Archive of Our Own ^beta

John is fifteen when he sees his father cry. It is both the first time, and the last. 

The woods are peaceful, filled with flittering birdsong and dappled sunlight that warms John’s winter starved skin. The undergrowth of the forest crunches under his weight as he steps over roots and minds his footing. There’s no clear trail, but he knows where he’s going, his tried and true fishing rod slung over his shoulder. 

His father isn’t too far behind. John can hear his footsteps, louder and heavier than John’s own. Uneven gait from the limp caused by an old injury he never told John or his sisters about. John had come to the conclusion on his own that it had been left to him from his time as a soldier. 

As John got older, he was starting to piece things together about his parents. Things that neither one would tell him, and things he would never talk to them about. He supposed it was just the nature of growing older and understanding more about the world. 

A sudden flash of blue catches John’s eye, and a shrill shriek follows. A blue jay lands on a branch above him. She stares down at him, black beads of her eyes asking him, What are you? Do you benefit my life in some way?

The bird tilts her head, screams again. John smiles. 

“I don’t have anything to give you, ma’am,” he says regretfully, holding his palms out flat for her to see that he was empty handed. 

Behind him, his father stops as well and follows John’s eye line to the curious feathered animal. 

“Beautiful little thing,” his father comments.

John nods wordlessly, head tilted upward and not taking his wide eyes off the bird. As he watches her peck at the bark under her clawed feet, he feels his father’s gaze travel down from the bow of the tree branch, to John. 

“You keep that. All that wonder about the world, son. Tie yourself to the ground with it, if you have to.”

John looks back to his father, blue eyes bright, and tilts his head like the jay. There’s a question he should ask, but he doesn’t know what it is. 

“You’re a good kid, even with that strong head you get from your Ma. Sometimes though…I think you like getting into trouble too much.”

“Hey. I can’t help it,” John laughs when his father ruffles the hair on his head, pulling out of his reach and saying with conviction, “It’s all I know!”

John’s father never got mad at him when he did manage to get himself in trouble, not really. If anything, John had always felt his father was proud of him, laughing over how he got black eye or listening carefully when John would spin a tale of his latest conquests. John second guessed it now. Part of him wonders if his mother put him up to it. Trying to tame the fire, reel him in.

“You know. A bird like that doesn’t know anything beyond these woods. Never has to think about anything other than catching bugs, raising their babies good and strong. Doesn’t know the nature of love or war. She’s unburdened and free,” his father pauses, “Life won’t ever be hard for her in the same way it is for us.” For you. 

“Christ. Are you dyin’ or something?” John says with an amused huff at the way his father was talking in a kind of abstract. 

John’s own teenage riddled brain wouldn’t register everything his father said to him until much later in life. Now, he was itching to go get his line in the water, wanting to watch the bird in the tree, without a side of whatever wisdom his father was trying to impart on him.

The jay bobs her head, clicking low in her throat before flapping her wings and disappearing into the thick of the trees. A blue feather floats down to the forest floor in her wake. 

“Ah. I just don’t want to have to worry about you, John,” his father says. His voice is even, but when John looks, he thinks he catches a wet gleam under his eyes, “Keep your head on you. Be a good man, that's all.” 

There were cracks in his father. John wondered if he would splinter from the intricacies of life someday, too. 

ོ

Curt is gone. 

He’s probably dead. 

John had told Curt that he didn’t feel a thing. He had to say that, had to put a cap on the bottle, otherwise everything would spill out and he’d be a mess of tangled wires and brains and guts that no one would be able to put back together again. It was all hot to the touch, and someone would get burned if they got too close to the inside of him. 

The cool metal of a B-17’s wing is solid underneath John as he stares up at the night sky. He can feel the ghost of Curt’s fist if he thinks hard enough. Can milk the pain a little more from the echo of the past, but it won’t last. 

His heart feels weak and fluttery in his chest. Doesn’t feel strong like a good man’s heart would. Only feels battered and bruised from the alcohol, from the pain, and the loss. Throbs in waves like unshed tears. 

John doesn’t know what to do with it all, staring into the dark and feeling like he can’t breathe. 

I’m fine. John tells himself. Would tell that to anybody who asked him.

I don’t even feel it, as he writhed in agony just below the surface. No one had to know. No one had to see. 

Gale could see it. John hated him for it sometimes. Why did he have any right to see into the workings of John’s head? Why did he need to? It was a mess up there. It felt wrong that Gale had to know that, had to burn himself to understand John. 

John stares and stares at the dark void of the sky and the beacons of stars between the clouds for a long while. So long, that eventually the whole of it begins to lighten, dimming the glow of stars with the steady arrival of the sun. The world was waking up, and John felt numb. Limbs cold. Mind fuzzy.  

A faint sound clattering against metal gets him to turn his head, pries his eyes from the distant gape of the universe. 

There’s a small bird, a mere few feet away from him on the wing. Its feathers could be blue, or maybe it was the morning light that made it seem one with the rest of the early morning surroundings. John watches it with dull eyes.

The bird looks at him. Doesn’t make a sound as it hops closer. John thinks about the forest and the trees, and his father. Am I letting you down. John tried to be a good man in the ways he could. 

As he got older, things only grew. Too big, and too much. A giant canyon in his soul that he didn’t always understand, only that it was always getting in the way of the man he thought he should be. It was too wide to fathom crossing. John drowned it out with the drinks and the bravado, but he was always there teetering on the edge of something he didn’t understand. A real good man wouldn’t struggle so hard.

“If you’re trying to tell me something, it isn’t working,” John murmurs at the bird. If this was the universe throwing him a bone, well, it was way past that time. It didn’t mean anything to him now. 

The bird flies away, and John doesn’t cry. 

ོ

The sun was warm, the leather of the steering wheel under John’s callused hand well worn and familiar. There’s a song in his head, and it leaves him as he hums all the way up the dirt road and past the fence posts he had fixed up only days ago. 

When he shuts the truck off, he gathers everything from the passenger seat into his arms, detesting the thought of making two trips. It’s only a box from the hardware store and a large bag of birdseed, heavy on his shoulder. Glancing over the cab of the truck before shutting the door, he notices some of the grain had spilled out onto the truck seat, even all the way down onto the floor. It would be a pain to get it out of all the small crevices.

John winces, He’s gonna kill me. He’d deal with it later. 

The back yard is quiet and fenceless, backed up onto a patch of woods and a gurgling creek just beyond it. The flora is green and bright, and life crawls abundant around him. John doesn’t head inside first, just makes his way to the tree he had already hung a sturdy metal hook on before running his little errand in town.

Cutting into the box with a key from his pocket, he unfolds a simple metal contraption with two tiers. John hangs it from the tree’s low hanging branch, making sure it’s good and secure with a tug on the chain that it hangs from. 

John stands back with his hands on his hips and admires his handiwork for a moment before ripping the bag of seed open and filling the bird feeder with a generous amount of the good stuff. John figured making their life easier was no strain on him, so why shouldn’t he? 

Wiping his hands on his pants, John hears the creak of the back screen door open. A large dog bounds out to meet him, and John gladly bends to his knees to offer her some deep neck scratches in the thick of her fur. “There’s my girl, huh.”  

The dog tries to lick at his face, quickly giving up when she realizes there was delicious stray bird seed to be cleaned up among the grass. When John looks up, Gale is partway through the yard, smiling at him in a way that John used to scratch his head over. 

John knew it now for what it was; love. 

“How was town?” Gale asks, offering a hand as John rises back to his feet.

John kisses Gale’s cheek in a hello, “It was good. Sally said those books you wanted would be here next week.”

Gale hums thoughtfully, “I gotta thank her for doing that.”

John smiles, he didn’t doubt Gale would find a way to go above and beyond to show how thankful he really was.

“The bird feeder is nice.”

“Looks good there, huh?” John says, moving to wrap his arms around Gale from behind, curving his back so he could rest his chin on the gentle slope of Gale’s shoulder. 

“Looks perfect,” Gale agrees, “I can see it well from the bedroom, too.”

Gale leans into John and they stand like that for a while. John keeps humming the song that was stuck in his head and kisses the familiar freckles on Gale’s neck, until Gale tells him they should start thinking about dinner. 

John doesn’t expect birds to show up right off the bat. Animals took time to give trust, and often it didn’t come lightly. Definitely not quick. A random object smelling of people and food would probably take them a bit to come around to.

When he wakes up the next morning, the line of Gale’s body is pressed close to his own. John’s feet are trapped under the dog. It’s quiet and the light is low, and to his surprise, John hears a familiar call from somewhere out in the yard, drifting in through their open window. Unmistakable. Blue jay.

John just closes his eyes, content to listen to the chattering. He doesn’t need to look to know it’s there, as he untucks his feet from the dog at the foot of the bed and curls his large frame closer to Gale. Nuzzles in the crook of Gale’s neck and breathes in the soft sleepy smell of him. 

I’m tying myself down with it, he thinks. The jay shrieks. 

John doesn’t know if he’ll ever quite feel like he’s the man his father told him to be, the nightmares and the guilt hold too fast inside him. The war always aching like a nasty bruise that won’t fade. But he’s warm, and he knows what love is. He’s got a life in his hands that allows him some peace. 

Never destined to be a perfect man, but almost starting to believe that he was a good one.