fic: PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING [2]
oh wow. even i didn't think this was gonna ever get finished.
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part two (part one here)
(gerard/frank and mikey/pete implied.)
au, based on "the ghost of you video."
r for violence, language, sexual situations.
9 July
Gerard arrived in the last moments of the service, hopping off the thrumming jeep with a grateful wave to Rickly, the driver. The kickback growl of the engine followed him down the short, muddy path, towards the neat white farmhouse of regimental headquarters. Gerard's hand, as he sniffed them, smelled like diesel.
Captain Trohman approached, helmet slung over his shoulder by one strap; he sent Gerard a salute and a smile.
"Looks like someone's enjoying our stalemate at St. Lo," he teased. "Taking a stroll?"
Gerard shifted from foot to foot. "Ah, no, sir. I'm," he swallowed, glanced past Trohman. "I'm looking for Father Howard?"
Trohman jerked his thumb out, towards the field behind the house. "Started at about nine. I went by for a while - Howard's a good guy, even if he is celibate, but all I know about Latin is 'Ave Maria' from Glee Club." He chuckled, nudging Gerard. "It's all Greek to me."
"Thanks." Gerard smiled, shaking his head. "Ah, I'll see you around, sir?" He pulled his hand into a belated salute.
Trohman met his salute. "You look better," he said, and stepped past Gerard.
Gerard stood for a moment. He could hear the wind prickle the trees, the faint sound of call-and-response from Father Howard's mass. The sky separated from the horizon into a blue so clear it almost hurt. He narrowed his eyes, until the flutter of his eyelashes darkened everything.
Taking Mikey's Rimbaud book from the deep pockets of his trousers, Gerard walked around the farmhouse to the open-air chapel.
Father Howard stood at his makeshift altar: three plywood boards, spread horizontally over empty supply crates. Above him, someone had strung a white canvas, corners shored up by tent posts or pinned to tree trunks, providing him some cover from the strengthening sun. He wore the rich green robes of ordinary time; the pendulous arc of his wide sleeves melded into the rolling fields behind him.
In contrast with almost every other mass Gerard had attended, Howard faced his congregation: a cluster of men, some fifty or sixty deep, kneeling on the hard, French earth. Most had done their best to clean up, their hair still slick from a dunk in one of the local streams. A few near where Gerard stood at the back struggled to stay awake after a night of sentry duty.
Howard paused, met his gaze. Gerard took a breath, and tightened his fingers around the edges of the book. He felt more eyes on him, glances from all the genuflecting men. Gerard's hand twitched, flitting over his chest in the four quick touches of the sign of the cross. He dropped to his knees, joints giving a resentful creak as they swung into action.
Howard gave a tilt of his chin; his expression returned to unearthly contemplation of the middle distance between the altar and the horizon. Gerard folded his hands, and dropped his head.
"Et verbum caro factum est." Father Howard intoned the familiar words. His voice rang out in the reverent quiet of the morning - ten miles from the front, Gerard could hear the querulous pitch of bird song. "Et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi Unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis."
Gerard felt his lips move, giving the last response without meaning to: "Deo gratias," thanks be to God. He crossed himself with the others and pushed himself up from his knees in one thrust of momentum.
Father Howard stood at his altar. He took the Eucharistic chalice in both hands, whispered a small prayer, and finished the wine in small sips. Wiping the rim with the purificator cloth, he produced a leather pouch, and tucked the cup away. Gerard watched, several paces away, as he worked. The simple paten plate that held the host - "this is my body, take of it and eat it" - glinted in the sun.
"You can come closer, Gerard," Father Howard said, not looking up. "Jesus doesn't bite."
"Hello, Father."
"Would you mind helping me for a moment?" Howard turned to him, paten in his outstretched hands. "I need to transfer the Body to a suitable carrying case."
"A portable tabernacle?"
Howard nodded. "Exactly."
"Ah, sure." Gerard bit his lip. "Just." He reached across the altar, grabbing a small linen square, and spread it over his palms. "Okay." He held out his hands.
Father Howard transferred the silver plate to Gerard; the metal warmed his fingers even through the layer of fabric. "You certainly know your catechism."
Gerard flushed. "I was an altar boy, sir. Me and my brother, both. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, when we were kids."
Howard tilted the paten, collecting the small flat disks of the Host. He took out another leather pouch, this one stitched with a simple white cross, and slid them inside. "Yes, Michael told me," he said mildly. "Would you mind?" Howard gestured at the altar, the white linen stretched across to cover the warps in the rough-hewn wood.
Gerard shifted over, folding it in the careful pattern he'd learned. Even after fifteen years, his hands remembered the motions: twice in length, twice in breadth. He passed it back to Father Howard, standing awkwardly as Howard administered a final round of blessings.
"Doesn't," Gerard scratched an idle itch on the inside of his forearm, "doesn't your acolyte usually do this before the end of the mass?"
Howard clapped his hands together. "Died," he said. "A week and a half ago. I've not had time to press one of the men into service. Unless," he shot Gerard a toying glance, "you've come to volunteer?"
Gerard slid his hand down to his pocket. "I've got. Officer duties. I mean, I couldn't."
Father Howard reached below the altar again, retrieving a neat black case. He placed each of the pouches inside, handling them with reverent hands. Loving hands, Gerard thought, watching the way he rested each item against the other. An image of Frank rose up in his mind, unbidden: Frank's careful fingers, nudging a compass into place across a stretched map; the deft motion of his hand as he sketched out a path for the platoon, (always) in pencil.
When Gerard shook off his reverie, Howard was standing close. His lean frame, buttressed by the heft of his vestments, cast a shadow over Gerard. "What can I help you with Gerard?"
"It's about Mikey." Gerard checked over his shoulder, but the gathering of men had melted away, stretched out over the field. He watched as two soldiers, their uniforms spattered in dust and mud, wrestled in the grass. Their laughter caught on the wind, traveled. "Have they fully de-mined this area yet?"
"You opened his effects." Howard looked steadily to Gerard. "What did you learn?"
"I don't know," Gerard said, quick and low. He fumbled the book, tugging it from his pocket. "This book - Mikey must have bought it when he came to France before, just when the war was starting."
Father Howard held it between his hands, weighing the slight object. "Rimbaud. A very influential poet, among certain circles." His words sounded chosen carefully, metered like the sign of the cross.
"There was a letter." Gerard swallowed. "I left it at home. In my pack. But. It was from someone, and Mikey had never mentioned - "
"Peter," Howard murmured. He slid his hand to the back of his neck, tilting two fingers under the stiff white band of his collar.
"He told you?" Gerard swallowed. "He never told me." He winced, a sharp jab of pain between his eyebrows. His palms dispensed sweat to his trousers, slick.
Father Howard's hand settled on Gerard's arm. "We discussed it in private."
Gerard glanced up. "That's. You can't tell me what he said to you in Confession."
"I'll make my peace with God when I go," he said. "He and I have an extremely long tab to settle."
Another bomber churned its way overhead, a guttural scrape of noise in the sky. "He never told me," Gerard said again, but he couldn't hear the words over the engines, could barely feel the push of his throat muscles, forming them. Maybe he hadn't said them at all. His lungs stung, ravaged like the after-effects of gas.
"Gerard." Father Howard squeezed the bundle of tendons and muscle and bone at his shoulder. "Your brother was haunted by the decision, whether or not to tell you. He came to me under the strictest of confidence."
"We used to play dice." Gerard folded his fingers, as if curled around a die. "We gambled. Sinned. I don't remember who was winning."
"Gerard," Howard said again, "your brother loved you. Up until the moment the Lord took him, he loved you. He would want that to be his legacy."
From their left, a soldier came running, appearing from the opposite side of the house. He panted, waving his arms at the Father and Gerard. "Sir!" he called out. "Father!" Gerard stepped back to give the man - younger than Mikey, maybe twenty - room; the soldier fell into a shuddering salute. His uniform was splattered with dirt, newly collected in the seams and the long straight panels of his trousers. Sweat rolled down the notches of his stubbled neck.
"Father Howard," he gulped, "there's been a German counterattack on A Company's positions."
Howard straightened, letting go of Gerard to match the salute. "Casualties?"
"Yes, sir - at least five. Captain Keeley's asking for you. I came," he exhaled, hands on his thighs, "by foot, but there's a tank, 742nd, coming in for backup. They said they'd take you to administer last rites, if you were done with your Sunday service."
"Let me change out of these vestments, and we'll get going." Father Howard inhaled, shoulders shifting as if taking off a second robe, one Gerard couldn't see.
"I should - see if Captain Trohman needs me," Gerard mumbled. His lungs still felt seared raw.
Howard nodded. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He moved his right hand, up-down-left-right in the familiar motions of a blessing. "Peace be with you, my son." With that, he turned away, and strode off towards the house.
...
14 July
Frank heard the music first.
"What was that?" He sat up from where he'd been stretched out against a hay bale, lazily losing three days of fruit rations to Butcher.
Gerard, never very good with cards, pulled the length of his torso upright. "What was what?"
"A drum." A wrinkle appeared above the bridge of Frank's nose, perpendicular to his brows. "You don't hear it?"
Beside him, Bob tossed in a rock - a betting chip equal to one K-Ration. "If you mean Toro's stomach - "
"Go to hell," Ray sighed, and folded. He flicked a spatter of dust at Frank. "I don't think it's good for the brains of the operation to start hearing things."
"No, I'm serious." Frank let his cards slide from his slender fingers, as he stood. Three tens and an ace. The others crowed in disappointment, but Frank waved a hand, shushing them.
Above the military clatter they'd begun to treat as white noise - men shouting, orphaned rounds pinging in the distance, truck engines growling - rose the crisp patter of a drum. Prrrrrr-rmm pmm pmm, prrrr-rmmm pmm pmm. Gerard picked up the faintest traces of a trumpet, smooth notes jauntily weaving in with the rhythm.
They froze.
"Think that's the Germans?" Ray murmured.
Gerard quirked a smile at Frank. "We're being attacked by Napoleon," he said.
Frank gave a vague murmur, licking his lips.
"What is it?" Gerard leaned in.
"Bastille Day," Frank said. He peered out from under the shade of the stable. "July Fourteenth. I forgot about - "
"Iero." Butcher sat back down, slapped Frank's knee. "You taking the pot, or are we going to send it home to your mother?"
"Keep it." Frank shook himself once, turned to Gerard. "I've gotta go." He took off at a jog, feet clomping on the muddy turf.
"What the hell was that about?" Butcher said, shuffling the deck. His bronzed fingers snapped the worn corners of the cards, fast enough that the pattern on the back, stars and stripes, blurred into a purple mass. "He sprung a leak or something?"
Bob shook his head. "You know how he gets, when he hears someone playing music."
Suarez held his shrinking collection of pebbles in his nervous hands. "What do you mean?"
"He's a musician, back in New York. Deal." Bob motioned to Butcher. "Works the jazz circuit in Greenwich Village."
"What's he play?"
"Anything." Bob watched as Butcher bridged the cards between his palms with a sharp crack . "Mostly guitar, I think, but I've seen him play anything from a banjo to a double bass."
Butcher tossed out cards. He flicked his wrist in Gerard's direction, but Gerard shook his head. "I'll pass, this round."
"Hey," Butcher said, thumbing through his new hand, "remember that night in Bizerta? He found a violin, in an abandoned German bunker. Played the fucking thing for three hours straight - "
"Until Mikey threatened to shoot a hole through the violin and whatever parts of Frank it touched!" Ray laughed, slapped Butcher on the shoulder. "Jesus, I thought they were gonna open a third front, right there!"
Butcher shook his hand off, eyes flickering to Gerard. He turned back to his cards, brows drawing down tighter over his forehead. "Your bet, Toro," he said, voice taut.
Gerard rubbed his forehead, felt a morning's worth of grit and sweat collecting in the pores above his brow. The sand in Africa, he thought, had gotten everywhere: yellow-orange dirt that caked their rifles and the cuffs of their clothing. One day, they'd stopped off at a cleared bathhouse to submerge their bruised, exhausted bodies, Able through George companies shucking their dirty khakis to dive into a white-tiled pool. Gerard had kept his eyes to himself, lowering his body into the water. The sand, he remembered, broke off his sunburnt skin like dissolving sugar. Somewhere next to him, Frank had been laughing.
"I'm out."
Bob frowned. "You sure?"
Gerard nodded. "I'm gonna go check on things with Trohman." He pushed his meager chips to Suarez. "Play for me, will you?"
Suarez grinned. "Thanks, sir!" He held his cards closer.
Gerard picked his way around the men, exchanging waves and nods. He saw Bob glare at Ray, who called out, "See you soon, yeah?"
"Sure," Gerard said. "Soon, Toro."
Fox Company had been given the small farm to use as officer's lodgings and a rest station. The occupants, a widow and her young niece, lived in the attic. Gerard had seen them only once since he and Allman, First Platoon's C.O., moved into an abandoned child's bedroom. The woman's cowed figure in the hallway barely cast a shadow; the tattered edges of the child's sleeves had fluttered as both struggled to make themselves understood in the fragments of English they could muster.
Today, as Gerard stepped out of the dank barn and into the July sunlight, he saw the girl, stretched atop a stool, reaching over the lintel of the front door. She clutched a length of fabric in one hand and a hammer in the other; the rickety legs of the stool wobbled as she stretched onto the ball of one foot.
"Hold on, there." Gerard knelt, steadying her perch. "Lemme give you a hand, yeah?"
The girl glanced down at him. Ten or eleven, Gerard guessed. Four nails lay, tucked askew, between her pursed lips, and her blonde hair bounced in curls over her shoulder. Her eyes regarded him, blue and cool. Older eyes than any of the neighborhood kids Gerard had known in Jersey. She tossed her head, flipping back a curl; the stool gave an uncertain wobble.
"Okay," Gerard said, hands wrapped around two of the three wooden legs. "I've got you."
She turned back to her task: deftly nailing two corners of the fabric--bunting, Gerard, realized--to the top of the door frame. With four good knocks, she let go, hopping off the stool while still holding her hammer and the other end of the bunting.
Eye-level with Gerard, she pointed over his shoulder at one of the ground floor windows. "Et la-bas," she said.
"Over there, too?" Gerard flexed his pitiful French, carrying the stool as she skipped ahead. The bunting stretched behind her, blue, red, and white in horizontal stripes. It flapped in the slight breeze, the edges just missing the dusty earth below.
The little girl pointed again, and Gerard put down the stool. "Okay." He knelt again. "Be careful, now," he said. "We don't want a civilian casualty on our hands."
Before he'd spoken, she leapt onto her stool, steadying herself with a palm against the white-washed wall of the house. She twisted her fingers, getting a good grip on her hammer. Plucking a nail from her mouth, she positioned it. Gerard watched as her thin arm drew back and hinged forward, jamming the nail into the wall with a satisfying thwonk.
"Nice job." Gerard steadied her as she tensed to jump down. "Here, lean on me." He moved her hand to his shoulder. The girl blinked, but swung off him with a nimble little leap.
He dusted himself off, smiling. "We make a good team," he said. "You wanna come fight the Germans?"
The little girl spoke, a flurry of quick, airy French syllables he didn't catch. She flashed a grin at his bewilderment, and grabbed her stool. Clutching it in both hands, she raced off around the house, toward the back door.
Gerard stepped back to look at the bunting. It rippled, stripes of color undulating one into the next. He'd seen dozens of French flags in the last month, hastily pulled out from their deep hiding places in closets, under floorboards ... even, as Allman swore, nailed to the furthest corner of a pig's moist pen. Released from four years of hiding, the hot Normandy sun revealed four years of mold, decay, and dirt. He wondered where the old woman had stored this much fabric without the Germans seeing.
In his dormitory in Providence, Mikey had hung a French flag over his radio, freshman year. Gerard had visited in November; he remembered ragging him for it. "Three months in Paris, and already you're an Interventionist?" he'd teased.
Mikey's blush had always looked so stark on his pinched features. "I just like the colors," he'd mumbled. "Come on - I wanna show you my class buildings."
The memories hit Gerard like machine gun fire, these days -- unrelenting, near-constant, merciless. He dug his heel in the earth, tried to blink away the sharpness behind his eyelids. "Fuck you," he whispered, low over the growing sound of a marching band. "Fuck you, Mikey."
The banner made no reply, and Gerard turned away. Somewhere, he could hear singing.
....
"I don't know," Gerard mumbled. He tried to match the width of Ray's grin. "I'm not much of a dancer."
They stood at the edge of the small town square, watching couples whirl past. The band played a brassy, light-hearted tune - an hour after sunset, the celebrations showed no signs of ceasing.
"Come on, Way!" Ray clapped a hand over his shoulders. "These girls - these women - none of them are gonna care about your two left feet!"
"My feet are fine," he said.
Ray looked at him as though he had several heads poking out of his pressed collar. "Sometimes," he shook his head, and passed back a long mouthful of calvados brandy, "I worry about you, sir."
Gerard's smile caught at the edges of his mouth, a loose thread that threatened to unravel and pull his face apart. "You too, huh?"
Two of the dancers spun loose from the crowd - girls, clutching one another's hands and laughing, fast and giddy. Color rode high in their cheeks, and their skirts hadn't yet settled, fluttering around their calves in the after-math of twirling.
"Look at that," Ray poked Gerard's side, "a clear offensive opportunity for Fox Company."
Gerard prodded Ray back, a hard finger in his side, but Ray side-stepped it, turning to wave a loose-wristed hand at the girls. "Follow me, Lieutenant," he said as he strong-armed Gerard to where they stood.
"Bonjour, mademoiselles." Ray gave a lazy salute, sweeping his rebellious hair off his forehead.
The girls giggled, fingers twisted together. The shorter one swayed her hips, weight transferring forward, rocking. She leaned in, fingered the red cross on Ray's arm. "You are doctor?"
Ray smiled. "Yes, ma'am, I am."
The band switched songs, tempo picking up. The violins led, high and bright, with a quick melody. Below it, Gerard heard the drummer pick out a three/four beat. He watched over the girl's shoulder as the couples reformed and whirled across the square.
"May I have this dance?" Ray slid his hand down to the fleshy inside of the girl's outstretched arm, tucking two fingers under her elbow. Gerard wondered if Ray could feel her pulse, if his knowledge of anatomy carried him through even moments like these.
The girl's friend coughed softly, eyeing Gerard. Oh, God. Gerard swiped his palms over his clean trousers. "Excuse me," he turned to her, "would you like to dance?"
"Oui!" Ray's partner answered for her friend, balancing one white hand on Ray's shoulder.
Ray flashed a thumb's up. "We're off," he said. He cupped the small of her back, and gave Gerard a final grin before disappearing into the thicket of dancers.
Gerard had suffered through six months of dance lessons at the Englewood Field Club, his mother paying the extra non-member dues and forcing his pudgy adolescent body into an ill-fitting tail coat and white-winged collar. His limbs, fifteen years removed, still remembered their correct orientation as he led his partner through a timid waltz. Her hand felt very light on his shoulder, almost ghostly.
"My friend is persistent," she said, leaning in to be heard over the band.
Gerard started. "You speak English?"
The girl laughed, nodding. "Apparently. My name is Victoria." She was pretty, he thought, when he gave himself a moment to look: dark hair, a small nose that balanced thinly between the symmetric halves of her face. The first button of her white shirt was undone; Gerard glimpsed a gold crucifix on a thin chain.
"I'm Gerard. Second Lieutenant. And I don't speak French," Gerard admitted. "Italian. Spanish. And Latin. But no French."
Victoria laughed again. "What's so funny?" Gerard felt his cheeks go hot.
He glanced at the bandstand, wondering if they'd trail off after the second refrain, but the violinist struck up the melody again, and the others followed. He hated dancing.
She inclined her head, gesturing across the crowded square. In the dim periphery, where the evening's shadows spilled over from the dusky buildings, Ray and his girl swayed together, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Gerard squinted, and blushed hard when he saw Ray's hand drop below the waist of her skirt, traveling from back to ... not-back. Gerard missed the next step of the dance, and fixed his gaze on his shoes. One-two-three. One-two-three.
"She is my fiance's sister." Victoria squeezed his hand. "He told me to look after her."
"Fiance?" Gerard exhaled.
"Ryland. He went South, to fight with les maquis." Her voice kept itself in a casual register, but Gerard held her a bit closer. "He worked at the school - all the other teachers were sent to work in German factories, eleven months ago."
They danced together for another moment in silence. The music drifted on, the melody drawing out into eddies of improvisation. The trumpet reached for a long series of high notes, wandering in the top register of its range.
Victoria's head drifted to his shoulder. Her hair smelled like soap and perfume. Her skirt whispered against his trousers. "Do you have someone?" she asked quietly.
"Ah." Gerard swallowed, shoulder tensing. "I."
"That's enough of an answer." He could feel her lips curl into a smile; they grazed the fabric of his shirt. Gerard felt a little nauseous - the circular motion, he thought.
The trumpet played a final note. Set against the soft pianissimo of the other instruments, the sound hung in the evening air, lifting up with the gently flapping tricoleur flags.
Gerard released Victoria. He bowed, one hand behind his back, just as Mr. Price had taught all the boys. "Thank you for the dance," he said.
Victoria dropped into a small curtsy. "Thank you, Gerard." Her accent caught the last syllable of his name and made it float. "You were a much better dancer than I expected."
Gerard surprised himself with a laugh. "I'll take that as a compliment."
Victoria nodded, and leaned in. Her warm, dry lips touched both of his cheeks, quick and chaste. "I hope that you see your someone soon."
Gerard fingered the flesh below his cheekbone. He watched as she walked away, skirt swishing in syncopation with the next song.
...
The back stairs of the house creaked in sighing protest as Gerard crept up to his room. A window, cut above the landing, let in a square of moonlight. Someone had covered the glass pane in an x of protective tape, and the narrow penumbra of the two strips made even that light weird, hesitant.
The room he shared with Allman was on the left side, beyond where the light reached. His fingers fumbled over the wall, tapping blindly for the door as though his eyes were dead in their sockets.
He found the handle. A piece of cloth - a tie, maybe, or a sock - sheathed it, muffling the metal from his fingertips. Gerard froze. Behind the door, he could hear soft shifting, low murmurs. He shook his head; Allman had a reputation, even from Basic Training. Gerard pressed his palm flat to the wooden frame, wished them both happiness, or at least luck.
The hallway held a series of doors, three on each side. Gerard imagined a family here, each room a child's bedroom in yellow or blue paint. They raised large families in Normandy, six and seven children. Not just an heir and a spare, as Gerard's father used to joke, draping his hands over his sons' shoulders.
Gerard bit his tongue, scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed sleep, could feel it gathering at the corners of his mind.
A light pricked on, under the jamb of the far door. Frank's map room. A guitar began to play, just the light stroke of fingered notes. Gentle, mingling with the ambient sound of laughter and cheers that echoed from the ongoing celebration.
Gerard walked down the hall, tracing the edges of the moonlight with the soles of his boots. A laugh rippled from Gerard's shared room, deep and clean. He reached Frank's door, knuckles hovering against the wood.
Frank reached for a chord, drawing the blended notes together into a sweet harmony and something within Gerard uncoiled. He knocked, two raps.
Frank's fingers slipped off the strings, clamped down to kill the reverberations. "Hello?"
Gerard opened the door. Maps papered every available surface, covering the dresser top, a desk, the luminous white expanses of walls. Even the bed, pushed up against a corner almost as an afterthought, bore three long scrolls, tucked in waterproof sleeves.
"Hey." Frank sat in the center of the room. He cradled the prone body of a guitar on his lap - like the pietà, Gerard thought uselessly. A lamp sat on the table and spread waves of buttery light in every direction.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Borrowed it." Frank smiled and stroked the neck of the guitar with his two smallest fingers. "The mayor's brother handed it to me when he heard I played." He waved his hand to Gerard. "C'mere."
Gerard stepped inside tugging the door shut behind him. He heard the snick of the lock as Frank began to play again, working his way down the frets of the instrument, notes spiralling higher and higher. "He just let you have it?"
"Well," Frank's grin shifted, devious, "possibly I traded two bars of chocolate to use it as long as we're here." He strummed an emphatic chord. "Completely worth it."
"Yeah."
Another chair stood next to Frank's, and Gerard lowered himself into it. His muscles refused to relax; he crouched, feeling his pulse thrum past the knobs of his knee caps.
Frank picked out an indistinct melody, lazy. "You have a good time?" His littlest finger hit a false note, but he corrected it quickly. "I saw you dancing - looked like fun."
Gerard propped his chin on the palm of his hand, elbow digging into his knee. "All Toro's fault," he said. "Owes me - that was his girl's brother's fiancee."
Frank laughed. "Really?"
"He's fighting in the Resistance, in the South, she said."
"We're finding more of those, the further we get into France." Frank played a quick, dark phrase - a noir melody, something out of "The Maltese Falcon," maybe.
"Did you have fun?" Gerard smoothed his hand over a wrinkled he'd caused in his trousers.
Frank glanced up. "I'm having fun now," he said.
Gerard's mouth went dry; he coughed, once, tasted the burn of his own throat.
Frank's eyes were flecked with gold in the lamplight as he continued, "I always think, when I don't get to play for a while, that I'm going to have forgotten how, that my hands won't know what to do. But then, as soon as I do, it's like I've never stopped. I just know."
Gerard didn't realize he'd caught Frank's hand over the neck of the guitar until he felt Frank's pulse. His thumb pressed to Frank's wrist, their fingers overlapping, and Frank's pulse skittered, fast, like the rabbit he and Mikey found once, tangled in the brambles at their grandma's house.
"Gerard." Frank shifted his fingers, trying to free them, but Gerard tightened his grip, tugging. Their clasped hands hovered in the space between them as Frank squeezed, said, "are you okay?"
Outside, Gerard could hear the crowd singing again, the mingled burr of deep voices in the darkness. He shook his head, took a deep breath.
"What's wrong?" Frank murmured, urgency on the second word, sharpening it. Gerard shook his head again, as if he could push all the thoughts from his mind, nudge them away like a loose lock of hair that slipped over Mikey's glasses and in front of his eyes. Mikey, and Victoria with her missing lover, and the little girl who might have once sat in this room, reading a book about something she could barely understand.
"How can I help you?" Frank tugged his chair closer. Eye to eye, he didn't let go of Gerard's hand. "I don't know what to do."
"That makes two of us," Gerard wanted to say, but he couldn't. He let the words go as his eyes shut, and leaned in.
The kiss didn't feel like anything, not at first. Gerard felt the friction of Frank's lips against his own, the tap of their outermost layers of skin. A night breeze cooled the nape of Gerard's neck, the beaded sweat that nestled there. He waited, balancing on the bayonet-edge of panic.
Then, in a silent motion, Frank's fingers crooked to cradle the curve of Gerard's skull; his nails rasped Gerard's scalp. Gerard took a sharp breath as his nervous system passed shivers down his spine to the thinnest filaments at his fingertips, and Frank nudged his mouth open all the way, tongue lapping at Gerard's bottom row of teeth. Frank's mouth was tart with the tannic sting of wine and Gerard hadn't tasted that in so long he gasped, squeezing their entwined hands and kissing harder, seeking out the edges of the taste in Frank's mouth.
"Gerard," Frank mumbled, the syllables clumsy. He turned his head, drew in a breath as Gerard kissed the corner of Frank's lips.
"Don't," Gerard breathed, his eyes shut as tight as he could hold them, "don't say anything, please, just." He kissed Frank again, petulant and short.
Frank shifted, hand releasing its grip on Gerard's and retreating from Gerard's hair, "just let me, ah, I have to move this." He slid the guitar from between them; Gerard heard the discordant twang as the instrument hit the bed. "Okay."
Gerard peeked, but Frank was close again, close enough that Gerard's vision swam with Frank's eyes and skin and his dark forelocks of hair. The height difference had changed, when they were both sitting down, and Gerard's spine was already loose from the swift electrostatic charges that kept hurtling down it; it was nothing at all for him to cup Frank's jawline, to shift so that Frank was almost sitting on Gerard's chair, leaning over him. Frank planted his hand on the wooden frame to hold his balance, the other skimming over the outer edge of Gerard's upper arm, down and over his elbow to clutch the smallest point of Gerard's waist.
My shirt must be disgusting, Gerard thought, with hay from the barn, dust churned up by the dancers, bits of crumbly bread he'd eaten, and then he laughed - they'd seen worse, together, before. The sound bounced off both their lips, vibrating in the uneven space where their tongues touched and moved apart, Frank's bottom lip a hair's breath below Gerard's.
"What?" Frank murmured, but he kissed Gerard again before Gerard could explain. He didn't want to explain, anyway. He felt words all around them, like the lines on Frank's maps (their only companions, their sentries), and let them go with a gasp - Frank teased Gerard's bottom lip into his mouth, sucking with just the suggestion of a bite. Oh, Gerard thought, oh, he liked the flash of heat, the lightning-shock when he felt that, the way it turned his insides white like Frank's teeth.
He turned his head to whisper something into Frank's ear - his pretty, pale ear, and it looked like a moon, hung in the dark sky of his hair. An easy thing, to let his lips continue their wordless path, kissing the bell-like lobe, sliding it between his lips.
"Fuck," and Frank, Frank shivered this time, a gasp that accompanied the advance of his fingers down the front of Gerard's shirt, an offensive over the terrain of Gerard's front and down to the metal plateau of his belt buckle. "Gerard, I won't say anything, I promise, just," his words slurred against Gerard's neck, "fuck, Gerard." His hand pried at Gerard's belt, tugging the teeth out of the webbing, easing the tension of the band through its metal mouth, inch by inch.
Gerard noticed his own erection only when Frank's palm grazed it, an accidental touch. He gritted his teeth; he couldn't remember the last time. (No. New York City, April 1941, the bathhouse at Coney Island - he remembered everything.)
Gerard's belt gave under Frank's questing fingers just as steps rang out on the stairs. Hard, pounding boots on the old wooden slats of the floorboards, accompanied with laughter that spilled over Gerard like ice.
He shoved his chair back, Frank's hand flopping uselessly in the yawning distance between them.
"Gee," Frank hissed. Gerard took in his appearance: hair askew at all angles, pupils blown black, lips red and swollen. The line of Frank's erection was clear against the fabric of his khakis.
Gerard stood on shaking knees, looked away from Frank as quickly as he could. He stepped from foot to foot, trying to get his belt back on, nails scraping against the buckle that just wouldn't tighten, no matter how Gerard tugged, his fingers all nerves and no muscles right now.
"I've gotta - I should go," he mumbled, giving up and breaking for the door.
"Wait, no - " Frank started, but Gerard couldn't look, didn't want to see the way the light haloed Frank's face, the shadows that flickered as he reached out again to stop Gerard. He found the doorknob, turned, was five feet away before it shut with a bang.
The moonlight was almost gone now, everything eerier. Wherever the other officers had been headed, they were gone, too, but Gerard's heart thumped like a caged thing. He walked quickly in near-darkness; he'd sleep in the barn, if he had to.
The sock was missing, though - his own door stood ajar. Gerard peered in, saw Allman's bed, rumpled and empty. He pressed his body through the half-open space, slamming it shut with the force of his weight. He let his head fall back, nudging the wood, and breathed.
----
(Part 3.1)
---
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part two (part one here)
(gerard/frank and mikey/pete implied.)
au, based on "the ghost of you video."
r for violence, language, sexual situations.
9 July
Gerard arrived in the last moments of the service, hopping off the thrumming jeep with a grateful wave to Rickly, the driver. The kickback growl of the engine followed him down the short, muddy path, towards the neat white farmhouse of regimental headquarters. Gerard's hand, as he sniffed them, smelled like diesel.
Captain Trohman approached, helmet slung over his shoulder by one strap; he sent Gerard a salute and a smile.
"Looks like someone's enjoying our stalemate at St. Lo," he teased. "Taking a stroll?"
Gerard shifted from foot to foot. "Ah, no, sir. I'm," he swallowed, glanced past Trohman. "I'm looking for Father Howard?"
Trohman jerked his thumb out, towards the field behind the house. "Started at about nine. I went by for a while - Howard's a good guy, even if he is celibate, but all I know about Latin is 'Ave Maria' from Glee Club." He chuckled, nudging Gerard. "It's all Greek to me."
"Thanks." Gerard smiled, shaking his head. "Ah, I'll see you around, sir?" He pulled his hand into a belated salute.
Trohman met his salute. "You look better," he said, and stepped past Gerard.
Gerard stood for a moment. He could hear the wind prickle the trees, the faint sound of call-and-response from Father Howard's mass. The sky separated from the horizon into a blue so clear it almost hurt. He narrowed his eyes, until the flutter of his eyelashes darkened everything.
Taking Mikey's Rimbaud book from the deep pockets of his trousers, Gerard walked around the farmhouse to the open-air chapel.
Father Howard stood at his makeshift altar: three plywood boards, spread horizontally over empty supply crates. Above him, someone had strung a white canvas, corners shored up by tent posts or pinned to tree trunks, providing him some cover from the strengthening sun. He wore the rich green robes of ordinary time; the pendulous arc of his wide sleeves melded into the rolling fields behind him.
In contrast with almost every other mass Gerard had attended, Howard faced his congregation: a cluster of men, some fifty or sixty deep, kneeling on the hard, French earth. Most had done their best to clean up, their hair still slick from a dunk in one of the local streams. A few near where Gerard stood at the back struggled to stay awake after a night of sentry duty.
Howard paused, met his gaze. Gerard took a breath, and tightened his fingers around the edges of the book. He felt more eyes on him, glances from all the genuflecting men. Gerard's hand twitched, flitting over his chest in the four quick touches of the sign of the cross. He dropped to his knees, joints giving a resentful creak as they swung into action.
Howard gave a tilt of his chin; his expression returned to unearthly contemplation of the middle distance between the altar and the horizon. Gerard folded his hands, and dropped his head.
"Et verbum caro factum est." Father Howard intoned the familiar words. His voice rang out in the reverent quiet of the morning - ten miles from the front, Gerard could hear the querulous pitch of bird song. "Et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi Unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis."
Gerard felt his lips move, giving the last response without meaning to: "Deo gratias," thanks be to God. He crossed himself with the others and pushed himself up from his knees in one thrust of momentum.
Father Howard stood at his altar. He took the Eucharistic chalice in both hands, whispered a small prayer, and finished the wine in small sips. Wiping the rim with the purificator cloth, he produced a leather pouch, and tucked the cup away. Gerard watched, several paces away, as he worked. The simple paten plate that held the host - "this is my body, take of it and eat it" - glinted in the sun.
"You can come closer, Gerard," Father Howard said, not looking up. "Jesus doesn't bite."
"Hello, Father."
"Would you mind helping me for a moment?" Howard turned to him, paten in his outstretched hands. "I need to transfer the Body to a suitable carrying case."
"A portable tabernacle?"
Howard nodded. "Exactly."
"Ah, sure." Gerard bit his lip. "Just." He reached across the altar, grabbing a small linen square, and spread it over his palms. "Okay." He held out his hands.
Father Howard transferred the silver plate to Gerard; the metal warmed his fingers even through the layer of fabric. "You certainly know your catechism."
Gerard flushed. "I was an altar boy, sir. Me and my brother, both. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, when we were kids."
Howard tilted the paten, collecting the small flat disks of the Host. He took out another leather pouch, this one stitched with a simple white cross, and slid them inside. "Yes, Michael told me," he said mildly. "Would you mind?" Howard gestured at the altar, the white linen stretched across to cover the warps in the rough-hewn wood.
Gerard shifted over, folding it in the careful pattern he'd learned. Even after fifteen years, his hands remembered the motions: twice in length, twice in breadth. He passed it back to Father Howard, standing awkwardly as Howard administered a final round of blessings.
"Doesn't," Gerard scratched an idle itch on the inside of his forearm, "doesn't your acolyte usually do this before the end of the mass?"
Howard clapped his hands together. "Died," he said. "A week and a half ago. I've not had time to press one of the men into service. Unless," he shot Gerard a toying glance, "you've come to volunteer?"
Gerard slid his hand down to his pocket. "I've got. Officer duties. I mean, I couldn't."
Father Howard reached below the altar again, retrieving a neat black case. He placed each of the pouches inside, handling them with reverent hands. Loving hands, Gerard thought, watching the way he rested each item against the other. An image of Frank rose up in his mind, unbidden: Frank's careful fingers, nudging a compass into place across a stretched map; the deft motion of his hand as he sketched out a path for the platoon, (always) in pencil.
When Gerard shook off his reverie, Howard was standing close. His lean frame, buttressed by the heft of his vestments, cast a shadow over Gerard. "What can I help you with Gerard?"
"It's about Mikey." Gerard checked over his shoulder, but the gathering of men had melted away, stretched out over the field. He watched as two soldiers, their uniforms spattered in dust and mud, wrestled in the grass. Their laughter caught on the wind, traveled. "Have they fully de-mined this area yet?"
"You opened his effects." Howard looked steadily to Gerard. "What did you learn?"
"I don't know," Gerard said, quick and low. He fumbled the book, tugging it from his pocket. "This book - Mikey must have bought it when he came to France before, just when the war was starting."
Father Howard held it between his hands, weighing the slight object. "Rimbaud. A very influential poet, among certain circles." His words sounded chosen carefully, metered like the sign of the cross.
"There was a letter." Gerard swallowed. "I left it at home. In my pack. But. It was from someone, and Mikey had never mentioned - "
"Peter," Howard murmured. He slid his hand to the back of his neck, tilting two fingers under the stiff white band of his collar.
"He told you?" Gerard swallowed. "He never told me." He winced, a sharp jab of pain between his eyebrows. His palms dispensed sweat to his trousers, slick.
Father Howard's hand settled on Gerard's arm. "We discussed it in private."
Gerard glanced up. "That's. You can't tell me what he said to you in Confession."
"I'll make my peace with God when I go," he said. "He and I have an extremely long tab to settle."
Another bomber churned its way overhead, a guttural scrape of noise in the sky. "He never told me," Gerard said again, but he couldn't hear the words over the engines, could barely feel the push of his throat muscles, forming them. Maybe he hadn't said them at all. His lungs stung, ravaged like the after-effects of gas.
"Gerard." Father Howard squeezed the bundle of tendons and muscle and bone at his shoulder. "Your brother was haunted by the decision, whether or not to tell you. He came to me under the strictest of confidence."
"We used to play dice." Gerard folded his fingers, as if curled around a die. "We gambled. Sinned. I don't remember who was winning."
"Gerard," Howard said again, "your brother loved you. Up until the moment the Lord took him, he loved you. He would want that to be his legacy."
From their left, a soldier came running, appearing from the opposite side of the house. He panted, waving his arms at the Father and Gerard. "Sir!" he called out. "Father!" Gerard stepped back to give the man - younger than Mikey, maybe twenty - room; the soldier fell into a shuddering salute. His uniform was splattered with dirt, newly collected in the seams and the long straight panels of his trousers. Sweat rolled down the notches of his stubbled neck.
"Father Howard," he gulped, "there's been a German counterattack on A Company's positions."
Howard straightened, letting go of Gerard to match the salute. "Casualties?"
"Yes, sir - at least five. Captain Keeley's asking for you. I came," he exhaled, hands on his thighs, "by foot, but there's a tank, 742nd, coming in for backup. They said they'd take you to administer last rites, if you were done with your Sunday service."
"Let me change out of these vestments, and we'll get going." Father Howard inhaled, shoulders shifting as if taking off a second robe, one Gerard couldn't see.
"I should - see if Captain Trohman needs me," Gerard mumbled. His lungs still felt seared raw.
Howard nodded. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He moved his right hand, up-down-left-right in the familiar motions of a blessing. "Peace be with you, my son." With that, he turned away, and strode off towards the house.
...
14 July
Frank heard the music first.
"What was that?" He sat up from where he'd been stretched out against a hay bale, lazily losing three days of fruit rations to Butcher.
Gerard, never very good with cards, pulled the length of his torso upright. "What was what?"
"A drum." A wrinkle appeared above the bridge of Frank's nose, perpendicular to his brows. "You don't hear it?"
Beside him, Bob tossed in a rock - a betting chip equal to one K-Ration. "If you mean Toro's stomach - "
"Go to hell," Ray sighed, and folded. He flicked a spatter of dust at Frank. "I don't think it's good for the brains of the operation to start hearing things."
"No, I'm serious." Frank let his cards slide from his slender fingers, as he stood. Three tens and an ace. The others crowed in disappointment, but Frank waved a hand, shushing them.
Above the military clatter they'd begun to treat as white noise - men shouting, orphaned rounds pinging in the distance, truck engines growling - rose the crisp patter of a drum. Prrrrrr-rmm pmm pmm, prrrr-rmmm pmm pmm. Gerard picked up the faintest traces of a trumpet, smooth notes jauntily weaving in with the rhythm.
They froze.
"Think that's the Germans?" Ray murmured.
Gerard quirked a smile at Frank. "We're being attacked by Napoleon," he said.
Frank gave a vague murmur, licking his lips.
"What is it?" Gerard leaned in.
"Bastille Day," Frank said. He peered out from under the shade of the stable. "July Fourteenth. I forgot about - "
"Iero." Butcher sat back down, slapped Frank's knee. "You taking the pot, or are we going to send it home to your mother?"
"Keep it." Frank shook himself once, turned to Gerard. "I've gotta go." He took off at a jog, feet clomping on the muddy turf.
"What the hell was that about?" Butcher said, shuffling the deck. His bronzed fingers snapped the worn corners of the cards, fast enough that the pattern on the back, stars and stripes, blurred into a purple mass. "He sprung a leak or something?"
Bob shook his head. "You know how he gets, when he hears someone playing music."
Suarez held his shrinking collection of pebbles in his nervous hands. "What do you mean?"
"He's a musician, back in New York. Deal." Bob motioned to Butcher. "Works the jazz circuit in Greenwich Village."
"What's he play?"
"Anything." Bob watched as Butcher bridged the cards between his palms with a sharp crack . "Mostly guitar, I think, but I've seen him play anything from a banjo to a double bass."
Butcher tossed out cards. He flicked his wrist in Gerard's direction, but Gerard shook his head. "I'll pass, this round."
"Hey," Butcher said, thumbing through his new hand, "remember that night in Bizerta? He found a violin, in an abandoned German bunker. Played the fucking thing for three hours straight - "
"Until Mikey threatened to shoot a hole through the violin and whatever parts of Frank it touched!" Ray laughed, slapped Butcher on the shoulder. "Jesus, I thought they were gonna open a third front, right there!"
Butcher shook his hand off, eyes flickering to Gerard. He turned back to his cards, brows drawing down tighter over his forehead. "Your bet, Toro," he said, voice taut.
Gerard rubbed his forehead, felt a morning's worth of grit and sweat collecting in the pores above his brow. The sand in Africa, he thought, had gotten everywhere: yellow-orange dirt that caked their rifles and the cuffs of their clothing. One day, they'd stopped off at a cleared bathhouse to submerge their bruised, exhausted bodies, Able through George companies shucking their dirty khakis to dive into a white-tiled pool. Gerard had kept his eyes to himself, lowering his body into the water. The sand, he remembered, broke off his sunburnt skin like dissolving sugar. Somewhere next to him, Frank had been laughing.
"I'm out."
Bob frowned. "You sure?"
Gerard nodded. "I'm gonna go check on things with Trohman." He pushed his meager chips to Suarez. "Play for me, will you?"
Suarez grinned. "Thanks, sir!" He held his cards closer.
Gerard picked his way around the men, exchanging waves and nods. He saw Bob glare at Ray, who called out, "See you soon, yeah?"
"Sure," Gerard said. "Soon, Toro."
Fox Company had been given the small farm to use as officer's lodgings and a rest station. The occupants, a widow and her young niece, lived in the attic. Gerard had seen them only once since he and Allman, First Platoon's C.O., moved into an abandoned child's bedroom. The woman's cowed figure in the hallway barely cast a shadow; the tattered edges of the child's sleeves had fluttered as both struggled to make themselves understood in the fragments of English they could muster.
Today, as Gerard stepped out of the dank barn and into the July sunlight, he saw the girl, stretched atop a stool, reaching over the lintel of the front door. She clutched a length of fabric in one hand and a hammer in the other; the rickety legs of the stool wobbled as she stretched onto the ball of one foot.
"Hold on, there." Gerard knelt, steadying her perch. "Lemme give you a hand, yeah?"
The girl glanced down at him. Ten or eleven, Gerard guessed. Four nails lay, tucked askew, between her pursed lips, and her blonde hair bounced in curls over her shoulder. Her eyes regarded him, blue and cool. Older eyes than any of the neighborhood kids Gerard had known in Jersey. She tossed her head, flipping back a curl; the stool gave an uncertain wobble.
"Okay," Gerard said, hands wrapped around two of the three wooden legs. "I've got you."
She turned back to her task: deftly nailing two corners of the fabric--bunting, Gerard, realized--to the top of the door frame. With four good knocks, she let go, hopping off the stool while still holding her hammer and the other end of the bunting.
Eye-level with Gerard, she pointed over his shoulder at one of the ground floor windows. "Et la-bas," she said.
"Over there, too?" Gerard flexed his pitiful French, carrying the stool as she skipped ahead. The bunting stretched behind her, blue, red, and white in horizontal stripes. It flapped in the slight breeze, the edges just missing the dusty earth below.
The little girl pointed again, and Gerard put down the stool. "Okay." He knelt again. "Be careful, now," he said. "We don't want a civilian casualty on our hands."
Before he'd spoken, she leapt onto her stool, steadying herself with a palm against the white-washed wall of the house. She twisted her fingers, getting a good grip on her hammer. Plucking a nail from her mouth, she positioned it. Gerard watched as her thin arm drew back and hinged forward, jamming the nail into the wall with a satisfying thwonk.
"Nice job." Gerard steadied her as she tensed to jump down. "Here, lean on me." He moved her hand to his shoulder. The girl blinked, but swung off him with a nimble little leap.
He dusted himself off, smiling. "We make a good team," he said. "You wanna come fight the Germans?"
The little girl spoke, a flurry of quick, airy French syllables he didn't catch. She flashed a grin at his bewilderment, and grabbed her stool. Clutching it in both hands, she raced off around the house, toward the back door.
Gerard stepped back to look at the bunting. It rippled, stripes of color undulating one into the next. He'd seen dozens of French flags in the last month, hastily pulled out from their deep hiding places in closets, under floorboards ... even, as Allman swore, nailed to the furthest corner of a pig's moist pen. Released from four years of hiding, the hot Normandy sun revealed four years of mold, decay, and dirt. He wondered where the old woman had stored this much fabric without the Germans seeing.
In his dormitory in Providence, Mikey had hung a French flag over his radio, freshman year. Gerard had visited in November; he remembered ragging him for it. "Three months in Paris, and already you're an Interventionist?" he'd teased.
Mikey's blush had always looked so stark on his pinched features. "I just like the colors," he'd mumbled. "Come on - I wanna show you my class buildings."
The memories hit Gerard like machine gun fire, these days -- unrelenting, near-constant, merciless. He dug his heel in the earth, tried to blink away the sharpness behind his eyelids. "Fuck you," he whispered, low over the growing sound of a marching band. "Fuck you, Mikey."
The banner made no reply, and Gerard turned away. Somewhere, he could hear singing.
....
"I don't know," Gerard mumbled. He tried to match the width of Ray's grin. "I'm not much of a dancer."
They stood at the edge of the small town square, watching couples whirl past. The band played a brassy, light-hearted tune - an hour after sunset, the celebrations showed no signs of ceasing.
"Come on, Way!" Ray clapped a hand over his shoulders. "These girls - these women - none of them are gonna care about your two left feet!"
"My feet are fine," he said.
Ray looked at him as though he had several heads poking out of his pressed collar. "Sometimes," he shook his head, and passed back a long mouthful of calvados brandy, "I worry about you, sir."
Gerard's smile caught at the edges of his mouth, a loose thread that threatened to unravel and pull his face apart. "You too, huh?"
Two of the dancers spun loose from the crowd - girls, clutching one another's hands and laughing, fast and giddy. Color rode high in their cheeks, and their skirts hadn't yet settled, fluttering around their calves in the after-math of twirling.
"Look at that," Ray poked Gerard's side, "a clear offensive opportunity for Fox Company."
Gerard prodded Ray back, a hard finger in his side, but Ray side-stepped it, turning to wave a loose-wristed hand at the girls. "Follow me, Lieutenant," he said as he strong-armed Gerard to where they stood.
"Bonjour, mademoiselles." Ray gave a lazy salute, sweeping his rebellious hair off his forehead.
The girls giggled, fingers twisted together. The shorter one swayed her hips, weight transferring forward, rocking. She leaned in, fingered the red cross on Ray's arm. "You are doctor?"
Ray smiled. "Yes, ma'am, I am."
The band switched songs, tempo picking up. The violins led, high and bright, with a quick melody. Below it, Gerard heard the drummer pick out a three/four beat. He watched over the girl's shoulder as the couples reformed and whirled across the square.
"May I have this dance?" Ray slid his hand down to the fleshy inside of the girl's outstretched arm, tucking two fingers under her elbow. Gerard wondered if Ray could feel her pulse, if his knowledge of anatomy carried him through even moments like these.
The girl's friend coughed softly, eyeing Gerard. Oh, God. Gerard swiped his palms over his clean trousers. "Excuse me," he turned to her, "would you like to dance?"
"Oui!" Ray's partner answered for her friend, balancing one white hand on Ray's shoulder.
Ray flashed a thumb's up. "We're off," he said. He cupped the small of her back, and gave Gerard a final grin before disappearing into the thicket of dancers.
Gerard had suffered through six months of dance lessons at the Englewood Field Club, his mother paying the extra non-member dues and forcing his pudgy adolescent body into an ill-fitting tail coat and white-winged collar. His limbs, fifteen years removed, still remembered their correct orientation as he led his partner through a timid waltz. Her hand felt very light on his shoulder, almost ghostly.
"My friend is persistent," she said, leaning in to be heard over the band.
Gerard started. "You speak English?"
The girl laughed, nodding. "Apparently. My name is Victoria." She was pretty, he thought, when he gave himself a moment to look: dark hair, a small nose that balanced thinly between the symmetric halves of her face. The first button of her white shirt was undone; Gerard glimpsed a gold crucifix on a thin chain.
"I'm Gerard. Second Lieutenant. And I don't speak French," Gerard admitted. "Italian. Spanish. And Latin. But no French."
Victoria laughed again. "What's so funny?" Gerard felt his cheeks go hot.
He glanced at the bandstand, wondering if they'd trail off after the second refrain, but the violinist struck up the melody again, and the others followed. He hated dancing.
She inclined her head, gesturing across the crowded square. In the dim periphery, where the evening's shadows spilled over from the dusky buildings, Ray and his girl swayed together, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Gerard squinted, and blushed hard when he saw Ray's hand drop below the waist of her skirt, traveling from back to ... not-back. Gerard missed the next step of the dance, and fixed his gaze on his shoes. One-two-three. One-two-three.
"She is my fiance's sister." Victoria squeezed his hand. "He told me to look after her."
"Fiance?" Gerard exhaled.
"Ryland. He went South, to fight with les maquis." Her voice kept itself in a casual register, but Gerard held her a bit closer. "He worked at the school - all the other teachers were sent to work in German factories, eleven months ago."
They danced together for another moment in silence. The music drifted on, the melody drawing out into eddies of improvisation. The trumpet reached for a long series of high notes, wandering in the top register of its range.
Victoria's head drifted to his shoulder. Her hair smelled like soap and perfume. Her skirt whispered against his trousers. "Do you have someone?" she asked quietly.
"Ah." Gerard swallowed, shoulder tensing. "I."
"That's enough of an answer." He could feel her lips curl into a smile; they grazed the fabric of his shirt. Gerard felt a little nauseous - the circular motion, he thought.
The trumpet played a final note. Set against the soft pianissimo of the other instruments, the sound hung in the evening air, lifting up with the gently flapping tricoleur flags.
Gerard released Victoria. He bowed, one hand behind his back, just as Mr. Price had taught all the boys. "Thank you for the dance," he said.
Victoria dropped into a small curtsy. "Thank you, Gerard." Her accent caught the last syllable of his name and made it float. "You were a much better dancer than I expected."
Gerard surprised himself with a laugh. "I'll take that as a compliment."
Victoria nodded, and leaned in. Her warm, dry lips touched both of his cheeks, quick and chaste. "I hope that you see your someone soon."
Gerard fingered the flesh below his cheekbone. He watched as she walked away, skirt swishing in syncopation with the next song.
...
The back stairs of the house creaked in sighing protest as Gerard crept up to his room. A window, cut above the landing, let in a square of moonlight. Someone had covered the glass pane in an x of protective tape, and the narrow penumbra of the two strips made even that light weird, hesitant.
The room he shared with Allman was on the left side, beyond where the light reached. His fingers fumbled over the wall, tapping blindly for the door as though his eyes were dead in their sockets.
He found the handle. A piece of cloth - a tie, maybe, or a sock - sheathed it, muffling the metal from his fingertips. Gerard froze. Behind the door, he could hear soft shifting, low murmurs. He shook his head; Allman had a reputation, even from Basic Training. Gerard pressed his palm flat to the wooden frame, wished them both happiness, or at least luck.
The hallway held a series of doors, three on each side. Gerard imagined a family here, each room a child's bedroom in yellow or blue paint. They raised large families in Normandy, six and seven children. Not just an heir and a spare, as Gerard's father used to joke, draping his hands over his sons' shoulders.
Gerard bit his tongue, scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed sleep, could feel it gathering at the corners of his mind.
A light pricked on, under the jamb of the far door. Frank's map room. A guitar began to play, just the light stroke of fingered notes. Gentle, mingling with the ambient sound of laughter and cheers that echoed from the ongoing celebration.
Gerard walked down the hall, tracing the edges of the moonlight with the soles of his boots. A laugh rippled from Gerard's shared room, deep and clean. He reached Frank's door, knuckles hovering against the wood.
Frank reached for a chord, drawing the blended notes together into a sweet harmony and something within Gerard uncoiled. He knocked, two raps.
Frank's fingers slipped off the strings, clamped down to kill the reverberations. "Hello?"
Gerard opened the door. Maps papered every available surface, covering the dresser top, a desk, the luminous white expanses of walls. Even the bed, pushed up against a corner almost as an afterthought, bore three long scrolls, tucked in waterproof sleeves.
"Hey." Frank sat in the center of the room. He cradled the prone body of a guitar on his lap - like the pietà, Gerard thought uselessly. A lamp sat on the table and spread waves of buttery light in every direction.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Borrowed it." Frank smiled and stroked the neck of the guitar with his two smallest fingers. "The mayor's brother handed it to me when he heard I played." He waved his hand to Gerard. "C'mere."
Gerard stepped inside tugging the door shut behind him. He heard the snick of the lock as Frank began to play again, working his way down the frets of the instrument, notes spiralling higher and higher. "He just let you have it?"
"Well," Frank's grin shifted, devious, "possibly I traded two bars of chocolate to use it as long as we're here." He strummed an emphatic chord. "Completely worth it."
"Yeah."
Another chair stood next to Frank's, and Gerard lowered himself into it. His muscles refused to relax; he crouched, feeling his pulse thrum past the knobs of his knee caps.
Frank picked out an indistinct melody, lazy. "You have a good time?" His littlest finger hit a false note, but he corrected it quickly. "I saw you dancing - looked like fun."
Gerard propped his chin on the palm of his hand, elbow digging into his knee. "All Toro's fault," he said. "Owes me - that was his girl's brother's fiancee."
Frank laughed. "Really?"
"He's fighting in the Resistance, in the South, she said."
"We're finding more of those, the further we get into France." Frank played a quick, dark phrase - a noir melody, something out of "The Maltese Falcon," maybe.
"Did you have fun?" Gerard smoothed his hand over a wrinkled he'd caused in his trousers.
Frank glanced up. "I'm having fun now," he said.
Gerard's mouth went dry; he coughed, once, tasted the burn of his own throat.
Frank's eyes were flecked with gold in the lamplight as he continued, "I always think, when I don't get to play for a while, that I'm going to have forgotten how, that my hands won't know what to do. But then, as soon as I do, it's like I've never stopped. I just know."
Gerard didn't realize he'd caught Frank's hand over the neck of the guitar until he felt Frank's pulse. His thumb pressed to Frank's wrist, their fingers overlapping, and Frank's pulse skittered, fast, like the rabbit he and Mikey found once, tangled in the brambles at their grandma's house.
"Gerard." Frank shifted his fingers, trying to free them, but Gerard tightened his grip, tugging. Their clasped hands hovered in the space between them as Frank squeezed, said, "are you okay?"
Outside, Gerard could hear the crowd singing again, the mingled burr of deep voices in the darkness. He shook his head, took a deep breath.
"What's wrong?" Frank murmured, urgency on the second word, sharpening it. Gerard shook his head again, as if he could push all the thoughts from his mind, nudge them away like a loose lock of hair that slipped over Mikey's glasses and in front of his eyes. Mikey, and Victoria with her missing lover, and the little girl who might have once sat in this room, reading a book about something she could barely understand.
"How can I help you?" Frank tugged his chair closer. Eye to eye, he didn't let go of Gerard's hand. "I don't know what to do."
"That makes two of us," Gerard wanted to say, but he couldn't. He let the words go as his eyes shut, and leaned in.
The kiss didn't feel like anything, not at first. Gerard felt the friction of Frank's lips against his own, the tap of their outermost layers of skin. A night breeze cooled the nape of Gerard's neck, the beaded sweat that nestled there. He waited, balancing on the bayonet-edge of panic.
Then, in a silent motion, Frank's fingers crooked to cradle the curve of Gerard's skull; his nails rasped Gerard's scalp. Gerard took a sharp breath as his nervous system passed shivers down his spine to the thinnest filaments at his fingertips, and Frank nudged his mouth open all the way, tongue lapping at Gerard's bottom row of teeth. Frank's mouth was tart with the tannic sting of wine and Gerard hadn't tasted that in so long he gasped, squeezing their entwined hands and kissing harder, seeking out the edges of the taste in Frank's mouth.
"Gerard," Frank mumbled, the syllables clumsy. He turned his head, drew in a breath as Gerard kissed the corner of Frank's lips.
"Don't," Gerard breathed, his eyes shut as tight as he could hold them, "don't say anything, please, just." He kissed Frank again, petulant and short.
Frank shifted, hand releasing its grip on Gerard's and retreating from Gerard's hair, "just let me, ah, I have to move this." He slid the guitar from between them; Gerard heard the discordant twang as the instrument hit the bed. "Okay."
Gerard peeked, but Frank was close again, close enough that Gerard's vision swam with Frank's eyes and skin and his dark forelocks of hair. The height difference had changed, when they were both sitting down, and Gerard's spine was already loose from the swift electrostatic charges that kept hurtling down it; it was nothing at all for him to cup Frank's jawline, to shift so that Frank was almost sitting on Gerard's chair, leaning over him. Frank planted his hand on the wooden frame to hold his balance, the other skimming over the outer edge of Gerard's upper arm, down and over his elbow to clutch the smallest point of Gerard's waist.
My shirt must be disgusting, Gerard thought, with hay from the barn, dust churned up by the dancers, bits of crumbly bread he'd eaten, and then he laughed - they'd seen worse, together, before. The sound bounced off both their lips, vibrating in the uneven space where their tongues touched and moved apart, Frank's bottom lip a hair's breath below Gerard's.
"What?" Frank murmured, but he kissed Gerard again before Gerard could explain. He didn't want to explain, anyway. He felt words all around them, like the lines on Frank's maps (their only companions, their sentries), and let them go with a gasp - Frank teased Gerard's bottom lip into his mouth, sucking with just the suggestion of a bite. Oh, Gerard thought, oh, he liked the flash of heat, the lightning-shock when he felt that, the way it turned his insides white like Frank's teeth.
He turned his head to whisper something into Frank's ear - his pretty, pale ear, and it looked like a moon, hung in the dark sky of his hair. An easy thing, to let his lips continue their wordless path, kissing the bell-like lobe, sliding it between his lips.
"Fuck," and Frank, Frank shivered this time, a gasp that accompanied the advance of his fingers down the front of Gerard's shirt, an offensive over the terrain of Gerard's front and down to the metal plateau of his belt buckle. "Gerard, I won't say anything, I promise, just," his words slurred against Gerard's neck, "fuck, Gerard." His hand pried at Gerard's belt, tugging the teeth out of the webbing, easing the tension of the band through its metal mouth, inch by inch.
Gerard noticed his own erection only when Frank's palm grazed it, an accidental touch. He gritted his teeth; he couldn't remember the last time. (No. New York City, April 1941, the bathhouse at Coney Island - he remembered everything.)
Gerard's belt gave under Frank's questing fingers just as steps rang out on the stairs. Hard, pounding boots on the old wooden slats of the floorboards, accompanied with laughter that spilled over Gerard like ice.
He shoved his chair back, Frank's hand flopping uselessly in the yawning distance between them.
"Gee," Frank hissed. Gerard took in his appearance: hair askew at all angles, pupils blown black, lips red and swollen. The line of Frank's erection was clear against the fabric of his khakis.
Gerard stood on shaking knees, looked away from Frank as quickly as he could. He stepped from foot to foot, trying to get his belt back on, nails scraping against the buckle that just wouldn't tighten, no matter how Gerard tugged, his fingers all nerves and no muscles right now.
"I've gotta - I should go," he mumbled, giving up and breaking for the door.
"Wait, no - " Frank started, but Gerard couldn't look, didn't want to see the way the light haloed Frank's face, the shadows that flickered as he reached out again to stop Gerard. He found the doorknob, turned, was five feet away before it shut with a bang.
The moonlight was almost gone now, everything eerier. Wherever the other officers had been headed, they were gone, too, but Gerard's heart thumped like a caged thing. He walked quickly in near-darkness; he'd sleep in the barn, if he had to.
The sock was missing, though - his own door stood ajar. Gerard peered in, saw Allman's bed, rumpled and empty. He pressed his body through the half-open space, slamming it shut with the force of his weight. He let his head fall back, nudging the wood, and breathed.
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(Part 3.1)
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