12 Facts about Brian and Roger (Union Jack/Destroyer)

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1. 1. He knows he’s in love with Brian from the first time they meet at Eton. Roger had caught measles and so had missed the first half term. When he first arrived back, his oldest Friend, Badger, introduced him to his roommate, Brian.

   Suddenly everything he’d read in books made sense. Unfortunately the books said he should be experiencing it for a girl.

   He was so surprised and horrified by this, that he could barely stammer out hello.

   Fortunately, Brian takes this to mean he’s shy and devotes the whole term to “bringing him out of his shell.”

   Roger doesn’t mind been thought of as shy if he gets to spend time with Brian.

    

   2. They have their first kiss after a polo match between Oxford and Reading in their second year. Roger was thrown from his horse, and was advised to rest in the medical tent, rather than go with the others into town. Brian volunteered to stay and keep an eye on him

   Perhaps it was the blow to his head that was to blame, because suddenly he was kissing Brian. When he realised what he was doing, he broke away terrified that he had ruined their friendship, with no thought of prison or the asylum that awaited him if Brian told. He was never more surprised or happy than when Brian kissed him back.

    

   3. He was never really a fascist. He doesn’t think Brian ever really believed in it either, it was just a method of getting away from everyone and just been them. Germany had always been more tolerant of the “love that dare not speak it name” than most other European nations, and Brian had met some Nazis who shared their tastes at Oxford.

   He could never bring himself to ask if Hans (the young man who met them at their arrival in Germany) was a “friend” of Brian’s, or something more. But when they found Hans body, (or what remained of it, he’d been tore apart by German Shepherds), suddenly it isn’t important. In fact nothing is except getting out of Germany alive.

    

   4. He’s not sure who out of the Invaders knew about them. All of the Kid Commandos did, but that might have been because Kid wasn’t an appropriate term to use in their case. Nick Fury and Logan did as well, but neither them ever said anything, they just let him know that they knew, and that they were fine with it and kept the others who figured it out from saying anything. He’ll not hear a bad word against either of them as a result.

   Torch, he is 99.9% sure didn’t know until he told him at the funeral. Equally he is 99.9% Namor knew, but that just raises the 101 questions about Atlantearan he knows he’ll never have the courage to ask Subby.

   He thought Steve was completely ignorant, just seeing them as good friends, until he comes back. Then Roger gets a card expressing his deepest sympathies from Steve.

   He doesn’t think much of it, until he sees the card for sale. In “husband/wife” Category of the sympathy cards. Then he remembers Steve’s sideways looks at the brunette, and the young sailor who turned up unexpectedly for the memorial service, and wonders just how much he knew.

    

   5. The first time they make love after Brian’s battle with Thor, they cause a blackout.

   They’re in a farm house, just outside of Avinyon, which has been bombed so many times it’s amazing it’s got a roof left, let along nearly five habitable rooms. The resistance have been using it for months, and for the first time in months he and Brian are in the same place with a degree of privacy, which they intend to take full advantage of.

   It’s only when they’re half way through, that a boot comes flying through the thin wall next to them. Brian sends out a bolt of electricity, and it hits the socket. The room is plunged into darkness, and (as they discover at breakfast the next morning), so is half the town.

   They’re both so shocked that they just start laughing, but first there’s a moment of silence, when they both realise who has the room next to them. Then Steve grunts and rolls over, still asleep.

   While they’re laughing, Bucky peers through the hole and angrily hisses at them to keep it down. This makes the situation even more amusing, as his eyes are screwed up very tight, so that he doesn’t have to see what they’re up to (though he’s sure an army brat knows exactly what).

   Brian manages to get control long enough to apologise and promise the young man they’d try.

   They do try, but they don’t manage it, and the next morning Brian has a shoe shaped bruise on his jaw.

    

    

   6. The first time Roger sees the new Captain America and guesses his identity, he isn’t sure whether he wants to weep, or go dig Steve up and kill him himself.

   The vibrant child that Roger knew did not deserve to be forced into a dead man’s shoes, not on top of everything he’d already being through.

   Bucky hadn’t stopped fighting since he was 16, if not younger. He deserved a chance to find out who he is without Steve, rather than trying to be Steve.

   In the end he does neither of those things. Simply calls Bucky and lets him know that he’s still here and He, Dynamite and Destroyer are willing to help in anyway they can. Somehow or other, when Bucky drops around and he sees those half dead eyes that he’s seen too many times in grown up child soldiers, he manages not to cry.

    

   7. He’s always in England for 15^th May. He goes to the little café in Soho that was one of the only places they could hold hands in public for breakfast (even though the café is now a very up market restaurant), walks from the tower of London, to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, along the River, trying not to notice how much it’s changed. Then he makes up a picnic for two and goes to the graveyard, and shares the picnic with Brian and talks until it gets dark.

   He does this, cos Spitfire visits on 11^th November, Remembrance Day or Armistice Day as he used to know it, and while he adores her as Brian’s sister, there are some things he says, some things he remembers, that no sister should have to hear about. And originally her father came with her, and he never knew about his son and Roger, and Roger didn’t want to give him a heart attack by telling him.

   The first few years, he fell asleep on the grave, but old bones don’t let him do that that eagerly any more. Instead he takes out the old jacket of Brian’s and lies cuddled with it, whether that’s on the flight back to America or wherever, his room at hotel, or more than once Brian’s old room at the family home. He keeps it carefully, so it still smells like him, and for one night a year, he can pretend that they got a proper chance.

    

    

   8. He was holding Brian in his arms when he died; telling him it was going to be alright. At the time, he thought it was more likely he was going to die, but when Brian started asking why he could smell carboxylic and violets, he knew he was dying. It comforted him, kind of the thought of neither having to grieve for the other one. He’s still holding him, when Brian finally goes still.

   When he comes around in the hospital after the accident, his first thought is for Brian, but it’s nearly four days before anyone tells him that Brian didn’t make it. It’s the only thing he can’t forgive God for.

    

   9. He didn’t join V battalion for revenge, or even properly to hunt down Nazis. He did so, because he’d spent nearly four years looking out for the Kid Commandos and wasn’t going to abandon them when they needed him the most.

   He’d seen enough men of Lord Faulworth’s generation to know that the peace is often harder on the soldier than the war.

   He knew the kids needed to see the monsters who had terrorised them behind bars, but he was honestly happier when they started working towards making sure it never happened again.

   After all, all revenge had got them last time was another war in just over two decades.

    

   10. He has to fight not to laugh the first time he sees the Avengers. He can’t help it, he’ll always remember Thor as the blond who tried to kill Brian, when he was dressed as Stalin. When the world seemed to get a lot madder in the fifties and sixties, the thought that the man they hated was the one his beloved nearly laid down his life to save both amused and saddened him.

   He also remembers Thor as the owner of the “Dog” which wiped out a whole platoon of soldiers, British, American and also some Germans in Bastogne in ’44.

   He also wishes he had the guts to ask Bucky what he thinks of working beside the Norse god. The Kid always was a little less forgiving than his partner.

    

   And two extra ones, just cost there’s so little out there.

    

   11. His father was a conscientious objector. He never knew him, as he died the year he was born, but he knows that much. That he was able to convince a committee that he was a true “conies” and became a stretcher bearer. He also knows that he was mentioned in the dispatches, because his mother always brought it up when ever anyone mentioned it.

   After the war, when he joins V Battalion, he wishes he had. So he could ask someone relatively neutral if he was doing the right thing.

    

   12. The ride back after they rescue Brian is what convinces him he’ll never be an Invader. Beside the sense of worthlessness and treachery, that he’ll spend the rest of his life fighting to over come, He could never put Brian though what the Torch was going though. Watching the person you care about hang between life and death and not being able to do anything.

   So he tells Cap he won’t join the Invaders, and lets him think it’s because of Dynamite. When they assign him Cat, the youngest of the Kid Commandos as his intelligence contact, he tells her firmly that if anything happens to him, she isn’t to let anyone, especially not Brian know until after he’s dead, and even then, no matter how it happened, she is to say that it was quick and painless and that he never knew what hit him. He also gives her a letter to give to Brian after he’s gone.

   It’s about a month after the funeral that there’s a knock on the door and Cat is standing there. She’s put on weight, which means she looks thin rather than skeletal. She was out of the country when Brian died (he thinks either Russia or Korea, she was very vague when he asked her), and only just got the news. Carefully, she hands him two letters back.

   Brian had understood.