FIC: A Laying on of Hands (Roe/Clay Busby)
TITLE: a laying on of hands
AUTHOR: eudaimon
PAIRING: Doc Roe/Clay Busby (Memphis Belle)
RATING: NC17
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Not at all. Fictional representation of the fictional representations of real people.
SUMMARY: His Grandma was a Traiteur, healed with a laying on of hands and a prayer...Before D-Day, Gene Roe looks for another sort of healing.
A/N: 2632 words. For orlanstamos, who asked me what would happen if the Easy boys ran into the boys from the Memphis Belle in London. This is what I ended up with. Mods? Do I need a crossover tag or something?
the heat and the bourbon was in your head
you were talking in tongues! you were back from the dead!
and the girl and the city were one and the same
and last call never came
and I can see you swimming out into the street
I can hear you singing, "when I die, don't cry for me".
On the rare, the very rare occasion that somebody managed to get (and keep) a weekend pass, there wasn't any way in the world they weren't going to beg, borrow and steal a ride over to London, bright lights, big city, good time girls and beer. Yeah, it was warm, but, hell, it was better than nothing and it was better than running Currahee. England had got a different sort of mountain to climb. Mostly, they were bored waiting to jump, guys in their early twenties, bored and they're horny and, once in a blue moon, they got to run wild, and, when they got to run wild, man, they showed those English boys how it was done.
Curra-fuckin'-hee.
They were drinking in this dive of a pub off Trafalgar Square, torn seats in the booth and a fug of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Gene hadn't even had that much to drink and his head was already starting to ache. He cradled it in his hand and looked up, watching as, while Liebgott clumsily played the piano, Gordon and Toye sung parts of all the songs that they knew, and the whole of none. In the other corner of the room, there was a gang of Air Force boys. Gene idly watched them talk and screw about, and it wasn't so different from Easy, the way they talked to each other, the way they scuffled and argued and laughed and loved each other kinda like brothers might. A couple of them were playing cards, arguing back and forth, cursing up a storm, watched over by a kid who sort of reminded Gene of Heffron; red hair, good shoulders, and an open, honest face. Gene looked around the bar but couldn't see Heffron or Guarnere, but they weren't nowhere to be seen, so God only knew what cheerful trouble they were getting themselves into, and the Virgin keep them safe while they were doing it.
Gene paused with his beer halfway to his mouth and watched as one of the flyboys, rolled up sleeves and slicked back dark hair against olive tan skin walked over to the piano and tapped Liebgott on the shoulder.
"Hey, man. Mind if I take her for a spin?"
Hell, Gene would've known that accent anywhere. From the front stoop of his Grandmother's house, Gene could see into the front rooms of people who talked that way, just like that, and his Grandmother would tend to their sick just the same way as she tended to her own, take away-make away their pain with her bony hands and then pray to God to take it away with Him when He was done with listening to her at the end of the day. As ever, it was kind of nice to hear an accent that reminded him of home.
Liebgott shifted off the stool with an easy grin, reaching for his beer before he was fully up on his feet. The other guy sat down and, from the first ripple of notes, Gene knew that this was gonna be a completely different ball-game. Since he started his Medic training, Gene had found himself more and more aware of what other guys are doing with their hands. You could tell if a guy was nervous by what he was doing with his hands, and, if a guy was nervous in combat then he was liable to make stupid mistakes.
It paid to keep an eye on a guy's hands.
This guy, he played piano well, real well, like he'd been doing it his whole life. There wasn't anything that Gene Roe had been doing for his whole life. Outta school, he'd learned to lay brick. Right then, he was trying to get used to being the guy who answers when the other guys called out "Doc", trying to figure out if it could really be possible to hold a man together with his hands. His Grandmother had been a Traiteur, and, lately, Gene had found himself praying for a measure of her grace.
He stopped thinking about that and listened to the singing.
"Darling, je vous aime beaucoup. Je ne sais pas what to do. You know you've completely stolen my heart?"
Gene couldn't help but smile. Yeah, he'd heard singers like this before, back when he was a wicked boy, hitch-hiking out of the Bayou to go spend coins he didn't really have up in NOLA. He'd danced with pretty girls in frilly skirts, and then he'd laid out in the grass with them and he'd smoothed his fingers against tan skin, scattered pins from dark curled hair. He'd been a wicked boy a couple of days a month, a couple of nights, too, and, the rest of the time, he'd been the hard-working boy his Grandmother loved so well.
Yeah, something like that, anyhow.
He leaned his chin into his hand, and watched the other Easy guys talking and drinking and half listening to the song on the piano. Wish my French was good enough; I'd tell you so much more, and Gene knew that, one by one, the Easy guys would drift off, find beds, occupied or un-, make it back to base within a hair of dropping them all in the shit.
Gene hadn't figured out where he was going to end up yet.
The song finished, one of the flyboys was leading the applause...The one who sort of reminded Gene of Heffron. He clapped the guy at the piano on the back.
"Ladies, Gentlemen, I give you Clay Busby. Never fear, he's all week!"
"No, I am not," said Clay, polite, smooth, getting up from the piano and moving the other flyboy out of his way with a gentle hand on his chest. Yeah, it paid to watch what people did with their hands. Clay came to the bar with a swagger, and, yeah, Gene had known guys like that his whole life, back home. Not the cruel ones. Clay didn't look like one of the cruel ones at all, the ones who played games, shoved with both hands and tasted of blood and wet grass. Clay looked like one of the sometimes good, sometimes bad ones, the ones who played piano in the church on Sundays, who sweat in the heat and Gene had watched the sweat trickle under the open collars of shirts and wondered what they meant about him.
"Lemme buy you a beer," he said, as Clay came to stand beside him at the bar. Clay look pleased, an easy grin full of white teeth in a tanned face.
"Man, I ain't gonna say no, but I might have to enquire about the occasion."
Gene didn't smile that often but, when he did, he meant it.
"I gotta thank you for separatin' Liebgott from that piano somehow."
He had a good smile, Clay did, and Gene found himself staring at the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders as he settled himself down on the stool at the bar. Gene gestured for two more beers and watched as the bar man poured them, each pull on the tap accompanied by a grunt of effort.
It was a moment before he realised that Clay was looking at him.
"Where you from?" Clay asked, lifting the pint but not drinking from it, yet.
"Bayou Chene," he said, knowing that Clay didn't need to hear Louisiana...that he already knew that part.
Clay whistled, and Gene watched the way his lips pursed.
"Way out, huh? I tell people that I come from New Orleans, 'cause it sounds better than sayin' I grew up on a farm just outside."
"Suppose it must be," said Gene, remembering the excitement of getting to be in New Orleans a couple of days a month, a couple of nights, too. He remembered feeling like a whole different person, two nights out of the month, and he wondered at how that person could feel a million miles away, in a whole different life.
"And here we are," said Clay.
In sync, they drank and reached forward to set their glasses down. Gene's bare knuckles grazed against Clay's bare, tan skin beneath the rolled up shirt sleeve. It was an accident of timing and Gene was surprised at how his breath caught. How quickly he'd forgotten how to be touched. Gene turned his hand and brushed just the tips of his fingers against Clay's wrist (months later, in Bastogne, he'd use his bloody fingertips like a rosary and count off prayers). His grandmother healed with a laying on of hands. Just then, Gene was desperately looking for a way to stop the ache in his head.
And there they were.
-
The room was barely there at all, a wedge cut out of an attic space with a paper thin wall. They undressed each other in silence, unknotted ties and kicked off boots. Clay had leaned in and kissed Gene with both arms still trapped back in the sleeves of his shirt. Gene had pushed both hands up inside Clay's undershirt, over the smooth skin of belly and chest.
"Put your hands on me," he mumbled. He just wanted to be touched. At Toccoa, he'd grown narrow, shrunk to his most useful size but he still remembered being loud, remembered bursting out of his skin. He found himself humming under his breath, crooning a little ditty which seemed stupid. Clay was the singer. Clay pushed both hands into Gene's hair, which left Gene unbuttoning two pairs of pants by touch. In training, he'd leaned how to bandage a wound with his eyes closed.
You just never knew how dark it was gonna get.
There was just the light from the window, but it was enough. Gene leaned forwards on hands and knees to press his lips against Clay's, rocking down against him. Clay's dusky skin was almost too hot to the touch and Gene pressed against him anywhere he could get. His dick slid against Clay's and Gene whimpered, pressing down, sucking at the pulse in his throat. Underneath him, Clay was pushing upwards, all long limbs and smooth skin. Gene pressed his nose into the dip of his collarbone and felt like he could smell home, smell dust and dark water and the promise of rain. In England, he felt like he could smell Louisiana on Clay Busby's skin.
"Just put your hands on me," he said.
Clay's hand slid down Gene's belly, his fingers curling around Gene's dick, and he stroked slow, so slow, and Gene's head dropped forward and he rocked his hips forward, just as slow. The side of Clay's foot trailed against Gene's shin, and, eyes closed, he managed to smile.
"You remember the steps to this?" Clay asked, and, even not looking at him, Gene could tell he was teasing.
"Ain't...never been much of a dancer."
Clay brushed his thumb over the head of Gene's dick and lifted his head to kiss him.
"Don't take much," he said.
Gene slid one hand down Clay's thigh, lifting his leg up onto his hip. For a moment, he just lay there, pressed against Clay and rocking slowly, enjoying having the time to let his dick slip against Clay's, sicked and tired of jerking off quick and quiet and private in the john in the middle of the night. He wanted to go slow with another human being. He wanted to push his luck.
If they carried on like this, he was going to come between them, and there was no way in hell that he was wasting this. With some effort, he pulled away, pushing up onto all fours and then straightening, wrapping his fingers around his dick and jerking slowly as he looked down at Clay lying there, long legs and tan skin.
"Come on then," he said. Gene Roe had never been a talker, though he was learning that men in pain, men in suffering liked to hear someone talk. His grandma had always talked while she healed. "Up you get."
Gene ended up inside him, deep inside him, skin against skin deep, and pausing to get his breath. When he moved, rocking his hips forwards, the bed hit the wall and he bent forward, his chest against Clay's back to find a discarded t-shirt to pad it out with. Clay dropped his head and arched his back, pushing, rocking, moaning encouragement so soft and musical it almost sounded like he was crooning. If Gene was quiet enough, he could hear the soft sound that his skin made when it hit against Clay's, could hear the whisper of Clay's knuckles against the sheet as he stroked his own dick. Rocking, fucking Clay slowly but not too slow, Gene pressed both hands against the planes of Clay's back. He smoothed his thumbs against his skin and thought about the kids who'd come calling to fetch his Grandma to one bedside or another, and he realises how cold he got, even with how warm it had been in North Carolina. Balanced on his shoulders, Clay reached back, gripping at Gene's thigh, and Gene found himself smiling, even as he was unraveling, rocking into Clay irregular as anything as he started to come and it was then that he realised that his head wasn't hurting anymore.
"Are you laughing?" asked Clay, breathless, the muscles in his upper arm slipping and tensing as he stroked his dick and pushed himself that little bit further that he needed. Spent, Gene took the precious few seconds he was staying hard and ran with it, still rocking into Clay, giving him what he needed. His shoulders were shaking with it, and he held onto Clay's hips with both hands.
"Yeah. Yes, I suppose I am."
When he came, Clay made this little, broken sound, and all Gene could think was Wish my French was good enough.
"Mind if I ask what the hell's so funny?"
Gene pulled out of him with the strangest, smallest sense of loss and slipped to the side, lying down with one shoulder pressing into the pillow and looking up at Clay still poised on his knees.
"Healer, heal thyself," he said.
-
Afterwards, Gene lay with his head pillowed back against Clay's shoulder, one leg bent to ease the stiffness in his knee picked up during a slightly fluffed jump. He turned his head and watched as Clay smoked in silhouette and then he reached out and took the smoke from him and slipped it between his own lips.
"Close your eyes," said Clay, his fingers that had played that piano so nicely smoothing up and down Gene's arm. "Close your eyes and imagine that this is a levy and we're just lyin' here like this to let our skin dry out. Imagine the sun setting and the sky all purple and gold, like Mardi Gras. And there ain't no war, none at all, and we're home already."
Gene smiled around the cigarette.
Imagine that I'm gonna see you again.
After that, they lay in the quiet and they smoked between them and they'd never see each other again, but that didn't mean that they couldn't pretend to be lovers, in the narrow bed, in the dark.
AUTHOR: eudaimon
PAIRING: Doc Roe/Clay Busby (Memphis Belle)
RATING: NC17
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Not at all. Fictional representation of the fictional representations of real people.
SUMMARY: His Grandma was a Traiteur, healed with a laying on of hands and a prayer...Before D-Day, Gene Roe looks for another sort of healing.
A/N: 2632 words. For orlanstamos, who asked me what would happen if the Easy boys ran into the boys from the Memphis Belle in London. This is what I ended up with. Mods? Do I need a crossover tag or something?
the heat and the bourbon was in your head
you were talking in tongues! you were back from the dead!
and the girl and the city were one and the same
and last call never came
and I can see you swimming out into the street
I can hear you singing, "when I die, don't cry for me".
On the rare, the very rare occasion that somebody managed to get (and keep) a weekend pass, there wasn't any way in the world they weren't going to beg, borrow and steal a ride over to London, bright lights, big city, good time girls and beer. Yeah, it was warm, but, hell, it was better than nothing and it was better than running Currahee. England had got a different sort of mountain to climb. Mostly, they were bored waiting to jump, guys in their early twenties, bored and they're horny and, once in a blue moon, they got to run wild, and, when they got to run wild, man, they showed those English boys how it was done.
Curra-fuckin'-hee.
They were drinking in this dive of a pub off Trafalgar Square, torn seats in the booth and a fug of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Gene hadn't even had that much to drink and his head was already starting to ache. He cradled it in his hand and looked up, watching as, while Liebgott clumsily played the piano, Gordon and Toye sung parts of all the songs that they knew, and the whole of none. In the other corner of the room, there was a gang of Air Force boys. Gene idly watched them talk and screw about, and it wasn't so different from Easy, the way they talked to each other, the way they scuffled and argued and laughed and loved each other kinda like brothers might. A couple of them were playing cards, arguing back and forth, cursing up a storm, watched over by a kid who sort of reminded Gene of Heffron; red hair, good shoulders, and an open, honest face. Gene looked around the bar but couldn't see Heffron or Guarnere, but they weren't nowhere to be seen, so God only knew what cheerful trouble they were getting themselves into, and the Virgin keep them safe while they were doing it.
Gene paused with his beer halfway to his mouth and watched as one of the flyboys, rolled up sleeves and slicked back dark hair against olive tan skin walked over to the piano and tapped Liebgott on the shoulder.
"Hey, man. Mind if I take her for a spin?"
Hell, Gene would've known that accent anywhere. From the front stoop of his Grandmother's house, Gene could see into the front rooms of people who talked that way, just like that, and his Grandmother would tend to their sick just the same way as she tended to her own, take away-make away their pain with her bony hands and then pray to God to take it away with Him when He was done with listening to her at the end of the day. As ever, it was kind of nice to hear an accent that reminded him of home.
Liebgott shifted off the stool with an easy grin, reaching for his beer before he was fully up on his feet. The other guy sat down and, from the first ripple of notes, Gene knew that this was gonna be a completely different ball-game. Since he started his Medic training, Gene had found himself more and more aware of what other guys are doing with their hands. You could tell if a guy was nervous by what he was doing with his hands, and, if a guy was nervous in combat then he was liable to make stupid mistakes.
It paid to keep an eye on a guy's hands.
This guy, he played piano well, real well, like he'd been doing it his whole life. There wasn't anything that Gene Roe had been doing for his whole life. Outta school, he'd learned to lay brick. Right then, he was trying to get used to being the guy who answers when the other guys called out "Doc", trying to figure out if it could really be possible to hold a man together with his hands. His Grandmother had been a Traiteur, and, lately, Gene had found himself praying for a measure of her grace.
He stopped thinking about that and listened to the singing.
"Darling, je vous aime beaucoup. Je ne sais pas what to do. You know you've completely stolen my heart?"
Gene couldn't help but smile. Yeah, he'd heard singers like this before, back when he was a wicked boy, hitch-hiking out of the Bayou to go spend coins he didn't really have up in NOLA. He'd danced with pretty girls in frilly skirts, and then he'd laid out in the grass with them and he'd smoothed his fingers against tan skin, scattered pins from dark curled hair. He'd been a wicked boy a couple of days a month, a couple of nights, too, and, the rest of the time, he'd been the hard-working boy his Grandmother loved so well.
Yeah, something like that, anyhow.
He leaned his chin into his hand, and watched the other Easy guys talking and drinking and half listening to the song on the piano. Wish my French was good enough; I'd tell you so much more, and Gene knew that, one by one, the Easy guys would drift off, find beds, occupied or un-, make it back to base within a hair of dropping them all in the shit.
Gene hadn't figured out where he was going to end up yet.
The song finished, one of the flyboys was leading the applause...The one who sort of reminded Gene of Heffron. He clapped the guy at the piano on the back.
"Ladies, Gentlemen, I give you Clay Busby. Never fear, he's all week!"
"No, I am not," said Clay, polite, smooth, getting up from the piano and moving the other flyboy out of his way with a gentle hand on his chest. Yeah, it paid to watch what people did with their hands. Clay came to the bar with a swagger, and, yeah, Gene had known guys like that his whole life, back home. Not the cruel ones. Clay didn't look like one of the cruel ones at all, the ones who played games, shoved with both hands and tasted of blood and wet grass. Clay looked like one of the sometimes good, sometimes bad ones, the ones who played piano in the church on Sundays, who sweat in the heat and Gene had watched the sweat trickle under the open collars of shirts and wondered what they meant about him.
"Lemme buy you a beer," he said, as Clay came to stand beside him at the bar. Clay look pleased, an easy grin full of white teeth in a tanned face.
"Man, I ain't gonna say no, but I might have to enquire about the occasion."
Gene didn't smile that often but, when he did, he meant it.
"I gotta thank you for separatin' Liebgott from that piano somehow."
He had a good smile, Clay did, and Gene found himself staring at the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders as he settled himself down on the stool at the bar. Gene gestured for two more beers and watched as the bar man poured them, each pull on the tap accompanied by a grunt of effort.
It was a moment before he realised that Clay was looking at him.
"Where you from?" Clay asked, lifting the pint but not drinking from it, yet.
"Bayou Chene," he said, knowing that Clay didn't need to hear Louisiana...that he already knew that part.
Clay whistled, and Gene watched the way his lips pursed.
"Way out, huh? I tell people that I come from New Orleans, 'cause it sounds better than sayin' I grew up on a farm just outside."
"Suppose it must be," said Gene, remembering the excitement of getting to be in New Orleans a couple of days a month, a couple of nights, too. He remembered feeling like a whole different person, two nights out of the month, and he wondered at how that person could feel a million miles away, in a whole different life.
"And here we are," said Clay.
In sync, they drank and reached forward to set their glasses down. Gene's bare knuckles grazed against Clay's bare, tan skin beneath the rolled up shirt sleeve. It was an accident of timing and Gene was surprised at how his breath caught. How quickly he'd forgotten how to be touched. Gene turned his hand and brushed just the tips of his fingers against Clay's wrist (months later, in Bastogne, he'd use his bloody fingertips like a rosary and count off prayers). His grandmother healed with a laying on of hands. Just then, Gene was desperately looking for a way to stop the ache in his head.
And there they were.
-
The room was barely there at all, a wedge cut out of an attic space with a paper thin wall. They undressed each other in silence, unknotted ties and kicked off boots. Clay had leaned in and kissed Gene with both arms still trapped back in the sleeves of his shirt. Gene had pushed both hands up inside Clay's undershirt, over the smooth skin of belly and chest.
"Put your hands on me," he mumbled. He just wanted to be touched. At Toccoa, he'd grown narrow, shrunk to his most useful size but he still remembered being loud, remembered bursting out of his skin. He found himself humming under his breath, crooning a little ditty which seemed stupid. Clay was the singer. Clay pushed both hands into Gene's hair, which left Gene unbuttoning two pairs of pants by touch. In training, he'd leaned how to bandage a wound with his eyes closed.
You just never knew how dark it was gonna get.
There was just the light from the window, but it was enough. Gene leaned forwards on hands and knees to press his lips against Clay's, rocking down against him. Clay's dusky skin was almost too hot to the touch and Gene pressed against him anywhere he could get. His dick slid against Clay's and Gene whimpered, pressing down, sucking at the pulse in his throat. Underneath him, Clay was pushing upwards, all long limbs and smooth skin. Gene pressed his nose into the dip of his collarbone and felt like he could smell home, smell dust and dark water and the promise of rain. In England, he felt like he could smell Louisiana on Clay Busby's skin.
"Just put your hands on me," he said.
Clay's hand slid down Gene's belly, his fingers curling around Gene's dick, and he stroked slow, so slow, and Gene's head dropped forward and he rocked his hips forward, just as slow. The side of Clay's foot trailed against Gene's shin, and, eyes closed, he managed to smile.
"You remember the steps to this?" Clay asked, and, even not looking at him, Gene could tell he was teasing.
"Ain't...never been much of a dancer."
Clay brushed his thumb over the head of Gene's dick and lifted his head to kiss him.
"Don't take much," he said.
Gene slid one hand down Clay's thigh, lifting his leg up onto his hip. For a moment, he just lay there, pressed against Clay and rocking slowly, enjoying having the time to let his dick slip against Clay's, sicked and tired of jerking off quick and quiet and private in the john in the middle of the night. He wanted to go slow with another human being. He wanted to push his luck.
If they carried on like this, he was going to come between them, and there was no way in hell that he was wasting this. With some effort, he pulled away, pushing up onto all fours and then straightening, wrapping his fingers around his dick and jerking slowly as he looked down at Clay lying there, long legs and tan skin.
"Come on then," he said. Gene Roe had never been a talker, though he was learning that men in pain, men in suffering liked to hear someone talk. His grandma had always talked while she healed. "Up you get."
Gene ended up inside him, deep inside him, skin against skin deep, and pausing to get his breath. When he moved, rocking his hips forwards, the bed hit the wall and he bent forward, his chest against Clay's back to find a discarded t-shirt to pad it out with. Clay dropped his head and arched his back, pushing, rocking, moaning encouragement so soft and musical it almost sounded like he was crooning. If Gene was quiet enough, he could hear the soft sound that his skin made when it hit against Clay's, could hear the whisper of Clay's knuckles against the sheet as he stroked his own dick. Rocking, fucking Clay slowly but not too slow, Gene pressed both hands against the planes of Clay's back. He smoothed his thumbs against his skin and thought about the kids who'd come calling to fetch his Grandma to one bedside or another, and he realises how cold he got, even with how warm it had been in North Carolina. Balanced on his shoulders, Clay reached back, gripping at Gene's thigh, and Gene found himself smiling, even as he was unraveling, rocking into Clay irregular as anything as he started to come and it was then that he realised that his head wasn't hurting anymore.
"Are you laughing?" asked Clay, breathless, the muscles in his upper arm slipping and tensing as he stroked his dick and pushed himself that little bit further that he needed. Spent, Gene took the precious few seconds he was staying hard and ran with it, still rocking into Clay, giving him what he needed. His shoulders were shaking with it, and he held onto Clay's hips with both hands.
"Yeah. Yes, I suppose I am."
When he came, Clay made this little, broken sound, and all Gene could think was Wish my French was good enough.
"Mind if I ask what the hell's so funny?"
Gene pulled out of him with the strangest, smallest sense of loss and slipped to the side, lying down with one shoulder pressing into the pillow and looking up at Clay still poised on his knees.
"Healer, heal thyself," he said.
-
Afterwards, Gene lay with his head pillowed back against Clay's shoulder, one leg bent to ease the stiffness in his knee picked up during a slightly fluffed jump. He turned his head and watched as Clay smoked in silhouette and then he reached out and took the smoke from him and slipped it between his own lips.
"Close your eyes," said Clay, his fingers that had played that piano so nicely smoothing up and down Gene's arm. "Close your eyes and imagine that this is a levy and we're just lyin' here like this to let our skin dry out. Imagine the sun setting and the sky all purple and gold, like Mardi Gras. And there ain't no war, none at all, and we're home already."
Gene smiled around the cigarette.
Imagine that I'm gonna see you again.
After that, they lay in the quiet and they smoked between them and they'd never see each other again, but that didn't mean that they couldn't pretend to be lovers, in the narrow bed, in the dark.