This You Will Be The One Worth Knowing

in a fandom where the main ship has, as of today, 1968 fics out of over 3000 total

i really don't think anyone should be throwing a hissy fit over the existence a pairing that has less than 100 fics on ao3, or saying that it doesn't count as a rarepair

“Bucky,” Gale says. “Hey, you’re alright.”

John is caught in the throes of whatever has him, his body rigid, his face slick with sweat. When Gale reaches out to shake his shoulders, John's hand flies up to grip Gale's wrist with startling strength.

“It’s me, John,” Gale says, making no move to break free.

John's eyes snap open, wild and unfocused for a moment before recognition dawns. He blinks hard, exhaling through his nose, then sits up slowly. His breathing is still ragged, his face pale and drawn in the moonlight filtering through the window.

“Buck,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Christ. I wake you?”

Gale isn’t sure whether to answer. John doesn’t seem to need him to, pressing his palm against his eyes instead. With his wrist still caught in John’s hand, Gale perches on the edge of the bed, not knowing what else to do.

“Bad one?” he asks.

John scrubs his face with one hand. Quiet for a long moment, then turns to Gale with something like embarrassment. “Yeah. It's always the same things. The crash. The body. The march. Wondering if you..." He trails off, shaking his head. “Doesn't matter.”

“What about me?”

The silence lasts for so long that Gale thinks there might not be an answer before John finally speaks.

“Wondering if you made it. If you were alive. If I'd ever see you again,” he says, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “Sometimes I didn't. In the dreams, I mean.”

He sounds calm, like he’s made peace with it, but the lingering debris of the nightmare on his face suggests the absolute opposite. Gale hasn’t allowed himself to dwell on what John's experience must have been like—the not knowing, the agonizing uncertainty. In the same way, he doesn’t dwell on the guilt that has been eating at him since the day he went over that camp wall. Not once had it crossed his mind that they should talk through it, but now he doubts what good keeping silent has done for either of them.

“Bucky, I—”

“I’m glad you got out first, Buck,” John says firmly, as if he suspects what’s coming is an apology. “That ain’t ever gonna change.”

And that’s the thing about John, dressing up perceptiveness as generosity. Sometimes Gale thinks, not without some kind of resentment, that John refuses to accept an apology only because he knows a few words of regret would let them both off the hook too easily and close the door on the very thing they need to look at. 

Gale’s not certain what else he could say, anyway. He swallows. “Okay.”

John smiles. After a beat, he adds, “having you here helps, y’know? With these damn dreams.” He finally lets go of Gale’s hand, leaving behind a cold trace and a dull ache in the bone. They sit mutely for a while, until John asks, “you ever dreamt about it?”

His unreadable gaze has a weight to it. Gale flexes his wrist, knowing he won't get many more chances to give something back.

“Sometimes,” he starts, feeling the words all tangled in his mouth. “Sometimes it’s Regensburg. Or the day my fort was hit. Or fighting the guards. Thought about putting an unloaded gun below my pillow just so I could hold it and feel safe.” He stops to inhale, letting the cold night air push the rest of the words out. “One time I woke up and there were bruises on Marge’s arms. No idea what I’d done.”

John goes stiff, but his breathing slows, turning softer. “Shit. That’s rough.” He pauses. “Was that—was that the reason?”

The question is complete without further specification. Gale's mouth goes dry, feeling as though he’s said too much, even while barely scratching the surface of it.

“Yeah,” he says, the lie coming easier this time, wrapped tightly in the truth. “Sort of, I think.”

John lets out a long, weathered sigh. He pulls his legs up, hunching over his knees. He still sleeps in his briefs. His muscles look slackened now, covered with a layer of softness, his torso thicker. Yet there is strength moving underneath, as if his body steadfastly refuses to come to terms with the passage of time. Motionless, his thighs look like tree trunks rooted deeply in the earth, his back a broad expanse pale as snow.

Gale wants to touch him. The urge is so strong it makes his fingers tremble. John is close enough that Gale can feel his breath against his shoulder. Touching him would be the easiest thing Gale has ever done, if only he could reach out.

Whatever courage Gale had gathered leaks right out of him, though, when John raises his head and his eyes are so clear Gale sees his own reflection in them. 

“Well. For what it's worth, I’m not afraid of guns,” John says, his voice slips back into its usual whimsical cadence. “Don’t mind a bit of horseplay, for that matter.”

Gale stares, taken aback. Then laughs despite himself. “Jesus, Bucky.”

John hums, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. “I mean it.” Then, with a more serious face, he says again, “having you here helps, Buck.”

so he’s actually ssssuper laid back and chilled and not a control freak

Here, Boy

(dog-coded Gale fic)

Gale knew that very first day that he was a stray, showing up in the doorway of John Egan’s room unloved and shy and bristling, coaxed closer with gentle touches and an eager voice—and Gale had fallen for it, head over heels.

He knows what it’s like to be kicked in the ribs, made to lie outside on the porch. To be fed scraps and yelled at. To be desolately desperate for love. But John gave it freely with open-handed affection, naming Gale and scrubbing fingers through his hair and squeezing him around the ribs to lift him bodily off the ground. Gale stared after him, answered his voice, followed at his heels. Guarded and guided, accepting John’s praise and requests with a voracious, guilty craving he fought to conceal. Hoping John couldn't see it in his eyes. 

*** Dog coded!Gale, or

When John gets back to Thorpe Abbots, Gale can't cope

Bucky Cleven and Bucky Egan, the two squadron leaders who went down over Bremen and Münster, were the very soul of Romanticism. - A Wing and a Prayer, Harry Crosby

Masters of the Air | The Selected Poems of A.E. Housman

Books in HBO War, Part III

He spent his life in unrequited love with his best friend Moses Jackson (athletic, outgoing, straight, a bit of a philistine); Housman was very shy, stiff, and one person described him as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts".

EDIT: The daddy issues! How could I forget the parallels with daddy issues: Housman’s father was a jovial guy but a heavy drinker and bad with money, and often invested in crazy get-rich-quick schemes (like growing and preserving exotic fruits?)

His poems are rather bleak and pessimistic, with lots of talk of death and suicide, unrequited love, and the “attitude that the universe is cruel and hostile, created by a God who has abandoned it”. But he writes it with a quiet acceptance, and there’s some irony and wit to them (and in some cases a little wink, where I think he might be playing up the drama a bit.)

A lot of his poetry is laced through with queer subtext but in a few it's pretty much just text--probably most notably in two about a suicide he read about in the paper, one written after Oscar Wilde's arrest (he even sent him a copy of his book when he was in prison), "He could not stay for me" and "Because I liked you better" (those last three were only published posthumously)

Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised To throw the thought away [...]

Given his repression of both his sexuality and his emotional/poetical side--and they way they were intrinsically linked--it's maybe not a surprise he once referred to his poetry as coming out of him like "morbid secretions"(!)(christ, my guy)

As a scholar, he was "worshiped and hated for his meticulous standards and his appalling sarcasms on the unscholarly". Truly, he was suuuuch a cocky little shit towards other scholars and after his death, his brother found notes with pre-written barbs awaiting assignment: “If we all knew as little as __ does, we should doubtless find the classics as easy as he does.” “Nature, not content with denying to Mr __ the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.” (I ❤️ him, I'm sorry!)

He spent nearly 30 years on translating his edition of "Astronomica", a 5 book Latin poem about astronomy and astrology, which he himself described as “so dull that few professed scholars can read it”. The undertaking was summed up by others as both an opportunity to show off and establish THEE authoritative text, and as an act of self-punishment.

He was so in love with his best friend that there's an acclaimed play about it--"The Invention of Love" by Tom Stoppard (of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” fame). It's pretty dense with esoteric references (and a fair bit of Latin)--a lot of it went over my head this first read but if you just let it wash over you, the meat of it is SO good and funny and bittersweet

@hogans-heroes raised the question of whether one of the Buckies washed out of fighter pilot school intentionally to follow the other—Housman failed his final exams despite being a promising student and ended up getting a job with Jackson in the Patent Office. The Invention of Love implies it was intentional:

Jackson: Someone said you ploughed yourself on purpose. […] We got what we wanted, Pollard at the British Museum and here's me with an Examinership and three hundred a year with prospects… You were cleverer than any of us, Hous! Housman: I didn't get what I wanted, that's true, but I want what I've got. Jackson: Pushing a pen at thirty-eight shillings a week. Housman: But here we are, you and I, we eat the same meals in the same digs, catch the same train to work in the same office, and the work is easy, I've got time to do classics … and friendship is all, sometimes I'm so happy, it makes me dizzy - [...]

The play also sums up his feelings for Jackson like this (!!!):

Housman: What do I want? Chamberlain: Nothing which you'd call indecent, though I don't see what's wrong with it myself. You want to be brothers-in-arms, to have him to yourself… to be shipwrecked together, (to) perform valiant deeds to earn his admiration, to save him from certain death, to die for him—to die in his arms, like a Spartan, kissed once on the lips… or just run his errands in the meanwhile. You want him to know what cannot be spoken, and to make the perfect reply, in the same language.

And that bit pulls from what his brother shared in an essay after Housman's death:

In Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence gives the following introspective account of himself: “There was my craving to be liked--so strong and nervous that never could I open myself friendly to another. The terror of failure in an effort so important made me shrink from trying; besides, there was the standard; for intimacy seemed shameful unless the other could make the perfect reply, in the same language, after the same method, for the same reasons ….” Against this passage, Alfred wrote in the margin "This is me."

In that same essay he says he found Jackson’s last letter to Housman, written as he was dying in faint pencil; Housman had gone over all the letters in ink 🥺😩

If you read this far, have a bonus gif! That I cut for being too much reading lol