Chapter Text
I feel lighter than I have in so much time
I've crossed the border line of weightless
One deep breath out from the sky
I've reached a rarer height now that I can confirm
All our weight is just a burden offered to us by the world
September 1st, 1946, South Dakota
It was the first day of September, but the heat was still unforgiving. When you sat inside of it, the Chevrolet felt like a metal can left in the sun for too long, so Gale, a toothpick hanging from the corner of his mouth, rolled both windows down, allowing for the dry air to rush in from the outside and whip through the cabin. He sighed and loosened his collar; his sleeves were already folded above his elbows, a thin film of sweat gleaming on his skin. The world around him hummed, all golden with slants of afternoon light and swollen with the incessant rhythm of cicadas’ song.
It was a long drive, seventeen-or-so hours behind the wheel. He’d done nine already and was planning to stop over for the night, finding himself a cheap room in one of the roadside motels. They all looked the same: an exhausted, barely-flickering neon here, a too-shallow, slightly neglected swimming pool there. He would probably just collapse onto the bed anyway. Maybe take a cold shower prior?
He wasn’t even thinking about dinner, let alone any more ambitious activities. Marge packed him a thermos filled to the brim with lemonade and made him sandwiches, too, folded neatly in waxed paper and tied with a jute string, a tiny bow embellishing each of the two squares, but they still sat in a wicker basket on the passenger seat, untouched. He didn’t feel hungry, his stomach all in knots.
He took a leak having passed Rapid City, got out to stretch his legs again in Murdo, where he also drank a cup of strong, bitter coffee. Good. Dirt cheap. There was nothing on the radio and too much on his mind but he told himself he had no reason to be scared. Instead, he decided to be hopeful. Why wouldn’t he be?
Never mind everything that happened last year.
Never mind what happened before. Never mind.
Gale needed to believe that he was still just going to see his best friend.
Never mind that they were also – now he could properly admit it, maybe even liking the shape of the word, the weight of it on his tongue - lovers before they became –
He wasn’t sure, really. Enemies? Strangers?
(The first possibility frightened him, but it was the second one that broke his heart every time he allowed himself to think about it.)
He fumbled with the car radio’s buttons and pushed his concerns aside. He was good at it: Avoidance. Denial. Resistance.
It was like reciting his service number over and over and over again, only to himself; still fighting the one war Gale never returned from, his mind both, the oppressed, and the oppressor.
He had no reasons to be worried. No need. He was going to be okay. They were going to be okay. Before they were anything else, they were nothing more than Bucky and Buck, the only two pilots left up in the air.
And, somehow, that very nothing was now also his everything.
July 17th, 1946, Sheridan, Wyoming
He sobbed, and she held him. First, just his hands, his fingers stiff but trembling, then his arms, framing him in a careful embrace as if afraid he would fall apart if she let go, but also break if she pressed too hard. Finally, she wrapped herself around him, exactly where they sat - or rather lay - on the bathroom floor, a neat, soft rug not enough to contain them both. She did it awkwardly, with her bell-shaped, sea-foam green skirt sliding up her bare thigs, knees fragile and girlishly pink against the blue terrazzo tiles, but with the exact strength that he needed right now. He wanted to thank her, or at least to look at her, express the gratitude somehow. But he couldn’t face her, and she didn’t force him. She never forced him to do anything.
(Maybe that was the problem.)
(It was him who always, it seemed, had to force himself.)
Propping herself up on one elbow, she slid her other arm over his side, found his chest, his heart ricocheting wildly against his ribs. He could feel the softness of her breast against his back, her breath warm and steady, not an Algerian sirocco, but rather a mild, April breeze over England.
He sobbed until he emptied himself. Then he sobbed some more.
At first, he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to stop. There was an apocalypse trapped between his ribs and pushing against his sternum, hard; a flood, an absolute annihilation with no end to it happening inside and trying to get out. He was hurting, and Marge –
Marge, who should have hated him, Marge who should have been disgusted by him and who should have rejected him, walking out and never looking back - stayed so close, so, so close, sombre but gentle. And patient: realising, perhaps, that since he’s unable to take anything else that she so desperately wanted to offer him, she can at least give him time.
(He lost the track of it, but when he looked up at some point, the sky outside their small, round bathroom window was darkling already, its’ silly July blue replaced by deep hues of indigo and purple.)
They left the bathroom around four in the morning, getting up from the floor wobblily and slowly. He helped her, and she helped him. They went downstairs.
He asked, his voice all small and hoarse, if he could do anything for her, and she told him to make her breakfast. He didn’t question it, didn’t say anything about the darkness outside, didn’t suggest that maybe, instead, they could eat the cake her parents got them delivered. He made toast, cracked some eggs into a metal bowl, whisked them with a splash of milk and a good pinch of salt, poured it all onto a pan, the smell simultaneously sickening and homely.
Marge brought out their expensive, hand-embroidered napkins.
They sat by the kitchen counter, first just in a total silence, then exchanging small snippets of speech, half-sentences about nothing, both times in each other’s arms.
The eggs were going cold on a plate he placed in front of her, so he eventually said:
“Marge, your scramble’s gonna get cold,” to which she replied, “How am I gonna make it without you, Gale?”, and then, “No, don’t,” when he tried to soothe her, maybe tell her that she’s going to be just fine, eventually. She lifted the glass, their wedding gift from her cousin Gracie-May, took a tiny sip of milk he’s poured into it a bit earlier, licked her lips and smiled. It was the saddest thing he’s ever seen her do. It felt like a goodbye, “I am just realising I will have to make it without you.”
July 16th, 1946, Sheridan, Wyoming
His lectures would only start in early fall, which meant that he had the entire summer to himself – three long months of bright, sunny mornings, sultry, languorous afternoons, and temperate nights heavy with the honeyed scent of linden blossoms. He was supposed to rest and wander. Let his mind go where it needed to go.
In June, Doctor Schafer suggested that Gale should allow for his thoughts to flow freely, for a stream of consciousness to take him with it wherever it went, but also reminded him of the importance of a grounding object, something, he explained, with the power to anchor Gale in his reality, should he float away too far. He said it would be essential for Gale’s healing; therefore, Gale attempted to do it right.
(He always wanted to do everything right.)
At first, he thought that maybe his wedding ring could serve the purpose, but he wore it at all times anyway, so it didn’t feel special enough.
(Maybe it never did.)
Then, Schafer made a point that it should be something with a scent. It had things to do with how the human nervous system and memory worked, apparently; Gale didn’t ask about the details. Schafer suggested that Gale could make a list, perhaps, think about aromas that brought him some comfort?
(The doctor sat in his wingback chair, a notepad resting lightly against his thigh. He always had the same look on his face: a gentle, owlish sorrow.)
Maybe some coffee beans, if Gale liked the aroma, kept in a small linen pouch? A perfume bottle, even if emptied out already? – they held the fragrance for such a long time!
Or how about something with a deeper meaning? Perhaps his lovely wife could lend him a thing or two?
(Schafer knew Marge; she sometimes picked Gale up from the Clinic and the three of them would have tea and biscuits in the rose garden before the Clevens had to hit the road to make it home before nightfall.)
A scarf she wore around her neck, a light, cashmere sweater with her unique smell tangled between the fibres? Gale could swear Schafer blushed at his own suggestion.
After that session, Gale told Marge he needed to practice what he’d learned in therapy, and went straight to the attic.
She was very accommodating, his Marge. She knew and understood him – or at least she knew him as he used to be, and tried to understand him as whom he’d become. She’s read a lot and went to some meetings with other military wives (“military wives”, good God!, it was a foreign concept, one that made them both chuckle, exotic and absurd in its’ accuracy), and never asked any questions if he used the argument of recovery and healing.
(Which he did, instrumentally, but – mindful of its’ strength - with caution, careful not to reach for it too often).
Gale struggled at night, insomnia keeping him company like the most faithful lover long after Marge had fallen asleep. He frequently chose the sofa, telling himself that, this way, he’s just protecting his wife from his own nightmares.
It wasn’t supposed to be the case forever; he had been promised that he would eventually heal.
He felt overwhelmed around her family and friends, their voices too loud, smiles too bright, questions too nosy, but he kept reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with them. They were just civilians.
It was him who needed to re-learn how to exist outside of the barracks, missions, POW camps and hospitals.
In bed (also twice in the living room, and once in their garden) he rarely got hard and, even more rarely, maintained his hardness past the point of nudity in Marge’s presence, but it was just a phase, a matter of practice, and he still had a mouth and two hands that he could use on her, didn’t he?
He just needed the bloody summer. Recovery. Healing.
(Marge looked at him, concerned. And beautiful, but bleak in her sadness.)
That was it.
That. Was. It.
He swore – to her, to himself – that he would be okay by September.
The attic had a low ceiling and just one, small window, letting a stream of light into the cramped, musty space. The particles of dust danced in the glow, thousands of them going up and up and up when he swept his hand over the box and lifted the cover.
Of course, by the time the war ended, everybody – everybody who lived, that was, Buck thought with a weak, humourless chuckle - knew Gale hated Bucky’s sheepskin jacket. Yet it still was Gale himself who made sure John got it back.
The very jacket was also the only thing that came to Gale’s mind when Schafer told him to think of comfort.
He was now taking it out of the box, holding it - with squinting eyes, careful hands, his arms stretched tensely - as if it were some dangerous, living creature rather than just a silly piece of clothing.
Heart pounding, Gale buried his nose in the fabric and inhaled what little he had left of Bucky. It was cigarette smoke, dust, the English countryside, sweat, sex, and whiskey.
It was John’s terrible singing, his arms flailing left and right. It was John drinking coffee in the mess, the porcelain cup tiny in his hands, a warm, lazy smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. It was his fingernails, bitten down to the quick in the Stalag days. The pendulum on his dog tags swinging, metal brushing the wide, warm expanse of his chest. John on his knees. John’s knuckles against Gale’s skin. John’s goading, his bratty provocations, his boot against Gale’s ribs and, later, the mumbled, embarrassed apologies. The worrisome caution with which he examined the twin scars on Gale’s cheeks, back in Thorpe Abbotts. It was John’s sweat, salty and sandy, running in rivulets down his sides in the Algerian heat. The freckles on his arms. The dampness of his armpit hair. The shape of him blocking out the sun. It was John wiping Gale’s come from the corner of his mouth. It was John walking into the room. John shaking his hand, closing his fingers around Gale’s. It was John naming him like a stray dog. John making him his.
The suffocating headiness of it all. It was just –
It was always John, John, John –
(It was just a jacket.)
(Gale made John wear it every day for a week before they parted.)
He was momentarily overcome with such desperation that it physically hurt. He gasped. His body folded in two.
He longed for John all over: it was in his fingers, feet, in his chest, in his shins, knees, thighs, his groin, his stomach. It was in his brain, burning. It filled his mouth, heavy, thick and cold like damp cotton, but when he tried to spit it out, all he’d gotten was his own saliva, now pooling in his palm. He used his other hand to undo his fly, the sound of it as loud as an explosion in his ears, and let the spit drip down his cock, wetness on heat. He wrapped his fingers around himself. Tightened the grip. Tightened the grip.
It shouldn’t have worked, and yet it did. Didn’t bring him much pleasure, but the relief was immense. His mind was, for once, completely quiet.
(Afterwards, Gale licked his hand clean imagining it was John’s spend, or John’s tongue on his fingers, bitter, still a little warm.)
He brought the jacket back up. He brushed his teeth. He drank some water. Rinsed the glass. Put it away on the draining rack.
Later that evening, he took Marge for a long walk, he talked to her, really talked to her. Then, when they got back, he fucked her on the stair landing, made her orgasm not once, but twice. She was tearful with joy, laughing into the hollow of his neck.
He kept his eyes open.
Respecting authority figures came to Gale instinctively, and that’s exactly what he did. He was just following the doctor’s orders – and falling into a shameful, but surprisingly effective routine.
When Marge was out, he would go to the attic, but it was so incredibly hot there that he soon started bringing the jacket down with him. He locked himself in the bathroom. Sat with it in the bathtub. Covered himself with it, curled underneath it on the floor. He spat into his hand. Sometimes he fingered himself, too, although rarely, not the blunt pain of it, but the sense of guilt that came afterwards too much to manage more than once, maybe twice a week.
(He was trying to be good.)
Eventually, he started doing it in their bedroom, doors closed, a song on the vinyl player to drown out his small, frenzied moans. Gale was trying to hide them. Especially from himself.
He had to squeeze his eyelids shut and retreat deep down into himself for all of it to work. But Christ, when it worked –
Gale’s mind pulled the exact same trick on him every single time: It was like time travel, going back and back and back, rushing through the last few months, Marge-Marge-Marge, Casper – Sheridan - Casper, skipping the wedding almost entirely, like none of it actually happened, switching continents, crossing oceans, arriving in Thorpe Abbotts so weirdly, as if back to front, running through the frozen maze of that German forest, jumping over that wall, marching marching marching marching, backwards, and finally arriving in the Stalag, where it all not so much started, but definitely developed; the Stalag, where Bucky –
– roles reversed so strangely - was already waiting for him. Losing his mind. And waiting for him.
(Gale was a married man now. He was a married man and he was jerking off, frantic, face pressed into the collar of another man’s shearling jacket, trying to forget his life as it was right now, and trying to remember what others perceived as the worst possible nightmare, just because that was the last time when he really felt whole, the last place where he had John as close to him as he wanted to have him always.)
It was the 16th of July, his first wedding anniversary, when Gale turned the radio on, as always, but – like never before - forgot to turn the key in the bedroom door.
1944, Sagan, Lower Silesia
Gale was aware that everybody in the Stalag knew – not about them, but that John Egan was going insane.
It wasn’t, however, something anyone would have the guts to ever bring up, especially that John wasn’t alone in such position, and some things just didn’t seem worth mentioning. Risking the stability of it (however wobbly if you took a closer look) with questions more complex than the standard “You alright, Major?”
The way they all functioned in the camp wasn’t healthy, surely, but they had all fallen into a sort of routine.
And the routine provided structure.
And the structure made it feel like things still made some, however little, sense.
Survival, Gale had learned that winter, really had the power to reveal the best and the worst about people. And both the best, and the worst, were equally as human. Things they would comment on at the flying school, or scowl about at the military base, didn’t make anyone flinch anymore. Some men fought whoever they managed to provoke and provoked everyone they crossed paths with. Some tried to befriend and use whoever seemed keen or sufficiently naïve. Some became withdrawn and lethargic. Some daydreamt, some didn’t want to risk dreaming at all, hence avoided sleeping altogether.
Some spoke to themselves. Others ceased to speak completely.
With Bucky, at least, the latter wasn’t a danger. Sure, Gale could have been the one with an oral fixation, but it was John, after all, who was one mouthy son of a bitch.
The first few days after he arrived in the camp, though –
(The first few days after Gale realised that he could feel his own heart again, his own pulse, some life streaming through him, a gentle, warm tickle in the side of his neck.)
- Bucky was too weak to even dream about horsing around in his usual manner. There was a spark in him, yes, a shy flicker of his old fire, but his body stood in the way: pale but feverish, exhausted, dehydrated, malnourished, bruised. And stubborn. He wanted to move, to do something, but his eyelids were heavy and his limbs heavier. He smelled of sweat and blood and death, before they helped him clean himself.
Afterwards, he smelled of nothing at all.
(Gale wanted to pull John into his arms and knead some life into him, caress some blush into him, rub his own scent into him, absorbing John’s pain, taking it away.)
(Instead, he went to beg the camp doctor for some iodine; sitting nearby and watching John smear it over the nastiest of his cuts was as close to intimacy as he thought he could get to in their circumstances.)
John mostly just slept, didn’t even want to eat, sometimes he only asked for water that someone, maybe Brady or Benny, as Gale did not want to leave his side at all, brought him in a little blue-rimmed, rust-marked tin cup. When he dozed off, there was a constant, tuberculous murmur to his breathing. It scared the hell out of Gale – not because he worried it was contagious, but rather that it wasn’t, and if John suddenly dies on him now, he will be left in this place – alone.
(Alone in this place – again.)
The cough subsided spontaneously, over a single, moonless night.
Then, John started feeling hungry. Moving more. He wanted to get out – out – out, was desperate for fresh air and angry at the damp stench of the barracks. He asked Gale to cut his hair, too long for John’s liking, sticking out around his ears and brushing against the collar of his threadbare sweater.
Most of all, he started talking. More. And more. And more. By the time the cuts on his face and knuckles closed, and the purple bruise around his eye yellowed into a subtle shadow, eventually giving way to the dark circles every prisoner seemed to wear under their eyes, as if following some fucked up Stalag fashion, he was impossible to shut up.
It was baseball, Circuit articles, kriegie gossip, escape fantasies. It was different “What ifs…” and “We should haves…” and “How abouts…?” He talked nonsense. Often with his mouth full. Equally as often - in his sleep: woeful, incomprehensible half-words escaping his chapped lips in sudden waves.
It got on people’s nerves. It got on Gale’s nerves when he was trying to sleep, to eat, to plan, to think. To understand the situation and figure out their way out of it.
But most of all, it worried him wildly. The bleak repetitiveness of John’s voice – not his typical, sudden explosions of ardour, a burst of flak, but something much more disquieting, the constant ratatat of a machine gun with an inexhaustible ammunition.
He knew that if he wouldn’t raise it with John, no one else would.
(Everybody cared about John. They really did.
But no one cared for him in Gale’s way.)
“You have a minute, Major?”
It was a cold, ash-hued afternoon, the sky swollen with the yet-unshed rain. Gale knew it was only a matter of time: clouds over Germany were reliable – what they promised, they delivered. Bucky sat on the step outside of their barrack, looking both too tall, his legs bent awkwardly, but also very small, somehow; a gangly, delicate kid on the first day of school. His eyes were dark and unfocused.
“Hmm - ? Sure, Buck,” he said without even looking up.
The library was empty, the men already done with their somewhat improvised little lectures and classes, now just getting all impatient and antsy before the evening roll call, unable to concentrate. Gale could hear their voices coming from outside the small, grime-marred window, saw their shadows moving. He let Bucky walk into the room first, closed the door, crowded him into a corner. He got as close to shoving him against the wall as his consideration for Bucky’s body, still healing, still weak, allowed. Bucky finally looked at him then, and for a moment they were both so still and quiet that Gale could swear he’s heard the Stalag rats scurrying in the walls. His heart was pounding.
Bucky swallowed hard.
And then he smiled, all absent and hollow, and got started again.
“Well, hey, ’s actually good you got a hold of me, Buck,” the excitement in John’s voice didn’t bring Gale any comfort. Quite the opposite: its’ brightness was one of a red flare’s. It was a distress signal, “I was just thinkin’, you see, tomorrow, when they let us out after breakfast, why not – “
“Keep it the fuck down, Bucky. We’re not doing this now,” Gale cut him off, surprised by the sternness of his own voice. He was standing too close, unnecessarily so. He realised he’s tugging at the lapel of Bucky’s weathered jacket, “Where are you?”
Bucky furrowed his brows.
“’m here?” He sniffed. It shouldn’t be a question.
Gale scoffed. He knew he’s still gripping Bucky’s clothes, but he couldn’t feel his fingers. That’s not how he wanted to touch him.
(That’s not how Bucky deserved to be touched.)
“No. No, John, you’re not. I’ll ask again. Where are you?”
Something was growing inpatient in both of them. Gale was unable to say what it was, but he knew it – just like them - wore the same name.
“I’m here, Buck. For fuck’s sake – ,“ there was a faint shadow of ersatz coffee staining John’s moustache. Gale wanted to lick it off. “I really don’t understand what it is that you want from me,” Bucky shot back and, that moment, Gale knew that Bucky himself knew he was lying.
Which meant there were no secrets left between them.
Which meant that Bucky saw him.
Even now, in the midst of his own madness. He rarely bothered to look at him, because he simply didn’t have to. It both excited and petrified Gale to a point of a paralysing panic spreading across his chest, rising like a flood, his throat closing as if in a desperate attempt to stifle the wave of heat, fire, colouring his neck with a dark, hot blush.
There was no time for lust in this place, it wasn’t efficient to yearn. And yet Gale was growing hard, his knees dangerously close to buckling. He felt the deep, ketotic sourness of Bucky’s breath on his cheek.
“That’s not true,” he tried in a weak rebellion, voice barely a whisper.
“Yeah, no, it’s not true,” said John and turned them around, pushing Gale against the library’s wall.
The only time anything actually happened between them – the only thing that Gale now had to cling to, to press on as if it were an open, inflamed wound in his memory, tormenting himself with the raw, hot sting of it – was the night before Bremen, after he told Bucky that he won’t be joining him in London, and Bucky got drunk (of course he did), and Gale danced with the dog, and wrote a letter home, and asked John if he wanted to take a stroll, two bikes pushed by them side by side as if they weren’t soldiers but schoolboys, children safe from slaughter.
The memory of it was nothing but a blur, an adrenaline-soaked, wet piece of a fever dream, guilt merged with pleasure.
It was all he had. It was all he thought he’ll ever have. It was all he promised himself he’ll ever have, even now, with both of them alive, both of them breathing in the same space, sharing a bunk at night, pressed close for warmth, one heart struggling beside the other.
There was a life waiting for Gale on the other side of this. Marge, Wyoming, his mother, Marge’s parents. A nice, modern little house with a spare bedroom, perfect to put a cot in. A vegetable garden. A small pergola, hybrid tea roses climbing the wooden construction. A stable nearby and, if you drove out north, the river; nothing but blue skies above it.
(John’s touch was also the last thing Gale thought of before bailing out of that plane, and the first thing he remembered after hitting the ground. John’s gaze and lips and hands on him, his breath filling his mouth, the only oxygen he could ever need).
Now, Gale panted and realised he was shaking. He was just trying to understand. Was he scared of Bucky? There was no way –
No, there was no way. It was Bucky. His lifeline.
It was something else, then. Maybe he was just scared of dying?
(He was scared of living as what he knew he was.
He was fucking petrified.)
He whined. The voices outside were a steady static, no one coming, but equally no one receding. The goons would start herding them for the appell any minute now. Gale shifted, shook his head.
Bucky clenched his fist and brought it down against the wall with a quiet thud. His other hand was on Gale’s shoulder.
“C’mon, Buck, just let me fuckin’ touch you.”
Gale wanted to laugh.
“You are touching me.”
“Not like that, Buck. Not like that."
Gale’s cock was straining, pressed against the rough fabric of his trousers, pressed against John’s thigh, the hard jut of his hip. Jesus, Gale was so stiff. Just like that. Just from this.
“Bucky. Bucky. John," what was supposed to be a reprimand, came out as a whine of panic, “Fuck, fuck, Christ, John. I –,“ he started to wonder – using some distant, absurdly sober, rational side of his mind – how long it would now take him to come or to burst out in tears, “John, don’t you understand? This is gonna get us killed."
He wasn’t sure if he’s talking about the now, or the after, should they both survive.
(What am I gonna do?, he thought.
What are we going to do?)
John laughed now; a pained, gravelled sound. Gale wanted to hit, and kiss, and fuck him. Didn’t know where to start. Didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing – he just stared at him, wide-eyed and vulnerable, feeling stupid, enamoured, lustful and young and so, so very frightened. Whatever it was that he felt, just then, was so much bigger than him that he was convinced it would crush him. Not kill him, that would have been mercy. It would crush him to pieces and leave him alive, but destroyed completely.
(That was not how people survived wars, was it?)
(And if there was anything that was supposed to annihilate him, it was war).
(Not love.)
John must have understood. He shook his head, hissed, raised his hand again and although Gale knew Bucky won’t hit him, for a second he braced himself, expecting the man to punch the wall mere inches from his cheek. Instead, John just splayed it on the rugged surface, the wood’s grain all raised ridges and deep grooves under his palm. He was so close that Gale could count his freckles (twenty-seven and two tiny moles), could memorise the shape of a thin, pink scar running across the apex of his chin.
“Imagine, Buck,” Bucky’s eyes were half-lidded, dangerous and gleaming, and sad, but the left corner of his mouth shivered with what must have been suppressed laughter, “Just imagine. To survive this hell all the way until now, bloody Münster, and that fuckin’ shovel - only to die with your cock in my mouth.”
Gale didn’t want to look at him.
(He couldn’t stop looking at him.)
“Bucky.”
“Not the worst possible way to go, if you ask me,” John took a step back, fixed the collar of his jacket.
“Bucky,” Gale couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to let him go, but he didn’t want to let him in, either, knowing that, if he did, there would be no return to his limping, but decent normalcy.
(What would he tell Marge? He proposed to her. He proposed to her, for fuck’s sake, and she said yes, and wrote him about the chapel and the strawberry-cream cake they would order for the wedding, the flowers: peonies and white-and-yellow anemones tied with lilac ribbons, and the music, and the band, and how everything would be just right, not if, but when he comes home).
“Bucky, I am begging you. I – Please.”
And since John apparently wasn’t able to ever say “no” to him, he said:
“You know what’s your problem, Buck? Once you’re out of the fuckin’ plane, you just want to play it safe. You want to have something, but not all of it. Alright. If that’s what you need,” Coward, he was saying. You’re a coward, Gale Cleven, “Alright, then.”
And, afterwards, he didn’t touch Gale again. Not even once. Not like that.
What he made him go through, though, was possibly worse.
They spent a lot of time together which nobody seemed to find suspicious. It was what everybody expected anyway; somehow even the Germans seemed to see them as a package, calling them the Two Bucks, like two dollars (when John noticed, and had one of his better days, he told Gale that maybe that’s what made them lucky: together they made for a deuce).
What they obviously didn’t know, was that when he wasn’t daydreaming about baseball or blabbering about their great escape, John used his mouth to drive Buck in the same direction of insanity that he was clearly headed towards himself. As promised, he didn’t touch Gale even once and, every single time it happened, which was almost every day, he still managed to make him leak and hiss and tremble, and to leave him miserably unsatiated, and completely undone.
The first time it happened was barely a week after what, in his internal monologue, Gale called The Library Conversation, or simply The Conversation, and what he mulled over so intensely every day that it eventually transformed into a vague, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of sensations and sounds, becoming so abstract that he could almost convince himself it hadn’t even been real.
He usually didn’t have to look for Bucky – when surrounded by others, they were still inseparable, acting as if nothing had ever happened, Bucky setting the tone, Gale following his lead – but this morning, right after breakfast, he lost track of John, growing tenser with each passing second spent unable to locate the tall, familiar silhouette.
He found him behind their block, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, a Chesterfield hanging from the corner of his mouth. Gale couldn’t help but smirk, thinking that John’s cigarette was like an older, more reckless sibling to his own toothpick.
Gale approached unhurriedly.
“No Lucky Strikes, huh?” He asked, knowing that what John currently smoked wasn’t his favourite brand.
“Yeah, no. No luck today, Major."
“Could have been worse, Bucky,” Gale attempted a smile, hoping to coax one from John as well. But even as he spoke, he realized he was failing, “Could have been Senior Service.”
John snorted, all morose. They stood in silence, Gale following John’s gaze, John looking the direction of a barbed-wire fence. A line of skeletal trees behind it. The watchtower to their right.
In that moment, Gale hated knowing exactly what John was thinking. He was desperate to stop him from having these thoughts.
“Bucky,” he said softly, “Listen. The other day – “
John cocked an eyebrow. The tip of his nose was pink from the cold; he must have stood there for quite a while.
“The other day just now, or the other day in England, when I sucked you off, Buck, and you came in my mouth?” He dropped his Chesterfield on the ground, killing the last orange flicker with the heel of his boot, an act of mercy. In that moment, Gale would have given everything to swap places with the cigarette stub, “You gotta be more specific, y’know?”
The only thing Gale knew was that he might be sick, chucking up bile onto the grey, frozen ground.
(Heat pooled in the pit of his stomach, momentarily quelling the constant physical hunger that had taken residence there.)
(It was a twisted, violent relief.)
(He realised he doesn’t want John to stop.)
“How specific?” He got himself to croak.
John looked at him and smiled.
“Very. You know I’m a simple fella, Major,” Gale wondered if John had a fever. He didn’t sound quite like himself. It was as if he was suffering from some sudden, undefined illness. Maybe it was contagious. Maybe he got it from Gale. Maybe Gale got it from him. “I need to know exactly what it is that’s bothering that pretty, blonde head of yours. Is it seeing me on my knees that gets to you, King Cleven? Is it knowing that I jerked off to the memory of it every single time I touched myself since?” Gale knew that it couldn’t have been often, given their circumstances, and hearing that when John pleasured himself it was with Gale in his thoughts went straight into his cock.
“Bucky,” he warned.
“Buck,” snickered John. It was cheeky, yeah, but it wasn’t cruel.
Gale’s eyelids fluttered. He felt dizzy and weak, needing to steady himself on his feet.
“You know I’ll stop,” Bucky’s expression grew serious, “You say one word, and I’ll shut up. One word, Buck. Any word.”
Gale looked at him and John held his gaze the way Gale wished the brunette would hold his entire body.
Gale didn’t say anything.
Two days later, they were alone in the washroom. Bucky was trying to shave evenly, cursing at the blunt, rusty razor as it dragged across his jawbones, while Gale brushed his teeth with toothpaste they had received a few days earlier in a Red Cross package. It was Ipana; the brand’s goofy, silly-faced mascot, fucking Bucky Beaver, grinned at him from the packaging. Gale redirected his attention to the brownish, ice-cold water running from the faucet.
“You know, Buck, I wish we’d just finished what we started, back then.” John said absentmindedly, first carefully examining his own face in the small, chipped mirror, and then getting in Gale’s way to rinse the razor, “You left me hanging,” he laughed, “Quite literally, you know? I thought I was gonna lose my mind.”
And you think you didn’t?, Gale thought. He realised he’s biting the toothbrush.
“That weekend in London… I fucked someone. A Polish gal. She was so blonde, so fair. And so sad, Buck. She looked like a rainy day in July.”
Gale tried to focus on the poor poetry he never thought John to be capable of, and to ignore the deep sense of sudden ease blooming in his chest. He wasn’t sure why, but it was easier to accept than if he were to imagine Bucky with another man. John shrugged and continued, “Truth be told, Buck, I wasn’t really keen on it, but… I dunno, it felt necessary. And yet I kept imagining she was you."
The strong, minty flavour ran down Gale’s throat. He was on fire. For some reason, he started imagining it wasn’t toothpaste at all.
“So I had her on her back, that gorgeous blue-eyed thing, and then I had her from behind,” John washed his face, droplets of water catching on his brows, and looked at Gale in the mirror, “And the entire time, Buck, I was thinking it should have been you.”
They both must have known – Gale definitely did – that these were dangerous thoughts, but at least they seemed to keep John’s mind away from the truly lethal ones, the ones that told him to put himself in the line of fire or not to bail out from a burning, plummeting plane, and so Gale allowed him.
Worse. He asked him for it.
Somehow, he always knew when the right moment was. He then followed John, approached and cornered him. He sat next to him or looked at him from his bunk bed, their combine quiet and empty, or directed his gaze towards the door, laced his boots and walked out, knowing that John would come after him to the yard or the workshop.
Then, it was enough if he said:
“Tell me, John.”
And John told him. He kept telling him over and over again.
It was vulgar, Gale thought. Disgusting. He would never, never, put anything like that into a letter to Marge. To anyone.
Then, he would tell himself that maybe Bucky just didn’t realise? How would he know what’s wrong to say and what’s right? He had no one. N o b o d y to write letters to, except for Gale, and Gale was here, within his reach, but out of his touch.
It made Gale feel better.
Better about himself. And like he was better than John.
(He never asked himself whether Bucky’s loneliness could have been his choice.)
(Whether Bucky’s loneliness could have been a choice he made for Gale.)
“I loved using my mouth on you, you know. You have the most perfect cock, Buck”, John would be doing something ridiculous, peeling hard, sprouting potatoes behind the kitchen building, shiny, pale tubers landing in a large pan with a metallic thud, peels pooling at his feet; or maybe untangling some jute string or some wire or something else that just may come in handy, God knows when and in what circumstances, “But, hell, you were so delicate with me. So gentle. D’you think you could be rougher?”, Veins protruded on John’s hands, blueish like rivers on the pale map of his forearms; body still strong, but thinner each day, “I think I’d like that. I think I’d like choking on your cock, Major. I think I’d like you to fuck my mouth.”
Gale hated himself. He hated himself, and he hated John, and he hated the war, the world that allowed for wars to happen, the world that made them be what they were.
(Not queers, he thought, the word both, a whisper and a scream in his mind. It just didn’t seem right, somehow, to think one could be made to be that, no matter what his daddy said.
Soldiers.
Gale hated the world that made them soldiers.)
(He then hid that thought from himself, deep, never wanting to look at it again.)
But he still came back for more. Images, words, shapes, sounds.
They were all just fantasies, except for that one scene from the past, but Gale eventually forced it to pass as a fantasy as well. All of it just snippets of some dream he and John sometimes.
The thing was, they could have made it work there, in the camp, if they really wanted to. It would be a makeshift kind of intimacy, rushed and hushed and dirty, but it wasn’t impossible. But Gale wouldn’t dare to make a move, a physical one, that is, to touch John where and how he really wanted to, even when their knees brushed under their combine’s rickety table and no one would have noticed if he’d put his hand on John’s thigh, move it higher, press his fingers into the fabric of John’s trousers until the skin underneath it tingled, then hurt, then bruised. Then move it higher again.
And John played along. He even seemed to take some wicked pleasure from the tension.
It felt like, that day in the library, they both entered some sort of competition, although Gale Gale wasn’t sure what the prize was exactly.
It turned out John was an expert at living a double life like that. The heat of it all bubbled in him right below the surface but he never allowed for it to spill. One day, when Gale walked back into their block after listening to John, Brady told him he looked good, fitter. Did the sun get you, Major, he asked, or is it the Red Cross chocolate? You look better. That’s good, Buck.
But with John, you could never tell. He was just as frustrated as everyone expected him to be. Impetuous in his regular, John Egan kind of way, only ramped up by the hunger and the helplessness they all felt. He was also sticking to Gale as always, speaking to him in the same tone as he usually would, touching him in the same, safe, platonic laddish way. It was so convincing that even Gale bought into it sometimes.
Hell, he thought, John would make a fantastic fucking spy.
They were always about the Here and Now, these fantasies that Gale felt intoxicated with, drinking them off John’s lips like syrup, not statements, just speculations: I’d do this if you’d let me, Buck, I’d do that. They never involved the future. Never related to anything that could actually happen between the two of them after the war.
And then, one day, Gale realised that John wasn’t planning to live past that point.
When it got colder again, the life in the Stalag slowed down, the prisoners’ bodies saving as much energy as they possibly could (they still had less and less of it every single day).
Gale still went to John and still asked him to talk to him in that sick, wonderful way, but it happened less often, and the tone had changed. Sometimes, John lost track of his thoughts before managing to even tell Gale how he would have him this time. On other occasions, Gale didn’t realise he wasn’t registering, missing the entire narrative between John sucking bruises onto his neck and coming in between his legs.
They were just hungry and tired and scared all the time.
And then the Germans made them march.
“You’re cold, aren’t you, Buck?” John asked the evening before their escape attempt, the two of them standing at the roadside, enveloped by sharp, frigid darkness, the last glitter of John’s cigarette like a dying lighthouse.
It was a ridiculous, rhetorical question.
(He was so cold. Jesus, they were both so, so cold.)
“Because I could fuck it out of you, you know,” John dropped his cigarette onto the ground. He looked delirious, “The cold.”
Gale couldn’t feel his feet anymore, he could only hear the crunch of the snow when he shifted his weight from one to the other. He couldn’t feel his fingers either, and maybe that’s exactly why he did what he did: he raised his hand – fingerless gloves, dry, red skin – and slid it into the pocket of John’s coat, finding his fingers, interlocking them with his own. He wasn’t even aroused; he wouldn’t be able to get it up if he tried. He was just sad that he might lose it. This. Whatever it was. John. His life.
(Sometimes he wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began, or whether there was any difference between the two.)
He was just sad that he would lose it, eventually, one way or another, no matter what happened, no matter what he did. If he allowed himself to cry, the tears would freeze on his eyelashes, turning into tiny, salty shards before even reaching his cheeks.
John got closer. Close. And then he pressed the tip of his nose – so cold that it seemed wet – to the corner of Gale’s mouth, and rubbed, just once. A tiny, sweet gesture.
“And I could love some warmth right into you instead, Buck, ” he whispered.
His name on Bucky’s tongue.
(Very slowly, Gale turned his head towards John.)
Bucky’s name on his lips.
Their name.
The only prayer Gale could ever need.
“Bucky.”
July 16th, 1946, Sheridan, Wyoming
“Bucky - ”
He was coming long and hard, and all over himself, first: teeth gritting, then: mouth slack, spit gathering on his bottom lip and wetting the wool; hips stuttering, fingers clutching the jacket’s thick, soft leather.
When he finally came to, the sudden realisation hit him like a freight train. The song’s ended; the vinyl player was now making steady, hissing sounds, the needle scratching the record in a rhythmic pattern.
Gale didn’t even have to look up, and yet he still did.
Marge was standing in the doorway.
July 16th, 1945, Casper, Wyoming
It was a perfect day for a wedding, the azure sky stamped with just the tiniest wisps of little white clouds, the sun casting its golden glow over the quaint churchyard adorned with pastel-coloured ribbons.
He wasn’t supposed to see Marge before the ceremony, but he knew she would be a vision in her ivory lace gown, her face angelic like an illustration from catechism books for children, her body something any man with half a mind would die for.
Gale looked gaunt but still handsome. Proper and poised in his crisp service dress uniform.
People really did show up. There was Croz with Jean and little Stephen, Alex, who had really journeyed all the way from Detroit, and Benny and Brady with their respective plus ones - two charming, dimpling obstacles - Gale couldn’t help but think - on their way to each other.
There was also Rosie, his moustache impeccably groomed, his eyes a striking baby blue, who came accompanied by a raven-haired dame Gale had never before encountered. Her name was Phillis, and they must have just met; they were all cautious infatuation, exchanging careful glances and small, not-yet-intimate smiles the entire time she petted Meatball and Rosie heroically volunteered to entertain Gale’s elderly aunties.
Finally, there was also Hambone, his golden teeth reflecting the sunlight and scaring the literal shit out of Marge’s cousin’s little daughter when he grinned at her without thinking (poor Gracie-May needed to excuse herself and immediately change the baby’s diaper).
And there was John.
Oh, of course.
“You surely wouldn’t suppose I would have missed the actual ceremony?” was his greeting that morning, once he released Buck from a rigid, careful hug. It felt like being embraced by a shadow, although John – on the surface – looked livelier than a couple months ago, slowly regaining some of the weight he’d lost in the Stalag, and some of the strength in his arms. His smell was all cigarette smoke, summer heat, a new, pricier aftershave, a tiny hint of whiskey he drank the night before, but no fresh booze on his breath.
“I surely wouldn’t, Major,” said Gale, and John smiled, looking at him. There was something dangerous in his expression, the flatness of his gaze like that of the ocean right before a storm.
“Major.”
They were alone in the spare bedroom of the house his mother had moved into after Gale’s daddy passed.
It was Gale’s mother who told them to take some time, just the two of them, boys, Gale and his best man. She seemed to have taken a real liking to John, the way he claimed space around himself, so tall and broad in his uniform, effortlessly charming all the ladies in the room.
“So – ,“ Gale started, the inside joke of a this is it dying on his tongue.
“So – ,“John sighed, although he kept on smiling, “So, I’m losing you today.”
It caught Gale off guard. He knew better than to assume that John would stay completely quiet about the things between them today, but what he expected was a drunken scene late at night, something easily explainable given the amount of alcohol men invited to the wedding were probably planning to consume. No one would pay much attention to a slurred insult, an erratic outburst, Bucky’s usual flashes of temperament. But this –
This was something else.
“John, no,” he stuttered, “What are you – Don’t be stupid.”
John sighed.
“I ain’t stupid, Buck. Sure, I might act dumb sometimes, but I ain’t stupid.” For once in his life Gale would prefer to know that Major Egan is completely blotto, but as far as he could tell – and he always could tell – he happened to be painfully sober, “I’m just honest, you see. ’s the truth.”
“Alright. Alright,” Gale tried, although obviously, nothing was alright, not even close. “You’re just talking nonsense, Bucky.” They survived the war. Wasn’t that enough? They couldn’t ask for more. It had to be enough, “No one’s losing anyone.”
They were standing in the middle of the room, facing a broad bay window, the wrought-iron bed frame behind them. John took a step to the left the exact moment Gale did the same. It was like a horrible dance where both parts tried to take the lead.
“No?” John cocked his head. A provocation. “Can you tell me, then, how’s it all gonna work? How am I gonna keep you, huh, when I - ”
Somehow, Gale usually knew what John wanted to say, and especially when Bucky – however rarely – kept his mouth shut. What he wanted to say now was: When I need to give you away.
“You’ll come to visit,” said Gale, quick and desperate, “You’ll come to visit, Bucky, of course. And we could—There’ll be reunions. Rosie mentioned already. We could go somewhere afterward. You and - "
“You and me,” mocked John, “Me and you, the two heroic pilots? Bullshit, Buck,” he spat out, and suddenly all Gale could say was, “Don’t do this, John,” but John was already doing it, his voice raising to a fevered pitch.
(Again: Gale knew that John wouldn’t touch him, and yet he could still hurt him so bad.)
“Don’t do what? Don’t do what, Cleven?” His surname in Bucky’s mouth - and, in about an hour, Marge’s surname, too - was like a slap. Gale swayed. “You want me to pick you up and take you to dinner and tell you how I’d screw you but never put a hand on you, huh? You wanna play pretend like that? And keep on playing? What d’ya take me for, Buck?” What, Gale noticed, not who. He tried to say something but John stopped him with a single wave of his hand. It was a silent, tired order. No space for discussions, “A puppy to play with? Some kinda accessory to your life? You think it’ll work like that? You keeping me at an arms’ length, reaching for me only when you want to use me? You want me to fuck you without touching you, Buck, ‘s that what you want!? Because I’ll tell you what you want. You want me to love you without touching you, Gale. And it’s the one thing I cannot – I cannot - ”
Gale realised that John was holding back tears, which made him lose control of his own. He felt a singular, humiliating drop of wetness running down his cheek, stopping abruptly when it reached his upper lip. John made a wounded sound, “I’m not your pet, Gale. I am a human, and I have a human fuckin’ heart."
Somehow, he wasn’t really sure how, Gale found himself on the floor, his back to the side of the bed, leaning against a nice, patchwork quilt. It wasn’t even that dramatic, just pathetic. He wrapped his arms around his knees. There was a sob trapped in his throat, his heart a Gordian Knot.
If he had known, he thought.
(He knew. He knew. Of course he knew. This entire time.)
“You used me,” it was supposed to be an accusation, but came out barely a weak, muffled mutter, “It was you. You wanted it. You, not me. You used me, John."
John laughed; loud, bitter. Deranged.
“You’re unbelievable, Major Cleven.”
There was a shuffling of feet, a pause, another sound. Then, John crouched next to him. He put a hand of Gale’s shoulder, and Gale had no energy to shake it off, “Come on now, Buck. It’s your fucking wedding,” John calmed down so quickly that Gale understood he was prepared. He didn’t expect anything more of him, didn’t think Gale would react in any other, braver way, “Get yourself together. Now.”
But it wasn’t John talking to Gale anymore, neither it was his daddy, as one could suppose. It was Gale’s momma, wiping snot and blood and tears off his cheek and chin. Telling him that boys didn’t cry, not the good ones. Good boys were supposed to be strong for their mothers. For sweet little Marjories, waiting for them on the other side of the nightmare.
What would she think of him if she saw him that way?
(Now, Buck. Now, boy. Come on. Get yourself together.)
“Now, Buck,” John handed him his handkerchief, and Gale took it. It was soft and warm from sitting, folded neatly, in a little pocket on John’s chest, the rhythm of his heart woven into the fabric, “You’ve got a life to go back to."
The worst thing was: John was right.
And Gale knew that the heartbreak of it all pierced them both in the same moment. Two bodies, one bullet. A story as old as time.
An hour later, John handed him his wedding band. Gale supposed -
Gale hoped it won’t, but John’s smile actually reached his eyes. It was warm. Sincere. It was real. Just as real as Gale’s life was.
Just as perfect.
September 2nd, 1946, Manitowoc, Wisconsin
Gale wouldn’t be sure where exactly to go in Manitowoc if it weren’t for Frances, whom he’d met at the wedding. She came as John’s companion, but you could immediately tell she wasn’t his love interest, unless one assumed that Major John Egan was into inbreeding.
Which, Gale hoped, no one would dare to assume.
Frances – “Oh, come on, don’t ‘madam me’, I’m Frankie!” - was John’s carbon copy, tall and lithe, but in no way brittle. That one time Gale saw her, her short hair was adorned with an airplane-shaped hairclip, her high cheekbones dusted with freckles and just enough rosy blush to enhance her features. She wore barely any makeup and was the sole woman clad in trousers at the wedding, the light, teal fabric flowing with each of her steps. Her refusal to dance with anyone only made Gale like her even more than he would have otherwise. She looked at people from beneath a dark, delicately arched brow and shook men’s hands as if throwing them a challenge. It was evident that she was her brother’s sister.
They had exchanged only a couple of rather formal letters – the last one particularly short, barely a greeting and John’s address provided by Frankie in her neat cursive – but Gale could imagine befriending her more closely. Who knew, maybe there was a chance. He checked the address: she lived just on the outskirts of Manitowoc, so if things went well…
He shook his head and spent fifteen minutes trying not to think at all, the car, still shivering with the engine’s quiet murmur, parked two streets away from John’s own. It was a quiet, residential area. Clean. Nice. There were flags on the poles in front of the houses, Stars and Stripes fluttering in the gentle breeze drifting in from the lake. He could hear children playing in the backyards.
Gale walked up the street, turned a corner, and stopped in his tracks. He double-checked on the map. He triple-checked with what Frankie had provided on the light blue stationery paper.
He wasn’t sure what he expected, really, but he surely did not expect this: a large, old but well-maintained house shaded by a porch, with blue shutters and a white clapboard exterior that gleamed in the soft afternoon light.
There was a tire swing hanging from an old oak tree in the front yard, and neatly trimmed hedges lining the path to the front door. John’s surname was engraved on the letterbox.
He gasped, a sharp pang of shame welling up in his chest at the thought of admitting to Croz or Benny or Rosie that he had no idea. It had been over a year since he’d seen John last. There were no letters, no calls, nothing. No “Are you okay?”, no expression of care on Gale’s side (unless you counted the fact that he really thought about John every single day, maybe every single minute).
He would never behave this way after breaking up with any dame.
(John wasn’t a dame.)
(Was that what it was? A breakup?)
Yeah. Telling Croz or Benny or Rosie how he treated John would be a proper, however deserved, nightmare. They would think that Gale failed him.
And they would be right.
Reluctantly, Gale considered a scenario in which John wouldn’t even want to talk to him.
(He climbed the few stairs, got to the porch. He knocked.)
But maybe there was a chance. For something. For anything. For a conversation, at least. An opportunity for Gale to –
He wasn’t sure, really. To explain himself. To apologise.
To beg.
(John opened the door, and time both stopped and rushed into all possible directions at once.)
Bucky looked tanned, a faint hint of sunburn colouring the straight ridge of his nose, and, obviously, stronger than the last time they saw each other. More robust, Doctor Schafer would say. Bigger, thought Gale. Big. Unable to identify the desire burning at the base of his spine, he immediately catalogued it as envy.
John simply looked better than him, healthier.
Although something in their postures, something he’d seen in other men, too, still made them both look like they fought in a war. Which they did, a realisation so brutally simple that it sometimes made Gale laugh.
John looked straight at him. No flinch, no gasp, no blinking, no smile. He didn’t look surprised. Neither did he look particularly sad or happy to see him.
(Here’s, Gale thought, here’s to living a double life.)
“Gale Cleven,” John said. The sleeves of his linen shirt were rolled up, the first three buttons open, showing just a sliver of lightly freckled skin glistening with sweat, “Well, I’ll be darned.”
Buck didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to start. It was like being at school again, having genuinely forgotten to do your fucking homework, knowing that your daddy would tan your hide when he learned about it, realising you’re not prepared for any of it, realising it’s too late to change anything, too.
“Major,” he said.
“Major,” said Bucky.
They stood like that for a brief moment, just looking at each other. Something was off. Right direction but wrong altitude or right altitude but wrong course.
(Either way, they were going to crash.)
Bucky cleared his throat.
“D’you want to sit down, Buck?” John asked, gesturing towards the two wicker chairs and a small table tucked in the farther corner of the porch. Gale didn’t notice them before. What he paid attention to, though, was that John did not ask him to come inside. He was staking his claim. It made Gale feel an intruder.
“Yeah – Yes. Sure, John,” He nodded, sat down. John asked if he’d like a drink, and Gale nodded again, so John disappeared in the house and emerged, soon, a bottle of Vernors in each hand, droplets of perspiration gathered on the brown glass like sweat. He handed one to Gale. Their fingers brushed. Gale blinked. He realised, only now, that earlier John didn’t pull him into a hug, didn’t even shake his hand. Bucky sat down. He seemed to be avoiding Gale’s eyes. Then Gale followed his gaze and understood what he was looking at. When John spoke, his voice was careful.
“You’re not wearing your wedding ring, Buck.”
“No, I’m not.” Gale shouldn’t have smiled, but he couldn’t help it, his lips stretched by a childish, guilty grimace. He needed it kissed off his mouth. By John. Right there.
He looked up, feeling greedy, his own gaze reaching John’s broad, beautiful, blunt-nailed, long-fingered hands.
And then he saw it.
There was a thin band of gold on John’s finger.
It was so obvious and simultaneously unexpected that it actually shocked a laugh out of Buck, a tight, pathetic bark of a sound. He looked away, as if what he saw was somehow indecent, obscene. Someone’s spouse caught in flagrante. A dead body. Escape fucking plans in a POW camp. Something that John should have kept behind closed doors, he thought. Something John should have protected him from. He squinted and looked again.
He bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t speak. He really, really couldn’t.
“But I am,” said John, reading him, reading his mind.
He was so, so calm, and Buck – the infantile, vicious part of him – wanted to scream. He found a toothpick in his shirt’s chest pocket and bit on it so hard that it momentarily split.
Maybe he could swallow it. See what happens then.
(Didn’t John tell him once that he’d want to see him swallow, after all?)
“You are,” It wasn’t proud or brave, the sound that escaped Gale’s lips. It belonged to a wounded animal.
It was a bad wound. Probably fatal.
He tried to clear his throat. Failed. Tried again. Would he just pass out? His vision was swimming, ears ringing with a high, piercing sound.
“It’s – “
(Unexpected? Changing everything? Breaking my heart? The end of my world?)
“It’s, um – , “ he couldn’t look at him, “Wonderful, Bucky, I’m – “
John shook his head, wrung his hands. It was clear he didn’t buy into Gale’s forced enthusiasm and, somehow, Gale was grateful for it.
John sniffed. With a quiet tut, he leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and his index finger.
“Gale, listen to me,” he started, then paused. Gale’s daddy sounded like that sometimes. Apologetic, but not regretful, “It was quite… It happened rather quickly. Didn’t have much time to think about large gatherings and all”, Only after a moment, Gale understood that what Bucky meant were weddings. Was he really just assuming that Gale was upset he didn’t ask him to repay the whole best man favour?
Was that it?
He didn’t have a chance to ask, because John spoke again, a bottle of Vernors in one hand, Gale’s heart in the other.
“She… Paulina is pregnant. I’m gonna be a father, Buck,” he said.