I’ve been nervous to do this for a while, but here’s the first Sledgefu I wrote “Hush Hush Baby”
(for notes, this is slightly AU, and I’m first familiar with the fandom from E. B. Sledge’s book “With The Old Breed”...the mention of the sister is inaccurate, I know...I just felt like it)
HUSH HUSH BABY
There’s nothing quite like your first place together, and there never will be again. The memory of it is going to stick with you, and for the good or bad, it’s going to mean the world.
It’s not all perfect, of course. There were those months apart they had to make up for. Baby steps. Mistakes made on both parts. Merriell had walked away, still never quite sure he’d survived, never since Gloucester. There were months Eugene had spent in Mobile, feeling stupid sorry for himself and not really needing to. His daddy saying so only when he brought it up, and his momma disappointing him like Snafu had promised him she would.
“You were right,” maybe not being the perfect words first out of his mouth when he found Snafu again (under a different name, the bastard) but something he felt in his heart the other man needed to hear for them to go on. It took Gene too long to really see it, as close to his parents and used to his little home town as he’d been, but the other world they’d been in when they’d fallen in love had put on the proverbial rose colored glasses in terms of what shit would be like when he came home.
Come home with Snafu, That’d been the plan. The plan, That didn’t help to put Merriell’s mind at ease, since it wasn’t far from the plain, old, acceptable by society’s eyes plans that Sledge had had before he’d left for the war. Not that the Cajun ever expected to be accepted by society. But he sure as hell didn’t expect to be accepted by someone else and their nice family.
He wouldn’t be. The hard lesson that the hard headed man he knew so well had used to decided, quickly and firmly, that the woman that didn’t accept him didn’t have to be part of his life.
As for Snafu’s side, there’d never been anyone to go home to. But that’s where he’d been and where they’d been making up time lost to one another in a tiny hole in the wall in New Orleans.
“Corporal Shelton?” A very patient stranger in a suit asks. He’d knocked politely, waited in that neighborhood where he certainly stuck out like a sore thumb, so Snafu decides to take pity on him and not bullshit him too much.
“I go by Damasy.” It’s not a flat out rejection, or a fuck you, but it’s no invitation either.
“But you were a Mr. Merriell Shelton?” Merriell nods. At this point Eugene has taken an interest, and can be overheard doing his damndest to get decent...quietly. Doesn’t help his case much that he’s peeking around Snafu, and they’re both sweating and out of breath. “It seems like you’re due quite the inheritance, Corporal. You’re a hard man to track down.”
Snafu is already cursing the lawyer out, making to slam the door when Eugene interjects. “If you’d just give me a moment with him please?”
“Whatchu mean, give you a moment with me-” Snafu complains, but Eugene holds out a hand and drags him close as the representative waits on the other side of the door.
“Listen, I know you don’t want anything to do with their money but think about this for just a moment would ya?” He sees those murky green eyes darkening, knows that squint back at him for what it is. But he keeps on. “What would stick it to them more than using that money for some good, for you and I- getting out of New Orleans maybe. A nice place for you and I?”
“Why would I wanna get out of ‘Nawlins?” There’s a million reasons, but Sledge doesn’t say a word, he just holds him. He knows why Merriell would hold out on taking his inheritance, what *that side* of the family did to him. The torment and shame over the years. He knows there’s one or two other things he’d like to do with the money if he could make it right in his mind.
They’ve gone over it just once or twice, usually near ending in a full blown fight because Merriell doesn’t want to hear it. Because there’s an equal mix of pride and shame and he’s been stradling that knife edge since he came home from the war. In some ways, in a lot of ways, being out there was less a battle than the rest of his whole life. It was easier out there.
He sighs, opens the door. “Where do I sign?”
They find themselves a real fixer-upper in small town Louisiana. Outside of the hustle and bustle of the city. The soul Sledge remembers feeling is still there. But maybe that’s just what it feels like, sweating it out while they gut the old place and cook for two. The way they’re living, it’s a bit like camping indoors. A string of lights here and there, a little stove and a pot. In the daylight they work as hard and fast as they want, or spend their time gathering supplies in town.
Eventually, anyone who has seen them together must have an idea, but no one bothers them. Snafu is making arrangements to bring his little sister out. She’s still young enough that she’s been with foster care- an arrangement he felt at the time was far better for her than he could provide. He’s still not sure, and he’s maybe a bit too honest in the letter he sends out to her. She’s just old enough to make the decision to head out with the train fare and spare cash he sends along.
Eugene figures something about that may be the final straw that pushes Merriell over the edge. The first bad night in their new home. It’s not that Snaf doesn’t always keep a piece under his pillow. Hell, back in their place in New Orleans it took some convincing to get him to take the belt with his kabar off for bed.
This time feels worse, everything in the other man feels different while he tries to hold him through the night terror; until Eugene realizes he’s wide awake and calm. Usually he finds all the other man’s muscles strung tight, his eyes closed, screaming. But they’re open, a bright green as tears spill over. The gun rests loosely in his grip, not so much aimed at an invisible enemy from a nightmare, not quite back on himself. What soldier hasn’t been about there after it all? They all had.
Eugene does the only thing he can. Saying what he remembers his lover whispering over and over one night, until he believed it. “Shh baby. Nothing’s going to break you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
In the morning it’ll be back to sweating it out, the occasional “don’t you put that through your hand” and “ain’t no way that’s fittin’ in that window”; but tonight Sledge just holds the other man who’d stayed strong when even he had definitely broken.
