Chapter Text
Watch how he prays like he is learning his first words.
Liam's not sure his life really begins until he meets Harry.
He's the new kid in school, he's always the new kid in school, ever since his dad died and his mom's had to chase jobs across the country. He hasn't been in one school for longer than a couple months since he was seven, but his mom promised they were staying this time, so he's been trying, honestly- but no matter what he does, he can't seem to make friends. Plenty of enemies, though. As usual. He's always been small for his age, and as frail as he is, it would be easy to give up, to curl up on the ground and accept the beatings, accept that he would never be more than a constellation of cuts and bruises.
But then he finds Harry. Harry from his year, six months younger than him but so tall Liam thought he was a grade above the first time he saw him in class. Harry with the soft curls, Harry who all the girls have a crush on. Harry, who helps him off the ground after a particularly bad fight, one hand outstretched, green eyes full of concern.
"Does this happen often?" he asks. He insisted on walking Liam home because he thinks he has a concussion, even though Liam keeps telling him he's fine.
"Not really," he lies, because he's embarrassed, for some reason. Because Harry's looking at him like he feels sorry for him.
"Your problem is you keep getting back up when they tell you to stay down."
He says it like someone who knows from experience- or maybe Liam is just desperate for someone to understand him, after being alone for so long.
So he asks, "Did they beat you up, too?" and Harry laughs.
"I'm the only boy in seventh grade who bakes and sings. 'Course they did."
"So how did you make them stop?"
Harry shoots him a lazy smile, and he can't help but notice the deep dimples in his cheeks. "I'm also the only boy in seventh grade who boxes."
Liam gives him a side-long glance as they walk, notices the muscles peeking out from under Harry's shirtsleeves.
Harry stops walking and faces Liam, those green eyes serious now. "I'll talk to them," he promises. "I can make them leave you alone."
It's a kind offer, but it would never fix the problem. Postpone it, maybe, until he's in high school and a fresh set of bullies comes along.
"Can you teach me to box?" He blurts it out without even realizing the idea's in his head.
It's Harry's turn to study him now. He knows what he's seeing- tiny Liam, with his round cheeks and pale face and stringbean arms. He feels his cheeks warming as Harry considers him.
"Nevermind," he mutters. "It was just-"
But Harry interrupts him. "We'll start next week," he says, and just like that, Liam has a friend.
They practice together nearly every day after school for months in Harry's room. Once he's taught Liam everything he knows, he gives up on boxing, says he'd rather have his hands in oven mitts than gloves. Liam's worried that's the end of them, that Harry's fulfilled his good samaritan duty and now they'll go back to being strangers, but then Harry invites Liam over to show him a new camera he got, or to go see a movie, or just to talk, and one night Liam realizes with a private smile that Harry actually, really, genuinely likes him.
Liam sticks with the boxing, even after all the bullies have learned to leave him alone. It helps him focus, gives him something to work on, and even though he tires too easily, even though he never really gets good at it, not like Harry is, he can master the technique. He knows how to throw a punch now, even if there's not much strength behind it. He knows how to stand up for himself, even if his body won't comply with what his brain is telling it to do.
He gets into a lot more fights after his lessons. It's not that he likes fighting, not that he wants to hurt people, but his dad was in the army to protect people, and he taught Liam to be a protector, too. He has to stand up for the people who can't stand up for themselves, or else what's the point of him learning to box in the first place?
And Harry's always there if he needs him. He says he doesn't want to fight anymore, but it's not something he can just unlearn. He always shows up right when Liam needs him, and usually he can scare someone off with just a Look, but he'll stand between Liam and a fist if he has to. He's used to it.
"Sometimes I think you like getting punched," Harry says after practically carrying him home from a fight one night. They're sitting on the sofa at his place, Harry carefully wiping away the blood from the corner of Liam's temple with a damp cloth. "What did he do, anyway? Make fun of your haircut? Tell you the movie was terrible?"
Liam forces a smile. "Something like that, yeah."
They had gone to see The Wizard of Oz, because Harry loves the book. The movie was great, and Harry's grin after it ended lit up the whole theater. When it was over, he pulled Liam toward him and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek.
"Thanks for coming, Li," he said, his bright eyes sparkling.
The weather was perfect, a warm summer night with a cool breeze, the stars bright even for the city, and Liam just saw a great movie with his best friend in the world. He was waiting outside for Harry to finish in the bathroom when a guy knocked past his shoulder. He turned around, his mouth open in an automatic apology, but he was taken aback by the nasty sneer on the guy's face.
"Where's your boyfriend, fairy?" The man spit out.
Liam was already turning away, he was, the night was perfect and he wasn't going to let some jerk ruin it, but then the guy muttered, "You fags should stay home next time."
And, well. Liam's fist curled up and swung around to smash into the guy's jaw before he really made the decision himself.
It's just that Harry wasn't there to defend himself. It's just that Liam hates bullies. It's just that they're fifteen and they're best friends and they've kissed before, a couple times easy exploring with the help of the whiskey Harry's stepdad keeps in his lounge, a couple times nervously giggling without it. It's just that Liam never thought there was anything wrong with that until he heard the venom in this guy's voice, until he saw the disgust.
But Harry loves the Wizard of Oz, and even though he's ending his night washing Liam's blood off his hands, he's still humming "Over the Rainbow" to himself with a brilliant smile on his face. And Liam won't ever be the one to make that smile disappear, so he bites his tongue when Harry asks what caused the fight. His wounds will heal up soon enough, anyway.
They don't kiss again, after that. He tells himself there's nothing wrong. They just grew out of it, like a worn piece of clothing that doesn't fit them anymore. It was comfortable, but not practical anymore. There's nothing wrong.
***
Liam's mom gets sick the next year. He's old enough now not to believe in fairy tales. The pneumonia has spread to too many organs and is cutting off oxygen to her brain. He knows she won't make it the day he goes to visit her at the hospital and she doesn't know who he is. It's always been the two of them, ever since his dad died. Liam and his mom were always there for each other, so for her to be staring at him with that blankness in her eyes is the worst kind of cruelty, and every time she has to ask him his name it's like having a dagger twisted into his heart.
But he still has Harry. He always has Harry. He's at the hospital just as often as Liam is. He's at the funeral, standing tall and strong beside him, holding Liam up when he wants nothing more than to collapse. And he's there afterward, too, in Liam's darkest months. He shows up at least once a week with freshly baked goods steaming in the cool autumn air, and he stays over at Liam's parents' place most nights, too, until the rent gets too high and Liam moves into a cramped studio on the Lower East Side. And even then Harry is there, a constant presence in his life, warm and familiar, willing to sit in silence when he needs to be alone together, ready to distract him by teaching him how to twist flowers together into a crown or braid hair.
And Liam is there for Harry, too, of course. Harry's stepdad passes away not long after Liam's mom does. It's hard, and sometimes they wonder how they're going to keep going, but they do. They have to, because they need each other. Liam gets more bruises in that period than he knows what to do with, but at least it makes him feel a little more in control. At least he can protect Harry from something, even if Harry doesn't realize it.
***
The war doesn't really surprise anyone. Liam and Harry both register, Liam because he wants to save people, Harry because conscription forces his hand.
"Anyway," Harry says as they stand in line to fill out the forms, "I can't let you go off to war without me. You'll end up picking a fight with Hitler the first night you get there, and even if I can't save you from that, I've gotta be there to see it."
It's a laugh. The war isn't real. They hear about it on the radio, sure, but it isn't real. Real is going down to Coney Island on a Saturday, letting Harry pick out the weirdest ice cream flavor he can find and Liam pretending to love it. Real is seeing an awful movie at the theater downtown on a Tuesday night because the tickets are cheaper. Real is getting pizza from the place down the street and taking it back to Harry's to eat, sitting cross-legged on the floor, Harry tucking his head over Liam's shoulder and reaching around to steal a piece of pepperoni off his slice.
So he isn't really sure how to react when Harry is drafted a few months later. He's been punched before, and it feels something like that, like having the wind knocked out of him, but no matter how much he takes a breath, he can't feel normal again.
Harry's holding the letter out in between them, pinching it gingerly between two fingers like it's something disgusting he found stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
"But you don't even like arguments," Liam says, staring at the paper. He knows he sounds petulant, and he's trying not to, but Harry never wanted to enlist and now he's the one going to war? He's the one leaving Liam behind? It's not fair.
"I know," Harry says. He sounds dazed. They're sitting on the stoop that leads to Liam's apartment. The letter is all he can see, but Harry's staring down the street at a group of little girls jumping rope on the sidewalk.
"Tell them you're morally opposed, one of those-" Liam waves his hand through the air, looking for the words.
"Conscientious objectors," Harry supplies listlessly. One of the little girls stumbles over the jump rope and skins her knee, but she gets right up and starts jumping again, giggling wildly. He gives a grim little smile.
"I have to go," he says, quiet and brusque. "If it means keeping everyone safe..." He looks away from the kids, focuses back on Liam. "I have to do it."
Liam frowns at him, not understanding, because this is Harry, who sings in the mornings and says Why can't you just be nice? to the guys Liam gets into fights with. How could Harry wear the uniform when he would never wear the cause? How could he sign up to fight?
How could he leave him?
Liam stands up and walks off the stoop, past Harry, past the little girls. He ignores Harry calling after him. He marches right up to the registration office and asks for a status update on his application.
The young woman at the window takes one look at him and frowns. "I don't think..."
"Check, please," Liam says. He doesn't care if he has to stand there all day. All night, even. "Payne, Liam."
She sighs and flips through a folder until she reaches his page. She only glances at it for a second before telling him he's still under consideration, but she doesn't close the file fast enough to stop Liam from seeing the stamp that reads "DENIED" in big red letters right over the list of all his physical ailments.
Okay, so maybe he's asthmatic and hard of hearing and iron deficient with early on-set arthritis and a malfunctioning kidney... but he's also determined. His parents raised him to keep fighting, to try just a little harder, so that's what he does. He re-registers, minus a few illnesses on the form. With a few more years tacked on his age. With a heavier weight, a taller height. And when those applications fall through, he tries a different route. He starts eating more, regulating his diet to pack on weight. He goes boxing every day. He hardly sees Harry anymore now that he's training so much, and he knows he should be taking advantage of the little time they have left together, but he can't help but feel that things will work out, somehow. After all they've been through together, things have to work out.
But then it's Harry's last night in New York. Liam wishes he could just stay holed up in his apartment and pretend Harry isn't going anywhere, pretend the war doesn't even exist, but of course as soon as he thinks that there's a knock on his door.
And there's Harry, already wearing his uniform, leaning up against the door frame with his dimpled smile.
"Hey, Li."
"Hey, H."
"What are we doing tonight?"
Liam shrugs. "I was thinking I'd stay in, actually. I don't feel well."
But Harry slings an arm around Liam's shoulder and pulls him in to ruffle his hair. "Come on, it's my last night! Come out with me?"
And maybe Liam wants to cry a little, but he can't mess up Harry's uniform, so he just squeezes his eyes shut against Harry's shoulder and nods.
There's a fair happening out on Coney Island. The music is loud, the lights blinding. Harry keeps his arms around Liam's shoulder as they walk, and he wonders if it's because he knows that Liam's barely holding together.
"So how does it feel?"
They're sitting on the docks, feet dangling over the water, sharing a cotton candy bigger than Harry's head.
Liam looks at him. "What?"
"You're about to be the last eligible man in the city." Harry grins at him. "There are three and a half million women here who are gonna be all over you."
Liam chooses not to acknowledge the way his stomach sinks at Harry's words. "One is good enough for me," he says tonelessly. He takes a bite of cotton candy but it doesn't taste like anything.
Harry sighs. "Liam..."
"What?" he snaps, even though he doesn't mean to.
"This is a war. This isn't some little kid game like we used to play. I don't want you to-" But he cuts himself off. Everything in him is waiting to hear how that sentence ends, but Harry just sighs again and rubs at his eyes. "I just don't understand why you're so obsessed with enlisting."
"My dad served. My mom was a nurse. They both risked their lives. I can't just let people go off to fight and sit here at home like a coward." It's a tired argument, one they've had before, and Liam knows his lines. Harry has always backed off when he brought up his parents. He knows Liam doesn't like to talk about them.
But this time he shakes his head. "No. No." He's staring hard at Liam, his eyes peering straight through to the heart of him. "It's something else."
And Liam can't- won't- say that the thought of losing Harry destroys him, that he would rather die than be alone, and so even though this may be the last time he sees Harry for at least a year, the only way to get him to stop studying him like this is to pick a fight.
"This isn't about me. I don't deserve to be sitting at home while y-" Damn it. Why can't he do even this right? "While men lay down their lives."
It works. Harry shakes his head, looks away. "Right. 'Cause you've got nothing to prove." His voice is hard, and for a moment Liam thinks he's fucked everything up. He's never seen Harry look so upset.
But then he turns back to him, the corners of his lips twitching upward, and he says, "Don't do anything ridiculous until I get back."
Liam manages to smile back at him. "How can I? You're taking all the ridiculous with you."
Harry takes the cotton candy from his hand, places it gently on the ground, and tackles Liam.
"Ouch!" he yelps, a laugh startling out of him. They grapple with each other until Liam gives up, breathing hard, and Harry is sitting on top of him with a triumphant grin.
Too triumphant, if you ask Liam, so he reaches over, grabs the cotton candy, and shoves it in Harry's face, forcing him to roll off.
"You're a punk," he says once he's sat up again. He wipes a bit of cotton candy off his cheek.
"Jerk," Liam retorts instantly. And then, a lump in his throat: "Be careful."
Harry flashes a smile at him. "Careful's my middle name."
They stay there until the stars are gone and the sky is pink like the cotton candy stuck in Harry's hair. Liam would have stayed there for the rest of his life.
But the war doesn't wait for anyone, and Harry stands up eventually, holding out his hand to pull Liam up, too.
"So..." he says.
He doesn't look at Liam, like he's bashful, but Liam understands. What is there to say?
So he just grins. "Don't win the war until I get there!"
Harry smiles back and gives him a crooked salute, and Liam thinks he's never seen anyone so gentle in his life.
He doesn't pray much, hasn't ever since his parents died, but later that night, after Harry has left and he's alone in a too-small apartment, he privately asks God if he can look after his best friend.
Just in case.
***
The city doesn't seem to shine as bright without Harry there to enjoy it with. He gets a job in a factory, melding two pieces of metal together and then passing them on to the next guy in the line. He takes his lunch break alone, and then he goes home to an empty apartment that still holds Harry's memory in every corner. Every morning before work, he shows up at the registration office. The lady who works at the front desk- Jade- knows him by name, and she even smiles at him now, but the answer never changes.
A month after Harry's been shipped out, there's an old man in a white suit standing next to the desk when Liam walks in. He doesn't think much of it, just smiles at Jade and asks her how she's doing today. Instead of answering, she looks up at the man.
"Mr. Payne, I presume?"
Liam raises his eyebrows. "Yes?"
The man is strange, there's no doubt about that. He looks Liam up and down instead of answering, then turns on his heel and heads into a door beside the registration desk.
"Well? Are you coming or not?" he calls back with a funny accent.
Liam glances at Jade, who shrugs at him. He follows the man into the office.
"Who are you?" he asks. They're in a storage room, with boxes and boxes stacked on top of each other.
"Dr. Abraham Erskine," the old man says, and then, without even a second's pause, he asks, "So you want to kill Nazis?"
Liam blinks. He knows what he should say. He's heard the new enlistees bragging before they've even seen a battle or a gun, but he has to tell the truth.
"I don't want to kill anyone." Erskine is still looking at him, almost encouragingly, like he wants Liam to keep talking, so he adds, "I just don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from." He presses his lips together.
Erskine nods, hands him a manila folder, and walks out of the room. Liam doesn't have to look at it to know it's his file, the same one Jade has been pretending to consult for weeks, but something pushes him to open it.
And there it is. A scrawny picture of him. His name, address, family status, physical description. But instead of the red "DENIED" stamp he's grown used to seeing, there's now a green stamp that says "APPROVED."
When he races out of the room to ask Erskine if it's real, he's nowhere to be seen.
***
Somehow, training isn't what Liam imagined. He thinks he's done the hard part- he's gotten in, he's been given a uniform, he's officially a soldier- and everything else will just work itself out. Because he worked so hard to get here, and he wants this more than anyone, but his body won't cooperate. His lungs give out after he runs a few yards, and he can't lift nearly the amount of weight the other men can. He always imagined being a soldier meant having a new family, people he can depend on for anything. Instead, every other guy in his squad seems determined to get him kicked out. They don't communicate with him, they don't help him out. They seem to hate him and the way he slows them down, and he wants to shout, I'm sorry! I'm trying! but they wouldn't listen, anyway. All he can do is push himself more and more until he collapses. The only thing that keeps him going is the thought that the sooner he's done with training, the sooner he can see Harry again.
He's glad to see Dr. Erskine the day he shows up with Agent Smith, even though the other men don't trust doctors and are terrified of the agent because she knocked a guy out cold after he made a crude comment to her during line-up. At least she and Erskine don't seem to hate Liam. Well, Erskine doesn't, at least. Agent Smith mostly just seems bemused by him, like he's some little kid who wandered into camp one day and everyone only let him stick around to see what he would do.
He forgets they're here after about an hour. They come every so often to observe training, so he and the other soldiers are used to it by now. Although he can't imagine why they're here, since training isn't the most riveting thing to watch. All they do is stand around talking in low voices and taking notes.
Except today, when they're out doing push-ups, Agent Smith shouts "GRENADE!" and a small metal cylinder goes rolling into camp. The men all scatter, and Liam jumps on the grenade without even thinking about it. He squeezes his eyes tight and wraps his tiny frame around the grenade as best he can, until a minute passes and he realizes he's not being blown into a million pieces.
He opens his eyes and everyone is staring at him curled around a fake grenade, the Colonel like he's done something wrong, Agent Smith and Erskine like they're... proud of him?
"Is this a test?" He stands up and kicks the grenade back to Agent Smith. He doesn't want to look at anyone. He hates tests, he's never been good at them, and now everyone's staring at him like he's some kind of freak.
"Of a sort," Agent Smith answers, her voice surprisingly gentle.
He looks up at her. She has a kind face, he thinks, even if the fact that she's part of some top secret organization and also broke that soldier's nose without any hesitation terrifies him. He looks at Erskine, who's looking back at him like he's done something especially interesting. He looks at the other guys in his squad, glaring at him like he made them look bad, like he's cemented himself as the me versus them. It occurs to Liam that his reason for being there is different from the others. As much as he wanted to be in this war, he knows he doesn't belong here. He was so happy to finally be let in that he didn't spare much of a thought for why he's been let in.
He pulls Erskine aside from the others and lowers his voice so they won't hear him. "Can we talk? In private?"
Erskine gives him an appraising look. "I think that would be prudent, yes."
They go back to Erskine's temporary tent. It's well-lit, with towering piles of books teetering haphazardly wherever there's an open space. Erskine pulls out a bottle of whiskey and offers Liam a glass, but he shakes his head.
"Bad kidneys," he says by way of explanation.
"Right, right." There's a glint of something in Erskine's eyes, and the not knowing is making Liam anxious.
He just has to come right out with it, then.
"Why am I here?"
Erskine nods, as if Liam has just told him something vital. "I was wondering when you would ask yourself that."
"I'm asking you."
Erskine gives a little smile and downs the rest of his drink.
And then he tells him what he calls the truth but what can only be some sort of story, because since when are superheroes and evil villains named Schmidt real?
And why would they choose Liam, of all people? Any of the guys in Liam's squad would be better. Harry would be better. The Colonel would be better. Agent Smith would definitely be better than any of them.
"You're good, Liam." When Erskine looks at him, he gets the distinct impression that he can see everything going on in Liam's head. "I made a mistake with Schmidt. He was a bad man who became worse. But you? You're a good man. I want to make you better."
He wants to run out of the room, to tell Erskine that he's making another mistake, that Liam isn't good enough. He's not hero material. He just wants to be a soldier and save people like every other guy here.
Erskine leans forward with his elbows on the table and looks at Liam imploringly. "If you do this, you can stop all this." He waves his hand around the tent, but Liam knows he means the fighting, the war, the parents losing their children. "This will all be over so much sooner. I promise you I have been searching for over a year. And we've been observing you. This is no hasty choice. We need you, Liam."
Liam still doesn't quite believe him, but then he thinks about Harry, out fighting a war he doesn't even believe in, putting himself in danger because it's the right thing to do.
If it means keeping everyone safe, I have to do it.
"What do I have to do?"
***
Agent Smith is in on it. She's the one who accompanies him to what Erskine calls "the operation room." Liam's not sure what exactly the procedure entails-- he was too nervous to ask Erskine-- but he's spent enough time in hospitals during his life to know it probably won't be fun.
They're being driven through the Lower East Side, past all the places he and Harry used to hang out. He wishes more than anything that Harry was here to crack some long, incomprehensible joke to make him feel better. Instead he has Agent Smith, sitting silent and stoic beside him.
"I used to live in this neighborhood," Liam says, just to talk, because he can't stand the thought of someone not liking him.
Agent Smith doesn't look at him, but she makes a vague hum of acknowledgment so at least he knows she heard him.
"I was beat up there," he says, pointing out an alley. "And there... and there... and there, too."
Aha! The ghost of a smile, there for the flicker of an instant before she wipes it away.
"You have something against running away?" she asks, glancing at him.
He smiles, because it's the same thing Harry had asked the first day they met. "You start running and they'll never let you stop. But if you stand up and push back... well, you can't keep losing forever, right?"
Agent Smith is fully looking at him now, like she's trying to understand him, and Liam feels his cheeks warming so he blurts out the first thing in his head.
"Why did you join the army, anyway? A beautiful girl- I mean, lady. Um, a woman." He coughs. "Not a girl. You are beautiful, but." His face is burning now. Opening his mouth was probably not a good idea, actually. Now he'll be the next story recruits will tell each other about Agent Smith kicking someone's ass.
But she just laughs, a real laugh, not like when that jerk made a rude comment and she punched him right in the face. "Sophia will do." She shakes her head and smiles right at him. "You don't have much experience with women, do you?"
He shrugs. "Talking to women always seemed so terrifying. And in the past few years, it just... didn't seem to matter that much." He's glad they arrive before she has a chance to ask him why it stopped mattering, because he's not sure he knows how to put it into words.
The building where the operation room is located is heavily guarded. He sees at least five standing outside, and he's sure there are snipers located on rooftops. They walk through what feels like hundreds of halls and then down several flights of stairs to the brightly lit operating room. There are more armed guards just outside its doors.
"Who are they trying to keep out?" Liam mutters, but Sophia doesn't answer. It occurs to him right after he asks that maybe it's more about keeping him in. In case he goes bad like Schmidt did. He can't help but give a little shudder.
When he walks into the room, everybody stops talking and stares. There are about ten people wearing lab coats, a few men in military gear, some suited businessmen, and a guy with a camera who snaps a photo right in Liam's face. The bright flash nearly blinds him.
"Liam!" Dr. Erskine comes strolling up to him and claps him on the back, grinning ear to ear. Liam doesn't think he's ever seen him look so excited before. "Are you ready?"
He's not, but he follows Erskine to the operating table anyway. It's less of a table and more of a machine, with straps and wires running from side to side. Liam lies down in it and lets them strap his arms in. The straps are awfully loose, and he can't help but think nobody told the guy who built it just how small he is.
"You are very brave to do this." Erskine peeks his head over the top of the machine like he's peering into a coffin.
"I don't scare easily," Liam says, and it's not an empty boast. It's just that he's never really understood the point of fear. Things happen, and then he deals with them. Fear just gets in the way.
"Don't worry," Erskine tells him. "It will all be over soon."
"Aren't you supposed to say it won't hurt a bit?" he asks feebly, but then they shut the lid and he's left in darkness.
There's no count-down when they start. Just a hushed silence, a bright light that burns his eyes even from inside the machine, and then the most intense pain he's ever felt in his life, like being set on fire, electrocuted, and pulled apart at the same time. He spares one last thought for Harry before he blacks out.