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"We only love what can get us killed," Harry tells him one night. "That’s how fucked up we are."
Rosie doesn’t pay much attention because Harry’s collar is a mess with at least three buttons down and he can’t focus and gaze at the same time.
"Look at you for exemple," Harry says as he tilts his head towards him and exposes another inch of pale skin. "Each time you enter a plane you know there’s a risk you won’t come back. And yet, you still love the feeling of soaring and you go back again and again."
Rosie leans on Harry’s side and his head finds its way to this glorious neck. He explores the diaphanous skin with his nose and Harry shudders under his breaths.
"It’s not like I have a choice," he whispers on the skin just to see goosebumps blooming.
It’s true, if he doesn’t go up in one of those birds, he would go down in martial court. Harry turns his head to lock his eyes with Rosie’s.
"You had."
He whispers it with hurt rather than rage. Rosie thinks he preferred it when Harry was mad at him for re-upping. Because he is now forced to watch as he stabs him to the heart with each mission. He cups Harry’s jaw with one hand and tries to force the pain out of his eyes.
"So what about you?" he asks. "What is it you love so much even though it can kill you?"
Harry kisses him instead of answering.
---
The first night with John back at Thorpe Abbotts, Gale makes a point not to leave his side for a single minute. They all drink and they sing and they dance and Gale is glued to him like John would disappear if he ever takes his eyes off him. Rosie finds it adorable and heartbreaking at the same time. And then Harry is gently pulling on his sleeve to guide him outside and he stops thinking about anything else.
---
"How many?" John shouts to him above the music, the laughs and the tinkling of glass against glass.
"What?" Rosie asks, drunk on whiskey and Harry’s smile.
"How many missions did you fly?"
John is an inch away from his ear and even like that Rosie doesn’t understand. When it finally hits him he curses himself for following the guys. He should have stopped drinking when he still had a functioning brain.
"Fifty-two," he shouts back.
A loud whistle escapes John's lips. A big grin lights up his face but Rosie is too close to miss the sadness in his eyes.
"You really did beat the odds, didn’t you?"
Rosie can’t respond because Gale appears behind John and pulls him away from the bar while apologizing to Rosie because he talks nonsense when he gets passed three drinks, sorry for that. He doesn’t even have the time to say goodbye because Buck and Bucky are out before his brain can even register it. He doesn’t think too much of it because Douglass drags him toward the others and Harry’s eyes make him forget about anything else.
---
Before May 1945, John Egan is a legend, a name whispered through choked throats, because if there is one rule in the hundredth it’s that the MIAs are MIAs and there is no use talking about them. But who are they to follow the rules?
Rosie meets John one night when there is music in his ears, shy words on his tongue and the most beautiful boy he has ever seen in the corner of his eyes. John isn’t high in his priorities at that moment. He discovers him by his absence and by rumors, softly spoken by the only friends Bucky left at Thorpe Abbotts. Jack says he is loud and mouthy, Everett says he is skilled and talented, Douglass says he is such a fun fellow, Harry says he is caring and in love. Nobody talks about him in past tense.
Rosie learns to know him after his return. John is indeed loud, mouthy, skilled, talented, fun, caring and in love. He also is young, reckless, restless, tormented, jealous and in pain. Just like Gale, just like the other POW and just like every other hero History reduced to a legend. Rosie learns that no legend is worth the men and women behind them and he decides the MIAs deserve to be more than a whispered name. Maybe that’s his insatiable thirst for justice speaking, as Harry calls it with a smile on his lips and sparks in his eyes. But Rosie wants to undiscover the legend and meet the man.
John happily lets him.
---
"I knew you two would get along," Harry says and it sounds like a I told you so when he never actually told him so. It’s not irritating, Harry has always been a little rebellious, even when he himself didn’t know. Rosie has always loved that about him. He has always loved a lot of things about Harry.
John throws an arm over Rosie’s shoulders and leans against him like he needs support. He doesn’t, he just pretends to be that drunk. He fools no one, not even himself.
"How could we not ? First time we met, not five minutes in and the guy is already telling me about his skivvies."
Harry laughs and Rosie listens because he knows how to appreciate good music.
---
Not even the earth that covers our bones will remember us. The woman’s voice is soft in his ear and he tells Harry so one fateful night.
"But I will," he shouts. "I will remember. I will remember for the whole world if I have to. They will not be forgotten as long as I breathe."
The lawyer in him knows that duty of memory can’t survive with only one devotee. The soldier in him doesn’t care and is ready to carry this banner alone. The little boy in him sinks into Harry’s embrace and cries for his brothers and sisters. Harry picks him up and wipes his tears away with his thumbs and his careful words. Then, gentle as always, he takes Rosie’s hand in his and kisses his fingers like the suicidal man kisses the barrel of his gun. What is it you love so much even though it can kill you? Rosie had asked him. Now he has his answer.
---
"I kissed Gale."
John says it like it’s a challenge, like he expects Rosie to call him sinful and walk away. But little does he know Rosie is just as sinful as him.
"I would have figured," he says smiling and he watches as John relaxes and lets out a sigh of relief.
And maybe that was a test, maybe he gained the right to be friends with Bucky, maybe he just won where others have perished, consumed by the shame of losing the great John Egan. Or maybe he already is his friend, maybe that is why John is telling him, maybe it has been too long since he had a friend like that. Someone he doesn’t have to protect, to feel responsible for and Harry doesn’t count because Harry is not his friend. Or at least he wishes.
"How was it?" he asks because he actually cares about the answer.
John turns his head and he closes his eyes.
"God kissed my lips," he says. "I felt safe."
When John talks about Gale, Rosie can only think of Harry.
"A boy kissed my fingers," he replies. "I felt saved."
It’s not much, just enough to let John know that they are the same. Judging by the way he smiles, it might have worked. John opens his eyes to look at him.
"Guess we both saw paradise then."
---
Sometimes Rosie hears it in John’s shaking voice, sometimes it is in his silences. Bucky has to carry the burden of memory too. Rosie doesn’t ask, he knows it will come out one day, just like it did with him. He just hopes that Bucky will have someone when it does, just like he had Harry.
It comes out at one point and he is the only one by Bucky’s side.
"I saw a train once," John says like it’s a big deal. "There were people inside, they were screaming, stretching their arms out to me, crying for help. And then the train took off and I don’t know where they went."
Rosie watches as he takes a sip of his drink. It is a big deal.
"I saw where the train went," he responds. "It was worse."
John doesn’t say anything, just places his hand on Rosie’s shoulder and squeezes.
Guess they both saw hell too.
---
As soon as they land, Gale flies home to Marge, Harry flies home to Jean and neither of them feels like sleeping tonight.
"Wanna go to a Jazz Club?" Rosie asks John as if he is asking Harry.
John smiles and says yes as if Rosie is Gale.
---
The Jazz Club becomes a bar, which becomes another one and another again. When they stumble out of the last bar, John is fully Bucky and his grip on Rosie is so tight that when he trips on the pavement, both of them almost end up in the gutter. But Rosie’s head is light and Bucky’s voice is warm and the sun is rising behind the buildings and not even in Europe’s skies did Rosie feel this high. There is no soul on the street, Bucky's weight keeps his feet on the ground, the sun is drawing figures of shadow that scare no one and it looks like the first half of a song. Where is the other half? he asks the universe. Where my other half is, his heart responds.
That’s when he collapses, crying in Bucky’s arms because he wishes so hard it was Harry’s.
---
They end up half lying on a bench and Rosie has never imagined another way to end this night. The night isn’t even the night anymore because the sun is burning his eyes and he squints them like an old man in need of his glasses.
John is there. Rosie doesn’t know what to do with this information. His head pounds too much to think about it anyway.
He knows he should think about it though. Because he broke down in front of John and John stayed like he cares, like they’re buddies, like they fought the same war together, side by side. John stayed like they’ve known each other since forever, like they didn’t meet and immediately got separated for a year and a half.
Rosie should think about it because he never broke down in front of anyone. Not since Nash.
You liar, the last functioning cell in his brain whispers. What about the night you told Croz about the camp? He wants to smash his head into a wall for mentioning Harry. He really doesn’t need to think about him right now.
"I am going to the Pacific," he tells John, and he is aware it’s not the perfect situation to announce that he is re-upping again but the headache is too strong for him to care.
John is leaning backward on the bench, head thrown back, throat exposed like he gifts Rosie his entire trust. Rosie knows how much it values and he really can’t think about it when the sun is blinding his vision and his thoughts.
"Aren’t you tired?"
John doesn’t move as he speaks, he might not have the strength.
"Of what?"
Birds sing and leaves rustle above their head and the breeze caresses their hair and it could be so romantic with someone else.
"War?" John responds. "All this killing?"
John doesn’t sound like Harry as he says it. Harry talks about all this killing with anger in his voice and fear in his eyes. He is bleeding guilt and all Rosie wants to do when it happens is to trap him in his arms and cradle him until the self hate vanishes. It never does. John doesn’t seem guilty, he doesn’t seem afraid or enraged. He just sounds exhausted. Rosie is not sure if he finds it better or worse.
"If I sit still, I’m going to make a big mistake," he admits.
John doesn’t need to know that the big mistake would be jumping into a train, rushing to Harry’s home and kissing him hard in front of his wife and kid as soon as he opens the door. Maybe John already knows. Maybe he is restraining himself to do the same with Gale. Or maybe he isn’t as selfish as Rosie and he wants to protect Gale from his downfall.
The fall. The logical continuation to finding paradise. As if they didn’t fall too many times already.
John turns his head towards him and looks at him almost upside down.
"Don’t get yourself killed," he commands like he still outranks Rosie. "Keep on beating the odds."
Rosie smiles at him. John doesn’t smile back.
---
John picks him up at boot camp after the armistice. Rosie doesn’t expect him but he isn’t surprised either. That’s always the feeling with Bucky, predictably unpredictable.
He wonders since when did he start to notice this sort of thing about John. Sometimes it feels like he has known him forever, a childhood friend with whom you can’t remember the meeting. He decides he likes it. Having someone to look at and then think we are the same. It is soothing.
"Finally back on earth, huh?" John says and it’s supposed to sound rhetorical but Rosie can’t help but hear genuine uncertainty in his words.
"Yeah," he assures him. "Finally back from paradise."
Rosie sits in front, John turns the radio on and just like that they’re off. It shouldn’t be that easy. John picking him up, seeing each other in civvies, humming together along the radio. And yet it is easy. Because they are carved from the same wood and their sculptor made their skin too strong, their heart too soft and their bones too fragile. Rosie likes that, he really does. He is not the kind of person to have regrets but he sometimes wonders what this war would have been like with Bucky by his side.
"What are you gonna do now?" John asks and Rosie tries to imagine himself in a cockpit with John as his copilot. That’s the one place where he always has all the answers.
"I don’t know," he says and it is the truth.
Rosie is tired, more than he’s ever been at Thorpe Abbotts. He shouldn’t be because he didn’t even have the time to fly to the Pacific, he never saw the color of that war. And yet, fatigue has fallen upon his shoulders as quickly as Little Boy fell upon Hiroshima. The thing is, Rosie never questioned his actions. He knew what he was forced to do in combat, he knew that each mission was mass murder but he accepted it, because it was the only way he could respond to the oppression of his people.
They weren’t angels but the other side was full of monsters coming straight out from hell. Now he isn’t so sure which side the monsters are on. The side of the camps or the side of the bombs.
"How was the wedding?" He asks to change the subject and he knows it’s an asshole move because there is no way Bucky wants to even think about Gale’s wedding.
"Lovely," John answers and his tone says the opposite. "I was forced to watch my agony from the stage, tragedy of the best man. But Gale looked really good in that suit. And I got to sing so it wasn’t all that bad."
Rosie regrets asking. To make amends, he turns the radio volume to the maximum and they sing until their throats are sore.
---
Come by sometime, Harry writes to him. Jean and I would love to have you home for a day or two. You could meet the little guy. Then, in small scribbled handwriting, uncommon for him, I miss you. Rosie writes back that he would love to come see them. He doesn’t. He goes anyway because he misses Harry too.
---
"How’s Croz doing?" John asks through the phone and there is an unusual calm in his voice that Rosie doesn’t really like.
"He’s fine," he answers and Doc Huston is rolling his eyes in the back of his mind.
He visited Harry last week-end and he didn’t know how much he had missed him before seeing his face again. Jean and Steven were there but it didn’t really matter because he got to hold Harry in his arms for a few seconds and it was enough.
"You met his son?" John’s voice echoes through the receiver when he understands that Rosie won’t elaborate.
"Yeah, I did. He looks just like him already."
When Harry had carefully placed the baby in Rosie’s arms, it had knocked the air out of him. Those baby-deer big brown eyes had looked up at him and he had almost cried because they were the same ones that welcomed him back with such warmth after each mission. Bucky’s silence answers him and Rosie really wishes he was there beside him and not so many states away.
"I wanted to take them all to Minton’s but Croz said his little ears couldn’t take the sound. That’s a lame excuse, if you want my opinion, he’s just jealous because the little guy prefers me over his own father. I mean, what sort of damage can jazz do to children? If anything it should be part of school program."
John laughs on the other end of the line.
"Your love for jazz will be the death of you, one day."
Rosie’s grip on the phone tightens. He lets John’s laugh slowly die in his ear.
"Bucky," he almost whispers in the interphone, "is there something that can kill you and even then you can’t not love it?"
Bucky takes the question in for a long, too long minute. Rosie thinks about Harry like he does in every silence. Harry loved him to death and he chose survival. Rosie is not sure John chose survival once in his life.
"There’s a lot of things that can kill me and that I still love," John says. "Drinking, smoking, gambling, all those stupid bets-"
"Gale?"
Bucky should learn how to lie because even his silence screams yes.
"So drugs, huh?" Rosie pushes because he needs to. "Is there something else?"
Through the receiver, Rosie hears them breathe in harmony. How did you know John and I would get along so well? he had asked Harry when Jean had gone upstairs to put Steven to sleep. He had longingly watched Harry’s chest rise and fall with every breath and it was a torture not to kiss the shadows under his eyes.
"Everything," John tells like he’s confessing all his sins. "Everything I love can kill me. Because I always love too much and it burns me alive. And I think it’s the same for you."
Because you just have too much in common. Music, bravery, flying, Harry had looked at him mischievously before adding, your respective mustaches. Rosie had forgotten how it was when Harry made him laugh. He didn’t know how he had survived this long without it until then. Because you are so different too. Because you complete each other. You are two sides of the same coin.
"It’s not the same," Rosie says and he sounds so desperate he doubts his own words.
He needs you, Harry had said. And I think you need him too. Rosie had wanted to hold him close to his chest, to feel each beating of his heart into his own. I don’t need John, he had almost whispered, I need you. If Harry thought Rosie could replace him with John, he really didn’t know him that well.
"It is the same, Rosie," John’s voice is softer than it ever was. "You are the same."
Only now Rosie realizes that maybe Harry had just meant that he needed a friend, a real one. He does. Because everything he loves can kill him and his skin is too strong, his heart too soft and his bones too fragile. And so are Bucky’s.
---
You are the last half of the most beautiful song ever written, he writes to Harry. He erases it. You became my salvation the second you kissed my fingers. He erases it. Everything can kill me and if I had to choose I would like it to be you. He erases it. I love you. He rips the paper apart and pulls a blank one out of the drawer.
You were right about Bucky, he writes. We both are fallen birds mourning our wings. We bond over the loss of paradise. He doesn’t erase it.
---
Dear Rosie,
I’ve never been good with letters. The only ones I have ever sent so far were more of a your-son-fought-till-the-end type. That might not be what you want right now. That might not be what anyone wants anytime.
But you are going to Germany and writing seemed like the only thing to do. First of all, let me tell you that you might be the bravest person I have ever known. I don’t think I will ever set a foot back in Europe, not in Germany, not in Poland, not even at Thorpe Abbotts. I want this to be behind me and I will make sure it stays there.
But you are not me and you go back to hell not even for yourself but for justice. And that commands admiration.
So, if you superhero ever need a sidekick, I’ll always be there, only an ocean and a phone call away. Please call, I want to hear about you and how you outshine everyone like the infuriating mister perfect that you are. Sometimes, you’re even worse than Gale on this.
So go to hell, Rosie. Then come back stronger. Go to paradise and come back wiser. Find your way to earth and learn tenderness. Don’t ever come back from there.
Take care, please do,
Bucky
---
Rosie folds the letter, tucks it in his breast pocket and steps a foot on the boat. One day he will stop re-upping. One day he will stop falling and he will start searching for an earth to land. One day he will take Harry in his arms and stop wanting to cry. One day he will learn tenderness. One day, when the lessons are known, he will look Bucky in the eyes and say I did it. One day he will mean it.
For now, he just needs to go back to combat and do what he does best. Time to chase some monsters.