#i love u buck i love u snafu i love u sid but u guys r not in this one !!

[antigonenikk]

do i dare//disturb the universe?

words: 1621

chapter 1/?

pairing: eugene sledge/john “bucky” egan

summary: Eugene Sledge and John Egan are both adrift in the wake of the War. They find each other in a small bar in a small corner of Chinatown. And the rest, as they say, is history.

also posted on my ao3: @wintersangels69

"And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

—————————————————————

There were certain things he couldn’t do anymore. Certain things he couldn’t take. And one of them was sitting still. After- well, after, there had been talk of sending him back stateside. Buck had headed back to Wyoming soon as V-E Day and went, and Bucky was right behind him. That was, before the goddamned Docs put a stop to it. As they so helpfully pointed out, Buck had had time to recover. Had been fed and watered and was back to looking like a real human being in between his rescue and his transfer back to East Anglia. Not so with Bucky. According to medical personal on base, Bucky wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere for at least six months. See, Bucky was down to 125 lbs, half his teeth had rotted out somewhere between Bremen and Berlin, he had sores all on his feet infected and peeling from frostbite, and to top it all off he had what the Docs were calling “mono-nueropathy of the upper limb” which really just meant that his left arm kept fucking twitching. Wouldn’t goddamn stay still. All of this combined meant that Bucky himself would have to stay still. And for a long time.

It was killing him, honest to God. Buck had given him a sort of sympathetic look before he was set to leave, standing awkward by his bedside. Like he was asking John for forgiveness. For what, he couldn’t be quite sure. For leaving maybe. But it seemed lately like Buck was always leaving. Those last few months marching from one camp to the next, he had started to forget Buck’s face. The color of his eyes. The way his eyebrow would twitch when he thought something was especially funny. All he could remember was the back of his head, gleaming and golden and leaving him. Always, always leaving. But that’s how it was, wasn’t it? With people like him. Unnatural, too loud, too brash, cloying and clinging and desperate for an ounce of human touch or feeling. It never worked. No matter what he did. Whether he was loud or quiet, strong or weak, joyful or stoic. He’d made himself into a million different men between the time of his birth and the time of his discharge from the military hospital, and none of them had ever warranted anything but the back of some poor fucker’s head. He’d had a lot of time to think on that, while recovering. He’d heard the boys in the middle of the night cry out, and he’d try and pace with his stupid fucking feet, and he’d stare out the windows as the nurses fussed over him, and he’d think. About Buck. About Leaving. About Home. About what any of it all meant now that he’d survived. What were you supposed to do, after you had spent years sure you would die, trying desperately to do anything you could to survive? What did it mean to live after all of that? It seemed to Bucky like everyone around him had it figured out. Everyone but him.

He wasn’t pathetic enough to follow Gale to Wyoming. He’d had a letter delivered two weeks before his release about the wedding. And that was great. Real great. He wanted to be angry, but he knew he wouldn’t have come to the thing even if he’d been able to, even if the wedding had been held off until he could walk on his own two feet. They were young, and in love, Gale and Marge, like two fucking little Dresden Dolls, perfect happy life perfect happy family. He would have ruined it anyways. And now there was no place for him. All those nights, the soft brush of a hand in his hair, whispering, love you, Buck, love you, and never once hearing it in return. There was no place for him there. They discharged him in April 1946, after months of grueling recovery and only a handful of letters, and he headed out for somewhere. Somewhere else.

From the top deck of the boat, crowded on all sides, he could feel the breeze in his hair, and it didn’t feel like freedom should have. It just felt like more nothing.

—————————————————————

He was back on Peleliu in the dream, for some reason. Sid was above him, blood leaking from his open mouth. He hadn’t known what to do. He tried to call for a Corpsman, but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t move his arms couldn’t move his legs just the oppressive heat drowning him. And then he’d felt fingers in his mouth, and he’d looked up, and there was Merriell, his glacier blue eyes wide with unhinged glee, a knife in hand, tearing out his back molar. He tried to scream, tried to tell him. It’s me. It’s me. But the image shifted. And instead of Merriell it was him, Eugene, grinning at him beneath the pelting rain. He pulled out his own teeth, one by one, his face in an approximation of a smile, laughing, and then-

He woke up silently. He couldn’t help it if he tried. The memory of that noise, the shovel hitting the poor fucker whose name he never learnt, the memory wouldn’t let him ever get to anything but a choked out whine in his sleep. No matter how bad the dreams got. His mind knew, vaguely, that he was back home. But his body was still on that airfield, in the middle of a warm wet hell, saying, “It was him or us.”

He wasn’t gonna be able to sleep. So instead he wandered downstairs, watching the sun rise through the curtains. College, of course, had been a bust. He was technically on break and set to return in the fall, but he knew deep down he wasn’t going back. Couldn’t stand to look in the eyes of people his age and see souls lurking back there. The resentment within him bubbled up each time he saw souls that still lived and breathed and hadn’t been left back with a crying baby in Okinawa. And besides, he couldn't stand their smug indifference, as if any of them knew what it had been like in the thick of it. Half of them hadn’t even served, and the other half kept talking about the European Theatre like it meant something to him. They’d been back home for a year before he’d had an inkling of returning to the waking world, and it showed. While they celebrated Hitler’s defeat he was in a foxhole being shot at, losing his humanity inch by inch.

Part of him wanted to go to New Orleans. To ask why. Why. Why wasn’t he good enough for Merriell? Why did he leave him there, sleeping, on that train bound for Alabama? Part of him wanted to run down the street to Sid and Mary’s house and start screaming at the both of them. “I used to fuck your husband! I used to fuck him! And he left me there without saying fucking goodbye! He didn’t warn me!”

He didn’t warn me. And now it was all too late. He wouldn’t go back to school. And he’d been trying to survive for so long he couldn’t kill himself. And he couldn’t stand the thought of New Orleans and the rejection he’d find there. And going to Sid’s was really just a funny little fantasy, something to indulge in when he was feeling real low and wanted to cry for the sake of crying. There was nowhere left to go, nowhere really. And he couldn’t stay here.

The urge to flee came inside of him and started tapping at the walls of his chest. He had to get out of Mobile. He had to leave, now.

In his room he spent an hour packing the essentials. His Bible from the War tucked into his back pocket. A few changes of clothes. Soap and a razor and a second pair of shoes. A book by Eliot. It was funny. Before the war, he always thought Eliot was a real sop. Could never get into the lilting rhymes. But now, it seemed reading Four Quartets or Alfred Prufrock was the only thing that could get him to calm down when the noise reached unbearable levels inside his own head.

There was only one thing for it, really. New York. The idea called to him, deep in his bones. He could feel it. He could belong in New York. He could be as inverted as he wanted to be and no one would bat an eye if he picked the right neighborhood. He could hide among the faces of strangers and forget that the word sledgehammer existed in the English dictionary. It would be like Peking. Which he had learned to love so dearly. The noise and the beautiful tonal language, the bright lights and the rickshaws. Maybe he’d move to Chinatown even. He knew the language alright, and he’d never felt as at home as when he was dining with one of the host families last winter. Yes. Yes. This would be good. This would be a fresh start.

He left a letter to his parents. He didn’t want to give it more thought than it needed. A swift separation was for the best. It was only a matter of time before they too got sick of him, and sent him to the hospital, having seen the weakness and the black ooze at the heart of him.

By noon he was on a train headed due North, set to run into the open embrace of a new city. Set to run straight into the back of one John Egan.