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The first time Rosie got shot down - before they knew he was going to make it back - Jack grabbed Douglass by the arm on his way through Operations and gave him one order.
“Get him out of here by 2100,” the air exec told him through gritted teeth. “I'm not having a repeat performance.”
Douglass didn't have to ask any questions, just looked over to the office where he could see Crosby's dark head bowed over his desk, pencil scratching away. He wasn’t sure whether to be nervous or touched that Jack had come to him. Him and Harry had been doing, they thought, a pretty good job of keeping what was going on between them, well, between them .
Then the realisation hit him; Jack didn’t exactly have any other options. He was practically running the place. Ev was busy scaring the replacements into shape. All the others who would have cared enough to step in were either dead or captured, and that most likely included Rosie.
Familiar pain lanced through him, the kind that made him want to sink to his knees and dig into the ground and curl up under it for a while.
He missed Bubbles. He missed Hambone. He missed the men they all used to be, alive and whole and full of something he knew had been stolen from them here, more than just good sleep and real food.
“You got it,” Douglass promised.
He gave Jack what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Jack didn't return it.
At 2030, Douglass walked into Croz's office.
The navigator's head was still down over the charts open on the desk, and he didn't look up until Douglass cleared his throat to announce himself.
“What?” Croz asked flatly. The shadows under his eyes were painfully pronounced, his whole face sunken in with exhaustion, with grief.
Jack hadn't been exaggerating about the risk of him working himself to collapse for a second time. Frustration and sadness churned in his gut.
“Gotta call it here for the night,” Douglass announced. “You’ve been given a curfew.”
An unamused eyebrow was raised at him.
“Very funny. I still got stuff to do. Letters to write,” Croz told him, turning back to his desk. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up later.”
Sucking on his teeth, Douglass entered the office properly and stood over Croz’s shoulder. He knew it wouldn’t be as easy as just telling him, but that was fine. That was why he had left himself an entire half hour before Jack’s deadline.
“I’m not kidding, Jack’s given me orders to have you out of here and into a bed.”
Croz’s head rose again, and very incredulously turned to face him.
“Somehow I don’t think those were his exact words,” Croz said.
Douglass shrugged.
“Close enough,” he argued. “He doesn’t want you dropping like a lead weight in his Ops room again.”
That got a flush of shame and anger blooming all the way up from Croz’s throat to his cheeks. Missing D-Day was still a sore point, even if everyone insisted it was better for him to have slept through it than to have sent himself into heart failure trying to keep going. Even if it had been involuntary on Croz’s part.
“That was once . And I had been awake for days . I slept last night,” he scowled.
Now it was Douglass’ turn to raise an eyebrow at him. They shared a two man quonset hut, one of the privileges of being group bombardier and navigator respectively, and he knew, intimately, how little Harry slept. Even when he did, it was rarely peaceful. Neither of them, he was sure, had slept a full eight hours unaided by either pills or booze since Bremen.
“Most people do it every night,” Douglass shot back. “And for more than a few hours at a time. C’mon, Croz, get out of here before midnight for once, huh?”
Croz’s jaw tightened, and Douglass knew he was walking into dangerous territory now.
“I’ve got work to do, Dougie,” Croz ground out lowly, like a warning.
Any other time Douglass would heed it, would back off with a smile and a nod and a promise to drop off coffee and a sandwich later. Not tonight. He wasn’t going to let Croz sit in here and wallow over all their grief alone, flagellating himself with maps and headings and missions until he couldn’t see straight.
“Nothing that won’t be there tomorrow. Nothing that won’t need a clear head.” He sucked in a deep breath and took a calculated risk. “Nothing that’s gonna get Rosie back.”
The chair scraped harshly on the concrete floor as Croz stood suddenly, forcing Douglass to take a step back. Rage inflated him, stretched him into a shape Douglass was growing increasingly familiar with.
“That doesn’t mean I can just walk away from it,” he hissed.
“It does for tonight,” Douglass insisted.
Croz was trying to stare him down, but Douglass stood firm, waiting him out. Finally, Harry wavered just a little. He swallowed thickly and put his clenched fists on his hips, looking down at the floor.
“I have to do something ,” he confessed, like the admission was being pulled out of him by force. “I can’t- I need to know it’s not-”
There was a sharp inhale, and Douglass was suddenly glad for both of their sakes that he couldn’t see Harry’s face any more. With a cough, the other man got a hold of himself and raised his head, looking just over Douglass’ shoulder rather than meeting his eye. The warm, deep brown of them was poisoned somewhat by the redness of the whites, and a thick shine lay over them.
“You’re no use to anybody sitting here driving yourself crazy thinking about all the things you wish you could change, alright?” Douglass reminded him gently. “Come to bed .”
This was his final enticement, all the weight on that one word, a whole private history in just the inflection of his voice. It worked - Harry sagged, tired and forlorn, and cast one last look at his workstation.
“The letters…” he said weakly.
Douglass’ chest ached.
“Tomorrow,” he insisted.
Slowly, Croz nodded, then tidied up what needed putting away. Watching him return to the desk even just for another minute made Douglass’ fingers itch. With everything organized, Croz turned back to Douglass expectantly. If it weren’t for the large window directly in front of them, Douglass would have reached for him like he had wanted to all day, since they heard about Rosie, and would have folded him into his arms right there and then. As it was, he just gave him a small smile and tilted his head to the exit.
He checked his watch as they left. 2056. Right on time.
Jack caught his eye as they went by his office, the door ajar, and Douglass watched tension visibly leave his frame as they went. It made something prickle oddly at the back of Douglass’ throat, and he resolved to keep an eye on Jack the way Jack was clearly keeping an eye on Croz. The last thing they needed was their air exec falling apart on them too.
Douglass drove them back to their hut, the ride passing in tired silence. For just a fleeting second, Douglass rested his hand on Harry’s thigh, and got the briefest touch in return. It warmed the skin where they had connected like a brand for the rest of the journey.
Harry let out a soul-shattering sigh as the door closed behind them, one that folded him in half with the force of it. He righted himself before Douglass could rush back to catch him, sweeping one hand through his hair and mussing it out of its normal neat slick, staring off blankly at the curved ceiling of their hut. His jaw was clenched again, tight enough that Douglass could see the tendons straining. For a moment he looked like he wanted to speak. The words never came, but Douglass knew what he was thinking.
“Rosie’s gonna be fine,” he said, with a confidence he didn’t have.
“If he’s been captured-” Harry started hollowly.
“You don’t know that.” They couldn’t know he hadn’t been, either, but Douglass decidedly didn’t want to think about that right now. It had been bad enough pouring over the Red Cross lists after Munster, ticking off names with a mixture of relief and sadness. “It’s Rosie.”
“It’s Rosie,” agreed Harry with a heavy sigh, like that really did mean something. Maybe it did.
“Stay right there, alright? In fact, strip off,” Douglass told him.
“I’m really not in the mood for that right now, Dougie,” Harry said drily, but kicked off his shoes and started peeling off his uniform anyway.
Douglass didn’t bother with a witty reply, focusing instead on the semi-familiar action of taking his bunk and starting to shift it across the room to fit beside Harry’s. Once he realized what he was doing, and had stripped down to his skivvies, Harry moved to help him lift and maneuver the frame until the two cots became something almost resembling a bed big enough for two grown men. They just had to be careful not to move in a way that pushed the two apart - more than once Harry had ended up on the floor sliding between the gap that could form there.
“Where do you want to go?” Douglass asked him.
Abruptly aware of his own mounting exhaustion, he started to unpick his own uniform’s buttons, tossing the clothes down as he went. They could figure that out tomorrow. They could figure everything out tomorrow. Tonight was for sleeping and hoping and pretending.
“I really don’t mind,” said Harry. He was so thin , Douglass thought, and pale , and the stress and grief and sleep deprivation made him look both impossibly ancient and uncannily young.
Fixing him with an unimpressed look, Douglass shimmied out of his pants. Harry rolled his eyes back at him and crawled into the jerry-rigged bed, burrowing under the two blankets and rolling so his back was to him. From anyone else it would be a snub, but he knew Harry too well to not know an invitation when he saw one. Neither of them found it easy to just say what they needed. God forbid they be forced to ask for it.
After making sure the light was off (and a chair was shoved under the door handle, just in case they needed time to fix the room), Douglass crawled in after him, slotting himself along Harry’s back like they were made to fit together. Sometimes he thought they were. There was a neatness to it, to them , navigator and bombardier, side by side in the air and on the ground, a matched set. He slipped his arms around Harry and rested one palm over his heart.
It was beating steady, strong and gloriously alive . Harry’s hand covered his, interlocking their fingers.
There were a thousand confessions they could make each other in the dark. A thousand they already had. A thousand more they would, God willing.
This time, Douglass settled for burying his face in Harry’s hair and planting a kiss there on his crown, squeezing him tight like he could compress the despair out of him. In return, Harry gripped his hand harder. If he sniffed a few times too many and tried to hide his shaky breathing, Douglass didn’t need to call attention to it. If Douglass nuzzled closer and pressed more kisses to his head and neck and shoulder when the tremors ran through them both, there was no need to acknowledge it.
Sleep had begun to take him when he heard him, so soft he could barely make out the words.
“I’m lucky to have you,” Harry murmured, achingly soft, almost awed.
Douglass felt his throat tighten, his heart skip, his eyes sting. He breathed through the pain and the love until he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack.
“Yeah. Yeah I’d say we’re both pretty fuckin’ lucky, Harry.”