Chapter Text
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
-Frederico Lorca
“When all this is over I’m taking you home to meet my family,” Bucky says, arms crossed behind his head and staring up at the slatted wood of the bunk above him. They’re the only ones still awake, the rest of the men trying to hide from the bitter reality of their captivity with sleep. Quiet snores rising about them in a comforting symphony. It was the only time Buck and Bucky had to themselves, to whisper freely and fantasize about a peaceful future that felt increasingly far away.
Buck laughs quietly “Shit Bucky, not sure I’m civilized enough for that.”
Just today they’d seen a man hanged for attacking a guard. He’d snapped, nerves frayed from too many cold nights and too little freedom. His feet kicking and swimming through empty air, tongue bulging out of his mouth in a great purple lump and eyes bloodshot and bulging from lack of oxygen. Buck had never seen a man hanged before, hadn’t known it was such a violent death; that sometimes men soiled themselves in their last desperate moments. And yet, he’d seen worse. Seen what happens when superheated metal sliced through fragile young bodies. Knew what a man's innards smelled like, how they steamed in the air, how quickly they froze in temperatures well below zero. Still, he couldn't help but watch that man struggle and wonder if this was a grim promise of his fraying companion’s future.
Here in the cabin barracks they were separate from all that. Here at night with only the searchlights outside to see by. Here it was just them two and there was no death.
“Sure you are, no worse than me that's for sure. Ma’ll love your pious commitment to a sober vice free life. If you were a woman she’d have me marry you on the spot.”
Bucks smile stretches painfully across his skull. “Ain’t no piety about it.”
“My sister’ll like you too.” Bucky continues in that specific way of his. Uncaring about how much or how little Buck contributed to the conversation, content to fill the empty space with his own voice. It didn’t matter, so long as Buck listened. “Sure, she’ll probably try to steal you away to be her dashing soldier man, but I think that’s alright for sixteen, to be a little silly.” His voice cracks a bit. Grief? Jealousy perhaps? “She deserves to be a little silly. ‘Sides, you got Marge.”
Marge, his Marge who was the mirror match to his own wheatfield looks; who took to his proposal with the same practicality and understanding he’d always admired her for. Marge who waited faithfully in Sheridan for her handsome soldier boy. He makes a noncommittal grunt.
“Dad’ll not know what to make of your lack of care for sports, but he’s the kinda guy who gets along with just about everyone. Kinda like you in that regard. He’s not mean like my Ma’ and me. He’s real quiet, like you.”
“Think you’re mean, do you Egan?”
John grins, eyes a little mad, a little madder every day they spend here “As a dog, Cleven, mean as a dog.”
Bucky was loud and crass and angry. He started fights but didn’t finish them, talked circles when he really should shut up and tested the guards a hair more than Buck thought was sane. He was an actor, a performer through sheer will more than talent, but there wasn’t a cruel bone in his body.
“You must not’ve met very mean dogs then.”
Bucky is silent long enough Gale thinks he might have taken a page out of his own book. Enough to wonder if the other man has fallen asleep were it not for his steady breathing. He doesn’t want John to be asleep yet, isn’t quite ready to be left alone with his own morbid thoughts. “Hell, I’d be crazy to turn down an invitation to your Ma’s cooking.” he finally says
“Good man.”
-*~*-
Escape comes; rescue then surrender and perhaps the Pacific theater they even think for a little while. Then it’s the end of the war, the process of shipping everyone home and Buck says goodbye to the men he’d spent the last few years eating, sleeping and bleeding beside for the last time.
He says goodbye to John. John with whom he doesn’t quite know where he stands despite their last conversation in the dark of the airfield. A hand on his cheek, a thumb brushing through the lashes under his eye and a quiet acceptance of a whispered secret were all well and good in the privacy of a B-17 cockpit. But it was back to the real world now where John had friends and family and a regular life. He’d promised Gale he’d call the moment he could get to town, write the moment he got home but it would be some weeks yet before they both even set foot in their respective states. And Buck was sure John would take time to be with his family before he bothered to invite complications back into his life.
And Buck.
Well, Buck had Marge, just like he’d always had. He had a job lined up at the local school teaching science while he finished the fancy degree a war had put on hold. He had a wedding to plan, even if it was a sham. Marge deserved that at least, deserved a good husband on the outside even if at home they would have their own beds, their own lovers. Buck liked Irene, liked her big dark curls and loud laugh and bawdy jokes. She was a far better match to Marge than he could ever be. It didn’t matter that Buck had no one, no one except John - and that wasn’t really anything was it?
He was alone either way, Marge living with her parents til the wedding as was proper and Buck fixing up the little farmhouse he’d purchased with a nice nest egg put aside from his service wages. It was run down and tired, just like anything else in the middle of Wyoming. But it’s warm when he gets home in late June, as far from the cold of German prison camps as possible and that's better than any other blessing Gale could ask for.
The day he gets the deed and the keys he sets about fixing up the place. Sweeping and dusting, fixing broken shingles, and loose siding. The kitchen needs a new stove and ice box, the plumbing needed entirely replacing and the perimeter fence was barely more than a suggestion of wires and wooden posts. But it was good work, hard work. The kind of tasks Buck could sink into and forget anything remotely relating to Europe or airplanes or irish boys with quick grins and quicker wit. Marge stops by after her work, to bring him food, to sit and chat for a while. If he prayed he would thank God for Marge, if not for her he’s sure he’d forget to eat and speak entirely.
There’s always something more to do, another project to lose himself in. Buck had never done well with idleness and it was worse than ever. If he could keep himself busy enough during the day he could fall into bed exhausted enough there was no time to think before sleep took him over each night. No time to linger and ruminate on could haves and should haves and what ifs. Sometimes he sleeps through the night. More often than not nightmares drive him from rest. He gave up smoking long before the war but he chews his toothpicks down to splinters and it seems like it’s every other day that he’s asking Marge to pick him up more gum from the general store.
Never him; he’d not quite been able to stomach town yet, with its people and its stares of admiration that made his innards twist up in some unpleasant way. Once upon the time he had been the no-good son of a no-good father. The spitting image of the man minus the constant liquor reddened cheeks and oil-feild roughened hands. He saw him around town sometimes still, ducking out of bars, passed out drunk on benches and against alleyway walls. Swearing his luck would change just as he always had. They never acknowledged each other, hadn’t since Gale had fled their crumbling home at eighteen to join the army with a vow to never be a man who could be compared to his father again.
He wasn’t sure if he liked being a War Hero any better.
So he stayed away from town, wore his flight jacket like it might vanish if he took it off and tried to pretend anyone outside of Buck Cleven the Airforce Pilot existed.
He tried to pretend he wasn’t waiting. Didn’t really know who he was pretending for.
“I’m worried about you Gale.”
Marge’s hand rests over his across the small kitchen table, small and terrifyingly fragile. Her hair was carefully pressed, clothes spotless as always. She’d always been so glamorous. Outgoing and friendly, the type of girl that had men flocking to her. She was at ease in every situation, commanded a room as confidently as Buck had commanded any squadron. It had confused young outcast Buck to no end that she had chosen him of all people; until it hadn’t.
Sometimes he wishes he could love her in a real way. Sometimes he hates the day he realized she and John were cut from the same exact cloth. How deeply he had been ensnared by them both.
“I'm gonna miss you every second,” He’d told her once. A lifetime ago, before he knew the sort of man he was. And he’d meant it to. He would miss her, his oldest dearest friend who knew him in ways nobody else had. Before he knew John, truly knew him, and well before Irene. Back when it had just been them two against the world.
He realizes Marge is waiting for a response. Realizes it’s been minutes and he’s gotten lost in his own head again. John never minded it, was content to fill the silence for as long as Gale needed it, but for some reason he feels like he’s disappointed Marge. He tries, he really does, but all he can muster is a noncommittal grunt. He knows he’s angered her because she curses for once, low and under her breath.
“I don’t know what to do.” She squeezes his hand “I know what you boys saw and went through over there I- I know it’s not things you can talk about. But you gotta give me something Gale. You’re barely eating, I can see you’re not sleeping. You’re shut away up here like a ghost. My parents keep asking where you are, why you won’t stop by anymore, but I’m running out of excuses.”
“It ain’t a big deal Marge-”
“Are you drinking?” She asks sharply. It’s not the question being asked. Are you turning into your no-good daddy Gale Cleven? Poison in different words.
Gale stands so fast his knock sharply against the underside of the table, sending it skidding.
Marge jerks back in her chair, eyes wide as Gale stares at her. He breathes rapidly, as he takes in her shocked face, the flicker fear in her eyes quickly hidden by caution as she reaches out a slow soothing hand. As one would an animal. As one would a dog that’s bitten its master. They put down dogs like that round here. A bullet between the eyes, thank you and done. His breath comes quicker, violent now in their vigor. Audible and rasping and painful.
Gale Cleven had grown up in an angry home. His first memories were raised voices and fists that fell heavy and painful. And oh he’d been angry himself once. Had tasted blood on his teeth more times than he could count. Felt his knuckles bruise and split like ripe peaches. Some men gathered their boyhood scars as badges of honor. Gale gathered his as war wounds long before a gun had ever been put in his hands. When he left home he vowed he was done being the man his father molded him to be. He never raised his voice, never touched any vice Don Cleven may have fallen victim to. He would be a Good Man. And Marge had never once looked at him in fear, not for a single moment until now.
What a wretched beast the war had made of him. Teeth broken and bared and bloody at any ounce of kindness.
John had once compared himself to a dog, not realizing the real mutt was the man in the bunk next to him all along.
“Let's get you some fresh air Gale.” Marge places a soft hand at his back, leading him out to the great sagging wraparound porch. The banisters needed refinishing, the shutters a new coat of paint.
“Hell, I’m sorry Marge.” his voice comes out small as a childs, shame choking him to near silence, “You know I would never-”
“I ain’t scared of you Gale Cleven, I’m scared for you. You’re somewhere I can’t reach these days.”
A breeze stirs his hair, fully grown out from his buzz now. The air smells clear and sweet, like hay and summer flowers and mountain snow. He inhales to the full capacity of his lungs, ribs expanding one by one like the popping of stiff knuckles, the spreading of a spider's limbs. Exhales hard. Wishes desperately for a cigarette and pulls a toothpick from his breast pocket instead. Can you be really a good man if it still took effort?
“What about John?” Marge tries again to get him to speak, a dirty underhanded tactic bringing up John, “You wrote me back in London he invited you to come visit his family. Maybe you two could…” she trails off, as if unsure herself what Buck even needed.
Daydreaming of sending me away, are you Marge? Wipe or hands of this mess and set off to find some other man who will serve your purposes?
Nasty thoughts, nasty words. Aimed to cut perfectly deep. He wasn’t that far gone quite yet.
“John ain’t called on me.” He says roughly, with a little anger and a lot of grief. ‘Called on me’ like a lover, like a doomed courtship. This wasn’t the longest they’d been apart. The month or so between escape and rescue held that badge. But that was before their conversation, before Buck's confession. Before the War ended and they returned to the real world. Before Buck was left to wonder if it was only John’s emotional state that had led to his acceptance, that had led to him stomaching Gale's lips to his wrist. Perhaps he had come back to the real world and found his senses returned to him. Maybe he looked back on the man he had given his name to with nothing but revulsion.
It wasn’t the longest they’d been apart, but it was getting close to it.
“Well, the mail just came on my way up here. Why don’t we go check? See if there's a whole stack of letters from Bucky for you.” She coaxes him, tugs him up by the elbow with a surprising amount of strength and an entirely expected level of resolve and marches him down the winding driveway.
Dust kicks up with every step they take, drifting in the gentle breeze as the sun beats down on them both. Sweat quickly gathers on Gale's upper lip, between his shoulder blades. Marge on his arm looks pretty as a flower and he realizes a part of him truly wouldn’t mind this for the rest of his life. If that’s what it had to be.
The mailbox is empty save for a flier advertising G.I. Benefits.
“Well,” Marge says.
Gale slams the mailbox door closed with twice the force necessary. “Ain’t no matter.”
-*~*-
There was a mighty storm rolling across Wyoming. Miles out yet, the thunder grumbles through the grasslands like the distant sound of anti-aircraft fire. Set just far out enough from The Bighorns to not benefit from its shelter, Sheridan was directly in the storm's path.
It sets Buck's teeth on edge, triggers the roaring pit in his head where he puts all the things from the War he just can’t think about.
It’s been a month and a half. It feels like a thousand years.
Ain’t no matter.
That had become his new mantra. His little trick to remind his brain not to care about things that hurt. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that they still hadn’t brought Curts body home. Still buried and rotting away in some muddy plot of land in Belgium. Ain’t no matter about the dreams that plagued him most nights. John still hadn’t called or written. Ain’t no fuckin matter.
His life was strictly and unevenly divided between things that mattered and things that did not. The house, Marge, the cleanly pressed uniform hanging in a place of respect in the wardrobe upstairs. Those mattered.
The rest was all static.
It was dark now despite it being midday, dark like it was late evening, dark like winter. The storm growls over his tiny property, awe-inspiring in its power and ferocity. The house groans and trembles around him. Gale could almost convince himself the entire world was about to tear apart. Could almost convince himself he couldn’t hear B-17’s and B110’s tearing across the sky above him. He can’t quite dismiss the notion, his chest growing tighter and tighter until he stalks out of the house, nearly tearing the screen door off its hinges to stare up at the sea-black sky. The rain lashes his face, stinging cold but god it makes him feel awake for the first time in weeks. He stumbles then falls back on his ass, mud soaking into his trousers and shirt as he stares and stares up at the demonstration of nature's power above his head.
There’s no sign of any planes.
It doesn’t stop Gale from sitting there and searching until the storm begrudgingly continues its path across the world.
The sun returns, the birds begin to sing again, humidity gathers, choking thick and unpleasant and the mud flecked across Gales skin and clothes dries uncomfortable and tight.
Steam rises from his trousers, his plain white shirt. He sits there long past when he should rise, and maybe he would have sat there until night came were it not for a rusty blue pickup making its way up the dirt road.
It wasn’t Marge, and there was nobody else in the world to visit him and for the first time since returning Gale wishes he had a gun. Even though the thought of laying his hand on one ever again makes him sick.
He stands, body creaking in a way no twenty-seven year olds should, wipes at the mud on his trousers in a futile effort to make himself more presentable.
In the handful of days between Buck's capture and the arrival of Bucky at the prison Gale had pulled aside every soldier that walked through those damn gates searching for news of his friend. Every time the whistle blew he was first to the fence, scanning for any familiar face, for names and news and updates. Fingers knotted in the barbed wire uncaring of where they tore and bled. There were still silvery scars across the pads of his fingertips; marks of a desperation he’d had no control over. He didn’t want John to follow him into that hell. He couldn’t imagine surviving it without him. His guys were unwavering, joining him day after day, group after group until the newcomers slowed to a trickle of broken and battered bodies. The ill, the infirm and the especially damaged.
He went down somewhere over enemy lines.
Don't know if he bailed in time.
Never heard of him, sorry sir.
Never for a second did Buck think John was dead. He was too big, too bright, too much for something as simple and concise as death. But when his bruised and battered face emerged from the limping crowd the relief that swept through Gale nearly took him off his feet. And yet, seeing John's face on that tarmac after landing, after hearing his voice over the radio, after not knowing if he was dead or alive blew that previous feeling out of the water.
What he feels now, as a familiar voice calls out “You been fighting mud monsters out here Major?” As John hops out of the driver's side of the truck. That feeling was indescribable.
Gale's knees buckle, he has to grab the wood pillar of the porch and when the half rotted wood groans in protest he opts for sitting down hard on the steps instead. It takes a moment for him to find his words, throat suddenly the driest it’s ever been. He pulls together his bravado, that soldier mask that was so easy to slip into.
“Yeah there's been a real infestation ‘round these parts. Gotta keep ‘em in check or they’ll overrun the whole town.”
John grins, his hands resting cockily on his hips. “Buck Cleven. One man army.”
Civilian life seemed to suit Bucky in all the ways it did not Gale. The brunette's cheeks were flushed with color, he looked like he’d finally recovered all the weight he’d lost during captivity and the hunted look in his eyes had faded enough it could almost be missed if Buck wasn’t so familiar with its sharp gleam. He was dressed in cleanly pressed light slacks and a delightfully wine red button down shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. It set off his dark eyes and hair handsomely. A stark contrast to Buck's own disheveled state, his dog tags clinking against his chest because he didn’t know how to take them off. He couldn’t see Johns, but they could be hidden under his clothes.
Bucky's grin slowly fades off his face as he gives Buck a second once over, taking in the ruined clothes, the stunned expression and scruffed chin that was more than a few days past due for a shave. It was easy to forget things, when there was so much fixing that needed to be done.
“Why don’t we get you cleaned up Soldier.” Buck says quietly, planting one polished shoe on the first step and reaching out a hand for Buck to take. It’s a mirror shot to the dozens, if not hundreds, of times Bucky had offered him a hand out of his fort.
Buck can’t quite remember his expression ever having been so careful, so tender.
John's hand is warm, warm as that night in the B-17, pressed against his tear-stained face. The first time Buck had wept in years, seeing Egan break down. The last time he thought he would for a long time.
The flex of John’s bicep is a pleasant view as he hauls Buck to unsteady feet, claps him on the back and gestures towards the cavernous maw of a screen door behind the two men.
“After you, Gale.”
It’s the use of his Christian name that spurs Buck into moving, leading Bucky through the empty house, past half-finished projects and through the kitchen where the table was still out of place after his outburst at Marge and into the small downstairs washroom.
“Plumbing’s not fixed yet.” he says before John has the chance to twist a knob. He nods towards a bucket and pitcher tucked to the side of the sink “Been hauling water up from the well in the meantime. Makes for a hell of a time washing up.”
“Yeah you sure smell like it.” John teases. It doesn’t bother Buck. They’d both smelled worse. “Alright Gale, down to them skivvies.”
Buck strips obediently, tossing his soiled clothes in a heap on the floor to be cleaned later.
The day is hot enough it’s left the water lukewarm against his skin as he scrubs himself with the rag cloth and soap balanced on the side of the sink. John doesn’t quite observe but he does stick close by, gazing around at the bare freshly painted walls and refinished floors. He gives a low whistle.
“Looks like it’s been a real fixer upper.”
Buck rolls his head more than nods, tossing the mud-covered rag into the sink and slipping past John towards the kitchen. He’s still in his undershorts, shoulders bearing the tan and freckles of days of hard work. John in contrast had lost much of his color, fading to a pasty irish tone aside from a handsome strip of darker skin across his nose and cheeks.
“Wanted to make it nice for Marge,” he says, flinging himself down into a kitchen chair. Now the shock of John's appearance is wearing off; he feels the first stirrings of temper. Real temper. His fathers temper.
John bustles around the kitchen, making noises of increasing distress as he finds cupboard after cupboard bare of anything of substance. “This kitchen is a sorry state Buck.”
“Well if I’d known company was coming I’da fetched the fine china from the butlers pantry.” Gale bites out, temper burning just a few degrees hotter. All he’d thought of for the last month and a half was John. And now all he wanted was for him to fuck right back off and leave Buck alone.
Bucky laughs and somehow manages to produce a half-filled tin of coffee grounds and two chipped mugs. There’s already a clean pot resting on the stove and Buck watches as Bucky sets about making two cups. While the grounds steep in the water John stops in front of him. Gale looks up at him, that burning temper bubbling under his tense mask. Not quite friendly but also not much more than a subtle expression to fuck off.
Bucky, reckless bastard that he was, smiles at Bucks raised hackles. He leans down and grips Buck’s jaw in a gentle hand, shaking it slightly.
“You’re in a sorry state.”
A hand on his face, fingers gripping his jaw; it’s a gesture John had made dozens of times before. A familiarity and possessiveness with Buck's body that had always been a little presumptuous and forward. It had stumped him, then calmed him, then excited him every time John took his face in his calloused hand. Even if it had never meant nothing more than a good friend touching a good friend. This time, however, it was different. Alone in Gale's kitchen, miles away from anyone else. Gale, stripped nearly bare and John fully dressed, stood almost between his legs to reach the roughness of his unshaven jaw. It makes something burn hot and heavy in his belly, something so violently yearning it has teeth that bite and twist on Gale’s heart. His temper bursts, a snake rearing its head back to strike.
He slaps John's hand away, hard enough the skin on skin contact echoes around the kitchen.
“Don’t think you’ve got much of a platform to stand on there Egan.”
His words were borderline hateful, angry with John like he's only been once before on that awful day when he struck him.
Johns sharp brows furrow. His mustache had grown back and it punched across his upper lip with just as much judgment as his brows.
“Not sure what you mean there Buck.”
It had been Gale for a second, right at the end. For a moment it had been Gale more than it had been Buck.
“I wasn’t the one all but begging to be shot by the guards for months on end there Bucky.” Buck shakes his head, laughing sharply. His anger was a living thing now and he aches with it “Nah, nah, not me. No, I was the one dragging your crazy ass back from the brink time and time again. Trying to convince those fucking Germans your sorry carcass was of more use alive than dead, trying to keep the men busy and motivated while you fucked about. You're welcome by the way.” He jabs a finger in John's direction, who stares at him taken aback. “So’s I don’t see much of a reason why I should let you come up into my home and cast your judgments around.”
Bucks chest heaves, great gulps of air like he’s once again racing through snow-covered German trees. He can tell he’s shocked John into silence, the other man's eyes darting back and forth. Buck averts his gaze, brushing his hair back from his face. That’s twice now he’s lost himself at the people he cares about. Twice now he’s bitten a hand reached out in kindness.
Gale takes a deep breath to compose himself, tucks the jagged angry edges of himself back to face inwards. “You said you would write.”
He glances up at Bucky and it's the other man who averts his gaze this time, face paling. He sits down heavily across from Buck and rubs a hand across his mustache, still avoiding eye contact.
“I meant to.” He finally says then laughs sharp and bitter, “I musta put pen to paper a thousand times. But I- well. The words just wouldn’t come. Figured eventually I might as well drive out and fetch you back with me.”
Gale's anger stutters and then goes out completely, leaving him hollow. Of course, of course he wasn't the only one with memories that nipped at his heels. And John, the man that he was, had decided to do something about it for the both of them. Who shouldered a sixteen hour drive because of course a letter wasn’t good enough, he’d already chased Buck into the heart of enemy territory, what were a few state lines?
“John Egan,” Buck drawls, “always to the rescue.” Bucky laughs, a genuine noise that sounds so foreign in the cold bare kitchen.
John was fake on the surface and all real underneath. Real bravery and real heart, a man who jumps on an armed German guard to save his friend. Who volunteered on the next mission out all because his friend had been shot down. And Gale, well he was just the opposite wasn't he? All real on the thin top layer and below that nothing much of substance. A good soldier, a good leader; good at being a man in all the ways that garnered approval and respect. He honed it to perfection, perfect responses full of bravado, not too harsh but not too intimate either. But below that…there was very little to behold. No matter how many times the other guys told him, he told himself, there would always be the fact that John faced down armed guards and Buck ran.
Buck knew how to be a soldier. He didn’t know how to be much else.
“Home’s been good?” He asks finally as John stands to pour their coffees. He watches as the other man pulls a flask from his pockets to tip a generous amount into one of the mugs, stirring with a finger before sucking it clean with a wet pop. Gale looks away quickly, accepts his own mug with a quiet thanks.
John was fake on the surface, so the easy smile he tosses Gale’s way is as fake as they come, full of all-american bravado. “Hell, I'm a hero wherever I go. Free drinks, free movie tickets, free meals. I might never buy my own beer again”
Gale purses his lips in a smile and nods into his coffee “Yeah, I know that deal.”
He wonders how John could stand it, enjoy it, not shy back from the borderline fanatical worship. But of course Bucky, always the center of attention; who sang when he couldn’t carry a tune and gambled the shirt off his back, would welcome it.
The silence that lapses between them is cautiously comfortable, the most calm Gale has felt since touching back down on american soil. They sip their coffee, Gale's plain and gritty the way he likes it, Johns with a little something extra they way he always had. It wasn’t enough to get the other man even tipsy; this was maintenance if nothing else, a morning exercise in leveling out the headaches and shakes that Gale had grown up believing to be normal.
“It is beautiful out here, Gale.” John says softly, an olive branch extended “You told me but,” he shakes his head and gives a low whistle,“Can’t really compare to the real thing.”
John’s eyes are so dark, so intense, the air around them so quiet and calm for a single moment Gale thinks it’s not the scenery his companion is talking about.
John knew. Knew Gale’s secret and, while not in so many words, had declared it did not matter to him. Gale was Gale and they were Buck and Bucky as they always had been. But that didn’t mean John was subject to similar implications and Gale tells himself it’s just wishful thinking. He’s missed his friend. Has oscillated wildly from yearning to anger back to yearning. His thinking was confused.
“Some things are better experienced in person.” Gale whispers. John's fingers tighten around his mug. The room presses in around them, suddenly twice as small and Buck’s pulse kicks up a notch. He licks his lips, catches the last dregs of coffee stuck in the deep center bow. He allows himself to pretend for a moment that John tracks the movement.
His stomach flips and it’s not lust that fills him but a deep sense of horror, washing over him like a bucket of ice water. He stands abruptly, takes Bucky's now empty mug and his own over to the sink to be washed. He scrubs, movements rapid and jerky trying to calm his racing heart. There were things he could not want, could not allow himself to want. He’d had his trysts once or twice as a youth. Quick and painful in back alleys or a car parked miles out of town. The pain paired well with the shame and the orgasms were as quick and violent as the interactions themselves. The mouth was better, less pain and preparation; but he loathed the vulnerability of it. Loathed that that had been stolen from him too.
That was over now, he was to be a married man and even if he would never consummate he wouldn’t make a fool of Marge. There was no use entertaining fantasy. The war happened, Buck and Bucky happened and now it was over.
“Gale,” John starts then stops and just for a moment his voice sounds….
Buck takes every ounce of feeling, of yearning and want. Takes all the small childish needy pieces of him and drops them right down that hole where the war lived. John was moving on, was healing and thriving. It was time for him to as well.
“Marge’ll be stopping by soon. She’ll be delighted to see you.”
There’s a long pregnant pause where Gale can feel John's shrewd gaze burrowing through the back of his skull. You didn’t get as good at leading men as John Egan without knowing how to read them as well.
“Hell, I’m excited to see the old gal as well.”
But for now it seems he decides to play along.