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"I'm cold," Eugene said, uselessly.
"Well, you've got your whole kit 'n caboodle exposed there," said Snafu. He gestured at the hole in Eugene's pants, worn out right at the crotch. Eugene was staring ahead and missed Snafu's pointed hand movement. "Your dick's gonna freeze off."
"Christ," said Eugene. White air puffed out around the word, like cigarette smoke. They'd run out of cigarettes two days ago.
Snafu would have thought it was a sigh at the state of his cold dick, or their wet dugout, or everyone's dwindling food supplies, but Eugene rarely took time to think about the more important details of daily life. Eugene was usually sighin' about "the state of things," with "things" being an evasive way of saying himself. Oh, Eugene spent an awful lot of time thinking about the state of Eugene -- the state of Snafu was that he didn't have the patience for it.
Snafu didn't get caught up in introspective navel gazing. You start over examining your own survival, and your luck'll run out fast. Take what you can, 'cause next week you won't get jack shit.
"Christ ain't listening," he said, a beat too late, but it was more of a scripted taunting than a product of genuine derision. He was tired. Eugene should be, too. If Snafu was extra boring, maybe Eugene would pass back out and leave Snafu to keep watch in a lonely peace. Snafu was physically tired, for sure, but he was especially tired of having to act like a person. Just 'cause Eugene was up and Eugene expected Snafu to be a person to him, still. After all this.
Snafu was not a person. Snafu was all God's shit that ever went wrong, and the clear head and purpose you get when you're pumped so full of panic and adrenaline that you stop digesting. Your body decides it has better shit to do, generally involving fight or flight, and your digestive tract has to nut up or shut up. Snafu was sometimes a soldier, was always a reaction, and was never a person.
"Where's your family at?" Eugene asked. His voice had gotten smaller, with the soft edges of a night-time whisper. Like a kid at a sleepover.
Snafu did not say a god damned thing.
"You never wrote anyone," Eugene continued.
"You trackin' my letters?" Snafu said. "Fuckin' notin' down what papers I use to wipe my ass?"
Eugene gave him a look, that slow and purposeful one, where he came at Snafu sideways. Like Snafu was picking on some girlie at a bar and Eugene was eyeing the situation. All at the ready to step in and be a hero. Lowered eyelids, angry stare, never quite turning his face to look at him. It disarmed Snafu in a way that grated.
"No," said Eugene. He shifted his legs again, trying to cover the hole in his pants by letting them sag a little in the rear, getting some extra slack.
"Your back end's gonna fall off before your dick does," Snafu noted. "Man's body cares a lot less about sittin' comfortably than it cares about fuckin'."
"Give me your hat, I'll use that to cover my ass," Eugene sniped.
Snafu smiled, the rare bloom of warmth he tended to get when Sledge got vicious. Made him want to hiss out, oh, so discourteous. What would your mother think, Eugene, of you giving backchat like that so easy? It made him want to get Sledge to bare his teeth more and more.
"I'm always coverin' your ass," Snafu said. He meant it to be airy, ribbing. Maybe his smile -- described by a more learned former lover as "sinuous," and oh how she caught those sibilants like a viper -- had been a bit much; because Eugene gave him this other look, one that made him look like a confused dog. Tilted head, furrowed brow, his still newly broad shoulders leaning in like they were in a huddle. Snafu and Sledge, a pair to highlight any basketball game.
If you asked, Snafu didn't wonder how the Pelicans were playing. Home team or not, doesn't make a difference. Maybe they were drafted. Maybe they were dead. Maybe he had marched over one of their corpses. Two children of the City That Care Forgot, climbing over each other like crabs in a bucket.
Snafu tripped his fingers along his gun, his silent pads instead of his broken nails. Eugene was still staring. He wished Eugene would quit staring, then realised he didn't know what he'd do on the day that Eugene looked away. Eugene made a face like he was fixing to say something, but Snafu cut him off. Tried to make it look like he hadn't noticed Eugene's ill-advised attempt to say whatever shameful thing he might have said.
"Fuckin' go to sleep, if you ain't gonna be talkin' no more," Snafu said, fast. Clumsy. Obvious.
A breath, a beat. Eugene sighed more false smoke and huddled down into the trench.
Snafu sat in the dark, and watched.