#halona x brady

[bcolfanfic]

universal sound au•gender-integrated 100bg

house fire

authors note: hi! writing this kind of au is new for me so i hope its alright. massive s/o to ww2 rpf is fine discord server for being so lovely and encouraging <3 bare bones run down: halona is a ball turret gunner, elowyn is a pilot + lesbian who was involved with tatty back on base and has been projecting missing her onto halona :p and cj was a navigator.

cj is *not* dead, while all this is going on she's a train evading via the comet line. which of course crank nor anyone else has a way of knowing.

---

Crank took a breath in before he knocked on the library door, the quiet murmur of conversation coming through from the other side.

When a few seconds went by without any movement he opened the door himself. Brady was seated in the far corner, his back slightly hunched over a stack of papers that sprawled across the table. Halona was pressed shoulder to shoulder next to him, leaning into his space to tell him something he couldn't quite hear- but whatever it was made Brady laugh under his breath. He tilted his head to look at her, eyes soft.

Better Clark sent me than Elowyn, Crank thought to no one.

Brady reached toward Halona’s hair, his fingers ghosting near her face before Crank cleared his throat, loud and pointed. Both of them jolted like they’d been burned.

Turning his head towards him, Brady sucked in his bottom lip.

"Hm?"

"Colonel Clark wants to run us through some escape stuff,"

Halona gathered her things and stood with a soft, Thanks Crank as she brushed past without meeting his eyes. But Brady didn’t move. He just stared at the table in front of him, shoulders tight.

It chipped at his patience.

"Come on, lover boy," Crank muttered, turning back and giving the door frame a pat. "we’ve got more important things to do."

"You're acting like El." Brady finally said as he pushed in his chair and stood, budging past Crank- shoulder pushing against his side hard enough that he had feeling it was intentional.

Crank paused for a beat before he followed him, boots brushing against the dust collecting on the floor. "And how am I doin' that?" He called out after him, edge of his voice biting at Brady's heels.

He could sense him rolling his eyes without seeing his face, tone annoyed. "By acting like the sky's gonna fall if I look at Hallie one way or another."

Crank inhaled, flexing his fingers at his side, knuckles aching to be popped. It was more complicated than that- for Elowyn of all people especially. But the root of the way her eyes narrowed at the two of them made enough sense to him. Johnny had never been good at compartmentalizing. And distractions were a liability, now more than ever.

Halona was a good girl; he'd seen enough of her around CJ to know that. He had more faith in her to not get distracted than he did Brady.

It was only the secondary reason that he felt like he could understand the way Elowyn's face twisted every time Brady's hand lingered on her friend's back- and every time he designated himself the one to swipe at the grime that managed to collect itself on the edges of the band-aid patched over her eye.

It made him miss having someone- miss CJ- so much it made his chest ache.

"There’s a whole lot to do around here without you trippin’ over yourself about her. We’ve got more important things to worry about." He said with a gesture at nothing. "El's right about that much."

"El’s just pissy ‘cause she’s jealous." Brady cut in, words sounding somewhat practiced as his tone dropped. "Halona knows it, and so does everyone else with a brain in their skull."

"Doesn’t mean she’s wrong," Crank mumbled, jaw feeling tight as he pushed open the door to the bunk room. Brady was so close behind him he could feel his breath on his neck.

"Yeah and you'd be singing a real different tune if CJ was here." He said, loud as he pushed past him into the room.

Crank froze where he stood in the doorway, suddenly feeling lightheaded. The girls had known from the beginning, and he had a hunch Croz did too if for no other reason than navigator proximity.

But not anyone else, Brady least of all. When he blinked and found his bearings, there was a proud grin tugging at Johnny's mouth.

"The hell 's that supposed to mean?"

Brady didn't miss a beat, stepping back towards him. "You know what it means, you were screwing her." he said, edging on shouting. "And you," He continued, jabbing his finger almost right into his face "wouldn't be acting like we all oughta' take celibacy vows in here if she showed up tomorrow."

Crank’s face burned, and he could sense everyone's eyes on him even when he didn't find he had the gall to look back. Settling for the safest bet he looked away from Brady at where Elowyn was sitting on the edge of her bunk, gaze flicking between the two of them, impassive. Halona had sat herself down at by her feet, looking up at her with one side of her cheek sucked in. Elowyn leaned down to say something in her ear.

Brady scoffed, expectant, and Crank felt like his strings had been cut.

"You know what- go fuck yourself," he spat as he stepped to him, enough that Brady dropped his finger away. "Or go screw Hallie, don't need my bles-"

Before he could even finish the sentence, Brady lunged, his fist meeting Crank's jaw with a crack.

All the air was sucked out of the room at once and Crank staggered back, blood rushing to his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, tasting copper as he stumbled to keep his footing. Who he was pretty sure was Bucky came over to haul him up by one arm, barking something at Brady that felt like white noise to his ears.

When he looked at Elowyn again her face had hardened, and it looked like she might say something, but the words never came.

"You think you got everything out of your system there boys?" Colonel Clark said as he walked out from where he'd been in the corner of the room, brows furrowed with his arms crossed over his chest. He clapped a hand on Brady's shoulder and motioned for him to go stand where he'd just come from- as far away from Crank as he was going to get in the small space.

Hearing Elowyn's voice, low and urgent pulled his attention back to her and when he looked over, she had shimmied out of her bunk to sit next to Halona on the floor. Halona looked back at him when he figured that she could sense his staring, lips pressed in a thin line- wet glint in her eye that wasn't bandaged.

Crank swallowed, guilt settling his gut like a stone. If CJ was here, he thought, she would've killed him for making Hallie cry. She'd about knocked a RAF prick on his ass over much less.

Every move he made feeling forced, mechanical, he made himself sit in the empty chair next to Buck at the table, furling and unfurling his fingers around nothing.

"Just this place talking." Buck had taken up saying to all of them.

Crank found himself wishing this place would just shut it if it didn't have a damn thing useful to say, or an MIA navigator to spit out through the fence.

[bcolfanfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/bcolfanfic/769237319741063168

like… i wanna ask 3 and 6 with buck and halona 😧 if u can make it work 😧

Halona took a step and misjudged the distance, the snow on the ground suddenly closer than thought it ought to be. A guard said something that she only understood half of in German and she dragged her head up to gage where it was coming from.

The yard looked emptier than she remembered it looking a few minutes ago.

She couldn’t judge how far away the guard was, or how far she was from the bunk house- the disorientation coursing through her brain, reaching the front of her head and looping back around. When the snow seemed to shift again, she took a step back, flinching at the voice that sounded much closer, now accompanied by the sniffs of a dog.

„Falscher Weg, du nutzloser Kerl!“

The air cut through her one good eye, and everything felt blurry- feet stumbling across the frozen dirt as the dog went from sniffling to growling.

Two more words in German and the weight of the animal slammed into her side like a wrecking ball, teeth tearing right through the layers of her coat and into the skin of her hip.

The pain exploded through her, white-hot and immediate. Her body hit the frozen ground, knees scraping, and she barely managed to twist away, but the teeth held fast. She tried to push at it, but it was no use, bite only digging in stronger.

“Call the damn dog off!”

Buck, she realized, and tried to call out something back to him but couldn't force anything to leave her throat save for a half-garbled scream.

The dog was yanked off her in a rough motion and the pressure lifted from her hip, but pain flared up her side- snow beneath her turning red.

She heard Gale’s voice again, this time closer, as strong hands wrapped around her shoulders, hauling her upright. His grip was warm, but she barely had the wherewithal to register it.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He said, helping her to her feet, and picking her up again when she fell right back to the ground.

Halona blinked and she was inside, but it seemed like everyone else had gone outside, voices that felt too far away to be coming from anywhere else just barley making it through the cotton it felt like someone had shoved in both ears.

She heard Brady- she thought it was Brady- shouting but couldn't make any of it out clear enough to understand.

“They sicced it on her!” someone that sounded an awful lot like Benny joined in. The anger in his voice sliced through the fog enough to make her recoil back into Gale, breathing coming in shallow pants.

The sound of footsteps, running, and more shouting all blurred together into one mass of terrifying noise.

“Brady, stop!”

Elowyn’s voice stuck out among the others, but it still felt clouded. The ceiling of the stalag was there, and real. Gale was practically breathing down her neck and her side throbbed. Everything else felt disjointed.

Then, the sharp crack of a gunshot split the air, the pulse of the movement coming from outside quickened, and suddenly the voices crashing over one another sounded a whole lot closer.

“If your name isn’t Elowyn, you need to back up,” Gale’s voice barked.

The room went still for a fraction of a second, who she recognized more clearly as Elowyn breaking it first.

“Brady can stay."

She could feel Gale shift as he hesitated, but he let out a resigned sigh and didn't push.

“Alright,” he mumbled before raising his tone back towards the others." “If you're not El or Brady, ten steps back that’a way,"

Brady’s voice came through next, trembling.

“Colonel Clark’s gettin’ a medic.”

Medic echoed off of every side of her head and drove her hand back to where her side was still throbbing. She shoved it under the torn layers of her coat, jolting when she felt it- hot and sticky blood seeping between her fingers and over the back of her hand.

A whimper broke from her lips before she could stop it, edges creeping into her vision and pulling everything into a narrow tunnel.

“Hey, hey,” Gale said, gripping one shoulder under his palm. “Look at me, Halona, you need to breathe.”

Her fingers shook as she pressed harder against the wound, someone grabbed for her wrist, and she went to yank it away before it set in that it was Brady.

"Let me see it Hallie," He said, gently lifting her fingers from her side. He was holding what she could only assume was someone's shirt, using it to wipe the blood off of her hand.

Faintly, she felt Elowyn putting her scarf against her side, breath hitching when she looked down and saw how quickly it was soaking through.

“You’re alright,” Brady whispered as he got the last of the blood from her palm and replaced the stained t-shirt with his own hand, intertwining their fingers. "Don't touch it, just breathe."

Tightness gripped her chest, but she squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to focus. Her fingers clenched around his so hard she worried for a moment she might be hurting him.

But Brady's grip didn't falter, the pressure dulling the edges of her panic just enough for her to exhale without it feeling forced.

xxx

[bcolfanfic]

halona is so sweet

my babyyy. her dog attack story/fic should be going up soon but here’s some softer post war ramblings about her and brady.

- idk if i’ve said this on tumblr or just discord but they don’t actually kiss until post liberation. babies. there is a one off two off ~incident~ in the stalag where they like. get each other off but they don’t kiss so obviously it means nothing (:

- benny wants to Scream when he kinda ribs brady about hearing it and he completely dead serious is just. halona’s my friend. it doesn’t mean anything.

- brady also just feels Bad about it and tries to apologize, which she shuts down but. they otherwise don’t really talk about it. the march happens shortly after and there’s enough going on as is.

- then post liberation she’s trying to keep up w brady in the partying/doesn’t want to pull him from his friends but. hatesss how crowded the o-club is. makes her itchy and she can’t even see where elowyn is to latch onto her instead so she panics a little.

- brady gets her outta there and back to the bunks and. it’s quiet. she looks so pretty in this light, the war is over and they both go in to kiss each other at the same time. have been waiting long enough :p

- **i need to do more research on hawaiian service members pre: hawaii being a state stuff so pls excuse any discrepancies here (still developing halona’s backstory more but her dad is an american navy admiral) when everyone is getting their shit sorted to go home from TA brady and his moving too fast heart wants to take halona home to meet his mom and sisters Right Away Immediately. talks himself off that ledge and tells her she should go home and see her folks but. you know there’s a lot i wanna leave here, and this isn’t one of those things.

- writes her the second he gets home and her family is so ::eyes:: about her getting a letter from a boy she served with when she’s barley through the front door. but they worry about her and think it might be good for her to be with someone who Understands so. no hard feelings save for her dad being very 1940s You Tell That Boy I Also Know How Guns Work lmao.

- brady’s sisters are SOOOO nosy nellie about this girllll he’s writing to. they make him tell them everythingggg about her and even write a letter to her themselves for him to stick in with his.

- once things are a bit more settled he pulls some strings to have a reason to go do some flight instruction at a base in hawaii and see her <3. so nervous bc he’s scared things are gonna be Different. which they are in some sense, but not in a bad way.

- is a little bit tiny smidge scared her dad is gonna hate him, is sweating a little when he’s introducing himself but. it goes okay. brady is a good man 🙏🏼

- ^ that last pinterest photo is her later down the line w her and brady’s little girl samara <3. 50% named after elowyn’s co-pilot that died before she could bail out, mara. brady calls her his little peanut and she VERY stubbornly informs him she is not a peanut, she is a girl. 🙄

[bcolfanfic]

literally makes my heart break to think of them setting a dog on halona :( she doesn’t get hurt does she? i’m also sorta here for the angst though so if you have any more thoughts pls share. feel like it’s something that would make stalag bucky go even more insane

it gets her in the leg ): not catastrophically but enough that she’s got a nasty gash and a camp medic’s gotta look at it which goes. bad in the same way someone checking out her eye when she first got the stalag went. poor girl.

but yeah all the guys are kinda lose their shit over it. think it’s one of the times bucky gets snappy with colonel clark (if ur memory is shaky he’s the officer that says the ‘there are only americans in stalag luft iii’ and stops the riot over bucky. i think their relationship is inchresting more people should write it) in a very “im hitting my brink with how much i can tolerate in here” way. and colonel clark has to tell him getting himself a bullet in the head trying to avenge her isn’t gonna do anything for halona or anyone (:

one tiny bright side, by this time this happens she’s gotten a lot closer w brady. and he’s a good help with her skittishness about getting medical attention. gives him +.5 points in el’s book because it’s obvious in all of that he genuinely cares for her and she trusts him.

[bcolfanfic]

soft hallie/brady hcs pls 🥺

beloveds…

like i said in a diff post elowyn normally sleeps in her bunk with her. halona has a really rough time with sleep ): has night terrors and el worries about her fully getting out of bed and accidentally hurting herself or worse wandering outside and getting the ire of a guard. and even night terrors aside has a horrible time falling asleep w/ how her mind feels like it’s racing 24/7.

then elowyn gets sick (: and bc she wants to avoid giving to hallie at all costs she very begrudgingly goes to brady all. i still don’t like you 😐 but you need to do something for me 😐. and asks him if he minds sleeping in hallie’s bunk until her cold has passed.

and ofc he doesn’t mind. nods very earnestly and says he’s got it, she doesn’t have anything to worry about.

elowyn: well i do. but thank you.

sweet lover boy brady crammed in halona’s bunk with her at night talking to her all quiet when she can’t sleep and realizing how much he really does like her. feels something close to love which scares him to death but. feels it all the same watching her breathe as she sleeps, feeling her feeling around for him to curl tighter into when she’s scared. his girl ):

**this is before they’ve even kissed. they move slowwww as sloths in that regard bc stalag brain wise it feels like a line cross that they couldn’t take back which feels. scary. makes crank’s jab in house fire a little funny in that he’s like GO FUCK HER!!! when they haven’t even smooched.