( he'd never do her the disrespect of makin' her think this is somethin' on her. he'd tell her near about anything if she asked. he just. doesn't know where to start, an' the simple fact that she's askin' about reggie more than the fact that gene saw him so is. it's tellin'. about the sorta person she is, what it is she reaches for in dark times. human connection is everything to her — but before this conversation it'd been an educated guess an' not an absolute. now he knows.
she'd wanted to touch him, he saw that much. but she's a woman who understands that sometimes you have to put what a person wants over what you want for them, and she'd acted on that. so he reaches out and touches her wrist, just a little point of contact to let her know it's all right. then he takes a bracing breath. talkin' about the man ain't a hardship, it's a goddamn privilege. )
I told you some, 'bout Brooklyn, yeah? Well, I moved there when I was fourteen. Big change, you know. Goin' from a city with less than a thousand souls to a place like that all on your own. Reggie, ah... he took me in, in a way. He was a couple years older. Taught me how to dance an' manage in a place that was as foreign to me as the moon. Sometimes we'd just... go out and ride the trolleys until the sun came up. I don't know why he picked me, Kyna. Ain't never met a man like him, before or since. All eyes came to him when he walked into a room, it was like... lookin' at the sun.
( but he never made gene feel small. or any manner of inadequate, despite the fact that his folks were both doctors an' he had more education in his little finger than gene'd had in the whole of his life. )
When the war kicked off, he went to Europe. He'd been born there, see, an' he joined the 'Special Operations Executive' as a spy against the Axis. An' on account'a my seein' the dead ( he says that deliberately. calm. ) he came to me when he died. He could'a passed on, you know? But he stayed. I lost track'a how many ambushes he foiled an' how many lives he saved just by tellin' me German troop movements an' spyin' on their officers. I was in Love Company, but a lotta folks nicknamed us Lucky on account'a how few casualties we took.
( comparatively. some paratrooper units clocked in at 96 percent casualty rates durin' big operations like overlord. an' lordy, did they lose men in italy. )
no subject
( he'd never do her the disrespect of makin' her think this is somethin' on her. he'd tell her near about anything if she asked. he just. doesn't know where to start, an' the simple fact that she's askin' about reggie more than the fact that gene saw him so is. it's tellin'. about the sorta person she is, what it is she reaches for in dark times. human connection is everything to her — but before this conversation it'd been an educated guess an' not an absolute. now he knows.
she'd wanted to touch him, he saw that much. but she's a woman who understands that sometimes you have to put what a person wants over what you want for them, and she'd acted on that. so he reaches out and touches her wrist, just a little point of contact to let her know it's all right. then he takes a bracing breath. talkin' about the man ain't a hardship, it's a goddamn privilege. )
I told you some, 'bout Brooklyn, yeah? Well, I moved there when I was fourteen. Big change, you know. Goin' from a city with less than a thousand souls to a place like that all on your own. Reggie, ah... he took me in, in a way. He was a couple years older. Taught me how to dance an' manage in a place that was as foreign to me as the moon. Sometimes we'd just... go out and ride the trolleys until the sun came up. I don't know why he picked me, Kyna. Ain't never met a man like him, before or since. All eyes came to him when he walked into a room, it was like... lookin' at the sun.
( but he never made gene feel small. or any manner of inadequate, despite the fact that his folks were both doctors an' he had more education in his little finger than gene'd had in the whole of his life. )
When the war kicked off, he went to Europe. He'd been born there, see, an' he joined the 'Special Operations Executive' as a spy against the Axis. An' on account'a my seein' the dead ( he says that deliberately. calm. ) he came to me when he died. He could'a passed on, you know? But he stayed. I lost track'a how many ambushes he foiled an' how many lives he saved just by tellin' me German troop movements an' spyin' on their officers. I was in Love Company, but a lotta folks nicknamed us Lucky on account'a how few casualties we took.
( comparatively. some paratrooper units clocked in at 96 percent casualty rates durin' big operations like overlord. an' lordy, did they lose men in italy. )