text of his paper. He doesn’t seem remotely fazed by the fact he’s missed his stop.

Eugene only looks at him bewilderment, not able to understand in his panicked state. He hadn’t been sleeping for that long, how did he miss that they’ve already passed New Orleans? And why was Snafu still here? Eugene just about manages to collect himself enough to voice his latter question out loud, earning a small quirk of Snafu’s lips before Snafu folds up his newspaper to give Eugene his full attention.

“Because,” Snafu says easily, the light outside hitting his tawny skin and making him seem deceitfully delicate and beautiful as he appears to glow in the sunrays. “Honey, you’re the one. Looks like you’re takin’ me home to your mama’s garden after all.”

#I am terrible at making stuff people ask for apparently #but I hope this is okay #sorry that I am the slowest in the universe but this was a bit of a struggle #but it's done! and I hope you like it #because it turned out a lot longer than I anticipated lol #Sledgefu #Merriell Shelton #Eugene Sledge #The Pacific #500 followers edit #my edit #my writing #my writing which hasn't been properly proofread like always

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